Well, good afternoon. Today we're going to be talking about Matthew 5. I'll cover about half of it in this message, and then we'll look at the second half in another message of chapter 5. And of course, this begins the Sermon on the Mount, which was the centerpiece of Jesus ' teaching and what the early Christians quoted when they were explaining Christianity to the Romans. They didn't go to Paul's epistle to the Romans.
They went to the Sermon on the Mount to explain what Christianity was all about, which is not something you hear done today very often. That's one of the things that separates today's church from the historic faith, from the early Christians who learned Christianity from the apostles themselves or from disciples of the apostles. Now, there's so much richness in the Sermon on the Mount. I mean, every single verse has significant meaning and we can't possibly cover all of them in this brief session.
So I want to just hit some highlights of some of the verses that are totally explained in a different way today than how the early Christians understood them. Or maybe in some cases, passages that were very new to me as far as how the early Christians historically understood them. So I want to start with Matthew 5:3, " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. " We've all heard that verse quoted many times.
Now, anybody who reads the Sermon on the Mount or who reads the book of Matthew, I think if they're intellectually honest, they know that this goes strongly against the message that Martin Luther preached, the message that is commonly preached today in most Protestant churches, which is that you are saved by faith alone. Your obedience to Christ, although it's something good, has plays no role in your salvation.
And that if we try to do good works and that sort of thing, if we think our works or our obedience play a role in our salvation, then we might not be saved. I mean, that's about the only thing you can do to endanger your salvation is to somehow think that living a righteous life affects that salvation. Now, again, you won't find any of that teaching in the words of Jesus unless you take something out of context. So evangelicals have found a way to try to sneak that into the Sermon on the Mount when it's not there.
And this is one of the verses they use. A poor in spirit, that's not a phrase that we use very much in common life. So they take that phrase and they give it a meaning very different than how it was historically understood. I'm going to just read to you some examples from some commentaries. These are from the first one is from the 19th century and the next two I think are both 20th century. The one of Jamieson Fausset and Brown, who were Calvinists, they say this about the meaning of poor in spirit.
" God wants nothing from us as the price of His saving gifts. We have but to feel our universal destitution and cast ourselves upon His compassion. " So they're saying that's what he meant by poor in spirit. Wow, you have to take that phrase and do a lot of imaginative thinking to render it from having something to do with being poor to bringing it into the evangelical gospel. God doesn't want anything from you.
He just wants you to acknowledge that you're a sinner, that you're helpless, you can only be saved by Christ. Now, there's a measure of truth in that statement, but that has nothing to do with the expression poor in spirit. And that's not an isolated example. I would say you could just pick any commentary today that covers Matthew and look at what it has to say. And I'm going to guess 90 out of 100, maybe 99 out of 100 are going to say something similar.
The New International Bible Commentary, which is a fairly recent one, says this, " To be poor in spirit means to depend totally upon God for all help. " The People's New Testament, which I think is early 20th century, maybe it's 19th century, says, poor in spirit means those who are sensible of spiritual destitution. And in fact, the Bible that I grew up with, the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses, it actually translates that verse.
Instead of saying poor in spirit, it says, " Blessed are those who are conscious of their spiritual need. " So in fact, I never even heard the expression poor in spirit until after I left Jehovah's Witnesses. And then it's explained just the same way that Jehovah's Witnesses translate that verse. And so that was the thinking I had. I would have never come to that just from reading the words poor in spirit.
But I thought, okay, if that's what everyone is saying until I read the early Christians and it's like they never got that thought. In fact, if you look at the parallel sermon on the plain, which is contained in the book of Luke, there Jesus said, simply blessed are the poor. Nothing about spirit. So when you look at the parallel, which like I say, the two sermons are very similar. They're not exactly the same, but they're similar. Why would he say blessed are the poor in the sermon on the plain?
And then something in the sermon on the mount, blessed are the poor in spirit. He doesn't mean anything to do with being poor. He means that you acknowledge the evangelical gospel. I'm totally helpless. I need salvation through Christ alone. It doesn't make any sense. And so the early Christians understood it in a natural way. When they read Luke, they understood it blessed are the poor, because most of Jesus's followers came from the poor. Jesus said because, you know, the kingdom of God is preached to them.
They're the ones who primarily heard and received it. So in this life, blessed are the rich, if you're going to say anything in human life. But in the eternal sphere, it's blessed are the poor. But the words in spirit did have some meaning. And the early Christians came to two basic understandings. I mean, not a single one of them understood it the way that modern commentators interpret it. You won't find a single one who says anything like that.
But there was a divided opinion or you could say two different thoughts as to what the phrase in spirit meant when he added that to poor being poor in spirit. Some of them thought that it meant, okay, in spirit, in your makeup, you are like the poor. The poor, at least in that day and age is not always true today. But in that day and age, the poor tended to be very humble people.
And so to be poor in spirit meant you had the same spirit they did, this humble, meek attitude that in spirit, you were poor, even if maybe you were middle class. They pointed to the verse in Micah 6:8, which says, " He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. " So that thought to walk humbly with God as if you were a poor person. John Chrysostom writes this, " What is meant by the poor in spirit?
It means the humble and contrite in mind. For by spirit here, he has designated the soul and the faculty of choosing. For many people are not willingly humble, but they're compelled to be so by the weight of circumstances. Jesus passes these by for such is no matter of praise. In contrast, He blesses those who are humbled by choice and who lower themselves. Here, He also means those who are awestruck and tremble at the commandments of God. God earnestly accepts such ones.
So instead of it meaning, " Oh, people who say, I don't have to obey God's commandments. I just throw myself on the mercy of God. " They're understanding it to mean these are people who walk humbly with God, who obey His commandments, who humble themselves. Instead of saying, I want to do things my way. No, I want to do things God's way. If he commands this, this is what I'm going to do.
Origen wrote this, those who have been obedient to the Word of God and have henceforth by their obedience, shown themselves capable of wisdom, are said to deserve the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, the promises are more worthily fulfilled. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, and blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. " So it's this humility of walking humbly and obediently with Christ as our Lord.
Now, I said there is another view, and the two aren't in contrast with each other. I think they're complementary. The other view was that the poor in spirit are people who are voluntarily poor for the sake of the kingdom of God. In other words, you might be born as a middle-class person, but you give up material things in order to devote more of your life to God and to be able to share what you have with the poor. Okay, let's move on. I'm not going to talk about any of the other Beatitudes.
Each one of them is very important. But I want to talk right at the end of the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:13, where Jesus said, " You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt becomes foolish, or if the salt loses its savor, as most translations say, how will it be salted? It is therefore good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. " Now, today, when you think of salt, what do you think of? What do most people think of as the purpose of salt?
Well, today, in modern usage, we primarily use salt to add flavor to our food or to bring out the flavor of it. It's also used for preservation today, but mainly to, like I say, enhance the taste of our food. But in the days of Jesus, salt was primarily used for preservation. They didn't have freezers. They didn't have refrigerators. They didn't have the modern process of canning food. So to preserve their food, you had the process of drying, like drying grapes to make raisins, that sort of thing.
And that would preserve them to last many months. But as far as things like meat, they would salt them and salt would preserve it. And so when they hear the word salt, they would think of, oh, preservation. I'm going to just give you an example, reading from Philo. Now, Philo is not a Christian. He was a Jew who lived at the same time as Jesus. He lived in Alexandria, Egypt. And so this sheds a lot on what Jesus's Jewish hearers would have thought when he said, " You are the salt of the earth.
" Philo writes, " Salt is an emblem of the duration of all things. For salt preserves everything upon which it is sprinkled. " So they thought of preservation. Origen writes, " Why are Jesus's disciples compared with salt? " It's because salt preserves meat from decaying into stench and worms. It makes them edible for a longer period. Meat would not last very long and be found useful without salt. So that's why we are to be salt because we are to help preserve this world through our actions and through our prayers.
Chrysostom writes this, " Jesus wants us to be salt. And this is the nature of salt. It not only preserves itself, but it also preserves all other objects with which it comes into contact. " So salt will take meat that would decay, lose its life, you might say, and it preserves it by salt being sprinkled on it. So likewise, as His disciples, we bring eternal life to people, not from ourselves, but the message of eternal life from Jesus Christ.
And by sprinkling it on people, well, we can preserve them, again, through His actions, for eternity. And that's what we are supposed to be doing. Now, when I read to you that verse, I read to you the rendering, but if the salt becomes foolish, actually, that's my own rendering because I could not find a Bible translation that renders the verse that way. But I put it that way in the commentary, because that's what the Greek says. I don't mean if you're a Greek scholar because I'm not one.
