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Well, let's go back to Matthew
chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5 this evening,
verses 19 and 20. Whoever then annuls one of the
least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the
same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever
keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom
of heaven. For I say to you that unless
your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Alright, so we come
to verse 19 tonight and we need to remind ourselves, of course,
that Jesus Christ is confirming His belief in the Scriptures
in this particular case. It's the Old Testament. He has
affirmed His belief in the Law and the Prophets and that they
are of God. And I emphasize that because a lot of people mistakenly
think that Jesus Christ came and He did away with the Law
and therefore we're no longer under the Law and the Prophets.
In fact, Jesus Christ declares that the Law is eternal. until
the heavens and earth pass away." And that was a saying, not necessarily
literally passing away, the heavens and earth particular context
we're looking at tonight, but indicative of the fact that the
law was going to last forever. That is the moral law of God.
Now, the demonstrations of the law through the ceremonial offerings
and through the civil laws that were given to the nation of Israel,
those were based on the moral laws of God. Okay, that's what
they are. The civil laws and the sacrificial
laws, they're just ways to demonstrate the moral, eternal laws of the
everlasting God. The sacrifices, the bulls, the
ghosts, the lambs, the burning of the incense, the special days
and the special weeks, and the stuff that they did in the tabernacle,
and the shekels that they paid for an offense, and the different
ways. All of these are just different
manifestations of the eternal principles of the moral laws
of God. Now the problem was, of course, that the Jews got
hung up on these external laws. They put a lot of emphasis on
external visible actions and behaviors, thinking that it was
important to behave in a certain way. and do something in a certain
way, and that's all that really matters. It's just your external
life. Your internal life didn't matter so much, and so Jesus
comes along, and he says, you guys got it all wrong. What goes
on internally is important, and as a matter of fact, he does
that by bringing forth the Beatitudes, because the Beatitudes have to
deal with the internal life, and so this is what Jesus tries
to reteach them. He says, your behavior is lacking
heart. You have the wrong motivation.
You're missing the point. God wants your heart. The only reason
you're doing this stuff is to make yourself look good. That's
the only reason you're concerned about the external actions and
behaviors. You think that if you control yourself externally
that you're going to escape hell. But he says basically your self-righteousness
is just one way ticket to hell. Because that's what they were
trying to do. They were full of self-righteousness that all
the external actions were going that way. How many have ever
done something and you thought you did it really well? You were
convinced that what you did was good. You were convinced that
what you did was the right thing. And then somebody comes along
and they begin to tell you, you know what, what you did may not
be completely right. Maybe what you did may not completely,
you have done it as well as you thought you did it. And that
kind of crushes you and it kind of gets under your skin. Well,
this is what Jesus was doing to the Pharisees and Sadducees
because they were thinking, oh, we're obeying the law of God,
man, we're doing it really well. We're doing everything God wants
us to do. And so Jesus comes along and
he says, oh, no, wait a minute, guys. Wait a minute. No, no,
no, no, no, no, no. And so, you know, Jesus is getting
under their skin. And no wonder they're getting
aggravated. No wonder they're getting mad, because Jesus is contradicting
them. So these gurus of the law were
coming down, so to speak. And they thought they were keeping
the law. But Jesus says, no, no, you're not doing it right.
You've got it all wrong. You're not as righteous as you
think you are. The moral laws of God, as a matter of fact,
are going to last forever as well. So, you can understand
why the elite hated Jesus Christ. They didn't like Jesus Christ.
