Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / The Sermon On The Mount

Raising The Bar By Following God's Word 07/22/07

Message: ‘Raising the bar by following God’s Word’ 

Text: Matthew 5:17-20

Introduction: People are experts at justifying themselves. We have the uncanny ability to convince ourselves that no matter what we have done, we’re OK. Think about it. How many times have you heard:

·       ‘Well it wasn’t the best choice, but it worked out OK.’

·       Yes, I know I shouldn’t have  (you fill in the blank) but it’s not like I do it all the time.’

The problem is we see ourselves as ‘good enough’ for anything.

·       Good enough for a company that turned us down, even though our resume lacked the qualifications they were looking for.

·       Good enough for a college that rejected us, even though our grades and SAT scores were below their entrance requirements.

We make ourselves feel better by thinking ‘we know we’re good enough even if they don’t see it.’ Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps or wish upon a star, sometimes, the truth is, we just aren’t good enough.

·       No matter how good I think I am, I will never be a math teacher.

·       No matter how good I think I am, I will never get my own Food Network TV show.

·       No matter how good I think I am, I will never win the Tour de France.

Ahh, but that’s too painful to deal with so we justify ourselves by thinking we are good enough. And here’s the bottom line…By doing that we refuse to accept, that someone else has a standard, that we just don’t measure up to.

The same could be said for our spiritual lives. We refuse to accept that there’s a standard, outside of ourselves, that we must measure up to in order to go to heaven. And in our text this morning, Jesus talks about that standard.

Transition: Turn in your Bibles to Matthew 5:17 (pg. 740 in the Bibles under the chair in front of you.) It’s here that we’ll find that we raise the bar of spiritual expectations and actions in our lives by following God’s standard…his Word.

I. Matthew 5:17-18    God’s Word is Complete.

Read: Matthew 5:17-18

I thought this was a rather abrupt way to transition out of the  Beatitudes. But since Jesus knows our hearts and thoughts, there must have been people in the crowd that day that thought he was coming up with a new Law…a new Bible if you will.

They thought that, because what they were hearing from Jesus wasn’t jiving with what they had been taught by the religious leaders. Jesus’ words had authority and demanded radical obedience and life altering change…they weren’t used to that kind of teaching.

Jesus said that his teaching and his actions, don’t abolish or replace of the Law, the Bible of their day. He said he fulfills what was written in the Law. So what does he mean?

·       First, Jesus is saying that everything he has said and done is in complete harmony with what has already been written. He hasn’t contradicted nor has he diminished the importance of any of what was written in the Law and Prophets. (OT)

·       Second, remember Mathew’s Gospel was written to the Jews who were looking for their promised Messiah. To fulfill means ‘to point to’. In this case, the Law and the Prophets, the OT, points to Jesus and he, alone, is the object of the prophesies. They are complete in him. They don’t need to look for anyone else.

·       Third, by saying he fulfilled the Law and Prophets, Jesus was exercising his authority to teach the fullness of God’s Word, in contrast to the incomplete teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees. You see that in verses 21 and following when Jesus repeats… ‘You have heard that it was said…but I tell you.’

Jesus said he didn’t come to abolish the Law but to fulfill, to complete it and to rightly interpret it. To further make his point, he said: 

Read: Matthew 5:18  

Your version may say ‘jot and tittle’. What this means is even the smallest parts of the OT are important and will remain authoritative until God has accomplished all he has planned.

Jesus gives great authority to the Word of God…in the context, the Old Testament, but by application and by other Scripture, God gives the same authority to the New Testament as well.

Jesus is saying that God has a standard and it’s found in his Word…all of his Word. And all means all, we are not free to pick and choose the parts we want to follow and which parts we can ignore.

Read: 2 Timothy 3:16-17 ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.’

Some religious leaders of our day will beg to differ on this. Probably because they have a new translation called the NJRB  (New Jump Rope Bible) They say…

·       Paul didn’t know everything there was to know about homosexuality so you don’t have to obey what he says about it being a sin…..just skip over it.

This is a close paraphrase of what was said in a TV interview by the now Bishop of New Hampshire for the Episcopal church…who by the way is a practicing homosexual. How convenient to just skip over what we don’t like…This Bishop has a very low view of the inspiration of Scripture…and probably doesn’t teach 2 Tim. 3:16-17. 

Too many leaders and followers in the Christian church have begun to adopt their own standards of belief and behavior: they  keep what they like…for now and they ignore what they don’t like in God’s Word That seems to be a violation of verse 18 does it not?

Jesus is saying that God’s Word is the absolute authority in life…and I have come to make sure you understand what God intended by it. So that you can understand it, I have come to fulfill it, to complete it and rightly interpret it.

Transition: Jesus knows our propensity to set our own standard of belief and behavior and not to accept God’s Standard, His Word. Not only do we do that now, they were doing it in Jesus’ day too.

