Life and Death…Reconciling the Law and Love
Scripture: Deuteronomy 30:15-20
I Corinthians 3:1-9
Matthew 5:21-37
When I looked at the date I would be speaking to you this time and saw that it was Feb 13th I thought how great it was going to be to speak about God’s love so close to the day we all proclaim ours on Valentine’s Day!
In fact one of my favorite gospel songs is by Janet Paschal called “Written in Red.”
It begins with the words, “In letters of crimson, God wrote his love, on a hillside so long, long ago. For you and me, Jesus died and love’s greatest story was told.”
Our texts this morning are not necessarily the soothing words of the lover of our souls as much as they are a scolding from someone who loves us far too much not to warn us about matters as serious as life and death.
If you have what is called a “red letter edition” of the Bible, you know whenever it quotes the actual words spoken by Jesus those words are printed in red ink. They also have quotation marks to show that Jesus was talking.
Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7 are almost entirely written in red ink.
Jesus is on a roll here. He is preaching to the crowds who already know a lot of the ancient scriptures. (That is a hard group to preach to!) They think they know it all already and do it all already. But Jesus knows they do not comprehend the depths of sin or realize how impossible it is for anyone to keep the law.
Since Eve succumbed to the lie of Satan we are pre-programmed with a default setting for self sufficiency instead of God sufficiency. We don’t think we have a problem.
Deciding that we are going to follow Jesus’ moral code in the Sermon on the Mount simply won’t work.
Even if we want to do good, we can’t sustain it for a long period of time before self interest takes over again.
And because the brain is a wonderful self-justifying organ, we believe deep down that we are good people.
Jesus came to tell us and demonstrate for us how far away from being “perfect” we really are, and then die to make a way for His perfection to become ours.
We tend to think of the Old Testament as being full of law and vengeance and can’t wait to get over into the New Testament gospel of Jesus and love. But here we see Jesus using the Old Testament law as his text and expanding its meaning!
Jesus begins by saying, “You have heard, but I say…”and he compares being angry at someone as being just as serious a sin as murder which carries with it the penalty of hell! (And he says insults and name-calling count just as much.)
Oh, no, what are we going to do?
Then he goes on to say that if they are worshipping (like good Jews, Pharisees or Christians) and think about someone who is mad at them they should even leave the worship service and go out and be reconciled with that person before they come back to church to even put something in the offering plate.
(How can I help it if someone is mad at me?)
Be reconciled? What a strange piece of advice.
If I am not mad at them and they are still mad at me how can I make sure we reconcile?
Do you think maybe Jesus was pointing out that he is always ready to reconcile with us and we are the ones who are guilty of offending and being offended?
And yet we say we are worshipping him before we have even accepted his forgiveness for our sin.
We feel guilty so we come to church and make an offering but we go home feeling just as guilty as before and we still hold guilt against others too.
Now that point would hit just about everyone squarely in the eye most of the time. But in case they were good even-tempered folks with absolutely no quarrels or hard feelings with anyone, then Jesus went on to preach on his next point of reference.
“You have heard….do not commit adultery….but I say if you have ever looked at a woman in lust you have already committed adultery with her in your heart.”
Now, I don’t know many men who wouldn’t just go ahead and be honest enough to admit that they have looked at some of the beautiful women in the world or in a Hollywood film and just for a moment wondered what it would be like to be with her.
I am not saying they would actually do it, but Jesus isn’t either! He is saying that the mind is the first battlefield where we fight against following up on a sinful thought.
Jesus reveals that what goes on in the mind is just as much defiling as what goes on with the body. In fact, your body will only do what your mind has first contemplated.
He even goes so far as to say that it would be better to pluck out your eyes if they continued to give you lustful thoughts which might lead to sinful actions.
Then he says your hand would be another problem. Have you ever seen someone who just can’t seem to keep their hands off women? Dr James Dobson talks about how affairs begin when “just talking” turns into touching and the spark ignites!
And women are certainly not guiltless on this point, but are often the perpetrators and predators…going after a good man and causing him to fall.
Again Jesus says this is serious enough to cause your whole body to perish in hell.
Oh, no, what are we going to do?
Then Jesus says something like, “and you think you are fine just because you can get a certificate of divorce, but I say when you divorce you cause your wife to commit adultery and then you marry someone else and you are committing adultery.”
This is just too severe to contemplate! Why would Jesus be so hard on folks?
Don’t we all know how difficult it is to find the “right” person the first time and then marry them and be happy for a lifetime?
That is just too unreasonable, Jesus.
Again, this sounds stricter than the provision in the law Moses gave them that they could get divorced! So why would Jesus now say they couldn’t?
Jesus is saying that divorce was originally given as a merciful way out of a marriage that truly had already ended because of immorality, not as an excuse to have multiple sexual partners and call it legal.
Men were getting divorced over something as trivial as a burned supper and women were forced out into the streets and treated as “used merchandise” and forced into prostitution or a merry-go-round of marriages that lasted until the next thing she did which even mildly displeased a husband.
Jesus isn’t really giving a primer on divorce (that would be just more laws to follow, more rules to obey.) What He is saying is that marriage is a picture of our relationship with God which is based upon unconditional love that forgives everything and is patient and kind and eternal.
God is into saving relationships.
Serial monogamy makes a mockery out of marriage and damages the very fiber of families. Jesus is saying that makes marriage and love meaningless.
Oh, no, what are we going to do?
Going on to a fourth topic that would surely involve most everyone now, Jesus says we should not take any oaths or give statements that swear to the truth of them.
Well, what is that all about? Does it mean we shouldn’t follow public policy to give oaths in court about our testimony?
Again, reading it against the backdrop of that day makes it a little easier to understand.
The religious leaders had created a complicated system for determining just when they had to keep a promise—just how binding it was.
Sort of like us… when something becomes too hard, or inconvenient, or we just forget to do something, we make excuses.
Jesus is saying “a promise is a promise.”
If you say you are going to do something, then do it! You shouldn’t have to swear to it.
Don’t say ‘yes’ when you really never plan on carrying through. And that goes for saying “no” as well. Don’t be wishy-washy.
And I think Jesus is trying to teach one more thing in this case. In our daily dealings we are not to assume a “god-almighty attitude.”
He says we can’t guarantee anything on earth or in heaven by swearing we will do it or promising that it will happen for sure, because everything is in God’s control not ours.
So we should just say yes or no and do our best to honestly perform what we have said we would or would not do. We don’t have the power to guarantee anything.
There is one God of the universe and we’re not him!
It is evil to think you could ever possibly absolutely control an outcome. That is why later, James teaches we should say, “If God wills…”
And here is where our scripture reading ended today but Jesus wasn’t through preaching on a lot of other subjects such as retaliation and loving our enemies and giving to the needy… (which is included in next week’s lectionary passages in chapter 5 and going on into chapter 6.)
We could just get overwhelmed with all the ways we sin and fall short of the glory of God and what he expects.
Oh, no, what are going to do?
The answer is we are going to choose life, not death.
We are going to choose Jesus and not depend upon our own ability to keep the law.
As verse 20 in our reading in Deuteronomy says, we are going to “love the Lord our God, listen to his voice and hold fast to him.”
Because when we see the way God looks at sin and realize that it is not just the big stuff but also the little stuff that makes us all guilty, we know we can’t possibly summon up enough morals and enough forgiveness, and enough patience and enough certainty that we can live in this world and not commit sins.
Then we KNOW we need a Savior.
Jesus came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
He had to show us what we are so we would see why he came and call on his name…and be saved.
Then we walk in daily contact with the one who kept the whole law for us and doesn’t condemn us but mercifully cleanses and forgives us when we ask him to.
It is a relationship based upon love, not law.
That is why we call the gospel that Jesus died and shed His red blood to cover our guiltiness the really GOOD NEWS!
With the Holy Spirit living inside of us, and our relationship with God repaired, we are being transformed into His character. We can take an active part in His plan to share the love of God through Jesus Christ with as many as we can.
The “rules” are not doable, but the love is!
Go and love as God loves you.
