The Sermon on the Mount (its not about what we think)
The Sermon on the Mount of the Prophetic
The assumption has always been that the Beatitudes are about being meek, kind, and merciful as a fulfillment of the essence of the Law. You know, to be nice if you’re a believer. Indeed it is. But if fulfillment pertains first to Jesus of the Law and the Prophets, and our faith is in the singular person of Jesus, the question is: “what does Jesus expect to be the singular content of our faith but his fulfillments? What is our expression of that faith, our kind of fulfillment, if not primarily that of the faith of the prophets?”
If expected is the Sermon and Christianity to be something more than about mundane religious bromides, then the meaning radically changes. Meek and merciful is seen then as attitudes of a prophetic faith in emulation of God’s mind in the prophetic act. The kind of attitudinal faith of the particular focus on the oracles is distinguishing the righteousness of those who practice it from Scribes and Pharisees. Here is the key passage:
Matthew 5:17-20: Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
The fulfillment of the Prophets is Jesus expounding in a Sermon on the faith of the Prophets. A faith intended for his believers in the prophets with respect to Him. Fulfillment means completion, elucidation, revelation, disclosure, explanation, by both history and Word.
There are three lessons Jesus is teaching here, and divisions of this piece of scripture that I would like to bring out asymmetrically:
-
- The description of the moral bearing of the believer of the prophetic faith
The understanding of the Law through prophecy
The believer’s understanding of true prophetic faith expression in the New Covenant in contrast to typical religious ones.
The Moral bearing fo the Believer
On Morality, its hardly worth citing anyone. We know what the world thinks is morality.
Catholic: https://catholicstrength.com/tag/the-sermon-on-the-mount-is-a-moral-code/
Protestant: https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20080529_1.htm
One size fits all: https://conciliarpost.com/theology-spirituality/the-sermon-on-the-mount-and-christian-ethics/
Buddhist: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/buddhamorals.html
Muslim: https://www.whyislam.org/social-ties-2/morality-ethics-in-islam/
Jesus came to destroy this pagan conception of morality. He came to destroy it by giving the world a spiritual reason for God that did not come only out of our fallen imaginations and love of lovely ideas. When transcendence is based and informed on human revelation instead of a real one from God, it is natural that what we think is moral is primarily through what we do with our bodies. It’s certainly not about what we do with our spirits because there is nothing for the spirit to demonstrate morality with. So, its do this, don’t do that.
What the Sermon on the Mount is about is God saying that if you need to do anything that you want to call moral, call moral what you do with God’s new revelation of Himself. If the spirit is the ultimate locus of the moral vital center of Man, then the locus of morality is in how we morally seek, think about, weigh and accept spiritual truth. What you find through that uncritical process is that you end up finding the only real one. That God through the Prophets spoke of Jesus and Jesus came and fulfilled those words hundreds and thousands of years later. This places morality far outside of human control and attainment except through an honest and righteous faith in the best evidence the world has or has ever known for the existence and nature of God.
In Matthew and Luke, Jesus uses tropes indicating both the righteous prophetic method and motivation as well as the people of prophecy, the prophets, which he uses to re-orient the hearer from the natural inclination to ascribe these to general religious types and toward very narrow, messianic ones.
To preface this, keep in mind that this is also Christ uttering prophecy itself. Each Beatitude predicts a certain future for the certain of those who are Christ’s faithful indicated by their displayed character: “blessed are” = “theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,” “blessed are” = “they shall be comforted…” This binds the moral bearing to the orbit specifically of the messianic oracles, and nothing else. These are not intended necessarily as immediate traits and benefits, but to be realized ultimately as future ones, after the resurrection, and in the prophesied Kingdom. At this moment Christ’s credentials as the prophesied Messiah are in the process realization, and so is His faith.
Christ’s prophecies and his allusions here are a guide for interpretation, a symbol given to indicate that the subject at hand is prophecy, that it is being fulfilled and will be fulfilled. The aim is not for the production of prosaic religious aphorisms and a revelation about the goodness of general pedestrian morality but of peculiar and particular righteousness through faith in the Messiah the Word. A spiritual faith, not first one of outward expression. Note here the allusions to messianic prophecy:
The personality description of the faithful in Jesus, in Matt. 5 and Luke 6, is taken from Isa 61. All are prophecies of the future in the consummation, as follows:
Poor in spirit. (Mat only) Luke has “poor.” (Isa 57:15, Isa 66:2)
Mourn. (Mat only) (Isa 53:3, 61:3)
Meek, humble. (only in Matthew) Nu 12:3, Isaiah 42:3, 53:7, 57:13-15, Isa 61:1, Psa 22:26, Psa 37:11, Psa 149:4,Zep 2:3, et al.
