Two Ditches

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says something, Matthew 7, and it's a statement about those who are going to follow Him. Matthew 7.

And you've read this many, many, many times. I mean, it's one of those passages that becomes sort of a cliché, but I'm going to talk about this passage today. He told His followers, Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction. And there are many who go in by it, because narrow is the gate, and difficult is the way, which leads to life, and there are few who find it. So He tells us, as He told them, that the way that He brought is difficult, and the way that He brought is narrow. Where living life, it could be very wide, you know, you go all over the place. It's like you're on some superhighway just going nowhere. But this is a narrow way. What I'm going to talk about today is that narrow way. In fact, we're going to discuss this in the Bible study, too. So we're going to have some discussion, and I want some of you to be able to discuss some of this.

This narrow way, it's not like it's, let's just think of a road. It's not a huge, super eight-lane highway, where people are just driving crazy all over the place. You know, that's the way the world is. And it's not two feet wide, either. It's wide enough that we can move down that a little bit, because we all have personal decisions to make. God doesn't make all of our decisions for us. So we're going down, let's just say it's a eight-foot-wide path, and we're moving, you know, making our decisions. But on both sides of that way are two ditches. And we as Christians wonder into those ditches, and then we wonder out, and we're going down, and pretty soon we're in the other ditch. I want to talk about those two ditches, and how we have to be very, very careful about being concentrating and being conscious about our Christianity, so that we don't end up at one ditch, then another, then back into the other one. Because it's just normal for us to do that in life.

So we're going to look at those two ditches today. Let's talk about the first one. I want to go to a story in 2 Chronicles. This is a fascinating story. 2 Chronicles 18. I was going to cover all of it, then I realized I'd have to give the whole sermon just to cover this whole story.

Because it's such a fascinating story, and there's so many facets to it. There's so many—we learned something about God. We learned about what He does. It's just a fascinating account of what happened in ancient Israel, but I'm just going to go through part of it. The story is about Jehoshaphat, who was the king of Judah, and Ahab, who was the king of Israel.

Israel had drifted into total paganism by this point. Judah still had some belief, some following of the true God. Now, as I've mentioned before, this doesn't mean Israel didn't believe in the God of Israel. He was just one of many gods. They still worship the God of Israel. He was just one of many gods, many ways through salvation, which is sort of what we hear in our society today. All religions lead to the same place. In Judah, at least they had some understanding.

No, no, we have one God. And so they hadn't deteriorated as much as the Israelis had, the Israelites. So we pick up the story in verse 1. Jehoshaphat had riches in honor and abundance, and by marriage he allied himself with Ahab. Okay, so the king of Judah, he was doing very well. Judah was very prosperous. Israel was so prosperous to a certain extent at this point. And so what happens is they marry off probably children to each other, and they make a treaty. You know, we want war against each other.

I mean, we're brothers, and we can show both countries we're brothers by marrying off members of our families. Up until World War I, that was done all through Europe. All those countries, because they had monarchies, they married each other. At the beginning of World War I, the Tsar of Russia, the Kaiser of Germany, and the King and Queen of England were all cousins.

They're all related to each other. So this is a common thing when there's monarchies. Okay, this is what they do. You marry, and you create treaties. And after some years, he went down to visit Ahab and Samaria. Samaria is the capital of Israel. And Ahab killed sheep and oxen and abundance for him, and the people who were with him and persuaded him to go up with them to Ramoth-Gilead. Ramoth-Gilead was a city that's on the border basically of what is now Syria, and it was not a city that the Israelites had. So this was an enemy city.

And so they're talking, and what Ahab wants to get him to do is get together and let's launch a war against that city. Now, you know, it's a city-state. It was a city. All the land around it would have been citizens. They grew their own food. So these city-states, and they became very wealthy because they traded with other city-states, and because they traded because they're in that major trade route between the Middle East and Egypt, they became very wealthy states.

