The Words of Jesus #13

SPEAKER 02 : 0:02

The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:18

Man is a territorial creature. I know we all understand that we like to stake out our turf and we want people to stay off our turf. But I don’t mean territorial necessarily in a geographical sense. Man is socially territorial. By that I mean we expect people to stay in their class, to not get above their raisin, as it were. And we also tragically expect people to stay inside their race, which has created an awful lot of problems in our society. But man is even territorial in an ideological sense. We put together belief systems, you know, take churches here and there with all of their doctrines and their creeds. We put together belief systems that are exclusive, that is, are exclusionary. They accept all people who believe exactly what we believe and exclude everyone else. Now, I think a large part of this comes from a very natural desire to feel special. No one wants to think he’s ordinary, that he’s just part of the herd, just one other guy. We want to believe that there’s something special about us, and we want to be together with people who share the same special quality that we have got, that same thing that makes us distinct from other people. I realize this sounds like psychobabble in a way, but let me explore this idea with you from a religious point of view. If you were to ask 100 people, What is the name of the religion of the Old Testament? Most of them would answer, well, Judaism, isn’t it? Well, they would be wrong. In the New Testament, we encounter two of the major sects of Judaism, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And Jesus is at some pains to make it clear to us that what these people believed was sharply different from the revealed religion of the Old Testament. You run into it again and again. You run into it in the Sermon on the Mount. You run into it in his conflicts with Pharisees and Sadducees from day to day throughout his ministry. That what they believed, Jesus said, was sharply at variance with what the Old Testament taught. Judaism was not the revelation of God. Judaism was the response of the Jewish people to the revelation of God. Now, this is manifest in the sectarian nature of Judaism. I mean, Judaism isn’t, you know, just one large homogeneous group of people. There are sects in Judaism just like there are in Christianity. I don’t know if Judaism can boast as many sects as Christianity, but if not, it’s probably only because there are not so many Jews in the world as there are Christians. Consider, in this light, a fascinating encounter Jesus had with a Roman centurion. Jesus is walking through the streets of the city. This is found in Luke 7, verse 1. But as he walked along, several of the elders of the Jews of the local synagogue came to him, beseeching him that he would come and heal the servant of a certain centurion. Now, this is rather interesting. The servant was very special to the centurion, and the centurion, in turn, was very special to the elders of the synagogue because he had been very generous with them. In fact, he had actually built a synagogue for the Jews in Capernaum, that he loved the Jewish nation, that he was a kind man. In other words, he had a very good reputation among these people. But the question is, why did the centurion send these men to ask Jesus to come and heal his servant. Why didn’t he go himself? Well, Jesus went with them, and as they were not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to him, saying, Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof. Wherefore, neither thought I myself worthy to come to you. Now, why on earth would this man have felt that way? People were coming to Jesus all the time. Sinners were around him. He ate with sinners. He went to their houses and ate with them. Sick people in the droves came to him, pressed upon him, touched him. Why didn’t this man come himself? The answer is simple. It’s because he thought it would not be appropriate for him to come. He was a Gentile. He knew that the Jews expected him to stay apart. The very elders that went to Jesus on his behalf would not have entered his house, would not have eaten with him, so he had no reason to believe that Jesus was not of the same custom and the same habit. Now, is this what the Old Testament taught the Jews? Or was it the result of their own desire to be special? The way they looked at themselves, their desire to be a part of to create their own, what shall we call it, ideological turf, their own social turf, their own cultural turf, their own religious turf. And Gentiles, well, they could kind of worship the same God, but they couldn’t really be a part of everything. Now, the Old Testament writings have a lot to say about non-Israelites and their worship of God. Yeah, if you have a concordance, you can do a little study on it yourself. Just look up the word stranger and strangers and see all the places where the stranger is mentioned in the Old Testament. Take Leviticus 19, verse 33, for example. It says, If a stranger sojourn with you in your land, some Gentile comes in from overseas, and he is living in Israel with you. It says, You shall not vex him, but the stranger that dwells with you shall be unto you as one born among you, And you shall love him as yourself. For you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Now, what