The NXR Podcast - THE SERMON - Dont Be Hasty And Make A Foolish Vow

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00:00:54.380 Please join me in standing for the reading of God's word.

00:00:57.000 We're continuing our series through the book of Matthew.

00:00:59.640 That is the gospel according to Matthew.

00:01:01.900 I've said before, I'll say it once more.

00:01:03.980 We do not have four gospels.

00:01:05.560 We have one gospel, and that's the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel of God.

00:01:09.100 But we do have this one gospel according to four different men inspired by the Holy Spirit.

00:01:14.880 So it's the technical sense.

00:01:17.000 It's not the gospel of Matthew, the gospel of John, the gospel of Mark and Luke.

00:01:20.980 But it's the gospel of Jesus Christ according to Matthew and according to Mark and according to Luke

00:01:26.280 and according to John.

00:01:27.960 So we have four different perspectives

00:01:29.640 inspired by the Holy Spirit,

00:01:31.480 human perspectives,

00:01:32.840 but purified by the Holy Spirit

00:01:35.240 so that they do not err in their accounts.

00:01:37.700 Four different human accounts

00:01:39.220 inspired and protected by the Holy Spirit

00:01:41.480 of one gospel,

00:01:42.760 the gospel of Jesus Christ.

00:01:43.980 Our text for today is Matthew 5,

00:01:46.380 verses 33 through 37.

00:01:48.000 I'll say this as a bit of a preamble.

00:01:51.580 Just for the record,

00:01:53.060 those of you who've been with us for a while,

00:01:54.740 you know that we're just right on target

00:01:56.080 and continue with our series through the gospel according to Matthew.

00:01:59.080 But those who may be joining us for the first time,

00:02:01.260 just to assure you, one of the great protections

00:02:05.360 that the Lord has graciously gifted me with

00:02:08.140 is a fairly mediocre IQ.

00:02:12.640 In other words, even if I wanted to,

00:02:15.880 I'm not quite smart enough to be as nefarious or sinister

00:02:20.160 as a highly intelligent person would be capable of performing.

00:02:25.280 And so with my gracious gift from the Lord of a 120 mediocre IQ, I couldn't plan some of the things that providentially play out, even if I tried.

00:02:39.740 And what I'm referencing specifically in the case of this morning is God's providence, not Joel's plan.

00:02:46.820 But God's providence sometimes is so sweet that perhaps the best word that I could think of to describe it is delicious.

00:02:53.480 a delicious providential gift. And so, as you'll see in our text today, the main theme is the idea

00:02:59.600 of oath-taking or making vows. And at first glance, it seems as though Jesus is saying that

00:03:06.760 his people should not make any vows at all. But we all do this. We do this in various contexts.

00:03:14.140 One example would be particularly a wedding ceremony. We make vows to our bride. Our bride

00:03:21.560 makes vows to her groom. And so it has been within Christian thought and tradition for centuries

00:03:27.960 that it is appropriate, in fact, to make vows. What Jesus is condemning is not the idea of making

00:03:34.500 any vows at all, but rather making hasty vows. Making a vow that is rash, that is hasty, that's

00:03:45.640 foolish, vowing towards something that you ultimately cannot keep, or oftentimes making a

00:03:53.360 vow that not only can you not keep, but that in a moral sense, you find out later as you grow in 0.99

00:03:59.060 wisdom that you should not actually keep. And so this would include vows, for instance, that someone

00:04:05.680 would make in a court of law, that they would be under oath, or vows that you would make, like I've

00:04:13.620 already mentioned in a wedding ceremony, or for instance, vows that you would make. And this is

00:04:19.100 strictly hypothetical, but if there was a theological and cultural statement that was

00:04:24.520 composed by multiple ministers of the gospel, but contain multiple facets that aren't true to

00:04:31.120 scripture, that would also be a foolish vow. So let's begin again. Our text is Matthew chapter

00:04:38.360 5, verses 33 through 37. That's Matthew chapter 5, verses 33 through 37. The Bible says this,

00:04:45.800 Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely,

00:04:51.440 but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all,

00:04:57.640 either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool,

00:05:03.380 or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.

00:05:07.540 And do not take an oath by your head,

00:05:09.960 for you cannot make one hair white or black. 0.97

00:05:14.360 Let what you say be simply yes or no. 0.88

00:05:18.680 Any more than this comes from evil.

00:05:21.640 This is the word of the Lord.

00:05:24.140 All right, please be seated and we will go ahead and begin.

00:05:27.660 I'm going to be using the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.

00:05:31.940 That is the specific statement of doctrine that our church adheres to.

00:05:36.480 Again, if you're new to the church, as it pertains to our membership,

00:05:39.940 what we have determined is that every member of the church,

00:05:44.400 not an officer, an ordained officer being a deacon or an elder,

00:05:48.280 but every member, non-ordained member,

00:05:51.020 would have to subscribe and affirm a statement of faith.

00:05:55.320 But we have chosen, we think that it's prudent and wise to bifurcate

00:05:59.680 instead of just one statement of faith for elders and deacons and members alike, we have

00:06:04.740 bifurcated and have two different statements of faith. Neither is in contradiction to the other,

00:06:10.600 but one is intentionally more broad or vague. It's clear, but it's clear on what we would

00:06:16.780 consider to be top shelf theology in terms of theological triage, prioritization of what

00:06:23.340 theological tenets are most important. It would merely be those primary theological truths,

00:06:29.800 things pertaining to theology proper, that is doctrine of God, things like the Trinity,

00:06:35.720 things like the hypostatic union, the idea that Jesus is both fully God and fully man,

00:06:43.740 the dual nature of Christ, that we have one God who eternally exists in three persons,

00:06:49.860 and then within the second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ, within his one person there

00:06:56.160 are two natures, the divine nature and the human nature that in the incarnation have been brought

00:07:02.940 together but without mixture but also without being severed or completely divorced and that

00:07:08.880 we do not have Jesus having two halves of two natures. He's not half God and half man but fully

00:07:16.400 God and fully man. So these are things that have been ironed out in the province of God throughout

00:07:22.760 church history very early on, within the first 500 years of church history, and Christians have

00:07:28.820 affirmed these truths for over a millennium. So these are non-negotiable. So what we have done

00:07:35.920 here at Covenant Bible Church is we have what we call our general statement of faith, and our

00:07:41.260 general statement of faith for the most part simply follows a creed rather than a more specific

00:07:47.360 confession so our general statement of faith is creedal and we have selected the apostles creed

00:07:53.780 which we recite in our liturgy each lord's day as the particular creed that our general statement

00:07:59.200 of faith follows and so everyone who is a member of covenant bible church must affirm covenant bible

00:08:05.540 church covenant bible church's general statement of faith which is creedal by nature rather than

00:08:11.380 confessional following the apostles creed for the officers ordained officers of the church

00:08:16.540 those being deacons and elders they must also affirm the general statement of faith which

00:08:21.720 follows the apostles creed but in addition to that also affirm are what we've considered or

00:08:27.180 called our specific statement of doctrine so general statement of faith creedal apostles creed

00:08:32.740 members. Specific statement of doctrine, confessional, we have selected the Second

00:08:38.960 London Baptist Confession of Faith, the 1689, as that specific statement of doctrine, that specific

00:08:45.180 confession, and that needs to be recognized by the members of the church, but not necessarily

00:08:51.180 affirmed. So you can be a member of our church and disagree at certain parts of the 1689, say,

00:08:55.960 well, I don't necessarily prescribe to that, but there's still a general recognition from the

00:09:00.540 membership, an affirmation of the Apostles' Creed, the general statement of faith, but a recognition

00:09:05.840 of the specific statement of doctrine, namely the 1689, saying, I understand that this is a

00:09:11.480 Reformed Baptist church. I understand that, and I'm not here to turn it into something else,

00:09:16.460 right? That if you feel a calling to a particular set of doctrines that our church doesn't hold,

00:09:22.620 then we're simply asking that you recognize before you even enter that it would be better

00:09:28.200 use of your effort and time to simply join a church that you already agree with rather than

00:09:32.560 trying to lead a hostile takeover or something like that that's that's the purpose there but

00:09:37.740 for again the ordained officers elders and deacons they're going to affirm the general

00:09:41.740 statement of faith apostles creed and in addition the specific statement of doctrine

00:09:46.140 the 1689 london baptist confession of faith so all that being said i have selected for our text

00:09:53.200 today by way of exegeting Jesus' words on vows and oaths, certain passages from the 1689 London

00:10:02.020 Baptist Confession of Faith. This is from chapter 23 that deals with oaths and vows, paragraph one.

