Sermon Tone Analysis

Remembering the Fundamentals of Faith

By Jason Self

Introduction

Pastor is with the FOP tonight for officer Woods memorial service so he asked me to speak.

He wants to spend Sunday evenings in the month of January covering the Fundamentals of our faith, last week he spoke on taking the things of God seriously and asked tonight that I speak on remembering the fundamentals.

If I start and I ask to list the fundamentals of our faith it could likely go like this: We hold to the King James Bible, We don’t drink, We dress a conservatively, we are careful of the music that we listen to, We are careful of the television we watch and a list like this could go on and on.

We could go to the distinctives.

I think the old BAPTIST acrostic, this could be thought of as our fundamental beliefs: B is Biblical Authority, A is for the Autonomy of the local church, P is for the Priesthood of the Believer, T is for the Two Ordinances, I is for individual soul liberty, S is for saved church membership, T again is for Two Offices and S is the separation of church and state.

But again these are distinctives of Baptists and are not the fundamentals of our faith.

To consider things that focus on the outward, even these things that are right and true the fundamentals of our faith is an error.

It is an error that tells us that we put the fundamentals of our faith away from us because as it is always true, the things that are important to God are matters of the heart.

It is much more difficult to dwell on the matters of our heart than it is to focus on those things which are visibly evident.

Gone to seed, those things that are Baptist distinctives or characteristics of conservative Baptists may serve to make us arrogant in our religion, not much better than Pharisee’s save that we believe in Christ.

The true fundamentals of Christianity are humbling.

And as we go through them and consider them this morning they ought to be a thing that causes you to reflect on your heart not to look across the aisle to someone else.

The Fundamentals

Simply stated we find the fundamentals of our faith stated by our Lord Jesus Christ in the book of Matthew, Chapter 22 and in verses 35-40.

Please turn there with me.

35Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, 36Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

37Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38This is the first and great commandment.

39And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

I would focus first on what we read in this last verse.

40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

What are they: to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and to love thy neighbour as thyself.

If we could be faithful in just these two things we would be faithful in not just some of the law and prophets but all.

To delve deeper turn with me to verses 8-9 and for our text today we will look at the Apostle Paul’s explanation of the second great commandment and here we will get a deeper picture of the fundamentals of our Faith:

8Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

9For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Do not commit adultery

I am not excited that Paul started his list with the most difficult of these points to discuss.

He starts saying that to love one another “do not commit adultery”

Sexual Relationships outside of Marriage

To define it simply, all sexual relationships outside of the bounds of marriage is adultery.

You may have not forgotten this but it is clear that our world has.

This is a fundamental of our faith is so easily forgotten because the whole culture that we live in seems to be turned towards its violation.

Casual disregard for this commandment is rampant, and as we complain about it on our television and in the media of Hollywood we have to be honest with ourselves; art imitates culture, and what we see on the big screen is no more than a condemnation of the culture that produces it.

In its simplest form we remember this commandment and most don’t need a reminder of the violation.

Stepping out on a marriage is adultery.

Where we can run into troubles are in the details

Our Lord had to address these details:

In the Heart

27Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: 28But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

It is a familiar passage to you but the imperative is difficult today than in any time in History.

Images to induce the heart towards lust abound and the effort required to guard ones heart is greater than ever

Divorce is Adultery

The easiest detail of Adultery to forget is that Divorce is Adultery.

Preachers don’t like to preach on divorce because unfortunately we have so many people in our churches today who are divorced and this is a shame.

I never hear anyone say: We can’t preach on lying in our church because we may offend those who have lied or we can’t preach on murder in the church because we may offend those who murder.

But when it comes to adultery, Hmm.

I will make the position clear from 16For the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: For one covereth violence with his garment, saith the Lord of hosts: Therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.

God hates Divorce.

And Divorce is Adultery.

9And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery….

The bible is clear, divorce is adultery and there are very few situations where it is not: The cause of fornication as instructs or in the case where someone becomes and their unbelieving spouse leaves them.

15But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart.

A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.

Paul refers this as not being under bondage any longer.

What does he mean by bondage?

What is being overlooked here?

Well if we look up a couple of verses we can read what 10And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: 11But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.

A divorced person is not to be remarried, why because it is adultery for both parties if they are.

The person who was divorced commits adultery in remarriage and the person who married the divorced person commits adultery.

Because, though we like to forget this truth Jesus said in 18Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.

Do not Kill

The next fundamental on Paul’s list is that we do not kill.

And it’s hard to argue this one, but still…people do.

We need to remember that when Paul says Thou shalt not kill he is quoting the commandment as found in .

The word רָצַח ratsach in the Hebrew is more than just ending a life.

It is translated in other places murder, to strike dead, slaughter, pierced.

It is the difference as we would call it between murder and manslaughter or defence.

To quote one commentary:

The Hebrew word for murder literally means “the intentional premeditated killing of another person with malice”

This isn’t something accidental, this isn’t the result of soldiers in war and this isn’t self-defense or justice.

It is the result of malice in someone’s heart which is what we read in if you want to turn with me 15Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.

The act of murder is only the physical action of what is in the heart.

Just like when Jesus said in for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

It is also out of the abundance of the heart man murders.

But what does it mean to Hate?

What is this heart attitude that our bible says is akin to murder?

Μισέω miseō in the Greek.

To take Louw-Nida’s definition: It means to dislike strongly, with the implication of aversion and hostility.

A Philadelphia woman in her will instructed her executor to take one dollar from her estate, invest it and pay the interest on this investment to her husband, “as evidence of my estimate of his worth.”

Another woman—also from Philadelphia—bequeathed her divorced husband one dollar to buy a rope to hang himself.

We hear stories like that and think, wow, those women hated their husbands.

But the definition of hate is broader than that.

Who do we dislike strongly?

Who do we have and aversion to?

Who are we hostile with?

See we can harbor these attitudes and forget that what we are harboring is hate.

And we can forget that hate is murder and that 1 John, the book whose theme is the assurance of salvation tells us no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.

Do not Steal

The next item on Paul’s list as he quotes from the 10 commandments is Thou Shalt Not Steal.

And we won’t dwell on this one but what is Stealing?

Taking the property of someone else, secretly and without their permission.

In we are given the commandment but in Exodus 16And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.

A very clear condemnation of slavery that I can barely believe was overlooked in this country’s history.

But where I think we are most likely to violate this is where it comes to intellectual property.

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