Pray with me.
We've got an easy text to deal with
today.
This is one of those seeker sensitive passages
of scripture, you know.
We submit to the lectionary, right, so that
we don't avoid certain passages of scripture.
There's a lot of those to avoid if,
you know, if we're insecure about the original
intent of what scripture is saying.
And that's what we want to get out
today.
So pray with me that I would hit
that original intent that Jesus, I believe, is
getting at in these passages.
So Lord, may the words of my mouth
and the meditation of my heart, that which
you have poured into me this morning, sitting
before you, that you would pour it out
this morning to nurture us, build us up
in the faith, to encourage us, to let
us know that you are a holy and
gracious father.
And in your infinite love, you made us
for yourself.
Amen.
We can go home knowing that.
In his infinite love, he made us for
himself.
It's a good father, right?
Father's a good word, too.
Mother's a good word.
It's not our idea.
It's the father's idea.
We're also dealing with wrong views of God
coming at us and screaming within us sometimes,
right?
Coming from that wrong place that is disordered
through sin and death.
The good news is that Jesus Christ came
to reconcile us back to the father, the
God and father of all.
Amen.
So we're going to be dealing with some
of the issues in between that we all
struggle with between the first coming and the
second coming of Christ.
Living in this present evil age, we all
are, but we're receiving a kingdom that cannot
be shaken.
The writer of Hebrews says in this kingdom
is coming at us in so many different
ways, but it's embodied in Jesus Christ in
his resurrection.
And in Christ now, he is our hope
of glory because it's Christ in you, the
hope of Christ in you.
So that's kind of the agenda today is
how do we live out of Christ in
us when the spirit and the flesh are
still warring against the full intent and the
original intent of why we were created?
He created us for himself.
We're really fighting for that.
That's a battle.
That Jesus is one.
And in our unity, as we cling on
to him, we get a glimpse of that,
but we're still fighting, we're still wrestling with
principalities and powers and with the flesh and
the lust, the flesh and the boastful pride
of life.
Another writer, John, gives it to us that
way.
We're dealing with Matthew five, beginning with verse
twenty one.
We've been walking our way through the Sermon
on the Mount.
We are beginning a new section in chapter
five, beginning with verse twenty one, where Jesus
begins to address common misinterpretations of the law
in the previous verses.
Jesus clearly says that he has not come
to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.
To perfectly satisfy its demands by accomplishing and
enacting all that was spoken of him in
the law, the Psalms and the prophets.
He thus meets the demands of God's righteousness
as the second Adam and through his whole
life, incarnation, birth, life, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension.
You see, our redemption is tied up in
all of that, not just the cross.
He does meet the demands of God's righteousness
as the second Adam, the second human being.
It's really how you want to hear that
through his whole life, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension
reconciles us.
He reconciles us to the father.
By sharing his life in us.
In Christ, therefore, becomes the new status shorthand
in Christ.
Paul uses it all the time.
I'm glad that he found something that was
shorthand because some of those paragraphs that Paul
uses with no commas or anything run on
sentences and everything like the first chapter of
Ephesians.
I'm glad it's not always like that, that
he can boil all that down to a
single sentence.
And say, no, all of that is in
Christ.
In Christ becomes the new status for the
people of God, in Christ becomes the new
status of the people of God.
Savor that shorthand for the story of redemption.
And he gives us what was mentioned in
the preceding verses as an exceeding righteousness, unless
your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and
the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom
of heaven.
What is that all about?
How does this exceeding righteousness as salt of
the earth, light of the world and a
city on a hill manifest?
Well, he begins to clear up common rabbinic
misinterpretations of the law in this verse, 21
and following six of them.
I'm sure there's many more, but he only
chose six on the Sermon on the Mount.
What do I mean?
Jesus does not begin with the common phrase,
it is written that I say to you.
So he's not contradicting the law.
This is a clue, along with the string
of references to the teaching of the scribes
and Pharisees throughout this sermon.