00:10:10.800 The 1689 says this, a lawful oath is a part of religious worship wherein the person swearing in

00:10:17.340 truth, righteousness, and judgment, solemnly calls God to witness what he swears and to judge him

00:10:24.560 according to the truth or falseness thereof. Now, this is an important point for us to understand

00:10:31.100 from the outset as we're dealing with this topic of oaths. One of the things that Jesus condemns

00:10:38.560 in oath-taking or vow-making is making any vow or taking any oath where the person is swearing

00:10:47.040 upon anyone or anything other than the Lord Himself. That's one of the first things, clearly

00:10:55.140 from our text, that the Lord Jesus condemns. He condemns the idea of swearing by Jerusalem.

00:11:02.200 And He condemns the idea of swearing by the earth, or swearing even by heaven, or swearing even by

00:11:09.840 the temple. What Jesus is saying in our text today, with all these examples that I've just listed,

00:11:16.340 is that all of them, if they have any weight or merit whatsoever,

00:11:21.580 it is only the weight and the merit that stems from God Himself.

00:11:25.980 Why is Jerusalem significant?

00:11:28.120 Because it is the city of the great king.

00:11:31.100 And that king not being Saul or David or Solomon,

00:11:34.400 but the great king being the king of kings himself, the Lord Jesus.

00:11:38.720 Why is Jerusalem significant?

00:11:40.580 Because it's the city of Jesus.

00:11:42.700 It's the city of our great Lord.

00:11:44.660 And just for the record, Jerusalem does not belong to the Muslims.

00:11:49.520 It also does not belong to the Jews. 0.62

00:11:52.100 It belongs to the Lord, and therefore it belongs to his people, to Christians.

00:11:55.920 And by God's grace, my prediction is not that a third temple would be mounted. 0.93

00:12:00.400 That's been attempted before by Judas the Apostate.

00:12:03.800 If you read that story, very interesting in history, Julius the Apostate.

00:12:08.840 What happened was that he commissioned different people to rebuild a third temple.

00:12:13.100 and there were literally thunder and lightning that came from heaven and burnt the people up.

00:12:20.260 So probably not a good idea. The red heifers, you know, and blood moons and stuff. Probably just

00:12:24.200 leave that alone and don't put the Lord God to the test. Don't anger him. But I do believe that

00:12:29.960 in Jerusalem there will be a structure built. I do believe that. It won't be a mosque and it won't

00:12:37.600 be a Jewish temple. I believe that by God's grace eventually it will be a glorious Christian

00:12:43.220 cathedral and that Jerusalem will be a centerpiece of Christian civilization and worship where the

00:12:51.620 Lord Jesus Christ and the triune God is worshiped in Jerusalem to the glory of God saying that Jesus

00:12:57.520 is the great king. Okay, back to our main point now. Jesus says don't swear by Jerusalem because

00:13:04.180 if there's anything to swear by, what Jesus is implicitly getting at, it wouldn't be Jerusalem,

00:13:09.680 the city, but it would be the great king of that city, the Lord. Don't swear by heaven,

00:13:16.680 because heaven is simply the throne of God. And don't swear by the earth, for the earth is simply

00:13:23.600 the footstool of God. Don't swear by the temple, because the temple only has significance during

00:13:31.280 this time period because it's the place of worship of God. And don't swear even by your own head

00:13:38.020 because you can't make one hair black or white, but swear ultimately by the one who knits you in 0.63

00:13:43.380 your mother's womb and has numbered the hairs on your head. Swear by your creator, that is God.

00:13:49.400 So in every single example that the Lord Jesus gives, notice that on the face, on the surface

00:13:55.060 of our text, it's very easy to take away that Jesus is simply, in a broad brush, condemning

00:14:01.800 all swearing, all oath-taking, all vows altogether. But by closer look, he's not saying that there's

00:14:12.120 no oath that could be possibly righteous at all, but the particular kinds of oaths that Jesus is

00:14:19.000 condemning is, one, oaths that break the ninth commandment. That would be oaths that are not

00:14:24.720 truthful. Those who take an oath and then break it. And that could be one of two ways. That could

00:14:29.860 be taking an oath towards something that's true, but then you failing and ultimately doing something

00:14:37.100 that's false, betraying a true oath. So you actually made a good oath, but you didn't live up to it.

00:14:43.420 That would be sin.

00:14:45.820 That's an oath that Jesus would condemn.

00:14:48.100 Another example would be in the reverse,

00:14:51.600 taking an oath that was rash,

00:14:53.840 like I mentioned earlier from the outset of the sermon,

00:14:57.140 swearing to something false,

00:14:59.720 giving a vow towards something false,

00:15:01.640 and then in God's mercy and sanctification,

00:15:04.520 you ultimately, in the final analysis,

00:15:06.860 prove to be true,

00:15:07.720 but your truthfulness then forces you to break a false oath. So you can take a true oath but be a

00:15:15.260 false person or you can make a false oath and be a true person. And so both would be wrong to hastily

00:15:23.080 enter into a good oath but as a bad man who's not prepared to keep that oath or a bad oath as a good

00:15:30.640 man who simply missed it and was ignorant or unwise and then later realized I have to break this oath

00:15:37.000 because keeping this oath would require me to sin

00:15:39.760 or to do something false.

00:15:41.680 So that's the first thing is Jesus condemning oaths

00:15:44.740 that would be sinful on the basis of a breach

00:15:47.840 of the ninth commandment.

00:15:49.200 The ninth commandment being,

00:15:51.000 do not bear false witness.

00:15:52.820 Don't lie.

00:15:54.020 So that's the first instance.

00:15:55.220 The second, as we'll see later in the 1689,

00:15:58.060 is that another kind of oath that the Lord Jesus forbids

00:16:02.320 is an oath that would break the third commandment.

00:16:04.920 So an oath that would be a false oath that would require you if you are to be a truthful man to break or a true oath, but you do it presumptuously and you're not a good enough man to keep the oath.

00:16:19.200 And so both of those would be examples of breaching the ninth commandment, which is bearing false witness, deceit, lies.

00:16:26.380 And then also there's the instance of breaking the third commandment, which is do not take the Lord's name in vain.

00:16:32.200 And these are the examples that Jesus is listing in our text.

00:16:36.180 By swearing by anyone or anything other than God himself,

00:16:41.160 that is, well, that's deifying and giving credence to something other than God

00:16:48.400 as actually being capable of holding you to your vows.

00:16:52.380 Jerusalem can't hold you to your vows.

00:16:54.820 The whole earth can't hold you to your vows.

00:16:57.240 Heaven can't hold you to.

00:16:58.240 Only the Lord Jesus Christ, the triune God, the Lord of the conscience, the Lord of all men, King of all kings, 0.75

00:17:06.760 he's the only one who's worth swearing by. 0.69

00:17:09.460 So swearing by something other than Jesus is petty.

00:17:13.500 And in some sense, could even, an argument could be made that that would be a breach of the first and perhaps even second commandment.

00:17:21.100 to love something or to attribute to something or someone other than the Lord a deifying

00:17:27.540 characteristic. The first commandment, have no other gods before me. You can't treat Jerusalem

00:17:33.680 as a god. You can't treat the earth or heaven or the hair on your head as a god or the temple as

00:17:42.160 a god. So you can't breach the first commandment by swearing by something other than the Lord

00:17:47.140 because it's, in a sense, deifying something other than the Lord.

00:17:51.600 That, you know, this will have the power to hold me and bind me to my oath.

00:17:56.560 Well, no, it won't. Only the Lord has that power.

00:17:59.700 So to swear by something other than God is, in a sense, deifying that something

00:18:05.280 and therefore a breach of the first commandment.

00:18:08.320 And in some sense, if you try to materialize and make visible that other thing that you're swearing by,

00:18:15.800 then you could even make a theological argument

00:18:18.140 that it's a breach of the second commandment.

00:18:21.300 And then to swear by God, which would be right,

00:18:23.680 but to swear by God,

00:18:25.640 but to make a vow that's petty or false or muddled.

00:18:32.200 Well, that would be swearing by the right person,

00:18:34.540 swearing by God,

00:18:35.320 the only person that could ever be sworn by,

00:18:38.680 but swearing with something trivial,

00:18:41.920 something trite, something false or muddy,

00:18:45.800 And so that would be taking the Lord's name in vain.

00:18:48.460 So to swear by anything other than God, breach of the first and second commandment.

00:18:52.340 To swear by God, but to swear or vow to something that's not really worthy of a vow,

00:18:58.660 not really worthy of your allegiance or your oath.

00:19:02.200 Well, that would be a breach of the third commandment, taking the Lord's name in vain.

00:19:06.400 And to swear by something true, but to live in a way that's false,

00:19:10.480 would be a breach of the ninth commandment, bearing false witness.

