Transcript
Matthew chapter five is where we're at. So turn on your Bibles or open your Bibles, however you're going to engage with scripture. We're going to be in chapter five verses one through 12 as a church. We're going through the book of Matthew. We go verse by verse, section by section as each week unfolds. So if you're new with us, that's what you can expect. If you know that we end in verse 12, you can expect that we've going to pick up in verse 13 next week. So we're very methodical in terms of going through the Bible. I want to put in front of you before we actually read the text together, just where we left off last week. In the story of Jesus, it says that Jesus began to go all over Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people.
I put up on the screen last week, a map that shows this Galilee region. It's north in Israel, significantly north of Jerusalem, and Jesus is kind of camped out there doing most of his teaching. A lot of Jesus's ministry happens in this Galilee region, and you'll notice that he's teaching and preaching in the synagogues. Now, I don't want to just take for granted that you kind of understand the synagogue, so let me just explain that for one minute. For the Jews, they had a temple where they would worship and offer sacrifices that was located in Jerusalem. The priests would serve there in the temple. But if you didn't live in Jerusalem, you lived far away. You still wanted to practice your faith and gather with other devout Jewish individuals and so on Sabbath. On the Sabbath, there would be a gathering at the synagogue on Saturday morning.
You'd go to synagogue and there would be a teaching that would go on. A synagogue was like a church. It was just a space where there would be a rabbi teaching from the Bible. There'd be some reading from the text. There may be some worship that's going on, and that was not where sacrifices were happening. So the stuff you read about in Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, the temple worship isn't happening at a synagogue that's happening in Jerusalem. The space where Jesus is at is just the little gathering. So maybe you're familiar with an AA gathering or maybe you're familiar with a church gathering. It didn't really need to be a big group of people. It was like six or more basically constituted a gathering and there'd be a space. So Jesus is going in and he's teaching. We'll see other times that this happens, but this is a summary statement from Matthew 4 23.
When we get to chapter five, we get an introduction and then we're going to get a sermon that's going to go from chapter five through chapter six and chapter seven. If you have a Bible that puts Jesus words in red letters, what you see there is that the color. What's the color of those words? Red. That's right. So this is a long sermon that Jesus gives. It's probably a gathering of, it's a collection of the teachings that Jesus was giving at these various sites. It's probably not just a sermon that he gave one time, but it's very likely that this is the material, the common material that was in Jesus's teaching. So let me read this to you and then we'll go back and unpack it just a bit. Starting in verse one, when he saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.
Then he began to teach them saying, blessed are the poor in spirit for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the humble for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Let's pray together.
Lord, we do just. We commit ourselves to you and we ask for the help of your spirit. God, the Holy Spirit that you would teach us through this text, that you would open up our eyes to see wonderful things from your word. Apply this scripture to our life. Would you help us to practice what we read here and assimilate it into our own spiritual life? And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. What do you think we should call these three chapters? Sermon on the Mount? It's definitely happening on the mountain. You see, it says there in verse one, he saw the crowds and he went up on the mountain is probably the slope near the Sea of Galilee. There's these inclines around the Sea of Galilee where Jesus could have easily gone up, sat down and began to teach his disciples, the crowds that were there.
So we could call it the Sermon on the Mount, but that's just the location where it occurred. I would suggest to you that this is the manifesto of the king or the platform of the king. Do you know when a political party is preparing for a political season, they'll put together a platform. This is what we are about. This is what we're about. In fact, I'm going to show you at the end as we're making an application of this text, I'm going to give you the manifesto as if there was a sermon on the Mount, both of Black Lives Matter and of the Republican Party. If they wrote a sermon on the Mount, wait till you hear it. It's going to be hilarious. Well, not hilarious, but it is fitting. It'll help me illustrate the point. But imagine that idea of a platform. What Jesus is doing is he's going into these synagogues around the Galilee, common people, and he's talking about the kingdom.
And one of the things that we see in our day and age is that there are parts of this sermon that people love, right? Hey, take care of the poor, that God is one who's merciful, right? And that the kingdom's about just mercy. But then it says, turn the other cheek and we're like, I don't know if I like that kingdom so much. This is the platform of the kingdom that Jesus is talking about. And my conclusion after we go through this text is basically, this is who's welcome. This is all about these first 12 verses is here's who is welcome in this kingdom. The doors are flung wide open for these people. This is setting out the value system of this is what's important for this kingdom that Jesus is heralding. So it says that he went up on the mountain and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.
