Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRODUCTION

Reading of Text

“Please stand with me for the reading of Scripture.”

Pray

Context of Passage

We have reached the climax or epilogue of Jesus’ sermon on the mount, which technically started back in Verse 21.

Over the last several months we have seen how the Sermon on the Mount is full of instructions, which challenge the wisdom of how we instinctively build our lives, and one thing is certain: it is difficult and countercultural to do what Jesus says.

To go to the sister or brother who has something against us and seek reconciliation.

To show generosity to those who hate us, speak ill of us, and have acted to our harm.

To willingly offer to someone more than he or she is suing us for.

To invest our money not with a view to our indulgence beyond the needful in the present, or to our secure enjoyment of the future, but with a view to relieving the necessity of our neighbor in the present.

To turn our powers of diagnosis ever toward ourselves and the distance we still have to travel toward Christlikeness, before presuming to diagnose a sister or brother.

So much within us screams, “Were we to live like this, we’d be ruined, we’d be fools!”,

but Jesus says just the opposite - that to live like this is akin to building a house upon a foundation of bedrock.

To live like this now is to lay a strong foundation for the future.

Peter J. Leithart et al., Reflecting on the Word: Video Devotionals (Year A), Logos Mobile Education (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016), Mt 7:21–29.

In this text, Jesus is following up a series of very clear and shocking contrasting images to illustrate two types of responses to Him and His gospel of the Kingdom of God:

Narrow gate vs. wide gate

Good tree vs. bad tree

Sincere discipleship vs. insincere discipleship

And now we have one final contrasting image to show the severity of the consequences of our response to everything Jesus has just called His true and sincere disciples to live out.

This is not a complicated image which needs a lot of explaining.

Jesus is saying to everyone who hears these words, which now includes all of us, there is a wise response and there is a foolish response.

Now, normally I try to resist or challenge binary thinking and overly simplistic reductions, but this is truly one option versus another.

And Jesus illustrates these two options with two images: a wise man who builds his house on the rock and the foolish man who builds his house on sand.

Both houses are hit by a violent storm leaving one standing while the other falls to ruin.

If the last few sermons, and these words of Jesus, stir something uncomfortable up inside of you, like they do me, that is a good thing.

That is the point.

It is exactly what Jesus is trying to do.

Jesus is getting real real with His disciples and saying “Listening, hearing, and even right thinking are not enough for entrance to the Kingdom of God” (v.

21).

To stop short of practicing the way of Jesus is to stop short of the Kingdom of God.

So, while last week we looked at two contrasting types of doing, this week we are looking at doing in contrast to not doing and the results of both.

So, we are going to look at:

DOING VS.

NOT DOING

THRIVING VS.

CRASHING

DOING VS.

NOT DOING

Scot McKnight writes:

The fundamental aim of the Sermon [on the Mount] is to present Jesus and his kingdom vision for his kingdom people, and the only acceptable response to this Sermon is to embrace him, to accept the challenge; that means to do what he says.

Scot McKnight, Sermon on the Mount, ed.

Tremper Longman III and Scot McKnight, The Story of God Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013), 276.

In verses 13–27 the word “do” or “practice” appears 10 times!

7:17 (2x), 18 (2x), 19, 21, 22 (negatively), 23 (synonym), 24, 26.

Jesus wants his disciples to know what he expected of his own and to get them to do what he said.

This is a really tough thing to reconcile for those of us who hold dear the wonderful doctrine that is justification by faith.

I mean, how do we sort this out with Scripture like these:

I can tell you this, we are not being forced to choose between team Jesus and team Paul.

Paul fully understood Jesus’ teaching when writing his letters.

We are not meant to read these words of Jesus as him promoting works over faith, but rather as him promoting what it means to have faith in Jesus: to live as he instructs, to do what he says to do.

This is faith.

This is doing.

Not two mutually exclusive options to choose between.

