Sermons

Expository Sermon on Matthew 5 – 7
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue Seventh-day Adventist Church 8/3/2024
©2024 by Maylan Schurch

To hear this entire worship service, click the link just below:

Please open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 7.

While you’re turning there, let me tell you about what’s going to be happening over the next few weeks. I need to say a fervent thank you to Annicia Gayle-Geddes. Have you noticed that over the last several months, you’ve heard a variety of Scripture-readers during the worship service? Annicia has been finding and scheduling these readers, and they enhance our worship service.

Well, this summer, Annicia has arranged for several very young people to present the Scripture.

When she sent me this schedule, she wanted to know if I could provide the Scriptures at least a week in advance so the kids would have time to practice.
So what I did this past Monday was to decide on the entire summer’s set of Scripture readings, and sent them all to her. I tried to choose Scriptures which the kids would have either heard in Sabbath school class, or they would have heard the stories about them.

And then I decided to preach a sermon on each scheduled Scripture passage, on that day. So each Sabbath this summer, the young people will read the Scripture, and then they will hear a sermon about that very story. And I want to say thank you to the kids who will be helping out in this way.

Because these kid-friendly Sabbath school Bible passages are tremendously important. We dare not store them away up in the attics of our minds where they might be hard to get to if we need them. I’m going to dig into each one and try to find some fresh, crucial 21st-century truth we can put to use.

As you heard, today’s Scripture tells the story about the wise and foolish builders. In fact, glance in your bulletin at the title of the sermon. You have to look closely, in order to see a couple of single-quote marks.

I called this sermon “’The Sermon’s’ Hidden Danger.” If you look carefully, you will see little single-quote marks before the word “the” and after the word “Sermon’s.” The reason for the single quotes is that we can think of the Sermon on the Mount as “the sermon,” the longest sermon we have in print which Jesus spoke.

So when I say “’The Sermon’s’ Hidden Danger,” I’m not talking about today’s sermon, or hopefully any of my sermons. I’m talking about “the Sermon,” the Sermon on the Mount. There is a hidden danger in that sermon, and we’ll look at part of the reason right now.

Matthew 7:24 – 27 [NKJV]: “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. “But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”

You see what’s happening? There’s quite a bit of potential danger in these verses. Both the wise builder and the foolish builder face the same dangers. But the wise man was prepared, and the foolish man wasn’t.

And notice how Jesus points out that we are not talking about literal housebuilding, but spiritual housebuilding. He says that those who hear his sayings and act on them are like the wise builder, and those who – even though they too hear His sayings – they don’t build on these sayings’ solid foundation, and they fall into deadly spiritual danger.

What’s interesting is that this same story also appears in Luke six. Luke six has a very boiled-down version of the Sermon on the Mount, but it also ends with this same parable. And here in Matthew, there is a lot more of Jesus sermon recorded, but it too concludes with this same parable.

What is Jesus’ point? If we want to be wise builders, we need to listen to His sayings, and act on them.

But what sayings of Jesus is He talking about? Well, the Sermon on the Mount sayings, of course, and anything else that He says in the Gospels or anywhere else in either Testament.

So in order to review what the sayings were, I actually printed out the entire Sermon on the Mount on several sheets of paper, and took them to our local library. There I like to study at a waste-high counter which lets you spread out lots of different papers in front of you if you need to.

So I stood there, scanning through the Sermon on the Mount, and I think I’ve boiled down these sayings of Jesus into at least three basic categories. (I actually came up with six, but I decided to cut the number down because of time.) Now of course, my categories are not inspired Scripture. Thousands of books have been written about the Sermon on the Mount, and there are many helpful ways of looking at these verses.

But I decided – for myself, and for you if you find them useful – to work with these sayings of Jesus which He considers so important. Let me show you what I’ve done, and you can see if this is useful to you.

To start, we go back to Matthew 5. I’m going to read quickly through the Beatitudes. See if you can spot a theme.

Matthew 5:1 – 12: And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him. Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Those words are so familiar, aren’t they? But as I studied them over this week again, I tried to boil them down into a single principle. This is what you could call Sermon Point One if you’re taking notes.