So this is a powerful state for him to go attack. So Ahab, the king of Israel, said to Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, verse 3, will you go with me against Ramoth-Gilead? And he answered him, I am as you are, and my people as your people, and we will be with you in this war. So Jehoshaphat says, yes, yes, we're the same people. So if you go to war, we'll go to war with you.

Also, Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, please inquire for the word of the Lord today. He says, but before we do anything, we better ask God, you know, our God. Now I find something interesting here as what happens next. Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, four hundred men, and said to them, shall we go to war against Ramoth-Gilead, or shall I refrain? So they said, go up, for God will deliver it into the king's hand. Now remember, they had no Levitical priesthood in Israel. The Levitical priesthood had stayed in Judah.

These are pagan priests, but had all kinds of different forms of worship. We know that Israel was involved in idolatry at this point. So he brings all these pagan priests in, and he asks, what should we do? And they said, oh, you're supposed to go to war. That's what the gods, even the god of Israel says that. I'll go to, let's, you should go to war. Verse 6. But Jehoshaphat said, is there not still a prophet of the Lord here that we may inquire of him? You mean there's no prophet here of our God? You're inquiring of these people? We need to, we actually need to go to, the prophet could tell us what our God wants.

So the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, this is just, this is Ahab. I mean, if you study Ahab, this is just so typical of him. There is still one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, but I hate him because he never prophesies good concerning me, but always evil.

Yeah, there's one here, but I hate this guy's guts. All he does is tell me I'm wrong and I'm bad and God's mad at me and I just, I just don't want to go talk to him. I'd rather listen to the 400 guys. So the name of this prophet is Micaiah. And so he says, he is Micaiah, the son of Imla, and Jehoshaphat said, let not the king say such things. He says, wait a minute, you can't talk about him that way. If he, if this Micaiah is really a prophet of God, you can't say these terrible things about him. Then the king of Israel called one of his officers and said, bring Micaiah, the son of Imla, Imla quickly. The king of Israel, Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, clothed in their robes, sat each on his throne. They sat at a threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria. And all the prophets prophesied before them. Now, what do you think of the pomp and ceremony here? You have these two kings, they have the robes on, they have their, you know, crowns on, all their soldiers, all their attendants. There's probably music playing. There's these 400 pagans and they're doing their chance and they're, you know, all they're prophesying and doing all their ceremonies. And, and they're telling them, no, the gods want you to go and want you to go fight this battle.

Now, verse 10, Zadakiah had made horns of iron for himself and he said this, that says the Lord, with these you shall gore the Syrians until they are destroyed. Now, so now you have on these prophets or he's made these iron horns. These will show you, this is what the gods want. These horns you will use to skewer these people and take the city.

And all the prophets prophesied so saying, go to Ramoth Gilead and prosper, for the Lord will deliver it into your hands. Now, notice what they're saying. The Lord, the God of Israel, the God of Israel is going to do this for you. We can tell you that. But they're not prophets of the God of Israel, but they're saying we know what the God of Israel wants and he wants you to go.

And so, Ahab saying, look, Jehoshaphat, what's holding us back? Your God, my God, our God wants us to do this.

Then the messenger who had gone to call Makaiya spoke to him saying, now hasten the words of the prophets with one accord, encourage the king. Therefore, please let your word be like the word of one of them and speak encouragement. So here's what when they pick up Makaiya, the messenger from the king says, no, don't go in there and say anything bad, okay? You can get away with this. Just say, yes, I agree with the 400. It's a simple thing. The God of Israel wants you to go. Because if not, he may kill you, right? Because you're going to be putting him down in front of the king of Judah. So you're going to have to, you just do this. And Makaiya said, as the Lord lives, whatever my God says, that I will speak. This next little part is Makaiya must have been a man of real...

He was one of these guys that I would say a sense of humor, but it's not that. He's just sarcastic.

So he came to the king and the king said to him, Makaiya, shall we go to war against Ramoth, Gilead, or shall I refrain? And he said, go and prosper and they shall be delivered into your hands. Now, I don't know what voice he said that in, but Ahab knew exactly what he meant. Oh yeah, go, yeah, do what you want. It's great, you know. Yeah, you'll be fine.

So whatever, however he said that, Ahab knew, oh, you're playing me here. Because it says, so the king said to him, how many times shall I make you swear that you will tell me nothing but the truth and the name of the Lord? No, no, no. I told you before I made you swear. You will only tell me what God actually tells you. And I know that's not what she told you. Now, I want you to notice he knew that's not what God had told him. He knew it. He understood he had a different message than all the other prophets. He didn't want him to be there anyways. And when he did this sarcastic remark, he says, now you tell me what God actually told you. Then he said, I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains as sheep that have no shepherd. And the Lord said, these have no master. Let each one return to his house in peace. And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, didn't I tell you he would not prophesy good concerning me? What evil? I told you this guy's just a, he's got a bad attitude, you know? The Messiah said, therefore hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne and all the hosts of heaven standing at his right hand and on his left. And the Lord said, who will persuade Ahab? Now I'm going to stop here because it goes on and it tells us seen in heaven about, okay, Ahab is going to do what he wants to do. So let's go ahead and make it possible for him to do it. And so Ahab actually convinces Jehoshaphat to go against the prophet of God. Now this is Jehoshaphat who worships God, who there is a temple in Jerusalem where they still go to Solomon's temple and worship God. They still keep the Sabbath, they still keep the holy days. And he gets persuaded by Ahab, okay, let's go to battle. So they go to battle. The Syrian king sees the army's coming up and he says to his soldiers, we're going to attack with one purpose. We're going to attack, find their king and kill him. And when we killed a king of Israel, the army will collapse and they'll run away. So they literally launched an attack against the king. And you know how you know the king? Because he has all these robes on, you know, and he has an entourage around him, and he's in the battle, not right up front. Well, what Ahab did was convince Jehoshaphat to wear all the robes, and he went in clothed as just a regular soldier. It doesn't say his motivation. He may have wanted him to get killed so he could seize both kingdoms. I don't, we don't know what it was.

But it's very interesting because Jehoshaphat gets in the battle. He sees these shock troops breaking through all the Israeli troops and coming up and he realizes they're going to kill him. And he realizes he's done something wrong here and he cries out to God. And when he does, God makes the other soldiers realize that's not the king of Israel. Where is he? An Ahab who's just fighting along with the regular soldiers, it says a random, it's very interesting, a random soldier shoots his bow and kills Ahab and God protects Jehoshaphat. He gets out of the mess and takes his army back to Judah. Like, wow, this was a really bad idea. In fact, Jehoshaphat went back and said, we got to get better with God here, okay? We got, we got to have something to revival here in Judah because I just saw what's happening up there in Israel. Now this story, like I said, it's a long story. You can read it. It's all of chapter 18, a little bit of chapter 19. But the point here is that Ahab knew what he wanted to do. He had his own ideas, his own desires, his own thoughts, and so what he did is he tried to manipulate and compromise so that he could be a worshipper of God and not do what he said.

That compromise, it's a ditch. Now, not too many people are saying, oh yeah, I'm just trying to find a way not to obey God, but that's that one ditch that we go off into. In that ditch, we get so influenced by the world, we get so influenced by what's happening around us, that we begin to sort of accept the values of the world without even realizing it. What we want is God to do for us what we want him to do, and for us to be able to do what we want to do. Or we get so comfortable with the world. We get so comfortable in the political mess of our world, which really isn't the kingdom of God at all, so why do we want to be involved in it? We get so comfortable with the morality of the world. We get so comfortable with, well, these are nice people, so they're just as much a Christian as anybody, even though they don't know Jesus Christ. And those aren't true.

We get in this ditch, and we get in there, and we begin to compromise with our lifestyles, believing that it's okay with God.

