Word & Spirit

(Title Slide) Gooding Morning, welcome.

We’re gonna do a quick review before we get into our text for this morning.

If you’ll remember from last week, we kicked off a new series focusing in one Identity, and we’re seeking to answer the question who does the Bible say we are as individuals and as a Church family. As we said, we’re taking aim at the core targets of Crossroads Church in regards to who we are, and who we will strive to be.

And we said that first and foremost we are what? I’ll invite you to read it with on the screen, we said that:

We are a people who will seek to become more like Jesus in how we think, speak and act!

Yeah, this is who we are this is who we can be. Right? We can grow in our maturity and Christ-likeness because Jesus came and Jesus died and Jesus raised!

Right!? BC — before Christ — we were dead in our sin, but because of Christ and His resurrection we too can be raised with him into new life as new creatures with a new nature, that is we can now think, speak, and act like Jesus more and more in this life and upon our death or His return we will be made like Him. This is true and we know it’s true because God has told us as much in countless places. (1 John 3:2, 1 Cor. 15, Romans 8:29, 2 Cor. 3:18, Phil. 3:20-21, Col. 3:10). I’d encourage you to jot down the references I’m sharing here. It’s not even close to complete or all encompassing, but these passage and their surrounding context teach that we as a people can become more like Jesus and will one day be raise to new life where we will conform to His image in fullness.

Now as we mentioned last week, this growing in Maturity, living as equipped and empowered people seeking to become more like Jesus in how we think, speak and act, although its possible, it isn’t always neat and tidy. In reality, it’s quite difficult.

Life has a way of creating sticky situations for us, doesn’t it?

And if you were last week, I mentioned that there are lots of ways that we can try to navigate these things. And, especially in this season in our country, politics sort of comes to the forefront of everyone’s mind. When it comes to thinking, speaking and acting, politics and the platforms of each party sort of float to the top of our consciences and dialogues and if we’re not careful we can become more concerned in becoming people who think, speak and act more like an American or a Republican or a Democrat rather than keeping Jesus as our complete and full standard of holiness and righteousness.

That’s a problem. We all know it and see it, but my question for you this morning is how do we avoid it! If we take aim at and believe that we are a people who can become more like Jesus in how we speak, think and act, the followup is, how? How do we go about doing this?

Jesus has equipped us and empowered us through his work on the cross and in His resurrection, but how do we partner with Him in walking out His work in our lives.

How to we navigate this process of growing into the fullness of Christ?

I submit to you that we do it by taking aim at another ring on the target so to speak, that we aim at being a people who are guided by the Holy Spirit and the Bible!

And I thought there was not better way to make the case for this core identity and value than for us to examine the life of Jesus and how He navigated just such a sticky situation presented from some philosophers and theologians of His day, the Sadducees.

Turn with me to Matthew 22:23-33. As you’re turning there, keep and ear open and I’ll set the context for you.

This passage is placed in the book of Matthew in the midst of several interactions Jesus has at the Temple in Jerusalem with the religious leaders and the crowds.

There’s been a few debates going on recently, so this won’t be hard for you to picture and honestly don’t think it’s too far off of what is going on between Jesus and the religious-political parties of the day.

I want you to picture that! Jesus isn’t running for President but He is making a case for God’s Kingdom with Himself as it’s King and He’s not making this case in a vacuum. There are Romans around, Their are Jews around, and within the Jewish culture, there are factions and politic parties and power structures.

All of this was sort of centered at the Temple in Jerusalem. So back in Matthew 21:23, we see that Jesus enters into that debate stage and a debate is precisely what He gets!

The power players of the day all take a pass at Jesus, and you’re welcome to go read how they try to trap Him. And you definitely should. It’s amazing reading. I shouldn’t for the sake of time, but I can’t help myself. In Mt. 22:15, the Pharisees come and try to trap Jesus on the issue of taxes! It’s such a clever gotcha setup. They bring in some big wigs from the gov’t. It wasn’t IRS agents but you can think of like they. They bring the IRS with them and then ask Jesus, hey JC, what do you think about paying taxes to our Roman overloads as Jews?

Now if Jesus were a politician seeking to win an election how would he answer this question. He needs the backing of Rome to actually get power, but he also needs the favor of His Jewish constituents who hate Rome and their oppressive taxes.

But Jesus ain’t running for political office, He’s there to proclaim the truth, He’s already the King over life and death and He’s the author of wisdom itself.

So what does Jesus do, He invites the Pharisees to show Him a coin. He says who’s image is on that coin?

Take out a dollar… who’s image is that thing… Washington. And he says you give to Caesar give to Washington what belongs to Washington!

