The Sermon on the Mount, particularly Matthew 5:17-30, is not a call to abolish the Law but to fulfill its deeper, spiritual intent, challenging listeners to a radical righteousness that goes beyond outward actions to the heart's attitudes and motivations.
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GODFREY: Well, it is very good to be here with you and very appropriate that we should begin
with a sort of solemn moment of remembrance of those who served to preserve our freedoms,
because we come to a sermon that is very solemn. I think one of the dangers of reading the Sermon
on the Mount is that maybe we know it too well and it doesn't strike us the way it
must have struck those early listeners. Last year I had a chance to be at what is called
The Church of the Beatitudes on the north end of the Sea of Galilee, which tradition holds
is where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. Now, like most of these traditions,
we can't be sure it is actually accurate, but certainly where we were was very near that spot
and a beautiful hill. In California we would have called it "golden," but it was actually,
kind of, brown, and looking down at the Sea of Galilee. It is a striking spot and helpful to
remember a striking sermon. And I want to look at part of that with you, chapter 5,
Matthew chapter 5 at verse 17. We will read down through verse 30. This is God's own Word.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not 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. 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 shall 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 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."
"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 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."
So far the reading of God's Word. This sermon among other things is a call to righteousness.
John Calvin said that it is the rule of godly and holy living. It is a call to righteousness,
and I think we live in a time when there needs to be calls to righteousness. Jesus warns near the
end of this sermon of the dangers of lawlessness and He warns of the dangers of hypocrisy,
those who pretend to be righteous and aren't. And He impresses upon us the seriousness of the
issues that He is dealing with. They will not enter the kingdom of heaven. They are
liable to the judgment. They are liable to the hellfire. Surely, this can't be mild-mannered,
nice Jesus speaking, but it is. And it has always struck me as ironic that liberals
constantly talked about reducing the message of Jesus to the Sermon on the Mount, and my
only conclusion is that they were not reading the Sermon on the Mount with any regularity,
because actually you have to edit the Sermon on the Mount significantly to take out all of the
disturbing bits. I think that Jesus intended right from the beginning of the Sermon on the
Mount to surprise and unsettle His disciples. It is a tendency for all of us as human beings,
but also as Christians, to settle into somewhat comfortable modes of thinking
and living. And Jesus by this sermon, I think, really intended to shake us up and to say to us,
"You need to think and live differently, certainly differently from the way in which the world lives,
but maybe you need to think and live differently from the way you are inclined to think and live.
I think Jesus means to surprise us and unsettle us. And if we don't sense that in reading this
sermon, we have maybe made it a little too bland and haven't quite enough understood what is going
on there. It is a call to righteousness, but it is a call to righteousness in a form that
is intended to make us stop and think. I saw a T-shirt in California—you can see almost
anything on a T-shirt in California—but this one said, "Don't think. Live." And I thought,
"That may be the most anti-Christian T-shirt I've ever seen." Christians need to say,
"Think and live." And Jesus wants us to think about righteousness. So He says in the beatitude,
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled." Well,
that certainly encourages us to think that righteousness is a good thing. It is something
we should desire, something we should pursue, something we need to think about. What is the
righteousness for which we are hungering so that we might know when we have been filled,
when we have been satisfied? And it is easy to agree with Jesus there, isn't it, "Blessed are
those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied"? But then, just a few
verses further down He said, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake." Now,
again, we are so familiar with this we may not see the rather odd juxtaposition there.
So I am to pursue a righteousness that will be satisfying and will lead to my persecution. So
righteousness is both a blessing and a danger. We are beginning to sense that, aren't we, in the
contemporary world in which we live, that if you stand up for righteousness it may be dangerous.
On Remembrance Day we remember those who fought for freedom, but we live in a world where in many
ways tyranny seems to be advancing. Tyranny is sometimes opposing freedom, but tyranny
is sometimes posing in the garb of freedom to persecute those who live righteous lives and speak
up for righteousness. So Jesus wants us to think about that. I think He wants us to be slightly
unsettled by the reality that righteousness is both a blessing and dangerous. And then to keep
us from settling down, He draws another contrast. He says, "You are the light of the world. So let
your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father
who is in heaven." Your righteous life needs to be shining in a dark world. Others need to see it to
see your good works. And then in Matthew 6 verse 1 He says, "Beware of practicing your righteousness
before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father
who is in heaven." So your good works are to be visible but your righteousness is to be done
in secret. How are you going to manage that? He wants you at least to pause and think about that.