They didn't like what he was saying. So, all of that is in
verses 17 and 18. We're coming down to verse 19
tonight. And Jesus has actually been preparing them for verses
19 and 20. Verses 17 and 18 are just kind
of an introduction to what Jesus wants to say in verses 19 and
20. Really, when Jesus started in
verse 17, It's just an introduction to really Roddy wanted to say
in verse 20 So what I wanted to do is I want you to read verse
17 with me and I want you to read verse 20 right after that
Because there this is really what? Jesus is getting at so
in verse 17. He says do not think that I came
to abolish the law or the prophets I did not come to abolish but
to fulfill and verse 19 He says for I say to you that unless
your righteousness surpasses that of scribes and Pharisees
you will not enter the kingdom of heaven That's where Jesus
wanted to be with this whole discussion. He wanted to get
into this discussion of righteousness, and he wanted to get into this
discussion of what it really takes to enter the kingdom of
heaven. Okay? So when you're talking
about fulfilling the law, which Jesus was talking about in verse
17, what you're really talking about is righteousness. If you're
keeping the law, doing the law, fulfilling the law, then the
one word that describes that is Righteousness. Righteousness. Some people might say, no, it's
being obedient. Well, it is being obedient, but the theological
term that we're looking at here is righteousness. Anytime, anytime
you are in a discussion of the law, You're going to wind up
talking about righteousness That is the goal of the law. That is where you're headed a
lot of people don't like that But that's what that's why Jesus
brings it up in verse 20 because this is the goal of his discussion
and this my beloved Is the offense of the gospel
This is the offense of the gospel and Righteousness. This is why we
use the law when we share the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this is what makes the law
offensive. We cannot get to the righteousness
of Christ without first deconstructing our own righteousness. You can't
get there. The need for salvation is in
the deconstruction of our self-righteousness. And that is what the law does. That's why we use the law when
we're sharing the gospel to show people that they don't meet God's
standards. It's an impossibility. They are unrighteous in the sight
of God. That is the offense of the gospel
of Jesus Christ and therein their need for Jesus Christ and His
perfect righteousness and the fact that He came in love and
mercy to make His righteousness available to us. We're not even close, folks. Sometimes we think we're close.
I don't know about you, but there are some times when I have good
days. I think it's a good day. Man, I'm really doing pretty
well. I'm serving God, and I'm doing
what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm not even close. I'm still
self-centered. I still demand that things go
pretty much my way, you know, and self-serving, you know. But
when we measure ourselves against the righteousness of God, which
is the Beatitudes, that's really where you need to measure yourself,
you're concerned about the righteousness of God, you need to measure yourself
against the Beatitudes. Now all of that prepares us for
verse 19. And so he comes down to verse
19, and he wants, you know, in verses 17 and 18, he's elevated
the law. He's elevated the law to the highest position possible,
and he's confirmed that the law, the moral laws of God, are eternal,
and they're not going to pass away. And he uses that heaven
and earth illustration there. The law is still going to be
in effect after you die, even when you're standing in the heavenly
realm. This is still what God's going to demand from you. So
he's assigning these eternal values to the law, and he confirms
that these things must be from God. If it's eternal, it has
to be from God. If it's eternal, it has to be
from God. The law is eternal, it has to be from God. So he
comes to verse 19, and then he says this in verse 19. He says,
"...whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments,
and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in
the kingdom of God." Oh, man! He's elevated the law. It's clear
that the law is of God. Clear that the law is from God.
