[Boundaries]
Slide Graphic – sign: “NO TRESPASSING. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again”
Slide Text –
These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men (Mathew 15:8-9)
(Note: I gave the following to our drama group, and they made a hilarious video. This did a great job of getting everyone’s attention for the lesson)
A man in a car slows down as he approaches a stop sign, looks in both directions, then drives on without ever coming to a complete stop. A policeman turns on his siren and pulls him over. The man seems baffled – “What seems to be the problem?” “You ran that stop sign, sir.” “No, I’m sure I didn’t” “Yes sir, you did, you failed to come to a complete stop” “But I did slow down” “Yes sir, you did, but you are supposed to stop.” “But I could see that no one was coming, I was perfectly safe – that’s all that matters” “No sir, you have to stop, I’m writing you a ticket.”
Next day – the same thing. The man slows, looks, then speeds through the intersection. The policeman pulls him over again. Both seem frustrated. The policeman insists the the man was supposed to stop. The man insists that slowing down is the same thing. Another ticket.
Third day – the same thing. The man slows, looks, then speeds through the intersection. The policeman pulls him over again. This time the policeman walks up to the window, doesn’t say anything, then suddenly grabs the man by the shirt collar, pulls his head out of the window, and begins hitting it repeatedly with his police club. “Now”, he says, between blows, “do you want me to stop, or do you want me to just slow down?”
It seems there was a difference. Stop means stop.
As a Christian, what rules apply to us? Did God give us any “laws” in the Bible that still apply to us today? What is the punishment for breaking them?
39 Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. 40 Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the LORD your God gives you for all time.
Deuteronomy 4:39-40
[What Does the Bible Say About Laws?]
Slide Graphic – sign: “Is there life after death? Trespass and find out”
Slide text –
John 14:15 says which of the following?
1. If you love me, you must keep my commandments.
2. If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
3. If you keep my commandments, I will then know that you love me.
Number 2 is correct. Jesus wasn’t saying if you keep My commandments, you will prove to me that you love Me. Jesus already knows whether you love Him or not! He was saying, if you fall head over heels in love with Me, you will be able to keep My commandments!"
If Jesus had said one of the other two, it would have been all about the law. It would have said that the way to heaven is like striking a deal and forcing God to hold up his end. It would have been like passing a test and proving your worthiness to go to heaven, practically on equal footing with God.
The true translation is about a relationship. Keeping the commandments is a commitment resulting from love, not the test. Two people in love sign a marriage contract and bind themselves with vows. This is natural. Lovers are driven by their passionate natures to bind themselves together with promises. Nearly every love song you hear on the radio is about a person in love making promises to his or her beloved. Love doesn’t follow after the promises as a result of them – it precedes the promises. The promises result from love.
So, what laws did Jesus give? What are the boundaries we are supposed to live within?
[What Does Jesus Command?]
Slide graphic – Osama Bin Laden
Slide text –
Jesus replied: “ ’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)
This is it – the Great Commandment. Given to us by Christ himself, who told us when he gave it that every other command is simply a special case of this one. So, what does it mean to love your neighbor? I have some really strange neighbors. Am I supposed to love them? Who all is my neighbor? Just the house next door? Are you my neighbor? Am I supposed to love everyone in the world? Am I supposed to love Osama Bin Laden? Am man responsible for the heinous deaths of thousands of innocent people? Hitler? Stalin?
What does it mean “Love”? Am I supposed to pretend these are wonderful people, whom I really, really like? People I would do anything for? People I would want to hang out with?
I hear people say this, but it is not only ridiculous to pretend that I love these people like that, it is simply not Biblical. Actually, the great commandment is not “Love your neighbor”, it says “Love your neighbor as yourself”. THIS is the key to understanding the great commandment Christ gave.
How do I love myself? Do I think that I am a wonderful person? Actually, no. I know I’m wicked, selfish, short tempered, harsh and unloving. And many other things I would rather not list in public. I do not like myself very much most of the time. I hate many of the things I have said and done in my life – horrible, repulsive things. That’s what I think about myself. When I “love my neighbor as myself”, Christ isn’t saying I am to pretend they haven’t done repulsive things, or pretend they are wonderful people. I don’t pretend that about myself.
You’ve probably heard people in church say “hate the sin but not the sinner”. You may have had a hard time with that. If someone does something hateful, how can you not hate them? Is this reasonable? Does the world really work that way in your experience? Actually, if you are honest, it may not, until you remember that one person for whom you have done this your entire life. There is one person who has done hateful things over and over, and yet you love that person still. That person is yourself.
