Sermon of the Mount: Understanding How to Flourish in God’s Kingdom (Matthew 5:1-2)

Everybody’s working for the weekend

No one got up this morning wanting life to be difficult. No one got up this morning fully aware of how to make life good. The reality is we live in na world that is difficult and we are not sure how to live the good life that all of us want to live. The world knows this. Pay attention to our advertising on social media and television.

When I was a child, I was a typical late seventies eighties kid. I was an avid T.V. watcher. One of the commercials I remember was the Miller Time commercial. For those hard working people who want a taste of the good life, drink the champaign of beers. Its Miller Time. Miller was trying to sell the American people the good life a small brown bottle. It worked.

If you take a look at people’s social media pictures, you will find two arching themes: work and entertainment. We are taught in our culture the method to having the good life is to work hard, which is not a bad value. In our fallen condition, however, we take that to mean to work eighty hours a week. We must work eighty hours a week because we need to pay for our highlife style: the new cars, expensive houses, private schools, and the toys. To offset the work hard value system, we need to pay hard. This is where Miller time comes into play. We need to entertain ourselves with our toys and vacations. Our toys need to be elaborate and our vacations exotic, both of which are costly. Then you add a little love and romance in there, maybe some children, and life is good. We sum up these two values with a picture of Miller Time of two people looking at their feet on a beach gazing on the vast ocean in the horizon with the alcohol in hand. Yes, this is the good life. Work ourselves to death and entertain ourselves to death. Its a cycle set on repeat.

Everybody's working for the weekend. Everybody wants a new romance. Everybody's goin' off the deep end. Everybody needs a second chance.

All of you are a little different, but the idea remains the same. Everyone wants to live the good life. The world is not lost for ideas on how to sell you toe good life. It works really hard and spends a lot of money to influence and form your opinion on what the good life is for the short time you are on earth. Because they are very successful in their influence, it is hard for Westerners to read the Sermon on the Mount well. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ teaching on how people can live the good life on earth. Specifically, he is teaching his disciples how to flourish in the kingdom of God in the already-not yet stage of life. On the one hand the kingdom came when Jesus was on earth, and yet it has not been fulfilled completely. We are joyfully advancing the kingdom until he returns to make all things new. So how does a Christian thrive in fallen world? How do we experience the fruit of the good life, a life that both honors God bering eternal fruit, and at the same time is fulfilling, satisfying, complete with purpose? That is what we are going to learn as we walk through the Sermon on the Mount. Before we dig into the sermon, we need to understand some terms that will help us guide our way.

Reading the Sermon of the Mount Well: A Framework of Themes

When Stacy and I went on our honeymoon, we were able to snorkle on a reef several miles off the coast of Florida. They gave us a deflatable life jacket to wear. If we pulled a knob, we get deflate the air to dive down and get a better look at the reef and the exotic fish. When we surface, we simply blew air into the jacket and it helped us stay afloat. As we walk through the sermon, we are going to let the air out of our jacket and dive deeper into the sea of theiology to get a better look at the text. I promise you, I will not let you run out of air. We will surface. This is necessary to glean as much fruit from the text so to apply to our life.

There are nine themes you need to recognize to read the Sermon on the Mount for what it is worth. Understanding these themes before we study the Sermon on the Mount function like light posts one a dark road that help you have clarity of the hard sayings, like Matthew 5:48 “be perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect.” They also function as fence posts that keep you from wondering out of the green pastors of truth and into the wilderness of heresy. I am going to present them in the form of questions that one would ask as they read the sermon.

What does Jesus mean when he says “blessed?”

Jesus offers us nine statements that have been called the “beatitudes.” The term beatitudes is the English transliteration of the Latin translation of the Greek markarios, beatus, which means happy, blissful, fortunate, or flourishing. Some of your translations will show the difficulty in translating this word. Some have blessed, while others have happy. The reality is, neither word fully captures the depth of markarios. For example, Johnathan Pennington notes, “the difference between translating the Beatitudes as, for example, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and “Happy/Flourishing are the poor in spirit” is significant. The first is a statement (in English) that indicates active, divine favor; the second is a macarism, a declared observation about a way of being in the world.” (Pennington, Jonathan T. 2017. The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group.)

Its not a state of being happy. It seems counter-intuitive of Jesus to say, “happy are those who mourn” or happy are those who are poor.” Happiness does not come from persecution. Jesus must be meaning something deeper. I believe he means a state of flourishing.

