Christ our King
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When God set out to redeem his creation from the Fall, His ultimate purpose was to take what He had once created as good and to completely restore it to a state of sinless glory. His plan was that the entire universe would once again be free from sin and once again under His glorious and benevolent rule. Then He would hand that rule over to another, His only Son and Heir to the throne, who would rule over all things as King of kings and Lord of lords.
This morning we have gathered to worship Jesus Christ our Prophet, Priest and King. Perhaps, this morning the image of Jesus that is most easily called to mind is the image of Him as a newborn baby nestled in a manger. He didn’t come into this world in the majesty of a king; his birth was as humble as they come. He wasn’t born in Jerusalem, the Kings’ city, but in Bethlehem where the shepherds lived. At His birth, He traded a king’s robe for peasant rags.
This is definitely not the way you would expect the story to go for the Son of God and king of all the world to come into the world; but this will be the theme of His rule.
Isaiah 9:6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Our King has to rescue the poor by becoming poor. He has come to heal the broken, the lame, the blind, and the outcast by being broken and cast out in our place. Jesus has come to rule with a heart for the lowly and with the desire to make sinners into sons.
Transition…
The story of Jesus’ rise to kingship is the story of the Bible and it is a progressive journey from the brokenness of the Garden to the glory of the cosmos restored; and on that day we will see Jesus in this way…
Rev 19:11 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. 13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. 14 And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. 15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
But how does that story actually unfold? How do we get from the curse in the Garden to the restored rule of our resurrected King? That is the story that we will be studying this morning and it begins all the way back in the Garden with a promise from God.
Sermon Focus…
I. God Promised a King
Even before the fall in Genesis 3, we see something of God’s design for a King to rule over creation. He gave Adam and Eve the command to, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over…every living thing that moves on the earth (Gen 1:28).” To have dominion means to rule, it means to exercise authority over the things that have been made. It was part of God’s plan for mankind that we rule God’s creation but instead we bowed our knee to sin and have been dominated by it ever since.
But in the promise of God to restore creation He made it clear that one day He would send a king to rule. In Genesis 12, God spoke to Abram and called Him to be the father of His people. He promised to give Abram a great name, to give him a great land, and to make his family a great nation. God also promised to give Abram a son and then He promised that through that son, one day God’s people would have a king. Soon a king would come!
They had their first opportunity during the period of the judges. At that point, Israel had taken possession of the Promised Land but they were being threatened by the surrounding nations. The theme of the book of Judges is what I call the cycle of stupidity. The cycle began with the people enjoying peace and God’s blessing, but then rebellion occurred and idolatry as well. They would be given over to bondage and then would cry out for mercy. He would hear and raise up a deliverer, a judge, to save them only to have the cycle repeat itself.
So, one by one God raised up judges to lead their armies, fight their enemies, and protect their land. But just a few cycles in and the people of Israel came up with a plan that they thought woulg keep them from falling into the hands of their enemies. In Judges 8:22-23, The people request that Gideon establish himself as their king.
Gideon had led their armies against the soldiers of Midian and had been victorious so the people want to exalt him as their king. But Gideon refused saying, “I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you.”
Gideon’s son Abimilech, did lead them as a judge for a short time but only in a small region and his rule was nothing like the king God had promised. But, God had promised and it wouldn’t be long now. Very soon a king would come!
II. Kings Come and Kings Go
It was Samuel who would serve as Israel’s final judge and near the end of his life the people begged him for a king. Like Gideon before him, Samuel wasn’t excited about the idea of appointing a king for the people. Of course, he knew that God had promised to send Israel a king but the problem was that they didn’t exactly want the kind of king that God had promised them.
The people demanded of Samuel, “Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” Israel did not want a righteous king to come in and lead them in faithfulness to God, they wanted a champion king, a war-lord to rule and strike fear into their enemies. They did not want to be faithful to God’s covenant; they wanted to be like the other pagan nations around them.
The short rule of Saul…
In response, God tells Samuel, “Go ahead and appoint them a king…‘They have not rejected you, they have once again rejected me.” The period of the judges comes to a close when Saul is chosen to be king of Israel. But his place among the people of God would be short-lived.
Saul’s rule as king started well. He gave glory and credit to God for Israel’s victory over the Ammonites. But his first major blunder came in I Samuel 13 when he took upon himself the office of Priest. He disobeyed the command of God and he found out that his days as king were numbered. God wants His people to have a King, but only the right king will do.
David the improbable champion…
Enter David the one who would become the shepherd-king of God’s people. We first meet David in I Samuel 16 as the youngest son of a herdsman of Bethlehem, named Jesse. God sent Samuel, to anoint young David to be the future king of Israel and when that anointing took place the Spirit of God rushed upon David. This anointing would be put to the test in the very next chapter as David, the shepherd boy anointed king stood in the valley of Elah to face the giant, Goliath of Gath, the champion of the Philistine army.
For forty days this seemingly invincible man would come out into the valley between the two armies and he would mock Israel and defy their God, while the people of Israel trembled in fear. But, God’s anointed king, who appeared weak and insignificant, in his zeal for the glory of God he strides out into the valley to meet his enemy. ”He fights for the people knowing and trusting that the battle belongs to the Lord. David stands alone as the one in the place of the many, and through him God works salvation for His People.”[1]
David wasn’t a perfect king, but he foreshadows Christ more clearly than any other. Regardless of what some modern Christian authors might say about you and I taking on giants, we are not the heroes in this story. We are not David, we are Israel. Jesus is the true and better David whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves.
David the father of the future Messianic king…
After his battle with Goliath David quickly became all the rage in Israel. The people made up songs about him and he was elevated to first place in their hearts even over Saul the reigning king. At the age of thirty, David took over in Israel as God’s anointed king and the favor of the Lord went with him in all of his efforts.
He led the army into battle against the Philistines and he defeated them to secure Israel’s borders. He captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites and made it his own capital city. He brought the Ark of the Covenant into the midst of the people and dreamed about building a grand sanctuary around it; but God said, “No!” God would not allow David’s blood-stained hands to build His temple, His house.
But this wasn’t God’s final word to David. In 2 Samuel 7 God made a covenant promise to David…
2 Samuel 7:8…I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. 9 And I have been with you wherever you went…And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. 10 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel…And I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house. 12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.
While David was a good king, He was not the King. God’s purpose was not fulfilled in David but would be fulfilled through David. The King that God will one day send to rule over His people will come from the tribe of Judah, from the line of David. He will build a house for God and His rule will last forever. This is God’s plan. Very soon now and Israel’s true king would come.
III. Our Promised King Arrives
David died in 971 B.C. and 1000 years had come and gone. But as the New Testament opens we hear that the promise made to David was about to come to pass. In Matthew 1 we see the genealogy of Christ that begins with Abraham, continues through David and results in Jesus. The entire New Testament is established on the fact that Jesus is the focal point of all redemptive history and He is the heir to the throne over God’s people.
In Luke’s gospel account, we read that not only is the genealogy in order for Christ to be the long-awaited king; but God sent a messenger (an Angel) to make it very plain who Jesus is. Look with me at Luke 1:26-35.
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary… 30And he came to her and said, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end… The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.
The King that God had promised His people had almost arrived. He was in the womb, a miracle in itself, because this king was the very Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit. But even before He was born He had a name, “you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins (Matt 1:21).”
Jesus was a very common name among Jewish males in the first century; the 4th most popular name behind Simon, Joseph and Judah. If you grew up in first-century Palestine, odds are you would have known a boy named Jesus.
But the reason this name was so popular was that it meant something wonderful? Jesus is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name Joshua and Joshua is the combination of two words that when put together mean, “Yahweh Saves.” This little boy, born of a virgin, conceived by the Holy Spirit, bore the name “Yahweh Saves.” God had saved Israel in the past and the day was approaching when He come and save them again, for good.
Thirty years pass and the name Jesus of Nazareth is well known throughout Israel. He had proven Himself to be a prophet, mighty in word and deed. He had proven Himself to be a faithful teacher of God’s word. He had declared Himself to be the Son of God and if you had ears to hear, He claimed to be the long-awaited hope of Israel, their promised Messiah and King.
In Luke 19 God’s promised King is standing on the doorstep of Jerusalem. The King to end all kings had made His way to the city but more importantly all of history has been leading up to this moment when the Son of God would enter the city where He will rescue fallen humanity from sin.
The people of Israel have been hoping for God to raise up a King to lead their nation out of oppression and into freedom and prominence. They have prayed for such a king, longed for such a king and God has indeed sent them a king. But his posture is not what they expected. Jesus hasn’t come as a warrior King firing arrows into enemy lines, instead He has come as a humble prophet whose words pierce people’s hearts. Israel expected a conquering king and God sent them a sacrificial savior.
As the disciples complete the final leg of their journey into Jerusalem, the city of Kings, they are not prepared for how this journey will end. Their sights are set on a throne but Jesus is focused on the mercy seat. They expect that they would soon see Jesus wearing a crown of gold but in just a few short days they will see Him wearing a crown of thorns. The disciples are filled with hope on Sunday as Passover week is set to get underway, but by the end of the week they will be filled with grief and fear. But make no mistake…their King had finally arrived.
Before He goes in, Jesus tells His disciples to go and get him a donkey. Now, why does Jesus want to ride the last mile and half on a donkey? He has been walking for three years and now all of a sudden, He wants a donkey? This request has to do with fulfilling prophecy. In fact, almost everything we see in the triumphal entry has to do with fulfilling prophecy.
The prophet Zechariah let us know that when the Messiah came, one of the identifying marks would be that He will come into the city of Jerusalem in a unique way,
Zech 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
So, Jesus’ riding in on this colt is actually fulfilling an OT prophecy made about Him. Five hundred years before Jesus arrived in the city, Zechariah predicted that the messiah would come in this way, and here He is for all to see. The King to rule all kings wouldn’t come on a great white stallion, but on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Jesus is no ordinary king. He is humble and gentle, willing to set aside His Kingly right in order to take on the role of a sacrificial servant. Jesus comes as our king and then He humbles himself to be our servant. This is a picture of the gospel to us. When we sin against our God, we are doing the opposite of what Jesus does here. When we sin against God, we are like servants trying to put ourselves in the place of the king. We have no right and no authority to rebel against our creator but we do.
But when Jesus came He flipped the script. He came as our king but He put himself in the servant’s place. So that He could die for our sin and rescue us from ourselves.
35 And they brought it (the colt) to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road.
In 2 Kings 9:13, the men of Israel took off their outer garments (cloak) and laid them on the ground for Jehu the newly anointed king of Israel to walk over. This might seem like an obscure bit of OT history but to the disciples this is an honor afforded to a king in celebration of his anointing.
37 As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, 38 saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
Jesus is riding on a donkey, His disciples are laying their garments on the ground in front of Him, and now the people are singing and celebrating the coming of the King. This phrase, “blessed is He who comes….” is taken directly from Psalm 118, which is a Messianic psalm, and it means that this crowd is acknowledging Jesus to be the Messiah.
Jesus is being welcomed into the city as the promised Son of David and this title is known by all of the Jews to refer to the ultimate King, the promised and final King, the Messiah. Jesus is the rightful king of Israel but His ruling crown will have to wait.
IV. Christ Our King Returns
As our great High Priest (Heb 4:14) Jesus had another task to complete; to offer the sacrifice that would atone for our sin. He was that sacrifice. He was our true Passover lamb. He entered the Holy Place to offer His own blood as atonement and He poured it out upon the mercy seat…every last drop.
The king we needed was not the king we deserved. He came to die and by his death he bought our freedom. In Heaven, they sing a song about Jesus,
Rev 5:9…“Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, 10 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”
Today, Christ rules as our king from Heaven and His rule is a spiritual one. His rule is grounded in his work of redemption and all who believe in Christ are citizens of His kingdom. He rules over the church as our Savior, He reigns in the hearts of His people by the Holy Spirit, He governs His people by His Word, and the day is coming when our king will return to rule over all the earth in glory.
Conclusion…
The day is coming when a window will open in the sky and the white war horse of heaven will come bearing the One who is, Faithful and True, whose name is King of kings and Lord of lords.
This morning we find ourselves living in the time in between Christ’s first and second coming. The King Has Come and His Return is Imminent.
He is coming again, as the king over all kings. King of Israel, king of all the nations, king of nature and the universe.
Until he comes again, there is a day of amnesty and forgiveness and patience. His posture now is humble and meek riding upon a donkey; at his return, he will sit atop a white war horse holding in his hand a rod of iron. He is ready to save all who receive him as Savior and who worship Him as King.
Which King will you have?
[1][1] G. Goldsworthy, According to Plan pg. 166.
Christ our Great High Priest
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Hebrews 10:11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.
Have you ever considered what it was like to spend a day as a priest in Jerusalem? If you were a Jewish priest in active service at the temple, then your day began before the sun came up. You would gather with the other priests on duty and cast lots to decide which tasks you would perform on that day. You might be filling the bronze lavers with water or maybe preparing the altar for the sacrifices to come. You might be stationed at the gates, which opened at 9 am, or maybe you would blow the silver trumpets to announce the beginning of the morning service.
Of course, there was a possibility that your day had a bloodier start to it. Each morning a sacrificial lamb was slain and then salt was sprinkled on the sacrifice. Someone had to make sure the lamps were trimmed, the incense needed to be filled, burnt offering was given, the drink offering was poured out and then the trumpets were blown again. The morning service would come to an end with the singing of the Psalm of the day presented by singers (Levites) and this would be accompanied with the playing of instrumental music.
An evening service, much like this would begin at 2:30 pm and this meant you had a few hours before you would be doing this all over again. But and in between the two daily services the people were allowed to come and offer private sacrifices or offerings as needed. If you were a priest of God this was your routine every single day but there were also special days like the Sabbath. There were special feasts and celebrations, each requiring careful attention on the part of the priests. There were even some functions that only the high priest could perform, like entering into the most holy place, which was the highest honor a priest could ever hope to receive.
The responsibilities of the priests included making the sacrifices and performing the ritual of the sanctuary, burning the incense along with their intercession in the Holy Place, and teaching the people the laws and the ritual (Deut. 33:9,10; Mal. 2:7). According to the writer of Hebrews, these services took place day in and day out, the sacrifices were offered over and over; but at the end of the day sin remained (Heb 10:11).
Something needed to change and with the coming of Christ it did change. Jesus brought an end to this priestly system. He even brought an end to the temple that housed the priestly operations. He did this by stepping into the priestly role himself offering the single sacrifice of His own body as atonement for the sins of all those who believe. When His task was completed He rendered this entire priestly system obsolete and He took up the office of Our Great High Priest.
Hebrews 4:14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Transition…
In the Old Testament, God established three offices to operate within the nation of Israel; Prophets, Priests and Kings. These offices were put in place to function in the lives of the people and to help them have an ongoing relationship with God. But one of the things we learn in the New Testament is that these offices were also put in place to foreshadow the day when God’s Son would take up each of those offices on behalf of His people. The writer of Hebrews refers to the function of those three offices in the Old Testament as mere shadows and He refers to Christ as their fulfillment.
This is one of the primary points of the book of Hebrews; to show us that in the unfolding of God’s plan of salvation a radical change has taken place with the coming of Jesus. Within God’s plan for the redemption of His people a shift has occurred from the Old to the New, from promise to fulfillment, from shadow to substance.
Jesus has taken over the priestly office and has assumed the role of our Great High Priest and our task this morning is to understand the shift that has taken place. To do that we are going to learn 2 truths about Jesus as our High Priest, 2 ways that we respond to Jesus as our High Priest, and 1 promise made sure by Jesus our High Priest.
Sermon Focus…
I. 2 Truths about Jesus, Our Great High Priest (V. 14)
V. 14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God…
The first thing I want us to see in this verse is that Jesus is our High Priest but He didn’t come into that role in the conventional way. The high priest was distinguished from other priests by the roles and responsibilities that fell to him, but also by his family lineage. The priesthood traced its lineage back to Aaron and through Aaron’s sons. If you were part of that family line then you were eligible to serve as a priest. The high priests came from the line of Zadok, Aaron’s grandson and this was the established pattern up until the time of the exile.
Each High Priest was supposed to be able to be able to trace his lineage back to the High Priestly families, but from the exile onward, the high priests were often appointed by rulers and at times the office could be attained for a sum of money.[1] This led to much corruption within the priesthood and the regular operation of the temple, which Jesus addressed during his ministry (Luke 19:46). The High Priests major responsibilities were to make atonement in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, to officiate in the Temple, and (at certain times) to preside over the Sanhedrin.
Now, we just read in Hebrew 4:14 that Jesus is our Great High Priest but He is not a son of Aaron, He is the Son of God. He came into this role in an unconventional way. Obviously, as the Son of God He can have and do whatever He wants but don’t forget that He is also a Son of Man. Jesus’ lineage is two-fold, divine and human and one of the question that we should ask is how can a nobody from the tribe of Judah become High Priest, or better yet our Great High Priest?
To answer this question, we need to talk about a priest named Melchizedek. First of all, Jesus is not from the priestly line of Aaron, instead His human lineage follows the kingly line of David, which we will talk about more next week. But, Jesus’ entry into the priesthood didn’t come from His human genealogy, it came by divine appointment.
Heb 5:1 For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins…4 And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was.
5 So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him,
“You are my Son, today I have begotten you”;
6 as he says also in another place,
“You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.”
7 In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. 8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. 9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, 10 being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
Now, I’m certain that most of you didn’t come to church this morning wondering, “I sure hope Pastor Justin helps me understand that guy Melchizedek?” but this is a very important point in the discussion about Jesus’ priesthood and it ties in with this mysterious character from Abraham’s past. Melchizedek was the king of Salem and a priest of the Most High God; he held both of these offices. He met Abraham in Genesis 14 after the battle to rescue Lot from the five kings. Melchizedek met Abraham with bread and wine and blessed him and then Abraham gave him a tenth of all that he had.
That is all that we know of Melchizedek until Psalm 110, which is both a royal Psalm because it deals with David’s kingly line but it is also a Messianic Psalm. But the really odd thing about Psalm 110 is that it connects the kingly line of David (Jesus lineage) to the priestly line of Melchizedek. Then later in Zechariah (3 & 6) we see a vision where God sends His servant and this servant is called the righteous Branch.
Zech 6: 12 ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch…13 It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.” ’ 14 And the crown shall be in the temple of the Lord
So what does all of this mean? Melchizedek is important for two reasons: He is a priest of God from outside the line of Aaron and in him we see a pattern of one who would serve as both a priest and a king. This means that God’s plan has always been to bring together, through His Anointed Servant, the two offices of Priest and King and these offices would be held by the Messiah permanently.
The Old Covenant priesthood was intended to be temporary because it was just ‘a copy and shadow of the heavenly things (Heb 8:5).’ When God gave Moses the instructions for the temple and the instructions for the priesthood, He gave him only the earth scale model of what was truly taking place in Heaven. The earthly priests were acting out a ritual that would eventually be played out in Heaven itself.
When the High Priest would go into the Holy Place to make sacrifices and offerings for the people, he was simply acting out what Jesus would eventually do when He passed through the Heavens. The OT High Priest came before the earth scale model of the Throne of God, but Jesus went before the actual Throne of God and He is there now, constantly reminding the Father of the sacrifice that He made for us and constantly praying to the Father on our behalf.
Brothers and sister, “we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God.” We also have a Great High Priest who understands our humanity in ways that make him sympathetic to our weaknesses because He lived on earth in the flesh and during that time He experienced all of the temptations that we face, but He was without sin (V. 15)
Brother/Sister Jesus knows what it is like to be tempted to sin. In fact, He knows more about facing and overcoming temptation than you and I ever will. We face temptations and there are times we overcome but far too often we fail and give in. Our capacity to battle temptation is small compared to His. He has faced every temptation that we have but He never gave in to them, which means that His capacity to sympathize with us is greater than we can imagine and if we will look at God’s word we will see His sympathy in action.
Think about Jesus’ sympathy for the woman caught in adultery in John 8. Why didn’t He call for her to be stoned? Why didn’t He pick up the stones Himself? For one, He felt sorrow (sympathy) for her. He understood the temptation that she had given in to and rather than condemn her, He felt compassion for her and He did what only a great High Priest could do; He brought her case before His Father.
Do you realize that right at this moment Jesus is serving as your Great High Priest in Heaven. He is sitting at the father’s side asking Him to show you mercy and grace. When you are being tempted to sin, Jesus is fighting for you before the throne of God. When you fail and give in to that temptation, Jesus is ready to forgive you and cleanse your sin away. Right now, He is sitting at God’s right hand reminding the Father of His sacrifice for you and praying that the Father would restore you and give you new mercy and fresh grace.
And because He lived on this earth in the flesh Jesus knows the sorrow that sin brings. He knows the pain that sin leaves behind. He knows the guilt that you bear from past sins and the anxiety you face in your present struggles. He not only faced the temptations that we face, He also lived with sinners. He may not know our grief first-hand but He sat with those whose lives had been destroyed by sin. He ministered to those whose families were torn apart by sin. He comforted people who had to live with the fact that their sin had brought pain and heartbreak to people they loved.
Jesus knows and He cares. Jesus is the great High Priest that God planned to give to His people. He is the priest who lives forever, divinely appointed to offer the once-for-all sacrifice to atone for our sin. He is at God’s right hand and will remain there for eternity whispering prayers in the Father’s ear on our behalf.
But what does this mean for you and me? It means that we should hold fast to our confession of Jesus as our Savior and we should draw near to the throne of God with confidence.
