The Sermon of All Sermons, Part 1

Scholars consider Jesus' Sermon on the Mount to be His finest work, if not the greatest speech of all time. The most familiar section is known as the Beatitudes, but the entire discourse takes up three chapters in the book of Matthew.

Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll provides a helpful summary of chapters 5, 6, and 7 before we conduct a deep dive into each verse. So whether this passage is new to you or it's quite familiar, let's listen carefully as God speaks to us through the sermon of all sermons. What a privilege it is to have a copy of the scriptures in our own language provided for us however we may wish to purchase it, especially when you realize in some lands to carry a copy of the scriptures is lethal. And to declare the message of the one true God is a frightening risk.

We have no such fear in this land so far. Because of that we have the privilege not only of carrying a Bible, studying and learning and carrying out its message, but even gathering to hear it proclaimed. May we never lose the thrill or a sense of gratitude for that privilege. Today we turn to the book of Matthew, three chapters, as we do, if you will, a flyover of the Sermon on the Mount, chapters 5, 6, and 7. Take you 15 minutes or less to read the sermon.

I always say to folks, don't get your hopes up. Jesus could deliver that much truth in 15 minutes. I don't know of anyone who's ever lived who could do so. Certainly not in the way he was able to do it. And he has captured for us in this sermon the answer to that which plagues everyone who claims to be a follower of his, and that is hypocrisy, which is hideous.

And to make matters worse, it is addictive. Most of us learn to be hypocrites long before we learn to be good Christians. Because that's true, the Sermon on the Mount is a very relevant message for each one of us to hear.

If you doubt that, you need to hear it more than anyone else. I want to read just a few excerpts from chapters 5, 6, and 7. I will read a few verses from each chapter. Chapter 5, verse 1 begins, as I read from the New Living Translation. One day, as he saw the crowds gathering, Jesus went up on the mountainside and sat down.

His disciples gathered around him, and he began to teach them. The Beatitudes follow in verses 3 through 10, down through verse 12, and then Jesus says, verse 13, you are the salt of the earth. Verse 14, you are the light of the world, like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.

Chapter 6, verse 1, watch out. Don't do your good deeds publicly to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. When you give to someone in need, don't do it as the hypocrites do, blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity. Verse 5, when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. Verse 16, and when you fast, don't make it obvious as the hypocrites do, for they try to look miserable and disheveled so people will admire them for their fasting.

I tell you the truth, that is the only reward they will ever get. Chapter 7, verse 1, do not judge others and you will not be judged, for you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. Verse 24, anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the flood waters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won't collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn't obey is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand.

When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with real authority, quite unlike their teachers of religious law. May the Lord use the message today and in the days to come from the Sermon on the Mount to break our habit, long-standing of performance before others in hypocrisy.

You're listening to Insight for Living. To study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scripture studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now Chuck's message about the sermon of all sermons. All of you who know Christ are preachers of the gospel. Now when you hear that you might think, well not me, I'm not a preacher.

Let me give you a new thought. Someone has written, preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. You see, you are at all times, as a representative of Christ, delivering the gospel.

You're just not saying so. It's coming through good deeds. It comes when you shake the salt and when you spread the light. Or as Jesus put it so well, when you let your good deeds shine so that others praise your Heavenly Father. And if that isn't preaching, I don't know what is. I've discovered that when you deliver the message in your life, you have very little difficulty later delivering it from your lips. For those who are the recipient of your good deeds are disarmed.

They're filled with gratitude. And you've not done it to manipulate that. You've done it because you care. It has been compassion. It has been mercy.

It has been love. It has been a demonstration of your concern for their lives in whatever way you may have preached through your good deeds. You see, when you preach the gospel without words, you are carrying out the Christian life at its core level. And I can assure you there is no difficulty in any community where a gathering our size who lives out the life will have any trouble spreading the message of Christ by word later on. And then admittedly there are some who are called to be proclaimers of the truth. Those who are called to be preachers, pastors, teachers. Jesus did not originate the preaching of sermons as powerful as his sermons were.

They had been going on, my, since the days of Enoch and Noah and Job and Abraham. There had been sermons preached by kings and especially by prophets, including all the way to John the baptizer. So Jesus preaches one in a long line of other preachers. We all know who loved the Lord Jesus that when the message is preached it is to be done so without reluctance or apology.

I agree with John R.W. Stott who writes in his fine book on preaching between two worlds. Preaching is indispensable to Christianity. Without preaching a necessary part of its authenticity is lost.

