You've Heard It Said Part 1

This sermon is the third in our series studying the Sermon on the Mount. Today’s sermon and next week’s sermon looks at the “You’ve heard it said” phrases that Jesus uses. We need, first of all, to understand what Jesus is stating when he says these words. Jesus is not just another teacher, right? Jesus is God, Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus is preaching with total authority, as one who authored the scriptures, as one who is the Word of God. God the Father, breathed out, Jesus-the Word, by the person of the Holy Spirit—the wind, the breath of God, the words in the Bible. So, Jesus is giving true authority on right living before God.

This means that we approach the Bible with humility. We can’t come to it thinking we have all the answers. Have you noticed that there are instruction manuals for everything we buy? The creators of those things have specific information about the thing that you bought, so that you can get the most out of it, the most joy and delight. They made it, they know best!

We come to the Bible in order to understand how we were made, what we were made for, and then how to best function under our creator’s guidance. Therefore, we submit to God’s teaching, we submit to the Word of God. God knows how life works best. Since he created us, we can trust him.

What Jesus is doing then, in this passage, and in next week’s passage, but also throughout the whole sermon, throughout his whole ministry, throughout the whole Word of God, is teaching the truth concerning God, and living in relationship with and to God and others. As we have seen already in our passage, no one is perfect. Not every teaching is correct. The religious leaders of Jesus day, got many things right, but they also got many things totally, completely wrong. Jesus is giving the true teaching.

In those days, the religious system served the religious leaders more than it served God, and it held the people in bondage, not freedom. Over time, as one teaching built upon earlier teachings, corruption crept in. Innovation, progress, non-traditional understandings, enlightened learning, pragmatism, you name it, came in and twisted God’s Word into something unrecognisable. In contrast, when Jesus preached, people responded with, “Yes! This is authoritative! Yes! This tracks with what the prophets said! Yes! This is good and true.” And the religious leaders said, “No! This takes away our authority! No! This undermines our whole system! No! We can’t let this continue!”

So, Jesus, knowing all this, goes right at the religious leaders by starting with, “You’ve heard it said...” or “You’ve been taught that...” or “You’ve been led to believe that...” “But I say to you, I am now telling you the truth.”

So the first thing Jesus deals with is murder. Murder is the ultimate relationship ender. I mean, there’s no room for reconciliation after murder, right? Murder has been with us from the beginning. The first born son of Adam and Eve killed his brother, Abel. I mean, can you imagine the pain this caused for Adam and Eve?

“Do not murder” is the sixth of the ten commandments. It’s location in the ten is important. The Law, the Ten Commandments can be divided into two tables. The first table contains the first four and governs how we love God—that’s the greatest commandment. The second table contains the remaining six and governs how we love others. Do not murder, comes immediately after honour your mother and father. It addresses all our other relationships.

Now, if we were all together this morning, here in the sanctuary, if I were to ask, has anyone committed murder, how many would raise our hands? I suspect none of us would. And we’d be right in a literal sense, in that we haven’t intentionally, physically ended another human being’s life as an act of murder.

But Jesus says to us, “Whoever has been angry with his brother will be liable to judgement; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, “You fool!” will be liable to the hell of fire.

Okay, that changes things, doesn’t it? I don’t think any one of us could say, “Not guilty” to that. I mean, whenever I’m driving, there seems to be no shortage of fools all around me! But it is sobering, isn’t it, to hear these words of Jesus? The only response is to say, “I’m guilty.”

But these words are even more damning to the Pharisees and the leaders, because they know what they are saying and thinking about Jesus, and it is not complementary. They believe Jesus is a fool!

This is bad, bad news for all of us. We are far worse off than we like to think. We think we can justify ourselves as to the law, but we are all totally guilty. All are guilty.

We’ll leave us in that wallowing of guilt, and heap some more on! Look at the second half of our passage. Once again, we might be tempted to think, those of us who are married, “I’m definitely not guilty of adultery. I have only ever slept with my spouse. “Okay,” says Jesus, “But have you ever looked with lustful intent at someone who is not your spouse?” Have you ever given thought, or allowed your thoughts to go on about another, or others? Jesus teaches us that that makes us guilty of committing adultery in our hearts. let’s be honest. We are all guilty of that! We are all guilty of looking at other people, not with love for them, but rather with love for ourselves. Adultery is selfishness. It is using another person for your own satisfaction. It is extracting a need you have from someone else without any commitment on your part.

So, knowing this, what do we do with Jesus’ teaching?

Remember what God calls us to be: he calls us to be poor in spirit, to mourn our sin, to be meek, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful, to be pure in heart, to be peacemakers, and to praise when persecuted. In doing this, not of ourselves, but by the Holy Spirit within us, we will be salt and light in the world.

We don’t live any old way of our own choosing. When I was a kid, they came out with these utterly deplorable, utterly repugnant books. They were called, “Choose your own adventure books.” I tried to read one. I hated it. Maybe I was wrong, but, as you can tell, I feel quite strongly about it. I wanted to know how it really worked out, so I tried to read every option at the same time. Didn’t work. No, I’d much rather have the author make the choices and tell a great story!

That’s how it is with God. He’s the author, he’s got a plan, and a great way to live, the best way for us to live, and we keep trying to choose our own adventure by following one sin after another, and every choice ends in the same way, with pain and suffering. But God says, no, choose my way, choose my adventure, and you will have joy and delight and happiness and blessedness! God knows best, let’s go it his way! And that’s what we show the world! God’s way of living… but if we look just like the world… what will people see?

If you stop and think about murder and adultery, and how easily we commit both, and how hard it is to not to, we can quickly despair. But then we remember that Jesus fulfilled the law, Matthew 5:17-20. The law condemns us, right? The law shows us our sin, and it really reveals that we can’t save ourselves. That’s true. And so, we need a saviour. But a curious thing happens after we are saved. We start thinking we can live up to the law’s requirements, on our own. But if we couldn’t before, how can we now? We can’t so, we need Jesus, Jesus living in us, to keep his commandments. Jesus fulfills the law in us, in our lives! So we’d better be living his way!

We begin by knowing we all are sinners saved by grace. We receive grace and we give grace. We receive truth and we give truth. We know what Jesus requires and we don’t excuse sin. We deal with it—knowing that Jesus paid for it. We let go of it, and we turn away from doing it again. We need to be open and honest with ourselves and others. Sin has consequences.

We are to hate sin. We are to treat it with utter contempt. Jesus calls us to hate sin so much that we would rather pluck out a perfectly well-functioning eye than to use that eye to sin again. We’d rather cut off our hand, rather than sin with it again. This is hyperbolic language. If we followed this literally, we’d all be blind and handless.

It comes down to relationships, with God and with others. Jesus has already made our relationship with God perfectly and forever right. All we must do is believe, and then live in obedience. He has also made us right in our other relationships: first with our immediate biological families, then with our church family, and then with our neighbourhood—friends, co-workers, schoolmates, etc.

But hear this now. Relationships are important. What the Holy Spirit builds in our relationships has eternal significance. I am often asked whether or not we will recognise people in heaven. I believe that we absolutely will. Here’s why: Peter, James and John were present at Jesus’ transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-13). Moses and Elijah were also there. Peter recognised them. He wanted to make shelters for them. So they were also somehow physically present (a spirit wouldn’t need a shelter, right) and they were not in soul sleep. When we die, we go to Jesus. So, yes, we will recognise people in heaven.

Relationships are important. Think of your relationships in eternal terms. Don’t use people, either by putting them down, gossiping or slandering, or any other form of killing them to make more of yourself. Do not use them, as objects for your pleasure, by committing adultery in your heart, either by lusting after them, or mistreating them. Control yourself, by the Holy Spirit—exercising the fruit of the Spirit—self-control.

Be salt and light in your relationships. Keep the commandments in Christ, by Christ, in the fullness of Christ. He fulfilled the law, so that you can obey. Don’t be lazy, don’t look for the easy way out, by calling sin not sin. Step up to the challenge, live in Christ! Obey God by Jesus’ perfect power! Amen.