Saturday, September 24
Behold
Matthew 7:24-29 NLT
“Anyone who listens to my teaching and obeys me is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse, because it is built on rock. But anyone who hears my teaching and ignores it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will fall with a mighty crash.”
After Jesus finished speaking, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, for he taught as one who had real authority—quite unlike the teachers of religious law.
Become
We call this the Sermon on the Mount. In doing so we do it an injustice and lower its tone. In a sermon we take a text and expound it. There is nothing of that here. This is not a sermon—it is a portrait, a portrait of Jesus himself, and of the Father and of the man-to-be. True, he does not set out to present a portrait of himself, but as he draws the lines in the picture of the Father and of the man-to-be we find he is dipping his brush into the deeps of his own life and experience, and gradually we see that “one dear Face,” the interpretation of both God and man. We have not the lines of a code but the lineaments of a Character.
E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Mount.
Be Perfect
But will this ideal work? Is it practicable? Just here is the central area of our skepticism. We are not quite sure that the Sermon on the Mount is the Sermon for the smart. We are not sure, and an unsure place is an unsafe place. We must go on or go back. We must be more Christian or less.
E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Mount.