The Greatest Sermon Ever Preached, Part 2

The Sermon on the Mount. It's the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever lived. Tonight I want to look at the preface of the sermon with you and then we'll conclude with some principles about what this means for us.

First of all the multitudes and when he saw the multitudes he went up on the mountain and after he sat down his disciples came to him and opening his mouth he began to teach them. The multitudes, Jesus saw them. Who were the multitudes? Well turn back to chapter 4 and listen to what it says in verse number 23 about Christ's ministry in Galilee.

And Jesus was going about in all the Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people. And the news about him went out into all Syria and they brought to him all who were ill, taken with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics and he healed them. And great multitudes followed him from Galilee and Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan.

And when he saw those multitudes he went up into the mountain, he sat down, he opened his mouth and began to teach them. And the very first words out of his mouth were blessing. Jesus knew that because there was a change in their external environment physically it would not bless them internally.

He knew that. These people coming with all their sickness and all their disease would come to Him and He would heal all of them. And they would be feeling better and they would walk with Him.

They were totally enthralled with this man from Galilee who would speak as never a man before them. And they would follow His teaching. And whenever Jesus saw the multitudes and He gathered them around and began to teach them He wanted to make sure they understand exactly who He was, what He was about and where He was going.

Because you see it was very easy to get a misperception of this King. If He can heal the diseased, if He can take away the pain, if He can make the paralyzed walk, just think of what He can do to the Romans. Just think of how He can overthrow them and set up His kingdom and we can rule and reign as His people for all eternity.

But that's not why He came. And so we had to make it very clear. And it'd be very easy for these people to think man you know I'm all better now.

I could not walk but now I can walk. I was blind but now I can see. And I was in pain and now there is no more pain.

Everything is good. I can move my arms. Everything is going to be great.

And Jesus says nope it's not going to be great because there's just been a change in the circumstances. What makes life great is because of the change in one's spiritual condition. If that's changed, then you'll understand real true blessing.

So He begins the sermon talking about blessing. We'll talk about that in a moment. But that's the multitudes.

They came, Jesus saw them. So He goes up into the mountain. That's point number two.

What mountain is that? Well it's the mountain that He made it to be. It has His popularity because of who He was and where He spoke. The Greek says that He went up into the mountain.

It's a specific mountain. A mountain that He Himself made popular because of what He gave that day. The manifesto of the King was delivered.

Therefore that mountain became a very strategic mountain. He would call His disciples to Him. Begin to speak to them.

The multitudes, hundreds of them, thousands of them would gather around and hear the words that He would specifically give to His men. They would listen and marvel at what He said. Number three, the manner in which He spoke.

It says that He sat down. That's important because you see that was the official position of the rabbi. When the rabbi sat down it was official.

When He stood up it was just general conversation. But when He sat down to teach this was the official teaching. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra, that means from his chair.

That means what he's giving is the official dogma of the church. Jesus was speaking, sitting down, because what He was about to give were the essential elements of true kingdom living. And the message, that's for number four.

It says this, and opening His mouth. That's a very unique phrase. It's a colloquialism in the Greek, which means a solemn, dignified, and weighty statement.

If you study extra biblical references, it was used to describe speaking intimately from the heart. Jesus' heart was burdened for these people. And so as He opened His mouth to speak, He revealed His heart and revealed the true essence of what it means to be a kingdom citizen in His kingdom, where He rules and where He reigns.

Our third main point are the principles. And I want to give four of them to you this evening. What's going to happen as a result of this sermon? One is the blessed life.

The blessed life. The Constitution of the United States of America says that we have the right to the pursuit of happiness. It does not guarantee that we will ever have happiness.

You can pursue it, legally or illegally, any way you wish. You have that right, but there's no guarantee you'll ever receive it. Jesus says, I guarantee you a blessing.

Makarios. It means blissful satisfaction. It's from the Hebrew word makar, which speaks of being happy in a way that is not dependent upon circumstances.

That's very significant. You go back to what we said earlier about all these people who had been healed, and were following Him, and were ecstatic, and now they could walk, and they could talk, and they could see, and move freely, and things were going well. He says real true blessing, real true satisfaction in life comes not because physically you are healed, but because spiritually you are healed.

That's real true honest blessing. The Beatitudes express a state of blessedness. The phrase is used nine times in the first few verses.

Christ is offering happiness in the first sermon He ever preached. Not a worldly kind of joy, not a worldly kind of blessedness, but His blessedness. A blessedness that's characteristic of who He is.

It says in Psalm 68 verse number 35, blessed be God. Psalm 72 18, blessed be the Lord God and the God of Israel. Psalm 119 12, blessed art thou O Lord.

So whatever blessing God is going to give, it's a blessing that He Himself possesses. Think about that. The blessing that He wants to give you is the exact same blessing that He Himself characterizes.

It says over in 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 15 that Jesus Christ is the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords. So whatever blessing that Christ is offering, it's characteristic of God the Father and it's characteristic of God the Son. So that means that the blessing that He gives is given to those people who are actually partakers of His divine nature, according to 2 Peter chapter 1 verse number 4. So the Sermon on the Mount is given to those who are true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because without being a true believer in Him, you will never be rightly blessed because you are not a partaker of His divine nature and His nature is determined by how blessed He is. And He is ultimately blessed because it defines who He is. He offers that blessing to you and to me.

Think about that. The kind of joy that Christ had, the kind of peace that Christ had, the kind of joy that God the Father has that characterizes all that He is. He says, I give to you.

I want you to be as blessed as I am blessed. Amazing. The blessed life.

The same happiness, the same contentment that God the Father has can be ours. The same kind of contentment that made Him sleep in a boat when there was a storm raging on the outside can be ours. The same joy that He set before Him to cause Him to endure the cross can be ours.

It's the blessed life. And Jesus says, I want to give this to you. Amazing.

You see, the world says, look, you want a happy life? You want a great life? Then you got to have all these things, man. You got to have the right wife and you got to have the right house and you got to have the right car and you got to have the right job and you got to have the right amount of income. You got to have all these things.

And so we gather up all these things to realize that there's nothing ever there because Jesus said in Luke 12, verse 15, man's life does not consist in the abundance of things in which he possesses. Now we've read that, but we haven't quite grasped that yet because we're still trying to get more things, aren't we? We're trying to accumulate more toys, trying to fill the, fill the void in our lives. If things are really bad, then what we got to do is go out and buy a new wardrobe and everything will be okay.

If things are really bad, let's go buy a brand new car and everything will be happy again. So we're going to spend all this money trying to fill a void in our soul that can only be filled in the context of a relationship with the living blessed God of the universe who offers blessing to those who come to him. Society says, man, if you don't have the right things, you got, you got to at least do the right things, man.

Because if you do the right things, then you will receive the right kind of recognition and your life will be blessed. You, you will be happy because everybody will see you as a person of great value. And that's just not the case.

Jesus would say to the apostle or the pen of the apostle John, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, but lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of the life. They're just of the world. They're all going to pass away.

But he does the will of the father. He'll abide forever. Solomon was a, was a man who had many things.

He had more things than you and I could ever dream of. He had horses. He had thousands of horses, big horses, moneymakers, the kind of horses that always won the races.

The Bible tells us that he had silver as the sand of the sea. He was rich. The Bible tells us that he had hundreds of women.

Can you imagine? I mean, if you're really going to be happy and satisfied, you got to have a whole bunch of women around you. So he had hundreds of women. He lived in a city, in a palace, and that city was the city of Jerusalem, a city favored by God.

He was the most intelligent man that ever lived. There was no man wiser than Solomon and you'd think that that man would be a happy man. But he said, all of that's just vanity.

It's empty. He says, I got it all and it just doesn't fill the void of my soul. Oh, for us to listen to that man would do us good.

But so many times we miss it. It was that great Puritan, Thomas Watson, who's written a lengthy discourse on the Beatitudes, who said these words, the things of the world will no more keep out trouble of spirit than a paper screen will keep out a bullet. Worldly delights are winged.

They may be compared to a flock of birds in the garden that stay a little while, but when you come near to them, they take their flight and are gone. So riches certainly make themselves wings. They fly away as an eagle toward heaven, Proverbs 23, 5. They are like a meteor that blazes, but spends and annihilates.

They are like a castle made of snow lying under the torrid beams of the sun, end quote. Yet there are so many times we think it's those things that will make us happy. And Jesus, in the record of the first sermon he ever preached, offers blessing, not cursing, but blessing.

He wants the people of his kingdom to experience what he himself has and what better message could be given than that. But not only the blessed life will you receive, but the baffled life as well. The baffled life.

Your life will be so contrary, so different than those round about you, that everybody will be baffled by how you live. They'll be totally awestruck by what you say and what you do. You see, all this is quite perplexing when you read it.

Jesus says, I want you to be blessed, so therefore I want you to be poor. I want you to be blessed, therefore I want you to mourn, mourn, mourn. I want you to be blessed, therefore I want you to be gentle.

I want you to be blessed, therefore I want you to be hungry and thirsty. And we read that and we think, oh who needs that? I don't need that. That can't possibly make me a blessed person.

But remember, he's the creator. We are the created. The creator always knows what the created needs to make them blessed.

And so he offers real true blessing. It goes against everything that the world has to say and everything that the world has to offer. It contradicts everything except God, because it's God's life.

And God contradicts everything that the world has. When the people heard him speak, they were amazed. They're amazed at his teaching, that he would say the things that he did.

And when you begin to listen and obey the Word of God, you will live the baffled life. Why? Well, because you won't seek revenge. You'll seek reconciliation with your brother.

That's why. The world doesn't understand that. You won't seek to lust after other women.

You're going to seek to love your own wife. Again, the world doesn't understand that. You're going to seek to live a life of honesty, not a life of hypocrisy.

The world can't even figure that one out, because they're so busy trying to put on a facade in front of everybody else, that when someone is truly transparent and honest with them, they can't handle it. You'll be one who's concerned more about righteousness than your rights. And the world just has never grasped that and never will.

You're going to live a life of faith. You're going to walk by faith. You're not going to walk by sight.

It's the baffled life. No one quite understands it. Illustration of a young lady in our church who decided to quit her job and to move closer to this church, because she wanted to be a part of Christ Community Church and its ministry.

So she quit her job with no other job and no place to live. Her work associates thought she was crazy. By the world's standards, she was.

But according to God's standards, she just lived a life of faith. So God provided her a place to live. God provided her a full-time job, stepping out with none of those things before her, just trusting God.

See, she did not take thought about what she should eat or what she should drink or what she should wear, but she decided to seek God's kingdom first and his righteousness. And God honored her. You see, God always honors those who honor him, doesn't he? That's just the way he is.

That's the baffled life. The world says, man, you're crazy. You can't do that.

That's stupid. See, I know it's stupid, but I serve a great God who can do anything. But thirdly, when you understand the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, you live the beautiful life.

You live the beautiful life. The sermon is the clearest reflection of the mind of Christ, the life of Christ, the ways of Christ. And when you live His life, people will see the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ in you, and you will live the beautiful, beautiful life.

Jesus would say in Matthew 5, verse number 48, be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect. The cry is, look, you are to be holy as I am holy. You're not to be like them out there.

You're to be like me in here, and you're to be holy as I am holy, perfect as I am perfect. That is a beautiful life because Jesus Christ is the essence of beauty. And so He says, look, be like me.

Don't be like them. You be like me. That's been the resounding theme for God's people down through the ages.

And sooner or later, you would think that we would get the hint. You think that if He repeats it often enough, we're going to get it. But you know what? We don't get it, do we? We just don't get it.

Our prayer is that maybe for the first time, me and you will finally get it and reflect the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ because His life is the blessed life. You see, it's beautiful because it's holy. It's set apart under God and His purposes.

That's why it's beautiful. It was Richard Alderson in his book, No Holiness, No Heaven, who recorded these words. God calls us not to happiness, but to holiness.

Of course, to be holy is a necessity also to be happy. But we are to seek after holiness. If we seek happiness, we shall get neither that nor holiness.

End quote. The beautiful life is the holy life. Boy, I tell you, if we understood that, everything would be revolutionized.

So there's the blessed life, the baffled life, the beautiful life, and lastly and not least, the bold life, the bold life. If you stand on the principles of God's Holy Word and implement them into your life, you will be able to stand against anyone and anything. And God's challenge to you, my friend, is this.

Will you live this kind of life? It's not a dare, but His challenge is this. Will you be a kingdom citizen? Will you live like a child of the king? And is that not what it's all about, trying to understand who we are in relationship to who Christ is and living that kind of life? I guarantee this. I guarantee this, that if you come, listen to the Word of God, and respond to the Word of God, it'll revolutionize this church.

If we were to say that two nights a week, we are going to distribute money to anybody who comes to the church, just give them money. People would come from all over the place, right? Just to receive money. They just keep on coming.

The more we get out, the more people would come. The more we get out, the more people would come. We'd just be giving out money all over the place.

Here, here's $10, here's $20, here's $100, here's $1,000. You need money? Here's some money for you. People would come, no questions asked, they'd be here.

Why? Because they received the money. Whenever we proclaim the Word of God, we freely distribute the bread of life, freely. And the words of God, according to Psalm 1, 1972, are more precious than thousands of gold and silver.

Think about it. The Word of God is more precious than thousands of gold and silver. Heaven and all of its treasures, freely distributed to all who come.

The question is, will you come and receive freely that which is more valuable than earthly silver and gold? Let's pray together. Our most gracious Heavenly Father, we come this evening to say thank you for the words of eternal life. Father, what we have done this evening is just kind of scratch the surface of a tremendous, tremendous portion of Scripture.

That in the weeks and months ahead, we will take one verse at a time, try to understand as you would have them to be understood, and then try to implement them in our lives by the grace and mercy of God. Father, we all long to live a blessed life. You tell us how to do that.

May we follow. And that blessed life will be so baffling to those around about us that they'll never understand. The Lord, the beauty of the Lord will shine forth, and Jesus is put on display, and that's why we're here.

And so you say to us, will you live this life? Will you live like a child of the King? Our prayer is that we would long for that more than anything else. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.