Transcript
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Welcome to the Gospel and Life podcast. Today, Tim Keller is teaching on perhaps the most well known sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount. In it, we'll find Jesus Invitation to a radical new kind of life that is far beyond a guide to morality. After you listen to today's teaching, we invite you to go online to gospelandlife.com and sign up for email updates. We when you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly journal and other valuable gospel centered resources. You can subscribe today at gospelandlife.com.
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Turn your bulletins to the passage from the Sermon on the Mount we'll look at tonight. Now, the Sermon on the Mount is not something that we should be reading as if it's an individual, a guide for an individual, a guide simply for how I as an individual should live my life. The Sermon on the Mount is really a description of a new kind of community. That's the reason why John Stott, who's a great Bible commentator, very well known, when he wrote his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, he called it the Christian counterculture. Because this is really describing a body of people. It's describing a community. But what's so interesting is that even though that theme, the theme of Christian community, Christian fellowship, of deep Christian relationships, even though that theme is all through the Sermon on the Mount, there's no one section where Jesus sort of lays out how a relationship with him radically changes our relationships with other Christians, how it forms a new, deep, radical human community in Christ. He doesn't actually lay it out any one place. It's through everything else. And so in order for me to do what I want to do tonight, which is to say what Jesus tells us about this new human community that His Gospel creates between believers, in order to talk about that, I have to pull these pieces out. So let's read these pieces and string them along like a string of pearls on a string. This is what we're going to read, Matthew 5, starting at 21. You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, do not murder. And anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother Raca is answerable to the Sanhedrin. Anyone who says, you fool, will be in danger of the fire of hell. Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there, remember that your brother has something against you. Leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother. Then come and offer your gift. He causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that. Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect. Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite. First take the plank out of your own eye. Then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Do not give dogs what is sacred. Do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet and then turn and tear you to pieces. Let's end our reading right there. What does Jesus teach us about this radical new community that is formed by his Gospel message? When it comes into your life, how does it create this new community between those who believe in Jesus? Here's what he teaches us in this passage. Five things. Five things. He's a liberal arts major. Five things. First of all, he teaches us the necessity of this new community. You can't be a Christian without entering a new community. The way he gets this across, this is something that you're going to overlook unless you bring it out and look at it. What does he call other Christians? What do we call them? What are they? Over and over and over again in verse 21 to 23, four times, five times he says, brother, do not murder. But I tell you, anyone who's angry with his brother, anyone who says to his brother, anyone. Therefore, if you're offering your gift at the altar and you remember your brother, then down in chapter seven, those verses, why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye? Hypocrite. Take the plank out of your eye. Then you'll be able to clearly remove the speck from your brother's eye eight, seven, eight times. Now, this is pretty obvious, but let me help you. Let us sink in. The people that you automatically get related to when you're born into a family are not friends. You choose your friends. Not Lovers, you choose your lovers. Relatives, you don't choose your relatives. And they're not. Well, look at your relatives. These aren't people you would have chosen. Look at your siblings. Look, your brothers and sisters. They come automatically. You don't want to be an orphan. Oh, no, you'd like to have parents. Who wouldn't want to have parents? The trouble with getting parents, if you don't want to be an orphan, you get parents. If you get parents, you automatically get family. You automatically get relatives. You automatically get brothers and sisters. And they're not like friends or lovers. Those are people you choose. Those are volunteer relationships. Your family relationships are with people that you don't particularly like, and yet there's really no way to get away from them. They're there and you have obligations, and you've got to see them and you've got to deal with them and you've got to do with them. And Jesus has the audacity to use that terminology to describe other Christians to you. Well, let's put it. Let me put it another way. When you enter into a relationship with the Father through Jesus, the whole point of Christianity is he is not a boss. You're not working for a boss. So as long as you're producing, you have a job. But if you stop producing, you're fired. He's a father. That means you have an enduring and unconditional and unmerited relationship. But what that means is, unlike your friends, you enter into a relationship with a friend because, hey, I think I can get something out of