BUILD YOUR LIFE: An Intro to the Sermon on the Mount

Intro: Have you ever seen a house, or a building being built? What is the 1st thing they do? They clear the ground, spread out a pad of dirt, & pour the foundation. ILL: When I was in college, a new student center was built in place of the old one. We could watch them build it from our dorm room. We saw them build a wall, tear it down, rebuild it, & tear it down again, & do it again. 3 times we saw them build this brick wall, tear it down, & rebuild it. That wall & student center is still there today.

Anyone who has ever built anything will tell you that the most important part of a building is the foundation. The most important part of your life is the foundation that you build upon. As long as you have a strong foundation, you can build, & even rebuild your life, as many times as needed. 1 Corinthians 3:11, “For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

We’re starting a new series of messages called “Build Your Life.” We’re going to talk about how to build a life that is blessed and fulfilled. Our curriculum will be the greatest sermon that has ever been preached- Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Today we will introduce this sermon with just two verses- Matthew 5:1-2, And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him. 2 Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying:

If we are going to build our lives on the foundation of Jesus Christ, there are at least 4 things about Him that we need to build on:

We need to build on His WORTH (He is the King).

I want to survey the 1st 4 chapters of Matthew to build the context for why we need to build our lives on Jesus.From the start, it seems clear that Matthew is writing to a mostly Jewish audience, & that his purpose is to show them that Jesus is the fulfillment of the OT promises about the long-awaited Messiah & King. Jesus is the King of the Jews.

The book begins like this- Matthew 1:1, The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham... Being a Son of Abraham identifies Jesus as a Hebrew, an ethnic Jew.

Being a Son of David puts Jesus in the royal line of kingly descendants.

Matt 1:6 “and Jesse begot David the king. David the king begot Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah.” 1:16 “And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ.”

Matthew 1:20 “… an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.”

Matthew 2:2 “(the wise men came) saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.” When the wise men found Jesus, the Christ child, they fell down & worshiped Him (Matt 2:11).

Their worship was a common Near Eastern custom to honor kings who were viewed as divine figures. A sign of their worship was to open their treasure & present Him gifts of “gold, frankincense, & myrrh”- gifts fit for a King. - What gift are you bringing the King? Jesus is Worthy.

We need to build on His WORK (He establishes a Kingdom)

Psalm 45:6, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom.”

When John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness, he said - “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matt 3:2). John’s ministry was to prepare the way for the Lord to come by baptizing a people for the Lord. He was clear that when Jesus came on the scene, his ministry would decrease, & Jesus’ ministry would increase.

- Skip Jesus’ baptism & victory over temptation & jump to ch. 4.

Matthew 4:12 “Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, He departed to Galilee… Matt 4:17, From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Matthew summarizes Jesus’ Work, i.e., His words & deeds, His life & ministry- Matthew 4:23, And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.

As we get into the Sermon on the Mount, we are going to see that the Kingdom Jesus preaches is a Kingdom of Righteousness(cf. Psalm 45:6).

Romans 14:17, for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

Are you in the Kingdom? Jesus has done the hard work to bring you into His Kingdom.

We need to build on His WORDS (the SOM is a message about Kingdom Living, for those in the Kingdom).

Right at the end of chapter 4, vs. 24 says that the fame of Jesus spread throughout all Syria “and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them. 25Great multitudes followed Him—from Galilee, and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.”

Matt 5:1, “And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him.”

Notice that Matthew doesn’t specify how many of Jesus’ disciples came to Him. Based on Matt 4:18, we know there are at least 4- Peter & Andrew, James & John. Based on later counts of the 12, & then also 72 others, both groups were selected from a larger group. Jesus likely had a few hundred disciples of both men & women who followed Him.

The message Jesus delivers is about how these disciples are to live in the Kingdom that He is establishing.

9 times in 3 chapters, Jesus references the Kingdom.Jesus tells us-

- who is blessed in the topsy-turvy Kingdom of God (Beatitudes)

- how to enter the kingdom of God & how to live in the Kingdom of God (spoiler alert: you must be righteous & do righteous things, i.e., acts of righteousness).

- how to know that we are on the path to the Kingdom of God

Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” You only know you are in the kingdom when your life is characterized by obedience to God. To know what it means to be blessed, righteous, & obedient means little if we don’t DO IT. Many people will claim to know the King, but will not enter the kingdom.

The Sermon on the Mount is less about getting the right INFORMATION to us & more about getting a righteous TRANSFORMATION within us.

If you are in the Kingdom, do you know what Jesus expects of you? Jesus has given us His Word for Kingdom living.

We need to build on His WAYS (The Word is how we know about Him, Obedience is how we know Him, i.e., His Ways)

One of my all-time favorite preachers is Adrian Rogers, the former pastor of Bellevue BC in Memphis, TN.His TV program used to play in our house every Sunday morning. He was in the ministry for over 50 years, & pastored Bellevue for 33 years. He died in 2005, but his legacy lives on through his ministry- Love Worth Finding. Rogers had a unique ability to preach profound truth in simple ways. I have often listened to Adrian Rogers via the Love Worth Finding app, & one time I heard him preach a message called Knowing God Intimately(Exo 33:11-16).

In this message, Rogers said- “To know about God is to see God’s works; to know God intimately is to know God’s way.” He then described how Moses demonstrated the beauty of knowing God intimately, seeing beyond an infatuation with God’s works to knowing God’s ways. That sermon made a profound impact on me.

There’s a little bit of Moses going on in this text. Matthew mirrors Moses receiving the law from God in Jesus who went up the mountain to deliver the New Law. Moses delivered the law for the nation of Israel. Jesus delivers the law for the Kingdom of God. Jesus is the new, better Moses. He doesn’t have to consult God for the Law, for He is God delivering the Law Himself.

ILL: Think about one of Jesus’ disciples who heard this sermon- His commitment to Jesus, his calling to be an Apostle & a gospel preacher; he was given the gift of healing, & even cast out demons. He was given the opportunity to walk with Jesus for 3 years, to see the greatest life ever lived, to directly witness His miracles, & hear His teaching. Colin Smith- “(this disciple) saw the clearest evidence. With his ears, he heard the finest teaching. With his feet, he followed the greatest example. And yet this man still betrayed Jesus.” That disciple was Judas Iscariot.

It’s one thing to know the Worth of Jesus, see the Works of Jesus, & hear the Words of Jesus, but to totally miss knowing His Ways. It’s not enough to read the Sermon on the Mount, or hear a message about the Kingdom, we must let it shape us & change us.

James 1:23-25, For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; 24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. 25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

Everyone wants a house that’s built for the long run, but a house is only as strong as the foundation it’s built on. The same thing is true for our lives. By the time we get to the end of the Sermon on the Mount, we will have to face the same choice that Jesus’ original audience faced- whose authority are we going to build our lives on? Matthew 7:28–29, And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, 29 for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

Who has the authority in your life? Is it Jesus, or someone else? Is it His teaching, or a different ideology? Is it His love, or a different ethic? Is it a foundation that will stand the test of time AND eternity, or will it get wiped out with the 1st big life storm that comes your way?

Everyone wants to build a life that lasts- a life of blessing, righteousness, & fulfillment; but that only comes through Jesus. What foundation are you building your life on? Is it Jesus or someone else? Is it something eternal, or something that just leaves you feeling empty?

We’re going to have a time of response- we call it an invitation. This is the right time for you to wrestle with the question- Am I building my life on the foundation of Jesus Christ? If you are not sure about that, & you want to talk to someone, counselors are available to talk with you.

If you want to be sure that you have laid the foundation of Jesus in your life, it’s simple (but not easy).You 1) Agree with God that you are a sinner, 2) Believe that Christis who He says He is- the Son of God & Savior of the world, & 3) Confess Him as your Lord. You will be saved.