Matthew 5:21-26

²¹ “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ ²² But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. ²³ So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, ²⁴ leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. ²⁵ Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. ²⁶ Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

The Southern Baptist Convention, of which Central Baptist Church is a part, has seven seminaries.  That is, there are seven seminaries that receive Cooperative Program funding and are officially considered to be “our seminaries.”  Each seminary has a president, as well as other officers.  While our seminaries are not perfect, they are, I believe, by and large, a credit to Southern Baptists.  Even so, they are staffed by human beings and, over the years, problems and conflicts inevitably arise.

One such conflict caught my attention some years ago.  It involved the firing of one of our seminary presidents.  I will not name the president or the seminary, for nobody should be dogged by their sins from years ago, especially when, as a friend of mine who knows him informed me, he genuinely repented and the Lord has done a real work of grace in his heart.

The title of the article I read reporting on his initial confession of wrongdoing to the Board of Trustees (that shortly thereafter led to his firing) was, “_________ Seminary president told to deal with his anger.”  The article reported that this seminary president had a serious problem with anger and that he “repeatedly bec[a]me enraged [and] used profanity with subordinates.”  The president confessed to all of this.  His particular wording struck me as interesting.  He said he had been guilty of “misappropriation of anger.”[1]

That wording (“misappropriation of anger”) is interesting because it means the “misuse” or “wrongful use” of anger.  If the brother in question used anger wrongly, that means it is possible to use anger rightly.  And, of course, we would all agree that there is a rightful appropriation of anger.  We should be angry, for instance, against injustice, the abuse of the weak by the strong, the perversion of the gospel, etc.  There are times when we should be angry.  There are even times when it is wrong not to be angry, as in the examples I just mentioned above.  For instance, in a poem by Jane M. Nirella, she writes:

God,

Grant me the grace

of anger,

Turn me into

a howling wind

to hasten change

where injustice stagnates;

make of me

a tempest

to conquer grinding sorrow.

Hammer at my

hard heart’s door;

smash the lock

of my indifference.

May the grace of anger

transform

my cowardly spirit.

Amen.[2]

In this case, Mrs. Nirella asks the Lord to help her be angry about injustice in the world.  It is almost a cry of repentance for her lack of anger.  We should have righteous anger over evil in the world.  Even so, it must be said that the majority of times we deal with anger it has more to do with pride than righteousness.  More times than not, our anger is a revelation of our own sinfulness and our own distance from God.

A few years ago I reached a point where I felt like I just needed to clear my own head, so I took an afternoon and took a long, slow walk through a place called Calloway Gardens in Columbus, GA.  Calloway Gardens is a lot like Garvan Gardens in Hot Springs.  On the way I picked up, on a whim, a little paperback copy of the sayings of that strange group of men we call “the Desert Fathers.”  The Desert Fathers is a phrase referring to a number of Christian men and women who withdrew from society moved to the desert to live in solitude in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries.  While they did not seek attention, they got plenty of it, and people soon flocked to see them and hear what they had to say.

As I sat in the little chapel at Calloway Gardens reading this collection of sayings, I was struck by how many times the Desert Fathers mentioned the dangers of anger.  For instance, one of the Desert Fathers named Agatho was prone to say, “Even if an angry man were to revive the dead, he would not be pleasing to God because of his anger.”  Another, a man named Isidore, who was the elder of Scete, was asked by another brother, “Why is it that the demons are so grievously afraid of you?”  He replied, “From the moment I became a monk I have striven to prevent anger rising to my lips.”  Another Desert Father, Ammonas, spent fourteen years praying that he would be free of anger.[3]

Yes, we are more apt to misappropriate anger than to use it appropriately.  And oftentimes, as in the case of the seminary president mentioned above, anger gets the better of us and we end up paying quite a price for it.  It is therefore all the more significant to notice that Jesus, after calling on His followers to exercise righteousness, began his list of illustrations of this exercise of righteous with a warning about anger.

²¹ “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ ²² But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. ²³ So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, ²⁴ leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. ²⁵ Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. ²⁶ Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

I. The “You have heard…But I Say” Formula Establishes the Deity of Jesus (v.21-22)

Before we consider anger in particular, I would like for us to acknowledge a shocking little formula that Jesus uses here and that He will use in the five illustrations following this (that we will consider over the next five weeks).  You can find this formula in the beginning phrases of verses 21 and 22.

²¹ “You have heard that it was said to those of old… ²² But I say to you…

Why is this shocking?  It is shocking because, in using it, Jesus is claiming deity for Himself.  He is, in fact, claiming to be God.  How so?  Because when Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said,” He is referring to Almighty God.  We know this because God is the one who gave the commandment that Jesus goes on to quote (“You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.”).  Furthermore, in the five illustrations that follow this one, Jesus begins with that phrase or some variation of it:  “You have heard that it was said to those of old…”  In every case He then mentions one of the commandments.

Of course, it was appropriate and right for a Rabbi to say that:  “You have heard that it was said to those of old…”  What He says next, though, is a very big problem:  “But I say to you…”  While Jesus does not go on to rebut the commandments or reject them (as we saw last week, such a notion was completely absent from His mind), He does interpret them in ways that were unique and surprising.

I do not wish to belabor this point.  I simply want to point out that unless Jesus is Himself God, the phrase, “But I say to you,” after the phrase, “You know what God said before,” is monstrously blasphemous.  If I ever stand before you and say, “God’s Word says this…but I say…” you should run me out on a rail before I finish the sentence.  Why?  Because no human being has the right to say, “But I say to you,” after quoting the words of God.  Only God can rightly say what God means and intends.  Thus, for Jesus to say, “But I say to you,” is for Jesus to say a great deal about Himself.

At this point we also need to recognize an important Old Testament prophecy that was fulfilled by Jesus Christ.  We need to do grasp this now or else we will not understand what Jesus is doing with these, “But I say to you,” phrases.  The passage is in Jeremiah 31:

³¹ “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, ³² not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. ³³ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

The Lord said that He would establish a new covenant, a new agreement with His people.  One of the central marks of this covenant is that it will reposition the Law of God from outside of man to inside of man’s heart.  Meaning, the fulfillment of the Law will have less to do with adherence to external rules than it has to do with the internal condition of the human heart.  (Though, again, let us remember that Jesus adamantly said He did not come to abolish the Law.)

I would suggest that this was the intent and upshot of the Law all the time, but what the Lord said was that the day would come when that reality (i.e., the reality that the Law is only truly abided by and fulfilled when righteousness takes root in the human heart) would move to the forefront.  Why this is significant for us to understand at this point is because it is here, in the Sermon on the Mount, and in this section of the Sermon in particular, that Jesus begins to define righteousness in terms of heart-health not rule-keeping.  As we will see today and in the weeks to come, Jesus moves us to a deeper understanding of the nature of righteousness and holiness.  And, in so doing, He shows that the new covenant that God said would come had indeed come in Jesus Himself.  This is why, in Luke 22:20, at the last supper, Jesus takes the cup and says, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”

II. Unchecked Anger is a Great Evil That Will Be Judged (v.21-22)

To illustrate how the new covenant under which we live works, Jesus begins with the issue of anger.

²¹ “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’

So here we have the Law, the sixth commandment to be exact.  “Do not murder.”  And for ages upon ages, the people of God sought to abide by that commandment.  Of course, it is a measurable commandment.  You have either killed somebody or you haven’t.  At least, that’s how the commandment came to be viewed.  So the scribes and Pharisees, and, likely, everybody, came to view this commandment with a kind of indifference.  After all, most people have probably not killed somebody.  So this became one of the “filler” commandments in the popular consciousness.  “You shall not murder.”  “No problem,” we are inclined to think, “I haven’t murdered anybody!”

That seems clear cut.  But then Jesus adds His, “But I say to you,” and are attention is grabbed.

²² But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

Do you see what Jesus is doing?  God said, “A new covenant is coming.  The Law will be written on your heart.  The heart is where true righteousness is found.”  And Jesus says, essentially, “Ok, you haven’t murdered anybody.  But what is the heart issue that leads to murder?  It is anger.  To have anger in your heart toward another person is to murder him.  What good is it if you have not murdered with your hands if you are consistently murdering with your heart?”

