Building on the Rock: Practical Advice from Jesus!

Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers. All rights reserved.

The NIV and New International Version trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

All original material is copyright © 1997 or earlier by Robert C. Buehler. All rights reserved.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Buehler, Robert C. (Robert Charles), 1950-

Building on the rock

Includes index.

ISBN 1-55212-205-0

     ISBN: 978-1-4122-4056-7 (ebook)

1. Christian life. I. Title.

BV4501.2.B83 1998             248.4             C98-910153-3

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Table of Contents

Author’s Note: How This Book Came About

O Come, Let Us Ignore Him?

Approach And Avoidance

Dressing Up Jesus

Chapter 1 The Rock And The Kingdom

The Source

The Audience

The Kingdom Of God

Daniel’s Prophecy

Chapter 2 People Of The Rock

The Poor In Spirit

Those Who Mourn

The Meek

Those Who Hunger & Thirst For Righteousness

The Merciful

The Pure In Heart

The Peacemakers

The Persecuted

Insulted Because Of Jesus

A Remarkable Portrait

Chapter 3 Living In The Real World

Salt And Light

Seven Ways To Be More Righteous Than The Pharisees

Chapter 4Responding To Evil:

X-Rated Gospel

Unpredictable Christians

The Power Of The Cross: An Explanatory Digression

The Most Excellent Way

From Perfection To Practicality

Chapter 5 False Religion And Real Faith

Giving

Prayer

The Lord’s Model For Prayer

Fasting

Chapter 6 Drinking From The Rock:

Heavenly Treasure

Right Perception

God And Money

Freedom From Worry

Chapter 7The Rule Of The Kingdom

Judge Yourself First

The Problem Of Prejudice

Tapping Our Resources

Judging By The Golden Rule

Chapter 8 Warnings And Promises

The Straight Gate And Narrow Way

Beware Of False Spokesmen For God

Lip-Service Versus. Love’s Service

A Question Of Foundations

Epilogue: The So What? Factor

Author’s Note: How This Book Came About

On May 15, 1970, in an attic bedroom in Brattleboro, Vermont, I met Jesus Christ¹.1 didn’t know it at the time, but this experience made me part of what was to become known in the popular press of the day as the Jesus freak movement, in which many hippies, druggies and disaffected young people found new life as Christian believers. This book really begins with that conversion, when as one of a new generation of Jesus freaks I began, among other things, to read and study the Bible—a project I am still working on.

I approached Bible study with the enthusiastic sense of discovery that came with the territory in those days, without benefit of proper instruction or training on the best ways a new believer should approach this book. I didn’t know that you were supposed to start with, say, the gospel of John, or maybe selected readings picked out by an experienced teacher. I simply started at Genesis and read through to Revelation, and then started over.

In the course of these readings, and of my life as a newly-arrived member of the evangelical subculture, I began after a while to notice some things that bothered me.

The churches I was becoming acquainted with, while proclaiming the authority (indeed, the inerrancy) of the whole Bible, tended in practice to put major emphasis on a few sections, such as the Pauline epistles and the Gospel of John, often neglecting the other three Gospels, known as the Synoptic Gospels. Teachers and leaders would stress the atoning work of Christ’s death while speaking in disparaging terms of those ‘liberals who looked to Jesus as merely" a teacher or an example². Indeed, I heard some people teach explicitly that to seek to follow Jesus as example was a form of blasphemy, which reduces Christ to the level of the merely human, or even worse, raises oneself to the level of the godlike.

At the same time, I was exposed to arguments to the effect that some or all of the sayings of Jesus must be either categorized along with the Old Testament period (the Law) which was coming to a close, or associated with a future millennial reign. In either case, they were not to be seen as directly applying to our own present lives. Most of the Christian people I knew in those days appeared to equate the gospel with what was often referred to as the plan of salvation, a step-by-step evangelistic program which could be presented briefly in some concise format such as the Four Spiritual Laws³. At the time, I found such tools to be quite helpful to me in my understanding of the importance of spiritual life.

There were, however, some aspects of such a simple, step-by-step approach that bothered me when I compared them with scripture. For example, I remember asking someone about the apparent conflict between the confident assurance I would often hear being given to a new convert that all your sins are forgiven, past, present and future⁴ and the link that appears in the Lord’s Prayer⁵between offering forgiveness and receiving it. It bothered me that what seemed from the text to be a clear warning of Jesus could be brushed aside because it conflicted with someone’s favorite doctrine.

Meanwhile, I began searching in the Bible for a concise definition of the Gospel and to my surprise couldn’t find one. One popular commentator,⁶ in an effort to be thoroughly rigorous and systematic, solved this problem by writing that there are at least nine separate gospels mentioned in the New Testament, including one called the everlasting gospel which, oddly enough, is to be preached at some time in the future for one hour by an angel as described in the book of Revelation.⁷ This type of absurdity-that something the Bible calls everlasting or eternal is supposed to exist only for a brief space of time—while representing what I eventually learned was a rather extreme type of dispensationalism—led me to question the basis of some of the teachings I had learned. Does rightly dividing the Word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15, KJV) really mean splitting the Bible up into little chunks, only some of which apply to our own situation? And just how is the gospel that came to be preached about Jesus different from the gospel that Jesus himself preached?

I wrestled with these questions for several years.

O Come, Let Us Ignore Him?

By 1974 I had begun to seriously wonder if the typically evangelical emphasis on conversion and subsequent evangelism, so often presented in my hearing as the sum and substance of the gospel, might possibly be leaving a gap in the teaching of the church. I began to study the history of reform and renewal, and the writings of persons who are widely respected for their contributions to such renewal. And I began to think about how to draw attention to Jesus, not only in his death and resurrection, but also in his way of life and the content of his teaching. In the mid-1980’s I resolved to write down the best observations I could make about Matthew 5, 6 and 7, to get an overall picture of the sorts of things that Jesus taught.

With this in mind, over the next several years as a pastor I conducted small-group Bible studies in those chapters. Every time it was a remarkable struggle for the participants in the study, because we committed ourselves to approaching it with the question firmly in mind, How can Jesus possibly expect us to take him seriously?

It seems strange and somehow mysterious that here in the latter end of the twentieth century, the great questions we face point us more than ever, not to more and better technology, but to issues of the spirit; and that the hunger in the world for religious answers to those questions has not diminished, despite both the cheerful expectations of religion’s critics, and the dire warnings of its partisans. The question of God, of the spiritual dimension

of life, has not gone away. And Jesus remains for many people the supreme focal point of religious life. But it seems to me (to understate the case considerably) that the reverence paid to Jesus as a religious symbol or even an object of devotion is not everywhere matched by the attention paid to his teaching.

For more than twenty-five years I have tried to learn, through both study and experience, what it really means for a human to say, I believe in God. And because I am a Christian, this has meant repeatedly asking myself and others the meaning of that most simple and ecumenical of Christian creeds, Jesus is Lord. This book is part of that adventure in learning.

Approach and avoidance

It took a long time to bring these thoughts to the printed page. I have to admit that I have been very hesitant, even apprehensive, about trying to explain, or even explore, the words of Jesus of Nazareth. Frankly, it is an intimidating project. So much has been said over so many centuries that it seems anything I say will inevitably either unnecessarily repeat familiar themes, or arrogantly defy respected tradition. However, someone has said that a large part of the preacher’s job is to remind people of the obvious. And it seems to me that especially in North America, and particularly in the Protestant mainstream and its highly visible and vocal evangelical component, we need both to be reminded of what we already know, and to be challenged in some of our comfortable assumptions.

The words of Jesus in the New Testament are there for all to see; this is one person’s attempt to call attention to them, to look at them perhaps with new eyes. I have a notion that if we pay attention, these words will have an impact on more than just our personal, private, religious lives.

Dressing Up Jesus

In this generalized, semi-Christian culture, we all⁸want Jesus to be inclusive and tolerant of a wide variety of opinions, especially on political issues. We want to be able to appeal to the Judeo-Christian tradition as justification for all kinds of things. We want Christianity itself to be a cultural backdrop for whatever we do with our lives. If Jesus addresses us directly, we hope it will be merely in order to remind us of our religious duties, that we should be good neighbors and good citizens, etc., and leave it at that. Unfortunately, if we are to maintain this perception of him, it is necessary to be selective about what we hear Jesus saying.

We like the promise of abundant life; and we want to receive it without likewise accepting the taking of the cross. Oh, we want the cross all right: we want the benefit of it. We’re glad to see Jesus hanging there, paying for our sins. But to follow him, to imitate him, to share (as Paul says he rejoices to do) in his sufferings: this we do not want at all. We like the sweet, comforting, Flannelgraph Jesus that we may remember from Sunday school, when we were assured that God wants us to obey parents and teachers, and that the policeman is our friend. We go to church (those of us who go to church) to be fed, to enjoy

the music and the preaching and the praying, to be transported from the world of death and taxes into a world of smiles and handshakes and voluntary offerings. If our religious convictions touch our politics, it is only so we can righteously demand that the government will exercise more control over other people’s moral choices.

I have written about some of Jesus’ central teachings for a very simple reason. I am a Christian. Most of what I