So we are in our series on the Sermon on the Mount, and I'll just be honest with you, because this is gonna be a Sunday morning of some honesty. This is a tough week, hasn't it? Outside of Wash and Tough Parish. This has been a tough week.
Inside of Wash and Tough Parish has been a tough week. Inside Sterling and 10, this has been a tough week. Inside of Foundry has been a tough week. This has been a stressor.
And what the funny thing was is the way the timing worked, you'll see in a little while, we actually held this message off a week because I wanted us to be able to kind of get in and honest and open with stuff, and we realized that with us having a whole church in here last week with all the kiddos and everything, that might not be the best Sunday. And so we pushed it back, and I realized now what initially was a pragmatic decision, I realized now why it had to happen. Because all week long, I was with my friend David's family and his friends, preparing for that funeral, and then on Wednesday night with a visitation and Thursday with the funeral and just being around people, law enforcement officers who are, they're my heroes. And seeing the stress that they have in their minds was going through.
This message made sense. I know now why we held off a week, because it speaks to us. And what's funny is we didn't really have to change that much. There's a couple of things.
I felt the need to move and shift around the whole experience was leading us, but this is a message for times of stress. This is a message for times where people are not liking other people. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. And so what are you doing when you have a rough week?
What are you doing when you get stressed out? How do you treat people when you get stressed out? I was joking earlier with Molly and Tony. I was back there working on the computer for our kids, check in, I told Tony I said, listen, if you weren't in here, I would have thrown this computer across the gym.
You can ask me to the likelihood of me throwing something across the gym would be too, and she'll tell you that's pretty strong. Well, what do we do? But this is a thing. Our reaction, when we get stressed, our reaction, when we get angry, our reactions, when we get mad, our reactions, when just crazy stuff happens, they say so much about who we are as people.
They say so much about who we put our trust in, who put our hope in. They say speak to what we choose to anchor ourselves to, and the way that we treat other people, and those times says an even deeper thing. And that's what we're gonna talk about someday today. Our scripture this morning is Matthew 5, 21-48.
It's a big huge piece. It's a lot more than you normally read on a Sunday morning, but it's supposed to be one big huge piece. And we're gonna treat it how Matthew, the author of this book, had decided to put together Jesus' words. This summer we're calling our series in the sermon of the Mount Jesus' greatest hits, because this is what Matthew was trying to do.
Matthew was trying to take the absolute best, the essence, the queers picture of Jesus and his message and put it together. And so we're gonna read this one big huge piece today. And it's also in response though, to what we read a couple of weeks ago, when Jesus said I did not come to destroy the wall, but to fulfill it. And as we spoke that Sunday, Jesus did not come with a message of destruction, but with a mission of expansion.
And so everything that we talk about today, it's literally related just to that. It is coming off of that. It's Jesus explaining this idea of how to not come for destruction, but I came from expansion. So let's open up our Bibles, Matthew chapter 2148.
I'm gonna read it here. You can read it on your phone. And if you're reading on your phone and you get distracted and you go to Facebook, just make sure you check in at Foundry. I'm totally cool with that.
I'll just also give you on the screen, behind me, but listen to the words of Jesus today and Matthew. You have heard that our ancestors were told you must not murder. If you commit murder, you're subject to judgment. But I say if you're even angry with someone, you're subject to judgment.
If you call someone an idiot, you're in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you're in dangers of the fire of hell. So if you're presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the temple, and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person and come and offer your sacrifice to God.
And when you're on the way to court with your adversary, settle your differences quickly. Otherwise your accuser may hand you over to judge, he will hand you over to an officer, you will then be thrown into prison. And if that happens, you surely will not be free again until you have paid the last penny. You have heard the commandment that says, you must not commit adultery.
But I say anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So if your eye, even your good eye causes you to lust, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your hand, even your stronger hand, causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.
It is better for you to lose part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. You've heard the law that says, a man can divorce his wife merely by giving her a written notice of divorce. But I say that if a man divorces his wife, unless she has been unfaithful, he causes her to commit adultery. Anyone who marries a divorced woman has also committed adultery.
You have heard that our ancestors were told, you must not break your vows, and you must carry out vows you make to the Lord. But I say do not even make vows. Do not say by heaven because heaven is God's throne. And do not say by earth because earth is his footstool.
