Episode Transcript
Jesus said in Matthew 28:19, go therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Welcome to go teach all nations, bringing you Christ teachings through australian and international speakers. And here is today's presenter, Pastor Tapiwa Mutseriwa.
It's good to be here with all of us today. I have a subject I would like for us to share together. It's not an easy one and it may have to put a disclaimer.
It may upset some of you. And that's fine, that it may start us on a journey. And I'd like for you to pray for me the whole time as I share this subject.
And then we can make a decision at the end together. Let me read the leading text. It's quite a chapter.
Matthew, chapter 16. If you are in Matthew chapter 16, please say amen. We are going to read from verse one to twelve.
I am not using the screen today. I thought I would speak from my heart one of the few times that I will not use PowerPoint and you are there. All right.
Then the Pharisees and the sadducees came and, testing him, asked that he would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said to them, when it is evening, you say, it will be fair weather, for the sky is red. And the morning it will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.
Hypocrites. He said, you know how to descend the face of the sky, but you cannot descend the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
And he left them and departed. Verse five. Now, when his disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread.
Then Jesus said to them, take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the sadducees. And they reasoned among themselves. That is the disciples saying, it is because we have taken no bread.
But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, o ye of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? Do you not yet understand or remember that the five loaves of the 5000 and how many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves and the 4000 and how many large baskets you took up? How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread, but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the sadducees? Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and the sadducees. Let us pray. Father, I commit my thought processes to you the burden I have struggled with throughout the week to a point of almost throwing out the ceremony.
I pray, Father that you may come through and take my anxieties, my insecurities away now that we have come to the point of presenting and you still have me the challenge to share I pray that you take the centre stage and I recede to the background. But when your message comes I pray Father that you, you may find a fertile ground in our heart to receive a challenging message for this is our prayer. In Jesus name, amen.
The winds are blowing. One of the things we have gotten to enjoy in the pastoral ministry is to be invited to University of New South Wales for their open orientation week. They call it the awe week.
We have a stall there for fountain in the city but run by the AsoK, the student association there and we get there we talk to young people and introduce ourselves. It's amazing the conversations that sometimes come out of there and the invitations that may come out of there but what I've often noticed at that event that is called the orientation week is that different worldviews are presented right there. It's almost like a jumbo sale of worldviews.
What I mean by worldviews is that you find socialists there, you will find Marxists there, you will find different kind of ideologies being advanced by the young people. And as I see the first years coming through, coming out of high school and going through this I often wonder. Sometimes I stand there and look at the new ones and I'm saying wow, they are bombarded by all these worldviews and we are a little cog within the system that is also trying to invite them to understand the gospel.
But there's certainly winds that are pulling apart at poles with each other. One is selling this ideology, the other is selling that ideology and often I wonder as they are being asked to take a stand on some issue that is a controversial issue in the time that we are living how are they going? And I sometimes have conversations with my own little, with my own daughter who is in that age group just to pick the mind of the young people. How are you travelling with all this? And I get to understand that sometimes we get into what you may want to call sister JK a moral dilemma.
Where do I stand on these issues and how can I stand on the issues? Because the winds are blowing, pulling us apart. One draws you this way, the other is pulling you that way. And you don't get to make a decision easily.
So you wonder, where do I stand on this issue? Have you ever been there? In our day, there are so many topics. The current topic is whether I'm pro choice or I'm pro life. Have you ever found yourself in any one of those conversations or at least thought about it? Am I pro this? Am I anti this? We are being invited, whether you like it or not.
Just switch on your tv. Whether you like it or not, subliminally or directly, people are calling you to make a decision on some controversial topic. And you wonder, where do I stand on this subject? More so, not just to make a stand, but they are calling for your voice.
Whichever way you look at it, they want you to add your voice. Sometimes even the government itself will say to you, vot, whether you want this or you want that, and you have to post your vote through the touch of a button. You have to vote for some decision as to whether to stand here or to stand there.
I'm saying it's not just a moral dilemma of asking, where do I stand? It is about even to be called to take action on some controversial topic. Do I have you yet? Is this something you relate when I say that? Is this something you're relating to or I'm speaking on something that is far fetched to you? You have never been called to make a decision on these polarising topics that are out there, and there are many of them. I'm not speaking on any one of them in particular.
I'm talking about the principle behind that's what I want to speak into. That's what I want to speak into. One thing I love the Bible for is that it informs the decision.
