Friday, January 7, 2011

The Beatitudes, Part 5 of 50

TEXT: Matthew 5:1-12

IDEA: The Sermon on the Mount serves as an “interim ethic” for Christ’s subjects to follow.

PURPOSE: To help listeners understand that the Sermon on the Mount serves as a goal, not as an ideal, a goal that, with God’s help, we can reach.

We have had several conversations about how the Sermon on the Mount has been applied and misapplied.
Do any of these applications have truth in them?

How can we look at the Sermon on the Mount and take it seriously as teaching we are to embrace?

I. The Sermon on the Mount tells us what Jesus expects of us as His subjects until He returns.

The Old Testament prophets looked forward to a political kingdom in which Messiah, God’s King, would rule over the earth.

When He was here on earth, Jesus inaugurated this kingdom, but He has gone to heaven.  He will return to establish His kingdom on earth.  (The “Already but not yet.”)  We are urged to pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Albert Schweitzer wrote a book on The Quest for the Historical Jesus.  He described the Sermon on the Mount as an “interim ethic” for Jesus’ followers to live by until His return to establish His kingdom.

II. Christians are like people in exile.

The Sermon on the Mount makes us counter-cultural.

Irish immigrants became American citizens. What did that involve for them?

Have you ever lived abroad as an American in a different culture? What is that like? What decisions do you have to make?

We live in a foreign culture as Christians and we anticipate the time when our King will return.