he’s saying here I think is fascinating. That the stranger who came among them was not to be kept apart. He wasn’t to be made to live over in a ghetto someplace. He says, after all, you people lived in a ghetto in Egypt, didn’t you? You were strangers down there. And look how those people treated you. I don’t want you to treat the strangers that come into your land that way. The Israelites were in Egypt. They were separated socially, and they were treated as inferior persons. The Jews of Jesus’ day did not treat the Gentiles as though they were one born among them, as the law commanded. Even the strangers that feared God and attended synagogue with the Jews were treated as inferior persons religiously and were separated socially. Now, there’s a funny thing about this, though. In the law, specific provision was made for the Gentile to participate in the religious life of the people, and they were allowed to participate fully. In Numbers 15, verse 14, if a stranger sojourns with you, okay, the guy’s come in from overseas, he’s docked on the coast, he’s moved in, bought a house, he’s living among you, or whosoever be among you in your generations, anytime, anyplace, and will offer an offering made by fire of a sweet savor to the Lord. As you do, so shall he do. Do you understand what I just read to you? What this says is that if a stranger among you wants to actually come up and offer a sacrifice to me, as you do, so shall he do. One ordinance shall be both for you of the congregation and also for the stranger who sojourns among you, an ordinance forever in your generations. As you are, so shall the stranger be before the Lord. One law and one manner shall be for you and for the stranger who dwells among you. You get that? One law and one custom. You’re not supposed to put together customs that make the stranger separate. You’re not supposed to put together a system of worship or religion that treats these people who are sojourning in your land, who are visitors to your coasts, as though they are somehow inferior or not as good as you. Israel was chosen by God. They were a chosen people. They were a special people. But they were chosen to be a light to the nations around them. They were chosen actually to take God to the nations. They were chosen to stand as a shining light in the world so all the world would approach God and say, what a wonderful God is the God of the people of Israel. We will go and worship Him. There was in Old Testament times only one way to approach God for Jew and Gentile. Gentiles did not have a different way of salvation, a different way of worship, a different set of laws, nothing of the kind. Jesus knew this, but the Jews had forgotten it. So the centurion, being a Gentile and knowing his place, sent word. And he said, Lord, don’t trouble yourself. I’m not worthy that you should enter under my roof. Wherefore, I didn’t think myself even worthy to come to you. You just say in a word, and my servant shall be healed. For I’m a man under authority and having under me soldiers, and I say to this one, go, and he goes, to another, come, and he comes. To my servant, do this, and he does it. So I know that all you have to do is say the word, and it will happen. When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and he turned around and said to the people who were following him, he said, you know, I’ll tell you the truth. I have not found so great a faith. No, not in Israel. And the contrast was, here’s this Gentile living among us who has this kind of faith, and I don’t find this faith in Israel. In saying this, he acknowledged that this Gentile was in no way inferior to the Jews. Jesus saw more faith in this man than he had encountered anywhere going up and down Galilee or Judea. And he continued to say, and I say unto you that many shall come from the east and the west. That’s outside of Israel, you know, off over the seas and from the east. They shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom, now understand the children of the kingdom is another way of saying Israel. The Jews knew this. They heard every word he said and infuriated them. He said, people are going to come from outside this country and will sit down in the kingdom of heaven with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but the children of this country, the children of the kingdom of Israel, shall be cast into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And you can kind of understand that more clearly when you understand that here were a people who thought they had a special relationship with God, and they tended to exclude other people from that special relationship. And in the end, those other people will be in, and they will be out. Weeping and gnashing of the teeth, indeed. And Jesus said to the centurion, Go on your way. As you have believed, so be it done to you. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour. The religion of the Old Testament was not the exclusive religion of the Israelites. It was the only true religion in the world. And any Gentile who wanted to come to God had to come to the same God that owned Israel. Notice, God owned Israel. It was not the other way around. And don’t jump on the Jews for thinking they own God. Your church may feel the same way. A lot of Christians do. I’ll talk more about the words of Jesus when I come back.