Jehoshaphat woke up in the middle of a battle that, wow, I've drifted into this compromise so much that if God just happened to protect him, it says the soldiers breaking through to kill the king realized, wait a minute, that's not the king of Judah, I mean the king of Israel. We better go find him. And Ahab got shot with an arrow before they could even find him. And when they retreated, Jehoshaphat left. He realized, no, this is a trap. I've compromised and compromised. I sat there with those 400 other false prophets and watched them do all their stuff and got so involved in it that when Micaiah came, I did not listen to him, and yet I knew he was from God.

I just didn't listen to him. It's an interesting story from both viewpoints, from one who wanted to compromise because he wanted to be able to be a worshipper of God and not obey God, and the other who got trapped up in it went off into the ditch and God brought him back out of the ditch. So from both of their viewpoints, I mean it's a very interesting story because of the story of both of them. That's a ditch we have to avoid. Every generation of Christians has to do that because every generation has its own world to deal with, its own issues that draw us towards it, that pull us towards the world. Because we don't want to be absolute pariahs to everybody else in the world. They look at us and say, there's those crazy people, right? So we can just slip over there. We slip over there in our lifestyles. We slip over there in what we allow in our lives. We slip over there in our honesty or dishonesty. We slip over there in all kinds of ways. But we will do with the Sabbath, what we will do with things that we just begin to take for granted. And we end up in that ditch where Jehoshaphat ended up.

Now, when I say compromise, we all have to compromise with unimportant things in life, right? I mean, husband and wife have to compromise sometimes on exactly what car they're going to buy.

We all compromise on things to get along. I mean, congregations will compromise on what social we're going to do. So, you know, I mean, we all have different ideas, but I know a church one time, they had a major problem because the people, I think they actually had a split. It was a little Protestant church because they couldn't figure out what color the carpet should be.

We compromise on those things. It's not important enough. But we can't compromise with what God wants us to do in our lives. He's come into our lives. He's come into our lives.

And here's the motivations we have to be careful about because these are the motivations that lead us into this compromising approach to life. Let's go to 1 John 3. 1 John 3.

So, this is the one ditch that I really want us to explore a little more in the Bible study. 1 John, I'm sorry, chapter 2, verse 15. 2 John, do not love the world or the things in the world.

Well, sometimes people, Christians living in certain times, loving the world was something they didn't want to do because it was so bad. It's hard for us. I mean, we live... I mean, I took Mr. Raines this week just so he could have the experience of eating at Zaxby's, a southern place. Now, I mean, you think about it, what we do all the time, the places we go, the things we do, our houses, where we live, the cars we have, everything we have. It's easy to love this world because it's pretty good to us. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. We can't love the evil of this world.

As much as we live good lives, the world we live in is still not God's world. This isn't what God created for human beings to be. This country is not God's country.

It just happens to be a great place for us to live. God's blessed this country. It doesn't change the fact God doesn't rule over this country. I mean, he intervenes. He intervenes the world events, but I mean, he doesn't rule over this country. We are strangers in a strange land. I read something this week that I hadn't thought about too much. It's when David is collecting all the things needed to build a temple. God wouldn't let him build a temple. He said, your son will. Solomon will build a temple. And he's collecting everything. And he gives a speech to the people of Israel as they're bringing in all these things to build the temple with. And he said, you know, this is our land and this is what God's going to do. And then he makes a remarkable statement. Like our fathers, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, we are aliens and sojourners on the earth. They were in the promised land. They were there. They were going to build a temple to God.

And what he was reminding them is, we're all still sojourners here because we all live for another country. We all live for another land. We all live for another kingdom. And is that interesting? They were in their land. They had a king. They were building a temple. It was a good time to be an Israelite. And he tells them, you are still, remember, you are strangers and aliens on this earth. Because that's what we, anyone who follows God, that's who we are. And so we have here, he says in verse 16, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, is not of the father, but is of the world.

