Matthew 5:21-37 - Jesus Takes Aim at the Heart - February 16, 2020

Last week, Jesus proclaimed that he had not come to destroy the Law or the Prophets…but to fulfill them and unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees…you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:17, 20). And today he shows us what that means. He shows us what kind of righteousness God demands from us – in order to be saved. And to do that, Jesus teaches the Law like it had never been taught before – and is rarely taught since. He takes the safeties off and unleashes it. He sharpens the blade of the Law to a razor edge, pulls it back, and takes aim directly at our hearts.  

Did you notice the refrain Jesus repeats throughout this section? You have heard that it was said…but I tell you. Unlike the rabbis and teachers of the time – who always had to refer to another, older, usually dead rabbis to support their interpretations – Jesus is interpreting the Law on his own authority. It doesn’t matter what the world says, what the religious elite say, or even what your own reason tells you – this is the Lord speaking. He doesn’t need references or footnotes. He’s the Lord (Matthew 12:8). It’s his Law. He can define and apply it however he wants.

And what he wants to do today is take the Law and amplify it. He pulls it out of our catechisms that have been gathering dust on our shelves somewhere and turns its volume way up to the point that it causes our ears to bleed. He does this by shifting the focus from action to attitude, from outward obedience to inward motivation, from your life compared to others to your life compared to God. And over the course of these 16 verses, Jesus makes it undeniably clear that the problem isn’t merely superficial, it isn’t just that we do bad things, but that we are rotten to the core right from conception (Psalm 51:5). Sin is like a malicious virus that has infected the hardware of our humanity to the extent that no matter how hard we try we are not able not to sin (non posse non peccare) even in the good things we do (Isaiah 64:6). [1] Well, that’s not good for our self-esteem, is it? Doesn’t he know that we feel bad enough about ourselves already? Why would Jesus speak this way? Jesus’ goal in this section of his Sermon is to drive us to despair of ourselves; to drive every last ounce of self-righteousness out of us – and drive us to hunger and thirst (Matthew 5:6) for the righteousness that comes from outside of us, the righteousness that God wants to freely gives us (Romans 3:21-22).

He starts with the 5th commandment: You have heard that it was said to people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be subject to judgment.’ “Well, I dodged that bullet. I haven’t strangled, stabbed, shot or poisoned anyone. I’m generally kind, I hold the door for strangers, and would never do any real harm to anyone.” But then Jesus turns up the volume, shifts the focus from what you do with your hands to the thoughts in your heart and the words on your lips. But I tell you that everyone who is angry with his brother without a cause will be subject to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ will have to answer to the Sanhedrin. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of hell fire. That’s right. If you’ve ever been angry with someone – personally, not according to your office or vocation as employer or parent – according to Jesus, you are a murderer. So the way you talk about those who hold opposing political views, that flash of road rage at the guy who cut you off on the Beltline, that simmering resentment you feel towards a coworker is more than enough to get you convicted of murder in God’s courtroom. And do you know what it cost to cleanse your murderous heart and save you from suffering hell fire? Jesus took your sentence on himself. He allowed himself, who had never hurt anyone, to die a murderer’s death and suffer hell fire on the cross. That’s what it cost Jesus to cleanse your depraved, murderous heart.

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ And we think: “I’m faithful in my marriage. Never had an affair or a one-night stand. I’ve never sent a suggestive text or flirted with a coworker.” And Jesus turns up the volume but I tell you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. All it takes is…one look. Whether in person or online. At the beach or the gym or at church. It doesn’t matter. I’m guilty and so are you. The Law has no loopholes, no exceptions, no mercy. You can live your entire life as celibate as a monk, you could interact only with members of your own sex, and just one stray look, one filthy thought will nail you. Oh sure, you could try gouging out the offending eye or cutting off the offending hand, but your eyes and hands aren’t the problem, your heart is. And so before you start mutilating your body, remember this: no one will be declared righteous by works of the law, for through the law we become aware of sin (Romans 3:20). Jesus isn’t teaching a course on self-improvement. He’s making us aware of just how depraved we really are. He’s reminding you that if he hadn’t become an adulterer in your place, your whole body [would] be thrown into hell. The good news is not that if you try real hard, if you watch only PG television and get all the right filters on your phone, you can keep this commandment. The good news is that Jesus allowed himself to be thrown into hell to cleanse your depraved, adulterous heart.

He continues with one of the most sensitive issues of his day and our day: It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ According to the ancient rabbis and authoritative teachers’ of Jesus’ day, God wasn’t so much concerned with whether divorce was right or wrong as much as he was that you got your paperwork properly filed (Deuteronomy 24:1). There is probably no other area in our lives where the inherent depravity of our hearts rears its ugly head than within the institution of marriage. And there is no more fertile field for self-righteousness, either, a field where there are infinite opportunities to keep score and to pass the buck. We hear the Law say “do not divorce,” and we either take pride in the fact that we’ve toughed out our marriage for decades (even though we’ve frequently dreamed of the escape divorce would provide) or we try to justify divorce by blaming the other person for being unloving or unfaithful or unromantic. The state has tired of listening to the finger-pointing and has invented what is called a “no-fault” divorce, so that no one’s feelings are hurt. There’s only one problem: it’s a total lie. Divorce is never no one’s fault; it’s always at least one – and usually both parties’ fault.

