Pastor Robert and TaQuaris Smith
Robert: Praise the Lord. Good morning.
TaQuaris: Good morning.
Robert: It's good to be here this morning. Hallelujah, to give forth the word again with my family. It's good. I love it. I have a couple announcements before we begin. There are always a lot of good things going on here at Hope. I wanted to let you know that on Saturday, February 19th, from noon to three, the Joy group is going to be sponsoring a game day and that's for, for all ages. We're going to have lunch and games for adults and kids. So we would like you to invite friends to come along. I don't know if there are any chess players here, but I collect chess sets. I have collected chess sets since I was about 13 years old. I'm going to bring a few of my collection to have on display, but I'll let you touch it if you are going to play. I just don't want any pieces missing. We're going to have all kinds of different little board games and group games. We're just going to have a fun day. That's on Saturday, February 19th. Come and get your game on.
February is the sanctity of human life month at Hope. In honor of that, we are collecting items for the Robbinsdale Women's Center. Anybody heard of the Robbinsdale Women's Center? It's a place that's very dear to my heart. When I was a young, young, young seminarian, I was looking for a place to do my pastoral practicum. Little did I know, the practicum turned into something that I would fall in love with, and I was a father focused mentor for a few years at the Robbinsdale Women's Center, mentoring and counseling the fathers to be. That was something that was very life changing for me. Speaking of miracles, I saw many miracles while I was there. And hopefully I'll get to share with you sometime about that.
We, at Hope, are collecting some items. They have a baby boutique. Something I got to experience at the baby boutique inside the Robbinsdale Women's Center is they have items for the babies that the mother or the father to be can earn things. As they go through the different programs, they can earn daddy dollars and mommy dollars that they can spend at the boutique. These are quality items. They are not hand-me-over items. At the back table where Rachel and Robin are, those that are inside the building, we have these flyers that list all the items that you can purchase for the baby boutique. We would love you to purchase them and bring the items to church every Sunday, this month. Or if you don't want to do that, they have a registry on Amazon. We have this information; I'm sure we'll have it online for you. If you are online streaming we'll have that available for you as well. Those of you who are here today, don't forget to pick this up before you leave. Today, Jim and Brenda Stein are going to be here to serve communion, so please join them after the service. Well, I get to do this again with my lovely bride. That's a joy in itself for me.
You know, I love the Lord. I love the Lord and all of the things that he teaches us in his word. It's something that doesn't get old. As we try to get closer to the Lord, we can read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation a thousand times. I guarantee if you read it with the intent of learning and hearing that you will learn something new and different and deeper each time that you do. So it is with some of the things that Jesus was teaching in the gospels. There is a teaching that's dear to my heart, but also convicting for me because at one point I can transparently say that I represented this, that Jesus addresses today in the gospel of Matthew chapter 23. We want to read that to start off, verse 25 through 26.
TaQuaris: What sorrow awaits you, teachers of religious law and you Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean too.
Robert: Today, we want to talk about cleaning the inside of the cup. In these passages, Jesus gives a long set of woes to Pharisees and scribes. Now these Pharisees and scribes, these were religious leaders. Jesus out of his compassion for those that he would be teaching and discipling— he had compassion on those that would be led straight by these religious leaders. In his encounter with these scribes and Pharisees, he would have these long sets of woes pointing out, really their failure to exemplify the heart of the father.
When we hear the word Pharisees today, because if we read these in the gospel, we automatically think of the Pharisees as hypocrites; hypocrisy comes to mind. But if we were the people in Jesus day, we wouldn't necessarily see the Pharisees in their light. The Pharisees were considered by their contemporaries as devout practitioners of the Bible and experts of the law.
In that historical context, teachers of the law, following the law was something that equated to pleasing God. But if we wanted to relate this example today, this experience for us today, we don't necessarily have Pharisees today. I know oftentimes when this passage has been preached it pointed the finger at those that would be considered religious leaders today, pastors and teachers of the Bible. But I want to go deeper than that. I want to broaden that scope a little bit because if we put this in the context today or apply it today to today, Jesus would be given a warning to those of us that would carry a religious and a self-righteous spirit. Right.
Remember I said in the introduction, I'm being transparent in a sense. And I think that hopefully by the end of this message, all of us would be honest with ourselves that at some point in our lives, we've been pharisaical our relationship with one another. If you don't, I'll say that at times I can still find being pharisaical in a relationship to things that I disagree with or people's behavior that seems that abhorrent to me. What happens is now more so than it did for me 10, 12 years ago, when I can feel that trying to come upon me, I'll take a pause and say, remember when you— and then you can fill in the rest of the blanks.
When most people think of the law, they think of the old Testament. Along with that, they think of the law as externally living out the commandments of law. Deuteronomy 11 one says—
TaQuaris: You must love to Lord your God and always obey his requirements, decrease regulations and commands.
Robert: In our mindset today as Christ followers, if we don't take a deeper look at what the plan of the Lord was and his relationship with us, we can say, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with following the laws and the commands of God? That's how we please God. And so with that, as I've been teaching and studying the Bible, I've come to understand that we still struggle with this tension between law and grace in the church. I don't think it's something that's going to go away anytime soon, but hopefully, my prayer is that through thoughtful, holy spirit led instruction in the scriptures, we would come to break that tension between law and grace.
That's really what is at the heart of this because as the Pharisees would understand it, to be deemed righteous, you had to follow the letter of the law without compromise. Those that were living in that first century with Christ would probably agree that you had to live the law to the letter of the law and in their eyes, the Pharisees and the scribes were the perfect example of how to do that. Jesus comes and at first he seemingly puts an emphasis more on serving God, not only externally, but internally with your heart as he says in Matthew chapter 22.
TaQuaris: Jesus replied, you must love to Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.
Robert: This is something as the Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus as they often would. They would try to trap Jesus into things that he wasn't going to get trapped on. But one of the things that Jesus was pointing out is that God has always been concerned about the heart. Even with the implementation of the law, God was always aiming at the heart of his people. Deuteronomy 6: 5-6.
TaQuaris: And you must love to Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves, hold heartedly to these commands that I'm giving you today.
Robert: As he has given him these commands or these laws, he said that you are going to have to commit to these wholeheartedly with all your soul, with everything that you have. As we continue in the scriptures, we are going to see that as we get to the heart of God, it goes beyond just a set of external dos and don'ts. Deuteronomy chapter 10.
TaQuaris: Deuteronomy 10: 12-16. And now Israel, what does the Lord, your God require of you? He requires only that you fear the Lord your God and live in a way that pleases him and loves him and serves him with all your heart and soul. And you must obey the Lord's commands and decrees that I'm giving you today for your own good. Look, the highest heavens in the earth and everything in it all belong to the Lord, your God, yet the Lord chose your ancestors as the objects of his love. And he chose you, their descendants above all other nations as is evident today. Therefore, change your hearts and stop being stubborn.
Robert: The Lord said change your hearts and stop being stubborn. When I think about the commandments of God that he has given us, and most of us grew up learning the 10 commandments, the "thou shalt nots." When you hear thou shalt not kill as a commandment to God, our flesh, which is our carnal nature, does what? In response, it asks why. That's because of our fleshly nature, the carnal nature. When we get something thou shall not, you shall not do this, why? Ask any child; tell a child not to do something, and they are going to say why. That's representative of the fleshly nature and the low level carnal response is going to be because it's a commandment, and if I do break this commandment, I'm going to get punished.
My friends, that's not the heart of God. The heart of God's response is this thou shalt not kill. Why? Because number one, it displeases the father, but it also robs your neighbor. That's the contextual example of Jesus saying, love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart, with all of your mind, with all of your soul, and then love your neighbor as yourself. And he says these two commandments contain all of the law and the prophets. That means that just that response, going away from the fleshly response of, well, I'm not going to do it because if I do it, I'm going to get punished. you are never going to change that way. As a matter of fact, it fosters more rebellion than obedience. Rules and regulations foster rebellion. That's just the nature of the flesh. So what am I saying? What do we do with things that we shouldn't do?
The Lord wants to get into our hearts, to change our hearts concerning the situation. That's what repentance is about. Repentance is not choosing to do right or wrong. Repentance is about changing the motivation of why we do right or wrong. Because when we change our heart concerning the manner it is going to automatically dictate which way we should go. It's a change of heart on the inside. When Jesus encountered the Pharisees, he wasn't rebuking them for the things that they would point out that were against the law. What he was rebuking was this simple fact: You appear to be one way because you are, allegedly, following set rules, but deep down inside you are hypocrites, because your heart is not pure. You have a twisted motive.
TaQuaris: Doing it for the wrong reason.
Robert: Doing it for the wrong reason; you have a twisted motive. That's what Jesus wants to get at even when we so-called follow his commandments. He wants us to do it for the right motivation.
TaQuaris: Because you love him.
Robert: Because you love him. If you love me, you will obey my commandments. If you love me—
TaQuaris: Because it's about relationship.
