Let's start with a question. In verse 48, the summary of the prior, is this a summary of the prior paragraph, or the summary of the prior chapter? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. Is that the summary of the prior paragraph, or is that the summary of the prior chapter? The more I thought about it, the more I think that it is a summary of the whole chapter. And as such, we'll spend this morning reviewing the chapter in such a way that I hope it helps tie it all together. We're not gonna look at the intricacies, we're gonna look at it from an overview. And I hope to show that the whole chapter is leading to verse 48. Jesus starts his sermon by telling us who the happy people of a happy God are. Matthew 5, 3-10, He says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So we talked about how this is a whole new breed of people. We went through the progression at great length. We saw how spiritual growth happened to these people. We saw what the work of God on their lives produced step by step by step. It created a person that is otherworldly. This person just does not tick like the rest of human beings on the planet. They have experienced a significant change from the inside out. From the description of what a real Christian is, Jesus took us to our purpose. Remember, he made that jump, showed us what a real Christian was, and he moved to why we're here. And it's what our days should be engrossed in. Matthew 5, 13 through 16, you're the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It's then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand that it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. And then next, Jesus teaches about why he came. And one of the ways of describing why Jesus came was to say that he came to fulfill the words of God. Jesus came to fulfill the words of God. This glorious Old Testament that God provided to reveal himself is the same Old Testament that Christ's mission was to fulfill. Matthew 5, 17 through 20. Don't think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For surely I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Remember how we looked closely at this as we were going over it? Remember that the jot and the tittle were the smallest letter, and not only the smallest letter, but the smallest mark on the letter. And Christ went out of His way to make it clear that His life was not a correction to the Old Testament. And His teaching was not a correction to the Old Testament. It was not a change to the Old Testament. It was an absolute endorsement of the Old Testament. And this gives us one of the most profound interpretation aids in applying this passage. And it's been so terribly helpful. The teachings of Christ cannot contradict the Old Testament that He was committed to endorse it. And that helps us, that helps us so much. We can check using this principle to make sure that we're applying everything the way Jesus said. If we are, it does not contradict anything that is taught by principle in the Old Testament. By that one principle alone, we can know for sure that Christ was not delivering this brand new ethic, a new Jesus way of living. He was not delivering anything new at all. All of the understandings that loft Jesus' teaching as his radical new mandate for the human race or some beautiful new proclamation to stand in the face of all that was said before are just Well, wrong. Jesus is teaching his disciples what the law had said all along. Now, who were the teachers who held the title of being teachers of the law in Jesus' day? They were the scribes and the Pharisees, ultimately. The Sadducees were the power elite. of the day. The Sadducees were the liberals, the theological liberals of the day. They didn't mind bending things for their profit, especially politically. They were not at all that concerned about exactly what Scripture said. They weren't real down-to-the-letter kind of people. They limited spiritual things to much smaller box, so they're not the ones Jesus talks about in the rest of the chapter. We know we're getting this right because it fits the flow of the text. Now what is the most logical thing for Jesus to talk about after just telling us that he was all for the real Old Testament teachings? Look what he says next. For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you'll by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. He has just introduced us to the rest of chapter five. Christ is saying, your experts are teaching stuff. Oh yeah, you've heard the stuff they've been teaching, you've been hearing it all along, it's their party line. They posture themselves as being the pros in the business. They see and present themselves as the answer people. But you know what? What the Pharisees teach and believe cannot save them. What the Pharisees teach and believe will not save them. You need to be saved-er than the Pharisees. Romans tells us that the Israelites did not attain the law of righteousness because they did not pursue it by faith, but by the works of the law. They were using the law as a tool to give them steps to earn approval to God. by God, and they were trying to attain something instead of receive something. Instead of the law driving them to poverty of spirit, which is where the truth of the law would take every truth-seeking person, the Pharisees figured out a way to justify themselves. wrong use of the law. They used the law to prove that their way of living was good with God. Their fleshly way of living, the way that they could live naturally, by the fruit of their discipline and effort, would win favor with God. And if it appeared not to work, if it appeared that they might be failing, well, they reworked the law a little more. They did a little bit more work in their study and come up with something that made them look better. So we start with this phrase in verse 20 that our righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, and it ends by giving us the goal. Our righteousness must