"Sermon
on the Mount: General Outline and Overview"
The
Lord's Day, June 4, 2000
|
The ECF Pulpit |
If you would open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5, and
having found Matthew chapter 5, put your finger there and
open to Luke chapter 6, just so that we can build a bridge
chronologically for you. We have come to an extraordinary
portion of the New Testament, and I don't think it would be
possible to overestimate the value of Matthew chapter 5
through chapter 7. It is commonly referred to as "the Sermon
on the Mount," and it is, in my estimation, the seed-bed
from which all New Testament doctrine is drawn in terms of
the preaching of the apostles immediately afterward. You're
going to see reoccurring themes here; you're going to see
foundations laid down, and these are the things which the
apostles wrote about and expanded upon and continued to
drive home to the body of believers. Now it's interesting
that this particular portion of Scripture would be
controversial, but it is. It is because some say that this
sermon, given by Christ at this particular time, was not
really for the church today, but was only for those that
were living then. I utterly and completely reject that
concept; it doesn't hold water, especially with the balance
of Scripture. But there is a danger inherent in looking at
this particular passage, and that is that we can, like those
who came before us as the Jews did when they were given the
Law at Sinai, can begin to imagine that the Sermon on the
Mount is a series of dictums that, if we just follow them,
will save us. And that's not what it's about at all. We're
going to go back and show you why that's true in just a
moment, but to give us the bridge itself, you're in Luke
chapter 6, and here's where a little bit of the controversy
comes. I hope we can dispel that quickly and then move on
with the body of the text itself. I just love this
portion.
If you're in Luke chapter 6 and you drop down to verse 12, this comes immediately on the heels of that last Sabbath controversy that we spent so much time with. And so verse 12 says, "It was at this time"-- at the same time in history that he had had this last controversy with them--"at this time He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God." And this is one of only two times in the New Testament that we read Christ spent all night in prayer--it is at this moment when He is preparing to ordain the Apostles to speak for Him and to go in His unique authority with the church during that time, and the night before He was crucified. But anyway, "He spent the whole night in prayer to God, and when the day came He called His disciples to Him and He chose twelve of them whom He also named apostles." Don't pass that up--He called the whole host of disciples to Him, and out of that host of disciples, He ordained twelve. So there's a bigger crowd there than just the twelve, but He marked out the twelve publicly in front of them--"Simon, whom He also named Peter and Andrew his brother; and James and John; and Philip and Bartholomew; and Matthew and Thomas; James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was the Zealot; Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place; and there was a large crowd of His disciples, and a great throng of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were being cured." So it's a big bunch. But when you get over to Matthew chapter 5, as you look at the first verse, it says, "When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him." So the question is, is this the same event or is this a different event, and, in fact, it's the same event.
There's an interesting thing that didn't come to light until just a few years ago in the understanding of the Greek words that were used in these two passages--that in fact it appears what happened was He went up into a high place in the mountain and then came back down to a plateau, and in this plateau He was still up above the crowds, but He was on this flat place, and it's here that He did the ordaining and did the preaching with the greater masses down below this plateau area but a good mass of His disciples up there right on the plateau with Him. That kind of takes away the disparity between the two accounts. And it's just a simple matter of understanding how the words were used both by Matthew and by Luke.
And so "when Jesus saw the crowds," verse 1, "He went up into the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him, and He opened His mouth and began to teach them, saying." And so there is in some sense, by His use of that term--"them"--there is some sense in which this sermon is to be understood as being uniquely for those who are considered the disciples of Christ. In fact, that is precisely what it is. And He opens with these words, verse 3, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." I don't want you to pass that up because, and this morning all we're going to be able to do is give ourselves a general overview of this, and hopefully give you a few careful observations so that we can work through this passage in the coming weeks, and we want to spend as much time as it takes to dig out what's here. But if you will hearken back to Luke, chapter 1, don't turn there--I'm going to run through a number of verses here--when the angel came to announce to Mary that Jesus was to be born, he said to her, "He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end." Then at the beginning of His ministry in Mark 1, we read, "Now after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying 'the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.'" And then in Luke, chapter 9, when he sent the disciples out, it says, "And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God." And then at the Last Supper in Luke 22, He says to His disciples, "And just as my father has granted me a kingdom, I grant that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on the thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." And then again, when He's standing before Pilate just before He's about to be crucified, and Pilate is inquiring as to whether or not He is, in fact, a king, Jesus responds, "My kingdom is not of this world." You see, He's been discussing the kingdom, preaching the kingdom; He's been announced as the king of the kingdom from the very beginning. So it's natural that what He says here has to do with the kingdom, but we're not finished yet. He says, "'If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews, but as it is, my kingdom is not of this realm,' and therefore Pilate said to Him, 'So you are a king.' Jesus answered, 'You say correctly that I'm a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world to testify to the truth, and everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.'"
