Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Almost everybody agrees with the Sermon on the Mount in general, but almost nobody can agree to the specifics of the last part of chapter 5.

Even Nikita Krushev, an atheist, when he was the leader of Russia, could say he agreed with the Sermon on the Mount, for even in Russia they do not consider murder, adultery, divorce, and all kinds of broken relationships as beneficial to society.

Krushev said, "I only disagree on one point and that was when Christ said, 'If I am struck on the one cheek I will turn the other.'

I believe in another principle: If I am hit on the left cheek, I hit back on the right cheek so strongly that the head may fall off."

Krushev was representing the vast majority of the world, for most of the religions of the world can buy into the wisdom of this great sermon, but at this point they draw back and refuse to follow.

Only one non-Christian ever had the nerve to try and apply these teachings of Christ in a world of conflict, and that was Gandhi.

He changed the course of history for many millions of people because he proved that the way of Christ can work.

In one of the closing scenes of the movie Gandhi, a Hindu leader comes to the bedside of Gandhi, and he pleads for him to stop his fasting.

He reaffirms that he will not stop until Hindus and Moslems stop fighting.

The Hindu says he hates them and cannot stop, and he explains the basis for his hatred.

Moslems took his little boy and crushed his head.

He in turn captured a Moslem boy and killed him by the same method.

Revenge reigned in their hearts, and though everyone was miserable there was no way out of this living hell of endless retaliation.

Gandhi said that there was a way out.

He said to go and find another boy like the one you killed, and the one the Moslem killed, and take him into your home and raise him as a Moslem.

Gandhi was saying that the only hope is to love your enemy, and he proved that even pagans can be part of the answer if they live by these principles of Christ.

Unfortunately, Gandhi was one in a billion.

We are dealing with that part of the Sermon on the Mount that really separates the men from the boys.

The Jews have done enormous research to show that their Rabbis, through the centuries, have come up with similar ideas to those of Jesus, but they cannot find anything to match this idea of loving your enemy.

The religious leaders of the world can quote their wise and holy men in ways that show they too have many of the values of the Sermon on the Mount.

But they have nothing to match the teachings of Christ on the love of one's enemies.

After all, enemies by very definition are not to be loved.

E. Stanley Jones, author of dozens of marvelous books, writes of these verses we are looking at: "When I come to the following verses I breath a little faster, for we now have reached the very crux of the whole Sermon on the Mount.

This refusal to retaliate, the turning of the other cheek, and the loving of one's enemies are the center of the whole.

If this principle is not workable, then the heart of the sermon does not beat-it is a carcass, a dead body of doctrine.

If it is workable and every other way that cuts across it is unworkable, then its heart does beat, and beating it pumps its warm life blood into every portion of the Christian soul and of Christian society and makes them live."

It is hard to believe these verses can be of such great significance, but the evidence is very strong that they represent the only hope for man to escape from his own self-destruction.

Billy Graham's book Approaching Hoofbeats deals with the four horseman in the book of Revelation.

In it he makes clear that the next war will be the only truly World War, for it will involve the whole world.

All other wars leave millions of people detached, and they can talk about the war going on someplace else.

Graham quotes the president of the United Nations General Assembly.

"What have the governments of the world to respond to the fervent demand of the people's of the world that this insane arms race be stopped?"

He gave his own reply by saying, "You and I know that answer, but I want to state it for the world to hear-nothing!"

Things have changed since Graham wrote his book, but the fact remains that there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world many times over.

Graham knows that the end will come someday, but he feels that Christians can delay the end for generations by being the peacemakers God wants them to be.

He regrets that he did not get active for world peace sooner, but he feels it is still not to late.

The problem is that governments are so impersonal, and they tend to operate on the level of the legalistic, and that is not good enough.

Only people can love, and it is people who will make the difference.

Graham quotes Dwight Eisenhower, "I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than are governments.

Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it."

Grahams favorite basis for hope is the story of Ninevah.

It was a doomed city, for God had already sentenced them.

It looked as hopeless as anything could be, for judgement was sure.

But because of the repentance of the people when Jonah preached of God's wrath, God altered His plan for history.

