Sermon: The Sermon On the Mount (Matthew 5:1-2)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. Matthew 5, and we begin reading this morning verses 1 through 12.

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Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

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And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

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Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see

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God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.

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Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

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Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to this word today, the word of your

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Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, instructing us as believers in your precepts,

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I pray that we would cherish what it is that we are reading, what we are embarking upon studying over the next few months, the most famous sermon that was ever preached.

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And we love the words that we read, and we bind them up and we cherish them in our hearts that we may live according to them.

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For as you said through your prophet Ezekiel, a new heart I will give you, my spirit

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I will put within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

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May we care to do these things in love and in honor of Christ our King and Savior, in whose name we pray and all

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God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. So we come to the

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Sermon on the Mount, and it's really a sermon that needs no introduction, but I am going to give it some introduction this morning.

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And we're going to look at a couple of the Beatitudes and then come back to these Beatitudes next week.

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I've been looking forward to this sermon so much that I've been preparing for it for the last two years.

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I've been preparing for this series that we're going to be in on the Sermon on the Mount. It was two years ago in the summer of 2018 that I was in Dallas, Texas, for the

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Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting. And it's at the annual meeting that you'll find the largest

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LifeWay bookstore spread anywhere. I mean, their bookstores can be massive, or could be massive,

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I guess to say. They've actually shut down all of their brick -and -mortar stores now. But it always pales in comparison to the size of the bookstore that they will have at the annual meeting.

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So at this particular meeting in the summer of 2018, I was there looking for one book, and one book only.

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And I found it, and it was on a stack of maybe four other copies that were there. But this was the book that I was looking for, and it's this one.

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Martin Lloyd -Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. It was the only book I was in the bookstore to find, and I happened to catch it.

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It's that thick. And when it comes to the Beatitudes, when it comes to what

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Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones taught on the Beatitudes, that portion of the book is about that thick.

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So just on these first 12 verses that we're looking at here in the

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Sermon on the Mount, he dedicated a fifth of his sermon series to the Studies in the

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Sermon on the Mount, just to the Beatitudes. Now, of course, to fill up that much space, you know that what

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Dr. Jones did is he went through each one of these

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Beatitudes and dedicated a sermon to each respective Beatitude. I'm not going to do that.

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I've listened to a few sermons from various teachers who have done that very thing, Thabiti Anuobwile, Dr.

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Albert Moeller, and they would dedicate a single sermon to each Beatitude. But we're going to cover this in a span of two weeks.

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So we're kind of doing an introduction to the Sermon on the Mount today, including looking at the first two Beatitudes, and then we'll come back to the

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Beatitudes next week. But first, when it comes to understanding the Sermon on the Mount, this is undoubtedly one of the most famous passages of Scripture that we have.

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It's without question the most famous sermon that has ever been preached.

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I heard a teacher earlier this week reference the most famous sermon that was ever preached on American soil.

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Anybody have any idea what sermon that might be? The most famous sermon on American soil.

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Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, preached by Jonathan Edwards in the 1740s up in New England.

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But that's the most famous sermon on American soil. This would be the most famous sermon ever preached in the world.

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Now, if you were to talk through the Sermon on the Mount, like if I were to stand up here and read through the entire thing for you, it would take me somewhere between 15 or 18 minutes, depending on pauses.

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I've heard some teachers say that if Jesus preached a sermon that was only 18 minutes long, then every one of our sermons in churches should likewise be only 18 minutes long.

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Much to your disappointment, I'm going to go a little bit longer than that this morning. Or maybe to your pleasure?

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I don't know. Okay, so the Sermon on the

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Mount itself, not terribly long, but we have to understand that what Matthew compiled for us here, and likewise what

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Luke wrote down in Luke chapter 6, was probably not the entire thing that Jesus taught.

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He may have been standing out there teaching the crowds for hours. But what we have here then is a summary, the high points, of what

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Jesus had preached to the crowds, summarized for us here in the Gospel account in Matthew.

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Now, we also find some discrepancies between the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5 and what's called the

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Sermon on the Plain in Luke chapter 6, beginning with the very title of the sermon.

