Contrast (Part 1)

Sermon Transcript
What does a 2000 year old book have to say to me? Have you ever heard somebody ask that question before? What does a 2000 year old book have to say to me? Have you ever asked that question yourself? Maybe you’ve heard that yourself. Maybe you said that yourself, or maybe, I mean, what would you say if a co worker or a friend, if they said that, well, what does a 2000 year old book have to do with me, right? They said the Bible’s outdated. It’s archaic. How would you respond? Would you respond, would you just shut down, not have an answer? Like, I don’t know what to say to that. I mean, it is pretty old, right? 2000 years is a lot of time, you know, like, we live in a completely different time from that culture, right? We’ve evolved. We have modern technology, we have modern science. AI, right? It’s everywhere. It’s taking over, right? Be afraid. Be very afraid, right? Modern psychology sure doesn’t speak to our sophisticated modern culture, right? Could that, could that be true? Well, you tell me. As advanced as our culture is, as much technology as we have, how often do we turn on the news and we hear, hear about horrible things like murder, hatred, adultery and divorce, fraud, people seeking vengeance, retribution on one another? I think it’s fair to say probably like every day, right? We turn on the news and we hear about stuff like that. We hear about that in our own worlds. And somehow with all of our advancements in technology, humanity seems to have forgotten to advance in holiness, right? We made all these advances in technology, but we forgot to evolve in our morality. At the same time, how often do we experience contemptuous relationships, brokenness in our own families, dishonesty from others, and the temptation to be dishonest, to speak dishonestly to others, ourselves? How often do we have to choose between bitterness and forgiveness? Probably every day. Often we deal with people who ask for help in ways that they aren’t even willing to help themselves. These are all things that happen frequently in our lives, and these are all things that the scriptures speak to. So is the Bible relevant? You tell me. Sinful humanity is still sinful humanity. And so even though the scriptures are ancient, yes, they are anything but irrelevant to our lives, especially if we want to apply the teachings of Jesus to our everyday lives as we follow him and we strive to live under his kingdom rule. Just like Jesus. First disciples had a need for a savior who washes away their sins and a lord to teach them to live in holy lives. We also need the teachings of Jesus to teach us how to live holy lives. And so throughout the last few weeks, throughout this series, called our Father, we’ve been looking at the teachings of Jesus in the sermon on the mount and throughout the scriptures, throughout the gospels especially, we have Jesus teaching on what it means to be holy, according to God’s law, according to the law of Christ. But holiness in the kingdom, it doesn’t come just by checking boxes. It doesn’t come just by following the letter of the law. And if that were the case, if you think about it, Jesus would have commended the Pharisees and the teachers of the law of his day, because that’s what they did. They were legalists. They followed the law to the very letter and even created what they would call a hedge around the law so that they wouldn’t break the law of God if they didn’t break their own laws. We talked last week about how these teachers misunderstood Jesus, though, how their legalism led them to even accuse Jesus of setting aside the law and the prophets. Our Old Testament and our bibles accused him of abolishing it. And Jesus makes very clear that he understands and is committed to the law and the prophets by giving an authoritative teaching and interpretation of the Old Testament that’s even greater than that of the teachers of his day. And so some of these misunderstood teachers, they were basing their misunderstanding on the traditions that were passed down to them from generation to generation. But some of them were based in the culture that they lived in as well. The fear that they had of being overthrown by outsiders, but who would come in and would just ravage their nation, or by some, made these rules because they were in cahoots with those people who overthrew their nation, right? And so they didn’t want to lose their power. But either way, any examples that we’re going to look at today, from the teachings of Jesus to his disciples, Jesus gets to the heart of the matter. In either case, no matter how we misunderstand the word of God, however, we misapply it to our lives. Jesus wants to get to the heart of the matter. The religious leaders of Jesus day, they had a tolerance for sin, for some sins which seemed to give. At the same time, they seemed to give a hall pass to others based on their own desires. The problem is that sin is like a poison, it’s like a cancer in our relationships and on our society, our relationship