II. 2 ways that we respond to Jesus our Great High Priest (V. 14 &16)
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession… (and)16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
First, we respond to the news of Jesus as our High Priest by holding fast to our confession. This means that we don’t abandon our faith in Christ as the Son of God who saves us from our sin. We stay faithful. We keep trusting His gospel and we keep believing His promises. Why would we turn away from this Great High Priest?
The author of Hebrews is writing this letter to Jewish Christians who are being tempted to abandon Christianity and run back to Judaism. They were being tempted to go back to the system of sacrifices and laws that they had known all their lives. They weren’t sure if Jesus would truly save them and bring them to God.
But the whole point of this book is to show us that Jesus is better. Jesus is the One that God has been pointing us to ever since Genesis 3. He is the Savior that God promised and the Savior that has come. He truly brings us to God as the fulfillment of God’s eternal plan of salvation and because of that he urges us to hold on to our confession of Jesus as Savior and Lord.
Don’t be ashamed of Jesus. Don’t abandon the hope He gives you. Don’t seek some other way to deal with your sin or your temptation. Don’t seek another priest, but Hold Fast to Jesus and with confidence draw near to the throne of grace. We should hold fast and draw near because everything that was required for our salvation has been provided. We have no reason to fear and no reason to turn back.
Heb 10:12 When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God…14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
Let me try to put this into perspective for us by imagining what it was like to try and approach God before the coming of Jesus.
(Illus… May I Go In There?[2]
Imagine with me a Moabite of old gazing down upon Jerusalem and the Tabernacle of Israel from some lofty hillside. This Moabite is attracted to what he sees so he descends the hill and makes his way toward the Tabernacle.
He walks around this high wall of dazzling linen until he comes to a gate and at the gate, he sees a man. “May I go in there?” he asks, pointing to the gate where all the bustle of activity in the Tabernacle’s outer court can be seen.
“Who are You?” demands the man suspiciously.
“I’m from Moab,” the stranger replies.
“Well, I’m very sorry, but you can’t go in there. You see, it’s not for you. The Law of Moses has barred the Moabite from any part in the worship of Israel until his tenth generation.”
The Moabite looks so sad and said, “Well, what would I have to do to go in there?”
“You would have to be born again,” the gatekeeper replies. “You would have to be born an Israelite, of the tribe of Judah, or of the tribe of Benjamin or Dan.”
“Oh, I wish I had been born an Israelite,” the Moabite says and as he looks again, he sees one of the priests, having offered a sacrifice at the brazen altar and the priest cleansed himself at the bronze laver and then the Moabite sees the priest enter the Tabernacle’s interior. “What’s in there?” asks the Moabite. “Inside the main building, I mean.”
“Oh,” the gatekeeper says, “That’s the Tabernacle itself. Inside it contains a lampstand, a table, and an altar of gold. The man you saw was a priest. He will trim the lamp, eat of the bread upon the table and burn incense to the living god upon the golden altar.”
“Ah,” sighs the Moabite, “I wish I were an Israelite so that I could do that. I would so love to worship God in there and help to trim the lamp and offer Him incense and eat bread at that table.”
“Oh, no, the gatekeeper hastens to say, “even I could not do that. To worship in the holy place one must not only be born an Israelite, one must be born of the tribe of Levi and of the family of Aaron.”
The man from Moab sighs again, “I wish that I had been born of Israel of the tribe of Levi of the family of Aaron,” and then, as he gazes wistfully at the closed Tabernacle door, he says, “What else is in there?”
“Oh, there’s a veil. It’s a beautiful veil I’m told and it divides the Tabernacle in two. Beyond the veil is what we call ‘the Most Holy Place’… ‘the Holy of Holies.’”
“What’s in the Holy of Holies?” the Moabite asks.
“Well, there’s the sacred chest in there and it’s called the Ark of the Covenant. It contains holy memorials of our past. Its top is gold and we call that the mercy seat because God sits there between the golden cherubim. Do you see that pillar of cloud hovering over the Tabernacle? That’s the Shekinah glory cloud. It rests over the mercy seat,” said the gatekeeper.
Again, a look of longing comes over the face of the Moabite man. “Oh,” he said, “if only I were a priest! How I would love to go into the Holy of Holies and gaze upon the glory of God and worship Him there in the beauty of His holiness!’
“Oh no!” said the man at the gate. “You couldn’t do that even if you were a priest! Only the high priest can enter the Most Holy Place. Only he can go in there. Nobody else!”
The heart of the man from Moab yearns once more. “Oh,” he cried, “If only I had been born an Israelite, of the tribe of Levi, of the family of Aaron. If only I had been born a high priest! I would go in there every day! I would go in there three times a day! I would worship continually in the Holy of Holies!”
The gatekeeper looked at the man from Moab again and once more shook his head. “Oh no,” he said, “you couldn’t do that! Even the high priest of Israel can go in there only once a year, and then only after the most elaborate preparations and even then only for a little while.”
Sadly, the Moabite turned away. He had no hope in all the world of ever entering there!
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith (Hebrews 10:19-22).
Here it is, a tremendous word of welcome, extended to Jew and Gentile alike, to come on in and worship, not in the holiest place of the human tabernacle, but into the Holy of Holies in heaven itself "by the blood of Jesus."
Conclusion…
We don’t have to stand outside the temple any more. We can go right in to the very throne of God and we will find that it is a throne of grace. Because of Jesus, God’s throne of judgment has become to us a throne of grace. As believers in Christ, when we approach God we will find there mercy and grace to help in our time of need.
So, draw near to Christ today and confess your sin and your need of Him. Hold fast to Christ today knowing that if you hope in Him your hope will not fail you.
[1] From the Talmud (Talmud Jer. Ioma, I.), “In the first Temple, the high-priests served, the son succeeding the father, and they were eighteen in number. But in the second Temple they got the high-priesthood for money.”
[2] This is taken from an illustration in John Phillips' Exploring Hebrews commentary
The Work of Christ our Prophet
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1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is superior/more excellent than theirs.
Here in this opening paragraph to the book of Hebrews we are introduced to Jesus and since we are gathered here to worship Him this morning I thought it would be a good idea for us to try and understand what this text says about Him. Working backward from verse 4, we learn that Jesus is superior to, He is greater than the angels and the name that He has inherited is more exceptional than theirs. The word “superior/better” is used 13 times in Hebrews to compare Jesus to what went before Him. That Jesus is better is a key theme of this book and here at the start, God wants us to know that Jesus is much superior to the angels. As powerful and amazing as the angels are, Jesus is better.
In verse 3, we learn that He has taken his seat at the right hand of God’s throne. Jesus sits on a throne in the place of chief honor beside the Majesty on high. In other words, Jesus is sitting in the throne room that governs the universe and He is the king in waiting who rules over all. This position, this title was His by right, as the Son of God, but He also claimed it when He accomplished the task given to Him. He was given the task of making purification for sin.
The sin that entered the world through the Garden, the sin that spread through the hearts of every generation of mankind, the sin that separates us from God, the sins of all God’s people; by Jesus work on the cross that sin has been cleansed, washed away. He provided the remedy for our defilement by offering up His own life to set us free.
In the middle of verse 3, we learn that by His command the universe stays in place, the stars continue to burn and shine, the planets continue in their orbiting course and life as we know it is sustained. Jesus is the strong nuclear force (ie. The nuclear glue) holding the nucleus of atoms together and if He were to let them go, the universe would dissolve in a moment.
If you could look upon His face, you would find yourself looking into the face of God. If you tried to look upon Him, you would have to shield your eyes to see beyond the shining glory of God that radiates from Him like the consuming fire of the sun in its full strength. He is the radiance of the glory of God.
He was the construction supervisor for the creation of the universe and He is set to inherit the very universe that He made. When you hear Him speak, you are hearing the voice of God and His voice is the final and definitive voice.
As we look at this passage we see a handful of wonderful truths about Jesus but there is something in particular that I want to discuss with you this morning. In this passage, we also see a three-fold description of the work of Jesus as a Prophet, Priest and King. He is the prophet through whom God has spoken His final word; He is the priest who has accomplished a perfect work of cleansing for His people’s sins; and He is the King who sits enthroned in the place of honor alongside God the Father.
Transition…
Over the next few weeks, I want us to focus on Christ’s fulfillment of these three roles and this morning we are going to learn about His role as the final Prophet of God.
Sermon Focus…
In the OT, prophets priest and king were three separate offices that God established and these offices served as mediators between God and the people of God. The prophets spoke the Word of God to the people, the priest offered sacrifices, prayers and even praises to God for the people, and the king ruled over the people as a representative of God. At times there were faithful prophets, priests, and kings; and as we know there were also wicked ones who failed in their office. But each of these offices foreshadowed the One who was to come. The One who would execute these offices with finality; that’s where Jesus comes into this discussion.
In Christ, these three offices come together and are fulfilled. As our Prophet, Jesus speaks the Word of God to us and He also reveals God to us. As our Priest, Jesus offers Himself as a sacrifice to God for us that ends all sacrifices. As our King, Jesus rules over the church and all of creation.
Let’s look at His role as Prophet.
I. God Has Spoken to Us in His Son (V. 2)
As we open our Bibles we learn very quickly that our God speaks. In Genesis 1, we learn that He spoke creation into existence. God’s word is powerful and true and this is a theme throughout the book.
Psalm 33:6 By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host. 7 He gathers the waters of the sea as a heap; he puts the deeps in storehouses. 8 Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him! 9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
Our God speaks and things happen; but He also speaks to men and He speaks to His people through those men called prophets. Moses was the first prophet of God and after him there was a line of prophets all the way to Malachi in the OT and then John the Baptist in the NT. These prophets were anointed by God with the Holy Spirit and they spoke or wrote God’s message to God’s people.
But there was a lingering promise that came through Moses, about a special prophet that God would send one day.
Deut 18:15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen…18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
Fast forward to the New Testament and you see that people are discussing whether or not Jesus is that prophet. The woman at the well discovered that Jesus was a prophet when he told her everything that she had ever done. The people were trying to figure out who Jesus was and they guessed, “Some say you are John the Baptist, other say Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets (Matt 16:14).” But Peter puts all the questions to rest in Acts 3 when He reminds the people of Moses’ promise and declares that Jesus is the one who fulfilled that promise.
Jesus is a prophet of God, the greatest of the prophets and He was also more than a prophet. He is the One prophet that all the other prophets were pointing to. He is the One prophet who fulfills all the promises and prophecies that God ever gave to His people. He is the One prophet who not only speaks the Word of God but who is the Word of God.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Jesus was not only a messenger bringing revelation from God, He was the source of revelation from God (Grudem 626) and we see this even in the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says, “Truly I say to you.” Jesus uses this phrase all the time and when He does He is drawing our attention to His authority not simply as a messenger of God but as the Son of God.
When Old Testament prophets spoke a word of prophecy to the people they would introduce it with the phrase, “Thus saith the Lord” and this showed that they weren’t speaking on their own authority, they were speaking on the authority of God. God was speaking through them.
Jesus uses a different phrase, “Truly, I say to you…” He is a prophet like no other because He doesn’t simply speak for God, He speaks as God. He is a faithful witness to God’s truth, because He is God’s Word in the flesh.
But why was it necessary for God to send us His Word in the flesh? Why were the prophets of Old not enough? To answer this question I want us to take a theological tour.
II. Munus Triplex – The Three-Fold office and the Triple Cure
It was John Calvin who brought the three-fold office of Christ into prominence during the Reformation. He wasn’t the first to write on it, the early church fathers and Catholic theologians referred to the work of Christ in these three distinct ways (prophet, priest, and king). But Calvin set out to show how Christ not only served in these roles but did so as a means to completely satisfy our need for salvation, where the Catholic teachers left that need unfulfilled.
Calvin understood that Jesus’s fulfillment of the three-fold office was tied to His title as the Messiah or the Anointed One of God. “Under the law, prophets, as well as priests and kings, were anointed with holy oil. Hence, the illustrious name of “Messiah” was bestowed upon the one promised mediator,” who fulfilled all three anointed offices of the Old Testament.[1]
But another Reformed theologian, named Francis Turretin, who introduced the threefold office of Christ as the divinely revealed cure to man’s threefold disease of ignorance, guilt, and pollution. Turretin taught that Christ serving in the triple office, as prophet, priest, and king, was necessary to accomplish the Triple Cure to our fatal three-fold disease.”
We don’t like to think of ourselves as ignorant, but the Bible points out that man lives in a state of ignorance that is brought on by our sin.
“God saw that every intention of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually (Gen 6:5).”
“We did not honor God or give thanks to God, but our foolish hearts were darkened and we exchanged the glory of the immortal God (Rom 1:21).”
“We were blinded by the god of this world, kept from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ (2 Cor 4:4).”
As a result of this, we are like blind men stumbling through life ignorant to the truth of God and to the guilt that we bear as sinners.
James 2:10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
But why is this true? Why have we sinned and become guilty before God? Because the sin in our hearts has infected every part of us.
You were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Eph 2:1-3).
These are the descriptions of our disease, the explanation of our corruption. The disease itself is sin and its prognosis is fatal. All of humanity is infected with it and earthly doctors have no cure because with a man it is impossible. But with God all things are possible.
Our threefold misery of ignorance, guilt, and bondage to sin are addressed and overcome by the threefold cure of Christ our prophet, priest and king.
Ignorance is healed by the prophetic; guilt by the priestly; the corruption of sin by the kingly office. Prophetic light scatters the darkness of error; the merit of the Priest takes away guilt and secures reconciliation for us; the Power of the King removes the bondage of sin and death. The Prophet shows God to us; the Priest leads us to God, and the King joins us together and glorifies us with God.[2]
There is one more thing I want us to see related to Christ’s role as our prophet and it is something that only He alone could help us to see.
III. Christ’s Role as our Prophet (Luke 4:16-21)
Christ’s role as our prophet means that He is representing God to man. He is shedding light on the love of the Father and the plan of the Father for ruined sinners like us. Like the prophets of old, Jesus serves as a prophet by speaking the word of God to us. But, the fact that He is God in flesh should give us a clue that His role as prophet will not simply be contained in the words that He speaks but also in the life that He lives.
I want us to look at Luke 4, where Jesus not only speaks the Word of God in a very interesting way but He also points us to what He will accomplish for us.
Luke 4:16-21 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.
The setting for this chapter is that Jesus has already begun his ministry of preaching the good news in the synagogues around Galilee. But on this day, He has come home to the synagogue in Nazareth and it is easy to imagine the excitement about His arrival. All of His friends, neighbors and family have gathered around to see if all the stories are true. Not to mention the fact that there is probably a great deal of pride on their part that one of their own has been called out to be a prophet to the nation.
There hadn’t been a prophet in Israel for several hundred years until John the Baptist stepped out and now the word is that Jesus might be a prophet as well. This is a local boy made good kind of story. So everybody is crowding into the synagogue because Jesus is in town and they want to hear what He is going to say.
Luke 4:17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
This verse is really interesting because many scholars believe that synagogues at this time followed a regular schedule of reading through the Scriptures but Jesus searches the scroll of Isaiah until he finds the passage He wants to read. He came into synagogue on the Sabbath with a particular message to preach. So when the time came he stood up and read this…
Luke 4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Luke 4:20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
This is not only the message of Jesus but His mission as well. This is why Jesus has come, to fulfill the promises made about Him through the prophets. Or you could say that He has come to fulfill the promises that He has made about Himself. Let me explain, this passage comes from Isaiah 61:1-2 where the Anointed Servant of the Lord is speaking about what He will do when He comes.
This section of Isaiah is understood to be the future Messiah speaking about His Mission. So when Jesus stands up to read this passage He is literally speaking about himself. He is quoting Himself and declaring the reason He has come and everything He declares He will also accomplish.
But what did He say?
1. He came with the anointing of the Spirit of God and He displays the power of God…we see that taking place in two ways: 1. He was anointed by the Spirit at His baptism and 2. He walked in the power of the Spirit throughout His life performing signs and wonders which only God can accomplish. What this means is that Jesus is the Anointed One of God.
2. He came to bring good news to the poor… Jesus preached the gospel of the Kingdom to all who would listen and He calls them to respond with a humble heart to the good news. This verse is not saying that the gospel is exclusively for those who don’t have money; the idea of poverty here is related to those who are poor in spirit. He is preaching good news to those who will humbly receive His word and this message is still being preached today.
Friend, if you come to the gospel of Jesus with a hard heart and an arrogant spirit you will walk away like the Pharisees boasting in self-righteousness on your way to Hell. But if you come to the gospel with humility, the knowledge that you cannot save yourself, and you cry out for mercy; you will find it in Jesus. He delivers what He promises.
3. He came to set the captives free…This is not the language of political revolution but a prophetic word of spiritual transformation. Jesus has come to proclaim forgiveness from sin and freedom from the law of sin and death. We do not simply need to be set free from individual sins and bad habits; we need to be transformed and set free from Satan’s control.
4. He came to give sight to the blind…we could easily read this and take note of those for whom Christ restored their physical sight; but the point is much deeper. The Scriptures say that Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they might not see the glory of God in the face of Christ and Jesus has come to strip those blinders off our eyes so that we can see and be set free. He doesn’t just declare the truth, but He gives us eyes to see that truth and hearts that are eager to accept it.
5. He came to liberate the oppressed... This carries a couple of ideas: Jesus came to liberate those men and women who had been abused under the legalism of their religious leaders. He came to liberate those who had been oppressed by demonic forces. Jesus does not simply come and promise liberty for the oppressed, He actually delivered and still does.
6. He proclaimed and ushered in the year of the Lord’s favor... This verse ties in to the Old Testament concept of the Year of Jubilee which was a time when everybody got to start over. If you had to sell your land because of debt or some family tragedy, in the year of Jubilee you would get it back. If you had to sell your possessions to your neighbor because of hard times, in the year of Jubilee you would get it all back. If you were weary from working and laboring for year after year, in the year of Jubilee you could rest and God would make the fields grow in abundance. Jesus has come to usher in the year of Jubilee, which means that it is time to celebrate.
Here’s what that means for us spiritually, Jesus not only preached Good News but in His death, burial and resurrection He made that news good. He atoned for our sin. Jesus died in the place of sinners and paid the ransom price to make us free and this becomes the foundation for our celebration. God’s favor is poured out on all those who receive Christ as savior and Lord. We don’t work for our salvation because the work has already been done. It is Finished! Let the celebration begin.
He told them “Today this passage is fulfilled in me.”
Conclusion…
In His role as the final prophet of God, Jesus came to reveal His plan to us but in His role as the Savior of the world, He came to accomplish this for us. As our prophet, He not only announced an end to our sin but He made an end to our sin. He not only announced the love of the Father but showed us the love of the Father.
Jesus fulfilled His role as our prophet but He also fulfilled His role as our redeemer. He does more than prophecy about these good things, He has come to give us these good things. He not only preaches Good News but He makes that news Good. He not only talks about a celebration, He has given us an invitation to the party.
[1] Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Vol 1, Book 2 (pg. 495-6)
[2] https://www.monergism.com/triple-cure-jesus-christ-–-our-prophet-priest-and-king {Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. 2 (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1994), p. 393.}
Lust and the Kingdom of God
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Matt 5:27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
Is there any Christian teaching more ridiculed than Christ’s teaching on sexuality? Is there any command of God more ignored and broken than the 7th commandment against adultery? Is there a more popular sin in human history than sexual immorality? Our American culture and much of the world thinks that Jesus is crazy for what He says in these 4 verses.
We live in a culture where our entire lives are inundated with sexuality. It’s on our TV, in our movies, and on the catalogues and ads that are delivered to our door. It’s on billboards as we drive into downtown. It’s plastered across the magazine racks in high-gloss photos as we approach the checkout counter at the grocery store. And of course, it’s almost as if the internet was made for the specific purpose of pushing sexuality into our lives in every imaginable way.
This has had a huge impact on our lives and our culture. Adultery is so common that it is simply accepted as a normal part of adult life, especially for our political leaders. In fact, if a political leader takes measures to remain faithful to their spouse they are mocked as being sexually repressive. Sex before marriage is just normal and it has been this way for generations. Homosexuality has been declared a basic human right by our Supreme Court. Transgenderism and transsexualism are just this cultural moment’s examples of sexual deviance being made to look normal and God’s standards being made to look obscene.
There was a time when the Jesus’ teaching on sexuality was largely embraced as good and right, even if it wasn’t practiced. But that is no longer the case. A sexual revolution has taken place.
This revolution is now so complete that those who will not join are understood to be deficient, intolerant, and harmful to society. What was previously understood to be immoral is now celebrated as a moral good. The church’s historic teaching on sexuality in general and homosexuality in specific, which was shared by the vast majority of the culture until very recently - is now seen as a relic of the past and a repressive force that must be eradicated.[1]
Transition…
When it comes to teaching on this topic, Jesus stands in the minority. Jesus, the Son of God and the Savior of the World, says that it would be better for us to live life without eyes and hands than to embrace the sexual revolution and ride it all the way into hell. He teaches us that there are some things that our hearts are naturally oriented around that will lead us to Hell. He wants us to understand that eternal things are at stake and therefore we must do whatever it takes to kill sin before sin kills us.
But before the battle gets underway we need to learn a few things. First, we need to learn what the law says about adultery. Second, we need to learn what Jesus says about lust. Third, we are going to learn how to battle against the temptation to sin in these ways.
Sermon Focus…
I. What the law says about Adultery (V. 27)
The first thing Jesus does is to quote the 7th commandment found in Exodus 20:14.
Matt 5:27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’
That’s all this is. Jesus is not adding to the law or taking away from the law; He is simply stating again that this law of God still applies. He is quoting from the 10 commandments and reminding us that God’s standards for sexual purity and marital fidelity haven’t changed. God’s standard was established in Genesis 2.
From the very beginning God made it clear that He created us, male and female, and His intention was for a “man to leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife…and the two were naked and unashamed (Gen 2:24-25).” That has always been God’s designed context for intimacy. Within the context of monogamous, heterosexual marriage sex is an amazing gift of God that is to be enjoyed for pleasure, for procreation and for the joy of intimacy. Outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage sex in all its forms is sin.
Adultery is sinful because it falls outside of what God has declared good and right, but it is also sinful because it seeks to destroy what God set up as the foundation of the world He created. He created this world and designed man, “to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth…” This would take place as families grew and children were born, but adultery is an attack upon the family.
Last week we learned that murder is an assault upon the image of God in man and this week I want us to see that adultery is an assault upon the plan of God for man. Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve was aimed to separate the husband and wife from their God. The temptation to commit adultery is aimed to separate a husband from his wife and a wife from her husband as a means of undermining the plan of God for the world.
Therefore, adultery is forbidden throughout the Bible and the punishment for this sin was death. But this wasn’t enough to keep people from committing this sin especially kings. The highest profile case of adultery in the Bible is that of King David and his sin with Bathsheba in 2 Sam 11. But David’s son Solomon was a serial adulterer and as a result the nation seemed to follow his lead. The prophet Jeremiah lamented the fact that, “The land (of Israel) was full of adulterers (Jer 23:10).”
But Jesus wants us to know that there is much more to adultery than the physical act.
II. What Jesus says about Lust (V. 28)
28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Last week we learned that we can commit murder with our words but here Jesus teaches that we can commit adultery with our eyes. Lust is heart adultery. It is the strong sexual desire for something or someone that is forbidden, for something that doesn’t belong to us.
The act of Adultery is forbidden in the 7th commandment and lust is actually forbidden in the 10th commandment.
Exodus 20:17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
So here in Matthew 5, Jesus is bringing these two commands together to show that they are connected. One of the things that God’s commandments show us is that we can commit sin without ever committing the act. When a man looks at a woman (not his wife) with strong sexual desire in his heart or when a woman looks at a man (not her husband) with strong sensual desires in her heart, Jesus says that you are guilty of adultery and sexual immorality. Let’s make this more personal, Jesus is saying that when you look at another person other than your spouse and you entertain lustful thoughts about them, you are committing sin in your heart.
Lust alone is enough to defile us before God.
Matt 15:19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person.
Those childhood/teenage crushes that so many think are innocent, those wild fantasies that we never discuss, those emotional romance novels that our culture has grown to adore, the pervasive spread of pornography; all of these things have caused us to consider lust a common and respectable sin. But Jesus says that any of these is enough to condemn us before God. And just so we’re clear, any and every sexual practice which God declares immoral in deed is also immoral in thought.
The fact that we live in the 21st century does nothing to change, altar or undo God’s command for sexual purity. C.S. Lewis wrote this in 1952 in the culture of Great Britain and it is true of our culture today.
Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it; the Christian rule is, either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your spouse, or else total abstinence. Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong. One or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is the instinct which has gone wrong.[2]
I agree with his conclusion about where the problem lies. It is not Christianity that is the problem it is our sinful sexual instinct that is the problem.
Human sexuality was created by God as a pleasurable gift to be enjoyed, as a means to build families, and as a way to strengthen intimacy/unity between a husband and wife. But the sin in our hearts has the power to corrupt the best of God’s gifts.
In a world filled with sinful people we find a world filled with sexual immorality. In every way imaginable humanity has explored the scope of sexual sin and the result is more serious than we might want to think. In Romans 1 as Paul is teaching on the pervasiveness of sin in the world he tells us that the root of the problem is that mankind has, “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of man and beast…mankind has exchanged the truth of God for a lie…mankind has exchanged what is natural for what is unnatural and the result is that the Wrath of God is ready to be unleashed against mankind.”
The vertical dishonoring of God (exchanging of God’s glory) is ultimately what has led to the horizontal idolatry of man, beasts, and sex.
When you exchange something, you express your preference. You express your greater desire. And if you prefer God’s creation over God, then you find God less desirable than what you prefer…if you see anything as more beautiful, more attractive, more desirable than God, you are in the dark and not seeing reality for what it is…This exchange of God’s glory for other things - this preferring human glories over God’s glory – is the root of disordered sexuality.[3]
In other words, sex is about worship. Our sinful heart’s refusal to worship and submit to God is what gives rise to the sexual immorality and idolatry in our hearts, our lives, our homes and our culture.
So at this point the question is, “What hope do we have to see real change in our lives when it comes to sexual sin?” Well let’s start with what Jesus says here in Matt 5 and then think about what Jesus did on the cross.
III. What must we do about Lust and Adultery (V. 29-30)
29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
Now, most of our world disagrees with this and many of us may as well. Jesus says it is better to go through this life without a hand or an eye than it is to indulge in sinful pleasures and go to hell. Our world lives like this statement from Jesus is a lie. But Jesus isn’t trying to take our joy and pleasure away from us. He is trying to lead us into the deeper and greater joy that He made us for.
We don’t like to entertain deep thoughts like this but the truth is that intimacy with God is eternally more enjoyable than a one-night stand or lustful thoughts. That’s what Jesus is saying here and if he were able, that is what King David would tell us.
(Illus…David looked upon a beautiful woman and desired her, so he had his guards go and get her and then he sinned with her. The sin in his heart led to sin in the bedroom and then it spilled out into his army when he orchestrated the death of one of his own mighty men, Uriah.
If he were here, David would tell us that Jesus is right and that we should make war with our flesh rather than to give into the temptation to sin with our eyes or our bodies.
But what about this command to cut out our eyes and cut off our hand. Notice that he says to eliminate the right eye and right hand. He is not speaking literally as some throughout history have supposed. Jesus is speaking metaphorically and using dramatic figures of speech to show us that sin must be dealt with radically. The value of the right eye and hand as the most important or valuable part of us shows that “in order to avoid sin one is to give up everything, even what is most important and most treasured” (Luz, Matthew 1– 7, 247).[4]
So one step in our approach to battling sin and temptation is, “If our right eye causes us to sin…don’t look.” Behave as if you had actually plucked out your eyes. That is what mortification is all about. It is taking real and drastic measures to battle against sin and temptation. For some of us that means you need to put filters on your computers and home network. For others, this means that you need to stop reading the books you’re reading. For others, this means you need to delete your social media accounts, or stop watching the movies or HBO and Netflix shows you enjoy so much.
Yes, I’m sure that your friends will say, “What are you talking about? You’re not going to know how this end. If you’re not going to watch this new show or read this new book…you won’t be as culturally educated as you could be.” That may be true, but it is better to be culturally maimed and preserve your purity. The question is whether you are willing to go to this extreme to battle sin and temptation.
Jesus says that it is better to live life culturally maimed, to avoid certain experiences in this life, than to risk final destruction in the life to come.
Now, in many ways, this approach to change is good But this approach is not enough because this approach doesn’t address the root of our problem. This approach is simply not complete because it focuses on the outward behaviors only and the root of our problem with sexual sin is the heart. Behavior modification alone will not solve this problem of our hearts. Only Jesus can solve this problem.
Now, one of my deepest Christian convictions is that the gospel is so much more than simply the minimal doctrine that one must affirm in order to go to Heaven. The gospel is the power of God that saves us from sin’s guilt and sin’s control and turns the entire world upside down.
The gospel is so powerful that it can turn an enemy of God into a worshipper of God. It is so powerful that it can change your eternity as well as your life here and now. The gospel changes us at the very core of who we are. It reorients our heart around the weight of God’s glory and when the gospel takes root in our hearts it begins a process of reorienting all of life around our growing love for God over our love for sin.
As believers in Christ our identity as gospel people is going to propel us into battle against sexual sin. Jesus doesn’t command us to embrace a Biblical sexual ethic in order that we can be saved, but instead as the born again people of God he calls us to embrace a God-honoring view of sex. Obedience to God flows out of a renewed relationship to God.
Conclusion…
I think that our battle against sexual sin begins not with what we need to do but with something we need to believe…
Our identity is in Christ, not our sexuality. The culture says, “You are your sexuality.” The culture says that to deny our sexual urges is to deny our humanity. The culture wants us to believe that If we reject its views of sexuality and the practice of those views then we are rejecting what it means to be human.
But the Bible teaches us something else about sex?
a. The Bible teaches us the context in which sex is a gift. Within the context of monogamous, heterosexual marriage sex is an amazing gift of God that is to be enjoyed for pleasure, for procreation and for the joy of intimacy. Outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage sex in all its forms is sin.
b. The Bible teaches us that sex and romantic fulfillment are not the keys to life. They are gifts but they are not the ultimate point of life. Jesus was celibate and lived the fullest and most God-glorifying life ever lived. Therefore, Jesus teaches us that the key to a full life is not intimacy with another person but rather intimacy with God.
In American culture, we have completely distorted this. Our culture promotes the pursuit of sexual pleasure first and foremost and then in the context of our sexual enjoyment we are to then find religious teaching that affirms and supports our sexuality.
But Jesus wants us to pursue our relationship with God first and foremost and then in the context of that relationship we are to enjoy God’s gift of sex in a way that glorifies Him.
Trusting Christ with our sexuality is hard because it goes against the grain of what culture says and in many ways, it goes against the grain of what we feel and want. Our natural predisposition is to sin. It is to go against God’s glory, Gods rule, and Gods word. We are dead in sin, we are enemies of God, we are blinded to God’s glory and through the gospel Jesus calls us out of this and into a life with God that is going to be hard.
But I want us to remember something about Jesus as we seek to navigate through this issue. In His life, Jesus dealt with a lot of sinful people, even those caught up in sexual sin. But something you will notice is that He never seems to want to push those people away. No matter the issue, Jesus invites people in close so that He can talk to them and offer them grace. Even when He encountered people who were involved with deep sexual sins we see that Jesus draws near to them and offers them grace, He is honest with them about their sin, but then He looks them in the eye and He says, “Now, come and follow me.”
Friends, I want you to know that Jesus doesn’t push us away because of our problems with sexual sin; He invites us to come even closer. He offers us grace, He calls us to repent, but He also offers us a place at His table. So let’s draw near to Him and let His grace and truth guide us.
Transition to the Lord’s Supper…
In a few minutes, we are going to put our Bible’s down and we are going to take up a small piece of bread which reminds us of the broken body of Jesus and a small cup of wine or juice that reminds us of the blood of Jesus. And like we have done many times before we will think about these elements, pray over these elements and then eat and drink them together. Now when we do this the historical and theological facts of Jesus’ death will be swirling around in our heads and that is the way it should be.
In that moment, we remember that Christ commanded us to do this for the sake of remembering. He told us to engage our minds and remember His loving sacrifice. But when the Holy Spirit opens up our hearts and pours the reality of God’s love into us, that’s when our obedience becomes an act of worship. That’s when our faith in Christ becomes true spiritual food for our souls.
So as we ready ourselves to eat this Lord’s Supper and to feast upon Christ’s provision for our redemption I would ask that you ready your hearts by clinging with all of your might to the love of God. We have a great need for a Savior and in Christ we have a great Savior for our need. Surrender your life to the love that God has shown us in Christ. Build your life upon Him. Trust your soul to His steadfast
love and pray with me that we would experience this love more and more through the power of the Holy Spirit.
If you are a believer in Christ, meaning that you trust that Jesus is the Son of God who died to take away your sin and was raised to secure your salvation. If you are trusting in Christ alone as your Savior and Lord then we welcome you to join us in observing the Lord’s Supper this morning. As the plates pass you will see clear cups filled with grape juice and purple cups filled with wine.
If you are not a believer and have not come to trust in Christ then we ask that you simply let these plates pass by you. But I would urge you to think deeply about the state of your soul. I would urge you to consider your sin and its offense to God. I would urge you to look to Jesus as your only hope of rescue and to put your trust in Him alone for salvation.
[1] Al Mohler We Cannot Be Silent (Pg. 4)
[2] C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity: Sexual Morality (pg. 95)
[3] John Piper Living in the Light of Money, Sex and Power (pg. 34-5)
[4] Pennington, Jonathan T.. The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary (p. 207). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Anger and the Kingdom of God
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Matt 5:20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. 26 Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
Of all the sins that Jesus could have chosen to start with to make his point, He chose murder. He could have started with something simpler and less offensive, but He comes out of the gate with one of the most grievous sins known to man. But if you think about it, it makes sense for Him to start with murder since man’s first crime was murder.
In Genesis 4 we read about the very first sin committed outside the Garden of Eden. Cain and his brother Abel prepared their offerings to the Lord. The Lord received Abel’s offering but not Cain’s and,
“So Cain was very angry, and his face fell…8 Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.
Now, Jesus’ audience would have been very familiar with this story about the first act of murder and the other stories of murder that follow. They would have remembered the story of Lamech who boasted about his two wives and that he had killed a young man. Perhaps Jesus’ audience would have been familiar with the first prohibition against murder from Genesis 9:6, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”
Don’t miss the fact that we are 9 chapters into the Bible and we have already seen murder become so prevalent on the earth that God gave Moses this divine law in order to forbid it. Murder is a serious crime in the eyes of God and it demands a serious punishment. Murder is an assault upon the image of God in man. Human life is not cheap, it is precious to God and when it is taken, God demands justice.
The act of murder is a grievous sin and its effects can be seen throughout the Bible and throughout the history of humanity. Murder is a terrible crime, a terrible transgression of God’s law, which demands swift and balancing justice, but murder has a root that goes deeper than the act itself.
The Scribes and Pharisees trusted in themselves that they were righteous. They trusted that since they hadn’t committed the act of murder that they had kept God’s law, but Jesus shows here that God’s law requires much more than we might think. God’s commandment teaches us that envy, anger, and even insults are forbidden.
Transition…
Anger is one of those respectable sins and when we get angry we don’t think it’s a big deal, at least it doesn’t seem like big deal to us. We get angry all the time with people who don’t drive the way we want them to. We get angry with our children when they run around the house making noise instead of going to bed like we asked them to. We get angry with our spouse when they forget something, or do something that annoys us, or when they fail to do something the way we wanted them to. We get angry when our favorite team doesn’t win. We get angry when someone posts something we don’t agree with online…We get angry all the time and for a lot of reasons
I think it is safe to say that we have an anger problem and Jesus wants us to know that this is a VERY BIG DEAL. We just read what Jesus said, “Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.” Jesus is talking to us this morning and He wants us to avoid the error of the Pharisees. He wants us to understand that our sins have roots that go way deeper than just the physical acts.
Sermon Focus…
I. Murder is terrible, but it is not the root of the problem (v. 21-22)
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
Now, it has been 3 weeks since we have looked at the Sermon on the Mount together and if you are anything like me then you could probably use a reminder of what we learned a few weeks ago. In verses 17-20 we learned about Jesus’ relationship to the Old Testament in general and to the law of God in particular. We learned that Jesus has not come to do away with the Old Testament law, nor has He come to establish a new law. Ultimately, He has come to fulfill the demands of law and to accomplish salvation for His people. But He has also come to faithfully teach on the law so that it would accomplish its purpose in the hearts of God’s people.
The people needed both of these things and so do we. They definitely needed a Savior who would take away their sin but they also needed a faithful teacher of the law because the Scribes and Pharisees had made a real mess of the Old Testament. They had confused and manipulated the law by adding their own interpretations of it and the result is that the people had been taught to look at their relationship with God as little more than a system of superficial rules. They had been taught that salvation could be earned by keeping all the rules.
(Illus…Martyn Lloyd-Jones suggests that the condition of the Jews in Jesus’ day was much like the people of the world just prior to the Protestant Reformation. They had popes and priests teaching them that salvation could be earned through a system of religious practices. The people were ignorant about what God’s Word actually taught and as a result they had been completely led astray by their teachers. But the reformation placed the Word of God in the hands of the people and they began to see for themselves that salvation was a gift of God’s grace, not the result of man’s work.
In a similar way, Jesus has come as a reformer to make the Word of God clear. He has come to make clear what God’s Word says and to show what God’s Word reveals about the real condition of man’s heart. Jesus is concerned with the letter of the law (v. 18) but He is also concerned with the spirit of the law because the Kingdom of Christ is first and foremost internal not external, it is spiritual and moral, not physical and political.
The gospel of Jesus and this sermon are not about external conformity to a pattern of dead religion. Jesus wants nothing to do with that. He doesn’t want blind obedience; He wants our lives of faith to be fueled by love for God that flows from hearts that have been spiritually changed and drenched in God’s grace. The kind of righteous life that Jesus outlines for us in this sermon is first a matter of the heart. His words are aimed at our hearts.
That’s why here in verse 21, Jesus doesn’t stop with the letter of the law but He probes deeper to help us understand what the law reveals about the root of sin that lies in our hearts. The letter of the law promises judgment for the sin of murder but the spirit of the law shifts our focus from the outward act to the inward state.
Now why might this be an important point for Jesus to make? How many of us have read the 10 commandments and thought, “Well at least I haven’t committed murder?” The Pharisees did the same thing. They looked at the pursuit of righteousness simply in terms of what they had and had not done, but Jesus says our behavior is only part of the equation. The key to understanding the deeper purpose of God’s law is to understand what it reveals about our hearts and in our hearts, we commit murder all the time.
It is easy to see that anger is what leads to the act of murder, especially if we look at the story of Cain and Abel. But here Jesus wants us to know that the anger in our hearts is just as dangerous and deserving of condemnation as the act itself.
Jesus wants us to know that God cares when we commit sinful acts, but He also cares about the sinful condition of our hearts. The acts themselves are produced in the heart and the attitudes and emotions of the heart are enough to defile us.
Matthew 15:18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person.
Can you remember the last time you were really angry? Angry enough to raise your voice? Or angry enough that you would need to repent of what was actually on your mind? Angry enough to mumble under your breath an insult or angry enough to shout that insult in the direction of another person? In the direction of your brother?
In the eyes of God this anger is enough to defile us. It is not enough that you have kept yourself free from the sin of murder; the unrighteous anger in your heart cries out against you. It may not lead us to murder but it shows itself in our angry thoughts and even the insults that we speak to others. Jesus tells us that this unrighteous anger makes us liable to judgment, which means that anger itself is a transgression of the law.
But wait a minute, is all anger sinful? Some say so, but I think the Bible gives us a category of righteous anger that God displays and He calls us to share. Righteous anger is anger that is directed toward sin, and I’ll share some examples from Scripture. In Exodus 4 we read that the Lord’s anger was kindled against Moses for his insecurity and lack of faith. This phrase is a common one in the OT and it shows that there is a type of anger against sin that is holy.
Later in Exodus 32, Moses himself gets angry when he sees the sin of the people and he throws the 10 commandments to the ground. This type of human anger against sin is connected to the anger that God feels toward sin, but God warns us against giving ourselves over to it completely.
In Psalm 4:4 we read, “Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on you beds and be silent. Offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord.” Paul quotes this Psalm in Ephesians 4:26 when he says, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” From these and other passages, I believe that it is possible to be angry and it not be sinful; but only when our anger is directed toward sin.
Jesus showed this type of anger toward the corruption of His Father’s House and His anger was directed toward the sins of men. But I suspect that much of the anger that we feel is not directed toward sin. We get angry because things aren’t going our way. We get angry when we aren’t getting what we want. We get angry when people let us down or when they disrespect us or when our kids annoy us or disobey us for the 10th time; and this anger reveals the sin that still resides within our hearts. This is what Jesus wants to confront us about.
James 4:1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.
James, the brother of Jesus, wants to follow His Lord’s example and probe to the root of our sin. He points out that the fighting and disunity that breaks out and ruins our relationships is really about the sinful desires of our hearts. We want control and when people don’t let us get our way we get angry. We want peace and when people make too much noise we get angry. We want people to recognize us and our accomplishments, but when they recognize others instead we get angry
This type of anger is selfish, prideful, jealous and idolatrous. This type of anger wreaks havoc in the church. It turns our family holidays into uncomfortable meals that lead to harsh words, hurt feelings and broken families. This type of anger causes bitterness between a husband and his wife and leads to greater sins.
You may have been a believer for years but this type of anger is still lurking in your heart. So, what do we do about? But what do we do about our anger? In the next few verses, Jesus gives us a couple of examples on what to do about our anger.
II. Don’t mask the sin in your heart with external religion (v. 23-24)
Matt 5:23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
Now this is something that I think most of us are guilty of. What Jesus is warning us against here is attempting to cover up our sin by going to church and participating in religious ceremony. We may be standing in the church building singing in worship, and the whole time we know that we have sinned against someone who is standing on the other side of the room. Perhaps, You are standing next to your spouse whom you sinned against on the way to church and Jesus is saying, “Put your hands down. Put your checkbook away. Humble yourself and go to your brother or sister and ask for their forgiveness.”
Jesus wants us to know that everything is not fine just because we came to church. In fact, this seems like an echo of what God told Israel through the prophet Isaiah.
I have had enough of your burnt offerings…I do not want the blood of bulls, lambs and goats…I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. (Isaiah 1:11-13)
When we overlook our sin against a brother and we think that it will all be fine if we just go and pledge our love to the Lord at church, Jesus tells us that we got the order all wrong. He tells us to stop attempting to worship Him, to leave our gift at the altar and go to seek reconciliation with our brother and then come back to worship.
Jesus wants us to realize that unity and love between Christians is more important to God to God than our tithes and our singing.
Remember that this is a sermon about Jesus’ Kingdom and His Kingdom is different than every other Kingdom. He commands His people to love one another and when anger or hate, which is the opposite of love, gets in the way; He calls us to stop everything and pursue the restoration of love.
Now, some of you men are uncomfortable with this because this isn’t hypothetical for you. You might be at odds with someone right now. Some of you men are thinking, “That’s just not how men handle these sorts of things.” But this is how all of us should handle these sorts of things as members of the Kingdom of God.
We should be quick to confess our sin. We should be quick to seek the forgiveness of those we’ve wronged, quick to reestablish our relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ. And once we’ve done that, then we should give thanks to God in worship.
1 Sam 15:22, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice…
Don’t use religious ceremony as a mask for your sin, that’s what the Pharisees would do and our righteousness must exceed theirs. Our righteousness must come from the heart.
But what about our relationship to those outside the church? Do we have a responsibility to them as well? In verse 25, Jesus gives us an illustration of what would happen when a person had an unpaid debt. At least that seems to be the scenario that Jesus is using.
In Jesus’ day if a person had borrowed money and then refused to pay it back at the agreed upon deadline, the person who loaned the money could take up the matter in court. If the borrower is proven guilty then they would be thrown in jail. Here is what Jesus says we should do.
V. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. 26 Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
This verse is connected to the previous one in that in both cases there is something standing between us and another person. In the first case, we did something against our brother and in this second case we have failed to pay our debts. The point of this is that when something stands between us and another person we should be urgently seeking to make things right.
Whether we owe them money or an apology we should take immediate action to be reconciled to our brother and even to our debtor. We are to be people of integrity in all walks of life because we are concerned with serving God from the heart. We do what’s right, not to be seen by others, but because it honors God. So, if we owe a debt, we should work hard to pay that debt off as soon as possible but if for some reason we are unable to meet the terms, we should be honest, go to that person and seek to make things right. We are to make every effort we can to mend relationships with others.
Conclusion…
1. Murder is terrible, but it is not the root of our problem. The root of the problem is the sinful desires of our hearts which are in themselves enough to condemn us. But empty religious rituals aren’t enough to solve our problem.
2. Don’t try to mask the sins of your heart with external religion. This was the lifestyle of the Pharisees and Scribes; it failed for them and it will fail for us.
God wants us to humble ourselves and seek reconciliation. He wants us to value integrity more than comfort. He wants us to let go our pride and then pursue peace, unity and love. He wants us to do what’s right not just to be seen by others but because He sees our hearts.
Let every one of us examine our hearts right now. Is there someone that we need to seek out today? Is there someone in this room that we need to seek forgiveness from? Maybe that person is standing next to you. Don’t hold on to your pride, turn to them and confess your sin. Go to them and seek to make it right. If there is something that you can or should do to seek peace with your brother or sister then do it at once.
Then come back to God who stands over His children ready to pour out new grace.
James 4:6 God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
He will forgive. In fact, that is why He sent His Son into the world. Jesus paid the price to make us free. He cancelled the debt of sin that we owed…and He didn’t wait until we asked Him. He came deliberately and while we were still enemies of God. He humbled Himself, made Himself the object of man’s scorn, He let His enemies gloat over Him but He fulfilled His mission.
He came to save His people, to give us new hearts, to lead us into His new Kingdom and He calls us to follow Him.
Contentment
The Righteous Shall Live by Faith
Heroes and Martyrs
Topic: The Reformation
Part 4 of 4
Speaker: Mark Ritchie
Church Life of the Reformation
Topic: The Reformation
Part 3 of 4
Speaker: Mark Ritchie
Doctrines of the Reformation
Topic: The Reformation
Part 2 of 4
Speaker: Mark Ritchie
What was the Reformation?
Topic: The Reformation
Part 1 of 4
Speaker: Mark Ritchie
The Righteousness of the Kingdom (2 of 2)
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This week we are jumping right back into the middle of a section where Jesus is addressing how He and His ministry relate to the Law and the Prophets. We spent our entire time on this last week and we discovered that Jesus did not come to abolish the law and the prophets but rather He came to fulfill them. He didn’t come to throw down the law but to uphold it, to teach us the true and deeper meaning of it, to fulfill its prophecies and to execute its demands with perfect obedience.
So, If Jesus came to fulfill the law and to establish a new covenant community upon His fulfillment, then what does that mean for the citizens of this new community? If Christ came to fulfill the law then in what way does the law affect my life as a believer?
Transition…
Matt 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Sermon Focus…
I. The Permanence of the Law (v. 18)
18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
First, I want us to recognize the significance of the phrase, “Truly I say to you.” Jesus uses this phrase all the time and when He does He is drawing our attention to His authority as a teacher. Do you remember the phrase that the Old Testament prophets used? When they spoke a word of prophecy to the people they would introduce it with the phrase, “Thus saith the Lord” and this drew attention to the fact that they weren’t speaking on their own authority, but they were speaking on the authority of God. God was speaking through them.
But Jesus uses a different phrase, “Truly, I say to you…” He is speaking on His own authority as the Son of God. He uses this phrase 28 times in Matthew, 25 times in John, 19 times in Luke and Mark combined; and each time He is asserting Himself as a faithful witness to the truth of God because He is God in the flesh. He doesn’t simply speak for God, He speaks as God. It seems like a subtle thing but in the overall picture, Jesus is declaring to us the very Word of the Lord.
But what does the Son of God say to us about the Law in this verse? He is stressing the fact that the law of God is permanent and that it will not be brought to an end until heaven and earth are brought to an end.
“Until Heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass…”
Now what does this mean? The passing away of Heaven and earth represents the end of time as we know it. It is a reference to the time to come when Christ will return to this earth to judge the world and when He comes it will set off what the Scriptures call, The Great Day of the Lord.
2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
On that day, Jesus will return to judge and to make war. Heaven will open and Christ will come forth on the white war horse of Heaven and He will come to “tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty (Rev 19:11f).” On that day Christ will step into His role as Conqueror and He will Captain the armies of Heaven to bring judgment upon Satan and the sin of mankind.
Now, that day has not yet come and until it does, Jesus wants us to know that the Law of God will stand. Not even the smallest letter or stroke of a letter will pass from the law until that day until all is accomplished.
But that brings up another question: If Jesus has come to fulfill the law (V. 17) then how is it still functioning? What part does it still play in our lives today?
Remember last week when we talked about the 3 parts of the law (Judicial, Ceremonial and Moral)? The Judicial law that governed Israel as a nation has been set aside. Israel rejected and crucified her Messiah, the temple was destroyed and the nation under God’s Old Covenant came to an end. In that sense, Jesus’ coming fulfilled that portion of the law.
The Ceremonial law that governed Israel’s worship has also been fulfilled and brought to an end. Christ was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices and to make this fulfillment clear, the temple of God, where the sacrifices were made, was destroyed in 70 AD. When Christ was upon the cross the veil of the temple was torn in two which means that by His sacrifice all who believe in Him have access to God in the Spirit. Jesus fulfilled the Ceremonial law.
But what about the Moral law the 10 Commandments? Jesus fulfilled the Moral law, not by adding to it or even by simplifying it, but by keeping it. Jesus fully obeyed the moral law of God and when we turn from our sin and receive Christ, the righteousness He earned through obedience to God’s law is credited to our account before God.
We call this Justification, an act of God’s grace where He pardons our sin and accepts us as righteous in His sight, not based on the works we do, but based on the perfect obedience of Christ that is credited to us by faith.
2 Cor 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
But Christ has done more than to obey the law for us. As Christians, we are no longer under the penalty of the law but we are still guided by the law in our pursuit of righteousness. The moral law of God still functions in our lives, not to condemn us for our sins, but to direct us in our obedience to Christ.
Now, we love to talk about how the law cannot save us and that it was never intended to save us. We are bold in our rejection of salvation by works and of the legalism that reminds us of the Pharisees, and we are right to do both. But from these verses Jesus wants us to learn that the moral law of God still has a purpose in our lives today.
One of the reasons that we know this to be true is from the Sermon on the Mount as a whole. In this Sermon, Jesus is giving us a deeper explanation of the 10 Commandments or the moral law. He teaches us to reject the corrupt teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees and then He expounds on them to give us the true and deeper meaning of each one. Jesus wants us to know that the law is permanently bound to heaven and earth but He also wants us to know the role of the commandments within His Kingdom.
II. The Commandments and the Kingdom (V. 19)
19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Notice the shift in Jesus’ language from the term law to commandments and that it is not subtle at all. I think this is a shift from the law in a general sense to a more specific focus on the 10 commandments or the moral law. Also, notice the term therefore at the beginning of verse 19. It is there to show that there is a connection between the law of God and the Kingdom of God.
Follow the logic of these verses with me…Because Jesus has not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and because not a single stroke of the law will pass away until all is accomplished, therefore greatness in the Kingdom of God is going to in some way be measured by our faithfulness to the law. If we relax the law because of God’s grace then we will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven.
For many of us this can be confusing. We know that we are not saved by our keeping of the law but rather that we are saved by believing the gospel and within reformed theology (Lutheran theology) there is often a sharp distinction made between the law and the gospel. In Luther’s view, there should be no law in the gospel and no gospel in the law but on this point, I don’t think Luther was right.
We do need to be careful not to confuse God’s moral demands with His saving grace, but I think it is more faithful to Scripture to understand that the law is a gift of God’s grace intended to function in our lives in very particular ways.
First, the law has a civil function within society in that it serves to limit and restrain evil (Roman 13:3-4). Second, the law has an evangelical function in that it shows us our sin and drives us to Christ (Gal 3:10). Third, the law functions to guide us as believers to know the will of God and to live a faithful Christian life.
I John 2: 3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
In His book, The True Bounds of Christian Freedom, Puritan Samuel Bolton wrote:
The law is abolished as a covenant for our justification, but it remains a rule for obedience. We are not under the curses, but we are under the commands of it. We are not under the law for justice, but we are under the law for conduct. The law no longer has the power to condemn us, but it still has the power to humble us and to build us up for our greater good.[1]
As we continue to study this SotM, Jesus is going to help us understand how we obey the law from the heart. He is going to teach us how to grow to be more like Him. He is going to show us how to be doers of the Word as well as hearers.
Now, look back to verse 19, where I want you to see that there is a connection between the word “abolish” and the term “relax.” The root word in both of these is the idea of casting something aside or throwing it down. And since Jesus has not come to cast the law aside and neither shall we, His disciples. If we relax or cast aside the law then we aren’t treating the law the way Jesus did and Jesus gives some really strong warnings about this.
Matt 18: 1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2 And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them 3 and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
5 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, 6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin (break the moral law), it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
Jesus is not soft on the law. He is completely opposed to the legalism of the Pharisees but He is equally opposed to the type of antinomianism that would relax the law of God or seek to overthrow it altogether.
What does it mean to be called least in the Kingdom? If we relax one of God’s laws it’s like we are saying that this law really doesn’t matter. We are treating it like it is the smallest of the laws and Jesus says that our title in the Kingdom will be, “Really doesn’t matter.” Our status in the Kingdom of Christ will be consistent with the status we gave to the law in our lives and in our teaching.
But if we learn the proper purpose and value of the law and we are faithful to teach it and to do it, then we will have an honorable name in the Kingdom. Our name will be Megas or Great.
First, Jesus wants us to know that the law is permanent. Second, He wants us to understand that the law of God still functions within His Kingdom. Finally, He wants us to know that our obedience to the law had better be greater than that of the Scribes and Pharisees.
III. The Christian and the Law (v. 20)
20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
It’s no secret that Jesus didn’t get along with the Scribes and Pharisees and a huge part of their disagreement had to do with the law. Jesus rebuked them over and over for their corruption of the law, for the fact that they added to the law and even made their human traditions more important than the law of God.
They were supposed to be experts in the law and the Jews had a saying, “If only two people go to heaven, one will be a scribe and the other a Pharisee.” They were revered in their day for their thorough knowledge of the law and for their rigorous adherence to it, but there were some big problems with their views on the law.
Their law was entirely external –
Matt 23:25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
They were only concerned with external conformity and not to the real heart change that Jesus came to bring. They didn’t care about their motives or the condition of their heart. Which means that they could lust all they wanted so long as they didn’t act on it. They could hate all they wanted as long as they didn’t go through with an act of murder.
They thought that external obedience was enough to earn the righteousness of God and by believing this they reckoned that God’s holiness was cheap. But Jesus teaches us that God looks on the heart and that true religion flows from a new heart.
Their law was hypocritical –
Matt 23: 27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
8 different times in Matthew, Jesus directly calls them hypocrites. Their religion was nothing but an act, a hypocritical external wrapping that hid the reality of spiritual death. Of course, they couldn’t see that this was true. They believed that they were right and so they kept spreading their teaching as far as they could and the result was that they were actually spreading falsehood, not truth.
Their law was a Corruption of God’s Word –
These guys were serious about the law, so serious that they gradually added their own interpretations to the law in order to expand on it. Instead of the 10 commandments that God gave on Mt. Sinai, they expanded the law to contain 248 commandments and 365 prohibitions. Let me give you an example of how they corrupted the law of God.
Take the Sabbath. What began as a command to rest from your work and enjoy the provision of God became an absurd attempt to regulate everything from how far you could walk to how much you could carry in your pockets. Here is a list of rules on the Sabbath from a section of the Talmud called the Mishna; and remember, according to the Pharisees and Scribes your entry into heaven depends on this.
You could travel no more than 3,000 feet from home. Unless on Friday before the Sabbath you had planted food at the 3,000 foot point and then you could go 3,000 more because you constituted that point as a home because your food was there. Now if you lived down a long narrow street and you might have been a few hundred feet down from the end of the street or the end of the alley, you could take a piece of wood and put it across the end of the street or alley or you could take a piece of rope and put it across the end of the alley, or you could take a piece of wire and string it across the end of the alley and that would, in the eyes of God, turn it into a doorway and you could consider that the front door of your house so you could go 3,000 feet from there.
You couldn't carry anything on your person that weighed more than a dried fig. But you could carry half a fig two times on the Sabbath.
You couldn't eat any forbidden food larger than an olive. And if you put an olive in your mouth and spit it out because it was bad, the Talmud said you couldn't replace it with a good one because your palate had tasted the flavor of the first one.
If you threw an object in the air, you could catch it with the hand that you threw it with, but if you caught it with the other hand, it was sin because there's less work in doing that than...that.
If you were in one place and your arm stretched to reach for food and the Sabbath overtook you, you had to drop the food rather than bring back your arm or you had carried the burden and sinned.
A tailor couldn't carry his needle. A scribe couldn't carry his pen. A pupil couldn't carry his books. No fire could be lit. No fire could be put out. Cold water could be poured on warm, but warm couldn't be poured on cold. An egg couldn't be boiled even if you buried it in the hot sand, which is how they would boil an egg in the desert. You couldn't take a bath for fear that the water would flow off you and wash the floor. You couldn't move a chair since it might make a rut and that would be too much like plowing. Women could not look in a mirror or put on any jewelry. If she were to find a white hair, she had to resist the temptation to pull it out.[2]
And the list goes on and on for 24 chapters. Today if you go into Jerusalem on the Sabbath you will encounter something called the Shabat elevator which is an elevator that automatically goes up and down stopping on every floor so that Jews will not break the Sabbath by pushing the button. What started as a gracious command of God has been corrupted and turned into a terrifying day where the slightest mishap might doom you to Hell.
Remember that Jesus said that our righteousness must exceed theirs if we hope to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Does this mean that we must keep all of the 240 commandments and 365 prohibitions? No! Christian righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees in type not in degree. The righteousness that is pleasing to God is the inward righteousness that begins in the heart and then faithfully seeks to live out the law in life.
We call this sanctification and it is an ongoing work of God’s grace where God’s people are, over the course of their lives, transformed more and more into the image of Christ. God enables us by His Spirit and His Word to grow in faithfulness more and more and to turn from sin more and more. This process starts when we are born again and it continues throughout our lives as a fulfillment of the promise that God made in Ezekiel 37.
Eze 37:26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
If you are a born-again believer in Christ then you have the Spirit of God within you, but that doesn’t mean that you can dispense with the law, because the work of the Spirit is to give us new hearts, to write God’s law on those new hearts, and to enable us to walk in obedience to God.
Conclusion…
Jesus is not interested in empty, superficial, hypocritical religious practice. Religion is a word that has the ability to conjure up both positive and negative ideas when it is used. The term religion, when used in a negative sense, refers to the empty religious rituals and formalities that are devised by man and are sadly so prevalent in the church. Behind the negative use of the term is the belief that religious practices are sufficient for us to earn the favor of God. Religion says, “I obey the rules so that God will accept me” and when this idea is full blown it teaches people that in order to be saved we must simply keep all the rules.
But this is a lie and this is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel says that “God accepts me on the basis of Jesus ‘works and in response to this grace, I obey (Eph 2:8-10).”
Here in the Sermon on the Mount we see Jesus does not give us a new law but boldly claims that He has come to fulfill the law and on the cross, that is what He did. But He has also come to faithfully expound on the law that was already given.
The people’s view of the law had been obscured by the teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees, but Jesus has come to make it clear and to call His disciples to understand it’s ongoing function, not to save us, but to guide us as we follow Him.
[1] Beeke and Jones A Puritan Theology (Pg. 562).
[2] List of items extracted from John MacArthur sermon titled Jesus the Divine Truth Teller. This list was originally taken from Alfred Edersheim’s book The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah which details the Talmudic traditions of Jesus day.
The Righteousness of the Kingdom (1 of 2)
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Throughout the ministry of Jesus there was no shortage of controversies, accusations, questions and even objections to His identity, His message and His mission. At the forefront of most of these controversies stood two religious groups, the Pharisees and the Scribes.
The Pharisees were the separatists and they were called this because their specific observance of the Law of Moses separated them from the mainstream religious teachers. They were the religious fundamentalists of their day who sought to practice their brand of religion in a very particular and demanding way. But the real force behind the Pharisees were the Scribes
The Scribes were the leading experts in the law of Moses. They were the legal scholars who wrote the books and the Pharisees took their teaching and put it into practice. These two groups were among the most influential religious leaders in Jesus’ day and from the very beginning of our Lord’s ministry He had their attention.
Why? Because, by all accounts Jesus was an unusual man. Ok, maybe Jesus wasn’t as unusual as John the Baptist who lived in the woods and ate bugs; but Jesus stood out for other reasons. The first thirty years of His life were mostly private. His mother and father would have remembered the miraculous events surrounding His birth, but it’s unlikely they shared any of that with others until much later. He grew up in Nazareth as the son of a carpenter but when He came to the Jordan River to be baptized by John, that’s when things changed.
At that point, He began to teach but He had not been formally trained. He had no formal education. He also didn’t join the Scribes, Pharisees or Sadducees, which was very unusual for that day; He was unaffiliated at a time when affiliations were key. He did not come into His position as a teacher in the customary way. Normally, a person would go through an education process, then they would become a disciple to a well-known rabbi and somewhere down the road they might get their start. Jesus skipped that whole process and instead began teaching in the synagogues and in the marketplaces, all on His own.
He was calling disciples to follow Him. He was training them on an understanding of the Kingdom of God that no one had ever heard before. He knew the Scriptures, better than anyone else, but He interpreted them on His own which wasn’t common for that day. Most teachers relied on the oral tradition of old rabbi’s known today as the Talmud, but Jesus relied on no authority but His own. This made people very suspicious of Him.
Then there was the fact that He was healing people, casting demons out of people, and telling people that their sins were forgiven. The stories of His works were spreading all over the place and causing people to try and learn more about Him. When they got close to Him they realized something else that was a bit concerning. He spent most of His time with the kind of people that other religious groups had a tendency to reject.
Jesus had called a group of uneducated laborers to be His disciples. His disciples consisted of fisherman and even a tax-collector (Matthew). Then when He wasn’t teaching He was spending His time with social outcasts. His audiences consisted of the crippled, sick and poor; even those known to be living in sin. He ate with tax-collectors and even went to parties in their houses. His larger group of disciples consisted of a few former prostitutes who contributed money to His ministry. He spent most of His time teaching the gospel and the Kingdom of God to societies prodigals.
Transition…
This last bit alone was enough to make the religious people of that day stand up and take notice. But it also caused them to wonder about Jesus’s view on certain things like the law. Did He believe the Old Testament? Did He follow the law of Moses? Did He come to do away with the traditions of the elders? These were the questions on people’s minds and here in Matthew 5:17-20 Jesus is going to address those questions head-on.
And these questions are important for us today as well. How has Jesus’ ministry affected our relationship to the law of God? What role does the law play in the lives of those who follow Jesus? Let’s see what Jesus has to say about it.
Matt 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Sermon Focus…
Up to this point Jesus has been declaring to us the character of His kingdom in the beatitudes. Then He talked to us about how the world was going to react to His kingdom with persecutions and how we should respond. Last week, we looked at the influence that Jesus’ Kingdom is to have in the world. But today we are going to learn what is the relationship of Christ’s Kingdom to the law of God? What role does righteousness play in the Christian life?
I want to break this up into two parts: I. Jesus and the law and II. The Christian and the law.
I. Christ and the Law (v. 17-18)
Matt 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Notice that the way Jesus begins this statement suggests that He is responding to a common concern about Him. The people are talking and forming their opinions but Jesus comes right out and says, “Don’t believe what you are hearing. Don’t think that I have come to abolish the law or the Prophets…” Now, that phrase “law or the prophets” is important and it is referring to basically the whole of the Old Testament.
Jesus upholds the law…
The use of the term law generally refers to the writings of Moses but more specifically it refers to the law of God that was given through Moses. This is a reference to the 10 Commandments or the Moral law. We also understand that this phrase would cover the other aspects of the law, like the Judicial law which contains the specific laws that governed Israel as a nation. This also included the Ceremonial law that dealt with the sacrifices and rituals that governed Israel’s worship.
The reference to the prophets would include all the prophetic books in the OT. In other words, Jesus is affirming his commitment to all of the Old Testament. The people were wondering of Jesus was going to try to do away with the law and the prophets, but He makes clear that He has no intention of abolishing God’s Word. In fact, He will take better care of God’s Word than Moses did
There is something interesting about Jesus’ use of the term abolish. It can be translated as “throw down” or “to turn loose” and I think this is a subtle reference to Moses. When God gave Moses the 10 Commandments He carved the words by His own finger on two stone tablets and then gave them to Moses.
Moses then took those tablets down the mountain and when he came to the bottom he saw God’s people worshipping a golden calf. When Moses saw their sin, he became angry and threw the tablets down onto the ground. At the sight of the people’s sin Moses threw down the law and at the sight of the people’s sin Jesus fulfilled the law on their behalf. Jesus is saying I have no intentions of throwing down the law. Jesus is saying that He will take even better care of the law than did Moses.
Jesus reveals the depth of the law…
Jesus doesn’t abolish the law, instead He reveals a depth to the law that the Pharisees and Scribes never dreamed of and that is saying something. The Pharisees and Scribes were supposed to be the experts in the law. They knew it front and back, they followed it with painful accuracy and they taught the people how to follow it as well…but their whole view of righteousness and the law was flawed.
Their view of righteousness and the law is illustrated in the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18. In the parable, the Pharisees are described as those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. They looked at the law and assumed that by following it they could earn the righteousness needed to be at peace with God. In other words, they believed that through their good works they could earn salvation.
Now, it’s crazy that they believed this because more than 2000 years of Biblical history proved the opposite. Every generation of God’s people have proven that it is impossible for man to achieve the righteousness of God through obedience to the law. Moses himself pointed out at the end of his life that the people weren’t able to obey God in the law because the problem was their corrupt and sinful hearts. The law can’t change the heart.
In time, other prophets would point out the same problem. No man can please God by keeping the law because the heart of man is so corrupt that it is not possible. This is why God promised Ezekiel and Jeremiah that He was going to establish a New Covenant. He was going to send His spirit to change men’s hearts and write God’s law on their hearts. That’s what Jesus has come to do and that is why He can say,
18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
While heaven and earth stand, the law will remain. He hasn’t come to do away with the law and the prophets, He has come to uphold them. This means that the Old Testament is just as true, trustworthy and important for us today as it was to Jesus. This also lets us know the permanence of the law. Jesus’ ministry and His cross have not nullified the law. (we will look at this in more detail next week.)
Jesus fulfills the law…
But let’s go back to what Jesus said in verse 17 that He has come to fulfill the law and the Prophets. This is a huge claim. How do you fulfill the whole of the Old Testament? For starters, He has come to complete the law, to carry it out because, unlike us, Jesus can actually obey the law. His heart hasn’t been corrupted by our sin. He is sinless, tempted in every way that we are but He is without sin.
Jesus has come to carry out everything that is required in the law and everything that has been stated in the prophets.
J. C. Ryle summed it up like this: “The Old Testament is the Gospel in the bud, the New Testament is the Gospel in full flower. The Old Testament is the Gospel in the blade; the New Testament is the Gospel in full ear.”
At the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, just after His resurrection, Jesus came and spent some time with His disciples and on that night, He reminded them of something He told them years earlier.
Luke 24:44 He said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,
This might be hard for us to grasp but ultimately, the Bible is not about you and me; it’s about Jesus. The point of all Scripture is to direct us to Jesus as the fulfillment of the law, the perfect atoning sacrifice and the Savior that brings us to God. If we don’t understand this then the Bible will crush us. It will crush us because we might assume that we must fulfill the law in order to be saved. But when we come to understand that the entire Bible is not about us fulfilling the law, but Jesus fulfilling the law for us, that’s when we’ve grasped that the Gospel is Good News.
Jesus is the thread holding the entire Bible together. Jesus is the main theme of all Scripture. He is the hero in all the stories. He is the fulfillment of all the prophecies. He is the substance, the reality behind all the mysteries.
The Bible is not simply a collection of moral stories aimed to help you live a better life so that God will love you and accept you. The Bible is the story of God’s plan to love a people who are completely unlovable. The Bible is the story of How God will draw sinful people into a relationship with Him, into His very family, not because of the wonderful things they do, but because of the wonderful work of Jesus on the cross.
The whole Bible is about Jesus and the work that He accomplished as the Son of God and the Savior of the World. Every promise finds it’s fulfillment in this; that God became a man and humbled himself to the point of death even death on a cross in order to settle our debts in the eyes of the Father. Where imperfect men have failed to rise to the standard of Holiness that God demands, Christ came to succeed
Jesus is the skull crusher from Genesis 3 who has come to put an end to Satan’s reign.
Adam failed in the Garden and his corruption and guilt were credited to us, but Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is credited to our account.
Abraham obeyed God leaving the comfort and familiarity of home to become the father of God’s people, but Jesus is the true and better Abraham who answered the call of God to leave the glory of Heaven and come down into the brokenness of earth to create a new people of God.
Isaac was the child of promise who was offered up and nearly sacrificed on the altar in obedience to God’s command, but Jesus is the true and better Isaac who was not just offered up by his father on the mount but was truly sacrificed for us.
Jacob wrestled with God and was wounded but Jesus is the true and better Jacob who wrestled and took the blow of Divine justice that we deserved, so we, could receive grace to wake us up and guide our lives.
Jesus is the true and better Joseph who, at the right hand of the king, forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his new power to save them.
Jesus is the true and better Moses who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and who mediates a new covenant.
Jesus is the true and better Job, the truly innocent sufferer, who then intercedes for and saves his stupid friends.
Jesus is the true and better David who did more than win a victory for Israel’s army; He became our victory for all eternity, and we never lifted a stone to accomplish it ourselves.
Jesus is the true and better Jonah who was cast out into the storm so that we could be brought in.
Jesus is the real Passover Lamb, innocent, perfect, helpless, slain so the angel of death will pass over us. He’s the true temple, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king, the true sacrifice, the true lamb, the true light, the true bread.
The Bible’s really not about you—it’s about him.[1]
The overwhelming trajectory of Biblical and world history concerns a movement by God towards man. The Father sent the Son. The Word became flesh. To save us, God did not come in the fullness of His glory, but rather he came in the humility of a man who would be condemned to die as a criminal upon a cross. Jesus hid his glory, shouldered our burden and walked to the cross in our place.
Jesus took the form of a slave. He became one with us, sharing in our limitations, our sorrows and bearing our burdens. He experienced the temptations that we know too well, only he remained sinless to the day of his death. And in his death, he atoned for us, paid the price for our sins and unites us to God.
Then to show that His work was finished and complete, God raised Him from the dead. Jesus Christ lives today never to die again and He holds out the promise that all who trust in Him, who believe in His name, they are given the right to be called the Sons of God.
This is the climax of world history. This is the hinge upon which eternity hangs and this is what Christ has come to do. He hasn’t come to throw down the law, like Moses, in the face of the people’s sin; He has come to uphold the law, to fulfill it so that we can be freed from our sin and truly have peace with God.
Conclusion…
The people want to know what Jesus will do with the Law of Moses. They want to know what His coming into the world will mean in light of all that the Prophets have written. They want to know if Jesus has come to tear down the Old or to uphold it. He has actually come to do even more, He has come to fulfill it all.
1. What does God want us to understand/think?
He wants us to understand that Jesus did not come to do away with the law of God. He did not come to remove it from existence, not to remove it completely from our lives. He came to fulfill the law on our behalf. Jesus lived a lived a life of perfect obedience to God and to the moral law. He also perfectly fulfilled the promises made about Him in the prophets. We have all fallen short of God’s glorious standard, but Jesus upheld it and fulfilled in our place.
And this is great news for us. He has become our peace. He has secured our place in Heaven with God. He and He alone has accomplished our redemption.
2. What does God want us to believe?
God wants us to believe that Jesus is focal point and climax of redemptive history. There is salvation in no other name than the name of Jesus. Before Him all heaven and earth will bow down to declare that He is Lord. There is no other prophet, there is no other way, there is no other hope than Jesus. This too is good news!
3. What does God want you to do?
God has supplied what our souls need most, a savior. Have you received Him? Have you confessed your sin to Him and asked for His forgiveness? Have you turned from your sin and surrendered to Him as Lord?
[1] Adapted from Tim Keller, from class lectures on Preaching Christ in a Post-Modern World.
The World's Response to the Kingdom
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Matt 5:10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
There are some things that we will face in this life that are worth suffering for. There are some reactions that will result from our love for Jesus that are worth enduring. There are some truths that we should never deny, that we should never back off from, and never avoid no matter the threat we face. And Jesus wants us to face those threats with the knowledge that He not only has our back, but will reward us for standing for Him.
Study the New Testament and you will be forced to create a category in your mind for persecution. Study the history of the church and you will see the wicked creativity of mankind dream up ways to torture Christians. The persecution and suffering of Christians has often been a demonstration by the kingdom of this world that they won’t tolerate a rival kingdom, especially one so subversive as the Kingdom of Christ.
But the persecution of Christians is not just a thing of the past, it is still happening today at alarming rates. According to Opendoorsusa.org, each month this year 322 Christians will be killed for their faith, 214 church or Christian properties will be destroyed, and 722 forms of violence will be committed against Christians, such as: beatings, abductions, rape, arrest and even forced marriages. North Korea is ranked as the most oppressive place in the world to be a Christian. The country of India, that we have sent missionaries to, is ranked 15th on the list.
But is persecution happening in America today? Compared to the countries at the top of this list, the church in American hasn’t seen a fraction of the persecution that our brothers and sisters worldwide have seen. We aren’t being beheaded. It’s not illegal to be a Christian. It’s not illegal to preach the gospel or to become a convert to Christianity. We should be thankful for all of these things. But there is a cost to being a faithful follower of Christ, even in the U.S.
“Martyrdom is a special category set aside for a select number of Christians (Rev. 6:8-11), persecution is the normal experience of every Christian everywhere. From stiff fines, to family shame, to being kicked off college campuses, to laws against sharing our faith, to unjust trials, to public mockery and scorn, to arrest and brutality, if we faithfully follow Jesus in this world we all will face persecution at some point in our Christian discipleship. Even American Christians--if they are really Christians--will have crosses to carry (Kevin DeYoung).”[1]
Transition…
This morning, we are going to let Jesus teach us more about the persecution that we will face as we follow Him. We are going to learn 4 things about the persecution that accompanies His Kingdom. We are going to look at the Cause of Persecution, the Response to Persecution, the Reward for the Persecuted, and the Company of the Persecuted.
Sermon Focus…
This is the final Beatitude and notice that Jesus gives us a double dose of it; first in a more general way (blessed are those…) and then in a more specific way (blessed are you…). It is important for us to understand that this final beatitude is as normal to the Christian life as the rest of the beatitudes. Jesus is teaching us that being persecuted, despised, mocked, slandered, and rejected for your faith in Christ is just as much a part of the Christian experience as being a poor in spirit, pure in heart, mercy-filled peacemaker.
Every Christian is broken down and then built back by Christ in the gospel; this is how we enter into the faith. And every Christian is called to live out the gospel in the way we interact with others. And every Christian should expect that when we live our lives for Christ we will experience opposition from the world.
But why? Why does persecution come to those who live for Christ?”
I. The Cause of Persecution or Why the persecution comes
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake…11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
Jesus uses two phrases here to describe the cause of persecution. It comes on account of righteousness and on account of Jesus (himself), and both of these phrases are referring to the same thing. They are referring to the life that has journeyed through the rest of the beatitudes. This journey begins with our being made to see our unrighteousness.
On our own we are poor and needy before God and we are moved to grieve over our sin. This produces humility because we recognize that we have nothing to boast about, nothing to offer to God. Then, when we come to feel our spiritual emptiness we long to be filled and Jesus satisfies that need. He fills us with His grace and love. He forgives our sin and gives us new life.
Then we begin to live out this new life showing mercy to others. We begin seeking to live honest and pure lives before others and before God. We pursue peace and seek to help others find peace with God through faith in Christ. This is what it means live for righteousness’ sake. This is what it means to live our lives on account of Jesus and this is the cause of the persecution that Jesus is talking about.
Jesus is not talking about a person who is being persecuted because he is a jerk who has a knack for getting on people’s nerves. Jesus is not talking about the type of persecution that you bring on yourself because you love to get in other people business and gossip about it. We are often the cause of our own suffering and it has nothing to do with our seeking to live a godly life in Christ.
1 Pet 4:15 Let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.
The type of persecution that Jesus is talking about here is caused by our living like Jesus. True righteousness flows only out of a relationship with Christ and it reflects the values of a different world.
John 15:18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20…If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.
Think about this: Jesus did amazing things to help people, to heal people, to love people; and the world responded with two options. They either wanted to use Him to get what they wanted or they were going to have to kill Him to get Him out of their way. If we seek to live like Jesus we can expect the same treatment and I don’t care what the health, wealth, and prosperity folks say.
For us to pursue righteousness means to live our lives repenting from sin, self and Satan’s influence. For us to follow Christ means we are going to stand for things the world hates and we are going to stand against things they love. For us to follow Jesus we are going to speak truth to people who don’t want to hear it in the hopes that they will be saved. We won’t live perfectly, but faithfully as followers of Jesus seeking to honor and obey Him till the very end, no matter what it may cost.
You might think that such a life would be admired by others, but that is not the case. So, we need to ask the question, why is righteousness persecuted? Showing mercy to others doesn’t seem offensive. Seeking to be an honest and transparent person might rub someone the wrong way but why should this bring persecution?
Jesus explains it this way:
John 3:19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
Persecution is caused by the clash of light with darkness. Unbelievers will find our hunger for righteousness distasteful. They will find our pursuit of mercy an unwanted path. Persecution is the result of the clash between two irreconcilable kingdoms.
On the one hand, you have a kingdom filled with men and women who love Jesus. They love something that is pure and true and eternal; and their love stands in confident opposition to every other kingdom. On the other hand, you have another kingdom that is filled with men and women who love something that is evil and untrue and they want their love to be justified, accepted and celebrated by all. In order to justify their love, they must oppose the other kingdom so they mock Jesus and all who follow Him. They seek to silence Jesus and all who speak His Word. They seek to destroy Jesus and all who call Him Lord.
Sadly, as we look into the past we see that persecution came from the world and at times even from the church. We see this today as well in that many claim to know Christ and want the blessings He offers, but they want nothing to do with His Word or His narrow path of life. Their ideas about Christianity are at odds with Scripture and they persecute those who stand upon the Word.
John Piper helps to put this in perspective:[2]
• If you cherish chastity, your life will be an attack on people’s love for free and devious sex.
• If you pursue self-control, your life will indict excessive eating, spending, partying, etc.
• If you live simply and happily, you will show the folly of luxury.
• If you walk humbly with your God, you will expose the evil of pride.
• If you speak with compassion, you will throw callousness into sharp relief.
• If you are earnest, you will make the flippant look flippant instead of clever.
• And if you are spiritually minded, you will expose the worldly-mindedness of those around you.
In other words, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus, will be persecuted (2 Tim 3:12).”
If we put our trust in Jesus and seek to live like Jesus we can expect persecution. But, what are we supposed to do about it?
II. The Response to Persecution or What we do about persecution
Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted…Blessed are those who are reviled…Rejoice and be glad…” This is hardly the type of response you would expect to show to persecution, but once again Jesus is turning our world upside-down. Jesus doesn’t tell us to retaliate. He doesn’t tell us to simply grin and bear it either. He tells us to rejoice, be glad and be happy.
This is the type of response that we read about in Acts 5 when the Apostles were arrested by the High Priest and called to stand before the Jerusalem Council.
Acts 5:40 When they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. 41 Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. 42 And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus.
This is the type of response that we see in Paul and Silas when they were chained up (wrist to ankles) in the inner part of the prison in Philippi. They had been attacked earlier in the day. Their clothes had been ripped off and they had been beaten with rods in the middle of the city and then they were thrown in prison. But at midnight they began to pray and then started singing hymns to God. Their long and painful day of persecution led them to a night of rejoicing and singing to the Lord.
Now what is going on in these two passages? How can these men be happy to the point of singing while suffering in pain from persecution? On one hand, they counted it an honor to suffer alongside Jesus. It was a validation of their faith, a mark of the genuineness of their walk with Jesus. But even more, it made them rest their hope completely in Christ and not this world. The aim of the Christian life is not a long, care-free existence with only minor hiccups along the way. The aim is to serve the Lord faithfully until the end and then go to be with Jesus.
Let’s remember that the type of blessedness or happiness that Jesus is talking about here in Matthew 5 is not dependent on the circumstances of life. He is not telling us to be happy that we are undergoing persecution; we aren’t masochists who enjoy being mistreated. Our happiness is rooted in the fact that this world may be taken away from us but we are citizens of the world to come. Our rejoicing is rooted in the fact that we may not see our name written in lights but our names are written in the book of life.
But Jesus’ give us even more reasons to be happy and rejoice.
III. The Reward for the Persecuted
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven,
Suffering for Jesus doesn’t earn us the Kingdom, only the blood of Christ has the power to secure our eternal life. But in a very real way, suffering persecution validates that we are genuine followers of Christ. Many who hear the message of Jesus rejoice when they first hear it and they appear to jump on board, but when persecution arises they fall away. Others hear the message of Jesus and they are ready to sign on the dotted line, but over time the cares of the world choke out their shallow faith.
Still others will hear the message of Jesus and it will take deep root in their soul. They weather the storms of temptation, they endure the heat of persecution and they grow to produce fruit for the kingdom. Their lives and the fruit of their lives show evidence that the gospel is firmly rooted in their hearts. So, in a sense, persecution is a mark of those who are faithfully following Christ and it gives evidence that we are members of the Kingdom.
But notice that Jesus actually uses the term reward here and it means recognition for our faithful action. The picture that this verse paints is that when we stand before God in Heaven, He will recognize/reward us for having endured the persecution of this life. The recognition is itself the reward and this reward is great. The reward will more than make up for the service rendered.
Perhaps, like Stephen, those who receive the sufferers reward will see Jesus stand at God’s right hand in order to acknowledge our sacrifice and to show His proud support of our faithfulness.
And finally, that brings us to the last point in this passage.
IV. The Company of the Persecuted
12 Rejoice and be glad, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
When we suffer persecution for our faith and faithfulness to Christ, we join the line of faithful men and women who have gone before us. The prophets who spoke the Word of God were not perfect men but they were faithful and they faced opposition. Some of them were killed by the very people that God sent them to. But their reward was secure and so is ours.
In Hebrews 11 we read,
32 For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35 Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. 36 Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— 38 of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
The world was not worthy to stand alongside these men and women, but persecuted believers are. God’s grace sustained them and it will sustain us as well.
Conclusion…
1. What does God want us to understand from this passage? Our natural instinct is to see persecution as a bad thing. Normal human beings don’t enjoy suffering, but there is a type of suffering that is right. There is a type of suffering that shows us that we are following Christ. So let’s remember what Jesus told us:
John 15:20 ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you…all these things they will do to you on account of my name,
2. What does God want us to believe? The happiness that our faith in Christ brings goes deeper than the wounds of the world. We can find our joy in Christ despite our circumstances. We can even rejoice and praise God when suffering comes our way. “There is no pit so deep but Christ is deeper still.” – Corrie Ten Boom
3. What does God want us to desire? Christ wants us to desire the Kingdom more than personal comfort. He wants us to set our hearts on the truth and be willing to endure hardship to allow its fruit to be borne in our lives. He wants us to desire righteousness more than the praise of men and to seek to glorify God more than to live a life of worldly pleasure and ease.
4. What would God have us do? Be bold and faithful. He would have us live out our faith with passion and sincerity. He would have us stand for truth against the tide of our worldly culture. He would have us speak the gospel into the lives of others. To be faithful evangelists in a world that needs the gospel. He would have us joyful endure the plundering of our property because we know that we have a greater and more lasting inheritance with Him.
12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven
[1] https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/kevindeyoung/2017/03/29/four-thoughts-on-persecution-in-america/
[2] Piper, J. (2007). Sermons from John Piper (1980–1989). Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God.
The Character of Christ's Kingdom
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“Dead in our trespasses and sins;” that is God’s description of the natural condition of man’s heart, our heart. Mankind’s chief problem is not ignorance, it is not faulty upbringing, it is not bad philosophy, nor is it flawed morality. All of these are problems, for sure, and there are more; but the chief problem for the natural man is the deadness in our hearts.
This deadness is the result of sin. It is the result of our rebellion against our Creator God. It is the natural condition of our heart because our first parents (Adam and Eve) sinned against God and the consequence of their rebellion was death, spiritual death. This death, this inherited deadness has spread out to all of mankind and it is the root cause of all the problems that we face in the world.
This deadness was on display over the past week as the new reports rolled in from Las Vegas of a man in his 60’s opening fire on a crowd of music fans. His attack killed 59 and injured more than 500. His actions were evil and they originated from his corrupt and sinful heart; a heart that God says is “dead in trespasses and sins.”
Throughout the Bible, we can read God’s description of the condition of man’s heart.
· Gen 6:5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
· Jer 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
· Matt 15:19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person.
The Las Vegas massacre that took place last week was a terrible tragedy and an act of pure evil; and God wants us to understand that the sinful heart of man was at the root of it. The man responsible for the crime will be held responsible for his actions by the Judge of all the Earth and at this point he is beyond redemption. He will answer to God for the sin that flowed out of his wicked heart.
But I want us to understand something about ourselves from this. By God’s grace we will not all commit such monstrous crimes, but our hearts are far more sinful than we care to admit. The engine that drives the kingdom of this world is the sinful heart of man. It is capable of doing amazing things but it is also capable of doing unthinkable evil.
But there is another Kingdom at work among us and it requires that the heart of man be changed. This Kingdom requires a heart that recognizes its deadness and emptiness. It requires a heart that grieves over sin, that is humbled by its own corruption and that longs to be made new.
Transition…
This is the heart that Jesus is announcing to the world in the Sermon on the Mount and this new heart is what He has come to give us.
Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Sermon Focus…
Looking back over the past few weeks, we have seen that the first four Blessings are not only aimed at the heart but they follow a progressive logic. Each step leads to the next but the whole process begins with recognizing that we are poor in spirit, our hearts are bankrupt before God. Next, we are moved to the point of mourning over our sin. We grieve the fact that our hearts are so corrupt.
Thirdly, our recognition and grief over sin makes us humble. We are made to see that we are no better than any other man, in fact, we may be worse and this produces meekness. Finally, now that we have seen ourselves truly as with the eyes of God we now know that our deepest need is righteousness. I can’t produce it on my own but I hunger for it and thirst after it so that I can be right with God and free from the sin in my heart.
The first three beatitudes/blessings are concerned with our need and our own awareness of that need. The fourth deals with how God satisfies our need. He fills us with the righteousness of Jesus and satisfies the deep need of our soul. But as we move forward starting with verse 6 we are going to see the result of that satisfaction. God has changed our hearts and filled us with the righteous love of Christ and now our lives will put the fruit of our salvation on display.
This begins with a display of mercy.
I. Happy are the Merciful
7 “Happy are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
To be merciful is to show compassion to those who are in need. It is to be sympathetic to others. A lot of times when we think of mercy we think of it alongside its companion, grace. And when we think of mercy and grace we tend to think of God the Father. He is a merciful God and a full of grace toward His people. But what do these terms actually mean?
“‘Grace is especially associated with men in their sins; mercy is especially associated with men in their misery.’ In other words, while grace looks down upon sin as a whole, mercy looks especially upon the miserable consequences of sin. So that mercy really means a sense of pity and a desire to relieve suffering.’”[1]
What Jesus is calling for here is not simply to feel merciful toward someone but to act with mercy toward someone who is suffering. It is to take the time to help those in need even though it will cost you.
Jesus illustrates mercy for us in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. He tells the story of a man who was travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho when he is attacked, robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. And the question is who will show him compassion by helping him.
A priest is the first on the scene but he avoids the helpless man and keeps walking. Next, a Levite comes by and once again he avoids the man and keeps walking. But then another man comes and he goes out of his way to show mercy.
Luke 10:33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion…
1. 34 He went to him – this alone was more than the other two men.
2. He bound up his wounds – And likely tore his own clothes in order to make the bandages.
3. He poured oil and wine on the man’s wounds – The wine would act as a mild disinfectant while the oil would work to soothe.
4. Then he set him on his own animal – which meant that he would have to walk the rest of the way.
5. He brought him to an inn and took care of him – He didn’t just bring him there and drop him off, he stayed through the night to tend to the needs of this stranger that he met on the road.
6. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’
This is mercy. This is what it means to be merciful. It means that we care for the needs of others and are willing to do something about those needs even though it will cost us.
Now it’s one thing to show mercy to someone you know and care about, but Jesus is telling this story to a group of Jewish men who would have seen Samaritans as their natural enemies. You mean to tell me that Jesus’ kingdom is one where we show mercy to our enemies? Yes. The way of this world is not to show mercy but to be merciless. It is to take what you can and give nothing back.
Jesus knows this better than we do so He’s not just trying to encourage us to alter our behavior, don’t forget that this teaching is aimed at our hearts. He wants us to be merciful toward others because we ourselves were in need and He showed us mercy at the cost of His life.
Jesus was full of love and compassion when he came to us and found us lying on the side of the road. He bound up our wounds by tearing up his own rich garments. He anointed us with wine that cleanses and with oil that soothes. He placed us upon his back and he bore the burden of our sin. He paid our ransom price on the cross when He died in our place. He has also promised that even though He has gone away He will return and settle our account once and for all.
Because we have been forgiven, our Savior calls us to forgive. Because we have been shown mercy, He leads us to be merciful. So, here’s the question that we need to ask before we move on, “Are you merciful?” Have you been moved to show compassion to those around you in need? When people come to you for help do you help them? Has your need of mercy and Christ’s supply of mercy to your heart, resulted in you being merciful? This is the way of Christ’s kingdom.
Happy are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
II. Happy are the Pure-Hearted
V. 8 “Happy are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
What does Jesus mean by “pure in heart?” Some have used this verse to suggest that sinless perfection is what God requires for salvation. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day would have believed something like this. They would say that you must achieve total ritual and moral purity in order to see God. But this interpretation doesn’t fit with the rest of the NT teaching, such as that found in 1 John 1:8. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
The NT also teaches that by the works of the flesh no man can change the condition of his heart. Heart work is God’s work. A leopard can’t change his spots, nor can man change his own heart. The Christian is one who has come to understand that if I am to have a pure heart then God must do this and He does this by the Holy Spirit.
I want to let A.W. Pink help us to understand how the Spirit does this.
The heart of the Christian is made pure by a fourfold operation of the Holy Spirit. First, by imparting a holy nature at the new birth. Second, by bestowing a saving faith which unites its possessor to a holy Christ. Third, by sprinkling him with the precious blood of Christ, which purges his conscience. Fourth, by a progressive and life-long process of sanctification so that we, through His aid, mortify the flesh and live unto God. The result it that the believer has a sincere desire not to sin against God in thought or word or deed, but to please Him in all things.[2]
By faith in Christ, our hearts are washed clean from the guilt and power of sin. Before God, our hearts have been, “sprinkled clean from an evil conscience (Heb 10:22).” When we believed in Christ and turned from our sin the Holy Spirit was at work in us cleansing and purifying our heart by faith…that is the theological side of this phrase.
But there is also a practical side to this and it is that we are to live now not simply putting on an external show of religion, but to serve Christ with a purity of heart, with a sincere and undivided desire to honor and serve God.
1 Tim 1:5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
I don’t want to love others simply as an outward show, I want to love them with a pure heart. This means that we aren’t living and acting so that men will praise us but we are serving with joy in order to honor God. We want our service to be pure worship to God.
2 Tim 2:22 So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.
I don’t want my turning from sin and obedience to simply be an outward performance, I want to turn from my sin and obey Christ because He has changed my heart and set me free from my slavery to sin. I want to glorify God in my life.
And listen, I know I will fail. I know that even when I succeed and do the right thing there are often impure motives inside. If we are honest we can all confess that our motives are less than pure much of the time. Out of all these beatitudes this one seems to be the most impossible of them all. It seems to me that the longer I walk with Christ and the more I learn from His word, the more convinced I am that my sin is deeper than I ever imagined. But as I go on in life I am striving to live out what Christ has put in me, a pure heart.
I trust that when I recognize the impurity of my heart (my sin) and confess that to God, that He will be “faithful to forgive my sin and to cleanse my heart from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).” My hope is that “God, who began this good work in me, will bring it to completion at the day of Christ (Phil 1:6).” I will strive with all His might to live and serve with a pure heart trusting that by His grace I will see God.
What about you? Are you serving the Lord out of an undivided desire to honor the One who loved you and gave His life for you? Are you serving for your glory or for His?
Happy are the Pure in Heart, for they shall see God.
III. Happy are those who make peace
9 “Happy are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
This statement would have been hard to swallow for the Jews of Jesus’ day. They weren’t looking for a peaceful Messiah, but one ready to lead an army. Sure they would have accepted peace once the battle was won and once their freedom from Rome had been secured. But on the front-end, they wanted a deliverer, a military conqueror like David who would defeat their enemies and secure their borders once more.
But, Jesus came to make peace and that peace came at a cost. In Ephesians 2, the Apostle Paul explains how we should view the work of the gospel from Heaven’s perspective. He says that we were once alienated from God but now in Christ, we have been brought near by virtue of His redeeming blood. Based on what Christ has done on the cross, we who were separated from God and from one another have been brought together into a state of divine peace. Jesus is the global peacemaker.
Colossians 1:19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
In other words, the only begotten Son of God paid the ultimate price of His life in order to usher us into a relationship of peace with God and with one another. We are the recipients and beneficiaries of divine peace and Jesus was the peacemaker who made it all possible. No wonder we are called to be peacemakers.
Did you know that as a Christian you are called to be a peacemaker? The desire to make peace flows out of a heart that wants to serve the Lord purely and show mercy to others, but the calling to be a peacemaker is actually connected to the purpose of Christ in the gospel.
The NT teaches that we are to pursue peace, to be at peace, to seek for peace, to pray for peace, and even to strive for peace with everyone, so long as it depends on us. In Colossians, we are told to allow the peace of Christ to rule in our hearts. Christ gives to His disciples His peace, which is unlike anything the world has seen and we are to trust our troubled lives to God and rest in the peace that He gives which passes all understanding. Peace is not just something we do it is the state of our Christian lives.
But what does it mean to be a peacemaker? Peace is a state of harmony between two parties and a peacemaker is someone who works to establish peace between two people who have been separated by some disagreement. A Peacemaker is one who labors to bring reconciliation.
Ken Sande has written an excellent book titled The Peacemaker and in the preface, he explains the role of a peacemaker in this way.
Peacemakers are people who breathe grace. They draw continually on the goodness and power of Jesus, and then they bring His love, mercy, forgiveness, strength, and wisdom to the conflicts of daily life. God uses them to dissipate anger, improve understanding, promote justice and encourage repentance and reconciliation.[3]
I really like Sande’s book and recommend it to you; but let’s make sure that we are clear on what forms the basis of this peace, it is the truth of God’s Word. To be one who seeks to extend the peace of God means that this is not peace at all costs. This is not cheap peace but true and lasting peace that seeks to glorify God by honoring Christ and the Word. This means that we will not always be able to make peace, but we can always seek it.
We will not always be able to reconcile people to one another but we must try and sometimes it will cost us dearly, but true and lasting peace is a costly treasure. Peace means faith and repentance. Peace means confession and forgiveness. Peacemaking is not a simple labor but it comes with great reward.
Happy are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.
Conclusion…
“The Christian faith is not something on the surface of a man’s life, it is not merely a kind of coating or veneer. It is something that has been happening in the very center of his personality. That is why the New Testament talks about being born again (MLJ).” Becoming a Christian is primarily a work of God in our hearts and this change of heart results in a changed life. All of our Christian activities are the result of our new nature.
If you read these blessings and see them as a to-do-list that you must follow in order to earn God’s love then you have misunderstood the gospel. The Christian gospel, the good news, of Jesus Christ is not about what you and I do for God in order to earn salvation; it’s about what Christ has done on the cross to save us though we were dead in our trespasses and sins. The message of Christianity is not do, but done.
Our hope is in Him and His work. Our confidence before God is that Jesus has paid the price for our sins. Our song in this life is that, “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe; sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.” And now, in our gratitude for what He’s done and with a desire to bring our Savior glory, we display to the world what He has done in our hearts.
[1] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (Pg. 99)
[2] Pink, Arthur W.. An Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount (Arthur Pink Collection Book 22) (Kindle Locations 600-604). Prisbrary Publishing. Kindle Edition.
[3] Ken Sande, The Peacemaker (Pg. 11).
The Character of the Kingdom
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When Jesus took His seat on the mountainside and began to speak to the crowd the last thing people would have hoped for was a warning, but in a sense, that is what they received. The sermon on the Mount is an announcement of the Kingdom of God, an exposition of its character, it’s ethics and its reward. But at the same time, it was a warning. It was a warning to those who thought that they knew what the Kingdom of God would look like.
Those who saw the kingdom as chiefly political were put on notice that they were in jeopardy of missing the Kingdom altogether. Those who thought the kingdom was chiefly to be obtained through military conquest would have been shocked by Jesus’ opening statements. Those who thought the kingdom was already in their grasp on account of their moral behavior (Pharisees) were warned that they would never gain entry.
This sermon was a warning to those who presumed to have a handle on all things related to the Kingdom. It was a warning to a whole generation of people who had convinced themselves that they didn’t need a man like Jesus to bring them into the Kingdom and the scary thing is that I fear we need this warning today even more than they did.
Living in the American Suburbs can be one of the most hazardous things to your soul. The spirit at work in the suburbs has a tendency to overwhelm the spirit of Christ’s Kingdom. Living in the suburbs can be like a real-life game to see how much we can drown out the deep need of our soul. The message of the suburbs is that everyone is fine, that having more and newer stuff can really make you happy, and at the center of it all is the you.
The values of the suburbs are convenience, abundance and comfort. Out here you can have it all and you can even get it value sized for just 50 cents more. This spirit can be toxic to Sermon on the Mount because out here we aren’t made to feel the need that Jesus wants us to feel. Out here we can stop thinking, turn on the TV, warm up some food and relax on the couch until it’s time to go to bed.
Transition…
I know you’ve felt this before. You’ve felt the tension between the comforts that surround you and the message of Christ’s kingdom…or maybe it’s just me. But, I believe that now more than ever we need Jesus turn our assumptions upside down in order to teach us what matters the most. We need Jesus to turn our hearts right side up and that is what He does in this sermon.
He has taken His seat on the Mountain so let’s focus our hearts on what He has to say to us this morning.
Matt 5:2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Sermon Focus…
I. Happy are the sad
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Let’s remember what we learned last week about his word blessed. It is the Greek term μακαριοσ and it means fortunate, blissful or happy. You could substitute the term happy each time you see the word blessed. So you could read this, “Happy are the poor in spirit, happy are those who mourn, happy are the meek who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
But remember also that this term is not referring to shallow emotion but rather to the distinctly Christian joy that comes from having a share in the salvation of the Kingdom of God. It is not shaken by the fears and pains of this world. It is a deep seated happiness in God that turns our natural evaluation of life upside down.[1]
So let’s read verse 4 again, “Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Let’s be honest, its hard to make sense out of this statement. Happy are the sad. Happy are the unhappy. How can happiness result from sadness? In my day-to-day experience, the thing being promised here (happiness) does not normally come from what is being required (sadness). This doesn’t seem to make sense, in fact all of these statements are paradoxical, which means that they seem inconsistent with our normal human experience.
These statements seem upside-down. They seem absurd, but that is part of Jesus’ point. There is something about His Kingdom that defies our experience of life in this world. To understand this we have to get underneath this sadness and learn something about it to understand how this statement can be true. So here’s the question, what does it mean to mourn?
Of all the Greek terms used to convey sorrow in the NT (9) this is perhaps the strongest and most severe. To mourn means to feel deep grief. It means to experience severe sorrow and sadness. This is that bitter mourning that comes over the unexpected loss of a loved one. This term is used to describe the mourning of Jesus’ disciples after the crucifixion and before they knew that He had been raised from the dead.
This is not benign sadness but real heartfelt grief associated with deep loss. But what it is that has been lost, what has caused this deep grief? Don’t forget that Jesus is not talking about a superficial kind of mourning but a mourning that comes from the heart. He is not talking about a type of earthly sorrow but a type of spiritual sorrow that reflects the values of His kingdom. Jesus is speaking about godly sorrow that relates to the knowledge of our sin. He is referring to the type of sorrow we feel not because we have lost a loved one but because we have recognized our loss of innocence.
IOW, happy are those who mourn over their sin. Last week, we talked about what it meant to be poor in spirit. To be poor in spirit is to know one’s own spiritual bankruptcy before God. It is to recognize that any hope of salvation would lie outside of yourself, because on your own you have nothing to offer. It is to see yourself as a spiritual beggar in the eyes of God, but this second Beatitude takes the next step.
It is one thing to confess our spiritual poverty; it is quite another to grieve over it, to mourn over it. But this is what Jesus is calling for here. Verse 4 moves us from confession of sin to grief over that sin, from acknowledgment to remorse. This is an awareness of our depravity that has moved from the mind to the heart. Happy are those who grieve over their sin.
Is it possible for someone to acknowledge their sin and not grieve over it? Yes! In 2 Corinthians 7 Paul talks about two kinds of grieving over sin. The first type is what he calls worldly grief and it is an acknowledgement of your sin that might lead to a momentary change in behavior and an apology but nothing more. It is the type of grief that we see in children who aren’t sorry for what they’ve done so much as they are sorry that they got caught.
It’s the kind of grief we see when our family pet eats a sandwich off the table and then puts their head down when you tell them they are a bad dog. But as soon as you walk away they are sniffing around for more food. It is a learned behavior.
But there is another type of grief that goes deeper and has a more lasting effect upon our soul. Paul talks about this type of grief as well.
2 Cor 7:10 But godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. 11 For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter.
Being poor in Spirit leads to godly sorrow and godly sorrow over one’s sin leads to repentance.
King David knew what it was to mourn over his sin. He had taken what didn’t belong to him. He had taken another man’s wife. He had tried to cover it up to hide his guilt and shame, but when confronted with the truth, David’s heart was laid bare and this was his response.
Ps 51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!
3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,
Let me ask this question: Do you mourn over your sin? Is there sorrow in your heart over the sins that you have committed but also the sinful heart that resides in your chest? Do you take your sin seriously to the point of crying out to God and to the point of sincere repentance?
Our sinful heart doesn’t want us to acknowledge our poverty of spirit and it doesn’t want to feel deep sorrow, but the Spirit of God leads us on this journey. He reveals our sin. He makes our hearts to feel. Then He turns our mourning into dancing and our sorrow into joy, because He comforts us in our grief.
Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
The Spirit comforts us when we grieve over our sin, not by telling us that it is okay to keep on sinning, but by reminding us that Christ died to remove our guilt and shame. The Spirit comforts us by bringing conviction to our hearts, which in itself is a reminder of God’s work in our lives. He comforts us by bringing us to repentance in our heart and life. He is the comforter sent out to all those who believe; to all those who recognize their poverty of spirit and who grieve over their sin.
II. Happy are the Meek
5 “Happy are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
The history of humanity has shown that it is the powerful, the bold, the aggressive and often the ruthless who rule the earth. In the world, the more you assert yourself the more likely you are to succeed. In business, it is a dog eat dog world and the goal is to be an alpha dog. In politics, the modern practice is to employ a cut-throat scheme of maneuvering oneself to the top. Life in this world is a daily battle to climb the proverbial ladder with no concern about who you might step on along the way.
But here comes Jesus with an astounding statement that it’s the meek who will inherit the earth. We can’t help but notice that the character of Christ’s Kingdom is at odds with the kingdom of this world.
Can you imagine how this would have been received in Jesus’ day? His audience would have been eagerly awaiting the news of this would-be Messiah’s plan for how Israel was going to inherit the earth. They would have been on the edge of their seats to hear how Jesus would overthrow Rome and establish Jerusalem as the capital of the world. They wanted deliverance, they wanted independence, they wanted Israel to be a powerful nation state again. But with this statement Jesus wants them to fix their hope on a different type of kingdom, a different type of power.
They weren’t looking for a meek king who would lead His meek people to inherit the earth, but that is what Jesus promises. Meekness is not about power it is about gentleness. It is not a show of force it is a show of humility. It is not the dog eat dog mentality of the world but counting others as more significant than oneself.
But don’t forget that Jesus is aiming His words at our hearts. He is presenting the character of His kingdom which is not of this world, but of the Spirit. So don’t focus first on the external nature of this verse but on the internal. What does it mean to be meek (in spirit)?
This is where we need to see the logical connection between these different Beatitudes. The starting place is to see ourselves as exposed by the glory and holiness of God. When we see ourselves before God we can’t help but embrace our spiritual poverty and as we examine the root of our poverty we can’t help but be moved to grief and sorrow over the sin that dwells in our hearts.
But now, as we look up from our grief we look upon others and we realize something that we hadn’t before, we realize that we are no better than those around us. We see that our sin makes us equal in the eyes of God. I am a sinner through and through. I am no better than anyone in this room and I know that because the gospel has exposed me.
It is meekness that led Paul to call himself the “chief of sinners.” Meekness is seeing yourself for who you really are, a sinner whose pardon could only be supplied by the death of Christ. Our sin, yours and mine, is so great before God that Hell is a just punishment. The sin in our heart is so great that the Son of God had to give up His life to cover the debt.
How can I be arrogant toward you when I know deep down in my heart what I truly am. When we learn to see ourselves as wretched men like Paul did, we won’t see ourselves as lords among men, but beggars telling other beggars where to find food.
Has the reality of the gospel produced meekness in your heart? Let’s put it to the test. John Stott urges us to apply the test of meekness in this way:
I myself am quite happy to recite the confession in church and call myself a miserable sinner…But let somebody come up to me after church and call me a miserable sinner, and I want to punch him on the nose.
Here is the test, are you prepared to allow other people to think or speak of you the way the gospel does? Meekness begins in the heart but it doesn’t stay there, it works its way out and affects the way we treat others.
To live with humility and meekness before God and others is a reward on its own, but Jesus goes further when He says that the meek shall inherit the earth. The children of Israel had to fight to obtain the Promised Land but the Kingdom of Christ is different. In Christ, we will obtain our eternal inheritance not by might but by meekness.
III. Happy are the Hungry
Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied
We all know what it is to be hungry. We know what it is to be thirsty. But these terms go beyond your run of the mill experience of waiting too long between meals. The type of hunger that Jesus is talking about is the type that puts you on the edge of death. This is the type of hunger and thirst where the need of nourishment is a matter of life and death. This is something that perhaps only a few of us have ever experienced, maybe none of us.
But we have enough imagination to see the apparent absurdity in the statement. How can a person by happy when they are starving to the point of death? The statement is meant to jar us awake from our normal way of thinking. Jesus wants to grab our attention and draw us in close so that we can understand what He means and to learn how to find the satisfaction that He is promising.
Notice again that Jesus isn’t talking about hungering for food but hungering for righteousness, this is once again about the heart. This is a type of spiritual hunger that marks the Christian life. And notice also that this is the next logical step in the progression of these Beatitudes. The man who has come to recognize his poverty of spirit will go on to grieve over the sin that put them in that state. The man who grieves over his sin will come to know the greatness of his sin and this will produce a meekness in his heart toward himself and others. So at this stage you have a man/woman who is broken, empty, humble and filled with godly sorrow.
The thing they need most at this stage is to be filled. The thing they need most is the opposite of what they have come to see in their heart. The thing they need most is to be put back together, not on their own but by God. They need God to give them a new heart. They need a forgiving Father who will embrace them, and clean them up, put shoes on their feet and a robe on their back. The thing they need most is to be fed with good things, filled with good food…so they hunger and thirst for the goodness of God to fill their lives.
Jesus is talking about the spiritual hunger for righteousness that only He can fill. Some pursue righteousness by the flesh, meaning they seek to earn favor with God by keeping the law. They are attempting to earn salvation through works. But the man who is truly poor in spirit knows the impossibility of that. So he hungers for something that He can’t attain on his own. He pursues righteousness, not by works but by faith.
A starving person has one thought, one goal and that is to find food and water. Nothing else matters. The desire for food is so strong it drives out everything else. What is the controlling desire of your life? What is the hunger that fuels you?
Some hunger for stuff and the materialism of our culture simply can’t satisfy. Some hunger for attention and praise, but how many times must we read of celebrity meltdowns before we realize that fame can’t satisfy our hearts. Some hunger for pleasure and eventually find that it too can’t satisfy the deep longing of our souls.
Mick Jagger was right, “We can’t get no satisfaction…” This world can’t make us rich in the way we need most. This world can’t take away the sin that causes us to mourn. We can’t gain the kingdom by forfeiting our soul. We can’t be satisfied, truly satisfied, by the things of this world.
But Jesus extends this promise to us,
John 6:35 I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
Only Christ can satisfy the hunger in our soul and He does so the moment we come to Him. But notice that full satisfaction doesn’t come in this life. “They shall be satisfied.” The hunger doesn’t leave us. We know His righteousness saves us and we know in the end that His righteousness satisfies us, but the hunger doesn’t go away until Heaven. It comes on us again and again and each time we remember that Christ is the fountain of living water so we go to Him and drink deeply, but we keep coming back day after day, year after year.
What began in our hearts as a hunger for salvation becomes a hunger for sanctification. We long to be filled with more and more of Christ’s love and character.
Conclusion…
1. The Character of Christ’s Kingdom is a total reversal to that of this world. The world, and our worldly heart, wants to laugh not grieve, to be rich not poor in spirit, to be bold and assertive not meek. The kingdom of this world is attained by power, success, personal achievement and personal comfort; but the Kingdom of Christ is not achieved, it is a gift to those who’ve come to see their deep need of Christ.
2. Our Journey into Christ’s Kingdom starts with brokenness and ends in joy. Happy are the poor in spirit. Happy are those who grieve over their sin. Happy are the meek. Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. This is the journey that the gospel brings us through. It is a journey of brokenness before God that changes us from the inside out. It is a journey of being emptied of self and being filled by the Spirit of God. It is a journey the turns our world upside-down.
3. Those who enter the Kingdom are concerned with holiness. Are you poor in spirit? Are you broken and filled with grief over your sin? Are you humble and meek because the Gospel has exposed you before God? Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? What begins in the heart works out in life. Holy thinking marks the starting line, holy living is the path, and eternity the goal.
Jesus’ message is intended to wake us up from the siren song of the suburbs, let’s let it.
[1] Theological Dictionary of the New Testament on the word makarios.
The Manifesto of Christ's Kingdom
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Of all Jesus’ teaching, none is more readily identified and associated with Him than the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. It appears in the first book of the New Testament and while it is not the first recorded statement of Jesus, it is by far the longest and most comprehensive of His public sermons. It seems clear that Matthew views this message as the foundation upon which Jesus’ life, ministry, and kingdom are to be established.
The sermon is ground-breaking on multiple levels. It is the inauguration speech of the King of the Universe. It is the sermon that broke 400 years of divine silence and at the same time, it introduced the world to the Kingdom of God in a way that it had never known before. This sermon describes what human life and human community look like when they come under the rule of God’s grace.[1] The Old Testament ended with the threat of a curse but this sermon opens the New Testament with the promise of blessings.
And yet, like much of Christ’s teaching, the Sermon on the Mount is not just widely known it is also largely misunderstood. Modern liberal theology will say that it’s not your doctrine (what you believe) that truly matters, but how you live out the Sermon on the Mount. The problem is that they don’t seem to have even read the Sermon on the Mount because no one can be perfect as God is perfect, and yet Jesus tells us in this sermon that we must be perfect like our Heavenly Father is perfect.
Many modern people are familiar only with certain lines out of the Sermon on the Mount and they quote these lines out of self-interest or an attempt to defend their sin. “Don’t judge me! Jesus says not to judge others.” Love your enemies, turn the other cheek, do unto others…how many times have we heard these quoted or used them ourselves, with no clue or connection to what Jesus was actually talking about in the sermon?
At the same time, there are many who have never heard of the Sermon on the Mount. Virginia Stem Owens was a professor of English and Literature at Texas A &M and one of the assignments she gave to an incoming freshman was to read the Sermon on the Mount and write a response paper. Most of her students were middle-class, conservative, Republicans who held to traditional American values, but she was surprised by what she read in their responses.
The first paper she picked up began,
“In my opinion religion is one big hoax.”
The second read,
“There is an old saying that ‘you shouldn’t believe everything you read’ and it applies in this case.”
One student came right to the point,
“I did not like the essay ‘Sermon the Mount.’ It was hard to read and made me feel like I had to be perfect and no one is.”
“The things asked in this sermon are absurd. To look at a woman is adultery? That is the most extreme, stupid, un-human statement that I have ever heard.”[2]
Transition…
Some people love this sermon, some hate it, but ignoring it isn’t an option. This sermon is intended to shake things up. It takes the value system of our sinful world and turns it upside-down. It points an unflinching finger at religious legalists and hypocrites and tells them that they will have no part in the Kingdom of Heaven. But it also makes clear that not one part of the law of God will be overlooked. It tells us the way to eternal life and then tells us that the journey will cost us our very lives.
But in the end, this sermon is an announcement of Good News. A New King for God’s people has come and He is establishing a New Covenant and this is His message.
Matthew 5:1 Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Sermon Focus…
I. The Setting for this Sermon
Before Jesus begins to speak here in chapter 5, Matthew has been working to build our anticipation for what He is going to say and the significance of who He is. In chapter 1 we read of Jesus’ miraculous virgin birth and we are reminded of the prophet Isaiah’s words,
Isa 7:14 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear and son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.
Next came John the Baptist, preparing the way of the Lord and pointing to Jesus saying, “He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and the fire (Matt 3:11).”
At Jesus’ baptism, God the Father spoke from Heaven declaring, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased (Matt 3:17).” Even the Devil got involved and declared Jesus to be the Son of God and tried to use that as a way to tempt Him in the wilderness.
If we go all the way back to the genealogy in chapter 1 we read that Jesus is called the Messiah, the Son of David, and the Son of God. He is the promised Ruler from Bethlehem, born of a virgin, and given the title, “God with us.” He is the bearer of the Spirit of God, the second Israel who was tempted in the wilderness but did not fail.
After succeeding in the wilderness Matthew tells us that Jesus went to Capernaum by the sea and began to preach, saying “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He taught in the synagogues and proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom. He healed the sick and afflicted, He cast out demons and by this time great crowds have begun to gather around Him.
But there is one more thing that sets our anticipation for Jesus’ first sermon and it comes by way of comparison and symbolism. I want you to think in terms of the whole of Redemptive History. There are two key events in the Bible that help us to see the redeeming love of God more clearly than any others: The Exodus from Egypt and the Ministry of Jesus. Matthew wants us to see a parallel between what took place at the time of the Exodus and what is taking place as Jesus steps onto the Mountain.
The setting for this Sermon on the Mount should fill our hearts with anticipation as we get set to hear what the Messiah and new Moses will say about the Kingdom of God and our own redemption from bondage to sin.
II. How do we read the Sermon?
How are we to understand and interpret what we read in Jesus message? To whom does it apply? What is its real purpose?
Craig Keener is a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary and he states that there are 36 different interpretations for this sermon. There is a Catholic view, a Lutheran view, a Social gospel view, a dispensational view, an Anabaptist view and much more. I don’t plan to go through them all but it is vitally important that we understand how we are supposed to read this sermon.
Is Jesus presenting a new law, like the law of Moses, that we are in some way supposed to follow in order that we can earn entry into the Kingdom of Heaven? Is this sermon outlining how we can live in order to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth by our own efforts? No, and No, that is not the way to read this sermon.
One interpretation says that the Sermon on the Mount has nothing whatsoever to do with modern Christians. They say that Jesus was offering the Jews of His day an opportunity to take part in the Kingdom but since they refused to acknowledge Him as their king, He went to the cross instead. In other words, the church was something of an afterthought, a plan B. Once again, No!
Let me be clear when I say that this sermon and everything in it is critically important for us today. It is a sermon meant for all Christians and it is a message that the unbelieving world needs to hear as well. This is the inaugural address of the King of kings and what He is showing us is a picture of what life is like in His Kingdom. So in order to understand this sermon, we must have some understanding of His Kingdom.
“The Jews (of that day) had a false, materialistic conception of the Kingdom. They thought the Messiah was one who was coming to give them political freedom. They thought of the kingdom in an external sense, a mechanical, military, materialistic sense…But the great purpose of this Sermon is to give an exposition of the kingdom as something which is essentially spiritual. The kingdom (at this time) is primarily something ‘within you.’ It is that which governs and controls the heart, mind, and outlook.
In other words, we are not told in the Sermon on the Mount, “Live like this and you will become Christian’; rather we are told, ‘Because you are Christian live like this.” This is how Christians ought to live; this is how Christians are meant to live (Martyn Lloyd Jones).”[3]
In John 18 as He stood before Pilate, Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” The Kingdom of Christ is first and foremost internal not external, it is spiritual and moral, not physical and political. His words are aimed at our hearts, because who we are in our hearts will determine what we do in life.
The gospel of Jesus and this sermon are not about external conformity to a pattern of religion. In fact, much of what He says throughout His ministry is aimed at correcting the teaching of the Pharisees which majored in external obedience as a way to earn spiritual favor with God. Jesus wants nothing to do with that. He doesn’t want blind obedience; He wants our lives of faith to be fueled by a love for God that flows from hearts so drenched in God’s grace that they are dripping wet.
The kind of righteous life that Jesus outlines for us in this sermon is first a matter of the heart. But that poses another problem, what if our hearts are the problem? What if our hearts are filled with pride, anger, and idolatry? What if we read this sermon, apply it to our hearts and find that we aren’t fit for the kingdom? That, I think, is where Jesus wants us to start because it means there is only one solution…we must be born again.
We cannot achieve the character of this Kingdom apart from God’s regenerating and saving grace. As He preaches this sermon, Jesus wants us to sense our deep need for God to give us a new heart. He wants us to yearn for God to write His law on our hearts by the Spirit. He wants us to come face to face with our own spiritual poverty and then He wants to build us back upon the foundation of His love and grace.
III. The Blessings of the Sermon
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
The first thing that I want us to notice is the word blessed. It is the Greek term μακαριοσ and it means fortunate, blissful or happy. Happy are the poor in spirit, happy are those who mourn, happy are the meek who hunger and thirst for righteousness. This is counterintuitive. This is upside-down; a complete reversal of our natural way of thinking.
What does this mean? This term blessed/happy was used by the Greeks to talk about a type of transcendent happiness that went beyond care, labor, and death. This term relates to inner happiness that is not subject to earthly suffering and worry. When this term is used in the NT it refers to the distinctly Christian joy that comes from having a share in the salvation of the Kingdom of God. It is not shaken by the fears and pains of this world. It is a deep-seated happiness in God that turns our natural evaluation of life upside down.[4]
This is Hebrews 10:34 kind of happiness…
34 For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.
But what does it mean to be poor in spirit? The phrase poor in spirit means to be completely destitute to recognize one’s own poverty of the soul. Even in our own day, we use this term to refer to someone who leads the life of a beggar. This is someone who has no property, no money, no power, no status; someone who is completely dependent on others for support. This person is empty, with nothing to offer and they know it. But the type of poverty that Jesus is after deals with one’s soul.
The poor in spirit are those who have come to see and feel the brokenness in their heart and the bankruptcy in their soul. When it comes to righteousness, true righteousness, they are no better than a beggar on the street. Even if they had a little money in their pocket it wouldn’t come close to paying off the debt they owe to God, they are truly poor in spirit.
No one wants to find themselves in this place. Our natural inclination is to assume that we have much to offer and that our spiritual life, though not perfect, is far from a state of poverty. The Pharisees that gathered around to hear Jesus’ message would have scoffed at this opening statement. This is not what the religious people in the crowd wanted to hear, but this is the point of entry into the Kingdom of God. This is how we are made to feel when the gospel hits our ears for the first time.
The gospel does two things in us; it tears us down and then it builds us back up. The gospel shows that our hearts are so desperately wicked that there is no hope that we can overcome our past sin much less do enough to earn eternal life. The gospel holds up the law of God demanding that we keep it perfectly, and then k that we have no chance. We are utterly incapable of pleasing God on our own. The gospel puts us on our knees before God and that is exactly where Christ wants us to start because only those who have come to understand their poverty of spirit before God are fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.
To be poor in spirit means an absence of spiritual pride, an absence of self-assurance and self-reliance. It is this tremendous awareness that we are nothing in the presence of God (Lloyd-Jones).[5]
To be poor in spirit is to be like the prophet Isaiah who saw the Lord high and lifted up, but he fell to knees and cried out, “Woe is me! For I am lost…I am unclean and everyone around me is unclean as well.”
To be poor in spirit is to be like the apostle Paul who could quote a spiritual resume that would shame everyone in this room, but when he stood before Christ he came to realize that all of his religious past was worthless. Paul said, “I count it all to be loss…like nothing but rubbish (dung) in the eyes of God.”
To be poor in spirit is to be like the Tax Collector in Luke 18 who would not even look up to heaven but instead beat his chest saying, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
When Jesus says, “Happy are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven…” He is making it clear that the kingdom is fit only for those who feel that their only hope of salvation lies outside of themselves because on their own they are nothing more than a beggar.
No wonder those young men and women at Texas A & M didn’t like this sermon. To be poor in spirit is foreign to the unbelieving world. The spirit of this world says that if you want to get somewhere you have to believe in yourself, you have to rely on yourself, you have to take pride in yourself. The spirit of our culture says that there is nothing wrong with you or your heart. It wants you to believe that there is nothing wrong with your choices, that there is nothing wrong with your spirit. In fact, the arrogance of our culture would say that if God is not willing to accept what you have to offer then you shouldn’t want anything to do with Him.
Conclusion…
But Jesus wants us to know that His Kingdom belongs to those who are poor in spirit. There is no one in the Kingdom of God who is not poor in spirit. It is the fundamental posture of its citizens and it is the entry point into the Christian life.
Perhaps you’ve never thought of this before, but I don’t think that Jesus just chose these w at random. There is a very specific and purposeful order to these attitudes, a logical spiritual sequence that helps us to see how the Spirit of God draws us to salvation.
He begins by showing us our need. Our journey to salvation by grace alone begins with understanding that if not for God’s grace we have no hope of being saved. We cannot be filled with God’s grace until we are first emptied of our own self-righteousness. We will not receive the riches of the Kingdom until we are able to see just how poor and needy we are.
But, it is also important for us to understand that as believers we don’t lose that sense of being poor in spirit. We still battle spiritual pride along the way and like Paul we say,
Gal 6:14 But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
The song of the poor in spirit is this,
Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked come to Thee for dress; Helpless look to Thee for grace;
Foul I to the fountain fly; wash me Savior or I die.
How do you see yourself? How do you view yourself in the presence of God? Are you poor in spirit? Have you come to see your own spiritual emptiness apart from Christ? Have you come to see that you are a spiritual beggar before God? If so, then listen to the words of Jesus once more.
Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
[1] John Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Pg. 18)
[2] http://andynaselli.com/why-people-hate-the-sermon-on-the-mount
[3] Martyn Lloyd Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (Pg. 16-17)
[4] Theological Dictionary of the New Testament on the word makarios.
[5] MLJ, pg. 50.
Two Mountains, One God
Manuscript
By the summer of 2000, I had been a Christian for just over 2 years, but I found myself standing on the front steps of a one-room church building in the middle of a cotton field in Louisiana. It was a hot and dusty and unfamiliar but I was in the right place. I was early, which would account for the fact that the front door was still locked, but my knock on the door was nothing compared the pounding of my heart in my chest.
You see, that morning I was set to preach for the first time and I was nervous. My father had bought me a new suit and tie, but as soon as the door opened it was obvious that I would look out of place. The smiling woman who opened the door was wearing a flannel shirt and denim overalls and she was holding a can of Lysol in her hand because a skunk had gotten under the building the night before. But those details didn’t matter all that much at the time.
Stepping into the building I was less focused on the surroundings as I was on the sermon I was about to preach. I had been studying for weeks and had revised my manuscript several times. I had practiced the sermon in front of the mirror and had almost memorized every line.
But still, I was nervous in a way that I will never forget. That old fear of failure was there, the fear of messing up in front of a room full of people. James 3 was there in the back of my mind as well, “Not many of you should become teachers…for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” My fiancé was there and no one wants to look like a fool in front of the person they love.
But over all of these fears and anxieties there was something much more pressing. It’s hard to explain, but it comes to this, I was filled with a deep sense of my inadequacy and unworthiness at standing before a group of Christians and representing God to them. I suddenly felt that I had no business behind the pulpit. Who am I to proclaim God’s Word? Who am I to stand before God’s people? Who am I to stand before God and declare what He has said?
Each week, before I ascend to the pulpit, I sit on this front row and pray that God would humble me, strengthen me, fill me and use me. And each week I feel that same old inadequacy and unworthiness. But I’m okay with it, in fact, I welcome it and hope that I never lose it because no matter how long I’ve been preaching or how well I might know my sermon or my audience, our God is still a consuming fire and we should approach Him with reverence and awe.
Transition…
12 weeks ago we started a study on the doctrine of God. I wanted us to take the time to look deeply into Scripture so that we could better understand, know and worship our God. In the process, we have learned some wonderful things about Him but today I want to bring this series to a close in a very practical way by asking the question, “How do we approach the God of the Bible?”
How do we relate to and approach an eternally powerful, eternally present, eternally good God? How do we approach a God who is perfectly holy, perfectly loving, and perfectly just? How can we hope to have a relationship with our Creator; with the God who exists as three-in-one?
This morning we are going to allow the author of Hebrews help us answer this question.
Hebrews 12:18 For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest 19 and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. 20 For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” 21 Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”
V. 22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Sermon Focus…
I. The Mountain of Law
When we began this journey to behold our God we entered into the story on the heels of the plagues in Egypt, the night of the Passover and the Exodus. We kicked this whole thing off with Moses’ request for God to, “Show me your Glory!” This stage of redemptive history was more about God showing Himself to His people than about God telling His people about Him. Theology wasn’t a subject to be read it was miracles to be witnessed. Sure, God had spoken to a few people and Moses was among that short list; but the primary way that Israel knew their God was through the signs that they had seen.
God had raised up a redeemer and sent Him to the people. He had commanded the forces of nature and the creatures of the world to do His will and to declare that He was the One True God. The memory of signs and wonders helped form the people’s understanding of God, but that was going to change.
God led the people into the wilderness and to the base of Mount Sinai and when they arrived…
Exo 19:9 And the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, (so) that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever.”
Finally, the people are going to hear God speak. Can you imagine how exciting that must have been? The God who loved them and heard their cries and sent them a redeemer and freed them from slavery was going to come and speak to them. But they weren’t prepared for what their God was going to say.
This mountain was ground zero for what we call the Old Covenant, which was an agreement between God and the people that outlined how they were to live in relationship to Him. It revealed God’s nature, character, will, and standards. It described the requirements and restrictions that the people would have to follow. But more than that, this covenant at Sinai made it crystal clear what it was like to approach God.
That is what we all want, right? We want to approach God. We want to know God and be close to Him and be in a relationship with Him. But what the people learned at Sinai is that God is unapproachable. Sinful man could not come near to God and live.
Even before God came down to talk with Moses, He made all the people back up away from the mountain. The people had to spend 3 days consecrating (cleansing and preparing) themselves. Then the people weren’t even allowed to come near to the mountain because if they touched the mountain they would die. God even sent Moses back down a second time to warn the people not to touch the mountain.
God wanted to make it crystal clear that sinners weren’t allowed to come near His awesome holiness on their own. Sinful man cannot hope to come into the presence of God and live. Then when the day finally came things got worse. The writer of Hebrews described the scene from Exodus 19…
Exo 19:16 On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightning and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. 17 Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. 18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. 19 And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. 20 The Lord came down on Mount Sinai
The scene was so frightening that the people trembled in fear and begged Moses to talk to God and ask Him to stop speaking. The sound of His voice was so terrifying that they felt as though they would die. The God of Sinai is a God to be feared. His power is terrifying and no man can stand in His presence on his own.
This scene would become the context for our understanding of the Old Covenant. The Sinai covenant was marked by the fear of being in the presence of God. It was marked by the commandments, the law and the fear of death. In 2 Cor 3:7 the Apostle Paul referred to it as “the ministry of death carved in letters on stone… the ministry of condemnation.”
Now, why does Paul speak of it this way? Because Mt. Sinai makes demands that man can’t fulfill. At Sinai, we see our inability and we fear the punishment that it announces. Sinai is the mountain of law and the law can’t save us it can only condemn us. But the law is not the problem, we are the problem.
You see, we can’t get our act together and in Romans 7, Paul tells us why. In Romans 7 the apostle Paul gets vulnerable with us when he lets us know about his own struggle with sin. He says, “I was once alive, but then the law came and when I saw the commandments of God, it was like sin came alive in me and I died. The commandments that promised life actually proved to be death to me.”
He had been studying the law of God all of his life, but he finally came to the point where he realizes that there was no way that he, or any other man, could keep the law perfectly. The law doesn’t bring life, it brings death. But he goes on to say that the law iss not the problem, sin is the problem.
Rom 7:13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin…
The law puts a spotlight on our sin. It exposes just how sinful we are. It makes us to see the fact that we are liars, thieves, adulterers, murders, and idolaters. But the law doesn’t create those things in us, it simply exposes that our hearts are filled with sinful desires. Our spirit may be willing but our flesh is weak.
V. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh. I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
V. 22 I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
In Romans 7 Paul is seeing himself as a man standing at the foot of Mt. Sinai hopelessly and helplessly condemned under the weight of his sin. It wasn’t that God was wrong when He came down on Mt. Sinai and gave us the law; but when He came down He revealed something to us. The reason we can’t get our act together, the reason we can’t get free from sin, the reason we can’t come near to God on our own is because we are wretched sinners through and through.
He is holy and we are not. He is righteous and we are wretched. He is perfect and we are stuck in the cycle of trying to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps only we keep slipping and falling on the floor and our bootstraps end up wrapped around our neck choking us to death.
This is what Sinai does to us. It reveals our sin in a vivid scene of darkness, fire, gloom and despair…But there is another mountain that God wants us to come to.
II. The Mountain of Grace
V. 22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Sinai is synonymous with the law but Zion is synonymous with grace. Zion was the name given to the city of the Jebusites. It was situated on a hill and when David became King he took the city and made it His capital. Zion refers to Jerusalem, the city of God and His people. The city where the temple of God was built. The city where the presence of God dwelt.
The people could not approach Mt. Sinai but they could approach Mt. Zion.
Sinai was forbidding and terrifying, Zion is inviting and gracious. Sinai is closed to all, because no one is able to please God on Sinai’s terms – perfect fulfillment of the law. Zion is open to all, because Jesus Christ has met those terms and will stand in the place of anyone who will come to God through Him. Zion symbolizes the approachable God (J Mac, Commentary on Hebrews. Pg 413).
We can’t come to Sinai on our own and we can’t come to Zion on our own either. In order to come to Mt. Zion we must come through the sacrifice of Jesus. He kept the law on our behalf. He achieved righteousness for us. He died our death on the cross. He paid the price for our freedom and adoption. Sinai reveals our bondage to sin, Zion is where we come to be free.
Here’s another way for us to look at this…Sinai brings us face to face with Romans 7 but Zion ushers us into the comfort of Romans 8. Jared Wilson writes…
“Every day I wake up in Romans 7…My alarm goes off and I sit up in bed, my uncoffeed consciousness groggily geared up for sins – both of omission and of commission. I am engaged in the flesh before I even get my feet on the carpet.
And yet, right there beside me, laid out like the day’s outfit, are new mercies. Romans 8 lies right there, spooning Romans 7 in a full-size bed, no wiggle room.[1] And it says to us…
Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.
Romans 7 is a world of shadow, fear and judgment; but Romans 8 is a world of light, peace, and deep joy of Christ. Romans 7 speaks a terrifying word of guilt, shame and condemnation; but Romans 8 speaks of mercy, grace, and full atonement. Romans 7 provides a window into a hellish eternity; but Romans 8 opens the doors to eternal rest in the presence of God.
The best news in the world is that we are not gathered at the fearful foot of Mt. Sinai this morning, but have been invited up onto the merciful mountain of Zion. And the final question is, what must we do?
III. How must we respond to our God…
Now that we have come to the end of this study on the doctrine of God, what is to be our response? What are some practical ways that theology should impact our lives?
Heb 12:25 See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven.
The author of Hebrews has shown us the contrast between the two mountains and here he helps us to understand what that means in a practical sense. We must not refuse or ignore the One that is speaking to us. Or to state it in the positive, “We must hear the Word of God and we must receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
1. We must Hear and Receive God’s Word –
Many of the Israelites refused to listen to God. They heard Him and trembled in fear, but still they went their own way and the full weight of the law rested upon them. This same thing happens in the church today. People hear the Word of God, they even hear the call to turn from their sin and trust in Jesus; but being a hearer of the Word is not the same thing as being a doer of the Word.
Far too many people today come to church to get some advice, but we need more than good advice, we need good news. The reason we think we simply need some good advice is that we don’t understand just how jacked-up we really are. We don’t understand nor do we want to accept the fact that we are desperately wicked people. We are sinners stuck in the rut of Romans 7 and we need the powerful grace of Romans 8 to change our hearts.
We need to listen to God’s speak and His message for the world today is Jesus. God’s word to us today is to come to Christ and live. God’s word to us today is turn from our sin and trust in Jesus to save us and lead us to God. And this is not just for unbelievers to hear and be saved, it’s for believers as well. We need to remember the gospel, we need to preach God’s grace to our hearts again and again. We need to 1. Hear and Receive God’s Word.
2. We must Worship God with reverence and Awe
No one can face Sinai alone. No one can approach God through the law; but Christ has done what the law could not do. He came down the mountain. He bought our freedom with His blood. He sent the Spirit to give us a new heart and a new life. He has ushered us into a Kingdom that cannot be shaken and our response is to worship Him with reverence and awe.
Heb 12:28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.
Atop both mountains (Sinai and Zion) we see the same God, the same consuming fire; but through Christ we are called up to meet with Him face to face. Christ has made a way for us to come back into the presence of God, but He is still a consuming fire. So we come before Him with gratitude and humility, with bent knees and reverent hearts and silent awe.
We use the word awesome far too flippantly when in reality there are few things in this world that truly fill us with awe. Incredible scenes in nature, breathtaking works of art, a deeply moving piece of music they fill us with joy and appreciation; but how many things leave us in a state of silent awe and gaping wonder.
2. Every worshipful glance at our God should leave us in a state of reverence and awe.
3. We Must be transformed
The goal of this study was not simply that we could learn more things about God, but that we could grow in our understanding and be changed. That’s what happens when we gaze at our god.
2 Cor 3:16 When one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed…18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
Theology is transformative and is not like other forms of information. There are some subjects that you can study that don’t really have an impact on your day to day life, but theology is not one of them. If you are growing in your knowledge of God you cannot stay the same. You will be shaped by that experience.
For instance, as I learn more about the grace of God, I am not only filled with more gratitude but also I should become more gracious as well. God calls us to be more like Him and His Spirit works that in us so the more I love the Lord my God with all my mind, the more I will learn to love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, and strength.
As I learn more about God’s holiness I am going to come to a better understanding of my own sin, which should lead me to repentance and confession….
Beholding the glory of the Lord leads to transformation because theology is transformative.
Conclusion…
4. We Must Serve the Lord
How could we grow in our knowledge of God without growing in our service to Him? To know Him is to love Him and serve Him. He calls us to serve Him in our hearts, in our homes, in the church and in the world.
[1] Jared C. Wilson, The Imperfect Disciple (Pg. 24-25)
The Spirit of Truth
Manuscript
If you only had 3 hours to spend with the people you cared about most, what would you do? Would you talk about how much they mean to you? Would you reminisce about the time you spent together? Would you say all the things that you couldn’t bear to leave unsaid? You would probably do all those things and more, but One thing is certain, if you knew you only had 3 more hours to spend with the people you loved most, you wouldn’t waste your time. You would do all that you could to make that time count.
As we read through the gospel of John and come to the 14th chapter, we understand that Jesus’ time with the disciples is almost at its end. In just a few short hours he will be arrested and His trial will begin. That trial will stretch on through the night. In the early morning hours, he will stand before Pilate. By 9 am He will be presented to the people and condemned. By noon, He will be nailed to the cross, bow His head and give up His life.
By the time we get to John chapter 14, Jesus has about 15 hours to live, but He will only spend about 3 of those hours with the 12. So, what does Jesus talk about in these final hours? For starters, He wants to comfort them. He wants them to know that God’s plan is right on track. They don’t need to abandon the gospel; they don’t need to seek salvation in any other way. They have put their hope in Him and nothing needs to change that.
But there is something else that dominates his final hours with the 12. He wants them to know that He is going to be leaving them but this is actually a good thing because when He leaves Someone else is going to come.
John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
John 16:7I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; 11 concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
Transition…
For the disciples, the coming of the Holy Spirit was good news. He would continue the work that God the Father and Christ the Son had begun. He would comfort them in the absence of Jesus. He would be a helper for them as they carried out the Great Commission but at the same time His coming would have an impact on the whole world.
The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit is the Cinderella Story of Christian Doctrine. He is the person of the Trinity that we seldom talk about, but this morning we are going to focus our attention on Him almost exclusively. I don’t have 3 hours like Jesus, but in the next 40 minutes or so I want us to answer 3 questions about the Holy Spirit: Who He is, What does He do and Why does His presence matter to us.
Sermon Focus…
I. Who is the Holy Spirit
The word for “spirit” in the OT is the Hebrew term “ruahk.” In the NT the word for spirit is “pnuema.” Both of these terms are used in other places to refer to wind or breath, as well as life, motion and activity. This has caused some, like the Jews, to think of the Holy Spirit as the impersonal force or power of God. Muslims teach that the Spirit of God is an angel sent to do God’s bidding. But the Bible is quite clear that the Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force, nor an angel; but rather He is the third person of our Triune God.
The Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit is a person by drawing out attention to the personal attributes that are ascribed to Him. The Holy Spirit grieves (Eph 4:30), He intercedes for us (Rom 8:26-27), He speaks (Mk 13:11), He creates (Gen 1:2) and He can be blasphemed (Mk 3:28-29). The Holy Spirit possesses wisdom and understanding (1 Cor 2:10-12, Isa 40:8, Psa 139:23), He acts according to His own will (1 Cor 12:11), and He is the One who sets apart men to special tasks of ministry (Acts 13:2, 4).
These are not the actions of a force or a power. The Holy Spirit is an intelligent, emotive, interactive, powerful, independent and personal being.
In the passage we read earlier from John 14:16, we see Jesus refer to the Holy Spirit as a HE.
V. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
The Holy Spirit is more than an impersonal force; He is a personal being. But He is also more than just a person, He is a divine person. In Hebrews 9:14, He is called the eternal Spirit. In Acts 5, when Ananias and Saphira lied to the Holy Spirit they are said to have lied to God. He shares in the immensity of God, the omnipotence of God, the foreknowledge of God, the omniscience of God and the Sovereignty of God.
The Spirit is God, like the Father and the Son. He stands alongside them as an object of worship. He is called the Holy Spirit because by His very nature He possesses the attribute of divine holiness. The Holy Spirit is God, but He is not the Father nor the Son. He is His own divine person equal in glory and majesty to the Father and the Son.
This is orthodox Christian teaching. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the trinity, but we don’t often think about the Spirit in this way. Within the Godhead, the Holy Spirit is probably the most neglected, the least cherished, the most misunderstood. Modern charismaticism has a lot to do with our misunderstanding of the Spirit. But one of the reasons that we focus more on the Father and Jesus, than the Spirit, is that this is the Spirit’s work.
John 16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
Whether we realize it or not, the Holy Spirit draws our attention away from Himself and He directs our focus to Christ, He magnifies the Work and Word of Jesus. His task is not to highlight our subjective spiritual experiences, but to amplify our love for Jesus.
But there is something else in this passage that we need to consider. In verse 13 Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes…” and we need to be careful that we don’t misunderstand what this means. This does not mean that the Holy Spirit hasn’t been in the world up to this point, but that He was coming into the world with far greater energy and far wider influence than before.
After Christ’s ascension into Heaven, the Holy Spirit came down into the world and was poured out upon men in such a way that it would seem as if He was coming for the first time. But the OT makes clear that He has been active in the world from the very beginning. Let’s look at the Presence and Work of the Holy Spirit throughout Scripture.
II. What the Holy Spirit Does (OT)
We first read of the Holy Spirit during the creation account. In Gen 1:2, we learn that He was hovering over the dark and disordered waters, ready to bring order and life to the new creation.
The primary function of the Holy Spirit in the OT is as the Spirit of prophecy. He revealed the Word of God to holy men who then proclaimed that word to the people and wrote it down for our instruction. That familiar phrase, “Thus saith the Lord…” is evidence of the Spirit’s work of revealing God’s message to God’s people.
After the Exodus, we learn that the Holy Spirit was poured out on certain men in order to equip them with the skill to create the artistic pieces that God wanted to fill the temple. You may remember that the instructions for the temple were incredibly detailed. Everything is to be done just so, and everything is to look a certain way. The curtains are to have a certain type of thread and a certain color of thread. The tables are to be a certain size and made of a certain wood and then covered over with gold. The lamp stands are to be made a certain way and then all of the elements are to be covered over with detailed artwork and design elements.
To pull off this massive work of construction and this incredibly detailed work of decorating; God gave His Holy Spirit to men.
Exodus 31:1-6The LORD said to Moses, 2 "See, I have called by name Bezalel…3 and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, 4 to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, 5 in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. 6 And behold, I have appointed (others), of the tribe of Dan. And I have given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have commanded you:
Later in Exodus 35:30,
Exodus 35:30 Then Moses said to the people of Israel, "See, the LORD has called by name Bezalel…of the tribe of Judah; 31 and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, 32 to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, 33 in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, for work in every skilled craft. 34 And he has inspired him to teach, both him and Oholiab the son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan. 35 He has filled them with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, or by a weaver- by any sort of workman or skilled designer.
God filled these men with the Holy Spirit to be artists and craftsmen. God gave them the artistic ability and skill that would allow them to make the things inside the temple beautiful and glorious (Exodus 28:40). Not only did God give these men artistic gifts that would be used to build the temple but he also made these gifts evident to His people so that they would rejoice together in the Lord’s goodness.
The Holy Spirit is also present in the OT in the lives of those in leadership. The Judges: Balaam, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson and Azariah, were filled with the Spirit of the Lord. The Spirit of the Lord anointed the kings and empowered David to be victorious in battle.
In Proverbs the Spirit brings wisdom and guides us in understanding. The Prophets were filled with the Spirit to the point that they were known as ”Men of the Spirit.” Their entire work as prophets was inspired by the Spirit of God. But the OT prophets help us anticipate that the Holy Spirit’s work is actually going to increase in the age to come
Joel 2:28“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. 29 Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.
III. What the Holy Spirit does (NT)
The first thing we notice of the Holy Spirit’s in the NT is how He is at work in the life of Jesus. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. As His public ministry began, it was said that He would baptize people with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus at His baptism. The Spirit led Him into the wilderness, and when He returned to Galilee it was in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The first time we hear Jesus preach in the gospel of Luke He quotes from Isaiah saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.” Jesus prayed in the Spirit, He was led by the Spirit, He taught on the Spirit, and He promised to pour out the Holy Spirit onto those who came to believe in Him.
The “pouring out” of the Holy Spirit is an expression that refers to the gospel age when the Spirit’s primary work is to bring people to saving faith in Christ, to grow them in that faith, and sustain them in that faith until the end comes.
IV. Why this matters for us today
let’s look more specifically at the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I have divided His work into eight categories and as we work thorough these will come to understand how vital the Holy Spirit is to our Christian life.
1. The Spirit convicts us
John 16:7… But if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; 11 concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
Notice first, that the Holy Spirit brings: conviction of sin, righteousness and judgment. For believers, we understand that the Holy Spirit has worked in us to convince us of our sins before God, of the righteousness of Christ that we need, and of the certainty that judgment will come.
This progression is the way we understand how God works in our heart and mind to draw us to saving faith in Christ. But there is more to this text. The Holy Spirit also brings this conviction of sin to the unbelieving world. The Spirit exposes sin. He puts a giant spotlight on it and causes the world to see the ugliness that they want to deny.
The world wants to brag about its own supposed goodness but the Spirit draws attention to Jesus’ righteousness, which was enough to cause the Father to welcome Him into Heaven. Judgment is coming and the world wants to act as though nothing is wrong, but the Spirit bears witness to the justice of God that will be poured out on Satan and all those who are his children. The Spirit Convicts.
2. The Spirit converts us
John 3:3 Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
In this conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus is talking about the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that causes us to be born again. This is the Holy Spirit’s work. He removes our blindness so that we can see our need of Christ. He breathes life into our souls and brings us out of our deadness to sin. He removes our heart of stone and gives us a living heart of flesh.
The Holy Spirit does this work in every believer and there is no genuine saving faith in Christ apart from this converting work of the Holy Spirit.
3. The Spirit applies to us all that Christ accomplished.
The whole of Romans 8 is about how the Spirit has set us free from sin and death. In Christ, the Spirit is at work in our life to help us live and enjoy the peace and comfort of Christ. Everything that Christ accomplished for us is applied to us by the Spirit, even the promise of resurrection.
V. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
The Spirit bears witness in our hearts that we are children of God and fellow heirs with Christ (Rom 8:16-17), He groans within us and causes us to long for the day when Christ will return to set all of creation free from the curse of sin and death (Rom 8:23), He helps us in our weaknesses and intercedes/prays for us with groanings too deep for words, and He will sustain us in the faith making us more than conquerors until the day our Lord appears.
4. The Spirit dwells with us forever
John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
Now, we know that in the OT the Holy Spirit was active in the hearts and lives of God’s people, but not in the same way as in the NT. For instance, King Saul was anointed with the Holy Spirit but because of his sin the Bible says that the Holy Spirit departed from Him. That’s why when King David confessed his sin he prayed in Ps 51,
11 Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.
But Jesus wants us to know that a change has come in the ministry of the Holy Spirit. When He comes on those who love and obey Jesus, He will not leave. He will not be taken away from us, but will be with us and will remain with us, forever. He will continue to convict us, to lead us to repentance, and to restore us to faithfulness…until Christ comes (Phil 1:6).
5. The Spirit teaches us
John 14:25 “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
This instruction had special significance for the Apostles but it is important for us as well. The Spirit of God reveals to us the things of God, the things that pertain to salvation and the Christian life.
1 Cor 2:11…No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.
6. The Holy Spirit sanctifies us
This should be no surprise to us, after all He is called the Holy Spirit and he works in us so that we will bear the fruits and become more like Jesus.
Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
7. The Spirit equips us
He fills us with courage, not fear. He fills us with wisdom, faith and joy. He grants us gifts that we are to use for the building up of the body of Christ. He empowers our service to God and to one another.
8. The Spirit seals us for the eternal inheritance that we will receive when Christ returns in glory (Eph 1:13-14). Like those overpriced embossing seals that we buy so that we can stamp an impression on our books, the Holy Spirit has placed His seal upon us declaring that we belong to God and our place in His kingdom secure.
Conclusion…
The whole of our Christian life is initiated, empowered, and sustained by the Spirit of God working with the Word of God to bring us into the presence of God. Without the Holy Spirit there would be no Bible (2 Tim 3:16). Without the Holy Spirit there would be no Gospel Witness, the Spirit works in us to accomplish the great commission. Without the Holy Spirit there would be no believers because our dead hearts would never come to life on their own. Without the Holy Spirit there would be no Church.
The whole of our Christian life is dependent upon the Holy Spirit of God, the third person of the Trinity.
Let’s ask God to give us more of the Spirit’s presence and power in our lives. Let’s ask the Spirit to shift our sanctification into overdrive. Let’s ask the Spirit to pour out His power in our church and in our lives. Let’s ask the Spirit to convert our loved ones. Let’s ask the Spirit to make the church more loving, more faithful, more compassionate, more like Jesus.