Inside Out: Lessons from the Mount

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Introduction

We are living in a dangerous time. Unrest might be an understated adjective that describes the days in which we live. There is political unrest. There is social unrest. There is economic unrest. And these expressions of unrest or not unique to our society here in the U.S. There is global unrest.

For the past few weeks, China has been conducting military drills around the Taiwan and in the South China Sea near the Philippines. In France, there have been dozens of protests from thousands of people in response to their government’s desire to move the retirement age from 62 to 64. Several nations have been conferencing together with the idea of changing their monetary base from U.S. dollars to another form of currency.

In our own nation, we are watching the decline, if not decay, of our society every day in the news. This week there have been four shootings. Our economy is in an uneasy decline. Crime is on the increase in almost every major city. Corruption in our government is becoming more apparent and more the status quo. Church attendance is plummeting and immorality is like a tsunami that threatens to wipe out all of the standards and values on which our nation was formed. In a few weeks we’ll read these words on Sunday morning:

Romans 1:29–32 CSB

They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful. Although they know God’s just sentence—that those who practice such things deserve to die—they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them.

While our government can solve some of the problems with better legislation and accountability, most of the problems I’ve mentioned are simply symptoms of a fatal disease: godlessness. We live in a very dark world of sin, and the only hope for our society, and for the rest of the world is the gospel of Jesus Christ. We, the church of Jesus Christ, have the gospel. The church holds the key for hope for our world.

Unfortunately, in many ways, the church is missing in action. And worse than that, the church has lost favor in the world. Think back on what Luke wrote about the early church: they “(enjoyed) the favor of all the people” (Acts 2:47). Can we say the same thing about the church today. What does the world, in general, think about the church?

The Message of the Sermon on the Mount Introduction: What Is This Sermon? (Matthew 5:1, 2)

The first place to which they should be able to turn is the one place which they normally ignore, namely the church. For too often what they see in the church is not counter-culture but conformism, not a new society which embodies their ideals but another version of the old society which they have renounced, not life but death. They would readily endorse today what Jesus said of a church in the first century: ‘You have the name of being alive, and you are dead.’

How do we respond to a society who can’t distinguish a woman from a man? How do we respond to a culture that places more value on a professional athlete than an educator? What do we say to a people who put Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and any other religious preference in the same basket? What do we do as we watch the foundations of our nation intentionally beaten and broken?

The Message of the Sermon on the Mount Introduction: What Is This Sermon? (Matthew 5:1, 2)

The Sermon on the Mount is probably the best-known part of the teaching of Jesus, though arguably it is the least understood, and certainly it is the least obeyed. It is the nearest thing to a manifesto that he ever uttered, for it is his own description of what he wanted his followers to be and to do. To my mind no two words sum up its intention better, or indicate more clearly its challenge to the modern world, than the expression ‘Christian counter-culture’.

The condition of our world — darkness — and the solution to its condition — the gospel — should evoke a huge sense of urgency in our hearts. We need to feel the tragedy of this moment. From my perspective, and many of my colleagues in ministry, the church has become conformed to the world, rather than conformed to Jesus. The church often contradicts its true identity: in Christ. And too often, the church is stagnant in its response to these dark times.

We need to remember God’s purpose for His people. The theme of the Bible, from beginning to end, is God’s historical purpose in calling out a people for Himself; a holy people, set apart from the world, belonging to Him and obeying Him. That is the vocation of the church; our true identity: to be holy or different in its outlook and behavior.

This is how God put it to the people of Israel soon after he had rescued them from their Egyptian slavery and made them his special people by covenant: ‘I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall do my ordinances and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God.’ This appeal of God to his people, it will be noted, began and ended with the statement that he was the Lord their God. It was because he was their covenant God, and because they were his special people, that they were to be different from everybody else. They were to follow his commandments and not take their lead from the standards of those around them.

