Following Jesus? The Sermon on the Mount – Sermon – Pastors Marlee and Dave Page

Matthew 5:1-2 tells us:

“Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying …”

In the midst of his rapidly growing ministry, Jesus chose a prominent rise or hill, sat down in the customary teaching posture of a rabbi, surrounded by many disciples -that is, those who were at that time interested in learning- and began to teach them.

Now, for some of you, you might by now be asking, for whom was the Sermon on the Mount intended? For whom is it intended today?

Well, as we’ve stated already, its both the followers, the crowds and Jesus’ closest Disciples – both are accurate.

But an equally important question might in fact be:

Is this a sermon or specific instruction from Jesus?

In other words,  it teaching or preaching?? Well that depends a little bit on you. You see Matthew goes out of his way here to distinguish between the “hearers” – those that hear and respond by doing and those whose response was astonishment.

You see, if you call yourself a follower of Jesus, then yes, this sermon of His is instruction – Instruction for how we are to live in the now of the Kingdom of God. If you have not made that decision yet, fully, then prepare to be astonished – astonished at how Jesus takes the world view of both then and today and absolutely turns them upside down!

Now, before we can go a lot farther, into this great teaching of Jesus, we need to answer 2 very specific and extremely important questions:

• What is the kingdom?
• How do we understand the word Blessed?

An understanding of both of these concepts will be paramount in understanding what Jesus is saying and how we are intended to receive Him.

Let’s start with the Kingdom of God….

If you had to tell someone in just a few words what the life, teaching, and ministry of Jesus Christ was all about, what would you say?

Some might say love. Jesus certainly talked about love, but when looking at the gospels I don’t think you’ll find love as the dominant theme.  Some might say forgiveness. But when we look at what Jesus actually taught and said, I think one theme stands above the rest.

In his Gospel, Mark introduces Jesus’ ministry with verses 14 and 15 of chapter one.

Mark 1:14–15

¹⁴ After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ¹⁵ “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

The Kingdom of God. Now, let’s think about this for a minute. Is this verbatim what Jesus said every time?  Did Jesus in fact go into every town and give 18 English words-worth of Aramaic to them, and then had the pianist start an invitational song?

No!

Mark’s intention is to sum up the content of Jesus’ preaching by giving the gist of the message that He preached.

When Jesus Himself preached the Gospel, He preached the kingdom of God.

The Gospel is a call to people to become a part of God’s kingdom.  Now, If I were to ask you to explain to me what the kingdom of God is, how confident would you be in your answer?

Jesus often taught on the kingdom. I think there is a good case to be made that it was His primary theme from the number of occurrences in the Gospels alone.

• • Kingdom – 105
  • Love – 58

I think we should consider, in fact, that you have this theme of God’s kingdom woven throughout the story of the Bible. Looking at the narrative of the Scriptures as a narrative of God’s kingdom helps us to weave the whole thing together. As much as we say that the whole Bible is about Jesus…I personally feel, the whole Bible is about God’s Kingdom.

Thus, the amazing story of God coming to this earth cannot be told without saying that He is the King who was bringing His kingdom to this world.

The kingdom of God is:

“the rule of the King, over the people of the King, in the place of the King.”

For me personally, the Sermon on the Mount has been the most important teaching in my spiritual life. Every time I return to it, especially the Beatitudes, which we will look at next week, I am confronted with my own shortcomings as I face the words of Jesus himself.

The once mighty Napoleon is reported to have made this statement: “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but on what foundation did we rest the creatures of our genius? Upon force!

But Jesus Christ founded an empire upon love; and at this hour, millions of persons would die for Him.

“I die before my time, and my body will be given back to the earth to become food for the worms. Such is the fate of him who has been called the ‘great Napoleon.’ What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, adored and is still existing over the whole earth.”

When the bible talks about the Kingdom of God it speaks about this kingdom in several ways.  One way it speaks of the Kingdom of God is within the context of the general sovereignty or rule that God has over the entire universe. More simply put, this means that God is the absolute ruler of all that is.

Throughout scriptures God is painted as a reigning monarch, as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Exodus 15:18 says, “The Lord will reign forever and ever.”  Psalm 24:10 says He is the King of Glory.  When the prophet Isaiah saw the Lord, in Isaiah chapter 6, he saw Him sitting on a throne, high and exalted. 1 Timothy 1:17 says “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory forever and ever, Amen.”  And Revelation 19:6 says, “Then I heard something like the voice of a vast multitude, like the sound of cascading waters, and like the rumbling of loud thunder saying: Hallelujah – because our Lord God, the Almighty, has begun to reign!”

The Bible paints for us this picture of God as the great and mighty King.

But there is another way in which the phrase, “the Kingdom of God,” is used also. It’s to describe the rule and reign that Jesus has in the hearts and lives of those who have come to know Him as Lord (another word for King) and Saviour.

We often talk about letting Jesus sit on the throne of our hearts or be the Lord of our lives. These are simply expressions we use to talk about the authority and the dominion that Jesus has in the lives of those who know Him.

Additionally, the scripture also presents the Kingdom of God both as being a present reality and something which will come to fruition at an appointed time in the future.

Perhaps you’ve heard this reference of the ‘now and then’ aspect of the Kingdom of God. Today Jesus reigns and rules in the hearts of those who love Him, and someday, all people everywhere will acknowledge His Lordship.

Many people live their lives today as though they were in control of their own destiny, they live as though there is no God to whom they must ultimately answer, and they go throughout the course of their lives without a thought for the eternal realty which they will ultimately face.

The Bible tells us that someday the clouds will roll back, with the voice of the arch angel and the trumpet of God, Jesus will appear, and like it or not, every defiant knee will bow and every rebellious tongue will confess what we already know to be true, that Jesus is Lord of all.

That is the future reality of the Kingdom of God. Jesus is coming back, only this time things will be a bit different.

The first time He came as a baby in Bethlehem’s manger,  the next time He’s coming as heaven’s eternal king.

The first time He came He came He was attended by the barnyard animals, the next time He comes heaven’s hosts will accompany their king, shouting with deafening voices that the King of all creation has returned.

The first time He came He was subject to the will of evil men,  the next time He comes evil men will be subject to Him.

The first time His coming was only known by a few wise people who sought Him out to worship Him,  the next time He comes, everyone, wise and foolish alike, those who sought Him and those who rejected Him will all bow before Him and worship at His feet.

Church family hear us, there is coming a day when the Kingdom of God will come to fruition. When Jesus sits on the throne of David and rules forever and ever. Romans 8:20-23 tells us that all of creation waits for that day when it will be freed from the physical curse of sin. That is a future reality that has yet to carry out, but till that day, the Kingdom of God exists within the hearts and lives of those who love Him.

Blessedness: The Approval of God

We said there were two things that we needed to understand and so here’s the second – it’s the word Blessed OR BLESS-ED.

Each of the eight Beatitudes opens with the word “blessed.” So, it is essential that we understand here in the beginning what this word means, because it informs everything that will be said in the remainder of this passage.

Contrary to popular opinion, blessed does not mean “happy,” even though some translations have defined it this way.

Happiness is a subjective state, a feeling. But Jesus is not declaring how people feel; instead, he is making an objective statement about what God thinks of them.

Blessed is a positive judgment by God, on the individual, that means “to be approved” or “to find approval.” When God blesses us, he approves us.

Of course, there should be no doubt that such blessing will bring feelings of happiness and that blessed people are generally happy. But we must remember that the root idea of “blessed” is an awareness of approval by God.

Blessedness is not simply a nice wish from God; it is a pronouncement of what we are – approved.

Blessedness, as Max Lucado has so beautifully put it, is “The Applause of Heaven”.

As we begin this study of the sermon on the mount, I feel I need to warn you about something. It’s for us to realize that if God’s blessing/approval means more to us than anything else – even the approval of our friends, business acquaintances, and the culture around us – then what Jesus is going to say to us over the next 8 weeks is going to penetrate our hearts, penetrating us in the deepest of ways.

The question is, do we really want His approval more than anything else? Not, do we want to be happy (as fine as that desire is) but, do we truly want God’s approval above all else?

If so, then we must heed every word of the Jesus’s instructional sermon, because it gives us the needed conditions for living in the Kingdom of God today.

On the final page of the final book of C. S. Lewis’ work entitled The Chronicles of Narnia, some of the children who have been to Narnia lament that they once again must return to their homeland. But Aslan (the lion who represents Jesus) has the best news of all for the children:

“[Aslan speaks to the children and says,] ‘You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.’  
Lucy said, ‘We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.’  
‘No fear of that,’ said Aslan. ‘Have you not guessed?’  Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.

‘There was a real railway accident,’ said Aslan softly. ‘Your father and mother and all of you are  –  as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands  –  dead.
The [school] term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream has ended; this is morning.’

And as he spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.

But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.

Church family, all their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Are You Ready?