SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: I ask you to take your Bibles this morning and join me as we look together at the Gospel of Matthew.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 5.
SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the things that is a pattern for me is that every Sunday morning, at some point just before I come up here on the platform, I pray to the Lord and ask for his help.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I say to him is that I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Because all I'm doing is getting up here and talking.
SPEAKER_01: It's the Holy Spirit that takes the words that God allows you to hear, to apply them to your life.
SPEAKER_01: That also means that because of the power of the Holy Spirit, you are here today.
SPEAKER_01: And you just happen to be here on a day when we're talking about lustful desires and divorce.
SPEAKER_01: We've been working our way section by section through Matthew chapter 5.
SPEAKER_01: And so if you wonder why this passage, that's why.
SPEAKER_01: And God the Holy Spirit has ordained for you to be here this morning, to be challenged by his word.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm excited about that.
SPEAKER_01: So again, Matthew chapter 5, we've been working our way through this book.
SPEAKER_01: We've been spending the last several weeks in the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_01: And this morning we find ourselves in Matthew chapter 5, beginning in verse 27.
SPEAKER_01: So I would like to read that if you would like to follow along.
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have a Bible, you can use one in the seat back in front of you, or just follow along on the screen on the sides here.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 5, beginning in verse 27.
SPEAKER_01: It is the Lord Jesus speaking.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, You have heard that it was said, quote, you shall not commit adultery, end quote.
SPEAKER_01: But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
SPEAKER_01: If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.
SPEAKER_01: For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
SPEAKER_01: And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.
SPEAKER_01: For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
SPEAKER_01: It was also said, quote, Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.
SPEAKER_01: End quote.
SPEAKER_01: But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Before we get into this difficult text, I want to start off in a little bit different vein.
SPEAKER_01: I want to remind us of the grace of God in regards to our sin.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you were with us last week, we worked through the first illustration that Jesus gives, and that pertains to anger, and not a single one of us should have left that time together not being convicted.
SPEAKER_01: Because we are all sinners.
SPEAKER_01: We all sin.
SPEAKER_01: So I want us to be reminded of the grace of God in regards to our sin.
SPEAKER_01: I've recently read a book by author Bob Kelleman, and he wrote, quote, when we exaggerate sin beyond Christ's grace, we minimize the work of Christ and magnify our sin as greater than Christ's grace.
SPEAKER_01: End quote.
SPEAKER_01: Symbols of the Lord's death and resurrection on our behalf, paying the price for our sin.
SPEAKER_01: And we must remember that when we come to these statements by Christ Himself that are indeed convicting to us, we must remember that His grace exceeds our sin.
SPEAKER_01: The Gospels demonstrate to us over and over again that many in the first century, when Jesus was teaching, many missed the point of their faith.
SPEAKER_01: They missed the point of their religion, they missed the point of what God's intention was.
SPEAKER_01: They missed the point of their history.
SPEAKER_01: What do we do with that?
SPEAKER_01: Their own forefathers, their own teachers had missed the point of God's instruction, and many on the hillside this day listening to Jesus would also go on to miss the point of what Jesus sought to clarify.
SPEAKER_01: Several years ago, I read a book entitled Adventures in Missing the Point.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure that missing the point would bring some adventures.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus here says that missing the point leads to hell.
SPEAKER_01: He uses a word called Gehenna.
SPEAKER_01: Gehenna became a term that was applied to hell.
SPEAKER_01: Because Gehenna was actually a garbage dump that was in the valley right outside the city walls of Jerusalem that was constantly burning, constantly smoldering.
SPEAKER_01: Every kind of trash and refuse was tossed there, and it was just this picture, this image, visual image of hell.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says that missing the point will bring that kind of adventure.
SPEAKER_01: Beginning in verse 21, Jesus challenged and corrected the common misunderstandings of God's law.
SPEAKER_01: And he started by telling them, listen, you need to get this right.
SPEAKER_01: You're missing the points of God's word.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, if you continue on this kind of adventure, you will miss me, the one you should never miss.
SPEAKER_01: This morning, then we are confronted with Jesus' teaching on desire and divorce.
SPEAKER_01: Now, most of your Bibles will have printed this text, verses 27 through 32, into two units.
SPEAKER_01: One about lust and desire, and the other about divorce.
SPEAKER_01: I'm of the opinion that Jesus intended them to be considered together.
SPEAKER_01: There's a couple of reasons for that, one of them being the bookends.