Again, Jesus’ authoritative but I tell you cuts through the noise: Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, causes her to be regarded as an adulteress. And whoever marries the divorced woman is regarded as an adulterer. Jesus is likely addressing the issue from the perspective of men because in 1st century Israel men held all the power in marriage – but the same would hold true for women. In either case, Jesus makes it clear that no piece of paper can legitimize the dissolution of the one flesh relationship established by God (Genesis 2:24). Divorce is simply not part of God’s plan. According to Jesus, divorce and adultery are two sides of the same coin. One always leads to the other. Either adultery causes divorce or divorce causes adultery. It’s unavoidable – no matter what the courts say. The larger point is that you can’t justify yourself before God in regard to marriage – whether you’ve been divorced three times or happily married for 50 years – we’re all in the same boat here. But there is a marriage that does justify. In Baptism, Jesus bound you to himself in a marriage that he will never give up on, no matter how hard you try. He didn’t marry us when we were beautiful, but filthy; not so he could benefit from us but so that he could pull us out of the gutter of sin and present us before God holy and blameless (Ephesians 5:25-33). That’s why Jesus married us. He married us to take our adulterous and faithless hearts and cleanse them with his blood.

Jesus addresses one final symptom of our depraved hearts: Again you have heard that it was said to people long ago, ‘Do not break your oaths, but fulfill your vows to the Lord.’ And you’re thinking, “I think I’m ok here. I’ve never been to court, but if I were, I’d tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I’ve never (intentionally) lied on an official document. I don’t use God’s name in vain – at least not regularly.” And along comes Jesus but I tell you, do not swear at all…let your statement be, “Yes, yes,’ or ‘No, no.’ The very fact that we would ever have to swear at all – when it is not required by God or his representatives – means that we are not good to our word, that we are all natural-born liars. And who of us would argue with that accusation? If someone could actually verify all of the fantastic stories we spin, who of us wouldn’t be guilty of perjury? History gets rewritten in our minds so that we always walk away the hero or the victim. We’re liars to the core. Half-truths and lies slip out so easily we don’t even notice them anymore. But again, just as Jesus has exposed our depraved hearts, he has also come to cleanse them. He became flesh and dwelled among us…full of grace and truth (John 1:14). And even though he spoke nothing but God’s truth, He suffered the false accusations and lies of humanity – both in court and in church. By suffering the death penalty for blasphemy (Matthew 26:65-66), the One who is the truth (John 14:6) became the lie in order to rescue liars like us from the Evil One, the Father of lies (John 8:44).

This part of our Savior’s sermon might feel like the doctor’s visit everyone dreads – the one where the doctor says “there’s nothing more we can do, it’s terminal.” This is the deeper diagnosis of the Law, the one we don’t want to hear. Sin isn’t shallow and occasional, it’s deep and chronic. It’s not a cold or a flu but a cancer that has metastasized from our heart to our every thought, word and action. It’s not that we sin every once in a while, it’s that we are sinful to the core. It’s not simply murder but anger and hatred; not simply adultery but lust in the heart and trashing of marriage; not little white lies but big black stains against God’s holiness. This is the sermon no one wants to hear. No one left that mountain happy that day. No one left feeling self-justified. No one left thinking, “Hey, I’m doing pretty well here; God must be pretty happy with me.” And that’s the point.

The way Jesus preaches the Law doesn’t leave any wiggle room, any room for self-justification. His preaching forces us to make the confession we would never make on our own: “I am a murderer, an adulterer, an unfaithful spouse, a liar and a perjurer.” To play games with the Law is to play games with the Gospel – the life and suffering and death of the Jesus – the One who came to fulfill the Law for us. When we justify ourselves, when we think we are good all by ourselves, we are, in effect, saying, “Thanks, but no thanks, Jesus. I’ve got this covered.” Every loophole we invent in the Law, every letter we erase, every self-justification trivializes Jesus’ death on the cross. He came to fulfill the Law completely – not just the places where we need a little help. He died for depraved sinners (Romans 5:8), not people who were doing “pretty well” or “better than average.” And if you don’t recognize how depraved you are to the heart, you won’t recognize your Savior.

Because it’s only when we realize that we are depraved right to the bottom of our hearts that we appreciate these words of Paul: God shows his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). While we couldn’t keep one word of the Law in a million years, Christ is the end of the law…for everyone who believes (Romans 10:4). Jesus didn’t just come to nail us with the Law, he came to keep the Law to the last letter in your place and die under the Law to rescue you from every commandment, every letter that would condemn you. He came to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). The righteousness God demands in order for you to be saved is not something you can do, it is only and always a gift of God through Jesus.

That’s why, like it or not, we need to hear both the Law and the Gospel. In fact, we need to hear the Law so that we appreciate the Gospel. So when the Law comes and exposes the depravity that lives in your heart, run to Jesus, whose blood cleanses your depraved heart from all sin (1 John 1:7). Amen.

[1] https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/augustinewill.html