The wording Jesus uses here is significant. Charles Quarles notes that “the term used for ‘anger’ (orgizo) here is a very intense term.  Elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel, the term is used only of anger that is a prelude to destructive behavior…The verse is never used to describe the anger of Jesus.”  Further, Quarles points to the fact that the word is a present participle, which denotes an ongoing, progressive state, to suggest that the word is used by Jesus to refer to “enduring anger as well as destructive rage.”[4]

So the anger Jesus is speaking of is the kind of anger that would lead to murder.  This is a deep spirit of anger, a kind of growing rage that slowly grips the angry person.  I do not say this to excuse our small bursts of anger.  In fact, the small bursts of anger we indulge lead inevitably to this deep spirit of anger.  Anger also leads to murder, but, before it gets there, it usually manifests itself verbally in insults.

^22b …whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

A.T. Robertson says that (raca) is an Aramaic word meaning “empty” and that the word for “You fool!” (more) is a Greek word meaning dull or stupid.  What is more, the word raca contains a phonetic insult in that the Aramaic pronunciation of it sounds like a man clearing his through to spit in another man’s face.[5]  Roberson quotes Bruce to the effect that raca communicates contempt for a man’s head while more, “fool,” communicates contempt for a man’s heart.[6]  So we are speaking here of anger that emanates from an enraged heart and that manifests itself initially in verbal assaults but would, if it could, manifest itself in physical assault.

If you think that you can traffic in verbal assaults without going all the way to physical assaults, please note that Jesus is putting insults as the first step in an inherently progressive process that leads to murder itself.  The heart that would insult is in fact the heart that would kill.  It does no good to say that you have merely insulted a human being, but you haven’t killed him.  In fact, an insult is nothing less than character assassination and an effort to kill a man’s name.  It is a form of murder, and it may, in fact, lead to murder.

Anger is progressive in the way that lust is progressive.  It is never satisfied.  This is likely why, if you read verse 22 carefully, the punishments for anger that Jesus mentions are increasingly more and more intense.

²² But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

If you’re angry, you’re liable to judgment in court.  If you call your brother raca you will have to stand before the Sanhedrin, the high Jewish court.  And if you call a man a fool you are “liable to the hell of fire.”

We should see anger for the ugly thing it is.  Martin Luther, a man who struggled with anger himself, said this:

We indulge in anger, rage, and villainy as though we were doing a fine and noble thing.  Really, it is high time that we started to deplore and bewail how much we have acted like rogues and like unseeing, unruly, and unfeeling persons who kick, scratch, tear, and devour one another like furious beasts and pay no heed to this serious and divine command, etc.[7]

It is true that not all anger is sinful anger.[8]   It is technically true.  Experientially, though, we rarely show ourselves to be responsible stewards of anger.

III. The Solution to Anger is a Transformed Heart Confirmed by Humble Action (v.23-26)

How, then, do we guard ourselves against this pernicious evil of anger?  Jesus shows us the way in what He says next.

²³ So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, ²⁴ leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. ²⁵ Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. ²⁶ Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

Let’s unpack these amazing words by listing the steps to combating anger that we find in them.

(1) Realize That Sinful Anger Disrupts Your Relationship With God (v.23)

It is significant that, in Jesus’ example, the person realizes his anger during worship.  He is offering a sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem when he remembers that another person has reason to be offended with him.

²³ So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, ²⁴ leave your gift there before the altar and go.

So this happens at church!  Have you ever had that experience?  Have you ever been singing a hymn about love and forgiveness and God’s grace and then realized that you have wronged another person?  In the immediate context, you have wronged them by harboring sinful anger against them.  But it could be any wrong.

The point to note here is that Jesus cautions us not to offer our offering if we remember that we have wronged another person.  This is because the undealt-with anger renders our offering null and void.  Sinful anger and conflict disrupts our relationship with God.  This explains to us what Peter meant when he wrote this in 1 Peter 3:

⁷ Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord Jesus is much more interested in the condition of your heart than in the volume of your hymn singing or the amount of your giving.  If you have wronged another person, your offerings to God, whatever they may be, will be stymied.

(2) Go to the Person You Have Wronged (v.24)

So you realize that somebody has something legitimate against you.  What then?

²⁴ leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

Go to the person you have wronged.  The longer you wait, the harder it will become and the more your relationship will be damaged.  If you are in the wrong, go the person and make it right.  Apologize.  Ask their forgiveness.  Be reconciled.  If you are not sure that you are in the wrong but think you might be, go anyway and talk it out.  If you are convinced you are not in the wrong, ask the Lord to search your heart and make sure one way or another.

Let me just say at this point that it is amazing how much conflict ensues in churches because people will not talk.  Christian people, for some reason, have a great deal of trouble simply talking to one another.  Your personal relationships, as well as the unity of the body of Christ, are worth the initial awkwardness of the conversation you need to have.

(3) Go Quickly and Try to Make Amends (v.25a)

Next, go quickly.

²⁵ Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court

Jesus recommends hopping up in the middle of church and going out to make things right.  There is no delay in His instructions.  It is gloriously awkward!  Paul says the same in Ephesians 4:

²⁶ Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷ and give no opportunity to the devil.

Why should we immediately get to work when the Lord brings us conviction in this matter?  Because the devil has immediately gotten to work in the moments you are not speaking.

(4) Realize That Undealt With Anger and Wrong Will Have Its Punishment (v.25b-26)

Jesus spoke of the certainty of punishment in v.25b-26:

²⁵ Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. ²⁶ Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

Next, it is important that we reject the notion that undealt-with anger is no big deal, that it will just fade away, and that it will carry no consequences.  As a matter of fact, it will have its punishment, both internally and externally.  Internally, doctors say that unresolved anger can have physical results on your heart.  It will also feed a further spirit of anger that will slowly consume your whole being.  Externally, it will erode your relationships and distort your very face.  In terms of earthly punishment, it may very well lead to devastating consequences here.  Regardless, it will ultimately be dealt with at the divine bar of justice if not repented of and confessed.

(5) Learn to Combat Anger by Allowing the Charitable Patience and Hope of Jesus to Take Root in Your Heart

Finally, it is important to understand that just as anger leads to a disposition of anger, so love leads to a disposition of love.  That is why it is so very important that we cultivate individual hearts of love as well as a corporate spirit of love.  In Ephesians 4, Paul put it like this;

¹ I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ² with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. ⁷ But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

Notice the positive virtues that combat a spirit of anger:  humility, gentleness, patience, love, eagerness for unity, peace.  Why?  Because we are one body in Jesus Christ!

Would you say that your personal disposition lends itself to congregational peace or congregational discord?  It’s in the little things that the battle is won or lost.

For instance, consider how developing the habit of charitable compliment can combat a spirit of anger.  What if you simply determined (a) to speak no ill of any person and (b) to speak good instead.  People used to say of the Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte, “Watch out for Whyte! All his geese become swans.”[9]  That is, he could find something good to say about everybody.  In doing so, he kept his own heart from anger and he did his part to fight a spirit of anger as well.

Finally, let us, as a church, help one another to combat anger.  Let us calm one another when we become tempestuous.  Let us reason with one another when we fall into blind rage.  Let us stir one another up to love and patience and kindness, realizing that we’re all on the same journey to Christlikeness, a journey in which we need the loving support of one another.  As Stanley Hauerwas put it:

Anger and lust are bodily passions.  We simply are not capable of willing ourselves free of anger or lust.  Jesus does not imply that we are to be free of either anger or lust; that is, he assumes that we are bodily beings.  Rather, he offers us membership in a community in which our bodies are formed in service to God and for one another so that our anger and our lust are transformed…Jesus, however, is not recommending that we will our way free of lust or anger, but rather he is offering us membership in a people that is so compelling we are not invited to dwell on ourselves or our sinfulness.[10]

Let us become that kind of community.

Exodus 4:1-17

¹ Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’” ² The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” ³ And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. ⁴ But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand— ⁵ “that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” ⁶ Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. ⁷ Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak.” So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. ⁸ “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. ⁹ If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.” ¹⁰ But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” ¹¹ Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? ¹² Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” ¹³ But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.” ¹⁴ Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. ¹⁵ You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. ¹⁶ He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. ¹⁷ And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs.”

Excuses are terribly easy to make, especially when they are employed to avoid something very unpleasant.  It is difficult to imagine many things more unpleasant than the prospect Moses faced of having to walk back into Egypt, face the Pharaoh whose house he had abandoned and whose laws he had broken in killing an Egyptian, and face his own people who neither saw him as a leader nor felt compelled to.  Even so, that is precisely what the Lord God called Moses to do.  Moses responds to God’s call on his life by offering excuses and objections.  Let us consider these this evening.

Objection #1:  The Israelites May Not Believe Moses (v.1-9)

The first objection was true enough as far as it went.

