Principles Review of Matthew 5

By Brother R. Michel Lankford

 
Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you. (Philippians 3:1 NASB)

 
As we continue studying Christ's commands in the New Testament, I thought we would do well to review the key points of Matthew chapter 5, and tie them together with the principles of the chapter we will be studying now. In this case this is particularly important, because we must remember that Christ preached Matthew chapters 5-7 as one sermon. In His mind it all fit together as one discourse. So while it is important to deal with God's word in its component parts and ideas, we also do not want to lose some of the key principles of the whole picture. It's critical that we notice something very important here.
After Messiah demonstrates what Heavenly Kingdom thinking looks like (Matthew 5:1-12), He then proceeds to describe the value that God places on every human being, and most particularly those who have a thriving relationship with God. He also reminds us that since we have such high value in God's sight, we also have great responsibility before God (Matthew 5:13-16). He continues by confirming the Law given to Moses and the prophets, and proclaiming that He came to fulfill all of them, and that if our goal is to be faithful ministers, then we too should always confirm and support those Laws and principles as well (Matthew 5:17-20).
Messiah then begins that mission to fulfill God’s Law and the prophets by first restoring Almighty God’s true definitions of sin and righteousness, back from where it had fallen in the people's mindset and tradition (Matthew 5:21-48). In the process, Messiah reaffirms some very important key principles that we do not want to forget:
Principle 1: Everything in our lives hinges on our having the right heart and mind set first
Principle 2: God values right and healthy relationships above all else.
Principle 3: All sin and breaking relationships has its roots in our heart.
Did you catch the idea that Messiah spoke about our getting the right mindset, the right heart attitudes, and restoring and maintaining right relationships with God and others, before He talked about performing a single religious duty? Jesus spoke for 48 verses (Matthew 5) about having a right heart and right relationships before He repeatedly this before He discussed performing a single religious duty in Matthew Chapter 6. Do you think this is significant?

 

Principle 1: Everything hinges on having the right heart in the right mindset.

Always maintain God's True priorities standards and definitions central in your thinking and in your approach to life.
Throughout Matthew chapter 5, the Messiah was repeatedly saying "You have heard it said..., but I tell you...." Why did Jesus do that? He did it because it was necessary. Everything Jesus said was clearly stated in the first five books of Moses, but over the centuries the religious leaders and the people had twisted the Scriptures around so badly with tradition, that they were making themselves believe that God said things He did not say. In the process, they were ignoring what God had actually said (Mark 7:13).
Over the centuries the religious leaders and the people had gradually but steadily redefined God's words, standards and principles to accommodate their own sinful natures. Their incorrect definitions of God’s Words and Principles had become so ingrained in their culture that Christ’s audience was beginning to lose sight of God's real standards altogether. In their minds righteousness had begun to seem like sin, and sin had actually begun looking righteous to them. (A reasonable argument could be made that modern Christianity is in the same condition today as Judaism was when Messiah arrived first time). Their new corrupted definitions had become so ingrained, that they were actually violating God's Law and principles, while they were proclaiming, (and sadly believing) themselves to be righteous God followers.
We must be diligent to regularly review and make sure that we are maintaining God's true priorities standards and definitions about everything, so that we do not fall into the same sins.
One of the first places that Jesus tries to restore God's correct definitions in the minds of the community of faith is the idea of what it truly means to be blessed as God defines the term blessed. By the time that Christ had physically arrived on the scene, people began to look almost exclusively on external circumstances to determine if they were really blessed by God. There was definitely the false idea prevalent among God's people:
"If So and So we're really doing right with God, they would not be struggling with ______, now would they?" Such a point of view was definitely not entirely scriptural. For example, the events described in the book of Job happened around the same time as Genesis 11 or 12, so Job's example had been in their writings and oral traditions for a long time. The people should certainly have remembered that you cannot always look at external circumstances and accurately determine someone's spiritual state of being before God. They had also forgotten the anointing of King David where God looks at the internals of the heart and not the external circumstances to determine righteousness (1 Samuel 16:6-8). They had begun to look at their own personal preferences to define righteousness instead of maintaining God's true definitions.
The community of faith had degenerated so badly that by the time of Christ, people began to look at anyone who is going through any spiritual, emotional, mental, physical, financial or circumstantial difficulty with suspicion, and even derision.
In modern times whole Christian movements (such as the false prosperity message teachers) have reverted to teaching the same lie. As a result many people in Christendom are now believing that being blessed of God means that their every need, and most if not every one of their wants will be gratified, and all of this will happen with the minimum of difficulty or discomfort if one is truly blessed by God. This is incredibly false, but it shows that history has repeated itself in the community of faith.
Even in our day, those who are not prospering (as the false prosperity teachers often mis-define the term), are looked upon as 'just a little bit less Christian.' We can clearly see from Matthew 5:1-12 that what God calls being blessed, and what we are often taught to call blessed, are very different indeed.
If we want to live in God's kingdom, we must be transformed to agree with the way that God thinks. Our thoughts and intellect will not be exactly like God, because we are not God, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9), but at the very least we must learn to esteem and value what God values. We must learn to love what God loves, and hate what He hates, because God will not allow rebellion up there. If God says something is good, then it is good. If God says something is wicked, then it is wicked. If I disagree, then I must cooperate and let God change me to agree with Him and obey Him, otherwise I am headed for hell, because God will not change to accommodate me, and He won't allow rebellion up there.

 

Principle 2: God values right and healthy relationships far above all else.

Always remember that God cares about your being in right relationship with Him, and then your being in right relationship with other people in your life, much more than he cares about your church attendance or your offerings of the time talents and treasures that God has supplied for you to give. Yahweh Almighty God does not even accept our offerings to Him if our relationships with Him and other people are not in good order first!
Please look again at what the Messiah has said:

"You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.' (22) But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, 'Raca!' shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, 'You fool!' shall be in danger of hell fire. (23) Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, (24) leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (25) Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge, the judge hand you over to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. (26) Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny. Matthew 5:21-26 (NKJV)

Church attendance, giving and serving with our time, talent, and treasure in ministry are important things, but nothing is as important to God as our being in right relationship with Him and our maintaining right and correct relationships with other people in our lives. God does not even accept our offerings and ministries unless our relationships are in good order first.
When Jesus made the statement in the above passage, He doesn't say anything new. Messiah was simply reestablishing a standard that had been in place since Genesis 4:1-8. Why had God rejected Cain's offering?
• Cain did not put pleasing God as his first priority - he brought an offering after a span of time. Notice that Scripture does not say that Cain brought the first fruits or the best fruits of his crops.
• He did not bring a sin offering of blood along with his offering of the fruit of his crops. This meant that he had not acknowledged his own sinfulness before God and his need for covering. Moreover, in order to obtain a proper blood offering, Cain most likely would have had to acknowledge his need to his brother Abel who was a keeper of herds. Cain was not willing to do this. Therefore we know that Cain’s relationship with God was not right, so God rejected his offering.
• God attempted to coach Cain (Genesis 4:4-7), but Cain rejected God's coaching, instead choosing to harbor hatred and jealousy against his brother Abel. He eventually murdered Abel (Genesis 4:8-9), probably assuming that since he was the only brother left God will now have to favor him. So we know that Cain's relationship with his brother Abel was not right, because you do not harbor jealousy and kill a person if you have a right relationship with them.
God does not even accept our offerings and ministries unless our relationships are in good order first. This is a godly principle that is not taught nearly enough in American church pulpits. Why is this not taught? It's because we have gradually trained ourselves to look at church success with an American business mindset rather than the truly biblical spiritual mindset that God requires. Think about it. How is the success of the church most often measured?
These are the questions that you often see being reviewed in American church board meetings: How many people are in regular attendance? How many have we baptized this year? How many people who are attending are actually financially supporting the church regularly? How many people are actually engaged and participating in the various Sunday school and other ministry programs that we offer? How many people are engaged in furthering our ministries with their volunteer efforts? We have actually developed a factory mindset in church that says that if people are engaged in and they are working to further our programs, then this must mean they are succeeding as Christians.
However, the vast majority of studies are showing that we are not truly succeeding as Christians. In fact studies are showing that only about 40% or less of people who are claiming to be born again and are regularly attending evangelical churches actually believes and make their decisions according to the Scriptures. Oftentimes more than half are not even believing the fundamental doctrines of Scripture, let alone obeying God's word. It's a clear indication that we are not as spiritually healthy as we think we are.

