Christ's righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees to enter the kingdom of heaven, as stated in Matthew 5:20. The sermon contrasts the external, tradition-based righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees with the internal, grace-driven righteousness exemplified by Christ. True righteousness involves a transformed heart that desires holiness and obedience to God's law, not merely outward observance. The message concludes by emphasizing that Christ's imputed righteousness is the only means by which believers can meet God's standard and enter His kingdom.
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We're turning again in our Bibles this morning to the Gospel by Matthew chapter five, the Sermon on the Mount. And we're beginning our reading at verse seventeen and we shall read through verse twenty. Previous Lord's days we dwell on the verses seventeen through verse nineteen. And the general theme is Christ and the law, the relationship that Christ had to the Old Testament law. what he has to give us here in this portion. Now let us read this section again. Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophet.
I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. For verily I stand to you till heaven and earth pass, one God or one fiddle, shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so. He shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But whosoever shall do and teach them. The same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven.
You will notice that twentieth verse that we want to examined in particular this morning. It says, For I say unto you, and that word for is a connecting conjunction. It connects us with verse nineteen, which we previously studied, where he deals with he that is least or greatest in the kingdom. The least in the kingdom is one who would teach someone to disobey the law of God. He that is greatest in the kingdom is one who not only would teach obedience to the law, but who himself obeys the law of God.
For I say unto you, except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven. Now, may the Lord bless his word. Let us pray together. Our Father, we thank you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you are more interested in us than we are in ourselves. We thank you, our Father, that you have given us this word, not only that we may know intellectually, but rather that we shall obey with our lives and glorify you because of it.
And we just look to you now and ask that this morning we may grasp the truth of thy word and glory in him who gave it, even our Lord Jesus Christ. Minister to us in a special way. Search our hearts and send us forth for Jesus' sake. Amen. One of the great verses that should cause the believer to examine himself is the verse that is to occupy our attention this morning.
Self-examination in the light of the Word of God is excellent. It gives us assurance. More than that, it enables us to check up on ourselves and our spiritual temperature in relation to the Lord. Whosoever we read here, no, that's the previous verse, for I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven. There are a lot of things in this text. If I'm going to enter the kingdom of heaven, my righteousness must be greater than the scribes and Pharisees.
So I need to know something about their righteousness. Furthermore, I also need to know what kind of righteousness is necessary that I can enter the kingdom of heaven. Third, I must know how to obtain that righteousness. And finally, I must be sure that I have it. Now, when we consider this verse, this verse gives real meaning to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. This verse as well as the last verse in the fifth chapter. They go together. For in the ending of the fifth chapter, verse forty-eight, we read, Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.
And therefore we need to take this lesson seriously. Christ's ministry, friends, had a startling effect upon each other. Scribes and Pharisees were the profound teachers of the law. They were. The Pharisees had the reputation of being the exemplary model of Judaism, the God-ordained religion of the Old Testament. The Pharisees were honored that they attained the very pinnacle of personal piety. The common people imagined that such height of piety were unable.
They were unable to reach them. And therefore it was a common statement among the Jews of the first century that if two men entered into the kingdom of heaven, one would be a scribe, the other would be a Pharisee. And here our Lord comes and he says, Accept your righteousness, shall exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees. He shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven. Here is a strong statement, friends. and we need to examine it. Now, our Lord did not belong to the order of the scribes in Pharisees. Now, our Lord was not an official doctor of the law. He had never attended their so-called schools.
He had never graduated with a Ph.D., and yet he appeared before them as a master teacher of the law of God. For instead of talking about the traditions of the Father, over and over again in the sermon on their mind he said but I say unto you but I say unto you but I say unto you and when you come to the end of the seventh chapter we read he taught them as one having authority and not as a scribe therefore when the people listened to him teach this great lesson and they knew that he had not attended their school they saw that he stood among them as a teacher and he was a teacher who did not hesitate to criticize, as he does here, the teaching of those who were recognized and in a sense the authorized teachers of the law of God.
No wonder they wondered about our Lord. More than that, our Lord did not avoid the company of sinners. He accompanied with sinners. The scripture says of him, he eat it. he eats and he drinks with publicans and sinners and more than that he emphasized the doctrine not only by his teaching but by his life and that doctrine is called the doctrine of grace he emphasized grace in his first sermon that he preached in the synagogue in Nazareth as recorded in Luke chapter four where he took the Scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and he read from Isaiah chapter sixty-one.
Everybody marveled at the wondrous words that proceeded out of his mouth, but then he began to apply them. And in the application of those words, he applies what we call the doctrine of grace. He said there were many lepers in Israel during the days of Elisha, the prophet, but none of them was cleansed, save Nehemiah and the Syrians. He chose, the God chose. That's grace. God chose to cleanse a Gentile instead of a Jew. There were many lepers, but he chose to cleanse a Gentile. He said during the days of Elisha the prophet, there were many widows in Israel. But none of them was Elijah sent to.
