Menno-Protestants 2 - David Bercot

They're not going to follow it. Now, I've heard so many different excuses not to, but it's always an excuse. So one of them you hear today a lot is, well, see, Christ gave those commandments just to show us we can't live by commandments.

That makes sense? Okay. So he gives us commandments that are difficult. They would be impossible on our own strength. Just to show us, see, you can't be saved by obedience because, see, I'm going to give you all these commandments. You can't live by them, can you? See, so yep, just ignore them because I purposely gave you commandments you can't live by. I mean, that is so stupid. You'd think no one would preach that with a straight face.

Well, good morning, everyone.

The title of my message is Mental Protestants Part Two. Now, when I gave the message, the first part, it was the end of July. It wasn't intended to have a part one and part two. It's got quite a bit of feedback on part one. I thought, okay, maybe I should do a part two to clarify some things. Now, a lot of the feedback, maybe most of it was positive. I'm not talking about from the congregation here. I'm talking about on our YouTube channel. When I was preaching it, I was only thinking of our congregation. I forgot, oh, yeah, this is going out to hundreds of other people. And so I thought I should clarify some of the statements I made, some of the things that we should think of in this area.

And maybe the very title, I was trying to come up with a catchy title, but I could see how someone might find the title a little bit offensive and think I'm taking a dig at them or something like that.

Now, fortunately, most of the feedback, negative feedback I saw are from people who probably were probably saying very similar things. They're, I think, were misinterpreting where I was coming from. But if not, like I say, hopefully today we can clarify that.

I had kind of to give the setting, which our congregation was aware of, but someone just tuning into that message would not have necessarily been aware. We had been talking a bit in our congregation about how any group of people lose their identity and that when you lose, there's four things we talked about and someone could, I'm sure, list five or six things, but yeah, we've just been talking about four. And that's vision, history, theology when it comes to Christianity, that is, and culture. And we had seen a message from Chester Weaver. He had showed us a documentary that CBS had filmed back in the '60s. These would have been about General Conference Mennonites. And just you could just see the tremendous change there.

And later, Kevin gave a very fine message about culture. So yeah, I was addressing then theology and the role that it plays. At the same time, the sermon I gave back in July, I was also addressing the vision that the original Anabaptists had. And of course, our history, if we don't understand what they believed and how the Anabaptists started, what was their vision, what were the things important to them, well, then yeah, we hardly know today whether we're on the right track or whether we have left it. The vision of the Anabaptists who, in fact, next year is going to be our 500th anniversary from the very first baptisms that happened there in Zurich of people being in the eyes of the state church, were being rebaptized.

But in our eyes, this was their first baptism because they had been baptized as infants without any personal faith. And their vision back then, when you read their writings, there's quite a number of people who wrote, whose works have been translated into English. Their vision, I would say, if I had to sum it up, was to restore Christ's church as a holy people separated from the world and living as obedient citizens of God's kingdom. I mean, that's how I would sum up what these writers, what the spokesmen, the original leaders of the Anabaptists were saying. And I think that would still be our vision today, to have a holy people living obediently to Christ, totally consecrated to Christ.

And then I had mentioned in the message, the Dortrek Confession. Now, the reason I mentioned it, actually, it wasn't written until a hundred years after the Anabaptist movement started. So it was not something the original leaders came up with. This was like a century later. But the reason I mentioned it was because here in the United States, the Mennonites in 1725, they adopted it as their statement of faith.

But then in, I forget the year, I think around 19, in the early 1920s, then the Mennonites, the General Conference, came up with another statement of fundamentals. And they said, well, this is not meant to replace the Dortrek Confession, but nothing in it really, well, I shouldn't say nothing, but a lot of the things in there really went against the Dortrek Confession. And then the same thing happened in 1963, which is the statement of faith that a lot of our churches use. And it's not bad. I mean, I would agree with nearly everything in there. But what it has to say about salvation, I would say, is a bit weak. And that was my concern.

But now, just to put theology in perspective, the point of this sermon and the point I want to share today, theology, Jesus is not going to give us a quiz on Judgment Day. And if we don't get these points right, sorry, you're out.

You didn't explain salvation correctly, so you're out. I mean, he's already told us in Matthew 25 how he's going to judge us. He's going to look at how we lived. He doesn't say anything about theology in there. And when you go through the teachings of Jesus, I mean, if you just read the four Gospels, there is some theology. Yes, there is some essential theology that goes with Christianity. But there's not a lot of theology you're going to get out of reading Matthew or Luke. There's a little bit in John, but that wasn't the focus of Jesus other than the theology that he is the Son of God and we must believe in him. There's no other way of salvation except through faith in Christ Jesus.