And the world is passing away in the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides forever. But these things pull us away from the will of God, the impulse to just satisfy physical desires.

Who was it that was it a football game or a baseball game that recently someone got up to sing the national anthem and she was so drunk and she couldn't hardly sing? Who, anybody see that? I read about it. Was it a baseball game? I can't remember. Oh, yeah. But she was so drunk. She said later, I'm so sorry. She said I had a drink and I sort of liked the how relaxed it was. So I had another one and I really liked the buzz. And by the time I got up to drink, I was so drunk, I couldn't even remember the words. And it was like, I just want to apologize. She didn't say being drunk is bad. She just want to apologize because she liked it so much that she just lost control. See, the lust of the flesh were driven by that. I mean, what she did wasn't so weird. It was just sort of normal, was it? You just sort of get into the ditch. Of course, she has no concept out that she was in a ditch, but we just sort of swerve off our lifestyles, the people we hang around with, the things we do, and we're slowly moving someplace. You don't realize you're there usually till you're in the ditch. And then it's like, how did I get here? Then we have that intellectual pride of the open eyes, which really just means we want to have unbridled, self-centered experiences. We just want to take in. Now, these things, by the way, are interesting. Physical, you know, having a drink, being married, and being with your husband or wife, these are normal. These are good things from God. There's lots of good things. We're supposed to enjoy food. But when we eat ourselves sick, we've gone into the ditch. So what we have is we have all these things God gives us that are not evil of themselves. And we go over here till we compromise to the point where we make them evil. We actually make the gifts of God evil. And we keep compromising. And then we start this, we want our eyes open to everything. So we want these constant, constant stuff coming into us. This is the great danger of too much screens. Too many screens. Too much screen time.

Constantly want new stuff. Or am I the only one that's gone on and started to look at my newsfeed and realize it's a half hour later and all I've done is read 27 stories or watched 13 videos, and most of it was something I really wasn't even interested in. I just started, you get sucked into, right? And there you are. Because we want this stuff. And what happens if we don't control it, we begin to move away. So our time, our energy and everything is going off the narrow road. Now some of that's fine, right? All the time, it's not. And then there's the desire to become wise. Because we want to know, we want to believe that we can choose between good and evil. That was Ahab's problem. He thought he could choose between good and evil. He was the king. And he got tired of this prophet from God telling him, no, what you're doing is evil. He just got tired of it. And poor Jehoshaphat let his guard down, and he's being sucked into this by Ahab. Compromising with the world. Pride and selfishness is that core part of human nature that causes us to drift in that direction. We just drift there. So that's the first ditch. The second ditch is interesting because at the core of it are sort of the same motivations, but it produces something totally different. Let's go to Matthew 23. Matthew chapter 23, and verse 1. And of course, this chapter is the famous chapter where Jesus just unloads on the Pharisees. You know, he's been at war with them for his entire ministry, and here close to the end, he just unloads on them. Verse 1.

Then Jesus spoke to the mollitudes and to his disciples, saying, the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. Therefore, whatever they tell you to do, observe. To observe, that observe and do. But do not do according to their works, for they say and do not do. For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear. They lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. Verse 5. But all of their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. And they love the best places at feast and the best seats in the synagogues. Verse 7 says, they love to be just called rabbi, teacher. The Pharisees had decided, back when they came into the land out of the captivity, the Babylonian captivity, that group decided that they were going to make sure God never put him in captivity again. So they were going to make the law so strict it could not be broken. Now that's their motivation. Their motivation literally is to make the the the law so strict it can't be broken.

And so they made laws after laws after laws after laws. Things you had to do. Things that the average person didn't do or couldn't do. And so they ended up judging everybody, not by the laws of God, but by the laws that were supposed to protect the laws of God. Now that ditch seems very righteous. When you're in that ditch, you're very pleased with yourself.

Because you've got it down. You just got it down. Pat, you are righteous. And you look at other people and say, wow, these people are unrighteous because of this and this and this and this. We go to this ditch too.

