Our sermon text this morning is Matthew 5 verses 20 through 48.
If you would turn there with me, and as you're turning there, I need to mention that much of what I'm going to say today is kind of predicated on what was said last time when we were in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, 17 through 20. In that message, I said that there's a tendency for Christians to view the law of God and the grace of God as being opposed to each other somehow. We have a hard time, I think, believing that grace can or should make moral demands on us, but then we read what Jesus says in Matthew 5, 17. I've not come to abolish the law or prophets, but to fulfill them. So Jesus never did away with the law of God. He certainly did away with its condemnation against us, but he never annulled the law. The main point was that the law and the gospel are friends. They're not in opposition to each other. They both are given to us to drive people to Christ.
The law should be the problem. The gospel shows us the solution. But I also pointed out that even after a person comes to know Christ, the law has a purpose. Its purpose is to show the Christian what God's will is for his or her life. Grace has given the believer a new desire and ability to obey God, and the law shows us what obedience looks like. If you love me, Jesus says, keep my commandments. So being under grace doesn't mean the absence of moral obligation.
Being under grace means we've been given a desire and ability that we previously did not have to live righteously. So we come to verse 20, and Jesus is about to show us what righteous Christian living looks like. Verse 20 is kind of the hinge of this whole section. It goes with the previous paragraph because it flows out of that, but it also goes with what's coming up because that's rooted in verse 20. So I'm gonna read verse 20 as well, and then we'll focus mainly on verses 21 and following in the message this morning. So Matthew chapter 5, verses 20 through 48.
I'm gonna let you remain seated because it's a lengthy passage, and I just think sometimes we can pay attention better if we're sitting down. So no disrespect is intended to the word of God. This is God's word to us.
Jesus says, for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder. And whoever murders will be liable to judgment, 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 counsel, and whoever says, you fool, will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and they 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. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery, 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 go into hell. It was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but 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 the 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 than this comes from evil. You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil, but if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.
And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. For he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?
Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, you are the one who helps us understand the words of Jesus Christ. Would you help us this morning to understand and to obey these verses that we've just read? We recognize that apart from Christ, we can do nothing. So, Lord Jesus, please intercede for us now and give us a love for you that obeys you. Father, thank you that though we fail, you look at us and you see the righteousness of your son, Jesus Christ, in whose name I pray.
Amen. Well, in the verses that we've just read, Jesus is contrasting two things. He's contrasting true righteousness with false righteousness, godliness with hypocrisy, spirit-filled living with legalism. Jesus in this passage is correcting a wrong view of righteousness. The Pharisees were the religious teachers, the theological experts of Jesus' day, and they had become so influential that they controlled the way the general public understood and applied God's Word to the point that there was great confusion over what the difference was between actual Scripture and the Pharisees' interpretation of Scripture.
The tradition of the Pharisees had come to be accepted as gospel truth. And so here in these verses, Jesus is correcting that misunderstanding. Most of us are familiar with this passage and many of us have perhaps read these verses and thought that maybe Jesus is comparing the Old Testament law of Moses with some new kind of law for the Christian church.
That's not what's going on. The contrast is not between Old Testament law and New Testament ethics. The contrast is between the Pharisees' misunderstanding of the law and the true meaning and intent of the law.
There are several clues that make this apparent. First of all, the whole discussion begins with Jesus saying, I've not come to abolish the law. And then he says, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus is setting up a distinction between the law of Moses on the one hand and the teaching and practice of the Pharisees on the other. Also, we see a certain phrase that Jesus will repeat six times.
It's the phrase, you have heard that it was said, not written, but said. Jesus is identifying certain oral traditions that had been passed down and accepted as the letter of the law. So Jesus introduces each topic by saying, you've heard that it was said. And then he gives either a blatant misquote of some Old Testament command or some misapplication of it. Then he adds, but I say to you, and he gives a correct interpretation of the law of Moses.
He tells us here is what it always meant and how it was always intended to be applied. So Jesus is not saying that the law of Moses is bad and the teaching of Jesus is good. He's saying that the Pharisees misinterpretation of the law is bad and the correct interpretation, which is Jesus's interpretation, is good.