You get that from his teachings. But yeah, beyond that, no, there's not a lot of theology. And then just this morning in communion, we were reviewing the Apostles' Creed. The same thing. I mean, it's theology in there, but boy, it is so basic and simple. If you don't agree or accept the Apostles' Creed, then you obviously don't accept the New Testament. Because if you read the New Testament, I mean, just anyone without any kind of theological training or indoctrination, you're going to come up with those points. I mean, they're just obvious points that are in the New Testament.

And then we see the same trend with the Anabaptists in the beginning. One of the earliest confessions of faith, and this is from the early 1500s, was the Schleidheim Confession. And I believe there are seven articles in there. And not one of those seven could you really say, oh, this is theology. It's all focused on lifestyle and on this vision of creating a holy church, a people separated to God, in contrast to the state churches where everybody in the state was baptized as a baby and supposedly they're all Christians. And so the Anabaptists were really bothered by this, that you'd go to the Catholic Church or the Lutheran Church or the church there in Zurich, wherever, it's the same story, that everyone had been baptized as an infant.

And you had some godly people. I mean, the state church, it's not like, oh, nobody in there was following Christ. No, it did definitely produce some godly people. But then you have this mixture of just totally godless people. And they're part of the church too. They're supposedly Christians because they got baptized as an infant. And so what you see in Schleidheim is, okay, we want a holy church. We want to have a holy communion. So communion is not going to be just everybody. If you were born in Germany, you're—sorry. No apology needed. No apology needed.

So if you were born in Germany, yeah, you're automatically admitted to communion in the state church. And pretty much the same in any of those countries. It might be the Catholic Church. It might have been the Reformed Church in Switzerland. But yeah, just the fact that you were born at all, you were supposedly a Christian.

So that is what the Anabaptists were trying to create something different. They realized that's not New Testament Christianity. You don't have a state church in the New Testament. It is people who have voluntarily given their lives to Christ, who have come to faith personally before they are baptized and then live just—we didn't get too far into it in Sunday school today—but of living a life of producing fruit to maturity that we'll probably talk more about next Sunday.

Now, so my point in the message, and I'll just reiterate it today, it's a matter of concern. It's not that, oh, if you don't have your theology right, then I'm hammering, let's get our theology right. I mean, I'm not saying there's no importance there, but I think it's fairly minimal.

So the things I'm saying today and that I was saying last time weren't out of being critical. It's out of concern. Theology generally doesn't affect how you and I live. I mean, your view on a lot of subjects isn't going to have any bearing. But the theology of Martin Luther directly affects how people live. If you are saved by faith alone and your obedience has no role in your salvation, which is what Luther taught and is what most Protestant churches teach, time has shown it does affect how people live. Now, there are plenty of people who hold to that doctrine and would preach it strongly. And yet, out of personal love for Christ, they live very godly lives.

I mean, I have met such people. I've worked alongside of them. Yeah, that's out there. But along with that then is this mass of other people who hear that message. It's faith alone, it's not works. In fact, almost the worst thing you can do is to think your works play any role in your salvation. It seems like grace will cover anything, no matter how wicked, unless you think works play a role in salvation. Then, oh, I don't know if you're even a Christian.

It's such an upside-down crazy thing.

And that's why it has such an impact because, like I say, the thing you're most worried about as a Protestant is, oh, am I guilty of work salvation? I was very surprised when I was an evangelical. I remember somebody in our church, we were talking about the—he was talking about the Baptists. And our congregation was very similar to the Baptists. It was an independent evangelical church. We said, oh, the Baptists, they're all just about works.

It's like, wow, that is strange because the Baptists are best known, at least I always knew them as the people who taught once saved, always saved. And that was their big thing and salvation by faith alone. And yet, yeah, that's the accusation. And that's what it's like in the Protestant world. It's like you're sniffing out someone who's maybe too focused on works, and we better do something about that. And not nearly enough teaching on the essential. In fact, they can't teach that it's essential to obey because then that would be work salvation. So it does affect how people live because in the end, what you're seeing with Luther's Gospel is that obedience is not that important to God.