¹ Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’”

If you listen to this objection closely, it really has more than one component.  Starting with the last component first, Moses fears the incredulity and skepticism of the Israelites:  “…they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’”  It is a reasonable fear.  God speaking to Moses through a burning bush is indeed one of the stranger occurrences of the Bible, and I suspect that any of us might be a little hesitant at having to recount the story to people not predisposed to trust us anyway.

Throughout my years as a pastor I have had numerous church members pull me aside in private and tell me of God speaking to them in odd and unusual ways.  Almost without fail they begin their testimonies with something like this:  “Now, I know this sounds crazy, and you may think I’m crazy after I tell you this, but the other day…”  I once had a lady tell me how the Lord spoke to her in a dream.  After telling me the dream, she said, “Pastor, I’m not crazy.  I promise.”

For myself, I am always quick to assure those who have had these experiences that I have literally no reason not to believe them as long as the content of the dream or vision does not violate the clear teachings of Scripture.  To be sure, we should be careful with these kinds of things, but let us be clear on this fact:  God has appeared to His people throughout time in ways diverse and fascinating.  He spoke to Moses through a burning bush.  I have no reason to think He does not occasionally speak to His people today in strange ways as well.

Moses feared the skepticism of the Israelites.  However, I rather suspect that the first part of his objection is the real crux of the matter:  “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice.”  He is speaking here from experience.  Perhaps you remember Moses’ first foray into leadership over the Hebrews.  It is recorded in Exodus 2:

¹³ When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?” ¹⁴ He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?”

That’s not exactly the most ringing endorsement.  Moses feared the rejection of those he was supposed to lead.  In his mind, he had every reason to think that this was going to go poorly.  However, God introduces another reason into the mix, and this was a reason to believe it would go just as God said it would.  Let us observe the Lord’s response to Moses.

² The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” ³ And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. ⁴ But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand— ⁵ “that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” ⁶ Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. ⁷ Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak.” So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. ⁸ “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. ⁹ If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.”

What is happening here?  The Lord is doing a couple of things in this response, and both are important.  The most obvious thing the Lord is doing is demonstrating His power to Moses so that Moses would believe and know that the God who called Him was the God who is able to accomplish the task to which He called him.  This is no weak God.  As we saw last week, God was not risking.  God did not have His fingers crossed, hoping this would all work out.  God knew what He was doing.  What is more, God was able to do what He called Moses to do.  Thus, God turned Moses’ staff into a snake and back into a staff again and God turned Moses’ hand leprous and back to normal again to demonstrate to Moses that He is a powerful God.

But there’s something else here, something that perhaps we might miss if we don’t think carefully.  Notice that the two demonstrations of power (the staff and the hand) and the one promised demonstration of power (turning the Nile water into blood) all would have frightened Moses as well.  It is not just that God wants Moses to see His power.  It is also that God needs Moses himself to fear His power.

Why is this so?  It is so because the first decision a minister of God has to make is a decision concerning who he is going to fear more:  God or the congregation.  Israel was Moses’ congregation.  It is a daunting and humbling thing to try to lead God’s people.  It is a daunting and humbling thing to dare to say, “Thus saith the Lord,” and no true minister will dare to say that unless he is actually speaking God’s revealed Word.  Even then, there is a subtle but powerful temptation to edit the message so as not to offend or anger the audience.

Many minsters have the same relationship with their congregations as tiger trainers do with their tigers:  they know they’re called to lead them, but they fear pushing too far lest the tiger have the trainer for lunch.  It is a tragic mentality to fall into, especially as the Bible does not present the minister/congregation relationship in terms of trainer and tiger but rather in terms of shepherd and sheep.  But the question remains:  who will God’s ministers fear more?  What will be the driving motivation of a leader’s ministry?

In truth, God needs leaders who fear Him above anybody else.  God needs leaders who know the awesome power of a Holy God.  Moses needed to reach the point where his fear of God was greater than his fear of either Pharaoh or the Israelites.  It is the same point that Jesus needs us to reach, as He says in Matthew 10:

²⁶ “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. ²⁷ What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. ²⁸ And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. ²⁹ Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. ³⁰ But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. ³¹ Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. ³² So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, ³³ but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.

Let me ask you:  who do you fear more, God or man?

Objection #2:  Moses’ Lack of Eloquence (v.10-12)

Moses’ objections seem to deteriorate in value and quality as he voices them.  Thus, his next objection was that he simply wasn’t a good speaker.

¹⁰ But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”

One senses that Moses was grasping at straws at this point.  The Lord’s reaction was telling and needed:

¹¹ Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? ¹² Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

In many ways, this exchange is reminiscent of the first.  Moses objects that he is unsure of what might happen and the Lord reminds him that He, the Lord, has the power to accomplish the task.  “Who has made man’s mouth?” is therefore a crucial question.  “You did!” is the only honest answer.  In asking this question of Moses, God is reminding Moses that it isn’t simply a matter of Moses’ mouth and Moses’ power and Moses’ strength.  The Lord would speak through Moses.

It is interesting to see how often great men of God were aware of the limitations of their own mouths.  In Jeremiah 1, we find an almost identical exchange:

⁴ Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

⁵ “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

⁶ Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.”

⁷ But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’;
for to all to whom I send you, you shall go,
and whatever I command you, you shall speak.

⁸ Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the Lord.”

⁹ Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,

“Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.

¹⁰ See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”

¹¹ And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” And I said, “I see an almond branch.” ¹² Then the Lord said to me, “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.”

The Lord tells Moses that He will be with his mouth.  The Lord tells Jeremiah that He will put His words in his mouth.  Most dramatically, as Isaiah 6 records, the Lord touched Isaiah lips to empower him to speak:

⁵ And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” ⁶ Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. ⁷ And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” ⁸ And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”

God is in the business of touching the mouths of those He would have speak!  Furthermore, it would seem that a recognition of our inability to speak the Word of God in our own strength is actually a prerequisite for usefulness!  Paul reached the same point of recognition concerning his own inadequacy to speak.  In the second chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul said this:

¹ And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. ² For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³ And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, ⁴ and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵ so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

This is the great choice:  either we will speak out of our own power or we will speak out of the power God grants us.  If we will trust in our own power, we will freeze in fear and never speak.  If we trust in God’s power, He will give us the words.  It is important to realize that this truth is not only for prophets or preachers or teachers.  In Matthew 10, Jesus says we all need to understand this:

¹⁶ “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. ¹⁷ Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, ¹⁸ and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. ¹⁹ When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. ²⁰ For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

Moses needed to learn this crucial lesson.  So do you and I!

Objection #3:  Moses’ Fear and Uncertainty (v.13-17)

Moses’ last objection is perhaps the most pitiful.

¹³ But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.”

This is roughly equivalent to, “I just don’t want to do it, Lord!”  I suspect, had there been a Tarshish to run to, Moses would have done just as Jonah did.  It was not something he wanted to do.  He felt utterly inadequate.  He felt ill-equipped.  He felt weak.  He felt uncertain.  He was afraid.  And even though God had given Moses every theological and demonstrable evidence that He would be with him, Moses still hesitated at the threshold of his calling.

I do not say this in judgment of Moses.  Who among us would not have had the same struggle?  The spirit might have been willing, but Moses’ flesh was week.  At this objection, God speaks in anger to Moses.

¹⁴ Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. ¹⁵ You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. ¹⁶ He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. ¹⁷ And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs.”

There are two realities at work here.  First, God, in His graciousness, decides to give Moses a helper.  He decides to send along Aaron, Moses’ brother.  The Lord has compassion on Moses.

Even so, note that God’s giving of a helper does not remove the calling that God placed on Moses’ life in particular.  This is not a victory for Moses.  He does not argue God out of His decision.  Note the wording.  Even though Moses will now have Aaron, Moses still must speak the words of God.  In verse 15, we see that Moses must speak to Aaron “and put the words in his mouth.”  While God will be with both of them, He says in verse 16 that Aaron “shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him.”

This is critical.  It means that although God condescends to give Moses a helper, that helper does not remove the mantle that God has placed specifically on Moses’ shoulders.  Moses still must go.  Moses still must speak.

There is something here about the inviolable nature of a call.  I believe that when God has called you to do something, that calling is yours.  You will not know peace until you do it.  It is simply a matter of accepting God’s will for you life.  He may well turn to another to accomplish the task, but He does not say, “Just forget it, then!” in doing so.  Either you will come to terms with what God is calling you to do, or you will not know His peace.

