Even More Foolish Than Starting a Land War in Asia

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to.

Saint Matthew, the fifth chapter. Jesus said,.

Christ Our Righteousness and the Law’s Demands

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.

But I say to you, everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. Whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire.

For if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.

Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison. Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Alright, here's the words of Christ. I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

How y 'all doing on that, by the way? How's your righteousness working out? You'll note that our sinful nature, our old Adam is not exactly spiritually adept, not exactly keen on figuring things out. Our old nature hears these words, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, it goes out and says, well sure, I can do that.

In fact, not even really thinking about the implications of it, I would note, it's as foolish as trying to start a land war in Asia, or worse, starting a battle of the wits with the Sicilian when death is on the line.

It's even worse than that. I mean, setting out to establish your own righteousness is a lot like a redneck sitting out in a lawn chair in his driveway and he sees a dangerous situation and says, hold my beer.

It doesn't work. And you'll note that the annals of human history and of church history are littered with the corpses of men, women, and entire church bodies who've set about to establish their own righteousness.

And it never ends well for them, ever. And I would note, in our day and age, y 'all remember Westboro Baptist Church? You guys remember those? Shirley Phelps Roper and the Phelps family? They were notorious for picketing places in the most cringy of situations.

When we were at war in the Middle East, when coffins would come back with military dead, they would protest the funerals and they would hold up signs saying that God hates America and God hates these people and God hates that people.

Right? Apparently God was always really cheesed off. There was no love of God in their church. So I thought it would be a wise idea. I invited Shirley Phelps Roper onto the Fighting for the Faith podcast.

Boy, that was fun. And in the very first few minutes of that podcast, I asked a couple of questions of Shirley Phelps Roper where, in an unguarded moment, she admitted that she is not sinless. That she still sins.

And then at the right time in the interview, we were talking about their behavior and the things they were doing, and then I reminded her of what she said, that she herself is not sinless. And I heard a click and she disappeared.

That was the end of the interview. So, all of that being said, I know a thing or two about trying to establish my own righteousness and I'm going to note something here. It can't work for us. It will never work for us.

And so we are stuck. The words of Christ must be taken literally. Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Christ is not speaking in hyperbole here.

And unless your righteousness does exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees, and by the world's standards and by the standards of self-righteousness, the Pharisees, man, they were way up there. I mean, not only did they tithe and obey God's commands, they created like a whole bunch of other commands.

That if you kept those commands, you'd never break God's commands. And then as far as tithing is concerned, these guys even tithe like 10 of their herbs in their garden. Or as my friends would say in the UK, herbs.

I don't know why they call it that. Herbs in the garden. 10 of the herbs, man. And so you'll note that by the way the world looks at righteousness and people who are holy and do-gooders and things like that, the Pharisees are way up there.

Way up there. And as for me, I'm kind of just merely mortal. I tried this and it never really succeeded. And there's a reason for it. Think of it this way. What was the purpose of the law? Why was it given?

Was it given for us to say, alright, here's 10 rungs of a ladder. All we gotta do is climb those 10 rungs of this ladder and then we're in. We show up into heaven and God says, well done. Way to go. Move over, Jesus.

Somebody else has ascended here, right? That's not the purpose of the law. Paul is very clear. The purpose of the law is to show us our sin. It is a diagnostic tool to let you know that you are steeped in ungodliness and iniquity.

And you say, but I'm really not that bad. Yeah, I know. The Black Knight from Monty Python said the same thing. It's a mere flesh wound, right? But it's worse than you can possibly imagine. Let's just walk through these commandments, shall we?

So God says, you will have no other gods before me. First commandment. We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. And here's the rub. Have you noticed that life is hard? Have you noticed that it's filled with difficulty?

And then all of a sudden, things are going okay-ish. But as they're going okay-ish, all of a sudden, a huge emergency pops up. Maybe it's that you can't pay your bills because you can't afford the gas anymore for your truck.