I mean, he doesn't really care that much about obedience. He says, I'm going to affect your salvation. He does care about what you believe. You better have it right on how we're saved. Because if you've got that wrong, even if you've gone up, done the altar call and all of that, yeah, if you start talking about works playing a role in salvation, I mean, like I say, right away, people are going to say, yeah, not sure he's a Christian.

And that's why it's such a dangerous theology. If we're just talking about a point of theology, okay, fine. But this is something that really affects how people live. Now, the problem is you hear that Gospel preached in so many of our Anabaptist churches, even churches who I know they believe that you have to live a godly life. You can't live a life of wickedness and still be saved. That is what they believe inside. But you hear that message over and over, it does have an effect on people. They will eventually, it's like, well, yeah, why focus on works? Why worry about it? God doesn't seem to care. I noticed just, and it's all throughout the hymns.

I mean, most of our hymns are written by Protestants. We don't sing very many Anabaptist hymns. We do sing a few. I wish that's one thing we would produce more of would be some good hymn writers. But I just noticed the hymn, and it's a nice hymn. It talks about nothing I bring, just a heart that's contrived for all of my sins. Well, that is true when you come to initial salvation, you do not have to bring any works at all. That just faith and repentance is all God requires. But it's not like, oh, it's bad if you're bringing godly works. I mean, Cornelius did. He stood out for that.

So that's fine. But okay, so why are we singing that after we've been saved? I mean, it's like, boy, I better just make sure, God, I'm not thinking I'm bringing anything to you. It's all you. And yeah, I mean, you keep singing that, you keep hearing that preached, it is going to affect how you live for most people. Like I say, some people will get past that and they live these remarkable lives. But that is not the general way that it flows.

And when I say it's so much in our circles, I'm saying it from personal experience. I mean, this has happened to me multiple times where I have preached. I can think of situations where I've preached just word for word what the original Anabaptist forefathers were saying about salvation and then get called down by a bunch of people for saying that.

I was at a seminar or a conference where John D. Martin and I were preaching on salvation, the Anabaptist view of salvation. And about a third of the people who had registered boycotted it because I was going to be speaking on salvation. It's like, I wasn't going to be saying anything that wasn't good Anabaptist doctrine, but it wasn't going to be good Protestant doctrine. And so, yeah, I got a bunch of people boycotted it. I was at a conference once where I wasn't even preaching about salvation.

It was on discipleship. And the material is now in the book, Secrets of the Kingdom Life. But I was talking about the victorious cycle of faith, prayer, obedience, faith, prayer, obedience. That you start with faith, you pray. The more you pray, the more it increases your faith and the easier it is to obey. And then when you live an obedient life, it increases your faith because you're walking with God. And then your faith increases, your prayer life increases. And then that increases your obedience. And it's a wonderful cycle. And it's like, I didn't think anything in there would offend anybody, even a Protestant. And wow, the other speaker who followed me, yeah, he said, well, I'm not going to give the message I was planning to.

And he went through a message on salvation. And all he did was quote all of the proof texts that Protestants use to teach their people that, see, works play no role in salvation. Of course, he left out a big long list of ones that say the opposite. And that was his message. And then he told, and this was young people, which was really bothersome. And he told them, now it's good if you obey, but it's not going to affect your salvation.

And this was an Anabaptist preacher. And it's like, wow. So that's why I'm concerned. It's not out of being critical. It's like, we're going to lose this if we keep preaching those kind of messages. If we're afraid to talk about obedience, then yeah, you can see already there's been so many groups. The General Conference men and I, they've gone liberal, but they went fundamentalist before they went liberal. Look at the Church of the Brethren. I mean, they weren't original Anabaptists. They were part of the Brethren movement that was very, very similar, taught almost the same things as the Anabaptists. And the Church of Brethren today, they're not non-resistant. And I don't know if they have anything that would be maybe a little bit that we would even think of as Anabaptist.

The Brethren in Christ, they started off as Anabaptists. And I'm not saying this in criticism. It's like, okay, this is the fruit of preaching a gospel that's not really the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let me get a drink here.

So in my sermon, I made this statement that probably was not the wisest thing to say. I said, when we lose our vision, our history, and our theology, culture is not enough to keep the Anabaptist movement alive. And I would still absolutely believe that. Culture helps a lot, but you're not going to keep it alive just with culture. And then I went on to say, in fact, without the original vision, history, and theology, I'm not sure we can still call ourselves Anabaptists.

So that maybe I should not have included that statement. Some of the comments, well, maybe David, you shouldn't think of yourself as an Anabaptist. And okay, touché. All right. Not trying to put a copyright on Anabaptists. I guess anyone who wants to call themselves an Anabaptist is free to do that. Obviously, that statement, I can see why someone would see that as coming across rather self-righteous or smug or something like that.

Now, just to clarify, when I said that, I wasn't talking about the conservative Anabaptist churches, although that's who I'm concerned about. I was thinking of the ones who most of us would think are already outside of the Anabaptist circle, even though those people still call themselves Anabaptists or perhaps do. But I wasn't thinking about the Beachy or the Eastern Pilgrim Hope, any of the conservative Anabaptists, because even though I don't feel the 1963 statement of faith and the Garden City one, that they do an adequate job in explaining salvation, what I found in most of those churches, if you talk to people, yeah, they believe more than just what those statements of faith say. They do recognize the need for an obedient life.

But like I say, there's so many others who were teaching the same theology. And now, yeah, now they have gone so far, most of us would not think of them as Anabaptists. But again, not in a judgmental way, just they're obviously in a different place.

But again, anyone is free to use that term. In fact, our forefathers didn't call themselves Anabaptists. That's what their enemies called them. They called themselves Brethren or just Christians, whatever. Really, what I've been told is, and this is secondary source, my source is Lynn Martin, so I think it's a pretty safe source. But anyway, it's still a secondary source, that it really wasn't until the 20th century that Mennonites and Amish and all that became comfortable calling ourselves Anabaptists. And so, yeah, anyone who wants to use that term, fine. I'm not pretending there's a copyright. It's interesting. I went online, and I didn't share this in the original message because the time ran out on it.

But there's a website for the Mennonite World Conference. And it's very interesting because it's saying there's over 2 million Anabaptists worldwide. Now, I'm always thinking of a much smaller group of people. I thought, well, 2 million, that's encouraging.

They say there are over 800,000 in Africa and over 400,000 in Asia. So I don't really, unfortunately, I've never met these people. So I don't know what they believe. I don't know if we would recognize them as Anabaptists or they would recognize us as brothers and sisters. I really don't know all the ones that they're listing, but they did go on to explain who they're calling an Anabaptist. So anyone who uses the name Mennonite, Amish, or Hutterite, yeah, they're automatically included in the worldwide Anabaptists. But they're also including the Church of the Brethren and the Brethren in Christ.

Now, my guess is there are very few Brethren in Christ people who would call themselves Anabaptists. I mean, there might be a few, but I would say very, very few. It is in their history. They started off as Anabaptists, but then they took on Protestant theology and thought that would make the combination of the two would make the perfect church. Well, over time, the Protestant has pretty well stamped out the Brethren in Christ. I talked to Brandon Byler, was it yesterday or Friday? I think it was yesterday.

And because I'd asked him, do they call themselves, his background is Brethren in Christ. So I said, did the Brethren in Christ people call themselves Anabaptists? And he said, if I remember it correctly, a few of them are aware that, yeah, they have Anabaptist roots, but most of them wouldn't. But they would consider themselves part as one of the peace churches, which is fine.

I told him, I said, well, okay, they might think of themselves as a peace church, but I know Andre had preached about World War I. And do I have it correctly? It was Brethren in Christ people who were turning people in for Church of the Brethren. Church of the Brethren. Okay. And they're one of the other ones included. So yeah, I guess if they want to believe themselves as a peace church, I'm not going to contradict that. But I would say it would not conform to our view of non-resistance. So yeah, the point is, yeah, you can keep calling yourself an Anabaptist, but these groups have strayed so far that we wouldn't necessarily recognize them.

I don't mean we, our congregation. I mean the general conservative Anabaptist community. I mean, and again, I'm not saying they're not Christians. I'm only talking about being Anabaptist. You don't have to be an Anabaptist to be a Christian. To me, it's the easiest road to follow. It makes it the easiest way to walk faithfully with Christ in the Anabaptist world, but it's not the only way you can go. It's just, to me, it's harder. You're going more against the stream when you go another way. So what I want, and I'm going to just, this will just be, I'll be closing with this. So this will be one of my shorter sermons. You can thank Deborah being sick for that.

