Speaker critiques modern hermeneutics and cultural shifts, arguing that lawful oaths in marriage or court remain valid under the 1689 Confession if truthful and God-centered. He condemns manipulative interpretations of "neighbor" that evade moral duties to one's household while praising historic confessions over isolated biblical literalism. Ultimately, he asserts that Christians may serve in the military or testify legally, provided they reject globalist agendas and prioritize national submission to Christ over resource redistribution. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Why We Need Confessions00:10:36
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Amen.
Please join me in standing for the reading of God's Word.
We're continuing our series through the book of Matthew.
That is the gospel according to Matthew.
I've said before, I'll say it once more.
We do not have four gospels.
We have one gospel, and that's the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel of God.
But we do have this one gospel according to four different men inspired by the Holy Spirit.
So it's the technical sense.
It's not the gospel of Matthew, the gospel of John, the gospel of Mark and Luke, but it's the gospel of Jesus Christ according to Matthew, and according to Mark, and according to Luke, and according to John.
So, we have four different perspectives inspired by the Holy Spirit, human perspectives, but purified by the Holy Spirit so that they do not err in their accounts.
Four different human accounts inspired and protected by the Holy Spirit of one gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Our text for today is Matthew chapter 5, verses 33 through 37.
I'll say this as a bit of a preamble.
Just for the record, those of you who have been with us for a while, you know that we're just right on target and continue with our series through the gospel according to Matthew.
But those who may be joining us for the first time, just to assure you, One of the great protections that the Lord has graciously gifted me with is a fairly mediocre IQ.
In other words, even if I wanted to, I'm not quite smart enough to be as nefarious or sinister as a highly intelligent person would be capable of performing.
And so, with my gracious gift from the Lord of a 120 mediocre IQ, I couldn't plan some of the things that providentially play out, even if I tried.
And what I'm referencing specifically in the case of this morning is God's providence, not Joel's plan, but God's providence sometimes is so sweet that perhaps the best word that I could think of to describe it is delicious, a delicious providential gift.
And so, as you'll see in our text today, the main theme is the idea of oath taking or making vows.
And at first glance, it seems as though Jesus is.
Saying that his people should not make any vows at all.
But we all do this.
We do this in various contexts.
One example would be particularly a wedding ceremony.
We make vows to our bride, our bride makes vows to her groom.
And so it has been within Christian thought and tradition for centuries that it is appropriate, in fact, to make vows.
What Jesus is condemning is not the idea of making any vows at all, but rather making hasty vows.
Making a vow that is rash, that is hasty, that's foolish, vowing towards something that you ultimately cannot keep, or oftentimes making a vow that not only can you not keep, but that in a moral sense you find out later as you grow in wisdom that you should not actually keep.
And so this would include vows, for instance, that someone would make in a court of law, that they would be under oath, or vows that you would make.
Like I've already mentioned, in a wedding ceremony.
Or, for instance, vows that you would make, and this is strictly hypothetical, but if there was a theological and cultural statement that was composed by multiple ministers of the gospel, but contained multiple facets that aren't true to Scripture, that would also be a foolish vow.
So, let's begin.
Again, our text is Matthew 5, verses 33 37.
That's Matthew 5, verses 33 37.
The Bible says this.
Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.
But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.
And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.
Let what you say be simply yes or no.
Any more than this comes from evil.
This is the word of the Lord.
All right, please be seated and we will go ahead and begin.
I'm going to be using the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
That is the specific statement of doctrine that our church adheres to.
Again, if you're new to the church, as it pertains to our membership, what we have determined is that every member of the church, not an officer, An ordained officer, being a deacon or an elder, but every member, non ordained member, would have to subscribe and affirm a statement of faith.
But we have chosen, we think that it's prudent and wise to bifurcate instead of just one statement of faith for elders and deacons and members alike.
We have bifurcated and have two different statements of faith.
Neither is in contradiction to the other, but one is intentionally more broad or vague.
It's clear, but it's clear on what we would consider to be.
Top shelf theology.
In terms of theological triage, prioritization of what theological tenets are most important, it would merely be those primary theological truths, things pertaining to theology proper, that is, doctrine of God, things like the Trinity,
things like the hypostatic union, the idea that Jesus is both fully God and fully man, the dual nature of Christ, that we have one God who eternally exists in three persons.
And then within the second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ, within his one person, there are two natures, the divine nature and the human nature, that in the incarnation have been brought together, but without mixture, but also without being severed or completely divorced.
And that we do not have Jesus having two halves of two natures.
He's not half God and half man, but fully God and fully man.
So these are things that have been ironed out in the province of God throughout.
Church history very early on, within the first 500 years of church history, and Christians have affirmed these truths for over a millennium.
So these are non negotiable.
So, what we have done here at Covenant Bible Church is we have what we call our general statement of faith, and our general statement of faith, for the most part, simply follows a creed rather than a more specific confession.
So, our general statement of faith is creedal, and we have selected the Apostles' Creed, which we recite in our liturgy each Lord's Day.
As the particular creed that our general statement of faith follows.
And so, everyone who is a member of Covenant Bible Church must affirm Covenant Bible Church's general statement of faith, which is creedal by nature rather than confessional, following the Apostles' Creed.
For the officers, ordained officers of the church, those being deacons and elders, they must also affirm the general statement of faith, which follows the Apostles' Creed, but in addition to that, also affirm what we've considered or called our specific statement of doctrine.
So, general statement of faith.
Creedal, Apostles' Creed members.
Specific statement of doctrine, confessional, and we have selected the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, the 1689, as that specific statement of doctrine, that specific confession, and that needs to be recognized by the members of the church, but not necessarily affirmed.
So you can be a member of our church and disagree at certain parts of the 1689, say, Well, I don't necessarily prescribe to that, but there's still a general recognition from the membership, an affirmation of the Apostles' Creed, the general statement of faith, but a recognition of Of the specific statement of doctrine, namely the 1689, saying, I understand that this is a Reformed Baptist church.
I understand that, and I'm not here to turn it into something else.
If you feel a calling to a particular set of doctrines that our church doesn't hold, then we're simply asking that you recognize before you even enter that it would be better use of your effort and time to simply join a church that you already agree with rather than trying to lead a hostile takeover or something like that.
That's the purpose there.
But for again, the ordained officers, elders, and deacons, they're going to affirm the general statement of faith, Apostles' Creed, and in addition, the specific statement of doctrine, the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
So, all that being said, I have selected for our text today, by way of exegeting Jesus' words on vows and oaths, certain passages from the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
This is from chapter 23 that deals with oaths and vows, paragraph 1.
The 1689 says this A lawful oath is a part of religious worship, wherein the person swearing in truth, righteousness, and judgment solemnly calls God to witness what he swears and to judge him according to the truth or falseness thereof.
Now, this is an important point for us to understand from the outset as we're dealing with this topic of oaths.
Swearing Only by the Lord00:02:59
One of the things that Jesus condemns in oath taking or vow making.
Is making any vow or taking any oath where the person is swearing upon anyone or anything other than the Lord Himself.
That's one of the first things, clearly from our text, that the Lord Jesus condemns.
He condemns the idea of swearing by Jerusalem.
And He condemns the idea of swearing by the earth, or swearing even by heaven, or swearing even by the temple.
What Jesus is saying in our text today, with all these examples that I've just listed, Is that all of them, if they have any weight or merit whatsoever, it is only the weight and the merit that stems from God Himself.
Why is Jerusalem significant?
Because it is the city of the great king.
And that king, not being Saul or David or Solomon, but the great king, being the King of Kings Himself, the Lord Jesus.
Why is Jerusalem significant?
Because it's the city of Jesus, it's the city of our great Lord.
And just for the record, Jerusalem does not belong to the Muslims.
It also does not belong to the Jews.
It belongs to the Lord, and therefore it belongs to his people, to Christians.
And by God's grace, my prediction is not that a third temple would be mounted.
That's been attempted before by Judas the Apostate.
If you read that story, very interesting in history, Julius the Apostate.
What happened was that he commissioned different people to rebuild a third temple, and there were literally thunder and lightning that came from heaven and burnt the people up.
So, probably not a good idea.
The red heifers, you know, and blood moons and stuff.
Probably just leave that alone and don't put the Lord God to the test.
Don't anger him.
But I do believe that in Jerusalem there will be a structure built.
I do believe that.
It won't be a mosque and it won't be a Jewish temple.
I believe that by God's grace, eventually, it will be a glorious Christian cathedral and that Jerusalem will be a centerpiece of Christian civilization and worship where the Lord Jesus Christ and the triune God is worshiped in Jerusalem to the glory of God, saying that Jesus is the great king.
Okay, back to our main point now.
Jesus says, don't swear by Jerusalem.
Because if there's anything to swear by, what Jesus is implicitly getting at, it wouldn't be Jerusalem, the city, but it would be the great king of that city, the Lord.
Don't swear by heaven, because heaven is simply the throne of God.
And don't swear by the earth, for the earth is simply the footstool of God.
Don't swear by the temple, because the temple only has significance during this time period, because it's the place of worship of God.
Breaching God's Name in Vain00:05:55
And don't swear even by your own head because you can't make one hair black or white, but swear ultimately by the one who knits you in your mother's womb and has numbered the hairs on your head.
Swear by your Creator, that is God.
So, in every single example that the Lord Jesus gives, notice that on the face, on the surface of our text, it's very easy to take away that Jesus is simply in a broad brush condemning all swearing, all oath taking, all vows altogether.
But by closer look, He's not saying that there's no oath that could be possibly righteous at all, but the particular kinds of oaths that Jesus is condemning is one, oaths that break the ninth commandment.
That would be oaths that are not truthful.
Those who take an oath and then break it.
And that could be one of two ways.
That could be taking an oath towards something that's true, but then you failing and ultimately doing something that's false, betraying a true oath.
So you actually made a good oath, but you didn't live up to it.
That would be sin.
That's an oath that Jesus would condemn.
Another example would be in the reverse taking an oath that was rash, like I mentioned earlier from the outset of the sermon, swearing to something false, giving a vow towards something false, and then in God's mercy and sanctification, you ultimately, in the final analysis, prove to be true, but your truthfulness then forces you to break a false oath.
So you can take a true oath, but be a false person.
Or you can make a false oath and be a true person.
And so both would be wrong to hastily enter into a good oath, but as a bad man who's not prepared to keep that oath, or a bad oath as a good man who simply missed it and was ignorant or unwise, and then later realized I have to break this oath because keeping this oath would require me to sin or to do something false.
So that's the first thing Jesus is condemning oaths that would be sinful on the basis of a breach of the ninth commandment.
The ninth commandment being.
Do not bear false witness.
Don't lie.
So that's the first instance.
The second, as we'll see later in 1689, is that another kind of oath that the Lord Jesus forbids is an oath that would break the third commandment.
So, an oath that would be a false oath that would require you, if you are to be a truthful man, to break, or a true oath, but you do it presumptuously and you're not a good enough man to keep the oath.
And so, both of those would be examples of breaching the ninth commandment.
Which is bearing false witness, deceit, lies.
And then also, there's the instance of breaking the third commandment, which is do not take the Lord's name in vain.
And these are the examples that Jesus is listing in our text.
By swearing by anyone or anything other than God Himself, that is, well, that's deifying and giving credence to something other than God as actually being capable of holding you to your vows.
Jerusalem can't hold you to your vows.
The whole earth can't hold you to your vows.
Heaven can't hold you to.
Only the Lord can.
Jesus Christ, the triune God, the Lord of the conscience, the Lord of all men, King of all kings, he's the only one who's worth swearing by.
So, swearing by something other than Jesus is petty, and in some sense, could even be made that that would be a breach of the first and perhaps even second commandment to love something or to attribute to something or someone other than the Lord a deifying characteristic.
The first commandment have no other gods before me.
You can't treat Jerusalem as a God.
You can't treat the earth or heaven or the hair on your head as a God or the temple as a God.
So you can't breach the first commandment by swearing by something other than the Lord because it's, in a sense, deifying something other than the Lord.
That, you know, this will have the power to hold me and bind me to my oath.
Well, no, it won't.
Only the Lord has that power.
So to swear by something other than God, Is, in a sense, deifying that something and therefore a breach of the first commandment.
