the sermon on the mount nt501 lesson · but nor, on the other hand, was he flamboyant or bombastic....

The Sermon on the Mount

Transcript - NT501 The Sermon on the Mount © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 10 of 10NT501

The Christian’s Religious Life: Part III (Matthew 7:28-29)

The Sermon on the Mount

Lord Jesus, in You are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Enlighten our minds by Your Holy Spirit and grant us that reverence and humility without which no man can understand your truth. For Your name’s sake. Amen.

Well, we really finished our study of the Sermon on the Mount in detail last time, but what I propose to do today is to look back over the whole sermon and to summarize some of its chief emphases so that we may feel the impact of it as a whole.

I’d like to introduce it in this way. There are many people. We meet them in the community around us, and the second community, as well as the invisible church, would tell us that they are prepared to accept the Sermon on the Mount as containing self-evident truth. Although they may not have read it ever, certainly not recently, they probably know it includes sayings such as “Blessed are the merciful; they should obtain mercy,” “Judge not that you be not judged,” “Whatever you want men to do to you, do to them,” etc. and here they say is Jesus of Nazareth, the moral teacher at His simplest and best. Here, they say, is the core of His ethical system without any of the later and worthless additions with which His followers encrusted His teaching. Here, they say, is the original Jesus with plain ethics and no dogmas, an unsophisticated teacher of righteousness claiming, they say, to be no more than a human prophet and telling us just to do good and to love one another.

Now I imagine you have heard people say that kind of thing as I have on many occasions, and we have to say—and this in a sense is my theme as we summarize the Sermon on the Mount—that they are wrong on both counts. They are wrong in their view of the Teacher and they are wrong in their understanding of the ethics which He taught.

So I want to invite you for this final lecture to look with me more closely both at the Teacher and at His teaching, both of the claims which He advanced to Himself and of the lofty humanly unattainable ideals which He set us. What the Sermon on the

Dr. John R.W. Stott, D. D. Experience: Founder of Teach Every Nation



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Mount discloses more clearly than anything else is first the uniqueness of Christ the Teacher, and secondly the distinctiveness of Christians who follow His teaching. Those, then, are the two themes I want to elaborate—the uniqueness of the Teacher and the distinctiveness of those who follow the teaching.

Firstly, then, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. There have been a number who have tried to contrast the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount with the Jesus of the rest of the New Testament. Then they say that they, like the former but not the latter, are prepared to accept the former, but not the latter. So at this stage I want to argue that there is no evidence whatever that the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount is different from the Jesus of the rest of the New Testament. On the contrary; the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount is the same supernatural, dogmatic, and divine Jesus you’ll find everywhere else.

As we read the Sermon on the Mount, the question that is forced upon us is not so much “What do you think of this teaching?” as “Who on earth is this teacher?” This was the reaction of those who actually heard the sermon preached as we see in the last two verses of chapter 7, verses 28 and 29, “When Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.” The crowds were astonished, as professor A. M. Hunter writes in his commentary, “After 1900 years, we are astonished too.”

Now what struck those first hearers was Jesus’s authority. He didn’t hum and haw or hesitate. He wasn’t apologetic about His teaching. But nor, on the other hand, was He flamboyant or bombastic. With quiet and unassuming self-assurance, He laid down the law for the kingdom of God. So I want to analyze with you the authority of Jesus as it is displayed in the sermon and suggest to you it has six or seven ingredients. A. There is the authority of Jesus as Teacher. Now, of course, there have been many other teachers in Jewry and elsewhere, but there is something exceptional, something unique about the authority of Jesus as Teacher, for He assumed the right to teach absolute truths. He spoke as one who knew what He was talking about. For example, in the sermon, He claimed to know who would be great and who would be the last in God’s kingdom. He said He knew who was blessed and who was not. He knew which way led to life and which way led to destruction. He knew these things, and with complete self-confidence He declared who would possess the kingdom of heaven, who would inherit the earth, who would see God, and who were the children of God.

As we read this we say to ourselves, “But how did He know? How could He speak with such certainty and assurance about these



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matters?” There was something regal about Jesus. He spoke like a king. Now commentators have variously described this element in His teaching. Let me give you a few examples. James Denney called it the “sovereign legislative authority of Christ.” Gresham Machen says, “He claimed the rights to legislate for the kingdom of God.” Spurgeon says He spoke “royally.” Plummer writes of His royal assurance. Calvin says people were astonished because “a strange, indescribable and unwonted majesty drew to Him the minds of men.” So here are some examples of commentators who were themselves in studying the Sermon have felt this royal authority, this majesty of the One who is teaching.