exceed the completely insufficient righteousness of the Pharisees because something a million times higher is in mind by Christ. The law was pointing us to a righteousness by faith that will have a perfection about it that in some small way resembles God himself. That's the goal. Now, at that point, in light of all the heresies out there, I wanna make it perfectly clear, we do not become little gods. That is a huge heresy that's out there now, and it is just growing, which, surprise, surprise, I mean, the devil started with it. You shall be as gods. And now, it's becoming a mainstream piece of false doctrine. But the goal of our righteousness is that we live in such a way that a person living in the darkness sees the same light in us that they see in God. We become a reflection of God's light. That is how we live. They see grace pouring out on the undeserved by us that looks just like the grace of God that God pours out. The goal of salvation is for us to become like God. We don't become God, but we take on some of his traits that are otherworldly. Now, going back to where we were before we jumped to the end, remember what we were looking at. Jesus was talking about the severe failure of those holding the reins to the scripture. So what would we think Christ would do next? exactly what he did. It's simple. He goes through a series of examples and he certainly could have come up with more. But Christ picks out several of his favorites, maybe because they were the most obvious, and the most obvious to make an example out of to the people. It wouldn't take a whole lot of deep understanding of theology for these people to get this. So he picks out some of his favorites. So Christ essentially laid out the model that we follow. The Old Testament says something, the Pharisees taught a distortion of it, Jesus taught the essence of it. And that's what we went through. Jesus proceeds to show us how the Pharisees had minimized the perfect law of God so it was fully attainable by anyone who wanted to, as long as they went strictly by the Pharisees' rules. Then Jesus proceeds to show how the law, when really understood, guides a believer in a way of living that they have no chance of perfectly fulfilling. But that's okay, because these people already understand poverty of spirit. They already get it, that they can't earn it. There's little surprise when they fail to meet, when it's exposed to them, hey, I screwed up here. I did not live perfectly here. I did not fulfill what Christ said here. There's not a big surprise. They know that they never have and they never will earn God's favor by their fleshly effort. They know that everything they have is from grace. So they're willing and even want to do the things that God truly requires. They know it's gonna be an uphill battle, they know it's gonna be a struggle, they know themselves, they know the poverty of spirit, and they know that they will never do it perfectly, but they want to want to. And that is the sign that God is in them. They want to want to. They would have never wanted that. They might have wanted the benefit, but they would have not wanted the character of God. They would rather be failing at that which God truly wants than to be succeeding at something that God does not represent at all. They would rather be a faulty reflection of that which God really wants than a perfect reflection of something that looks nothing like God. What Jesus lays out is a million miles removed from the Pharisee's teaching. But it's how we are to live as Beatitude believers. It is how we are to live as supernaturally changed people. Remember how Jesus started with murder? That was his first example. And he basically tells us to stay off the murder train altogether. Then he explains the adultery really starts when we covet, and avoid coveting like it's the coronavirus. Do anything to get rid of it stronghold on your heart. And then Jesus talks about divorce, and Jesus lets us know what a big deal marriage really is, and that only sexual sin by a believer, or non-believer, or abandonment by a non-believer, is reason for divorce and allows remarriage. Otherwise, we need to figure out some way of working this thing out, even if separation might be a tool in that process. I added that in, but that's the kind of attitude we gotta have in this. And then Jesus talks about using oaths as tools of deception. And Jesus lets us know even playing those games at all is in the devil's playground. Simply tell the truth in your normal communication. Don't embellish, because that leads to deception. And then Jesus talks about justice and lets us know that justice is not an individual mandate. The civil government was given the job of justice. As much as we can, we should remove a wicked person's control over our behavior and attitudes. We should be submitted to King Jesus and not King Flesh, to the place where a person cannot push our buttons with insults to our dignity, removal of our property, threatening our security or demanding our time. We must have the attitude that asks, what does King Jesus require of me at this moment, require of me at this moment? I think it's safe to say that there is no human other than Jesus that will ever carry that out perfectly. It is so astoundingly difficult because it goes so much against our flesh and our fleshly impulses. And finally, Jesus talks about who we are to love and how we are to love. And we find ourselves seeing humanity from His gracious perspective. We reflect Him when He loved us, when we were His enemies. We issue out good things to bad people. only because it's like Jesus. It's like what He did to us, and we do it now to others. We go beyond any idea of economy, to give something to get something. That's how the world lives, you can expect that. That's not really a virtue. And we move on to an eternal framework where we give out good things to evil people because our Father makes it His normal business to do the same. That's why. And that's where we reach our conclusion. We've gotten to the verse 48. Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. Notice the you shall. ESV says, therefore you must be perfect, and I think that's a better interpretation. You must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. What's the point here? Would Christ have gone through all the beatitude traits to only at the end tell us that we are all completely disqualified and we will never receive our reward? Obviously, that cannot be it. Given what the Bible tells us everywhere else, we cannot possibly arrive at that conclusion, that unless we're perfect, we won't be saved. After all, we as believers live in the belief that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I'll bet most of us have that verse memorized because most of us have needed it every single day of our lives. Yet we cling to that, we hold to that, because if that's not true, we're all lost. Who of us has not had to assure his or her heart a million times with that verse? I hope, well, I sort of hope I would be alone, but I doubt that I am, that we're all in this together. No, we cling to the fact that we're saved by faith, and we know that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, and Christ Jesus our Lord. I think the next verses help us to understand a little better, and it's verses that we, again, cling to and live in. Ephesians 2, seven through 10. So that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works so no one can boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. I believe it works out like this. We need a greater righteousness than the Pharisees. We need more than a workspace righteousness that a human being could somehow attain to. That will never do, no. Righteousness that will achieve salvation must be perfect righteousness with no sin in it. Well, everything that Christ said in each of his examples showed us that this absolute righteousness, which it's very clear that it's impossible for us to do perfectly, This absolute righteousness is unattainable by our efforts. So when Christ gets to the end, he tells us, friends, this is what righteousness is. If you wanna know the right thing, the righteous thing, in each of these situations I just laid out for you is what I said. And in the spirit, you are now capable of doing it. But because we live in the flesh and are surrounded by the world and are inflicted by the devil, failure is a certainty. But Christ wants there to be no confusion. If you wanna know what the perfection of my Father is in these situations, I'm telling you. I just told you what God thinks, how God sees it. What I just told you is what perfect looks like in the examples that he gave. In fact, Jesus could say, watch me, and you will see what perfect looks like. That's what perfect is, and that's what you must be. That righteousness is the righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the Pharisees. And that's the righteousness that you need. You can't cheat like they do. You can't bump down the law to say things that make the law achievable by your efforts. You can't play their tricks. Don't even try. You cannot grade your efforts on a curve where the highest score gets the A no matter how far it falls short of perfection. No, God's standard is perfect righteousness. And that's what we must shoot for and that is what we must attain in some way. And here's the beauty of it all. The perfect righteousness that we are required to have is graced to us. through Christ Jesus. And we get it by confessing with our mouth the Lord Jesus, that Jesus truly is King, and believing in our hearts that God really did raise Him from the dead, and along with the understanding of the reason that Christ died, then we will have eternal life. When we come to Christ in salvation, we receive this perfection that is required of us for salvation. When we come to Christ in salvation, we receive this perfection that is required of us for salvation. But that's not the whole story. Remember what Ephesians said, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. The righteousness that we were given at salvation was imputed righteousness. It was counted toward our account. But that righteousness was not imparted. We are not given full possession of it. It does not become us. Our flesh was not instantly removed. Oh, what a sweet day that will be, but it is not today. Our wicked desires didn't instantly turn into good ones. No, that's the rub. We're counted as good, but we don't exhibit the goodness unless we are looking at our righteousness from God's courtroom. From where God sees in terms of judicial judgment of us, Christ is our absolute righteousness, perfect righteousness. But this new birth has enabled us for a whole different way of life now. What Christ described earlier, we can now do because we are empowered to do it with a new life. God created us for good works and God created the good works for us to do. So like we cannot ever say enough that we begin to do the perfect things because we know them to be like God. We don't do them all. And even when we do them, they're not perfect. They're mixed with us. But Christ laid out what the holiness we were given by the blood of Christ looks like in day-to-day decisions. So we have the glorious opportunity to live like a blood-bought child of the King. That's the essence here. is when wicked men push our buttons, or when we're tempted to win the affections of our neighbor's wife, or when someone has done us wrong and we want vengeance. Even though we do not always do it, we can now call a spade a spade. We can see it from Jesus' perspective. He told us what he wants. He made it clear to us. He showed us what the law expects. When we're tempted to excuse ourselves, we can say, no, that's not what King Jesus said. King Jesus said, this is what looks like God. I can see that. I can't pretend, I can't hide behind anything. I can't excuse my failure, but I can confess it and depend on my imputed righteousness to save