Holistic Transformation Part 2

Welcome to this edition of Back to Basics with Pastor Brian Broterson.

And we know from scripture our hearts are by nature deceitful above all things.

So either way these types of things come from a place other than the Spirit.

So whether it's the evil in the heart or if it's the influence of the enemy, we don't

want to go either place.

We want that influence of the Spirit.

Today on Back to Basics, Pastor Brian continues his study in the sermon on the Mount.

Join us as Pastor Brian resumes his teaching on Matthew chapter 5 verses 33 through 37.

In a message titled, Holistic Transformation, Now is Pastor Brian.

Jesus Himself gives the best example of this type of thing in the 23rd chapter of this

gospel of Matthew.

Listen to what he said, woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, blind guides.

You say if anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing.

But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, they are bound by the oath.

You blind fools, which is greater, the gold or the temple that makes the gold sacred.

You also say if anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing.

But anyone who swears by the gift on the altar is bound by the oath.

You blind men, which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred.

Therefore anyone who swears by the altar swears by it and everything on it.

And everyone who swears by the temple swears by it and the one who dwells in it and anyone

who swears by heaven swears by God's throne and the one who sits on it.

So Jesus is taking away all of their ability to find the loophole and to manipulate.

Because again, what they would say is, well, I didn't swear by God.

But Jesus says, well, if you swore by the earth, you swore by God's footstool.

If you swore by heaven, you swore by His throne.

So He's not giving them any way out of this.

So with this as the background, it's easy to see why Jesus says in relation to His people

for the future, do not swear an oath at all.

He just says, we're going to just, we're going to nix those oaths.

And we're going to get down to the real core of what is going on.

Now a couple of quick sidenotes, because this question has been asked many, many times

about swearing or taking oaths, well, if, you know, since the Bible says this, like what

happens if I get called for jury duty?

And you know, then I like have to testify, I have to take an oath.

Well listen, this has nothing to do with that at all.

But there have been those who have mistakenly thought that throughout the long history

of the church.

They have thought that you couldn't take an oath in court or you couldn't swear upon

entrance into some type of service.

The anabaptist back in the time of the Reformation and the Quakers who came not much later on

in history, but are still with us today, the Friends Church.

They mistakenly thought that this was what was being said or applied in that way.

And to this very day, Sirius Quaker still refused to take oaths or to swear in a courtroom.

So just so you know, in case your conscience is ever bothering you when you have to maybe

do this, Jesus hasn't talked about anything like that.

So it's just, you know, probably going back to the the anabaptist who, the anabaptist

were a group of people in the Reformation who just, they took everything just absolutely

literally and they didn't take into consideration the background of the context often.

So this is why they would have come up with that type of an interpretation, but no application

in that area.

As we see the context, we understand, okay, this is, this is what Jesus is referring to.

Specifically, these types of things.

One thing, when Martin Lloyd Jones, the great 20th century British preacher, when he preached

a series on the Sermon on the Mount in the 1950s, which became a classic book on this topic,

I think most pastors have that book in their library.

But when he was teaching the series on the Sermon on the Mount, he imagined someone asking

the question, why when the world is in the state that it's in, should we be talking about

such things as vows and oaths and whether we should take them or not?

After all, they might say, this seems a bit trivial in comparison to all the problems

in the world.

His answer was essentially this, according to the New Testament, everything a Christian

does is important because of who we are and of our effect on others.

One of the ways people become Christians is by observing Christians.

We are all being watched and therefore everything we do is of tremendous importance.

And then he said this, perhaps one of the most potent means of evangelism at present is

whether we are people of integrity, people whose word can be trusted.

Now the reason why I'm sharing this is because I think there is a parallel at the present

moment.

Here are Christians today who would ask, why are we teaching through the Sermon on the

Mount and talking about not taking oaths with all the evil that is going on in the world?

They would say, you should be preaching in times.

You should be preaching the judgment of God against all the wicked people who are destroying

our country.

You should be educating people on the woke agenda and working to get people that are going

to support our traditional values into office.

Listen, this is huge right now in our Christian culture, so much so that some Christian leaders

are even looking at some of the statements of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and saying,

you know, that's too weak.

You know, Jesus is saying things like turn the other cheek, we can't afford to turn the

other cheek because if we do, we're going to be buried by the left.

And so I, over and over again, I hear Christian public figures, pastors saying, you know, the

church has to rise up, the church, unless the church does something, the country is going

to hell.

Well, what is, what are they wanting us to do?

That's the question that I have.

You see, the reality is those efforts that I just mentioned here that people would insist

that this is what you should be doing instead of talking about this, you know, love your

enemy stuff, those efforts will inevitably fail to produce the level of change needed

so they shouldn't be given the level of priority that they are given by so many in this

moment.

The reality is these things will ultimately fail.

And so to take that and make that the priority and to think of something like what we're

talking about today, which really what we're talking about is getting into the deep things

of our hearts where change must take place first.

See, that's the important thing.

Formation of Jesus' character in our lives, listen, we'll never fail to bring forth the

fruit of righteousness that glorifies God and that's what matters first and foremost

and that's really what we need more than anything today.

That's what we need.

We need people that are transformed.

People who are honest in a dishonest culture, people with integrity in a culture of corruption

will be the ones in the end to make the real difference.

That's the truth.

A German theologian who lived through Hitler's reign of terror said that during the time,

listen to what he said, he said the avoidance of one small fib could be a stronger confession

of faith than a whole Christian philosophy championed in lengthy, forceful discussion.

I believe that we are living at a time, especially here in the West, where merely talking about

the faith without living it will no longer fly.

It will no longer be tolerated.

People don't want to hear us preach things we are not living.

They don't.

And probably, more so than any time I can remember, the need is for really living our faith

as well as proclaiming it.

We always have to proclaim.

We always have to preach.

There's no time where you just say, we don't have to preach or say anything.

We just try to live good lives and that's going to be the thing.

Somebody somewhere came up with the saying one time they attributed to St. Francis that

he supposedly said, preach the gospel in a necessary use words.

Well, Francis never said that.

He wasn't that daft when it comes to what the gospel is.

You can't preach the gospel without using words, but you need to preach the gospel with

the life that supports what the gospel says.

So people just don't want to hear.

They should follow Jesus from people who don't really seek to live the way Jesus lived.

I shared this quote before, but it just, it's so relevant again, Leslie Nubigan.

He asked the question, how is it possible that the gospel should be credible?

That people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs

is represented by a man hanging on a cross.

I'm suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation

of men and women who believe it and live by it.

Who believe it and live by it?

Quite honestly, four decades perhaps, even, maybe even a longer period of time, the environment

in the culture has allowed for a telling but not living.

But we've come to a place in the culture where that's not tolerated any longer.

People want to see the reality of Jesus in our lives and the wonderful reality is when

they see Jesus in our lives and they hear what we are saying.

That's when people connect, that's when they say, wow, this, this is real stuff.

This isn't just religion, this isn't just external.

So what is Jesus' point?

Jesus' point is this, that we are to be people that are true through and through.

People that are true, people that your word is your word, nobody even has to think twice

about whether or not you're going to be faithful.

We need you to swear on a stack of Bibles because they know, man, this person is a person

of integrity.

Jesus-formed people can be nothing less.

Peter says this, Christ left you an example that you should follow in his steps who committed

no sin and listened and no deceit was found in his mouth.

No deceit was found in the mouth of Jesus.

You could absolutely count on Jesus to be always truthful, always speaking the truth.

And Peter reminds us Christ left you an example.

Now I hate to say it, but I have to, that I do think that the church has been riddled

with the same kinds of issues that Jesus is addressing here with the religious leaders

of the day.

People not being people of integrity, people not being people of their word, people making

promises that they never intended to keep and then looking for a loophole.

And sometimes saying, yeah, well, I know, I told you I'd do that, but then I prayed

about it and the Lord told me, don't worry about it, no, he didn't.

You know, there's a proverb, I think it's a proverb.

It says, blessed is the person who swears to their own hurt and does not recant.

So even if you made a promise and later on you're thinking, oh, dang, why did I make that

promise?

I don't really have time to do that.

Or gosh, I don't want to give that up.

The blessed person is the one who just says, well, you know, I said, I would do it, so

I'm going to do it.

But the temptation is to say, well, you know what, I had my fingers crossed behind my pack

when I told you that at church the other day.

Jesus is teaching whole person holiness.

That's why I called this holistic transformation.

It's whole person holiness.

This is, Jesus, this is what he's always been about.

This is not anything new.

This is what Jesus is aiming for.

He wants to transform us so that the things that come out of us, the things we say,

are things that would please and honor him.

Remember Jesus made this statement.

He was speaking, he was actually speaking to the Pharisees, to the religious leaders.

And he asked the question.

He said, how can you be an evil, say these pious things, you know, you sound so holy.

How can you be an evil, say these things?

Because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

So Jesus knew that it was all fake, it was all a facade.

We are not to be those people.

Nothing false, disingenuous, dishonest, duplicitous or manipulative should be anything

that's seen in our lives.

We are to be people whose simple yes or no can be trusted, period.

Now it doesn't mean, you know, I was reading one commentator who I actually really like.

But I felt like he was taking this to a level that it didn't need to go to,

where you know, you might even just be having a friendly conversation with somebody

and in the course of them asking you something and then maybe them saying really,

yeah, I swear.

Now he would be a little condemning of that.

I think that's maybe going a little bit far.

It's what's really happening there.

Somebody's not, it's not because they're lacking integrity necessarily.

This is just kind of the way we communicate sometimes.

So we don't want to get into this weird, rigid, legalistic type of a thing about it.

But in the end, the point is that Jesus wants us to be people who can be trusted.

People who can be taken at their word, people who don't need to say,

I swear on a stack of Bibles, cross my heart and hope to die.

People who can just say yes or no.

And then Jesus says this at the end, he says, having said all you need to say is yes or no.

He said, anything beyond this comes from our translation, the evil one.

There's a debate among translators as to whether it's the evil one or whether it comes of evil.

And some manuscripts read of the evil one, other manuscripts just read of evil.

Which one is it?

Well, it makes sense that it would say the evil one because we know that Satan is the father of lies and deceit.

All deception originates with him when he speaks a lie, he speaks his native language.

Jesus told us that in John, chapter 8.

But then if it's not the evil one and it just comes of evil, then it's referring to the heart.

And we know from scripture our hearts are by nature deceitful above all things.

So either way, we don't need to get hung up on that.

Either way, these types of things come from a place other than the spirit.

So whether it's the evil in the heart or if it's the influence of the enemy, we don't want to go either place.

We want that influence of the spirit.

And so Jesus is calling us.

And let's just walk ourselves back here a little bit.

Jesus is calling us through each of these examples that he's using.

Oaths here, divorce prior to that, adultery before that, murder which he said hatred in the heart.

Jesus is calling us to be formed into his image to our very core, to our very core.

Surface religion, pretending, which is also known as hypocrisy, plain religious games,

that's what the scribes and the Pharisees were doing.

Plain religious games will not cut it.

The Lord wants our hearts.

With Jesus, it's always a matter of the heart.

It's always a matter of the heart.

Jesus wants deep.

He wants transformation that begins deep, deep within and works itself out from within.

And he, of course, is able to do that for us as we yield ourselves to him.

When we receive Jesus, he takes up a residence in us.

He comes and dwells in us.

And you know, when he comes to dwell within us, think of somebody, think of it like this.

Here's maybe a good illustration.

Your house.

Jesus is moving in.

Guess what he's going to do?

He's probably going to rearrange things.

He's probably going to clean things up.

He's probably going to toss some stuff out.

That's a picture.

And I was thinking about that, and I was thinking, you know, I mean, you might, the initial response

to that might be, oh, man, oh, Jesus, don't, don't, no, Jesus, don't do that.

Don't get rid of that.

I don't want to rearrange that.

Come on, Lord, that's cool, the way it is.

But you know, I was thinking, no, Jesus knows what he's doing.

I think when we, what our response will really be when we see Jesus doing what he's doing,

you know what we're going to go, wow, that, I never, I never thought to put it like that.

That is so much better than the way I had it arranged.

See, when Jesus comes in and starts rearranging our lives, it's good.

And it's going to be good.

And we're going to think it's good.

And people are going to go, wow, who decorated your house?

This is amazing.

That's what it's like.

He's come into our lives to transform our lives from the inside out.

We'll continue next time with more valuable insights from Pastor Brian,

as he continues his series on The Sermon on the Mount.

Thank you for listening to Back to Basics with Pastor Brian Broderson.

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And now, here's Pastor Brian.

I think the verses that we're looking at, let your yes be, yes.

And your no be no.

They really get to the heart of what the gospel does.

It transforms us from the inside out.

And of course, we've heard that.

We might have even said that, but that's the reality.

The power of the Spirit of God transforms us from the inside out.

So that even the words we say show that work of transformation in our hearts.

Let's be those people who say what we mean and mean what we say.

Back to Basics is the listener supported,

preaching and teaching ministry of Pastor Brian Broderson.