Summer on the Mount: A Wholehearted Pursuit | Matthew 5:17-20 | Micah Hales

Our Salt Company Director Micah Hales continues with our series, Summer on the Mount.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to the Ambassador Church Podcast, a church in the city for the city, on Milwaukee's east side. We pray this message meets you where you are, challenges your faith, and draws you closer to Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Micah, and I get to serve here on staff at Ambassador, uh, specifically with our college ministry, the Salt Company. Um, some of you guys are in here, not many, but we're, you know, we're loud and proud. Um I'm excited to be uh opening up the Bible with you this morning. Um if this is your first time here at Ambassador or you haven't been in a while, we're currently in this series on the Sermon on the Mount and kind of this play on words, the summer on the mount, because it's summer and we're doing the Sermon on the Mount. So uh if you haven't listened to uh any of the previous messages, we're going through this Sermon on the Mount. It's the greatest sermon ever preached by Jesus. Okay. Uh so we're on week three. We've had um the Beatitudes. If you missed that, please go back and listen to it. Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, all of those things. Jared did a great job walking through that. And then we've also had uh the salt and light passage, which is where we get our name for our college ministry, the salt company. Uh that was last week. So if you missed that one, go back and listen to it there. Uh and Jesus now is going to take the greatest sermon ever in a different direction. So if you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and start making your way to Matthew chapter five. That's where we'll be this morning. And we're going to be starting in verse 17. And if you don't have a physical copy of God's word, we have Pew Bibles uh all around you. You can borrow those. And if you need a physical copy of God's word, if you don't have one, we want to give you one for free back at the Connect table. So you can start turning to Matthew 5. But as we turn there, I want to start with a question for us, okay? And it's this what do you think of when you think of the word law? A little dry reaction there, okay? Not great. Uh what do you guys think? Give me give me some give me some ideas here. Rules, okay. What else? Come on. What? Regulations, okay. What else? Come on, let's get a little interactive here. You guys are sitting six rows back. Give me something. Okay. Government, okay. What else? Authority, okay? Alex Angle, what do you think? You're the lawyer in the room. Got nothing? Too many words are floating around in his head. Okay. Many of you are probably thinking like legal matters, right? Like maybe even police, lawyers, courtrooms, judges. Okay, but this morning in our passage, Jesus is going to be addressing a different kind of law, and that is the Old Testament law. Okay. If you know nothing about the Old Testament law, that's great. I'm about to give you a brief overview so you can go ahead and lock in. Uh, the Old Testament law was given by God to his people, the Israelites, thousands of years ago. And the law was based on what the Bible calls a covenant. Okay, we don't throw that term around very often. Okay. Uh, and a covenant, I'll give you a definition, it should pop up here on the screen. A covenant is a promise or a vow between two people or groups to do what they say they're going to do. Okay. I know in our society, the fact that anybody does what they promise to do can seem a little foreign, right? Especially in this day and age. Unfortunately, that's our reality today, that it's rare that someone fulfills what they promised or they vowed to do. But in ancient Israel, the people of God were incredibly serious about covenants, okay, and fulfilling their end of their vows to God through the law. So much so that because the law contained over 600 commands, both negative, don't do this, and positive, do do this. I said, doo-doo, let your laughs out, consumed the Israelites' daily lives from sunup to sundown, because that's when they went to bed. They didn't have electricity. Okay? That was their life. But here's the problem the law wasn't designed to be an all-consuming checklist for the people of God to follow. It wasn't meant to be a legal contract which they were trying to fulfill just so they don't get fined. But the law was meant to be, what it was meant to be was closer to wedding day vows from a groom to a bride. See, the law wasn't just meant to be some list that you checked off, but a set of vows that you promised to fulfill. Multiple times in the scriptures, God is depicted as the groom and his people as the bride. You can look through those in your spare time, but Hosea, Ezekiel, and other places in God's word, we see this. So the image of the law being given from God to his people should invoke a visual of like a joy-filled wedding day that was overflowing with love. But there was a problem. Despite God being a faithful groom, like loving, caring, protective, righteous, and ready to hold up his end of the bargain, the people of God, his bride, were far from faithful. Even though the groom vowed to love, to protect, to care for, and to provide for his bride, his bride couldn't hold up her end of the marriage vows. And unfortunately, the bride in this marriage thinks that her fulfillment of the vows is going much better than it really is. The bride, God's people, thinks that she's been faithful, dare I say, perfectly