Be Perfect

Well, if you have your Bible with you this morning and I hope you do, we're going
to be in Matthew chapter five in the Sermon on the Mount. I want to start this
morning with a multiple choice question. Those of you who thought finals were over
and you didn't have to put up with any more of this, now we have one more
multiple choice question for you here this morning. The question is this, how good
do you have to be to live with God forever? What's the standard?
And here are your options, is it, I have to be better than,
can we put it up, can you put my multiple choice up there? Yes, here we go,
here are the options. I have to be better than Hitler, okay? I have to be better
than most people. I have to be better than I used to be.
I have to just try to live a good life and follow the golden rule, I have to do
my best and God will forgive the rest, or I have to be perfect." Which is the
right answer there? Now most people in our world, if you ask them this question,
most people would pick one of A between A and E. They'd find one in there that
they'd like and say, "I fit in there." And they would find one, by the way, that
would reflect the the fact that they're in, they would find an answer where they
achieve the standard. But the right answer, as you probably imagined, is actually
letter F. You have to be perfect to live with God forever. To be right with God,
to be welcomed into his family, and to be with him forever, you have to be
perfect. God is holy, God cannot dwell in the presence of sin.
You have sin so God can't dwell with you until you're perfect. So follow the logic.
I have a syllogism for you just to keep the academic theme going here this morning.
Here's our syllogism. A, only perfect people go to heaven. B, no one is perfect.
Therefore, there's no one in heaven. I mean that would be the logical syllogism,
right? You've got to be perfect to get there. Nobody's perfect. How can there be
anybody in heaven. How do we, that makes logical sense. The problem is Jesus told
the thief on the cross next to him who was not perfect. Today you will be with me
in paradise. So how does that work? How is it that Jesus says you have to be
perfect and then says to the thief, come on you're in.
If you are a visitor with us this week we are going through, this is week four of
a five -week series that we're calling "Jesus Said What," and we're looking at
statements that Jesus made in the Gospels, in the New Testament, where we go. I'm
not sure I understand that, and just try to figure out what's going on with all of
this. These are some of the hard statements of Jesus, sometimes hard to understand,
other times hard to implement. And the passage we're gonna look at this morning
addresses this issue of having to be perfect, that it's Jesus' command that his
followers would be perfect. So we want to see if we can figure this out. And
again, let me just ask for the Lord's help, Father. We need your help, we need
your spirit to be our teacher. We need you to soften our hearts and make them
ready to hear what your spirit would say to us. And I pray that we would hear
this and be doers of your word and not just hearers. And I ask it in Jesus' name,
Amen. You follow along as I read. The statement Jesus makes about being perfect is
one verse, but we're gonna set the context by backing up a few verses. So Matthew
five, look at verse 43, we'll start there and go to the end of the chapter. This
is the word of God for the people of God. Jesus speaking says, you have heard that
it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you so that you
may be sons of your father who is in heaven. For he makes his son rise on the
evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax
collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you
doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore,
must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.
Amen. May God bless this reading of his word, the grass withers, the flower fades,
the word of our God will last forever. Okay, here's what we're going to do. We're
going to look this morning at the context for this impossible command to understand
what's going on here. And then we're going to see two possible responses to what
Jesus is saying. Then we're going to look at the motivation we ought to have for
being perfect, we're going to look at the frustration of pursuing perfection,
and we're going to wrap it up with how to be perfect, okay? So that's where we're
headed. Let's look at the context. This is actually coming in a part of the Sermon
on the Mount that begins in Matthew 5 and verse 17, where Jesus is explaining to
people that he did not come to abolished the Old Testament law, he came to fulfill
it. He didn't come to do away with it and substitute it with something else. He
came to bring all of the puzzle pieces together so that we can see what it's
supposed to look like in the first place. The Jewish leaders in Jesus' day were
teaching, or they were saying to people about Jesus' ministry, that he was setting
aside the Old Testament. He was ignoring everything that Jews had been taught for
centuries and he was coming up with his own ideas, with his own thinking. And Jesus
is saying, no, that's not what this is all about at all. He says, what I'm telling
you is not doing away with the Old Testament, it's filling it in. It's giving you
the complete picture of the Old Testament. You've had a partial picture, I've come
to give you the complete picture. And then He makes six statements to illustrate
what he's talking about that begin with, you have heard it said from people of old,
but I say to you this, where he's saying this is what you've been taught, here's
the fuller picture, here's what was left out of that. Here are the other puzzle
pieces that fill in the puzzle for you. So he's saying you've been taught this
about murder, but I tell you it's not just about murder, it's about hating people
in your heart. You've been taught this about adultery, but I tell you it's not just
about adultery, it's about the lustful feelings in your heart. You've been taught
this about divorce, you've been taught this about telling the truth, you've been
taught this about showing mercy, you've been taught this about loving others, but I
say to you, the whole issue goes deeper than you think. You've been told you have
to be this good in order for God to be pleased and satisfied, but Jesus says you
gotta be better than you've told. So this chart here is showing that the issue is
not, don't murder someone or you'll be liable to the court, the issue is you've got
an angry heart. Don't commit adultery, the problem is you have a lustful heart. You
say you've heard don't divorce someone without doing the paperwork first, the problem
is you have a self -indulgent heart or a self -focused heart, a selfish heart. You've
been told you must tell the truth if you swear by God but the problem is you have
a deceitful heart to begin with. You've been told you must limit your revenge. The
problem is you have a vengeful heart in the first place. You've been told you
should love your neighbor and hate your enemy. The problem is you have a hateful
heart. So you can see he's saying you've been told focus on your behavior. I'm
telling you your heart's the issue. That's this section in the sermon on the mount.
