A Word in Season: Teaching like Christ (Matthew 5:2)

When the Lord Jesus Christ opened his mouth and taught, what matchless wisdom flowed from his perfect lips, what understanding, what clarity of instruction, what beauty of truth, what vigour of application.

It's no wonder that at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the people who heard the Lord Jesus speak marveled at the way that he spoke because he had authority.

He didn't speak like the scribes to which they were accustomed, the men who would debate mere possibilities.

Here was a man who'd grasped the truth of God, who was gripped by it in his own soul, and who spoke it forth.

The sermon itself begins in Matthew chapter 5, when he saw the multitudes, went up on a mountain, and when he was seated his disciples came to him.

Then he opened his mouth and taught them, and from his lips there rolled those beatitudes, first of all, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and then so on and so forth, as he began to explain and apply what it meant to belong to the kingdom of God, and the kind of believing and behaving that characterizes those who truly know

God as the Lord Jesus makes him known. And, for as much as we have an opportunity to gather and hear the word of God, we too will have men who, though they may not do what the

Lord Jesus did, and probably sit cross -legged on the mountainside in order to teach, nevertheless, they too will open their mouth and teach, and they will come very conscious of the fact that they do not have the wisdom of our

Lord Jesus Christ. There was no one who ever spoke like he spoke, and the men who seek to follow in his footsteps, speaking the truth about him, they need his spirit in order to do that.

They need the prayers of God's people in order to bring forth out of the treasuries of God's word things new and old, to bring the truth to bear in a timely fashion, to be ready in season and out of season, to rebuke and to exhort with all long -suffering, to instruct and to encourage and to comfort, to bring the word of God to bear upon all the souls under their particular care in a way that will convince, will convict, will under God save and sanctify.

I hope you're conscious of the privilege that you have if you have a pastor and a preacher who loves

God, loves the word of God, trusts the son of God, and speaks the truth concerning him.

You need to pray that when he opens his mouth, he may truly teach the word of God, that he wouldn't be a debater, that he wouldn't be a mere theorizer, but that he would be someone who with some sense of that Christ -like authority, a man who knows and is gripped by the truth of God, he brings that to your soul so that you know that it's not the voice of a mere man, but truly the voice of God that you are hearing.

I trust that you're conscious of and confident in that privilege, and I trust that you'll be praying then for these servants of God, weak and fallible men who are very conscious of their frailty, very conscious of how much they need the help of God in order not only to understand, but then to explain and apply to others the word of the living

God. It's a wonderful privilege, but it's also a profound responsibility to bring the truth to bear for the blessing of men's souls.

Whether or not we're going out as it were into the highways and the byways to make Christ known, or whether or not the disciples are gathering so that the word of Christ may be spoken to them, it is in dependence upon him that we go.

So let me encourage you, pray for your teachers, pray for the pastors who minister the word of God to you, pray for them in their preparations, pray for them in the delivery of their sermons, that whether or not it's a more developed and prepared address, or perhaps it may be even a simple conversation, more off the cuff, that when they speak, they will speak the word of God indeed, and by the power of the

Holy Spirit that word would come, as it did in the days of Christ, with an authority from heaven, so that men know that God is speaking in his word.