Sermon on the Mount, Looking Forward

[HKHaugan]

Sermon on the Mount, Looking Forward

“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
Those recognizable words from the program Star Trek give us a feeling for where the Sermon on the Mount is leading us. If you can see yourself as a spiritual being having a human experience then you are a spiritual being created to explore what lies behind the physical existence in which you find yourself. It starts with the One who came from the reality behind reality, Jesus the Christ, the One through whom all things were made. You are a 'Star ship' with a mission, a lifetime mission, to bring the new life in Jesus and the Body of Christ to those who don't know Him and boldly go where you have never gone before. This is the reason for the Sermon on the Mount. It is the launching platform for your personal Star Trek adventure. You may face unseen hostile forces and attacks from unseen quarters but you have the Creator of the universe as your Captain. He is your way, your truth, your life and your mission.

So let's begin. When you are in the Spirit you move at warp speed. In His Word you are instantaneously beamed into His presence in His dimension. So let's get on with reality as the Lord presents it.

From the Old Testament we know the 10 Commandments summarize the Law and the rest, the writings, history and prophecies are basically commentaries on the Law. The New Testament is the presentation of the Messiah and how He fulfilled the Old. So when Jesus comes as the fulfillment of the Law we discover a numerical parallel. Thus we see the purpose of both Testaments. The first is to declare, through a physical people and physical signs, the presence of God and His plan for mankind. The second is God's purpose of salvation revealed through the prophesied Messiah who is the plan. But both giving us the revelation of the spiritual mind and presence of God establishing humanity as spiritual images of Himself living in physical form. Thus we are not human beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a human experience.

The Sermon on the Mount is basically the spiritual reclamation of man's mind, heart and spirit from the sin and evil into which they fell when they retreated into self and away from God. The parallel is Jesus going to a high place like Moses did. The difference is that Moses went to receive and Jesus came to give. What Jesus does here is to get us think spiritually. Thinking spiritually leads us toward acting spiritually. Let's look at that.

First of all, there are nine Beatitudes, nine blessings (God's touches), completely spiritual in nature. But there are 10 Commandments. If the Lord is the fulfillment of the Law what about the 10th? We'll get to that. Right now it is the spiritual dimension He is moving us to enter. This is what the Lord is emphasizing, everything starts with God the Spirit creating through God the Son by God the Father. Nothing is conceived, planned and done outside of God who is Spirit (Jn.4:24) because there is nothing outside of Him. Everything in existence both visible and invisible has a spiritual beginning in the spiritual mind of God. Our God has taken nothing and made it something. He holds it all in His mind, heart and Spirit. From the most minute physical cell to the unfathomable massiveness of universal invisible space, everything is spiritually conceived and initiated. Space, time, existence and personal reality are all founded spiritually. The more spiritually aware we are the more we think, grow, feel, see and know. The Beatitudes are Jesus bringing the whole spiritual dimension to bear on each individual mind, heart and spirit. This Sermon is His gift enabling us to open up to the vastness that is God's. The Sermon takes us into the experience of the spiritual dimension for which we were created. This world is just the beginning.

But another aspect of this Sermon is it also shows us its opposite reality: sin, evil and their motivator the devil whom Jesus exposed when He was tempted in the wilderness. Here is where the dark negative opposites in the devil's kingdom, his demons, spirits and anti-God attitudes, are exposed by the light of the positive blessings. They become obvious.

Sin reduces us in size, being and quality. The more we sin, by being self-centered and self-indulgent, the smaller we become. Sin shrinks us through fear, anxiety, distrust, suspicion, pride and greed. They shrink us into aloneness, the goal of the devil's plan for each of us. The Sermon on the Mount is designed to do the opposite. It reveals God's plan to expand us, to grow us, to fulfill us, to fill us full with His love to increase our size moment by moment. This is what is revealed by Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount.

The first thing the Sermon opens us to is the presence of an eternal spiritual kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, a limitless expanse of reality He wants us, His images, stunted in growth by sin, to experience. The passport into the Kingdom of Heaven is the Word of God.

Second, just as there are seven days of Creation and each one leads to the next, see how each blessing builds on the preceding one. They are connected and follow a path, a progressive way to grow spiritually. It's completely understandable how Jesus would choose spirituality to begin with. It covers all reality.

Third, this is personal. Every one of us is unique to God and therefore the world around us. No one will ever be like us or has ever been. That's what makes it so personal. That is how we are to Him. We are His children. We need to keep that in mind which is why I repeat, each of us is unique to Him. Our place in the world is to share that uniqueness and only He is the source to enable our journey.