Now, keep in mind, as you go
through these verses, and I'm specifically talking about this
section of the Sermon on the Mount, that began back up in
verse 21, after Christ said, your righteousness must exceed
the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, that he's
basically doing two things here. He's showing first that the law's
strict requirement of righteousness is the perfection that can only
be found in Him. And you can see the progression
of this. You go back over to verses 17 through 19. He says, He came into the world
to fulfill every jot and tittle of the law. That's why Christ
came. Paul wrote in Galatians chapter
2 and verse 21, he said, if righteousness comes by the law, meaning by
our works, then Christ died in vain. Well, why is that? Because
he came to keep the law, satisfy the justice of God for his people,
and bring forth the only righteousness by which we as sinners can stand
before God and be accepted, be saved, be blessed. be justified. And then after he said he came
to keep the law, he said your righteousness must exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. And let me
put that in perspective for us. Think of it this way. He says,
he's saying this, Whoever you pick the best person in your
own mind that you can think of that ever lived on earth I mean
other than the Lord himself. I'm talking about it just a mere
human being You pick the best of the best Your righteousness
in order to be saved in order to be accepted and just your
righteousness must exceed theirs And that's the perspective that
he's showing because these scribes and Pharisees, now the people,
the mass of people looked up to these people, these scribes
and Pharisees. These were the religionists.
These were the students of the scripture, the teachers of the
word. And so whoever it is you think
of, when you think of the best of the best, whether in history
or somebody living today, what he's showing is you have to have
a righteousness that exceeds theirs. You've got to be better
than them. Well, how righteous do we have to be? Well, the Bible
teaches us we have to be as righteous as Christ. And none of us can
do that. That's why salvation is by what? Grace, and not by works. And that's why we have to stand
before God based on his righteousness imputed to us. And that's the
only ground of salvation. So that's what he's showing.
Now, another thing he's been doing here from verses 21 and
all the way over to 48, he is correcting the errors that the
Pharisees and the scribes had taught under the law as showing
them up to be not God's word, but the traditions of men. And
what you have to understand is the Pharisees were very good
about finding loopholes or ways to get around the law. And the
first thing he exposes is that this idea that sin is just in
the outward act, but not in the thought. You've heard it said
by them of old, you shall not kill. Well that's true. But I'm
telling you something that you need to hear about this law.
If you're trying to be righteous by your works, the law condemns
the thought of anger that would lead to murder. You've heard
it said by them of old, you shall not commit adultery. And that's
true. Now you know murder and adultery
under the old covenant law were subject to capital punishment.
Remember the woman that they brought to Christ as an adulteress,
and they said the law of Moses says stone her? Well, that was
true, although they weren't doing it right, because they were doing
vigilante justice. She was to be brought before
the court, and the evidence was to be brought, and she was to
be sentenced by the court, not just a mob. One thing you need
to understand when you read that in John chapter eight, ask yourself,
where's the man? that she was committing adultery
with. They said she was caught in the act. Where's the man? He must have been somebody of
influence or something, I don't know. They just drug the woman
out, you know, gonna stone her. Well, adultery was a capital
offense. But Christ said, I'm gonna tell you something, that
the thought of lust is condemnable under God's law. In other words,
just because you're exonerated in man's court, for not committing
the outward act, that doesn't mean you're exonerated in God's
court. Because that's a different court, because God looks on the
heart. Now we come here to verse 31, and he starts talking about
divorce. All right, he says in verse 31,
it hath been said, whosoever shall put away his wife, let
him give her a writing or a bill of divorcement, But I say unto
you that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the
cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery, and whosoever
shall marry her that is divorced, commiteth adultery." Now you
know there's been a lot of talk about, you know, how we should
view divorce in the Christian church and all that, and I won't
talk about that. But here's the point. It's, you know, What he's
dealing with here is the attitude that the Pharisees had promoted
that if a man wanted to divorce his wife, all he had to do is
give her a bill of divorcement and that cleared him of the sin
of adultery if he remarried. And what Christ is saying is
you're wrong. That doesn't clear you of the
sin of adultery. And this is important because
adultery was a capital offense, punishable by death. Now, of
course, as we said last week, Christ understood and we know
that you cannot be arrested and put in jail and tried and executed
for the thought of adultery. If he could, we'd all be dead.
