Transcript
The Sermon on the Mount. I want you to pause a moment and put into one sentence what you think the Sermon on the Mount is about. Are you thinking? I’m not going to ask anybody to give me their sentence tonight. Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow night. You may want to go home and consider it.
But I have a strong feeling that most people who come to the Sermon on the Mount have a kind of an undefined sense that this is about all the different things we ought to do and not do.
One of the goals that we have — thank you, Arch — one of the goals that we have in the study is to attempt to put the Sermon on the Mount together so that it hangs together as a unit for you. And then you can do a lifetime of study in it, hopefully. And you may even revise the outline that we give you. But hopefully we will give you a framework or grid within which you can think about this very famous and important utterance of Jesus Christ.
We should however begin with some introductory considerations. Have you ever asked yourself the question, why are there four Gospels? I think most people ask themselves that at one time or another. And then a very subsidiary question is, why are three of them so similar and one of them so different? Right? Four Gospels, three very similar, one of them different.
During the sixties and seventies it was not uncommon to read in the technical literature on the New Testament a distinction between what was called kerygma and didache. Kerygma referred to the message of the New Testament that was beamed to those outside the church. We would say the gospel is the kerygma. That’s where we got the name of our organization, by the way, from the Greek word for message. But didache is the content of the message that we give to people inside the church. Kerygma, the message to those outside the church; didache, the message to those inside the church. Or as we might in our circles say, we preach the gospel to the unsaved and we teach believers. Because didache means basically teaching.
Now I think that’s a useful handle to get a hold of the four Gospels with. It seems to me that we can say that the Gospel of John, which is the distinct gospel over against the other three, is kerygma. Because according to the statement of the Gospel of John, these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing you might have life through His name. And the aim and function of the Gospel of John, it seems to me, is evangelistic. This is what we say to those outside the church. That doesn’t mean that the people inside the church can’t profit from a great deal that is in that gospel, but the thrust, the aim, the purpose of the Gospel is to those outside the church.
Conversely it seems to me that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are didache. They are teaching for those who are inside the church. Or another way of saying this, all three of the so-called synoptic Gospels — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — are instructions to disciples. They teach about discipleship.
Now if I were in many churches today there might be some confusion about what is the difference between the gospel and discipleship. And there are those who teach that you can’t be a Christian without being a disciple. But to me that’s a little like saying that you can’t be a child in a family and not go to school. We hope that all our children will go to school, but it is not a condition for being a child in the family that I have to go to school. And some kids do not go to school, or at least some kids play hooky. And so in a very general sense we may say that the gospel is the message that tells us how to belong to the family of God, how to be children of God. And didache, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, discipleship teaches us in the school of Christian learning how to live for God.
And I think it would be a great mistake if somebody said we’re going to give the Gospel of Matthew to such and such a group in order to win them to Christ. Because it would be very, very hard to find clearly articulated in the Gospel of Matthew the terms of eternal life. You can find it but it’s not there clearly or obviously. It is not the main thrust of the book. And so if you’re going to ask somebody to read one of the gospels who is unsaved, the gospel they ought to read is the Gospel of John. And if you want somebody to learn how to grow in the area of discipleship then they can read Matthew, Mark, or Luke.
But that leads to a second question. Why not just have one gospel that is kerygma or evangelistic and one gospel that is discipleship? Right? Why three Gospels that focus on discipleship? I want to make a suggestion. I’ll let somebody answer this question. Above the cross of Christ the accusation that was written was written in three languages. Who can tell me what those three languages were? Yes, that is exactly right. And that in fact is the order in which they are mentioned: Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. In the Palestine of the first century therefore it could be expected that there would be people who passed the cross who would read the Greek inscription, others who would read the Latin inscription, and others who would read the Hebrew inscription.
And I want to make a very simple proposal that this represents three major cultural groups in the Roman Empire. And that the Gospel of Luke is the gospel to the Greek culture. By the way, where does Luke first appear in the narrative of the book of Acts? This is not a real easy question but where do we first meet him? We know that Luke is there by the fact that the writer switches to we, the famous we sections of the book of Acts. Where do we meet the first we section? No, did you say 12? You’re getting warm but we’re not quite there yet. It’s basically in chapter 16 where we have the Macedonian call. And when Paul receives the Macedonian call the writer says, “We concluded that God had called us to preach the gospel.” And then we get the we working until we get to Philippi. When we get through with Philippi we don’t get the we anymore. And when we get back to Philippi later in the book we get we again. So Luke, we meet in the Greek-speaking world first in western Turkey and then in the land of Greece itself in Philippi. And apparently he stayed with the church in Philippi for a while after Paul moved on. So I would say the Gospel of Luke is the Greek cultural gospel.
The Gospel of Mark however is the Latin gospel. And there is a tradition that when Peter went to Rome to preach that Mark went as his interpreter. And then after Peter’s death the Roman Christians asked him to write up Peter’s preaching. And the result was, according to this tradition, the Gospel of Mark.
And then you will not be surprised to hear me say that the Gospel of Matthew is the one that remains and is the Hebrew gospel. What do we mean by that? Well I think what we mean by that is that it was addressed to Hebrew Christians. It was addressed to Jewish believers. It is not addressed to the Jewish nation as such. It is not designed to do evangelistic work. There was a large group of believers in the land of Israel. They went to some church or group of churches apparently in the land of Palestine. And I would call it therefore the Hebrew gospel. And everybody notices that there are a number of slants in the Gospel of Matthew that are definitely oriented to the Jewish mentality and to the Jewish background in the Old Testament.
Okay, we’ve got a couple of points here. Is Matthew kerygma or didache? Didache. To what cultural group does Matthew go? The Hebrew culture, the Jewish culture. So it is not an evangelistic document to unconverted Jews but a didache document on discipleship to converted Jews. In other words we could say that the Gospel of Matthew is discipleship from a Jewish perspective. Discipleship from a Jewish perspective. Or another way of saying this, one that would be very meaningful to Jews, is to say that Matthew is discipleship with the King. We all know that the Lord Jesus Christ is introduced as the King, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. “Where is He that is born King of the Jews?” say the wise men as they come to worship Him. Matthew is not therefore an effort to convert Jews but it is an effort to instruct Jewish Christians. Let me run that by again because that is a premise that definitely colors and affects our whole understanding of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew is not an effort to convert unsaved Jews. Matthew is an effort to instruct converted Jews, Jewish Christians. In other words.
Now therefore what is the Sermon on the Mount itself? Put it within this framework. What do you think the Sermon on the Mount is about? Well first of all I would like to suggest that if you will open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5, let’s look at the first couple of verses of that chapter. Matthew 5:1 and 2. “And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain. And when He was seated, His disciples came to Him. And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying.” Here begins the Sermon on the Mount.
Now you will notice however there was a large crowd here. So when Jesus goes up to the mountain there’s a large group of people there. But He calls out of these people His own disciples and they sit in front of Him, you know, like pupils. Because the word disciple, don’t forget, means basically a student. And He taught His disciples. But of course the crowd hears what He teaches, right? So what is this? I want to suggest to you that it is a public lecture to the disciples of Jesus. It is a public lecture to the disciples of Jesus Christ.
If you can imagine going to a university where there is a famous professor and he is holding a class in a large auditorium. And down in front of him in the seats are the students who are enrolled in the course in the university. But you’re a guest so you go sit in the balcony or you go sit in the back somewhere and you listen to this famous professor teach his students the lessons of the day. I think that gets us as close to the ethos of the Sermon on the Mount as we can get. Here we have a vast multitude of people but Jesus is saying, “Look, I want My disciples up here. This is really for you all.” But the people are there listening. And as we shall have more to say about it in subsequent talks, they will profit in various ways from what they hear. But nevertheless the instruction that is given in the Sermon on the Mount is for the disciples.
One other thing we should say by way of introduction. I hope nobody thinks that we have every single word of this sermon in the Gospel of Matthew. It takes us what, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes to read chapters 5 through 7. I don’t think Jesus gave a fifteen-minute talk to His disciples. I don’t even give fifteen-minute messages and I know Arch doesn’t give fifteen-minute messages. If you’ve got a lot to say you want to say it all, right? And so I’m quite sure that what we have here is a précis of the sermon, a condensation of the Sermon on the Mount, a quintessence, a kind of a running off of the essential truths that are presented in this sermon. This is a real life situation. Jesus actually spoke these words. But these are not all of the words that Jesus spoke. But they are the words that Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, chooses to report to us. And therefore he is giving us the valuable lessons that the sermon contains.
