Now I want to go back, I will go back shortly to the reading that Esther had from Matthew's
Gospel. But if you are visiting with us today, maybe for the first time, this is part, as
I mentioned, of a series that we're doing. Last week it's called Unbelievable, and that's
the graphic. Last week we looked at, is Jesus real, and are you hurting in our evening worship?
So today we're looking at, is Jesus a bigot? And in the evening, are you empty? Some of
the questions. And then next Sunday morning, which is Easter Sunday, is Jesus good? And
then the question, are you hopeless? So we're looking at it kind of from different angles
over the next kind of around Easter time. And so that's really where we are and where
we're at. And we, I kind of geared it as something for those who maybe are questioning or wondering
or skeptical about the Christian faith. Because the reality is, I'll go on to the next slide
if I, yeah, a lot of you will have maybe been aware of that poster series that came out.
Many people who think of Jesus, but if not Jesus, certainly Christians, as bigots. And
that is probably a common theme that's in our society in many ways today. And so I'm
looking at that, I hope I'm looking, I'm going to look at that head on a little bit. By looking
at the life and claims of Jesus Himself, I think sometimes the greatest opposition comes
from those who have made a lot of assumptions about Jesus and maybe Christians as well,
or have had bad experiences maybe of Christians, but who maybe haven't looked quite so much
or listened quite so much to the claims of Jesus Himself. And that's a challenge then
for us all to listen and to respect those who may be different from us. But this police
campaign and government campaign, I think, was generally quite controversial. I wouldn't
doubt the motives behind it at all. But the statement that went public, dear bigots, you
can't spread your religious hate here end of sermon was pretty powerful. It was a very
broad brushed dismissal, really in many ways, of all faiths and of all sermons. So tough
today. It was promoting potentially in some ways a rather stereotypical view, and it was
at some levels challenged itself on grounds of inciting hate. It's a tad bigoted in
some ways. And it seems that it's fighting hate with hate rather than dialogue. And that's
never a good thing. It's always an important thing not just to throw out sound bites or
something that we can add to social media and to our memes, but to genuinely enter into
dialogue where there's disagreement. But it's a very interesting point that is made there,
and so I'm going to look at that for a few minutes this morning, and ask the question,
is Jesus a bigot? The Cambridge definition of a bigot, Cambridge dictionary, definition
of a bigot, is a person who has strong unreasonable beliefs and who does not like other people
who have different beliefs or a different way of life. Okay? So that's a bigot. And
that is, I would imagine that's the kind of definition we all recognize as being a bigot.
So we're going to look at one or two things about Jesus in the Bible and try and unpack
whether he fits into that category of being a bigot. He certainly had strong beliefs.
He definitely had strong beliefs, and particularly he had strong beliefs. Most clearly in the
Gospels, the strongest beliefs he had were against religious hypocrisy. That was where
Jesus' passion in many ways really spilled over when he was in public. Not just to be
honest, not just religious hypocrisy, but any kind of hypocrisy. He really hated any
kind of hypocrisy. And we read that, and Esther read that for us. It's an amazing chapter,
Matthew chapter 23, it's called The Seven Wows of Jesus, where he almost expresses
judgment in seven different ways to the religious leaders of his day who were plotting to have
him crucified. And what was enraging him about them, because Jesus, and we haven't looked
into the claims of Jesus being the Son of God and being divine, but we're taking that
at the moment for granted, he understood them and knew what was in their hearts. And what
he knew about them was that they were taking Old Testament teaching and they were twisting
it and changing it so that they could wield political power and so they could feel good
about themselves and judge other people. They used the misinterpreted Scripture teaching
of the Old Testament to feed their own pride, and he was absolutely brutal. He was brutal
in his assessment of them. And we read that in the different verses that we read from
Matthew 23. He refers to them as uncaring and hypocritical, that they made all kinds
of demands of everyone else, but never helped anyone in any way whatsoever to meet these
demands that they were making, and that they themselves were, by making such demands, denying
their own need of a Savior. He called them in verse 13, blind, well he didn't call them
this, but he expressed that they were blind gatekeepers. He says to them, you know, you
shut the kingdom of heaven and men's faces, people's faces, but you neither enter yourselves
nor allow anyone else to enter. He could see that they didn't accept or believe God's
verdict on their own hearts and on their own need, and they even then misdirected other
