A month or so ago I posted on Jesus' final week--what He chose to say and do during that week. It's just as instructive, I think, to look at what He said and did in His first lengthy teaching. I'm referring to the Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matthew 5-7. What are its main takeaways? I think these:
- Thoughts are as powerful as deeds
- Intentions matter hugely
- Do nothing for show
- Avoid sin at all costs
- Be the salt and light of the world
- Whatever good you might see done by the world, you're called to more and better
- Persist in prayer
- Do as you would be done by
- Beware false teachers
To me, the first four are the most striking. "If you thought it, you did it." Jesus was speaking to people who had spent their lives watching the Pharisees' meticulous and too-often hypocritical obedience to the letter of the law. "Meticulous" wasn't wrong, but if we aren't careful people can catch the idea that outward observance and compliance are enough--or the only important thing. Jesus meant to disabuse them of this notion; He was interested in the integrity of the whole individual. A thousand years earlier, David had realized that God desired truth in the inward parts (Psalm 51:6). Almost every deed first starts with a conscious thought. I've found that if I keep the Scriptural reminder to bring every thought captive to Christ, my thought life improves noticeably. I pray this before bed and have even experienced changes in the things I dream.
Thoughts lead naturally to intentions. There's a claim running through our culture today that intentions do not matter. I will certainly agree that protesting, "But I meant well!" when we have caused offense isn't good enough. Good intentions don't mean we're excused from taking responsibility for our careless behavior; that is centering ourselves at the expense of the person we hurt. Saying those good intentions are worthless, though, is running off the road into the opposite ditch, nor does it make sense, nor is it true. Should we prefer ill intentions? Didn't we just say that the quality of our thoughts usually determines the quality of our deeds? The most important point: the claim that intentions don't matter runs contrary to Jesus' teaching. Intentions matter hugely.
"Do nothing for show" is possibly better rendered "Do nothing just for show." There is nothing wrong with beautiful appearances (in fact, I believe peacocks were created expressly to display the beauty of God's design). Excellence in all things, inner and outer, honors Him, but it's wrong to (a) be prideful or puffed up about appearances, and/or (b) slap them onto the surface of a rotten interior so things look better than they are and expect credit for that. The Lord desires purity, not in the sense of some sort of prissy behavior, but in the sense of lack of mixture or compromise. Our aim is to be Godly through and through.
Avoid sin at all costs. Of course Jesus doesn't mean to literally cut off our hand or pluck out our eye, but the illustration is no less powerful for that realization. Whatever is causing us to sin, we should spare no cost in forsaking that thing; eternally, even our bodies are not worth our souls. The wages of sin really are death. The unsaved person becomes more entrenched in his path to destruction the more he sins, and the saved person becomes entangled again and is often worse off than before, at the very least losing reward he could have gained (1 Corinthians 3), and making it less likely each time that he will repent and turn back. That pet sin we keep sent Jesus to the cross. What we need to do, He says, is rip, cast, thrust, erase, and "cross" it out of our lives. Habitual sinners deceive themselves if they believe they have seen or known Jesus (1 John 3:6).
In all things, may we attend to the inside as much as the outside. Let what we show to others on the outside be the real deal.
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