following her vows that she was meant to keep. That's her perspective. This is the state of the marriage that we jump into when Jesus is going to address this covenant and the law in our passage this morning. It's a marriage that's far from perfect, but in spite of the lack of faithfulness from the bride, the groom is still pursuing his bride with all the love and care that he promised on their wedding day. So, with that, let's jump into our passage in Matthew 5. Hopefully, that was plenty of time for you to get there. If you got it, say got it. All right, I'll read our passage for us, starting in verse 17. Cause Matthew five seventeen says this Don't think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass away from the law until all things are accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never get in to the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus, he's in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, and he's sort of going to pivot from where he was in the previous section, and he's going to address these questions that people likely have about the law, this marriage-like covenant that Israel has had with God for centuries now. Questions like, what does Jesus plan to do with the law? Okay, what does he expect out of the people of God now? And how he wants them to view their relationship with God from here on out. Okay, so the first thing that he makes very clear to the people is this. It's Jesus didn't come for an annulment, he came for a fulfillment. That's our first point this morning. This comes from verse 17. I'll read it again for us. It says, Don't think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. Okay, the people of God have had this covenant between them and God since the days of Moses. Okay, and over the years and generations since that time, they seem to have gotten pretty used to the idea that this is how things are now. Like they're used to doing the same things over and over and over to maintain their relationship with God because they know that's what's right. Like these people genuinely know that the one true God of the Bible is who he says he is. They genuinely believe that. But they seem to have gotten a little too comfortable with the routine of their relationship with God. In this marriage-like relationship of the Israelites and God Himself, the Israelites are the bride who has gotten so used to doing all of the right things that she's gone numb to why she's even doing them in the first place. Like she's gone years and years since this covenant relationship started and has just been going through the motions thinking that's enough. Like I'm doing what I was asked to do. I'm in the right. I'm fulfilling my vows. And because of that, even though I've forgotten why I even entered into this agreement in the first place, I'm secure and I'm doing good. So when Jesus enters the scene and starts to talk about a new kingdom, a new covenant, a new message of the gospel and being saved by grace through faith, the Israelites are starting to get suspicious of what he's actually talking about here. And as the bride, they're probably thinking, wait, are you trying to take like my man away from me? Like, is that what you're trying to do right now? Because we're doing great. Like I do all the things that he asked me to do. I'm not breaking any rules. Like if you looked at our marriage from the outside looking in, like we're doing great. It's Instagram worthy, right? We're doing all the things. Have you seen it? All smiles. So you better not be talking divorce here. But Jesus, knowing where the people of God are at as the bride, knowing that they highly valued their covenant relationship with God, he sort of addresses the elephant in the room here. He says, Don't think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets, or in other words, don't think that I came to get a divorce or an annulment here. That's not his mission. And you can sort of imagine the Israelites and the and the people going, like, man, that's a relief. Like I thought we were, I thought we were over, Jesus. I thought we were over with God. But Jesus, knowing how the people of God were treating this covenant relationship with him that was birthed out of like this pure and complete love from God, the faithful groom, to give to his bride, his people, knowing this, he adds something on the end of verse 17 that would have perked their ears back up again. Okay, he says, I didn't come to abolish or annul, in other words, but to fulfill. Now, what's interesting about Jesus' word choice at the end here is that he says the word fulfill. Okay, and the thing about covenants is that the whole point of making an agreement in the first place in this covenant agreement is the two sides would both fulfill their end of things. That's the whole point. And what the people of God haven't been doing as the bride is they haven't been fulfilling their end of the bargain. See, they may have thought that they were, but the reality is that the bride was not holding up her end of the deal here. The bride is out of touch with reality of how they have been living up to this covenant. Like the bride has not been faithful. The bride has not been living up to the standards of the agreement, and maybe even more importantly than that, the bride has forgotten the reason they entered into this covenant in the first place. Like this had to be heartbreaking for Jesus here. Like the bride has forgotten that they got into this relationship, not out of obligation to check off a list or to be the perfect bride in every way, but because