Now, these things are easily reconcilable, aren't they? We are to live righteously to
give glory to God not as the Pharisees who do, parade our piety to be praised by men. That is
what Jesus is saying. But He reminds us this is tricky, this is challenging, and He wants
us to be challenged. He wants us to rethink what this whole call to righteousness is all about,
and He then becomes more specific in the text to which we are particularly pointed
today. "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder.'" Now,
this is Jesus' transition from saying we need to be guided by the law in general to Jesus beginning
to talk about what the law means in specific. And here He is quoting from the Ten Commandments,
"You shall not murder." It is important that we know the Ten Commandments, isn't it?
One of my dearest friends, who is a minister, retired and set out to drive around the United
States, in retirement went to a church. And the pastor on Sunday was pounding the pulpit
about how we needed the Ten Commandments in front of the courthouses of America. And my
friend went out after the sermon and said, "I really agreed with what you said about the Ten
Commandments." The pastor said, "That's great, brother." And then my friend said,
"But you know there is a place in America where you can read the Ten Commandments." And he said,
"Oh, really. Where is that?"And my friend who was just slightly obnoxiously Dutch Reformed,
my friend said, "You can read the Ten Commandments in church and you didn't." Now, there is a domine.
But this is important, isn't it, that we as Christians know the Ten Commandments,
that we hear them, that we hide them in our hearts. And so, Jesus seems to be talking
about the Ten Commandments, but I don't think He is. What He is really talking about here is
the pharisaical misinterpretation of the law of God. That is why it is so important to read verse
20 of Matthew 5 in relation to verse 21, "For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds
that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of God. You have heard that it
was said to those of old," by the Pharisees, "you shall not murder." But the Pharisees,
in their approach to the law, wanted to restrict it and manage it and control it. They wanted
it to be easily accomplishable. They wanted to interpret it in such a way that it was restricted,
that it didn't control the hearer, but the hearer could control the law. And so,
you could fulfill the law of not murdering by not murdering. Well, on the surface that
seems a reasonable proposition. But Jesus is saying the law was intended to be much more
than that. The law was intended to be much more searching than that. The law was intended to be
much broader than that, looking into our lives of relationships much more generally. The law
was intended to be spiritual and searching and exposing of the hearts and lives of God's people.
And so, Jesus is presenting us as He presented those original disciples with the fundamental
choice of how you are going to understand the Old Testament. There are two ways of understanding the
Old Testament all through the New Testament. There is the rabbinic Pharisaical way of
understanding the Old Testament and there is the dominical apostolic way of understanding the Old
Testament. There is the way that shrinks the law down to manageable proportions, and there is the
way that expands the law as spiritually searching into the lives of God's people. And John Calvin,
who I think at this point in his commentary on the Gospels is brilliant in his insight,
says that the Pharisees had fundamentally misunderstood the law, because the law from the
beginning had been spiritual, not just external. The law from the beginning had penetrated into
the heart, not just the externals of the life. And so, Calvin would write,
"Christ in fact had not the least intention of making any change or innovation in the
precepts of the law. The law is spiritual. That was Moses' intention." Calvin wrote,
"It is certain that at all times Moses required the spiritual service of God."
So Jesus is not changing Moses here in chapter 5. He is changing the pharisaic
misinterpretation of Moses and restoring the proper spiritual interpretation of the law,
and He shows that in what He does here with this commandment, this sixth commandment. "You have
heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murder shall be liable to
judgment.' But I say to you," not saying, "I am in disagreement with Moses," but saying,
"I am in disagreement with the Pharisees." "But I say to you that everyone who is
angry with his brother will be liable to judgment." It is not just the murderer,
but it is attitudes and actions that could lead up to murder that the Savior is applying. So,
don't be angry or you will be liable to judgment. And don't let your anger lead to
open insults of a brother. Jesus is showing how we can move towards murder by our attitudes even
if we don't get there and that the law condemns those movements towards murder. Don't be angry.