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Why does Matthew call it the Sermon on the Mount, but Luke refers to it as the Sermon on the

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Plain? Didn't these two guys get together and talk about what they were writing down concerning what it was that Jesus taught?

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Figure out what land formation Jesus is standing on, for crying out loud, when he was teaching.

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One says a mountain and one says a plain. Well, the fact of the matter is they can both be true.

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There are two possible explanations for this. Number one, it could be, like I said, since this is a summary of things that Jesus taught, that he taught these things in more than one place.

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So, he could have taught it on a mountain, and he could have also taught it on a plain. You've got to remember, 2 ,000 years ago, this wasn't a place where sermons were recorded or even written down, so that when a sermon was preached, somebody had it written down and then would distribute copies of it to everybody else.

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That's the distribution of sermons as it was done in Charles Spurgeon's day. He would have, what was it called, the penny sermons or something like that.

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He would have five guys sitting on the front row when Charles Spurgeon would preach and they would all write down everything that he said because Charles Spurgeon would not manuscript his sermons.

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So, these guys would write down what it was that he preached, and then they would compile it into the penny sermon, which they would go out and they would sell just for a penny.

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And they would sell hundreds of thousands of copies of that sermon, even over Charles Spurgeon's lifetime of those sermons.

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All the sermons compiled, collected together would have totaled into the hundreds of thousands. People loved to buy copies of Charles Spurgeon's sermons, which is why we have them so accurately chronicled today.

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You can find almost every single sermon that Spurgeon ever preached because somebody was there writing it down and distributing copies of it.

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That was before the advent of recording. And now you have teachers whose entire ministries have been recorded and you can access for free.

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It was just a few years ago that John MacArthur made his entire library, nearly 50 years of sermons, available online for free.

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And you can go listen to any of John MacArthur's sermons, even going back to the 1960s.

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There are other preachers following his example that have done the same. John Piper, R .C.

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Sproul. You can even find Martin Lloyd -Jones sermons. He happened to be teaching at a time when recording was just kind of beginning to be the thing.

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And so you can listen to Martin Lloyd -Jones sermons. It's called the Martin Lloyd -Jones Trust. You can even download it as an app on your phone, and every

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Jones sermon that was recorded, you have it as an app on your phone. It's amazing how we've been able to chronicle those things and be able to access such great teachers, even down through history.

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But of course, at the time of Christ, that was not the convenience. So there wasn't these sermons that were being recorded, written down, or otherwise being distributed to other people.

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So a sermon like the Sermon on the Mount was taught not just in one place, but several. So he probably taught this to the crowds on a mountain, and he also taught this to the crowds on a plain.

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So that's one possible explanation. The second explanation for the Sermon on the Mount versus the

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Sermon on the Plain is that when you go to the area in which Jesus had taught, and here still being described as being around the region of Galilee, there are a lot of rolling hills in that area of the

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Holy Land, and you would go to the top of a mountain, and it would be a plain.

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Now, when we talk about mountain, we're not talking about the Rockies or even the Appalachians.

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We're talking about just these rolling hills. But considering the land formations in that particular area, you would consider that to be a mountain.

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You get to the top of one of those large hills, and it flattens out, and it becomes a plain up there on the top of that hill, even overlooking the

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Sea of Galilee, a plain overlooking the sea. So therefore, you have the

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Sermon on the Plain, which is also the Sermon on the Mount. So there's your two possible explanations for why

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Matthew would call it one thing, but Luke would refer to it as another. Now, the

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Sermon on the Mount, in addition to being the most famous sermon that was ever preached, is also the most misunderstood.

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There are many ways in which the sermon is misused, misread, misapplied.

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As a matter of fact, in this book, in the studies on the Sermon on the Mount, one of the things that Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones says is that we make a grave error and a serious mistake when we start applying the

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Sermon on the Mount as a lesson in moralism. When we start telling people who are unconverted, who are not

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Christians, who are still worldly and living as sinners in this world, when we start telling them that you need to follow this instruction, which

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Jesus gave in the Sermon on the Mount, they're unconverted. They have no even ability to follow that instruction, for the

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Holy Spirit does not dwell within them. And so Dr. Lloyd -Jones says that's not the way that the

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Sermon on the Mount should be understood. He says this, page 17 of his book, there is a kind of logical sequence in this sermon.

