Dec. 18, 2016 Afternoon Service Beatitudes Part 23 by Pastor Josh Sheldon

remaining in this Sermon on the Mount for us. I'm still going back and forth with myself whether I will do one sermon to wrap it all up, but again,

I haven't decided on that, and I'm not threatening to do it or not do it. I just don't know, but it's around four or five sermons remaining on this, and my inclination is at this point to pick up the book of Hosea and to preach through that for the afternoon portion of our service after we finish this.

So I will, Lord willing, by next week, perhaps the week after, solidify that and know for sure if that's where I'm going to go, and I will then encourage you to as often as you can just read through that book and become familiar with it so that we can all be

Bereans and hear the Word of God, but with knowledge having read it for ourselves. Let us attend to the

Sermon on the Mount, this message to the church from the Lord Jesus Christ. Matthew chapter 7 beginning at verse 12, the

Lord says, So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets.

Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.

For the gate is narrow, and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

And so we have before us, I mentioned it a moment ago, we have before us here the the golden rule. And I looked at that,

I said, well, do we have to call it the golden rule? And the scripture doesn't call it the golden rule.

We have in my ESV here, it says, there's a superscription there, a bolded little chapter heading or paragraph heading, says the golden rule.

But Jesus never stops and says, well, I'm going to teach you now the golden rule. And we don't look back in in Deuteronomy or Numbers or Exodus or anything like that and find where God, through Moses, for example, said, here's a golden rule for you to follow.

All that to say, we can call it what we wish. I'm going to call it the difficult rule.

The hard path, the path, the road less trodden is one way to say it.

The difficult way. It's a rule, it's more valuable than gold in that it teaches us the way to fulfill something.

In other words, it completes something from the scripture, clearly is what Jesus is talking about, the law and the prophets.

Now, if someone was to say to you, I have something simple, something memorable that you can keep in your mind, you can apply wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whatever situation you find yourself in.

And in this precept I shall give you, this rule, it's easy to remember, but perhaps not to follow, but still easy to know and here's what

God would have of you. I'm going to give you a single rule and so that all the law and all the prophets take that whole corpus of scripture from God through the mouths of appointed men, anointed men, we could say.

I'm going to give you one rule that fulfills all of that. Now, wouldn't you be enticed? Wouldn't you say, well,

I want to hear that rule. I want to know how do I please God? The rich young ruler came up to Jesus says, what good thing must

I do to inherit eternal life? And you can almost hear him say, can you give me a rule?

Can you give me one thing to do that would then satisfy God? I've got it. I'll do it. And then God is pleased with me.

Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them. The Lord Jesus says, for this is the law and the prophets.

More valuable than gold. Yea, they're much fine gold, we could say. To assess the value of something like this, this single word from Jesus Christ, we could think all the way back to Matthew 5 17.

Do not think that I've come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Jesus Christ to fulfill them, but what's he telling us here when we do this?

This is fulfilling the law and the prophets. Now, it's only by analogy. It's only by metaphor.

It's only by comparison that we fulfill the law of prophets, and Jesus fulfills the law of prophets, because Christ fulfills the prophecies and the types.

Christ fulfills everything that they yearn for, which was him. Now, we don't do that.

Obviously, we don't do anything even close to that. We fulfill the law and the prophets by obeying what they taught.

By ordering our lives and living a God -pleasing life in accordance with what they preached and what they taught us.

The precepts of the law according to Moses, the application of the law to our lives according to the prophets, that sort of thing.

A few verses after Matthew 5 17 about Jesus not coming to abolish, but to fulfill, after that we're warned that if our righteousness and in that context, our law -keeping, our own effort to please

God, to gain God's favor by obedience, if it doesn't exceed, if it is not better than the world -champion law -keepers, who of course then are the

Pharisees, if we don't outdo them, then the kingdom of heaven is closed.

So this law that fulfills the law and the prophets, this is the law and the prophets, whatever you wish others, that others would do to you, do also to them, is crucially important to us.

