Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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Introduction:
Last Sunday we began our journey through the Sermon on the Mount, which for those of you who have no idea what that means, is a three chapter section inside of the Gospel of Matthew.
Because there has historically been so much attention given to the Sermon on the Mount, I felt it necessary to take an aerial view of the Sermon before we actually began treading through it.
And what we determined was that Matthew focuses most on structuring the book in a way that presents Jesus as King.
So, he set the stage by introducing us to Jesus’ family tree which was a bunch of Royal Misfits.
He then continued to guide us to see this royal lineage at the same time the lineage of the unimportant.
So when we get to the fourth chapter and Jesus begins to preach that “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” we know that he is saying, “Jesus the one from the royal heritage (son of David) is announcing that God’s reign is here.”
The challenge last week was to actually repent of our preconceptions of who Jesus is, what Jesus says about discipleship, and what Jesus says about the Kingdom.
We determined, we’re going to listen to what he says.
So naturally Jesus begins to assemble a people, but those people aren’t who you might expect, they’re the misfits of society.
Matthew beautifully weaves the two themes together.
And just as you might expect, Jesus does what preaches a sermon that reveals what the Kingdom is actually like.
To do that Jesus picks up a very traditional approach to teaching, he begins by announcing nine statements.
What are the things that epitomize life under God’s Reign?
Life in the Kingdom of Heaven?
#Blessed ?
How many of us have ever had a difficult time figuring what Jesus is saying in the Beatitudes?
Join the club.
Part of the difficulty of understanding the Beatitudes is that we’re not quite sure how to define what Jesus means when he says, “Blessed.”
In our society, and even in the Church, the primary understanding of that term is that God’s favor is upon you (which is not totally untrue).
So when someone asks us, “How are you doing?” and we say, “I’m blessed” we normally mean that things are going well.
Or maybe we’re saying, “I’m happy.”
But what do we mean when we say “happy” and “Things are going well?”
Do we immediately envision escaping reality to become happy?
(bills, kids, relational tension)
Do we immediately envision upgrading to become happy?
(houses, cars, boats, toys)
Do we immediately envision not having to worry about anything?
(balancing all the plates well so I’m never stressed out)
If you lay that understanding of blessed onto the Beatitudes, what do you have?
Or “You are like this, so therefore you are blessed?”
Or is Jesus saying, “If you want to be my disciple, you’re going to have to be poor in spirit, but don’t worry you will go to heaven for your humility?”
Almost as a way of saying, “If you want to go to heaven, you’ll need to be meek, you’ll need to mourn, you’ll need to be pure in heart?”
Is Jesus saying, “Things are going to go well with you, if you become poor in spirit?’
Or is Jesus saying, “The people in my Kingdom are poor in spirit, mourn, meek, hungry and thirsty for righteousness?”
Or if you twist it around a little you might get something like, “If you’re poor in spirit, you’re going to get… the kingdom of heaven?”
How poor do you have to be?
How meek?
How much do I need to mourn?
How poor do you have to be?
How meek?
How much do I need to mourn?
This is really where the issues begin because now we have to figure out how to make that fit into the theology of salvation by grace through faith.
And the other option goes against a sanctification by grace and turns it in to legalism.
This is where recognizing literary genre and cultural context make all the difference.
Because what Jesus is doing was very common in Judaism and in Greco-Romanism.
Let me give you a couple examples
You’re familiar with the Psalms and Proverbs that begin with the same term, “Blessed” like,
Psalm 119:
Psalm 32:
And Lady Wisdom speaking in
Prov 8:
The Jews had a term for this that is still used today, this genre is called, Wisdom Literature.
The purpose of wisdom literature is to cast a vision/ an invitation of a way of living in the world.
Often in wisdom literature you will see a fork in the road scenario where two paths are presented.
Typically you have the path of the blessed man or wise man and the path of destruction or the foolish path.
Like
What were Solomon and the Psalmists doing?
They were holding up a model and saying this is the path to the life of flourishing.
Here is the way to live in the world towards God, yourself, and your fellow-man.
About 150 years before Jesus, there was another teacher named, Jesus son of Sirah.
He wrote a very proverb-like book called the Book of Sirach
If you didn’t know this wasn’t in the Bible you might gloss over it and assume it’s somewhere in the Proverbs.
But, there is something different about these Proverbs.
The 25th chapter of this book of wisdom is all about happiness, the good life.
His description of the blessed life has some interesting twists to it, like:
“A man who lives to see the downfall of his foes” In other words, the blessed or good life is the life of the ultimate warrior.
The one who never loses.
“A man who does not plow with an ox and ass together” Why is that the good life?
Because you have plenty of cash to buy two bulls, so you can save the donkey for other things.
The blessed life then is the multi-car family.
We have abundance, we’re blessed.
“And the one who has not served an inferior.”
That’s pretty self explanatory, but just in case, he’s teaching that the blessed life is the life where you don’t ever have to do the serving, you’re always being served.
You have arrived at the top of the ladder, you’re not stuck with the jobs nobody wants, more importantly you don’t have to stoop down and interact with the inferiors.
It’s elitism in the clearest form.
“And the one who speaks to attentive listeners” The blessed life is the life where you’re the one giving the TED talks.
Everybody is at your feet, hanging on everything you say.
You no longer need to listen to others, you’re on top, you call the shots, you’re the man.
So, what’s the model that this wisdom literature is hoisting up, saying the lady who has this kind of influence, the guy who has attained this level, they’re the goal.
This is the ideal.
And there’s just enough truth in there to cause any Jew to say, “I think this guy is on to something.”
Another highly influential teacher and thinker was the philosopher, Aristotle.
He lived some three hundred years before Jesus, but his influence was heavily spread throughout the known world even up to today.
Aristotle’s works to his son in the book “Nicomechean Ethics” is also a form of wisdom literature (a wise sage writing a book to his son).
Aristotle’s idea of the good life has some very admirable commendations, but they ultimately lead a person to individual and personal fulfillment.
Aristotle taught that virtue was for the elite.
Aristotle taught that mercy and humility were very low forms of virtue if they had any value at all.
So the point is that Jesus is being very intentional.
The Jews have become very Hellenized, so it seems what Jesus is doing as he (the King) gathers his people (the people of the Kingdom) and begins to teach, taking the posture of a Rabbi that he is acting on what he has already said, “Repent (stop what you’re doing, how you’re thinking about God and the Kingdom) and listen to what the Kingdom is really like, because it’s here.
And he does so by using wisdom, holding up a model, think of the model like a stained-glass window that has nine pieces of glass and each one adds to the whole piece.
So he’s simultaneously holding up that model and inviting people from all walks of life to find the true life of (not just personal, but) human flourishing in the Kingdom.
And the great surprise is that this life of flourishing is not at what one might think.
But if you were here for our OT reading this morning, listen to the Beatitudes with the background of and the chapter in Isaiah we read last week, , where he says
Is 52:
The Great Surprise
The Jews living in the first century have gotten the idea in their minds that the Kingdom is for the spiritually elite.
Those who can live up to the law and it’s demands are the ones who God favors and therefore the more knowledge and the better you’ve become at knowing and memorizing the Torah, the more likely you are to living the flourishing life.
This is a typical example of the two-path wisdom literature.
A wise son hears his father’s instruction (we’re not waiting on anything there) but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.
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