He didn't send Elijah to a widow of Israel. He sent Elijah to be kept by a widow who was a Gentile. That's grace, friends. And our Lord emphasized grace. He accompanied with publicans and sinners. His teaching was vastly different from that of the scribes and the Pharisees. And they wondered, what is his relation to the law? And he told them, I didn't come to abrogate the law. I didn't come to set aside the law. There isn't one jot or one tittle that's going to pass from the law. It's all going to be fulfilled. And then he turned, and he says to them, And whoever teaches otherwise will be called Reis in the kingdom of heaven.
And then he adds the test that is before us. For I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven. Now who were the scribes and who were the Pharisees? That is the first question we want to answer. Now the word scribe designates an office in Israel. There were two kinds of scribes. There was a civil scribe, and he registered the affairs of state. And of these we may read of Shemshiah in Ezra chapter four and verse eight. He was a civil scribe.
But then there were ecclesiastical scribes. They were employed in copying and in expounding the scriptures. And one of these was Ezra, the scribe, that we read about in Ezra seven, verse one, in verse five, and again in verse six. Now, they were the scribes. But then who were the Pharisees? The Pharisees were a sect. They were not an office. The Pharisees followed a code of morals and ceremonial acts that were more rigid than than the law itself. They base their code on the traditions of the father.
Of the father. Not the father, but of the father. And by the fathers we have reference to the rabbis who taught the people down through the years. The various teachers of the law. And the writings of the fathers are known as the Talmudic writings. The writings of the Talmud. And they are, you can find them, you can read them today if you want to. And the scribes and the Pharisees, they had much more to say about the traditions of the fathers than they did about the word of God. Now the Pharisees were held in high esteem among the Jews.
And when Paul was defending himself in Acts chapter twenty-three, he said, I lived according to the strictest sect. of our religion. I was a Pharisee. Saul of Tarsus, before God saved him on the road to Damascus, he was a Pharisee. Now the scribes were the doctors of the law, and the Pharisees professed the purest practice of it. Our Lord said, except your righteousness shall exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of God. Now what was our Lord's relation to the law?
This is very important. Our Lord did not come to make it easier for us or to make the law of God in any sense less stringent in its demands upon us. And this needs to be proclaimed from the housetop in the day in which we live. We are living in a day when a lot of believers could almost be called antinomians. That means they are without law. It shouldn't be so. Our Lord's purpose in coming was to enable us to keep the law, not to abrogate it. And in Romans chapter eight, verse four, the word of God says that God has so worked through the gospel and in the new birth that now the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us.
who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. Now if we're going to be keepers of the law, if the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us, then we need to know what the law is. More than that, we don't only need to know what it is, we need to obey it. Obedience. And I want you to notice verse nineteen here in the fifth or in this passage. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Now, when you consider this, least and greatest, all the arguments that the theologians have made over that expression, the least and the greatest, they try to take the ten commandments that were given by Moses.
There were two tables of the law. You see, the one had the first four commandments, our duty toward God. The other table had the last six commandments, our responsibility toward one another, toward man. So the least was our responsibility toward men. Our greatest was our responsibility toward God. And the old rabbis, they thought if you are very strict in your observance toward God, it doesn't matter how you treat your fellow man. But you see, least and greatest can be boiled down a lot further than that. Our word said to one day, and it's recorded in Matthew twenty-one, what is the great commandment of the law?
And the man said, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, and was added, and thy neighbor as thyself. That embraced the whole of the law of God. And as James puts it in James chapter two, whosoever shall keep all the law and shall fail in one point. He's guilty of breaking it all. And as you read in Galatians chapter three, and I think it's verse twenty-one, no, it's verse ten. Galatians three, verse ten, we read these words are cursed in everyone who continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.
That puts all men under the curse. That brings all men to a place where their mouth is stuck. And they are guilty before God. Now then. This was Christ's attitude toward the law. Now we come to the teaching of the scribes and the Pharisees. You see beloved the whole purpose of the grace of God in Christ Jesus is to enable us. to fulfill the righteousness of the law. Holiness is not an experience that we have. Holiness is our means of fulfilling the law of God.
Holiness is that which we practice in our daily life. That's holiness. It is honoring and keeping the law of God. as a son of God did. That's holiness. And I read Hebrews chapter twelve, and it says, Follow peace with all men and holiness, apart from which no man shall see the Lord. Let me inject this right here on the basis of this text that we have. If you claim to be saved, And there are no yearnings in your life for holiness.
No hunger and thirst for righteousness. No desire to be like Christ. All you have is a profession. You have nothing else. You are not the Lord. It doesn't matter how many verses of Scripture you know. Holiness, beloved, without which, no man shall see the Lord. Holiness is not an experience that you can work up on a Sunday morning at eleven o'clock. Holiness is a way of life. It is a living before the Lord. Beloved, the Pharisees were self-deceived.
And if there's any area in my life where I don't want to be deceived, it's in relationship to this. Where am I going to spend eternity? I don't want anybody to deceive me when it comes to my soul. My soul is the most valuable thing I possess. The Lord said, what shall it profit a man if he gained the whole world? But he loses his own soul. What can a man give in exchange for his soul? So if you put your soul here, and you put all the wealth of the world here, Your soul is more valuable than the whole world.
And I don't want to be deceived, friends, when it comes to this matter of eternal salvation. I want to be sure, friends, that if the Word of God says, Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord, then my desire is for holiness of life. My desire is a hunger and a thirst for righteousness. For it is the only thing that is a genuine reality of assurance of faith, the only thing. Now let's move on. When we think of the teaching of Christ, his teaching was that of holiness.
And we contrast that with the teaching of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were lacking in two things, in righteousness and in holiness. They lacked that, you see. Our Lord, when He came, He said, Don't think that I've come to make the demands of the law easier. Oh, no. I do not come to reduce the demands of the law. One jotter, one pillow. The crossing of a T or the dotting of an eye will not pass away. Everything written in the law is the mind of a holy God. Well, what did the Pharisees teach? Well, what does it mean to really understand what the Pharisees taught?
You need to study Luke eighteen, where the Lord tells a parable of the Pharisee and the publican who went up to the temple to pray. And the Pharisees stood and he prayed with himself. And as he prayed with himself, you got to listen to what he said. He said, Lord, I thank you. I'm not as other men are. The problem is he was. But he was fooled. He didn't think he was. See? And then he said, I fast twice in the week. You see? I fast twice in the week. Now, he went way beyond what the Old Testament required in the law. There's only one fast in the year.
The law of God only commanded them to fast once in the year. And that was on the day of atonement. But he said... I say it twice in the week. Boy, Lord, you look at me. I differ from other people. Boy, you ask for once in a year, but I give it twice in the week. Boy, I am something. No, God says, you're nothing. You see, let's consider the religion of the Pharisees very quickly. You see, the Pharisee, he stood forward in a place of prominence. In Luke eighteen, as he stood and he prayed with himself, he stood alone.
There was no one his equal that he could stand there. And he said, Lord, I thank you. I'm not his other man. I fast twice in the week. I pay tithes of all that I possess. And I thank you that I'm not like that publican over there. You see? In other words, he stood forward in his prominence. But the problem was his religion was purely external. It was formal. It was not a religion of the heart. It was all outward activity. And in Christendom today, it is most an outward activity rather than a real action of the heart that produces holiness.
When we look at our Lord Jesus Christ, there is no contradiction between his wrath and his love. It's amazing. Christ never complained about anything that people did to him. He never complained about anything that people did to him. Because out of him flowed genuine love. But Christ denounced judicially the people who misrepresented God. And his great denunciations were for the Pharisees and the scribes. And most of chapter twenty-three of Matthew is taken up with us. He denounced them.
You see, here's what we need to examine. When we come to this text, he says, For I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter in. We can easily deceive ourselves. We can easily fool ourselves. The scribes and the Pharisees were denounced throughout the New Testament by our Lord himself as being hypocrites. They were unconscious hypocrites. They didn't realize they were. Everything was outward. In Matthew twenty-three he says, Whoa, are you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites?
For ye compass heaven and earth. No, he said, ye compass land and sea. to make one proselyte, and when you've made him, he's twofold more the child of hell than yourself. Now you talk about strong language. In other words, they compass Ram and C to get somebody to agree with him and to be their pupil and to come up after them. And he said, and when you're finished with him, he's twofold more the child of hell than yourself. He's already a child of hell because he's dead in trespasses and sins. And when he has all this awkward deception about him, He has fooled himself. He's an unconscious hypocrite.
And now there's a notion abroad today among God's people. And I hope I'm not misunderstood, but I'm going to say it anyway. There's a notion abroad today, as long as you go to the heart of God at eleven o'clock on a Sunday morning, everything is all right. Be not deceived. God is not much. And the problem with the Pharisees was their attitude toward others. You see, a complete absence of the spirit of the Beatitudes of Matthew five is lacking in their lives.
You don't find a hungering and thirsting after righteousness. And in spite of all our Christian teaching today, I find among God's people a hungering and thirsting to be like the world, not to be a pilgrim. or a stranger on the earth. It is written of Abraham in Hebrews chapter eleven, and the same is true of Enoch and Noah and Abel. They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. The Pharisees, no hungry and thirsting for righteousness. Everything they had was awkward.
