Matthew 7:24-29

Chapter 28

The Omissions of the Sermon Christ's Adaptation to His Audience Caution Against Mere Literalism Common Trials

Prayer

Almighty God, for every gentle promise of thine our hearts would bless thee. We need thy tenderest word, for the wounds in our life are vital, and there is no recovery for the soul of man but by the healing which thou dost supply. We are wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, and there is no health in us: we have destroyed ourselves, but in thee is our help. This we say to ourselves when we are most sober-minded, and see most clearly into our real condition in the sight of heaven. Sometimes we delude ourselves, and by many a pretence do we seek to mislead divine judgment: we wash our hands with soap and nitre, and we think that therefore our heart must be clean: we robe ourselves in white linen as if we clothed the spirit with the snow of absolute holiness, but now and again we see into our own corruption and it frightens us with a great terror, for in us there is no health we are charnel houses, we are dead souls, we are corrupt and pestilent in thy sight, and we annoy heaven by our very breathing.

To whom shall we come but unto the living one for life, and to the eternal for the extension of our duration? We hasten to the cross, we flee with feet of lightning to thy side, thou wounded One, Emmanuel, the God-Man. Thou didst never cast out the contrite seeker, thou didst never say "No" to the broken heart; when streaming eyes have been turned to thee thou hast poured upon them the light of thy smile, and made even the tears of sorrow beautiful. We all come to thee with great piercing cries of want, sharp and ringing utterances of agony, principally saying, "God be merciful to me a sinner;" and we wait with one grand expectation for thine infinite answer of pardon and peace through the blood of the Lamb. Amen.

Mat 7:24-29

24. 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:

25. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

26. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:

27. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

28. And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:

29. For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

We have, as you are aware, gone verse by verse through all the preceding chapters in the gospel by Matthew. We began with the words, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham," and from time to time we have pursued a consecutive study of the gospel by Matthew, and we have now come to the close of the Sermon upon the Mount. My object to-night is to review the Sermon upon the Mount as a whole, having already perused it sentence by sentence and commented thereupon.

It is a very common question which men ask of one another, "What did you think of the sermon to-day?" It is that question which I intend to answer, the sermon being the Sermon upon the Mount and the Preacher being the Son of God.

Looking at the sermon as a whole, I will take it for granted that you ask me what I, having heard the sermon, thought of it. Let me tell you first of all, how much I was struck with the omissions of the sermon. I am told that a sermon is right in proportion as it begins with the creation of man and steadily pursues its heavy way through all human history, and sums itself up by the events of the day of judgment. If that is a correct interpretation of a sound and good sermon, then the sermon delivered upon the mount must be regarded as being most remarkable for its serious omissions. I am not aware that the Preacher has ever referred to the existence of Adam. To the best of my recollection, there is not one solitary word in the sermon about what took place in Eden, and the terms "original sin" are not to be found in the discourse from beginning to end. Nowhere did the Preacher say, to the best of my recollection, "You are wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, and there is no health in you;" never once did he say, "All ye like sheep have gone astray, ye have turned everyone to his own way;" in no instance did he say, "There is none righteous, no, not one; God looked down from heaven to see the children of men, and behold if there were any that did good, and lo there was none that served him with a perfect heart." How then?

In the next place I am struck by the utter absence of what we call now-a-days Evangelical Doctrine. There is nothing here about the Blood of Christ, there is nothing here about the Cross of Calvary, there is nothing here about believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, as that word is evangelically interpreted and applied. There is here nothing of the doctrine of grace, nothing of the doctrine of justification by faith, nothing of the grand savoury doctrine of the assurance of adoption into the family of God. The Preacher himself calls his discourse a set of Sayings. Where is orthodoxy? where is grace? where is faith? where is election? where is assurance? where is a single element that is denoted amongst us to-day as evangelical? where is unction? So far, I think, I could justify myself in every sentence I have uttered by the letter that is now spread open before me in the sacred volume. And yet it would be only a justification in the letter, for every one of the grand doctrines I have now referred to, though not specifically named in the discourse, is absolutely and profoundly assumed as the basis of the entire utterance. So mistaken may we be when we hear preachers: we bind them too severely to the mere letter: if we do not hear our favourite set of terms and tones exactly as we have always heard them, the temptation is to feel and to suggest that the preacher is not preaching the grand old doctrine by which we obtained our personal salvation.

Now the reality of the case is that this Sermon upon the Mount could not have been preached if man had not fallen from his first estate. The language would have been an unknown tongue, the doctrine would have been without application and point to any living creature. Jesus Christ takes human history as he finds it: he addresses the human nature that was before him, and I ask you to lay your finger upon a single point in his discourse that would have been appropriate if there had not taken place, some time in human history, a total collapse of human integrity. We must allow our preachers therefore some latitude of expression, we must allow that some things are to be taken for granted; we really must not insist on having in every discourse a correct and formal statement of all our theological beliefs and doctrines; we must seize human history as it actually is, we must modernise some antique expressions, and must mint again some grand old words and turn them into the coinage and the currency of our present phraseology. Be careful how you take away the reputation or character of any man for not being evangelical. Such persons as I now refer to might have taken away the reputation of the Son of God himself by confining their attention strictly to the narrow letter. Rely upon it that the evangelical doctrine is to be found sometimes under apparently uncouth forms of expression. Now and again the rocks of our thinking may be reddened with unseen blood, the blood of Jesus Christ himself, whilst we who only see imperfectly what is taking place, may blame the preacher for want of evangelical grace and unction and pathos.

Suppose a man should say to a student, "In order to be a sea captain, you must be able to take the latitude and the longitude of a ship at sea. That is one thing which you must be able to do." What would you think of that young student turning round and saying to his father, "This teacher ignores great fundamental truths: he never said a word to me about the first four rules in arithmetic do you call that orthodox direction and calculation? He uses long, fine words; he says I must be able to take the latitude and the longitude of a ship at sea is that fundamental teaching? The man ignores the very root and base of arithmetical reckoning." How would you esteem such a criticism? Surely as a piece of blatant folly; for how can any man take the latitude and longitude of a ship at sea if he is ignorant of the first four rules of arithmetic? To be able to do it assumes all previous knowledge and training. The teacher states results rather than processes, and this form of teaching must sometimes be allowed to the pulpit. Jesus Christ speaks to human nature as he finds it; he takes the human history for granted, and he lets his gracious words fall upon the hearing of mankind to be, received, adopted, and applied according to the personal conditions and requirements.

If you ask me again what I thought of the Sermon on the Mount when I heard it, I should say how much struck I was by the infinite wisdom and tact of the preacher, in beginning just where his audience was prepared to begin. Instead of coming with some high-flown morality, of which the world had never heard before, he said, "What are your maxims? Hew far have you gone in the Book already?" And when they said to him, "We have come up to this point, namely, Thou shalt not kill," he said in effect, "Very well; so far so good. But that is a rough and vulgar morality that hardly begins to be morality at all: it is a very little way beyond the merest barbarism. It is a little from it, and so far it is upon a right line but I say unto you, Ye shall not be angry with your brother without a cause. How far have you got upon the line of civilisation?" The answer, is, "Thus far, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy." Jesus Christ says, "You must alter your doctrine upon the latter point: I say unto you, Love your enemies."

Still the point to be noted is this, that Jesus Christ took morality as he found it, began where the people were prepared to begin. He took upon, him the form of a servant and became such to their ignorance: he made himself of no reputation instead of talking in a high-flown language which the people could not understand, he took their germs and elements of morality and civilisation, and carried them onward to their proper development and culmination.

This is the right method of teaching, this is the philosopher's plan. If I want to teach a child, I must ask the child where he can begin I must not play the great scholar with my little pupil, I must lay aside my intellectual divinity, and be born in the child's place. I must make myself of no reputation, and find little words for my little hearer, and begin the race where his little feet can begin to run. The child looks at his alphabet, and his face, his eyes, his mouth, round, into a great wonder, not unmarked by a peculiar trace of distress, for he thinks it impossible that he can ever make friends with such monstrous looking figures. What had I to do? To sympathise with his distress, to tell him that once upon a time I was quite frightened, and that little by little I got to know them, and that now we are the best friends in the world. Then I say to my little hearer, "You have not got to tackle the whole six-and-twenty at once, you have got to take them one by one. Now we will drop the other five-and-twenty and see what we can do with the first one." Is that the man I have heard talk in polysyllables and in long and well-connected sentences, and who has endeavoured to work his way up into high climax and ringing appeal in the hearing of the great congregation? Yet he is talking so to that little child why? Simply because he is a little child. If I were to talk so to a man, I would talk below the occasion, I would not rise to the height of my responsibility. Jesus Christ therefore says in effect, "Where can you begin? You begin at, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt hate thine enemy, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth now hear me." And then he proceeds to unwind and disclose the superior revelation, and to lead his disciples onward, little by little, from height to height, until they are all on the mountain with him together, a happy, thankful, well-instructed band.

