This episode explores the profound insights of Jesus on leadership and hypocrisy, focusing on the perilous interplay between power and morality. Ronald L. Dart uses historical references from biblical texts to reveal how religious leaders have historically grappled with temptations of power, the double standards they uphold, and the lessons that can be drawn for today’s leaders. The discussion becomes a mirror to our times, challenging listeners to consider how power structures affect integrity and humility in leadership.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It was Lord Acton who, I think, first said that, and it’s passed into the popular culture as a truism. It was one of the reasons, in fact, why men rejected the idea of absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings, because history showed them that power corrupted, and absolute power certainly corrupted absolutely. But forget about absolute power for a minute, and think about power. Power in small amounts, power in small doses. It’s a little spooky, frankly, to realize how little power it takes to actually start the process of corruption. When Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem, Rome was the absolute power. And, true to form, Rome was corrupt. What was less obvious, though, was that there was also power in the hands of religious leaders, and that power had done its work in all of the sects of the prevailing Judaism at the time. But nowhere was it more apparent than among those who formed the religious establishment. Now, this comes as no surprise to a student of history, that any time you become the establishment, any time a power, whether it’s political or religious, comes to be the establishment, it has to defend its position. And the power that it has has to be defended. And oftentimes, even religious people do some very corrupt things in the preservation of their power. Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples. This is in Matthew 23 and verse 1, saying, Now, what did he mean by that? Well, you’d have to go all the way back to the Old Testament and read, the accounts of Israel coming out of Egypt and passing through the wilderness, after they had gotten the Ten Commandments even, there was a great deal of judgment that had to go on. In other words, people would have disputes and arguments and natural things with people. And Moses would sit all day from morning to night judging the people. In the process of time, God set up a judiciary for Israel, and they were to have priests and Levites and judges in various cities. And if you had a problem, you were supposed to take your problem away. to the judges, and the judges would make their decision. This is basically what they mean when they say Moses’ seat. It’s the seat of judgment. It’s the judiciary. So Jesus said the scribes and the Pharisees sit in the judiciary. Now, the scribes and the Pharisees, the scribes were the sages. These were the men who had memorized parts of the Torah, had memorized the oral law. They were the repositories of the oral law. They were like walking, talking computers in a way. They had all these things in their memory banks, and they discussed the law of God without end, hours without end. It was they ate the law, drank the law, breathed the law. Now, these were the people then who were the interpreters of Moses to the people. Okay? So Jesus said, these people sit in Moses’ seat. All that they bid you observe, that observe and do. In other words, if you take something to one of these courts and they say this is the decision, Jesus said you’ve got to do it. However, he went on to say, don’t do after their works, for they say and they don’t do. Now there’s nothing more frustrating than a double standard in religious leadership. What is it about power? What is it about power that causes people to think that way, that creates this double standard? You see it in secular politics just like you do in religion. The political class and government act like the law was made for you and me, not for them. They seem to think that they can break the law. That’s not important whether they keep the law. They can stonewall. In fact, there’s a whole class of people in this country in the legal profession, the lawyers, who act like the law doesn’t apply to them. And in fact, In some ways, maybe in practical fact, it doesn’t because they can get away with stuff that you and I can’t get away with. And it’s power. They have enormous power because of their knowledge of the law, and they know ways of making their way around it that you and I just don’t know. Now, religious leaders are apt to do something very similar. Even the power to preach is a temptation. Because when you’re up there preaching in front of people, and you’re preaching about sin, and you know some of the people who hear what you’re saying are dirty, rotten sinners, it’s very tempting to pound the pulpit, to raise your voice, to shout, to rattle the windows, to condemn sin, and to forget that you’re also a sinner and you make your own mistakes. It’s a tough thing to do for a man who is aware of his own sins to get up there and shout and thunder. Well, Jesus was talking about a group of men who in their day-to-day administration of the religion of the time carried a double standard. They would tell you, the people, to do one thing, but they themselves did something different. Jesus said, using his words, they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be born, and they lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves, they wouldn’t move them with one of their fingers. Well, double standard. And this is not that unusual. And as I said, it’s a question of the degree of power to the degree of corruption. If there’s not a great deal of power, there may not be that much corruption. But I’ve been astonished at how small things religious people can fight to defend, how small the prerogatives can be of leadership in a church, however small the church. as people struggle for position. Now, Jesus