You know, it seems that oftentimes we're scared to talk about moral demands in the Christian life because we're afraid of being a Pharisee. And yet the Pharisees' problem was that their view of God's law was not high enough. They were exalting their own interpretation above that which God had said. And in doing this, they were reducing God's law to a very doable outward form of religion. To be a Pharisee, then, is to actually have too low a view of God's law.
And their misapplication of God's law had been taught and spread all over Palestine and was wreaking havoc on the lives of countless people. So Jesus goes to great lengths here to correct it and to show folks what true righteousness really is. Well, he does this by making these six contrasts or comparisons between the oral tradition of the Pharisees and the true meaning and application of God's law. Now, there are certain principles, I think, that we'll begin to notice. They'll begin to emerge as we work through these six comparisons.
So what we're going to do is take a look at each of these comparisons. And as we do this, we'll begin to see those principles and see how they should shape our behavior and our attitude. Principles that show us what a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees looks like. The first contrast, then, is found in verses 21 through 26, and it has to do with murder. Verse 21, you've heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. Now, as I mentioned just a moment ago, each of these comparisons begins with the Pharisaical perversion of God's law.
And that perversion is introduced with the phrase, you have heard that it was said. So with regard to murder, what was the Pharisees' perversion? They quoted the sixth commandment properly, you shall not murder. They even pointed out that murderers deserve strict punishment, which was certainly an established principle in the Old Testament.
As far back as Genesis 9, 6, we read, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. So what was the problem? Where was the perversion? Well, the problem was that the Pharisees didn't carry the sixth commandment far enough. They limited guilt to outward behavior only.
A person was only liable for breaking the sixth commandment if they had physically killed someone. Some of you have worked in law enforcement, you've seen the worst of the worst in society. You've had to deal with murderers and thieves and rapists.
I suspect that you could bear witness to the reality that people who end up engaging in these criminal activities probably didn't just decide one day to go out and murder someone. Behavior that leads to heinous crime usually begins small and it begins in the heart. It begins when an individual fails to keep bitterness or anger or selfishness in check.
And it grows and grows and grows until one day there's a serial killer running around. The Pharisees failed to acknowledge that guilt begins in the heart. They were going around assuring everyone that it doesn't matter what's happening on the inside.
The state of your heart doesn't matter so long as you don't pull the trigger. Can you imagine the devastation this kind of teaching must have caused in the lives of so many people in Jesus' day? Anger, unresolved conflict, resentment, lack of forgiveness. It didn't matter, just don't kill anyone and you'll be fine. So went the rationale of the Pharisees. Well Jesus was not going to play that game and so in compassion and concern for the well-being of God's children he corrects this perversion.
He says, I say to you, I say to you. You hear the authority in that statement. It doesn't matter what the religious experts are saying. It doesn't matter what the secular psychologists or the self-help books are saying.
Who cares what popular opinion is? Jesus says, I say to you, everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. He points out that guilt goes beyond external behavior.
It includes the disposition of the heart. When God says murder is wrong, he includes everything that leads to murder. And when we fail to recognize that the spiritual cause that produces murder is wrong, we've failed to understand God's law.
We've missed the mark. As one theologian put it, even as you cannot expect a healthy drink from a polluted fountain, so the beginning of the outward act of murder is sin. Jesus is pointing out that sin is first and foremost a matter of the heart. And true righteousness demands that we deal with our hearts. Jesus goes on to address how uninhibited anger affects one's relationships with others. It affects one's worship of God.
It affects one's social standing and language and financial security. A murderous heart, then, is in danger of producing much more damage than just the physical act of taking the life of another. And right in the middle of this paragraph, Jesus makes a very sobering statement. He says, and whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. You see, not only had the Pharisees misunderstood the nature of murder, they had misunderstood its consequence. The Pharisees warned murderers that they would face capital punishment before men, but said nothing about facing God on judgment day. Jesus pointed out that even the smallest display of anger, calling someone a fool, would incur enough guilt to send you to hell forever. Folks, the Pharisees had seriously underestimated God's standard of righteousness.
But Jesus wasn't finished. He went on to address the issue of adultery. Again, Jesus starts by quoting the oral tradition of the Pharisees, which, again, was a perversion of the true intent of God's law. Verse 27, you heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.
And once again, we notice that the oral tradition was an accurate representation of the letter of the law. The problem, again, was the way in which it was limited to external behavior only. Adultery, they taught, only had to do with engaging in sexual intercourse with someone who was not your spouse. But just as was the case with murder, the final overt act of physical adultery with another person is just the end result of an adulterous heart. Jesus pointed out that adultery begins long before any sexual improprieties with another person occur. So adultery, like murder, is a matter of the heart. Verse 28, I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So again, Jesus insists on making sin and guilt a matter of the heart. Guilt is not simply incurred from external behavior.
It comes from the disposition of the heart. A person can take vows of celibacy and lock themselves up in a monastery in the middle of nowhere and in the end still be guilty of breaking the seventh commandment. You shall not commit adultery.
Why? Because adultery is a matter of the heart. Even the desire to be morally impure is a sin before God. Jesus goes on to tell his hearers that the guilt incurred in breaking the seventh commandment is not just guilt before a spouse or before a religious court. It is guilt before God. And this is so serious, in fact, that it would be better to sacrifice a member of your own body than to carry that guilt with you into eternity. Now, I want to come back to this thought in just a moment, but for now we just need to see the seriousness with which Jesus speaks of the guilt brought on by sin. It's a degree of guilt that the Pharisees had totally underestimated and understated. Well, Jesus goes on then in verse 31. It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Once again, we see the Pharisees missing the mark.
They were so caught up in the legalities and the technicalities of their oral tradition that they had made divorce a matter of proper certification while totally overlooking the real intent of the law. When I was younger but old enough to know better, I had some money that was burning a hole in my pocket one afternoon, and there were some toy soldiers at the dollar store across town that were calling my name. So I got on my bike and rode all the way across town. The only problem was I didn't get permission to go, nor did I tell anyone where I was heading. I just took off. Well, I guess the toy aisle must have been really interesting because I lost track of time.
When I got home, my family was all seated around the table eating supper. My dad did not look happy. In fact, he came out to meet me in the driveway as I came riding up happily with my little bag of soldiers. And all of a sudden, the thought occurred to me, you know, it probably wasn't a great idea for me to hop on my bike and head across town without asking my parents. I'll spare you the details of what happened next, but what if after my dad had lectured me and disciplined me, I had responded by saying, but Father, I looked both ways at every intersection, and I was exceptionally polite to the cashier at the store. You know, at that point, it really didn't matter how mannerly I had been or how careful I was on the roads. I did not have permission to go in the first place.
That was my offense. So it was with the Pharisees. They had all their forms and signatures in order. They had all the proper certification for divorce, but they had totally ignored the central issue of the matter, which were, what are the proper grounds for divorce? Jesus spelled it out for them, if there are no grounds for divorce, it doesn't matter how meticulous you've been with the certification, you are guilty of adultery. And once again, we see these religious experts dumbing down the law of God and spreading that ignorance to their followers. So Jesus, out of compassion for His people, corrects the misunderstanding. In verses 33 through 37, we see Jesus dealing with the issue of oaths. He says, again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.
But I say to you, do not take an oath at all. It says in verse 37, let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil. And again, the Pharisees' perversion doesn't sound bad. In fact, it has a ring of truth to it. When you make a promise to the Lord, keep the promise.
That sounds great. The only problem was that in practice, the Pharisees used this idea to get themselves off the hook. They twisted this principle to actually justify breaking God's law in other areas. This is illustrated for us in Mark 7, where Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. He explains how the Pharisees would neglect the fifth commandment to honor their parents by pledging all of their assets to God.
Then they would say, essentially, sorry, Mom and Dad, I wish I could help take care of you, but all of my money and resources belong to God. They would hide behind an oath to keep from having to honor their parents, as if obedience in one area justified disobedience in another area. Furthermore, the Pharisees would increase or diminish their moral obligation to be honest based on how elaborate their swearing was.
This is laughable. Matthew 23 describes what they were doing. They were teaching that if anyone swears by the altar, the promise is not morally binding, but if you swear by the gift that is on the altar, well, now that's morally binding. Have you ever seen kids display this Pharisaical piling up of oaths that one kid will say to another, I'll do such and such, but the other kid wants some confirmation. He says, you promise? So the first kid says, yes, I promise, but the other kid is still not convinced, so he says, you cross your heart? Yes, I cross my heart, and just keeps escalating until the kids are crossing their hearts and hoping to die and sticking needles in their eye.
What is all of that? It's a distrust of words due to an established pattern of dishonest, disingenuous speech. The Pharisees were not honest with their words, which necessitated oath-taking. But if your yes and no are dishonest, who's to say that your oaths aren't also dishonest, which very quickly devolves into ridiculous speech patterns in which there's no reliable integrity? Jesus said, stop it.
Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Let your speech be completely honest all the time. The issue did not concern the technicalities of speech. It concerned the truthfulness of speech.
I came across a very insightful comment last week. The writer said, it is characteristic of certain individuals who are aware that their reputation for truthfulness is not exactly outstanding, that the more they lie, the more they also assert that what they are saying is true. They're in the habit of interlacing their conversations with oaths. Such conduct stems from the evil one. In other words, people who have to make promises all the time are ironically the least to be trusted.
Now, a question sometimes arises here. Is all oath-taking wrong? Should Christians, for example, not swear on the Bible in a courtroom? Should we not take vows of church membership or vows at the installation of officers?
Those kinds of things. There are religious groups that universally forbid the taking of oaths, and they point primarily to Christ's words in these verses. So the question is, is all oath-taking forbidden?
My answer would be no. That's not what Jesus is saying in Matthew 5, 33-37. And I base that on the fact that in Scripture, God gives instruction on the proper way to make vows. Also, there are numerous instances of godly people taking oaths without being condemned by God.
Even Jesus himself swears by the living God that he is the Christ. Hebrews 6, 16 acknowledges that oaths can settle disputes by giving a measure of authority to someone's words that nothing else can give. So Jesus isn't forbidding the taking of all oaths, it seems. He's forbidding the taking of dishonest oaths, hypocritical oaths, uncalled-for oaths. In other words, he's correcting the abuse of oath-taking and commending complete truthfulness in speech.
Now, let me very quickly move through these last two comparisons. In verses 38-42, Jesus deals with retaliation. You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil, but if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. So the Pharisees were teaching a principle called lex talionis, the law of retaliation. This was a biblical concept.
It's found in Exodus 21. The problem was that they were using this principle for personal benefit and failed to recognize that this law of retaliation was designed to govern public justice, not individual behavior. While public justice demands consistency and uncompromising fairness, there are times when self-sacrifice on the part of an individual is appropriate and good, a time when offenses ought to just be absorbed and overlooked. The Pharisees had missed all of that, and so Jesus explained the godly practice of self-sacrificial love as a loving and biblical alternative to retaliation. Now, related to this issue of self-sacrifice is the issue of loving one's enemies. Verse 43, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Now, first of all, this isn't even in the Old Testament. God doesn't command us to hate our enemies. Leave it to the Pharisees to take a command to love your neighbor and turn it into a command to hate your enemies. Jesus' correction at this point is radical. He says, but I say to you, love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.
The Pharisees had pursued personal revenge. Jesus said, no, the command to love your neighbor is and has always been about personal selflessness. We find this principle explicitly taught even in the Old Testament. Proverbs 25, 21 says if your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat.
If he's thirsty, give him water to drink. And perhaps when we live this way, it is the closest we'll come to godliness because Jesus says this way of life shows that we are sons of our Heavenly Father. We're bearing his image through this, for God makes his Son rise on the evil and on the good. He does good to his enemies.
He sends rain on the just and on the unjust. It's this kind of righteousness that distinguishes us from Gentiles, from unbelievers. It's this kind of righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees. It's a righteousness that proves our Heavenly citizenship. If we were to distill all of these corrections that Jesus has made down to a practical level, I think we would notice some principles that ought to govern our conduct as it relates to God's law.
Martin Lloyd-Jones has done that very thing, and I want to stand on his shoulders this morning, if I may, and share these principles with you. As we consider how the law of God applies to us in light of Jesus' teaching, we need to remember first of all that it is the spirit of the law that matters primarily, not just the letter. This doesn't mean the letter doesn't matter.
It does. But it's not primary. We ask, what is behind this law, this instruction that brings God pleasure? And that's what ought to control our application. Secondly, and closely related, is that conformity to the law must not be thought of in terms of actions only, but must also include thoughts, motives, and desires. Again, this doesn't mean that actions are unimportant.
They are. But actions are really just revealing what's in the heart. And sin begins in the heart.
Likewise, obedience begins in the heart. Let me go back to Jesus' comment about lust, in which He said it's better to go through life maimed than for your whole body to be cast into hell. Is He really telling us to cut off our hands and pluck out our eyes in our fight against sin? Well, the point He's making in that particular paragraph is just this. Sinfulness is a matter of the heart, not just the actions.
So I think He is then using the Pharisee's way of looking at sin, which is ludicrous, to illustrate His point, to illustrate how ludicrous their view is. The fact is that even if we were to pluck out our eyes, which is an external act, we still would not have gotten rid of the problem, would we? A blind man can still lust. A person without hands can still steal. A mute person can still lie.
Why? Because sin is a matter of the heart. Jesus wants us to take sin seriously and fight against it for all we're worth, but all the while recognizing that it is ultimately a battle for the heart. The New Testament, particularly the writings of Paul, tell us how to biblically mortify the flesh. That is how to deal with the way our body pulls us towards certain sinful behaviors. Paul speaks of buffeting our body and of making no provision for the flesh.
There are times when we need to fast, times when we strain our body to bring it into control, but all the while we must recognize that sinfulness is a matter not of mere external behavior, but of the heart. Thirdly, the law must be thought of not only in a negative manner, but also positively. The ultimate purpose of the law is not just to prevent us from doing certain things. Its real object is to lead us to do and love that which is right. And then finally, we need to realize that the law of God and all the ethical instructions of the Bible must never be regarded as ends in themselves. The ultimate objective of all this teaching is that we might come to know God. Man's chief end, as we confessed just a few moments ago, is to glorify and enjoy God. Obedience to God's law is merely a means to that end.
If our view of God's law doesn't allow for this, we're no better off than the Pharisees. Lloyd-Jones closes with a heart-searching summary of what we've been talking about this morning, and I want to take time as we close to share this with you. He says, as you examine yourself before you go to bed at night, you do not ask yourself if you have committed murder or adultery or whether you've been guilty of this or that, and if you have not, thank God that all is well. No, you ask yourself, rather, has God been supreme in my life today? Have I lived to the glory and the honor of God?
Do I know Him better? Do I have a zeal for His honor and glory? Has there been anything in me that has been unlike Christ?
Thoughts, imaginations, desires, impulses. We must always be very careful, lest we do with the Sermon on the Mount what the Pharisees had been doing with the old moral law. The one thing we have to avoid above everything else in our Christian lives is this fatal tendency to live the Christian life apart from a direct, living, and true relationship to God. I may stop drinking or gambling, but if my poverty of spirit is not greater, my sense of weakness is not deepened, my hunger and thirst after God and righteousness not greatly increased, then I might just as well not have done it at all.
This is the fatal danger of making these things ends in themselves. We can even be guilty of this with regard to public worship. If public worship becomes an end in itself, it may be the very thing that will damn my soul. God forbid that we should turn our relationship with Him into a legalistic religion. Jesus' last word on these things is this. You, therefore, must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.
And, folks, that's not doable, is it? We can't live up to that standard. None of us can live up to this standard of righteousness, not even for a moment. So we can either lower the standard like the Pharisees did and give it our best shot, or we can ignore the standard altogether and live however we want, or we can let the blade of God's law cut us deeply to the heart and make us desperate for Christ.
Don't read the last verse of Matthew 5 without remembering verse 17. Jesus has come to fulfill the law's demands in our place. And it is the perfect keeping of God's law that makes Jesus Christ so, so very beautiful to lawbreakers like you and me.
Let's pray. Almighty God, You are holy, holy, holy, but we are unholy. Thank You, Jesus, that You take what belongs to a holy God and You give it to sinful man. May the breadth and the depth and the bite of Your law absolutely overwhelm us with gratitude for Your grace, and may Your grace give us an enduring love for righteousness. Jesus, we love You, and we rest in You alone. Amen.