Clear that the law is eternal. And so He says, look, look, whoever
annuls one of the least, one of the least of these commandments,
and He teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in
the kingdom of God. So Jesus says, look, you don't
mess with the law of God or you're going to be in trouble. If you
mess with even the least of the eternal commandments of God,
you're going to be in trouble. You're going to be in trouble
no matter how least it is. It is an eternal commandment
of God. Well, preacher, what would Jesus
consider to be one of the least commandments of God. What would
you consider to be one of the least commandments of God? If
I were to ask you, give me one of the commandments, give me
one of the laws that you think is the least of all the laws,
what commandment, what kind of law would you give me? I would think, this is my own
conjecture here, that the least commandment would be the one
with the least punishment. It just makes sense to me. When
you look at the law, there are varying degrees of punishment
assigned to the laws. Sometimes you broke the law and
you were required to pay some shekels. And there would be more
shekels to the importance of the law. And finally you work
up to the point where the ultimate price you would pay for breaking
the law is your death penalty. Not all breaking of the laws
required the death penalty, but not all breaking of the laws
required that you just pay a few shekels. And so there were various
punishments in the law. So guess what? If I am going
to choose which law to annul and not pay attention to, if
I'm going to choose a law to ignore, I'm going to choose the
law that's going to cost me the least, that has the less punishment
tied to it. Listen, you're kids. Your kids
know your loss. They know which things they can
do if they can get away with it. It's going to bring the least
amount of punishment. It might be just a verbal. You
might correct your kids with a verbal thing. And then you
might do something else that would, if they break one of the
more important commands that you give them, then you'll increase
that punishment. And there's a place where there's
corporal punishment. There's that there's that there's
that line up there of corporate punishment where they're severely
disciplined and your kids know They're good there. Your kids
are weighing Their weighing their options and what's involved if
they choose to do disobedience to you and to some degree We
do that with God And these Pharisees and these Sadducees, they knew
which laws of God were the least they were going to get punished
for. And so and so they're in their minds. They're thinking,
you know, okay We can these are the laws over here that that
we can get away with we they're not gonna cost us much if we
happen to Get caught. So what does Jesus do? He knows
this is what they're doing He knows this is our tip thing everybody
here. Everybody here does it we all do it. And so what does
Jesus do? He gives an eternal weight He
gives an eternal weight to the least of the commandments."
Look at that statement again. Whoever then annuls one of the
least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same
shall be called the least where? In the kingdom of God. Whoa. Okay. He assigns the weight of the
kingdom of God to even the least of His commandments. He signs
an eternal side to every law of God. He assigns an eternal
weight to the least of even God's commandments. You have to consider
that, folks, that when we're doing things, we don't just look
at what we're doing and what we're saying and how we're behaving
from a horizontal point of view, from a worldly point of view.
We have to look at what we're doing, thinking, and saying from
God's perspective, from a kingdom of God perspective. There are
kingdom of God consequences Everything we do I Don't know how to get myself Regardless of y'all, you know
regardless of y'all I Don't know how exactly to get myself to
see everything from a kingdom viewpoint but that's what Jesus
is saying and here. You have to look at everything
you do from an eternal viewpoint. Everything you say, there is,
there is, there is no secular. You do not have a secular life. You do not have a secular job.
You do not live in a secular world. There is no secular music.
There is no secular TV shows. There is no such thing as a secular
world. divides the world into two categories,
godly and ungodly, holy and unholy, truth or lie, right or wrong. We think that being secular,
if we call something secular, it's somehow or another falls
in between. Godly and ungodly and it's you
know is it you know it falls in the crack there somehow another
and somehow another if it's secular God is not gonna judge it it's
neutral no there is no neutral there is no neutral there is
no excuses that's gonna appear before God and be applicable
to what you're doing now before you start throwing him books
at me Let me divert a little bit here, just a little bit. Just because it doesn't have
the word Jesus on it, or just because it doesn't have the word
God on it, or just because it doesn't have the word church
on it, or just because it doesn't have the word Christian on it,
doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad or evil. Now, this is a whole sermon that
I don't have time for, but all I'm trying to do is divert here, maybe for confusion or clarification,
I'm not sure which. Yeah, I don't know. But, you
know, music is a good, maybe an illustration, I'm not sure
how good an illustration it is sometimes, you know. There is
good music that does not wear the name Christian. There is
good music that doesn't have the name Jesus, or the name God
on it, or that's played in a church. You know, the music that follows
God's principles, the music that has good rhythm, the music that
has good timing, the music that has a good message, the music
that has a good purpose, that feeds the soul and feeds the
spirit and may calm the flesh. But it can't go to the point
where that music is making the flesh make suggestive movements
or that the music is controlling the body. At that particular
point, the music steps over the bounds. Classical music is wonderful
music. It doesn't have the name Christian
on it. It doesn't have the name Christian
on it, but it follows the principles of good, of what is good. It's
good music. This is a whole that's a whole
new thing there, you know sermon in and of itself But back on
point Jesus is warning his disciples that even what he considers to
be even though what they consider be small stuff and important
It's not small and unimportant. So then he says this he goes
on he says but whoever he increases his volume here he says but whoever
keeps and teaches them and He shall be called great in the
kingdom of heaven. Look at that phrase and I want
you to put it in context for me. I want you to put that phrase,
that last phrase, into context for me because I want you to
understand what Jesus Christ is saying in that last phrase.