In issuing His teaching, He spoke neither like scribes nor like prophets. Thus in verse 29 we’re told that He taught them as “one who had authority and not as their scribes,” because the scribes had no authority of their own. They relied in their teaching on their commentaries which they were unfolding and their only authority was in the authorities which they quoted. So they took refuge in the authorities of the great Jewish rabbis of the past, you see, but Jesus didn’t quote any the rabbis. He spoke in His own name and on His own authority. He didn’t rely on other people’s authority. He didn’t quote the authorities. He had authority of His own. So He was not like the scribes. Nor was He like the prophets either. Their formula was ‘thus saith the Lord, thus saith Jehovah or Yahweh,’ hiding behind the authority of God while Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you.”

It’s not that He was contradicting Moses, as we have already seen. It was only the perverted traditions of the elders, their corruptions of Moses that He rejected. Yet in saying that He was able to give the true interpretation of the Mosaic Law, He challenged all the inherited traditions of the centuries. He dared to sweep it all away and to replace it by His own authoritative interpretation of God’s law. So certain was He of the truth of His teaching that He said that “the only wise men there are, are those who build the house of their lives on His teaching. So as Plummer puts again in His commentary, quoting, I think, from Alexander

MacClaren if I remember right; “He stood forth as a legislator not as a commentator and commanded and prohibited and repealed and promised on His own bare word.”

So it’s not surprising that the people who heard Him were amazed. They never heard anything like this before. They’d heard the prophets speak in the name of the Lord. They’d heard the scribes interpreting the Jewish rabbis. They’d never heard anybody say, “Verily, verily I say to you,” and sweep away all the traditions of the ages in interpreting Moses. We need to try and feel this



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authority of Jesus as Teacher.

Then, secondly, or B, there is the authority of Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah of Old Testament expectation. That is, it’s evident in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus knew that He came on a mission. In chapter 5, verse 17 He could say, “I have not come to destroy, to abolish the law and the prophets. I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill.” But notice the repetition of the verb, _____. I did not come to do this; I did come to do that. So here is a consciousness that He had come into the world on a mission and with a purpose. This purpose was not to abolish but to fulfill. His mission related to all the centuries of preparation that God had given His own people, and Jesus had come as the culmination of this. That is, indeed as the Christ.

So in this sentence, “I came to fulfill,” the ____ and the _____, the two words don’t…well, they sound innocent enough at first, until you reflect on the implications of that statement. It is a claim that all the adumbrations and the predictions of the law and the prophets found their fulfillment in Himself. Now this is consistent with the rest of His teaching in the gospel, so that His first recorded words in the Greek of Mark’s gospel are _______ _______, fulfilled is the time. The kingdom of God is drawn near, repent and believe the good news. So the kingdom of God long promised, long foreshadowed in Old Testament days, had arrived. It was on the threshold and He, Jesus, had come to inaugurate it.

So at the beginning of His public ministry He could go into the Nazareth synagogue. He could stand up to read the Scripture. He could be given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He could find the place that in our Bibles is chapter 61 and He could read the “Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He’s anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives,” etc., etc.. And finishing their lesson, winding up the scroll, giving it back to the synagogue attendant, sitting down to preach, and as the eyes of the congregation are fastened upon Him, He begins to say, “I say to you, this day, this Scripture ______ has been fulfilled in your ears.” In other words, “You want to know who Isaiah was writing about. He was writing about Me.” So you see this _____, this fulfill is something that came again and again in His teaching. He continued to affirm it. “Moses wrote about Me. Abraham rejoiced to see My day. The Scriptures bear witness to Me,” and He interpreted unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

One of the most amazing things I think He ever said to the apostles was “Blessed are your eyes, for they see and blessed are your ears, for they hear. And I tell you many kings and prophets



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desired to see what you see and didn’t see it and to hear what you hear and didn’t hear it.” In other words, “They were living in the days of anticipation, but you are living in the days of fulfillment. Your eyes are actually seeing and your ears are actually hearing what all these Old Testament seers and prophets said was going to come to pass.”