between God and our relationship between one another. And so Jesus knows this full well. And so, in contrast to the many jewish leaders and teachers of his day who misunderstood and misapplied the scriptures, Jesus has come to take his disciples deeper, to deepen their understanding of the scriptures intent and its meaning for our hearts. Let’s start with the end in mind. Jesus said to his disciples, be perfect, therefore, in Matthew 548, be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect. Now, perfection is a pretty high standard, isn’t it, really? We’re starting with perfection. I mean, raise your hand if you’re perfect. Oh, you lied. You’re not perfect. Sorry, some of you just got elbowed by your spouse. Right? Put your hand down. Right. But this verse is a perfect summary, no pun intended, of all that Jesus teaches in Matthew five, as well as the rest of the sermon on the mount. God is perfect. His love is perfect. His mercy is perfect in every single way, his holiness in every way imaginable, God is perfect. But can we reach the perfection of God in this life? Craig Keener, in his commentary, points out that it may help to understand how this aramaic word for perfect is translated into the Greek. The word telelos is translated into English, and it means complete or whole. And so, Keener says, in this context, it means fulfilling the requirements of Jesus teaching as he has presented them to his disciples just before and as he will just after. And so this standard of perfection or holiness or the mercy of God, this is nothing new in the scriptures. In fact, all the way back in Leviticus, it says, be holy as God is holy. And in Judaism and even among some greek philosophers, in Jesus day and before and after, the ideal was to strive for the perfection of God based on his character. Michael Wilkins suggests that there’s two forms of perfection that we should consider here in our christian lives. The first is the righteousness, which is accredited to us when we place our faith in Jesus Christ. And what I mean by that, Paul says it this way to the Galatians, a person is not justified by the works of the law. In other words, we can’t become perfect by doing good things. We’ve already sinned. Even if we’ve sinned once, there goes perfection. It goes right out the world, right out the window. Right. If we even sin once. And so Paul says, a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law, no one will be justified. Now, you might call that blind faith. And you’re right. I was blind and now I see. So it’s blind faith, right? So like I mean, call it what you want. The reality is that our faith is the doorway into salvation through Jesus, as Paul says in Ephesians, chapter two, verse eight, it is, for it is by grace. You’ve been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. In other words, I can’t make myself perfect. I’m a sinner in need of a savior. I need God’s grace. And so this first form of perfection that Wilkins is suggesting for us is one in which we are perfected by Christ through the cross, and we can’t attain that for ourselves. You can’t make yourself perfect. Jesus has to do that for you, and we must turn to Christ and be justified. In other words, it’s just as if we had never sinned. That happens through God’s grace, through the blood of Christ, which covers the offense of our sin. And this, Wilkins says, is the perfection of our position in the kingdom of God. In other words, in Christ, not of any effort of our own, not in any way by ourselves. Our position in the kingdom of God has been perfected through the blood of Jesus Christ, through his grace, through his mercy. No matter what you’ve done, no matter how much you’ve gotten it wrong, no matter how much you’ve hurt others, the grace and the love of God is sufficient to cleanse you of your sins. Let me say that one more time. No matter what you’ve done, no matter how much you’ve hurt others, no matter how much you’ve gotten, the grace of God for the forgiveness of sin through the blood of Christ is sufficient to make your position in God’s kingdom assured, secure. When we repent, we turn away from our sin and we turn toward Jesus. When we call on Jesus to be saved, this is true because he loves us and he wants us to be reconciled to him. That’s not the end of the journey. There’s another form of perfection that we then strive toward as Christians. Christians are also in the process of experiencing what Wilkins calls imparted righteousness. So if this is imparted righteousness, which I’ll explain in a moment, the previous perfection that we talked about is imputed righteousness. It means it’s not from us. God puts that on us. He gives that to us. But imparted righteousness, Wilkins says, is the process of sanctification, which is just a fancy word that means that we’re being made holy through the work of the Holy Spirit. And that begins when our position in the kingdom is secure in Christ. It begins when we accept Jesus as Lord, when we accept him as savior. But we have not yet reached that goal, and we will not reach it until we’re in eternity with Christ. And this is the perfection that Jesus is referring to. When he says, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, it assumes something. It assumes that our position in the kingdom of God is secure through Christ, and it builds on that position that we have in God’s kingdom because we are in Christ. It’s an important process that we all go through a transformation throughout our lives, and it will only be completed in its fullness when we realize our goal in eternity. The apostle Paul speaks of this process to the corinthian church. He says, we all who, with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory are being transformed into his image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the spirit. The apostle John speaks to the completion of the likeness of Christ. When he returns, he writes, dear friends, now we are children of God. Now we are children of God. Right now you’re God’s children. Your position in his kingdom is secure. But John says, what we will be has not yet been made known, but we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. When we are truly following Christ, we experience a transformation in our lives, in our hearts, through the presence of the kingdom of God, through the presence of Jesus rule and reign in our lives. And this lifelong transformation, what Eugene Peterson calls a long obedience in a single direction, the same direction means that as we become more like Jesus, we continually grow into the image of our perfect Father in heaven. We become perfect. We become holy, we become merciful. As God is perfect and holy and merciful, God’s people have to we must live by the spirit of his law, not by the letter of it. We must seek holiness by God’s standard, but not by our own. And so today, what I want to do is I want to look at Matthew, chapter five, the rest of it, and we’re going to look at this week and next week. This is a two part sermon where we’re going to look at what that holiness looks like according to Jesus so that we can then live it out in our lives. Now, I will say this. This half is kind of the pg 13 half of this sermon. So if there’s kids in the room, Terrence, you may want to plug their ears at certain points. Just saying, like, we’re talking about some things today. It’s getting real, right but Jesus teaches in Matthew, chapter five, six specific examples on how holiness in God’s kingdom is the antidote to the sin poison that is alive in our lives when we’re apart from Christ. And so Jesus is a teacher, right? And so, like any good rabbi, he cites the scriptures, and so his disciples are gathered around him. It’s a sermon on the mount, still. And so he would say something like, you know, you’ve heard that it’s been taught or you’ve heard that it’s been said, or you’ve read that it says or something like that. And a good rabbi would say that it was kind of the way of introducing what the Old Testament scriptures say. And the disciples knew at that moment to kind of listen in, to perk up their ears, to hone in on what Jesus was about to say because he was going to offer his teaching on that portion of scripture. And that’s exactly what we see here. For example, Matthew, chapter five, verse 21. You’ve heard that it was said to the people long ago, you shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. Now, Jesus is quoting here, the 6th commandment in Exodus 2013, and that prohibits taking another human life. Now, in the Old Testament, there are seven hebrew words for killing, okay? And the one that is quoted here, the one that Jesus is referring to is the word for premeditated murder. Da Carson says that the verb refers to all killing except in war, capital punishment, or self defense. And so murder is the ultimate offense to the image of God in which we are created, because it robs life from the image of God, it robs the dignity of the life that God created. And so only God is ultimately sovereign over life and death. What murder does and why it’s such a great offense, why it’s probably the greatest offense to God himself, is because, as we’ll see, the image of God is not only robbed of its dignity, it’s life that God has sovereignty over. And so Jesus follows up with this teaching. But I tell you, anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Jesus internalizes the commandment from the law. He shows us that those who are enraged with or who speak words of contempt to a brother or sister are also in violation of the law. They also rob the life of that same brother and sister in the following verse, rakah, the word there, that aramaic word, means you empty headed. In other words, it’s like calling a person a moron. You know, you’re an idiot. You’re a moron. You’re so stupid, right? Things like that that we say to other people in anger. Jesus says similarly, we call people fools when we say these contemptuous words to them, as he says in verse 22, that that puts the offender in danger of hell itself. That sounds serious, doesn’t it? It sounds so serious, in fact, that Jesus is so serious about the offense of contempt and rage against your brother or sister that he says that you should even leave the act of worship if you realize that you’re in a broken relationship with someone. That reminds me, I got to go take care of something, so I’ll see you guys later. I’m just. I debated on whether I was going to do that or not. I shouldn’t have. That was silly. It’s a good joke, though, right? Preacher jokes. But Jesus says, therefore, if you’re offering your gift at the altar and there, remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them, then come and offer your gift. Let me set this up for you, though. Jesus is talking to people probably in the galilean countryside, and he’s discussing the altar all the way over in Jerusalem, right? So what he’s saying is like, hey, you galilean Jews, when you’re all the way over in Jerusalem offering your gift on the altar, in the temple in Jerusalem, if you remember at that moment that your brother or your sister has something against you, what I want you to do, Jesus is saying, is I want you to leave that gift right there and I want you to walk, walk yourself all the way back to Galilee and be reconciled with them. And then you can come all the way back to Jerusalem and you can worship God through your gift on the altar. Now that’s hyperbole. You’re gonna see that that’s a theme here a lot, that Jesus is saying that it is so important for us to be reconciled with one another that the act of worship at the altar of God does not even outweigh the importance of being reconciled to your brother or sister a day’s walk away. It’s that serious to Jesus that we’re reconciled in our relationships. In the Old Testament, God only accepted sacrifices that were offered with a pure heart, both toward him and toward your neighbor. Reconciliation has been the goal all along for those very same sacrifices. And so offering oneself an offering of oneself that is done simply out of obligation, simply checking the boxes in worship, when in reality, the brokenness of our broken relationships, we’ve not met that obligation. Those sacrifices are unacceptable to God. Contempt and anger, they are poisonous. They are the sinful antithesis of reconciliation. And so what we learn is that the antidote for that poison, the antidote for contempt, is treating others with dignity because they’re created in God’s image. If we truly want to follow Jesus teaching, and we must not only follow the letter of the law, we must not only just avoid murder, which I’m guessing for most of us is probably not a problem, right? I mean, you set the bar pretty low. Well, at least I haven’t killed anyone, right? You know, if that’s all we’re living for. But Jesus says we must also be transformed into the children of God who do not want to offend the dignity of our brothers and sisters, who are created in God’s image through our anger. And in our anger, what we do is we strip away the personhood of others, the identity of others, or we defame them. We’re guilty of sin when we do this, and it happens all around us. Right? This is no mystery to you. That’s an election year. Come on. Right. This happens all the time with people. Instead, what we should do is we should continually seek to be reconciled with others, with those whom we’ve offended, and even those who have offended us or not, to do anything that demeans a person’s dignity. CS Lewis refers to this in his sermon titled weight of glory, and he says beautifully, the load or the weight or the burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. You remember the beatitudes when Jesus said, blessed are the poor in the spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Well, the poor in the spirit, they did not think highly of themselves, more highly of themselves than they should. They are humbled by their simple position in life. And so, according to the teaching of Jesus, the poor and the spirit, they will not inappropriately be angry with or defame another person. So we should also think carefully about what Jesus is not saying here. Right? It’s possible to be angry and not sin. We shouldn’t create a law here where there is none. As Paul writes in Ephesians 226 27, in your anger, do not sin. So logically, therefore, what Paul is saying is that it’s possible to be angry and not sin. Right? In your anger, do not sin. He doesn’t say never be angry. He just says, in your anger, do not sin. So do not let the sun go down. Paul says, while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. He is equating the two there, saying those are equivalent, that letting the sun go down while you are still angry is the same as giving the devil a foothold. Jesus demonstrated this kind of anger when he cleansed the temple. And in his parables, Jesus puts God’s anger and his wrath against sin on display. And so he spoke also stern warnings to the religious leaders of Israel. He called them blind fools. But he wasn’t name calling. He wasn’t defaming them. He wasn’t speaking falsely. They were fools and they were blind. They were blind guides, and they were leading others astray. They were leading themselves astray because of their false beliefs, their distorted views of God that they put in place in their lives. And so what we learn is to live without contempt against others and not to sin in our anger. In the next two antitheses, Jesus looks at a relationship in which it’s probably hardest. We probably have to be most careful not to bring contempt in, because it’s so easy for contempt to creep into our marriages over a lifetime and to cause destruction through it. Jesus says in 527 and 28, you’ve heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But what I tell you, I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Here Jesus quotes the 7th commandment within Exodus 2014, and once again, Jesus internalizes this commandment by saying that adultery can be committed even in one’s heart. Craig Keener, in his commentary, says that the greek word translated as lustfully is the same as the opening line of the 10th commandment in the Septuagint, the greek version of the Old Testament, which says, you shall not desire your neighbor’s wife. And so the relational and the legal consequences of adultery and lust are not equal, of course, but they are both equally sinful. And so Jesus says, as a result, if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away, it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It’s better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. Now, Jesus words here are drastic, right? But again, these are hyperbole. They’re not meant to be taken literally. Da Carson makes the great point that blind and disabled people can still lust, right? They’re still capable of sin. And so what’s Jesus saying here? Well, in Jesus day, adultery and divorce had kind of different rules for different people, different strokes for different folks. Right. And so Jesus is teaching drastically in contrast to the teaching of his day. In fact, in Jesus day, there were two main schools of thought as far as adultery and divorce went. In Jesus day, one school of thought required divorce and allowed remarriage only for infidelity. The other school of thought permitted divorce for pretty much any reason. Maybe you’ve heard sermons preached on this before, and you’ve heard it said, like, if your wife burned your toast, you could divorce her, right? That’s. I mean, they didn’t have toasters back then, but it’s basically the same sentiment. And so Jesus is teaching in contrast to this. He says in verse 31, it’s been said anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce. But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual morality, makes her the victim of adultery. And anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual morality, makes her the victim of adultery. And anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. The word translated here as sexual morality is the greek word. Porneia, Carson says, is the broadest term for sexual sin. It refers to sexual relations with any other person besides one monogamous heterosexual spouse. Later on in Matthew 19, when some pharisees come to test Jesus, they ask him whether it’s lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason, any and every reason. Jesus replied, haven’t you read that at the beginning, the creator made them male and female? He said, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh, so they’re no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. Jesus said that the law of Moses permits divorce because their hearts, the hearts of God’s people, were hard, but that wasn’t God’s original intent for marriage. Jesus then repeated this teaching in the same way. And what we learned from Jesus teaching is that the antidote for the poison, the cancer of impurity and marital brokenness, is devotion to your spouse and the sanctity of marriage as God designed. And those who truly wish to follow Jesus will not only avoid physical acts of adultery, but they’re so completely committed to God’s purpose for marriage that they have eyes and hands only for their spouse. Now, I will say this. We have to be careful here not to take the teachings of Jesus and create our own law around them or make them into something that they’re not. I said earlier, no matter what you’ve done, no matter how you’ve been hurt, no matter how you’ve hurt other people, you can still be reconciled to God. Divorce and remarriage are not some unpardonable sin that cannot be reconciled by the blood of Christ between you and God, or even between two divorces. Nor is divorce required for immorality. Again, the goal that God has for us is reconciliation wherever it’s possible. The reality is, apart from Christ, all of our marriages are broken. All of our relationships are broken apart from Christ. But living in the kingdom, it makes reconciled marriages reconciled relationships possible. The kind of relationships which God originally designed, it makes those possible. And so in God’s kingdom, a marriage is when both partners treat one another with the dignity that we talked about earlier, that’s deserved of someone who’s created in the image of God. We avoid demeaning and defaming one another. We forgive, we serve, we love one another. We not only reject impurity in our actions and with our bodies, we seek purity with our minds and our hearts as well. And we remain faithful to our spouse for the rest of our lives. God isn’t calling us to tiptoe up to a line. He’s not calling us to check off boxes. He’s calling us to a full and complete holiness in Christ. As Wilkins says, religious activity that attempts to appease our relationship with God is meaningless if it’s not based on purity in our human relationships. So we’re called to be reconciled not only to God, but to others as well, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ, to our neighbors, and even to our enemies, as we’ll see next week. There are, of course, limits to that, to what we can do in that you can’t force someone to forgive you. You can’t force your spouse to remain faithful to you. That’s a decision that they have to make for themselves. What we are called to is to pursue holiness in our relationship with Christ, in our relationships with one another. We need to have what Michael Wilkins calls restful dissatisfaction. I love that restful dissatisfaction. The restful part is what we talked about earlier, that our position in the kingdom of God is secure. And so, as we said, we know our position in the kingdom of God is secure as we are redeemed by Christ, as we are children of God once we are in Christ. And in that sense, we are made righteous through Christ. But at the same time we’re dissatisfied because the remainder of our transformation into the love of God, into the lives that God wants us to lead, we’re still in pursuit of that, in pursuit of righteousness from here to eternity. We’re reconciled, and we’re also seeking reconciliation with ourselves, between us and God, and with us and others. And this happens through Christ. When we live holy lives, we press on courageously, knowing that we will fall short in this life. We’re not going to do this perfectly every day. But all the while, we can celebrate what God has accomplished in our lives. And we’re careful with our words and our actions, because we know that when we hurt others, it hurts God, too. God sets in our hearts the goal to heal us and to heal our land through his Holiness. And so what we learn is this. And if you can take anything away from today’s message, it should be this, that God’s children devote their hearts to the father’s complete holiness in their lives. I love the thought in the sermon on the mountain. We talked a few weeks ago about the Beatitudes. And Michael Wilkins, in his commentary, suggests the idea that the Beatitudes are kind of like the preamble of the sermon on the mount. Right? You know, like the preamble of the constitution. Maybe you’re familiar with that. Probably heard of it before, right? The US. And so it kind of sets up the document. It sets up the idea of the whole thing, you know, kind of gives you an overview of what we’re going to talk about. And so that’s kind of like the beatitudes that we talked about about a few weeks ago. But if the beatitudes are the preamble of the sermon on the mount, then what Wilkins says, what he suggests is that the antitheses, what we’ve been studying today and what we’ll study next week is kind of like the Bill of rights. Now, it’s not like these are not like rights that we’re asserting over a government or something like, you know, that’s not what I’m talking about. But the idea is that these are things that teach us the intent behind the document. These are things that teach us how to live out the teachings of Jesus. Now, I just imagine that there were several opportunities that Jesus had to teach this way to his disciples. You’ve heard that it was said, but I say to you. And so if we look throughout the scriptures, we’ll see all these ways in which we can apply this to our lives. And we found two important ways to apply this, so to speak, this Bill of rights to our lives. The first of all is that we treat others with the dignity that the image of God deserves. When you follow Christ, you see that others are created in the image of God, and you treat them with the dignity that the image of God deserves. The second thing that we’ve learned today is this, that Jesus followers, God’s children, remain pure and devoted to their spouse as God designed. Now, some of us are not married, but we can still apply these things to our lives. Jesus teaches us, just as God treats those he created in his image with dignity, we treat others with the dignity that his image deserves. And just as God is holy and pure and faithful in all that he says and does, we remain pure and faithful and devoted to our commitment to the sanctity of marriage. Now, if you come back next week, we’ll talk about the rest of the antitheses.