03/02/2003

Let's bow in prayer. That promise in You, of course, is the promise of eternal life that You have given us Father in Jesus Christ. Father, we thank You that we have the opportunity to not just sing and enjoy each others company here, but to sing and enjoy the company of You in heaven. Father, we thank You that this is offered to us as a free gift, but nothing we can do to earn it, or to deserve it, but we do have to accept it as Your Son Jesus Christ into our lives as Lord and Savior to live our lives to follow You. Father, I pray that this might be true in every heart here this morning. That these have not just been words that we have sung, the truths that we sung, but they have been truth in our heart also. In Jesus' Name we pray, Amen.

What is the difference between worship and church? One of them is a verb. One of them is a noun, generally speaking at least. Often times we say we are going to church. Well, what are we going to church for? Some people just come to the place, the church. But if we say, I am going to worship that means I am going to participate in something important to my life. So when a person says I miss church. If we think of it the other way and say, I did not worship that day, that is a whole different statement, isn't it? Many times we have the view that we are going to a place for a meeting. We are not going to a place for a meeting, we are taking ourselves to a place for the purpose of worshiping, entering into worship. And so we want to kind of rethink what we are doing here. We are not going to church, we are coming to worship. And so I hope that kind of helps as you come next week. Say what am I doing, am I going to a meeting? No, I am taking myself to a particular place that is designed for the purpose of worship. I am going to worship. That may change our attitude, some of our thinking as we get ready and prepare for it. So we get here and we are ready for worship.

Turn to the Book of Matthew, if you would please. Matthew 5 and when we do this we want to remind ourselves that we have been working on a verse and hopefully you have it all memorized by now anyway. It is not that long of verse, not that difficult. Psalm 19:14

Let the words of my mouth and the mediation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Or my strength and my Redeemer depending on what translation you might have.

And so we are talking about the words of my mouth and the mediation of my heart. The things that we think about, the things that in a sense make our heart sing. That is what that word mediation means. The things that come out of our mouth, the things that come out of our heart. Jesus says that the mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart. The mouth speaks as a indication of what the heart is. And so we are looking at different aspects of the scriptures in terms of how our heart works and how our mouth works. We have talked about how we pass things on to our children through our mouth, we encourage each other through our mouth, we have to make sure our heart is right. Can we look at ourselves in the mirror? Is our heart right before God? And so a number of different things we have been looking at trying to help us understand that the words of our mouth are very important to God. The meditations of our heart are very important to God.

This passage in Matthew 5 is a very interesting one, because Jesus hits on a subject on a level that we really don't understand, but as we study all of the scripture about it, we begin to see a little bit different view of it. He is talking about a practice that the Jews had of the day. And that was of making vows, all the time. Strengthening their word with a vow. Does anybody know what this means? When you were kids you said, Yes, I will give you a stick of gum if Mom gives me some gum I will give you one. What does that mean? I am lying and my fingers are crossed so I really didn't mean what I just said, ok. It is interesting though that cross my heart, hope to die, is also a form of a vow, isn't it? It is strengthening my word with some kind of a vow. This means I don't have to keep my word after all. Well, I don't know whether they crossed their fingers or not, but the people of Jesus' day had made a fine art of making vows they did not intend to keep. But making it sound like the end of the world would come before they would break their vow. So Jesus says in Matthew 5, Verse 33.

Again, I say to you, You have heard that the ancients were told, the ancients were people before them and there were people in the Jewish culture of Jesus day who followed kind of the different teachings of scribes. The old testament laws were written years before, of course, in Moses day. Down through the years there have been different practices, but during the last four hundred years before Christ there had come on the scene scholars who explained the law, who explained the writings of God in practical terms. They tried to make it very clear how you followed the laws of God. So what they did, there were two of them, Shimmei and the other guy was Hillel, they were two different commentators. They explained the law. One was the liberal, the leftist and the other was the conservative, the rightist. So they kind of had different views of how you followed the laws. But of course during the last four hundred years before Christ the Pharisees had come on the scene and they had committed themselves to following the laws of God to the Tee. And so these commentators helped them understand how you go about doing that. And they had all kinds of rules about how you live your life according to the law. 

Go back to Deuteronomy which is the fifth Book of the Bible, Deuteronomy Chapter 6, Verse 4 says,

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your might.

Then he goes down further and he says Verse 13,

You shall fear only the Lord your God; and you shall worship Him, and swear by His name.