Inflation has made it so that you've taken a hit financially and you're in dire distress because you cannot figure out how to get the ends to meet. And so what do you do? You turn to a bottle of booze and you disappear into the bottle.

Or maybe you decide that you're just going to run away and do Netflix nonstop and lose sleep. You'll note that whatever it is that you turn to, to comfort you, to assuage your anxieties, that literally is your God.

And you'll note that in human ways of thinking, people have made all kinds of weird things their deities. From money, sex, power, to drugs. You know, just the list goes on and on. Even Etsy can be a drug.

You've got to be careful with that Etsy stuff. I'm just saying. It could be a false deed. It's the thing that you turn to. Food and shopping and stuff like this. So all that being said, I think we can clearly say that we've established that each and every one of us, we are guilty of idolatry.

That's most certainly true. Next one. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. And the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. And this is, I always like to point out, this is the pastor's sin.

A lot of people don't think of it in these terms. But we also are guilty, if you're a layman, of doing similar things along this line. So have you ever said things like, well, you know, the God I believe in, you know, I just believe that certain things are this way and that God is this way and that he would never do that thing.

And always the thing that God would never do is punish sinners for actually sinning. Right? We find some way of retooling things so that evil now becomes love. Evil looks good. Right? And you sit there and this is the deity I believe in.

And you teach others this. Oh, that's a great way of looking at it. We can just abandon the word of God here because you've come up with a great opinion. Right? Yeah, that's called blasphemy. It's a breaking of the second commandment.

And then, if I looked at the church attendance records, do we keep attendance here? I just wonder. You know, the third commandment, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching in his word but hold it sacred, gladly hear and learn it.

You ever woken up on a Sunday and went, you know, it's kind of nice outside. You know, it's not freezing right now. Man, those catfish are calling from the red, you know. Right? And you're thinking, you know, rather than go to church, you know what I should do is like pack up the car and maybe head off to the lake.

Right? And then you miss a Sunday and another Sunday and a few Sundays together and oh yeah, you're really well rested when you come back. Right? But you're going to note here, you've chosen other things above the word of God when you do that.

Or when you look at your watch and say, Roseboro, how long is this sermon going to be, man? Right? People have done that to me, by the way. You'll note that despising God's word and not wanting to hear it and learn it, that's the breaking of the third commandment.

How about this one? Honor your father and your mother. You say, well, I've got that one down. Mom, I know she's a little loony, but we treat her kindly and Dad, of course, he's now passed into glory and so I've got this one covered.

Right? And so they go, well, wait a second here. This also applies to anybody who's in authority over you. You'll note that all authorities, even governmental authority, gets its authority from God through the families.

So let me ask you, have you dishonored the president? Right? This is getting a little uncomfortable, right? Yeah, I may or may not be guilty of doing such things. How about your boss? Do you have a boss?

That guy who always makes these really stupid decisions and you're sitting there going, why hasn't HR sacked this moron? That guy. You'll note you've broken another commandment when you do this. We'll talk about that one, too.

So you're going to note honoring your father and mother extends to your... We're all guilty of that. You shall not murder. You'll note that in our gospel text, which had no gospel in it at all. I was so tempted to say, this is the law of the Lord.

Praise to you, O Christ. So tempted. But you'll note Christ talking about murder. Let's find out if we're a bunch of murderers in here. We've got to be careful how we say that because this is being recorded.

We don't want the authorities to show up. We have to nuance this stuff here. But to Christ, he takes the law. And have you ever talked to somebody and they said something like, I know it says thou shall not steal, but it's only stealing and it's only a sin if you get caught.

Have you ever talked to anybody like this? I actually work with a guy like that. He didn't stay in the job very long for obvious reasons. But all of that being said, you get people who basically say, listen, as long as you haven't really pulled the trigger, blown their head off, or stabbed them and they've stopped breathing, you're not guilty of murder.

Jesus has a completely different view on this. And we're going to note, since he rose from the dead, we might be wise to adopt his view. He says, you've heard that it was said to those of you of old, you shall not murder.

Whoever murders will be liable to judgment. So Jesus now, in a true spinal tap moment, takes the law and cranks it to 11. He says, but I say to you, everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. Whoever says, you fool, will be liable to the hell of fire.

Oops. Yeah.

And then, what about this? Do you have any unreconciled anger towards your brother? Or maybe your brother is angry at you and you haven't reconciled with him and you're the one who needs to fix things.

Remember a few weeks ago I said that I was going to talk about this topic. I knew it was coming up in this text. So if you're suffering or people don't like you because you're a jerk, you're not suffering for Jesus.

You're suffering because you're a jerk. That's how this works. So when you have sinned against somebody, you need to go and reconcile with that person. And Jesus gives the example, if you're offering a gift at the altar, a lot of people talk about this in terms of communion.

It's not really directly talking about communion. It has implications along those lines. But there you are. You've sinned against your brother. You've done him harm. You've done him wrong. And you show up at church, I've got a gift for you, God.

Uh-huh. Right? God's really not interested in your gift at the moment. He says, remember that your brother has something against you. You're going to leave your gift there. Leave it there before the altar and then go.

Get out of here. First, you're going to need to be reconciled to your brother and then come offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accusers while you're going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and judge to the guard.

You get the idea here, right? So let's kind of review where we were in these commandments here. You shall not murder. Yeah, it's true. Y 'all are a bunch of murderers. A bunch of idolatrous, blasphemous, Sabbath-breaking, parent-dishonoring murderers.

Do I need to go on about adultery? You can sit there and go, well, I've been faithful to my wife. That's fine. That's great. But if you've ever looked at anybody lustfully, you're an adulterer. That means we're all that.

Do not steal. Do not bear false witness against your neighbor. Oy. Gossip. It's a big thing here. Social media runs on it. It's also like jet fuel out here in the middle of nowhere. But yeah, that's a sin.

How about coveting? The coveting, sit there and go, well, coveting is a thing that occurs right here in your heart. You don't even have to do anything. You just got to look at your neighbor's combine and go, mmm.

Man, I wish I had that. Every year when Apple has their big premieres to explain what new technology is coming out, I have this deflated feeling afterwards.

Going, the computer I bought last year is so inferior.

Right? Coveting.

Yeah. So let's kind of just hang this out here. You all do not have any righteousness that you can boast of. Neither do I. In fact, y 'all are a mess and so am I. So Christ's words, though, what do we do with them?

Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never, never enter the kingdom of heaven. Well, that rules out universalism, by the way. Some people will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The Law as a Diagnostic Tool and Human Inability

So what are we to do? Well, here is where I have to cheat a little bit. I can't exactly use these texts. Exodus, law. Romans is talking about sanctification and a baptismal reality that is true for all Christians.

And then our gospel text, well, that was all law. So we're going to have to do a little bit of Bible study, shall we? And so we're going to note that long ago in the prophet Jeremiah, talking about a future reality that was coming, the days of the new covenant.

In Jeremiah 23, starting at verse 5, Jeremiah prophesied all these centuries, millennia ago, Behold, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch. He shall reign as king and he will deal wisely.

He shall execute justice and righteousness in the land and in his days Judah will be saved. Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called. Yahweh is our righteousness. This is a prophecy regarding Christ.

And here we hear that term righteousness and it's important because the name by which Christ will be called in this prophecy is Yahweh is our righteousness. We've heard from the prophet Isaiah those important words that he was pierced for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquity. The chastisement, the punishment that brought us peace with God was upon him and that God had laid on him, Jesus, the iniquity of all of us. And so you'll note there's something important that has happened.

God has made Christ to be sin. He has borne your sin in his body on the cross. He languished on the cross being nailed to it, having been scourged, bleeding out, suffering, pain, and the agony of having been separated from his father when he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

This was all because your sin and mine were laid on him. But you'll note that in our epistle text we hear that when we were baptized, we were baptized into Christ's death and into his resurrection. We were buried, therefore, with him and we will also be raised with him.

And the most amazing thing has happened and that is that we have had our sin taken off of us and imputed to Christ and by faith now his sinless righteousness is given to us. Indeed, Jesus is our righteousness.

And now we begin to see it, that there's a way out of it because I can't climb my way up through the law. Something else has to give. Paul writes it this way, before faith came, we were all held captive under the law.

We were imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. Is the law then contrary to the promise of God?

Certainly not. Paul says if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. And the point is righteousness isn't by the law. Try as you might. Be as sincere as you can.

Struggle with sin. Be intentional. Really go out there and try to conquer it and I assure you, you're going to fall flat on your face. It doesn't work like that. And if you think that you're going to be able to take your little well, muddy, yucky, sin-filled good works, because every one of our good works is still sinful, and hold them up to God and say, hey look God, you should let me into heaven, you got another thing coming.

In fact, a good way to think about it is this, is that each and every one of us, not only were we conceived and born in sin as we sung in our hymns today, this is absolutely true, even though we are in Christ, we still have a sinful nature to contend with.

And trying to fight that thing on our own or somehow earn salvation is as foolish as something I used to do when I was a kid. Back in the day, you lived in Southern California, it was pretty much just sunny and 70 all the time, except for when it was hot, it was glorious.

But during the summers, my parents would take us to the beach. And so this is the days before I was a teenager and I discovered girls, because before that, girls were just icky, they had cooties, you just kind of avoided them at all costs, because they would embarrass you.

So when we would go to the beach, I would do this interesting thing, if we would go to the beach and it was low tide, there we go, if we went to the beach and it was low tide, what I would end up doing is I would go out to where kind of the surf line was and just back up a little bit, and I would create a sand fortress.

I would dig a hole and I would put up the walls and I would put these water channels and stuff like that and I would basically defy the surf to destroy my sand fortress. And it only takes a few hours, the low tide eventually starts to go the other way and the high tide starts coming in.

And you know what happened to every single one of my sand fortresses?

Decimated.

Trying to save yourself by your good works is a lot like that. You might start off well, have the best intentions and the best strategy, but nothing is going to hold the tide back. Nothing is going to keep that thing from being decimated.

And so we dare not try to establish our righteousness by our good works. And unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you're doomed. And so you'll note Christ is our righteousness.

Paul himself speaks of that very thing in Philippians chapter 3. In Philippians chapter 3, he makes it so clear that he tried as a Jew to establish his righteousness by being obedient to God's law, as a Hebrew, as a Pharisee, a persecutor of the church.

And he concludes that whatever gain I had, I count that as a loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. And for his sake, for Jesus' sake, I've suffered the loss of all things and I count them all, all of my good works, all of my attempts at establishing my righteousness, I count them as rubbish so that I may gain Christ and be found in him and here are the important words, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ.

This is the righteousness from God and it depends on faith and that's what Christ is offering to all of us. A righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees because it is the very sinless righteousness of Jesus himself that is imputed to you, given to you as a gift, not by your works, but by faith, trusting in the promises of God.

Indeed, Jeremiah's prophecy has come true. Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him and we dare not call him by any other name than he is our righteousness.

And so, good news, brothers and sisters. Although God's law rightly has condemned each and every one of us today and it will condemn us tomorrow, it will condemn us next week and should the Lord carry on into next year, its job is to condemn and show us our sin.

There is another word from God and it is not the law of God. It is not the word spoken from Sinai that just terrorized the people of Israel when they were at Mount Sinai. This is a word of comfort, a word of peace, a word of reconciliation and it's for you.

Yes, even you. Don't think that you're beyond this grace and mercy of God, for Christ has bled and died for the sins of the whole world and that includes you. So trust Jesus. Trust these promises. You now, having been baptized into his death, into his resurrection, you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

Take heart. Your righteousness exceeds, far exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. In fact, the righteousness that you possess by faith is perfect. You are blessed. You are forgiven. You are reconciled.

You are not among those who will never see eternal life. You are those who have it guaranteed by the one who conquered death himself. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Righteous Branch, Imputed Righteousness, and Justification by Faith

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