Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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Review
During our last time together we looked at the ministry of Jesus and, based on chapter 4 verses 23-25, we boiled it down to two basic categories, his words and his works.
His words were centered on the gospel, or the good news, of the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus’ ministry was first and foremost a message and a proclamation of the kingdom of God and of its king.
A people dwelling in darkness had seen a great light, and that light was Christ.
His message of the kingdom would be a beacon of hope for all those who would repent and believe, both then and even now for us.
Jesus took this message throughout all of Galilee teaching and preaching in the Jewish synagogues.
And like Ezra, a priest and scribe before him, he read and taught from God’s law with authority and clarity.
He read the Scriptures aloud to the people and declared to them that he was the fulfillment of their teaching.
18  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19  to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Oracles of wheal and oracles of woe.
These beatitudes are oracles of wheal - or blessing.
18  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19  to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
We also saw that great miracles were performed at the hands of Jesus as he travelled throughout the region.
We saw how those miracles were manifestations and tangible evidences of God’s kingdom having come not only in word but also in power.
These miracles were intended to be but a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven.
They gave evidence to the inauguration of God’s kingdom on earth.
These miracles also confirmed the identity of Jesus as the prophesied Messiah.
As Nicodemus testified in John’s Gospel, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do theses signs that you do unless God is with him.”
These miracles were signs that God’s kingdom, and more specifically, that kingdom’s king had come.
It was Jesus’ message and his miraculous works that would confirm to John the Baptist that Jesus was the “one who is to come.”
The Sermon on the Mount
This week we continue our study in the book of Matthew and turn to what’s likely the most famous block of teaching recorded in the Gospels from the mouth of Jesus - to what’s been famously called the sermon on the mount.
We’ve spent a lot of time looking at the good news of the kingdom and the inauguration of the kingdom at the arrival of Jesus, but now we’re going to see Matthew point his readers to the specific teachings of Jesus.
The ethics of the kingdom
In these teachings here in chapters 5-7 Jesus will spend a great deal of time outlining the character and the behaviors of those who are citizens of the kingdom.
These are what some have called the ethics of the kingdom.
What Jesus will teach us here in this sermon is the kind of character that will mark those who profess Jesus as their Lord.
He will outline what our lives as Christians ought to look like as citizens of his kingdom.
Answering the question, “What is it to be a citizen of God’s kingdom?”
This teaching is what we might call Christianity 101.
Jesus teaches his disciples
So, Jesus, “seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.
And he opened his mouth and taught them.”
Now, at this point Jesus has continued to amass a following of people, but seeing the crowds he ascends a mountain, sits down and begins to teach his disciples.
We get the picture that while the crowds likely followed Jesus up the mountain Jesus intended to sit down and teach his close circle of disciples.
Discipleship
While this particular block of teaching is known by most of us as the sermon on the mount, in many ways the text of Scripture seems to indicate that this was a teaching with the explicit intention of discipleship.
He’s not only declaring the good news of the kingdom at this point but explicitly teaching his disciples the details and the requirements of that kingdom.
He’s teaching and calling his followers to something.
This is the point where we as Christians should take notice that this teaching is directed specifically at us.
As disciples of Jesus we are called to these very things and if our profession be genuine we ought to take them to heart.
Sitting and opening his mouth
Now, it was customary at this time for the disciples of a rabbi to follower their teacher everywhere he went, and when the rabbi would sit it was a signal to his disciples that he intended to teach them.
So after Jesus ascends this particular mountain he sits and opens his mouth.
This formula of sitting and opening his mouth would have been a clear indication of Jesus’ intention to teach his followers by the Jewish readers in Matthew’s day.
Sitting was a position of authority and it was customary even within Jewish synagogues for the scribes to sit and teach from the Scriptures.
Jesus
A parallel with Moses and the law
Many before us have recognized that this sermon on the mount by Jesus in many ways parallels the events surrounding the Israelite’s and Moses at mount Sinai.
Moses ascends mount Sinai, receives the law of God and finally delivers that law to the people.
While there are certainly parallels here that are reminiscent of Moses and the Israelites who have just come out of Egypt, what sets Jesus’ words apart is his careful attention to get at the heart of God’s law.
Jesus isn’t saying anything new, but he is honing in on the intent of God’s law.
He’ll say things like,
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’
22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’
22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go.
First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
We cannot please God by merely outward conformity to his law
The idea that we can please God by merely exercising external conformity to his law is nothing new.
Untold billions of people around the globe, from Europe to Asia, and Africa to Australia and all over the American continents are falsely assured that by some external conformity to a higher moral law will somehow grant them access to some imagined form of heaven, and the Jewish people were of no exception.
It didn’t matter if their theology was right or if there lives had the outward appearance of righteousness or not, what mattered was the state of their hearts, and Jesus makes a bee line for the heart, our hearts in fact, here in his sermon on the mount.
The idea that we can please God by merely exercising external conformity to his law is nothing new.
Untold billions of people around the globe, from Europe to Asia, and Africa to Australia and all over the American continents are falsely assured that by some external conformity to a higher moral law will somehow grant them access to some imagined form of heaven, and the Jewish people were of no exception.
It didn’t matter if their theology was right or if there lives had the outward appearance of righteousness or not, what mattered was the state of their hearts, and Jesus makes a bee line for the heart, our hearts in fact, here in his sermon on the mount.
There is no blessing or assurance of salvation in the merit of our own works.
says,
6  We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
7  There is no one who calls upon your name,
who rouses himself to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.
and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
7  There is no one who calls upon your name,
who rouses himself to take hold of you;
Jesus is good news
for you have hidden your face from us,
And it’s for this reason Jesus is good news, because in Christ God has not hidden his face from us but he has revealed himself to us through his Son, and what a blessed people we are to be steeped in the knowledge and reality of the love of Christ.
There are so many people outside of these doors who are perishing because they don’t know the gospel, and to the credit of none of us here in this room we know the truth, and much more than that we love the truth, yet we so often we treat this treasure not as the man who who sold everything he had to acquire it but instead we keep it secret.
So I implore you not to shrink back in fear, but in joy and in the full assurance of your salvation rejoice “when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on” account of Jesus.
and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.
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