And this ditch leads us in another direction. The one ditch, the compromise with the world, leads us into constant sinful behavior and thoughts.

So it's obvious to see someone who's in that ditch, right? Well, where were you Friday night? Oh, I went out with some guys I know, and we got it and had a few drinks together at the local bar. And it's like, well, you shouldn't do that on the Sabbath. Oh, okay. They're in this ditch. This ditch, you actually feel really good about yourself.

Because in this ditch, you think, and we're all, we've all gone back and forth through these ditches. When you're in this ditch, you think you're just superior. You got this down.

Look at verse 25. Woe do you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgences. In other words, you indulge yourself in your belief in your own righteousness, in your own superiority. You indulge yourself that way. And you're hypocrites. You're play-acting.

That's what a hypocrite was. Man, a play actor. You're in a play, and you're pretending to be a character. So you're just pretending to be a character, and you're really not that character. So the one ditch leads to absolute behaviors that are sinful. The other leads to pretending you're not sinful, and a different behavior. And if you look at why the Pharisees were criticized by Jesus all the time, well, you're not... you have all this behavior, but in yourself you don't realize you're off the straight and narrow path just as much as the other person. You're off the path, but you can't see it because you become a player. You become an actor in your Christian... in your following of God.

He says, first clean the outside of the cup and the dish.

But inside they are full of extortion. Blind Pharisees first clean the inside of the cup and dish that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, if you're like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead man's bones and uncleanness.

Even so, you outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you're full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Now, how could a Pharisee be guilty of lawlessness? I mean, they never worshiped idols. They kept the Sabbath. They, you know, married to one woman, never divorced. How could I be full of lawlessness? And what it was, was they had a modified behavior, but inside there was no change at all. In the church, if you've been around long enough, you've seen the church go from one ditch to another.

You know, I remember as a kid where there were churches where if a woman walked into the church, there was someone near the measure how long her skirt was. That may be one side of that ditch. Then there's others. The other side of the ditch is you can wear whatever you want. And I've been in churches where everybody was wearing whatever they wanted. Those are the two ditches. And we're always individually working through that. That's why we can't be too hard on each other. We're always individually working through that. But once we get into one ditch or the other, we get into serious spiritual problem.

So measuring someone's skirt is really fair say, right?

But in some instances, wearing certain clothes at church is not proper.

Where those lines are, remember, there's a little leeway in the narrow path. So we can't set up rules for everything. They're on this side. We have no rules. We're on this side. And that's where we're always struggling. We'll always struggle with that. So Christ comes back. Then it's easy. He'll say, do this and do this. Oh, we get it, right? Until then, we struggle with that.

I mean, we struggle with all kinds of things.

Health issues. When to go to a doctor and not a doctor. I mean, four years ago, there was problems in the church on whether to wear a mask or not a mask.

Or not wear a mask, right? Which was, to me, seemed somewhat unimportant. If you want to wear a mask, wear one. And if you don't want to wear a mask, don't wear one.

And sit on different sides of the hall. It's okay. Just be together. Just be together. But see, we go, we just swing back and forth as part of our human nature.

And so, what did he tell? In fact, what's very interesting here is that you're lawless. In other words, the pharisaical motivations are the same as what we read in 1 John that are the motivations for compromise. One is, I want to do whatever I want. The other is, I want to control everything so that we have some kind of perfection. And you can't do both. Either of those. You go off into a ditch.

So what do we do? Well, Matthew 23, 23.

I was telling my wife, as I was preparing this sermon, something sort of... I thought, I've never given this sermon. Why is it in my head? I remember hearing this sermon, probably, when I was a teenager in the worldwide Church of God, how the Church goes from ditch to ditch, we need to make sure we're not in one ditch or the other. I thought, I remember hearing that as a kid.

