Transcription
We Begin this morning a Christmas series with the theme why four gospels and of course we have a text in Galatians 4:4. I read, "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."
In the Hawaiian Islands last week, in a very remote spot on the island of Maui, in a place that is called Hana, population 600, mostly Hawaiians, very few tourists go to this place. The road from the airport is about 65 miles, and the last 30 miles are the crookedest road I've ever been over in my life. They even boast of the fact that they have 900 hairpin curves in the road.
Now, it was our first trip to this place, and there is a very famous country store there that has everything. Everything from a single tree for a studio baker wagon to a spool of pink thread number 60. You can buy it all at this store. It's been made famous in a song by Hilo Hatti, "Hwa's General Store," and he has everything. The thing that interests us is that in this remote section, before Thanksgiving, the Christmas gifts and decorations were already on display in profusion. How in the world did they get that?
The department stores in Southern California for weeks now have had Christmas gifts on display, and now that se and all the other stores are open on Sundays, probably they'll begin on December the 26th to say there's 365 shopping days till Christmas. May I say to you that we moved in a very unusual era. But in other words, the world is making elaborate and extensive preparations to celebrate Christmas. But this year, we're going down Santa Claus Lane with a ho ho ho and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I don't think they're going by Bethlehem this year. An old little town of Bethlehem, how still we see the lie. It's going to be still this year. It's Silent Night is something that will be characteristic of that stable in which he was born.
May I say to you, more money will be spent this year than has ever been spent at any one season. The clank of silver and the rustle of paper money will drown out "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." The shopping centers in Suburbia are more popular than that stable back of an inn, and the sale, it may company will draw more people than "Come, let us adore Him." Joy to the World comes in bottles this year, and the Christmas tree hides the manger and the cross. When the Christmas tree is withered though, and the bright colored wrappings are in the garbage can, and the toys lie broken and neglected on the floor, will man be any nearer God than they were before? Will hearts be prone to worship Him? Will they be made more tender and loving to those those that are about them?
Christmas has become tinsel, today tarnished, tainted, tinctured, tattered, and torn. It's not what it used to be. This year is not though the greatest year for the preparation for Christmas. This is not the greatest preparation that was ever made. 1900 years ago, God prepared the world for the coming of Christ. It was then that God was getting ready for Christmas, and the world unconsciously and consciously entered into God's plan. To see this, I think, is the strongest factor in convincing the head, confirming the heart, and compelling the will of the divine origin of the gospels.
The question has been asked from the very beginning, "Why four gospels? Why not five? Why not three?" Well, a wag has given an answer: three is not adequate, and five superfluous, so we have four. But there must be a better reason than that. Some scholars have attempted to resolve the problem by making a harmony of the gospels. When I was in seminary, I studied a harmony in both English and Greek, and I'm here to say that I feel that that's the greatest failure that can possibly be made. And you, they of course attempt, and these are sincere men, to come up with one account. They trim the corners, and it's amazing how outstanding men will trim the corners in an attempt to reconcile any disparity that they find in the gospel records. And to read many of these harmonies is like trying to fit a number four shoe on a lady with a size 7t. It's just difficult to do.
You probably heard the story about the lady who went into the shoe store, and the shoe clerk wanted to be very gracious and and nice to her, and he says, "What size do you wear?" Well, she said, "I can get on a four, but five is my size, and since six feels so good, I always buy a number seven." May I say to you that that's the way they harmonize the gospel today? We do not need a harmony. Today, we need a disharmony. There's a vast difference and a wide divergence among the gospels. Each was written for a very particular purpose, to meet the need of a very separate segment of the world population. We need to recognize this and let the gospels conform to this very natural pattern. If the Holy Spirit had wanted one gospel, he would have given us one gospel. He gave us four gospels in order that they might meet the needs of mankind.
And when Christ came, there were four major divisions in the human family. And these divisions were not strictly racial or national, although they basically follow that pattern. They were, this division is a rather a cultural division. It's a matter of thought patterns. There are four separate ways of looking at life. There are four levels of civilization. And I believe that to this day, that you can push all of mankind, as you could in Christ's day, under one of these major divisions of the human family, and a gospel to meet the need of that individual. Each presented certain specific human needs. Each had certain expectations. Each group performed his particular mission. These were tremendous missions, and that God used these divisions of the human family to get over to man his message, a message that is for all mankind.
Israel represents the religious man. And God took these people, he segregated and separated them from mankind in order to do a work in the nation, and then he scattered them throughout the world. And my friend, he did that for a very definite purpose. They represented religion, and they represented a God-given religion. Actually, God has never given but one religion, and that was Judaism, the Mosaic system. Oh, I know somebody says, "Well, what about Christianity?" Christianity, in my book, is not a religion. It's a person. You either have Him or you don't have Him. You either trust Him or you don't trust Him. It's not a religion. It's a person. But God did give a religion, and that was the Mosaic system, and He gave it to this nation.
And in Christ's day, religion had gone to seed. It was as dead as a dodo bird. It was reduced to a ritual and a law. It was a legalistic system, and that was all. And I'm afraid that there are those today, even in fundamental circles, that have tried to make Christianity just that. You follow a little rule and a little regulation. You learn a little vocabulary, and you are all right. May I say to you, Christianity is a person, and that person is Christ, and it's not a religion at all. It doesn't even conform to the meaning of the word religion at all.
Now, Matthew was written to meet the need of the religious man. I think we can show that Matthew was not originally written in Greek. It was written in Hebrew. It was written to meet the needs of the religious man. And did you know that religion had become so dead that our Lord finally could say to his people, "Your house no longer God's house"? When He began His ministry, He says, "Make not my Father's house a den of thieves," but He concluded by saying, "Your house is is left unto you desolate," and He walked out. He turned His back on religion. But may I say, religion had not satisfied the heart of man. A Pharisee, one dark night, came and he had a question. Finally, religious men always think they have the answer until a few questions are asked, and he comes into contact with Jesus Christ. And that night, Nicodemus said, "How can a man be born again?" He represented religion at its death.
A scribe came to him one day, and the scribe knew the Old Testament, or he wouldn't have been a scribe. They played a little game. It was not in book form, but the Old Testament was in a scroll. They take a thorn in the temple when business was light, and the game was, you push the thorn in and guess where it stopped. And if you couldn't guess not the chapter, not the verse, not the word, you couldn't guess the letter, you better not play with those boys, 'cause that's the way they played. They knew it. They knew the Old Testament. But this scribe came to him and said, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" He knew he didn't have it. And Nicodemus knew he was not born again. And even the Publican, who had been an Israelite outcast, he climbed up in a sycamore tree because he wanted to see Him. And that little man wanted something that religion could never give him. And when our Lord entered his house and then came out, he said, "This day has salvation come to this house." And when religion rejected Him, because religion has always been against Jesus Christ, the greatest enemy in this country right now of the person of Jesus Christ is liberalism. And He denounced religion.
The public has been subjected to the news of one of the most brutal crimes in this century, the mass martyrs that the news media has labeled the Sharon Tate case. It's one of the most shocking and sensational crimes in this age of crime. A group of young people, some teenagers, some barely out of their teens, even girls, participated, committed in the most cold-blooded fashion, wholesale slaying from what looks like a passionless and senseless orgy of blood. This, I think, is the final product of a society that boasts of its new freedom and its new morality, and that we need to get rid of the Judeo-Christian ethic, as they have called it. Nothing new, of course, because this age has been duplicated many times before. This is what happens when depraved human nature is free to do its thing. These Anidelians, way back at the very beginning, they engaged in great wickedness, evil, corruption, viciousness, and violence. Paul said there was going to come a generation that he listed a catalog of many things, and among them was they would be without natural affection and they would be despisers of those that are good. Looks like we've arrived, does it not?
The most offensive and disgusting factor to me is that the least leader of this group of young degenerates calls himself Jesus Christ. This blasphemous assumption reveals that he was a religious leader, that he was operating a depraved and disgusting religion, and there are many like that abroad in our Southland today.
On another section, Life Magazine reports that a writer and producer of Off-Broadway films has turned out a smashing hit, and the critic of the New York Daily News, a hardboiled newspaper reporter in New York, after he saw it, he wrote it up and said, "It's vicious and vile, the most offensive picture I've ever seen." The producer of that picture says that this one is tame compared to the one he's going to produce. He says it'll truly be vile and offensive, and it'll also be blasphemous because he's going to portray Jesus Christ.
Two factors, I think, merge right now in our contemporary culture. One is that the Lord Jesus Christ is still a controversial person. 1900 years ago, He asked the question, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" And they don't have the answer today. In that day, it was John the Baptist, Jeremiah, Elijah, one of the prophets, but they all came short. They didn't have the answer, and they don't have the answer today. But they're still talking about it. It reveals a second factor: that filth, depravity, corruption, degeneracy, and sex have become a religion again. And that's not new, because all of the pagan religions of the past were based on sex. The female principle is in the deity of all pagan religions. May I say to you that I'm not sure, but we may have turned the corner, but now the world is sick of that type of thing, and illiberal writers today are beginning to turn the corner and say, "Let's stop." I don't know what they'll do, but I do know this: that religion has always, always been the greatest curse of mankind. If you doubt that, look at India today. They've got religion. Look at Africa today. Africa has religion. And the very interesting thing is, Los Angeles is filled with religion. But religion has been a curse to mankind, and religion always deals with externalities. It deals with rituals, with liturgy, with forms, with rules, with regulations, with ceremonies, with laws, with ordinances, with rites, and orgies, and incantations.
And as we indicated, there are four major divisions of the human family, and each gospel is slanted in the direction of each one of these segments. And the gospel of Matthew is written primarily to the nation Israel, and therefore written to religion, if you please. May I say to you, you need the background, therefore, of the Old Testament to understand this. My book I have on Matthew, I title it "Moving Through Matthew," why? Because there's a movement in the gospel of Matthew, and if you miss it, you miss the gospel, my friend. And it is like a swinging door. It swings back in the Old Testament, gathering up more Old Testament prophecies than any other book, and it swings into the New Testament farther than any other one, because only in the gospel of Matthew is the church mentioned of the four gospels. And it was written by an ex-tax gatherer to meet the need of his countrymen, because as a tax gatherer, he had a great need. In that day, though he were a a rich man, I read this morning what Mark said about him when he wrote about himself. He had very little to say. In the ninth chapter of Matthew, verse 9, he says, "And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom: and saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him." That's Matthew.
But Mark and Luke both tell us that Matthew made him a great feast in his house and invited all of his friends in. My friend, if you have come to know Christ, you certainly want somebody else to know Him. He invited all of his friends in. He apparently was a wealthy man. May I say to you, but he tells us practically nothing about himself, because he's presenting another.
Now, Matthew was originally written in Hebrew. It's the only New Testament book that was written in Hebrew. And you would say to me this morning, "Preacher, what's your authority for that?" Well, Papias, one of the early church fathers, and he was a bishop in Asia Minor. He lived toward the end of the first century and into the second. He was evangelized by Philip and Bartholomew. They are the ones who preached the gospel that caused this man to turn to Christ. He became a disciple of John. He was an associate of Polycarp the Martyr and of Justus of Jerusalem. And he is the one that tells us that the gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew. May I give an exact quotation from him? "Matthew wrote the articles of the Lord in the Hebrew tongue, and everyone interpreted them as he was able." And then another quotation from him: "He wrote, and I quote, Matthew, having in the first instance delivered the gospel gospel to his countrymen in their own language, afterward, when he was about to leave them and extend his apostolic mission elsewhere, filled up or completed his written gospel for the use of those whom he was leaving behind as a compensation for his absence." And the very interesting thing is that Irenaeus, who came along later, Eusebius, they all confirmed this. These were church fathers in whom we have great confidence. And then Jerome, who came along much later, but he lived in Palestine, and he made this statement. He is considered, I think, the most learned of the Latin fathers. None compared to him. And he makes the statement that while he was in that land, that Matthew the public called Levi had composed a gospel in the Hebrew tongue for the special use of those Jews who had believed in Christ and no longer followed the shadow of the law after the revelation of the substance of the gospel. May I say, those are indeed remarkable statements.
Now, this is the language that the Jew would have accepted. And the only one you will recall that when Paul was arrested in Jerusalem, the mob was ready to take him and stone him to death, and he was rescued and came to the steps of the palace there of the captain, and the mob still was milling about, ready to take him, and he began to speak to them in the Hebrew tongue, and it quieted them down, just as the Lord had quieted the waves on the Sea of Galilee, and they listened to him. The gospel of Matthew was first written in the Hebrew tongue for them. And after all, that's the language of religion. You remember what the Lord Jesus said to the woman at the well? "Salvation is of the Jews." And Dr. Kurtz, the great German historian, has written, "Judaism prepared salvation for mankind, and heathenism prepared mankind for salvation." And Dr. Gregory says, "The world religion has been delivered to them." Isn't it amazing that the other religions of the world were always slanted to a particular group of people, but the gospel given to these people, and they were a small group in that day, is a gospel that is to go out to the very ends of the earth? That's something that ought to cause the critic to think twice today.
Now, God had prepared these people over the long haul, 2,000 years, even before Christ came. There was a man living down in Ur of the Chaldees in idolatry, for the whole world had gone into idolatry. And God called Abram and said, "Leave this, follow me, come into the land I'll show you." And God made certain covenants with that man. He promised him a land, he promised him a nation, and he promised that he'd be a blessing to the nations of the world. Because after the flood and then the Tower of Babel, God had to bid goodbye to the human family, but He said to them, "I'll be back," because "I'm going to prepare salvation for the world." And so He prepared these people in their long history. Three dispersions were predicted. Also, it was predicted they would be regathered. Three times. Up to this morning, all three dispersions have taken place, but only two re-gatherings. I disagree with that. Under today, that present nation is the picture of the third re-gathering. You haven't read the Old Testament if you come to that conclusion, my beloved, because those prophecies concerning that third re-gathering have not been fulfilled.
God took these people, first drew them aside from the stream of humanity, segregated them, put them in a place where He could school them and train them, and then He scattered them throughout the world for a purpose. There's purpose in what our God does. The first one took place at the time of Jacob and his family. 70 souls went down under Jacob. They came out probably a million and a half. Jacob went down to Egypt at God's direction. God said to this man, "Go on down there." And there in the brickyards, God forged in the fires of slavery these people into a nation. Then He took them out into the wilderness, and there He gave them the Mosaic system, a religion. And then He kept them in that wilderness 40 years to train them and give them the experience of the 40 years with the law. And then at the end of it, Moses wrote Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is not a repetition of the law, but it's the interpretation of the law with 40 years' experience. And God gave to them, for the ancient world, the greatest doctrinal statement that most theologians say is the greatest doctrinal statement in the Old Testament: Deuteronomy 6:4. "Hear, O Israel: The Lord thy God is one Lord." Or let me translate it a little different: "Jehovah your Elohim." Elohim is plural. The Hebrew has a dual, it that's not used. And when the plural is used above three of the numberers given here, no number, but it's plural. May I translate like this: "Jehovah our Triune God is one Jehovah." That's what God was saying. And He said it through these people, and He said it in a world of polytheism. And He said to them, "Thou shalt have no other gods before thee." And these people bore that witness. They had an influence. Have you ever wondered about the Greeks and their tremendous civilization when Homer was singing and writing about the gods on Mount Olympus and the wars at Troy and Helen of Troy? At that same time, David, the sweet psalmist of Israel, was singing praises to his God. It's recognized today that they influenced the Greeks and it caused many intelligent Greeks to repudiate the gods on Mount Olympus and say, "There's only one God." Socrates wrote that way. Plato wrote that way. And out yonder in the Far East, there arose after the Babylonian captivity, Zoroastrianism. Modern [Music] it's a Hollywood type. It's sort of counterfeit stuff. Has a lot of tinsel on it, a lot of glamour. If I wanted a religion, I'd become a Parsi. They got a religion out of the ancient world. They testified to the Oneness of God. Where did they get it? They got it from these people here. "O Israel, Jehovah your Triune God, our Triune God is one Jehovah." Nothing greater than that, my friend.
And then they went into Babylonian captivity because they did go into idolatry, in spite of what God had said. And 70 years they were down yonder in the land of Babylon, and by the decree of Cyrus, they were returned. And during this period, Jesus was born. Then our Lord said, after His rejection, "Your house is left unto you desolate." "Not one stone will be left upon another." Here they said, when the disciples did, He said, "When you see Jerusalem compassed with armies," and in 70 AD, Titus the Roman came and surrounded that city, he breached the wall, and his hordes marched in, and there has never been a slaughter that's quite compared to that. May I say to you that that that time, these people were scattered throughout the world, and they took the synagogue to every corner of the empire, and that synagogue became the spring bow by which Paul and the other apostles came in every city, preached the gospel, and then they were thrown out, and the Gentiles heard. But they've made a rich contribution to the history of this world. Pharaoh in Egypt, at the time of his greatest crisis, had as a prime minister Joseph, and it's a good thing that he did. Daniel was prime minister to the ruler, rulers of two of the great world empires, influenced them, and led them to a knowledge of God, Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus. And then there came a Persian ruler, he had a Jewish consort by the name of Esther, he had a prime minister by the name of Mordecai, and he had a secretary of state by the name of Nehemiah. And that was another critical moment in the history of the world when the power did pass from the East to the West, and it was determined that the West would prevail.
In the day when Christ came, this God-given religion had deteriorated into a liturgy of laws, an empty ritual where they would tie the little row of anise and cumin, that which would be a condiment. The scribes and Pharisees, the religious rulers, had reduced it to nothing in the world but a form. And our Lord said to them, "The letter of the law, you pay attention to, you miss the spirit of it all together." And I'm afraid that fundamentalism may be doing that today also. It's one thing to say you believe this is the word of God. It's another thing to know it and let it speak to your heart. One thing to carry a Bible under your arm. It's another thing to get a little of it in your head. You see, fundamentalists can reduce it to a little form and ceremony. We think today, many of us, that if we carry a Bible, if we learn a certain vocabulary, and act very pious on Sunday, we've got it made. May I say to you, that's the thing our Lord condemned the Pharisees and scribes for.
The people in our Lord's day, for the most part, were ignorant of the scripture. They only knew what the scribes and Pharisees gave them. They had no Bible of their own. The orthodox Jew of that day, and there were, they were in the majority, they would not accept anything that did not conform to the law and the prophets. It had to follow the letter of the law. Matthew wrote to show that Jesus was the Messiah, that that He fulfilled the letter of the law and the prophets. And His coming to this earth, He said He was going to initiate a kingdom on earth, but it must conform to the intent of the Old Testament, not just an outward form, but an inward change. And I studied under A.B. Simpson. I went to an amillennial seminary, and I do wish the amillennialists would understand what our Lord really meant when He says, "The kingdom is within." Of course, it's within. That's where it has to begin. You don't rub it on the outside like lotion or rubbing alcohol. It's something that has to begin in the heart. And Matthew makes it very clear, and that the kingdom is to be peopled with a people who have been changed from within. They must have a capacity for God. But Messiah must die to make that possible. That man that came to Jesus that night, that he was a religious leader, and he came to talk about the kingdom, our Lord says, "You can't see the kingdom of God except you must be born again." You must be born again. But He also said, "The Son of Man must be lifted up, that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish, but have everlasting life." He must die to make the kingdom possible. He must die to bring the church into being.
Matthew does not deal with that, the matter of the church. He merely gives that prediction. Our Lord said, "I will build my church." And so the gospel of Matthew, very briefly, tells about the birth of Jesus, and it opens with these majestic words, and I'm afraid they're meaningless when you just put a New Testament in the hands of anybody and they begin with Matthew. That genealogy is pretty discouraging, friends, but it's a wonderful genealogy. And it opens in these majestic words: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." That was never challenged. That's who He is. That's written for the Jew. He said, "Sure, He's the son of Abraham. If He's a son of David, I'll listen. He's the son of Abraham." And then the genealogy is given to explain why Joseph could not be the father. And actually, the the value of the genealogy is not really how could He be born of a virgin, but how could He be born any other way? Because Matthew makes it clear that Jeconiah is in that line back in Jeremiah, there had been a curse pronounced upon that line, and no one in that line could sit on the throne of David. How can Joseph have one? He can, but he can be the husband of Mary, who's also in the line of David through another route, through Nathan, and through by being her husband, he can give to Jesus the royal rights, the legal rights to the throne of David. Israel must know that, and Matthew wrote for that reason.
He gives four prophecies that look to me, if you go back and read them, you'd have as much trouble as the postmillennialists used to have with prophecy. If you'd lived in that day, you would have said, "How in the world can Messiah, when He comes, how can He be born in Bethlehem? Why are the women weeping, mothers weeping in Rama? Why does He call Him out of Egypt? And how can He call Him out if He's born in Bethlehem? And of all things, He's to be brought up in Nazareth to be called a Nazarene." How can it be? Matthew gives all the prophecies. He says that Micah said He'll be born in Bethlehem. He was. Jeremiah said that there'd be weeping yonder in Rama, that was 10 miles north of Jerusalem, and Bethlehem 10 miles south. Old Herod drew a circle, says, "We'll kill everybody in the circle." It reached north. He did call Him out of Egypt, as Hosea says, and Isaiah said He'd be called a Nazarene. And not only that, but Daniel, and I won't go into it this morning, that marvelous prophecy of the 70 weeks of Daniel gives the time that Messiah would be cut off. This nation should have been sitting on the cornerstone in Jerusalem, waiting for the triumphal entry to come by to accept and receive it. Had they accepted their word, really accepted the spirit of it and believed it with all their hearts, why, it had even predicted the star. Old Balaam said, "A star will rise out of Judah." And these wise men came out of the East where Balaam had been. I said, "We've seen His star. He's King of the Jews. We've come to worship Him." And it was Isaiah that made it very clear that Gentiles were going to be present. Will you listen? Isaiah 11:10. "And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse." Oh, how accurate! Isaiah is not a root of David. Why didn't he say David? He says Jesse, because by this time the line of David are back his peasants. Jesse was no longer king. "In that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people. To it shall the Gentiles seek, and His rest shall be glorious." And we are told again that He'll be a light unto the Gentiles in the 60th chapter. May I say to you, the wise men came out of the East. And John the Baptist, Matthew says, came according to the prophecy of Malachi, when he said, "I'll send my messenger before me." And out yonder in the wilderness, there went out this message: "Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Repent! The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." And when our Lord came, He picked up that message.
Then The Sermon on the Mount. Matthew gives it as no other gospel writer. Why? It's given for a people under law. May I say to you, it's given for people who have a religion. Have you ever noticed that the liberal always goes to this? I've talked to any number of men and women who said to me, "The Sermon on the Mount is my religion." You better change it, friend, unless you're keeping it, and I haven't found anybody yet that's keeping it. And I say to you, we don't need religion. We need Christ today. We need a Savior. And The Sermon on the Mount is religion, and He gave the ethic. Don't despise The Sermon on the Mount, just realize that you don't keep it, and be honest. But He also gave the dynamic in Matthew. After that, Matthew's not attempting to give you a chronological life of Christ. He clusters together a group of miracles our Lord performed to show you that the one who gave the ethic on top of the mountain had the power to execute it down below. He is the one that Matthew is presented. And then he shows that The Sermon on the Mount deals with the outside again, why? Because the people have already been dealt with on the inside side. You have to be changed from within.
And after 3 years of ministry, our Lord took these men who'd been with Him 3 years up to Caesarea Philippi, and He said, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" And they said, "There's all kinds of reports going around." They've been going around for 1900 years. Then He said, "Whom do you think I am?" That's a question He asks you today. And Simon Peter said, what any Jew in that day must have said who came to know Him, "Thou art the Messiah, a son of the Living God." "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." And at that time, He mentions the church for the first time. That is His immediate program. Now, but wait just a minute. He had something else now to give them that was new. After Simon Peter gave that magnificent answer, our Lord says, "From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day." And Simon Peter wasn't ready for that one, and a lot of people today that have religion are not ready for it either. Simon Peter had a religion, but he's not ready for this. He believed the Old Testament, but he's not ready for this one. "Or be it from thee, Lord." How wrong was he? He's so wrong that our Lord says, "Get thee behind me, Satan." That type of talk is satanic. And then Dr. Luke says, "He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem." And Matthew, for the benefit of these people, says five times on the way to Jerusalem, he said, "The Son of Man is going to Jerusalem to suffer and to die." "I'm going to Jerusalem to die." And again and again, he gave that to them. You see, at the very beginning of His ministry, He never told these disciples about His death. You see, now why they weren't ready. He did tell Nicodemus. Nicodemus was well acquainted with the Old Testament. Nicodemus came to know Him at the very beginning. And when at the end, when everybody fled, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, two prominent men, they stepped out for Christ. Became the undertakers that buried Him. I think there, when they buried Him, I think Nicodemus, as they wrapped his body in the linen and poured in that ointment, I think that that Nicodemus said to Joseph, "Joseph, you see these wounds? That night he told me he's going to die. He said he'd be lifted up. I couldn't understand how our Messiah was going to die. I had a religion. I didn't think I needed a Savior, but He died for me. He died for me."
When He came to Jerusalem for that last time, our Lord denounced. He denounced the religious rulers as no one has ever been denounced. Will you listen to Him? Matthew 23. And I'd like to turn there now to verse 23. Matthew 23, verse 23: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites." The word "hypocrite" was the word used over in Athens for an actor. It's somebody playing a part. "Kryo" means to answer, "hypo" means to answer back, and an actor's one somebody gives him a line and a cue, and he answers back. Hypocrite was an actor, somebody playing a part. And our Lord said to them, "You're just acting religion." A lot of people play church. It's fun. They love it, you know. You can come and you can just do so many things in the church, but you cannot be saved. You can just be acting. Listen to Him: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; but ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith." They argue about little things. "Dr. M., do you think a Christian could smoke a cigarette?" Why don't you grow up? Faith and mercy and [Music] judgment. What about your life? You don't smoke, but what about your life? Is it real to you today? Are you just playing a part? Listen to Him: "Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel." That's a good one. I'd have laughed. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess." And that sums it all up. Outside, that's religion. Inside is Christianity. And when you get the inside clean, the outside will take care of itself.
And then He gave to them, and I have to drop back to pick this up in the 21st chapter. I read that this morning because I consider it important. Will you listen to Him? "Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner?" They rejected Him, but He will become the head of the corner. He'll yet rule on this earth. He's still the Savior of the world. "This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes." Now, you're going to have to do with Jesus Christ someday. Every person will. Save the lost. You'll stand before Him. "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." And I think He's getting ready to take it away from us too. "And whosoever shall fall on this stone." Who is that stone? It's Christ. "Fall upon him for salvation." Come in your weakness and in your sin, and accept Him. "But on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." There is the great white throne, and He is the one V that must judge you. If you reject Him, either the stone is where you can fall, your own free volition, or else He'll come in judgment.
And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them. But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet. Then He gave a commission: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel." And I think as those disciples heard Him say that day on the Mount of Olives, they went back to Isaiah and heard Isaiah as he talked about "my servant, he shall be a light to the Gentiles." "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel." A gospel now that reaches inside and transforms individuals who will trust Jesus Christ.
Our contemporary cultures have rejected Him in more ways than one. I was reading just last night in a magazine where five of the most popular records today by the five most popular singers has to do with "I love me. I'm just wild about myself." And that we're moving now into an era where no longer will it be love songs talking about the girl or the boy, but "I love me." This generation really has become interested in itself. "I've got to do my thing. I am I. Got to have freedom. Oh, I'm somebody. You must hear from [Music] me." God said, "Won't you take your rightful place as a sinner? See that you have a great need, and that you're not really as wonderful as you think you are. And you, you can rub it on the outside, but it's vanishing cream. It won't help you. You need a Savior." I read this little jingle in walking by a mirror fast, I vaguely wondered whom I pass. I backed up several steps to see, and what a shock the wreck was me. Are you willing to see yourself as that wreck, or do you praise yourself today, proud today? May God help us in this hour to see that we are lost sinners who need a Savior. Matthew wrote to a religious people. They had religion, but they didn't have Christ. So our Lord came to meet the need of the religious man.