This morning we're going to be in Matthew chapter 5 if you'd grab your Bible and get it open here We are today going to spend most of our time talking about the Sermon on the Mount. It's really kind of the most famous of Jesus' preaching in the Gospels, and it runs really from chapter 5, verse 1, all the way through the end of chapter 7. So, the Sermon on the Mount is the three full chapters, so I'm just going to read all of it. I'm just kidding. We're just going to let it preach itself. I'm going to read it and we're going to say amen and walk away. While many of you might like that, I'm not actually planning that. Like I said, today we're just going to be talking pretty much about the sermon. Hopefully you'll bear with me in this. I just want to start today by reading the first two verses in chapter five. These are the prologue. before Jesus begins preaching. It's the sort of the intro to the Sermon on the Mount. So Matthew chapter five, verses one and two, it says, seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain and when he sat down, his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth and taught them saying, this will be our text. Lord, I just pray and ask You to help us here as we look at these things to understand the setting and the purpose of Jesus' preaching here. Lord, I pray that You would open our eyes to what we have to look forward to, how it is that we can see in this sermon the things that we need to learn how to live. Lord, I pray that You would show us as we read In the future here, you prepare us even today to learn more about your kingdom and what life in the kingdom looks like. Lord, I pray that you would help us to take this seriously as it's presented. You'd help us even as we pray to understand and to begin on the right foot here. I pray for your help in this today. I ask you in Jesus' name. Amen. So these two verses are Matthew's, it's really kind of a brief introduction, right, to the sermon. Most of us know it as the Sermon on the Mount because it was a sermon on a mount, I think. It's not only probably Jesus' most well-known preaching, it's also the longest sermon recorded for us in the New Testament. Like I said a minute ago, it fills up Matthew 5, 6, and 7. There's an enormous amount of material that's been produced over the last 2,000 years about this sermon. mountains of commentaries about this, and there are many ways that we could approach our study through these chapters, but I'm just going to give you the heads up, starting next week we're not going to change really what our method has been, which is starting at the beginning and working from the beginning to the end, verse by verse, in the way that they're presented to us in the Scriptures. And so we're going to do that in the Sermon on the Mount. going forward, but the reality is that I think this is so large a body of preaching with many subsections and subtopics that we really need to start with kind of talking about it in an introductory way today. Kind of like when we started the book of Matthew itself, took a time and tried to lay out some of the background and some of the things about Matthew and sort of discuss Matthew before we actually started looking at the verses. This is a big enough section that we're going to do that today and sort of introduce the sermon itself. I wanna do that partly because once we get into the sermon, we may spend several weeks, months, perhaps in the sermon, as I anticipate there's areas where one, two verses will be our text for a week. And so we're gonna go pretty deep into some of these sections. And today I wanna make sure that we don't miss the purpose of the forest, so to speak, before we start diving in and looking at the details of the trees. So that's kind of what we're doing today. Last week we covered the end of chapter 4, where Matthew provided for us a summary of Jesus' ministry in Galilee. Look back at Matthew 4, just verse 23, 24, 25 at the end of that chapter. As Matthew's sort of wrapping up his introduction to Jesus' ministry, he provided us this summary of what Jesus was doing. You see Matthew 4.23, He went throughout all Galilee, teaching in the 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, and 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." He said this is the summary, we said it last week, of Jesus' ministry. The rest of the book of Matthew fills in many of the details. Where He went, what He said when He went to certain places, the kinds of people that He dealt with and talked to, the stories that He told, the teaching that He gave. And the first thing that Matthew does after introducing us with that summary is he presents to us the Sermon on the Mount. What's the kinds of things that Jesus was preaching and teaching in the synagogues? Proclaiming as the gospel of the kingdom? Well, here it is. This sermon is the first example of that. It's unlikely that Matthew is following strictly the chronology in the timeline. It's unlikely that, as we talked about last week, that Jesus one day was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee by Himself, a nice quiet stroll down the lake, and He finds James and John and Peter and Andrew and calls them to come follow Me and be fishers of men. And the next day, He has crowds gathered around and he's up on the mountain preaching. It's unlikely. There's a time delay in there somewhere, and we said it last week. Matthew has a tendency, maybe more than all the other gospel writers, to organize his text according to topics. And so, when Matthew tells us, in summary, that Jesus was going and teaching and preaching, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, he's now telling us, showing us, in this sermon what that means. What did that sound like? This is one example. As Jesus is traveling throughout Galilee and the disciples start following Him, He's going around demonstrating to them how to be fishers of men, teaching them what life should be like for those who are in the Kingdom of God. It's really what he's doing in this sermon. And as he went about preaching and teaching, there began to be great crowds that followed him. Right? Because of the miraculous powers he was demonstrating. When