So Jesus, after bringing us to despair of ever meeting the standards, if you read through the beginning of this sermon, chapter 5 all the way to where we are now, in chapter 7 verse 12, and we look at what is the standard, what is it

Jesus is looking for? Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. We have to despair of ourselves.

We have to look and say, well, who can do this? Who is sufficient for these things? How do we show that the law and the prophets are our standard for our worldview, for our ethics, for our behavior?

It was by following the first half of verse 12, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.

Simple, right? Simple. Can we all do that? Can we simply, if we want something to be done to us, we go out of our way and do it to others, and that satisfies the law and the prophets, and therefore we're good with God, right?

That easy. So simple to understand. In technicals,

I talked about this morning, I didn't preach an exegetical, an expositional sermon about Mary's song, the

Magnificat, because somehow when you do that, you miss something. You could be technically correct.

I can give you the facts as what was it? Sgt. Friday in the old show

Dragnet. Just the facts, man. I just want the facts. There's something you miss when you do that.

So this golden rule, simple to understand in terms of grammar, in terms of how the words come together to make a sentence, and we can get it.

But to do it, I mean to really do it, is another matter. Jesus is not speaking of a quid pro quo here.

There's no room for us to be just reacting to others. Let's say I need some money, and I know you have plenty of money, and what

I want you to do to me is to give me some money so I can get by. So I open my wallet, because I'm not doing very well.

I've only got a few bucks, but I empty it. I give it all to you, because what I want you to do to me is give all you've got to me.

I mean, that almost sounds silly, right? It's the way sometimes this is taken, if you look at it wrongly.

It's a crazy example. But Jesus' rule, you see, has nothing to do with what we expect others to do to us, or how they even ought to do to us.

It's about how we would wish them to do. How we would wish them to do.

And here's the rub. Do we wish them to behave towards us in a manner that gains us some advantage, or at least evens things up so I'm paid back by you for any good

I did towards you? I mean, that can't be the case here. That's not what Jesus is talking about.

So what exactly are we wishing for here in this difficult rule, this golden rule? Call it what you will.

The Lord makes it explicit, and here it is. The behavior that we are to exhibit towards others, that we wish they would exhibit towards us, is the summation of the law and the prophets.

And this is how we keep ourselves away from silliness, like the example I tried to put together a moment ago.

By remembering that it's the law and the prophets that are behind what Jesus is speaking of here.

This sums it all up for us. So any hope of reward, any hope of personal advancement, any hope of balancing the scales so our good deeds are at least met with equal force when we return to ourselves, all this has to be cast aside.

What is meant by the law and the prophets? We can be glad that we don't need to pull together hundreds of different scriptures, and then collate and systematize them to understand this, because the law and the prophets is most of the

Old Testament. Is that what Jesus is telling us? To memorize it all and to follow that?

I don't think so. Listen to how the apostles and Jesus himself make this clear.

I'll just read to you a few verses. Romans chapter 13 verse 8. The one who loves one another, the one who loves another, has fulfilled the law.

The one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Of course Paul is summing up the book of Hebrews at this point. He's coming to the end of it, to a climax if you will, and he's speaking within the church.

So brothers and sisters in the church, you who love the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who loves another, that means another believer, another saint who is with you in fellowship in Christ, has fulfilled the law.

Galatians chapter 5 verse 14. The whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The entire law, love your neighbor as yourself. There's a few others.

I don't want to go through all of them. Most of you can find them pretty quickly with a concordance.

It's just one more. Matthew chapter 22 and verses 37 to 40. These are the words of the

Lord Jesus Christ. He says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Now listen to how he sums this up. Such a crystal clear teaching.

So easy to remember, and here's the sum of it. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Same phrase we had there back in Matthew 7. Whatever you wish others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets.

This takes us worlds away from how this rule is usually taught.

I think that's the reason it's called the golden rule so often in our Bibles that added by the publishers, not by the inspired word of God.

They just add that there for us, for our help to keep us on track. But most religions, including

Judaism, have some form of this rule. But when they have it, it's in the negative sense.