Makes mention of them, and at the end,
Jesus, I believe, is addressing an oral tradition
and wants to correct it in these six
verses.
The scribes and the Pharisees teaching would always
reference a certain rabbinic school of interpretation, Hillel
and all of these contemporaries of Jesus.
And they had their own little school and
ways of interpreting the law, and most of
them really made it easier to do the
law.
Of course, it's not doing the law that
way.
And so everybody knows this.
Jesus is the only one that could fulfill
it anyway.
Right.
I intend to abolish it.
I came to fulfill it.
And the scribes and the Pharisees were trying
to lessen the demands in order to fulfill
it.
But that was impossible.
And so the scribes and Pharisees, they would
always quote their sources as a means of
their authority.
Right.
And this is why, upon hearing Jesus teaching
at the end, the hearers conclude with amazement.
This man teaches with authority, not like the
scribes and the Pharisees.
Who quote every other rabbi to make their
point.
Jesus is the new rabbi, the last rabbi.
And he's come to set it straight, all
the false teaching, all the misinterpretations.
You have heard that it was said, not
you've heard it's written.
You've heard that it was said that I
say to you, OK, that's that's my understanding
of where we're going and why Jesus is
doing this.
He chooses six misunderstandings of the law and
seeks to correct and clarify their original intent.
And so this homily will consider the first
four, not in any way attempting to expound
on these four areas.
We would never be able to do that
satisfactorily.
You could do a whole course or you
could get a Ph.D. in anger.
Right.
And emotional disorders and all of that.
Right.
From a psychological or a theological perspective.
We just know what anger is.
We know what murder is.
I don't have to spend much time on
that.
Right.
We get it.
But rather, I want to place all these
things.
Anger, murder, lust, adultery, divorce and oath taking,
which is assuming that we lie.
I want to place them within the larger
story of redemption.
This is where I was going as I
was reading and preparing for this.
This sermon, I just said, Lord, this is
a 15, 20 minute thing.
And so how do you do this?
Anger, murder, anger and murder go together.
Lust and adultery go together.
Divorce and then assuming adultery go together and
oaths.
He begins with murder and then it leads
to the foundation of murder, which is he
begins to address anger.
What we want to do is set this
in a liturgical context because that's what we're
here for today.
And it's all about reconciliation and how to
live a reconciled life because we don't get
along.
Only in Christ we can get along.
It's hard for human beings to live through
the covenant of marriage.
It's hard for Christians to to love each
other.
Right.
I mean, the New Testament's just it explodes
with all of the stuff.
That's why we have the New Testament.
I mean, it's what Paul's addressing is most
of our problems of not being able to
get along or living disordered of passions and
desires.
Right.
He's addressing that disorder and he's always bringing
us back to the indicative.
But this is who you are.
You're struggling with lust, but this is who
you are.
You're about to divorce, but this is who
you are.
Right.
I know you're angry.
You could actually look at the structure of
this where a lot of relationships enter into
matrimony, not with anger, lust and divorce, but
with lust, anger and then divorce.
That's kind of the sequence of the erosion.
Right.
Lust can bring us together, but it won't
keep us together.
And then the anger starts and we start
blame shifting, just like right back in the
garden.
It's this woman you have given me and
this woman has been talking to snakes.
This is the human condition.
And this is what the liturgy, this Eucharistic
prayer, if you want to memorize it, it
is powerful, holy and gracious father.
To savor that, because he must for God
to be God, he must be holy and
he must be gracious.
We've got to believe that and experience that
a holy and gracious father.
In your infinite love, who God is out
of his being, out of himself, in your
infinite love, you made us for yourself.
I mean, gosh, man, I could just stop
right there.
And if we could sign off on that
and go, I'm convinced we're convinced.
But then we get jostled a bit in
the real world or in our relationships or
in our marriages or whatever.
And at work, we're challenged to hold our
profession of faith right to to really like
I am living into this in your infinite
love.
You made us for yourself.
But when we had fallen into sin in
the garden and become subject to evil and
death.
