The Golden Rule Matthew 7:12

The Golden Rule in Context

A copy of God's Word to our study in Matthew chapter 7. Matthew chapter 7, today our primary text is going to be a verse that's very well known by even the world. It's referred to as the Golden Rule. It's in verse 12 here in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

But I would like for us, just as we commonly do, to start reading ahead of that one verse so that we can get our minds within the context of what Jesus is saying here. So we're going to start reading in verse 7 of chapter 7 of Matthew.

And Jesus says, Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

Or, which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him?

So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them. For this is the law and the prophets. So let us stop now that we have read the word of God and pray again. We desperately need God's help to understand the depths of his great word and truth from.

Scripture. So let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you and we ask that you would illuminate our hearts and.

Minds.

God, we desire to know your word. We desire to know your truth. We desire to be true to it, to be honest with it, but God, I pray that you would help us to do so. Because we need you to illuminate your truth to our hearts and minds as it renews us from the inside out.

So God, I pray that you would be honored as we speak of your word here. Guard my lips from error. Lord, help me to speak only truth from your word. Guard the ears of everyone here that is listening. Lord, I pray that everything spoken, everything heard would be in line with your truth.

In Christ's name, amen. Well, this is one of those passages in scripture. One of the few passages in scripture, mind you, that the world applauds and affirms about Christianity. This is one that they see, they see the words of Jesus here in the Sermon on the Mount, this golden rule as a universally unifying, agreed upon truth, don't they?

They love this. Something that all religions and all people can agree upon. After all, it's what it's named for, is the golden rule. They see it as, well this is the gold standard of human morality, is how they approach this passage.

But the fact is that they are merely assuming that they know what Jesus is saying in this particular verse. I mean, after all, it sounds like a lot of what the world's philosophy and other religions have brought to the table, doesn't it?

As a matter of fact, there are other religious leaders in history, even ones that came before Jesus, that have very similar statements. I'm sure some of you are familiar with that. Even before Jesus, I want to share some with you here, Buddha.

Buddha says, this is very similar to the golden rule, this is his golden rule. He says, whatever is disagreeable to yourself, do not do unto others. Confucius says, do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.

Even within Judaism, we have a Jewish rabbi, Hillel, he says, what is hateful to yourself, do not to someone else. We have Greek kings and scholars. One Greek king says, do not do to others the thing which make you angry when you experience them at the hands of other people.

So all of these sound very familiar, don't they? They sound very similar. However, I want you to notice one thing about all of them. There's one distinct thing in each one of the cases of the world and other religions' golden rule, and that is in each case, the emphasis is a negative one.

It's do not do. Do not do this. You might say, well, that's reaching, isn't it? Essentially, they're saying the same thing. They're just saying it from a negative perspective. But I would argue that that is not even remotely the case.

What Jesus is saying with this positive command in the golden rule is fundamentally and categorically different than any of the other world views when it comes to this matter. You see, according to the world's golden rule, all you have to do to be morally upright, to be in good standing with fellow humans, is to not do something bad to them.

Catch that? There's a big distinction here. All you have to do to be morally upright with other people is don't do something bad to.

Them.

For example, let's suppose you're stranded on the side of the highway here. You've had to drop a family member off at the Memphis airport. It's late at night. It's dark outside, and all of a sudden, you have car trouble, and you're stranded on the side of the highway, and you're out in the middle of one of those cotton fields so you don't have cell service.

It's dark.

You don't want someone to run you over, do you? You do not want to be run over while you're out trying to figure out what's going on with.

Your car.

So according to the world's standard of the golden rule, all they have to do is make sure that they get over into the left lane a little bit and avoid hitting you because you don't want to do to others what you don't want done to you, right?

I don't want to be hit by the car. So to be morally upright, they're okay. To be morally innocent, all they have to do is not hit me with their car. Sounds decent, doesn't it? But on the other hand, according to Jesus' golden rule, what I want done to me is for someone to stop and help me.

So if the tables are turned, and you're stranded on the side of the road, my response should be whatever I want done to me. Not the negative, but the positive. Do you see the distinction here? Jesus is the only one that brings this rule in this positive way.

Once we realize this distinction, this command from Jesus, it goes from this nice little feel-good slogan that we can put on a t-shirt or plaster up on a wall and use as a reminder to be good, like a reminder to, hey, don't run over your neighbor with your car, and I'm okay, to this terrifyingly overwhelming burden that no person could ever live up to.

Do you see the distinction? This shouldn't surprise us, though. If you have been with us throughout this Sermon on the Mount this entire time, you know that Jesus has been bursting bubbles the entire time, hasn't he?

That's what Jesus has been doing with this sermon. The religious leaders that are listening to him there, the ones that thought that they knew everything, they knew the law of God, they had taken the law of God and they had reinterpreted it to fit an attainable, achievable list of do's and don'ts.

If you remember, if you were with us back when we first started it, they said, the religious leaders said, hey, as long as you don't commit the act of adultery, you're morally innocent.

To the law.

As long as you don't actually follow through with the act. And what does Jesus do? Jesus blows that out of the water, didn't he? Jesus comes in and he says, hey, let me tell you, if you've even looked at another person with lustful intent in your heart and in your mind, just a thought, guess what?

You've committed adultery. And not only have you committed adultery, now because you've committed that one thought of adultery, you are now guilty of breaking the whole law. You see, Jesus is bursting bubbles left and right.

And why is that? Why is someone guilty of the whole law? Because we've sinned against an infinite holy God. That's what we've done when we break the law of God. We've sinned against a God that is infinite.

So even the smallest, or seemingly in our minds, what we would perceive as the smallest of sins is of great insult to the creator. So how, how though, did we sin so greatly against God by merely thinking something?

Let's keep in line with this idea of adultery. Why in the world is it such a great sin for merely thinking it? Because we want to justify our sin, don't we? We want to be like, I didn't act, I didn't murder the person.

I just hate them. Or I didn't actually commit adultery. I didn't cheat on my spouse. I just had this little thought that kind of creeped in. How can that be so bad against God? And it's because that thought, that one simple thought, devalued, dishonored, and disrespected.

Him.

How did it do so? How did it disrespect him? It disrespected him by devaluing, dishonoring, and disrespecting one of his image bearers. Are you trekking with me? That lust in your heart devalued, disrespected, and dishonored an image bearer of God.

And because of that, you have directly dishonored, devalued, and disrespected the creator. You see, the religious leaders had this high view of God, didn't they? We've talked about it before. They had this really lofty view of God that seems like, oh my goodness, I don't even feel like I have that lofty view of God.

I want it, but man, they wouldn't even write the name of God, would they? They took it very seriously. They had this super idea of, oh, God is up here with the law of God, the law of God. They had this high and lofty view of God, but yet at the same time, they had this low view of man.

There's an issue here.

There's a very low view of man. Now, on the flip side, whereas the world, especially in today's secular culture, they've done the opposite, haven't they? They flipped that. They had this very low view of God, if a view of God at all.

They despised God's law, and they had this lofty view of man up here. So the religious leaders, lofty view of God, low view of man. The world has flipped that upside down. So what do these two things, what do these two views have in common?

What do both of them have in common together? Because of the disproportionate perspective of man versus God and God versus man, they now have a low view of God and a low view of man, both of them, equally.

Because you cannot have an appropriate view of man without a robust view of God.

Right?

And you cannot have an appropriate view of God outside of his revealed truth of who he.

Is.

And part of that revealed truth of who he is is the fact that we, his people, I'm going to say his people, his creation in whole, even people that aren't his children, but his creation are made in his image.

Even the lost world, even the worst pagan you can fathom in your mind, the worst, lowest of the low person is still an image bearer of God. And that is why God gave us the law and the prophets. Trek with me here.

God gave us the law and the prophets. He gave us this in the Old Testament, we've talked about that before, this is his revealed word in all of the Old Testament, right? We have the law, we have the mosaic law, we have the moral law, we have the judicial law, and we have the prophets, we have his revealed truth and his word, and he gave it to us to point to his holiness and the fact that we were made in his image.

We call it the imago dei, the image of God that we bear as humans. And because of his holiness, and because we bear that image, we too must be holy. And part of that comes with the fact that each person is called to be treated with dignity and respect.

Now this is why it must have blown their minds, these religious leaders, when Jesus responded the way he did later on here in Matthew. As a matter of fact, turn with me. Matthew chapter 22. Just flip over a few chapters here.

I want you to see this. Matthew chapter 22, starting in verse 36. This here, the Pharisees had heard that Jesus had kind of silenced the Sadducees, that he had kind of put them in their place at this point.

And so they come, and they've got one of their guys, it says he's a lawyer, he's a Pharisee who's a lawyer, so he probably thinks he's a big shot. If you've known most lawyers, not all lawyers, I know some great lawyers, but a lot of times these guys like that, they kind of know it all, so I'm sure this guy comes in thinking I can use my powers of persuasion and my mind to trick this guy.

And I'm going to trick him, and I'm going to corner him here in front of everyone, and we're going to kind of put him in his place. So here in verse 36, Matthew 22. He comes in, he says, teacher. Now how pandering is that, isn't it?

He knows these people around are looking at Jesus like a teacher, and he comes in, he doesn't mean it, this isn't from the heart, he's like, teacher? We'll call you teacher here before I crush you, before I corner you into this.

He says, teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Now remember, these Jewish leaders, these religious leaders, had this, in their minds, this high view of God. And so they, in their minds, knew what the most important commandment was.

And so they're going to try and push him to have to say it. That's what they want Jesus to do. In verse 37, Jesus responds, and he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the great and first commandment. And I'm sure at this point, these Pharisees, they're nodding their head, yes, that's right. While inwardly, like, he didn't fall for the trap. You know, so Jesus is saying, hey, this is the first commandment, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.

This is the greatest commandment. This is it, right here, this is the pinnacle of the law, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and they would say, amen. And then Jesus goes on, look at verse 39.

He says, and a second is like it. Notice that, a second is like it. He is now adding something to the greatest commandment. This one is equal to it. This one is just like it. This one is of equal value here.

He says, and a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Notice here is another positive assertion. It's just like the passage here in the Sermon on the Mount, isn't it? To do what you would like others to do to you, but to treat your neighbor as yourself.

In verse 40 he says, on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. You notice that? Notice the word all here? He's saying, hey you, religious leaders, people are supposed to be teachers of Israel here.

You, you're only seeing half the law. That's all you've seen. You are seeing half the law, and by only seeing half the law, you have missed the whole law. You're so fixated on love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then you are turning around and ignoring your brother.

You're devaluing the next part of the law that is of equal value to it that God has prescribed for you, and because of that you've missed the forest for the trees altogether. I mean, essentially Jesus is quoting the Ten Commandments, isn't he?

I love how he does it there in that verse. They come to him and they're like, hey, what's the greatest commandment? And he's like, oh, the greatest commandment, yeah, well of course, that's the first four commandments.

It's like he lifts them off, and their minds, you know, they're going through them. He's like, have no other God before me. Don't make any graven images. Don't take the Lord's name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day.

And they're like, yeah, and he goes, oh, but equal to it are the next six. Remember the next six? Honor your father and mother. Shall not kill, shall not commit adultery, shall not steal, shall not bear false witness, shall not covet what your neighbor has.

All of the law and the prophets is summed up in these ten. The Ten Commandments are merely a summary of everything throughout all of the law that God had laid out. And Jesus essentially quotes them. He says, what's the greatest law?

All the Ten Commandments. So what's the greatest law?

All of the law.

Because the Ten Commandments are a summary of all of the law. Everything comes from that. But I want you to notice that the law of God starts somewhere. There is a first commandment there that he starts off with.

It starts with God, doesn't it? The law starts with God. You shall have no other gods before me. And we always must start there. But that's not where the commandment's in. More than half of these Ten Commandments, the last six of the commandments have to do with our relationship to man.

More than half of them. Four about God. Six is a relationship with man. And relationship to God. Now hear me out. I want to be very clear about this. By no means does this imply that man is on equal standing or value as God.

Do not hear me say that. He is by no means on equal standing with God. Man is not God. God is holy. We are not. God is infinite. We are finite. God is the creator. We are the creature. There is a distinction.

But as we talk about this in the Law and the Prophets, I want us to understand the balance here. Still yet, God has created man uniquely. Because man, we, people, are the only creature in all of the universe that is bearing his image.

That's unique. I would say that's something different. So what does that mean? The fact that we bear his image. What does that mean? It means that whatever you do to the creature, you are doing to him.

Whatever you do to the creature, you are doing to him. Whatever you do to man, you are doing to God. Because man bears the image of God. And this, I think, is why David says in Psalm 51, this is David's cry of repentance to God, right?

Psalm 51 in verse 4, what does he say? He says, against you, you only have I sinned and none was evil in your sight. Against you, you only. You've got to remember though, as he's praying this prayer, this prayer is in response to him committing adultery with Bathsheba.

Conceiving a child. Trying to cover it up by bringing her husband home from war. And then not being able to cover it up, so then having her husband murdered.

Okay?

It's a lot of sin lining up one after another, isn't there? There's a lot of sin that's involved in here. And he is praying this prayer, and it seems like he has the audacity to pray against you and you only have I sinned.

There's a lot of people involved in this that he's sinned against, isn't there? But David says in his prayer, no God, against you and you only have I sinned. But David isn't shrugging off his sin against Bathsheba.

He's not shrugging off his sin against Uriah, her husband. He's not shrugging off his sin against the nation of Israel, the people within Israel that he's tasked to care for and oversee. He's not shrugging that sin off.

He's merely pointing to the fact that him treating them this way, him sinning against them, is a direct act of treason against the Creator who created them in His image. That's what David is praying. Against you and you only have I sinned.

I sinned against your image bearer, and that is a direct act of treason against you. A sin against an image bearer is a sin against God. That is why God's law points us to justice and mercy. If you look at the Old Testament law, what do you see?

You see justice. You see righteousness. You see mercy within that law. The religious leaders of Jesus' day, they couldn't understand this. They had detached justice and mercy and thought that they were honoring God so greatly while dishonoring their fellow man.

In a lot of cases, maybe they didn't feel they were directly dishonoring their fellow man, but at least indifferent to their fellow man. See the disconnect here? Now our secular age, I'm giving you these extremes from both sides so we can kind of see everything in the middle and kind of figure out where it is that maybe some of us land in this.

But our secular age, they do just the opposite, don't they? They want to detach God from justice and mercy and think that they're honoring man while merely devaluing man by denying the Imago Dei. Did you catch that?

They want to detach justice and mercy from God. They want to remove God from the scenario, but they still want man to be honored, but they're dishonoring man by devaluing him, by removing that image-bearer title.

And we as a church today, I would say that we have a unique struggle in that we have really an infusion of both of these godless worldviews that plague us. Both of them have penetrated the church of today.

Let me give you some examples. There are the social justice type. I think we deal with that quite a bit in our culture now. This social justice type that have little to no thought of the God of the Bible.

I mean, they claim him by name. Most of the social justice warriors that I know of within the church, they say, yes, the gospel of Jesus Christ. I love the Lord. I love the Word of God. That's what informs my idea of social justice.

I'm not going against social justice. I'm saying the world's perspective of social justice, okay? So what they're doing is they're swinging the pendulum, though, because they have very little teaching about God.

And you can tell it because they would much rather do outreach and special projects, social things and social projects than to gather and dig into God's very Word. They do very little of that. They stay very busy trying to externally help man.

Now that sounds like a good thing, doesn't it? But it's imbalanced. They're taking God out of the equation, essentially. As a matter of fact, they're making it even worse than the secular age. They're using the name of Christ, and they're using a watered-down, distorted gospel to further their humanistic perspective.

And then we have that extreme in the church. Before we get to the next extreme, I want to point out maybe the squishy middle within the church, which is where most of the church in America probably lands right now, the seeker-sensitive type, right?

The types that they don't really ever dig into God's Word, but they also don't really ever do any meaningful outreach. That's the majority of American church today, isn't it? I mean, they do the occasional event, like outreach event.

It's kind of a surface level in order to keep their wealthy soccer moms from feeling guilty about themselves. But they never really do anything. They don't teach the Word, and they don't act upon the Word.

And that's most church today. But let's talk about the other extreme. We have another extreme here. We have the social justice types. We've got the center here of the seeker-sensitive. But then, let's sit a little closer to home for us.

We have the frozen chosen. You know the types, right? The frozen chosen. Those who, like the Pharisees, pride themselves in their lofty view and knowledge of God while doing very little to nothing for image bearers.

Claiming, like David, that they love the law of God. Mmm, I love the law of God. I meditate on it while I sit here on my behind and do jack squat for his image bearers. We see these three examples more often than not in the church today, don't we?

So I guess there's nothing new under the sun. But it's penetrated the church in this way. What do all three of these have in common? What do all three of these go hand in hand together in? They fundamentally misunderstand and miss God's law altogether.

Because they've only seen a portion of it. The first is focused on man and outward. And the last, focused on God and ignoring his commands. So they've missed the law. They've missed the law and prophets.

So how about you?

Let's make it a little personal here. I got beat up on this this week, so it's your turn.

How about you?

Does your worldview, does your ministry paradigm, lean towards one of these unbalanced, distorted views of the law of God? How could you know if it did? How can we tell? Well, I'm going to give you an answer today.

We can tell by understanding Jesus' words here in the Sermon on the Mount. These words from Jesus and this golden rule is like holding up a mirror and getting a brutally honest picture of reality. When Jesus says, So whatever you wish that others will do to you, do also to them.

For this is the law and the prophets. Did you catch that? This is the law and the prophets. Do you really love the law of God the way you say you do? Because if you do, you will seek to obey this. This golden rule will be a golden rule for you to pursue.

So do you? Do you always, at every moment, every waking moment of your life, do to everyone in your life what you wish they would do for you? Now think about that for a second. That is a wildly provocative, wide open, endless mandate.

It's not in the negative like the world gives. The world wants to give us an out. They're like, hey, don't do what you don't want done to you. Don't run over that neighbor that's on the side of the road.

Don't do that.

It gives you an out, doesn't it?

Ah, I feel good.

I've accomplished the law. I've done as I'm supposed to do. I did not do what I didn't want done. But Jesus is like, hey, you must do whatever you want done to you. And the way he phrases this is open-ended to every single individual at every single moment of every bit of your life.

That just got real, didn't it? It calls you to action. It calls you to self-sacrifice. It calls you to radical selflessness because, let's be honest, that's exactly what we want from others. Think about what you actually want others to do to you and now put that burden on yourself for every single person on the planet.

Now, see, Jesus' words here, just like the law of God. Well, actually, they are the law of God. This is the law of God. But Jesus' words leave no wiggle room. Do you want to live righteously? Do you want to be in good standing with God?

Okay.

Then fulfill every single requirement of the law. That means right now, in this moment, your responsibility is to do for everyone in this room what you want done for you at all times. So whatever you wish that others would do, do also to them because this is the law and the prophets.

Die to self and live to everyone else. Y 'all feeling the weight yet?

Good.

The law is heavy, isn't it? Now, if you're paying attention, by this point you have come to the astute conclusion that this is utterly impossible. You cannot accomplish this. It is purely and completely impossible for any one person to carry out.

No one is capable of this kind of self-sacrifice at all times.

But hold on.

Is that really true? Can't say no one. It's our Savior. In the beginning of this sermon, as Jesus is preaching, in Matthew chapter 5, verse 17, Jesus says, Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Amen. Our triune God knew that we were incapable. So, before the foundations of this world, within the perfect counsel of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,.

A perfect plan,.

A plan that was never birthed or contrived, but eternally purposed. This plan was to send the second person of the Godhead, Jesus, to come. To be amongst us. To take on human flesh. And He did that, according to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, not to do away with God's perfect law.

For His law is perfect. It will never end. There is nothing to take away from it. Because it is the character of God. It is righteousness. It is justice. It is mercy. That perfect law, He did not come to do away with it, but to fulfill it, to carry it out perfectly.

Okay, Saint. At this point is when you start checking out and going, okay, these are the things we know. I know this, Pastor. This is the part of the sermon where you do the gospel presentation. And I know that part.

That would be the biggest mistake, is to check out right now. Because guess what I need to hear every second of every day? And guess what you need to hear every second of every day?

Is this truth.

That's the only thing we need to hear. Over and over again. Because it must stand as a reminder. We must be reminded of this standing. God could have left us condemned under the law to bear the weight of do unto others as you would have them do all the time.

He could have left us under that weight, knowing that we could never live up to it. But praise God. Praise God. Well, just like Paul said in Romans 4. Paul said for the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world.

Heir.

A joint heir, right? A child of God. To inherit the kingdom. To inherit eternity. That he would be the heir of the world. Did not come through the law. But through the righteousness of faith. Faith in what?

Christ alone. And in Abraham's case it was a coming Messiah. He knew God promised to send a sacrifice. One that would live a life that I'm incapable of living and I have faith in that. And it's coming.

And now we're on the other side of it. And we get to look because we have verses like John 3 .16, don't we? For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever believes should not perish but have eternal life.

Right?

We get to look back at that and see this great truth. And now those of us who have been granted faith share in His righteousness. We now have the power, get this, to obey His law. We now have the power to obey His law.

This is why Jesus says just a couple verses after He said He didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill it in Matthew 5. In verse 19 He says,. Therefore whoever relaxes 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. He then goes on in this sermon to give us examples of this righteousness that are leading up to this verse today, the golden rule.

So whatever you wish that others would do to you do also to them for this is the law and the prophets. Notice how the sentence starts off,. So, so, what's Jesus doing here? What is He saying? Notice we read the first few verses.

Jesus is reminding us in those previous five verses that we talked about two weeks ago of our eternally secure position as children of God. Those who get to come into the throne room and ask our Heavenly Father for anything.

So, in light of that, according to that great truth, what more do you need? This gives us the power to live a life of sacrifice. A life sacrificially laid down for others, doesn't it? We now have the power to do so.

A life that is being poured out for other image bearers. Because here's the thing, here's what it boils down to. If you're in Christ, you don't have any needs.

We think we do.

I need the new iPhone. I think it would be awesome. I need one of those new Corvettes.

Those are awesome.

Do I need it? No, I don't need it. It would be bad for me to have it. But I have everything I need, don't I? I don't need anything. Your Father is the King. He owns everything. So guess what? What does that mean?

Your Father is the King. He owns everything.

You're heirs.

You own everything. You have no need. Because you were bought. You were bought by the blood of Christ, weren't you? You now own everything. You were made sons and daughters of the Most High King. And because of that, your Father, who owns a cattle on a thousand hills, and wields everything according to His perfect will, has granted you, through His Son, unfettered access to Him.

As we've seen in the previous five verses there. If you remember the example from two weeks ago, I said who has the audacity to wake up the King in the middle of the night for a glass of water? His Son.

That's it. No one else dares. But His Son does it. Anytime He's thirsty. And what God is saying, what Jesus is saying, because of me, because of your position now, you now have that position. You now have that right.

So, in light of that overwhelming promise, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them. You see it? See how it's connected? This is the Law and the Prophets. We cannot have a high view of God and a low view of man, and we cannot have a high view of man and a low view of God, because both of those end up with a low view of both.