They were interested in detail, not in biblical principles. They were interested in doing. They were not interested in being. Our Lord says, accept your righteousness. Exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees. He shall in no law, in no case enter the kingdom. Now, when you looked at a Pharisee or a scribe, people stood in awe of them because of their piety. but God wasn't impressed. Beloved, unless there's righteousness in the heart that manifests itself in holiness of life, God isn't impressed with us.
With the songs we sing, with anything else that we do, I must have his righteousness. You see, this is Paul's great argument in the third chapter of Romans. Romans three-nineteen, I read these words, for we know that whatsoever things the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped. And when I come and I hear our Lord say, accept your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, my mouth is stopped. I find myself guilty before God. And that's when I turn from everything and I run to the only one who can meet my needs, our Lord Jesus Christ.
All friends, on the cross on Calvary Hills, he met the need of poor sinners. And today I have a righteousness. I possess a righteousness. Which is greater than that of the scribes in Pharisees. It is the very righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ himself. For he earned that righteousness when he lived among men. And when I come to him as a guilty sinner, he removes my sin and he gives me his righteousness. He imputes it to my account.
And I am received by God as Christ is received by God. I'd like to just state a few things in closing. A number of things. And I'd like to close with a number of questions. But first, our Lord is teaching here that the proof of our having truly received the grace of God in Christ is that we are living a righteous life. Faith without works is dead. If you claim to have been saved and there are no righteous works in the life, your faith is a dead faith.
It is not a living faith. Faith without works is dead. For when a person has received the new nature, that divine nature from God, that divine nature manifests itself in good work. I'm not teaching salvation by works, friends. I'm not teaching that. Oh, no. I would not work my soul to save, for that my Lord has done. But I would work like any slave in love to God's dear Son. For once a person has come to the cross, they're never the same if they've truly come. Their life has been transformed.
The second thing that I'd like you to remind you of is we're living in a day when people say, but I get my teaching from Paul, the epistles of Paul, and not the Gospels. Well, let's listen to what Paul says. I invite you to turn with me to First Corinthians six very quickly. First Corinthians chapter six, we want to read a few verses, and he's dealing with entering the kingdom. In First Corinthians chapter six and verse nine I read these words. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Be not deceived. Don't be fooled, he says, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God.
That's the very teaching of our Lord. But notice the next verse. And such were some of you. But here's what makes the difference. But you are washed. But you are sanctified. But you are justified in the name of the Lord and by the Spirit of our God. So, beloved, we come to this conclusion. To receive the grace of God in Christ Jesus means not only that my sins are forgiven because of his death on the cross, on Calvary's Hill, but also that I have been given a new life. I have been given a new nature. I'm a partaker of the divine nature. Now let me ask a few questions, and we'll be through.
Question number one, do you know God? Do you know God? Question number two, do you love God? Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. Can you honestly say that the biggest thing in your life is to glorify God? The biggest thing in your life Nothing bigger. The one main objective is to glorify God.
Another question. Do you want to glorify Him and you don't care what it may cost you? Just glorify Him. One more statement. Let every one of us Examine himself. Not our neighbor. Except your righteousness shall exceed. None of the scribes and Pharisees. He shall in no case enter the kingdom. We're living in a day when we think, oh, we can live any way we like.
Just as long as we're saved. My Bible teaches that if we're saved, we don't live as we like. We live to please him. That's New Testament Christianity. And anything short of that is deception. And it's in deception, friends, where it's going to cost you the most, your own soul. And we need to herald this message, friends, because people are getting wrong signals today from the Christian community. They think all is right. When it isn't right, it's wrong. Let each examine himself.
Let's pray with him. Our Father, as we bow in our holy presence this morning, we realize that we are totally shut up to the grace of God. Unless you save a man, he isn't saved. And we thank you that when you save a man, you place in him a divine nature. A holy want to glorify you. And therefore we ask you that you take this word and let us search our heart. We thank you that we can have a righteousness that is greater than the scribes and Pharisees.
It is the very righteousness of thy dear son. And we thank you that to as many as receive him, that then he gives the right to become the sons of God. even to them that believe on his name. For they have been born, not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of thee. Father, speak to us in this hour. Search our hearts and send us forth. And we'll thank you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. I'd like to sing a hymn in closing, one stanza only, three hundred ninety-three, the third stanza, where we read these words, My sin, oh, the bliss of that glorious thought.
My sin not in part, but the whole is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh, my soul. And oh, with self-examination before us, is it well with your soul. I trust it is. And if not, I'd be happy to talk with you with an open Bible. Let's stand and sing as Steve leaves it.