Jesus Sets the Bar Higher!

September 15, 2024

In His most famous sermon, the sermon on the mount, we find, to borrow a phrase from Marty McFly of Back to the Future fame, Jesus telling His disciples some pretty “heavy” stuff. While preparing our sermon series on the beatitudes, I have spent a lot of time with this sermon of Jesus as well as with the commentators who have written about this sermon. I am struck by how “counter-cultural” this sermon really is. Jesus makes an astonishing statement in Matthew 5:20. He tells His disciples, “Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” If you have read your New Testament at all, you know about the hypocrisy of these religious folks, but in Jesus’ day, the people didn’t have a New Testament because it hadn’t been written yet. To them, the scribes and Pharisees were the best of the best. Imagine hearing this sermon with their ears and from their viewpoint. Jesus is telling them they must be “better” that the religious folk. Jesus isn’t finished. He goes on to say in 5:48, “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” What in the world is Jesus talking about? Just what kind of bar is Jesus setting? When you read this sermon (Matthew chapters 5-7) you can sum up what Jesus teaching with this sentence. A real relationship with God is not a list of do’s and don’ts, it is a matter of the heart. The scribes and Pharisees were experts of the do’s and don’ts, but Jesus tells us it is more than that, so much more. An example of this can be seen in 5:27-30. Everybody knows “Thou shalt not commit adultery” but Jesus takes it a lot farther. He says whatever is in our heart that we are chasing after is adultery. He puts the cherry on top in the next few verses when He tells us to pluck out our offending eye or to lop off our troublesome appendages. I don’t think Jesus is advocating unnecessary surgeries, but He is telling us that we need to eliminate whatever is holding us back from being totally committed to Him from our lives. Whatever has captured our eyes and our hearts that is competing with our relationship with Jesus has to go and that “whatever” may cause radical changes in the way we live our lives, but that is what is necessary to be kingdom citizens.

Be blessed and go be a blessing . . . Bro. Andy