So there are some side benefits sometimes when evil strikes in your life. So that's why we don't have PowerPoint this morning as well. So I'm going to just give three litmus tests. Again, not that if you don't pass these tests, that I'm trying to copyright whether you can call yourself an Anabaptist or not. But I would say these tests would indicate, are you in harmony with the Anabaptist forefathers of the 1500s? Okay. We'll put it that way. Okay. So the first one is going to be a scenario. Okay.

So picture two people, a brother and a sister. And I don't mean fleshly brother and sister. They're both Christians. All right. They get saved. They hear a salvation revival message. They come to a genuine faith in Christ. They say the center's prayer and really mean it.

And later get baptized. They are alive in Christ. They're just on-fire Christians. They witness a lot. They're in church every Sunday. They like to give their testimonies and all of that. I don't think anybody could say they're not Christians, at least in the Protestant world. Okay.

Now, they both eventually get married, not to each other, but to other people. Years later, they get acquainted and they carry on an affair. And eventually, they each divorce their spouse and they end up living together in adultery.

They still think of themselves as Christians. They still come to church every Sunday. They still witness to people. And they're absolutely convinced that they are saved. So that is the litmus test. Can we reasonably expect what we know from the Bible, not that we can judge people, but just from what we know in the Bible, can we expect that they're going to be in heaven?

I mean, they continue to live in adultery. Okay. So if you put that question out, a pure Protestant would have to say yes if they're going to be consistent because they say works play no role in our salvation. So once saved, always saved. If it was genuine when they got saved, then yeah, they're guaranteed to go to heaven. That is what a pure Protestant would say.

Now, probably someone with a Calvinistic background would say it's unlikely they're going to heaven because the fact they're living a life of adultery would indicate they're not of the elect. So they may think they're of the elect, but that would be evidence they're not. Okay. That would be their way of handling it. A lot of very committed evangelicals would say, no, they can't do that and go to heaven. And you say, well, why not? Because I thought works don't play a role in our salvation.

Well, yeah, but it shows they weren't really saved. They're not Christians. And it's like, well, they did everything else everyone else did to get saved. And everyone said it was genuine at the time. And they have assurance of salvation. So it's kind of a cop-out. But that's what evangelicals will often do. Well, no, I don't think they're really a Christian. They didn't really get saved.

And I hate that kind of spiritual pretzel-making where you say you believe this, but then when it bumps up against the hard facts, you sort of change what you believe. Now, as Anabaptists, oh, and by the way, in a conservative evangelical church, yeah, I mean, people are going to be really scandalized by this. But what would probably happen in this, we were in a small town in Texas, Northeast Texas, and this actually happened in our town, the same scenario I've given you, except they didn't continue to live in adultery. Instead, they got married and then they just changed churches. They were in the First Baptist Church and they both changed and started going to East Side Baptist Church where they were accepted in as members and everything's fine.

Okay. So yeah, they're Christians. No one, okay, yeah, good and fine as long as you have an adulterous marriage. Now, if you're just living adultery and don't get married, then everyone's going to say, "I don't think you're a Christian." But yeah, you get married, even though Jesus says it's adultery, okay, you're admitted to heaven. Okay. But see, as Anabaptists, we'd say, "No.

No, you cannot do that. You will not go to heaven based on Christ's teachings." Again, that's up to God in the end on anybody. But we would certainly not give anyone any hope that they are going to be eternally saved if they're living in adultery like that. Okay. So to me, that's one of the litmus tests. And like I say, most conservative Anabaptists would all agree on that. I mean, they would not let someone become a member in their church who's divorced and remarried, even if it wasn't in a situation like I just described.

So like I say, we hold on to it in practice, but then we preach this gospel message often that contradicts what we say and what we really believe in our hearts. Okay. So that's the first litmus test. Can you, after you are saved, if you're genuinely saved, can you go out and live an ungodly life? And because works don't matter, you're still going to go to heaven. Or does obedience actually matter? And to me, as an Anabaptist, if you think you can do that, in my opinion, you're no longer an Anabaptist. But I'm not the one who gets to decide who's an Anabaptist and who isn't. But okay, so that's one litmus test. I think we're all agree with, does anyone here like, "No, Dave, I don't agree with that"?

I don't see any hands. Okay. Tell me in private if, no, I'm sure no one here would disagree. All right. A second litmus test. Well, yeah, what we base it on, in case you're listening to this and saying, "Well, how can you say this?" Well, it's based on what Paul says. He says, this is 1 Corinthians 6, 9, and 10.

