1 Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me! 2 Take hold of shield and buckler and rise for my help! 3 Draw the spear and javelin against my pursuers! Say to my soul, “I am your salvation!” 4 Let them be put to shame and dishonor who seek after my life! Let them be turned back and disappointed who devise evil against me! 5 Let them be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the Lord driving them away! 6 Let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the Lord pursuing them! 7 For without cause they hid their net for me; without cause they dug a pit for my life. 8 Let destruction come upon him when he does not know it! And let the net that he hid ensnare him; let him fall into it—to his destruction! 9 Then my soul will rejoice in the Lord, exulting in his salvation. 10 All my bones shall say, “O Lord, who is like you, delivering the poor from him who is too strong for him, the poor and needy from him who robs him?” 11 Malicious witnesses rise up; they ask me of things that I do not know. 12 They repay me evil for good; my soul is bereft. 13 But I, when they were sick— I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with head bowed on my chest. 14 I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother; as one who laments his mother, I bowed down in mourning. 15 But at my stumbling they rejoiced and gathered; they gathered together against me; wretches whom I did not know tore at me without ceasing; 16 like profane mockers at a feast, they gnash at me with their teeth. 17 How long, O Lord, will you look on? Rescue me from their destruction, my precious life from the lions! 18 I will thank you in the great congregation; in the mighty throng I will praise you. 19 Let not those rejoice over me who are wrongfully my foes, and let not those wink the eye who hate me without cause. 20 For they do not speak peace, but against those who are quiet in the land they devise words of deceit. 21 They open wide their mouths against me; they say, “Aha, Aha! Our eyes have seen it!” 22 You have seen, O Lord; be not silent! O Lord, be not far from me! 23 Awake and rouse yourself for my vindication, for my cause, my God and my Lord! 24 Vindicate me, O Lord, my God, according to your righteousness, and let them not rejoice over me! 25 Let them not say in their hearts, “Aha, our heart's desire!” Let them not say, “We have swallowed him up.” 26 Let them be put to shame and disappointed altogether who rejoice at my calamity! Let them be clothed with shame and dishonor who magnify themselves against me! 27 Let those who delight in my righteousness shout for joy and be glad and say evermore, “Great is the Lord, who delights in the welfare of his servant!” 28 Then my tongue shall tell of your righteousness and of your praise all the day long.
Like so many psalms, the Thirty-Fifth Psalm is a prayer for the Lord to defeat David’s enemies.
Question: Praying against my enemies—is that even allowed?
Answer: Yes. More than allowed, it is required.
Remember, the psalms teach us to pray through our emotions, and sooner or later you will have the emotions that come with enemy opposition. Enemies are people who deliberately work to harm you or your loved ones in some way, and if you tell me that you’ve never had any enemies, I’ll tell you it’s only a matter of time: enemies are inevitable. When enemies attack, we have two choices:
Lie and pretend that we are so holy that enemy attacks don’t cause us pain;
Tell the truth and ask the Lord to defend us.
Honesty in prayer is essential, and asking the Lord to defeat your enemies does NOT mean you are hating them. To love is to will the good of the other, and if your enemies are wrong, then it is to their good that the Lord stop them from doing greater evil. In fact, the surest way to end up hating your enemies is to refuse to pray honestly to the Lord (thereby letting your hurt fester into hate); and have them do more evil to you (thereby fanning the flames of hurt into hate in your heart).
When we pray for the Lord to defeat our enemies we are doing a very important thing: we are giving a desire for vengeance over to the Lord and trusting him to judge justly.
Praying in this way is a way to remove the venom from the bite before it turns your heart black.
The psalms teach us to pray through our emotions.
Through what feelings do you need to be praying today?
A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.
1 O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me, 2 lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver. 3 O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, 4 if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, 5 let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust. Selah 6 Arise, O Lord, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment. 7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high. 8 The Lord judges the peoples; judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me. 9 Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous—you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God! 10 My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart. 11 God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day. 12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; 13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. 14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. 15 He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. 16 His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends. 17 I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.
