"Reconciling Righteousness!" Matthew 5:17-26

The Sixth Sunday After Trinity                             16-July-2023
Sermon Text: Matthew 5:17-26
Sermon Theme: Reconciling Righteousness!

I.N.R.I. What does a life freed from slavery look like? Living the Ten Commandments! 430 years the children of Israel had been enslaved by the Egyptians. The Lord God had not forgotten His children, nor abandoned them to slavery. He raised up an 80 year old shepherd to lead them out of slavery. 40 years earlier this man’s sword failed to rescue them. The Lord would save His children through His Word spoken and His action alone. Moses and the children of Israel would learn to “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.”
      Fifty days after the first Passover, when the Lord God rescued them from death and slavery through the blood of an innocent male lamb strengthening them for new life with his flesh, the Lord God spoke from Sinai. Two million freed slaves heard the voice of the Creator and Deliverer. He had rescued them from slavery for a new life of freedom. Freedom is living God’s Holy Ten Commandments - a life of true love.
      “Wait,” our sinful flesh and reason protest, “isn’t freedom doing anything that I want!” Since the day Satan whispered the lie that we can be our own idols if only we rebel against our Creator and His Word. Our world, our mind, our body, our feelings have been enslaved by the lie. This lie that freedom is doing our own thing has taken many forms. From the lie that you can’t love others until you love yourself. To the lie that you can do what ever makes you feel good. To the lie that it isn’t slavery if it isn’t hurting anyone else. Lies abound as lawlessness abounds. A nation surrendering its God given liberties will try to erase the Ten Commandments from the minds of those it seeks to enslave. Though Moses holding the Ten Commandments is chiseled into our Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. - now we are told that they are too fanatical to be tolerated by modern America. Our founding fathers knew that the Ten Commandments are the greatest distillation of natural law given by nature’s God. True liberty flowed from the Creator to His people through His Word of Law to preserve peace and order in a nation. Slavery, tyranny, flows from rejecting God’s Ten Commandments and chosen our own selfish path to destruction.
      The second table of God’s Ten Commandments teach us civil righteousness. A nation is blessed following God’s design for creation and community. The Home - father and mother are the authority through which God rules a culture. Husband and wife are called and entrusted by God to have and educate their children with His Word. Human life and the sanctity of the human body is protected. Marriage is the life-long commitment of husband and wife and it alone is given the gift of sex as a blessing. Private property is to be honored and protected. Reputation is to be defended and all given due process of law presumed innocent until proven guilty. Government is not to enslave its people by setting citizens against one another playing on their greed for another’s property, or positions of authority. Civil righteousness orders our world in peace, but it cannot save us from God’s just judgement and the hell we have earned.
        We need a greater righteousness to be saved from our inborn sinful condition inherited from our first father Adam. We need Jesus! We need His “Reconciling Righteousness!” found in I. Completion Not Compromise! (Vs.17-19) II. A New Heart Not Self-Help! (Vs.20-22) III. Receiving True Healing Not Giving Your Gifts! (Vs.23-26)
I.     Jesus gathers His Church to preach His Word. Preaching is teaching. Our Lord is present breathing out His Holy Spirit through preaching. Despising preaching is despising Jesus. Listen. (Mt.5:17-18) Jesus isn’t a marcionite or an anti-nomian. Marcion was a 2nd century gnostic heretic who had no use for the Old Testament. He falsely claimed that the God of the Old Testament wasn’t the same as Jesus. Gnostics rejected the sanctity of the human body and claimed a greater secret knowledge above the written Word of the Holy Bible. Gnosticism thrives in our culture among those who reject their own body and chromosomes claiming that they are what they feel, not what is written upon their flesh by the Creator. Jesus came to fulfill all the prophets preached about Him. From Adam to Malachi the Old Testament is all about Jesus.
      Jesus also wasn’t an anti-nomian - that is He wasn’t against God’s Law. Anti-nomians were heretics who taught that Jesus abolished the Ten Commandments, so now we are free to live anyway we choose as they claim to be led by the spirit of love. Anti-nomians, people led by a deceiving spirit, are seen in Christians who profane God’s Holy Name as they reinvent Him to bolster perversion in “sparkle creeds.” The Holy Ten Commandments - the Law of God is eternal. The Law doesn’t make me sin - it serves as a diagnostic tool of the old adam within. Going to the doctor for an annual check-up doesn’t give you obesity, cancer, diabetes, or any other ailment. Running tests doesn’t make you ill, but uncovers disease to be able to apply healing medicine before they become terminal.