Now this again, and in the authority with which He claimed this, is most remarkable. The whole prophetic testimony of the Old Testament in all its minstrels converged upon Himself. It was only with His person that the kingdom of God had come. Now I don’t think it is any exaggeration to say that all of that is implicit. In chapter 5, verse 17, “I came to fulfill the law and the prophets. It’s all fulfilled in Me.” So there is the authority of the teacher and the authority of the Christ.

Thirdly, C., there is the authority of Jesus as the Lord. Notice He didn’t just teach even that He was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. He didn’t just teach this whether people would hear or whether they refused to hear. He expected people to accept His teaching, not only to believe it, but to obey it even if it was in conflict with the opinions of their contemporaries. His complaint in the Sermon on the Mount was not that they addressed Him as Lord. He accepted the title as appropriate. His complaint was that they didn’t submit to Him as Lord. They called Him Lord, but they didn’t give to Him the loyalty and the obedience which His Lordship required. So He said, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ and do not the things that I say?” which is the Lukan equivalent of the words in Matthew 7:21. He expected His followers then actually to build their lives on His teaching, to make His teaching the foundation of their lives, and anybody who built His life on that foundation was one who not only heard the teaching but obeyed it. He said, “He who hears these sayings of mind and does them.” He expected obedience, and He pronounced them wise and promised them security only if they did so; the authority of Jesus as the Lord.

Fourthly, D., is the authority of Jesus as the Savior. I don’t hesitate to say that in the Sermon on the Mount it is implicit that He was the Savior as well as the Lord of men. It isn’t just that He knew the way of salvation and could teach it, declaring who was blessed and who wasn’t, pointing to the narrow gate that leads to life—not just that He could show the way of salvation, but that He actually could give this salvation. Now even in the Beatitudes He appears in the role of one who virtually distributes blessedness and bestows the kingdom. But consider in addition to that the salt and the light metaphors and what they imply. How is it that this little group of half-educated, Palestinian peasants could be



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described as the salt of the earth and the light of the world? How was that possible? The only answer is because they were followers of Jesus. It was He who made them the salt of the earth and it was He who made them the light of the world. It was He and only He who could give them this light with which they could shine into the darkness of the world, for He is the Light of the World. He claimed to be. He did not share in the universal darkness. He did not even share in the evil of the men He so described, “If you being evil know how to give good gifts.” No, He was distinct from the rest of mankind as the source of light and the source of life and the source of goodness and all that implies that He is the Savior.

Fifthly, E., there is the authority of Jesus as the Judge. Now the whole Sermon on the Mount was preached against the background of the Day of Judgment. The choice that He forces upon His followers looks forward to the day of final reckoning. Jesus knew that the Day of Judgment was a reality and He desired to be a reality in the lives of His followers. But it’s more than this. It is not just that the background to the Sermon on the Mount is the Day of Judgment, but that He had claimed that He Himself would be the Judge. Think particularly of verses 21-23 of Matthew 7 that we looked at last week. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but He who does the will of My Father who’s in heaven. On that day many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord didn’t we prophesy in Your name, etc.’ and I will declare to them ‘I never knew you. Depart from Me, you evildoers.’”

Now the self-centeredness of that paragraph is quite extraordinary. Let me subdivide it. First, the passing of the judgment. “Many will say to Me,” (verse 22) and “I will say to them,” (verse 23). So Jesus will decide and declare their destiny. On the Day of Judgment, they’ll get to speak to Him and He is going to speak to them, and He is going to decide and declare their destiny. So one, the passing of the judgment, two, the nature of the judgment. What will the sentence be? “It will depart from Me.” The terribleness of the sentence pronounced on the lost will be banishment from Jesus Christ Himself. “Depart from Me you evil doers.”

Or consider, thirdly, the criterion of the judgment. That is, on what basis will they be judged? Answer, “I never knew you.” The destiny of men will depend on their relation to Christ. In particular, did Christ know them or did they know Christ? And thus does the carpenter of Nazareth make Himself the central figure on the judgment day. He will Himself on that day assume the role of Judge. The basis of the judgment will be man’s attitude to Him and the nature of the judgment will be exclusion from His



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presence.

The prominence of the personal pronoun and the personal possessive adjectives in these verses is amazing. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter into the kingdom, but he who does the will of My Father. On that day many will say to Me and I will declare to them ‘I never knew you; depart from Me.’” It’s all I, I, I, Me, Me, Me. He claims to be the Judge.