he was healing, as he says, every disease and every affliction. This summary of his ministry is the context that leads up to the Sermon on the Mount. Chapter 5. Now, there are many scholars that believe this was likely preached fairly early in Jesus' ministry, which is probably true, but it certainly wasn't, as I said, His first sermon. He didn't start like this. There must have at least been a couple of probably months after His first days of settling into Capernaum, right? After He calls the first disciples and people start following Him. We know that Jesus didn't really have any permanent disciples when He first started. Even Peter and Andrew who had followed Him back to Galilee from Jerusalem, or at least the area where John the Baptist was baptizing, they quit following John the Baptist to follow Jesus, but then they went back to fishing, as we talked about last week. They weren't permanent disciples just yet. It took some time to gather these crowds that followed Jesus that were so large. According to Matthew 5.1 here, the crowd was so large that he went out of Capernaum up into the hill country surrounding the northwest side of the lake, the Sea of Galilee, to get some space. Now there is a mountain that's not very far from Capernaum that today is known as the Mount of Beatitudes. They built a church on that site. About 400 years after Jesus preached there is the first time it was really kind of identified as, ooh, this is the mountain where he preached the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. But it's kind of... useful to see a mountain, I guess. I've never been there, but they say it's a couple of 300 feet above the Sea of Galilee, but you can see the lake, and it has a nice kind of flat top and a gentle slope, and all this sort of stuff that would make it a good place for preaching. But there's really no certainty that that's the exact location where He preached. I just mention it because if you get interested in the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, and you want to see more, there's a traditional site there. But it's unlikely that it's really the right place. But whether it's exactly there or not, we do see in our text that there was a mountain. Right? Matthew 5.1. Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Now, it's not perfectly clear in the text why Jesus went up to go on a mountain. It's possible, and some people think this, that this is one of those times when Jesus wanted to get away from the crowds. He did that a couple of times, right? A couple of times he'd get in the boat to try and go across the lake with his close disciples, the apostles, to get away from the crowds because the crowds were coming and they just wanted to see miracles. They wanted something from him. They wanted to see him make food out of nothing and these kind of things. And so sometimes he wanted to have a time where he was devoted to teaching the apostles in particular without any other distractions. We see in verse 2 that he really did start to teach, and he had the disciples first in mind. It says that he began to teach them after he sat down, meaning the disciples. So getting away from the crowds might have been his purpose, except for, really if you think about it, the top of a mountain isn't exactly the best place to get away from crowds, right? I mean, if he wanted to get away from the crowds, he should have done something like get an upper room in the corner of the city where nobody knew he was, like he did that last Passover, the Last Supper with the disciples, the apostles. That's what he probably should have done. But it's not only because of the fact that he picked a mountain that it is unlikely that he was trying to get away from the crowds. It's also the content of the sermon. Some of the sermon, even though it's sort of directed at the apostles and the disciples and how to operate and live as a Christian, really, you see by the time we get to the end, there's an evangelistic tone, especially in chapter 7, where there's warnings about, come to me, come on the narrow way, right? That don't go the wrong way. There's these warnings that have an evangelistic purpose to it. We are going to assume this, probably throughout, because I don't see any reason from the text to assume anything different, that this is one of the times when Jesus was often teaching with the disciples in mind, but in front of a mixed crowd. By mixed crowd, I mean there were people there who were disciples, committed, who wanted to hear Jesus, who were following Him. There were others who were thinking about it, right? They're contemplating. Is this a guy I should pay attention to? What's he teaching? Am I interested? Do I want to follow him? There were others who were just showing up for the miracles. They were just there for the show. Maybe a majority. It was kind of like a circus a little bit, and the circus is in town, so we go check it out. They had heard things and they wanted to see Jesus. There were even though in the crowd sometimes those who opposed Him, right? Sometimes the Pharisees are there. Sometimes there's others who were agitators who didn't want him to be gathering the crowds, didn't like what he was teaching, would come to argue. This crowd, we assume, was mixed like that, even though he says in the text that the message and the meaning of it is primarily for the disciples. It benefits everybody to listen to this. Everyone needed to hear the truth that Jesus was preaching, didn't they? And so Jesus went up to the top of a mountain, not far away from the town of Capernaum, with the crowds following Him. And it probably started with His closest disciples sitting close, and then people see what's going on up there, and they come, and, oh, Jesus is over here, come listen. And the crowd would quickly build to be one of these crowds again. Everybody needed to hear this. And so Jesus, as He did through much of His ministry, kept this preaching and teaching open and accessible. Remember when Jesus was arrested, and they had Him in front of the Sanhedrin, and He asked them, why did you come and arrest Me in the middle of the night? I haven't been in a corner. I've been out in the open the whole time. You could have done it any time you wanted to. He knows the answer. It's because they're afraid of the people, right? He knows the answer. He's trying to point it out to them. Maybe you should pay attention if you're afraid of the people kind of thing. But Jesus always preached that way out in the open for the most part. Now we see three things in the verses that we're looking at here that point to just this purpose in the sermon. The first is that Jesus went up on the mountain. Like I said, if Jesus were trying to exclude the crowd, he probably would have sought a less visible location. on top of the mountain is probably the best location Jesus could find, or as many people as possible could listen to him. And it has a little, if it's that mountain, there's a lot of them around there, has a little bit of a shape to it that the acoustics would carry well, right? He could preach and teach to a lot of people over a long period of time. And so the mountain was preferable, obviously. Once he got up there, he made it clear that he was intending to teach because it says that he sat down. He went up there on top of the mountain and he sat down. That was the posture of a rabbi who was intending to teach. It was the position of the elders in the Sanhedrin when they were contemplating things concerning the nation. In fact, it's the position of a senator in the Roman Senate to sit down and adjudicate. We think about it like a courtroom, right? All rise, the honorable judge so-and-so is coming, and he sits down. And everybody else then knows it's time to get on with the court proceedings. It's the same kind of thing. Jesus went and He sat down. This standing behind a pulpit thing is a more modern thing that wasn't that. Jesus here indicates this, that He was intentionally communicating to the crowd that it's time for Him to start teaching and time for them to start listening. That's what that indicates. We read in the second verse in Matthew 5 that He opened His mouth Please don't think that that is the Scripture telling us that he needed to physically open his mouth in order for sound to come out. It's not that basic, right? It's not a lesson in the mechanics of how speaking works. To say that he opened his mouth is actually a Hebrew phrase that indicates he was about to say something very important. It's what the Old Testament would have said when somebody like Moses would have come in front of the people and he opened his mouth to speak. He was getting their attention, right? This is the evidence that Jesus is now going to tell you something important. He sat down and He opens His mouth to speak. It's in contrast to Isaiah 53.7. In Isaiah 53.7, it says that the Christ, after He's arrested, would not open His mouth when He was the Lamb being led to the slaughter. And isn't that exactly what Jesus did to Pilate? After Pilate says, Jesus said, I've come about the truth, and he goes, what is truth? He mocks Him and He refuses to believe Him. And Jesus won't answer him anymore. I'm done with you. Jesus shut His mouth. That doesn't mean he kept his lips pursed together. It means that he stopped teaching. He stopped talking. You don't want to listen to anything I have to say? I'm going to shut my mouth. Here, he's doing the opposite. He sits down to teach and he opens his mouth to begin. Now, those things, even in these first couple of verses in the introduction of the sermon, it is the evidence of Jesus is purposeful about preaching. In case you weren't familiar with Jesus, knowing that's what he was doing. Which is exactly what Matthew told us back in chapter 4, right? He went everywhere preaching, teaching in the synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. Where? Well, at least on a mountainside, at least once. Although probably many mountainsides, and probably many times. We've noted this in verse 2 that it says that Jesus taught them, indicating the disciples who had come to learn from him. Here again in Matthew 5 at the beginning, Matthew uses the generic term for a disciple. which could have included the 12, but was not exclusively him teaching to the 12 in particular. We noted this last week that it's not until Matthew chapter 10 that the 12 are called and commissioned as apostles. It's not until Matthew 10. And so Matthew inserts this, we're not sure, of the timeline if this was preached before or after he appointed the twelve, but he doesn't mention them in particular here. It's just all of those who were interested in following Jesus, who had come and wanted to learn and listen to him. They are the ones who come and at least begin the crowd. So we can easily understand here that Matthew's interpretation of the audience for the sermon is not primarily for the apostles. This is a wrong interpretation and understanding of the Sermon on the Mount, because you read it and there's such depth, right? There's so many things that were told, and it doesn't just hit at obedience to the law, but it talks about the attitude of your heart. is one of the features of the Sermon on the Mount. Because of that, some interpreters wrongly understand that Jesus was here teaching the ministry professionals how to be professional ministers. Those who are advanced Christians, how to advance even further. No, this is just a sermon that Jesus preached to the mixed crowd, some of whom were disciples. Some of them were thinking about becoming disciples. Some of them were just there because it was something to do. Some of them, in fact, came opposed, already thinking that they didn't like what He had to say or the fact that He was trying to say it. He's preaching that indiscriminately to everybody. This is a sermon for everybody, for anybody who desires to follow Jesus, and even for those who aren't yet following. And the sermon itself is about the superiority of the Kingdom of Heaven. And it's a call to all people everywhere to enter into it and live in it, in this life. We don't know exactly when the sermon was preached. I think it's probably a few months after Jesus settled in Galilee because by this point, as I've said, the crowds are following him. But because of the vagueness of the location and the timing, some commentators have