"King and Country: The King's Constitution" by John D. Martin

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Good morning and welcome to Strength to Strength. It is 6 o'clock here and time to get started. Today we're going to be continuing in our King and Country series. We already had Part One, The King Foreshadowed, and Part Two, The King Arrives. Today we're going to be looking at King and Country, The King's Constitution, and that will be brought to us from Brother John D. Martin. John D. is from Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, and he will be sharing with us. Usually, we have a live video to present here, but this morning John D.'s technology is not working, so he will be joining us by phone, and we look forward to hearing from him on what he has to say about the Sermon on the Mount.

So, Brother John D., if you want to open with prayer, and the time is yours. Father, we thank you this morning that you have all things under your control, and I don't understand why this delay was, but you do, and I just pray, Lord, that you would just come down and grace our meeting with your presence, fill our hearts and minds with your word, and help us, Lord, to understand better when we leave this meeting how to allow your kingdom to dominate our lives and influence our world. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Yeah, so I've been assigned to talk about the King's Constitution, which of course is the Sermon on the Mount, and my concern has been for quite a few years now that when you talk to most people and ask them why they're Christians, they will tell you, well, they want to go to heaven or they want to escape hell.

What's interesting to me is that that's not where Jesus' focus was. In fact, if you turn to the Epistles, you see very little of that emphasis. The Epistles is all about allowing God's kingdom to be established on this earth currently by the church. For instance, Ephesians 1, read the whole passage. There's not a thing in the passage about anybody going to heaven. We do believe that people will go to heaven at the end, but if people ask me on this billboard line when I answer the calls, how do I get to heaven, I say, well, you have to join the kingdom of heaven here and now. So that was Jesus' message. He began his message with nine words, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Notice he did not say, "Repent if you want to go to heaven," although that's true. He said, "Repent, I'm introducing a kingdom, and you're welcome to join it." And six verses later, after calling his first four disciples, it says he went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of sicknesses.

And that's right before the Sermon on the Mount, and I think the Sermon on the Mount then spells out what that was all about. You'll notice in the Gospels that Jesus always called his message the gospel of the kingdom, and so that's what we focus on. Now, some people think that the kingdom is not a present reality; it's a coming. I mean, even some of our Mennonite people would refer to this age as the church age and did not want to apply the concept of or the terminology of the kingdom of heaven to this age. But I guess Mark 9:1 to me makes it pretty clear that Jesus meant for the kingdom to be a reality here and now because he says in that passage, "Verily I say unto you that there be some of them which stand here which shall not taste of death till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power."

And I think most people would identify that as Pentecost. And so Jesus is saying that when you see the kingdom, when you see that, then you will know that the kingdom has come. So now the rulers of kingdoms characteristically lay down the law and tell what it means to be a citizen of their kingdom.

There's usually a constitution, a magna carta, or something that's describing what is expected in that kingdom, what the rights and privileges and duties of those citizens are. Now, the Old Testament constitution was the Ten Commandments, and so now the New Testament kingdom of God has a Sermon on the Mount that is actually the constitution of that kingdom. It's interesting this constitution is for a universal and eternal kingdom. It's only about half the length of the constitution of the United States, which of course is a much smaller kingdom and a temporary kingdom, and yet it has a much longer constitution. In fact, some people believe that the Sermon on the Mount ends at the end of chapter six, and we'll talk a little bit more about chapter seven, so that would make it even shorter.

Now, let's talk a little bit about this constitution. Our constitution of the United States has a preamble. A preamble literally means to walk in front of, to amble in front of. It's an introductory statement indicating what is to follow. And so what we see in the preamble, the beatitudes, as we call them, is in fact giving the privileges and duties in a general way for the rest of the constitution, the Sermon on the Mount.

What privileges do we have? What rights do we have? Well, a privilege to enjoy the kingdom of heaven, to be comforted, to have an inheritance, to be fulfilled, to experience mercy, to see God, and to be actual children of God, part of his family. Those are the rights and privileges of the citizens of this kingdom. And then we have the duties that follow. So I would like to just sort of outline this constitution for you this morning.

I often looked at the Sermon on the Mount, and I wondered why it did not begin with the new birth, which we know is a very important beginning in the Christian life. And then a closer look at this Sermon on the Mount made me realize that that's exactly how it begins. It not only begins with an entrance into the kingdom by becoming poor in spirit, surrendering, becoming teachable, being ready to be a disciple. That's verse three. So there you have your new birth experience, but then it goes on to describe the dynamics of that new birth. It's an ongoing experience. It has a beginning, but it has dynamics that continue throughout one's entire life. This is not just an event.

It is an event. It's a definite beginning, but it is the beginning of a process. Salvation is not an end in itself. It's a means to an end. And Jesus said, "If you make it an end in itself, you will lose it." He says, "He that seeks to save his life shall lose it." And so this beginning is very important because Jesus is picturing a redeemed society. You can't have a redeemed society unless you have redeemed citizens. So this is a very important part of the Sermon on the Mount to help us understand what this is all about and a process that must begin in our lives. Now, if you just have verse three and you don't see this as an ongoing process, someone has said that's like singing a song and ending it on T. That would punish any musician to have a composition that ends on the next to the last note of the song.

In fact, Mozart had a trick he liked to play on his old father, Leopold, who was also a musician. He liked to come home late at night, sit down at the piano, and play a composition, and then stop at the next to the last note and get up and go to bed. Well, his poor old father was lying in bed tossing and turning. This was not a good aesthetic conclusion to the musical experience. And so he would lie there and he would toss and he would turn until he finally couldn't resist getting up, going down, and playing the last chord on the piano, and then he could go up and go to bed and sleep.

And I feel that people who've made salvation an end in itself, an event without the continuing process, are trying to live life with a song that ends on T. They just never really get into the conclusion of that, the process. So let's talk now a little bit about what we have here in this passage. The first thing we have in the beatitudes is a focus on the character of these citizens of this kingdom. Somebody has said, "The character of influence is the influence of character."

And I would love to spend the time talking about the beatitudes, but we don't have time to do that this morning. But this is all about influence. This kingdom of heaven was supposed to influence the rest of society, and that's what you see immediately after the beatitudes.

You see that the purpose of the kingdom is to influence society. We're all born with a desire to have an influence. We're sometimes told that desire is a wrong desire to want to dominate or to want to have dominion, which actually was the responsibility given to man at the beginning. He was to have dominion, and that desire is a God-given desire. Of course, it becomes perverted with selfishness, but all of us should have a desire to have an influence on our society, to be somebody who makes a difference in our society, and that's exactly what this kingdom is all about. So in the Old Testament, God's people were supposed to demonstrate what a nation looks like whose God is the Lord.

Psalm 33, "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." And that's exactly what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to demonstrate a nation whose God is the Lord. 1 Peter 2:9 says, "Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar or favored people that you should show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."

And so we have the preamble to the constitution that is laying out the duties and privileges of the citizens of this kingdom, introduces the concept of a new birth, a change of character that's an ongoing process that continues, and then the result of that is an influence on our society. The next thing we have in the constitution is a connection between the Old Testament and the New Testament. I'm sure many of the people listening to Jesus ask the question we all ask of a religious teacher, "Is he a liberal or is he a conservative? What's he going to do with the laws of the Old Testament?" And so Jesus comes out very clearly that he is on the side of law.

In fact, the laws he gives are more stringent than the laws of the Old Testament. He makes it very clear that he came to bring to completion those laws. He didn't come to obliterate any of them, including the one that is least. The Jews had figured out which one that was. It was the one where you were told you could, if you found a nest in a tree, you could take the little ones, but you could not take the mother. And I think the ecologists today would say, "Well, that is an important commandment." And so Jesus said, "There's no place in his kingdom for people who play fast and loose with law." In fact, he later in his teaching said that the love of many shall wax cold because of iniquity.

That's lawlessness. We have a lot of people today who think that it's legalism that causes people to cool off spiritually, and it certainly can, but Jesus never targeted that. He said, "The thing that's going to cause apostasy is lawlessness." And of course, he ends the Sermon on the Mount with a warning, in fact four warnings against that concept of lawlessness. And so he comes out very clearly here saying this ties right into the Old Testament. This is going to be a kingdom of laws, and the lawless person is the least in the kingdom. The people who are going to be the greatest in the kingdom are the people who have a high respect for law and teach a disciplined way of life.

In fact, a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the Old Testament. According to the Old Testament law, you were guilty if you committed murder. Jesus said, "You're guilty if you're angry with your brother." That's a much higher standard and of course takes care of the whole issue of murder. The same thing is true with adultery. In the Old Testament, that was the crime. Jesus said, "The problem here is lust."

We're going to have a law against lust. And so I'm just giving you of how he brought to completion the Old Testament. People ask me all the time what I think of the Old Testament, and I say, "Well, the Old Testament is preliminary. It moves us in a direction that finally culminates in Christ, and he is the completion of that Old Testament law." So that's what you have next. You have a connection, which I really appreciate that connection that makes it clear how the kingdom of heaven is related to the kingdom in the Old Testament.

Then we move into the next part, which is 5:17 to 20, which I'm sorry, 5:21 to 47, which I call the kingdom statutes. And here we have the kingdom morality. Here are the laws that we are to keep. And it's interesting that if you really look at those laws, they would be the laws that I think everybody would say would produce the perfect society. A law in which anger has been overcome, a law in which lust has been overcome, which destroys families and causes all kinds of havoc in society.

A society in which dishonesty is overcome. People mean yes when they say yes, and they mean no when they say no. A society in which people don't coerce other people. They don't resist evil people. They overcome evil with good. They influence them by heaping coals of fire on their head, loving them, blessing them, praying for them. People don't like to be coerced. In fact, that's one of the accusations I get all the time when people call me. They're upset at the church because the church is trying to dominate everybody's life.

And of course, I have to tell them that, "No, that's wrong. We believe in freedom of conscience, but it's not to tell somebody that they're wrong and that they're out of sync with the laws of the universe and with the God of the universe.

But we don't use any coercive measures to make people obey those laws." And so you have that next, how we're to relate to evil people. So you have a morality where anger is dealt with, lust is dealt with, dishonesty is dealt with, and the whole idea of coercion and mistreating other people or dominating other people is dealt with. So that's chapter five. So that's the kingdom statutes. And then you come into chapter six, which is the kingdom spirituality, which is the dynamic that motivates that morality. And it's interesting.

There's just a lot of connection in the Sermon on the Mount with Judaism. And here's one. Judaism said the three pillars of righteousness are almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. That was Judaism's code for righteousness. And Jesus endorses that. He picks up on that and talks about those three things.

It's interesting that the word alms is the Hebrew word for righteousness. And what Jesus does next is he picks up that particular pillar of righteousness and elaborates on that. And I think that's important because that is the most important characteristic of the Christian. The Christian is a giver. The Christian is not a taker. The world is divided into two classes: the givers and the takers. And even if a Christian is an invalid, a Christian will find out a way to give, to pray, to perhaps write letters.

The heart of the Christian is to give. John the Baptist was asked once, "What do you expect us to do to demonstrate our repentance?" And he says, "Well, if you have two coats, give one away. If you have extra food, give it away." I don't know how many people today would give that as an evidence for repentance, but that's what John said. And then we have Zacchaeus, who Jesus came to his house, and after that visit, we don't know what was in the visit, but Zacchaeus says, "I'm going to give away half my goods. I'm going to restore fourfold." And Jesus said, "Today is salvation come to this house."

That's a message of the gospel that has been very neglected, that Christians are not takers. Christians do not accumulate things on this earth for themselves. They are givers. They disperse. They're generous. They're liberal in the biblical sense of the word. And so Jesus then elaborates on that one pillar of Jewish righteousness, which is giving, laying up treasure in heaven, and not accumulating wealth for yourself.

I think it's interesting that that aspect of Christianity is in this chapter on the kingdom spirituality or piety rather than in chapter five because I think that's where it belongs. I think it is part of the dynamic that drives the morality of chapter five. So that's chapter seven to the end of the chapter.

And then we have in chapter seven, some people don't include this in the Sermon on the Mount or the, yes, the because it actually is telling us how to apply the constitution. It's telling us warnings against what happens if it's not applied. So in a way, it's a little bit different from the first two chapters.

So the first thing we have is four kingdom cautions in applying the Sermon on the Mount. And I want to spend a little time with that one, so I'm going to come back to that. And then at the end of the chapter, we have four kingdom warnings. And here are the four kingdom warnings. Beware of the undisciplined life, the easy way. Beware of false prophetic personalities, the theoretical way, the people that have all their theology right, but it doesn't translate into life. Beware of lawless miracle workers. They have the idea it has to go beyond theory, but then they have a false demonstration of the power of the gospel. And finally, beware of foolish builders on a false foundation.

So we have those four warnings at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. But I want to go back now to the applications of the Sermon on the Mount, the four kingdom cautions, because Jesus has laid out an idealism that is the reason why most people postpone this to another age because they say, "This is not realistic." Jesus has pictured a new kind of person. He's pictured a new kind of society without anger dominating or lust or dishonesty or revenge or violence. He pictures a society where the tyranny of property is broken. He pictures a society where there's genuine faith without hypocrisy. He's actually picturing a little colony of heaven on earth, and people say, "Is it real?"

But yes, it is real. But Jesus said there are some things that we need to consider if this is going to actually work the way it's supposed to. So I have four things I want to give here that Jesus gave. The first one is verses 1 through 5 of chapter 7, and I'm going to call this correct with compassion.

Anabaptists are passionate about these ideals, and there has been this constant effort to have the perfect Christian community. And what starts out as a beautiful ideal and people are really excited, if they're not careful, it turns into a nightmare of judgmental attitudes, criticism, gossip, and just all kinds of ugliness. And Jesus understood what we don't see. And so he gives us this caution.

How shall we relate these teachings in this Sermon on the Mount, this constitution? How shall we relate them to our fellow disciples? How should we handle these ideals? Well, the first thing he says is, "Don't judge." Now, he's not saying we should not discriminate because obviously he ends the chapter with some real specific discriminatory concepts that we should apply. But what he's saying is, "Don't condemn." It's what we find in John 3:17. Jesus did not come to condemn the world. Now, if you look at the word condemn and look at the last four letters, D-E-M-N, you only need to change one letter in those four letters to get what he really meant. It's the word damn.

We are not supposed to put other people down, which is the essence of damning people or condemning them. That's not really what we're supposed to be doing. We're not supposed to be judgmental and condemning. And it's wrong for three reasons.

Number one, it's the opposite of what Jesus did. I just told you he did not come to condemn the world. He did step down to our level, but he came down here to lift us up to his level.

He did not come here to condemn. He did not come to put people down. In fact, he says, "If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me and receiveth not my words hath one that judgeth him. The word that I've spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." So Jesus was not a person to be putting people down. That was not his approach in life at all.

So the second thing, it causes us to project our own faults on others. Romans 2:1 says, "Who are you that condemns another person? You're doing the same thing." And I've noticed that too. People tend to judge other people from their own weaknesses. They tend to project them. Liars are sensitive to the lies of other people. Proud people are usually sensitive to pride in others.

Lustful people are usually critical of other people who are lusting. Of course, we had that incident a few years ago where Jim Baker had a moral breakdown, and then you had Jimmy Swagger jumping on it on his TV program just saying how awful this was, only to be found out within the next year that he was having an even worse problem. So that's the warning here.

Correcting another brother carries a very high risk, and that risk is self-righteousness. And that's why the Bible says we're to correct in meekness, lest you also be tempted, because there's this tremendous temptation when you're trying to point out the fault in another person to climb up high and become self-righteous and feel like you're better than the other person. I call it the Haman syndrome.

