Sermon Series: The Sermon on the Mount: Leveling the Field of Faith

Matthew 5:1-3

PSBC 8/1/99 AM

In a nutshell: The Sermon on the Mount is God’s bulldozer, leveling all the extra things of our lives down to the essential things that are needed to abundant living in His Kingdom. Realizing we are spiritually bankrupt on our own merit is the entry point into this Kingdom.

Well, friends, the Sermon on the Mount is God’s spiritual bulldozer. You see, we all have hills and valleys and trees and brush in our lives.

-Maybe you’re wealthy, you have a good job, you have a loving family, you’re good looking, you’re athletic, or very smart, or you don’t have to worry about money or retirement. You have a beautiful hill in your life.

-But maybe you have a severe illness, you’re family is falling apart, you have an addiction to some kind of substance or thing that you’re fighting, you’re barely or not even making it financially. You have a deep valley in your life.

-Or maybe you have a loving friend on which you can depend, you have a flock group or ministry group where you are loved and cared for, you have a spouse who will stand by you and love you no matter what happens in your life. You have a sturdy oak tree, or maybe a stand of 40 foot tall oak and hickory trees in your life.

-But then maybe you have some secret sins–things no one else even has a clue about–in your life. Maybe you have a burden or burdens that no one will never know that you carry. Maybe you have a past that you are utterly ashamed about that you’re trying to keep hidden. Then you’ve got some bushes and snakes and rodents in your life.

But friends, what the Sermon on the Mount does, as it’s recorded in three chapters in Matthew, that few other concentrated passages of Scripture do in the entire Bible, is to level out all those hills, valleys, trees and bushes and varmints in our lives and puts us all on the same level ground before God.

1 Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him,

2 and he began to teach them...

This is a message for a crowd–not just any old crowd–but the crowd of believers–the crowd of people who have decided to trust Jesus Christ to be the forgiver of their sins–that’s most of us in this room this morning. And these three chapters show how that same Jesus can then become the leader of our lives.

Illustration: When we purchased our house, signed all the papers and the money from the sale of our home in Missouri was wired to the escrow office and paid the initial down payment and closing costs, we were given the keys to our home on Willow Lane in Cathedral City by our Real Estate Agent.

Well, friends, if salvation is the initial entry into our new homes, the Sermon on the Mount is the series of hallways and doorways that give us access to the rest of the house that God wants us to enjoy, use, find security in, and shelter us in the times of storm.

The overall message of the Sermon on the Mount is that no matter where we are in the circumstances of our lives, we all need to move beyond the entry way of our faith, and start living in the house that is ours because of that faith.

I love what Philip Yancey, said on the front of your bulletins this morning...

So, let’s start a journey together that will take us through most of this fall and a good portion of the winter and spring.

The first section of the Sermon on the Mount is called the Beatitudes. In essence, they are 8 short, succinct statements about the way to be happy when you are a follower of Jesus. They are called the "Beatitudes" because they are statements of how to be blessed.

Now, let me define some words for you.

The first word you should know is the word "blessed". In about the last 25 years in the church, this word, blessed, has usually been translated, HAPPY. In fact, Dr. Robert Schuller, of the Crystal Cathedral, has written a book that he calls, The Be Happy Attitudes.

Well, being happy is a close cousin of what the word means in everyday English, but it still doesn’t carry the "oomph!" that the word carries in the original Greek.

Illustration: Imagine how you’d feel if your best friend was visited by the van from Publisher’s Clearing House, and given a check $1,000,000. You’d be happy for them, and you’d probably say something like, "You’re so lucky!"

Well, that’s the idea behind this word, Blessed, that will appear in each of these first verses of the Sermon on the Mount. It’s best understood as an exclamation that says, "You’re so lucky or fortunate, or privileged!"

A second phrase that is used in the Beatitudes, and throughout this sermon, is the phrase "Kingdom of Heaven". What does that mean? Other New Testament writers use similar language when they refer to the same thing as being the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of the Son. All those phrases are talking about the same thing.

The Kingdom of Heaven is not a physical territory, it is not a country, and it is not even planet earth or the universe. It is a relationship. To use Henry Blackaby’s words in his book, Experiencing God, it is A love relationship with God.

It’s in this love relationship with a human being that God reveals Himself, He reveals His purposes, and He reveals the ways He does things. When you obey Him and cooperate with His way doing things, you come to intimately know Him and can experience Him working through you.

So, the things Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount are ways to we can experience more of God, and know better how to join Him in what He’s doing in the world. That life is what Jesus described as abundant--over flowing with peace, joy and significance.

Before we get into the first verse of this sermon, I need to preface it with something. You see a disturbing tendency is taking place today, like never before. The tendency is to play games with the truth. Especially when the truth of a situation is something that we don’t like, or it doesn’t suit us.

Illustration: It’s like the story of the man eating lunch in an organic, natural food restaurant. When he looked into his soup, he was disturbed by what he saw. So, he called the waitress over and said, "Young lady, there's dirt in my soup.

If human beings were to design the way a love relationship was to happen with God, we’d probably add that...

-it only belongs to those who’ve earned it,

-or who have done something outstanding to help their fellow man,

-or who have accumulated wealth or status or notoriety.

-It’s only for people who’ve achieved enough

-or did the right things at the right time.

-Or even, for people who balanced out their lives so that the good they did out-weighed the bad they did.

That kind of thinking can happen when we aren’t anchored to something called truth. In fact, there are a lot of groups in southern California today who teach the very things I’ve just told you. And they believe that that’s how you enter into some kind of relationship with God.

But in the Christian faith, we are fortunate. We don’t have to guess at truth, or make our own truth up, or have one truth for one person or group, and another for another person or group.

That’s because we have a leader who said, "I am the Truth". So, when He speaks we know we are hearing something on which our very lives can be built–at all times and in all circumstances.

Well, Jesus starts out the Sermon on the Mount with a strong dose of truth concerning the way we enter this relationship that’s called "the Kingdom of Heaven".

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Now in explaining what this statement means, I find that’s it’s best to keep four words in mind..., and keep them in mind in a very specific order. Here are the words, and here is the order...

Now let me explain what I mean...

God is a loving God. Most people want to believe that about God. Most people like to think of God as this grandfatherly figure who pats us on the head and says, "I don’t care what you do, your O.K., and I love you."

But God is also Holy. Holy means absolutely pure. Anything that is impure, unholy, or sinful stands in direct contrast to the holiness of God. Because He is holy, He must by nature reject anything that is unholy. The two cannot exist side by side in the presence of God.

God is also just. That simply means that He is a good and perfect judge. God’s justice says that He must do something about unholiness or sin. He can not let people who break the law go unpunished.

You and I were created good, but became sinful. The human race was originally created good, but became sinful as a result of Adam and Eve’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden. Since that time, every human being has had a propensity toward sin, and not one person has been able to live a life from start to finish without sin happening, sometime. That sin accumulates as a sort of debt to God that has to be paid for, some how, some way.

Since every human has sinned, every human being is judged guilty of not being holy and therefore deserves to be separated from God. Separation from God is called death–And death is for all eternity in the only other place created for eternity besides heaven–a place the Bible calls, Hell. The only way to avoid death is by paying God back with perfection, to pay off our debt of sin.

Here’s where the truth of this first beatitude comes into play. You and I are morally bankrupt. In other words, Spiritually poor. That means we are helpless to pay the mountain of debt that is owed God for the sin we have done.

In fact, if we had a bank account loaded with...

-all the good we have done in this life,

-all the achievements we have achieved,

-all the accolades we have received...

... and we wrote a check for the entire amount in that account, it would be so little compared to God’s holiness, that we would have to declare bankruptcy. The truth is, the funds in our account don’t come near to the debt we owe God.

That’s bad news if you stop there. But we still have two more words...

As sinful people, how do we enter into this love relationship with a holy God? How do we get rid of the debt of sin? The debt is still there! Since God is just, He must demand payment for our sin. So, whose going to pay the debt?

Follow this string of Bible verses...

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

...The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

1. Jesus, the Word, was not only a man, but He was also God. God actually became one of us and lived among us.

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

2. The debt of sin that we owe, and its consequence of death, must still be paid under God’s perfect system of justice. According to this verse, it was paid in full by Jesus, when He died in our place on the cross. In exchange for our sin, rebellion, and guilt, He gives us His righteousness, and forgiveness.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith— and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.

3. The whole package of eternal life and the Kingdom of Heaven is given as a gift. It’s waiting to be taken by each person, simply for the asking. And that’s where the last word comes into play–YOU!

Each one of us must respond individually, by personally receiving God’s gift. I can’t receive it for you and you can’t receive it for me. Each person must respond individually. And when you do receive the gift, this is what happens...

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—

And this is how we receive the gift...

This explains how we personally receive the gift. We confess we are poor in spirit–we are morally bankrupt–we are sinful, and deserving of death; and we ask God to forgive us. When we do that, our spiritual back account is filled with the riches of Jesus Christ’s righteousness, and that is the exact amount that satisfies the justice of God.

In other words, "You’re so lucky, when you realize you’re morally bankrupt. At that point you can turn to the only one rich enough in righteousness to pay your debt–Jesus Christ–and when you do that, you can enter into an abundant and eternal love relationship with God."

(Invitation)

To make us rich in spirit, Jesus Christ had to die a substitutionary death. He substituted Himself on Calvary’s cross for you and me. That’s what we remember at this meal.

Serve the cup and the bread.