Throughout the centuries which followed, the people of Israel kept forgetting their uniqueness as the people of God. Although in Balaam’s words they were ‘a people dwelling alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations’, yet in practice they kept becoming assimilated to the people around them: ‘They mingled with the nations and learned to do as they did.’ So they demanded a king to govern them ‘like all the nations’, and when Samuel remonstrated with them on the ground that God was their king, they were stubborn in their insistence: ‘No! but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations.’ Worse even than the inauguration of the monarchy was their idolatry. ‘Let us be like the nations,’ they said to themselves, ‘… and worship wood and stone.’ So God kept sending his prophets to them to remind them who they were and to plead with them to follow his way. ‘Learn not the way of the nations,’ he said to them through Jeremiah, and through Ezekiel, ‘Do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.’ But God’s people would not listen to his voice, and the specific reason given why his judgment fell first upon Israel and then nearly 150 years later upon Judah was the same: ‘The people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God … and had … walked in the customs of the nations.… Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs which Israel had introduced.’

All this is an essential background to any understanding of the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon is found in Matthew’s Gospel towards the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Immediately after his baptism and temptation he had begun to announce the good news that the kingdom of God, long promised in the Old Testament era, was now on the threshold. He himself had come to inaugurate it. With him the new age had dawned, and the rule of God had broken into history. ‘Repent,’ he cried, ‘for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Indeed, ‘He went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom’ (23). The Sermon on the Mount, then, is to be seen in this context. It portrays the repentance (metanoia, the complete change of mind) and the righteousness which belong to the kingdom. That is, it describes what human life and human community look like when they come under the gracious rule of God.

And what do they look like? Different! Jesus emphasized that his true followers, the citizens of God’s kingdom, were to be entirely different from others. They were not to take their cue from the people around them, but from him, and so prove to be genuine children of their heavenly Father. To me the key text of the Sermon on the Mount is 6:8: ‘Do not be like them.’ It is immediately reminiscent of God’s word to Israel in olden days: ‘You shall not do as they do.’ It is the same call to be different. And right through the Sermon on the Mount this theme is elaborated. Their character was to be completely distinct from that admired by the world (the beatitudes). They were to shine like lights in the prevailing darkness. Their righteousness was to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, both in ethical behaviour and in religious devotion, while their love was to be greater and their ambition nobler than those of their pagan neighbors.

There is no single paragraph of the Sermon on the Mount in which this contrast between Christian and non-Christian standards is not drawn. It is the underlying and uniting theme of the Sermon; everything else is a variation of it. Sometimes it is the Gentiles or pagan nations with whom Jesus contrasts his followers. Thus pagans love and salute each other, but Christians are to love their enemies (5:44–47); pagans pray after a fashion, ‘heaping up empty phrases’, but Christians are to pray with the humble thoughtfulness of children to their Father in heaven (6:7–13); pagans are preoccupied with their own material necessities, but Christians are to seek first God’s rule and righteousness (6:32, 33).

Thus the followers of Jesus are to be different—different from both the nominal church and the secular world, different from both the religious and the irreligious. The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian counter-culture. Here is a Christian value-system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, life-style and network of relationships—all of which are totally at variance with those of the non-Christian world. And this Christian counter-culture is the life of the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed but lived out under the divine rule. Living out the divine rule of Jesus, however, are not simply add-ons that we use as an overlay, so to speak, on our behavior. We can never live out Jesus’ rule in our hearts without a serious reformation of the heart. Being God’s holy and set apart people, or as mentioned early, expressing a “Christian counter-culture” in this world must take root in our hearts. Thus, to be the change-agents in our world, the church must live “inside out.”

Overview

Matthew’s editorial introduction to the Sermon is brief but impressive; it indicates the importance which he attached to it.

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them (5:1, 2).

There can be little doubt that Jesus’ main purpose in going up a hill or mountain to teach was to withdraw from the ‘great crowds … from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan’ who had been following him. He had spent the early months of his public ministry wandering throughout Galilee, ‘teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people’. As a result, ‘his fame spread throughout all Syria’, and people came in large numbers bringing their sick to be healed. So he had to escape, not just to secure for himself the opportunity to be quiet and to pray, but also to give more concentrated instruction to his disciples.

The “disciples” mentioned in verse 1, included the Twelve, who were serving in a daily ministry/mission apprenticeship with Jesus, but more than likely included other consistent followers, perhaps as many as 100. As we will continue our study through the sermon, it will become apparent that many others, perhaps seekers, found Jesus and his followers, and sat down to listen in. The primary audience, however, were Jesus’ most devoted followers. Since that is the case, it’s very important that we take these teachings from Jesus, very personally and seriously.

The citizens of our world might ask us, “Do you really think that these ancient words from a Jewish rabbi have any relevancy for our world today?”