He said the scribes and the Pharisees have been telling you if you can just follow
this That's acceptable righteousness. You can you can come up with your own
Righteousness you can follow the rules and God will be okay with that Jesus is
saying the issue is a heart issue and God wants more than just righteous behavior
He wants your heart to be right. He wants it to be cured of the sinful wickedness
that's in there, he wants your righteous behavior to flow out of a transformed
heart.
Okay, stop there with me for just a second. Every person here, we all have a
default setting in our heart. The default setting is this, I want to be able
somehow to earn God's approval.
That's how you are wired. You want, by your behavior to make yourself pleasing to
God. You don't want a gift, you want to earn it. And the reason you want to earn
it is because if you earn it, you get credit for it. And what you ultimately want
is that credit. You want the glory that comes with the achievement of a level of
righteousness that God finds pleasing. Remember back in school, when you were in
elementary school, you liked it when you could put your hand up and you knew the
right answer and the teacher said, "That's right, Billy. Good job." You liked that
credit, made you smile, made you happy. You want the same thing with God. You want
to be able to say, "Look, God, here's what I did," and have God smile and say,
"You did enough." You'd like the glory that comes with that. We are all glory
seekers, whether you know it or not. Some of you are going, "Not me. I just want
to be in the background. I don't want anybody paying attention to me. I don't even
want to be noticed." But you want deep inside, you want to be admired, you want to
be noticed, you want to be seen, you want to be recognized, you want people to
think you're special. All of us do. We want our virtue,
we want our goodness, our successes, our nobility, our righteousness to be on display
and to be seen by others. We want to be admired. We want people to give us some
level of glory.
It's in our DNA that we think we should get credit for anything we do. It's the
orientation "of our heart, an orientation to earn or deserve "God's blessing or
favor." That's what was in the hearts of the scribes and the Pharisees when they
came along and said, okay, we've come up. If you can keep these rules, we'll be
pleased. You'll get our admiration and God will be pleased too because if we're
pleased, we're sure he's pleased. So you're righteous living. If you just keep the
rules, you'll be okay. And Jesus comes along and says, if that's how you're gonna
think about this, then you need to realize that what you're trying to earn from God
is gonna require a whole lot more than you think it's gonna require. You think as
long as I don't murder somebody, God will be pleased with me. No, you can't even
have hatred in your heart toward them.
He comes along and sermon on the mountain says, the scribes and the Pharisees have
laid out for you that you and press your friends and neighbors, and you can earn
their admiration if you will keep this list of rules. They had 613 of them,
but if you want God's approval, you're gonna have to step it up.
Their 613 is not sufficient.
Each of these you have heard, but I say to you statements that Jesus makes, takes
the bar, it sets the bar that you have to clear, a little higher than what the
scribes of the Pharisees have said you have to clear. They say if you can get over
this, God will be pleased and Jesus said, "No, we've got to move the bar up." In
fact, let me give you an illustration of this. Chad Donnelly was a pole valter at
the University of Arkansas. Did you know that? There he is. Look, that is actually
Chad Donnelly.
Yes, AI, he said. That's right. AI can do amazing things.