00:19:13.400 or to swear by something that's false

00:19:15.500 and then ultimately in God's providence

00:19:17.620 become a man who's true

00:19:19.140 and therefore by necessity having to break that oath

00:19:22.460 because it was made rashly and presumptuously

00:19:25.020 in the first place

00:19:26.020 would also be a breach of the ninth commandment

00:19:28.360 not to bear false witness, not to lie.

00:19:31.660 And this is the idea that the 1689 and the Westminster

00:19:34.260 bear out our reformed confessional fathers

00:19:37.400 as they work through texts like ours today.

00:19:40.820 And this has been held by Christian tradition

00:19:43.000 within the Reformed tradition for 500 years and largely, even more largely, beyond merely the

00:19:49.980 Reformed tradition, within Eastern Orthodox traditions and Roman Catholic traditions,

00:19:56.440 this has been the majority report of the Christian faith for a millennium. So this is why we don't 1.00

00:20:06.360 want to be, I'll use a term here that perhaps you're familiar with and perhaps you're not, 1.00

00:20:10.100 But this is why we don't want to be biblicist. 1.00

00:20:13.580 Now, I remember when I was in my 20s and I came into reform theology and I adopted the five points of Calvinism, the doctrines of grace, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement or particular redemption if you want to church it up. 1.00

00:20:29.180 But limited atonement will do just fine.

00:20:30.660 If people are offended, well, you're wrong.

00:20:31.960 And then, you know, going on, irresistible grace and perseverance of all saints.

00:20:35.300 And I came into that, and like every young man in his 20s, I came into it, and within 15 minutes, I was, of course, a self-professed expert, and anybody who didn't believe what I have now held ferociously to for a week and a half, I made it my mission to prove how wrong they were.

00:20:56.380 And that's kind of the way that a lot of times young men operate, and certainly the way that I operated when it came to the doctrines of grace.

00:21:05.300 But my point in saying that is it wasn't until later in life that I became more largely Reformed in a robust and well-rounded manner.

00:21:15.120 And not just adopting the five tenets of Calvinism or the five doctrines of grace, but coming to see the broader Reformed tradition.

00:21:23.620 And that there's more, although justification by faith alone is what I would consider to be the linchpin or the heart of the gospel,

00:21:31.600 there are still more important things, not more than the gospel, but additional important things

00:21:39.020 that Christians must believe. The Bible is a big book. It's a collection of 66 books written over

00:21:44.600 the course of 1500 years by 40 human authors, all inspired by the Holy Spirit. And the central

00:21:49.860 message is the gospel, but far more is contained. And Christians should not be theological minimalists,

00:21:57.060 but rather we should be theological maximalists.

00:21:59.780 We should be pushing our doctrine

00:22:01.160 all the way out into the margins,

00:22:03.160 all the way out to the edges.

00:22:04.520 We should have a robust theological Christian faith

00:22:07.760 on more than just the gospel of Jesus Christ,

00:22:11.040 never less, but more.

00:22:12.780 And that includes certain things like oath-taking.

00:22:16.320 And so all that being said,

00:22:17.760 when I first came into the doctrines of grace,

00:22:20.380 and I knew, you know,

00:22:21.560 I started coming out of my cage stage,

00:22:24.020 and I realized, well, a lot of people

00:22:25.660 just don't like the terminology, right? It's, you know, certain words, you know, it's the same thing

00:22:31.000 with biblical gender roles, right? So patriarchy, right? There's a lot of guys who say, well,

00:22:37.600 patriarchy is just, it has a negative connotation and people don't like it. And my, you know, I think

00:22:42.780 one of the things that should be considered there is, well, is this word not liked because it

00:22:47.520 actually conveys something sinful or it contains something sinful, or is it not liked because the

00:22:52.580 culture in our modern era is sinful and therefore kicking against the goats. And I've determined

00:22:58.640 that when it comes to a word like patriarchy, it's not that patriarchy is inherently sinful,

00:23:03.780 but that our current culture is inherently feminist and therefore doesn't like patriarchy.

00:23:08.120 So I have decided to use the word even more because it gets precisely the kind of reaction

00:23:15.040 that I think is necessary. Sometimes, I've said this before, but there's a difference between

00:23:21.000 charity and ambiguity difference between charity and ambiguity sometimes we think that we're being

00:23:27.220 charitable but really we're being vague and sometimes you can avoid an offense but you

00:23:32.860 didn't avoid the offense by being loving and charitable you avoided the offense by being

00:23:38.080 unclear you know you knew what you were getting at and a few of your followers you know they got

00:23:44.780 the wink and the nod they they heard the the patriarchy dog whistle but but you did it in

00:23:50.560 such a way that when when it comes to your opponents they're not quite as angry at you

00:23:56.340 but it's not because you were more loving than than some other patriarchal guy it's it's actually

00:24:00.720 because you were more ambiguous and that's not loving that's actually deceit there's actually

00:24:05.780 a problem with that so back to calvinism coming into the doctrines of grace you know there was

00:24:10.260 a season there where I was in the cage stage, and then there was a season where I think I

00:24:13.860 backtracked too far, where I tried to overcompensate for my prior cage stage years, and I started

00:24:21.400 thinking, well, I'm not going to use the word Calvinist. I'll use the word Biblicist. I'm not 0.96

00:24:26.400 a Calvinist. I'm a Biblicist. I just believe the Bible, you know, and the Bible does point towards

00:24:31.880 Calvinism, you know, so I got you now. But it wasn't until even later that I began to realize

00:24:37.860 that biblicism actually is a doctrine of sorts and it's actually a heresy which sounds funny 1.00

00:24:45.820 right because it's like biblicist that sounds like a good thing right you just you just believe

00:24:50.500 the bible but biblicism if you look throughout the reformed tradition the idea of biblicism is

00:24:58.460 a particular hermeneutic that is a way of reading and interpreting the scripture

00:25:04.260 that causes you to come to the plainest and simplest interpretation

00:25:10.420 of each and every passage that you possibly could,

00:25:14.080 but there are various instances where the plainest reading of the text

00:25:18.880 doesn't turn out in the final analysis to be the truest reading of the text.

00:25:23.940 So you could read a text and say, well, on its face it says X, Y, Z,

00:25:30.440 and so I'm going to take the literal interpretation,

00:25:34.260 and miss, ultimately, some of the typological and analogical meanings

00:25:41.680 that the Lord actually baked into the text that we should understand and believe.

00:25:47.760 And so when it comes to our hermeneutic,

00:25:50.380 again, that's simply the way we read Scripture and interpret it,

00:25:54.140 I eventually, as I got older, and hopefully, by God's grace, a little wiser,

00:25:58.940 adopted never less than a literal reading.

00:26:02.380 So when I look at the words of Christ,

00:26:04.500 when I look at the Bible as a whole,

00:26:06.380 I am looking at it through a literal lens.

00:26:10.020 But I've opted for a literal, historical,

00:26:14.180 grammatical, and typological reading of the text.

00:26:18.540 Literal, historical, grammatical,

00:26:21.240 and typological reading of the text.

00:26:22.680 And you might say, well, I don't know.

00:26:24.600 The typological piece,

00:26:26.420 that seems to kind of lower the defense measures

00:26:30.140 that would allow some funny business

00:26:32.700 to creep into the church.

00:26:34.400 That's where you can get cute with the text.

00:26:38.620 And you can take that typological piece

00:26:43.520 of your hermeneutic

00:26:44.540 and begin to symbolize,

00:26:49.240 use symbology and these kinds of things.

00:26:51.160 And you can apply that

00:26:52.340 to virtually everything in the Bible.

00:26:54.160 And that's where you get LGBT affirming pastors

00:26:57.300 and things like that.

00:26:58.100 And I understand.

00:26:59.920 So I'll use MacArthur as an example.

00:27:02.400 And I have no intention of being disparaging towards MacArthur.

00:27:06.760 I disagree with him on multiple points.

00:27:09.400 So many points.

00:27:11.620 But I believe that he teaches the gospel faithfully

00:27:15.760 and that he's done a lot of good.

00:27:18.480 And so I don't believe that MacArthur is a false teacher.

00:27:20.680 Anything like that, I'm grateful for MacArthur.