And do not say by Jerusalem, for Jerusalem is the city of the great king. And do not even say by my head, for you can't turn one hair wider black. Just say as simple, yes I will, or no I won't. Anything beyond this is from the evil one.
You've heard the law that says, the punishment must match the injury. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say, do not resist an evil person. If someone slaps you on the right cheek off of the other cheek also, if you're a student court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat to.
If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles, give to those who ask and don't turn away from those who want to borrow. You've heard the law that says, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.
And then in that way you'll be acting as true children of your father in heaven. For he gives a sunlight to both the evil and the good. And he sends rain to the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that?
Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. And if you're kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even the pagans do that. But you're to be perfect.
Even as your father in heaven is perfect. So we're to Jesus. Now let's be honest. So does this be a Sunday morning for honesty.
Does anyone else feel a little awkward right now? Okay. So here's the thing. This is like this piece of scripture that so many people do not want to tango with.
It's like, let's get away from it. We don't know what to do with it. Let's just stay with John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, the leader of the Wesleyan Revival that saved the nation of Great Britain and took America by storm in the early 1800s has 52 standards sermons. They're considered to be the doctrinal standards of the Methodist church.
And part of those 52 standard sermons are a series of 11 sermons that Wesley preached and wrote on Matthew 567, the sermon of the Mount. He didn't write one on this passage. He stayed away from it. Okay.
Now it's probably the fact that Wesley had a horrible relationship with his wife and he just didn't know what to do with it. He didn't go to her funeral like three weeks after she died, she found out about it. He had very, very bad standards. But this is what this thing's going on.
We're talking about the big picture here. And we can get bogged down in the little stuff. Y'all we can sit down and we can spin weeks picking apart these 46 verses. And by the end, every single one of us will feel like we have nothing good coming for us whatsoever at all.
But what we look at is a couple of things that Matthew intended for this to be a big, huge picture talking about the same thing. And for us to realize that we can insert ourselves in the story and realize that our own behavior has the capabilities of doing the exact same thing that Jesus is talking about. So some textual stuff to help us understand the big picture of his passage. The first one is this, did you all notice the repetition in there?
Did you all notice the same phrase that happens six times? You have heard it with said, but then I say to you. So Jesus takes six examples. And some of them he talks about the commandments.
Some of them talks about so you have the Ten Commandments, this covenant relationship, God made with his people. And he talks about the law and so these mankind interpretations this fall. He also, people have said long ago, so he's realizing that these people are holding themselves to this religious system because they're trying to figure out. But for him to say this six times, that has to mean something.
So I spent like three weeks trying to connect every possible dot that I could, trying to figure out what this is, what can we say about this? But nothing, whatever, you couldn't connect to, but what fact you realize is this, we're thinking about that small stuff. We're not thinking about the big stuff. Remember we talked about that couple weeks ago too?
We're getting that big picture here. The big picture of what Jesus is doing, and the big picture of what Jesus is doing, stretched out all across time and all across scripture, is the fact that Jesus is in the repentance business. In repentance, it isn't something specific. Repentance is something that's very individual for each one of us.
It requires human action. We're gonna find Jesus talks a lot about that in this passage. What Matthew is doing is he's covering the waters, my grandfather used to say in all country phrase. He's covering the waters of a certain aspect of human behavior.
That's the six examples are serving towards. There is some specificity in there. We're gonna talk about that in a moment. But Matthew is trying to tell us understand there's specific behavior that Jesus was warning us against.
And we can all shake in our seats with these examples because none of them are easy to deal with. But we have to breathe a little bit because we have to have this scripture. The gods and the repentance business, gods and the redemption business. He's not in the condemnation business.
They came for us, he wants us. So these passages aren't there for us to separate ourselves out and think that some of us are worthy and some of us are not worthy because anyone who comes before Jesus is worthy. He accepts that. See do's and don'ts, we get hung up on do's and don'ts.
See me else, get hung up on do's and don'ts. See do's and don'ts are what Jesus is trying to expand things from. And what he's angry about. This tone that we hear in Jesus' voice, because we're hearing that right.
What he's angry about is this. This is that human behavior that I really think, Matthew's trying to talk about is that Jesus is angry at people who are looking for loopholes in the will of God. Okay, he's angry at people trying to find a loopholes. They're trying to justify things.
They're trying to justify their behavior and work around the laws that God gave them and the laws that they used to interpret stuff through. This is about the motivation and the character of the human heart. But what do we do in times get tough? What do we do when we're confronted with sin?
What do we do when we're stressed out? What are the unhealthy ways that we lash out? And what we need to be doing is harnessing ourselves closer to Jesus. This is in goal is redemption.
This is in goal is fulfilling. His father's dream and desire and vision for this world and expanding means drawing a bigger picture of redemption. So for us to get nervous, because we're looking at these six verses. And for many of us, we hear the adultery and we hear the divorce piece and we get very nervous for some of us.
We hear the eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. Peace and get very nervous. Cause I'll tell you what, this has been a week where a lot of folks would not want to hear an eye for an eye for a tooth for a tooth, right? I got to tell people sometimes like, you might get pre-church ad, you might get rednecked.
Very big difference between the two of them. Okay? We can all find these things inside of this passage that make us nervous because we know it's talking about us. But we have to realize what Jesus is saying here is my vision for this world is significantly bigger than being nitpicky about stuff.
And if all you think I care about is being nitpicky, you're missing the whole point. And the verse that when I was looking inside of this, I started breathing, I was like, okay, this is what we need to think about. This is what it said in Matthew 548. It's one of my favorite verses in the description of my buddy Ronnie Scott.
I said this versus the best thing in the whole book. Says now be perfect. Even as your father in heaven is perfect. You are to be perfect.
Even as your heavenly father in heaven is perfect. And that sounds kind of crazy, right? I'm not perfect. Are you perfect?
Like I consistently forget to turn the bathroom light off. My head gets turned around, something's supposed to do. I do it wrong, not perfect. I was laughing last week.
I'm very, very forgetful. And early this week, when I was at David's funeral, I was lined up in for the funeral procession. I'm surrounded by police officers for every shape and stripe. I look down and realize that my inspection sticker is out of date.
I'm not perfect. So not at all. So what do you do with this? It's all to be perfect.
So this is what we go back to the very beginning. Okay. That's my answer for so many things. We go back to the very beginning.
Genesis 1, 26 and 28. We're about to run through a lot of scripture. It's gonna be on the screen behind me though. But let's build a story of what Jesus is doing.
So Genesis 1, 26 and 28. Then God said, let us make human beings in our image to be like us. And they will reign over the fish in the sea, in the bird, in the sky, the livestock, and all the wild animals on earth and the small animals that scurry along the ground. So God created human beings in his own image.
In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. And then God blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground. We're made to be in his image.
He intentionally made us to be in his image. Now I don't think that means we look like God. I don't think God would talk my great grandmother. Cause she was the nicest person I knew.
So God wears a moo moo and would ring chicken next off the bodies. Lord I got the rust that God didn't look like Granny. But God gave us attributes that he intentionally shared with us. I'm gonna make him in my own image.
And also realize that he gave us things to do, that us being made in the image of God is bound in our participation with him, that he did not make us to be sedentary creatures that lived in his world. He made us to be active participants in what he is doing. So we go on ahead a little bit into Exodus, Exodus 19 verse six. And you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation.
This is a message. You must give the people of Israel. This is God talking to Moses. You must be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation.
He's not talking about a patriotic idea of a nation or like a boundaries of a country. He's like, you're supposed to be my society. You're to be in Latin and Latin, I talk about this decivitas. And it's gonna be defined by you being holy.
In 2231, he starts speaking again. And this is what he says, you must be my holy people. So God's progressively, we're seeing a story. We're made in his image, made to participate in what he's doing.
And he desires for us to be a holy makeup, a holy society, a holy culture that's living in the middle of this world. Now he's just saying, you're going to be described by your holy people. Now he's using family language. You were my holy sons and you were my holy daughters.
He's getting intensely personal right here. In Leviticus 1144, it says, for I am the Lord your God. And you must consecrate yourselves and be holy because I am holy. So we see our little phrase from Matthew 5, 4.
A little bit different pop up. You must be holy from the holy, consecrate yourselves. He's talking there about that level of human participation. That holiness is not something that's given to us like an award, we don't have a key to the city.
I got a key to the city and I got my Eagle Scout award. I didn't open anything. Holiness has not bestowed upon us like that. It's not this worthless thing that God just gives us.
