If you will, take your Bibles
and turn to Matthew chapter 22. There's 32 verses in our lesson
this morning, more than what we have time to read. So I'm
just going to kind of sum these verses up for you, and then you
can read the entire text later at home. I'm teaching you this
morning from verses 15 through 46 of Matthew chapter 22. Our Lord had just spoken three
judgmental parables against the Jews. And He uses that term in
a broad sense, not necessarily as every individual
who was a Jew, but in the Jews as relating to what they believed
in that context. And He just spoke in these three
judgmental parables against them. and having perceived that they
were spoken against them when they understood. On the second
parable, they said, now they understood that these parables
that he'd just spoken was against them. It didn't just include
them, but it was against them. And it was a judgmental parable.
And so now they determined more than ever to destroy him and
to destroy his reputation and to destroy his ministry. So these
Jews kind of allied their efforts with those who were their own
enemies. The Pharisees were the main group. There were all kinds of sects,
religious sects, just as there are today, among them. They all didn't believe the same
thing. There was Herodians were the These are the three main. There was Herodians, and there
was Sadducees, and there was Pharisees. And the Pharisees,
by far and away, had the strength of it. They had the bulk of it.
They had the mass as far as the believing. And they had the power
and authority of this thing. They controlled the temple. They
had the Sanhedrin, the High Council of Israel. They were in control. But there were still others out
there who were very influential among the people. And among them
was these Herodians and the Sadducees. And now being angry at Christ
and wanting to in any way, shape, or form to destroy him and destroy
his reputation, they allied themselves with their enemies. And I found
this so true. when gospel preachers are attacked
in a community, how these churches, the reason why there's 15 churches
in a little area like this is because they don't get along.
They've had business meetings and this and that and they split
and this one split and started this church. And then that church
got together and they went along while they split and started
this church. And now there's four or five or eight or 10 or
15 or 20 depending on the size of the city. But when it comes
to these things of the gospel, and a gospel minister becomes
influential in a community, and the Lord begins to do a good
work in that community, they'll ally themselves together against
him. Yes, they will. They'll ally
themselves together, and that's what was going on here. The Pharisees were the first
and largest of the groups. They had control of the schools
and the temple and made up the high council. And then secondly,
the Sadducees. These men denied the resurrection,
claimed that men and women die like beasts with no afterlife,
no place of judgment, and no heaven. Whatever you got, you
got while you're here on the earth, and after that, that's
the end of it. That's what they believed. And then thirdly, these
Herodians. And I'm like Don. I've read all
the history on these men. And in the scriptures, I can't
find out exactly who they were or what they believed. It just
don't say. It just calls them Herodians. But their name implies some connection
between Herod and them. And having read all these things
and all these speculations about them, the only thing among any
of those things that even remotely made sense to me was that they
were people who mixed Judaism with Gentilism. They took, Herod was a religious
man, and they took Herod's beliefs and his ideas and philosophy
and that type of thing and mixed those things with Judaism. And
actually, if you give some consideration to these three, and I'm going
to call them cults because that's what they were, I think they
pretty much sum up the religion of our day. You can apply these
things to the religion and the religious philosophy of our day. But anyway, the Pharisees, being
the most influential of these, sent first some disciples, some
of their own disciples, with these Herodians and tried to
tangle Christ up in his speech with a question about civil authority. Should believers pay taxes? Now, come on. Our citizenship
is in the kingdom of God. Our king sits on the throne in
heaven. We're fellow citizens with the
saints and of the household of God. Am I subject then to pay
taxes? See what they're asking? And
he very simply answered the question. I wouldn't have thought of it
in a million years. He said, whose inscriptions on that money
you're talking about? Well, Caesar. He said, render
to Caesar that which is Caesar's. Render to God that which is God's.
Isn't that simple? I mean, they thought they had
him, anything he said. But they weren't playing on that.
They weren't playing on that answer. And we hear the same
thing today. Should believers fight in the
military? Or should they, I forget what they call that, they take
a, anyway, they have a way out. Should believers hold office
in government? We're to render unto the government
that which is its due. There is no power except that
of God. It tells us that over in Romans
chapter 13. He tells us what governments
in this world are all about. They're put there to keep evil
men from being more evil than they could be. It's a restraining
thing that he uses them for. I'm to obey the laws of the land
insomuch as they do not break the laws of God." Have you ever thought about that?
We've got a lot of laws in our land and laws that are right
now being bandied about that are totally contrary to the law
of God. Abortion, that's one of them. It's a law that's contrary to
the law of God. And I don't condone it. I'm not going to condone it.
