Happy New Year. Today’s post is an excerpt from the New Year sermon delivered by Pastor Cameron Arensen of the Evangelical Community Church based on Jesus’ sermon on the mount (Mathew chapters 5 through 7). Here it is:
Jesus’ words in this sermon are intended to bring us to the cross for salvation and thus to prepare us for life beyond the grave. But I believe they are also intended to show us how to experience life in the kingdom of heaven now while we are on earth. Yes, this sermon describes the righteous life that God requires if we would be saved by our works. But it also describes the righteous life that Jesus desires in his followers and the members of his kingdom. This is how he desires us as his followers to live. And what is more, Jesus tells us that this kind of living, which is possible only by faith, is also the path to real life-fulfillment and true happiness.
Do you remember how the sermon started? Blessed are…Do you remember the alternative translations of this word? Happy…Most favored…Lucky…Truly happy…
I think this is illustrated in Jesus’ closing story of the two men and the storms of life. Who is the happy man in the story? Who is the favored one? The lucky one? The truly happy one? It is the wise man; the one who built his house on the rock.
As Jesus concluded his sermon he asked his audience: “What will you do with my words?” I remember the president of my seminary warning us against the danger of what he called, “wallowing in unlived truth.” For over 2 months and 8 sermons we have pondered the great truths of what has been called Jesus’ greatest sermon. And in this closing paragraph, with a simple story, Jesus tells us clearly: If all you’ve done is listen, it has all been for nothing.
A couple years ago, I attended a pastors’ conference. The speaker, a man by the name of Bob Roberts, talked to us about discipleship. He drew a sharp contrast between two models of discipleship. The first one he called the “Learn and Grow Model.” This is the model that tries to turn everyone into a Bible student. We have Bible studies and classes and seminars and workshops and the focus is always on the transmitting of knowledge. The assumption is that knowledge will produce spiritual growth and mature disciples of Christ. But according to Jesus’ words in front of us this morning, that’s not necessarily true. Learning alone is not enough. Hearing is not enough. Both of the men in the story heard the words of Jesus. The wise man heard them and did them. The foolish man heard the same words, but he did not do them. They both “learned”. But they didn’t both “grow” did they? In contrast to the “Learn and Grow Model”, the speaker borrowed the very words of Jesus and called us to pursue a “Hearing and Doing Model” for discipleship. This is the only model that will produce true disciples of Jesus.
The principles and truths of life that Jesus has described in these chapters mark the path to real life-fulfillment and true happiness. There is a parallel passage in the Book of James. James was Jesus’ half-brother. I can’t help but believe that James was in the audience when Jesus preached on the hillside that day. I once did a paper in seminary on the many common teachings between the Sermon on the Mount and the Epistle of James. I discovered that out of 108 verses in James, 50 of them (almost half) could be shown to have very close parallels in Jesus’ teaching in this sermon. Listen to this section from James 1:22-25, as a parallel to Jesus’ closing words of the sermon:
“But bedoers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts,he will be blessed in his doing.”
By the way, the word “blessed” in that final sentence is the same word Jesus used in the beatitudes. That’s also why I believe this conclusion to Jesus’ sermon makes a great sermon to start the New Year.
What do we say at this time of year? “Happy New Year!” What do we mean by that? We mean blessed, prosperous, a year of true fulfillment and real happiness. That is what we wish for each other. That is what we wish for ourselves.
But how shall we experience such happiness, such blessedness? Jesus’ sermon is a great place to start. But we won’t experience the blessedness by just hearing or learning. The blessedness comes when we do the words of Jesus.
I can’t think of a better way to conclude this message than with Jesus’ own words. As we reflect on the year ahead and the choices we will make and the decisions we will face and what kind of year we want it to be, listen once again to the words of Jesus:
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”