The Mount No.6 The Heart of the Matter

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. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished.

Anyone who breaks 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 practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, do not murder and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, Rakkar, is answerable to the Sanhedrin.

But anyone who says, you fool, will be in danger of the fire of hell. Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother.

Then come and offer your gift. Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way.

Or he may hand you over to the judge and the judge may hand you over to the officer and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. You have heard that it was said, do not commit adultery.

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. It has been said anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.

But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife except for marital unfaithfulness causes her to commit adultery. And anyone who marries a woman so divorced commits adultery. Again you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.

But I tell you do not swear at all, either by heaven for it is God's throne, or by the earth for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great king. And do not swear by your head for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your yes be yes and your no no.

Anything beyond this comes from the evil one. You have heard that it was said eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I tell you do not resist an evil person.

If someone strikes you on the right cheek turn to him the other also. If someone wants to sue you and take your tunic let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile go with him two miles.

Give to the one who asks you and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your father in heaven.

He causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect therefore as your heavenly father is perfect. May the Lord give us understanding of the searching passage from his word.

We've been making our way through the Sermon on the Mount and we're now preparing ground for some of the topics that perhaps brother Tim Saunders will be taking during the time that I'm away in Southeast Asia. It's been a privilege to handle this passage of Scripture together and we trust that this approach on a Sunday morning is of benefit and and help to you. I wonder if you ever read the quotes that we put down in the notes and news.

We select these quite carefully and the one this morning it seems to me helps to if you like create the platform for our study today. The test by which all conduct must finally be judged is motive. A.W. Tozer, the test by which all conduct must finally be judged is motive.

Well what does he mean? Well if you're just giving some sort of kindly attention to an older person over a period of time and your motive is that perhaps when they die you will feature in their estate then far from kindliness being the mobilizing factor for you it is actually connivance. It is connivance. If as a preacher as some of you are here with with me your main objective if you're really honest as you move into the pulpit is to get the adulation of the congregation and not to minister to the praise and the glory of God then actually you are not a preacher you are an actor.

You are not a prophet you are a charlatan. John the Baptist will give you the classic example of the point that I'm trying to underpin. He must increase and I must decrease.

The motive behind any religious practice must be to bring honor and glory to the triune God. But why this introduction? Well it seems to me that it's vital that we start off from this particular point if we're going to understand what our Lord here is now teaching in regard to six particular aspects of of human life. Let me remind you as Tim already has and I have on a couple of occasions but there are always visitors and we're glad to have them who are just in for for one particular morning so let's set up the scenario a little.

Our Lord like John Wesley and George Whitfield in their day our Lord was an open-air preacher not for him the controlled atmosphere of a large Cathedral type building. He was there in the natural amphitheater just backing off from the Sea of Galilee and thousands of people had come to him. He had such magnetic abilities.

He was in northern territory where he was brought up as a lad. But there were within the audience not only those who basically appreciated what he had to say but there were those who were highly suspicious of him. Largely they were not northerners they were southerners and largely they were not quote church people unquote or rather largely they were church people in sense of the legalistic in the official sense who actually did not appreciate what the Lord Jesus had to say.

And one of the reasons for the problems that they had was the success that he was having for the non-church people. The ordinary person who never went to the synagogue who only rarely went to the temple almost like the situation that you've got in our country today when 10% of the United Kingdom regularly go to church and the vast 90% are not unbelievers as such. There's basically very little atheism in this country but somehow or other the church has lost its ability to communicate the gospel effectively and so very often in our churches the toast is absent friends on a Sunday morning and even more so on a Sunday evening.

Now our Lord I say has this magnetism he can bring the ordinary people they listen to him and in the moving congregation that it must have been on this occasion there were those who were very much opposed to him because of his success. Now as I told you these were the religious leaders from Jerusalem if you express them technically they're the scribes and the Pharisees and in one sense they're very noble men the men of great dignity in terms of their erudition and their learning. Now they're on a collision course with Jesus the reason being well they feel that he has misunderstood the law of Moses.