 

The Types of Questions We SHOULD be Asking to Measure Church Success

We are clearly not measuring success the way that God does. Part of the reason is we're not asking the questions we should be asking.
• How many people in our congregation are reading the Scriptures regularly?
• How many are actually practicing the commands and principles written in God's word?
• How many are successfully overcoming their sinful natures by applying God's word and seeing genuine victory in their lives and their relationships with other people?
• How many marriages in our congregations are being restored into good order?
Those are the types of questions we should be asking and the standards by which we should be measuring our success in American congregations.
For one example, right now in American congregations, 66% of married couples calling themselves Christians will willfully gradually choose to harden their hearts (Matthew 19:1-8), they will choose to willfully violate their vows, they will choose to violently break their marriages which is an act that God specifically says He hates (Malachi 2:16), and they will do it all while claiming to be Christ followers. So we wonder why our society is such a mess. We need to get it right with God and each other before we expect God to restore our society into good order (2 Chronicles 7:14).
The simple reality is that God has not changed. He required right relationships with God and other people before He would accept people's offerings since Genesis, and Christ reestablished that standard in Matthew 5:21-26. He still has the same standards before accepting our offerings and ministries today. Could this be why our outreaches and ministries are not having the same life-changing and community changing impact that they could be having? I truly believe so.

 

Principle 3: All Sin and breaking relationships has its Roots in our Heart

In Matthew 5:17-20, Messiah declared that part of His mission on earth was to completely fulfill the Law of God, and the prophets. He begins that mission in earnest starting with Matthew 5:21-48. His first task is to re-elevate and to reestablish God's true definitions and standards which had been watered down, even altered and perverted through neglect and human tradition for thousands of years.
All sin, without exception, has a spiritual connection, a heart connection, a mental or belief connection, and a connection at our personal will that has somehow gone astray from God's principles and desires before any sinful behavior ever manifests itself in our lives. If we learn to really submit to God and to attack our sinfulness at this genesis level, then we can kill our sin before it ever mushrooms into the destructive attitudes and behaviors that harm our relationship with God, and or other people. We should focus on learning how to do this as Christians and so fulfill Romans 6:12. So when we become aware of a sin in our lives, it is critical that we deal with that sin at their foundational connections, and not just the external behaviors. We don’t often enough teach Christians in Church how to do this successfully, and we should.
By the time Messiah had arrived on earth in the first century A.D., sin and righteousness had been horribly redefined according to human culture and tradition instead of upholding God's true and highest standards. According to first century Hebrews, (God's only covenant people at the time), sin had been reduced to a very long series of mechanical do's and do not's. If you followed all of what was considered the appropriate religious traditions and didn't make waves, you were considered 'a good Jewish person.' In those days it was considered ethically acceptable to give in to your anger and commit all sorts of acts of retaliation, just so long as you did not pick up some form of weapon and mutilate or kill your adversary. Now this belief and practice was completely contrary to the expressly stated Law given to Moses (Leviticus 19:18), but that is what human tradition and practice had been reduced to among God's people by the time Messiah arrived. They had completely forgotten and neglected the lessons of Cain and Abel which we reviewed earlier in this very paper.
All sin involves the breaking or damaging of our relationship with God, and or the violation of relationships with other people. So in Matthew 5:21-48, Messiah is trying not only to restore God's true definitions concerning sin, but He is also trying to challenge the people to recognize and then uproot their sin from its ultimate foundation, which is the wicked human heart that desperately needs renewal (Jeremiah 17:9).
The whole point Messiah was making is that we need to learn to deal with sin at the foundation and seed level (which is in our hearts and mindset), so that it will not fester and mushroom into wicked behaviors which violate our relationship with God or others. So, according to Matthew 5:21-48, Messiah deals with those core issues that violate people's relationships with God and others, but He also wants us to deal with the seeds of wickedness in our heart which causes those violations. Messiah does not start off slowly and work His way up either, but he starts right in and attacks the biggest things that violate relationships. These are:
• Murder, and evil speaking,
• Adultery and entertaining lustful inclinations,
• Divorce; which is breaking the ultimate human relationship,
• Violating Trust by Breaking Promises (this is at the root of every broken relationship somewhere).
• Choosing Selfishness
• Revenge and Retaliation Instead of Choosing to Forgive in order to restore Relationships,
• And finally, choosing hatred instead of Love.
A Review of Christ's Commands in Unit One
Finally, here is a review list of all the commands we studied in unit one
1. Repent (Matthew 4:17) - Remember that to Biblically repent means that I change my mind and thinking, I change my desires and attitudes, and I change my life's choices, direction and behaviors Away from sin. I then start and continue thinking, desiring, choosing and walking through life in a manner according to what is righteous and pleasing to God. That is true biblical repentance. Anything less than this is not true repentance.
2. Follow Me (Matthew 4:19; 1 John 2:6) - Remember that to follow after or come along behind Jesus Christ literally means that;
a. We will grow to develop the thinking and attitudes that Jesus had (Philippians 2:5-8).
b. We will grow to desire and value what Jesus valued (John 4:34).
c. We will grow to value and evaluate our personal relationships the way that Jesus does (Matthew 12:46-50; Psalm 1; Amos 3:3).
d. We will grow to be more and more obedient to God the Heavenly Father, like Jesus was (John 5:19; John 14:21; John 15:9-14).
3. Let your light shine to glorify God (Matthew 5:13-16) - I recommend that anyone who has a self-esteem issue begins their recovery by making a detailed study of this passage. When Jesus says you are the salt of the earth, we must remember that in those days, salt was a very highly prized and expensive commodity. It was a statement of God's value on us as human beings, as well as a sign of how difficult it would be to retrieve us from sin, (just like salt was difficult to retrieve). At the same time, salt had specific functions and usefulness. God has a specific purpose and design for our lives. With great value naturally comes great responsibility. There are some parts of God's design for human beings that are universal to all. Other parts are specific to us as individuals. Our goal in life should be to fulfill both God's universal design, and His specific design for our lives.
When we fulfill God's design and purpose for our lives, it brings glory and honor to God who made us, and Jesus His son who went to such great lengths to retrieve us out of sin. If we do not fulfill God's desire, design and purpose for our lives, then we have wasted the life that God gave us.
The way that we discover God's will for our life is by first obeying His universal will, which we learn by first obeying Christ's commands. No one who is ignoring Christ's written word can accurately and correctly claim to have true revelation knowledge from God, because God through Christ only reveals Himself to those who are obedient. So people who claim to be walking by a revelation of the Holy Spirit, but who at the same time insist on disobeying Christ's written commands are really lying and deceiving themselves. They have no true revelation or manifestation of God at all. This a spiritual law (John 14:21).
4. Rejoice, even when you are persecuted for doing right (Matthew 5:10-12) - In Matthew 5:3-12 (the Beatitudes), Messiah is describing what our new attitudes and mindset will be when we are truly transformed by God from within. Only someone who is genuinely born again and has the new nature which has been transformed by the Holy Spirit of God can successfully obey this command. Otherwise it is impossible. As God transforms us from the inside out (Ezekiel 36:25-27), our mindsets, attitudes, and desires will change to agree with God. We will begin to value the eternal things that God prizes more than the temporary pleasures and comforts of the sinful world. We will begin to love righteousness and truth more than we value temporary tranquility and lack of conflict. We will become willing and able to desire and to obey Yahweh Almighty God's Commandments, and His Instructions. That's the real fruit, the real evidence that one has been born again and transformed by God (Ezekiel 36:25-27), and that the True Biblical Grace of God is indeed working within an individual (Philippians 2:13).
The sinful world loves darkness instead of light (John 3:19-21). The sinful world will not like us when we love and then do what is right (John 15:18-20). Those who love sin will persecute God’s and Christ’s followers (John 16:1-4; 2 Timothy 3:12). There will even be those (such as Muslims and others), who claim that they are doing God a service when they kill Messiah’s followers. However we should not be deceived because that is the spirit of the antichrist at work (1 John 2:22). The reason that Christ tells us to rejoice when we are being mistreated for doing the right things, is not that He wants us to become masochists who enjoy being hurt, but He is recognizing a pattern of historical truth in human affairs. Every true God follower throughout human history has had to separate themselves from the attitudes and behaviors of the sinful world. Everyone who loved righteousness was despised and ridiculed by those who love sin and wickedness. So the reason that we are to rejoice when they mistreat us for doing what pleases God is that we really are in good company.
5. Do not think that Christ came to remove or overthrow the law of God, because He came to fulfill the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17-20) - We touched on this in the previous section of this paper. Jesus was always proclaiming and re-elevating God's true standards in the minds of the people of faith, because what sometimes happens is that the people in the world who love sin want to water down godly principles in order to accommodate the sinful nature. What the sinful world does oftentimes is to try to get God’s faithful people to water down God's standards so that they don't have to be convicted of their own wickedness.
So the world encourages God's people to accept watered-down definitions in the name of peace love and unity. Christ was confronting that in His day, and Christ followers today must faithfully confront the same problem in our day. We must remain aligned with God’s true definitions because only the truths of God can set people free (John 8:31-32). If we water down the truths of God in order to avoid confrontation, it has the same effect as watering down penicillin. It will make the disease more resistant and will eventually kill the patient.
Redefining God's true standards and definitions may make it easier for us to get along temporarily, but all it will do is allow people to remain more comfortable in their sin until it kills them (2 Corinthians 4:4; Romans 6:23).
People who fall for this very comfortable self-deluding approach to ministry often do so because they thoroughly misunderstand Scripture. That is to say that they fall into the very mistaken belief that if they require any type of real obedience to God and Christ's words from the congregation, it becomes the same thing as placing people under a system of righteousness through works, which they mistakenly believe to be the same thing as denying what Christ accomplished on the cross. This is not at all an accurate interpretation, as Christ expressly declares (John 15:1-14). Teaching people that they don't have to obey what God and Christ says is actually the spirit of lawlessness, and not Grace (Matthew 7:21-23). If a person is truly growing to love God with their entire being (Matthew 22:34-40), then obeying God, and following His Instructions will be what you want to do (Matthew 12:48-50; John 15:9-14), and you will not consider obeying God's and Christ's commands to be a burden (1 John 5:1-3).
So here is the conclusion. We are still responsible to keep all of God’s Laws (as much as possible, as a matter of discipleship, not for salvation); even though keeping those Laws by themselves will not make us righteous. Righteousness is a gift that we receive from God simply by believing Jesus and asking for it.
We keep God’s Laws because God has changed us from the inside out and we are more and more growing to love what God loves and to dislike what God dislikes. It is the fruit and the evidence that the change has truly taken place (Ezekiel 36:25-27). All the other laws that we cannot rightly fulfill, or the blood atonement laws that are fulfilled through what Jesus Christ accomplished in His life, death, burial and resurrection; we simply trust in what He did.
6. Guard your heart against murder (Matthew 5:21-26) - Remember that all sin and transgressions of God's Laws (1 John 3:4), no matter what it is begins in the heart. If we want to successfully deal with the sin, we must let God deal with us at our heart level, not just our behavioral level. Murder begins by overindulging anger and resentment in our heart before any action is ever taken. So we need to view harboring ugly attitudes as though it was as ugly as the physical sins themselves. The stems of murder begin, and continue to grow when we fail to restrain our mouth. So we must attack the seeds of murder from being planted in our hearts, by uprooting our anger before it turns into resentment and bitterness, and then mushrooms into ugly words, which can lead to even uglier actions. For more details see the previous sections of this paper.
7. Guard your heart against unfaithfulness, lust, adultery and Divorce (Matthew 5:27-32) - Just like murder has certain internal procedures that take place before the sinful action ever happens, so are their heart and attitude problems that have festered before divorce ever takes place. Just like letting your mouth get you carried away, letting your eyes get you carried away into looking wantingly at someone else, can lead a person to be unfaithful to God and their mate. God absolutely loves people, but He hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). So we have to get radical about getting rid of the snares that could entice us to sin against God and one's spouse.
8. Guard your mouth against all sin (Matthew 5:33-37) - Tell the truth. Say what you mean and mean what you say. If you do anything other than that, you are letting the devil talk through your mouth, which is extremely dangerous. So make your promises sparingly and only when you are absolutely sure that what you are promising is in God's will, and that you will be able to fulfill what you promise. That's because breaking your word violates trust which breaks relationships, and God hates that. So only make promises that you are absolutely sure you can keep. It's better to get into the habit of saying things like “With God's help I would like to, or I desire to_______, God willing.”
Don't forget that Jesus said that we will be judged, we will be justified or we will be condemned, based on every word that has come out of our mouth (Matthew 12:36-37). Therefore, gaining and maintaining genuine mouth control is not optional. It is imperative.
9. Guard your heart against the desires for revenge and retaliation (Matthew 5:38-42) - The desires for revenge and retaliation are one of those things that break relationships between human beings, which is again something God hates. Every one of us has sinned against God. We all need forgiveness. It's in God's nature to be generous and forgiving with us, and that is how we should learn to respond when others have offended or wounded us in some way. When we adopt a generous and forgiving response, we are actually demonstrating our transformed nature in Jesus Christ, because it is not natural to the sinful human being to forgive. Obeying this command is about overcoming what's natural and doing what's Godly instead.
As we grow in Christ, our first reactions should be not to take revenge when we are offended, instead our initial response should become one that absorbs the offense without retaliating because God's character is living inside of us.
Our first response should be to do exactly the opposite of what our normal sinful nature desires. As Christians, we need to become willing and able to do more then what is asked of us. We are to turn the other cheek. We ought to give more than is demanded, and we ought to do more than what is required of us, even when it's not quite fair to us. Why? Because we remember that Jesus Christ willingly paid for our sins through His death on the cross, even though this was not personally fair to Him at all.
10. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:43-48) - Once again, this is the command that we can only obey when God through Christ has thoroughly transformed us from our old sinful nature, into a new Godly nature. It's not "normal," for the sinful human being to respond with love when we are offended or wounded, but it is something that we can do when we are transformed by God. Almost any human being with virtually no character at all can do good and be kind to those who treat them well, but being able to respond in a loving and Godly way to those who hate us takes real character. According to Christ, being able to do this is the proof that we are truly becoming children of Almighty God (Matthew 5:45).

Conclusion

Messiah said that making disciples involved teaching people how to obey everything that Jesus commanded (Matthew 28:20). This is what we are in the process of doing together now.
In our first unit and review together, we have studied the first 10 commands that Jesus gave in the New Testament. Christ's first 10 commands reveal something very important about God's priorities. Remember that in Christ's first 10 commands, He has not focused on anything that we would typically call church or Christian service. He is not focused on our gathering together as a group (church gathering). He has not focused on praise and worship. He is not focused on our offerings of time talent or treasure, nor has He focused on any other act of "Christian service” so to speak. Christ will begin dealing with those things as he continues with His sermon on the mount in Matthew Chapter 6, but that is not, nor has it ever been His top priority. So, what has been Christ's focus in the first 10 commands that He gave in the New Testament?
Christ focused primarily on our being renewed in our heart, in our having the right mindset, and in our having a renewed character so that we will agree with God. He also focused primarily on maintaining right relationships and diligently guarding against those things that would violate our relationships first with God and then our relationships with other people. If those things are not in good order, Christ requires that we leave our gift behind and repair those relationships first. If we refuse to do this then our offerings will be rejected as meaningless. If our heart and mindset is right according to God, if our relationships with God and other people are in good order, then God gladly accepts our offerings of time talent and treasure into His kingdom.
May God be with you. And may God write His love and commands into our hearts, and give us grace to thoroughly love honor and obey Him, to the delight of His heart, and the glory of His name, through His Son our Lord Jesus Christ, Yeshua the Messiah, Amen.