I don't know whether I was sharing this with Pastor Tim. I was sharing with all of you. Soon after I finished my seminary at Avondale, I got called for ministry late into January.
If you know anything about the call from the seminary, it starts from around October, somewhere there. It's October, November, December. I've not been called.
And you can imagine what's going on in my mind. I'm getting a little bit anxious. There are other things I would have done with my life and I thought God was calling me to ministry.
And I decided, well, in my anxiety, I decided to go back home to Africa and I spent some time, found myself in the car with my brother, driving about a thousand kilometres together. He was raised Christian, he was raised Adventist, but stopped going to church and he's just living his life. And he asks me the question, hey, you have decided to be a pastor.
And I said, yes, an adventist pastor. And I said, yes. Why Adventist? Why not the other? And why a pastor? I had the privilege of sharing with him nonstop.
There are many things I have problems with. I don't have problems with talking. I shared with him what it means for me to be a christian and to be a christian pastor, that it informs everything I do, my decisions, what I eat, what I think about, what I read.
Every sphere of my life is influenced by the. It gives me meaning of life. When I'm faced with challenges of life, how I look at those challenges, it's all my when I'm celebrating, when I'm joyful, when I'm parenting, when I'm everything, everything about it gives me a certain view to life.
That's my worldview. It gives me meaning even when things are challenging me, throwing me hither and thither. When I take this lens through the Bible, I can say, even when the winds are blowing, aha.
Grounds me. And by the time we were finished with the thousand, he said, I understand whether he was saying, understand. So let's look at this passage.
How can it help us? Who are the sadducees? The Bible is telling us that the Sadducees and the Pharisees, these were people living at Paul with each other. They were coming from two different perspectives, two different worldviews, though they were both of jewish tradition, but they had these different worldviews. By the way, you are not only put in a moral dilemma or in a place of making decisions by the winds that are outside the faith, sometimes within the faith, you'll find these poles within the faith itself, within your worldview.
Christian Worldview first, adventist worldview second, you find yourself being pulled. You've got these two poles. I could talk about publications that are out there, but I'm not going to mention any one of them.
I'm being live streamed. I'm not putting any one of them down, and I'm not putting any one of them up. I'm just saying there are publications that are out there even within the christian faith, within adventist faith, that are pulling us apart.
And you say, where do I stand on this subject? And as a young person growing up, wanting to find your own moral or spiritual address, find yourself in a dilemma. What does this passage say to us? We find two people in the same faith, a jewish, two sectors of the same faith, the far seas and the Sadducees. Somehow the only time they agree is when they have to crucify Jesus.
With me, my friends, the only time they are agreeing is when they are agreeing to crucify Jesus. So it's important to understand these wins. Because at some point in time, they converge.
And when they converge, they murder the truth. Let's start with the Sadducees. Before I started really looking into who the Sadducees were, I used to think that the Pharisees were the conservative group.
Because of the conversations that they have with Jesus. But actually, if you go back in time, they actually. The liberal group, the conservative group.
Was the Sadducees. The Sadducees were so called. That's actually a distortion to say Sadducees.
They were called the Tzadoks, after the priest Zadok. During the time of David, the high priest was called Zadok el Sadok. That means the holy ones.
The Sadducees did not believe in anything outside the first five books of Moses. Because they believed only in the written law. Almost very close to the worldview of the Muslims.
That say that God had written, word for word, the first five books of Moses. And you end there. You don't read anything outside of that.
This is the reason why they could not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Because you would find that in the first five books. There's not so much you can garner or gather about the resurrection.
You can find it in the Old Testament, say, in the book of Daniel, for example, Daniel in Phaz resurrection. So for them, in the first five books, what they called the written law, not the oral law, they did not want that. You can go and search this up.
They did not want that. So they stayed in the first five books of the law. The Pharisees were different.
They had another way of reading the law, the first five books. And they had their own innovative ways. That's why they wrote a book called the Talmud.
Of reinterpreting the law according to the time that they were living in. Anyone with me yet they would interpret the first five books according to the Times that they were living in. Not so much the Sadducees.
They were so strict. And you would find that the Sadducees were mostly the high priests. Were almost always in the Sadducees kind of sect.
And the wealthier people and the merchants of the time were almost always Sadducees. And sometimes the way they did business was a little bit ruthless. They were very shrewd in the way they did business.