concluded that this really isn't a single sermon. There are many commentators who think that Matthew compiled parts of several sermons and put them together because he does have a tendency to group things topically. And so they think that, you know, excerpt from this and that, and Matthew sort of assembled them. Even John Calvin taught this about Matthew 5 through 7, that it's a collection of the main points of the doctrine of Christ related to a devout and holy life. He called this sermon a brief summary collected out of his many and various discourses. You see that? There's many who agree with that thought. And I can certainly agree that what we have in these three chapters is a summary of sorts. I mean, an average reader sitting down to read these three chapters can read the three chapters in 15 minutes. And we all know that any sermon worth listening to is at least 45 minutes long, right? Yeah. Actually, Jesus actually sustained His teaching for much longer periods of time than that occasionally. If you look in Mark 8, verse 2, Jesus, it says, was teaching the crowds, and the crowds had been with Him for three days, learning from His teaching for three days with nothing to eat. It's one of the scenes where Jesus told the disciples, get some food and feed these guys. He fed 4,000 that day with seven loaves and a couple of fish. But they had been with Him for three days. where he had been teaching in such a way that they didn't take a break to stop and go get something to eat. Probably because of the remoteness of whatever location he was in. But most would understand that three continuous days of teaching would have involved frequent interruptions, questions, discussions. We see Jesus teach like this, right? Where he asks a question and he actually is soliciting a response. where he wants to discuss these things, where he's willing to be challenged. I mean, that's not even counting that, you know, he recognizes that, you know, you got to do stuff like eat or go to the bathroom or, you know, take a nap or something like that. Three days of teaching probably involves all that kind of stuff. It may have been more like a three day long seminar series of topical sermons, right? That's at least one occasion, though, that they were so invested in listening to Jesus that they skipped meals to continue listening to him that day. Well, those three days, anyway. And so this was evidently something that Jesus did on a somewhat regular basis. It's fairly simple, actually, to read the Sermon on the Mount, to see where there's a few verses on a single topic. Or he could have spoken on these three verses about loving your enemy, He could have spoken on those few verses for an hour, two hours. and then had a little time where he's answering questions, and then on to the next topic. Maybe a five-minute break for a glass of water or something, right? You could see how that could be. And the Sermon on the Mount seems to be one of these times. Despite what Calvin and others think, who say it's a collection of tidbits collected by Matthew from several sermons, the text of Matthew itself doesn't really allow us such an understanding. In Matthew 5 verse 1, we already said, it doesn't tell us exactly where the mountain was, but it does say it was on a mountain. In a single location. A time when Jesus sat down in one spot and taught a crowd that was consolidated in one location. This specific mountainside where the disciples gathered to learn is one place at one time. And if you flip a couple pages and look at the last two verses of chapter 7, the other end of the sermon, there's two verses at the end of that chapter where Matthew provides sort of the prologue, the conclusion. It's not Jesus' words, but it's Matthew's commentary about the end of the sermon. He says in 7.28, when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at His teaching. For he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes." See, Matthew leads us to believe this, that in verse 1 he starts teaching, and in chapter 5, 1, and here in 7, 28, that he finished teaching. Start to finish, one sermon. How long did it take? Hmm, I don't know. A while. Longer than the 15 minutes it takes to read, for sure. I think that's got to be for sure. I think what Matthew has done is given us sort of the Cliff Notes version, right? The consolidated topics a little bit, not all the discussion, not the verbatim of everything. This is sort of how we look at the sermon in this way. Even recognizing this, I think that this is not Various teachings pulled from different places all assembled into a neat little book. I think it is the summary of the teaching at one time. It's obvious that Jesus taught many of these things more than once, right? Hopefully we also recognize that. that Jesus preached lots of different things, lots of different places, but as an itinerant preacher, he probably preached similar things in all these different locations, covering the most important stuff. So even recognizing that I think this is one sermon in one location, there's actually little consequence to being dogmatic in either direction here. Whatever your conclusion is about whether this is a single sermon or a compilation of sayings from several sermons is really largely irrelevant as long as you get this point and understand correctly the gravity of Jesus' teaching. This is important. Vitally important. It's interesting that with all the various interpretations of what Jesus was teaching, why He did this, what His main point was, almost everybody considers this teaching to be of monumental proportions. Important stuff. It occupies a ton of real estate in Matthew's Gospel, doesn't it? And in the hearts and minds of most who are commentators, Christians, teachers, all this stuff, this occupies a huge space. as very important stuff, even for unbelievers. Philosophers, non-Christian activists, they all seem to be drawn to the unrivaled excellence of the morality of what Jesus taught, at least some aspects of it. Do you guys remember Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu philosopher over in India? Gandhi, he was like this social activist and teacher and philosopher, right? He was actually a