The Bible speaks a great deal about human flourishing in this world, and in eternity. But flourishing in God’s kingdom in this world looks very different than what the world conveys to be flourishing. Those who flourish now are those who fear the Lord, those who are humble and lowly, needy, aware of their depravity and need for God’s righteousness. In fact they hunger for it and can only be satisfied by it. Those who are merciful and pure experience the good life, they are blessed. In other words, as Pennington says, the beatitudes declare with authority what is the true way of being that will result in happiness and human flourishing. They are Jesus’s answer to the universal philosophical and religious question, how can one be truly happy? (Pennington, Jonathan T. 2017. The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group.)

What Jesus means when he says “blessed,” is human flourishing. How can you truly be happy? How can you truly thrive in this world today? You must cultivate Jesus’ ethics and virtues into your character. You must live by these beatitudes. Disciples of Jesus cultivate God honoring, Spirit-empowered, Christ-exalting mature character because Jesus says it is blessed by God. “Doriani, Daniel M. 2008. Matthew & 2. Edited by Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani. Vol. 1. Reformed Expository Commentary. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing.”

What does Jesus mean by “be perfect?”

Jesus says hard things in his sermon that are hard for Western ears to hear. He says things like,

Matthew 5:48 ESV

48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

When you and I read that, we immediately think to ourselves, I can’t be perfect. I mean, that is what the gospel tells me. Ho can Jesus tell me to be perfect?

The word Jesus uses for perfect is the word teleios. The word carries a wide range of meanings, but in the Old Testament and in the New Tetsament, it is often use to convey wholeness or completeness. It means to give yourself entirely to the Lord, wholeheartedly with complete obedience to God’s will. Its the idea of walking with God the way Enoch walked with God. (Patrick Hartin Hartin, Spirituality of Perfection, 26.) its a whole orientation toward the Lord with righteousness and holiness.

What does Jesus mean when he says “be perfect?” Jesus means be whole heartedly devoted to the Lord. Have a single-minded heart united loyal love for Jesus that expresses itself in joyful obedience that makes much of holiness and righteousness.

What does Jesus mean when he says the word “righteousness?”

Jesus will speak of righteousness in one form or another twenty-six times in the Gospel of Matthew. The disciples of Jesus are called the “righteous ones.” They are contrasted with sinners (Matthew 5:45), evil ones (Matthew 13:39), and hypocrites (Matthew 9:13). Jesus mentions righteousness six times in the Sermon on the Mount: those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (5:6), those who are persecuted for righteousness (5:10), those whose righteousness must supersede the Pharisees (5:20), those who must be righteous like their father (5:45), those who are not to do their righteous acts in order to be seen (6:1), and those who are to seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness (6:33). Righteousness is important to Jesus. So, what does it mean to be righteous? It means, as Pennington helpfully defines its, as whole-person behavior that accords with God’s nature, will, and coming kingdom. (Pennington, Jonathan T. 2017. The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group.)

What does Jesus mean when he says be righteous? He means is you follow Jesus’s righteousness. Righteousness is living rightly before God with a pure heart. Your ethics and morals are in line with what is acceptable in heaven.

What does Jesus means when he warns against “hypocrisy?”

Jesus says in Matthew 23:1-3

Matthew 23:1–3 ESV

1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, 3 so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.

Jesus is describing hypocrisy. For Jesus, hypocrisy is of the devil, the great slanderer, the liar. It is the doubleness James speaks of in his epistle. It is skin deep righteousness. It is a divided heart. Your heart is not matching up with your actions. It is the worse thing a professing Christian can be.

What Jesus means by hypocrite is the opposite of perfect or wholeness. Instead of having a single-minded heart united loyal love to Jesus, a hypocrite has a double-minded, heart divided, loyal love to self.

What does Jesus mean when he speaks of the “heart?”

The heart is mentioned over nine hundred times in the Old Testament and over a hundred and fifty times in the New Testament. Matthew mentions the heart sixteen times. The condition of your heart is a major theme in the Bible, and Jesus is most concerned with your heart.

