The Commands of Jesus

Last week we looked at the Blessings of Jesus, commonly known as the Beatitudes. We saw how the first thing God asks of us after he calls us into receive his blessing. And we saw how his blessing provides the strength and the courage to follow God as we go forward and serve him.

 

Now Jesus comes to the second part of his sermon. And, if you are like me, it can be challenging as well.

 

I have thought long and hard about how we should discuss what Jesus is saying here. I think what I want to do is to give you a little background and point out a few important things about reading this in context. Then I want to talk through a number of ways of looking at this passage, concluding with the way that I think makes the most sense.

 

This passage is about how the Old Testament Law relates to New Testament living. In case you have not noticed, in these passages Jesus is retelling the Ten Commandments, and expanding on them and what it means to follow them. He begins by saying he has come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. He ends by saying be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. He says that people's morals need to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees and Scribes, who were the morality police for their entire nation. Jesus covers adultery, murder, and bearing false witness right off the bat. Then he talks about a couple of other quotes that were popular from the Old Testament law as well.

 

With each of these commands Jesus does something that our popular culture does not expect Him to do. The world around us would say that the Jesus came and the bar was lowered a little bit on what is asked of us. But if you listen to this passage, it appears that Jesus is raising the bar a little bit. Instead of asking less from us than the Law asks of us, he seems to ask more.

 

Jesus starts each section in his teaching with "You have heard it said" and then follows that up with "But I tell you". And through the "I tell you" he turns the whole world on its head.

 

The first thing that I notice is that it seems that Jesus took all the old rules, and just added more rules on top of them. And this really frustrated me when I first read this passage, and for many years afterward. You see for me following the Ten Commandments is something that does not always seem easy. For me, it takes real effort to not lie, especially when I know that my life would be a little easier if I was a lot less honest. For a while I thought the "thou shalt not commit adultery" was easy. Then I started this new job just out of school as a single guy with this new office administrator who I was very attracted to and who was very unhappy in her marriage. Suddenly, as her behavior and words seemed to be more and more flirtacious the "thou shalt not covet your neighbors wife" seemed like more of a challenge. And I remember this time in high school when I was wrestling and I had this guy in a headlock and I put his arm over his mouth so he could not breathe. And I could feel him his body heaving from the inability to breathe underneath me. I squeezed tighter. It scared me how much I liked to hurt someone like that. If not for the grace of God, there are points in my life where I could have been capable of murdering someone is a fit of anger.

 

So the Ten Commandments seem challenging enough. Then Jesus says his "but I tell you" stuff, and it is easy to think that Jesus added even harder rules to follow. Let me take one example from this. I used to think I was doing well not to commit adultery, now he says don't even look at someone lustfully. Its seems at first glance that Jesus has a nearly impossible rule to an already challenging but manageable one.

 

I thought an eye for an eye was fair. Now it seems Jesus is asking us to be nice to those who are not so nice to us. How does that work? I was raised never to start a fist fight, but if someone started something I was supposed to finish it. Now Jesus wants me to turn the other cheek? I still wonder if I am capable of that. Now I have another rule to follow. Great. I have a hard enough time with the old rules.

 

I could be wrong, but I think this is the sentiment we have deep down when we honestly read this. Or we try to find ways to work around the standard that Jesus says.

 

In the times of Jesus and before, the rabbis devised this way to make sure that people didn't break the commandments. What they did was make rules about the rules to make sure that people did not ever break the commandments. They called it building a fence around the Torah. They were supposed to keep the Sabbath by not working on the Sabbath day. The rabbis did not want their people to break this rule, so then they started to develop other rules about the Sabbath. You couldn't lift something over so many pounds, because that might be work. You could not walk too far, or you would be working by walking. Certain kinds of food prep was legal on the Sabbath, other kinds were not. Pretty soon you had rules about rules about rules about the Sabbath given by the rabbis, when what God said was "don't work on the Sabbath".

 

You do the same things with your children. Your goal is that you children don't end up parents before they graduate from high school. So you set up rules around your house. No dating until you are sixteen. No kids of the opposite sex at the house when you are not there. No boyfriends coming over to the house and going in your daughter's room and shutting the door so they can have more "privacy". You better drive your date home and be back at the house by a certain time or you are grounded. If you have parented teenagers, you may have all sorts of rules like this, and more. Why? Because you don't want to end up a grandparent before your child is raised, or because you want your kids to wait until they are married to have sex. This is what the rabbis did with all the Old Testament. Make up more rules so they won't break the big rules.

 

And it is easy to think that Jesus is doing this. Making more rules to make sure we don't break the big rules. In fact, Jesus is doing the opposite. He is trying to tell that by making everything about following the rules, we miss the purpose behind the rules. We follow the letter of the law, but miss its Spirit when we get legalistic. Jesus wants changed hearts, not newer and better rules.

 

You see, whenever we get legalistic, what we tend to do is find a way around the rules. For instance, there have been times when I tried to fast from food, but not from liquid. About twelve hours into the fast, I try to figure out what I can put in my mouth that is not food, but will still be filling. So I start wondering, Is ice cream food? I decide it is. But then I ask myself, isn't a milkshake a liquid and not a food. Ok. So I will fast but that means I can have a few yummy peanut butter and chocolate milkshakes instead of eating. Its ok because it is a liquid. Or I decide to give up fast food for Lent, but then I wonder—does Subway count as fast food? What about take-out Chinese? Surely those are not fast foods. See how it works. Pretty soon I start living by rules. My focus gets on the rules. My focus is not on filling my life with a renewed focus on prayer. It is not about building my relationship with God, even though that was the whole point of the fast. The focus becomes the rules and regulations, and not the relationship that the Law was supposed to lead me to.

 

The people at Jesus' time were focusing on the rules instead of the relationships with God and one another. And by doing so they were missing the whole point of the Law in the first place. So Jesus tries to get us back to the heart of what the Law and Prophets were teaching us.

 

So, this is not about adding another rule on top of the rules God has already given us. Most of us eventually come to the point where we recognize this.

 

Some other people take this knowledge and say that what this is really saying is that Jesus is trying to prove that the Law, at its heart is really impossible to follow. Thus, the whole point of the "I tell yous" is to show us we are all lawbreakers and completely unable to do what is right. Because even when we can follow the commandments, our hearts continue to be evil.

 

After all, who has never said a hurtful word in anger? Who has never lusted after someone else? Who is able to keep all their promises? Who is able to never seek revenge against someone who has hurt you? Who of us eagerly runs out to be even more vulnerable to an enemy and has betrayed our trust? Maybe this is all about us realizing that we cannot keep the law. That we cannot be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.

 

I believe that this is also a misinterpretation of this passage. It is a concept that is clearly stated in other parts of the Scripture, so it is good Christian theology. This, however, is not the truth that Jesus is trying to communicate to us on the Sermon on the Mount.

 

The truth is that Jesus does ask us to go further than the Law, but not in the ways we would expect. God want us to love him, he does not want to just be an obligation.

 

As I hinted about earlier, Jesus wants us to move from rules to relationship.

He wants us to love him with all our hearts, with all our souls with all our strength, and with all our might. Our temptation is to treat Him as an obligation.Think about this the way you would other relationships. You don't want people to love you out of obligation, and just attempt to meet their obligations in relationship with you. You want those you love and who say they love you to love you in a way that goes beyond some legalistic obligation.

Suppose at some point you go to that parent that raised you. And you had a conflicted relationship with them for a lot of your life. And you felt you need to have a conversation with them about how they feel about you. And their answer was, I did everything I was obligated to do for you as a parent. I fed you. I clothed you. I kept you safe. You ask your parent if they loved you. And their answer was—I guess so, as much as I am supposed to. I would guess you would not like that answer that much. Nobody wants the kind of love that only cares for you out of obligation or because they are supposed to.

 

I love my wife. I want to grow old with her. I want to be one of those retired couple's that are still holding hands in church when I am 70 years old. But what I don't want is to be her obligation. There would be no worse marriage in my mind that a marriage where Jenny said we were staying married because she wanted to do the right thing, and she was obligated to stay married to me.

 

Do you like being a obligation of someone? Or do you like to be treasured for who you are and what you have done with or for someone? I suspect you want to be treasured. So does God. God doesn't want to be our obligation. He wants us to be passionate about his call on our lives. He wants us to have this commitment of love and honor that we chose, not endure.

 

Also, God wants us to be completely committed, not just doing the minimum to get by. When we live with an obligation to follow the rules, we usually try to do the minimum that the rules require. God doesn't want our minimum. He wants all of us. Our temptation when we live by the rules is to do just enough to get by, instead of seeing how radical and whole hearted commitment to faith we can make. When I was a youth pastor we would often have these abstinence talks with them about waiting until marriage to have sex. And these were frank and open discussions. One question that kids would always quickly bring up is the "how far is too far?" question. They would ask how physically intimate they could be without sinning. When I was single, I often struggled with the same question myself. Then I had a preacher tell me that was the wrong question. A better question would be, "How pure can I be before I am married, not how self-indulgent can I be before I cross the line and sin?" The same is true with giving. What if instead of asking, what is the minimum I can give to God, we asked how can I find I way to give more to God and his work? Or what if instead of looking at church service as obligation you tried to find ways to give as much of your time and skills to the church as you possibly can? What if you approached your faith as a "get-to" and a "want to" instead of a "have to"? That is the kind of thinking Jesus is aiming you toward.

 

I tend to be person that thinks a lot in terms of obligation and duty. Since I have been young, I have believed that I need to be as self-sufficient as possible. There were a few times in my early 20s where I needed financial help from my mother. And then I wanted to pay her back. She didn't like that. Well, there came this point where we heard this Tanya Tucker on the radio called "I Won't Take Less Than Your Love". And she told me I needed to listen to it and stop feeling obligated to pay her back whatever I owed, and just do what the song says. On my wedding day, it is the song I danced with her to. The song expresses the point of what Jesus is getting at with this passage.

 

I will read these lyrics as I close, and I want you to ponder them in silence as the deacons and I gather at the Lord's table. The song goes like this.

 

"How much do I owe you?" said the husband to his wife,
"For standing beside me through the hard years of my life.
"Shall I bring you diamonds, shall I buy you furs?
"Say the word and it's yours.

And his wife said: "I won't take less than your love, sweet love.
"No, I won't take less than your love.
"All the riches of the world could never be enough,
"And I won't take less than your love."

"How much do I owe you?" to the mother said the son.
"For all that you have taught me in the days that I was young.
"Shall I bring expensive blankets to cast upon your bed?
"And a pillow for to rest your weary head."

And the mother said: "I won't take less than your love, sweet love.
"No, I won't take less than your love.
"All the comforts of the world could never be enough,
"And I won't take less than your love."

"How much do I owe you?" said the man to his Lord.
"For giving me this day and every day that's gone before.
"Shall I build a temple, shall I make a sacrifice?
"Tell me Lord and I will pay the price."

And the Lord said: "I won't take less than your love, sweet love.
"No, I won't take less than your love.
"All the treasures of the world could never be enough,
"And I won't take less than your love."

"I won't take less than your love, sweet love.
"No, I won't take less than your love.
"All the treasures of the world could never be enough,
"And I won't take less than your love."

"No, I won't take less than your love."