Resurrection Righteousness Matthew 5:17-30 This is God s Word Prayer: Thank you, Father, for this church and for the opportunity to hear from my friend Jake White as he lays out an opportunity to serve you by working for the good of your people. We thank you for your Law, for your commands because they show us how we ought to live with one another and how we honor you. We ask your forgiveness for failing to live in light of your law, but we ask forgiveness knowing that if we confess our sins, you are faithful to forgive us and more than forgive us, cleanse us from all unrighteousness by the power of Jesus perfect obedience to your law and his resurrection to a new life! Thank you for you Holy Spirit who helps us obey and convicts us when we fail to walk in the light of your good Law. Intro: Good morning, my name is Jacob and I m one of the deacons that serves here at Redeemer and I get to preach from time to time, like this weekend while Pastor David is covering the pulpit at another church. But we ve just started a new sermon series called the Resurrection Life and because Jesus resurrection which we just celebrated on Easter gives us new lives, we are looking at what that new life should look like from Jesus sermon in Matthew, chapters 5, 6, and 7 commonly called the Sermon on the Mount. We are, as Americans, a people obsessed with the law. Supreme Court briefs trend on Twitter, we love watching The Good Wife or Law and Order. We love it when the bad guy gets his comeuppance and is sentenced to six life sentences without parole for knocking over a Toot n Totum. But at the same time, we re uneasy with the law. We want justice, but not for us. That s why we speed down I- 40, but get irate when someone else does. We re quick to come up 1
with an excuse about why we need to go 80 in a 60. I get really annoyed with people who pass on the right until I m passing someone on the right. Chuck Klosterman, a pop culture critic for The New York Time Magazine pointed out in his book I Wear the Black Hat that even a lot of our heroes are villains. We love Batman, because we think we love justice, but he is a criminal, a vigilante and in real life, we d think he needs to be committed. In fact, Klosterman pointed out, that you know how artistic a TV show is supposed to be based on whether or not the drug dealer in the show is a good guy. All that to say that, we have a troubled relationship with the law. We don t quite know what to do about it. We want other people to obey it, but fear it for ourselves. So it s natural that when Jesus comes on to the scene in First Century Judaism, he talks about the Law. They were, like us, obsessed with Law. With the rules. Now, their concept of law is different than ours. When they talk about Law, they are talking about the Law of God. So when Jesus comes onto the scene in this context, and he starts preaching, and ticks off the Pharisees, the Lawyers of the Day, what do you think people want to know about him? What about the Law of God, Jesus?! If you make the guys who claim to be God s lawyers angry, what do you think about the Law of God? That would be a good question, because what Jesus thinks about the Law of God demonstrates what he thinks about God. So Jesus does what good preachers do and he puts it into a sermon. (And then other people preached sermons on that sermon; its all very meta.) But what does Jesus show us in his sermon? He challenges us in two ways: He challenges our tendency to think we are good people just because we are alive and challenges our tendency to think we are good because of what we ve accomplished. But Jesus will also show us how he is the ultimate fulfillment of God s law. 2
1. Jesus challenges our belief that we are good people naturally by remind us that God s Law has not been abolished. So Jesus has just, in his Sermon on the Mount, finished describing the citizens of God s Kingdom. Blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit, etc. But every kingdom has a law, so Jesus starts to talk about what the Law, what righteousness looks like in that kingdom and his opening salvo is v. 17, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. You can practically hear the hard swallow in ancient Judea. But Jesus ups the ante: v. 18 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. We re not good people just because. We need righteousness. Unless people are more righteous, more holy, more in line with God s Law and therefore with God himself than the Lawyers who claim to be experts in God s Law, then they cannot be citizens of God s Kingdom. Jesus isn t getting rid of the Law and he s saying the Pharisees actually underestimate the law. It s more than even they understand. They ve relaxed the Law in order to make themselves feel more righteous. (Now, before I go on, I want to say there are valid reasons the New Testament, even Matthew, gives for why the ceremonial parts of the Law, like not eating pork or shellfish are fulfilled in Jesus and since they serve as a sign point to Jesus they no longer hang over us. If 3