It's hard as I mentioned last week for you and not for me to appreciate the esteem that Moses who is the author largely of the first five books of the Old Testament had as far as Jewish people are concerned and for a man to get up and seem in some way to be revising Moses well that for them was totally unacceptable utterly obnoxious indeed it was blasphemous. And so here are these men buzzing the ministry of Jesus nitpicking when he's with his disciples criticizing him and Jesus finds them amongst this vast concourse of people and suddenly as though he's throwing a hand grenade because certainly had he done that he couldn't have had such tremendous reactions as he would have got. He says to this large number of people that unless your righteousness surpasses verse 20 that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Now these were men who made a job of of keeping the law it was their it was their prime function in life to to live to this end. You get a very good statement of what I'm trying to say when you when you find the Apostle Paul as he used to be a Pharisee he's reflecting upon yesteryear as he writes to the Philippians and he says this in in the third chapter if you if you want to turn to it and the fourth verse if anyone thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh I have more circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin a Hebrew of Hebrews in regard to the law of Pharisee as for zeal persecuting the church as for legalistic righteousness faultless. This was the badge of the Pharisees they were the righteous people and Jesus has the audacity to say publicly amongst a great unless you ordinary folk have a righteousness in excess of the Scribes and the Pharisees you'll never enter the kingdom.

Now how do you understand it? Well you see that's the reason why I had to talk to you about attitude, motive, why I had to bring to you the the quotation from from from Dr. Tozer. You see here is our Lord Jesus and in one sense he's he's a great Moses in fact he's greater than Moses and he is setting down the the regulations if you please or the way in which people are to understand how they enter into the kingdom that he's establishing. And isn't it interesting as brother Tim Saunders pointed out to you that from the third verse through to the tenth of this chapter he concerns himself not so much with theology but attitude.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. All this teaching you never find with the Scribes and Pharisees. They're concerned about the law the Scribes would copy the law of Moses they would be meticulous in the way that they went about their business.

The Pharisees they were so concerned to fast not only once a year but but twice a week not only to tithe in terms of what they have but also to tithe in terms of gifts that are given them in terms of the harvest that's theirs and so on so forth. In one sense it's admirable but in another sense it's very deceptive. Why? Well you see they're more concerned about belief than behavior.

They're more concerned about creed than conduct and our Lord Jesus will not have that. This is a great problem that the Lord is exposing, the great contradiction that he is wanting to correct. Now this affects you and me.

You see it seems to me that there is within the church today two opposing principles. One I can illustrate without being unkind by referring to the fact that every year now for the last ten years the Scouts have always kindly invited me to take their annual service in the town. And invariably their hymns are the same.

And there's one hymn and I have a bout of hiccups in the middle as I try to sing it. It runs something like this, the plot is not brilliant but there we are, it runs something like this. When I needed a neighbor were you there were you there, when I needed a neighbor were you there.

And the creed and the chatter and the church don't matter were you there, were you there, were you there. Now I can't go all the way with that, that the creed doesn't matter, that the church doesn't matter, that what you believe has absolutely no interest as far as God is concerned as long as you do what is right. The other extreme of course is, and this is perhaps something that befogs evangelicalism more than the so-called liberal church, and that is to ensure that you've a real theological understanding of the ABC of salvation and that you've moved on to a grasp of the doctrine of the Spirit and you can grasp to some degree the doctrine of the Trinity, that you can defend the authority of Scripture and you can allow your good works to the more Martha Brigade within the church.

Now I say that that equally is a total denial of what our Lord Jesus Christ is here teaching in regard to the Sermon on the Mount. Creed matters, but if conduct doesn't flow from creed as a shadow of the ground accompanies my person as I walk down on the pavement assuming that it's a sunny day, then your creed really has no value. If your belief doesn't change your behavior, then you have utterly misunderstood what the Lord is about.

If you don't appreciate that attitude is as important as right doctrine, then you're in the same difficulty as the Pharisees and the scribes. They were not theologically heretics, but when Jesus speaks to them and of them, he publicly exposes them. And later on in Matthew's Gospel, as I reminded you, he denounces them with the most fearful language that ever left his lips.

