RIGHTEOUSNESS PAR EXCELLENCE
Matthew 5:17-20
1. I have been an “average person” much of my life.
• During my school years, I was an average student in my class. I studied and worked and aimed as high as I could, but I knew there were always those other students who would consistently achieve higher grades than I did.
• I played cricket, rugby, tennis and participated in swimming and athletic competitions. And while there were the few occasions in tennis and athletics where I excelled, by and large I was an average guy.
• When I went to university at age 17, I was at least ten years younger than all the other theological students in my class and felt totally out of my depth. They would be off discussing deep issues I had never even considered and authors I had never even heard of. Though at the end of my third year I did finish at the top of my class, for much of the rest of the time, I felt quite a lot less than average!
• In my years of ministry, especially in this country, a large part of it has been spent in very average sized congregations. While others have moved up the rungs of the ladder to larger and more influential churches, I have opted to spend my time in congregations of around this size.
• Financially, we have always lived among the average income earners and have not had any “Jones’s” with whom we needed to keep up.
2. I guess I just prefer hanging out with more with average people than with the elite of any group. I tend to feel much more at home and the sense of competition is just nowhere near as intense.
3. The scribes and Pharisees were the Spiritual elite of Jesus’ day and their interpretation and definition of righteousness had become the benchmark by which everyone else’s practice of righteousness was judged.
• Now here we find Jesus, who has just spoken in the Beatitudes about the way to enter the kingdom of heaven involving acknowledging our own utter spiritual poverty and bankruptcy, mourning our condition, coming in meekness and purity of heart and so on
• Where we are NOT trusting in or relying on any righteousness or goodness of our own – “nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling”.
• Here we have Jesus telling us that “unless our righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven”.
• This sounds like double-talk. I thought we were already included and blessed on the basis of NOT trusting in any righteousness of our own – and now here we are told that we will only get in if we are better at keeping the law than the scribes and Pharisees!!
4. Jesus, please. Something is not adding up for me and I am sure also for others of us here. I’m not one of the spiritual elite. I’m just an average guy and I mess up a whole lot. No way am I going to be better at keeping God’s law than those professional law keepers. Does that mean there is no hope for people like me?
• Well, before we get too hot under the collar and start dismissing all this stuff as just a bunch of confusing religious mumbo-jumbo – let’s allow Jesus to explain His perspective on God’s Law.
5. The first thing we hear Him say is “Do not think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them”.
• These words must have sounded almost as strange and unbelievable to those disciples as they do to us. After all it was the scribes and Pharisees who were so openly critical of Jesus and accused Him of being a breaker of God’s law – one who DID NOT observe rules about washing hands, about the Sabbath, about eating and drinking with known sinners, about allowing unclean lepers to touch him, about allowing a prostitute who had been caught in the act to go free, and on and on.
• So how is it that He proclaims to not only fully uphold all of the Old Testament – the Law and the Prophets – but go on to fulfill it? What does that mean?
6. The Jews of Jesus’ day had several things in mind when they referred to the Law.
A. It was used to refer to the Ten Commandments
B. It was also used to refer to the first five books of Moses – also known as the Pentateuch – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy
C. The term “the Law and the Prophets” referred to all of our Old Testament
D. They also used the term to refer to the Oral or Scribal Law – the vast number of rabbinical definitions and applications of the law handed down by the scribes over many generations.
o Around the middle of the 3rd C. A.D. a summary of all these laws was written and called the Mishnah – a book containing 63 tractates on the law.
o The English version runs to about 800 pages. Jewish scholars then went on to write commentaries on the Mishnah which are known as the Talmud.
o One Talmud originated in Jerusalem that was composed of 12 volumes and another from Babylon that made up 60 volumes!
o Their objective in all these writings was to try to extrapolate from the law the practical application for everyday life – but the effect was that of multiplying the laws and vastly increasing their burden.
o So taking the example of remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy, the scribes went on to debate what might be defined as work. One thing classified as work was to carry a burden. The scribes defined a burden as “. . food equal in weight to a dried fig, enough wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one swallow, honey enough to put upon a wound, oil enough to anoint a small member, water enough to moisten an eye-salve, paper enough to write a customs house notice upon, ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet, reed enough to make a pen”.
o Expanding on a basic rule meant that all kinds of additional sub rules needed to be made so as example, writing was forbidden on the Sabbath. But the question was asked, “What can be termed as writing?” Here’s the answer: He who writes two letters of the alphabet with his right or with his left hand, whether of one kind or two kinds, if they are written with different inks or in different languages, is guilty. Even if he should write two letters from forgetfulness, he is guilty, whether he has written them with ink or with paint, red chalk, vitriol, or anything which makes a permanent mark. Also he that writes on two walls that form an angle, or on two tablets of his account book so that they can be read together is guilty . . . But, if anyone writes with dark fluid, with fruit juice, or in the dust of the road, or in sand, or in anything which does not make a permanent mark, he is not guilty . . . . If he writes one letter on the ground and they cannot be read together he is not guilty.
7. This latter understanding of the law – this oral or scribal law is what Jesus opposed because it emphasized only the trivial externals of the law and ignored the heart and spirit of the law. It viewed salvation as dependent on human performance rather than on God’s mercy and grace.
• It is a view of God’s law that almost invites law breaking, because it puts the emphasis on me and my performance rather than on God and others.
• On another occasion Jesus summed up the entirety of God’s Law in just two short sentences by saying that the two greatest commandments are these, “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)
• What God is after is a love relationship with His people – not legalism. Rules can be followed – at least externally - without there being any relationship of love for God or for others. When you truly love God and others, your desire will be to do what fosters and builds up that relationship rather than what hinders it and breaks it down.
8. Now, I am going to assume that when each of you who is or has married did so and you stood with each other at the altar before God and the congregation and made your vows of love to one another, that you did not first pull out a long list of rules and regulations requiring your partner to agree to and sign on the dotted line first before you would commit to the marriage.
• I will help with doing work around the house
• I will take out the trash
• I will bring you coffee in bed each morning
• I will clean up the dog poop, etc.
• Love does not need an additional set of rules and regulations to govern its behavior. Yes, it will certainly need some nudges and reminders and acts of sorrow and repentance and correction every so often because our love is imperfect – but a new set of laws is not going to improve things – rather being refreshed in love will do that.
9. God’s law in and of itself is righteous – but it cannot make you and me righteous. On our own we can never fulfill all of the law’s demands. All the law can do is serve as a reminder to us of just how much we need the ongoing grace and mercy and forgiveness of Christ and the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit to reproduce the life of Christ within us.
• The purpose of the law is to bring us to Christ so that we might receive His righteousness as a free and precious gift.
• And growing in love for Him involves growing in our desire for His will and His ways to be perfected in us.
10. As our hearts are filled with both the Law Giver and the One who fully kept and obeyed all of God’s law, so His righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees will be perfected in us.
AMEN