me, not my imparted righteousness. Good works, imparted righteousness, is the evidence of salvation, of imputed righteousness. Imparted righteousness is the evidence of imputed righteousness. Let's look at what our brother Jones has to say. Is there anything more discouraging? We feel that the Ten Commandments, the ordinary moral standards of decency, are difficult enough. But look at these statements about not even looking with lust, about going the second mile and throwing in the cloak together with the coat, and so on. There's nothing more discouraging than the Sermon on the Mount. It seems to throw us right out and to damn our every effort before we have started. It seems utterly impossible. But at the same time, Do we know of anything more encouraging than the Sermon on the Mount? Do you know of anything that pays us a greater compliment? The very fact that we are commanded to do these things carries with it an implicit assertion that it is possible. This is what we are supposed to be doing. And there's a suggestion, therefore, that this is what we can now do. It is discouraging and encouraging at the same time. It is set for the fall and rising again. And nothing is more vital than that we should always be holding these two aspects firmly in our minds. The Christian is a man who goes beyond what a normal human can do because he has been enabled to do the impossible through the power of the Holy Spirit. I can do all things, and those are the things we are empowered to do in the Christian life, like suffering in the example of the verse, through Christ who strengthens me. We have a supernatural fruit. We're not like other men. God has gifted us to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees. At the same time, we are like God and like Christ. We aren't junior models of them, but we have a family resemblance. We do some of the same things. We have some of the same traits, because we have learned them from our father, God, and our brother, Jesus. We see the whole world different. You think about it. I mean, how you see the world as a believer, it is completely different. than how the world sees it. The Pharisees saw the law mostly in terms of what they should not do. We see it in terms of a higher way of living. We see love as what we exist for. And love is primarily a positive thing, a proactive thing. We are here to continue pursuing that quest that is most satisfying and motivating to the human heart. We live in the love of God and the love of others. We have a purpose far bigger than ourselves. It's even bigger than what contains our own self-interest. Our quest is not only to resemble our God, but to love Him to the point of congruity. That's the thing. Not only that we love Him, but we love Him to the point of congruity. That's what Jesus is talking about. That is what he is calling us to today, tomorrow, next year, next decade, until he calls us home. And what is our destiny? One glorious day, our imputed righteousness will match our imparted righteousness. Seems hard to imagine. Seems hard to imagine now. But one day, the righteousness of Christ will match the righteousness that he has given us. The righteousness that he has counted toward us will match the righteousness that we live. Our actions and our attitudes will actually be perfect, just like Christ, and just like we aspire to now. while knowing our poverty and spirit. We will not attain the goal by our continual improvement. It will still need to be given to us by a gracious act, a tremendous act of grace. But by the time we are given this perfection, it should not be completely out of our realm of experience. We ought to know what it is to love God so much that we grace those who hate us. We ought to know what it is to have pure hearts towards someone for whom we are tempted to have all other kinds of thoughts. We ought to know what it is to long for God's grace to be shown to some whose evil heart is doing evil things. We should be experiencing this radical transformation daily. We are supposed to smell of heaven. And we do that by being like God. We do that by doing what King Jesus said, and we do it by doing that in faith, trusting completely in his provision. There's no sense delaying these changes. Let's challenge each other to prepare for a steady diet of perfection that we will have in heaven by practicing the attitudes and actions now. Let's practice to get ready for the environment that Jesus has spent over 2,000 years preparing for us. We might as well get used to it. And we have that glorious opportunity now to do so. Therefore, you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. Let's close with a prayer. Lord, we thank you. We thank you that we come, we have communication at all, we even exist because of your tremendous grace toward us and your mercy. That you would not kill us because we deserve to be killed, but that you allowed us to live. And not only that, but you reached out to us and grabbed us by the heart and for reasons we'll never understand or at least we certainly don't understand now you picked us you selected us and you brought us to yourself what what amazing amazing grace and lord we're we're in communication Now Lord, we want to follow you, at least we want to want to follow you, in this Sermon on the Mount process, where we do things that are completely contrary to the flesh, for the only reason that you said so and we love you. So we drop all of our defenses, We drop all the things that we have carefully built over the years. We drop them all in submission to you, and we say, yes, Lord. Lord, that is what we want to do. That's what kind of people we want to be. That's the kind of life we want to see. This week, we will see a mixture, and Lord, we ask that you would provide us your Holy Spirit to show us, to come alongside of us, to guide us, and to help us to come out at the end of the week being just a tad bit more like Jesus than we went into it. We just thank you and praise you, in Jesus' name, amen.