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Not only that, there is certainly a spiritual order and sequence. Our Lord does not say these things accidentally.

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The whole thing is deliberate. Certain postulates are laid down, and on the basis of those, certain things follow.

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Thus, I never discuss any particular injunction of the Sermon on the Mount with a person until I am perfectly happy and clear in my mind that that person is a

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Christian. It is wrong to ask anybody who is not first a

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Christian to try to live or practice the Sermon on the Mount. To expect Christian conduct from a person who is not born again is heresy.

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The appeals of the gospel in terms of conduct and ethics and morality are always based on the assumption that the people to whom the injunctions are addressed are

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Christian. So the first thing that we need to understand as we come to a study of the

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Sermon on the Mount here is this. This is written to Christians. There are many who will theorize what this is supposed to be for.

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Is this for Christians? Was this just for Israel? Does the church today find any application in this at all?

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Some will even say that what is written about here in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 is like an idealized life, but we can't actually aspire to it.

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So Jesus is demonstrating something that we should be living according to, but we can't, and so therefore exposing our need for the gospel.

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You can't do this, Jesus did, so therefore you need to turn to Christ. But I tell you that these are instructions that are given to Christians, and we can and should live according to them, but we only can if we are in Christ.

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How do I know that this is written for Christians and it is written for Christians today? Consider again the first verse,

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Matthew 5, verse 1. Seeing the crowds, He went up on the mountain, and when

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He sat down, His disciples came to Him. Verse 2,

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And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying, Who is He teaching?

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His disciples. Who are His disciples? As I said to you last week, the word disciple means learner.

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So the crowds are there, they've come to Him, as we looked at last week, those last few verses of chapter 4.

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He went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

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So His fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to Him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, and those oppressed by demons, having seizures and paralytics, and He healed them.

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And great crowds followed Him from Galilee and the Decapolis and from Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the

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Jordan. One of the things that is illustrated for us here in verse 25 is these people came a long way.

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This wasn't like going from Jerusalem over to Bethany, which was a trip of just a few miles.

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You just hike over the Mount of Olives, boom, you're there in Bethany. It wasn't that kind of a trip.

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They were coming from all over, outside of Judea, outside of Jerusalem, even from Galilee, even from beyond the

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Jordan. They were coming from everywhere to hear this man who was healing all kinds of diseases and teaching something unlike they were hearing even from the scribes and the

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Pharisees in the synagogues. One of the things that was so important to me to highlight for you last week was just how powerful a preacher

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Jesus was. Of course He was because He was the Son of God. The people didn't know that.

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They came to listen to a man who was teaching something that really was otherworldly. It was totally different than even their own teachers of the

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Word of God were saying to them. This was a man who was speaking with authority, and that's the way the

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Sermon on the Mount ends. And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at His teaching, for He was teaching them as one who had authority, not as their scribes.

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So there was something, indeed, revolutionary about what

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Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount. And I think we need not overlook that.

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There is a tendency for us, especially in this age, to shy away from anything that would be called new.

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And in fact, you've heard me warn you. Don't listen to a preacher who stands up and says, I have something new to say to you today.

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And you will not hear this in any other church, but you will hear this from me this morning. Run away from that guy.

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He is full of himself. As Charles Spurgeon had said of guys like that, there are no new teachings.

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There are old heresies with new labels. And so beware the guy that comes teaching you something he claims is new, and you're not going to hear it anywhere else.

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Or he's even going to say something to the effect of, God just told me this morning what should follow should be, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Something that comes straight out of the Bible. Or God was not speaking to that man.

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Here's one of the things that would be revolutionary to us in this culture today.

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When I read to you, starting this morning from Matthew 5, verses 1 through 12, you heard

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God speaking to you. Now please don't think that that was any sort of hiking up of myself as God just spoke to you today.

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No. Not in the least. God Himself, Jesus Christ, spoke this sermon, which was written down by His apostles, which has been passed down through the ages, has been transmitted to us today on leaves of paper.

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But we need not dismiss this as mere black and white words on a page. This is a very word of the

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Creator Himself who came to us. And I am merely a tool. I am merely a vessel that has been entrusted with these words to communicate them to you.

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I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet. But I am a person who reads the

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Word of God, and cherishes it, and upholds it, and understands my responsibility as a pastor to teach it to you.

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And so that's what we're doing as we come to a study in the Sermon on the Mount. Now when it comes to understanding this sermon, we've got some background here, and I've laid out a little bit of background for you over the course of the last few weeks, even since Christmas.

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We've been getting background before coming to the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is

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God incarnate, God in human flesh who has come to us. We've read the story of His incarnation and His coming.

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We've read about His baptism and these things being done to fulfill all righteousness. I've illustrated to you even how the way that Matthew lays things out concerning the beginning of the story of Christ in the first four chapters of his gospel shows how

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Jesus Himself is the fulfillment of all those things that Israel could not do faithfully.

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Israel had failed at every point, and yet Jesus keeps all those things perfectly.

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He is the fulfillment of faithful Israel, which is why He's referred to in Revelation 1 -5 as the faithful witness.

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Israel couldn't be faithful. Jesus has. Everywhere Israel failed, Jesus succeeds.

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Now, that's important to keep in mind, even as we come to this this morning. For in Matthew 5, we read,

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Seeing the crowds, He went up on the mountain, and He sat down. He went up on the mountain, and He sat down.

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And His disciples came to Him, and He taught them. That, to a first -century

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Jew, was mind -blowing. Now, we might just read it because it's the words in black before we get to the words in red.

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So it's just kind of, you know, this is where Jesus is at when He starts teaching. That's the way we read

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Matthew 5 -1. Why would that have been so mind -blowing, and why should that be mind -blowing to us?

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Every time we open the Word of God, there is a context. There is an audience that this was written to, and the audience who heard it understood the context in which the message was being delivered.

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That's a little more difficult for us. It's difficult for us to open the book of Matthew and just automatically know that this letter was written to a primarily

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Jewish audience concerning the things of Christ. And so what Matthew lays out is, even he comes back to all of these

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Old Testament references, he's showing how Christ is the fulfillment of all those things. We might come to an understanding of that as we go through Matthew, but the

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Jews already understood that when they opened up the book of Matthew. There was a women's study that we did a few years ago, and it was a

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DVD study, and the woman that was on the DVD was basically teaching women how to read their

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Bible and understand it, how to use Scripture to interpret Scripture, what's the proper way and the most productive way to do a

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Bible study. And so that's what she taught, and she used the Sermon on the Mount in order to teach this.

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The first thing that she taught in this particular Bible study was, don't use a study

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Bible or a reference Bible. She said, just have a Bible with just the black and white words on the page, read it for yourself, make some notes, gain some general understanding, and then open up the study

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Bible and start accessing other people's notes. I was fine with the study. I wouldn't say there was anything wrong with the study as it was presented.

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I even still have the DVD series, but I don't agree with that method. Why do

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I not agree with the method of, do it on your own, figure it out for yourself first, and then go to everybody else's notes?

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Because when you do it by yourself like that, you don't have context. And we have to have context.

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Everything is context. When this letter was given to the Jews in the first century, they had context.

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And we need it as well in order to make a right understanding of what it is that we're reading.

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Which is why the number one Bible that I recommend to you, when you come to me and ask me what's a

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Bible that I should purchase, I will tell you, either buy the ESV study Bible that's published by Crossway, or buy the

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Reformation study Bible that's published by Ligonier. Either one of those two. Those will be my first recommendations.

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Have a study Bible. Now, I would not in any way say that the notes that are underneath the words that you're reading are

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Scripture. In fact, I've even gone through a study Bible and found things that I did not fully agree with. So, the notes at the bottom of the page are not the

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Bible. Don't think of those notes as being the Bible. But they help you to understand the Bible.

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They give you context into things that the readers at the time they heard this letter had that we don't have.

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The context can get lost on us 2 ,000 years later, so it's important to keep those things in mind. Now, I was meaning on having a few examples of my

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Bibles, the Bibles that I use up here. I didn't bring my study Bible with me so that I could show that to you. But the

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Bible that I'm reading to you from this morning is my journaling Bible. And I'll make my notes in this

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Bible and then come to preach from this Bible because my notes will be there in the margins.

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And I'll have certain underlines, and I know where my eyes can fall on those underlining passages because I've been making those notes during the week before coming up and preaching it.

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So, this might be the first Bible that I'll preach from. But I also have my preacher's

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Bible, which is this one. The margins aren't as wide, though I do write some things in the margin, and I'll underline some things.

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This will be the Bible that I'll walk down to Sunday school class with, or I will teach to the students from in Awana.

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So, these are the two Bibles that I use the most often to teach from. This one is my reference

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Bible. It's actually the first English Standard version that I ever bought. So, I'm still holding that for that purpose.

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It's falling apart, so you know I'm a Christian because it's well used. One of these days,

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I'll get it rebound because the binding is going to come off of it eventually. But this one, because of its size, is easiest to stand with.

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And you can see even portions of the Bible where my fingers have been, because I'll read a passage like this, and then

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I'll close it, and I'll gesture with the Bible like this. So, you can see exactly where my finger has been in that Bible, and it's like that all the way through the

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New Testament. So, that's the other one. And then the Bible that I use perhaps the most, it's the one

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I use for Bible study on Thursday night when you come to my home, is my study Bible. It's the ESV Study Bible.

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I use that when you're hearing me on the podcast, teaching to you from the podcast. Before I have opened up the microphone and have begun teaching,

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I've read the entire passage that I'm going to read to you from, and I've read all of the notes concerning that that's right there at the bottom in the

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ESV Study Bible. So, that helps you with context. It helps me in even knowing how to teach it and how to communicate it to you.

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Those things are important. It's important for us as we come to a study on the Sermon on the Mount that we have context.

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The Jews had context when they read this. We need context to even behold the wonder in the words that we're reading to the degree that they should be beheld.

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And if this was mind -blowing to a Jew to read at the very beginning, seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, he taught them.

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We need to understand why that was mind -blowing to a Jew. Why was that so incredible? Well, if you had been sitting down and you were reading through the entire

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Bible in one sitting, you may have found

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Matthew 5, 1, and 2 as mind -blowing as a Jew would have in the first century.

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Because in one sitting, here's what you would have noticed. The last time God spoke to His people was in Exodus 20 when they heard the voice of God from the mountain giving them the

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Ten Commandments. How did the people respond to hearing the voice of God from a mountain speaking to over a million people at the base of Mount Sinai as they heard the thundering voice of God command them?

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How did they respond to that? They were terrified. And they looked at Moses and they said,

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We can't do this. You go up there. Go up there for us,

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Moses. You go talk to God. And then, why don't you come back and tell us what

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He said? That would be way less scary to us than this.

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And Exodus even describes the mountain as lit up like a furnace.

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Smoke was going up. Peals of thunder. Lightning. There were trumpet blasts. It was so overwhelming for the people of Israel.

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They were terrified and they wouldn't stand there and listen to it. And because they would not stand and listen, even to the terrifying voice of God coming from Mount Sinai, what did they end up doing?

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Moses goes up there to talk to God. They stay down at the bottom and they make a golden calf.

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They fashion for themselves an idol, and Aaron even presents that idol to them saying,

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Behold your gods who delivered you out of the land of Egypt. They refused to listen to the voice of God, and they listened to their own hearts instead.

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And it led them to wickedness. And they never heard the voice of God addressing the people of God again.

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From that point on, it became the priesthood. It became that God would communicate to his people through prophets, but his voice would never be spoken to those people again because they had rejected it.

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So you go from Exodus through the entire Old Testament with God only communicating to his people through a prophet until you get to Matthew 5 .1.

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Seeing the crowds, he, God, went up on the mountain.

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And when he sat down, as a king sits down, as God descended and came down on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19 and 20,

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Jesus sits down and his disciples came to him, and the voice of God, he opened his mouth and he taught them.

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The voice of God had come back to Israel. That's why that would have been so mind -blowing to a

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Jew. God himself is talking to us again.

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And I tell you, my brothers and sisters, we must revere these words with the same awe and honor as maybe that converted first -century

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Jew may have beheld these words. This isn't merely black and white words on a page.

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This is the voice of God speaking to us, teaching us because he loves us, because he is merciful, because he is gracious.

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We have these words. And what are the first words that we have?

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Blessed. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Now, what does this mean?

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What does blessed mean? The most common explanation or definition that I have of the word blessed, when

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I would listen to several teachers that would go over this, the most common definition that I would hear was happy.

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The word blessed means happy. Happy are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

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I tell you, that's not the definition of blessed. I think that there's some truth that can be gleaned from that, but it's not the definition of blessed.

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We need to understand blessed according to what Scripture says the word blessed means. And I tell you, as one who loves the

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Scriptures and as one who uses Scripture to interpret Scripture, every time I open the

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Sermon on the Mount and I read Matthew 5 -3, blessed, the first place my mind goes is here.

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Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the

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Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.

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In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

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Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, for the

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Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. What did

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I just read to you? Psalm 1. That's exactly

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Psalm 1. And the rest of the Psalms that follow will go after that pattern of what we have in the introductory

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Psalms, Psalms 1 and 2. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.

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So who is blessed according to Matthew 5 .2,

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or according to Matthew 5 .3? Who would the blessed be? Another word that we might understand for blessed, the best word

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I think that we can use to define blessed, and that would be synonymous with blessed, would be approved.

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Approved are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Meaning that this person has received the approval of God.

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When it comes to understanding what we call the Beatitudes, that's these next several verses,

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Matthew 5 .3 -12, it's the verses that begin with the word blessed.

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We call them the Beatitudes because that was the Latin word for blessed. So as Jesus is laying out these blessed statements, we've chronicled them and come to compile them together and call them the

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Beatitudes. Those who are blessed, approved by God, and we must understand that this blessedness that we receive is not something that is of our own merit, but it is the gift and the blessing of God.

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And these very first two Beatitudes, which we'll come back to again next week, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. And both of those

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Beatitudes are very similar. They go well together. Blessed are the poor in spirit.

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This does not mean blessed are the poor, like the economically poor, which is often the way that that verse gets used.

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Now Jesus certainly talks about, in several occasions, here in Matthew even, Mark 10 being another place,

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He talks about how those who are rich will find a more difficult time getting into the kingdom of heaven because they place their hope and their trust in stuff, in worldly things.

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And when they don't find any satisfaction in that, they go to find a different stuff or more things to pile up on top of that former stuff because hopefully if I have more stuff,

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I will find more satisfaction in life. Jesus says it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

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And He means that literally than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is easier to get an animal through the eye of a needle and have it survive the trip than it is to get a rich man into heaven and have him survive that trip without taking all of his stuff off.

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So yeah, it's true. The rich have a more difficult time getting into the kingdom of God because they place their hope and trust in stuff and the things of this world.

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But that doesn't mean the poor, the economically poor, inherit the kingdom of God.

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It's specifically blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who are needy. Blessed are those who realize that they can't do anything on their own.

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But they are desperate for God. And when they turn to God and they know that salvation is found in Christ alone as we've sung about in several of our songs this morning,

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I surrender all. Blessed are they. Approved by God are they.

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For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. They will not find satisfaction in the things of this world, but they will find true contentment and everlasting life in the kingdom of God.

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Look at the next one. Verse 4, which is very similar. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

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Mourning is likewise that we don't find any joy in the things of this world.

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If we find any joy in this world, it's temporary.

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It eventually goes away, and we look for something else that will bring us joy. But we can find joy in this world in those things that give us a taste of what heaven is going to be like, which

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God has given us those things to enjoy. He's given us a good meal, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying the food that you eat and having that roll up into praise to God.

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I know by this food that I'm eating here, I'm getting a picture of glory in heaven where we're even told about this wedding feast of the

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Lamb that's coming. We're all going to be gathered together in one place rejoicing in Christ our

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King with saints that have gone before us and saints that are going to come after us and saints who had perished even while we were in this life who have died and have gone to be with God in glory, and we're all going to be gathered together at this feast.

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And this meal that I'm sitting down at and enjoying right now is kind of a taste of that.

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And friends, I really think that's why we as Baptists love eating so much. It's not just because we love our potlucks, although those are certainly wonderful meals, but let all of this be a picture of the glory of the kingdom of God that we're all going to be enjoying together.

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Why would we get together and have a feast when we say goodbye to our friends Dave and Vicki when they moved away a couple of weeks ago?

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Because we know that though we're just breaking bread together for an hour or two on a

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Sunday, it's a picture of we're all going to be together again in glory soon.

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This is one of those churches that is unlike most others in that we're very transient.

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And a lot of people are, we're going to make fast friends here and we're going to know each other for maybe a year or two, and then the government, by God's providence, is going to move you to another place.

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And we may never see each other again on this side of heaven, but we rejoice in knowing. We've met each other now.

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We've been able to enjoy sanctification with each other now. We've encouraged and edified one another for the little space of time that we share together on this planet.

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But a day is coming when we're all going to be together again rejoicing in God for the goodness that He showed to us and the deliverance that He gave us in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. By faith in Him, our sins are forgiven, and we have everlasting life, eternal fellowship with God forever in His perfect kingdom where there's no more dying, no more tears, no more pain.

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All the former things have passed away, for Christ is making all things new. And we can enjoy even those little enjoyments here in this life knowing that heaven is going to be all the more greater.

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The enjoyment doesn't terminate on the experience, but for those who do not know

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God, it does. And I've known people who were worldly, who looked to this world for satisfaction and meaning and truth and never found it.

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And when they enjoyed the things of this life for a little while and found no more pleasure in it anymore, they took their own life.

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Because if this stuff can't satisfy me, what hope do I have? We can find pleasure in the things of this world knowing that it rolls up into praise to God, that there's something even more eternal and more glorious coming.

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And even when life is hard and we struggle and we suffer, we still do not lose hope.

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Because we know, as Paul said in Romans 8, the sufferings of this world don't even compare to the glory that awaits us in the end if we endure.

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So blessed, blessed are they even who mourn. They will be comforted.

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We're here in this life for a little bit of time. We'll be in eternity forever because that's the definition of eternity.

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So let us understand as Jesus preaches even here in the Sermon on the Mount, not to lay up treasures here on this earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, but we lay up treasure in heaven where moth and rust cannot destroy and thieves cannot break in and steal.

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Matthew 6, Jesus says, Let us seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all the things you need will be added to you as well.

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And these are some of the instructions that we will find as we continue and embark upon this

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Sermon on the Mount. In the meantime, as we consider these beatitudes, let us understand what it means to be approved by God, and not approval in the sense that we can gain it, for it is not by our own merit that we gain the approval of God.

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It is by faith in Jesus, who is the anointed one. He is the one who is the most beloved of God, and the

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Father has extended the same love that He has for His Son to each one of us who are in Christ Jesus.

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That we may read, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

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And we'll talk more about the beatitudes as we come back to this next week. Charles Spurgeon said of the beatitudes,

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The beatitudes do not describe how to be saved. The beatitudes describe the saved.

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This is for us. We must read this. We must understand that there's an imperative in this.

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There are even instructions in this that we must follow. The Law has not gone away.

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It wasn't just given on Mount Sinai 3 ,500 years ago, but it continues to be proclaimed to us now, and those who are in Christ Jesus love to hear it.

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We love to hear this word. We delight in it, that God would command us, and that it would be our heart's desire to follow it, for we desire to serve and please our

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King, who died for us, who laid down his life as a ransom for us, who conquered death for us, so that in Christ we will not perish, but we will have everlasting life.

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Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

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For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

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On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ...