MATTHEW 5—7
JESUS MADE A NUMBER of remarkable statements, but perhaps none as remarkable as when he said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (24:35). Think about that claim. If I told you today that what I am about to say in the next few pages, each and every word that is mine, will be remembered when we’re all dead and gone, in fact, when the whole world is dead and gone, what would you think of me? If I was to claim, as Jesus did, that there is lasting value to each sentence I speak, what would you think of me? Well, those who know me well might think I was making a joke, and those who don’t know me might think I was one. You see, no one in the history of the world, who had his head on straight, talked like Jesus talked, claiming that his words have eternal value.
I make my living by speaking, and yet I am self-aware enough to know that when words fall from my mouth, it’s as if they fade into the wind, or it’s as if they are swallowed up by time. And this is not true of only my words or your words—it’s true of everybody’s words.
After President Obama’s inaugural speech in 2008, I remember how some in the media claimed that America’s new President’s words would be “chiseled in stone”; in other words, what he said would be long remembered. Now, certainly I would agree that such a speech by our first African-American president has historical value to it, but I had to laugh at such a claim (and this may offend some of you; I don’t mean to be offensive, and I promise I’ll be far more offensive later in this chapter, so please wait until then to be offended)—only because I know from history that even presidential speeches—the best of them, the most historically significant of them—are easily and usually forgotten.
What about George Washington’s Farewell Address or FDR’s War Message or Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address? Yes, all those are famous presidential speeches, but even the Gettysburg Address, the most famous of the three, though we might remember how it starts (“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation...”) is forgettable. Let’s be honest, most Americans have forgotten the precise contents of that speech, and some of us can’t even remember what “four score” means.
Important words might be written down or even “chiseled in stone,” but like the chiseled script on most monuments in your city’s downtown as well as downtown Washington, DC, we have forgotten when and who and what was said.
But not so with the words of Jesus! Isn’t that remarkable? Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever stopped to think, “How is it that this carpenter’s son, born out of wedlock [wasn’t he?], this poor Jew from the nowhere town of Nazareth, who lived 2,000 years ago and who lived fewer years than what is required to be the President of our country—how is it that his words are as alive today as the oxygen in this air, as the blood that pulses through our veins?” I don't care how long you have gone to church or how much or how little you have studied the Bible, you have likely heard Jesus’ teachings from the Sermon on the Mount.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (5:8)
If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. (5:39)
No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. (6:24)
Judge not that you be not judged... Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye. but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? (7:1,3)
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. (7:7)
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them. (7:12)
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. (6:9-13)
Those words aren’t chiseled in stone. Rather, they are words sown into the fabric of the civilized (and uncivilized) world, as Christianity has spread from the Middle East to North Africa and Europe, then over to North America, then south to Latin America, Africa, and India, and finally to Asia, where it is currently spreading like wildfire. You see, it’s not just that he has the whole world in his hands, but also that now the whole world has his words in its mouth.
So as skeptical as someone might be about Christ and Christianity, I cannot grasp how anyone can disprove Jesus’ own prophecy about the longevity of his words. Was Jesus right? Well, yes! He was right, right? Whatever you think of him, so far so good; he said his words would be around, and sure enough I’m writing about them now, and you're reading my words about them now. And we’re not alone. In every continent and in every major city around the world Jesus’ name is being praised and his words are being explained and applied.
But why is this so? That’s what I’m trying to get us to think about. "Well,” you might respond, “that’s simple. It’s indoctrination. In the Western world, since the time of Constantine, we have indoctrinated our children with this religious rubbish.” Yeah, maybe you’re right. But I don’t think so. Each and every culture indoctrinates their children with stuff that’s really rubbish, and like rubbish it easily or eventually dissolves. Truths, however, have a way of rising to the surface. If one culture or country seeks to bury them in the sand like atheistic Russia did a few decades ago or Communist China does today—strangely, oddly, almost inexplicably (some might call it miraculously) Christianity flourishes. It grows like a thousand wildflowers through the cracks of a city sidewalk. I don’t think it’s indoctrination. Rather, I think there is something inherently truthful and powerful in Jesus’ words because someone inherently truthful and powerful said them.
