Sermon on the Mount

A Whole Person Issue

Psalm 51:5-12; Matthew 5:21-48

Sunday, October 12, 2003

 

  1. Introduction
    1. 6 of 12 – Half-way
    2. Is this reframing your thinking on the SOTM? From the “impossibly bad news” to the “impossibly good news?” If not, then you already had a mature Christian handle on this or you are not really paying attention.

                                                              i.      I have said it before, and I will continue to say it again and again, this is religiously revolutionary content. This is truth contra-mundum. Herein lies the description of something unlike anything else, anywhere else, at anytime with any group of people.

    1. Prayer
  1. Matthew 5:21-48
    1. Opens your Bibles. Page #___________ in your pew Bible
    2. This may seem like a really huge chunk to deal with at one time. There are certainly many potential good sermons loaded in this text. It would certainly be worth it to follow today’s sermon with six more on each section. Having to choose to either swamp you with small bits about each or the central theme, I choose to take them all at one time – because they six examples of one issue -all united by the same point. That is, that God’s holiness has is and will always be about THE WHOLE PERSON. It could be none other. God’s law by nature must demand complete obedience. He is perfectly holy, to commune with him, we must be perfectly holy, anything would be an abomination, an affront to His perfection. Even the smallest blemish is abhorrent to the perfect being. The whole OT sacrificial system just covered unintentional sin, intentional sin had dire consequence. It has never been about man-made rules and regulations, long lists of prescriptions and proscriptions. It has always been about the whole person. It is why the law could be summed up into love God with your whole heart and mind and your neighbor as yourself. If I may steal from the college and more specifically, Dan Neary, it is a Heart, Head and Hand issue. The whole person is involved in holiness – right attitude, right knowledge, and right practice. Always has. Always will.
    3. Here in this section of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus makes this point rather empathically. Let’s have a look at the text.
    4. The section opens with the phrase, “Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times.”

                                                              i.      Research has done a fair job of arguing for both possibilities of Jesus’ meaning here.

                                                            ii.      He could mean, that the law of Moses said, and now I deliver a new law

                                                          iii.      Or he could be referencing the traditional laws surrounding the law.

1.      Given the fact that he just emphasized the validity of the Mosaic Law and its permanence and his directed attention to the Pharisees, I think it is appropriate to suggest that Jesus is referencing the tradition around the law.

                                                           iv.      So, this is Contra Pharisaic/traditionalist not contra Torah

1.      I am afraid we fail to recognize the intimacy we have with the Scriptures since the reformation. There are no other books, No other authority; the Pope does not stand equal with the word. There are only Church Confessions and denomination declarations. The Bible and only the Bible is the absolute rule of faith. Like Luther, Jesus was not changing the demands but rather stripping them down to there actual content. Religion constant adds culture and moray to God.

2.      To complicate matters, again like the period of the reformation, Hebrew was largely lost to the general public and they had synchronized into an Aramaic speaking population. Consequently the Jews had to rely on the “Clergy” to interpret their Law.

                                                             v.      Stick with me now :~) See, if you can follow the confusing maze of authority.

1.      Following the first period of Old Testament scribal tradition, the period of the Sopherim (c. 400 B.C. -c. a.d. 200), there appeared a second, the Talmudic period (c. a.d. 100-c. 500), which was followed by the better-known Masoretic tradition (c. 500-c. 950). Ezra worked with the first of these groups, and they were regarded as the Bible custodians until after the time of Christ. Between a.d. 100 and 500, the Talmud (instruction, teaching) grew up as a body of Hebrew civil and canonical law based on the Torah (613 Mitzvot). The Talmud basically represents the opinions and decisions of Jewish teachers from about 300 b.c. to a.d. 500, and it consists of two main divisions: the Mishnah and the Gemara.

a.      Mishnah The Mishnah (repetition, explanation, and teaching) was completed at about a.d. 200, and was a digest of all the oral laws from the time of Moses. It was regarded as the Second Law, the Torah being the First Law. This work was written in Hebrew, and it covered traditions as well as explanations of the oral law.

b.      Gemara The Gemara (to complete, accomplish, and learn) was written in Aramaic rather than Hebrew, and was basically an expanded commentary on the Mishnah. It was transmitted in two traditions, the Palestinian Gemara (c. a.d. 200), and the larger and more authoritative Babylonian Gemara (c. a.d. 500).

