Note: This sermon has been edited for readability

Transcription

1 Jesus Uncut (Sermon on the Mount) Integrity Matthew 5:33-37 Darrin Patrick October 19, 2014 Keywords Jesus, Jesus Uncut, Sermon on the Mount, Integrity, Truth, Lies, Idols Note: This sermon has been edited for readability Copyright 2014 The Journey REVIEW We enter the scene in the Gospel of Matthew, as Jesus, after 30 years of intentional obscurity, has come out. God in the flesh is with us, God is here, God is showing miraculous signs. Jesus is doing all these crazy things, and they're powerful. You can read about all the miracles in the Gospels. We believe those happened, they're true. But His words were really what gripped peoples' hearts. The miracles are awesome, but it was his words that really captured the human spirit. These words he says, will endure. He doesn't say my words replace the Old Testament, he says, "I didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill the law." And, "That my words last longer than the heaven and the earth," meaning nature. Jesus says his words are supernatural, and that the Bible can be trusted. Every word in the Bible is inspired. And every word in [the Sermon on the Mount] is inspired. But there are three words that stick out. And as you're studying, trying to understand the Bible, specifically the Gospels, specifically the Gospel of Matthew, these three words will help you: The first one is the word blessed. Now some translations say "happy," but it's the same idea. It's a life that's characterized by goodness and distinctiveness that there is this deep inner joy that you have, that circumstances can't take away, that people can't steal, that abides in you. It doesn't mean your life is perfect; it doesn't mean your life is easy. But it means there is this sense that God is with me. Jesus calls it "abundant life" in the Gospel of John life to the full. This is so counter to how we think about Christianity. I remember thinking about becoming a Christian, "Jesus, I'd like to hang out with you, but all these Christians freak me out." Anybody been there? They're not very happy. They're kind of bored, and then they have Bible, and they frown a lot. "I don't want to be like that." Then I met a couple of joyful Christians, and I'm like, "Oh, sign me up for that deal!" These people were living in the reality of this. They were blessed, they were happy. This is what it means. It doesn't mean your life is easy, but there's this interior joy that's real. Jesus Uncut Integrity (Matthew 5:33-37) 1 of 10

2 The second word is kingdom. This theme is prominent throughout the Bible. The kingdom is the rule and reign of God through the people of God. That God gets His way through a certain people. The kingdom is not the church, but the church is the embodiment of the kingdom. The church is the place where people on the outside go, "Wow, look at how those people do their money. Look at how those people do relationships. Look at how those people do their sexuality. That's different, that's distinct. I don't understand it, but it's interesting. This happens when the kingdom comes near, through the people of God. When we are an alternative city within our cities. We look different; we are distinct. We have a different king; there's a different administration; there are different rules that govern us. Jesus is talking to us about His kingdom. The third word is righteousness. Righteousness is living up to God's standards, through God's transforming power. Now every word is pregnant in this definition because to live up to God's standards requires God's power. If you try to do this on your own, you're in trouble. Does anybody have a family Bible? Do you remember those things? They doubled as a weapon if an intruder came into your house. Mark Twain, well- known writer and atheist, would have this reoccurring dream where this huge family Bible so big that he could hardly hold it with two hands was laying on top of him. He was in bed, and it was pressing against his chest. He couldn t move. It was crushing him. This is what happens when you try to serve God in your own strength. This is what happens when you try to obey God without God s power. Righteousness is not just living up to standards, it s doing so it in God s power. Now you might be confused about this word because it has a breadth of meaning, as many concepts and words in the Bible do. There is what s called imputed righteousness. This is the righteousness that we get from Jesus when we give Him our sin. We give Him our sin; He gives us His righteousness. We are transformed positionally, so that we are as holy as Jesus is before God. We re in Jesus, we re in Christ that s imputed, positional righteousness. That s not what Jesus is talking about here. He is referring to practical righteousness. This is when our practice is living up to our position. Our behavior is holding up to our belief. Through the rest of your life and my life, we are becoming practically righteous. It is a process. You re not going to get there over night. Now, this idea of being transformed to actually live up to your position is governing the Sermon on the Mount, specifically in this passage with regard to our words. Our words require a transformation from God. But you can t just change your words. God has to change your heart. This is what Jesus is talking about. THE DANGER OF OATHS Jesus Uncut Integrity (Matthew 5:33-37) 2 of 10