Now, anger is not just a matter of the heart, is it? Have you ever seen anger
on a face? Absolutely! So, don't be angry. Don't engage in insults. Don't be alienated
from your brother so that when you are in church you suddenly think, "Wow! I'm having trouble with
so-and-so. I really need to make that right." Don't be angry. Don't be insulting. Don't be
alienated. Don't have an accuser who is going to take you to court. You see how He is moving,
sort of, from element to element in how the law needs to be understood spiritually in our
lives. If you are alienated from a brother, solve that. If some accuser is taking you off to court,
presumably not a brother, try to make that right. You don't want to end up in
prison. Now, there is practical advice. Write that down: you don't want to end up in prison.
What Jesus is doing here is really digging deep into the law and helping us to see how it helps
us in the wide range of life to think about relationships here in the sixth commandment.
You know one of the confessional documents of the Reformed churches that really helps with that is
the Westminster Larger Catechism. I have to say that because I see in the audience an Orthodox
Presbyterian minister friend and, you know, he gets annoyed with me for pretending to be Dutch,
because he is Dutch. But the Westminster Larger Catechism's exposition of the Ten
Commandments is absolutely fabulous. If you have never read it, you really should. It is
a very careful thoughtful reflection on what the commandments mean broadly and profoundly
for the life of the Christian. We need to think in those terms about the commandments as they shed
a light on all the aspects of our lives, and of course it comes down to the simple proposition,
doesn't it, love your neighbor? If you love your neighbor, you will not be angry,
you will not be insulting, you will not be alienated, you will not be in court.
And under the surface of that maybe unsettling interpretation of the commandment is Jesus'
criticism of the Pharisees. What is wrong with the Pharisees? How do we see the Pharisees in the
Gospels? They are angry a lot of the time, aren't they? They are insulting Jesus a lot of the time,
aren't they? They are alienated from Him a lot of the time, aren't they? And what is
their ultimate desire? Their ultimate desire is to arrest Him and to see Him killed. No
one needs to hear the true meaning of the law more than the Pharisees, because for
all of their fascination with the law, they don't understand it. That is what Jesus is saying here.
And then He goes on from the sixth commandment to the seventh commandment, doesn't He,
there in verse 27? "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say
to you." Now, is Jesus setting aside the seventh commandment? No, of course not, not at all. He is
exploring the depths of the commandment as Moses had originally received it from God. And what He
is saying is that keeping this commandment is more than avoiding some sexual activity. It is
also very much about what goes on in the heart and in the eye. "But I say to you that everyone who
looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Now,
if anger shows up on the face, does lust show up on the face? I have heard women say,
"I don't like him. I don't like the way he looks at me." I see the women nodding, the men looking
as usual, kind of, benighted. Jesus is saying the attitudes of the heart play out in the life
and in the face and in the relationship. And it is hard to think of many societies in the
history of mankind that need this commandment and this explanation more than ours does.
And, of course, it is not just the general culture that is revealed as obsessed with sex,
but tragically, how much has been revealed about breaking the seventh commandment in the
churches. And Jesus wants to challenge us in a fundamental way and say to us,
"What is going on in your heart? What is going on in your attitudes, not just who are you in
bed with, but what is the character of your life in relation to the opposite sex?" And,
Jesus, you see, surprises us with a shocking statement, "If your right eye causes you to sin,
tear it out and throw it away." Really? Even in the most literalist circles that I know in
the history of the church, I am not aware of this ever happening. I look around and I don't
see empty eye sockets. But I would guess in a gathering this large there might be one or
two people guilty of lustful thoughts or maybe more. What is Jesus saying to us? He is saying
how profoundly we have to approach the matter of holiness and righteousness in the way we think,
in the way we live, and how profoundly we have to see the implications of this,
the outcome of this. Again, it is amazing to me how pastorally and insightfully Calvin writes
about this. He writes on this passage, "However difficult, arduous, troublesome or painful God's
rule may be, we must make no excuse for that as the righteousness of God should be worth more
to us than all other things that are chiefly dear and precious. Christ in hyperbole bids us
prune back anything that stops us offering God obedient service as He demands in His law. He
does this deliberately for men are too generous to themselves in the limits they allow over these
things." Isn't that true, how generous we are with ourselves? How willing we are to explain how "We
just can't help it. It is just the way we are. It is this way everyone is;" too generous with
ourselves. Too generous with ourselves. Christ says, "Where is the life of repentance among us?"