So the audience of the Sermon on the Mount is also the same as the audience of the book, right? Jewish disciples. Now there are other auditors there but it is aimed for Jewish disciples in its original setting. And it is aimed for Jewish disciples as a written document in the New Testament record.
Now that’s introductory and I think it would be a good idea if I just stopped here for a moment and allowed you to ask questions. I think it’s fairly important to understand the framework in which we’re presenting the Sermon on the Mount. And I don’t know what conception you have brought to this but this is the grid out of which I’m approaching it. So feel free, if I haven’t made anything clear, you want elaboration or further comment, to feel free to ask any question at this point.
I think it’s very likely that it was in Galilee. And it’s an interesting thing that a number of parallels have been noted between the Sermon on the Mount and the Book of James. So that the suggestion has been offered, we know that James was not a believer at this early stage of our Lord’s career. But if this was in Galilee it would not be surprising that James might have been in the audience and heard this sermon. It’s kind of challenging to think of it that way. Here is the brother of our Lord, not yet a believer, listening to this marvelous exposition of the life of discipleship. And probably torn various ways as he listens but many of the words sinking in for him and being reflected in the epistle which he writes later for the New Testament.
Yes, I personally do not think that we have any very good way of dating the document beyond saying that in all probability it was written prior to 70 AD. There was a book written by a man named Robinson called Redating the New Testament. And he was not a conservative man. He was in fact in some respects quite a liberal man. But his contention was that every one of the New Testament books, including the Book of Revelation, were written before the destruction of Jerusalem. And he builds a very good case I think in almost every instance. And so I think that he probably made his case there. But I don’t think we have any further data that permits us to define the writing of Matthew within further perimeters.
Well I first of all I want to say I don’t know. The second thing I want to say is that the prologue to the Gospel of Luke, in my judgment — not everybody agrees with that — but the prologue to the Gospel of Luke in my judgment implies that the previous efforts to write up the story of the life of Jesus were not entirely satisfactory. That’s the implication I get out of it. Not everyone gets that implication and you can debate it. But let’s say for the moment that that was what Luke was implying. That would indicate that Luke at least had not seen the Gospel of Matthew. You know as many others have tried to do this but I’m going to do this because I can do it accurately and I’ve got it from eyewitnesses and so on and so forth. So insofar as it goes that would make a case for the priority of the Gospel of Luke. And if we therefore think that Luke-Acts was written by the end of Paul’s first imprisonment, maybe in the early sixties, we might then conjecture that Matthew was written in the middle sixties somewhere but before 70 AD.
Yes sir, that’s one of the arguments that Robinson uses. And you know his point is well taken that had the destruction of Jerusalem already occurred, had it been known to have occurred, it would have made a very powerful argument for Christianity. And it would be very amazing that it was not used. So you know that’s not perhaps as conclusive for Matthew as it is for certain other books but nevertheless it’s an effective argument. And Matthew purports to be predicting it and not describing it. Matthew purports Jesus predicting it and not describing it. So as far as that goes that’s an argument that it has not occurred yet. And it’s not a decisive argument however.
Yes sir. Yes, yes. Uh-huh. That’s a good and relevant question. You know I started by saying Jesus was crucified outside of Jerusalem of course. And Jerusalem was what we would call a cosmopolitan city. So that meant that people from all over the world were there. And people from the Latin areas were there and people from the Greek areas were there. And obviously Semites were there. So the fact that we have the interplay of these three groups in Jerusalem is not surprising. But if we look at the Roman Empire as a whole we would say that Italy for example was the center of the Latin culture because that was the language of Rome and the language of the Italian Peninsula. Now that is not to say that Greek had not become a second language and a lingua franca in the Roman world. But nevertheless Latin was a very much alive and spoken language in that part of society. And then of course the Greek peninsula and western Turkey, Anatolia as it’s sometimes called, was Greek-speaking. And there was a lot of Greek-speaking over the area that had been covered by Alexander’s conquest. But also within this area in places like Syria and Palestine and so on there would be the use of Aramaic. Probably the word Hebrew in the passage in John refers to Aramaic.
