The End Of Resentment And Of Retaliation ( Matthew 5:38-42 Continued). The answer is, from the very first He was the rejected Messiah. I doubt not that God was pleased in His goodness to give a seal to that prophecy, after a literal sort, not to speak of its true symbolic force. Wherever they are they are either involved in quarrels themselves or the cause of quarrels between others. Now you have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. And surely true Christianity, wherever it has gone has been a preserving influence in that society. This remains a challenge for our generation, as well. Could a Christian become a sharer in a heathen act of worship like that? They are content with a part of righteousness. In this paper, I argue that clinical ethics consults involving non-clinicians should be done away with for two reasons: first, they lack clinical medical experience to properly analyze the ethical issues, and second, moral expertise should give way to medical expertise. He cites the case of a woman who had eight husbands in five years. At its highest the Jewish law of giving was a lovely thing. (verses Matthew 7:5-11.). He has composed and performed original music for five albums. My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:17-18). The Greeks always contrasted they quality which they called praotes ( G4236) , and which the King James Version translates meekness, with the quality which they called hupselokardia, which means lofty-heartedness. And "We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers"( Ephesians 6:12 ). It lays it down that only the man who committed the injury must be punished, and his punishment must be no more than the equivalent of the injury he has inflicted and the damage he has done. And these men were constantly displaying how righteous they were by the types of robes that they wore, by the types of borders around their garments and all. There are cases where an author necessarily departs from the mere order in which the facts took place. At his trial before the High Priest, the High Priest said to him: "I adjure you by the living God--I put you on oath by God himself--tell us if you are the Christ, the son of God" ( Matthew 26:63). The Roman government did not begin this worship; at first, in fact, it did all it could to discourage it. The words of the Last Supper--"This is my body." If we love someone with all our hearts, we are bound to feel that if we gave them a lifetime's service and adoration, if we offered them the sun and the moon and the stars, we would still not have offered enough. It is not his province to regard the person of Christ peculiarly, i.e., His divine glory; neither does he occupy himself with the testimony or service of Jesus here below, of which we all know Mark is the exponent. This word is often used in Greek in a very special way. Christianity did in fact split families as we have seen; and so Christianity was represented as something which divided man and wife, and disrupted the home. It was but once that God forbade his sun to shine on the Egyptians, when the Israelites had light in their dwellings; God could make such a distinction every day. Bless them that curse you. They found active minds not a few that could tell them clearly where the Messiah was to be born: for this God made them dependent upon His word. Now, I shall proceed with all simplicity, the Lord helping me, first taking up the gospel before us, in order to point out, as far as I am enabled to do, the great distinguishing features, as well as the chief contents, that the Holy Ghost has here been pleased to communicate. But when we realize how God has loved us, the one desire of life is to answer to that love, and that is the greatest task in all the world, for it presents a man with a task the like of which the man who thinks in terms of law never dreams of, and with an obligation more binding than the obligation to any law. More than a hundred years after this a man came to Tertullian with this very problem. Because he has had a true encounter with God, and as the result, the kingdom of heaven belongs to him. There are glimpses and even splendours of mercy in the Old Testament. They were really, you know, go at it, go get it; you're honor-bound to do it. "When you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not be slack to pay it; for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and it would be sin in you" ( Deuteronomy 23:21-22). I say not that there is no evidence in the other gospels to demonstrate that He is really Jehovah and Emmanuel too, but that nowhere else have we the same fulness of proof, and the same manifest design, from the very starting point of the gospel, to proclaim the Lord Jesus as being thus a divine Messiah God with us. The beloved John writes, "But whoso hath this worlds good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels [of compassion] from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? And so Jesus is going back more towards the original. She took her full part in life. Sometimes the occupying power exercised this right of compulsion in the most tyrannical and unsympathetic way. It is clear that this word praus ( G4239) means far more than the English word meek now means; it is, in fact, clear that there is no one English word which will translate it, although perhaps the word gentle comes nearest to it. In Matthew 5:44-45, Jesus commands you to "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven." But this isn't easy. So, then, the hunger which this beatitude describes is no genteel hunger which could be satisfied with a mid-morning snack; the thirst of which it speaks is no thirst which could be slaked with a cup of coffee or an iced drink. At a conference at which D. L. Moody was present there were also present some young people who took their Christian faith very seriously. Man is going to dwell together in righteousness, in true justice, in peace. But Jesus said, "Let your light so shine that when men see your good works they will glorify your father in heaven".Now, as we move through the gospels and we study the ministry of Jesus Christ, so often we are going to be reading where the multitudes came to Him and he touched them and he healed them and it said, "they went away glorifying God". The history of the development of the marriage situation amongst the Romans is the history of tragedy. The gospel is, like C.S. The worst of men is "condemned to some kind of nobility.". Sunday on Monday Study Group. Luke, on the contrary, inasmuch as he, for perfectly good and divinely given reason, changes the order, necessarily omits these words. For man may look on the outward appearance but God is looking upon your heart, and that's what God is interested in tonight, a heart that is broken before him. Giving must never be such as to encourage him in laziness and in shiftlessness, for such giving can only hurt. bitterness. For love the whole realm of nature is an offering far too small. Again, it is evident that, as the text stands in the received Greek text and our common English Bible, "Get thee behind me, Satan," is another mistake. If we ask what the right time and the wrong time are, we may say as a general rule for life that it is never right to be angry for any insult or injury done to ourselves; that is something that no Christian must ever resent; but that it is often right to be angry at injuries done to other people. Yet, His childrenthat is, you and Iare children by holy adoption. It really means the Valley of Hinnom. In a time of widespread social disorder, Moses had introduced a law to prevent easy divorce and protect innocent partners (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). They take the sacred names upon their lips in the most thoughtless and irreverent way. The sum of religion is to imitate the God whom we worship. This comes out in His very name. Jesus will show that agape love manifests itself in three radical ways: in blessing, in doing good, and in praying. (ii) It may be that in Jesus' mind there was something more ultimate than this. advice for the good of their souls: by "so doing", you will "heap (ii) The word blessed which is used in each of the beatitudes is a very special word. Our Lord is carried outside the reach of the storm into Egypt. Peter is in the children's bedroom; they have seen him fly; and they wish to fly too. If you're hungering and thirsting after righteousness, surely God will answer that hunger and thirst of your heart and you will be filled with the righteousness of God.Now we come into more positive kind of characteristics. Blessed is the man who is entirely'. John the Baptist preached the nearness of this kingdom in the wilderness of Judaea. In his story of the Temptations he shows us Jesus deliberately choosing the method he will use to carry out his task, and deliberately rejecting methods which he knew to be against the will of God. (iii) Still further, this law was never, at least in any even semi-civilized society, carried out literally. In the ancient world it was very different. . They didn't have much of an elaborate background. shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. "Not one jot or tittle will in any wise pass until it is all fulfilled.". Blessed is the man who is abjectly and completely poverty-stricken. (ii) But the great ground of persecution was in fact political. If in one who was of that sacerdotal succession where the proofs were rigorously required, where a defect in it would destroy his right to the exercise of spiritual functions if in such a case there might legitimately be an omission, clearly there might be the same in regard to the Lord's genealogy; and the more, as this omission was not in the part of which the Scripture speaks nothing, but in the centre of its historical records, whence the merest child could supply the missing links at once. Any excuse, any uncleanness and that can mean anything; didn't like the way she combed her hair, didn't like the way she looked in the morning when she first woke up, and so they had so liberalized the divorce law. Truly, as the French proverb has it, "To know all is to forgive all," but we will never know all until we make the deliberate attempt to get inside the other person's mind and heart. It is the word which is used for mourning for the dead, for the passionate lament for one who was loved. No matter what men do to him, God seeks nothing but their highest good. As James had it: "For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy" ( James 2:13). And so the first possible translation of this beatitude is: Blessed is the man who is always angry at the right time, and. Copyright 2022, Bible Study Tools. The fact is that very few of us in modern conditions of life know what it is to be really hungry or really thirsty. Supposing you are describing a certain character; you put together striking traits from the whole course of his life; you do not restrain yourself to the bare dates at which they occurred. He was the Messiah, but such He was after God's heart, not man's. Here's this weird-looking gal and everybody turns to look who she's exhorting, and I would turn and look too, you know, and just sort of