But it's the character of his people, the last verse in this run here, Deuteronomy 14.2. It says, you have been set apart as holy to the Lord your God. And he has chosen you from among all the nations of the earth to be his own special treasure. You are my holy family.
And my holy family is going to be different from all the other makeups, from all the other societies or cultures of this world. And you were going to be my special treasure. Be holy because I'm holy. And then Matthew says it, be perfect.
Because your heavenly Father is perfect. This idea of perfection is not that you have perfect. You do everything 100% great. Because we can't do that.
We're human. We're falling. We're going to accidentally say the wrong thing. We're going to put our foot in our mouth.
OK? We're going to do that. This idea of perfection means you're complete. That it's fulfilled.
It's a word that's used to describe an unblemished sacrificial animal in the Old Testament. Matthew's telling us that our lives and our behaviors in Jesus's kingdom are to be offerings of holiness. Our decisions and our choices and the way we interact with people are the sacrifice that brings and gives glory to God. Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.
So these six examples that Matthew is talking about are about unholyness. They're about people who have consciously chosen to be rampant abusers, to be unrepentant, to abandon other people. Our hearts' motivations matter. We're not supposed to look for loopholes in God's world to get our own desires.
In order to steal you, I don't want to do your dirty work. Jesus is saying, if you want to do bad things, don't blame them on me. Don't try to find a way to get squirrely and say, I've justified your bad behavior. OK?
See, this big feature here is our willingness to put ourselves above and over other people. That's not holy. And thinking that we are worse than we do that. We put ourselves in a relationship like that with other people and we think that we are better than somebody.
What happens is that we think we are worse more than Jesus than they are worse than Jesus. And when we begin to comprehend and understand that, it begins opening things up. It doesn't mean we can't be angry. It doesn't mean we can't be frustrated and talk about that in a little bit.
But that we realize that Jesus loves the person that we hate the most just as much as he loves us. Think of the person that you would call your enemy. When we go through seasons of life, we think we have those. And that Jesus loves that person just as much as he loves you.
That Jesus died for that person in the exact same way that he died for you. See, in this kingdom Jesus is talking about, the citizenship is defined by our desire to be wholly complete and sharing this long-term vision of Jesus. And we realize that his vision for this world is much bigger than our vision for this world. And we find our own holiness by realizing that we love God's will so much that we desire to please him in all areas of our life.
And we let it start to modify our behavior. We go from that's all bad and that's all good to realize, and that's not necessarily bad for me, but it doesn't make me any more holy. To the point where we realize, I just want to do every single thing I can that's gonna set me up the best possible way for me to live in the vision of Jesus for this world, the vision that Jesus has this for me. No, for years I tell people that I focus on trying not to sin, I was horrible at it.
And I learned what it was like just to focus on Jesus instead and the mind-blowing fact that you just kind of slowly quit doing that stuff that you used to try not to do so hard. Just you focus on Jesus. In this community that Jesus is calling together, it's not defined by what we stay away from, by what we abstain from that's negative holiness. Negative holiness is how you get into lists of do's and don'ts.
That's what Jesus wanted to expand from. But this new community is defined by the conscious decisions of what we want to add into our life and what we want to connect ourselves to. They were not trying to find loopholes anymore. They were trying to find Jesus.
They were trying to focus on Jesus. That we're not doing whatever it takes to crawl to the top on the back of somebody else, but we're focusing on Jesus. And as disciples, the our relationship with God, is contingent on how we choose to treat other people. That's terrifying.
That's the piece that scares me. I've told people before, you get me on 165 to 830 in the morning in my truck, it's like a fury road. And I've been reminded of myself lately, the way I treat these other people is saying something about how much I'm allowing Jesus to invade and infect my heart. The disciples' relationship with God is contingent on how we treat other people.
Because here's the thing, and this is the crux of the matter. This is the loophole. This is the frustrating part. This is the dirty work.
It's all right here that when we damage our relationship with other people willingly and willfully, that we are also then willfully and willingly damaging our relationship with God. That's what these six things are about. That's the six issues. These are people that are saying, I am going to be on top.
I am going to win. I am going to rule over this person. I'm going to take over the divorce passage in here. What he was probably talking about is the fact that a man could divorce his wife if she cooked a bad dinner.