Chad was able to clear 16 feet 6 and 3 /4 inches as a polevolter in college Pretty
impressive, right? The world record today 20 feet 6 inches just 4 feet higher than
Chad was able to clear that's all just 4 feet higher That's the world record today
some guy in Sweden back in February set that new world
If you're involved in track and field events, if you're involved in track and field,
there's a minimum you gotta be able to clear in order just to qualify. So let's
say with pole vaulting, you gotta be able to get over 13 just to even qualify to
be in the meet. I don't know what it would be, but we'll just say you gotta be
13. So if you can clear 13, you qualify, and then everybody's trying to do better
so that they can get higher. Well, here, the scribes and the Pharisees had come
along and said, "We've come up with what is the threshold. We've set the bar here
as if you can clear these 613 laws, you qualify to be in God's presence.
And Jesus comes along and says, and by the way, most of the people in Jesus' day
looked at the 613 laws and said, that's ridiculous, I can't do that. And the
scribes and Pharisees said, we know, only special people can do it. I mean, they
were very proud of their ability to be fastidious about the law. And they would
come along and say, "Now, you know you're supposed to tithe 10%. Did you do your
dill seeds when you harvested the dill? Did you give one of those dill seeds to
God and keep the other nine for yourself?" They were that fastidious. And if you
said, "I don't have the wherewithal to do that with your dill seeds," oh, that's
too bad. So 90 % of the population in ancient Israel was just like,
they'd given up on the whole game. They're just out there trying to do their best
and hoping that God will bless them 'cause they're Jews. The scribes and the
Pharisees are saying, we wish you could be like us and keep the law as perfectly
as we're able to keep it. Jesus comes along and says, you know that minimum, those
613 laws that you had? No, the bar is not 13 feet.
It's not even 20 feet. The bar you've got to clear, 50 feet. And every polevolter
in America would look at that and go, "That's impossible." And Jesus would say,
"Okay, now we're getting somewhere."
Because that's part of the point. Jesus wants them to recognize with these,
"You have heard it said, but I say statements, he wants them to think, those who
think that they are succeeding in righteousness, he wants them to be called up short
so they go, oh, wait a sec, I still have work to do, don't I?
He's not giving them a new, harder law. He's saying, this has been God's standard
all along. You just thought you were able to do it and clearly you're not. When my
daughter was in college in New York the college she was she was attending the
King's College in Manhattan and The administration of the college decided that they
wanted their academics to be rigorous So they came to the professors and they said
to the professors We want you to start grading these students papers like you are
teaching at They said at Harvard Harvard's in the news, I don't know why they
picked Harvard, but we want you to use academic rigor. We want you to treat these
students like they're students at Harvard and grade accordingly. And my daughter went
from getting 80s and 90s on the papers she was turning in. She called me one night
and she said, "Dad, I got a 39 on the paper I just turned in." Out of 100,
39 out of 100. And she said, "And I got one of the top grades in the class.
"This is ridiculous." Well, what had happened was the standard had just gone up. And
the students who thought that they were clearing the bar were finding out, oh, the
bar's higher than it's ever been before. I don't think I can do this. Jesus is not
resetting the bar here. He's reaffirming that the bar's always been up here. The
scribes and the Pharisees had just lowered it so that they could get over it. And
that's what all of us do with this whole sense of righteousness. We go, okay,
I know what God's standard is, but he's got a grade on the curve. I'm better than
most. I'm better than Hitler. We're back to that original multiple choice question.
And so Jesus, after saying, you've heard it said, but I say, You think it's murder,
it's not, it's hate. You think it's adultery, it's not, it's lust. You've got more
issues than you realize. Then he wraps it all up with the summary statement in
verse 48, "You therefore must be perfect." As your heavenly father is perfect,
you wanna know what the standard is? Be as perfect as God and everything's good.
Now, people will hear that and there are two responses to that. Most of us would
hear that and go, that's ridiculous, that's impossible. Nobody can do that, I can't
do that. And then at that point you just kind of go, he can't mean that and you
just tune it out and you keep functioning and just say, I'll just do my best and
hope that works out. That's how most people respond when you read, Jesus says be
perfect, you go, it can't mean that. I'll just ignore it and keep trying hard.
There are Some type A's, some alpha dogs who hear that and go, "Okay, I'll do it."
They cinch up their boots, they tighten their belt, and they'll say, "I can be
perfect. You just watch." And here's what happens with those two groups. The alpha
dogs say, "I can do this." They become the new Pharisees, and they start off fine,
but as soon as they mess up, the first thing they do is they conceal the fact
that they're messing up, because they don't want anybody to know they're messing up,
so they can still look good. And then when it's not concealable after a while,
they will begin to say, okay, it actually means this, and they'll lower the standard
for a new standard of self -righteousness. All the while, they are hiding their own
sins because it's appearances that they're keeping up. They're not worried about
what's in their heart as long as they look clean in the neighborhood. These people
become the new legalists. Meanwhile, the other group, which I call the give up
group, that group comes along, they're the slackers, they're the normal folks, and
they come along and they give up on the whole game and say I'm just gonna do my
best and try to be nice and hope it's okay. They become relativists, they ignore
God's standards altogether and do whatever seems right to them. Both of these are
wrong responses to the command of God. When he says be perfect, he's not saying try
harder and he's not saying don't worry about it.
When you commit your life to Jesus and surrender to him, here's what happens. God
gives you his Holy Spirit and his Holy Spirit comes into you to give you a new
desire to want to be pleasing to God and a new ability to be able to be pleasing
to God, to live right. So the right response to be perfect is to say,
even though I know I will stumble in the process, I'm gonna stay in the race,
and I now have both the desire and the power to want to be pleasing to God,
but knowing I'm gonna stumble, I'm gonna rely and grace. That's God's goal for all
of us. And it will happen one day for all followers of Jesus that we will finish
the race and perfection will be achieved. We'll talk more about that in a minute.
God is perfect. You are being made more and more into the likeness of His Son,
and one day He will finish the job that He has started for you. And our assignment
as followers of Jesus is not to try to pursue perfection in our own strength,
in our own power, for our own glory, our assignment is to pursue Christ's likeness
in his strength for his power, or by his power and for his glory.
So you don't say I can do it, you don't say I can't do it and shut down, you
say I can't do this apart from you, but I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me.
And And as for your Christlikeness, you say all glory to God for his transforming
work and his power in my life. What God commands and demands he empowers and
enables. Say that again, what God commands and demands he empowers and enables.
We need to make sure we're clear on this. If you're a child of God, understand
this, Today, in one sense, you are already perfect as a child of God.
We call this positional perfection. You are positionally perfect. When God looks at
you, he sees the perfection of his Son. He has declared you perfectly righteous
because of what Jesus has done. You're positionally perfect already. He is in the
process of making you, practically perfect. He is making your performance match your
position. So he's in the process of transforming you so that your performance catches
up with what he's already declared to be true about you. And he will bring into
your life whatever is necessary on your journey to help move you along that path.
Sometimes it will be hardship and trials and pain because Jesus experienced hardship
and trials and pain on his path. The path toward, if the path toward Christ
likeness was all a downhill slope with mossy grass underneath your feet, you'd never
get any stronger, you'd never get any better. It's when you're going uphill, it's
when you're facing obstacles that you grow and you get stronger and so God lovingly,
graciously brings those into your life so he can conform you to the image of
Christ. If you went to the gym and the guy at the gym said, no, all you have to
do is just sit in this chair and you'll glide straight down and you'll get
stronger. That's ridiculous. You've got to have weight. You've got to fight. You've
got to groan and grunt in order for the muscles to get stronger.
Perfection is our goal in this life, but in the life to come it will be our
possession and experience. So God has declared it's true. He's in the process of
making you more like his son. One day you will be perfectly righteous through his
transforming work. I like what John MacArthur says about this. This is a long quote,
but follow along with this. He says because God is perfect, those who are truly his
children will move on in the direction of his perfect standard. If you are stalled,
or if you're slipping in the opposite direction, it's right for you to examine
yourself. Pursuing the standard of perfection doesn't mean that we can never fail.
It means that when we fail, we deal with it. Those with true faith will fail and
in some cases fail pathetically and frequently. That's good news.
Let me say that again. Those with true faith will fail, and in some cases will
fail pathetically and frequently, but a genuine believer will, as a pattern of life,
be confessing sin and coming to the Father for forgiveness.
Perfection is the standard, direction is the test.
If your life does not reveal growth in grace and righteousness and holiness, you
need to examine the reality of your faith, even if you believe you've done great
things in the name of Christ.