to the people around me saying hmm-hmm. He did not come to bring an end to it but to fulfill it, and he fulfilled the requirements of the law for us, dying in our place. The roads were cleared of brigands and the seas of pirates; the despots and tyrants had been banished by impartial Roman justice. No Christian can depart from the standards of strict honesty. And we can see those rotting forces that are beginning to erode away the very foundations of our democracy, as we see children being exploited for sexual purposes, as we see child pornography being produced and purchased. The moment we have stated that, we see that it needs a change. Doubtless there may have been a special reason for the omission; but whatever may be our judgment of the true solution of the difficulty, it is evident that a priest who was giving his own genealogy would not put it forward in a defective form. He goes through, in His own person, Israel's history. The whole of this is directly opposite to . To some extent every man is a split personality. O the sheer happiness of knowing Jesus Christ as Master, Saviour and Lord!" In all matters of Jewish law there were two schools. It was notorious as the place where Ahaz had introduced into Israel the fire worship of the heathen God Molech, to whom little children were burned in the fire. Jesus draws a picture of two opponents on their way together to the law courts; and he tells them to get things settled and straightened out before they reach the court, for, if they do not, and the law takes its course, there will be still worse trouble for one of them at least in the days to come. Well, you only have to do that if you are basically an untruthful person and nobody trusts you.But you should be a person of your word. "And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve Him. He is showing that he was skillful in using the debating methods which the wise men of his time were in the habit of using. It was based on Deuteronomy 15:7-11, 5:38-42 "If there is among you a poor man, one of your brethren, in any of your towns within your land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him, and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. They are the words which describe the love of a parent for a child and a child for a parent. This is a typical Hebrew way of expression. "A woman," said the Rabbinic law, "may be divorced with or without her will; but a man only with his will.". And there was one school of rabbi's under Hallel who interpreted that very strictly as being he found that she wasn't a virgin when he married her. Dr. Lukes Sermon on the Plains, is shorter than the Sermon on the Mount. It is sometimes the Christian's duty to bring to his fellowmen the necessary warning. What was uttered by the Lord, according to Matthew, is thus presented as a whole. But that doesn't come until I've come to the end of myself, and that place of just mourning in the fact that I have no strength, no ability, no power. I don't like the way she cooks. By the second century B.C. At a first reading it might well be held that this is the most astonishing statement that Jesus made in the whole Sermon on the Mount. . So, then, a son of God is a godlike man. Matthew has said as plainly as Greek will say it that the Sermon on the Mount is not one sermon of Jesus, given at one particular time and on one particular occasion; it is the essence of all that Jesus continuously and habitually taught his disciples. The genitive which follows verbs of hungering and thirsting in Greek is called the partitive genitive, that is the genitive of the part. Such relationships brought not the slightest discredit; they were part of the ordinary routine of life. He was coming from his teacher's house, and he was feeling uplifted at the thought of his own scholarship and erudition and goodness. Salt was indeed the most primitive of all offerings to the gods, and to the end of the day the Jewish sacrifices were offered with salt. drink": unless our Lord should be supposed rather to regard the They have made the notable discovery that there is an omission! David was a type of this kind of searching love when he returned to Jerusalem. The point is that by right a man's cloak could not be taken permanently from him. It may be that he is saying, "Put things right with your fellow-men, while life lasts, for some day--you know not when--life will finish, and you will go to stand before God, the final Judge of all." We shall leave the discussion of the ideal of Christian marriage until we come to Matthew 19:3-9. It is impossible to love the conduct of a man that curses and reviles us, and injures our person or property, or that violates all the laws of God; but though we may hate his conduct, and feel deeply that we are affected by it, yet we may still wish well to the person; we may pity his madness and folly; we may speak kindly of him, and to him; we may not return evil for evil; we may aid him in the time of trial; and seek to do him good here, and to promote his eternal welfare hereafter, Ro 12:17-20. Who shall deliver me from this body of death? A man might be on a journey, and in the midst of it the hot wind which brought the sand-storm might begin to blow. Without humility a man cannot learn, for the first step to learning is the realization of our own ignorance. ", One of the outstanding qualities of Jesus was his sheer honesty. The first way is by Christian action. It is the consistent teaching of the New Testament that indeed only the merciful shall receive mercy. They have suggested that, since Matthew is the most Jewish of the gospels, and since Matthew wrote it specially to convince Jews, this is a saying which Matthew put into Jesus' mouth, and that this is not a saying of Jesus at all. Many and many a man in the hour of his sorrow has discovered his fellow-men and his God as he never did before. Now that must have been a tremendous shock to his disciples, because as far as they were concerned, no one was more righteous than the scribes and the Pharisees because that's all these men live for. Second, there is the picture of a pit dug in the ground and deceptively covered over with a thin layer of branches or of turf, and so arranged that, when the unwary traveller sets his foot on it, he is immediately thrown into the pit. But this is what the Pharisee's were teaching. They learnt the scriptures as to it. We are supposed to love those who hate us and . In regard to loss of time, the injurer had to pay compensation for the wages lost while the injured man was unable to work, and he had also to pay compensation if the injured man had held a well paid position, and was now, in consequence of the injury, fit for less well rewarded work. How faithfully they support the title to which they lay claim I do not now say: (420) but the folly and absurdity of alleging, that they are only advices, will appear from many considerations. John asked. The point about the seventh year is that in every seventh year there was a cancellation of debts; and the grudging and the calculating man might refuse to lend anything when the seventh year was near, lest the debt be cancelled and he lose what he had given. When Jesus said that the Christian must be the light of the world, what did he mean? Jesus set before men, not the law of God, but the love of God. Do you want it as much as a starving man wants food, and as much as a man dying of thirst wants water?" Listen to ourDaily Bible Verse Podcast Now! Then, in verses 11 and 12, you have, "Blessed are ye . 5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 5:45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Apparently the most exposed, He bows before the storm, retires, carried by His parents into the ancient furnace of affliction for His people. Most people are so concerned with their own feelings that they are not much concerned with the feelings of anyone else. But, if by any chance there was anything lacking, any private person could be impressed, compelled into giving food, lodging, horses, assistance, and even into carrying the message himself for a stage. The matter was complicated by the fact that the Jewish law of divorce was very simple in its expression and very debatable in its meaning. Light is not that which simply preserves what is good, but is an active power, which casts its bright shining into what is obscure, and dispels the darkness from before it. The smallest letter--the letter which the King James Version calls the jot--was the Hebrew letter yod. God said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour; and by neighbour they understood those only of their own country, nation, and religion; and those only that they were pleased to look upon as their friends: yet this was not the worst; from this command, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, they were willing to infer what God never designed; Thou shalt hate thine enemy; and they looked upon whom they pleased as their enemies, thus making void the great command of God by their traditions, though there were express laws to the contrary, Exodus 23:4; Exodus 23:5; Deuteronomy 23:7. And now Jesus is saying you gotta be more righteous than those guys if you're going to enter the kingdom of heaven. When Shaftesbury undertook the cause of the poor and the oppressed he was warned that it would mean that "he would become unpopular with his friends and people of his own class," and that "he would have to give up all hope of ever being a cabinet minister." And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him. Love your enemies - There are two kinds of love, involving the same general feeling, or springing from the same fountain of good-will to all mankind, but differing so far as to admit of separation in idea. Here, again, if I be not mistaken, righteousness and grace are found alternating; for the exhortation against a censorious spirit is grounded on the certainty of retribution from others, and paves the way for an urgent call to self-judgment, which in us precedes all genuine exercise of grace. He goes into Egypt, and is called out of it. As someone has said, "There is an internal desire of which adultery is only the fruit.". On the other hand a man may have all kinds of faults; he may drink, and swear, and gamble, and lose his temper; and yet, if any one is in trouble, he would give him the last penny out of his pocket and the very coat off his back. He will never do it by trying to save his own life; he can do it only by flinging his life away for others. Bless them that curse you - The word bless here means to speak well of or speak well to: - not to curse again or to slander, but to speak of those things which we can commend in an enemy; or, if there is nothing that we can commend, to say nothing about him. Secondly, We must therefore love our enemies, that we may exceed them. The mistake spoken of lies only in blundering scribes, critics, or translators, who have failed in doing justice to that particular place. The reality was coming: as for him, he was merely one to announce the advent of the King. Fully is it admitted that there is nothing like grace to meet duty; and doing one's duty is a good thing for a