Jesus' Heart Transformation Blueprint.

If we have not met yet, my name's Abbie Sawczak. I'm one of the pastors here, and today we are in the midst of our series on the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus gave this sermon in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, and we've been walking through it. If you missed any weeks, we have an incredible team that uploads podcasts so you can catch along and know what's happening.

Sometimes when we walk into a room, we might not know what's happening. We have options. We can ask questions and say, guys, what is happening here today? Or we can be quiet and start worship in a moment of silence. Some of us tip toe in the back and think, what is happening? And when we walk into different settings and places and don't know what's happening, we have two options. We can try to fit in and pretend that we know, or we can ask questions and say, what do they know that I don't know? What is happening here? What did I just walk into?

Because whether we can always name it or not, we all have a culture that we are bringing into a room and we are entering into somebody else's culture, somebody else's story. And every time we read scripture, that's what we're doing. Whether we always know it or not, based on how you grew up, the culture that you come from, you're reading through just a little bit of that lens. Maybe sometimes more than others. But there are things that have been deeply formed inside of you that are going to impact the way that you read the text.

We're reading about people that have their own culture. Sometimes it's pretty simple for us to understand. And other times we have to ask some questions. What did I walk into? Today is a really fun Sunday. We're talking about everybody's favorite topics: murder, adultery, divorce. When we hear these things, everybody feels a certain way.

We all have different responses. Maybe some of you, it's because you've experienced pain from these things. Maybe you have been deeply hurt by people. Maybe you have experienced things that are mentioned here. And so all of a sudden there can be hurt, shame, and all sorts of things. And a lot of it comes from even how these scriptures have been taught through the years.

I want to clear the air. This sermon is not going to be something where we're sitting around defining sin. We're not here to put shame. Rather we're here to take a deep breath and say, God, what is your heart for us? What are you truly longing for us to experience?

Although the text that we're reading today has three specific things, they're examples. After Jesus gave the Beatitudes and said, blessed are those who live this way, he's now using three specific stories to illustrate his heart for us. As we read this, I want to invite you, as best we can, to just pray and release any hurt or any pain that might come as we read this text. I want to invite the Holy Spirit to bring healing to our hearts as we look at this text not as something meant to define wrong, but rather to show us how God intends us to live in unity and in peace with him.

Anger and murder

Starting in Matthew chapter 5, verse 21:

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, do not murder. And anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, Raka, is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says you fool will be in danger of the fire of hell. Therefore if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother. Then come and offer your gift. Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way. He may hand you over to the judge and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

Matthew 5:21-26

The big message I want us to take away is this. Jesus is showing us the life that we truly long for, even in these texts. He's highlighting that it's not behavior modification, but heart transformation. Jesus is using these laws from the past to point to what he's really after: your heart. It's about heart transformation. That is what Jesus is telling us over and over again.

So what do we do with this? We examine our hearts. We examine our hearts and we lead all of our desires, all of our hurt, all of our pain to Jesus. That is our response. So again, we see here in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus shares teachings that are revealing the heart of God for God's people. These aren't just moral rules that Jesus is saying, follow, follow, follow. Rather they're an invitation for us to experience the fullness of God's kingdom living, a life of true righteousness, which comes from the inside.

If we can be people that continue to examine our hearts and let God transform them and heal them and live from that place, then we won't need all of these specific rules to teach us what that looks like. It will just be an overflow because when we are living from that place that we are so deeply loved by God, then that love will just have to spill out.

So what we're seeing here is that it's not just about what we do. It's about what we feel, what we desire, what we think. This is an invitation to examine our hearts, to ask: what do we honor at the end of the day? What do we value? Jesus is showing us the life we long for is found in letting him transform our hearts from the inside out.

We're going to start with anger. It says you heard that it was said to the people long ago you shall not murder. So he's quoting the Torah, quoting the law. This was something that the culture there, the people listening, would have known. But then what we see here is Jesus saying, you've said, like, as long as I don't murder anyone, I'm fine. That kind of became the position of people. Like, well, I haven't technically murdered someone, so I'm good. I'm good.

But Jesus then doubles down on this. He says, anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Anger, sometimes when we think of it, is just an emotion. So why is it positive? Is it negative? What does this mean here?

And I want to talk about this for a moment. Jesus is saying that it's so much more than just the outward, but it's the inward. But I also want to be cautious of how we look at anger because anger in and of itself is an emotion and it's not bad. Anger is something that we need to explore and examine to say, why am I angry? Because if we don't examine internally why we're angry, that's when we see it come out in the wrong places.

So rather than Jesus highlighting murder as being so out there, Jesus is really telling us: what is happening here when you're murdering someone? You're showing them that you don't value their life. You're showing them how you see them. That their life is not worth living. And then he's going even deeper and saying, if you're angry at people, if you're coming and saying, Raka, and you're cursing them and putting them down, you as well have a heart that is saying to that person: I don't value you.

So this is causing us to ask: how are we treating people? What does that action tell us about how we see those people? Do we look at the people around us and do we see them as image bearers made in the image of God?

We see here that anger can be a sign that something is wrong. Normally this emotion is that. But anger is not always considered a primary emotion. It's a secondary emotion. Let me explain this. The things that we feel automatically, we might just be like, I'm angry. But typically that anger is a sign of something else. A primary emotion of something that is happening.

Anger is often a response to frustration. Anger can be a response to hurt. Anger can be a response to fear or to disappointment. So it's important for us that when we start to see these things creep up in us of being angry and starting to see the outward actions of the way we're speaking to people around us, the way we're treating people around us, rather than just saying, stop it, like that's bad, I want to invite us to say: how do we explore that? How do we examine our heart to say, what am I really feeling? What hurt is deep inside of me? What disappointment exists? What frustration?

When we talked about this a couple of weeks ago when Nathan was teaching, he was talking about us being salt and light and how we can sometimes see people do really bad things. Like, we can all agree, murder, that's a really bad thing to do. And you think, how do you get to that place in your heart where you can do that? It doesn't just happen overnight. So how do we examine our heart so closely every single day to say, what am I feeling? Where is this emotion and feeling coming from? How can I lead that to Jesus and lay it down at the feet of Jesus?

I think an invitation for us here, rather than to just look and say okay, what is God saying about murder, but to really see what Jesus is trying to tell us about our hearts. Look at the end of your day and think: how did I treat the people around me? Was it honoring them as image bearers? Was it showing kindness and love the way Jesus wants?

And if you find yourself feeling angry, rather than jumping to this place of stop it and being in shame and thinking that's bad, bad, bad, instead dig deeper and think: why am I angry? What am I really feeling here? Is this anger because of injustice? Is it righteous anger? Is there something that I'm feeling that I need to do something about? Or am I angry because I've been hurt and I've been disappointed?

Let your anger lead you to Jesus, where we can find that peace and that restoration. Because what we're going to see is that when we bring our anger to God and we allow God to heal our hearts, we stop seeing other people as obstacles or as people that hurt us. Instead we see them as beloved children of God. And that is the place we need our hearts to be. We need to see even the people that wronged us as beloved children of God. And I know that when you're sitting here today and thinking of people in your life that have deeply wronged you, this is really hard to do.

In verse 25, it says: settle matters quickly. Do it while you are still with them, or he may hand you over to the judge. In verse 23, it says: therefore if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. Go first and be reconciled to your brother. Jesus is highlighting over and over in this text this urgency to say: be reconciled, be reconciled, be reconciled.

Why? Because God created us to live in unity with one another. Yet there is a lot of hurt and brokenness that is going to take place in this life. So the point is not on the brokenness, but rather God's intent for us to live at peace and in unity with one another. So this causes us to say: how do we take this invitation of whenever we're feeling anger to not just shove it down, but explore that anger so that we can be people that forgive? We can be people that say: Holy Spirit, I need your help to see these people as image bearers, because sometimes it's really hard to do that.

Lust and adultery

Next we see this section on adultery, verse 27:

You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

Matthew 5:27-30

Yikes. That's a lot in just a few verses. We're talking about cutting body parts out. And not anything, but notice it's even the right eye, the dominant eye. There's so much that you can note here about this text. But again, one of the things that we have to remember is whenever we're looking at scripture and reading it from Old Testament to New, we can see God's overarching heart. Because if you just open this up and read this, this could lead you to a lot of trouble. What is God really saying right here in this text?

Jesus is challenging us once again to look beyond an external act, but instead to examine deep down the desires of our hearts. When we're talking about lust here, we're not just talking about a glance or acknowledging a beautiful person. Like, we're beautiful people. God made us in his image. But we're talking about this deep gaze, right? This objectifying of someone, this using someone for your own pleasure. We have to be cautious of how we talk about this because we're talking about lust in an extreme type of way here.

And when it said in verse 29, if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out, what I think is so interesting about the eye is that the eye is what we see. The things that we see are then what create these memories. It brings in so much. But we see here that Jesus is calling us. Rather than just shaming people that have been found in situations of adultery, he's saying, hey, those of you, if you're even looking, gazing at someone with lust in your heart, you're on the same place.

I always laugh. When people ask me what my favorite verse is, I say Romans 3:23, which is: for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It was like, what a strange verse. But I think it's this constant reminder that sometimes we can look and we, in our own culture, in our own context, start to rank like all these different things of like, this is really bad, this is kind of bad, this one's okay, right. But the reality is that we have all in some way fallen short of the glory of God.

And we need Jesus. We need the Holy Spirit to continue to lead us back to transform our hearts so we can walk in our identity in Christ. We all need the power of the Holy Spirit. So when we're talking about these things, it's so much less about looking at adultery and looking deep inside of our hearts and asking: in what way am I not honoring the people around me? In what ways am I objectifying people?

Now, here's the thing. We all have desires and we all have longings within our hearts. So we have to be intentional to say: where are we leading those longings? What are we doing with these desires? When we let our longings lead us to God, we realize that what we ultimately are longing for is intimacy, connection, to be fully known, to be loved, to be found in God. The Lord is our true source of fulfillment.

Yet we're going to find ourselves in moments where we start looking for things that only God can give us in other people. And that is one of the things that we see often happening when people are found in lustful situations, when they find themselves gazing at people that they shouldn't be using to fulfill their own desires. It's so much less about this outward act and so much more about this inward heart position of asking: what am I truly looking for and longing for that I'm not receiving from the Lord in this moment?

And I hope that you hear me today. I'm not trying to simplify these really big things that cause harm to people. But I'm also not trying to shame us saying, like, hey, watch out, like you might go commit adultery tomorrow. Like that's not it. But it's this intentionality to say: how do we be people that we constantly are examining our hearts? We are recognizing there's always going to be a temptation at hand to look to fulfill our longings and desires in other places that are not of the Lord and are not the Lord, which is our true source. And in doing that, we can cause harm to other people.

And Jesus, so much of the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes is about his love for people. When we look at the law, we have to look at it every day when we go through intersections. When you stop at that stoplight and you don't run the red light, you're not only protecting yourself from getting hit, but you're protecting other people from getting hit as well. God, the obedience that he's asking us to walk in, is not just about us as individuals, but about every single person around us.

How are we honoring the people around us? How are we living into this kingdom identity that God wants us to live and walk in? His kingdom come. How do we live and walk in that?

I think so much of it is the daily examining our hearts. So when we are tempted by lust, here are some questions to ask yourself. What am I really longing for? What am I looking for in others that only God can provide? And how can I surrender these desires to God and allow my heart to align with his?

Divorce and unity

Next, we get to divorce, the breaking of unity. Jesus is saying:

It has been said, anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce. But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife except for marital unfaithfulness causes her to become an adulteress and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.

Matthew 5:31-32

Okay, what is going on here contextually that they would have known about? Looking back at the cultural context, only men were allowed to divorce. So that's why you're hearing language of like men to the wife or like husband to wife, men to women. Only men were allowed to divorce women. And one of the things that we see Jesus do again and again in his life is restore the dignity of those who had been marginalized and oppressed. And one of those people groups and populations were women.

So even in this, I think often we can read this text and think that it's just giving us what are the grounds for divorce? What are not the grounds for divorce? That's not what's happening here. Jesus is showing us his heart for humanity, his heart for us to live, yes, in unity together. But when we look a little bit deeper and ask some questions, we see a lot of this is protecting the marginalized and the oppressed, which at the time were women.

There's really only one law that you can find that specifically addresses this issue of divorce. And it says that if the man initiates, it has to be a legitimate reason. And this was kind of up for debate. So some people were like, the only reason was adultery. That was it. It's the only reason you can get divorced. And then there was another group of people that were like, you could get divorced for any reason.

But here's what happens though. At that time culturally, if you were to just divorce a woman, women could not work and support themselves. Women could not provide for themselves in that type of way. So if men were just going to marry women and just be like, I'm done with you and divorce them, essentially they're stranded, right? And they're stuck in poverty. They're stuck in a place where they are going to continue to be oppressed.

Some people were living like this, that any reason you could just get divorced. But here it's interesting because it's saying that if you divorce her for any reason, you're making her a victim of adultery. But this would then mean that the marriage contract was still going to be in play, but it was in a way Jesus was saying then like to the husband: this is going to be on you. Like, you're the one that is making her a victim of adultery.