I mean, just the word that he uses there is moraino, a form of it, which means foolish is where we get the word moron. And there is no other meaning than foolish. It doesn't sometimes mean saltiness or anything like that. So modern translations, they don't translate it literally because they think, well, what does that mean if the salt becomes foolish? And so they put in there, even though the Greek doesn't say this even remotely, if the salt loses its flavor, or its savor, or its saltiness, or something like that.
And it's like, but that's not what Jesus said. He said, " If the salt becomes foolish. " Well, the problem is we forget that he's using a metaphor, which the early Christians didn't forget. It made perfect sense to them. He just said that we, His disciples, are to be the salt of the earth.
Origen explains this, if the reason the rational power, that is, in us sins, and we do something foolish, then we must be fearful of that statement of the Savior which says, " You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt becomes foolish, it is of value for nothing. " Hilary writes this, " But if the teachers become senseless and lose all the saltiness they once enjoyed, they are unable to restore soundness to corrupt things. " So, yeah, they're understanding Jesus. They're not stumbling over this.
He said, " We're the salt of the earth. If we become foolish, we the salt, then we're good for nothing. " If we cease to preach wisdom, if we cease to preach the gospel that saves people, the gospel of Jesus Christ, then we're of no value. We're worthless to be thrown out and trampled on. That's why he used the word foolish. Now, today, in most conversation, if you use the word foolish or people use that, they mean it in the sense of silliness. And it can have that meaning in the Greek as well.
But in the Bible, foolish takes on also a spiritual dimension. Just reading from Romans chapter 1, Paul said this, and he uses in this passage, I'm going to read you, he uses this exact same Greek word, moraino. He said, talking about the pagans, they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man. So he uses a form of the same word there.
That's what happens to people who forgot God following their own debased human reasoning. They ended up worshiping images like man. And even worse, they started worshiping animals and images of animals. That's how foolish they became. And we can become foolish also. So no, Jesus made it just as he said it. Okay, moving on to the Sermon on the Mount. And again, I'm just hitting some highlights here.
I hope you will read the entire, of course, the entire sermon on the Mount, but the entire chapter here of how the early Christians saw each of these verses. And so often, their explanation, how it was understood historically differs from how it is taught today. Matthew 5:16, he said, " Let your light so shine before men that they can see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
" Now, one of the things I first noticed when I picked up the early Christian writings for the first time, which was about 35 years ago, was that they had no compunction against talking about good works. When I was reading them, I was a member of an evangelical church that, well, you didn't use that word very much, good works. I mean, well, you start talking about good works. And right away, people began wondering, hey, is this person really saved? Is he really a Christian? Or does he have some wrong doctrine here?
He's talking about good works as if they were something bad. Well, then I start reading the early Christians and they talk about works all the time and the importance and the necessity of works. And I kept thinking, " Okay, you don't mean that how you're saying it. You mean something different. " And then after a while, I quit arguing with them. I realized, no, they mean exactly what they say.
Clement of Alexandria, he writes this, " We ought to have works that cry aloud that are fitting for those who walk in the day. Let your works shine, " quoting there from the Sermon on the Mount, or at least referring to it. Now I talked to you about how people are afraid of the word good works or even thinking about works. John Wesley made this observation.
He said, wherever this doctrine, he's talking about the doctrine of easy believism, the main doctrine taught by Protestants is received, it leaves no place for holiness. It makes men afraid of personal holiness, afraid of cherishing any thought of it, for they fear that any step toward holiness might be a denial of the faith and a rejection of Christ and His righteousness. So instead of being zealous for good works, works are a stench in their nostrils.
In short, they are infinitely more afraid of the works of God than the works of the devil. And I thought that was a very astute observation that this is true. People are so afraid of don't talk about good works and all that. It's a lot better to be just steeped in wicked works, wrong works, foolish works than to be talking and focused on good works. That's just how far we have gotten from the gospel of Jesus Christ. But like I say, that's not the way it was in the beginning.
They saw that Jesus talked so much about works and that the New Testament talked so much about works. And they realized if we are to please our Master, Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior, then we have to be zealous for good works. Second Clement, which is the oldest Christian sermon that we have outside of the New Testament, or at least we think it's a sermon. It really doesn't address itself, but this is the conclusion that scholars have come to because it's certainly not a letter. It's not addressed to anyone.
Anyway, in there, the writer or speaker says this, " This then is our reward if we will confess Him by whom we have been saved. " But in what way will we confess Him? We confess Him by doing what He says, not transgressing His commandments, and by honoring Him not only with our lips, but with all our heart and all our mind. So we can't confess Jesus Christ just with our lips. It has to be seen all throughout our life. That is our main confession and testimony of Jesus Christ.
Justin Martyr wrote this, " If men by their works show themselves worthy of his design, they are deemed worthy of reigning in company with him, being delivered from corruption and suffering. " And that was another word they weren't afraid of using of worthy.
And if you go through the New Testament, it appears in the New Testament many times as well talking about us, that we are to be worthy of Christ, not meaning that we have to earn our salvation or that we have to be so perfect that we have somehow become entitled to salvation. No, salvation is always a gift. If we lived a totally upright life, we still would not be owed eternal life. We would not be owed reigning with Jesus Christ as co-rulers with Jesus. Nothing we can do could entitle us to that.
We would be worthy of death because every one of us is fallen. But what they mean by worthy is how we are judged by God as imperfect humans. William Law, who is one of my favorite writers. He lived during the 1700s. And I'm paraphrasing him here. He said, God doesn't expect from us the obedience that angels can give, nor does he expect from us the obedience that a perfect human could give.
No, all he expects from us is the obedience that a fallen human can do, what we are capable of doing in our fallen nature, and that he does expect from us. So don't be afraid of good works or the term good works. Jesus wasn't afraid to use it. He wants us to have good works, but not to glorify ourselves. He said, " So people will praise your Father in heaven. " So if we do things to be seen by men to receive praise from them, then we're doing something blame-worthy rather than praiseworthy. Okay, moving on.
Another important point or that was new to me that I would say I never had a complete grasp of until I began compiling this commentary is Matthew 5:17, where Jesus said, " Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill. " Now, for a lot of my life, that seemed to be just a sentence or two that is sandwiched there in between the Beatitudes and in between his teachings about how we're to live.
And I never quite saw why he put that in there other than I knew if he said it, there was a reason for it. But I didn't completely grasp that reason. Well, the early Christians saw it right away. They had no problem with it. And so I learned a lot, like I say, from reading this.
And they understood that he was about to give us his teaching, his legislation that, in some parts, was going to contradict the teaching of Moses, was going to annul some of the teachings of Moses, was going to amplify the teachings of Moses in other areas. And so he was wanting to make sure his readers knew that he hadn't come to destroy the law. Because when they heard what he said about divorce, you could well imagine they would think, " Wait a minute, this man is contradicting Moses.
" And he didn't hesitate to contradict Moses. And he explained why he was doing it as well later on when he was asked about it. But he wanted to make sure that they realized, no, he was not an enemy of Moses. He was not putting down Moses. But he had come not to, in his words, destroy the law, but he was fulfilling it. Okay, now John Chrysostom says this, " Why did he say I did not come to destroy the law or the prophets? " He did not say this haphazardly or without a purpose.
Rather, it was because he was about to enact commandments greater than those of old. And then he talks about the law says, " You shall not murder. " And he says, " Don't even be angry, " and so on. Now, one of the problems I realized that I had and probably most people would be understanding this English word fulfill. And it has almost exactly the same meaning as the Greek word that is used here. Now, I hadn't realized myself.
I never really thought about it that the English word fulfill when it was originally coined. And I looked this up in a dictionary that gives the etymology of different words, that it literally meant to fill full, you know, fulfill to fill something up full, like a glass of water. You fill it to the very top. That's fulfilling. So it doesn't mean to bring something to an end. It can mean that, but it can have that sense of making something complete.
And the Greek word pleroo has about the same meaning as the English one as I meant. And so the early Christians understood to be Jesus to be saying two different things when he used that word, pleroo. He was telling or he was going to be filling out the law, which included amplifying certain parts of it. So like the teaching on thou shalt not kill or thou shalt not murder. He's going to say, don't even be angry with your brother. So he was actually amplifying. He wasn't doing away with it.
He was keeping it there, but he was making it bigger. But then other parts, he was bringing to completion. Irenaeus writes this, " Those things in the law that were given to the Israelites only for servitude, and to serve as a sign uniquely to them, he brought to completion in the New Covenant of Liberty. " But he has increased and widened those laws that are natural, noble, and common to all humans.
