The great preacher of many years ago, Henry Ward Beecher, had a clock in this church that didn't keep good time. It was always too fast or too slow. And he fiddled with it month after month after month trying to get it right and it became kind of a standard topic of conversation in the church. Finally, in desperation he put a sign over the clock that said, "Don't blame the hands, the trouble lies deeper." That is the essence of the message that Jesus has for His followers in the passage that we’ll look at this morning. The trouble lies deeper.
You’ll notice from the earlier Scripture reading that I’ve chosen to look at a pretty big chunk of Scripture this morning and I’m convinced that is the appropriate way to handle this section of the Sermon on the Mount. This is one of those places in the Bible where it is easy to spend so much time focusing on all the details that we can miss the heart of the message. While what Jesus has to say about murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, retaliation and how we treat our enemies is important, we will miss the heart of the message if we limit its application to just those few issues.
This section of Jesus’ sermon is just a further explanation of the closing words of the passage that we looked at last week:
For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:20 (ESV)
As we discovered last week, the external righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees could never earn citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. It is only through faith in Jesus and trusting in His righteousness that we can ever be made right with God. And in this last part of chapter 5, Jesus provides his disciples with several examples to show that outward appearances and external actions just aren’t adequate to earn favor with God.
By now you know that I like to take Scripture and be able to explain it using a logical approach. So I really like being able to take a passage and neatly outline it and approach it in a very structured, logical manner. But in many ways that kind of approach would actually hinder our understanding of this particular section of Scripture.
So I’m just going to make some general observations about Jesus’ words here and suggest how those broad principles ought to be reflected in the way we live our lives.
Some General Observations
1. Man looks at the outside, God looks at the heart
The scribes and Pharisees thought that if they were just religious and appeared to be righteous from an external perspective, that would please God. But that view was certainly not in concert with the record of Scripture. Throughout the Old Testament Scriptures these religious leaders claimed to know and follow, God made it clear that He was more concerned about the heart than with outward appearances.
The clearest example of that is the account of Samuel going to the house of Jesse to anoint the next king of Israel. When he sees Eliab, the firstborn, he immediately assumes that he is the one God has chosen. But then we read these words:
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
1 Samuel 16:7 (ESV)
But that is certainly not the only place where God places an emphasis on the heart of men. Let’s briefly just a couple other passages from the Old Testament Law where we find that principle confirmed.
And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good?
Deuteronomy 10:12, 13 (ESV)
This day the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and rules. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul.
Deuteronomy 26:16 (ESV)
God had always been concerned with the heart of the people. So throughout the Scriptures He consistently pairs the commands to obey His law with a call to have a right heart.
But the religious leaders had missed that and they had focused so much on religion rather than relationship, on performing external acts rather than developing a right heart. So they could claim that they hadn’t murdered anyone, or committed adultery or violated an oath they had sworn to God, but on the inside they still harbored hatred and lust and deceit.
But God has not given us His Word just to prevent us from engaging in certain activities. It is not there just so we can tally up how good we’re doing at following the rules. God desires that His law leads us to right heart attitudes. He wants us to keep the law because we love Him and desire to please Him.
One of the potential dangers of getting into too much detail in this section of the Sermon on the Mount is that we can make it into a mechanical code of rules and regulations or develop it into some kind of checklist of procedures to follow. But through these illustrations Jesus is laying out broad principles that we can use to take all of His Word and apply it to our lives by starting with the right heart attitude.
So instead of asking, like the scribes and Pharisees, whether I violated the letter of the law today, what I need to be focusing on is my heart. The question I need to be asking is this: Have any of my thoughts, desires, or fantasies been inconsistent with the heart of God today.
Unfortunately, the church has often been guilty of focusing on the externals rather than the heart the same way that the scribes and Pharisees had done. Instead of focusing on developing the right heart attitudes we argue and debate over man-made rules about the non-essentials. And the world outside the church sees that and thinks that all we are about is rules – a list of do’s and don’ts that we not only use to govern ourselves but also use to condemn and criticize the people outside the church.
No wonder that kind of Christianity isn’t appealing to those outside the church – it’s not appealing to me either!
I’m not saying that we don’t need to hold fast to the absolute truth that we find in Scripture. Murder, adultery, divorce without Biblical grounds, lying, and retaliating all clearly violate Biblical standards and we should stand firmly against those things. But we also need to make sure that we dig below the surface and deal with the issues of the heart that lead to those actions. We need to remember that the trouble lies deeper.
