WWUTT 1953 Be Perfect, Part 2 (Matthew 5:48)

Jesus said, you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. The scriptures tell us,

Old Testament and New, be holy as God is holy, and the thing He demands,

He also gives. When we understand the text. This is

When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary that we may be equipped for every good work in Jesus Christ our

Lord. Please tell others about our ministry at www .utt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. So we come back to this verse today, which finishes up Matthew chapter 5.

Looking at this from the Legacy Standard Version in Matthew 5, 48, Jesus said the following,

Therefore, you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

And therefore is being said in light of everything else that came before it in the

Sermon on the Mount thus far. We're finishing up chapter 5 of the Sermon on the Mount. We're just a third of the way through.

We still have chapters 6 and 7 to go. We'll get into chapter 6 next week.

But first with this statement that closes out Jesus going through the law and telling us how we are to live as part of the kingdom of Christ.

We must obey His law, and we must be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. But the very thing that God demands of us is the very thing

He gives. He demands us to be righteous, and He gives us His righteousness.

The righteousness we are clothed in by faith in Jesus Christ. So let's finish up this sermon that I did a couple of years ago on Matthew 5, 48.

Here is part 2 of You are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Jesus was asked, what is the greatest commandment in the law? And you know what

His answer was, right? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Think about this, ladies and gentlemen. There has never been a second of your life where you've done that.

You have never loved the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, all of your mind, and all of your strength.

Whatever love that you can give God will always be imperfect and unworthy of Him.

So how is it that God indeed loves us, and we can pray before God, and the

Father listens to us, and He loves us, and He disciplines us, and trains us, and sanctifies us?

How is this accomplished? How are we accepted by God? It's by faith in Jesus Christ that we have

His righteousness. So that, once again, just as John MacArthur had said about 2

Corinthians 5, 21, when God looks at us, He looks at us as though He sees

His own Son. And that's how we know we have the approval of God.

Going on in 1 John 2, verse 2, He is Christ, the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

This simply means that there is no other Savior. Everyone who is anyone in the world who is ever going to be saved is only saved by Jesus Christ, the

Savior of the world. Verse 3, and by this we know that we have come to know

Him if we keep His commandments. How do you know that you have come to know

God? For you keep the commandments of Christ. Jesus said to His disciples in John 14, 15, you will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments.

We already know that God loves us. He made us, though He knew we would sin and rebel against Him.

And then He redeems us by giving His Son as an atoning sacrifice, as a propitiation for our sins.

Romans 5, 8, God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, as Pastor Tom had said last week, while we were enemies of God, Christ died for us.

And as God has loved His enemies, so we must also love our enemies. By this we know that we have come to know

Him if we keep His commandments. We know that He loves us by what He has already demonstrated and shown to us through His Son.

We show that we love God when we do what He says. Jesus will even get to that in the

Sermon on the Mount at the very end when we get to chapter 7. He says, the one who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a man who builds his house upon the rock.

But the one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like the foolish man who built his house upon sand.

And the storms come and beat against the house. The one who has built his house on the rock who is

Christ, that house still stands. But the one who has built his house on sand that is shifting, when the storms come against that house, it will fall.

And Jesus goes on to say, and great will be the fall of it. We must not only hear what

Jesus has said in this word, we must also do what He says. As James says, faith without works is a dead faith.

We're not saved by our works. But if we have faith in Christ, we will work.

There will be works that we will do that demonstrate that we belong to God and that we love

Him when we obey the commandments of Christ. By the grace of God, He accepts us and He receives us even though we don't do that perfectly.

We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. My friends, you've never done that perfectly.

You will get to heaven having never done that perfectly. And yet when you walk through those gates, you will hear your

Savior say, well done good and faithful servant. Now great is your reward.

I'm reminded of that command constantly to love God because my surname Hughes means heart, mind, and strength.

That's what my last name means. So I'm consistently reminded of the call to love

God with all that I am. Yesterday morning, our daughter Aria came into the bedroom and climbed into bed with Becky and I.

And somehow we got into conversations about our friends, people that we know and their last names.

And Aria, who's six, she started asking questions about why people have the last names that they have.

We talked about our friends, the Armstrongs. And she said, well, we know why the

Armstrongs are called the Armstrongs because they have arms and they're strong. We talked about our friend,

Sonia Walker. Well, we know Sonia likes to walk. So she's called

Sonia Walker. We talked about the Reeds. Well, they like to read.

So that's why they're called the Reeds. We talked about the Bucks. And I asked

Aria, so why are they called the Bucks? And she said, because they like Buckies. And then she looked at me and she said, but what about Hughes?

What does that mean? And mom chimed in, well, it means we like huge hugs.

Yeah, and then we hugged. But she didn't leave it at that. She wanted to know. No, I really mean it. What does

Hughes mean? What does our last name mean? And I said to her, it means heart, mind, and strength.

And she just laid there and said, heart, mind, and strength. And I asked her, what have we been told to do with all our heart, mind, and strength?

And even my six -year -old daughter knows. Love God. And I said, yes, sweetheart.

With everything that we are, we are to love God. And we can't do that perfectly.

But our Father is gracious to us. And that we have an advocate. One who paid the price for our sins.

And then ascends into heaven to the right hand of the throne of God, where he speaks favorably for us on our behalf.

And as Paul again said in Galatians 2 .20 is, Christ gave himself for me. The life

I now live in the flesh, I'm going to live by faith. Verse 4 of 1

John 2, whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments, is a liar.

And the truth is not in him. My friends, we need to have more than a conversion experience.

We need to give our lives to God. And live for his service.

Live for his name. Jesus did everything to the glory of God.

Our brother Andrew shared that this morning as he was quoting from Philippians chapter 2. It's in verse 11, where it says that Jesus did all these things to the glory of God the

Father. As Jesus did this, so must we. We must also do all to the glory of God.

If we say we know him, but we do not do what he has said, then we lie.

We don't actually know God. What we know is a God of our own making, a

God of our own design. This is the God that I like. He lets me do whatever I want. He lets me be whoever

I want to be. That person does not have the truth.

You know, this world even demands perfection. As I said, even people of the world can know that nobody is perfect.

But there is something virtuous about the way they say that. When we are worldly in our minds, we have worldly minds.

When we think like the world instead of thinking like Christ, we can turn imperfection into a virtue.

And instead of just simply saying nobody is perfect, you go, well, nobody is perfect. You have your imperfections,

I have my imperfections, so let's just love one another. Doesn't matter. It's almost like there's a certain kind of perfection about being imperfect.

We're perfectly imperfect, which is a paradox. It's a contradiction, and so is the logic of this world.

So is sin. I heard a pastor say recently, sin is stupid. That needs to be on a bumper sticker.

Yeah, it's ridiculous. Everything that you try to rationalize about sin is absurd.

When you understand the righteousness of God and what He has called sin. Sin incurs the wrath of God.

Brings about the wrath of God on a person who rebels against God. Yet there's people in this world that will say these sins are good and they're perfect.

We're about to enter into a month where we're going to hear for a whole month long what this world says is good and right.

They'll call it pride. Such an appropriate name for June, pride month.

Celebrating debaucherous sins pridefully with no shame. The world will say that if you're going to be perfect, you must think like us.

You must do what it is that we do. You must embrace this. You must love like this.

And in the pride parades that are going to be going on, even some of them close to Lyndale. In those pride parades, there will be people surely who will be saying that Jesus loves me.

And He approves of what it is that I am doing. God is on my side. There are people that will say in this way that they are without sin.

But they are liars and the truth is not in them. Now not to look at the world and say, oh well those guys out there, let me put it upon you.

If you say that you love God, do you keep His commandments? Do you do what He has said?

You go through what Jesus has given in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. You go through Romans 12. You go through 1

Thessalonians 5. You go through Galatians 5. Any of these places where it says to us, this is what it means to follow

God. Do you desire to do those things? Or are there parts of your Bible that you've marked out and you've thought to yourself,

I can do this and it really won't be that bad. Remember friends, Adam and Eve ate a fruit.

And it separated us from God eternally if God had not intervened. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Verse 9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

We go on in 1 John 2 verse 5. But whoever keeps His word in Him truly, the love of God is perfected.

Whoever keeps His word in Him truly, the love of God is perfected.

Jesus prayed for us in John 17 17. Father, sanctify them in your truth.

Your word is truth. When we hear the word of God, when we do what it says, the love of God is perfected in us.

Until that day that we reach perfection and join Him in glory. 1

John 2 6. Look at verse 6 now. Whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

And again, I hope that's penetrating to you. I hope that is hugely convicting to you.

You see what it is that Christ has done for you. His death on the cross for our sins.

His resurrection from the grave. Conquering death for us.

And you see that. And you say, that's love.

And I want to be as my Savior. Whoever says he abides in Christ ought to do as Jesus has done.

Once again, as Jesus says in Matthew 5 48, Be perfect as your heavenly

Father is perfect. He is one who is saying this as one who is perfect.

Jesus Christ is perfection. And we have the righteousness of God.

When we believe by faith in Him. Skip ahead in 1 John to chapter 3.

Look at chapter 3. I've quoted a little bit of this already. 1

John 3 verses 1 through 3. See what kind of love the Father has given to us.

That we should be called the children of God. And so we are. The reason why the world does not know us.

Talking about we who are Christians. Who are followers of God. John in the more immediate sense.

Talking about the apostles and the apostolic ministry. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

Beloved, we are God's children now. And what we will be has not yet appeared.

But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him.

Because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him.

Purifies himself. As he is pure.

Amen. Turn your eyes upon Jesus.

Look full in his wonderful face. And the things of this world will grow strangely dim.

In the light of his glory and grace. Let us pray.

Heavenly Father as we have considered this word once again. That you must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

I pray that we don't shrug this off. That we don't rationalize. Or try to justify ourselves like the rest of the world does.

Like we once did before we were in Christ. Trying to say our sin is fine.

God loves me. He's just going to forgive me for it anyway. And we try to continue on in sinful things that God has promised that he will judge.

We think too highly of ourselves. We think pridefully of ourselves. I pray we would be convicted in our hearts.

We would understand as Jesus said in the Beatitudes. Blessed are the pure in heart.

For they shall see God. And when we examine ourselves we look at those temptations.

And we ask this question. Would I rather have this? Or would

I rather see God? We know that we cannot be perfect. But Christ is perfect.

And we know we can have the righteousness of God by faith in him. So lead us in paths of righteousness for your namesake.

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Heavenly Father we thank you for what you have shown to us in Christ.

The very thing that you demand of us. You don't leave it to us to have to accomplish it because we can't accomplish it.

You give us the righteousness of Christ. That we may be perfect. As our

Heavenly Father is perfect. Continue to perfect us. Grow us in righteousness and sanctification before you.

It's these things we ask in Jesus name. Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the

Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study.

Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.