Whether the Sermon is relevant to modern life or not can be judged only by a detailed examination of its contents. What is immediately striking is that, however it came to be composed, it forms a wonderfully coherent whole. It depicts the behaviour which Jesus expected of each of his disciples, who is also thereby a citizen of God’s kingdom. We see him as he is in himself, in his heart, motives and thoughts, and in the secret place with his Father. We also see him in the arena of public life, in his relations with his fellow men, showing mercy, making peace, being persecuted, acting like salt, letting his light shine, loving and serving others (even his enemies), and devoting himself above all to the extension of God’s kingdom and righteousness in the world. Perhaps a brief overview of the Sermon will help to demonstrate its relevance to ourselves in the twenty-first century.

The Message of the Sermon on the Mount

A Christian’s Character (5:3–12)

The beatitudes emphasize eight principal marks of Christian character and conduct, especially in relation to God and to men, and the divine blessing which rests on those who exhibit these marks.

A Christian’s influence (5:13–16)

The two metaphors of salt and light indicate the influence for good which Christians will exert in the community if (and only if) they maintain their distinctive character as portrayed in the beatitudes.

A Christian’s righteousness (5:17–48)

What is to be a Christian’s attitude to the moral law of God? Is the very category of law abolished in the Christian life, as the advocates of the ‘new morality’ and of the ‘not under law’ school strangely assert? No. Jesus had not come to abolish the law and the prophets, he said, but to fulfil them. He went on to state both that greatness in God’s kingdom was determined by conformity to their moral teaching, and even that entry into the kingdom was impossible without a righteousness greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees (5:17–20). Of this greater Christian righteousness he then gave six illustrations (5:21–48), relating to murder, adultery, divorce, swearing, revenge and love. In each antithesis (‘You have heard that it was said … but I say to you …’) he rejected the easy-going tradition of the scribes, reaffirmed the authority of Old Testament Scripture and drew out the full and exacting implications of God’s moral law.

A Christian’s piety (6:1–18)

In their ‘piety’ or religious devotion Christians are to resemble neither the hypocritical display of the Pharisees nor the mechanical formalism of pagans. Christian piety is to be marked above all by reality, by the sincerity of God’s children who live in their heavenly Father’s presence.

A Christian’s ambition (6:19–34)

The ‘worldliness’ which Christians are to avoid can take either a religious or a secular shape. So we are to differ from non-Christians not only in our devotions, but also in our ambitions. In particular, Christ changes our attitude to material wealth and possessions. It is impossible to worship both God and money; we have to choose between them. Secular people are preoccupied with the quest for food, drink and clothing. Christians are to be free of these self-centred material anxieties and instead to give themselves to the spread of God’s rule and God’s righteousness. That is to say, our supreme ambition is to be the glory of God, and neither our own glory nor even our own material well-being. It is a question of what we ‘seek first’.

A Christian’s relationships (7:1–20)

Christians are caught up in a complex network of relationships, each of which arises from our relation to Christ. Once we are properly related to him, our other relationships are all affected. New relationships are created; old relationships are changed. Thus, we are not to judge our brother but to serve him (1–5). We are also to avoid offering the gospel to those who have decisively rejected it (6), to keep praying to our heavenly Father (7–12) and to beware of false prophets who hinder people from finding the narrow gate and the hard way (13–20).

A Christian’s commitment (7:21–27)

The ultimate issue posed by the whole Sermon concerns the authority of the preacher. It is not enough either to call him ‘Lord’ (21–23) or to listen to his teaching (24–27). The basic question is whether we mean what we say and do what we hear. On this commitment hangs our eternal destiny. Only the man who obeys Christ as Lord is wise. For only he is building his house on a foundation of rock, which the storms neither of adversity nor of judgment will be able to undermine.

The crowds were astonished by the authority with which Jesus taught (28, 29). It is an authority to which the followers of Jesus in every generation must submit. The issue of the lordship of Christ is as relevant today, both in principle and in detailed application, as when he originally preached his Sermon on the Mount.

Are we ready to go to the mountain? Are we willing to listen intentionally and intently on Jesus’ teachings? Are we ready to have our hearts transformed so that we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, can create a “Christian Counter-Culture” here at CBC, so that God can use us to bring spiritual transformation in our community and world?