And yet there are dangers about that method of teaching. It is God's method in the Bible, and he has gotten himself well affronted for it; every pigmy who could double up his fist has smitten God in the face for adopting that kind of teaching. Persons have written books in contravention of Mosaic history, Mosaic science, Mosaic archaeology, geology, and many other ologies with awkward names. Well, now, how does all this intellectual opposition arise? Here are men with sharp eyes and pointed fingers gathered around the first chapter of the book of Genesis, and they are saying, "How can this be?" not knowing that God spake to men as children, and as they were able to hear it. He, in effect, said, what Christ said upon the mount, "How far have ye come?" Men talked about the sun rising and the sun setting it seemed as if it did. A man said, "I saw the sun in the East, and I watched and waited, and I saw him sink in the West; so the sun rises and the sun sets." And the Lord said, "So be it; that is your conception of the astronomy of the universe; then let us begin there and say the sun rises and the run sets, and let us talk as if that were really so."

And again they say, "How can all this take place in a day?" The Lord spoke to those to whom he was speaking in the only language they could understand. What is a day? Twelve hours? Nothing of the kind. Four-and-twenty hours? Nothing of the sort. That is only one kind of day. Day is a long word, a broad word, a strange word, spreading itself out over great spaces. Why, you say, "Every dog has its day;" you say, "I must preach to the day" what mean ye? That I must preach to every twelve hours the clock ticks off? You know that you have no such meaning, and yet now that God gave us these infantile lessons because we were in an infantile state of mind, we go up to him and say, "What did you mean by talking to us about the sun rising and the sun setting, when the sun never does anything of the sort? And what did you mean by saying this and that were done in one day when there are only four-and-twenty hours in the day, and part of that must be spent in sleeping?"

Why it is just like this: you gave your little boy at four or five years of age a rocking-horse, and when he is four-and-twenty he comes to you and says, "What did you mean by so insulting me giving me a rocking-horse what did you mean by giving a man a thing like that, a dead piece of wood, a painted horse what did you mean by giving a man such a gift?" Suppose you had such an idiot son, what would you say to him? You would say, "My boy, it was not given to the man, it was given to the child; it was not given to five-and-twenty years of age, it was given to a five-year-old infant: it was not intended that you should always be on the rocking-horse, it was a hint, a suggestion, something to be going on with the only thing you could then use. It was adapted to the then state of your mind, and all this abuse you are now pouring upon me is utterly undeserved and beside the mark."

So there are persons who still reckon the Bible in its letter only; they have not seen into the inner meaning, their religious imagination has never been inflamed, they know nothing of the holy passion, the secret heart-unction which breaks a loaf into a feast for thousands, and which finds in one cup of water wine enough for a life's long drinking. O, my friend, thou art a personal letter, locked up in the little gaol of some literal verse. I heard of a person the other day who thinks that she ought not to pray unless her head is covered. To think of the eternal Father of us all looking down to see if you, dear old mother or young sister, have got your head covered before you say, "Our Father which art in heaven." So, to meet the circumstances of the case, not always having an umbrella at her disposal, she puts a pocket-handkerchief on her head in order to accommodate the infinite Jehovah. Would you believe that such idiocy were possible in the nineteenth century?

This is the difficulty of the preacher: he cannot get his hearer or student away from the letter. The student will not sow the seed of the letter and let it grow into the fruit of the spirit. "No, no," says he, "I have got this seed: I am not going to part with it;" and he is thought to be very tenacious of the truth, he is reported to be exceedingly attached to the old truth. The man who takes his handful of corn called the biblical letter and sows it in his consciousness, sows it in his imagination, sows it in his heart, sows it in every part of his nature, and lets it grow in the sunshiny blessing and the dewy baptism of heaven until it blooms into verdure and blossom and beauty and culminates in fruitfulness, is the man who uses the Bible in the right way. It was so the Son of God used it: he met us where we could be met, he took us by the hand as little children, and he left us under the ministry of God the Holy Ghost to grow in grace, to grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, to grow in that subtle, loving sympathy which sees God and touches him and holds him with a heart grip for which there are no words, Hast thou attained that height in the divine life? Then truly art thou born again, and truly are thine ears circumcised to hear the inner music of the celestial world.