It's something more like this. Like in Judaism, it's taught what you would hate to have others, what you would hate to have done, don't you do to someone else.

In other words, if you don't want a bad thing to happen to you, avoid doing it to others, so they will not be incented to do that bad thing that you wouldn't have to you.

Something like that. And in that form, it really serves only our self -interest.

If it would negatively impact us, if it would do us harm, well, then avoid it in your relations with others.

Restrain from doing it, hoping that by this self -control to at least earn being passed by for wicked treatment by others.

Sort of a, I didn't hurt you, so don't hurt me approach to it. But Jesus, as we have come to expect, he takes it to another level.

The difficult rule is tied to the law and the prophets, which means it's tied to what?

To God's glory. The law, which is God's will for his people, so that we can reflect what?

His glory. The prophets, whoever word they spoke, was for God's glory, for his word to be known, for people to get a vision of who

God is and what God is. It describes a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the

Pharisees. In the context of the Sermon on the Mount and the law and the prophets, we can paraphrase it something like this.

Behave towards others so as to bring God the most credit by adhering to the ethical demand placed on us by his scripture.

In other words, with no hope of recompense, with a thought only for God to get credit through our actions, behave towards others in a way that most closely as we can manage adheres to what the law and the prophets would have of us.

And for no other reason than that's following God's word and that's pleasing to him.

Remember what Jesus said a little while before this in the Sermon on the Mount. Truly, truly,

I say to you, they have their reward over and over again. They have the reward. Those who pray in order that you see them, those who do their piety, their tithing, their almsgiving, whatever the case is, and they do it so that you see it and so that you're impressed.

They have their reward. It's sort of like that here. If we follow this rule, if we take this rule as something that gets us benefit,

I think we've stepped completely outside of what Jesus means. The law and the prophets. Follow their dictates because they spoke for the glory of God and do it for no other reason than because it's good, it shows love to your neighbor, and by doing this we fulfill the law and the prophets and do it with no other expectation than you know that God is pleased.

If even a fellow Christian doesn't ever pat you on the back, say, hey, notice you did that to that obnoxious person over there.

I want you to tell them I'm really impressed. If that never ever happens, good enough for us that God is pleased.

And Jesus already said in chapter 5 verses 43 to 48, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Excuse me. It starts out, you have heard it said, you shall love your enemy and your neighbor and hate your enemy.

I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.

For he makes his son to rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

As you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

Therefore, you must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. And this all flows from verses 7 through 11, which was our lesson last week.

And we remember there Jesus spoke of God's good gifts to his children and of his willingness, and really more than his willingness, his desire to give good gifts to his children when they ask him.

And as Luke puts it, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

God is the model for how we treat others. God, in his word through the law and the prophets, is the model for what

Jesus is talking about. What do we wish that others would do to us? What the law and the prophets would have.

What do we do to others? What the law and the prophets would have us to do. God is our model, not just holding back from doing others ill in the often vain hope that they'll reward us by themselves not doing us ill, but by study of the scriptures and our insistence on imitating

God himself, actively doing those things that we know reflect his nature. One might even say that if we're to imitate

God, if we are to embody the whole law and the prophets, we need to go out of our way that we actually seek out ways to do others good.

Now we could ask ourselves, did God wait for you to do good to him before he did good to you?

Any of us who know Jesus Christ, and what does the psalmist say? God looks down from heaven to see if there's any who do good.

If there's anyone who seeks after God, no, not one. So if God waited to do good to us before we, until we did good to him, we would all be lost.

Not one of us could be saved if that were the case. Did God wait for any of us to deserve to be saved by Jesus Christ before granting us forgiveness?

Which one of us deserved for Jesus Christ, the holy pure son of God, to suffer for me?

Deserves got nothing to do with it. We're saved by Jesus Christ. By grace you've been saved.

Through faith that's not of yourselves. The gift of God, not of works that no one should boast. It's all of grace.

The Lord goes on, he speaks of narrow and wide gates. The one hard found by few, the other wide enjoyed by everyone.

