Transcript
I'm Susan Phillips from New College Berkeley, and it is my great joy to welcome you all and to introduce our friend and New College Berkeley co-founder and long-time professor and encourager, the Reverend Earl Palmer. This week, a member of our faculty was talking with me, Dr. Margaret Horwitz, and she told me that she often thinks about the C.S. Lewis phrase, the touchstone of reality. That was the title of Earl's seminar for us last
year. How many of you were here last year? Yeah, true blue fans. And she said that each year's New College seminar with Earl is for her a touchstone of reality. Earl has a great gift for bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ in touch with our particular lives, giving us all that sense of touching the stone, the true faith. And I am grateful for Earl that he has been a touchstone of reality and a means of God's
grace in my life for many, many years. My husband and I moved here in 1976. In college, we'd been going to both a Baptist and an Episcopal church, and when we moved here, people said, you have to go to Earl Palmer's church. Later, we discovered it was Presbyterian. And so for about 15 years, we had the great privilege of learning from Earl as he preached week after week here until he went off to Seattle. I have
also been Earl's colleague on the session of this church, on the boards and faculties of New College Berkeley and Regent College. All of these ministries dedicated wholeheartedly to the education of Christians such that the faith suffuses our everyday life and God's grace flows through us to the world. In working closely with Earl in those settings, I've discovered that not only is he a great preacher and teacher, but he is indeed a peacemaker, and I have been
greatly blessed by that part of who Earl is. But most of us know him, and through these nearly 40 years of teaching for New College, we know him primarily as a great teacher. He offers to us a clear, illuminating exposition of Scripture that teaches us but also nourishes and encourages us. In his forthcoming book, To Run the Race, St. Paul's Second Letter to Timothy, Earl describes the Apostle Paul as a man in Christ, a man who
loves people, ordinary people. This, I believe, is a description also of Earl Palmer, and we today are blessed to be the beloved beneficiaries of his scholarly and pastoral insights. Earl has shared those insights through teaching, service to various ministries, the writing of many books, some of which are available in the Narthex for sale, and speaking on, I think, all the continents, including, I've heard, a rather wild adventure in Antarctica. Mostly, however, he has been a pastor,
caring for congregations in Seattle, Manila, Berkeley, and Washington, D.C., and that pastoral call informs all these other ministries. The Apostle Paul was primarily pastoral, too. In the final chapter of Second Timothy, Paul encourages Timothy, in Palmer's words, to do the work of a welcomer, inviting people into a larger hope. This is what all of us in the priesthood of all believers are to do, is to welcome people and invite them into a larger hope. And
it's exactly what our dear friend and teacher has done through a lifetime of living and speaking the gospel of Jesus Christ. Today, we have the opportunity to hear Earl Palmer teach about the Sermon on the Mount. Would you please join me in welcoming Earl Palmer? Thank you. Wow. Well, thank you, Susan and Sharon, for inviting me once again to come and be with New College Berkeley. Thank you for coming on this wonderful day. It's raining in
California. We're very happy about that, so you're thrilled, even though that means a coffee hour has to be in the gym. But that's all right, because we want the rain. Yes, I am technically retired. You know, I have had a big ministry and was at University Press for all those years, here for 21 years, Manila for six years, and then I did retire technically in 2008 from University Press. But immediately a group of friends wrote me
into a thing that they called Earl Palmer Ministry. It was sort of built on the John Stott model that when John stopped, when he was no longer the rector of All Souls Church, he became rector emeritus. And I am emeritus pastor in several churches, too, including this one and University Press. But then a group of friends helped John Stott to have kind of a wider ministry, you know, in kind of a pastor at large. So that's
really what I am now. But, you know, we're doing what we want to do and Shirley and I are having a great time doing it. And one of the most joyous parts of this whole period of my life now has been once a year to keep this living contact with New College Berkeley because it's been one of the joyous parts of my entire career is being involved with New College Berkeley. And once a year I do
a class here. So you're in my once a year class and I just love it. Our children are doing well and, you know, we are very happy. We're very active grandparents. Now we have eight grandchildren and that's four boys and four girls and they're in a very key age bracket from age 17 down to 11 and then a little tag along boy, Abraham, who's four. So we have this wonderful group of grandchildren that we're keeping track
of. Our three children live nearby so we have nothing to complain about. Liz and Eric are in Tacoma and John lives two minutes from us in Seattle with his two boys and then Ann in Bellingham with her two girls. So you add them all together and we have just had the most joyous time trying to keep up with those kids. We're going to so many games. We're going to every one of the games we possibly can
and it means sometimes two or three a day. And so that is, it's been just, it's been so great. Well, now you guys here today, I have a chance to do some soundings with you and study of three chapters in the New Testament. Matthew five, Matthew six, and Matthew seven. And we'll do our very best to try to give a overview and an understanding of those three chapters which are very famous because they're called the Sermon
on the Mount. In the middle of Jesus' Galilean ministry, he does give a sermon in the good rabbinic tradition. He as a rabbi is supposed to teach his disciples, especially he's supposed to teach the disciples about the law. That is the number one role of a rabbi is to teach, and Jesus is called a rabbi, a teacher, is to teach about the law. Of course the prophets as well but the law especially. And so our Lord
decides to fulfill that ministry. Notice how it starts in Matthew, in Matthew four, the sentences just before the Sermon on the Mount begins. It says, Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. His fame spread throughout Syria, that'd be the northern part, and they brought to him the sick and those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains. And then
they list some of the people that he cured. And great crowds followed him from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, that's the south, and from beyond the Jordan, that would be over in the eastern part, which is what would be called the period, the realm of Syria. They would come from around, people were coming, his fame is spreading, it's in the middle of the Galilean ministry and that's the setting for when Jesus then saw the crowds, he went
into a mountain and he sat down, his disciples came to him. People are wondering, does this just mean the 12 came to him or is it a larger circle that came? We're seeing that a lot of people are following him and the word disciple just means followers. At this point they're not apostles yet, they haven't been sent out. They're disciples, they're learners, they came to him. So you can make up your mind on that, is this
just a small circle or is it a large circle of people, we don't know. And he sat down, which the rabbi's supposed to do when he teaches from the law, sitting down and he began to speak and he taught them. Now that's what we're going to look at today, the Sermon on the Mount. Why should we read the Sermon on the Mount? By the way, we published it for you, so everybody should, if you don't have