this. Rel. I like you, you like me, let's do things together. We have common interests. That's friends. Or you fall in love, wow, I'm attracted to you, you're attracted to me, and so on. Those are actually conditional relationships. But family is unconditional. Jesus says, if you want an unconditional relationship with your father, you're going to get unconditional relationships with brothers and sisters. You're going to have people around you Christians who now are family. And you have got to treat them as family. You have an obligation to them. It's not a voluntary relationship. Now, I know I'm putting this in the most negative possible way, am I not? Because that's part of what it means. Basically, you can turn them into friends. You ought to try. In fact, we're spend the rest of the time talking about how you do you want to turn your brothers and sisters into friends. In some cases, you would like to marry a brother or sister, hopefully. Okay. I mean, you would like to turn at least one of them into a lover and into a spouse. But the fact is, they all start out, they're at least brothers and sisters. And that means you have got an unconditional relationship with them. They are yours whether you like them or not. And in many, many cases, in fact, in most cases, you won't. You won't like them just like you don't like your own relatives. So many of them. And that's what Jesus is saying in C.S. lewis's Narnia Chronicles. There's a place when Aslan, the great lion, who's the Christ figure, he's been resurrected just like Jesus. And then he bends down to his two girls, Susan and Lucy, and he says, and now, said Aslan, to business. We have a long journey and you must ride on me. And he crouched down and the children climbed onto his warm, golden back. And Susan sat first, holding on tightly to his mane, and Lucy sat behind, holding tightly to Susan. And with a great heave, he rose underneath him and shot off faster than any horse can go. Now, this is very interesting if you read the story and if you know, and some of you do, not most of you, but some of you do, if you know something about the characters, it's very interesting how the author, C.S. lewis, depicted the Post Resurrection Church and their relationship to the Lord, because that's what he's showing Susan. Of all the children in the book, Susan is the weak one. She's the spiritually weak one. She's obtuse. She's cruel to Lucy. She never gets it. She's kind of stupid, spiritually speaking. But Lucy is the true heart. Lucy is the dear heart. Lucy's the one with the deepest spiritual sight. Lucy's the one with the best relationship with Aslan. But C.S. lewis puts Lucy up on Aslan's back, and the only way she can hold on to Aslan is to hold on to Susan. And this is exactly what the Bible says. If you want to have a relationship with Jesus, if you want to be related to him in mission, See, Aslan says, we've got places to go. I've got things to do. You've got to get. You've got to hold on to me. But the only way he will let you hold on to him is if you're willing to hold on to Susan, to brothers and sisters that you don't like Lucy. You know, Lucy is. When you read the book, if you do read the book, you know, you identify with her and you say, if anybody deserves to be able to get on Aslan's back and be an individual practicing mystic. It would be her. She gets up there, she holds onto the main personal contact. I don't need anybody else. And you see, typically Americans today say, I want to be spiritual, but I don't want to be religious. And what they usually mean by that is, I want to have a personal experience of divine reality, but I don't want to have to deal with other people. I don't want to have to join an institution. I don't want to have to be part of a body. And the God of the Bible says, I don't work like that. You're going to have to make up another God. The only way you can hold on to me is if you hold on to Susan, to hold on to brothers, to hold on to sisters, people that you wouldn't really have chosen to be friends. But because they are related to me now, you have to be related to them. You have to hold on to them. You have to love them, you have to know them. Question, Can I get personal with you? There are people around you who are Christians, your brothers and sisters. And you're making you know, they're not your friends, but they're your brothers and sisters. Are you putting up with them? Are you dealing with them? Are you trying to turn them into friends? Now, that's the first thing Jesus talks about, the necessity of a new community. He doesn't work in your life as an individual. He only works in your life corporately, huh? Secondly, he not only talks about the necessity of Christian community, he talks about the intensity. See, clearly, you're supposed to have deep relationships, okay? Somebody says, how deep? How deep do they have to go? Well, he tells us in verse 23, he tells us how intense. Therefore, if you're offering your gift at the altar, and remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First, go and be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. Now, there are two standards in this little verse. Jesus is telling us here just how deeply involved you've got to be with other Christians. You have to be involved to the place of personal accountability and corporate spirituality. Personal accountability? Corporate spirituality. What do we mean? Well, first of all, personal accountability. Look, therefore, if you're offering your gift at the altar and you remember your brother has something against you, leave. Go get reconciled now. This is really weird. Listen carefully. It doesn't say if you've got something against your brother. It doesn't even say if you've done something against your Brother, see, look carefully. This person, whoever this is, this brother has a grievance against you, but you don't have a grievance