One of the unintended consequences of how we have elevated the doctrine of justification by faith is believing our works, or doing, do not matter - to God, to the world, and to ourselves.

Martin Luther, a champion for gospel orthodoxy and arguably the central figure in our modern elevation of justification by faith, says this well when commentating on the Sermon on the Mount:

“The doctrine [in the Sermon on the Mount] is a good and a precious thing, but it is not being preached for the sake of being heard but for the sake of action and its application to life.”

Luther, Sermon on the Mount, 281.

Even Martin Luther believed our works, our doing, mattered.

Jesus is not just listing off a Buzzfeed article with pro tips for life.

He is showing us what life in the Kingdom of God looks like.

This is how citizens of the Kingdom live, and they live like this because of their faith in Jesus.

If any of this sounds familiar it is because this is what God has been about all along.

Go read Genesis 6-7 and Deuteronomy 28; 30:15-20.

God called and blessed Abraham not because of anything Abraham had done, but by grace.

God does this so Abraham and his descendents would go and bless the nations and in doing so bring God’s presence to a world who so desperately needs him.

God then calls his people to a way of life through another man on a mount named Moses.

God then gives us wisdom literature like this:

Jesus says the one who hears his words and then practice them is wise, like a man who builds his house on the rock, and when the storms come and violently beat against the house, it stands firm because of the foundation.

Understanding this gives a whole new, and proper meaning, to Jesus’ words when he said, “I didn’t come to abolish the law of Moses, I came to fulfill them!”, does it not?

Again, Paul understood this non-mutually exclusive truth that both faith and works matter - to God, to the world, and to ourselves.

To have faith is to do the will of the Father, which is to practice the way of Jesus.

To do so is to choose wisdom over foolishness - to resist the temptation to embrace shallow, one-dimensional thinking.

It was Socrates’ who said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”,

and Jesus’ words challenge us to examine the dimensions and depths of inviting the Kingdom into our lives through listening and doing the whole of Jesus’ teaching.

If we truly believe Jesus’ words, we will become Jesus’ words in our daily lives.

…and how good is this in a world where foolishness seems to have no end?

When the world sees us, it has the opportunity to see the very presence of the Kingdom of God!

It is an entirely different kind of apologetic to those who so desperately need God’s presence.

Richard William Harbart says this:

“Our embracing of these beliefs becomes the profound change mechanism that allows the person and community an opportunity to step into the new mind-set and lifestyle the kingdom offers.

As they are embraced, these beliefs become the great “game changer,” as the empty tomb was to Mary and the disciples when they thought everything was lost and gone.

They become the spiritual mind expander and “eyeopener” whereby the human focus on selfish needs is put aside.

Once done, the altruistic principles of the kingdom of God and Jesus’ teachings become the new center of thought and action, not only for the Christian community, but for the whole human family.”

Richard William Harbart, “Homiletical Perspective on Matthew 7:21–29,” in Feasting on the Gospels: Matthew, Chapters 1–28, ed.

Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, First Edition., vol. 1, A Feasting on the Word Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), 181.

We are always building, with each action and each omission of action, each decision to invest in a particular direction, each response to a new situation.

Jesus challenges us to carefully examine the foundation we are building on.

THRIVING VS.

CRASHING

While Jesus seems to have the day of judgement in view here (vv.

21-23), that setting is not emphasized, meaning the every day building of our lives is at stake as well.

What we build on and how we build has both eternal and present consequence.

In Jesus’ illustration he doesn’t give us the impression at all that these two houses are much different.

Don’t you find that interesting?

I do!

He could have painted a picture of this beautiful strong house against some rickety shanty, or he could have gotten clever and painted a picture of a beautiful house hiding rotted-out framing against an uglier house hiding a strong frame.

He doesn’t do this.

The impression is both of these houses are being built and are similar except for one thing, the foundation.

It is possible to go through this life building our lives in a way that has the appearance of one thing, but hides the foundation of another.