people so that they wouldn't come to know God and to see his forgiveness. They were
really, in other words, they were kind of proud moralists, and their argument to each
other and to others was, well, we're so good, we're so good, other people will accept, other
people might not accept, but God will have to accept me because I do so many good things,
I go to church, I give money to the church, I keep the commands of God and blah, blah,
blah, blah, so they went on, and so they believed that therefore God had a duty to accept them
as worthy and then into heaven when they died. It was a radical inversion of the Bible teaching
and of what Jesus came to do, completely the opposite of what Jesus came to do and what
he came to be involved in. And they've provided a foundation for a miserable alternative to
the gospel ever since, that we don't really need Jesus, we just need to do our best and
that's all that matters. But he goes beyond that and he calls them hellish fanatics in
verse 15. It must have been absolutely outrageous to have been there and to have heard these
people who were morally upright and religious and the kind of foundational leaders of the
day when he says that they go over land and sea to win a single proselyte and when they
do you make them twice as much a son of hell as you are. That's pretty strong words, isn't
it? Is it strong enough for us? It's really great stuff because he saw that their teaching
and their actions actually gave way to division and to hatred and to ugliness. That's why
he was so strong in what he was saying because in effect he's exposing their bigotry and
he's exposing their dangerous teaching because it led to division and it led to pride and
it led to a separation of people one from another. So definition of bigot that we looked
at, strong beliefs, yes, he did have strong beliefs, absolutely, especially against religious
and other kinds of hypocrisy. Unreasonable? No, because he could see it was leading to
division and to hatred and to separation within society. It wasn't unreasonable. Does he not
like others because in that definition it speaks about not liking others for their beliefs
and for being different? No, that's not the case either because if you look at the last
verse of this chapter that we just read a few verses of it, but at the last part of
that chapter we've got this remarkable picture of Jesus saying, pleading and crying, he says,
oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, and there he was speaking about all the people that he had
been damning in some ways by his language, the religious leaders of the day, he said,
the city that kills the prophets and stones those who sent it, how often would I have
gathered your children together as a hen gathers the brood under her wings and you were not
willing? He's pleading with compassion and with a great love for them and a great sorrow
that they don't see and understand and know who God was and why Jesus had come and that
they were intent on taking him all the way to the cross. So at that level you can never
accuse Jesus of being a bigot. He opposes them, opposes them strongly because he believes
it's damaging what they're doing, but he has a great love for them and he wishes to take
them in a kind of fatherly, motherly way under his wings and they would accept what he's
saying, but yet he will not stand down from what he believes and knows to be the truth.
So that's the first thing we see about the Jesus of the Bible and that's just a very
small snippet into who he is, but he also does make many exclusive claims and we can't
forget that and I think this is where maybe the claim of bigotry comes in for people when
they think about Jesus and what he claims. Jesus answered and he said, I am the way,
the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. This is very shortly
before the passage that Esther read was very shortly before the crucifixion, which is what
we remember the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus at this time of year. And this is
kind of a pointer towards what he's come to do because many people will argue that crucifixion
was just a, you know, it was a, a bearant mistake that it shouldn't have happened, it was just
the way it happened. And the leaders all of Jesus or the followers of Jesus after that
twisted it around and made it something that was meant to happen and it was good. But Jesus
always had this clear move towards Calvary, towards what was happening. He went willingly
and yet he was opposed all the way. And, but he made this exclusive claim that he says,
I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father, Father God except through
me. And that's unique in the world of claims, in the history of anyone's claims. It's not
that he taught the way that he said, I can teach you the way. It's not that he claimed
to know the truth or that he had some kind of secret of life. He's making the claims
for himself. He's saying, I am the way, the truth and the life. He's an incarnation of
these things in a sense that the only way that we can get to the Father, to God, to
heaven is through Jesus Christ. That's what he taught. That's what he showed himself to
be and that's what he came to do through his death on the cross and his resurrection.
