Audio Archive | Christadelphians at Boston

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Location:WCF (1985)

Topic:Sermon on the Mount

Title:Class 2

Speaker:George Booker

Download:1985-ecbs-g-booker-2.mp3

Transcript

Location:WCF (1985)

Topic:Sermon on the Mount

Title:Class 3

Speaker:George Booker

Download:1985-ecbs-g-booker-3.mp3

Transcript

We're continuing tonight with the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, and the section that we're considering here is very similar, at least it follows the same pattern as the section that we considered yesterday. We entitled the class yesterday the Two Kinds of Righteousness, and that might even carry over into our class this evening. If you want another title for this class, we could take it from the last verse of the chapter, be ye therefore perfect, so that at least for part of the class we'll be discussing what Jesus meant when he spoke of the perfection that we should show as his disciples. So let me just recapitulate a bit what we discussed yesterday by way of the Two Kinds of Righteousness, because we're moving, as I said, through the same area. The Two Kinds of Righteousness are the righteousness that the Pharisees exemplified and that which Jesus taught, and they were two very different kinds of righteousness. The Pharisees were interested in the technicalities and the details of the law. They were interested in comparing themselves with one another in looking down upon others who hadn't quite fulfilled the same requirements that they had, and they were interested in the actions and not particularly in the heart or in the mind from which those actions would develop. So as long, according to the Pharisees, as long as the actions were controlled, therefore a person could be righteous without any particular regard to what he thought or what he desired. The righteousness that Jesus was teaching when he said your righteousness should exceed that of the Pharisees had to be righteousness of a completely different sort. Righteousness that was interested in the heart as well as the actions, it wasn't particularly concerned with details, but rather was looking for the principles that God was trying to instill in individuals through the teaching of his law. And also the righteousness that Jesus spoke of, that he was instructing his disciples in, was a righteousness that did not sit in judgment of anyone else, that did not compare one person or his actions with another person and his actions, but rather was willing to be merciful, was willing to forgive, even as Jesus said in the Beatitudes, blessed are the merciful. So you see there are two very distinct kinds of righteousness, and they are shown here in this chapter five by the sorts of introduction that Jesus gives to them. Throughout this chapter, beginning with about verse 19 or 20, we see that Jesus is giving continual contrasts. You have heard it said by them of old time, and then he gives the Pharisees' version of righteousness, but I say unto you, and then he gives his version of righteousness, the two being contrasted with one another. So we'll look this evening at several more of those contrasts that will bring us to the end of chapter five, beginning with verse 33 then. Again, Jesus says, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, some versions say to them of old time, but it's pretty much the same sense, thou shalt not forswear thyself, the RSV translates that I think quite reasonably, thou shalt not swear falsely, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths. Now so far as it went, this was a very plain statement of what the law had to say, that if a man desired to take an oath, he would swear by the name of God, and then he was bound by that oath without escape, although there were provisions and technicalities and exceptions to various oaths that were taken. But generally speaking, that is what the law did in fact say. Jesus goes a step beyond this, and he introduces it in verse 34 by that formula statement, but I say unto you, swear not at all, neither by heaven, for it is God's throne, nor by the earth, for it is his footstool, neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. Neither shalt thou swear by thy own head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black, but let your communication be yes, yes, or no, no, I'm giving the modern English equivalence there without confusing you with the King James, yes, yes, or no, no, for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil, or whatsoever is more than these arises out of false motives. What do we mean by that? Harry Whittaker, in commenting on these verses, said the following, Moses' command, and it's taken from Deuteronomy 10 and verse 20, thou shalt swear by his name, Moses' command, brother that any other oath not addressed directly to God himself need not be regarded as binding. This was a fine device in the hands of the Pharisees for deceit or deception in a business deal. So you see the point of what the Pharisees were doing. They were taking a law which said, if you swear, you should swear by the name of God, and they were saying, if we swear by anything else, then we don't have to be held to that because the law strictly says only that if a man swears by God's name or in God's name, only then is he bound to keep his oath or keep his word. So you see the Pharisees were looking at a very strict and very narrow law, and they were saying, it only has application in this one very small area. So if we step just over the border, if we use a different name, if we swear perhaps by Jerusalem or swear by ourselves or our own heads, we're not bound to keep that kind of an oath because it isn't swearing in the name of God. So you see by making a very narrow and limited application of Moses' law, they were in a themselves free to do whatever else they pleased if they stepped just over to the other side. And in a very deceitful way then, a very clever way perhaps, but a very deceitful way, they were getting around the intent of the law so that they might, in a sense, come very close to lying if not lying altogether. Jesus says, in effect, don't try to make the law as narrow as possible, but take the intention that God evidently had behind the law, the intention of exhorting you to be honest in all your dealings and therefore understand that the spirit of the law intends that you be honest no matter what you say or how you say it. Hence Jesus then says, do not swear at all because apparently among the Jews and the Arabs and other people in the Middle East in those days, and I think it's even true to date, you go into a marketplace or you find two men who are attempting to conduct a business deal and they're making all kinds of promises back and forth, swearing by this or that, but avoiding swearing by the name of God so that those things that they are saying with every pretense of being perfectly honest may or may not be true. And you know the statement, let the buyer beware is thousands of years old. That is the way that the Jews and the Arabs quite often conducted their business deals. For that matter, you go into most used car lots today and you'll find people conducting business deals in the very same way, making all kinds of promises that don't expect them to put their name on a piece of paper and swear to it in a sense. Those promises mean nothing. Jesus says, don't get involved in this. There are a number of Proverbs in the book of Proverbs that talk about the buyer and seller, the ones who make great promises and yet they mean nothing. And so much of commerce, of salesmanship, even in our modern world, is conducted on some of those same principles. Don't believe everything you hear. Don't believe everything you read. Don't believe everything they tell you on television. It's amusing, Adam watches commercials sometimes and he'll come in and he'll say, you know that such-and-such detergent is the best by far and it's twice as good as so-and-so. And Barbara says, don't believe it. But that's the way things are. If you want to get someone's attention, you have to make almost outrageous promises and then they take those promises and cut them in half or divide it by two-thirds and come up with more or less a reasonable approximation of the truth. Jesus says, don't get involved in that. Don't start making promises. Don't try to evade the law of God that says you should be honest. Simply be honest. Say what is true. Don't even make a pretense of promising that it's true or swearing by something. And of course, we don't generally swear in that sense in any regard. But the same principle is there. I mean, what he's saying is this. Two people are having a conversation. And each one presumably is saying the truth to the other. But then in the middle of the conversation, one of the persons says, oh, but this is really true. You know, what do you immediately think? You immediately think, what about all the other things? You just finish saying. Jesus says, don't even think about different levels of truth. One brother, I knew he used to tell stories. And he would start out some stories by saying, I'm telling this for the truth. I'm telling this for the truth. Everything you say should be true. There should be not some statements that are 75% true and others that are 90% true. They should be true. There are some people who go about denying certain things, but denying them in a very careful way. If you remember a few years ago, if you watched the Watergate trials and all the interviews and so forth, you had a whole stream of politicians and clerks and various government officials who went about continuously before Congress or before the courts categorically denying this or that or the other. And you listen to them and you think, everyone, I was perfectly honest. Until you realize that if a person says, I categorically deny that on the evening of June the 17th, I was doing such and such of an illegal sort of activity, that that categorical denial really means that I was probably doing it on the 18th or the 16th, but I categorically deny beyond any question that I was doing it on the 17th. And therefore, a statement which appears to be true and is true maybe in a very narrow technical sense, is essentially a false statement, a lie. And all you have to do is sit in the courtroom and you see people going about lying in that particular way with the aid of clever attorneys continuously. Jesus says, don't do that. Don't even think about doing that. Don't deny something in such a way or don't state something positively in such a way that the intent of it is to deceive someone. We've probably all experienced our occasions when people did that sort of thing with us or when perhaps we were tempted to do that sort of thing to others, because sometimes it's unpleasant to tell the truth. Jesus says, tell the truth. He says in verse 37, let your communication, that's the word logos, let your word be yes, yes, no, no. What he means by that quite plainly is, if somebody asks you something, give them a yes or no answer. And if they ask you again, tell them the same thing. In other words, the second time, don't protest that you're telling the truth so vehemently that they might question it, but rather simply say yes or no, as the case may be. In other words, to confirm that what you are saying is true, say the same thing twice. But when Jesus is putting it that way, what he's saying is, don't elaborate, don't embellish, don't protest how honest you are, just say what is true. And if you're asked, say the same thing again. And therefore, you won't ever mislead people, and you will never be able to play the part of one of those super salesmen who says just enough of what's true while ignoring the other parts to make a deal or to make a sale or to work to his own advantage. Never do that, but simply be as honest as you possibly can with all men. Now, you see, the principle of this is quite obvious, and here we contrast the two kinds of righteousness. The kind of righteousness that Jesus is talking about is not that of the Pharisees. The Pharisees approach this problem of telling the truth by saying in effect to themselves, how much do I have to say or how much do I have to do? By saying to themselves, how little can I possibly get away with? Or in effect, how dishonest can I really be without technically telling a lie? Jesus says, no. When you go about to say something or to do something, your question should be, how honest can I possibly be so that there's no misunderstanding what I'm trying to say? Not, not what can I get away with? Jesus is saying then that there are no gradations of truth. There are no compromises. There are no legal subtleties that can get you out of a problem. Simply say what is true, and if necessary, say it again. The next contrast begins with verse 38. You have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil. But whosoever shall smite thee on my right cheek, turn to him the other also. Now, verses 40 and 41 and 42 are clearly related to that, but let's stop for just a moment, and then we'll come to those verses when we've considered a bit more of verses 38 and 39. It's all one section, obviously, but we'll come to it in a moment. First of all, verse 38. Ye have heard it said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Now, that is a direct quotation from the Law of Moses. But apparently, it was being used by the Pharisees and by others as justification for seeking personal vengeance or retribution on those who have done you wrong. That man did such and such to me. It's only right that I do such and such back to him, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Though this statement is a direct quotation from the Law, so far as it goes, in that kind of application as being taken out of context, turn with me to Exodus