Welcome back, friends. We’ve almost made it to the end of Janu-weary. Now that Bill and I are in Charleston, my view is beautiful but someone turned off the heater! Anyway, we have a lot to cover this week. I have to say in advance that, every week, I think that I will try to make the next week’s post a little shorter, a little quicker to read through. And then I read the next lesson and think, “No way!” How do pastors possibly pick what they want to spend their twenty minutes or so talking about?!
Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12
This week we begin what is possibly the most famous sermon in the entire world, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The sermon actually takes three chapters in Matthew, 5 through 7, and is nonstop preaching with no narrative at all. I’m going to set it up and then talk very briefly about today’s passage. Entire books have been written on this passage alone! There’s no way I can do it justice.
At the end of chapter 4, recall that Jesus was traveling around Galilee, teaching but also healing everyone who came near. He was becoming very well-known and there were crowds everywhere. An interesting point to keep in mind as you read Matthew is that “disciples” refers not just to the twelve but to all those who had accepted Jesus’ teachings and were followers; “crowds” refers to the merely curious.
It’s helpful to go all the way to the end of the Sermon on the Mount before we start. It frames everything that we will read in these three chapters (spoiler alert):
And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at His teaching, for He was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.
Matthew 7:28,29
Jesus is going to unpack a lot of different ideas in the next three chapters, but they will always be in relationship to what we call the Old Testament. He speaks with the authority of one who is finishing a story. I read this week that N.T. Wright, an amazing theologian, refers to the Old Testament as a story without a climax, a plot that doesn’t resolve. Jesus Himself is resolving that plot with this sermon. He starts by going up the mountain to preach. There are echoes of Moses here: recall that Moses went UP the mountain to get the law. Jesus is going up the mountain to fulfill it.
And then we come to the sayings best known as the Beatitudes. Once again I’m stymied by my lack of knowledge of Biblical languages, because I would dearly love to know exactly what Jesus said in Aramaic. I find some interpretations of these verses to be, well, painful, and maybe incorrect. I don’t know about you but I don’t aspire to be a mourner.
However, I did come across a commentary by Bishop Robert Barron that I have found intriguing. Maybe you will like it, too. The first word in all of these verses that begin “Blessed are” is makarios, which can equally be translated as “lucky.” So, “Blessed are the meek” becomes “You’re lucky if you aren’t consumed by a desire for power.” The world loves power, even for its own sake. If you can pick your eyes up and see beyond the worldly grab for power, what a blessing!
I love this. Try it with some of the other Beatitudes and see if it expands your understanding.
Old Testament: Micah 6:1-8
I’ll bet that if you have a verse of OT prophecy memorized, after Jeremiah 29:11, it’s Micah 6:8. It’s a beautiful reminder of God’s heart and how desperately He longs for OUR hearts. I also think it corresponds beautifully with Jesus’ teachings in the Matthew readings. But first, context.
Micah was a prophet in Judah (the Southern Kingdom) during the time of King Hezekiah. This means that he was also alive at the same time as Isaiah, and he was active during the time when Assyria, who had just defeated the Northern Kingdom of Israel, threatened Judah.
Micah’s overarching theme is that, even though Judah had been awful, God still would redeem them. He was still after their hearts, always had been. God desires nothing more, or less, than reconciliation.
Let’s look at the historical references Micah makes to help understand this passage a little more. First, Micah talks about Balak and Balaam. You have to go back to Numbers 22-24 to read this story. Neither Balak nor Balaam were Jewish. King Balak had watched the Hebrews approach his territory during their desert wanderings and was getting anxious. He called on Balaam to curse the Hebrews for him. Despite threats and cursing and untold yelling, Balaam couldn’t do it. He was unable to curse the Israelites! Balaam finally had to acknowledge God’s sovereignty to Balak and give up. (This is the story with the talking donkey, if that helps you remember. It’s such a good one!)
Micah references this story to remind his listeners that God has been pursuing and protecting them for a long time. And then, lest they decide that God is pursuing them because of their goodness, Micah brings up Shittem and Gilgal.
Shittem is the site of terrible, awful sin by the Israelites in Numbers 25—immediately after the story of Balak and Balaam. God has just gotten done telling a foreign king that He won’t be cursing the Israelites when we immediately find the Israelites doing their best to curse themselves, by “whoring” with Moabite women and joining all of them in sacrifice to Baal. One of Aaron’s sons was finally so overcome with anger that he killed one Hebrew who was in his tent with a Moabite woman. He impaled them both with one blow of his sword.
Gilgal was the end of the Israelite journey to the Promised Land, the site of a re-awakened covenant with Israel.
In these very brief verses, Micah covers it all—the world’s view of God’s chosen people, how little those people valued their status as chosen, and how very much God is determined to follow through. In the end, He wants our hearts.
Again, I feel like an entire sermon series could come out of these few verses. Thankfully, I’ll be brief about the Psalm.
This is a pretty short Psalm, one that would be easy to commit to memory. Note that, like the Micah passage, these verses point to the condition of the heart and not the tasks around sacrifice. That’s especially interesting considering since, as my Bible commentary noted, this is an entrance hymn. It is a good check on how you approach the communion table each week: doing right? Honoring those who fear the Lord?
One idea that too out to me was the idea of “speaking truth in his heart” (v. 2). That is surprisingly hard! To determine to always tell yourself the truth, not to merely tell the truth to others—I find that to be a hard idea to struggle with sometimes. It’s so much easier to let yourself believe things that aren’t true.
New Testament: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
We finish up chapter 1 with today’s reading. Over the last two weeks we considered what kind of city Corinth was, and what Paul’s history with the congregation was like. Today, let’s take a quick look at the issues the Corinthian church was dealing with.
We know this was a busy, contentious congregation in a bustling melting-pot of a town. Last week we read about their disagreements over which pastor to follow. The answer: Jesus! The rest of us point the way. There were a slew of other problems, though: legal disagreements and lawsuits among members; sexual immorality and the inability to even call certain behaviors immoral; worship practices; marriage and family problems; meals and food. Basically, if it was part of life, it was probably a disagreement in Corinth. Paul had a lot to write about!
But first, Paul needed to cut through the rhetoric. The nature of Greek culture was to endlessly debate and never resolve. Paul had to put that to an end, and quickly. And so he opens up this passage by saying, “Look, this sounds dumb if you’re an unbeliever; but it’s the most important thing is you love Jesus. “ (A paraphrase but please read the passage.) Paul knows that soaring rhetoric might get him noticed in the marketplace but it won’t help this community of believers. So he has to point them back to the one thing they do agree on, and work forward from there.
Prayer
Father, how in the world can You want our broken, confused hearts? And yet, You do, and even that is a mystery. Lord, thank You for loving me. Thank you for teaching me that it’s my heart you are after. Bend my will towards Yours. Teach me, Father, to do justice. Help me to love kindness. I want to walk humbly with You. Thank You for sending Jesus to save me. Amen.