Now, this is powerful stuff, isn't it? It should be unsettling because we realize how far we are
from meeting this standard, this standard which Christ raises so high in front of us. And then we
look at the way which Christ in the Gospels speaks to the Pharisees in different places. What does He
say to the Pharisees? That they are full of greed and self-indulgence, Matthew 23:25. They are full
of uncleanness, Matthew 23:27. They are part of the adulterous generation, Matthew 16:19;
and that out of their hearts, as all of our hearts, comes adultery amongst other sins,
Matthew 15:19. Jesus wants to get us thinking, get us realizing how serious these issues are
of righteousness, how holy is the God we serve, how great is the holiness to which we are called.
Jesus, in Matthew 23:16, will say to the Pharisees, "You are blind guides. You have
blinded the people to the real calls of righteousness in the law of God." Now,
the wonderful thing is Jesus heals the blind who come to Him and seek Him. Jesus helps sinners.
We have to be careful with this, don't we? We don't want the call to holiness to jeopardize
the doctrine of justification by God's free grace through faith alone. That is foundational in the
Gospels. But we don't want the gospel of free grace to undermine the seriousness of the call
to us as Christians to live holy and godly lives. We need both of those things, not in conflict,
but in harmony. Why did Jesus come to save us from our sins? Not so that we can continue to
live happily in our sins. When Jesus comes to save us from our sins, He makes us lights in the world,
not because we are perfect, but because we are pursuing the holiness to which we are called.
Now, in the Heidelberg Catechism after the exposition of the law there is a statement that is
absolutely true, as all things in the Catechism, absolutely true that in this life even the holiest
of men have only small beginnings of the obedience to which we are called, but that, nevertheless,
we are to seek to live faithfully to all the commandments of God. That is God's pattern for us:
know your sin and seriousness of it, but also know your God's holiness and His call that we
should live different lives in this world. One of the most discouraging things that various surveys
have shown about Christianity in America—I am sure this is not true in Canada. We can be thankful
for that—but one of the things surveys show in America is that many of the issues of life are
no different in the church than they are in the world. And then we have to ask, "What is
going on in the church?" We know what is going on in the world. It is easy to talk about what
is going on in the world, but what is going on in the church? Are we different? Does the world see a
difference in the way we live? Christ is calling us in the Sermon on the Mount to be different.
Now, Matthew does not mean to plunge us into despair or to discourage us,
but he does want us to see the seriousness of the call to holiness. Jesus wants us to see that. But
Matthew in his Gospel also brackets this very serious call to holiness with reminders of the
work of Christ for us His people. And so, what do we find in Matthew 3? We find John the Baptist
preaching, and he is preaching a baptism for the forgiveness of sins. He is preaching a baptism of
repentance. He is preaching a baptism of a new beginning. And he is saying to God's people,
"Do you acknowledge that you are sinners and that you need to be baptized?" Have
you thought about the importance of baptism always being talked about in
a passive voice? You need to be baptized. You are not supposed to baptize yourself.
In an earlier Ligonier trip we were at the Jordan River in a place where tradition holds John was
baptizing. And there was a member of— surely it can't be in the Ligonier group—who wanted
to be re-baptized in the Jordan River. And, thankfully, I can report no one was willing
to re-baptize him in the Jordan River. So he baptized himself. And if you are taking notes,
there is another place to write down, "Don't baptize yourself." The very act of baptism says,
"I can't save myself. I can't baptize myself. I can't wash myself. I can't cleanse myself. I
have to be cleansed by Another." And so, baptism points to that utter dependence that we have on
Another. And Matthew 3 makes clear that that Other is Jesus ultimately, that Jesus is the One who
fulfils the symbolism of baptism. Jesus is the One who can really cleanse the heart. Jesus is the One
who really forgives the sin. Jesus is the One who really brings new life into His people. So before
He says to His disciples, "Live a holy life," He says, "I know you are sinners. I know you need
salvation. I have come to provide that salvation. I have come to fulfill all righteousness."
