***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Speaker: Dr. Dallas Willard preaching The Kingdom of God Part 3.
Dallas: This morning as we read scripture I would like to say that we’re reading two prayers from two women who were failures. One had been barren for many years and there was no failure greater and if you’ll turn with me to the second chapter of 1 Samuel we’ll read her prayer of rejoicing after the Lord had met her. First Samuel, I’m sorry, first Samuel, the second chapter. We’ll look at Luke 2, put your finger there to find the passage before we begin to read so you won’t break your concentration. Luke chapter 1.
Jesus preached the gospel to the poor, came into a suffering world and he confirmed all the promises of the Old Testament concerning the Messiah and he disappointed some people but he never disappointed the poor folks.
Now listen to Hannah and Hannah prayed and said my heart rejoiceth in the Lord. My horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth is enlarged over mine enemies because I rejoice in thy salvation. There is none holy as the Lord for there is none beside thee neither is there any rock like unto our God. Talk no more so exceedingly proudly. Let not arrogance come out of your mouth for the Lord is a God of knowledge and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty men are broken and they that stumbled are girded with strength. They that were full have hired out for bread and they that were hungry have ceased being hungry so that the barren hath borne seven and she that hath many children is waxed feeble. The Lord killeth and maketh alive he bringeth down to the grave and he bringeth up. The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich he bringeth low and he lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust and lifteth up the beggar from the dumb hill to set them among princes and to make them inherent the throne of glory. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s and he hath set the world upon them. He will keep the feet of his saints and the wicked shall be silent in darkness for by strength shall no man prevail. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces out of heaven shall he thunder upon them. The Lord shall judge the ends of the earth and he will give strength under his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.
Now from Luke chapter one we read Mary’s response. Mary was carrying an illegitimate child. She was a failure of immense proportions in fact so much so that people in her condition were often killed. And she says in the 45th verse and blessed or Elizabeth says to her after Elizabeth greets her and the babe leaps in her womb for joy. And then she speaks to Mary 43rd verse whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come unto me. For lo as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears the babe that is John the Baptist leaped in my womb for joy and blessed is she that believed for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.
Now here’s Mary’s response. And Mary said my soul does magnify the Lord and my spirit has rejoiced in God my savior for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed for he that is mighty hath done to me great things and holy is his name and his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He had showed strength with his arm he had scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts he had put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree he had filled the hungry with good things and the rich he had sent away empty he had opened his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spake unto our fathers to Abraham and to his seed forever. May God add his blessing to this reading of the word.
Thanks very much for that good song. These songs that have been coming in these last meetings have been very suited to the sort of thing we are trying to talk about which is the great inversion that Jesus brought about and that occurs as we enter into the kingdom of heaven.
We look at human life and we see as the song said a few moments ago dreams and find machines and pieces on the ground. We look at a world in which perhaps in the last 50 to 70 years normal human beings have killed over 100 million of their fellows in the name of what is good. We look at a world in which the majority of the world are constantly troubled with hunger and disappointment and those who are full usually have broken hearts. And consequently when Jesus came he spoke to the condition of the people in the world and he announced to them good tidings of the kingdom of God.
Now we’re pursuing this inversion that he brought about and last time we talked about the inversion of blessedness and this time we’re going to talk about the inversion of righteousness and I give you my text from Matthew 5. Matthew 5 20. We find a contrast of righteousness and then I want to join with that a couple of verses out of John 3. Matthew 5 20 for I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. This is talking about entering the kingdom of heaven and I want to put with that you need not turn to it unless you just wish the third chapter of John the third verse and the sixth and the fifth verse. And here Jesus says to Nicodemus verily verily I say unto thee except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. And again Jesus said verily verily I say unto thee except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
The revolution of blessedness saw those who were marked out by the order of the world as un-blessable called to attention and informed that they too were blessable. It is amazing the things which mark us out in our own minds as beyond hope.
Recently I heard the story of a man who was a powerful minister and greatly used but all of his life he had terrible nightmares because when he was a child he was raised in an orphanage and in that particular orphanage they believed that it was wrong for a man to have curly hair and so they would clip his hair very close. And all of his life he would wake up with terrible nightmares because his hair had grown and he believed that he was lost. He would dream that he was lost and condemned because his hair had grown out. This is a man who had been used of God and whom you might expect to have it straight but these things lie in our souls. They sit there and condemn us.
And when the writer of the Gospel of Matthew began to write his message he wanted to make sure that everyone understood that. And Jesus comes and is presented to us here as one who meets those who stand outside of the pale of blessing.