Christian. "Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Study Matthew 5:44 - 'Det Danske Bibel' translation - Men jeg siger eder: Elsker eders Fjender, velsigner dem, som forbande eder, grer dem godt, som hade eder, og beder for dem, som krnke eder og forflge eder, alongside Explanation of Matthew 5 and What the Bible says about. The word for such compulsion was aggareuein ( G29) . Human beings naturally struggle with the idea of passively accepting persecution. A Christian should be just as much a Christian in the factory, the workshop, the shipyard, the mine, the schoolroom, the surgery, the kitchen, the golf course. Take heed lest there be a base thought in your heart, and you say, 'The seventh year, the year of release is near,' and your eye be hostile to your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lord against you, and it be sin in you. The one would suggest foul thoughts. But Jesus said be a person of your word; if you say yes, mean yes; if you say no, mean no. The Day of Atonement does not atone for the offences between a man and his neighbour, unless the man has first put things right with his neighbour." "Take heed [He says] that you do not your righteousness before men." In his first example Jesus shows that to refrain from murder is not enough. a. The Law lays it down that the Sabbath Day is to be kept holy, and that on it no work is to be done. The English word happiness gives its own case away. Because it is natural to man to avenge himself, and plague those who plague him; and he will ever find abundant excuse for his conduct, in the repeated evils he receives from others; for men are naturally hostile to each other. It is the word skandalon ( G4625) . So often when we wish to be kind the kindness has to be given in our way, and the other person has to put up with it whether he likes it or not. In the other case, there would be a lack of testimony for Christ, and grace makes one rejoice to be counted worthy of suffering for His name: but righteousness is not in question. I content myself now with giving what appears to me the true reason why the Spirit of God here adheres to the order of the facts. "One who has given his word and who changes it is as bad as an idolater." But in the way that the law was originally intended, because it was intended to govern the spirit of man, the law was actually intended to make the whole world guilty before God and to show man's guilt. O wretched man that I am! (ii) In this passage Jesus definitely warns men not to think that Christianity is easy. (ii) A light is a guide. There was no provision for a wife getting a divorce from her husband, but the husband could get a divorce. (i) There is the noun storgi with its accompanying verb stergein. Man was created to be like God The characteristic of God is this universal benevolence, this unconquerable goodwill, this constant seeking of the highest good of every man. 7. In the sentence, "He shut the gate," shut would be an aorist in Greek because it describes one completed action in past time. The provincial was very willing to sacrifice to the spirit of the Empire which had done so much for him. Whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca ( Matthew 5:22 ). See his WORKS, vol. One of the gods most commonly worshipped was Serapis. Therefore, not only are we supposed to obey the message in this verse, we are supposed to do so gladly and with a happy heart. The self-same principle applies to the so-called sermon on the mount, on which I am about to say a few words. This is a supernatural process. Human happiness is something which is dependent on the chances and the changes of life, something which life may give and which life may also destroy. However even they, Jesus said, loved those who loved them. Drawing still nearer to our text, we observe; First, that THE PERSON DESCRIBED HAS DISCOVERED A FACT, he has ascertained his own spiritual poverty; and, Secondly, BY A FACT IS COMFORTED, for he possesses "the kingdom of heaven." I. ( Matthew 5:47 ). Christianity begins with a sense of sin. It was like grace before meat. Yet Jesus words are unmistakable. See 1 Peter 3:9. In some sense sacrifice was substitutionary. Why Do the Angels Say Good Tidings of Great Joy? You know when they get back they're gonna fire up their cars and drive off and they'll never know that if it weren't for my kindness and my goodness, they would've had dead batteries when they got out here. One of the strange things about the Sermon on the Mount is the number of occasions when Jesus was recalling to the Jews that which they already knew. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away; and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." Clearly one of two things must be true--either Jesus was mad, or he was unique; either he was a megalomaniac or else he was the son of God. Jesus said, hey, you violated that law already in your heart, in your spirit. If the church is not being a purifying influence within the community, then it's good for nothing. The man who makes peace is engaged on the very work which the God of peace is doing ( Romans 15:33; 2 Corinthians 13:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Hebrews 13:20). The ideal is that a man should never need an oath to buttress or guarantee the truth of anything he may say. Jesus emphasizes the reality of reward in loving others. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. When did anyone ever find fault with it? In such ovens "in order to retain the heat a thick bed of salt is laid under the tiled floor. John says, "He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now" (1 John 2:9). This word means "become something that you were not before." The idea is to enter into a new state. Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, 2 "Where is he who has been . When a man is called on to suffer something for his Christianity that is always a crucial moment; it is the great occasion; it is the clash between the world and Christ; it is a moment in the drama of eternity. even enemies, are to be loved with a natural love, as men; though Divorce became as common as marriage. It remains to be noted that sometimes the early Church made a very strange use of this text. It is true that that law was a law of mercy; it is true that it was a law for a judge and not for a private individual; it is true that it was never literally carried out; it is true that there were accents of mercy speaking at the same time. At any moment a Jew might feel the touch of the flat of a Roman spear on his shoulder, and know that he was compelled to serve the Romans, it might be in the most menial way. The trained botanist would see this and that, and call it by name and know its use; and he might even see something of infinite value and rarity because he had eyes to see. There was a cynical Roman jest: "Marriage brings only two happy days--the day when the husband first clasps his wife to his breast, and the day when he lays her in the tomb.". It is the word which is used in the famous saying of Meander: "Whom the gods love, dies young." The Rabbis said, "Those who deny that the Law is from heaven have no part in the world to come." So, then, a man will be teleios ( G5046) if he fulfils the purpose for which he was created. Note, (1.) (i) First, there is the word peace. I've never done those horrible things, look again. Barnabas is called a son of consolation instead of a consoling and comforting man. But then he proclaims repentance; not here in view of deeper things, as in the gospel of Luke, but as a spiritual preparation for Messiah and the kingdom of heaven. The Law And The Gospel ( Matthew 5:17-20 Continued). When we look at the Ten Commandments, which are the essence and the foundation of all law, we can see that their whole meaning can be summed up in one word--respect, or even better, reverence. On the face of it that sounds like a commandment which cannot possibly have anything to do with us. impression quite different from the impression which it conveys to us. As the Lord begins to minister to me, the power of his Holy Spirit and his strength, and I begin now to experience those victories of Jesus Christ in my life and that makes me indeed happy. A person can be doing all kinds of magnanimous works for God in the church, just busying himself and doing so many marvelous things around the church, but his attitude can be bad. They are now called to be His companions in Israel, formed according to His heart as His servants here below; but before this we have a remarkable Scripture applied to our Lord. The law of Deuteronomy had said that a man must be given whatever he lacks. Salem Media Group. If it be certain that the Holy Ghost has been pleased to give us in Matthew this discourse and others as a whole, leaving out the originating circumstances found elsewhere, it is a fair and interesting inquiry why such a method of grouping with such omissions is adopted. Juvenal writes: "Is one husband enough for lberina? As they pushed the barrow up the hill the box, which was the coffin, fell off the barrow and burst open. Nor is the reason obscure. But, then, it is not simply the anointed of Jehovah, but One who proves Himself, and is declared of God, to be Jehovah-Messiah No such testimony appears elsewhere. No man can repent unless he is sorry for his sins. So, then, what Jesus is saying is: "Suppose your masters come to you and compel you to be a guide or a porter for a mile. It was a question of another sort of righteousness. A man must so live that the end will find him at peace with all men. But he is at variance, not only with the licence of his own age, but also from the customs and concessions of our ancestors. And Jesus answered correctly, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength and with all their mind". Praotes ( G4236) , meekness, as Aristotle saw it, is the happy medium between too much and too little anger. Epicurus, the famous philosopher, had his equally famous Leontinium. So long as men are thinking of the praise, the thanks, the prestige which they will get for what they have done, they have not really even begun on the Christian way. He told of his business difficulties. In Greek the phrase has a double significance. Prayer changes us so that we might be better servants in Gods kingdom. But who can obey it? We don't like to be persecuted but Jesus said "rejoice". Ahaziah vanishes, and Joash, and Amaziah, when the line once more reappears here in Uzziah. Let your light so shine before men, that when they see your good works, they will glorify your Father which is in heaven ( Matthew 5:16 ). Only in a measure, of course, can we thus speak of any other than Jesus; but of Him who was full of grace and truth, in whom, too, the fulness of the Godhead dwelt even so, of Him it was fully true. helplessness, and who has put his whole trust in God, for thus alone he can render to God that perfect, obedience which will make him a citizen of the kingdom, The Bliss Of The Broken Heart ( Matthew 5:4). Somehow we want recognition from man for our good deeds. Marriage amongst the Romans ( Matthew 5:31-32). It is surely the lesson of simplicity to learn this from God, and, once learnt, to apply it steadily as a help of the most manifest kind; full of interest, as well as of the weightiest instruction, in examining all the incidents as they come before us. In those days the teachers would sit, the students would stand. When indeed was this not done? Its sacrifices were held to atone for sin known and unknown; but even this day had its limitations. It was on a hand-barrow. If ever we are at variance with someone else, we must get the situation put right straight away. So, says Jesus, it is only the pure in heart who shall see God. But rather then their reading the law and feeling guilty before God, seeking the mercy and the grace of God, they were so interpreting the law as having fulfilled the law, and thus being very pompous and very righteous and very critical of everybody else. When we speak of blessing men, it unites the two meanings, and signifies to confer favour, to thank, or to speak well of. By the world's standards a man is a good man, if he never does a forbidden thing. Sophocles described eros as "the terrible longing." I lay the screw-driver on the slot of the screw, and I find that it exactly fits. Moses was no milk and water character; he was no spineless creature; he could be blazingly angry; but he was a man whose anger was on the leash, only to be released when the time was right. It is very seldom indeed that we do even our finest actions from absolutely unmixed motives. To learn more visit and subscribe: https://michaelmilton.org/about/. Now according to Jewish Rabbinic law to hit a man with the back of the hand was twice as insulting as to hit him with the back of the hand. If the Christian is to be the salt of the earth, he must have a certain antiseptic influence on life. First of all, it doesn't have a personal vindictive within it but it is something that the judges were to meet out equitable judgment.But Jesus said. If a man has injured another, he is liable on five counts--for injury, for pain, for healing, for loss of time, for indignity suffered. There are people with filthy minds who can see in any situation material for a prurient snigger and a soiled jest. Now, one day Jesus was asked the question, "What is the greatest commandment?" All are agreed that in the Sermon on the Mount we have the essence of the teaching of Jesus to the inner circle of his chosen men. Wherever there is a strong Christian emphasis and a strong Christian voice, that society is being preserved and maintained. These are the warmest and the best Greek words for love. When we study this passage we must first try to find out what Jesus was really saying, and what he was demanding of his followers. Where there is good the Church must praise; where there is evil, the Church must condemn--and inevitably men will try to silence the troublesome voice of conscience. (iii) Then Jesus goes on to speak of the man who calls his brother moros ( G3474) . Give to him who asks you, and do not turn away from him who wishes to borrow from you. To the Roman the home was everything. And she walked away saying, thank you, Lord, for the persecution, you know. Doing "good" is only half the picture. As earlier (verses 17, 18) the law is fully maintained in all its authority, we have later on (verses 21-48) superior principles of grace, and deeper truths, mainly founded upon the revelation of the Father's name the Father which is in heaven. COMMENTARY What is the meaning of Matthew 5:44? We are bidden to pray for them. And they just write out the divorcement and hand it to her and she had no alternative. If this be so, assuredly there must be some key to these phenomena, some reason sufficient to explain why sometimes Matthew adheres to the order of events, why he departs from it elsewhere. It has been called "The Compendium of Christ's Doctrine," "The Magna Charta of the Kingdom," "The Manifesto of the King." As we have them the beatitudes are in Greek, and the word that is used for poor is the word ptochos ( G4434) . When a word appears in italics in the King James Version it means that in the Greek, or in the Hebrew, there is no equivalent word, and that that word has had to be added to bring out the meaning of the sentence. (i) Giving must not be refused. [Note: Plummer, p. I understand, then, by this expression, what might be gathered justly from Old Testament prophecies; and that John, at this time, had no other thought but that the kingdom was about to be introduced according to expectations thus formed. And there is a way by which we can do our good works before men to draw attention to ourself and to bring honor to ourself. We know how difficult even the city streets were when there were no lights. The book of Matthew reveals Jesus as the Promised One of the nation of Israel . It was clearly gathered from the Old Testament prophecy, particularly from Daniel, that. In actual fact this is even truer than at first sight appears. And it is reported of these men, that they used to pray to God to pardon and forgive all that disturbed them. We can see the length to which this went from the following facts. It was not a mere kingdom of the earth, neither was it in heaven, but it was heaven governing the earth for ever. For, although to enter upon the gospels before the soul has been founded upon the grace of God will not leave us without a blessing, yet I am persuaded that the blessing is in every respect greater, when, having been attracted by the grace of Christ, we have at the same time been established in Him with all simplicity and assurance, in virtue of the accomplished work of redemption. 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