What Are You Doing About It?

MHA: The Sermon on the Mount concludes with three sections that are thematically, structurally, and terminologically connected with each other: a section on the two ways, a section on false prophets and the Last Judgment, and a section on the house on sand and the house on the rock.

DMLJ: Strictly speaking, the Sermon as such has come to an end at the close of verse 12 [the Golden Rule].  By the end of that verse our Lord has laid down all the principles which He was concerned to inculcate.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching, Vol.2 - The Sermon on the Mount, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev

Before coming to these three concluding sections, I think it worthwhile to summarize where Jesus has brought us in this Sermon, and present some idea of why He is concluding in this manner.

Until this point, Jesus has presented a vision of a Christian people and His kingdom.  In the Beatitudes, He presents His general portrait of a Christian – not just for a few, not only in the afterlife, but for all Christians, here and now.  He says, because you are like this, the world will react to you in a certain way – they will dislike you and persecute you.

He further gives detailed instruction about the kind of life the Christian is to live, this in contrast to the teaching of the Pharisees.  He then concludes with our attitude toward others, specifically in this idea of judgment.

DMLJ: …this kingdom He has come to establish is entirely different from anything the world has ever known…

And with this, as Lloyd-Jones sees it, Jesus has concluded the Sermon – summed up very succinctly in the closing verse, the Golden Rule.  But we find these subsequent concluding verses, the three sections as described above by Metropolitan Hilarion.

DMLJ: So, He proceeds now to test His listeners.  He says, in effect, ‘My Sermon is finished.  Now at once you must ask yourselves a question, “What am I doing about this?  What is my reaction?”

If we hear it and don’t live it, it’s as if Jesus is saying that He might as well never preached it.  And in this last section He offers the two paths – one that follows the teaching and one that doesn’t.  The Sermon is not merely to be commended, although there is obviously much to commend.  It is to be lived. 

DMLJ: …the whole purpose of the remainder of this chapter is just to exhort us to do that in a most serious and solemn manner.

One way leads to life, the other to destruction; one bears good fruit, the other bad; one’s house stands, while the other’s washes away.

MHA: All three sections make use of antithesis… The predominant tone is one of warning.