Robert: Not if you fear me, you fear retribution, you fear punishment. Many people ask me about evangelistic outreach. If you look at the way society has changed today, unfortunately not that we should change necessarily, the church changes necessarily in what we believe, but I think that we could do justice to what we are trying to do if we learn how to change our approach and delivery.
What do I mean? There are things that worked for people 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago that don't work now in this generation. I don't necessarily know or believe if they worked before. I just think in God's mercy sometimes, you know— and people have their different motivations for responding a certain way, but what they used to call it, this hellfire and brimstone preaching to scare people into the kingdom, so to speak. I don't necessarily believe that it works. As a matter of fact, if I was a statistician, which I'm not, I hated statistics, but if I did a study, maybe I'll do a self-study, if I was able to go and do a study of those who so-called committed their lives to God in the era of the fire and brimstone preaching, how many would be still following Christ today? That's a hypothesis I have.
My hypothesis would be that they are representatives of a large group of people that want nothing to do with Christianity. Why? Because I think the mistake in that is not showing the love of Christ, preaching the love of Christ, the love of God, the love of God, the father. I know most places will throw me out. Here comes this guy. I'm not giving a pass or anything. It's like the apostle Paul, when he talked about grace in the law and he talked about grace abounding more where sin abounds more. What did he say? He said, does that mean that we take advantage of it and sin more? He said, no, God forbid. And I'm saying that too loudly; God forbid that we take advantage of the grace that God has. But the fact is grace is there. And there is a reason for that grace. Because as we are in the process of sanctification and learning more of God and learning more of how to act, the grace is there until we get there.
If we ever get there. Yes, I think there is a place that we can get to in God that we can send no more. I think we have that opportunity. Are most of us there? I don't know. I think we can get there. We'll have a conversation with this again, between flesh and spirit. As a great friend of mine says, we all have flesh. That's a daily battle that we have to continue: it is flesh and spirit and keep that thought because there is something in the end that we want to share.
Jesus comes and he talks about cleaning the inside of the cup. When we look at that, we can see that Jesus is using this metaphor to speak, to cleaning the human heart, Matthew 23:27-28.
TaQuaris: What sorrow awaits you, teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites, for you are like white wash tombs, beautiful on the outside, but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurities. Outwardly, you look like righteous people, but inwardly, your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Robert: Jesus had some very powerful words and imagery for these Pharisees. He said, outwardly, you look like righteous people, but inwardly, there is a whole different story. He uses a very powerful image here in which he compared the Pharisees to whitewash tombs. When I first read at this scripture, I had no idea what Jesus was talking about, but I did a little research into what that meant. In Israel, especially during feast times, as they would have many visitors in the land— Let me backup.
Dead bodies in Jewish law were considered unclean and therefore, a tomb that housed the dead body would be considered unclean. And so the whole thing with clean and unclean is there were these religious rituals that if you came into contact with something unclean, you were shunned from the rest of society and you had to go through this purification process from the priest. Anyway, dead bodies, tombs, dead, unclean. But during these feast times, especially, to make things beautiful and attractive for all the visitors in the land, they would use a process kind of like bleaching the outside of these tombs in the sense of beautifying them. They looked bleached and clean on the outside, but inside they still had dead men's bones.
And so that's what Jesus was making this analogy to the Pharisees. You look, on the outside, like this beautiful thing, but on the inside you are still unclean and dirty. I think that if we look at our walk with God, a lot of times, we are not trying to please God; we are trying to please people or ourselves or ourselves. We make justifications. We try to appear righteous, especially to other people because of the external things that we do or say. But where is our heart, which God sees and which God looks upon?
The radical thing that Jesus was saying is that beauty comes from the inside out, not the outside in. I can appear a certain way to you on the outside, but do you know my heart? Hopefully, as we get to know each other you will know that my outward is an expression of what's inwardly in my heart. But I can't sit here before you today and say that there aren't things that I have to do to work on, continually cleansing my heart. But I have a motivation to do that because I want to express the love of the father every time, every opportunity that I have, but the only way to do that and grow closer to the heart of God is to be transparent and turn your eyes inward, instead of outward.
Because at times we are so worried about what other people are doing or not doing or how they look. And if you do that long enough, you start looking so much on other people, you neglect. Because when you see other people doing certain things that you don't agree with, it starts to affect you too and your behavior. If you are not cautious, you can turn into something that's very callous and judgmental and condemning, which is not the heart of the father.
You can say pastor, well, what happens when we see people, as they say, being out of pocket, so to speak? Pray to the father. Pray that the holy spirit would be able to move in them in such a way that the holy spirit would bring conviction and that as they are convicted by the Lord, whatever is not right the great teacher, the great comforter would move them. I'm not saying if we see a brother and sister in trouble, we are not to speak up. Of course, but it's how we do it.
TaQuaris: I was going to say it still needs to be done through love. Sometimes God allows you to see things in someone, and actually, you can be the person that God uses to actually talk to that person. However, it's in God's timing and it's how you do it. And it has to be through the spirit of love, because when it's done through the spirit of love that other person can receive it. But also it can still be done through the spirit of love and they won't receive it. You can be led to tell them that, but it's God who has to work that out through them. Sometimes God allows you to just minister to that person. Or have someone come along to water it. We have to remember it is he who saves. We are not saved by our works anyway. We were saved by God's grace.
And to me, like when I deal with people, I minister to other people, what reminds me of showing love is how good God has been to me. When you humble yourself and realize, okay, God, you brought me through this, you are looking at the other person differently. You are ministering through love. Because God has been good to me, I want to tell you how good he is and what he can do to you, through you, bring you from. Robert, you said something very interesting; we tend to look at other people. It just reminds me of the scripture that says get the plank out of your eye before you try to get the spec out of your neighbor's eye. For a lot of things we need to do, our motivation has to be love. For God so loved the world. Love covers a multitude of sins. So our motivation, we really need to check our heart. We really need to check our heart because yeah— I'll just leave it there.
Robert: I would want to be in a place, whether it's in the church community, whether it's in a work community, whether it's in family, if they see something in me that's wrong, I would want them to say something to me. I believe that when we truly love people, we are compelled to speak out when something is off. This is by no means a declaration to say that we should not speak up, speak out, speak against anything in anyone's life. I'm just saying that we need to temper it with our motivation. What I'm saying very bluntly is that we don't replace it's the holy spirit. That's all I'm saying.
TaQuaris: And that you ask God for wisdom, wisdom on how to direct you into talking to that person about the issue.
Robert: A lot of us, a lot of people, we have blind spots. We have blind spots. In those blind spots, thank God we have people that love us that are able to say, hey, I think this is you are blind to this situation. But at the end of the day, we can't force them to do anything. But thank God it's not up to us. We have a great God who has given us the holy spirit. One of the things I hope that the teaching comes into church more is that— and I love all the songs, and I'm not making any reference to anything that's happening right now today. I'm making a general statement. I think the church can benefit from learning more about who the holy spirit really is and where he really is.
We're no longer waiting for him to come. He's here in you and me. If we are believers, if we are following Christ, we carry the holy spirit inside of us. Every single person who is born again has the spirit of God in them, has the holy spirit in them. And so why am I saying this? I'm saying this is because all we have to do is motivate people to tap into the holy spirit that's already present in them. Once we deliver truth, we don't have to be the ones that keep banging at the door with the truth, because if they are born again, they have the spirit in them that will do that for you. That will work to the Holy Spirit's time with people.
The holy Spirit is great at that and does it perfectly, better than you or I could ever do. What I love about this church community is that you guys love to pray. In this equation we can't leave prayer out because prayer helps us go beyond what we see and what we can't see with our natural eye. I know it gets tiresome as we minister, as we hope for, even with ourselves, when we see things not going a certain way, it can get discouraging. But God knows and God is faithful and God knows what's best for each and every one of us. Why not press into God's plan? Remember you thought I was going to lose the faith series. No, it's applicable to what we do. We have to trust God and in his timing, in his program, his plan, his ways, his methods. We have to trust him.
We can fool people. Most people, we can fool with our outward expression. We've learned all the Christian things to say. In some places of worship, they learn to dress a certain way. I'm thankful that at Hope, I can relax a little bit. We all look the same, so there is no competition about who has the most righteous vests on today. You delivered me too. We're all in the same boat, all of us. I think if we were more honest, we would all understand we are all in the same boat. This is a daily thing that we have to work on. Your heart— as I'm listening to someone's voice in my ear, our heart outside of Christ is deceitfully wicked above all things outside of Christ. Because when we are in Christ, we are in the righteousness of Christ. But when we are outside of Christ, this heart is wicked. It is so wicked that we can seemingly be doing the right thing.
Anybody heard of Saul who got converted to Paul? He was seemingly doing the right thing because he was striking down Christians and persecuting them until he met with that power that he thought he was with. And the Lord said, how long are you going to fight against me? Paul thought he was doing the right thing, but then he had a conversion to the heart of God and the heart of Christ
TaQuaris: It reminds me of the song that says, "Create in me a clean heart and renew the right spirit in me, oh Lord."
Robert: God wants to clean up our hearts so that we can truly worship him and that we can truly serve him. Last scripture.