And in some sense, if you try to materialize and make visible that other thing that you're swearing by, then you could even make a theological argument that it's a breach of the second commandment.
And then to swear by God, which would be right, but to swear by God, but to make a vow that's petty or false or muddled, well, that would be swearing by the right person, swearing by God, the only person that could ever.
Ever be sworn by, but swearing with something trivial, something trite, something false or muddy, and so that would be taking the Lord's name in vain.
So to swear by anything other than God, breach of the first and second commandment.
To swear by God, but to swear or vow to something that's not really worthy of a vow, not really worthy of your allegiance or your oath, well, that would be a breach of the third commandment, taking the Lord's name in vain.
And to swear by something true, but to live in a way that's false, would be a breach of the ninth commandment, bearing false witness, or to swear by something that's false, and then ultimately, in God's providence, become a man who's true, and therefore, by necessity, having to break that oath, because it was made rashly and presumptuously in the first place, would also be a breach of the ninth commandment, not to bear false witness, not to lie.
The Heresy of Biblicism00:15:59
And this is the idea that the 1689 and the Westminster bear out our Reformed confessional fathers as they worked through texts like ours today.
And this has been held by Christian tradition within the Reformed tradition for 500 years, and largely, even more largely, beyond merely the Reformed tradition, within Eastern Orthodox traditions and Roman Catholic traditions.
This has been the majority report of the Christian faith for a millennium.
So, this is why we don't want to be, I'll use a term here that perhaps you're familiar with and perhaps you're not, but this is why we don't want to be biblicist.
Now, I remember when I was in my 20s and I came into Reformed theology and I adopted the five points of Calvinism, the doctrines of grace, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, or particular redemption if you want to church it up.
But limited atonement will do just fine.
If people are offended, well, you're wrong.
And then, you know, going on, irresistible grace and perseverance of all saints.
And I came into that, and like every young man in his 20s, you know, I came into it, and, you know, within 15 minutes, I was, of course, A self professed expert, and anybody who didn't believe what I have now held ferociously to for a week and a half, I made it my mission to prove how wrong they were.
And that's kind of the way that a lot of times young men operate, and certainly the way that I operated when it came to the doctrines of grace.
But my point in saying that is it wasn't until later in life that I became more largely reformed in a robust and well rounded manner, and not just adopting the five.
Tenets of Calvinism or the five doctrines of grace, but coming to see the broader Reformed tradition, and that there's more, although justification by faith alone is what I would consider to be the linchpin or the heart of the gospel, there are still more important things, not more than the gospel, but additional important things that Christians must believe.
The Bible is a big book, it's a collection of 66 books written over the course of 1500 years by 40 human authors, all inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the central message is the gospel.
But far more is contained.
And Christians should not be theological minimalists, but rather we should be theological maximalists.
We should be pushing our doctrine all the way out into the margins, all the way out to the edges.
We should have a robust theological Christian faith on more than just the gospel of Jesus Christ, never less, but more.
And that includes certain things like oath taking.
And so, all that being said, when I first came into the doctrines of grace, and I knew, you know, I started coming out of my cage stage.
And I realized, well, a lot of people just don't like the terminology, right?
It's, you know, certain words.
You know, it's the same thing with biblical gender roles, right?
So, patriarchy.
There's a lot of guys who say, well, patriarchy, it's just, it has a negative connotation and people don't like it.
And my, you know, I think one of the things that should be considered there is, well, is this word not liked because it actually conveys something sinful or it contains something sinful?
Or is it not liked because the culture in our modern era, Is sinful and therefore kicking against the goats.
And I've determined that when it comes to a word like patriarchy, it's not that patriarchy is inherently sinful, but that our current culture is inherently feminist and therefore doesn't like patriarchy.
So I have decided to use the word even more because it gets precisely the kind of reaction that I think is necessary.
Sometimes, I've said this before, but there's a difference between charity and ambiguity.
A difference between charity and ambiguity.
Sometimes we think that we're being charitable, but really we're being vague.
And sometimes you can avoid an offense, but you didn't avoid the offense by being loving and charitable.
You avoided the offense by being unclear.
You know, you knew what you were getting at, and a few of your followers, you know, they got the wink and the nod.
They heard the patriarchy dog whistle, but you did it in such a way that when it comes to your opponents, they're not quite as angry at you, but it's not because you were more loving than some other patriarchal guy.
It's actually because you were more ambiguous.
And that's not loving, that's actually deceit.
There's actually a problem with that.
So back to Calvinism, coming into the doctrines of grace, you know, there was a season there where I was in the cage stage, and then there was a season where I think I backtracked too far, where I tried to overcompensate for my prior cage stage years.
And I started thinking, well, I'm not going to use the word Calvinist.
I'll use the word Biblicist.
I'm not a Calvinist.
I'm a Biblicist.
I just believe the Bible, you know, and the Bible does point towards Calvinism, you know, so I got you now.
But it wasn't until even later that I began to realize that Biblicism actually is.
A doctrine of sorts, and it's actually a heresy.
Which sounds funny, right?
Because it's like, biblicists, that sounds like a good thing, right?
You just believe the Bible.
But biblicism, if you look throughout the Reformed tradition, the idea of biblicism is a particular hermeneutic, that is, a way of reading and interpreting the scripture that causes you to come to the plainest and simplest interpretation of each and every passage that you possibly could.
But there are various instances where the plainest reading of the text doesn't turn out in the final analysis to be the truest reading of the text.
So you could read a text and say, well, on its face it says X, Y, Z.
And so I'm going to take the literal interpretation and miss ultimately some of the typological and analogical meanings that the Lord actually baked into the text that we should understand and believe.
And so, when it comes to our hermeneutic, again, that's simply the way we read Scripture and interpret it.
I eventually, as I got older, and hopefully by God's grace a little wiser, adopted never less than a literal reading.
So, when I look at the words of Christ, when I look at the Bible as a whole, I am looking at it through a literal lens.
But I've opted for a literal, historical, grammatical, and typological reading of the text.
Literal, historical, grammatical, and typological reading of the text.
And you might say, well, I don't know.
The typological piece, that seems to kind of lower the defense measures that would allow some funny business to creep into the church.
That's where you can get cute with the text.