You can't be tried and executed for the thought of murder. But
what Christ is showing them is this. Again, just because you
don't commit the act, or just because you find a loophole around
the act that will keep you from going to man's court and being
executed doesn't mean that that makes you righteous and you're
cleared of the sin. Now that's what he's teaching. And I've had a lot of people
talk about this issue about divorce. I had people leave the church
up in Ashland because there were divorced people in the church.
And they used things like this. And that's not what it's teaching,
and that's not the way we're to view it in the Christian church
today. But look over at Matthew chapter
19. I told a fellow one time, I said,
well, God tolerated these things because of our sinfulness. You
know what he told me? He said, oh, God doesn't tolerate
any sin like that. My friend, if God didn't tolerate
sin, we'd all be lowered down, wouldn't we? The Bible says that God is forbearing. And I want to tell you something,
He's forbearing with me. I got news for you, He's forbearing
with you all too. Or you'd be dead right now. The
long-suffering of God, He suffers long. He puts up with a lot from
us. And so we need to understand
that. Last week when I preached on chastisement, if we, you know,
somebody says, well, when you sing, God chastises you. Sometimes. Not every time. If God chastised
us for every sin, we wouldn't be able to lift our heads up. We'd be like old Job. And we'd
probably be miserable comforters to old Job, too, just like his
friends were. But the thing about it is, You know, somebody says,
well, God tolerates this. Well, why does he do that? Well,
Christ, in dealing with this issue, look at verse seven of
Matthew 19. He says, they say unto him, why
did Moses then command to give a writing or a bill of divorcement
and to put her away? Talking about when there was
a divorce. In verse eight, he said, he saith unto them, Moses,
because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered allowed you
to put away your wives, but from the beginning it wasn't so. Now
what he's saying there is in the beginning, God instituted
marriage between one man, one woman to be until death do you
part. And what you say when you stand
before the preacher and he says until death do us part. That's
the way it was from the beginning. But because of sin, And you say,
well, it was his fault. It was her fault or it's both
fault. That's not what we're talking about. That's an individual
issue that has to be set up between the couple. All right. But because
of sin, because that's what he means the hardness of our hearts.
All right. I mean, listen, if you ever find
a man, a husband who really purely loves his wife as Christ loved
the church. and a wife who submits to her
husband as unto the Lord, you'll have a perfect marriage. Now,
none of us have perfect marriages, do we? I mean, there's always
problems, you gotta work through them. I always tell couples,
I say, love isn't anything you fall into, friend, it's something
you grow into. And that's by the grace of God.
But the thing about it is, that's the way God instituted it. But
because of sin, All right? He tolerated this under the law. And what this meant is that a
person who wrote a bill of divorcement, especially for fornication, and
remarried, they wouldn't be brought up under the court and executed.
All right? But it didn't relieve them from
the sin of adultery. They were still adulterers. Well,
now that's what he's talking about back here in Matthew 5.
OK? There's no loophole around this law in God's court. There's
no way of getting around the requirement of perfection of
righteousness in God's court. No matter what you do. You say,
well, I fulfilled the law. I wrote her a bill of divorce.
Well, that doesn't matter. That'll keep you from getting
put in jail and getting killed, getting stoned. But it still
means this. You don't have a righteousness
that answers the demands of God's justice. Now. This always raises the question
of divorce and how we're to view it in the church today. And I
want to tell you something now. Religious people have put such
a stigma on divorce people that they almost set it alongside
what people call the unpardonable sin. Or they're a lower class
Christian or something like that. And that's not the way that we're
to do it. Now let me say this. Divorce
is a sin. Divorce is wrong. There's no
getting around that. And those who divorce and remarry
are adulterers. But let me put this one to you.
