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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text comes from that gospel reading, Jesus’ sermon. You may be seated. In the opening prayer that I chanted at the very beginning, we call it a collect or a prayer. It’s on the front of your bulletin. It talks about praying to God to preserve us from the consequences of your and my sin. Amen. The consequences of your and my sin.
And in the hymn we just sang, that real short but very pithy hymn about forgiving as we’ve been forgiven, about putting away hurts and wrongs that we may love and give forgiveness, that’s also a consequence of God’s forgiveness. There’s a consequence of sin, but there’s a consequence of God’s forgiveness of that sin. Amen.
Jesus’ sermon that was preached on the mount that we have an excerpt from in this morning’s text is not about giving a laundry list of those things that are against the fifth or the sixth commandment. It is really about where sin begins. The half-brother of our Lord, St. James, the one who wrote the epistle of St. James, wrote this about sin. Listen. But each person is tempted… when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then, desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Fully grown sin means impenitence, where one does not confess the sin.
It sounds like Jesus is only preaching about your actions. He’s not. He’s not. He is preaching about what James cites, where actions flow from. All of your actions flow from first the desire. Eve desired the fruit and saw that it was good for food and for gaining knowledge, the text says. You and I desire something that’s not ours, and you and I can’t ever stop desires coming in our head, can we? Because you and my head and heart are sinful from the time of conception.
Jesus is saying very clearly the act is sin, but what is really the sin is not just the act, but the desire and the thought. So Jesus is saying, murder is not just the ending of a person’s life, but the anger that you have in your heart towards someone else, and more importantly, towards someone who is a believer, a fellow believer. That’s murder. Words spoken are as deadly a weapon as any knife or gun. But where did the act of words come from? Where did the anger come from but from within our hearts? That’s where Jesus is saying is the sin.
Thoughts of ungodly sex, you and I can’t stop. They come within us. And it is as grievous of an adultery as having sex outside of marriage physically with someone. Because our sexuality was meant only to be expressed in a marriage between a male and a female. That’s where God said, express sexuality here. This is where it matters. But that act, that wrongful act of that, starts somewhere, and it starts within your and my desires. Any breaking of a marriage vow is adultery. Period. There are always correct ways of doing divorce. And in fact, the Jews reveled in it.
And Jesus was making the point in this morning’s text, it’s not about doing divorce rightly, it’s about divorce in general. But lest we think this is God pinning the rose on only divorcees, where do sinful thoughts regarding adulterous feelings come from but the heart? Jesus is concerned about actions, but He’s more concerned about the desires and thoughts that flow from your bosom, your heart.
Our heart is in daily need, constant need of forgiveness for those thoughts and desires, not just the actions. We confess at the beginning of the service, we have not loved God as we ought. We have not loved our neighbor as we ought. Those are actions, and those actions flow from the heart. That’s the real core issue of your and my problem. Hence the need for regular and daily coming to terms with this, asking God for forgiveness, repenting.
And how important and vital for God’s forgiveness to do its work in you and receive such forgiveness for such desires and thoughts. There are two things discussed in this text: one, the sins of the heart, and two, being reconciled with your fellow believer. You look at the text, it’s smack in the middle, and it’s not just with any sinner; it’s reconciled with your brother, a fellow believer. Whether that fellow believer has got it all right or not, a fellow believer nevertheless. His intent in this sermon is not to cover every nuance of these commandments. His intent in this sermon is to point out to us where sin begins and to point out to us where the end of its reign is found.
The end of the reign of that sin is found in Him. That’s the intent. We have to be daily killed by repentance. Putting to death the desire and thought. And daily Christ has to raise us up from the dead and give us that which we then can give to each other: His forgiveness.
It’s interesting. Whenever you and I have been sinned against, you and I don’t ever think about owing anybody anything when we’ve been sinned against. Do you know what you owe by God’s desire and demand? Do you know what you owe to someone who has sinned against you? You owe them what you’ve been given: forgiveness. That’s God’s desire and will. We owe forgiveness because we ourselves have received forgiveness. That’s why we sang that hymn: “Forgive us, O Lord, as we forgive.”
Now, here’s the problem. It’s not easy to live with other sinners. And you want to know what’s even more messy? It’s even more messy for sinful believers to live with other sinful believers. Why else would you be shocked by a fellow believer’s actions? Why else would you be embarrassed by your own? Why else would you be disappointed in yourself and in your fellow believer? Because living as a forgiven sinner with other forgiven sinners is messy.
And if you really want to know what mess it looks like, it looks like that. That’s the mess it looks like. None of you will ever be the worst adulterer, and none of you will ever be the most heinous of murderers, and none of you will ever be the one who has broken the most holy of vows, because there’s only one man in this world who has ever been the worst murderer, the worst adulterer, and the worst breaker of every vow. His name is Jesus. Because he carried your broken vows and your broken hearts, your anger toward your brother and the adultery in your hearts. He carried it, and not just for you, but for all the world.
He, that is the Father, made him, that is Jesus the Son, who knew no sin, to be your sin for you, that you might be given the righteousness of God. So the rose of being the worst will never be on your shoulder. It is in His riven side for you. And living together as believers, sinful believers, forgiven sinful believers, is always going to cause us to be embarrassed with one another’s actions and with our own, disappointed in one another’s actions as well as our own, and shocked by one another’s actions as well as our own.
This is not a sermon about what you need to do for your life to be perfect in your actions. It’s a sermon about what God has done to bring you forgiveness for your sinful actions. And those actions flow from first and foremost a sinful heart. None of us can find wiggle room. We can always find wiggle room that we don’t act otherwise like other people. We can always find that. It is the heart that is the same. The heart of the most pious pastor is the same as the most heinous man on the street. They’re both the same hearts. And they both were paid for in the cross.
In the greatest sinner of all. A little later on, we’re going to sing, “Chief of sinners though I be, Jesus shed his blood for me.” Yes, but the only reason that the chief of sinners are we is because He first was foremost the chief of sinners to pay for all sinners. That there may never be anyone that Satan can accuse to say, “You’re worse than.”
Living together with other believers is a messy, messy life. All you’ve got to do is think about your interactions with parents, siblings, wives, husbands, and children, and you realize that’s why you are shocked by their behavior or they by yours. That’s why you are embarrassed by their behavior and by yours. That’s why you are disappointed by their behavior and by yours. But forgiveness is really what Jesus is striving at reminding we need.
You know what changes you? Not you changing you, but Him changing you with forgiveness. That’s what changes hearts. That’s what enables people to give it. That’s what enables people to receive it. You’ve always heard it’s better to give than to receive. Now, it’s better to receive His forgiveness so that you can give.
Jesus is very concerned about the hearts of His people today and that His people live together as forgiven and forgiving of one another. It will not take away the shock. It will not take away the disappointment. And it will not take away the embarrassment. It will take away sin. Satan does the rest. And you know where he can go. Because that’s where he is always going to be. And not with you.
But in the meantime, we pray, “Lord, forgive. And help me to continually seek it. Because it’s all that I have to give to my brother and sister.”
His name was David. David was the holy man of God who slew the great giant Goliath, the king of Israel. And yet David committed adultery with Bathsheba. David murdered Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite. And David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote Psalm 51. And you and I have heard it if we grew up in the church since we were little boys and little girls.
Stand up with me and let’s pray it by singing it to Him who can take care of our hearts: “Create in me a clean heart, a right spirit within me.”
Ask me. Words from a condemned sinner for his fellow sinners to find comfort in.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus, the life everlasting. Amen.