I'm not going to vote for it. I'm not going to see that as
something I have to stand behind. I'm going to stand in this pulpit
by the grace of God and tell you that this is contrary to
the law of God. And any law that promotes, protects,
and honors the coupling of men with men and women with women
in any way whatsoever, call it what you will. It's contrary
to the word of God, contrary to the law of God. And as believers,
we cannot or should not condone it. It's not all right. Well,
it's according to the law, so we're going to have to accept
it. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. I don't have
to accept it either. And any law that promotes or
honors men and women to live in open adultery is contrary
to the Word of God. Pornography is contrary to the
Word of God. I don't care if you have the
freedom of the press or not. It's contrary to God. But for
the most part, I'm to view these governments and the laws of this
land as put there by God. He calls it actually in Romans
13, the minister of God to thee for good. And that's the way
I'm to look at it. And if it requires me to pay
taxes, I need to pay taxes. If it requires me to pay tribute,
I need to pay tribute. And then the next group they
sent to him was the Sadducees. And their questions, of course,
was in their own comfort zone. It was a question about the afterlife.
And we need to think about this because this is the way these
things come to us. When evil men and seducers, when
they come to you, they always come to you, or usually they
come to you, and they first lay down a right principle before
they hit you with this question. And so they first gave him a
quote from the law showing the question to be according to God's
word. and then an imaginary situation, or what we call hypothetical
situations, and not meant really to gain information, but to state
a point of fact. Now, they said this man had seven
brothers, and under the law, if he had no male children by
him and he died, his brother was to take his wife as his own
wife, so that he could raise up seed to his dead brother,
so that his brother's children and their children's children
wouldn't lose their inheritance. So the story goes, all seven
brothers had her. So now the last one died, and
they all went to heaven. Now whose wife is she? Whose
wife is she? You see why he calls them foolish
questions? Foolish questions. Foolish questions. To whom the Lord answered, and
He said this. He said, you're ignorant of two
things. Number one, you're ignorant of the Scriptures. Totally ignorant. You read the Scriptures like
a chicken feeds in the yard. It pecks a little here, and then
it pecks a little over here, and then it goes over here and
pecks a little something different here, Something over here and
eat a bug over here and a snake over here and something else
over there. You just go in and you get this. The Bible has no
clear message to you. Has no clear message. The Bible
has no continuity. It doesn't flow for you. It doesn't
have a message. You just pick this and pick that
and pick something else. And then try to build doctrines
on it. Try to build religions on it. And he said you're ignorant
of the scriptures. As far as I know, I've never
really studied this subject in particular. But the most I ever
heard, and I think in our study in Genesis, I think it was Onan,
one of the sons of Judah. Her first husband died. God killed
her second one. And then the third one, Judah
wouldn't let her have him. And so she wound up having her
child by Judah himself, by fooling him. And so as far as I know,
that's the most wives of any man stated in the scripture. Eight is just something that
they chose to just go way out there in the middle of nowhere
with. And they didn't tell this as a parable. They said, we had
a friend. We had this man. And told all
about it like it really happened. You do err not knowing the scripture. And he said, here's the second
thing you're ignorant of, the power of God. Now let me tell
you something. Religious knowledge is not spiritual
knowledge. You can have all kind of religious
knowledge. You can just spit the facts out.
You can have knowledge so as to confront men and argue with
them and be successful in your argument and still not know God
and not have any spiritual knowledge at all. Religious knowledge is
not spiritual knowledge. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians
2. Demas knew all these things and
had no spiritual knowledge at all. 1 Corinthians 2 verse 1. Listen
to how Paul talks about this. And I, brethren, when I came
to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring
unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know
anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And
I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.
And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of
man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power."
Now, the only way a preacher can do this is by declaration
instead of explanation. We declare the message of the
gospel to men. And then from there, it's in
the hands of the Holy Ghost. He'll use it, cause it to be
effectual in the hearts of His elect, or he'll use it and he'll
cause that man's heart to be hardened who didn't receive it.
One or the other. Preaching is the ordained means
of God for regeneration and the conversion of His elect, but
only as it's accompanied by the presence and power of the Holy
Ghost. Watch this now, verse 5. Paul said, I did this that
your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the
power of God. What is this power that our Lord
said that these Sadducees didn't experience, didn't possess? It's
the revelation of Christ in them. The revelation of Christ. The Gospel is the living Word. It's the Word Quickened in the
hearts of men. It's it's alive. It works. It's
effectual in the heart. It don't it's not just words
It's not just words. I studied math and especially
algebra and I had all these explanations and words and and it just Man,
it was uphill climb for me every day These are not just words
I know sometimes Tuesday night I was struggling a little bit
and maybe going over somebody's head but but These are not just
words. These are not just words. When
God the Holy Spirit quickens that message in a man's heart,
it moves him. It changes him. He's born again. He's born of God. He doesn't now have the option
to repent. He's led to repentance. He doesn't
now have the option to believe. God makes him willing in the
day of His power. He receives this gospel. He believes
this gospel. And it continues to work in him.
And I'm telling you this, that no man will ever turn from his
ways, his intellect, or this world until God the Holy Spirit
convinces him of sin. And I mean until he becomes obnoxious
to himself and sees himself for what he is, is convinced by the
Word of God that there's no potential in him, no value in him, nothing
worth clinging to or trying to defend. I've known men and women
who are solid as a rock in their doctrine, but they live like
men who don't know God. Now there's a problem there,
because the gospel is effectual. When Paul talked to those Thessalonians,
he said, I thank God for you, for when you heard the gospel
that you received from me, you heard it as the Word of God,
which effectually also worketh in them that believe. And where there is no effectual
working, there is no power, and where there is no power, there
is no faith. Paul said, I'm not ashamed of
the gospel of Christ. It's the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believes it. As far as their doctrine, when
they came to him and talking to him about the afterlife, don't
buy into this. Somebody close to you dies and
you go down to the funeral home and I just, I can't stand to
stand there. I'd rather go outside. I'd go
out there with the smokers and sit and talk. You sit inside
that place and they're talking. nonsense about angels and all
this kind of nonsense. Well, he's went to his reward. Well, he lived like hell. What
do you mean? Reward for what? He hated God, despised God, lived
his life in a bar in open adultery and he dies and he's an angel.
That's foolishness. That's foolishness. Don't buy into these silly notions
that men and women talk about at funeral homes and family gatherings
when somebody dies. Well, he's better off. You need to read your Bible.
He ain't better off. I don't care how much he suffered
here, he ain't better off if he didn't know God. He's in everlasting
punishment now. He's in a place where the worm
dieth not, where it's weeping and gnashing of teeth. And then I know this, I know
you love your husbands and your wives and your children, but
these relationships will not be in glory. I know you, I know
my wife as a believer and as a sister in Christ, not as my
wife. There's no marrying, giving in
marriage in heaven. He said we're like the angels. Religious knowledge is not spiritual
knowledge. Spiritual knowledge is effectual
knowledge, turning us to God from our idols, and turning us
to God from this world, and turning us to Christ from our religion. And I'll tell you this, when
Christ becomes your only hope, your only hope, You'll love Him
then. You'll love Him. And you'll seek
Him. And you'll want to be like Him
when He becomes your only hope. And then thirdly, these Pharisees
came, these self-righteous hypocrites who believed by their works and
devotion to be highly favored of God and elevated above all
others in this world, giving thanks in their prayers that
they weren't like other men. And they chose a lawyer. They
got an expert concerning the law of God to tell them which
of the laws of God were the greatest. And they come up to Christ and
they said, which of the laws of God is the greatest? He said,
thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul,
mind, and strength. This is the greatest law. The
whole law hangs on that. And the second one is like unto
it, love your neighbor as yourself. You fulfill them, too, you can
fulfill that whole law. You won't have a bit of trouble
with the rest of it if you can fulfill them, too. Actually, they didn't know themselves
which was the greatest law. They speculated about it, and
there's all kinds of writings about it by these Jewish historians
and experts. But they didn't know themselves.
And they thought, well, we'll get him. And if he quibbles about
it at all, then we can say he's not a prophet. He claims to be
God's prophet. He's not a prophet. He can't
even answer a simple question. But he did answer their question. Spiritual knowledge is not the
perception of a fleshly mind. To know Christ only in theory
is to know Christ exactly as these Herodians and Sadducees
and Pharisees knew Him. To know Christ, one must be born
again and be given the mind of Christ. Carnal knowledge puffs
up. That which is born of grace is
humbled. Carnal knowledge demands explanations. If thou be the Christ, tell us
plainly. Faith disbelieves God. Carnal
knowledge demands recognition. Faith gives all the glory to
God. And it's obvious to me that all
worldly religion is anti-Christ or against Christ. They're not
against their Christ, but the Christ of God as He set forth
in the Word of God in the preaching of the gospel. But when we look
at the kind actions of Christ and His benevolence to men, ungodly
men, And you see his benevolence to them and his patience with
them. I've got to ask, why is the gospel so offensive to natural
men? What makes men so angry about
this gospel? Why do they get so offended?
Why do they just, oh, sometimes folks in here, I'll say something
and they'll just glare at me. Just glare at me like, one more
word and we're going outside, you know. Well, just hang around. I've got another word. Let me give you six reasons very
quickly. Men and women despise the gospel
because it insists that all men are totally depraved, spiritually
dead, and morally evil. That's why they hate it. They never really apply it to
themselves, but they always start, you saying my grandmother He said, hell, you say my grandmother
was a false prophet? You talking about my daddy? Yeah, I guess so. When he said all,
I guess that includes all of us, don't it? I'm not a linguist,
but I think that word all means all. I think that's what it means. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. All are under sin. By one man,
sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed
upon all men. I guess that's all of us, isn't
it? They despise the gospel because
it insists that all men are totally depraved. And then secondly,
religious self-righteous religionists. They hate the gospel of Christ
because the doctrine of unconditional election makes salvation completely
according to God's will with no regard for yours whatsoever.
before these two were ever born or ever did any good or evil. Now, when he's talking about
that, Jacob and Esau there in Romans chapter 9, he's talking
about establishing the purpose of God according to election. That's what that question was
all about. And he said the elder is going
to serve the younger. How come? Because that's the
way I ordained it to be. That's election. It is according
to the good pleasure of His will. It has nothing to do with us
whatsoever. And then thirdly, natural men
in a pretense of religion despise the gospel because the doctrine
of particular accomplished redemption makes salvation to be merited
and effectually secured by Christ alone and takes man out of the
picture altogether. He paid the price, all of it,
all of it. It doesn't take His and mine. He paid it all. We sing that
song all the time. Salvation is actually guaranteed
by the death of Christ. His blood is the blood of the
everlasting covenant. And His resurrection, His death
and His resurrection including, and listen to this, it guarantees
all the means. When Christ died and was raised
from the tomb, and ascend it up and set it at the right hand
of God, this guarantees the salvation of God's elect, and that includes
all the means and all the reaction of men to the working of God's
Spirit in them. It's all of God, and it's guaranteed
because of what He did. And men despise that. And then,
fourthly, they despise the Gospel because it proclaims salvation
by the free, unmerited grace of God. Not by works, not by
works, lest any man should boast. And I don't care how tiny that
work is. You know, I remember back in
grade school, and I just got a picture, one from my granddaughter,
so that's why this came to me. But you can draw a little picture,
you can do a little something, and go to one of them little
fairs, and they hold that up, and they put a little ribbon
on there, Man, you swell up. You swell up. I mean, if you
was to take that down to an art gallery, they'd throw it out
the door. Wouldn't they? Now, you think about this. You
think about the glory that Christ manifested and accomplished at
Calvary. And I'm going to take my little
thing down there with a ribbon on it and say, here, add this
to it. You reckon God's going to hang
out? I don't think so. I don't think so. That makes
men angry. I don't care what little part
of that work it is. And then sixthly, the Gospel
declares that salvation is the eternal design of God and His
work from beginning to end. He's Alpha and Omega, the beginning
and the end. Paul said in Romans chapter 10
that the righteousness of faith doesn't talk about its ability
to ascend into heaven. or its value to resurrect Christ
from the grave, or some kind of worthiness to bring Him down
from heaven. What does this faith do? It lays
hold of this grand truth that God sent Him, God was in Him,
God accomplished the work, God received the work and honored
the work and seated Him at His own right hand. God in Christ
reconciling. And true faith receives the work
of God in Christ as the free gift of His grace. And with His
heart, He believes unto righteousness. He lives that way. He preaches
that way. Somebody said, well, I believe
it, but I don't preach it. And you don't believe it. You
don't believe it. You don't believe it. I've known
men since I come here. that sat in my living room and
give me a straight and a solid testimony as you've ever heard
from any believer. And then go back down to the
Armenian church and sit down. Well, you don't believe those
things. You don't believe those things. And it said when the
Lord was finished talking to him, nobody dares to ask him
any more questions from that time on. Nobody's going to come
and ask him any more questions. They recognized that he was the
answer. He is the answer. I don't care
what your question is. He's the answer.