Kingdom #3: The Sermon on the Kingdom

In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus comes announcing the in-breaking of the Kingdom. And then Matthew presents to us what we usually call The Sermon on the Mount. We have come to call it the Sermon on the Kingdom, or, if you will, the sermon on kingdom living. This is the core of Jesus’ message and he almost certainly repeated many of the teachings found here on other occasions. Luke, in chapter 6 of his gospel, tells us about at least one of these times that is often called the Sermon on the Plain.

If we are serious about the kingdom of God, living as disciples of Jesus, and obeying everything Jesus taught, this sermon on the kingdom must get a great deal of our attention. But we will not really get the sermon on the Kingdom unless we get the Beatitudes that are found at the beginning.

In my book No One Like Him, I called these the Kingdom attitudes. They are the essential attitudes that must characterize one’s life if he or she is going to have a kingdom heart. When we think of the relationship of the Beatitudes to the rest of the sermon, numerous analogies and metaphors come to mind.

If we envision the life this sermon describes as a great spiritual mountain that we wish to climb, the Beatitudes should be seen as the boots that every climber will tell you are so essential. Without a grasp of the Beatitudes, our journey through the rest of chapter 5, into chapter 6 and on through Chapter 7 will be quite miserable. We will have some pretty severe blisters and will likely take a big fall when we come to something like "don't resist an evil person."

To change the image, the Beatitudes are like the alphabet: you must learn them early, but you will be using them for the rest of the way. Try to skip them and your spiritual life will end up being only so much gibberish. In a similar way, trying to live this sermon on the kingdom without internalizing the Beatitudes, would be like trying to play basketball before you ever master the art of dribbling and passing. And just as a coach will often bring his team back to focus on these basics when their play becomes ragged and sloppy, so we must be brought back to these crucial attitudes again and again as we seek to live this kingdom life.

It is interesting that we call these the Beatitudes, for these are the essential kingdom attitudes that need to be in all our lives. (Of, course, that play on words works in English, but we’re not sure how it will come out when it is translated into another tongue.)  When we find Jesus’ words in this sermon irritating us, frustrating us or seeming to be a burden, a key rule for the road is go back to the Beatitudes. When we find our relationships with others who are traveling the road with us to be broken or not close, go back to the Beatitudes.

It is our observation that just about everything we are called to do in the rest of the Sermon, or in the rest of the New Testament for that matter, can be traced in some way back to the Beatitudes. We will benefit greatly by focusing carefully on them. Jesus is going to go on to some specifics and to some things that sound to some like new laws, though that would probably be to miss his point. However, before he goes on examples of specific behavior he starts with “the inside of the cup” knowing that when that is right the outside takes care of itself. The Beatitudes then are about the new heart one has on the inside after hearing the call to the Kingdom and repenting (Matthew 4:17).

In our second volume on the Kingdom, Steve and I will be focused completely on this sermon on the kingdom life and we will spend considerable time at the beginning on the Beatitudes but I hope you won't wait for that book to start meditating on these crucial qualities and attitudes as you pray for God's kingdom come will more fully to your life.