3 If you read this text, it seems strange. And sometimes you will read the Bible and think, Well, I don t really get how this all makes sense this word thing. Well, think about words. God created the universe with what? A word. God has revealed himself through what? Words. God says, I want you to stay connected to me. I m inviting you to dialogue with me through what? Words. We use words because God uses words. We re made in His image. We are distinguished from animals because we use words. Words are how God created the universe, words are how God revealed Himself, and words are how we stayed connected to Him. Words are everything. Jesus knows this, which is why He talks to us about words. Look again in verse 33, Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not swear falsely, but you shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.' But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is His footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more comes from the evil one." The Sermon on the Mount is challenging misunderstandings about the Old Testament. Jesus is standing on the shoulders of the Ten Commandments as he speaks these words. I didn t come to abolish the law, I came to what? Fulfill it. He s standing on the shoulders of the Ten Commandments. Let s do a little refresher. Would anybody like to stand up and recite all of them? All right, no takers? All right. Let me summarize: The first one is about idolatry. The second is about idolatry. The first commandment says, Have no other gods before me. This means we don t put anything in the place where only God should be. Don t get your identity, your meaning, and your purpose from anything outside of God. Doing this means you have another god before you. The second commandment: Don t make graven images. Don t reduce God to something you can put in your pockets. You say, Well I don t make little trinkets. I like trinkets, but it s not an idol. No, the idea here is about compartmentalizing God. This is my God life. This is my sex life. This is my work life. No, no, no! Your whole life is God life. You can t quarantine Him. That s the second commandment. Commandments one and two talk about the root of sin. Commandments three through ten talk about the fruit of sin. Don t dishonor your parents. Don t commit adultery. Don t covet. And more. Jesus is really going off of commandment nine, which says, Don t bear false witness. In other words, Stop lying! Stop lying! Now when the Bible says, Don t lie, it s because we lie. I mean can we just start there? This is going to go so much better if you can start there. If not, it s just going to feel like a beating Jesus Uncut Integrity (Matthew 5:33-37) 3 of 10

4 today. Okay? Just start there. It will be better for all of us. We all lie all the time. And when I say all the time, I mean all the time. It s a very nuanced Greek word here, it means, all the time. All the time! We do it. We lie. The commandment says, "Don't lie." Now God is after us on this in both the Old and New Testaments. The reason why Jesus is after us here is that we, religious people, take simple things and make them complicated. You re in church, so you re a religious person. This is what we do. This is what the Pharisees did. The Pharisees took the Ten Commandments, listen to this, and made 800 rules out of those ten. Now, my guess is that it was purely motivated in part. All legalism is like this. Just take a law like Do not lie. And say, I don t want to lie, so let me make a rule here, and a rule here, and a rule here. So you ve got to break five laws before you break the bad one. That sounds awesome, except that every time we make a law or a rule beyond God s revelation, we become self- righteous. Every time we make a rule or a law outside of God s revelation, we lower the bar. We reduce God and elevate ourselves. We don t establish the righteousness of God, we establish our own righteousness. By the way, this is what s wrong with religious people. We have all these rules, and so when someone looks in and goes, Where is the kingdom of God? Oh, the church? Ooh, they ve got all these rules that they try to keep. And we re so proud about keeping our rules. But they re not from God. This is what s going on in our text. Jesus is blowing up this self- righteousness. There was a myth going around that basically claimed that the wrongness of the lie depends on the object of your oath. The rabbis had created this system of oaths that helped people evade honesty. This is what eventually happens. We complicate God s law purely motivated sometimes but often impurely motivated to prevent us from being obedient. Imagine, someone challenges us and we respond, Well I did this and this and this. I kept all my rules. But you lied. Well, you don t understand how I see the truth. It s a little different, and there are certain situations. See how we do that? When we complicate things, we don t have to be accountable. Jesus is going right to the heart, saying, You have to stop lying. You are lying. Even with all these oaths? You are lying? Now I was thinking about how to explain this oath thing, because it's a little strange. Then I immediately started thinking about The Christmas Story. Here s the progression of these oaths. I dare you, which means well, it's not a big deal. I double dare you. Hmm, maybe I'll think about doing that. Or say it with me, I triple dog dare you. Now, if you get triple dog dared, you've got to put your tongue to the frozen pole. You've got to do it. That s the way it is with these oaths. If you have an oath here, well maybe you can tell the truth. If you have an oath here, well, maybe you ought to, but if you have an oath here, you ve got to be truthful. Jesus was saying, No, no, no, let your yes be yes and your no be no. There is no progression here. There are no levels of truth. Every time you make a vow, every time you make a promise, every time you make an oath, it is before God. Period. Jesus Uncut Integrity (Matthew 5:33-37) 4 of 10