Language that he never used when he condemned sinners. He reserves for these religious bigots. And he says to the people, unless your righteousness is greater than theirs and the kingdom, forget it.

So our Lord enunciates this principle from verses 21 onwards. Enunciates means he explains, he fixes what he's trying to get us, the understanding of the people. He develops it.

He takes six units of teaching. This is not exhaustive. These are examples that he gives and he shows what he means by the righteousness he's looking for as being superior to the righteousness of the Pharisees and the scribes.

Notice how he always commences these illustrations. You have heard that it was said to the people long ago. Verse 27.

You have heard that it was said. Verse 31. It has been said.

Verse 33. Again, you have heard that it was said. Well, who said it? Well, it seems to me that the answer must be simply this.

Here is our Lord and he's not correcting or condemning Moses. What he is doing, he is disassociating himself from the explanation of Moses as has been brought by the scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus is saying that often they got it wrong.

Not Moses, but them. And so he has recourse to what we can call his dominical authority. That means his authority as the master teacher.

You have heard what they say. Verse 22. But I tell you, time and time again in those verses that that personal program, pronoun is emphasized.

I tell you, I tell you to the extent that by the time he's through you're asking the question, who is this man and what is his authority? Which is precisely what the people did at the end of the discourse. Verse 28 of chapter 7. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught them as one who had authority. And there's more than just the implication that behind the law is Jesus who speaks to Moses, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.

And when he comes on earth he refines the understanding of Moses which has been obscured by the scribes and the Pharisees. Who is this man who teaches not as the scribes do, but as one who has authority? Well, let me set down a few principles which will help us, I think, to prepare the way for what follows in these addresses on a Sunday morning. Our Lord Jesus Christ is giving here authoritative teaching in regard to how you and I are to understand the kingdom of God and entry into the kingdom.

That's really my first principle. I've no need to enlarge upon it because I've already done so. But here's my second.

It's following fairly quickly. I can't give you snappy headings because the teaching here doesn't actually allow me to do that without distorting it. So here is my second principle.

This is not a full statement that the Lord Jesus is making of the Christian's lifestyle. Did you hear that? You see, in one sense if you think that you have to live by the Sermon on the Mount in the same way as the Pharisees and the scribes felt that they had to live by the law of Moses, you're in their error. As far as they were concerned, being righteous was a thing that you did.

It was keeping, if you like, a codified group of rules and regulations. Now our Lord is saying that this is not the case. He is saying that you have to go behind the law to the law giver.

You have to understand in the Sermon on the Mount not just what our Lord teaches but what he is assuming in regard to the attitude of the hearer. You see, the person who says, well, I believe that the Sermon on the Mount is the greatest exposition of Christian behavior and that it will resolve every conflict, every question that might come up in life, is fully misunderstanding the Lord. Because, well, quite frankly it doesn't speak to every situation.

It gives here in this fifth chapter just six examples. What is our Lord saying, however, that when you are confronted with such a situation as temptation for adultery, divorce and so on and so forth, you have to examine your own heart in relation to your understanding of God. And our Lord as he teaches in regard to these six units of life will tell you that it's not just the meticulous peripheral law-keeping that's important.

What Jesus has to say is far more challenging. He is concerned about your motive and your attitude. You see, there are those who perhaps think, as long as I do not commit adultery, I am all right.

As long as I have not divorced, I am all right. As long as I do not murder, I am all right. And Jesus says, no, no, that's just the legalistic approach to the law of these Pharisees and these Sadducees.

That is important, but by no means is it the greatest importance. What is the greatest importance is the attitude of your heart, the way that you behave. As I shall demonstrate to you a little later on.

You see, there's more, and this shall be my third principle. There is more to the law than keeping the law. Did you hear that? There's a lovely story which will help to underline the point of a sort of situation that your school teachers never have in your class.

This lad would not do what teacher said. She wanted him to stand up, he wanted to remain sitting. So they had one of these classroom frackers, and ultimately, because he had more authority than he, he submits.

But he's a precocious little beast, and he says to her, I may be standing up as far as you're concerned, but in my heart I'm sitting down. That's a humorous little tale, but it hits the point beautifully. You see, God is not just concerned with you standing up in your body.

