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In this section of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus uses the above saying 5x:

“You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ Matthew 5:21

“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; Matthew 5:27

“Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, ‘ YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FALSE VOWS, BUT SHALL FULFILL YOUR VOWS TO THE LORD.’ Matthew 5:33

“You have heard that it was said, ‘AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.’ Matthew 5:38

“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’ Matthew 5:43

The form of the sentences

• The Formula (You have heard it said)
• The quotation (from the Law)
• The commentary

This would possibly be the same form that rabbis used when discoursing.  (I need to check this up).  Even if it isn’t the case modern Bible commentaries follow this type of format.  The quotation and then naturally with the commentary.

The grammar

In the root ‘to hear’ and ‘to say’ are both in the aorist and plural.   He was speaking to his disciples and not just one disciple.   In the saying ‘you have heard it said’, the main verbs are in the aorist or passive aorist.  It seems to be a formula that introduces something very important from the Law.

General description of the formula ‘You have heard that it was said’. 

In every verse of this found here in Matthew the grammar is the same.  This is understandable as it is just the flow of the Gospel story.

 And I say to you…

I found this interesting and it validates what I said earlier about the form of speech Jesus used was a traditional rabbinic ways of speaking about the Law and explanations:

“the second half of the comparison used by Jesus, ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν, “but I say to you” (in all six antitheses: vv 22, 28, 32, 34, 39, and 44), involves an authority that is alien to the spirit of the rabbis—especially, of course, where the new interpretation seems to stand in tension with the direct statement of Scripture. The rabbis, who never would pit their views against Scripture, preferred to support differing interpretations by appealing to other earlier representatives of the rabbinic tradition. Jesus’ remarkable use of the “but I say to you” formula is to be explained by his identity as the messianic bringer of the kingdom (Hengel points out that the element “to you,” which gives each antithesis the tonality of a kerygmatic statement, is lacking in the rabbinic parallels [TRu 52 (1987) 376]). It is the Messiah’s interpretation of the Torah that is finally authoritative.”

From Hagner, D. A. (1993). Matthew 1–13 (Vol. 33A, pp. 111–113). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Our Lord as the Messiah and the King of Israel relied on his own authority.  There would have been many interpretations but for the disciple it is the Lord’s understanding of it that counts as it is the true understanding (Trinitarian revelation). Jesus did not do what these Rabbis did by finding earlier quotes from past teachers.  Our Lord as the second Person of the Trinity had the correct interpretation through divine access to the original and deeper spiritual meaning.

What is our Lord doing?

In each section after he says ‘You have heard it said’ he then quotes from the First five books of the Law.   It is interesting that there is only five.  My question is, did Matthew choose 5 as symbolic of the five books of Moses.  I don’t know the answer to that. 

Our Lord is taking examples from the Law and giving it a twist that brings out the real meaning behind each saying through ‘but I say to you’.  We have seen that the beatitudes are mainly spiritual and hence our lord is taking us deeper into the text and how it ought to be interpreted.  Perhaps using our Lords method, we could also build on this for ethical decisions. 

In a scientific way our Lord is taking the moral object and then having interrogated through the beatitudes, he explains the meaning to us.

Let’s now look at the first saying in more detail:

21 “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’

22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

23 Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you,

24 leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.

25 Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last cent. Matthew 5:21-26

The law from the 10 commandments is very basic.  If one murders, one is guilty before the law courts.  This is the same as in British Law or any Western Law. Murder is murder.  However, our Lord brings out some steps in this law.  We can see them

• Anger with the brother = guilty before the court!
• Saying ‘good for nothing’ to one’s brother= guilty before the Supreme court!
• Whoever says ‘You fool’= guilty enough to go into the fiery Hell

Why such strong sayings from our Lords mouth?

God is the giver of the law.  It is God who is the Creator of the universe.  Our Lord then takes us into the Second Temple Institution (before it was destroyed in AD 70). Jesus says:

” Therefore, if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you,”

We know what the two great commandments are, loving God and loving our neighbour. We cannot love God if we do not love our brother.  This is an impossibility.   God will not accept anything less.  These are standards that would test any religious and non-religious institution to its limits.

Jesus our Lord continues by saying:

“25 Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison.

26 Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last cent.”

Hmm when I look at the context, I ask myself who this ‘opponent’ is.  I feel that the opponent here would be God.  I also feel that the prison would be hell.  This is a prison with no key because the price cannot be paid.

In a sense we are all prisoners locked up in our sin but what is impossible with us is not impossible with God.  Christ died on the cross so that we could be released from this prison. 

So, then Matthew seems to emphasize close relationships whereas Luke seems to emphasis Judgement

“Christ Divides Men

49 “I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished! 51 Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; 52 for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

54 And He was also saying to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘A shower is coming,’ and so it turns out. 55 And when you see a south wind blowing, you say, ‘It will be a hot day,’ and it turns out that way. 56 You hypocrites! You know how to analyze the appearance of the earth and the sky, but why do you not analyze this present time?

57 “And why do you not even on your own initiative judge what is right? 58 For while you are going with your opponent to appear before the magistrate, on your way there make an effort to settle with him, so that he may not drag you before the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. 59 I say to you, you will not get out of there until you have paid the very last cent.” Luke 12:49-59” (NASB)

Reflection

The kingdom of God is Here and with the eyes of faith we know that the next time our Lord comes will be a time of reckoning and judgement. 

What have we learned?

Positively

1. We need to love our neighbour.
2. We need to keep in step with our Lord’s sayings and be ready to forgive
3. We shouldn’t hold grudges and sort things out while we still can.

Negatively:

1. Hate has dire consequences
2. If we do not forgive, we should expect the same from God
3. Holding grudges pulls us down and away from the Kingdom of God

Following in the steps of Christ in our strength is impossible.  But Jesus died on the cross for us and in Him our election is sure through the gift of faith and its fruit of good works.  Pertaining to salvation it has all been done by God.

• God came down to earth in the incarnation
• Christ is the High priest who mediates for us
• Christ is the sacrifice for us
• Christ by the Holy Spirit brings us into the Trinitarian life through the resurrection of Christ.

All we need to do is confess him as our Lord and believe that God the Father by the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead.  We in our strength can do nothing to please God.  After we have been saved good works flow from gratitude for what He has done for us.  By faith gratitude flows by remembering our neighbour whoever our neighbour might be.

Today I’ve been thinking about when Jesus said that our righteousness has to surpass that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  These are actually incredible words because If we think about it Jesus had many run ins with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and they were always trying to trip him up.  Yet Jesus said, your righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  Nicodemus was also a Pharisee he was a Pharisee that actually believed in Jesus, secretly, that he was the Messiah.

Now the question is:

How can our righteousness surpass that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees?

The Pharisees and the Sadducees kept the law absolutely perfectly, and they even made a fence around it so that it would be impossible to break the law when our Lord and saviour grew up in a place where the Temple, the Second Temple, was still around also there was a place in the desert where people worshiped God, because for them the Temple in Jerusalem had become unholy.

In that sense the New Testament isn’t only important to Christians but it’s actually important to Judaism as well.  At one point, Christianity is a critique of Judaism in a particular form.  Perhaps one of the problems of Judaism at the time of Jesus was that the rabbis and the priests and so on may have come to a place of pride because they were so important to the functioning of the Temple that perhaps the logic was, they were more important than the ordinary person in the street.  From that point of view, Jesus can be seen as the great equalizer in Judaic society.

The truth is that what Jesus taught was so radical that it changed the whole ancient world and brought in a new religion, Christianity.

So, the question is.

What was so radical about what Jesus taught?

I think Jesus got behind the action. This is a very important point this is why the Beatitudes are so important.  This is why the Beatitudes are the key to understanding Jesus’ teachings.

It is true that the Pharisees and the Sadducee’s were able to keep the law absolutely perfectly.

They were perfect on the outside, but Jesus looked beyond the outside.

He looked at what is within the human heart.

On the outside, you can be pretend to be Mr Goody 2 shoes but on the inside, you can be somebody completely different.  Jesus revealed the hypocrisy that was going on in human beings universally.

This teaching of Jesus is a lot bigger than the Pharisees and the Sadducees, It is a bit lot bigger than Christendom.  It’s a lot bigger than any political system.  The teachings of Jesus hints at what it means to be human and how we ought to live our lives.  Jesus cuts through all of this. Surface social perfection and doing good things where people can see what you are doing.  He cuts through all the way through to the soul and what it is that makes a person tick.

The thing is that some Christians tend to put the emphasis on grace and that the law was done away with.  This is a misreading really. The main thing that was done away with is the ceremonial law.  The 10 Commandments stay effective forever, is part of the moral law.

So, then what was done away with the death and resurrection of Jesus was the ceremonial law where animals had to be killed regularly so that we could have our sins forgiven and this was done by the priest.

The big problem was that in AD 70 the actual Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and Judaism itself had an identity crisis and this is when, in a sense, the rabbis went on a particular Road.

But for Christian Judaism, I don’t think this was such a problem because the death and resurrection of Christ meant that there was no physical Temple that Jewish Christians had to rely on.

Looking at a commentary on Matthew here I read the following:

“The larger context of the verse (e.g., the grace of the beatitudes) forbids us to conclude that entrance into the kingdom depends, in a cause-effect relationship, upon personal moral attainments. The verse is addressed, it must be remembered, to those who are the recipients of the kingdom. Entrance into the kingdom is God’s gift; but to belong to the kingdom means to follow Jesus’ teaching. Hence, the kingdom and the righteousness of the kingdom go together; they cannot be separated. And it follows that without this righteousness there can be no entrance into the kingdom.”

(By Hagner, D. A. (1993). Matthew 1–13 (Vol. 33A, p. 109). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.)

I can see from the Beatitudes that God searches not only, cause and ‘effect but he also searches deeper than that, the ‘intentions and attitudes of the soul’.  Hence because of the Fall we need Christ to bring us into His holiness and glory. 

The same writer continues:

“Only an interpretation of the present pericope such as this is compatible with the bearing of Jesus toward the law throughout the Gospel. These words do not contradict what is said elsewhere in the Gospel nor do they involve a misunderstanding of the ministry of Jesus. Although they unmistakably reflect the idiom of the Pharisees, and to that extent may be misleading if taken literally, they make a valid point concerning Jesus and his attitude toward the law. The words may not have been adequately understood at their first hearing, but in retrospect, given the whole sweep of events recorded in the Gospels, their meaning would have become clear to the early Church. The evangelist is of course delighted to seize these sayings and incorporate them into this discourse on the righteousness of the kingdom. His Jewish-Christian readers needed to know—especially in the light of repeated counter-claims—that the pattern for righteousness taught by Jesus reflects the true meaning of the Torah, and thus that the Torah in its entirety is preserved in and through the ethical teaching of the Church”

(By Hagner, D. A. (1993). Matthew 1–13 (Vol. 33A, p. 109). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.)

So, then we as believers have a true understanding of ‘righteousness’ by following the teachings of Jesus.  By faith we follow our Saviour and by faith one day we will meet him in the Celestial City for all eternity.  Matthew is an amazing book, and it blows away a lot of our misconceptions away.

Reflection

My reflection on the Sermon on the Mount has slowed me down in my writing because I realize how little I actually understand.  Thus, I have been reading some background stuff to get up to speed.  At the same time, I have started book two of Herman Bavincks Ethics and he is actually going to go through all of the 10 commandments.  He begins by looking at duty and in his introduction, he has shown us the pitfalls of the new philosophy through the eyes of Kant.  Actually, Bavinck looks at Matthew’s Gospel for the Trinitarian ethics which goes against our Culture.  I’m sure that I will feed his teachings into the Sermon on the Mount!

Nevertheless, I can say that at the time of Christ the world was a melting pot of various cultures.  This is what is happening to the world today.   There were many streams of thought at the time of Christ and our time is very similar.  They had powers and authorities and today we have powers and authorities.  When Jesus said these things, it was before the Second Temple was destroyed.  Jewish Christians also worshipped in the Temple as Judaism and Christianity at that moment in history did not go their separate ways.  With the destruction of the Temple this changed.  Christians were being persecuted by the powers of the age.  The destruction of the Temple was from my point of view a cataclysm that would change the world forever.   For Christians today the Temple of God is the Church.  We do not need a building to worship in.  The sacrifice of Christ on the cross and His resurrection was enough to bring us into the presence of God through the Son and the Holy Spirit. We are blessed.  Judaism has also survived the destruction of the Second Temple and flourished, and the synagogue has played a massive role in this.

The word duty is not found a lot in the Bible.  In the Bible it is found in about eight books in the Old testament and once in the New Testament (NASB, exhaustive concordance).  Herman Bavinck said the same type of thing on page 7 of his Ethics volume 2.  He actually said that duty in the Dutch Bible is really only found in the Dutch Psalter. However, he explains something very important to us:

“Duty presupposes Law.”

This then leads Herman Bavinck to raise the more important question:

“What is the relation of the believer to the law?” (Around page 7 of his ethics).

However for this piece of writing I can ask the question:

“What is the relation of our Lord Jesus to the Law?”

Then this would lead into Bavincks question.

So then as we can have seen in Matthew, Jesus said in Matthew that he did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfil it.  As Bavinck says, when it came to the Judaic law Jesus was very conservative. 

“Jesus says no word, nor performs any deed to abolish the law.”

Bavinck then goes on to say,

“Jesus demands a righteousness that ‘surpasses’ the Pharisees.” 

As we have seen from the Beatitudes that Jesus ‘gives an internal spiritual explanation of the law.’ (Around page 7 of his ethics).  Righteousness (δικαιουσυνη) is an attitude of the Kingdom of God. 

“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”(Matthew 6:33; Olive Tree, NASB Bible)  Bavinck reminds us of how Jesus describes  this ‘righteousness’ through the use of metaphor:

Being clothed with wedding garments

 “But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, 12 and he *said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.” Matthew 22:11-14

Jesus family are his disciples

“For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother.” Matthew 12:50

God’s will is revealed in the Law and the Prophets

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Matthew 7:21

And again

“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. Matthew 7:24

Jesus starting point is the Law

“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. Matthew 5:17

Again,

“In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

Again,

 “On these two commandments depend on the whole Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:40

Summing up Bavinck on Duty

We need to take Jesus’ words very seriously on righteousness and there is a direct correspondence between ‘righteousness’ and our understanding of duty.  Duty carries in itself the idea ‘that we must do the right act’. When we dive deeper into the text there are other verbs that point to this ethical necessity:

 Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. Hebrews 2:17

The phrase above ‘He had to’ οφειλω.

Or again in Vines Dictionary

“Behoved dei (1163), “it is necessary,” is rendered “behoved,” in Luke 24:46; RV, (that the Christ) “should” (suffer). Dei expresses a logical necessity, opheilo, a moral obligation; cf. chre, Jas. 3:10, “ought,” which expresses a need resulting from the fitness of things (Trench, Sec. cvii). Luke 24:46”

Reflection

Jesus’s teachings of the kingdom of God necessitate Holiness and the truth is that no person on this earth in their own strength and will can make themselves perfectly holy.  Jesus dis not lower the bar on the law.  In fact, Jesus did the opposite.  It is only when we realize that we cannot be Holy in our strength that we realize that we ought to humble ourselves before a Holy God. This is the starting point, by faith through the work of the Trinity that we can even have a sniff of the Kingdom of God.  Jesus’ teachings engenders humility something that deals with pride in people. Dare I say it! The pride that is found even within our own being. So then let us come to Christ in humility confessing Jesus as Lord, believing that God raised Jesus from the dead and through his atoning work as The True High Priest, and once and for all sacrifice, that we may walk into the heaven-lies as beloved children of God.