Introduction

Today we begin our eight-week study through three chapters of Matthew, which are commonly called the Sermon on the Mount. The word sermon might sound boring to some people, but I want to tell you that this will not be boring. This is Jesus's own words, and even if people don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God, they tend to be intrigued by his words. And even if they don't want to obey him, they tend to want to quote him. And so there's a lot of familiar things in these passages that we're going to study that are familiar to even people who don't know their Bible. Even people who aren't Christians will find familiar things like, for example, the golden rule, do unto others. The Lord's Prayer, our Father who art in heaven. The Beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit. Salt of the earth, the light of the world. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The ever popular, judge not lest thou be judged, right? That's going to be in here. Ask and it will be given to you. And we're going to end with the children's song, the wise man built his house upon the rock. So there's a lot of familiarity in here, and I hope that doesn't trip us up. I hope it blesses us, but it will not be boring. St. Augustine said, and I'll put this on the screen for you, that the Sermon on the Mount is probably the best known, least understood, and least obeyed of all scripture. And that may be true. So our heart is going to be to obey. Now in your study guide on page four, there's some bullet points and some fill in the blanks for the introduction. Those of you who are retreat, you heard my sad story that all of my notes for Sermon on the Mount have been lost. And so now as I'm just completely rewriting this, the bullet points are out of order because the Lord probably has something fresh. So anyway, but that is one of the bullet points there. I trust that you can find them. I titled this series, The Way of Jesus. And you might think, well now that's an interesting title for the Sermon on the Mount. Is there even anything in there about the way of Jesus? And no, there really isn't anything exactly in that phrase, but I'm going to trust that this is from the Lord and that this is going to help us, help pull us through. So I want to begin by talking about the way of Jesus, and I want to talk about choices. We all make choices, whether we're conscious of them or not, we're making choices. Our choices eventually create for us a path for our life. They create for us a way. Maybe we call them habits. But this summer on vacation, Paul and I were in the Midwest and I was in the trailer and I was reading my normal through the Bible. It was in the book of Proverbs. And I began noticing all the references to the way. And I counted up, there was over 50. And so I want to read a few of them to you and you'll go, oh yeah, that sounds familiar. I'm going to start with the negative ones. The way of evil, the way of darkness, the way of the wicked, the way to Sheol, the way of the crooked, the way of the sluggard, the way of the guilty. And then the positive ones, the way of good, the way of pleasantness, the way of life, the way of insight, the way of good sense, the way of righteousness. And then the Proverbs talks all about our choices. It says to plan your way, guard your way, discern your way, make straight your way, give thought to your way, and there is fruit in your way. So those might sound familiar to you. All over the book of Proverbs, I'm going to put just three of them on the screen for you. Proverbs 14.8, the wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way. Proverbs 4.21, for a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord and he ponders all of his paths. And then Proverbs 4.26, ponder the path of your feet and then your ways will be sure. So it is a definite theme in this book of wisdom, the way that we take. Now did you know that the average adult makes 35,000 remotely conscious decisions every day? 35,000 decisions today. So here it is about 10 o'clock in the morning, you're probably sitting at four to six thousand decisions that you have already made. Are you tired? Do you need a nap? Does that exhaust you? But we do, we make lots and lots of decisions. As I was writing these notes, it was lunchtime, I started the grill, we chose to grill. And Paul chose a turkey burger and I chose a beef patty and I grilled them. He always has raw onions, I choose grilled onions, right? He always eats his burger in a bun. I almost never eat it in a bun, but this day I decided to go vintage and I had my beef patty in a bun. And then there's the choices of pickles and, you know, and ketchup and the choice of mustard. And is it going to be the French is yellow or is it going to be something more? Do you see? Like decisions, decisions, decisions we make. Now all of a sudden you can say, oh yeah, it's probably 35,000 decisions every day. Now grilled or raw onions are not going to be course life-changing decisions, are they? But you can imagine that there are decisions that we make that shape the course of our life. They determine the way that we take. Sometimes just one decision changes our way, changes the course of our life. And remember the Proverbs told us to give thought to our way. Give thought to your way. That's a really important reminder for those who are children of God. Because if we are born again, we are in God's kingdom. God has put us on a mission and we need to live like we are on a mission. And our decisions can cheer on that mission or it can put that mission to sleep. So sometimes we need to be very conscious. Some of my day-to-day decisions can determine my path. The way of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, will give us direction and inspiration on how we really live like a follower of Christ. So by way of introduction, whenever we start a new Bible study, we should talk about like the author who wrote this, what book of the Bible we are in. We are in the book of Matthew, which was written by Matthew. So that's handy to remember that way. You know, I've always appreciated the writing of Matthew. Resonates with me. I can read through Matthew great, but I have never appreciated Matthew so much as until I watched the drama, The Chosen. Yeah. And if you have not watched The Chosen, you know, get on the Play Store, download the app, start watching this dramatization. But like, oh, Matthew. It's just like, of course, of course, that is exactly what Matthew is like. I think they found Matthew to play Matthew. But anyway, Matthew had been a tax collector, and his own gospel, his own writing is the only place that he is called Matthew the Tax Collector, which I think is fascinating because we are the only ones who can really point out what we were before Christ. And that is what he called himself. And we learned that one day Jesus walked past his booth and said to him, looked at him and said, follow me. And Matthew did. He followed Jesus. He not only followed Jesus, but then whether he took notes like it shows in the drama, or if he had a mind like a steel trap, he was into the details. And so then when the Holy Spirit had him write his gospel account, he had details, which I love. So Matthew opens up his gospel account with, starts at the beginning. He starts with the birth of Jesus. And then he goes on to talk about his baptism, the baptism by John, and then the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Those are the only things that are covered prior to where we start our lesson. We're starting, actually you can turn if you haven't in your Bibles to Matthew chapter four. The Sermon on the Mount actually starts in five. But after his birth, his baptism, the temptation in the wilderness, then Matthew tells us that Jesus withdrew to Galilee and he lived near Capernaum. And that's where this sermon takes place is in Galilee. I have mentioned to you that this is a red letter Bible study. If you have a Bible where the words of Jesus are in red, all 107 verses that we're going to study will be in red. But before this point, we're in John chapter four. There are very, very few verses in red. Jesus doesn't say much. There's one sentence that's recorded that he said to John the Baptist, and then he quoted some scripture to the tempter. But as Jesus's public ministry begins, the first words out of his mouth that we see in red, I think are very intriguing. So I want you to look at Matthew chapter four, verse 17. And Matthew says, from that time, Jesus began to preach, saying first word out of his mouth, repentance. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Now, we might assign that word to John the Baptist. He's the one that went around saying, repent. Look at this. First thing out of Jesus's mouth in his public ministry is repent. And the next words are in verse 19. Jesus says, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. So repent and follow. Those are the first things that Jesus said. Repent and follow, and you know what? If somebody said to me, give me the gospel in two words, you may only use two words, I would have to choose these. Repent and follow. It does bring the gospel right down to two words. So I want to look at these words. Repent is the Greek word metanoia. It actually means to think differently, to change one's mind and purpose. Paul told the Colossians, this is from the NIV rendition, he said, once you were alienated from God, you were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. I like that concept of thinking about what I was before. We are all naturally enemies in our minds of God because of our sinful nature. We need to repent. We need to change our mind. Change our mind about who's the boss of my life. Change our mind about God. So once we repent, then which way do we go? Who do we follow? And Jesus says, follow me. And so this is your gospel inspiration as we begin the Sermon on the Mount. When we read the Sermon on the Mount, we will not approach it as read these rules and follow them. And we won't approach it as these are the good decisions to make. Do the right thing, like the mama, make good choices. And it's not going to be like, follow your heart. Although when we do repent and we do follow Jesus, he writes his law in our heart, what pleases him. He does write it in our heart. But God is always interested in personal revival. And this is the formula for personal revival. Repent and follow. So Matthew tells us then in verse 23 that Jesus went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel, the way of the kingdom, healing every disease and every affliction among the people. And you can imagine that this made quite a stir that Jesus became a household name. Verse 24 says his fame spread throughout all Syria. Verse 25 tells us the great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, from Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan. And so that is what sets the stage for us for the Sermon on the Mount. And that allows us now to turn to Matthew 5, verse 1, where he writes, seeing the crowds, he, Jesus, went up on the mountain. And when he sat down, his disciples came to him. I think it's significant that Matthew tells us that he, Jesus, went up on the mountain. I think Matthew knew the significance in his people's history of mountains and words from mountains, okay? And we know the significance because we're women of the word. We've gone through many of the Old Testament books. And so we can walk back and say, oh yeah, I see that that is significant. Because as we were in Exodus, when God revealed his glory and his character for the first time to his people, where were they? They were on Mount Sinai. And the words that God spoke, the law of God, he connected with his people right there in a covenant way. And then we've studied the book of Joshua, where when the people of Israel enter into the land that God promised to them, God told Joshua, this is in chapter eight, if you wanted to look it up later, he told him, in the presence of the people of Israel, Joshua wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses. And with half of the people on Mount Ebal and half of the people on Mount Gerizim, Joshua, it says, read all of the words of the law, did it all over again. The blessing and the curse according to all that was written in the book of the law. So we have a history of words from the mountain. And now none of these mountains in this area are like our Mount Hood or Pike's Peak in the Rocky Mountains. They're not tall and jagged Rocky Mountains. There's no mountain in Israel that rises more than about 4,000 feet. But still, they're higher than the rest. And this was the word from the mountain. We still use that phrase, don't we? Somebody says, well, the boss says do this. Well, is that the word from the mountain? See, it's still a pop culture phrase that we use. But Matthew tells us that Jesus went up on the mountain. And don't you wonder if that detail on both Jesus' part first to do that and then on Matthew's part to record it was intentional. You wonder if it was to put into mind the covenant that God had already made with them. They didn't call it the old covenant. It was the only covenant. But it was their covenant with their God. But if they had been listening at synagogue while the Old Testament was read, while the prophets were read, and if they had listened while Jeremiah was being read, they knew that something else was coming. They knew that they should be expecting something else. And I wanna show you this from Jeremiah chapter 31. I'll put on the screen so you can follow along. The words say, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Jacob, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. And here's the important part. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts. And this is one of your important fill in the blanks. God said, there's coming a time that I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts. And God was explaining through Jeremiah that in the covenant that they had, there was a weakness. There was an insufficiency with the old covenant. It was external, it was good, it was right. But you know what? It had no beating heart. The old covenant that God made with Israel had no beating heart. And so God sent a beating heart, as Galatians says, in the fullness of time, God sent his son born of woman, born under law to redeem those under law. And this was the time, this was the place, things were changing. And so I love that Jesus went up on a mountain to say, this is the time, this is the place, it's changing. He was the one God had sent a beating heart to show us a better way, to show us a more excellent way, to show us the way of Jesus who put flesh into the law of God that pleases him. Jesus was the only possible way that the law of God could be written on our hearts. And so he went up on the mountain, he sat down. So as the disciples came to him, he opened his mouth and he taught him, and here's the first words, only beatitude that we're gonna look at this morning, verse three, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. That's the first thing that Jesus said. And before we talk about the content of this verse, I just used a phrase, I called it a beatitude. That might be a heading in your Bible, it might say the beatitudes. And this word comes from the Latin beatus, which means blessed, okay? In other words, we could call it the blessing. It can literally be translated happy. It would be okay to say happy are the poor in spirit. Now, the word that stands out to us there is poor, right? You have a baseline understanding of what it means to be poor. There's probably someone in this room that thinks they're poor, someone listening online that thinks they're poor, but you think you're poor because you're comparing yourself to someone else. And so if I lifted you out of space and time and put you geographically in a different location in the world and maybe a different time frame, then you would compare yourself and you'd say, I am wealthy, I have so much. So poor is in the way that we look at it in a comparison of wealth, it is a comparison. But this first sentence in the Sermon on the Mount is talking about something completely different than the condition of our wealth. This first sentence is talking about the condition of our spirit, the condition of our spirit. And it goes hand in hand with that first gospel word that Jesus spoke, which is repent. Because before we repent, before we change our mind, we are not poor in spirit. We think we're pretty good. We think we're enough. We think that we are self. And so, spiritually speaking, we do the same thing. We compare with someone else, and we grade ourselves on the curve. I'm talking about someone who has not yet repented, okay? You look around, and you say, well, compared to my friends, I'm pretty good. I think I'm okay. And then we convince ourselves that we've done enough good things to fulfill our spiritual responsibilities. And so, we are not poor in spirit. We think that we are wealthy in spirit before we repent. But the way of Jesus here tells us that there is a blessing, there is a happiness for those who accurately see their spiritual condition after they have repented, or while they have repented. Those who know they are insufficient, those who know that they have a spiritual poverty, those who agree that they have nothing to offer. Those who recognize the barrenness of their hearts, and are able to hold out empty hands to the Lord, and say, I got nothing. The only thing I got is what you put in here. Do you ever spend time around little kids? They tend to like to fill up their hands with things. Bunch of little kids playing in a room, and they fill, I had one grandchild that seemed to have like a condition or something. She always had to have her hands full of something. And we'd go to a store, and she'd pick up the tags off of the floor, you know, under the, she just had to have something in her hands. And so, you come to those little kids, and you've got your M&Ms or something. And some of them will just drop. They will just stop and drop what they have. It's like, I want what you have, Grandma. In fact, my, I do keep some M&Ms, but my Grandma candy is the Andes chocolate, the mint, you know, the green ones. I thought, oh, that's a nice memory. I want them to be adults and get an after-dinner mint, and think of Grandma. How sappy is that? So, I buy them in the big plastic containers, and there's always a little line of them in the toy closet, but anyway, back to the open hands, you know. There's different ones. Some of them, they'll have a bunch of cars, and out comes the little green Andes mints, and they drop, and they want it. And some of them, they want to figure out how they can have it all, right? They want to have it all. So, spiritually speaking, we want to be women who have empty hands before the Lord. And if we put anything in those hands, thinking, I've got something to offer to God, when he comes along and shows us the good stuff, the chocolate, and we'll just go, I don't have anything. And we just, we repent. We change our mind. We say no. Personal brokenness is both the foundation and the first step to understanding the beating heart that is the way of Jesus. And this can be a painful realization for us, but it is critically important. And so, on page five, I created this little stair-step thing, and you see, I wrote this first step that the poor and blessed are the poor in spirit. As you go through your study this week, you'll finish the Beatitudes, and you'll build upon that. And what I want to say is, this concept has to be the foundation. This has to be the most important and the first step. So, this is the only one we're going to cover this morning. I hope for you it's like reading aloud in class the first page or first few paragraphs of a long novel, and you'll go, oh, yeah, that's great. I want to go and read the rest of this chapter. So, I hope that's inspiration for you. So, this study guide is based on four days of study each week. The questions in there are very brief. It is not an in-depth study, and so, I say that to you to tell you, no excuses. This is not an in-depth, you need two and a half hours a day. This is pretty brief. It should fit the lifestyle of just about any one of you. And so, but you will write out the entire text of the Sermon on the Mount over the next eight weeks, so plan whatever medium you want to use for that, either a notebook or a journal or something, because as you go now into day two, it will say, write, and you will write out the passage. You will answer some of those directed questions, and then for those of you who are studying at home, and then you're going to be meeting with a group or watching online, the order is you do your study guide, you watch the video, some groups watch it together, some groups watch it individually, and then you gather to discuss what the Lord has shown you. There's a great privilege and blessing with being able to listen to what the other one has heard in her life and be able to share what you've heard. So, I hope you'll all be able to gather back. My hope and prayer is that the words of Jesus in these three chapters will help us hear the beating heart that Jesus brings to God's way. It will help us make straight our way, like the proverb says, and it will help us live like the blessed women that we are in God's kingdom. Remember, that word means happy. Are you happy because you are poor in spirit? Are you happy because your hands are empty? I am. It makes us blessed, and I hope we can live as blessed women. Father, thank you for allowing us to begin this journey through the Sermon on the Mount, the way of Jesus. Lord, tenderize our hearts to hear from you fresh this week while we begin this process, and I pray that you would bless all of my sisters. In Jesus' name, amen.