Why the Sermon on the Mount?

Why the Sermon on the Mount?

by | Jan 27, 2019 | The Life of Jesus

​The Sermon on the Mount is a central part of the New Testament that demonstrates the essential nature of the Christian way of life as much as any part of Scripture. We may have even memorized sections of that sermon as found in Matthew’s Gospel (chapters 5-7), but how much time have we spent thinking about the setting of the sermon as opposed to the sermon itself?
 
We tend to take for granted that the sermon was given on a mountain because we know that Jesus frequently climbed mountains (Luke 6:12, John 6:15, etc.) – though he usually did this to get away from others, to be alone and to pray, rather than to teach people.   In this case we are specifically  told he went up on a mountain with his disciples following him.

The New International Version tells us: “Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them” (Matthew 5:1-2).  This gives the impression that Jesus simply went up on the side of a mountain – the lower slopes.  But in the original Greek (anebē  eis to oros) “he went up onto a mountain” conveys the sense that he ascended  on to the mountain – certainly well up toward, or to, its summit.
 
Now this wording is interesting, because when we compare it with the Old Testament account of how Moses went up onto Mt. Sinai to receive the law from God, we find “When Moses went up on the mountain …” (Exodus 19:3, 24:12).  In fact, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures which many of the writers of the New Testament used, translates this with exactly the same words as those used of Jesus ascending the mountain: anebē  eis to oros.

Many Jewish readers of the first century would have recognized the beginning of this story of the Sermon on the Mount as being identical to the beginning of the story of Moses receiving God’s law.  This would have struck a deep chord for those readers because every devout Jew knew that God had told Moses:   “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him” (Deuteronomy 18:18). Every devout Jew expected this prophet like Moses, and the similarities between Jesus and Moses were clear for those ancient readers who knew the Hebrew Scriptures. 

For example, the infant Moses and Jesus both escaped death when a ruler attempted to kill the male Jewish children in the area, both hid in Egypt as a child, both gave up  life in a kingly home to lead a humble life of service,  both fasted forty days and nights, both communicated directly with God, both performed miracles, both provided the people with bread to eat, both sent out 12 individuals, both chose 70 individuals, both taught with authority – and both ascended a mountain for the giving of  key commands and instruction from God. 

With that background in mind, we can see the significance of the fact that throughout the first third of the Sermon on the Mount the law of Moses is mentioned repeatedly, using the formula “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago …. But I tell you ….”  For example:

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment” (Matthew 5:21-22, and see also Matthew 5:27, 31, 38, 43). 

Within the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus made it clear to his followers that he was not doing away with the underlying principles of the law given through Moses at Sinai (Matthew 5:17-19). Instead, in this pivotal sermon – also given on a mountain – he gave new insight into God’s spiritual laws, raising our understanding of their intent to the higher level to which we are called.

What the Good Samaritan Gave

What the Good Samaritan Gave

by | Jan 13, 2019 | Giving

 
The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the best known and most profound of all the parables of Jesus.  The parable may have been based on an Old Testament story that tells of the kindness given to certain Judean military captives by men of Samaria whose behavior resembles that of the Good Samaritan at certain points, because they:

“… clothed all who were naked among them. They clothed them, gave them sandals, provided them with food and drink, and anointed them, and carrying all the feeble among them on donkeys, they brought them to their kinsfolk at Jericho, the city of palm trees. Then they returned to Samaria” (2 Chronicles 28:15).

Regardless of the origins of the story of the Good Samaritan, its timeless message teaches us that when there is true need – as opposed to requests for handouts (see our article on the savvy Samaritan here) – we should give without hesitation.  That much is clear from even a cursory reading of the story, but the parable also teaches something else that is easier to miss – that in cases of real need, we should be willing to give with true generosity.

Christ’s parable tells us that the Samaritan who rescued the injured Judean – despite belonging to a group that was generally shunned and even despised by many Jews – not only bound the man’s wounds and carried him on his own donkey to the nearest inn, but also made provision for the man’s upkeep for a while. The story tells us: “The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have’” (Luke 10:35).

