Sermon Tone Analysis

Who likes Change?

For some people, a change is a good as a vacation.

For the rest of us, change is difficult.

Especially if the change is being forced on us.

If we have to change, then please, at the very least, let us as least be in control of the change.

The worst though, is when we don’t understand that change.

And when we add up all of the factors and the reason for the change our logic says that it is going to end in disaster.

How do you respond to that type of change?

Typically, you would fight it.

The Israelite way of life

had a long history.

We could go all the way back to Adam, or Abraham, but instead we will only go so far back as Moses in Israelite history.

God used Moses to lead the people out from under the slavery of Pharaoh and into the land that was Promised to them.

Along the way, God had to help these people change the way that they thought about life.

They were used to being slaves in a foreign country with very little ability to make their own choices and decisions in life.

God’s plan for Israel was to have them be like a City on a Hill, a light for all of the nations.

He wanted for them to live according to his righteousness, so that he could bless them and so that all of the world would be blessed by God through them.

The Ten Commandments

are the best example of God’s standard for the Israelites.

If they followed these commands, they would enjoy God’s protection, prosperity and they would experience a life that was in many ways supernatural.

Their history is not one of obedience to God though.

Instead it was a destructive cycle of apathy, which lead to sin, which lead to loss of protection, which lead to invasion by enemy armies, which lead to the people crying out for help which lead to God sending a judge to save them.

And for a while they would worship God, but eventually, the cycle would repeat.

And it seems to be the rule that every time that the cycle would repeat, it would get a little worse.

Finally it came to a point where invading armies were used by God to take his people out of their land, so that the land could heal.

When a remnant of the people finally began to return it was devastating to see the state of affairs.

The people realized through prophecy that everything that they had suffered was a consequence for their sins.

They longed to be prosperous and autonomous once again.

But it never seemed to happen.

They were consistently under the rule of foreign powers.

The Pharisees

A religious and political group of people emerged calling themselves the Pharisees.

Their goal was to ensure that the Israelite people would follow God’s law, so that God would once again bless their nation and give them back their autonomy.

Over a period of about 400 years, the power of this group grew until it became the standard for righteousness and also a political power with the authority of Rome in religious dealings.

Experts in the Law

The Pharisaical expertise soon began to take God’s law and build upon it.

They began to add more clarifying laws, hashing out in excruciating detail how you could obey the law.

They were also very careful to give out their approval and authority only to people who met their standards.

The result is that for the nation of Israel, the Pharisees had become the picture of righteousness.

Their way of teaching was the way of teaching.

It was entrenched in their culture, customs and ordinary every day routines.

A New Rabbi named Jesus

Now, the Pharisaical way of living was being challenged by a young Jewish Rabbi named Jesus.

He welcomed people that were ceremonially unclean, he ate with sinners, he didn’t fast on the days they expected him to fast, and he would even help people on the Sabbath days.

Worst of all, he forgave sins, which is something only God can do.

Jesus was accompanied by signs and wonders.

People were being healed, nature was servant to his commands.

Food was miraculously being multiplied.

Jesus was attracting massive crowds, and the Pharisees were not impressed.

Here was a change that was being forced on them.

And when they did the math and added everything up, they were very concerned about where things were going.

They thought that Jesus would undue everything that they and their fathers had done, both religiously and politically.

The Sermon on the Mount

The crowds that came to Jesus were immense.

When he saw the crowd he went up onto a mountain.

It was there that Jesus found a place to sit down and teach.

The mountain was an ideal way to speak to a crowd without the use of a microphone.

His voice would carry, everyone could hear.

What would it have been like to have been a part of that crowd?

What sorts of expectations did people have for Jesus?

Jesus started off by saying “The poor in Spirit are blessed, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

Remember the Jewish way of life.

Everything that they were doing was to regain their prosperity and autonomy.

And Jesus says, it’s the poor in spirit who have God’s approval.

It just keeps going from there.

Nothing that he says is what they have been taught.

Everything sounds so different from the religion that they had.

It was like a whole new authority was here.

It was incredible because it rang true.

Their hearts are hearing what Jesus says, and it’s blowing their minds and resonating in their spirits simultaneously.

The Pharisees must have been steaming mad.

Was he trying to undue all of the work?

Was he trying to destroy God’s law?

This brings us to todays’ passage.

Lets stand and read it together.

“Don’t assume that I came to destroy”

Why would people have assumed this?

Because, by all appearances, he was undoing the work of the Pharisees.

Because it seemed as if he was proposing a massive shift in understanding God’s law.

Imagine that God’s law is beautiful tent.

Some of the teachers assumed that Jesus was figuratively going from tent peg to tent peg, loosening the cords until the whole tent would lose its power and fall down.

Destroy God’s Law?

Actually, when you think about it, it was the Pharisees who were destroying God’s law.

They had made the law all about appearances.

It was appearing to be good, even if your heart had ulterior motives.

They had made the law all about trying to gain prosperity and national independence.

Jesus came to show the beauty and truth of God’s law.

And we all desperately need this truth because we all have some remnant of legalism in our hearts.

We want to appear good to people, we want for others to think of us as wholly and righteous, regardless of our own motivations.

So, we need this truth today, to correct us and to heal us, and to point us to Jesus, the only one who can save us from these desires.

But Jesus says,

There are so many different ways in which Jesus fulfills the law and the prophets.

It is amazing and beautiful to see how everything comes to its completing and fullness in Jesus.

The entire story of the Old Testament points to Jesus.

A people who couldn’t save themselves who were looking forward to a saviour.

A law that was the requirement of God, but was impossible for any one to fully obey.

Prophets that foretold Christ’s coming.

A sacrificial system that Christ satisfied.

The Seed

How can a seed be fulfilled.