You have asked me what I thought of the sermon as a whole: now I should like to know what Jesus Christ himself thought of it. The preacher has an estimate or an opinion of every sermon which he is permitted to proclaim. I cannot but wonder therefore what Christ's own opinion of his discourse was, and happily we have a reply to that inquiry. He treated his sayings as fundamental; he said, in effect, "These are foundation stones, these are not fine things to put on the top of the capital, these are great rough, unhewn rocks to build on." We like polish in our modern preachers; in fact we have gone so far as to say of certain preachers, that they are extremely finished which is awfully true. Jesus Christ laid foundations: he himself is revealed to us as a rock, and we may say of those who do not follow us, "Their rock is not as our rock, our enemies themselves being judges. He is a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, elect, tested by every means at the divine disposal." That is the kind of preacher we ought to hear every now and then, and though we do, now and again, hear a man who is in every sense of the term most finished, we should again and again for our soul's bettering and rousing hear a kind of preacher that is fundamental, that brings us back to the rock, that puts a test into the base we are building upon, and that says, "Either this is rock or this is mud sand. Beware."

He also regarded his sayings as supplying an indestructible basis of life. The rain descended, and the winds blew, and beat upon the rock-founded house, and it fell not. Like foundation, like building; Jesus Christ thus gave his hearers assurance of durability, strength, protection, indestructibleness, immortality. I cannot see the foundation of this building: it looks well as an edifice, its proportions, its decorations, its defences are excellent, so far as my eye can judge, but what the foundation is I cannot tell. So it is with many a human life. Many a man talks to me of whom I form an excellent opinion. He looks well, he speaks well, his appearance is all that can be desired, but what his foundation is I do not know. Do not be content with appearances, do not be satisfied with mere external decoration. If you are going to build me a house, I say, "Be sure first of all about the foundation: never mind about the decoration, let me know that the house is well founded, do not tell me that the drawing-room is well papered. Mere decoration I can take in hand little by little, as I may be disposed to expend money upon it, but the foundation once laid, who can get at it again?"

Both the houses had trial. The rain descended and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon both houses. So I have heard men say, "Well, it seems to me as if you Christian people had quite as many trials as other folks," So they have, I have heard you say, "It seems to me as if being religious did not save you from trouble, for really you seem to have just as much to contend with as I have, and I make no profession of religion." So it is. What is the result? Everything depends upon the foundation: if your foundation is not right, I do not care how high your building is, or how it is decorated, or how put together. I do not care if it is pinnacled all over with gold, all but piercing the clouds it will come down, and great will be the fall of it. I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a green bay tree, yet he passed away, and lo, he was not, yea, I sought him, but he could not be found. A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.

What is your foundation? Are you resting upon the eternal Son of God are you resting upon Christ? You shall be saved, for the foundation is safe. Your house is a very odd one, my friend; I never look at it with any pleasure; you are peculiar, crotchety, odd-minded, eccentric, extremely impracticable, and very few people care to visit you or sympathise with you but you shall be saved, for the foundation is elect, precious, tried, laid in Zion by hands divine.

On the contrary, here is a man that I like very much; I like his look, I like his voice, I like his reading, I go with all his aspirations and sympathies of a social, civilising, and literary and elevating kind. So far as this world is concerned, he is a beautiful and noble soul to all outward seeming, but he has no foundation except a foundation of sand. Then your rejoicing is but for a time: so long as health continues and business is prosperous and all around you is sunny, men will praise you and believe in you but there is a trying time coming. I know it will come upon you: you are broad-chested, heavy-boned, full-blooded, nobly built from a physical point of view, and it would seem as if death could never strike such a target. But he will that great thunder voice shall be contracted into a whining whisper, that great strong frame shall be bent down like a broken bulrush, the time will come when you will be thankful for the most menial service which your most menial servant can render you. The time will come when the window that used to be a blaze of light will be darkened and there will be a shadow upon it, grim as a skeleton. Then the quality of the man will be discovered: in that hour it were well to know the Son of God, the sweet Jesus, the infinite Saviour, the bleeding Lamb.

Let us all endeavour to read this Sermon on the Mount over and over again, and to make it our life-chart, and to do nothing that will not stand the test of its divine fire.