Sermon on the Mount: Intro- A Kingdom Invitation
Notes
Transcript
Matthew 4:12-25
A Kingdom Invitation
(Intro to the Sermon on the Mount)
Introduction: The Sermon on the Mount is probably the most famous
sermon from all of scripture and definitely the most famous teaching of
Jesus. Some consider it the epitome of the teachings of Jesus and
therefore the essence of Christianity.
A.M Hunter Writes, “After Nineteen hundred years the Sermon on the
Mounts still haunts men. They may praise it, as Mahatma Ghandi did; or
Like Nietzche, they may curse it. They cannot ignore it. It’s words are
winged words, quick and powerful to rebuke, to challenge, to inspire. And
though some turn from it in despair, it continues, like some mighty
magnetic mountain, to attract to itself the greatest spirits of our race (many
not Christians), so that if some world-wide vote were taken, there is little
doubt that men would account it the most searching and powerful
utterance we possess on what concerns the moral life.” A.M Hunter, A
pattern for Life.
All though I wholeheartedly agree with this statement I don’t think it’s how
modern people think of the Sermon on the Mount ( if they even think of it
at all). Our culture is become increasingly more hostile to the scripture and
skeptical of it’s wisdom and claims. Yet our culture claims to be after the
main objective of this sermon - The good life.
This sermon is Jesus’ answer to the universal philosophical and religious
question - how can one truly be happy?
The sermon on the mount is a vision for a true way of being and living that
will result in happiness and human flourishing. This is a question that we
are still obsessed with today - The New York times published an article
earlier this year stating -About 12,000 Yale students signed up for a new
psychology course, for this year, making it the most popular in the school’s
history. What was the subject? - Happiness
But if you come to this sermon expecting to find our culture’s definition of
flourishing or true happiness.. you will be sorely disappointed. It denies
and denounces many of the vices and virtues of our current culture. Rather
many of us will find an insurmountable mountain to climb and those who
scale it on their own, white knuckled and by the skin of their teeth, will not
find the flourishing promised when they get to the top.
1. How should we approach this Sermon?
1. Not so Literal
1. Sadly the modern church has turned the world’s greatest sermon
from one of instruction or even invitation to indictment…And
since that doesn’t square well with our version of Jesus we tend
to dismiss the sermon in a number of ways.
2. Historically, the church, by and large doesn’t know what to do
with this sermon. I think this is due in part because we have
wrongly relegated every biblical story and command to a grace
vs law paradigm.
1. Pinchas Lapide wrote, “The history of the impact of the
sermon on the mount can largely be described in terms of an
attempt to domesticate everything in it that is shocking,
demanding and uncompromising, and render it harmless.”
3. Isn’t it true though - we take Jesus’ radical teaching and say he
must be using Hyperbole, “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is
perfect,” (nobody could really be this good). Doesn’t Paul tell us
that we will always wrestle with the flesh in an endless battle till
Jesus returns? Jesus’ point must be to raise the bar so high that
we forsake our own working or doing and “just trust in
him….Don’t try, just believe”. But by doing this we complete declaw the sermon, undermine it’s high demands, and remove any
effort on our part. We’re not taking Jesus seriously. Do you really
think Jesus would have wasted his time even giving the sermon if
that was his point? Or that Matthew as well as Luke would have
taken the time to meticulously record this sermon for us, if the
point was simply not to do anything except “trust Jesus”? If
that’s the point, why read and study this Sermon at all when we
can spend all our time with Pauline theology instead?
4. Sadly so many christians are missing out on the flourishing and
happiness that Jesus offers because they have been given a
theology that says, “ just let go, and let God”. We hear
testimonies of those who lived like hell and then gave their lives
to Jesus in one moment in time and since then have never
struggled… and so we think that we need to be “saved” again
and again, or that we need a second baptism or we’ve just given
up on this vision for flourishing in this life and are just waiting for
the New Heaven and New Earth.
1. Can I just say, The Gospel, God’s grace, is opposed to
earning, it is not opposed to effort..
2. Literally?
1. I actually believe that the Sermon on the Mount is to be taken
seriously, very seriously. It is to be followed and lived out! But If we
are approaching this sermon on our own, rolling up our sleeves
getting ready to work it out we should see that it’s requirements are
undoable, it’s an insurmountable mountain .. it is not something we
can do on our own and this why it’s so important to read things in
context so we approach this Mountain of a sermon correctly…
3. The Context
1. Matthew 4 reads, “From that time Jesus began to preach,
saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”And he
went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and
proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every
disease and every affliction among the people. So his fame
spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick,
those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those
oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics,
and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from
Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and
from beyond the Jordan.
2. When Jesus first shows up he isn’t teaching anything, He is first
proclaiming and incarnating the presence of the Kingdom of God.
He isn’t requiring people to do anything except to turn around and
reconsider (repent).