It’s easy to read over the fact that the Samaritan gave “two denarii” – or “two pence” as some older translations have it – for the man’s upkeep, but the amount was a considerable one.  The denarius was a silver coin of the Roman Empire – from which the word “money” is derived in several modern languages (for example, Spanish “dinero”). We know historically that at that time a single denarius would be the approximate pay for a day’s labor (Matthew 20:2). Two denarii equaled two days’ wages, or a full third of what an individual could earn in a week; at current U.S. minimum wage it would be about $140.  But what would that amount buy at that time?

Archaeology can help answer that question.  A sign from an inn located in a city of the Roman Empire not too distant in time from the setting of the Parable of the Good Samaritan may indicate that the nightly cost for a room was 1/32nd of a denarius.  At that rate it is obvious that providing two denarii for the care of the man would provide for a stay of two months, or for several weeks including food. Not only that, but also the Samaritan made it clear that when he came by on his return journey he would pay for any extra expenses if the two denarii were used up.

So the gift of the Samaritan was not a small one, and the extent of the individual’s generosity toward a total stranger (especially of a nation that generally shunned his own people) seems astonishing.  This does not mean, of course, that Jesus advocated giving several days of our pay to everyone we attempt to help.  We do not know how rich or poor the Samaritan was – the parable does not give us that context. But Christ’s parable does show us, through what the Good Samaritan gave, that when human need is real, truly generous giving is appropriate.
 
*For more on the parables of Jesus, download our free e-book on this subject, here.

The Spear of Prayer

The Spear of Prayer

by | Jan 6, 2019 | Prayer, Warriors of the Way

In the apostle Paul’s famous analogy of Christian qualities that he compares to the armor of the Roman foot soldier (Ephesians 6:10-18),* he lists only one offensive weapon – the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (vs. 17). Although the short sword was the main offensive weapon of the lightly armed Roman legionary – such as the one assigned to guard the captive Paul (Acts 28:16) – it was not the Roman soldier’s only weapon.  Fully armed combat troops were also armed with a spear, as we read in Acts 23:23 where 200 spearmen were assigned as part of the escort to take Paul from Jerusalem to Caesarea.

If Paul had based his analogy of the “armor of God” on the more fully armed infantryman, rather than the lightly armed soldier who guarded him in Rome, he would certainly have had to expand the analogy to include the spear.  We cannot know for sure what Paul might have chosen as a spiritual counterpart to the spear had he incorporated one in his arms and armor imagery, but by reading Ephesians 6 carefully we can see a distinct possibility.  Paul concludes this passage with a mention of the power of prayer.  Had the soldier guarding him held a spear, Paul could well have ended his discussion not simply with “prayer” but with “the spear of prayer.”

There is another reason to presume that Paul might have equated prayer with the ancient soldier’s spear.  In the book of Joshua we are told:

Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Stretch out the spear that is in your hand toward Ai, for I will give it into your hand.” And Joshua stretched out the spear that was in his hand toward the city. So those in ambush arose quickly out of their place; they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand, and they entered the city and took it … For Joshua did not draw back his hand, with which he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai (Joshua 8:18, 26 NKJV).

This story is recorded as a direct parallel to that in Exodus in which the prophet Moses held out a staff in his hands in prayer and continued to hold them out while Israel was fighting against the Amalekites who had attacked the Israelites:

The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.” So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset (Exodus 17:8-12).

The story of the prophet Moses continuing to pray with the “staff of God” in his hands clearly shows the same lesson as that of the warrior Joshua continuing to hold his outstretched spear till the battle was won – that God helps those who seek his help as long as we continue to seek it. 

How does this tie together with what Paul tells us about prayer at the close of his description of spiritual armor and arms? The message is the same.  Notice what Paul’s exact words are at the end of his description of the armor of God: “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people” (Ephesians 6:18, emphasis added).

So if the legionary guarding Paul had been a little more heavily armed, we might well read today of the “spear of prayer” as well as the “sword of the spirit.” But whatever the case, we can draw the same lesson from what Paul does say at the close of his “armor of God” analogy as we can from the stories of Moses with his staff and Joshua with his spear: If we are to be victorious against the spiritual enemies and problems that we fight, we must continue in prayer as long as the problem persists. 

God does not call us to pray, then hope things work out for the best, or to stop praying if things don’t get better (Luke 18:1). He calls us to continue to pray as long as we continue the fight or the work we are given to do. Prayer, like any military offensive, must not let up until victory is accomplished. It’s an attitude that we could say is aptly summarized in a comment about men with spears in the book of Nehemiah:

“So we continued the work with half the men holding spears, from the first light of dawn till the stars came out” (Nehemiah 4:21). 

* Read our blog post on Paul’s analogy of the Armor of God here.

The Genealogy of Jesus

The Genealogy of Jesus

by | Dec 23, 2018 | The Life of Jesus

​Biblical genealogies are things most of us read, accept, and then move on in our reading.  But the genealogy Matthew gives for Jesus at the beginning of his Gospel has a particularly interesting aspect.  Matthew divides the “family tree” he constructs for the promised Messiah into three sections of fourteen generations each, saying: “Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah” (Matthew 1:17).

But if we look back into the Old Testament lists of the ancient kings of Judah who were among the ancestors of Jesus, we find that Matthew actually omits  three individuals between the kings Jehoram and Uzziah (Matthew 1:8): Ahaziah (2 Kings 8:25), Joash (2 Kings 12:1), and Amaziah (2 Kings 14:1).  In other words, there were actually seventeen known generations between David and the exile, rather than fourteen as Matthew states.

How can we reconcile this apparent contradiction in the Scriptures?  First, we must understand that Matthew follows a common ancient practice in structuring the genealogy he gives into clear units which were more easily remembered and taught.   That Matthew omits some individuals in order to accomplish this pattern is not surprising because if we look back to the very first verse of his Gospel, he does that to an even more striking degree in saying “This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham” – where the practice of “jumping generations” is clearly utilized to make his point: to stress that Jesus was the descendant of David (who is actually named first, before Abraham).

When we remember Matthew’s stress – both here and throughout his Gospel – on Jesus being the son of David, we can consider another fact.  The Jewish audience for whom Matthew primarily wrote had no numerals of the kind we use today. Instead, the Jews gave numerical values to certain letters of the Hebrew alphabet.  In this way, a given word could have a numerical value as well as a phonetic one.  “David” was written with the letters dalet (4), vav (6) and dalet (4), giving a total numerical value of 14. So fourteen was a number associated with the name of David, and it is certainly possible that Matthew structured his genealogy of Jesus in a pattern of fourteen generations in order to stress, in a literary or symbolic manner, the connection between David and Jesus, the “Son of David.”

We must remember that precisely because Mathew wrote to a Jewish audience, he knew that his readers were familiar with the king lists of the Hebrew Scriptures and that they would understand he was “jumping generations” in Matthew 1:8 in exactly the same way he did in Matthew 1:1.

We can see this fact in another way.  Ancient genealogies usually omitted women in their reckoning, but Matthew includes four women who were Gentiles or had Gentile connections (Matthew 1:3, 5-6), even though he did not include the four great matriarchs of the biblical tradition – Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel.  The reason is clearly because another theme of Matthew’s Gospel is the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s plan for humanity. 

​Matthew adjusted the details of his genealogy of Jesus in order to make the points that were vital for his story.  So, rather than contradicting Old Testament accounts, Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus is carefully constructed to stress Jesus’ descent from both King David and from several Gentile ancestors – which gave him the genealogy to be not only the King of the Jews, but also the King of all mankind.

