Sermon On The Mount - Part 2

Sermon on the Mount Part 2 of 10 Absolute Welcome - The Upside Down World of Jesus -

Matthew 5:1-16 We are talking this morning about the idea of blessing and who is blessed. So would you find a couple of people around you who look like they could use a blessing? And tell them they are blessed and that you are really glad they are here. We are immersing ourselves for the next few months, in the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon ever given. We started last week by looking at the story Jesus told at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. I’ll read it again this time from the Message Paraphrase Bible. Jesus is concerned here with what we defined as the “knowing-doing gap.” We learned that Jesus is not really concerned with people who know stuff, but don’t actually do stuff. Jesus is utterly uninterested in that.. Why? Because Jesus was the kind of teacher who was interested in changing lives, and when something happens that changes your life, you remember it. You just do. When the 9/11 attack took place, How many of you can remember where we were. Because when something changes your life, you just remember. We start today with the Beatitudes, the blessed. Nobody who was there had to write them down. Nobody who was sitting on the side of that hill and heard those blessed statements from Jesus would ever forget them, not till they die. And I want to tell you why. To get this, you actually have to back way up to the Old Testament, because the Prophet Isaiah is one prophet who wrote about a day that Israel was looking forward to. What would happen for the human race on that day? This is what Isaiah said: (You can find it in chapter 52 verse 7) How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news...Now we are talking about good news. Good news is the Gospel. This is an Old Testament concept. It comes from passages like this in Isaiah. How beautiful on the mountains are the feet. That is how good the news is. Even the feet of the people running to bring it are beautiful...who bring good news, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion: (to God’s people,) “Your God reigns!” (Isaiah 52:7) What is coming? Good news is coming. Gospel’s coming. What is it? Your God reigns. That is the Kingdom where everything is precisely the way that God wants it to be. It is the range of God’s effective will. It is real, and one day, how beautiful on the mountains will be the feet of the one who comes to tell us, “It’s here.” Whose feet will those be? Who’s going to bring that news that the human race is dying to hear? Isaiah knew... That one day somebody is going to say, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news, (that word again,) to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to comfort all who mourn, to provide for all those who grieve in Zion. (Isaiah 61:1-2) Who’s bringing the good news? The Lord’s anointed. And that meant the Messiah. The word Christ, it’s a Greek word khristos from a little verb, krio which meant “to anoint.” Some of you will know when Jesus got up in His home town to begin his teaching ministry, those are the words that HE read, the words of Isaiah and when He finished reading them, He said, Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. It’s me. I’m the Lord’s anointed. Who is the good news coming to? Well it is kind of an odd bunch. Jesus said, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, to the brokenhearted, to those who mourn, to those who grieve. Now of course, the good news will not be that it is good to be poor or brokenhearted or mourn or grieve. The good news is the Kingdom is coming to you. And the good news will be, for poor people and brokenhearted people and mourning people and grieving people. People who will say,

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Not me. I lost out on the good news. I’m an outsider. I’m the little urchin, that little street kid sitting with his nose pressed up against the glass of the window at the restaurant looking at the lucky people eating inside. They got the feast. They’re at the table, not me. And then the Lord’s anointed will say, No, no, no. It is you. It is you. It is you. You all come in now. It is for you. That is what the world’s waiting for. The broken, the oppressed–and one day, a poor carpenter who turned rabbi began to walk amongst the people of Israel on this earth and to say, Now it’s come. Jesus sees the crowd that has gathered around Him and He begins to teach them, to explain what is going on. What was that crowd like? Well, they were mostly Methodist. They’re nicely dressed people. They’re successful people leading prosperous lives with happy children who get good grades and enter into nice colleges, driving hybrid cars. And they have well-groomed pets. Do you think? Not so much. No so much. These are the poor. These are the broken-hearted. These are those who mourn. These are those who grieve. Jesus, the Lord’s anointed, has been dispensing the Kingdom, power and reality through his miracles and healing. Up there has now been coming down here in a few lives–broken, needy lives and Jesus wants to explain what’s going on. So the people can understand, so they can see what God is doing, so they can respond, so they can join in, so they can be a part, so they can become His movements, so that they can enter into the blessed life and become a blessing to a broken, needy, mourning, grieving world. And so, He says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. (Matt. 5:3) Now everything has changed and the world is turned upside down. Not because it is good to be poor or hungry or weepy or disliked, but because the Kingdom of God has now become available to you through Jesus. Blessed are the poor in spirit...(Matt. 5:3) The crowd was filled with the spiritually impoverished. They didn’t know the Torah. They had no spiritual qualifications. They were religiously illiterate. Kind of like a lot of folks in our day. Gallop did a poll on the Sermon on the Mount. The majority of people didn’t know who preached the Sermon on the Mount. Guess what the number one answer was when people were asked who preached the Sermon on the Mount. (Billy Graham.) 24% of the people said it was called the Sermon on the Mount because it was delivered on horseback. These are the people who don’t know the Bible. No one is asking them to teach S.S. They are spiritual zeros and didn’t get the faith-gene. So how does Jesus reach these folks? Let’s say that Jesus sees in the crowd someone what has been brought to Him that He’s just helped. Maybe it is a man who was brought to Jesus because he had been demon-possessed, emotionally tormented, out of his mind, a spiritual zero. Now he’s calm and in his mind. Why? Because even though he had done nothing to deserve it, Jesus just comes up and touches him, and heals him. And so Jesus has him stand up, and they smile at each other. And Jesus turns around and has him face the crowd. Jesus says, You want to know who’s blessed? This guy right here; blessed are the spiritual basket cases. Blessed are the faith-challenged. Blessed are the religious disasters, for now theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. And the guy sits back down and everybody’s looking at him, going “Wow!” Nobody ever looked at this guy and went “Wow” before, but now they do. And the guy says to the people around him, Yeah, that’s me. I’m the poster boy of the blessed life; that’s me. And this rag-tag, motley crew of a crowd is going nuts. One of us is blessed? Nobody’s ever told us that one of us could be blessed, before. Is there anybody else? Who else? Come on, Jesus, give us another one; tell us another one. Jesus is kind of on a roll, now. He goes, maybe, to a middle-aged woman. She has always been sad her whole lifelong, because she was unable to have children. That is always a sad thing. Now her husband has died and she’s alone. And she’s penniless. To tell the truth, she would have supported herself by becoming a prostitute because that was the only way. But now she is too old even to do that. She has no hope. She comes to Jesus in utter desperation because she’s got nothing else to do.

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And Jesus goes to this widow. And He has her stand up and He puts an arm around this woman’s shoulder, and He has her face the crowd. What to know who’s blessed? Blessed are those who mourn. Not because it’s a good thing to mourn, but because the reality of the presence of the Kingdom is coming down to the mourning, and they shall be comforted now. You just watch what happens in the life of this woman. He is not saying mourning is a good thing. He is not saying, Blessed are those who mourn over their sin. Jesus was capable of saying that. That is not what the text says. HE is saying, Blessed are those who thought they had missed out; who thought they had lost out on the good life, because now, through me, here is the Kingdom. If you want it, come right on in. Everyone of the Beatitudes involves situations of dire human needs that left people hopeless, thinking they were forever outside. Blessed are the meek. These are the people who had been pushed around. Jesus is not saying, Be shy, be timid, be unassertive. He is saying, Congratulations, you meek people, because here is the Kingdom, now. And nobody, not even the powerful and the connected, can keep you out. Good news! Happy are the meek, because the Kingdom’s coming. And he goes on and on. The Beatitudes are designed to shock people into realizing that now the blessing, the good life–that we all drive ourselves crazy and frantic and busy trying to grab a hold of–the good life, the real good life, life in the Kingdom is now available to anybody who wants it through personal contact with this man Jesus. And no one and no thing can shut you out. How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the one who comes to say, “Good news; our God reigns.” (Isaiah 52:7) What do Beatitudes look like in our day? If Jesus were giving them right here? What would they sound like? It would be a good exercise this week as you read through the Sermon on the Mount, as you read through the Beatitudes, if you write out some Beatitudes for our day. I’ll give you some. Where we have to start is: who are the people that our culture says are shut out of the good life? Who are the people who get the message in our culture, on our playgrounds, in our classrooms, from our media, in our commercials that says, Oh, too bad for you; you got the wrong genes. Start at just the silly level, because we live in a silly culture. Blessed are the geeks. Blessed are the nerds. Blessed are the whimps. Blessed are you when you have dandruff and blemishes and all manner of bad breath. Blessed are those who have no fashion sense. Blessed a the uncoordinated. Blessed are the middle-managers. Blessed are the wrinkled. For Jesus says, “You’re not a loser.” Jesus says, “That party’s for you. You’ll be righteously celebrated at my table. And then we go into more serious ones. Blessed are the anxious. Blessed are the unemployed. Blessed are the divorced. Blessed are the homeless. Blessed are the drop-outs and the burn-outs and the left-outs. Blessed are the chronically angry. Blessed are the sexually addicted and the sexually frustrated. Blessed are the mentally ill. Blessed are the HIV positive. Blessed are the parents who failed. Blessed are the children who ran away. Blessed are the barren. Blessed are the pregnant out of wedlock. Blessed are the failures. Blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed. Is this good news for anybody? Blessed are you who felt that because of your bad genes or bad health or bad circumstances or bad looks or bad choices, you had been cut off forever from your chance of a life worth living. You have not missed your chance. Here’s the Kingdom, now, available to you through Jesus to begin now and to know in its fullness one day and enjoy into eternity. Blessed, blessed, blessed are you. Blessed are the poor and the hungry and the grieving and the hated. Now, I have to answer one question as we close because a lot of us look at those words of Jesus and say,

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You know what, that’s not really my condition in life. What about the people that are not in that category? What about the well-off and the well-fed and the well-pleasured and the well-spoken? Of course the Kingdom is available to them, too. It’s available to everybody. But Jesus does give a warning, here, that I need to hear and maybe you do. Because people in that other category, the well-off, well-fed category, can sometimes mistake the blessed life for the well-managed, well-financed, well-thought of, well-dressed, well-educated, well-spoken, well-off life. They can start to think that–if they’re Christians–they can start to think that’s the life that’s blessed by God. Those are the lucky ones. And then entitlement and arrogance and pride and exclusivism all start to creep into the Jesus community. It doesn’t happen on purpose–they’re usually not even aware of it–but then what happens is, instead of being a Jesus community, they form kind of a little club for elite people. And the secret is, that every body who doesn’t have a well-managed, well-financed, well-thought of, well-dressed life, looks at them and says, I could never belong to that club. We have a mat inside our door that people wipe their feet on. A lot of people used to have them. It has a single word on it and we have a name for that kind of mat. We call it a..... Welcome mat. A welcome mat; just kind of humble little mat. But it says to the person who comes through our door. We are not neutral about your presence in this house; this is your kind of place. You walk through this door. You’ll find that you’re celebrated here. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Sometimes at homes, in lives–even religious communities–there are others signs. Keep Out. No Trespassing. Violators of our religious rules, creeds social tenets will be prosecuted. When Jesus begin to form His community, it’s like there was a giant welcome mat out in front of Him. And wherever he went: Welcome, poor. Welcome slaves. Welcome, Gentiles. Welcome, sinners. Welcome, prostitutes. Welcome, everybody. Everybody’s welcome, nobody’s perfect. Anything’s possible with God. This is a Kingdom. And see what happens, people will look at that community, see the poor in spirit there and the meek there and the mourning there. They say, You know, if it could happen for them, it could happen for me. I could be a part of that group. I want to be a part of that group. Of course, lots of people rejected Jesus. But it was because they didn’t want His Kingdom. It was never because He gave them s subtle sense that they really weren’t’ Kingdom material. Because for Jesus everybody was Kingdom material: Everybody’s welcome, nobody’s perfect, anything’s possible. How are we doing as a church with this? I was talking to somebody who’d been checking the faith out; not a Christian yet, just on a journey. They came to our church for awhile and then they dropped out, stopped coming. And then the bottom fell out of their lives. And somebody said, Why don’t you come on back to the church? And this is what they said, I could never go there. They’re much to together. They kind of have it all working for them. Deep down you and I know that nobody around here has it altogether. We know that. The good news is, I think we have enough messed up, junked up, goofed up people right here in this church. We just need you to look more messed up so that other people don’t feel quite so intimidated. Nobody in this room needs the Kingdom more than me. But I’ll tell you another secret. You want to know who’s blessed? ME. I’m blessed. Not because I ever get it right or have anything together or am well-gifted, but because Jesus came to me. I don’t know why. He did. And you know who’s blessed? You’re blessed. You’re blessed. You’re blessed. Not because you live in a well-managed life, not because you have a lot of resources. