Sermon Tone Analysis

*STUDY GUIDE 84*

*Matthew 6–7*

*KINGDOM LIFESTYLE*

*Overview*

These chapters continue Jesus’ extended teaching called the Sermon on the Mount.

In chapter 5 Jesus gave the moral basis for life in His kingdom: Jesus’ people are transformed from within, and their godly values are expressed in a holy life that fulfills not just the letter of the Law, but its spirit and intent.

In chapters 6–7 Jesus described the lifestyle of those who live in His kingdom.

The major emphases in these chapters indicate that the person who lives, in any age, as a citizen of heaven’s kingdom will:

•    seek to please God, who sees in secret, rather than men who judge by what is on public view.

•    trust God completely to meet material needs, and so concentrate on God’s kingdom and righteousness.

•    express trust in God in prayer, and by looking to Him to meet every need.

•    act on and obey the words of Jesus, which are the only sure foundation for the kingdom lifestyle.

Christians who develop the lifestyle Jesus explains in these two exciting New Testament chapters will experience the presence and the power of our God.

è  *Kingdom.

*A “kingdom” is a realm in which the will and power of a king are expressed.

We live in the kingdom Jesus rules when we do His will.

Then He will act in our lives and circumstances.

Jesus’ listeners were hungry for the kingdom.

His message was a jolting one, yet many followed and listened eagerly.

They sensed that this Man, who taught with authority, had to know the way to the experience for which they yearned.

That hunger, that longing, is something you and I can understand.

We’ve yearned for a fuller experience of God.

We too have been looking for the kingdom where Jesus reigns and acts.

All too often we’ve missed it.

All too often we’ve concluded, wrongly, that the kingdom is wholly future, only to be known when Jesus comes again.

Part of the reason why we tend to look at the kingdom as future only is that we’ve missed the kingdom when we’ve looked back into history.

Our view of history is distorted, a caricature that has little resemblance to reality.

Often the caricature is drawn something like this: “Everything was great as long as the apostles lived.

Then it got bad, with the church hardening into a dead and restricting institution paganized by Rome.

Then Luther and Calvin brought the Protestant Reformation, and it was alive again for a while.

But soon that drifted into deadness as well.

Today we’re just holding on (sometimes with a feeble grip), waiting till Jesus comes.”

This portrait of church history is faulty.

It comes in part from the tendency of historians to focus on the institutions, the popes, the cathedrals, and the books written by establishment men to sum up the wisdom of their age.

But neither Thomas Aquinas’ /Summa/ nor John Calvin’s /Institutes/ expresses the kingdom!

The kingdom is expressed in the living witness to Jesus which the Holy Spirit has burned into the lives of those whose hearts turn to the Lord.

For instance, in the twelfth century, the Waldensians, the Poor Men of Lyons, appeared.

They gave the Bible to the people in the common language, stressed repentance and conversion, and also emphasized living a Christian life guided by all Scripture—and especially by the Sermon on the Mount.

Long before Luther, John Huss led a great revival in Prague; a revival later forced underground by the persecution which led to Huss’ death.

For 300 years an underground church existed in Bohemia, with the Gospel passed quietly from father to son, from grandparent to grandchild.

Finally these people found refuge in Germany on the estate of Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf.

Now called Moravians, this group provided impetus for a great missionary movement leading to revivals in Germany, Holland, the Scandinavian countries, France, Switzerland, and America, as well as England.

It was Moravian missionaries who met John Wesley while on a ship going to America and introduced him to the possibility of personal faith in Jesus Christ.

So, many years before Luther, small prayer and Bible-study groups dotted Germany; when God called Luther to the Reformation leadership, followers had already been prepared.

Today the United States sends out thousands of missionaries across the world.

But as late as 1800, there was no missionary movement to reach abroad.

Then in 1806, students at Williams College in Massachusetts began to discuss their part in sharing the Gospel with the non-Christian world.

A sudden rainstorm sent them dashing into a haystack.

Praying there together, God called the first American missionaries.

Adoniram Judson, Luther Rice, and Samuel Mills were to lead a host of young men and women, who crossed the oceans to take the Gospel to the world.

These illustrations, which can be multiplied to touch every century and every nation where the Gospel has taken root, bear a striking similarity.

A movement of God began in a quiet, hidden way.

As far as what has become known as “church history” is concerned, the movements often lie outside the worldly events historians choose to record.

Yet the haystack, not the cathedral, is most likely to be characteristic of the kingdom!

True, these movements have often forced their way into the history books.

A city set on a hill cannot be hid; a light placed on a candlestick cannot be ignored.

But all too often, whether the movement has been Catholic or Protestant, the historical record is one of persecution and antagonism and fear.

As in Jesus’ day, institutions tend to teach the traditions of men rather than those of God.

And such institutions feel threatened by the kingdom.

The kingdom comes into conflict with the world, even as Jesus ultimately was forced into open conflict with the religious men of His day, who demanded, with insistent shouts, “Crucify Him!”

*Commentary \\ Recognizing the Kingdom: Matthew 6:1–7:23*

It would be wrong to conclude from what I’ve just shared that the kingdom of heaven is always in contrast with the established or institutional church.

The Wesleyan revival led to the formation of the Methodist Church.

The touch of the kingdom was not removed as soon as this church became institutionalized.

Today there are Methodist churches which are living expressions of the kingdom—and Methodist churches which know no touch of kingdom life.

The point made by church history is that institutions can never be /identified/ with the kingdom.

The kingdom can sweep into man’s edifices—and sweep out again.

To perceive the kingdom, we must look beyond outward appearances to the fleshed-out life of Christ in His body.

This is hard for seekers to grasp.

You and I, who are looking for the kingdom of Jesus and are eager for Him to reign in our lives, often become confused.

We look to the wrong things for light to guide us.

/It is exactly this tendency to miss the inner reality of the kingdom in the outward trappings of religion which Jesus dealt with in the next section of the Sermon on the Mount./

Jesus gave four warnings—warnings against plausible pathways which will inexorably lead us farther and farther away from the kingdom’s presence in our daily lives.

/Visible piety (Matt.

6:1–18).

/“Be careful,” Jesus says, “not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them” (v. 1).

It’s a very natural thing to want to be appreciated as men and women of God, and to be looked up to with respect.

It’s healthy to want to be a leader.

But there are many religious games that people of every age play, which draw them away from the reality of the kingdom.

In Jesus’ day, one game was to have a trumpeter announce when someone was going to give alms (charity) to the poor.

The poor would come—and so would a host of admiring observers.

Everyone would watch as the giver earned a reputation for piety and generosity.

Another common game was played with prayer.

When a man wanted to pray, he would go to a busy street corner or a well-filled synagogue and stand, to pray aloud.

Often he would pray prolonged and wordy prayers, giving evidence to all that he was pious.

Even when men took a vow to go without food, they would be sure to look pained, and would rub dirt into their faces so all could see how much they were suffering for God!

These games were not played for God.

They were played for other men, to be seen by them, and to win a reputation with men for piety.

Tragically, many in Jesus’ day thought that such people were truly pious!

They felt that the way to find the kingdom was by imitating such public acts.

Thus an earnest seeker could be drawn into a hypocritical, “play-acting” lifestyle.

In contrast, three times in this passage Jesus instructs, “But when /you/ give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be /in secret./

Then your Father, who sees what is done /in secret/ will reward you” (vv.

3–4, italics added).

And about prayer, “Go into your room … and pray to your Father, who is unseen.

Then your Father, who sees what is done /in secret/ will reward you” (v.

6, italics added).

Fasting too is to be seen only by “your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done /in secret/, will reward you” (v. 18, italics added).

It is tremendously important for us to grasp the impact of this repeated emphasis.

Kingdom reality cannot be measured by the external things which, done to be seen by men, are singled out in each age as evidence of spirituality.

In one of the churches I attended as a young Christian there were a number of external measurements: attendance at the meetings of the church, praying in King James English at prayer meetings, teaching in the Sunday School, carrying tracts to hand out at the subway station, refraining from smoking and drinking and movies—and from close association with anyone who did indulge in the forbidden three.