I am still processing the Sermon on the Mount. I have gone through the 25 posts and edited them for clarity and to revisit them for myself. Now I want to look at the applications I should be making for myself.
I find this to be a critical section of the sermon. Jesus knew the hearts of men. He knew how some would twist His words and try to use them against Him. He knew that they would attack this "new" teaching. So Jesus clarifies something important. He was not bringing something new. He was not here to say that God had got it wrong, and that the prophets had misinterpreted what God wanted. He is not here to reinvent the laws of God, or explain why they don't mean what they say. In fact, He is going to take them to a level they had never been taken to before. He is going to demand a stricter adherence than any of the leaders of the Jews. He is going to clarify the purpose of the law.
For centuries the Jews had understood the law to be their pathway to God. If they could follow the law, then they could reap the reward of eternity in heaven. The problem was, they knew they could not be perfect, so they altered the law to make it more attainable. So the very thing they would like to be able to accuse Jesus of, they had already been doing.
This is why Jesus says in verse 20, For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Their righteousness was not God's righteousness. Their righteousness was to earn their way to God, to in a way put God in their debt so that He would have no choice but to grant them entrance to heaven. This kind of righteousness will always fail, as there is no way that we can put God in our debt.
Jesus knows that this kind of righteousness does not work. From the moment of the fall of man in the garden of Eden, it would fail. Once stained by sin, no amount of righteous behavior will cleanse us. Jesus knew that this is why He came, He would have to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. The righteousness of the leaders was not enough because only the righteousness gained through faith in Jesus would be enough.
Take Away: There are a lot of things I need to take away from this. A big one is the knowledge that my efforts, no matter how good, will never be enough. This should be humbling to me, which happens to be one of the characteristics Jesus spoke of in the Beatitudes. Humbling to the point where I see myself as God sees me, a sinner in need of a Savior, as a Saint, only because I am washed in the blood of Jesus. It also means that I see others as God sees them, which is the same way that He sees me, as sinners in need of a Savior. It is why Jesus will encourage me to not only love my neighbor, but my enemies as well. It is why I should not sit in judgment of others, for I fall short myself. It is why when I pray for forgiveness, I ask to be forgiven as I forgive others.
Jesus said in Matthew 11:29,30, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” How is this so, when He seems to be taking things even farther than the Scribes and Pharisees had ever imagined? The answer is that He is there with us. Just like oxen yoked together, we are yoked with Jesus. Think a mouse yoked together with and elephant. We know who is doing the majority of the work. We know that the elephant does not need the mouse and could do the job by himself. We rejoice in the thought that together, in spite of our inability, we are a team who will reap the reward together.
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