Secrets Unsealed

What Jesus Said

Stephen Bohr

1. The Word of God

2. The Unconditional Love of God

3. How Jesus Understood His Self Identity

4. Good and Evil

5. Moses and Jesus

6. Overcoming Life’s Mistakes

7. How to Pray

8. Family Values

9. Relief From Stress

10. History’s Greatest Hoax

11. Holy Spirit Baptism

12. Life and Death

13. Peace in the Middle East

14. The Rapture of the Saints

15. The Final Judgment

16. The End of Evil

17. The Secrets of Health and Wealth

18. The Return of Elijah

19. Religion and Politics

20. The Abomination of Desolation

21. The Unpardonable Sin

22. Prophets and Psychics

Tonight, the subject that we're going to study is very appropriate for the time that we're living in.

We're going to talk about what Jesus said regarding religion and politics.

And what we want to do is trace the life of Jesus and the conflicts, the controversies that he had both with church and state because the scenes that Jesus went through are the very scenes that his people are going to go through at the end of time.

So if we know how the life of Jesus developed and how it culminated, we'll know exactly the situation that God's people will go through also in these last days.

I'd like to begin by turning in my Bible to Luke chapter 4, and I invite you to go there with me, Luke chapter 4 and verses 16 to 21.

This is the beginning of the ministry of Jesus, And Jesus is going to proclaim his agenda, what his agenda is all about.

By the way, at his baptism, the Holy Spirit has been poured out without measure, and this is going to give Jesus power to preach and power to perform great signs and wonders.

It says there in Luke 4, verse 16, so he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up.

And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read.

And he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah.

And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of the sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

Then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down.

And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him.

And he began to say to them, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

And then of course the Bible tells us that Jesus went out and he taught with power and he performed signs and wonders through the power of the Holy Spirit which he had received at the moment of his baptism.

Now because of the power of the Holy Spirit in his preaching and in the signs that he performed the Bible tells us that multitudes started following Jesus.

Notice Matthew chapter 4 and verse 25 on this point.

When Jesus begins to fulfill his agenda that he had announced at the synagogue in Nazareth, we find that multitudes catch the Spirit and they start following Him.

Matthew 4 and verse 25, it says, and great multitudes followed Him from Galilee and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.

Multitudes of people following Jesus, hungry for the word of God, and hungry for miracles that Jesus performed in the healing of the sick and the casting out of demons.

But this popularity of Jesus very soon got him into deep trouble with the hierarchy, with the establishment, with the religious leaders of his day.

It's a sobering fact, folks, that as you read the Gospels, you discover that the very people who professed to be the people of God, the very people who professed to be expecting the Messiah, The very people who professed to be expecting the Messiah, the very people who professed to be living the religion of the Bible were the ones who fulfilled prophecy in destroying the Messiah.

Now I want you to notice some of the texts that speak about the trouble that Jesus got in and why he got into trouble.

We've read this a long time ago in our lectures but now we want to read it again.

By the way, this is right after Jesus has given the parable of the man who built his house upon the rock and the man who built his house upon the sand.

You remember that the man who built his house upon the rock and the man who built his house upon the sand.

You remember that the man who built his house upon the rock represents those who hear the word of Jesus and do it.

Now the multitudes loved to sit and listen to Jesus, but they didn't like to listen to the scribes.

And so it was when Jesus had ended these sayings that the people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as 1 having authority and not as the scribes.

So the scribes began losing their authority Because instead of teaching the word of God, what they did was teach the traditions of men.

You see, what gives power in preaching is not the preacher.

What gives Power in the preaching is the holy word of God.

Where the word is preached, there is power.

Where human beings simply speak their own opinions, there is no power.

And that was the problem with the scribes.

Jesus always said it is written and therefore his teaching was with authority and with power.

Constantly the religious leaders were asking Jesus where he got his authority from.

Notice what it says in Mark chapter 11, Mark chapter 11, and let's read verses 27 and 28.

Then they came again to Jerusalem, and as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, those were, we would call them today pastors, The scribes, today we would call them the theologians, and the elders, we would call them the church administrators, came to him and they said to him, by what authority are you doing these things?

And who gave you this authority to do these things?

The reason why they asked Jesus that question is because Jesus had not studied in the schools of the rabbis.

So they want to know which rabbi did you study with which would give you authority to teach these things.

Now let's go to Matthew Chapter 23 and verse 2 and take a closer look at this idea of authority according to the scribes and the Pharisees.

And what I want you to notice is that Jesus is in constant conflict with the religious leaders over the question of authority to teach.

Notice Matthew chapter 23 and let's read verse 1 and verse 2.

Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples, saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit where?

Now I need to stop there for a minute and explain to you what Moses' seat is.

See, this is a technical term in the days of Christ.

Moses' seat, by the way, the Greek word here is cathedra.

That means he speaks from his throne, and his papal throne gives him what?

And so in the times of Christ, the Bible says that the scribes and the Pharisees sat on Moses' seat.

This supposedly gave them authority to teach.

Now, what does this mean, sitting on Moses' seat?

You see, in Mark, chapter 7, if you'll go there with me, Mark, chapter 7, which we've already studied in another context, we notice that the Jews in the times of Christ had a very unique view of tradition.

They believed that God at Mount Sinai had revealed to Moses, of course, the 5 books that we find in what is known as the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

But they also believe that at Mount Sinai, God had given Moses many oral traditions which were only spoken to Moses, and Moses transmitted these teachings to the elders in his day.

Those elders transmitted it to their successors, their successors transmitted it to their successors, and so on successively until the days of Christ.

This was a type of what you might call apostolic succession.

And I'd like to read from the book by the Jewish scholar, Marcel Simon, Jewish sects at the time of Jesus, he describes this.

He says, an oral law was revealed to Moses along with the written law, And this oral law was faithfully transmitted from generation to generation.

The rabbinical treatise, Aboth, which means the fathers, formulates this Pharisaic theory of tradition and retraces the unbroken chain which, beginning with the lawgiver, linked each succeeding generation of doctors.

And then Marcel Simon quotes from a Jewish source, Aboth chapter 1 and verse 1, and here's the quote.

Moses received the law from Sinai and committed it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, And the prophets committed it to the men of the great synagogue.

In other words, the idea was that not only did people need to live by the written word of God given to Moses, but they needed to live in harmony with the traditions which supposedly had been given orally to Moses, transmitted by a succession of scholars from generation to generation, all the way to the times of Christ.

Of course, Christ rejected this idea of oral tradition.

In fact, he rejected the traditions of the scribes and the Pharisees.

We remember that we studied Mark chapter 7.

For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in a special way, holding what?

And then verse 4, once again, has the same idea.

When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash.

And there are many other things which they have what?

There you have the process of transmission once again.

Verse 5, then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders?

Notice verse 13, making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have what handed down.

There you have the technical terminology, handed down and many such things you do.

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What Jesus Said

19. Religion and Politics

Transcript

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