It would perhaps be helpful here to conclude with yet another example of One who had a calling on His life but struggled with the pain of it.  His struggle was in a garden called Gethsemane.  It is found in Matthew 26:

³⁶ Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” ³⁷ And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. ³⁸ Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” ³⁹ And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” ⁴⁰ And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? ⁴¹ Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” ⁴² Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”

Two times Jesus acknowledges the pain of His task.  Two times He subjugates what concerns He had to the will of God.  “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”

It is a powerful picture.  Jesus, the God-Man, knew the pain of a hard calling.  His calling was harder than any we can imagine or any that we will be called upon to undertake.  Yet Jesus desired only to do the will of the One who sent Him.  “Your will be done.”

Moses had to reach that point where he could say those words:  “Your will be done.”

Isaiah had to reach the point where he could say those words:  “Your will be done.”

Jeremiah had to reach the point where he could say those words:  “Your will be done.”

Jonah had to reach the point where he could say those words:  “Your will be done.”

Paul had to reach the point where he could say those words:  “Your will be done.”

The Lord Jesus Himself said those words:  “Your will be done.”

All that remains is for you and me to say those words:  “Your will be done.”

Will you say them?

Will you go?

Matthew 5:17-20

¹⁷ “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸ For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹ Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

I used to have a bumper sticker (before I gave it away) with a saying on it by G.K. Chesterton:  “Break the Conventions, Keep the Commandments.”  I love that, because it draws a needed distinction between, on the one hand, the essence of actual right and wrong, and, on the other, the additional and often petty rules we add to this essence in our attempts to safeguard right and wrong.  The former are commandments.  The latter are conventions.  One can break the latter without breaking the former.  Jesus oftentimes did precisely that.  Jesus broke the conventions but never the commandments.

Some years ago I took a youth group to a summer camp.  On that trip was a young man who was known to be an atheist.  He was known to be that by the other kids, but also by me, for I taught him in a high school Bible class.  I had been wanting to talk to the young man for some time about his lack of belief and finally, one night at camp, it happened.  After the other kids left the room where we had had a group Bible study, the young man stayed and he and I talked.  We stayed and talked for about two hours.

He launched his many objections to the existence of God and to Christianity in general, and I, in turn, sought to respond to his objections and bear witness to the gospel.  I was particularly struck by one of his arguments in particular.  He argued that Jesus had at most violated and had at least changed the Old Testament Law that was given by God and thus could not be the Son of God.

I responded that Jesus had not broken the Law itself, but rather had violated the man-made additions to the Law that had attached themselves to the Law like barnacles to a ship.  He countered that, at the very least, I had to admit that Jesus had acted in a very non-traditional way concerning the application of the Law.  I admitted such immediately, as I do now, believing that that actually proves the point:  Jesus did not violate the Law, He violated the traditions that grew up around it.

What is more, I pressed the young man to consider the fact that Jesus, as the divine Son of God, actually wrote the Law.  As such, if His interpretations seemed odd or unorthodox, it was probably wiser for us to trust His interpretation to the extent of correcting our own rather than to force our own interpretation of the Law on Jesus in an accusatory manner.  In general, I pointed out, it is courteous to allow authors to interpret and explain their own work, no matter whether or not the author’s explanation fits our own.

I was intrigued by this young man’s appeal to Jesus’ unconventional approach to the Law.  For one thing, while wrong, it is at least a thoughtful argument that goes a little deeper than some arguments.  For another thing, it is a very old argument pointing to a very old question:  what exactly was Jesus’ relationship to the Law?

In our text this morning, Jesus addresses specifically this question.  The beginning of the text seems to suggest that some people, perhaps after hearing the Beatitudes, began to think that this Jesus had come to offer a new Law and had come to overthrow the old Law.  Jesus would have none of that idea, as we will see.

I. Jesus and the Law:  Reorientation, Fulfillment, Interpretation (v.17-18)

Jesus has just finished His amazing Beatitudes, these eight marks of Kingdom life.  The Beatitudes are spellbinding and provocative.  Perhaps they filled the people up with thoughts of something totally new, a new movement, a new religion, and maybe even, as we have said, a new Law.  What Jesus said next put an end to these thoughts and showed that Jesus was not inventing, He was reorienting, fulfilling, and interpreting.

¹⁷ “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

This, as they say, is plain as day.  Jesus has not come to do away with the Law or the Prophets.  The word for “do away” or “abolish” or “destroy” “means to ‘loosen down’ as of a house or tent.”[1]  No, He has not come to take the Law down and pack it up, He has come to fulfill the Law.

The Law Defended and Defined

There is a great deal of discussion about the meaning of the phrase “the Law or the Prophets.”  What, exactly, is the Law?  It seems that the term had come to be pretty fluid even within Judaism and was used in a number of different ways.  It could mean the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.  It could mean the Ten Commandments.  It could, as some scholars suggest, refer to the four major collections of laws:  the Covenant Code (Exod 20:22-23:33), the Deuteronomic Code (Deut 12-26), the Holiness Code (Lev 17-26), and the Priestly Code (Exod 25-31, 34:29; parts of Numbers).[2]  Or it could mean, more generally, the whole apparatus of rules and conventions and traditions that had grown up around the Law.  Undoubtedly, some Jews used it in this last sense, though Jesus certainly did not include the customs of man in His use of the term.

Regardless of the precise definition, Jesus’ addition of the words “or the Prophets” to “the Law” would suggest that He was speaking of the entirety of God’s revelation in the Old Testament.  His use of the term “the Law” in particular would undoubtedly refer to all of God’s righteous commandments for His people.

The Eternal Nature of the Law

These commandments, Jesus said, are rooted in the character of God and cannot be dispensed with.  None of them can be discarded without the person discarding them disobeying Almighty God.  Jesus is quite specific about the truthfulness of all of the Law:

¹⁸ For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

An iota refers to the Hebrew yod, of which there are approximately 66,420 in the Old Testament.  The “dot” refers to the Hebrew serif which is basically a little mark on some Hebrew letters.[3]  So Jesus is saying that all 66,420 yods and all of the tiny little serifs will last forever as they come from the very heart of God.

Whatever else this might mean, it slams the door forever on the suggestion that Jesus came to start a new religion with a new Law.  On the contrary, whatever Jesus was doing, He saw His actions as ultimately faithful to the revealed Law of God.  Some Jews have seen this statement as a radical declaration of Jesus’ faithfulness to God’s Law.  For instance, Dale Allison quotes the Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide as saying:

…in all rabbinic literature I know of no more unequivocal, fiery acknowledgment of Israel’s holy scripture than this opening to the Instruction on the Mount.  Jesus is here more radical even than Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba and Rabbi Johanan, both of whom were prepared to renounce a letter – that is, a written character of the Torah if doing so would publicly sanctify the name of God.[4]

Jesus would not renounce a single letter of the Law.  This fact troubled me a bit when I received a phone call from a man whose mother I was going to bury in Georgia.  I had never met the deceased woman.  She was not a church member.  I had never met her son, who, if I recall, did not live in the state.  Regardless, when he called me to plan the funeral, he emphatically asserted, “The only thing I must ask of you is that you NOT read from the Old Testament.  My mother was a New Testament Christian.  I do NOT want the Old Testament read.”

What a strange and tragic idea.  It is a statement that Jesus never would have made.

The Perversion of the Law

Well, then, if Jesus declared the Law as good and holy, and if all His actions should be viewed as obedient actions, and if He did not come to create a new Law or abandon the old Law, then what, we might ask, was the problem?  Why did Jesus conflict with the scribes and Pharisees so often about the Law?  Furthermore, why did Jesus’ interpretation and application of the Law seem, frankly, so odd and unorthodox, as it certainly often did?

To understand this, we must understand the perversion of the Law that had taken place over the many years since the Lord God first gave the Law to His people.  Here I am using the term to refer to the commandments that God gave His people.  If you don’t get what the Jews had done with the Law, I think you won’t understand why Jesus had so much conflict with the religious elites of His day on precisely this question.  Furthermore, if you don’t get this, you won’t understand a lot of legalistic behavior in the Christian church today.

To get at this, I think we need to make a distinction between (1) God’s Law, (2) the rules that man created to help people (theoretically, anyway) keep the Law, and (3) the further explanation of those rules that ended up being another set of rules altogether.  God gave His people the Law, His commandments and prescripts.  Then, over time, a class or group of people grew up among the Jews who saw it as their job to create the rules that were intended to help the people not break the Laws.  These people were called scribes.  Those rules, however, needed further explanation themselves, so layer after layer of further rules were added, with each layer becoming more miniscule and more micromanagerial, to use our term.  The Pharisees were another group of people who grew up within Judaism.  These were the super-religious, the men who devoted their lives to the radical living out of the Law.  Thus, they immersed themselves in the rules and tried to live them out very deliberately.

The scribes had calculated that the Law contained 248 commandments and 365 prohibitions.[5]  They had counted them.  However, the rules they made ostensibly to keep people from breaking the Law were almost innumerable.  It was hard to know them all, though thankfully there was usually a professional rule-keeper around to help you out.  So when Jesus was incarnated upon the Earth, He was born into a system that had piled layer upon layer of rules, customs, traditions, and conventions on top of the core Law that God had pronouced.

To help you understand the extent of the problem, let us look at what the scribes had done with one particular commandment.  Now keep it mind that they did this kind of thing with all of the commandments, but this one illustration will be helpful.  Let us take, for instance, the fourth commandment, found in Exodus 20:

⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

That is the Law:  “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”  The scribes and Pharisees accepted that and loved that.  However, in order to help people keep the Sabbath day holy, they felt they needed to create a number of rules, because, after all, there were numerous ways one might violate the Sabbath.  So, to pick three examples, the scribes said that carrying a burden violated the Sabbath, writing violated the Sabbath, and healing violated the Sabbath.  It is important to note that the Lord Himself did not say this.  Rather, it was the deduction of the scribes:  no carrying burdens, no writing, and no healing.

But of course that’s not sufficient, because it raises the questions, “What is writing?  What is a burden?  What is healing?”  Furthermore, life isn’t always simple.  There are lots of complicated situations in the world that defy simple definitions.  So the scribes and their interpreters got to work again, defining what a burden is, what writing is, and what healing is.  William Barclay has passed on these specific examples from the scribes.

The scribes defined a “burden” as:

…food equal in weight to a dried fig, enough wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one swallow, honey enough to put upon a wound, oil enough to anoint a small member, water enough to moisten an eye-salve, paper enough to write a customs house notice upon, ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet, reed enough to make a pen…

They defined “writing” in this way:

He who writes two letters of the alphabet with his right or with his left hand, whether of one kind or of two kinds, if they are written with different inks or in different languages, is guilty.  Even if he should write two letters from forgetfulness, he is guilty, whether he has written them with ink or with pain, red chalk, vitriol, or anything which makes a permanent mark.  Also he that writes on two walls that form an angle, or on two tablets of his account book so that they can be read together is guilty…But, if anyone writes with dark fluid, with fruit juice, or in the dust of the road, or in sand, or in anything which does not make a permanent mark, he is not guilty…If he writes one letter on the ground, and one on the wall of the house, or on two pages of a book, so that they cannot be read together, he is not guilty.

Healing was not allowed on the Sabbath because that was considered work.  Concerning healing, Barclay says:

Healing was allowed when there was danger to life, and especially in troubles of the ear, nose and throat; but even then, steps could be taken only to keep the patient from becoming worse; no steps might be taken to make him get any better.  So a plain bandage might be put on a wound, but no ointment; plain wadding might be put into a sore ear, but no medicated wadding.[6]

Again, I repeat, God’s Word does not say this.  The Law that God delivered does not say this.  These were the man-made rules that grew up around the Law.  It is important to understand that the scribes and Pharisees were not pernicious, evil men.  They sincerely thought that the rules they were keeping were protecting the honor of God.  They loved the Law.

Theologian Randy Harris wrote about a friend of his who visited his child’s school one day.  He told Harris that in his child’s classroom there was a bulletin board dedicated to the many things the children of the class loved.  So on one piece of paper a child had written, “I love my dog.”  And, under those words was a picture of something that Randy Harris’ friend assumed was meant to be a dog.  He said he was looking at all the various things the children wrote when he noticed one that said something odd.  It said, in a child’s handwriting, “I love Torah!”[7]  The Torah refers to the first five books of the Old Testament.

That is very interesting.  It is a traditional, pious, Jewish thing to say:  “I love Torah!”  The scribes and Pharisees would have said the same.  Jesus would, I think, have said the same, as an observant Jew, though He would have meant something different by it.  The scribes and Pharisees would have meant by, “I love Torah!” that they loved the Law and the rules and the traditions.  Jesus would have said, “I love Torah!” in the sense that He loved the Lord God who had given His Word.

Here is where the main problem comes in.  Not only did the scribes add layer upon layer of petty rules over the Law, they set up a system whereby obedience was quantifiable and measurable.  Following God, then, became a matter of simply checking off the boxes:  I kept that rule, and that rule, and that rule!  It is just a short step from there to loving the Law for the Law’s sake.  Brothers and sisters, it is a tragic thing to love God’s Law more than you love God.  It is like being in love with the Bible.  The Bible was not given so that you can love the Bible.  It was given so that you can love God!

By making the Law almost bigger than God in their hearts, the scribes made an idol of it.  Most tragically, by fixating on keeping the rules instead of on reaching the ultimate destination of the Law – love of God Himself – the scribes and Pharisees were missing the whole point and were not actually moving toward God.  I love how Clarence Jordan put it when he said that the scribes and Pharisees “were treading water in an ethical sea.  The hope of reaching harbor had been replaced by an involuntary impulse just to keep their souls afloat.”[8]  In other words, they weren’t obeying the Law to journey to God.  They were simply dog-paddling in the rules.

There are Christians who do the exact same thing!  In all their rule keeping, they miss God.  In all their checked-off boxes, they never walk with Jesus.  In all their “do’s” and “don’ts,” they miss Jesus all together.

It is interesting to me that whereas the scribes made the Law bigger and bigger and bigger, Jesus simplified it dramatically. He did not violate it or cut it down.  Rather, in Matthew 22, He reminded the people of the simple core of what the Law was about.  Do you remember?

³⁴ But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. ³⁵ And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷ And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰ On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Do you see?  Jesus came to reorient the Law back to the heart, where it belongs.  He came to remind us that God’s desire was not countless, unfathomable regulations, it was simple love of God and neighbor.  “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

This reorientation was not an effort to make the Law easier.  On the contrary, by reorienting the Law away from checked-boxes and back to the condition of the human heart, Jesus actually made it much more challenging.  After all, it is easy to keep little external rules.  It is much harder to become a true child of God internally.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets,” Jesus said, “I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”  So Jesus reorients the Law back to the human heart.  We will also see over the next number of weeks that He is the ultimate interpreter of the Law, as we consider His teaching on specific aspects of the Law.  But what is striking here is that Jesus said He came to fulfill the Law.

This likely means many things.  It means that Jesus fulfilled the demands of the Law by never violating it.  It means that when Jesus gave His life on the cross, He was fulfilling the Law in the sense of satisfying the demands of justice against all who had violated it.  It also means, more generally, that He came to fulfill the Law in the sense of fulfilling prophecy.  Meaning, the Law and prophets prophesied and spoke of and pointed to Jesus in everything they said.  In Matthew 11:13, Jesus says, “For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John.”  All of the Old Testament pointed to Jesus’ coming.  He is the fulfillment of it.

II. The Christian and the Law: Surpassing Righteousness From the Heart (v.19-20)

If verses 17 and 18 speak of Jesus and the Law, verses 19 and 20 speak of our relationship to the Law.  Having spoken of His fulfillment of the Law, Jesus next says this:

¹⁹ Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

This is a challenging teaching, to be sure.  Verse 19 is clear enough and seems to follow naturally from verses 17 and 18.  If Jesus valued the Law and did not abandon it, neither should we.  But in verse 20 He goes even further, saying, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Righteousness, here, would refer to true godliness, true obedience to the Law.  But how is the righteousness of the Christian to surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees?  These were experts in the Law.  These were professional Law-keepers.

It is important to understand and remember that through perverting the Law into a mere list of external rules, the scribes and Pharisees were not actually practicing the true Law.  They were, once again, dog-paddling, not swimming.  So let us first recognize that when Jesus says this He is not asking us to out-legalize and out-minutia the scribes and Pharisees.  No, He was speaking of actual righteousness, the original intent of the Law.

But even this does not help us.  Why?  Because when we try to be righteous, try to follow the Law, try to do and be all that God has called us to do and be, we find we fall short.  Paul put it like this in Galatians 3:

¹⁰ For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.”

The Law, then, curses us.  It curses us not because it is evil, but because it reveals the evil that is within us.  If you want to see how far you are from God, simply try following His Law perfectly.  The Law does not give us salvation.  The Law gives us condemnation by highlighting our lawlessness.

