Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ.
At the time of Christ, what they believed about the law, they believed that if you did more of the law, you were obedient more than you were disobedient in the scales. God will accept you. By the way, Americans believe the same thing. You see, do you think you're going to go to heaven? Well, yeah, I do. On what basis? Well, I'm a pretty good guy.
Americans actually believe often that Hitler and Charlie Manson might be the only two people now. Because I'm a good guy. And that's how God sees me. It's not how God sees you. It's so clear. If you want to know there's none righteous, no, not one, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
You see? Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. This week I read this story about a guy who was getting ready to go out of time for the weekend to a very formal event. And as the week went along, he got toward the end of the week and he realized that he hadn't gotten his formal word dry cleaned. And he found out that it was a total mess.
And the cleaners that he'd normally use couldn't handle it. So he remembered across town there was a cleaning establishment that had one hour cleaner. And so he got in his car and he went across town and he brought his cars into the establishment.
He filled out the claim ticket. And he said to the guy, he said, I'll be back in a couple of hours to get my clothes. And the guy said, no, no, we can't have these ready till Tuesday. He said, wait, wait.
On the establishment, there's the sign one hour cleaner. He said, oh, he said, that's the name of our business. He said, we can't do that.
Do you know what that reminded me of? Us. You and me. Were Christian. It's the name of our business. We're Christian. That's what we call ourselves. But often we say, I can't do that.
We can't do that. It's the name you have. If you were to take the term Christian. And reduce it to the most simplistic description possible.
What would that description be? You see, especially the way we live our lives. Well, you won't have to hear it from me, but you'll have to hear it from the Lord. I want you to open your Bibles to Mark Chapter 12. Mark Chapter 12. And let me give you some context to Mark 12.
It's Wednesday. In Mark 12. Of the Passion Week of Jesus Christ, he's going to be crucified in two days. He he's been in Jerusalem since Palm Sunday. His enemies are there. They have decided and worked themselves into a fervor to kill him at all costs.
But their fear is, how do we do that? Because he's so popular with the people. How can we have him executed? And so on Tuesday, he went into the temple and he cleansed it for the second time. He said, You have turned my father's house into a robber's den. That's what you've done. And so then they decide he decides he's going to aggravate them all the more. And that's what he does. So in the beginning of 12, the first 11 verses, Jesus tells a story. And he's telling the story of the religious to the religious leaders of Israel.
This is the way you've always been. And he talks the story about someone who owns the vineyard, who sends his slaves there, meaning the prophets. And you miss up. You abuse them.
You did everything you could to stop them. And then you get down to the verse six and he says he had one more to send a beloved son. And he sent him last of all to them, saying they will respect my son. But those vine growers said to one another, This is the heir. Come let us kill him.
And the inheritance will be ours. He means himself. And he says to them, You're trying to kill me because you want the kingdom.
And that's not unusual. Jesus called the Pharisees, hypocrites, whitewash sepulchers. And he said, Because you've stolen the kingdom of God. And so then what happens now that they're in a fervor, it says in verse 13, and notice what verse 12 said, though, and they were seeking to seize him. And yet they feared the people. So in verse 13, it said they sent some of the Pharisees and the Herodians to him in order to trap him in a statement.
Now, this is interesting. You need to know this. Pharisees hate Herodians. Herodians hate the Pharisees. The Herodians are Greek Jews. They hate that the Pharisees are Jew Jews. They don't like the Herodians, but they're together now. And they said, What we've got to do is figure a way to trap him so that he'll lose favor with the people. Well, they decide to get they come up through all their thinking with this great way to trap him. First of all, they come and they came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are truthful and defer to no one, for you are not partial to any, but cheats the way of God in truth.
Now that's called, by the way, schmoozing. It's pure lies. They're just telling them lies. You're like the greatest man. No. What? Then they've dropped the question. Is it lawful to pay poll tax to Caesar or not?
Now they've got a subject they can really go with. Why? How many of you like to pay taxes? How many of you hear a candidate get up and say, The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to reduce all your taxes?
I'll vote for that guy. You see? And these people, though, the Jews hated paying a poll tax to Caesar. They hated paying taxes to Rome. And so they're going to get them in this, they feel. So they get it to him. And they said, Shall we pay or shall we not pay? Knowing their hypocrisy, he knew they were lying to him. He said, Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius.
He knows what they're doing. So he gets a denarius. What's a denarius? A Roman coin. A denarius is one day's wages to a Roman worker.
It's a denarius. And he says, Whose likeness and inscription is this on the denarius? They said to him, That's Caesar's. Jesus said to them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's into God. The things that are God. Being lost, it says, and they were amazed at him. And you could just see them.
Well, I told you that would never work. You know, now we look like fools compared to him. So the next group comes in some Sadducees. The Sadducees are the intellectuals of the Sanhedrin. They're wealthy, highly educated. They don't believe any of the Bible except the first five books of Moses. That's all they believe. They don't believe in the rest of the Jewish Bible. They also don't believe in a resurrection.