How about this? We're all adulterers. Including
this fella up here. We may have never committed the
act, but remember what Christ said over here, verse 27? You've
heard that it was said by them, oh, thou shalt not commit adultery,
but I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after
her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. Now,
this thing about sin and things about adultery, it's not something
that you can do and then stop doing and then you're no longer
an adulterer. Once you commit adultery, you
know what you are. I'm talking about even in your
mind now. You know what you are then? You're an adulterer. Sin makes you a sinner. And it's
not, well, I've stopped that so I'm no longer, no. Now listen,
we who are saved by the grace of God, we who are washed in
the blood of Christ and clothed in his righteousness, we're all
forgiven adulterers. Before we were brought to faith
in Christ, what were we? We were spiritual adulterers.
You know, the church is called the bride of Christ, isn't she?
Married to Christ, betrothed to him. Well, while we were in
our unbelief, we had adulterated ourselves out to another husband,
another God, you might say. I know that sounds extreme, but
that's the way it is. So we're all forgiven adulterers.
So this is not a situation where we put a stigma on this person
and say, well, you're some kind of a second class or lower class
Christian. I mean, I'm sorry that all this
happened. I guarantee you, most people
who've gotten divorced, they're sorry that it ever happened.
And divorce is a particular sin that sometimes has particular
consequences that you have to deal with the rest of your life.
But my friend, we're all sinners saved by the grace of God, period. And that's it. And we don't have
any reason to look down on this one or that one for anything
like that. So understand that. I hope that's
helpful to you. You can study that if you want. If we're saved by grace and based
on the righteousness of Christ, we're forgiven of our sins. You
know, we're all murderers, forgiven murderers if we're in Christ.
I know that may be hard to swallow, but it's true. Read what he said
there, whoever's angry. To the point. I mean, you know,
you can fool yourself and say, well, I've never been that angry.
You know, well, okay. Just go through life with guile. Go through, think what you want
to think about yourself. I guarantee you, if it's not
according to this word, it's too high. How about that? Isn't
it? Too high. Well, let's go on.
Look at verse 33. He says, now he's going to be
talking about swearing oaths. And he says, again, you've heard
that it's been said by them of old, thou shalt not forswear
thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths. In other
words, keep your word. I mean, as simple as that. Keep
your word. He says in verse 34, but I say
in you, swear not at all, neither by heaven, for it's God's throne,
nor by the earth, for it's his footstool, Neither by Jerusalem,
for it's the city of the great king, neither shalt thou swear
by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black,
but let your communication be yea, yea, nay, nay, yes and oh,
that's it, you know. And he says, for whatsoever is
more than these cometh of evil. Now you have to understand the
historical context of this. What he's simply saying is that
we are to be, the law requires perfect truth and honesty. Keeping
your word, for example. And if it's anything less than
perfect truth and honesty, if you have ever promised something
or swore an oath that you never kept, if you've ever told a lie,
here's what he's saying. There is no possibility for you
to be justified before God based upon your works. You just disqualified
yourself and that covers us all too, doesn't it? You say, well,
I try to be as honest. Well, trying to be is not gonna
get you there. Should you try to be honest? Yes, but that's
not gonna make you righteous. You understand what I'm saying
now? You know, if we're truly Christian, we should be some
of the most honest people that ever walked the earth. But if
we've ever told a lie, if we've ever swore an oath, and in this,
the scribes and the Pharisees by this time, you know when the
Pharisees first came into existence was in the intertestamental period
between the Old Testament and the New, and they rose up as
a sect, you had different sects, you had the Pharisees who were
kind of like the fundamentalists today, You had the Sadducees. They were very political. They
were like the liberals of today. You had the Zealots. They wanted
to go to war against Rome. They wanted to commit suicide,
basically, what they wanted to do. You had a group called the
Essenes. They were the mystics, the star
children, all that. So you had all these sects. But
the Pharisees, they were intent on finding a way that I can arise
in my life and say, I've kept the law. And one of the ways
they did that is they developed a whole system around the issue
of swearing oaths where you could get away with it. You could swear
an oath and not keep it and get away with it. It's kind of like
a child who says, well, I'm going to promise mom and dad that I'll
do this, but he's got his fingers crossed behind his back. Well,
I don't have to keep that promise. Debbie, you always talk with
the grandkids about pinky promises. It's a pinky promise, you gotta
keep it. Well, God says if it's a promise you gotta keep it,
I don't care if Pinky's involved or not. But they had really developed
this system. Let me show you where, turn to
Matthew 23. You remember when Christ here
is exposing the hypocrisy of the scribes and the Pharisees.
