When Jesus Sat Down to Teach: The Sermon on the Mount

By Stanley A. Fry

Often the teachings about Jesuswho he was and what he does for usovershadow the teachings of Jesus about how to live our lives. Many of his teachings were grouped together in chapters five through seven of the Gospel of Matthew, commonly called The Sermon on the Mount.

In When Jesus Sat Down to Teach, author Stanley A. Fry offers a collection of sermons that show the life-changing vision Jesus taught and modeled. He brings a fresh look to answering the following questions:

What was the connection between Jesus and St. Paul?
What did Jesus ask his followers to do?
What was Jesus trying to accomplish?
What did Jesus teach about the Kingdom of God?
How did the Christian churches get their doctrines?

Based on the Sermon on the Mount, Fry describes how Jesuss teachings thrust the foundation of most of modern Christendom out the door and replace it with Jesuss own program for the Kingdom of God. Seeking to inform and challenge, When Jesus Sat Down to Teach provides a clearer understanding of what Jesus was calling upon the people to do and it clarifies what Jesus believed about the coming of the Kingdom of God and the meaning of his death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491790311

Stanley A. Fry

Stanley A. Fry has earned two Master’s degrees, one in theology and the other in philosophy, and a PhD in philosophy. He has served for more than forty years as pastor of churches in Brazil and the United States. This is Fry’s fourth book. He lives in Rutland, Vermont with his wife, Edith.

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Copyright © 2016 Stanley Fry.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-9030-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-9031-1 (e)

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iUniverse rev. date:  05/10/2016

CONTENTS

Introduction

1    Trust The Man

2    In Wisdom And In Grace

3    The House On The Rock

4    Blessed Are Those …

5    Walk The Jesus Way

6    The Weepers

7    The Meek Are The Weak?

8    Addicted To Righteousness

9    The Power Of Mercy

10    To Will One Thing

11    Peacemakers

12     … Because Of Me

13    The Mustard Seed And The Yeast

14    Thy Kingdom Come

15    What Is God Up To?

16    The Fragrance Of Christ

Epilogue

This book of sermons is

dedicated to my three sons,

Peter, Andrew, and Kip.

They have supported me with their love and advice

throughout the writing of this book.

INTRODUCTION

T he teachings of Jesus often get lost behind the doctrinal affirmations of the churches. Or, to say it differently, usually the teachings about Jesus—who he was, and what he does for us—overshadow the teachings of Jesus himself about how to live our lives.

Many of his teachings were grouped together in chapters five through seven of the Gospel of Matthew. This part of Matthew is commonly called The Sermon on the Mount.

How Paul Betrayed the Ministry of Jesus of Nazareth

We must begin this story with a look at the letters of Paul. They were the earliest attempts in our modern scriptures to try to explain the significance of the life and death of Jesus.

These letters were written between 50 and 60 CE, and most of their early chapters explain how Jesus’s death and resurrection assure us of our destiny in heaven. Only then does he get around to describing the way we are to live our lives. And though some of his teachings sound like what Jesus was reported to have said, he never once actually credits Jesus with any of them. The most likely signs that Paul had heard of some of the teachings of Jesus are in Romans 12:14–17, 14:10, 1 Corinthians 9:14, and Thessalonians 5:15, 22. That is hardly surprising, of course, since he had never met Jesus, nor had he ever heard him speak. Furthermore, the four Gospels had not yet been written, and all Paul really knew about Jesus’s life was his death and an early tradition about his later resurrection.

Of course, we can understand why Paul’s knowledge was so limited. In Galatians 1:13–18, he says that, following his conversion, he had never talked to any other followers of Jesus but had gone immediately into the Arabian Desert. There he spent three years meditating on what had happened to him. Then he went to Jerusalem, by way of Damascus, where he announced to James and Peter that he was going to preach to the Gentiles. By this time, he had worked out his own idea of what Jesus was doing and his own theory about why he had been crucified as the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

He chose to interpret Jesus’s death on the cross as a substitute for the ancient Jewish practice of sacrificing animals as atonement for the sins of the people. They believed that God was thereby enabled to forgive them whenever they failed to keep the ancient laws of Moses.

That’s why, under Paul’s influence, church tradition has held that Jesus was executed because God needed someone to shed his blood to pay for the sins of all mankind. Most churches to this day rest their claim to offer salvation to the people on this Pauline teaching.

Paul’s own theory, however, was a bit more complicated. In an effort to explain himself more fully, he wrote a number of letters to churches he had founded or visited. The last and longest of his letters was the one to the church in Rome. In it he claimed that the righteousness of Jesus in going to the cross was credited to the account of the believer. Thus it appears that the believers have been relieved of responsibility for righteous behavior. He writes, No one will be declared righteous in his sight by obeying the law; rather through the law we become conscious of sin. But now righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. (Romans 3:20–21)

In this view, there are of course a couple of obvious benefits to the life of the believer. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into his grace by which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:1–2) Such peace and such hope are not to be despised, but they give no guidance for one’s conduct.

However, what follows in Paul’s letter to the Romans makes it clear that some kind of appropriate behavior should be expected. For example, he goes on to employ the analogy of slavery. Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey … But thanks be to God that, though you used to be a slave to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:16–18). What righteousness is this? To what teaching does he refer? Presumably, he refers to Moses’s old laws. But he has already said that the only function of the law is to make us conscious of sin.

This is, clearly, a problem for him. So he tries the analogy of death and resurrection. What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may have a new life (Romans 6:1–4).

This passage seems to say that, for believers in the atonement, new life enables them to obey the old law of the Hebrews, which they couldn’t obey before. But there is still no reference to anything Jesus had taught. In this case, righteousness as obedience to the Law of Moses becomes possible by the gift of new life.

Paul makes one more effort to explain how the believer is able to live a righteous life. He wrote, Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life sets me free from the law of sin and death … Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you (Romans 8:1–2, 9a). Here Paul is calling Jesus by the title Christ. This is the Greek translation of Messiah, which the Jews applied to the king who would deliver them from the yoke of Rome and thus usher in the kingdom of God. So once again it was belief in the death of Jesus on the cross that produced the life of the Spirit in believers.