My hiatus left us concluding the fourth chapter of Dallas Willard's "Divine Conspiracy". The fifth chapter alone could take as much time as the rest of the book up to this point. Hence I have been preparing for this journey.
As previously mentioned, chapter five of the book deals with the Chapter 5 of Matthew, beginning where the Beatitudes end. We are about to take a look at each section, as a whole, and in light of the rest of the Sermon. Keep in mind, while we talk and discourse about The Discourse on the Hill, that talking in and of itself has very little value.
Almost one sixth of the Discourse is devoted to emphasizing the importance of actually doing what it says. Doing and not just hearing and talking about it is how we know the reality of the kingdom and integrate our life into it.
I cannot help you live out the Sermon on the Mount just as I cannot help you live out the Beatitudes. My hope is that at some point along this reading, you and I will experience a change of heart in reaction to the heart-changing power of God's word. However, do not think that by reading this book or these posts you will somehow be gaining access to the Eternal Life that Jesus promised. You must choose to do what you hear, to live what you read, and to act on what you believe.
Now, here is what you can expect from Jesus' sermon, and a slight preview to what you'll be reading on during the next few months:
- Background assumption: life in the kingdom through reliance upon Jesus (already covered in the first three chapters)
- It is ordinary people who are the light and salt of the world as they live the blessed life in the kingdom. (already covered in chapter four)
- The kingdom heart of goodness concretely portrayed as the kind of love that is in God
- Warning against false securities - reputation and wealth
- Warning against condemnation engineering as a plan for helping people and a call to the community of prayerful love.
- Warnings about how we may fail actually to do what the Discourse requires, and the effects thereof.
To understand correctly what Jesus is teaching us to do in his Discourse, we must keep the order of the treatment in mind and recognize its importance. The later parts of the Discourse presuppose the earlier parts and simply cannot be understood unless their dependence upon the earlier parts is clearly seen.
Here you can see yet another reason why I've taken some time off before going into this teaching. If you have not read and understood the previous words of Jesus, the availability of his kingdom to all, the entrance into his kingdom, and the desire to reign therein, then you will find it near impossible to take in the expectations that Jesus places on those who live in his kingdom.
Let me put it another way. You will have great difficulty living in Spain if all you speak is Icelandic. No, that's still too far off. It's more like trying to join Facebook without the internet. There is an incredibly large community with all sorts of possibilities available to them, but before you can answer their requests to post pictures and message them and check out your wall posts, you have to be able to join the site. Jesus has asked us to join his Kingdom. It's quite a bit larger than Facebook, but it still requires people joining before they'll be able to access the kind of life that's inside.
Otherwise the Discourse will make little or no sense as a guide to what to do. For they are thinking of their life as the one they now have, untouched by the more fundamental parts of Jesus' teaching, given earlier.
I hope that the Discourse does start making sense to you. I hope that this book opens your eyes to old truths. And I hope you can find yourself living them out in exciting ways. And I'd love to hear about them.
So, dear reader, if you've ever caught yourself pondering, "What does it mean to turn the other cheek? Do I really have to cut off my hand if I sin? How can I be more righteous than the religious elite?" Then have we got a story for you...
See you tomorrow.
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