But even when He's on the cross, as He's hanging there and as the two thieves on either side of Him had at first been casting into His teeth malicious things, finally the one convicted by the Holy Spirit, understanding what was going on turns to Him and says, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And then when He speaks to His disciples in the time between His resurrection and the time when He actually ascends in the clouds in Acts, chapter 1, listen to the account of those days--"To these He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning [what?] the kingdom of God." He was preoccupied with the kingdom of God. I've heard it said by some, usually guys who like to preach about money, that the thing Jesus talked about most was money. I've heard by others, who like to talk only of love, that the thing Jesus talked about most was love. And I've heard of others who like grace, and we all like grace and we all like love and we all like money, that Jesus only talked about grace and that was his number one thing, but the truth is, if you go back and look at the words, he spoke more about the kingdom than anything else. He came to be king over a kingdom. That was the announcement that was given by the angel, and that's the gospel that He proclaimed--the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And that's what He talked about with His disciples, and that's what He talked about--and that's what transpired even that night in which He was crucified and the hours before as He spoke with Pilate and as He talked to the thief on the cross and then as He came again saying, "I want you guys to remember," as He's talking to the disciples in those exiting moments, teaching them about the kingdom. So it makes perfect sense that when He sits on the hill at this moment to begin the Sermon on the Mount, and isn't it great, He sat down when He delivered His sermon. I'm planning to do that in the future--don't get bent out of shape. Actually, when I was filling in in a church in the city, on Sunday nights when we would get together, we would always sit, and when we would talk it didn't bother them because it didn't have a cultural connotation. We're used to guys up and walking around and standing behind big chunks of wood, and that's the way it's all done, but Jesus sat down to give them the Sermon on the Mount.
And the very first thing He says to them is, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom." That's what He's after. And so, this entire passage of Scripture is all about the kingdom. In fact, I've divided it up, and I'll tell you, you can divide it up by your own little scheme. The ways of dividing up the Sermon on the Mount are almost as myriad as the number of commentators. But it seems to me as you work through the passage that these ten sections arise in and of themselves. And first, in [Matthew] 5:1-12, He's going to talk about the citizens of the kingdom--those who are born again. What is it like for those who are the citizens of the kingdom of God? And His initial concept is this, and that which He uses throughout this set of things called the beatitudes, is that they are blessed. Above all things, the citizens of the kingdom are acknowledged as blessed. We're going to go back and find out why that's true in a moment.
As you look at verses 13-16, we find the role of the citizens of the kingdom in this present age--that we are to be salt and light, that we become citizens of two countries. We have a citizenship in heaven and of that coming kingdom, and yet we dwell here on this earth. So what is the role for those who are blessed of God? How is it that we're to function within the present kingdom when we know we're expecting to be a part of a new kingdom? And he says, "We do that by being salt and light." Of course we'll spend great time on that.
In 17-48 then, He begins to discuss both the character of the kingdom and all of its citizens. And here He talks about true righteousness, true holiness. He delivers, and He'll be dealing actually with six perversions of the Law that the Pharisees had become accustomed to using, and I think we'll see ourselves falling into some of their traps--how we will manipulate and change and warp the Word of God in order to make it conform so that we can justify ourselves by the Law. And He goes back and so deals with the Law in such great detail that He destroys any notions of us justifying ourselves by works in any way, shape or form, and gives us the true character of the kingdom and of the citizens of the kingdom.
In chapter 6 then, verses 1-24, He discusses the life of service in the kingdom--that we are to be living unto the Father and not for men. And in 25-34, he discusses the sufficiency of the kingdom and how we are then delivered from the anxiety of this life. In chapter 7, 1-5, He discusses the humility of the kingdom--how we're to deal with one another uncritically as brother with brother. In verse 6 of chapter 7, He deals with the otherness of the kingdom--its unique preciousness and the way that it is contrary to all that the world values. In 7-12, He discusses the privilege of the kingdom and how we have unlimited access to the Father and what that means. In 13 and 14, He discusses the entrance to the kingdom--that it is a narrow gate and a narrow way and not a broad gate or a broad way. And then in 15-27, He discusses the integrity of the kingdom--that it's not something that happens, that we cannot just have it up here, or even just in here, but it has to be that perfect integrity of a heart on fire for God that lives it in everyday life.
The whole sermon is about the kingdom. He's discussing the reality of where you and I are, and so we have this and we talked a little bit about this Wednesday night. We are caught in this situation where we have a measure of the kingdom here and now because we've already been born again. And so we're a part of the kingdom, and yet we haven't seen the kingdom come in all of its fullness yet. There are still things that need to transpire. But this we do know--that we have this coming, conquering kingdom which is going to dispel and destroy all of the kingdoms of this earth, and Christ is going to reign and He's going to cause every knee to bow and every tongue to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father, and that will be the fullness of the kingdom. We're awaiting that day; that's what we're excited about.
So when we come back then to these beatitudes and, let me go back, and, that's kind of an interesting word--beatitude. And if you have been afflicted by that abominable idea that was once propagated to call these "the be happy attitudes," please banish that from your brain. That's utter foolishness. That is not the concept that is being communicated here at all. In fact, what He's dealing with, and if we were to look, the word beatitude is a Latin word, it comes from a Latin word which means "blessed." And, in fact, if we were to try and bring that over into English the way that it reads in Latin, you would be talking about the "blessednesses." But since the "blessednesses" is pretty lousy English, they stick with the beatitudes, and that's probably what's in the top of your Bible. But what He's talking about here are the citizens of the kingdom. And He outlines this in a series of ways. In each one, we read about the blessedness--"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 gentle, 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 have been persecuted for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." He's not talking about individual groups of people. He's talking about Christians as a whole, and that each of us is to be partaking of these very things.
And, in fact, I just want to look, again, as an overview, that there are three things you ought to notice about this entire passage of the beatitudes, of verses 1-12. And the first is that the Christian mindset is paradoxical to the world's thinking. We're going to work on a few of those this morning before we get out of here. Secondly, that the Christian life is a progression--that it starts at one place and moves on toward another. And thirdly, that the Christian is to live in a constant tension between the present and the future that is yet to come. We're going to unfold those in a second, but let me first give you this word "blessed," because it is so important to understanding what else goes on in this passage. Blessedness, the word, in the Greek is "makarios," and it's a fascinating word and a deep word, and I don't want to miss some of the nuances of it, so let me read this to you directly from the lexicon, OK?--"Makarios--blessed, possessing the favor of God, the state of being marked by fullness from God." It indicates the state of the believer in Christ--blessed for the Son of Man's sake, blessed for my sake. It is said of one who becomes a partaker of God's nature through faith in Christ. The believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit because of Christ and as a result should be fully satisfied no matter what the circumstances. Let me go back and reread that, because when Jesus talks about being blessed and we talk about being blessed, we're talking about two completely different things. What we're usually talking about, in terms of being blessed, is being happy. What we're usually connecting with this idea of blessedness, is having things going our way, is having the conditions of life favorable to our liking. But when Jesus uses the word blessed, He's not worried about the outward conditions; He's speaking to individuals who count themselves and know themselves as truly blessed because they're God's. And the outward circumstances have no impact on that. The reality is they live in the blessedness of being Christ's.
Now the truth is, we all like to say that theologically; very few of us live that in reality. I'm blessed, but boy, don't let something bad happen tomorrow, because then I'm going to think I'm not so blessed. I'm blessed, but don't let something transpire that is even just an irritant against my flesh, because pretty soon I'll tell you I'm not all that happy about the circumstances. And if I can go back and steal a great old phrase that I think I first read in J.C. Ryle: "God is more concerned with you being holy than He is with you being happy." And blessedness is that sense, that reality of being God's, and of His favor being poured on you. Let me expand that just a little bit more, still reading from the lexicon--"Makarios differs from the word happy in that the person who is happy has good luck; it comes from the root 'hap,' meaning, luck as a favorable circumstance. To be makarios, blessed, is equivalent to having God's kingdom in one's heart. Makarios is the one who is in the world yet independent of the world, for his satisfaction comes from God and not from favorable circumstances."