Do you remember Jesus around the temple? Because it's the sadducees that were almost always around the temple. Because there were high priests. And the priests, what would they do there? They would sell Things within the temple.
Remember the story of Jesus having issues with people in the temple? Most likely, though it is not written, most likely, it must have been the sadducees. The Pharisees were found. Not all.
Not mostly in the temple. They were mostly found in the synagogues. Because they wanted to teach people the schools, the schools of thought, of the time where they would learn how to interpret in the new ways, in the innovative ways.
They could not do that in the temple. They would have to build something else on the side, in their side towns. So they built this place of gathering.
The word synagogue means a blessed garden. They built this and they found themselves in the Greek world. MOsT of them were not that rich.
So if you were to find these people called the zealots, they almost always came from the Pharisees. The Zealots were the Freedom Fighters. They were fighting against Caesar.
They were fighting against all these Laws of the Oppressors that were there. They were a liberation movement, fighting for the rights of self determination for the jewish nation, most of them. This is why you would find them asking Jesus why he was hanging out with people like Matthew.
Because Matthew, according to the Pharisees, was a sellout. The roman empire would impose texts on this colony where the Jews are. And they would appoint these Jews as tax collectors.
And they would put them in provinces or in districts, and they would say, in the CBD of Sydney, we want you to give us $2,000. We have counted the people that are there. You remember when Jesus is born, there is the counting of people.
So they have counted the people and they have made a budget and said, we are expecting this much. And there is going to be a transportation of goods as they come. Let's put at all.
A tax collector would always found at a toll. As machines are moving by those. Stop.
Let's count your donkey number one. Donkey number two. And what you are carrying that is going to cost you so much.
Now, a tax collector, if he was told to collect in a certain place, $2,000 for our understanding, a tax collector could collect $14,000. He pockets $12,000 in his pocket. And he takes $2,000 that is required to the coloniser.
So these people were said to be sellouts. They were worse than the Romans themselves, the coloniser themselves. And they were the enemies of the people.
This is why the Jews, the Pharisees cannot understand why Jesus is hanging out with a guy like Matthew. Sorry, not this Matthew, the Matthew the tax collector. Why Jesus has to stop at the tree where Zacchaeus is.
Zacchaeus, the greatest thief of them all. They did not like that guy. And Jesus ignores the whole crowd and he starts talking to Zacchaeus and he says, zacchaeus, I've got a journey with you.
Forget about all these people. Me and you are going to your house. What? This is the guy you're calling the messiah.
The messiah is supposed to emancipate us and you. And you. Look at him, he's eating with sinners.
He's eating because the word sinners, when you hear sinners, you had to do practically two things to be a sinner. In their context, it was mostly adultery or a tax collector. If you're a tax collector, this was the definition of sin.
Don't worry about envy, don't worry about pride, don't worry about anything else. This is why a guy can come into the sanctuary and look up to heaven and says, God, I thank you. I'm a pharisee.
Pride was not a sin. But this publican here, this tax collector here, God, I'm not like him. Thank you very much for making me who I am.
Jesus had to tell these stories to compare the kinds of people that they were. That was during the time of Jesus. And as they leave this place where these tax collectors, I mean, where these Pharisees and Sadducees have come, are you catching the drift of who these two sects are? The Pharisees and the sadducees very much at pause with each other.
Sadducees are very, very strict people, but rich and most of the times take advantage of other people. Got these Pharisees that are revolutionaries and they fight for the rights of self determination, and they can reinterpret the Bible their own way. If you were a person who likes tags, you would call these liberals and these conservatives.
Sometimes you can find yourself being attacked from left, right. Oh, I've just used the term left and right. Let me tell you how we have come to a place where we use the terms leftists and rightists.
Are these terms that you are familiar with? The right wing and the left wing? Do you know why we call them the left wing and the right wing? Please pray for me. Can we stop and pray? Father, we are interested only in the gospel. Help us to get to the matter that matters.
The gospel of Jesus Christ. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
1791, King Louis XVI in France. People are asking questions because of the atrocities of the church, the Saint Bartholomew massacre, if you like, and a few other things that the church had been involved in and thinking. People are questioning why should we have our government run or our monarchy run by.
By the church? Why should we? And there is. And people are saying we don't want the monarchy anymore because it is run by the pope. And there's all these things that are.
