Q1, S10 The Sermon on the Mount

Quarter 1, Session 10: The Sermon on the Mount

ARE YOU LEARNING TO LIVE IN GOD’S KINGDOM?

Passage

Matthew 5–7

Concept

This session falls under Jesus’ third question: Will you learn from me? In Jesus’ famous “Sermon on the Mount,” he challenges our understanding of what it means to live a life that is pleasing to God. So many of the assumptions that religious people make about obeying commands reveal a lack of true relationship with God. In this sermon, Jesus challenges us to see the kingdom in a completely different light.

Key Question

Based on Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, how is your understanding of what it means to live in God’s kingdom being changed, challenged, or clarified?

The Tool

Do you see our tool being played out in Matthew 5–7? With whom? How so?

The Sermon on the Mount

Have you ever completely missed the point with regard to something you thought you understood perfectly? This happens to many of us at some point in our careers as technology improves and best practices shift. It sometimes happens in the sciences as some new knowledge reveals that our previous models were inadequate. It happens to married people on a regular basis—our spouses have a way of revealing the areas in which our (over)confidence is unwarranted.

It’s difficult to have that realization that everything you thought you understood suddenly needs to be rethought. Some choose in these moments to continue on as usual, even though their basis for operating this way has been proven inadequate. It’s difficult to start over, to relearn.

Jesus is a master as making us rethink what we thought we knew. But it is vitally important that we learn to relearn. We have a real tendency to hear Jesus without truly learning from him. The difference is everything. As you read through the Sermon on the Mount, keep an eye open for all the ways that Jesus subverts the conventional wisdom and forces his hearers to start over from the beginning.   

1.     Read Matthew 5–7. Right off the bat, what strikes you about this passage? What do you find interesting or challenging or confusing?

Vehicle vs. Vision

Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is overturning much of the conventional wisdom on what it means to please God. But Jesus also makes clear that he is in no way trying to do away with the Old Testament Law. God himself had delivered this Law to Moses to govern the life of the people of Israel, his representatives on earth. Jesus insisted that he wasn’t abolishing this Law. Instead, he says that he came to fulfill it. He came to reveal that which the Law was intended to reveal.

One way to think about Jesus’ statements about the Law here is through the lens of “vehicle vs. vision.” If you’re planning a vacation, the mental picture of you sitting on a beach is the vision. Once you’ve settled on the vision, you figure out a vehicle to make the vision a reality. In this case, the vehicle is a car or plane tickets or whatever other arrangements and adjustments need to be made to carry you to the place you want to be.

The vehicle gets you to where you’re trying to go, but the vehicle is not the point. Your destination is the point. The vision that led you to choose a means of transportation to get there is the point. But when it comes to the way people relate to God, we have a tendency to grow attached to the vehicle. Often, the vehicle comes to replace the vision. And this is a huge problem.

God’s vision is to have us with him. To bring us close to himself. To have a relationship with us. This is why he created the earth, and the Garden of Eden, and why he placed us in that garden and walked with us in the evenings. He wants to be with us.

One of the vehicles he created to facilitate that vision is the Law. The Law was created to facilitate that relationship, but the laws themselves were never the point. Think about what rules are intended to accomplish. The provide a framework. They offer instruction and protection. But they can never provide us with internal motivation. They can protect us from poor choices, but they should never be allowed to replace the original vision. The internal motivation we need is a longing to be with God, and that flows through relationship, not rules.

So as Jesus speaks to a crowd of religious people who had grown fond of the Law itself, he’s helping them to distinguish the vehicle from the vision. To be sure, they had distorted the vehicle as well by adding laws and details to the Law that God had handed down. But Jesus undercuts all of this and exposes the ways in which they’ve missed the point. Jesus uses the phrase, “You’ve heard it said…, but I say to you…” In doing this, Jesus was not relaxing the Law, he was actually showing the intent of the Law. There’s a way of keeping the Law that actually misses the point, and Jesus is exposing the extent to which religious people, who took great pride in keeping the Law, were totally missing the heart of God. They exchanged a relationship with God for the rules of God. We are constantly in danger of doing the same.  

2.     How do you tend to relate to the commands of God? Is it possible that you’re guilty of any of the distortions that Jesus addresses? Do any of Jesus’ words here challenge the way you’ve related to his laws and/or commands? How so?

Be Perfect

One of the most shocking statements that Jesus makes in this sermon is “You shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This is the exact point where any realistic person would throw up her hands and walk away.

But don’t think of this as Jesus waiting at the finish line and saying, “If you can run this race perfectly, you can join me here.” Remember that Jesus started this sermon by saying “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” So as we walk through Jesus’ teaching on missing the point of the Law, and as we hear these words that tell us that we must be perfect as God himself is perfect, how do we begin to feel? Poor in spirit. And this is precisely where we need to be. As we find ourselves poor in spirit, we come to the one who is rich in spirit. But if we relax the Law, we are tempted to believe that we are doing okay and then we never realize our great need for the good news that Jesus offers. And that good news is himself!

Another big statement that Jesus makes here is the warning against judging other people. A huge tell as to whether or not we are living according to the kingdom is whether or not we are judging other people. Setting ourselves up as judges has no place in the kingdom of God. Any time you find yourself judging someone else, you can know for sure that you’re misunderstanding the purpose of God’s commands. This is the exact opposite of being poor in spirit. It reveals your own self-righteousness, rather than your desperate dependence on Jesus to carry you through. Lack of compassion reveals lack of humility, and Jesus points to this essential to living in God’s kingdom.

3.     How do you feel when you hear Jesus say that the standard is perfection? How do you think he wants you to respond to that statement?

The Narrow Road

Jesus says that entering the kingdom of God is like walking through a narrow gate and along a narrow road. Like walking along a mountain path, you have to watch every step. If you’re going to follow Jesus, it’s going to require constant attention. It’s not the default in a fallen world. We must always be keeping our eyes on him, always being careful to follow, to lay our motivations bare, to seek his help and guidance and empowering.

Not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven but only those who do the will of the Father. Those who hear and act accordingly will find life. Learning is not just about hearing. True learning means doing.

4.     In your own words, what do you think it means to follow Jesus on the narrow road? How well are you doing at following along the narrow road?

5.     As you step back and reflect on the Sermon on the Mount as a whole (include the Beatitudes that you discussed last week), how is your view of what it means to live in the kingdom of heaven being changed, challenged, or clarified?

6.     Spend some time in prayer. Ask God to continue to reveal the nature of his kingdom to you. Pray that he would guide you moment by moment in following him through the narrow gate and the narrow path.

Key Question

Based on Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, how is your understanding of what it means to live in God’s kingdom being changed, challenged, or clarified?