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Okay. So Paul is saying, some of you think you can live ungodly and you're going to inherit the kingdom of God. He said, "Don't be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God." I mean, it's about as black and white as you can get. And this is coming from Paul, who Luther puts above the gospel writers. So I mean, it's black and white in scripture. And that's why we believe, no, you can't live in adultery. You can't live in sexual immorality.

You can't be practicing homosexuality and think you're going to inherit the kingdom of God. It's not based on us being judgmental. It's just what the scriptures say. Okay. A second litmus test that I think we're all in agreement on is the doctrine of imputed righteousness, which I'm not going to give a sermon on that today.

And what that means, if you haven't heard that expression before, is what most, not necessarily all, and in fact, there are evangelicals who don't believe in imputed righteousness. Wesley preached very strongly against it, John Wesley. But yeah, what it teaches is, and it's mirrored in a lot of the hymns we sing. And I always, some of them are my favorite tunes. I've even picked some of them, "Oh, can we sing hymn such and such?" And then we're singing it and I'm noticing the words and it's like, "Uh-oh, I should have picked a different hymn." But it's this idea that you have no righteousness of your own, even after you're saved.

Instead, what happens is Jesus has total righteousness. And so in heaven, I guess there's bookkeepers, okay? So they take his righteousness, which never runs out, and they put it on your bookkeeping ledger. So yeah, you have nothing there, no entry, zero, no righteousness. But his righteousness is then put on your ledger. Now you've got all this righteousness, but none of it's your own. And just you're okay as long as you keep saying, "I know I can't do anything good. It's all Christ." As long as you keep saying that, you're good, all right? So that's imputed righteousness. You have none. It's Christ's righteousness. So even that scripture we read, neither fornicators nor adulterers nor adulterers, etc., will inherit the kingdom of God.

Okay. I've preached that verse to evangelicals and guess what they say? "Oh, well, yeah, but Christ doesn't look at you as an adulterer." See, his righteousness now covers you. So yeah, before you were saved, you were an adulterer, you're homosexual, whatever. But now that's not how Christ views you. See, his righteousness has been imputed to you. And so yeah, now you're no longer one of those things. Even if you're living adultery, you're not an adulterer because Christ's righteousness is there on your ledger, okay?

Now, I don't know of any Anabaptist, again, sorry, anyone listening to this who that offends, but I don't personally know anyone who calls himself an Anabaptist who believes in that doctrine. But that is the predominant doctrine in the evangelical world. I heard it all the time when I was an evangelical. I remember one preacher, he was a visiting preacher, and he says, "Your sin, when God looks down, he doesn't see your sin.

The Father, all he does, he sees the blood of Christ, and that covers you. He doesn't see your sin. He sees the blood of Christ." I mean, I heard sermons like that all the time. All right. So yeah, I'd say if you believe in imputed righteousness, you don't fit my definition of an Anabaptist, okay? It's not copyrighted. You can still call yourself one. All right. The third one and final is how do we view the Sermon on the Mount?

Now, both the early Christians and the original Anabaptists, they viewed the Sermon on the Mount as the law of Christ, that's how the Dortrek Confession calls it, as being a central teaching of Christianity. They would say that in addition to having genuine faith in Christ and having been baptized as a believer, living by the Sermon on the Mount is something that defines a real Christian.

Not to say that judgmentally, but that is one of the central teachings of Christianity. It's more central than any of Paul's letters, okay? The early Christians, when they were explaining Christianity to the pagan Romans, they went to the Sermon on the Mount. This is Christianity. They weren't denying the need for faith in Christ, etc.

They were affirming we must live a godly life. We must be producing godly fruit in the end.

And the early Anabaptists took the Sermon on the Mount fairly literally. Now, we all know here this morning that none of us live by the Sermon on the Mount perfectly. So we take it seriously. We make that as a goal to live as literally by it as we can as fallen humans. We're not going to ever live perfectly by it. But yeah, there is a difference between doing your utmost with the power of Christ and just not even trying, just ignoring it. So it's always been a central identifying characteristic of the Anabaptists that we practice non-resistance. We don't swear oaths.

And we violated this one a lot. We don't worship money and make material things the center of our life. We try to do unto others as they do unto us. We love our enemies instead of going to war and killing them.

This wasn't an Anabaptist who said this, but I think it sums up what we would believe.

This is Richard of St. Victor. He was a Roman Catholic. And even among Roman Catholics, the Anabaptists certainly were not friends of the Roman Catholics. And the other way around, it was even worse. We didn't do anything to them, but they burned us at the stake. Nevertheless, there have been some remarkable godly Roman Catholics through the centuries. Anyway, so Richard of St. Victor, this was in the Middle Ages when there hardly was any other church you could go to. He said, "The Sermon on the Mount is neither impractical idealism nor a collection of unlivable moral precepts."

Now, I'm reading this because that's exactly what Protestants say it is. That it's impractical, it's idealistic, and it's unlivable. He says, "It is a superb analysis of right action in the light of things as they really are and not as they appear to be." So the Sermon on the Mount is reality. What we think is reality today, that might, wins, that do unto others before they do unto you, and things like that that the world lives by, that's not reality. It may be the reality right among us in the world at this moment, but it isn't eternity. That's not the reality of eternity. The Sermon on the Mount is.

So the Protestant view, in contrast to the Sermon on the Mount, is, well, they're not going to follow it. Now, I've heard so many different excuses not to, but it's always an excuse. So one of them you hear today a lot is, "Well, see, Christ gave those commandments just to show us we can't live by commandments."

That make sense? Okay. So he gives us commandments that are difficult. They would be impossible on our own strength. Just to show us, see, you can't be saved by obedience because, see, I'm going to give you all these commandments. You can't live by them, can you? See? So yep, just ignore them because I purposely gave you commandments you can't live by. I mean, that is so stupid. You'd think no one would preach that with a straight face. That is what I hear all the time. I'd say that's probably the most common explanation given today in the Protestant world. Another one, now the one I heard in the years when I was a member of an evangelical church was, "Yeah, the Sermon on the Mount is great, but that's for a different dispensation.

That's going to be after Christ returns." Yeah, in the future dispensation, yeah, in the kingdom age, yeah, that's how people are supposed to live. But right now, we're living in the gospel age. So that doesn't apply to the gospel age. That's for another one. So that's what I heard for so long, and that's still preached a lot. And then the other one I hear all the time is they just explain it away. "Well, Christ is using hyperbole here." No, he doesn't really mean this the way it is, and blah, blah, blah. Well, Augustine, all of his explanations were like, "Well, Christ didn't say you can't go to war. He didn't say you can't run a sword through your enemy.

He just said you have to love him." So it's like, "Hey, brother, love you." Just, "Man, meet you in heaven. Have a great day." I mean, honestly, that's what Augustine taught. And everything else was the same way. It's your attitude. Yeah, as long as you love the person, it's okay to swear oaths, but you're not doing it because you think you have to do it. But this guy says he wants you to swear a no, so you're doing it for his sake, see? So it's okay then because Jesus said, "Anything beyond your yes and no is of the devil." So see, it's the devil telling you to do this, so you're okay. You're not doing it because you want to.

I mean, he explained everything away, and he got away with it because they tried to Christianize the whole Roman Empire. And so everyone is like, "Well, yeah, okay. I'll go with that because I don't want to live by the Sermon on the Mount." So that is what has happened, not just Protestants, Catholics, whomever, and I think has been one of the major distinguishing marks of Anabaptism. So to me, those would be the three litmus tests that I predominantly think of.

Yeah, how do you view someone who has been saved and turns and lives an ungodly life thereafter? And don't cop out by saying they weren't really saved because you were saying they were saved up until they started doing something wrong, okay?

We don't believe in imputed righteousness. We believe in actual righteousness. That doesn't mean that we think we're so good that God, we deserve to go to heaven, we deserve eternal life. No, we all know that. Eternal life, salvation is a gift, but God gives the gift to those who love him, and we don't love him if we don't obey him. So yeah, we're not claiming, "Oh, yeah, we're so righteous.

We'll make it on our own." And then third is the Sermon on the Mount. So yeah, I hope that I don't think there was any question here on my first message, but for those who are listening to it, maybe on YouTube or other places, I hope that maybe clarifies what I'm saying. If it still steps on your toes, then probably it's just going to have to step on your toes.

But yeah, I just want to clarify for those people who listened to it and thought, "Okay, I'm self-righteously picking this group and saying you don't deserve to call yourself Anabaptist in that group." I'm not trying to do that.

Again, I'm just so concerned when I, like I say, keep running up against this, that as an Anabaptist, I can't just preach what our forefathers taught. I can't preach what's in the Dortrek Confession without somebody attacking me for doing it, boycotting me, or getting up and giving a message to contradict that.