And you can take that typological piece of your hermeneutic and begin to symbolize, use symbology and these kinds of things, and you can apply that to.
Virtually everything in the Bible, and that's where you get LGBT affirming pastors and things like that.
And I understand.
So I'll use MacArthur as an example.
And I have no intention of being disparaging towards MacArthur.
I disagree with him on multiple points, so many points.
But I believe that he teaches the gospel faithfully and that he's done a lot of good.
And so I don't believe that MacArthur is a false teacher or anything like that.
I'm grateful for MacArthur.
That said, when it comes to hermeneutic, one of the reasons why.
In the final analysis, I land on various theological positions that would differ with Brother MacArthur, is because the source that it's all rooted in is the difference of our two hermeneutics.
MacArthur would have a literal, grammatical, and historical hermeneutic, and to steal man MacArthur, to be both charitable and I think just just and fair towards him, part of his motive, incentive in having the hermeneutic that he has is because he was in the trenches before I was born.
And he was battling against liberal theologians who were creeping into churches and seminaries and getting cute with the scripture and saying, well, you know, homosexuality, you know, Paul wasn't really talking about that, you know, and maybe there's a place for this and there's a place for that.
And MacArthur was standing in the trenches, God bless him, and saying, no, read the scripture for what it says, a plain reading of scripture, you know, no creed but Christ.
Give me the Bible, just the Bible.
And MacArthur was a bit of a biblicist.
Now, here's the problem, and I want you guys to think about this being fair to MacArthur, but also fair to some other theological views.
The same hermeneutic that allowed MacArthur to stand as a titan in the trenches against thousands of liberal theologians that came and perverted the scripture on things like sexual orientation and gender and these kinds of things.
The same hermeneutic that allowed MacArthur to be a fortress and a shield against liberalizing scripture is the same hermeneutic, if we're fair.
That also allows MacArthur to be a dispensationalist and a Zionist.
Because his reading of Scripture in a very plain, literal sense that allows him to defend against some of the funny business from liberal theologians when it comes to gender is also the same hermeneutic that, when applied to the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation and these passages of Scripture, causes him to believe that Jesus is.
Going to return probably next Thursday.
There's going to be a rapture, and you're going to get a third temple on the Temple Mount and the red heifers and all that.
So, do you see how I appreciate it?
I'm trying to steal Man MacArthur.
I appreciate the instincts that he had 50 years ago because he was overall, in a general sense, he was right.
He saw that liberal theologians were getting cute with scripture and they were in a Using the typological hermeneutics serving as a Trojan horse to smuggle in things like feminism, LGBT craziness, and even like BLM and critical race theory, and these kinds of things, smuggle it into the seminaries and then indoctrinate young men who would then become pastors in churches.
And part of the problem we're dealing with today is that guys didn't listen to MacArthur.
And then part of the other problem we're dealing with today, the problem of, I believe it's a serious problem of Zionism and Judaism.
Is that guys did listen to MacArthur.
And so it's kind of, you win some, you lose some.
So I've opted for nothing less than MacArthur's hermeneutic.
So his being literal, grammatical, historical.
And I'm going to have all three of those pieces in the way that I read and interpret scripture.
But I'm going to add, not replace, not as a substitute, but in addition to literal, historical, and grammatical, I'm also going to add that typological piece.
Because there are certain genres of scripture, like the Psalms or like the book of Revelation.
That actually says the book of Revelation, actually says in the very first couple chapters from the outset that it's speaking in a typological, symbological way.
And so to read Revelation as literal and not typological is actually not doing justice to what the book of Revelation itself says about how it should be read.
Does that make sense?
So, all that being said, Biblicism.
Although it sounds good, I'm not a Calvinist.
I'm not an Arminian.
Those are just men, and I follow no one but Jesus.
I'm not following John Calvin.
I'm not following Aristotle.
I'm not following, you know, whoever.
I follow Jesus.
And so for me, there's no creed but Christ, and there's no confession but the Bible itself.
I'm not a Calvinist, I'm a Biblicist.
I know what you mean.
I've said it myself.
I think the motive there, the instincts there, are good.
And I don't want to pour cold water on that.
I hear you, and I think that's good.
But although the Bible is the only infallible revelation that we have, The only inerrant revelation, that is the only revelation that's truly directly from God and without error, we would be fools to interpret the Bible apart from the witness of the collective church throughout the ages.
And I think one of the false dichotomies that modern Christians and Baptists can be extremely guilty of this, because Baptists, let's be honest, aren't typically huge fans of church history and confessions and these kinds of things, you know, we'll make fun of the Anglicans and the Presbyterians, you know, and we'll make fun of them for that, the Lutherans.
And we'll say, well, Baptists, we just got back to the Bible.
Just got back to the Bible.
But you've got to be careful with that because it's like, well, the Pentecostals say the same thing.
And the Baptists are like, well, we're not the Pentecostals.
But they literally say the same thing.
They're like, you know, there's the first century church, then 18 years of wasting time, and then Azusa Street Revival, 1906.
And if we're not careful, Baptists kind of have, it's not with the gifts of the Spirit, but it's the same narrative of there was faithfulness in the first century, and then there was a bunch of those, you know, pencil pushers and ivory towers, you know, that.
That did all that theology stuff, and then we got back to the Bible.
Just give me Jesus.
And that sounds good on the surface, but it's actually immature.
And here's the reason why because it creates a false dichotomy.
And the false dichotomy is this what it asserts is that you're pitting up against one another two positions.
One is the Bible as interpreted by the Westminster divines, the Bible as interpreted by Nehemiah Cox, and all these different writers of.
Of Benjamin Keech of the 1689 Confession, or the Bible as interpreted through Augustine and Athanasius and Ignatius and Irenaeus, and then there's just the Bible.
See, that's a false dichotomy because what it insists is that there's the Bible as read through men, as interpreted through men, and then there's the Bible just pure and unadulterated.
But that option is not actually a real option.
That option doesn't actually exist because if you were honest and thought about it just for a moment, what you'd have to acknowledge and admit.
Is that when you say the Bible is interpreted through men throughout the ages and then just the Bible alone, what you actually mean is the Bible interpreted by men throughout the ages and then the Bible interpreted by me?
Because there's actually no viable option of just the Bible.
Because when you say, just give me Jesus, no creed but Christ, or don't give me a confession, just give me the Bible, at the end of the day, when pressed, I would still have to say, okay, so you just opted for just the Bible.
No confessions, no history, no creeds, just the Bible.
Great.
What does the Bible say about Mary, the mother of Jesus?
What does the Bible say about the dual nature of Christ?
What does the Bible mean when it says that God is sovereign over salvation?
No Option for Just the Bible00:10:39
What does the Bible say about election?
What does the Bible.
And you know what you'll have to do?
You'll have to begin to interpret the Bible.
You'll have to begin to explain the Bible's meaning.
And so then, immediately, what we have is the false dichotomy is removed, and now we have.
The two actual choices that are before us the Bible interpreted by men who were better men than you and better men than me, or the Bible as interpreted by ourselves.
See, every church actually has a confession, it's either the Westminster Confession, the 1689 Confession, perhaps it's, you know, all these different options.
That historically are before us, the church has opted for those confessions the Belgic confession, the three forms of unity, the canons of Dort, or it's Pastor Billy Bob's confession that he's kind of been writing in his head and maybe put some of it, you know, 20 years ago when he first started pastoring on paper and it's in the church's basement somewhere.
But mark my words, there's still confession.
The idea of just having the Bible without a confession is not actually an option before us.
It's not whether, but which.
So you'll either have a confession that's historic and tried and true and written by better men than you and I, or you'll have a modern confession that's constantly in flux as this person changes their mind about the next thing.
But you will have a confession.
And I would opt for the historic, tried and true version rather than the modern, constantly fluctuated Pastor Billy Bob, God bless his heart, his confession.
Probably not the right choice to go with.
So, Biblicism.
Is not a good idea.
And the biblicists, when they come to texts like ours, Matthew 5, 33 to 37, the quick biblicist interpretation would be don't ever make any vow, period.
Jesus condemns all vows, just let your yes be yes and your no be no.
But when we look at the whole of Scripture and we read Scripture not alone in isolation, but in conjunction with all the men who have come before us as they sought to interpret Scripture and understand it, the answer is a little bit more complex.
The answer is not as simple as just don't ever make a vow.
Instead, it boils down to multiple facets.
One, don't vow by anything but the Lord.
The Lord is the only one who can hold you to your vow.
To vow by anything else is a breach of the first and second commandment, is to deify something other than the triune God.
Also, if you're going to make vows by the only one who you should make vows by, appealing to the name of God Himself, then they better be good vows.
And it better be something that's not petty, but something that's valuable so that you're not taking the Lord's name in vain.
And breaching the third commandment.
And then, lastly, of course, you should only give your vows and make an oath with something that is true so that you're not breaching the ninth commandment.
And you need to be a man who is true, who can live up to those vows so that you don't break them, which would also be a breach of the ninth commandment.
There's more quotes from the 1689 that I have in your notes.
You can read them on your own time, but I've given the synopsis of my point here.
So I'm going to go ahead and skip on to a couple passages of my own words that I've written in your notes.
I've written the following.
The concern of these verses is both the third and the ninth commandment.
I've additionally added the first and second.
If you were to swear by Jerusalem or swear by the earth, swear by heaven, swear by your head, swear by the temple, swearing by other things beside God would be to deify these other things as though they had the power to hold you to your oath, like golem swearing by the ring.
Don't do that.
Only swear by the Lord if you're going to swear at all.
And Jesus is right.
Classic Jesus W, you know, like that.
Statement that usually doesn't need to be made.
Jesus is right.
Of course, he is.
For the most part, people make petty vows.
We actually end up swearing far more than we should.
There are appropriate avenues and contexts to make a vow.
When it's made, you should vow by the name of the Lord.
The vow should be true, should be vowing towards something that's worth vowing towards.
But in general, people make too many promises, too many swearing, too many vows, too many oaths.
And so Jesus is right that in general, on the whole, simply let your yes be yes and your no be no.
So, The concerns in these verses are with a breach of the third commandment and the ninth commandment.
The ninth commandment is in view regarding truthfulness that humans find so difficult to uphold.
The tongue is guilty of false witness, lying, gossip, slander, boasting, flattery, cursing, and more.
Oaths, promises, and contracts all have the same goal to bind the conscience of men to keeping their word, especially when it is tempting not to because of sin.
The third commandment comes into play.
Because in lawful oath taking, the name of God is invoked, and therefore it must not be invoked in vain.
In Jesus' day, rabbis concocted a system.
This is classic Jesus W, classic Rabbi L. Just about, well, I was going to say just about always wrong, but that just about isn't necessary as a disclaimer, just always wrong.
In Jesus' day, rabbis concocted a system that defeated the purpose of oaths.
They taught that oaths might or might not be binding, depending on how one swore.
If one swore by Jerusalem, then it was not binding.
But if one swore toward, facing toward Jerusalem, then it was.
Imagine this for a moment.
I mean, this is Jewish rabbis in Jesus' day and in ours.
Well, in our day, they're worse.
But in Jesus' day, they were really bad.
And this is what they were doing it was the equivalent of, like, a four year old girl trying to trick her dad to get something that she wants.
So a rabbi would say, well, it's not swearing by Jerusalem, it's swearing while facing toward Jerusalem.
And then, kind of behind his back, pulling out his compass, you know, or his map, and realize, okay, Jerusalem is over there, and we're 50 miles away, so hopefully, this person that I'm trying to swindle right now won't know his geography well enough.
Jerusalem is there, and I'm going to face this way, northeast, even though Jerusalem is true north, and so I'm going to be off by 15 percentages, and then I'm going to swear as a Jewish rabbi, and then I'm going to break my oath and steal from you.
And that's what they would do.
Classic Jewish rabbis.
So, in other words, back to the five year old girl, it would be like that she just found out that crossing fingers is a thing.
It's not really a thing, it's superstition.
But she just heard about it from, I don't know, one of her friends or something like that.
And so she's trying it out.
And dad says, You cannot have a cookie before dinner.
I want you to give me your word that you will not get into the cookie jar.
And she puts her hand behind her back and crosses her fingers.
And that's sin.
She's lying.
