Word of Salvation – Vol. 43 No. 04 – January 1998

 

The Most Radical Sermon Ever Preached

 

Sermon by Rev. J. Westendorp on Matthew 5:1-2

Scripture Readings: Leviticus 18:1-4, 24-30; Psalm 1; Matthew 5:1-12

Suggested Hymns: BoW 171; 496; 404; 148

 

Theme: Introducing the Sermon on the Mount
            as the Kingdom manifesto for a people set apart in Christ.

 

Introd:            It would be interesting to do a survey to find out what the values of our society are.

I mean ultimate values.... bottom line issues.
I suspect that for most the bottom line is pragmatism:  what works...  what gets results.
Our society has generally given up on higher ideals of kindness & generosity, humility & purity.
Certainly, the idea that there are absolute moral standards has gone out the window.
Most people today wouldn’t even know the Ten Commandments any more.

So generally we just live for the moment.
  For possessions and success... for fame and fortune...!
   And anything that helps us get there is okay... as long as no one gets hurt too much.
  Prosperity and materialism...  “The one who dies with the most toys wins”.

Of course there is a small radical minority that oppose that mentality.
A few in society have higher aims and ambitions.
They generally live away from the big smoke in communes... or bush shacks.
They’ve adopted a simple life-style... they try to conserve energy and avoid waste.
And we ask ourselves:  Is that the answer?  Well, at least they are different.

It’s painful for us sometimes to hear people say:  You Christians are no different than anyone else!

Is it true that we too have no higher ideals than owning and enjoying our own house and car?

Are we too preoccupied with success? ...with prosperity? ...with the trinkets and gadgets of this world?

The Sermon on the Mount is going to make us face up to some of these questions.

Today we want to begin with an overview of this most radical sermon ever preached.

 

A]        COMING TO TERMS WITH THE SERMON.

1.         Here in this sermon of Jesus we have the higher standards... good ethical values.

They cut right across success and prosperity... they tell us not to lay up treasures on earth.

Instead they focus on relationships... how to get on with God and with our fellow man.

Radical demands that fly in the face of the standards we are confronted with daily.

If anything is different... it is the Sermon on the Mount.
            It tells us to turn the other cheek... while the world tells us to get even.
            It encourages us to give our coat as well when someone asks for our shirt.
            While society lives by the motto:  Neither a borrower nor a lender be...!

But the big question is:  what are we going to do with all that?

How do you come to terms with these radical demands?

Here we have what seems to be the NT equivalent to the 10 commandments.

Jesus is like a new Moses coming down from a NT Mount Sinai.
And here on this mountain a greater Moses gives an even more demanding list of rules.
No longer is it good enough not kill... even anger is now forbidden.
And while society treats adultery lightly... Jesus now condemns even the lustful look.

Are we able to keep the high moral standards Jesus sets?

That is particularly important for those concerned about their eternal salvation.

Time and again Jesus links his demands to eternal rewards from a heavenly Father.

So it’s hardly surprising that someone once even suggested:
Matthew made all this up to oppose Paul’s teaching that we are saved by faith and not works.

2.         Most people have certainly recognised that the standard Jesus sets is extremely high.

So high that there have been many negative reactions to the Sermon on the Mount.

Philip Yancey tells of a Uni lecturer who told her class to write an essay on the Sermon on the Mount.
She wasn’t prepared for the hostile reactions she got back.

Here are some of the things her students wrote:

    -       This stuff the churches preach is extremely strict and allows for almost no fun
without thinking it is a sin or not.

    -       I did not like the essay “Sermon on the Mount.”  It was hard to read
and made me feel like I had to be perfect and no one is.

    -       The things asked in this sermon are absurd.  To look at a woman is adultery.
That is the most extreme, stupid, unhuman statement that I have ever heard.

Some Christians too have reacted negatively to the Sermon on the Mount and tried to get around it.

Early last century the missionary Albert Schweitzer said we didn’t have to worry about it.
He claimed Jesus expected the kingdom to come in glory before His death.
And in that urgent time of crisis Jesus set these radical demands.
But they were only meant for that crisis situation.
When the Kingdom is just around the corner you can afford to turn the other cheek.
But you can’t really live like that in normal everyday life.

Christians who use the Schofield Bible look at it in a similar way.
The Schofield Bible has a footnote that the Sermon on the Mount is not for today.
It is for a future dispensation... the kingdom age... then we’ll live by this standard.
In the meantime we can learn some moral lessons from it but don’t take it too literally.

3.         The problem is that when we take that line we don’t do justice to what Jesus said.

Then we are really just trying to fit the Sermon on the Mount to our low performance level.

We’re then basically saying:  Forget it!  It’s beyond anyone’s reach anyway.

So other people have gone to the other extreme.

Some have said:  Fair enough... in fact this is really at the heart of all religions.
Every religion calls us to bend over backwards to be kind to others.
Every religion has as its aim:  love... and purity... and gentleness.
So all of us need to take the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount to heart.
You and I really do need to turn the other cheek and go the second mile.

One problem is that it doesn’t distinguish between the religion of Jesus and other religions.
Because - interestingly - Jesus’ standards are immensely higher.
For example:  It’s true that most other religions also have a version of the Golden Rule.

But usually they put it only in the negative form:
            Do not do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you.
In Matt.7:12 Jesus gives us the Golden Rule in a much more demanding form:
            In everything do to others what you would have them do to you.
That is much, much more difficult and demanding.

The other problem with literally applying this sermon is our own inability.
The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was almost obsessed by the Sermon on the Mount.
The demands of Jesus to moral excellence come out in many of his novels.
But in his own tormented life he failed miserably over and over to live up to them.
So stressing that we should live by these standards can lead to hopeless despair.

 

B]        THE GOSPEL CONTEXT OF THE SERMON.

1.         So what are we going to do with the Sermon on the Mount?

How will you respond to the demands Jesus makes?
Will you tear your tongue out next time you speak a harsh word to someone?
Or gouge your eyes out when you’ve looked lustfully at the woman next door?
How are we to understand and interpret the Sermon on the Mount?

It is important for us - with any text - to always to take into consideration the context.

And we need to do that here too.

First of all this is the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.
In the previous chapter we see Him choosing His 12 special disciples.
It is on their ministry that Jesus wants to build His church.
They are the first workers in His Kingdom.

Jesus then takes these men with Him as He goes around preaching and teaching.
And just before our text we are told what is the heart of His teaching and preaching.
The essence of His message was the Kingdom of God.
In 4:23 we read:
            Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues,
            preaching the good news of the Kingdom.
A few verses earlier we read how Jesus began His ministry (4:17):
            From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is near’.

The Kingdom of God!  And that too is at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount.

Seven times in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus refers to the Kingdom.

So the first thing we would want to say is that the Sermon on the Mount is a Kingdom constitution.

If you like, these are the standing order... and the by-laws of the Kingdom of God.

2.         That still leaves us with our basic problem:  the doing of what Jesus demands.

In fact it may even seem that we have just made the problem a little worse.

If this is a Kingdom manifesto where does that leave us when we fail to live by these standards?

Will it not put us outside the kingdom?
Notice for example the first beatitude:
            Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
We’d better be jolly sure we’re ‘poor in spirit’ or we’ll miss out on the kingdom of heaven.

So we need to note a second thing in the context.

Jesus is not only preaching the Kingdom of heaven.

Jesus is especially preaching the gospel... the good news...!
Jesus went throughout Galilee... preaching the good news of the Kingdom...!
So what’s good news about all these demands Jesus makes?
What’s good news about having to love your enemies... and turning the other cheek?

Well the good news of the Kingdom is much more than these demands.

The gospel of the Kingdom is that Jesus comes to make all things right.

That He comes with healing and forgiveness... that He comes to change human lives.

So we also need to notice that in 4:17 He called people to repent.
“Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is near.”

So the Sermon on the Mount is preceded by the preaching of the gospel and the call to repent.

It presupposes what Jesus said to Nicodemus - that to see the Kingdom we need be born again.

And it is to born again people... who repent and believe the gospel... that Jesus preaches this sermon.

3.         So the Sermon on the Mount is not Jesus telling us that salvation is by law-keeping.

As though we receive the grace and mercy of God only when we live up to these standards.

We have already received the grace of God... and therefore we are now asked to live by this standard.

Here it is easy to miss a very important part of our text.

Most Hollywood films about the life of Jesus show Jesus preaching this sermon to massive crowds.
Yet verse 1 of our text could actually give the impression that Jesus escaped the crowds.
So the point is:  To whom is Jesus specifically addressing the words of this Sermon???

To His disciples...!  His disciples came to Him... and He began to teach THEM saying....!
It is addressed not primarily to the crowd but to His own disciples.
This is not a sermon for unbelievers... for non-Christians... it is for followers of Jesus.
            Well, okay, it seems that some of the crowd may have listened in too.
            Luke in his version tells us they did.... but he agrees Jesus spoke primarily to disciples.

So what happens if you are not a Christian and you study the Sermon on the Mount?
I trust it will drive you to Jesus - as you become aware of your inability to live by His standards.
To experience in that way the new birth and enter the Kingdom of heaven.

