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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The last couple of Sundays, the sermons have been based upon the Sermon on the Mount from our Lord Jesus. It is the longest recorded dialogue of our Lord. It is in the 5th, the 6th, and the 7th chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew. In it, Jesus gathers around himself hundreds, possibly thousands of people who heard the message as individuals. But the bigger picture of what Jesus was proclaiming in this Sermon on the Mount was to a community, to knit that community into one voice, to knit that community into one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father of us all.
Just like you growing up in your family. When you grew up, your parents had a family standard that the whole family abided by. Because you and I know if sister or brother didn’t, we were the first to report to our parents what sister and brother were doing and how he was at variance with the family standard. Now that’s typical. The family of God that gathers here around this altar has been given a standard by God as well in this morning’s text. And primarily we look at the fifth and the sixth commandment about murder and about adultery, which is really more broadly interpreted by our Lord than maybe how you and I think.
You see, the whole reason our Lord came at these two commandments is because we typically tend to narrowly interpret them. If I haven’t ended anybody else’s physical life, then I am not a murderer. If I have maintained my marriage vows, though I may not be treating my spouse the way I ought in a godly manner, I am not guilty of adultery. Notice in the text, Jesus presents every one of these with a beginning that says, “You have heard it said.” And then in the text, Jesus adds this, “But I say to you.” The reason he is interpreting it for us is because man being man, sinful, we want to narrowly interpret God’s law so that we can come away from its impact in our life, saying, “I’m a pretty good person. I haven’t killed anybody and I haven’t committed adultery.”
And Jesus completely crushes us, for he says very clearly, the fifth commandment is not about ending someone’s physical life. It’s also about harboring anger and bitterness and any unloving feeling toward another, thereby making all of us convicted murderers. He also does the same with the gift of sexuality, and that is God’s gift to us as men and women. He does the same thing because he doesn’t narrowly interpret the sixth commandment to only apply to simply whether one is divorced or not, but whether one is expressing their sexuality in a godly manner. Thereby, convicting all of us of having committed adultery, either with words, thoughts, or deeds, either before we were married or after we have been married.
Jesus presents this very striking contrast to how typically people in this world view things so that we see our standing in God’s sight. So that we see who we are in this community of believers. That we are not independent. That we cannot choose to do what we want to do. Well, and then I’ll come back and be with the family, but then I’ll go back and do what I want to do and have no interaction or repercussions with the family. If you had a sibling that did that, how did your parents handle it? Not very well, I bet, and you felt like someone was bending and breaking the family acceptable standards.
We as the church have made it very clear that life does begin at conception. And that life ought not to be taken by anyone except those that have been given that authority in this world. And we then ought to bring the repair for one who comes having repented of such sins, including you and me. And that’s reconciliation, forgiveness. It is the same with the sixth commandment. For there are many people who bear the ring on their hand and yet are committing adultery by what they view or look at or talk about. Or commit adultery by not treating and loving and honoring their spouse as they ought. Though they still bear the ring of being married and have not divorced, it is one and the same in Jesus’ mind.
The standard of the family is that we withhold and continue to uphold that standard. But let us also remember what we are as family members. Yes, we uphold and maintain such integrity within the family, but in addition to that, we also willingly and lovingly give forgiveness and reconciliation. The Apostle Paul had a congregation in a city of Corinth that had, interestingly enough, a sexual sin that was dividing the congregation. You can read it and find out some details. But in his second letter to the church at Corinth, he’s encouraging the church, not the pastor only, the entire body of Christ gathered around this communion to be reconciled one to the other.
Hear the word of the Lord. For the love of God controls us. Because we’ve concluded this, that one has died for all, and therefore all have died. And he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on then, we regard no one according to the flesh. We once regarded Christ according to the flesh, but we no longer regard him according. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
That’s a tall order that He’s given you and me. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us, entrusting to us, the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God.
Interesting, isn’t it? For typically, we tend to think wrong and right, and that’s very good and right and proper. Jesus is also getting at in this text the cause of sin. Because if the church winks at sins that Christ never intended for her to wink at, then we have cast aside the standard of God’s great command, loving our neighbor as ourselves. And then on the flip side, if we withhold that forgiveness to one who is repentant, then we too break the command of not loving our neighbor as ourselves.
It’s interesting. Right now in our school, the 7th and 8th grade class where I teach religion, we have 40 kids. 40 kids. Sometimes in one classroom and it gets a little dicey at times. But we go to this text that we’re looking at today to talk about the 5th and 6th commandment because in their minds, killing is ending a life. Adultery is fooling around on somebody. That’s how narrow their minds interpret it, and rightly so. But the broader interpretation that Jesus brings is that we all are murderers. We all are adulterers. For the sake of the need for us to confess and repent, and the need for us to receive the forgiveness.
Now, it’s kind of interesting. When you and I look at our concept of forgiveness, we’ve got to trace it back to our own parents, because in their life as husband and wife, as mother and father to us, we saw exemplified a concept of repentance or confession and a concept of forgiveness and absolution. Many things that our parents brought to us were godly and good, but many habits that you have inherited that we have brought into our own marriage, into our own children, brothers and sisters, we have a need to cast it overboard. It’s ungodly. And it is also a part of us as we relate to one another in this family of whom we are a part.
To withhold mercy and forgiveness is saying, I do not want to be a part of you as my family. You are not my brother. You are not my sister. I am breaking that fellowship with you. We are no longer reconciled. In fact, we are irreconciled. James preached to his own church in Jerusalem. James was the bishop of Jerusalem. He wrote something similar to his own church when he said, “For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. But the wisdom from above is first pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.”
Amen. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Yes, we uphold the sanctity of life. We uphold the sanctity of marriage between male and female. We uphold that men ought to be honored and women ought to be honored in a godly manner and our sexuality expressed in a godly manner. But we also uphold and maintain, as we began the service, He who says he was without sin… It says, We share that in a very concrete manner at the communion rail, where we are confessing, I am in agreement with you, you and me, we are one. And we are most importantly of all reconciled one to the other.
There is nothing that keeps us apart. Brothers and sisters, be reconciled to God, for in Christ Jesus he has reconciled all of us to himself. In the name of the one who brought reconciliation, Jesus. Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