2. God’s standard is higher than man’s standard
When the Israelites had been taken captive in Babylon, they gradually transitioned from their native Hebrew language and began to speak Aramaic. But since the Scriptures were still in Hebrew, the common people had to rely more and more upon the learned religious leaders to hear and understand the Bible. And over several hundred years, the scribes, Pharisees and other religious leaders had added their own man-made interpretations and regulations to the Word of God. Since the people didn’t have the ability to read the Bible on their own, they were dependent upon that teaching.
So when Jesus comes on the scene, He addresses that situation. You’ll notice that Jesus begins each section here with the words “You have heard that it was said…” He is not referring here to the law as it was given to His people through Moses, but rather to the oral teaching that the people had been subjected to which had perverted the original intent and meaning of the law. And in doing so, they had lowered the high standards that God had established for His people.
• Two ways in which the religious leaders lowered God’s standard:
1) They restricted the application of the Law
This is what they had done when it came to murder, adultery, and making oaths. As we have seen, God focuses on the heart. But the religious leaders had restricted the application of much of the law to just the letter of the law. So they could accurately claim that they hadn’t literally killed anyone one or committed adultery or broken an oath, while at the same harboring hatred, lust and deceit on their hearts.
2) They extended the application of the Law
This is what they had done with divorce and with the command to love their neighbor.
In the case of divorce, they had taken one part of God’s law that He had put in place to protect the woman whose husband had divorced her and turned it into a justification for divorce. Once again they missed the heart of God who hates divorce.
Since it is so crucial to this entire section, I’m going to address separately in a moment what they had done with the command to love their neighbor.
As we saw last week, Jesus made it clear that He had not come to abolish the law, but rather to fulfill it. But before He could complete that task He had to first restore the original intent of the law in the hearts of His followers. He had to make it clear that what they perceived to be God’s standard was really not God’s standard after all. His standard is much higher than the one that had been taught to them by their religious leaders.
But it was not just Jesus’ audience that day that needed a change in attitude towards the law. We need one, too. We live in a culture where we’re encouraged to just give “minimum due” in order to get by. We tend to raise our level of spending to match whatever income we have and so many of us live paycheck to paycheck. So when an unexpected expense comes up, we have no savings and we have to charge it to our credit card. And then when the credit card bill comes in the mail, we only have enough money to pay the minimum due.
But this idea of “minimum due” isn’t just limited to our finances. How many of us lived by that concept while we were in school? All we wanted to know is the minimum we had to do in order to pass the class or get a certain grade. I know I’m certainly guilty of that. I can still remember my last semester of college. I was taking 21 units and by the middle of the semester I already had several job offers in hand, so for a couple of my elective classes I just did what I had to do to pass the class.
There are some of us that operate in that manner in our jobs. We make sure we show up for work on time every day and put in a full 8 hours, but we never go beyond the basic requirements of the job.
And unfortunately that idea of “minimum due” has carried over to our relationship with God. I certainly know I was guilty of that for so long in my life. All I wanted to know is the minimum I could do and still get into heaven by the skin of my teeth when I died. I was just like those scribes and Pharisees who focused on the external things rather than having the right heart. And unfortunately there is a lot of evidence to show that many who claim to be followers of Jesus live their lives just like that. They just want to do the minimum that they can to be right with God.
But God wants something much better than that for us. He raises the bar not to keep us from achieving it or to frustrate us, but rather, as we’ll see more fully in a moment, to give us a rich, fulfilling, abundant and complete life. God sets His standards high in order to help us understand that the problem lies deeper.
3. Being “perfect” does not mean being without sin
Jesus closes this section with these challenging words.
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5:48 (ESV)
If we’re honest, our first reaction to those words is “that’s not possible! How can I possibly be perfect, especially measured against God’s perfection?” And I think that is the reaction that Jesus wanted to foster among His disciples. With those words, He is essentially reminding them of the opening words of His sermon:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:3 (ESV)
It is only when we recognize our spiritual poverty and place our trust in Jesus that we can ever be made righteous before God. We’re reminded here of the words of Paul:
For our sake he made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV)
But there is another principle that Jesus is teaching here and it requires us to understand…
• What it means to be “perfect”
This is another one of those places where we need a quick Greek lesson. The word that is translated “perfect” here is the Greek word “teleios”. It is an adjective that literally means “having reached its end” and it described something or someone who was “complete, fully equipped or mature”. Jesus uses the verb form of this word when He utters His final words on the cross – “It is finished”. By that Jesus meant that his journey here on earth had reached its end and that it was complete.
