Sermon On The Mount (Week 9)
To view these notes as a PDF, click here.
SERMON ON THE MOUNT (WEEK 9)
Matthew 7:1-8 NIV: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
The biggest trap of seeking the spiritual is thinking we can somehow arrive at or master a certain spiritual thing, no longer having to worry about it ourselves.
The most important part of following Christ is continuing to follow Christ, which requires constant humility and dependence. The moment we think or act unknowingly out of our own independence, we drift from humility. The most common symptom is thinking, speaking, or acting towards others in ways we would never want to be treated, but feeling justified for doing so.
We forget that others are people. We make them objects, slurs, and labels, holding them in contempt, unworthy of the consideration we ourselves deserve just by being human. This is when we truly judge, moving ourselves from the defendant’s chair to the judge’s bench, a place we are not qualified to sit.
Romans 14:4 NIV: Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
“When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities.” –Martin Buber (1878-1965 AD).
Jesus calls us to see each other not as objects, but rather, as people with objects in our eyes, albeit different in size, circumstance, and consequence.
“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945 AD)
Christ’s ways call us to constantly choose to see both the divine reflection in others and the human limitation in ourselves. This is wisdom for all relationships. Never be comfortable as the judge of others or yourself, sentencing them, but exonerating yourself. Our divine value is equal, as is our need for grace.
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” C.S. Lewis (1898-1963 AD)
“Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart, and especially the hearts of the people of this land, that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” –Book of Common Prayer