And that's where we have to be all the time. And like I said, not be too hard on each other because we're all struggling with that. We're all struggling with going back and forth. We're all trying to get back on the straight way. And you know, the Bible doesn't give us an answer to every problem. That's another thing, too. People think the Bible has an answer to every problem. No, it doesn't. We're supposed to work this out together with the Scripture and with God's Spirit. We have the Scripture. We have the principles. Principles sometimes don't break down into absolute laws. I understand. I'm a firstborn. I want the principles to break down into 37 laws. I would like if we had a Talmud and I could turn and say, well, here's how we have an answer to every problem. But that's not life. And God gave us this, not 37 volumes. Here's the reason for it. We're supposed to struggle with these things. We're supposed to work with the Bible. Work through things. We're supposed to talk about things.

Always in a different society. You know, there was a time in the radio church of God where they were so liberal.

Because there was a time when women had to wear a skirt, basically a dress to go into a swimming pool. And men had to wear pants and a shirt to go into a swimming pool. And we didn't make people do that. Of course, they were still dressing a whole lot. Had a lot more clothes on than people do today.

In the earlier days of the worldwide church of God, we were considered incredibly liberal in society. Because we let blacks and whites come together into the same church building.

There were places in the south where we were considered incredibly liberal. Some kind of weird, crazy religion. Police would come in some places.

Because we let, we said, no, these are all God's people. We're all together.

See, we're always fighting something. We're always on a road, and the world is trying to pull us into this ditch or this ditch. And we got to be on that road. And we're always going to be outliers in this.

We're always going to be, though.

That's why he says in Matthew 23, 23, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you may tithe of mint and anise and come in and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone.

Justice. The idea that we treat everyone fairly. The idea that everybody gets a fair trial. The idea that we don't go around running each other down, tearing each other apart. That we deal with each other properly, even if someone's done something wrong. We deal with them properly.

Instead of just creating more and more traditions. You know, traditions aren't always bad. We have traditions in this church, right? I mean, three songs, sermonette, announcements, traditions. But they're not bad. There's a sense of sort of familiarity with traditions and a stability. I mean, traditions can be good.

But traditions can also become like it's part of the law of God and it's not.

What happened was the Pharisees created these laws to protect the law and what they did, they actually broke the law in the Spirit. It's good to attend Sabbath services.

We're commanded to. It's righteous to do so. But how good is our Sabbath services if we're just filled with bitterness and strife and wars? We're missing something, right? Not that we, fortunately, we're not. But I've been in congregations that were.

What good is the Sabbath? Should we not keep one and the other? Like Jesus was telling them, tithes. But you're missing out on justice and mercy and faith. How much do we miss out on mercy with each other? We're so far into that pharisaical ditch, we never let anybody get a break. We don't forgive easily. We don't show kindness to someone who's made a mistake in suffering.

Should we not do one and the other? What good is our tithing if we're dishonest in our business practices? How does God look at that? You see what I mean? If we do one and not the other, we're still wrong before God. But we can brag about our tithing. I'm righteous because I've tithed. Oh yeah, well business is just business. That's not acceptable to God either.

See, we go back and forth between these two ditches all the time.

So we have to love mercy and faith. Faith is the willingness to walk humbly before God and simply believe He's going to do what He says He will. And I talked a little bit about that last time I spoke here when I talked about the faithfulness of God. Well, you have to believe He's faithful, but boy it's hard. You know, I get it to say these things now because I always get it right myself.

Because it's like, oh yeah, I'm compromising because I really don't believe God's going to be faithful to me and He says He will be. So once God's reaction is, I'm really disappointed with you, son. That's God's reaction. That's how God looks at us. It's not like I'm going to squash you like a bug. It's I'm disappointed in you. So, two ditches. I want to explore this more. I have some very specific issues I want to talk about in the Bible study, but I want you all to contribute by giving some ideas as we talk about these two ditches in just life that we all face. That we all slipped into one or the other and using one and then way back to the other one. We just go back and forth so we can stay focused on what Jesus told us to do. And that's to walk the straight and narrow way.