SPEAKER_01: Taking these units together and putting them together, we see that Jesus begins with a statement that says something about committing adultery, and he ends with the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: Committing adultery is kind of giving us book-ended sections here.
SPEAKER_01: So I think that was intentional writing by Matthew to show us that these things are to be considered in the same light.
SPEAKER_01: Now, when we look at the previous section about anger, we talked about this last time, we noted how easy it is to fall into a moralistic view of what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_01: That simply means that when we approach this moralistically, we look at it in terms of do's and don'ts.
SPEAKER_01: You know, work harder at not being angry.
SPEAKER_01: Work harder at being quick to forgive.
SPEAKER_01: Do this, do that, and everything will be okay.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's moralism.
SPEAKER_01: In the same way as we look at our text for this morning, our focus, if we approach it moralistically, would be on what to do or what not to do.
SPEAKER_01: Be a good Christian and don't have illicit desires.
SPEAKER_01: Be a good Christian and maintain your marriage.
SPEAKER_01: Put up boundaries around your marriage.
SPEAKER_01: Work harder at establishing fences that you won't cross.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that would be moralism.
SPEAKER_01: That would be saying approach this as a way to fix your life, to be right with God.
SPEAKER_01: Now there are applications from this passage that pertain to how we should live as God's people.
SPEAKER_01: Some good things to think about.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to remind us that how to live is secondary to Jesus' main point.
SPEAKER_01: That's not primary here.
SPEAKER_01: He is not first giving us some standards to live out, to follow.
SPEAKER_01: No, it's the exact opposite.
SPEAKER_01: He's showing us that the true intent of God's rules is to show us, to make us realize that we can't follow them.
SPEAKER_01: You can't follow them.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, by the end of this chapter, Jesus will say decisively, you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.
SPEAKER_01: I can't do that.
SPEAKER_01: And neither can you.
SPEAKER_01: Can you live your entire life without being angry at someone?
SPEAKER_01: Can you live out your life with a perfect heart that never throws out an insult or a derogatory statement?
SPEAKER_01: If you can't, then you are not perfect.
SPEAKER_01: And you fall short.
SPEAKER_01: Remember that Jesus' point here goes back to verse 20.
SPEAKER_01: You therefore must have a righteousness that exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees, or you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees were those who appeared to do everything right.
SPEAKER_01: On the outside, they looked like they had it all together.
SPEAKER_01: They knew God's law, they knew all of God's rules, they could probably recite them to you, and it looked like they obeyed every single one of them.
SPEAKER_01: But the intent of God's expectations is far deeper than that.
SPEAKER_01: He says, we must obey with our hearts, not just our bodies.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus used anger first to illustrate that.
SPEAKER_01: Now he shifts to another illustration, a second illustration of the same truth, speaking about the desires of our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: And he gives us two contrasts here.
SPEAKER_01: Two contrasts to illustrate that desire.
SPEAKER_01: There is a desire that leads to adultery and a desire that leads to divorce.
SPEAKER_01: So let's consider first the desire that leads to adultery.
SPEAKER_01: He says, You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.
SPEAKER_01: Remember that Jesus is comparing and contrasting here the righteousness of the Pharisees, the righteousness that was commonly seen and taught with his expectations, with God's expectations, with God's righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: The religious standard of the day held high by the Pharisees was the seventh commandment in Exodus 20.
SPEAKER_01: God said, Do not commit adultery.
SPEAKER_01: And the Pharisees worked hard at not committing adultery.
SPEAKER_01: Their focus was on the physical act of violating the marriage covenant.
SPEAKER_01: And you could do that by violating your own marriage or even violating the marriage of another.
SPEAKER_01: And that was their level of righteousness, of being right with God, of having a pleasing standard with God.
SPEAKER_01: They obtained that righteousness by doing, by working hard, by laboring to avoid breaking the marriage union.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus said that God's law expected more.
SPEAKER_01: The righteousness that is greater than the Pharisees goes deeper.
SPEAKER_01: It goes all the way to the intentions of your hearts.
SPEAKER_01: Already committed adultery.
SPEAKER_01: That's the really the first main truth that we need to grasp here this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Addressing physical actions isn't enough.
SPEAKER_01: God expects us to have proper intentions.
SPEAKER_01: That's the attitudes and the desires on the inside.
SPEAKER_01: That's the righteousness of God versus the righteousness of the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: Now, in a male-dominant patriarchal culture, which is what Jesus was living in, women had few, if any, privileges and rights.
SPEAKER_01: So in that culture, Jesus addressed men firmly.