See making oaths, swearing, making vows is not wrong. It is not a wrong thing to do. There are people who make vows, we have marriage vows, we have commitments that we make of all sorts. And when we are in a court of law they may ask you to put your hand on the Bible and swear upon the Bible. There are different ways that we can strengthen our word and make people understand how serious I am about this issue. But in their day they had made it a fine art not to be serious. In fact, they would come up with some really interesting ways around the law. I am not sure whether they ever crossed their fingers or not, but they had a whole bunch of ways not to keep their word. One was, if they didn't say it out loud with witnesses, they didn't have to keep their word. Or if they said it with their mouth, but didn't really mean it in their heart they didn't have to keep their word either. That is pretty convenient, isn't it? Well, I didn't really mean it when I said it. I didn't really mean it, so therefore you shouldn't be upset that I didn't keep my word. Or if they said it and strengthened their vow by anything else. In fact if you go back to Matthew 5 you will see some of the things that they used. 

By the way, the commentator suggests that this is still in practice in much of Israel, the middle east. People still do this kind of thing. He says in Verse 34,

'YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FALSE VOWS, BUT SHALL FULFILL YOUR VOWS TO THE LORD.' But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is THE CITY OF THE GREAT KING. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be 'Yes, yes" or 'No, no"; and anything beyond these is of evil.

Well, they had become very adept at making vows by everything except things that would make it binding upon them. In fact, the only thing that many would use that would actually bind them to keep their word was if they vowed in the name of Jehovah, by the name of the Lord. Then they had to keep their vows. In Jesus' day remember there was another passage where Jesus said, Many of you will swear by the altar, by the temple, and won't keep your vows, but if it is by the gold on the altar, then you will. So they even elevated gold to the level of God's name.

It gives interesting insight on the fact of one of the commandments. One of them says, you shall not take the name of the Lord, your God in vain. This is one of the ways of taking God's name in vain. Is to say, Yes, you can count on me as God is my witness, that is kind of the way they would say it, the Lord be my witness, or in the name of the Lord, or to the name of the Lord. I will do this. And so when you do that with no intent to keep the vow or break the vow because of circumstantial changes, then you have misused, you have taken the Lord's name in vain. Generally speaking that commandment means, if you use God's name or any form of it in any way that is demeaning or less than His character, we have used His name in vain. So if we swear on a stack of Bibles and break our word, we have demeaned, we have used the Lord's name in vain. 

TURN THE TAPE

He will be judged, He will judge every idle word that we speak. By our words we will be condemned, by our words we should be justified. So God uses the words of our mouth to be a test of our heart. So, if we say Yes, I will. Jesus said let your Yes, mean yes, your no mean no. But in those days they had to come up with some really great ways of making it so they didn't have to keep their vows. One of them was called corban. You may have seen that in different passages of scripture. Corban was a term that they would use, it was actually a rule that they would invoke on a certain vow. There were vows that were quite acceptable. There is the Nazirite vow, Samson was a Nazirite. There are other Nazirites, they didn't cut their hair, they didn't eat any of the fruit of the vine. There were certain things that they didn't do and certain things that they did do as a vow to God, as a Nazirite. Sometimes these were life long, sometimes they were short lived. There was a time limit on them. Remember Samson could not have his hair cut. When his hair was cut, God took away his strength also. And so there are consequences when we make a vow to God and we don't keep it. Ecclesiastes 5 says, if you make a vow to God, make sure you keep it otherwise it says God will be angry on account of your voice and will destroy the work of your hands. So God takes very seriously the words of our mouth, especially when we commit ourselves to something. Whether we make a vow or take an oath, or whether we just say, yes, I will. God takes that vow very seriously, because God is a God of truth. We want Him to be trustworthy, He wants us to be trustworthy. So as a Christian, especially, we need to be people that can be counted on.

We have been studying the last few weeks a book by Bill Hibells. It is on leadership and the last chapter we studied in staff meeting was the aspect of people who were on ministry teams and leading teams and things. He said there are three aspects we need to make sure that we have. One is competency. Can they do the job? Another one is chemistry. Means do they get along with people when they do the job? And the third one is character. Can you trust them? Can you count on them? So the question that Jesus is really addressing here is, people can you be counted on? Can people count on you when you say yes I will, that you will. If you say No, I won't, then you won't. Can they take your word truly as your bond? Or do you have to strengthen it by somebody else's integrity? It is almost like co-signing. The bank says we don't trust your financial practices, we don't think you can pay us back, so you add somebody else who has more money that you and have them sign their name on. Well, the bank doesn't trust you, but they trust them. That is what a vow does, or an oath in using somebody else's name. Say by the name of the Lord, or by the word of the God, or whatever else you want to use, it means, you can't trust me, but you can trust Him. Now have Him be accountable to my word. Jesus said, You shouldn't have to do that. You should be people of integrity that can be counted on, that can be trusted anyway. So He says, Corban was a term that people would invoke that was actually a kind of rule of Old Testament law. Was not in the Old Testament, but was one of those things the ancient's were told you could use. Corban meant if I made a vow to God. Say I made a vow to God that I would give above and beyond the produce of my field, which is normally the tithe. I will give you double this year Lord. If you bless me, I will give you double what I said. Well that was a good vow, that was ok. You can make vows like that. 

