Missions Paul

Monday morning, start of another working week for many, maybe a week of zoom calls, living in a locked-down family unit, with the rise of social media there hasn’t been a time quite like now when our lives are publicly lived out to so many.

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 6 v 1)

In a nutshell this sermon of Jesus is about revealing His kingdom. Its motto is ‘what is inside of you counts’. So it is indeed a new chapter as Jesus moves us into the public domain where we practice our righteousness. To practice it is to test and develop it.

Be You.

Don’t let others or the circumstance tempt you to pretend to be someone you are not in order to curry favour and acceptance from them.

Be You.

Don’t try to seek attention through ticking all the boxes of Christian behaviour.

Be You.

It is equally as dangerous to try to do good as it is to do bad; for doing good without making it a performance so that everyone claps will mean there is One who won’t be, the important One. (Thanks to the Message).

Be You.

Do good, it will lead to your reward from the Father. But don’t do it for the reason that you want to be seen. There will be no reward.

I woke early this morning and read an article sent from a colleague about the downfall of one of the Christian world’s leading apologists. He wasn’t the person everyone thought he was. He died last year and with that came the public inquiry not into his death but his life. I read the article with disturbed sadness.

I then read our next verse in Matthew’s gospel and what ends for us chapter 5:

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5 v 48)

So that’s easy isn’t it?

I try. Don’t you? I also fail. What about you?

If the Apostle Paul openly talked of his struggle with sin then this Paul certainly is going to struggle!

So how am I going to achieve perfection?

Antony of Egypt (251-356) abandoned his inheritance at the age of 20 after hearing a reading of: If you want to be perfect, go and sell everything you have and give to the poor.

For 20 years he shut himself off from society in a Roman fort on a solitary desert mountain. After which he became a symbol of strength and wisdom for Egypt.

 As a result many became followers of Antony, they were known as the desert fathers. An arm of the desert fathers was the Stylites, an extreme bunch of people who thought perfection was attained by living on top of pillars. Thousands of weak, weather-beaten hermits lived a short life of malnutrition in the pursuit of being like Christ and being perfect.

So in my desire to be perfect do I become a follower of Antony?

Or do I realise that I am just a broken man in need of the Japanese practice of Kintusgi pottery? I need God to mend me, a broken pot, with gold or silver so that I am more beautiful than I was before I broke. Is this now perfection?

Which is it? Let’s read the sentence again.

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

‘Therefore’.

This sentence is a conclusion of all Jesus has just said:

Love is to bless those who hurt you; Love is saying sorry; Love is reconciliation; Love is not lust; Love is not being selfish nor being self-righteous; Love is honest; Love says I will not respond the way I am being mistreated; Love your enemy; Love without partiality; Therefore, Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The whole section is to love as God loves. Jesus gives a description of the kingdom whose citizens mirror God’s activity towards them.

The Message says of the verse:  “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

I may never achieve perfection but in my response to people I can reveal a perfect God.

Do people annoy you sometimes? Do you find it hard to love certain people? For a season of my life I believed that I was called to love people but that didn’t mean I had to like them. Yet compared to the love I showed to those people I genuinely liked it was a very small amount of love! I came to the realisation if I wanted to be like Jesus I needed to work on my liking as well as my loving.

Have you ever heard God speak this to you? I love you but I don’t like you.

No.

But you do understand these words: I don’t like what you did, but I like you and I love you.

Let’s talk about love: have a think of people who may have gossiped about you, misrepresented you, complained about you. Now, with those people in mind let’s talk about the demonstration of your love to those people. You don’t like what they did. Can you find something you do like about them? Can you show to love them sacrificially?

Remember the days when you had people come round for dinner? Who did you invite? Nice people?

The goal of our life is to love how God loves. So how does He do it?

He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? (Matthew 5 v 45-47)

Jesus took a saying of the Jews which said that the resurrection of the dead was for the just but rain was for the just and the wicked. He uses their words to say that within his kingdom people imitate God. They love even the tax-collector (Matthew would know) and the pagan.

Most of the Jews believed that God actually hated the Gentiles but loved them. Think about the following beliefs:
There were 3 things to be thankful for as a Jewish man, you were not a slave, a woman or a GENTILE.
Never help a GENTILE, not at all, no matter how small or how much of an emergency it was. The answer was NO.
Funerals were held for Jews who married GENTILES. They were dead people.

You might disagree with a person’s belief or behaviour but you are stupid to disagree with God’s love!

Jesus’ sermon reveals how to live in his kingdom when we face so many challenging situations. How do we remain a Jesus follower?

The kingdom principle is to do the opposite of what comes your way and not the same response.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven”. (Matthew 5 v 43-45)

The preacher spoke, “I’ll bet that many of us feel as if we have enemies in our lives. So raise your hands if you have many enemies.” And quite a few people raise their hands.