There are a number of other hints along the way that indicate this is for Christians.

For example in 5:20 Jesus said our righteousness has to be greater than that of the Pharisees.
How could that be possible?
            They had refined God’s law down to 613 rules:  248 commands and 365 prohibitions.
            They had added to that a further 1,521 refinements.
And then Jesus says our righteousness needs to exceed that of the Pharisees.
Because He is talking about a heart righteousness that comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

 

C]        THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THE SERMON.

1.         When we grasp this background to the Sermon on the Mount we begin to understand it’s character.

So what we have here is not just the constitution of the Kingdom.
It is at the same time a description of the character of a Christian.
Jesus is holding out before us the image of a person touched by the grace of God.
And so over and over Jesus makes comparisons.

There are comparisons with the pagans...
    -       When they pray they keep babbling with many words thinking that gains them a hearing.
            When Christians pray they simply say:  Our Father in heaven...!
    -       The pagans spend all their energy running after food and clothing.
            Jesus’ disciples are relaxed about that and seek His Kingdom knowing He will provide.

There are also the comparisons with the nominally religious whom Jesus calls ‘hypocrites’....
    -       They love to show off their religion in the way they pray and by publicly fasting.
            Christians close the door and pray and fast in secret.
    -       People who want to show off their piety give in such a way that others will be impressed.
            Followers of Jesus will do that in secret knowing a heavenly Father will reward them.

What Jesus is saying is that Christians are different.

We will see that especially in the Beatitudes... those nine times Jesus pronounces a blessing.
These are not eight different groups:  the poor in spirit, the meek, the persecuted and so on.
They are all features that mark just one group of people... the followers of Jesus Christ.

It is really a little like we read in Leviticus 18 where God spoke to the people He led out of Egypt.

He reminded them how easy it was for them to forget they were different and go along with the crowd.

So too Jesus calls us as citizens of the Kingdom to work at being different.

2.         We see the same thing when we look at the blessings pronounced in the Beatitudes.

Some people have called these pronouncements the ‘be happy attitudes’.
Fine!  There’s some truth in that.
Happiness comes in the way of living in harmony with the will of our Maker.
And real happiness is what God gives as His blessing on Christian living.

Yet to call them the “be happy attitudes” doesn’t quite do justice to what Jesus is saying.
When He pronounces as Blessed, the poor in spirit, He is saying more than that they are happy.
He is really speaking of God’s favour on them...!
And that favour is not eight separate blessings... to eight categories of people.

These are rather eight different ways of looking at exactly the same thing.
            These are really nothing less than the sum total of the blessings of salvation.
            Salvation is being in the Kingdom of heaven... inheriting the earth... it is being filled...!
            All of these are the riches that come to those who belong to Jesus.

So again Jesus clearly means for us to see here a picture of the Christian.

Here is the Christian character we ought to aim for.

To be different in a society that has lost its moral directions.

It is as we walk that difficult road of being radically different that God’s blessing also rests on us.

That’s our encouragement as we swim against the current of our society.

3.         All of that leaves us with one other thing I need to point out.

It’s easy to turn the Sermon on the Mount into something that puts all the focus on us.
It’s all about the character of the Christian... in the beatitudes.
It’s all about the influence of the Christian... in being salt and light.
It’s all about the relationships of the Christian... in relation to one’s neighbour.
And in addition we draw comfort from our rewards and our blessings.

But I want to conclude by saying that in the final analysis the Sermon on the Mount is about God.
Over and over it ties everything back to the character of God.
And that we who claim to belong to Jesus need to reflect the image of Him who made us.
            We are to love our enemies because He makes the sun rise on the good and evil.
            We are to forgive one another because He our divine Parent is forgiving.
            We are to be perfect because He our Father in heaven is perfect.

In fact the Sermon teaches us in some lovely ways the gracious character of our God.
His blessing us... even though we will always struggle to live up to this sermon of Jesus.
His gracious provisions for us... as He cares for us more than the flowers and birds.
His love...  His grace... His forgiveness shines through over and over.

When Israel was called to be different from the surrounding nations... God gave a clear reason.

In Leviticus 18 He keeps saying: Because I am the Lord your God.

They are to model their lives on Him.  To be holy as He the Lord is holy.

We live in a world that is full of selfishness and greed.

A world where you have to look after number one and ride rough shod over everyone else.

A world where the one with the most toys at the end of the day wins.

Jesus said:  Those who follow me are different... and this is how they are different.

They reflect the image and likeness of the Father in heaven.

An image that began to be restored in them when they were born again.

And that grows more and more into God’s likeness as they live by this Sermon in the Spirit’s power.

Amen.