And then watch this… who’s image is on the coin…well give to Washington what belongs to Washington and then He probes deeper to the heart! Remember what Hamblin said when He was here, JC always cuts straight to the heart… he asks a follow up question… who’s image is on you!

Who’s image is on you Pharisee? Who’s image is on you Church, well then you give to God what belongs to God!

OOOOOO you try to trap Jesus!!! You can’t do it! Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God! What an answer!

So Good! But that’s not our text… I actually want look at a different interaction Jesus has with a different political party in His day, the Sadduccees.

I’ve made this comparison before and it’s not exactly a direct or maybe even fair comparison. And while It’s not an exact crossover, I don’t think it’s completely out of line to think of the Pharisees as the conservative party and the Sadduccees as the liberal party of the day within Judaism.

And before you get torqued off at me, I want you to know that Jesus did not approve of either entirely! He didn’t reject either out right, but simply made the case that neither was fully informed on God’s Kingdom! Neither was meeting His standard!

In a lot of ways both these party’s and both of our current party's today fail because they are too worldly and don’t keep Jesus at the center of all things! The same could be said here.

Jesus was rightly inviting them to put Him at the center, and spoiler alert, they killed Him for it!

Church, do not be surprised if you choose not to be forced into the 2 parties, don’t be surprised if you to take heat from both sides for doing so! If it happened to Jesus, we as His followers should expect nothing less. Also, we as his followers, should follow Jesus in His courage to stand against country and against party when Jesus and His standards are not made to be at the center, come what may!

So back to the picture at hand.

The important religious and church workers of the day are gathered around Jesus and the other lay people and parishioners are listening in to their debate.

Throughout the whole book of Matthew, Jesus has been gaining more notoriety before the people because He teaches with authority and he’s been doing crazy miraculous stuff. Healing blind people, stopping storms with a word, feeding thousands with nothing more than a lunchable. The dudes on fire. The people are excited and the religious leaders of the day are terrified because Jesus’ teaching is upending the status quo and the order of the day, a societal order they quite like, because they’ve made it to the top. Right, started from the bottom and the religious leaders, well now they up here! The top!

And now in Matthew 22:23, we’re introduced to the Sadduccees and we’re told right there in vs. 23, that the Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection. They thought you only lived once and then that was it. YOLO. When you die, you gone! Bye, bye, see you later.

They believed this because they only trusted the first 5 books of the Bible. Even though they had access to the Psalms and wisdom literature as well as the books of the prophets, they didn’t think those books were authoritative and they claimed that since no case could be made for the resurrection from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers or Deuteronomy well then there was no such thing!

The Pharisees disagreed and as it turns out so did Jesus as we shall see.

Nevertheless, because the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection and thought very confidently that they were right, they came to Jesus with a typical debate tactic… offer up the absurd! Pose a question that is just so preposterous no one could readily answer it with an amount of credibility.

Look at it with me. Matthew 22:23-28

Matthew 22:23–28 (NIV)

23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 24 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27 Finally, the woman died. 28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”

Hmmm. Got’eeeem… right. That’s a sticky one. Remember what we said. Life has a way of putting us in these sticky quandaries. How do we navigate them? How do we become more like Jesus in how we think, speak and act?

How does Jesus do it here?

The Sadduccees pose to Jesus something that just seems so absurd to them. There’s a woman, she’s married 7 times to 7 different brothers following a law put into practice in Genesis 38:8, and codified in Deuteronomy 25:5-6. There’s this woman who followed God’s law, married 7 brothers and now she dies. Who’s wife is she in the after life they want to know?

Perposterous? Right?

Now before we get to Jesus’ response, please notice what they are doing. They are student’s of scripture or at least part of scripture and the law they are talking about is actually something that God did command, but then they extrapolate things out from there to support their own interpretations and the ideologies of their party.

As Jesus is going to point out, because they’ve been locked into a party way of thinking, and because they don’t have the Holy Spirit, they’ve missed what was starring them right in the face the whole time! The Resurrection is so incredibly obvious in the scriptures, but they failed to see it because they were so aligned with their party and it’s ideology that they could see God when He was standing right across from them! Anything that didn’t follow the party line was absurd!

Now, before we look at how Jesus did respond, let’s consider how the Pharisees would’ve responded. The Pharisees probably had had arguments with these folks about the resurrection! They probably had shouted at each other before and posted on each others social feeds really kind and uplifting messages back and forth to each other! Right.

The Pharisees had their own ideologies and talking points from their party. The Pharisees believed in and read the rest of the Old Testament and one could image that this was their main argument when they faced off with the Sadducee! Why don’t you guys read the rest of the book! What are you stupid?

If you would just turn to Daniel 12:2 it explicitly states that “2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.” The Resurrection is all over the Old Testament, but you jokers cut out more than half of the book!