That's important to understand. They don't believe there's anyone gets resurrected. And so they say that notice that Mark writes that there is no resurrection. And they said, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves behind a wife and leaves no child, his brother should marry the wife and raise the children, he said, and raise up the children to his brother.
OK, now what? Then there were seven brothers and the first took a wife and died having no children. The second one married her and and died having behind no children.
And the third likewise. And so all seven left no children. Last of all, the woman died. OK, that's Jewish tradition and law. If you would die in that case, a woman could not be on her own.
If you died as the husband and you had a brother, the brother would take your wife in and keep her so that she would have a security. And so they now notice what they say then. Then they say in the resurrection when they rise again. Now, what I tell you about Sadducees, they don't believe there's a resurrection. So this has set up written all over it. You see, the idea is, wait. When they're resurrected, they're sort of mocking the Lord and said, which one as wife will she be?
For all seven married her. And Jesus said to them in this, he says, is this not the reason that you're mistaken? That you do not understand the scriptures or the power of God?
That's a great insult. He said, you know why you don't understand this? You don't know the Bible. And you think, well, he must be talking about all the Bible. He's talking about the books that they've memorized. Genesis to Deuteronomy. He said, for when they rise from the dead, they neither married nor are given in marriage, but they're like angels in heaven. But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses?
See, that's their hero. You don't read Moses. I thought you guys memorized the five books.
You don't even read Moses. And they're thinking, what does he mean by this? He said in the passage about the burning bush.
I could just imagine right now. What's a burning bush have to do with this? What does he mean by this? How God spoke to him saying, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.
You are greatly mistaken. Notice God didn't say in the burning bush, I was Abraham's God. You see, I was Isaac's God. He said, I am Abraham's God.
What's that mean? Abraham's raised from the dead. So Jesus just buries them.
So he holds them off. And now it says, and one of the scribes came, heard them arguing and recognizing that he had answered them. Well, he asked him. What commandment is the foremost of all?
Now, this is for all real intensive purposes. This truly is an honest man. He wasn't sent by the Sanhedrin. He's a scribe and he listened to him. He said, wow, look what he did to the Pharisees and the Rhodians.
Now look what he did to the Sadducees. This guy knows stuff. I want to ask him a question that I've always wanted to know. You have to have that in your mind. You know, I've been thinking about this for years.
I'd love to find someone who can answer my question. So that's what he asked Jesus. What is the foremost commandment of all? See, the Jews, by and large, lived by the commandments, as you know, the law. That's how they lived.
That's the way it was for them. By the time the Pharisees come along, according to the Mishnah and the Talmud, they have 613 laws. 613 laws that you have to keep. 248 of those are positive, 365 are negative.
Now, that's quite interesting. You might wonder, why do they have 613? That seem like an odd number to you? Well, if you took the Ten Commandments in Hebrew and you gave one point credit for every Hebrew letter in the Ten Commandments, guess how many letters you get?
613. So that's why they made 613 laws. They all built off the Decalogue.
That's the way this is. And they end up finding out what is the most important. They had all kinds of ways. Some said the positive laws are more important. Some said the negative laws. Some of them said there are light laws and heavy laws and the heavy laws are more important. Others said the first commandment of the Ten Commandments, you have no other gods before me.
That's the most important one. But everybody agreed that no one would understand this. In fact, when he actually asked the commandment here, notice how he says what commandment is the foremost. The word for what in Greek is tis.
It's not tis here. He doesn't use that. He uses a completely different word in the context of the Greek text. He uses the word pois. That means quality of. He said, I'm going to talk about the quality here.
Not just identification, but quality. So the Lord answers him and gives him a complete shock. First of all, Jesus didn't do what I would have probably done.
Wait, let me think about this. He just answered. He said, this is so obvious. This is so clear. So he said, the foremost is this hero is real. The Lord, our God, the Lord is one. He says, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. And he says, and with all your mind and with all your strength. Who's he quoting? Moses. He's quoting Moses. And he says, there it is. That's the foremost. Now, let's go back to Deuteronomy six for a moment where he's quoting from.
You can hold your place there. Deuteronomy six. And when you see this in its context. Everything about Deuteronomy, everything that is written about this particular book in Hebrew, the book isn't called Deuteronomy. It's Elahad Avarim, and it means and an additional amount of words like Moses, by the way, is relatively old when he writes Deuteronomy.
He's probably just short of 120. OK, his law, his life broke down in the 40 in Egypt, 40 in the wilderness, then 40. And you see 40 in Egypt. Then he went to actually he went to the land of Midian, was a shepherd back into Egypt, took out Israel, ended up in the wilderness because of disobedience. And he died before he went into the Promised Land.
So he wrote it in the wilderness at some time. And what he tells them in Deuteronomy is this. I'm telling you people something important. You're going into the land of milk and honey. If you obey God, he'll bless you and he'll tell you every possible blessing. He gives them all the blessings that they'll have in the land of milk and honey. But if you don't, he'll curse you. And ultimately, when you read Deuteronomy 28, 29 and 30, you find out that God says, look, if you're disobedient enough to me, I'm going to rip you out of the land and I'm going to disperse you all over the world.