What Jesus was doing here, when Jesus essentially was saying, no other reason but adultery, this was to protect the women. But also we have to realize that so many women were in marriages where they were being oppressed and abused and taken advantage of. So Jesus is not saying, here's the only grounds necessarily for divorce, but instead showing that marriage is about mutual respect, where two image bearers are coming together. He's not saying that this is the only reason and then it violates everything. Rather, he's trying to show us that there's so much more going on than just this. How we can get so caught up in these small little things that we completely miss the heart of God.

Jesus is concerned with protecting the vulnerable and making sure that we don't have laws in place that keep people captive to abuse, that keep people captive to mistreatment. So Jesus is not just saying like, get divorced, whatever, it's not a big deal. Because he knows that's something that causes pain. So of course, God's intent is that there would never be any fighting in relationships, right? His intent is that no one would ever harm each other.

Yet we live in a world where that's not always the reality. And that's not always the situations that we find ourselves in. And so Jesus is reminding us here that he cares about us, that he's protecting the vulnerable, he's protecting the oppressed. And although divorce, yes, can often result in brokenness and it's not God's ideal, the focus here is his desire for us to be people that uphold his character in the way that we treat one another.

I believe that his purpose and point in this is to focus on the restoration of the vulnerable and the relationships around us. So rather than focusing here on just the logistical reasons for divorce or not for divorce, I think that's the wrong question when we approach this text. But instead, we should be asking: how can we in all of our relationships protect one another, honor one another? How can we love the way that God intends us to love one another? And in that, protect the dignity of the life that we get to be married to or we get to be in relationship with?

God desires the sacredness of unity, yes. But more than that, he desires healing. He desires safety for us. And so this goes so much more beyond just the protecting of a covenant of marriage, but moves towards showing us God's heart to honor and protect people.

So these teachings, just at face value, if we're not understanding what's happening culturally, we can be gouging our eyes out, right? We can be cutting off limbs. We can be running around trying to tell people: look, this is when you can get divorced and when you cannot get divorced, and this is all fill in the blank.

And in doing that, we can miss God's heart where he's saying: I desire for you to live fully surrendered to me. I desire for you to live and to follow my ways and to be righteous. But you on your own are not going to be able to do this. We are not going to be able to control our righteous anger or unrighteous anger. We're not going to be able to control our lustful desires. We're not going to be able to control those things without Jesus.

If you look right before Jesus says all of this, in Matthew 5, verse 20, he says:

For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:20

He's saying you can't live into this kingdom reality even if you upheld every single one of these things perfectly. Which is why we need Jesus.

Heart transformation and the examine

Jesus is calling us to a higher level of righteousness, but a righteousness that truly does surpass just external behavior but goes deep within the depths of our hearts. We would not be people that read scripture looking to say: how do I like check or not check these boxes of sin or not sin. But that we would be people that look to say: God, you sent your son Jesus to give his life for people. You made all of us in your image. So how do we love? How do we honor? How do we protect? How do we fight for justice for the people around us? How do we live into all of the things that Jesus is saying in the Sermon on the Mount of how he intends us to live as holy and righteous?

That is our goal: to become more like Jesus and do the things that he did. Not just to avoid certain things or to define what is sin and not sin, but to look at Jesus, and as we look at Jesus, to become more like him every single day.

One of the things that we encourage everyone to do here, if you're a part of our community, is to have what we call a rule of life, which is a set of spiritual practices that we are committed to following in our becoming like Jesus. And one of those is every single day. We encourage you to end your night and pray in what's called the examine.

There are many different ways that you can do this. But a simple form of this is to take time to just replay your day, to think about what happened, and then to reflect. Try and notice: what were you feeling? Because I don't think you just wake up one day and all of a sudden you're objectifying people, right? You don't just wake up one day and start causing harm to people. But it's the seeds that we're sowing and the seeds that we're watering every single day in our hearts and our lives. That's what's going to start to take root and that's what's going to multiply.

So how do we every single day reflect and just say like, ah, not just I was angry again. Okay, stop it. Or ah, like I felt myself being like lustful again. I got to stop that desire. I got to suppress it. But instead: how do we pay attention to those desires? How do we even listen and say: what are my emotions and my feelings telling me about how I'm really feeling?

And as we reflect on that, begin to say: God, where were you at today in that? God, what are you trying to show me through this? And then take a moment to repent, to confess any ways that you felt like you were causing harm to people. Any ways that you felt like you were not living the way that God has asked us to live. Confess your sins, repent, turn back towards God, and end in a time of gratitude.