But as you can see from the fact that the Sadducees are still pressing the point with Jesus, the Pharisees hadn’t made much head way in convincing them otherwise!

Jesus doesn’t press this point with them. He doesn’t say, well if you just would read the rest of the book, you’d see the Resurrection is all over the place! This is a non-starter for the Sadducees and so Jesus doesn’t start there, rather He starts with where they are!

Which is a great evangelistic point. If people don’t believe in God or the Bible, starting off in sharing your faith with them, isn’t usually helpful to quote Bible verses at them because they don’t believe in the Bible, so you’ve got to start in conversation with them where they actually are, but that’s for a different message.

So Jesus could have sided with the Pharisees and went after Sadducees with their party slogans and talking points, which weren’t entirely off base I’ll add, but Jesus doesn’t do that. Jesus knows it’s a none-starter. These folks don’t respect the other books of the Bible as authoritative.

So instead Jesus meets them where they are and He challenges their assumptions and their interpretations of the Scriptures as they see them.

Matthew 22:29–32 (NIV)

29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

Now, Jesus wasn’t being soft here. I mean he engages them on their turf for sure, but let us not misconstrue things. Jesus is getting after them. He comes out swinging verbally.

You guys think you know the scriptures… and they did. The Sadducees were no dummies, they prided themselves on knowing and applying the Law of God from the 1st 5 books! Honestly most of these guys probably had the 1st 5 books memorized. Just memorizing the book of Leviticus alone would be impressive, but Gensis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy! That’s impressive! These guys were students of the text, but Jesus challenges them quite directly and comes out swinging. He says to these scholars and lawyer types: you don’t know the Scriptures or the power of God!

Then Jesus makes 2 authoritative statements.

There will not be marriage in the Resurrection and

People will be remade like angels! We won’t become angels but we will be like them in the fact that they aren’t married and don’t procreate.

Which is another barb as the Sadducees didn’t believe that angels existed. Imagine your these guys for a second. You ask Jesus a question you think is absurd and he’s like well there isn’t marriage in heaven because humans will become more like angels, you know the beings you don’t believe exist! Which I’m sure just stopped them in their tracks but then watch this, He uses the scriptures these guys respect to make His case!

And then He comes at them again! Haven’t you read what God has said to you through Moses!? These guys loved Moses! Moses was the guy! Jesus says From Exodus, a book they respected, He quotes Exodus 3:6

Exodus 3:6 (NIV)

6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

He uses their logic and their literal interpretation of scripture to teach them the truth!

Look at the verbs tenses here Jesus is saying… you guys are word wranglers, the whole reason you don’t believe in angels and spirits is because you take the very literal meaning of the word messenger! Well what about this verse Jesus says… Look at what God says to Moses. He says He’s the god of the Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In the present tense, as in Abe, and Isaac, and Jake they’re alive! Their alive and God says He’s their God currently! So where are they or how could God say that if there was no such thing as resurrection!

Jesus shows them to be in error! He says, They don’t know the word or the power of God! Resurrection is real! And before we move on, let me just say with Paul, praise God for that! If there was no such thing as Resurrection, we as Christians should be pitied above all else (1 Cor. 15:12-15). Jesus here teaches there is and His own Resurrection puts an exclamation point on it, but that’s not necessarily our focus for the morning.

I want to get back to the target we’re taking aim at this morning.

How does this passage connect with the target of being guided by the spirit and the Bible?

The first thing I want to point out is that Jesus places a high view on both of these things. He seeks to correct the Sadducees by pointing out they don’t know God’s word, the Scriptures or the power of God, The Holy Spirit!

If I were be so bold as to paraphrase Jesus, I think we could say Jesus says to the Sadducees your aren’t guided by the word or the Spirit!

And we know they took offense to this because the crucified Jesus but Church Jesus was right!

As educated as these people were. I guarantee you their knowledge of the Bible far surpasses most of our knowledge in this room. Chances are they could’ve quoted verbatim most or all of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy from memory!

That’s impressive! But even though they read the words they didn’t really understand them!

Part of the problem was that they didn’t read or study the whole counsel of God. Right, they cut out most of the old Testament, they only read and studied the 1st five books! And that’s a problem!

God’s word is the objective standard but if we chop parts out of it, we will fall into error!

Scripture is meant to interpreted scriptures and if you don’t have all of the scripture, you’re interpretation is going to inevitably be off somewhere, maybe in even very pivotal places, like in this issue with denying the resurrection of the dead! That’s a big problem. One could argue they wouldn't have had that problem if they would’ve kept reading.

The reality is we need God’s word, all of it. We need to study it and memorize it and teach it and consult it. We need to allow it to be the bedrock of lives and our objective authority in all things or we’re going to get off base!

