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.