What Would Jesus Have to Say About the Rules?

   Rev. Dr Christopher Carlson

Jesus was getting quite a reputation.  At the beginning of his ministry he went around and preached and healed and did all kinds of things, and word got out that he was going to do away with the Law of Moses and all the traditions of the elders.  This is what people began to think.  Now there were a few reasons for this.  He did go around doing things like healing on the Sabbath.  He would see a person who was sick and he would make them well.  In those days you couldn’t even do good to another person without it being considered breaking the Sabbath if you did it on the Sabbath day.  He kept company with the unwashed, people who were ordinary people who were sinners in the eyes of the religious people.  He hung out with them and talked with them and that was considered wrong; and so they wondered and thought, especially the leaders, whether Jesus was out to do away with the law.  Now in the passage today that I am going to read to you, Jesus says “Au contraire, on the contrary, that’s not what I’m about.”  This morning I am continuing a series of sermons I started last week on What Would Jesus Have to Say About… and today it’s about the Rules, about the Law.  Last week we talked about Happiness and next week we’ll talk about Purpose.  It is a familiar passage to us, one taken from the Sermon on the Mount.  But it is a passage that shakes people up.  We have heard this too often sometimes; and in the context in which Jesus is reading these words, people are going to be upset.  They’re going to be wondering what’s going on and wondering what Jesus is up to.

From Matthew 5:17-20

“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.  I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.  Anyone who breaks 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 practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.  For I tell you, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray together.

Father we thank you that you love us so much that you have given us instructions about how to live, what we call the Law.  We ask you Lord that as we hear the words preached, you would teach us and guide us and tell us what you want us to know.  We pray this in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

For me it is no wonder that Jesus was crucified.  You don’t say some of the things he said in the way he said them and not get people upset, particularly those who were the leaders.  For example, at the end of this passage he says, “I tell you the truth, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees you won’t enter my kingdom.”  And all the common people were going “What’d he say?”  And the Pharisees were going “What did he say?”  You know the first rule is that you don’t upset those who are in charge, and Jesus did that on a regular basis.  But what Jesus did, is that he didn’t mince words.  He was going after the core.  He was going after the center of their thinking and he does the same to us.  To some degree our situation is a little different, but still the same.  He does it in many ways for us, but particularly in a couple of ways.  One is that Jesus shows himself to be very different than our stereotype of him.  We tend to think of Jesus as being a nice person.  He accepts everybody.  He doesn’t go out of his way to insult people.  He doesn’t get angry, does he?  Well, yes he does.  He’s the same guy that took a whip and drove people out of the temple.  You should read some of the things again what he says about the Pharisees; they’re not nice.  And even in this statement, he is trying to disrupt people in their thinking; he’s trying to disrupt us as well.  In our day we have come to believe that there are no principles that last in every situation.  We have come to believe that there are no absolutes, and the only absolute is that there are no absolutes.  Everything is relative.  Everything depends on your opinion of it and your situation.  I would like to show you a video tape.  It’s a man on the street interview with some college students.  Now we first see a man named R. C. Sproul, who’s a theologian; he says a couple words but then we get to the place with the interview.  Watch and see.

“I wouldn’t do it, but it’s OK.  Maybe it’s OK for somebody else if they choose to do it.  If that’s what they want to do, then it’s OK for them.  And do you see what’s happening here?  We’re making truth a matter of personal preference.”

“Basically if I don’t like it, then it’s wrong and if I like it, then it’s right.  Simple as that.”

“Basically from experiences from what I see, read, feel, basically just what feels right for me.  There’s no particular thing that makes me say this is morally right or this is morally wrong.”

“I’m always consistent what I’m sure is right; but whether or not the Man upstairs perceives that as being right, then that’s another story.”

“My standard for faith and belief comes from the bible.  I believe the bible to be without error, perfect, a living God-breathed word of God; and through those scriptures is where I attain my guidelines, my morals, the way Jesus Christ has told me to live my life.”