The Law of God is a mirror revealing the thoughts and intents of our hearts - that the healing medicine of Christ’s perfect keeping of the Law might be washed over us daily in our baptism. In Jesus we daily die to the old sinful self and rise to a new life - freely running in the path of God’s Commandments. Loved by God under the cross, we rise to love our neighbor living the Ten Commandments within our various daily callings.
    Listen! (Mt. 4:19) We don’t compromise the Ten Commandments to fit in with the times. In love we speak the Law in its fulness to awaken fellow sinners of the danger of hell. In love we speak to them of Jesus, our Brother, He alone has fulfilled the Law perfectly for us. Never tire of teaching, learning, praying the Holy Ten Commandments daily in your home - they will turn you to Christ Jesus’ reconciling righteousness in His completion of the Law for you!
II.   “Self-help” sections in libraries and bookstores feed on our fallen human pride. Adam on the day of the rebellion, chose the lie, death, and slavery to sin. Then he was certain that he could make things right by himself. He covered his shame with fig leaves. Ran with Satan. Ran away from his wife. Hid when Christ came seeking His lost sheep. He blamed God and his wife for his sin. He was certain that he could handle it himself. Why do we stay away from gathering around Christ Jesus every Sunday? We think we can handle life ourselves. We don’t really need the cross, forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, or the living body and blood of Christ - we are enslaved in the lie that we are our own saviors - we’ll do it ourselves.
      Have you kept the Ten Commandments? How about 613 more? (Mt.5:20) The scribes - experts in the Old Testament Scriptures. The Pharisees - pious followers of Yahweh - who followed 613 additional commandments so they wouldn’t break God’s Ten - were very good people. By twelve Pharisees had memorized the first five books of the Bible, Psalms, and Proverbs. They fasted, prayed, cared for the poor - but all of their good works could not save them. They needed a greater righteousness than one they could work for themselves.
      Jesus isn’t speaking against good works. Satan and our flesh often twist the reality that we are saved by grace for Christ’s sake through faith - into a reason to be lazy in caring for our neighbor - or slack in fighting against our own sin. Remember your baptism - you died to sin - you can’t live in it any longer. Crucified with Jesus on Good Friday - now you live in Easter - new life - daily dying to your old sinful self - daily given and new heart by the Holy Spirit through the Word of Christ. (Mt. 5:21-22) The human body and life are creations of God. They are to be protected from the moment of conception to the point of natural death. In Christ we are freed to protect our neighbor’s body and life. As a nation we’ve failed the test as we stand on the grave of 63 million unborn human beings slaughter in the holocaust of abortion. Now supporting mutilation of our young for sexual confusion. We should rejoice that last week it was reported that Indiana has saved three times as many infant children from death than has Illinois. Truly preserving the life of unborn female infants from conception.
    The Fifth Commandment cuts us to the heart. It isn’t only those other people who are murderers - it is I. Been angry? Cursed a fellow human being under your breath? Screamed at your screen - “that man is a fool.” The Law condemns you. Judges you worthy of hell fire! You don’t need self-help. You need Jesus! Learning to pray with sinful David, “Create in me a clean heart O God, and renew a steadfast Spirit within me!”    You need Christ’s reconciling righteousness daily making you a new creation.
III.     The Temple and its offerings were never a way for sinful mankind to make God happy. The sin offerings, the blood shed, the flesh given were so that the Holy God might dwell among His people filling them with His life. Stewardship isn’t about your giving, but receiving your daily bread from your loving Heavenly Father with thanksgiving. He has reconciled you to Himself through the flesh and blood of His only begotten Son sacrificed for your sin on the cross!
        Listen! (Mt. 5:23-24) Reconciling righteousness has brought your back to God your Father. Christ’s one sacrifice you has reunited you with your family - sinners forgiven. He teaches us to pray for forgiveness - confessing our sins, laying them all on Jesus. He teaches us to live forgiveness - as we forgive fellow sinners as we are forgiven. This is against our old adam - that my brother is to conciliate me when I am angry and that when my feelings are hurt I am to forgive my sister though she offer me no apology. This is the heart and life of the New Adam - Jesus in us. He has healed sin’s breech with our Holy God freeing us to seek healing reconciliation with fellow sinners. (Mt. 5:25-26) Receiving healing from the sacrificed and risen body and blood of Jesus - His forgiveness flows through us to all who sin against us.
        Dear Christian do not delay! Run to the cross! Receive Jesus’ healing. Run to your neighbor, your brother, your sister, your mother, your father, your enemy - forgive - love them as God the Father loves you completely - that while you were yet a sinner - Christ died for you. Cross won-empty tomb certified forgiveness, reconciling righteousness - frees you to live a new life - a life of freedom running in the path of God’s Holy Ten Commandments. 1Jn 5:1-4 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. (2) By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. (3) For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. (4) For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Amen