He's concerned about the attitude of your heart. You see, you could never really think of the Pharisees and the Sadducees in terms of the opening statement of our Lord's great sermon, could you? We call these little comments that he makes the Beatitudes, and you can play on those words. These are the Beatitudes.

This is how the Lord wants you to be. Poor in spirit, meek, merciful, peacemakers. But you can't be frog-marched into this, and what's more, neither can you by just a meticulous keeping of those dictates, fulfill what the Lord Jesus is wanting.

You can't be a peacemaker on the surface. You've got to be a full-blooded peacemaker down here. You understand what I'm trying to say? There is more to the law than keeping the law.

Now, David will help us in case you're still not clear on this point. Here is this great man of God, and he's sinned in a wretched way, in such a fashion that if he were a member of our church, I doubt whether any of you would agree to him ever exercising office again, which is an interesting comment on the forgiveness of God as outlined in the Old Testament. He's engaged in murder, he's engaged in envy, he's let the Lord down, he's made the name of Israel stink.

And you remember how a brave prophet comes along and exposes this man in all his guilt and all his wretchedness. And in the 51st Psalm, you've got David sobering up, the realization of what he's done and who's his offender. Now his dilemma is, what can he do in the face of all this? Now, there would have been those in Israel in his day who would have said, well, just increase the amount of offerings that you bring, sacrifice a few more bullets, engage in some of the ceremonial practices in the tabernacle.

But you see, David's an astute man. He may be a sinful man, but he does know something of the character of God. And so he says in the 16th verse of Psalm 51, you do not delight in sacrifice or I would bring it.

You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. You see the point? There's more to the law than keeping the law.

It's not creed, it's conduct, it's not belief, it's behavior. If those two aren't together as a substance and the shadow, then you misunderstood Jesus and incidentally, you misunderstand Moses. So what is our Lord here doing in setting down all these comments in the Sermon on the Mount? Well, it seems to me he's doing exactly what the Pharisees and the scribes have utterly misunderstood about Moses.

And because their misunderstanding is not repeated in the ministry of Jesus, they're in utter confusion. Our Lord Jesus, and this is my fourth principle, our Lord Jesus is presenting the Sermon on the Mount not in terms as a law to imprison, but a message to liberate. There are some people who have utterly misunderstood Christianity.

Once you become one of these Bible-believing people, it so fences you in that you become a very narrow person, you become a joyless person, you become somber and sober and what have you, and that sort of thing we don't want. And that is a complete misunderstanding of what the gospel is about. The prayer book has got it beautifully.

In the service of God, there is perfect freedom. When Jesus talks at the end of John's gospel about his ministry, he says the words that I bring are life and imprisonment. Later on in the 10th chapter, he says that he who believes in me will have life and more abundantly.

A wonderful word, the Greek word life, zoe, means life with its zest, life of the crest of the wave, life with a capital L. Jesus does not want you to approach the Sermon on the Mount or the Old Testament, law for that matter, with the idea of instructions that are binding upon you, that are fencing you in here, there, and everywhere. What he wants you to discover that is, in the teaching that he's setting out, there is liberty. There are large areas of experience.

There is thrill. There is fulfillment. This is life as God wants you to live it.

And you enter into the life that Jesus offers, not in terms of someone who's been given a course in Lewis Prison for a sentence for two or three years, or what have you, but rather as someone who's moved out of the prison cell into the glorious light and the liberty of the sons of God. You know, sometimes when I'm dealing with a pastoral situation, I shake my head and I think, oh my God, if only that person had lived his life in the way that you want him to live it, he or she wouldn't be so gnarled, wouldn't be so knotted up. They would have discovered that, in the very spirit of the gospel, as they flowed into the message of the Lord Jesus, that there is wonderful dignity, self-expression, a sense of purpose, a wonderful freedom.

It's a distortion, you see, of the gospel, to think of it in terms of imprisoning you in some legalism. That's why Jesus speaks so passionately against the scribes and the Pharisees. Take him once more in the 23rd chapter of Matthew's gospel.