So he makes a really exclusive claim here for humanity, not just for religious people
but for humanity. And he makes exclusive claims right through his ministry. I'm going to look
very quickly at three. The first is in his greatest sermon. His greatest sermon that's
recorded in the gospel is a sermon on the Mount and we know a lot of people who maybe
don't know a lot about Christianity will know about the sermon on the Mount and the ethical
teaching of Jesus that comes from it. But the interesting thing about his greatest sermon
is the theme of it is our hearts. He says, blessed are the pure in heart for they will
see God. And it's an interesting thing because nobody can be pure in heart. And he's beginning
already in that sermon to point to our need of him and what he can do to transform our
heart. In other words, the theme of the sermon, it kind of is ethical, but it also isn't ethical.
It's much deeper and much more spiritual. If you could summarize it, you could probably
say that the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. That's what he's exposing in
the sermon on the Mount for everyone he says. And he's, you know, no one comes, he says,
to the Father except through me. Now, what he says there, that's the most exclusive,
that's the most inclusive statement ever. They talk about the gospel being exclusive,
well that's right, but it's also the most inclusive statement that has ever been made.
It's the ultimate leveler, in other words. And he spoke the whole of his ministry about
the need of humanity, not about certain people being worse than others or greater sinners
than others. He said that the whole of the human race had only one way to get back to
God and to the Father, and that was through Jesus Christ. He says it's a universal heart
problem that we have, that we evolve by nature, turned away from the living God, the author
of life and of love, and therefore we pay the consequences for that. And the sermon,
the sermon is a really uncomfortable place to go, the sermon on the Mount Matthew 5 and
some of the other references in the gospels, because he takes us, he takes us to the dark
places of our hearts, before him, before his purity and his perfection, he exposes really
for us our guilt, our brokenness, our lostness, and how limited we are spiritually. He takes
us to the places nobody sees, nobody else sees in our lives. You know, but sometimes
you spill out into maybe greed or lies or unfaithfulness or pride or selfishness. He
kind of exposes that intangible ugliness that polite company doesn't speak about. That's
really what he does for us. All the intangible ugliness of which we have both been victims
and perpetrators in our lives, if we are going to be brutally honest, quite often speak
about the Bible as a mirror, because it is a mirror often into, if we are willing to
let it into the hurt and the pain and sometimes the guilt that nobody wants to speak about
but we recognize as being there. And he exposes the myth that all that matters is just if
we just try our best or be true to ourselves or be religious and do nice things and good
things. And that sermon kind of says, look, it doesn't cut it with the living God who
wants purity of heart. It doesn't deal with the forsakenness that we have before God.
He's simply not interested in our comparative goodness to other people. And we may be, you
know, we may be really good as we compare ourselves to other people. And he's much better
than them. Absolutely, we might be much better than the next person. But he says, I'm simply
not interested in that. And the great definition of that is what he said to the Pharisees.
They were the most morally upright and good and very commas people in the world, in the
ancient era, in the world which he lived. But he says, he actually calls them, at one
point he calls them whitewashed tombs. You know, they're named nice and clean on the
outside, but they hadn't dealt with their hearts and with the pride and the greed and
the selfishness. So there's a great leveler there in the all, it's just equally bad news
for everybody. And he also highlights that in his greatest parable. He's a great storyteller
and he tells, well, I think it's his greatest parable, it might not be according to other
people, but the prodigal son where he tells the story of a son who leaves his father,
but who demands his inheritance from his father and spends it all on wild living and then
he has nothing left and he ends up wanting to eat the food that he's feeding the pigs
with and he says, I'll go back and be a servant for my dad. And when he goes back, his dad's
running towards him with open arms and says, oh, you are dead, but now you're alive again,
you were lost and found. It's tremendous and a beautiful story. And again, it's, but what
it does do is he's exposing that in his description, he's exposing our condition that we are like
thankless children who take all the good gifts from our Father in heaven, but ignore them
and don't give thanks and don't respond to him, but take the life that he offers and
the pleasures that we get from life and spend all ourselves, but have no reference to our
Father until we see our need and we turn back to Him. It's a hugely significant story. Living
without reference to His love as our Father, taking all we can get as if it's ours by right
and then finding ourselves in a mess at the end of it, needing to get back to our Heavenly
Father. And then of course, in terms of his exclusive claims, not just in the sermon and
in that parable, but in his greatest action, greatest sermon, greatest parable, greatest
action, probably the most famous verse in the Bible for God so loved the world that
He gave His only, one and only Son, whoever bleeds them shall not perish, but have eternal
life. And so his greatest action is in response to all that, in response to the bad news of
the gospel, the bad news, I guess, of the diagnosis that Jesus Christ says and reminds
us that He's the only way back. He's the only way back because He gives Himself, God, the
Son in His death and resurrection. That's what He says. That's why, you know, it seems
a strange thing to do, doesn't it, to sing about someone's death from a long time ago?
It's a bizarre kind of thing that we do. We take it for granted. I bet none of the Christians
here thought anything of singing these songs today. But maybe if you're not a Christian
or you don't normally go to church or you don't think about these things, what a really
bizarre thing to do, be singing about someone who died 2,000 years ago on a cross. So out
of our comfort zone, it's unbelievable. And yet, that's because everything revolves around
that in terms of the gospel. It revolves around Jesus giving Himself on the cross in our place.
As His answer, it's His only answer. As God, the Son, is the only answer as He gives it
to our sin and our separation from Him. He bears the cost of our sin and our rebellion
against God, which is death. He takes the guilt on Himself. He pays the price. He satisfies
divine justice. He's the substitute. He does it because He loves us. He does it because
there isn't another way. If there was another way, we would have found it. Absolutely. In
fact, just before He goes to the cross, Jesus pleads with the Father and He says, if there
is another way, can we do it? But He says, not my will, but yours be done, because He
knows that this is the only way to satisfy divine justice and also divine love. So these
are some claims, aren't they? I didn't make them up. I don't know why any of His followers
would have made them up. They didn't bring power or wealth or status or influence on
any of the founders of the church. Mainly, martyrdom was what they got for believing
that. And I think generally, not as the Christian faith understood by most people as offering
anything except a life of humility, often rejection, self-denial, accusations of bigotry
and ridicule. There has to be something else that would make us follow Jesus, surely, if
it's none of these things. And if it's not power, and if it's not wealth, and if it's
not popularity necessarily, what is it? Well, let's just finish with revisiting the bigotry
question. Where does it leave us with the bigotry question? Because that's what sort
of foundation of many people's rejection of the gospel, isn't it? Aren't Christians
and Jesus Christ maybe not so much Christ but certainly Christians? Aren't those who
don't accept homosexuals or reject the LGBT community and say no to anything that's fun
and criticise women's rights and resist abortion and are horribly moralistic and judgmental?
That would be the prevailing view of many people, wouldn't it? Christianity, and maybe sometimes
we feed into that with our arrogance or our wrong understanding and thinking. But is Christ
and our followers bigoted, prejudiced, racist? Well, if we're serious about our understanding
of Christ and the gospel, we need to recognise that all humanity is equal. All humanity is
equal. All of us are made in the image of God. That is fundamental Bible teaching that
gives value to every single life and respect to every single person and that we are all
spiritually in the same condition without Jesus Christ. No place for pride, no place
for judgment, no place for lording over anyone else. All Christians are called to a life
of love. And maybe I'm speaking now to the Christians here, more particularly. We've
come to recognise we need saved, we need redemption because we are not pure in heart and we've
broken God's laws, all of them, even thoughtward indeed. And these laws are laws of love, love
God and love your neighbour. And in fact, as believers, we've come to receive His love
in our hearts so that we can love Him, we can love one another, but even more so, we
can love our enemies. That's the radical teaching of the New Testament and that's the most
radical teaching in the universe that we are called to love whoever we meet with, whoever
we know, however different they are from us, whether they believe or disbelieve, even
whether they are violently opposed to what we believe and what we teach. We are to love
them in word and in deed. But as we do so, as we love Jesus first and love other people
next, fundamental differences and disagreements will be exposed and that's for sure. And there
will be times when we need to ask for forgiveness, for being hypocrites or for hating people
in the name of Christ, no place for that whatsoever in his life or teaching or in us as followers.
