Faithfulness in the Kingdom

We're continuing with this series entitled, “Kingdom Living.” We've been going through the Sermon on the Mount. We're still in chapter five. The Sermon on the Mount has been called “The greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher Who ever lived.” Today, as we move verse by verse through it, we come to a section that I would say many pastors would be tempted to skip.

This pastor does feel some reluctance, I have to confess that to you. I have some reluctance to preach on this topic, because today Jesus takes on the topic of marriage and divorce and being faithful. Being faithful in your vows, your words, your communication and your commitments. You might say, ‘Well, Gary, why do you feel reluctant?’ It's not because I make any apology for God's word, because I don't; it's because I love you deeply

and I know so many of you have felt the pain of divorce. It's a complex issue and I'm going to be talking for about forty minutes. There's no way that I can cover every question you might be having in your heart today about this. Indeed, Jesus is not so much interested in the topic of divorce. The Pharisees were very interested in divorce, but He was more interested in the topic of being faithful in marriage.

So, this is an emotionally charged issue. Many of you have suffered and are still suffering the pain and aftermath of divorce. Indeed, there are very few of us who have gone through life unaffected by this, either as the husband and wife who either would not or could not reconcile, or the children of divorce who had no choice in the matter. They've suffered divorce too, haven't they?

Or, the family and friends that surround that couple, who were invited to the wedding. No one invites you to the divorce, but we all end up having to choose sides, so there's division. Divorce affects everyone. I experienced two tragedies at an early age.

The first tragedy was at age 8, when I lost my father to cancer. I was 8 years old. He was 39. That hurt.

The grief of that hurt. I'm the firstborn of four children. It hurt my mother. My mother grieved deeply for him. When I was 11, my mother met another man.

I really liked him. And I was starving for a daddy. Boys need a daddy. Girls need a daddy. I wanted a daddy.

My mom remarried, and she immediately got pregnant and had our little baby brother, Donnie. Our tears began to turn to laughter. The grief of loss was replaced by a little toddler in our house. I had a daddy and, although, he wasn't my daddy,

I liked him. But, he turned out to be an adulterer and a liar.

He had a wife in another state.

And my mom's remarriage failed.

It was a failure and she felt guilty for it. She grieved about it; the tears that had been swept away by remarriage and this new birth came back, except they seemed to linger more. I was the oldest of four, and I felt like I was the man of the house at age 11. I felt responsible for my mother's tears.

And I would say, “Mom, but if you hadn't remarried, we wouldn't have Donnie. We love Donnie.” You try to think of ways to get through these things, right?

”Mom, I know you're hurting. Stop crying.” So this pastor has some reluctance to talk about this topic, knowing the deep pain firsthand of how it feels to see a marriage fail. I've felt the pain of both death and divorce, and I've grieved for both. But I think I understand why God says in His Word that He hates divorce.

I think He hates death, too, but He says He hates divorce and I think I know why - It has a lingering pain to it. Perhaps some of you feel that grief today. That's substantially why I feel the reluctance.

It's not because I make any apology for God's word. I completely believe God's word. It's because I, as I preach, I'm praying that the Holy Spirit would cause His Word to land in the right spot in your heart. Some of you need correction. Good.

Get the correction. Some of you need forgiveness and you need to be built up. Good. Get that. I can't do that.

Only the Holy Spirit can do that. My calling is to proclaim God's word to you both boldly and without apology. But, I want to do what Paul tells us to do in Ephesians 4. I want to speak the truth in love. Okay, so let's turn to Matthew, chapter 5, verses 31-37.

In this passage, Jesus challenges His disciples to be faithful in their commitments, in the things they speak, the oaths they take, the vows they make, the covenants they make, to be faithful people contrary to the world and greater than the righteousness of the Pharisees and the scribes. I believe today that we, as God's Kingdom citizens, are called to be faithful. Faithful to the marriage covenant, faithful to all the covenants that we make and to the words that we speak. I believe the text gives us two key areas where he calls us as God's kingdom citizens, those who call Jesus King. He calls us to faithfulness.

So let's look; we'll read the text and we'll ask the Spirit to speak to us.

Matthew 5:31-37 (ESV) 31 “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. 33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.

This is God's word. We're looking for two areas that Jesus addresses.

