Sermon on the Mount Part 1 - Jesus' View of Scripture

(or "Jesus the Fundamentalist")

Matthew 5:17-20

Matthew 5:17-20  ¹⁷ "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸ "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹ "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  (NASB)

I. INTRODUCTION

There are many people - even of those who call themselves Christians - who react with anger toward anyone who would presume to try to prove something from scripture.  “That is your interpretation”, they say, or “the Bible was written by flawed men”, or even “that is obsolete – it is based on a more ignorant, less enlightened time.  We know better now.”  If you literally believe in the reliability and infallibility of God’s word, you are looked down on as backward, uneducated, simplistic and unsophisticated.

But there are a few Bible passages that are almost universally loved and acclaimed, passages that everyone – even those who mostly reject the Bible as authoritative – love to recite for comfort or for rebuke.

Today’s text is the beginning of one of those universally loved passages, which is actually horribly wasted and misused by 90% of those who read it, and is probably only read by 1% of those who claim to love it and live by it. What we call “The Sermon on the Mount” has been called by many “The Greatest Sermon Ever Preached.”    It is dramatic, wide ranging, hard hitting, inspirational, poetic, evocative, and powerful.  Similar versions are recorded in Matthew and in Luke, and it is likely that he preached the content of this sermon more than once.  While most people think of the Sermon on the Mount as the “blessed are” statements (the Beatitudes), the sermon recorded in Matthew is three chapters long and covers a lot more than just the Beatitudes.  A LOT more.  Since Matthew’s gospel has the theme of Jesus as the prophesied King, this sermon has been titled “The Manifesto of the King”.  In it, Jesus gives a picture of what a citizen of his kingdom looks like.  It is not a picture of a certain nationality, or ethnic background, or even a set of deeds or activities.  No, the picture that Jesus paints is a picture of the heart – he defines them (to borrow a phrase from a more recent minister) “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.

This sermon has three powerful effects:

1. First, it reveals the holy heart of God, and what He values.  The things that God desires in his people are very different than what the world values.  The world values aggression and self-assertiveness, God says the meek will inherit the earth.  The world values self-esteem and hubris, God says the kingdom belongs to the poor in spirit.  The world values surety and self-sufficiency, God says those who mourn will be comforted.  The world values the worldly man, wise in the ways of sinning, God values the pure of heart. In every way the kingdom that Jesus describes flies in the face of worldly values.

2. Secondly, this sermon utterly crushes human systems of works-righteousness, leaving those who are seeking to be justified by works without any hope of reaching God by that means.   As Paul wrote to the Romans (7:7b NASB) “I would not have come to know sin except through the Law…” and to the Galatians (3:23-24 NASB) “²³ But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. ²⁴ Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.”

3. Third, the Sermon on the Mount tells those who are born again how to live for the kingdom – what kind of people we were re-created to be, what we should strive to be, and to let the Holy Spirit change us into.  As Paul wrote  to the Corinthians (2 Cor 5:17 ESV) “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”  Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount described what the new looks like, and how we should act.  A person who trusts God fully for daily grace, who is humble and hates sin, whose life shines like a light or a shining city on a hill!

As we can see, those people who only get “judge not” from this magnificent oration are missing a whole lot of material of great value.  But how often do we study Jesus’ words here and compare our lives to what He described?  How often do we only look at the external and not judge our hearts by this revelation of God’s heart?

❧

Well, I would like to be able to cover all of this wonderful material in these two weeks that we have, but I would want to take at least 8-16 weeks to break it down.  Instead I will cover two themes from within its many teachings.  Next week I think I will be speaking about living the Christian life in hope and faith, something Jesus discusses in chapters 6 and 7 in a wonderful way.  If you need to trust God better, it will be medicine for the soul. 

This week I want to talk about Jesus’ attitude toward scripture, which is a very important topic found in the inclusio in vs 17-20.  These verses are very important, as they define the role of God’s Word in the life of one of his children, one of the members of his holy and eternal kingdom.  With some tongue-in-cheek I have titled this “Jesus the Fundamentalist”.