So there may be times when we just have to say sorry for our attitude or say sorry for
the attitude of people in the past. But as Christians, we also believe in society, we
believe in respect and the protection of rights and freedoms and diversity and compromise.
We don't believe biblically for oppression or enforced censorship or intolerance or
prejudice. Interestingly, not easy to say today, but interestingly, I think there's
more evidence of bigotry and of intolerance in our secular society than there was previously.
Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who I know nothing about, I don't know who she was other than
she was speaking about the right of free speech back at the beginning of the twentieth century,
she says, I disapprove of what you say but I defend to the death you're right to say
it. And we believe in that and we should believe in that as Christians. It may be that we can
have voiced as approval, but we believe absolutely in the freedom and the right of people to
say. There's no place for hatred, self-righteousness, moral superiority, bigotry, homophobia or
transphobia or any other phobias that are on the go. It doesn't mean that we agree with
people and that we think the same way. It must be that we encourage debate and dialogue
and recognition of differences both morally and philosophically, but in the context of
respect and love. Hugely significant in the society in which we live. For the Christian,
though, Christ is Lord. We have come to see Him and our need for Him and our relationship
we have with Him. We believe His love has captivated our hearts and changed our perspective
and our understanding of what true freedom is and of what truth is and what life is.
That is what we have, because He is, we have, by faith we've come to believe in His forgiveness
and in the transforming power of His love in our hearts.
So I finish with this. What I regard as the, by a long stretch, the most powerful apologetic
for the gospel. And I think in the society in which we live, it needs to be one that
we express far more so as Christians and understand. In other words, I'm not sure how easily people
are persuaded by argument. I think argument is important and I'll make an argument. It's
very important and it must be part of what we do when we share our faith. But we also
need to recognize fundamentally that it's a spiritual problem that we have all had and
we all have, and that it's only love that changes that spiritual problem. The only perspective
that will change a sinner's heart is the love of Christ. It needs that strength. It needs
to be something as powerful as that. It's the only thing that will capture your heart
if you're not a Christian. Argument will have its place. Truth, as it's laid out before
you, will have its absolute significant place. But the reality is it's not a question of
evidence. It's not a question of philosophical and moral argument. Ultimately, it's a spiritual
problem that we have a rebellion against God. And the only thing that can change that is
when we understand and see the price He paid to deal with that rebellion. So it will capture
your heart if you're not a Christian. You're made in His image. He loves you. He wants
you to come home. It's that picture of the prodigal. Home to Himself and to that relationship
with you that is the most fundamental reality of every one of our lives. And I can only
point you to the author of that love. It's the beauty of that love. It's quite hard sometimes
for a bloke to speak about that. But it's the beauty of His love which captivates us,
which changes us, which holds us, which becomes our identity. That's the gospel that I have
come to see, the courage, strength, compassion, tenderness, extravagance, and forgiveness,
and healing, and cost, and commitment of God's love for me in Christ that's made me able
to see things differently in the world in which I live. And that's the same for every
believer. If we come home, we belong. He is Lord. And therefore, that is what will change
our thinking about our rights, about our life, our priorities, our image, our sexuality,
our pleasures, our ambitions. They will all look different when we realize that love has
come to town and love changes everything for us. So I hope you'll consider that if you're
not a Christian today. And we have tea and coffee afterwards. And I'll be very happy
to speak to anyone or you speak to anyone around you who you think is part of the church
here. We'll be very happy to do so. So I'm going to pray and then we're going to sing.
Father, we thank you for the gospel. We know it's for many people it's that horrible reality
of honesty, which makes it bad news, but not bad news, full stop. Rather, a diagnosis which
is humbling and exposing, but absolutely honest and real and points us towards the great
love of Christ who took on all that guilt on himself on the cross to pay the price.
And his resurrection to life is the guarantee of our resurrection with him. Forgive me,
Lord, for not telling all the story, not enough time in the short while we're together, but
pray that it would have maybe triggered an interest or further thoughts in people's minds
today if they are maybe questioning or skeptical of truth. And we ask that you would be working
in their hearts and touching them with your love and with the great purpose, therefore,
of life that we find in you. Amen.