The Sermon on the Mount of Jesus has been the admiration of many great men and women in history for the last two thousand years. But did Jesus preach it to be admired? Did He teach it to be kept as the supreme standard of ethics?

Gandhi, the Father of modern India, had a high regard for the Sermon of the Mount. As he spent time reading the Bible and attending church searching for the truth in both the United Kingdom and South Africa, he came to appreciate the person of Jesus Christ and His teachings, especially the Sermon on the Mount.

However, he concluded that Christianity was only one of the great religions, but not the only true religion.

It was obvious that his life had been greatly affected by what he read of Jesus Christ. His non-violent revolution reflected his understanding of the Sermon on the Mount.

However, as great a man as he was, and as close to the True Light as he once was, it is said that when he died, he confessed that he was still searching for light, but all around him was darkness.

The Sermon on the Mount indeed sets out a set of supreme ethics, but they are not to be observed. No one can live out such a perfect set of ethics. They reveal,beyond the letter of the Law of Moses, the heart of God's perfection, so that we may thirst after Him and find Him. And for those who have found Him, it is His will that we be salt and light, exhibiting the kind of ethical living that befits the citizens of the Kingdom of heaven, so that people will be drawn to and give glory to our Heavenly Father.

I have had the privilege of walking alongside many Christians over the years, helping them to ponder over their passion and mission in life. One of the tools we have used is the writing of a Personal Mission Statement. In arriving at such a statement, one of the questions we considered is what values or virtues we might hold dear. As a result, the Personal Mission Statements, so arrived at, often reflect these values or virtues. Quite a few Personal Mission Statements include words similar to these: "I shall live according to the Ten Commandments."

However, as I read these or similar words in their statements, I wondered whether we still misunderstand the function of the Law.

As Paul makes it plain,

"So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law." (Gal. 3:24-25)

Indeed, the law has been divinely inspired by God, but its purpose is to lead us to faith in Christ. Therefore, Paul reminds us that the sum or end of the law is Christ (Rom. 10:4) and the goal of the command is love (I Tim. 1:5).

In Christ, our new supervisor is love and not the law. The Old Testament Law still gives us specific reminders of God's holy standard, but since we are no longer children (Gal. 4:1), the "law" that supervises us is that of loving God and loving our neighbors (Matt. 22:37-40).

Indeed adultery is a serious sin which unfortunately has become more and more prevalent among Christians. Most Bible-believing churches still take it seriously and uphold the teaching of the Bible in this respect. But not so, with the sin of anger!

Anger is a serious enough sin that Jesus has to mention it together with adultery in the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, He has to mention it before adultery and equates it with murder!

If a Christian leader admits that he is constantly plagued by adulterous thoughts, he will definitely not be allowed to continue his leadership role. But I have seen Christian leaders who are quick-tempered and yet are allowed to continue to serve in the church as if what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount does not matter.

In fact, the Scripture is full of teachings that admonish us against anger, and consider a person of anger not fit for Christian leadership. Allow me just to quote a few such passages from the Scripture:

"An angry person stirs up conflict, and a hot-tempered person commits many sins." (Prov. 29:22)

"…because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires." (James 1:20)

"(An overseer must) not (be) given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money." (I Tim 3:3)

"Since an overseer manages God's household, he must be blameless — not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain." (Titus 1:7)

Of all kinds of Christ-likeness that we can think of, Jesus Himself only mentions two in the Bible:

"…learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart." (Matt. 11:29)

What do you think His reason is?

In the Beatitude, Jesus says,

"Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth."

In essence, Jesus is not saying anything new. He is simply repeating what has already been written in Psalm 37. Throughout the psalm, the theme is one of "inheriting" (73: 9, 11, 18, 22 and 29).

The teaching is clear, as the people of God we look to God and God alone to provide for us and to increase our wealth. That is the meaning of inheriting. Whatever we have is not ours, but is given by God.

As children of God and citizens of heaven, we have to exhibit this attitude in order to be light and salt to the world. Yes, this is not fashionable, and in fact, contrary to the secular mind. The world teaches that if you want to get ahead, you have to be aggressive; if you want to be successful, you have to be ruthless; and if you want to be rich, you have to "leave no crackers on the table."

In fact, the beatitudes as a whole aim to de-secularize our worldly mindset. But the toughest is perhaps this third beatitude. Perhaps Jesus senses the perceived impracticality of such an approach. He gives three further examples — those of turning the other cheek, letting go of even one's own cloak and walking the extra mile.

These examples have at least two things in common:

1. They are all bearable: Jesus was not talking about the cutting off of an arm, having one's wife or children seized, or walking an impossible distance; and
2. They all must overcome the greatest hurdle of all, pride or ego!

Therefore, if a person can overlook or put up with physical pain, the loss of material possessions and inconveniences, and, most important of all, can let go of his ego, he will truly be humble! In fact, he will almost be invincible!

Wanting to learn to pray is always the heart-cry of all Christians who seek to love God and it is also an area that all of us feel so inadequate. I guess it is not something new; even the disciples of Jesus felt the need and thus asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. (Luke 11:1)

In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew sets the prayer that Jesus teaches against the error of some of the Jews of His days and that of the pagans. Both took a reward approach to prayer: For some of the Jews, prayer was simply an outward "act of righteousness" (6:1), to make them feel good about themselves religiously; and for the pagans, a means to twist the arms of their gods to satisfy their wants.

While most of us do not use prayers as an "outward" act of righteousness, we often use it to gauge our own spirituality. In a way it is right, if we love the Lord, we naturally will hunger and thirst after meeting Him in prayer. But more and more, we gauge our spirituality based on how long we pray, and even if we can "listen" to God through our prayer.

The meaningfulness of our prayer is far more important than its length. Some pagans can pray for hours to their gods, and it is nothing more than a reflection of their "discipline", which does not necessarily translate into a love relationship.

And whether God chooses to speak to us through the time of prayer, in another time, or through some other means is absolutely His prerogative.

It is interesting to note that in Luke 11, it was after having seen how Jesus prayed that the disciple asked to be taught how to pray. This meant he longed to pray like Jesus.

In two of the recorded prayers of Jesus (John 17 and Matt. 26), the focus of Jesus' prayers was glorifying the Father through His submission which reminds me of one of the insights of Henry Nouwen on prayers.

Nouwen likened prayer to the method of performing trapeze. He discovered the likeness through interviewing a trapeze performer who dazzled his audience with his amazing swinging back and forth. To Nouwen's surprise, the performer gave total credit to his brother who grabbed hold of him every time he finished his swinging routine. He added that all he had to do was to open his hands and trust that his brother would grab him. If he tried to grab his brother instead, it might spell disaster.

Nouwen went on to liken our prayer as one of emptying our hands of things that we like to hold onto (be it self-will, preference, timing and even the way we like to see things happen). Prayer, like that of Jesus, is a process of submission, whereby we learn to let go of things that are hindrances to our total submission to God. When we are able to extend a truly empty hand to God, He will certainly grab a hold of us. Humans may fail us, God never will.

In the last few decades, fasting as a form of spiritual discipline seems to be in vogue among evangelical Christians again, perhaps rightfully so.

It was practiced by the people of God in the Old Testament (1 Sam. 7:6; Jer. 36:9; 1 Ki. 21:9, 12, 27; 2 Sam. 12:16), even after their exile (Est. 4:1-3,15-17; Neh. 1:4; Dan. 9:3) and was in fact mandated as part of the Law of Moses (Lev. 16:29, 31; 23:27, 32; Num. 29:7). The New Testament believers, including the Apostles continued to practice it as part of their church life (Acts 13:2,3; 14:23).

And yet, Jesus chooses to warn us against practicing it as an "act of righteousness", whether to impress God, ourselves or others.

I think most Christians would not practice fasting to impress others. But to safeguard against this pitfall, Jesus commands us not to show others any sign of our fasting (let alone telling people that we fast).

But the danger of impressing ourselves does exist. I have come across many Christians who practice fasting as if they would not be quite complete without it, but with it, they would be closer to God.

And the danger of impressing God also is real, in that, we may think that we are able to twist God's arm into submission to our agenda, our will or our desire.

As we carefully consider all the examples and teachings given in the Bible, the overwhelming focus on fasting is repentance. Indeed, the abstinence from food or drink and from our work or routine is purely an expression of our genuine sorrow over sin.

The Chinese Bible beautifully translates "fasting" on the Day of Atonement as a "bitter denial of one's heart". Such is the essence of fasting according to most of the examples and teachings in the Scripture concerning this practice.

While the rest of the passages about fasting, like those in the Book of Esther, Nehemiah and Daniel, do include a desire for divine intervention or wisdom, they are still grounded in sorrow and repentance.

Indeed, regular fasting from food or drink or any of our routines that would be a distraction from a time focused on God is very helpful in drawing us close to God, but we should never use a work mentality that by fasting, we can somehow twist God's arm into loving us or accepting us more, let alone answering our prayers.

We do not have anything to offer God, except "a broken and contrite heart." (Ps. 51:17)

In my secular career, I worked for a few family businesses. The benefits of working for a family business included a much cozier working environment, with less of a bureaucratic structure in decision making and more of a relational approach to line and functional management. I found it more comfortable in such an environment as a Christian. However, it also had its pitfalls and the most important of them was having to answer to more than one boss unofficially.

Officially, I reported to the chairman of the company who was the father of the family, but unofficially I had to answer to the other members of the family, who often had competing interests. In one such company, as much as I enjoyed my work very much and the complete trust of the chairman, I had no choice but to resign, because it is true that, "No one can serve two masters (or more)."

However, as much as I have had this first-hand experience, I have found myself very comfortable in serving two masters in my personal life.

I am familiar with the teaching of 1 John 2:15, "do not love the world…If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Since my conversion in my late teen-years, I learned to memorize this verse. But as I reflect on my secular career, as successful as it was for the most part and one in which I invariably gained the trust of my boss, I, imperceptibly, had engaged in the rat race, just like many others in the corporate world.

Yes, I joined short-term missions, I sought to share the gospel at work and even led Bible study in my office, and I served actively in the church. While I might even be able to maintain a good reputation as a good Christian at work, deep down, I admired, I pursued and I sought after fame, fortune and power. The only difference was that I was able to hide it quite well in the eyes of my colleagues, but not in the eyes of my Lord.

Indeed, "If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness." (Matt. 6:23)

All along, I "saw" myself as a good Christian, but what I saw was, in fact, darkness, that is, false light. How great had that darkness been!

It was not until I learned to set aside time for regular prolonged self-reflection and examination (in addition to my daily rush-devotion time), that I came to see my folly. As a result, when I was invited to speak at my son's wedding (he is an accountant married to another accountant, just as I am), I said to him, "Do not follow my footsteps to a tee."

I was referring to how I tried to gain the world and the Lord at the same time.

In today's scriptural reflection, I ask about the main difference of Jesus' teaching — "So, in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you…" (Matt. 7:12) from the following:

1. "What you do not want done to you, do not do it to others?" (Confucius)
2. "What is hateful to yourself, do to no other." (Rabbi Hillel )
3. "What thou thyself hatest, to no man do." (Tobit 4:16)

It is obvious that these proverbs focus on the negative, while that of Jesus focuses on the positive.

But the difference goes much deeper. In the latter sayings, one seeks to avoid doing things that are wrong, and to do the things that are right (for us). Doing right is at the center of the decision and so we ourselves are still central in the decision. But Jesus teaches us to make others the center of our decision, and "others" include those who might have made us their enemies (as mentioned in Matt. 5:44 earlier).

But the sum of the Law and Prophets is that of love.

The Jews of Jesus' time, especially their teachers, approached the Law and Prophets based on observance, making their religious life a set of "dos and don'ts".

But Jesus is saying that if we truly love God and love people, then, essentially, our actions will more than meet the letter of the Law, and the very heart of our Heavenly Father also.

This is why I am very leery of the church trying to set up too many "dos and don'ts", instead of teaching the people to love God and their neighbors whole-heartedly. It is perhaps also a reflection of how we approach the raising of our children at home. We take pride in their obedience, their academic excellence and their career achievements, as if somehow it would lessen the pain of knowing that they do not really put God first in their life.

"Man of Vision" is a book about the founder of World Vision, Bob Pierce. He was obviously a very successful and influential man. He obviously preached in the name of Jesus. He might not have driven out demons, but he certainly performed things that very few could match — the setting up of World Vision that has greatly impacted the lives of many in the Third World, especially children in abject poverty.

But in the book I just mentioned, his daughter honestly tells of how he could not get along with other people in leadership, how he ignored his family and contributed to the suicide of one of his daughters. While he might have helped millions of families, he ruined his own. It was by the extreme mercy of God that he was able to reconcile somewhat with his family before his death.

Bob Pearce's life is a warning to us, especially those in Christian leadership. Jesus is not looking at the fruit of our lavish claim about Him, our effective preaching and teaching ministry, our great sacrifice for Him nor any achievements recognized by the world. He only looks at our relationship with Him, if we are obedient to Him and His will. That is the only fruit He looks at.

Today, I invite you to reflect on the lyric of this old hymn:

Refrain
Oh yes, He cares, I know He cares,
His heart is touched with my grief;
When the days are weary, the long nights dreary,
I know my Savior cares.

Does Jesus care when my heart is pained
Too deeply for mirth or song,
As the burdens press, and the cares distress
And the way grows weary and long?

Does Jesus care when my way is dark
With a nameless dread and fear?
As the daylight fades into deep night shades,
Does He care enough to be near?

Does Jesus care when I've tried and failed
To resist some temptation strong;
When for my deep grief there is no relief,
Though my tears flow all the night long?

Does Jesus care when I've said "goodbye"
To the dearest on earth to me,
And my sad heart aches till it nearly breaks,
Is it aught to Him? Does He see?

(Source: hymnalaccompanist.com)

History of author, Frank Graeff (1860-1919):

Is God really present and concerned during my times of hurt? Does He care when the burdens weigh heavily on my every thought and activity? Does He care when I can no longer endure some strong testing? Does He care when I must say a final farewell to my dearest loved one on earth?

These questions and doubts are common to nearly all of God's children at some time or other in life, just as they were to the author of this text, Frank E. Graeff. Mr. Graeff was a minister in the Methodist denomination and served some of its leading churches in the Philadelphia Conference. Throughout the district, he was known as the "sunshine minister." C. Austin Miles, author of the popular hymn, "In the Garden", paid this tribute to Frank Graeff:

He is a spiritual optimist, a great friend of children; his bright sun-shining disposition attracts him not only to children, but to all with whom he comes in contact. He has a holy magnetism and a child-like faith.

In spite of his outwardly-cheery disposition and winsome personality, Graeff was often called upon to go through severe testing experiences in his life. It was while passing through such a test and experiencing severe despondency, doubt and physical agony, that Mr. Graeff wrote this text. He turned to the Scriptures for solace and strength. 1 Peter 5:7 became especially meaningful to him during this particular struggle:

"Casting all your care upon Him;
for He careth for you."

The phrase, "He careth for you," spoke deeply to his need and eventually became the basis for this text.

To experience times of question and even doubt regarding the nearness of God, as Frank Graeff did in the verses of this hymn, is only human and normal. It is only as a believer comes through such a struggle, however, with the firm conviction as Mr. Graeff did in the chorus of this hymn, "O yes He cares, I know He cares," that a child of God can be truly victorious.

Sometimes I wonder why Jesus would make rather harsh statements to those who wished to follow Him, as if to deter them from following.

But as some of those who tried to follow were put off by His words and really "turned back and no longer followed Him", (Jn. 6:66) He would be greatly saddened.

It is obvious that He really wants us to follow Him, but if anyone comes to Him "and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters — yes, even his own life — " he cannot be His disciple. (Lk. 14:26) The key word is "cannot", not "better not" or "should not", but "cannot" — the Greek word is for dynamo — not having the power to follow through!

I have not found one place in the gospel that Jesus calls anyone to follow Him for their own sake. Each one of us is called to follow Him for the sake of the furtherance of His Kingdom.

What good is a nominal disciple who is of no use to the furtherance of His Kingdom (that is the meaning of being salt without taste in Lk. 14: 34)?

A young man recently told me that he would like to believe in Jesus and I asked him why. He told me that he had prayed to get a good result from his latest test with the promise that he would be a Christian if God answered his prayer.

He got an "A" from his test and so he wished to become a Christian as promised. As I explained to him that faith in Christ is not purely intellectual faith nor it is about getting a temporal benefit, be it health, wealth or a grade, but total trust in His saving work on the Cross and the commitment to follow Him at all costs. And I asked him if he still would consider being a Christian. To this he hesitated, which was good. This is what Jesus desires us to do — to count the cost of following.

I am glad to share that this young man, though hesitant at first, did eventually decide to put his total trust in Christ and to follow Him.

I think you would have heard skeptics of the gospel say that if they see God with their own eyes, they would believe in Him.

Of course, our natural and logical response is that if they can see God, they do not have to "believe" Him. Faith, by definition is to be "certain of what we do not see" (Heb. 11:1), not to mention that, because of our sins, as God puts it, "No one may see me and live." (Exod. 33:20)

That does not mean that God would not give us enough evidence for us to believe in Him, as Paul eloquently puts it, "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities — His eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." (Rom. 1:20)

But God has not stopped at what we call, general revelation. He, through His Son's incarnation, has made Himself known to us. The Gospel of John is also called the Book of Signs, in that, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John carefully crafts his gospel to tell of the signs (i.e. miracles) performed by Jesus. His purpose is that we "may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, (we) may have life in His name." (Jn. 20:31)

You may wonder why, we in the intellectual world, no longer witness similar miracles as recorded in the Gospels. I believe, for one, we now have the privilege of the written Word of God in languages that we can understand. If we do not believe in God's comprehensive witness through His written word, even if we see miracles every day, like the resurrection of the dead (Lk. 16:31), we will still reject God.

But on the other hand, we do see miracles everyday — the rising and setting of the sun, the birth of a baby, and most of all the regeneration of a sinner who repents to God.

They all witness to us the eternal power and divine nature of our Creator God.