Now I want to show you something you may not have noticed to emphasize this point. If you go back to the very opening verses of the Gospel of Matthew you find something which you may have trained yourself to skip because it’s just an old genealogy. The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Son of Abraham, Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac begat Jacob and Jacob begat and at that point we go to sleep until we get perhaps to verse 16. I cannot cease to wonder at how intricate and amazing the way the scripture is written is.
In this passage you will find mention, verses 1 through 16, you will find mention, five five women, five women. And I want to just go through that list and tell you a little something about them to enforce the point that in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus is presented as someone who stands and sits and walks and lives with those who are beyond the pale of the blessable.
The first woman is mentioned in verse 3, and Judas begat Pharise and Zara of Tamar. This was an incestuous relationship with a woman who was an Adulomite, not a Hebrew.
Look at the next woman, verse 5. Ray Cottage says in your Old Ones, this is Rachel, Rachel was the harlot in whose house the spies went to hide in Jericho. She was saved because of her faith in God.
The next woman that is mentioned is Ruth, also in verse 5. This woman was a Moabitess. The Moabites were hated by the Jews and they had a scandalous origination in an incestuous relationship between Lot and his own daughter.
The next woman is in verse 6. And in order to make the point very clear, we read, and Jesse begat David the king and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Uriah, a relationship of adultery and murder.
And the last woman, the little teenage girl in verse 16, Mary, had a child out of wedlock. He was later called the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
Do you think it is an accident that these people are mentioned here? It’s no accident. Every line of the Gospel we are presented with a man who was more than man but who those who were the caretakers of blessedness and righteousness in his time could never accept because he accepted sinners and he ate with them, he kept company with them, and he said to them, the whole need not a physician. He received sinful people. And he said to them, you too can be blessed.
Now what is blessed? Let’s talk about that for just a moment. To be blessed is to be well off, and to be well off depends upon who and what you are. To be blessed is to be well off, but if you take a pig and dress him up in a tuxedo and take him downtown to Scandi’s or Perino’s and serve him in the most expensive meal in the house, you will get nothing but trouble out of that and that pig will be miserable. The pig is not suited to that. That is not his nature. And to be well off is related to what you are. To be well off is to have the provisions which you need given the nature that you have. That’s to be blessed. On human terms, that’s really about all there is to be blessed, as long especially as you have a guarantee that it’s going to keep coming. Once you have that, you are, as we say, on easy street.
Now in the Greek culture there were two levels of blessedness recognized, and one was the level of ordinary human well-being that I’ve just referred to, and the other was the level of blessedness which the gods enjoy. And when Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God, he uses the word makarios, which we are familiar with from the news. There is an archbishop in Cyprus who used to be named Makarios. That just means blessed with the blessedness which the gods enjoy. Eudaimonia is the Greek term which refers to simple human well-being and fulfillment. When you’ve got enough to eat and all of your various faculties have sufficient play and you’re enjoying your life, then you have eudaimonia. But makarios means blessed in the manner in which the gods are blessed. Blessed with that abundance and power and holiness which is a part of God’s life. And when Jesus says, blessed are they that mourn, he is saying to them that that kind of blessedness is possible for them.
Now when we think of blessedness in the context of the Beatitudes and Jesus’s revolution of what it is to be blessed and well-off, we always have to remember that it has two aspects. One is the present ministry of the kingdom of God to us. And that is the note which is sounded in the very first Beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. And the other is that eternal dimension where we have passed simply from the kingdom of heaven into heaven itself. And you may note that the final Beatitude in verse 12 of chapter 5 concludes, rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven.
You cannot leave out the two dimensions of the ministry of God and the community of the redeemed if you understand or if you would understand the blessedness which Jesus is announcing. It has both the dimension of time and eternity. And it says to those that mourn that are depressed and unhappy and miserable, they can be comforted and it doesn’t postpone that comfort till heaven. But there is a dimension of life which will never be healed here. And very often as it is said, when we look at life it looks like the backside of a tapestry where all of the strings and the threads hang loose and no pattern is available, it looks like a mess. And it’s only in heaven that we turn the side and we see how the threads all come together and it makes sense. And that dimension is something we cannot leave out.
It used to be said that many Christians were too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good. I think we have come to the point now to where we are not enough heavenly minded. We think too much in terms of this world only and we look too much here for our satisfaction and our fulfillment. We need to say very simply as Jesus said in this beatitude, they have reward in heaven. It isn’t all here.
As we look now at this new blessedness and we hear what Jesus is saying, we must understand what a chaos it created in the minds of the people who heard him. And consequently, after he has said to them, you are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth, he must caution them because that new wine in their old wine bag will burst out and rupture their lives. That new patch on the old cloth, when it gets caught on a snag, will just tear a bigger hole because the old cloth won’t be strong enough to hold it because he has to caution them. Jesus is not a revolutionary. He does not say go tear the institutions down. Jesus stands beyond that level of change.
So note what he says in verse 17. Meet not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. Now you see, you have to understand that that is exactly what they would think. Having heard just what they had heard, having been told that the entire scale of human blessedness was not what they had been led to believe, not what had been forced down their throats, not what had sat upon their backs all of their lives, they’re apt to rise up and say let’s go kill a few people.
Once we hear the message of grace, unless we have been restructured in the depths of our heart by experience and teaching and the companionship of Christ, we are likely not to know what to do with all of the evil that has been suppressed in our souls by the threat of the law. And we have to say, well, if it’s this free and if it’s this easy, then why shouldn’t I have my way? Why shouldn’t I be proud that I’m not a Pharisee? And after all, Pharisees are rather bad people, so why don’t we go kill a few?
So Jesus says do not think that I’ve come to destroy the law and the prophets. I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, tell heaven and earth, pass away. One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law. And he concludes this by saying in the words of my text for today, for I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Now I must stop here and say to you very soberly because I know that most of you folk here are concerned to bring people to God. You are concerned to live for him and to bring others to him. And I want you to understand that if you’re going to do that effectively, you cannot disregard this verse.
Today we live in a time where the words born again are being prostituted and emptied and misused and abused all over the place, and that is why I read those verses on being born again to you in conjunction with this verse. To be born again is to enter the kingdom of God. And Jesus in many ways, and we shall see some of these in future meetings, and Jesus in many ways tried to explain how that happened.
And here he says you must go beyond the righteousness of the scribe and the Pharisee. Now I must tell you what that is. The righteousness of the scribe and the Pharisee is the righteousness of the explicit act. And sometimes that act is even a thought, but it is something specific. It is not a righteousness of the general spirit of the individual. It is a righteousness of the specific act. The Pharisee says if you do this, you’re all right. If you don’t do this, you’re all wrong.
Now what Jesus is saying is that you must go through that kind of righteousness and beyond. It is interesting to note that most of the disciples of Jesus Christ were Pharisees. They did not rest easily with it, but the Pharisees were tremendously drawn to him as well as rebuked by him. And they were very serious about this matter of righteousness.
And when Jesus speaks to them and of them, he does not say forget about the righteousness of the Pharisees. Let’s say a good word for the Pharisee. He is one of the better types among human beings. He takes righteousness extremely seriously. He understands how very important it is. But in order to make it manageable in terms of his own fleshly strength and the structures of the world in which he lives, he cuts it down to the level of acts.
Let’s look at some examples. There are in fact six examples here in which Jesus gives us a contrast between the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees and the righteousness of the kingdom of God. They are in verse 21, verse 27, verse 31, verse 33, verse 38, and verse 43. I will not have time to deal with these. I simply want to call them to your attention and use a couple of them to illustrate what the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees is and how the righteousness of Christ contrasts with it.
Let’s look at the first one. Verse 21, you have heard that it hath been said, thou shall not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. Now that is the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. As long as you don’t kill anyone, you’re all right on this point. This is dealing with that general area of human life in which men run into men. And one of the things which occurs at a certain point is that they decide to kill. And the Pharisees had taught that as long as you didn’t do that, you were all right.
But Jesus now deepens the principle to move from the level of the specific act to the level of the pervasive spirit and watch the marvelous way in which he goes deeper. The first verse following, that is verse 22, is actually taken from the Jewish rabbis of his own time. It is not new, but he does not stop there. He says, I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Rekha, shall be in danger of the counsel, that is, you worthless thing. But whosoever shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger of hellfire. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there remember’st thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift, go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
Do you see the progression from the level of killing to the level of being angry without a cause to the level of regarding others as worthless to calling them fools to finally coming to the place to where you cannot stand to have an unreconciled difference between you and your brother? The great transition of spirit as Jesus moves downward to the level of feeling, of character, and finally you come out with a man who has a tender heart, who loves other people, who is grieved if there is a harm that is done, and will do whatever they can to set it right.
It is so easy to misunderstand the teachings of Jesus here, I remember as a child my grandmother would never allow me to use the word fool. And if you take the route of the Pharisee here with Jesus’ teachings, you can say simply well as long as I didn’t call him a fool, I thought it may be that I didn’t call him a fool, I’m all right.
But you have to remember that Jesus is not at all teaching about specific actions. Now if you don’t understand this, the teachings of Jesus on what we are to do in this passage will bring you into insufferable bondage. You have to understand that what Jesus is teaching is a spirit, not an action.
And when you read, for example, in the verses which immediately follow, agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the office, and thou be cast into prison, verily I say unto you, thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost tharthing. What’s he talking about? Is he telling you you should never go to court with anyone? No he’s not. He’s saying that it is characteristic of the righteousness of the person who lives in the kingdom of God, that they will find a way of reconciliation. That they will seek out a relationship with the brother that has offended, which isn’t necessarily based on justice, which doesn’t just ask, well, have I lost anything through this? Have I suffered from it? But who is ready to give?
You may recall that in 1 Corinthians 6 and the 6th and the 7th verses, Paul is chiding the Christians at Corinth because they are taking one another to law before the unbeliever. And he says to them, isn’t there anyone in the church who is smart enough to settle your disputes? Why, he says, you are going to judge whole people. And he says, finally, why don’t you suffer wrong? Why don’t you suffer wrong?
Now, you see, the person who lives in the kingdom of God understands that’s quite all right to suffer wrong. The person who lives by the method of psychosocial justice says, it is never right to suffer wrong, never. And if they are injured, they must be repaired. Justice must be done. The other person must fess up and make it right. Jesus says, in the kingdom of God, the righteousness which is of that realm is so opposite to the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees that unless you are of that spirit you are not right.
Let me illustrate it with one more part of this passage, and that is the section verses 27 through verses 32. In this section Jesus is dealing with that area of relationships which affects men and women, and he deals explicitly with the matter of sex and divorce.
And the Pharisees had taught in verse 27, you’ve heard it said of them of old time thou shall not commit adultery. You see, that is an act. And the Pharisees defined righteousness in terms of the act. And if you simply did not do the act, that was all right.
Jesus said unto you, said, but I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. You see, Jesus moves the righteousness from the level of the act to the level of the heart. And he asks, why is it you did not commit adultery? And he has in mind here those who will purposely use the opportunity to look upon a member of the opposite sex for the purpose of eliciting lust.
The grammar here really is pretty clear. Whosoever looketh on a woman for the purpose of lusting after her, not and lust after her. This is very important because many people think if they have any thought of sex outside of the appropriate relationships, they have sinned. Jesus is not talking about that. You see, you must not make temptation into sin. Jesus himself was tempted on all points like as we. He is not talking about that at all. As Martin Luther used to say, you can’t keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair. And these are the people who are inviting the birds to build a nest in their hair. They are using things to elicit and evoke and provoke a condition of dissatisfaction and lust.
Jesus is saying, if all you can say is that you haven’t done it, that doesn’t say anything at all about the kind of righteousness which God regards.
He goes on to say, if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and so on with your right hand. Many people have thought Jesus was actually endorsing this, but you see what he’s doing is he’s taking pharisaical righteousness and reducing it to the absurd. The Pharisee was the one who said, you sin with your eye. Jesus is saying, all right, if you’re serious about righteousness, get rid of your eye and you can’t sin. The Pharisee is the one who said, you sin with your hand. And Jesus says, all right, if you’re serious about righteousness, cut your hand off and you can’t sin. The Pharisee is the one who put the sin in the action. Jesus says in general to him, all right, if your view is right, make action impossible and you can roll into heaven with whatever is left of your body. Just chop it off.
Jesus never believed for a moment that that would do it. That’s why you have to understand he’s not recommending this. He never thought of recommending this. The whole point that he’s making is that if you do all of that, sin is still in your heart. You can’t cut off your heart. You can’t cut off your mind. And as long as you have focused your attention upon the actions of the body that have performed by its members, you haven’t touched the root.
You see, Jesus is saying that unless you go beyond the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven because the kingdom of heaven is in the hearts of people.
What Jesus is saying to us is that it is possible to live without hatred and grudgingness and resentment. He’s saying it is possible for us to live without that gnawing sexual dissatisfaction which drives so many people to the point to where they feel like they’re not alive unless it is gnawing on them. He says it is possible to live with grace and mercy towards our mates and our friends. It is possible to live in a way which does not brutalize others and does not keep them from finding the rest and peace that they should have simply as a human being in God’s world. And he’s saying all of that is possible if the Spirit is transformed.
The new birth provides us that contact. It is the work of God and it comes through the effect of the word of God on our lives as we hear. You are going out into this world today and you’re going to be there meeting people right and left. Are you prepared to give that message of the righteousness of the kingdom of God as a possibility which you can offer to others both by what you are because you have it and by what you say because you understand it.
What is needed is hope. We are saved by hope. That’s what Paul said. We are saved by hope. And the thing which Jesus did above all was he gave hope to people who heard him. He gave hope because he assured them you are blessable. God can reach you where you are. He gave hope because he assured them there is a kind of righteousness which God can give you and which he can give to any person which will transform the heart so that good deeds as Jesus said will well from the inner man. And out of their inmost parts shall flow rivers of living waters. Dear friends I have not met a person who when they understood what he was saying would not be happy to exchange what they have for what he gives.