We come upon the most incredible sermon that has ever been preached. We know it as the sermon on the mount. We will be a long time in the sermon on the mount. There's so much to chew and swallow. It is at one point the most beautiful of ethical teachings. It is at the same time, the most frustrating sermon you will ever try to apply. In fact, I will go so far as to say impossible.
What we have before us has been described as the manifesto of the king, the Magna Carta, the laws that govern his kingdom. The Matthew gives us the king, and here is his index, if you will. This is where he lays down how the kingdom actually operates, but at the forefront. Let me say to you that none of this was meant for us Oswald Chambers, and by the way, I quote from a small group of authors, and so I want to give you their pictures. I do that occasionally.
So you see what these men look like because you're going to hear me say chambers quite a bit. Uh, he was a congregational and Presbyterian preacher who was born in 18, 74, died in 1917. He died in his early thirties. We have nothing that is written by him. We have his wife, biddy, who took longhand as he preached and taught. And thanks God. Thank God for his wife, biddy. That's how we have his writings. But he preached a founded, founded a college. Uh, he was British.
He worked with the soldiers during World War One. Tremendous theologian. Uh, the next one I want to throw up there is g Campbell Morgan, also a Presbyterian who preached at a church in Philadelphia and a, an Englishman, another, another Brit. And he preached in, um, Philadelphia at a church there in the thirties and forties, quite a theologian he was. And so these are the two men that I quote regularly, and I think it's good for you to see their faces and know them a bit.
I have a clipping that I treasure much a newspaper clipping of g dot Campbell Morgan, going back to his church after he had retired to preach
a sermon his son had taken over. And I value the information on this side, but if you flip over the newspaper clipping, it's the box scores for the baseball for that day and in the standings were the Brooklyn dodgers and those older. It's a fascinating clipping, but I just thought I'd share that with you. G Campbell Morgan. So I quote from Oswald Chambers.
He writes this fancy giving to men and women with a defective lives and defiled hearts and wrong main springs streams and telling them to be pure in heart. What is the use of giving us an ideal that we could possibly achieve? We are happier without it. The sermon on the mount. If Jesus is a teacher only then all he can do is to tantalize us by erupting a standard. We cannot even come close to or anywhere near.
But if by being this is his point, but up by being born again, from above, we know him first as our savior. We know that he did not come to teach us, only the sermon on the mount. He came to make us what he teaches us to be. That's the point. The sermon on the mount is a statement of life. We will live when the Holy Spirit is having his way with us.
Yes.
So the sermon on the mount was not meant for you directly and I directly. We cannot do it. It was meant for the life that he would put into us. It was meant for the Christ in us living that life out. Who among us turns the other cheek? Who among us goes the extra mile? Who among us is pure in heart? He said, in the sermon, you must be perfect. Who is that? He gave us the sermon.
I suggest to frustrate the tar out of them in order to get us to the end of ourselves so that we reach out for someone outside of ourselves to live that sermon out. That's the sermon on the mount. So as we read it, these are like, these are like torpedoes that you take in like land mines that you swallow when you smile and you say, oh, blessed are the poor in spirit. For theirs is the kingdom. Oh, how beautiful. Oh, how wonderful. Blessed are the pure in heart.
And then you swallow that and how beautiful the ethical teaching is, and then you go out and someone cuts you off in traffic and all that boils up and it explodes in your face and you cannot do it. So as we enter in at the, at, at the threshold of this long to chapter sermon. And by the way, I think this was all well, let's get into the sermon. Look at chapter five of Matthew, verse one.
The order is very important as we open before we even get to the first beatitude, the setting is this Jesus, verse one of Chapter Five, seeing the crowds, seeing the multitudes. That's the first thing you need to know that when Jesus looked out, and by the way, look at chapter four. Let's see what this multitude consisted of. Let's see this crowd that was following him.
You look back up in chapter four and you see verse 24 says that the fame spread throughout all of Syria and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains and oppressed by devils and epileptics and paraplegics and, and he healed them. This is the crowd that followed him in that a lovely crowd, the outcast, those who lived in the shadows were flocking to him, but it wasn't just them.