It may interest the newer members of this church that when this building was just a dream in the minds and hearts of the congregation who met over at the Armory, the sign that they put up announcing the coming church building on this site proudly proclaimed that this would be a “fundamentalist” church.  Back in those days, the term had not fallen into the disrepute that it currently has.  The word fundamentalist  nowadays conjures up the image of Islamic terrorists with bombs strapped to themselves and blowing up innocent bystanders, or perhaps of people dressed like the Amish whose women always wear long dresses and head coverings, or of legalists who plague free-spirits in small towns who just want to have a school dance, or even of odious groups like the Westboro Baptist church.  But the Fundamentalist movement actually came into full bloom about 100 years ago and was a response to liberal theology that was spreading through the church at the time.  The liberals had been influenced by the theology of German rationalism and higher criticism from the previous century and had discarded the literal interpretation of scripture, replacing it with humanistic ideas. The Bible was no longer accepted as the infallible word of God.  Its accuracy and relevance were questioned, and many churches had come loose from the moorings of historical Christianity as taught by the apostles and re-established during the Reformation.  The fundamentalists fought back, affirming the reliability of scripture and defending it from attack.  That is the definition I will be using of fundamentalist.

[A side note: Actually in that respect the term would apply to the “radical” Islamists of our day.  500 years ago the reformers compared the Roman Catholic church with scripture and found the accumulated human tradition of 1500 years had moved it far from “The Faith once delivered to the saints” (as Jude put it).  They stood against the edifice of what was then called “Christianity” and started to read the book and go back to doing and teaching what was found there.  It is no surprise that the Church reacted by putting the Bible on the Index of Forbidden Books for a while, to keep “unqualified” people from criticizing the establishment of that day and threatening their power.  Many people died martyr’s deaths (and still do today) to defend that truth.  In much the same way, the term fundamentalist would indeed be a term that could be applied to Islamists.  Can someone who reads in his scriptures that unbelievers should be killed, and acts upon that scripture, be described (as some have put it) as hijacking his religion?  In political circles I have heard many, many times the idea expressed that “Christianity had its reformation, and now Islam needs a reformation”.  People who make this statement show their ignorance of what the protestant reformation was about.  The narrative that the world puts out is that the Reformation was a bunch of people who realized that Christianity was too primitive for modern society and so they revamped it – making it a sort of “Christianity 2.0” – a kinder, gentler, more touchy-feely and fuzzy wuzzy type of modern religion, and so the same needs to happen in Islam.  But the Reformers (and the fundamentalists) were getting back to the Bible, which is the opposite of what the world thinks it did.  The difference is that Jesus never called for war or for killing opponents.  He said to turn the other cheek and to love your enemies.  In this sermon He said [Mat 5:10-12 ESV] ¹⁰ "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ¹¹ Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”  Hardly a call to war.  When we get the closest to the teaching of Jesus, peace and love follow.  I would argue that a similar reformation of Islam IS happening now in many parts of the world, and it looks like ISIS.  For Islam to become kinder and gentler, especially to outsiders, I think they would have to move further from their founders’ teachings, not closer.]

This brings us to an interesting and crucial point that we must understand.  In the same way that the world thinks that the Reformation was some sort of new enlightenment which created a new and nicer form of Christianity, they also believe that Jesus was a radical who realized that the religion of the Old Testament was evil and out-of-date and who gave it an unplanned upgrade to “Religion 2.0”.  In just about every secular university’s history of religion classes (and in a lot of clueless seminaries) the narrative goes as follows:

·    The Old Testament portrays a primitive, angry, vengeful God.  The writers of the OT condoned genocide, advocated harsh punishments for crimes, made ridiculous rules and hated love.

·    The New Testament God was a whole new type of God – the loving Father (or doting grandfather) that looked down from heaven with joy and longing and just wants everybody to live and let live.

In this view, Jesus was just this guy who rejected the Old Testament law and who hated the old system.  He was sort of an old-time hippie rebel who loved everybody but rebelled against the system.

