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Born to Win Podcast - with Ronald L. Dart
Hosted by Born to Win · EN
Born to Win's Daily Radio Broadcast and Weekly Sermon. A production of Christian Educational Ministries.
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The Gospel of Matthew #19
Mar 200:28:03Tap to summarizeHave you ever encountered a prophet? I mean the real thing, the genuine article. I’m not talking about some guy with wild eyes and a bad hair day who’s telling you, The world is going to end next December 13th at 4:23 in the morning. No, I’m talking about an authentic sent-from-the-Lord type of prophet.Prophets true and false come in many different descriptions, and sometimes the ones sent by God don’t really know who they are. They don’t realize the significance of what they are and what they’re doing and what they’re saying. How do you evaluate a prophet? How would you know if one came on the scene and really had a message from God? Make no mistake about it; there are false prophets out there—and false prophets, obviously, deserve no consideration at all.One thing you can know: those that set dates for the return of Jesus Christ are surely uninspired and can be safely ignored. Why would I say that? Well, because Jesus himself said it in Matthew 24. There are also those who prophesy the future, but teach against God’s law. In another day in time, you could stone those fellows. Today, you can just shut the door in their faces without incurring any displeasure from God. But there is another group of prophets (or people who claim to be, at least) who are not so easily defined.
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Standing at the Brink
Feb 2800:28:13Tap to summarizeYears ago, while living in England, I saw some graffiti on an overpass that declared “War is Obsolete”. This was in the glory days of the “Ban the Bomb” movement. There were well-intentioned people who favored unilateral nuclear disarmament. The British could afford to think that way, because the American bombs could be counted on to keep the Russians in check.At the time, I wrote a magazine article that opined that war was far from obsolete—that history told us Man had never developed a weapon he did not eventually use. Time passed, and so did my opinion. In fact, it has been 60 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and no one has been killed by a nuclear weapon in all that time. No one could hope to win a nuclear war, and so there was no reason why any sane person or nation would start one. In all those intervening years, the only nations that had any nuclear weapons were allegedly sane.Well, more time has passed, and now we have to deal with powers that show very clear signs of not being very sane. And the insanity has allowed nuclear materials and technology to leak out of their tightly sealed boxes and into the hands of people who are certifiably insane. Mutually Assured Destruction was a reasonable doctrine in a world where we were dealing with reasonable people who loved life. Now we are dealing with unreasonable people who care nothing for life, not even their own. You could even say that they love death.I don’t think we yet understand the religion or the psychology of the 9/11 hijackers who brought down the World Trade Center. But with the advent and spread of the suicide bomber, everyone is now thinking that we will ultimately have to deal with nuclear suicide bombers, and that is truly unimaginable.
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Why Not Life?
Feb 2700:28:04Tap to summarizeI live in the country, near a small city. Some people, out where I live, sleep with the windows open and night and don’t bother locking the doors when they go for a walk. But not far from here, just a few days ago, a high-school student and three accomplices robbed a man at gunpoint, took him to a nearby lake, shot him in the back of the head, and left his body there on the beach. Just another senseless act of violence. You can probably find one very much like it in your local paper.It would have been just another mysterious homicide except for what followed. The killer took a friend or two from school out to the lake to show them the body. These friends told other friends, who then went out to see the body, and so on. In all, over a dozen students had seen the body, and many more at the school had heard the story of the killing. Yet, not one reported it to the authorities—until one anguished student who had heard the tale reported it—four days later.What’s wrong with this picture? The school district has a good reputation. It’s not a bad community, at all. But the local prosecutor said this, It is stunning that we have a society so deviant that people would treat a body like a tourist attraction. I know that some will argue that allowing millions of abortions in this country has so cheapened life that these kids didn’t really think of this man as a life. But abortion laws didn’t cause this. They are another symptom of the same disease. So what brought us to this coarsening of our attitude towards human life?
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The Gospel of Matthew #18
Feb 2600:28:02Tap to summarizeHave you ever wondered why religious people can be so hard-nosed and intolerant? No, I’m not exaggerating—religious people can get in bitter arguments with one another over small matters of doctrine or belief. So much that men won’t speak to one another. People can be ostracized from their families. They can get into fistfights and even, in history, kill over fine points of scriptural interpretation. The intolerance can even affect whole nations and races of people.The Eastern and Western churches divided themselves over several differences, but one of the chief points of contention was the question of whether the Holy Spirit came out of the Father and the Son…or out of the Father through the Son. There is a distinction to be made there, but is it really worth dividing whole religions over? Instead of respecting one another, people were dis-fellowshipped and excommunicated—whole churches, whole countries were cut off from one another.This was serious business. And in Jesus’ day, there was a party of Jews who wanted him dead. If you believe that minor doctrinal differences are the real reason behind such intolerance and hatred, you’re just not thinking. The real reason is fear. Jesus understood this and, on sending out his disciples, warned them very carefully about it. We’ll find that passage in Matthew, chapter 10.
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The Gospel of Matthew #17
Feb 2500:27:57Tap to summarizeHave you ever wondered why healing played such a big role in Jesus’ ministry? Probably not, because it seems like the most natural thing to do. What would you do if you had the power to make the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? Wouldn’t you go down to visit your local hospital and straighten out a few problems?But the real mystery may not be why Jesus healed, but as to why, often, he did not heal. When you realize that Jesus did not empty every sick bed in Israel, you suddenly bring into focus the truth that when he did heal he apparently had some reason in mind or some motivation for it beyond mere compassion. Jesus’ compassion cannot be called into question, but there were times when he did heal and times when he did not.One thing that Jesus’ healing did is prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he had the power to forgive sin. Healing is, in a way, a metaphor for salvation. No, it’s more than a metaphor—it’s what salvation is: a repairing of destruction, a putting right of things gone wrong, the healing of a life, the giving of the beginnings of hope. The healing of a withered arm is one thing; the healing of a withered life, a withered soul, a withered heart is another. In his healings, Jesus proved that he had the power to do both.
Transcribe →The Words of Jesus #8
Feb 27, 202500:27:31Tap to summarizeI known I’ve been complaining about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John not giving us more of what Jesus actually said. They’ll tell us that Jesus went into a synagogue and taught, that people were astonished at his doctrine, that he delivered it with authority—but wouldn’t tell us what his doctrine was.Well, we’ve discovered that the reason for that supposed lapse is that the doctrine is conveyed to us elsewhere in the gospel accounts. Jesus was an itinerant preacher, and many of his messages were the same in one location as they were in another. So we can presume that when we do find a comprehensive lesson from Jesus, we are getting what he taught in most of those places where the evangelists neglected to include the message.In our study on the words of Jesus, we have come to Sermon on the Mount—which is the longest, and perhaps the most comprehensive statement of Jesus’ doctrine in the New Testament. And we have come to the point where Jesus is about to tell his audience something very important. I don’t know how his audience took it, but I know it poses major problems for modern Christian students. First, let me explain a little background that those listening would already have known…
Transcribe →The Words of Jesus #7
Feb 26, 202500:27:32Tap to summarizeJesus was a man of few words, so we want to pay close attention to the words he did say. When he spoke, he was often enigmatic in what he said–sometimes it was hard to figure out exactly what he meant. As often as not, he would make his point with a question, or perhaps with a question followed by an action. For example, Jesus was a Sabbath-keeper, but he was very much at odds with the scribes and Pharisees on their interpretation of Sabbath observance. In its origins, the Sabbath was a liberating law–it set men free. One version of the original commandment is found in Deuteronomy, chapter 5:Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord your God: in it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates; that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you. And remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm: therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.Deuteronomy 5:12–15What’s the idea here? Well, you were toiling as slaves for hundreds of years. Now, with an escape from bondage, you, your servants, and your animals would be given a day off. You’re liberated, you’re free. The Pharisees had managed to turn this liberty–something to be rejoiced over–into a burden. They had a list of do’s and don’ts as long as your arm. According to Jesus, they had lost touch with what the Sabbath was all about. So how did Jesus, a man of very few words, make his point?
Transcribe →The Words of Jesus #6
Feb 25, 202500:28:05Tap to summarizeHow was it possible that otherwise sane men would want to kill Jesus? Think about it. He was a quiet man. He was plainly a kind man. He was an engaging teacher and faithful to the scriptures. More important, he was doing miracles—he was healing people left and right, and such healings as no one had ever seen. And yet, immediately after some of these healings, they wanted him dead. I submit to you that this is strange behavior.We know a lot of it had to do with jealousy. The religious establishment felt threatened by Jesus. The establishment always feels threatened by someone outside the establishment who is successful. Even Jesus’ own disciples felt threatened by a man successfully casting out demons in Jesus name. They wanted him stopped. It is just human nature, I suppose. But the establishment would not have admitted they were jealous. What was their reason?And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day. But Jesus answered them, My Father works still, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.John 5:16–18 KJ2000So the establishment had two reasons for getting rid of Jesus: breaking the Sabbath, by their definition, and blasphemy—making himself equal with God. In response to their objections, Jesus gave a relatively long response. (I say relatively. It is only 108 words.) It is an important statement, because it addresses the relationship between Jesus and the Father. It is Jesus’ first major doctrinal statement as well. I touches on the nature of God, the resurrection and the fact that there are at least two resurrections, the judgement, and the connection between Jesus and Moses. All this in 108 words. Let’s read it.
Transcribe →The Words of Jesus #5
Feb 24, 202500:28:09Tap to summarizeOver the years, a common objection people raised to religion is that, well, it’s pie in the sky. Religion, they think, has some vague promises of benefits in the next life, but it doesn’t do much for a person in this life. That’s really a pity that those of us who call ourselves Christians have allowed people to think of us that way; for if a person comes to understand the words of Jesus, they’ll come away with a totally different perspective.Take for example one day when Jesus came to a synagogue in Nazareth where he had been brought up. As his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read. (As Jesus was a Sabbath keeper, he did not work at his job on the Sabbath and he was in regular attendance at the synagogue. Adult men were allowed to read aloud from the scriptures in the synagogue and it was very important in a time when hardly anyone had even a piece of the Bible of their own and a lot of them couldn’t have read it if they had it.) So, Jesus stood up to read, and there was delivered to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. When He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.Luke 4:18–19 KJ2000He closed the book, he handed it back to the minister, and he sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. Something about the way he read it, something about the way he communicated this ancient prophecy, struck people, and he said to them, This day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears. Not tomorrow, not in the next life, right now.
Transcribe →Christian Origins #64 - Ephesians
Feb 21, 202500:28:03Tap to summarizeThere seems to be a difference between a secret and a mystery. At the very least, the Bible seems to use the word mystery in more than once sense. For example, there might be something that can be known but has been deliberately kept secret. Then there can be something that, even though stated, is not understood.This is the only way I can understand what Paul is saying when he declares that the conversion of the Gentiles was a mystery—that it was not made known to the sons of men. We find this discussion in Ephesians, chapter 3.
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