www.sermoncentral.com. The largest, best, and most popular preaching research and resource site in the world…if they do say so themselves. Or I should say, ourselves? Because there are more than 80,000 totally free sermons, illustrations, and dramas, including more than 100 from yours truly. There are 300 new sermons added each week, and more than 200,000 users a week.
And yet, many a person within the church cringes at the thought of their pastor preaching someone else’s sermon. Though I suppose there might even be a few churches that wish their pastor would preach someone else’s sermon.
But it is actually not a new phenomenon. For decades, even centuries preachers have taken the works of other preachers and boldly declared God’s Word. Sometimes adding their own personality or flavor. And sometimes even reading them verbatim as they were originally written. John Wesley’s 52 Standard Sermons have been preached by many Methodist ministers through the years. Long before the internet, or sermoncentral.com.
What an odd opening to a message you might think. Whose sermon is he about to preach you might ask. Well, let me tell you why this is relevant to our life today at SWC. Throughout 2008, and I’m guessing even well into 2009, I am going to be taking us through the Sermon on the Mount. While I have preached straight through other books of the Bible during my time here, I’m anticipating that the Sermon on the Mount will cover more weeks, and a larger calendar period than any other expository preaching I have done in my life.
And I want you to know up front that there are going to be five primary inspirations to our time in these three chapters over the next year or two. And the reason for this will make a little more sense in a few minutes.
First, and foremost, will be the sermon itself. The Word of God. Hopefully the beginning and ending inspiration of just about any sermon that is preached. In fact, I so desire that it be the foundation of our study together that I have set a personal goal of committing to memory the Sermon on the Mount as I preach it.
Let me encourage you to not be intimidated by such a task, but to join me in it. Over the life of a year or two, it will come out to just a verse or two a week. Pretty manageable. In fact, on the back of your outline you will see that between now and the beginning of May, just 6 verses. And many of the verses you are already familiar with.
But aside from the Word of God, there are going to be two sermon series, two historical, pre-sermon central databases that will be lighting our study along the way. The first is by a man named D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. You may have never heard of him, because he died before many of us were even born and he spent his ministry career in London, England.
In the late 1950s he preached for 60 successive weeks at Westminster Chapel on the Sermon on the Mount. In March of 1959, almost 50 years ago, those sermons were published, and have already come to be known as a spiritual classic in many circles.
Preaching magazine named D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones as one of the greatest preachers of the 20th century. So for those of you who want to dig deeper, or want to take what we look at on Sunday’s and reinforce the teachings from God’s Word Monday through Saturday, pick-up a copy of “Studies in the Sermon on the Mount” by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. It will give you some great devotional reading and help you get even more from this series.
The second sermon series you might be more familiar with. It comes from a man named John Wesley. The John Wesley. In the midst of Wesley’s 52 Standard Sermons, there are actually 13 that work their way through, in an expository fashion, the Sermon on the Mount. Think about that. A founding father of our denomination. The very namesake of our denomination gave 13 out of 52, 25% of his foundational teaching sermons to the Sermon on the Mount.
So we’ll start from the foundation of the Gospel of Matthew. A first hand account of the Sermon on the Mount from the 1st Century. We’ll look to the wisdom and study of a direct church father to our tradition in John Wesley from the 18th century. We’ll gain 20th century insight from the sermons and studies of Lloyd-Jones.
And we’ll add another 20th century man’s reflections to the mix. Deitrich Boenhoffer’s book “The Cost of Discipleship” deals very directly with the Sermon on the Mount in the life of a person desiring to live as a disciple of Christ. It is another spiritual classic, and would be a source of some great devotional reading throughout this series.
Off course, I’ll top it all off with my own 21st century flavor. Hopefully taking the timeless truths of God’s Word, and opening it up to us in a manner that brings it alive and makes it relevant to our daily walk in 2008 central Kentucky.
So that’s just a little time up front to make sure you know where we are going, what is going to help take us there, and just acknowledging that there are very few things I come up with all on my own. And more importantly, helping to resource you to go deeper in your own personal study and discovery of this great sermon from Christ.
