This sermon is part of our Inescapable series. Inescapable is a 12 part series that studies the Gospel of Matthew and its messages. You can watch all 12 here.
Sermon Manuscript:
Good morning everyone. For those whom I haven’t met my name is Rhesa Browning. I am currently an elder at the church, and I am excited and honored to have the opportunity to speak to you today. We will cover a passage from the Sermon on The Mount, Matthew chapter 5 verses 17-26.
Before we start looking at those verses. I would like to say that the last time I was on the stage back in July, I preached on 1 Corinthians 12 discussing Spiritual Gifts. I want to remind everyone how important spiritual gifts are. Please continue to search for your spiritual gifts through prayer and reflection. If you know what your spiritual gifts are, please think about how best to use them to benefit the local church.
Now to Matthew 5. When I was reading the passage 3 topics came to the surface as important. The first is what Jesus means when He says He comes to fulfill the Law and Prophets, in vv. 17-18. The second topic is the kingdom of heaven in vv. 19-20. The third, and most important, is how Jesus defines righteousness and sin and how to enter the kingdom of heaven, in vv. 20-26.
Has anyone seen a meme like this on social media? They were more common 10-15 years ago. The meme is talking about commands from the OT law that Christians don’t follow today. The purpose is to call Christians hypocrites for not following all the commands in the Bible given to Israel. In other words if you eat pork, eat shellfish, and wear mixed fabrics you don’t really believe or follow the Bible. It also accuses Christians of not knowing the Bible very well. I have even seen comments from people who post memes like this saying that they are atheist because they know the Bible better than Christians. However, as we get into the details of the Scripture, we will see that the meme demonstrates that at best the person has a surface level understanding of the Bible but doesn’t understand how Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection changed everything. It is an attempt to call out an error while making a big one in the process.
Let’s dig down into vv. 17-18 to see whether or not Christians need to abstain from eating pork and shellfish and wearing mixed fabrics. Let’s read vv. 17-18.
“17 “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”
- The key is to understand how Jesus fulfilled and accomplished the Law and how that affects our relationship to the Law. We will look at several other passages to do that.
- We also need to understand everything we can about the Law itself. To start there are 3 different components to the Law and they apply to us in different ways
- The 3 components are:
- 1) Civil Law – the legal system of the nation of Israel before Christ, it contains laws for settling disputes and punishing crimes, it contains principles of wise government but is not binding on Gentile nations
- 2) Ceremonial Law – contains the religious rituals, festivals, the sacrificial system, dietary rules, and rules on cleanness/uncleanness; I will show you the verses later, but the requirement to follow these laws expired when Jesus resurrected. The most important example is that there is no longer a need to sacrifice different animals to make atonement for sin. Jesus’ sacrifice accomplished once and for all what the Jewish sacrificial system could never accomplish, which is why we don’t follow it today.
- 3) Moral Law – reveals the moral character of God and His statements of what is inherently good and evil, therefore it applies to all people at all times. The most well known example is the 10 commandments. Thou shall not have any other gods before Me, thou shall not murder, thou shall not commit adultery, thou shall not covet, etc
- Jesus fulfilled the civil and moral laws by not committing any sin. His behavior perfectly conformed to all the commandments. So by Jewish standards and by God’s standards He was morally perfect. He was perfectly righteous. As a side note, this meant he was able to sacrifice Himself for the sins of others since he didn’t need to pay for His own, just as the sacrificial sheep and goats did not have any physical imperfection, Jesus had no moral or legal imperfection
- Next we will read verses in Romans 7 and Philippians 3 to explain how His fulfillment of the Law affects our relationship to it.
[read Romans 7:6 and Philippians 3:9]
Romans 7:6 “6 But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter..”
Philippians 3:9 “so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith”
- The first verse describes how we are released from the requirements of the law when we place our faith in Christ because by faith we participate in his death. So when we die with Christ we are released from the Law as it says in verse 6.
- The other verse shows that when you believe in Jesus you are found “in Him”. Anyone who is “in Christ” receives His righteousness. As a result, “In Him” we fulfill all the requirements of the moral and civil law. To say the same thing more simply, His fulfillment is our fulfillment.
- We don’t have to follow the Old Testament civil law for 2 reasons. First, it doesn’t apply to Gentile nations. Second and more importantly any time we violate the principles contained within it we are already considered righteous before God as written in Philippians 3:9.
- The same concept applies to God’s moral law. When the Father sees us He sees the righteousness of Christ.
- This does not mean we get a license to sin as much as we want. God calls believers to sanctification which is the process by which we act more and more like Jesus, we live out more and more of His holiness and righteousness
- That brings us to the ceremonial law. The meme I showed at the beginning is about the ceremonial law.