against him. Now, if that person has a grievance against you, shouldn't he come to you? Yes. He hasn't. Why not? Now, if you've got. If this person's got a grievance against you and he hasn't come to you, that means either he's a coward or it means he's oversensitive and he's really making things up and he's too upset or he's overly resentful. In other words, this guy is at fault. If this was a voluntary relationship, there'd be no reason for you to go to that. I mean, it's up to him. If he's got a problem with me, he should come to me, okay? But Jesus holds you responsible inside the family of God that whether that person is worthy of it, whether that person's being stupid or smart, whether you've actually done something wrong or not, you are responsible to go. Why? You're accountable. You're accountable for that person's spiritual growth, and that person's accountable for yours. The Bible says that. See, that's the difference. That's the difference. Friendship is an informal, voluntary kind of mutual relationship. But your brothers and sisters, family, you are accountable to each other. In Hebrews 3:13, it says, exhort one another daily, lest you're hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Now, that's very interesting. Hardened. The Bible says sin is like frigid air and your heart is like a bucket of water. Now, if you've ever gone camping in the winter, you know that you've got to always be breaking the ice on the top of the bucket of water because it just forms there naturally. And if you don't keep breaking it, next thing you know, you'll turn around and you'll be looking for something to drink or to cook with, and it will be frozen solid. Now, the Bible says that your heart is like that, that it's automatically getting proud. Or it's getting either hard through pride or hard through sadness. If things are going well in your life, it's getting hard through proudness. If things are going poorly in your life, it's getting hard through sadness, but it's going hard. It's always getting hard, naturally, as water on a cold day. And what does Hebrews 3:13 say is the only way you're going to avoid freezing? And the answer is, you've got to have some people in your life who know you well enough to be able to talk to you about your pride and talk to you about your sadness and talk to you about your problems and talk to you about your character flaws. And not only do you have to have people who know you, who you're that open with, you've also got to have people that you have that much contact with. This is one of the issues, a big issue. If you're a Christian and you live in this day and age, you're mobile. You're mobile and your friends are mobile. Especially if you live in New York, you're always saying goodbye to friends, and you know what that means. And they're saying goodbye to you and they're moving around. And you know what that means. That means you do have people in the world that you're open enough with for them to be breaking the ice over your heart. But usually you don't have anybody nearby. I mean, it takes tremendous work to be constantly getting open enough with the people who know you, the people who really live near you and the people that you are seeing enough so that they can hold you accountable. But you've got to be deeply involved enough so that there's personal accountability between you and other people. Who does know about you, who have you given the green light to blow the whistle on you? Who are you opening your to? Whom are you opening up fairly regularly about everything? About your prayer life, about how you use your money, about your sex life, about your thought life, about your who if you have nobody, Jesus says, I insist you have people that you're that accountable for and that you are that accountable to who are always breaking the ice over your heart. Who are they? Do you have them? So first of all, he's saying you've got to have relationships that are deep to the place of personal accountability, superficial fellowship, saying hi to everybody, hugging and kissing at church is not enough. Secondly, you also, he's showing us here, you have to also have deep relationships to the point not just of personal accountability, but of corporate spirituality. What do I mean? Well, look at the verse again. What's the problem? You need to go get your brother and bring him to the altar. Your brother's not there. See, the issue is don't worship alone. You must not worship alone. Now, this simply doesn't mean by, you know, it doesn't mean, well, I want to go to a big church where there's 1,500 people there, and that's more spiritual than a small church. That's not what we're talking about here's. What we're talking about. The Bible says in this place that only as a temple, you know, it says in First Peter and also in Ephesians 2, it says as a temple, we are living stones in a temple inhabited by the Spirit of God. You know that image? Well, that's not just a beautiful image. It's beautiful. We are stones. We're built together, we're cemented in together, and the Lord inhabits us. It's only together that we're inhabited. C.S. lewis says in his book the Four Loves. And by the way, I'm using all C.S. lewis illustrations tonight. Anybody notice? C.S. lewis says that when he was a circle, he was a member of a circle of three people, three friends. Jack, Ronald. He's Jack, Jack, Ronald, and Charles. And when Charles died, he thought he'd have more of Ronald. But he said, and I'll read it. To his shock, he found he had less of Ronald, is what he says. He says, in each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself, I am not large enough to call the whole person into activity. By myself, I am not large enough to call the whole person into activity. Now that Charles is dead, I'll never see Ronald's reaction to his humor. Far from having more of Ronald, now that Charles is gone, I have less.