SPEAKER_01: But if we limit this contrast to men, we miss the point.
SPEAKER_01: At issue here is not whether only men have lustful intentions or whether only men commit adultery.
SPEAKER_01: The issue is outward physical righteousness versus a righteousness that transforms the heart, no matter one's gender.
SPEAKER_01: The statistics vary widely, but modern research suggests that seventy-five percent of males and thirty to fifty percent of females view pornography today.
SPEAKER_01: That alone should show us that all of us need the application of Jesus teaching.
SPEAKER_01: And what is the application that's needed?
SPEAKER_01: Here it is.
SPEAKER_01: If all you do is shut off the porn feed, you haven't done enough for God's kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: If all you do is install internet filters or refuse to have internet access or have stricter accountability or set up boundaries around your marriage, if that's all you do, you still fall short.
SPEAKER_01: Now listen, I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: This is not intended to be good news.
SPEAKER_01: It's not intended to be good news that encourages us and comforts us.
SPEAKER_01: Because the truth is that everyone, not just those who commit actual physical adultery, but everyone who has ever had a sinful desire in their hearts has no more righteousness than a Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Jesus, let's clarify something.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus isn't saying that noticing beauty or noticing handsomeness or attractiveness is sinful.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what he's saying.
SPEAKER_01: He's declaring sinful desire in our hearts and minds a breaking of God's law.
SPEAKER_01: When you desire to possess another for your own purposes, you are an adulterer.
SPEAKER_01: In the same way that anyone who has been angry, ever been angry, has broken the command to not murder, so too, anyone who has entertained a sinful desire for another has broken the command to not commit adultery.
SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
SPEAKER_01: It's because in Jesus' kingdom, people must have righteous intentions.
SPEAKER_01: And obeying on the outside only makes you a good Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: To be part of Jesus' kingdom, we must have a greater righteousness, a righteousness that recognizes the purity of the marriage covenant, a righteousness that honors others who are being who are made in the image of God, a righteousness that conforms our inward desires to the holiness of God.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees could judge a person who committed adultery, and they did.
SPEAKER_01: Remember the story in the Gospels about the woman caught in adultery and brought to Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, they could judge and they would judge.
SPEAKER_01: But they couldn't judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
SPEAKER_01: But God can.
SPEAKER_01: And God does.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see then that Jesus wants us to look inwardly?
SPEAKER_01: Not just on the outside, not just on what we do.
SPEAKER_01: And when we do that, when we apply the word of God to who we are on the inside when nobody else is looking, we find sin in every corner.
SPEAKER_01: Being able to recite the Ten Commandments is good.
SPEAKER_01: But dig a little deeper and take a look at your desires.
SPEAKER_01: What do you find?
SPEAKER_01: Do you find that that you give in to sinful desires when you know that others aren't looking?
SPEAKER_01: But when others are looking, you make sure that you put on a good front for them?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus would call you a good Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: See, it's not just the adulterers, the physical adulterers that break the command, but everyone who has sinful intentions in their heart.
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't really leave any of us out, does it?
SPEAKER_01: Now the second contrast is about desire that leads to divorce.
SPEAKER_01: First is the desire that leads to adultery, and then the desire that leads to divorce.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to understand how these connect together.
SPEAKER_01: The second group, desire that leads to divorce, this is the group that would say to Jesus, oh no, we would never commit adultery.
SPEAKER_01: We'll just divorce and remarry instead.
SPEAKER_01: That would be their argument.
SPEAKER_01: If I get divorced and remarry, then I'm not committing adultery.
SPEAKER_01: See, divorce then becomes a means of obeying the law.
SPEAKER_01: Don't commit adultery.
SPEAKER_01: Just divorce and remarry.
SPEAKER_01: That's better.
SPEAKER_01: Then you're following God's law.
SPEAKER_01: After all, Moses commanded it, right?
SPEAKER_01: Moses said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.
SPEAKER_01: Well, it wasn't actually true that Moses commanded divorce.
SPEAKER_01: He allowed it.
SPEAKER_01: And there's a big difference.
SPEAKER_01: He allowed it for the protection of the innocent party, most often the unwanted wife.
SPEAKER_01: See, there's a reason that the primary Old Testament term for divorce means putting away.
SPEAKER_01: In that culture, a man could just kick his wife out and marry another.
SPEAKER_01: That would then relegate the wife to either prostitution or remarriage.
SPEAKER_01: And if she remarried, she would be an adulterer, adulteress, because she was still married to her husband.