When Jesus speaks of your heart, he is speaking of the well-spring of your life (Proverbs 4:23). He is speaking of the center of your being, your soul, your reasoning, your affections. It is your true inner person. its’ what makes you, you. From your heart, says Jesus, all of your life flows. It is your heart that can become dull, unable to hear to see the Lord (Matthew 13:15). It is in your heart that you can honor God being near to him, or dishonor God by being far from him (Matthew 7). Jesus requires you to forgive from your heart (Matthew 18:35). On the beatitudes only the pure of heart see God. Even your words flow from your heart (Matthew 12:34). The greatest commandment to love the Lord your God is only fulfilled from your heart.

When Jesus speaks of your heart he is speaking to the inner you, your soul, and to what you love, what you think, that moves you to act. A heart that thrives in Jesus’ kingdom is whole, complete.

What does Jesus mean by “gentiles/pagans?”

Typically when you hear the Gentile, you think of none Jewish person. This is a distinction that is made in the Old Testament, as it refers to the other nations over a thousand times. This idea also carries on into the New Testament seeing that the nations are referred to over one hundred and fifty times. It refers to people other than God’s people. This idea is important to Matthew.

As I said last week, Jesus is creating a new people for himself. This time, however, it is not just Jews, it is both Jews and Gentiles. He’s creating a new people who are not unified by their ethnicity, but by their relationship to Christ.

You get the gist of this in the fact that Matthew includes gentiles in Jesus’ geanology (Matt 1:1-17). You also see it in how Jesus says things like faithless Jews not sitting at the future table in the kingdom, essentially being cutoff.

What Jesus means by gentiles is not about Jew or nonJew. Its about faith., or the faithless. Gentiles refers to those outside the church, those who are not God’s people. Jesus makes this clear when he asks, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers? Whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother, sister and mother (Matthew 12:48-50). The whoever refers to both Jew and Gentile who love him with all of their heart.

There are two kinds of people in this world, those who believe and those who don’t, those inside the kingdom of light and those in the kingdom of darkness, those of the seed of the woman and those of the seed of the serpent.

What does Jesus means when he speaks of his “Father in heaven?”

Jesus mentions God as father seventeen times in the Sermon on the Mount. Pennington notes that this is the largest concentration of reference to God as father in Matthew. Jesus also makes God very personal to his disciples, saying things like “your father in heaven.” Let your light so shine that men may see your good works and glorify your father i heaven (Matthew 5:16). When you pray, pray, “My father in heaven” (Matthew 6:9-13). Only those who do the will of “my father in heaven” enter the kingdom” (Matthew 7:21).

What Jesus means by “father in heaven” is to make a clear distinction of God’s children. God’s children are not distinguished by ethnicity, such as being Jewish. Those who do the will of God, those who believe upon the Son, have a right to be called children of God. It is not right to say that all of humanity are God’s children. All of us are his creation and image bearers, but Jesus distinguishes God’s children verses fallen image bearers.

What does Jesus mean when he says “Kingdom of God?”

Jesus is the promised King. He is the Prince of Peace, Wonderful Counselor, Holy and Anointed, full of righteousness, and the exacter of perfect justice. He is the perfect moral and virtuous King who is to be imitated by his people. He has a kingdom that is both geographical and spiritual. The kingdom of Heaven is the kingdom of God. It is a kingdom that reflects the virtues of the King. It is the place where Jesus will rule without competition.

When Jesus refers to the kingdom of heaven, he is referring to the kingdom of God where He rules in wisdom and power. His kingdom is advanced both in the human hearts and in the world. One day both will be united, but for now, we live out the kingdom of God by following Jesus’s ethics in the Sermon on the Mount.

What does Jesus mean when he speaks of “rewards, recompense, and treasure?”

jesus promises rewards to those who follow Him rightly. The one who is ruled by Jesus expects the appropriate reward from the king. It is not contrary to expect to be rewarded, to receive the proper wage for righteousness. By contrast, Paul says the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). What you earn from your sin is God’s condemnation. On the other side of that coin is the wages of righteousness is life, by which we first receive through Jesus, and then as we are rewarded for living a virtuous life. The writer of Hebrews says, Hebrews 11:6

Hebrews 11:6 ESV

6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Jesus says when you are persecuted,

Matthew 5:12 Matthew 6:6

Matthew 5:12 ESV

12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

He also says,

Matthew 6:6 ESV

6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

When Jesus speaks of reward ore recompense, he is speaking of the wages you receive for being faithful to the Lord, living rightly according to his kingdom ethic. Your Father in heaven seeks to reward his children for their virtuous faith.

Jesus on the Mountain

Matthew 5:1–2 ESV

1 Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: