Notes on Matthew 5 and Luke 6; Come Follow Me Lesson, Feb. 18-24

I feel a bit intimidated by posting about the Sermon the Mount, often called the greatest sermon ever given.  I watched one impressive video where Jack Welch spoke about the temple themes and contexts that permeate the Sermon and I'm still working to grasp some of what he presented.  He memorized the Sermon in German as a young missionary and has been studying it in depth for forty years, culminating in many articles and books.  There is a lot of depth, breadth, and meaning in every verse in these chapters.

Sermon on the Mount, Sermon on the Plains, and the Sermon at the Temple

• The more I have studied these chapters and the three different accounts we have of similar sermons, as well as the many other echoes of the Sermon recorded in later scriptures, the more I am convinced of Jack Welch's main theme, that this was no ordinary Sermon.  It was likely given in different places as part of the preparation for further covenants, as happens in 3 Nephi.  Some have pointed out differences between Matthew and Luke's accounts that make it seem as though Matthew's account was given to disciples on an actual mountain, while Luke's smaller portion could have been given to a wider audience who was not as faithful and prepared for the full address.  The Sermon, which is the essence of the gospel, could have been given with variations depending on the audience.  For one thing, Luke's account of the beatitudes includes a corresponding "woe" for every "blessed" given.
• Matthew's account shows Christ as the Moses-like prophet that the Old Testament promised would come.  There are many echoes between the exodus account and Matthew's.  This sermon has many important parallels.  Just as Moses tried to bring the people up to the mountain to see the face of God, so Christ brought his faithful disciples to a mountain to teach them.  The Sermon itself has further parallels, with Christ giving his higher law to the people, not to destroy but to fulfill. Matthew 5:17  "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."  

• The Bible Project says it this way:  "the first words of Matthew’s prologue to the sermon also recall Mosaic imagery. The words “he went up on the mountain” are a verbatim quotation of Exodus 19:3. In Exodus 19:3 the description is of Moses ascending Sinai to receive the law. As others have noted, this particular phrase occurs only three times in the Greek Old Testament. Each of the three times it is in reference to Moses’ ascent to Sinai (Ex 19:3, 24:18, 34:4).
  
  Third, Matthew describes the mountain as “the mountain.” Matthew usually does not use a definite article when referring to a mountain unless a mountain is mentioned in the preceding context (Matt 8:1, 17:9). This would be called the anaphoric use of the article. But in Matthew 5:1, there is no immediately preceding mountain mentioned. This indicates it might point to a par excellence use of the article. Matthew is inviting a comparison with the most prominent mount in the Old Testament.
  
  Finally, Matthew describes Jesus as sitting down to teach. This recalls Moses’ stance when he received God’s law on Mount Sinai. Although the verb in the Hebrew is debated, references in the Talmud show that Jewish interpreters regarded Deuteronomy 9:9 as meaning Moses sat down on the mountain. All three of these details place the sermon under the lens of Sinai. Unfortunately, many note these opening Mosaic parallels and then stop. But the parallels continue throughout the sermon. Matthew’s point seems to be to connect law of the Torah with the law of the new covenant. Jesus delivers the new covenant teaching as the new Moses.

• Luke's account of the sermon on the plain, besides differing in location, also omits a good part of the longer Sermon contained in Matthew 5-7.  

Beatitudes

Matthew gives us 8 qualities to strive for to receive God's blessings:

1. The poor in spirit.  Lynn Wilson says that the New Testament "uses “ptochos/poor(adj.)” 34 times to mean: reduced to beggary, asking alms; destitute of wealth, influence, position, honor; lowly, afflicted; destitute of the Christian virtues and eternal riches; helpless, powerless to accomplish an end; lacking in anything that respects their spirit.."  One comment I heard reduced that down to basically being dependant on God spiritually the way a beggar is dependent.  Both the poor in spirit and they who are persecuted are promised the kingdom of heaven.
2. They that mourn, for they shall be comforted.  What a beautiful promise!  
3. The meek.  From Elder Bednar comes this great definition: "Meekness is a defining attribute of the Redeemer and is distinguished by righteous responsiveness, willing submissiveness, and strong self-restraint . . . The Christlike quality of meekness often is misunderstood in our contemporary world. Meekness is strong, not weak; active, not passive; courageous, not timid; restrained, not excessive; modest, not self-aggrandizing; and gracious, not brash. A meek person is not easily provoked, pretentious, or overbearing and readily acknowledges the accomplishments of others.  Whereas humility generally denotes dependence upon God and the constant need for His guidance and support, a distinguishing characteristic of meekness is a particular spiritual receptivity to learning both from the Holy Ghost and from people who may seem less capable, experienced, or educated, who may not hold important positions, or who otherwise may not appear to have much to contribute."
4. They which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.  We need that sustenance daily in the same way we need food.  This fireside has always been one of my favorites and this short video explains the same concepts.           
5. The merciful for they shall obtain mercy.  This concept, that we receive the same kind of mercy that we give, is echoed many times in the scriptures as well as in later in the Sermon -- Matthew 7:1-2, "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." and in 6:14, "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you"
6. The pure in heart for they shall see God.  Many of the concepts in this sermon have deep ties to the Psalms.  This one hearkens to Psalm 24:3-4: "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?  He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart" I see this as a temple text, as we are promised that like Moses, who ascended to his Mountain, removed the slippers from his feet in that holy place, and spoke to God face to face, we who are pure and faithful to our covenants will be prepared to behold the face of God. (See D&C 84:17-26)
7. The peacemakers. As a mother, I am deeply grateful for the peacemakers in my home.  I hope to cultivate and inspire more of it!
8. They which are persecuted for righteousness' sake.  I love this quote by C. S. Lewis, which helps me understand why enduring persecution without abandoning the other 7 "be's" is so important:  “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. ”  It's great to be meek, merciful, and a peacemaker, but are we willing to keep doing it while someone sneers at us for doing it?  

Salt and Light

• "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men."
• This short article has excellent background information about salt in the time of Christ.  Was it valuable and important?  Yes.  It was used to preserve food, enhance flavor, and as part of each sacrifice in the temple.  It was not as rare as some have said, however.  "Anciently, salt was not scarce in the Holy Land. There was a large mine near the Dead Sea and shallow evaporation pools along the Mediterranean coast."
• I thought this was interesting as well:  "For a time, the Roman Empire gave its soldiers a ration of salt but eventually replaced it with a fixed sum of money for purchasing salt. This is where the word salary comes from (Latin for “salt money”)."
• I'm thinking a great object lesson is to have two bowls of popcorn for my family to sample, one with and one without salt.  
• How can salt lose its savor?  

"When the Savior talked about salt that has “lost his savour” (Matthew 5:13), He was talking about what happens when salt is mixed with other substances: it becomes corrupted and therefore cannot be used in the accustomed ways. So we must keep ourselves pure and unstained by sin and worldly things. The Lord has also said that when we disobey and do not fulfill our duty to be “saviors of men,” we “are as salt that has lost its savor” (D&C 103:10; see also verses 8–9)."

• In thinking about how salt loses its savor, I was reminded of this powerful devotional.  In it, Kerry Muhlestein discusses some of the ways ancient Israel was "halting between two opinions."  They weren't so much trying to decide which way to follow -- God and his laws, or the gods of those around them -- as they were trying to do both.  And we have the same problems today, sometimes without even knowing it:

"We cannot imagine why they would stop worshipping Jehovah and instead worship things carved from wood or stone or molded from metal. We ask ourselves, “What were they thinking? What is wrong with them?” Yet I have found that we should never ask ourselves, “What is wrong with them?” Instead we should ask, “What is wrong with them and me?” If ancient Israel struggled with something, surely we struggle with it as well. We should not ask ourselves if we struggle with the things that tempted them; rather, we should ask how we do the same thing. 

I have also found that we can more easily answer this question when we come to a more accurate view of exactly what ancient Israel was struggling with. I believe we are wrong when we think they stopped worshipping Jehovah and started worshipping other gods. While some did stop worshipping God, most kept worshipping Him—they just added the worship of other gods. They worshipped Jehovah and Asherah or Jehovah and Anat, Ba’al, Chemosh, Molech, and so on. 

The problem is that everyone around them was doing this. Their neighbors had gods that they focused on, but they were also willing to adopt new gods as they encountered them. As Israel drank in the culture around them, it seemed only natural to keep worshipping Jehovah but also to worship the things their neighbors worshipped. Most likely many of them felt just fine about doing this because they continued to feel quite devout toward Jehovah. It is this attempt to worship more than one god at the same time that Elijah addressed on Mount Carmel when he challenged the priests of Ba’al. During that contest he thundered out to Israel: “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). 

The word halt here does not mean “stop,” as we usually think it does. It is used in this scripture in the same way that it is used in the New Testament: to mean that someone is lame or unable to walk. Perhaps a better translation would be “How long limp ye between two opinions?” Elijah was not asking them why they couldn’t choose which god to worship but rather was pointing out that they could not really go anywhere as long as they were trying to worship both gods. . . Now that we know ancient Israel was worshipping both the true God and false gods at the same time, our task is, as I said earlier, not to ask ourselves if but instead how we do the same thing. I believe there is no doubt that we all worship more than one god. For some of us, instead of worshipping both Jehovah and Ba’al, we worship Jehovah and footba’al. For others it is video games, material possessions, or a whole host of other things. Yet over the last twenty years, as I have tried to observe the ways in which we struggle with idolatry, I have become convinced that on the whole we struggle with one kind of false god more than any other. We tend to worship the ideas of the world, and, like those who pull on the waterski rope, we don’t even realize we are doing it.

The problem is that the world has been shouting its ideas at us loudly and incessantly from the time we were very small. We encounter these ideas in our schools, from kindergarten through college. We are inundated with them as we read newspapers, watch TV and movies, or listen to the radio—and in a hundred other ways. Many of the concepts we encounter are harmless enough, but most of the time we are not very careful in sifting through the ideas we hear, and I am certain we have all swallowed a lot of fallacious and dangerous ideas without even realizing it. As President Thomas S. Monson said at the rededication of the Boise Idaho Temple, you “walk in a world saturated with the sophistries of Satan”  

Sadly, Satan’s ideas are so prevalent and often so subtly, consistently, and insidiously conveyed that we usually are not aware we have adopted them. We drink so heavily from the well of the world’s influence that such influence can become part of the fabric of who we are without our even realizing it."

• With this in mind, it is easy for me to see how we can lose our own saltiness and uniqueness by allowing ourselves to hold back from full commitment, being unwilling to be too different from the world, or by refusing to examine our habits and eliminate those that are not good enough for one trying to follow Christ.  Are our media choices just like those around us?  Or do we refuse to watch things that are crude, objectify women, belittle faith, and glorify violence? 
• At a recent regional meeting in Arizona, President Nelson said, "To be faithful to our temple covenants means we are willing to be different — much different — from men and women of the world.  As covenant keepers, our thoughts, behavior, language, entertainment, fashion, grooming and time on the internet — to name a few things — are to be distinct from patterns and habits considered as normal by the world." 
• What corrupting influences do I allow into my life?  What changes should I be making to the way I use my time?
• Christ's injunction not to hide light under a bushel connects to the ideas above but also to that last beatitude about enduring persecution.  If someone is inclined to mock or belittle us for our faith, are we willing to stand as a city on a hill or do we look around for a basket to hide under?  

Living the Full and Higher Law of Christ

• In the next section, verses 17-48, Christ outlines a higher way of living.  Instead of simply not killing your brother, you must also not even be angry.  Instead of simply avoiding adultery (or all forms of sexual sin, which the original meaning indicates), you shouldn't even think about committing it.  Cut off the part of you that offends, Turn the other cheek, and love and bless your enemies.  Easy doctrine, this is not. 
• Elder Holland says this about Christ's doctrine: 

Sadly enough, my young friends, it is a characteristic of our age that if people want any gods at all, they want them to be gods who do not demand much, comfortable gods, smooth gods who not only don’t rock the boat but don’t even row it, gods who pat us on the head, make us giggle, then tell us to run along and pick marigolds.11 

Talk about man creating God in his own image! Sometimes—and this seems the greatest irony of all—these folks invoke the name of Jesus as one who was this kind of “comfortable” God. Really? He who said not only should we not break commandments, but we should not even think about breaking them. And if we do think about breaking them, we have already broken them in our heart. Does that sound like “comfortable” doctrine, easy on the ear and popular down at the village love-in? 

And what of those who just want to look at sin or touch it from a distance? Jesus said with a flash, if your eye offends you, pluck it out. If your hand offends you, cut it off.12 “I came not to [bring] peace, but a sword,”13 He warned those who thought He spoke only soothing platitudes. No wonder that, sermon after sermon, the local communities “pray[ed] him to depart out of their coasts.”14 No wonder, miracle after miracle, His power was attributed not to God but to the devil.15 It is obvious that the bumper sticker question “What would Jesus do?” will not always bring a popular response.

• The word meaning "lust" here is the same word used for covet in the Old Testament.  It also means desire and can be used in passages that refer to good desires too.  We need to train our thoughts and our desires so that we desire what God does.  
• From Elder Neal A. Maxwell:  Each assertion of a righteous desire, each act of service, and each act of worship, however small and incremental, adds to our spiritual momentum. Like Newton’s Second Law, there is a transmitting of acceleration as well as a contagiousness associated with even the small acts of goodness.
  