3. The Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God is a huge Biblical
idea woven throughout scripture. To proclaim that the kingdom of
God was here was a was hugely packed statement! For the Jew the
Kingdom of God referred to God’s final and eternal reign over his
creation - for where God rules his Kingdom is present. The Kingdom
of God meant, a guaranteed new heavens and new earth, a healed
material creation. Absolute wholeness and well being- physically,
spiritually, socially, and economically."
4. The Kingdom was bound up with the Old Testament concept of
shalom - The peace and glory of God permeating every part of the
creation. The Kingdom was said to be fully established when all that
is broken and wrong with this world is mended and made right. As
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such, it is tightly bound up with poverty, oppression, misery and sin
in all its various forms being brought to an end, and an ushering in
of absolute flourishing, prosperity and blessing of the creation.
Jesus was claiming and displaying that THAT kingdom was here.
(Isaiah 11; 25:6-9; 60-61; 65:17-25)
Jesus’ message wasn’t just -the kingdom is here -but Repent, the
kingdom is here. In essence He is saying drop whatever you are
doing, turn from whatever you are preoccupied with, whatever you
think life is really about, think again; give me your full attention and
your full consideration, sit down, tune in, listen up and receive the
vision of the kingdom of God. He’s inviting us into the Kingdom, to
join it. (The parable of the wedding feast -everything is provided and
prepared, come to the feast)
Once we see this we can clearly see the beatitudes are the
Kingdom characteristics, the kingdom way of life. This sermon is not
rules to get into the kingdom, And I don’t think it is unobtainable
rules just to get us to see that we can’t keep the rules so we should
stop trying. It is also not rules of how we “must behave” if we are to
stay in the kingdom…
What Jesus is saying is - Now that I am here, God’s new world
is coming into being. Once you realize that, you’ll see that these are
the habits of heart which anticipate the new world here and now..
These qualities - purity of heart, mercy, and so on, are not, things
that you have to do to earn a reward, or a payment to God. Nor are
they merely the rules of conduct now that you’ve become a
christian… They are themselves signs of life, the language of life,
the life of the kingdom of the new creation, the life of the new
covenant, the life which Jesus came to bring..
1. “What Jesus teaches in the sayings collected in the Sermon on
the Mount is not a complete regulation of the life of the disciples,
and it is not intended to be; rather, what is taught here is
symptoms, signs, examples of what it means when the kingdom
of God breaks into the world which is still under sin, death, and
the devil. You yourselves should be signs of the coming kingdom
of God, signs that something has already happened.” -Joachim
Jeremias
So the sermon isn’t Jesus giving you principles to go and make
your self happy. It’s not Jesus’ sage wisdom for a DIY life, a self
made man or woman. As C.S. Lewis said, Our faith is not a matter
of hearing what Christ said so long ago and “trying to carry it out”
rather, “The real son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn
you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to
speak, to inject his kind of life and thought, his ZOE, into you;
beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man; the part of you that
doesn’t like it is the part that is still tin.” C.S Lewis, Mere Christianity
1. The commands of the NT are not so much telling us to do
something but are telling (rather inviting) us to become
something through the King -Through his life death and
resurrection and by the giving of his spirit in us - We are to
become fully human beings who reflect the image of our Father
in heaven, who is gracious to all, who causes the rain to fall on
the just and the unjust. Who love their enemies, who bless those
who curse us, who go the second mile, who tell the truth, who
are faithful in all their commitments because that’s just the kind
of people they are or rather the people they have become.
4. The sermon on the mount is a huge vision because God has big plans
for your life, he has big plans for my life. Not plans to make you
famous, or to make you a billionaire, or a rock star..or the founder of
some new tech start up, no, something so much bigger, something so
much greater! He wants to make you whole, he wants to make you
perfect, he wants to make you wise, he wants to mold you into his
likeness so that you can rule and reign with him in the new heavens
and the new earth to shine like the stars forever and ever, to share in
his glory, to be conformed to the image of His Son!
1. This sermon should bring out in each of us a conviction that we are
not what we should be, we are not what we could be, we are not
what God intends us to be…. There is not a person in this room that
is hidden from that indictment. Not one of us are what we should
be, could be, or will be. But I do believe that this Sermon is to be
taken as an invitation from Jesus to let him make us into what he
intends us to be, what God created us to be - A flourishing
humanity.
Conclusion: The sermon on the mount is a vision for human
flourishing but first it is a call to receive the King and the Kingdom.
Will you except Jesus invitation into his kingdom and his vision for
flourishing? Will you turn from whatever else you are preoccupied
with and give yourself fully to his plan and his instruction? Will you
come and sit at the feet of Jesus? will you make yourself his disciple,
will you learn from him and take his yoke on you? Will you enroll in the
Jesus school of discipleship? Will you begin to surrender yourself to
him and to what he wants to make you into? I believe that is the true
invitation of this sermon and how we properly approach it.