THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT: JESUS’ WISDOM AND LOVE

Now that we have license to interpret, let’s start. The interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is regarded as particularly challenging. It seems to contradict the rest of the Bible in many ways. For example, Jesus’ teaching on giving to the poor:

·       “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:3-4)

Here’s the problem – Jesus just taught the opposite thing:

·       “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)

Here, Jesus taught that others should see our “good works.” However, in the other verse, Jesus taught to do good in secret.

How can we resolve this apparent contradiction? We need to look at the context. Jesus’ teaching to give in secret followed His warning about the ungodly motivations of the Pharisees:

·       “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” (Matthew 6:1-2)

The religious leadership had been doing good publicly in order to win the esteem of others and not God. Consequently, “they have received their reward,” consisting of the admiration of others. (Our Lord allows us to have what we want!)

How then should we interpret, “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” Clearly, this is an exaggeration (hyperbole), since hands cannot know anything. It suggests that we give in utmost secrecy. However, the “contradiction” seems to still remain between giving secretly and giving so that the world might see our good works.

Is there a possible interpretation that might fit in comfortably with the rest of Scripture? I think so. We should practice giving secretly. Why? Because we are all Pharisees to some degree, and we need to see our hidden motivations! How? By giving secretly! This doesn’t mean that we should not give publicly. However, before all else, need to be humbled, lest we become self-righteous. Perhaps the best path to humility is to see what we are really all about. When we give secretly, we become aware of the pleasures we had obtained by giving publicly, and we find out that we too are self-righteous Pharisees.

Jesus was the supreme “Doctor of the soul.” He understood that we first had to be healed of our self-trust before we could learn to trust God. He first had to expose our soul-sickness before He would do something about it – to confess and repent. The next several verses are also aimed at exposing the rot:

·       “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:5-6)

Once again, we are confronted with something that looks like a contradiction. Jesus instructs us to pray in utmost privacy. However, He often prayed publicly. He even asked His Apostles to pray for Him (Matthew 26:36). Besides, public prayers had always been part of Israel experience. Why then does He insist in the Sermon on the Mount that we pray in complete privacy? So that we can see what our motivations truly are!

We are people pleasers, who are addicted to the praise and approval of men. We need to know this about ourselves. Why? So we would be humbled; so we would cry out to God for His mercy and help; so we would see that it’s all about His righteousness and not at all about ours.

Jesus is the great diagnostician. Diagnosis must precede healing, and we must have this fatal diagnosis in hand. Only then, will we become willing to submit to His sometimes-painful surgery.

Jesus’ teaching on fasting follows the same pattern:

·       “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:16-18)

The deadliest form of pride is spiritual pride. Why? Because spiritual pride disguises itself as piety! In its disguise, this cancer can metastasize throughout the whole loaf of the fellowship infecting all. While love and humility draw people together, pride drives them apart, forcing everyone to wear a mask so that they too can appear spiritual.

Pride is deadly in many ways. It grants us a sense of moral entitlement and enables us to behave in immoral ways. Elsewhere, Jesus demonstrated the close association between pride (self-righteousness) and immorality:

·       “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” (Luke 20:46-47)

Even worse, self-righteousness cuts us off from God’s righteousness and forgiveness:

·       Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.” (Luke 11:52)

How does self-righteousness cut us off from God?

·       And he [Jesus] said to them, “You [Pharisees] are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. (Luke 16:15)

When we practice self-justification we are not seeking the justification or forgiveness that can only come from God. After all, if we can make ourselves acceptable in the eyes of humanity, who needs God.

Jesus has to expose this deadly cancer to the light. How? By requiring that we perform our various spiritual devotions privately! This will expose our self-glorying motivations so that we might be sickened and humbled.

Humility is the foundation upon which the house must be built. If it is built upon pride, the rest of the house is in jeopardy. When I came to the Lord, I was filled with pride. I had assured myself that God had saved me because I was a quality person. Consequently, I looked down on others. I now see that He had to first humble me by showing me the truth about myself so that He could lift me up.

Had I first been lifted up, I would have told myself, “God has blessed me because I deserve it.” However, none of us deserve anything other than judgment. Jesus also made this plain in the “Sermon”:

·       “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 5:21-22)

These are damning words. All we need to do is to utter “You fool” to deserve eternal judgment. At first glance, this seems so unfair. What wisdom could possibly be buried in such counsel?

This is the same wisdom buried in the Mosaic Law (Deut. 27:26). One little sin will damn us. How unfair, right? Wrong! Why? We are contaminated with sin but refuse to see it. Instead, we convince ourselves that we are spiritually deserving, even if others aren’t. We might realize that we do have a few moral blemishes but we have convinced ourselves that they are nothing compared to our great good and merit.

How does God break through such denial? By demanding sinlessness, and this is something even the hardest heart knows that it cannot attain. We all have called others a “fool” or even worse.

If we really have ears to hear our Lord, any confidence that we might have had in our own goodness, merit, and deservedness should melt away into desperate sobs. And this is the Master-of-our-souls’ intention – to break us down in order to rebuild us into His image.

We can only learn mercy after we have learned our overwhelming need for mercy. We have to learn that we are in a desperate state that can only be addressed by the mercy of our Lord. Only then can we learn mercy towards others. So our Lord lovingly enables us to see our need for His mercy. How? By showing us our unworthiness!

I had boasted to myself that I had never committed adultery. However, our Lord does not allow us to get away with this boast:

·       “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28)

This means that we are all guilty and deserve the worst punishment. That’s both humbling and terrifying, and it should be! It means that our only hope is exactly where it should be – in the mercy of the Lord. Without this mercy, our situation is so serious that Jesus counseled:

·       “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” (Matthew 5:29-30)

This makes it clear that Jesus’ idea of love is not the idea that we have today. We equate “love” with making-nice. Meanwhile, Jesus equated love with whatever measures it takes to connect us with God. Of course, plucking out the eye and cutting off the hand couldn’t achieve this. However, if these harsh measures could, then they would be a small price to pay in order to not go to hell and to enjoy the Lord eternally.

If Jesus had preached so strenuously against sin, perhaps we too must do so. If love is a matter of preaching to break down the barriers to a saving relationship with our Lord, perhaps we have failed to love as we ought.

Sodom’s Sin: A Question of Interpretation?

Do our Bible interpretations merely serve to justify our own agenda or God’s? Are we using the Bible or abusing it for our own purposes? One blog – God’s Rainbow Coalition – conveniently denies that Sodom’s sin had anything to do with homosexuality or homosexual rape, but rape merely as a way to “humiliate someone”:

• Show me where it says that Sodom was destroyed for homosexuality. In Genesis, it does not say what Sodom did to be destroyed other than Genesis 18:20-21, (which was said before the incident at Lot’s house) “Then the Lord said, ‘The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.’” It doesn’t say homosexuality. In other parts of the Bible we find that the sin of Sodom was pride and inhospitality, not homosexuality. In fact, Ezekiel tells us the sin of Sodom in chapter 16:49-51. “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.”

But what were these “detestable things” (“toebah” in the Hebrew)? This is the same word used to describe homosexuality in Leviticus:

• You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion. (Lev. 18:22-23)

• If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them. If a man marries a woman and her mother, it is wickedness. (Lev. 20:13-14)

These teachings against homosexuality have also been carried over into the New Testament, except without any mention of the death penalty. The Book of Jude is particularly revealing about Sodom’s sin:

• Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh (“perversion;” NIV), are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. (Jude 7)
  
  

God’s Rainbow Coalition wrongly concludes:

• The reason people equate Sodom with homosexuality is because of the gang rape scene that almost occurred. Back then, it was common to humiliate someone by raping them. 

Evidently, Sodom’s sin went far beyond an attempt to merely “humiliate someone.” Why then does God’s Rainbow Coalition conclude otherwise? Are they coercing the text into conformity with their own views and interests?

Doesn’t Scripture have to come first? Such an inversion of biblical priorities costs! I also had coerced the text into saying what I had wanted to find, and I suffered greatly for this. Now my prayer is this: “Lord, I just want your truths and your ways, even when they oppose my agenda. Lead me accordingly!”

Evangelism is more than just Soft Cuddlies

Most Christians would define evangelism this way:

• Sharing the Gospel – the power of God unto salvation – in hope that it might bring faith by the mercy of God.

This is not a bad definition, but it is very incomplete. For instance, Jesus often sought to humble the arrogance of the self-righteous in hope that they’d see their need for the mercy of God. While He often simply taught His listeners that they needed to believe in Him in order to find mercy (John 3:16, 36; 5:24; 6:29; 8:24). He also preached the law to show them that they could not trust in their own righteousness.

On one occasion, the “experts of the law” tested Him, asking what they should do to “inherit internal life” (Luke 10:25). Jesus asked them what they thought. They answered with the two greatest commands – loving God and loving our neighbor.

Jesus then described what this looked like in the parable of the Good Samaritan and told them to “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37). Of course they couldn’t do so on any consistent basis, and they were humbled.

We require humbling. Jesus warned:

• "I tell you that this [tax-collector] man, rather than the other [the Pharisee], went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18:14)

If mercy first requires humiliation, Jesus, in love, sought to humiliate the religious leaders:

• "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness…Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (Matthew 23:23-28)

Jesus didn’t use this tactic because He hated them, but because He loved them:

• "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. (Matthew 23:37)

The leadership needed to first see their need for mercy before they would cry out for mercy.