Look at Matthew 23 and verse 16. Matthew 23 and verse 16,
he says, woe unto you, you blind guides, which say, whosoever
shall swear by the temple, it's nothing. Now, if you swear by
God, it's something, but you can swear by the temple. Well,
he says, but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple,
he's a debtor. Now, you know, Now, this may
seem silly to us now, but you've got to understand that culture,
all right? He says in verse 17, he says,
you fools and blind, for whether it's greater the gold or the
temple that sanctifies the gold, sets it apart. Verse 18, and
whosoever shall swear by the altar, it's nothing, but whosoever
swear by the gift that is upon it, he's guilty. In other words,
you can swear by the altar, but you're okay if you mess that
one up. But if you swear by that, that's
sacrifice. And he says, he says, you fools
and blind, for whether is greater the gift, the altar that sanctified
the gift. Verse 20, whosoever therefore
shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it and by all things thereon. You can't separate these things.
And whosoever shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and
by him that dwelleth therein. The temple was the Shekinah glory
of God, you know, before Christ came. And verse 22, and he that
shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by
him that sitteth thereon. And what he's doing there, now
go back to Matthew five, he's exposing their hypocrisy. You
can't find the loophole here. You can't get around the law
here. So whenever you swear an oath
and you don't keep it, you've just disqualified yourself as
having any hope of salvation, of righteousness, but in Christ,
by the grace of God in Christ. That's what this law is. He's
setting them straight. Now look at verse 38. And what
he tells them, he says, it's best for you all, just don't
swear any oaths at all, just say yes or no and keep your word.
You promise this, yes or no, and keep your word. Yay, yay,
nay, nay. That's what he means. All right, look at verse 38.
He says, you've heard that it has been said, an eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth. Now, did the Old Testament under
the law said that? And what's it talking about?
Well, we'll say it this way today. The punishment must fit the crime.
That's what that means. Eye for an eye and tooth for
a tooth. He's not saying, like in some of the Arab cultures,
if a guy's caught stealing with his hand, you know what they
do? They cut his hand off. That's not what this means. An
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth just simply means the
punishment must fit the crime. So he says here, you've heard
it said by them of old, all right? Verse 39 says, but I say to you
that you resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on
the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And of course,
you'll hear a million jokes about that verse, won't you? Well,
what if I run out of cheeks and all that stuff? Listen, what's
he saying here? What he's telling them is the
law will always forbid personal vengeance. I've got cited here
in your lesson, Romans chapter 12, somewhere in here. Yeah, in this. Where God says,
you can read these verses, where God says, vengeance is mine,
saith the Lord. It's not yours. He says, vengeance
is mine. What this eye for an eye, tooth
for a tooth is about is justice. Now God commands under the civil
law for justice to be exacted through the court systems. It's
like the Israelites, they had the Sanhedrin, the court. And
if somebody was accused of a crime, they were to be brought up before
the court. The evidence was to be presented.
And if the person was guilty, then the punishment must fit
the crime. But that was to be done by the
state in a proper order because the state represents God. What's
right and what's wrong in the civil law. And you can read all
about that in Romans chapter 12. Just read the whole chapter.