SPEAKER 02 : 12:04

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SPEAKER 03 : 12:32

It came to pass the next day that Jesus went into a city called Nain, and many of his disciples were with him and a whole crowd of people, quite an entourage coming down the road. And when he came near the gate of the city, there was a crowd coming out carrying a dead man on a pallet, as it were. He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, which meant that was the last man had gone out of her life. She was desolate and alone. And apparently well-known in the city because most of the people in the town were with her. And when the Lord saw her, he really felt sorry for her. His heart went out to her. And he said to her, don’t cry. And he walked over and touched the pallet that they were carrying the dead man on. And the people carrying him stopped. And he said, young man, I’m talking to you. Get up. And he that was dead sat up and began to speak. And Jesus handed him down and turned him over to his mother. And there came great fear on everyone there. I can only imagine. They all knew the boy was dead. And all of a sudden, he’s up speaking and giving back to his mom. Well, they glorified God saying, well, there’s a great prophet risen up among us. And other people said, God has visited his people. And this rumor went all through Judea and all through the region, all over the place. Well, the disciples of John were picking up on all this information. And this is a kind of a curious relationship that you wonder, you know, John baptized Jesus. He knew who he was. He also seems very much to have known his mission. He calls him the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Well, these disciples of John went to see John. And he then, when he heard all about it, he called to him and he said to Jesus, saying, Are you he that should come, or should we look for someone else? And you really wonder, when you hear these words from John, what had happened. Why does John now doubt that all these things he’s hearing about Jesus mean that he’s the Messiah? Because he seems clearly to have understood it at Jesus’ baptism. Well, John’s in prison. And I have very little doubt being a human being and subject to human emotions, he was depressed. And things hadn’t worked out like he thought they would work out. The Messiah was supposed to come and get an army together and throw the Romans out and start a new era. He was at least supposed to be something other than what John was hearing that Jesus was. John lived a very ascetic life. You know, he lived in the wilderness, he ate locusts, he ate wild honey. Jesus didn’t stay in the wilderness. He went into the towns and the cities, and he ate with publicans and sinners, and he healed sick people while he was at it, but his lifestyle was different. Like I say, it seems odd that John would have been asking this question at this late date. And how could he wonder about a man who had just brought back a dead man to life? Well, apparently, all this did not fit the pattern that John expected of the Messiah. But when the men came to Jesus, they said, And that same hour, while they were standing there watching, Jesus cured many of the infirmities and plagues of the people who were around there and evil spirits. And to many who were blind, he gave sight. These guys were standing there with their eyes going back and forth watching what Jesus was doing as blind people were seeing, lame people were walking, devils were cast out. And then Jesus answered and said to them, you go back to John and tell him what you’ve seen and tell him what you’ve heard. Tell him that the blind see, the lame walk, that lepers are being cleansed, deaf are hearing, the dead are raised, and to the poor the gospel is preached. And he could have, in fact, as he said these different things, pointed to different people in the crowd, the blind see. See those guys over there? They were blind yesterday. See that man dancing over there? He was lame yesterday. See this fellow here with good clean skin? He was a leper yesterday. And that chap over there, he couldn’t hear yesterday. Now he can hear. And oh, by the way, that young man standing right over there, he was dead yesterday. And if you look around, you’ll see that the poor, that is the downtrodden, the ordinary people, the old run-of-the-mill men in the street, is having the gospel preached to them. It’s not just going to the higher-ups. It’s not just going to the people who are in and around the temple. It’s not going to the religious establishment. It’s not even going to some sect down around the Dead Sea Scrolls who think themselves more righteous than the people who live in the rest of the country. And then he said, including his message to John, And blessed is he whoever will not be offended in me. It’s almost a rebuke to John. But when the messengers of John left him, he turned around and spoke to the people concerning John. And he said, What did you go out in the wilderness to see when you went down to the Dead Sea or the Jordan River to watch John baptize? What did you go down there for? To see a reed shaken with the wind? What did you go down there for? To see a man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they that are gorgeously appareled and live delicately in king’s courts. No, no. What did you go down there to see? A prophet? Yeah, that’s what she went down there to see. And I tell you, he was much, much more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who shall prepare your way before you. I want to tell you something. Among those that are born of women, there has not been a greater prophet than John the Baptist. Wow. You know, you can write off Elijah. You can write off Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, all that gang. Among all the men that have been born of women, there has not been a greater prophet than John the Baptist. Why? Because he was the one who introduced directly the Son of God, the Messiah. Then Jesus could go on to say, oh yeah, he was a great prophet. But he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than John the Baptist. Now, who let that be? Well, the people that heard him and the publicans all justified God being baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves and weren’t baptized by John. And the Lord said, what am I going to liken the men of this generation to? And what are they like? They’re like children sitting in a marketplace calling out to one another and saying, well, we’ve piped to you and you haven’t danced and we’ve mourned and you haven’t wept. For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine. And you say, oh, he’s got a devil. The Son of Man has come eating and drinking. And you say, look at there, a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But he says wisdom is justified of all our children. You can know who’s doing what by the wisdom that’s there. But what’s fascinating about this is that Jesus looks at the people around him and saying, you know, you people have got a real problem. Because anybody that comes along that’s not exactly like you are, is somehow inferior, he’s an outsider, he’s to be excluded. It’s all a reference to this exclusionary, selfish, exclusive approach to religion where anybody who’s not a part of our group can’t possibly be accepted. So you find your excuses for rejecting him. John the Baptist, a prophet sent by God, was rejected because he ate bread and drank wine. Jesus was rejected when he came eating and drinking. They just weren’t going to hear the messenger from God, and they would find whatever excuse they needed to find for it.

SPEAKER 02 : 20:38

I’ll be back with more Words of Jesus. 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 The Words of Jesus, number 13. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791 or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44 and tell us the call letters of this radio station.

