Matthew 5, Part One

There’s no way I’m going to try to handle the Sermon on the Mount in three parts; at least, I’m not going to try chapter five in one. This sermon is magnificent, and I want to do it as much justice as possible in this short summary series.

God doesn’t do anything arbitrarily. I mentioned, in the introduction to Matthew (chapter one), that most Bible scholars believe that the gospel of Matthew was not the first gospel written. But it obviously is the first book in the New Testament. God wanted it where it is, and while I certainly cannot claim to know all of the reasons, I do believe that the Sermon on the Mount is one of them. It is the first sermon recorded in the New Testament, and it says things the Jews, and all of us, need to pay very careful attention to.

Religion can be fairly easy if we concentrate simply on the outward rituals. For the Jews, that meant their temple and sacrificial system. To us, it would be baptism, church attendance, the Lord’s Supper—externals that don’t require a whole lot of thought, sacrifice, effort, or inward analyzing. In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees especially were the respected “religious leaders.” Very zealous for the Law of Moses, they even added certain traditions to it to “protect it”; you had to get through a lot of Pharisaic layers before you could ever break the real commandment. Jesus faced this constantly. For example, there was no commandment against healing on the Sabbath; that doesn’t constitute “work.” Your “work” is your job. But, just to make sure that “work” was never violated, the Pharisees created all kinds of man-made traditions and laws—man-made, not God-made—and then they bound them on other people. These customs were outward rituals; the Pharisees had no conception of an inward, purity of heart religion. Their religion—and again, it’s the easy way—was purely procedural, outward, and rarely, if ever, touched the inner man. And since they largely were the teachers of the Jewish people, it wasn’t terribly surprising that such a ceremonial creed was what Jesus faced when He began preaching. The Old Testament prophets repeatedly told the people that ceremonialism was insufficient to God; read, for example, Isaiah 1:10-18, Amos 5:21-25, Micah 6:1-8, Jeremiah 7—it’s all through the Old Testament writings. But it was ignored. Again, the ceremonies are simple; pay your dime and leave. Keeping one’s heart clean and motives pure is what’s tough.

Think about it a minute: what’s easier, going to church one hour a week, or keeping your heart and mind pure from sin and evil thoughts for 168 hours a week? If humans can rationalize the former in their own minds, then you can bet your sweet bippy that they aren’t going to do the latter.

Now get this because it is the most important point of my entire study of the Sermon on the Mount. Here, in the very first sermon in the New Testament…here, after hundreds of years of Jewish ritualism and ceremonialism dominating that religion to the point where the people equated religion with that ritualism and ceremonialism…here, in the Son of God’s first recorded sermon…there is not one single, solitary religious ritual mentioned! Oh, Jesus talks about prayer, fasting, alms giving—but prayer, fasting, and alms giving are not His point. “Blessed are the pure in heart; for THEY shall see God,” (5:8). The rituals are absolutely, positively WORTHLESS unless they are done with a pure heart, a pure mind, and a godly attitude.

THAT is the Sermon on the Mount, and that is one of the reasons, I believe, that Matthew’s gospel is placed first, by the providence of God, in the New Testament. Let man be confronted, right off, with the righteous demands of the Son of God.

And consider something else—we think the Jewish system, with all its animal sacrifices and such, was a difficult religion, “law,” far more taxing than the “grace” of Christianity. Folks, the Jewish religion was a piece of cake compared to what Jesus demands in this sermon. We call the Christian system “the gospel of Christ,” the “good news.”

Read the Sermon on the Mount, compare it to your life, and tell me where the “good news” is in that sermon.