“The bible doesn’t have much authority over my life.  I basically go on my own and I have my own certain morals.”

“Whether something is right or wrong, I mean that is very individual.  I think that it all depends on circumstances of your life, etc., etc.  I decide whether something’s wrong for me.  You know, if it’s not morally correct for me or something like that then I won’t do it; and if something’s good for me if it’s going to make me happy or it’s going to get me what I want, etc.”

“Morals are morals.  Everyone has their own.”

Interesting, isn’t it?  Not an isolated philosophy.  In fact, it permeates our culture.  One of my favorite examples of that is the advertisement for Outback Steakhouse.  “No Rules.  Just Right.”  Now, how dumb is that?  Listen to what it says, listen carefully, “No Rules.  Just Right.”  But how do you know if it’s right if there are no rules, if there is no standards for, say, cooking the meat.  Or according to that great sage and philosopher, Mick Jagger, in a current advertisement “I can do whatever I want, whenever I want…” or whatever he says.  Wherever I please, you know.  “I’m free, that what it is, I’m free to do whatever I want, whenever I want” that kind of thing. You know, I can’t do it like he does, but it’s that winsome sarcasm that he has.  But it really is true.  It plays to the culture, “No Rules.  Just Right.”  It sounds right, doesn’t it?  We don’t like rules.  We are a culture that we have come to equate rules with something that are bad; and we have gotten to the philosophical place of thinking that everybody makes their own up as they go along.  Each person in a sense are their own little gods.  You may realize that a few years ago that Ted Turner, also a philosophical genius, declared that the Ten Commandments were obsolete.  Now one wonders what particular standards Ted would do away with.  I mean, would he actually do away with Thou shalt not murder or steal or bear false witness?  I think I know which one it is, don’t commit adultery.  It’s kind of like Moses, a picture, a cartoon of Moses coming down from the mountain with the tablets, you know; and he says to the people “I have some good news and some bad news.  The good news is I got Him down to ten.  The bad news is that you shouldn’t commit adultery is still one of them.”  Our society is just this way and it’s into the church as well.  You know, if we don’t examine these things, we discover that we believe the same thing.  We hear it all the time.  Jesus comes along and says several things to us.  He says “The Law, the rules, are real in themselves.”  No matter what we think of them, they are going to be there.  He says “Not one (the old language) jot or tittle will disappear.  Not one stroke of the pen or dot will disappear until all is fulfilled.”  It’s going to be there.  It’s real. 

You know it’s interesting to me that we really have made almost everything a matter of opinion, even the existence of God.  How often have we heard, “Well, it’s good for you to believe in the existence of God and all those things, going to church and worship are good for you; but I don’t believe those things and that’s good for me.”  We hear it all the time, as though, these two mutually exclusive things really go together and it really matters.  Think about it for a minute.  I’m going to use Rick Pavelka as an example, here; not in a bad way.  He’s kind of my father-in-law, twice removed, or whatever he is; but anyway, but suppose I’m sitting here talking to someone and we point at Rick and this person says “Well you believe that Rick actually exists; he’s sitting there and that’s good for you.  It means something to you.  But for me, I don’t believe that Rick exists.  That’s my philosophy.”  That’s the way people talk about God.  You know, Rick exists whether we believe in him or not.  So does God.  It doesn’t matter what we believe about Rick; he’s there.  This is absurd conversation.  The same is true with moral distinction.  God has said these things are going to be there.  So you can imagine this little girl at the end here, standing up before God and saying “You know, I just made up my own rules, whatever made me happy”.  Is that going to play?  I don’t think it is.  Bless her heart.  I’m sure she’s a nice person; but, it’s not going to play.  Everything seems to be a matter of opinion and what Jesus is saying is that the rules are going to be there.  “Not one jot or tittle.  Not one period or slash from the law are going to disappear from it.” 