You, in your mercy, sent Jesus Christ, your
only and eternal son, to share our human
nature, to live and die as one of
us.
Therefore, to reconcile us, to reconcile us to
you.
Here it is again, the God and father
of all.
That's the big story.
Where are we in that?
God created us for himself.
To use the Latin word to adore him,
adore, adore to the mouth, that's what adoration
means in Latin, and that's where we get
all kinds of terminology, right?
Oral hygiene, all of that, you know, the
mouth, it's all about the mouth to the
mouth, mouth to mouth.
God gives us mouth to mouth resuscitation, eyelash
to eyelash.
You see, when you're mouth to mouth, your
eyelash to eyelash, that's another image.
And that's what Adam and Eve were doing
in the garden.
It wasn't resuscitation, it was communion, mouth to
mouth communion with their creator.
No conflict, no lust, no disorder desires.
And they were listening to their father coming
in the cool of the day, in the
cool of the evening, and they would walk
together in some way of fellowship and communion.
That's the picture.
And so this adore, who wants to be
adored otherwise in the garden where there's this
creature who can't stand human beings and he
and he has fallen from grace and he
and he's present some way in the form
of a serpent or an image of a
serpent.
That's the image of evil.
And he begins to pull human beings away
from mouth to mouth with God, adoring God,
worshiping because he knows that orthodoxy, which is
right worship, produces orthopraxy, right living.
And so he comes to disorder their worship.
As God said, and, you know, the rest
of the story, when we had fallen into
sin and become subject to evil and death,
these four things and many other things that
anger, murder, lust, adultery, divorce and oath keeping,
you know, I swear by heaven, I swear
by the temple, you know, all this stuff,
all of this has come in as a
result of that back story.
We must live into the second human being,
the second Adam, our redeemer, our reconciler, in
order to live in this present evil age,
as it were, naked and without shame, without
shame.
That was the original intent, to live openly
and naked before God and without shame.
It's interesting that Jesus is talking about anger
and alter and murder in the passage.
You have heard that it was said to
those of old, you shall not commit murder.
Whoever murders will be liable to the judgment
that I say to you, that everyone who
is angry with his brother or sister, I'd
say, will be liable to judgment.
Whoever insults his brother will be liable to
the council and whoever says you fool be
liable to the hell of fire.
And then he brings in this thing.
So if you're offering your gift at the
altar.
And there, remember, your brother has something against
you, leave your gift there before the altar
and go first be reconciled, first be reconciled
or you won't have orthodoxy, which is right
worship.
What biblical passage could Jesus be alluding to
in anger, murder, alter?
Cain and Abel, absolutely.
And it's the first murder in the Bible.
And it was all about anger because there
was heterodoxy and orthodoxy involved.
Bad worship, heterodoxy and orthodoxy, right worship.
And the guy who did it right got
snuffed.
Righteous Abel.
And it's mysterious, but he offered from the
flocks of his herds, the shedding of blood.
The backstory is not told, but it still
Cain couldn't understand why isn't my offering acceptable?
And the Lord says sin is crouching at
the door and it seeks to master you.
But you must master it.
Well, thanks be to God, the greater righteousness
that Jesus is talking about.
And sin itself and death itself got mastered
in Jesus.
Yeah, I think that's an allusion to Cain
and Abel, which speaks so much about what
God wants is reconciliation and reconciliation in worship.
They're inseparable.
OK, so now we're looking at murder, anger,
lust, adultery, divorce, oaths, so on and so
forth.
Jesus doesn't give us a laid out theology
like Paul does about Paul lets us know
that in this big story, he says a
part of it is that we have crucified
the flesh.
We have crucified the flesh, what?
With its passions and desires.
I have been crucified.
I no longer live.
I live by faith in the son of
God who gave himself up for me.
It's an exchanged life now.
And the more we're struggling with anger, murder,
lust, adultery.
Pornography, whatever, all of that.
This is why I don't even have to
emphasize that stuff, because that's what we've been
delivered from.
And it's through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
I have crucified the flesh, that part of
me that wants to draw in and give
attention to my lust and my disordered desires.
This is the difference between a Christian on
the way and a Christian in bondage.
Stuck in sin and not knowing how to
get out.
And when I say stuck in sin, I
mean the statistics that so many are stuck
in with pornography.
Leading to adultery and feeding lust, and so
the original intent is what?
Sexual purity.
That's the original intent.
And that's what we're dealing with today, not
disordered sexual relationships, but a healed, reconciled, in
Christ perspective of who you are in Jesus
Christ.
Taking authority over lust because it's a powerful
principality, taking authority over all of these things
because he's given it to you in Jesus.
All authority has been given to me.
Get out there in that place where it's
going to be tough.
Go into all the world.
And boy, Paul did that and the disciples
did that.
They took the nations with that single focus
of adoration to God.
They went forth mouth to mouth with God.
We can choose who we will worship and
adore.
And I would just say this morning, there
is God's voice is calling us all to
adore him.
And if you've not been adoring him, this
is the time to re up because we're
going to confess our sins.
And we do we confess our sins every
day and in all the liturgical gatherings, because
it presupposes that we struggle with sin and
we're sinners, right?
That's no surprise to us.
That's the means of grace to be reconciled
with God.
Holy and gracious father in your infinite love,
you made us for yourself.
Holy and gracious father in your infinite love,
made us for yourself.
And when we had fallen into sin and
become subject to evil and death, you, in
your mercy, sent Jesus Christ, your only and
eternal son.
To share our human nature, to live and
die as one of us and to reconcile
us to you.
But I have all of these desires, right?
And C.S. Lewis addresses that, and I
brought the book today so I don't have
to botch the quote.
The thing is, is that desire is a
good thing.
Disordered desire is what we're dealing with today.
When we had fallen into sin and become
subject to evil and death, does that mean
the eradication of desire?
No.
One thing I desire that will I seek,
David said.
It's refocusing our disordered desires and passions back
to God's original intent that draws us near
to him.
Cleanses us, reconciles us and just baptizes us
in his love, because that's who God is
so good.
But sometimes it's so hard to receive.
You get it?
It's hard to receive sometimes.
It's hard to press into it.
It's always there, though.
I want you to know that.
And I want you to know, yeah, it's
hard sometimes to receive it and press into
it.
Yeah, I get it.
But we press in.
We still march into the truth and we
still proclaim the truth against our disordered desire.
In affections that are pulling us, as it
were, like gravity back into bondage.
No.
OK.
And so C.S. Lewis addresses this and
he says, we're not trying to kill our
desires.
That would be more from Kant and the
Stoics and is no part of the Christian
faith.
Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of
reward, the promises of reward and the staggering
nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels,
it would seem that our Lord finds our
desires not too strong.
But too weak, we are half hearted creatures
fooling about with drink and sex and ambition
when infinite joy is offered us.
We're half hearted creatures fooling around with drink
and sex and ambition when infinite joy is
offered us.
Like an ignorant child who wants to go
on making mud pies in a slum because
he cannot imagine what is meant by the
offer of a holiday at the sea.
We are too easily pleased.
This is the war, the battle, this is
the fight we need to encourage each other
in knowing this, right?
We're all in the same boat, G.K.
Chesterton says, and we're all seasick.
Here's the deal.
Rather than lustful intent and anger and all
of this disordered passion, it sounds really right.
Who wants to go to that party?
C.S. Lewis ends in his great sermon,
The Weight of Glory.
He basically says that if we could only
understand the person sitting next to us and
the glory to be revealed, we would be
tempted to fall down in worship.
That person, and this is what Paul means
when he says, we no longer know each
other after the flesh, lust, anger, ambition.
But now we no longer know each other
after the flesh.
You don't know your wife after the flesh.
You don't know your husband after the flesh.
You don't know your brothers and sisters after
the flesh.
After the flesh, what does that mean?
That old creation that's been, you know, full
of evil and sin and death.