It is interesting in the Old Testament, in Numbers it says, if a man makes a vow to God he is held to it. He is held to it. If you make a vow to God, keep it. If a wife makes a vow to the Lord and her husband hears about it, if he doesn't say, No let's not do that the same day, then they are bound by that vow. If a daughter makes a vow and the Dad hears about it the very same day, if he does something then it is cancelled, but if not it carries through, they are responsible to hold it. And so it is interesting how vows are treated. They had regulations concerning vows.

There are times, however, when a person would say, Mom and Dad when you get old I will give you, let's see how much is a good amount of money? How much would I like from my kids? A lot. That is a good round figure. So, Jeff and April, Owen and Marcie, and Audrey and Adam get together and they say, here is what we will do to take care of our ancient Mom and Dad when they are feeble and infirm. We will make sure we will take care of them. By the way, where it says in the Old Testament that you shall honor your father and mother. It is actually a financial commitment, we make to our parents. We will honor them and take care of them. It is a continual, not just obey them in the home, it means we will make sure they are well taken care of all the way through. And so he says make sure you do that, because that will make your days long on the earth too. Really long.

Suppose our three kids got together and said we will give Mom and Dad, by this time my kids will probably we really wealthy, so they can give us $10,000.00 a week. Pretty good, right? We have really good kids. I don't know about your kids, but ours are really good ones. So, about the time I retire and my wife decides to retire and we decide we are going to take vacations and she is going to ride horses while I hunt. And so we say, it is about time for you kids to pay up. And they say, well, boy we would really like to Mom and Dad, but we declared that gift to be corban. Well, what is corban? Corban means the gift that I had promised you, I have sense dedicated to God. So I am sorry I can not take what belongs to God and give it to you after all. That is convenient isn't it? By the way, you are not Jewish so you can't do that one. Ok, so our kids have to give us the money. And you have to give it to your parents too. But in those days there was a way around taking care of your parents. They would call it corban. Now the neat thing about this was, corban meant I have dedicated this money to God so it belongs to Him, but by God's grace He allows me to administer it. Wow, so what I am saying is my three kids say, we are going to give you $10,000.00 a week, but they say sorry we dedicated it to the Lord and He has told us we can keep it and use it however we want to. That is a great thing to have. Wish I had that kind of corban rule in my life, but we don't, do we? And Jesus didn't like it either. It is not Godly, it is totally ungodly in fact, but it is a way of saying Mom and Dad we will promise to give you $10,000.00 once a week, sorry can't because we crossed your fingers. 

Well those are the kinds of vows that were being made in those days. People were saying yes I will. Then saying sorry you can't hold me to it cause I really didn't mean it. Well, it sounded like you meant it. Well, I am sorry if it sounded like that, I really didn't. The only binding vow, that is why Jesus put it this way. The ancients were told you can not make false vows or in other words for swear, which means to swear without intention to keep it. But you shall fulfill your vows to the Lord. The way they had put it, they way they understood it was, that the only vows I need to keep are vows I make in the name of the Lord. 

Let me read you an interesting passage. This is a quote from one of the scholars of that day, in fact. They swore by the city Jerusalem, but he sayeth by Jerusalem sayeth nothing unless with intent purpose he shall vow towards Jerusalem. Ok, Jerusalem is either that way or that way depending which way you fly. But he says if you vow in the name of Jerusalem, it doesn't mean anything unless you are facing Jerusalem. So if I am facing this way and Jerusalem is the other way, so I face this way and I say I vow by the city of the King, the Great Jerusalem. He'll say oh that's good, then you are going to keep your word, right? Well no, because I wasn't facing Jerusalem, so it doesn't count. Wow, sounds like kids, doesn't it? Sounds like a lot of kids. 

Then He says, We are also after two lines coming between the forms of swearing and vowing were added this. For Jerusalem, by Jerusalem the temple, for temple, by the temple, the altar for the temple, by the temple, the lamb for the lamb by the lamb, the chambers of the temple, for the chambers of the temple by the chambers of the temple, the word, for the word, by the word, the sacrifices on fire, for the sacrifices on fire, by the sacrifices on fire, the dishes, for the dishes, and by the dishes and by all these things this will I do to you. None of which count. You can make the vow twenty feet long and it doesn't count if you are not facing the right direction, or didn't intend to in your heart, or don't include the name of God. Isn't that interesting? What does it mean to us? Well the principle that Jesus is getting at is here. They would only keep their word if finally bond to their word by circumstances by their own voice, by something that made them keep their word. Jesus is saying, you be the opposite. If you mean yes, just say yes. If you mean no, just say no. We are to be people of our word. We are to be people that people can say he said he would be here at 10 o'clock, if he is not here at 10 o'clock, he must be dead or a car accident or something is wrong here, because he would be here at 10 o'clock. If this person says I will do this for you, it means they will do it, because they said they will do it for you. If they say it will be this amount, it means it will be that amount. 

