Christ Lived What He Preached

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Sermon on the Mount” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, April 26, 1987.

Sermon transcript

Our scripture this morning is from Matthew chapter 5, and we are reading from verse 21. Hear the word of God. He hath heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill. And whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever shall say to his brother Ratha shall be in danger of the council. But whosoever shall say thou fool shall be in danger of hellfire.

Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother has off against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way. First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary deliver thee, to the judge and the judge deliver the to the officer and I’ll be cast into prison. Barely I say of the thou shalt thou shalt by no means come out then still thou has paid the uttermost part.

Your word to the ends of the earth goes now our God spoken by those who are truly unprofitable servants yet called sanctified by you and Lord for your own sake and for the sake of your great name bring to the surface their gifts And may the magnificence of your spirit be evidenced as the word is proclaimed with power.

We ask in Christ’s name. Amen. Jesus up into the mountain goes. Jesus up into the mountain goes. He ascends. And he sits down. Now you may be confused. For the words that I’ve just spoken sound as if I’m stealing them from the Apostles Creed or from the confession of the Church that declares to us the conclusion of the matter beyond Christ’s crucifixion. After his death, his resurrection, his ascension. But all that I am doing is paraphrasing for you the beginning of Matthew 5. Jesus goes up into the mountain and he sits down And in that language, you hear things that remind you of the great destiny awaiting this person.

He truly will ascend, and he will sit down in glory at his father’s right hand. But even before that time, you are given the preview you are given the preview of that which is yet to be. So, even before glory arrives in all of its splendor, glory appears. And marvelously, that glory appears in this creation, in this world, no other.

The very world in which you live the very place in which you dwell. Glory in this world, the world of all my troubles and woes, the world in which I strained and agonized and suffered, the world in which I am confused and befuddled at times, upset, distressed, The world seems so common and ordinary.

We’re given over to the team. Where everything seems to be smacked of saying. This world. Yes. This one. In this world. the glory appears. It is the glory of the kingdom. The kingdom. And what you see then, here at the opening of Matthew 5, is that premonition of those things yet to be when glory shall surround the son of God in all of its magnificence. The son himself.

All of this given to you here. Before that glory actually is the sun in all of its fullness, so that you might know what the Son what Jesus will, in fact, do from glory. These things told you in the gospel so that you might understand what Jesus will do, yes, what he presently does from glory. And what does he do?

He receives his disciples whom he is called. Now, understand that there is something here of a discriminating work that is going on. For you see, we are told, as Matthew begins, that Jesus sees the multitudes, but he withdraws from the multitudes. And on the mountain, then, withdrawn from the multitudes, his disciples come to him.

Those, truly, yes, those, if properly understood, those whom he has called. is he like? He’s chosen. So what does he do from glory? He draws his own, he calls them and he receives them. And he teaches them. And these things he continues to do today. Presently That one who is in glory seated draws to himself those whom he calls, and he receives them even now. And you are a testimony to that. Has he not moved your heart? Has he not worked in you? Can you not say so this morning? Is it not the truth?

That being the truth, the one here described as having spoken on a mount in Galilee is still speaking and acting from glory from the throne, and he is drawing you to himself. You, a disciple, no less than the disciples spoken of in this passage. Now, that does interject something into the ordinariness of our lives. You see, that does, and you would confess this too, that does make a difference. That does. Now, you might be too busy listening to the suggestions and whispers of Satan, who’s telling you that it doesn’t make any difference. But you know that it does.

A right from glory, this one who has been enthroned, he and his sovereign power calls and draws and saves. for himself. But he also, and here’s the emphasis of the passage, he also teaches. Disciples come to be taught, and from glory, not just from a mountain in Galilee, but from glory, Jesus, the Exalted One, teaches. He teaches presently, and his instruction from glory is recorded here. Not just for Jews in the first century, not just for the early church, the instruction, the teaching of the exalted Son of God is here for you, for me. But what does Jesus teach?

He teaches us about the kingdom, he teaches us that wisdom that belongs specifically to the kingdom. The kingdom as described here consistently throughout Matthew as the kingdom of heaven, that kingdom of glory, that kingdom that is upon will hear them. Here, then, the instruction, the teaching of that wisdom regarding the kingdom of heaven.

Its content, run down through it. First point, blessed. First point, blessed. Not a demand, but a gift. I can’t emphasize that enough. I can’t say that enough to myself. I can’t remind myself of that too often, because my habit of mind is to forget it. The way I think about things, demand must precede gift. Gift comes as the reward. That I have fulfilled the demand. But that’s not wisdom according to the Kingdom of Heaven. The wisdom of the Kingdom of Heaven takes the thinking of the world, takes my thinking, and turns it upside down.

Turns it inside out. It’s completely, utterly extraordinary. It’s baffling, it’s so baffling that we can hardly understand it, we can hardly grasp it. And that and. Constraint is all the more. To hold back the truth here. The blessing blessing the blessing precedes the demand. The gift precedes the demand, or if I can draw out for you a little better. This somewhat philosophically conceived. The is precedes the ought. The is precedes the ought.