The five year old girl crossing her fingers behind her back while promising dad she won't get a cookie is the exact equivalent to Jewish rabbis.
If you want to understand Judaism, think five year old girl crossing her fingers behind her back as she lies to dad.
That's pretty much Talmudic Judaism.
Okay, so that being said, going on, awful oath taking must be invoked.
In Jesus' day, rabbis concocted a system of defeating the very purpose of oaths.
They taught that oaths might or might not be binding.
Depending on how one swore.
If one swore by Jerusalem, it was not binding, but if you faced Jerusalem, toward Jerusalem, then it was.
If one swore by the temple, it wasn't binding, but if you swore by the temple's gold, then it was binding.
If one swore by the altar or sacrifice, it was not binding, but if one swore by the gift that was upon the altar, then it was binding.
This illustrates, here's another example.
So the five year old girl with crossing her fingers, I thought of that, but I just thought of another.
Jewish rabbis would be the equivalent of the IRS.
That would be another great, I think, comparison.
So the IRS is like, well, We love to use the American people as a tax farm for Ukraine and Israel and everybody except for America.
And how are we going to do this?
Well, one of the ways to swindle people is instead of having the Ten Commandments, G.K. Chesterton said this if man will not live by Ten Commandments, he will be bound by 10,000 commandments.
And that's what the IRS has done.
I mean, you look over the decades, and it went from a book about this big to now it's like volumes.
You couldn't fit all the different tax codes in your own house.
You would have to get a warehouse to fit all the.
And what is the IRS doing?
Well, they're being deceitful.
That's what they're doing.
I mean, think of this.
This alone is just so silly to me.
So each year, I have to figure out how much I owe the IRS.
But if I get it wrong, the IRS will certainly tell me.
So the IRS already knows exactly how much I owe them.
They know it clearly enough to tell me if I got the number wrong, but only to tell me if I got the number wrong by getting it too low.
I'm sure it'd be just fine if I got it too high.
So I have to figure out how much I owe the IRS.
The IRS knows how much I owe them.
That's why they're able to hold me to account.
And then they have volumes and volumes of tax codes to where no private citizen could ever figure out the system to be able to plead their case and defend themselves.
So you basically just have to submit to whatever they say.
They're like, well, according to stipulation $5,000,100,000 and blah, blah, blah, you owe us your firstborn son.
And it's like, it's ridiculous, but that's the system.
So, whether it's the United States IRS, whether it's the five year old girl who just learned about crossing her fingers, or whether it's Jewish rabbis in the days of Jesus, or Jewish rabbis in our day as well, in all these cases, what Jesus has in view at the heart of the matter is not so much swearing is always bad and Christians shouldn't do it.
Loving Your Neighbor Today00:06:25
See, that's a biblicist approach to the text, it's oversimplifying it.
What Jesus actually has in view is Jesus is saying, Don't be liars.
That's what he's saying.
He's not saying you can't ever make a promise.
Like to say, I promise is a sin because Jesus said, just let your yes be yes and your no be no.
So if anyone ever says, I promise, every time someone gets married and exchanges marriage vows, they're in sin.
Let's put them under church discipline because Jesus said, just let your yes be yes and your no be no.
That's not what he's saying.
That's a biblicist reading of the text.
A more mature reading of the text with a more robust hermeneutic that is literal, it's not less.
But it's more than merely literal.
It's literal, historical, grammatical, and typological.
And reading the text in conjunction, not just with Pastor Billy Bob, but also with all the saints of old through 2,000 years of church history and the historic confessions that we have, the conclusion that we come to, and the final analysis at the end of the day, the conclusion is it is okay to make promises.
It's okay to make vows.
And it's okay, even in a court of law, to put your hand on the word of God and swear to God, make an oath.
To tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
So help me, God.
That's actually lawful.
These things are okay.
It's okay for a Christian to serve in the military.
Probably not a good idea today because the military, sadly, is really just become a function of exporting gay pride parades in Tel Aviv and everywhere else.
But historically, the military has done a lot of good, a lot of bad, but also, I think, a lot of good in America.
And typically, on the whole, those who are pro military or serve in the military in America tend to be the salt of the earth, the best people I know.
Who really love the country, but to join the military, my point is there's an oath, there's a vow.
And so I would never say, well, you know, a Christian can't bear testimony in a court of law because Jesus says, don't swear at all.
That's not, that's a poor reading of the text.
Or a Christian can't ever serve in the military because it requires an oath.
And Jesus says, don't make any oaths at all.
Do you see why this matters?
So you actually can do those things.
Now, For other reasons than oath taking and vow making and those kinds of things, for other reasons, if there's an 18 year old young man and he's saying, I want to be a Marine in 2024, I would not say no.
I don't want to bind the conscience so clearly because it's more nuanced and complex, but I would give some cautions and say the military in 2024 is not what it was in the 1950s and 60s, and you do need to be aware of some of these things.
But by God's grace, hopefully it gets better.
There's been some new appointments.
I'm grateful for some, some of them I don't like.
Some of them I really do like, and we can pray that our military would not just be exporting our sacred democracy and gay rights in the Middle East, but hopefully our military could actually do what it's designed to do, which is to protect the American people.
And hopefully by God's grace things improve, and we'll see.
So, but saying that a Christian can't join the military because of oaths would be a silly reading of the text.
All right, let me continue.
We're almost done.
This illustrates the way in which certain teachers would manipulate God's word in the first century.
Judaism in Israel.
When they read a challenging law, they reduced it to something that was manageable.
When they heard, love your neighbor as yourself, they defined neighbor so that everyone counted as a neighbor, or so that not everyone counted as a neighbor, so they didn't have to love this person.
Or what we do in our modern times is what we've done is we've said, everyone is our neighbor, which I think is true.
Okay, because that's the whole idea.
Remember when Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, and he asks the question, Who is my neighbor?
And so for the Jews in his day, they had made the law manageable by narrowing the scope of who is my neighbor.
And so they were basically saying, well, really, my neighbor is only, you know, 14 people.
And these 14 people are doing just fine, aka, I don't have any obligation.
That was their way of escaping being morally obligated toward your neighbor, narrowing it.
Now, here's the thing you can actually, I think if Jesus was to come today, He would actually challenge us in the opposite direction.