Whoever keeps and teaches them shall be called great in the
kingdom of heaven. What does the pronoun, plural
pronoun, them refer to? What does the personal pronoun
them refer to? Where is it pointing back to?
What is the subject of that pronoun them? It's the least of the commandments. Whoever keeps and teaches them,
that is, the least of the commandments, the least of the commandments,
shall be called great. in the kingdom of heaven. The
word them is a plural pronoun, it is not singular, so it's not
referring necessarily to the law as a whole, but it's referring
back to the commandments. Them. Don't you know that when Jesus
made that last statement there, that last phrase there about
keeping the least of the commandments, she'll be called great in the
kingdom of heaven. Don't you know that shook their tree right
down to the roots? Because they thought keeping
the least commandments was their least problem. And they weren't
worried about keeping the least of the commandments. They didn't
care about keeping the least of the commandments. And all
of a sudden Jesus comes along and he elevates the least of
the commandments. You know, we're saying, oh, no
big deal. We say, oh, don't sweat the small stuff. Don't sweat
the small stuff, you know. We use that all the time. And
Jesus, He differs from that. That's not what he says at all.
And so he makes this great statement in verse 19, clarifying where
he wants to go, and then he comes into verse 20 and he slams him
to the ground. And he says in verse 20, for
I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that
of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom
of heaven. So, just for the sake of clarification, Who is Jesus talking to here?
Lost people or saved people? When he's talking about entering
the kingdom of heaven, who is he talking to? Is he preaching
to lost people out here or is he preaching to his disciples?
Well, he's preaching to his disciples, folks. That's the context. That's what it is. So if he's
preaching to his disciples here, he's certainly not preaching
about the possibility of losing it or salvation. You can't be preaching
about that, because we know that goes against a ton of other scriptures
that we don't have time to get involved in here tonight. So he's not explaining them how
to gain eternal life necessarily, because they're already saved.
He knows they're already saved. people. So this phrase here of,
you know, entering the kingdom of heaven, what is really going
on and what is Jesus really talking about here when he's talking
to his saved people about entering the kingdom of heaven? Well, obviously, Jesus is not
teaching them that you have to do the law, that you have to
perform the law, that you have to keep all of them in order
to get to heaven because, you know, it's an impossibility.
That's not going to happen, you know. But he says that your righteousness
has to surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees. Now, you've
got to understand, the scribes and the Pharisees had taken the
law and they'd categorized it. And they had, in the mind of
the scribes and the Pharisees, they had 365 positive commandments
of the law. that you had to obey. They had
248 negative commandments that you had to obey to. So you had
to obey all 365 positive commandments of the law, and you had to obey
all 248 negative commandments of the law, and if you did that,
if you kept all of those, and you could mark them all off,
and you got to the end, and you did them all, then in their eyes,
according to their interpretation of the law, you're good to go.
So when Jesus said you got to surpass the righteousness of
the scribes and Pharisees was he saying oh You have to keep
20 more commandments In order to surpass them which Jesus telling
his disciples. Hey guys, look you got it You
know, you know, I got to keep the 365 and you know, I keep
the 248 but I'm telling that you got to at least keep one
more You got to surpass, you know You got to surpass them
by 1 or 10 or 15 or 20 or whatever case it is This is what Jesus
was trying to tell him Obviously not. So what is Jesus thinking
about here? Is He thinking about doing something?
Or is He thinking about what righteousness is? He's talking
about what righteousness is. The difference between the righteousness
of the scribes and Pharisees and the righteousness that He
was offering them. You see, here's the deal. Let me just get out
of the theology here and get out of the nebulous world that
I've been talking about and bring it down to you. The righteousness of
the scribes and Pharisees was a self-righteousness. It was what they themselves had
achieved according to their idea of what was righteous, keeping
all these laws. It was a self-righteousness.