doesn’t, you know, in all the Sermon on the Mount, in all of his teachings, he is very much opposed to that type of thing, and one wonders how in the world it gets going among Christian people. Speaking of these leaders, Jesus said, “…all their works they do for to be seen of men.” They make broad their phylacteries, and they enlarge the borders of their garments. The phylacteries were just a religious symbol. They were a symbol of the law. And the border of the garment, that’s that fringe of blue that they were supposed to put on their garments, is a sign that they were law-abiding citizens, that they believed in the law and kept the law. And that fringe became something of a status symbol. And so they embroidered them and elaborated on them and enlarged them. They also, he said, love the uppermost rooms at feasts. And they like to have the chief seats in the synagogue. All these things, folks, are symbols of power. They like those symbols. And they love the greetings in the market and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. I want to tell you folks something. Don’t be called Rabbi. For one is your master, even Christ. And you, well, all you people are just brethren. Well, this is the way he seems to want it. The leadership of the church is fully invested in Christ and the rest of us, well, the rest of us are brothers. And he goes on to say, don’t call any man your father on the earth. One is your father, which is in heaven. And don’t be called masters, for one is your master, even Christ. You know, it’s hard in the face of this plain statement by Jesus to understand how men can construct a church in his name, a church of Jesus Christ, a church of Christ, you know, God’s church as it were. and to try to rule over other men, to rule over one another within that church. For Jesus explicitly says, don’t do that. And in verse 11, he that is greatest among you, well, he shall be your servant. And whoever shall exalt himself, he shall be abased. And he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. This is the design for the Christian church. And it seems to have been for the very purpose of avoiding corruption in leadership. For in fact, as soon as you begin to allow structure… to create power, and to bring power into focus, and to pull in monies from over broad areas and from lots of peoples into a central location in order to make the church more powerful, you automatically increase corruption. Woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, said Jesus, for you compass sea and land and make one proselyte, And when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of hell than you yourselves. It’s, you know, what is the difference between proselyting and evangelizing? Do you know? Because the idea is to go out and tell people the truth about Jesus Christ, spread the good news, the evangel, the gospel, to let people see all these things. We’re supposed to do that, aren’t we? Well, yeah, Jesus said go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. Well, what’s the difference between doing that and proselyting? Well, proselyting seems to be where you have gone out and looked for people to add to your own power structure. And the Pharisees, in the process of doing that, weren’t doing anything very worthwhile. We’ll have more about what Jesus had to say about power and corruption when I come back after these words.
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There is danger out there. There are pitfalls everywhere. So what do you do? Stay indoors and play it safe or stick your neck out and take a chance? Write for a free CD titled Stick Your Neck Out. 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 station.
SPEAKER 03 :
The problem with power is that once you’ve got it, you want to keep it. And because you want to keep it, you tend to see the things, the decisions you have to make in terms of the power and what you have to do to keep it and who you have to please and how you have to sound and how you have to look. And that process screws up your judgment. to the place to where you’re no longer thinking logically as you did before, but you’re thinking strictly in terms of what will work for you. Jesus said to the Pharisees and the scribes, He said, Woe to you, blind guides, who say, Whoever will swear by the temple, it’s nothing. But whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, well, he is a debtor. You fools and blind! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? Now, it’s interesting that he calls them blind. And I think that’s one of the things that happens when you have power. Because of the fact you tend to distort judgment, because of the fact you tend to make decisions based upon what suits you instead of necessarily what’s right, you slowly but surely blind yourself and you begin to adopt a different set of logic. And so here, the question is, what’s more important, the temple or money? And I think it’s fascinating that all the way back in the first century, all the way back to the earliest part of the Christian faith, the caution is thrown out here that you will begin to think that money is the important thing. And if you watch Christian churches across the country and television evangelists and all the rest of us out here as we do our work, money is very much on our minds today. The answer to the reason for it is fairly simple. Television, for example, is an extremely expensive medium. It costs a lot of money to buy television time. Radio is not so bad. But in the case of television, you’ve almost got to centralize because of production costs and time buying costs. And when you centralize, all that money has got to come into one place. And when you’ve gotten on a lot of television stations, you’ve got to maintain the level of income, so you’ve got to raise money. And so as a consequence… instead of being a teacher of the gospel, to simply tell the truth according to the Bible. You’ve got to write to people. You’ve got to write letters. You’ve got to devise means of raising