“This lament calls on God the Warrior to rescue the psalmist from the vicious attacks of his enemies. While many laments confess sin, here the psalmist proclaims his innocence, as well as his confidence that God will recognize that he does not deserve the treatment is is receiving at the hands of his foes. In addition, he is sure that these enemies will get their deserts unless they relent.”—Tremper Longman
Note that the meaning of the opening superscription of Psalm 7
“A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.”
is lost to us. A “Shiggaion” is probably some kind of musical term, but we don’t know what it means, and “Cush” is an otherwise unknown enemy of David.
I particularly like the psalmist’s description of what will happen to the wicked if he does not repent:
12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; 13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. 14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. 15 He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. 16 His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends.
Haven’t we all at one time or another hoped that someone who has wronged us would eventually be a victim of his own scheming, “falling into the hole that he has made”? See how the psalms give us language for everything?!
Apologies for the delay today—we had it set to go live at 3:30 PM instead of 3:30 AM! Better late than never, right? —AF
Psalm 5
To the choirmaster: for the flutes. A Psalm of David.
1 Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning. 2 Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray. 3 O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. 4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. 5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. 6 You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. 7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you. 8 Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me. 9 For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue. 10 Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you. 11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you. 12 For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.
Psalm 5 has often been used as a morning prayer, because of the words in verse 3.
Here’s what I want to do today: I’ll include the text of the entire psalm below, commenting as we move through it. Remember, the psalms help us pray through our emotions, thereby shaping and strengthening us to face the day.
To the choirmaster: for the flutes. A Psalm of David.
1 Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning. 2 Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray.
The psalmist is desperate—we’ll see below that it seems people are lying about him—and he wants the Lord to know that things are not good in his life.
3 O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
He starts his day with prayer, and then he just sits…and waits. There is wisdom in that kind of behavior. Pray your worries early, and then just sit in silence.
4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. 5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. 6 You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
Here, the psalmist is reminding himself of what he knows to be true: the Lord does not support or favor the wicked. It’s like he just needs to hear himself say it out loud.
7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.
And then he reminds himself that he does NOT behave like the wicked, but instead has been faithful to the Lord in the past.
8 Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me.
Like all of us, the psalmist needs guidance; in his case, he needs to know what his next step should be, in light of his enemies’ actions against him. There’s something powerful in praying for the Lord to show you your next step. Not every step, but your next step.
9 For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue. 10 Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you.
He vents his anger to the Lord by describing just how nasty are his enemies, and he begs the Lord to do something about them. It is healthy to ask God to defeat our enemies—the alternative is taking vengeance into our own hands, which is a dangerous step for us to take.
11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you. 12 For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.
As with so many of the psalms, Psalm 5 ends on a note of reassurance. I think it’s precisely because the psalmist has cried out in pain and fear and frustration to God that he then feels a sense of confidence in the Lord. There is a lesson here for us—the Psalms help us pray through our fears and thereby lead us to a place of confidence. Always be honest with God in prayer, and the Psalms give us language for that.
One final point about the last verse:
12 For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.
It’s good to slow down and pay attention to the imagery in the psalms we read. How does a shield function? It blocks the blows of an enemy. Note that you only use a shield when you are being attacked.
The lesson: the life of faith does NOT mean we will not face opposition, it does NOT mean our enemies will not strike out at us. What it DOES mean is that the Lord will protect us and keep us from feeling the full weight of our enemies’ blows.
Remember, these “Songs of Ascents” are the songs that the Israelite pilgrims would sing as they made their way up to Jerusalem every year for the big festivals. The boy Jesus certainly sang these with his family.
Think about how singing something like this would shape a child for life!
Something antifragile is something that not only withstands hardship but actually thrives as a result of hardship.
(Americans are not antifragile these days.)
Psalm 129
A Song of Ascents
1 “Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth”— let Israel now say— 2 “Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me. 3 The plowers plowed upon my back; they made long their furrows.”
So, the Israelites taught their kids to SING that, though they had been sorely oppressed by their enemies— “they plowed upon my back; they made long their furrows”—they were not defeated.
They acknowledge difficulty—they sing about it!—but they all tell themselves they’ve not been defeated.
Can you imagine singing that your whole life? Can you imagine how antifragile that would make you?
The psalm closes with a defiant statement that God will defeat Israel’s enemies:
4 The Lord is righteous; he has cut the cords of the wicked. 5 May all who hate Zion be put to shame and turned backward! 6 Let them be like the grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows up, 7 with which the reaper does not fill his hand nor the binder of sheaves his arms, 8 nor do those who pass by say, “The blessing of the Lord be upon you! We bless you in the name of the Lord!”