What’s one thing Jesus is teaching us here in this famous sermon? What does He want us to do?

Stay Eden-human, no matter what.

What does it mean to be “Eden-human”? Well, if you just look down the list of those Beatitudes, you see that each one of them tells you to be happy about something. But most of these experiences are not really pleasant ones to the average Earth-human.

But Jesus Himself was Eden-human. Not only did He create the garden of Eden, He came to this sinful earth directly from the presence of God, and according to the last chapters of Revelation, there are definitely some Eden items up there – the Tree of Life, and so on. And He must have found the difference between “up there” and “down here” truly discouraging.

This week, as you probably know, there was what people are calling the largest ever prisoner-and-hostage exchange since the Cold War came to an end. Can you imagine what it must’ve been like to be one of those hostages? Mostly, these folks were held in another country besides their own, against their will, and they didn’t know how soon, or even if, their captivity would ever come to an end. An American person, for example, recognized that he or she was still an American even though they were trapped in hostile territory.

I think one of the ways of looking at the Beatitudes is to see them as emotions that an Eden person feels when shackled to this non-Eden planet. The more we read the stories and God’s statements in the Bible, the more you realize that, as the gospel song says, “This world is not my home.”

So right here in the Beatitudes, right up front in the first part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us how Eden-humans react to the challenges down here. One online source calls these sayings the “How to Be” Attitudes,” saying that they give us a “roadmap for sanctity.” They deal a lot with compassion and courage. They speak about virtues we need as we live on earth.

Okay, how do we become – or stay – Eden-human? I’d say a good place to start is reading through the Beatitudes often. Maybe even memorize them. I think I probably had to memorize them as a church-school kid. And I believe that the Beatitudes express emotions that Jesus Himself felt as He grew to adulthood among us, sensing that His true home was Heaven, while each day facing the sorrows and cruelties of a planet in rebellion. Yet even though He felt these very “Beatitudes emotions,” Jesus was happy. And He insisted that we can be happy in the face of these challenges.

Now let’s look for another principle here in the Sermon on the Mount. Here are some more sayings of Jesus which, if we build on them, provide us a solid foundation.

Verses 13 – 20: “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

You know how I would summarize what we’ve just read into another important principle? What’s something else Jesus is teaching us here in this famous sermon? What does He want us to do?

He wants you to stay Eden-human, no matter what. And He wants you to embrace your influencer role.

Yes, there were “influencers” back in Bible times. Jesus was in influencer. Everybody He talked to, everybody who accepted Him, everybody who rejected Him, all these folks were influencers.

And everybody in this room today, no matter what age you are, no matter whether you are still working, or retired, or still in school, or not yet in school. You are an influencer. Teachers influence students. Students influence teachers. Landlords influence tenants, and the other way around. You cannot even walk out of your house or apartment Sabbath morning, at an hour when most people are still sleeping in, dressed as though you are about to go somewhere important, you can’t do that and not be an influencer.

Earlier this week I got a puzzling phone call. I’m going to be vague about who called, for privacy’s sake, but it was a cheerful and incredibly positive phone call.

The caller told me that at a church in another conference this past Sabbath, a baptism took place. He told me which church’s website to go to so I could watch the baptism. He said that the person introducing the baptismal candidate had mentioned my name.

He told me the lady’s name who was being baptized, and I did not recognize it. It was the caller’s impression that I had given her Bible studies, but I did not recognize her name. So right away, Shelley and I pulled up the website. We watched the young lady standing in the baptistery with the pastor. A friend of this woman’s read her testimony. And sure enough, he mentioned the Bellevue church, and he pronounced my name perfectly (which in itself is amazing).

And all this time, Shelley and I are staring at the face of this young lady, greatly puzzled.

The more I thought about it this week, the more I do faintly remember her. I did not give her Bible studies, but after a visit to our church, she had asked if she could come to my office because she had some questions.

Every once in a while somebody will do this. They just want to talk to an Adventist pastor, and learn something about how we view the Bible.

And the young lady I’m remembering, if it’s the same one, visited me in my office almost a decade ago. The questions she asked were thoughtful, and she seemed to be understanding and absorbing my answers. She may have spent just an hour in my office. I offered to give her studies, but she said she lived on the other side of the mountains and that she would be doing some study on her own.

And that’s the last I heard of her until I got this call. One thing I discovered later, from the person who called me, was that this woman – who’s married to an Adventist man and they have a couple of kids – this woman kept it secret from her husband that she was going to be baptized. She’d already been involved in the church, but hadn’t yet taken this final step.
This was one of those churches where the baptistery is up behind the front wall, and before the person is baptized, somebody opens a curtain. And evidently, the husband had absolutely no clue that behind that curtain was his beloved wife, and that she was going to join the Adventist church in baptism! The caller told me that the husband broke down weeping when he saw what was about to happen.

A great story, but also – to me — a very chilling one. Here I had forgotten this woman, didn’t even know her name, but had sat in my office answering a few questions she had. I answered them as truthfully as I could, the way I would with anyone else. I probably even pulled out a small whiteboard and wrote things on it and drew diagrams on it.
So for that hour, I evidently was important influencer, in this woman’s life. That influence was so important that, a decade later, she remembered to put my name and my church’s name into her testimony.

I would imagine that there are several of you, maybe more than several, in this congregation who were influenced by somebody who may have forgotten that they were in influencer. Or maybe you influenced somebody, and later on, that influence brought good to that person’s life.

Because we all are influencers. Jesus says we are. If we act as salt, we need to stay salty. If we’re acting as light, we need to let our light shine. God did not create us to be anonymous. Since we are made in His image, we should reflect His image.

Revelation 1 asks us to “read and heed” the book’s message, and then to act on it. And since we are all influencers, we need to “read and head and lead.”

The Sermon on the Mount has so much material in it that it was hard to leave anything out. I had actually come up with six categories, six basic principles I thought these truths to be boiled down to. But I’m going to just look at one more.

Matthew 5:43 – 6:4: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. “Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.

What’s something else Jesus is teaching us here in this famous sermon? What does He want us to do?

He wants you to stay Eden-human, no matter what. He wants you to embrace your influencer role. And He wants you to love God’s way.

This has always been a tough-to-swallow part of this sermon. We’re supposed to love like God loves, and that love is to be acted out with absolute generosity, even to our enemies or to other people who don’t seem to deserve it.

How can we do this?

It’s helpful to glance at the Greek for a moment. The word for “love” used here is agape, which is the same word used in “For God so loved the world.” There’s another word for love, sort of the “liking” or “friendly” love, which is phileo, and that word is what the Greek dictionaries call “the love of emotion and friendship.”

But phileo isn’t used here. Agape is. Agape love doesn’t have to mean that you need to generate a warm feeling toward this person. In chapter 4 of his book God in the Dock, C. S. Lewis expressed this kind of love like this: “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” Some people have called this agape love a principle rather than an emotion.

My dad was someone who I believe acted from this kind of love. He was very shy and introverted. But Dad followed these Sermon on the Mount principles faithfully.

Especially when it came to money. Dad worked very hard, often for long hours, but never got money-rich. He was prudent, and didn’t go into debt, but we kids learned to cheerfully do without a lot of the toys other kids had.

Dad was frugal, but he wasn’t a miser. When a friend sharpened the blades on his sickle mower, he would press extra money on them, above and beyond the exact cost of the service.

Dad’s attitude was that money would be there when it was needed. The Lord would provide. Dad knew his old floppy paperback Bible very well, and he had learned from it that God loved him and would take care of him.

Dad knew the Sermon on the Mount from personal experience. “Be not dismayed, whate’er betide, God will take care of you. Beneath His wings of love abide, God will take care of you.”

Because Dad was a wise builder. He could not only build fences that no pig or cow or sheep could ever penetrate, but he built his life, and his family’s lives, solidly on the sayings of Jesus, because Dad knew the danger at the end of the both Matthew’s and Luke’s version of this mountain sermon—how if its words were ignored, the spiritual life is devastated.
Dad knew how to read, and heed, and if necessary, lead.

And when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more, Dad and Mom are going to rise from their prairie graves and hear a gentle “Well done, thou good and faithful servants. Enter into the joy of thy Lord.”