So the ceremonial requirements he brought to an end, the ones that deal with how we should live and what God wants us to be as people, he expanded and enlarged. Now, you heard me read there about the law of liberty. Now, when we think of liberty today, or at least I should say the way it's preached in most churches, is this thought that, oh, we're under liberty. That means we have no laws. But that's not how the early Christians understood it.
When they thought of liberty in their context, you know, don't think about the American Revolution and those sort of things that didn't exist in their day. They were part of the Roman Empire and no one. Well, maybe the Jews were hoping at someday to be free from the Romans. But during Jesus ' lifetime, there wasn't a whole lot of talk or any action towards that. But in everyday life, when they thought of liberty, they thought a slave that had been freed from being a slave. And this was very common.
In fact, in the first century, it was sort of a mark of a gentleman, of a noble person, that if you had a faithful slave who had served you well and faithfully, that you would give that slave his liberty. But now how that worked in Roman society was the slave now became like a son to you. Normally, he wouldn't just disappear. In fact, maybe in releasing him, there was specific conditions.
Whether there were or were not specific ones, what was understood was that person basically went from being a slave where he was owned by you and you didn't have a lot of legal rights to being a free person with a much greater legal rights, but now as an employee of his former master. In other words, he wasn't owned as a slave, but he still worked for his former master as an employee. And that's normally how it worked.
So Irenaeus says this, " We should know that we will give account to God, not of our deeds only, as would slaves. " In other words, if you're just a slave, all that your master cares about, did you, if I told you to bring something, did you bring it in? Did you wash the floor? Did you do that? Just your actions.
But he said, even of our words and thoughts, we will give account as those who have truly received the power of liberty in which condition a man is more strictly tested whether he will reverence fear and love the Lord. So in other words, we are elevated from a servant to a son. But a son in that day and age wasn't somebody who, okay, I'm through with you, parents, I'm going my own route. No a son was expected to have more reverence to his parents. They have more responsibility than a slave would have.
As a son, he would be taking over the management of the household, of the lands, of any farms, any business, that sort of thing. So you had more responsibility being free than you did as a slave, not less responsibility. So that's the problem of reading our 21st century attitudes back into the day and age of Jesus. So the early Christians understood, no, as free people, we have laws. Just like in a free nation like the United States, we call it a free nation. That doesn't mean we don't have any laws.
No, we have to have laws. God has laws. But there are laws that are aimed at sons and daughters, not aimed at at slaves, like maybe the Mosaic Law was aimed at. And then Jesus said, " For I say to you, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will, in no case, enter the kingdom of heaven. Now, I have heard this explained so many times today that Jesus said our righteousness had to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.
Well, the scribes and Pharisees tried to live out every single aspect of the law. You couldn't get any more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees. And he says, we have to exceed that. In other words, we have to do something impossible. Well, if it's impossible, then that means we just throw ourselves on the Lord and acknowledge I could do nothing good and save totally by His mercy, nothing on our part.
Again, they keep trying to stick Luther's teaching back into the Sermon on the Mount where it doesn't fit or belong. That's certainly not how the early Christians understood about your righteousness has to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. I mean, people who explain it that way, I have to think, have you never read Jesus ' denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees in various parts of Matthew? He points out that all they are were whitewashed graves.
They did the external commandments, the unimportant ones like tithing. And they were so punctilious in this that they would tithe their spices, you know, the dill and things like that, little parts of a leaf that they were concerned about those things that God hardly cared about. But then the important things about being merciful of loving their fellow man on which the law hung, you know, loving our Father, God in heaven, and loving our neighbor as ourselves.
And well, on that count, they were at the bottom of the class. So no, he wasn't saying, I want you to do something impossible. No, he was saying something that was common sense. The Pharisees, they just do things to be shown to appear righteous before other people. But they're wicked in the sights of God. I want you to change from the inside. I'm more interested about, do you love your fellow man? Are you a merciful, forgiving person than I am? Whether you fulfill some outward commandment.
Now, he wants us to fulfill them, even the least of his commandments. But he particularly wants us to focus on the important ones that come from the inside of us. One of the early Christians understood as another meaning of our righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees. As the scribes and Pharisees, their righteousness was tied totally to the law of Moses.
So our righteousness exceeds that because the Sermon on the Mount, the law of Jesus Christ, the law of liberty, the law of the gospel, it exceeds the Mosaic law. So naturally, our righteousness has to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, because theirs never went beyond the law of Moses, and they didn't even fulfill the greater parts of that law. And we're dealing with a much greater law than that.