Preached in Markham Baptist Church, October 1, 2006

Are you a Royal Watcher?  This was a popular pastime a few years back – ever since the fairy-tale wedding of Charles and Diana, royal watching has been THE thing to do.  The fashions they wear, the opinions they hold, the things they say, the places they go all receive international press.  Did you know that there is a magazine devoted entirely to Royalty and especially to the British royal family?  Every month there is a magazine published that has articles and pictures of the royal family at home, walking the dog, sitting in the heather.  My mom is a royal watcher, so I know one of them personally.

Well, royal watchers were present in the New Testament times too.  The Israelites of ancient history waited and they watched and they waited, and they watched and they waited, and they watched for the coming of the King.  He wouldn’t be just any king - he would be in the line of King David, the one king described as being after God’s own heart, the one chosen of God to rule His people.  This king would be THE one promised by God who would have a special relationship with God and with the people.  They waited and watched for a King who would bring peace, and help to the afflicted, a King who would rule with justice and mercy, a King who would defeat the people’s enemies and a King who would bring a Kingdom that would last forever.

There were promises of the King, glimpses of His coming through the prophets – but no King came.  All through the exile in Babylon – no King came.  All through the return of the remnant, no King came.  All through the four hundred silent years between the Old Testament and the New Testament – no King came.  O how they longed for this King – and they needed the King in Psalm 72 - the people are told that this King sent from God would defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; He will crush the oppressor.

By the end of the four hundred silent years, they needed a King to crush the oppressor – Rome.  But no King came.  Until finally you open the book of Matthew and you read, “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the Son of David.”  Ahh!  A King is born!

And if. for a moment. you just stand outside the door of the book of Matthew you will hear voices.  They are voices filled with urgency, asking questions – they all seem to be speaking over the other – all asking questions – What do you mean the King has arrived?  Who is this King?  What does his Kingdom look like?  When will He overcome the enemy?  Where is His authority?  Where is this King?  Prove it!

And after a minute or two the questions subside and we hear a voice, a rich and deep voice that has a quality of calmness about it which can only come from being sure of what he speaks.  If we were with the 12 we would recognize it at once as being the voice of Matthew. 

“Do you want me to prove that Jesus is the King then let me tell you about his ancestry  - from Abraham to David to Jeconiah to Joseph the husband of Mary of who was born Jesus, who is called Christ?” 

“Then let me tell you about His advent – you do know, don’t you, that it all happened just as it was prophesied through God’s prophets.”  It is a constant refrain for Matthew - this is what was said by the prophet, this is what the prophet said would happen, this is how the prophets said the King would come.  Jesus is the King long-promised

Then Matthew says in chapter 3, “Let me tell you about the King’s ambassador – John the Baptist.  He came just as the prophet promised.”

And at Chapter 4, “Let me tell you about the King’s adversary the true enemy he came to defeat – you think it is Rome, but Rome is but a tool, a mere serpent compared to the great dragon – the real adversary is Satan and that is who the King has come to defeat.”  

But the questioner’s voices begin again.  This Jesus may be the King but where is His Kingdom?  What is His Kingdom like?

And Matthew says this is what Jesus came to proclaim.  Matthew 4:23 – “Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom.”   And back up at verse 17 - “From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.’ ”

What? What is the Kingdom of heaven? 

It’s a phrase I like to use. If you listen to the other disciples and followers of Jesus, they will say “the Kingdom of God” – it means the same thing.  I prefer “the kingdom of Heaven” – it means the rule of God, the authority of God.  It has arrived. 

Really?  Yes, and in verses 18 through 21 we are given an invitation.  Come follow the King. Come and be part of the kingdom where God is the ruler.  Come and put your life under the rule of God and follow the King. 

And the questioners ask, “What does that mean?  What does that look like? What does it mean to follow Jesus?  What does it mean to repent and live in the Kingdom of Heaven – under the rule of God and still live here under Roman rule?”     

And Matthew says, “Let me tell you,” and Matthew begins chapters 5,6 and 7.  And it is at this point that we stop listening on the outside and open the door and draw up a chair and sit down and we say, we want to hear this for ourselves.     For we are asking the same questions – we want to know what does it mean to be live in the Kingdom of Heaven.  We recognize Jesus as the King, we see that He is the one long-promised – but what does it mean to live under His rule and His authority and still live here in the culture that surrounds us? 

And so we come to the Sermon on the Mount. It is not the whole sermon that Jesus preached on that day.  It is a distillation of his preaching.  It is the nugget – yet it is massive in its scope. 

Now this morning I want to give you an overview of the sermon to try to look at the whole of it before moving into the particulars. Like an art critic who stands back and takes in the whole canvas before trying to examine the individual brush strokes, so we need to stand back and examine the whole sermon before we examine the mechanics of the passage.

First consider the preacher of the sermon. 

Matthew 5:1 – “Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down.  His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.”

The preacher is Jesus Christ Himself, the teacher of truth.  The prince of preachers. These are important words that are being spoken – notice Matthew’s details.  Jesus sat down – says Matthew. We know that when a rabbi sat down to teach, it was a sign that everyone should stop talking, stop sleeping, stop looking down and pay attention because the rabbi was about to say something of huge importance. 

Second, we read that Jesus began to teach them.  Or in the NRSV it says He began to speak.  The Greek expression conveys an idea that this is serious stuff that is being shared.  The modern phrase that might be used is “Jesus opened his heart.” 

What we are reading is of utmost importance – His body language tells us this – but more it is coming from the lips of Jesus Himself.  This is the King who is speaking!  The one who has authority.

He has authority to interpret and apply God’s Word.  When you are reading this, notice how many times Jesus says, “You have heard it said.” (Matthew 5: 21, 27, 31,32, 38, 43)  And it is always followed by, “But I tell you,” “I tell you,” “I tell you.”  Living in the kingdom of God means living under the authority of Jesus Christ. 

The crowds recognized this – so that at the end of the sermon they are amazed at His teaching because He taught as one with authority. 

When you read the Sermon on the Mount, there may be times when you throw up your hands and say this is impossible, this is crazy, this is insane, what kind of Kingdom is this and what kind of standard is this?  We need to step back and realize – wait a minute – these words are spoken by the one who is in authority.  It’s not spoken my some disciple or some kid preacher. It is spoken by Jesus who has all authority so we must take His words seriously. Living this sermon means bowing to the authority of Jesus AND living in relationship with Jesus.

This leaves us next to consider the people to whom it was addressed.

He went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to Him and He began to teach them.  These words then are intended for anyone interested in living under the Kingdom rule of King Jesus.  What we have here at the beginning of the King’s coming is Jesus the King sitting down on a hill and instructing the disciples on what life in the Kingdom should look like.  It is an outline of behaviour for the citizens of the Kingdom.

We are not told in this sermon to live under these principles and concepts and then you will become a Christian. Rather we are told because you are a Christian live like this.

Martin Lloyd Jones writes, “The sermon on the mount is a description of character, not of ethics or morals, not a new set of 10 commandments, but a description of Christians as they are meant to be.”

So Jesus is saying because you are what you are - this is how you will face the world, this is who you will face under the law, this is how you will live with God, this is how you are to live.

What about the sermon itself?  What can be said, in very broad terms, about the sermon?  If we use the idea of looking at a large canvas again, we would have said, well, a life within the Kingdom is being described here but what we notice right away is that it appears that the picture is hanging up side down.  Everything about this Kingdom is different from the reality we know and live with every day. 

And we would have to say Jesus this is an upside-down Kingdom.  The world says, blessed are the rich – you say blessed are the poor. The world says blessed are those who are happy – you say blessed are those who mourn. The world says hate your enemy – you say love your enemy. The world says get all you can, store all you can – you say give it away, don’t even worry about that stuff.  The world says – well, Jesus your Kingdom does not fit in this world.

And that’s exactly right.  The kingdom of God, the rule of God is diametrically opposed to the kingdoms of this world.  And this is the key to the whole sermon - the purpose or the key to the whole sermon is found in the first 5 words of chapter 6:8.  Do not be like them.  That is the key to understanding the whole sermon.  It is a call to Christ’s disciples:

-         to be in the world but not of the world

-         to seek to transform the world rather than being conformed to the world

-         to be a part of the world yet separate from the world

-         to live in a foreign land but to have citizenship in the heavenly Kingdom.

Have you ever seen a sign hanging on a restaurant window with the words, “Under new Ownership?”  It’s a sign that is supposed to entice us into the restaurant, because with new ownership hopefully comes higher standards of quality and better service.

So every Christian should have the idea that they are now under new ownership.  When you became a Christian, the old owner - of self and Satan - have been bought out, bought with the blood and sacrifice of Christ. Now we have a new owner.  Jesus Himself.  You not only accepted Him as your Saviour but you also accepted him as your Lord.  There is now a new authority in your life.