Look at the next verse and great crowds followed him from Galilee and Deco Pollis and from Jerusalem and Judea and from on the Jordan like a magnet. They came in, thousands of people in this countryside flocking to him. G Campbell Morgan writes this about the crowds. I find this fascinating. These were not a people of one class or sort.
He attracted to himself all sorts and conditions of men, and as the king passed through that region, all kinds of people came out after him, crowded after many of them to see his works. The curious crowd always attracted by something out of the ordinary, the weakest part of the crowd, always the most difficult to deal with. Other men were attracted to him. Not so much by his works as by his words and wherever, but whatever the motive, they came all sorts and conditions of men.
People jostled each other as they had never done before. Farracies side by sides with prostitutes. I liked that fear on the read that again, farracies side by side with harlots and centers, men of light and leading and the scholarly men of the age, side by side with the illiterate, the degraded, and the depraved. The presence of Jesus meant the massing of humanity without any reference whatsoever of the accidentals of life and position. Pharisees dropped their quibbling for a little to listen.
Publicans quitted their seats at the customs. The tax collectors left their seats to hear him. Men Forgot everything about I love this. Men forgot everything about their divisions. Cast never lives. Positions in life, never lived for five minutes in the presence of Jesus Christ, he burns it up with is coming. He is never attracted to the man because of the breadth of his clothes or the enlargement of his garments. He has never repelled by a man.
Blessed be God by his rags, good writing underneath the rags and the fancy clothes. He sees the man and he is always after the man, not as close and men know it and they're always attracted by a man who was after men. So they gathered to him that then is the occasion seeing the multitudes. He left the multitudes in the valley. Isn't that amazing crowd? He sees them in that beautiful. He sees people. When Jesus sees the crowd, he sees them not as one who wants to take advantage of the crowd.
He sees them as a shepherd king who wants to love and take care of them. He has compassion on the crowds, but for some strange reason he chooses at this point to leave the crowd behind. Let's see why. Notice first one, seeing the crowds. He went up the mountain. Now where was this mountain? It is by the Sea of Galilee. There it is in the past. There it is behind me or in front of me. As I turned around. This is the north western end of the Sea of Galilee live.
You know the mount of the beatitudes is right there. It is between Capernaum and [inaudible], but to get a better shot of the mountain so you can see what it kind of looks like. This is what it looks geographically. It's the mount in the back of the picture. It is about women as well, a little over five feet above the surface
of that beautiful lake.
He leaves the crowd in the valley and he begins to climb that mountain.
This is the ascent of the king. This is the key
walking up to a mountain that will become his throne
for the moment as he issues his manifesto. It's a beautiful. See
look at verse one. He went up on the mountain and when he sat down,
his disciples came to him. There it is.
There you have the most important setting you can imagine. He sees the multitude. He leaves the multitude. He ascends the mountain and only those who are around him that maybe the 12, maybe more when you see his disciples, don't think of just 12 because there were women who followed him from Galilee in this area, that work disciples that were on the fringe out there who worked the call to the 12, but just as faithful to him as the 12.
This was probably a larger group than just the 12, but the point is he leaves the multitude in the valley and it goes up with his disciples. Now, when it says he sat down, this was the the common Hebrew phrase for a rabbi, when they give official teaching, a rabbi could teach you as he walked through the vineyards he could teach as he walked by the sea, but when he sat down, it was in an official capacity
and there you have it, and he sat down.
Now for a moment, I want to take a small rabbit trail in contrast this walk up to the mountain with another walk of the mountain thousands of years before because it is important for you to see the difference as we contrast the two. His name was Moses and it was Mount Sinai and he walked up a mountain, but when he walked up in a mountain, it was a mountain in a desert, the desert of Sinai. There weren't any beautiful plants around the area. It was a desert with a rough and rugged mountain.