SPEAKER 03 : 21:09

I wouldn’t want to suggest that Jesus got frustrated exactly, but I think in time it wore on him a little bit that with people standing around all the time listening to him that he could point to who used to be blind and now could see, and people who used to be deaf and now could hear, a man that was dancing, like I said, and who used to be lame. And all this has been going on, and yet people see it, and they don’t do one thing to change their lives. They don’t say, oh, God is in his heaven. God knows what we’re doing, and begin to turn around and say, I should live a better life. And so he began not only to chastise John a little bit, as he did earlier, but now he begins to chastise some of the places where he had done a lot of mighty works, and people had not responded. He said, Woe to you, Chorazin, a little town. Woe to you, Bethsaida, another town. For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented a long time ago in sackcloth and ashes. That’s an interesting thing that he should say. If I had gone up the coast of Tyre and Sidon and I’d done up there what I’ve done down here, we would have had an absolute revolution up there. It’s almost like hearkening back to the book of Jonah, where Jonah was sent not to Israel, but to Nineveh over in Assyria. And he goes charging into town saying, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And guess what? Nineveh repented. Something that doesn’t seem to happen very much in Israel. But he said, you know, if I’d done that up there, they would have repented, but not you folks. I’m going to tell you the truth. It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, who are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell. For if the mighty works which had been done in you, Capernaum is a place where Jesus did a lot of stuff. He says, if the mighty works that had been done in you had been done in Sodom, Sodom would still be down by the Dead Sea today. You could go visit it. It’d still be there because they would have repented. I’m going to tell you the truth. It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. Now, let me give you something to think about here. Like the Jews, we have invented our own religion. Oh, we have based it on the Bible. I’ll grant you that. But don’t ever assume that the faith that you see in your church every week, and I don’t really care what your church is, don’t ever assume that that is the religion of the Bible. because the religion of the Bible is something the Jews, they used it as a basis somehow, but they had created their own religion above it, and so has Christianity. You can find a lot of what we believe in the Bible, but down through 2,000 years, Christian theologians have created a set of traditions just like the Jews did. And unfortunately, many of those traditions don’t match up real well with Scripture. If Jesus came on the scene today… We would go through the same rejection of the religious establishment that they went through in the first century. He would come in and say, well, your people told you at the Council of Nicaea, but I say unto you, it would be rather brutal, I’m afraid, as we would endure the things that Jesus would have to straighten out of all the things that we have put together in our tradition. In those places where our traditions don’t fit the Scriptures, we read over it and maybe just miss the point and don’t even notice it. If we do catch it, well, we can go to the preacher, and he will give us a handy-dandy, candid explanation to deal with it that may or may not be consistent with Scripture. Right here is one of those passages. Most of you listening to my voice right now believe that when a man dies, he goes straight to heaven or hell, and he stays there forever, right? I know not all of you do, but most of you listening to my voice believe that. And hell is hell. It is not more hell or less hell. I mean, if you’re in hell, you’re in hell, and you’re suffering torment forever and ever, a world without end. Amen, as the saying goes. Now, if that belief is true, then it’s safe to assume that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah went straight to hell with no detours on the way, right? Because Sodom, the men of Sodom and Gomorrah were wicked and sinners exceedingly before God. In fact, they were so bad. As far as I know, it’s the only place in history where God came down, looked at them, and destroyed them with fire and brimstone from heaven. Right? So surely, if anybody in history ever went to hell, the men of Sodom and Gomorrah went straight to hell. Now consider again the words of Jesus. And you, Capernaum, who are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell. For if the mighty works which had been done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. Who? The people in Capernaum he’s talking to. People apparently sitting there with their ears hanging out listening to the words that Jesus was saying. Jesus presumes a future day of judgment for the men of Sodom, which is a curious thing to consider if they had already been in hell for a few thousand years. What impression I get of hell from the preachers I listen to is that hell is not a very pleasant place to be for 24 hours. And these people will have been there for 1, 2, 3, 4,000 years, whatever. they then, at the judgment, are going to receive some level of toleration from God, which suggests that after some time, hell is, well, less than hell. It’s fascinating how easy it is for us to hold two contradictory ideas in our mind without even giving it a second thought. We believe people go to heaven or hell when they die. At the same time, we believe they are going to be resurrected from the grave and judged at some time in the future. What does that mean? Well, it means we’re sending people to hell without ever giving them their day in court. I’m not suggesting that you throw all your beliefs out the window, only that you file this away for future reference, because it may be that you’ve got something wrong in your set of doctrines, and you don’t want to be wrong. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart, and you were born to win.

SPEAKER 02 : 27:26

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SPEAKER 01 : 27:55

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