Studies in the Sermon on the Mount [Two Volume Set] by David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Author:David Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Christian, Christian Ministry, Religion, Preaching, Evangelism, Sermons
ISBN: 9781614271161
Publisher: Martino Publishing
Published: 2011-07-15T21:20:27.892000+00:00

If we were all to practise this it would be revolutionary. I am quite certain a revival would start at once. What a difference it would make to church life, and the life of every individual. Think of all the pretence and sham, and all that is unworthy in us all. If only we realized that God is looking at all, and is aware of it all, and is recording it all! That is the teaching of the Scriptures, and that its method of preaching holiness-not offering people some marvellous experience which solves all problems. No, it is just realizing that we are always there in the presence of God. For the man who starts with a true realization of that is soon to be seen flying to Christ and His cross, and pleading to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

The next subsidiary principle concerns rewards. This whole question of rewards seems to trouble people, and yet our Lord continually makes statements like those in verses i and 4. Here He indicates that it is quite right to seek the reward which God gives. He says, `Otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.' If you do the right thing, then `thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.' There was a teaching (we do not hear so much of it now) towards the beginning of the century which used to say that one should live the Christian life for its own sake, and not for the reward. It was such a good thing in and of itself that one should not be animated by any motive such as desire for heaven or fear of hell. We should be disinterested and altruistic. The teaching was often put in the form of a story, an illustration. A poor man was walking along an Eastern road one day with a bucket of water in one hand and a bucket of fire in the other. Somebody asked him what he was going to do with these buckets, and he replied that he was going to burn heaven with the bucket of fire and drown hell with the bucket of water-he was not interested in either. But that is not the New Testament teaching. The New Testament teaching would have us see that it is a good thing to desire to see God. That is the summum bonum. `Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.' It is a right and legitimate desire, it is a holy ambition. We are told this about our Lord Himself: `Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame' (Heb. xii. 2). And we are told about Moses that he did what he did because he had his eye on `the recompence of the reward'. He was far-sighted. Why did the people whose lives we read of in Hebrews xi live the life they did? The answer is this-they saw certain things

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