The Law of the Kingdom of God

Moses was known as the lawgiver.  He spent 40 days and 40 nights communing with God on Mt. Sinai and received from God the Ten Commandments, the Universal Law for all mankind, regardless of race, culture, or conditioning. 

Jesus, as the New Moses, spent 40 days and 40 nights in the desert, in preparation for His earthly ministry, establishing the kingdom of God on earth.  His Sermon on the Mount has often been described as the corollary of the Ten Commandments, but as Oswald Chambers pointed out,

The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of rules and regulations.  It is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting His way with us.

 

I think Chambers has it exactly right.  There is nothing we ourselves can "do" to make ourselves "poor in spirit," for example.  There is no discipline or practice that can affect our inner man in such a way so as to be truly poor in spirit.  This has to be the work of the Holy Spirit transforming our strong and proud flesh -- the natural man -- into the image of Jesus Christ, the only One who is truly "poor in spirit:"  I can do nothing on my own; it is the Father in me who is doing the work....   I do only what I see the Father doing....  The Father is greater than I....

 

Take a look at the Beatitudes.  If we can imagine the disciples and the multitude who came to listen to the Teacher on the mountainside, we will see all manner of hopes and dreams represented there -- the same ones that gather together at any assembly on a Sunday morning, or at any religious conference.  They are there for every reason we can imagine.  Now see Jesus looking around at the crowd and seeing the poor and lowly, the sad and afflicted, the "lesser ones," those who are hungry and thirsty for God instead of for the recognition of other men.  Imagine His glance picking out those who have been condemned by others as 'sinners' and outcasts -- the unworthy.

 

Instead of giving a new "law," a new practice of religion, He begins to look at each one of the unworthy ones:  Blessed are you, He says to them....You are the salt of the earth; You are the light of the world.  These are the ones who have come to the end of their own strength, just as he came to the end of his in the wilderness, as He depended solely on His Father for sustenance.  These are the ones who have recognized their own helplessness in a world of power, strength, manipulation, and greed.  These are the merciful ones, because they themselves have experienced their own weakness.  These are the ones who mourn, who need the comfort that can be given only by God.

 

What is Jesus giving?  Not a new practice of religion, but comfort to the sorrowing, hope to the hopeless, recognition to those who suffer at the hands of others. 

 

What if Jesus came into one of our high schools today?  The student body is assembled in the gym.  There are the popular kids, the football players, the cheerleaders, the student body president and officers, the bullies, and the honor students.  But He doesn't speak to any of them; He looks around until He finds the 'little ones,' --- the one who is failing all his subjects because his mom is sick and he is worried; the one who is ashamed of his small, weak frame and his ineptitude at sports; the girl who has befriended someone unpopular with the 'in' crowd....

 

You are blessed, He says to the outcasts.  You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.  "What is He talking about?" murmur the others.  "He doesn't know what we know about those people."  He sees something they cannot see; he sees that the strong and the sleek, the smart and the able, will have to come to the end of their own strength before they can receive the strength that He came to give them.  Once they are 'empty of themselves,' they can receive the Spirit of the Lord.

 

It is a journey that none of us can take on our own; we must be led into the wilderness by the Spirit, and there, stripped of all natural resources, we can be filled with the mercy, the purity, the emptiness of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  As long as we think we are 'following the law' and living up the God's demands, we are not yet there.  The Spirit Himself must fashion us after the image of the Only Son so that it is His Light that shines from us, and not our own.