Sermon Tone Analysis

Heart

Good Morning Everyone,

Many of you know me, some of you may not.

My name is Shawn and I am a Teacher.

Teaching is my calling and ministry gift, given by God, it is why I am here on God’s Good Earth.

See my job, is to journey with you, my brothers and my sisters, coaching, mentoring, training, teaching, encouraging and loving along the way to maturity in the faith.

Now like any good coach or trainer, I am going to challenge you, if I didn’t we would never improve or reach maturity.

So what that means is, you should expect to come in, be filled, be instructed and leave challenged to go make a difference out in the world.

I say all of this to set the expectation.

If you have no desire or expectation to change, or be challenged then know that we love you but nothing will change in your life.

However, if you have come in here hungry, I have food for you!

Title (POV)

This sermon is titled, How do Moses and Jesus lead us to life today?

WIIFM

Today we will be talking about:

How to best experience life in a way that leads to Blessing

Bible Instruction

So today if you are following along in a Bible we are starting in Matt 6 and this is the best sermon ever preached, preached by our King Jesus.

Recorded here in the Gospel of Matthew.

Now as we turn there, I want to explain a concept about how to read the Bible to you.

Some tools when reading the Bible is to zoom out and ask at least some questions.

What is Happening?

So what is happening here big picture, Jesus has crafted a sermon that goes like this:

9 Blessings that are totally inverted

Shares the Identity of His people as salt and light

Starts teaching Torah which means Instruction, commonly translated as law and is the first 5 books in your Bible.

Quick Points here in v.17 when He says Law and Prophets he is referencing the whole of the Old testament by referencing the Sections of it

He re-affirms the need for protecting, practicing and promoting Torah

He challenges our view of Righteousness because surely in regards to the Law the Pharisees were Righteous?

I mean weren’t they?

Or does Jesus mean something by righteousness that we need to deepen our understanding on.

Re-gives Torah on:

Murder

Adultery

Divorce

Oaths

Justice

Generosity

Love

Prayer

Then He says THEREFORE in v.25 don’t be like your neighbours, but be like what I just told you to be like.

This should lead us to at least one question, why is everything that He just talked about actions for now and in regards to other people?

Do not judge, said another way, if you don’t judge others using God’s loving standard treating people how they’re worth not how they deserve, God will judge you, using yours.

Seek the Lord, Fear the Lord,

Love others as yourself Walk the narrow Path

Be careful who you listen to because they may lead you astray, to help narrow this down, the News and Media are false prophets, they claim to be speaking truth but rarely do, their prophesies lead people away from God, they are false prophets.

Blessing for those that listen and do and Curse those that listen and don’t

If we know our Bibles this should sound very familiar.

See the Biblical Authors use a number of techniques to communicate to us, now in our modern western world we tend to only think of the content as important, but the biblical authors also use literary genre, form and structure to communicate to us.

Let us zoom out a bit further,

Have you all ever noticed that all the events in the Gospels seem to happen at different times?

It is on purpose, the authors have arranged the events to communicate different messages, Matthew has gone through extreme effort in his Gospel to model Jesus’ life in mirror image to that of Israel.

Both start in the promised land

Both go down to Egypt to escape something

Both are brought up out of Egypt

Both are Baptised through Symbolic death waters exercising and defining Faith

Both have God commit to them in perpetuity and move in with them via a Temple which is a whole other sermon.

Both go through a Period of 40 in the wilderness being tested

Then before beginning the work of the Kingdom Moses gives an Epic Sermon

Ladies and Gentlemen the Sermon on the mount is Deuteronomy.

Do you see how using narrative patterning Matthew has set that up?

In actual fact, the only way to really interpret the Sermon on the Mount is to realise what Matthew is doing, He is giving us the key to understanding what Jesus is saying.

Matthew is making a huge claim here by saying that this person, Jesus is the new Moses, He is the one who is going to lead us on the new and true Exodus.

That you may live?

32 Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other.

Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of?

33 Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived?

34 Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

35 You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides him there is no other.

36 From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you.

On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire.

37 Because he loved your ancestors and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, 38 to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today.

39 Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below.

There is no other.

40 Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the LORD your God gives you for all time.

This is all about the Lord manifesting His life and His love to us, Saving us from Satan, Sin and Death, revealing Himself to us, every wonderful commandment is a testimony of God’s character and love for us and His good world.

But there is a shift happening here, who is Moses talking to?

This is not the generation that got taken out of Egypt, it is their children, Moses is not confused, this is intentional.

By saying you, He is saying that this is your story by heritage and by right, this is your story but even more than that, we the reader are meant to see that it is our story too, this is the story of the faithful Israel.

This is the logic here, that every generation needs to hear Torah which means Instruction afresh.

Moses here retells most of the laws stated previously but adapts many of them for the new life that the people were about to enter going from a nomadic lifestyle to a settled agricultural one.

Jesus followed this same logic clearly by giving the sermon on the mount to inaugurate His people into how to live in their day and age, by most restating but expanding on the Law.

Just so you do not think I am pulling this out of thin air,

The later Biblical Author Paul picks up this Logic in 1 Corinthians

10 For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

Who is Paul talking to?

Mostly Greek Gentiles, but he says OUR ancestors, he clearly understands the logic of Deuteronomy.

He is saying that this is OUR story, stories give meaning and purpose to our lives and this is ours, this is the story that we as believers, as the faithful have been grafted into and it is beautiful.

Why does this matter?

So What Story

6 These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.

3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you.

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

y 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.

7 Impress them on your children.

Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

In the future, when your son asks you, “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?” 21 tell him: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.