Secret Sins. Matthew 5:21-30 ~ October 9, 2016 ~ Heritage Lutheran Church

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Rosa Nash
5 years ago
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1 Secret Sins Matthew 5:21-30 ~ October 9, 2016 ~ Heritage Lutheran Church I m going to make a shocking confession today. It is about a secret sin that I have never told another living soul. But I m going to have to give you some background or you will not understand how troubling this confession is. In 1964 a toy company by the name of Topper produced an amazing toy gun called the Johnny Seven OMA. OMA stood for One Man Army. Well it was amazing to a ten year old boy, like me. I was fascinated with army stuff. And when the TV commercial came out to show all the things that the Johnny Seven OMA could do I was absolutely possessed with desire to own one. The full action commercial showed a boy just my age engaged in playing army with his friends and dominating the contest as the announcer proclaimed, You ve won with the Johnny Seven One Man Army Gun! Its seven Guns in one!" However as a member of my particular family, owning a Johnny Seven was never in the cards. You see my father was a sort of amateur gun collector. He tried to instill in his children a healthy respect for firearms. We were not actually ever allowed to have toy guns, because my father insisted that guns were not toys. He didn t ever want us playing with anything that even looked like a gun. We were to treat all guns as loaded and dangerous, even if it was a cap pistol. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, my father s prohibition did not extend to my friends. And an acquaintance of mine became the proud owner of a Johnny Seven OMA that Christmas. He instantly became my best friend. I went to quite extensive lengths to get invited over to his house. And I m afraid I was sort of a pest about wanting to play Army so I could see the Johnny Seven in action. My friend was possessive about his toy and would never let anyone hold it for long. And in our childhood renditions of the Dirty Dozen he was the only one who could actually use the OMA in any mock battle. Now here comes my confession. One day when I was over at my friend s house, we were doing something besides playing army. I told everyone that I needed to go inside the house to use the bathroom. But what I really did was to sneak into his room to get just a few moments with the Johnny Seven OMA all to myself. While working the action 1

2 on one of the seven different capabilities of that amazing toy, I cracked one of the levers. It did not break off and I was able to get it positioned so that it looked normal. Carefully replacing the gun where it was before I quickly left the house and rejoined the play outside. To this day that lamentable incident has remained a secret sin. That is the nature of secret sins. They are secret. Nobody or very few people know about them. Secret sins are the subject of Jesus teaching today in the Sermon on the Mount. In today s text Jesus addresses anger and lust. He starts with this comment. You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. Jesus repeats that same phrase, You have heard that it was said six times in the next 27 verses. Each time he introduces a new subject. These subjects are murder, lust, divorce, oaths, retaliation, and loving your enemies. These are some of the best known teachings of Jesus. But rarely do people get the significance of how each one of them starts. When Jesus says, You have heard it said he is saying something very specific. But to understand we have to go back to verse 20 where he says, For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Frequently modern Christians scratch their heads over this. We have little to do with the scribes and the Pharisees. So what do we care about their righteousness. But verse 20 is the key that unlocks an understanding of what Jesus means throughout the rest of Chapter 5. Each time he says, You have heard it said he is talking specifically about what the scribes and the Pharisees say when they teach about the law. The scribes and the Pharisees had considered it their duty to make the law accessible to people. They paired down the law pretending that people could attain righteousness by doing the Law. This is where their righteousness fails. You cannot do the law. Do you hear me? You cannot do the law. It is beyond you and me. The Law is God s tool. He uses it to constrain sin and he uses drive us to the Gospel. The minute we try to use it then it is like grabbing hold a very high voltage fence. There can only be one outcome of such foolishness. This is why Paul says that we are dead to the law. So how can our righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees? When Jesus says this, he is looking through the event of his crucifixion right into our eyes. He is telling us that our righteousness will exceed theirs precisely because 2

3 the righteousness in which we stand is not our own. We have the righteousness of Jesus Christ who fulfills the law. It is perfect righteousness attained in agony and death on the cross. It comes to us as a free gift from God given to us by grace through faith. It takes up residence in our lives in the form of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. My dear friends everything stands or falls on this point. Jesus words, "unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees," is not a threat. It is a promise. It is a promise that Jesus fulfills through the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life right this moment. Your righteousness does indeed exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. Your righteousness before the law is perfect, because you have the righteousness of Jesus Christ made perfect by his death on the cross. Only when we understand that, can we proceed to understand what Jesus has to say about anger and lust. Jesus takes up the subject of anger first. He yokes it to the commandment, "You shall not kill." The scribes and the Pharisees try to ease the burden of the law by claiming that it only pertains to the actual act of killing another person. But Jesus expands this understanding to include everything that creates the environment for murder. In particular, this means anger. Anger itself is a natural human phenomenon that is morally neutral. But Jesus is teaching that what is done with anger is what causes the problems. When anger hurts other people, or undermines them that is as much a transgression of God's Law as manslaughter. As Jesus puts it: But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, You fool! will be liable to the hell of fire. Based on the righteousness of Christ, the Spirit's work in us brings us face to face with our own anger in practical ways. When we resist God's spirit by keeping anger to ourselves it festers in us and the law has its way with us in the form of guilt. This is a secret sin which we hide fastidiously. And by hiding we make it much worse. God s work in us then is to bring us to repentance, real repentance. Not just empty words of regret, but a life responsive and confident in the Spirit of Jesus so that we can actually hear and live out his words when he says. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 3

4 But only by God's grace, and the power of the Holy Spirit within us, can we even hope to be about Christ's calling in this world. He must take us by the hand and lead us, for without Christ and his grace we are surely lost. This moves even deeper into our secret sins when we come to the subject of lust. Jesus notes that the scribes and Pharisees warn against adultery. But they reduce the law to mean only the act of adultery itself. All of the other things that lead a person into sexual sin are not included from their perspective. Jesus exposes their hypocrisy when he rightly defines the full extent of God s law about adultery to include all manner of lust. He puts it this way: But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. It is true that in Jesus day his followers did not have to deal with the challenges of Internet Pornography, but girl watching and for that matter, boy watching is as old as the hills. It is true that natural inclinations when seeing someone who attracts us are secret. They are hidden inside our own heart. A visit from the spirit of lust is familiar. And when Jesus includes these unbidden feelings in God s requirement for a chaste life our hearts quail within us. What hope can there be for us? But remember that Jesus purpose here is to reveal the hypocrisy of the scribes and the Pharisees. He has a plan, for you and me, that resolves our worst fears in a wonderful way. To demonstrate the absolute seriousness of God s requirements in opposition to the teaching of the scribes and the Pharisees Jesus says. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. Jesus is not telling us to mutilate ourselves. He is saying that God is this serious about living a chaste life. But remember that Jesus is looking at you through his own Cross. He knows the physical price required to give you the righteousness you need to become God s own child. And certainly the Spirit who is at work in you is deeply concern about living a chaste life in and out of marriage. I feel confident that you have heard the Spirit s promptings about this. As you are freed from the consequences of the Law by Christ s sacrifices you are also freed from the paralysis of secret sin. You may now listen 4

5 to the voice of Christ within you by his Holy Spirit to live as a chaste child of God. This is the power God gives you in his gift of grace. In summary, today we have examined more deeply how Christ spoke to his disciples regarding the way the scribes and Pharisees taught God s law. In their efforts to establish their own righteousness they had limited God s Law to only outward public sin. They were pretending that the secret sin was not held accountable before God. Jesus exposes this hypocrisy loudly and clearly and in so doing denounces the scribe and Pharisees and all folk who follow their ways. God s law is a matter of the heart. It defeats our every effort to fulfill it. The Scribe and the Pharisees method was dangerous, yes deadly, because it taught people to put their faith in their own efforts. This is why Jesus teaches that he has not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. And fulfill it he does indeed! On the cross Jesus took in every sin, public and secret, every transgression of the law ever committed or ever will be committed and he fully atoned for them before the just requirement of the law. He established the righteousness in which you and I stand. It is a righteousness that makes you a beloved Child of God. It is a righteousness that gives you a new life in the Holy Spirit apart from the law. It is a righteousness that establishes your place in the Kingdom of God for eternity. The cross is full. The tomb is empty. Jesus is alive and leading us out to go, make, baptize and teach disciples. Let us take up our cross and follow him. 5

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