That's what it's talking about. Even the civil magistrates, he
said they're agents of God to do justice. Now that doesn't
mean they'll always do that because they're sinners too. You may
have a crooked judge or a crooked attorney. You find that because
this is a sinful world. But when justice is to be performed
by the state, it's to be done in a proper manner. But now if
somebody comes and kills one of your loved ones, you don't
have the right under God's law or the law of the state to go
out and kill them yourself. You understand what that's saying?
Well, this is what he's saying here. He says, I'm saying you
don't resist evil. But whosoever shall smite thee
on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Verse 40, now
keep on going. And if any man will see thee
at the law, they're gonna sue you, take away your coat, let
him have thy cloak also. This is the perfection of love,
isn't it? Love your enemies, go on, let's
go on. Verse 41, whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go
with him too. 42, verse 42, give to him that
asketh thee and from him that would borrow from thee, turn
not thou away. That's the perfection of love,
isn't it? Guess what? None of us have it. And guess what more? We need
a righteousness we can't produce. That's what he's showing. And
there's no way to justify yourself in these matters. before God
now. There's no way to just, if somebody
wants your coat or steals your coat, they do wrong. If you don't
wanna give them your inner cloak too, that's what they wore back
then, they're not gonna arrest you. But I'll tell you one thing
it shows is that we don't have the perfect love of Christ who
did what? Who did Christ die for? His enemies. That's who he died for. That's what God's elect were
before we were saved, we were enemies of God. And go on, so
that's what he's talking about there, but look on verse 43,
you've heard that it said, that hath been said, thou shalt love
thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say in you, love your enemies.
Bless them that curse you. He'd already said that back in
the Beatitudes, hadn't he? Do good to them that hate you.
Pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Now
that's a perfection of love. He says in verse five, that you
may be the children of your father which is in heaven. That kind
of perfect love certainly would evidence a child of God, wouldn't
it? For he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good
and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. That's what
God does. Now that's not teaching that God loves everybody without
exception. But the fact that God does send
good things on this earth that affects both the just, that's
sinners saved by grace, and the unjust shows in perfection what
we need to have in order to attain righteousness by the law. And
it's just like the old fella told me one time. He said, well,
nobody does that. And I said, that's right. We've
all sinned and come short of the glory of God. That's why
we need salvation by grace. Verse 46, he says, for if you
love them, which love you, what reward have you? Do not even
the publicans do the same? Verse 47, if you salute your
brethren only, what do you more than others? Do not even the
publicans so? Well, what's the requirement?
How righteous do we have to be? Look at verse 48. Here's the
summation of everything that he said up to this point. Be
ye therefore perfect. Even as your father which is
in heaven is perfect. A lot of commentators, they'll
go to that word perfect and they'll say, well, that means just be
complete. Well, okay. The word perfect can be translated
complete. Be ye complete. even as your
father in heaven is complete. How complete do you have to be? Colossians chapter two says,
for in Christ dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily
and you believers are complete in him. Hebrews 10, 14 says,
for by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.
How am I gonna be complete as the father in heaven? There's
only one way, and that's by the imputed righteousness of Christ.
Now let me, before I close, let me make one statement about this
loving your enemies and all that. I told you, I think last week
or maybe the week before, a lot of Bible commentators will say
that what Christ is doing here is teaching a whole new law that he didn't teach, that wasn't
taught in the Old Testament. And I don't believe that's true.
Now, Because they say, well, they weren't required to love
their enemies because God commanded them to go over and kill their
enemies. You remember in Canaan? Jericho and all of that? Well,
you need to understand something. That has nothing to do with an
individual's requirement under the law. When God commanded Israel
to form an army, and go against their enemies, they weren't going
in personal vengeance and personal vendettas, they were being used
as instrument of God's justice. That was God's way of punishing
his enemies, and God always does what's right. Okay? So that doesn't prove anything.
But the law always required them to love their neighbor as themselves,
and that neighbor includes their worst enemies. So you can't get
around it that way, see? Anyway, that's the perfection
of the law that's required and that's why we need the gospel
message of the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith.