Trinity VII (31-Jul-2022)

 Service cancelled today, due to the pastor being sick.

Trinity VI [Matthew 5:20-26] (24-Jul-2022)

  

This sermon was preached at St Peter’s Evangelical-Lutheran Church, Public Schools Club, Adelaide, 9am

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Unless your righteous exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

    

Our Gospel reading comes today from the Sermon on the Mount, which is a wonderful, and very famous, sermon of Jesus, which is recorded in Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7.

The Sermon on the Mount contains many famous passages which are well-known to Christians. For example, at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, we have the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and so on. Then Jesus teaches his disciples about being the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Then Jesus teaches his disciples about many of the Ten Commandments, and this is where our Gospel reading today comes from. Jesus also teaches about giving to the needy, about prayer and about fasting. He talks about treasure in heaven, and about not being anxious about our life. Look at the birds of the air. Consider the lilies of the field, Jesus says. Jesus teaches about judging, about asking, seeking knocking. He teaches the Golden Rule: Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them. He also teaches about false prophets, and about building our house on the rock, rather than on the sand. As you can see, there are many well-known passages that Jesus teaches in this sermon.

In our Gospel reading today, we begin in a place where Jesus is talking about the law, and he says: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

And then we come to the verse which begins our reading: For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Well, in this verse, we see Jesus mention here the scribes and the Pharisees. Now, I’d like to tell a little story. A number of years ago, there was a Christian lady who was on the TV show Masterchef. One of the things they were required to do in the course of the competition was to cook a meal for the Dalai Lama. In all of this, they were instructed about how they should address him as “His Holiness”. Now, this Christian lady (who actually won the whole competition that year) had a problem with calling him His Holiness, and she saw it (rightly so) as a conflict with her Christian faith. This all played out behind the scenes of the show, and there was no big deal made about it on air. But this incident reached the press in India, where there was a headline: “His Holiness not holy enough for Australian Masterchef competitor.”

Actually, this is exactly what Jesus is doing with respect to the scribes and Pharisees. They were known by all the Jewish people as the holiest people alive. The Pharisees lived in such a way that everybody thought they lived an exemplary life. The Scribes were the expert scholars in the law of God. And yet, Jesus throws a blanket over all them, and refuses them entry to the kingdom of heaven. Their holiness is not holy enough.

In order to enter the kingdom of heaven, says Jesus, your holiness and your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees. This statement either makes the people who hear it angry, or it makes them despair. They either say: “How dare you say such a thing about these holy people?” Or they say, “There is no way that I could be as righteous or holy, or even more so than them!”

And so, we might think of all the people in the world who are considered holy. In Buddhism and Hinduism: The Dalai Lama, gurus, monks. In Islam: the scholars and sheikhs and muftis. But even in Christianity: Popes, bishops, theologians, pastors, preachers, everyone. Jesus throws his blanket over all of them, and he says, unless your righteousness exceeds all of these people, whoever they are, whoever it is that you look up to, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Now, why does he say this? Jesus picks the scribes and Pharisees, because they are the highest standard in these people’s minds. And he says that to heaven the standard is higher. And so, he destroys the false righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, and plunges everyone else into despair.

Now, this is how the law should be preached. Jesus says: Not a dot, not an iota, will pass from the law. Jesus teaches us to do works of the law, but he also shows us that to achieve the righteousness of the law is far above our abilities. And with the law a tremendous knowledge of our sin. We look into the law like a mirror, and we see our imperfections, our sinful condition.

And so, what kind of standard is Jesus holding us to? At the end of Matthew 5, he says: You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Now, if we consider our righteousness before God, we should consider ourselves as on trial before him, in his courtroom. We have been brought there to be judged, and it is as if we have been caught out for all kinds of things that we know we had done, and many things which we didn’t know we had done. And there is a stack of fines and debts, that amounts up to a completely insurmountable amount of money, that is completely beyond our ability to pay.

The only way that we can go free is if someone else pays for the fine who is richer than us. That person is Jesus Christ. He comes before God’s throne and pleads our case, and he says, “I have paid for this person with my life, with blood and with my sacrifice on the cross.” As it says in 1 Peter: You were ransomed…not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. And when Jesus was on the cross, he stretched out his arms, and said: It is finished. In other words, everything that I have come to do has been accomplished, and done, and it is all over. Everything has been paid for, I have made a full atonement, everything that we owed to God has been nailed to the cross.

And so, Jesus takes every single debt and fine that we owed, like going through all the pieces of paper, and stamps a red stamp on each of them, with the red of his blood, which says: Paid in full.

And so, this is such an incredibly amazing thing. So many people think that nobody else can pay for or atone for your sins. So many people think that if I have “done the crime”, then I must “do the time”. But it’s not true. God shows his love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus puts himself in your place, and he makes an exchange, he does a swap. He takes all of your sin, your unholiness, your impurity, your uncleanness, your unrighteousness, and he takes it upon himself. He takes all of his holiness, his purity, his righteousness, and he gives it freely to you.

Let’s think for a moment about the thief on the cross who asked Jesus to remember him. Jesus said to him: Today you will be with me in Paradise. Jesus gives to this man his righteousness and holiness, even though this man was being justly punished for his crimes, and had no righteousness and holiness that belonged to him. And Jesus deals with him personally.

In Holy Baptism, which we read about today in our Epistle reading especially, Jesus also deals with us personally, just as he dealt with that thief. He stands alongside of us, just as the thief was crucified alongside of us. Jesus says about baptism, when he sends his apostles out into all the earth, And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. And so, when we receive baptism, this is where Jesus comes and deals with us personally, taking our sins upon himself, giving us his righteousness freely as a gift. And the gift is ours simply because we believe it. Jesus died on the cross, and we believe it, we trust in him. Jesus rose from the dead, and we believe it and trust in him. And he has received us personally into his kingdom through Holy Baptism, and we believe it and trust in him.

And so, Jesus, in actual fact, stands in our place, he takes the punishment that we deserved, the justice that should have been carried out on us is carried out on him. And the righteousness and innocence which is his is given to us, so that when God looks at us, he sees us not with all our sin, but with all our sin washed away in the blood of Jesus, because we are there with Jesus. And we are saved by faith alone. We trust in Jesus for our salvation, and we have everything that we need.

This is the righteousness that exceeds the Pharisees and the scribes, and all the holy people of the world: the gurus, the lamas, the monks, the nuns, the popes, the bishops, the scholars, the muftis, the sheikhs, the pastors, the theologians. There is only one who is righteous, and he is Jesus Christ, and the only way to the kingdom of heaven is through him, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and this is because he shares his divine, holy and perfect righteousness with us, purely by his grace and mercy, and not because of anything that we have done either to achieve it or to earn it. What a wonderful Saviour we have!

Now, in our Gospel reading today, Jesus goes on to teach us about the Fifth Commandment: You shall not murder. He is holding up this commandment to us as a kind of mirror, so that we look into it and recognise our sin. But also, he wants to show us how we should go about carrying it out in our life, even though in this life, we never really carry it out as perfectly as we should.

And so, Jesus says: You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

Now, when we look at the Fifth Commandment, we see there the wonderful way in which God has created human life, and he values it. We should value it also. However, because of sin, God also gives to each person in the world death as their wages. St Paul says: The wages of sin is death. This goes right back to the Garden of Eden, where God said to Adam and Eve: You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. But it is God’s business to give life, and it is God’s business to take life. We cannot take the life of another person whom God has created, and we cannot murder a person for whom Christ has died. In our times, we also see many people who have successfully brought in laws in many countries, including our own, where they want to kill unborn babies (abortion, I mean) and also give people lethal injections if they no longer wish to live (euthanasia). Christians everywhere (and even we ask all people too) must always resist these things as against God’s moral law, and do what we can to support the life of unborn babies and their mothers, and to help people who are in great pain or suffering in their life, so that they do not despair of their life.

Now, for us, personally, Jesus wants to say to us something further. He says: When it says, “You shall not murder”, it doesn’t just mean that you shouldn’t break this commandment with your hands, or however a person might kill another person. Because murder is something that is premeditated, it is considered in advance. And so the outward murder where someone kills another person has already begun inside the murderer’s heart. Murder also takes place when we seek to get rid of someone in our imagination, in our mind, in our heart, in our thoughts. And so, where does Jesus say it begins? It begins with “anger”. And so Jesus, teaches us that we when we find ourselves angry with other people in our hearts, and even when our heart explodes outwards into our mouths, and wants to insult people, then we have also broken the command to murder.