Hunger and thirst after righteousness. (Mat only). Luke has “hunger now.”(Psa 63:1, Isa 55:1-3,Jer 31:25, et al)
Merciful. (both)
Pure in heart will see God. (Mat only). Psa 24:4, Eze 36:25-27
Peacemakers. (Mat only) Between Abraham and Lot.
Persecuted for righteousness sake. (Mat only). Luke has “hate you, separate you, reproach you, cast out your name as evil (for the Son of Man’s sake). Matthew says “for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” Not primarily persecution of physical moral bearing, but persecution for righteous belief in Jesus Messiah of the Old Testament. Type of persecution is specifically that of the prophets, of which are many examples: Acts 7:52, Amos, Jeremiah, Elijah, Urijah, Mat 23:35, Mt 23:31; Lu 11:47; Ro 11:3; 1Th 2:15.
These are prophetic passages and the faith of the audience is compared to the faith content of the prophets.
In Luke, the “poor,” not poor in spirit, will receive the Kingdom of God. Those that hunger shall be filled. Those that weep will laugh. Persecution is repaid in heaven if it’s for “the Son of Man’s sake,” “because “ in, v. 23, in “like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.” “Son of Man” is a specialized prophetic name of the Messiah from Daniel 7:13 and in Ezekiel of that prophet, and is therefore given a complete meaning by paraphrasing “for the sake of the messianic prophecies concerning Jesus.”
The comparison to the prophets and the prophetic faith in both Matthew and Luke 6 times: Mt 5:12,17; Mt 7:12,15; Lu 6:23,26. The “rich,” by contrast, have had their reward. They are full but they will hunger, laugh now but will weep. “Rich” is then that which is principally the carnal rich in position and wealth, those say they are rich but are not. By quantity of religious knowledge say they are rich, but spiritually (Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes) full of undeserved pride.
Jesus again reorients the reflexive notion that this is about the carnal rich toward the spiritual rich in Luke 6:26: “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.” The faithful are like the prophets, but those who are not are the false prophets and their supporters.
In Luke 6:27 there is “but I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you.” In v. 35 he says, as in Matthew, that God is kind to the evil and to the righteous. This is the prophetic historical reality, which will continue until the end, in which believers are to emulate. Emulation is not of “God” but of God through the foregoing prophetic method.
The faithful do this for their understanding of God’s oracular method, looking backward to fulfilled prophecy and forward to a future prophetic fulfillment at the end of history. When there is mercy, mercy is given. Giving will render back. It is no wonder then that v.39 launches into the subject of interpretative sin.
Blindness, as in Mat 7:4 and 5, is not physical blindness, but the inability to see the truth. The mote in the eye is not some nondescript sin or flaw, but the inability or unwillingness to see the prophetic truth of Jesus through the scriptures but criticizing others for relatively minor problems of doctrine or issues around tradition, disqualifying them from being masters of the Scriptures and the true religion.
Religious action is around the revelation of the oracles and spiritual, not primarily physical action. This is established without question as “poor” is interposed “poor in spirit.” Hunger and thirst are said to be after” righteousness.” The pure are said to be pure in heart, a morality of the spirit, not physical action. These are states of the mind in action to love, know and understand the messianic revelation. Persecution is then persecution not mostly of the body but of spirit and for spiritual reasons. Persecution is first one of an assault on a kind of corrupt faith against Jesus of the Prophets upon a believing spirit, not one of a body against another. Mourning is being downcast for the same persecution.
The Believer and the Law
The SOTM is about the Old Testament fulfillments of the New Testament by Christ, and this includes the Law prophetically fulfilled by Christ as well. The believer’s faith is then a spiritual faith that Christ has fulfilled them. It is most important to start with this fact. But the New Covenant conversion of the Law is one first of a release from obscurity, strife, and a wresting of meaning from the scriptures, as all mysteries now have been revealed. The burden of the Law has been lifted. These are exhortations to present action to righteousness through faith and a symbolic reflection in bodily action, seen as expressions of the righteousness of Jesus who fulfilled not the stricture of the Law but the Law and Prophets together as a prophetic corpus. Jesus in this way converted and fulfilled the Law.