Just like these jokers. They allowed their party and their crowd to set their standards rather than God’s word, the whole counsel of it, and so they got off base!

But while it’s true that the word of God, the Bible, is and should be our guide, I also need you to hear me say it’s not enough!

Without the Spirit of Jesus, there is no power in the word of God! And the Pharisees show us that!

Without the Spirit’s help you won’t know how to interpret, apply or understand what you read!

And even more you won’t know when to speak up or when to hold your tongue!

To be guided through the sticky situations of life, we need God’s word and His Spirit!

Jesus’ interaction here shows us the truth of this. He knew the word and was guided by the Spirit which made him so incredibly powerful! Look at the wisdom He displays here! It’s supernatural! It’s Spirit empowered and guided! There are a lot of ways He could’ve addressed this issue and the issue of taxes, but Jesus shows us that with the Spirit’s guidance we can wield the sword of the Spirit, that is the Word of God, just like Jesus! And it will be crowd stopping!

Look at the text!

Matthew 22:33 (NIV)

33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.

Church we do not follow a cold, dead, religious rule book. We follow the risen Christ, who has show us what he’s like in the Book and sent His Spirit to us so that we might receive personal application and encouragement on how to wield his word and live it out in our daily lives!

To think, speak and act more like Jesus we have to know His Word and learn to Listen and follow His Spirit!

One without the other will no do! Why?

Well, as good as the Bible is and as deep as it is, and as important as it is, you know this, there is not a chapter and verse for every situation of life. Right, there isn’t a code or rote rule for every situation that we come across, from parenting to sharing our faith to navigating the work place with integrity! We can’t just say here’s my situation, and then turn to a chapter or verse that says well if you’re in this situation here’s what you should do exactly! It takes more than a list of rules to live like Jesus in this life! It takes a relationship with Him through His Spirit!

But that relationship, because Jesus isn’t standing right across from us and because learning to listen to the Spirit is a subjective and difficult process, we need the Word to keep us on track!

We need to learn Christ's chracter through his word objectively so that when we feel or hear things from His Spirit more subjectively we have a means of testing what we sense, hear or feel! The Word is our objective Standard and then the Spirit helps us apply it and interpret it and live it out in more subjective and personal ways!

Perhaps you’ve been a part of a Church that has one without the other.

There are churches that error in both ways on this. Some major on being guided only by the Word and they don’t give any credence to what they might call the subjectivity of the Spirit’s leading in a believers life. Often times these places have a lot of smart Bible thumpers who live mostly devoid of God’s power in their life.

And their are others who error in the opposite direction. They only “live by the Spirit” and they’re weird in ways God never meant for us to be weird and a lot of times are swept up into unsound doctrine and ultimately demonic things. They only give credit to supernatural signs and wonder and utterances of tongues and almost seem to down play God’s word! They even try to add to God’s word sometimes with “new revelation”, which is forbidden in the book of Revelations!

And we don’t want to be either of those churches, rather we want to walk in the wisdom of both. We need both. God’s word keeps up the guardrails to keep things orderly and it gives us as standard to test the spirit or spirits against!

We know God will never contradict Himself, so if someone comes to you and says, the Spirit told me that you should divorce your wife, we know immediately that that ain’ the Spirit of Jesus speaking because in His book we read that God hates divorce among many other things the Bible teaches about redemption, forgiveness, grace and reconciliation!

So we need the guardrails and Scripture gives us that, but we also need to recognize that we don’t follow a dead book, but we worship a risen King! A King who has entered in to relationship with us and if we’ll listen, He will guide us often times very specifically beyond just a chapter and verse or more likely He reminds of just such a chapter and verse that applies to our exact situation!

I was talking with my wife about this back and forth between the Spirit and the Word and she gave me the ipod illustration. Remember the ipod you had to load with music. You could only play the songs you had load on the ipod. This is how the Spirit works, We work to get the Word loaded into our hearts and minds through study and memorization and then the Spirit works to play those “songs” as we go through our lives. The more we load into the ipod, the bigger the playlist the Spirit has to work with!

Now why are we aiming to be a people guided by the Bible and the Holy Spirit? Because it’s crowd stopping!

Look at the text v. 33

Matthew 22:33 (NIV)

33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.

Bible teaching devoid of the spirit is boring. It will put you to sleep and be useless for you life, but Bible teaching empowered by the Spirit, well that will stop you in your tracks won’t it!

This is what we want Church! We want to be a Church who stands on the Bible and applies it with the power of the Spirit to heal and prophesy and redeem and help the lost get found and the found live free!

We are a people who: Are guided by the Holy Spirit and the Bible.

Look at your neighbor and point at them… tell them, I’m gonna hold you to that!

Pray.