No matter how bad you hate that thing you did, you still love yourself. You don’t love yourself because of the things you do – you hate those horrible things you do because you love yourself and wish that you had not been the kind of person who had done them. Christianity does not ask that you stop hating the horrible things your “neighbor” does – you should go right on hating them, just like you should hate the bad things you do yourself. But you should hate those bad things your neighbor does for the same reason you would if you did them, because you care about the person and are sorry to see that they did such a thing. We should hate the things Osama Bin Laden has done, but if we are truly Christ-like about it, we would also truly wish that the man could be cured of what drives him to do these things, that he could put that behind him and become a “good” man. Christ himself said that there is no neighbor, no matter what they have done, even Osama, that they cannot be cured by Christ and become good. Remember the story of John Newton, the slaver – all the heinous things he had done, the depths to which he had sunk, and yet God reached down and saved him. He became a good man. He wrote a song about the amazing grace God showed by saving a wretch like himself. “I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see”.
If you went home today and saw a news article proving conclusively that Osama was not involved in the September 11th tragedy, what would be your reaction? Relief that he had not done such a bad thing, or would you be disappointed, or even cling in the face of proof to your pleasure in believing him as bad as possible? Which would be the Christian response? Which would be loving your neighbor like yourself?
Do you love your neighbor like yourself? Can you see how this command of Christ’s impacts how we should forgive people? No matter how bad the thing is that you have done, don’t you always forgive yourself? The Bible clearly says that if you don’t forgive others (those neighbors), you won’t be forgiven yourself. The Lord’s prayer includes the phrase “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”. It’s all the same thing. Love your neighbor in the same way that you love your own self.
[Is there “Right” and “Wrong”?]
Slide Graphic – small dog wearing “invisible fence” collar
The Bible clearly says that “Right” and “wrong” are no defined by the rules men make. God created us in his image. We are built to operate on his rules. We do “right” when we live like God intended. We do “wrong” when we do not. The Bible explains all this, but it also says that the Bible is unnecessary. We are built in such a way that we know right from wrong. Every human being knows how they are supposed to live. They know where the boundaries are.
We have an “invisible fence in our yard. The kind where you bury a wire that transmits a radio signal. Our dogs wear special collars that detect this radio signal when they get close to the wire. As you approach, the collar will beep first, then buzz, then finally, if you continue to try to cross the boundary, it will transmit a static shock. When you install this fence, it comes with a video showing how to train the dog. You first bury the wire an hook it up. Then you walk around your yard holding the collar. When you get to the point that the collar beeps, you stick a little white flag in the ground. You wind up with a line of little flags defining the warning beep zone. You put your dog on a leash and hold the collar in your hand. You walk around the yard, but when you approach the flags and the collar beeps, you grab the flag, whip it back and forth, then pull the dog back into the safe part of the yard. You do this for 4 days. Then four days of the dog on the leash but actually wearing the collar. Finally, for the last four days, you keep the dog on the leash wearing the collar, but you don’t stop him when he enters the beep zone – you let him go in until he gets shocked. This really works well for most dogs. Hunter got shocked once on one side of the yard, and once on the other. After that, he knew what to do. Then you can start removing the flags.
Let’s put his another way. We’re talking about boundaries today, keeping commandments, obeying. Are laws and morals something we impose on ourselves, or are they a fundamental part of the way the world works? Suppose you grew up in a town where there were no Bibles, no churches. Where you had never once heard about God. Where your parents and teachers did not teach you any moral “rules” one way or the other. No one ever once told you “this is good, that is bad.” What would you be like, morally? Would the concept of Right and Wrong mean anything to you, or are they really just conventions we are taught? If you had no little white flags, would you have any boundaries?
Think about this – do you think there would be any arguments in this town? “You took my seat” “You owe me $50” “You put chocolate in my peanut butter.” Of course there would be arguments. Why? Is arguing just part of Nature? Animals don’t argue. They can fight, but they don’t argue. “Hey dog, that’s not fair! That was my bone – I just got up to get a drink from the toilet.” “Sorry, dog, you’re right. Here, take the bone back.”
(Note: the following is based on C.S. Lewis’s argument in “Mere Christianity”)
All arguments are basically an appeal to an injured sense of fair play. If you got up to get a coke at the movies and someone who knew you were sitting there moved into your seat, you would say that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t “right”. This sense of fairness is universal – across all cultures, across time. Everyone would recognize that there was a universal rule of fairness – some things are Right, and some are Wrong. This does not have to be taught. We can sense it. It is instinctual. There is a universal law of behavior – a moral boundary not invented by man, but instinctual to man.
