10-30-2021, 04:50 PM
The Sermon on the Mount continues. In His teaching, Jesus drives with a passion to restore the Covenant. In particular, He seeks to restore the Hebrew mystical outlook on which the Covenant stands. We need not examine all the ways people take the phrases from this passage out of context. What matters is that we understand what Jesus was saying to His audience. They were all under the same Covenant, a covenant that demands humility before the Lord. It's all about the sin of arrogance.
The Scribes and Pharisees were notorious for condemning people, as if only their in-group knew the Law and was fit for God's mercy. Jesus says that we should make room for people to repent and find God's mercy as long as they are still alive. Thus, He warns people not to act like Scribes and Pharisees, because God has a tendency to judge us by the same standards we use on others. If we make room for mercy to operate, we shall receive mercy ourselves.
He goes on to use a parable to mock the Scribes and Pharisees who nitpick over the minor imperfections of others (a mote in the eye) while running around with major moral failures themselves (a log in the eye). Then Jesus promptly judges the Scribes and Pharisees by their own standards. He says trusting them with leadership is like giving the sacred Showbread from the Temple to the feral dogs running around Jerusalem's trash dump. Trusting those men with teaching the Scripture is like throwing pearls to swine. In either case, it's clear they simply do not comprehend the true value of what they have been given. All they want is to feed the fleshly nature.
Don't listen to them when they disparage the average Jews as despicable and accursed, unfit for God's mercy. Don't be afraid to approach God. Ask for things you actually need and see if God doesn't provide. The Scribes and Pharisees make God out to be mean and capricious, when He's actually the good Father of His people.
Then He sums up the whole discussion by explaining that we should not be arrogant like them. Be humble with your covenant brothers and sisters. They are just people like you; treat them with the respect you want from them, and you'll be surprised how well it works. You don't need endless dissection of the words of Covenant Law to figure out all the angles. This business of being humble and respectful easily fulfills the core teaching of the whole of Scripture regarding your relations with your covenant kinfolks. From the Ten Commandments to the last prophet, you could cover it by instinct alone if you cared for your covenant family the way God does.
Finally, He tells the Parable of Paths. Serving the Lord requires a hard commitment to sacrificing your human pride. It's like a steep path, narrowed by the presence of obstacles. It's pretty easy to fall into God's wrath, just don't resist the flesh. It's like walking on a broad highway, nicely graded and smooth. The gate into the Kingdom of Heaven is too narrow for swollen egos.
The Scribes and Pharisees were notorious for condemning people, as if only their in-group knew the Law and was fit for God's mercy. Jesus says that we should make room for people to repent and find God's mercy as long as they are still alive. Thus, He warns people not to act like Scribes and Pharisees, because God has a tendency to judge us by the same standards we use on others. If we make room for mercy to operate, we shall receive mercy ourselves.
He goes on to use a parable to mock the Scribes and Pharisees who nitpick over the minor imperfections of others (a mote in the eye) while running around with major moral failures themselves (a log in the eye). Then Jesus promptly judges the Scribes and Pharisees by their own standards. He says trusting them with leadership is like giving the sacred Showbread from the Temple to the feral dogs running around Jerusalem's trash dump. Trusting those men with teaching the Scripture is like throwing pearls to swine. In either case, it's clear they simply do not comprehend the true value of what they have been given. All they want is to feed the fleshly nature.
Don't listen to them when they disparage the average Jews as despicable and accursed, unfit for God's mercy. Don't be afraid to approach God. Ask for things you actually need and see if God doesn't provide. The Scribes and Pharisees make God out to be mean and capricious, when He's actually the good Father of His people.
Then He sums up the whole discussion by explaining that we should not be arrogant like them. Be humble with your covenant brothers and sisters. They are just people like you; treat them with the respect you want from them, and you'll be surprised how well it works. You don't need endless dissection of the words of Covenant Law to figure out all the angles. This business of being humble and respectful easily fulfills the core teaching of the whole of Scripture regarding your relations with your covenant kinfolks. From the Ten Commandments to the last prophet, you could cover it by instinct alone if you cared for your covenant family the way God does.
Finally, He tells the Parable of Paths. Serving the Lord requires a hard commitment to sacrificing your human pride. It's like a steep path, narrowed by the presence of obstacles. It's pretty easy to fall into God's wrath, just don't resist the flesh. It's like walking on a broad highway, nicely graded and smooth. The gate into the Kingdom of Heaven is too narrow for swollen egos.