Sophisticated Fools - Part I Matthew 16:1-4

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In order to get into Ivy League schools, or schools of that caliber, you have to be highly intelligent.
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These are the schools that are considered the most prestigious in America and in the world.
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This means a perfect GPA along with a very high SAT or ACT score.
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You would expect that these institutions held in such high regard by the world would have an edge on truth.
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You would expect that the smarter someone is, the better he or she understands reality. But is this often the case?
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What is interesting is that it is not. These institutions do not have an edge on truth because they are steeped in godlessness.
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Most recently, an atheist was hired as the head of chaplains at Harvard University. To give you an example, the whole goal of learning is to get to the truth, and all knowledge and truth is ultimately found in the
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Creator. As Proverbs 1 .7 says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
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Fools despise wisdom and instruction. And Colossians 2 .3 says that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
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At these institutions, there is no question that there is high intellect. But why is it that the smartest people so often find themselves in falsehood?
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The Bible has a clear answer for this. The Apostle Paul tells us the answer in Romans 1 .18
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-23, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.
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For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse.
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For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal
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God for images resembling mortal man, and birds, and animals, and creeping things.
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Now, the professors at Ivy League schools and the students who attend are highly intelligent, and yet most of them are unbelievers.
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They have a power of mind that most of us don't have. They excel when it comes to superficial knowledge.
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They can solve complicated math equations. They can perform scientific experiments.
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They can read large books. They have large vocabularies. They say words you've never heard before.
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But when it comes to the whole goal of knowledge, knowing God and understanding everything in relation to Him, they are inept.
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And we just read why from the Apostle Paul. Their denial of God is not from sound thinking.
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Their denial of God comes from sinful desires that want God out of the picture.
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They think just fine when it comes to common subjects of learning.
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But when they consider God, the one who owns them as their Creator, sound thinking goes out the window.
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And this happens because the heart takes over.
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The ones who let their sinful heart deny God miss the whole goal of knowledge.
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The Bible tells us that if you really want to learn, to have depth of knowledge, then believe in God.
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All other intellectual pursuits that keep God out of the picture are shallow at best.
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Now this morning, as we continue our sermon series through Matthew, Jesus has an interesting conversation with people who have their intellect influenced by their sinful heart.
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And He is going to point out their hypocrisy. So this time, I encourage you to turn in the
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Bible with me to Matthew 16. We'll look at verses 1 -4. If you're using a red
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Bible in the pews, it is on page 976. Now the sermon is only four verses.
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But there is so much to say. And so I'm going to take two Sundays to get through this text.
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As I was writing my sermon, I'm like, this is getting long. Okay, this is going to take two Sundays. And you're probably all grateful for that.
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But we'll do the first point today and the second point next Sunday. And this two
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Sunday sermon is titled, Sophisticated Fools. And we'll begin by reading the text.
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And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test Him, they asked Him to show them a sign from heaven.
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He answered them, When it is evening, you say, it will be fair weather, for the sky is red.
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And in the morning, it will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.
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You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.
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An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.
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So He left them and departed. Here's our big idea. Understand that sharp minds often miss the things of God.
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Understand that sharp minds often miss the things of God. And we will see two reasons why in this text.
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But before we jump into our text, let me give you a little recap of where we were one week ago. We had the harvest service last
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Sunday. Two Sundays ago, we were at the end of chapter 15 where Jesus fed the 4 ,000.
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This passage was almost a repeat of a chapter earlier where Jesus fed the 5 ,000.
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In chapter 14, He fed 5 ,000 Jews. In chapter 15,
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He fed 4 ,000 Gentiles. And this is, of course, not including women and children. So really there's about 20 ,000 to 25 ,000 people that He fed.
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And what we saw in this text is three manifestations of how Jesus once again shows
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His great benevolence to a new people. These are through showing compassion to those in need, enduring patiently
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His people's amnesia of His past provision, and satisfying fully all your needs.
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Jesus is truly compassionate, a provider, and a satisfier of our deepest desires.
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Now this leads us once again back to our text that we've already read. But now we're going to zero in on it.
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And we'll zero in first on verse 1 where Matthew once again writes, "...the
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Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test them, they asked Him to show them a sign from heaven." Now, we have seen
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Jesus' confrontation with the Jewish leaders to this point on several occasions.
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The moment God's true work in the world came on the scene through John the Baptist, the religious establishment in Judea rejected
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God's true work. As John the Baptist was baptizing people in the
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Jordan River, the Pharisees and Sadducees were troubled that all the people were flocking to him. When these two groups went out to see
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John, this is what he said to them. And take notice that John does not mince words. He says, "...you
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brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
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And do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. For I tell you,
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God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees.
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Every tree, therefore, that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."
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A nice greeting, right? To these people. Now, what we have seen in Matthew are several confrontations that Jesus has had with the
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Pharisees. But the other group mentioned in verse 1, the
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Sadducees, he has not yet had a confrontation until now.
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John did, but now they meet Jesus. They meet the man. But Jesus thinks of the
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Sadducees the same way, of course, as John the Baptist. He's got a very low opinion of them.
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This is a false movement, a corrupt group of people that is hostile toward God. Now, what's the difference between the
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Pharisees and Sadducees? The Pharisees, whom we have seen numerous times in Matthew, were the conservatives of their day.
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These were the ones who read their Old Testament and they established numerous man -made traditions.
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They were unhealthy conservatives. Now, to be conservative is a good thing.
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Jesus was conservative. He was very conservative, in fact. He believed John was swallowed by a whale.
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He believed the earth was young and not old. He believed in the
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Red Sea story. These are basic truths that are laid out in the
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Bible. And Jesus tells us these things happened. Jesus was very conservative. And we want to be like Jesus.
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But an unhealthy conservative is when a religious group puts burdens on people that God does not.
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In our modern context, it would be like making a rule saying it is sinful to own a television.
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Now, God would lead us to be careful what we watch because there's a lot of trash on TV. But to say that it is sinful to own a television, this is pharisaical.
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The Pharisees had tons of man -made rules that burdened people. To listen and obey the
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Word of God brings blessing, but to make man -made laws and to impose them on others brings oppression.
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The Pharisees were masters at burdening people and Jesus called them out on this, telling everyone this is not the way of God.
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Now, while the Pharisees were the unhealthy conservatives of Jesus' day, the Sadducees were the liberals.
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And they were also the well -to -do people. The Pharisees were largely the working class.
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And the Sadducees were largely the elite class. Both of the
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Pharisees and the Sadducees had their group represented among the Jewish leadership, the priests and scribes.
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But the Sadducees were wealthier and had more connections. This allowed the
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Sadducees the opportunity to easily enrich themselves from the buying and selling that took place at the temple.
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And we'll see that later on in Matthew where Jesus overturns their tables. The Sadducees were not people who had a moral compass.
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The Pharisees did have a moral compass, but it was just really strange and it was really unhealthy.
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The Sadducees did not have a moral compass. They would gladly take advantage of others in order to make money.
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I already mentioned that they were the liberals of the Jews. When we say that someone is a theological liberal, what we are saying is that they do not take the
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Bible as written. For example, when liberals today look at the bodily resurrection of Jesus, they call it a spiritual resurrection.
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Whatever that means. Not a bodily, but a spiritual resurrection.
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This is what the Sadducees did with the Old Testament. They spiritualized the text. When you spiritualize what is meant to be taken literal, the true meaning is lost.
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Even conservative Christians can spiritualize too many texts. Not a good thing to do.
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When the four Gospel writers wrote about the bodily resurrection of Christ, none of them had in mind that this was a spiritual resurrection.
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That's a false, man -made interpretation that no doubt is motivated by the sinful human heart.
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But why is it that people play fast and loose with the text of Scripture? Well, I just told you.
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It's not driven by intellect as much as they would like you to think that it is.
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They use big words. They couch it with all these things.
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Keith and I went up to Duluth this week. It was a fun day together. We were talking about this.
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All these secular scientists, what do they do? They couch their reasoning with these big words that really don't make sense.
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When you try to understand it, I don't understand this. These people must be smarter than I am. When really it doesn't make sense.
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Mark has a quote. They'd rather... You say it.
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No, no, no. If I can't... There we go.
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Okay. We'll replace the second half with hogwash. How about that? Okay. So, it's driven by the heart.
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Okay? The quote from my old pastor. People do what they do because they want what they want.
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And the heart of the matter is the heart is the matter. Liberals, whether the ancient Sadducees or modern liberals, want nothing to do with true morality.
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Because true morality means you can't sin. And sin feels good.
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For a time. They want their sin, and so what one does is explain away the
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Bible texts that condemn sin and show the dreadful consequences for the one who remains in sin.
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If the God of the Bible is true, if everything the Bible says is 100 % true, then that means there will be consequences for sin.
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So what liberals do is lie to themselves, believing that much of the Bible is false in order to live in sin without consequences.
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If one can sin without experiencing judgment, then why stop sinning?
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It's convenient to have certain interpretations of Scripture.
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So intellect does not drive their interpretation, but it is the sinful heart that does.
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This describes the first century liberal Sadducees very well. We learn about the
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Sadducees' belief in Acts 23 .8. In that text, they say, there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit.
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In other words, the Sadducees were materialists. They were secular. They believed that God created them, yes, but they believed that this life is all there is.
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So live it up in this life because there's no judgment waiting. Just have a good time. Now as we look at the
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Pharisees' and Sadducees' approach, Jesus, in verse 1, it looks like they're a team.
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But what is it that binds them together? It certainly wasn't their beliefs that tied them together.
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They hated each other. They had a strong rivalry. What brought them together was their shared animosity toward one person.
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Jesus. They both had a common enemy.
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They both agreed that He was a big problem, and they wanted Him off the scene. With Jesus on the scene, both groups were losing their hold on the
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Jewish population. We already saw the account earlier where the scribes and Pharisees wanted
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John off the scene as he was baptizing all those people in the Jordan River.
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They are threatened by this true work of God that started with John the Baptist and continued with Jesus, the one
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John had pointed to. When evil is confronted by that which is good, evil has no problem uniting.
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This is how Satan works. He is in the business of defeating good.
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And if he can unite two evil forces that are otherwise opposed to each other, how effective is that?
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During World War II, what tied Nazi Germany, Benito Mussolini's dictatorship in Italy, and Imperial Japan together?
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The answer is easy. They opposed that which is good. They opposed democracies, yes, in France, Great Britain, and the
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United States. But what they really opposed were governments greatly influenced by Christianity, which these governments were.
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We've seen hatred toward America in our own country in recent years. In the history of the world, it is hard to find many nations that have been more influenced by biblical
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Christianity than the United States of America. The first Americans were just like us, the pilgrims.
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They believed everything that we believe as a church. Yet evil people want to tear the whole thing down.
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And when you see evil attacking good, we know who is behind it. What we must understand is that at the root of all of this is animosity toward God.
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And when evil forces that normally oppose each other feel that good needs to be taken down, they unite.
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Put their forces together and try to take down the light that stands before them.
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This is exactly what the Pharisees and Sadducees are doing. Uniting because the
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God -Man Himself stands before them. These Jewish groups are ruled by Satan.
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How do we know that? Because everything that's opposed to God is ruled by Satan. And their sinful hearts love their sin and so they're glad to go along with Satan's plans here.
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Satan hates God and his son Jesus, and so the Pharisees and Sadducees hate him as well.
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And they show it every time we see them in the Gospel of Matthew. Now when the
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Pharisees and Sadducees come to Jesus, they want to test Him. And how the second half of verse 1 says that they want to test
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Him is by asking to show them a sign from Heaven. At this point,
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Jesus has done numerous miracles. What this shows is that no amount of evidence will ever be enough for the skeptic.
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At some point, the one who believes has seen enough and puts your full trust in Christ.
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That's a story of all genuine believers in this room. You learn enough about the
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Christian faith, and then you follow Jesus. This questioning from these two
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Jewish groups is not innocent questioning. You might run into someone who has honest questions about Christianity, and they want help and understanding.
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In that case, you should desire to answer those questions. Yes. But the questions we should avoid are the ones that are meant to harm the one answering.
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Sometimes people question, and it's not innocent questioning. It's an attack.
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And that's when you avoid people. The scribes and Pharisees are motivated here to prove
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Jesus is a fraud. This is meant to harm Jesus, this question that they ask.
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Now, it's very important to look at the phrase a sign from heaven in the second half of verse 1.
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Because this helps us understand what exactly the Jewish leaders are asking for here. According to one author, there was a popular
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Jewish superstition that said demons could perform earthly miracles, but only
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God could perform heavenly ones. In order for a true prophet to truly show that he is from God, he must do a celestial sign according to this fable.
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This would be like causing an eclipse on the spot or keeping the sun in the same spot the entire day by stopping the earth from rotating.
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If you're truly from God, you can do these celestial signs. You can make the sun turn dark.
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The Pharisees and Sadducees believed Jesus could not do this and therefore this would discredit him.
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Their unbelief was that strong. But Jesus always knows just what to say.
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You can write a whole book on that. How does Jesus respond to people? Very interesting. And then we can learn how to respond to people too.
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So let's look at what he says in verse 2 in the first half of verse 3. He answered them,
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When it is evening, you say, It will be fair weather, for the sky is red. And in the morning, it will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.
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You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky.
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It's an old sailor's saying. You wonder where it comes from? Well, it comes from right here. Red sky at night.
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Sailors delight. Red sky in the morning. Sailors take warning. This was their life.
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The fishing industry and transporting trade over the sea was a huge part of their life.
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They knew about this because they lived it. It was their experience. They used reason.
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They were able to reason about the world that they lived in. And what
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Jesus is highlighting about the Pharisees and Sadducees is their ability to accurately reason about the world they live in, and specifically their ability to reason about the weather.
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During Jesus' time in the first century, the people did not have a weather man or a weather woman that would go on TV and tell you what the forecast was going to be like for the next ten days.
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Those long range forecasts. It would have been very difficult for them to know what the weather was going to be like one week out.
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But they could know to a certain extent what the weather was going to be like the next day or the near future.
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According to one weather site, when we see a red sky at night, this means that the setting sun is sending its light through a high concentration of dust particles.
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This usually indicates high pressure and stable air coming in from the west.
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However, a red sunrise can mean that a high pressure system, which is good weather, has already passed.
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Thus indicating that a storm system, a low pressure system, may be moving in to the east.
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Now, I'm not a weather man, but that's getting a little more scientific. But they just saw these things.
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When it's like this, this is what the weather is going to be like. Now, even for us, we can tell the weather without turning on the
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TV to a certain extent. When it starts getting really windy and the temperature drops, we can tell that a low pressure weather system is on the way.
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If there's not a cloud in the sky, we know that the weather will be nice and there's no harmful weather in sight.
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And what Jesus is telling the Pharisees and Sadducees is that they have the ability to reason.
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To a certain extent, their minds work just the way God made them to work.
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Their reasoning is sound when it comes to the weather. But when it comes to the things of God, sound reasoning disappears.
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I mentioned this in the introduction. Why is it that Ivy Leaguers can be so brilliant on basic subjects like math, science, and literature, but completely miss it when it comes to the most important realities of life?
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I'm sure we've all asked that. And some people really struggle with that. For some people, this keeps them from coming to faith in Christ.
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Well, all these smart people don't follow Him, and I'm a smart guy. Why would I do this? Well, this book has the answer, if you want to know it.
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And we're seeing it right now. The answer is because when a smart person solves a complex math problem, they are unbiased.
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They just want to find the answer. And so they do. But when it comes to drawing conclusions about God, there is too much on the line.
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It affects too much how one has to live. The sinner does not want to be told what to do.
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Humans are, by nature, rebellious. And this goes back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve rebelled against God. They knew you weren't supposed to eat from that tree.
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But they did. By nature, humans want to run life their own way.
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As Isaiah 53 -6 says, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned. Everyone do his own way.
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By nature, humans enjoy sinning. And so when God through His Word says you must turn from your sinful ways and follow
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My Son Jesus, people come up with all kinds of creative reasons not to believe in God.
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They invent fanciful ideas that supposedly disprove the Bible. There was a 19th century philosopher, in fact, 20th century philosopher, that is, and author by the name of Eldess Huxley.
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He wrote the well -known book Brave New World. And he said something very honest about the motivation of him and his peers in reaching the conclusions that they do.
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Keep in mind that Huxley was an atheist. This is what he wrote. I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning.
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Consequently assumed it had none and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.
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The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem with questions about how the world came to be.
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He is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason why he should personally not do just what he wants to do.
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For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation.
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The liberation we desired was simultaneously a liberation from a certain political and economic system and a liberation from a certain system of morality.
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We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.
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Interesting. Usually they don't tell you the truth about why they hold to the positions they do.
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Eldess Huxley just told us why he did. And yet he continued in it.
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And it's so important for people to know if this is their barrier in believing in Christ. Well, why don't all these smart people?
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We must understand that those Ivy League institutions, they started off as Christians.
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I mentioned the pilgrims were just like us. The Ivy League institutions were just like us. In fact,
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Harvard is the oldest. It started off as a school to train pastors. The last
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Ivy League school to fall to liberalism was Princeton in the early 20th century.
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Think about that. They started in the 1600s and then the last one to fall was 300 years after they started.
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If you don't guard the gate, Satan will prevail. That's the lesson in this. People do not want a creator and judge.
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If he's just the creator, fine. We don't want a judge. And the reason is so they can sin in all kinds of ways.
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And so people come up with fanciful ideas and lie to themselves and then it becomes acceptable in mainstream society all for the purpose of continuing their sinful lifestyle.
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When you think about sinful humanity's efforts against God, biological evolution is a good example of this.
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Evolution has been refuted. It is a scientific impossibility. Any Christian leader that believes
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God used evolution to create life in the world should not be trusted. And there are some out there. This person is showing that they are infatuated with the world's ideas.
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And if this teacher will go down this path, what other path will he go down? There's one guy who believes in theistic evolution.
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Well, he believes in social justice. Well, what do they have in common? They're both worldly ideas imported into the text of Scripture.
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If you are following the facts, you will not believe in evolution. But what is the mainstream view in the world as to how life came to be?
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Evolution. And why is this? The same people who say follow the science don't follow the science.
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If you say follow the science and you don't follow the science, the Bible has a term for this. It's called lying.
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It's breaking the ninth commandment. The reason people lie is because they don't want to face the reality of the truth.
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People don't want to believe that God created everything. People don't want to believe that we are accountable before a holy
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God. People want to sin without consequences. People want to sin without a future judgment looming.
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And so if all these people believe this lie together and they're all the elite people and they're all the smart people and they get all the praise of man in the world, they actually start to believe the lie.
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And they find comfort in it. And it justifies their sinful lifestyle.
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So the solution for rebellious people is to try to run from God by believing lies.
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They get to the truth when it comes to a math problem or a scientific experiment.
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But the truth is suppressed when it comes to God. Because if God really exists, this is very inconvenient.
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As I write in Romans 118, the unrighteousness of men suppress the truth.
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You know what suppress means? It means bury. You hide it. You see it. You don't like it.
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So you try to explain it away. That summarizes the world we live in pretty well. But believing lies fails.
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Because believing lies does not change reality. Wishing that God isn't there and then inventing falsehood to ease one's conscience doesn't change anything.
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Christ is still coming back, whether people say He is or not. Everyone will stand before their
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Creator to be judged at the end of the world. And how much better to face the true reality and repent rather than run from God one's whole life only to meet
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Him in condemnation. The applause of man is so fleeting. But that's what so many so -called smart people need to do.
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They need to leave the applause of man and repent and truly believe that which is true.
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And Jesus here, in our text, is hitting the
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Pharisees and Sadducees head on. He knows how to respond.
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He's showing the real problem. And I wonder, is it even worth it to have these debates with atheists?
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Because you're not addressing the main issue. If you want to debate me, let's talk about the heart.
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Let's talk about the real reason you don't believe in God. What He tells them is that you can reason just fine about the world around you, but when it comes to the things of God, you intentionally miss it.
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They miss it because they bury the truth. They don't want it to be true, so let's pretend that it's not.
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They intentionally ignore God. They intentionally ignore His Word. And the
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Pharisees and Sadducees, with antagonism, they ask an antagonistic question to Jesus, dismissing the true understanding of the
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Word of God. So many in our world are just like the Pharisees and Sadducees.
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Essentially, the human heart, from Adam all the way to the present, is actually very similar.
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The same motivations are always there. And it might be different ideas that are put forth, but the same problem is always there.
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And it's an animosity toward your Creator. So, in this first point, we are to understand that sharp minds often miss the things of God.
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And the first reason why is that rebellious humans intentionally miss
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God's truth. Rebellious humans intentionally miss
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God's truth. So that's the first reason why. And if we stayed for the second reason why, we'd be here well into lunch.
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So we will stop right here. And next Sunday, we are going to focus on the end of verse 3 and verse 4.
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And in this verse, just to give you a little bit of a preview, Jesus is telling them that amazing things are happening right before your eyes, and you don't see it.
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And we're going to delve into that. And it has great application for the 21st century, 2021, where we live right now.
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So I look forward to sharing that with you next Sunday. But at this time, let's bow our heads in prayer.
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Father in Heaven, Lord, all of us, naturally, are rebellious against You.
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I see it in my own heart, Lord. And we are called, though,
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Lord, to surrender to You. And as Christians, Lord, we do surrender, but we still fight our sins.
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We still fight our rebellion. But that's far different from the one who is fully in rebellion right now.
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And that's who Jesus talked to here with the Pharisees and Sadducees. These were people who were engulfed in their sin, and it impacted their thinking negatively.
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And this happens so often in our day. And I don't know, Lord, maybe there's someone listening that will benefit from this.
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But it helps us here to recognize this in our society. Why is it that people don't believe in You when the evidence is right there in front of them?
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Well, it's the human heart. It's the sinful human heart. So help us to understand that. Help us not to give too much credit to the elite, prestigious intellectuals.
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But help us also. There is a righteous anger, Lord, as there should be.
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But help us also to pray for them, to pray for their repentance. In Jesus' name,