“Now raise your hands if you have only a few enemies.” And about half as many people raise their hands.

“Now raise your hands if you have only one or two enemies.” And even fewer people raised their hands.

“See, most of us feel like we have enemies.”

“Now raise your hands if you have no enemies at all.” And the preacher looks around, and looks around, and finally, way in the back, a very, very old man raises his hand. He stands up and says, “I have no enemies whatsoever!” Delighted, the preacher invited the man to the front of the church. “What a blessing!” the preacher said. “How old are you?

“I’m 98 years old, and I have no enemies.” The preacher said, “What a wonderful Christian life you lead! And tell us all how it is that you have no enemies.”

“All the fools have died!”

A funny story and maybe true?!

The Scribes and Pharisees had brought their own interpretation to Scripture resulting in hating your enemy.

Jesus says the unthinkable. It seems impossible. How can we do this? To love and to pray for those who are against us?

It leads to us having to cope with loss. And that is what the core of love is.

If you have given out more than you have received back then you are venturing into the kingdom life.

There needs to be loss in your life. The loss of loving someone who doesn’t return that love.

The loss of helping those who just take.

Loss because there is no hope of getting anything back from your kindness and generosity.

When you question whether it was worth it; when you ask whether you have been taken for a ride; when you see nothing from your acts of kindness it is then when you enter the kingdom life.

The Kingdom Life is a life where you look like God, especially in front of your enemies. They may be ungrateful and they may not recognise what you do but He sees. God can see you identify with Him for this is who He is and what He has done and does today.

So if today you meet that awkward, self-centred, seemingly unavoidable person then be kind. Lose. Be like God, love, pray for them and you will be doing so from the place of the kingdom.

The next section of Jesus’ sermon isn’t referring to the abused spouse nor is it advocating that criminals can get away with it and neither is it an attempt to abolish whistle-blowing.

We live in a world that says, ‘Don’t let them walk all over you’ and ‘Stand up for yourself’.

Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” (Matthew 5 v 38-42)

It has received great attention throughout the centuries of theological debate trying to get to the root of what Jesus was saying. The pacifists and the conscientious objectors have used it along with the anarchists. This was never meant to be a theological blog and there are so many better thinkers who will do a greater justice to this text.

Jesus is bringing in his kingdom, it is deeper and higher than the kingdom of the world. It is an upside-down kingdom. The one major point in his sermon is that of hypocrisy that was so prevalent and still is.

Slapped on the cheek, sued for your shirt, forced to go a mile, begged or borrowed. Five instances of people taking from you.

The message is found in the response.

Here’s the big thing and I simply write it in a number of different ways, my own responses to the attacks that come our way:

“I will not do life like you do life. I belong to a different kingdom to you. I choose a higher level. Not out of arrogance or pompous attitude but simply because I will not stoop down to a level of the world which says I should retaliate by ‘hitting your cheek or saying NO to my shirt, that mile, that ask or the loan.”

“Look down on me, make me look unequal to you and my response to you will show the world that we are indeed not equal.”

“Make my life hard and I will expose your injustice by making your life easy.”

“Make me look like some cattle carrying your bags for a mile (the Romans practiced conscription amongst the citizens) and I will show you I will not be demeaned for I will go the extra mile. My generosity will defeat your conscription”

“Humiliate me but I will not be humiliated in my heart.”

“My humanity will expose your violent humanity by revealing a bigger heart than what is being shown.”

“I will fight within the Kingdom of Jesus not within your kingdom.”

That’s what I think Jesus is saying.

For those who don’t want to be like a doormat then decide to be a shoe polisher as well and you will turn the demeaning kingdom upside down.

You shall not commit murder; You shall not commit Adultery; and we know the next one? You shall not steal.

“Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” (Matthew 5 v 33-37)

So why doesn’t Jesus speak about stealing?

He does, this is it, but it is stealing with words. He is following an order that is seen elsewhere, in Jeremiah 7: 9 when God is telling His people He knows exactly what is going on and sees through their falseness, “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely …”

A BBC report today says that scamming someone out of money by pretending to want a relationship has been on the rise during lockdown. It reports of a terrible story where one widow in her 50s was defrauded of £320,000 by a simple, but evil, false talk.

These are extreme but real situations of perjury.

Also today the headlines of newspapers are pretty much all saying the same thing- 10 days quarantining after entering the UK or if you lie about where you have flown in from then it’s 10 years in a cell! I swear on my mother’s grave!

What about the times when you want to say yes or no but you know it is going to be really difficult to do so? Have you ever been tempted to make up a story to go along with your NO because you want to let someone down gently?

The heart of the Sermon of Jesus on that mountainside was hypocrisy. That was his main target when speaking to the Pharisees throughout the gospel. They were constantly pulling the wool over people’s eyes. It seems that the religious would make great promises that they had no intention of keeping. Jesus is not saying that oaths should never be made. He has just spoken about the sanctity of marriage and divorce. But he is telling his disciples in the hearing of the crowd not to be fooled by elaborate words and promises and indeed not to make them.

The pain that many have received from the Church because of the verses we will read today!

 “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 5 v 31-32)

In their failure to keep a marriage together some of the loveliest of people have found themselves in the outer courts of the Church. We must do better with our marriages and with other people’s divorces.

The Talmud says that when a couple get divorced, it is as if the Altar sheds tears.

So what was Jesus saying?

Is he giving the grounds for divorce? If so, he only mentions sexual immorality, what about physical abuse? Also can the wife divorce her husband, it appears it is only one way?

Jesus continues his fulfilment of the law bringing a deeper intended meaning. The Pharisee thought they were fulfilling the Law of Moses by issuing a certificate of divorce. They prided themselves on not just walking away from their wife but making it all legal. The Message helps us: “Remember the Scripture that says, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him do it legally, giving her divorce papers and her legal rights’? Too many of you are using that as a cover for selfishness and whim, pretending to be righteous just because you are ‘legal.’ Please, no more pretending. If you divorce your wife, you’re responsible for making her an adulteress (unless she has already made herself that by sexual promiscuity). And if you marry such a divorced adulteress, you’re automatically an adulterer yourself. You can’t use legal cover to mask a moral failure.”

Jesus was living in a time when the Pharisees and teachers of the law were divorcing their wives for the craziest of reasons but were gloating that they never broke the commandments, like the 7^th one, adultery. They were interpreting Deuteronomy 24:1, “If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her …” with the focus on he is displeased and has found something indecent about her. The indecency was anything that displeased him. Surreal that it may sound but that included permission to divorce her for spoiling his dinner!

Jesus is not saying divorce should never happen.

Jesus is not saying that adultery should lead to divorce.

Jesus is not saying remarriage is wrong.

Jesus is not saying divorce without grounds is blasphemy and the unforgivable sin.

But Jesus is saying that people should stop pretending they are carrying out the will of God when they are treating the sanctity of marriage so badly.

If a spouse divorces in order to marry someone else, if that is the reason, no matter if you follow the whole legal process, you are doing what an adulterer does and have broken the 7^th commandment.

It is the reason, the motivation, it is pursuing a course of action for your own personal gain. It is a matter of the heart. That is always the secret to the kingdom.

Can I have a divorce? Yes. But your selfishness and self-righteousness may reveal the answer is NO. The condition of your heart is everything.

If you got it wrong, then don’t worry, I know a Saviour who specialises in this kind of thing.

The Talmud speaks of 7 different types of Pharisee. One of which was called the ‘bruised Pharisee’ who walked into walls to avoid looking at women. Ridiculous but true.

Staying with the same theme of relationships having brought the deeper meaning that was intended with the Law of Moses regarding murder, Jesus continues to another commandment.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” (Matthew 5 v 27-30)

Jesus moves into the marriage relationship. Before he speaks of divorce he challenges the law of adultery.

We can easily imagine people being able to say ‘I have never committed adultery. I have been faithful.’ But what of the heart? Have you been singularly devoted? Has the spouse turned away from their married partner, to look, hope, dream for someone else, whether they are known or not?

Why is this important? It is once again because of the mirror of our relationship with God. This Old Testament verse is certainly in parallel, “Then in the nations where they have been carried captive, those who escape will remember me—how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts, which have turned away from me, and by their eyes, which have lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their detestable practices. (Ezekiel 6:9)

You may not have committed physical adultery. Bravo!

But have you thought it?

One of the saddest verses in the Old Testament is this:

From his vantage point on the roof King David saw a woman bathing (2 Samuel 11:2)

No one else saw him, but he from his vantage point, alone, was able to see what was for him beautiful.

The world’s most successful industry is the porn industry and yet it is the most destructive in a person’s life and on those involved.

When I was a teenager – only vantage point was on the highest shelf of the newsagents. You would have to stand on the Readers Digest and puzzle shelf to have any chance of reaching it and then risk causing a collapse of the whole shelving unit. It wasn’t worth it. It was left to the diagrams in the human biology books!

Today it is so different. The vantage points are all around and so easily accessible.

But there is one finer measure. If you are looking at another person lustfully then you have turned away from your spouse. God says through Ezekiel that His people ‘have turned away from me’. So here is another question for us.

Have you turned away from your spouse with a commitment to other things or yourself?

This is also the adultery.

But what if we are guilty of parts or all of this?

What is Jesus suggesting? The leading Theologian in the 3^rd century, Origen of Alexandria, known for his huge work on the Trinity, was also known for making himself a eunuch for the kingdom, though this self-mutilation was never proved.

So we haven’t done this yet have we? We haven’t cut our hands and feet off, we haven’t plucked our eyes out and thus saved ourselves from an eternal fiery hell.

If we were to start where would we stop? We would have no body parts left for sure!

With the use of exaggerated language to stress the difficulty, Jesus advocates for us to take it really seriously. The point is to go to great lengths. Maybe become narrow-minded and reduce our freedoms. Do whatever is needed to make sure you don’t reject your spouse by looking away. There will be other people and things out there to look at but don’t do it. It will lead to sadness.

If you have ever had a fine then you will know you can settle the matter now or leave it and when you get to court it could be even worse for you.

“Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.” (Matthew 5 v 25-26)

Jesus tells another story.

When things go wrong and you don’t try and reconcile they can get even worse.

This story is more severe than the previous.

Jesus says if you don’t do anything you can end up in a debtor’s prison, the Gentiles would understand that from the Roman culture, perhaps not so much the Jew. It is impossible to pay the fine in a debtor’s prison as you cannot earn money. It is left to the family to pay the fine to get the debtor released. They were abolished in the UK in 1869. Charles Dickens’ book ‘Little Dorrit’ was inspired from his childhood when aged 12yrs he had to work at a shoe-polish factory to raise money because his father was imprisoned in 1824 for failing to pay a local baker £40.

The point of Jesus’ story is that if we leave things unreconciled then the offence will remain and increase enough to destroy completely.

Are we to blame?

If we are to blame then we must do all we can to reconcile. The Message translation says, ‘Make the first move.’

Who will apologise first? For most often than not the other person is also to blame.

There will be times when reconciliation is impossible because the other person may not want to. But failure in reconciliation is not the same as failing to try.

So is there anyone today you can at least try with?

Most days I am walking into someone’s battle. It is usually not with an enemy as such though they have made it so. It is with another Christian, maybe an authoritative figure or just a fellow member of their Church. Often they haven’t counted the cost of their argument. They haven’t considered what they would lose, the damage they would cause to themselves and to others. They neither ask for peace and they never get on to the cross. The one word I never seem to hear is the one word everyone is fighting for, ‘sorry’. I said to one person who was in a fight with their Pastor, “Do you not realise the damage this is causing you? Even before we think of the people in the Church. If you carry on like this then you will die a sad, old, bitter person with bad memories.” I met this person at the end of the service of a church I visited a year ago. I had noticed how she had come forward to serve the bread and wine during the Communion part of the service. She was one of the two members who then went row by row collecting people’s tithes and offerings. After I called people to the front for prayer after my sermon she was the first one out. She wanted more of God and was praying through tears. After the service had ended she was the first to approach me to tell me how much God had spoken to her through my message. After a couple of questions I realised this was the woman the Pastor had told me had given him so many problems because she wanted rid of him for he had made too many changes!

When was the last time someone hurt you? The list of names come easily. Here’s another question: When was the last time you hurt someone? Is that even possible?!!

Many are living with open wounds and cannot truly be the person God has called them to be. Those wounds could have been caused by you and me.

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5 v 23-24)

Maybe our church buildings need to stay empty for this reason alone?

Jesus is on the mountainside teaching his disciples with the crowd around listening. The Temple in Jerusalem is a long way away (perhaps 75 miles) but it is etched in the imagination of the people. So Jesus tells a story of travelling all that way to Jerusalem, to the altar, this is a special occasion and everyone would know how exciting this trip would be. The purpose is one of thankfulness for all that God has done, you desire to celebrate Him and you have purchased an animal, it was bought whilst there or you brought it from Galilee, either way it cost you. But then at the altar something happens, you remember, not how hurt you are, but the hurt you have caused to someone. You realise it is more important to stop worshipping and giving and going to reconcile than it is to continue knowing someone is angry or hurt with you.

Go back in the same way that you came. You came with excitement, with personal cost, with thanksgiving and Jesus tells us to approach the person we have hurt in the same way. There is no condition attached to this on whether or not the person is innocent and actually the argument is 50/50. Just go because of your part. Stop singing, leave your money or your lamb and leave the building. Then come back and start again. Reconciliation is more important than your worship.

This word ‘reconciled’ means to change thoroughly, it means to bring back together a relationship that was broken. For that to happen repentance needs to be present; the willingness is hugely important; pride needs to fall; humility needs to rise; it won’t be easy but when we hurt someone the first place to go is not the altar though that may be where the conviction comes. We must go and use a word that is more longed for than spoken, ‘sorry’.