they had a loving relationship with the faithful groom who put this covenant in place because he wanted to give his unfaithful bride a way of maintaining a relationship with him. But this covenant was never made to be permanent. Verse 18. Jesus is saying, This isn't permanent until I fulfill all that I came to do and accomplish what the bride could never accomplish. Okay, now why is this important? Because God knows that the bride could never actually have perfectly fulfilled the agreement. He knows that we could never be perfect. Like God's people are inherently sinful and had been even at this point for centuries since the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3. But despite them being sinful, these miserable failures of a bride, God, the faithful groom, does not give up on them yet. He doesn't fully sever ties, even though he could have filed for divorce a long time ago on good grounds. He doesn't throw in the towel or move on to a new bride, even though he could have. But he actually looks at the bride and her absolute mess of an effort to maintain a loving relationship with him and says, You couldn't do this, but I can. See, Jesus pronounces this to the people, and even though he says, I came to fulfill the law, and sort of kind of leaves that part alone, he doesn't expound on it here, is that he would fulfill the law in multiple ways that his people never could. Like he actually lives out that the law of God, those 600 commandments of the people to a T perfectly, crosses all the T's and dots all the I's. He never sinned. Okay, he never failed to meet the standard of the law, and nobody else had ever done this and will ever do it again. Only Jesus. He actually fulfills hundreds of prophecies about himself when he appears on the scene as God in the flesh, the promised Messiah, the Christmas story, when he's born in a manger. There's tons of prophecies that are fulfilled in that, all foretold by the prophets. Okay, Jesus talks about the prophets here. Think Isaiah, Micah, shout out, okay, etc., in the second part of his statement here. Okay, and on top of that, he fulfills the moral laws and the ceremonial laws through his sacrificial death on the cross, entering into a new covenant with his people, but more on that later. In fact, the entire point of the law and the prophets was to point forward to Jesus in his perfect fulfillment on all that had been foretold. They knew this was coming. Like Jesus does everything that we could never do, and the Israelites could ever do. And because of that, Jesus doesn't expect a flawless bride, but he provides a faithful groom. Because Jesus knows that we, as the people of God, will be unfaithful. He steps in as the faithful groom and pursues us, anyways. Now, has God ever been frustrated with his people? Absolutely. If you ever read through the whole Old Testament, man, get through those laws. God's angry with his people sometimes. Just read any of it. Or even Jesus flipping tables in the temple courts. He gets frustrated. Like God has gotten frustrated with his people before. How many married people have been frustrated with their spouse before? Anybody? My wife's in the room right now. She can raise her hand. Yep, I'm sure she has been. How many people have been frustrated with their spouse today? Less likely to raise your hand there. Haven't talked about it yet. Maybe after church you'll talk about it. My frustrating things that I do to my wife are usually things that she's already asked me to do and things that I understand the purpose behind. Okay? Things like taking out the trash so the kids don't go dumpster diving in the kitchen trash and reach in. Like my daughter right now, she loves popping that thing open with her bare hands and just grabbing garbage, dude. It's crazy. She's a year and a half and she's eating garbage half the time. Okay. She's very smart. She just is curious. Okay. Things like wiping up the table after a meal, even though there's no visible food on top of it. Okay. Just a double, just a second wipe, okay? Just a second clean. Things like putting the seat down when I'm done with the toilet. Okay? No, I actually don't get that one. But she does get mad at me for it, okay? Um, thought there'd be a little more support from the fellas there, but that's all right. I'll I'll put my neck out there for us. I'll do what you weren't brave enough to do, okay? But in all seriousness, when you're frustrated with your spouse, what usually happens is that you tell them something that they can do to love you well, and they just didn't do it. And when your spouse doesn't do something that you asked them to do, it can be really frustrating. Amen? Babe? Yep. But you know what's true about frustration with your spouse? It can happen without losing the love that the relationship was built on. Like God, the groom, has absolutely a right to be frustrated when his bride chooses not to do what he asked her to do. Like he has a right to be frustrated with his bride when she is unfaithful to him. But you want to know something crazy about what God does with our failures and our flaws? He doesn't double down on the punishment or add more to the honeydew list. He provides a faithful groom to do what we as the unfaithful bride could never do. Not once does Jesus think that perfection is possible for God's people on this side of eternity. It's not. He knows that we are sinful, that we are imperfect people who could never do what he did. Okay, but as we read on in our passage, we get to verse 19, it says this Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Okay, so it might seem like us to us reading this verse that he kind of goes back on this logic of us being flawed people by saying, Whoever breaks one of these commandments of the law and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Seems like he's kind of backtracking here if we read it on the surface. Okay, but he's not saying we need to be perfect here. What he's actually doing is he's calling out a particular group of people in this instance. They're likely in the crowd. You've probably heard of them before if you read the New Testament, but the scribes and the Pharisees. Okay, and the scribes and the Pharisees are the religious leaders of the day, the Jewish religious leaders that have a lot of power, a lot of control, and believe wholeheartedly in this law and achieving cleanliness and perfection before God. That's what they believe. But what they've been doing is they pick and chose what parts of the law mattered more to follow. Okay, in other words, they were elevating the severity of certain laws or breaking certain laws and certain sins over others. But what Jesus is saying is that if you're going to follow the law, they all matter. All 600 of them. Like if you are trying to achieve perfection by following the law, trying to do all these good deeds before God, all of the law must matter. You cannot pick and choose. See, the Pharisees would be lax on certain teachings more than others, and effectively would see themselves as better because they didn't murder. Or they didn't commit adultery. But they were simultaneously breaking other lesser laws. Sound familiar? Sound like any Christians you've ever met? Elevating certain sins over others. Anyways, back to the Pharisees. So Jesus is checking them, and they're picking and choosing of which laws are most important by saying, if you break any of the law, you can't be righteous enough. He even doubles down on this in verse 20. He says, For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never get in to the kingdom of heaven. He says, unless you are more righteous than the most supposed righteous people that there are in the world. World according to God's law, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is giving this statement not as one that's aspirational to work towards, to try harder to get to. Like he's not just saying, just do better, guys. But he's giving this statement as one that's impossible to accomplish without him. He's trying to get them to understand that they cannot be faithful enough. But he can be. Like these religious leaders and a large portion of God's people, it's not just them. We're thinking that they could be good enough, that they could be faithful enough, that they could be righteous enough as God's bride. But Jesus is trying to say to these people is that they can't. And that he doesn't need them to be. And because of this, Jesus does not want a checklist agreement, but he wants a wholehearted pursuit. Okay, if being a faithful bride isn't about checking off the list of religious obligations that we could never actually accomplish, then what in the world is this whole following Jesus thing about? Okay, see, the way of living under the laws that God people, God's people have been accustomed to over the hundreds and hundreds of years was to never supposed to be a checklist agreement with God, but it had been twisted into that. Okay, it was given from a loving groom to his precious bride as a way to show his undying love for her, even though she didn't deserve it. But the plan was to always have Jesus, the faithful groom, usher in a new set of vows. Okay, a new covenant. And under this new covenant, Jesus doesn't want some lifeless relationship that's built on doing everything by the book perfectly. Otherwise, that would just be the old covenant. But under the new covenant, Jesus wants us instead to wholeheartedly pursue Him where we know that we can't be perfect, but we can rest knowing that Jesus is. See, the new covenant isn't dependent on what we do or we don't do, but it's dependent upon what Jesus has already done for us. Like this is incredible news because the unfaithful spouse is still unfaithful. None of you guys are perfect. I've done meetups with you. I know there's stuff going on. Okay? There's stuff going on with me too. I sin every single day. Not because I want to, but because that's my nature. We're all unfaithful. We still sin, we still make mistakes, and guess what? We will continue to do so into the future until Jesus returns. Bummer, but true. We will not stop being unfaithful to some degree. But now, in the new covenant, it isn't dependent on what us, what we can do, okay, or or trying to be something that we can't, but it is dependent on what Jesus has done and being what only He can the perfect, faithful, loving groom. This was the only way that it could work in this relationship. Okay, and it's this reality, the pathway to a right relationship with God, through only what Jesus could do that should give us a reason to joyfully pursue our relationship with Him. This wholehearted pursuit of Jesus isn't birthed out of an obligation, but a proclamation. Because the faithful groom has looked at the unfaithful bride right in her eyes and proclaimed, You are forgiven and I will love you unconditionally. Like, how are we going to respond to that with anything other than pursuing a relationship with him wholeheartedly for the rest of our lives? Like, this should be all of our responses here. But the reality is that it isn't all of our responses.

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Okay?