Six, F., the authority of Jesus as the Son of God. Now Jesus portrays in the Sermon on the Mount a wonderful knowledge of God to begin with as the Creator, the God of the universe who makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good: who sends rain on the just and on the unjust, who feeds the birds of the airs, who clothes the lilies of the field. But He not only speaks of God as Creator, He also speaks of God as Father in heaven.

Now it’s quite true that He taught His disciples to regard God as their Father as well. For example, chapter 5, verse 16, “Let your light so shine before men they will see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” At the end of chapter 5, “Love your enemies, pray…” etc. “…that you may be sons of your Father.” “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Chapter 6, verse 6, “When you pray enter into your room, pray to your Father who is in secret.” Chapter 6, verse 31, 32, “Take no anxious thought, your heavenly Father knows what you need.” Chapter 7, verse 11, “If you who are evil know how to give good gifts, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask.” See in each chapter He refers to God as your heavenly Father. But in chapter 7, verse 21, He refers to God as My Father. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, ‘Lord,’ will enter the kingdom, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.”

We need to notice that these are the only two possessives that are used: My Father and your Father and never our Father when associating Himself with them. Well, it’s quite true in chapter 6, verse 9 when He teaches them the Lord’s Prayer, He says, “When you pray, say ‘Our Father.’” That is, He is your Father and when you gather together, you can address Him as our Father together. But in teaching them to pray that prayer, He was not associating Himself with them. Jesus could never have prayed the prayer that He gave to us to pray because it is a prayer, for example, that God would forgive our sins. Jesus had no sins for which He needed to ask for forgiveness. So when He said, “When you pray, say ‘Our Father’, He was not associating Himself with them. He knew He couldn’t because God was His Father in an altogether unique way.

Although He gave His disciples the privilege of addressing God by



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the same title as the one that He used, “Abba Father,” He was still deeply conscious that God was His Father in an altogether different sense. He said so. I’m arguing that it is implicit in the Sermon on the Mount because He uses the possessive “Your Father” and “My Father,” but never associates the two together. But it’s explicit, for example, in Matthew 11:27 where He says, “Nobody knows the Son except the Father; neither does anybody know the Father except the Son, and he to whomsoever chooses to reveal Him.” In those verses He claims that there existed between Himself and the Father a unique reciprocal relationship. He was the Son in an absolute and unqualified sense, and He knew the Father in a way in which nobody else knew Him. Our knowledge of God as the Father is derived from Jesus Christ. It is He who allows us to call God Father in a sonship that is secondary to and derived from the sonship of Jesus. When Jesus did want to associate Himself with us, He had to resort to that clumsy paraphrase—or periphrasis would perhaps be the better expression—or _____ of ______ you have to go right round and say, “I ascend to my Father and your Father to my God and your God.” So there is the authority of Jesus as the Son of God.

The seventh and last example, G., is the authority of Jesus as God Himself. I don’t hesitate to say that this is implicit in the Sermon on the Mount, that the relation Jesus claimed with the Father was more than one of a unique knowledge of the Father. It was an actual identity. Not of course in person, in that the Father and the Son are two eternally distinct modes of being within the godhead, and yet it was an identity of substance or essence. He put Himself on a par with God, and a careful scrutiny of the Sermon on the Mount makes this plain. I’ll give you three examples.

Maybe the first is the most striking. It takes us back to the Beatitudes in chapter 5, verses 11 and 12, for the eight beatitudes are generalizations in the third person. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful,” and so on. In the third person. And the eighth one pronounces “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.” But then He goes on—you may call it a ninth beatitude or, if you like, it’s an elaboration of the eighth. He changes from the third person to the second person; verses 11 and 12 says, “Blessed are you when men revile you, persecute you, utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on My account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Now the implications of this—I simply suggest to you—are staggering. To begin with, Jesus expects His followers to have to suffer for His sake and pronounces them blessed if they do so and promises them a reward in heaven. He says, “If you suffer for



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Me, God will reward you in heaven.” Now that in itself is a fairly astonishing statement, but it’s more than that. He then likens His disciples to the prophets of God in the Old Testament. He says, “They’re going to persecute you, my followers, as they persecuted the prophets who were the spokesmen of God.” The prophets suffered for their faithfulness to God and the disciples were to suffer for their faithfulness to Christ. I say that the implication of that is inescapable; if He is likening His disciples to the prophets of God, He is likening Himself to God.