And everywhere you go, you'll be hated. And by the way, the first time God disciplined them, the Assyrian captivity. Second time God disciplined Babylonian captivity. Third time they killed their own Messiah, Jesus Christ, the son of God. And in 70 A.D. took him out of the land for 2000 years.
I mean, it's an amazing story. And the Jews have been hated everywhere they've ever been. So that's all in Deuteronomy. So he says, you've got to obey all these laws.
And he says it over and over again. Notice at the end of Chapter five, verse 33, you shall walk in all the way of the Lord your God has commanded you that you may live and that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days in the land that you shall possess. Starting in Chapter six, this commandment, the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land that you're going over to possess it. So that you and your son and your grandson might fear the Lord your God to keep all his commandments, which I command you all the days of your life and that your days will be prolonged. Oh, Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it. That may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you in the land that's flowing with milk and honey. Now, when you read that, you think this. First of all, religious people love this.
If you're a religious, the Pharisee, religious people love this kind of thing. Oh, good. What do I have to do? I'm going to do everything.
I'll do it as best I can. Now, when you get to say the Pharisees at the time of Christ, what they believed about the law, they believed that if you did more of the law, you were obedient more than you were disobedient in the scales. God will accept you. By the way, Americans believe the same thing. I hear Americans say this stuff all the time. Americans say, you see, do you think you're going to go to heaven? Well, yeah, I do.
On what basis? Well, I'm a pretty good guy. I mean, I'm not even close, but I'm a pretty good guy.
Americans actually believe often that Hitler and Charlie Manson might be the only two people in hell. Because I'm a good guy. And that's how God sees me. It's not how God sees you.
It's so clear. If you want to know there's none righteous, no, not one, all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You see, it's not like that. But what the Pharisees believed, this idea God will weigh the scales and if you have more positive, you'll spend eternity with God. Do you know who believes that exact same thing today? Islam. That is Islam. That's what all Muslims believe.
God will put you on the scale. If there's more good than there is bad, you're in. That's what the Pharisees believed at the time of Christ. That's almost always what religious people believe.
There's some way that I'm going to jump through a certain amount of hoops and do a certain amount of things, and I'm going to be good. So when you read Deuteronomy, you think, oh man, that's a lot of law. But notice what it says next. Hear, O Israel. The word hear, Shema. If you've ever known what the Jewish Shema is, very important to Jewish people, it's that word. It's an imperative mood.
It's a command. Hear, O Israel. The Lord is our God. The Lord is one. Well, it's quite clear the Lord is one.
Now, you might say, well, I've heard Jehovah's Witnesses and people tell me there is no such thing as a triune God. He's just one. That's all the Lord is, is just one.
Because Deuteronomy says it. That word one is the word echad. That's not number one. Echad means one in multiple. It'd be like saying a cluster of grapes.
It's one cluster, but it's many grapes. That's what the word echad means. So when he says the Lord is one, he doesn't mean singular. He said it's a group, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. So then he says you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And he says these words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. So Jesus says it's the greatest commandment. It's the basis of everything in Christianity. There is nothing in Christianity, even remotely, is important. What is the single most important thing as Christians that you and I need to do?
Love the Lord our God. We're going to look at that. That's what this is all about. That's what you're faced about more than anything. And we get in the same kind of problem. We keep thinking, man, there's so many things I should be doing or not doing.
I need to do more things. No. You see, how do you, if you're in Israel at the time, how do you obey God and get all those blessings? You love Him. You see, the obedience is born out of love, not duty. Duty will never work. It's not wages.
You love Him. That's the whole point. So if we look at it from that point of view, let's go back to Mark. So Jesus answered and said the foremost of this, hero Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. This is very, very hard for religious people to accept. It's all about love. Yeah. But let me explain something.
You and I are just as guilty. You see, how do we judge people? See, how do you know if someone's really a believer and walks with the Lord? Well, maybe if they know a lot of scripture, they must be walking close to the Lord.
Oh, they've done great things. Won't matter. You're going to see this.
Hold your place here one more time. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 13. You know the chapter. Even if you don't even know the Bible, you know this chapter because you've attended weddings. This is the wedding chapter. I'm not totally against that.
I even use it myself. But it's not about weddings. You see, it's not what it's about. Paul is going to say something to us that I find very convicting. 1 Corinthians 13, first verse. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, how about that? Now, I want you to imagine this. You meet me in the lobby afterwards. And I say to you, I'm talking, I said, I want to be able to speak to you in a certain way. I know you're nervous. And I speak angelic language to you.
I don't even have any idea what that's like. But you know it's not English. You know it's not. And I'm speaking angelic language. What do you think about me? I mean, some of you think that's creepy.
I get that. But what do you think? You think, holy cow, this guy speaks angel language. You see, he's something. I mean, you'd say that's what, look what kind of Christian he is.
Okay. If I speak with the tongues of men and the tongues of angels, but I do not have love, I have become nothing but a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. It meant nothing.
It meant nothing. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.
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That's fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find a message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.
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