[Stubborn Dogs]
Slide Graphic – large breed dog wearing “stubborn dog” invisible fence collar
The words written in the Bible are like the little white warning flags. They are visible reminders of where specific points along the boundaries are. But, the Bible tells us, they should be unnecessary. We are designed by God with a built in radio collar. It tells us when we are about to cross the line. Just like the collar, it doesn’t physically prevent us from crossing the line. We can choose to cross anyway, even though we know it is wrong.
Lets go back to this town where people only knew about right and wrong through their built-in sense. What if someone came to this town and told you about God. How he is outside the world we live in – he made this world and it was made perfect. It was God who defined what is “Right” and created us in his own image to know understand right and wrong – whether we knew him or not – we are just built that way. Animals were not built to know right from wrong. We were built in God’s image. This human-nature is a Law we are bound to. A natural law of the universe, just like the law of gravity, or the laws of planetary motion. Only, unlike all the other laws, we humans are designed by God to be able to chose whether to obey this law or not. If we step off a chair, we can’t chose not to fall to the floor – we can’t choose to break the law of gravity God built into the universe. But we can chose to break the law of right and wrong god built into the universe.
But we decided we wanted to decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong rather than live subject to God’s rules. We should be the ones to set the rules. We should not be bound by God. We should have no boundaries other than those we set for ourselves. This was the sin of Satan. This was the sin of Adam (“You will be like god’s, knowing for yourself good and evil”). By breaking God’s law of moral behavior, mankind has been punished. It must be so – for God is the God of Right and Wrong. He created a law, and we broke it. However painful it is for us, it is “fair”. God didn’t cast us out of his garden – we decided on our own to break away and separate ourselves from Him.
Many people have denied that God exists based on the argument that there is evil in the world. If God were truly good, he would not allow bad things to happen. That would not be fair, so there must be no God. The problem with that argument is that you are denying God exists based on your sense of universal right and wrong. A built-in morality that could only have been created if God exists.
When Jesus came to the world, he said he had the power to forgive you when you were immoral – when you crossed this universal boundary. This was very important and significant. Any one of us has the power to forgive someone when they do something wrong to us, but we can’t forgive someone for the offenses they’ve committed against someone else. Only the person who’s rule was broken can forgive offenses against it. Jesus could forgive us for violating the universal right only because he made that law – he was God. The Jewish people understood this claim, which is why many of them were so upset. By claiming to be able to forgive moral sin, he was in fact claiming to be God.
The study of “why do we exist”, “what is the meaning of life”, and “what is right and wrong” all fall into the field of philosophy. We have only taken a small sip from that sea today. These are important and interesting questions. If you are interested, I would encourage you to read more on your own. I’m reading an excellent book at the moment entitled “Mere Christianity” by C. S. Lewis. He was a professor at both Oxford and Cambridge, and, at one time, an outspoken atheist. He set out to “prove” that there was no God, and after examining all the evidence, became convinced that God did exist, and that the Bible was entirely factual. He fought in the trenches in WWI. During WWII, he was asked to give a series of radio talks, which were broadcast to the people of England while the bombs fell on their cities. These talks were in plain, easy to understand English, rarely quoted any scripture, and covered wide reaching questions about morality, the existence of God, faith, hope and forgiveness. He often spoke about Satan as “the enemy”, living in this world as “living in enemy territory”, about the Christian life as “the resistance”, and about the return of Christ as the “coming invasion”. The book “Mere Christianity” is a collection of these radio addresses. He later wrote “The Chronicles of Narnia”, an excellent book on its own, but also an astounding allegory, with Aslan the lion representing Christ (“The Lion of Judah”).
[Matthew 15]
Slide text –
1Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2"Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!"
3Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4For God said, ’Honor your father and mother’ and ’Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ 5But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ’Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’ 6he is not to ’honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 7You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
8" ’These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
9They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’"
10Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand. 11What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ’unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ’unclean.’ "
12Then the disciples came to him and asked, "Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?"
13He replied, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. 14Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit."
(Matthew 15:1-14)
In Mathew chapter 15, there is a rather funny story about a time when Jesus and his disciples were accused of crossing the line – of being immoral. The Pharisees were lay people who studied the law – “religious lawyers”. The Sadducees were the priests who kept the temple.
They weren’t saying the disciple’s hands were dirty and should be washed. They were saying they were ritually unclean, and needed to be purified. This kind of ritual hand-washing was a rule created by the Pharisees. It is not required by the Bible – Old Testament or New (it was a “tradition of the elders”). The Pharisees thought men would be safer, spiritually, if the correct response to every single possible situation was spelled out. In terms of boundaries, they didn’t feel like a white flag every few feet around the yard was enough. The decided to fill in the gaps on their own with thousands of additional white flags, with the goal of making a solid line that defined the line of behavior at every single point.