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In a room this size, there's bound to be someone here who has never responded to what Jesus has done for us in this way. There's bound to be somebody. And if that's you in the room, the first thing that I want to say is it's not too late. And if you actually desire to wholeheartedly pursue the Lord, this is how you do it. This isn't everything. But first, it starts with you doing what Romans 10, 9 says. And I love this verse because it says, verbatim, what we need to do to come into this new covenant relationship with the faithful groom. It says, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and here it is, you will be saved. It's crying out to God and saying, God, I have been unfaithful to you. I have sinned against you, and I deserve nothing more than separation from you. But I declare, I proclaim that Jesus is Lord and that Jesus has been faithful when I have not, and that Jesus was in fact raised from the dead by you, and I want to wholeheartedly pursue him for the rest of my life. This is the posture of someone who has not only realized their position as the unfaithful bride, but has realized that they are now free to pursue the faithful groom, knowing that they have a renewed relationship with their Savior and a new purpose for their life. Some of you have been looking for that purpose. And here it is. This is it. There's nothing else. And if that's you and you've placed your faith in Jesus for the first time, first of all, welcome home. This is a good place for you. Welcome to the family. But what about the people who have already responded to the faithful groom, loving them unconditionally? Okay, because this is the church and the church is not a building, believe it or not, this is not the church, this is the church, it's the people of God. The people of God should not stop, will not stop being unfaithful to God to some degree. Okay, we're still broken, but what do we need to do? If you've already responded to God in this way, we need to remember the proclamation that the faithful groom has declared over us. Okay, we need to remember that we are not any less loved than we were the day we professed faith in Jesus. Our status has not changed. We need to remember that even though we are the unfaithful bride, even after we are saved, that our faithful groom will never stop pursuing us. He's never gonna stop. We need to remember why we professed our love for Jesus in the first place. We need to remember our wedding day. We need to remember that our relationship with Jesus is not just some fling that we can come back to when we want, but it's a relationship that's not just for this life, but it's forever. It's our purpose, it's our mission, it's our everything. Why? Because Jesus gave everything for you. This is incredible news for the Christian. And so as we get ready to wrap up this morning, I want us to take a moment and imagine for a minute. Okay, if you're more imaginative with your eyes closed and you're not going to get as distracted, go ahead and do that. But I want us to picture this city we live in. Right here in Milwaukee. And I want us to picture what Milwaukee would look like if every single Christian in this city regularly reminded themselves of how good our Savior is and how faithful our groom is, and that they didn't just need to treat their walk with him as a checklist agreement, but a wholehearted pursuit of him because he wholeheartedly pursued us. Imagine that city. How would this city change? How would your neighborhood change? How would your workplace change? How would your life change as a result? Like this Milwaukee you're picturing, where Christians are doing what Christians are supposed to do, it's not as far-fetched as you think. Because when you're a Christian, you're not relying on your own faithfulness. You will be unfaithful. You're not relying on that. But instead, you're relying on the faithfulness and the strength of Jesus, the faithful groom. This reality that we're picturing can be true of our city, but it will not happen unless the faithful groom moves. And how do we talk to the faithful groom? We come to him in prayer. Okay? So let's pray that this would be true of our city, right here in Milwaukee, as we go from this place. God, thank you for Jesus. Thank you for sending a faithful groom to us, the unfaithful bride. Thank you for doing what only you could do when we could never earn our way back to you. God, I pray that this room, full of people, Lord, who have placed their faith in you would remember the commitment that they made, remember their wedding day, remember the vows that you proclaimed over them to uphold forever and ever and ever and seal them with a life in eternity with you. I pray that every person in this room would hold on to that truth, not just today, but every day for the rest of their lives, and that the city would be changed because of it. Lord, and if there's people visiting from other cities, I pray that they would take this truth and that they would remember and that they would proclaim and that they would believe in you and get others to do the same because that should be their purpose and their mission. God, I pray that your Holy Spirit would indwell these people and empower these people to go and do the work that you have called them to do. And Lord, I pray that you, as the faithful groom, would move as we go from here in this place. Pray that we would trust in that. I pray that that be true of us as we go from here. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Thanks for listening to the Ambassador Church Podcast. To learn more, visit ambassadormke.org or follow us on Instagram at Ambassador MKE. And if you're in the Milwaukee area, we'd love to see you this Sunday at 9 or 11 a.m. at 2308 East Bellevue Place. Grace and peace.