He also will say, and other places in the bible will say, that the law is good.  We really are, from using a philosophical word, an antinomian culture, that means anti-law; nomos is the Greek word for law.  We’re antinomian, we think that “No Rules.  Just Right.”  We can make them up as we please.  We don’t want anybody telling us what to do; and that’s where we are.  We tend to think that the rules are bad; but they’re not.  You know, there are laws that don’t last, they are kind of like they have a time limit.  And Jesus himself said, for example, the dietary laws of the Old Testament no longer apply to us.  But God didn’t give those laws just to be a killjoy.  He gave them because it protected them.  Not eating pork was a good thing health wise at the time, and other things.  You know there are even people who write books today about biblical eating and I don’t know if that stuff means anything.  But apparently some people think they eat that way is a lot more healthy. 

Even the rules of adultery or sleeping around are not out to keep us from having fun.  Any of you who have experienced a divorce either personally or in a family knows how much it hurts.  You know it used to, it was popular for a little while, to have these free relationships.  But you know when you bind yourself to someone spiritually, emotionally or physically, it hurts to tear it apart; and it has consequences for the family.  It has consequences for the kids and for society.  And God makes these rules up because they are good for us.  The Law, the rules are good.  Can you imagine a world without rules?  Can you imagine doing brain surgery without rules?  Can you imagine living your life without rules?  You know there is an example that I found in a book by Bill Hybels, it’s called Making Life Work.  He sites a study that was published under the intriguing title, “178 Seconds to Live”.  The study was this.  They took twenty experienced pilots and put them in a simulator and told them to keep the plane aloft for as long as they could without instruments.  The average for these experienced pilots was 178 seconds, less than three minutes.  They threw everything in the book at them, storms, wind, rock, and you name it; and they lasted less than three minutes.  Hybels goes on to say “It may seem an odd way to put it, but it takes courage to rely on instruments more than intuition.  It takes courage and supreme good judgment to rely more on unchanging standards and measurements than on personal instincts that we feel certain are telling us what to do next.”  For pilots that’s a matter of life and death and it happens to be doubly true for anyone contemplating an authentic spiritual existence.  One of the great dangers of moving forward with God is that our intuition may scream that it knows better than God when it comes to the most appropriate ways to respond to life’s joys and challenges.  Facing a personal crisis apart from an appreciation of the principles of scripture and a determination to obey them is like flying into a storm without instrument training.  What makes us assume that our intuition or opinions concerning a particular realm in life whether sexuality or finances or relationships or morality is going to keep us from hitting the ground.  What has led us to conclude that no matter what the seriousness of our personal missteps we can surely handle the consequences?  The Law is good and the Law guides us into living well.  It steers us on the right path. 

But in a more serious way, it’s also going to be God’s standard and is God’s standard for judgment.  Jesus says “Those who say the law is not good and don’t teach it will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.  Those who do teach it and teach people to obey will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” When we stand before God and the teaching as we all will, the standard used will be the Law.  It will be the brick wall, if you will, that we will all run into; and that’s where it gets really hot and heavy.  You see Jesus then turns right around and makes his comment about righteousness.  He says “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees you won’t get into the kingdom of heaven.”  Now if you can image a parallel in our day, who for you would be the most righteous person alive, or maybe recently alive?  Well if I would have asked that question a few years ago, it probably would have been, say, Mother Teresa.  We would say, maybe rightly so, that she’s the best person alive.  It would be like Jesus saying “Unless your righteousness exceeds Mother Teresa’s you’re not getting into the kingdom of heaven.”  That’s the way the people took it at those times. 

You see the Pharisees were the ones who kept all the rules, at least according to their standards.  Then Jesus turns around, a little later we’ll actually get to this in another sermon, and says “You know all those standards you’ve got, they’re a little to low.”  This is where Jesus really confuses us because we don’t think of Jesus as being kind of a rule keeping type.  We don’t think Jesus really has much truck with the rules; but then he says just a couple verses later, he says “Well you’ve heard that it was said that you shouldn’t commit adultery; but I say to you that if you have even lusted after someone, you’ve already committed adultery in your heart.”  You see the Pharisees thought that if they just kept their hands off somebody, they kept the rules.  They didn’t realize they had to keep their minds off somebody too.  Jesus raises the standard, the bar.  That’s where it gets a little scary because if we’re honest with ourselves none of us make it.  None of us get there unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees.  Now, this is where the law loses something.  See the law is good; it’s real.  It will be used as a standard; but the law has no power to make us righteous.  This was the Pharisees mistake.  They thought that it did.  Now I’ll give you an example.  Suppose you’re driving down Excelsior Blvd. and you are going just a little too fast.  Now some of you probably don’t do that.  I do; I admit it.  I get a little bit heavy with the gas pedal.  Suppose I’m stopped and the officer gives me a ticket.  I deserve that.  I run into the law.  It’s the function of the law to keep me safe by saying you should drive only this amount and not any faster.  It’s not only good for me it’s good for society.  If I go too fast I endanger other people.  But the law can’t make me righteous.  It can’t change my heart because I still want to go too fast.  Now suppose you are also a person that always keeps the law.  You never drive over the speed limit.  Do you think the Minnetonka police will call you up in about ten years after all those years of keeping the law and give you a certificate of appreciation?  That’s not the function of the law.  The law does not reward for you keeping it, it punishes you when you don’t.  So there needs to be something more.  Where are we going to get righteousness of the heart and action that exceeds that of the Pharisees?  This is where Jesus is at his disruptive best.  Because he has planted a seed which should make all the people who hear this lose sleep at night.  Where they will ask a question the disciples asked a few chapters later, “How can anyone be saved?”  Jesus answered “That which is impossible for human beings is possible for God.”  And so we have come full circle to the message of the gospel.  The righteous One that God substitutes for us is none other than Jesus Himself, who is perfect, does keep the law.  He says that on purpose, “Until all is fulfilled.  The prophesies about him and the law he fulfills.”  When we put our trust in Jesus, God gives us and looks at us and sees Jesus’ righteousness, not ours, because we’re not righteous. 

Sometimes I also like to shock people in my sermons; and one of the shocking things I’ve said over the years, is that your pastor is guilty of breaking every one of the Ten Commandments.  And I am.  And so are you; every one of us.  Oh, I haven’t committed adultery physically; but you males know what I’m talking about, don’t you?  I haven’t stolen anything, too; well I’ve stole an allowance one time, I think, or stole something from my parents.  But I wanted too.  Maybe I’ve stolen some time on the internet when I should have been working.  Maybe I’ve fudged on my income tax.  I haven’t killed anybody; but, boy, I wanted to.  I haven’t bowed down before an idol; but I worship myself, at times.  I’ve certainly envied.  You see, it’s not so shocking after a while, is it?  All of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  There is none righteous, no not one.  That’s what Jesus was trying to say.  He was trying to create desperation in the heart that they would go to God and say “Have mercy upon me, a sinner.”  And then it comes, the mercy.  The amazing grace.  So I want to encourage you.  Don’t swallow the philosophy of the age.  You know we have to have an appreciation for the law the live well, keep safe, to be happy.  You have to have an appreciation of the law also because the law teaches us that we need grace.  And I want to say this to you.  Unless you have a deep appreciation for how you have broken the law, you will never have an appreciation for how great God loves you, how much he loves you and the great grace he gives you.  Amazing grace.  To be able to sing that with conviction in the heart.  Spiritually speaking you must have an awareness of your sin before you can even draw close to God.  Seems strange but it’s true. 

And I just want to encourage you too.  Let me back up and say if you don’t get anything else, I want desperately for all of us here to draw close to God; and we can’t unless we understand how big His grace is.  But then go out in the world and know that the law is still real.  Do what is right.  Be a witness to the community, not because you’re righteous in and of yourself; but because that’s what the Lord wants you to do, and it pleases him.  “Not one slash or dot will disappear from the law until all is accomplished.”  In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.