There's only one path that you can follow that will lead you to where Jesus is
telling people to go. The path to get on that is the path toward perfection is not
the path that says I'm going to try my hardest and do it in my own strength. It's
not the path that says I'm going to kick back and just hope that but all works
out, it's the path that says, I know there's no way I can do this.
I give up, Jesus, I need you, I surrender to you, give me the power and give me
the desire to be the person you've created me to be, so I can be with you
forever.
So that's the right response
to Jesus' call to be perfect, which brings us to the motivation to be what Jesus
is calling us to be. Why do we care about being perfect
if we don't get the glory that comes with being perfect? Why do you wanna be
perfect? That nobody's gonna think you're special if you are? Pretty simple,
the motivation to pursue what Jesus is calling us to do, There are two parts to
the motivation. First, we're motivated to godliness and Christlikeness. When I talk
about perfection, another word for perfection is to be like Jesus. Christlikeness and
perfection. Godliness is perfection. That's what we're aiming for. The first reason we
pursue it is because Jesus commands it and we love Him.
We are happy to follow his commands because we love him, we want to pursue and
obey what he has called us to obey because we love him. Jesus is the one who puts
the desire to obey him in our hearts in the first place. That didn't come from
you. God put that desire in your heart. So if you don't have a desire to follow
what Jesus is calling you to do, maybe you need to pull back and go, why don't I
have that desire? Why hasn't God put that in my heart? Maybe I've never surrendered
my life to Him.
Now, that desire in your heart to follow Jesus will always be under attack from the
world, the flesh and the devil. The desire is there, but there's a war going on
between your flesh and your desire to serve Jesus. There's a war going on between
what the culture is saying and your desire to follow Jesus. It's is under attack,
and there will be times when you will give in to the flesh. But if you have any
longing in your heart to be like Jesus, to be free from the sin that so easily
entangles you, to be the person God created you to be, that longing that you have,
that's a desire that comes from God and is evidence that you are His child. The
absence of that desire should be a cause for concern. The second motivation to
pursue is not just God's commandant and we love him, but it's gratitude for what
Jesus has done for us. When you stop and consider what God did in sending his son
to be the atoning sacrifice for your sin, to give his life for you, to die in
your place, to pay the penalty that you owe, so that you can spend eternity with
God, That response ought to stir, or that reality ought to stir in your heart a
desire to express gratitude to God for what He's done by honoring Him with your
life. You're saying, "Lord, I belong to you. I wouldn't be here without you.
I owe you everything, and I happily give to you my obedience in response to what
you've done for me. In 2 Corinthians, the apostle Paul says it this way. He says,
"We are the temple of the living God. "As God said, I will make my dwelling among
them "and walk with them." These are the promises God has made. "I will make my
dwelling among them and walk with them. "I will be their God. They shall be my
people. "And I will be a father to you. "You will be sons and daughters to me,"
says the Lord Almighty. Then Paul says, "Since we have these promises, beloved, since
God has promised us this, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and
spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. Because of what God has
promised you and out of a desire to honor that and to show gratitude for that,
you say, I wanna cleanse myself from every defilement of body and spirit and bring
holiness to completion in the fear of God. We sang this a couple of weeks ago, but
the hymn writer puts it perfectly when he says, "When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count as loss and poor
contempt on all my pride. Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
save in the death of Christ, my God, all the vain things that charm me most, I
sacrifice them to His blood. When we consider what God has done for us, we say,
"Nothing else matters. I just want to express gratitude to God for what He's done."
That's our motivation. The longing to be free from sin and to be more like Christ
and the gratitude to express our gratefulness for all He's done for us.
So that's what motivates us, but I want to get to what's called, what I'm calling
the frustration that we feel when it comes to this command to be perfect. And
here's where I think I just need to spend a few minutes talking to some of you
who are prone to perfectionism.
If you're not sure if you're a perfectionist or not, I'm going to read a few
statements and see if this sounds like you. I see shoddy work everywhere I look.
People tell me that my standards are too high.
I'm afraid of not measuring up to my own standards in my own eyes.
I'm prone to comparing myself to others.
I have a hard time forgiving myself when I make a
If, if those things are true about you, you probably have some perfectionist
tendencies in your day. David Burns, who's a psychologist in an article in Psychology
Today back in 1980, said, "A perfectionist is someone whose standards are high beyond
reach or reason. People who strain compulsively, unremittingly toward impossible goals
and who measure their own worth entirely in terms of productivity and accomplishment.
That's a perfectionist. When Jesus calls you to be perfect,
He is not calling you to be a perfectionist.
Now this is important. There's a difference between striving to be perfect and being
a perfectionist, you say, what's the difference? Well, there's a difference between
striving to be feminine, if you're a woman, and being a feminist.
There's a difference between trying to obey the law and being a legalist.
There's a difference between being human and being a humanist. You see,
there's a difference between what is good and turning it into the philosophy that
runs your life. We should be straining and striving to be Christ -like and godly in
what we do. That's what Jesus is calling us to do as his followers. But a
perfectionist is someone whose sense of identity, their worth and their value is
wrapped up in performing at a perfect level. For a perfectionist,
If you're not perfect, you're worthless.
That's the difference. The difference between someone who is straining and striving to
be Christ -like and someone who's a perfectionist, here's the difference. The person
who is straining and striving but is not a perfectionist understands grace and a
perfectionist doesn't.
If you have a tendency toward perfectionism, you need to understand that one of the
things that Jesus does perfectly is he extends grace to those who fail.
Jesus is perfect at giving grace to those who fail. If you really wanna be perfect,
like Jesus, you have to grow in your capacity to give grace to yourself and to
others when you fall short. If you're not doing that, you're not perfect. That's a
part of perfection. We strive, yes, but if you're more disappointed in yourself or
someone who falls short than God is, then we got a problem. If you withhold grace
from yourself or others where God would give grace, then you're twisted in your
perfectionistic thinking, and if you find yourself thinking that God is disappointed
with you because you've fallen short, that somehow you have fallen out of favor with
him, that he's no longer your loving father as a result, then you need to go back
and read your Bible a little more. Read about Peter denying Jesus, and how did God,
How did Jesus respond? He restored him.
Read 2 Corinthians 12 where the apostle Paul says, "I boast only in my weakness
"because God's grace is sufficient when I fail." Next time you're beating yourself up
for being human, ask yourself this question. Do I believe God is mad at me because
I've fallen short? Do I believe he's disappointed in me? "Is he ashamed of me, has
he quit loving me?"
And then tell yourself the truth. There is no condemnation for those who are in
Christ Jesus. Nothing can separate you from the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus.
Charles Spurgeon says that as children of God, we should be pursuing Christ's
likeness. We ought to stretch toward the highest conceivable standard and not be
satisfied until we reach it." And he's right. But there's a difference between not
being satisfied and beating yourself up. There's a difference between saying,
"I want to excel still more," and beating yourself up for why you didn't get there
the first time. It's the difference between pursuing being perfect and being a
perfectionist.
If you think you might be a perfectionist, and by the way, if you're not sure if
you're a perfectionist, just ask somebody who knows you. Do you think I'm a
perfectionist? Do you think I have perfectionistic tendencies?
Don't ask unless you're ready for the answer and ready to extend grace to whatever
they say.
But let me wrap this up, all of this up, by letting you know how you can be
perfect according to the Bible's understanding of what that perfectionism needs to
look at. Because when Jesus in Matthew 5 .48 says, "Be perfect as your Father is
perfect," that's not just hyperbole.
He's not just saying that rhetorically to try to get a rise out of you. He's not
exaggerating for emphasis.
When Jesus went through the six you have heard it said, but I say to you and he
upped the bar in chapter 5 He was leading everyone to this conclusion at the end
when he said you must be perfect Because he wanted his audience to say no one can
do that Because when they said Jesus no one can do that. He smiled and said we're
getting to somewhere.
We're halfway there. You can't get to where I'm trying to take you till you first
say nobody can do what you're asking us to do, Jesus. That's when he says,
okay, now you're ready for the good news.
When you say there's no way I can do it, I'm sunk, I'm in trouble, it's when you
get to that point that now you're open to abandoning your own self -effort for self
-improvement and self -righteousness, and you're open to a new option, to other ideas.
And so when Jesus says, "Be perfect," and you say, "There's no way," and he smiles,
then he would say, "You're right, there is no way. "You can't, but I can,
and I have, "and in me, You can too.
The only path to perfection is to find it in Christ. Not in your own ability,
but in Christ. The only way to obey what God is commanding in Matthew 5 :48 is to
be in Christ so that His perfection becomes your perfection.
I heard a pastor once talk about a and he had, who worked at Disneyland. And he
was a character. So he would come to work every morning, he'd go to the locker
room, and he would put on over his clothes, he would put on his Mickey Mouse
costume. And he would go out in the park all day. And when people saw him in the
park, they didn't see him, they saw Mickey. And he went like Mickey and oh,
you know, he'd laugh like this, right? He had all Mickey, the mannerisms and nobody
saw him. He was Mickey until he went back to the locker room and took his clothes
off, took his costume off. Romans 13, we're told we're to put on Christ,
put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to glorify its
desires. Now when we put on Christ, it's not like we're putting on a costume and
hiding us behind the costume, we're putting on a person, we're putting on a new
identity, our identity is in Christ. In fact, I want to, let's just read this verse
aloud together, put it back up. Read it with me. "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ
and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
One more time. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the
flesh to gratify its desires. This is the only way you can be perfect.
You have to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. When you're in Him, He's covering you
and when God sees you, It's like the people at Disneyland, they don't see the
person behind the, they see Jesus, God sees Jesus when he looks at you and is
looking for your righteousness. Because when you become a Christian, you are in
Christ, Christ is in you, it's not a costume you're putting on, it's a new
blending, in fact I was thinking about this and these are all imperfect
illustrations, but it's more like becoming Spider -Man than becoming Mickey Mouse.
When you become a Christian, you got bit by the radioactive spider. Now, you're
different, you're changed. You're still you, but there's something new,
there's something different. You're fundamentally a different person. When you are in
Christ, his perfection is now yours. That's a gift he gives you.
God sees that. He sees you as perfect. But the verse we just looked at said put
on Christ, but then it says make no provision for the flesh. So it's not just put
on Christ, but now you're actively seeking to kill the flesh, to squash the flesh,
which is at war with the spirit. you strive for perfection, even though you have it
because you put on Christ. Because as we said, you're positionally perfect,
you're growing in practical perfection, so it will one day be your full possession.
Imagine that Disney worker, imagine that every day when he puts on that costume, he
was actually being transformed when he put it on into the, not just into the image
of Mickey Mouse, but he was becoming more and more like Mickey every day. Imagine
that when he took off the costume at the end of the day, he was a little more
like Mickey, and pretty soon he didn't need to put on the costume because he had
become Mickey Mouse in the process of just putting on that costume every day. Well,
as we grow, every day we are growing more and more into the image of Christ, and
one day we don't put on Christ because we will be fully in Christ when we get
home, that day's ahead for us. Right now, God sees us clothed in Christ. He sees
you as perfect because Christ is covering you. The apostle Paul knew that Jesus had
called his followers to be perfect, and here's what Paul said about his own quest
for perfection. In Philippians three, he says, "Not that I have already obtained
this, or I'm already perfect. This is Paul. If you're thinking anybody in the New
Testament who might have achieved perfection, Paul would seem like a good candidate.
He says, I have not obtained it. I'm not already perfect, but I press on to make
it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I don't consider that
I've been made my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and
straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of
the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Press on toward the goal,
friends, that's what we're to do. God has already declared you perfect. Now press on
toward the goal of becoming what he's declared you to be, and One day you'll get
there. If you're a Christian, Jesus Christ has made you his own. Forget what lies
behind, strain forward to what lies ahead. And press on toward the goal that the
perfection you've been given as a gift will one day be the reality more and more
each day will become the reality that we see in your life and one day the final
reality that you'll experience. Pray with me.
Father, we thank You that when You command that we would be perfect,
You give along with the command the desire and the power to accomplish it.
Lord, I pray that You would deliver us from perfectionism, but that we would not be
lax or lazy in straining to grow in Christ's likeness.
Help us to be diligent and help us to remember grace every time we fall short.
Help us to embrace the grace every time we fall short
and help us to get back up and press on. Lord,
I pray for those here with us this morning who are not in Christ,
for those who are either trying to pursue righteousness on their own,
hoping that they will make themselves good enough, that they will achieve their own
salvation and earn your favor and get glory for themselves.
And I pray for those here who have given up on the whole enterprise and said I
can't do it while I try and are just hoping for the best. I pray that they would
understand that neither of those is the right response. I pray that they would need
to be, they'd understand they need to be in you, that they need to be every day
putting you on, that they need their heart transformed, and they need the Holy
Spirit in them to give them both the desire and the power to want to please you.
Would you be pleased, Lord, to save any here who need to come to you this morning?
Help them to understand their need and surrender to you and begin the journey toward
the high call.
We ask these things in your name.