And what Jesus was trying to teach his disciples was, you
need my divine righteousness. It's not so much the doing of
the righteousness as Jesus was comparing the kinds of righteousness. You don't need the kind of righteousness
that the scribes and Pharisees are trying to tell you to have
because it comes from, it is self-righteousness that is performance-based. What you need is divine righteousness. You need Jesus Christ fulfillment
of the law kind of righteousness, which means the approval of God
because I am the righteousness that you need. So he's really
talking about two kinds of righteousness here. That which comes from the
Pharisees, which is self-righteousness, and the divine righteousness,
or the kingdom righteousness, which they could only get from
Jesus Christ, which they already had. They already had this righteousness. Let me give you a little secret
here. How can you tell when someone is operating under the influence
of self-righteousness? How can you tell when someone
is operating under the influence of self-righteousness? Because they act just like these
Pharisees. They get really, really mad.
When somebody is self-righteous, They're just a bomb ready to
go off. Their fuse is lit. A self-righteous person immediately
responds with agitation, vindictiveness, anger, getting even. That's how self-righteous people
act. That's what they do. That's what
the Pharisees were doing. They may look good on the outside,
and they may think that they're convincing you that they really
care about what's right, but when you cross them, when you
cross them, they get angry, they get bitter, and they have a mean
spirit. We're as a person, and you can
tell that. Look at people today. I know
that you're getting tired of me using this illustration, but
it is so in your face today to me. When you look at the rebellion
going on in the world today, and you see how people are in
the news, you see how they're throwing things and they're destroying
things and they're ruining things. These people are self-righteous. They are self-righteous. That's
why they're acting like they're acting. And that's why the news
kills them. But when you possess, back to
our point here, when you possess divine righteousness, Jesus is
saying your heart is changed. How do you demonstrate divine
righteousness? You demonstrate it by being poor
in spirit. You demonstrate it by mourning
over your sins. You demonstrate it by being gentle
because you know what it's like to be hurt. You demonstrate divine
righteousness by hungering and thirsting after righteousness. You are merciful and you extend
grace to those who disagree with you. You are pure in heart and
you seek to make peace between people. And you know that truth
is the only basis that's going to serve as peace between people. And you're being persecuted for
the sake of righteousness and for the cause of Christ. But
yet, in fact, and in face of the persecution, you are still
loving those people who are persecuting you. That is divine righteousness
demonstrated in your life. It is kingdom of God kind of
righteousness. It is the kind of righteousness
that Jesus Christ had, and it's the kind of righteousness that
Jesus Christ gives to you and me. And it surpasses that of
the scribes and the Pharisees, folks. It surpasses that of the
scribes and the Pharisees. Their righteousness was all about
how many laws they could mark off. And if you started messing
with how many laws they marked off, they got mad. Jesus is our righteousness. He is the law. He obeyed the
law. He kept the law. He did the law
because he was the law and he therefore is our righteousness. So the scripture says in first
Corinthians chapter 1 verse 30 By His doing, you are in Christ
Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness,
and sanctification, and redemption, so that it is written, let him
who boasts, boast in the Lord, amen. Now, last point. Here's what I want you to remember.
God's going to test you. God is going to try you tomorrow
or Tuesday or Wednesday or maybe every day this week. But I can
promise you that God is going to test you and try you and make
you an example of his righteousness to your family, to your children,
to your co-workers, to your wife, to your husband, to your friends.
God is going to put pressure on you. You are in the world
and God wants you to respond to the misery and sorrow of this
world with the kind of righteousness that is defined in the Beatitudes. That, I can assure you, will
happen in your life this week. It will happen this week. Next
week, we're going to start defining it individually. Beginning in
verse 21. Beginning in verse 21. Well alright,
appreciate you being here tonight.
Matthew 5:19-20
Series Matthew
Jesus is encouraging them to keep the least of God's commandments, which is indicative of the kind of righteousness that God demands.
| Sermon ID | 2617853162 |
| Duration | 30:35 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Matthew 5:19-20 |
| Language | English |
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