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2001
28th January (am) - A Christian's Righteousness

There is a sports goods company - a very big one - whose logo is a long sweeping 'tick', and whose slogan, for a while, was 'Just Do It' ........ Nike!

Probably all that they mean by their logo and slogan is that we are to enjoy doing whatever our particular sport happens to be, and that we are to enjoy doing so wearing their football boots, their trainers, and the latest, hi-tech breathable fabric that they have come up with etc!

However there is another way of thinking about their slogan - maybe something that they never even thought of - Just do It is maybe not a bad way of summing up a way of thinking about life that is pretty very influential and widespread - an approach to life which perhaps has at least some influence on all of us.

Just do It - just live the way that you want and do things the way it suits you - just because most people have had certain ways of thinking about life up to now, don't feel that it's always got to be like that for you; don't feel that you've got to fit in with the way everybody else lives, and accept the rules and regulations of life that they have - you do what suits you - as long as you don't do anybody else any harm, you live the way you want -

Just Do It ...... for there aren't really any fixed rules for life - its whatever, whenever, wherever it suits your life.

If you want an illustration of this, think about how 25-30 years ago people accepted that even though not everybody kept Sunday as a special day, they really should - whereas nowadays, you keep Sunday special if you want to, but somebody who doesn't is just as right as you are - it's whatever suits you personally!

There have been whole books written about this change in the way people think - all sorts of fancy philosophical names given to it (Post Modernism) - but basically it means that many people believe that there are no, or at least very few, fixed rules for life - nobody has the right to tell you or me what to think or how to live - everybody has the right to just do what suits them.

- in terms of what they believe about the religious side of life, everybody is free to believe whatever they want to believe and their ideas are as valid as anybody else - nobody should try to suggest that some ideas are right and some are not..

- morally, people are free to do whatever suits them - as long as it suits your life and your feelings, it's all right e.g the increase in cohabitation instead of marriage; the aggressive promotion of homosexual rights etc.

As we work our way through Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, we will find him speaking about some of these issues - in tonight's short little passage, he just speaks generally about this question of whether it is all right to 'Just Do It' - whether, in overall terms, there are any fixed rules and unchanging principles.

In fact, Jesus is going to tell us that there are some basic starting points in life that do not change and will not change; starting points which we have to take seriously as we think about our lives; starting points which we maybe need some help to think about in a better way than is sometimes the case.

From a simple little phrase in tonight's verses, we know immediately that Jesus wants us to listen carefully and to take seriously what he is saying: vs.18 'I tell you the truth ....... - this is important, this is the way it really is, this is the way you need to see it!

And he uses a word to cover everything about how we see life, how we think about life's fixed points and principles, how we are to live life - vs.20 your righteousness - how to live life rightly, especially if we believe that God ought to come into the picture in a significant way.

So let me give you 3 headings about righteousness which I hope are helpful. for unpacking this little passage:

1. Right and wrong (righteousness) is definitely more than an out-of -date idea.
2. Right and wrong is probably more than we thought it was.
3. Right and wrong is certainly more than we can manage by ourselves.

Right and Wrong is definitely more than an out-of-date idea.

As far as Jesus was concerned, there were some things that do not change, and which will never change - certain basic standards and principles of right and wrong - righteousness.

And for Jesus, those basic standards and principles for our lives are found in the Bible - for him, in the OT.

vs. 17 Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.

In Jesus' day, people wondered whether Jesus was going to dismiss and do away with the OT teaching, and start from scratch again - they wondered what he thought about the OT teaching about God and about faith, and all its detailed commandments about life - 'the Law and the Prophets', as it is called here.

Their religious leaders, the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law(vs.20) were very strong on all of this - so they wanted to know what Jesus thought. And so Jesus stated his position very clearly - he too, wanted to affirm very strongly that the OT Scriptures were a very vital statement about what is right and wrong in terms of what people are to believe and how they are to live - he had not come to abolish them, but to fulfil them ie. not to do away with them, but rather to fill them out more fully and more clearly for people.

Nowadays, people are asking a slightly different question, but actually the answer needs to be the same.

Nowadays, not everybody may necessarily pay much serious attention to the OT, some may not care much about it at all; they ask the question from a less religious starting point - but they do wonder if there are any fixed starting points - are there any unchanging principles of right and wrong or is it all right to 'just do it', to decide for yourself as you go along.?

Is it really acceptable, ever to say, that some religious views are right and some are not, that some moral attitudes are OK and some are not - or does political correctness mean that we must just allow everybody to believe, think and act in the way that suits them?

It strikes me that we must draw a distinction between properly respecting people who take a different view of life from us, and yet not necessarily concluding that their view is just as valid as mine or anybody else's!

Jesus certainly affirms in this passage that there are basic starting points for right and wrong - that the starting place for those standards of right and wrong is in the OT part of the Bible, but that they are not just for OT people - but rather for people in every place and at all times. Listen again to what Jesus says:

Until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, nor the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the Law.

- we cannot fail to notice the note of importance and permanence which Jesus strikes here.

- whoever we are, and whatever our approach to life, Jesus is challenging us with a clear affirmation that there are definitely unchanging principles of right and wrong for life - that it is not just a matter of standards which quickly change or become out-of-date and no longer applicable, and certainly not a matter of just doing whatever suits us at the time.

- for people who want to take Jesus seriously, here is a very vital statement - those who hunger and thirst after righteousness (5:6) must listen very carefully to what Jesus says about the OT teaching about faith and about life.

So, Point 1, right and wrong is definitely more than an out-of-date idea.

 

Right and Wrong is probably more than we thought it was.

This is almost certainly the most important point in this sermon, because people often have ideas about right and wrong which are unhelpful, inadequate, out of touch with the real world, and sometimes damaging to themselves or to other people.

Last November I took the car for MOT - the inspecting engineer had a clipboard with a whole series of boxes on his forms that needed to be ticked if my car was to pass its MOT - systematically he worked his way through the test, covering all the various checks that needed to be carried out before he could certify that my vehicle was roadworthy. It was a pretty black and white exercise - either yes or no.

Sometimes, I think, this is a very close approximation to how we think about life, and about how we decide on issues of right and wrong. We think in terms of a serious of tick boxes - of rules and regulations which we either keep or do not keep; answers which are either simply Yes or No; aspects of life where we either pass or fail.

In Jesus' day, it was very much like that, especially for the religious Pharisees and Teachers of the Law - faith and life was a matter of very detailed rules and regulations about things that you could and could not do - and they could therefore put their own life or somebody else's life through an MOT in a relatively easy way - it was a tick box approach - it was relatively easy to decide whether somebody had passed or failed!

In fact what they had done was to take the OT teaching and commandments, and to restrict them and reduce them to lists of rules and regulations about how these were to be kept - the how and when of sacrifices at the Temple, the keeping of the Sabbath Day; the rules about how you should or should not treat other people - a whole battery of interpretations and traditional ways of understanding these things had been developed.

- sometimes it really only dealt with the actual outward actions and not the underlying motivations/attitudes e.g. you might be able to say that you had kept the Sabbath rules, but you maybe hadn't actually been motivated or inspired very much by the underlying ideas of Sabbath worship and positive rest.

- sometimes it was more like being able to say that you had kept the rule even though you had been able to get round the real challenge and heart of the rule e.g. you didn't cheat someone, but you avoided giving them what they should have got.; you didn't tell lies but you were very economical with the truth etc.

- sometimes the rules and regulations weren't applied to whole areas of life where they should have been e.g. attitudes to strangers or foreigners - Samaritan

However, they were able to tick the boxes and believed that they had passed their spiritual/moral MOT.

Maybe that is not much different from what sometimes still happens - sometimes people still think about faith and about right and wrong like a serious of tick boxes - a list of Do's and Don'ts - so long as we can tick those boxes, we are OK.

Sometimes the Do's and Don'ts are a bit superficial; sometimes they are limited to certain areas of life; sometimes they have more to do with traditions that have accumulated over the years than with what the Bible actually tells us. e.g. the traditional lists of Christian tick boxes usually specialised in things like dancing, theatre/cinema; attitudes to alcohol, make-up and jewellery, clothes and fashions etc - instead of asking ourselves about the underlying principles that might guide us on these issues.

Sometimes the traditional list of tick boxes misses out whole areas of life upon which Scripture speaks very strongly and clearly, and to which it maybe gives greater emphasis than some of the things above e.g. attitudes to our neighbours, matters related to work, possessions etc, issues of social justice etc.

Sometimes we have found it easier to stick to the simple tick boxes of things that we do or don't do!

And sometimes this leads to a rather judgmental approach towards other people - we judge them on the basis of this restricted set of Do's and Don'ts - sometimes even feeling a wee bit good about ourselves because we don't do what they do!

In these verses, Jesus leaves us in no doubt that he holds to clear standards of right and wrong, and that these standards are high and demanding - vs.20 I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees ...... You must be more righteous than the most righteous people - but not by having more tick boxes!

Rather he is going to talk about why we do things and how we do them and what impact they have on others, and what they say about our inward motivations and attitudes - rather than just the outward rules and actions themselves.