a copy, there were 150 of these printed, so you can follow along with the text. And I published it in the new RSV double space so that you can make notes. As I alert you to words, you can make your own notes, that way you're not writing in your own Bible. You can do that too if you want to, but you can write in this little Bible and it'll be a memento to you of this day
that you're spending in the Sermon on the Mount. Well, why should we study the Sermon on the Mount? Well, first of all, because Jesus taught it and we want to learn from Jesus Christ, he is the teacher. And also because he does what he says he's going to do in the sermon, he's going to interpret the law, the Torah. And that is so fundamental and so important to understanding the life of Israel, the life of the
people at that time, how to interpret the law, how to understand the law. So many rabbis are teaching the law. In fact, he would have to do that if he's going to be a legitimate teacher in the eyes of his disciples. In some ways when this happens in the Sermon on the Mount, he's going to make the law harder for us and so that's the problem with the text we're going to read. The text in a
way make the law even harder than it would just appear in its simplest form. But in the middle of the sermon, Jesus is going to teach us how to pray. And that how to pray part is one of the most famous parts of the Sermon on the Mount. It is the Lord's Prayer. We get that in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. So he will teach us how to pray. And in that prayer, we
can ask for help. And then at the end of the sermon, the really good news, some people say, what is the gospel in this Sermon on the Mount? And the really good news of the Sermon on the Mount is the teacher himself. And when we get to the end of the Sermon on the Mount, we meet the teacher in a wonderful, wonderful way when he invites us to ask, knock, seek, and then tells a wonderful parable
at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that shows us that we're wise when we trust him. And so that is this great sermon we'll look at. And when the Sermon on the Mount is all over, Matthew will make this comment when everything is over, he'll say, he'll tell, he'll make this comment. He'll say that the crowds were astounded at his teachings. He taught them with authority and not like their scribes. He wasn't a typical
teacher of the Sermon, of the law. They were struck with the authority that Jesus had. They were struck with who he was when he taught. So we're going to see that too as well. Well, I'm so happy to be here. I should make one introduction, and that is my study assistant. When they formed Earl Palmer Ministry, I have a board that kind of shepherded me, and they gave me a study assistant. So now I have my
fifth study assistant because I've been doing this for five years, and he's out in the back. Chris Thornton, and so we're here. And if you want information on this ministry, you can write your name down. They'll put you on our mailing list if you want to be on that. And also it shows something that we are up to, and that is the Kindlings Muse that once a month we offer up in Seattle for six months from
October to March every year. We offer once a month a special time where I do a book or a theme, and then we have dialogue, and they make a podcast out of that, and they make a recording of it, and it's available on our website, free of charge, people from all over the country. Some of you here have listened regularly to those, what we call Kindlings Muses, those podcasts, and that's sort of our ministry right now,
except that once a year I get to come to New College. Let's pray together. Lord, be our teacher today. We thank you for this sermon that Jesus gave. We thank you for, most of all, for the teacher of the sermon, and how in the middle of all these words that we're going to hear, hope comes, and goodness, and your love shines through, especially when we realize that the one who gives help and the one who makes
sense of it all is the teacher himself. So Lord, thank you for this time that we have to be together. In Christ's name we pray, amen. All right. Well, every rabbi has to teach about the law and explain the law. The law is very simple in its boldest form. Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5, give us the narrative of the Ten Commandments, and the Ten Commandments, interestingly enough, is focused on each of us personally. The people of Israel
are mentioned, but yet it's put in very personal terms, and it presents a understanding of who we are. You could be, describe it this way. The Ten Commandments tells about an upward relationship that we have. It's really, those Ten Commandments deal with three fundamental relationships of a human being. The upward relationship to God himself, and it starts out with the God who has brought us out of captivity. It begins with redemption then, and then it tells
us that there are no other gods, no other gods. Now that is good news, but it is the opening line, no other gods, and then we're given two warnings, and we're told that we live on the earth, we're told not to make any idols of anything on the earth, or in the heavenly realm among angels, we're to worship nothing but this one God. That's good news too, it's a clarification. There are no other gods, there is
this one God, therefore no idols, no representations, nothing that's shadowy things that we should worship of the earth or in the heavenly realm. That rules out seances and all that sort of thing to try to get advice from the stock market. No one knows anything anyway, to give you advice. Don't do it, no idols, and then third, no emptying of, don't empty the name of God, no emptying of his name. That is the word schwa, and
that by the way, interestingly enough, is also the word in the Old Testament for witchcraft, no witchcraft, no emptying or diminishing of the name of God. So those are the three, you might say, the first three commands all have to do with our relationship with God. The fourth command has to do with our relationship with ourselves. It's the great remembering commandment. Six days thou shalt labor, one day thou shalt rest, but you shall remember, and it's
interesting, in Exodus 20, Exodus 20, you shall remember that God created the earth. You shall remember creation, understand who you are, your creation. And then secondly, in Deuteronomy 5, the other remembering of the law, in Deuteronomy 5, you shall remember that you were imprisoned and you were set free from imprisonment, and therefore you shall remember that you were redeemed. So in the fourth commandment, which our Lord said is a commandment in our favor, not against us,
it's for us, we are to remember who we are, and we're to remember that we were redeemed, and then we're to live in a rhythmic relationship with the world around us. Six days thou shalt labor, one day thou shalt rest. That's a rhythmic view of life, and it's marvelous, and that is the fourth commandment. Then all the other commandments deal with the people around us. They're profoundly ethical, and you get the birth of ethics now in
the 10 commandments come here, but now here toward all the people around us. Starting with our parents, after the fourth commandment, we say honor, the first commandment, the first of the ethical commandments, honor your father and mother, and that word honor means weigh heavy. Weigh heavy, it's a worth commandment. Saint Paul will expand it and actually say in Romans 12, honor all people, but here, honor your father and mother. Weigh them heavy, and then the commands
will go on. That's the fifth commandment, and then the next commandment is thou shalt not murder, rasha means to cross over, and murder, take another person's life. Life is valuable, and then the relationship with marriage, thou shalt not commit adultery, those are the nots. So we get now a whole series of nots. After the positive commandment, honor, then we get a series of nots, not murder, not adultery, not stealing, not false words, and then finally, not
coveting, and those are the commands. It's simple, these ethical commands deal with the people around us, so we're seen in community, we're seen not just in a solitary relationship, we're seen as rememberers, and then we're seen as people who relate, starting with your parents, then it's interesting that thou shalt not cross over the life of another person, and then adultery, thou shalt not violate the commitment you made in marriage, and then not stealing, not false words,
