The Sermon on the Mount
Adult Class-Spring 2004
Lesson 5
The Sermon on the Mount is about the cleansing and reordering of the human heart to make us fit to live in the Kingdom of God. In the process of spiritual reformation, we must deal with the faulty thinking that is prevalent within us. Our task is to develop true inner goodness, the kind of life so desperately wanted and needed by everybody. This inner goodness is required for any kind of ethical life.
After Jesus identified the people who were welcomed into the kingdom of God, He speaks about six new attitudes that must be cultivated in the kingdom heart. We will deal with three of these today and three next week. Far from being ancient theological musings that have little contemporary significance, Jesus approaches the most critical pitfalls of our society. He is able to do that because these are the most critical issues of every era in human history. From the very beginning of these new attitudes, He deals with issues of sex and violence.
Matthew 5:21-26-Live in peace
This is the longest of the six attitude changes. This gives us an idea about how Jesus chooses to teach these ways of thinking and it also deals with a subject that is "front and center" in our lives-violence. Jesus begins with a simple restatement of the age-old prohibition against murder. But the new attitude of the kingdom heart goes far beyond the legalistic "Thou shalt not kill."
Jesus points out that the first problem is one of anger, and especially an anger that is cultivated and nourished. Anger is a feeling associated with the frustration of general righteousness. However, in most cases involving us, our anger is the result of a feeling that our desires have not been fulfilled-and since we automatically assume that our desires are always right, anger is properly indicated! With the mere feeling of anger, we intend to hurt others. Unbelievably, this is cultivated in our society as right and proper. We are told that we should be angry over injustice, we should stand up for our rights, and we should make sure that our interests are fully served. If anything impedes our desires, it is a positive virtue to get angry-thereby intending malicious harm to others.
Jesus quickly passes to the next level of evil-contempt for others. To treat others with contempt is to consider them practically beneath anger. They are merely worthless and can only be an irritation. In a very practical way, the stunning prevalence of profanity among young people today is an outpouring of their contempt for others. This kind of contempt makes it both reasonable and natural to inflict violence on others-after all, their mere existence is an irritation.
But the expression "You fool," as Jesus indicates here, is the lethal combination of both anger and contempt. It might be most accurately rendered in our world as, "Hey, you stupid #!**/!" As such, it is an eyelash from condemnation.
The point to this discussion is not to create new commands that surpass the prohibition on murder to include what phrases we may not speak. Jesus' point is that in the kingdom of God, we see people in an entirely new way. Then He draws two illustrations of inner goodness to show us how it looks in practice.
First, He makes it plain that even at the most important moments of your life, if there is ill feeling between you and a brother, you must cease the ceremony and immediately be reconciled. Your brother is far more important than the ritual. Now, what kind of person would walk out of his own wedding, for example, to resolve a situation?
Second, Jesus demands that we resolve trouble even with an enemy. We are to seek the good and try to avoid bitterness. This has nothing to do with any prohibition on legal matters-it's only about resolving disputes. Both of these illustrations deal with things done in love. By contrast to the lives represented here, "Don't kill" looks pale!
Matthew 5:27-30-Control your desires
The second attitude to be reshaped in the kingdom of God has to do with a pervasive problem-sexual desire. Beyond the prohibition on adultery, Jesus here requires that we not cultivate a lustful longing and fantasizing about sex outside of marriage. He accurately notes that with the corruption of our hearts in such a way, we have as good as committed the act. Once the heart is corrupt, the body will soon follow, just as a thief will steal at any presented opportunity.
It is true that actual adultery is a worse situation than the corrupt heart, yet the evil heart has already defiled one or more parties. The corrupt heart spews poisonous words, frequently offending the unwitting target of the lust.
Jesus again draws an illustration designed to show the absurdity of attempting to control inner desire by external restrictions. Should we cut off a hand or gouge out an eye since we are led to sin? Of course not. Neither of those organs will do anything to curb a corrupt heart. The source of our problems is in a heart not fully given into the kingdom of God.
Matthew 5:31-32-Keep your covenant
Again, Jesus is dealing with more than a mere command, "Don't divorce." This is currently an explosive issue-because of corrupt hearts! In order to understand this section, we must realize that in the world of Jesus' hearers, a man could divorce his wife for any reason he thought acceptable, while she could not divorce him at all. This situation left her with only three practical options:
No matter what, she would be forced into a degraded sexual condition as a result of divorce. But in the kingdom of God, kingdom hearts will overcome unhappy moments if both will submit to Christ. In extreme cases, divorce may be necessary, but it will always expose a hard heart-one not suited to the kingdom of God.
There are three more attitudes Jesus discusses that will require a renewed heart if we are to live as citizens of the kingdom of God. In all of these, though, the basic requirement is that we develop a heart of love in imitation of our God and our Father. That's what living in the kingdom of God is about.