'And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the
people were astonished at His doctrine: 29. For He taught them as
one having authority, and not as the scribes.'--MATT. vii. 28-29.
It appears, then, from these words, that the first impression made on
the masses by the Sermon on the Mount was not so much an appreciation of
its high morality, as a feeling of the personal authority with which
Christ spoke. Had the scribes, then, no authority? They ruled the whole
life of the nation with tyrannical power. They sat in Moses' seat, and
claimed all manner of sway and control. And yet when people listened to
Jesus, they heard something ringing in His voice that they missed in the
rabbis. They only set themselves up, in their highest claims, as being
commentators upon, and the expositors of, the Law. Their language was
'Moses commanded'; 'Rabbi _this_ said _so-and-so_; Rabbi _that_ said
_such-and-such_.' But as even the crowd that listened to Him detected,
Jesus Christ, in these great laws of His kingdom, adduced no authority
but His own; stood forth as a Legislator, not as a commentator; and
commanded, and prohibited, and repealed, and promised, on His own bare
word. That is a characteristic of all Christ's teaching; and, as we see
from my text, to the apprehension of the first auditors, it was deeply
stamped on the Sermon on the Mount.
I purpose to turn to that Sermon now, and try if we can make out the
points in it which impressed these people, who first heard it, with the
sense that they were in the presence of an autocratic Voice that had a
right to speak, and which did speak, with absolute and unexampled
authority.
And I do that the more readily because I dare say you have all heard
people that said 'Oh! I do not care about the dogmas of Christianity;
give me the Sermon on the Mount and its sublime morality; that is
Christianity enough for me.' Well, I should be disposed to say so pretty
nearly too, if you will take _all_ the Sermon on the Mount, and not go
picking and choosing bits out of it. For I am sure that if you will take
the whole of its teaching you will find yourself next door to, if not in
the very inmost chamber of, the mysticism of the Gospel of John and the
theology of Paul.
I. I ask you, then, to note that the Sermon claims for Jesus Christ the
authority of supremacy above all former revelation and revealers.
'Think not,' says He, 'that I am come to destroy the law or the
prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.' And then He goes on,
in five cases, to illustrate, in a very remarkable way, the authority
that He claimed over the former Law, moulding it according to His will.
Now I do not propose to do more than suggest, in a sentence, two points
that I think of importance. Observe that remarkable form of speech, 'I
am come.' May we not fairly say that it implies that He existed before
birth, and that His appearance among men was the result of His own act?
Does it not imply that He was not merely born, but _came_, choosing to
be born just as He chose to die? In what sense can we understand the
Apostle's view that it was an infinite and stupendous act of
condescension in Christ to 'be found in fashion as a man,' unless we
believe that by His own will and act He came forth from the Father and
entered into the world, just as by His own will and act He left the
world and went unto the Father?
But I do not dwell upon that, nor upon another very important
consideration. Why was it that Jesus Christ, at the very beginning of
His mission, felt Himself bound to disclaim any intention of destroying
the law or the prophets? Must not the people have begun to feel that
there was something revolutionary and novel about His teaching, and that
it was threatening to disturb what had been consecrated by ages? So that
it was needful that He should begin His career with this disclaimer of
the intention of destruction. Strange for a divine messenger, if He
simply stood as one in the line and sequence of divine revelation, to
begin His work by saying, 'Now, I do not mean to annihilate all that is
behind Me!' The question arises how anybody should have supposed that He
did, and why it should ever have been needful for Him to say that He did
not.
But I pass by all that, and ask you to think how much lies in these
words of our Lord: 'I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.' They imply
a claim that His life was a complete embodiment of God's law. Here is a
man beginning His ministry as a religious teacher, with the assertion,
stupendous, and, upon any other lips but His, insane arrogance, that He
had come to do everything which God demanded, and to set forth before
the world a living Pattern of the whole obedience of a human nature to
the whole law of God. Who is He that said that? And how do we account
for the fact that nineteen centuries have passed, and, excepting in the
case of here and there a bitter foe whose hostility had robbed him of
his common sense, no lip has ventured to say that He claimed too much
for Himself when He said, 'I am come to fulfil the law'; or that He
falsely read the facts of His own experience and consciousness when He
declared, 'I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.'
Still further, here our Lord claims specifically and expressly to fulfil
not only law but prophets. That is to say, He sets Himself forth as the
Reality which had filled the imaginations and the hearts of a whole
nation for centuries; as the living Reality which had been meant by all
those lofty words of seers and prophets in the past. He declares that
all those rapturous forecastings, all those dim anticipations, all those
triumphant promises, were not left to swing _in vacuo_, or to float
about unfulfilled, but that He stood there, the actual Realisation of
them all; and in Him, wrapped up as in a seed, the Kingdom of Heaven was
among men.
And still further, He claims not only personal purity and completeness,
and the fulfilment of all prior and prophetic anticipation, but also He
claims to have, and He exercises, the power of moulding, expanding,
interpreting, and in some cases brushing aside, laws which He and they
alike knew to be the laws of God. I do not need to specify in detail the
instances which are contained in this Sermon on the Mount. But I simply
ask you to consider the formula with which our Lord introduces each of
His references to that subject. 'Ye have heard that it hath been said to
them of old time' so-and-so,--and then follows a command of the Mosaic
law; but '_I_ say unto you' so-and-so,--and then follows a deepening or
a modification or a repeal, of statutes acknowledged by Him and His
hearers to be divine. He certainly claims to speak with the same right
and authority as the old Law did. He as certainly claims to speak with
incomparably higher authority than Moses did, for the latter never
professed to give precepts of his own. He was not the Lawgiver, as he is
often called, but only the messenger of the Lawgiver. But Christ is
Himself the fountain of the laws of His Kingdom. Nor only so, but He
puts Himself without apology or explanation in front of Moses and
asserts power to modify, to set aside, or to re-enact with new
stringency, the precepts of the divine law.
One supposition alone accounts for Christ's attitude to law and prophets
in this Sermon, and that is that the Eternal Wisdom and Personal Word of
God, which at sundry times and in 'divers manners' spake to the old
world by Moses, itself at last, in human form and personal guise, came
here on earth and spake to us men. It is the same Voice that breathed
through the prophets of old, and that spake on the lips of the Christ of
Nazareth; the same Eternal Word who manifested Himself in a 'fiery law'
on Sinai, and in words of no less majesty and of deepened gentleness,
when He gathered the people round about Him, and said to them, 'It hath
been said to them of old time, ... but _I_ say unto you ...'
Here is the sum and climax of all revelation, the last word of the
divine mind and will and heart, to the world. Moses and Elias stand
beside Him on the Mount of Transfiguration, witnesses of His superiority
and servants at His feet, and they vanish into mist and darkness, and
leave there, erect, white-robed, solitary, the unique figure of the One
Lawgiver and the perfect Revealer of God to men.
And this is the authority which struck even on the unsusceptible hearts
of the listening crowds.
II. Still further, let me ask you to consider how, in this same great
Sermon, He claims the authority of One who is unique in His relation to
the Father.
You will find that in it there occurs very frequently the expression,
'_your_ Father which is in Heaven'; or sometimes with the
variation,'_thy_ Father which is in Heaven,' or, 'which seeth in
secret.' But you will also find that whilst our Lord speaks about '_My_
Father which is in Heaven,' He never says '_our_ Father'; excepting in
the exception which proves the rule when He is putting into the lips of
His disciples the great formula of prayer which we call the 'Lord's
Prayer'; and there speaking as through their consciousness, and teaching
them their lesson, He says '_Our_ Father,' not as if He Himself were
praying, but as if He were telling them how to pray. But when He speaks
out of His own consciousness He speaks of '_My_ Father' and '_your_
Father,' never of '_our_ Father.'
And that corresponds with other phenomena in Scripture in our Lord's own
language where you find that always He draws this broad distinction. He
never associates Himself with us in His Sonship. He ever asserts that He
is _the_ Son of God. Even when He wishes to speak with the utmost
tenderness, He bids the weeping Mary hear the message, 'I go unto My
Father and your Father.' This doctrine is thought by many to be one of
those which they get rid of by professing the Christianity of the Sermon
on the Mount. But it is there as plainly as in other parts of Scripture.
If we accept all which it teaches, we cannot escape from the belief that
He is the only begotten and well-beloved Son of the Father; and also
that through Him and in Him we, too, may receive the adoption of sons.
Dear friends, I press this upon you as no mere piece of hard theological
doctrine, but as containing in it the very essentials of all spiritual
life for each of us, that all our spiritual life must come by
participation in Christ, and that we enter into an altogether new and
blessed relation to God when, laying our humble and penitent hands on
the head of that dear Sacrifice that died on the Cross for as, we
through Him cease to be children of wrath and become heirs of God. 'To
as many as received Him, to them gave He authority to become the
children of God, even to them that believe in His name,' but His Sonship
stands unique and unapproachable, though it is the foundation from which
flows all the sonship of the whole family in heaven and in earth. Moses
and the prophets, teachers and guides, Apostles and Helpers, they are
all but the servants of the family; this is the Son through whom we
receive the adoption of sons.
III. We have in this great discourse the authority of One who is
absolute Lord and Master over men.
'Not every one that saith unto me, Lord! Lord! shall enter into the
Kingdom of Heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord! Lord! have we
not prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name done many wonderful works?'
'Whoso heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them, I will liken him
to a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.'
Jesus Christ here comes before the whole race, and claims an absolute
submission. His word is to control, with authoritative and
all-comprehensive scrutiny and power, every aim of our lives, and every
action. In His name we may be strong, in His name we may cast out
devils, in His name we may do many wonderful works. If we build upon Him
we build upon a rock; if we build anywhere else we build upon the sand.
Strange, outrageous claims for a _man_ to make! 'Give me the Sermon on
the Mount, and keep your doctrinal theology,' say people. But I want to
know what kind of morality it is that is all traceable up to this--'Do
as I bid you, My will is your law; My smile is your reward; to obey Me
is perfection.' I think that takes you a good long way into 'theology.'
I think that the Man who said that--and you all know that He said
it--must he either a good deal more or a good deal less than a perfect
man. If He is only that He is not that; for if He is only that, He has
no business to tell me to obey Him. He has no business to substitute His
will for every other law; and you have no business--and it will be at
the peril of your manhood if you do--to take any man, the Man Christ or
any other, as an absolute example and pattern and master.
My brethren, Christ's claim to absolute obedience rests upon His divine
nature and on His redeeming work. He has delivered us from our enemies,
and therefore He commands us. He has given Himself for us, and therefore
He has a right to say, 'Give yourselves to Me.' He is God manifest in
the flesh, and therefore absolute power becomes His lips, and utter
submission is our dignity. To say to Him 'Lord, Lord,' carries us whole
universes beyond saying to Him, 'Rabbi, Rabbi.'
IV. And now, lastly, we have in this great discourse the authority of
our Lord set forth as being the authority of Him who is to be the Judge
of the world.
'Then will _I_ profess unto you I never knew you; depart from _Me_, ye
that work iniquity.' He, the meek, the humble, who never claimed for
Himself anything except what His consciousness compelled Him to assert,
who desired only that men should know Him for what He was, because it
was their life so to know Him, here declares that the whole world is to
be judged by Him, that He has such knowledge of men as will pierce
beneath the surface of professions and will be undazzled by the most
stupendous miracles, and beneath the eloquent words of many a preacher
and the wonderful works of many a so-called Christian philanthropist,
will see the hidden rottenness that they never saw, and, tearing down
the veil, will reveal men at the last to themselves.
That is no human function, that is no work that belongs to a mere
teacher, pattern, martyr, sage, philosopher, or saint. That is a divine
work; and the authority of Him whose final word to each of us will
settle beyond appeal our fate, and reveal beyond cavil our character, is
a divine authority. He has a right to command because He is going to
judge; and the lips that declare the law are the lips that will read the
sentence.
So, my brethren, do you take the whole Christ for yours, the Son of God,
the crown and end of revelation, the sinless and the perfect, who died
on the Cross for our salvation, and loves and pities, and is ready to
help every one of us; who, therefore, commands us with an absolute
authority, and who one day comes to be our Judge? If you turn to Him and
ask Him, 'Art Thou He that should come?' let Him speak for Himself, and
He will answer you: 'I that speak unto thee am He.' When He asks each of
us, as He does now, 'Whom sayest thou that I am?' oh that we may all
answer, with the assent of our understandings, with the love of our
hearts, with the submission of our wills, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son
of the living God.'