Of course, intertwined throughout our year will be breaks from the sermon. The first week of March will feature our 2008 Missions Conference, which will actually feature a homecoming of two SWC family members. . .the Majors and Brenda Wahl. We will be excited to share an Easter season series that many other Wesleyan churches participate in entitled SpringLife. I might even take a vacation, have in a guest speaker or two, and even preach from God’s Word regarding a given holiday we might be enjoying. But the theme for the year will be learning how to live life the way it was meant to be lived, as taught to us in Jesus’ own Sermon on the Mount.
Now, you might wonder, why the Sermon on the Mount? And really all I want to accomplish today is to answer that from my perspective as pastor, and give you a perspective to consider in answer to that question as a congregation. First, as pastor. Why would I set aside a year or two in pursuit of a deeper understanding of three chapters from God’s Word? Or why did it get 25% of John Wesley’s standard sermons, or 60 consecutive weeks at Westminster Chapel?
Interestingly enough, whether you talk to me, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, or John Wesley, you get the same two answers. The first answer is what hopefully drives the preaching of any preacher. Simply put, a stirring in my spirit. At the very core of the rationale is simply my sensing that God is guiding me to these verses at this time as pastor of this church. That’s what led me to Philippians a few years ago. The Seven Miracles and “I Am” statements of John in 2006, the “Seven Longings of the Human Heart” this past fall, our teachings on prayer, and so on and son on. A stirring in my spirit.
But beyond that, each of us three preachers have a second reason that you will even find in Wesley and Lloyd-Jones writings and reflections. The condition of the church today. Ironically enough, the condition of the church in the 18th century pulled Wesley to it, and the church in the 20th century pulled Lloyd-Jones back to it as well.
To use a sports analogy, as I am prone to do, there are times when things can get so off track, so complicated, so confusing, even. . .dare I say. . .so messed up, that the best way to coach it through is to get back to the fundamentals. The basics.
And as I look at the church of America, I often think that the Bride of Christ has turned into the beast of Revelation, or at the very least, the bride of Frankenstein. The politics. The hypocrisy. The infighting. The distorted witness. The lack of impact.
Surveys show, and I believe that most of the world today sees the church in a rather negative light. They see it something like this poor waitress. ("Faith Without Love" Video - resteraunt survelience cameras)
The image the world carries. The encounters they have had with the church leave them with an impression similar to the one left with this waitress just trying to do her job. And as we will see together over the coming year. The Sermon on the Mount does not allow for such behavior from those who call themselves Christians. It does not allow for such a disconnect between the faith we profess, and the life that we live.
Now, what could cause such a disconnect? What has brought us to the point where the faith we profess and the life that we live are so significantly different?
There are probably many answers to that question. It is probably a multi-headed beast. However, the main cause I believe for this disconnect is our attitude toward God’s Word. A pervading attitude within the body of Christ that I’m not sure really takes it seriously. Really allows God’s Word to speak to us in an authoritative manner.
Upon examining the works of John Wesley, an American Methodist named Albert Outler coined a term that came to be widely known as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. As he studied Wesley, he felt that Wesley came to theological conclusions through four different sources. A type of theological methodology. Some have pictured it as a four sided polygon. Some as a stool. But four components that John Wesley saw influencing us as Christians in our establishment of doctrine. The first component of the quadrilateral is. . .
A. TRADITION
The two millennia history of the Christian Church. A worthy component to reflect on and consider when making decisions and thinking about what it means to live as a Christ follower in the world around us.
Of course, most of us have lived long enough to see that tradition can stray over time. Many of us love the Christmas carol “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. And in our tradition we proudly proclaim it as a great Wesley hymn from the hand of Charles Wesley. But did you know that when Charles Wesley read the first line, “Hark! The Herald angels sing,” he was incensed. Nowhere in the Bible did Charles see angels singing about the birth of Christ, and when he read it for the first time he discovered that his hymn had been re-worded by George Whitfield.
As long as he lived, Wesley never sang Whitefield’s reworking of his song. But tradition isn’t too concerned about those particulars. For us, it is traditionally a great Wesley Christmas hymn. “Hark! The Herald angels sing.”
Under the component of tradition, by itself, habits designed to help us experience the fullness of Christian life become the pursuit in and of themselves. Before long, the stench of sacred cows in the sanctuary force us to wear gas masks when we come to church.
