Friday, November 14, 2008
Sermon on the Mount
If you have a bible around, read Matthew five, six and seven. This is the greatest sermon to have ever been preached in all of history. It is not just the bringing forth of a new set of commandments, this is where the line is drawn between religious practices and real Christianity. There is nothing you can do that can make you holy, it begins with the heart attitudes, the question of redemption is "How does one receive a new heart?"If you're asking yourself why you need a new heart Jesus exposes this in His sermon; we have murder, lust and a lying heart within us and the only solution is radical abandonment into the divine nature (Matthew 5:38-48) "You think that you are going to leave this teaching today with a 12-step program in order for you to walk this out. You're missing it! You can't walk it out! In fact the only way for you to do anything is for you to deny yourself. You must die to yourself!" (Matt 10:38-39)(Matt 8:34-36) WHY? The divine solution does not lie within a "what" but a "Who"! Salvation comes through a radical abandonment into the divine nature- it is the wholesale leaving of oneself in exchange for the person of Jesus. This movement will go as high in as much as we go low. This movement will never go any higher than the depth to which we die to ourselves at all costs. Don't just fantasize about it. No prophetic word is going to get around this!If you walk out Matthew 5-7 I promise you will receive a great reward in heaven! This is the wisdom of God! You will receive no reward for this except happiness, righteousness and holiness until Jesus returns! This is foolishness in the eyes of the world! It's doing the most difficult things with no-one to pat you on the back for it! Go make yourself of no reputation and love your enemies at all costs, when they crucify you for it... BLESS THEM AND LOVE THEM WELL!
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1 comment:
Hi there!
Over on the "Muddle House" blog, you posted a comment for this post to which I replied, "I think, forerunner, that you missed that this post is facetious.(Definition.)".
Anyway, it's a Jibe at the ESV promoters and evangelicals as if they're making a big deal of nothing about people gender-neutralizing the text of Scripture. It really isn't a little deal, though, nor are they merely changing appropriately neutral terms in such version. Those who do it go to great lengths to show exceptions to this or that, and then mysteriously assert they apply to all instances (such as using "aner", "male", of females...an obvious oddity if/when it ever occurs, and shouldn't be used to justify neutralizing passages containing "aner"; nor should "man" always be assumed to be generic, but rather context dictates that).
And I'm not a fan of Mr. Grudem, either, as his teachings (and those of others like him) made their way into the biblical text of the ESV in certain points, (an excellent review of the ESV which also touches on this is here).
Unfortunately a lot of blogdom has "christians" (I put in quotes because their actions are not adornign of Christ, however amiable they make themselves out to be: the Christian is foremost concerned with truth, not at expense of, but not neglected for, friendliness) being quite devilish and un-upright, pretending their theological liberalism is perfectly compatible with Scripture, rather than abhorrent under its scrutiny.
See this NRSV review, the quotes in the article, and particularly footnote #4 with Paul Jewett's comments.
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