SPEAKER_01: So Moses said, give her a certificate of divorce, notifying everyone that she has been released from the marriage and she's innocent of the situation.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that became advantageous for those with sinful desires.
SPEAKER_01: There was one Jewish school of thought in Jesus' day that argued for a limited divorce, for unfaithfulness in the marriage.
SPEAKER_01: But the other school of thought, which obviously was much more popular, the other school of thought said that a man could divorce his wife if he found someone prettier.
SPEAKER_01: Or get this, quite literally, he could divorce her if she burned his morning toast.
SPEAKER_01: Within ancient Jewish culture, wives could rarely divorce their husbands.
SPEAKER_01: Husbands had full rights to divorce at any time.
SPEAKER_01: The wives, if they wanted to get divorced, they had to petition the Jewish courts and they had to let out their case to prove that their husband had either been unfaithful or had failed to provide.
SPEAKER_01: Only then, and maybe only then could she get a divorce.
SPEAKER_01: So you begin to see the culture then in which Jesus is addressing this issue.
SPEAKER_01: Divorce had become a means of entertaining selfish freedom.
SPEAKER_01: So the Pharisees said that you could divorce for practically any reason and still be obedient to God as long as you did it the right way.
SPEAKER_01: Follow the rules, follow the patterns, follow the procedures, issue a certificate of divorce, and you'll be good with God.
SPEAKER_01: You will maintain your standard of righteousness with Him.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the level of righteousness the Pharisees maintained.
SPEAKER_01: And it's the kind of righteousness that Jesus said would lead right to hell.
SPEAKER_01: In contrast, the righteousness that God expected and that Jesus demands is far greater.
SPEAKER_01: I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.
SPEAKER_01: And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
SPEAKER_01: What do we see here?
SPEAKER_01: Well we see that this idea of divorce being a means to entertain selfish freedom is not right.
SPEAKER_01: A self-centeredness an attitude a a perspective of self-centeredness always works to ensure that there is free reign for my selfishness.
SPEAKER_01: I'm always going to make sure that I have an escape route, that I have room to entertain my own desires, my own freedoms in life.
SPEAKER_01: Now if you think about it, we do that in all kinds of different areas in life.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever our personal struggles are wherever we like to have our own corrals of freedom we make sure that we keep those fenced off properly so we have freedom within these boundaries.
SPEAKER_01: These people were doing it in terms of divorce and Jesus says no God expects something different.
SPEAKER_01: He expects you to set aside your selfishness, your self-centeredness and consider others as more significant than yourself.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees were concerned about having freedom to do what they wanted while still making sure they could check off the box of doing what God wanted.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus says that pursuing that kind of religiosity ignores the command to love your neighbor and if you fail to love your neighbor then you're failing to love God.
SPEAKER_01: Now watch what Jesus does here everyone who divorces his wife everyone so that's he lumps everybody together start there with me.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine a gigantic bowl okay imagine a gigantic bowl and we're lumping everybody together.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone who pursues divorce is going into this bowl.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone who divorces is going into this bowl.
SPEAKER_01: They're all seeking to be rid of their spouse except on the ground of sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_01: Now there's a lot to be said about that statement and Jesus will go on to say more later in chapter 19 but his intent here is not to develop a theology of divorce he's giving another contrast so in our bowl we have all people who divorce and then out of all of the people who divorce those who pursue that action as a result of unfaithfulness in the marriage are put in a different category than all the others.
SPEAKER_01: So all of the divorces are in a cat in a bowl and then we pull out of our imaginary bowl all who divorce because of sexual sin in marriage.
SPEAKER_01: Now we have two categories don't we have those who who divorce because of marital unfaithfulness and then everybody else including the burn toast the other group those pursuing divorce for reasons other than unfaithfulness have the potential to cause sin in others as well as themselves do you see that no we're talking about that other group not the ones that divorce for unfaithfulness the others for every other reason if a man divorced his wife for burned toast her only options for providing for herself for her own well-being were prostitution or remarriage.
SPEAKER_01: Now remarriage is the easy choice but regardless of her reasons for remarrying the husband that was upset with the burned toast is the one guilty of leading her into sin if you lead someone into sin that's a failure to love your neighbor isn't it's a failure to consider others as more significant than yourself.
SPEAKER_01: In fact if you lead others into sin it's pure selfishness.
SPEAKER_01: And anyone who marries a person divorced for a reason other than sexual immorality also commits adultery.
