Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from Matthew’s Gospel the 5th chapter:
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment… You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart… It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all… Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”
Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
I’m going to be honest with you. This is a hard text to preach. There is so much that is good in today’s Gospel reading, but the problem is that it is all Law. Jesus is very clearly telling us that the problems He addresses at this point in the Sermon on the Mount are things that He expects Christians to do. The Christian life, quite honestly, should look like this.
Not only should we not murder, but if we are wrongly angry with our brother or sister in Christ, if we call them names, if we wish in our heart for their death, or we wish them ill in anyway, we are breaking the Law.
And let’s be honest, this happens ALL THE TIME! None of us listen to Jesus on this one. We all grow unrighteously angry at others. We, each and every one of us, think that we are so much better than another person, we know better, we feel better, we see better than they do. They do something to make us upset. They do something that causes us to rage. They do something that just irks us the wrong way, and, man alive, we jump down their throats, we hold bitterness in our hearts, we call them fools and morons behind their backs. We do every single thing that we can in order to NOT be reconciled with them. We don’t want it, we won’t have it. It only makes us crazy. We have all broken this Law. And Jesus says that it is worthy of the fires of hell. So, there you are.
Then let’s talk about adultery. We are people who commit adultery every day, for the Lord says that should we even look at another person with lust in our hearts, we have committed adultery with them. And check out Jesus’ language here. This is more serious than just you committing adultery, you have now LEAD THEM into adultery. You sinning causes the other to sin. It doesn’t seem fair, does it, but it’s what the Lord says.
We live in a time today where we lust with our eyes, we lust with our fingers, we lust with our mouths. We lust all the time. We have lust available to us anytime we open a computer, turn on the TV, go to the movies, drive down the highway, open a book, for Pete’s sake. Lust is everywhere and we have embraced it, men and women alike. And we think it’s okay. We think it’s a little celebrity crush, it’s just a little pornography, it’s just a bookstore. It spices things up at home. Bull hockey! Jesus says if your eye causes you to sin, throw it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your TV, computer, car, causes you to sin, get rid of it. I don’t see very many one-eyed, one-handed, technology-less people here.
But Jesus ain’t done there. Jesus now rips into divorce, a related topic between lust and what He’ll bring up next, oath-taking. For Pete’s sake, you stood in front of a congregation, and before God Himself, promising that you would remain faithful to your spouse until DEATH do you part, not because you fell out of love, not because you grew apart, not because life gets hard. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. But we haven’t done that, either, have we, any of us? Even if you’re not divorced, you still haven’t been too good with what you promised others, and because of that, you have forsaken these words of Jesus.
Man, Jesus is ripping us down hard here. This is absolutely, one hundred percent true of what Jesus expects you to do. And there’s not a single person here who has been able to keep any of this. There’s not a single person here who can stand blameless before Jesus and say, “Hey, I did pretty good with this,” much less, “I kept this perfectly.” We are all deserving of hell. We all deserve to burn.
This is why this is hard. There’s no Gospel right in this text. So, maybe I should just sit down now and let you stew on this for a while.
But I can’t do that. There is no hope in that. What are we but Christians, who know we are poor, miserable sinners, who cannot stand before the face of God the Father and expect Him to be merciful based on our own merit? Nothing. We cannot stand before God based on anything we’ve done. We break every single one of His laws. We break every commandment, every instruction, every guide. Most times, we don’t even know that we’ve done it, and perhaps that’s what makes us all the worse. We cannot come to God and expect Him to give us eternal life based on what we’ve done.
But, perhaps that’s the point. I cannot stand before God and say I have been without anger, I’ve never lusted, I’ve never not kept an oath, I’ve been a man of integrity. I can’t. And neither can you.
There is one who can, however. His name is Jesus Christ the Righteous. He has lived the perfect life of obedience to all God’s Law, for He indeed is the one who gave it to Moses and all the people of Israel. He knew it perfectly when He explained it, and He was able to keep it perfectly. He obeyed everything. For this, He should have been able to stand before the Father and claim eternal life for Himself. He should have received absolute justice and been given every good thing.
But, that’s not what happened. Instead, He was lifted up before the Father, upon the cross, and the Father poured down wrath upon His head. All Jesus’ perfection was poured out, and the only thing that remained was the God-man who had taken upon Himself the sins of the whole world. Our sin was imputed to Him, placed upon Him, in order that God would judge that sin as Christ’s. And so Christ was judged, and He was found wanting. And He did this, for you.
He did this because He knew that you would be angry unrighteously with your brothers and sisters. He did this because He knew that you would be so laden down with lust that you could not even look at a man or woman without judging them by pornographic standards. He did this because He knew that you would divorce your spouses, with or without cause. He did this because He knew that you would not be able to keep your oaths perfectly, setting God up as a liar. He did this because He knew that you would need Him, you would need His perfection, you would need His forgiveness, you would need His strength to persevere, you would need assurance you are His own.
He did this because He loves you. And so, He took your place upon the cross, died for you, was resurrected for you, all to give you the promise of the forgiveness of all of your sins and to promise you that you, too, like Him, would be raised up from the dead into everlasting life. Jesus Christ took the punishment that brought us peace. Jesus Christ took death and evil, to give you life and good. Jesus Christ kept the commandments of God because the people of God cannot. Jesus Christ surely perished, witnessed by heaven and earth, so that you might love life, the life that He has given you now, and the life that He will grant you eternally.
With Christ’s blood, we are given new life. With His flesh, we are granted the ability to grow as Christians. Don’t get me wrong, yes, Jesus does say we are expected to do these things. We are expected to obey the Law. And when we don’t, we do indeed deserve hell. But, Jesus took that punishment for us upon the cross. Now, in Christ, we are set free of the Law’s demands. Before, the Law demanded we obey it perfectly in order to live. But now, in Christ, the one who kept all the commandments, the Law makes no demand on us for such life, for it is already won for us.
Instead now, as Christians, we are free to obey the Law. We can attempt to do so without fear of damnation. We do so, not because we want to be so righteous and holy, but because we do it out of love for the neighbor. We do it because the Lord has loved us, and so we love others. We do it for He has forgiven us much, we should forgive others. We do it because He values each person, so, too, should we value their bodies, their oaths, their personhood.
And when we don’t, because you know you won’t, be reconciled to one another. Repent, be forgiven, grow in Christ. He has forgiven you these sins, He proclaims it each and every service here. He proclaims it each time you remember your baptism. He proclaims it every time you eat His body and drink His blood. He has forgiven you, He has forgiven each and every person here. For He loves you. You are Jesus’ neighbor, and He has laid His life down for you so that you would be declared righteous on His account. God, He loves you so much. And He always will. Turn to Him, the only one who kept all these things perfectly for He has forgiven you perfectly of all your sin. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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