and not coveting. So Jesus now is going to take this law and explain it. The regions say, why does he have to explain it? It's so simple, when you see it in this basic outline of Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5. But Leviticus and Deuteronomy both give what we call the expansion of the law. So the law is greatly expanded and explained in Leviticus, explained further in Deuteronomy with great complexity, and you can see therefore why the rabbis
for the first century had to take all of the complex implications of the law and spell them out and explain them. And so that's why a rabbi was expected, not only to understand the basic outline of the Ten Commandments, this basic worldview of who you are, it's a beautiful view of who you are. It sees you in terms of four relationships, the relationship you have with God, the relationship you have with the earth, the relationship you
have with yourself, and the relationship you have with everybody around you. Four relationships. It also shows what the crisis is in life. The crisis happens when there's a break in your relationship with God. If there's a break in terms of your understanding of who you are and you become non-rhythmic, and you become, you forget who you are, you forget you were redeemed, you forget your belovedness, and then when there's a break toward your neighbor, that's
the crisis. So the law gives an ideal view of who we are, but it also gets us ready for when things go wrong. And then we need to have them healed. And so the law does that. So you can see why by the first century, a rabbi would have to explain and interpret the law, especially all the technical parts. And as you know, if you've looked at the ministry of our Lord, he seemed to have more
controversies with Pharisees and others around him over the handling of the fourth commandment. Six days thou shalt labor, one day thou shalt rest. What constitutes rest? Should you eat an egg that had been laid on the Sabbath? Had the chicken worked on the Sabbath? Therefore, should you not eat that egg? And they tried to cover some of those things and solve those problems. If an animal fell into the ditch, our Lord actually makes reference to this
because there were hardcore teachers that said when an animal fell in the ditch, he should let, you can't help him up on Sunday on Sabbath because that's your day to rest. You should not do it. Then Jesus said, well then you leave him to die. And so then Jesus himself criticized that kind of narrow interpreting of the law by saying, no, you're to do good on the Sabbath. You're to do good on the Sabbath. And so
Jesus had to work with this Sabbath law because many people criticize him because they said he worked on the Sabbath or he healed a man who then carried his bed on the Sabbath. So this becomes a controversial law. But then all the relationships toward your neighbor become complicated and therefore they need to be interpreted. So you can see they need to have an interpretation of the law. Our Lord decides to use Psalm one and Psalm, there
are two Psalms in the book of Psalms that are called the great law Psalms, the Torah Psalms. One is Psalm one and the other is Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is actually an acrostic Psalm which goes through the entire Hebrew alphabet and honors the law starting with the letter A Aleph and moves all the way to Tao and goes through the whole Hebrew alphabet with a poem about each letter of the alphabet to show how great the
law is. That's Psalm 119. Psalm one is not called Psalm one just because it happens to have its numbering at that level. It is the most important of the Psalms because it is the great Psalm of the law. And Psalm one is, you'll see the outline for the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus uses will basically be Psalm one. Listen to it. Blessed are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or take the
path of sinners and the path they tread or sit in the seat of scoffers but their delight is in the law. And the word there is Torah. Torah is the Hebrew word for law. It means it comes from the Hebrew word to throw the rock to show you the right way. That is what Torah means. It's the law shows you the way, the way you should go. So their delight is in the law, the Torah of
the Lord. And on his law they meditate day and night. And then the Psalm goes on with a promise. They're like a tree planted by the streams of water. Our Lord's gonna pick up that image in the Sermon on the Mount. They yield their fruit in the season. Remember he says you can tell a person by their fruit. That's right from this Psalm. And their leaves don't wither. In all they do they prosper. The wicked are
not so. They're like the chaff that the wind drives away. In other words there are consequences to when the law is broken. We saw the crisis of the law. When the law becomes crisis, it becomes a crisis of the breakage of the law. There's going to be consequences. And they'll be like when the law is followed there's good results. When it isn't followed there's a crisis. And here's the description of the crisis. The wicked are not
so. They're like the chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment. Sinners in the congregation of the righteous, the law watches over the way of the righteous, the way of the wicked will perish. It perishes. Our Lord will in the Sermon on the Mount will follow that Psalm. He'll have one reference to tree and fruit. But he'll end the Psalm with his own parable which is the same parable but
he improves it that you have at the end of Psalm one. Psalm one says the tree that, the good tree bears fruit. The tree that is not following the Torah is like chaff. It blows away. Jesus will say the wise man hears these words of mine, builds his life on a rock. The storm comes, the wind comes, blows against it, the house stands. The foolish man who hears these words of mine and doesn't do them is
like a man or woman who builds their house on sand. The floods come, the winds come, the rain comes. It washes away and great is the loss of that house. And that's the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Notice the same ending as in Psalm one. So Psalm one is your clue to what Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, he starts the Sermon on the Mount the same way as Psalm
one does. Oh, by the way, the Psalm 119, remember I told you it starts with Aleph is the first word. And so Psalm 119 starts that the blessed is the person who follows the Torah of the Lord. Starts the same way as Psalm one with the same word blessed. Now the word that's used for bless in Psalm one is a Hebrew word. It would look like this in English, a shar. If you're Hebrew, it would be
like this. You know, Hebrew only has three letters for every word. They don't have vowels, only consonants, except the one sort of vowel in Hebrew is the Aleph, A. A-S-R, ashar. There are two words for blessed in the Hebrew vocabulary. One is this word, a shar. The other one is the word Barak. Again, in Hebrew, only three letters, three consonants for every Hebrew word when you're putting it in English, barak. And barak would
look like this in Hebrew. And it means to bow. So these are the two great words that are translated blessed in the Hebrew Bible. The one barak is used since it's the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It's the second poem in 119 is barak, the blessing that comes from God for us when we follow the law. And you see that here. But barak means bow. It's the Hebrew worship word. And for instance, Psalm 103. Bless
the Lord, O my soul, and all is in the bless his holy name. That is the word barak, bow. It's the worship word. The only thing about Hebrew that's interesting is in Hebrew, when a word does double duty, which the Hebrew language being more primitive language, words do double duty. For instance, when the word barak is used for God, and it is used in the great number six blessing. Remember when the blessing was given to Aaron.
