The answer is that it is not. In this sermon, we look at the reality of God’s choosing of Israel. It wasn’t because of any intrinsic value in which they possessed. There very existence as a nation was absolutely dependent upon God’s mercy, grace, and miraculous power. When Jesus focus on them, it is not because who they are, but what He promised them in the covenant with Abraham.

We look at Israel’s origins, from Noah, to the Tower of Babel, and finally, to the father of all who believe, Abraham.

Their testimony that He was the Son of David, was more than just a title. It was a declaration to the people of Judea, that the Messiah had arrived.

“If I only touch His garment, I will be saved from this.”

It was simple from her perspective. Touch the tassel on His garment.

What did she do:

...she came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His garment and was immediately healed...

She acted in faith as she approached Christ. She believed that if she were ever going to be healed, it would be through Him.

And she was immediately healed... and her hemorrhage stopped...

Her faith led her to approach Jesus, and simply touch Him.

We cannot fall into the trap of thinking that the union we see in the Garden of Eden was JUST a marriage. It is so much more than that. We know that with every institution God gives to us in the material world always point to a greater spiritual reality. There is nothing in the physical world that does not do this. We may not see the reality of this truth, but it is there.

When Moses built the tabernacle, he did so with the instructions God gave him, because the tabernacle actually points to the greater spiritual tabernacle in heaven.

When Jesus heals the blind men, He does so in order to show us that when we come to Him, we go from being spiritually blind to having spiritual sight. There is a correlation between His outward miracles and our spiritual needs.

The same is true with marriage. Marriage is not JUST an institution given by God to increase the population. It is more than that.

If you recall, in the Garden of Eden, BEFORE the Fall, YHWH had all the animals brought before Adam two-by-two, in order to show Adam that he was alone. He had no helper suitable to him, and as God declared, “It is not good for man to be alone.”

Therefore, He caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. He then took a rib out of his side, and made Eve out of Adam, and gave her to him. This was the first marriage.

Genesis 2:23-24

²³ Then the man said,

“This one finally is bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
This one shall be called Woman,
Because this one was taken out of Man.”

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

There is no greater union or relationship that man can have, other than marriage. It is a completely unique institution given to us by God. He is the One who defines it. He is the One who declares what it is.

Marriage is the union, both spiritually and physically, of one man and one woman in holy matrimony.

It is the Imago Dei, the image of God, in its fulness.

We are given that phrase, they shall become one flesh... because it shows us what the Imago Dei looks like.

We all know that this is the intimacy between husband and wife, but it is more than just a physical act. It is a physical act that shows the greater spiritual reality.

When we unite with our lawfully ordained spouse, we become God’s representative to the world, as God’s one-flesh image bearers going forth.

This is what Adam and Eve were made for. They were God’s image bearers created to fill the earth with other image bearers.

The Spiritual Purpose of Marriage

But there is another reason that God created Adam and Eve as the first couple, uniting them in the first marriage.

Their union was made because it also reflected the union Adam and Eve had in the garden, which was also a temple, with YHWH. They were married to YHWH through their relationship with Him in the Garden.

This is why Ephesians 5 is so important. It shows us why the Bridegroom had to come in the first place. Here is the key verse:

³¹ For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. ³² This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

NOTE: The following is NOT a picture of Jesus, but is simply a picture of a bridegroom in the first century.

⁹ And as Jesus went on from there, He saw a man called Matthew, sitting in the tax office; and He *said to him, “Follow Me!” And he stood up and followed Him.

Notice that? He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t ponder. He didn’t form a committee to explore what following Christ might mean for him, and whether or not, it was financially feasible.

He stood up and followed Him. He trusted Christ.

The underlying spiritual reality is that Matthew was made a new creation. He knew Christ, not only as King, but as Savior. He may not have known the implications, in fact, we know he doesn’t know them. But He knows Jesus as One worthy of following, and only the Spirit moving in a man can bring that about.

He followed.

It was as simple call, followed by simple obedience.

The Implications

Yet, there is more here than Matthew’s simple calling. Of the disciples called in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, only Peter and Andrew, James and John are given accounts of their actual calling. The rest of the disciples are only mentioned in the list of disciples.

In Matthew’s case, the fact that it is covered in all three gospels, shows the importance of Jesus telling him to “Follow Me!”

Why is this tax collector called? Was it simply because he was a tax collector, showing the richness of God’s grace? If we are honest, we all have this grace. Or is there something more to the fact that Matthew was called?

Jesus makes two unexpected declarations to the paralytic, who is hoping to be healed.

Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, “Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven.”

First, as I mentioned several weeks ago when we looked at Christ’s authority, is that Jesus calls Him son! This statement is a wonderful statement because He is telling the paralytic, “You are My Son. You belong to Me. I am your Father, and you are My Son.”

This shows us the reality of the relationship we have with Christ when we believe in Him. We become children of God. We become Sons of God.

Jesus sees the faith in the paralytic and knows that the paralytic belongs to Him. Jesus is the Shepherd, the true Shepherd, and this paralytic is one of His sheep.

All that Jesus will accomplish in His ministry, and on the cross, and in His death, and in the resurrection, and in His ascension, will apply to this paralytic.

The man, coming in faith, finds that he has a true Savior in Jesus.

When we come to Christ in faith, all these truths apply to us as well. We are sons and daughters of the King. He is more our Father, than our earthly fathers could ever be. Not that we don’t honor our earthly fathers, but know we have a true Father in Christ, and the Father of the Trinity is our Father as well.

He has also stepped into a cosmological battle. He is about to do battle with the forces of Satan once again, and we are going to get a snapshot of the greater victory to come.

He has been working on this victory over the supernatural since His public ministry began, yet, it hasn’t been a visible as we will see.

We got a glimpse of the spiritual warfare when He healed Peter’s mother-in-law.

¹⁶ Now when evening came, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed; and He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were ill...

It is on the shores of the Sea of Galilee that we get a glimpse of what it means for Jesus to cast out the spirits with a word... thereby demonstrating His power and authority over the supernatural.

And this authority should not surprise us. We have seen His authority, dominion, and power demonstrated in the healings of the sick, the leper, the Centurion’s servant, Peter’s mother-in-law and a host of others.

And He touched her hand, and the fever left her...

Notice what Jesus does? Just like with the leper He touches her.

We don’t know that He does this a lot, but in these two healings, He does. This is important for Matthew because he makes sure to mention the physical contact that was taking place.

Our Infirmities

Why does Matthew mention this?

Because it is part of the fulfillment of Isaiah 53, specifically verse 4.

“He Himself took our infirmities and carried away our disease.”

This physical touch is the outward sign of this physical and spiritual reality. Jesus, in touching the leper and Peter’s mother-in-law, shows us He is bearing away our infirmities. Jesus takes the infirmities upon Himself.

I like the way it’s written in Isaiah. The verse I just read was Matthew’s interpretation from the Hebrew writings. He is not quoting the LXX, but reading it from the Hebrew (per Matthew Henry).

Yet, the Hebrew is translated a tad differently:

Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried.

The Hebrew word for infirmities can be translated as griefs. The Hebrew word for sorrows, can be translated as disease. Both translations are correct.

Hopefully you see the connection. Infirmities leads to grief. Disease leads to sorrows. The words and connected together, they go hand-in-hand. One does not have infirmities that do not lead to grief. One does not have disease in which it does not lead to sorrow.

This is not to say that all disease is the result of our direct sin, but because of sin, disease is in the world, which leads to sorrow.

But there are two more words in these two translations that are far more important: the word we translate to bear, and to carry.

These two words show us that Jesus isn’t simply healing us. These words point to the reality that Jesus, in some sense, had to physically, or spiritually bear up not only our sins, but also our griefs, our sorrows, our diseases and our infirmities. He bears them up, and takes them to the cross, where they are dealt with.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MARVEL???

The Son of Man is astonished... He marvels.

We marvel when something magnificent takes place that we did not expect to happen. In the gospel, the multitudes will marvel, the disciples will marvel. Individuals will marvel. All marvel because Jesus keeps doing miracles before them that they do not expect.

But what does it mean for Jesus to marvel? Is He caught by surprise at the centurion’s faith? Hardly.

I think Matthew Henry is helpful.

“Christ admired him, not for his greatness, but for his graces. When Jesus heard it, he marvelled; not as if it were to him new and surprising, he knew the centurion’s faith, for he wrought it; but it was great and excellent, rare and uncommon, and Christ spoke of it as wonderful, to teach us what to admire: not worldly pomp and decorations, but the beauty of holiness, and the ornaments which are in the sight of God of great price.”

Jesus is marveling because of how rare and excellent the centurion’s faith is, setting an example for us, so that we know how precious faith it. Faith in Christ is what we are to value. It is what we are to cherish. The things of the world will pass away, but not genuine true faith.

It is more precious than gold.

A man can live in abject poverty, but if he has faith, He has the world and an eternal hope. See the rich man and Lazarus.

And on the flip side, a man can have everything, dining sumptuously every day, wearing the finest clothes, but without faith, he has nothing.

So let us learn from the centurion that our faith should be great and excellent, rare and uncommon. It should be the central point of Christ in our lives: we believe in Him. We trust Him. We look to Him.

This is what the centurion was doing.

These are words of belief and trust. The unclean man doesn’t ask IF Jesus can heal him, but asks If He is willing. To ask if one “can” do something, is a statement of ability. To ask if He is “willing” is a statement of volition. The man knows that Jesus has the ability, it’s just a matter of Christ willing to do so.

Given these words of trust, I believe he did hear the Sermon on the Mount. The leper probably took great comfort in the words we call the Beatitudes. “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 lowly, for the shall inherit the earth.”

The leper is exactly the kind of person Jesus is looking to use in order to build His kingdom. He’s not traveling the halls of the Roman Senate, but the area around Galilee, looking for the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are lowly.

This man knows He has the authority, and we are seeing that Jesus does indeed have the authority. He was teaching them as one having authority...

I believe we get an explanation of the type of real authority the Messiah will have in Psalm 2.

Now, there is a lot to Psalm 2. It is placed right after Psalm 1, which shows that there are two paths we can take: the path of one who follows the way of YHWH, and delights in the Torah. This is the path of the righteous. And then there is the other path, which includes everything else. That path is wicked and includes the wicked.

Psalm 2 is similar in that it is showing us the path that the nations have before them. They can Kiss the Son, which is a sign of loyalty, or they can continue on in their rage against the Son.

Those who rage against the Son, will be shattered like a potter’s vessel under the Anointed One’s rod.

“You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like a potter’s vessel.”

It is in this psalm that we are given a glimpse of the authority that the Messiah will have. He will be like King David, only with much greater authority. He will be like Solomon, only much wiser. He will be a King worthy of the Father’s blessing.

The Messiah will have true, godly authority in the fullest sense of the word. Not only is He given the rod of iron, but also the right to pour out His wrath.

So now, O kings, show insight;
Take warning, O judges of the earth.
¹¹ Serve Yahweh with fear
And rejoice with trembling.
¹² Kiss the Son, lest He become angry, and you perish in the way,
For His wrath may soon be kindled.
How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!

Introduction –

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. This is one of eight statements that Jesus has made, showing us the qualities and character of those who make up the Kingdom of Heaven.

Each one of these statements makes it clear that we are to be different than the world. The verse I quoted shows that those who belong to the Kingdom of Heaven are different, they are, pure in heart.

The pure in heart are those who are devoted to Christ without distractions. Their hearts are set upon Christ and Christ alone, without mixture, without compromise. They are not divided with two masters.

It makes us want to ask: “am I pure in heart?”

We know the answer. We are not pure in heart. What most Christians who have the power of the indwelling Spirit of God discover is that their hearts are still wicked, even after being redeemed. We find, that we struggle with sin far more after our conversion that we ever did before our conversions.

In fact, before conversion, we didn’t really struggle with our sin, we just didn’t like the consequences that our sin led us to. But in Christ, when we are given the Spirit of God, we find our hearts are still filled with sin. We find our hearts are wicked and divided. We are prone to wander. We are prone to forget the God we loved, the One who saved us.

Yet, there it is. The reality is that if you are a member of the Kingdom of Heaven, even with the sin and dividedness of your heart, you are being made… pure in heart, because our Savior is pure in heart.

Our entire text this morning has the underlying theme that we are becoming what He is. Are we pure in heart? No, not yet. While it is our goal to mortify sin, Jesus has achieved heart purity for us… He is the One who is pure in heart.

Over the last several weeks, we’ve been exploring Christ’s pattern for the practice of prayer. As members of His Kingdom, we are expected to pray. It should be a normal, vibrant part of our lives.

In the instructions thus far, Jesus has given us instruction on how NOT to pray using hypocrites and heathen.

The hypocrites loved to be seen as they prayed, seeking the applause of men. Their focus was always on their attention they would receive from other men. They were those who honored God with their lips, but their hearts were far from Him.

The heathen, on the other hand, relied on vain repetitions, believing their many words would manipulate divine favor. The vanity in their prayers is that they were not praying to the living and true God. They were praying to false gods. Even those who say they pray to the true God, if they do not come to the Father in Christ, their prayers are empty and go unheard.

This is stressing the point that we can only pray to the Father, as we are instructed, by coming in the shed blood of Christ, and the power of the Spirit.

These are the ways we are not to pray.

Now, in His instruction to us, He now gives us a pattern for prayer—a model to guide us into communion with God.

Now, right off the bat, we need to say that these blessings are counter-intuitive in nature. You don’t normally say that someone who hungers is blessed, or that someone who is poor is blessed, because such things show a lack of something else.

To be poor is to lack food, to lack what is necessary for life. We think of poor as a lack of finances. And it is as far as the social condition that many suffer from. While Jesus does show concern for those who are poor economically, what He means here is much more than a matter of finances.

Leithart puts it this way: “Poor means one who is oppressed, deprived, attacked. The poor is the righteous man who is assaulted and under oppression for his righteousness. It is a social condition; but it’s a social condition that’s directly tied to a spiritual condition.”

Our main text reads: Jesus Came Down From the Mountain...

He has been on the mountain teaching, correcting, rebuking, encouraging and warning the people of the Kingdom. It has been quite a sermon that He has given to us, and there has been more taking place than just a sermon.

I think we will see that when we turn back to Isaiah 2, and being to open up what it is that Isaiah is telling us will take place. Hopefully, we will see that the Sermon on the Mount, is what Isaiah is telling will happen, and, continues to happen.

What is it that He says:

Jeremiah 31:33

³ “But this is the covenant which I will cut with the house of Israel after those days,” declares Yahweh: “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

Notice that He says: “I will put My Law within them...”

Is His Law a different Law than the Law He has given us under Moses?

Absolutely not. His Law is a reflection and revelation of His righteousness. So to say that the Law we have is a different Law goes against what Jesus tells us.

The other argument against those who think they no longer need God’s Law since it’s written on their hearts is: how do we know what we think is written on our hearts is God’s Law? How would we know?

If the standard becomes our feelings or fallen desires... well then, just look around at our culture. We can see that abandoning the Law of God, His Law, has not been beneficial to society, the church, or the family.

This is why Jesus said:

Matthew 5:17...

“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets (Torah); I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”

To fulfill Torah is to complete it. It is not to do away with the Torah, or the Ten Commandments, or the writings of the Prophets, or the narratives, or the Psalms.

Jesus is fulfilling all that was prophesized and all that is requires of us in order to obtain righteousness before God.

WITHOUT His ministry, we are truly lost. Without His righteousness, we are truly damned to the eternal fires of hell,where the worm never dies, and the fire is not quenched(Mark 9:48...).

The link for the page his here.

Introduction: On Naming a Sermon

I don’t know if you have notice this or not, but my sermon titles about Jesus have been about Christ’s movements. Some of the titles are as follows: He Departed to Galilee, Jesus was led up by the Spirit, Walking by the Sea, and last week, Jesus went about… Today’s sermon is: He Went Up on a Mountain.

I’ve done this for two reasons. The first is that when I title a sermon, I want to use something from Scripture so that I can avoid the temptation to come up with some cheesy catch phrase. Cheesy titles are a bane to the pulpit because the one preaching is always having to come up with something clever, at least in his own mind. In one sense, that cheapens the word of God, and exalts the pastor for how witty he is.

I don’t want to do this. But more importantly, by using a phrase directly from the text, I can bring Scripture to bear on the sermon, before I’ve uttered a word. Just by titling the sermon, He went up on a mountain, your minds are already thinking of the movements of Jesus. He is not stagnant in His ministry, but is moving about from place to place, preaching and teaching as many people as He can.

But secondly, the movement of Christ reminds us… that He was indeed, led by the Spirit, departed Galilee, walked by the sea, and went about…

All of these movements were purposely recorded by Matthew so that we would realize how much He moved around. These details help us see the truthfulness of Christ’s ministry.

They are the people of YHWH’s. They had been slaves in Egypt, and YHWH brought them out to Egypt with a strong hand (6:21). He brought them out with signs and wonders, so that they would know who their God was and know that their God is a God of power.

This rescue from Egypt was redemption. Now the lesson of their redemption is there for us to meditate upon and to understand. In thinking about redemption, we can conclude that there are two ways that redemption takes place.

The first and most simple way to understand redemption is what we just read: YHWH delivered His people from slavery. He paid the price for them to be made free, or to be made His slaves.

It is this imagery of being redeemed from bondage that points to the second way we are to understand redemption: being redeemed spiritually. Instead of being redeemed from physical Egypt, we are redeemed from spiritual Egypt. Instead of being purchased with actual money, we are purchased with the blood of Christ.

Both ways of redemption took place in the Exodus. All the Israelites were physical rescued.

But some of them, believed in YHWH and their faith was credited to them as righteousness.

Now, I bring all this up to show how things are ordered. The order is simple: redemption, which is by God’s grace, and then, the giving of the Torah, which is by God’s grace.

Please note the order: redemption first, then the Law, or better yet, Torah.