Let's take our Bibles and turn to Matthew, chapter 5, verse 17. Jesus preaches the classic three-point sermon. He really does. He has a well-constructed message. It has an introduction. It has a conclusion in three points in the middle, as most sermons do. His introduction is Beatitudes where he invites all different kinds of people at different spiritual places in their life to come and enter the kingdom of God and to be blessed. And then he talks about, in the end, the conclusion how we might actually do that, how is it that we enter into the kingdom of God? How is it that we are saved to become part of Christ new society? And in between that introduction and that conclusion, inviting us into the kingdom, telling us how to get there, Jesus Christ tells us what kingdom life is like. He tells us about the kingdom ethic, how we are to live, the kingdom religion, or piety, how we're to approach God, and finally, the kingdom's values and perspectives on money and other people and our own lives. It's a well-constructed sermon as in every sermon that is well-disconstructed and well-delivered, it has transition points. Where the speaker, the preacher, will take you from one section to the other, and that transition will summarize what he just said and introduce what he's about to say. And in Matthew, chapter 5, verses 13 through 20, there is a great transition point as there is between each one of these sections in Jesus Christ's sermon on the Mount. Now, the first transition point kind of summarizes who we are before God. We come to Him in all these different states. He receives us into His kingdom and we become, whether we're good salt or bad salt, whether we're bright lights or not, we become the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and corporately as a people, a city on a hill. But in order to increase our ability to season and preserve and to bring taste to life and in order to increase the brightness of our light, Jesus Christ now enters into a section where He begins to tell us what demands He's going to make on His kingdom's citizens. And the first one concerns His demands about our being righteous and keeping the law of God and being an obedient people. And He talks about this as He transitions into this section in Matthew chapter 5, verse 17. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an Iota nor a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of God. Jesus is going to hear in this next point, chapter 5 and 6. He's going to tell us how it is that we would approach the ten commandments. He selects six different topics that are common struggles in the human life. The struggle with anger, with lust, with marriage, with integrity, with feelings of revenge or resentment, and how to deal with people who are unkind to us even our enemies. And his challenges, unless our keeping of the law, exceeds the level of righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, then we will not live according to the kingdom ethic and we will not enter the kingdom of heaven. It almost sounds like Jesus is talking about a works righteousness. Of course, he is not. But what he is saying is that the moral demands of the kingdom of God are radical demands. They're not easy things to do. They're not easy to preach or to hear. They're not easy to practice and to obey. They don't leave us with a warm, fuzzy feeling about ourselves. And they certainly do not reinforce our spiritual status quo. But they will turn our world upside down. The reason the terminal mount is so radical, is that Jesus Christ is telling us that as worldlings we have the opportunity to enter into a new dimension of life to live in other worldly life and complete the Great Commission. Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe or to obey all that I have commanded. We often quote that Great Commission and we kind of breeze by the very last part of it. The end, the terminus objective of the Great Commission is that we teach people how to obey all that Jesus has taught us. That is a radical demand. Now, before we jump into this and before we lose heart at the beginning, Jesus is aware how radical it is and he promises us his own divine help, his own presence and his own spirit to do these things. But what Jesus is saying here, we must not water down. He's saying that when you enter the kingdom of God, when you enter into relationship with Christ, when you are saved, when you're converted, when you're made into a new creation, and the old things passed away, there comes a new way of looking at God's moral demands. And you need to embrace these things and live by these things and help other people learn how to keep all that God demands of the world. Now, we're uncomfortable with this. And the first thing we say is, first of all, Pastor, is it possible to perfectly keep the law? And the answer is, of course not. Not in this life, not as sinful human beings. Well, then is it possible to do what the Sermon on the Mount says? Yes, it is. Most of the time, over time as we progress in maturity, we do grow in the grace and knowledge and obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, aren't we kind of forcing our religion down other people's throats and the answer is no. We're not a group of fundamentalists that are requiring people to live according to our standards. These are not our standards. If we were to write a Sermon on the Mount, it wouldn't be like this. These are the demands not a fundamentalism. This is the will of God. We're not forcing people to do these things. We're modeling these things before people, inviting them into the same kind of life and relationships that we have. This is the great difference between the Christian religion and the Muslim religion. We do not promote the kingdom of our God through death, through a sword, through killing other people. We promote the kingdom of our God through death, across our own death, where Muslim extremists may kill other people, Christian extremists die for other people. There's a vast difference. And the first death that has to occur is a death to ourselves so that we can live unto God and live according to the law. And what the law has an ability to do is to kill the fleshly man inside. And that's what makes it so radical, a word that means in the Latin erotics at the core, at the root, it goes down to the root of a person and demands a new ethic. Jesus says a radical thing here. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Until every jot and tittle, every Hebrew marking of vowels under the Hebrew letters of the words of the Old Testament are fulfilled, I will not rest. Because I tell you, unless your righteousness is like mine and exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you won't be able to get into the kingdom of heaven. So what is Jesus saying? Well, he's talking here about the law and he tells us four things. I believe in the introduction, is he transitions from our blessings and to be attitude to our requirements as citizens of the New Kingdom. He tells us four things. Here's the first thing that he has a very high view of the Old Testament. The Old Testament is the Bible for Jesus. Jesus has a very high view of the Old Testament and its law versus 17 and 18 again. Do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I've not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, unless heaven and earth pass away, not an Iodot nor a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Jesus saying, look, don't think for a minute that I've come to get rid of the Old Testament law. What I've come to get rid of is this sentimental and silly view that we are undergrace and therefore the law has no authority or bearing upon our lives whatsoever. Moses and Abraham and David and the prophets were all saved by grace as you will be and they were under the law as you are. They lived by grace and that grace enabled them to keep the law and you must do the same. Jesus says three very straightforward things about his relationship to the law of God. First of all, he's not going to abolish it. We're talking about the moral law, not the ceremonial laws of the sacrifices or not the civil laws of a nation that no longer exists. Those have been abolished. They've been abrogated. They're gone. But he has reinforced the moral law. That's the second thing he says. He's going to fulfill it. Everything that the law teaches, everything that the law demands, Jesus Christ will do. And finally, every minute detail, the law is important. Even the Iodas and the dots, the little markings of the Hebrew language. Jesus Christ uses an hyperbole here to say that even the smallest thing you would overlook, the word of God is serious about and so am I. When he says law and prophets, he's talking about the Old Testament. That's the phrase that the Jews of his age used when they talked about the law and the prophets. Turn if you will for just a moment over to chapter seven. Just look at chapter seven in the ceremonial amount and look at verse 12, where we find the golden rule. He says, so whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them for this is the law and the prophets. This is the Bible. This is the Old Testament. Do unto others, but you would have them do unto you. Later on in this great Gospel of Matthew, when he talks about the great commandments, you should love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. He says on these two commandments rest all the law and the prophets. He would say in Matthew chapter 11, the law of Moses and the prophets have prophesied until this day concerning me. So when Jesus Christ uses the phrase the law in the prophets or Moses in the prophets, he is talking about the Old Testament. In fact, the Jews divided their Old Testament up differently than we did. They had three sections. The law, the prophets and the sacred writings. And they often referred to them as Moses, the prophets and the Psalms, because those are the principal books of those sections. The end of his life when Jesus Christ was giving the great commission to his apostles in Luke's version of the Gospel. Jesus says, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was with you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Here Jesus is a new Moses. In fact, he's the great prophet that Moses talked about. From Moses said in Deuteronomy, The Lord your God will raise up from among your bread and a prophet like me who will do all his will. It is to him you shall listen and obey. And Jesus Christ is his great prophet. And he's going about instructing us what the law and the prophets require and how he is the fulfillment of those things. How does Jesus fulfill everything in the Old Testament in ten ways, first of all in history? All of history moves towards or away from Jesus Christ. He is the climax of the Old Testament in the beginning of the new. We divide our time. BC and AD based upon the person and work of Jesus Christ. Everything from Genesis to the cross look forward to him and everything from the cross to the end of time looks back to him. He is the centerpiece of human history. He is also the fulfillment of all God's promises. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1 for all the promises of God find their yes in Jesus Christ. All of the predictions of God are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. There are over 300 prophecies in the Old Testament that Jesus Christ himself fulfills. He is the fulfillment of all God's predictions. He is the fullness of all of its types or symbols. All of those sacrifices and all of its holy days in these lambs of God and these ritual cleansings. All of these things look forward to symbolically to the atoning and sanctifying cleansing work of Jesus Christ and his blood. All the praise in the Psalms are built around Jesus Christ. It is not David who is the main person in the Psalms for David is a type of Christ. The Psalms, if you want to know how God, the Son, worships God the Father, read the Psalter. For Augustine is right. Christ in the Psalms is Himself the singer of these poems. These are the songs of Christ that Christ put in the mind of David and Solomon and others to express his love and adoration of his Father. All the wisdom of the Bible are found in Jesus Christ. You want to know how Jesus Christ relates to his Father read the book of Proverbs. You want to know how he loves this church? Read the song of Solomon. You want to know how he thinks about the world? Read Ecclesiastes. For he has become to us wisdom from God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 30, all of the precepts, all of the commandments, this is perhaps the most marvelous thing of all. Jesus Christ has kept perfectly. Perfect obedience is what Christ owed the law and gave it. And finally, all of its punishment, all of the wrath that the law prescribes and brings against those who sin, all of that wrath Jesus Christ absorbed in Himself and took to the cross and put in the grave. The wrath of God, the wrath of the law has been satisfied in its justice and the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So Jesus takes the law seriously. He possesses what theologians call both active obedience and a passive obedience. Actively, Jesus Christ goes after the law with vengeance to keep its every single dimension, even things that you and I run aware of. And passively, He then submits Himself to the punishment of the law. In fact, it is this active obedience that makes him a sinless, perfect man so that his sacrifice is a perfect and acceptable sacrifice for all sinners everywhere. Why? Because Jesus Christ has kept the law where every sinner has broken it and paid for the penalty of every sinner's sins. His active and passive obedience are the great two heroic dimensions of his earthly life and they all have to do with the law of God. So Jesus says, how seriously do I keep the law? There it is. I keep the law and the law drove me to the cross and beyond. And therefore do not think that I have come to ignore the law and to say to my subjects in my kingdom, oh, we're under grace, we can just take the law and not be serious about it whatsoever. No, he said, the law of God is permanent and will be kept until the law of God is no longer necessary in the kingdom of heaven. That's the first thing Jesus tells us. And therefore he tells the second thing to us. He expects us to take the law seriously, verse 19. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. I want you to look at those words while I talk for a minute. Look at the word therefore. Therefore is there for a reason. It points to something beyond because I take the law seriously and because the law is permanent and because I am determined that the law will be kept therefore whoever, a general application, anybody in the world, whoever takes seriously the law will be great in the kingdom whoever does not will be least in the kingdom and he uses the word relax and Greek the word luo to loose or untie, to let go, to be unbounded or to a knoll, to abolish or to repeal. And he said, you know what distinguishes me from the rabbis is this. The rabbis taught that what they called light and heavy commandments. The heavy ones like don't kill another man and take his life, work to be kept strictly but the light commandments weren't. You could not kill the guy but cuss him out and it's no big deal. The heavy commandment was you shall not sleep with another woman if you're married to someone else. You should not do that. The light commandment was you can flirt with all the women in the world you want. And Jesus said, you know, we're not going to keep the law that way. He says, there's no ranking of sins in the kingdom of God. There are no mortal sins and venial sins. No heavy commandments and light commandments. Just one perfect law emanating out from the character of my father. To keep the law of God is to honor the character of my father. Why do you not murder because God is the giver of life? Why do you not violate your marriage because God is faithful? Why do you honor your father and mother because I honor my dad, God, the creator and father of us all? Why do I not steal because God is generous? And why why I'm not coveting because God is content? God is truth and God is life, God is unique. Even the way we spend our week is a reflection of God. Why do we keep the Sabbath because God rests after his work? Works for six days, great in the world keeps the Sabbath on the seventh and so do we. So there are no light and heavy things. He says, in effect here, I'm not going to be a legalist and overemphasize the light things. And I'm not going to be a lawless person and ignore the heavy things. It's ironic that lawlessness and legalism all come from the same root sin. From anti-nominism. Anti and Greek means another. Nammas is law, anti-nammas another law, anti-nominism, another way of approaching the law, either one or two ways. Legalism, I replace my cheap rules for the costly laws of God and it makes it easy to be obedient. Or lawlessness, anti-nominism, I ignore the law of God and therefore I don't have to worry about it all. Either way, it's another law. It's another way of approaching God. And Jesus said, no, we're not going to be like that. We're not going to be legalists like the Pharisees and scribes and we're not going to be lawless like the pagans, the Greeks. We're going to keep the law. This is important for people who know me. Turn again to chapter 7. Look this time at verse 21. Look at what Jesus says about obeying the law and getting into the kingdom of heaven. Chapter 7 verse 21. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. But the one who does the will of my father, who is in heaven. Not everyone who says, I've received Jesus Christ as my Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven. But those who actually follow my Lordship and let me rule over them and help them keep the law. Jesus is saying, we will not pit law against grace. The law convicts us of sin and drives us to grace and grace introduces us to Christ. And once we find Christ, he fills us with grace so that we can keep the law. It is one unbroken circle. Law to grace, to Christ, to grace, to law. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. For this is all of the law and prophets that you love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Commandments 1, 2, 3, and 4. And that you love your neighbor as yourself, commandments 5-10. This is law of God. It's for our good. It's to be kept in gospel obedience by the power of grace, not because we're afraid of punishment. Remember earlier, I told you where that punishment is. Where is your punishment for sin? It's in the tomb where Jesus left it on Easter Sunday when he rose from the grave. There is therefore now no condemnation for you who are in Christ Jesus. No penalty. We don't keep the law because we're afraid if we don't God's going to get us, he's already gotten us. He nailed you to a cross some 2,000 years ago and he watched you die. I have been crucified in Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me. No, we don't keep the law out of fear. We keep it out of love. And therefore, the smallest things that the law requires become the duty of love for you and me. Jesus is not teaching, folks, again, a salvation by obedience. Listen to sin, Clair Ferguson. With these words as Jesus reversing his earlier teaching that we enter the kingdom of God through grace, surely not. Rather, he is saying that our attitude to the law of God is an index of our attitude toward God Himself. If we treat the law lightly and encourage others to do so, that is if we have a settled and consistent attitude of antagonism toward it, we show that we are strangers to the promises of the new covenant of Christ. But if we love and keep even the least of the Lord's commandments and if we encourage others to do so, that is if we have a settled attitude of obedience, that is a sure mark that we love Christ and belong to His kingdom. In a sense, Jesus is saying, I love that you love me. And I love to hear you tell me that you love me. That's why I like you to go to church on Sunday because all your hymns and all your prayers and all your sermons are about how much I love you and you love me and I love that. But don't just tell me you love me. Show me you do. If you love me. If you really do, keep my commandments. And that leads us to the third thing Jesus says. He calls us to a deeper application of the law of God, verse 20. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of God. What a bold statement. It's about to get bolder. I want you to notice that the next six paragraphs for the rest of chapter five, Jesus will talk about anger and lust and marriage. He'll talk about integrity and he'll talk about our attitudes of bitterness and revenge and how we treat people who don't treat us well. And he will make these statements six times. You have heard it said by others. But I say, Jesus steps out on the pages of human history and says, I will reinterpret God's law. I'm here to tell you that no one has a right to do that, except God the author of the law. Well, let me tell you what Jesus is not saying. He's not saying that you've read the Old Testament, and that's pretty rough. So I got a new law. No? Look again at the words. Look very closely at verse 21. For example, you have heard it said. He doesn't say you have read in the Old Testament. He's not correcting what his father wrote in the Old Testament because he wrote it with his father. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit wrote the law. Jesus isn't going to change his mind about that since it reflects his own nature and character. No, what he's correcting is what we have heard. Other men, the rabbis, say about God's law as they watered it down to make it easy. Convenient for them and hard for their enemies. Convenient for men and hard for women. Easy for Jews and hard for Gentiles. Nice for the guy who always went to synagogue impossible for the woman who was a prostitute. No, Jesus said not anymore. That's what you've heard said. I tell you something else. And he goes into the deeper meaning of the law. And he says, here's the difference between you and me. You take a minimalistic approach to the law. What's the least I can do to keep out of trouble and I take a maximum approach to the law. What's the most I can do to glorify my father and love other people? Two different world views. I want to show you how this works. In a very practical way. Look at chapter 6. Look at one of these things that Jesus is going to talk about in verse 31, which is marriage. Chapter 5 verse 31. It was also said by the rabbis. It was also said, whoever divorces this wife, let him give us certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces this wife except on the grounds of sexual immorality, make sure commit adultery and whoever marries a divorce woman commits adultery. Now let me show you the minimalistic approach to things. The minimalistic approach says, okay, I'm in an unhappy marriage and so how can I get out of it? Well I can't commit physical adultery and later on Paul said I couldn't physically and permanently desert the home, the marriage. Well, here's what I'll do if I'm a woman and I don't like my husband anymore. I'll be cruel to him. I'll be cold towards him. I'll deny him his marriage bed until his left drive him to another woman and I say adultery! I have biblical grounds for divorce. If I'm a man and I'm unhappy with my wife, I won't physically leave, but I won't talk to her. I won't show her any affection. I won't be tender towards her. I'll do the minimum I have to pay the bills. I'll disengage emotionally until she's so frustrated she leaves and then I'll say desertion! I have biblical grounds for divorce and I'll get that certificate. And I'll take this to heaven you see. I got out of my marriage and you can't do a thing about it. A man will say I've never been unfaithful to my wife. Well how about those thousands of women you have fornicated with on the internet in pornography year after year? I think you have been unfaithful. I think if you committed adultery we're going to find that out in the verses right before the ones on divorce. And the woman may say I've been a godly submissive wife. No you haven't. You've ridiculed your husband, you've presented him. You've undermined his authority before the children. You just wanted to get so embittered that he quits and then you can go to the pastors and say, I wish I had a spiritual leader because pastors are always a sucker for a crying woman. I told the staff this week we're going to start approaching our helping people from this perspective, from the sermon on the mount. We can't make people do anything. We have only ministerial authority just to teach and to preach and to advise. We can't use magisterial force to make you do anything. We're involved in your lives to help you have better marriages and better families and better lives. If you don't want to follow our advice, we're not going to be offended by it. It's not us you're disagreeing with. Either we're wrong on our advice and we apologize for that, or you don't want to follow the word of God. We have no apologies for that. And if you fool us, you haven't accomplished a whole lot. We can easily be fooled by crying women or indignant men. In fact, whatever you tell us, we have no reason not to believe it. We have to believe what you say, which really puts us at a disadvantage. But you're not fooling God. And when it comes to the point where you no longer want to be here and you leave, or you threaten to sue us because you don't like our counsel, okay, we're not here to fight with you, to take you to court, to defend ourselves before Caesar. We're just here to help you. And if you don't want our help, you still stand before the law of God, and God will not be satisfied with anything, except your heart saying, I love you enough to obey you, even when it's very, very difficult to do so. We are not legalists here. We're not playing the minimalistic game. And we're not lawless people here. We're not going to ignore the Bible. We're simply saying what Jesus says, that if we keep the least of these commandments, God is pleased with us. And if we ignore them, God is offended. And our great concern, even beyond our own welfare, is that God be glorified in us and pleased with us. No more minimalism. Let the Word of God come into your life and change you so that you want to obey the law of God so that grace transforms your mind and blesses you. Now here's the fourth thing Jesus says, not in this passage, but all through the New Testament, wherever he speaks with the apostles. Remember when Paul says something, it's Jesus saying it, because Jesus told Paul to say it. When John writes something, it was Jesus who wrote that. When Peter says, this is what I think it's the mind of Christ speaking. Jesus says three things to us about the law of God. You need some help. Because these are overwhelming radical demands. And Jesus knows we can't do it by ourselves. So first of all, he offers us his righteousness. That's the first thing he tells us in the gospel. That his righteousness will be imputed or credited or transferred to us so that every time we try to keep the law of God in fail, what we fall short of is covered by the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who carries us with all of our disobedience and shortcomings and weaknesses into the perfect presence of Christ with his perfect righteousness. So listen, it's a difficult thing to keep in balance. Christ wants us to take serious the law of God, but he doesn't want us to be destroyed by anxiety and fears when we fail. He wants us to rest in himself, to rest in his grace, to say, you know, as difficult as it may be to believe that the guy who's a believer and is addicted to pornography is righteous in God's sight through Jesus Christ. If he's united to Christ, he is righteous in Christ. And that addiction to pornography will eventually be broken overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the second thing Jesus wants to tell us to encourage us. Not only do we need his righteousness, we need some divine power. So he's going to send in to us this wonderful friend. He calls him friend, our friend, the friend of sinners, the helper, the paraclete. And the Holy Spirit will come and take up residence in our heart and as a new creature, there will be a new motivation, a new desire to try harder, to obey the law of God, to learn, to discipline ourselves, to practice the fruit of the Spirit against which there is no law. Because Jesus says if you walk in the Spirit, you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. And the third thing he says is that God the Father will change the way we think. He will recalibrate our minds so that we become living in holy sacrifices committed to doing his will. Romans chapter 12, I appeal to you therefore, my brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may test to discern what is the will of God, all those things that are good and acceptable and perfect. So we have the righteousness of Christ, the indwelling grace and power of the Holy Spirit and the mercy of our teacher and God and Father, who's going to change us from the inside out. And you know what? It's going to take a lot of grace and a lot of patience. And Bukhu's amount of time, the God is patient. He's a patient Father. And Jesus Christ is a most gracious pastor. I'm so sorry that human pastors often change people's attitudes about Jesus Christ. He's nothing like me at all. And the Holy Spirit is the most faithful friend in all of the universe. I will not leave you or forsake you, says the Spirit of God, until I deliver you safely into my Father's hands in the kingdom of heaven. So here's what Jesus Christ is asking us to do, just for a start. Don't back away from the radical demands of the sermon on the Mount, but rather engage them and go deeper into them. Find out what liberating, life changing, blessed truths are in this kingdom gospel. This kingdom way of life that Jesus Christ is teaching us. These radical demands of the sermon on the Mount have changed the lives of many people. And I can think of one in particular, a young German man named Dietrich Bonhoffer, whose life was changed. He was converted because of the sermon on the Mount. He grew up in a liberal family in Germany, studied under the great liberal teachers of the University of Tobagen and Berlin. And then he came for a year in 1931 to New York City to study a year at Union Theological Seminary, the most liberal seminary at that time, or even at this time in the country. Full of the liberal theology and the social gospel. And one of the Rockefeller men, John Rockefeller senior, had built the Riverside Church so the Americas leading liberal social gospel preacher, Henry Emerson Faustick, would have this glorious cathedral preaching. And that's where all the Union Theological Seminarians were supposed to go to church on Sunday. So Dietrich went there. And as he listened to Faustick, watered down the sermon on the Mount. He said he felt cold and dead and without hope. Then an African American student that was his roommate said, why don't you come with me where I go to church? I go over to Harlem. I go to the Abyssinian Baptist church where Dr. Adam Clayton Powell senior. Now not junior. He was the congressman, senior, the dad, preachers of the gospel. So Dietrich went over there and he said I was amazed they sang like they love God. The preacher preached as if the word of God was alive and Jesus was risen from the dead. They loved each other and they loved white people despite all the oppression and the pain that white people put them through. There was a joy and a happiness and a confidence and an expectation in their life. And they are under the preaching of that black man and that black congregation in the Harlem, New York. Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a Christian as he listened to Adam Clayton Powell senior go through the sermon on the Mount. Listen to a letter he wrote five years later to his sister and brother-in-law. I plunged into that work in a very unchristian, like manner, ambition. It was an ambition that many people noticed in me that made my life difficult and something wonderful happened, something that has changed and transformed my life to this present day for the first time I discovered the Bible. I had often preached and I had seen a great deal of the church and talked and preached about it a great deal but I had never become a Christian. I know that all that time I turned the doctrine of Jesus Christ into something that was always a personal benefit to myself. I pray to God that that will never be the case again. Also I had never prayed or prayed very little. So for all my loneliness I was quite pleased with myself but then the Bible and in particular the sermon on the Mount freed me from that and since then everything has changed. You see, if it is I who determined where God is to be found then I shall always find the God who corresponds to me in some way who is obliging to me, who is connected to my own natures. But if God determines where he is to be found then it will be in the place that is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. Of course this place is the cross of Jesus Christ and whoever would find God must first go to the foot of that cross as the sermon on the Mount commands. This is not only according to our nature at all, it is entirely contrary it but I must say this is the message of the Bible, the whole Bible, not only in the New Testament but also in the Old Testament as well. This is the message of Christ. Let the sermon on the Mount have its way with you. Let Jesus come into you and say, I will change your righteousness and make you ready for the kingdom of God.
All we have to do is to trust and obey for there is nowhere the way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. Amen. Father we are getting ready to come to your table as people who are trusting in you and who want to obey you better. Now we know we don't, we are more cognizant of our sins than we give each other credit for. Yet we know at this table there is offered to us a sanctifying grace just as there is offered to us in the Word of saving grace. That if we come to you in faith and in surrender, if you give us the gift of the Holy Spirit then you will indeed meet us at this table and fill us with gospel grace and power so that we can grow and our love for you and our love for others. Grow in our power to conquer our own flesh and put the depth, the deeds of the flesh. We will find a reinforcement of our righteousness in Christ who has fulfilled the law for us and now wants to teach us how to live in this world like he did for you and for other people. Meet us at this table we pray and strengthen us for Jesus' sake. For we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.