great admirer of the Sermon on the Mount. Not a Christian himself, but he said that he considered the Sermon on the Mount as part of his Scriptures. He was especially drawn to Jesus' teaching on non-retaliation, as he referred to it in Matthew 5.39, where Jesus taught, "...but I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil, but if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." That was right up his alley, non-retaliation. When somebody oppresses you, love them back. When somebody slaps you, turn the other cheek. It became the basis of much of his philosophy, that verse from the Sermon on the Mount. And others like it, about how to deal with the poor, about how to love your enemies. He loved all of that stuff. He actually spoke often of the similarities between the Sermon on the Mount and the Hindu holy book known as the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu holy book. It's the same as the Sermon on the Mount, he'd say. They're the same thing. There's little difference between these two texts. He considered them to be really of the same spirit. And one that invigorated him at the level of his soul. Motivating him. I suppose that's one way to interpret the Sermon on the Mount. There are some in our day who have no Hindu influence, but who sound actually a lot like Gandhi did. when you listen to them talk about the Sermon on the Mount. They see the excellence of Jesus in this. They see the perfection of His teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. The high level of righteousness that He describes in these chapters. Some in our day even take to calling themselves Sermon on the Mount Christians. I'm a Sermon on the Mount Christian. They speak about how much better the world would be if everybody just followed what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Well, at least part of it anyway. At least the parts that they like. It would be a much better place, and they're right, aren't they? I mean, they're usually talking about the golden rule, Matthew 7, 12. Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you. If everybody did that, it's not like they're wrong. We'd live in a much better world if everybody did that, wouldn't we? I mean, they got that part right. But there are those who say, that's my religion. That's the sum total of Christianity for me, the golden rule. I want nothing to do with the laws and rules of the Old Testament. I reject the weighty doctrine of Paul in the New Testament. I'm just about Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, and that's all I need. But of course, that's a severely insufficient means to pleasing God, isn't it? Can you please God unto salvation by keeping the golden rule? Oh no, this is severely insufficient. I've got some quotes. This will be the first of them. I've got some different quotes from commentators that I'm going to read today, so bear with me a little bit as I go through some of these. Because for me to paraphrase what they said just isn't as good as what they said. And so I'm trying to kind of hit it that way. The first here is a guy named John Blanchard. He wrote a book called The Beatitudes for Today. I didn't even know the book existed until Thomas told me about it. kind of modern, he's got a good understanding of a lot of things in the Beatitudes. So you might hear me quote him a little bit more in the next few weeks when we're in the Beatitudes verses. But he wrote this, that the irony is that many who stand condemned by the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount hold it in high esteem. Indeed, many people base their whole religious position on their understanding of what it says. Yet those who say, my religion is the Sermon on the Mount, and I've heard it said countless times, are on very shaky ground. They're usually referring to the so-called golden rule, so in everything due unto others what you would have them do to you, which Jesus said sums up the law and the prophets. in Matthew 7.12. And what they mean is this, I think the Golden Rule is what Christianity is all about. I try to keep it, and I hope that at the end of the day, God will accept my attempt. Humanly speaking, that might sound quite reasonable, but the whole notion, Blanchard said, leaks like a sieve. Because there's no indication that obeying the Golden Rule or any other of Jesus' commands will ever result in salvation, right? And even if that were possible, we've all hopelessly failed the test of keeping the golden rule, haven't we? And if you don't get that out of the Sermon on the Mount, you're not reading it with anything in mind other than trying to justify yourself that you've been following it. Because the Sermon on the Mount, as he says, is exactly the place in the Scripture that condemns you for not keeping these things. We've all fallen short of the glory of God revealed in this one simple golden rule. Just take that one by itself. We've all failed miserably in that. And so we must be saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ who obeyed that rule in our place. I mean, you've missed one of the main points of the sermon. If you can read it and conclude that you're doing what it says. That was Gandhi's fatal flaw. The fatal flaw in his reasoning is not that Jesus is right or that it was good. His fatal flaw was in thinking that he was actually doing it. And that God would be pleased with him for his efforts. It's the fatal flaw of all of those who will arrive at the judgment and commend themselves to Jesus about how well that they did in recognizing the excellence of His teaching here in the Sermon on the Mount. But then they failed to surrender their lives to Him as their Savior. And this is perhaps one of the worst interpretations you could derive from the Sermon on the Mount. That I can be a Sermon on the Mount Christian and God will be pleased with me. But there are others. Many others. Craig Bloomberg noted this in his commentary, that in 1985, he quotes about a study that a professor named Clarence Bauman assembled concerning the Sermon on the Mount. That guy in his study in 1985 itemized 36 different interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount. So hopefully you've