Sermon Tone Analysis

Prepare To Be Amazed

Matthew 5-7   |   Shaun LePage   |   February 19, 2006

 

 

I.

Introduction

A.   A few years ago, I went to Montana with two friends.

We went backpacking up into the Gallatin National Forest near Bozeman, Montana.

We spent the first day and a half hiking up to a lake about 9,000 feet up.

Of course, everything was beautiful—the lake, the streams, the trees, the mountain peaks.

We camped there and fished and did nothing for a couple days.

Then we decided to hike around and explore the area.

At one point, we picked a ridge and decided to climb up and see the view from the top of that ridge.

That climb took us all morning.

About 200 yards from the top, I got a burst of energy and pushed up in front ahead of my two friends.

When I reached the top, I could not believe my eyes.

It was one of the most amazing views I’ve ever seen.

It was a clear day and we could see for miles and miles.

One particular range of mountains was decorated with crystal clear lakes at various levels with streams and waterfalls connecting them.

It was amazing.

I had never seen anything like it.

Every time I’ve tried to describe what I saw that day, I’ve come up short.

It was truly one of those things you had to see for yourself to appreciate.

Even the pictures can’t come close to the amazing experience of being there and seeing it for yourself.

B.    Isn’t that the way “amazing” things are?

A report or a description or a snapshot can’t do it justice.

If it’s truly “amazing,” you have to see it for yourself to appreciate it.

You have to make the climb yourself to understand what others have tried to describe.

C.   The Sermon on the Mount was one such event.

Matthew 5:1 says Jesus “*went up on the mountain*” just before He delivered this sermon that we now call Sermon on the Mount.

That’s why it’s called Sermon on the Mount because Jesus’ sanctuary that day—His pulpit—was one of the beautiful green mountains that rose up from the Sea of Galilee *[ppt]*.

D.

Not only did Matthew record that magnificent sermon for us, but he also recorded the effect of the sermon on those who made the climb that day.

Matthew 7:28 tells us the reaction of Jesus’ first audience: “*When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching*…” Those who made the effort to be near Jesus that day got to experience something that in one sense, we can only imagine.

We can only dream about how amazing it must have been.

But in another sense, we can experience the Sermon on the Mount in a way that is just as amazing—just as life-changing as hearing it from Jesus Himself.

E.    This sermon is another part of Matthew’s presentation of the person of Jesus Christ.

He’s answering the question, “Who is this Jesus?” and here he demonstrates Jesus to be One with “authority”.

Jesus taught like no one else.

He taught as the God-Man.

In a word, Jesus was “different.”

Radically different than anyone they’d ever seen or heard.

II.

Body

A.   But we must “prepare to be amazed”.

I feel compelled to lay some groundwork before we dive into this magnificent section of the Bible.

There are significant interpretation issues that need to be addressed first.

The way we answer these interpretation issues will make an enormous impact on our application of the Sermon on the Mount.

1.

R.

H. Mounce wrote: “The Sermon on the Mount has had a long and varied history of interpretation.

For Augustine…it was the ‘perfect rule or pattern of Christian life—a new law in contrast with the old.

Monastic orders interpreted it as a ‘counsel of perfection’ designed not for the populace but for the chosen few.

The Reformers held it to be the ‘uncompromising expression of divine righteousness directed towards all’.

Tolstoy, the Russian novelist…resolved it into five commandments (suppression of all anger, chastity, no oaths, nonresistance, unreserved love of enemies), which if literally obeyed would do away with the existing evils and usher in a Utopian kingdom.

Weiss and Schweitzer held that the demands were too radical for all times, and thus declared them ‘interim ethics’ for the early Christians, who believed that the end of all things was at hand.

Still others, making great allowance for figurative language, understood the Sermon as the expression of a noble way of thinking—teaching which dealt with what man should /be/ rather than with what he should /do/.”

(/New Bible Dictionary/)

2.     There are two important questions we need to ask about the Sermon on the Mount:

a)    The first question is: *1.

Who is supposed to live out the Sermon on the Mount?

*This is a fundamental question to answer because some have distorted the gospel by not answering this question correctly.

(i)   The Social Gospel View is the belief that the Sermon on the Mount is all that matters in the New Testament.

(a)  All we have to do is apply the Sermon on the Mount.

We can thereby produce the kingdom of God on earth.

Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones says this view has become “out-moded.”

“Two world wars have shaken that view to its very foundation,” writes Dr. Lloyd-Jones.

(b) If we look at the Beatitudes alone, it becomes obvious that no man can live the Sermon on the Mount in and of himself.

Those who try to say that the Sermon on the Mount is “the gospel”—the good news of Jesus Christ—completely misunderstand the definition of “the gospel” in the greater context of the New Testament.

(c)  Once again, R. H. Mounce writes, “Canon Liddon, in his Bampton Lectures, refers to the Sermon as ‘that original draught of essential Christianity’.

If this be interpreted to mean that the Sermon on the Mount is Christianity’s message to the pagan world, we must counter with the reminder that it is manifestly /didachē/ (teaching), not /kerygma/ (proclamation).

By no stretch of the imagination can it be considered ‘good news’ to one depending upon fulfilment of its demands for entrance into the kingdom.

(Imagine a man outside of Christ, without the empowering aid of the Holy Spirit, trying to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.)”

(/New Bible Dictionary/)

(ii) Dispensationalists—among whom I consider myself—have traditionally interpreted the Sermon on the Mount as being primarily addressed to those who will populate the earth in the 1,000 year reign of Christ following His return.

In other words, the Sermon on the Mount was delivered as Jesus was offering Himself to the nation of Israel as the King of the Jews.

When the Jews rejected their King, they—in essence—postponed the Davidic reign of Christ on earth.

(a)  Dr.

C. I. Scofield popularized this view in his very popular study Bible—the Scofield Study Bible—when he wrote that the Sermon on the Mount “in its primary application gives neither the privilege nor the duty of the Church.”

But, Dr. Scofield was quick to explain that “there is a beautiful moral application to the Christian” as well.

And, “these principles fundamentally reappear in the teaching of the Epistles.”

(b) This is—as I understand it—the same view held by Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, the founder of Dallas Theological Seminary.

Dr. Chafer wrote, “In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt.

5-7) moral principles relating to the (future) kingdom are detailed with some application to the present” (/Chafer Systematic Theology/-Abridged, Vol. 2, pgs.

324-5).

(c)  This view has a lot of credibility—in my opinion—and has been misrepresented at times to say that the Sermon on the Mount “has nothing whatsoever to do with modern Christians.”

I think this is overstated.

I just quoted two of the most famous dispensationalists of the past century and they both say that the Sermon on the Mount has application for the modern Christian.

At least two other significant dispensationalists—J. Dwight Pentecost and Charles R. Swindoll—have written excellent books presenting the present-day application of the Sermon on the Mount.

(d) The fundamental issue is in how one defines “the kingdom of God.”

When Jesus spoke of the kingdom, was He only referring to His future millennial reign?

1.

Dr.

Lloyd-Jones put it this way: “I agree, of course, that the kingdom of God in one sense has not been established on the earth yet.

It is a kingdom which is to come; yes.

But it is also a kingdom which has come…Christ is reigning today in every true Christian.

He reigns in the Church when she acknowledges Him truly.

The kingdom has come, the kingdom is coming, the kingdom is yet to come.”

(/Sermon on the Mount/, p. 16)

2.     Dr.

Craig Blaising—himself a Dispensationalist—agrees: “Whereas Jesus advances the tradition of the Old Testament prophets by predicting the coming of the eschatological (future) kingdom with Himself as Messiah, there are some occasions in the Gospels when He speaks of the kingdom as being present in His own day.”

(/Progressive Dispensationalism/, p.248)

3.     I’m just scratching the surface here of what is a hotly debated theological issue.

Whether it interests you or bores you, it is important because the Sermon on the Mount is a very high standard.

Some would say it is an impossible standard.