That means that everything must change – our values, goals, priorities, desires and habits all change because we are now under new ownership.

If you have ever traveled to the United States you have probably come across Eckerd’s chain of drug stores.  After Jack Eckerd, founder of the Eckerd drugstore chain, committed his life to Christ, he walked through one of his stores and saw with new eyes the magazine racks full of glossy copies of “Playboy” and “Penthouse”.  Though retired from active management, he called his president and urged him to clean out the magazines.  Management protested, as the sales accounted for substantial profits.  Though as the largest stockholder, Eckerd himself stood to lose money as well - a lot of money – still he persisted.

And he prevailed.  Playboy, Penthouse and their ilk were removed from all 1,7000 Eckerd drugstores.  And Jack Eckerd has since begun a quiet campaign to get other retail stores to do the same.  (from Chuck Colson’s book, “Who speaks for God”,  p. 60)

You see, that is what Jesus’ sermon is all about.  Come follow me, says Jesus, and together with me as your Lord we will make a radical change for good in this world.  But it all comes down to this - you must not be like them.

The preacher the people, the purpose.  Consider finally why we need to make this text a priority for our study and life.  I have two points to make here.

We need to make this passage a priority for study for our own spiritual adjustment. Many of you go to a chiropractor for an adjustment.  You get your back cracked so your spine is in line again.

Well, we need a similar readjustment in our spiritual lives.  We get to thinking that the world we live in is the world that is right side up – that its values and its way of thinking is the way we should think and act.  From small things, like the shoes we wear and the way we wear baseball caps, to large things – like the way we think about success, ourselves, about sexuality, about marriage, about relationships, about sin, about truth. 

We begin thinking like the world, and what happens is that we look at the world and we say it is the world that is right side up and we go back to scripture to adjust it to the ideas we get from the world.  So we get the idea that there are no absolutes and we twist scripture to make it say what we want it to say. 

But we need to come to Scripture to get readjusted – and what we discover is that it is not God’s Kingdom that is upside-down but the world in which we live that is really upside-down.   God’s Kingdom is really the way we were supposed to live and act. 

We need to approach Matthew 5,6 and 7 prayerfully, asking God to readjust our thinking to His way of thinking.  I wonder if coming to the North American church, Jesus would not say what He said to the church of the first century in Revelation 3:1 – “You have the name of being alive, but you are dead.”

Let me ask you why, if we are now under new ownership, do we still have churches that are torn apart by people who refuse to forgive, who refuse to reconcile, who refuse to say I’m sorry and then as a result rip their churches in two?  If we are under new ownership why are still more concerned with saying the right things and projecting the right image than we are about this log in our eye that keeps us from seeing that what is important is actually serving the poor, and healing the sick and giving to the needy and loving our neighbour?   If we are under the Lordship of Christ why do we still have people who think that warming a pew on Sunday meets the demands of commitment that Christ made?

Where are the people who will say, “I am now under the Lordship of Christ and the slipshod commitment of the world will just not do for me.  I am going to go the whole way. I am no longer going to live like the world wants me to live I am now under new ownership and I will live the way He wants me to live.”

Listen, you become a Christian when you give your life to Jesus and lay it all on the altar. We need to make it a priority to visit the Sermon on the Mount again and in light of what is being said, examine our hearts and allow the words to readjust our souls and our minds.  So that once again we will have a church in North America that will stand up and say, “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.”

Second, we need to study and put this passage into practice for world evangelization.  Let me simply say here that the world is looking for and desperately needs true Christians.  There is a bumper sticker that reads, “Christians aren’t perfect just forgiven.”  Is that what a Christian is?  Someone who is simply forgiven?  No.  It is that, but so much more. Being a Christian is one who says I am now under new ownership and I will live the way my new King asks me to and enables me to. 

We need to live the Christian life – for when we do, people will crowd our building saying, “What is the secret of this?”

Tony Campollo travels the world proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. As a result he crosses many time zones and his interior clock often is different than the actual clock on the wall. If you’ve done any traveling you can understand why it was 3:30 in the morning when Campollo was wandering up and down the streets of Honolulu looking for a place to get something to eat. He finally found a place open on a little side street in a regular greasy spoon.  You know the kind with stools and a counter and grease everywhere.

The fat guy behind the counter came over and asked him, “What d’ya want?” Campollo ordered a coffee and a donut. As he sat there munching on his donut and sipping coffee at 3:30 in the morning, the door of the diner suddenly swung open and to his discomfort in marched eight or nine provocative and boisterous prostitutes.

It was a small place and they sat on either side of Campollo.  Their talk was loud and crude. Tony felt completely out of place and was just about to make his getaway when he overheard the woman sitting beside me say, “Tomorrow’s my birthday.  I’m going to be thirty-nine.”

Her “friend” responded in a nasty tone, “So what do you want from me?  A birthday party? What do you want? Ya want me to get you a cake and sing Happy Birthday?”

“Come on,” said the woman.  “Why do you have to be so mean?  I was just telling you, that’s all.  Why do you have to put me down?  I was just telling you it was my birthday.  I don’t want anything from you, I mean why should you give me a birthday party?  I’ve never had a birthday party in my whole life.  Why should I have one now?”

When Tony heard that, he made a decision.  He sat and waited until the women had left. Then he called over the fat guy behind the counter and he asked him, “Do they come in here every night?”  “Yeah,” he answered.

“The one right next to me, does she come here every night?”  “Yeah,” he said.  That’s Agnes.  Yeah, she comes in here every night.  Why d’ya wanta know?”

“Because I heard her say that tomorrow is her birthday.  What do you say – you and I do something about that?  What do you think about is throwing a birthday party for her – right here – tomorrow night?”

A cute smile slowly crossed his chubby cheeks and he answered with measured delight, “That’s great I like it.  That’s a great idea”

“Look, I told him, If it’s okay with you, I’ll get back her tomorrow morning about 2:30 and decorate the place.  I’ll even get a birthday cake.”

“No way,” said Harry.  “The birthday cake is my thing, I’ll make the cake.”

At 2:30 the next morning, he was back at the diner.  He had picked up some crepe paper decorations at the store and had made a sign out of big pieces of cardboard that read “Happy Birthday Agnes!”  He decorated the diner from one end to the other.  The diner looked great.

Harry must have gotten the word out on the street, because by 3:15 every prostituted in Honolulu was in the place - it was wall-to wall prostitutes and Tony.

And at 3:30 on the dot, the door of the diner swung open and in came Agnes and her friend.  He had everybody ready and when they came in they all screamed Happy Birthday!

Campollo said, “Never have I seen a person so flabbergasted, so stunned, so shaken. Her mouth fell open.  Her legs seems to buckle a bit.  Her friend grabbed her arm to steady her.  As she was led to sit on one o the stools along the counter we all sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her.  As we came to the end of our song with ‘HappyBirthday dear Agnes, Happy birthday to you,’ her eyes moistened.  Then when the birthday cake with all the candles on it was carried out she lost an just openly cried.”

Harry gruffly mumbled, “Blow out the candles, Agnes, Come on!  Blow out the candles.  If you don’t blow out the candles I’m gonna hafta blow out the candles.”  And after an endless few seconds she did.  Then he handed her a knife and told her, “Cut the cake, Agnes. Yo, Agnes, we all want some cake.”

Agnes looked down at the cake.  Then without taking her eyes off it she slowly and softly said, “Look Harry, is it all right with you if I …I mean, is it okay if I kind of … what I want to ask you is … Is it ok if I keep the cake a little while?  I mean is it all right if we don’t eat it right away?”

Harry shrugged and answered, “Sure.  It’s okay if you want to keep the cake, keep the cake.  Take it home if you want to.”

“Can I?”  She asked.  Then looking at me she said, “I live just down the street a couple of doors.  I want to take the cake home, Ok?  I’ll be right back.  Honest.” 

She got off the stool, picked up the cake, and carrying it like was the fine china walked slowly toward the door.  As they all just stood there motionless she left.

When the door closed there was a stunned silence in the place.  Not knowing what else to do, Tony broke the silence by saying, “What do you say we pray?”

Campollo says that looking back on it, it seemed more than strange for a sociologist to be leading a prayer meeting with a bunch of prostitutes in a diner in Honolulu at 3:30 in the morning.  But then it just felt like the right thing to do.  He prayed for Agnes.  He prayed for her salvation.  He prayed that her life would be changed and that God would be good to her.

When Tony finished, Harry leaned over the counter and with a trace of hostility in his voice, he said “Hey, you never told me you were a preacher.  What kind of church do you belong to?”

In one of those moments when just the right words come, Tony answered, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning.”

Harry waited a moment and then almost sneered as he answered, “No you don’t - there’s no church like that.  If there was, I’d join it.  I’d join a church like that.”

And Campollo concludes, “Wouldn’t we all?  Wouldn’t we all love to join a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning?”

Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - October 2006

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