Now, if in fact what He's doing in these twelve verses is describing what a citizen of the kingdom of God is like, I will have to ask you the same thing that kept nagging me as I was studying this passage and have been probably now for almost months, preparing, because I see this as such the seminal portion of the life and ministry of Christ in terms of His teaching. And that is, are you, as a citizen of the kingdom of God, living as blessed? Or are you ornery and mean and cantankerous and upset and cranky and touchy and out of sorts with everybody, because your joy and your blessedness depend on outward circumstances? And the people said "Ouch!" I share your pain. I don't just feel your pain; I share it deeply. As I kept reading this passage and going through it time after time after time, you keep getting struck in the forehead with Jesus speaking to His own people, and that's you and me. And as we read that portion out of Hebrews this morning, if you haven't heard anything else, Christ is speaking now--listen to Him, this is God. And He's saying to those who belong to Him, "You are blessed because you're mine!" And if you're worried about the rest of the stuff, your focus is wrong--you're thinking like the world. We talk about worldliness, and we talk about it in terms of going to dances, going to movies, doing other things. Worldly-mindedness is not being blessed or considering ourselves blessed because we're His, and looking instead at those things that are happening in life and saying, "Well, this isn't going right; that isn't going right. I want this to be the change; I want that to be the change," and basing all of our happiness, all of our joy, all of our contentment on those exterior things when He says, "My people are people who know they are blessed because they're mine." And that transcends everything else.
I tell you, we don't live like that in this age. We live more like the unsaved. We live more like the world does in this context. At least, I do. Maybe you don't. Maybe you've come way past that, but I find myself in dire straits, rehearsing this over and over. Look at the paradox that occurs when you contrast what He's saying here with the way that the world thinks. Because of this blessedness, each of the things listed is something that the world would designate as that which produces misery. And yet the Christian is not only is not made miserable by it, but takes particular satisfaction in it. Now watch this, because it's extraordinary--the world produces and promotes men and women of gigantic self-image. That's the spirit of our age. Feel good about yourself. Make sure that you don't discipline your children lest you warp their psyche. It's another part of their anatomy I'm intending on warping usually when I'm disciplining, but that's another deal. But we're sometimes worried about, well, will they grow up with a poor self-image? Well, no! Here they are, little sinners, lost and undone and completely alienated from God, and we're going to tell them how wonderful and perfect they are. I think there's a contrast there. But if you are in business, especially in corporate America, in any way shape or form, you've been to one of those seminars at one time or another that has taught you how to gain that good self-esteem. We're told that every woman in the world who does anything wrong does it because she has low self-esteem--that's a lie! If she had low self-esteem, if she hated herself, when she looked in the mirror she's say, "I'm ugly and isn't that great?" That's low self-esteem. You're happy when you do wrong things. You have pride when you look in the mirror and say, "I'm not happy with the way I look." You see, we've twisted it; we've bought the world's version. We've taken their concept and then imported it into the church. We've blended it into our church services. For heaven sakes, don't preach on sin. In fact, when we first began doing the White Horse Inn, we had a great interview that was done originally with Michael Horton and Robert Schuller. He actually had Robert Schuller over to his home first, and they had dinner, and they discussed what they were going to discuss when they got to the broadcast. And then they got into the broadcast, and they began to unfold some of the things that they were talking about, and he says, (and I'm just bringing up Robert Schuller as an example because he's an easy target--because I know this one, all right? If I knew it on somebody else, I'd tell it on somebody else, but it's public; it's on the internet; it's not something that's restricted). And in the process of their discussion, as Michael Horton was saying, "Well shouldn't we tell people that they're lost and need a Savior, Schuller responded to him, "I hope you never say those things to your congregation. You would never tell them that their sinners." Well, what else are you supposed to tell them? How else can men be saved unless they know their lostness first. As a matter of fact, that is the first beatitude--the one who is blessed in Christ is the one who is poor in spirit. The one who has come to the end of themselves, to the bankruptcy of their spiritual condition. They've not suddenly elevated themselves to some new spiritual state, and now they can just step on off and be gods. But they've come to the reality that in themselves there is no good thing, just as Paul said. And in that utter bankruptcy, they find the blessedness of a Christ who saves those who have nothing with which to save themselves. But see, we've lost that. We let those concepts slip away from us.
The church is buying into that same thing, and so we have seminars to help us gain a good self-image. Well, if you were to put--and I heard Chuck Colson say this once, and I think he was right--if you were to put up a picture of Jesus Christ and on the other side, put up a picture of Adolph Hitler, and ask a room full of people, "Whom do you have more in common with?," almost invariably, we would point to Jesus Christ. But the truth is we have far more in common with Adolph Hitler than we have with Jesus Christ. The world produces and promotes men and women of gigantic self-image, but Jesus says "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The world responds to everything that brings sorrow as though it were abnormal and needed to be corrected. Isn't that interesting? Everything that causes sorrow, we think is abnormal and needs to be corrected. That's not true. When someone dies--a loved one, we ought to grieve. We ought to be sorrowful. That's the proper response. And we don't want to get over that too quickly, nor do we want it to consume our lives. But that's not the wrong response, that's the proper response. In contrast to a world that responds to everything which brings sorrow as though it were abnormal, Jesus says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Obviously, we'll discuss those in more detail in the weeks to come. But that's an extraordinary statement in and of itself. How is a man or a woman who mourns to count themselves blessed? Because they are blessed by being His, and the proof that they are His is that they mourn over their sin. That's a right condition. God forbid that our teaching and preaching help people become comfortable with their sin. We should grieve it; we should mourn it. It's a sign of our blessedness.
The world cultivates and rewards aggressiveness. I don't know, some of you may have gone to assertiveness training at one time or another--how to stand up for yourself, how to speak back to the cabby, how to yell at the girl in the checkout counter, all those good things. Don't let anybody in the world step on you. But Jesus says, "Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth." Well wait a minute, if we don't stand up for ourselves, nobody will stand up for us. You might be right. Who says standing up for yourself is the best way? It's a tough thing to do, but, you see, the world thinks differently than the Christian thinks. The world encourages the satisfaction of every lust and the denial of none. Jesus says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. The world does not believe in mercy but in survival of the fittest, but Jesus says, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy." The world applauds a duplicity which says, "What does it matter what I'm like in my private life as long as I can do my job well?" And Jesus says, "Blessed are the pure in heart." The world is continually restless, and Jesus says, "Blessed are the peacemakers." The world rejects any form of persecution, whether it's real or imagined, demanding to be treated after their own self conceptions. And Jesus says, "Blessed are you when they persecute you." And so we'll start the Christian Anti-Defamation League. And we'll write letters to the newspaper and to the television station and say, "You portrayed Christians in a bad light," as though we're doing something righteous. What a bunch of idiots we've become. We've bought the world's mind. And the citizens of the kingdom think differently. And that's what He begins to open to us here. In utter contrast to the mindset of the world, we have the Christian whose character is Christ. The beatitudes are an extraordinary passage for that reason.
The second thing, though, that I would have you see out of the beatitudes as a whole is that in them we see that the Christian life is a progression. We see it in three different ways actually. First, we understand that there's a progression as we work through each of the beatitudes themselves. In other words, you begin, salvation begins with a revelation of the poverty of our souls. You begin as poor in spirit, and then it moves on to mourning and grieving over sin. And then it moves on from there to humbling ourselves before the throne of God, and then having done that, it produces within us a hungering and a thirsting after righteousness. And then having come to mercy, we carry that mercy to others who are out there who still need Christ. We pursue after holiness and purity. We desire to see others reconciled to God, and we want to be peacemakers for them in that situation. And we gladly begin to suffer the identification with Christ that may lead to persecution. You see, there's a progression in life that works all the way through that, and each of these are to be owned by all Christians. They're not just, one guy is gentle, one guy is pure in heart, one guy is poor in spirit, but each of us is to partake of the fullness of these things because they are the progression through which the Christian life moves.
But lastly, we understand that it's a progression and that we don't end here. We aren't existentialists. We have an expected end--"Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." We don't live just in the here and now, but we live in the here and now knowing that God has yet set for us a goal and an end and a place for us to be. And so we see the progression of the Christian life as moving from this age into the next age, from this kingdom into the next kingdom, from this day into the one that is yet to come. So the Christian mindset is paradoxical to the world's thinking, and the Christian life is a progression. But then thirdly, we see this, that the Christian lives in a tension between the present and the future. I love this because it happens in each one of the beatitudes separately--"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." I'm poor in spirit now, but the kingdom of heaven is yet to come. "Blessed are those who mourn now, for they shall be comforted," maybe not now. "Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." In each of these, there's a constant moving, there's a tension here between what is and what is yet to come. And when we lose that tension, when we lose the reality of that tension, we don't know how to live in the present world.
As a matter of fact, Titus says this so wonderfully, Paul does when he writes to Titus. If you'll turn over there, just quickly, Titus chapter 2. I love it! Beginning in verse 11, Paul says to Titus, "for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires," and here's the tension--"and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age." See the tension. To do that now, but look at [verse] 13--"looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ." We don't do that in a vacuum. We don't live godly just to live godly, we live godly with this knowledge--that that kingdom is yet to come, "looking for His appearing, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds." Isn't that great? So that our living now is put into that juxtaposition of what is to come, but we begin living as citizens of the kingdom of God here in this present age, while we await the fullness of the coming of the kingdom of God in all of its glory, in all of the manifest presence of Christ when He slays the enemy at His coming.
And let me take that one step further by getting you to turn over to 1st Peter chapter 3. Or 1st Peter chapter 1, I'm sorry. Peter picks up on this same thing. As a matter of fact, each of the apostles do. Again, finding the seed-bed for all of their teaching in the teaching of Christ. They bring it out for us. Verse 3 of chapter 1 of the 1st letter of Peter, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Well, what's our living hope? I mean, Christ has been raised from the dead, but what about us? To obtain an inheritance. You see, we weren't just raised from the dead so that we might be here now in spiritual terms, but there's coming a full resurrection of the dead, like Christ's, where we'll be given a new body, for what end--to obtain an inheritance. And this inheritance is imperishable, and it is undefiled, and it will not fade away, and it is reserved in heaven for you. That's the end. That's why we start living in the kingdom now, because the kingdom is about to come. We start living as citizens of that new country. And we're to obtain that inheritance, and in order for us to enjoy an inheritance that's imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, in fact, he tells us we'll be given bodies that will be imperishable and undefilable and will not fade away. So we can take up the fullness of that inheritance which is ours. But what about us now? Well verse 5 says, "Who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."
There is a great phrase that's used often. Forgive me if this steps on someone's toes--I mean to. No, I won't step on anybody's toes here. Here's the phrase you hear--"This is a ministry of faith." Now what that means is, I believe you will support me. My faith is, you're going to send me money if I ask for it. A ministry of faith looks forward to the coming of Christ. That's what he just told us in 1st Peter--that we live in this tension of living now with a forward look to the return of Christ, and that's how our faith is anchored. A ministry of faith is not an excuse to say that I can send you letters so that you can send me money. A ministry of faith is one that believes the promises of God and clings to them as we see the approach of Christ at hand. That's what Peter means by those things. That's what we need to mean by them. Because how else can we live in this age? How else can we endure? Just as we were talking last week, and this certainly ties in with where we were last week in Hebrews 12. Except we have, and faith always has, a forward look to the fulfillment of the promises of God. But when those promises aren't real, when we only live in the here and now, when we become existential even as Christians, when it's only what I can have today, what I can enjoy today, how I feel today, what's going on today, how I think today--when today rules everything, we do not live by faith. Living by faith is believing what God has said is true and then ordering my life accordingly. And Christ has said, "I'm coming again to receive you unto myself that you might be with me forever," and I start ordering my life today based on the reality of that promise of Him coming back to put me in that kingdom. But I start living in that kingdom as a citizen now with those who have been changed by the Spirit of Christ, made whole by His grace with those who are called to walk as Christ walked, in holiness, righteousness and truth, depending on the Word, depending on the fullness of the Spirit.
Well, all of that is introduction to the Sermon on the Mount. We're going to have a wild ride. But I would ask you in the meantime, to go home and spend some time looking through the Sermon on the Mount. These chapters [Matthew] 5-7 are extraordinary. And they are Christ speaking to the church, specifically about His rule and reign, and specifically about how we live for Him in this age. He never wasted His breath. He never just gave an off-handed comment. He never just said it for effect's sake, but teaching us from the depths of His soul beginning at this time, that we understand the whole of it being wrapped up in the blessedness of being Christ's. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you again this morning for your Word to us. Once again, it is so easy for us to get tangled up in the world, to get lost in the world's thoughts, to get lost in the world's ways, Father, to take the world's thinking and make it more apart of the way that we view life and live in life than the way that You've described it to us. Lord, forgive us for buying that. It's sin. We confess it, and we turn from it. And we ask instead that we might sit at the feet of Christ and learn from His lips truth, truth about who we are and what we are, and especially how we are to live here and now, especially in the glory of that coming kingdom, when He shall be manifest in all of His glory. Father, teach us to live as citizens of two kingdoms, beginning to live here in light of the future that is to come. Father, make us like Christ. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen.
Transcribed by Brad Hansen
Copyright © 2000 Reid A. Ferguson. Permission granted to quote in context.