So Wesley saw tradition as just one piece of the quadrilateral. A second component is. . .
B. REASON
The rational thinking and sensible interpretation that God has gifted us with as human beings. Granted, some more gifted than others. And there in lies one of the shortcomings of reason. Namely, that some of us just don’t have much of it.
But others, have plenty of it, and still end up at different destinations. I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe that John Calvin, Billy Graham, Chuck Swindoll, Charles Stanley, Tim LaHaye or even a modern day Rod Parsley are idiots. I think they are reasonable, rational thinking, sensible people. I think some of them, and others in church history, might even qualify as borderline Biblical and theological geniuses. But you know what? They carry with them some very different reasoning about the interpretation of Scriptures and the course of church history.
I would join with Lloyd-Jones in going so far as to say that I’m not sure that many of the heretics of church history were dishonest men. They were just mistaken men. Their path of reason took them through a few too many wrong turns, and they ended up standing on a foundation of heresy rather than standing on the pure Word of God.
So Wesley didn’t want to solely rely on reason and tradition. To the quadrilateral he added the side of. . .
C. EXPERIENCE
Each Christian’s personal and community journey in Christ. What we go through day in, day out in the church, the world, and our environment.
However, there are counterfeit experiences. Right? How many of us at some point in Middle School or High School fell in love, and knew that we had joined hands with the person we would be with for the rest of our lives?
For Christmas, 1980, she gave me the album Journey Escape. A rock classic. I was just 12, but I knew that I had met the love of my life. Her name was Tammy Dale. Could it get any better than that? Chip and Dale! Of course, four months later we moved from Wisconsin to California, and that was that.
Had I combined my experience with some mature reason and reflection on traditional adolescent life, I might have known better. But the point is proven that experience itself can be shaky ground. And in fact, can combine with reason and tradition to simply take us further from the fourth piece of the quadrilateral. . .
D. SCRIPTURE
The Holy Bible. The Word of God, in Old and New Testaments. And stay with me, because here comes my point to this little philosophy or theology lesson. As a quadrilateral, things might look like this (draw). By definition a quadrilateral is a polygon with four sides. They don’t have to be equal. One side can be given precedent. But they are intra-dependent. Without any one of the four components, you don’t have a quadrilateral.
As the Wesleyan stool, I have seen it drawn something like this (draw). From a purely visual standpoint, I personally have some real problems with this. Logically, I want to see Scripture holding up my experiences, tradition and reasoning. Not Scripture falling if any of the other legs collapse.
And what I would like to propose has happened in many Wesleyan circles. In many churches that found their roots in the Biblical teachings of John Wesley two hundred years ago. Is that the quadrilateral has turned Scripture into just another side of the polygon. Or worse yet, something that is somehow on the same plane as my reason, or tradition, or experience. When in fact, it is the Word of God. Sharper than any two edged sword.
So what can happen is that God’s Word is minimized. It becomes less of a controlling influence in our lives. Our attitudes and actions are no longer guided, even dictated by it. And despite all of our efforts to be a relevant church, we become totally irrelevant. For what good is salt that has lost its flavor? Or as Jesus says in this great sermon, “If salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.” (Matthew 5:13)
Our flavor as salt is the truth of God’s Word. So I think it is time to get back to basics. Back to the Word of God. Back to the foundational teachings of the Word of God. Back to the Sermon on the Mount. We don’t have to throw out our reason, tradition and experience, but we once again recognize the preeminence of Scripture in guiding and directing our lives. That is why I think I am to teach from the Sermon on the Mount.
But I want to quickly address one more question this morning. Why should you study the Sermon on the Mount? It is one thing for me to feel led to teach something. It is an entirely different and exponentially more powerful thing for the body of Christ to follow that leading, and enter into a place of personal study of the Sermon on the Mount. (Application to “I didn’t get anything out of that message”)
So let me try to persuade you. To try and give you some reasons and thoughts as to why I hope you will take this as more than 30 minutes of blah, blah-blah, blah, blah every Sunday. In fact, what I am going to try and convince you of is taking what for you may be a new approach to our time of teaching in 2008. An approach that prepares for this time. Studies in advance. Studies following the week’s teaching. Maybe even reflects together in your Connection Groups on some practical application related to what we are looking at together.
The answer to that question, to the question of why should you study the Sermon on the Mount can be found in passages such as Titus 2:11, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”
These verses tell us that Christ died so that we might live as a purified people. A people zealous for good works. So that we might be enabled to live the life we were meant to live, as laid out for us in the Sermon on the Mount.
So a study of the Sermon on the Mount is a worthwhile venture for you personally because. . .
1. CHRIST DIED THAT YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO LIVE IT
It is to be one of our distinctives as a “holiness” denomination. That we not only receive the gift of grace. We not only partake of the blessing of salvation. But that we accept that sacrifice as a launching pad to a life that is set apart from the world. Filled with acts and activities representative of the greatness of our God and Savior. A life lived the way it was meant to be lived according to our Heavenly Father.
Beyond that, when you look at the Sermon on the Mount you realize that. . .
2. NOTHING MORE EFFECTIVELY SHOWS US THE NEED FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT
Right out of the gate with the beatitudes, a life style is described that I am not capable of living in and of myself. Without the working of the Holy Spirit in my life, I am not capable of living this life that Christ maps out for us. So as we study the Sermon on the Mount, we will see our dependency, our reliance, our hunger for the Holy Spirit increase.
Another great reason for you to personally and actively join me in this study of the Sermon on the Mount is that. . .
3. IT IS THE PATHWAY TO TRUE BLESSING
Again, just start with the beatitudes, and look at what is promised to those who live the life described by the Sermon on the Mount. You see a trap to “old school” holiness teaching is that we teach what we aren’t supposed to do with our lives. We emphasize the “do”s and the “don’t”s, and we miss out on all the blessing that is promised to us if we live and practice what Christ teaches in this message.
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” That’s a promise. A promise of blessing. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” But it is counter-culture blessing. It teaches us that the pathway to blessing isn’t attending another meeting or seeking some mystical blessing. The pathway to true blessing is to long for righteousness. To long for holiness. To long to live the life Christ meant for us to live and laid out for us in the Sermon on the Mount.
If you want to live the blessed life. If you want to know how to experience that. This is where you start. Studying the Sermon on the Mount.
And last, but definitely not least. . .
4. IT IS THE BEST MEANS OF EVANGELISM
Reflection on recent board interaction:
- What would SWC look like?
- Common Answer: More People
- How does that happen – corporately and individually?
The Sermon on the Mount becomes the answer to the individual piece. D. Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote the words fifty years ago, and they still ring true as if it was yesterday, “The world today is looking for, and desperately needs, true Christians.” He wrote, “What the Church needs to do is not to organize evangelistic campaigns to attract outside people, but to begin herself to live the Christian life. If she did that, men and women would be crowding into our buildings. They would say, ‘What is the secret of this?’”
Many of us have tried many things to win our neighbors, our family members to Christ. We have prayed for them. We have read them the four spiritual laws. We have shown them the Jesus Film or the Passion of the Christ. We have invited them to special services or revivals.
But have we simply lived the life Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount before them? I would suggest, if the words of this sermon our not worked into the very fabric of our lives, how could we have? If we don’t know what Jesus said, if we have not studied what He meant, how can we walk it out?
And if we will corporately, not just as a pastor preparing sermons, but if we will individually commit to a study of this great sermon, we will find ourselves simultaneously learning the best means of evangelism out there, and moving towards that dream of what SWC would look like.
If all of us will live out the Sermon on the Mount, those who encounter us will know that there is a dynamic in the Christian gospel. They will know that it is a living thing. They will not go looking for anything else. They will say, “Here it is.”
I wouldn’t say this often, and I don’t say it lightly. . .I’m begging you to join me in this study of the Sermon on the Mount. To not simply show up and listen to teachings, but to personally engage in the journey of plumbing the depths of God’s Word. Memorize the words of Christ. Pick-up a classic work on these three chapters, and weave it into your devotional life. Commit yourself to engaging in a journey that twelve to 18, maybe even 24 months from now will enable you to look at Matthew 5 through 7 and say, “Yea. . .I hear the words of Christ. I know what He is saying to me. I know how to live my life the way it was meant to be lived.” Let’s pray.