It strikes me that this is EXACTLY the kind of music we need to be singing and memorizing these days.
Like so many psalms, the Thirty-Fifth Psalm is a prayer for the Lord to defeat David’s enemies.
Question: Praying against my enemies—is that even allowed?
Answer: Yes. More than allowed, it is required.
Remember, the psalms teach us to pray through our emotions, and sooner or later you will have the emotions that come with enemy opposition. Enemies are people who deliberately work to harm you or your loved ones in some way, and if you tell me that you’ve never had any enemies, I’ll tell you it’s only a matter of time: enemies are inevitable. When enemies attack, we have 2 choices:
Lie and pretend that we are so holy that enemy attacks don’t cause us pain;
Tell the truth and ask the Lord to defend us.
Honesty in prayer is essential, and asking the Lord to defeat your enemies does NOT mean you are hating them. To love is to will the good of the other, and if your enemies are wrong, then it is to their good that the Lord stop them from doing greater evil. In fact, the surest way to end up hating your enemies is to
refuse to pray honestly to the Lord (thereby letting your hurt fester into hate); and
have them do more evil to you (thereby fanning the flames of hurt into hate in your heart).
When we pray for the Lord to defeat our enemies we are doing a very important thing: we are giving a desire for vengeance over to the Lord and trusting him to judge justly.
Praying in this way is a way to remove the venom from the bite before it turns your heart black.
The psalms teach us to pray through our emotions.
Through what feelings do you need to be praying today?
“This lament calls on God the Warrior to rescue the psalmist from the vicious attacks of his enemies. While many laments confess sin, here the psalmist proclaims his innocence, as well as his confidence that God will recognize that he does not deserve the treatment is is receiving at the hands of his foes. In addition, he is sure that these enemies will get their deserts unless they relent.”
Note that the meaning of the opening superscription of Psalm 7
“A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.”
is lost to us. A “Shiggaion” is probably some kind of musical term, but we don’t know what it means, and “Cush” is an otherwise unknown enemy of David.
I particularly like the psalmist’s description of what will happen to the wicked if he does not repent:
12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; 13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. 14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. 15 He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. 16 His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends.
Haven’t we all at one time or another hoped that someone who has wronged us would eventually be a victim of his own scheming, “falling into the hole that he has made”?
See how the psalms give us language for everything?!
Psalm 5 has often been used as a morning prayer, because of the words in verse 3.
Here’s what I want to do today: I’ll include the text of the entire psalm below, commenting as we move through it. Remember, the psalms help us pray through our emotions, thereby shaping and strengthening us to face the day.
To the choirmaster: for the flutes. A Psalm of David.
1 Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning. 2 Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray.
The psalmist is desperate—we’ll see below, it seems people are lying about him—and he wants the Lord to know that things are not good in his life.
3 O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
He starts his day with prayer, and then he just sits…and waits. There is wisdom in that kind of behavior. Pray your worries early, and then just sit in silence.
4 For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. 5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. 6 You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
Here, the psalmist is reminding himself of what he knows to be true: the Lord does not support or favor the wicked. It’s like he just needs to hear himself say it out loud.
7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.
And then he reminds himself that he does NOT behave like the wicked, but instead has been faithful to the Lord in the past.
8 Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me.
Like all of us, the psalmist needs guidance; in his case, he needs to know what his next step should be, in light of his enemies’ actions against him. There’s something powerful in praying for the Lord to show you your next step. Not every step, but your next step.
9 For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue. 10 Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you.
He vents his anger to the Lord by describing just how nasty are his enemies, and he begs the Lord to do something about them. It is healthy to ask God to defeat our enemies—the alternative is taking vengeance into our own hands, which is a dangerous step for us to take.
11 But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you. 12 For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.
As with so many of the psalms, Psalm 5 ends on a note of reassurance. I think it’s precisely because the psalmist has cried out in pain and fear and frustration to God that he then feels a sense of confidence in the Lord. There is a lesson here for us—the Psalms help us pray through our fears and thereby lead us to a place of confidence. Always be honest with God in prayer, and the Psalms give us language for that.
One final point about the last verse:
12 For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.
It’s good to slow down and pay attention to the imagery in the psalms we read. How does a shield function? It blocks the blows of an enemy. Note that you only use a shield when you are being attacked.
The lesson: the life of faith does NOT mean we will not face opposition, it does NOT mean our enemies will not strike out at us. What it DOES mean is that the Lord will protect us and keep us from feeling the full weight of our enemies’ blows.
Storms are inevitable in life. And what's worse is that they are also unforeseeable. In literal storms, millions and millions of random occurrences come together to produce the winds and the waves; life's storms are also the result of random interactions of complex systems. So, how do you prepare for something inevitable that's also completely unpredictable and random?
In what follows, I want to talk about how we can become the kind of people who can weather life's storms by walking us through the Sermon on the Mount. I personally have been doing a lot of reading and studying recently of this famous set of Jesus' teachings (Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy has been a particularly helpful source of ideas), and I finally feel as if I understand what he was getting at, which is exciting, because this is AMAZING stuff! (This will be a much longer post than I've been writing recently in my weekday commentary on the Gospel reading, but I want to help you understand how in Matthew 5-7 Jesus is giving his followers practical advice they can actually use to become the kind of people who survive life's storms.)
Amazed At What He Had To Say
There's this really fascinating aside Matthew gives us after Jesus wraps up the Sermon on the Mount.
When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.
Matthew 7:28-29
Having just heard Jesus give this famous set of teaching, his hearers are amazed. What Jesus has been saying was so insightful and unusual and so obviously cut to the heart of the matter of everyday life that it was nothing short of astounding. And you know what? Nothing has changed in 2,000 years--these words are still AMAZING.
The Two Kinds of People
Let's begin at the end. Jesus closes the Sermon on the Mount by saying that there are two options in life: the way that seems easy but actually ends in ruin, and the way that seems difficult and unpopular but actually results in blessing [Matthew 7:13-14]. He expands on this by talking about how it's not what people say that matters, but what they actually do (and how to tell between the talked and the doers) [Matthew 7:15-23], and then he sums up the entire set of teachings with a little parable:
"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
Matthew 7:24-27
In his conclusion, Jesus says that the difference between the people who are destroyed by life's storms and those who survive them are that the survivors actually do what Jesus said to do. But how do we actually do that? That's what he's been telling us in the previous 3 chapters of his famous sermon. In fact, the Sermon on the Mount is meant to be a How-To manual to becoming the kind of person who can weather any storm. And the first thing we have to understand is what Jesus meant when he talked about the "Kingdom".
What the Kingdom Is
Here's how Matthew sums up the central message of Jesus:
"Jesus began to preach, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.'”
Matthew 4:17 NIV
Another way of translating this might be:
"HEY! Turn around and change your mind: living in the reality of God is now one of your options."
Matthew 4:17 AFV [Andrew Forrest Version, in the vein of Dallas Willard]
A kingdom is wherever a king's will is done; beyond that frontier, it's no longer that king's kingdom. Queen Elizabeth reigns over the United Kingdom; she does not reign in France. Each of us has our own kingdom or queendom; where my will is done is my kingdom. So, my body is one part of my kingdom, for example: I command my finger to move, and it does; I command my mouth to speak, and it does. The kingdom of heaven is wherever God's will is done. The only place in the Creation where God's will is not done is here, where God has permitted for a while his human creatures to exercise their own reigns. This is why we pray in the Lord's Prayer "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth [as it already is] in heaven."
From the beginning, it was God's plan that men and women would exercise their free will and rule in his name over the earth [see Genesis 1:26]; it remains God's will that we would freely choose to align our kingdoms under his Kingdom.
So, the message of Jesus is that through him God's Kingdom is now available to anyone, anywhere, RIGHT NOW if they are willing to do what he says. Apprenticeship or discipleship to Jesus is learning to live your life in the reality of the Kingdom. In the Sermon on the Mount which follows, he provides some practical examples of what Kingdom life will look like.
The Introduction and Overview
Jesus begins the Sermon by telling people that there is no spiritual condition that precludes them from learning to live in the Kingdom now: not the spiritually poor, not the mourning, not the meek, etc. [We call this section "The Beatitudes", Matthew 5:1-12.]