Went to Rome, Latin. Yeah if you were in inscriptions of course you would see a lot of Latin. Now what happened was that Greek became the international language. But the typical citizen of Rome would be expected to speak Latin. Okay. Anything else? Can I clear up any of the obscurities here? Because it’s very important to get the grid picture here.
Yes, none that I am aware of or remember. There may be something but if there is something I’ve forgotten what it is. I don’t remember anything down. No. And usually the dates of the death of the Apostles are as equivocal as the dates of their books so that usually doesn’t help us unless we have some specific knowledge. In the case of Paul and Peter it is usually agreed that the tradition points to their death in 68 before the fall of Nero. But that’s what the tradition seems to say to us. But where Matthew might have died I don’t know. And there may be something in the literature but I don’t remember it.
The Golden Rule and that’s what the law and the prophets are ultimately all about, says Jesus. For this is the law and the prophets.
Now tomorrow night is the night that we will spend more time on the body of the letter. But please notice how the body of the letter hangs together like that, right? “Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law or the Prophets. Far from it. I haven’t come to destroy them. I’ve come to fulfill them. And I want you, My disciples, to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. How do you do that? By doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A marvelous summarization of Christian morality.
Then finally there is a conclusion to the sermon. And the conclusion in my judgment begins at 7:13 and goes all the way to verse 27. I wish to reserve to the last night the way in which the conclusion hangs together. I think it does hang together very nicely in forms of a very effective conclusion to the sermon. But by taking you through these steps I have tried to point out to you the structural pattern of the sermon. Number one, prologue, verses 3 to 12. Number two, thematic statement, usually relatively brief, verses 13 to 16 of chapter 5. The body of the sermon, 5:17 to 7:12. The rest of the sermon is a conclusion. I think that’s the way the sermon goes together. That’s the way we’re going to think about it, the Lord willing. And that is the way in which we hope to understand the message of the sermon.
So let’s go to the prologue, shall we, and spend a few minutes on the prologue. And one of the things I hope to do, because it is always daunting to talk about the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and I think it would be remiss if we did not actually read the words. If only my words about His words are heard that’s not quite up to the par that He has set. So I may make a few comments here about the prologue that I’m going to read. And I’ll make hopefully a few more.
The prologue, as we have said, consists of the series of blessings that we describe as the Beatitudes. And we should also notice very carefully that the stress of the Beatitudes is upon being, not upon doing. The stress of the Beatitudes is upon being, not upon doing.
Let’s read the prologue.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Let me make a few comments and then I think we’ll open it for questions that you might have. I think it is significant that the one reward that is mentioned twice here is the statement, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And it seems to me that in the New Testament there is a very clear-cut doctrine that teaches us that if we persevere in the pathway of Christian discipleship we will reign with Christ in His kingdom. To whom does a kingdom belong? Well it really belongs to the King. And it belongs to those with whom the King is inclined to share His power. It doesn’t really belong to the citizens. We live in a democracy and we probably think the U.S. belongs to us though sometimes we wonder perhaps. But nevertheless in a democracy it’s different than in a kingdom. It’s the King who owns the kingdom. It is the King to whom the kingdom belongs. And it is the King who shares the authority of His kingdom. So in the series of eight Beatitudes we begin with the promise of possessing the kingdom which is, I think, functionally equivalent to ruling in it. And at the end of the series of Beatitudes we are reminded of the same promise again.
I think we should say something about the expression “poor in spirit.” We all know what it means to be poor in money or in material things. But poor in spirit, what does that mean? One thing it obviously means is that we can’t have a spirit that is puffed up and filled with pride and a sense of self-sufficiency. The poor in spirit is one way of talking about humility. But I also think since the word poor suggests need, that the person who is poor in spirit is a person who is conscious of his spiritual need, of his spiritual weakness, of his spiritual poverty. Show me a Christian who thinks they’ve really got it together in the Christian life. Show me a Christian who thinks they really have what it takes to be an effective Christian. And I will show you a Christian who’s probably a failure as a disciple. The beginning point of the Beatitudes is poverty of spirit. The realization that I’m weak, that I’m without real spiritual strength, that I have need of wisdom and grace and enablement of all kinds. It’s the very opposite of the sense of pride and vanity that puffs me up, makes me think I’m better than the person sitting next to me in the pew. And I think it’s really significant that the Beatitudes begin with that. If we do not go into the Christian life in a spirit of humility and with a conscious sense of need we are inviting catastrophic failure. Because through catastrophic failure the Lord will show us our need. So that’s where we start, with a sense that we are poverty-stricken when it comes to the capacity to be and do what God wants us to be and do.
Interesting that the next thing is about those who mourn. You know if a person is inclined to be a little puffed up, nothing deflates the balloon faster than sadness, sorrow, tragedy, or loss. And one of the ways to deepen our sense of our need is to mourn. If being poor in spirit means sensing my need before God of every kind of enablement, then mourning is something that deepens that sense and intensifies it.
Notice that the next statement is, “Blessed are the meek.” Meek is not too good a translation of this. We tend to think when we hear the word meek in English of a Mr. Milquetoast type of guy everybody walks all over him and that sort of thing. The word meek more or less indicated a person whose basic manner was gentle. I think the word gentle is a fairly good approximation to this. Blessed are the gentle. You know what mourning does, grieving does? It tends to make you more gentle with other people. It really does. Until you have been touched by something that is deeply grieving, whether it’s the loss of a loved one or some other tragedy, some other disappointment, it softens the hardness that often gets into our attitude toward our fellow Christians. Why doesn’t that guy straighten up? Why is he the way he is? And in its place comes the capacity to be gentle.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. So the guy that is poor in spirit, has tasted mourning, has learned a little about gentleness, is probably a guy that’s going to have an intense desire for righteousness, God’s kind of righteousness. I tend to think that the first four Beatitudes form a series and the last four form a kind of series. So in the last four we talk about the merciful, showing mercy to people. Then we talk about the pure in heart. You know what we discover when we think we are being merciful? Sometimes we discover we have ulterior motives. You know I’m being merciful to this guy. And you know we’re tooting our own horn while we’re being merciful. So being merciful is good but also being pure in heart is essential to deepen and perfect the mercy that is in us.
And then to be peacemakers. It’s amazing how many of us are troublemakers. And when God is really working with us we are working with others to bring them to peace and reconciliation.
And then I think the what Jesus regards as the special privilege: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Blessed are you when men shall revile you and curse you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for My sake.” If you’re the kind of person I’m talking about you are very blessed if that’s what happens to you.
Now you know what happens to us though is we get into problems and people kind of persecute us. But it’s not altogether because we’re righteous. It’s partly because we’re hypocrites or partly because we’re inconsistent or partly because we don’t measure up to the standards of Scripture. And when God’s character building is what He really wants it to be then we are prepared. If necessary — and it will be, for all who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution — it will be necessary in some form or other to suffer for righteousness’ sake. But we are prepared for that by character formation.
Please notice a very simple principle in this prologue. Discipleship to Jesus Christ is character driven, not activity driven. Can I repeat that? Discipleship to Jesus Christ is character driven, not activity driven. We live in a very active culture, so active that people no longer can drive down the street without talking on their phone sometimes. And you know what surprises me? I was in a checkout line the other night in a Vineyard store I believe. And there was a guy in front of me being waited on by the clerk and he was on the phone to somebody. And I heard him say over the phone, he says, “You know,” he says, “I used to get really mad at the people who came to the store and talked over the phone. Now I’m doing it myself.” So that’s the way we are. We’ve got to be doing something. And I think it’s refreshing and necessary for us to get back to the basic truth that God isn’t nearly as interested in what you do as in what you are. And that the beginning point of all real discipleship to Jesus Christ has to be a recognition that God wants to make you the person that He wants you to be.
I’m here as a preacher and I’m here to tell you that He even wants that of preachers. And sometimes it’s a very unpleasant discovery for preachers. We’ve preached for years and years and suddenly we become aware of some horrendous flaw in our character or personality. And it is intensely embarrassing. But then the question becomes, do I face that flaw and ask for grace to overcome it? Do I allow God to do the character building in me that He wants to do? If you want to measure your discipleship do not measure it by your activity in church, by what you put in the collection plate, by the amount of witnessing that you do. Do not measure it in these ways. Measure it by the kind of person you are. And measure the kind of person you are by the characteristics that the Lord Jesus Christ gives us in this sermon.