00:27:22.980 That said, when it comes to hermeneutic,

00:27:25.980 one of the reasons why in the final analysis I land on various theological positions that would

00:27:32.020 differ with Brother MacArthur is because the source that it's all rooted in is the difference

00:27:37.760 of our two hermeneutics. MacArthur would have a literal grammatical and historical hermeneutic

00:27:43.960 and to still man MacArthur to be both charitable and I think just just and fair towards him part

00:27:51.020 of his motive and incentive in having the hermeneutic that he has is because he was in the

00:27:56.700 trenches before I was born and he was battling against liberal theologians who were creeping

00:28:01.900 into churches and seminaries and getting cute with the scripture and saying well you know

00:28:08.020 homosexuality you know that you know Paul wasn't really talking about that you know and and and

00:28:13.660 maybe there's a place for this and there's a place for that and MacArthur was standing in the

00:28:17.400 trenches, God bless them, and say, no, read the scripture for what it says, a plain reading of

00:28:24.860 scripture. You know, no creed but Christ. Give me the Bible, just the Bible. And MacArthur was a bit

00:28:31.300 of a biblicist. Now, here's the problem, and I want you guys to think about this being fair to

00:28:37.980 MacArthur, but also fair to some other theological views. The same hermeneutic that allowed MacArthur

00:28:45.060 to stand as a titan in the trenches

00:28:48.120 against thousands of liberal theologians

00:28:50.880 that came and perverted the Scripture

00:28:52.240 on things like sexual orientation and gender

00:28:55.760 and these kinds of things.

00:28:57.100 The same hermeneutic that allowed MacArthur

00:28:59.100 to be a fortress and a shield 0.65

00:29:02.600 against liberalizing Scripture

00:29:04.180 is the same hermeneutic, if we're fair,

00:29:07.200 that also allows MacArthur

00:29:08.780 to be a dispensationalist and a Zionist.

00:29:11.240 because his reading of Scripture

00:29:15.220 in a very plain, literal sense

00:29:17.800 that allows him to defend

00:29:19.620 against some of the funny business

00:29:21.960 from liberal theologians

00:29:23.080 when it comes to gender

00:29:24.160 is also the same hermeneutic

00:29:26.640 that when applied to the book of Daniel

00:29:29.080 and the book of Revelation

00:29:30.020 and these passages of Scripture

00:29:31.920 causes him to believe that

00:29:34.300 Jesus is going to return

00:29:38.040 probably next Thursday.

00:29:39.660 There's going to be a rapture

00:29:41.000 and you're going to get a third temple

00:29:43.080 on the Temple Mount

00:29:43.980 and the red heifers and all that.

00:29:46.400 So do you see how I appreciate, 0.99

00:29:49.560 I'm trying to steal Man MacArthur, 1.00

00:29:51.040 I appreciate the instincts

00:29:53.000 that he had 50 years ago.

00:29:55.760 Because he was, overall,

00:29:57.760 in a general sense, he was right.

00:30:00.000 He saw that liberal theologians

00:30:01.920 were getting cute with Scripture

00:30:03.600 and they were using

00:30:08.720 the typological hermeneutics 1.00

00:30:10.380 serving as a Trojan horse to smuggle in things like feminism, LGBT craziness, and even like BLM 1.00

00:30:22.260 and critical race theory and these kinds of things, smuggle it into the seminaries and then 0.84

00:30:26.060 indoctrinate young men who would then become pastors in churches. And part of the problem

00:30:30.520 we're dealing with today is that guys didn't listen to MacArthur. And then part of the other

00:30:35.940 problem we're dealing with today problem of i i believe it's a serious problem of zionism and

00:30:41.020 judaism is that guys did listen to macarthur and so it's kind of you win some you lose some

00:30:48.740 so i've opted for nothing less than macarthur's hermeneutic so his being literal grammatical

00:30:54.300 historical and i'm going to have all three of those pieces in the way that i read and interpret

00:30:58.500 scripture but i'm going to add not replace not as a substitute but in addition to literal historical

00:31:05.440 and grammatical, I'm also going to add that typological piece. Because there are certain

00:31:10.360 genres of scripture, like the Psalms, or like the book of Revelation, that actually say, the book of

00:31:17.000 Revelation actually says in the very first couple chapters from the outset, that it's speaking

00:31:22.580 in a typological, symbological way. And so to read Revelation as literal and not typological,

00:31:35.440 is actually not doing justice to what the book of Revelation itself says about how it should be

00:31:42.440 read. Does that make sense? So all that being said, Biblicism, although it sounds good, I'm not a

00:31:49.820 Calvinist. I'm not an Arminian. Those are just men. And I follow no one but Jesus. I'm not following 0.96

00:31:56.260 John Calvin. I'm not following Aristotle. I'm not following, you know, whoever. I follow Jesus.

00:32:02.320 And so for me, there's no creed but Christ

00:32:04.360 and there's no confession but the Bible itself.

00:32:06.360 I'm not a Calvinist.

00:32:07.660 I'm a Biblicist.

00:32:09.040 I know what you mean.

00:32:10.340 I've said it myself.

00:32:11.440 I think the motive there,

00:32:14.560 the instincts there are good.

00:32:17.100 And I don't want to pour cold water on that.

00:32:19.140 I hear you.

00:32:20.540 And I think that's good. 0.94

00:32:22.700 But although the Bible

00:32:25.580 is the only infallible revelation that we have,

00:32:28.920 the only inerrant revelation,

00:32:30.800 that is the only revelation

00:32:32.180 that's truly directly from God

00:32:34.000 and without error, 0.95

00:32:36.400 we would be fools to interpret the Bible 0.52

00:32:38.980 apart from the witness 0.97

00:32:40.560 of the collective church

00:32:42.360 throughout the ages.

00:32:44.060 And I think one of the false dichotomies 1.00

00:32:46.340 that modern Christians

00:32:48.600 and Baptists can be extremely guilty of this 0.99

00:32:50.940 because Baptists, let's be honest,

00:32:52.380 aren't typically huge fans

00:32:54.360 of church history and confessions

00:32:55.900 and these kind of, you know, 0.63

00:32:56.700 we'll make fun of the Anglicans

00:32:57.980 and the Presbyterians, you know, 0.98

00:32:59.500 and we'll make fun of them 0.82

00:33:00.760 for that the lutherans um and we'll say well baptists we just we just got back to the bible 0.82

00:33:06.720 just got back to the bible which you got to be careful with that because it's like

00:33:10.500 well the pentecostals say the same thing and the baptist's like well we're not the pentecostals

00:33:15.660 but they literally say the same thing they're like you know there's the first century church

00:33:19.320 then 18 years of wasting time and then azusa street revival 1906 and if we're not careful

00:33:25.660 baptists kind of have it's not with the gifts of the spirit but it's the same narrative of

00:33:30.060 There was faithfulness in the first century, and then there was a bunch of those, you know, pencil pushers and ivory towers, you know, that did all that theology stuff.

00:33:39.380 And then we got back to, you know, to the Bible.

00:33:41.740 Just give me Jesus.

00:33:43.400 And that sounds good on the surface, but it's actually immature.

00:33:46.600 And here's the reason why.

00:33:47.740 Because it creates a false dichotomy.

00:33:49.540 The false dichotomy is this.

00:33:51.000 What it asserts is that you're pitting up against one another two positions.

00:33:58.860 that one is the Bible as interpreted by the Westminster divines,

00:34:03.000 or the Bible as interpreted by Nehemiah Cox,

00:34:06.140 and all these different writers of Benjamin Keech of the 1689 Confession,

00:34:12.360 or the Bible as interpreted through Augustine, and Athanasius, and Ignatius, and Arrhenius,

00:34:18.240 and then there's just the Bible.

00:34:21.840 See, that's a false dichotomy, because what it insists is that

00:34:25.140 there's the Bible as read through men, as interpreted through men,

00:34:28.280 and then there's the Bible, just pure and unadulterated. But that option is not actually

00:34:35.700 a real option. That option doesn't actually exist, because if you were honest and thought

00:34:40.220 about it just for a moment, what you'd have to acknowledge and admit is that when you say the

00:34:45.180 Bible is interpreted through men throughout the ages, and then just the Bible alone, what you

00:34:50.700 actually mean is the Bible interpreted by men throughout the ages, and then the Bible interpreted

00:34:54.860 by me because there's actually no viable option of just the Bible because when you say just give

00:35:02.520 me Jesus no creed but Christ or don't give me a confession just give me the Bible at the end of

00:35:07.680 the day when pressed I would still have to say okay so you just you opted for just the Bible

00:35:13.420 no confessions no history no creeds just the Bible great what does the Bible say about Mary

00:35:19.800 the mother of Jesus? What does the Bible say about the dual nature of Christ?

00:35:25.300 What does the Bible mean when it says that God is sovereign over salvation? What does the Bible

00:35:32.120 say about election? What is the Bible? And you know what you'll have to do? You'll have to begin

00:35:38.320 to interpret the Bible. You'll have to begin to explain the Bible's meaning. And so then

00:35:46.120 immediately what we have is the false dichotomy is removed and now we have the two actual choices

00:35:53.100 that are before us. The Bible interpreted by men who were better men than you and better men than

00:36:01.980 me. Or the Bible as interpreted by ourselves. See, every church actually has a confession.

00:36:11.800 it's either the Westminster Confession

00:36:16.100 the 1689 Confession

00:36:18.040 perhaps it's

00:36:20.420 all these different options

00:36:23.220 that historically are before us

00:36:25.160 the church has opted for those confessions

00:36:27.160 the Belgic Confession

00:36:29.920 the Three Forms of Unity

00:36:31.980 the Canons of Dort

00:36:33.820 or it's Pastor Billy Bob's Confession

00:36:37.980 that he's kind of been writing in his head

00:36:41.080 and maybe put some of it, you know, 20 years ago

00:36:43.980 when he first started pastoring on paper

00:36:45.680 and it's in the church's basement somewhere.

00:36:48.780 But mark my words, there's still a confession.

00:36:51.920 The idea of just having the Bible without a confession

00:36:54.380 is not actually an option before us.

00:36:57.220 It's not whether but which.

00:36:58.980 So you'll either have a confession that's historic

00:37:00.940 and tried and true and written by better men than you and I,

00:37:03.720 or you'll have a modern confession

00:37:07.020 that's constantly in flux

00:37:09.460 as this person changes their mind

00:37:11.380 about the next thing.

00:37:13.360 But you will have a confession.

00:37:16.200 And I would opt for the historic,

00:37:17.960 tried and true version

00:37:18.960 rather than the modern,

00:37:20.500 constantly fluctuated,

00:37:21.900 Pastor Billy Bob,

00:37:22.820 God bless his heart,

00:37:25.060 his confession.

00:37:26.220 Probably not the right choice to go with. 1.00

00:37:27.840 So Biblicism is not a good idea. 1.00

00:37:30.980 And the Biblicists, 1.00

00:37:32.020 when they come to texts like ours, 0.67

00:37:33.600 Matthew 5, 33 to 37,

00:37:35.980 the quick Biblicist interpretation would be

00:37:38.480 don't ever make any vow, period. Jesus condemns all vows. Just let your yes be yes and your no be no.

00:37:44.720 But when we look at the whole of Scripture and we read Scripture not alone in isolation, but in

00:37:50.300 conjunction with all the men who have come before us as they sought to interpret Scripture and

00:37:55.980 understand it, the answer is a little bit more complex. The answer is not as simple as just

00:38:02.340 don't ever make a vow. Instead, it boils down to multiple facets. One, don't vow by anything

00:38:08.280 but the Lord. The Lord is the only one who can hold you to your vow. To vow by anything else

00:38:13.260 is a breach of the first. And second commandment is to deify something other than the triune God.

00:38:18.380 Also, if you're going to make vows by the only one who you should make vows by, appealing to the 0.71

00:38:24.580 name of God himself, then they better be good vows. And it better be something that's not petty,

00:38:29.680 but something that's valuable so that you're not taking the Lord's name in vain and breaching the

00:38:33.460 third commandment and then lastly of course you should only give your vows and make an oath with

00:38:39.260 something that is true so that you're not preaching the ninth commandment and you need to be a man who

00:38:45.160 is true who can lead live up to those vows so that you don't break them which would also be a breach

00:38:50.920 of the ninth commandment there's more quotes from the 1689 that i have in your notes you can read

00:38:56.040 them on your own time but i've given the synopsis of my point here so i'm going to go ahead and skip

00:39:00.540 on to a couple passages of my own words that I've written in your notes. I've written the following.

00:39:05.440 The concern of these verses is both the third and the ninth commandment. I've additionally added the

00:39:10.080 first and second. If you were to swear by Jerusalem or swear by the earth, swear by heaven, swear by

00:39:15.400 your head, swear by the temple, swearing by other things beside God would be to deify these other

00:39:21.360 things as though they had the power to hold you to your oath. Might call them swearing by the ring.

00:39:26.120 don't do that. Only swear by the Lord if you're going to swear at all. And Jesus is right.

00:39:33.700 Classic Jesus W, you know, like that statement that usually doesn't need to be made. Jesus is

00:39:39.140 right. Of course he is. For the most part, people make petty vows. We actually end up swearing far

00:39:46.220 more than we should. There are appropriate avenues and contexts to make a vow. When it's made, you

00:39:51.340 should vow by the name of the Lord. The vow should be true, should be vowing towards something that's

00:39:56.720 that's worth vowing towards. But in general, people make too many promises, too many swearing,

00:40:06.040 too many vows, too many oaths. And so Jesus is right that in general, on the whole, simply let

00:40:13.360 your yes be yes and your no be no. So the concerns in these verses are with a breach of the third

00:40:21.200 commandment and the ninth commandment the ninth commandment is in view regarding truthfulness

00:40:25.300 that humans find so difficult to uphold the tongue is guilty of false witness lying gossip

00:40:31.680 slander boasting flattery cursing and more oaths promises and contracts all have the same goal to

00:40:38.960 bind the conscience of men to keeping their word especially when it is tempting not to because of

00:40:46.000 sin. The third commandment comes into play because in lawful oath taking, the name of God is invoked

00:40:53.220 and therefore it must not be invoked in vain. In Jesus's day, rabbis concocted a system. This is

00:41:00.940 a classic Jesus W, classic Rabbi L. Just about, well, I was going to say just about always wrong, 0.96

00:41:08.240 but the just about isn't necessary as a disclaimer, just always wrong. In Jesus's day, rabbis 0.96

00:41:14.080 concocted a system that defeated the purpose of oaths. They taught that oaths might or might not

00:41:20.920 be binding, depending on how one swore. If one swore by Jerusalem, then it was not binding. But

00:41:27.300 if one swore toward facing toward Jerusalem, then it was. Imagine this for a moment. I mean, this is 0.92

00:41:33.080 this Jewish rabbis in Jesus' day and in ours. Well, in our day, they're worse. But in Jesus' 1.00

00:41:38.740 day, they were really bad. And this is what they were doing. It was the equivalent of like

00:41:43.400 a four-year-old girl trying to trick her dad to get something that she wants. So a rabbi would say,

00:41:49.940 well, it's not swearing by Jerusalem. It's swearing while facing toward Jerusalem and then kind of

00:41:55.840 behind his back, pulling out his compass, you know, or his map and realize, okay, Jerusalem is over

00:42:00.580 there and we're 50 miles away. So hopefully this person that I'm trying to swindle right now won't

00:42:06.260 know his geography well enough. Jerusalem is there and I'm going to face this way, northeast, 0.90

00:42:11.860 even though Jerusalem is is true north and so I'm going to be off by 15 percentages and then I'm 0.96

00:42:17.520 going to swear as a Jewish rabbi and then I'm going to break my oath and steal from you and 0.98

00:42:22.620 that's what they would do classic classic Jewish rabbis um that's so so in other words back to 0.99

00:42:29.780 like the five-year-old girl it would be like um that she just found out that crossing fingers is

00:42:34.420 a thing you know it's not really a thing it's you know it's superstition but she just heard about it

00:42:39.140 you know, from, I don't know, one of her friends or something like that. And so she's trying it

00:42:43.420 out, you know, and dad says, you cannot have a cookie before dinner. I want you to give me your

00:42:48.840 words that you will not get into the cookie jar. And she puts her hand behind her back and crosses 0.72

00:42:52.660 her fingers, right? And that's sin. She's lying. The five-year-old girl crossing her fingers

00:43:00.320 behind her back while promising dad she won't get a cookie is the exact equivalent to Jewish 0.53

00:43:06.280 rabbis if you want to understand judaism think five-year-old girl crossing her fingers behind 0.90

00:43:12.100 her back as she lies to death that's that's pretty much that's talmudic judaism okay so

00:43:17.040 that being said going on awful taking um must be invoked in jesus day rabbis concocted a system

00:43:25.620 of defeating the very purpose of those they taught that those might or might not be binding

00:43:29.420 depending on how one swore if one swore by jerusalem it was not binding but if you face

00:43:34.680 Jerusalem, toward Jerusalem, then it was. If one swore by the temple, it wasn't binding. But if you

00:43:40.320 swore by the temple's gold, then it was binding. If one swore by the altar or sacrifice, it was

00:43:47.320 not binding. But if one swore by the gift that was upon the altar, then it was binding. This

00:43:53.060 illustrates, here's another example. So the five-year-old girl with crossing her fingers, I

00:43:57.060 thought of that, but I just thought of another. Jewish rabbis would be the equivalent of the IRS. 1.00

00:44:03.560 That would be another great, I think, comparison. 1.00

00:44:06.280 So the IRS is like, well, we love to use the American people as a tax form for Ukraine and Israel and everybody except for America.

00:44:14.720 And how are we going to do this?

00:44:16.480 Well, one of the ways to swindle people is instead of having like the Ten Commandments,

00:44:22.040 G.K. Chesterton said this, if man will not live by Ten Commandments, he will be bound by Ten Thousand Commandments.

00:44:27.420 And that's what the IRS has done.

00:44:28.600 I mean, you look over the decades and it went from a book about this big to like, now it's like

00:44:32.960 volumes. You couldn't fit all the different, you know, tax codes in your own house. You would have

00:44:38.340 to like get a warehouse to fit all that. And so, and what is the IRS doing? Well, they're being

00:44:44.560 deceitful. That's what they're doing. I mean, think of this, just this alone is just so silly

00:44:49.280 to me. So I, each year I have to figure out how much I owe the IRS. But if I get it wrong,

00:44:56.120 the IRS will certainly tell me. So the IRS already knows exactly how much I owe them.

00:45:01.520 They know it clearly enough to tell me if I got the number wrong, but only to tell me if I got

00:45:06.300 the wrong number wrong by getting it too low. I'm sure it'd be just fine if I got it too high.

00:45:11.120 But so I have to figure out how much I owe the IRS. The IRS knows how much I owe them. That's

00:45:16.760 why they're able to hold me to account. And then they have volumes and volumes of tax codes to

00:45:22.360 where no private citizen could ever figure out the system to be able to plead their case and

00:45:27.880 defend themselves. So you basically just have to submit to whatever they say as, you know,

00:45:34.900 they're like, well, according to stipulation, 5,000 million, 100 and blah, blah, blah. You owe

00:45:40.560 us your firstborn son, you know? And it's like, it's ridiculous, but that's, that's the system. 0.86

00:45:47.400 So whether it's the United States IRS, whether it's the five-year-old girl who just learned 0.72

00:45:51.460 about crossing their fingers, or whether it's Jewish rabbis in the days of Jesus, or Jewish

00:45:56.660 rabbis in our day as well. In all these cases, what Jesus has in view at the heart of the matter

00:46:05.680 is not so much swearing is always bad and Christians shouldn't do it. See, that's a 1.00

00:46:11.720 biblicist approach to the text. It's oversimplifying it. What Jesus actually has in view

00:46:16.860 is Jesus is saying, don't be liars.

00:46:20.840 That's what he's saying.

00:46:21.800 He's not saying you can't ever make a promise.

00:46:24.440 Like to say, I promise is a sin

00:46:26.660 because Jesus said, just let your yes be yes

00:46:28.300 and your no be no.

00:46:29.560 So if anyone ever says, I promise,

00:46:31.400 every time someone gets married

00:46:33.000 and exchanges marriage vows, they're in sin.

00:46:34.840 Let's put them under church discipline

00:46:35.920 because Jesus said, just let your yes be yes

00:46:38.180 and your no be no.

00:46:38.960 That's not what he's saying. 0.62

00:46:40.360 That's a Biblicist reading of the text.

00:46:42.880 A more mature reading of the text 0.69

00:46:44.780 with a more robust hermeneutic

00:46:46.580 that is literal it's not less but it's more than merely literal it's literal historical grammatical

00:46:52.320 and typological and reading the text in conjunction not just with pastor billy bob

00:46:56.280 but but also with with all the saints of old through 2 000 years of church history and the

00:47:02.800 historic confessions that we have the conclusion that we come to and the final analysis at the end

00:47:08.020 of the day the conclusion is it is okay to make promises it's okay to make vows and it's okay

00:47:14.660 even in a court of law,

00:47:15.980 to put your hand on the word of God

00:47:17.540 and swear to God.

00:47:19.740 Make an oath to tell the truth,

00:47:22.520 the whole truth,

00:47:23.200 and nothing but the truth.

00:47:24.420 So help me, God.

00:47:27.020 That that's actually lawful.

00:47:28.600 These things are okay.

00:47:29.280 It's okay for a Christian

00:47:30.120 to serve in the military. 1.00

00:47:31.540 Probably not a good idea today

00:47:33.020 because the military, sadly,

00:47:37.440 is really just become a function 0.87

00:47:39.760 of exporting gay pride parades

00:47:42.840 in Tel Aviv

00:47:43.840 and everywhere else.

00:47:47.060 But historically, the military has done a lot of good,

00:47:51.580 a lot of bad, but also, I think, a lot of good in America.

00:47:55.380 And typically, on the whole,

00:47:58.060 those who are pro-military or serve in the military in America

00:48:01.200 tend to be the salt of the earth, the best people I know,

00:48:04.420 who really love the country.

00:48:07.300 But to join the military, my point is, there's an oath.

00:48:11.600 There's a vow.

00:48:12.700 And so I would never say,

00:48:15.080 well, you know,

00:48:15.980 a Christian can't bear testimony 1.00

00:48:17.860 in a court of law 0.97

00:48:18.560 because Jesus says,

00:48:20.000 don't swear at all.

00:48:21.920 That's not,

00:48:22.700 that's a poor reading of the text. 1.00

00:48:24.480 Or a Christian can't ever serve 1.00

00:48:25.760 in the military 1.00

00:48:26.260 because it requires an oath.

00:48:28.300 And Jesus says,

00:48:29.300 don't make any oaths at all.

00:48:31.240 Do you see why this matters?

00:48:32.800 So you actually can do those things.

00:48:34.780 Now, for other reasons

00:48:36.920 than oath-taking and vow-making

00:48:38.460 and those kinds,

00:48:39.020 for other reasons,

00:48:40.580 if there's an 18-year-old,

00:48:41.920 young man. He's saying, I, you know, I want to be a Marine in 2024. I would not say no. I don't want

00:48:48.900 to bind the conscience so clearly because it's more nuanced and complex. But I would give some

00:48:52.960 cautions and say the military in 2024 is not what it was in the 1950s and 60s. And you do need to be

00:49:01.180 aware of some of these things. But by God's grace, hopefully it gets better. There's been some new

00:49:05.700 appointments. I'm grateful for some. Some of them I don't like. Some of them I really do like. And

00:49:10.100 and we can pray that our military would not just be exporting our sacred democracy and gay rights, 0.54

00:49:15.780 you know, in the Middle East, but hopefully our military could actually do what it's designed to

00:49:20.020 do, which is to protect the American people. And hopefully, by God's grace, things improve,

00:49:24.460 and we'll see. So, but saying that a Christian can't join the military because of oaths

00:49:30.100 would be a silly reading of the text. All right, let me continue. We're almost done. 0.66

00:49:34.160 um this illustrates the way in which certain teachers would manipulate god's word in the

00:49:41.960 first century um judaism in israel when they read a challenging law they reduced it to something

00:49:49.460 that was manageable when they heard love your neighbor as yourself they defined neighbor so

00:49:54.400 that everyone counted as a neighbor um or so that not everyone counted as neighbor so they didn't

00:50:00.180 have to love this person. Or what we do in our modern times is what we've done is we've said,

00:50:06.400 everyone is our neighbor, which I think is true. Okay, because that's the whole idea. Remember when

00:50:11.400 Jesus, he tells the story of the Good Samaritan, and he asked the question, who is my neighbor?

00:50:18.480 And so for the Jews in his day, they had made the law manageable by narrowing

00:50:25.220 the scope of who is my neighbor. 0.65

00:50:28.520 And so they were basically saying,

00:50:30.340 well, really, my neighbor is only, you know, 14 people.

00:50:34.400 And these 14 people are doing just fine,

00:50:36.680 a.k.a. I don't have any obligation.

00:50:39.000 That was their way of escaping

00:50:40.760 being morally obligated toward your neighbor,

00:50:44.240 narrowing it.

00:50:45.500 Now, here's the thing.

00:50:46.380 You can actually, I think if Jesus was to come today,

00:50:51.360 he would actually challenge us in the opposite direction.

00:50:54.660 what globalist post-war consensus modernist classical liberals do what we do

00:51:04.380 is we actually say well everyone is our neighbor and and that's true but then we get rid of the

00:51:12.380 order amoris that is the order of loves that there's a triage a prioritization of neighbors

00:51:17.640 and who we're actually bound to in a moral obligation in that sense and so what what

00:51:22.820 liberal theologians today would do is the Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus day say, well, only a

00:51:28.900 handful of people are my neighbor, and so I don't have to do anything for anyone else. And what

00:51:32.780 people today, what evangelicals today do is say, well, everyone is my neighbor, so I can actually

00:51:38.120 forsake my own people here in America as long as I write a $15 monthly check to an orphanage in

00:51:46.720 Uganda. But it's still the same tactic of getting out of what Jesus is actually commanding.

00:51:55.120 So the Pharisees, the Jewish rabbis of his day, what they did was they said, well, you don't

00:52:01.460 actually have to love people, all these people, because you only have to love these three people

00:52:07.680 over here. And what modern day Pharisees, even in the evangelical church today do, is they say,

00:52:14.900 Well, you don't actually have to love your own people like it's fine.

00:52:19.400 It's totally fine if if our pastors and our seminary professors and our our politicians and every elite institution in America actually hates Americans.

00:52:33.580 That's totally fine, because Jesus said, love your neighbor. 0.94

00:52:36.660 And what that means is you can't have any borders and you need to import the third world by the millions into the United States and you can't do anything about it.

00:52:47.860 And if you ever do something about it, then you're not obeying Jesus' words to love your neighbor and you're a racist. 0.98

00:52:53.180 And that's so, isn't that funny, though?

00:52:56.020 It's just the other side of the coin, but it's the same in principle. 0.62

00:52:59.100 You have Judaizers in the first century saying, well, I only have like two or three neighbors and I don't have to love anybody else. 0.86

00:53:07.920 And then you have Judaizers today saying, well, everyone's our neighbor. 0.96

00:53:13.220 And here's the great thing. 0.99

00:53:14.520 When everyone's your neighbor, no one is.

00:53:17.940 Did you ever watch The Incredibles, that animated film?

00:53:20.720 thinking of there's the little nerdy kid who wants to be a superhero and he felt blown off

00:53:25.600 when he was younger by Captain Incredible. And so then he becomes the arch nemesis, the villain at

00:53:32.480 the end of the movie. And he does it through, you know, he doesn't have any innate superpowers,

00:53:37.420 but he does it through technological innovation. You know, he's smart. He's your classic

00:53:42.040 Anon, you know, autist on Twitter and figures out how to be a superhero without actually being a

00:53:48.940 superhero. And so he creates all this tech and captures, you know, Captain Incredible and,

00:53:54.780 and subdues him and all this. And, and then his whole goal is not just to keep it for himself,

00:53:59.660 but he's going to, he's going to export, you know, manufacture a bunch of this tech so that

00:54:04.620 everyone can be a superhero. And his big line in the movie is this. He says, now everyone can be

00:54:09.680 a superhero. And when everyone's super, no one is. And he was just mad. At the end of the day,

00:54:15.680 he was just holding a grudge ever since he was a little kid he was just mad that some people

00:54:19.300 were more special than him well today guess what it's the same thing

00:54:24.920 everyone is not equal brothers and sisters you are all equal in terms of the merit and dignity

00:54:34.740 and worth of your soul in an eternal sense you're also all equal in a judicial sense under the law

00:54:42.820 but we are not all equal in terms of intelligence skills gifts wealth the time that you were born

00:54:54.220 the place that you were born the family that you were born into life is not fair get over it

00:55:02.100 it's not fair well people who were born in the sudan don't have the opportunities as those who

00:55:08.680 were born in America. Correct. Correct. But your job is not, therefore, to say, well, then we need 1.00

00:55:18.300 to import every single person to Sudan to America. No, the Sudanese need to bow their knee to the 1.00

00:55:25.640 Lord Jesus Christ, enact just laws, work hard, and eventually experience the blessings that we

00:55:31.980 experience here. It is actually a sin, a great and grievous sin for us to slap our American fathers

00:55:41.960 in the face and say, the inheritance that you built up for us, we're going to give it to the 0.99

00:55:49.760 third world. No, Jesus, remember even the words of Jesus, he says, you'll always have the poor. 0.83

00:55:56.900 You always have the poor.

00:55:59.700 They're not going away.

00:56:01.800 Even in a great post-millennial hope,

00:56:03.720 I think that poverty will be more eradicated,

00:56:06.880 but you're always going to have some poverty, some poor.

00:56:10.420 Do you know why?

00:56:11.640 In this gospel age, until the final return of Christ,

00:56:14.900 until we're in heaven and perfected and perfectly sanctified,

00:56:18.120 until that happens, in this world, in this life, in this age,

00:56:21.580 you'll always have poverty.

00:56:22.700 Do you know why?

00:56:23.320 You will always have poverty because you'll always have sin.

00:56:27.600 And the poor are always poor because of sin.

00:56:31.260 Now hear me, it's not always their sin.

00:56:34.120 Sometimes someone is poor because of their own sin.

00:56:37.320 And sometimes someone is poor because of someone else's sin.

00:56:40.460 Oppressing them, ripping them off.

00:56:43.400 But one way or another, mark my words, poverty is always rooted in sin.

00:56:48.680 If there were no sin, there would be no poverty.

00:56:52.020 And to say anything otherwise is ultimately not to indict man, but to indict God himself.

00:56:57.600 It is to say that God created a world that was a zero-sum game with limited resources

00:57:03.900 and then command his image bearers to do the very thing that he knew would end in their own detriment.

00:57:10.040 What is that thing? Be fruitful and multiply.

00:57:13.020 That God said, you guys should reproduce.

00:57:15.160 and then behind closed doors was saying,

00:57:18.100 I created an impoverished world

00:57:21.760 with limited resources and a zero-sum game

00:57:24.120 and as soon as they obey my commandment

00:57:26.340 to be fruitful and multiply,

00:57:27.960 eventually half of them will starve.

00:57:29.680 Is that the character of God?

00:57:32.960 No.

00:57:35.680 Overpopulation is not our problem.

00:57:38.860 Sin is our problem.

00:57:41.200 Corrupt governments is our problem.

00:57:43.680 Lazy citizens is our problem. 1.00

00:57:46.820 False religions is our problem. 1.00

00:57:48.860 Theft is our problem. 1.00

00:57:51.360 Usury is our problem.

00:57:54.460 Centralized banking is our problem.

00:57:57.900 These are the causes of poverty.

00:58:00.140 Not God.

00:58:01.820 Let God be true and every man a liar.

00:58:05.360 We messed this up.

00:58:07.220 Not him.

00:58:08.540 Not him.

00:58:09.060 and because we messed it up

00:58:12.500 until he comes back

00:58:13.740 and ultimately with finality

00:58:15.940 and perfection fixes it

00:58:17.640 then the words of Jesus remain true

00:58:20.240 that the poor will always be among you

00:58:21.960 and so the solution for the poor

00:58:26.280 ultimately

00:58:26.920 is that each nation one by one

00:58:30.040 would flock to Mount Zion

00:58:31.240 out of love for Jesus

00:58:32.900 and submission to his law word

00:58:35.320 but also in the meantime

00:58:38.080 that we resist the temptation

00:58:40.560 to try to solve poverty

00:58:42.180 on the other side of the world

00:58:43.480 by simply writing checks 0.98

00:58:45.880 or getting rid of borders 1.00

00:58:46.960 and bringing them all here. 1.00

00:58:49.640 Guys, the third world, 1.00

00:58:51.040 this is the sad reality of life 1.00

00:58:52.820 and Christian pastors won't say it. 0.99

00:58:54.460 And this is why we're in the mess that we're in.

00:58:57.000 But here's the sad reality.

00:58:58.540 The third world is a black hole.

00:59:02.340 It's a black hole.

00:59:04.980 You can throw resource after resource

00:59:07.960 after resource

00:59:08.720 after resource

00:59:09.520 after resource

00:59:10.280 and you won't fix it.

00:59:12.320 You won't.

00:59:14.760 Only Jesus can fix it.

00:59:17.460 At the end of the day,

00:59:18.680 people have to take responsibility

00:59:21.380 for themselves.

00:59:24.560 We learn this on our own soil 0.94

00:59:26.740 with BLM, right? 0.99

00:59:28.740 That reparations

00:59:29.800 aren't going to fix it.

00:59:31.420 It doesn't matter.

00:59:32.300 You give reparations

00:59:33.280 and then five years later

00:59:35.100 there'll be a call

00:59:35.740 for more reparations

00:59:36.860 and why, you know, that last check from Gavin Newsom

00:59:40.360 really wasn't just.

00:59:41.920 It was actually only 10% of what we're worth.

00:59:43.960 And it'll continue forever.

00:59:46.020 It'll never end. 0.83

00:59:48.580 Well, that's domestic. 0.99

00:59:50.340 Now just think foreign. 0.85

00:59:51.400 It's the same thing. 0.97

00:59:53.420 It's the same thing.

00:59:54.780 America writing checks to the third world

00:59:56.960 will never solve the third world. 0.79

00:59:59.120 It's a black hole. 0.99

01:00:00.300 It'll eat every resource 0.97

01:00:01.820 and it'll just dissolve into nothingness.

01:00:05.740 It has to be the nations loving Jesus

01:00:10.500 and submitting to Jesus and obeying Jesus.

01:00:15.340 And none of this happens in 15 minutes,

01:00:17.540 but over time, over centuries,

01:00:20.780 nations, as they submit to Christ,

01:00:22.920 just like European nations did, 0.86

01:00:24.720 all the way back to King Alfred,

01:00:26.440 eventually, over centuries, things change. 1.00

01:00:30.040 So the solution is not to let the third world become American. 0.96

01:00:33.680 the solution is to say to the third world look at what america did and track the common denominator 0.92

01:00:41.500 the common denominator is submission to the lord jesus christ you should try that too and then to

01:00:47.320 say not only that to the third world but then to turn right around and say to america itself hey

01:00:52.300 guys stop being rebellious dummies you better start resubmitting to the lord jesus christ 0.85

01:00:59.180 or you will become the third world. 0.97

01:01:02.160 You're not special.

01:01:03.840 Don't be arrogant.

01:01:06.780 You disobey Jesus long enough 0.99

01:01:08.840 and you'll eat up like a bunch of locusts

01:01:11.260 every ounce of blessing that he's given us.

01:01:16.100 That's what the Pharisees did.

01:01:17.560 I got to land the plane.

01:01:18.500 That's what the Pharisees did.

01:01:19.860 They bent the law.

01:01:21.720 They're the five-year-old girl with her fingers crossed.

01:01:24.220 They're the IRS with a zillion tax codes.

01:01:27.600 because they're post-modern, classical, liberal, globalist Americans

01:01:35.460 in the way that we think today that are always, ultimately,

01:01:40.640 the end goal is always just simply trying to get out of obedience to the words of Christ.

01:01:46.880 So whether it's saying, well, I only have 14 neighbors,

01:01:49.840 and they're right here in front of my face,

01:01:52.040 and they're the only ones that I'm obligated to,

01:01:53.800 and isn't it convenient that none of them, you know, they're all rich,

01:01:56.400 and they have their needs already met,

01:01:58.240 so I don't ultimately have to do anything.

01:01:59.820 That's one way of getting out of Jesus' commands,

01:02:02.920 to love your neighbor.

01:02:03.820 And another way is to say,

01:02:05.360 well, the real neighbors that we should love 1.00

01:02:07.760 are all the illegal immigrants 1.00

01:02:09.560 that are trying to come into the country and flood it. 0.99

01:02:11.860 You know, the real neighbors are the 500,000 Haitians, 0.99

01:02:14.920 you know, that have immigrated in the last 15 minutes 1.00

01:02:17.100 and are eating the cats and dogs in Springfield. 0.99

01:02:20.160 Like, no, no, that's not the way it works.

01:02:24.180 those are just two different ways of one two sides of one coin and what is the coin the coin is i

01:02:30.420 don't want to obey jesus well as christians we don't get get to do that we have to obey jesus

01:02:36.380 everyone is your neighbor but you do not have an equal obligation to eight billion people

01:02:42.640 you can't you can't you're finite so you start in and then you ripple out first your household

01:02:52.640 if a man is sending checks to uganda but not providing for the members of his own household 0.94

01:02:57.760 then the bible has a word for him it calls him an unbeliever he has denied the faith he's worse 0.86

01:03:03.360 actually than an unbeliever so you can love your universal neighbor and yet have jesus on the final 0.58

01:03:09.820 day say depart from me i don't even know who you are or you can do it in the opposite way

01:03:15.480 you can love your family and not love anybody else and that would also be a sin

01:03:20.580 in other words whether we're talking about oaths we're talking about vows we're talking

01:03:26.300 about the order of more so we're talking about this talking about that here's the deal

01:03:29.800 little one-liner cute cliches are not going to win the day for evangelicals in 2024

01:03:37.760 we are going to have to get back to serious thought our fathers all of them were better than us

01:03:48.160 that's the that's a cold hard truth you just you got to come to terms with it i've had to come to

01:03:53.860 terms with it the christian nation that i am working towards this is ironic but it's true

01:03:59.080 and if i don't acknowledge this then i then i will become a liability and not a blessing

01:04:02.880 the christian nation that by god's grace that i'm working towards if we achieve it one of the

01:04:08.080 implications of that is that um i will not be allowed to have a youtube ministry with over

01:04:13.160 100,000 subscribers. Do you know why? Because I'm just not, I'm not qualified.

01:04:20.240 I'm doing what I do today, not because I'm gifted. I'm doing what I do today because

01:04:25.700 evangelicals are pathetic. And it makes me, by comparison, look gifted. That's what I'm doing. 1.00

01:04:34.700 So by God's grace, I hope I continue to have a broader reach because right now the pickings are

01:04:40.520 slim. But if God would be so kind, eventually they won't be. And eventually we'll have men

01:04:47.100 of the caliber of Athanasius and Augustine and Calvin again, both in theology and in political

01:04:53.740 philosophy. And they'll be able to think in categories without blurring lines. They'll be

01:04:58.180 well-read. They'll be brilliant. They'll be scholars and yet also men of the people, men who can work

01:05:05.220 with their hands as well as study books. And when those men come, then I will gladly

01:05:12.440 delete my Twitter account, get rid of my YouTube channel, and hand it over to them. Say, take the

01:05:20.500 reins. I've done my duty. Glad you're here. Thank you for relieving me. I'm just going to spend time

01:05:27.480 with my kids. Maybe I'll start a small business and live happily ever after. But until those men

01:05:33.620 get here, then I'm sorry. I feel just as bad as you do, probably worse, but you're stuck with me.

01:05:42.680 So until the future Athanasius and Augustine come, then you've got to deal with blue collar, 0.99

01:05:49.780 slightly stupid Joel Webin. Because when you look at the lay of the land and evangelicals 0.98

01:05:57.820 as a whole, I'm nothing to brag about, but I'm one of the best we got. And it's not to say much

01:06:06.200 of me. It is very clearly to insult evangelicals. I will never lose an opportunity to insult

01:06:12.180 evangelicals. So not trying to brag about myself. I am very much trying to insult evangelicals.

01:06:21.520 That's kind of, that's my ministry. So we need people who can think. We currently don't have 1.00

01:06:26.980 them. And so until we have them, you're stuck. You're stuck with A.D. Robles and Joel Webben,

01:06:34.640 the reasonable Latino. If you don't know A.D. Robles, he has a YouTube channel. 1.00

01:06:38.820 And me and A.D., we each have like four cylinders, but we're firing on all four of those cylinders.

01:06:45.100 You know, we're not a V8 or a V12, you know, but what we got, we're like,

01:06:49.620 you know, we're giving it everything we got with what the Lord has given us.

01:06:53.580 We've taken our one talent.

01:06:55.080 We wish we had 10.

01:06:56.240 We don't.

01:06:57.080 But I guarantee by the grace of God, it's only his grace.

01:06:59.740 I'm going to take that one talent at the end of my life.

01:07:01.760 I'm going to give that back to the Lord Jesus too.

01:07:05.080 And the reason why I have to do that with a wide platform is because the few guys who

01:07:10.080 actually do have IQs of 170 and were given 10 talents, they took those talents and wrote

01:07:18.220 a check to some Zionist in Israel and are playing for the other team.

01:07:23.580 and so here we are but that's not the way it was when you look at church history and by God's

01:07:30.420 grace it's not the way it'll be in the future using little cliches to get out of obedience

01:07:35.980 to Jesus Christ will not be the end of the story because Christ is good and faithful and he'll

01:07:41.680 bring us along in due time so you can make an oath you can't you just have to make it rightly

01:07:48.020 make an oath about things that matter not silly things not petty things if there's a statement

01:07:53.480 that's needed and it's robust

01:07:56.900 and serious and theological,

01:07:59.180 then sign that statement.

01:08:01.300 But if there are entire clauses

01:08:03.320 in the statement

01:08:04.020 that are only in the statement

01:08:06.200 because they're very clearly personal

01:08:08.960 and taking a jab at Eric Kahn

01:08:11.180 because he posted something

01:08:12.280 three months ago about Aristotle,

01:08:14.540 then that's just not a serious statement.

01:08:18.220 And because it's not serious

01:08:19.980 to sign that and give a vow to that

01:08:22.740 would actually, I believe, be sinful.

01:08:27.040 And there you go.

01:08:27.980 Let's pray.

01:08:28.660 Father, thank You for Your Word.

01:08:30.020 Blessed to Your people.

01:08:30.980 All for Your glory.

01:08:32.200 Amen.

01:08:32.900 We're going to enter into a time of worship

01:08:34.600 through Psalm 1.

The NXR Podcast - November 24, 2024

THE SERMON - Dont Be Hasty And Make A Foolish Vow

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