The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

The King Etches His Law on Our Hearts:  Mt.5:1 – 7:29

^5:1 ‘And when he saw the multitudes, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.  ² And opening his mouth he began to teach them, saying…’

In 1960, Israeli undercover agents pulled off one of the greatest kidnappings in history.  They discovered the South American hideaway of one of the masterminds of the Nazi Holocaust, a man named Adolf Eichmann.  Eichmann had presided over the slaughter of millions of Jews in the hideous Nazi Final Solution.  The undercover agents brought Eichmann to Israel to stand trial.  Adolf Eichmann’s deeds were well known to the Jews in Israel in 1960, when his trial took place, and a long line of witnesses were brought in to testify against him.  As Eichmann sat in a small bulletproof glass booth, prosecutors called in a Jewish man named Yehiel Dinur, who had miraculously escaped death in Auschwitz.  Dinur, ready to testify, stared at the former Nazi mass murderer behind the glass, and the courtroom was silent, waiting for what Dinur would say about Eichmann, who was responsible for the deaths of his friends and beloved people.  But no one was prepared for what happened next.  Yehiel Dinur began to shout and sob, collapsing to the floor in a faint.  What happened?  Was he overcome by hatred?  By horrible memories triggered by some evil in Eichmann’s face?  No.  Dinur later explained in a 60 Minutes interview that Eichmann was not the demon he expected.  Instead, he was an ordinary man just like you and me.  And in that moment, Yehiel Dinur came to the realization that sin and evil are the human condition.  He said, ‘I was afraid about myself.  I saw that I am capable to do this...exactly like he.’  There is sin in every one of us.  Then Dinur concluded with a statement that shocked the world then and it shocks the world today:  ‘There is Eichmann in all of us.’

That is the conclusion that God was calling all Israelites, and all people, to embrace.  There is something wrong with us – a corruption that needs healing from God Himself.  Long ago, the people of Israel gathered around a mountain to hear God.  On that mountain, God initiated a covenant relationship with them.  As part of that covenant, He uttered his commands for how His people would live.  God etched those words on stone tablets.  But they broke those laws and kept breaking them, which God also predicted.  Israel realized that the reason God drew them into this special covenant relationship was to teach them their need for deep, internal transformation.  He said he would one day ‘circumcise their hearts’ (Dt.30:6).

Long after those original commands had been broken by the people of Israel, Jesus gathered a renewed Israel around him.  He was on another mountain.  He initiated a new/renewed covenant with them.  This new covenant had been foreseen by the prophets.  It would be written, not on stone, but on human hearts.  For example, one had said, ‘This is the covenant…I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it’ (Jer.31:33).  Speaking on a mountain just as God did over a thousand years prior, Jesus now speaks these words.  His words still burn right into our hearts:

^5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart.

^5:22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry [a heart issue] with his brother

^5:28 He who looks on a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

^5:44 Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you [heart attitude of self-giving].

^{6:4, 6, 18} Your Father who is in heaven sees your secret motives.

^6:21 Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

^7:15 Beware of the false prophets, who…inwardly are ravenous wolves.

          One way to respond to Jesus is to say that he asks too much, even more than our parents ask!  After all, who can possibly be ‘pure in heart’?  But there is another way to regard him.  We must see that he cares about us more deeply than anyone else possibly can.  He wants to cut off sin at the very root of our being and plant integrity there instead.  In fact, he wants to plant himself there instead.  As we will see, because we can’t do this on our own strength, Jesus will place his Spirit in us.  He spells it out this way for us because he is already cleansing his own human nature, his own human heart, preparing to share it with us. 

Jesus alone changes us from the inside out.  He causes fundamental change on the deepest level of who we are.  Jesus transforms the heart – the core – of who we are. 

Are you committed to letting Jesus transform you?

Are you committed to sharing your story of transformation with others so they’d know that Jesus wants to heal and transform as well?