The response of the people so moved God that He postponed their destruction for 150 years.

Graham was convinced that people can still change history today by repentance.

We have taken a detour to look at the views of Billy Graham, but now we want to get back on the main road.

It is the road that Jesus says is narrow, and it is not very widely traveled.

It is not a popular road because most everybody is convinced it is a dead end, and will not get you anywhere.

Jesus, however, says it is the only road that will get you anywhere worth going, for it is the road that takes you to that level of living where you relate to people like God does.

Only those who travel this road can be part of the answer to local and world peace.

Only as Christians prove by their life that they Prince of Peace really has a strategy that works will there be any hope of the world noticing the light.

One of the most important thing we can do for world peace is to learn to understand and obey these crucial teachings of our Lord.

Look at verse 39 where Jesus says, "Do not resist an evil person."

The number of things this doesn't mean could fill volumes.

It does not mean that if some mad man is coming at you, or your family, with a knife that you should not find a weapon to defend yourself.

There is nothing spiritual about dying or suffering for such a meaningless cause.

There are all kinds of evil we are to resist.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you is the advice of James.

Jesus resisted the evils of the Pharisees by His words and His actions as He cleansed the temple of their racketeering.

Only once do we have a record of Jesus actually taking a fist to the face, and though He did not swing back, neither did He say, "Thanks, I needed that," or turn His other cheek.

He rebuked the striker.

In John 18:22-23 we read, "...One of the officials near by struck Him in the face.

"Is that anyway to answer the high priest?

he demanded."

Jesus replied, "If I said something wrong testify as to what is wrong.

But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?" Jesus protested the unjust hit.

You are obviously going the wrong direction if you think Jesus means we are to let evil have its own way, and not resist it.

This leads to the totally unrealistic view of Tolstoy who said we should not have policemen, for they resist evil men, nor armies for they do the same.

Jesus did not come to abolish the law, and so the law will be needed for all time.

Without force to resist evil the world would already be long pass judgment.

The only reason it is not totally rotten is because of the salt and light that Christians bring to it, plus the rule of law that prevents man from being his worst.

The whole purpose of law is to resist evil.

What then does Jesus mean by not resisting an evil person?

Is He saying, shame on all the Christians who resisted Hitler, and who threw enough monkey wrenches into his plans so that he could not move at the speed that could have made him a world ruler?

Jesus is certainly not condemning the resistance movements of history, which have been the cause of so many evil leaders to fail.

Thank God for those who have and do resist evil men, and all of their satanic plots to destroy man's liberty.

It was resistance to all of the evils that Britain imposed on the colonies that led to the Revolutionary War, and the birth of our great nation.

Resistance to evil is what the history of Christian heroism is all about.

Like I said, there is a endless number of things Jesus could not have meant by this statement.

What he meant has to do with a very specific situation, and that is one where you have been insulted, and your pride is injured, and you feel the inner compulsion to retaliate and get revenge.

The being struck on the right cheek is the slap of insult.

It is the strike of the offenders right hand turned over, and so you are being slapped with the back of his hand in contempt.

Early Jesus taught us not to treat others with contempt.

Now he is telling us how to deal with it when we are treated with contempt.

Jesus says, do not add fuel to that fire in the offender.

He is angry at you for some reason, and in his evil state of mind he is challenging your ego, and he insults you with his slap.

You have two choices.

You do back to him what he has done to you, which is the eye for eye response of the Old Testament.

The problem with this is that the evil action, and the evil person doing it, sets the tone of the relationship.

By reacting to evil with evil you are only feeding the negative and magnifying it, and you are becoming part of the problem.

I have another choice, however, which will make me part of the answer, and this is the one Jesus says is the way of superior righteousness.

Instead of reacting to his agenda, you have an agenda of your own.

I will not strike back, but turn an offer the other cheek.

We are not talking about telling some big lug to knock our head off.

We are talking refusal to retaliate to an insult, and instead showing our willingness to endure the insult without hatred, and a desire to get even.

The turning of the other cheek is to say, "I have no intention of challenging you to a duel.

Consider yourself to be the winner if that is what your ego demands."

You thereby, defuse the bomb of hostility in the other.