Sermon on the Mount (Part 2)

The Sermon on the Mount as the Definition of Christ’s Kingdom

Mike, I'm busily making all of the adjustments. Thumbs up from up top, so we're good to go. So let's begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for this day. Thank you for this day that you have made.

Lord, we thank you for your provision in our lives. Thank you for showing us how faithful you are and merciful and kind and good. I pray that you would help us to rejoice in your truth today, help us to love one another as you have loved us in Christ.

It is in his name that we pray, amen. This morning, we're going to think about the pricelessness of Christ's kingdom, meaning we're going to survey the Beatitudes that begin the Sermon on the Mount. Last week, we did some background on the Gospel of Matthew and thought about the first two verses and the significance of its introduction.

But what we're looking at here in Matthew 5, which is our focus for this summer session, what we're looking at here in Matthew 5 is the definition of the kingdom. And then Matthew chapters 6 and 7, the direction of the kingdom.

It makes sense that the first four chapters of Matthew's Gospel is all about the arrival of the king, the announcement of the king. The king is here, just as the law and the prophets have stated. So it's fitting that the following five major discourses of Matthew, which we talked about last week, they all describe his kingdom in one way or the other.

And the first major discourse of Matthew's Gospel is called the Sermon on the Mount. Now, this is not only the largest of the five, but it is the largest continuous discourse of Jesus Christ recorded in Scripture.

Jesus has already begun preaching the gospel of the kingdom there in Matthew chapter 4. But really, what does that mean? The kingdom of heaven is at hand. You repent and believe. Here's the good news of the kingdom.

What does that really mean? A king has both a people whom he governs and authority with which to govern. The old trope is correct. The leader who has no followers is just out taking a walk. If he's a king, well, who do you govern?

And if you're a king, what's your authority? And so he begins to explain all of that. Having announced the gospel of the kingdom, now he begins to explain the kingdom, gives definition to the kingdom here in Matthew chapter 5.

So, in defining his kingdom, Jesus first begins describing the people that make up his subjects in verses 1 through 16 of Matthew 5. And then he declares the precepts by which they are to live, which is the remainder of the chapter.

Christ is ascendant, he is glorious, he is exalted. We see that in the first four chapters, and that gathers many to him, and they are compelled to obey him, given his unrivaled authority. And these related themes of Christ's supremacy and his sovereignty run the full length of the sermon, chapters 5 through 7.

All of it's about Christ's supremacy and Christ's sovereignty. And this is very firmly established in the first chapter. When you look at chapter 5, verses 1 through 16, just the people of the kingdom, we learn that they are blessed, that's verses 3 through 12, and that they are to be a blessing, verses 13 through 16.

In fact, there's a relationship of purpose between the two. The saints are blessed to be a blessing. There's a purpose to it. There's a gracious purpose in view. We've seen the preamble of the kingdom in verses 1 and 2.

And then we're gonna look at the pricelessness of the kingdom, verses 3 through 10, the beatitudes. And then we'll look at the persecution and public testimony of the saints next time in verses 10 through 16.

Why the Beatitudes Must Be Read Together

It's a remarkable thing how often the beatitudes get misread. And perhaps it's to be expected. They are poetic, to say the least. They're not exactly poetry, but you can't get any closer. There's a good case that they are a kind of poetry, being so closely in parallel.

But poetry being an art form can lend itself to an unclear privatization of the meaning. It's art, so it's beautiful, so then I get to say whatever it means. As people buy a piece of art and say, it means this to me, that's why I bought it.

Who cares what was originally intended by the artist? And so we have to be careful of appropriating something beautiful simply for our own purposes. Finding some verse out of context, this is now my life verse, put it on a plaque, I'm good to go.

Only to find out later on, this has nothing to do with me directly. Still good scripture, but the beatitudes are short. They are pithy by design. They appear on plaques and mugs and bumper stickers. They show up as tattoos.

And sometimes only halfway. Sometimes only half of them are quoted. Blessed are the peacemakers. And that's all that is ever said. Sometimes a whole beatitude makes it into a speech or into a book. It's quoted by itself without context, often without any attribution at all.

Doesn't matter who said it, it's just that it was said. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. That should be written somewhere. And everyone says, oh, that's nice. And that's understandable, but it's not excusable.

Jesus spoke in particularly effective ways and we are meant to be taking up these beatitudes together. They are to be held together. Because they provide a definition for the people of God. They provide a definition for the saints.

They tell us who the people of Christ are. And that's very important. When the king says, I am the king. Well, king, where's your people? Where are the boundaries of your kingdom? Of what character is your kingdom?

And it's important to look here as he begins to define that. The beatitudes are to be received as a group. They all begin with the same word, blessed. They all use the same grammatical structure. The very first and last beatitude end with the same declaration, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

So you have the beginning and the end, the bookends of the beatitudes. And this signals the main purpose Jesus has in locating the beatitudes at the very beginning of his sermon. He's saying who's in his kingdom.

You want to know who my people are? Well, here's how you can tell. He states at the very beginning who belongs to his kingdom. Now, imagine we didn't have the beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

And we just launch into the Sermon on the Mount and we have all these exhortations. Well, who's supposed to obey those? We have all this wisdom being offered. Who's that for? We have promises given. Who do those belong to?

If we didn't have this definition at the beginning, we don't really know who Jesus is talking to. So it's very good that we have a definition of the people before we have the precepts, principles, and promises.

Many have read the beatitudes and indeed the entire Sermon on the Mount as Christ's instructions meant for an entirely different people of an entirely different age without any authoritative application to Christians whatsoever.

I was actually told by, told someone. Someone told me that when I first preached through these beatitudes. Or a reminder that this really wasn't for Christians. It's awfully strange given the person who's giving it.

It was kind of, you know, to be treated like a New Testament kind of Leviticus. You know, this is, that had nothing to do with us. But given the trajectory of the first four chapters and given the New Testament's unanimous clarification that the new covenant is realized in the Church of Christ by the Spirit, we should have no qualms identifying ourselves as the blessed ones of these beatitudes.

And so, blessed are, blessed are, blessed are. All the saints should say, that's me. Present and accounted for. Thank you for telling me who I am. And isn't it right for the one who has redeemed us and bought us with his own blood to tell us who we are?

It's good.

So, the beatitudes are not a new list of commandments. They are not a new standard of achievements. Can anyone find a command in verses three through 10? Is there an imperative? Is there an exhortation?

Is there a prohibition?

Hmm.

We have no thou shalts and we have no thou shalt nots. Interesting. This is a description of the people of the kingdom of heaven, but we don't have any list of commands. We have statements. We have descriptions.

We have comforts. We have promises. And whatever verbs we find tend to keep the blessed ones over in the passenger seat and other forces are driving. We're not the active ones. God bestows the blessings.

Enemies may persecute. And sometimes the blessed ones look more active, mourning, hungering, or thirsting. But these are all in their original grammar. They're just participles acting as adjectives. They're describing, describing.

These are not agitations. Blessed are the mourning ones. Blessed are the ones hungering and thirsting for righteousness. All of these Beatitudes are a densely packed, eight-layered definition of Christ's new kingdom people.

And this list of eight declares, describes the nature of the new covenant. Remember that Moses was given a tenfold word of the old covenant in Exodus 20, repeated in Deuteronomy five. And we've already seen that there's a close connection between what Jesus is doing here and what Moses did at Sinai, an intentional correlation for the purpose of stating something new.

Sinai compelled those within Israel to live righteously according to their identity. Christ identifies the living within him as compelled unto righteousness. Say that again. Sinai compelled those within Israel to live righteously according to their identity.

Christ identifies the living within him as compelled unto righteousness. There's a lot there, and it's an important distinction to make. Let me put it a different way. Has anybody noticed a big Catholic monstrosity over by I -35?

What's all that about, besides money? It's always about money with the Roman Catholic Church, if you didn't know. So we know it's about money, but what else is it about? About a man. Anybody know the name of the man?

Yeah, Stanley Rother. Why does he get a big, fat, fancy shrine? Well, a vicar of Christ, supposedly.

What?

Martyr, martyr, yeah. But lots of people get martyred. Why does he get a shrine? Because there's a campaign going of trying to get him to be sainted, to be sainted. And so they've attributed a miracle to him, which is a prerequisite.

They've got all these proofs to bring him up the level till finally some pope somewhere will saint him. In the meantime, he has the status known as what? Blessed, or the beatified, the beatified. Isn't it interesting that the Roman Catholic Church will only identify a very small amount of people as saints, whereas the New Testament calls all born-again the saints?

All those in Christ are saints. Isn't it interesting that the Roman Catholic Church says only a few people are beatified? But notice, dearly beloved, this eight-fold definition tells us that all the saints in Christ are the beatified.

And we don't need a big, fat, fancy shrine. To prove it, right? There's a lot of the old covenant lingering around in the Roman Catholic Church, okay? They have to have the golden buildings, don't they?