He calls us to be faithful. The first is to God's view of the marriage covenant. Jesus calls us to be faithful to God's view of the marriage covenant. This is the first commitment that He calls us to, and that's the covenant of marriage. As Kingdom citizens, we are called to be faithful to what God says about marriage, because God is the originator of marriage.

Marriage was God's idea before there were nations or before any institute. If you read the book of Genesis, the first relationship that God ordained was marriage. Marriage was God's idea. The word says in Malachi, as I mentioned before, that he hates divorce.

Here's what the word says, Malachi 2:16 (NLT) “For I hate divorce!” says the Lord, the God of Israel. “To divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “So guard your heart; do not be unfaithful to your wife.”

Now, like many of you, I've already said we have felt the pain of death and divorce. While both bring grief, divorce leaves a lingering wound. It affects hearts and homes. It affects generations. That's why the bible says God hates divorce.

Notice the bible doesn't say God hates people who get divorced. He never says that. God loves you. He hates divorce. Why does He hate divorce?

Because he loves people. That's why He hates divorce. Because divorce is a cruel, hurtful reality. He hates it. He hates what it does to us.

Notice what Jesus does here as He takes on this topic. This has been His pattern. We started this a few weeks ago and we observed that. Here's Jesus, if you will; He's the “second Moses,” except He's one greater than Moses.

Moses brought down the Ten Commandments on stone tablets. He went up on Mount Sinai, he brought down the ten Commandments that God had written with His own finger. He brought them down and they were external. The people tried to follow them and they couldn't follow them. They needed a new heart.

Jesus goes up on the mount. He goes up on the mountain and He preaches the Sermon on the Mount. He tells them, ‘Do you know what you need? You need to move it from the stone tablets to your heart.’

So, He begins to go through some of the commandments. He doesn't go through all of them, but if you think about it, He really has covered them all in the way He addresses it. It's got to move from external stone tablets to an internal heart change. He started and we covered this a couple weeks ago. In the first one He said, “You've heard said, thou shalt not murder.

But I say that if you call your brother an empty head or if you have anger towards your brother or sister and act out on it and diminish them through name calling, you've committed murder in your heart.” Well, that did us all in, didn't it? I think I committed “murder” with my little brother when I was like five years old. You know, calling him names or whatever. I mean, you know, we've all broken that; we've all broken that.

Then, the last time we talked, He said, “If you've ever looked at someone with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery with that person.” Well, there went that one. He's talking about the attitude of sin that precedes the action. Since he was already on the topic of adultery, He moves toward the topic of marriage and divorce. You can see the progression.

So now, He's on the third antithesis. There's six of them in the Sermon on the Mount, where He takes on a law that the scribes and the Pharisees were talking about. What they were trying to do was lower the effectiveness of those laws. They were looking for “loopholes” so that they could keep them. Jesus closes all the “loopholes.”

Then, He says that it's all about the heart. Now, he moves to marriage and divorce. He says, 33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old…” and He talks about divorce. What does He say?

He says, 31 “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ He's quoting the book of Deuteronomy; He's quoting the Mosaic Law. He immediately says, “but I say.” The New Testament is written in “koine” Greek. “Koine” just means common, like “black creek” English, okay? It's like “southern” Greek.

”Koine” Greek was common Greek, down to earth, easy to speak Greek. So the New Testament was written in “koine” Greek. In koine, it's the emphatic use of “I,” so you would say it like this, literally. “But I, I say;” you would emphasize the word, “I.”

As the people walked away, they said, ‘No one has ever spoken with such authority as this man. He speaks as one with authority.’ Why? Because He's the Son of God. He wrote the commandments.

He's the word of God made flesh. He is the commandments; He knows what they mean. He says, ‘You've heard it said, but here's what I say about that.’ That's what he says, that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the grounds of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.

This is called “the exclusion.” People talk about exclusion. The Greek word for sexual immorality is “porneia.” “Porneia” is where we get the word, “porn.” It literally means anything outside of the marital bonds. This could be either physical or emotional, but out of bounds.

You've committed adultery, you've broken your marriage vow. That's the only exception He gives in His sermon on the mount. He says that if you give her a certificate of divorce and she remarries, you've made her commit adultery now and if you remarry, now you've committed adultery.

That shouldn't surprise us too much because He had already told us that all of us have already committed adultery if we've lusted.

But now, He makes it very clear. The Pharisees were very interested in “loopholes” in the Mosaic Law. They were very interested, especially in this one. Apparently, they were looking for “loopholes.” What they really wanted was a “no fault” divorce.

“No fault” divorce is in all fifty states now in America. All you have to do is write down “unreconciled differences.” It depends on the state. In North Carolina, it's twelve months of separation and then, you can go no fault.

Different states have different time periods, you see, because divorce is a legal matter. So, He says, “certificate of divorce.” A certificate is a document that has a legal aspect.

Jesus talks about this in a greater way later in Matthew. Can we look there? Let's look there, in Matthew, chapter 19. Remember that I told you the Pharisees were interested in divorce.

Jesus was interested in marriage. Matthew 19:3-9 (ESV) 3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?”

4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”

8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” So, He's got a larger teaching here. In the Gospel of Matthew, he expounds on it further, because the Pharisees had detaily, “loopholey” questions about divorce.

There were two rival rabbinic schools during Jesus’ Day. A rabbi is a teacher. So there was “Harvard” and “Princeton,” except the names of the two schools was “Hillel” and “Shimei.”

Hillel and Shammai were the two Pharisaic rabbinic schools and they had very different views of divorce. Rabbi Shammai took a rigorist line, and taught from Deuteronomy 24:1 that the sole ground for divorce was some grave matrimonial offense, something evidently ‘unseemly’ or ‘indecent’, such as adultery, fornication or some sexual offense. I'm sure the Pharisees that were from the school of Shimei, when Jesus answered, they said, ‘See, we told you,’ like that. They're probably happy. But then, from the more popular school,Rabbi Hillel, held a very lax view… [that a man could] ‘be divorced from his wife for any cause whatsoever.’”

They belonged to the school of Hillel. Hillel had a more lax view, shall we say, of divorce. They believed that a man could be divorced from his wife for any cause. So, the school of Hillel added little detaily laws in their school of interpretation, saying, ‘If her head is shaped a certain way, and you don't like it. You know, if her head's flat on the back or something.

You got married to her and she had her head covered. Then, when you finally saw her for the first time, you found out she had a flat noggin…’ I'm telling you, this is exactly how it is written down. They had this list of things.

She was skinny when you married her, and she got fat, so you give her a certificate of divorce. Or maybe during that day, you preferred fat and she was too skinny. She couldn't put on any weight. I mean, it didn't matter. You could put her away for any cause.

This was a very patriarchal society. Women had hardly any rights at all. People say that Christianity has harmed women, but it's actually been the most uplifting of women of any world religion.

Jesus says, ‘listen, you're trying to quote the Mosaic Law to me here. I want to go back to what my father meant when he started marriage.

Let's go back to Genesis; I believe if you flip through your Bible, Mr. Pharisee, it precedes the law and the fall.’ Even before the fall of man, His purpose was one man, one woman for life, the two become flesh, one flesh forever in this world until death do us part. Jesus says, ‘you want to talk about divorce and loopholes.

I want to talk to you about being faithful, because kingdom citizens are faithful.’ He adds this phrase that I've said at the end of every wedding I've ever been the pastor that was leading it; He says this phrase, “Therefore God has joined together, let not man separate,”

or in some of the older versions, “Let not man cast asunder.”

I still remember some of the details of the wedding vows. I've said them so much as a pastor. Maybe, I remember them better that way. My wife's sitting over here against the wall. “Gary, do you take this woman to be your wedded wife?”

"I take thee, Robin, to be my wedded wife. To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poor, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until death do us part. According to God's holy law, in the presence of God, I make this vow.

I do.” Just in a couple weeks, June 2nd,

will be forty-six years.

Forty-six years ago, we said our vows. I'm not bragging on us. I'm bragging on God, because we've had some pretty good fights, we've had some disagreements. We had to get to where we decided to just accept one another the way we are.

Love each other, overlook shortcomings, give each other grace. It's all from Jesus, because I can be a selfish person. Without Jesus, I don't think we'd still be married otherwise.

Praise you, Jesus, for helping us keep this. You know, that's a covenant, what I just read to you: “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer…” But a certificate of divorce is contractual. Did you know there's a difference between a contract and a covenant?

There's a difference.

A contract is a legal transactional agreement. It's only valid as long as both parties meet expectations. A lease agreement, when you rent a house, is a contract. Your part as the renter is to pay the rent. If you fail to meet that expectation, the landlord has a certificate, a contract that says you need to move out, you have not paid the rent.

That's a contract. A covenant is a sacred relational commitment, not between two parties, but a third party who bears witness and enters into it with you. His name is the Lord. The writer of Ecclesiastes says, “Two are better than one.

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” Who's the third strand? I think it's Jesus. There's that third strand, the stronger strand, the faithful strand, that's kept my wife, Robin and I together. Without Him, I don't know where we'd be.

A covenant is a sacred relational commitment. It's based on trust, loyalty and faithfulness. It involves God. It's permanent and unbreakable. It's “until death do us part,” even when the other might be unfaithful.

You're called to remain faithful because divorce is a concession for the hardness of men's hearts. That's what Jesus said in verse 8. Do you know why God let Moses write that in the Word? It’s because we have hard hearts and we won't reconcile; divorce is not a command.

Some of you are in the audience right now where your spouse committed adultery on you. They stepped outside and it hurt, but they came back to you. They asked for forgiveness. Sometimes,

it happens before you came to faith; it happens before you came to Christ. But because of Christ, you've been able to forgive them; it took some doing. You had to really ask the Holy Spirit to help you.

But you got through it and now your marriage is stronger than it ever could have been before because you didn't give up. You didn't quit; you trusted. So, divorce is a concession to the hardness of our hearts. I had people line up in the lobby to talk to me after the first service.

You might be one that wants to do that, too. I'm preaching just from what God's word says. What I want you to understand is that Jesus is more interested in marriage, whereas the Pharisees were more interested in the “loopholes” for divorce. So Jesus is not talking about, nor am I talking about every instance that divorce might be called for. I had people line up after the first service saying, ‘Yeah, but what about abuse?’

Well, that's a legal matter. I've called the police on people before where I saw evidence of abuse, because I can't know that and not do something about it. What about abuse? Well, what about abandonment?

Look at 1 Corinthians, chapter 7:15 (NIV) “But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.”

If you're a believing wife, you're here today by yourself and your unbelieving husband is at home. He would be on the golf course, but it rained him out today. The scripture says to stay with him. If he'll stay with you, stay with him. Because it might be through your love of Jesus and your love of him that he'll come to Christ and vice versa,

if you have an unbelieving wife. Here's what I say to people that come to me. They want help with their divorce.

I tell them this, “I don't do divorce. I'm God's man. I'm called to marriage. You had better go get a lawyer.”

There's probably a hardness of men's hearts. God wants peace. There are reasons for divorce, for peace. But it hurts. I will not lie to you.

I'll tell you, “Look, I'll be here for you after the divorce, but I'm not going to help you get one. I'll be here to help you through it.” It's going to hurt worse than if they would have died.

Especially, when there's kids involved; it’s like “the walking dead.” Then you have to keep seeing them every other weekend.

It's painful. Malachi 2:14 (ESV) “… the LORD was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.” Christ calls us to be kingdom citizens. If you're married today and your marriage is in trouble, Jesus as your king, is calling you to a high view of marriage.

Get some help. Get some help. Here's what I know. When wives feel like they've got some health problems, they'll go to the doctor. When men need to go to the doctor, they have to have a heart attack.

First, a body part has to fall off, then they'll go to the doctor. It's the same with marriage. The wife will call me, Our marriage is in trouble. Would you do some counseling with us?

I said, “Well, I can't just counsel one of you.” “Well, I'm asking him, but he says it won't help.”

”Why do we want that pastor to be involved? I mean, we don't need him. What's he know about us?” It's a personal matter, and he won't come in. Then over time, she gives up and she leaves.

Then he calls me. I've been at this a long time, folks. I've been at this for almost 34 years. He calls me. He's crying on the phone.

”Pastor, can I come in to see you?” He wants counseling. She won't come in now. She wanted it, but then her heart broke. Listen, if you're married and you're in trouble right now, if the warning light's flashing in the dash, pull over and get some help.

It doesn't have to be me. I have enough work to do anyway. Don't call me. Call somebody else. I mean, I work all the time as it is.

But if you need help, the Lord's called me to be a pastor and I love people. I'll try to help you. I'm not the answer. Only Jesus can save your marriage. If you're married, stay faithful. Work through the difficulty.

Forgive one another by the grace of Jesus, stay married. If you're divorced and this sermon's really hurting you today, I'm only preaching what God's word says. If you've been divorced and you're sitting there thinking, I just feel beat up. Don't feel beat up. That's the flesh.

That's inappropriate guilt because the Holy Spirit comes at you saying, I have forgiven you through Jesus. Receive forgiveness. Yeah, but I feel like a failure. Okay, take some time and reflect on your part. How did it end?

Did it end in divorce? What was your part? Confess it. If there's a part of you that was in sin, confess it. What does the scripture say?

“If you confess your sin, he is faithful and just to forgive your sin and forgive you of all unrighteousness.”

Deal with it. Don't sweep it under the rug. Deal with it with Jesus and know this: Even when we're unfaithful, He's always faithful.

So if you're divorced, don't leave here thinking, Man, that pastor, I can't go to that church anymore. You haven't really let the Holy Spirit speak to your heart. You haven't really heard God's word on this. You're forgiven. Learn from what was your part and ask the Spirit to teach you how to do better.

If God wants to lead you to marriage again, make sure you lift that covenant up as high and the person you decide to marry that God calls you to, make sure they agree with it. Learn. If you're single and you're one of these young people looking at me right now, these young people on the front row,

I can see all of you. These are older than high school down here. I think I've been seeing this group here for a little while, but we have a lot of young people right here. What's going on? Randy, it just now hit me.

You all took over the first two rows here. Let me just preach this sermon to you. If I didn't have bad knees, I'd just sit down here, but I'm just going to stand.

You're single. Make sure that, when it comes time to get married, the person that you're looking at marrying has the same view of God's word and God's view of marriage as you do. Otherwise, don't do it. I hear a lot of young people today saying, ‘I'm from a broken home.’ I mean, broken homes are everywhere now.

Many people come from a broken home. They're afraid of the marriage commitment. They think, Well, let's just live together and have kids without marriage. That's not the answer; you don't have any covenant.

What you've done is you have said, ‘Well, I don't believe in it enough. I don't believe in you enough to even marry you.’ I'll talk to the ladies for a second. Young ladies, if he says to you, ‘If you loved me, you'd let me,’

he doesn't love you. Hang on to your purity. You hang on until a man comes your way that believes as he should believe. Married, divorced or single, all of us should hold marriage up.

It's God's idea. It wasn't man's idea. One man, one woman for life. Then, he moves on. Let's breathe, okay?

He moves on to a fourth topic and this leads us to our second commitment of faithfulness:

He moves on. He continues to follow His approach of saying, Verse 33, “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God,”

Why do you have to swear anyway?

Stop swearing.

I still remember getting yanked out from under my mother’s car. I was lying under my mom's Buick on the carport so I could sing a song that was on the radio because I'd been forbidden to sing this song. I can't even say it now. I feel like I would get a spanking.

It was ( ) me, ( ) me. They ought to take a rope and hang me. Hang me from the highest tree, Lordy, won't you wait for me. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.” The song had a bad word, at least to my mom's idea. It was a “by word.” I went to singing that song

and by the time I got to that chorus, something grabbed my ankle, yanked me out from under that car and started switching my legs. “Do not swear, young man.” Then Jesus says that we've been swearing since we were young. So you remember what you did, guys, whenever you said that the fish was THIS big; that fish that I pulled out was THIS big.

Come on now, it wasn't that big. When you were 7, 8, 9 years old and you're trying to prove it and you say, “Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye?”

We swear. Then we get older. We get more filthy with it.

He's referring, I think, to Leviticus 19:12 (ESV) “You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.” He covers a bunch of the laws. There's the one, “Do not take the Lord's name in vain.”

Then in Leviticus, ‘don't swear by my name without keeping it. If you're going to take my name, don't do it in vain.’ Apparently, the Pharisees had a way of “loopholes” on oath taking. They said, ‘well, if you're not supposed to use God's name in vain, what if we swore an oath on heaven?

I swear by heaven.’ It's kind of like you've crossed your fingers behind you. I didn't say God, I swear by the earth. What else?

Oh, Jerusalem. I swear by Jerusalem, the Holy city. I swear by my head. Which is another way of saying, I swear by my life,

on my life, it was THIS big. What does Jesus say? He says that, in every instance, you're still swearing by God.

If you swear by heaven, it's the throne of God. If you swear by the earth, it's the footstool of God. If you swear by Jerusalem, it's the city of the great king. Who's the great king? Jesus.

The throne room is in the Holy of Holies. That's the mercy seat. That's the throne you can't swear by. If you swear by your head, who do you think made you? He said something that's a little bit fuzzy now in modern days, in verse 36 “And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.”

A lot of us have been getting “hair color in a box” lately. Some of you show up with purple and green hair. The point is, don't swear on your life.

Then He says, in verse 37, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.” If you're going to say something and somebody asks you something, just let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no.’ Be a person of integrity. Stop speaking in “fine print, so you can find “loopholes,” to get out of your word.

Certainly, that includes the vow of marriage, but it also includes any kind of vow.

In the King James, it says to let your word be ‘yay’ or ‘nay.’

I grew up hearing this story about my uncle Basil; my grandmother would tell this story. My uncle Basil was a toddler. They were at church and he was holding himself. She asks him, “Honey, do you need to use the bathroom?”

He says, “Uh huh.” She asks, “Which one?” She needed to figure out where she needed to take him.

He thought to himself, and he thought, Now if I say a bad word, I'll get in trouble. So he said, “I'm not sure, Mama. It's either ‘yay yay’ or ‘nay nay’.” 1. He wasn't sure which one was number one and which one was number two.

It's either ‘yay yay’or ‘nay nay.’ He wasn’t sure which one.

Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no.’ Ephesians 4:25 (ESV) “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” Speak the truth, but when you speak the truth. Ephesians 4:15 says, “Speak the truth in love.”

That's what I've been trying to do this morning - speak the truth, but let you see the heart of Jesus exposed, even in me, that He loves you. He hates divorce, but He sure loves you. He hates lying, He hates “loopholes, but He sure loves you and me.

So let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no.’ You see, in this Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is not trying to call us to stricter rule keeping. He's trying to demolish the fact that the Pharisees, the most religious of His people, can't follow the law. They need a Savior, they need a new heart. He's trying to prove to them that they need to ask for a new heart.

So what do we do if it's not stricter rules and regulations? Trying harder to stop swearing. I will not swear. I will not swear.

I wish I could stop swearing. I mean, it's not that. It's not just trying to. I'm just going to stay with him even though he's an adulterer and he's breaking our marriage. It's not that.

It's not just trying to muscle your way through. It's to ask the Holy Spirit to tell you how to live a life of faithfulness and integrity,

because when we're unfaithful, He's faithful. When our faithfulness is imperfect, His faithfulness is perfect. What can we do when we feel like a failure? We can look to Jesus.

What can we do when we feel like our life is defined by past failures? We can look to His perfect faithfulness. We can walk in newness of life. We can be empowered by the spirit of Christ. We can be fully forgiven.

The truth is, we've broken the entire law.

We're all sinners. Only one is righteous without sin. His name is Jesus. So today, if you need forgiveness, it's available. If you need strength to be faithful, it's available.

If you need grace, you need a “do over,” you need a new start, it's available in Jesus. So let's answer His call to faithfulness. How do we do that?

Come on Jesus, save me, rescue me, forgive me, cleanse me. Help me to be more like You.

Let's pray.

Lord, I pray first for the person that's here today. You came in on a thin thread. You barely got here. You've been struggling. You need hope.

You need a Savior. Would you pray with me right now, right where you are? “Dear Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner. I've fallen short. But, I believe in You today.

I believe You died on the cross for me, that You were raised from the grave, that You live today. Come and live in me. I invite You to be my Lord and my Savior. Forgive me of my sins. Make me the person You want me to be.

I want to follow You all the days of my life.” If you pray that prayer of faith, believing, the scripture says He will save you. He will adopt you into His father's family. He'll give you the Holy Spirit and empower you to live for Him. Others are here and you're a follower of Jesus, but you've had a failure in marriage or your marriage is in trouble right now, or it was your parents and you still experienced the pain of growing up in a broken home. It has caused you to suffer and it's hurt your view of God.

I don't know where you are today, but this affects all of us. The pain of it. Would you just come to the Lord now and say, “I need forgiveness, I need grace, I need a “do over.”

I need help; save my marriage. Lord, help me know if this is the right one that I'm falling in love with. Help me to guard my heart.” Wherever you are right now, married, divorced, single, wherever you're at, cry out to the Lord. “Jesus, help me.”

In Your name we pray, Amen.

Audio

1. …To God’s view of the marriage covenant.

2. …To God’s standard for truthful communication.

Audio

What to watch next...

Love in the Kingdom

Right Motivation in the Kingdom

Ready to Dig Deeper?