What, then, are we to do?  How is our righteousness to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees if the Law ultimately shows us our distance from God?  Here is where the gospel is good news.  Let us get at this by first considering something Paul says in Romans 1:

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. ¹⁷ For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

This is fascinating!  Paul preached something called “the gospel,” which we may summarize here as “the good news about Jesus.”  He says in this text (1) that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to believers and (2) that the gospel, the good news about Jesus, is the vehicle through which God’s righteousness is revealed from faith.  So Paul says that the righteousness we must have, the righteousness that Jesus called upon us to have in excess of that of the scribes and Pharisees, is communicated and revealed to us in the good news about Jesus when we trust in Him.  But more than that, He says, “The righteous shall live by faith.”  So there is a connection between what Jesus did for us on the cross, the faith we place in Him, the righteousness of God, and our lives.

In Romans 3 things become even clearer.

²¹ But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus

Ah, so the Law itself was given not as the means of creating righteousness (again, all it reveals in us is condemnation and judgment), but rather as a signpost from God pointing to the means of righteousness.  The Law and prophets (Paul is using Jesus’ phrase here) “bear witness to” the righteousness of God.  Ok, but where am I to find this righteousness?  In Jesus Christ!  And how am I to receive this righteousness I must have?  By faith!  Thus, when I trust in Jesus, repenting of my sins and giving Him my life, He somehow forgives me and covers me in His righteousness, justifying me by the gift of grace!

Could it be?  Could it be that my righteousness, the righteousness that Jesus said I must have in excess of the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, is given to me as a gift?

In Romans 10:4, Paul writes, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”  “The end of the Law” does not mean “the abandonment of the Law” but rather “the fulfillment of the Law.”  What the Law was seeking to do, it accomplished in Jesus.  The whole road of the Law ends at the feet of the cross.

Does this mean that I am free from the righteousness that the Law demands?  Can I simply use Jesus, then, to abandon the Law’s demands on my life?  May it never be!  Of course not!  The Law ending in Jesus does not drive us to sin, it drives us to holiness!  Christ’s righteousness now takes up residence in our hearts!  We are not free from the need for righteous living.  We are rather free from the terrifying prospect of having to achieve this righteousness by our own efforts!  It is given to us as a gift by the Christ who lives within us and then empowers us to live it out in the world!

Paul says precisely this in Romans 5:17:

For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Adam gives us death, Jesus gives us life.  But notice that those who receive “the free gift of righteousness” are to “reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”  You were dead and ungodly, now you live and are free to follow the Lord God.  You were condemned and fearful, now you are liberated and empowered to do what God commands.

But let us not forget the most scandalous and shocking aspect of this great exchange:  that the righteousness Christ gives us was purchased by His taking on our unrighteousness on Calvary.  In 2 Corinthians 5:21, Paul writes, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  Christ becomes my unrighteousness (“He made Him to be sin”), taking with it the punishment due it, and gives me, in its place, His righteousness.

Paul used even more graphic imagery in Galatians 3:

¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— ¹⁴ so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

Amazing!  Astounding!  Can this really be?  I am cursed by the Law, not because the Law is evil but because the Law reveals the evil that is within me.  So I am cursed by it, rightfully.  The Law tells me I am unrighteous.  The Law tells me I am unworthy.  The Law tells me I am condemned.  The Law tells me I am cursed.

It is devastating news, crushing news.  It tells me I am lost.  It tells me I will spend forever in Hell, separated from God.

But then I have a voice behind me, a voice I was not expecting to hear.  It is the voice of Jesus, the Jesus against whom I have rebelled.  And Jesus says, “Yes, what the Law says is true, for the Law itself is true.  Before the Law you are condemned.  Before the Law you are unrighteous.  Before the Law you are cursed.  It is all true!  But hear me brother:  I have taken your condemnation upon myself.  I have taken your unrighteousness upon myself.  I have taken your curse upon myself.  I took it upon myself on the cross.  I have met the just demands of the Law of my Father.  I have fulfilled them.  I have satisfied them.  I have abolished the curse.  So come to me!  Come to me and I will give you life!”

Exodus 3:13-22

¹³ Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” ¹⁴ God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” ¹⁵ God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. ¹⁶ Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, ¹⁷ and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.”’ ¹⁸ And they will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; and now, please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.’ ¹⁹ But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. ²⁰ So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go. ²¹ And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty, ²² but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.”

Everything is theological.  Life is theological.  By that I mean that everything stands in a certain relation to God and to certain convictions about God.  Life is inevitably lived in reaction to who you think God is, that is, in reaction to your theology.  It is tempting to forget this fact when reading the amazing and dramatic story of the exodus.  It is tempting because the exodus is so filled with amazing human activities that, if we are not careful, we can focus more on Moses than on God.  However, among the great theologically-driven acts of human history, the exodus stands very near the top.

Only this can explain the great pains God took to make sure that Moses had a right conception of who God is in Exodus 3.  This is because God knew that there was not enough human wisdom, human strength, can-do attitude, adrenalin, and street smarts to be mustered for Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.  What is more, the exodus would require acts that would simply go well beyond human agency or possibilities.  Thus, what Moses needed first was a sound lesson in theology, a solid grounding in the person and nature and character and attributes of God.

This is what He gives Moses in our text this evening.  So let us sit in and listen to God’s theology lesson to Moses, considering all the while how these same eternal truths should shape and drive our lives today.

I. God’s Essence (v.13-14)

There is first of all the matter of God’s name.  Last week we saw that God commissioned Moses to go to Egypt and proclaim freedom to the captive Israelites.  Moses asked, then, a very simple question.

¹³ Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”

It is simple and it is natural.  After all, one is naturally curious about the identity of one who would give such an audacious charge.  “Who are you,” Moses asks?  It does strike me as humorous that Moses pulls here a variation of the old, “I have a friend who would like to know…” trick.  Do you know what I mean?  When you want to know something that you are uncomfortable asking yourself for whatever reason, you will sometimes say, “Hey, I have a friend who asked me…”  This is what Moses does here. “If I come to the people of Israel…and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”

The Lord’s answer to Moses is as profound as it is enigmatic.

¹⁴ God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

“I am who I am,” God says.  It is a strange answer, and one that is, frankly, hard to grasp.

Terence Fretheim says that this verse “is one of the most puzzled over verses in the entire Hebrew Bible.”  He offers a number of proposed translations of these words:  “I am who I am”; “I will be what (who) I will be”; “I will cause to be what I will cause to be”; “I will be who I am / I am who I will be.”  He suggests that this last translation (“I will be who I am / I am who I will be”) may be the most accurate, and interprets it to mean that “wherever God is being God, God will be the king of God God is…Go can be counted on to be who God is; God will be faithful.”[1]

Perhaps that sounds nonsensical or redundant:  “I will be who I am / I am who I will be.”  However, it is really quite significant.  What strikes me as the most significant thing about the name, “I am,” is that it is a statement concerning pure essence.  If you will allow the word, it is an ontological statement.  It describes something about the “is-ness” of God.

The fact that the essence of God is incommunicable is reflected, I believe, in the paradoxical nature of the name, “I am.”  There is, in the essence of God, something that defies human understanding and human comprehension.  Who God is is unfathomable outside of His revelation of Himself to mankind.  We may thank God that He has revealed to us who He is in many ways but definitively through Jesus Christ.  However, certain revelation is not the same is exhaustive revelation, and we may be sure that though we do know what we do know about God we are simply not in a position to know everything about God.  Our minds would explode if the Lord God poured the totality of His name into us.  Our minds could not conceive of it or grasp it.

So here, God reveals in phrases that we strain to understand a very simple but infinitely deep fact:  God is God.  “I am.”

Behind all human activity and effort, there must be a certainty concerning this fact:  God is God.  It is essentially the same answer He gave to poor Job beginning in chapter 38 of that great book, though there He was saying “I am” primarily by saying the corollary truth, “And you’re not.”

¹ Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

² “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

³ Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me.

⁴ “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.

⁵ Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?

⁶ On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,

⁷ when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

⁸ “Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb,

⁹ when I made clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling band,

¹⁰ and prescribed limits for it
and set bars and doors,

¹¹ and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?

The Lord continues speaking in that way for some chapters, reminding Job over and over again not only that Job is not God but that neither Job nor any human being on the planet can even begin to fathom the essence of God.  However, the God who wants a relationship with His fallen creation gives the answer that we are able to receive even if we are not able completely to understand:  “I am.”

Job needed God’s “I am!”  Moses needed God’s “I am!”  So do you and I.

II. God’s Remembrance (v.15-16)

The second theology lesson that the Lord teaches Moses concerns God’s memory.  In short, the Lord tells Moses that He, Almighty God, is the God who keeps His promises.

¹⁵ God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. ¹⁶ Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt

Moses and the children of Israel not only needed to know that God is, they needed to know that the God who is remembers.  Twice God speaks of Himself as “The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  This is significant for two reasons.  First, it is an acknowledgment of the promises that God made the patriarchs.  It is a divine recognition that God will do what He said He would do.  Second, by calling Himself “the God of” the patriarchs, the Lord is connects Himself with Israel’s story in particular.  He is not thereby reducing Himself to a mere tribal deity.  He is the one true God of all.  However, He is the God who has His eye and His heart fixed on Israel.  God therefore presents Himself relationally as the God who knows and loves His people.

The remembrance of God was critical for Moses insofar as it assured Moses that God was using him to fulfill His promises.  The remembrance of God was critical for Israel insofar as it gave them a foundation to dare to trust and set their feet on the daunting path of the exodus.  And the remembrance of God is critical for us because it keeps us from despair and crippling fear, reminding us all along that our great God is the God who knows us, remembers us, and fulfills the promises He has given us through Jesus.

III. God’s Knowledge (v.17-19)

God’s remembrance is closely tied to His knowledge.  We speak of God’s omnipotence too casually.  It is, in fact, a staggering truth that God knows, exhaustively, all that has been, all that is, and all that will be.  Consider, for instance, the display of His amazing knowledge in the next portion of our text in which He tells Moses precisely what is going to happen.

¹⁷ and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.”’ ¹⁸ And they will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; and now, please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.’ ¹⁹ But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand.

The definitiveness of God’s pronouncements are noteworthy:  “I promise that I will bring you up…And they will listen…and you and the elders of Israel shall go…But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go…”

While the particulars of that may not have been encouraging to Moses, the certainty with which God pronounced it certainly was.  God knows everything.  God knows precisely what will happen.

I chuckle a bit when I think of the theological movement from some years back called “open theism.”  Open theism was a movement of theologians who essentially asserted that God did not technically “know” everything about the future because the future was not there yet for Him to know it.  One of the books that came out of that movement was by a guy named John Sanders.  It was entitled, The God Who Risks.  That title is a good summary statement of open theism, because if God does not exhaustively know the future, God is therefore, in a sense, risking a bit when He acts in the presence.  Tragically, that is what these theologians were asserting about God.

A few years ago the New York Times put some ads on city buses in New York City.  The ads said, “The New York Times: Omniscience, Updated Hourly.”[2]  How absurd!  A truly omniscient being does not need updates.  God is not risking and God needs no updates.

It is impossible to read the Bible, particularly passages like ours, and not be struck by God’s exhaustive, definitive, immeasurable knowledge of the future.  There is nothing in our text to suggest that God took a risk in sending Moses.  God knew precisely what God was doing and precisely how it would play out.  God was utterly in control.

Is this not a comfort to you today, the absolute, perfect knowledge of God?  God knows you.  God knows your circumstances.  God knows all the variables.  God knows precisely what will happen.  And God knows how He would like to use you in these circumstances to the furtherance of His glory.

Unlike Indiana Jones in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” God is not “making it up as He goes.”  You can trust that when God calls you to a task He is doing so because He knows precisely what He is doing.

IV. God’s Power (v.20-22)

Perhaps most comforting of all is God’s power.  He not only knows all things, He is able to do all that He desires to do.

²⁰ So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go. ²¹ And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty, ²² but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.”

Along with God’s strong name is God’s strong hand.  His hand is His power.  God is able to do what God has willed to do.  So He speaks with certainty once again:  “I will stretch out my hand…I will give this people favor…you shall not go empty…You shall put them on…So you shall plunder the Egyptians.”

God’s omnipotence, God’s “all-powerfulness,” is the bedrock theological tenet of the exodus.  God is God.  God knows what will happen.  God is able to do it.  God will do it.

It is a beautiful truth, the power of God.  It tells us that there is no hand as strong as God’s hand.  There is no might like God’s might.  God alone can do what only God can do.  He will break Egypt with His hand of judgment.  He will free Israel with His hand of might.  He will heal Israel with His hand of mercy.  And He will bring Israel to a new home with His hand of promise and love.

Jonathan Edwards famously preached about “sinners in the hands of an angry God.”  He was right to do so.  We are also right to preach about “the redeemed in the hands of a faithful God.”  For God is faithful and His hand is sure.

In the Reformation, Martin Luther was once threatened by a papal envoy.  They told him that if he did not desist his life would turn very hard and he would be abandoned by everybody and left utterly alone.  “Where will you be then?” they asked Luther?  He answered, “Then as now, in the hands of God.”[3]

So, too, were the Israelites.

So, too, through the blood of Christ, are we.

Matthew 5:13-16 

¹³ “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. ¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Sometime in the late 100’s AD, an unknown person wrote a letter describing the nature of the new religion, Christianity, and its adherents.  Today we call this the Letter to Diognetus.  It is fascinating since it is such an early description of the church.  The writer of the letter was impressed by the early Christians and what he called their “wonderful and striking way of life.”  Let me share a portion of that letter now.

[Christians] marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not commit infanticide. They have a common table, but not a common bed. . . . They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. . . . To sum it up: as the soul is in the body, so Christians are in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. . . . The invisible soul is guarded by the visible body, and Christians are known indeed to be in the world, but their godliness remains invisible.[1]

Of particular interest to us this morning is that summation sentence:  “To sum it up:  as the soul is in the body, so Christians are in the world.”

That is an utterly fascinating thing to say.  Indeed, I do not think a higher compliment could have been paid the early Christians.  What the writer of this letter seems to be saying is that the world itself is somehow different because Christians are in it.  In fact, the world is somehow better because the church is in it.  To use his imagery, Christians inhabit the world in the same way that the soul inhabits the body.  What that means is that the Christian church brings a kind of vitality and vibrancy to this world.

In truth, this anonymous person was saying something very similar to what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, though he used different imagery in doing so.  Here is what Jesus said in our text:

¹³ “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. ¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

The unknown author of the letter to Diognetus likened the followers of Jesus in the world to the soul in the body.  Jesus used the imagery of salt and light.  The implications of Jesus’ metaphors are striking and revolutionary.

I. Followers of Jesus are, by definition, agents of preservation in a lost world.

Let us begin by first defining the significance of the metaphors.

¹³ “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. ¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

The two images were well known in that day just as they are in our own:  salt and light.  Salt has many functions:  preservation, purification, and flavoring, for instance.  While the Bible elsewhere mentions salt as a seasoning (Job 6:6, “Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt,
or is there any taste in the juice of the mallow?”), it is likely that the primary function Jesus was thinking of here with his allusion to salt was preservation.  In a day before refrigeration, salt was the primary means of preserving meat.

That is also the case even in our day.  My dad is a hardware salesman.  He has spent his life in hardware stores, small and large, through the eastern half of South Carolina.  He told me once of going into a little hardware store in which he noticed an old burlap sack hanging from a rafter behind the cash register.  He asked the store owner what was in the bag.  “Country ham,” the store own replied.  My dad said that the ham must be very old indeed.  The store own replied that it was but that it was still perfectly edible as it had been salted so well.  Whether the store owner’s confidences were misplaced or not, he was certainly correct that salt is a powerful preservative.

If salt is primarily an agent of preservation, light is primarily a light of illumination.  Light illumines darkness revealing the truth that darkness conceals.  Light, too, is an agent of health and vitality.  We would not think of a life lived in darkness as an enviable life.

Let us also notice the definitive nature of Jesus’ language: “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.”  He does not say, “You will be salt,” or, “You can become salt,” or, “If you walk with me long enough I will make you into salt.”  No, He says, “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.”

Salt and light are therefore inherently connected to being born again.  If you are born again, you are salt and you are light.  To put it another way, being salt and being light is connected fundamentally to our justification in Christ, though, through sanctification, we grow into that fact more and more.

This is crucial.  This is key.  It means that coming to Christ means putting our feet immediately on the path of world transformation, preservation, and illumination as the presence of Christ in and through us touches the world.  Salt and light, then, are not the higher state of super Christians, they are the basic elements of the simple Christian.

It is not a question of, “Will I be salt?”  It is a question of, “What kind of salt am I being?”  Because, in point of fact, according to Jesus, you are salt and you are light.

It is also significant for us to realize something about the nature of salt.  “Sodium chloride,” D.A. Carson tells us, “does not lose its taste.”  This is true.  Salt, as salt, remains salt.  From a particular vantage point, the idea of salt itself becoming saltless is an impossibility.  But, as Carson continues, “the salt in use in first-century Palestine was very impure and it was quite possible for the sodium chloride to be leached out, so that what remained lacked ‘saltness,’ and specifically the salty taste.”[2]

Ah!  So salt, as salt, will always be salt, but salt infested by foreign unsalty elements can lose its saltiness.  This means that Jesus’ idea of salt losing its taste carries with it the idea of diluting pollution, for it is only through the introduction of polluting elements into pure salt that salt can lose its saltiness.  What this means for you and for me is that we were made to be salt and, when we walk with Jesus, we simply will be.  In order for us not to be salt we must allow unsalty elements to enter our lives and dilute the salt that Christ Jesus has made us to be.

Another important implication of Jesus pronouncement that “you are the salt…you are the light” can be found in the pronoun, “you.”  “You are the salt…You are the light.”  You, who?  You believers, you disciples, you who will trust me…you are salt and light.  This is critical not only because, in it, Jesus defines who is salt and light, but because, in it, Jesus defines who alone can be salt and light.

Only the people of God can be salt and light for the Kingdom of God, for only they are citizens of the Kingdom.  What this means is this:  at home, at school, at work, at church, if you are not salt, nobody will be.  If you are not light, nobody will be.  You are the salt!  You are the light!  It’s on you.  You!

Knowing this, we might ask, how can we be silent?  How can we be still?  How can we not speak?  How dare we not be salt and light?

Furthermore, the metaphors of salt and light say something about our basic disposition in and towards the world.  John Piper put it nicely when he said this:

The salt of the earth does not mock rotting meat. Where it can, it saves and seasons. And where it can’t, it weeps. And the light of the world does not withdraw, saying ‘good riddance’ to godless darkness. It labors to illuminate. But not dominate. . . . We don’t own culture, and we don’t rule it. We serve it with brokenhearted joy.[3]

Indeed, salt does not hate the meat it is trying to preserve.  Were it conscious, it might hate the decay and rot seeking to destroy the meat, but it would not hate the meat upon which the decay and rot were seeking to work their mischief.  Similarly, the primary disposition of the Christian in and towards the world ought not be and dare not be hatred and anger.  The Christian resides in the world as salt resides on meat:  with a recognition that the world needs the presence of the salt or else it will decay and rot and ultimately be thrown out.

How, then, do the images of salt and light tie into the idea of the Kingdom of God that we have seen rests at the very heart of our understanding of the Sermon on the Mount?  As it turns out, they rest naturally and easily in the Kingdom that Jesus preached.  Remember that we have said that the Sermon on the Mount is a depiction of what the Kingdom of God life looks like lived out in the kingdom of the world.  We have been using this image to depict the breaking in of the Kingdom of God into the world:

The Kingdom of God breaks into the world definitively in Jesus.  Jesus reigns in the hearts and minds of the crucified/resurrected community called the church.  This means that, today, the primary means by which the Kingdom of God is demonstrated before and enters into the world is through the born again lives of followers of Jesus.  And that means that the mores, values, ethics, truths, tenor, and tone of the Kingdom of God is lived out in the world in the lives of Jesus’ disciples.

With that crucial truth in mind, hear again the words of Jesus:

¹³ “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. ¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

If Christians are to be agents of preservation and illumination in the dying, decaying world, that means that the nature of this salt and light are the Kingdom of God values that have been imparted to us in and through the indwelling Christ.  Salt and light must therefore be Kingdom of God salt and light.  To be salt and light must therefore mean that we are bringing the preserving and illuminating realities of the Kingdom of God into the decaying kingdom of the world as we follow King Jesus in the world.

Being salt and being light does not mean forceful overthrow or violent coercion.  It does not mean a siege mentality or power posturing.  It simply means that we live out the values of the Kingdom of God within the Kingdom of the world.  New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg put it like this:

We are not called to control secular power structures; neither are we promised that we Christianize the legislation and values of the world.  But we must remain active preservative agents, indeed irritants, in calling the world to heed God’s standards.[4]

Blomberg’s reference to salt and light as “irritants” is telling and, it seems to me, very important.  It is important because it reminds us that this application of salt to the decaying, dying world structure is not a welcome application.  The world sees it instead as a gross imposition and uncouth intrusion.

It is a sad thing when meat has decayed for so long that it views the decay as normal and desirable.  It is a sad thing when the agent of preservation is resented by the very object it is seeking to preserve.  However, we should remember that the world’s hostility to the intrusion of the Kingdom of God life is itself a result of the decay that we are seeking to combat.

II. The temptation to abandon what we are is really a temptation to abandon Christ.

This inevitable opposition to the intrusion of the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world (which we discussed at length last week in looking at the eighth Beatitude on persecution) presents the church today with a very real temptation:  the abandonment of our function as salt.  This can happen in many ways:  rank abandonment, subtle concealment, or redefinition.

The Christian who embraces rank abandonment simply refuses to be salt and light.  In this case, Christ is usually imprisoned in something we call “the spiritual realm” (which usually means church services and functions) and we live like the kingdom of the world in something we call “the secular realm.”  The spiritual/secular idea is perniciously brilliant because it allows us enough Jesus to comfort our hearts but not enough to bring us in conflict with the world.  I am thinking here of the person who says that Christianity is their personal faith but they don’t carry Jesus with them into the workplace or the voting booth.  It is as if life has been reconstructed as a house with many rooms.  Jesus lives in the religious room, our favorite candidate lives in the political room, our favorite team lives in the sports room, etc.

A few years ago one of the major news magazines interviewed the novelist Reynolds Price on the subject of Jesus.  I will never forget that Price said he was personally very impressed with Jesus.  In fact, he said he tried to follow Jesus and live the kind of life Jesus prescribed. He embraced all of Jesus’ teachings, he said, except one:  the Great Commission, Jesus’ call for His followers to go into the world making disciples.  He wanted Jesus.  He just didn’t want a Jesus who actually called him to conflict with the world.

The Christian who embraces the tactic of subtle concealment is the Christian who keeps Jesus around, even in the world, but allows the kingdom of the world to whittle down the sharper edges and more scandalous elements of the teachings of Christ.  It is all very subtle and all very nuanced.  It is also very effective.

I suspect this happens frequently with “cool Christians,” by which I mean Christians who never quite seem ever to have to disagree with the world.  These Christians are very good with words.  Using words, they can deflect the uncomfortable aspects of Jesus while maintaining a form of godliness and a kind of Christianity.  They can even put up a front of prophetic courage on certain issues about which the world already has some basic agreement of outrage:  say sex trafficking, racism, or political posturing.  We must oppose these things and I applaud all who oppose them.  But it does indeed goad a bit when one meets Christians whose only challenges are to those structures that it has become acceptable to challenge.

And, of course, some Christians simply redefine Jesus, the gospel, and the Kingdom of God so that there is no conflict at all.  This is the “Christianity” of the niche Jesus:  gay Jesus, environmentalist Jesus, feminist Jesus, New Age Jesus, white supremacist Jesus, black power Jesus, liberation theology Jesus, cult Jesus, vegetarian Jesus, cage fighting Jesus, etc. and etc.  The redefinition of the Kingdom of God so as to make it fit into our desired shape is a popular and devastating tragedy.  It requires the outright gutting of the Kingdom of God as presented in the Scriptures and the insertion in its place of a kingdom that, strangely, looks just like us.  When we complete this terrible revisionism, we do not end up with the Kingdom of God but rather the kingdom of __________ (insert your own name here).

All of these are ways that we abandon our calling to be salt and light, to be the living, breathing presence of the Kingdom of God in the fallen kingdom of the world.  What is really important to understand is that the temptation to abandon what we really are is actually a temptation to abandon Christ Himself.

We are to be Kingdom of God salt.  We are to be Kingdom of God light.  Jesus is the King of the Kingdom.  It is His.  To abandon our high calling and privilege of being salt and light is therefore to abandon the commission of our King, Jesus.  To abandon the commission of our King, Jesus, is to abandon our King.

Brothers and sisters, if you refuse to embrace your identity as salt and light, you are refusing to embrace the One who makes you salt and light.  It is not just a matter of not living up to your calling.  It is a matter of committing treason against our King.

If you have come to Christ, you have come to the King.

The King has commissioned His followers to illuminate the dark world with His light.

The King has commissioned His followers to preserve the dying world with His salt.

It is only through the salt and light of the Kingdom that the world can come to know the King that it does not know.

It is only through your life that they will come to know of Him at all.

¹³ “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. ¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.