But we have a living temple, a new covenant temple, don't we? So we are to recognize, not only are we the saints, but you can go ahead and say we are also the beatified. This is not something that is intrinsic to only a few, but to all who are in Christ because of who Jesus is.

Priests, yes, the priests, the beatified, the saints. Isn't that interesting? So it's good to remember that as we read through the scriptures. And of course, behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed to us, that we should be called the children of God.

Precious definitions. It's good to know who we are. And that's what Jesus is saying. Here's who is in my kingdom. They are blessed because they're in the kingdom. They're blessed because they're with me.

This is who constitutes the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God. And so some effort should be made on our part to appreciate the beauty of the Beatitudes in the terms of the truth that Jesus so carefully constructs.

To observe and triangulate the pulse and the symmetry of the Beatitudes. My homework suggestion is simply to read them aloud. And my first instinct after reading them aloud is to want to read them aloud again because they are beautiful and they are rich.

They are encouraging. And so that's the homework. Just read them aloud. Just give it a try. Let your own voice read them aloud. Let it lay on your ears. And consider the repetition of the term blessed.

Now some say blessed, some say blessed. Depends on how many syllables you need for the hymn. So don't get caught up on one way or the other. It's still the same idea. Blessed or blessed. And the term repeats itself and there's a rhythm of an identifier that follows it.

And then a promise that follows that. And that's eight times over. And you see that on your handout. You can see the rhythm there. There is the title, blessed. There are the eight unique traits. And then there's the treasure.

The first and last in the present tense. There's is the kingdom of heaven. And the middle six put into the future tense. But look at the symmetry of it all. It's very carefully constructed. The identifiers are all unique.

But they and the other, and the treasures are all put within this beginning and ending. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And you can consider that an inclusio. You can also consider everything being labeled as the same trait, or the same title.

Mind you, we're all blessed. Obviously, all of these are to be held together. The title, the trait, and the treasure are all correlated by tense and voice. There's the are, the shall be, and the is. Those who are of the kingdom bear the title of blessed and show the traits of wisdom, of righteousness, of Christ.

Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And this treasure shall be realized, how? In the king, in his victorious reign. That's the basic idea of the Beatitudes. Now, again, these are identifiers, these are promises, these are not commands.

And they're not even directly in their interpretation motivations, they can be applied very well to that degree, but this isn't the meaning of the text. Jesus could have certainly given his authority, given his glory, given his role, he could have certainly expressed blessedness as a worthy goal, rather than as a present title.

He could have stated it that way. He had the authority, he had the right to issue commands, commands that were attended by contingent rewards, such as it was in the old covenant. But we don't find thou shalt, and we don't find thou shalt not.

Those who are in the kingdom are the blessed ones and are described with a variety of identifiers. So, even the future tense of they shall be comforted, they shall be filled, this is depicting the certain victory of Christ's kingdom.

This is the shall of certainty, not the shall of maybe if you get your act together. So, in other words, Jesus did not say something to the effect of, if you would just practice meekness, then you may indeed be blessed insofar as the meek will inherit the earth.

Oh, he could have said it that way. He didn't say it that way. It often gets read that way and applied that way. So, Christ is particularly defining who makes up his kingdom. He's not laying out eight hurdles for his hearers to leap over in order to enter.

Once you've accomplished these eight, then we'll let you in. Fine, but they can be applied that way and interpreted that way to the detriment of the hearers. If you want to be blessed, you must work at making peace.

Otherwise, God, will he truly own you as his child? I think not. That's not why Jesus said this. How quick some are to use the passage in that way. Now, this does not mean that Jesus fails to compel. He certainly does compel.

He compels those who are in darkness to enter into the light. Matthew 4, 17, he preaches to those who are in darkness, compels them to come to the light by repentance and faith. Repent and believe, we read in Mark chapter one.

But this entry command of repentance and faith is different than what he is saying in the Beatitudes. It's a different kind of grammar. And there's the compelling and then there's the reality. So let's hear that in another passage.

Matthew 11, 28 through 30. Jesus compels, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. Here's your identity over here outside of me. You are weary and heavy laden. This is who you are outside of me.

But come to me and I will give you rest. You're going to have rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. Yoked with Jesus, therefore we are in rest.

We are in shalom. We are in communion. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. But I think this is important for us to see. Jesus does not hold the carrots of blessedness, the carrots of grace and eternal life just out of reach, ever motivating, bring them out of our way, never satisfied with our efforts.

The beauty of the Beatitudes is constituted in grace rather than crushing us in law. They do compel. They do motivate. They do sanctify. But in this way, we are blessed to be a blessing. It's the only way it ever worked anyway.

Blessedness as Identity, Not Achievement

So the title of Christ's people, we've talked a lot about being blessed, but we can't talk about it more than Jesus did. He repeated it eight times in a row. It's almost as if he really wants us to focus in on that word.

Pretty significant to have something repeated three times here it's repeated eight times. We've really got to hone in. Nine times, if you count verse 11, that's very intense. So we're probably not gonna have the amount of time that we need to go over every single one of the eight traits and let it have its day in the sun.

I plan to cover a lot of that in the blog that's going to be continued to come out after the summer session is done. We're not gonna have enough time to appreciate in full the various treasures, but again, it's on the schedule.

But I do want to emphasize something that I think is often overlooked, that all of these things hang together as a group. And the key word in this whole passage is blessed.

Blessed.

So we are the saints, we are the beatified. Jesus wants his hearers to be fixed on this idea from the very beginning of his sermon, so much so that we would carry it all the way to the end. Now, the original word for blessed is makarios.

It is most often translated as blessed throughout this New Testament, but in a handful of New Testament passages, it's also translated as happy. A very small minority of translations will say happy eight times over rather than blessed in small minority.

Does anybody find, based on how you were discipled in church, does anybody find the word happy a bit suspicious? Like, that's not a word I can trust. That's not a word that I can really or ever really should use of myself.

I should always use some alternative. I should never be happy. You bring up a point that I think that has been long handed down by oral tradition in our discipleship. And it's an interesting thing because as hard as I try, I can't get Jesus to say, when I say blessed, I don't mean happy at all.

I can't put any kind of wedge in there and successfully separate happiness from blessedness. I tried because that's the way I was raised. And I thought, hang on a second. There's a phase of exegesis that someone once said if you're on your backside kicking your legs, trying to make it work, maybe the problem's with you and not the text.

I'm happy to report that happiness is not a sin.

This is good news.

It was good news to me. But yes, of course, we understand the point. There's just some good truth in what we've been taught. We've been said, you know, Christians are not happy. They're joyful. Joy is better than happiness.

Happiness is circumstantial, thus fleeting, but joy eternally remains regardless of circumstances. Happiness is rooted in the self, but joy is rooted in Christ. And I appreciate the intentions behind the tradition, but there is such a thing as a happiness that's rooted in Christ, right?

Like, oh, there is that category. We didn't have to erase that category in order to press home the point. One of the major concerns of discipleship, isn't it, is helping Christians to ground their faith in Christ rather than be tossed to and fro by circumstances.

I mean, that's Discipleship 101, right? To help people understand, look, when bad things come, Christ is still good, God is still good. Don't be tossed to and fro, and that's a solid discipleship concern.

Happy in the Beatitudes is not a fleeting, self-centered happiness, but it is a lasting, Christ-centered happiness. It is, to use a more modern term, anti-fragile. Anti-fragile, okay? It has redundancies.

It is not something that can easily go away, right? It is robust and off-grid. You can't disrupt it. This type of happiness, okay? And think about how that works in the Beatitudes themselves. Just listen to it.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. The next one's even more challenging. Blessed are those who mourn. Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, deprivation, sadness, brokenness.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. Happy are the hunted. Well, that's kind of hard to... But what it says is that, yes, this really is genuine, true happiness, but it's not anchored in present circumstances.

It's anchored to the changeless promises and eternal treasures of salvation in Christ, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven. They shall be comforted. They shall be filled. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And so what I'm saying is, yes, the place to put the wedge is not in between happiness and joy. It's in between Christ and the self. That's where Jesus put the wedge, right? That's where he put the dividing.

You can't save your life.

You'll lose it.

Lose your life for my sake, and you'll find it. So that's where the dichotomy should be placed. And, of course, part of the challenge is that these promises are very bold, very bold. Comfort, satisfaction, inheritance of the earth,.

Seeing God.

These are bold promises. And so sometimes it seems better to take them as conditional prizes. It's a safer reading. If we can just take them as conditional prizes rather than identitarian privileges. Because what's the challenge?

What happens to an immature Christian if they take hold of these promises and they don't seem to pan out? What will happen to their trust in God's word? Won't their trust be undercut? Won't they not lose faith?

And so, disciplers everywhere, moderate expectations in the saints. Well, you know, if you do enough, then good things will happen. If bad things happen, we'll leave the blame on you. But even moderating expectations in the saints leaves us with the fact that Jesus declares the subjects of his kingdom happy eight times over, saying, this is who you are, this is who you are, this is who you are, this is who you are.

Blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed. And not in the cheap health and wealth ideas that so often get attached to this, but in every sense, in a full sense, there's a blessedness in Christ. This is our identity.

If we are concerned about stumbling believers because of inappropriate applications of the promises, we should also be concerned about stumbling believers by saying, even though Jesus says you're happy eight times over, you're not really happy.

Like, isn't that a problem too? So, what happens when we read the Beatitudes and then begin to insert qualifications which disembowel them from significant comfort? Now, Jesus says here blessed or happy eight times in a row, but that's only for the Jews in the millennium.

Very favored interpretation of the text. Off the hook, I don't have to be happy. Not for me. Or we could say, this is not happiness, but joy, misery, and suffering are the real ingredients of Christian living.

Or we could say these Beatitudes are only true if you fully achieve the entire attached eightfold virtue list. What goes on here? Jesus often embarrasses our modern sensible approach with his declarations of grace.

But again, good intentions here. We don't want the Bible to over-promise and under-deliver. We're concerned that the Scriptures be understood as authoritative and absolutely true. And so we can scramble to make sense of these matters.

What happens when I don't think I'm blessed? What happens when I see that this person over here isn't blessed even though I know that they're a Christian? How do we make sense of these problems? Do we blame the sinner?

Do we blame the saint? Do we blame Satan? Do we blame the Savior? What happens when the blessings don't run on time, but the scramble is not necessary? We don't have to put a spin on the text to account for why Jesus's assertions of blessing do not seem to accord with our expectations or experiences of human flourishing.

Because human flourishing isn't the center. Christ is the center. And that's why we would know ourselves as blessed when we are in orbit around him. So, blessedness, blessed. When we have a title, the broad testimony of Scripture in the use of the term blessed is that there's this definitive statement, hey, you are blessed.

It declares our status, that we have this identity as blessed, and describes a state of genuine blessedness. So it's not just in name only. It isn't empty religious rhetoric, but it actually is a state of blessedness.

And so we should think about the terms and how they show up in the Scriptures. Now, the Greek word we have here in Matthew 5, so many times over, is makarios, and it conveys a status bestowed or a state observed.

Something given and something shown, something observed, something present. It pertains to God's favor. God conveys the status of divinely favored well-being. Meaning, when blessed are, blessed are, this one or these folks are well-favored by me.

Or blessed, meaning this one is happily situated with great advantage. That's the meaning of the word. And why is that so? Well, you'll learn more about that when you look at the traits and you look at the treasures.

The reality of the blessedness is shown eight times over in the descriptions of who we are in Christ and what we're given in Christ. And we can see that there is enough there to affirm to us that, indeed, we are blessed.

There's another word in the New Testament that is used for blessing, and we get our word eulogy from it, eulogeo. And this is a statement, a declaration. An example of this is in Matthew 5, verse 44, where Jesus says, but I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you.

So in this word, this word, bless, that's where he's, this is a command saying eulogize them. Bless them. This isn't makarios. This is saying make a statement. Bless them, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.

So the second term, eulogeo, or eulogy, or I bless you, is actually in a supplication to God. When I say I bless you, it's not because I have some repository of divine favor I will now extend to you, because, no, no, no.

I'm actually asking God to bless you. I'm interceding for you. I'm making supplication on your behalf. I want God to bless you. That's what that means, to bless somebody else. And so a silly example, and you, on Sunday morning, and your pew neighbor sneezes, you eulogize them.

Bless you.

And then they take up the answering makarios. Oh, he does, and I am.

Okay?

So bless you, there's the statement. And then he says, oh, he does. There's your status. And I am blessed. There's your state. So the statement, the status, and the state. Those are the three ways in which we think about the term bless and blessing.

Corresponding to these Greek words are Hebrew words, Barak and Ashar. Now, both of these are names that we might recognize. One is a very cute little boy named Asher, but originally he was a son, a surrogate son of Leah in the Old Testament.

And then Barak. Anybody know, anybody named Barak, anybody? My wife's grandmother one time took me aside many moons ago and let me know that someone had done a deep dive into the book of Enoch. And there amongst the Hebrew words, he found the name of the current president, undoubtedly the Antichrist.

She said, he found his name, Barak. I said, well, Gigi, you're gonna find that in more places in the book of Enoch. It's all through the Old Testament. That's the word for bless. So Barak and Asher. Barak means to kneel as part of declaring the elevated or excellent state of another, which is very strange to find God blessing his creatures and blessing his covenant partners.

But what does that mean? That means he's condescending and saying to mankind or saying to Abraham, you are blessed and you have a privileged position. You have a raised position given anybody else, anything else that I've ever made.

And then often men will invoke God's blessings on one another saying, you know, God, instead of like eulogio in the Greek, it's Barak in the Hebrew. May God bless you. May God keep you. May he cause his face to shine upon you.

So invoking God's excellence upon somebody else. And when men outright bless one another, the creator's favor is at the very least implied in that. But Asher or Ashar speaks to a state of happiness observed the status of being well-favored.

An example of that is of course with Leah in Genesis chapter 30, verses 12 to 13, when Leah's maid Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. Then Leah said, I am happy, right? That's my status. I am blessed. I am Ashar for the daughters will call me blessed.

They're going to observe my status as blessed. Right? So she called his name Asher or happy. So the root word is used throughout the Old Testament to describe the happy state and favored status of all those who are faithful to the old covenant, used to describe those who are faithful to the Messianic King, and even used to describe those who are faithful to lady wisdom.

And when we read the Old Testament in the Greek, Ashar is covered by the word we have here in the Beatitudes, makarios. They are blessed. They are happy. Now, why is this so important? It's important because God's statement on the status of his creatures determines their state.

What was the very first creature that God declared as blessed? Any guesses? Trivia time. He blessed them. Who's the first creature? Ah, see trick question. That would have been my answer. Until you get Strong's Concordance out and you're like, oh, a few verses prior.

Genesis chapter one, verses 21 and 22. So God created great sea creatures in every living thing that moves with which the waters abounded according to their kind and every winged bird according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them. God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply, fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth. He blesses the birds and the fish.

And what happens when he blesses them? They fill the waters and multiply on the earth because God blessed them to do so. You see how that works? The blessing therefore is not primarily a creature's mandate to achieve.

It is God's purpose expressed. The fish and the birds are fruitful and they multiply because God blesses them. This blessing first defines them, then it directs them. And it is the same with mankind. And to Jay's point, yes, indeed, God blesses Adam and Eve.

God blesses mankind. So verse 26 of Genesis one, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them and God blessed them and said to them, that sounds familiar, just like the birds and the fish.

God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply. That sounds familiar. Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth.

So God blesses mankind to be a blessing. Thus it ever was. That's the only way it ever worked. This blessing is inherent to what it means to be made in the image and the likeness of God. Man, as the image of God is blessed, so as to mediate God's blessings by his fruitfulness and multiplication.

So do we derive some application and some direction from this so-called creation mandate? Yes, but do you notice it's more about man has his dominant position in this created order and he is fruitful and he multiplies because God blessed him to do so?

This isn't primarily here's commands for you to achieve and if you don't, then watch out. But this is God's original design. What happens when man rebels against God's design, which has attendant responsibilities and accountability and so on?

Well, man's sin brings a curse. Man's death and destructiveness and rebellion to his creator therefore necessitates the covenants that God makes with Noah and following. And the first thing he does when makes a covenant with Noah is reiterate the blessings in creation, be fruitful and multiply.

The covenants amplify for us the ruin of creation and anticipate the reign of Christ. In the old covenant, life and death, blessing and cursing are set before Israel and they are instructed, choose life.

They are said, choose blessing, choose life that you may live. Blessing and cursing are laid out before them in amplification of Adam's sin. In the new covenant, Christ as the true Israel chooses life and blessing, bears the curse in our place and through his own righteousness, redeems for himself a new people in the last Adam.

When Jesus identifies therefore in this sermon on the Mount, when he says, bless, bless, bless, bless, bless, bless, bless. What is he saying? No longer cursed, no longer cursed, no longer cursed, no longer cursed.

You are not going to be defined by the old covenant. You're not going to be defined by the old creation. You are in Christ, you are in the new covenant. You are in Christ, you are a new creation. Old things have passed away.

We owe all things have become new. That's why this is our definition of who we are. This is identifying who belong in the kingdom of Christ, in the kingdom of heaven. We owe everything, we owe everything to Christ to bear this title of blessed.

Ephesians chapter one, verse three, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Where's our, how are we so blessed? God's favor is not on me because of me. God's favor is on me because of somebody else, because of Jesus Christ.