Sermon On The Mount

Christ and the Law

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 07- 25

Genre:

Track: 07

Dictation Name: Sermon on the Mount - 07

Location/Venue:

Year: 1980

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, again we come into Thy presence knowing that as we face a dark and evil world Thou art our hope and our salvation and with Thee is the victory. We pray oh Lord that Thou wouldst confound the workers of iniquity, that Thou wouldst crush the humanists, that Thou wouldst establish again this nation as a covenant people. Oh Lord our God send out Thy word and by Thy spirit bring great numbers into Thy kingdom and make us again a people whose delight is in Thy word. Bless us now as we study Thy word and grant that Thy spirit may speak to us the word that we need so that we may flourish and abound in Thy service, praise and glory. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

We have been going through the Sermon on the Mount. This morning we shall go through a number of verses because they have a considerable unity and need to be, really, either taken almost singly or as a unit. Matthew 5:21-48. As you will remember we dealt with the beatitudes and saw that they were addressed to the poor in spirit, they that feel their spiritual need. The poor in spirit are those who are the meek, the blessed meek, which means the tamed of God and God declares that those who are the tamed of Him, that is, broken to harness, useful to Him, shall indeed inherit the earth. Then he goes on to speak of the need of Christians to be, and the fact that if they are truly His people they are, salt and light to the world, and that they also stand in terms of His law. He goes so far as to say whosoever shall set aside this law and teach men so, that being the culminating offense, they are certainly to be regarded as alien to His purpose. Now to continue with verse twenty one.

“Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:

22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;

24 Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

25 Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.

26 Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:

32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:

34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.

37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

Now to understand what our Lord here says we need to look at two things. First, His declaration in verse seventeen:

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”

And the word fulfill has the meaning of put into force, this is the meaning in the Greek. Now, then when our Lord deals with the law in the passage we just read what He says is ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, again and again He uses that expression. Now that is a curious one, why does our Lord follow that usage, He is quoting in most cases the law. Why then does He suddenly put it at a distance from them? Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, why not ye know that it was said of them of old time? Or ye know that it was said by Moses? Well, it was a peculiar usage. It attracted notice. And our Lord in a sense was putting a distance between the giving of the law and His day. Let’s drop that for a moment and look at something else so we can understand what He was doing. People always, conservatives in particular, talk about the constitution. But the mistake most of them make is that when they are talking about the constitution they are not talking about the constitution. They are talking about something that was said of old, by the men at the constitutional convention. But the constitution as it exists today is a radically different document. Because any legal document that is amendable is always to be interpreted in the terms of the most amendment and the most judicial interpretation. Now that has been the nature of law through the centuries. In other words, it is a recognition to a degree that the law is not infallible, it has to change, it has to grow.

So that it is not the original wording that is the binding force nor the original intention but what it has come to mean in terms of court interpretation. In other words, if ERA is passed, the whole of the Constitution will be reread in terms of ERA. This is the only way that law works in a fallible world. So that in no sense when we talk about anything connected with the constitution are we talking about the original framers had in mind. Well now the same thing was true of God’s law, illegitimately so, because God’s law was a perfect and infallible declaration. It could not therefore change and alter as human laws could but men so changed it and interpreted it. So that the law had come to mean something radically different. I think the classic example of that is that the tenth commandment, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, was actually finally interpreted to mean and the seventh commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery, so that the seventh meant exactly and strictly what the tenth said, neighbor and neighbor meant someone who lived next door. So if you slept with a woman or a man who was three miles away they were not your neighbor therefore it was not adultery and there was nothing wrong with it. Now that is the kind of legal precedent and decision and refinement of meaning that prevails today with the constitution. So that our Lord is dealing with that which was said back there, ye have heard that it hath been said, you all know that it has been said, now let’s look at it. Something as it was long ago, not as it is read today, not as it is taught today, because the rabbinic saying was the word is like water, the interpretation is like wine. In other words the interpretation is superior, it is the true meaning. Now as they dealt with the law of God what they did was either if it was something that was foreign to their fallen nature and disposition as thou shalt not commit adultery they restricted the meaning.

So that it didn’t apply to the woman next door but it could apply to a woman at the other end of town or down the road a ways. Then again where they found the law that was a relatively easy matter they made it difficult. They added rules and regulations in order to say look Lord, you are demanding something so difficult and unreasonable of us but we are so strict about the adherence, the Sabbath law. It commanded rest on the Sabbath except for works of necessity and yet what did they do? Why they were so super strict on the Sabbath that it was a great debate as to whether you could eat an egg that had been laid on the Sabbath. But what if the egg were laid the day after the Sabbath and the hen had obviously been laboring over it to produce it on the Sabbath, well you could not, many held, eat that egg. Well could you eat any egg, how long did it take an egg? That was an argument that never ended. But a lot of people became super holy by their strictness on details like that, how many feet could you go on the Sabbath, walking? Only so many and no more. You could not light a light so you hired a gentile to come in and light it, an unbeliever, and the orthodox still do that, they pay someone in the neighborhood to come in and turn on the lights from sun down Sabbath to Monday morning they will not turn the lights on and off. And so on and on, of course since drinking was not work there was no rule or regulation against getting drunk on the Sabbath. Now with all the rules and regulations they added to very simple laws they made the law a burden. That is why our Lord said my yoke, the yoke refers to the law, my burden is easy and my yoke is light. But the yoke of the law as the Pharisees interpreted it was heavy and oppressive. Any relationship by the way that is a legal one, a binding one upon one another is called a yoke, in terms of scripture, that’s why someone with whom you are a co-laborer is a yoke fellow.

And marriage is also a yoke because you are together under a common law and a common vow, a covenant. So we see that what has happened to the law as our Lord began to minister to Israel was that the law on the one hand had been altered so that adultery could be forbidden and yet practiced and practiced legitimately and the Sabbath which was to be a time of rest was made such a difficult thing in terms of work that you had to be very careful that you didn’t walk more than so many feet and do so many things. Dorothy has a recent book in which there is an amusing episode about Sabbath observance among wealthy orthodox Jews in England. It describes life at this luxury resort hotel and on the Sabbath their great pleasure was bridge, but how are you going to play bridge and keep score because picking up a pencil and writing is work, playing bridge is not. So each of them sat with a large book in his lap or next to him and instead of keeping score with a pencil they turned to the page which represented their score and kept score that way and in that way they were very good pious orthodox Jews, they had not broken the Sabbath law. Now, our Lord is speaking to people with this kind of perversion of the law. Who wanted to take it outwardly, who want to say look Lord, see how strict I am, I am not as these poor publicans, I keep every jot and tittle that our rabbis have laid down and have refined so that I am super holy. In this way they made the law a matter of works while breaking it as far as its real meaning was concerned. And so our Lord takes up several to show that the law must be kept from the heart, that is a total thing, it is in word, thought and deed. Thou shalt not kill means Thou shalt not be angry with a brother without a cause and a brother here means a fellow believer.

And anyone who is is in danger of the judgment, and whosoever shall say to their brother rakki, you are an empty head, shall be in danger of the council, the council of elders, but who shall ever say thou fool shall be in danger of hell fire. We are therefore to be brothers one to another as Christians. So that if we bring a gift to the Lord, we, if we have any problem without cause with a brother we are to go away first and be reconciled to our Christian brother and then come and offer our gift. When we are in a dispute with anyone where we have any fault we are to agree with our adversary quickly and make peace with him and make restitution lest we be delivered to the judge and the judge deliver us to the officer and we be cast into prison. God will not protect us when we are in violation of His word. Then He takes up the commandment Thou shalt not commit adultery and our Lord as He took this up knew full well the kind of thing that I just described to you because it was in the process of being formulated even then, although since it has become much more refined in Talmudic thought. But He says not only are we not to commit adultery physically but we are not to commit adultery in terms of our imagination and our planning, in our hearts and in our mind. Moreover He says if a right eye offends us we are to pluck it out. By this He does not refer literally to amputating ourselves or maiming ourselves by blinding ourselves but that whatever aspect of our life is a problem to us that aspect of our life we are to separate ourselves from even though it is so basic to our livelihood and our functioning that it’s like an eye and a right hand. Then he goes on to speak with regard to the writing of divorcement.

The rabbinic thought of that day would certainly have made a modern woman’s lib feel that this was the ultimate in male chauvinism and in a sense it was, because rabbinic thought had gone so far as to say if you see a more attractive woman that is grounds for divorce. If your wife over salts the food, or under salts it, or if she puts the food down before you, let us say a broth or a soup, and it is too hot and you burn your tongue and she didn’t warn you that constitutes grounds for divorce. Now this does not mean that divorces were routine for every kind of trifling reason such as that, what it means is that they made this kind of thing law as to give the man such total power that the woman would be afraid to push him on anything because he had any kind of ground imaginable to get rid of her. And so it was that indeed Israel had these laws while not usually put into practice their purpose was to intimidate women, that was their function. Now, our Lord says:

“32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.”

I shall not go into a long exposition of what fornication, pornia, means here, I’ve devoted more than a chapter to it in the Institutes of Biblical Law, fornication does not mean adultery, it is a broader term, and it can cover a number of things including uncleanness, rebellion, unbelief and the like. Then our Lord goes on to deal with speech and He says that we are not to take the name of the Lord our God in vain. It had become common place as people became less and less Godly to become more and more extravagant in their speech and to swear by this and that and the other thing that what they said was true. This is something we should be familiar with, there was a time when very little business was done by written contract.

Virtually everything was done with a handshake or by word of mouth because most people were trustworthy since most people were Christian, either by profession of faith or by very strict schooling. Now we’re finding that a written contract has little meaning and it is really worthless. We heard recently from someone in southern California who was visiting us of a prominent church in Orange County where one member in a business deal with four other members cheated those four each out of twenty thousand dollars. When they figured the cost of going to court and the difficulty of settlement and the loss they would suffer they had to write it off exactly as the prominent church member who rigged the deal knew they would. So that the written word or contract is worthless today. But our Lord here summons men to truthfulness in speech.

“But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”

We are to speak the truth in simplicity and no more. Then He goes on to the biblical statement, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and into the fact that of non-resistance to evil. Now what does our Lord have reference to? Some of you have heard me speak on this aspect in passing before in answer to questions because this is an area where many people have questions. Is our Lord a pacifist here? Then why is there no hint of pacifism elsewhere in the New Testament and certainly not in the Old Testament. The answer is of course is that He is speaking to a particular situation. He is speaking to a people who are hard of heart and are determined upon a course of action that is going to lead to the most fearful single event in all of history, the fall of Jerusalem.

In which perhaps two million people died, a disaster without equal. And they were doing this, building up to a rebellion and using the word of God to justify it. They never stopped to think that God again and again as in Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28 and elsewhere says that when captivity and bondage come to a people it is for their sins and that the remedy is not in rebellion and revolution and in armed resistances which are futile but in a return to the Lord in faith, in godly character. But Israel was determined that they were going to render to the Romans an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. They were not going to allow them to get away with anything, even though the Roman legions covered the country and they were in the hands of a foreign conqueror. And our Lord tells them resist not evil, this is not the way to destroy Rome but the way to destroy Jerusalem and Judea. Your course of action will be one of utter destruction,

“39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.”

It’s a word that was common not only to Rome and to Greece and to Israel but also to the ancient Persian Empire. It was a word that was used a number of languages. They are in a position of bondage, they are under an alien law, they have an inferior position in terms of that law because they are not citizens they are subjects and so our Lord says if you are drafted go because if you will not go you will be compelled to go even more and if they want to exprociate something, give it to them and be cooperative. And do not go to a court in a Roman court expecting God’s law to be enforced in a Roman court.

Very soon we going to have the same situation here I fear if it continues at present. One third of all the federal judges have been named by Carter and one of the men for whom there was a little bit of discussion is a man wildly suspected of being a mafia front and is known to be anti-Christian and a homosexual. He is going to be in a particularly powerful post. What kind of justice can you get in such courts? And the day may soon come when the courts will be the last place to go which is what our Lord is talking about. Well what do you do in the face of this? There were the Romans and there were the Jews, the Israelites.

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?”

To love our enemy means to keep the law in relationship to them as I’ve said so many times. Thou shalt not kill, commit adultery, bear false witness, steal, or covet or defraud your enemy. You will treat him as you would be yourself treated. Now very practically what does this mean? It means and I think I’ve seen a very clear illustration of this in some of these court cases. One of the things that has become very apparent as these trials have become more bitter and intense is the marked discourtesy of state and federal officers and attorneys. It used to be customary before a trial for lawyers to introduce themselves to the judge and for the lawyers to introduce themselves to one another and to shake hands.

This rarely happens now. The state and federal attorneys come in almost with a snarl, they are deliberately discourteous to those who represent the Christian church or school. It is very clearly a situation where they have the power, they are bitterly resentful that anyone stands up to them and they are determined to be as ugly as possible, and they are! Very ugly. And in the face of this it is very impressive and moving to see, for example, attorney William [unknown] walk into the courtroom, continue with the historic amenities, greet them, speak graciously to them and ignore all their discourtesies. He is doing unto them as he would do unto him. It means therefore in ways great as well as small we manifest the grace of God. For if ye love them that love you what reward have you? We become children of our Father which is in heaven by manifesting to those who are our enemies and who are working to our destruction the grace which God requires us to show to all others. If you salute your brother only, if you greet them only, what do you more than others? Do not even the publicans do the same? And so in the court room the federal and the state officers talk only to each other and look as though the Christian attorneys have leprosy. What do you do in a situation like that? You do then greet them and ignore their unkindness. And if they at the last minute make a cancellation or a change in the court calendar and tell you only when you walk in on Monday morning to kill time for you, when you affect a change you very graciously let them know. This is what our Lord is talking about, this is how we are called to act in things great and small. What is our Lord saying? Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

Perfect means not what we come to make it mean in English but mature, fully grown. We are to be mature and fully grown, not to indulge in childish demonstrations of our hostilities. Childish pranks in a courtroom or in our neighborhood, just to let them know we can do the same thing they do. Are we no better than they are? To be perfect therefore is to be mature, to be fully grown, fully grown in the grace of God, fully grown in the knowledge of His word, fully grown in the application thereof to every area of life. We are going to need this kind of maturity in the days ahead. Friday night I mentioned the situation in California, how [unknown] was defeated largely because apparently it’s a protest against the homosexual community. James Robinson, one of the most forthright pastors and evangelists in this country has been barred from the air because in one of his sermon he spoke out against homosexuality and the federal commission has said that cannot go out on television and so his program is Sunday morning worship is barred now from television. Well we are being despitefully used and we need to deal with it as long as the courts are open to [unknown] but also remembering that ultimately there is only as Christians are again Christians, not only having the form of godliness but the power thereof that we will change these things. And what our Lord tells us in the Sermon on the Mount is that we must be broken to the Lord’s harness. When we are the blessed meek then indeed we shall inherit the earth. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we thank Thee that Thou hast called us broken us to harness, and given us tasks to do. Make us zealous, strong and able in Thy service. Keep us oh Lord from being despairing or fainthearted and make us ever mindful that greater is He that is in us and with us then he that is in the world. Bless the persecuted churches and schools and give them the victory. Confound the workers of iniquity, especially the homosexuals who are working now to subvert and to destroy Thy church and Thy schools. Grant us this we beseech Thee, in Jesus’ name, Amen.