Very soon in the Sermon on the mount we will hear Jesus saying repeatedly: You have heard that it was said, but I tell you .... i.e. Here's a better way of understanding the principles of right and wrong. I'm not changing the basic law/commandment, but here's a different way of thinking about it and living it out than you have been used to - actually here's a more rigorous, heart-searching, practically demanding way!

Therefore right and wrong is probably more than we thought it was - it's not just a set of Do's and Don'ts that we either keep or ignore - it's not a set of tick boxes - it's about your attitudes and motivation, as well as your outward actions. This should make us feel much less comfortable about ourselves and our own living out of what is right and wrong, and much more aware of the complexities of other people's lives - that's it often not black and white, that we may not understand the underlying situations in their lives, that we need to be very slow to judge them, and maybe a bit quicker to examine ourselves.

After all, it is in the Sermon on the Mount that we find Jesus' funny little story with the biting point about the man with the plank in his eye trying to take the speck of sawdust out of his brother's eye!

Therefore as we affirm that there are unchanging standards and principles of right and wrong - God's unchanging principles found in the Bible - so we also have to remind ourselves that there is far more to them than a simple set of tick boxes.

Right and wrong is probably more than we thought it was - it's about struggling with our own inner attitudes and motives as well as our outward actions; it's about recognising the limitations of how we understand other people's situations.

It's rarely a black and white situation with only one possible way of approaching it and an always obvious answer.

Right and Wrong, righteousness, requires us to be intensely rigorous on ourselves, and immensely sensitive to others.

 

Right and Wrong, Righteousness, is certainly more than we can manage by ourselves.

Maybe what we have been saying actually takes us back to the series of short sayings, called the Beatitudes, at the beginning of Jesus' Sermon: -blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are those who mourn; blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; blessed are the merciful ...... As we think about the implications of what Jesus says in tonight's passage, we know that, even though we might be able to tick at least some of the boxes, we don't really get life right - either for ourselves or in our attitudes towards other people - we fail badly, we fall very far short - right and wrong, righteousness, is certainly more than we can manage by ourselves!

And that has always been the experience of Christians who have faced up to the teaching of Jesus with seriousness about what he says, and honesty about what they know of themselves.

I think that it was never put better than in Paul's honest words about himself: For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out ...... who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 7:18ff Surely we all know what Paul means - we have the desire to do what is right and good, but we cannot carry it out.

But how is it that God rescues us through Jesus? Is it that he sets his standards of right and wrong, but because we cannot reach them, he goes easy on us. and lets us through anyway? That even though we don't get it anywhere near right, he lets us through anyway?

I don't think that that's the right answer. But maybe tonight's little passage points us in the direction of the right answer.

Jesus tells us in vs.17 that he had come to fulfil the Law and the Prophets - when we think about it, we know that a very major part of the OT Law is about the sacrifice laws God gave the people as the means by which they could receive his grace and forgiveness, his love and hope ...... and a very important part of the OT Prophets' message is about how a day would come when God would work in people's lives at the level of their hearts, their motives, rather than just their outward actions.

I have come to fulfil the Law and the Prophets, said Jesus.

His death would be the one final, fulfilling sacrifice of forgiveness - never needing to be offered again - real and full and lasting forgiveness for everybody who trusts in him as their Sacrifice and Saviour.

Faith in Jesus would allow him to work deep down in our lives - at the level of heart and motives, changing us from the inside out, rather than simply by the tick box approach. I have come to fulfil the Law and the Prophets - to accomplish true sacrificial forgiveness for all the ways we get it wrong, and to bring inwardly changing love and help into out whole lives - inwardly changing love and help that becomes a springboard for our outward, daily living.

So right and wrong is certainly more than we can manage by ourselves - it is something that we can only begin to understand and live by when we start off from the point of trusting in Jesus as Saviour and Lord.

It was that famous man who began the Reformation in he early 1500's, Martin Luther, who said: 'The function of the Sermon on the Mount is to teach you to crawl to Christ.' Wasn't he right?

- If we recognise that right and wrong do matter - to us and to God, to whom we are ultimately answerable - then the beginning place for us to find help and our hope is by coming to Jesus Christ, to humbly and earnestly receive him as Saviour and Lord.

- If we are people of faith in Christ already, as many of us are, but recognise that we have tended to simplify life for ourselves in terms of a set of tick boxes, and maybe even judge others on the same basis, then maybe there is a word here about listening more carefully to Jesus and thinking more rigorously about what he says to us about the rights and wrongs of faith and living.

Right and wrong is definitely more than an out-of-date idea.

Right and wrong is probably more than we thought it was.

Right and wrong is certainly more than we can manage by ourselves. , their motives, rather than just their outward actions.