But as wide is the opposite of narrow, so also is that path the opposite of the other.

In every way you can imagine, the narrow way is the hard way. The wide one is the easy way.

Opposites. Narrow, wide, hard, easy. The wide one easy to find, easy to stay upon.

Where the narrow one is found only by a few, the opposite on the wide one. It's overflowing.

It's packed. I mean, you have to shoulder your way to get on it. There's an expression, the easy way out usually leads back in, if you ever heard that.

The easy way out usually leads back in. There's no easy path to salvation.

Not for us, most especially, not for the one who gained it for us.

You can ask yourselves, I mean look, look at the path our life is on. Is it easy?

Ask yourself, is it easy? Be suspicious that you have maybe made a detour, even an unwitting detour, if things are just rolling along smooth.

Too smoothly. I don't mean that your bank account has to be emptied, your job has to go away or anything like that.

I'm talking about the inner man. As we struggle with indwelling sin and those things all around us that tempt us off the path, this part, most especially, should never be easy.

And if it is, if the teaching we're receiving makes it easy, if every day we leave having been preached to, having been taught from the word, and just feel wonderful about ourselves and kind of glad -handing about it, and isn't that great?

And I feel really refreshed and ready to go. Be suspicious. Ask yourself, where is that struggle?

Where is the putting off the old man and putting on the new man? This exercise, this discipline that we need to do daily and constantly and never fall away from.

Even if the world doesn't give us an especially bad time, the Christian life must be hard.

It has to be. Jesus said it would be. If for nothing else than our struggle against sin, our desire to be like Christ, it has to cause our hearts to break when we see how far we have to go.

Look at our roadway. What path are we on? We really need to ask ourselves, are there many who would say my course is right?

How about your unbelieving friends and neighbors and co -workers? Do they congratulate you?

If so, I would say be suspicious. You may be on a well -populated road, the one people like because it's easy on their consciences.

A good test is to ask yourself, who agrees with you? Look carefully at who your cheerleaders are.

What drives them? Whose glory is on their minds? Who's getting credit for any good that is done?

The roads are opposites in their course and they lead to equally opposite destinations.

The broad, easy one, the one that is so level and smooth, the one without potholes and with no danger of falling off.

Its way is easy and it is easily discovered. It's quick and simple to find.

In fact, we don't even have to look for it because by nature, that's the road we're on.

The billboards along it say something like, you know, there is no God. You are in control.

You can do it. You are capable. They wouldn't say it, but they mean you are sovereign.

That's the easy path. And along that path, evil is called good and is promoted while good is called evil and is reviled.

And all roads, of course, lead somewhere. And this one to destruction as Jesus says.

The narrow road, the difficult road, the one Jesus places us on, its end is, as everything else in these roads, is opposite the other one.

If the wide road is to destruction, this one, this more difficult way, difficult in the here and now, difficult while we sojourn on this earth, it leads to salvation.

And along its way, difficult as it is promised to be, by the grace of God, we can stay on it.

By the grace of God, we're good to stay on it. 1

Corinthians 10, 13, No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.

But with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

And remember, as Jesus said, my father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand.

And finally, he said, I will never leave you or forsake you. We are on a harder road. I think the road, one of the definitions of how hard that road is, is even the golden rule here.

Do actively to others with no hope to receive anything back as the law and the prophets would have us to do.

Those quick summaries I gave you from Paul the apostle, from Jesus Christ himself, what summarizes the law and the prophets?

The difficult duty to love one another, to go out of our way to show that love, to treat them as God treated us, remembering that God came and sought us out.

God did good to us when we would even think to do good for him. We can't give good to him. What does

God need? What could we possibly bring to him? And yet, according to the law and the prophets, he came to us and did good to us.

So it's a hard road. The narrow road is the hard road. The wide road is the easy road.

Let's stay on the hard road. The Christian life is hard, but as Jesus reached his hand towards drowning

Peter, so he is there for us each step of the way, all the way to eternal life.