got your notebooks ready. I'm just going to run through all of them quickly. Not really. Thanks for giggling uncomfortably, but I'm not going to cover all 36 of them, but I do think that we need to be familiar with a couple of them, because there are some popular interpretations that I think have some issues with them. So as I try to explain what's really, I think, three or four, maybe five dominant interpretations, I want you to realize that most of these are not complete heresy. The issue with most of these interpretations is actually that they focus on one aspect of the Sermon on the Mount, but not on the whole thing. And so this is one of the reasons why I wanted to start today with the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount. What's it really about? Because if we focus on our favorite verses, the ones that we feel like we're doing the best at, or the ones that we think will be most meaningful in helping the world towards peace, or whatever. If we focus our attention on one part but forget the rest, it leads to these sort of not great interpretations that have issues with them. to some degree or another. And so, I'll try to explain, even as we talk about how there's some merit in some ways, but most of these approaches fall short of a full understanding of the Sermon on the Mount. So, the first I'll talk about is many of the Reformed tradition. Many of the Reformed interpreters lean toward the understanding that the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' explanation of the Ten Commandments and the Law of Moses. You ever heard that one? This is really just Jesus here teaching us the deeper, more spiritual meaning behind the Ten Commandments. He's giving us an exposition of the Law. And part of the reason for Him to do that is to drive men to cry out to God for grace. Seeing that I couldn't obey the commands, but at the heart of the commands, I definitely can't obey those. Lord, it's impossible for me to obey. I obey. I need grace. Forgive me. Save me. I think that that's what the main or even sometimes only purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is. Now, there's value here in recognizing that the law can convict the unbeliever. But the issue with the law and the unbeliever is, the law itself offers no pathway to salvation, does it? There is no way out. The law condemns, but the law has no ability and no information, let alone ability, to tell you how to come to God and be saved. This is the deficiency of the law. And Jesus isn't explaining the deeper meaning of the deficient law in the Sermon on the Mount. Oh, He talks about law here, doesn't He? We'll see that as we go into it. But to say that the sermon is primarily about law is to miss that personal righteousness is the result of salvation and not the cause of it. See, the sermon is much more than an explanation of the old law that Jesus says He came to fulfill, thus making it obsolete anyway. We'll talk about the law, we'll get to that, but it's not the primary purpose of the sermon. Some, of another persuasion, Anabaptist Mennonites, They emphasize a different subset of verses in the sermon, which they say teach a philosophy of pacifism, wherein the Christian is to retreat from the affairs of the world. This is an interpretation that does have the benefit of rightly understanding that Christians need to be separated from the motives and the actions of the self-centered world, but going too far with that can lead to something I'll call exclusionism. Let me explain for a second. Not exclusivism. Exclusivism is kind of appropriately understanding that there's a vast difference between those who are in Christ and those who are not. Right? Salvation is exclusively for those in Christ. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me. You see, that's an exclusive statement. But if you misunderstand how far you're supposed to go You come into something of sort of stepping across the line from exclusivism to exclusionism, where we could understand that we're supposed to be so separated from the world that we have no dealings with any of the fairs anywhere, and it will result in a lack of interaction with and evangelism of the lost world. We are excluding you all as if you don't exist and salvation's not something that's possible for you because we have our little thing and we are excluding you. That is different than being exclusive. And that's the problem with this view of the absolute pacifism of them taking a few verses where Jesus says something like, turn the other cheek and reading it into every circumstance of all the time. There can be a real issue with that. When we get to those verses, we'll talk about that too. You see, again, like the first point about the law, this point about the passivism, has the weakness of sort of unbalanced emphasis on a subset of verses, and not all of them taken in conjunction with one another. So, those are a couple. There's another one, those of the dispensational persuasion. who consider this actually to be a teaching purely for the Jews of that day. They say, see, Matthew, we know, is writing to the Jews, and so the sermon that Jesus preached was exclusively to the Jews, and it doesn't have any meaning for anybody else. In fact, this sermon, the most extreme in this dispensational camp, actually believed that these were the instructions for the Jews about how they could earn the kingdom of God in their day. Jesus came to establish a throne, and if they would have submitted to him and obeyed these things, the kingdom would have come then, and Jesus would have assumed the throne of David then, and it would have been a political overthrow. It's quite a stretch, but... That's what they say. But because the Jews rejected Jesus, and they refused to take the kingdom, these verses now are applied to the millennial kingdom. When Jesus returns and reassembles all the Jews, and, you know, they finally believe, hopefully. Most dispensationalists are Arminians, so they don't know. But hopefully, hopefully that'll work out next time. In the meantime, do you know what the value of the Sermon on the Mount is for you and I? Nothing. It's not for Christians, it never was. We're the great parenthesis in the middle of the Jewish thing. It gets really wacky. This one, there is no upside to this one. This one is just heresy, okay? Like, their thoughts of this interpretation are just over the top, to say that. There's degrees in all of these interpretations, of course, but the far end of it is so far extreme that we wouldn't even consider it beyond just mentioning it. You might actually hear somebody talk about this someday. The last interpretation that I want to mention I guess I got four, is the one that's in resurgence today. There's a resurgence, a resurging, an up-and-coming return to this interpretation, especially among the liberal teachers and theologians, which is to say that the sermon is a paradigm of the social gospel. Like Gandhi, basically, they see the sermon as the means for eliminating selfishness and creating global equity for all. That Jesus' main concern was fixing all of the wrongs in the world, getting rid of oppression, and everybody will get along just fine. That that's the main purpose. Now, we should be concerned about justice. Especially with compassion for those who are in need. But that can never replace the calling that we need to be doing of calling people to repentance, right? Isn't that what we learned a couple weeks ago? What was Jesus preaching when he started going out and preaching? Follow me, I'll make you fishers of men, and before that, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent is the message, in many ways, of the Sermon on the Mount. You're not like this, so what are you supposed to do with it? Repent. Enough of us repent. Yeah, it will improve things for sure. But to skip the repent, and to skip the faith in Christ, and to think that just by saying world peace that we can create world peace, just by saying the golden rule that people will start following the golden rule is nonsense. We got that going on all around us in churches all over the place. with all the rainbow flags and all the rest hanging over their old stained glass windows that used to tell you in picture form about the gospel, now it's this other thing. And they've completely given themselves over to it. As if for anybody to think anything about the gospel ministry is supposed to include the gospel as if we're the wrong ones. You understand what's going on, right? In the Western world, especially in this country. The main issue with that interpretation, of course, is that it removes the requirement to know and to love Jesus. Thereby it attempts to save the world by tossing the Savior of the world aside. Hopefully that demonstrates all the nonsense that it could possibly be. Now most of these various interpretive constructions fall apart, like I said, because they focus on only one aspect of the Sermon on the Mount, to the exclusion of other aspects. I'm going to read here, D.A. Carson wrote this about the Sermon on the Mount. He said, The unifying theme of the sermon is the kingdom of heaven. This is established not by counting how many times the expression occurs, but by noting where it occurs. The kingdom of heaven envelops the Beatitudes, verse 3 and verse 10. It starts and finishes the Beatitudes. It appears in chapter 5, verses 17 through 20, which details the relation between the Old Testament and the Kingdom. A subject that leads to another literary envelope around the body of the sermon. From verse 17, 517 out to 712. the beginning and the end of the sermon actually talks about the kingdom. It returns the idea of the kingdom at the heart of the Lord's Prayer in chapter 6 verse 10. It climaxes the section on kingdom perspectives in chapter 6 verse 33 and is presented as what must finally be entered the kingdom, in chapter 7, verses 21 through 23. Matthew places this sermon immediately after the two verses, insisting that the primary content of Jesus' preaching was the gospel of the kingdom. We started with that, chapter 4, verse 23. This provides ethical guidelines for life in the kingdom. And the glimpse of the kingdom life, both horizontally, with us between one another, and vertically, with our relationship with the Lord, in these chapters anticipates not only the love commandments that we read later, the first and second greatest commandments, but also grace and everything about grace that we need to know. It's all emphasized here. The sermon is all about the kingdom. You see, the pervasive theme of the Sermon on the Mount is life in the kingdom of heaven, how we should live with God, how we should live with each other in the kingdom. As we've noted, Jesus was teaching disciples primarily, those who were following him, those who were either in the kingdom or were about to enter the kingdom, hopefully. It reveals clearly what my life should look like as I follow him, the Sermon on the Mount. Martin Lloyd-Jones said that we're not told in the Sermon on the Mount, live like this and you'll become a Christian. Rather, we're told because you are a Christian, now live like this. This is how Christians ought to live. This is how Christians are meant to live. He said, the kingdom has come. The kingdom is coming. The kingdom is yet to come. This sermon is a perfect picture of the life of the kingdom of God. The Lord structured here a fantastic sermon that begins immediately with the Beatitudes that show us the character of an authentic Christian who desires to follow Christ. And we'll see this next week. Each of these Beatitudes reveals to us how we can be blessed and how to be happy in the Kingdom of God by following the Lord and living rightly in His Kingdom. The sermon flows on from there, describing how it is that we'll influence the dark world. Becoming little lights, dawning as we obey, just as Jesus himself was the first light dawning. In chapter 4, as we read a couple weeks ago, we'll discuss ethics, law, righteousness, piety. Our place in the kingdom should dictate our ambitions. It should dictate our relationships. We'll discuss all these topics in detail as we work our way through the sermon. And it all concludes with the warning of judgment on all those who fail to come into the kingdom and live in the way you're supposed to in it. that we consider the main theme of life in the kingdom of heaven, we'll see that the text of the sermon consistently draws stark lines of difference between the kingdom and the world. And I'm quoting John Blanchard. He said, if the overall theme of the sermon is the kingdom of heaven, then the subordinate theme, the secondary theme, is the principle that those who are in the kingdom are to be so different from those outside of it, different not only from outright pagans, but also different from nominal Christians, different from religious hypocrites, different from those described by Paul later in the New Testament as having a form of godliness but denying its power. 2 Timothy 3.5. John Stott wrote this about it in the same sort of vein. He said the key text of the Sermon on the Mount is chapter 6, verse 8, in my opinion. Do not be like them. It is immediately reminiscent of God's Word to Israel in olden days. You shall not do as they do. It's the same call to be different. And right through the Sermon on the Mount, this theme is elaborated. Their character was to be completely distinct from that admired by the world. See that in the Beatitudes. They were to shine like lights in the prevailing darkness. Their righteousness was to exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees, both in ethical behavior and in religious devotion. Their love was to be greater and their ambition nobler than those of their pagan neighbors. There's no single paragraph of the Sermon on the Mount in which this contrast between Christian and non-Christian standards is not drawn. It is the underlying and the uniting theme of the sermon. Everything else is a variation of it. The followers of Jesus are to be different. Different from both, he says, the nominal church and the secular world. Different from both the religious and the irreligious. The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian counterculture. Here's a Christian value system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, lifestyle, and network of relationships, all of which are totally at variance with those of the non-Christian world. And this Christian counterculture is the life of the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed, but lived out under the divine rule. The kingdom of heaven is countercultural in every region of the world compared with Every religion, every government, every society, everywhere on the planet, no matter how the world manifests itself in any country through any religious and governmental, political, socioeconomic system, the kingdom of God is at odds with them all and completely countercultural. Not only because we have a superior ethic, which we do, But more importantly, because we have a superior teacher, who not only taught us these things, but he also actually gives us the new birth that is essential to living up to these otherwise impossible standards. These ideals are beyond the reach of any of us, so long as we're trying to do them by our own will, with that stone-hard heart under the dominion of sin. When the Lord makes the tree good, The fruit becomes good too. He changes us from the inside. Again, John Stott said that this is the reality of the spiritual new birth in Christ that can keep us from reading the Sermon on the Mount with either a foolish optimism or a hopeless despair. You understand, those are the only three ways to read the Sermon on the Mount. A foolish optimism. Oh yes, if everybody did this, the world would be so great. All we have to do is put it on a bumper sticker and away we go. utter foolishness, or a hopeless despair of, this is impossible, nobody can ever do this. It's been tried and failed in every decade of every century since we got kicked out of the garden. It's hopeless. Well, those are the two ways. The third is the Christian way. Just Jesus tells us an impossible standard, but then he brings us into his kingdom and makes us citizens of it so that we might do these things. So that we have by his power, by the indwelling of the spirit, the desire and the ability to do these things. That's how we're going to look at this. That's how we will go through. If we who are in the kingdom of heaven will live more like the life we see described in this Sermon on the Mount, then the lost men and women around us would know that there is a God in heaven who is powerfully working through the gospel of the kingdom, the one that Jesus preached. Because that same gospel of the kingdom that he preached to them then, he's preaching to us now, and if it will affect our lives, the world will notice. I'll leave you with this one last thought from Lloyd-Jones on that final point. If only all of us were living the Sermon on the Mount, he said, men would know that there is a dynamic in the Christian gospel. They would know that this is a living thing. They would not go looking for anything else. They would see it and say, here it is. And if you read the history of the church, you'll find it has always been when men and women have taken the Sermon seriously and faced themselves in the light of it, the true revival has come. When the world sees the truly Christian man, it not only feels condemned, it is drawn and attracted. Let us carefully study the sermon that claims to show what we ought to be. Let us consider that we may see what we can be. For it not only states the demand, it points to the supply, to the source of the power. May God give us the grace to face the Sermon on the Mount seriously and honestly and prayerfully until we become living examples of it and exemplifiers of its glorious teaching. Amen. Lord, help us indeed to come to the Sermon on the Mount with this purpose of learning better how to live in Your Kingdom. Not just to learn how to make doctrinal arguments and to see the truth as it's presented to use in various ways, but Lord, I pray that You would first and foremost use it in our lives. Make us attentive to Your teaching, I pray, Lord, obedient to Your commands. Make us evermore in love with You through what we read in these verses in the weeks, perhaps months ahead. Lord, I pray that you would give us more desire to live rightly in your kingdom. Pray for this simply in the name of Jesus Christ, our great Lord and Savior. Amen.