We want to be a democratic government. So there's a split between, in what is called the National assembly, there is a split of those that are pro KING Leo, Louis XVI. Practically what they are for is they are for the establishment or the church.
Because King Louis is there because of the church, because of the pope is the pope, who puts him there, if you remember the times. So when people are rejecting the king, they are actually primarily rejecting the church of the time. So these people that were rejecting the establishment, de establishing the establishment, it got so heated in the National assembly that at some points in time they would be at each other's throat.
These are saying, we want the status quo. They're saying, we have to change things. The church cannot tell us anymore what is right and what is wrong.
We don't want that. We don't want the church to be exacting upon us. We want to be free.
We are revolutionaries. We want our rights from the church. And as a matter of conflict resolution, these people had to be set in different sects of this room.
They were in the people that were pro church. And if you like, a little bit. They were very strict people.
They sat on the right. And these people that were against the establishment, the de establishment people, sat on the left. So you had your right and you had your left.
This is the beginning of the use of the term the right wing. And the left wing. If you go to places like United States of America, you still find that.
But there are people that are pro church, very strict people that know what the Bible says and what is right and what is wrong. They are on the right. There are people that say, we don't want the church to tell us what is right and what is wrong.
They are on the left. If you move into the 18 hundreds, even back as in the 17 hundreds, you will find that the people that were pro slavery were actually christians. They had a way of reading the Bible that allowed for that.
So they would go to church on a Sunday and say, we have to stop working. Sunday is the Sabbath. We have to stop slaves.
The Bible says, even the slaves among your guests, they have to stop. But Sunday they will be flogging the slave. These people were in the right wing.
There were people on the left wing that would say slavery is wrong. Yes, you'd find christians who would say slavery is wrong, but most of the people that said it is wrong were left wing. It is a time when the colonies are coming up.
Those that freed colonies were not mostly from the right wing. They were actually from the left wing of the world. Now I'm in the world.
There were mostly people that did not believe in God, people that were mostly communists, like Russia played a lot of big role in removing the colonies and bringing the freedom. I hope you are not upset yet with me. I'm going somewhere.
I'm just giving history as it is. These are just historical facts. By the time you get to our time, there is a lot of stuff that has happened.
It's almost as if when people in the world are looking at the cold heart of those that are called christians, they say, we don't want to be associated with this. When they look at the left wing and they see that they are actually championing humanitarian sort of trust, they say, that is. Can't you see that? That is beautiful.
That is nice. That is good. So people tend to gravitate towards those ideologies.
Now enters you and me, 2022. The right wing and the left wing are fighting. Some of the topics have to do with lifestyle choices.
Some of the choices have to do with, can a woman be allowed to do abortion or not. The question is, where do you stand as a Christian? Jesus says to you and I, beware of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Beware of the conservatives, beware of the revolutionaries, because you and I have not been called for these causes.
There is a call on our life. There is not a revolutionary call. It is not a call to be cold hearted.
We are called to the character of God. I actually believe one of the reasons why I'm an Adventist is that around 1844, God deliberately raises up a movement. And I'm sharing with you what I find.
And I don't say this with any sense of pride. I'm not putting down any other denomination or anything else. I'm just speaking about my worldview.
And I do so humbly. I believe the reason why God is calling this particular group of people at this particular point in time has to do specifically about the character of God that people in the world cannot see anymore. There is just too much pulling hither and thither.
And God says, hey, this is not about revolutionaries. This is not about trying to patch things together. I want to start a new establishment.
It's not about the establishment. It's not about de establishing. It's about a new establishment.
I want a rock to come and destroy this statue and we start all afresh. Could you tell people that I want us to start something new. Don't patch this old world.
You can't do it. So sometimes they get to ask me, don't you see the oppression of your people? Why don't you come on this revolutionary? And I say, no. Jesus is interested in both parties.
In both parties they are sinners. And what he's interested in is redeeming everyone from Adam's race. And he's calling you.
And I. Let me share with you a bit of that. I still pray that you're not upset with me yet, and I hope you won't be.
Paul is writing, and Paul is bothered by things that he is seeing and is writing to the heart of the matter. He's talking about what he has been called to do, and I think what you and I have been called to do. Are you ready to hear it? Second Corinthians, chapter five.
Let me start from verse 16. You are there. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh.
Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him. My eyes. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him, thus no longer.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, old things have become new.
Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to him, to himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us this word of reconciliation. Now then, you and I, we are ambassadors of Christ, as though God were pleading through us, we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. Friends, Paul says when Christ was hanging on the cross, anyone ever tissue paper? Sorry? Anyone? Thank you.
Thanks. Thanks, Pastor Tim. That would do.
That will do. Paul is saying, as Jesus was hanging on the cross when that was happening, pouring out his punishment on his son to a point where his son says, Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me? And the temple's veil rends in two, as if we are being invited, that you who were alien to God, now you can approach the throne of God with confidence and boldness. God was reconciling the world back to himself through Jesus Christ.
But he did not stop there. He's now giving you and I the ministry of reconciliation. And Paul says, it's as though God through us is calling out to the world, reconciled with God.
So why is God doing that through us? It is because everyone has the chance to respond, the opportunity to respond to the love of God. You see, God does not play coercing gimmicks or forcing gimmicks. He does not legislate morality.
He lifts up his goodness so that we can be drawn to him. And then the life of Jesus, when we receive it, it can be lived through us. That's how he resolved this thing.
Let me say it one more time. For people that have cold hearts, God is not about to destroy them through the gospel. God is saying, Christ, go and reconcile the world to me, my son.
Go and reconcile the world to me of people with cold hearts that love to colonise others. All I have for them is for my goodness. Paul writing to the romans two, four, he says, do you despise, therefore, the goodness of God? Don't you know that it is the goodness of God that brings us to repentance? So all God has for these people is to show his character.
And when a sinner, a vile sinner, stands in the presence of the goodness of God, they see themselves for who they are and they don't like it. Do you remember this roman soldier who was standing at the foot of the cross with a very hard heart? He had killed so many. Blood is not something for him because he has seen so many bleed to death and looked at a dying man in the eye while stabbing him.
A man on the cross dying, sorry thing that he has seen for the first time. But something about the man who is dying that particular day that he says, surely he was the son of God, he falls down on his knees. When we come to the goodness of God, it does something to our hearts.
Haven't you ever been there where you have stood in the goodness of God? And you look at your vile character and you say, wow, I want some of that. I want some of that. And this is all God has for these people.
With God out, not revolutionaries, it's not the gospel that he tends and he says to these people, you think you can fix and patch the world without Jesus? It's impossible. You are better off going to Africa and term lions than try to change people. Revolutions, legislate morality thing that's going to fix this broken world.
My voice is not with the left. My voice is not with the right. I've given my all to Jesus.
I don't even know how to call out to the world, Jesus, just live your life through me. So that when they see your good works through me, they may want some of our father in heaven. So I will love both sides.
I will love both sides. Have you ever been in a place where you have been called to take sides? Left, right, and you wondered? No. Stand up.
Stand up for Jesus is the call this afternoon. Stand up for Jesus when the winds are blowing. Stand for the righteous, for the, for the white garment of Jesus.
It is the one that patches the world. Jesus actually is not trying to change this world that works at old. He's not trying to patch it together.
He actually wants to make it anew. And that's the message that you and I have. We don't take sides, but this side, not with that other side.
We're going to love the oppressor. We are going to love the revolutionary and love a cold world. Because my ministry is the ministry of reconciling the world to God.
And that's tall order. I don't know how to do that. Ah, then Paul says, the Father was in Christ, reconciling the world back to himself.
So if the father can be in me, he can use me to reconcile the world to himself. And then Paul says, it is as though through us, he is calling the world back to himself. Let us pray.
Father in heaven, I just want to thank you at this point, point in time, thanking you because you have given us a conscience to know what is right and what is wrong. In fact, we call your law a delight, and we want, Father, to hide it in our hearts because we believe through it. You will tell us, this is the right way.
Take it. You will speak once and will hear twice what to do with our own unborn babies. You have spoken through your law to us, because we are not a law unto ourselves.
What to do with our sexuality. You have told us what to do. But, Father, as these two poles are pulling apart, drawing us to either of them, we are saying, Father, your word is speaking to us to take a stand of reconciling the world back to you.
I pray, Father, that your gospel may burn in our hearts to both sides, that we may be focused on the person of Jesus, that when your glory is seen through our lives, many might be drawn to you. This is our prayer this afternoon. In Jesus name, amen.
This message was made available by fountain in the city. For more resources like this, visit fountaininthecity.com.au. It's been our pleasure bringing you this programme today.
Here on 3ABN Australia Radio.