- Jesus fulfilled the ceremonial law by following all the rules around remaining “clean”, taking part in the various rituals and festivals, and keeping the diet.
- In the book of Hebrews the author explains what this means in chapter 10
Hebrews 10:1 “For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things”
Hebrews 10:11-14 “11 Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; 12 but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, … 14 For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
- So the ceremonial law was never the real thing. It was a shadow God used to teach the Jewish people what Jesus was going to do on the cross. Once the real thing came. There was no reason to continue with the shadow.
- God made this clear by speaking to the apostle Peter in Acts 10. He says that He has removed any ceremonial uncleanness from the Gentiles in Acts 10:9-16 28-29
[read Acts 10:15 and 28-29]
In Acts 10:15 a voice from heaven tells Peter in a vision “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy” talking about what was considered unclean foods in the ceremonial law.
In Acts 10:28 Peter explains to a Gentile named Cornelius what God has just taught him in the vision “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean.” what made the Gentiles unclean was the fact that they didn’t follow the ceremonial law
- The church then applied this new declaration universally in Acts 15:5-11 19-21 saying that those who believe in Jesus do not need to follow the OT ceremonial law but they do need to follow the moral law
- We even see Paul rebuking Peter for separating himself from Gentile believers in order to follow the ceremonial law with a group of Jews in Galatians 2:11-14
- I go into all this to say that the meme misses the mark because it doesn’t take any of this Scripture into account. It should be clear that Christians aren’t hypocrites because Jesus’ fulfillment of the Law freed believers in Him from following the Old Testament commands regarding the ceremonial law.
Kingdom of heaven
Next let’s read vv. 19-20 where we find the subject of the kingdom of heaven.
[read Matthew 5:19-20]
19 Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” 20 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
- To understand the importance of this concept, Jesus mentions the “kingdom of heaven” 31 times in Matthew. This phrase is key to understanding the whole book.
- A quick scan shows that He says that it is near or at hand (3:2), he describes it as more valuable than your own life (13:44-45), he explains how to enter into the kingdom (by following Jesus in faith) (5:3, 10, 20; 18:3), how it will grow from something very small to something very large and powerful (13:31-33), and more
- I like how Eastern Orthodox bishop Metropolitan Alfeyev describes the kingdom of heaven:
- “…the kingdom of heaven is, in Jesus’ language, an all-encompassing concept: it cannot be reduced to the present, nor to the future, nor to an earthly reality, nor to eternity. … The kingdom of heaven is eternity superimposed on time, but not merged with it.”
- Jesus also mentions the kingdom of heaven in the Lord’s prayer which says
- Matthew 6:10, “thy kingdom come they will be done on earth as it is in heaven”
- So we are to pray like Jesus and act like Jesus in order to bring the kingdom of heaven into operation on the earth; in our hearts & minds, in our families, in our workplaces, in our cities, over the whole world; the kingdom of heaven should shape our ideas about morality, ethics, sexuality, family, society, technology, economics, politics, justice, etc.
- Maybe the most intriguing comment Jesus makes about the kingdom of heaven is from Matt 11:12 “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has been treated violently, and violent men take it by force.” By these words we see that it exists on the earth and is at odds with the kingdoms of men. There is a conflict, a struggle between heaven and earth.
- When you read the gospels you see that Jesus’ opponents are people with political power like the Romans, Herod the Great, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees. What does that tell us about who we are struggling against in the current day? The answer, any leader who isn’t bringing about the kingdom of heaven but violating God’s moral law that I talked about earlier. Some examples are when any politician or ruler lies or deceives, takes others’ property by force, initiates violence domestically or abroad, doesn’t punish evil, but rewards/celebrates immoral acts. As Christians we should consider such things as unacceptable and disqualifying because our fundamental loyalty is to Jesus and His kingdom.
Righteousness To Enter The Kingdom of Heaven
But the most important lesson in this passage of scripture is what Jesus says we must have in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Let’s read vv. 20-22
[read Matthew 5:20-22]
“20 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. 21 “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not murder,’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be answerable to the court.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be answerable to the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be answerable to the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”
- The answer to the question, how do I enter the kingdom of heaven?, is you must have righteousness and a kind that is greater than the Pharisees
- He then defines what that means in vv. 21-22
- Let’s talk briefly about the Pharisees, and the righteousness of the Pharisees so we can understand what Jesus is talking about: they were the most religious people in Israel, if any group was believed to be close to God it was them, they were experts on following the OT law, all the things I talked about at the beginning, but their problem was that they set up traditions that they put on the same level as the Bible
- In their zeal for following their traditions about ceremonial and civil law they violated the moral law, Jesus condemned them for it (Matthew 15:1-7). Even though people saw them as righteous, Jesus found them to be unrighteous.
