The Sermon on the Mount for Today
No portion of Scripture has been considered, debated and worried over more than Jesus’ first recorded in the NT, i.e., the Sermon on the Mount. It’s placement in our Bible is purposeful being the essence of our Lord’s impassioned sermons throughout His ministry, that the times called for a special urgency or intensity “for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
Our times call for a special intensity also. It could very well be that the Lord’s coming is soon but if not, there is still the fact that the fabric of our nation is tearing apart in the worst economic crisis perhaps in our national history; our form of Government is changing before our eyes; and a massive spiritual apostasy is taking place, where Christianity is being replaced by a form of selfish obsession (i.e., post-modernism) that really is changing all the rules. Even in our Evangelical church life, entertainment has become central. And also central to the change is a “new morality and system of ethics” that has no anchor in absolute truth. As believers we are called to fight a two-headed philosophical monster, i.e., a True War and Culture War.
At stake is not only the culture at large but the new generation (i.e., our children and grandchildren), who have been brought up confused as they see the “old morality and system of ethics” in their parents or grandparents, but have been educated into the new post-modern thinking as they hear it in school, on TV, but especially from their peers. It is a frightening time. The younger generation have no “mission to die for or purpose for live for,” beyond their struggle for self-fulfillment. Josh McDowell says it is, “The last Christian generation.” Charles Colson calls it “the new Dark Ages,” and I would try to appeal to you that our times calls for a special urgency and intensity, uncommon.
Now I realize some on Giddy will discard me. I know as I’ve ratcheted up my rhetoric in the last year or so, that some are thinking, “Here goes Heck again exaggerating the danger of the times.” And I can imagine most of the younger generation on Giddy concluding that and I find there is little I can do to alert them to these urgent times. But I appreciate the growing number of others who are beginning to grasp the facts of our desperate times, that some critical changes have taken place in our culture that signal the end of God’s blessings on us as a nation. No I do not know if these are the very last days; but I would not be a faithful watchman on the wall if I didn’t plead with you on Giddy that on the horizon is danger coming. It is perverse, dark, vile, in a self-indulgence that embraces Satanic atheism in practice as well as theory.
It is not simplistic to say we need desperately a return to the fear of God and awakening to the “old morality and system of ethics” found in the Sermon on the Mount. As our culture unravels we have opportunity in the trenches of the last days to pitch our battle in these Culture Wars and Truth Wars, to be influential to those who have no hope. So I am imploring you as I call my own soul to account, “Let us immerse ourselves in the very message of our Lord who shocked His day with a message of special urgency calling for an uncommon intensity!”
Sunday February 22 we finish the inspired introductory background to our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount and from then on, seek to give clarity to this intense message for our times. I want us to talk careful historical grammatical and literal interpretation; I want us to worry over meanings and the sages of the past who have grappled with these intense teachings, often in their own context of frightening times; I want us to explore the Theology of the message, capturing the heart of an ethic that centers in the fear of God; I want us to debate implications and drink deeply into the deep well of Jesus’ words; I want us to mine the ore of Truth to stand as a counter culture for our times, “for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” I want Grace Community Church to prepare ourselves for our crisis times, by becoming scholars and careful intense practitioners of the Messianic Message.
Doug