SPEAKER_01: We could literally spend hours here delving into the potential variations and ramifications of what is said here, but I want to make sure that we get the point before we start rambling off into tangents Jesus makes it very clear that the first group those who divorce based on unfaithfulness to the marriage union are in a different category.
SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
SPEAKER_01: Why does he separate them?
SPEAKER_01: Well it's because in those cases one spouse has already violated the marriage union.
SPEAKER_01: And when a spouse violates the marriage union the other spouse is generally guiltless.
SPEAKER_01: And remarrying when the marriage union has already been broken doesn't violate the union it's already been broken.
SPEAKER_01: Now some might say well that that sure gives you freedom we need to notice that Jesus doesn't say he does not say don't divorce but neither does he say that divorce is okay because this isn't about the right or the wrong of divorce.
SPEAKER_01: That will come later in Matthew.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry you have to wait for chapter 19 for that is he's addressing how a person's actions in divorce impact the spiritual lives of someone else when a person divorces their actions say something about their righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: And if you divorce for a reason other than a violation of the physical marriage union then you set yourself up to be the cause of someone else's sinoess of the Pharisees said it like this.
SPEAKER_01: They said divorce is okay for whatever reason as long as you follow the prescribed patterns and Jesus comes along and says well you know God views marriage as the establishment of a lifelong union of two becoming one and so if you divorce with that union still intact then you bear the guilt if the one you divorce remarries.
SPEAKER_01: Now let's make a few things clear.
SPEAKER_01: First when Jesus addresses divorce in more detail in chapter 19 he says and this is a quote what therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
SPEAKER_01: God designed the marriage union to be permanent.
SPEAKER_01: So to dissolve that permanent union for selfish reasons might keep you looking good on the outside and might keep your self-centered chorale intact but God still sees your heart.
SPEAKER_01: And your heart shows that you do not care about your neighbor.
SPEAKER_01: And if you can't keep the second greatest commandment then you're not going to be keeping the greatest and if you're not keeping those commandments then your righteousness is no greater than the Pharisees you have enough righteousness to send you to hell.
SPEAKER_01: So what do we do?
SPEAKER_01: Do we become all moralistic and establish a bunch of rules and fences and boundaries to keep out the the sinful lust and desire and selfishness that reigns and rules in our lives let me make a second thing clear doing things to keep you from sinning may function to varying extents as tools to limit your sin.
SPEAKER_01: Installing an internet filter your computer might function to limit your sin establishing boundaries in your marriage saying that we will do this or we won't do this may function as ways to protect your marriage but those tools do not change your heart.
SPEAKER_01: If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away it's better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
SPEAKER_01: If your right hand causes you to sin cut it off and throw it away for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
SPEAKER_01: In those days the the right side was considered the strong side the dominant side and so it was considered especially important.
SPEAKER_01: For example in some cultures a man could not serve in the army in the military if he couldn't see out of his right eye it was considered especially important.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus uses that right side to amplify his illustration if your most important eye causes you to sin take a spoon and gouge it out and throw it away because that'll fix your problem if your most important hand causes you to sin lop it off and throw it away now remember what Jesus has already said if if you have anger towards someone you've already murdered them you've already committed murder.
SPEAKER_01: If your eyes lead you to sinfully desire another person then you are guilty of adultery.
SPEAKER_01: So based on what Jesus has already said to this point do you think that gouging out your eye or amputating your hand will fix your heart of course not we can still harbor hate in our hearts we can still be angry and lust and be selfish without any hands or without any eyes or any other body part.
SPEAKER_01: That won't fix our problem will it have sinful hearts don't we have hearts and minds that if we're honest sin without even trying it often takes us no effort to sin.
SPEAKER_01: Now we can try real hard and be like the Pharisees but in the end we don't get any better than the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: But if we don't get any better than the Pharisees then that means according to what Jesus said in verse 20 that we will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: If we try real hard to gain some kind of righteousness by what we do that kind of righteousness leaves us on the outside looking in wishing we were with Jesus now that's astounding.
SPEAKER_01: It would have been shocking to Jesus' listeners on the hillside that day they would have said this is this is unimaginable.
SPEAKER_01: This is just crazy who then can be included in God's kingdom because everybody is angry at some point everybody has some kind of wrong sinful desire we all fall short for it is better literally it would it's more advantageous it's more advantageous.
SPEAKER_01: It's more advantageous for you to lose a body part and let your whole body be thrown into hell this is this is hyperbole.