II. Matthew 5:19 All of God’s Word is to be taught and obeyed

Read: Matthew 5:19

People in Jesus’ day were not just setting their own standards for righteousness, (belief and behavior) they were teaching others to follow their standard instead of God’s,  That’s really what’s behind the  false prophets, false teachers, false TV evangelists, and cult leaders today. They some company when they break the commands of God’s Word or do injustice to it’s proper interpretation.

Understand, to break one of the commandments is more than just outright rebellion. It also involves disregarding or diminishing the importance of any part of God’s Word in order to support your own standard..

I think this we all understand this… But Jesus says something that we struggle with, theologically, when he talks about the least and greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. What exactly does that mean?

Honestly, I really don’t know. I wish I did.

I can say for certain that Jesus places great responsibility on those who teach the Word of God.  Other than that, I honestly can’t speak with any great confidence.

But, here’s what I have found.

·       Most Bible commentators and preachers avoid this verse.

·       Those that do comment specifically on ‘least and great’ in the Kingdom of Heaven say that Jesus is setting the stage for his confrontation with the Pharisees.

-Least in the Kingdom means they won’t get in and

-Greatest in the Kingdom means they will get in heaven.

·       Least and great are seen as legal terms meaning ‘not-accepted’ and ‘accepted.’

·       This makes some sense when you look at his attack on the Pharisees’ rejection of God’s standard of righteousness and developing and following their own.

Transition: Bottom line: keep and teach all of God’s Word is good. Break and teach others to break any of God’s Word is bad. But it goes deeper than that.

III. Matthew 5:20       Following God’s Word is a heart issue.

Read: Matthew 5:20

ILL: Sergei Bubka of the Ukraine in 1994 set the world record in the pole vault…20 feet, 1 3/4 inches. It’s been 13 years and no one has gone higher.

The Pharisees of Jesus’day were like the world record holders in Law keeping. Their righteousness was the standard by which  everyone else was judged.

Jesus was telling the people that if they continue to follow the standard of the Pharisees, they wouldn’t get into heaven. He said that their righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees if they  want to get to heaven.

Transition: So, what’s so bad with the righteousness of the Pharisees?

External VS Internal Obedience

ILL: The standard of the Pharisees is shown by modern day Orthodox Jews. In early 1992, tenants let three apartments in an Orthodox neighborhood in Israel burn to the ground while they asked a rabbi whether a telephone call to the fire department on the Sabbath violated Jewish law. Observant Jews are forbidden to use the phone on the Sabbath, because doing so would break an electrical current, which is considered a form of work. In the half-hour it took the rabbi to decide "yes," the fire spread to two neighboring apartments. (Guzik)

·       The Pharisees knew the rules but they didn’t know God.

·       They kept the rules but failed to seek the God of the rules.

·       They loved the attention form the people but failed to give a heart of love to God.

·       What this means is their hearts weren’t in it.

Read: Matthew 23:27 ‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.’

God wants obedience that flows from the heart.

Read: 1 Samuel 16:7b ‘The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.’

Read: Psalm 40:8 ‘I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.’

Read: Deuternomy 6:5 ‘Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’

That’s passion, folks. Passion for God’s Word…passion for God, an intimate relationship of love. Not just going through the motions of Christianity. And this happens when we open up our lives to be touched by the loving hand of God.

Respect and fear of God will only take you so far in your relationship with God…Love, passion for God and his Word will lead to the kind of righteousness that surpasses that of the Pharisees.

Conclusion

Nice exegesis pastor, but I’m a Christian, not a Pharisee, are you sure?

·       When you say grace over your food, does that thanksgiving come from a heart that’s genuinely thankful for the provision God has given, or are you doing something Christians just do before they eat?

·       When you break bread together at the Lord’s Supper, are you really remembering Jesus’ death on the cross for your sins or are you just doing what people do on the first Sunday of the month in church?

·       When you give, do you give with a sincere heart that all you have belongs to God or are you just paying your dues to relieve some guilt??

·       Do you pat yourself on the back for not killing anyone but nurse hatred or a grudge against someone?

·       Do you come to worship faithfully on Sundays but fail to regularly seek the presence of God in between Sundays?

Friends, when we change or ignore what God’s Word says to justify our beliefs or behaviors, we are like the Pharisees and have begun to establish our own standard and have rejected God’s. We become more interested in how we look than how we love.

There are times we all are like the Pharisees…but there are also time we’re not. Like this past week here at CBC.

Many of you went beyond the letter of the Law to the heart of the Law and gave up time, took vacation weeks and poured your hearts. Muscles and noses (right John and Gavin) into the lives of children and to get God’s house back in shape for worship this morning.

There are too many names to mention…but thanks for your obedience to following God’s standard…his Word. And thanks for your hearts…they honored God this week.

God’s Word….our heart…passion

will lead to obedience.