  Fortunately for us, our loving Lord will work with us, “even if [we] can [do] no more than desire to believe,” providing we will “let this desire work in [us]” (Alma 32:27). Therefore, declared President Joseph F. Smith, “the education then of our desires is one of far-reaching importance to our happiness in life” (Gospel Doctrine, 5th ed. [1939], 297). Such education can lead to sanctification until, said President Brigham Young, “holy desires produce corresponding outward works” (in Journal of Discourses, 6:170). Only by educating and training our desires can they become our allies instead of our enemies!
  
  Some of our present desires, therefore, need to be diminished and then finally dissolved. For instance, the biblical counsel “let not thine heart envy sinners” is directed squarely at those with a sad unsettlement of soul (Prov. 23:17). Once again, we must be honest with ourselves about the consequences of our desires, which follow as the night, the day. Similarly faced with life’s so-called “bad breaks,” the natural man desires to wallow in self-pity; therefore this desire must go too.
  
  But dissolution of wrong desires is only part of it. For instance, what is now only a weak desire to be a better spouse, father, or mother needs to become a stronger desire, just as Abraham experienced divine discontent and desired greater happiness and knowledge (see Abr. 1:2).

• What are my desires?  How do I better train them so they are my allies instead of enemies?  
• In regards to Christ's prohibition of divorce, Elder Oaks quoted these verses and then said, "The kind of marriage required for exaltation—eternal in duration and godlike in quality—does not contemplate divorce. In the temples of the Lord, couples are married for all eternity. But some marriages do not progress toward that ideal. Because “of the hardness of [our] hearts,” the Lord does not currently enforce the consequences of the celestial standard. He permits divorced persons to marry again without the stain of immorality specified in the higher law. Unless a divorced member has committed serious transgressions, he or she can become eligible for a temple recommend under the same worthiness standards that apply to other members."  

Becoming Perfect . . . Eventually

• Matthew says, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."  Elder Nelson explained the meaning of this injunction in this address:

In Matt. 5:48, the term perfect was translated from the Greek teleios, which means “complete.” Teleios is an adjective derived from the noun telos, which means “end.”10 The infinitive form of the verb is teleiono, which means “to reach a distant end, to be fully developed, to consummate, or to finish.”11 Please note that the word does not imply “freedom from error”; it implies “achieving a distant objective.” In fact, when writers of the Greek New Testament wished to describe perfection of behavior—precision or excellence of human effort—they did not employ a form of teleios; instead, they chose different words.12

Teleios is not a total stranger to us. From it comes the prefix tele- that we use every day. Telephone literally means “distant talk.” Television means “to see distantly.” Telephoto means “distant light,” and so on.

With that background in mind, let us consider another highly significant statement made by the Lord. Just prior to his crucifixion, he said that on “the third day I shall be perfected.”13 Think of that! The sinless, errorless Lord—already perfect by our mortal standards—proclaimed his own state of perfection yet to be in the future.14 His eternal perfection would follow his resurrection and receipt of “all power … in heaven and in earth.”15 

The perfection that the Savior envisions for us is much more than errorless performance. It is the eternal expectation as expressed by the Lord in his great intercessory prayer to his Father—that we might be made perfect and be able to dwell with them in the eternities ahead.16

• He finished the address with this encouraging thought:  We need not be dismayed if our earnest efforts toward perfection now seem so arduous and endless. Perfection is pending. It can come in full only after the Resurrection and only through the Lord. It awaits all who love him and keep his commandments. It includes thrones, kingdoms, principalities, powers, and dominions.41 It is the end for which we are to endure.42 It is the eternal perfection that God has in store for each of us. I so testify in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

 Christ's Miracles and Ministry in Luke 6

• While the lesson manual focuses mainly on the Sermon on the Mount and on the plain, there are also several beautiful passages in Luke 6 about Christ's ministry.  Luke outlines some controversy over Christ's and his disciple's use of the Sabbath.  He heals a withered hand on the Sabbath after asking the scribes and Pharisees, "Is it lawful on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or to destroy it?"  They were so focused on how they might catch Christ in error.  It's hard for me to fathom how such a thing could fill them with "madness."  Why fight so hard against One who is doing good?  Is it fear of their loss of power?  A true belief in their distorted view of righteousness and the law? 
• In verse 12, we see that Christ " went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God."  If Christ himself needs to set aside time to pray, how much more do I need that in my life?
• In verse 18-19, he heals a whole multitude with his power, all who "sought to touch him."  When you compare the fruits of the scribes and Pharisees (worrying more about Sabbath observance than someone's pain, anger, madness, seeking to destroy Christ), with the fruits of Christ, the difference is clear.  "For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes."  (Luke 6:44)

What did you learn as you studied this week?