This is not necessary. Remember the Bible itself says that we are built to know right from wrong on the inside. The flags are just reminders. You should be able to detect the line without a single flag. What’s more, these Pharisees were telling Christ – God made flesh, God who created the boundary – that he had crossed the line. They were telling him that he had walked past one of these extra flags that they had put out.
Jesus responded pretty harshly. He accused them of putting out their own flag (“because of your tradition”) that was in the wrong place, and caused people to cross the real boundary. The real boundary (“God said”) was that you are responsible for supporting your parents when they grow old. It is the right thing to do, and we should know this on the inside because God built us this way. The Pharisees had created a way for this requirement to be bypassed. You pledged all your money to the church after you die, then you can live your life for yourself, telling everyone that “I would like to give you some money, but this money s no longer mine to give, it has been given to God”. You pretend to be ultra-religious, but are in fact sinning against God. Remember “Sin” means “to separate”. Like Adam, these men knew what God’s law was, but decided to cross the boundary, separating themselves from where God said they should be (“your hearts are far from me”), and define a new boundary of their own. They taught that these new flags were equal to the ones God put out in the Bible as reminders of where his boundary was.
“They worship me in vain” “Their teachings are but rules taught by men”. Jesus is saying that, yes, there are rules. But men don’t get to make them up. God defined what is right and what is wrong and put that knowledge inside you. It is your responsibility to follow God’s law, to obey His boundaries. Any human law which causes you to violate God’s law is wrong.
Jesus called everyone up (v10), and told them, right in front of these Pharisees, that the real law was written in their hearts. The choices you make based on that knowledge is what comes out of your heart. When you choose to disobey the warning beep, that is what makes you a lawbreaker in God’s eyes. This is the true meaning of purity.
The next scene is pretty funny – the disciples take Jesus aside and told him “Um, you probably didn’t realize this, but you really made those guys mad.”
One more point here. Jesus doesn’t tell the disciples to go argue with the Pharisees. He says to ignore them. God will take care of them.
[The Little Dogs]
Slide Graphic – a picture of my dog!
Slide Text –
21Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession."
23Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us."
24He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."
25The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.
26He replied, "It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs." 27"Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table."
28Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
(Matthew 15:21-28)
(Note: At this point I did something I have always wanted to do. I brought my dog in. As I paraphrased the story above, I gave my dog hand signals for his tricks: speak, beg, crawl, shake, run in circles, etc. I had told the students there would be a “Guest speaker” this week!)
Tyre and Sidon were Canaan cities, about 50 miles from Galilee in what is southern Lebanon today. Tyre was a city built on an island just off the coast of the Mediterranean. It is famous today because Alexander the Great, shortly before the time of Christ, got mad at the ruler of the city, and rather than leave it behind him, he had his army build a causeway out to the island, and destroyed it.
A woman there had a child who was suffering. The woman loved the child, and really wanted her to be healed. She desired the best for her daughter. In this, she was obeying God’s law, to love others as yourself – to wish the best for them.
She called Jesus “Lord, Son of David” and knelt before him. She knew who he was, and believed he had the power to heal her daughter.
This is the same Jesus who would issue the great commission just a few chapters later. We know he cares for the whole world, not just the Jewish people. Jesus tested her and testing his disciples, telling them he was sent to focus on the “Children of Israel.” He told her it wasn’t right to take what was meant for the children, and throw it to the dogs (waste it). The phrase he used, though, was “little dogs” (“puppies”), a term of endearment, rather than the traditional Jewish slur “dogs” used to refer to the gentile people of Canaan. At that time, the people in this area did not keep dogs as pets. They were considered dangerous and offensive scavengers who lived at the edges of civilization, feeding off of it.
She did not argue with him. She didn’t say he was wrong or that this was not fair. She didn’t become angry that he caller her a little dog. She didn’t disagree that she was lowly or ask to be elevated, but asked him to respond to her on her own low level. She didn’t go away and try to become more worthy of coming before Jesus, but just came as she was. She just assured him that if she were allowed to have some of what the children of Israel were wasting, it would not go to waste. She had great faith.
The Bible doesn’t mention anything else Jesus or the Disciples did in this area before returning to Galilee. It appears that Jesus, with all of mankind to redeem, knowing he had only 3 years on earth, walked 50 miles there and 50 miles back, just to minister to this woman. Why? Because it was the Right thing to do. Jesus loved his neighbor. She was his neighbor, and he wanted the best for her. Just like He loves you and wants the best for you.