Then he began to teach them. Now I got to mention this as we go through here, because I've been doing this all the way along. Who else do we know of that went up on a mountain, got a word from God, brought the message of God from that mountain down to the people. Moses. Moses. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. So here we have again, maybe Matthew, as he is writing this account of Jesus, he's drawing out, he's connecting the dots because we've already seen this image of baptism, right? The idea of being taken through the water. Then we saw the testing in the wilderness, and now we have a mountain scene where God's man, Jesus, the son of God is delivering the message of God. So maybe there is a bit of a parallel. Many believe this section continues the Moses typology from the birth and temptation narratives.
Now this material is also found in the gospel of Luke. If you know the Bible that Matthew, mark, Luke, and John are all telling the story of Jesus's ministry, the three years of Jesus's ministry, we get a little bit of birth narrative on some of 'em in Matthew and Luke, and then we get ministry narrative in all four. And so if you look at Luke six, you'll see a condensed version of similar material in a different order. That's why I was saying that this is probably the material in general that Jesus is preaching as he's going and healing people and sharing these messages. Now, before we get into this sermon specifically, I just want you to recall the prayer that you know so well. I mean, I think you know this prayer, right? This is the Lord's prayer. That's oftentimes the name that comes from it. This is a piece of it. He teaches his disciples. Jesus says, this is how you should pray. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We'll get to this text, we'll look at it more in depth, but I put this in front of you and I this morning because what Jesus is teaching his followers to do is to be asking the Father to have the kingdom of God that he's talking about to come on earth in the same way that the kingdom is operating in heaven.
So just think about for a second, what is a kingdom? What does it take to have a kingdom? Go ahead. What does it take? A king. A king? Okay, good. We need a king. What else do we need? Subjects. Subjects. We need some subjects. So what else? A queen. Okay, what else? Some people, some what subjects, yes, we need some rules. We need a monetary system of how things are exchanged. We need a value system. We've got a culture. So when we talk about kingdom, don't just think king, don't just think place, think culture, think space where Jesus is in charge and it's just designed well. The rules are just and perfect. There is structure, there is order, there's flourishing. That's when we talk about, look, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. This needs to be this something we chew on and we let it just flourish and open up in our imagination and think about what do you think?
What is a kingdom? What does it take? If you are going to establish your own kingdom, what would be all of the pieces? It's likely that those parallels are that those things are similar to this idea of Jesus having a kingdom in heaven where everything is ordered around him. And Jesus says, I want you to pray. I want you to pray that the kingdom that is in heaven would come on earth. So here we're going to go through a sermon that Jesus is going to just open up. He's going to pull back the curtain. He's going to say, look, here's what my kingdom looks like. Here's what my kingdom is all about. Excuse me.
So verse three, he says this, blessed are the poor in spirit for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Now if you're familiar with this text, this is called the Beatitudes, and we're going to have a repeat repetition of the word blessed. Maybe your translation has the word a little bit different. It could be, oh, how happy is, or something like that. But blessed, blessed, blessed. Then we're going to have the character or the experience or the station in life here. It's poor in spirit. The experience and then why they are blessed. It's because in God's reality, in God's economy, the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Okay? But we've got to do something because do you know what the New Testament, what language was the New Testament written in Greek? And so it wasn't written with the word blessed, it was written with the word does not have a good English version. It doesn't have a good English translation. So that's why we have this term blessed. Or maybe, oh, how happy is it carries this idea of being happy or fortunate, happy or fortunate.
But even that, it's not asking you to to change your thinking. So there's a bunch of things that this text is not, it's not saying, Hey, look at the fact that you're impoverished in spirit. You're totally spiritually bankrupt, and so you just need to change your thinking and see yourself as so happy. That's not what's saying here. Instead, probably the equivalent of blessed is what we would say is congratulations. I was going to put on my slides and I forgot to this morning, that little party popper emoji, right? Where it's like, congratulations. I think there's some kind of automation that happens when you do that on Facebook. If you break, congratulations, like balloons start going up across your page. That's the idea. Congratulations. Now again, that's still challenging because why is he saying congratulations, you're poor in spirit. So there's some commentators that come and look at these beatitudes, the first few, and they say, these are ethical qualities that you need to go and try to achieve.
You need to try and be poor in spirit, but this literally poor in spirit, really literally it means in a bankrupt, bankrupt and spiritually bankrupt. I don't know why anybody would want, it doesn't seem, in fact, instead what Jesus wants is enriched. He wants us to have this spiritual wealth. So we've got to wrestle with the text a bit. We've got to figure out what's going on here because this is not the only one where it just seems to be confusing. What does it mean to be congratulations are the poor in spirit, and I'll give you the framework and then we'll work it through. I think that what Jesus is saying as he's going around the Galilee, he's just declaring these are the kinds of people that are welcome in the kingdom. The gates of the kingdom are flung wide open to these types of people.
Not that you'll stay in this state, but there are people like this here around Galilee who are just, they feel like they've totally, they've just totally bankrupt. It just reminds me of sometimes we're out serving people in the line and somebody will come along and you can just see from their appearance that they're just had a life wrecked by addiction and their bodies wasted away by addiction and yet having a conversation with them, a spiritual conversation, there's an understanding about Jesus and there's a longing for the Lord. But there's this impoverished state of like, I don't have anything going for me spiritually, but I wish I did. There's just this spiritual poverty. I bring nothing to the table spiritually. And Jesus is saying, congratulations, the kingdom of heaven is for you. I've come for you. I haven't come for the one who's like the religious leader who thinks they have everything together. Remember, later on, Jesus responds back to a challenge to why are you hanging out with tax collectors and sinners? And Jesus partially responds by saying, look, I have come for the sick. The sick are the ones that need the physician, not those who are healthy. And that is this reality of the kingdom. And so right at the beginning of this sermon, there is this list of 10 quality states or experiences that are describe those that are just welcome into the kingdom. This is familiar territory. It shouldn't be off-putting.
Then he says, blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. This mourning is this idea of grief, the state of being in the state of grieving. These are the people that the gates are flung wide open. You can imagine Jesus throwing up his arms is saying, congratulations. The kingdom message has come to you, your mourning. You are in your place of grieving. You have experienced loss in your life and the kingdom is for you. You will be comforted in all of these things that Jesus is going to say the kingdom of heaven. He just promised the kingdom of heaven here. He's promising comfort. He's not saying, I don't think he's saying your mourning, but all of a sudden your grief is just going to go away. You had your morning cup of coffee. I think that there is a present fulfillment and a future anticipation.
This is how the whole New Testament works because there's two comings of Christ, right? There's the first coming and second coming, so there's a aspect, but there's a greater fullness that's yet to come. So there's a comfort that's available to those of us that grieve. It says in Second Corinthians seven that we grieve, no, that's not Second Corinthians seven. Maybe it is that we are not like those who grieve without hope. You know those of you that know the Bible, you know that verse, right? We have a different way of grieving because we have a meta narrative that tells us the end. So there is a comfort that we receive from the presence of the Holy Spirit and of the truths that we live out. But there is a hope of comfort as well that he says in verse five, blessed are the humble. Your version may say, blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.
I grew up hearing that meekness was strength under control or something like that. Did you hear that when you were growing up? Yeah. Restrained strength, it's really not. That's not really what it means. It really means to be powerless, lowly and operating from a position of you are not a mover and shaker, you're have a disadvantage. You're the underdog. It really doesn't have much of this idea of strength under control. And Jesus is coming in and he's saying, congratulations, you are totally powerless and lowly in society, but God's kingdom welcomes you. It's come to you and if you enter that kingdom, you'll inherit the earth. You'll inherit the earth. It's a fascinating picture. Again, there's this upside down. You notice how upside down some of these things are culture shifts. Some of these are prized values in our culture today, but in the past we're not.
And again, things will shift. It's like the sexual ethics in the late sixties, it was like free love and then all of a sudden you have the me too movement. It's like you can't make eye contact with the opposite sex for more than three seconds or you've had a microaggression. So ethics, culturally weave back and forth and sometimes they overlap with sermon on the mount material and then other times it's like 180 degrees. The reality though is that the ethics of the kingdom have never changed and they don't weave back and forth. But here we have this welcoming, this congratulations to the meek or the humble in verse six. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Again, this is that person that's operating from the position of just, I'm hungry for the Lord, I'm hungry for the Lord.
You may not have much to show for it, but there's this longing and intense desire for what is right in the world, and this doesn't say anything about your ability to carry out the righteousness. It's just Jesus is saying, look, if you're one of these people that's longing for the rightness in the world, things to be done orderly, just in a just way, then you need to know in my kingdom you will be filled. These people will be filled. The next one is merciful. Verse seven. Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. This is sympathy compassion. In the midst of a culture where vengeance and retribution and an eye for an eye are prized in God's kingdom, he's saying congratulations to the merciful. They're going to be the ones who are shown mercy. So there are times where in these beatitudes it's a desirable quality and it's like, yes, we want to be merciful people. There's other times where it's like we don't want to be impoverished in spirit. I don't have the reference here in front of me, but there's a time where Jesus is like, nah, this is not where we want to be at. We don't want to be impoverished in spirit. We want to be wealthy in spirit.
And there is a shift, I can't remember if it's with the fourth or the fifth beatitude, but we shift from current state over to more future tenses in the language here. So we're moving in. We are kind of now with the beatitudes moving into territory where we could say, yeah, this is not just an entry quality, but this should be a continuing value in Jesus's kingdom mercy. Now, verse eight, blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. This is this singleness or single-mindedness, a single commitment to God, a sincere loyalty to God. Think of somebody who is undistracted in their commitment to God. There's just a purity of heart, and he's saying this in the midst of a culture, their culture, our culture where an impurity of heart can be prized. Sometimes there is in our culture a celebration of being vulgar or impure, but it's not just because we have taken the idea of purity of heart and we connect it with vulgarity or profanity, but there's also an aspect, a positive aspect of just focus, of simplicity, of I'm simply committed to the Lord.
I'm keeping my heart loving the Lord with all my heart, my soul and strength. And he says to those they're going to be the ones they'll see. God. It reminds me of how we were talking about fasting a couple of weeks ago and how as you fast, you're taking away one or two of your senses and it gives you this ability of like, oh, there's clarity. It opens up this ability to sense, to sense God even with greater clarity. So he says in verse nine, you'll see God, and then in verse 10 he said, blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the sons of God. Super simple, just the maker of peace, the people who desire to make peace, not the ones that are stirring the pot, not the ones that are causing conflict, but the people who are trying to make peace.
They're the ones who are called the sons of God. And then verse 10, notice we have the kingdom of heaven. So we have bookends here, but then we're going to add one more after this. He says, blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for the kingdom of heaven is theirs, and he adds to this a similar idea. You're blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you. And so he closes out with this idea of just in his kingdom, the persecuted are the ones who are to be congratulated. So again, if you can just as you go back for the rest of your life, as you reflect on this text, think of when you post to Facebook or say to somebody, congratulations for their special moment.
That is the closest English concept we have to what's going on in the beatitudes, and it can only happen if you embrace the value system of the kingdom. If you've embraced what Jesus is all about, then you're able to look at these different scenarios, settings, and events and say, congratulations. Welcome in. There is something for you in this kingdom. You'll notice throughout this whole text that there's something for the participants. We happily in our western Protestant Christianity, we talk about being born again and being saved, but you'll notice here in Jesus's teaching to his disciples that he's not using that language here. He's talking about something that you'll have, whether it's you'll have the kingdom or you'll inherit the earth or you'll be a son of God or you'll receive mercy. There are different experiences that you are receiving as a participant in this kingdom. As you step in, this is what he has for you. As we look at this passage, we should start to see who the kingdom is for. There is this forming. What we're going to see through this text is a forming of a value system that is different from other systems in the world. It may be a helpful exercise to just go and consider what is your value system? What's important to you?
What are the underlying motivations for you? As we travel through the next three chapters, we're going to see Jesus lay out the value system of his kingdom. One of the things we will see as we move through these three chapters is the crossover with society's values and sometimes those stark differences. We're going to see an overlap and then we're going to see with our culture, and then we're going to see stuff where it's just like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. That's not for me. I don't that part of this sermon, and that's where the alignment has to happen.
Sometimes we're going to say, yes, let's give to the poor. I love it, and then we're going to say, no, no, no. Don't give your other cheek to the person who just smacked you. We're not going to like that part. I'm guessing that's not how our culture works, right? So it's going to be fun. It's going to be fun to go through this. One of the things though that you will see and that I will continue to point out is that in our culture, in our culture, there are things where there's this overlap between our culture, whether you're a Christian or not, whether you're secular or you're religious, there's a shared value system, and then there's other areas where it's different. I feel like I've said that now five times. I apologize. I am a little bit under the weather. One of the things though that is not accepted is that people don't want the king.
They don't want a person being Jesus to oversee what is the shared value. They want to be the king. Even if it's like, Hey, I agree that caring for the poor is good. It's like I like the value of the kingdom. I just don't want the king, and it doesn't work like that. You don't get to pick and choose from the Sermon on the mount. It's all about that. A kingdom has a king and he's inviting you and I through this text. He's like, congratulations. This is a place where you're welcome. Now, there is on the internet, the Beatitudes of the Black Lives Matter and also the beatitudes of the Republican Party. I give this to you because I just want you to see that these groups, whether you associate closely with them or don't associate with them, you're going to see that there's a value system there.
You're going to hear, it's going to ring true, like, oh, yeah, that's pretty good. That does sound right. I know them. I know that perspective, and not all of them are bad, but again, I want you to see a sample that we're more closely aligned with as we are wrestling and as we're saying to the Lord, Lord, I want your kingdom to come in my life. Okay, beatitudes of the Black Lives Matter movement, blessed are those number one, blessed are those who mourn the lives lost the systemic racism, for they shall be comforted in community and justice. Number two, blessed are the activists for they shall inherit a world more equitable. Number three, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the
Merciful who reach across divisions for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in purpose who work for the good of all, for they shall see change. Blessed are the peacemakers who deescalate and mediate for they shall be called the children of a new world. Blessed are those who are persecuted for standing against injustice, for theirs is the moral high ground. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you, falsely on account of your fight for equity. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is in the impact you make and in the same way they persecute the prophets who were before you. So some similarities, right? Some things where we're like, yes, we agree, we want justice, but then some other things where it's like, yeah, that's kind of like your pat thing, right? Wait till you get to the Republican party. Okay, here we go. The beatitudes of the Republican Party. Number one, blessed are the financially responsible for they shall steward the nation's wealth. Number two, blessed are those who honor, tradition and family for they shall inherit a stable society. Number three, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for limited government, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs who risk for the betterment of all, for they shall see prosperity. Blessed are the defenders of the constitution for they shall uphold liberty. Blessed are the peacemakers through strength, sorry, sorry. Blessed are the peacemakers through strength, the peacemakers through strength for they shall secure a free world that one died a decade ago. Blessed are those who are persecuted for their conservative beliefs, for theirs is a historical backbone of America. Blessed are you and people mock you and cancel you and utter all kinds of falsehood against you because of your principles. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is the enduring legacy. You leave just as they challenge the founding fathers before you. So look, it is whatever you identify as politically, you might have your own. It would be worth it to see what would be your beatitudes if you were to give some to your family. Jesus comes in. He has a upside down kingdom that is just this beautiful, he's not in the center of power. He's around a bunch of fishermen. He calls a bunch of fishermen to be his core to team. He's going from synagogue to synagogue, and he's declaring this congratulatory message saying, the gates are open to the kingdom, and there's all these benefits for these
People that are kind of societal outcasts or the worthless ones to you and I. It's this beautiful sermon that is sometimes going to be upsetting, and it's sometimes going to be this invigorating, inspiring message no matter what. We have to remember that Jesus is the king of that kingdom, and we're here to learn from him and to place ourselves in a position where he is authoring our lives. Amen. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you that we're going to get to read through the Sermon on the Mount together. We thank you, God for being so kind and gracious and for designing a kingdom that welcomes in the outcast. You don't shy away from sin and you don't shy away from loving sinners, and you bring us in and you just start changing our lives, building us up and giving us a kingdom. Lord, would you do some awesome thing in our lives? Continue your work, your kingdom work, make yourself known. Make yourself known through our lives. Help us to treat other people in the way that you've treated us, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.