chapter 21, beginning with verse 22. Exodus 21, 22. Now, here is just one example of a quotation, that eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. There are several others scattered throughout the Law, but let's read the whole context and see in what sense that phrase is used. Exodus 21, verse 22. If men strive, if men are fighting, and hurt a woman with child so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow, he shall be surely punished according as the woman's husband will lay upon him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if mischief follow, apparently mischief meaning if the child dies, the child that was born prematurely as a result of this strife in which the woman was involved, if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, etc. Notice though, in verse 22, the basis on which this kind of application should be made, according as the woman's husband will lay upon her, and he shall pay as the judges determine. So apparently this expression eye for eye and tooth for tooth meant that, and I think it has the same meaning in every place where it's used, it meant that the judges had a set value that they placed upon the inadvertent loss of an eye, or the loss of a tooth, or the loss of a hand, or any other sort of wound, just as, and I think probably one is patterned after the other, just as if you read insurance policies, and it has laid out for you there the compensation that the insurance company promises to pay if there is an accidental loss of an eye, or loss of the use of a hand, or any other calamity that is specially graded out, and a value is assigned to each particular disability or loss that might occur. The key phrase in this passage is as the judges will determine, and it isn't suggesting, at least I don't think it's suggesting, that there would be a literal punishment for something that happened inadvertently. In other words, you were involved in a fight or maybe even by accident and someone lost an eye. It doesn't mean that the judges are going to lay upon the guilty party the loss of an eye, literally, but rather they're going to lay a fine upon him that he might pay compensation, as the judges have determined, is reasonable for that particular loss, the payment of an eye for an eye, and so forth, a very humane and a very reasonable sort of thing to do. But apparently, a precept of the law that was misused by individuals who, in a very real sense, were trying to take the law into their own hands, not waiting to see what a judge in Israel might say was correct, but going out and seeking vengeance as they saw fit on a very personal basis. Okay, back to Matthew chapter 5. Jesus, in verse 39, does not say what the law had to say. He does not say, go to the judge and get a just compensation, as we might expect him to, because that was pretty much, I think, the letter of the law. You know, be honorable and be honest and go to the law and go to the judge and settle your difficulties there. Jesus doesn't even say that. He goes even one step beyond that. Jesus says, verse 39, resist not evil, but whosoever will smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And I know that when we start into these verses, we're talking about something that is one of the most difficult principles, not perhaps one of the most difficult principles to understand, but one of the most difficult principles to accept of anything that Jesus had to say. Jesus says, very plainly, do not seek any kind of retribution, whether it be legal or illegal means. Don't do it. What Jesus is saying here is very much what Paul has to say in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 1. Let's look that up and read a couple of verses, because it seems like Paul is borrowing and amplifying the teaching of Jesus in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. 1 Corinthians 6, verse 1. Dare any of you having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust and not before the saints. And again in verse 4. If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. Or as the RSV puts it, and perhaps this is a better rendering, I'm not sure, of verse 4. Why do you lay these things before those who are least esteemed by the church? That is, why, and he puts it in the form of a question, why do you go to those outside rather than to those in the church or in the ecclesia to resolve your difficulties? This I think squares very much with verse 5 when he says, Is it so that there is not a wise man among you? No, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren. But brother goes to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now therefore, he says, there is utterly a fault among you because you go to law one with another. Why do, and here he comes very close to quoting the words of Jesus. Why do you not rather take wrong? Why do you not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? So Paul here I think is amplifying the teaching of Jesus back here in Matthew chapter 5. As I said, this is one of the most difficult things for us to understand and to do of all the teachings of Jesus. It's very plain and it's very straightforward, but it can be very difficult for us. Why does Jesus give such a commandment? What possible good is achieved by suggesting, maybe that's too strong, maybe that's too easy a word, by commanding his disciples not to try to redress evil, not to try to protect themselves or to punish the evil doer that has done something against them. What possible good could that achieve? Perhaps if we could begin to understand that, then it might make it a little easier if we're forced to submit to some kind of ill treatment. Brother Perkus in his book where he discussed the Sermon on the Mount had the following to say about this. Brother Perkus said, the sacrifice of God's Son bore no relation to justice. The redemption of the world, Brother Perkus said, is upon the principle of forgiveness. That I think provides the rationale for this kind of conduct on the part of a believer. God doesn't deal with us on the principle of justice. The law of Moses did. The law of Moses said, if a man sins, he's guilty. If a man sins in any point in the law, he's guilty of all. The law dealt with men in that way, but the law was a teacher. As Paul says in Galatians 4, the law was a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ, to help men to understand the need of Christ and the mercy that he could provide. So now, in Christ, with these principles of the forgiveness of sins, the mercy that God has shown to us through Christ, and the necessity for us to be merciful to others, we then come face to face with a completely different way of life. We are forced to recognize that God does not deal with us on the principle of justice. God does not demand from us a true payment for the sins that we have committed. If he did, we would all die in that without remedy. God does not deal with us on the principle of justice but mercy. Therefore, if we take that and then we turn around and face our fellow man, we must be prepared because of the blessing we have received from God not to turn around to our fellow man and say, I have a right. I demand that my rights be upheld. I demand justice. We can't. God doesn't demand justice from us. And you see, we're right back to the same principle that Jesus gave at the very beginning, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are those who are willing to forgive because God is willing to forgive them. It's been said that every man wants mercy for himself and justice for everyone else. We have to be willing to give mercy to others if we expect to receive mercy. We have to be willing to overlook the faults of others, no matter what their character, for sins directed against us because God is willing to overlook our faults and forgive us. We forgive people. We put up with things. We turn the other cheek. Not because the person who's done something to us is righteous, not because he deserves to be forgiven, because we are not righteous at the foundation. We are not righteous underneath, truly. We do not deserve to be forgiven, and yet God forgives us. So Jesus elaborates on this principle in verse 40 when he says, If any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy cloak, let him have thy cloak also. Notice how this is a development of what he said in verse 25. Agree with your adversary quickly while you are in the way with him, lest he deliver you to the judge and the judge deliver you into prison. If any man threatens you or attempts to sue you at law and take away something that's rightfully yours, there's no matter what he does. Jesus says, If any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. In other words, do even more than is required of you just to make peace, just to satisfy a problem, just to be done with it. Do even more than is required of you because God, and here again is the same rationale, because God has done more for you than you could ever have expected, more than you ever deserved. Verse 41, And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain or two. And here is a very practical application in the days of Jesus of the sort of thing that he was talking about, go the extra mile. And perhaps most of us know, but I'll mention it anyway, that this principle that Jesus is stating is based upon the Roman law, that any Roman official or soldier could by law, as he walked along the highway carrying a burden, if he grew tired of the burden, he could find some poor unsuspecting fellow, Jew or otherwise, standing alongside the road, and he could conscript him like a person who's conscripted into the army. He could draft him and say, Here, you have no choice. I don't care what you're doing. I don't care whether you want to or not. You have no choice. Come and carry my burden for a mile along the road. He couldn't compel him to do it for ten miles, but he could for one. Jesus says if you're caught in that situation, don't complain, don't grumble, don't look for a way to get out of it, and instead of going one mile, go two miles. Why not? In doing these sorts of things, difficult as they might be, and we can all find application for this in our lives, in doing these sorts of things, we're not being foolish, we're not being weak, but we are demonstrating in a very practical way how meaningful the mercy of God is to us, that if God was willing to go the extra mile in coming to us, in offering to us his son, the salvation through his son, then surely in gratitude we should be willing to go the extra mile in a very small and mundane matter. Because after all, what are we talking about except the loss of time, the loss of face, maybe sometimes the loss of a little bit of money? What are those things anyway? What are those things compared with the salvation that God has given to us freely, without price? Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away. Here again, we have the same principle, but now we're talking about a situation where it might be very easy to evade one's responsibility. The Proverbs talk about, don't say to your neighbor, go and come again tomorrow when he asks something of you, if you already have it there beside you, but give it to him today. And turn to Deuteronomy 15, which seems to be the place that Jesus is quoting from in this verse 42. Deuteronomy 15, verse 7. The law says, If there be among you a poor man of one of your brethren within any of your gates in your land which the Lord your God gives to you, you shall not harden your heart, nor shut your hand from your poor brother. But you shall open your hand wide unto him, and shall surely lend him sufficient for his need in that which he wanted. Beware that there be not a thought in your evil heart, saying the seventh year, the year of release is at hand. In other words, this needs maybe just a bit of explanation. In other words, at the seventh year, all debts apparently were forgiven in Israel. So a person who had money and was approached on the first year of this seven-year cycle by some poor person who said, I need to borrow $1,000 or whatever, put it in terms that are meaningful to us, $1,000 and you kind of reach for your wallet. $10 doesn't mean much, but $1,000, you want to think about it twice. So someone who is in need comes to you and says, I need $1,000. Now, in the first year of the seven-year cycle, you'd say, okay, I can do that. I have the money and I've got seven full years to get it back. Surely somewhere along the line, oh so-and-so is going to come up with the money and I'll get it back. I'll be a pretty good fellow and I'll lend him the money and maybe one day it'll come back to me and pat myself on the back and feel pretty good about it. But what Jesus is saying here is if you come to the middle of the sixth year and you know that six months down the road, there's going to be the year of release of all debts and a person comes to you and he says, I really need $1,000. I'll pay you back as best I can and you think and you begin to calculate and look at the calendar and you say, well, if I give him $1,000 and he can't quite manage it, in six months from now we come to the end of this calendar cycle and all the debts are forgiven as though they never existed, I'm out $1,000. And right away you go about trying to think of excuses why maybe, maybe I shouldn't do it. The law says exactly that is not the thing you're supposed to do. If you beware that there be a thought in your wicked heart saying the seventh year, the year of release is at hand and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother and thou give him naught or nothing. And he cry unto the Lord against thee and it be sin unto thee. Thou shall surely give him and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him because that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works and in all that thou puttest thy hand unto. And believe me, when the principles that we say are so important to us finally come to touch our pocketbook, things can get a little bit sticky, things can get a little bit difficult. Even then, Jesus says there is a right way to act. And surely if we value that which is in our pocket more than that which should be in our hearts, then that which is in our heart will certainly be lost. God says I have redeemed you without money and without price as I redeemed Israel out of Egypt. No ransom was paid except the ransom of the blood of the Passover lamb. No ransom was paid for us except the blood of Christ and it can't be measured by money. It's amazing how many of the parables of Jesus have to do with money. Of how, for example, that which is forgiven us is compared to an immense debt that is forgiven. Whereas that which we forgive others is compared to a very small debt. And numerous of Jesus' parables deal with the subject of money. I suppose it's because if you start talking about money, everybody pays attention. You know, the math teacher goes about trying to get his rather thick-headed students to add columns of figures and they can't do it until he says, well, take that 300 and put a dollar sign in front of it and right away everybody's attention is there on the board and they're adding and subtracting like crazy. No problem at all. You talk about money and people pay attention. Jesus had a way of equating money with the essentials of our life and the truth. Not trying to remove money altogether from the life and the truth, but integrating the two. And it's, I think, for the reason that he says in Matthew chapter 6, we'll come to that a bit more, I think, tomorrow when we talk about Matthew 6, where he says, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And let's face it, to some extent, all of us have our hearts where our earthly treasure is. We spend a lot more time looking in our bank book than we do looking in Elk, Israel, and Eureka, or maybe even looking in our Bibles. I mean, we have to. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And so Jesus takes money, which is at the center of our lives. And you can't do anything without money. And he ties it up with the Gospel. And he forces us to look at not just the way we live, but what we do with the money that we have. Because that's a very important part of living, and it can't be divorced from the truth. We need to think about what our money means to us. And when I say money, I don't mean just the stuff that you carry in your pockets. You know that. I mean the life insurance, the certificates of deposit, the investments in real estate, and homes, and whatever. All of the things that can be turned into money. All of the things that come under the category of treasures in this life. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. A man can be a very fine disciple until he's forced to bring his money into the equation. And then right away we have all kinds of difficulties. And here, as in everything, none of us have any business judging someone else or their motives. The only business we have is exploring our own hearts. And that's what Jesus says. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. We'll talk about that more tomorrow in Matthew chapter 6. In this section that we just covered, we have talked about nonviolence as a general principle that was taught by Jesus. And now before we move to the final section, I think we need to mention that those things that Jesus taught, he lived by perfectly. He was the one perfect example for everything he had to say. Notice Peter's comments in 1 Peter chapter 2. 1 Peter 2, and we might begin with verse 19. For this, Peter says, is thankworthy. In other words, this is a good thing. This is a gracious or a kind thing. If a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. Suffering wrongfully. Not resisting, not fighting back, not saying, I have rights and I'm going to stand up for those rights, but suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it if when you be buffeted for your faults, you take it patiently and say, I had it coming. It's a big deal. But if when you do well and you suffer for that and you take it patiently, this is acceptable unto God. I mean any man can take it well if he's being punished for his faults. But if he is receiving something that he doesn't deserve and he still takes it acceptably and patiently and forgivingly, then that is an acceptable thing with God. And Peter goes beyond that then in verse 21. For even he says, here unto were ye called. Called? Yes. Called by Christ. Because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow his steps. Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. It wasn't easy, was it? Because he was reviled. And when he was reviled, he reviled not again. When he suffered, he threatened not. He committed himself to him that judgeth righteously, who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins should live unto righteousness by whose stripes ye were healed. If Jesus had not been perfect, if Jesus had not been without sin, all of his sufferings would have been to no avail. Jesus had to be without sin and he had to suffer so that we might be provided with a perfect sacrifice for the covering of our sins. And so right at the very heart of the gospel, there is the development of this principle that a man should suffer. A man should suffer for things that he is not guilty of, even as Jesus suffered. If Jesus had not been willing to suffer in that way, there would be no salvation for any of us. And so it is not a secondary matter. This matter of nonviolence, nonresistance to evil, submission to wickedness, is not a secondary matter. It's not some little side issue that you can put over here and you can say, this is something that maybe I'll do and maybe I won't, but the gospel is over here and the gospel is important. No, because if Jesus hadn't lived in that way, there would be no gospel. And so we are called upon by his example to live in the very same way. Forgiving, being patient, accepting wrong, wanting to resist and yet refusing to resist because we're following the example of Jesus. It is directly intertwined with the gospel. No secondary issue, no side issue. It's there and it's meaningful. There are other passages we can look at, but I think probably we've belabored that enough. Passages that speak of Jesus very plainly, the way in which he lived, the way in which he resisted not evil. But I think it's summarized quite well by what Peter has to say there. And notice, while we're in 1 Peter chapter 2, notice some of the earlier verses that led into this statement of what Jesus did. Notice that he's counseling believers to show by their good works, that's in verse 12, that they are followers of Christ, to submit themselves to every ordinance of man. Don't resist, don't try to evade the law, but go the extra mile, that's the point. Submit yourself to every ordinance of men, for it is the will of God, verse 15. And then in verse 16 he says, you are free, but do not use your liberty as a cloak of maliciousness. And we're right back to talking about the sort of thing that we mentioned a little earlier, about the brother comes to you and he says, I need a loan. And right away we begin calculating whether or not we can do it, whether or not we're going to get the money back. We may be free to do as we please, we may have a liberty to say yes or no, but don't use that liberty as a cloak for your own greed. Because remember what God gave, what Christ gave for you. Therefore, all of these things of our conduct, governing our conduct have a direct relationship to the gospel. We can't have, we can't put these two things in two separate compartments, they're all interrelated. Just a few moments on the last couple of verses of Matthew 5. The final contrast between the two kinds of righteousness, beginning with verse 43. You have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy, which is very much a perversion of what the law said. It was a paraphrase and it was a very mixed up application of what the law had to say. Jesus sets it right in verse 44, but I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Remember verses 10 through 12, blessed are ye when men shall persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake, that ye may be the children of your father who is in heaven, for he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. God treats all men equally without regard to merit. He doesn't pour rain upon those who deserve it and withhold it from others, but he's merciful to all. And so Jesus says, we should be merciful to all too. That first phrase in verse 45 we notice, do these things Jesus says, difficult as they might be, do them so that you will be the children of your father which is in heaven because that is the way in which he behaves. There is a family likeness in the family of God. Jesus showed forth the character and the quality of his father in heaven. And if we're going to be a part of that family we have to make some effort to show forth the same qualities. Even as you have a family, a natural family, and the family members show forth the same characteristics first of all quite often physically that they inherit from their parents and then because of the situation in which they're brought up, teachings of the family and the environment, they begin to show the same emotional and spiritual and character traits that their parents have. So Jesus says, this is what you must do so that you will be like your father which is in heaven. If you don't become like your father who is in heaven, why in the world would God want you in his kingdom? Why would he want you as a member of his family? And the choice is made on the basis of how we react and how we mold ourselves by the principles that Jesus has taught. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same. And if you salute your brother only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans so. Be ye therefore perfect even as your father which is in heaven is perfect. Is it possible for us to be perfect? Should we even try? Well, we can evade that question a little bit by pointing out, and sometimes this is done, that in Greek the word which is translated perfect means complete or mature. It means fully developed, like the fruit on the tree perhaps. It's there as a bud and then it becomes fruit. The fruit is green and then finally the fruit becomes ripe or perfect or complete. In that sense, perhaps we could talk about being perfect. But if you do that only, I think it's really an evasion. It's a lessening of the sort of statement that Jesus makes. And even then it becomes, I think, practically an impossible task if we look at it only in the natural way. God said, be perfect. I can't be perfect. I can't be complete. I'm a sinner. Nevertheless, Jesus concludes this long discussion of his law and the contrast between his law and that of the Pharisees with a very simple statement when he says, be ye therefore perfect, be ye therefore complete, even as your Father in heaven is perfect or complete. And when we look at the last part of that verse, the even as part of it, then there's not much room for evasion. The same thing that God is, that's what we're supposed to be. It's kind of frightening. The worst thing that we could do though is to look at the impossible ideal and turn away and say, I can't do that, and go in the opposite direction. Jesus doesn't want that. He didn't intend that by making this statement. Jesus knows that because of the limitations that all of us have, we're never going to come up to the ideal. But Jesus still tells us, strive for that ideal. Never be satisfied with something less. You realize, of course, when we say that, we're saying we'll never be satisfied with whatever we are because we'll never be perfect. There will always be something more to do. There will always be some imperfection that needs to be removed and worked on. And that's true. So I think this statement here is not telling us to feel ashamed or embarrassed because we're not perfect. I mean, if anything could be embarrassing, it would be considering verses 40 and 41 and 42 and realizing that so often we come short and we try to find ways around fulfilling these difficult commandments. So we shouldn't be embarrassed about that. We shouldn't feel frustrated. We shouldn't feel like we want to forget about all these things because we can't do it. But the point is, keep trying. So put stress upon the be in the sense of keep trying to be and not so much upon the perfect. See, the perfect is perhaps an impossible ideal, but keep working by it nevertheless. In that regard, I'm reminded of a story that I read once of this artist, this sculptor, who was quite a craftsman and he had been for many years. And one day he was working in his shop, working on this sculpture, this masterpiece, chipping away a little here and there, polishing the edges and so forth. And a visitor came into the workshop and he watched the old fellow working away for a while and it looked like a beautiful work of art. But the old gentleman was still working away, polishing here and rubbing there and etching a little here and there and standing back to look at the work. And the visitor finally got his attention and he said, tell me, sir, how do you know when this work of art is finished? And the old artist smiled and he said, it's never finished. I just keep working on it until they come and take it away. That is the way that we should approach our lives. Never will we achieve perfection. Never will we be finished, short of the kingdom when we stand before Christ. But all we can do is what that old man did. Keep on working at it until someone comes and tells us that our work is finished.

