Well, this is it! Today we come to the end of the Sermon the Mount after almost three weeks of listening to excerpts from Matthew’s three full chapters.
These last words of Jesus to end his Sermon on the Mount have always been striking and challenging to me. After proclaiming this new teaching about being a human being who has a right relationship with God and with neighbor, Jesus says that recognizing him as Lord or being able to do miracles or driving out demons in his name, are not enough to be counted as part of the kingdom of God. In fact, he goes as far as to say he will not recognize those folks. What a stunning and even shocking statement! Most of the folks in Israel would have been accustomed to a religious lifestyle based on simple public profession of faith, a cold external expression that never penetrated their hearts. They were always looking for healings and miracles (exorcisms) as external signs of God presence. But Jesus dismisses those attitudes. He says very clearly: I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers. He actually calls them evildoers for reducing the Word of God in the Old Testament to external formalities and personal benefits.
Jesus says to us today that true faith is in living out the Sermon on the Mount as he proclaimed it. And that is without skipping over portions or cutting out sections. The oral or external proclamation of faith must have a personal expression in our daily lives. The Word of God as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount is the rock that acts as a foundation of a lifelong commitment to the Lord and Christian live. Our faith must reach into our heart and soul and have an expression in the way we live. Being able to say “Lord, Lord” or being able to do miracles does not mean we are centered in the kiddom of God. Living out the Cross as described in the Sermon on the Mount is the center rock of our Christian life.
This teaching astonished the folks in Israel. This was not a cold external law but rather a new personal way of living with God. The people saw that Jesus had a deep authority to teach this new “law”.
I hope and pray that the last three weeks of listening to the Sermon on the Mount has been a stunning and astonishing time for all of us, a time of conversion.
Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
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