[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], March 2021]
Is being a follower of Jesus all about doing the right things and not doing the wrong things? Or maybe a preoccupation with external perfection misses the point of what it really means to be a Christian.
Yes, I am in with the chickens again. It’s really annoying, I did go out and walk the dogs this morning and I forgot to take all my recording equipment with me so I’m here because it’s raining again. But I want to talk to you just over the next few minutes about the difference about being right on the outside and being right on the inside
I’ve made a decision a few weeks ago that I’m going to start reading through all four gospels in the space of a month, because I realized that I don’t know Jesus that well. Yes, I dip in and out and read bits of the gospels but actually there’s a real strength in reading the gospels from start to finish. Currently I’m in Matthew and there’s this real battle between Jesus and his teachings, and the teachings of the Jewish authorities, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and everything that they had and what Jesus draws a real parallel between is their outward appearance, a person’s outward appearance, what they do and what they don’t do, and actually what they’re like on the inside.
There’s a bit in Matthew where Jesus lays out his manifesto, I guess. He tries to tell those who are listening as disciples and probably hundreds of other people that have gathered to listen to Jesus as he tries to lay out for them what it is to be a follower of Jesus Christ, what it means to be part of the kingdom of heaven. What’s really striking is that he says that if you want to be part of the kingdom of heaven your righteousness, your being right with God has to be even greater than that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. That’s a major thing to say because the Pharisees and the Sadducees were obsessed with rule-following.
They did everything they could to follow the rules and to look like they were doing the right thing. In fact, the Pharisees believed if the whole of the Jewish nation managed to keep all of God’s rules for one entire day then God would come back, the Messiah would arrive. See, for the Jewish people and particularly the Pharisees and the Sadducees, outward appearances were everything.
But what Jesus does in what we call the Sermon on the Mount – his manifesto – it says actually what is on the outside is not enough. What you need is an inward change. You may technically be right but that is not enough. I mean if you said to your wife “technically, I didn’t commit adultery” that’s not going to be enough because that’s not a heart change. That says something actually really bad about what is inside your heart: ‘Technically, I didn’t commit adultery’. Jesus is saying that for these Pharisees and these Sadducees, technically they may not be doing the wrong thing but actually what really matters is a change of heart, an inward change, and these Pharisees and these Sadducees just didn’t have it.
I remember when I was a teenager I came up with all these rules and t these his regulations almost like code of honour that I would follow and it was really based upon the teachings I’d received in church, what I thought was right, and yet by the time I reached 20 I’d broken every single one of them. So when I was in my early 20s I just remember saying to God “What is the point? You set this impossible task, you set this example of Jesus which is just unfair, I can’t live up to that, I cannot obey all the rules you are demanding of me. I can’t be holy and perfect like you because I am fallen and sinful”.
What I’ve come to realize is that we don’t need to worry about that. We don’t need to worry about the things that we’re doing right or the things that we’re not doing that are wrong because the reality is if you’re focusing on an external morality then you put the cart before the horse. As a follower of Jesus Christ, what makes the most difference is the gift of the Holy Spirit, that when you welcome Jesus into your heart, that when you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, that God does the work for you. He transforms you from the inside out and what happens when you become a follower of Jesus Christ and you welcome him into your heart is the inside is cleansed and therefore in time you will be amazed how your actions and your words are transformed, dictated not by morality, not by rules and regulations, not by the expectations of others but by the love of God within you. This is why king David in the Psalms he prays to God, he sings to God “Create in me a clean heart o Lord and renew a right spirit within me”.
Are you asking God for those things?
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[1] YouTube link: Do I need to obey a bunch of rules to follow Jesus?
Bible references: Psalm 51 v10, Matthew 5 v20
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Contributed by Martin Shorey; © the Author