The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace. The great blessing. The greatest benediction in all the Old Testament. That word for blessed there is barak. But it doesn't mean that God bows to us. It means he stoops to us. So stoop is when referencing God. Bow when it references us. We
bow, he stoops. And so it's a wonderful grace word in the great blessing that was given to Aaron. The Lord bless you, see, stoop toward you and make his face shine upon you, that's truth, and be gracious to you, there's love, and give you shalom, peace, fulfillment. That's the tree that bears fruit, see? That's the great blessing. But that is the word barak. But that's not the word used in Psalm one and in Psalm 119 in
the first poem. It's the word ashar. Now let me tell you what ashar means. In the Hebrew language, every word is concrete. Barak, bow, or stoop, depending on whether it's referring to God, referring to us. Ashar is a word that's used always for us. It means to follow the road. To follow or to find the right road. That's ashar, I love this word. Ashar is used in the Proverbs a lot. The blessed man is the one
who's wise and follows the advice of his parents. You're blessed, notice Psalm one, when you don't sit in the seat of scoffers, but you walk in the way of the Torah. When you walk, by the way, the symbol of New College Berkeley is novite vitae ambulan. New life, walking. New life, walking in Christ. Saint Augustine has another one of those ambulando phrases. He says ambulando solvitur, servitor, which means you find your answer while you're walking. While
you're walking, you find the answer. Miss Mears put it this way, you can't steer a parked car. The car's gotta be moving if you're gonna steer it. And so that's ambulando solvitur, that's Saint Augustine. New College comes close to it with new life, walking in Christ. Walking, notice that's Psalm one. You walk and you find the truth. Ambulando, see, ambulando solvitur. If you wanna make that little Latin quotation as one of yours to put in your
Bible, ambulando solvitur, you find your way when you're walking. C.S. Lewis puts it this way. Remember when Jill falls and starts to cry, and then Lewis makes a great line. Crying is all right in a way as long as it lasts, but sooner or later you have to stop and then you have to decide what to do. Or where to go, or where to move. You just can't sit there, see Jill's weeping. And then Lewis
makes this little aside comment. Crying is all right in a way while it lasts, you gotta cry. But sooner or later you have to stop. And then ambulando, you have to decide where to move. What to do. And that is the way Psalm one begins. Blessed, you're on, okay now I'm gonna translate blessed. You're on the right road when you walk in the way of the Torah, okay? That's also Psalm 119, all right? Now Jesus is
going to start the Sermon on the Mount, not just with one blessing, but he's gonna do a little bit of overkill. He's going to start the Sermon on the Mount with nine of these blessings. But they're all, though he's using the Greek language and uses the word makarios, which is translated in Greek. It's a weak word in Greek, unfortunately. Makarios in Greek means happy. And so many translations of the New Testament will say happy are the
poor in spirit. And we'll get the blessings, they're translated happy. They should, I think they should be translated blessed. You're, keep the word blessed to show that this Hebrew word is involved. Jesus is speaking in Greek, because our Lord taught mostly in Greek because people wouldn't understand his Northern dialect. But he would use the Greek, but he's thinking in the Hebrew underneath it. He's thinking Psalm 1, he's thinking Psalm 119. You're on the right road. And
that's the way the attitudes make sense. So now with that, let's move into our text. Notice how the text begins. Now you can just follow in your printout. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went on the mountain, sat down, the disciples came to him, he began to speak. And he taught them saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. All right, you're on the right road when you're poor in spirit. By
the way, the word spirit there means small case. That's not referring to Holy Spirit, it's referring to our spirit. And again, there's an example of where a word does double duty. Spirit in the New Testament sometimes referring to our spirit, our wind, or who we are. See, we talk about our spiritual state is who we are. And so that's the word, sometimes the word suke, soul, is used synonymously with spirit, but here it's spirit. It's the
wind. It's the wind of who I am. The wind that's blowing through me right now is poor. It is in need. It's parched. It's dry, it's poor. And I know it. That's why when it says, blessed are the, or you're on the right road, when your wind, your spirit, knows you're poor. See? Then comes the second half of each of these blessings is a positive result. For then you will know the kingdom of heaven. Okay, now
I have to explain kingdom. In the New Testament, kingdom language is used to refer to the kingly reign. I owe a debt to Dietrich Bonhoeffer for this. He says, always in the New Testament kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, is referring to the kingly reign of Christ. The kingly reign of God, the kingly reign of God's son, Christ. So it's not a territorial promise, and this is very important, I wish all the prophetic movements remembered this,
that the promise of kingdom in the New Testament is not territorial, it's relationship. It's relationship with the king. That changes everything. If you think, oh, we want a kingdom territory, no, no, you wanna be related to the king, related to the kingly reign of the Lord. And so kingdom of God is used that way. In fact, the Jews used it even that way. Did you know that because of reverence, they didn't want to use the holy
name for God, Yahweh, and only once a year did they use the holy name for God, the he is name, that Moses gave them, and they did it on the day of Yom Kippur, where they used the holy name for God. Otherwise, they used other ways of referring to God, and that's the main way they would refer to God, is kingdom of heaven, the kingly reign. And it's interesting, one rabbinic prayer says, there is no authentic
prayer that does not pray for the kingdom of God. And so when our Lord taught the prayer to us, he followed that, and in that prayer, you're gonna be thy kingdom come. Not a territory come, but the kingly reign come, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. See, Jesus put that in that prayer because he knew that the rabbis insisted that there had to be a reference to the kingdom of God because they
used that instead of using the holy name for God, Yahweh. Now our Lord doesn't abide by that completely though. He uses, in the Lord's prayer, he says when you pray, say our father. This would be considered by some people irreverent. You know, you should just use kingdom language, but he there breaks that tradition, except that Moses did the same thing. In the great Moses prayer, he refers to God as father too. So our Lord knows that
Moses did that, and he does it as well. But here, the way I'm going to interpret, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. They're going to meet the king. You will meet the king. He's the one that can resolve your dryness or your spirit of porness. So you're on the right road when you're poor in spirit and you know it. Notice how that makes a little better sense than to say you're happy. That's why I always was
bothered by Makaria when people would say, oh, the Bible says you're happy when you're poor in spirit. No, you're not happy, but you're on the right road. When you face up to, when Jill is crying, she's not in the wrong place when she's crying, except the crying is all right in a way as long as it lasts, but sooner or later you have to decide what to do. And you have to know what's going to resolve
that porness of spirit. So notice, it starts, blessed, you're on the right road when you're poor in spirit. You're on the right road when you mourn. Well now, who in the world would say you're happy when you mourn? No, you're grieving. It's grief, and our Lord brings that up next. You're on the right road when you grieve. That means you care deeply. And you are weeping, again, Jill, weeping. And then comes a promise, you will be
comforted. There is comfort, and there the Greek word parakletos means there is one who will come alongside of you. It literally means one will come alongside. A great promise, the first, the promise of the king. The second, the promise that the king will come alongside of you when you're mourning, when you're in grief. And then comes the most interesting, one of the most interesting of all the Beatitudes, blessed are the meek. That Greek word, price, means
it's used several times in the New Testament. It's used as one of the fruit of the spirit in Galatians five. It's used by our Lord himself when he says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. I am meek and lowly in heart. Meek, in the, it's only used a few times in the New Testament, but the word means in classical Greek, it's used with reference to animals. Interestingly enough, a meek animal is an animal
like a horse that is trainable, that can be trained. That doesn't mean the horse is weak. No, in fact, that horse is probably stronger than any other horse because he's trainable and can be trained to go into battle. And during Alexander the Great's time, they had all these races to test how much a horse could go into battle and jump over things that other horses would be frightened to jump over because the horse had been trained
and was teachable. So I'm going to translate meek in its generic terms. Blessed are the teachable ones. So you're on the right road when you're teachable. And then comes one of the best promises of all, especially when we think of the modern ecological crisis of the world today, you will inherit the earth. You want to solve the problems of the earth, then be teachable. Figure it out. Learn what is causing carbon buildup in the atmosphere. Talk
about any great beatitude that's an encouragement to science. It's the third beatitude. Blessed are the teachable ones. Our Lord said it. He's not anti-intellectual. He's not anti-learning. Blessed are the teachable, okay? Then you will inherit the earth. Now we're, notice how all these blessings are having to do with that picture I drew of man, his relationship with God, relationship with his neighbor, relationship with the earth. Now the meek one is your relationship to the
earth. All right, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. You're on the right road when you're hungry and thirsty for the truth of God. Righteousness always has to do with the truth of God. And then again, a promise. When you're hungry for that, you can be filled with that. There is food that will nourish your yearning for righteousness, truth, and you can be filled with that. You can, there's food for that. Then one of
the most beautiful. Blessed are the merciful. By the way, the word is eleimos there, which is one of the great Greek words that means specific acts of mercy. It's a specific word. It's not, agape is the huge word, but this is the specific word that is agape love when it becomes totally concrete. And that's the word mercy that's used here. Blessed are the merciful. Are the people who have acts of kindness, specific acts of kindness. Blessed
are the merciful. And then the promise. You, there is mercy that you will find. When you are merciful, you're going to find more of the same. That's the promise. Then blessed are the pure in heart. The word pure means clean here, but it means uncluttered too. The uncluttered heart. Our Lord will have references to this in other ways too. The uncluttered heart. The heart that is able to focus because it's been cleaned of dirt and clutter.
And then the promise is, and you'll see God. God can be seen. God can be found. And you can meet him. And so blessed, you're on the right road when your heart is not cluttered. And then peacemakers. You're on the right road when you're a peacemaker. When you're endeavoring to slow things down, not just to have a truce, but to have a shalom and peace. And then comes another beautiful result, a beautiful promise. You will be
called children of God because God's children are involved in peacemaking. And then comes two hard ones. Blessed, you're on the right road when you are persecuted. This word persecuted is one of the harshest words in the Greek vocabulary. The word in the Greek vocabulary means diogenemos. Diogenemos means to literally run down. It was used in the gladiator games when they would put chariots in the circus and they would run down people that were running around. Criminals
would be thrown down. And sometimes Christians, after Nero accused the Christians of arson, he put Christians into the arena and gladiators with chariots were told that sometimes Nero himself wrote in the chariots, would run down these helpless people. And that became the Greek word for persecute. To persecute means to run somebody down into the ground. To run someone down into the ground. And it's a harsh and horrible word. And our Lord decides to put that word
in the beatitude. Blessed, if you're being run down and it's because of truth, now he repeats the opening one. The king is there. You will meet the king. The kingly reign you will meet. He is there in spite of that persecution. And then finally he has one more in persecution. Blessed are you when people revile and persecute you, utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad. Your reward is great
in heaven for the same way they persecuted the prophets before you. In other words, you're in good company and yet the Lord is going to resolve and fulfill your life in spite of that harshness that you're in the midst of right now. So they're the nine beatitudes. There are nine blessings. And in these nine blessings, notice what's happening. In the nine blessings, this ashar word is the key. Always translate these beatitudes, you're on the right road.
You are on the right road. Even in these harsh issues like grief and the sense of poverty of spirit, it's the right place to be. Pascal put it this way, it's good to be weary and worn out so that you may open your arms to the redeemer. And that is a wonderful promise that when you have that spirit of need, it's a pathway toward the discovery of grace. I'm going to interpret now all these ashar passages,
all these opening beatitudes as pathway words. Okay, now follow me now. They're pathway words. They're words that help you find your way into. So these pathway words find your way into the answer. So these are all questions in a way. And they're things you do, acts and moves you make that move toward finding the answer, finding the truth. So see them in pathway terms. Bonhoeffer helped me tremendously with this. He wrote, in my opinion, the finest
commentary on the Sermon on the Mount really is two books that Bonhoeffer wrote. The one is The Cost of Discipleship, which is his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. And then his book, Ethics, that was written in prison and smuggled through prison guards out to his friend, Eberhard Bethke. But it was in fragments. So that, for instance, if you get this book, it'll come to the bottom of the paragraph and just say that he intended
to write another whole chapter further on this, but he didn't get to do it. So it's an unfinished book, but it is an amazing book in that he continually, in the book Ethics, which he wrote in prison, Cost of Discipleship was written in 1937. This was written during his imprisonment, Ethics. And there are fragments, but they're mainly his going back to the Sermon on the Mount and making comments on it. And he was very interested in
this ashar nature of the Beatitudes, the blessings. We're on the right road when you're poor in spirit. You're on the right road when you're teachable. You're on the right road even when you're persecuted. That may be the right road. It's where you're supposed to be right now. But there is a positive answer. There is a positive place you're moving to. And he decided to develop a thesis on that that I found very helpful. And I'm gonna
read one little quotation from Bonhoeffer for you. He says, it has now become clear that the ultimate, the last things, the grace that we're looking for must make room for the penultimate, the next to the last thing. And one of the famous lines from Bonhoeffer in his letters and papers in prison is, you cannot say the last word until you've said the next to the last word. The next to the last word is the law, which
prepares you for the last word. But you've gotta hear the next to the last word before you hear the last word. And in a way, Bonhoeffer is treating, and I'm going to do that now with all the Beatitudes, the Beatitudes, these blessings, the beginning, you're on the right road, that's the next to the last word. And then the answers come, they're the last word. Are we together? So the next to the last word prepares you for
the last word. So he says, the last word makes room for the penultimate and the things before the last. We must therefore consider what this penultimate means more closely. And I'll just read a couple more sentences. What is this penultimate? It is everything that precedes the ultimate. Everything that precedes the justification of the sinner by grace alone. Everything which is to be regarded as leading up to the last things when the last thing has been found.
