How I Found the Kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount

A preview of how my journey through Matthew 5-7 led me to brink of the kingdom with shocking implications for my theology and life...  "Kingdom Come" starts Sunday February 14 @ Fenway Church.

The Sermon on the Mount is the most well known of Jesus’ teaching and is held in high regard by people of many religions and cultures.  Men such as Ghandi used it as a basis for how they lived and led influential movements.  In my experience, the Sermon on the Mount is generally taught in two ways...


Most Christian commentaries view the Sermon on the Mount as Jesus’ instructions on how his followers should live.  It serves as a model of the type of behavior and attitudes citizens of the kingdom of heaven should exhibit.  Verses like “turn the other cheek” and “treat others the way you want to be treated” serve as behavioral guides and ethical goals for many. (Martin Lloyd Jones, Dow Robinson, ESV Study Bible)  The Sermon on the Mount is also largely used as tool to show our need for Jesus.  Jesus’ affirmation and extension of the law leaves a person with no hope of being able to fulfill what Jesus teaches in this passage.  Statements like “if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” & “you therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” vividly reveal mankind’s inability to achieve God’s standard and the depths of our sin. 

Both of these interpretations while surely accurate reveal a tension within the text.  For the believer in Jesus, it sets forth the possibility of and an ideal for a Christ-like life. Almost all would agree that a world filled with people living out the attitudes and instructions of the Sermon on the Mount would be a true utopia.  Yet, our inability to live out this teaching ends up making it feel burdensome, overwhelming, and unrealistic.  How many can truly love their enemy? How many truly turn the other cheek? Who actually seeks other well being before their own on a consistent basis? Thus, the teaching merely becomes a tool to highlight our need for a Savior. He will forgive your many sins. In fact, he may even help you live a more holy life. Yet, in the heart of every person that has ever glimpsed of the glory of who Jesus is lies an aching desire that the Sermon on the Mount be more than just a verdict of guilt, a sentence of condemnation, an acknowledgement of our own imperfection.  We wish we could actually live this way.  We wish the church were actually a light to the world.  We wished our lives really did demonstrate the love and life of Jesus.  We wish we were salt the earth. We wish that when people bumped into us they caught the fragrance of Jesus not the frustration of our busy lives.  THAT is the tension of the Sermon on the Mount.  It leaves us yearning for a true utopia (the kingdom of heaven) yet dismayed at the lack of its reality in our own lives and world. 

Many having discovered that tension have thrown themselves at the mercy of the cross of Jesus, thanking him for providing forgiveness of their sins through his sacrifice, and asking for newness of life by a spiritual re-birth (new start) through the Holy Spirit. 

However, having begun a new life, they soon discover that living out the Sermon on the Mount is not much easier than before.  They are shocked to find non-Christians exhibiting more Christ-like attributes then themselves or even the church; in this city, it may seem the world is more concerned with such concepts as social justice, world peace, and love then the church is.  We search for fixes.  I must be filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit.  I must pray and fast.  I must join an accountability group. I must find a pastor that understands my needs.  I must surround myself with more positive people.  I most avoid contact with the world.  I must setup boundaries from others’ sin.  I must do more for God.  Then questions begin… Am I really a Christian? Is the power of the Holy Spirit real? How come I haven’t changed? Does God love me? Is God judging me for my sin? I must be a terrible Christian. Surely God is angry with me. God can’t use me; I hope he uses those other super Christians the really on fire ones. It was better in the world. Is God real? The Bible doesn’t seem to be true. I give up.

For years, I avoided the Sermon on the Mount.  I quoted a verse or two from it when needed and that was it.  I read it and couldn’t figure it out. Was Jesus speaking in hyperbole? Did he really expect this kind of life from his followers?  Was he serious when over and over again he said to enter the kingdom of heaven you had to live this way? If he was, I and my Christian friends didn’t have a chance of getting in.  If he wasn’t, how could we take anything he said in the gospels literally? Hell irrelevant – a motivational tool for rebellious pre-teens.  Jesus the only way? Nonsense he was just showing a way. Miracles a metaphor for hope. Sinning and still a Christian – grace, grace - every Christian does. Don’t worry about it.  Sanctification – pursued mainly by legalists. Let’s just enjoy his love.  The world? It’s a lot more fun than in here – let’s focus on making the church more attractive – lights, cameras, action! Damn, church splits, in-fighting, divorce, immorality. Really? This is the light of the world?

So for many, the Sermon on the Mount remains an unattainable reality even with Jesus.   As a Christian I preferred to think that the Sermon on the Mount was part of that Old Covenant law, the law that was abolished at the cross.  It was Jesus making sure we got Moses’ point – you can’t approach God unless you’ve been purified and consecrated.  So, I was grateful for the blood of Jesus which did that but frustrated by my inability to live a Jesus like life.  So many Christians seemed to be ignoring the stronger elements of Jesus teaching.  Why did some seemingly fiery Christian leaders filled with the power of the Spirit seem to promote such man-centered, commercial driven tendencies?  Why did some Christians with seemingly great personal character seem so timid and removed from the lives of lost?  If people were going to hell without Jesus, why weren’t we mobilizing the church for an all out world-ending missional campaign?  And why couldn’t we do that without making the world our enemy instead of the recipient of our sacrificial love?

I looked for answers in spiritual experiences, conferences, books, Christian leaders, unity, and prayer for revival, fervency, and evangelistic programs.  I felt led to start a house church 5 years ago.  A small, vibrant community emerged enjoying worship & the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  We reached out the lost on the campuses, streets, and apartments near us.  I began to teach about the kingdom.  We explored scripture together.  I wrote some discipleship materials.  A couple years in I decided to tackle the Sermon on the Mount.  I would like to say it changed my life.  I am sure of one thing.  It changed my perspective, and it has the potential to change my life in an incredible way.  As our community of 12 - 15 studied the Sermon on the Mount over 2 months, I saw a theme beginning to emerge.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  I wondered if Jesus had a central point he was trying to communicate throughout these 3 chapters that represented his message.  The repetition of the word kingdom grabbed my attention.  I always viewed the Sermon on the Mount as a manual for how to exhibit Christian character.  Instead, I began to see something I had never seen before.  Jesus was revealing a mystery within those 3 chapters.  He wasn’t just giving a list of requirement or points on what the Christian life should look like. He wasn’t just trying to just help us see our need for a Savior. He was trying to get his disciples to see something so much more.  He was talking about something that was greater than the Law and Prophets, greater than a philosophy of life, greater than our sin, greater than any earthly utopia.  He was talking about something that transcended every philosophy, every religious practice, every holy book, every god, every empire, every nation. He was talking about “a kingdom.”  He was talking about something that would shake the very foundations of the world.  It would shake every other kingdom, every ideology, every social enterprise, every tribe, every tongue, every human.  He was revealing a kingdom “not of this world.”  It was the kingdom of heaven.  It was coming.  It was present.  It was in the here and now.  Heaven had invaded earth with the incarnation of its Son.  The rock that would smash all others had finally hit earth.  Only it looked different than anyone could have expected.  The crowds missed it, and so did the religious leaders. We often miss it too.  He was cracking open the doorway to a new world, a kingdom that couldn’t be shaken.  He was laying out a whole new reality for life.  He was laboring to how one got in to this realm.  Really got in.  Really experienced a new life, a new reality on earth as it is in heaven.  Here was an invitation to really live in the confrontation of the heavenly kingdom with the earthly one. 

Somewhere between Matthew & Revelation I had gotten lost in the theology of salvation, church planting, pastoral letters, and end-times prophecy.  I missed the kingdom.  Yet there it was staring me in the face in Matthew 5 – Jesus’ first teaching. I knew it held a key, and I wanted to find it.  I wanted to play with the big boys.  I wanted in on everything Jesus intended when he said follow me, when he said pray his kingdom come.  But the road to glory shocked me…

I am not sure I’ll ever recover.

"Kingdom Come"  A 7 week series on Matthew 5-7 

Starts Sunday February 14 @ www.fenwaychurch.org