King of Hearts

Mountaintop Experience
The people were terrified. As they stared at the mountain a thick cloud appeared, and then thunder rumbled and lightning flashed all around. But this was only the pre-game show. When God descended on the mountain in the midst of a blazing fire, smoke billowed and the earth began to shake violently. In the past three months, these people had been chased by angry Egyptians, crossed the Red Sea and embarked on a camping trip in the desert wilderness. They were ready for some R&R, not the intensity of a face-to-face encounter with God. So it was unanimous. Send Moses to meet with God and then let him break it down for everybody later. These former Hebrew slaves had just been liberated from bondage in Egypt, but they needed some serious guidance on how to live and enjoy their new-found freedom. So, in effect, God said, “Okay, here are Ten Commandments to get you started.” He later added about 600 more laws as part of the Torah. The purpose of these laws was not to earn a relationship with God–they already had that. The purpose was to define a standard of acceptable conduct before God and to show people how to relate with each other.

Changing the Game
Jesus arrived on the scene about twelve hundred years after Moses had the mountaintop experience with God. The gospel of John says that the law came through Moses, but Jesus came to bring God’s unfailing love and faithfulness. One day on a hillside in Galilee near the fishing village of Capernaum, the young rabbi delivered a game-changing sermon that would captivate his audience and challenge people of faith for centuries. Jesus did the unthinkable. He pushed way beyond the traditional interpretation of the scriptures and unpacked what God had intended all along. He started by saying that he had not come to eliminate the law, but to fulfill it. What could that mean? Here’s what Jesus said.

“You have heard that the Law of Moses says, ‘Do not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’ But I say, if you are angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the high council. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell.” – Matthew 5:21-22

Jesus does a brief check-in with tradition when he quotes Moses, ‘Do not murder.’ Then he rocks their world. ‘But I say, if you’re angry with someone, you are subject to judgment!’ He went way beyond tradition and pointed back to the original intent of the law. Don’t murder is a good start, but let’s deal with the anger that precedes physical violence. He’s saying that the intent of the tradition was not to simply to avoid murder, it went much deeper to the heart level. The next logical step would be to put a stop to the verbal violence of name-calling. In the verses that follow (v23-26), Jesus nails it by encouraging people to be proactive about making peace when we know we have a damaged relationship with someone.

“Whenever we detect a breach in a relationship, we don’t need to determine who is at fault. The intent of tradition isn’t merely to be ‘in the right’; the goal is to be in a right relationship. So we are to deal with the breach quickly and proactively, seeking true reconciliation. Being in a right relationship— not merely avoiding murder— was the intent of the tradition all along.”
– Brian McLaren from ‘We Make The Road By Walking’

Be Perfect
After dealing with the issue of violence, Jesus continues his revolutionary teaching by exploring four more areas that deeply affect individuals and society: sexuality, marriage, oaths and revenge. In each area, he starts with tradition and then probes deeper into the heart issues that lead to behaviors. Jesus rightly understood that if we focus only on externals, we’ll never experience transformation. To be spiritually alive means that we allow God to work in us to transform our inner desires. On this day, Jesus saved his most radical example for last.

“You have heard that the Law of Moses says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and on the unjust, too…. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” – Matthew 5:43-45, 48

Tradition says show love and compassion to friends and neighbors, but Jesus insists that we extend love to everyone, including our enemies. This was never on the radar before, but it was always God’s intent. Jesus is pulling us forward beyond what tradition requires and toward what God desires. When Jesus says we should be perfect like God, most of us are thinking: ‘That seems like a real cosmic stretch.’ Let’s try to break it down. God gives sunshine and rain to everyone–both evil and good. If he withheld these blessings from bad people he would cause them to starve. But God is good to everyone whether they deserve it or not. God’s perfection is being gracious and compassionate Period. We can do this.

King of Hearts
The main thing for Jesus was to help people understand that God is a loving Father. He invited people into a relationship where they could experience love and life. He refused to be influenced by religious leaders who spent their time trying to manipulate and control people through pressure to follow religious tradition. Living to meet external standards set by man is not the way to experience true life. Jesus taught and demonstrated that real life comes through transformation of the heart. It’s not doing things to earn God’s love. It’s doing things because we are loved. When asked what was the greatest of all the laws, Jesus didn’t blink. He said simply to love God with all your heart and to love others as much as you love yourself. All 600 laws and the writings of the prophets depend on love. This was God’s intent from the beginning. Jesus came to fulfill the law as the long-awaited Messiah. Like Moses, he led people to freedom, but not in the way everyone expected. He established a new kind kingdom on earth, but he did not need an army. He became the greatest of all kings. Jesus is the King of Hearts.