What is the Sermon on the Mount all about? That’s what we will look at in this chapter. What's the Sermon on the Mount—Jesus’ most remembered words of his well-remembered words—all about? The short answer is, JESUS. It’s about Jesus. The long answer is, it’s about Jesus’ authority. The longer answer is, it’s about Jesus’ truthful and powerful authority and why you and I should submit to him.
It's about Ethics, Right?
“But wait a minute,” you say. “The Sermon on the Mount is about ethics, isn’t it? It’s not about Jesus; it’s about the moral teachings of Jesus, right?” Well, to be sure Jesus makes ethical statements. In fact, he gives fifty imperatives; do this, don’t do that; be like this, don’t be like that. And yes, he deals with ethical issues that affect family and society, such as adultery and divorce and the taking of oaths. He speaks on religion—true religion and religious hypocrisy—and he instructs us on prayer and fasting and almsgiving. He teaches on doing good works and doing God’s will. He speaks on virtues—being merciful, peaceful, humble, loving our neighbors and even our enemies. And he speaks on vices—lust, anger, anxiety, undue and ungrounded and unexamined criticism.
So, yes, his teachings are ethical. But, no, he is not just some moral teacher, as is so often claimed. Many people today like to “befriend” Jesus only to domesticate or update or revise his words to fit their own politics or philosophy or lifestyle. And many, because of this, just pick and choose from the sayings of this Sermon, like a three-year-old boy picks at his dinner plate, pushing the broccoli aside for the Jell-O. They say, “I like the stuff about love, but not divorce; about feeding the poor, but not poverty of spirit; about the dangers of materialism but not of idolatry; about God being good but not about me being evil; about those who are judgmental, but not about me having to stand before Jesus as Judge.”
Ah, but you see, Jesus’ ethical teachings are like the relationship between our bones and our bodies. If you took all that surrounds our bones—our organs, veins, muscles, flab, and whatever else there is—we'd die. The “bones” of Jesus’ teaching cannot be separated from the body of the Teacher or from his life, death, and resurrection—his view of God, humankind, and the necessity of new birth, repentance, and faith for one to enter into a saving relationship with God.
It's about Authority
What we have here are not moral platitudes for the masses, especially that ever so popular one-size-fits-all morality. These are ethics of the kingdom for those who call Jesus King—for those who have come, so to speak, to the feet of Jesus, listening to him on the Mount as he opens his mouth (5:1,2). This Sermon is not about ethics so much as it is about the Ethicist! It’s about Jesus. So it’s about Jesus’ authority and why you and I should submit to him and his words.
Let me show you from this text, quickly and convincingly (I hope), this central theme.
To set the broader context, we’ll start with the bookends of the Gospel of Matthew (chapters 1 and 28). Then we’ll look at the bookends of the Sermon on the Mount (5:1-12 and 7:21-29).
The Gospel of Matthew begins with Jesus’ genealogy. Now, what’s the point of this long list of names (so and so was the father of so and so... and so on)? The point is to say, as Matthew does say in the first verse, that Jesus is the son of Abraham and the son of David (1:1), that is, he is the Messiah, the King of the Jews.
That’s how Matthew’s Gospel begins. But how does it end? Turn again to Matthew 28. It ends with the Great Commission, where Jesus tells his disciples to spread the gospel throughout the world. But what does he say before that? Before the commission he makes an admission. He says in verses 18 and 19, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” “All authority”—those are the two key words of this Gospel!
Matthew 1—he’s the King of the Jews.
Matthew 28—he’s the King of the universe!
Those are the bookends to the book.
Next let’s turn our attention to chapters 5,6, and 7. What’s at the start and stop of the Sermon on the Mount? Again we find this theme of authority! In 7:28, 29 we read, “And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.” The first reaction from the first hearers was, “Wow! What authority! Who is this teacher? He has a weight to him that even our best Bible authorities don’t have.”
This same note of authority is found in the Sermon’s setting, 5:1,2. Here we learn that Jesus “went up on the mountain,” there “sat down,” and then “opened his mouth and taught them.” Each of these actions—going atop a mountain, sitting, and opening his mouth—actually relates to his authority. Here’s why I say that.
In Matthew mountains are important. Seven times we find Jesus on one— at his temptation (4:8), when he went away to pray (14:23), when he healed and fed the multitudes (15:29-38), during the transfiguration (17:1), when he gave the Olivet Discourse (24:3) and the Great Commission (28:16), and here in the Sermon on the Mount (5:1).
Mountains are also important elsewhere in the Bible. We think especially of Moses and Mount Sinai where God speaks to him and gives him the Ten Commandments. So the mountain is a hint to us that something important is going on here and someone important is at hand. But so too is the posture of sitting. Sitting in the ancient world and sometimes today is a symbol of authority. Kings sit when you come into their presence. The Pope, when he has something authoritative to say, speaks ex cathedra, which is Latin for “out of the chair.” He’s sitting. Jewish rabbis in Jesus’ day would sit to speak from or about the Scriptures (cp. Luke 4:20, 21). So Jesus sat to teach. He opened his mouth, but not merely to speak from or about the Scriptures, but in fact to claim authority of interpretation and application over them, and even fulfillment of them. “Do not think,” Jesus says, “that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (5:17). Now that’s authority! In the past when God had something to say, he spoke through Moses or Samuel or Isaiah or Jeremiah. He spoke through the prophets. But now, with Jesus, we have the direct and authoritative voice of God’s beloved Son, of “Immanuel” (“God with us”), as Matthew calls him (1:23).
Matthew 5:1-2—authority
Matthew 7:28-29—authority
Let us look at something else related to this theme of authority in the Beatitudes. Look afresh (5:2ff.) to what Jesus says here, and concentrate especially on the end of the first and last beatitudes. The first says: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (5:3). Now ask this question to that beatitude: Says who? What authority do you have, Jesus, to say who gets into the Kingdom and how? Now note the last beatitude: “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (5:11,12a; cp. 24:9). Again, says who? On your account? You, Jesus, know and determine what kind of faithful perseverance will be rewarded in the afterlife?
Now, if you thought or you now think that the Beatitudes have a bite to them, let me show you Jesus’ final words, the tail of this text (7:21-27), which, like that of a scorpion, has quite a sting of its own. And here look again for those penetrating first-person personal pronouns—every “I” and “me” and “my” and "mine.” Note also the phrase “your name.” Jesus says:
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”
Keep looking. We’re in the middle of the potentially offensive part of the chapter.
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
End of sermon. Wow! What authority! Who preaches like that?
I'd like to say, here at the end of the Sermon, that Jesus gives a gracious invitation—“Come to me,” as he’ll later say, “and I will give you rest” (11:28). But here our Lord gives not so much an invitation as an assessment. He says in essence, “Listen, I will be the Judge of everyone. And your final destiny will be determined by our relationship or lack thereof, whether you know me or not, whether I know you or not, and along with that, whether you listened to my words or not.”
I know this is not politically correct. Jesus is not PC. I’m not PC by saying he’s not PC. And I know (trust me I know) that the biggest mental and moral issue in our culture today is exclusivity. I know that I can say to you just about anything about Jesus—that he’s my personal Savior, that he loves little children, that he once walked on water. I can say all that—I just can’t say, “He is the only way to God.” I can’t say what he said: “If you don’t know me, then you don’t know my Father in Heaven.” Yes, that sounds arrogant, but it is not any more or less arrogant or exclusive than the person who says, “I think all religions are the same,” “I think each religion has some of the truth but not all of it,” or “I think everyone is going to Heaven.”
Why do I say that? Because says who? Says you! And who are you to say such things? I’m serious. As I see it I have three choices: (1)I can believe you or someone just like you—another mere human being, (2) I can believe myself (and whatever I want to think and claim about such matters), or (3) I can believe Jesus and what he said.
You see, it’s a matter of authority. Who is your Lord? Self, society, freedom of choice (the great idol of our age)? Who is Lord? Jesus is my Lord because I believe he is the Lord! I believe he has authority over Heaven and earth, which includes me and my itty-bitty mind, me and my unholy heart, and me and my dirty hands. He is Lord! And I don’t claim that for him—I simply acknowledge it and live by it.
I became a Christian when I was nearly twenty years old, after I had lived exactly how Jesus says here in the Sermon on the Mount not to live. I was like a whitewashed tomb—clean on the outside, but full of dead bones on the inside. I would pray each day—mumble, mumble, mumble to God, thinking the more prayers, the greater the likelihood he would hear and love me; I would do religious acts to be seen and esteemed by others; and I was no adulterer, but I was full of lust; no murderer, but full of hate; no perjurer but full of lies. But Jesus got a hold of my heart. He showed me its blackness; then he cleaned it up. He made it white as snow. And he made it beat, beat, beat to the rhythm of his voice.
When I tell people about my conversion to Christ, some say, sometimes in a patronizing voice, “Well, that's nice. I guess that’s what you needed. You know, I think religion has some value to it. It brings comfort and joy, a sense of belonging.” Well, yes, all those things are true. As a Christian I have found comfort and joy and a sense of belonging, much more than when I was not a Christian. I have felt fulfillment and happiness and hope. But, you know, I'm not primarily or foundationally a Christian because of these benefits, as real as they are. I'm a Christian not because it’s nice or even because it’s helpful, but because it’s true. You see, it’s a matter of authority, and then of allegiance. Since Jesus is Lord (the Lord), then I acknowledge that—I believe, I submit, I love the Lord my God with all my heart and mind and strength and soul.
Fall at His Feet
Jesus made a number of remarkable statements, didn’t he? He predicted that the gospel would reach the ends of the earth and that someone from every nation would know him and accept the good news about him. He claimed that his Ecclesia—first comprised of former fisherman (4; 18—22), lepers (8:2-4), Roman soldiers (8:5-13), mentally insane men (8:28—34), cripples (9:1-8), tax collectors (9:9-13), those who were blind and mute (9:27-34), thieves, murderers, and prostitutes—would remain (16:18). And he said that Heaven and earth would pass away but his words would last and last and last (24:35). And so far he has been right about all of these. It is not a matter of opinion or belief; it’s a matter of history!
And if he has been right about those things, might he also be right about who he is and why he came? He is the Lord, as he says here in 7:21, who “came,” as he says in 9:13, “not to call the righteous [those who think they are not morally sick, cp. 9:12], but sinners [those who know they need a Savior].” And might he be right about how such “sinners” enter the kingdom of heaven? We enter (1) through poverty of spirit—the first beatitude, (2) through the asking of forgiveness for our trespasses—the center petition of the Lord’s Prayer, and (3) through faith—which underlies every word here in chapters 5, 6, and 7 and is as obvious as a red cross on a white shield in chapters 8, 9.
C.S. Lewis became an atheist when he was fifteen because, in his own words, he was “very angry with God for not existing.” But then later in life, at the age of thirty-three, while a professor at Oxford, he came like an unwilling child “kicking and screaming”. He was, in his own words, a “reluctant convert” to Christ, but a real one. He didn't want to become a Christian, but as he looked at the person and teachings of Jesus, he didn't see another viable alternative. “In the Trinity Term of 1929,” he writes, "I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed.” Later Lewis would write in Mere Christianity these now famous but always thought-provoking words:
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or... you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.
My prayer today is that you and I do (and continue to do) the latter—that we admit that God is God and that Jesus is indeed Lord.
(R. Kent Hughes. and Douglas Sean O'Donnell., 2013; edited Carl Hinton., 2020)