And then just in case we are not clear about this, just after the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 9,
Jesus says that remarkable statement: "I have come not for the righteous, but for sinners. A
physician is only needed by the sick." "Oh, so Matthew 9 shows that God doesn't really care
about righteousness after all. What a relief!" No, that is not what He means, is it? He says,
"I have not come for those who think they have established their own righteousness before God
in which they can stand in the judgment." That is who the Pharisees are. "I have not come for them,"
Jesus says. They are hopeless unless they repent, unless they recognize that they are sinners.
One of the most poignant statements in Luke's Gospel is that the Pharisees refused to be
baptized with the baptism of John. Why did they refuse to be baptized? Because they weren't
sinners. They didn't need to be cleansed. They had cleansed themselves. Jesus didn't come for people
who can establish their own righteousness, but to those people the Scriptures say,
"There are none righteous like that; no, not one." But Jesus came to save sinners who acknowledge
that they are sinners, who acknowledge their need. But where Jesus saves, there is a new life
begun. There is a new reality at work. A new life that has to be approached, Matthew 5 is saying,
with great seriousness on our part. It is not a game. It is not a matter of a game that says,
"Well, now that you are saved, you have option A, which is to pursue holiness or option B to
skip it." There is no option B. We are called to be the people of God. And part of what the New
Testament says is, if you are not concerned about holiness, you maybe first need to be concerned
about whether you are actually regenerated and justified. And so, Jesus is challenging us,
isn't He? He is calling us to be deeply thoughtful and reflective about our lives.
We have lived through in the United States, and I fear it has been exported elsewhere,
an approach to Christianity, that says, "It is fun to be a Christian! It is great to be a Christian!
It is uplifting to be a Christian! Come and join us in the Disneyland of faith!" But that is not
the religion we find in the New Testament. Now, there is joy in Christianity. There were times in
the history of Dutch Reformed churches where we thought we had effectively destroyed the joy. I
can say that because I am Dutch Reformed. But joy is not frivolous living or thinking. It
is hard to be a Christian, and if no one told you that, they are lying to you. It is not hard to be
justified. Jesus did it all, but it is hard having been justified, belonging to Him, to continue to
live for Him. That is why He wants to surprise us in the Sermon to keep us thinking, to keep
us off-center a little bit so that we don't settle into a very comfortable kind of Christian living.
One of the earliest things that we read in Matthew's Gospel, Matthew 1:19 is about Joseph,
Jesus' father. We don't know a lot about Joseph in the Bible, but in Matthew 1:19 we are told
Joseph was a just man. Now, I don't know how and why translators make all the decisions in
translations that they make. That really should be translated, "Joseph was a righteous man." What
does it mean that Joseph was a righteous man? Well, I think this is foundational to the way
Matthew wants us to think about righteousness all through his Gospel. "Joseph was a righteous man."
It is exactly the same word that is used later in Matthew 27 to describe Jesus on the cross,
"He was a righteous man." What does it mean that Joseph was a righteous man? Does it mean he didn't
need a Savior? Of course not. The angel in the dream says that this Son will save His
people from their sins, and Joseph embraces that, rejoices in that. Joseph is presented right at the
beginning of the Gospel as the model of what means to be righteous. It means to know the Word of God.
You notice, in each of the three dreams the word of the angel is accompanied by a citation from
the Prophets. Now, we are not quite sure if all those citations immediately came to Joseph's mind,
but I rather think they did: "Behold a virgin shall conceive," "He shall call His Son out of
Israel," "He will be a Nazarene;" all of those things I think Joseph knew. And so,
he knew the Word of God. He was a righteous man. He listened to the voice of the angel. He was a
righteous man. He obeyed the instructions received from the angel. He took Mary. He went to Egypt. He
returned to Nazareth. He obeyed because he believed the word of the angel. He knew he
was a sinner who needed a Savior. That is what a righteous man is like in the covenant of grace;
knowing the Word, committed to the Word, believing the Word, trusting the Word, following the Word.
Jesus calls you to be a righteous man and a righteous woman, not in your own strength,
not to save yourself, but so that you would be a light shining in a dark place,
not to glorify yourself, but to glorify God who is in heaven.
Let's pray together. Father, we are humbled by the call to righteousness. We are so conscious
of how far short we fall. We are so thankful that we have a Savior who saved sinners,
but our earnest prayer is that as He has saved us, so by His Spirit He will sanctify
us and help us more and more to pursue the righteousness that would glorify You,
our Father in heaven. Hear us and help us we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.
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