you d like, maybe we can talk about it sometime over a bacon cheeseburger and a plate of oysters, but Jesus here uses examples of what we might call the moral law. The moral law doesn t go away.) 1 He gives in his sermon six examples of how deep the law actually is, seemingly as commentary on the Three of the Ten Commandments, Murder, Adultery, and Taking God s Name in Vain. We re going to look at two of those today: Murder and Adultery. Both of these in the Ten Commandments are big in our imagination. Few people in here have committed outright murder, I imagine. Some of you have waded through the devastation of adultery whether your doing or someone else s. But we know that both murder and adultery are massively destructive on a personal scale. Murder ends life. Permanently. Someone is not coming back this side of glory. But more than that, their life leaves a hole. Their families are left devastated, their friends mourning, perhaps jaded or even seeking revenge, compounding the initial sin with more murder. Murder is bad, it s evil. It s against God s law, so it s a sin to murder someone, but the Lawyers, the Pharisees get involved with the law and here s what they do with it: v. 21 : You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. The change is subtle. What the Pharisees are saying is that if you actually kill someone, and their heart stops beating, dead, that s when you are guilty of murder. At one level that makes sense. It s difficult to try someone in a court of law when there isn t a body. But remember, we re not talking about human laws. We re talking about God s law. 1 R T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Commentary On the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2007), 186-7. 4
Similarly, the Pharisees were reducing the command of Scripture Do not commit adultery, the righteousness demanded by God for his people, to a purely external act. Unless you ve had sex with someone not your spouse, the Pharisees and Scribes siad, you ve not committed adultery. Maybe you ve heard people talk this way about their porn use. It s not hurting anyone, they might say. The Pharisees will even go a step further though. You don t like your spouse for some reason? All you have to do is divorce her and then you can marry the person you do like. It s just paper work. What the Pharisees and Scribes have done with God s law is to reduce it to items on an Excel Spreadsheet that they can check off as they think they ve accomplished it. The Law has become (in their version) manageable and bearable. And we do that. I do that. I think I m a good enough person because I get to do ministry. Or because my rap sheet is comparatively short. Or, more likely, because I don t get caught doing or thinking a lot of what I do and think. And look, I grew up in West Texas Christianity. I know what it means to have a bunch of Christian T- Shirts and Christian Band Posters and to only listen to Christian music. I know what it s like to tell God that I go to church three times a week and ask Aren t you glad, God, that I m on your side? But God s law was never meant to be a simple spreadsheet of dos and don ts. God s law was always intended to show God s people his character, their frailty, and the way of hope. 2 In other words, Jesus challenges our tendency to believe that we are good because of what we can accomplish because: 2. God s Law is deeper than we understand 2 Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Sermon On the Mount (Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), 70. 5
And Jesus shows us God s character and our frailty in stark terms when he shows us how he interprets the commands of God. And since Jesus is God, he has the best interpretation of God s Law. Murder, Jesus tells us, isn t just not bludgeoning the occasional person to death, but murder isn t just an act; it s a hateful heart. V. 22, 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. 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. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. Jesus says that if you have anger toward your brother, another human being, who is created in the image of God, you ve violated God s law. That s when you re liable to judgment. Not after you ve killed a man, but when you ve killed that person in your heart. Harboring that animosity is, in the words of Scottish pastor and theologian, Sinclair Ferguson, a time bomb. We do not know when it will go off. We must deal with it quickly, before the consequences of our bitterness get completely out of control. The effects of our hatred for our fellow man are well documented; we gossip about one another, murdering other people s reputations. We ignore our spouse when they anger us, pretending that they don t even exist. Or, we might even imagine the worst possible things happening to that person who has angered us. Maybe we don t pull a physical trigger, but we wish strongly, someone would. Jesus command in that sort of situation is deeply practical for us. Repent, go to the person, and try to work out 6
whatever is the matter. Do it before the both of you are dealing with a judge, whether human or God. That might mean working to forgive someone or asking for forgiveness, or most probably some of both. But it is better than an eternity paying down the debt of sin. Now you might say, but you don t know my situation. Going to the person who hurt me could be dangerous. Fair enough. If you ve been abused, whether physically, sexually, or verbally it might be wisdom not to talk directly with that person. But you still have to deal with the hatred in your heart. That person, as vile as what they ve done, was still created in God s image. But you can be freed from murdering that person over and over again in your heart if you understand and believe that God gives justice and what that person has done will be dealt with by God. But just as Jesus explains that murder is really about hatred, he explains that adultery is really about lust. V: 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 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. Adultery doesn t begin once the sexual act has occurred. Adultery begins with the stolen glances. With the flirty email. With the thought in the back of your mind, I wish my spouse was more like someone else. It starts with looking at someone and thinking that that person can be reduced from the full personhood to a sexual object to be 7