- The kind of righteousness that is greater than the Pharisees: So maybe being more righteous than the Pharisees doesn’t sound so difficult now, but let’s go through vv. 21-22 statement by statement
- Everyone think this through with me. According to vv. 21-22, can I produce a level of righteousness high enough to get me into the kingdom of heaven?
[‘You shall not murder,’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be answerable to the court.’]
- Have I murdered anyone? No. Alright, good start. Give me another one.
[But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be answerable to the court]
- Have I ever been angry at my brother? Hm. Uh. Yes. Do I need to pay a fine to the court? That’s not too good, but not too bad.
[whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be answerable to the supreme court]
- Have I ever called my brother something like “You good-for-nothing”? Yes again. Now I am guilty enough to go before the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish court of the day, made up partly by Pharisees. This is getting really bad.
[whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. “]
- Have I ever called someone a “fool”, the word moron in the Greek? Oh no. Actually I have called people much worse. Verse 22 says I am guilty enough to go to hell. My righteousness doesn’t surpass the Pharisees. I am not good enough to enter the kingdom of heaven. What am I to do? Is there any hope for me?
- The point is that no human can enter the kingdom of heaven according to their own righteousness. But Jesus has already fulfilled the Law and the Prophets 100%, He completed everything on the cross. When we place our faith in Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, He gives His righteousness to us. All our sin is paid for. We are no longer guilty before God. We get to enter into His kingdom.
- So the point isn’t how good we can act. It is believing in Jesus and receiving His righteousness. That is the only kind that surpasses the righteousness of the Pharisees. That is the gospel. That is the only source of hope for us today.
- Jesus ends the section by giving us a description of how sin is handled in the kingdom of heaven while on this earth.
[read Matthew 5:23-26]
“23 Therefore, if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there you remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering. 25 Come to good terms with your accuser quickly, while you are with him on the way to court, so that your accuser will not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you will not be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last quadrans.”
- The point of this passage is to demonstrate how sin should be handled within the kingdom of heaven. In our current world sin exists alongside the kingdom, so Jesus tells this story to show how Christians should deal with it. He says there are still grave consequences for sin when he says “you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last quadrans”, that is a Roman coin similar to a Quarter. Sin has to be completely resolved in the kingdom of heaven in one of two ways.
- Let’s think through the story. Jesus places the audience in the place of the offender. You have become angry with your brother, your neighbor, your coworker and insulted them in some way. You are the one in the wrong and he is taking you to court. If you are found guilty by the court you will owe a fine. The correct course of action is to waste no time. Go to your brother and reconcile with him before he brings you before the judge. Confess. Repent of your sin. Ask forgiveness. This is the correct way to deal with your sin against people and against God. Waste no time. Sin can’t sit unresolved in the kingdom of heaven. Either receive forgiveness from your brother, or you will suffer consequences. Someday sin won’t exist but while it still does, we need to respond to it “on earth as it is in heaven”.
- To end this section I would like to share a story that is a great illustration of what Jesus is talking in vv.23-26
- One evening during the last week I was practicing my sermon in the living room with Geraline when my daughter Anna comes down the stairs. She immediately starts to say things like “oh no, what are doing?, not in the living room.” generally giving me guff. I reacted by getting upset with her and saying something like“hey, why are you disrupting me… I’m working on my sermon”. After getting through the sermon I tell Geraline that I feel bad that my sermon was a source of conflict with my daughter. The Bible, my relationship with God shouldn’t cause conflict and it doesn’t fit that I would respond without patience while I’m in the middle of thinking through God’s Word. Geraline then suggests that I should go tell Anna what I had just told her and apologize. All the while I’m totally oblivious to why she was suggesting this. I go up stairs and apologize and explain why I thought what she did was disruptive and how I want to avoid disrupting her too when she is in the middle of something. She receives it well and I go back down stairs and tell Geraline about it, and Geraline say “well, it was what your sermon was about stopping what you are doing and making peace”. It wasn’t until then that it hit me. I didn’t stop what I was doing and apply v. 23-24. I stayed focused on what I was doing and ignored the need to go make peace.
- The reason I share this story is because it shows how important it is to resolve conflict quickly. I think part of the reason Anna responded well was that the issue was still fresh in our minds. The story also shows how easy it is to miss these opportunities. So please take notice when conflict comes up in your life so you won’t be like me and miss the opportunity for resolution. Lastly, the story shows how we can help each other out. We can point out to others when we see them in conflict and gently encourage them to stop what they are doing and seek reconciliation.
- To finish up, let’s not forget this passage is all about Jesus. He fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. He rules the kingdom of heaven. He gives us His righteousness through faith so we can enter His kingdom. And He wants us to never miss an opportunity for peace.
Let’s pray.
North Village Church
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