Principles for “Ye Heard / I Say” Passages

Review: The Nature of Kingdom Righteousness (Matthew 5:2-20)

0:04 Now, as we begin our study again, it will be necessary to spend perhaps a little bit longer time reviewing this morning that we can catch the drift of truth as it brings us up to verse 21, where we will be commencing our study this fall. And I would remind those of you who were with us, and for the sake of those who were not with us, of the basic approach to truth which our Lord Jesus gives in this sermon that we call the Sermon on the Mount. In that familiar portion, beginning with verse 2, where our Lord Jesus opened his mouth and taught them, and then we find following these eight blessings, what our Lord Jesus is doing is basically this. He is describing in some detail the characteristics which are peculiar to the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. The Beatitudes are not a road map concerning how...

1:05 ...how to get to heaven.

1:08 They are not the plan of salvation, but the Beatitudes are a picture of the one who has been born of the Spirit and is a citizen of the kingdom of God. And so in these eight blessings, we have a description of what is true, at least in some measure, of every true child of God. If there is no basic mourning for sin, no basic pause, poverty of spirit, hunger and thirst after righteousness, or purity of heart, or these other characteristics, it is simply because the grace of God has never been operative in our lives. You do not grow into the Beatitudes. You must be born of the Spirit into the possession of these basic characteristics. Then we grow from the Beatitudes. And in the expression of these characteristics of heart, so that if I am a true child of God, I ought to be more poor in spirit today than I was a year ago.

2:18 I ought to see more fully that I am nothing, I have nothing, and I can do nothing apart from the grace of God. The world counts growth and development in terms of self-confidence. Our Lord counts growth. Spiritual growth and development in terms of self-abnegation and the absence of self-confidence.

2:43 The increasing realization that if God should take His hand off me for an hour, my wicked heart would lead me right back into the hogpens of sin and the muck and mire of the world. If you're growing in grace, you'll be growing in poverty of spirit. Recognizing your utter helplessness. Apart from the grace of God.

3:07 You'll be growing in hunger and thirst after righteousness. All that you learn through the preaching of the word and the teaching of the Sunday school class and in the Bible school classroom, instead of leading you to a sense why I'm full, if you're truly growing and receiving divine truth as you ought to, it will merely increase the ache of your heart after God. And growth in grace. Is growth in soul thirst and in heart hunger after the living God.

3:42 And so I would remind you as God's people that the beatitude should ever be before us as a picture of what the grace of God has wrought in our lives and as a signpost telling us this is what you ought to pursue as you grow in the Christian life. Then beginning with verse 11, and in verse 12, our Lord told us the reaction of the world to such a person. This person who is meek, poverty, stricken in spirit, who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. What will the world's attitude be to this person?

4:22 Jesus tells us in these verses, the world will persecute him, the world will hate him, because this kind of a person exposes the sham and the emptiness and the hollowness of the world. Then in verse 12, in verses 13 through 16, our Lord tells us the function of this kind of person in the world. Though the world reacts to him with hatred, he is the very light of the world and the very salt of the earth. Blessed be God that he takes the likes of us and he makes his people the preserving agent in the midst of a corrupt society and he makes his people the only light, the only glimmer and spark of light in a world of sticky and darkness. So that's the function of the Christian. This man or woman described in the Beatitudes, the world's reaction to him, verses 10 and 11, 11 and 12, his function in the world, verses 13 to 16, and then at verse 17, we come to a transition in the sermon. It's as though the people of our Lord's day said to him, now wait a minute, you mean to tell me that the essence of true Christianity is found not in doing this and in doing that, but in poverty of spirit, meekness, mourning over sin,

5:49 hungering and thirsting after righteousness? It's as though the people said, wait a minute, this is foreign to everything we've heard. Have you come along with some new teaching? And the Lord Jesus anticipates their response and says, don't think that I've come to destroy the law.

6:04 I've come to bring nothing new. I've come to fulfill the law. I've simply come to embody in my life all that the law has taught, and by the power of my death and my resurrection and the outpouring of my spirit to bring to myself a host of men and women who will bear these very characteristics. And in so doing, the Lord says, I've not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill the law.

6:32 And so verses 17 to 20 give us, in a brief paragraph, Christ's relationship to the Old Testament law. And this whole matter was summarized in verse 20, and we looked at verse 20. I was checking the date on my notes. June 28th of this year was the last time we considered this portion of the word.

6:55 And Jesus closes this section of the sermon with this sobering warning. Notice it in verse 20.

7:03 I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. And some of you may remember that we saw what was wrong with the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. It was based upon a wrong foundation. They thought that what they were and what they had done commended them to God instead of resting on the foundation of the mercy of God in Christ.

7:37 It was erected on wrong principles. The whole thing that was wrong with the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees was this. They were more concerned about the externals than the internals.

7:54 This is what was wrong with them. More concerned about details than great principles.

8:02 Phariseeism is the natural product of the human heart apart from the grace of God. For all of us by nature, the moment we begin to get identified with Christian truth and Christian standards, immediately we want to know where is the list of do's and the list of don'ts and we begin to frame our lives by an external code of standards. God says to us in His Son, accept your righteousness, go beyond that of the scribes and the Pharisees. You must be more concerned about your heart than your hands.

8:33 More concerned about your attitudes than your actions. Poverty of spirit, meekness, hungering in sin, thirsting, these are all attitudes of the heart. The Pharisees knew nothing of this. Jesus said they were whitewashed sepulchers that appeared beautiful unto men but inwardly were full of dead men's bones in all corruption.

8:54 And so Jesus says your righteousness must exceed that of the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. It must rest on a different foundation. It must be erected by different principles and it must be governed by different motives. The whole motive of the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees is set out in chapter 6.

9:14 They do these things to be seen of men. Three times Jesus says that concerning fasting, praying and giving. He said their motive is their seeking to gain the opinion of men. Whereas the motive of true righteousness is that I might be acceptable before my God.

9:34 That I might know the smile of my God and I might know the reality of His fellowship. May I remind you as you sit here this morning that the whole end for which Jesus Christ came and bled and died was that as you sit here this morning your heart might bathe in the glorious experience of intimate, warm, loving, vital communion with the living God. And if you aren't enjoying that this morning your presence here is vain worship.

10:12 For the Bible says He died to bring us to God. That's why He died. That you and I might have a righteousness which brings us into living, warm, vital communion with the living God. The Pharisees didn't know anything about this.

10:32 Just so long as they were in the right place at the right time saying the right thing and hearing the right words they were content.

10:42 Oh may that not be true of anyone this morning. That you live in the right place leave here today with a sense of well-being simply because you've been in the right place, church at the right time, 11 o'clock saying the right words the hymns hearing the right thing the word of God. Listen, don't be content with anything less than the gaze of your soul upon the glories of God in the person of Jesus Christ. If you missed that you've missed everything.

Introduction to the 'Ye Heard / I Say' Passages (Matthew 5:21-48)

11:12 You've missed it. You've missed it. All right now we come in our time. We've come in our study to verse 21.

11:18 We've spent 10 minutes on review. I trust this has helped now to get us to feel the drift of the truth. And beginning with verse 21 through verse 48 we have this very unique section of the sermon and to think our way through the key is found in these six phrases. Notice how they occur.

11:39 Verse 21 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time. Verse 21 Verse 22 But I say unto you. Verse 27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time. Verse 28 But I say unto you.

11:58 Verse 31 It hath been said. Verse 32 But I say unto you. Verse 33 Again ye have heard that it hath been said. Verse 34 But I say unto you.

12:14 Verse 38 Ye have heard that it hath been said. Verse 39 But I say unto you. Verse 43 Ye have heard that it hath been said. Verse 44 But I say unto you.

12:32 Now make it a principle of Bible study that the repetitions of the Holy Ghost are important.

12:39 What God takes time to repeat is important. And we have in this portion six times six times this parallel phrase Ye have heard but I say unto you. And what is our Lord doing in this portion of the Sermon on the Mount? He has described the Christian in the Beatitudes.

13:06 He's shown the reaction of the world to that man. He's shown the function of that man in the world. And then He has let His people know that in bringing to pass this glorious work in the hearts of men He is not destroying the law but He's fulfilling the law. Now in this portion He's going to take that very law which He said He came to fulfill and He's going to lay it out as a standard for all of His followers.

13:34 And He's saying in essence just this. Do you know what it means to have a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees? Do you know what it means to be a true child of the Kingdom of Heaven and walk in the light of your calling? I'm going to tell you what it means.

13:51 Ye have heard that it means merely this. Ah, but He says I'm going to tell you what it really means. So in laying out in this portion verses 21 to 48 the true meaning of the law of God Jesus is going to expose the fallacy of the meaning that the scribes and Pharisees had put upon it and then He's going to lay out before us its true meaning as God intended it should be.

Principle 1: Liberating Commands from Traditional Shackles

14:24 Now, as we approach this study I would like to start right in with the first ye have heard but I say unto you and we're going to do that. We'll take at least one morning some of these portions it will take two mornings these six parallel passages introduced by that coupling of ye have heard but I say unto you but we must before we take the details try to discover what are some of the basic truths that are true of all six of these paragraphs. Can we get some principles that will guide us in our study of this portion of the Sermon on the Mount and I believe we can and principle number one is this that in these six passages ye have heard but I say unto you our Lord is liberating these commands from the shadowing or in the light of the Holy Spirit to all the Levitians to the scribes of the Old and New Testament to the scribes including the Old Testament and the Bible to the elect and to the scribes and to the scribes and to the scribes to Christ and to the pages and to the yoge and to the texts of the scriptures and to the letters and to the more and more of the scriptures that are written and they say it is the command of God that makes you and you are

15:53 what it supposedly meant, they have nullified the true meaning. So our Lord's going to come along and say, look, this is your understanding of it, but that understanding is wrong. I say unto you, here's what Moses really meant. And he's going to lay it out, and in so doing, he's going to break off the shackles from these commands which had bound them in the tradition of the scribes and the Pharisees.

16:18 For you see, the scribes and Pharisees were looked upon as the religious teachers of their day. You're aware of that. And when the Jews were down in captivity in Babylon, many of them lost their facility in the Hebrew tongue. And when they came back into Palestine and at the time of our Lord, most of them spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew.

16:41 But now, the scribes and Pharisees, they were the doctors of the law. They spoke Hebrew. They studied the scriptures. So they came before the great populace of Judaism, and they said, now look, you people are unlearned and ignorant.

16:56 You don't know the law. You can't study it in the Hebrew. But we're the doctors of the law. We will tell you what it means.

17:03 So the only knowledge the great majority of the people had of what the law said and meant was what the Pharisees told them. You have a perfect parallel, and I'm indebted to Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones' book and the Sermon on the Mount for these thoughts here. And I'll read it to you in a minute.

17:19 The Sermon on the Mount for these thoughts here. The Sermon on the Mount for these thoughts here. The great masses there in Europe in the 14th, 15th century before Martin Luther was raised up of God and other lights with him. The great populace did not speak Latin.

17:36 But all the preaching and all the teaching and all the rigamarole of the Roman mass, it was carried out in Latin. The scriptures were written in dead languages. So the average person in Europe, Europe could not open up his Bible like you did this morning and in the congregation have a responsive reading. So all he knew about the meaning of the Bible is what the priest told him. The priest told him this Bible talks about salvation through Christ, but the only way you get that salvation is through acknowledging the authority of the priest, through partaking of the mass. And so the great multitudes across Europe were trusting in the priest, trusting in penance, trusting in all of these things. Why? Because the religious leaders had misinterpreted and misapplied the word of God. The Roman church had shackled the word of God by its

18:33 traditions and had passed on that shackled interpretation as truth. And so the people thought that's what truth is. What did God do through his servant Martin Luther and John Calvin and Melanchthon? And some of these other great reformers. God did exactly what the Lord Jesus was doing here. Through his servants he broke off the shackles from the word so that men could once again know what God meant when he spoke. You see the parallel between the two. Now our Lord Jesus in these six passages is doing exactly the same thing. He is going to liberate these commands which are valid to the Christian. From the shackles of traditional interpretation which had nullified their true meaning. I can't help but pause here for a moment, because there is a terribly frightening principle here. Do you realize that in the evangelical church, the fundamental segment of the church of Jesus Christ here in America, we have done the same thing? When I say we, I stand under

19:45 the condemnation with many of my ministering brethren. For many people who listen to us, never go home and open up their Bible and search to see if what the preacher said is merely a shackled interpretation of the voice of God or whether he has been true to the voice of God. You are not my friend if you go out of here and believe everything I say simply because I said it and had the Bible open in front of me. My greatest friends in this congregation are those who go home and Sunday afternoon sit down with their own Bibles and they go over the passage that the pastor preached on and they compare reference with reference.

20:22 And they examine these things to see whether they be true. You're my greatest friend. You don't flatter me by saying, Pastor, I believe everything you say. No, you scare me, because someone else may come along with his Bible in his hand and talk about Jesus and talk about truth, who may be shackling the essence of truth by a traditional interpretation which nullifies the very power of that truth. And would to God that we had a congregation of Bereans, for it's said of that people in Acts 17 that these were nor noble than they at Thessalonica, in that they searched the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. They didn't have Bibles all bound together, you know, and something they could stick in their pocketbook. It was difficult. There were the great scrolls and there were the segments, but they searched the Scriptures daily to see whether these things be so. If

21:25 I can leave any challenge with you. If I can leave any challenge with you as a congregation in the tenure of my ministry among you, I trust it will be this. Become a people under God who know what it is to come to the book of God, willing to be taught by the Spirit of God. Not a cynic who says, I don't believe what anybody tells me. No, no, no. Recognizing that God gives gifts to his church, teachers, preachers, evangelists, but coming with that attitude and saying, Lord, I thank you for the suggestion of truth. But now I want the confirmation in my own heart by my own study of the Word by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. You'd be amazed at how much truth in the Bible is shackled in by our tradition. Not of what? 1500 years such as the church of Rome, but by the tradition

22:20 of 50 years. Who says the Sunday morning service has to be more formal and the Sunday evening service more informal. Can you show me chapter and verse for it? Now, I want you to think. That's the only reason I'm saying this. Can you show me chapter and verse? Who says it has to be this way? Yet in every evangelical church around America that's the way it is. Why? Because that's the way it's done. That's the tradition of the elders. Now I'm not saying we should change it abruptly. I'm not saying what we should do with it. I'm merely asking you, why do we do it?

23:10 I don't like it. They're disturbing us. me. Wonderful. No man gets out of a rut until he gets disturbed about being here. Isn't that true? A rut's a comfortable place. Somebody said a rut's nothing but a grave with the ends kicked out. I think he's true. I think he's right. We begin to examine, why do we do what we do in our churches? Why do we have certain practices? And you'll find no scriptural precedent. We should have the attitude as the people of God that our Lord demonstrates here of ever seeking that the word will come unshackled by traditional interpretation.

23:55 Now, if you come up with some strange meaning that God has never shown anyone else in the history of the church, watch out, because the Holy Spirit doesn't let the Son of Truth rise and set on one man's head and allow that sun to be setting for 1,900 years. When someone comes up and says, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't see something in Matthew 5 that no one else has ever seen and says, look, I've got a new approach. I'm afraid of him. No. For you will find whenever you break off the shackles of tradition and begin to study back in other portions of the word or the history of the church, you'll find a stream of men and women who saw the truth of God exactly the same way. Don't believe your Roman Catholic friends when they say Protestantism was started by Martin Luther. You read the history of the church and write down to the dark ages. God had a little group here, the Waldenses, the Hussites, and groups here and there. God had

24:50 them who knew him, who worshipped him, who trusted in Christ alone for salvation. And when Luther came out with the truth that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law, this was no new truth. He was simply breaking the shackles of wrong which had bound that truth. But he stood in good company.

Principle 2: Vindication of Christ's Divine Authority

25:11 He stood in the company of Augustine. He stood in the company of some of the church fathers. And he stood in the company of that little band of people who paid with their own lives. Hallelujah. Well, we've got to hurry on to the second thing that's in these six passages. Our Lord is liberating the commands from the shackles of traditional interpretation. The second thing we'll find all the way through these six paragraphs, our Lord is vindicating his divine authority as the sword of God. For having said, ye have heard that it was said, he then says, but I say unto you. It's as though someone said now, thou teacher of Nazareth, upon what authority do you take your hands and snap the shackles with which this portion of truth has been bound for these many years? Have you no respect to the fathers? Have you no respect to the elders? Have you no respect for tradition?

26:13 And you know what the Lord answers? He says, the only answer I give you is my person. I say unto you. The answer to why I do this is found in who I am. That's the only answer he gives. He says, you've heard that it was said, tradition, the elders, all the rest. But he says there's something that stands above all of that and it's found in knowing who I am. I say unto you. What a claim to divine authority.

26:45 I can't read you too well this morning, but I thrill when I think of this. Can this do something for you? Our Lord doesn't argue with him. He simply says, I say unto you. Know the authority of his glorious person as the God-man. And he asserts it here. I'd like to get some of these liberals who say, well, I love the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. It's such beautiful, ethical teaching and I accept it. What are they going to do with a phrase like this? If he were just another person, he would say, I love the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. I love the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. I love the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. I love the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. I love the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. I love the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. I love the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. I love the teaching of man there'd be no qualitative difference between his authority and the authority of the scribes but because he was God manifested in the flesh the source of all truth he could say the basis upon which I break the shackles of traditional interpretation is the basis of who I am for the scripture says he is not only the way and the life but he is truth itself and all the way through and I trust we feel this as we study these portions week by week if the Lord tarries and spares us to share in ministry together you will be confronting not the opinions of Pastor Martin

28:00 you'll be confronting the authoritative declaration of God incarnate Jesus Christ himself that's what you're going to be confronting week after week and when we begin to touch on some of these vital issues of what does it mean not to murder and the Lord begins to talk about derisive speech begins to talk about contempt in attitude and when we begin to touch on adultery and Jesus talks about thoughts of the mind and desires of the heart and when we begin to touch on divorce and Jesus speaks clearly on it I want you to remember you're not confronting the opinions of the Alliance Church or its pastor but you're confronting him who said I say unto you you're confronting the authoritative voice of the Eternal Son of God and I trust we'll remember that when Jesus said in John 14 John 12, 48 the word that I speak unto you shall judge you in the last day and that's a terrible thing for a Pastor to realize that some of the very truths that he preaches from the word of God are going to be the very instruments by which God condemns some of his hearers for Jesus said the word that

Principle 3: Illustrating Great Principles by Specific Details

29:21 I speak shall judge you. And when some of you go to judgment, who've lightly regarded these words of Christ, who've taken them with a lackadaisical, indifferent spirit, it's a frightful thing for me to know as I look into your faces this morning, that in that day when you stand before him, some of the very words you heard here are going to be the basis of your judgment. I'm giving God food which will be piled up for your own damnation. But thank God it will also be seed which will produce divine life, for we're the saver of death unto death, but thank God the saver of life unto life. Now may I give you a third thing that our Lord is doing here constantly, and we've got to keep these things before us. He's not only liberating these six commandments of God, but he's not only liberating God from the shackles of tradition, he's not only vindicating his divine authority, but now listen carefully, for this is so hard for us to get hold of. Our Lord is illustrating great principles by specific details, but he's trying to get across great principles. Now may I illustrate. I say to my son, now son, daddy wants you

30:48 to be thoughtful. I want you to be a thoughtful boy, to consider yourself a thoughtful boy. I want you to consider others. And he says to me, daddy, what's thoughtful mean? And I say, well son, we're thoughtful when, well suppose we see a piece of paper on the floor and we don't wait for mommy to pick it up, we go over and pick it up. And if we're walking through the door with little Dougie or one of the other boys, little Kevin, we don't walk through and let the door slam, we hold the door open for them. And so in illustrating the principle of thoughtfulness, I give my son two specific illustrations. So what does he do? He goes around and looks for a piece of paper to pick up and he picks it up. Then when he walks through the door, he's careful not to slam it in someone else's face. But that's all he thinks about. So he's just looking for open doors to show his thoughtfulness or paper on the floor. But then when we come to the table, he doesn't wait for us to pray.

31:44 He just goes ahead and starts to eat. He doesn't think of us. And when he goes upstairs and his little sister's sleeping, he doesn't do this. I'm just making a conjecture now.

31:53 And we say to him, son, your sister's sleeping. And he goes upstairs and sings at the top of his lungs and bangs his feet. No consideration for her. What's the problem? And I say to him, son, you aren't being thoughtful. But he says, Daddy, I held the door open for Dougie and I picked up the paper. You see what his problem is? Because I gave him some definite illustrations of what thoughtfulness meant, he forgot the whole principle and he just had these two rules. Hold the door open and pick up paper. And where the rules are, he'll pick up the paper. And where the rules are, he'll pick up the paper. And where the rules are, he'll pick up the paper. And where the rules are, he'll pick up the paper. And when the rules didn't tell him what to do, he forgot about being thoughtful. You see? Now we're just like that. I picked on my son because I've got a right to do it. I'm his father.

32:35 And I can't pick on you. But we're all like that. We're all like that. And when you read the Sermon on the Mount, this is exactly the temptation we're going to face. Jesus said, he that smiteth thee on one cheek, turn the other. So we're going to say, alright, I've got a rule. If anyone should ever hit me, I'm supposed to turn the other cheek. No, no. Listen, you'll never understand what Jesus meant.

32:55 by turning the other cheek, going the second mile, until you understand the principle that he's trying to illustrate. For all those requirements are nothing but illustrations of principles. Our Lord gives us one or two illustrations, but he says, in essence, get the principle. Get the principle.

33:14 And if you've got the principle, you'll not go around looking for paper and open doors, but you'll carry the principle in your heart and in every situation you'll make your own application. It's very convenient to be a Roman Catholic. I don't say that with any disparagement to any Roman Catholic friends we may have among us. I'm not picking at the Roman Church.

33:36 But you see, back in the Dark Ages, you had your scholastic scholar, the scholastic priest and the rest, and they were great masters at writing up great lists of details so the average Catholic could go, and even today he can. And on almost any subject, all the way from what books he should read to how many children he should have, and the Roman Catholic Church has got a little code on page something, paragraph 35, to tell him what to do. And that's so convenient. And we're all like that by nature.

34:10 We want a big long list. What do I do here? What don't I do here? I was on a retreat with a group of men yesterday.

34:17 And it was a precious time. We got in last night, Mr. Nixon and I, around, well, he got in about 1.30 this morning, and I got in around 2.00, we had a blessed time with these men, but we got on the subject of witnessing. We had a good panel discussion. And these men were throwing questions at some of the laymen on the panel who've had a wonderful ministry in the area of personal witness. And every question that began to come up toward the end was, well, in my situation, what should I do?

34:44 In other words, they wanted a definite black and white answer. And you know what we had to keep throwing at them? You've got to get the principle and then get your own answer from God. I have parents come, they say, Pastor, here's the situation, what should I do?

34:58 They want me to be a little pope and tell them, thou shalt this, thou shalt... I can't do it.

35:02 I say, here's the principle, now you get alone with God and you apply the principle to your situation and you do what God tells you. But we don't like that. Why? Because it means that we've got to be sensitive spiritually.

35:14 It means that we have got to be in touch with God and we've got to know what the principles are. And we don't like that. We can do with the Sermon on the Mount the very thing Jesus, Jesus is condemning in the Sermon on the Mount. What's he condemning?

35:28 The Pharisees' thought of holiness in terms of a list of do's and don'ts. Jesus is condemning that. We can turn the Sermon on the Mount into the same thing, into a list of do's and don'ts. So I plead with you, and if I seem overly zealous that you get hold of this, it's because I am this morning, that when we study these portions and we're going to study the specific illustrations, never forget, Jesus is illustrating, illustrating great principles by specific illustration.

36:00 Find the principle. Because I know some of you are just itching until we get down to turn the other cheek. What's the pastor going to say about that? Well, I hope you go home and get all scratched out as far as that's concerned and just get rid of the itch to know the details and pray, Lord, what's the principle behind turning the other cheek?

36:21 How many of you have ever had anyone up and come up on the street and actually slap your face? How many? Raise your hand.

36:30 See, you don't need that specific instruction. Ah, but there's a principle there. How many of you husbands ever had your wife say something mean to you?

36:40 Hmm?

36:43 And you said something mean like that. Why? Because the Bible doesn't say when your wife speaks mean, don't speak mean back to her. Ah, but that's the principle behind turning the other cheek.

Key Principles for Understanding the Law's Spirit

36:57 You see, we can be getting the details and miss the principle. And that's what we want to get hold of. May I give you in closing several of these principles that we'll find in here along this line? Principle number one is we're to be concerned about the spirit of the law and not the letter only.

37:14 Now, we're to be concerned about the letter. But let's get hold of the spirit. If you've got the spirit, you'll have the letter, but you can have the letter and miss the spirit. May I illustrate again from my own experience as a father.

37:26 When my son got to be seven months old, he began to pull himself up. Our little daughter is not quite that quick. She'll be another day. Another couple of weeks.

37:32 She's making real attempts at it. And we didn't want to have a child that every time we went and visited somewhere, we had to call an emergency session and have our host take everything off knick-knack tables and put it up six feet high. So we determined that Joel was going to learn not to touch things that were on our little coffee table. So he began to walk around, you know, as they will, holding on to the couch in our little apartment back in Pennsylvania when he was about seven, seven and a half months old.

38:00 And then he made his way over to the coffee table and began to touch some of the little knick-knacks. And I said, no, son. Slapped his hand. He said, you're not to touch with your hands.

38:07 So after a while, he got the idea that his hand was not to touch the knick-knacks. You know what he began to do? I come in one day and he has one of his little rubber dolls. And with the doll, he's touching the knick-knack.

38:25 Now, he was obeying the letter of the law. He wasn't touching it with his hand. But he was sure enough breaking the spirit of it. See?

38:35 He was obeying the letter, but he missed the spirit. Now, we can do exactly the same thing. So as we study this portion, we want to see what's the spirit behind that commandment. And it's the spirit of the law with which I am to be occupied.

38:53 Not so much the letter. See, the Pharisees thought, thou shalt not kill. I haven't gone out and plunged a knife in someone's breast. I'm clear.

39:01 Now, the Lord said, no, there's a spirit behind that law. I want you to know the spirit. The second thing we'll see as we study through under this matter of the principles, we're going to find that the law of God touches our motives and our attitudes as well as our actions. The Pharisees didn't know anything about this.

39:19 As long as a man didn't go off and take another man's wife, he thought he was clear of the sin of adultery. And Jesus said, oh, no, you're not. If your heart has gone off with her, you've committed adultery. And so as we study through these things, we want to find the spirit of the law, not just the letter.

39:38 We want to remember that God's law touches not only our actions, but our motives and our thoughts. And then we're going to find that God's law, when it condemns a certain thing, in the same breath, it is commanding the opposite virtue. We're going to see that when it comes to this matter of love and hate. When the Bible says, thou shalt not murder and condemns everything in the realm of hatred, it's also, it's also commanding everything in the realm of love and the positive affection that is virtuous before God.

Practical Use and Conclusion

40:16 We say, pastor, of what practical use will this be? Well, I think you've already seen this morning. I hope it'll make some of you better husbands, better wives. I trust it will help us as Christians to see the breadth of God's requirement for us.

40:32 And then it will be our prayer that by the exposition of these portions, the Holy Ghost will produce conviction of sin in some, some, for the scripture says, by the law cometh the knowledge of sin. Some of you don't love the Lord Jesus simply because you've never deeply felt your need of him. But when you see his holy law in all of its breadth and length and see the standard of almighty God, I trust some of you will go down in the dust crying out, woe is me. And then when the Holy Spirit reveals the sufficiency of Christ, he's going to be able to do so.

41:08 He's going to be able to do so. He's going to be able to do so. He's going to be able to do so. He's going to be able to do so.

41:08 He's going to be able to do so. He's going to be able to do so. He's going to become precious to you. May I give you the headings now as we're closing this morning?

41:14 As we study through these portions, what are we to remember? We're to remember, first of all, that Jesus is liberating these commandments from the shackles of tradition. Secondly, he's vindicating his own authority. I say unto you.

41:33 And thirdly, he's revealing to us throughout these six passages that we'll study certain principles by the details, but we want to get the principles. And as we do, we're going to see God's more concerned with the spirit of the law than the letter. God's concerned about attitudes as well as actions. God is concerned about the virtue, not only the vice being omitted, but the virtue being embraced.

42:07 I trust that God will give us such a revelation of our glorious Lord, as we hear his words, that we'll ever bless God, that in his providence we were led into these green pastures of his own wonderful truth. May we unite together in prayer.