Then, Jesus tells his followers that living in the Kingdom will make them distinct from people around them: it will be as if they are salt--thereby bringing out the flavor in life--or light--thereby showing others how best to live. [Matthew 5:13-16.]
To be clear, Jesus wants his followers to understand that he's not doing anything new, that this is ultimately what the Old Testament is all about, and that he's not come to abolish "the law and the prophets". [Matthew 5:17-20.]
With those remarks out of the way, Jesus explains what it looks like to put his words into practice and live in the Kingdom. What he is going to do is take familiar situations that arise and give an example of what Kingdom living would look like in each of those situations.
Here’s the point: it would seem at first that going along with the conventional wisdom in each of the examples that follow would be the best course of action; actually Jesus wants us to understand that if you just do what everyone else is doing—“the wide and easy path” he references in Matthew 7:13—it will be the equivalent of building a foundation on sand. Instead, if you do what he says to do, as counterintuitive as it might seem, you’ll be building your life on bedrock.
Here’s the point: it would seem at first that going along with the conventional wisdom in each of the examples that follow would be the best course of action; actually Jesus wants us to understand that if you just do what everyone else is doing—“the wide and easy path” he references in Matthew 7:13—it will be the equivalent of building a foundation on sand. Instead, if you do what he says to do, as counterintuitive as it might seem, you’ll be building your life on bedrock.
A Practical Plan for Becoming a Survivor
Anger
Jesus begins his advice by talking about anger. He tells his hearers that though it is obvious that murder will mess up your life, the anger and contempt that are behind and underneath murder are also spiritually dangerous. So, rather then indulging in anger, Jesus tells his followers that they should actually seek reconciliation with people with whom they have bad blood. Living in the Kingdom is trying as hard as humanly possible to be reconciled with others. [Matthew 5:21-26.] Building on Sand: anger and contempt. Building on Rock: seeking reconciliation.
Lust
Next, Jesus tells his followers that though it is obvious that adultery will mess up your life, what's really important is to rid your thoughts of lust. Lust is using someone else's image for your own gratification, which is evil because people were created in the image of God, and not for the purpose of pornography. Jesus says that Kingdom living, then, is about doing whatever it takes--he uses the hyperbolic image of cutting off your own hand!--to learn to see other people as God sees them, and not as objects of desire. [Matthew 5:27-30.] Building on Sand: indulging your thought life. Building on Rock: disciplining your thought life.
Marriage and Divorce
People have been having marital problems since the Garden of Eden, and they had marital problems in Jesus' day, too. But Jesus tells his followers that marriage is not primarily a contract between two people for the purpose of meeting their emotional needs; rather it is a covenant before God. And so Kingdom living is about being reconciled with your spouse (remember reconciliation is an important Kingdom value) as far as is in your power. Now, if your spouse persists in adulterous behavior, reconciliation is clearly outside of your power, but Jesus tells his followers divorce is a last resort. [Matthew 5:31-32.] Building on Sand: leaving a marriage when it doesn’t fulfill your emotional needs. Building on Rock: working towards reconciliation as far as is humanly possible.
Manipulation ("Oaths")
Then Jesus takes on a pervasive human behavior: that of trying to manipulate other people into doing what what we want them to do. In his day there had developed this convoluted practice of swearing on the Temple in Jerusalem to convince people you were sincere. ("I swear on the Temple I didn't take your money!") We don't do that, but of course we try to use language (social media posts?) to get other people to do what we want them to do. In contrast, Jesus says that kingdom living is much simpler: just say what you mean, and leave it at that. [Matthew 5:33-37.] Building on Sand: trying to manipulate others. Building on Rock: saying what you mean, and leaving it at that.
Vengeance/Retaliation/Enemies
You will have enemies; people will seek to do you harm. Though it seems natural to us to hit back and hate the people who hate us (the wide and easy path always seems "natural" to us at first), Kingdom living is about forgoing retaliation and instead seeking ways to bless the people who mistreat us, even to the extent of praying for God to bless them! Jesus makes the reason explicit: when you try to love the people who hate you, you are acting like God, who wants to bless all his children. So, Kingdom living is learning to act like God in the times of inevitable conflict we will encounter. [Matthew 5:38-48.] Building on Sand: vengeance and retaliation. Building on Rock: seeking to bless those that hate us.
