Sermon on the Mount, Part 2-Doug Crum

I could um probably come up here and um share some things uh about life and death and celebration and what that really means.

Uh and I don't know, that might mean something.

Um but when Tony will come up and talk about life and death and celebration in light of all the things that have transpired over the last several years and the last few weeks, that is an amazing story of faith for us.

Uh and even in our difficulty, in our dark times, in our struggles, God is good and faithful, uh, and we can glorify him even on really bad days.

Uh, as you can probably guess from last week, we are launching a series into the Sermon on the Mount.

Uh, it's recorded in Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Uh, and it will take us a little while to get through.

For those of you who thought I spent a long time in Jonah, you have no idea.

Um, it is 107 verses long, and we will not cover it in it in its entirety in one sitting again.

Uh, but I'm gonna ask you to do that.

I'm gonna ask you uh to be people who are willing to sit down and read through it.

Uh, if you're just reading it um to yourself, you can probably do it in about 15 minutes.

Um, and so by the time we get done with this study in spring of 2031, you um we won't take quite that long, but you will have plenty of opportunity.

And so I want to encourage you to read through it as often as you can.

It's not important uh to memorize it, but just having that on your heart and in your mind can be really helpful.

Uh, Giles and I were just talking this week, and and I've been going through it quite a bit, and it's interesting um how it talks about the the birds of the air.

Uh, and for the first time, I think, ever, um, I was uh outside and I heard all these birds just flying over.

Uh, I'm not necessarily a bird watcher.

When I see birds, I usually duck, um, but I saw these birds and instantly I was like, those birds speak of the providence of God, a God who feeds those little animals that most people don't even notice.

And so I want to encourage you to be people who are constantly uh looking through the Sermon on the Mount and seeing what we can get from it.

Um, why are we going to spend so long, uh, nearly 30 weeks in the Sermon on the Mount?

And the reason is, one, it's the words of Jesus.

And they're powerful and they're transforming.

But you'll also notice as you read through it and listen, you're gonna see the myriad of topics that are covered in really actually a pretty short span of time.

Within one sermon, Jesus is going to talk about giving and greed and judging others.

He's going to talk about pride, prayer, and integrity.

At times he's going to cover sensitive issues like lust, divorce, and money.

In that time, he teaches those who will listen how to fast, who is blessed, and what the road to righteousness looks like.

He warns about being angry with brothers, not hating our enemies, and not showing favoritism to our friends.

And he's going to repeat some words over and over again.

Words like father, forgiveness, and love.

And when we finally finish, you might think that he has covered every single topic.

And it seems like he has.

And it's one of the reasons why I absolutely love the Sermon on the Mount.

Because it spreads the gamut of topics that we really ought to have at the forefront of our minds, but sometimes it's really difficult to bring up in public, especially when a lot of people are looking back at you.

Jesus does not pull punches, he doesn't dodge landmines, and he certainly does not walk in the middle of the road.

He unashamedly exposes the dark places and the ulterior motives that lead people away from a God of love.

I must confess, I made a mistake last week.

I typically make mistakes.

That's not unusual, but when I was standing up here last week, I made a mistake.

A pretty big one, honestly.

Prior to this, I had spent quite a long time preparing for this and going over it.

Uh, and I prayed that God would be glorified and that and that I would not.

And I feel like God answered that prayer because I managed to miss a whole section of the Sermon on the Mount.

And I left last week being really, really disheartened and frustrated and upset with myself.

And then I remembered the Sermon on the Mount, and I remembered my prayer.

And my prayer is that God would be glorified and that I would.

And so the words that were shared last week go to God's glory, and the words that were not shared last week go towards my humility.

But the thing is, is that we were never meant to live up to everything that the Sermon of the Mount calls us to.

Um, I I heard this, I think, third hand, um, but I'm gonna go ahead and share it.

I think it might have been Bill Gresham, um, who told someone else, he says, I thought I would mention to Doug last week that he missed a section of the Sermon on the Mount, but he said, since it was the section was on judging and how we shouldn't look at the speck in your brother's eye, he said, I decided I wouldn't say anything about it.

But the fact is, I didn't intentionally mean to skip that section.

It is a really raw section, and it is challenging.

Um, the fact is that Jesus taught and lived his sermon better than I ever will, and that's why I really need him.

Uh, so let's move on from that.

Uh, the fact is, is that when we get to Jesus' teaching on a particular topic, we are going to do our best to cover it.

When he talks about giving, it's because it was in the text, not because the elders wanted me to talk about how we need to increase our budget.

When we talk about divorce, it's not because we want to tell everyone that it's the unforgivable sin, but instead because Jesus taught about grace and mercy when dealing with our spouse.

We're not going to skip over passages like fasting or lust or pride because they're just too difficult.

We're going to look at them just like Jesus did.

And when it's in the text, we'll discuss it, and if it's not, we will just keep going on.

When I think of the Sermon on the Mount, I think specifically of the red letters of Jesus.

It's the longest words of Jesus that we have consecutively.

Uh, it covers almost three entire chapters.

And so that's always what I've thought of uh in times where I think of that, I always start off with, you know, blessed are the poor in spirit.

But as I was going through it this last time, for some reason I was drawn towards the first verses of chapter five that basically set up the context, the scene of what's going on.

It says that when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down.

His disciples came to him and he began to teach them.

These are black letter words, they're not red letter words, so maybe they're not that important.

But as I was listening to that and thinking about that, I thought, wow, I think that really says a whole lot about who Jesus is.

Notice, he sees the crowd, and what does he not do?

He doesn't run to them, he doesn't force himself to them.

He simply goes up on a mountainside and he sits.

He gives them an opportunity to come to him.

I love that he doesn't stand to preach against them, but he sits down to teach to them.

I'm not saying that Jesus did not use rebukes in the Sermon on the Mount.

He certainly did.

But I'm convinced that when he talks about people entering through the wide gate and how there's going to be many of them, and how it will lead to their destruction, he doesn't say so out of anger, but he does so out of sadness.

Last week, after I had finished, somebody asked me, what's one thing that maybe impressed upon you more as you were looking through this?

That maybe you hadn't.

And I said, to me, the one thing that really got me was the response and what I believe was the tone of Jesus.

When he told the unrighteous that he didn't know.

I don't think it was a gotcha moment.

I don't think he was laughing or pointing.

I don't think he was shaking his head or wagging his finger.

Instead, I think it was one of harpering.

As he said to them through tears, I never knew.

The fact is, is the sermon on the mount is filled with emotion and passions and warnings and love.

And to me, it's hard not to notice the comparisons between Moses on Mount Sinai and Jesus up on the mount speaking to the people.

Both of them were there to help people to know their God better.

Moses had just been up on the mountain, and there he was he was in the presence of God himself, and he came down from the mountain to give what God had shared to him.

And Jesus was there up on the mountain.

He wasn't just with God, but God was in him.

They both were talking to an oppressed people.

The Israelites had just left Egypt from slavery and bondage, and they didn't know how to live life.

And Moses was there to help give them some guardrails and guidelines to be like God and to show God to others.

And here Jesus is doing the same thing to a people who were oppressed, a people who were still living in a country that was occupied by their enemy.

And the leaders who were supposed to be showing them who God was, they were abusing them and neglecting them and running over them.

But both Moses and Jesus wanted to offer something different from where they had been.

But the bottom line is the Sermon on the Mount is really challenging and it can be very intense.

It's difficult to read and really hard to live.

The fact is we can read it, hear it, or even memorize it, but that doesn't anything if we're not good.

This is where I call us to extreme pressure.

If we aren't careful, we can turn these words of Jesus into another set of rules.

And that was exactly what Jesus was trying to get the Jews away from.

If we're not careful, we read the Sermon on the Mount and we walk away, thinking that maybe Jesus was trying to raise the bar or elevate expectations or take everybody to the next level.

But that's not where Jesus was going.

He did not want us to go further, but instead to go deeper.

He was calling us to love and to mercy and even forgiveness.

He wants the words to leave the page that we read and enter into our lives.

He says, following me is not just about your mind, it's about your hearts.

But too many times it's just so easy to turn it into a checklist.

God just wants me to do that.

Jesus wants me to be a better Christian, a harder worker.

Years ago, I remember hearing the story for the first time about a woman named Kegy.

She loved life.

Shortly after graduating, Peggy married him, her high school sweetheart.

And she just knew that they would have a fairy tale.

So Peggy was surprised, shocked.

Just a few days after the honeymoon.

She woke up.

Kim had already left for work.

And as she got up, she noticed on the kitchen table a sheet of paper.

And on that piece of paper was a list of things that Peggy needed to do before she got back here.

So she looked at the list, grabbed some coffee, did a few things on that list, sat down and ate some lunch, watched the show, did a few more things on the list.

She didn't get all of them done.

Of course, there was no way she could get all of them done.

The list took the entire page, but she made sure to skip down to the very end where it says, have dinner ready for me when I get home.

So she tried her best.

She didn't get everything done, but she thought that was good enough.

So she was disappointed.

For all the things she had over for the next several years taking following that list.

Her husband to a hands.

And knowing that she would never ever be enough.

She continued on through life until finally she met Kevin.

Kevin was very different.

She was compassionate and never gave grace.

And so despite her fears and her reservations, her and Kevin ended up getting married.

And they had a wonderful life together.

It was filled with laughter and joy and children.

Wonderful conversations.

And while she stayed at home, Peggy loved to hear the garage door open because she knew that Kevin was coming.

And she couldn't wait.

Decades passed.

And one afternoon, as she was cleaning out a cabinet, she noticed a piece of paper at the back.

And she pulled it out and lopped it off and looked.

And there she saw one of Tim's list.

She was acting with anger and resentment for the way that he had treated her.

And all these crazy expectations that he had for her.

And just as she was about to rip it into pieces, she noticed upon the list it said Vacuum the Den.

She remembered that just a few hours prior, she had run the vacuum cleaner through the den as she did.

Every week.

And she saw another one about cleaning the bathroom, and she said, I just finished doing that an hour ago.

And she looked down at the bottom of the list.

It says, Make dinner for me.

And she can already smell the spaghetti that she had started cooking for her husband who would be home in just a little bit.

And then she realized she was doing the same thing for her second husband that she had done for her first.

Yet being with Kevin didn't bring her anger or bitterness, instead joy, gratitude.

The difference was that now her marriage was built on love and on a relationship with someone that she cared about.

For many of us, our relationship with God can seem a lot like a checklist.

I have to go to church.

I ought to read my Bible.

I shouldn't have said that joke.

I don't need to be watching this show.

And all we have these lists of things that we shouldn't do or should do.

And before long it becomes very rogue and it becomes very legalistic.

And it turns into, well, I'll go to church, but God, you owe me.

I don't want to be nice to this person.

I won't kill them, but I will gaydream about you.

And so we start to turn into a group of Pharisees who don't know Jesus or even care about being like him.

We just want ourselves.

And so as we progress through the Sermon on the Mount, my prayer more than anything else is not that you turn this into a checklist of things to do, but instead you come to see a Savior that you love.

So this week, that is my invitation to turn Christianity to a list of Christmas.

Turn it into a lie.