Love requires that God first humbles us. This is accomplished in many ways – some ways we find very troubling, like the prayer of the Psalmist:

• Pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your storm. Cover their faces with shame so that men will seek your name, O Lord. (Psalm 83:15-16)

Why do we require such harsh treatment before we become ready see the light?  This Jew required decades of depression to “cover my face with shame” before I would even begin to think about Jesus. I had been “wise in my own eyes” as the Proverbs describes:

• Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him. (Proverbs 26:12)

Only the man who knows he doesn’t have the answer will be open to listening. In God’s mercy, He shut my mouth to open my ears.

What then is evangelism? It is lovingly giving the other what they need so that they can hear the truth.

What it’s Like to be Rejected – a “Loser”

We’ve all tasted rejection. However, some of us have lived under a blanket of shame – a constant sense, even a conviction, that we are “losers.” We feel hated by the world, and we consequently hate back. It’s a prison worse than bars and a ball and chain!

Jesus was the quintessential reject or “loser.” Luke reports that He was born “in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7). Although Mary’s husband Joseph came from Bethlehem, it seems that there were no family members to take them in. Perhaps, this was because it was plain to all that Jesus had been conceived out of wedlock. Although He had been conceived by the Holy Spirit, it appeared to everyone else that He was no more than a bastard.

To add to the shame and disgrace, His parents was virtually homeless, and Jesus had no other birthing place than a filthy animal manger. Our crèche scenes tend to make this setting seem idyllic. However, a manger was anything but that. It was generally covered with manure, thoughtlessly deposited as the animals ate from their manger. Of course, this environment also attracted all types of insect pests and their manure-eating larvae.

To add further to the shame, Joseph and Mary seemed to lack baby clothing. Perhaps they had expected to receive these from Joseph’s family? Consequently, they had to wrap the baby Jesus in strips of cloth they found in the manger.

Some commentators insist that these strips of cloth were actually used to wrap the dead. And perhaps they kept them in the mangers to keep them out of sight and out of mind. If this is the case, the symbolism is unmistakable. Jesus was born to die.

Meanwhile, an angel beckoned a troupe of lowly shepherds to visit the smelly manger and gave them a sign so that they would know that they came to the right place:

·        “This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." (Luke 2:12)

The shepherds needed some forewarning. It was inconceivable that the homeless parents they’d encounter in a smelly manger would be the parents of the Messiah, the Savior of the world and that the child nestled in filth would one day become their Savior.

Yet, there they found Him, just as the angel had promised. It was also too difficult for Joseph and Mary to believe that, out of such shameful circumstances, a Messiah would arise to save the world.

Instead of touching down in a palace before adoring kings, King Herod attempted to kill the Messiah. Instead of the reception He deserved, He was met with utter rejection. The family then had to flee to Egypt and eventually returned to Nazareth to face the music of an out-of-wedlock birth.

Why did not the Father prepare a glorious earthly welcome for His Son? As Savior, He was meant to be the lowest of the lowly – the ultimate reject. Why? So that all would be able to identify with Him! So no one could say, “You just don’t understand. You haven’t been through what I have.” Therefore Jesus could say:

·        “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-29; NKJV)

Finding “rest for your souls” depended upon His being “gentle and lowly.” We have a mistaken idea that Jesus’ time hear on earth was like a vacation. However, Isaiah informs us that:

·        He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:3)

His incarnation was no joy-ride. He was misunderstood and rejected even by His own people and family. Meanwhile, He had to live under the prospect of the worst death conceivable – a crucifixion. Nor was He able to just turn off the fear and pain. He even prayed to the Father that if there was any other way to accomplish the salvation of humanity, then He should spare Jesus the cross (Luke 22:42).

The cross was more than excruciating; it was also humiliating to the max. Jesus had been beaten to a bloody pulp and then stripped naked – the ultimate humiliation.

He did this for us. In my decades-long struggle with severe depression, feeling that I was the ultimate looser, I often wondered if God was a cosmic sadist, passively watching a freak show called “humanity.” That’s the way it felt to me. However, over the years, the life of my Messiah and His cross have become radiantly alive for me.

Jesus isn’t robotic, unfeeling or sadistic. He suffered humiliation, rejection, and death for me even though I had hated Him. If He was willing to suffer so much for us, He must really love us! He became a loser so that we might become winners. He experienced the worst humiliations so that we would be exalted.

In His death, He has set me free. Jesus offers us a new life and a dignity. At the least, shouldn’t we be willing to “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8)?