Unclaimed Luggage, Cash, and Promises

Unclaimed Luggage, Cash, and Promises

by | Dec 16, 2018 | Positive Living


​Have you ever travelled through an airport and seen unclaimed suitcases sitting on or next to luggage carousels?  We might think that it would be hard to forget a suitcase after a flight (depending on how bad the flight was, of course), but astonishingly, millions of bags are unclaimed each year worldwide – sometimes after being misdirected but other times just forgotten and left in the airport to which they were flown.  Unclaimed luggage in the United States over the last few decades has included bags containing incredibly valuable things such as a 40.95-carat natural emerald, a 4,000-year-old Egyptian burial mask, and even an Air Force missile guidance system.

Perhaps even more amazingly, what is true of luggage is also true of many people’s money.  People forget that they have old or dormant bank accounts, uncashed checks, bonds or other financial holdings, and these funds often go unclaimed after their owners’ deaths,  despite the fact that they may sometimes represent very large amounts. In fact, it is estimated  that in the United States alone there are over thirty billion dollars of such unclaimed funds at a given time.

This may seem strange to most of us – especially when we realize that all the owners had to do to obtain their unclaimed possessions was to show two forms of identification to claim what was rightfully theirs. Yet hard as it may be for many of us to understand the huge number of suitcases and the massive amounts of money that go unclaimed each year, we too may be guilty of forgetting to claim some of the spiritual things –  the standing promises found in God’s word –  to which we are entitled.

How many promises does the Bible contain?  Different estimates have been made by different people. Many who have tried to count the Bible’s promises feel that there are well over 3,000 and some feel that there are actually more than 5,000 or even 7,000. The 20th century Bible writer Dr. Herbert Lockyer published a book titled All the Promises of the Bible which claimed that there are actually some 8,000 distinct promises waiting to be claimed between the pages of the Bible.

However many promises the Bible may contain, the point is that there are ones applying to almost every conceivable situation in life. Most of them are clearly stated and waiting for us to claim them.  But biblically, we do need two forms of identification, and many people are disappointed or disillusioned when they try to claim the Scripture’s promises without them.

The Bible shows that to claim its promises we must be the people to whom the promises belong and the first identifier is that of obedience.  Notice what the apostle Paul says specifically about this form of spiritual identification needed for promise claiming: “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God” (2 Corinthians 7:1).   While these words may sound somewhat formal to our modern ears, it is the same kind of formal language found in a passport or other form of identification, and its meaning is clear. To claim God’s promises we need to be as obedient as possible to what God reveals to us regarding his way of life. 

But a single form of identification is often not enough to retrieve your unclaimed suitcase or financial account, and the same is true of biblical identification.  The Scriptures specify a second form of spiritual ID that we need to claim its promises –  that of perseverance.  The book of Hebrews makes this clear: “You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised” (Hebrews 10:36 and see also Hebrews 6:12).
​
Just as we may have to wait a little while in the line at the airport luggage office or we may have to wait patiently till we hear back from the bank from which we try to withdraw our unclaimed funds, spiritual promises sometimes require a little patience before they are fulfilled – but a promise is a promise and the God who gave the Scripture’s promises knows that better than any of us and he will fulfill them (Numbers 23:19). Our responsibility is simply to know, remember and claim the promises he has given us.

Yet so often we do not claim promises we have been given or utilize them even when we need them.  A historical example comes to mind. In the 1800’s the great warrior chief Isapo-Muxika, or Crowfoot, of the Blackfoot nation in southern Alberta, gave the Canadian Pacific Railway permission to lay railroad tracks through his people’s land.  The grateful railroad officials gave Crowfoot a lifetime ticket to ride the trains, and the chief wore this ticket in a pouch around his neck –  but never once used it –  throughout the rest of his life. 

That is a human trait all of us can display to some degree –  to be aware of promises and perhaps even to treasure them, yet to not always actively claim them. That is why, like many suitcases and bank accounts, there are so many spiritual promises that go unclaimed. But the Bible is clear. As long as we have the two identifications of obedience and perseverance, we are eligible to claim what has been spiritually promised to us and what is rightfully ours.