So anyway, Jesus is touted as teaching new stuff – revamping the OT – almost a new God (nice NT God vs mean OT God).  The Sermon on the Mount is given as an example because of the difference between the Mosaic law and Jesus’ “judge not” lovey-dovey teaching.  And it certainly seems that way.    After all, he said repeatedly “you have heard .... , but I tell you”, right?  Jesus spent his entire ministry rebelling against the religious leaders of his day.  The Pharisees were really that day’s “fundamentalists”, in that they wanted to follow God’s laws – every one of them – and pursue personal holiness.  They certainly saw Jesus as a rebel who repudiated their historic faith.  But there is more here that meets the eye, and we need to understand that by Jesus’ day the Pharisees had gone horribly wrong.

We should note the following facts:

• When Jesus quotes scripture as authoritative (all the time) He says “it is written”.  When contradicting the Pharisees’ teaching He says “you have heard” which is speaking of the teachings of the rabbis and their writings, NOT scripture.
• Jesus was like the Reformers, pushing back to the Word of God as given to the Moses and the other prophets.  He had nothing but contempt for the accumulated dross of traditions.  As He put it in a later discussion: “you have invalidated the Word of God by your tradition” (Matt 15:6)
• Matthew 5:17-20 mark the transition from the Beatitudes to his clarification of the Law for the disciples.  In three short sentences Jesus gives us his view of holy scripture, and it is not the voice of a rebel who wants to do away with the law.  Rather, He has strong words for any critics who would say that scripture contains errors, that it is obsolete, or who discredit it and refuse to follow and teach it:

IIa. No Scripture Was A Mistake (v17) 
[MacArthur: the "Preeminence" of scripture]

Matthew 5:17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.

He starts with a strong warning not to misinterpret his teaching.  He was NOT planning to attack scripture in any way whatsoever.  To “abolish” means to destroy or subvert – literally to dissolve or disassemble.  He did not come to abrogate the law, which is what would have happened if He taught something new that contradicted existing scripture.  (there is a doctrine of abrogation in Islamic interpretation wherein later writings by the prophet overrule any previous statements if they contradict, which is bad for us because the early teachings were more conciliatory than the latter ones).  When He first began his ministry, remember that He was called upon to read in the synagogue in Capernaum.  He caused quite a stir there: 

Luke 4:17-21  ¹⁷ And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 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." ²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ And he began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

Not only would Jesus have nothing to do with any abrogation of scripture, He was the fulfillment of it.  His life and death fulfilled hundreds of specific prophesies.  He was the fulfillment of the Law (as the perfect sinless man), of the sacrificial system (as the Lamb of God) and of the promises to Abraham (as the One who would bless the whole world).  He spoke specifically to the religious leaders in Jerusalem:

John 5:39, 46-47 [NASB] ³⁹ "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; ... ⁴⁶ "For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. ⁴⁷ "But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?"

Jesus’ very high view of scripture is clear here.  When Jesus seemed to be in violation of the law it was because He had fallen afoul of the “extra added parts” put in place by the theologians of his day.  As God He knew what He had meant by the words in the scriptures and by nature was incapable of disobeying his own commands.  When He healed people on the Sabbath, that seemed like a violation of the Sabbath law to them, but then they had been reduced to arguing whether women should be allowed to wear wigs on Saturday because that would be “carrying a burden”, utterly missing the point that the Sabbath was to be a day devoted to pursuing God rather than secular pursuits.

So there was nothing that needed fixing in God’s revelation to that point, and we would do well to take warning that we do not become arrogant and think that we now have the job of fixing God’s Word as delivered to us, as if we could add or substract anything and make it better. 

IIb. No Scripture Is Temporary (v18)   
[MacArthur: the "Permanence" of scripture]

Matthew 5:18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

This is similar to the view referred to as “verbal plenary inspiration”, which means that “God preserved the integrity of the words of the Bible by moving the authors so as to produce the words God wanted.”  But Jesus takes it further.  Referring to Hebrew lettering Jesus speaks of two of the smallest elements in the Hebrew alphabet, the so-called “jot and tittle”.  The “jot” is the smallest letter of that alphabet, called the yud (think of a lower case “I” without the dot), and the “tittle” is like what a publisher would call a “serif”.  (diff between sans-serif and serif fonts discuss here?)  It is merely a small projection on a few of the letters which distinguish them from what would otherwise be identical letters.  So what Jesus is saying is that every letter of scripture is more established and durable than the physical universe.

Jesus starts this statement with an AMEN, I SAY UNTO YOU, which basically means “I affirm this for a fact”.  Some commentators call this phrase “Jesus’ own signature, since no other teacher is known to have used it.  It occurs 31 times in Matthew and 25 times in John (in John’s case with a double “Amen”)”

James Montgomery Boice asks “why should this be so greatly emphasized?  Obviously because the utter truthfulness and abiding authority of the Bible is critical to everything we are to know and believe as Christ’s followers.  If God has spoken to us in the Bible, if the Bible is his Word, then the Bible must be truthful, because God is a God of truth; it must be reliable in all its parts, because God is utterly reliable; it must be lastingly authoritative, because God is the only ultimate and eternally abiding authority.  If the Bible is not truthful, in even on e of its very small parts, then it is not from God and it has no more authority over us than any other merely human document.  That is why the fiercest attacks on Christianity have always focused on this point… Here are three ways people have tried to undermine the Bible’s authority: 1. By appealing to tradition. (like the Pharisees), … 2. By elevating reason above revelation,  (liberalism), … 3. By rejecting the Bible’s sufficiency.”

Luke 16:17 "But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail.

Jesus, when using the OT to prove a point said (John 10:35b) “Scripture cannot be broken”. He spoke of his own teaching in the same way (underlining the NT):

Luke 21:33 "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.

Any movement that questions the relevance of God’s word is looking at the wrong standard.

IIc. No Scripture Is Ignorable (v19[-20])   
[MacArthur: the "Pertinence & Purpose" of scripture]

Matthew 5:19[-20]  "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. [²⁰ "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.]

In case his disciples missed the point, Jesus makes it personal.  Any disciple of his who annuls or relaxes (looses, unties) the LEAST of these commandments is going to lose their rewards.  Note that this punishment comes from even messing with THE LEAST of these commandments.  THE LEAST.  What would be the least of all of the commandments?  (I wonder if any teacher has ever determined that…)  But if the least of the commandments are not to be relaxed or removed, what about all of the other, more important ones?  (see what he did there?)  We are not to stand in judgment on God’s laws as if we were a higher authority or had leeway to mess with them. But it is worse – if we teach others to do so it is just as bad as doing it ourselves.  Anyone teaching the Bible (by word or just by a lived life) who gives the impression that the least of the commandments are able to be ignored or annulled is guilty of sin.  This is reminiscent of Paul’s words in Romans:

Romans 1:32 Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

And Jesus’ words at the end of Revelation:

Rev 22:18-19  ¹⁸ I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, ¹⁹ and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

   

III Conclusion

Our modern times are characterized by the questioning of everything traditional, every authority and everything that had been accepted as truth.  Sometimes that can be a good thing, as when, for example, abolitionists questioned the mostly accepted practice of human slavery, even though had been a part of “respectable” society all around the world, for almost all of human history up to that point.  As another example, I personally think that it was a correct moral choice to disobey the Nazi government in WWII and hide people from Hitler’s “final solution”.  We should at least be willing to ask questions about traditions, even in church, to make sure that they conform to scripture.  The seeking of truth requires diligence at all times, with a commitment to honesty, openness to facts and to being willing to defend what you believe – with love, facts, and gentleness, not with yelling and fists (or worse).

Our modern society has gone far beyond that, however.  Now we as a culture have reached the point where we no longer argue about truth but instead we deny that there is even such a thing as truth.  This is a huge step, which I believe is mostly unprecedented in human history.  Ironically it has come at a time when “science” has become the religion of society.  Nearly everybody bows down at the altar of “science” while simultaneously denying the objective existence of the universe itself!  Science has become a buzzword used to beat people into submission by people who insist in the same breath that “everyone’s reality is equally valid”.  Now, in this age of “science”, your sex is determined by your feelings - not genes or anatomy, morality is determined by feelings – not God or human tradition and even truth about God is determined by feelings – not revelation. 

While our 21^st century world is marked by a postmodern rejection of Christian truth, the rejection of God's truth is not a new phenomenon.  Not by a long shot. God’s Word has been under attack for the entire sweep of human history, starting in the Garden of Eden.  The fall of mankind was given its first push with Satan's words “has God said?”  Throughout history, people have tried to burn all Bibles, to outlaw Bibles and even to destroy all believers of the bible.  But such overt methods are far from the full arsenal of attack, and they are usually of little overall effectiveness – such obvious and brutal methods usually strengthen the church in many ways, removing the chaff from the wheat and making the church a more pure and powerful institution internally.  The more effective ways are more subtle and often come from inside the visible church itself.  Some time-tested methods include:

• Removing things from the Bible: either through literally removing sections you don’t agree with (Jefferson Bible?) or by declaring some part obsolete (“old fashioned”, not “with the times”)
• Adding to the Bible: adding new revelations either through new books (like LDS) or through acceptance of new prophesies or prophets.
• Retranslating the Bible to conform to different doctrines (like JW’s New World Translation)
• Mixing other religions with the Bible on an equal basis (one big happy family – just throw out what doesn’t fit)
• Spiritualizing or Reinterpreting the Bible to bring out the secret meaning that only you know. (Mary Baker Eddy)
• Mis-using the Bible to justify sin (1 Cor 8-10, Jude, etc)
• Shoehorning the Bible into your pre-determined philosophy or political cause

We would agree, at least in this church, that all of these are bad.  But could we articulate why these things are bad?  Is it enough to learn by rote in Sunday school that God’s Word is inspired and that there is a verse in Revelation that warns against adding or removing words from “this prophesy”?  No, it is not.  If we do not have a well-defined philosophy of what the Bible is, we will probably finding ourselves guilty of some of the sins in the list (and we probably already have).

A generation ago the attacks on scripture brought about a crisis in the church, as more and more of the churches and seminaries began to abandon the scriptures as the authoritative word of God in large groups.  The Enlightenment, with its humanistic pride led into German rationalism and higher criticism, which ushered in the 20th century with a skeptical and critical attitude toward the Bible.  With the rise of modern science came the rise of modernism (with an emphasis on materialism and disbelief in the supernatural), followed by neo-orthodoxy (religion of human tradition), occult and spiritism and finally Post-Modernism (disbelief in truth itself).  Each of these movements came into the church in one form or another as the world’s philosophy got in and polluted it.

To address this need for a good philosophy I suggest this as a starting point: A generation ago many conservative leaders in the evangelical world got together to address the quickly degrading view of scripture in the professing church.  The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy was formed and in 1987 they produced the following statement, called “The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy”. Listen to these five points:

1.   God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge.  Holy Scripture is God’s witness to Himself.

2.   Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms: obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.

3.   The Holy Spirit, Scripture’s divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.

4.   Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.

5.   The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible’s own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.

This is a pretty good starting point, yes?  The thing that strikes me the most about this being a controversy is that all of it rests on a pretty important premise: 

• that God actually exists
• that God actually wants to communicate truth to us
• that God is actually competent to devise a means of communication, and 
• that God wants to hold us accountable to what He has told us.  

So many times we find ourselves, when talking to people – people who call themselves Christians – about some topic that the Bible addresses, we find ourselves being told “you can’t take the Bible literally” or “that’s your interpretation” or “the Bible was written by flawed men”.  Those same people love to quote isolated verses from certain areas – Psalm 23 and the Sermon on the Mount for example – and they seem to be sure that some verses are authoritative.  Their favorite verses are things like “judge not lest ye be judged”, but they could not tell you the context of where that verse fits into the recorded conversation to save their lives.  They are like a kid who asks if they can have a cookie before dinner who is told “NO”, who then goes on to tell their siblings not to eat a cookie but then go and eat cake.  When Mom catches them they point out how well they told everyone else not to eat cookies, and then go on to tell mom that they know that Mom really wanted them to eat cake.

It comes down to this basic question which you must ask yourself: when you speak, is your intention to impart something from your own thinking (your own meaning) or are you happy if the hearer tells you that what you really meant was the opposite of what you know that you meant to say?

Let’s treat God’s word with the respect it deserves, both in our words and in our deeds.

(Next Sermon)