He thought he could raise himself by putting Mordecai down. He was raising himself, but in a way that he was not really planning. So number one, it's the opposite of what Jesus did. Number two, it causes us to project our own faults on other people. And finally, it misses the goal of correction. The goal of correction is to redeem the brother.

Matthew 18:15-17, the whole thing is to restore the brother. So what is the answer? How do we do this? Well, Jesus explains it. He says, "Be sure that you have your own repentance well established before you set out to correct your brother." He says, "Quit beholding the beam that's in your brother's eye. Quit gazing at his fault and start looking at yourself."

And it's interesting, I think, that he chose the eye. He says, "Look, you're getting ready to do eye surgery." That's probably the most sensitive part of the human body. I just had cataract surgery a couple of months ago, and I was very concerned because a very, very small fraction of people have a cataract surgery that goes bad. And the idea of losing one's sight is just an awful thing to consider. And he says, "When you go to correct your brother, consider that you're ready to do the most delicate and the most crucial operation that you could possibly do." And so the surgeon is very concerned. One of the things he's concerned about is infection. And so with that cataract surgery, they gave me all kinds of eye drops, antibiotics of all sorts, and that was their main concern, infection.

And of course, we know that surgeons wash their hands. They wash their hands, I think, for like two minutes, something like that, with the best antibiotics. And so Jesus is saying, "You make sure you've washed your soul. Make sure that there's contagion in your attitude. Make sure when you go to your brother, you have one of humility. Make sure that your purpose is to restore and not to put him down. You might have to say something that's very hurtful, and surgery is hurtful, but the purpose of surgery is to hurt. It's to heal." And so Jesus is saying, "If you're going to go to correct your brother, it probably is going to hurt, but make sure that the hurt is the way you do it.

Make sure that you cause the least amount of hurt. Make sure if there's hurt, it's not because you said it in a hurtful way."

This is something I've really had to work on in my life. I mean, the temptation for self-righteousness and judgmentalness and condemnation and putting people down and raising ourselves by doing that, I think, is probably one of the most damaging aspects of the way Christians handle their responsibilities toward their brother. So the first thing that we need to do is secure our own repentance. Quit gazing at the fault and start gazing inwardly and make sure that we have ourselves in a position where we can do this extremely, extremely delicate, crucial surgery. And then number two, gently correct your brother.

Self-righteousness sees the moat. The clean heart sees how to remove it if it was even there in the first place. Our brothers are precious. I don't think we realize that every one of them has gifts that contribute to the congregation. I'm just thinking right now of a few people in our congregation that trouble me with some things that I would like to see different. But I can also think of things in those brothers that our congregation needs, and it would be a real loss if we could not keep those brothers in the congregation. Now, there comes a time when that can't be done, but I think we need to realize that every brother is a valuable brother, and there may be a time when you'll need him to help you with your Christian life.

And if you obliterate him from the congregation or from your life, you'll be without the helper you need later. A few cautions that I would bring here: hatred, greed, jealousy, and hurts, these are all contagious, and there are people who walk around expressing those things. And you really should avoid those people who make that kind of talk and those kinds of attitudes their primary focus.

The second thing I would say is fight against gossip. Somebody says, "Gossip is that in both ears and comes out the mouth greatly enlarged," and we all have to deal with because gossip helps us make ourselves look better and the other brother look worse, and that's just an awful thing.

And the third thing is develop a readiness to compliment. We are so ready to criticize, but there are people that I have met that are just ready to compliment. You know that when you're around them, they're going to make you feel like a very special person. They do everything they possibly can to encourage people to compliment them. There was a teacher at EMC at one time that the students used to say about her, "You did not misbehave for Mrs. Brackbill because it made her so sad when you did that." And she was always thinking so well of all her students that it was just unthinkable to ever do anything to make her feel bad because she was such a positive person and had such an uplifting approach and attitude toward all of her students.

So the first thing, the first caution then is avoid the judgmental attitude. Correct your brother with compassion. The second thing, the second caution is how do we relate these ideals to the world? That first one was how do we relate them to each other. The second one is how do we relate them to the world? Well, this one I have said tells us to witness with wisdom.

Without grace, these ideals are impossible. In fact, for people to try to apply these ideals without grace, it's probably going to turn into a disaster. Marxism is an example of that. The maxim of Marxism was, "From each according to his means and to each according to his need." Well, that's straight out of the Gospels, and that's wonderful, and they won many people because that's a wonderful promise that they're going to do that. But it turned into a nightmare because selfishness was not dealt with. And I tell people that on the phone. I say, "When I talk about the kingdom of God, there are people who say to me, 'Well, I suppose you voted for Bernie Sanders.'" And I say, "Yes."

No, I didn't vote for Bernie Sanders, but it is true that when you hear him talk, a lot of what he says is sort of reflecting the ideals of the kingdom, but it's a dangerous concept to try to carry that out unless you have surrendered your life to Jesus and selfishness is brought under control. So anyway, we need to be careful how we relate these teachings to those who are without. I think we need to discern the difference between the simple person, the fool, and the scorner. The simple person believes everything he's told, and he will try to believe what you have to say, and you can say more to him than you can to the fool.

The fool is opposed to what is right, and he fights against it. And the scorner not only fights against what's right, he tries to destroy the messenger as well. And so I think we have to be careful. When we went on our wedding trip, our first night was in Winchester, Virginia, and we get up the next morning.

There were no Mennonite churches in Winchester, so I guess we went to the church with the highest steeple. And we went at 9 o'clock. Most churches, besides ours, do not start at 9 o'clock. Theirs started later, but they were having an early morning Bible study led by the pastor, and the series that they were on was the Ten Commandments, and it happened to be on the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," that Sunday that we attended. And the pastor started off by saying, "There are two basic concepts here. The first group of people believe that it's right to kill under certain circumstances, but it's wrong to commit murder. It's wrong to kill for personal reasons." He said, "I'm sure there's nobody here that represents the second view, which is that all killing is wrong."

Well, of course, I was sitting there smiling, and I waited until I had my opportunity, and I raised my hand and I said, "Well, I represent that minority view." And all they were all so happy. "Oh, we're so glad you're here. We'd like to hear that view." And so I started to tell them a little bit about non-resistance, and it wasn't long until they didn't want to hear anymore. So we have to be careful. I look back. If I had handled that differently, I might have been able to open some hearts to that subject, but I don't think I handled it very well. So we have to be careful how we give these ideals to the world around us.

Now, the Bible says we are to be the light of the world, so we are to communicate the Gospel to the world. So how do we do it if people are going to not be able to apply these? Well, it says we're to be the light of the world. We are supposed to demonstrate. We're to show people less talking, more living. And back at that passage, it said, "They will see your good works." And so the world has to see. The Christian can believe, and then he sees when he applies his belief, but the world has to see. They have to see something. On the day of Pentecost, the disciples were praising God, and they ended up speaking in tongues, and then the people said, "What is this?"

And then the sermon followed. Too many times we're trying to preach the sermon without the demonstration, and the Gospel order is for the world there must be a demonstration. Nothing got the message of forgiveness across to the world better than the nickel mine shooting. I mean, everybody was talking about forgiveness because they saw the demonstration and they wanted the explanation. So witness with wisdom, and the maxim there is make sure that you're showing before you're telling. They say that when you made a cannon, the cannon had to be 1500 times heavier than the cannonball, or it wouldn't shoot straight. And I was over Gettysburg one time, and I saw the weight of the cannon and the cannonball, and I think I had that figure right, but there was a formula.

There had to be much more weight to the cannon than to the cannonball, and I think that applies here with our witness. The third question that's answered is, "Well, how are you going to have the wisdom to know how to do all of this to relate these properly to your brother and to the people of the world?" Well, the next one is perceive with prayer.

Jesus said, "Ask, seek, and knock." And it took me a long time to realize that there's a promise connected with every one of those. Everyone that asketh receiveth. He that seeketh findeth, and to everyone that knocketh, to him it shall be opened.

I have come to say there are no unanswered prayers. They're not answered in the way sometimes we think they should be answered because God gives us what we need, not what we want. And so sometimes when we pray, we are not aware exactly what we need. It's a little bit like when I went to high school. I wanted to study to be a farmer because that's what I thought I was going to be, so I wanted to take vocational ag. And my dad said, "Look, I can teach you all the vocational ag you need to know right here on the farm. You're going to take the academic course," which was a college preparatory course, which my dad didn't really mean to prepare me for college, but that's what he did.

He ended up giving me what I needed for the rest of my life, unknown to him and to me. And I think that's a little bit the way it is with God. He hears our prayer, and he knows what need is represented in that prayer, and then he gives us what we need, not what we ask for. For instance, you pray for patience. What are you going to get? Tribulation worketh patience.

So that's an example of what I'm talking about. So it says, "Perceive with prayer." He says, "We're to ask, we're to seek, we're to knock so that we have the wisdom to make all of these applications."

One thing about prayer, some people wonder why they don't get answers to their prayers. Jesus taught several times it's the persistent prayer that gets the answer. George Mueller said he prayed for five men for 50 years. Two of them were converted shortly before he died, and somebody observed that the other three were converted shortly afterward. I think God listens to hear what we really care about in our prayers, and so persistence is a very important part of the prayer. And then I must bring this to conclusion so we have some time for some questions.

The last thing that he gives us is that we should serve with self-sacrifice. All right. How shall I conduct myself in situations not covered by this teaching? This is a very short constitution. It doesn't cover everything. So suppose I run into something that there's nothing in this constitution that addresses specifically. Well, here's where the expansion clause in the constitution is. In the United States Constitution, there's an expansion clause called the commercial clause, I think, and it basically says if there's anything that the federal government needs to do that's not covered in this constitution, they have the power to do. I'm not getting that said right. It has basically to do with interstate commerce, and it's known as the expansion clause.

Well, the expansion clause in the Sermon on the Mount, if you have your Bible open, is verse 12. "Therefore, all things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets." And sort of smile because if I had been choosing something that people could reference to get them an answer for any issue that they face, I probably would not have chosen what Jesus chose. He chose our selfishness as our reference point.

That's unique because that means there isn't anybody that lacks this reference point. All of us are intensely selfish by nature, and Jesus turns this on its head and says, "Use this selfish inclination you have to decide how you're going to act toward everybody else." So think the most selfish thoughts you can think, and then go do that to the person that you're ministering to. And there again, I go back to Haman. He's the best example of this in the whole Bible. The king said to Haman, "What shall I do to the man that the king delights to honor?" And Haman, of course, thought it was himself, so he said, "Well, get the king's horse out, put this man on the king's horse, array him in the king's robes, put the crown on his head, have somebody lead him through the streets saying, 'This is the man who the king delights to honor.'" And then the king says, "So you go do that to Mordecai."

And that's exactly what Jesus is saying. He's saying, "Your selfishness is a reference point that will give you abundant wisdom to know how to apply these teachings to anybody you meet. Just use your selfishness as a reference point and then turn that outward instead of inward, and you'll be right in the way you decide." So I like that. The Bible says, "My strength is made perfect in weakness, and our selfishness is made worse weakness, and out of that can come strength if we apply this expansion clause. Surely the wrath of men shall praise thee." Psalm 76:10. God has chosen the base things of the world, and that's what he uses. So we come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount.

It's just amazing. It covers every aspect of life, and it even at the end tells us how to apply it in a way that it's constructive. So now, do you have any questions? I'm sorry I couldn't see you. It would have been an inspiration to see your expressions, but I didn't have that privilege this morning.

