Matt 5 (Part 1) RIGHTEOUSNESS EXCEEDING BEYOND

Real Righteousness Part 1

Part of the "Design of a Disciple" series.

Sunday 19th October, 2008 7pm service.

A few years ago a man called Michael Hart wrote a book called The 100. He attempted to rate the 100 most influential people in history. It got quite a reaction, because, against everybody’s expectation, the winner wasn’t Jesus.
His choice was Mohammed.
The runner-up wasn’t Jesus – he chose Isaac Newton.
Jesus Christ, the only and unique Son of God, the defeater of Satan, sin and death, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world… came third.
Second place wasn’t hard to justify, because gravity is pretty important stuff. But Mohammed? First? My gut-reaction was, quite simply, tell him he’s dreamin’.

Here was the kicker, though. Michael Hart looked at how followers follow. From his viewpoint, Islamic people today are far more faithful to the teachings of Mohammed than Christians are to the teaching of Christ. Here’s what he says. He’s referencing Matthew 5:43-48 – specifically, the command to love ones’ enemies:

These are surely among the most remarkable and original ethical ideas ever presented. If they were widely followed I would have no hesitation in placing Jesus first in this book. But the truth is that they are not widely followed. Indeed, they are not even actually generally accepted. Most Christians consider the injunction to love your enemy as at most an ideal which might be realised in some perfect world, but one which is not a reasonable guide to conduct in the actual world we live in.
We do not normally practice love for our enemies, we do not expect others to practice it, we do not teach our children to practice it. Jesus’ most distinctive teaching therefore remains an intriguing but basically untried suggestion.[1]

That raises a pretty valid question. What does it look like to be a disciple, a follower, a Christian? What should the design of a disciple look like?

Matthew records Jesus teaching his disciples and a huge crowd, and it’s famously known now as The Sermon On The Mount. And that’s a pretty good place to start.

Matthew 5:20 – Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, there is no way you will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Greek here is even more emphatic – Unless your righteousness exceeds beyond that of the Scribes and Pharisees…

We’re pretty comfortable with that. We’ve seen the movie, and we know that the Pharisees are the bad boys. Weirdie beardies with big robes and a scowl... Not quite…
The scribes and the Pharisees were seen as the standard of righteousness – they were famous for it. That was their job. People listening to Jesus would have looked to these scribes and Pharisees to see what righteousness looked like, to see the design of a good, obedient, godly person.
Much to the peoples’ surprise, Jesus says that their righteousness is insufficient – it’s not good enough. So the obvious question that Jesus’ listeners would have asked now is: “what’s the difference between righteousness and righteousness?” The Pharisees were all about obedience to the law. Is there a difference between righteousness and obedience? Good question.

Let’s say I drop a glass by accident. There’s lots of glass on the floor. Being an old glass, it’s shattered into slivers, and it’s gone into the carpet. That makes it very hard to find the pieces. That’s not good, because I have little kids. So I say to them, don’t come into the room.
Benny is three. He looks at me, and I say Danger really carefully. He blinks, says danger, and goes away. He goes and watches Maisy, counts frogs, plays with his Thomas the Tank Engine train-set (thanks, Mum and Dad).

Grace is nearly seven, smart and a real livewire . And she’s still there. And she edges right up to the doorway… Now, I know Grace – she'll push the line, so I have to make a line for her. She edges up to the door. I tell her there’s glass in the carpet, gorgeous, and it’ll shred her feet. I want to help you, Daddy – she goes and gets a pair of shoes. No – it’s too dangerous. Don’t come into the room. But I really know my daughter. I need to tell her don’t go past this line. And she needs to know, too. And she’ll wonder – and ask – if on the line counts as being over the line… you get the picture.
She doesn’t physically cross that line. She’s obedient in form, she’s obedient to the letter… she hasn’t disobeyed me.
But it’s all about the line. The glass – the real danger – is nowhere in her mind. There’s a difference between the righteousness of Grace and the righteousness of Benny, who’s just gone okay, Dad and toddled off.

There’s a big difference between the righteousness of being compliant and the righteousness of being joyfully obedient.

There’s a big difference between the righteousness of the Pharisees and the righteousness that God is asking for.

We live in a world where compliance is the key. We’re not by nature lovers of law, and the idea of loving the law is very alien to us. We live right on the edge of the law in so many ways... speed-limits and taxes, for instance.

King David’s passionate love of the Law of the Lord that we read in the Psalms just seems so bizarre to us.
But if we can separate compliance from righteousness, we’re on our way to understanding.

Next week....
REAL RIGHTEOUSNESS PART II: Semper Fidelis

[1] Michael H. Hart, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History. London: Simon & Schuster; 1993. p 20-21

Image from an article on Pro-Boolean software. Available at www.cguu.com/.../il_probool_glass_shatter.jpg