Because sin is not something simply of the hands, it is not simply something that happens outside. Sin is something that has completely penetrated our whole being: mouth, heart, mind, imagination, dreams, everything. And so, we should come to Jesus, but not in such a way that we excuse ourselves, and say: Well, I haven’t killed someone, so I’m okay; but in such a way, that reveal to him our angry and vengeful hearts, and commend it to him, into the pile of things which he dies for, and which he has nailed to cross.

The wonderful thing about the Gospel and the righteousness which Christ has won for us and shares with us is that he has not just died and atone for the things we have or haven’t done with our hands, but also for our evil words, and for our evil thoughts. His righteousness extends even to all those places which we don’t even really know. So Jesus exposes our hearts before us, so that we despair of our hearts, and run to him, and trust in him, and in his righteousness.

Just one little thing. In Martin Luther’s sermon for this day, he says something very useful. Because as I have mentioned before, there are some legitimate situations where a person is able to kill. For example, the government has the “power of the sword”, as it is called in Romans. And so, police and soldiers are allowed to use weapons to protect our citizens. Sometimes, even, a judge may need to sentence a person with a very harsh and sharp sentence because of the nature of their crime. And, when terrible crimes are committed in our society, like murder, rape, and all kinds of things, we become angry. And how can a judge give a sentence to these people with a happy face? Aren’t they going to be angry? How can a policeman or a soldier shoot dead a terrorist without being angry? If a child does something bad, is it wrong for a parent to be angry? When another country wants to invade country, should people not be angry about it?

And so, there is a righteous anger that comes when our position in life, or what we might call our vocation, or our office, demands it. We are called upon sometimes, according to where God as placed us, to do something against that which is evil. We ask in these situations that God would forgive us for our own personal, unrighteous anger in all of these situations. As it says in Psalm 4, Be angry but do not sin. As a father, I know that many times, I get far too angry with my children about things than I need to be or should be. We ask for God to forgive us for this excess anger, but sometimes in our life, we must act according to our vocation against what is wrong, or someone who has done what is wrong. And this is a good thing. When Jesus is talking here in our reading, he is talking about us as equal, fellow human beings—we should not murder them, we should not hate them, we should not harbor grudges against them, we should be angry with them, and think we are right to be angry. But rather, we should love them, and do what we can to help them.

In the last part of the reading, Jesus says: So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

Jesus says here, that when we are going to serve God, and when we are on our way to worship him and do something for him, he wants us as best as we can to put away from ourselves the anger that we have with other people. Because this anger and bitterness can destroy all kinds of things, and eat away at us, and make us ineffective.

So, for example, Jesus says that when we remember that someone is angry with us—not just if we are angry with them—we shouldn’t just thing, “Well, it’s their problem. They are the ones who need to come and reconcile with me”—No. We are people who have been reconciled to God the Father through the blood of Jesus. Let’s also do our best to reconcile with each other, as a reflection of the wonderful reconciliation we have with God. Let’s also remember this each week when we confess our sins at the beginning of the service: we ask for forgiveness from God, but we also should seek genuine reconciliation with each other. Sometimes, of course, the other person doesn’t want to reconcile, and wants to keep the grudge against us. Then we must pray for them, and wait for them, but also know that we have reconciled with them in our hearts, even if with each other, things are not quite as they should be yet.

In the meantime, all of this flows from the righteousness which we already have in Christ. It comes as part of the Christian life which we have been freely given to us from God, and which the Holy Spirit leads us in and shows us each and every day. And so, we thank Jesus for sharing with us, and imparting to us, and reckoning to our account, his own divine righteousness, which exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees: the forgiveness of sins. Let’s learn from him each day and walk along behind him, following in his footsteps, and learning the Christian life from him, which for us, is only always begun but never completed. And so, we thank him for his gift, his promise of eternal life, for his eternal and sure promise to us to enter into the kingdom of heaven, through faith in him. Amen.

 

And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.