money. And I don’t offhand know of anything other than perhaps sex that can foul up your judgment faster than money. And they went on to say, Jesus said, you say, whoever shall swear by the altar, well, that’s nothing. But whoever swears by the gift upon it, he is guilty. Here we go again. It’s not the temple. It’s not the altar. It’s the money. It’s the gift. It’s what you’re doing. And I can see that happening. It happened to the Pharisees. It happened to the scribes. And down through history, it’s happened to the disciples of Jesus. You fools and blind, Jesus said, which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? So whoever will swear by the altar swears by the altar and everything on it. Whoever swears by the temple swears by it and upon him that dwells therein. And he that shall swear by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him that sits on it. So let’s realize that if you’re lifting up your right hand saying, I swear to God, that you’re reaching up and calling God to witness, and it’s not a question of the money in the temple or the gold in the temple or the gift on the altar. It’s God. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees. He shifts gears here just a little bit. You hypocrites. For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. This you ought to have done and not to have left the other undone. And you know, it’s funny, but here we’re still talking about money. Oh, I know, it’s tithing of the leaves out of your herb garden that he uses as the illustration. But all this stuff that is all the tithes of agricultural produce in the land, all the tithes of the people of the land that had to come in, all of this came into the central place and increased the power of the people who had control over it. And so they were very concerned that if you had ten leaves of mint… that you should tithe by giving one leaf of mint. And I can see these guys sitting down and counting out the seeds and counting out the leaves and being very, very careful to meticulously tithe on their herb garden. You know, there’s something about it that these little things like this, that we can do these things and we can feel very righteous about them and never even consider the implications of being unmerciful to people we know. of perverting judgment, of telling lies, of distorting the truth. What is it? Do all these little righteousness make us feel good before God so we think he won’t notice the other things that we do? You blind guides, you strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. A neat little expression that he uses here, and it’s plain enough. You really work so, so hard not to get a gnat in your mouth, but you’re willing to swallow a whole camel. You are so concerned about trivialities, and especially trivialities that have to do with money. Woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites! You may clean the outside of the cup of the platter, but inside they are full of extortion and excess. You know, he’s implying here that these men, in the process of using their religious offices, actually engaged in extortion. How would you do that? Well, you would threaten people. You would threaten people with exposure, or you would threaten them with religious consequences. You might threaten them with their eternal life based upon whether or not they gave you money. You blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside may be clean also. What’s he talking about? He’s saying clean up the inside of your life. It’s no good you’re appearing to be righteous. It’s no good all these trappings of righteousness that you have on the outside. None of that matters a hill of beans. It’s what goes on in your heart that counts. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whited sepulchres, which appear beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and all kinds of uncleanness. Even so, outwardly you appear righteous to men, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets, and you garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and you say, Well, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. They had to acknowledge that in years gone by, their own fathers had been the ones who killed the prophets that God sent. And Jesus said, You say that. And you’re your own witnesses then that you are the children of them that killed the prophets. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to give you a chance to fill up the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you snake in the grass, how are you going to escape the damnation of hell? What I’m going to do, I’m going to send to you prophets. I’m going to send to you wise men and scribes. And some of them you shall kill and crucify. Some of them you will whip in your synagogues and persecute them and drive them from city to city. And I’m going to do this. I’m going to send these people to you so that you will do this, and you will. so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias, whom you slew between the temple and the altar. He is saying all of this corruption that you have engaged in, your attitudes of heart and mind, which are the minds and hearts of murderers. You actually appear to be just and appear to be righteous people, and you live all these righteous acts in your life. You are careful and meticulous in the tiniest parts of the law. but you’d steal from a widow, and you would murder an innocent man. And the way I’m going to prove it to you, I’m going to send innocent men, and you’ll kill them. I’m going to tell you the truth, he said. All this will come upon this generation. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets, you that stone them that are sent to you. How often would I have gathered you unto me, like a hen gathers her children under her wings. But no, you wouldn’t have it. Behold, your house is left to you desolate. For I say unto you, after this you’re not going to see me anymore, until you finally will say, Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.
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Stay with me. I’ll be right 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 The Words of Jesus, number 37. 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.
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Jesus had taken a seat opposite the treasury in the temple, and he was watching as people came along and made offerings. They cast money into the treasury. And there were a lot of rich people in that line coming by there, and they put a lot of money in there. But he noticed a woman, an elderly woman coming along, obviously poor, probably a widow. And he called his disciples over and said, watch this. And she came up and threw in two mites, which make a farthing. Don’t know how much that would be in our money, but you can be sure, not much. And he said to his disciples, you see that? I’m going to tell you the truth. This poor widow has cast in more than all the rest of them that have thrown money in here. For all of them cast in out of their abundance, but she out of her want cast in all that she had, even all of her living. And, you know, there seems to be something in that. It seems as though God looks upon this in terms of a proportional thing as to how you give in relation to what you’ve got and of the attitude and the heart of mind. And he takes what you give. And it’s almost as though he can do more with a tiny amount given by someone like this than he can do with huge amounts of money given by someone with a totally different, arrogant, self-serving attitude and spirit. Money is money, though, isn’t it? Well, yes, it is, but maybe not with God. I’ve noticed a funny thing over the years, and this tends in my mind to bear it out. The poor people of the world seem to me to be more generous than the rich. They seem to be more willing to give to a religious work. They seem to be more willing to give to help another poor person. If you’re in trouble, you need help. the chances are a poor person will be more likely to help you than a wealthy person. About this time, Jerusalem was full of people because it was the feast, and people had come from all over the empire, in fact, to observe the Passover in Jerusalem. And there were, the account tells us, certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast. And I think this is fascinating because there were people who made pilgrimages to Jerusalem from all over the world who weren’t Jews. There were Greeks. There were Romans. There were all sorts of people who believed in God. And at that time, they came, some of these Greeks came to Philip, who was a Bethsaid in Galilee, and they desired him, saying, Sir, we want to see Jesus. And Philip came and told Andrew. Andrew told Philip, tell Jesus. And Jesus said, the hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. He realizes now that his word of what he is doing has spread all over the world. And he said, the time has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. I’ve got to tell you the truth. Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it will never amount to anything except a grain of wheat. But if it die, it can bring forth much fruit. And I guess that’s true, isn’t it? If you’ve got just a grain of wheat and you leave it on the shelf and come back days, months, years later, you’ve still got a grain of wheat. But if you plant it in the ground and if you water it, it can bring forth a lot of wheat. And Jesus was basically saying, I’m going to have to die. If I don’t die, if I don’t actually go through this, well, I’m going to be all there is. He that loves his life shall lose it, and he that hates his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. Jesus was ready to lay his life down, and it wasn’t that important to him. If any man serve me, let him follow me, and where I am, there he shall be my servant be. And if any man serve me, him will my Father honor. Now is my soul troubled. And what am I going to say? Father, save me for this hour? Well, for this cause, I came to this hour. You know, it’s really tough. It’s hard to realize that Jesus did not face what he had to do with equanimity. He didn’t come to this saying, well, I’ve got to die. Big deal. No big deal. I can do it. I can make it. God will be with me. No, he was troubled. And he would have been tempted to say, well, Father, save me for this hour. But he couldn’t because he knew that’s why I’m here. And then he said, Father, glorify your name. And then there came a voice rumbling down out of heaven saying, I have both glorified it and I will glorify it again. There were people standing by and they heard it. They said it thundered. And other people said, no, no, an angel spoke to him. And Jesus said, this voice came not for my sake, but for your sake. Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out, and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. In this he said, signifying by what death he should die. And I gather his audience understood it that way because they responded and said, well, now we’ve heard by the law that Christ abides forever. And how can you then say the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is the Son of Man? They were confused. They didn’t understand because their idea of the Messiah was, well, he wouldn’t die. He would come and establish the kingdom and we’ll go on. But Jesus said, no, I’m going to die. If the Son of Man be lifted up, He will draw all men to himself. And Jesus said, Yet a little while the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walks in darkness does not know where he is going. While you have light, believe in the light, that you may be children of light. These things spoke Jesus, and departed, and hid himself from them.
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Until next time, this is Ronald Dart. 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 Stay in touch with the new Born to Win with Ronald L. Dart app.
SPEAKER 01 :
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