Yes. Well, thank you, Brother John, for sharing. That's been very interesting, and it's been a real blessing to me, and I'm sure to all of us. Just one question here to get started, and then we'd like to open it up to the audience here to share whatever questions you might have as well. So in the context of relating to the world, you talked about the colony on earth, and you made the phrase about living more and speaking less. What is that a reference to? Is that a reference to evangelism that we're to be seen but not heard? Or do you want to just expound on what you meant by that phrase?

Well, obviously, some people have taken this to an extreme. I mean, if you go to the Bruderhof, it's hard to even talk sometimes to them about spiritual things because they're reacting. They see that most Christians are talkers, and so they're trying to demonstrate by community, and they don't say much.

Brother Lynn Martin, who was our late bishop, said it this way: "Actions speak louder with words." So the action should be there, but there also should be words. I mean, Peter did explain when they said, "What is this?"

That was his chance to preach the sermon. So I guess I shouldn't minimize the speaking. I should actually more emphasize, be sure you get a very strong picture of the Gospel out there, and then what you have to say about it is going to carry some weight. Does that answer your question?

Yes. Thank you. Appreciate that. All right. So we'd like to open it up here for a few minutes to anyone who has any questions or comments, and who will be first? Brother John, thank you so much for this message and for your passion in preaching the kingdom of God. It's been a tremendous inspiration to me.

So yeah, a question I have for you is at the end of the sermon there, Jesus, they were astonished, the people who were listening, because he spoke as one having authority and not as the scribes. And my question for you, John, is why have so many of us as anabaptists lost that astonishment with this sermon? It was something that I didn't hear preached a whole lot growing up, that we are Sermon on the Mount Christians.

It seems like we have lost that astonishment as a people, and why is that? Why is it different for you? You're a brother who's astonished at this sermon, and it shines through your life and your teaching for years, but why have so many of us lost that astonishment?

Well, I think one of the—I think a number of things have contributed to that, and that is the whole focus of the Gospel has shifted to what I call a save-me Gospel with a focus on getting to heaven at the end.

This does not focus on that. It focuses on life here and now, but the focus shifted.

The preaching became a revivalistic preaching, which I don't know about you, but most of the revivalistic preaching I heard was, "You need to get saved so you can go to heaven." And of course, then you had the altar call with a lot of pressure put on with warnings, frightening descriptions of hell, which I don't want to minimize that reality, but that was the motivation. And then, of course, you had dispensational, a Benedict premillennialism that did sort of relegate the kingdom to the future. And then, of course, you had the Gospel song, which was written for the revivals of the early 1800s and the moody revivals at the end of the 1800s and the Sunday school movement in between.

And that was all focused on revivalism, and the songs that were written to accompany that were songs about getting saved and going to heaven and how wonderful heaven is going to be. And of course, since that, that genre has produced songs in some other categories. But I mean, you have some Gospel songs about cross-bearing and living the life, but they're few in number compared to the many, many songs about just getting saved and going to heaven. And so I grew up with a tremendous emphasis on the importance of the church, but I didn't hear the reason why the church was important. I guess I would have gotten the impression the church is important because you can't go to heaven unless you obey the church or something like that.

It still was focused on heaven. The community concept, the kingdom concept was there. There was some emphasis on living the life, obviously, but the focus shifted. And so I think because of that, the Sermon on the Mount basically was not as important as it had been earlier in anabaptist experience.

Sure. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Just yesterday, I had the privilege of reading part of the sermon to an Iranian man, and it's just been just so fun to read this sermon with him and talk about it.

Yeah. My prayer is that we would get that astonishment back, and thank you. Thank you for engaging us and inflaming our imaginations in this way. Thank you. Let me say a little bit more about it. The reason why people were astonished and the reason why they responded the way they do and people still do is because this is raw realism. This is not starry-eyed idealism. It gets right down to the nitty-gritty of life. And in fact, a person like Richard Dawkins, who will never believe that Jesus was divine or the Gospel in any way, does say, if you read Dawkins, he says, "If the way of Jesus were carried out, actually practiced, it would be the best hope for our world."