Virtue-Signaling (e.g. Giving and Fasting)
Jesus tells his followers next that they should be careful of trying to impress other people with how they help the poor or do "spiritual" things like fasting. Instead, those should be personal practices and a way of life that's more private than public. In other words, learning to live in the Kingdom is learning not to need to impress other people with how good you are. (Think of all the virtue-signaling on social media.) [Matthew 6:1-4, 16-18.] Building on Sand: virtue-signaling to impress others with your goodness. Building on Rock: doing the right thing because it’s right, not because people will see you do it.
Prayer
Jesus tells his followers how to pray. Learning to live in the kingdom is to make prayer a habitual action ("When you pray, go in your room and shut the door....") and to use Jesus as a model for prayer. [Matthew 6:5-15.] Building on Sand: praying haphazardly. Building on Rock: having a plan for habitual prayer.
Money/Wealth
It seems that having more money will make you happier, but Jesus points out that which we all already know: more stuff won't necessarily make you happier. (If that were the case, then the people in Beverly Hills would be the happiest people on earth, but we know that isn't true.) Living in the Kingdom is learning to trust God more than our own stuff. [Matthew 6:19-24.] Building on Sand: thinking more stuff will make you happier. Building on Rock: learning that trusting God actually makes you happy.
Worry!
If there were ever a topic for practical pastoral advice, it would be worry! Jesus tells his hearers that worry, which seems so natural ("the wide and easy path") will actually be harmful. So, he tells his followers to focus only on the problems of that particular day (over which they actually have some measure of control), and leave the rest of God. [Matthew 6:25-34.] Building on Sand: getting worked up and worried over things you can't control. Building on Rock: focusing on what you can control today, and working to trust God with everything else.
Other People's Behavior and Hypocrisy
Jesus tells his followers that though discerning between good and bad, right and wrong has a place, focusing on other people's behavior and ignoring our own is foolish. Rather, kingdom living is about turning most of your attention on your own shortcomings and working on those. [Matthew 7:1-6.] Building on Sand: judging other people by their actions and yourself by your intentions; getting all worked up over other people's hypocrisy. Building on Rock: focusing on your own actions and shortcomings.
Asking God for Stuff
Which brings us to the final bit of practical advice in the sermon: definitely ask God for stuff you need! Lots of folks think "I don't want to ask for the wrong thing; I'll just pray a generic prayer for God's will to be done." Instead, Jesus tells his hearers to ask boldly. [Matthew 7:7-12.] Building on Sand: refusing to ask and not persisting in prayer. Building on Rock: asking and persisting in prayer.
Two Kinds Of People
All of the above is Jesus providing his hearers of examples of what Kingdom living looks like. Each topic he covers is a topic that each of us encounters all the time; doing what Jesus said is putting his principles into practice when you encounter anger, lust, worry, etc. Anyone can choose to participate, because Jesus came to bring the good news of the Kingdom to everyone. But, he concludes with telling his followers that hearing is not the point: actually practicing what he said is the point.
The people who actually do what he says will be the kind of people who, rather than going along with everyone else by taking "the wide and easy path" will be the kind of people who take the narrow, hard path that actually leads to life.
The people who do what he says will be able to survive any storm--even death!--because they are learning to live the eternal life of the Kingdom RIGHT NOW.
If you want to learn how to survive life's storms, start doing what Jesus says. Go down the list, and begin to practice the kingdom response or mindset. It works.
The Sand Palace of Mexico Beach
In October of 2018, Hurricane Michael came ashore in the Florida Panhandle. It made landfall on the town of Mexico Beach. When the winds died down and the sun came out afterward, this is what remained:
The Sand Palace of Mexico Beach. [credit: Johnny Milano for The New York Times]
This house, called "The Sand Palace", was built by two men in 2017. They didn't do whatever everybody else did, they built their house their own way, to withstand the storm of all storms. What they didn't know was that that storm would arrive just a year later. When it left, all the houses around theirs were destroyed, whereas the only damage the main structure of their house retained was one cracked shower window.
Storms in life will inevitably come; no one is exempt. Jesus says the only way to prepare is to start learning to live in the Kingdom now, and the Sermon on the Mount offers advice how to do just that.
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