In other words, according to the wisdom of the kingdom, what you are that which you have made, that which you have been made to do, by the grace of God, that precedes what you will become through your obedience, your response to the demands. It isn’t that you will become sons so much that you are sons. It’s not so much that you become children, but you have been made to be the children of God, and now all of the demands that are laid upon you by the Father in light of the fact that you’re part of the family. So the is that you are precedes the ought.

And isn’t that the way of it? Isn’t that the way of it? As you read the Old Testament now, isn’t that the way that you understand what’s going on there as God deals with Israel? It’s because he has redeemed them, and he has made them his people, that he now lays upon them their duty. I am the Lord thy God, he says, that hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, and therefore thou shalt have no other god before me. You see how it works itself out. They are constituted a nation. precedes the other. Why? Because it must be completely, thoroughly, by grace. It must be thoroughly, completely, by grace. Not what my hands have brought. completely early. By God’s grace. Precedes. The man. Now that’s the wisdom of the king. Exalting.

But there’s something else here, you see, as you run down through the opening part of the sermon. The blessing and the demand are not what were expected. We see the anticipation for the children of Israel. When Jesus was preaching and teaching, even the anticipation of these disciples that he taught here, and I might say by way of parallel, our own expectation as we come to Christ and he receives us see our expectation their expectation is that blessing comes in such a way that it ends suffering.

Blessing comes in such a way that all opposition to that blessing anything that would differ from that blessing is removed completely. The wisdom of the Kingdom of Heaven is different than that. It is not blessing instead of the opposition and the suffering. It is blessing in the midst of the suffering and the opposition. Therefore, blessed are the poor in spirit. The blessing comes to those who are in the predicament of poverty.

In the midst of, not instead of. But everybody was looking for the instead of. And you might be looking for the instead of. And therefore, your view of life may be quite muddled. And your distress multiplied. Because the wisdom of the kingdom of heaven is being pushed away, instead of grasped and held. I can say to you that it is only in the midst of the things that Jesus here describes, poverty, spirit, etc., that the blessing is a reality.

What about the demands? The demands of the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of the Messiah, as that kingdom was anticipated, were along the lines of those demands appropriated for exterminating anybody that opposed. Not only would the blessings come in such a way that all opposition, you see, would be ended with the demands of the kingdom that laid upon all the believers who embraced Messiah would be of such a nature that in keeping with those demands, they draw the sword and there would be an end to all the opposition. But note the demands.

Now that you are called to blessing in the midst of suffering and opposition, the demands that are laid upon you are those that compound the ones that oppose you. For you are called to be merciful, pure in heart, and a peacemaker, even with regard to those who hate you.

Wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. Well. That gets us up to verse seventeen. And the response you see of the disciples then, if this is as you say Jesus, what then of the Law and the Prophets? I thought the Law and the Prophets were in keeping with my expectation. Aren’t they saying what I believe? Aren’t they advocating what I have advocated? Aren’t they spokesmen for a hope along the lines of that which I have hoped for? So Jesus tells them. about the significance of his coming, not to dismantle the law and the prophets, but to fill them all.

Of their greatest significance of that which they were designed to teach from the beginning. Himself. At the center, then, of the wisdom of the kingdom of heaven is the one who received and the law and the prophets are unto him. In fact, the kind of life that has been described here as you run through the opening part of the Sermon on the Mount is exactly that which corresponds with the life of the exalted. He is the one who found and experienced and knew the blessing in the midst of poverty of spirit. He is the one who, in the midst of that opposition thrown at him by the world, continue to be merciful, pure at heart, and a peacemaker, did not return kind for kind, insult for insult, reliance for reliance.

And now, as Jesus would progress in his teaching concerning the wisdom of the kingdom, he’ll take up commandments in series. and he’ll deal with them in such a way as to convince you that the very wisdom of the kingdom of heaven is coming to play through those commandments that have been held to the ages just a bare command as the Jews would embrace thou shalt not kill not on your life for the probing will be as high as the throne of the sun And what Jesus here describes in verses 21 through 26 will be that which becomes an expression of his own life and the life of all his disciples, those who are being drawn to him, received by him, and instructed by him. In the weeks to come, we’ll be taking up the commandments, the sayings that have been dealt with by Jesus here. as we run through the fifth chapter of Matthew.

Let us pray. The uncommon wisdom, our God, of your kingdom that is from above, the manifestation of that glory from above in your Son, who even now receives those who are drawn by him and Lord he instructs them he instructs us and may we truly be instructed. Oh Lord. May it be plain to us that before we do anything at all in compliance with the demands of the kingdom. We have been made by your grace citizens of the kingdom how so through the work of Jesus Christ who came and died that by his blood we might be washed that we might be cleansed that we might be included and so it is Lord through the cross unto glory we your children drawn by him now assembling before him to receive of him the things that he is delighted to give for Christ’s sake. Our final hymn is hymn 649.

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