Who Is Jesus?

Jesus the Teacher

Matthew 5:1–10 (ESV)

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.

I Share:

Why do we need to know about Jesus?

Jesus was not just a man who lived historically, but He was God in human nature.

Today we are looking at Jesus as our teacher.

All of you have many teachers whether its a math teacher, history teacher, science teacher, or maybe your mom or dad are your teachers, or shoot maybe your computer is your teacher.

Whatever it may be, we are being taught a lot of things in a lot of different places.

Now the Bible has a lot too teach us, but the thing about the Bible is that it is God teaching us.

And we may have a lot of teachers but I think the creator of the universe has something to teach us, we ought to pay attention.

So we are going to look at the first book in the New Testament titled Matthew. Matthew is what’s called a gospel but it’s literary style is a historical narrative. Matthew tells us about Jesus and what he accomplished in His life, death and resurrection.

Today we are going to learn about Jesus as our teacher.

Go to Matthew chapter 5.

Just to give a summary, Matthew chapters 1-4 we read of Jesus’ Birth, His baptism, and his 40 days of having no food or water in the wilderness being tempted by the devil.

Jesus now has called himself a few disciples to follow him and learn from him, and now where we are in Chapter 5, is Jesus about to teach to a large crowd of people.

Chapters 5-7 are known as the Sermon on the Mount.

These two chapters are the best teachings of Jesus.

So this is how today is going to work, get into your small groups now and we will start looking at this passage.

So I’m going to show you what we are going to do tonight. We are going to ask three questions:

What does this mean?

What does this teach us about who Jesus is?

What is our response to this?

Matthew 5:3 (ESV)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Watch what I do, I’m going to circle three phrases (Blessed) (Poor in Spirit) and (for theirs is the kingdom of heaven) then I’m going to ask What do these terms mean?

I find the answer in this commentary that says this:

To answer what the term (blessed) means, we look at where it originally is stated in Numbers 6:22-26

Numbers 6:22–26 (ESV)

22 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 23 “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,

24 The Lord bless you and keep you;

25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

26 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

To be blessed means that God favors you, and gives you peace.

The poor in spirit are those who recognize their lack of spiritual resources and therefore their complete dependence on God

Simply put, the poor in spirit means that they are people who realize they are not good in their heart and have no spiritual resources to help their state as sinners. The poor in spirit are people who know that they need God as the ultimate resource for their lives.

Now we want to ask ourselves What is the kingdom of heaven? And How come the Poor in Spirit lead to inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven?

I think we can all agree and even many people would agree that this is heaven.

So now we put these pieces together:

So what does Jesus mean? Jesus is saying that God favors you and gives you peace when you realize that you have a heart problem and no way to help themselves, but God gives people who trust in Him with their sin, a place in heaven.

So now, we ask ourselves, what does this teach us about Jesus? Jesus points us to depend on God for our sin. We also see that Jesus also gives good gifts. He gives His favor, and He gives people access to heaven.

Last: What is our response to this?

We should realize that we are sinners, and that the only way to heaven is to first to realize that we make mistakes and God wants us to be aware of that. Not only that, but we can trust God with the broken state of our hearts.

The characteristics of people in heaven are people who first realized they were sinners and needed help from God.

Now let’s do the second Beatitude together:

Matthew 5:4 (ESV)

4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

What should we circle to ask questions about what they mean?

Blessed/Mourn/they shall be comforted

What does blessed mean from the last Beatitude?

God’s Favor & Peace

Now let’s ask this question, what does mourning mean?

Let’s consult a commentary to see what is possibly being said here:

Mourning includes grief caused by both personal sin and loss and social evil and oppression.

So mourning is like sadness or grief as a feeling, but what causes mourning is because of the broken state of someone’s heart relating to sin.

So now let’s answer the question, What does this mean?

So now, how are those who mourn being comforted? Well by God. God comforts those who mourn because of their sinful state, their guilt, and we could even say God comforts people who are hurting. God gives people comfort.

What does this teach us about who Jesus is?

Jesus comforts us when we feel guilty about our sin. He gives us peace in our hearts so we don’t stay mourning. He cares about what we are going through. Jesus is a comforter

What is our response?

I have to ask myself, have I ever really felt guilty or grieved over the fact that I’m a sinner? Maybe not, but the fact of the matter is that our sin gives us a reason to mourn but God gives us comfort. So we can trust God when we mourn over our sin, but even when we are grieving over things that happen to us in our lives. I can trust in God’s comfort when I am in pain whatever that pain might look like.

Now what we are gonna do is get into our groups and your gonna do the same thing with the other beatitudes. I will assign each of you a line and you have to answer the questions

What does this mean?

What does this teach us about who Jesus is?

What is our response?

5“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

6“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

7“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

8“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

9“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

10“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

HS boys: 5

HS Girls : 6

6th Grade Girls: 7

7th Grade Girls: 8

8th Grade Girls: 9

MS Boys: 10