And part of that gratitude is just thanking God that we can continue to turn back every single day. That every single time we take a step away from him, it's an invitation for us to turn back and to look at Jesus again. Because when we let our longings lead us to Jesus, he transforms our hearts and empowers us to live the life that we were created to live. A life where it's a natural overflow. It's not about achieving these rules. But we're so in love with God and living from a place of love with God, union and communion with God, that it is just this effortless overflow.

It's like we wouldn't even dare look at someone lustfully because we're like: that's God. That's someone that's made in God's image. We just can't. That is the goal. How do we become so in love with Jesus that that is the overflow of how we live our life?

And then if we have moments where it comes in, we don't sit stuck in the shame. But instead we surrender that to Jesus again and again and again. And what I hope you hear is that if we make this a part of our rhythm and our practice, the enemy is not going to be able to keep us stuck in shame. Because we know that every day we can end in this place of gratitude of saying: God, you love me. You love me. You love me. You love me. And so I want to invite you to take a moment.

There are a few things that I sensed the Lord wanting us to do here. I think it's recognizing this. With this text, it can be really hard. But I really sensed that for many of us, we just need space to just talk to the Lord and even practice some of that examine and to just receive healing and let the Lord transform our hearts.

Maybe, when you think about anger, there's space and I want to invite you into this too. If you're feeling led there, to say: God, in what ways have I not been treating the people around me as people made in your image? Is there any person in my life that I've been showing hatred towards? That I have mistreated? Holy Spirit, would you show me? Confess, repent, turn to Jesus.

But I also just sense an invitation to take a minute. And if you're in a place where there are people that have really hurt you and you're recognizing you're still living in this place of hurt, to just invite the Spirit of God to come and to heal and to restore. And to help you, even as hard as it may be, to see that person made in the image of God again.

Some of you, maybe there is a conviction of saying: yeah, I recognize that although maybe I have not committed the act of adultery, that I've been looking lustfully towards people and I've objectified people. And in that I'm dishonoring the image bearer that they are. So take a moment and say: Holy Spirit, would you show me any way that this has been a part of my life and I surrender that to you, Jesus.

But also, if you're in a place where you feel like you've been mistreated and objectified, to just invite the Holy Spirit to come and to bring healing and to restore you in this place.

And then the final is with divorce. For some of you here today, just that healing of: this wasn't what I wanted. This wasn't what I intended. This isn't where I thought I would end up. But when we're following Jesus again, we're not just relying on ourselves. We're relying on everybody else around us.

And we live in a world where we're going to be hurt and broken things are going to happen. But Jesus wants to heal those broken places and to continue to remind us that although that's not the way that he intended it to be, that he's going to bring healing and restoration even still from the most painful, hurtful situations that we never could have imagined that we would be.

So I want to invite you, however you feel comfortable, if you want to close your eyes, if you want to position yourself and stretch your hands out in a posture to receive, we're just going to invite the Holy Spirit to bring healing in this place. And in the back, I'm going to invite the prayer team. If you're here today and you're like, I want someone to partner with me in prayer for any reason, I'm going to invite you as we close in a time of worship and prayer to receive that.

Holy Spirit, we just invite you now. Would you just shine light on these areas of our heart? If there are ways that we have been causing harm to people in our anger, in our lust, in the way that we, maybe even though we're not realizing it, and we wouldn't name it that, would you show us any ways we're not honoring people that are made in your image? People that we need to forgive, that we need to run before and bring to your altar and just say, God, would you help me forgive these people? Would you show us?

And Holy Spirit, I just ask, would you come and would you bring healing in this place today? Any wrongs that have been done. Any situations that we are just mourning and we're grieving. Like, this wasn't what I had planned. This wasn't what I had intended. I didn't want it to end up this way. Would you just come and would you heal our hearts today?

God, would you transform our hearts today in only a way that you can? And so we just stand here, Lord, surrendered, listening, inviting your presence, inviting your spirit to speak to us. To show us even the deep things that maybe we have just thought, if I can just suppress it and suppress it and ignore it, it'll go away. God, would you just gently lift those things up from the surface today so that we can lay them down at your feet? Every longing, every desire, every hurt, every pain.

Would you remind us of our identity in you as child, as holy, as righteous, as redeemed, as restored? We just welcome your presence in this space. Holy Spirit, you are welcome here.