Hello and welcome today to Trinity Sermons. Today we're going to be listening to the second sermon in the series Playing with Fire, where we will be learning about how Jesus challenged the perceptions of the sacred scriptures. I hope that you enjoy the message and find it impactful to you today.
A reading from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, beginning at verse 17.
You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, you shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.
Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, Raka, is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, you fool, will be in danger of the fire of hell.
You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
You have heard that it was said, eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.
And if anyone wants to see you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.
Give to the one who asks you and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
You have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your father in heaven.
He causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. This is the word of the Lord.
I'm going to start by telling you just a couple stories from antiquity.
In the year AD 50, there was a Roman soldier by the name of Apostumus who broke into the temple and stole some copies of the Jewish Torah scrolls.
Now, for those of you who don't know the Torah, the word Torah means law or teaching.
And the Torah scrolls were the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or what we would call the Old Testament.
So that was Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and?
There's a mumbling of Deuteronomy. You're correct. Right.
Now, what he did after he stole these scrolls is he took them out into public and he burned them.
Now, this created an incredible outcry, nearly caused a revolution to take place in the city.
And in the end, the Roman magistrate, the only thing he could do was grab Apostumus and chop off his head.
That was the only thing that could appease the crowd to execute him.
Another story about 100 years after that, when Hadrian was emperor,
it was forbidden for anyone to read the Torah in public or to teach it. That was forbidden.
And yet there was a Jewish teacher by the name of Hanna Nias who said, I'm going to do it anyways.
And so he convened public gatherings where he read and taught the Torah to the people.
Well, he was arrested. And as punishment, what they did is they took one of the Torah scrolls
and they wrapped it around his body and they set him ablaze. They burned him to death.
And it is said that as he died, he called out that I can see the words of the Torah ascending into heaven.
So let's just get this straight. One man burns the scriptures and loses his head.
Another man teaches the scriptures and is burned at the stake.
Now, how precious and contentious must those scriptures be that you would kill someone who desecrates them
or you would be willing to die in order to defend them? If you mess with someone's sacred writings,
their sacred documents, you are playing with fire.
Now, that is the name of our teaching series this winter, Playing With Fire.
And what we're getting at through the series is we're looking at how Jesus would say things and do things
and he would poke and he would prod and he gained all these enemies for himself because he challenged
Israel's sacred symbols, some of the things they cherished most dearly.
Jesus played with fire. He was a total pyromaniac.
If you don't believe me, check out some of these fiery quotes from some scholars I dug up this week.
Jesus was inflammatory to the religious and political authorities because his teachings exposed their hypocrisy.
Or this one. Jesus brought a fiery passion for love, justice, and mercy that ignited hearts and challenged societal norms.
NT Wright, one of my favorites. Jesus approached his ministry with a fiery zeal,
confronting the oppressive powers and passionately advocating for a new kingdom of God.
Benjamin Shaw said Jesus' ministry was like a fire that could not be quenched.
Gary Habermas said Jesus' teachings were not meant to be tamed or controlled,
but to ignite a spiritual revolution. Inflammatory, fiery, burning, igniting unquenchable fire.
Is it just me or is it getting hot in here? It's getting hot in here.
It's like that song by Billy Joel. We didn't start the fire.
You guys know that one, right? I wrote a new version of it. Ready? Here it is.
Jesus started the fire. Yes, the things he said. People wanted him dead.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes. No. But the truth is, Jesus played. Thank you, Amanda. I appreciate that.
Jesus did things, got him into a lot of trouble, and ultimately led to his crucifixion.
Because when you play with fire like this, you get burned.
Last week, for example, we got started and I looked at how Jesus challenged one of the most sacred possessions of Israel,
and that was the Holy Land. Right? And I actually, I was a little nervous about preaching about that one last week
because it's such a hot topic both then and now. But we were just getting started.
That was week one. That was just kindling the fire. Now this week we are fanning the flames,
and we are going to be looking at how Jesus played with fire in another way,
this time by challenging another one of Israel's most sacred symbols,
and that was this. The hot docks themselves, as I like to call them,
Israel's scriptures, the Torah, or the Pentateuch, whatever you want to call it.
Now, you can actually tell a lot about how people care and what they think about their scriptures
by just looking at how they treat them. So for example, I know some people who own Bibles
and only store their Bible on the very, very top shelf of their house, the very top.
And why is that? They do that because they say, this book is so special and sacred,
it deserves to be elevated above everything else in this house. Or I know some people who will never put a Bible on the ground.
They'll never set it on the ground because they say that is to demean the Bible.
The Bible is sacred and holy, deserves to be lifted up, not put down.
I also know some people who will not stack any other book on top of a Bible because they would say that the Bible
is more holy, more precious, and superior to every other book, every other document that is out there.
And so they would never stack something on top of it. You know what? Here's another thing to think about.
In typical Anglican churches, we are not a typical Anglican church, in typical Anglican churches,
this is what they do every Sunday. When it comes time to read the scripture,
the priest will go to the altar and take the sacred book from the altar and lift it up over his head.
And then the organist will fire up a rousing tune. Organist, fire it up. There it is.
The rousing tune. And they will carry the scriptures down into the congregation, into the midst of the people,
with it held high above their heads. And when they finally get to the middle, they will say,
okay, and then they'll pull the scriptures down and they'll open it up.
No, and they'll say, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Saint Matthew,
and everybody will respond, glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Then they open up the scriptures and they would read from the gospels and proclaim these words.
And afterwards they would close it up again and they would lift it up high and they would say,
the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Saint Matthew or whatever.
And everybody would say, praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
And then they would turn and the organ would fire up again and they would walk back up to the sacred place
and they would place the holy book back where it belonged. Thank you. Thank you.
How about a round of applause for our organists?
I bet you didn't know Trinity had an organ or an organist, but now as you can see, we do.
That kind of respect that is shown for God's word just gives you a little bit of a taste
of what the Jewish people of Jesus' day felt about their sacred and special Torah.
For good reason, they felt this book deserved to be elevated above all other books.
I'm going to share with you three reasons why this deserved to be elevated.
The first was this was God's word spoken through, spoken by the prophets.
What could be higher than that when you think about it?
And when I say God's word, Isaiah says that God is high and exalted
and that God lives in a high and holy habitation.
God is high and these are God's words, so they need to be lifted high.
When I say they are spoken by God, God's words, of course, God didn't audibly speak them
or write them with his own pen, but he had these people, these prophets who he spoke through.
People like Isaiah or Jeremiah or Jonah and or yeah, there was so many prophets in your Bibles.
You can look through them all and they spoke God's words to the people.
And that's why you will find all throughout the Bible, you'll find this phrase,
the prophet would speak something to the people and then they would say, thus says the Lord,
because they're not speaking their own words here.
Otherwise they wouldn't say this, but they're speaking God's words.
So they say this is what the Lord says. Thus saith the Lord,
because these are God's words spoken through the prophets.
Second reason why this book was elevated, these scriptures were so high elevated,
was because this was also God's law given through Moses.
The Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy,
were specially given to Israel in a very dramatic and unforgettable event
that just formed the foundation of who these people were.
You probably know the story, but Israel was wandering in the wilderness
and they came to Mount Sinai and the people of Israel camped out
about the bottom of Mount Sinai and Moses went up the mountain.
And he was up the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights, we are told.
And while he was up, a cloud surrounded him on the mountain.
And there he received the laws of God, the Torah on stone tablets.
And by the way, that made Moses the first person to download something from the cloud onto a tablet.
Then Moses came down the mountain with these tablets, with the commandments with him.
And these sealed the covenant between God and his people.
You just cannot overstate how foundational this was to Jewish identity.
And ever since then, Moses has been seen as the greatest of all the prophets of Judaism.
And that's why these words are elevated, because not only were they God's words spoken through the prophets,
they were God's laws given through Moses.
Now there was a third reason.
The third reason why these words are elevated and lifted high is because they are God's direction.
They were God's instruction to be taught by the scribes and the Pharisees and the other teachers of the law.
You see, there were these religious scholars and their job was to read the law
and actually make copies of it and to interpret it and then to teach it to the people.
You know, even Jesus said that the teachers of the religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses.
They're the ones who are supposed to take the words spoken through the prophets,
who take the law given by Moses and translate it into a way that people knew how to live their lives according to God's way.
So just to summarize, do we now know why these texts, these documents were so elevated?
These words were God's words spoken to the prophets.
They were God's laws given through Moses and they were God's direction for life as given and explained through the scribes.
And this document held Israel together.
It gave them an identity. It showed them how to live their lives in a way that was different than the nations around them.
Can you see why they treasured them so dearly and defended them so passionately?
You mess with these words, you are playing with fire.
And that's where Jesus comes in.
Now, it should be said, it's important to note that Jesus was not a book burner.
Jesus valued, respected and honored the Torah and the writings of the prophets.
He read them regularly. He memorized them. Jesus knew his Bible inside and out.
He recited them. He used them to teach other people.
But what really started the wildfire of controversy around him is that Jesus believed that, yes, scripture deserved a high and holy place.
But, he said, there's actually something that is even higher than scripture.
There's something that goes even on top of scripture as far as importance and value.
And people would say, no, no, no, Jesus, listen, remember, this goes on the top shelf.
Nothing goes above it. You don't stack anything on top of this.
This is the supreme thing. But Jesus is actually no.
No, there is one person actually who can speak for God better than the prophets.
And there's one person who can give the laws better than Moses.
This is hot stuff.
There's one person who can teach God's ways even better than the scribes and the teachers of the law.
And that one person is drum roll.
Me. Jesus says, I actually am and belong above these scriptures.
Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do.
You hear it. You hear it. You hear the fire starting to burn.
You hear the explosions going up. What is Jesus saying?
What is Jesus saying? Jesus is saying that he was above the prophets.
Right. The prophets of old, of course, they were close to God.
And they definitely had authority from God to speak God's words.
But Jesus says, I've got an even closer connection to God than the prophets ever had.
And the words that I speak have a greater authority than any authority they would have.
Wait a second, Jesus. You've got a closer relationship to God than the great prophet Isaiah.
Yes. You've got more authority to speak than the great prophet Jeremiah, who we hold so dear.
Yes. These are fighting words, folks. These are fighting words.
When Jesus was born, though, check this out.
When Jesus was born, there was it was said that they will call him Emmanuel,
which means God with us.
Now, prophets were assumed to be close to God, but nobody ever said that a prophet was an embodiment of God,
that a prophet was actually God's presence with the people in flesh and blood.
That is way higher. That is something completely different.
Or when Jesus was baptized, as he came up out of the water, a voice from heaven said,
This is my son whom I love. With him, I'm well pleased.
Now, every prophet had a moment when they were commissioned to go and do their work,
but no prophet ever was commissioned with a voice from heaven that declared them to be the son of God.
This is higher. This is holier. This is something completely different.
One time during this moment on another mountaintop, which was called the transfiguration.
You can look that one up. But Jesus was actually revealed to be with two of the great prophets of old,
Moses and Elijah. And his disciples got to see this, and it was like mind blowing.
But then another voice from heaven came and that said,
This is my son whom I love. With him, I'm well pleased. Listen to him.
To which the disciples could have gone, God, there's like three of them.
Which one are we supposed to listen to? Is it Moses you're talking about? Listen to him.
No. Is it Elijah? Is this the one you love and you're telling us to listen to?
No, it's Jesus. Jesus is higher. Jesus is holier.
And just in case, you know, you want extra proof, go through your New Testament and read it
and see how many times Jesus said, thus saith the Lord after he taught something.
I'll tell you the answer right now. He never said it. He never said,
This is what the Lord says because Jesus didn't speak for God.
Jesus spoke as God. Jesus is saying, yes, the scriptures are filled with the words of the prophets,
but I'm not a prophet. I'm the son of God. I am God with you.
I am a VIP with a backstage pass, the likes of which you've never seen before.
So my words are higher. My words are holier than, brace yourself, than the words in this book.
So now can you see why the religious authorities wanted him dead?
He was playing with fire. Who does he think he is?
I can hear the fire crackling right now.
But the fire that started with that actually just continues to roar
when Jesus actually then goes ahead and sets himself above Moses.
Moses, yes, he gave the law on Mount Sinai, but Jesus is greater and higher than Moses.
Now you might say, Rob, I read my Bible. I don't see Jesus ever claiming to be greater or higher than Moses,
but it's there. It's there for all to see. You just have to read really carefully.
Matthew's gospel, especially Matthew goes to great lengths to show you that Jesus is the new Moses
and he's the better Moses. What do I mean?
First of all, there's all those similarities. You guys ever notice this?
Moses was born without shelter. Jesus was born without shelter.
Oh, Moses was laid in a straw basket. Jesus was laid in a straw manger.
When Moses was born, Pharaoh orders the killing of all the boys under two.
When Jesus is born, Herod orders the killing of all boys under two.
Moses fled for his life. Jesus fled for his life. Moses came back. Jesus came back.
Moses spends 40 years in the wilderness. Jesus spends 40 days in the wilderness.
Moses passes through the waters of the Red Sea.
Jesus passes through the waters of baptism in the Jordan River.
Moses was sent to redeem his people from bondage in Egypt.
Jesus is sent to redeem his people from bondage to sin and death itself.
These are all pointers that are there to show us that Jesus is the new and better Moses.
Let me give you another argument for that.
So you remember that Moses, of course, went up the mountain.
I already told you this story. Well, guess what? Jesus says, I too go up a mountain.
Read Matthew chapter five. He goes up the mount, up this mount, right?
And when Moses got to the top of that mountain, what did he did?
He received the law from God so he could teach it to the people.
What does Jesus do in his most famous sermon, perhaps the most famous sermon ever preached,
the Sermon on the Mountain, the Sermon on the Mount?
He teaches the people the new laws of God.
And then just to make sure we all get what Matthew is trying to say,
of course, Moses came down from Mount Sinai. Jesus came down from the Mount.
It seems kind of obvious, but these are not accidental illusions that Matthew is inserting in here.
He's telling us something about who Jesus is.
He's showing us that, as Scott McKnight says, that Jesus is teaching the new law
as the new Moses for a new people of God.
This is incendiary, everybody.
You know, you can hear Billy Joel singing in the background.
And just in case, you need more proof. This is like really interesting.
If you look at how Matthew organizes his gospel, there's 28 chapters in the gospel, according to Matthew,
but he lumps all Jesus's teaching into five distinct chunks.
Why would he do that? You now know why he would do that.
Because how many books of the Torah were there? Right?
And so this is Matthew's way of saying Jesus is the new Moses.
He is the better Moses teaching and fulfilling the law in a brand new way.
And so, yes, Jesus is above the prophets. He is the true voice of God.
And Jesus is above Moses. He is the true giver of the law.
You can feel the fire spreading. You can feel people's blood beginning to boil here.
But Jesus just takes a bucket of gas and he throws it on that fire when he goes the third step
and says that he also is above the scribes and the teachers of the law.
Remember, the Torah was to be taught to the people so they knew how to live.
And the scribes and the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, this group of people,
it was their job to study hard for a long time to get good at understanding what this meant
and then to be able to explain it to the people so they knew how to live their lives in accordance with this law.
It took years and years and years to become a scribe.
But then Jesus comes on the scene and he just starts lobbing hand grenades at the scribes and Pharisees left, right, and center.
He says stuff like, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you blind guides, you blind fools,
you nitpickers, you dirty cups, you whitewash tombs.
He tells the scribes and the Pharisees, yeah, you're teaching the law, but you're not even trying to live the law.
You're not living it out. And yeah, you're teaching the law, but you're so focused on the details of it
that everyone is just so confused by it and they're burdened by what you're teaching them.
And therefore, in typical Jesus style, he comes along and says, tell you what, let me teach what the law is really about.
I am a better teacher. He puts himself above these teachers.
And that's when he starts going around saying things like this.
You have heard, you guys have heard, it said, you shall not murder. But let me tell you now what that really, really means.
You have heard, it said, and someone tried to explain to you what it meant about not committing adultery,
but not me now explain to you what it really means.
Or you have heard that you're supposed to love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I tell you, love your enemies.
Pray for those who persecute you. I'm a better teacher.
You have heard, you have heard, you have heard, you have heard. I tell you, I tell you, I tell you, I tell you, I'm a better teacher.
Let me show you how to live according to the spirit of the law and not just the letter of the law.
And the people loved it. The people scooped it up. They ate it up with a spoon.
Somebody was finally teaching them the law, finally teaching them how to live out the Torah, finally teaching them how to live out the prophets.
They were amazed at his teaching and get this, because he spoke as one having authority and get this, not like their teachers of the law and the scribes.
This did not land well, as you might imagine.
Now you can probably see why the chief priests and the scribes wanted Jesus dead and they were seeking how they might put him to death.
He's playing with fire, putting himself above the prophets, above Moses, above the scribes.
This way, you could even go a step further and say what Jesus was doing was actually putting himself above the law altogether.
And I think what's going on here is Jesus knew something about the law that nobody else knew.
He knew that it was actually impossible to follow.
It was impossible to keep these laws and commandments.
As Paul would later say, the law of Moses was actually unable to save anybody because of the weakness of our sinful nature.
It's too hard. It's too demanding.
And the more that people try to follow these teachings, the more they realize how much they failed.
And so the effect of the law was not to make people feel better about themselves and feel great about how they're living God's way, it made them feel miserable and made them feel like they were never living up to the righteous requirements of this law.
But, but what if there was one person?
What if there was one person who could actually live this out perfectly?
What if that person actually could live these words not just for themselves, but live them for everybody altogether?
So that's what happened. God did what the law could not do.
He sent his own son in a body like the bodies we sinners have.
And in that body, God ended sins control over us by giving his son as a sacrifice for our sins.
This is so important.
He did this so that the requirements of the law would be fully satisfied by us. No, not by us, for us.
Or as Tim Keller said many times in his life, Jesus Christ lived the life we should have lived.
And he died the death we should have died.
Jesus was above the prophets.
He was above Moses. He was above the teachers of the lie.
He was above the law itself.
So wrapping up, what does this all mean for us?
If Jesus is the new Moses, if he's the new giver of the law, if he's the new interpreter,
if he's the new teacher of the new people of God, what's our response?
What should our posture be?
It's simple, actually.
If he's the new teacher, we need to be his students.
Listen, when the prophets spoke, the people listened.
When Moses spoke, the people listened.
When the teachers of the law and the scribes spoke, the people listened.
Even when Jesus went up on the mount and gave the sermon on the mount,
the people sat down and listened to what he said.
So we need to do the same, to read the words of Jesus as his student,
to sit at his feet and receive what he had to say.
And so to do that, you know what you're going to have to do.
You're going to have to go home and you're going to have to reach way up onto that shelf
where you put that Bible, pull it down, blow it off,
and you're going to have to open it up and you're actually going to have to read it.
Yes, when it's up on some shelf, it won't get damaged,
but you won't get transformed if it stays up there.
And yes, if it's behind some nice piece of glass, it looks beautiful, but it's not useful.
You can revere the Bible all you want, but it's only useful if you take it down and open it up.
And when we open it up, man, you're going to read all these laws
and you're going to read the words of the prophets.
And some of it will be confusing.
Some will be inspiring, but some of it will be confusing.
But now we know.
Now we know the secret to understanding even the hardest passages of the Bible,
and that is to read them through the lens of Jesus,
to listen to what Jesus had to say about all these things,
because Jesus is above the prophets.
Jesus is above Moses.
He's above the scribes, and He's above the law itself.
So thanks be to God. Amen.
Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope that you found the sermon one
that you will carry with you all week long.
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so that we can continue to spread the good news with others.
Please come back again next week, and thanks again for listening.
Today's sermon was taken from the January 14, 2023 service
at Trinity Church, Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario.