REVIEW
FLIP CHART: SOM’S KEY VERSE, GOAL, MOTTO
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness ….” (Mt. 6:33a).
The law sends us to Christ for justification; Christ sends us back to the law for sanctification.
FLIP CHART: Show new “Perfect Righteousness” chart explaining steps to coming to Christ (As a worm, mourning, meek, spiritual hunger/thirst with the result of legal righteousness). Explain moral righteousness, immediate moral change at conversion, gradual change through life’s challenges and speeding up moral change via CCRC (Concentration, Choice, Reflection and Confession/Thanksgiving). Repeat the verse, “By one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” (Heb. 10:14) HAVE SOMEONE COME FORWARD AND EXPLAIN THE CHART.)
FLIP CHART: Go over John Stott’s outline of SOM. Show that 5:17-20 was an introduction to a Christian’s righteousness.
INTRODUCTION:
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
“Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny (Mt. 5:21-26).
FLIP CHART: “What are various ‘acts of worship’ we as Christians can perform on a daily, weekly basis? (As they list the various acts of worship, have someone write them on the flip chart.)
Singing praise to God, prayer, attending church, giving, helping a friend, witnessing, listening to God’s Word preached, comforting, counseling, encouraging etc.
OUTLINE FOR TODAY:
1. The Role of “Remembering” in Worship
2. Relational Conflict and Worship
3. Why Right Relationships Improve Worship
4. God’s Willingness to Wait While We Reconcile
Since the “axial age” mankind has been asking the question, “How should we live?” The quality desired by the founders of the great religions, the Greek philosophers and the Hebrew prophets was “righteousness” (dikaiosune / dik-ah-yos-oo’-nay) which could be defined as “true inner goodness” or “moral excellence.” In the six anti-thesis of Matthew 5:21-48 Jesus describes true inner goodness and moral excellence.
IMPROVING OUR WORSHIP
REVIEW – THE SIX ANTI-THESES & FORM/CONTENT
These six illustrations are sometimes referred to as six anti-theses because they are contrasts of two ideas that are in opposition to each other. Statement / Anti-statement; Concept / Anti-concept
(1) Prohibition against murder – Warning against anger.
(2) Prohibition against adultery – Warning against lustful thoughts.
(3) Regularization of divorce – Permanence of the marriage
(4) Avoid lying thru oaths – Avoid lying thru integrity
(5) Retaliation / revenge — Reconciliation thru creative suffering.
(6) Hatred of one’s enemy – Loving ones enemy
“As long as you and I accept the letter (form), and forget the whole spirit, content and meaning [of the law] we may persuade ourselves that we are perfectly righteous face to face with the law.” (MLJ 223)
The axial verse in SOM is 5:20 – “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The Sermon on the Mount is not primarily about providing us with a new set of rules, a new code of conduct. It is Jesus’ effort to force us to deal with the spirit of the law instead of the letter of the law. He wants us to deal with our hearts. He is describing a righteousness that surpasses that of the Pharisees.
I. THE ROLE OF “REMEMBERING” AND WORSHIP
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
Some of the things are on list “A” of our memory bank. We don’t have to use the “refresh” key to see them. They pop up every time we have a moment to reflect.
ILL: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. He murders a friend. Everything he does, every book he reads etc. reminds him of the murder.
This “remembering” is due to conscience and we need to be thankful for it.
But we can submerge and block out our memory. So God encourages us to reflect, to remember and even to ask His help in remembering.
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life (Psalm 139:23-24, New Living Bible).
That is why you should examine yourself before eating the bread and drinking from the cup ….. If we examine ourselves, we will not be examined by God and judged … (I Cor. 11:28, 31).
ILL: Some churches give partakers in communion a short time to reflect and search their hearts to see if there is any sin that needs to be dealt with before communion. They did this at PBI.
It is unfortunate that often it is only distress that forces us to remember (e.g. the son’s of Jacob remembered what they did to Joseph when they were arrested in Egypt). It is a good thing to always reflect and seek to remember what we may have done to offend God before we worship.
II. RELATIONAL CONFLICT AND WORSHIP
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
In Biblical interpretation scholars always say “What is the ‘therefore’ there for?” The “therefore” is obviously tied to the two preceding verses.
QUESTION: What is the “therefore” there for?
Those verses talked about anger towards another person, calling a person an empty headed dimwit, a mental and moral idiot. That is treating another person with disdain, contempt and doing so in anger. In other words a heated conflict filled with demeaning name-calling. … here Jesus is talking about an individual who has something against you, perhaps because you talked to him in a demeaning way.
“We are called to sensitivity in our relationships with others. This does not mean having morbid sensitivity to imagined offenses, but rather dealing with real offenses that the Holy Spirit brings to mind” (Hughes, 104).
The offense felt by the other person might be real or it might be a perception on his part with no ill intent on your part. Whether fancied or real, we need to deal with in.
This need to reconcile with a person we have offended takes us back to the 7th Beatitude in Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God.”
Even if the other individual is the problem, even if he doesn’t want to reconcile we are responsible to seek to reconcile with him. Paul wrote in Rom. 12:18, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”
“Not only are we not to harbor murder and evil thoughts in our heart against another; but the commandment not to kill really means we should take positive steps to put ourselves right with our brother” (MLJ, 227)
Our text tells us that we are responsible to pursue reconciliation; we are not responsible to make reconciliation happen.
QUESTION: What can we do to improve the worship service here at Bethany?
III. WHY RIGHT RELATIONSHIPS IMPROVE WORSHIP
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
Although we live in a God-bathed world, in worship in a special way we come into God’s presence. Who is allowed into His presence? The Psalmist answers that question.
LORD, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and has no slander on his tongue, who does his neighbor no wrong and casts no slur on his fellowman, who despises a vile man but honors those who fear the LORD, who keeps his oath even when it hurts, who lends his money without usury and does not accept a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken (Psalm 15:1-5).
ILL: John Piper, quoting this verse while seeking to raise $1.1 million from his congregation through a “Freeing the Future” fund raising drive, said to his congregation on a Sunday morning before the big offering: “If you have anger and contempt for another person in your heart and have not reconciled with them you just can’t happily come to worship next Sunday with your “Freeing the Future” pledge. It just will not be acceptable to God if some contempt and anger is in your heart.
Worship is only a pretense if we have sin in our hearts, especially the sin of contempt for another person.
To seek to worship God while we harboring disdain and contempt for another person or group of people is meaningless. Worship devoid of moral life is useless.
Worship from a wicked heart is what the prophet Isaiah dealt with:
“Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah! “The multitude of your sacrifices— what are they to me?” says the LORD.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. …….. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. ……..” (Isaiah 1:10-15).
If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened (Ps. 66:18).
ILL: Saul was told by God to destroy all of the livestock of the Amalekites but instead he saved some of the sheep and cattle. When challenged by the prophet Samuel, Saul said that they were spared in order to be given as a sacrifice to God. Samuel rebuked Saul and then made the great statement: To obey is better than sacrifice and to heed is better than the fat of rams (I Sam. 15:22b).
The Apostle Peter’s advice to husbands is built on the principle that God will not listen if we are harboring sin in our hearts: Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect …so that nothing will hinder your prayers (I Pet. 3:7).
“In the sight of God there is no value whatsoever in an act of worship if we harbor a known sin” (MLJ, 228).
Angry contempt for God’s creation does not only break your relationship with another person; it also breaks your relationship with God. If you try to pray after showing such contempt, your prayer is detestable to God.
IV. GOD’S WILLINGNESS TO WAIT FOR OUR WORSHIP
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
Since most of the Jewish people lived at a great distance from the temple they were allowed to bring their sacrifices during the major feast days, e.g. the feast of Tabernacles, Pentecost, Passover etc.
In many or most of these cases the “offended brother” would be somewhere in the vicinity of Jerusalem since he was also attending the feast, but if not, the offering could wait.
Martin Lloyd-Jones writes, “If we are harboring any sin in our hearts, [especially in relationships] (may I put it thus, with reverence) we should, in a sense, even keep God waiting rather than stay and try to perform an act of worship.” (MLJ, 228)
ILL: If we are in conflict with our wife or husband we should pull over the side of the road or into a parking lot and reconcile before we proceed to church. If you come in late and I ask you where you were and you say, “We were parking in a parking lot” I will understand.
Re this admonition one pastor writes: Are we to take these words literally? Right in the middle of the worship service, right now, should you get up and leave? Perhaps! At the very least, I would say, at earliest possible opportunity, the burden is on you to seek out reconciliation and restoration of relationships, recognizing that your fellowship with God is deeply impaired as long as you do not esteem that which is valuable to him, that which flows out of his heart. (Danny Hall -http://www.pbc.org/library/files/html/14704_4905.html)
ILL: In the church I attended as a student we were advised not to participate at the Lord’s Table if we were aware of sin that we have not dealt with.
APPLICATION: It is amazing how we complain about the worship service, the music etc and are concerned about improving it and fail to realize that the most important way to improve the worship service is to confess and deal with angry contempt and make every effort first to reconcile with an offended brother.
APPLICATION / FLIP CHART: Point to each of the acts of worship we wrote on the flip chart earlier in the class and note that God wants us to postpone participating / performing that act of worship until we have dealt with our sin.
APPLICATION: The most important thing we can do to improve the morning worship service is to examine our hearts and make sure we bring no unresolved conflicts into the service.
TESTIMONY – GARY MERRIL
Introduction: Gary’s is the first Adult Community I attended at Bethany. After being in his class for a couple of months he invited me to lunch, got me to meet with Pastor Marquard and Jim Whitlach and got me involved in teaching. I think it may be because he wanted to get me out of his class.
Several years ago Gary gave a testimony before the church about his effort at reconciliation. I don’t remember much about the testimony now but it spoke to me at the time. I have asked him to share his testimony with us today.
SO WHAT?
1. If we are going to surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, we will need to take time to reflect upon our moral lives and ask God to search our hearts.
2. If we are in a conflict with or have a feeling of angry contempt for another person that we have not tried to resolve, any and every act of worship on our behalf is detestable to God.
3. God is so concerned that we approach him with a pure heart that he prefers to wait for our worship while we resolve a conflict.
4. We must not be among those who walk into church week after week never searching their heart and dealing with their sin before worship.