used and thrown away. Adultery in particular, and sexual immorality in general, implies disposability. One can engage in a relationship, and sometimes not even that, and move on. Practically, we can combat the sin of lust and adultery in our own heart. Jesus uses hyperbole to show us that we should avoid temptation as much as possible, as quickly as possible. If a place on the internet is a temptation, don t go there. If having a smartphone enables you to look at porn to easily, don t have one or grant a trusted friend or your spouse permission control. I heard David tell a guy once that if your iphone causes you to sin, it is better to end your data plan than enter hell with 2GBs of data. If a friendship seems like it is about to turn into a sinful relationship, cut if off. Proverbs 6:27 asks, Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? The obvious answer is, no. Remove that temptation from you. But the reason that is so against God s character, the reason he forbids treating people like an iphone that s gone past its date, is because he doesn t act that way towards his bride, the church. He is faithful and committed to her and has promised never to leave her, or forsake her. In Matthew 28, Jesus promises that he will be with his church even to the end of the age. One day, he will come back, there will be a big wedding feast, but even in the meantime, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God does not abandon his bride. Our sin so cuts against God s character, his faithfulness and his forgiveness, that Jesus says it puts so out of relationship with God and so intrinsic to ourselves, that the best word for what is coming is Hell. That s scary. It s supposed to be. Paul says in Romans that the wages of sin is death. Sin is not pretty. It is not to be flirted with. It will burn us. It will kill us. 8
But if we re honest with ourselves for a minute, and if we take Jesus words at face value instead or trying to figure out some reason they don t apply to us, we ll realize that it is difficult to cut out lust most of us still have our hands and eyes and smartphones. It is difficult to deal with anger; we still have a person that if we think about them, our blood starts to boil. In fact, it is impossible in our own power to obey. And it is impossible to undo our sinful acts and impossible to unthink our sinful thoughts. We ve already disobeyed God and broken the law of his Kingdom. But as much as I want you to know that our sinfulness, our lust, our anger, our unfaithfulness goes all the way down and is not merely a surface action; as much as I want you to know the destructiveness and severity of sin; As much as I want you to know what repentance looks like; as much as I want you to know that obedience is in your power impossible; I really want you to know this. It is Jesus whose obedience matters. 3. God s law has been fulfilled by Jesus. When Jesus says in in verse 17 that he has come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, he means that despite your disobedience to God and your objectifying other people, you can keep your hand because his hands have been pierced for your transgression. Despite the murder in our hearst, Jesus, pure in heart, took a Roman spear in his heart because of our sin. He fulfills the Law by taking the punishment for our failure to obey the law despite the fact that he satisfied the demands of the Law; Jesus was himself totally obedient to the Law. But not only that and this is why the Resurrection, the fact that Jesus left behind and empty tomb, is so important. Jesus is fulfilling the Law in us. When we baptize people we say this line form Romans 6, Buried with Christ, risen to walk a newness of life. Jesus is also enabling us through 9
his defeat of sin and death and the cross and in his resurrection to have a new life that can wage war against sin; that desires to fight lust and anger. Do you do this perfectly? No, not yet. But you can obeying him because he has given you a Resurrection Life. And one day, we will enjoy the fullness of that life when Jesus returns. Until then, my hope, Redeemer, is that we can fight against sin by seeking to forgive and asking for forgiveness instead of feeding bitterness and murder in our hearts. My hope is that we can fight lust and adultery by addressing our areas of temptation. But when we fail in the future, or when feel shame or guilt over what we ve done in the past, we can always remind ourselves that Jesus has won the war for us. 10
Works Referenced Carson, D A., and Douglas J. Moo. An Introduction to the New Testament. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2005. Ferguson, Sinclair B. The Sermon On the Mount. Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987. France, R T. The Gospel of Matthew. The New International Commentary On the New Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2007. Ryle, J C. Matthew. Expository Thoughts On the Gospels. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1993. Morris, Leon. The Gospel According to Matthew. The Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1992. 11
Sermon Questions 1. How have you sinned with anger? What were/are the effects of that sin? What would repentance (turning away) from sin look like? 2. How have you sinned with lust? What were/are the effects of that sin? What would repentance look like? 3. How does Jesus death and resurrection enable you to live obey his law? 12