It is at the same time, everything that follows the ultimate and then precedes it. So the ultimate grace makes room for this journey. There's a journey that every one of us are on to find and to discover the new life. Ambulando, we are walking to find the new life. We find it walking. As we journey with these beatitudes on the right road toward finding the grace. This is not works righteousness. Bonhoeffer makes it very clear in
Cossack of the Sabbath, he's not talking about works righteousness, but he's talking about the fact, and Luther makes the same point, that there is the next to the last word before the last word. And that means that when you see this next to the last word, that's happening, it's valid in itself, but it can't just live by itself. For example, take the first half of the sentence, pure in spirit. If you had only poor in spirit,
blessed are the poor in spirit. And you have that all by itself without discovering the king, the one who can come alongside of you when you're mourning, come alongside of you when you're poor in spirit, like Pascal again, good to be weary and worn out in the vain pursuit of the true good, so that you may open your arms to the redeemer, who then can heal you in your poorness of spirit. But if you had only
poorness of spirit without the redeemer, you then have depression, just depression. And that isn't where you want to end your life, that's Lewis's point, crying is all right in a way while it lasts. Sooner or later, you have to stop and decide what to do. You have to make the discovery. So notice the discovery comes after the journey. So the journey is happening and nothing is lost. This journey is a part of, and that's what Bonhoeffer
goes on to say, this penultimate, this journey part becomes a part of the answer itself. It's a part of the whole. And that was the St. Augustine quote, ambulando servitude. While you're walking, the discovery comes in on you. Jesus Christ finds you. Remember the road to Emmaus incident after the resurrection? That's Rembrandt's greatest painting of the resurrection. Was not Christ meeting the disciples in the upper room, but was the people that had walked away and thought
we had hoped that he would be the redeemer, but I guess it's all lost now. And then Jesus talks to them. It's interesting what the text says in Luke. He told them all about the Old Testament. He took them on the journey of the law and the prophets and showed that that suffering had to happen. And then when they broke bread, it suddenly dawned on them. And Rembrandt's great painting of road to Emmaus is that moment
when the people having supper realize this is Jesus Christ. Here he is. He found us. We were particularly looking except we were lost. And we knew we were lost. And we said we had hoped he would be the redeemer. And now we realize all is lost. It's just like Bach's, the Passion of St. Matthew, that great line before you get to the resurrection where he said, ah, Golgotha, unhappy Golgotha, who will be the world's redeemer now?
We have seen the redeemer killed. Who can help us now? And then on the third day we realize that death could not hold him. But still, see, everything is a part of the whole. That penultimate is part too. And the thing that's good about that is that a lot of people are on that first part of the journey. They're not even Christians. They don't even understand. They're on the first part of the journey, but they are,
and one of the roles we need to play with one another is to see that the journey we're on now, it has a resolution. It has an answer. And at this point I want to tell you an interesting book I've just read. This is a great book. I saw the New York Times review two weeks ago and I immediately was so struck by the review that I called up the University Bookstore and got the last copy
at University Bookstore in Seattle. It's called Not I. Anybody here read this book? Well, the New York Times did a huge article on it in the book review section just two weeks ago. It's The Memoirs of a German Childhood, written by Joachim Fest, quite a famous German author. And it was published, actually it was put into print in 2006, just before he died. But it's the story of this young man growing up in Germany. He was
born in 1926, Joachim Fest, and he grew up in a German family. And the book he tells you at the beginning is mainly about his father. His father was a Roman Catholic headmaster of a school in Germany. And in 1933, he was part of a Catholic action group of Catholic laymen. And when Adolf Hitler was able to become Chancellor and took over and then inserted, exercised tremendous control over the schooling and everything of the German society,
he was called in and was dismissed from his headmastership because of being in this Catholic men's group. And he was opposed to what was happening in the Third Reich at that time, and he had been sort of outspoken, so he was fired. And that happens at the beginning of this book. And he had three boys, his oldest son Wolfgang, Wolfgang and then his son Joachim, and then the younger son Winifred, and then two daughters. And he
took his boys, who were the older boys, and he took them, and this book tells a story of how they had dinner every night, well, they had two dinners. They had the dinner for the younger girls, and then the older boys had dinner with the mother and father later. So the girls ate first, but the boys ate with the father and mother after because the father wanted to talk politics with them and wanted to explain what
was happening in Germany right in front of their eyes. And he had a, the first time they met, after he'd lost his position and everything was, and he never got his post back until after the war, but he gave them a, he gave them a saying. In fact, it becomes a very, I'll write it down for you because it became very important in the life of this book. He took his boys into his confidence, and he
said, I want you to memorize this. Don't write it, I want you to memorize it, and don't tell anybody it's just ours. And so he gave them this great Latin quotation. Etium si omnes, ego non, exclamation mark. And they would memorize this. And it was going to be their life verse for these boys from this father, this Christian father with his boys. And it was this, it's a quotation from Matthew 26:33. Even if all others
do, I do not. And that's what this book is all about. And like the father did not allow his boys to join the Hitler Youth. And he got into great trouble for this. And one way he got out of it was he got the boys moved to another school, and then they didn't force them to join the Hitler Youth there. Though the boys all ended up in the army, so did he end up in the army.
He ended up in a Russian prison camp, almost died. Yakim was in an American prison camp for two years, and his other brother was able to evade the draft at the last minute because he was only 17 years old. And then his older brother was killed in the war. So, but they all ended up in the army. But this young man is the writer of the story. But they had this, etium si omnis ego non. Others,
even if all others do, I do not. And that was the way the father kept, they kept their sanity. And he tells about how they kept their sanity through all of this. And it was very difficult and very heartbreaking. And he goes into all of that. But at the end of the war, an amazing thing happened. I should say that during that time, there were three occasions where the Gestapo raided their house to search for, they
were mainly searching for documents, these Catholic documents that they wanted to find. And then they could put the father in prison. His father's name was Johannes. And on three occasions, just before the Gestapo arrived, a mysterious anonymous phone call came saying, they're coming to your house. And then he would put the phone down. And that gave them about 30 minutes to put everything away and hide stuff. And then the Gestapo came and did three investigations of
the house and never found anything. When the war was over, he met a man whose name is Fengler, who was a very key Nazi leader. They lived in Berlin, so it was in Berlin. And he was a member of the Nazi party and a very key player in that whole period. My father, he met him and they wanted to talk and he realized that Fengler wanted, I did not want to drag Fengler into a political argument.
He refused to be sidetracked, this is the father. He didn't want to get into a debate that would lead nowhere. And he told Fengler, merely looking for an answer to a simple question. I just want an answer to a simple question. Which, after all, reflected very well on him. After a lengthy exchange, Fengler admitted that he had been the caller. And when my father inquired, why, had you been ready to do so? His response was, perhaps
it was the decent thing to do. This guy stayed a Nazi. And in fact, when Fengler's father met with him, his father now had been rehabilitated after the war and became, again, a headmaster, was quite a prominent person in Germany. And he could have written a document for him to get Fengler off of punishments from the Allies because he had been a member of the Nazi party. And he said that he did respect him because he
didn't ask for an exoneration certificate. He didn't ask for it. But he did admit, finally, that he had called three times, though here he was, involved with the Gestapo, called three times to protect this family, even though he was so angry at this family. There's one scene where he comes to the house and warns them that if your youth are not in the Hitler Youth, and if they're not in it, you don't realize how much you'll
have to pay for that. And then they got the kids to move to another school, so they got, again, didn't have to join the Hitler Youth until they got in the Army, of course. But then they were in the Army. But isn't it interesting, Fengler showed an act of mercy. He's not a Christian. And yet he showed an act of mercy. And that act of mercy is, again, a part of a pathway. It is a pathway.
It's a pathway toward the discovery of mercy. That's what it says, you will discover mercy when you take that merciful route. You will make that discovery. C.S. Lewis tells a story in Surprise by Joy that when he was in World War I, he was in the Battle of Somes, and one man that was his commanding officer who was killed right in front of Lewis's eyes, and that's why Lewis carried shrapnel the rest of his life,
but a man named Johnson, and he said, God rest him, he would have become my lifelong friend had he not been killed. And he tells a point that this man Johnson, who was not yet, he says, not yet a believer, but he was one who led me toward the importance of goodness. And then he makes this comment about having read Chesterton. He says, whenever I saw goodness, I admired it, though I had no intention of being
good myself. But when I saw goodness, I admired it, I respected it. And I thought to myself, that's a little bit of what Bonhoeffer's getting at about penultimate versus ultimate. When you see mercy, and did you know that Bonhoeffer's books, like this book, Ethics, was smuggled out of a very high-powered SS prison camp. He ended up in Schlossenberg, where he was then executed, but his documents were smuggled by many guards, and that's how Eberhard Bethke
got them. Guards who were merciful, who cared, who reached out to Bonhoeffer. Then there were horrors that were going on in the Nazi regime, but yet those acts of kindness were happening, and they were, what Bonhoeffer calls, they were penultimate. They are not the ultimate, but they get there, it's sort of like, Lewis has a line that sometimes, when you see a stream coming down, at the lower reach of the stream, you see some signs of
grace, and they're happening down here, but there's a higher part of the stream that you're not even aware of at this point, and the person that's doing it is not even aware that that grace is coming from a higher source. And it's your job to point them toward that higher source, to find that higher source, which is the source of that kindness. But when you see the kindness, you're grateful for it. You're thankful for it. You're
thankful when you see the fact that this man, Fengler, three times phoned these people that he was angry at and protected them from the Gestapo raid, knowing that his father would have been put in prison. So he did that, and I love the line. It just seemed the decent thing to do. Wow, the merciful thing to do. So that's why the New Testament never makes light of mercy, never makes light of when you see it. Wherever
it comes from, does that mean that that mercy is equal to our redemption? No, but it is preparing us for the redemption. It's preparing us for the fulfillment. And that's the way, I believe, the Sermon on the Mount begins. It begins that way. And now we move on to two great statements that follow this, and then we'll take our coffee break. As soon as these nine blessings, these nine, and let's now use this language, these nine
roadways that Jesus is giving, and that's why Ashar is dominating the theme. These are roadways that will bring you toward Jesus Christ. By the way, can I say that with regard to Bible study? I've made a point of this. The other day I did a kindling muse on how to study the Bible, and I said, you know, my philosophy on studying the Bible when I had small groups, and the small group that I was in right
here at Barrington Hall was that way, I say to people when they're reading the Bible, read the Bible like you read any other book. You don't have to say this is the word of God when you're reading the Bible, just read it. Read the text, and you don't even have to agree with everything in the text. When I led little Bible study groups when I was at Princeton, I figured some weeks Paul wins, some weeks he
loses with this group. But sooner or later, the text would always bring the reader to the living center of the text, who is Jesus Christ. He is the one who wins our respect. But the text brings us to him, and that's why you don't have to start reading the text by saying this is the word of God, you don't have to do that. Just read it, like you'd read any other book. In fact, Karl Barth's great
Commentary on Romans, which converted him, just like Luther's Commentary on Romans converted him, and that's when Karl Barth became a Christ-centered man, but when he wrote his Commentary on Romans, some critics said to Barth, they said, you are a Bibliolater, you're worshiping the Bible. So in his third edition, so yes, when you get the Barth Commentary on Romans, you should get all the editions, because the introductions to all the editions appear in the Oxford, if
you get the Oxford copy. And in the third edition, he answered his critics who said, you are worshiping the Bible. He said, no, no, you can't accuse me of being a Biblicist. I didn't worship the Bible. All I did, and I love this line from Barth, is I read Saint Paul with equal seriousness with which I read my own thoughts. I just said, he's equal with me on thoughts, but I'll see what he says, and what
I found is that he brought me, like Luther in Romans 8, he brought me to Jesus Christ, and it was Jesus Christ who won me, and I think that's the way, that is the sense of these nine blessings. They're roadways toward the one who can solve and heal, all the, especially the persecution ones, especially the ones on grief, the one on poor spirit, he's the one that can answer those questions. Now, with that in mind, notice
what Jesus then goes on to say, you're the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, now I have to do, I have to be critical of the RSV text here. Did you know that there's only one word used here, not three words, and the word that's used is morainthe. I should write that down, because this is an interesting word because of English equivalent, morainthe, so morainthe, we get the word moron from that
word, and it means literally tainted, it means tainted, or it means away from its nature, and that's why a moron used in intellectual language would be a mind that's away from its intention, away from its clarity, away from its clear thinking, and so that's the word that's used here, and so it should be read literally if you want to make notes here, if salt has morainthe, if it's tainted or away from what it's meant to be,
see it's not what it's meant to be, like a moron used mentally is not the kind of mind I'm supposed to have, so if salt has morainthe tainted, it's a little bit like the Dead Sea, the Dead Sea is salty, believe me, I've been in it, don't take a little spoonful of it and put it on your steak, because there's copper in it, there's all kinds of chemicals in the Dead Sea as well as salt, but
of course there's a tremendous amount of salt, now if you purified it like they do in San Jose out here in the salt beds, you could use that salt, but otherwise don't take a spoonful of the East Bay, which is salty, and put it on your meat, because it's morainthe, it's tainted, it's contaminated, it does have a use for the pathway, notice, use it for the pathway where you don't want anything to grow, okay, and believe
me, if you brought a bottle of Dead Sea water back and put it on your pathway, you will not have any problem with weeds on that pathway, believe me, nothing is going to grow on that pathway if you could get a quart of Dead Sea water and bring it here, maybe even great salt lake water, but notice, if you're the salt of the earth, but if the salt has morainthe, if it's not what it's meant to
be, if it's not pure, if it's not true salt, okay, it can't be restored, it no longer good for anything, but it is good to throw on the path, all right. Now, I've got, I want to be really careful here with you now, he's talking to these disciples and saying, you're meant to be salty, don't treat this passage as if salt were a spice, and I've heard whole sermons on that, if you've lost your tang and
you don't taste good anymore, no, salt in the New Testament era was used to purify, not to purify, but it's used to preserve fish, it's a preservative, and so he's saying you're a preservative, you're meant to be a preservative, but if you're moranthe, if you're not, if it's contaminated salt, you won't be a good preservative, you'll be good though for the path, I don't think he's saying you lose your salvation, I'm gonna make that on the
next point too, some people misinterpret this, he's not saying, oh, if you're the salt of the earth, but if the salt is contaminated, then you lose yourself, you're no longer salt, no, you're just contaminated salt, so we can't use you on stake, we can use you over here, all right, so in other words, you're not being able to use the way you should be used, okay, you're not on the right road in that sense, but don't
now over read this and say, oh, our Lord now is one of the hard sayings of the Sermon on the Mount, he's now throwing you away, no, and now hold that thought with the next one, and you are the light of the world, a city built on a hill cannot be hid, no one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel, but on a lampstand, it gives light to the whole house, in the same way,
let your light shine before others so they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven, now this is a little milder and a little calmer illustration or parable, but it's really the same parable, he is saying, you are light, notice, first you're a preservative and you're meant to be a preservative, and you are light, he's saying, you're meant to be light, well, light should not be hidden under a sheet, it shouldn't
be hidden, it should be out where it can be seen, all right, so if it's hidden, it's not what it's meant to be, okay, now, with that in mind, I'll give you another text to look up on your own when you get home, read Revelation two, the church at Ephesus, there are seven letters written to seven churches, and the first letter is written to church at Ephesus, the most important church, where John was actually the bishop,
and he says, he honors the church of how, they're very strong against false teaching, they don't allow false teaching, and so he honors them for that, wonderful, wonderful church, you don't allow false teaching, but I have one thing against you, he says, the love you had at the beginning, you left behind, just one little problem, it just happens to be the greatest commandment, but you left that behind, you got the light commandment, you're shining your light,
you don't like the nickelations and all that, good for you, good, good, you do not tolerate false doctrine, good for you, it's only one problem, the light, the love that you had at first, you and literally there, you left it behind, and then you know what he goes on to say, he said, I want you to repent, and if you don't repent, now here's the part again that's been misunderstood by some people, I wrote a book
on Revelation, so I'm up on this right now, he said to them, if you don't repent and return to that first love, I'm gonna remove your lamp stand, now that doesn't mean they're not gonna be saved, but he's not going to use them to light any paths, you're not lightable, I don't want people illuminated by you, you're too negative, you're too angry, you're too bitter, in your battle against injustice, in your battle, that's why some revolutionaries
are not fun to be around, you're just not any fun, you have no sense of humor whatsoever, because you're so intolerant toward people who are wrong, good for you, except, in all of that you left one thing behind, the most important command you left behind, and if you don't repent, I'm gonna remove your lamp stand, he isn't saying I'm gonna d*** you and throw you to hell, instead you're no longer going to be a lamp for
me, nobody's gonna find their way with you, doesn't that make sense, isn't it funny, there are some people that are so right, but they can't lead you anywhere, because you don't wanna follow them, and notice that's the same thing here, Jesus, who is by the way the speaker of the book of Revelation too, is Jesus saying it to the church, but here, through the mouth of John, here, you're the light of the world, wow, you're a
city built in a hill, now no one should squelch that light, that light should be there, and it gives light, in the same way let your light shine, so that they may see your good work, and then the word erg is used there, kalas erg, your excellent work, and then they'll give glory to God, and well, with that the sermon begins, now we take a coffee break, and you'll see in the next section that he says,
I'm not come to destroy the law, I've come to fulfill it.