What globalist, post war consensus, modernist, classical liberals do, what we do, is we actually say, well, everyone is our neighbor, and that's true, but then we get rid of the order of amores, that is the order of loves, that there's a triage, a prioritization of neighbors and who we're actually bound to, and a moral obligation in that sense.
And so, what liberal theologians today would do is the Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus' day say, Well, only a handful of people are my neighbor, and so I don't have to do anything for anyone else.
And what people today, what evangelicals today do, say, Well, everyone is my neighbor, so I can actually forsake my own people here in America as long as I write a $15 monthly check to an orphanage in Uganda.
But it's still the same tactic of getting out of what Jesus is actually commanding.
So, the Pharisees, the Jewish rabbis of his day, what they did was they said, Well, you don't actually have to love people, all these people, because you only have to love these three people over here.
And what modern day Pharisees, even in the evangelical church today, do is they say, Well, you don't actually have to love your own people.
Like, it's fine.
It's totally fine if our pastors and our seminary professors and our Our politicians and every elite institution in America actually hates Americans.
That's totally fine.
Because Jesus said, Love your neighbor.
Responsibility or Third World00:15:57
And what that means is you can't have any borders and you need to import the third world by the millions into the United States and you can't do anything about it.
And if you ever do something about it, then you're not obeying Jesus' words to love your neighbor and you're a racist.
And that's so, isn't that funny though?
It's just the other side of the coin, but it's the same in principle.
You have Judaizers in the first century saying, Well, I only have like two or three neighbors, and I don't have to love anybody else.
And then you have Judaizers today saying, Well, everyone's our neighbor.
And here's the great thing when everyone's your neighbor, no one is.
Did you ever watch The Incredibles, that animated film?
Thinking of it, there's the little nerdy kid who wants to be a superhero, and he felt blown off when he was younger by Captain Incredible.
And so then he becomes the arch nemesis, the villain at the end of the movie.
And he does it through, you know, he doesn't have any innate superpowers, but he does it through technological innovation.
You know, he's smart.
He's your classic anon, you know, autist on Twitter and figures out how to be a superhero without actually being a superhero.
And so he creates all this tech and captures, you know, Captain Incredible and subdues him and all this.
And then his whole goal is not just to keep it for himself, but he's going to export, you know, manufacture a bunch of this tech so that everyone can be a superhero.
And his big line in the movie is this.
He says, now everyone can be a superhero.
And when everyone's super, no one is.
And he was just mad.
At the end of the day, he was just holding a grudge.
Ever since he was a little kid, he was just mad that some people were more special than him.
Well, today, guess what?
It's the same thing.
Everyone is not equal, brothers and sisters.
You are all equal in terms of the merit and dignity and worth of your soul in an eternal, You're also all equal in a judicial sense under the law.
But we are not all equal in terms of intelligence, skills, gifts, wealth, the time that you were born, the place that you were born, the family that you were born into.
Life is not fair.
Get over it.
It's not fair.
Well, people who were born in the Sudan don't have the opportunities as those who were born in America.
Correct.
Correct.
But your job is not, therefore, to say, well, then we need to import every single person in the Sudan to America.
No, the Sudanese need to bow their knee to the Lord Jesus Christ, enact just laws, work hard, and eventually experience the blessings that we experience here.
It is actually a sin, a great and grievous sin, for us to slap our American fathers in the face.
And say, the inheritance that you built up for us, we're going to give it to the third world.
No, Jesus, remember even the words of Jesus, he says, You'll always have the poor.
You always have the poor.
They're not going away.
Even in a great post millennial hope, I think that poverty will be more eradicate, but you're always going to have some poverty, some poor.
Do you know why?
In this gospel age, until the final return of Christ, until we're in heaven and perfected and perfectly sanctified, Until that happens, in this world, in this life, in this age, you'll always have poverty.
Do you know why?
You will always have poverty because you'll always have sin.
And the poor are always poor because of sin.
Now, hear me, it's not always their sin.
Sometimes someone is poor because of their own sin.
And sometimes someone is poor because of someone else's sin, oppressing them, ripping them off.
But one way or another, mark my words, poverty is always rooted in sin.
If there were no sin, there would be no poverty.
And to say anything otherwise is ultimately not to indict man, but to indict God Himself.
It is to say that God created a world that was a zero sum game with limited resources and then command His image bearers to do the very thing that He knew would end in their own detriment.
What is that thing?
Be fruitful, multiply.
That God said, You guys should reproduce.
And then behind closed doors was saying, I created an impoverished world with limited resources and a zero sum game.
And as soon as they obey my commandment to be fruitful and multiply, eventually half of them will starve.
Is that the character of God?
No.
Overpopulation is not our problem.
Sin is our problem.
Corrupt governments is our problem.
Lazy citizens is our problem.
False religions is our problem.
Theft is our problem.
Usury is our problem.
Centralized banking is our problem.
These are the causes of poverty, not God.
Let God be true and every man a liar.
We messed this up, not him.
Not him.
And because we messed it up, until he comes back and ultimately, with finality and perfection, fixes it, then the words of Jesus remain true that the poor will always be among you.
And so the solution for the poor ultimately.
Is that each nation one by one would flock to Mount Zion out of love for Jesus and submission to his law word, but also in the meantime, that we resist the temptation to try to solve poverty on the other side of the world by simply writing checks or getting rid of borders and bringing them all here?
Guys, the third world, this is the sad reality of life, and Christian pastors won't say it, and this is why we're in the mess that we're in.
But here's the sad reality the third world is a black hole.
It's a black hole.
You can throw resource after resource after resource after resource after resource and you won't fix it.
You won't.
Only Jesus can fix it.
At the end of the day, people have to take responsibility for themselves.
We learned this on our own soil with BLM, right?
That reparations aren't going to fix it.
It doesn't matter.
You give reparations and then.
And then five years later, there'll be a call for more reparations.
And why, you know, that last check from Gavin Newsom really wasn't just.
It was actually only 10% of what we're worth.
And it'll continue forever.
It'll never end.
Well, that's domestic.
Now just think foreign.
It's the same thing.
It's the same thing.
America writing checks to the third world will never solve the third world.
It's a black hole, it'll eat every resource, and it'll just dissolve into nothingness.
