30th September 2024

30th September 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (Matthew 5:33-37 focus v33)


Message (Alan Burke) 


How good are you at keeping your word? Are you one of those people who has to make promises all the time, or to swear by something, or are you the kind of person who people know that if you say you will do something that you will do it? As we come to this passage it doesn’t forbid us to make promises, vows or oaths as some would argue. We can conclude that by letting scripture interpret scripture, God even commands his people to swear by his name (Deut 10:20), Jesus before the Sanhedrin when the high priest said to him, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” 64 “Yes, it is as you say,” Jesus replied (Mt 26:63–64). Jesus recognised the binding nature of the oath in court. Also early Christians didn’t understand this as Jesus forbidding all oaths neither we should we but for the believer we shouldn’t need them, we shouldn’t need to say ‘I promise’, ‘I swear’ ‘I cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye’, no we shouldn’t have to say these things because we should be people of our word. 


Jesus beings teaching on oaths similarly to how he had with Murder, Adultery and Divorce. You might be wondering where it says in scripture, ’Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’? You could try to do an internet search. You’ll not find it though. Unlike what Jesus had death with pertaining to the sixth and seventh commandment which is a narrow understanding of what the scripture was teaching, here he is dealing with a rabbinic paraphrase. In effect it’s a an interpretation of all the passages on oaths and vows in the Old Testament. This was a commonly held view time, it was the way that scripture was understood by many people. Basically it was the understanding that you could make an oath and as long as it wasn’t made in the name of the Lord, then, well, you didn’t really have to keep it. What Jesus was doing here was correcting a misguided interpretation of the scriptures, this time it’s not of the scriptures themselves but how the scriptures in relation to oaths were interpreted. 


We live in a time when people do not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions (2 Tim 4:3-4). If you go into many a Christian book shop they will have many many authors that are teaching things just like the Rabbis that might sound like truth, that might have the appearance of truth but they aren’t. We all need to be careful with what we consume. We should be those who do not just accept what we are told not even by Scott or myself but we should examine it against the scriptures. I’m going to quote from the Westminster Confession of Fatih I.1 Of the Holy Scripture; …therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his Church; and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which maketh the holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.


For us the Word of God as set forth in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and the supreme standard of the Church. Be careful what we consume, who you listen to, examine everything Scott and I against the scriptures before you, what we believe should be founded upon and agreeable to the Word of God. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q103. What do we pray for in the third petition?
A. In the third petition, which is, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven,” we pray, that God, by his grace, would make us able and willing to know, obey, and submit to his will in all things, as the angels do in heaven.
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