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Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him (Matthew 5:1, NASB).
In Matthew chapters five, six, and seven, we read The Sermon!
It’s also known as the Sermon on the Mount, but to me, it has become The Sermon! I’ve preached hundreds of sermons, read hundreds of sermons, and listened to hundreds of sermons, and none of them have come close to The Sermon!
At the beginning of my preaching career (over fifty years ago), I recognized the significance of The Sermon, so I memorized it. My thinking: Is there a better foundation upon which to build my future sermons?
I’m glad that I memorized The Sermon as preparation for a career of preaching, but having reviewed The Sermon in my meditation on Matthew 5 thousands of times, I’ve found three sections/passages that have changed my life.
I use these three passages as orientation for the rest of The Sermon. . .
First Passage
You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet (Matthew 5:13, ESV).
The Sermon teaches a radical relationship with God that got Jesus killed! We should follow His example, not by overtly seeking martyrdom, but by desiring to be salt. Our faith should be irritating to the religious and lukewarm.
I decided early in my ministry that I would live a radical faith.
I’ve paid a price for misjudging my flesh as salt and doing things “in faith” that were more ambition than obedience. However, any victories in my life as a follower have come by leaping — not tiptoeing — towards God’s will.
We can’t understand or live The Sermon without intense saltiness!
Second Passage
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:33).
One day, after meditating on The Sermon, the Spirit said to me, “Be a Big Kingdom person, and not a Big Problem person.”
In my prayers that morning, I was complaining to God about being insulted the day before by a parishioner. It wasn’t just the insult but also the difficulty of the ministry at that time, as things weren’t going well.
So, I had a lot to discuss with God. And the Big Kingdom, not Big Problem lesson, was His answer.
We can focus on our problems and allow those difficulties to make us Big Problem people, or we can seek His Kingdom first and become Big Kingdom people, resulting in a Kingdom in our lives that is so large that our problems seem irrelevant.
Third Passage
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you (Matthew 7:7).
From this verse, I learned the principle of asking specifically.
Most of our prayers are general of the “God bless me today” variety — and we won’t even know if God answers the prayer. A specific prayer is, “God, our church needs one hundred thousand dollars this week to purchase a new building.”
And the $100,000 prayer was answered. That’s the difference between general and specific prayer.
That’s the OG on The Sermon. These three passages have become the radical-Big-Kingdom-asking-specifically lens that guides me in reading The Sermon — and also as I follow Jesus.
*OG stands for Old Guy. I’ve written 21 “OG’s” on differing books and sections of the Bible. Go to grantedwardsauthor.com and type “OG” in the search function to find all of them.