It has to be the nations loving Jesus and submitting to Jesus and obeying Jesus.
And none of this happens in 15 minutes, but over time, over centuries, nations, as they submit to Christ, just like European nations did all the way back to King Alfred, eventually over centuries, things change.
So the solution is not to let the third world become American.
The solution is to say to the third world look at what America did.
And track the common denominator.
The common denominator is submission to the Lord Jesus Christ.
You should try that too.
And then to say, not only that to the third world, but then to turn right around and say to America itself hey, guys, stop being rebellious dummies.
You better start resubmitting to the Lord Jesus Christ, or you will become the third world.
You're not special.
Don't be arrogant.
You disobey Jesus long enough, and you'll eat up like a bunch of locusts every ounce of blessing that he's given us.
That's what the Pharisees did.
I got to land the plane.
That's what the Pharisees did.
They bent the law.
They're the five year old girl with her fingers crossed.
They're the IRS with a zillion tax codes.
They're postmodern, classical, liberal, globalist Americans in the way that we think today that are always ultimately the end goal is always just simply trying to get out of obedience to the words of Christ.
So whether it's saying, well, I only have 14 neighbors and they're right here in front of my face and they're the only ones that I'm obligated to, and isn't it convenient that none of them, you know, they're all rich and they have their needs already met, so I don't ultimately have to do anything.
That's one way of getting out of Jesus' commands, to love your neighbor.
And another way is to say, well, the real neighbors that we should love are all the illegal immigrants that are trying to come into the country and flood it.
You know, the real neighbors are the 500,000 Haitians, you know, that have immigrated in the last 15 minutes.
And are eating the cats and dogs in Springfield.
Like, no, no, that's not the way it works.
Those are just two different ways of one, two sides of one coin.
And what is the coin?
The coin is, I don't want to obey Jesus.
Well, as Christians, we don't get to do that.
We have to obey Jesus.
Everyone is your neighbor, but you do not have an equal obligation to eight billion people.
You can't.
You can't.
You're finite.
So you start in and then you ripple out.
First, Your household.
If a man is sending checks to Uganda but not providing for the members of his own household, then the Bible has a word for him.
It calls him an unbeliever.
He has denied the faith.
He's worse, actually, than an unbeliever.
So you can love your universal neighbor and yet have Jesus on the final day say, Depart from me.
I don't even know who you are.
Or you can do it in the opposite way.
You can love your family and not love anybody else.
And that would also be a sin.
In other words, whether we're talking about oaths, or we're talking about vows, or we're talking about the order of morals, or we're talking about this, or we're talking about that, here's the deal.
Little one liner cute cliches are not going to win the day for evangelicals in 2024.
We are going to have to get back to serious thought.
Our fathers, all of them, were better than us.
That's the cold hard truth.
You just, you got to come to terms with it.
I've had to come to terms with it.
The Christian nation that I am working towards, this is ironic, but it's true.
And if I don't acknowledge this, then I will become a liability and not a blessing.
The Christian nation that by God's grace that I'm working towards, if we achieve it, one of the implications of that is that I will not be allowed to have a YouTube ministry with over 100,000 subscribers.
Do you know why?
Because I'm just not qualified.
I'm doing what I do today, not because I'm gifted.
I'm doing what I do today because evangelicals are pathetic.
And it makes me, by comparison, look gifted.
That's what I'm doing.
So, by God's grace, I hope I continue to have a broader reach because right now the pickings are slim.
But if God would be so kind, eventually they won't be.
And eventually we'll have men of the caliber of Athanasius and Augustine and Calvin again, both in theology and in political philosophy.
And they'll be able to think in categories without blurring lines.
They'll be well read.
They'll be brilliant.
They'll be scholars and yet also men of the people, men who can work with their hands as well as study books.
And when those men come, then I will gladly delete my Twitter account, get rid of my YouTube channel, and hand it over to them.
Say, take the reins.
I've done my duty.
Glad you're here.
Thank you for relieving me.
I'm just going to spend time with my kids.
Maybe I'll start a small business and live happily ever after.
But until those men get here, then I'm sorry.
I feel just as bad as you do, probably worse, but you're stuck with me.
So, until the future Athanasius and Augustine come, then you've got to deal with blue collar, slightly stupid Joel Webbin.
Because when you look at the lay of the land and evangelicals as a whole, I'm nothing to brag about.
But I'm one of the best we got.
And it's not to say much of me, it is very clearly to insult evangelicals.
I will never lose an opportunity to insult evangelicals.
So, not trying to.
Brag about myself, I am very much trying to insult evangelicals.
That's kind of my ministry.
So, we need people who can think.
We currently don't have them.
And so, until we have them, you're stuck with AD Robles and Joel Webbin, a reasonable Latino.
If you don't know who AD Robles is, he has a YouTube channel.
And me and AD, we each have like four cylinders, but we're firing on all four of those cylinders.
We're not a V8 or a V12, but what we got.
We're like, chug it, chug it, chug it.
You know, we're giving in everything we got with what the Lord has given us.
We've taken our one talent.
We wish we had 10.
We don't, but I guarantee by the grace of God, it's only His grace, I'm going to take that one talent at the end of my life, I'm going to give that back to the Lord Jesus too.
And the reason why I have to do that with a wide platform is because the few guys who actually do have IQs of 170 and were given 10 talents, they took those talents and wrote a check to some Zionist in Israel and are playing for the other team.
So here we are.
But that's not the way it was when you look at church history.
And by God's grace, it's not the way it'll be in the future.
Using little cliches to get out of obedience to Jesus Christ will not be the end of the story.
Because Christ is good and faithful, and He'll bring us along in due time.
So you can make an oath.
You can.
You just have to make it rightly.
Make an oath about things that matter, not silly things, not petty things.
If there's a statement that's needed and that's robust and serious and theological, Then sign that statement.
But if there are entire clauses in the statement that are only in the statement because they're very clearly personal and taking a jab at Eric Kahn because he posted something three months ago about Aristotle, then that's just not a serious statement.
And because it's not serious, to sign that and give a vow to that would actually, I believe, be sinful.
And there you go.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you for your word.
Blessed to your people, all for your glory.
Amen.
We're going to enter into a time of worship through song.