The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Matthew. Jesus said, you are the salt of the earth. But a salt has lost its taste. How can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand. And it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill. Virtually I tell you until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them, will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The gospel of the Lord, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Oh, man, please be seated. If you had asked the average person today, will you go to heaven? You'll get a lot of answers along these lines. Well, I think I'm a pretty good person. Hopefully, the good I've done is outweigh the bad. And at least, I'm not like that person. There are places in Scripture that kind of see the teach that. Be holy for I am holy. Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Offer your bodies as living sacrifice. Holy and pleasing to God. And the last sentence in our gospel this morning, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees. I don't know about you, but I looked at those verses in the past and thought, well, if that's the case, I'm toast. Have you? At any point? But then you get to the crazy passage in Isaiah and others like it. And all that gets thrown out of the window. And the wonderful thing is when we understand how Christ and the cross fits into all of this, then it starts to make a whole lot of sense. See what most people think about being a good Christian. What being a good Christian is actually about being good or being religious. Getting our religious duck center row, that's what it means to be a good Christian. The more religious or spiritual that you're able to be, the more stature, the more clout you somehow have with God. And I'm here to tell you, all of that is bunk. That's not true at all. Your relationship with God has nothing to do with how many times you show up to church, how much money you give or how sincerely that you think you pray. The only way that you and I are accepted by Christ or accepted by God is being found in Christ. Because He has been accepted. Because He is acceptable to His Father. You and I are accepted as long as we are united in Him. So we're going to look at these scriptures and see what I'm talking about. I'll show you what I mean. This Isaiah passage is almost comical. Did you catch the beginning of this? Isaiah, God tells Isaiah, announce to my people their rebellion to the house of Jacob their sins. And then what does he say? He says this, you come to church too much. He says you obey my laws too well. He says you actually ask me for righteous judgments. How dare you? You delight in my ways. You're too righteous. That's what he's saying. What in the world is God talking about? Well, He points out the problem. Because as He goes in and He describes all the good things that they're doing, He quotes Israel as saying this. Why do we fast but you don't see? Why do we humble ourselves? But you don't notice. See, this was their attitude towards God. And God answers them. And He says you serve your own interests on the fasting. And then to drive the point home, He says this, you come to church to fight. And your fighting is wicked. See, this passage in Isaiah is an example of what it means to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons. God says to Israel, your religion is worthless. You think you're being perfect. Or you think that you being perfect draws you closer to me, but you are so far away from me. When we make our religion about ourselves, those acts themselves become a stench to God. They stink. And did Israel even have a clue? No. They had no clue that they were walking in wickedness. They were actually confused why God wasn't responding to all of their good things. And most of the world thinks that doing good things, being religious, will somehow get you into heaven. It will somehow get you into God's favor, all the good things that you do. And some in this room might even think that. But if all we're doing in our religious acts is trying to earn God's favor, then our doing gets us nowhere. We might as well not do it at all. God says to Israel this. He says quit pointing your finger, quit speaking evil, serve others out of humility and submission to God. Then you'll be like light in the darkness. Your gloom will be changed like the new day sun. Sounds like a piphany much? He says God will guide you. He'll bring water to your parched soul. He will make your bones strong. Paul addresses the same thing in Corinth. The lecturing passages are amazing because he's dealing with a church in Corinth that is just wrapped up in the world's ways. Their mindset on how the church should operate was more focused on how the world operates than God's way of doing things. And some in the church at Corinth had rejected Paul and his authority because he didn't quite fit the world's picture of strength. See an apostle should come in strength and empower. But Paul actually says he came in weakness and fear. An apostle should have cunning arguments. An apostle should sound impressive. Paul comes proclaiming one thing and one thing only. The story of Jesus. And in response to this, Paul points out that God's wisdom is very, very different than the wisdom of the world. And serving God is actually opposite of what the world would naturally think. Because instead of being about strength, it's actually about weakness. It's about our weakness. Somehow our weakness and serving God coincides. And the reason is this. And he points this out. Right in the middle of this passage, it's because at its core Christianity is about a crucified savior. This would have been anathema to everybody in the world in that day. Not just Jews, but Jews in Greek alike. Crucifixion was public. It was degrading. It was shameful. And it was a sign that you were guilty. And so a crucified person. They were put out next to the road. More people would come by and as they did, they would hurl insults. Day in and day out until that poor person died. Because anybody on a cross was guilty. And the fact that Christianity centered around a crucified man was absolutely preposterous. As a side note, it's an apologetic for the truth. It's an argument that everything we believe is true. Because nobody would make up a story to create a religion about the center figure having been crucified. Nobody's going to respect that. And yet what Paul says, this is exactly God's wisdom. This is exactly what God meant to do. This is how he works. Because what the world sees hanging on the cross is failure and shame. But for us, it's the path to eternal life. And what this means for us, there's so much to say about that. I don't want to get sidetracked. But what this means for us is that Christianity is not about being perfect. It's not about our perfection. It's not about us doing all the right things. We don't have to be perfect in order for God to work through us. Or even to accept us, God can and does work through our failures, our brokenness, our sin, all the ways we're not put together. He works through life's reversals. He even works through catastrophes, catastrophes of our own making. He works through those. Because these are exactly the places that he shows up. It's not in the places of great strength and wisdom and power and cunning and might. It's in weakness and frailty and shame. That's where God is at work. We don't have to be impressive to be accepted by God. It's in our weakness and shame, our very powerlessness that God is at work. And here's the other thing. What this also tells us is that Christianity is not some sort of partnership between God's work and my work. You know, God gets us so far and then I got to do the rest and somehow we're working together. It's all God's work. If we only bring weakness, brokenness and shame to the table, we have to rely on God and His power. This doesn't mean that we sit back on our hunches and do nothing. That's all about God, so I'm just going to go hang out at the bar and have a beer and hope He does something. That's not what it's about. And this is what the point of the gospel. The gospel says, first of all, that Jesus says you are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. And He even says, live this way so that God may look at your works and give... So people may look at your works and give glory to God. And then He gets even more confusing when He starts talking about the law. Did you notice? Have you ever seen those two sections you're put together? Be salt, be light. And no, by the way, let me throw this yoga perfection on you. Whoever breaks the commandments, it's not going to be good for you. And then He gets to this last verse and says, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, there was no greater or more righteous person religiously at that time than the scribes and the Pharisees. And Jesus says, your religion has to even exceed theirs. You depressed yet? I mean, that seems to throw a wrench in everything that I've just said. Until you understand the key to this whole passage is when Jesus says He came to fulfill the law. If we don't get that, then we will live our lives thinking it's all about us. It is all about us fulfilling every jot until the law. That's what we will think. Unless we understand that Jesus came to fulfill that. Why does He have to fulfill that? It's because there is no way on earth that you and I can fulfill the law. Have you read that part of the Bible? I mean, it's not just the 10 commandments. That's the easy part. We could probably convince ourselves that we keep the 10 commandments. But, you know, the next 30 chapters are the addendum. And then you got the book of Leviticus. No, no, no. There's no way we could live up to that. And that's the point. There's way too much. And yet, it is still on us to fulfill it. And we can't. So we're in a dilemma. And that's where this phrase comes. That's where Jesus says, I fulfill it. Why is that important? Because he comes to fulfill the law on our behalf. He does all of that work for us. We receive His righteousness so that we may be perfect. And we are perfect in Him despite the fact that you and I all know that we are still broken and messed up. Anybody here want to confess it? You're not broken and messed up. I mean, how do we live our lives and not go absolutely crazy? It's through Christ. That's the point. He comes. He fulfills the law. And then the rest begins to make sense. Because he doesn't say, let yourself righteous religiosity shine before men. That's what he says. Let your good works done in your own strength shine. That's what's going to bring the light to the world. He says, let your light shine. That light is only the hope that we have in Christ. That's what shines. It's what we have to give to the world. Because that light of hope shines despite the fact that we are still messed up creatures just trying to do our best. We don't come to God on the basis of all the good things we come. We only come on the basis of Christ and the things that the thing that He has done for us, which is to go to the cross. And because He did that, we are united to Him in all the perfection that He has done in fulfilling the law is credited to us. That's where our light shines. And then all of the righteous things that we continue to do, the ways that we're still trying to do good, we're still trying to fulfill the law. We still give to the church. We still come and pray and worship. All of that, all of the good that comes from that is Christ working in us so that He might get the glory. There's absolutely no way that in and of ourselves our righteousness can exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. The only way that that can happen is if we are united to Christ and His righteousness shines in us. That's what it means to be the light of the world. Do you remember when I asked you recently, there's a few weeks ago, why do you think that so many people hung around Jesus? I mean, He just drew all sorts of crowds. And it wasn't the free bread. People hung around Jesus because living in darkness stinks. It's awful. It's depressing. It's hopeless. And it was that light that He represented. The light came to the nations. The light dawned upon them. It was His light emanating. And it's that light that emanates from us that shines forth into the world. And that happens when we stand humbly before God, not trumpeting all of our works, but saying, here I am, I'm broken, I messed up, but I believe in you, and I know you went to the cross for me. The world doesn't need to see our religiosity. The world needs to see more than anything else is our weakness so that our hope in Christ, His light that dwells within us, that that shines out. And when we're trying to light our light based on our own efforts, there's that conflict with His light. We're called to get out of the way and let our weakness just be our weakness, but say, listen, this, this is the hope that I have. That's the light that shines. That's the way people are going to be drawn to Christ. This is when we get out of the way. Just be honest. Let His light shine. Let that light change the world. Amen.