TaQuaris: But the time is coming; indeed, it is here now when true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth. The father is looking for those who will worship him that way. For God is spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. You know, worship is a lifestyle. It's not just singing songs. I'm a singer. I love to worship. It's one of my best places, especially being in the secret place of worship. But it's not about just singing the songs. It's about worship. Your lifestyle has to have to live up to that every day. Paul said, "Kill a flesh daily," so that everybody has to do that every day. We're all trying to make it. We are all trying to draw closer to God. So that should be our prayer every day. Lord, show me what you want me to change. God, helped me to see my brother and sisters the way you want me to see them. One thing I pray is God, help me to be a light for those who are in darkness on my job, in the store. My motivation is really love, because I've been through a lot of things and I've seen the love of God. That was extra though.
Robert: As we worship God, we have to worship him in spirit. It's not just things that we have to make sure of; okay, today I didn't do this. I didn't do this. I didn't do this. I didn't do this. I didn't do this. So I'm good. It's more of, I told you to do this that's. I told you to do this, this, I told you to do this by the spirit of God.
TaQuaris: Obedience.
Robert: Did you obey me? I'm not so concerned about what you didn't do. It's what you did when I moved upon you to move. Our so-called godly behavior comes out of an expression of our worship towards God, not out of obligation. If you are not understanding what I'm getting at, it's out of a heart recognition for him, not from obeying rules.
As a matter of fact, most people that are law components don't understand the law was in place not to make you righteous, but to show you how unrighteous you were. That was the point of the law: to show you how wicked the heart was outside of Christ outside of God. That's why the Lord, when he came to give us the new covenant, he said, this is a greater covenant. This is a better covenant. The oldest is faded away. It was impossible for you to keep all the laws because if you broke one, you were in violation of all 613 laws. No one could live up to that.
There were a lot of animals that lost their lives because of people breaking the law, a lot of animals, a lot of sacrifice. But thank God we have Jesus, who became the sacrifice, once and for all, for us. And because of that, now we have a choice. As followers of Christ, we have a choice. We have a choice to live carnal lives, because outside of Christ, you don't; you are bound by the will of sin. But as Christ followers, you are no longer bound. You have a choice, and your choice is to follow the way of the flesh or to follow the way of the spirit.
That's the beauty of this relationship now. Why do you do the things that you do? That's the question. That's homework for you guys. Why do you do the things that you do? I think the answer to that will tell you where your heart is and your relationship with the father. Why do you do the things that you do? Is it out of fear or is it out of love and gratitude for the sacrifice that Jesus made for you?
My challenge to you is to move towards that motivation of fear, to an expression of your love for God and what he has done. Fear is based on the flesh. Love is based on the spirit. Because when you truly love God, you are going to want to do everything that pleases him, both on the inside and the outside. The scripture said, worship him in spirit and in truth. Get this; the truth is you can't fool God. The truth, worship him in truth means that you fully understand who God is. As you truly understand who God is, you know that he is not going to be fooled by your external appearance, because he is going to see right through that to see the motivation of your heart.
So even as we sometimes can be so difficult on ourselves, we beat ourselves up way too much, and in turn, we beat other people up way too much; allow God to be God in your life and in the life of others. As we examine where our hearts are, my prayer today is that Lord, you will continually clean the inside of our cup, so that our outward and our inward match, and that matching bears the image of Christ.
Even in your disciplines, Lord, there is love. Even in your correction, there is love. Because God, the father wants more than just to change the behavior. He wants to change your heart and mind concerning anything that's not right for you. Because behavior can change for a day or two, but when your heart has changed, it's changed forever. A mindset has changed forever. Lord, I thank you, that you are a great God. I thank you that you care about us so much that you want us to be whole beings, perfect in every way.
So I pray for your people today. I pray that as they continue their journey with you, that they will be on that journey of being perfect and perfected by you through your spirit. But I also ask a prayer for us, Lord, any place in our heart that still seems to be tainted in our relationship with other people that you will create in us a clean heart, Lord, a new heart, and allow us to see people as you do. Give us the word Lord to speak to those that are wayward to those that are hurting, to those that are sick, to those that need comfort, to those that need direction, to those that need correction. Holy spirit, guide us in our words, in our actions, so that we can draw them not to us, but to you, not how we would want them to be, but how you have called them to be. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
And I bless everyone here in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. I pray that you go in, God's love, in the heart of God and that you go with his peace in Jesus name.
TaQuaris: Have a wonderful, spirit-filled week.
Robert: Amen. God bless.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 2-6-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.