SPEAKER_01: It's an exaggeration to make a point now how do we know it's exaggeration because you can still you can you can gouge out your eye and still end up in hell you can cut off your hand and still end up in hell and if that's the case then it's not better.
SPEAKER_01: So what does Jesus mean?
SPEAKER_01: Well the desire of the Pharisees was to please God.
SPEAKER_01: They wanted to be the sons of God the children of God and so be part of his kingdom and they thought they were doing it right.
SPEAKER_01: They thought they were on the right track that they were doing everything the way God expected them to do it.
SPEAKER_01: But their way only pointed out how much they fell short.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus comes along and says listen you have a kind of righteousness yes but it's a kind of righteousness that will lead you to hell so you need a different kind of righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: You need one that's not gained by what you're doing in life by what kind of rules and boundaries you're setting but a righteousness that comes from somewhere else a righteousness that comes from me that's what you need because God requires a perfect faithfulness a perfect righteousness a perfect obedience he requires perfect holiness nothing less will do.
SPEAKER_01: Having the most stringent rules and regulations won't give us that righteousness because we have sin lurking in our hearts God requires an unimaginable righteousness that's how that's how the people would have heard that but Jesus was there to say I have that righteousness Jesus has obeyed all of God's requirements and all of God's expectations perfectly therefore Jesus says it is better it is more advantageous for you to pursue the unimaginable righteousness that's found in Jesus than it is to have your own selfish freedom in life and receive the unimaginable punishment that comes from any kind of righteousness based in what you do pursue Jesus now what does that mean for you what does that mean for you today well if you are not a Christian stop trying to please God by working hard because your hard work will only send you to hell it is not better.
SPEAKER_01: The reward in working hard to please God is not worth the effort.
SPEAKER_01: Even going to extremes will not heal your heart so that's why we go back again and again and again to the beginning of chapter five in those Beatitudes humble yourself in recognition of the fact that you can't achieve the right kind of righteousness and come to Jesus as a person who's poor in spirit mourning over your sin humbly thirsting for his righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the amazing thing the astounding thing when you do that Jesus will wrap you up in his unimaginable righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: And that means that whenever God looks at you the angry you he doesn't see the lustful you doesn't see the adulterous you he sees the sinner who is trusting in the righteousness of Jesus a sinner wrapped in that perfect righteousness and it is far better to pursue that righteousness because that is your only hope and it is amazing hope.
SPEAKER_01: Now if you are a Christian I know you've failed you've sinned I know that because I have too but see as as people who have trusted in Christ we've been redeemed that means we've been bought for his glory and that means that that Christ has has begun a cleansing work in us yes we we still have that weight of sin that clings so closely to us and tries to trip us up until Jesus rescues us from this body of death we try to be perfectly faithful to Jesus and we fall short again and again and again but if your faith is genuine if you are in Christ if you are wrapped in his righteousness do not lose hope.
SPEAKER_01: Confess your sin to a faithful God with a repentant heart and then pick yourself up again to Christ and the cross and with fresh eyes see the unimaginable righteousness of Christ on your behalf yes our sin is great it's great enough to condemn us for eternity but the wonderful grace of Jesus is greater than your sin pick yourself up dust off the trappings of sin and follow Jesus with fresh amazement at his grace.
SPEAKER_01: Nehemiah leading the remnant of Israel in that very act prayed to God these words you are a God ready to forgive just ponder that ready ready to forgive because he's gracious and merciful slow to anger abounding in steadfast love and he does not forsake run to Jesus look to Jesus pursue Jesus be astounded at his unimaginable righteousness grace and mercy to you and follow him trusting not in yourself but in him author Michael Reeves wrote quote Christian don't look to your behavior your feelings or your faithfulness Jesus Christ is your righteousness he is your status he is your standing before God always there always reliable always the same run to Jesus let's pray together Lord Jesus we run to you may your spirit your powerful spirit work in all of us to recognize our sin and to abandon it to leave it behind and to run to you desire your unimaginable righteousness to be wrapped in that and to be seen by our Father not as ones teeming with sin but as ones who are enveloped by the righteousness of Christ and we come now then to remember at the cost of that righteousness that the eternal absolutely holy without sin God would take on flesh and dwell among us not to be a good person not to not to show us that we need to work harder but to pay the price for our sin to receive the judgment for our sin for the forgiveness of our sin so that we might be called the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus we confess our sin to you and ask that you would enable us to come to this table of remembrance trusting in you with cleansed hearts relying on your righteousness and not our own that concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
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