One of the things that they did in the Old Testament in Malachi. Malachi got up from the people and he said try this with God. Try vowing a sacrifice or a gift to the King, a wonderful lamb, and then send Him a blemished one instead. See if the King likes that. Do you think God likes it when we promise something and then don't keep it or substitute something else? No, the King is not as near as great as God and yet you are defrauding God by promising one thing and giving another. What kind of promises have we made to God? Said God from now on out I am going to tithe. From here on out I am going to read the Bible every day. From here on out I am going to live this kind of life. From here on out I am going to get rid of the stuff on my computer. From here on out I am going to put away these magazines. From here on out I am going to be true to my wife, true to my husband, from here on out I am going to be doing these things whether they were said by the name of God or not. He says we are bound to that commitment. So treat our word as if it is a vow, because it is. It is a reflection of our honest desire to do something. Now we don't have to make a vow. We don't have to say it. But if we are going to, keep it. That is what is says in Psalm 15, we read a couple of weeks ago. Where it says, 

A man who lives on God's holy hill is one who swears to his own hurt and does not change.

It means he makes a commitment even if circumstances change, he sticks with his word because he is a man of integrity. It is important that we are people of integrity. One of the sad things is that many times in peoples lives they have not come to Christ because they have known Christians who were untrustworthy. They couldn't trust them to do the job that they said they would do. They have them on a position and they won't finish the work They don't show up on time, they don't certain things that they said they would do. And all of us know that. We have been in ministry, all of us who have been in ministry for very many years know there are many times when people have said yes I will do that for the church. I'll be there and I'll take care of this ministry. I do this and the next thing you know they are no where to be seen. And it is disappointing, disappointing to us, disappointing to you. When a person says they will do something and then don't, do you think it disappoints God? Of course, it does. It offends God for us not to keep our word. If offends God when we say, yes and mean no, especially with intent. It offends God when we say we will do it and then don't do it. If we make a commitment to God, in Ecclesiastes it says, think before you make a vow. Think before you say yes. Think before you say no. Because God is going to hold us to our words. Why? Because we are going to hold Him to His word, aren't we? He is not afraid of us holding Him to His word. He said I have heaven waiting for you. I have heaven in the name of Jesus Christ. You accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and you have a place with Me. If you follow Me throughout your life, you have a place for Me, you have reward. You have My guarantee upon it in the name of My son, Jesus Christ. When we make statements as a Christian, as a person, we are making statements in the name of and for the sake of Jesus Christ, because we bear His name.

Now every once in awhile I have a sermon that I have no clue why I am preaching it. Ok, I will be told later. By God or somebody. Somebody will say you know that was me. But I bet there is one or two or three who are here this morning who are saying, I said something, I made a commitment to something and I don't want to keep it. I have been trying to figure a way out of it. But I better not, because God holds us to our words. Another one may be saying, you know I have been ask to do this certain thing and I have been considering whether I should or shouldn't. Well, think more about it, think twice about it, three or four times and pray about it. Say God, should I commit myself to this thing? Because we will be held by our words. If not the person, they might say, oh you have a good enough excuse we will let you off this time. I don't think God has the same excuses. I have had people sit in my office before and say, well the reason I didn't follow through because of this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this. Well, it is a wonderful thing when you have to have a whole list of excuses, but I don't know how many of them God counts. If we make a commitment we should stick with our commitments. God sticks with His, we stick with ours, because we bear His name. Otherwise, we are using His name in vain. 

Let's pray. Father we thank You that You give us the word. In fact, You said that You elevate Your word far above Your word far above Your name. And Father, we know that Your word is true. It has been established forever and You will hold yourself to Your word. You will hold us to our word so therefore, we should be careful that when we make a commitment, when we make a vow, when to take an oath of any kind that we mean it. That we understand the importance of it. That we understand that it is based upon Your very character. Father we know that You said You are the author of truth and Satan is the author of lies. We also know that Satan often times shrouded his lies in things that looked pretty true. When he tempted Eve he used the same words that You used. Then he twisted them a little bit so it looked like Adam and Eve were not really disobeying You, but they really were. So Father, help us understand that our half truths, our almost truths are truths but real intent to lie are seen by You. There is nothing hidden from You. You understand our thoughts, You understand our words, the very intent of our heart. Father, as Christians help us to be truly reflective of Your character in this truly important area. ' Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer.' Every word from my mouth, every meditation from my heart is truly in Thy sight, Lord. That is how we make them acceptable to You. In Jesus' Name, Amen.

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