That was inside of the bounds of the man-made law for divorce. If he literally was not satisfied with a single thing that happened that day, he could in good conscience according to the man-made religious law divorce. And if one of you want to say, I'm really glad Meredith can't do that. I mean, oh my goodness, I'd be in trouble.
12 years ago, I would have lasted like two days. But us saying, I'm not going to willfully wrong that person so I can grow, but I'm going to willfully love that person so that they can grow. Y'all, that's hard. But Jesus never said this would be easy.
But he says it would be better. So my own emotions this week have been tough. They've been really, really rough. That whole afro-nab bit, didn't want to think about it.
They didn't work on the sermon for two days, so they didn't want to read about it. I was telling some folks a couple days ago about this. What I've realized reading through all of this and thinking about this and thinking about our own community situation, but also thinking about the situation of our world, because I want to just what I'm mad about right now. That the depths that my heart is willing to grow angry, and you can insert frustrated, depressed, any of those emotions like that right there.
The level that our heart is willfully and willing to go to that level, what that showing us is, this is the extent that I need to learn to love. This is the extent that I need to learn to forgive. This is showing a chasm in my heart that needs to be filled by the Holy Spirit and by Jesus. Says in scripture, in your anger, do not sin.
Sometimes, frustration as a human emotion. Sometimes, anger as a human emotion. Sometimes, questioning as a human emotion. And we can have those, and sometimes it's gonna happen.
But when we're in that mood, we cannot let that lead us into sin. Jesus says, concentrate yourselves and be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, because I've got something much bigger for you to do. And that's the thing is I have to believe in Jesus' big vision for this world, and how it's outside the scope of what I can create on my own. I have to, because I know it's better.
Because I've tried it on, I didn't pull it off very well. So the last thing is this, you know, we talked about this loophole, and it's kind of weird for us to read this passage and try to figure out what's going on with it, because we see these six examples of sin that are very personal, very frustrating, we don't know what to do with them. They're personal. I mean, every single one of us can find ourselves in there.
And it's kind of weird for Jesus to say, I'm gonna tighten things up, because I didn't come to destroy the law, but it'll fulfill it. And he's saying, you have heard it was said this, well, I'm gonna tell you this. I mean, that whole, if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out, but we'd all be walking around blind. But Jesus is tightening things up, he's expanding things.
But he's tightening them up. And most of the time, what we're thinking about is like a slip knot. Okay, how many of y'all have put up a tent, and how to use ropes? Okay?
I worked at Boy Scout camp once, I'm gonna live in a tent for 12 weeks. It's a canvas army tent on a concrete slab with a cot. So you have to go outside and you have to tighten your ropes. And sometimes you tighten a rope by pushing it down and making it tight, when you're trying to, when you're trying to, John Riffle's floating dock off during the flood.
You're tightening it up and making it smaller. That's loop holding. That's do and don'ting. That's not believing Jesus is a large vision for this world.
So the first couple weeks I lived in this tent, I kept going outside and trying to tighten my ropes down that way. And my tent was flapping around, it was falling over and it was small and it had any space. And this is my final country. I said, man, you need to work on your ropes a lot.
I was like, I've been working on my ropes for two weeks and making everything tighter and getting it smaller as I can so you're doing it backwards. So the rope was tied to the post and the rope was tied to the tent. All I had been worried about was those ropes that were tied to the post and tightening those. My friend came over and just started tightening the ropes attached to the tent.
I've been tightening the wrong thing all along. And we pulled off all those guy ropes attached to that tent. This flappy little canvas tent that was itty bitty, instantly turned into bigger than my dorm room. It was huge.
And it was strong. And it was stable. And for the rest of the summer, when the rain came, I did not get wet. It was spacious.
I've been trying to tighten the wrong side of the rope the whole time. And Jesus says, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. He's saying, make sure you're tightening the right side of the ropes because human nature is not to do it that way. Then we have moments to where we want to put ourselves on top of other people.
What we need to realize is that's the space where we need Jesus the most in our life to come and work things out for us. Let us pray. God, we thank you for how you have come into each moment in each area of our life and change things and move things. And so Lord, we pray for you to come and watch over us.
To heal us. To open up the places in our minds and our hearts and our souls where we need more of you. Because God, that's a lifelong journey. So come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts and faithful.
Renew us in the fire of your love. So you're gonna be praying. Amen.