The Professor Takes His Seat

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I encourage you to take out your Bible and turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew.
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This series has been a long time in coming.
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And the reason is I have actually been quite fearful to do this series of messages because of my fear that I would not be able to do this portion of Scripture justice.
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There was a time in which I said, you know what, I'll just read it.
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I'll just read the Sermon on the Mount.
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I mean, what better sermon? It's the Sermon on the Mount.
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I just read the sermon.
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And I thought, you know, I don't know if that would work because there is a context that the sermon is in and that's part and parcel of understanding what it's all about.
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And so it does take some exposition.
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Here we sit 2,000 years later from its original time of being preached.
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So it does need some explanation.
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But to preach a sermon on the greatest sermon ever preached is a daunting task.
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So it is with fear and trepidation that I am finally wading into this series and I'm asking for your prayers as I do so.
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Somebody said, how long do you think it's going to take? Well, it took us three years to get through Hebrews.
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That was 12 chapters.
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This is three chapters, so I don't know.
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Maybe we can do it in a year, but we're not going to be in any hurry.
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Certainly not.
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But the question is, why do I believe this message is important? Well, I believe that the Sermon on the Mount is something that deserves our study, not just because the words are the words of Jesus Christ, and certainly they are, but I believe also that it is important because in the American church today there has been allowed a new type of Christianity.
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There has been birthed a new type of Christian, what I have dubbed the lordless Christian.
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Sometimes they're called anti-lordship theology, but I just simply call them lordless Christians.
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They have decided that it is okay to have Jesus as their Savior, but not as their Lord.
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They have no responsibility to listen to His commands.
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They have no responsibility to follow after His word.
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They simply say, well, we love Jesus, but we have no affection for what He said.
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And that doesn't jive with what Jesus actually did say.
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When He said, if you love Me, what will you do? You'll do what I told you to do.
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If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
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I mean, that was so clear.
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And certainly we are not going to be perfect, and certainly we will not reach sinless perfection in this life, but that does not mean that we do not have a standard, a bar which we should be striving towards.
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And you know, that's the great thing about the Sermon on the Mount.
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It is an unapologetically high bar.
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Jesus set a high bar, and He was unapologetic about it.
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It is the greatest expression of the highest form of personal and ethical righteousness which has ever been given to man, which is why it is so ignored, by the way.
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It is so ignored because it is the highest expression of personal and ethical righteousness which has ever been given to man.
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Because Jesus not only says, this is what the Law says in the letter of the Law, but He says, this is also how it affects you in your heart.
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It's not only that you don't commit adultery, but it's that you don't even look with lust.
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It's not that you don't commit murder, but that you don't even get angry with a brother unless you have right cause.
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You know, that's a standard that is unapologetically high.
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It is a bar worth exalting.
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And it's an amazing bar.
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And you know, there are some people that are so afraid of it, there are some people that don't care for it so much that they have even come to the conclusion that it's not for us.
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There are those who believe that the Sermon on the Mount was not given to Christians, that it wasn't intended for Christians, but that it was intended to describe a future utopia.
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The millennial state which is to come.
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But it wasn't intended for us as a bar now.
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There are others who believe it wasn't intended for us, but intended for the Jews.
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Jesus was preaching to Jews, and Jesus Himself was a Jew, and so that sermon was for them, not for us.
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And there's a lot that can be considered in both of those arguments.
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But beloved, I believe that both of those are lacking because they are missing the value that this sermon has for us today.
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It is missing the power that this sermon can give to us today if we simply seek to understand it and to apply it.
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Know this, first of all, that the Sermon on the Mount was not intended to teach us how to be saved.
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And that is an important thing to start from the beginning.
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It is not intended to teach us how to be saved, but rather, it is intended to teach us what a righteous life looks like.
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It is intended to teach us what righteousness looks like.
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And those who have been saved by grace through faith should have an internal yearning for righteousness.
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Let me say that again.
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Those who have been saved by grace through faith should have an internal yearning for righteousness.
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Where do we turn when we want to see what that righteousness looks like? Well, we have the Sermon on the Mount.
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It's the picture, it's the bar, it's the standard.
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So this morning, we're going to spend some time examining just the first two verses.
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We're not even really going to get into the sermon today, but rather we're going to look at how the stage is set for the greatest sermon ever preached.
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So let's stand.
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We're going to read Matthew 5, verses 1 and 2.
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Seeing the crowds, He went up on the mountain, and when He sat down, His disciples came to Him, and He opened His mouth, and He taught them saying, Father in Heaven, we thank You for Your Word.
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We thank You that even in these two short verses, which may seem inconsequential, there is great truth and important facts that we need to understand as a prelude to this series.
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We thank You, Father, for Your Word.
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I ask You that You would keep me tied to it today, that You would keep me from error, and that You would open the hearts of the people to the truth.
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And in all these things we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
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It may seem as though I cut off before we really got to any material that we could study.
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I stopped before Jesus said anything.
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But the reality is, there is a lot in these first two verses which we can study to set the stage for all that we're going to be learning in the weeks to come.
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And what I want us to do from these two verses, I want us to look at three things.
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If you're taking notes, this will be an outline.
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I don't always give an outline that is alliterated, so here's a nice alliterated outline.
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They don't all start with the same letter, but it's an alliterated outline nonetheless.
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It's the location Jesus goes for the sermon, the position Jesus assumes for the sermon, and the introduction Jesus gives to the sermon.
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So that's the three points that we're going to look at today.
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The first one is the location.
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Look back with me at verse 1.
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It says, "...seeing the crowds, He went up on the mountain." Now, sometimes things which we read may seem somewhat insignificant in our reading, and at the same time be pregnant with symbolism and with meaning.
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It is obvious that this is the case with Jesus choosing to go up on a mountain to provide the first and most public of His discourses in the Gospel of Matthew.
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Jesus actually has five discourses in the Gospel of Matthew.
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This is His first.
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And in this first discourse, He goes up onto a mountain.
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And it's not just that He's elevating Himself so as to be more easily seen by the crowd.
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Instead, He is elevating Himself to draw attention to the height of importance of His discourse and to bring to the minds of His hearers another great discourse which was also given on top of a mountain.
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I want you to think about in your mind from the Old Testament what was another very important discourse which came from on top of a mountain.
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Well, think about when God, from atop Mount Sinai, delivered the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.
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Those laws were given to Moses on top of a mountain.
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There, God delivered His Word of Law to Moses who then became the person who came down to the people and delivered to them this Word of God, the Law of God, which was given to him atop a mountain.
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It is obvious when we look at the Scripture that there is a direct connection between Moses and Jesus.
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Just think about the first part of the Gospel of John.
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The Gospel of John makes a clear distinction with Moses and Jesus and a comparison.
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What does the Gospel of John say in 117? It says, for the Law was given through Moses, but Grace and Truth came through Jesus Christ.
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And there is this connection.
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We have this one man who was very valuable because he was the mouthpiece of God who gave the Law.
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And yet, here is this next man, this next great important hero, this Christ who comes to not only give us the truth of the Law, but He gives us Grace to go along with that truth.
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Moses stood before the people of God from the side of Mount Sinai, and with a powerful voice, he commanded the Word of God and God's Law.
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And Jesus, 1,500 years later, would stand upon a similar mountain before the descendants of those same people and proclaim to them a proper interpretation of that Law.
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You see, Moses gave them the letter of the Law.
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Jesus would give them the Spirit of the Law.
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What Moses said from the mountain was true and holy and godly, but it had been misused.
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It had been misunderstood.
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It had been misinterpreted.
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I mean, just look at the Pharisees in the time of Jesus.
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They had taken the Law of Moses and they had twisted it and they had contorted it.
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They had turned it into something that it was never intended to be.
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So here Jesus comes, some 1,500 years after that Law was given, and He says to the people, I am not here to change the Law.
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I am here to fulfill the Law.
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And part of the fulfilling of the Law was to give the people a proper understanding of it.
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You can't fulfill it without first explaining it when you've got people who have been misrepresenting it and misunderstanding it.
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So Jesus comes, He stands on a mountain as Moses did, and He says, You have heard this, but I tell you this.
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He's not, by the way, and we'll get to this more as we dive into the sermon, He's not calling Moses to task.
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He's calling all the people to task who had misunderstood what Moses said and giving them the right interpretation of what Moses had said.
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There was no difference between the Law of Moses and the Law of Christ because both of them are the Law of God.
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It's just that people had misunderstood the Law of Moses and Jesus came as the great divine interpreter.
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Now, I want to mention quickly, as far as location is concerned, I want to mention about the differences between Matthew and Luke because there is some debate and controversy between whether or not this sermon is given in Scripture twice.
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If you look at the Gospel of Matthew from chapter 5 to chapter 7, we have what is called the Sermon on the Mount.
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And yet, if you go into the Gospel of Luke in chapter 6, you will find another sermon which is very, very similar.
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And some people believe that it's actually the same sermon.
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It's just that Luke recorded some parts differently than Matthew did and they're both giving us the same sermon just in different ways.
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Sort of like if I were to ask two of you to describe my sermon today and to write down what you remember from my sermon or portions of my sermon, one of you may consider one thing more important than the other or you may focus on something.
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If I told one of you to write to a group of children and the other one to write to a group of adults, certainly your writing would be different and we know Matthew was writing to the Jews, Luke was writing to the Gentiles, so there's differences.
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So the question is, well, is the sermon in Matthew and the sermon in Luke the same sermon? Well, I would conjecture based on the text that they are not exactly the same for one reason.
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In the Gospel of Matthew, it says Jesus went up on a mountain.
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In the Gospel of Luke, it says Jesus went down into the plain.
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Unless Jesus went up on the mountain and found a hollow spot in the mountain, I mean, I guess that could be.
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I mean, it could be.
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Maybe He went up on the mountain and then down into the plain.
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We don't know.
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It seems as if these are two differing accounts.
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But the question becomes, and some of the agnostics or those who don't believe in the Scripture will say, well, why are they so similar? If they're two different accounts, why is there so much similarity between what He says in Matthew and what He says in Luke? Could it be that Luke was copying from Matthew? Oh, maybe there's conspiracy here.
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Or could it just be that Jesus preached a similar sermon to the one He had before in a different location and to a different group of people? Maybe it's not controversy.
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Maybe it's just common sense.
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Because I want to ask you this, and I want you to be honest with me.
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Have you ever heard me say the same thing twice? Have you ever heard me say the same thing multiple times? Those of you who have been with Jack and Patsy, those of you who have been with me the longest, you've heard me say the same things a bunch of times.
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But you know what's great about that? I hear you guys repeat stuff I say, and it's always the stuff I say 15, 16 times.
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So it works.
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And anyone with an itinerant ministry, a ministry that travels, there is a sense in which the sermons develop a theme.
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Because the themes of the sermon that this group needed to hear will later say so-so be needed to hear by this group.
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Do you know in the whole ministry of Billy Graham, if you go back and listen to all his sermons, he really had about six or seven sermons that he rotated through.
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Now, he had hundreds of sermons that he did over the years, but if you listen to his crusade messages, it was Jonah and Nineveh, and there's a couple other ones, but if you listen to two or three crusades, you'll hear the same sermons.
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Why? Because he knew what the people needed to hear to hear the gospel, and he had so well articulated these messages, and he knew that this group had heard it, but this group hadn't, so I'm going to give it to this group as well.
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So there's no controversy between Matthew and Luke.
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It's just Jesus preaching the truth of the gospel to two different crowds of people.
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Important truths are worth repeating.
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Do you agree? Important truths are worth repeating.
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So it would make perfect sense that the Sermon on the Mount would have many truths that Jesus would have reiterated over and over and over throughout his three-year ministry.
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And the similarities between Matthew and Luke do not demand that we are recounting the same sermon, but they are recounting sermons in which Jesus preached about the same thing, similar truths.
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So in Matthew's recording of the Sermon on the Mount, like Moses in the Old Testament, he is elevated in a position of authority, in a position of majesty to give this great message.
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A.W.
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Pink, the great Reformed scholar, makes reference to this location, and I want to read a quote to you from Pink.
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He says, and I quote, We believe there is yet a deeper significance in the fact that Christ delivered the sermon from a mountain.
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Very often, the noting of the place where a particular utterance was made supplies a key to its interpretation.
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For example, in Matthew 13, Christ is seen entering into a house where He made known unto His own inner circle the secrets of the kingdom.
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In Luke's Gospel, He is seen as man, the perfect man among men, and there He delivers the sermon in a plane among the people, descending, as it were, to a common level.
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But in Matthew, His royal authority is in view.
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And consequently, He is seen again in an elevated place.
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In the 17th chapter, we behold Him transfigured on a mountain.
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In the 24th chapter, He delivers His great prophetic discourse from a mountain.
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Then in 28.6, we see the conqueror of death commissioning His disciples from a mountain.
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So here in chapter 5 and verse 1, He ascends to a mountain to give the manifesto of His kingdom.
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End quote.
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So that's Ping's point.
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What is Matthew all about? He is the King of the Jews.
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So where does the King go to deliver His manifesto? His address? He goes to the top of the mountain.
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And that is the location wherein He begins.
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But the next thing I want us to look at is His position.
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Read with me again Matthew 5 and verse 1.
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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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I've often found that part to be quite interesting because when a modern preacher proclaims the Word of God, he stands before the congregation.
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He stands normally behind an elaborate lectern, which we call a pulpit, or the sacred desk as some refer to it.
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And it is the procedure in many cultures that the one who is giving the discourse to the people stands before them as they sit waiting to receive the message.
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But as we just read in this text, this discourse is different.
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Jesus is the one who comes and sits to give His historic address.
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That's not the picture that most people have in their minds.
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In fact, I've seen a lot of movies about the life of Jesus.
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In almost every movie that I have seen where He is proclaiming the Sermon on the Mount, the director using his artistic license has Jesus standing proclaiming, blessed are those and blessed are these.
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Right? But this text says Jesus sat down.
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Why is that significant? Why even mention that? Well, it speaks to the authority of what He is saying.
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Because in the time of Jesus, the posture of teaching that was common among rabbis, the posture of the authoritative teaching among rabbis was the seated position.
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It spoke to the authority of what they were saying.
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They might walk and chat with their students, but the time for learning came when they sat, because this is the discourse with authority.
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It was the position of authority of the day.
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And even today, even now, there is somewhat of a hearkening back to that positional authority, even when we see vestiges of it all around us.
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Think about when a king sits upon his throne.
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What does the throne represent? He sits in a position of authority.
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In schools of higher learning, they talk about the professor's chair as being a place of authority.
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In meetings, what do we call the person who is the head of the meeting? The chairman.
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Why? Because he is sitting in the position of authority.
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He is sitting in the head chair.
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And even the Pope, and we are not Catholics, and we decry the idea of the Pope and the authority of the Pope, and we do not accept his authority or his position.
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But what is it when the Pope gives a statement of decree? It comes ex cathedra, which means from the seat.
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Often a rabbi gave instruction when he was standing and strolling about, as I said, but when he wanted to give his official teaching with authority, he would sit and his students would come around him.
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Notice that that is what happens here.
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It says, And when he sat down, his disciples came to him.
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They positioned themselves as students around the Master to receive this authoritative proclamation.
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So I believe that not only the location where Jesus is on top of the mountain, but the very position that He took adds to the level of authority with which this sermon was presented.
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And finally, I want us to look at the introduction.
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It says in verse 2, And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying, and this isn't in verse 2, it's in verse 3, but He said the word, Blessed.
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He begins His proclamation with the word, Blessed.
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It begins with this beautiful section which we call, what do we call it? The Beatitudes.
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We sang a song.
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The Beatitudes.
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Now I want to share with you a story about my youth.
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When I was a child, I was brought up in this church.
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It's one of the great beauties of having been here my whole life.
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I was patsy with my Sunday school teacher and we talked about the Beatitudes in Sunday school class.
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We talked about them in church services and things like that.
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And one of the funny things, I never knew what the word meant.
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And I don't know if you're like me, but I'm somewhat of a creative soul.
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When I don't know what something means, I make it up.
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I try not to do that anymore.
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But when I was a kid, the teachers always told you use context clues, try to find root words, and try to come up with meaning.
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If you don't understand something, maybe that will help you understand it.
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Well, I came up with the meaning for the word Beatitude because I didn't know.
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And I'm thinking in my mind, I said, well, it's got the word attitude in it, which I later found out it does not.
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In my mind, it's got the word attitude in it.
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And it starts with the B.
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Well, maybe these are the attitudes that we're supposed to be in.
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And that was my answer.
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And for years, I didn't know any better.
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Of course, I was a kid and it didn't really matter.
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Because I said, you know what? We're supposed to be poor in spirit.
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We're supposed to be merciful.
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We're supposed to be this.
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These are the attitudes we're supposed to be in.
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So that's what the word Beatitude meant.
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Well, I was wrong.
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I was very incorrect.
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The word actually means, the word Beatitude means supreme blessedness.
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That's what Beatitude means.
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It means supreme blessedness.
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Now, in theological language, we have a term.
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And I don't know how many of you have ever heard of this.
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I assume some of you have.
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But how many of you, just very quickly, are unfamiliar? You've never heard of the term the beatific vision.
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Unfamiliar with that term.
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Some of you? The beatific vision.
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Well, if you're unfamiliar with that term, I want to give it to you today as something to consider.
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Because the beatific vision, beatific, of course, meaning supreme blessedness, is the presence of God.
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Turn in your Bibles.
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You're in Matthew 5.
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Turn in your Bibles to 1 John 3.
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1 John, one of the small letters close to the back of the Bible here.
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And turn in chapter 3.
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And when you get to chapter 3, look at verse 2.
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It says, We are God's children now.
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And what we will be has not yet appeared.
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This is talking about the end and when we receive our glorified bodies.
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It says what we will be has not appeared yet.
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But we know that when He appears, and the He here is referring to Christ.
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When He returns, when He appears, we shall be like Him.
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Not that we shall be gods.
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Not that we shall be divine.
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But that we will receive a glorified body as He had after the resurrection.
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That we will be like Him because we shall see Him as He is.
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Beloved, that is the beatific vision.
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That there is coming a day.
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O glorious day! As we sang this morning.
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There is coming a day when we shall see Him as He is.
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It is the greatest expression of blessing for the believer.
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And who are those who will experience this extreme blessing? Who are those who will experience this blessedness? Well, Jesus tells us something about them in the Sermon on the Mount.
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He tells us something about them in verses 3-11.
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He says, Blessed are the poor in spirit.
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Blessed are those who mourn.
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Blessed are the meek.
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Blessed are the merciful.
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Blessed are the pure in heart.
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Blessed are the peacemakers.
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Blessed are the persecuted.
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Blessed are the reviled.
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For these are all those who have the character.
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These are all those who have the heart's desire to see the Lord as He is.
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These are those who will experience the beatific vision.
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These are the blessed.
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What is the greatest blessing we could have? To see the Lord as He is.
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Who are those who will see the Lord as He is? These are those who will see the Lord as He is.
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Now, I want to mention one thing about this and we'll get to this in the weeks to come.
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But some modern translations, and I don't know what version you have.
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It doesn't matter.
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We don't hold to one particular text in this church, even though I think some would be happy if we did.
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But some of the texts say happy.
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They say happy are the poor in spirit.
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It says happy are those who mourn.
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Happy are the meek.
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And beloved, this is one place where I do take issue with some translators because I think the word happy is not enough.
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I think the word happy in our modern day has too much inherent baggage.
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Happy is a trite word which we have come to ascribe to everything.
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You know, happiness is a warm bed or happiness is a good meal or happiness is a new toy.
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And that's the way we have ascribed our understanding of happiness.
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And beloved, the reality is that the word blessed is so much more than that.
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And to ascribe happy as what the word of Christ meant here is to rob it of its meaning because the heart of it is the beatific vision.
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It's the heart.
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It's that these are those who will see God.
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It's a supreme blessedness.
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It's more than happiness.
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It's more than joviation.
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It's more than joy.
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It is a blessedness that is beyond our comprehension.
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It is a bliss which comes only in knowing and fellowshipping with the Almighty.
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That is the blessing Jesus is pronouncing upon this people.
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Jesus has gone up on top of a mountain.
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He has sat down before the people, a vast multitude, and He has opened His mouth to them and His first words to them are the word of blessing.
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And you know what? That's an interesting shift in the normal order of discourse.
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I don't know if you really recognize this, but normally the blessing comes at the end.
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Think about what we have in our own worship service.
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What do we do at the very end? We have something called a benediction where I as the pastor extend my hand into the air and I ask God to bless and keep us and to make His face shine upon us and to lift up His countenance toward us and give us peace.
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But that's the end of the discourse.
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That's after the proclamation has been made.
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That's after this is done and worship has concluded and now we've asked that God bless us and keep us until we come again and meet again.
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But Jesus here gives the blessing first.
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And Martin Lloyd-Jones said that he believes, and if you don't know who Martin Lloyd-Jones is, learn.
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Martin Lloyd-Jones, one of the greatest writers, pastors in the history of the church.
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And he said the reason why Jesus begins with the blessings is because He wants to describe the character of those who will possess the kingdom.
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He said we are to be interested primarily in character before we consider conduct.
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Consider this.
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A man of bad character may conduct himself properly at times if it fits his own desires.
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If it fits his needs at the time, a man of bad character may at times conduct himself properly.
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Right? So what's more important? Conduct or character? Character is first.
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Because from character will come the conduct.
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And that was Lloyd-Jones' point.
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He said first and foremost, we must consider character.
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And the Sermon on the Mount begins with this address of Jesus wherein He addressed the conduct which His followers should exude, which will then become a character which is unlike the world has ever seen.
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And in the weeks to come, we are going to study the Beatitudes and look at the character traits in detail.
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And I pray we will be convicted over it.
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I pray they will break our hearts and turn us even closer to our walk with Him as they should.
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As we prepare to close this morning, I want to read them to you yet again, but I want to ask that you close your eyes and turn out the noise and listen only to these words.
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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.
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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.
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Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
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Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called 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.
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For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
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Our Father and our God, we thank You for all that You have given us in this Word and in this sermon and in these two verses that precede this sermon.
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And I pray, O God, that in the weeks and in the months to come as we seek to examine the parts of this sermon, that You would just anoint this time as a time of growth for believers and a time of conviction for unbelievers and a time of change for us all.
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We pray this in Jesus' name and for His sake.
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Stand with us now as we sing.
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If you have a need for prayer, please come.