The idea is that the believer is no longer striving for truth, no longer struggling through speculating and a wresting of uncertain meaning from the Scriptures, as of a heavy yoke that cannot of lifted but is at rest in his soul, essentially an epistemic rest, of knowing the meaning of the oracles and its good news. Because of this, the attitude is external as a symbolic indication but mostly substantially internal. The believer is spiritually at rest, and to act is to act in a way as to show what God has done in giving this rest and by what means.
Thou shalt not kill – Murder is the unrighteous, murderous separation of one from his life. There will be no murder in the Kingdom. But the key is in the expression in the SOTM that anger without a cause is killing your brother. Destructive, overwrought emotion against another believer only though carnal motivation can be the cause the death of that brother’s prophetic faith, as God has fulfilled and promised peace, a plan set in motion from the beginning of the world that cannot fail. This is transferred to religious observance—”makeup with your brother before pretending to be religious.” But it goes far beyond this. This also goes to a display to the spirit of other people the object and reason for your faith: Jesus and the messianic oracles. God gives perfect evidence for his righteousness and goodwill in prophecy and so should those that believe it and Him give it to the world. Don’t pretend to be spiritual unless you have forgiven all those as God has forgiven you and will forgive you.
Adultery – adulterer of the heart, not principally objective adultery. The admonition about looking at a woman with the covetous intent of committing sin is a sin of the heart. This is a statement about the futility of works righteousness through a deeper Law, but that deeper of the Law that is violated is that which was instituted to teach the Messiah, which is the greater sin of the Pharisees. The Law is used to judge every action, no matter how minor, even of the heart, making it impossible to fulfill unless the Law is seen properly as pedagogic of the Messiah to come, which Jesus fulfills and faith obeys to salvation. Jesus says to cut off the instruments (hands, eye) of the effective adulterer to prevent his going to Hell, but it is obvious that Jesus does not mean this literally, as the body cannot be cast into Hell, only the spirit. What must be cut are those things in the mind, the spirit, that prevent one from righteously seeing and teaching Jesus from the Old Testament. The spiritual eye sees the desired but sinful spiritual thing and the spiritual hand affects the fulfillment of sin with it by false messianic belief. One should take away both if they enable us to sin, sin quintessentially being false interpretative results of the prophets and the effort spent to teach those false results. This is the adultery with other gods by private, subjective, religious means, by the interpretive eye and the hand of the will to make it known that enable it.
Divorce – without cause, except for her fornication, causes her to commit adultery when she remarries, and the person remarrying will himself commit adultery. Divorce is a divorce from a belief in God’s oath for a future relationship of provision, therefore we don’t go back on our faith. Adultery is essentially the breaking of an oath, a covenant, that is the oath of God to perform his goodwill on history, and faithfulness and failure are transferred to man’s spirit when it disbelieves this God’s prophetic Word. It is a failure in the belief that the oath and the benefits are not believed and will not be fulfilled. There is no divorce in the coming Kingdom, but the opposite in permanent union with God, as what he promised must be fulfilled. In the man-woman relationship, man is God, the woman is the believer. God does not break covenant with his believer, and the believer does not come to play the whore with him by coming to deny his oath for her future, as he does not fail to fulfill what he has promised, except for her/the believer’s fornication with other gods. If he did he would be an adulterer, capricious, motivated only by selfishness, perhaps evil in his intentions toward man, perhaps even willing to be in union with a completely different kind of believer, such as those of pagan faiths.
Foreswearing – don’t swear by Heaven (God’s throne, Isa 66:1), earth (God’s footstool (Isa 66:1)), Jerusalem (City of Great King), or your head (because you can’t change it). Should be “yes” or ‘no,” no equivocation. That is, your word is all that is required, and an oath should not be given rashly, just as God’s oath in prophecy. God will in the future fulfill his oaths, and man’s oaths are therefore in emulation not capricious. An oath is given by simple “yes” I will perform or “no” I don’t. Anything else is almost definition one that expresses insincerity that he will perform it, requiring instead argumentation, persuasion, and emphasis by emotional displays and hyperbole, religion, tradition, which can be mere symbols instead of substances. One’s word is expected to be accepted because one has a reputation for fulfilling his word in the past, like God. God’s examples are his fulfilled prophecies, and their outcome cannot be changed. Mans’s example is essentially in his expression of faith in their belief without having to steal the glory God’s unchangeable works and apply them as evidence to one’s own veracity.
Eye for an eye – don’t resist, give cheek for cheek (Isa 50:6), cloak for coat (Psa 22:18), mile for mile (Jesus was compelled to the Cross and he willingly completed the course to fulfill the prophets, as his pledge to do for their faith in Him: Mt 27:32; Mr 15:21; Lu 23:26), give to those that ask without turning away. If God will prophetically fulfill, if God does the working, then man can only be at rest, a rest of faith that He will perform. God’s prophetic promises will be fulfilled in perfect judgment. The idea is that God’s way is to promise blessings and fulfill them, and do it so that it makes the same thing impossible for man, and this includes retaliation for evil, something which is also ultimately future. Instead of giving back the same of what evil took from you, an eye for an eye, you give back, in the present time, like God for all the evil that man has done, good. (Gen 50:20). This means that the entire course of the human history of the deliberate evil for man was part of God’s plan, to save some alive through causing evil to participate unwittingly in the plan. The faithful’s participation is their constant expression of prophetic faith against such prophesied evil. The Law is again revealed as prophetic.
Suing and Accusation by the Law – same as an eye for an eye.
Love neighbor, hate enemy – love only, bless, pray. Again, God’s sun rises and fulfills blessings on all. God fulfills his word and its blessings go to the whole world, not just believers. God will judge, God will fulfill, therefore, as in above, not to presume to be in the position of God as the Great Judge at the consummation. Please do not lose sight of the fact that the consummation is a prophetic one.
“Be perfect as your Father is perfect.” Luke includes this at the end in v. 40. Be like God to the fullest extent possible without thinking you are God. God is perfect in fulfilling what he promises. Therefore, man is perfect only by believing it fully and moving those implications into their religious practice, attitude and theology. This is not a motivation by wanting to be nice and feel good about yourself, it’s one of the prophets and the prophets alone as fulfilled by Christ.
True Religious Practice
Alms. Substance out of an abundance of not primarily money, but knowledge and understanding of Jesus in the Old Testament given to benefit those who are not first carnally poor, but the downtrodden and abused by the false, anti-relational religious establishment. To be done in secret is that done through private conversation. God will then see in secret and reward openly, instead of seeing only carnal displays. This is also his prophetic formula: he sees in the mysteries of his own council the future and rewards openly in physical fulfillment for all to see.
Prayer. Praise and petition to God, the same as above. No vain repetitions as heathen. This exhortation goes not to the repetition of the outer form, but inner substance. Prayer is in what and through what the prayer is made which distinguishes the essential faith of the prophets from the heathen faith. This is the distinction from a complete dependence on the prophecies, where heathenism believes out of mere will and choice, tradition or emotion, where only Jehovah objectively, demonstrably proves himself to all. Jesus says God knows what you need without asking. Instead, pray the type of the Lord’s Prayer. The content of the prayer then must be radically different from the content of a pagan prayer. Therefore it is a prayer through prophecy. Sandwiched inis the body of the prayer between two great statements of prophetic faith: “Thy Kingdom come,” is a prayer for God to fulfill his promise for the kingdom in the eschaton. “They will be done” is for him to execute his prophetic plan perfectly, “on earth as it is in Heaven.” Then, “daily bread” is the daily truth of Jesus from the Scriptures. Then forgiveness is asked. Forgiveness is expected according to the prophetic pattern: Forgive us as we forgive, fulfill prophecy as we believe you will fulfill it. The Lord’s Prayer ends with the prophecy “for thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.” “Amen” is literally, “surely,” or “surely it will come to pass.”
Fasting. Same, in secret. Fasting is the denial of spiritual sustenance, of self-confidence, pride, desire for stature and knowledge as a trophy of piety and intelligence, and all such, but is given up and converted as a particular display of faith in God’s future plan when carnal food is not necessary, replaced by his complete and perfect provision.
Laying-up treasure. Treasure is the treasure of knowledge of the scriptures that are given by God and increased by man as a steward, and the praise of God for its stewardship.
The Light of the body and darkness. The light is the prophetic truth of Jesus.
Don’t worry about the future because its taken care of in prophecy. The lilies are a picture of this, beginning with a seed and flowering in all its glory in the end.
Judging. Matthew 7:2 “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” The judging is clarified in the next verse, describing the practice of condemning interpretative corruption of others when one’s own eye is filled with the much greater beam of the inability to recognize Jesus in the Old Testament scriptures. Here is not an exhortation not to judge, but to judge falsely, as the standard by which you expect others to keep is a standard with which you will be judged (Rom 2;1, 3). Therefore, the emphasis is on the idea of not judging with a corrupt standard, and then about the judgment of another person’s scriptural interpretations only with a standard of one that is fixed and infallible, instead of a general religious one out of philosophy, common sense, and dogmatic theology. That is, “don’t judge someone’s interpretative results of the Old Testament Messiah by anything but a perfect standard. ” That standard is on the foundation of Jesus as Messiah alone, without any peripheral aims and methods than to fully explain the Jesus of the Old Testament by the prophets.
Pearls before swine (evangelism). Pearls are one’s knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures that foretold of Jesus Messiah. Don’t preach them to people who will not or cannot accept them, emphasizing the discernment of the audience before evangelism. The effect will only result in their diminishing as a religious motivation.
Seek, knock, look for the Kingdom of Heaven (searching scriptures for the Messiah, found to be Jesus, which also means searching for the divinely ordained faith-religion basis, which is messianic prophecy itself).
4. Closing verses in Matthew
Following on from seeking, knocking and finding the prophetic truths of scriptures, God will give what one asks. False religion gives stones for bread, serpents for fish. Bread is the Word of God, fish the Word of God. Not the generic Word of God, but the prophetic Word, which is Jesus himself. God gives these “good gifts.” These gifts of God, particularly Jesus, through the prophets, is what is given to others when they ask: Matthew 7:12: ‘Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” The law and the prophets are about God fulfilling his word in history. What one does for others is through participating with God in fulfilling God’s prophetic word in them. That is not a general aphorism to do good generically, but prophetically.
This, in v 7:13, is the narrow gate. The wide gate is the touted gifts and method of any mundane and prophetically opaque and un-demonstrated scriptural, philosophical or subjective truth or motivation, of which there are thousands, which characterize all other religions.
Cementing this interpretation, Jesus says in the next verses, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” False prophecy is then in contrast to true prophecy. They are thorns (see Parable of the Sower) and thistles, evil fruit from corrupt trees. This type of religion and their form of “truth” will be, along with their persons, destroyed at the Second Coming.
Therefore, simply calling “Lord, Lord” is not an expression of real faith (Matt 16:13-17) any more than any heathen and unsubstantiated religious display. Calling “Jesus” is calling but a name without any presumption that anything exits behind faith in a religious claim and person without its historical proof, that is self-serving or merely obliquely oracular. “Lord Jesus, Messiah” contains the full title, containing the name and the symbol of his messianic and proven credentials. “Lord” therefore is a symbol of a non-messianic, non-prophetic faith. The same people falsely confessing “Lord” without this prophetic prediction in knowledge and faith are false prophets who perform false wonders in an attempt to supply that proof themselves, which is making themselves God.
“Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.” Whoever understands Jesus sayings, keeps them, and patterns his faith and religious expression on them alone. The “Rock” upon which this faith is built is Jesus as much as this his scriptural revelation and his prophetic faith basis. Others not so grounded will be washed away.
Here are just a tiny sampling of the other prophetic scriptures to consider as they bear on the SOTM:
-
- “Kill” (murder) Mat 5:12. Isaiah 11:9-10 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.
- “Prayer.” Isaiah 56:7 Even them will I bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.
- “Meek.” Isaiah 57:13-15 When thou criest, let thy companies deliver thee; but the wind shall carry them all away; vanity shall take them: but he that putteth his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain; And shall say, Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people. For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.
- Jeremiah 7:9: Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not.”
- Ezekiel 16:29-32: Thou hast moreover multiplied thy fornication in the land of Canaan unto Chaldea; and yet thou wast not satisfied herewith. How weak is thine heart, saith the Lord GOD, seeing thou doest all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman; In that thou buildest thine eminent place in the head of every way, and makest thine high place in every street; and hast not been as an harlot, in that thou scornest hire; But as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband!
- Isaiah 50:1: Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.
We conclude that the Church has transformed the Sermon on the Mount into a prosaic religious exhortation. Jesus’ promise in Mat 5:20 is, therefore, frightening in a way that was never considered: “For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
See these articles:
What is the Word of God?: Passing by Nehushtan
Christ and the Norming of Transcendence: Passing by Nehushtan
Prophesying, Preaching, and the Prophetic: Passing by Nehushtan