That's all it was. This mountain was surrounded by a lake. Let's get that picture back if we could. This. This mountain was surrounded by a lake, beautiful countryside. This was the most fertile ground and all of Israel. Everything grew there, so rather than a desert of law, we find the mountain that Jesus walks up as a mountain of grace and life men. There's life everywhere. When Moses walked up that mountain, he woke up along.
Jesus takes us with him up that mountain.
I'm a melon of Law of Sinai. There was a storm and there was thunder and there was lightning and there was fear
down in the valley as they waited for Moses. Not this one. Probably a beautiful day just like that because grace takes us with him in law. We get it on stone tablets. You shall do this and you shouldn't do that, but in grace we hear the words of Jesus Christ in the very presence of Jesus Christ. Oh, beloved, what a beautiful place and position. We are in apposition of life. So take a look back at verse one that his disciples came to be.
I just need to mention why his eye was forever on the multitudes. Yes, he left them in the valley, but his goal to reach the multitudes of the Valerie was to spend time with his disciples to teach them the heart of Jesus Christ and I'll mention it in passing and talk more about at the end, the heart of Jesus Christ is always for all the world, but he reaches the world by teaching us and spending time with us. That's always his and it was here. All right, let's go on to verse two.
Now you see why we're going to be months and months in the sermon on the mount. Verse two, and he opened his mouth and taught them. Now if you want
right it all. One thing writers work at is considered to be very concise and crisp in your writing and and one way writers avoid
not doing that is redundancy. Well, we have redundancy here
in matthew's sentence in it bothers me, but it doesn't bother me because I know why he's doing it and let me show you what I mean. Look at verse two, and he opened his mouth and taught them really a more concise way to say it is
he taught them, how do you pitch someone without opening your mouth? You can't. You don't need that phrase, but matthew needs that frames because here Jesus clearly enunciates. He opens his mouth. This phrase in the Greek gives the hint of a solemn lecture. You know, there's things we say in passing, there's casual conversations and then occasionally we say something of great significance.
I gathered around my family I think five years ago and it was a Thanksgiving meal and I remember stopping and thinking how thankful we should all be in this family for how God has blessed. And I think Caleb will remember the moment when I stopped the meal and I said, you know, I a look at your children. Look at, look at the mates that God has given you. Look at their health, look at their menu, look at the look at your families.
God has been good to us and I remember looking over, Rebecca had tears in her eyes. There are things we should say of solemn reference, and this is any opened his mouth notice any taught them. Uh, let, let me talk to you a little bit about the Greek language. Jesus spoke this in Aramaic, not Greek, but it's written in Greek and the word taught them is significant to note
in the Greek language there are tenses more than just past, present, and future. Uh, in the Greek, there are, is what is called an arrest tense. And what it means is something that has happened in the past, something that is completed and done. A, that's not the word taught here. The word taught here is another different kind of tense called imperfect tense. It means, yes, something happened, but it continues to happen over and over and over.
So literally you could write, you could read this and, and, and read it. And he continued to teach them. The point is, this isn't a one time sermon. This is what he taught synagogue after synagogue after synagogue. In fact, Luke's account of the sermon on the mount is much smaller. Do you know that much shorter. He takes many of the teachings that Jesus teaches in Matthew and sprinkle them throughout the gospel of Luke because these were the repetitive things that he taught everywhere.
Wet. All right, let's begin with the first beatitude and that's all we have time for today. Look at verse three. Blessed said, Bob, you've got to tackle that word
because that's the same word that all of these verses run with at the beginning. At least the nine b attitudes that we have. What does the word blessing? Well, 46 times in the New Testament, it's rendered. Bless it. Nine Times. It's rendered happy. Really, the rendering is
happy.
I think the writers use the word blessing it because it gives it a more refined feel for the sermon, but the word real is Jesus uttered. It is
happy
and there's an authentic phrase. There's an emphatic and construction of the verse of the word, meaning where if we knew it in the English, it would be, oh, how happy. Oh, how blissful. Oh, how joyful is that? A radical thought that God would want us happy. This is the first. This is the first thing out of the gate of the sermon on the mount that God wants us to be. Oh, how happy. Now, I know in some Christian circles, happiness is a sin.
You know, if you're happy, it must be doing something on spiritual. You must be doing something wrong. If you're happy, we don't. This happiness is not talking about the outward circumstances of things that are going on. This is a happiness that's intrinsic inside of you that is indestructible, that can't be taken away. This is God's purpose for the Kingdom, joy and happiness. I watched a special on CNN, the history of comedy
gone too soon about comics who have died. Robin Williams, Freddy Prince, and went on and on. You know the death rate among comedians is high. It's kind of a joke. Think about him. They die. Young, tragic characters. Most of them. One comedians, I think it was Robin Williams and interview. They asked Robin, when you, if you were to,
if you were to enter heaven and beat God, what would you ask him? And at first he said, I want front row seat
the seats on the front row. But then he said this. He said, you know, I kind of hope there's laughter. I hope there's laughter in heaven. And there is, there's joy, there's happiness. In fact, oh, how happy. Look at verse two. Bless it. Are the poor in spirit. Know everything he's about to say is a rebuke of the kingdoms of this world. Everything he's about to say, condense everything that we know. Here's the king telling us about the kingdom. There will be no mention of military power. There
will be no mention of international trade.
There will be no mention of the gross national product. There's nothing economic about what's going to be said, nothing.
There's nothing about political power. There's nothing about gold and silver infect the walk of the mountain. If you'll notice wasn't a walk up a throne with, with gold staircases and a gold throne, you would think a king would have those things. He had the natural beauty of the mountain overlooking a beautiful lake and everything. He said, if, if, if Jesus tweeted, this would be his morning tweet and it is contrary to tweets we see today on all fronts.
This is a kingdom that absolutely rejects the kingdoms of this world and the way things go on this kingdom is about the character of the people who make it up. The argument is made and justifiably so that if you take and you live out the sermon on the mount in the world that we live in, you will be abused, walked over, trump's down, you will fail. Man. You can't live this stuff in a real world.
You know, there's workplaces, there's people, there's customers, there's people you've got to deal with out there, and they're ruthless. I was talking to Benny last week about going back to school and getting them long, and this is what he said, that he. He said, if they're normal to me, I'll be normal to them. That's the way all of us. Look at life. You treat me right. I'll treat you right.
Jesus flips that thing around and says, oh, trust me, I spent lots of times talking to them about, if you want to make friends, you got to be friendly. You got to show respect to get respect. You got to love people in order to make it reciprocal, but Jesus flips our whole mentality around and man, ain't nobody. Ain't nobody running me over. Take care of me and my family and back off I got my 20 gauge.
Jesus takes all that away and he begins with a premise. Now there's nothing blessed, sad about being poor. That's not what he's teaching here. If you're struggling with your bills, I'm telling you, you're not going to. God bless you. I can't even pay my bills. I'm blessed. That's not a blessing. That's not what he's talking about here. Notice what he says. Oh, how happy are the in
spirit? What does it mean to be poor in spirit? By the way, all these beatitudes are in relation to God, not to fellow man. That's the difference between the ethical teaching of the other world leaders in Jesus. Jesus is talking about our relationship with God. Blessed are the poor in spirit toward God blesses those who are empty, spiritually poor. What does it mean? It means to be so emptied of self and my agenda that I will listen and submit to the king out of the gate. This is the first one.
Without this, there's no other beatitudes. It means being so drained of my own effort. It means literally to give up on anything spiritual and reach out to God for everything for the last. It means to realize you're lost and spiritually you have nothing, and then you cannot help God save you. God has to do everything. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Notice they don't get the Kingdom of God because they're poor in their spirit. They, theirs is the Kingdom of God. Closer you get to Jesus Christ.
The closer you see that in your standard, you have nothing to offer. Nothing at all. Uh, the gym I go to, there's an APP thing and it has these, these bowling ball looking things. And I know the way to work it is to grab those bowling balls and lean back and then come up like a setup. But that's going to hurt me, so I just don't do it that way. In fact, I didn't even know how it worked for awhile, so I took those balls sitting there and I just made it like a chest.
I'm just throwing those balls into the map and it rolled back down here. Throw some up and you've got to be careful. You don't get too aggressive because I've had them come up and just kind of hit you in the head. But anyway, hey, throw me against the thing. And I came in one day about a week ago and I was grabbing the balls that were the two of them that were there. And man, they were incredible. I thought I had light they.
I was throwing them in there and I thought finally some results from from lyft. They may not feel strong now, man, these, these, this is nothing else. I was like, man, progress. I can see the progress. Well, I came back a few days later, I sat down with a very safe seat. The two balls were there and I picked him up. That's when I looked down. I noticed all the balls and some of them had fives on them. Some of them had sevens on them, some of them had knives on them. I wasn't any stronger.
I just picked up a lighter ball. That's all I did. If you live your life according to how you think you ought to live it, you think you're quite successful. You can pull it off, but you look at these standards and new. Look at this whole sermon on the mount. Now you're picking up not a nine pound ball. You pick it up a thousand pound ball. You can't even move it, so how do you move in it? How do you do any of this stuff? Bless. Oh, how happy
are the poor in spirit?
Those who have had their fee knocked out from underneath them and all they're trusting in his Christ. Overall, I reject human effort on every level spiritually because I can't
do it,
and when, when, when I'm telling you in my flesh dwells no good thing.
That's hard to come to it and it takes a lot of, a lot of. We're knocking out of you to get there. We'll continue this next week. Three things I want to share. Number one, it is God's will for mankind is a perpetual state of happiness. This word, bless it, is the Greek word, Makarios Mccarthy Os. There was a little island in the Mediterranean. Still is there. Of course, Cyprus. Cyprus was called Macquarie Os the island, the happy aisle. It was seven
back then that Cyprus had everything that a man could possibly desire. He, she, he could. He could never leave that little island of Cyprus. He never needed to because of the food, because of the trees, because of the climate. Everything around it. It was paradise.
Yes. Even to this day, it's a beautiful island of Cyprus that is the word for blessedness, brothers and sisters in Christ. We need nothing else than Jesus Christ. He is all that we need. He gives us this joy, this peace. Number two, with his eye and the crowd, he taught us. His goal was always outside of these walls in reaching people with the love of God and the Gospel, and he does it by the lives that he builds in here by the teaching that we receive by his life.
You know how many people are frustrated in church? You know how many people are miserable in their churches? Do you know how many people that are not taught the life of Jesus Christ?
They're given the law of the law and asked to live the Christian life by human effort and there are more miserable than the last people out in the world
world. Why would you go
peddle that stuff? Why would you communicate the gospel if you're miserable yourself with the Gospel? You get a hold of the true gospel where the life of Jesus Christ is revolutionizing your life, where he is truly your life. You are empty in your spirit and he is living that thing out. You can't wait to tell people of the gospel because it walks because you have joy down deep, unspeakable.
You have peace and love and it's from Jesus Christ. The sermon on the mount was always meant for the life that he would put into you. When you focus on Christ within these these principles, these edicts, this manifesto becomes incredibly easy. If the Christian life is hard for you, you are depending on yourself rather than Christ. He said, come unto me, all ye that are burdened and heavy Laden and I will give you more weight and loads and make your life miserable. He said, I will give you rest.
What part of the life of Jesus in Uni that can ever get burned out, frustrated and discouraged were discouraged because we look at ourselves and when we look at ourselves, we're not being poor in spirit. Are you here today and you've never trusted Christ as your savior? Maybe you've heard the gospel before. You're full. You're full of your own spirit, full of your own pride. You can't come to the cross other than on your knees, bowing to the king who died for you.
Are you a Christian that's struggling? You know that's an oxymoron. You know that's an oxymoron. Christians who rely on Christ cannot struggle. Do you understand.