So Jesus is not saying here that His followers need to be sinless. He’s not saying that we can’t ever make a mistake again as long as we live. But what He is saying here is that we are to live the same kind of life that God lives – one that is characterized by wholeness, completeness and maturity.
But just as we can only obtain our righteous before God through faith in Jesus, it is only possible for us to live the kind of complete, full and mature life that God desires for us when we surrender our lives to His control. We can never live that kind of life by focusing on the external. The problem lies deeper.
4. The standard for the kingdom of heaven is to love as God loves
While the concept of being “perfect” certainly applies to the entire passage we’ve been examining this morning, it seems like it is particularly connected to the last section.
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
Matthew 5:43-47 (ESV)
As I mentioned before, this is one of those places where the religious leaders had perverted God’s law by extending the application of the law. To see how they had done that, let’s begin with the correct teaching from God’s Word:
You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
Leviticus 19:17, 18 (ESV)
The religious leaders had done two things that allowed them to extend God’s law beyond what He intended. First, you’ll note that they had removed or ignored several important aspects of this command. They certainly weren’t teaching that the people were not to hate their brother in their heart. They also had passed over the last phrase there – “as yourself”. So they were right when they preached “you shall love your neighbor”. The problem is that they conveniently left out some other significant aspects of the command.
The second thing they had done was to extend God’s law by adding to it – “hate your enemy”. Because they didn’t want to love everyone, the religious leaders justified their hatred by adding those words and by making them the standard by which righteousness was to be measured externally. And just in case they thought there was any doubt at all in God’s mind about whether we are to hate our enemies, we need only read these words a few verses later in Leviticus 19:
You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 19:34 (ESV)
It was God’s intention from the very beginning that His people love outsiders and even those they considered to be their enemies because that is how God loves. The fact is that every one of us was an outsider at one time – separated from God by our sin. We were His enemies – and yet God still continued to love us. And since that is the heart of God, that is to be our heart as well.
But that is not an easy thing to do is it? It’s not easy to love the unlovable. We’ll never be able to do that in our own strength or by our own efforts. It is only when we allow God to do that through us that we can even begin to live up to this standard for the kingdom of heaven. Once again, we must remember the problem lies deeper.
5. Proper application of the law will glorify God, not man
For the scribes and Pharisees, the goal of the law that they taught was to glorify themselves. They set the rules and then they made sure that everyone knew how meticulously they kept the rules they had established. In reality, they really didn’t care whether they were measuring up to God’s high standard. They just wanted to show that they were better than those they were teaching.
Essentially that is the fatal flaw of every religion. When we try to live our lives based on a laundry lists of do’s and don’ts, it inevitably leads to measuring our lives against others rather than trying to understand the heart of God.
The law was never intended to be an end in itself. Its purpose was always to reveal God’s heart so that we could then conform our hearts to His. And when we do that, it is God and not us, who gets all the glory. So let me remind us again that the question we ought to be constantly asking ourselves is not “Have I done something to violate the letter of the law?” but rather “Have my thoughts and deeds been consistent with God’s heart and have I glorified God with my life today? If I want to make sure that God gets the glory from my life then I must remember that the problem lies deeper.
Henry Ward Beecher was right – the problem does lie deeper. Man looks at the outside, but God looks at the heart. And if that is the case, then what we should all be focusing on is…
Developing a heart that pleases God
There is no magic formula I can give you here. I can’t leave you with “Five easy steps to develop a heart for God” or “Three keys to unlocking the heart of God”. But what I can do is leave you with God’s Word from the Psalms:
Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
Psalm 1:1, 2 (ESV)
Blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the Lord!
Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,
who seek him with their whole heart,
who also do no wrong,
but walk in his ways!
Psalm 119:1-3 (ESV)
There is just no way that we can discern God’s heart apart from His Word. The more time we spend in the Bible, seeking God with our whole heart and living according to what we find there, the better we’ll be able to develop a heart that pleases God and deal with the problem that lies deeper.