2.      The Midrash (textual study, textual interpretation) was actually a formal doctrinal and homiletical exposition of the Hebrew Scriptures written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Midrashim (plural) were collected into a body of material between 100 b.c. and a.d. 300. Within the Midrash were two major parts: the Halakah (procedure), a further expansion of the Torah only, and the Haggada (declaration, explanation), being commentaries on the entire Old Testament. These Midrashim differed from the Targums in that the former were actually commentaries, whereas the latter were paraphrases. The Midrashim contain some of the earliest extant synagogue homilies on the Old Testament, including such things as proverbs and parables.

    1. But I say to you

                                                              i.      Like a breath of fresh air, Christ says, “but I say”. He takes it back to the Basics, stripped of human invention

                                                            ii.      Christ establishes himself as the authorized interpreter of the law in a crowd of Pharisees! Who proclaimed themselves as the authorized expounders of the law, but here Jesus claims authorship privileges!

                                                          iii.      He uses the astonishing and very assertive Egw legw

    1. Six examples of the true meaning of the law not a new code of Ethics!

                                                              i.      Examples: could be 10, could be 50, they are examples of this point:

                                                            ii.      The law has always been about the heart, the head and the hand

                                                          iii.      In which case, it continues to be entirely awesome, not only must we behave right, we must think right! The law did, does and continues to be the only thing it could be - a demand for perfection. How else can we relate to an all-holy, all-knowing, all-powerful, eternal being? Only in absolute perfection, far and above whatever the Pharisee was telling anybody, could we relate to God of our own accord. This makes Jesus’ point perfectly. If I may change the order of the Sermon. I imagine that he stated these demands first and then made it clear that the only ones who will be blessed (happy, congratulated) will be those who are poor in Spirit! Wouldn’t that come as a relief? Well, it is still the same relief, be because it forms the foundation of this rule.

                                                           iv.      Fight the temptation to adopt these as your new rules unless you are adopting the superceding truths- God is absolutely holy and by his nature must require absolute holiness, but take heart Christ has come as your advocate and he has credited you with his perfect obedience of holiness. Now he gives you the truth imbedded in the law it calls you out in head, heart and hand!

    1. Now, lest you should rest in lazy salvation hear these further admonitions from our savior.

                                                              i.      Read Matthew 5:27-30

                                                            ii.      Profundity of sin – deeply impacting and wounding; requiring the death of the divine man

                                                          iii.      Pluck it out and cut it off

                                                           iv.      Anecdotal story from GCTS. Son ship-done, sin everything is lost perhaps even you life

                                                             v.      There is no gospel without a theology of sin. Period. Sins impact in Christian Life and to the lost.

1.      We do nobody any favor when we mitigate the impact of sin. It destroys, it kills it mains, and it’s ugly. It holds out the same stupid promise of pleasure than garbs you and takes you down. It the same lie sin has offered since the beginning of time –just do it. It is so destroying!

  1. So, now what?
    1. How should we look at Matthew 5:21-48, this daunting list of prescriptions and proscriptions? Christ is our rest; he is the perfect answer to God’s beautiful justice and absolute holiness. If your are obligated until eternal damnation to obey it perfectly then you may despair, but if you are a child in Christ, then I hope that you will look these in another way – as an Emancipation Proclamation from slavery to sin not a restrictive list. The gospel is good news. Sin holds out the same lame promises, and then beats you senseless when you bite.
    2. This is the light of life – this is life well led. It is good to know God with your whole mind, growing daily in your understanding of him. It is good to love God with your whole heart, casting aside what is dark, selfish and ugly and filling your soul with the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is good to love God in deed. In may bring some pain even suffering, but nothing is better than to suffer for doing the right thing and being obedient to our high-calling. Plenty of people suffer for stupidity; let’s hope we may suffer for justice, mercy, holiness and reflecting the Light of Christ and being salt in our World.