5 The best illustration I think I've heard of this is from Tim Keller, who talks about counseling a couple trying to put their marriage back after an adulterous relationship by the husband. Now I've done a few dozen of these over the years, and it's very difficult. And his example is even more difficult I ve had a couple of these cases where the husband actually brought the mistress into the house. He had to make sure his wife s not there. Think about the energy that it takes to commit adultery. It s amazing the energy output that it takes. There are these things to consider. Make sure she s not there, park the car in the garage, make sure the neighbors don t see it, whatever. But the hardest part was that his wife had pictures everywhere of their wedding, their vacations. The husband would go around the house before the mistress came over and put down all the pictures, take them off the wall. Keller asked him, Why did you do that? The husband said, Well, I just felt like my wife is watching. And here s the thing, God was watching. A vow or a promise doesn t create the presence of God. When you are making a promise, you re just recognizing the presence of God. God sees this. Now, that s fearful. God is watching. But I think Jesus is trying to get us to see as well that it should bring comfort because God is with us always. Yes, he s watching always, but He s with us always. This idea of an oath recognizes the presence of God, but it also shows us that we re not God. There are many times in the Old Testament where you ll see the phrase, If you vow this to the Lord. Jesus is not against oaths and vows, in general. Some groups take this command to mean that you can never take an oath in the court of law. I don t think that s what Jesus is talking about. He s talking about levels of truth. He s talking about authority. That s why our text says, Don t swear by your own head. Can you make your hair black or white? No. Jesus, don t you know about Just For Men? That s not what he s talking about. Head means authority. I don t know if you ve ever had to be in a court of law. I had to be a character witness in a trial. When you come into the court of law, and they bring you in as a witness, they say, Do you swear to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth and so on. Then they ask you to put your hand on what? Your head? No, the Bible! I love this. Our nation is trying so hard to get away from God, but there are Bible verses all over Washington. The President has to put his hand on the Bible when he s sworn in. What s that about? You re not swearing on your own authority, on your own head. Jesus is saying, You are putting your hand before God. It s not on my authority. The court says you re going under the authority of God, who gave authority to this court. Jesus is saying you cannot be the arbiter of your own truth. You cannot be flexible with the truth. Truth exists outside of you. You don t critique truth. Truth critiques you. WHY WE LIE Jesus Uncut Integrity (Matthew 5:33-37) 5 of 10