My second example is back in chapter 7, verse 21 where you would expect the verse to read, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of God, but He who does what I say.” That’s what you’d expect. “Not everyone who calls me Lord, but everyone who obeys Me as Lord.” But that’s not what He says. He says, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom, but He who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.” So to call Jesus Lord and to obey the will of God the Father are identical, and therefore Jesus is again putting Himself and His will—which is to be obeyed as Lord—on a par with the will of God His Father. That is tantamount to calling Himself God.

Or again, take chapter 7, verse 23, “I will say to you, ‘depart from Me, you evil doers.’” Well, it’s clear in other parts of the teaching of Jesus that it is God who judges and God who rewards. But if the sentence to be pronounced upon them is “depart from Me,” and if the fate of the wicked is exclusion from Christ, Jesus is again equating Himself with God.

Now all those I agree are implicit, but I would argue with anybody that they are a legitimate deduction from what He is teaching. Well, here then is your original Jesus. Here is your simple, ethical teacher of righteousness. He teaches with the authority of God, laying down the law in His own name, expecting people to build their lives on the foundation of His teaching. He claims to fulfill the Old Testament. He is both the Lord to be obeyed and the Savior to bestow blessing. He casts Himself in the role of the Judge and makes Himself the central figure on the Judgment Day. He speaks of God as His Father and finally implies that what He does, God does, and what men do to Him, they do to God. We have to conclude that we cannot escape the implications of these claims of Jesus, that either Jesus Christ is true or He suffered from a severe paranoia and its accompanying delusions. I don’t think anybody has put this better than

C. S. Lewis. If I may quote a couple of his passages.

On the one side, there is clear definite moral teaching.



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On the other claims which, if not true, are those of a megalomaniac compared with whom Hitler was the most sane and humble of men. There is no half-way house and there is no parallel in other religions. If you’d gone to the Buddha and asked him, “Are you the son of Bramah?” He would have said, “My son, you are still in the vale of illusion.” If you’d gone to Socrates and asked, “Are you Zeus?” he would have laughed at you. If you’d gone to Mohammed and asked, “Are you Allah?” he would first have rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If you’d asked Confucius, “Are you Heaven” I think he would probably have replied, “Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.” The idea of a great moral teacher saying the kind of thing that Christ said is out of the question. In my view, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion which undermines the whole mind of man.

Just to enforce it, I’ll give you another quotation from Lewis in which he says the same thing in other words. He says,

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he’s a poached egg—or else he would be the devil of hell. And you must take your choice. Either this was and is the on of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but don’t come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great moral teacher. He has not left that alternative open to us.

Well, there I’ve delivered to an extent the greater part of my time on this first subject, the uniqueness of Jesus, the teacher. Maybe I would sum it up in this way. I don’t think any of us can claim to be converted if we’re both not intellectually converted and morally converted. To be intellectually converted means to bring our mind into submission to the teaching of Jesus, and to be morally converted is to bring our will into submission to the will of Jesus. It’s not worth talking about being a converted Christian unless my mind and my will are converted. So I am not at liberty to disagree with Jesus. If I disagree with Jesus, I’m not intellectually converted, and I’m not at liberty to disobey Jesus. If I do, then I’m not morally converted. To be truly converted is to bring my mind, my will, my heart, my life—every part—under the sovereign lordship of Jesus. This is involved in His authority that we’ve been



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talking about.

Now, secondly, for just the remaining five minutes that we’ve got, I’d like to move from the teacher to the teaching, from the uniqueness of the teacher to the distinctiveness of Christians who follow the teaching. You see, it’s not unusual to hear men claim that they actually live by the Sermon on the Mount, and I ask myself how deeply deceived human beings can be. The ideals of the Sermon on the Mount are so lofty that they are unattainable by fallen men. Nobody can even approximate to these standards without new birth by the Holy Spirit and constant renewal by the power of the same Spirit. Only one historical person has ever fulfilled the ideals of the sermon perfectly, and that is the One who preached it. He practiced what He preached, but nobody else has ever succeeded.

Well, what are the distinctive ideals of the sermon? What is the distinctive character that Christ expected of Christians? We’ve look several times at what I’ve called the call to be different. It’s not our dress. It’s not our accent. It’s not our hairstyle. It’s not our mannerisms which mark us out as Christians. In these things we may be indistinguishable from non-Christians. It’s just in terms of our moral standards. The Christian may be culturally identical in all things not sinful with men of his own generation. But morally he is entirely distinct, and I want to emphasize this negatively and positively as I close.

Negatively, the Christian is not to be like any other people. Positively, the Christian is to be like God in whose image men were made and in whose image Christians are remade. We are not to be like any other men; we are to be like God. That is the distinction when you bring it down to its ultimate. The negative, not to be like other men.

Well, this negative is struck repeatedly isn’t it? You take the question of piety in chapter 6, “You must not be like the hypocrites.” You take the question of prayer, “Do not be like them, the pagans.” You take the question of ambition, “Do not be anxious about your materials needs.” Gentiles, pagans are preoccupied with those things, you see. Don’t be like them. Again and again, the Christian calling is to be different from everybody else.

But positively, Christians are to be like God. If you look carefully at this call to be the distinctive people of God in the Sermon on the Mount, you’ll see that it is a call to have standards not just that are different from other people, but that are superior to other people. Thus, 5:20 our righteousness is to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. And 5:47, our love



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is to exceed the love of the publicans “what do you more than others?” They love those who love them. Both our righteousness and our love are to be greater. Christian righteousness is the righteousness of the heart, not the latter, and Christian love for enemies and not just our friends. So you see there are to be no limits to either. No limits to the depth of our righteousness. It’s not to be a thin, shallow veneer of external conformity. It is the righteousness of the heart, the mind, the motive—no limits to the depth of this righteousness and no limits to the breadth of our love. We ought to love everybody, even our enemies, even those who hate us. No limits. Our righteousness is to be so deep, you see, that it includes the heart. Our love is to be so broad it includes everybody, including our enemies.

Now it’s only then that we shall be sons and daughters of our heavenly Father. That is a recurrent theme of the sermon. “Blessed are the peacemakers. They shall be called the sons of God” (5:9). “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your heavenly Father” (5:44,45). “You must therefore be perfect in your love as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48). So you see, it’s a fantastically high standard that Jesus sets before us, that our character and our conduct are not just to be different from the religious and the irreligious, from the Pharisees and from the pagans, but that we are actually to be like our heavenly Father, like God.

Well, let me just conclude in this way. If you say, “How can we make this choice?” and I just didn’t quite have time to go into all the details of the choice, although I guess I have done in the earlier lectures. But I guess when we’re faced with this there is the crowd on the one hand both in the church and in the world, the religious and the irreligious, the Pharisee and the pagan, and there is our heavenly Father on the other as exhibited in His Son, Jesus Christ. The depth of this righteousness, the breadth of this love, is incredibly high standard. I suppose all of us would tremble before the decision of such magnitude, so I wanted to finish just by showing you the good reasons that Jesus gives us for making the right choice; they concern ourselves, others and Himself just in a sentence. One, that only the Christian way is the way of blessedness. People who live like this in righteousness and love are blessed, truly blessed. Personal fulfillment in this life that is perfected in the next is possible only this way. Only the Christian way is the way of blessedness. Two, only by living a Christian life in the power of the Holy Spirit can we become the salt of the earth and the light of the world. If we want to serve our generation, this is the only way. And thirdly, only by following Christ can we even begin to give Him the honor that is due to His name, by acknowledging His divine authority, and by submitting to Him as


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The Christian’s Religious Life: Part III (Matthew 7:28-29)Lesson 10 of 10

our teacher and our Lord.

So for our own sake, in terms of personal fulfillment, for the sake of others, we hope to serve in giving our lives to their service, but above all for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Teacher and our Lord, there is no alternative. We must take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Him. So let us pray. Lord Jesus, we want to thank you together for your teaching as it comes to us freshly, pungently, challengingly across the centuries of time. As powerful today if not more so than when you first spoke it in Galilee. We want to thank you that in your divine providence, your teaching has been preserved for our learning and for our obedience. And we want to submit to your authority together at the end of this course and acknowledge you as our Teacher and as our Lord and Master. Help us to go forth with a new determination to build our lives as wise builders from the foundation of your teaching to be not only forgetful hearers, but doers of it. Not just to call you Lord, Lord, but to do what you say. Hear our prayer. For your great name’s sake. Amen.

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