Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Book: Matthew

  • Incredible Incarnation

    Incredible Incarnation

    About this sermon

    Mary was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit before she and Joseph came together, and an angel told Joseph to take her as his wife. The child would be named Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins, and he is Immanuel, God with us, as Isaiah promised. The virgin birth is God’s doing, and salvation in Christ is his gift, received by faith through repentance and trust in him.

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    Sermon transcript

    Matthew chapter 1 again. I’m sure that you’ve been to grocery stores and some of you have seen those grocery store tabloids. They’re not maybe as prevalent as they were. I don’t know. I don’t get to the store to see that as often as I might have. But imagine you got one of those papers. that you pick up at that checkout counter at the grocery store. Here are the headlines. Woman claims she was a horse in another life. Man grows second head. Pregnant woman says she’s a virgin. When you hear them all together, they all seem pretty unbelievable. Today’s culture rejects the virgin birth.

    So how do we think about this? How do we understand these things today? Well, just a background, those of us who were here this morning, we saw how Matthew began his gospel by placing the historical context of Jesus in relation to Abraham and David and then the kings that came after that time.

    And so we know that this is real. This is true. It’s history. It’s a real event, not just a myth, not just an imaginative story, as many would hope to be the truth here. And so now we’re going to continue on and look at Matthew’s narrative about the birth of Jesus. So we’re going to look at this beginning at verse 18. Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

    When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.”

    And we’ll end our reading there. Let’s pray. Our Lord and our God, this is an incredible account just the plain truth laid before us in this short passage. Lord, give us eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts that will be broken by this truth and mended by the healing hope that comes through Jesus Christ. May we know your truth today. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen. It is an incredible passage, isn’t it? I love the way this starts out. Now, the birth of Jesus took place in this way. Very straightforward. No beating around the bush. Just right to it. No fanfare. No birthday cakes. No big celebrations of this. Just this is how it took place. And so we want to look through this process as we see it here.

    And I’ve got it under a couple of headings. a perplexing predicament. Well it starts out beautifully, Mary pledged to Joseph their betrothed. The marriage itself would take place in time when the groom who’s already called the husband at this point in this culture, ceremoniously takes his bride to his home. And so we need to realize in that time, in that place, the pledge to be married was actually a legally binding act. And so at this stage of their relationship, where we might use the word fiancé, they are truly legally bound.

    And only a written divorce can break that connection, that relationship. Any infidelity, any unfaithfulness at this stage would be considered adultery. And so we have this awful uncovering that comes. What is it? Mary is found to be pregnant. It was found out. Mary was showing. It couldn’t be hidden anymore. It couldn’t be concealed.

    And what does Joseph know about this? He knows he’s not the father. He knows that much. Now imagine, put yourself in his place. Women, it’s harder, but men, think about this. Imagine that it’s just a few months before your wedding, and you find out that your fiancé is pregnant.

    How would you feel about that? So, what would you think? What about Mary? What happened? The only apparent answer would be, in your mind, that she committed adultery somewhere along the line and didn’t have the courage to tell Joseph what had happened. Because we know that she had gone away for a while to see her relative Elizabeth. She was gone for three months and comes back pregnant. What happened? What happened with whom?

    Imagine how Joseph would have felt in this situation. And I think torn between a sense of jealousy and anger. sadness and disappointment that would come along with this overwhelming love that he has for his bride-to-be, for his beloved, and this has happened. And so he’s left with an unpleasant option. He has tough choices, and he has troubled thoughts about this, and he’s considering what he should do. Now, he did not go off like a wild man, ranting and raving, and raising his own hand against Mary in a fit of what would have seemed righteous anger against his fiancée.

    It’s interesting, we talked this morning about Judah and his judgment of Tamar, which is different from what Joseph does here. Listen to what it says about Judah. From Genesis, chapter 38, verse 24. About three months later, Judah was told, your daughter-in-law, Tamar, is guilty of prostitution. And as a result, she is now pregnant. Here’s what Judah says.

    Bring her out and have her burned to death. What a harsh and shocking treatment. But that is, in a sense, that was what was the right in the Jewish culture. That would have been the right response. It would be legitimate to bring that adulterer to a stoning and put them to death. But think about Joseph. What does Joseph do? Look at verse 19. It says this in contrast.

    Because Joseph, her husband, was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. Not make a big deal out of it. A merciful and loving Joseph considers this quiet end of the marriage without any shame, without any big public fanfare so as not to have harm come to Mary because she could have been executed in Jewish law.

    What could he have done? He could have just given her that bill of divorce before two witnesses and bring that matter to a close. He was seriously thinking about that. He’s contemplating that. It seems that it was his intention to do so until the dream. And we find this extraordinary explanation for what has happened. Here’s the angel’s announcement. An angel of the Lord comes to Joseph in a dream. And what does he say first of all? He says, Joseph, son of David. He reminds him of his lineage. He is the son of David. He is in that genealogy.

    And then he goes on to say, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife. Because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. You know, most of the times that angels come to people, they say, don’t be afraid. Mary had that when the angel comes to her. Joseph has this when the angel comes to him. The shepherds we saw in the field told, don’t be afraid. Angels are frightening beings. And yet, they always take this angle of don’t be afraid. And here, don’t be worried. Don’t be ashamed. The angel says, Joseph, trust God.

    He has the master plan here. He is working these things out. And he was to marry Mary. There was no impurity in her becoming pregnant. Why is that? Because Mary has conceived Not by the power of nature. And we need to understand that this is the case. Mary comes to this and she’s told ahead of time that this is what’s going to happen. But we need to remember that Mary didn’t proclaim this news. We understand that she wasn’t going about telling people what had happened. Thus, an angel needs to come to Joseph and help him understand and explain this that has occurred.

    And what is this? This is the greatest mystery in the universe. Science could spend an eternity trying to explain What is this virgin conception? How does this happen? Science will try to explain this away, and it will never be able to do that. How does a virgin conceive a child without other human flesh? How could this come about? What’s the explanation? How does this come? How does the infinite God somehow fit in a womb? How does that Logos, the word, who’s God himself, how does that get carried as a tiny baby and marry this woman?

    Ecclesiastes 11.5 says this. As you do not know the path of the wind or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the maker of all things.” We don’t have an explanation. All we have is what scripture tell us. She became pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit. No bigger explanation, no smaller explanation is needed. This is simply the Word of God to us.

    Do you believe it? Do you believe this truth? I know when I talk to people at my work, there was a lady who was actually Jewish, who said, you’ve got to be kidding me. How can you believe this? It’s not believable in the world around us. No one can comprehend and fathom how such a thing can be. We can only do what? Stand in awe of what God has done in this intricate and masterful handiwork of a virgin conceiving by the power of the Spirit. So what?

    Like Joseph, we have to hear this incredible news. We need to accept it. We need to believe it, as Joseph did at that point. So, virgin birth. Does it actually matter? Do we have to believe this? Well, we need to point out what the virgin birth is and what it’s not. Mary is a virgin. that never had relations with any man until she gave birth to Jesus. So there’s no way that we can get this mixed up. That’s what it says at the end of verse 25.

    But he knew her not until she gave birth to a son. But Mary truly became pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit, and she had an actual baby growing and developing inside her, that incarnate God-man, Jesus. And Mary goes through all the experiences that a woman would go through who gets pregnant, and then she went through all the birth experiences that a woman goes through who gives birth. And then we need to remember that she goes on to have other children. Jesus has brothers and sisters. And so as some wrongly believe, she isn’t a virgin her whole life. She goes on to have relations with Joseph and have children, what we understand by Joseph, her husband.

    Can you explain this to me? I don’t understand it. I can’t explain it. But I believe it because the scriptures are so clearly telling us these things. You know, we talked about Luke’s genealogy of Jesus and coming through the line of Adam. That he came in human form in this world. Mary was his real flesh and blood mother. He didn’t just appear somehow. It was truly through her. It’s through her that he gained his human nature. And yet, Christ did not come through the natural way that we all have come. He was not from the line of Adam himself. Having no earthly father, he is born without original sin.

    Scripture tells us that the sin of Adam is imputed to us. It’s passed on by father, by father, by father. It’s part of the reason that this genealogy is here to remind us there is a fatherhood. But if you look at it, and you look at what it says at the end of that line of genealogy, it mentions Joseph, but it says Mary was the mother of Jesus. It doesn’t say Joseph was the father of Jesus.

    And so Christ comes through this line of Mary, but he must be free of the taint of the original sin nature which passes down Only a perfect, sinless being in human form could do the work that the Christ came to do. To die for sin in the place of sinners. To be our Savior. He must be that man without blemish or spot, free from all flaws, to be that final sacrifice to end all sacrifices. It’s absolutely critical that Jesus comes from a virgin birth. So that moves us to the next section, the divine deliverance. Matthew chapter 1 verse 21. She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. Notice that first line, she will give birth to a son. Note, she will give birth to your son.

    It doesn’t say your son. It just says a son. It’s not Joseph’s. Joseph would assume the position of an earthly father to him, but he is not the father. He has given the opportunity, the angel says, give him the name Jesus. He gets to name his son as that would be the rights of the parents to name their child. It says, you are to give him the name Jesus. Now, Jesus, the name. This is actually a very popular name in this time.

    It was the Greek rendering of the name Joshua. There are two Joshuas in the Old Testament. One we’re very familiar with, Joshua going into the promised land, who is the right-hand man of Moses, driving out the heathen nations before them, gaining the land. That was Joshua. We think of him as that incredibly great warrior leader. He was the one who would save his people, bring the land under their control, and be that one who led them into that place.

    His name was first of all Hoshia, not Joshua. Moses added the first syllable of the name Yahweh to Hoshia to make it Yeshua, which we say Joshua. So the Messiah would bear this name, Joshua. He would be Jehovah and able to save to the uttermost, much greater than Joshua under the tutoring and mentoring of Moses. Much greater than that, a greater salvation than anything Joshua was able to do for the people of Israel. So there’s another lesser known Joshua. He’s a high priest. at Israel’s second settlement during the captivity.

    Listen to this in Zechariah chapter six, Zechariah chapter six, verse 11 and following. Take the silver and gold and make a crown and set it on the head of the high priest, Joshua, son of Jehozadak. tell him this is what the Lord Almighty says. Here is the man whose name is the Branch, and he will branch out from his place and build the temple of the Lord. It is he who will build the temple of the Lord, and he will be clothed with majesty, and will sit and rule on his throne, and he will be a priest on his throne. Christ is our Joshua, the leader of God’s people and the high priest of God’s temple, and in both, our Savior. That’s the picture of who Jesus is, the name Jesus comes to us. So what else do we know about this Jesus? Verse 21, it says, for He will save His people from their sins. He will save His people from their sins.

    The deliverance that He would bring is not merely a physical deliverance. It’s not a political, military deliverance that He’s going to throw off the Roman powers. It’s not that kind of deliverance. It doesn’t say He’s going to deliver them from their oppressive rulers. This would be an inward, moral, spiritual, related deliverance.

    And that’s what Matthew focuses on and that’s what we need to be remembered. That centrally, this is salvation from sin. That’s what it is about. If we want to say what Christmas is about, this is it. This is what He has come to do. He is here to save His people from their sins. Because that’s our greatest need. Salvation from the consequence of our sins. This is what we need and Jesus came to do just that. For who? For His people. Not for just everybody or anybody. He says He will save His people. These are God’s chosen ones. These are the ones that God, before time began, before anything happened, He elected to be His children, and He will save these people, His people, from their sins.

    That’s what we need to remember about Jesus in this situation. So He is the imminent Emmanuel. Look at verse 22. He’s the one who brings it all together. Verse 22, all this, all that he has just talked about, all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and they will call him Immanuel. which means God with us. God with us.

    That was the prophetic name of the child and it provided God’s deliverance. They will call him Emmanuel. And that’s what Jesus Chapter 1, verse 14. 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. That is God with us. This is that Shekinah glory that was known to the people in the Old Testament.

    This is Emmanuel. This is God with us. What was known in the Israel tabernacle and in the temple is what we have in Jesus Christ, the incarnate God-man, the mediator between God and man. This is Emmanuel. Jesus, the Son, born to Virgin Mary, is Jesus, that Messiah, the Christ, the one who will save His people from their sins. He is Emmanuel.

    God with us. This is the glory that we celebrate. This is the bringing of God and man together. This is solving the problem of sin in our world. Bringing God to be with us is our greatest joy because we have salvation through Him. Bringing God to us because He fills our greatest need of redemption from sin. So that brings us to the righteous response that Joseph makes. He moves from his perplexity to certainty. He moves to honorable obedience. Look at verse 24.

    When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son and he gave him the name Jesus. Very simply, he did what God told him to do. He honored God and he was obedient.

    The hesitations, the agonizing doubts, should I put her away, I don’t know how to think about this, all of that’s gone. The dread and the shame of an illegitimate baby and everything that that by means swings 180 degrees to this divine certainty that this was a mysterious and holy work of God. So Joseph wakes up and does what he’s called to do. He takes Mary as his wife. obedience to God’s Word drives out his fears. He is trusting God to proceed with what God would do and be satisfied and content with that.

    Do you think this was easy? I don’t think Joseph and Mary were the only ones who knew that Jesus wasn’t Joseph’s son. Could you imagine? He’s going through life because you say, oh, how’s your son? What’s he going to say? Yes, he’s my son, but… Joseph has to live with this, and yet he is satisfied and content to do this. And that’s why it’s this incredible incarnation. Because again, look at verse 25.

    He had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. There’s no mistaking the situation. There’s no last minute, oh, yep, this is my son, sorry, we went ahead and did, no. There’s none of that here. He remains unconnected to her, unrelated to her in that way. She has no union with him until she gives birth. And again, this is just so simply stated. You have no union with her until she gave birth to a son.

    And we read this in our world, and we know this story, we’ve heard it so many times. But know that this is incredible! And this is incredibly important that this is stated to us in Scriptures. In the history of the universe, there’s nothing more incredible or important to have happened. There’s never been before such a son as this. And there will never be another. This is Emmanuel.

    This is Jesus. this Immanuel Jesus in this virgin birth, there could be no salvation for us. Because if Jesus is like you and I, if He has the same kind of biological coming into existence, then He has Adam’s original sin. And He has to die for His own sins, and He cannot cover yours or my sins if He’s covering His own. But, He died in our stead. This is our only hope.

    If you have not put your trust in Christ alone, the Son of God, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, you will be bearing personal responsibility for your sins before God. Because if you don’t believe this about Jesus, then He’s not of any hope for you, and He’s no help for you, because He’s going to have to pay for Himself. You will be found lacking in your own life and you will be condemned by God to eternal punishment in hell. The very opposite of Immanuel is what you will have if you don’t believe these things. An external existence separated from the virgin born Jesus. and an eternal existence separated from the virgin born Jesus is what we will understand and we will live with. here’s born of a virgin, incarnated Christ, the infinite God-man.

    He alone had no sin and He could bear our sins. When we trust in Him alone, when we see Him as our Lord and Savior, when we repent of our sin and turn towards Him. And even that repentance, even that turning is a gift that comes to us. It’s not what we can choose. It comes by grace. God’s unmerited favor, it’s received by faith in us. And even our faith is that gift, the best gift you can ever have. You may have lots of thoughts of what gifts you might want in this season, but this one tops them all. It’s the best gift we can ever receive.

    If you have not come to know this gift, please turn from your own ways. Repent and come to Jesus Christ. Believe that He is born of a virgin. And that He truly is God, the Messiah, the Christ Emmanuel. And you can know salvation. Do you have that today? If you do, rejoice and be glad of what you have. If not, come to Him. Come to Him and know Him as your Lord and Savior. Let’s pray.

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  • Royal Bloodlines

    Royal Bloodlines

    About this sermon

    Matthew opens his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, arranged in three sets of fourteen generations. The line runs through great kings and through scandal, and it names Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah. Matthew establishes from the first verse that Jesus is the royal Messiah promised to Israel, and believers speak boldly of him as the Christ who came to save.

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    Sermon transcript

    turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 1. Matthew chapter 1. We’re going to be looking at this, this morning and this evening. This morning, as you’ll notice, we’re looking at the first 17 verses, looking at the royal bloodline that’s there. And then this evening, the incredible incarnation. So please come back as we explore that further in the next section in Matthew.

    Now the U.S. does not have a lot of bloodlines, not a lot of royal bloodlines for sure. Some might think themselves, Kennedys, Rockefellers, maybe even the Carnegie’s might think of themselves as bloodlines, but not like those over in Europe and around the world where there are emperors and Typically, in that setting, there’s a very careful genealogy.

    You want to keep track of these things. If you know your history, which I am not great at, this was always a big issue. Was this person in the line? Who was next in line? All of those issues around that are extremely important. And genealogy was important in my family at some level.

    My mom is the one who has kind of followed these things in our lives, and she has traced back to Henry II in the 1100s for our heritage. I don’t think that’s good. If you know Henry II, but at least there is a track record there. A better name might be Jonathan Edwards. Apparently our family has some relation to Jonathan Edwards, which is at least better than Henry II.

    But genealogies, they’re important. They’re especially important to Israel. And if you look through the Old Testament, there are many, many sections of genealogies. You find them several times in Genesis, in Exodus, Numbers, the Chronicles, first 12 chapters. It’s slow reading if you try to go through those genealogies, but they’re there for a reason. Ruth has them, Ezra has them, Nehemiah has them.

    This is something that we need to think about as we look at Matthew. And Matthew, being the Jew and speaking of these things, from his heritage and his culture and his perspective also finds them very important. And that’s why when we begin the book of Matthew, we begin with the genealogy. And so we’re going to look at this and find out what’s in a name as we look at these bloodlines. So we’re going to read Matthew chapter 1. 1-17, and forgive me if I don’t say all the names exactly right, but these are the names that are written in God’s Word for us. So listen to this, Matthew 1, beginning at 1.

    The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram. and Ram the father of Amenadab, and Amenadab the father of Nashan, and Nashan the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king.

    And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah. And Solomon the father of Rehoboam. And Rehoboam the father of Abijah. And Abijah the father of Asaph. And Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat. And Jehoshaphat the father of Joram. And Joram the father of Uzziah. And Uzziah the father of Jotham. And Jotham the father of Ahaz. And Ahaz the father of Hezekiah. And Hezekiah the father of Manasseh. And Manasseh the father of Amos. And Amos the father of Josiah.

    And Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shittil. And Shittil, the father of Zerubbabel. And Zerubbabel, the father of Abiad. And Abiad, the father of Eliakim. And Eliakim, the father of Azor. And Azor, the father of Zadok. And Zadok, the father of Akeem. And Achim the father of Eliad, and Eliad the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Mathan, and Mathan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David, were 14 generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations.”

    We’ll end our reading there. Let’s pray. Our Lord and our God, Help us to see Your truths, to help us to have that mindset that understands why we have a list of names of people in Your Word as the beginning of this Gospel. Show us Your truths, help us to see its significance, that we would be challenged and comforted and encouraged in these very words. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

    So we said genealogies are important, and this is the first one in the New Testament, but there’s another genealogy similar to this in Luke, Luke chapter 3. We’re not going to read through it, but I want us to see something of the relationship between the two of these, because I think it’s valuable to compare one to the other.

    In terms of the flow of them, the directional flow, Luke, starts with Jesus and then moves back towards Adam. Matthew begins with the source and moves towards Joseph. The earliest person in each of these genealogies, Matthew, as you’ll notice here, begins with Abraham. And it’s through Abraham that God chooses for himself a people and from whom the Redeemer of the world would come. Abraham was the beginning of that people that would become Israel, the Jews, and that world. Now Luke, much more humanistic, much more world-like in that sense, his approach presents Christ as the son of Adam for all mankind, not just the nation of Israel.

    So he broadens his genealogy in that way. Now notice the line of descents here. Luke uses Mary’s line, the natural line of descent, and it has greater exactness than that that we find in Matthew. Luke could not bypass any names in that natural line of descent. They needed to be there because that’s how that genealogy worked through. Thus, there are more names, actually, in the genealogy in Luke. Matthew traces by Joseph, Luke by Mary, Matthew by Joseph.

    And Matthew presents his legal, we might call it this royal descent, this royal bloodline by which Christ would rightfully take the throne as that lawful successor. So he arranges the names to come out in these three groups of 14 as it says in verse 17 there. It says that these are three groups of 14 names as we shall notice as we look at this.

    So genealogies, we’ve already said these are something that are important to the Jewish people. Matthew us is the fulfillment of that Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah would come and that Matthew is giving us this good news, which is the gospel, the good news. And he proclaims this in the very beginning. Verse one, look at verse one. It says, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. So we notice here two key names, Abraham And David, these are the main figures in Jewish history as they look back to the Old Testament. Who’s Abraham? Well, Abraham is the one who received those promises of a nation of many people.

    Genesis chapter 17, verse 7. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.” So Abraham is noted in this way by God Himself and makes this covenant with Him. Now David is the one who received the promises that his seed would be on the throne forever. David was the king, the anointed one, and at some level he was the messiah of his time, but there was one who was greater who was coming. 2 Samuel 7 verse 13 says, He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

    So we see Abraham at one point, and then we see David as the king who is going to have this successor. And now notice that we said in verse 17, I want to come back to these three time periods, just so we’re noting them here. The first one we see is from Abraham to David. It’s a patriarchal focus. Prior to the tribe of Judah coming to power, we have these pre-monarchy days, these days before there’s a king that culminates in David and now the beginning of a kingdom established under him. The second period is the kings that come after David.

    Under David is the established king, the royal authority is now on the scene, and it goes all the way up to Jeconiah. Jeconiah on our list here. And it is at that point that the kingdom is abolished, the sin has gone on long enough, and it’s the end of the kingdom as they knew it at that time. Now, I’m sure that you were counting the names as they were on the list, right? Nobody was counting the names, I’m guessing. Okay, okay.

    Well, I want you to realize that there are three kings, if you were, that are omitted in this list. It’s not a full-blown list, not because they were unworthy, not because they’re forgotten, It’s just a way that we need to think about this is Matthew is confining his list to 14 names, but there’s three more that existed in that line of kings. And so when he says 14 kings, it’s a representation of that time period. It’s not comprehensive of listing every king that was in that grouping. Now, scribal error may have been a reason that there are 13 names instead of 14, but we don’t really know for sure why that came to be. The last period, the last listing are the kings after the exile.

    When they returned to the land of Israel And we see them at that point under the authority of Zerubbabel. And it’s not that he was established a king in that way as clearly as the other, but he was the one who was in the line, and he becomes the leader of that time. And so you have this fragmentary type of kingdom established. The royal scepter, sort of there, but not in the same way that it was under the kings in the line of David before Babylon. And yet, according to the prediction of Jacob, the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes.

    And that was from Genesis chapter 49. Now, this last group, again if you’re keeping count, only has 12 names in it. Why might that be? Well, again, Matthew takes his ways of presenting this under this kind of presentation of the grouping. Some would suggest that maybe the time of the captivity when there was no established kingdom authority in Jerusalem would be one of those. And then Jesus is the 14th in that line, which would make sense that he is the Christ, the 14th in that group.

    So these are the names of the patriarchs and the kings of Israel. And so you’ll look at them, all of these leaders of the people of God through the Old Testament. Here you have the who’s who of the Old Testament. If they were going to create the Heroes of the Bible video series, you’ve got the list right here, right? Well, let’s just take a look at the men on this list, the people on this list. Royal bloodlines, not always the best groups, not always the royalist of bloodlines, not always the best at being heroes in this sense. So I just want us to remind ourselves a little bit about these men who are on this list, this royal who’s who in God’s plan. Abraham, God’s chosen. Here is the man that God has picked to be the father of the generations in this position.

    But what does he do? He lied twice. about Sarah not being his wife but his sister to protect himself. He distrusted God enough that he thought he needed to help God along in his plans to have someone come after him. So he takes Hagar, his wife’s handmaiden, to get an heir to his name because it didn’t look like God was going to be able to pull this off.

    And so that’s our picture of Abraham. How about his son Isaac? Isaac, a godly man. But he follows in the same line as his father Abraham did about his wife. And what does Isaac do? He played favorites with his son. He loved Esau more. Jacob. Well, Jacob is the father of the 12 tribes. His name is changed to Israel. It is his prodigy that is the peoples of Israel in that very clear sense.

    But what do we know about Jacob? the deceiver. He swindles his brother Esau out of the birthright for soup because he was hungry at the time. The deceiver of his father. And he goes in and pretends to be Esau so that he can get the firstborn’s blessing. Is this one of the heroes of the Bible?

    And then what happens to Jacob himself? He gets swindled himself, the swindler gets swindled by his father-in-law Laban. And he marries the elder daughter, who was not his choice as we know, and then goes on to marry the younger daughter. And so now Jacob deals with this rivalry and tension that exists when you have two wives and just the favoritism of his life and with his own sons that he had.

    We see that picture. Again, not the hero of the Bible that we might imagine. Well, Judah. Judah, the Lion of Judah, from whom the Messiah would come. This is that picture. But what does Judah do? He sells his brother Joseph into slavery. He leaves his family behind and marries a Canaanite woman. Judah has three sons. Two die because they are so wicked in the eyes of God that God deems it better for them to die than to keep on living. And then Judah has two sons by Tamar. Who was Tamar? while Tamar was his widowed daughter-in-law.

    And she deceives him by acting like a prostitute, and he negotiates with the prostitute, not knowing who she is, that he would be with her, but she wouldn’t say anything about it. But she’s smart enough that when she’s found out, convicted of prostitution, and Judah makes judgment on her, but she says, hey, wait a minute, look who’s staff I have. Look whose seal I have. Look whose cord of authority I have.

    And it’s shown that Judah is the one who engaged with her as a prostitute. It’s an incredible line of royal blood here. Rahab. Rahab is the great, great grandmother of King David. She was a Canaanite prostitute in Jericho when Israel came to destroy it. That’s part of this bloodline. Ruth. Ruth is David’s great-grandmother, but she’s a foreigner. She’s a Moabite.

    She’s not Jewish. And she marries a Jew and escaping the famine in Bethlehem, she experiences the death of her own husband and her brother-in-law. And then what does she do? She traveled with her widow, mother-in-law Naomi, back to Judah, setting aside everything that was in Moab.

    But here again, this non-Jew in the royal bloodline of Jesus. And then we come to David. David, the man after God’s own heart. And after God’s own heart, we hear this again and again. Here’s the one who suffered under Saul, that constant chasing. Saul bent on killing him, and David lives under that, and then eventually does become king, and so then all is great, right?

    Until he’s caught in lust for another man’s wife. Bathsheba. Bathsheba is not even mentioned, but we know the wife of Uriah is Bathsheba. And so what does David do? He becomes an adulterer. He becomes a murderer. And he lives the rest of his life with the consequences of his sin. The household of David is a terrible place in that sense. Amnon, one of his sons, falls in love with a half-sister, Tamar. He rapes her and then despises her because he didn’t love her after he finally got her. And then what? Her brother, Absalom, revenges her by killing Amnon.

    What a household this is. What a house of David. Absalom then brings more sorrow upon King David because what does he do? He conspires against his own father, takes over the kingdom, pushing his father out, steals the kingship. And how does this end? Well, Joab’s commander ends up killing Absalom, his son. What a terrible household that David has in his life. the man after God’s own heart.

    Well, what about Solomon? The wise man Solomon, the one who God bestows incredible wisdom on, who knew peace, knew God’s blessing under the kingdom of Solomon. It was an amazing time for Israel. What a time of growth and prosperity. And yet, what happens to Solomon? He fell into the worship of idols. He had many, many concubines and wives. And so what happens for King Solomon?

    The kingdom is ripped out of his hands and given to his servant. To his servant. king after king in the line of David when it says that they did not follow in the ways of their father David. Again and again these kings are said this. A few that were fairly good but over and over we see this. This is the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ. This is the line of those who became.

    And so Matthew tells us this genealogy And notice he gives this, and then he includes some of these instances by talking about Tamar, by talking about Rahab, by talking about Ruth and bringing in Uriah’s wife. All of these things are mentioned, but I don’t think these would be normally mentioned when you’re talking about a royal bloodline. Matthew could have left these out. He could have been silent on these events, and yet, since it is Christ’s lineage, since it is the truth, Matthew is not silent.

    He mentions these in this very beginning of his gospel. And I think the inclusion of these women and these foreigners shows that God’s tender care and power that he has for you and I, for his people, as he brings redemption through the likes of these sinful men and women. This is Christ’s earthly heritage.

    Jesus did not come to avoid people like this. Jesus came to embrace the likes of His royal line, the likes of the Gentiles and the prostitutes and the Pharisees of His time. He came not to escape this sin and disgrace, but He came to bear it upon Himself on the cross. his death on the cross than all of these who came before him. He didn’t shun his birthright, but he accepted it as required in order to offer salvation to his people. Regardless of what their shameful acts, regardless of what his history was in terms of this royal line, he came because he came. to save us. Christ was not of a pure line of unblemished royalty.

    He came from this line of those who were sinners. In fact, those who are changed in Christ are those he came for. Adulterers, prostitutes, murderers. They’re no longer identified with their sin, with their identity. Their identity is now in Jesus Christ. They become a new creation.

    Listen to 1 Corinthians 6, verse 9. Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, and think about this list that we’ve just talked about. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slaves, inherit the kingdom of God.

    That sounds like the list that we just went through. The list is these types. And then we see this promise here, this great blessing. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. That’s the hope. That’s the glory. That’s the promise.

    Why else might Matthew want to include these names for us to understand? It might be so that the people of Israel, the Jews, would see, look what these ones are really like. They paraded the name of Abraham in their world. Their genealogical lines were incredible to them. And yet, if they really saw them for what they were, Matthew lets us know.

    There’s no glory in this line of Jesus Christ. Even Paul himself, who was a pretty great guy in his time as a Jew, had a great pedigree. He went through all of that, told us that in Philippians about how incredible he was, but then he says, I put no confidence You and I cannot put any confidence in whatever pedigree we think we have in our life, who we came from, what our studies were, how we have lived our lives, or what we’ve done. There’s no confidence. And Christ’s lineage was not His glory, and it couldn’t be for the Jews of His day, and it can’t be for us in our own time. Why is that?

    Because all of us are under the bondage of sin. The great forefathers and the kings of Israel, they were under the bondage of sin and so are you and I. We are in the same place. Judah stands condemned by Tamar. David knew his sin in the face of Solomon. Could you imagine, every time he sees Solomon, he has to remember how Solomon came into existence. The son of adultery.

    None of these great ones were able to fulfill the law for themselves, let alone for us. They were without hope in themselves. They were all lost and dead in their sins. We need to see them as they are. We need to see them as so great that they didn’t need Christ? Absolutely not. We need to see them as they are, the sinners that they are, those who needed Christ’s coming as much as you and I do.

    And Christ came to do away with all the sins of these patriarchs and kings who are elect of God. Even one such as David, with all that he had done, Christ came to pay for his sin. That was the Church of the Old Testament. And just as much as they are in need of a Savior in their time as we look at this, so we are in our day.

    We need the same things. Any one of us has to realize that we are fully capable of committing the sins that we have looked at in these royal bloodline people. On the list, we could do any of these things. Maybe we have. I’m sure we have done some of these sins.

    Our lineage is no better. Why is that? Because we come from Adam. We’re in the line of Adam. We have Adam’s sin upon us. None of us has anything that we can present to God and say, well, look at me, I’m not like them. We’re in the line of Adam. We are those like him. We are lost in our sin. Is there anyone on this list that strikes us as someone who might actually have good character and is expressed that way? There’s at least one. Boaz. Boaz on this list.

    He didn’t despise the foreign-born Ruth, this widow who was left with nothing. She who had come renounced her country, her race, her family, everything behind her, and yet Boaz accepts her. He’s a picture of Christ in this way, who accepts his church. Christ accepts us, aliens without merit, without resources. And just as Boaz took in Ruth to be a partaker of the blessings that he could provide her, so Christ on our behalf that we might live forever and he takes our sin upon himself and pays for that on the cross through redemption. Just as Ruth had her life redeemed by Boaz, so Jesus Christ redeems us for eternity in the spiritual sense. Ruth’s redemption was only physical. It was only for a time. It ended when her life ended. But when we come as Christ’s bride, when He redeems us for Himself, it’s for all eternity.

    How much greater is this that Christ has done for us than what Boaz did for Ruth? And so we know this Jesus is the Christ. The Christ. That’s what it says here. We see this name Christ, this word Christ used. Look at verse 1, a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. At the end of verse 17, it talks about these periods from the exile to the Christ. What is this Christ? How do we understand Christ?

    Well, Matthew points out his office to inform us that this is not just a private person. Christ is not Jesus’ last name. It’s a title. It’s an important title. It’s not His name in that sense. It is one that was given to Him. It is divinely appointed to Him.

    He is divinely anointed to this office of Redeemer to be the Christ. And so after the royal authority of David’s king is abolished with the exile, the name Christ becomes less and less about a royal bloodline and more about the Redeemer, the Messiah, the one who is to come, the one who would bring more than just physical kingship, who would bring a spiritual heavenly kingdom that was to come. And we see that that’s what Matthew establishes Jesus as the Christ from the very beginning of his gospel here. We see that his messianic, royal, regal duty is the foundation of everything that Matthew is going to go on to say in his gospel. This is the true King of Kings. This is the truly anointed One who comes in the line and in the form like one of us, lowly sinners, in need of what only He could do.

    Does He sin? Is He in that line of sinners in the sinning? No! And we’ll talk more about this tonight, how He’s not in that line, yet He lives the sinless life. Like none on this list, like none of us, like no one else has ever been, He lives perfectly. And then what does He do?

    He dies for those on the list, on God’s list of those elect, for those who are trusting in Him alone for their salvation. This genealogy, this list, should fill us with hope. This should fill us with joy that He came Not from a line of spiritual elite, just for the spiritually elite. He came from a lowly position, born in a manger. All of these things that he went through, suffering under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead, and buried. We know these things in our understanding. And he came and rose again from the dead in that time.

    You and I are no worse in God’s eyes than anyone on this list. But I also want to remind us, we are no better than anyone on this list. And that’s the good news, the joyful news, the message that what comes in the Messiah is for you and me. We can have these blessings. We can have these benefits. by delivering us from the corruption of the flesh and renewing us by the Spirit, we can have new life in Him.

    We can know the glory that is to come. Our Redeemer came and accomplished what He was to do. He established His kingdom. We know His kingdom now. This is what Matthew talks about. The kingdom is here. The kingdom is at hand. It is in Christ. Jesus is that Christ. Jesus is that Anointed One. He has come and redeemed His people.

    There can be no greater joy, no greater gift in this time of year than knowing Jesus Christ as your Anointed One, as your Lord and Savior. So you today, do you know Jesus Christ? Is He your Lord and Savior? Is He your hope today and for all eternity that you’re trusting in Him alone for your salvation? No bloodline, nothing that you’ve done, but Jesus Christ alone. That’s what we celebrate in our Lord’s Day every week.

    That’s what the world around us is open, I think, to hear in this season. Let us share the true Redeemer, the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. Let’s pray. Our Lord and our God, this is a time of year that people are at least aware and maybe open to the truths of who you are and what you have done. in this season to speak of these truths, to relate to others what we have our hope in, what we truly believe. Because Lord, if we believe it, if it’s true for us, we should be talking about it to those around us. It should be just as important as the sports team, the news of the day, the things that we enjoy, the foods that we love, the restaurants we want to go to. Lord, this should be of even greater value and greater significance.

    So Lord, give us your Spirit to be bold, to speak of Jesus, not just a baby in a manger, but Jesus the Christ. What if there’s any here today who do not know Jesus as their Christ, as their Savior? Open their eyes to see these things. Give them hearts of flesh that your Spirit would come upon them and change from dead to alive in Jesus. That they might know the good news of Jesus Christ, what we celebrate so much in this time. We pray this in Jesus’ name.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Blessed are the Peacemakers

    Blessed are the Peacemakers

    About this sermon

    “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Peace with others begins with peace with God through reconciliation in Jesus Christ, and without that foundation nothing else holds. Those who have this peace pursue what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding in the church and in the world, living now as God’s children.

    More sermons from Matthew · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Please turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5 Continuing our study in the Beatitudes Matthew chapter 5 we’re nearing the end Matthew chapter 5 we’re going to read these again minding ourselves We’ll read Matthew chapter 5 beginning at verse 1 through verse 12 Matthew chapter 5 verse 1 This is God’s Word to us Seeing the crowds he went up on the mountain and when he sat down his disciples came to him and He opened his mouth and taught them saying Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven blessed are those who mourn and for they shall be comforted.

    Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

    And we’ll end our reading there. Let’s pray. Our Lord and our God, this is your word to us. Open our hearts encouraged this hour. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. So I’m going to date myself a little bit. Some of you might be in the same camp. I do have remembrance of the Vietnam War back in the day. And during that era, there was what at least I understood and called the Peace Knicks.

    Does that term ring a bell for anybody, the peaceniks? Who were they? And my question about them in that Vietnam era, was they really interested in peace? Were they peacemakers or peacebreakers? What did they do? They had sit-ins. They were fighting against the police and the school administration.

    It seems to me that they were not really interested in peace, even though, you know, peace, you know, remember this? You don’t see this so much anymore. But that was the sign of peace, and that’s what you’d see everybody doing. And yes, they did not want to be in a war in Vietnam and they didn’t want to have people going there, but was what they were doing, what they were seeking, biblical peace? What were they practicing as peaceniks or peacemakers? What were they pursuing?

    I think it’s not what we are going to learn today as we look at this idea of the peacemaker. So we’re gonna look at this in a couple of different ways, look at the word, how it’s used in the Old and New Testaments, and then look at those who were peacemakers and what it might be to not be a peacemaker, and then look at the consequences for that peacemaker.

    So, word peace. And the Hebrew, and Jim, I’m sorry, you’ve probably covered all of this already, because I know you guys are going through this in your class, so, Look at it as a review, if you’ve already heard it, and enjoy what God has just as a reminder to us. So, peace. The Hebrew word, of course, is shalom. Shalom.

    And what does that mean for us? Well, it has come to mean prosperity, well-being in general. And I’m going to have a number of verses as we look through these ideas. Psalm 35, verse 27. says this. May those who delight in my vindication shout for joy and gladness. May they always say, the Lord be exalted, who delights in shalom, well-being, prosperity, idea in the well-being of his servant.

    And so that’s one idea of what shalom is. Well, it’s also used as a greeting and as a farewell. It’s used in asking about the health of someone. Joseph, when he has his brothers coming to him in Genesis chapter 43, says this, and he asked them about their shalom. their welfare, and said, is your old father Shalom? Is he well of whom you spoke? Is he still alive? So Shalom was a way of greeting and a way of looking at people. But it’s also something that was political. It had a political sense to it and a sense of justice. Isaac and Abimelech were at issues with one another.

    Genesis chapter 26, verse 28 and following. We saw clearly that the Lord was with you. So we said, there ought to be a sworn agreement between us, between us and you. Let us make a treaty with you that you will do us no harm, just as we did not molest you, but always treated you well and sent you away in peace. So early the next morning, the men swore an oath to each other, and then Isaac sent them on their way, and they left him in once.

    And so peace is also understood in the Old Testament as a primary blessing, what you would want. Psalm 122, 7, we sang this and we read this. My peace, my shalom be with you within your walls and prosperity within your citadels or your palaces. And so this peace is what people are looking for in the Old Testament. Peace from enemies. Primarily, that was the main thing, which if you had peace from your enemies, you probably had prosperity. And that was the great desire of many nations. And from God’s perspective, peace was a gift to the people, if they walked in His ways.

    Listen to this in Leviticus 26, verse 6. I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down, and no one will make you afraid. I will remove savage beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country.” Picture of peace, Psalm 2911.

    The Lord gives strength to his people. The Lord blesses his people with shalom. with peace. And then in Isaiah, chapter 26, 12, Lord, you established peace for us. All that we have accomplished, you have done for us. And so there’s the blessing of peace in the lives of these people. And this, in a sense, is an outward, very physical manifestation of peace that they could see. But there was also a desire for an inward peace. that was the portion of the righteous for those who trusted in God.

    Isaiah chapter 26 verse 3 says this, Thou will keep him in perfect peace. Thou will keep him in peace, peace, perfect peace. Thou will keep him in shalom, shalom, if you will, whose mind is what stayed on thee because he trusts in thee. peace was to be sought for in those who were seeking righteousness. Psalm 34 verse 14. Seek peace and pursue it. This was what we are called to. This is what the Old Testament was called to. Now, turning our attention to the New Testament. How do we see this in the New Testament?

    Arene has much the same meaning, the Greek term, as shalom. And we see Jesus, as he’s approaching Jerusalem, he sees the city there, and he says there in Luke 19, if you have even had only known on this day what would bring you peace, Shalom, or now Ereine, the idea of peace, but that was hidden from them. And so we see here this idea of peace. Well, when the angels come to the shepherds, very familiar passage in Luke chapter 2 verse 14, what do they declare to them?

    Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to men on whom his favor rests. In Acts 20, Acts 10, verse 36, you know the message of God sent to the people of Israel, telling them the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. So this idea of peace is essential in the New Testament and Christ is obviously the person who you look to for the one who is going to bring this about. Listen to this in Romans chapter 14 verse 17 and following.

    For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men. And so what he goes on to say, let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. It is something that is to be cherished by us as believers, as Christians. We are to make this part of our lives.

    Listen to Mark chapter 9 verse 50. Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and now this connection, and be at peace with each other. Saltiness and peace, that’s an interesting combination of thought, that idea of being salty, of having that impact, and also being peaceful. Second Corinthians chapter 13 verse 11.

    Finally, brothers, goodbye. Aim for perfection. Listen to my appeal. Be of one mind. Live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you forever. And of course we know that many of the epistles start with, grace and peace be to you. It’s something that’s said again and again there. Peace be with you. John 14, 27, Jesus also makes this same thing. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

    And so we see the sense of peace enriching and just and filling in all of the New Testament perspective here. And those were a kind of peace that were, again, sort of an outward kind of peace, but there’s a spiritual peace that we look for as well. Why do I say that? Because when Jesus came, while he says, peace be with you, there’s a time that he says that this is not peace, not peace on earth. It’s interesting. Matthew 10 verse 34 says this, Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.” Now, wait a minute. He’s just said, peace be to you, and they release phrases. But it says, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. So how do we get these things in our mind? How do we wrap ourselves around this?

    The ultimate peace from war and strife comes only through the peace that Jesus brings through salvation and reconciliation. That’s what we need to understand, and we’ll talk more about that, that the peace that people found physically could come and go. It might not be permanent, but the peace that Jesus offers is permanent. So what are some examples of those who were peacemakers?

    It’s interesting, I’ve got a few of them here. The first one I want to talk about is Phineas. Phineas. Listen to this about Numbers 25.11.

    Now what do we know that Phineas did to bring peace? Not a very peaceful act. He’s the one who runs the javelin through the Israelite man into the Midianite woman while they’re engaged in activity that should not be done. And so that is his act that brings peace.

    Listen to it in Numbers, chapter 25, 11. Phineas, son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, has turned my anger away from the Israelites. for he was as zealous as I am for my honor among them, so that in my zeal I did not put an end to them. Therefore tell him, I am making my covenant of peace with him. He and his descendants will have a covenant of lasting priesthood because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the sacrifice.” So you see, there’s the beginning stages of what it means to make peace and what you accomplish by it. Deborah, Deborah sought the well-being others and herself in that setting. We’re called to do the same thing like Deborah.

    Judges 5.31 says this, So may all your enemies perish, O Lord, but may they who love you be like the sun when it rises in its strength.

    And then the land had what? peace for 40 years. Again and again in the book of Judges, peace comes, but it comes at the hand of what seems to be not very peaceful. but it’s those who are doing what is right, what is honoring to God. Remember Gideon? Again, Gideon, another familiar figure in this, went to Penuel in peace. He went to this place and he’s breaking down its towers and killing all the men of the city because he was doing justice to a city that did not give food to the Israelites. And listen to what it says here in Judges 8 and 9 as he’s doing this. So he said to the men of Peniel, when I return in shalom, in peace, I will tear down this tower.

    So here’s a picture of a very aggressive, if you will, a very antagonistic, a very destructive sense of peace. But the ambassador of peace in these places is the one who ends wars, who brings reconciliation between people, who does God’s work of judgment in these places.

    And of course, we know that Jesus who is the prince of peace, is the ultimate worker of peace. And so we see this as we think about Jews and Gentiles. That was the The major issue in the New Testament world was this contention, this distinction, this angst between them. And so we see in Ephesians chapter 2 how Jesus is a part of this, how He is the means for peace. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 14, is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God. what Jesus has done reconciling both Jew and Gentile to God to God through the cross by which he put to death their hostility he came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.” And that’s the message for us, Jew or Gentile, we are called to this peace.

    And it comes through Jesus Christ. This is the good news of Jesus Christ. This is the gospel truth that is the ultimate peace that we have with God. There’s no greater peace that you can have if you don’t know this peace, this personal peace. of Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will never find peace, and it’s true in ultimate sense, anywhere else. Romans 5-1 says this, Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, And that’s the picture. Jesus Christ, just as if I had never sinned, by grace, God’s riches at Christ’s expense, this is what we have. And it says, therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God. through our Lord Jesus Christ.

    There’s nothing greater that you can have than that. That’s what we desire and that comes through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Amen? Is that where you are today? Do you know that glory, that hope, that peace, and that access to the grace where we are. This is who you are if you are in Jesus Christ. So that’s a picture of the peace. So what about peacemakers? What’s some examples of those who I would call non-biblical peacemakers? What does that look like?

    Well, there might be some who consider it peace if they just treat a person as if they don’t exist. I’m at peace because I basically don’t see you. They disown someone, they kick them out, maybe out of the house, they avoid them, they ignore them, and they’re not speaking with them at all. And so, I’m at peace with that person, I just don’t have any contacts. It’s not a true peace, it’s not a biblical peace. Well, some seek after peace by staying uninvolved. Staying uninvolved. I hate conflict and trouble. I don’t want any confrontation. I’m just going to let the sleeping dogs lie. I’m going to stand back. I’m going to walk on the other side.

    And this situation again is not real peace. Such may be time bombs waiting to go off. And some people are just naturally docile, peaceful people. It might be in their nature. Someone who just has a peaceful heart. They’re not a critical person. They’re not a judgmental person. They’re not an arguing person. And so you just have a hard time to get in any kind of conflict with them.

    And they say, well, it’s just a peaceful person. And while that might be a good thing, to have that sense of peace, it’s not the beatitude peacemaker. How does one become a beatitude peacemaker? And it has to begin in the heart. You can’t bring to others what you don’t already have. So you need to look at your heart.

    What kind of a hard attitude do you have? Are you one who is generally argumentative? Do people look at you as someone who is harsh or critical? Do you have a certain amount of holding grudges against people, where you won’t let something go, where you won’t seek forgiveness, where you have these unreconciled offenses, where you’re divided with people.

    And it seems like everywhere you turn, there’s a division. There’s somebody who has something against you, or you have something against them. Or maybe it’s against God. Maybe you have a division with God because He hasn’t brought you what you wanted in life, or He didn’t give you the things that you thought you deserved, or He took something away from you. Do you have a heart attitude that is at peace or in contention? And so how do we come to this? Well, again, we’ve been looking at the Beatitudes, right?

    I just want us to be reminded this peacemaker comes in this the sense of progression that we see. And it comes about, as we reminded ourselves in the very beginning, that we have a poverty of spirit. We realize that we are grieving over our sin, that we have fallen short, that we don’t measure up. And in that grief, we find comfort in our mourning.

    And then in our meekness, as we realize that that’s our place, we now submit ourselves to God’s will. And we say, not my will, but thy will be done. And as we’re in that process, then we’re hungering and thirsting to understand who God is and what He calls us to do and how He wants us to live our lives. And we desire His righteousness and not our own. And then as we come to that place, we are merciful. to others. We realize and see what God in his mercy has done for us, saving us from our sins, turning us from death to life, giving us his spirit so that we in turn can show mercy to others because we received God’s mercy. And in that process we become pure in heart and we see things as God sees them and we desire to follow in his place.

    And this prepares us then to be a peacemaker. This may happen over time, it may come in slowness, it may come all at once. You may have experiences in your life that move you in this direction, but know that the end of your Christian life, the purpose of your life, is to be at peace and be of peacemakers.

    And it comes out of your own personal experience with God. My life as a Christian doesn’t end with me and God off somewhere by myself in isolation from others. I can’t be a peacemaker if I’m not with other people. I can’t be a peacemaker if I’ve hidden myself away, if I’m not connected. I have to come off the mountaintop. and engage in the world around me with those who are the human race and sinners, believers, unbelievers, different ethnic values, different people groups, all of them need to be a place where I enter in to bring peace. I’m not merely just a good man that goes about and tries to bring contending people together, try to work out their quarrels and produce kind of a tranquility between them that may or may not last. But if I’m going to be this peacemaker, this happy peacemaker, this blessed peacemaker, I need to bring the peace first and foremost of the reconciliation with God. If we don’t have that kind of peace, if we don’t have peace with God as the point of everything, as the foundation, then the rest of it won’t matter.

    It’s not truly peace. So I take the message of a reconciled and reconciling God in the person of Jesus Christ to those in conflict. I need to tell them the good news of Jesus Christ. I need to say that you will never find peace unless you find peace first with your Savior, Jesus Christ. And then I need to proclaim that message with my mouth, yes, and with my life. I need to proclaim Christ. I need to proclaim this reconciliation that is available to us.

    2 Corinthians 5.19, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them, and he has committed to us that message of reconciliation. If you’re dealing with people in conflict or if you’re dealing with struggles in a place that has no peace, bring the peace of the gospel of Jesus Christ into that place. But how else do I keep the peace?

    You know how easy it is to start gossip. You know how easy it is to create strife and contention, to be critical, to be judgmental. A mere spark and that haystack will just go up in flame. It’s much, much harder to put that fire out, to put out that gossip, that animosity, that division, that contention.

    So watch and guard your tongue. Watch and see how you’re speaking, how you’re bringing these things to be. Don’t return evil for evil. Hateful words or acts of evil will only produce more evil. Romans chapter 12 verse 21 says, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

    It takes two to quarrel, right? If one person cannot quarrel by themselves, make sure you are not the one who is part of the quarrel. Resolve to keep the peace. So no peacemaking is even required. If we don’t allow ourselves to be the peacebreaker, then we don’t have to become the peacemaker. And scripture is very clear. It says, let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Romans 14, 19. Live at peace with all men. Live at peace with all men. How do you engage with people to bring about peace.

    As a lover of God, detest strife, abhor strife and debate and contention. Labor to see that you are not part of those things. And if you see that happening, find ways to nip that in the bud, so to speak, if there are these things coming up. Attempt to calm the stormy hearts of men. Quiet the passions and turbulence. Soften the minds of contending parties. Bring that reconciliation of the gospel of Jesus Christ into that setting. Preserve the peace where it is. does not.

    Ephesians chapter 4 verse 2. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. That’s the picture of peace. Peace and unity is very much what God wants for us. So you were called to be that peacemaker. Well, what’s the outcome? What’s the payback, if you will, if you are going to be a peacemaker?

    You’re going to be called sons of God. And ladies, we understand that that includes you. You are sons of God or children of God. Well, who’s going to call you a son of God? Well, I can tell you it’s not going to be the world around you. The world around you is not going to call you a son of God.

    We see that in the verses that come after this particular verse. Men will revile you and persecute and say all evil, a manner of evil against you for my sake. It doesn’t matter though what men say, what the world says. Don’t worry about that, but what God calls us. sons of God. God is the one who calls us His sons. 1 John chapter 3 verse 1. How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are. Do you take that promise and take it and hold on to it? Well, what’s the significance of being God’s sons? Well, we have His likeness and we’re to be like Him.

    Ephesians 5.1, be imitators of God therefore as dearly loved children and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Imitate your Heavenly Father. If you’re a son, it’s the greatest form of love that I can imagine. If there’s anything that, for me as a father, in hearing people telling me about my children and how they have walked in my steps, how they have followed in the things that I have done that are godly, that are desirable, acting like imitators of my father, Are you imitating your Heavenly Father? Well, what else is the significance of this? Romans 8, verse 15, For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship, or we would say adoption.

    And by him we cry, you can call on as Abba. That very personal sense, we are his sons, he is our Abba, our father. It is as we live in his likeness that we come to the calm understanding of what being a child of God is about, is all about, and then spreading that peace to others.

    What is the ultimate Outcome what is the ultimate significance? We’re co-heirs with Jesus Christ Romans chapter 8 17 now if we are children Then we are heirs Heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory Revelations 21 7 he who overcomes will inherit all this and and I will be his God, and he will be my son.” That’s God’s promise to you and I. That’s the blessing that we have.

    So I ask you, are you a peacemaker or a peacebreaker? God calls us to peacemaking. Beware of that false prophet who says, peace, peace, when there really is no peace. Are you that false prophet in your life? Do you say, peace, peace, in the way the world says peace? But there is no actual peace. Don’t live in a false peace. Peace without Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is a false peace. If you don’t know Christ, you cannot know this peace.

    And if you are that peacemaker, then you are that child of God. You have peaceful reconciliation with Him and with the other heirs of Christ. You’re to spread that peace to those around you, even regardless of the consequences of you being that person.

    You probably are going to be reviled. You’re probably going to be persecuted. But God still calls you and I to be peacemakers and live in that peace in the midst of the strife that we may know all eternity let’s pray our Lord and our God we’re not always very peaceful you just have to ask people in our family or at work or around us and you’ll find how we fall short where we do anything but make peace with those around us, with our parents, with our children, with our spouses, with neighbors, with relatives, with fellow church members. Lord, we are a fallen people.

    We need your spirit that we would know these truths. Thank you for the blessings and the promise that you have given us in Jesus Christ. us to Yourself, that You have made us Your sons and daughters. What a marvelous gift this is that we know in part, but in time we will know fully for all eternity. Lord, if there are those here who don’t know this peace, by the power of Your Spirit, we pray that You would take them from their lack of peace, their false peace, and bring them the true peace of salvation through Jesus Christ. Lord, if we live our life and we feel like there is no peace, we’ve forgotten, we’ve left this aside. Lord, bring this to bear in our life that we would know your peace, that we would be those who bring peace, that we would make peace with others. would be known as that person who brings peace into the body of Christ into the world around us that we would live now as sons of God knowing that we have the blessing of that eternity forever we pray this in Jesus

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Blessed Are the Meek

    Blessed Are the Meek

    About this sermon

    Psalm 37 tells God’s people not to fret over evildoers but to trust in the Lord and wait for him, for the meek shall inherit the land, and Jesus repeats that promise in the Beatitudes. Meekness is the quiet strength seen in Moses and in Christ, who submit to God’s dealings and bear with others instead of pushing to be first. Those who begin poor in spirit grow into this meekness and receive the earth as God’s gift.

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    Sermon transcript

    for our Old Testament reading, Psalm 37. Our topic is, Blessed are the meek. And so notice how the meek are mentioned in this passage as we read this. Psalm 37, I’ll begin reading in verse 1. Fret not yourself because of evildoers. Be not envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb.

    Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in Him and He will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.

    Fret not yourself over the one who prospers in His way, over the man who carries out evil devices. Refrain from anger and forsake wrath. Fret not yourself, it tends only to evil. For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. In just a little while, the wicked will be no more. Though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there. But the meek shall inherit the land. and delight themselves in abundant peace.”

    And we’ll end our Old Testament reading there. And if you’ll now turn with me to Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5 as we continue our study in the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes specifically. Matthew chapter 5 and we’ll begin our reading at verse 1. Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain. And when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

    And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

    And we’ll end our reading there. Let’s pray. Our Lord and our God, we thank you for your word. And as we look into this sermon that Jesus gave so long ago, may we hear their truths. May we be blessed. May we be encouraged. May we be challenged. May your spirit come alongside us in this time. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    So we’ve talked about these being the B attitudes. What’s the world’s B attitude? I’d say this is what they might suggest is their B attitude. Blessed are the strong, the proud, the independent, and successful. Those who can hold their own. For they will be considered great.” Is that not pretty much the B attitude of the world around us?

    Whether it’s sports figures, politicians, movie stars and celebrities, or business tycoons. That’s kind of the picture we have. And who’s the picture of who you don’t want to be? Does anybody remember Back to the Future? Anybody? Just a show of hands. I just want to know if we have anybody who… Oh, there’s a few of us that remember Back to the Future. Do you remember the name of the Casper Milquetoast character? George McFly.

    He is the epitome of what you don’t want to be in the world today. And of course we had Biff, who was the bully, who in a sense was what the world was all about and what the world desired to be like. And so there’s the contrast that we see in our world. This is what the world says is the right way to be, the right attitudes to have. And George McFly was not it.

    So, the Beatitudes. How do we understand these? Let’s review a little bit of what we have been saying. First of all, with the Beatitudes, we talked about a ladder. We’re ascending a ladder as we look at this group of Beatitudes. The first one, poor in spirit, and this group inherits the Kingdom of God. Then there were those who mourn. and they’re gonna be comforted. And so as we think about these two, we recognize the true poverty of spirit that we have, our utterly sinful condition and our poverty of spirit. The depths of this is incredible.

    Our hopelessness outside of Christ causes us to then grieve and mourn over our sin and the consequences of our sin. and what Jesus has had to do on our behalf. And we have injured others. We’ve injured ourselves. We’ve injured others. And so we grieve and mourn over what we have done in our poverty of spirits.

    And now we understand that in this life, this side of perfection, this side of heaven, we will never stop being poor in spirit. We will never fully stop mourning and grieving over the sin because we will never stop sinning. We will never be perfect. But we also have the idea that as we are on this ladder, as we grow in our faith, that we will see ourselves with less grieving because we hopefully will see ourselves experiencing less sin in our life.

    And we will also, in contrast, be experiencing the comfort and grace and mercy of Jesus Christ in our lives. And so those will move us to this new beatitude, the attitude of meekness. The attitude of meekness. So how do we understand Meekness. How do we look at this? First, I want to say what the opposite of this is. And I think if we think back to back to the future, Biff was the opposite of what meekness is. He was harsh. He was tyrannical. He was haughty. He was rebellious. He just was a bad guy. He just was all about himself. Arrogant, conceited, and proud. That’s the picture we have of what is the opposite of being meek. So what does the picture of meekness not look like?

    What are we not expecting to see here? Well, if you think back to the early New Testament time and the Greek perspective, the Greek view was that meekness was a weakness. If you were meek, they saw it merely as being servant-like, as someone who was not worth considering. It also, meekness is not the idea of being a Casper Milquetoast, not being a George McFly. That’s not what we want to think of meekness as.

    It’s merely a doormat, the person that gets walked on in whatever they do. meekness in our biblical perspective is not merely being timid or being shy. Now, in our DNA, we kind of look at that, say someone who is kind of introverted, into themselves, and we say they look like they’re being meek. And we might use that idea, but that’s not the biblical idea of meekness. Just because someone hangs back, just because someone doesn’t speak up, or someone is not as active in sharing of their opinions and their ideas, does not bring them to being biblically meek.

    Meekness is not otherwise. Also being apathetic, feeling nothing, having no perspective on something, is not being meek. It’s not being the way that God wants us to be meek. Another aspect of what meekness is not is being ignorant. Sometimes we’ll look at people who have no understanding, no ideas, no knowledge, and they seemingly are meek because they just are not knowledgeable in certain areas. Not having zeal for God.

    Just because someone is of a temperament that is not excitable and they’re calm and gentle does not merely or make them meek. So how do we understand meek? And I want to suggest that those who are meek are not extreme in their lives, either one way or the other. They’re balanced in how they approach and think about life and their responses. So their emotional responses and desires are scaled down. They’re on a scale where they’re not either way out here or way out there. The meek hold an even scale in their lives with regard to anger, to sorrow, and fear. they are preserving that sense of moderation and being in the middle, not turning to the right or to the left.

    So here are some examples in scriptures of those who are meek. And what is in a sense surprising if we don’t think of this, Moses is the only one who I know of in scripture besides Jesus Christ who is said to be meek in Numbers chapter 12 verse 3. It says, Now Moses was a very humble, and that’s the same word used for meek man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. And you think about Moses’ life, and you think about the things he had done, and the places that he had been. He was someone who had killed. He had done all kinds of different things in his life. But Scripture tells us that he was the most meek man.

    Well, what was the context of this verse, Numbers 12.3?

    At this point, Miriam and Aaron, his siblings, have just spoken against Moses, because he has just had the sense that he had married this Ethiopian woman, and they were speaking against him. They were wanting to claim leadership, and as if they had the voice of God connection that he had, they were trying to take that place. In a word, they were jealous of Moses. How does Moses do in this situation?

    Well, first of all, Moses didn’t deserve this kind of treatment. He didn’t deserve what they were doing to him. And what does he do? Nothing. He does not respond in defense of himself. He doesn’t get up there and give a diatribe or a debate or a discussion about what he did was right and you people are wrong.

    God defends Moses. And in that way, God defends Moses by striking his sister Miriam with leprosy. And Moses, even at that point, could have said, eh, see, you got what you deserved. He could have said those words or he could have thought those words. But what we see is that Moses speaks on behalf of his sister Miriam to God to say, take this from her. So Moses is a great example in the Old Testament. of one who was meek in the face of what was before him.

    And of course, Jesus is our other example. In Matthew chapter 11, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle, you fill in the word meek in the Greek text there, I am meek and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. The picture of Jesus, again, Matthew 21. Say to the daughters of Zion, see your king comes to you, gentle, read meek, and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. This is the picture of what meek is, Jesus, the king of all kings, Lord of the earth, and comes into Zion in that very meek way, on a donkey. This is the picture of scripture of what meek looks like.

    So how do we express meekness? How do we think about this in our own lives? Well, first of all, we want to think about how are we meek towards God? And I think there’s two aspects here of how we demonstrate meekness before God. First, we endure. We have what I call meek endurance. We accept what God brings into our path without murmuring, without sulking, without rebellion or resistance.

    Again, think back to the Israelites in the desert. They were constantly complaining, constantly against God. And what have you done to us? And why are you doing these things? It would be better back in Egypt. And yet Moses never voices these concerns.

    We are to accept what God has. When sorrow comes on us, When we rely on our natural strength, we become like children. When these things happen to us, we kick and we scream and we have temper tantrums. Maybe they’re adult temper tantrums, maybe they’re not. But this is not how we endure meekly what God brings to us. And we take offense at this, as if, I don’t deserve this. Why can this happen? Why is this happening to me? And that’s the picture of what we are not to be doing. Instead, we are to without murmuring, without complaining, without rebellion.

    We’re blessed when we accept what God brings our way, what he sends our way. And so what can be a sorrow, what can be painful, what can be annoying becomes joy to us as believers who are demonstrating, acting out meekness towards God and enduring what he brings to our lives. What’s the second aspect of meekness towards God?

    It’s obedience. It’s obedience. It’s doing what God calls us to do with a heart that is willing to say, as Jesus said in the garden, not my will, but thy will be done. That’s the picture of meekness. And so we, in the same way, have to say, not my will, not my desires, God, but what you desire. Your will and our will bends and conforms to God’s, no matter what he brings our way.

    Whether it’s joy, sorrows, light, darkness, whatever it is, we say, yes, Lord. And the picture the scriptures give us here is that clay. We are like clay in the potter’s hands. We don’t tell the potter what to make us into. We don’t complain about what he’s done. If we are the clay and he is the potter, we sovereignly accept what the Lord has brought into our lives. And we delight in conforming to his way and his will. So that’s how we’re meek toward God. How are we meek towards others, to those around us in the world?

    And it’s what’s interesting in the Beatitudes, as we look at this idea, this is the first Beatitude that involves others, that’s relational. Being poor in spirit, that’s me. Mourning, that’s me. But now, meekness is something that is demonstrated towards others. This is outward oriented. So are you able to respond with meekness when people point out your poverty of spirit, your problems, the issues in your life, are you able to respond in relationship to the first two Beatitudes of having that poor spirit, wings poor in spirit, having that mournful and grieving heart over your sin, then are you able to respond meekly to those who help you understand these things in your life? We need to have that true view of our poverty and sense of sin to respond appropriately to those around us.

    Otherwise, what do we do? We lash out, we defend ourselves. We become like, not me, that’s not what I did, you can’t put that on me. We get into that sense of defending ourselves at all costs instead of responding with patience or an openness or being teachable. mildness, gentleness to that evil. Even if it is evil, even if it is good. We’re free from a malicious heart. We’re free from a vengeful spirit.

    We’re not going to have an attitude in our meekness towards others that says, oh yeah, well let me tell you something about you. That’s not being meek. We respond in the way the Lord would want us to respond. The meek can discern what is evil We don’t have to have our own way. We don’t have to demand our rights if we’re expressing meekness. We are zealous for the Lord, but we are zealous to temper our thoughts and our actions, our work and all that we do so that God is served, not us. So that God is praised and raised up, not us. And that’s what I need to do if I’m going to be meek towards others, is I need to work daily on expressing myself in these ways, controlling, self-controlling my passions and my emotions so that I don’t lash out at those around us.

    This is what the meek will be doing. So, idea of being meek towards God, meek towards men, how do we see this in scripture? What are some other passages that help us understand this? Well, if you’ve been with us in the book of James, we saw this in James chapter 1, verse 21. The word there is, humbly accept, and it would be better read, meekly accept the word planted in you. This is not being weak and mamby-pamby and Casper milquetoast, but it’s being submissive to God, meekly, humbly taking what He is telling us, not being haughty and rebellious, not rejecting what God has, but accepting it as God’s truth and incorporating it into our daily lives. James chapter 3, a little bit later, says this, Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, By deeds done in the humility,” read meekness, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. So meekness involves gentleness, it involves that sense, it involves humility, it involves this idea of accepting and receiving these things in the way we relate and treat others. What’s an example of this?

    Horses are broken at some point. We try to get on them. I don’t like to do this personally, but people try to get on horses and ride them, and use bridles and all kinds of things to control them. To me, it seems like a very scary proposition, because I never know what would happen, because horses are horses, and in my mind, they’re not trustworthy.

    But even scriptures will tell us that here’s a case where the horse is at some level put under control, is made to be humble, made to be meek, has this bridle in its mouth, and that’s somewhat of the picture. That we, when we are meek, are like horses who are bridled.

    What I like to call this, the term I like to do is say, this is strength under control of the Holy Spirit. That’s what meekness is for us. It’s not weak, mamby-pamby, Casper milquetoast kind of people that get walked all over. It’s strength. It’s might. It’s power. But it’s bridled. It’s controlled.

    That’s what the picture of meekness is. That’s why James said, who is wise and understanding? How are you known by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom? That’s what we’re to be like. That’s what meekness is for us. Strength under control of the Holy Spirit. And it comes from wisdom. It comes from wisdom. How often do we act without wisdom? How often do we just react without any sense of what we’re about? And we just lash out. We just do something.

    And it’s not a meekness. It’s not a humility. We’re to act out of these ways in our life towards others with gentleness, with humility, and then with considerateness. Considerateness. That’s when you think about others before yourself, when you consider others’ sensitivities, others’ issues, other things that are going on in other people’s lives, and being willing to accommodate them. Now, we don’t accommodate sin, we don’t accommodate what is evil and against God and abuse, but we can accommodate other people’s quirks, other people’s character traits, how often do we respond in haste and in anger and annoyance towards that which is really not sin?

    Well, the person who is meek is going to be considerate and will allow those things to wash over, will allow those things to pass by them. It’s that sense of Romans 12, 21, do not be overcome by evil, do not be overcome by these things in the world, but overcome evil with good.

    That’s the picture of what meekness is. Another area where meekness will show its face in a similar sense is when the meek person is provoked, when there is that sense, they can remain silent, in the face of whatever is oppressing upon them, whatever offense comes on them, or they can return a soft answer. Again, James chapter 1, we saw this recently in our evening services. My dear brothers, take note of this. If you want to know what it means to be meek, this is it.

    Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry. I think that’s a perfect picture of what it is to be me. Why is this? Because for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. That’s what we are to be. We are to be slow to speak, slow to get angry, But what? Quick to listen. Are we listeners? Meek are listeners. The meek are slow to these things. Think about this picture. I’m not a dog lover, and so I really pay attention when I hear dogs barking. It really affects me.

    But have you ever seen dogs do this? One dog starts to bark, and then the other dog barks back. And then that dog barks back at the barkback, and then barkback, barkback, barkback. It just goes on and on. And it’s this picture of not listening and just going at one another without having any sense of what’s going on. Now, sadly, you may have experienced this in the human world. One person barks. The other person barks back. This one bark, bark, bark, bark.

    It’s that picture of what we’re not to be about. So we need to understand when someone barks, we don’t have to bark back. Those who are meek are going to be this very idea, quick to listen, slow to bark, and slow to become angry. That’s what we want to see in our lives as meek. Can you show displeasure when it’s appropriate? Moses showed displeasure when it was appropriate, yet not go overboard in the display in that setting. Can you remain calm when others get hot?

    I don’t know if you have ever played in church softball leagues. Anybody who has played in church softball leagues knows exactly what I’m talking about. This is a place where you need to be quick to listen, so to speak, and slow to get angry. I remember umpires talking to umpires who said, church softball leagues were the worst place to umpire in. What a sad statement about church softball leagues.

    Because this was the picture. Because there was not a demonstration of meekness in those settings. We are called to turn away, to remain silent, or return a soft answer. It’s the picture of meekness. We have to be rarely provoked and easily pacified as those who are meek. We need to say, I would rather forgive 20 injuries that happened to me than revenge one for something that happened to me.

    Having that control over my spirit, that’s the picture of meekness. One last item here that we think about in terms of what is meekness, it’s the absence of pretension. It’s the absence of having a heart that says, I deserve what I deserve. 1 Peter 3, chapter 4. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle, slash meek, we read meek, and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.

    1 Peter 3.14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear. Do not be frightened, but in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness, meekness, and respect.

    How many times do we, as the all-knowing, all-perfect, almost in a sense, reformed people, blast others with our knowledge? How often do we belittle others? How often do we, as it says here, give an answer for the hope that is within us, but has very little to do with meekness and respect? We are called to have an absence of a pretense of I’m right and you’re wrong.

    I’m better than you and you need to know it. If I’m going to be meek in this way that God calls me to be, then I need to put away all of that sense of I’m better, I know more. If you will just listen to me, everything will be fine. Do these things with gentleness and respect. Well, that’s the picture of meekness. The question that I always have is, well, that’s really nice stuff, but that’s not me. I’m not very good at this meekness thing. I’m really good at the other side. I’m really good at everything that we’ve described here in the opposite way. Why can the believer, why can we react in meekness? Why should we react in meekness instead of with pride and harshness and tyranny and all the other things that we shouldn’t be doing. Here’s why I should be reacting in meekness. If I have grieved over my sin and sensed my complete unworthiness before God, then surely I should be able to do the same for others. I should be able to receive God’s mercy and grace, and then I should be able to show mercy and grace to others.

    I’ve received it. You’ve received it. Do we truly understand what we have gotten, what God has done? I should be able to see these things as what God has done for me. Listen to Ezekiel chapter 36 verse 25. God speaking to us, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.

    So if we truly understand this, if we truly have received God’s comfort, if we know this in our life that we are made clean, then we should be truly penitent. We should truly have a heart that sees, I have received an incredible grace and mercy from God, and I need to extend that to others. That’s the picture of why I can be meek. When we realize what debt we have had forgiven of us, we are not as likely to go so hard on that other person who has offended us. We need to have that heart attitude, that sense of meekness because I have received incredible mercy. That’s who I am. That is what God calls us to do, to be meek in this way. So what is the outcome? What is the outcome for the meek? What is the thing that comes to them?

    Well, we actually saw this in Psalm 37 that we read in our Old Testament passage, verse 11. The meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace. the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace.” This, of course, is a reference to Israel and to the peaceful possession of the Promised Land based on their faithfulness to keep God’s commands. This is what was to come to them. This is what the blessing was. This was the happiness. This was the joy that they were going to receive if they indeed acted as meek people.

    It’s quite an opposite view of what the Jews of Jesus’ day wanted. What did the Jews in Jesus’ day wanted? They wanted to set up an armed rebellion against the Roman government, win back Israel for them, and they figured that Jesus was the best thing going at the time. So, Jesus, let’s do this, let’s rebel, let’s go against the people.

    But that was not meekness. That was not the promise of blessing that was to come to set up an army and push out those who were ruling over them. So what is this idea of inheriting the earth, the meek inheriting the earth? Because I think it’s talking about the earth. It’s talking about something of our temporal time, our time on earth. The idea here is that this is indeed for now. This is indeed something that is here. So what is the blessing of inheriting the earth for us? Well, first of all, let me again start with what it is not. Inheriting the earth is not that everything in the earth, the possessions will all be yours and if you indeed act meekly, you should expect to have health and wealth. That’s not what inheriting the earth is.

    The meek are not likely to be the ones bullying to the front to get the biggest piece of cake. The meek are not the ones who are going to push through in that crowded room to get first in line. Rather, the meek are the ones who stand around the edges waiting for others to go ahead. Do you know who the meek are sitting here?

    You probably do. You probably know who are the ones who say, no, no, you go first. No, no, no. I’ll go later. Or they just stand back. That’s part of this picture of the meek. This is what we would see them doing. The possessions of the things of this life are not a measure of importance and esteem for them. They’re not the measure of happiness or blessing for the meek.

    Proverbs chapter 16 verse 8 says, Better a little with righteousness than much gain with injustice. Do you live that way? Is that true for you? Blessed or better a little with righteousness than much gain with injustice. So the earth in view in one sense here is that which we dwell in now. It’s the life here and now, but it’s not about possessions for the meek. Meekness promotes health, wealth, comfort, and safety. It looks for those things. It doesn’t try to abuse ourselves. It doesn’t try to make ourselves worse off. Those things are good in this life.

    But the meek live the most easy of lives because they live meekly. If you think about this, think about those who are harsh, tyrannical, who are the troublemakers, who are are unkind, selfish. Typically, their lives are a lot harder in terms of their relations with others. Typically, they live difficult lives, whereas the meek lifestyle, happiness, blessings, not looking to do those things, not being involved in those other activities, somehow we find a great happiness.

    God’s provided us all things that we need in life. For life, regular living, and godliness. In the face of evil forces, fraud, malice, God saves the meek. God blesses those who are meek. The meek possess whatever God gives them, and they are content with what he is pleased to give them, because it has pleased him to give it to the meek. Blessed are those who are meek.

    We need to seek meekness. Listen to this from Zephaniah chapter 2 verse 3. Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, you who do what he commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility, seek meekness. Perhaps you will be sheltered on the day of the Lord’s anger. And that’s the picture we have. Seek these things because this is who God blesses. These are those who will inherit the earth. So the Beatitudes emphasize this putting off and putting on.

    Pride is what we need to remove from our lives. It’s one of the main things that needs to be replaced. Having that poverty of spirit is the first step. and then realizing that we are mournful and we are not prideful in that place. We need to realize that thoughtlessness and a casual, no worries, I don’t care what’s going on, it’s no big deal about my sin, prevents us from having the right heart attitude toward our sin. That’s what needs to be replaced by mourning for that sin.

    And then as we move forward, such attitudes as anger, impatience, discontentment, are what? They’re replaced with the beatitude of Christian meekness. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Let’s pray. Our Lord and our God, We find it hard, typically, to be meek. We are typically proud. We are typically wanting to put ourselves forward. We are typically wanting to let other people notice us, to be me first, to get what we want.

    It’s so against our human, fallen nature to be meek. And so, Lord, we know that without your saving grace, without your Spirit in our midst, in our hearts, soul being changed by the Spirit. There is no hope for us. We won’t have that poverty of Spirit. We won’t be mourning. We won’t see any of this.

    We’ll be like the world that says the Beatitude is to be me first, me the greatest, and everything about me. And so Lord, forgive us where we have followed in the world’s steps, where we have been that kind of Beatitude. and not been meek, not putting others first, not following what you would call us in humbleness, gentleness, consideration, the way we should not respond in like manner to that which is upon us.

    But Lord, give us a heart that is meek, a heart that follows in the example of Jesus Christ. when these things are upon us. Lord, if there are those who don’t know you at all, I pray that you would be changing hearts that are dead, selfish, all about themselves, to hearts that are flesh and alive in Jesus Christ, that look to you and trust in you alone for their salvation, and that they would Get on this ladder of the Beatitudes that you have set forth in scriptures. We thank you for your word. Lord, comfort us where we fall short, challenge us where we fall short, and lead us in your way. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

    Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

    About this sermon

    The Beatitudes begin with the poor in spirit, the first rung of the ladder, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. To be poor in spirit is to see one’s true spiritual state, empty-handed before God, the opposite of the self-reliance the world prizes. Those who come to God like the tax collector, crying for mercy, receive the blessing of his kingdom now and in the glory of Christ’s return.

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    Sermon transcript

    and turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5. With us last week, we were beginning the Sermon on the Mount series, and today we’re beginning with the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. And this is the week that we recognize the passion of Christ, this week when we pay attention to what He went through. And we’ll see as we come to this first of the Beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit, it’s the right place to start this week for us as we focus on who we are, what our situation is, where we stand before God in the beginning of our walk with Him. So we’re going to look at this particular passage and we’re going to again be focusing on the first beatitude. But we’re going to read verses 1 through 12.

    Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain. And when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

    Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

    And we’ll end our reading there. Let’s pray as we come to God’s Word. Our Lord and our God, we thank you that you speak these truths to us. May our hearts be open to you. May you challenge us. May you encourage us. May you comfort us. May you call us to a higher way. And Lord, may all that is said here be to your glory and truth. We pray this in Jesus’ name.

    So, coming to the Beatitudes, I want us to be thinking of them as a ladder. something that gets us moving forward, gets us moving up. A ladder, of course, everybody knows what a ladder is. It has several steps on it. And I want us to see that that sense of steps is the description of the progression of my life in Christ as I walk in Him. And as we go on this ladder, we want to see that certain steps seem to work together. They seem to come one after the other. You have to go one step at a time.

    And this is true of ladders. Any good ladder, you need to realize the first step needs to be somewhere down near the ground. If the first step is like at 10 feet, that’s not a very useful ladder. It doesn’t help us in our situation. We can’t climb that ladder. And that’s the case with the ladder of the Beatitudes.

    It doesn’t start at some high-level qualities of Christian character, but it starts at the bottom, the most basic characteristics of any Christian. And from that basic level, everything else rises out. So, these Beatitudes are what we need to understand when we have a sense of the Law that is before us. There is that idea, the Old Testament, everything that is there is the Law of God as presented in summary form in the Ten Commandments.

    And so we look at that and we come to that and we say, so where do we go from there? How do we understand when we see how unable we are to keep those laws, to do that, how we have fallen and we have nothing in ourselves, how do we move forward? And so we need to understand that the law, in that sense, condemns us. The law is only for that purpose, to show us what we’re to do, show us how we fall short, and show us how we don’t make it, in that sense.

    And so we come to this time of the Beatitudes, we come here precisely with the status of fallenness and then we see how the progression of the Beatitudes brings us up to that ladder and brings us up that ladder. And so you remember last time we talked about the Beatitudes as the What am I to be? What is my attitude to be? Well, that’s what we want to look at here.

    And the first one is, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So let’s first of all talk about what poor in spirit is not. poor in spirit is not being poor, financially, physically poor, having few worldly possessions. That’s not what is being talked about here as poor. It’s also not the fact that you might be sickly or frail, that you have a personality or a physical sense that is not very strong. It’s not able to withstand the hardships of life. That’s not what poor in spirit is. It’s not just merely being sad or depressed. And it’s not having a poor spirit.

    You know, some of us are poor losers. I don’t know if anybody wants to admit to that. I tend to be a poor loser and that’s not the picture here that I just get angry or I have things happen or that selfishness that I don’t get my way. I’m just a poor being in that way.

    That’s not what poor in spirit is here. It’s not that I have just a small bit of the Holy Spirit. It’s not that I’m just, you know, just low in my Holy Spirit within me. And this person who is poor in spirit is not just a person who is newly in Christ or who has just a few works as a new Christian or early in this process. This is not what we want to understand under poor in spirit.

    Turn with me to Luke chapter 18. We’re going to see some more here about what it means to be poor in spirit. Luke chapter 18. We have here a contrast of someone who is poor in spirit and someone who is not. Luke chapter 18, we’re going to look at verse 9, beginning at verse 9.

    And again, this is Jesus talking. He has told this parable to some. who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. And it’s interesting to hear, we don’t always talk about that first part. This is what the parable and who it’s for. And that’s a good reminder for us about what it is not to be poor in spirit.

    Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed, thus, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

    That’s the picture of the poor in spirit. This tax collector is the one who realizes his true spiritual state. That Pharisee does not. He’s about himself and his righteousness. And so that’s one of the first things we want to see when we are poor in spirit is that we realize our true spiritual state.

    We realize our guilt due to the sin in our lives. The total corruption of our whole natures. Our being dead in our sin like that tax collector, that publican who couldn’t even lift his eyes up and just calls out for mercy. We also see, when we are poor in spiracy, a tendency in our lives to do evil. Our habits, our appetites, the things that we’re inclined to do are evil. Charles prayed this in his prayer, that what we do is evil. We have this heart that is evil.

    We come from the line of Adam. And as Romans 5 would talk about, the sins of Adam are our sins. They’re imputed to us. That original sin nature is our nature. And it’s who we are. And we need to understand that whatever we do, whatever we do is always going to be tainted with sin because of who we are as original sinners with Adam’s nature.

    And so we need to realize that that is our tendency to do what is evil. Then we need to realize our complete inability and helplessness to do anything about that condition. Not only is that who we are, but there’s nothing that I can do to change that in myself.

    And then with that in mind, then I need to realize that without faith in Christ and the grace that He provides, I’m lost. It is only through faith in Christ alone that saves. There’s nothing that I can do. There’s nothing that I can add to my situation to make me acceptable. And so, realize this.

    If you have faith in Christ, and you’re a true believer trusting in Him alone for your salvation, well, you can be no more justified than you are right now. There’s nothing about you. you can do nothing to add to your righteousness that God gives you in Christ.

    Remember the thief on the cross? We’ll be hearing that this coming weekend as we hear about Christ’s crucifixion. That thief on the cross who was said, today you will be with me in paradise. That baby still in the womb who is the elect of God who dies, neither of them are less justified than you and I. just because they came to that place in a different time. So we need to realize that without faith in Christ, we are lost, we are dead, we have nothing, and it doesn’t matter where we are in the process, we’re no more or less justified in where we are. Then, the poor in spirit will realize that God is the one who chooses them to faith.

    I don’t choose for myself. I don’t do this on my own. It is only by the power of God’s Holy Spirit and the sovereign grace of God that I, through Christ, can even have faith. It is that gift of God. It’s nothing that I have purchased, nothing that I can do. It is the gift of God through faith.

    And then, as I’m this poor in spirit, I realize this deep and abiding sense of this absolute need of a Savior. Because, again as Charles prayed, because we are utterly wicked, utterly helpless, utterly condemned when we are without Christ. We are vile and we have no hope of salvation in ourselves apart from the atoning work of Jesus Christ.

    This is where I am. This is my sense of who I am when I am not in Christ. Do you really see this in yourself? Do you really see how filthy, how loathsome and hopeless your situation is? unless you know Christ, unless Christ has been applied to you in your life. You need to hear this today. If you are outside of Christ, you don’t know this being poor in spirit. You are blind and deaf to these things.

    You’re like a corpse to the saving love of Jesus Christ. If you have not turned to him and if you haven’t repent, turn to Christ, trust in Him alone for your salvation, and then you will have eyes to see and ears to hear, and He will make what is dead alive. That stony heart becomes alive, and you are in Him. But when we are in Him, we still need to realize that we have nothing in us to make us acceptable to Him.

    So what else do we understand in being poor in spirit? Well, when I am poor in spirit, I’m going to have a willingness to set aside self. I need to move from my independent life and my independent approach to dependence on Christ. I need to trust Him for wisdom, for righteousness and sanctification. I need to hold on to nothing in my life. as if it was mine alone. I need to be poor in my rights and in my possessions and belongings. I need to realize that I have nothing in myself and everything is of Christ and through Christ. And then if I’m going to practice, I’m going to be part of this poor in spirit, I need to practice humility in my relationship to others.

    Matthew 23, 12 says, for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Holiness begins with lowliness. begins with lowliness. Listen to Philippians chapter 2. If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. And then this. Verse three, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourself. I need to have that humble attitude. Holiness begins with lowliness. Each of you, verse four, should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. So there’s questions we need to ask ourselves.

    What do you have? What do you have that you have not received from somewhere outside of yourself? Where did you get whatever it is that you have? How did you come by it? How long is what you have going to last? Is it such a very big thing in the scope of all eternity, what you have and the things that you are in that? Is it not all of God? Is it not by God? Is it not sustained by God? And is it not for God? Nothing of your own is yours, it’s all His.

    And so I need to understand that until I empty myself of me, it’s very difficult to be filled with Christ, with God. Before we’ve seen our own righteousness as filthy rags, when we understand and see ourselves as that poor in spirit and removed it, It’s hard to put on the righteous clothes of Christ when we still keep our own filthy rags on as the two don’t fit together well at all.

    Until we see the true poverty of our hearts and our situation apart from Christ, it’s hard to perceive the wealth and the greatness of what He offers us. So often we have proud, blind eyes. And we need to be given that sight, we need that change of heart, we need a humbling by the Holy Spirit to truly be poor in spirit. Now this blessing comes to those who have admitted that they are absent of praiseworthy qualities. When we understand that we are sadly deficient in our life, that we will see grace in a way that we can’t see it without.

    Those who need to be pure, those who need mercy, those who cry out, who are not worthy to be called sons of God, will see these things in a way that the person who doesn’t understand that will never get. And that’s who we are. God wants those who are in want. God wants those who need to be filled, who have deficit, who have laxity, and who understand and admit, I’m not all I can be, all I should be. And so the question is, if you move from that state of natural worldly success to the meager, lowly world of spiritual poverty, it is God’s desire that this is your first step in the Beatitudes.

    The truth is, This is man’s state. I am deeply impoverished in spirit. Whether I realize it or not, whether you realize it or not, whether the world out there realizes it or not, this is man’s state. It is man’s fallen condition, fallen in sin, bound in sin, all in need of God’s mercy. We all owe 10,000 talents, and we have no means of repaying our debt. We are destitute in our shame and our sin and we are guilty.

    Now you know the people you’re up shoulders with out there in the world do not recognize this condition. They don’t see themselves in this way. They do not want to know this truth. If you try to tell the world around you that this is where they are, they just will plug their ears. They don’t want to hear it.

    And if we’re honest, if I’m honest, I can hardly bring my own self to admit my own guilt, my own failings, my own shame that I have in my life. Do you have that same sense? I know other people who are worse, but I’m pretty okay. And yet, what happens?

    We need to see ourselves as poor in spirit Those who are poor in spirit and know this truth only know it because it’s been revealed by the Spirit of God. We cannot come to this knowledge rationally, through thinking, through our own heads. It comes because the Spirit of God changes us and we see these things. To know our spiritual poverty is the gift of God, granted to those who are His elect, to those whom He has chosen. He created us and made us to do this, to bring this knowledge to us when we are His children. We can’t get this on our own. We need Him to bring us alive. We need Him to do this for us. And so we need to see that our imaginary goodness, the way we think of ourselves, is really hard to give up.

    It’s hard for me to not think pretty highly of myself, because I could be like that Pharisee and point out all the ways that I’m different from other people who are worse than me, or the people at my work, and what they do, and the lives they lead, and I could feel pretty good about myself.

    But that’s not real. It’s harder to conquer my imaginary goodness, in some ways, than the actual sin. It’s harder for me to conquer my imaginary goodness, my high view of myself, than the actual sin that I’m doing. It’s not our weaknesses that make this difficult.

    It’s my self-perceived strength. It’s my sense that I’m okay. This is what makes it difficult to see ourselves as we really are. And so I would say it is a sign of grace to us. that we actually know we need grace. The world around us doesn’t see this. The poor in spirit at least have this truth to hold on to, more than any of those out there who live in their imaginary goodness. We who are poor in spirit can at least know, I’m not that person. I don’t have that goodness. I am different.

    And yet, even in the midst of knowing our sin, knowing this, we need to beware the feeling of merit about feeling bad about our sin. Because sometimes we fall into that trap. Yeah, and you’ll know those people who will go on and on about how evil they are and how bad they are and what they’ve done. And it almost sounds like they’re proud of it. So that somehow our acknowledgement of despair and unbelief is somehow to merit to us. Somehow that makes us better.

    Rather, one must not commend the despair and humility any more than the sin that led to it. We need to be careful. All boasting must be cut off. Repentance is not something of which I am to boast. And yet we can easily fall into that trap and say, look at how repentant I am. It’s incredible. Compared to you, my, I am much more aware of who I am and my sinfulness.

    The one who is not boasting, who doesn’t bring this before the house, is truly poor in spirit. So that is the nature of being poor in spirit. So what is it about being poor in spirit? What are we supposed to be? How are we described? Well, we know the word blessed, right? Blessed is this person who’s poor in spirit. And we’ve also used the word happy. Happiness is tied to being poor in spirit. So why is it that this poor in spirit person is blessed, is happy? Well, the verse tells us some things, and we’re going to think through this a little more. Well, what’s the main primary reason that this person is happy?

    It’s because theirs is the kingdom of heaven. They have the kingdom, the elements of the kingdom of heaven in them. It’s their possession. Luke 12, verse 32 says, Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. We have the kingdom now. This is where we are.

    And so I need to realize that. I can be happy in that. It’s a blessing to me, as poor in spirit, to know my hopeless condition. Do you hear what I’m saying? That’s a blessing to me. To tear us away from our self-dependence, our self-righteousness, our imaginary goodness. That’s a good thing.

    It’s good for me to remove this sense that within myself I can somehow merit God’s God’s satisfaction and His approval. This is the first great difficulty for fallen men to overcome. This prideful and false idea that I can make it on my own. I can somehow do enough. What a blessing if we have been able to set that aside.

    If we know our hopeless condition. If we understand our true nature before God. The more we know of our sin, the more we fail, and the more we realize our hopelessness and despair in ourselves. This is something that we begin to understand when we are poor in spirit.

    And so we are more likely and able to see it for what it is, renounce it, put off the old righteousness, my personal wisdom, my self-dependence, and put on Christ. Put on His righteousness. This is a blessing that comes to me when I really see these things for what they are.

    And it is only the truly poor in spirit who will value what Christ gives. If I’m not poor in spirit, if my righteousness is doing enough, I don’t have any need of Christ’s righteousness. I don’t need that. It doesn’t provide me anything. It’s only as I truly understand my poorness of spirit. the value and the richness of Christ’s righteousness comes to front and center in my life and seeing Him for what He is. So I get the kingdom. I understand my hopeless condition. Third, Christ is applied to me. This is the blessing. Christ stands at the door. He says, I want to come in. He comes He takes that heart of stone and makes it alive. We’ve been trying to get things in order on our own and realize when we’re poor in spirit, I can’t do it. I’ve tried. I can’t do it. There’s nothing I can do.

    And so Christ comes and applies His righteousness. His Spirit comes and takes us and makes us His. That’s the blessing that we have. And so again, we see the blessing here of not having to be independent. not having to depend on our self-righteousness. We can trust in what is assured to redeem. You can be confident that if you are in Christ and He is your Savior, that Christ’s work will accomplish it.

    We heard that, Philippians 1.6, He who began a good work in you will complete it. You can be assured of this, and it’s not your work.

    I think If you talk to people who are unbelievers and you can get them to really look in their hearts and you’d say, what are you trusting in? And how often do you hear, sometimes from those who call themselves believers, well, I hope. I hope I’ve done enough. I hope it’s going to get me in. I think I’ve done more good than bad. You know that sense of no hope, that sense of no sureness of what is there. But for us, we have the blessing that I’m not trusting in anything I’m doing. I’m trusting what Christ has done.

    Christ is all I need for my salvation in life. And what a blessing. to not have to try to work day in and day out, week in and week out, year in and year out, to somehow please God enough that we could get into heaven. We are free from the bondage of sin, of our own hearts and our own deceitfulness. We are free in Christ.

    He is my strong tower. He is where I flee. He is where I stand protected. And that’s why some of these psalms that we’ve been singing speak of that, how God is our protector. The evil is put down. We are kept by Him. And so that is what we understand where we are.

    And then with no self-interest, when I’m not looking out for myself, then comes the blessing of not having to labor for self-glory. How often do we have a heart that says, I’m going to do what it takes for people to notice me? At my work, that’s what they want you to do. They want you to do stuff, point it out, and show how good you are, and that’s how you would advance.

    But when I am poor in spirit, when I’m trusting in Christ, when this is who I am, I don’t do this at work. I don’t need to do this at church. I don’t need to do this in my relationships. I no longer need to worry about building up my reputation. I don’t need to worry about fulfilling all my desires. I don’t need to worry about contending for my rights and what’s coming to me.

    Because I am all bound up in Jesus Christ. He’s enough. And that’s what I need to realize. The one who is brought low, the one who is poor in spirit, the one who is humble, has no need to fear failure or falling. There’s nowhere to fall. You’re in Christ. And that’s where we stand. And lastly, what’s the happiness? What’s the blessing?

    There’s more to come. There’s more to come. To the poor in spirit belong all the security which the gospel kingdom can offer, where in this world, the already not yet, but there is still more to come. We have not experienced the fullness of the kingdom. We are going to see that kingdom of heaven when it comes, reserved for the future. The second advent of Christ is coming in glory.

    The poor in spirit inherit everything. It becomes ours, we inherit this kingdom. So if you are blessed, who mourn. If you are blessed who hunger and thirst after righteousness, if you are blessed who are persecuted, how much more will that blessing be when you are united forever with Jesus Christ for all eternity?

    Revelation 3.21, To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on His throne.

    That’s what we’re celebrating this week of Jesus Christ. He has come, He has done it, and we are going to sit with Him in glory. What an incredible blessing and happiness we have ahead of us. So, Christian, our culture glorifies a Christianity that’s always high, always up. A lot of situations where worship is going on. It’s all about feelings of warmth and joy and ecstasy and excitement in that setting.

    But I want us to remember being poor in spirit has a different sense. If we only ride a high when we come to God’s house and we live the rest of the time without that, we don’t have the realism of our true sense of being poor in spirit. When I’m in that setting, when I’m sometimes in that place of worship, it’s all about me and how I’m feeling.

    It’s self-centered. It’s self-seeking. But when I’m poor in spirit, I’m not focusing in on me. I’m focusing on Christ. He wants us to be clay, acting like clay in His hands. He is the potter. We’re not telling Him how my life is supposed to be and where it should be going. what I should be experiencing and what I should have, but we do what the Potter tells us.

    In this state of weakness and low spirituality, when we are totally given over to Christ, when we are dead and buried with Him, the Spirit of God is ready for us to receive a blessing and give us that blessing when we come to Him in that way. That’s why we began with Matthew 11, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. So this position of spiritual poverty is the only safe and secure state for you to be in. When you see yourself as you are, clearly before Christ, when you renounce yourself and you seek after Christ only, then you can say with that tax collector, that publican, God have mercy on me, a sinner.

    And ours will be the kingdom of heaven. Let’s pray. Our Lord and our God, we are pretty full of ourselves. I know I feel pretty good about myself most of the time, and I’m sure others do too. Instead of looking out for your ways, understanding who each our poverty. We too easily ignore the grace that you offer us and your mercy and we don’t seek it and we don’t really live that poor in spirit attitude. We’re not humble.

    Lord, as we are more like that Pharisee in our hearts and our lives and our dealings and relationships, Lord, forgive us, help us to see that sin and to run from us, run from that. And Lord, as we are that publican, that tax collector who truly sees himself for what he is, who can’t even raise his eyes, he understands his condition, his poverty, and his spirits. And may we truly have that sense of trusting in you, that we would take that step on this first step of the beatitude. lives that we would cry out for mercy that we would see ourselves as we truly are and then see the blessings that we have the happiness that we have of being in Christ again I would pray if there’s those who are not on this ladder who don’t know what this is like I pray that your spirit would be merciful and gracious that they would see themselves as you see them that they would cry out with the publican Lord have mercy on me a sinner those of us who have it, may we remember these truths, may we relish them, may we focus on them, may we live our life before you and before the world around us as those who are truly poor in spirit, that we might know your blessings. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. So let’s respond by taking our hymnals, turning to Psalm 145, selection B. Psalm 145, selection B. Please stand and remain standing for prayer.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

    Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

    About this sermon

    The Beatitudes open the Sermon on the Mount with a blessing on the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Like Psalms 1, 2 and 40, they pronounce blessing on those who trust the Lord in lowliness. They move from need to transformation to the virtues of mercy, purity and peacemaking, and they reverse the world’s values, so that those who know they lack God receive his kingdom. Jesus teaches with the authority of the eternal Son, and he gives his people the power to live the life he describes.

    More sermons from Matthew · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    You cross me not, even as I cross thee, but I will not confess to you. Should I declare it wrong, the number is too great. You want no offering, no sacrifice. What you have given, We are ready to hear. I say, here I come, as in those glory days. Due to your will, O God, to me is my delight. The Lord is strong among we, deep in my heart, O God. He congregates on great high court of righteousness. You may be seated.

    The Word of God comes to us from two great texts. One is the one we’ve just sung from, Psalm 40. The other is the Beatitudes, Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 through 10. And the sermon shall be entitled, Blessed are the poor in spirit, from the first of the sayings of the Beatitudes. Let’s then hear the word of God as it comes to us from King David. One of the great Psalms, Psalm 40.

    For the leader of Psalm of David, I put my hope in the Lord. He inclined toward me and heeded my cry. He lifted me out of the miry pit, the slimy clay, and set my feet on a rock, steadied my legs. He put a new song into my mouth, a hymn to our God. Many will see it and stand in awe and trust in the Lord. Blessed is the one who makes the Lord his trust, who turns not to the arrogant nor to followers of falsehood. Oh, Lord, my God, have done many things.

    The wonders you’ve devised for us cannot be set out before you. I would rehearse the tale of them, but they are more than can be told. You have opened my ear to understand that you do not desire sacrifice and meal offering. You do not ask for burnt offering and sin offering.

    So I said, see, I come in the scroll of the book. It is written. To do what pleases you, my God, is my desire. Your teaching is in my inmost parts. I proclaim your righteousness in the great congregation. I did not withhold my words. O Lord, you know it. I did not keep your beneficence to myself. I declared your faithful deliverance. I did not fail to speak of your steadfast love in the great congregation. O Lord, you will not withhold from me your mercy. Your steadfast love will protect me always.

    For misfortunes without number envelop me. My iniquities have caught up with me. I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head. I’m at my wit’s end. Oh, favor me, Lord, and save me. Oh, Lord, hasten to my aid. Let those who seek to destroy my life be shamed and disgraced. Let those who wish me harm fall back in frustration. Let those who say, aha, aha, let them be desolate because of their frustration. But let all who seek you be glad and rejoice in you. But those who were eager for your deliverance always say, extolled be the Lord. But I, I am poor and needy. May the Lord plan deliverance for me. You are my help and my rescuer. My God, Do not delay.

    And now the reading from the New Testament, Gospel of Matthew chapter five, verses one through 10, beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.

    He opened his mouth and said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, For they will be called the children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So far, the reading of God’s own word. Thanks be to God.

    What’s happened in recent time is that I’m preaching accidentally a series to you. I didn’t know it was a series. Now it’s a series. And the series is how Jesus preaches the gospel. We’ve been looking at passages where we have the opening statements of Jesus in his proclamation. We looked at Matthew chapter four, the opening words of Jesus in his public ministry. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent. We looked at Mark chapter one, verse 15. The time has come. The kingdom of heaven is, the kingdom of God is drawn near. Repent and believe the good news. We looked at Luke four. where after the reading of scripture in Jesus’ own home synagogue in Nazareth, he says, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

    Isaiah 61, the text that’s been read. Here we have the opening of the most famous sermon by Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew five through seven, presented in both Matthew’s gospel and Luke in somewhat different words, but the same basic content. And in Matthew’s gospel, the large chunk of, well, if you’ve got a red letter Bible, and some of you might, okay, the actual words of Jesus in reading for about four pages of text. And so here we have how Matthew presents the preaching of the Lord. In our story, we have Jesus presented as the master teacher. The crowds have been following, they’ve seen miracles, they’ve heard some teaching, they’ve heard the basic call that the time has come, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent, believe the good news.

    But so far in Matthew’s gospel we don’t have details of content. Now Matthew gives it to us right between the eyes. And the things that we think are most blessed are the very things that Jesus does not begin to speak about. Jesus, the master teacher actually engages in ironic reversal.

    And whereas we might think that blessing comes best and most upon those who are rich in the deeds of piety and kindness and righteousness. That’s not how it is as the words begin. Not blessed are the rich in spirit. That’s how we might expect the sermon to begin if we’re going to have blessings upon people. Blessed are the rich in spirit, that is, blessed are those who have made great progress in the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who know and keep the commandments.

    And if we were to misread Psalm 1 and Psalm 2, we might begin to think that. To misread the Psalms. In Psalm 1 we begin with blessing. Blessed is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but rather his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

    All right, well, why meditate upon the law of the Lord? It’s because you need it. Because you are far from the ways of God, it must be brought. And so that person becomes like the tree that grows up nurtured by God, that at last becomes fruitful. But the beginning of the life of that tree is not so. So even Psalm 1 implies a life of repentance, beginning with our spiritual need and having that need addressed by the life of God and the teaching of God in Torah.

    In Psalm 2, the nations are in their uproar. The same word about meditating upon the Torah is used about their meditation of their rebellion. The kings of the earth in plots and games. It’s the same verb in Hebrew. They are meditating upon their plot of revolt against the Lord and against His Messiah. And they are rebuked.

    And in the last line of the psalm, again we have the word blessed. Same word that begins Psalm 1. So these two psalms are pairs. It’s the right entry into the book of Psalms. And so we are exhorted to rise, to wise up, to kiss the son, that is to declare allegiance to him, to give him our loyal kiss, to repent of our rebellions. And the last line says this, blessed is the one who trusts in him.

    The same ashray, blessednesses, that begins Psalm 1 is the one that ends Psalm 2. So even here we are being taught the lowliness of our repentance. In Psalm 40, which we sung and also have heard read, we find a kind of irony at work. We begin with the deliverance. Okay, I waited and waited upon the Lord and he lifted me from the miry clay and set my feet upon the rock.

    That’s how the psalm begins. How does it end? I’m poor and lowly and my enemies without number. Oh Lord, do not delay. We reverse the order of the usual psalm. We work not from need to deliverance. We work from deliverance and then go backwards to our need. And the psalm forces us to consider that we are always poor and lowly and always in need.

    And that’s what the Beatitudes do. Blessed are the poor in spirit. In contrast, later on in Luke’s telling of the gospel, we have that Pharisee who goes up to the temple to pray. He says, I thank you, God, that I’m not like other people. I fast twice a week. I give a tithe on all I can get. And I’m not like this tax collector over there. And what’s the tax collector say? God have mercy upon me, the sinner. The definite article there is in the Greek text, the sinner, not just any sinner. God have mercy upon me, the sinner, as if he’s the only one. Which one went away justified, says Jesus? Not the one who is proud of his so-called spiritual achievements, but the one who knew his spiritual poverty.

    And so Jesus, the master teacher, teaches us the ironic reverse by which we enter into the kingdom of God. The reversal that also says things like this, that those who think they are first will be last. If you think you came to be served, sorry, it’s the other way around. And unless you take up your cross daily, the cross, a means of death, you cannot be my disciple.

    Jesus the Master Teacher overturns the ordinary orders of the world, turns them upside down, or rather sets them right side up so that we can at last enter into God’s Holy Kingdom. Not by claims of virtue and mercy and confidence in our own moral power, but only when we know we don’t have any. And that’s the only way in. When we know we don’t have any, that’s how we enter God’s kingdom.

    And so Jesus, seeing the crowds following, goes to the mountainside by the Sea of Galilee. We actually think we know the place. It’s marked there by ancient Christians. And the disciples come. And oddly in our story, the text tells us, not that Jesus addressed the crowds, He opened his mouth and began to teach them, that is, the disciples. And the crowds are overhearing as if they are the strangers to it. And yes, they are. And they’re being told the path of entry into the kingdom of God. The parallel that Matthew builds is certainly clear. that there’s another mountain in the past behind all this story and another great teacher on a mountain speaking the will of God.

    And we’re meant to think of Moses and Mount Sinai and the declarations of the law, which nonetheless begin also with mercy. But I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Israel begins an utter spiritual deficit. enslaved to tyrannical pagan power, and out of that, in the mercy of God, they come to the holy mountain, are brought into covenant in this new and powerful way, and receive the will of God.

    So already in chapter 19 we read that, of Exodus that is, we read that I brought you to myself. 10th commandment is chapter 20. Chapter 19, I brought you to myself. on eagles’ wings. That is, deliverance precedes any moral power. And even the teaching of the law, the Ten Commandments, is withheld until Israel understands that great deliverance that has already happened. So there are the disciples at the feet of Jesus, and He addresses them. Now, you may not realize this, perhaps it’s just too common to note, but this text actually is poetry. The servant begins with eight lines of gorgeous poetry.

    And for those who’ve been in my classes at Geneva, you know that I say such things as this, that when the Bible breaks into poetry, you know something important is happening. The very first poem in the Bible is Genesis 1, 26 to 28, begins this way, let us make man in our image. That’s a poem. The second poem of the Bible is given to the voice of Adam, chapter 2 of Genesis, verse 23. At last, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones, shall be called woman, for she was taken from man. These are the first two poems of the Bible. The Bible breaks into poetry at crucially important moments. In Genesis 1, the climax of creation, the human race. In Genesis 2, the solution to solitude, the creation of woman. At last, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.

    And a third of the Bible is poetry. You may not think you like poetry, but if you, the lyrics of every popular song you’ve ever loved, that’s poetry too. And all that Dr. Seuss stuff you loved when you were five, that’s poetry. All right, so a third of the Bible is poetry. And so Jesus is the great poet. Our text actually gives us eight paired lines of poetry, each pair beginning with the word blessed, probably the same as in the opening of the book of Psalms, in the verse one of Psalm 1, the last line of Psalm 2, asherah.

    In Hebrew, it’s actually a plural, and it’s exclamatory, and it goes something like, oh, the blessednesses of. Jesus would have used the Aramaic equivalent probably. And so, oh, the blessedness is off. And Greek puts that as makarios, blessed, blessed.

    Eight times we get it. Now, the number eight was marked by ancient church fathers as important. You may remember that when Abraham was called to be the person of God in Genesis 12, he was given the sevenfold blessing. So seven sentences, seven clauses of blessing in the calling of Abraham.

    Go from your home, your father’s place, the place of your birth, your father’s family. Go to the land that I will show you. All that’s prose. And then the text breaks into poetry in seven clauses. And I’ll bless you and make your name great. And you will be a blessing. And those who bless you, I will bless. And the one who curses you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the nation shall find blessedness.

    Maybe I left out a clause, I forget. But that’s seven total in the actual text. And the idea is that the sevenfold blessing is the most complete blessedness of them all. Nothing can be more blessed than Abraham with this sevenfold blessing. Well, Jesus outdoes it. Eight. And I think the number’s on purpose.

    The ancient Christians of Galilee so noted it that when they built the first ancient church on that site in about the third or fourth century, they made the building eight sides. And nearly all the earliest Christian architecture is eight-sided octagon churches, reflecting, the ancient writers tell us, the eightfold Beatitudes, which describe the fullness of the Christian life.

    And so Jesus, the poet, Each of those blessednesses speaks of what God, how God counts us, how God treats us with divine favor. And each of those blessednesses ends with a particular gift. We’ll look at all eight of them, and I hope to be nonetheless relatively brief. And so Jesus, the Son of God from heaven, the source of all beatitude, the source of all blessings, opens up for us the pathway into his kingdom and throughout its enduring life within this mortal world. For years I never noticed that the Beatitudes are actually linked into a plot line.

    I always thought they were just individual cool sayings, each one independent relatively, and you could just quote each one at need, like maybe a line from the Book of Proverbs might be quoted at need. It wasn’t until I was called upon to lecture on them at Geneva in 1992 that I had to think about them more clearly. And I was given a lecture outline, and lo and behold, the lecture outline gave them as a plot line, which had a kind of progress from beginning to end. And as soon as I understood what was happening in that outline, I realized, oh, yeah. Why didn’t I ever think of that before? I felt stupid. And the plot line is easy, actually. The eight are grouped in this way. Three plus one. Three plus one. What are the first three?

    They are Beatitudes pronounced upon need. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Now the poor in spirit and those who mourn in the meek, these are all statements of weakness, of need. And the first of them gives the clearest clue to how the plot goes. Because these are blessednesses beginning with the ones who know their need of God. To be poor in spirit is to know that you lack the gifts and graces of God’s kingdom, to know that you need God.

    And if you don’t know that, you can never begin. One paraphrase, I don’t especially like paraphrases of the Bible, but one paraphrase actually seems to get it pretty good. I don’t like Eugene Peterson’s The Message, but here I have to admire it, at least for one sentence. And here’s how Peterson puts it.

    Blessed are those who know their need of God. That’s accurate for the sense of the sentence. Those who are poor in spirit know they are not rich in spirit. They know that they lack. And so we have three beatitudes of need. And then we have one beatitude of transformation.

    Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” That is, those who hunger and thirst for something lack whatever it is that they’re hungering and thirsting for. The metaphor, of course, is famine and starvation even. Okay, no water, no well, no dinner, no refrigerator, no restaurant, no kitchen, no food in the pantry. And you hunger and you thirst. And here you’re hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

    The very thing you lacked in the first beatitude. So when you know that you are in spiritual impoverishment, here’s how the plot line goes. You then are in mourning over it. That is, you are in grief Because you know you need God and you know you do not have Him. Therefore, you mourn. And in your mourning, whatever pride you have in your own power evaporates all away. And you become meek.

    And God has made you open then. to his kingdom. Only the humble may enter. God makes it his business to humble us. And so three beatitudes of need followed by one of transformation. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, as they know they lack it. And what is the promise? They shall be filled. Notice the next three Beatitudes. These now are Beatitudes of virtue, a virtuous action even. Blessed are the merciful. Now so often in the orders of the world and even of the church when it is worldly in its forms of conduct, judgment upon sinners becomes the dominant mode. One of my students, way back 30 some years ago in the first college where I worked, told me, quote, the church is the expert at judgment. I was glad he was not describing my church. Or rather, I don’t know, let me try that again. I hoped he was not describing my church. OK, I’m a little over the line there. I hoped he was not describing my church.

    If the church is the expert at judgment, No wonder the world turns aside. Now of course we must judge and we must exercise clear moral judgments because the world is astray and we have to know that and we have to know it with astuteness. But if judgment overpowers mercy, then we are not doing the deeds of God’s kingdom.

    And so after this beatitude of transformation of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness being filled with God’s gift of virtuous life, the love of God, obedience, discipleship, what’s the next beatitude? The first of the action beatitudes, the virtue beatitudes, blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. live life as the expert of judgment, and you will be judged by a like standard.

    That’s Matthew 7. And so those who have been transformed by God’s kindness and generosity are merciful to those who are not yet. And those who exercise mercy then, They make a progress of the soul. Beatitude six and seven. What are they? Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Pure in heart. What’s the outcome there?

    They will see God. Thomas Aquinas tells us that there is no greater outcome of the Christian life than the blessed vision, the beatific vision. Visio beatificis, I think is the Latin phrase in Thomas’ writings from the 13th century. The vision of God where soul to soul, we are engaged with the living God. That’s the heavenly future. Soul to soul, engaged with the living God. Blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God.

    And within the fallen orders of the world, those who are transformed by righteousness then become the peacemakers. Those who reconcile the warring parties, those who bring arguing brothers and sisters back to the table again, and they will be called the children of God. Last, Beatitude, in our second set of four, I said it was three plus one plus three plus one, three of need, one of transformation, three of virtue. What’s the one that comes after the three of virtue?

    Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. And so often the world responds to those who exercise mercy and purity and peacemaking. The world responds with rejection and hatred and sometimes even martyrdom. Because we witness against the principles that rule the world. And we witness for a better way. And when we come to the end of the eighth beatitude, we now know that we’ve also come full circle. because the first blessedness ends with the saying that theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and the eighth says the same. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And so we see that we begin this matter of the kingdom of God, recognizing that we do not have God, and need him.

    And God grants us that grace to enter in. It cannot be done without grace. Only God can do it. But God in his mercy does. And so we begin to be transformed by that righteousness. And to gain a merciful life. and to make progress in purity, and to become peacemaking, and yes, sometimes to be persecuted. But those who are in this spiritual pathway receive immense blessedness.

    The kingdom of heaven, first beatitude. Comfort from God, the second one. The earth inherited, the third beatitude. righteousness that shall ultimately fill us, the fourth beatitude, mercy. Now and on the day of judgment, the fifth beatitude, the blessed vision of God, the sixth beatitude, and the right, the privilege to be called the very children of God, the seventh beatitude, And to close it off now with a fine conclusion to the Eightfold Poem, the Kingdom of Heaven.

    And so Jesus, the Son of God from Heaven, grants us then this blessedness. He is the source of all blessedness. He is the source of all good. And He can teach such things with authority because not only is He the master teacher, but he teaches us by the infallible knowledge that is his by origin as the second person of the Trinity in the word of the Father. All that he teaches is true and useful. And so we receive from him this teaching which enters us into that ironic kingdom, the kingdom that looks so upside down to the world, but that is at last right side up.

    Shall we pray? Lord Jesus Christ, we bow before you with love, with reverence, confessing our own, yes, fatal tendency toward self-exaltation, pride, And if we make any moral progress at all, yes, pride in that as if it is our own. So grant us, Lord Jesus, that gift of an enduring humility to know that we are, by everything in us, impoverished, but by everything in you, enriched by gift. Help us then to be those persons of mercy and purity and peacemaking that you so prescribe. And help us then to receive from you the very powers of heaven by which these things can be done, yes, even on earth. And make us faithful, Lord, to this way of life, so that the world may know that you have come into the world as the Savior of sinners.

    Hear our prayer, Jesus, Son of God from heaven, source of all blessing, and bless us indeed. Amen. The hymn is based upon that peace that comes to us from God, the peace that passes understanding, the peace that makes us truly peaceable and peacemaking. Hymn number 580, When Peace Like a River. So we stand. Ladies and gentlemen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Jesus Preaches the Kingdom

    Jesus Preaches the Kingdom

    About this sermon

    Isaiah promised that the people walking in darkness in Galilee of the Gentiles would see a great light. John the Baptist and Jesus both preached the same sentence: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The time has come in Christ, and the church still proclaims the good news of the kingdom with its call to repentance and faith.

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    Sermon transcript

    The reading of the scriptures comes to us from two texts, Isaiah 9, verses 1-7, I think a text you’ve heard preached recently, if I remember your bulletins correctly. And then Matthew 3 and 4, those texts, the preaching of John the Baptist summarized, and also the preaching of Jesus Christ summarized. And you’ll notice a common sentence in both those sermon summaries from John the Baptist and from Jesus. Let’s then turn to the Word of God in Isaiah chapter 9. Very important text. Let us pay close attention to God’s own Word.

    There will be no more gloom for those who are in distress. In the past, he humbled the land of Zebulun, the land of Naphtali. But in the future, he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles by the way of the sea along the Jordan. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned. You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy. They rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as people rejoice with dividing the plunder.

    For as in the day of Midian’s defeat, you shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. Every warrior’s boot used in battle, every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, fuel for the fire. For to us, a child is born.

    To us, a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing it and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time forth and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

    The Word of God from the Old Testament. And now the Word of God from the New Testament, Gospel of Matthew, starting in Matthew 3. In those days John the Baptist came, preaching at the desert of Judea, and saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah, a voice of one calling at the desert, Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. And then skipping to chapter 4, verse 12, the introduction to the preaching of Jesus, again the Word of God from the Gospel of Matthew.

    When Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been put into prison, he returned to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which is by the lake in the area of Sebulon and Naftali, to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah, land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, the way to the sea along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people living in darkness have seen a great light. And on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned. From that time on, Jesus began to preach, repent, For the kingdom of heaven is near.

    As Jesus was walking beside the sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. Come, follow me, Jesus said, and I will make you fishers of men. At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father, Zebedee, preparing their nets.

    Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. Jesus went through Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, the paralyzed, and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.

    So far, the reading of God’s own word, thanks be to God. Surely one of the most glorious stories in all the history of the world we’ve heard right now. And what I’m going to do today is talk about, well, first of all, the smallest things in it. Then by the end, the largest things in it. What are the smallest things? Well, context, place, time, circumstance. And then the facts, the events.

    What did Jesus do in this story? Well, summarized by preaching and by healing. What did Jesus preach? How did Jesus preach the gospel? How does Jesus preach the gospel? We’ll talk a little about healing. The function of healing in the gospel stories. And we have several commands, well actually not very many commands. Commands from Christ within the story, two explicit, one implied. Explicit, repent. Implied, believe. Explicit, follow. Repent, believe, follow. And then last and greatest, we’ll talk about the King. the king of the kingdom of God.

    So there’s our focus today. And we see that in the preaching of Jesus as he preaches the kingdom of God, the theme of the day, it’s the same way that he continues to preach the kingdom of God, because the basic gospel commands have never changed. And they come to us even after 20, 30, 40, 50 years of faith. Yes, they come to us the same way. that they came to us the first day we heard the gospel. What are the commands? Repent, believe, follow. And so the old and mature Christian, the Christian who has followed for decades and decades, maybe lifelong, still takes up the cross and follows in faith and repentance the daily task of the Christian. And that’s how we entered in faith and repentance.

    Jesus preached the kingdom that way. Jesus still preaches the kingdom that way. In those days he did it in bodily presence. Now he does it by the presence of his spirit and through the word, the scriptures, and by the ministry that he has commissioned and ordained, namely the ministry of the church, which is his agent upon the earth and the principal expression of the kingdom of God that he proclaimed. And so what is still the mission of Jesus in the world. Notice how the text tells us that, verse 17 says it this way, that at that time Jesus began to preach. He’s never stopped. Okay, he ascended. He ascended to heaven three years later or so, but still he preaches.

    And he uses, yes, the fall in infallible means of, yes, people like me, and yes, you, in speaking the message, the message of the King. And so we see in Matthew 3 that John the Baptist is granted one of the greatest privileges in all the world history. What’s the privilege? That he should be the first to say the sentence What’s the sentence in common in both stories? Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. Same words in Greek, both texts, Matthew 3, 2, Matthew 4, 17. And so John the forerunner, Jesus the Christ, both privileged, I’m sorry, John vastly privileged, I should say, to be the accompaniment, the opening act, the warm-up, so to speak, of the main deal, Jesus, the incarnate God, is earthly ministry.

    In my previous sermon on a very difficult text in Zechariah 6, a text that might have been still mystifying in many ways after the sermon as well as before, we see that the two crowns, the two thrones, the two anointed ones of that text are John and Jesus. And two crowns made in that story in Zechariah and 519 BC, one for the high priest in that time, a priestly crown, and one for the coming Davidic King, the Messiah. And those crowns would have been kept and cherished. And they are said to be signs, memorials, remembrances in the house of the Lord, especially the golden crown, the crown of the Messiah.

    We read in the days of the Maccabees in 170 or so BC how the crowns were taken by Antiochus IV, that wicked Greek king who made the faith of Israel illegal and killed those who sought to obey it. But we see that even the taking of the crowns cannot prevent the event, the fulfillment of the event, namely the coming of redemption. And so John comes, a fulfillment of priestly ministry, baptizing, a priestly work in Levitical teaching, the washing of cleansing, Levitical purity by means of water. But of course, the water doesn’t do it, right? Repentance. Okay, Pharisees, who told you to come? Who told you to flee?

    Bring forth fruit worthy of repentance. says John, to those who sought baptism without, without repentance. And so a Levitical sign, kosher washing, you might say, the ministry of John the Baptist proclaiming that yes, even kosher Jews need to be cleansed of sin and repent and prepare for the coming of the Lord.

    And so John, the great forerunner, And we have Isaiah 40 quoted there, the voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths for him. Isaiah 40, also predicted in Zechariah 6, also predicted in Malachi, the last page. And then the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. Again, the book of Malachi, speaking of the Messiah. And so next chapter, Matthew 4, Jesus taking up the ministry now.

    And verse 12 has it that John has already been put in prison because of his bold denunciations of the sins of one of the herets, taking his brother’s wife. All right, Jesus then withdraws to Galilee and there chooses Capernaum, a seaside fishing town on the northwestern shore of the lake called Galilee.

    And it’s the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali. Why does the gospel make much of that point, that location? The gospel writer cites Isaiah 9. The land of Zebulun, the land of Naphtali, two of the tribes of ancient Israel. There they were in the far northern territories of that ancient land. The way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles? I thought Zebulun and Naphtali were twelve-tribed Israel, holy land.

    But in the days of Isaiah the prophet, as you now might know, in 728 BC, the Assyrian Empire conquered Galilee and paganized it. The rest of the Northern Kingdom would fall just a few years later. Samaria, the capital city of the Northern Kingdom, will be besieged in 725 by the Assyrians. A triple defensive ring of massive walls will keep that army out, but not forever. Three years the city stands besieged, and in 722 the ring is broken, and Samaria falls, and the whole North Kingdom paganized under Assyrian domination.

    The Assyrians were the great evangelists of their ancient Mesopotamian pagan world. If you were under their thumb, you worshiped their gods. They insisted upon it. You didn’t worship the Assyrian gods, you were in trouble. Even King Ahaz in Jerusalem in that time makes a deal with the devil, namely an alliance with the Assyrians and shoves aside the altar of Yahweh in the temple courts to build and replace it by a bronze Assyrian style altar. And so yes, the star gods of the Assyrians worshiped in Jerusalem too. Because the underlings of Assyria must worship the Assyrian gods. Already in 728, the first lands to fall to that northern pagan empire will be the lands around the Sea of Galilee, Zebulun, Naphtali, and they will be paganized.

    No wonder Isaiah refers to the people as the people living in darkness, dwelling in the shadow of death. But Isaiah foresees the time of grace. On them the light has dawned. And by verse 6, the manner in which the light has dawned. Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor.

    And so in Matthew 4, what text is cited regarding the place, the circumstance of Jesus preaching? The land of Zebulun, the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. And so the preaching of Jesus is presented as the breaking of the darkness, the breaking of the, of the reign of evil and idolatry in that world. And this matches exactly how Mark proclaims the gospel too, at least how Jesus proclaims the gospel according to Mark. In Mark chapter one, the first sentence from the mouth of Jesus in that presentation of gospel is this, the time has come.

    What time? The time spoken of by the prophets, when the power of evil shall be broken over the world. And the time of God’s righteous kingdom shall invade it. The time has come. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news. That’s the glorious first sentence of Jesus in Mark. Mark chapter 1 verse 15. And notice how Matthew matches it. A different occasion, a different summary, but the same point. Repent, says Jesus. where the kingdom of heaven is near. The truth is the same.

    The kingdom of heaven has now come upon the earth. Why is it come upon the earth? Why is it drawn near? Why is the door now open? Because the king of the kingdom is upon the earth. The child that was born is now grown and has started the preaching ministry. And the door of the kingdom of heaven is open. Enter, enter, says the Lord. And how do you enter? Well, there’s only one way. And that’s the way of faith and repentance. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has Luke does a similar strategy.

    He chooses yet another occasion in the earliest preaching of Jesus. He takes us to the synagogue in Nazareth, the hometown where the boy grew up. And he’s been away for a while, and so they’re glad to see the hometown boy return. And they hand him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue that Sabbath day, because he, among other men, is one of the qualified ones, a bar mitzvah boy, now grown up, qualified by synagogue standards to read and comment upon the scriptures. And he’s been away and he’s been doing some preaching and some very other strange things. And we want to know more about, okay, he’s given the scroll of Isaiah that day. He turns to a certain passage and reads, the spirit of the Lord is upon me.

    He’s anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the prisoner, to declare The year of the Lord’s favor. The year of the Lord’s favor, that’s the jubilee year. Every 50 years when land goes back to its original family, owners, debts canceled, slaves liberated, a year of redemption. And on our liberty bell in Philadelphia is a line from that description in Leviticus 23, I believe. Proclaim liberty in all the land. And Isaiah takes that old Moses commandment and makes it the symbol of ultimate redemption when evil is broken. The blind see, the lame walk, the poor of the gospel preached, and the year of the Lord’s favor. That is the consummation of the kingdom of God.

    In that story, Jesus then takes his seat but on the podium, on the platform, I should say, the bema, the rabbis would say, and that’s the chair of the preacher in synagogues. Synagogue preachers sit. And the text in Luke tells us that the eyes of everyone in the synagogue are fixed upon him. And here’s the sentence that Luke chooses to summarize the preaching of Jesus. Here’s the sentence, quote, This scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. What’s the statement mean? That the Jubilee has arrived with me.

    The crowd doesn’t like it. They try to throw him over the cliff adjacent to the town. They fail. They fail. In Arab Christian legend, that cliff is called Jumping Mountain. And the legend is that Jesus flew away. He leapt into the air and flew. And that’s how we escaped them. In actual gospel story, He simply slips through their hands because it’s not the right time. Not time for that atoning death quite yet.

    And the crowd is left in astonishment at what Jesus has claimed in their very hearing. that the year of liberation, the dawning of God’s kingdom power has come in him. And so we then find the ministry of preaching and healing going on. And Matthew 4, the rest of the text summarizes that. Notice verse 23, Jesus went through Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom. and healing every disease and sickness. Preaching, healing, preaching, healing.

    And by the end of our paragraph, we have then the crowds from all over, even into pagan territory, even Syria and the Decapolis. What in the world is the Decapolis? Those are the 10 cities of Hellenistic foundation, Greek-speaking paganized towns with Jewish minorities, yes. but pagan towns in Holy Land territory. One of them is just south of the Sea of Galilee, Scythopolis, otherwise known as Beit Shan, one of the largest cities in the land of the Gospels.

    Pagan. Pagan. And large crowds following Jesus, then we should see them as Jews and Gentiles alike. And in the kindness and compassion of Christ, All manner of people, rich, poor, Jew, Gentile, healed in the ministry of Jesus. Sorry, the time has come. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news. Repent, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven is near. Today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

    In the days of Luther, as you may know from one of my lessons a year or two ago in this place, You may remember that that word about repentance was misunderstood in their Latin Bibles. St. Jerome had translated the Bible into Latin and in obedience to a request from the Pope of that time to get a unified standard Latin version for all the Western Church in which Latin was the principal language of the people of God. And Jerome’s Latin had Jesus say it this way, In Latin, probably in 400 B.C., that meant repent, agita, the act of doing, penitentium, repentance. But by 1200, 1300, 1400 A.D., that was not understood that way anymore.

    And the text was understood to mean do penance, that is, go to your priest, confess your sins, receive absolution and works of merit to earn God’s favor. So the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance was understood to be the command. In the 95 theses of Martin Luther, we see the correction which he learned from reading the Greek New Testament published the previous year by Erasmus, that Jesus did not say do penance, but metanoid repent, repent. And that’s the first theme that becomes the Protestant Reformation, a restoration of the spirituality of the Gospel with repentance and faith.

    And so we turn from evil. We turn to God. We renounce the evil of our own hearts. We turn to God in trust and faith, in confidence And renouncing evil, we know we have not renounced it yet enough. There is always more to renounce, right? There is always more to renounce. But we are not called upon yet to reach that vast perfection. We are received as sinners, and by the grace of God we are received.

    Repent and believe the good news. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Remember the prayer? Mark 9. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. And Lancelot Andrews, a bishop of the Anglican Church, 17th century, parallels the prayer in a prayer that first shocked me, but which I now love. Lord, I repent. Help my impenitence. That prayer is true. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Lord, I repent, help my impenitence. Those gospel commands are always upon us to repent and believe. They never go away. They never should go away within all this mortal world. Because we are pilgrims on that road, following that next command, follow me.

    It is not the providence of God that we should be instantly healed of all evil. That’s not the gospel plan. Oh, we might wish it were, but that is not the gospel plan. And the gospel plan is yes, testing and failing sometimes and testing and sanctifying. And as Paul says, through many tribulations entering the kingdom of God, that’s the Christian life. It’s fraught with difficulty. It ought to be. and this is for our good. Repent. Believe. Follow. Take up the cross daily and follow.

    Now in those miracles we see the power of the kingdom and something of the goal of the kingdom. What is the goal? That all evil should be conquered. And Jesus will conquer it. The Kingdom of God begins in this new and powerful way in this mission of Jesus so long ago. The Kingdom of God, though, is not yet consummated. It will be.

    And as we see from our glorious Isaiah text, that that child born, the mighty God, the Prince of Peace, what is said about him? that of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end. What is the increase of his government? Surely that is the history of the church of Jesus upon this earth. And surely it is also the story of the holiness that grows in the life of the believer.

    It is not the providence of God that we should be instantly struck righteous. We are under the discipline of sin, yes. But we have a Savior who is sanctifying us. And as St. Paul tells the Philippians, faithful is he who calls you. will achieve it. What’s the it in that sentence? Our holiness. Faithful is the one who calls you. He will bring it to pass. So the time has come. What time? The time for the breaking of the reign of evil. The kingdom is at hand. the Kingdom of God. And how do we enter? Repent. Believe. Follow.

    And this is said to be good news. It is actually the best news that you’ve ever heard in all your life. Because in this story we find the arrival of the King himself. who alone can bring the kingdom, and who alone can be the Savior, and who alone can be the one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as an offering, an atonement for his people. Only the King can do that.

    And so, as we read in that shorter catechism, we’ve read it already, This morning, page 672, Shorter Catechism 102, one of the glorious statements in that glorious manual of instruction. What do we pray for in the second petition? The second petition of the Lord’s Prayer. We pray that Satan’s kingdom may be destroyed. That the kingdom of grace may be advanced. ourselves and others brought into it and kept in it and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened. Jesus is still doing it. And Jesus still preaches the kingdom of God. Shall we pray?

    Lord Jesus Christ, we bow before you with joy, with reverence, with devotion, with love, because you are the King who redeems, the King of the kingdom, the King who liberates us from the powers of evil, the King who breaks the spellbinding power of the idolaters that have ruled the world, the King who brings light and darkness, the King who is, in fact, in his own person, the kingdom of God. So bless us then with all manner of faith and devotion, of willing obedience, and give us, Lord, strength to do these things, strength to love them, because the power to obey God comes from God. How then can our weakness be any obstacle? Bless us, and we pray this day, and we pray it in your holy name, Lord Jesus Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, and before the throne of your righteous Father, who has determined that the world will be set right and it was coming to judge the world and the people’s inequity. Hear our prayer. Through Jesus we pray. Amen. The hymn is I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord. Hymn number 281. Shall we stand?

    I love thy kingdom, Lord, The house of thine abode, The church of blasphemy, Jesus said, With his own precious blood. I love thy church, O God, With all thee stand, as the apple of thine eye, and bread in all thy hand. For her thy tears shall fall, for her You heard my cares and joys begin, Till chores and cares shall end. Beyond my highest throne, my mighty ways, O sweet communion, solemn vows, O hymns of love and praise, ♪ Jesus, thy friend divine ♪ ♪ Thou Savior and our King ♪ ♪ Thy hand on earth is meek and bold ♪ ♪ In thine inheritance clean ♪ ♪ Sure as thy truth shall last ♪ The Zion shall be gay, The brightest glories earth can hear, And brighter bliss shall end.

    God extends His blessing to all those who trust Him through His Son, Jesus Christ. Let’s receive then the rich blessing of the Lord. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father Almighty, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be yours in rich abundance today and always. Amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Signs of the Times

    The Signs of the Times

    About this sermon

    Isaiah 24 foresees the Lord laying waste the earth and then reigning in glory on Mount Zion, and in Matthew 24 Jesus speaks of the signs of the end and of his coming. The signs are ordinary as well as spectacular, they cannot be used to date his return, and they show the continuing struggle between the kingdom of God and the powers of evil. Believers live in faithful readiness, like the wise servant whom the master finds at work when he comes.

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    Sermon transcript

    commence. The reign of righteousness has already begun through the life, the death, and resurrection of Jesus. Hallelujah. But two texts that deal with that awesome day. The first is Isaiah 24, the second is Matthew 24. So two, 24 texts. And the first text then from the Old Testament, Isaiah This particular chapter is the climax of a whole series of oracles against the foreign nations, beginning with the great denunciation of Babylon in chapter 13 of Isaiah. So 11 chapters of text against the tyrannies of the pagan nations that have oppressed the people of God. And then chapter 24 is the climax of that stroke.

    Let’s hear, then, the Word of God. See, the Lord is going to lay waste the earth and devastate it. He will ruin its face and scatter its inhabitants. It will be the same for priest as for people, for master as for servant, for mistress as for maid, for seller as for buyer, for borrower as for lender, for debtor as for creditor. The earth will be completely laid waste and totally plundered. The Lord has spoken this word.

    The earth dries up and withers. The world languishes and withers. The exalted of the earth languish. The earth is defiled by its people. They have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse consumes the earth. Its people must bear their guilt. Therefore, earth’s inhabitants are burned up. Very few are left. The new wine dries up, the vine withers.

    All the merry-makers groan. The gaiety of the tambourines is still. The noise of the revelers has stopped. The joyful harp is silent. No longer do they drink wine with a song. The beer is bitter to its drinkers. The ruined city lies desolate. The entrance to every house is barred. In the streets they cry out for wine. All joy turns to gloom. All gaiety banished from the earth. The city left in ruins, its gate battered to pieces. So will it be on the earth and among the nations.

    As when an olive tree is beaten or when one’s, when gleanings are left after the grape harvest, they raise their voices. They shout for joy from the West. They acclaim the Lord’s majesty. Therefore, in the East, give glory to the Lord, exalt the name of the Lord, the God of Israel in the islands of the sea. From the ends of the earth, we hear singing glory to the righteous one. But I said, I waste away. I waste away, woe to me.

    The treacherous betray with treachery, the treacherous betray terror and pit and snare await you, O peoples of the earth. Whoever flees at the sound of terror will fall into a pit. Whoever climbs out of the pit will be caught by a snare. The floodgates of the heavens are open. The foundations of the earth shake. The earth is broken up. The earth is split asunder. The earth thoroughly shaken. The earth reels like a drunkard. It sways like a hut in the wind.

    So heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion that it falls, never to rise again. In that day, The Lord will punish the powers in the heavens above and the kings on the earth below. They’ll be herded together like prisoners bound for the dungeon. They’ll be shut up in prison, punished after many days. The moon will be abashed, the sun ashamed. For the Lord Almighty will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before its elders gloriously.

    So far, the reading of God’s own word from the Old Testament. And then from the New, a companion chapter, Matthew 24. In the scholarly labeling of these passages, Isaiah 24 is part of what’s called the Little Apocalypse of Isaiah. And in the scholarly labeling of Matthew’s gospel, Matthew 24 is the little apocalypse of Jesus. So two apocalyptic texts, texts of final judgment, final salvation. Let us then hear Matthew 24 from the lips of Jesus.

    Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came to him to call his attention to its buildings. Do you see all these things? I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left upon another. Every one will be thrown down.” As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately. “‘Tell us,’ they said, “‘when will this happen? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’ Jesus answered, “‘Watch out that no one deceives you.

    For many will come in my name claiming I am the Christ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is not yet. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginnings of the birth pangs.

    Then you’ll be handed over to be persecuted and put to death. You will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time, many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other. And many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.

    But he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations. And then the end will come. So when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation, spoken of through the prophet Daniel, let the reader understand. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

    Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back and get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers. Pray that your flight not be on the Sabbath or in winter. For then there will be great distress unequaled from the beginning of the world until now and never equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened.

    At that time, if anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ, or there He is, do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect, if this were possible. See, I’ve told you ahead of time. So if anyone tells you there he is out of the desert, do not go out. Or here he is in the inner rooms. Do not believe it.

    For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even to the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Wherever there’s a carcass there, the vultures gather. Immediately after the distress of those days, the sun will be dark and the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky, the heavenly bodies shaking. At that time, the sign of the son of man will appear in the sky and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the son of man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. Now learn this lesson from the fig tree. As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, then you know that it is near, right at the door.

    I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will never pass away. No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the sun, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. Up to the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field. One will be taken. The other left. Two women will be grinding at the millstone. One will be taken, the other left.

    Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this, if the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So also you must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at a time when you do not expect him. Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time?

    It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, my master is staying away a long time. And he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him, and at an hour when he is not aware of, and he will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where they’ll be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” So far the reading of God’s own word. Thanks be to God. I want to tell you about Harry Truman, 1944. I wasn’t around then. Were you? Look, I was born 10 years later,

    54. But in 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been elected to his third term as president of the United States.

    That was unprecedented. Congress had to change the law. The Democrats were in power. OK, the Democratic president. the war hero, the one who’d done great things for the country as was widely believed, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, secretly in very ill health, elected to a third term. And one day, Harry Truman got the shocking news that FDR, as he was fondly known, had died at his desk. Who’s Harry Truman? Vice President.

    Well, no longer on that day. sworn in amid his shock that he was now the president of the United States. Not long after that, they told him about the Manhattan Project, the building of the atomic bomb. He knew nothing about it. Okay, all this shock, all this awe, and suddenly a man is president who does not expect to be. If he had been conversing closely with Eleanor Roosevelt, he might have seen the signs of the times. But he did not know.

    Four years later, at last, Harry Truman was up for election. And various polling places had polled the country, and they predicted the firm victory of Thomas E. Dewey, who had been the Republican governor of New York. In fact, the New York newspaper, I think it was the New York Times, published a headline, Thomas Dewey wins. There’s a famous photograph of Harry Truman holding that newspaper. Because a few hours after that paper came out, the election results were more fully in and Harry Truman had won the election against the signs of the times. Apparently the pollsters had used the telephone to poll people across the country and it was the wealthier people who were the Republicans who answered the poll. And the Democrats won that election in 1948. And against all news reports, all predictions, Harry Truman was the president duly elected. All right, the signs of the times misread. Our topic today, the signs of the times.

    This is, of course, a topic of immense speculation and often ungodly speculation. And these texts are maybe more commonly read in churches where that speculation is loved. It may be you’ve never heard all of Matthew 24 read in a single church service. It’s not one of our favorite passages. All right, we’re kind of all millennial, right? Or maybe we’re post-mill, and these are not the favorite passages.

    But it is absolutely true that Jesus Christ is coming back. The signs of the times are indicated within these two texts that I’ve read. The signs themselves, however, are deeply ambiguous. And all that speculation that’s out there in the Christian world, you know, on the air and on the internet and on the radio and on Christian television, you know, a vast amount of it is just wrong and silly. But it fills the airways, and it gives the non-Christian world the sense of the idiocy of the Christians, who have all sorts of stupid speculations about when the end comes, and especially its imminence.

    Okay, it’s right around the corner. Well, it might be. But what does Jesus say in this text? That day is not known to the angels, nor even to the sun. but to the father alone. The disciples have asked the question, you know, tell us when these things will be, what will be the sign of your coming? After all, they’ve been sightseeing on the mall in Washington, D.C. and they’re looking at all the monuments, Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, you know, there’s the White House, Supreme Court, I’m sorry, I’ve got the wrong city.

    Okay, it’s Jerusalem, it’s the temple. It’s the most glorious building in the world. Herod’s Temple, that outshone even the greatest temples of Rome and Athens. Look at all these buildings, Lord. Isn’t this wonderful? It was the most marvelous urban setting in all the world. And it was the temple of the Lord. Look, Lord, how wonderful the city is, how beautiful, how high the temple, how vast, joded with gold, gleaming in the sun, white limestone like marble, glistening.

    And then Jesus gives them the shocking news, I tell you not one stone will be left upon another. All will be torn down. And in excavations in 1968, in newly conquered West Jerusalem, just after the year after the Six Day War, archaeologists found the stones of the toppled walls of Herod’s Temple. Some were reset in reconstructions of the ancient city. But a whole ancient street of them was left untouched as testament to how Rome had destroyed the city of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Some of you have walked that street and have seen the vast toppled stones, some of them two tons, cracked limestone from the crest of the great wall of Herod’s temple. Not one stone left upon another, all shall be torn.

    And so in Matthew 24 we see a coalescence of awesome events. And the coalescence is hard to pull apart and understand with vast clarity. We are not meant to, I think, in some ways, to understand it with vast clarity. As I mentioned last time in the Daniel 12 sermon, there is an intentional mystification of elements.

    And so we had those strange numberings of days at the end of Daniel 12. What do the numbers mean? Well, seal up the book. It’s hidden till the end, says the angel to Daniel. And in Matthew 24, there are elements that are hidden from us amid the clear, clear warnings. What are the two elements that coalesce?

    Well, the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome in 70 AD. And it is indeed true, as Jesus says in one of these sentences here in this chapter, this generation will live to see it all. A line spoken in 30-something A.D. and fulfilled 40 years later in 70, when Rome destroyed the city, burnt the temple, destroyed the place, and about a million Jews killed in the war, at least according to Josephus’ rough estimate. He was a general in that war. All right.

    So an event in 70 AD that is part of the Matthew 24 story. But just as in Isaiah 24 we had a city’s destruction as the token of final judgment for the whole world, we have the same dynamic here in Matthew 24. A city’s destruction as token of what is coming. In the destruction of Jerusalem, the Christians of the city are warned. When you see the desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, let the reader understand.

    Okay, flee from your housetop. Don’t pack your bags. If you’re in the field, don’t go home to get something. Flee. Flee at once. In Luke’s version of this little apocalypse, The text there says, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, OK, flee. That’s the parallel account.

    No doubt Jesus said both things. Both things were understood. And when in 70 AD, in the springtime of that year, Jerusalem was indeed surrounded by the Roman army, the Christians obeyed the word of the Lord and fled the city and crossed the Jordan River and took refuge in a place in what is now the kingdom of Jordan, a place called Pella. And there the Jerusalem church survived. They had obeyed the Lord. They had fled the city.

    And Titus’ Roman troops soon set up their standards in the holy courts of the temple and sacrificed to the God images on the tops of their poles, each regiment with its own divine sign, and the troops sacrificed to those gods after victory. and before battle.

    And so, pagan idolatry in the Holy Court. An abomination of desolations. Titus himself enters the Holy of Holies. Okay, an abomination that desolates. And so, half of our text, roughly, is Jerusalem’s destruction. The elect delivered. The elect not deceived. In fact, the text assures the elect that they cannot be deceived. And so as we live our faithful life, we live it in repentance and faith and in confidence that the end is good and not to be feared.

    Notice that the end of Isaiah 24 rejoicing in the glory of the Lord in Zion, in the presence of the Holy Elves. That’s the conclusion that the people of God have survived the ordeal, the faithful have been delivered, and evil is vanquished, and God reigns supreme within His world. Isaiah 24, with all its awesome language of destruction, is not really about end of the world. It’s only about the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. That is, the people of God are saved by God, and in the midst of ordeal, sustained by God, so that they persevere.

    Sustained, as Dan so wonderfully prayed last week, sustained by the prayers of Jesus before the throne of God. What a wonderful line, Dad. I’ve been contemplating it all week. Thank you. We are sustained by the prayers of Jesus in the perseverance and preservation of the saints. It is what Jesus principally prays for, I think, as he prays before the Father’s throne and ever makes intercession for us.

    And so we have within our story signs of the times But the signs are signs for believers. There are no signs for unbelievers. That is, they will be heedless regardless. The elect, all right, in the preaching of the gospel to all the nations that the text promises, the elect will awaken and know and believe and repent. And the elect will not be deceived. Hallelujah. And the rebels, that is those who refuse the gracious invitation of gospel, what happens? Well, they’re marrying and giving in marriage. Okay. Very unlike what happened yesterday, where godly people joined in matrimony. Okay. Members of this congregation. I missed it. I’m sorry. I’m sure it was beautiful.

    All right, it’s not a prohibition of marrying and giving in marriage. The people who founded Old Economy Village in 1829, not very far from this place, those people forbade marriage because they thought Matthew 24 meant that. Okay, marrying and giving in marriage, you know, and thoughtless at all until the day comes and takes them all away. All right. Those people thought that in preparation for the coming of Christ, they should refrain from marriage. They took the text wrong. What’s Matthew 24’s warning about marriage all about?

    It’s the heedless life that really is in mind. Okay, they’re eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the floodwaters came and took them all away. It’s not a denunciation of the ordinary things of life, eating or drinking or marrying. It’s a denunciation of heedless life. Life without repentance. Life lived as if God does not reign. Like the fool who says in his heart, there is no God. That’s probably not a statement of atheism in the Old Testament, but a statement that God’s irrelevant. Don’t worry about him. The most high does not see. That’s the kind of life denounced in that text. And in the folly of so much of the Christian world, notice how they take the text. There they are eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the flood came and took them all away.

    What’s the next line? So it will be at the coming of the Son of Man, two men will be in the field, one will be taken, the other left. Now in that parallelism of the floodwaters taking the unheeding away while Noah and family are saved, and the coming of the Son of Man where people are taken and others left behind, what do you want to be? The floodwaters came and took them all away, that is the unbelievers, while Noah and family are safe in the ark. Noah and family are the ones who were left behind. So be it the coming of the Son of Man, two men in the field, one taken, one left behind, two have been grinding at the hand mill, one taken, the other left behind. In that text, Who gets saved? The ones who were left behind.

    And half the Christian world is deceived on this text by idiocy in not paying attention to the text. Why is this? How is this possible? Because Christians are idiots. And we are too, in vast ways. So we need close attention. to the pious instruction of Jesus and the prophets and Moses and the apostles. And without our close attention to the scriptures, folly rules our lives. And a great deal of folly rules the Christian world, and the rest of the world laughs.

    Now those rapturists out there, okay, they’ve got something right. Here’s what it is. Jesus is coming. That’s right. And it may be that those premillennialists and rapturists that are out there love that fact more than many other Christians do. We ought to love that fact richly. And so St. Paul tells us, writing to the Thessalonians, that we are looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, looking for the blessed hope. What is the coming of Christ for us? It’s the victory of Jesus over all the powers of evil and death. And in the ordeals that lead up to that, as the Bible so clearly teaches, the elect are protected. preserved and cannot be deceived. And so we ought to embrace those things not with fear, but with confidence.

    When I was not a Christian, I had almost no fear of final judgment. I didn’t think about it at all. It was only after I became a Christian that I began to fear it. It’s odd. Okay, newly converted Christian begins to fear going to hell. That’s true of me, age 16, age 17. Why? Because, you know, Calvinism was not taught where I was. And the idea of the perseverance of the saints was disbelieved, actively disbelieved, and the constant warnings that Christ is coming at a time when you do not know. Okay, so maybe I sin horribly and three minutes later Jesus comes and to hell I’m bound. It’s a terrifying thought. Bad theology yields spiritual fear. And I was enslaved to horrible theology in the name of Jesus.

    I’ll tell you, becoming Reformed was a vast, vast deliverance from fear, because at last I believed that my faith was not my own doing. that it was the gift of God, and that it could not perish, or wither, or fade away, as I’d read in 1 Peter, but scarcely believed. And instead of fear of hell, I began to anticipate with joy the second coming of Christ.

    Well, I live to see it, I have no idea. In those circles, we were confident. We were sure Christ would come before 1988. Why that date? Because you see the fig tree, and when its twigs grow soft, OK, you know that summer is near. Matthew 24. And the fig tree was taken to be the symbol of Israel as the new nation, 1948.

    And this generation will live to see it all, 40 years. So 1988, everything’s going to happen by 88. We were confident. Well, in 1988, somebody published a tract, 88 reasons why Christ is coming in 88. He was a NASA rocket scientist. It kind of takes rocket science to do this, I guess. OK. The following year, he published a revised tract, 89 reasons why Christ is coming in 1989. After that, he ran out of money. I’m glad. No more tracts. All right. Well, OK, mistaken notions. Folly, in the name of Christ.

    Because what does Jesus say? The angels don’t know, not even the son in his earthly ministry knew. And when the apostles again ask the question at the beginning of the book of Acts, Lord, is it at this time that you’re going to restore the kingdom to Israel?

    Acts 1. The reply is even clearer. It is not given for you. to know the times and seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. All right, that’s clear. Next sentence is the marching orders of the church. But as for you, you’ll be by witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. OK, so get working, guys. And don’t worry about that other thing. And so in the end of Matthew 24, what do you have? exhortations to watch, to labor, to be faithful, watching and waking and working in the commands that Jesus has given His church.

    And we have the parable then of the steward, one who is wise, who cares for the household of the master until the master comes, and one who is foolish and beats the servants and drinks with the drunkards and wastes his master’s wealth. And then the master comes. Matthew 25 continues with parables like that, two-edged parables, sheep and goats, wise and foolish virgins. And in all of these we have a moment of divine judgment in which believers, faithful, are separated from unbelievers everlastingly.

    It’s all very clear. It’s all very simple. We don’t need vastly detailed charts to figure out this stuff. Christ comes. St. Paul’s diction about it is very clear, that Christ, the first roots of the resurrection, then those who belong to Christ, that is coming, and that’s the end, when he delivers up the kingdom to his God and Father. One great theologian observed about 50 years ago that the most difficult thing about the New Testament’s teaching on the second coming is not its complexity, but its simplicity. It’s very simple. And so we’re called upon to live faithful life, to fulfill the commission of the master, to preach the gospel among all nations, to faithfully carry out our mandate as the Church of Jesus, and not worry about the time.

    And the signs of the times are not such that we can make any firm prediction. OK, wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, these are but the beginnings, the birth pangs. You can’t predict based on that, can you? There are some negative signs, three of them. There are two great positive signs, But let me just enumerate briefly three wrong uses of the signs and then two right uses of the signs. And I see it’s 8 minutes after 12, so the signs of the times are also on my watch here, and I need to be a little careful. All right, wrong uses.

    It is wrong to think of the signs of the times as referring exclusively to the end. That is not true. Jerusalem in 70 AD is one of the signs of the times, not for the time of the coming, but for the manner of the coming. Signs are not always about the time, but about the manner. And it’s one of the great mistakes of the church, of the evangelical church, to mistake the signs as time-bound rather than manner. And so Matthew 24 is full of the destruction of Jerusalem. Something that happened for us not quite 2,000 years ago. Second, the second error is to think of the signs only in terms of the abnormal and the spectacular and the catastrophic.

    Remember what Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospels? The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed. Nor will they say, oh, here it is or there. For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you. Elsewhere we have a parable of a seed growing secretly. How does it grow? The farmer does not know. All right, so the secret growth of the kingdom, the quiet, the quiet life of the godly church, which never makes the headlines of the New York Times and shouldn’t.

    That’s the majority of Christianity in the real world. It’s not the stuff that makes the headlines. Oh, no, no. The real church is obscure and hidden. and virtuous and faithful, and the ministry can be small and may be undistinguished, but it is graced by God. And that’s the vast majority of the Church in its times and seasons. Inconspicuous, but faithful. The third error is to think of the times as a way of dating the exact time of Christ’s return. Folly. Folly. Folly.

    What are the right uses? The signs point to what God has indeed done in the past. And the greatest of all signs is this, the sign of Jonah. Remember the sign of Jonah? As Jonah was in the belly of the fish, three days, the Son of Man, in the belly of the earth, three days. What’s the greatest sign of all?

    The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, which is the dividing point of history between what seems to be the victory of evil and what is absolutely the victory of God. And so death begins to end Easter Sunday morning, just before sunrise. And death is being rolled up and evil being vanquished. And then the end comes. Both kingdoms intensify to the end, and so of course the struggle between both kingdoms intensifies to the end. And so we speak of tribulation, and even great tribulation in the Bible, and even such things as Antichrist.

    But the greatest sign is past. and the resurrection of Christ, Jesus Christ alive and well and transformed beyond all imagining, walking forth from the tomb just before sunrise, Easter Sunday, that is the sign of the future and the indication of who we will be. For when we see Him, we will be like Him.

    What an amazing statement. That’s the future. And it’s 2,000 years in the past. The signs also point us to the end of our present frame of history. Okay, the end will come. Jesus says that three times in this chapter. Verse 14, verse 29, verse 30. Saint Paul says it, then comes the end. First Corinthians 15, verse 24.

    The Bible does not say that the world comes to an end. The Bible says that the fallenness of the world, the present evil age, that comes to an end. And what we have in the aftermath is the renewal of all of heaven and earth, as if it’s a new heaven and earth, not new creation out of nothing, but the restoration and glorification and transfiguration of the present world based upon the resurrection, which is the dust and bones and flesh and muscles and sinews of the body of Jesus. And so the world is resurrected too. And that which is wicked is destroyed. And so the signs point to the end of our present frame of history. And something glorious then continues. And what will it be? Wonderful. Though we know not what. Wonderful. Third, the signs do indeed reveal the continuing struggle within our present history between the kingdom of God and the powers of evil.

    So we have a faithful pastor named Andrew Brunson, falsely imprisoned in a Turkish prison for what, three years now? For some alleged crime, which never happened. Faithful missionary pastoring a Christian congregation in Islamic Turkey. And the man has been in solitary confinement for a great deal of that time. Now I think he’s in house arrest. He was allowed to go home about a month ago, wears a bracelet on his ankle, can’t leave the town, but can we get him back into his freedom? All right, so irrational persecutions. In the struggle between evil and God, can evil win? I don’t think so, Ed. Evil cannot win. And so the signs call for decision. And in our text, what do we find?

    Persistently the call to keep watch, to be faithful, to labor for the kingdom, fulfilling the mandate of the church to live the life of faith and repentance and witness within a fallen world. The mandate is not to speculate on when it might all come to its grand conclusion. The mandate is to love the world and evangelize it, and live a faithful life of repentance, and do our work, whatever work we are called to do.

    So the signs call for decision, to repent, to believe, to be saved, to enter the ark. And having repented and believed, the life of watchful obedience Verse 42, Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. There are two glorious signs. Matthew 24 says one of them, and I’ll focus there.

    This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached as a witness among all nations. And then the end will come. What’s the sentence mean? The church will reach the whole world with the message of Jesus Christ. It will happen. It cannot fail. The church cannot fail. How about that? In our small numbers in this place, Yeah, we’re tempted to think the church will fail. Yeah, we are.

    But the preachers of the gospel are not the angels of heaven. Oh, no, no, no. Not even Cornelius has an angel preached to him. Okay, go send for Peter, says the angel. We are the preachers of the church. We are the witness bearers. We are the faithful upon the world. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached as a testimony among all nations. It will happen. It cannot fail because Jesus cannot fail. That’s wonderful news.

    And I think I’ll leave it at that. Maybe another Sunday for that other sign I haven’t mentioned. All right. So what do we have in our text? The certainty of the coming. It’s fact. the uncertainty of the time. That’s meant to be. And the certainty of the call. Repent. Believe. Be faithful until the Master comes. Let us pray.

    Lord Jesus Christ, we bow before you with awe and wonder at your teaching in this text. We may be tempted to treat it with fear, with terror even, but reassure our hearts that in the faith that is your gift to us, we cannot fall. And even with the most arduous labors of the powers of evil, we will not be deceived. Thank you for that massively important confidence. And help us then to be faithful and to work faithfully for the callings to which we have, which you have given, whatever work and family life and Christian witness we may have.

    Help us, Lord, to live that life of faithful wisdom, as in the parable that ends our text. And on that great and glorious day, Lord, receive us amid great joy with those wonderful words, well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master. May each of us in this place hear that sentence spoken to us on that last and great day. We pray it because you are faithful, Lord Jesus Christ. and you died and rose on our behalf that these things might all be true. Hear us, we pray. Amen. The hymn is one of the great old chorales from German Lutheran pietism, Wake, awake, for night is flying. A glorious

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Mission Is for Doubting Disciples

    Mission Is for Doubting Disciples

    About this sermon

    The eleven worshiped the risen Jesus on the mountain in Galilee, though some doubted. Jesus answered with his authority over heaven and earth, his command to make disciples of all nations, and his promise to be with them always. The mission belongs first to Christ, who sends ordinary and even doubting disciples, so the church shares the good news it has received with its neighbors and trusts his Spirit to call the lost to life.

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    Sermon transcript

    bright hope for tomorrow. Blessings on my with ten thousand beside. Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, Your guidance, great is Thy faithfulness, loyalty be. Amen. In our passage for consideration tonight, it’s found at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, the very last paragraph, 16 through 20. Matthew chapter 28 verses 16 through 20. Read that in our hearing together.

    Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

    And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.” Let’s pray again. Father, we would simply ask for ears to hear, eyes to see and hearts set to obey what it is you reveal to us in this your holy word. So would you give us the grace to mix the hearing with faith and to be changed, to be positively impacted by what it is you say through this your word. This is indeed your word and we need to hear from you. Earthly words simply won’t do. So be present with us, empowered by your spirit, opening the eyes of our understanding that we may behold wondrous things from this, your holy word. In Jesus’ name, amen.

    Decades and decades ago, during the course of a piano lesson, And my piano teacher was from the older school, a very unsentimental, don’t care how you feel music teachers. So during the course of one of my lessons, she clearly was finding me less than attentive and more distracted than usual. So she stopped me cold. in the middle of what I was playing in such a distracted, disinterested way, and in a frustrated fashion, began to demonstrate to me what I should have been doing by slowly and deliberately playing the notes in a correct manner. So he went, dink, dink, dink, exaggerating what it is I should have been doing. She did that more than once. And what she was doing was like she was saying with her hands, Mark, this is a piano, and this is how you play.

    It was one of these back to basics moments that any good teacher does when they see a student getting off course. Well, the passage we just read is like that. For anyone who’s been a Christian for any length of time, it’s a back to basics kind of passage.

    It rehearses for us in very basic and rudimentary ways what the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ is. Make disciples. Of course, we know the ultimate end of all things and all people is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But as that is instantiated in the earth, in time history, in this present economy of things, the principal thing we’re to be about as a church is making disciples. And his passage tells us how to do this, how it’s carried out in this age and every age until Christ comes back.

    And one of the things, perhaps slightly underappreciated, that we get, that we see, is that that mission, that specific mission, is for doubting disciples. So let’s consider this together, just basically around a couple basic interrogatives, the who, the how, and the what, why of mission. Who, how, what, why, combining the what and why of mission together. Who participates in the mission of the church here? Verse 17 tells us, and when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. It’s doubting disciples. At least some of them are the ones that are participating.

    It’s impossible to say exactly why, at this particular point, they were doubting. Maybe they were shocked in realizing that Jesus, who had just been crucified, was now resurrected and alive. And maybe that just didn’t settle in with them particularly. I mean, it’s not every day that you encounter the bodily resurrected Son of God. So perhaps that was making them nervous and they weren’t sure if he was an apparition or a ghost or something, maybe?

    And it wouldn’t have been the first time that a disciple doubted. I mean, to this day, many think the Apostle Thomas’ first name is really Doubting Thomas. So we don’t know exactly why or what they were doubting here. But that they doubted, that they were doubting, isn’t the least bit surprising for anyone who’s been a disciple of Jesus Christ for any length of time.

    I mean, in light of the historical resurrection of Jesus, we still grapple with unbelief 2,000 years later. In all kinds of realms. In any given church, there are Christians who doubt that their stagnant or cold marriage will ever experience new life again. There are lots of people who doubt whether or not their dead-end vocational life will ever be truly fulfilling and life-giving, or even sufficiently remunerated. I know lots of people who question and doubt whether or not children will ever come around to full, true, authentic faith. Whether God will keep his promises. Many believers simply doubt having lost the capacity to imagine with kind of hope, Christian hope, that anything can or will improve in life.

    For lots of people, doubt of whatever type operates like a low-grade fever that takes up residence. You know how a low-grade fever operates? You just kind of go through life. You’re able to function. But there’s this ever-present thing that’s just eating away at you. There’s just some doubt, some place of unbelief just constantly at work that doesn’t ever seem to go away. It can be a painful thing to have doubts, particularly where one thinks faith should be very present.

    I’ll never forget preaching a sermon years ago at church where I was on staff and a struggling Christian friend, who was a member of that church, coming up to me one evening after the sermon, after the service was over, and just looking totally devastated, totally exhausted.

    She was besieged by doubt and was deeply troubled, wondering if God actually loved and accepted her. And after she sat down next to me right at the end of the service, she just kind of burst into tears. And I remember looking over at her and she cried out, why won’t God make it clear to me? Why won’t he show me I’m saved? Just remember that. The vividness of her doubt in that moment and the way it just was really had her in its grips.

    And all it was really able to offer her was just the gift of presence in prayer in that moment. There was nothing she hadn’t heard her whole life from the scriptures concerning the promises of God and the gospel that I could say. Now, in the Christian community, in the church particularly, doubt gets Can I say a bad rap? But unremarkably, when you think about it, it often has been the occasion, inadvertently, we’re not sanctifying doubt here, but inadvertently, it has been the occasion of some positive developments.

    You think of Galileo. Like a few others, he doubted. And it was actually against the position of the church of his day, the Catholic church, doubted that the Earth was the center of the universe. And as many of us know, he sparked a scientific revolution with his doubt. And so others who questioned the prevailing wisdom of their day, it was that actual questioning that led them to go on to some great discovery, to actually find the truth about something. So doubt, often inadvertently, is used to get at the truth of something.

    We’re going to have to sanctify doubt to see that is the case. But nevertheless, the doubt, the kind of experience here by the disciples who saw the resurrected Christ and worshiped him, yet some had doubts. The kind experienced here by the disciples is the kind that is likely to prove troubling to us, to believers. Right? Here’s Christ. We should not be doubting in His presence. But the truth of the matter is this.

    Doubting, or we could substitute fearing, the Marys were fearful earlier in the chapter. There are other places where disciples show a bit of anxiety or guilt-ridden or cowardly disciples here really are the only kind there is. There are no, never has been, never will be fully confident, faithful, undoubting, unbelieving disciples. the only ones that Jesus uses and has, have some doubt somewhere. We still, even in Christ, have the blood of our first parents, the tainted blood coursing through our veins. So we are never going to be perfect disciples.

    And this is likely why Jesus even says he promises in the very end, his final words here, promises to be with us to the end of the age in this mission to which he’s called us. Why? Because we need his presence. Our doubting, fearing hearts need assurances of his presence with us. Hesitant doubters are who Jesus calls and uses in His work here on earth in this time before He comes. Mission is for these kinds of folk. For fallible, questioning, weak disciples who hear Christ’s call. Whose faith strengthens them.

    It’s for us. And thankfully, this mission ultimately, it doesn’t depend upon the disciples ultimately. Here’s the how. That’s the who. He’s doubting disciples. How? How does this happen? The authority of Jesus Christ. Jesus came and said to them, verse 18, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Then the command, go. But first, the statement of how this is going to actually happen. Here’s how this mission, with some of you doubting, questioning, feeling weak, fearful, here’s how this is actually going to happen. My authority over all things. So even before mission is something done by us, in our participation what God has commanded us to do. Before mission is something done by us, it is always, first and foremost, something done by Him. The One who holds all power and control in Himself.

    You know, there’s like echoes of that famous statement that Abraham Kuyper, that phrase that is often uttered of his. Jesus is like expressing with these words here to this group of feeble followers, and by implication to us, these words of Abraham Kuyper, where he says, there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, mine.

    He owns everything. He has authority over heaven and earth. This is how the church is going to go forward in all places as he calls out his elect from every kindred, tribe, and nation. His authority. So our feebleness, our doubting, our weakness ain’t holding up the forward movement of the kingdom of God and the carrying out. It is calling forth from all corners of the earth his people. It’s his authority. This is a big task to which they’re called.

    It requires an even bigger God to carry it out. A king whose grace and power is such that no one could ever ask too much of him in this task. So in a very real sense, following Christ, who has all grace and power and authority, and is currently engaged in a cosmic reclamation project to reconcile all things. And in the end, extinguish death itself. Turn the curse back in on itself. The curse will curse the curse. And all things will be.

    Not just the way they were initially, but it’ll be, as one of my professors said, it’ll be creation plus. We will have the glory of Christ fully displayed in memory of His redemptive work for us, in addition to a pristine renovation, renewal of all things. Following Christ. following him is to join in what he is already doing with that over which he has already claimed ownership.

    The who, a bunch of feeble doubters, fallible, weak, unbelieving often. Right? Lord, we identify with the man. Lord, we believe, help our unbelief. That’s the who. The how is by the authority of Christ. And authority, I see more and more of this. Authority is kind of a dirty word in the West. We want to smash and level everything out. Equality meaning no distinctions, no one above anyone else, right? So it’s kind of a dirty word. Jesus’ authority, his expression of it, it isn’t the kind where he ultimately presses his people under his thumb.

    It is the power and authority that leads him to come down. And as Athanasius says, he comes down to be like us, to raise us up to be like him. It’s that kind of expression of authority. His commanding authority is that which calls out to the dead, like Lazarus, and raises them to new life. It’s a life-giving authority. And of course, Jesus used His authority to lay down His own life, that we could have eternal life through Him.

    So it’s not a macho, abusive, destructive kind of cosmic power. But it is the power of the lion who becomes the lamb. Christ commanding sovereign authority is our only hope for true life. In addition to our only hope for success in this mission or anything. You know, it really is a marvel that anything gets done in Jesus name. Especially making disciples. When we consider, as one author puts it, the ragamuffins that Jesus chooses to use. You know, I think about myself often in God’s call to participate at a personal level. He calls us to love strangers, but yet I find myself often struck with stranger anxiety.

    You know, I sit on the plane and people ask, you know, what do you do? And you ask them, what do you do? And I say, well, I, uh, I’m a preacher, Presbyterian preacher. And then I find myself strangely not wanting them to engage, just wanting to sit there and be quiet. I’m like, wait a minute.

    This is not the way it’s supposed to be. So it’s just that God chooses to use, that Christ calls forth. The imperfect do this task. It is an amazing reality. That he uses actual people. He calls, even uses people like us to carry out his great commission. This is even for when people like to make fun of Presbyterians. He even calls the frozen chosen. to participate in this. Who participates in this? Doubting disciples.

    How? The ultimate sovereign authority of Christ himself is what grounds and backs that call. But what about the mission itself? It is this, right? Simply make disciples. He uses doubting disciples, backs it with his cosmic, sovereign, absolute authority, and says, go make disciples. So what is that mission? Between his ascension and second return, the church is charged with making disciples now. As one Southern preacher said about this, the church that doesn’t make disciples will have some splainin’ to do. Everything else Jesus says here is related to that one central command in this passage. Make disciples. Right? So, go, first thing, right?

    Implies that the church, far from being a holy huddle, My four no more. Far from being just this kind of one location bound entity, is an institution that is actually moving outward to accomplish this mission of making disciples. That’s what go means. The church is on the move, going to those places where dead people needed to rise to new life, where lost people need to be saved. Where those who haven’t heard need to hear the call and summons to believe on Christ. That’s go. Going doing what? Baptizing. What are the implications of that?

    Making disciples is a community affair. Baptism is the initiation into Christ’s church. It’s a translation from outside the kingdom of darkness, not by regeneration, but out from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. It’s a bringing into the church. Which tells us to make disciples takes a church. It takes the work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to grow a Christian. Lone Rangers make good movies, but not good disciples. We go, we baptize, we teach.

    We’re an apostolic church community. We pass along. We seek to be shaped by that deposit of writing and teaching that Jesus gave through generations of apostles and disciples down to us. We’re to give what has been given. Here’s the Bible. The truth. and the tradition of the church. Those are some of the just the very straightforward basic mechanics that obviously lots of things are written about, but that’s just the basics of it. The call is to make disciples. And those activities are the mechanics, the going, the baptizing, the teaching, all that Christ has commanded. All that the apostles, the positive of truth the apostles gave us in the scripture.

    Now here’s the why. Or the motive. We all know this. Again, this is a think, think, think. Basic truth that we just pause for a second and just reflect on anew. What’s the motivation for this? For giving the gospel? At the individual level I’m thinking of particularly.

    It’s said that You’ve heard this, that the best product promoter, the best person to promote something, to sell a product or whatever, is a happy, satisfied customer. So it is even in discipleship making. The people who, as one author put it, gossip the gospel, who speak it, who give it, who tell of the great things Christ has done for them, who testify, whatever language you want to apply to it. The people who do that are the people who’ve actually tasted of the gospel. They’ve experienced something that they can’t help but share and invite others into it. They have overflowing cups, and they spill on other people. Because we can’t give what we haven’t first perceived. That’s not how this works. You know, it’s easy to be mechanical and say, if you’re a Christian, give the gospel. OK, yeah, but that’ll last as long as you feel the conviction. But when you’ve actually tasted the good news, and it’s actually impacting you, you will share it.

    C.S. Lewis has a little book called Reflection on the Psalms. He talks about how, when he was an unbeliever, still considering the Christian faith, and perhaps even before that, how he used to get annoyed in the Anglican church by the singing of psalms. It annoyed him when he was an unbeliever. Because he thought he’d listen to these psalms, and it was all about God saying, you need to worship me, look to me, praise me. So he thought it was boastful. that God would demand that everyone everywhere praise Him at all times. And in this unbelieving presupposition, he thought, what kind of God would be that narcissistic to demand that we sing to Him and praise to Him? So that was how he saw it as an unbeliever. But Lewis, he came to realize a few things. He says it hit him suddenly at some point that all enjoyment of someone or something spontaneously spills over into praise.

    That we urge others to join in our enjoyment. We say things like, you know, if there’s a beautiful rainbow, do you see that? We’re not content to just leave it as this kind of internal enjoyment. Our enjoyment of a thing is made complete when we invite others into it. You read a great book, you see a great movie, you see a beautiful flower or whatever. You go, you need to check this out. There is something about a praiseworthy thing that we enjoy, which we don’t feel is a completed experience until we’ve invited others in. Stevie Wonder has the classic case of this, right? This song. Isn’t she lovely? Right? He sees this beautiful woman, and he thinks everyone else needs to admire her in order for his joy to be complete. C.S. Lewis came to realize that.

    He came, the things we enjoy, the things we praise, lead us to invite others into it. We don’t feel it’s a complete sense of praise and enjoyment until we’ve actually invited others in. If our inner joy is not made complete until we audibly invite others into it, he realized that the psalm writers are telling everyone to praise God. All those psalms are calling, where God is saying, worship me. And the psalm writers are saying, worship and praise God. That all those psalms are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.

    That’s what he came to realize. And so that’s to say, the person who has tasted new life even in a partial way, having been made a disciple, who knows they’ve been called out of darkness into light, whose eyes, who knows they once were blind, but now they see. That’s the kind of person who will be internally motivated to move toward others. and invite them to taste and see that the Lord is indeed gracious as a God who saves.

    If you were starving and you found some bread and you encounter another beggar, you’re going to point the way to that bread, right? You’re perfectly posited to tell others where you’ve gotten it. And what that turns is it turns the task of giving the gospel, of evangelism, of the mission of the church, into something more than a mechanical thing we check off the list. You see, if your heart, if you’re drinking deeply from the wells of salvation, if you’re experiencing it personally, If you’re motivated, then the actual mechanics, there’s tons of books and techniques and all this, right? And there’s a lot of good stuff. But all of that is secondary to you desiring to actually give what has been given to you. It becomes easy.

    You know, it’s kind of like a, Let’s get Rebecca and Rachel mixed. Rachel and Leah, right? Got Leah first. Isaac, right? Isaac? Yeah, Isaac got Leah first, right? He’s deceived. Ah, I wanted Rachel. Well, then, you know, father makes him wait seven years, right? Seven years to get her. And I love what it says about that. It says, in those seven years seemed but like a few days to him because of his love. See what love will do? You see what a kind of internal motivation will do? It makes what would seem laborious actually less laborious, free, simple. Love for a sense of Love to Christ for what he has done is a good motivation for actually participating in this mission.

    We remember the leper that Jesus healed and commanded to keep silent, except before the priest, right? Jesus was basically saying that too much public clamor would hamper his own public mission. which is exactly what happened because the leper opened his mouth. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut about what Jesus had done and people thronged Jesus and he had to leave. That leper was simply doing what is natural for a man to do who has been given a new life by Christ. A man who has taken in, received, believed on Christ by faith. So that’s one way, motivation.

    In closing, I mentioned the gal who came up at the end of the service years ago, who was just really besieged by a sense of doubt of God’s love and acceptance of her. And today, I see her on Facebook now. She really, at some point, came to receive and to revel in God’s mind-numbing love for her in Christ. Somehow, she got a sense of that on the heart. It was no longer an empty promise in her head. But somehow, it really got personal for her. God helped her by His Spirit. And today, I mean, her whole countenance is different.

    Where she used to just be heavy, she’s just a happy, boy it, she participates in all kinds of acts of mercy and service in the church and participates in all kinds of ways in the life of that church and serves Christ that way. Of course, with all the attendant bumps and bruises and the ups and downs that we all face in the fallen world, but there’s a complete change in disposition. I see her as the kind of doubting disciple who participates now, joyfully, in Christ’s mission and His call to the church. So may God, by His Spirit, help us in whatever that looks like, whatever that means for us individually, whatever it means as a church, whatever it means as the kingdom of God here in this area and beyond.

    Help us to Live this out. And be pleased to see Him call out people. Not just by shifting churches, but even converting. People coming, what must I do to be saved? In our workplaces, in our families, in homes. and the church itself and wherever else God in this kind of providence leads us to be lights, lets us be lights that shine forth the praises of him who has called us. Let’s pray together.

    Father, we recognize the clarity of what you’ve called us to be and to do. We pray for your great grace, Lord. We know that you are at work, that the authority of your son that by that great authority over heaven and earth, he is claiming his own and is calling out people from darkness into your marvelous light. Those who were not a people who were far off, aliens to the promises and the Commonwealth of Israel, who are being brought near because of the death Christ, the shedding of His blood for His people. Ones whom you foreknew have called and will call in due time.

    Father, we want to participate in that. So would you be gracious and lead us and direct us and give us courage, faith, hope, love for our lost neighbors for the people in those places we inhabit. Would You give us wisdom in how to express the Good News? And Lord, would You be pleased by Your Spirit to take the Word, because we know faith comes by hearing, and hearing by Your Word. and use it to the end of calling the lost, the dead to live, the lost to come home. Lord, do these things by Your Spirit, in Jesus’ name, Amen. Let’s take hymnals and hymn number 295. Let’s stand together, if you’re able. Then into all the earth I’ll hear and turn unto

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Beyond Worry

    Beyond Worry

    About this sermon

    Jesus tells his disciples not to be anxious about what they will eat, drink, or wear, for the heavenly Father who feeds the birds and clothes the lilies knows what they need. He shows them who they are, persons of more value than the birds and children of a Father in heaven, and how to live, seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness one day at a time. Faith in him drives out worry as believers start living the way he made them to live.

    More sermons from Matthew · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Please be seated. It’s good to be with you again, and I want to ask you to turn with me in the Scriptures to Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 25. Matthew chapter 6. I try not to be one of those guys who goes to a church several times and ends up repeating a sermon. So I keep a list of what I preach and where I preach it.

    And I was looking back and saw that last October when I was here, I said that all of us need to hear a sermon once a year on contentment. And all of us need to hear a sermon once a year on fear. And all of us need to hear a sermon once a year on worry. Well, in October we talked about contentment. So tonight let’s do worry. Matthew 6, beginning in verse 25.

    Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.

    They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

    Therefore, do not be anxious saying what should we eat or what should we drink or what should we wear for the Gentiles seek after all these things and your heavenly father knows that you need them all, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Please pray with me. Oh Lord, I know these are familiar words to many of our hearts, and yet we need to hear and heed them again. And so help us to do that by your Holy Spirit. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

    I honestly have watched about a half dozen YouTube videos in my entire life, but one that I did enjoy is one that maybe you have seen. It’s gone around. It’s Bob Newhart, the comedian, in his role as a psychiatrist. And a woman comes to his office and says she needs some help. And he says, well, that’s fine. The counseling session will only last about five minutes, and it will cost you only $5. She then describes her problem. She has a fear of being buried alive in a box. And his response to her is, stop it. Stop it. S-T-O-P-I-T. Stop it.

    Worry, anxiousness, threatfulness. We all know about it. Some of us know a lot about it. In a world of sin and suffering, we worry. We like to describe worry, I like to describe worry as distracted care. We’re supposed to care about things. But worry is when you care so much that you are distracted from what God is calling you to do. And so what do we do when we worry? Jesus says, don’t worry.

    Is he just doing what Bob Newhart does in the video? Is he just saying, stop it? I don’t think he is. I think he’s wiser than that because I think he knows that if he just says, stop it, he won’t really help us. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ is cultivating our hearts. He is shaping the paths of his disciples. And he knows they are susceptible to worry. So yes, he makes the command, don’t worry. But he also brings words of both comfort and challenge as we think about this issue. And I hope and I pray that his words will help us to move even a little bit more beyond worry. How does he do it? Well, he speaks to who we are. And then he speaks to how we live. So who are we?

    Well, we’re creatures made in God’s image, but we’re fallen creatures. And that means we don’t have physical ease. It doesn’t mean we have freedom from care in this world. It means we worry. And so what Jesus does is he addresses us with two truths about who we are. Here’s the first. We are physical, but we’re more than physical. eating, drinking, keeping warm, keeping cool. We concern ourselves with those things and we should. God made us as physical beings.

    Jesus has just before this been speaking about money. We get money. We use money. We care about money. It helps provide for our physical needs in this physical world. But what do we do with money? We tend to treasure it. We tend to worship it. We possess it. It begins to possess us. We become distracted by it, even obsessed by it. We have a tendency to live for health and for wealth and to think that is all that matters. Even if we would never subscribe to what we call the prosperity gospel, we have a way, even in our reformed churches of thinking in those terms.

    And so Jesus says in verse 25, is not life more than food and the body more than clothing. Again, we’re physical creatures. We need food. We need clothing. We’re more than that. We’re physical beings, and yet we are also spiritual beings. And Jesus says, yes, you will be concerned with food and clothing, but you should be far more concerned with other things as well. So do you care about your physical needs? Well, that’s good. But do you think about your physical needs so much? Your needs of today so much? that you forget that you’re more than physical.

    Jesus says in verse 32, the Gentiles seek after all these things. That’s the way of the world. The way of the world is to simply think about the physical, to simply think about food and clothing and things like that. And we can be drawn into that where we become obsessed with the world and it’s worry.

    I remember reading a few years ago about this thing called, and you can Google it if you want, called the Copenhagen Consensus. This is a bunch of smart people who get together and talk about all the problems of the world. And they listed 22 core issues facing humanity. You ready? air pollution, biodiversity, chronic diseases, climate change, conflict and violence, data for development, education, energy, food security, gender equality, governance and institutions, health systems, infant mortality and maternal health, infectious diseases, infrastructure, illicit financial flows, nutrition, population and demography, poverty, science and technology, trade, water, sanitation.

    Don’t worry out. Now are those things nothing? No, they are not nothing, but are they everything? Jesus would say no. Life is about our health, and we need wealth to some extent, but there’s more to us than that. You see, if you forget that, you become consumed with worry. If you remember that, you have a bigger perspective on what your life is all about. And you begin to be freed from worry.

    So that’s the first statement Jesus makes about who we are. We are physical, but we are more than physical. And then he also says, we are part of creation, but we are a greater part of creation. In verse 26, He says, Look at the birds of the air. Are you of not more value than they? In verse 28, Consider the lilies of the field. Will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

    God delights in His creation. And yet, we’re made in the image of God. And He has placed a definite value on us as the apex of His creation. And if you are here tonight and you are united to Jesus Christ by faith as Savior and Lord, you know He has placed an infinite value on you. He has given His body and His blood for you. Again, that’s not the perspective of our world. It’s not the perspective of our culture. We live in a world and in a culture that tends to flatten out the distinctions between us and the rest of the creation.

    I’m from Cincinnati, so I paid careful attention a couple of years ago where there was that story from the Cincinnati Zoo. Do you remember it, where the young child fell into the gorilla exhibits? And the zoo personnel thought the child was endangered, so they killed the gorilla. And there was quite an uproar about that. Now, what do we say about that? Is it too bad? Is it sad even that the gorilla had to be killed? Well, yeah. But there’s a deeper issue there. Did that child have unique worth, even beyond the worth of that gorilla? As I observed that discussion, I wondered if people really saw that he did. You see, to God, he does have unique worth. To God, we have unique worth.

    We’re a part of creation, but we are a greater part of creation. And that means that unlike anything else in the creation, we can go to one we call Father for our needs. Philippians 4 says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God. Nobody else in the creation can do that. Gorillas can’t do that. But you can. Paul says you should.

    He says, The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. So here you are, you’re worried and you’re anxious and you’re fretting. And Jesus says, don’t worry, but he doesn’t just say, stop it. He says, see that you are so much more than a physical being. Yes, your physical needs are a concern, but you’re much more than that. And I care for all of you. And then he says, see how much more you are than just another creature. Yes, they are valuable, but you are of infinite value. You can call God your father. You can pray to him and trust him. So we start to get beyond worry when we see who we are as more than physical beings and as the greater part of creation.

    But then Jesus speaks to how we live. Now, near the end of this passage, there are two statements that really guide us in a very practical way. I want to take them in reverse order. Here’s the first statement that guides how we live. Today is sufficient. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious about itself. Sufficient is the day for its own trouble. That’s divine wisdom. The past is past and you can’t do anything about it. The future is future and you can’t do much about it. All God gives you is today. And so Jesus says quite simply, focus on today rather than tomorrow. How do we do that? I think it’s a spiritual habit that we develop in our hearts and even with our words.

    I remember last year sitting and praying with a woman who had fought very difficult battles within her heart and mind and body. And she was talking about her oldest child going to college several hours away. And this was the first child from this family to go to college. She lived in a community where almost nobody goes to college. And she was struggling with it. She was worried about it.

    But then she pointed to a wristband on her wrist and it said one day at a time. In a very practical way, I think it is good to have visual reminders of Jesus’ call to worry about one day at a time. I’ve in the past sometimes used a calendar that you change every day. Once a day. You might, as you make your lists, just make a list of just today. I’ve used in talking to people who’ve gone through great struggles, an image that was given to me by a woman in a previous congregation where I served.

    She talked about the umbrella of God’s grace. She said, we walk every day under the umbrella of God’s grace. And we get ourselves in trouble when we get out past the umbrella. So we stay under the umbrella of God’s grace today. So, so, so take whatever image you like. Make one up of your own. I don’t care. The point is that worry begins to fade, says Jesus, as you live today. So today is sufficient. Then the second way Jesus speaks of how we are to live.

    The kingdom is first. Verse 33. but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. God’s kingdom, His rule and reign growing in this world. In all you do, you want to be a part of advancing God’s purposes. God’s righteousness, His claim on your life. He wants you to be godly. And so in all that you do, you want to live righteously before Him and others. His kingdom is first. The kingdom is first.

    Now, what does that have to do with worry? I thought this was a sermon about worry. I thought Jesus was talking about worry. What is this stuff about the kingdom? Well, think about it. From a negative standpoint, when you worry, it keeps you from serving God and His kingdom. If you’re just worried about physical needs, if you’re forgetting your special place in God’s care, if you’re racing far beyond today, you won’t do much but survive, and you certainly won’t be thinking about serving God’s kingdom. You’ll be like a scared puppy, that puppy who hides in the corner, never ventures out and does anything that would lead to any risk or to any struggle. You see, worry paralyzes you, and it keeps you from serving the kingdom.

    More positively though, I think kingdom living frees you from worry. You see, when you seek God’s kingdom, when you seek God’s righteousness, your world gets bigger. Your view of the world gets bigger. Your life becomes bigger. Worry fades. Worry flees. When you have this vision of something so much bigger than you, your worries start to seem a whole lot less large. There’s a dramatic picture of this from church history. It’s the story of this monk named Telemachus. Maybe you’ve heard the story. It’s from 5th century Asia.

    He’s going about his daily chores and his tasks, and he wants to just kind of do what he’s doing, but the Holy Spirit says, no, you’ve got to go to Rome. You need to go to the heart of the Roman Empire. And he goes to the Colosseum, and he sees the gladiator.

    And these weren’t NFL games. These were fights to the literal death. And he’s appalled by this, and he stands up, and he literally runs into the arena and says, stop. And people laugh at him. And the crowd says, gladiators, kill him. And he cries out in the name of Christ, stop. And a gladiator takes a sword and kills him. Now the story goes that when people saw that, that was the beginning of the end of the gladiator fights. Why do I tell you that story? You’re probably not going to do that.

    Your kingdom service may be very different, but you see what happened in that man’s mind and heart? He opened his eyes to the reality of sin and suffering in the world. He saw a call to serve God’s kingdom. And with his heart set on God’s kingdom, he wasn’t worried about his life anymore. He was simply worried about serving the Lord. And where he fled, seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness. If you’re a believer in Christ, you want to serve the kingdom. with the godliness that you exhibit, with the things that you do.

    And as you do, it will help you with worry. And now what does this service look like? We can go on and on and on about this, and I won’t do that. But let me just give you a couple of ideas. When you serve the kingdom, you serve the people around you with integrity. I want to honor God in my work. I want to honor God in my play. I want my life to reflect my faith in the workplace, on the softball field, in the grocery store.

    You see, if I’m just living for myself, I’m going to be quiet. I’m going to be inconspicuous. I’m going to do only what I have to do to survive. But if I seek God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, I will tell the truth. I will humbly but boldly defend Christ. I will defend the defenseless. I’ll love those who hate me no matter what the cost. And you say to yourself, well, if I live with integrity, something bad might happen to me. But if you live with integrity, with your eye on the kingdom, you’re not worried about bad things happening to you. God says, don’t worry.

    Serve me. And trust the results with me. And so we live with integrity. It also means we serve with generosity. When I have worry in my life, my generosity is squelched. But when worry begins to flee, I serve with generosity. I give my time, I give my talents, I give my treasures, and I trust Him for the results. Whatever I have, whatever I am, worry flees, and I give generously. Oh, what if I’m going to suffer loss? Well, maybe you will, but Jesus says, don’t worry about it. Be generous.

    Trust your life to me. See what he’s saying here? If you just see yourself as just a physical creature, if you just see yourself just like the rest of the creation, you’ll live in this worried, stressed, anxious mode. And you won’t seek God’s kingdom and righteousness. But if you follow Jesus’ words, if you live with integrity, if you live with generosity, you’ll honor Him.

    And something will happen to you. You’ll find that worry begins to flee. See, we don’t conquer worry. by sitting around and worrying about worry. We conquer worry by remembering who we are in union with Christ and by living a day-by-day life of pursuing God’s kingdom and pursuing God’s righteousness.

    So what’s Jesus done here? Instead of just saying, don’t worry, Jesus has shown us who we are, that we are not mere physical beings. We are spiritual beings, that we are not just another part of the creation. We are a greater part of the creation. And he’s also shown us how to live. We don’t live for yesterday. We don’t live for tomorrow. We live for today, a today where we have the opportunity to seek God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness now.

    So do you struggle with worry? Do you struggle with anxiety and fretfulness? Of course you do. Almost everyone does, in one way or another, in one form or another. Bob Newhart says, stop. Jesus says, with my help, start. Start seeing who you are. United to Christ. With a Heavenly Father. If you see who you are, faith in Him will drive out worry. Start living in the ways I’ve made you to live. Live for My Kingdom. Live for My Righteousness. For every day that you call today. You see, as you start, you’ll stop. As you start to live in these ways, you’ll stop worrying. You’ll move beyond worry. You’ll never fully get beyond it in this life, but you really will.

    Really. Let’s pray. Oh Lord, help us to start seeing who we are before you. Oh Lord, help us to start living for You each day. And in this starting, O Lord, would You do the work of stopping worry in our hearts and lives. I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.