6 Some you are thinking about this and going, Well, I don t do oaths and vows. This doesn t apply to me. Well, let me help you. Let me help us. What is true about lies is that we all do it. I said this earlier, trying to warm you up. We all lie. We speak lies. And the way we lie, a lot of times, is related to our idol. This is why before the Ten Commandments talks about lying (commandment nine), they talk about the root of lying in commandments one and two. One of the things Jesus does in this sermon is that he attacks all of our idols. Social scientists and theologians have tried to get to the core of what an idol is. I ve bought into this particular taxonomy. You don t have to buy into it. Create your own. But I believe there are four core idols that drive people power, approval, comfort, and control. And if you read through the Sermon on the Mount, you ll notice that Jesus attacks all four. People lie because of their power idolatry. People lie because it makes them look like they're not influential. Power is about winning and influence. You know you have a power idol when you're constantly lying about those things, or your tempted to lie. I have that power idol. I want people to think our church is awesome, so I lie about that. I want people to think we re winning, Oh, we ve planted hundreds of churches! How many?! Oh, well, a few dozen. See how this works? How many did you have this weekend? 10,000-12,000! How many did you have?! Well, it was closer to 4,000-5,000. See, I m always tempted this way. Why? Because of that power idol. If you have approval idolatry, your temptation is to lie with regard to rejection. If somebody is going to reject you or you might be perceived in a bad light, you re going to lie. See how this works? Some of you are really controlling, and so your whole thing is about security. You re trying to secure the future. If somebody breaks into your control, trying to mess with that, you re going to lie in a related way. Some of you are comfort- oriented. I don t want stress, I don t want demands put on me. If someone does that, you re tempted to lie. Does that make sense? Now, do you realize you re a liar? We speak lies, we just do. THE WAYS WE LIE We exaggerate the truth Another thing we do is we exaggerate the truth. Now, I m great at this one too. I m good at the first one, I m great at this one. Anybody that speaks publically does this. And I do it at home too. There s an idea I don t think I made it up superlative fatigue. We have friends like this. The hot dog is awesome! My husband is awesome! The Cardinals are awesome! Everything is awesome (like the song). But it s not! It s an exaggeration. Everything is not Jesus Uncut Integrity (Matthew 5:33-37) 6 of 10

7 awesome. There are people that are constantly doing this. And it breeds such cynicism when you hear it. What does that even mean? If everything is awesome, nothing is. I do this at home. You always leave that on the counter. You never clean up your room. Always and never exaggerations. It s a form of lying. And it harms community. This is why Jesus is going after our words, because it harms community. It hurts people when we lie. It damages people. We bruise people with the truth Another way we lie and this is a little counter- intuitive we bruise people with the truth. Have you ever been bruised with the truth? I had a guy in college tell me this. We had a cool thing happen in college. A bunch of guys got serious about God in college, and we were keeping each other accountable. You know, we weren t out breaking commandments and doing crazy stuff, like some of our friends. We were serious about God. It was really good accountability. One of my friends came to me, and said, "Hey man, I really appreciate you speaking the truth to me." I was like, "Dang right, I'm a truth teller. I'm going to be a pastor. Thank you for recognizing my gifts and the influence of my life on your life." Then Mark, who is now a missionary in the Philippines I'll be mowing His grass in heaven says these words to me, I ve never forgotten them, Darrin, I know you love the truth, but I don't feel like you're loving me with the truth." Now he wasn't saying, I don't want to hear the truth. He wasn't saying, Soften the truth. He was saying You're not loving me with the truth. You're not doing what the Bible says, you're supposed to speak the truth in love, you're not doing that. A lot of us do that. We are so convinced that we are right. I'm right, and you need to hear it. We're not going to nuance it. We're not going to think through it. It's so easy to blast people. It's so hard to be precise. But it's all the difference between being a butcher with a cleaver and a surgeon with a scalpel. Truth hurts, but it shouldn't hurt because of our delivery, or our attitude, or our timing. Those things are on us. Are we going to be perfect with that? No. But if the shoe fits, wear it. Don't bruise people with the truth. "Well I just tell them the truth!" Well, you're not helping. Glad you feel better; everybody else is dying! We withhold the truth Another way we lie is by withholding the truth. This doesn't feel like an outright lie; it actually feels compassionate at times, doesn't it? I don't want to hurt their feelings. I don't want them to be you know what, what they don't know won't hurt them! Well, maybe. Maybe. Bosses do this all the time, when they have to fire somebody. "You're just not a fit for our organization." How about relationships, "It's not you, it's me." My favorite though is on the church side with the pastor. "Pastor, we just feel led to go to another church." Oh really? You feel led to go "What happened, what's wrong?" "Oh nothing, we just feel led." Liar! It's me, it's not you, right? We just are so afraid to say the hard thing. Some of us, it s about our personality. Usually, those of us who have approval idolatry have a hard time here. Jesus Uncut Integrity (Matthew 5:33-37) 7 of 10

8 When we withhold the truth from someone, we re saying that we don t have confidence the truth will change them, so we have to spin it. There are times when you don t just say the truth. I get there are times to do that. But I would guess that many of us in this room, many of us listening and watching, would think, All right, that s me! Man, I failed to We call it, around our staff, going the last 10% Have a hard meeting? Somebody confronts me? When I m in my right mind, I will say, Listen, that was really thank you for saying that. Is there anything else? Did you go the last 10% We have to do that, or we re lying to people. We re lying to them. One of the things I love about the Bible is it pushes us at this point. Ephesians 4:25 Paul writing under the inspiration of the Spirit says, "Having put away falsehood, let each of you speak truth to his neighbor." Neighbor means near one. Why? "For we are members of one another." This is church stuff, it's talking about the church. You go and try to do this at work, it's probably not going to go well. You go and try this at your neighborhood party, like I have one today, this afternoon, It may not go well. But guess what, we get to practice on each other in the church. We get to be an alternative city within the city. We get to be under a different King in a new kingdom. We have to learn to tell the truth to each other, in community. Why? Because we're members of one another, we need one another. If we're not going to get the truth at church, where the heck are we going to get it? Netflix? Cable television? I don't think so. Let's not do that. Let's be truth tellers. You speak, but don t live the truth Here is a challenge though, and we'll close with this. You can speak, but not live the truth. Now guess what, every time you speak truth, you're not perfectly living it. Every time you wake up in the morning, you and I are hypocrites. None of us live perfectly what we claim to believe, that's a hypocrite, in one sense. It's just who we are. Which is one of the reasons we don't want to speak the truth, right? "Well I'm not perfect, so how can I..." That's just a cop out, okay? We re told to speak the truth. Yes, we are told to let our life catch up with the truth. You speak the truth, and you re trying to live. You re on a trajectory to live it. You re not perfect. If you wait to get perfect before you speak the truth, you will never open your yapper, you will never talk. But there is a reality of integrity here. Integrity is from the word integer, whole number. Not a fraction, but a whole. God wants to make us whole, that our lives back up what we say. Now is this a process? Yeah. Is it easy? No. Should that make you scared? Yes, especially if you re a Christian, and especially if you re a leader. One of the verses that keeps me up at night, and let me go ahead and share the love, and let you stay up a few nights with this one, is James 3:1, which says, "Let not many of you be teachers. Because as such, we will incur a stricter judgment." What is he talking about? James is the half- brother of Jesus. Most of his book is based off the Sermon on the Mount. What he's saying is watch your words, because your words reflect your life. And watch the fact that your words and your life are not lining up. And your words are powerful, so if you re a leader, if you re discipling people, if you re a community Jesus Uncut Integrity (Matthew 5:33-37) 8 of 10

9 group leader, if you re a minister, this ought to keep you up. This is scary, scary stuff. It s difficult. One of the things that people have been asking me about and I m just going to mention it right now is the whole Mars Hill Church situation in Seattle. If you don t know what it is, don t worry about it. Mars Hill was one of the founding churches of the Acts 29 Network. Mark Driscoll, the former pastor there, was a coach and a friend. We kind of built Acts 29 together. A lot of drama in that church, a lot of sin, and Mark resigned last week. People are asking me all the time, What s going on? Here is what I ll tell you. I will tell you that Mark gave me some really good advice one time. He said, Darrin, be careful not to preach repentance, and then not live repentance. It s easy for pastors to preach repentance. It s easy for Christians to talk about, Oh, this world! This nation! It s hard to live repentance. And guess what? That s true for Mark, and that s true for me, and that s true for you. We re all in this journey to apply the truth to our own hearts, while commanded to speak the truth. We are truth- tellers, that s what distinguishes this kingdom from the kingdom of this world. I don t know if you guys have been affected by the Ray Rice video I mean how could you not have seen it? Have you seen it? What rock have you been living under if you don t know about this? The good thing about this situation is the awareness of domestic violence is probably heightened in a way that has probably done a ton of good. But when you saw that video in case you didn t see it the first video was outside of this elevator, and you see this woman lying on the threshold of the elevator in the hall, and she looks to be unconscious. This is the first video. Then you see Ray Rice, hard to say, dragging her out of the elevator. Oh, what the heck happened? Who knows? Then it comes out there was a fight. They were fighting, who knows what? And then the camera inside of the elevator comes online. And you re like Oh, wow!! You see him punch her, and knock her out. And then just kind of stand there coldly. When I saw that, especially the second video, I thought and this was a God moment, not Darrin s a pastor, Darrin s righteous I just thought, Wow, what if my worst moment was on video for all the world to see? And then I thought this week, as I was working on this sermon, What if the words I say in my head were broadcast for all the world to hear? Then I remembered God. I thought, Well, you see everything. You hear everything. You know my thoughts. Friends, we re all on equal ground on this deal. We re all liars. Probe that idol thing. You re like, Well, I don t know about that. Ask your spouse, they ll tell you! You catch your spouse in lies all the time, right? They re on the phone, Well we got a lot going on, and the calendar is blank, but they don t want to have coffee with so and so. You know? Do it, just start a little bit of Holy Spirit introspection. It s good for the soul. What would it look like for us to really be honest with God about that, and let God meet us in our lies? Now you say, Bite your tongue. If you don t have anything nice to say about Jesus Uncut Integrity (Matthew 5:33-37) 9 of 10

10 somebody, don t say anything. I mean what cliché are you going? I m not giving you any of that crap, because it doesn t work. What would it look like for us to really be honest with God about that, and let God meet us in our lies? Now you say, "Bit my tongue. If you don't have anything to say nice about somebody, don't say anything." I mean what cliché are you giving? I'm not giving you any of that crap, because it doesn't work. Okay, there are times to bite your tongue. There are times your tongue should be bleeding inside your mouth. But that s not really going to do it as far as transformation. What s going to do it is what Jesus says later in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus says, Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So it s a heart thing. Your tongue is tied to your heart. What if we said, Enough, I m never going to lie again. Well, that s a lie. But what if you said, You know what, by God s grace, I m got to let Him work integrity in my heart. And more and more and more, my heart is going to be integrous. And more and more and more, I m going to be whole. And more and more and more, what I say with my lips will be true in my life. That's our invitation to pray, so pray with me. Lord, we need you. When we talk about stuff like this, it's very clear, we need you. God, I pray that you would move in our hearts. I pray that you would show us our lies. I pray that you would show us our idolatry that leads to our temptation and our application of lies. I pray that where there have been lies, that truth would be spoken. Where there is sin, repentance would be had. And Lord, I ask that we would do things differently in this church, then what we see in the world. It's easy to mock politicians. It's easy to mock professional athletes. It's easy to look at people and say, "What a liar!" But God, it's hard to turn it on us. So Lord, that's what we want to do. We want to turn the spotlight on us. And Holy Spirit, would you just show us our sin and then show us Jesus, so that we can cling to Him. Friends, take a minute, before we take communion, and let's see what God would say to us about our hearts. Let's let God expose our lies. Jesus Uncut Integrity (Matthew 5:33-37) 10 of 10