For Christianity is in its very essence a religion of the Word of God because God has spoken we must speak what he has spoken. Hence the paramount obligation to preach. Of all the sermons Jesus delivered none is more significant, more famous, more convicting, or more enduring than his immortal Sermon on the Mount. That's why I call it the sermon of all sermons.

It cannot be improved upon. Before we get into it I want to do today sort of an overview of the sermon as a whole and even before that I want to set the stage for it because you may have overlooked that in your understanding of the scriptures. So go to chapter 5, Matthew's Gospel, and let's focus on the first two verses. Let me point out some things that can be easily overlooked.

They're contrasts. Instead of Jesus waiting for the people, I should say instead of Jesus going to the people he had the people come to him. See verse 1, one day as he saw the crowds gathering he went up on a mountainside. Most preachers would rush to the crowd. Jesus walks away from the crowd and on the mountainside we read, he sat down and his disciples gathered.

When you compare this with Luke in the parallel passage in Luke that matches Matthew 5, you notice that not just the disciples who were the close and the called ones of Jesus but a larger gathering than they had come together to hear this. Second thing I notice he's not inside a building. Most sermons are preached in a building called a church or a chapel or a temple or a tabernacle, some type of synagogue.

He's not inside a building. He does his outside on a mountainside. When you travel to Israel you are pointed to an area called the Mount of Beatitudes which is north of the Sea of Galilee. It's a sloping rise that leads to a plateau. Most scholars believe that it was there at that plateau. Jesus delivered this sermon. You can see the wildflowers in the spring, the beautiful blowing grass from the wind and the rippling waters of the sea in front of you as you're on that site.

It's a beautiful site but it's not like you would think of a mountain in Colorado or up even north of that or in some other country. This is like a sloping rising hillside where he preached this message. Notice also that he didn't stand up. Most sermons today are preached while the person is on his feet. We read that Jesus sat down. The people gathered around him sitting and he sat down among them. It wasn't uncommon and isn't to this day for rabbis to deliver their message in a sitting position.

So he's sitting down. I noticed also he doesn't begin by blasting away as many evangelists do when they preach the gospel. He begins in a very gentle way telling them how they can find lasting happiness and he repeats that several times, blessed are you, blessed are you, how happy are you, how happy will you be, how happy you are as he delivers what we know today as a series of Beatitudes. What was the result of delivering the message?

Turn to the end. Often at the end of a sermon people are ready to leave and they're on their way to wherever they want to go for the day quickly forgetting what they heard. It didn't happen this day on the 28th verse of chapter 7 when Jesus finished.

Watch closely. The crowds were amazed at his teaching. A.T. Robertson, the great Baptist scholar writes, they listened spellbound to the end and were left amazed.

He also points out that it is in the imperfect tense as Matthew writes it in the Greek language which suggests a continued action. They were continually sitting there amazed, a buzz of astonishment. As Robertson puts it, the word means literally they were struck out of themselves. We have the saying today they were blown away. This sermon stunned them.

They couldn't get over it. They had never heard anything like it. Though they had heard preaching all their lives, none like this. One man writes, the people had heard many sermons before from the regular rabbis in the synagogue. We have specimens of these discourses preserved in the Mishnah and Gemara, the Jewish Talmud.

When both were completed, the driest, dullest collection of disjointed comments on every conceivable problem in the history of mankind had been addressed. You have sat through sermons like that and you have been bored to tears. And may I say to you, it wasn't your fault. If a sermon is uninteresting, it's the preacher's fault. Now you may not be interested in hearing it and you may be reluctant to listen, but if he delivers the message as it is designed to be delivered, you cannot be bored because the truth is designed to set you free.

And when you are liberated from bondage, you're not bored. In this case, the bondage is hypocrisy. It's a long-standing habit among those who are followers of Christ to learn the system. Unfortunately, we're raised around it. Preachers can be the worst at hypocrisy. We can look like we're living one life when in fact we're living a lie.

We can say things beautifully, but we can live them pathetically. And because you're around that, you can pick up that habit just as people did in the days of Jesus. And this sermon is designed to make you different, to make you break that habit. If it happens to be one, you have to be informed.

In fact, I agree with John R. W. Stott. I think the key statement in the entire sermon is chapter 6 verse 8, do not be like them. Jesus' concern is that those who follow him will continue to follow the Pharisees and the scribes, to continue to live like and sound like and actually look like hypocrites, which is why he repeats on occasion through the sermon the word hypocrites, hypocrites, hypocrites. Hippocrates is a Greek word that is used on occasion in the scriptures.

It's a word that means one who plays a part. In the ancient Greek plays, they would wear a mask. The mask was at the side of the stage. The same actor would go and get the mask for tragedy, the one that's frowning and the mouth is turned down. He would hold this large mask in front of his face and he would repeat the lines that were tragic lines and the people in the audience would understand he's playing the part of this tragic scene. A little later, he would go get another mask that would be smiling. It would be a comedy part and he would play this part, same person wearing two different masks. He was called a hippocrates, from which we get the word hypocrite.

It means obviously one who plays a part, one who wears a mask. Before I go any further into this grand chapter or five or three chapters of this Sermon on the Mount, I want to address a few of my comments to hypocrisy in our day. We live around political hypocrisy. That's not a political statement, it's a true statement. Rare is the politician who isn't also a hypocrite. They learn to play a part. They make promises they have no plans to keep and they deliver them with persuasion to the point where you will vote for them, believing they will keep their word.

Most don't. So there's political hypocrisy. They deliver a speech and were impressed, only to find out later that they were plagiarists. They stole the words from someone else and what sounds like their original work was in fact the work of someone else who did not get the credit for what they said. How seldom do you hear a politician say, and I quote, they come across as though it's their original thought. They come across as though it's their original thought. That's hypocrisy.

Here's another one. There is a moral and ethical hypocrisy that has swept our times. We leave an impression that an individual is trustworthy, has integrity, and we find out later that person lied. There was a a newscaster announced that he had for the longest time been in a helicopter that was shot down and he barely escaped with his life. After he was finally faced with the truth, he made the comment, I misremembered.

What is misremembering? It's lying. I have never once heard a newscaster say, I lied.

I expect to live the rest of my days and never hear it. Why? Because you build up a front, a facade. You're putting on a performance and you're in front of the microphone until you're caught in a lie and then you're relieved of your responsibility if the organization you work for has integrity. And then there's financial hypocrisy. It's called fraud. We've all read of it.

We've all read of it. Funds are raised for one cause, but they are spent for other things. Promises are broken. Plans are phony.

The fraud occurs and we are shocked. So the Sermon on the Mount is a message that is for every one of us living today. The worst kind of hypocrisy, in my opinion, is religious hypocrisy. So-called spiritual leaders look one way, but in reality, they do not live that way.

In private, they are another kind of person. Sermons are preached that another one originated. Instead of Christ and his kingdom being enhanced, the person himself is enhanced.

The great temptation is to learn the system and to fit into that lifestyle. One of my ongoing prayers for Stonebriar Community Church is that we will continually break down a tendency toward hypocrisy. One of my great goals for us as a church is that we live the life Jesus taught. And when we don't, we admit it. The Lord does not expect perfection, but he does expect authenticity.

So that not if, but when we do wrong or say something that isn't correct, we acknowledge it rather than denying it or moving on as though it were the truth. In the sermon of all sermons, Jesus didn't shield the Pharisees from their deserved rebuke. In no uncertain terms, Jesus called out their behavior as hypocritical. You're listening to Insight for Living, and there's much more from the Sermon on the Mount that Chuck Swindoll needs to address. We urge you to keep listening through this week as we venture deeper into this classic message from Jesus. And to learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. Many of our listeners have resolved to study their Bible on a deeper level with the extra time that the pandemic has afforded over the past year.

While working at home or becoming quarantined, many people are leveraging this time to read and study as never before. Along those lines, I'm pleased to remind you that Insight for Living offers the Swindoll Study Bible. This is a fully integrated study Bible, complete with scripture, helpful commentary from Chuck, his practical insights, and more. And you can purchase the Swindoll Study Bible by going to insight.org slash offer. And when you're prepared to dig deeply into the Gospel according to Matthew, which is the primary focus of our current series, we recommend that you add Swindoll's Living Insight commentary on Matthew to your personal collection.

The Matthew commentary comes in two hardbound volumes, and they're written in a style that's easy to understand, and the format is simple to navigate. To purchase Swindoll's Living Insight's commentary on Matthew or the Swindoll Study Bible, go to insight.org slash store. Or if you prefer, you can call us. If you're listening in the U.S., dial 1-800-772-8888. Insight for Living Ministries is a nonprofit organization made possible not by the purchase of study tools, but through the voluntary gifts of grateful friends. To help us continue providing these daily programs and all of the collateral resources, you can give a donation today when you call us. If you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888 or give online at insight.org. Chuck Swindoll describes this sermon of all sermons, Thursday, right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, The Sermon of All Sermons, was copyrighted in 2015 and 2021, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2021 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.