You hypocrites, why are they hypocrites? Because they're blind leaders of the blind. They bind on people burdens that they cannot bear, and they themselves are unable to understand the heart of God. And there is nothing that Jesus denounces more than those who lead people astray and make their hard lives that much more difficult.

So you understand him? Don't back off from the Sermon on the Mount and from Matthew 23 and thinking that Jesus is such a hard person. He's not. He's compassionate towards the multitudes.

He doesn't understand, as I don't understand, why people don't come into church today in their hundreds, in their thousands. So our Lord Jesus is perplexed, and then he sees the scribes and Pharisees, and he says, you're the reason. You've got it wrong.

You've taught something about God that isn't true. Your understanding of the very person of God, what he's communicated to the world, is an utter distortion. So our Lord has this bomb shell that he throws into the middle of his teaching.

Your righteousness, hear me you ordinary people, has got to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. You see, and this will be my final principle. At the back of this Sermon on the Mount is our Lord's objective to bring you near to God.

That's what he wants. This is life eternal, says Jesus, that they might know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. Now the Pharisaical idea of getting close to God was a question of removing certain obstacles.

Now you remove these obstacles by what you did. So the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3, as he tells us what he used to do. In other words, it's a question of merit.

And that of course is wrong, it's impossible. The Pharisees claimed to be living at this level, but actually they weren't. And the ordinary people looked to the Pharisee and thought, we can never live like this.

And so what does Jesus do? Well, he gives you an example of what Pharisaism really is. And we looked at that so there's no need to spend much time right now, as I close down. We looked at it last week in Luke 18, the Pharisee who goes into the synagogue, who goes into the temple.

I thank God that I am not like other men are. I this, I that, I the other. Now when you finish up, what has he got? Well he's got great merit, hasn't he? The merit is his.

He's kept the regulations. Lucky fellow, but God finds him utterly unacceptable. He will not enter into the kingdom.

The tax collector, the publican, has a greater chance of going into the kingdom than the, than the Pharisee. Because the Pharisee has never been brought near to the Father heart of God. And that's what Jesus wants.

He wants people to hunger and thirst, verse 6 of chapter 5, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. He wants them, therefore, as a result, to be filled. He wants them to be merciful, and then they will receive mercy.

He wants them to be pure in heart. For what reason? So that others may say, well they're not adulterers, like he is an adulterer. No, says our Lord Jesus.

That again is a complete misunderstanding. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God at the end of the ministry of Jesus. Throughout the whole of his teaching program on this earth, he has the one goal of making it possible for people to come near God.

And so we conclude. What's your desire, my friend, in your life? You say, I want to be a Christian. And you understand Christian in terms of keeping the requirements on the Sermon on the Mount.

We compliment you for your desire, but the only way to deal with the Sermon on the Mount is first of all to confess your sin. It's to have the right attitude that enables you to say, Lord, I'm poor in spirit. Lord, I have done so many things that are wrong in my life.

Now I ask you to take away the muck and the mire of that sinfulness. May my attitude be one that pleases you. You see, the more you adopt that disposition, the more the Lord can make his, his inhabitation in your heart.

Thus saith the Lord, who inhabits eternity, I dwell in the high and holy place, and with him who is of a lowly and contrite spirit. It's the Old Testament, you see. It underlines what our Lord makes clear.

Attitude is so important. You may not physically be an adulterer. You may not technically be a murderer.

You may never have fallen foul of Moses' teaching in regard to oaths. You may seemingly love your neighbor. You may always give 100 pence, as far as a pound is concerned, in exchange.

But unless in your heart there's a loving attitude towards God, an honest understanding of who you are, and a desire to help other people, then you haven't heard Jesus. You never did hear Jesus. The gospel you claim to believe is not his gospel.

Blessed are those who understand what our Lord is saying. But the way into the kingdom is easy, and it means an acknowledgment of where you are and who he is, and then the request of him to so fill you with his spirit that you might enter into that freedom and fullness of life that he wants to bring. Your righteousness must be greater than the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, for the righteousness of which I speak is a relationship with God founded on obedience.