Location:WCF (1985)

Topic:Sermon on the Mount

Title:Class 4

Speaker:George Booker

Download:1985-ecbs-g-booker-4.mp3

Transcript

I thought I might move us rather quickly through this section that is a bit longer than the sections that we've discussed in the earlier classes, by putting a few things on the board and helping you to get, as I got when I analyzed it a bit, a brief overview of an entire section and the points that are made in that section. So, first of all, I could direct your attention to the board. We have an outline of the first 18 verses of chapter 6. It really is a section all in itself that we're not going to spend much time with at all, so that we can get into the second or the last section of chapter 6, beginning with verse 19 and going on to the end of the chapter. In this section, we have a three-fold warning that Jesus makes to his listeners about a particular kind of righteousness. And remember, we're still following up on what was the main subject of the last part of chapter 5, that there were two kinds of righteousness that are being contrasted with one another. The righteousness is practiced by the Pharisees and a different kind of righteousness, not just a different degree of righteousness, but a different kind or type of righteousness that was practiced by Jesus and exhorted to his followers. So, in following up on this, Jesus says, And that rather peculiar word in the King James Version, verse 1, is really the word for righteousness. So, what he's saying is, Beware that you do not practice your righteousness so as to be seen by other men. So, in putting it that way, Jesus is, in a roundabout sort of way, describing the Pharisees and others who think like the Pharisees, who were interested in doing particular things so that they would be seen by others to be righteous, so that they would bolster up themselves in their own ego, in their own pride. So, again, we're right back to what we discussed considerably in chapter 5, that Jesus and his law are concerned with the intentions, not only with the outward appearance, not only with the actions on the outside, but the intentions. Jesus says, Examine your heart as you do any particular thing, and do it for the right motives. So, this becomes a theme that is repeated three times in the first 18 verses of chapter 6, with a little additional footnote, actually, which is quite long, an additional footnote under the second section about prayer, which it seems rather strange to say that something as important as the Lord's Prayer is in the sort of a footnote, but that's the way it's set out here in the pattern that Jesus is developing. Three times he goes through the same sequence. After making this initial statement, take heed that you do not fear righteousness before men to be seen of them. He then goes into the first of these three sections. And notice how each one follows the same pattern. Verse 2. Therefore, when you do your righteousness, and this particularly seems to have to do with giving of one's wealth for the benefit of others, as we see in the last part of verse 2, when you do these things, he says, do not sound a trumpet before you. In other words, don't do it so as to be seen of men. And there's the first point that we see in the chart. In your giving, do not give so as to be seen of men, because if you do, you will already have your reward. Your reward will be the satisfaction that you feel in doing this, the pride that you feel in showing how righteous you are and having other people recognize that act of righteousness. But you, when you do these things, and here Jesus is talking obviously about doing the same sort of thing, whether it be the Pharisees, if we want them as a bad example, and his followers as a good example. He's talking about doing the same thing, but he's talking about doing it for a completely different motive. But you, when you give your arms, or when you give of your possessions to help others, however that might be, do it in secret. And your Father who sees these things in secret, verse 4, himself will reward thee openly. So a contrast between doing things openly so that they might be seen by others, and doing them in secret, so that God who will see those things done in secret will reward openly at a later time. In other words, and this is an interesting concept that comes later in chapter 6, in other words, you can't have your reward now and have your reward later. And Jesus gets more specific on that point in the last part of chapter 6 when he says, you can't have treasure now and treasure later. You can't have treasure on earth and treasure in heaven. So here he's saying the same thing. You can't have a reward now in the satisfaction and the pride that comes from knowing how good you are and that other people recognize it, and at the same time expect to have a reward in the future. Very fightingly and very sarcastically, he says, those who do things only to be seen by men, for the purpose of being seen by men, they have their reward, and a rather sad and pitiful reward it is, but Jesus says they have it already. Now the second section follows the same pattern, and here he's talking about prayer, verses 5 and 6. Notice again the same pattern. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are. Hypocrite, interestingly, is a Greek word which literally means one who is an actor, one who puts on a face, who puts on a mask and plays a part. Don't be as a hypocrite. Don't do something to be seen by others, while behind the mask you're really an entirely different person. But be yourself, and in being yourself, do things for the right reasons rather than the wrong. Be not as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray, standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men, verily I say unto you, they have their reward. The second time he's used that expression. But thou, when thou prayest, enter thou into thy closet, find a secret place, and there pray in secret, that your Father who sees you praying in secret will reward you openly at a later time. In other words, you can't have your reward for praying now and have your reward for praying later in the same person. Verses 7 through 15 then, as I said, is something like a footnote, as if Jesus is saying, now that we're talking about the subject of prayer, I'll tell you a bit more about prayer. When you pray, this is the pattern that you should follow. We'll look at the Lord's prayer for just a few moments when we finish going through this outline. We'll come back to those verses. The third beware that Jesus gives is verses 16 through 18. Again, it follows the same pattern. Moreover, when ye fast, be not as the hypocrites of a sad countenance, for they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily, I say unto you, they have their reward. But when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret. And thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. Again, the identical pattern. Now, several brief notes on this first section, points that I thought might be interesting to bring out in a bit more detail. In verse two, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets. A figure of speech there that's very obvious, sounding a trumpet before someone or before oneself, making sure that others see the good things that one is doing. Do not sound a trumpet before you. But apparently there's something a little more that's intended by this. And for this we have to know a bit of the background of the times, a bit of the customs. In the temple in Jerusalem, there were along the sides of the court of the women, outside the temple proper, there were 13 alms boxes in which money was to be put for various purposes, voluntary contributions to be made for such and such a fund, and another fund, and a third fund, and so forth. This apparently was what Jesus was standing or sitting nearby, as described in one of the gospels, when we're told that he was sitting over near the treasury, watching those who put money into the treasury, and that's in Mark chapter 12 if you want to look at it later. And as he was watching, he saw how many who had very much, obviously by the clothes that they wore and their demeanor, how they came and with a great ostentation, with a great pretense, dropped in much money. They dropped the money into these boxes, and we're told by some of the historians of that time that the boxes themselves, the 13 alms boxes, were made of metal, and they were very small at the top so that you could put your coins or your money in them, and very large at the bottom, and shaped like a trumpet, so that when you dropped money into the box or the trumpet, it would make a sound. And if you dropped a little coin, it would make a little people. If you dropped a lot of coins, it would just make a great clashing noise, like an orchestra was playing or like a trumpet was sounding. So Jesus says, don't make your giving in that way. And it's not hard to imagine the sort of activity that he was watching. The Pharisee with his rich robes and his friends there, making sure that he came at the right time when there were the most people to be seen, his friends and his relations and so forth, and there was great ostentation reaching into his pocket and bringing out a bag filled with coins and waiting for just the proper moment, perhaps, when everything was quiet around the valley. And then with a great noise, throwing all the coins into the trumpet, and a great sound went through the temple. And everyone far and wide said, isn't Joshua a wonderful man? Listen to all that money that he just gave to the temple, to that particular service. Jesus, of course, in his watching also saw the poor widow, and we can imagine the way in which she gave the two mites, creeping up carefully so as not to be seen and dropping the two small coins into the trumpet box. It was scarce to make any noise at all. And Jesus, in looking at the two, clearly had in mind what he was saying here. Those Pharisees, those hypocrites, had their reward when the money dropped into the pot, into the box. Her reward was to come later because she had cast in all her living, all that she had, all that she could possibly give. Also in verse 2 and in verse 5 and verse 16, we have that phrase, they have their reward. And we're told by consulting the concordances and the lexicons that that word reward, and I think this fills out the picture of it, that word reward is, quote, a commercial term meaning full payment made and receipt given, like a business transaction. A man pays all of the money that he owes on a note, perhaps, or a mortgage, and he receives the mortgage back, or he receives a receipt for that which he has paid. Jesus is literally saying, when men do things for these motives to be seen by others, they have already been paid in full. Everything they have coming has been given back to them. A receipt is given, the business transaction is finished. If that's the way in which they approached it, then that's the way in which God approaches it. They have been paid in full by the satisfaction they received in doing this particular thing to be seen by others. And they have no expectation of any further reward coming to them in the future for that deed. Another little point, and here we're getting into the section about prayer, so we'll talk about the Lord's Prayer for a few moments. In verse 7, he says, When ye pray, I told you how not to pray, and then I told you to pray in secret, and that's the proper way so that you'll have a reward in heaven. But when you pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathens do. One of the modern translations says, do not go on babbling like the pagans, babbling away, repeating repetitiously the same things. And when I saw that particular translation, I was immediately reminded, though I'm not sure that Jesus had that in mind, but I think it's quite fitting, reminded of the prophet Elijah on Mount Carmel with the 450 priests of Baal who were there with their continual repetitions, and they cried and they danced around the altar where the animal was laying to be consumed by a fire, and no fire came. They yelled for half a day, and their God, Baal, never heard them. So it seems as though Jesus had that very sort of thing in mind, and Elijah comes to them very sarcastically. It's in 1 Kings chapter 18, and he says, oh, perhaps your God is asleep, or maybe he's gone away on a trip, and you have to yell louder so he'll hear you. And obviously they had no God. There was no one there and no one to answer their vain repetitions. They're babbling away. But Elijah spoke once and spoke quietly and confidently, and God responded to him, the God of Israel, the only true God, for they think that they shall be heard because of their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them, verse 8, for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of even before you ask him. As someone once said, he who already knows all things doesn't need detailed information bulletins. Oh, God, well, now we need this and now we need that and now we need the other. He already knows. And so, as is said in the Old Testament, I believe in the Book of Ecclesiastes, God is in heaven and you are upon earth. Therefore let your words be few. And approach God in the same way that you might approach, or at least with the same sort of feeling and sensitivity and diffidence and humility that you might approach a great and mighty master upon earth. Be careful with your words. Be thoughtful of them. Don't repeat in your prayers wonderful flowery phrases so that other men might hear you and marvel at the fine prayers you gave. But always keep in mind that you are approaching the Lord of all the universe and do so in humility and with care. After this manner, therefore, pray ye, verse 9. And then we have Jesus' model prayer in verses 9 through 13, commonly referred to as the Lord's Prayer. Notice that he has already said that when you pray, you should pray privately. He said that in verse 6. I don't think that means that public prayers are wrong, obviously. I think he's talking about the individual. And if we know something of the custom of the times, the Pharisees customarily stood in the marketplaces and on the corners of the streets and prayed with great words so that others who passed by could see them. That was clearly a sort of prayer that was very wrong. And yet there are occasions, as we know from reading the letters, when public prayers, at the time when brothers and sisters were gathered together, public prayers are quite fitting. Still, I think the counsel about vain repetition and flowery phrases and so forth, we would do well to heed that even today. So the pattern that Jesus gives here is for private prayers, but I think also to some extent it could be the pattern for public prayers, prayers in the Ecclesia as well. There is an organization about what he gives here in this rather brief prayer. First of all, verses 9 and 10, there are three requests that God be glorified. Then in verses 11 through the first part of verse 13, there are three personal requests, three requests for the individual or for the group on behalf of whom one is praying. And then finally the prayer closes in the last part of verse 13 with three ascriptions of character to God, three blessings upon God or three ways of praising God in the last part of verse 13. So notice those, verses 9 and 10. Three requests that God be glorified. One, thy kingdom come. Two, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Excuse me, I started with verse 10 rather than verse 9. The first one, of course, in verse 9, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. That's number one. Number two is thy kingdom come. Number three, thy will be done in earth. Now, those three requests that God be glorified are all quite similar, and yet I think we can make some distinction between them. To request that God be glorified requires in the person offering the prayer a knowledge of what God's purpose is. We cannot pray ignorantly that God be glorified. We must know what it is that God intends to do so that he can be glorified. And so this comes out very plainly. The first request, may thy name be hallowed. May thy name be holy or blessed by all men. And we hope that that is true so far as we have opportunity to do it today and to instruct others to praise God's holy name. But we know that it will be true in the future when all men and all the earth will be filled with the glory of God. God's name will be hallowed. So to understand the point of that request, we must understand something of what is generally referred to by Christadelphians as the doctrine of God manifestation. That God intends through his son and those who are righteous in his son to fill the earth with his glory. God intends that his name will be upon all men and all men will glorify him. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, that God will be all in all. So to pray that sort of prayer requires us to understand something of the purpose of God as he has already promised. The next two requests are very similar. And quite often you see them linked together as though there were an equal sign between the two. In other words, thy kingdom come equals thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And that's true if we're looking forward to the kingdom. That only when the kingdom comes will God's will be done perfectly on the earth. But there is a distinction, it seems to me, between those two. We can pray thy kingdom come. And that's an obvious request that God will send his son back to the earth to establish his kingdom. And again, we have to know what it means when we speak of the gospel of the kingdom to pray that prayer properly. But the second or the third request that we see at the last part of verse 10 is something a little different. We know that when the kingdom comes, God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven now. But let's think about right now. It seems to me rather a puny sort of prayer for any of us to pray if we were to say, may God's will be done on earth in the future when Christ returns, and although we'll clap our hands and we'll be so happy, without taking any particular thought as to how we can go about doing God's will right now. And so I think we need to expand our understanding of that phrase to see it as a prayer that God's will be done immediately today as best we are able, and that God give us strength to do that will. So the prayer that I will be done on earth doesn't just relate to the future. It relates to here and now, and it relates to you and me. May God's will be done now in my life, and may I find the knowledge and the strength and the faith to do his will. This portion of the prayer reminds me of what Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane, not my will, but thine be done, which should be, I would think, the framework of any prayer that we offer. May God's will be done even now in my life and in the lives of those whom I touch as it is done in heaven. In that way, in a sense, we can extend the kingdom of God even into this very day and to our very lives, because there God will be dwelling if we are doing his will. Enough on that then. Verses 11 through 13, the first part, we have three personal requests. First one, verse 11, give us this day our daily bread. The thing to notice about that, at least what seems important to me, is we are to ask for our provisions what we need this day. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. We're not to ask for money in the bank or security that's going to take us through to the end of our lives, but we're to ask for our daily bread. And Jesus, when he gave that as a suggestion as to how we should pray, probably had in mind the children of Israel in the wilderness where God provided for them. If God hadn't provided for them the food that came every day, the man in the wilderness, they would have surely all perished. But God provided for them one day at a time. And at the most, once a week, he provided for them two days so that they might give their attention on the Sabbath day wholeheartedly to remembering and praising God. So if we are to pray, give us this day our daily bread while at the same time being anxious and concerned and frustrated and worried about what's going to happen to us next week or next month or next year. We are thorough hypocrites. And again, we see how linked together all the Sermon on the Mount is because this becomes the main theme of the last part of Chapter 6 that we'll get to in a moment. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, the treasures upon earth, but rather lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Don't be concerned about the bread for next week or next month. Don't worry about that. God will take care of it. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Of course, following on in what Jesus had said at the very beginning in the blessings, Blessed are those who are merciful, for they are the only ones who can expect to receive mercy from God. Forgive us our debts even as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. The third request that God guide us by His providence in such a way that though we undoubtedly will come into trials or we will be affected by trials and temptations, we will not be led into them in the sense of them taking over our lives and changing us and removing us from the path in which we should go. I think that's the sense in which he means do not lead us into temptation. He means do not let the temptations of the world overwhelm us. Even as Paul says elsewhere in one of his letters that God will not tempt us or try us above that we're able to bear, but will with every temptation provide a way of escape. We can't really pray to God at least it seems to me. We can't pray to God that He keep us completely away from any temptations because the world is filled with temptation and it is through temptation or trial, those two terms being more or less interchangeable, that our character is strengthened and developed. So we can't pray to God to wrap us up and protect us from everything that might happen to us or everything that might lead us astray, but we can pray to God that He guide us so that whatever trials we face we can go through them successfully relying upon His strength and they won't turn us aside but rather will strengthen us in our faith and our resolve. Then we have at the end of verse 13 the three ascriptions are blessings upon the character of God, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Everything belongs to God and that's the end point of the last part of the prayer. Though one day we might be in that kingdom by the grace of God, it won't be our kingdom, it will be God's kingdom because it is His power and it is His glory. Though one day that glory may be upon us, it is still the glory of God. As one brother quite fittingly said, to desire the kingdom of God merely as an end for ourselves is to desire not God's kingdom but our own kingdom, thy kingdom, thy power, and thy glory. This is the way that Jesus ends the prayer. Now into the last section of Matthew chapter 6 beginning with verse 19. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. We have here perhaps the most comprehensive of all of Christ's commandments. Why is that? Because it deals with the whole of our lives. There is scarcely a time in our waking moments and perhaps when we're asleep that our thoughts are not somehow touching upon money. That seems rather crass and rather materialistic. If you look back at your own life and examine yourself carefully, you'll find that that's true. The provider, whether husband or wife or individual who goes out to work every day, though he or she may have time to think of other things during the day, is by and large directing his or her attention toward doing a job on behalf of an employer and thereby securing a particular amount of money. Even the housewife who remains at home is continually concerned if she has any regard for prudence with taking the money that she is provided with and using it to the best advantage, being careful about it, planning and laying aside and so forth and so forth. And then when we come to our leisure time, we're continually confronted with questions of what we should do with our leisure and what we should do with our spare money. Is it right to afford this? Should we buy this? Should we spend the money for a vacation? Should we buy a new car? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Most all of our lives in one way or another are taken up with our relationship to money. To mammon as Jesus calls it. So, how we react, how we use money is in large measure how we develop our character. We really can't escape from it. At least in the society in which we live. And perhaps there's no society where one can go and escape from that kind of concern. We need money. How much money we need, it's hard to say. Generally, the answer to that is a little bit more than we have. But let's face it, we do need money. In verse 22, Jesus says, The light of the body is the eye. If therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. What is he saying? He's talking about the eye as a symbol for the mind or the heart, the inner feelings. That which a person looks upon is that which a person desires and wants. So, if your eye, that is your desire, your ambition or your goal that you're looking for, if your eye is single, in other words, if you have established in your mind that there is one thing toward which you're pointing, then your whole body will be full of light. Everything you do will be directed toward that one goal. Jesus said in another place, the children of this world are wider in their generation than the children of light because they established one goal in their lives, though it might be irreverential. And yet, if that's their goal, they don't let anything stand in their way. They aim for that one goal with a single eye, with a single desire, and they achieve it. The children of light can get bogged down. They can find themselves for a while looking at one goal and then maybe on Sunday mornings looking at an entirely different goal and be thoroughly confused. This is what Jesus is saying in verse 23. If your eye be evil, in other words, the opposite of single, if you have double vision, so to speak, and we know what that is naturally, if you have double vision, your whole body will be full of darkness. You won't know where to look. You'll be looking here, you'll be looking there, you'll be looking back here again. It'll be a thoroughly confusing condition. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness. So he comes to the punch line then in verse 24. Look at the way that you handle money. If you make money your master, and by money or mammon we mean any of the things that you can do with that money, if you make that your master, then you cannot at the same time serve God. No man can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise and push aside the other. One has to make a choice in one's life. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. And yet as we're talking about money here, it's the most natural thing in the world. It's inescapable almost. It's the most natural thing in the world for us to desire treasure now and treasure later. For us to justify whatever level of money seeking we find we feel comfortable with or whatever we can accommodate. For us to justify whatever level of spending that we can accommodate and feel perfectly righteous in doing so. But in reality, find ourselves jumping back and forth between two opinions, between two goals. First of all, spending a day or two or a week or two satisfying our baser instincts that we clothe it with some of the best motives that we can think of. Providing for one's family, being prudent, being careful, enjoying life, getting recreation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We spend a little time doing that and then we find ourselves with an entirely different goal, jumping back and forth, serving two masters. The parody that Jesus has in mind is obviously the slave who can't figure out who his master is and who has to jump when one calls and then jump when the other calls and is running continually back and forth between the two. Pretty soon, neither master is going to have anything to do with that kind of a slave, that kind of a servant. Jesus says, you cannot serve two masters. What is the meaning of this word mammon? Mammon is apparently from a Hebrew root word meaning something in which one trusts. Actually, more literally perhaps, something which is true and solid. The world is filled with people who figure there's nothing more solid. There's nothing more real and fundamental than wealth. Money answers everything. Money can talk. Money can buy anything. If you have enough money, you don't need anything else. You don't need love. You don't need affection. You don't need respect. Money will get it for you. Money by itself. The word mammon here is a word that is kind of flexible. In a sense, it's something good. It's something in which one can trust. It's something which is true and reliable. In fact, supposedly this word is directly related to the Hebrew word amen which means let it be so or it is true. But it seems as though Jesus is using it in a rather sarcastic way. You know, money or wealth is that which is true and that which is real only in an ironic sense. It's that which the world thinks is real but there's no substance to it at all. It is that in which man trusts but he has put his trust in it mistakenly. It's like the bruised reed that if he leans upon it will break and pierce him and will not provide any support whatsoever. That's what Jesus says about the wealth of this world. The mammon of unrighteousness. Mammon then as Jesus expresses it means riches, worldly possessions and pleasures. This acquisitiveness this need to acquire and have and use which is really greed is so universally acceptable that it's almost heresy to question it even among believers to say that money is not all that important because deep down our inner being rebelled against that enormously. Of course it's important. Just consider for a moment the possibility of a job promotion comes up it'll mean a bit more money maybe a bit more responsibility maybe being taken away from the family or from the ecclesia or from the truth a bit more and we consider the possibility of that promotion and we think of the possible dangers involved in it and then we begin to rationalise well I could use the extra money I could pay off the debts I could be a little more settled and established I wouldn't have to worry about such and such or so and so maybe I could even give a little more to the meeting to the work of God I know it'll mean some sacrifices but surely God will understand and pretty soon we've rationalised ourselves into accepting every possibility of more money that comes along we stopped a little bit we thought about it a little bit we questioned a little bit but we went ahead. Consider the world around us with all of the possibilities of job promotions the consumer goods that every time you buy something you're shocked six months later to find out that you bought a model that's now out of date and you need something better and something more expensive and a new attachment the good life that we see portrayed in magazines newspapers radio and television you can't get away from it if you don't have a radio and television you drive down the road and you see the billboards telling you buy the newest model that just came out this week forget about the one you had last year, it's no good anymore you know the whole of our society is founded inexorably on this principle that everything has to be recycled including your money it's not even good enough to put it in your pocket and save it for a rainy day you have to go out and give it to someone else so it can spur on the economy and everybody will be happier for the experience of the money passing through so many hands we consider all those things and we recognize that we're a part of the world that we can't escape from the world entirely and yet do we even stop to examine ourselves how many times in our lives have we considered a job promotion the purchase of something that we could afford but we didn't really know whether or not we needed maybe deep down we knew we didn't need it how many times have we considered that thing and said no to ourselves I think if we're fair we say not very often we pamper ourselves we take very good care of ourselves Jesus says you cannot serve God and mammon in this as in all things we can't ever get in the position of examining our brothers we have to examine ourselves and yet having said that I have to say let's get on with the business let's examine ourselves let's think about these things and question some of the things we do I'm not going to do it I'm not going to question any one of you I don't know enough about your personal lives even to begin to do so and if I go home to the brothers and sisters that I live with I'm not going to look at them and question them I can't but I'm going to try to tell them that they should question themselves even as I try to question myself Why shouldn't we have all the wonderful things that money can buy? If we have enough money to indulge ourselves why shouldn't we do it? Any good reason? What difference does it make? Jesus explains why man cannot serve God and mammon in the section beginning in verse 25 and he does it by a continual refrain that appears four times in those verses in verse 25 in verse 27 in verse 28 verse 31 I take it back five times verse 34 as well five times he says take no thought there's a little difficulty with that translation modern versions say something like this do not be anxious about such and such and so and so that is the reason why we cannot trust in riches that is the reason why we shouldn't indulge ourselves in everything that we can possibly afford because if we do we have in a sense moved ourselves away from the position that we enunciate when we pray give us this day our daily bread we have moved ourselves into a position where the daily necessities to satisfy our lives and to keep us alive that we might serve God have become not nearly enough and there's always something more to be had to be acquired to be used and consumed and enjoyed so Jesus says if you start down that road then you find yourself being anxious about all kinds of things being anxious about where the money is going to come from to buy the things that you were anxious about having that you didn't really need so that you could look good to the Joneses who lived next door because you were anxious about how they thought that you might look when you really didn't need to be and so forth and so forth and so forth and a constant renewing and recurring cycle never quite coming to a satisfaction because you're chasing the wrong thing Jesus says don't worry about those things do not be anxious about those things God will provide every day he will provide for you what is necessary if you simply set out to serve him and do the best job you can now if I say that I wouldn't mean that to be misinterpreted to say you needn't worry about doing a job wherever you happen to work because you should and there is a reason provided for that as Jesus says and as Paul says and I'm paraphrasing we must serve our earthly masters as though we were serving God we must be honest with them we must be hard working with them we must give them the best that we can muster in exchange for what they're giving us and there comes the rationale for doing a good job and trying to get ahead however you want to express that at your job you are doing what you can to the best of your ability because God has told you to not because of what you're going to get out of it right now if that were the case then you'd be just like the Pharisees and the hypocrites who have their reward now rather than having their reward later so nothing I'm saying should be interpreted as suggesting that we live the lackadaisical lifestyle that doesn't go about doing a good job at school or a good job at home or a good job at the workplace that's just not true we should do the best we can doing it heartily as unto the Lord that's the precise wording of one of the quotations of the New Testament Jesus says we should not worry because at the root of the misuse of money there is this business about worry do not worry about anything and in verses 25-34 Jesus gives seven reasons why we should not worry worry is a sin fretting and being anxious about tomorrow or having things or accumulating things or using things being anxious and worrying about anything is a sin unless it's being anxious and worrying perhaps about how best we can serve God and in that sense I don't think worry or anxiety is the proper word to use at any rate, Jesus says do not worry, be not anxious about your life that's verse 25 about adding to your span of life that's verse 27, in other words how long am I going to live and am I going to be healthy while I'm doing it don't worry about that, he says in verse 28 he says don't worry about raiment or clothes in verse 31 he says don't worry about what you're going to eat or drink in verse 34 he says don't worry about tomorrow because you've already prayed to God give me today my daily bread and tomorrow you can pray the same and he'll do it again so don't even worry about tomorrow so there are seven reasons why we shouldn't worry about food and clothing and what's going to happen tomorrow and even our health or our very lives, seven reasons and they are enumerated here in these verses in verse 25 we have the first reason is not the life more than meat and the body more than raiment, in other words Jesus is saying that life itself is more important than even the food that we put into our body or the clothes that we wear the absolute essentials are all that need concern us and we have prayed to God that he give us those and we can trust that he will do we risk our lives for example to save our best suit or our best toy when the house is burning down, no we run for our lives because the life is the most important thing and God has said he will take care of that life and if this life even now is more important than the food and the clothes and the other necessities that go to support that life then how much more the life that is to come, so Jesus says the life is more than meat and the body itself is more than raiment, so don't worry about meat and raiment and so forth, in verse 26 the second reason why we shouldn't worry behold the fowls of the air for they sow not and neither do they reap nor gather into barns yet your heavenly father feedeth them are ye not much better than they the second reason is the birds don't even worry and you're worth a lot more than any sparrow why should you worry, you are the children of God, surely if God cares for the birds he'll care for you third reason in verse 27 which of you by taking thought or by being anxious can add one cubit unto his stature, that's the King James version the RSV says which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto his span of life and that's much more reasonable, to say that you're going to add one cubit to your stature would be that a man who's six feet tall would suddenly become seven and a half feet tall and that's not very reasonable the word literally means one's span of life and a cubit then stands for a short space of time not distance in height but time of one's life which of you by being anxious can increase your span of life even by a few moments and here there's a very practical reason for what Jesus is saying because modern doctors physicians for example tell us that one of the things that shortens life more than any other is continual worry so even the doctors are on the side of Jesus when they tell us, don't worry get stressed out of your lives and you'll live longer, Jesus says which of you by worrying is going to live any longer, in fact you'll probably decrease your span of life by all of the worry that you indulge in fourth reason verses 28 through 30 and why be anxious for clothes consider the lilies of the field how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these wherefore if God so clothe the grass of the field which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, literally what he's talking about is this is a figure of speech for the burning hot winds blowing in off the desert and drying up the grass of the field practically overnight when summer came tomorrow is cast into the oven of that burning fiery wind that comes from the desert shall he not much more clothe you, oh ye of little faith, if God takes such trouble with the flowers that are soon going to die anyway how much more trouble will he take with us, us who are made in his image reason number five in verse 32 for after all these things do the Gentiles seek, or the heathen seek to me this is a very, very forceful reason why we should not worry Jesus says and it's very blunt and it's very simple don't worry because the godless people around you are worrying and that by itself is almost reason enough, isn't it, why we shouldn't do it if you stop and think about that if you're ever puzzled about should I do such and such a thing or should I not do it then you can almost always answer your quandary by saying is it something the world around me does, is it something that the godless Gentiles are doing all the time then maybe that's reason enough in itself for me not to do the same thing it's the reason that Jesus gives here after all these things with all these anxieties and concerns, the Gentiles are worried so why should you be worried in other words, if you see all the world rushing off in one direction the best thing you can do is pause for a moment and consider seriously going in the opposite direction yourself reason number 6 last part of verse 32 for your heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of all these things in other words, just like Jesus said in verse 8 of chapter 6 when he introduced the Lord's prayer for your father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him and in that thought there is a basis for great faith and great trust God knows what you need you can tell him, you can remind him once or twice but you needn't be concerned about going out worrying and fretting and trying to get those things for yourself God knows what you really need just as the parent knows what the child needs and the child need not worry because the parent will provide so God will provide for you and verse 34 be not anxious about tomorrow for tomorrow will be anxious for itself sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof in other words, let the day's own troubles be sufficient for that day or as we might say live one day at a time because we do we can't live our lives carrying around the worries and frustrations of last week burdening us down and keeping us from doing what we should do today we can't live our lives by carrying around all the worries and the expectations of what's going to happen next week if we do we'll be so burdened down we won't be able to make the proper decisions today as to how we should serve God we should live one day at a time the world is such a wicked place Jesus said that we need all of our mental resources to fight against the temptations and the trials with God's help and seek to overcome them so don't borrow worries from next week don't mortgage today so that you can buy concerns tomorrow because today is the day of your salvation today this day and this is a universally true statement this day right now is the only day in which we have to live tomorrow by God's grace there may be another but this day and this moment right now is the only moment in all of the span of our lives in which we have an opportunity to do anything and even as we talk about it that moment is gone to be replaced by another and we spent one moment doing nothing except thinking about it this moment today is the day of your salvation sufficient until the day is the evil thereof as Jesus puts it in verse 34 and so we conclude then by considering verse 33 Jesus says speak ye first to the kingdom of God and that word first doesn't mean you can do it for a little while and then put it aside and go on to number 2 and number 3 and number 4 on your list but what he means is seek the kingdom of God first of all all the time having it foremost in your lives wherever you go and whatever you do seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things that you might otherwise be anxious about will be added unto you the question is do we have the courage do we have the faith to truly put God first in all things and I say to you that in my opinion or whatever it might be worth the materialism of the world around us in this western society is probably the greatest threat that we will ever experience to our faith as individuals or collectively in our eclogias we can talk about the catholic church with its false doctrines we can talk about the churches around us that would lead us astray we can talk about Pentecostalism we can talk about the sins of adultery and divorce we can talk about any number of things that might threaten the body but all the time like a Trojan horse the greatest enemy that we have has already worked its way inside the city and there it is in our very midst the materialism of a society that tells us continually you can have anything you want just work for it and just spend the money and buy on the installment plan and nothing will ever be withheld from you it is the temptation of an idolatry of a false god that will turn us away from the true god more surely than anything else in the world around us Paul says covetousness is idolatry there is no question about it and he says that because those things that we covet and we desire, that we want to have can very easily work their way into our affections so that god is found to take a second place or no place at all anything that we have elevated to the position of desiring and wanting and using and enjoying has the potential of replacing god and therefore has the potential of becoming an idol we can find ourselves very easily serving a false god and so I would conclude with another saying of Jesus that has a direct bearing it seems to me on this particular discussion when he says in Luke chapter 12 and verse 15 take heed and beware of covetousness for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth in other words never should we suppose that we are what we have never should we suppose that what we have what we possess is more important than who we are a man's life ultimately in the sight of god consists in who he is and the character that he brings before the judgment seat all the other things that have occupied us like children playing in our in our play pins with all of our toys around the balance all of those other things that could have occupied us about our lives will one day be taken away from us as if by a thief in the night and we'll find ourselves face to face with price with nothing to show for ourselves not our cars not our homes not our bonds, not our bank accounts not our securities not even our accomplishments in the sense of accumulating and getting and spending but the only thing we'll have to show for ourselves is what we are what we have become take heed for a man's life consistent not in the abundance of the things which he possesses

Location:WCF (1985)

Topic:Sermon on the Mount

Title:Class 5

Speaker:George Booker

Download:1985-ecbs-g-booker-5.mp3

Transcript

In the very beginning, in the first of these classes about the Sermon on the Mount, there were the eight blessings given in the first part of Matthew chapter 5, and they were matched by the eight curses or the eight warnings that Jesus gives in Matthew chapter 23. It's as though he gives an opening speech to his ministry and then a closing speech to his ministry. The opening speech emphasizes all the positive things, blessed are the meek, blessed are the merciful. The closing speech is a warning to the Pharisees telling them, beware or woe unto you if you behave in this way. And each one of the woes or each one of the bewares, there are eight of them in Matthew chapter 23, are very much parallel to the blessings that he gave at the beginning. And so, blessings at the beginning and curses at the end, and both of them directed toward the same kinds of conduct, or the negative, one against the other. The opposite sort of conduct receives the curse from the one that receives the blessing. Keeping that in mind, we notice here that Jesus in both of these discourses of his gives that basic statement of what is at the foundation of the law and the prophets, what you would that men should do unto you, do ye even to them also. He states it positively toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount, and also in Matthew chapter 22, the last few verses of that chapter, immediately before he enters into the woes, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, he gives precisely the same statement when the whole law is comprehended in these two statements, love God and love your neighbor as yourself. So it's a very fundamental principle that he mentions at the very beginning and at the very end as a part of his two major discourses to the nation of Israel. Verses 13 and 14, enter ye in at the straight gate, he says, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in there at, because straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth into life, and few there be which find it. He's basing his statement here on a topographical or topological fact of the layout of Jerusalem. The approach to Jerusalem was a very narrow road that led up a hill into the city itself, and from Jerusalem a very broad road led down into the valley of Gehenna, where the trash, the rubbish was to be collected and burned, where the bodies of criminals and those who could not afford burial or their families could not afford burial were to be cast. So Jesus says there is a narrow road which leads up into the city of God, but there is a broad road away from that city, leading away to destruction, leading away to the garbage dump out of which there is no escape. Jesus, of course, speaks of himself as the way. John 14 verse 6, I am the way, the truth, and the light. No man can come into the Father except through me. He tells us to walk in that way, which is Jesus himself. Not a literal pathway, but a way of life down which we walk, following the pattern of all the things that Jesus has been telling us in these chapters. I am the way. Walk in that way by showing forth my character in everything that you do, everything that you think, everything that you say. In verses 15 through 20, he says that we should beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. You shall know them by their fruits. They are those, he says, who profess many righteous things according to the law, but they live in that other kind of righteousness. They live in the sort of righteousness that is only in details, but not in changing the heart of the individual. They are interested only in judging others that they might elevate themselves. They are interested in justifying themselves and making themselves proud and righteous in the eyes of other men, but not justifying themselves in the eyes of God. Beware of false prophets, he says. You will know them by their fruits. You will know them by their actions. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles, even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A man who goes about professing to live in a certain way and believe in certain principles, in effect, you may need to judge to some extent, at least to keep from being led astray by the words that he speaks. You may need to observe his actions to see how real his words are, and at any rate, at the very least, you should be judging your own actions based on your own words. By their fruits, you shall know them. God, by our fruits, will know us, and here certainly he's speaking of the fruit of the Spirit that Paul refers to in Galatians 5. The fruit of the Spirit, that which is produced by the teaching of God's Spirit in his word, is love and joy and peace and mercy and long-suffering and gentleness and meekness, against which there is no law. These are the things that God intends us to show forth. Jesus said something very similar at the beginning of Matthew chapter 23, when he says, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. He says to those who were listening, don't do the things that the Pharisees do. You might listen to their words and they might sound very good, but they don't live by their words, so don't watch the things they do and do them. You might want to do the things they tell you if they come from God's word, but don't try to live the way in which they live. By their fruits, you shall know them. Then verse 21, we're coming to the close of everything that Jesus has been saying, not the close simply of chapter 7, but the close of chapters 5, 6, and 7, his entire discourse. What he's saying here should be understood in the context of a climax or a concluding statement for everything that he said earlier, beginning with Matthew chapter 5. Not every one, he says, that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven. Many will find themselves at last in the broad way, who have assumed all along that they were walking in the narrow way, and yet the judgment reveals them for something altogether different. Again, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, in thy name have cast out demons, and in thy name done many wonderful works? The fact of the matter is that in Christ's name, many works have been done that are far from wonderful. Many things have been done and said that in themselves were despicable, and yet the name of Christ is drawn into the discussion as a justification for some of that conduct and some of those actions and thoughts and statements. Lord, Lord, have we not done many wonderful things in your name? And then will I profess unto them perhaps four of the most terrible words that we could imagine. Then will I say unto them, Lord, I never knew it. That word never is one of the most frightening words in the English language, never. Brother Harry Winkler said, This grim word declares the ghastly truth that many a life that seemed to have been lit up by a blaze of light from heaven has in fact never emerged from the smoke and the fire and the destruction of the heavens. I never knew it. Depart from me, all ye that work iniquity. Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, notice the exact contrast to verse 21. Those who said, Lord, Lord, I never knew you. Jesus said, I never knew you. Only those who do the will of the Father which is in heaven. By their fruits, by their deeds, you will know them whether or not they are disciples of Jesus. Jesus says in John chapter 13, I believe it is that by this shall all men know that you are my followers, if you have love for one another. And of course, love is more than an emotion, more than a sentiment. It must be expressed by actions. So Jesus is really saying, it seems to me, by this you will know who are my disciples and who are not, those who show their love for me, their love for God and their love for their brethren by their actions. There is no other way. Expressions of interest, expressions of good thoughts, expressions of one's own righteousness are of no consequence whatsoever. Many will say, Lord, Lord, to whom Jesus will say, I never knew you. Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock, and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. What is the rock? The rock is Christ. The rock is the sayings of Christ. The rock is a life based upon the sayings of Christ. That is the only foundation. And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not shall be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand, the shifting sands of the seaside or the desert, that can hold no foundation, that shift with the winds and with the rains and with the water, and the house falls and collapses, and great was the fall of it. Notice that Jesus refers to everything that he has said previously, even when he was quoting from the law itself, as these sayings of mine. We emphasize what we emphasized at the very beginning, that when Jesus went up in the mountain to sit down and the people were gathered to him, that when he spoke, it was as though he was speaking with the power and the authority of God. He was. The word of God made flesh. And now without the least apology, he says, the one who hears the sayings of mine and does them, he will have built his house upon a rock and it will stand forever. My sayings, he said, Jesus assumes all power and all authority for himself. He speaks as though it were the voice of God. He speaks, in fact, as verse 29 tells us, as one having authority and not as the scribes. The scribes were always interested, and we know this from secular history, they were always interested in looking at the opinions of others, in comparing what Rabbi Samuel said, with what Rabbi Jonah said, with what Rabbi Ezekiel said, and putting them all together in a commentary and then adding their own thoughts on top of it. And they couldn't begin to tell anyone what the law said because they had to consult all the other authorities. Jesus was completely different. When he spoke, the word came from God and there was no question about it to Jesus's mind or to those who listened to his words. He spoke as one that had authority and not as the scribes. So we see here the contrasting ends of the two different ways. The one way which leads to destruction, because it's based upon hearing the words of God, the words of Christ, and not doing them. Saying, Lord, Lord, we've known you, you know us, don't you? And he says, I never knew you. And the other way, the narrow way, the straight way that leads to life. And it consists in building one's house upon the rock of the sayings of Jesus and attempting as best we are able to keep those sayings, to keep those teachings in every part, in every facet of our lives. In his concluding remarks here, Jesus calls to our mind the certainty of approaching judgment. And he says that there is only one hope, the rock upon which we should build. Remember the message that Jesus first preached when he came to the nation of Israel. We read it back in chapter four in verse 17. Jesus began to preach and he said unto them, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. All the doctrine, all the first principles of the world, believed perfectly, laid out with proofs, end upon end, will never bring us into the kingdom of God unless we learn to live by the teachings of Christ. And so the most fundamental of all the first principles is this, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent, change your life before and again, and recognize that simply passing through the waters of baptism is not in itself sufficient to bring about repentance. But repentance is a change of mind and a change of life that never stops trying to improve, that never stops seeking first for the kingdom of God, for God's kingship over us in our lives. Our lives in serving God should be a continual lot of repentance, of change, of growth and development and ever striving upward for the perfection that Jesus spoke of when he said, be ye perfect even as your father which is in heaven is perfect. It's in a sense a very frightening thing to speak that way and to consider the ramifications of it and yet it shouldn't be because the same God who told us that we should be perfect told us also through Christ that we could be forgiven. And so the strength doesn't come from us. If it rested upon us then we should give up now. But the one thing that we can give to God is our devotion and our dedication, our continuous effort to serve him. We may fail time after time after time but if we truly believe in God and what he said we'll stand up again and we'll continue on the path and we'll try to help others along that path as well. Let me conclude by reading a few verses from Deuteronomy chapter 30 because it seems to me that the teachings of the law of Moses are not that much different than the teachings of Christ and the same principle to apply in both cases. Deuteronomy chapter 30 beginning with verse 11, think of these words as though they were spoken by Jesus himself. For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off, it is not in heaven that thou shouldest say who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it unto us that we may hear it and do it, neither is it beyond the sea that thou shouldest say who shall go over the sea for us and bring it unto us that we may hear it and do it, but the word is very nigh unto thee in thy mouth and in thy heart that thou mayest do it. See, I have set before thee this day life and good and death and evil, the two ways, the two kinds of righteousness, in that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments that thou mayest live and multiply, and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in the land whether thou goest to possess it, but if thy heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, you cannot serve God and Mammon, I denounce unto you this day that ye shall surely perish, I never knew you, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land whether thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it. I call heaven and earth to record this day against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, and then almost as a father would speak beseechingly to a child, therefore choose life, choose life that both thou and thy seed may live, that thou mayest love the Lord thy God, that thou mayest obey his voice, that thou mayest cleave unto him for he is thy life and the length of thy days, that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord swear unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them. May that land, I promise, be given to us as well.

Location:WCF (1985)

Topic:Sermon on the Mount

Title:Unknown

Speaker:George Booker

Download:Tape 22B.mp3

Transcript

In paper or the Constitution we might say that the king is presenting to the nation the law that is to be enforced in Christ's kingdom and therefore the law that needs to be enforced with us even today. And if you've noticed, if you've been here during the earlier classes, we've continually talked about the two different ways or the two different kinds of righteousness. And that same kind of theme holds even into chapter seven in those very familiar verses as Jesus draws his teaching to a close when he says in verses 13 and 14 that there is one way, the wide way, the broad way that leads to destruction. And there is the other way, a narrow way, a straight way that leads to life. So he still is talking about the two different ways, just as he talked earlier about the two different kinds of righteousness. We'll look at some of the earlier verses and then we'll work up to what I think is something of a climax in verses 13 and 14 on to the end of the chapter. Beginning with verse one then, in fact the first five verses or so compose one section. Judge not, Jesus says, that he be not judged. The word that is translated judge here is a word that more literally we might translate condemn. Do not condemn others lest you will be condemned. And by making it a bit stronger there than the simple word judge, we emphasize that there are times in fact when we need to discern amongst individuals and their actions and their speech. Even as Jesus himself says in other places, for example verse 16 of chapter seven, when he says, verse 15 and 16, beware of false prophets. And then he says, this is how you will know the false prophets. You will know them by their fruits or by their works or by what they do. So there is a rather limited sense in which it is permissible and it is even required of us, we might say, to judge, to discern, to understand and make distinctions between different teachings and different individuals. Jesus does say, however, we should not condemn. Those who condemn others will find themselves condemned by God, for with what judgment or with what condemnation you condemn, you shall be condemned by the great judge. And with what measure you meet or you measure out to others. So you will receive the same measure. It will be measured to you again. And Jesus then in verses three and four and five goes on in a sort of a brief parable to explain exactly what he means when he says, judge not or condemn not. Why beholdest thou, he asks, the moat that is in thy brother's eye, a moat, a very small speck, a little sliver of wood or dust or whatever. Why do you consider the little tiny moat that is in your brother's eye, but you haven't even considered the beam, the whole log of wood, the whole piece of wood that is in your own eye? And it's an outlandish sort of comparison because nobody could imagine having an entire chunk of wood or beam of wood in one's eye. And yet Jesus overstates or exaggerates in this way to make the point. How wilt thou say to thy brother, let me pull out the moat out of thine eye, and behold a beam is in your own eye? You couldn't begin to see well enough to help your brother take care of his relatively minor problem. And so in effect Jesus is saying before you go about to judge or to condemn others, or even for that matter to try to help them especially, and you think you have the best of motings, the first thing you need to do is be concerned with your own character, your own actions. Thou hypocrite, he says, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the moat out of thy brother's eye. Now I think we have to understand that to take the words of Jesus in a perfectly literal fashion here, recognizing that we all have faults and we're never quite shed of all of our faults, if we take it quite literally then we have to assume that there is never the possibility of any of us offering help or correction to any of our brothers. And we know that's not true because we should be interested in helping one another. But I think allowing for the sort of exaggerated language that Jesus uses, it's still quite plain that what he's saying is the primary thing you need to do is be concerned with your own conduct, the quality and the character of your own life, and try to get that in the best shape that you possibly can. And then maybe somewhere along the line after you have done a considerable amount of self-judging or self-condemnation to remove and to arrange your own life as you think it should be lived under Christ, then and only then should you be in a position to go about judging others or even positively trying to help others. So allowing, as I said, for this sort of exaggeration, Jesus plainly puts the emphasis, 99.99 100's emphasis upon judging ourselves rather than having anything to do in regard to judging or criticizing or correcting our brethren, a very strong, very overbalanced sort of emphasis that Jesus uses. Of course, in saying this in the first few verses here in chapter seven, Jesus is only repeating some of the same principles that he has been mentioning all through this teaching of his. Going back, for example, to chapter five in verse 28, we might turn it up since we're in the same general vicinity. Remember Jesus had said in contrasting the two different kinds of righteousness, verse 28 of chapter five, but I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman till lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. He lays down a very plain principle, but a principle which of necessity cannot be applied by one individual judging the motives or the intentions of another individual. It can only be applied by each individual looking at himself, looking into his own heart, into his own intentions and motives. It's the only way in which you can be judged. In fact, we might say there are only two people that can judge that kind of a sin. One is the person who might be committing it and the other is Christ himself. Christ has said, I will judge. In a sense, Jesus has appropriated now the judgment that God said belonged to him in the first place. The judgment that God had, the power and the authority that God had has now been conferred upon the son. All power has been passed to the son and he can judge in the same way that God can judge, but no one else, no one else is in that category. And also we realize that this is the same principle basically that was referred to in chapter 6 and verse 4 and verse 6 and verse 18 of that chapter where in that three-fold refrain Jesus says, those who do things so as to be seen of others will have their reward. You should do the righteous things that are commanded of you in private, in secret, so that the father who sees in secret will reward you openly. Because we're not doing anything, or we're not refraining from doing anything either for that matter, to please men. We're doing it only to please God. God can judge both the outward actions and the motives behind those actions. God is the only one who can, of course with Christ being the one who has received that authority and that power from God. They can judge the motives of the individual and no one else can. So with all that in mind, it seems quite reasonable that Jesus then comes to the point of emphasizing again that we should not judge or condemn our brother. And if we do, if there is the occasional time when we feel compelled to help someone by making a suggestion, then we should do it in a spirit of meekness, not from a position of righteousness way above them looking down our noses at them, but rather in a position of helping out of love, recognizing at the same time that we have weaknesses of our own. And if truly we do that, then we will be perhaps in the best position, if there is a good position, to go about offering some kind of constructive criticism to others. But if we do it in the sense of we know everything, we're righteous and you're not, then we can't hope to succeed. We might be righteous by comparison with the other person, but we're not supposed to compare ourselves with one another. We're supposed to compare ourselves with Christ, recognize that we're all failures, we're all sinners, and only from that kind of beginning or that kind of source can we ever hope to help our brotherhood. Paul picks up this same point and he speaks of it quite effectively. In Romans chapter 14, verse 4, where he says that if we compare ourselves with ourselves, in other words, if we find ourselves judging or condemning our brother, that this is a perfectly pointless exercise. It's of no benefit to the person who is being judged and it's of no benefit to us who are doing the judging. For Paul says in Romans 14 and verse 4, who do you think you are to judge another man's servant? I'm paraphrasing, obviously. To his own master he standeth or followed. And he says it's just as unreasonable to go about judging your brother as it would be to go into another business establishment and start telling the employees how they should be serving their master, how they should be serving their boss. Their boss is going to tell them how to serve him and if they're not serving them correctly then he'll see about what discipline might be necessary. Who art thou that judgeth another man's servant to his own master? He standeth or followed. Yea, he shall beholden up, for God is able to make him stand. And very interesting there, isn't it? Paul says he might not even be doing a good job, he might be falling down in his service to his master, but his master is the one who can forgive him and lift him up and make him as though he had not committed that sin or he had not failed. You can't do that, so leave him to his master, let his master be the judge. And then again in verse 10 of the same chapter, Paul says, Why dost thou judge thy brother? Or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? In other words, judge your brother in the sense of making him feel inferior or making yourself feel superior to your brother. Why do you attempt to set him at nought or make him to feel little in your sight by judging or criticizing? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And you see, it's pointless to judge one another, because the time is coming when we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and we will be judged on the basis of what we have done individually by the only one, Christ himself, who truly can judge. So you see, it's all anticipation anyway, it's not going to do us any good, except perhaps it's going to make us feel better if we think we are better than someone else, but it's a false or delusory, delusional type feeling. We might make ourselves feel better, but we're not better in the least by looking down at someone else, and we'll all stand before Christ at any rate. So what Paul is saying here is, if you go about judging and passing judgment upon others, you're just anticipating the judgment seat of Christ, where it's all going to be set right anyway. You're like a lower court judge who can't ever make a pronouncement because it's going to be overturned by the Supreme Court that's sitting above him, so why bother? Your decisions hold no weight whatsoever, they're going to be overturned by Christ anyway. We will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Going back then to Matthew chapter 7, we mention one more time, as we mentioned in our consideration of chapter 6, that if we go about judging our brother, then this kind of judgment may stand in the way of ourselves being forgiven by God, even as we pray in the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our debts, even as we forgive our debtors, for if we forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. And we read these very simple and straightforward sorts of exhortations, and we feel compelled to ask, how long will it be, how long will it be before Christadelphians ever learn what seems to be such an obvious and simple lesson? How long will it be till we cease running around continually passing judgment on one another for some of the most silly details of conduct and behavior and beliefs that are simply foolish and there's nothing else that can be said? It is a lesson that is as plain as any lesson in Scripture, and yet for all of our knowledge of the first principles and our understanding, our true understanding of the Gospel, I think we come very short in understanding this very simple principle. And we do it at our own risk, because when we start fooling around with judging our brethren in ways that we are not clearly commanded to do, we are tampering with the very mechanism by which we ourselves can be forgiven. None of us can stand as righteous before Christ based on our own conduct or our own beliefs. And if we get so caught up in considering the conduct and the belief of others that we're willing in one sense or another to pass judgment upon them, then we are plainly putting ourselves on the wrong side. We're putting ourselves on the side where one day we might find that there is no mercy forthcoming for us because of the attitude that we've shown to others. In this context and in this understanding, we think of the parable that Jesus told in Luke chapter 18, and I'll just read it if you didn't bother turning it up, Luke 18 verses 11 and 12, verses 9 and 10 and 11 and 12, and he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. The parable went like this, two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a Republican, the one the most righteous of men, the Pharisees with their fine robes, with their precise conduct, with their consideration of every little detail of the law, trying to get it right. And the publicans, the tax collectors, the sinners, the IRS agents, the government flunkies, the ones who were despised by any right-thinking Jew and looked down upon, they turned the other way and passed by them in the street without speaking. The Pharisee and the Republican went up to pray, a study in absolute contrast between the two. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. The irony of that, the Pharisee stood probably looking up to heaven in the traditional pose of the Jew as he prayed to God. He stood, probably keeping in mind things Jesus said earlier about the Pharisees who loved to be seen of men, to be righteous. He probably stood in a place where others could hear, not just the publican but some of his own cohorts and friends. He stood and he prayed a lovely prayer in his lovely robes, feeling very righteous and very proud of himself. And Jesus said, he prayed thus with himself. Apparently that prayer never got beyond the ceiling of the room where he stood. He prayed with himself. God, he said, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I possess. I am just a downright wonderful person. And surely everybody around me sees it, and of course you see it too. God wasn't even listening. And the publican, standing afar off, removed, afraid perhaps even to come close and touch robes or garments with the Pharisee, knowing that he was a sinner, would not so much as lift up his eyes into heaven but cast his head down, bowed down before God and smote upon his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, Jesus said, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For every one that exalted himself shall be abased, and he that humbled himself shall be exalted. Brother Roberts said one time, if men were more busy judging themselves, which they are commanded to do, they would have much less opportunity to judge one another, which they are forbidden to do. Truly, we as Christadelphians need to learn that lesson, and we need to teach that lesson to others. In Matthew 7 and verse 6, we now come to a little short verse that almost appears to contradict much of what we have just said. In verse 6, Jesus says, Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you. Brother Sargent, in his book, commenting upon this verse, says, following up, keeping in mind what we just said with the first five verses, he says, there is one sense in which you should judge. The truth we hold and the salvation it offers are God's gifts to be handled with reverence for the giver. This he said is one of the most difficult discriminations or judgments that we're called on to make. And apparently, we should understand this verse in the sense of our relationship with those who are outside, with those who are potential candidates to receive the truth and believe it, the gospel, and be baptized. But Jesus is saying, there is, in fact, a sense in which you should judge, in which you should discriminate. Cast not your pearls before swine. It seems to me, and this is admittedly one of the most difficult verses to understand and to try to explain to others, but it seems to me that what Jesus is saying is this. If we're going to go about presenting what we believe to others, we have to exercise some kind of discretion in the way in which we do it. I'm sure this can be carried overboard to the point where we're never quite sure to whom we should speak, and so we keep quiet because it's the easiest thing to do. But I think that he's saying we have to be careful in what way we go about introducing the truth to others, somehow trying to exercise discrimination and judgment as to how and when they might be approached. And there may even be occasions when it would be improper to speak of the things that we believe to others. Perhaps he's saying something like this, that we can't drag people into the truth against their wishes. We can only present the truth to them and let the truth, or let God himself draw them by the power of his teaching. Perhaps he's saying that, and perhaps there's really a lot more in the verse that is difficult to bring out. But I would say that such a verse as this can be very easily misused. It can be used as an excuse for our own cowardice. If we're afraid to speak to someone, we say, well, perhaps they won't listen anyway and you shouldn't cast your pearls before swine. That's judging, I believe, in the wrong sense. But say perhaps, and this is just off the top of my head, say you find yourself in a situation, maybe you didn't choose to be in that situation, where you're with a group of people, they're behaving in a rather rowdy or even immoral fashion, drinking, et cetera, et cetera, not that every bit of drinking is wrong, you know, I don't think that. But you're in a situation where you don't feel comfortable at all and you find people who are behaving in a blasphemous sort of fashion, that probably would not be a good place and a good time to try to interest people in what you believe. For one thing, your credibility might be questioned, why are you here with us? Why are you seeming to condone the things that we're doing and yet you say that you're standing for something else? Now, you know, there may be occasions, there may be times when with all honesty and forthrightness we can go into a situation and we can call people out of it. I mean, Jesus did that. He went into the publican's house when others were looking down upon him, where there was eating and drinking, perhaps to excess, and he was able to reach them and bring them out. But there may be other occasions when that would be very difficult, if not impossible, and we might find ourselves being mocked at or made fun of, or we might find ourselves not being able to stand up for what we believe because of the delicate, the difficult situation that we find ourselves in. And again, we're talking rather vaguely, but it's hard for me at least to find the precise application for this verse. And again, I go back to what I said, that we shouldn't use such a verse as this in such a broad fashion that somehow it becomes an excuse or a reason why we should never present the truth to others, that somehow it becomes a quote for our cowardice or our laziness or a snobbery, perhaps, that looks at a person and says, that person is just not quite the right caliber, and so I shouldn't be bothered with them. Cast not your pearls before swine, and so forth. Jesus went to the very poorest of society. He went to the people who were outcasts, and he presented the truth to them in the proper fashion. But again, as I said, there may be occasions when this very verse needs to be applied to a particular situation. Verse seven, actually verses seven through 11 make up a section. Jesus says, ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. If you want an easy memory verse, this is it. I'll tell you why. All you have to do, and you can memorize the whole verse in five seconds flat, all you have to do is remember how to spell a very simple word, ask. If you've got the first word of the verse, ask and it shall be given you, there's the A, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened unto you. And you memorize the whole verse in five seconds flat. Then you can remember where it is because it's the first book of the New Testament, and that's easy, everybody knows Matthew. And it's chapter seven and verse seven, and everybody knows how significant the number seven is. So, you know, close your eyes. Matthew seven, verse seven, ask and you shall find, seek. Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened unto you. Practice it twice before you try it. You'll be better off. James says, and remember I mentioned once before that James is presenting a commentary pretty much on the Sermon on the Mount. James says, chapter one and verse five, if any one of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that he will give it. So again, he's applying this principle that Jesus gives here, ask and you shall find, ask and it shall be given you. I did it again. For everyone that asketh, receiveth, and he that seeketh, findeth, and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. In other words, Jesus is saying, God will give to you everything that you need. And this goes along with the prayer that Jesus prayed. Give us this day our daily bread. He wasn't just talking about physical things. I think he was talking about the spiritual needs that we have too. God will provide for you in that regard. You lack knowledge, God will give it to you. I mean, he won't give it to you on a silver platter where you don't have to think for yourselves. But if you apply yourself to the scripture and if you pray for God's help, he will give you knowledge from the scripture and by the experiences of your life that you go through. And you will know, you will eventually learn how you should act. There may be many false starts. There may be many wrong turns along the way. But God will give you what is necessary if you go to him. So I think, give us this day our daily bread is talking about spiritual needs as well as physical needs. And Jesus returns to that theme here in verses seven and eight. And then he says in verses nine and ten and eleven, why is this so? How do we know we can trust in God? Because God is our Father. What man, he says, is there of you, whom if his son asked bread, will he give him a stone? If he asked a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, if you then being something less than righteous, something less than perfect, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father, which is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him? So he's saying, look at the analogy. The parent for the child, any reasonable parent will try to provide for his child whatever that child needs. And if you're able to do that, weak as you are with your own selfishness and your own difficulties in doing what is right, then surely you can recognize that your Father in heaven will give you all the things that you need. He may not give you all the things you want, but he'll give you all the things that you need. Just as we can't always give our children all the things they want. And even sometimes we make a conscious choice not to give them something they want for their own good. So God will act in the same way and more perfectly toward us who are his children, giving us what we need, not necessarily everything we want, but what we need to sustain us physically and spiritually in our way toward the kingdom. Then in verse 12, Jesus gives something of a summary verse, it seems to me, for a lot of what he said in chapters five and six and seven. Therefore, he says, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets. What he's saying is this is the whole law. Everything that I've been saying to you is comprehended in this rather simple statement. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. He puts it in a slightly different way in Matthew chapter 22 when he says, the two commandments, the two great commandments are, love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and thy spirit, thy mind, thy strength, and…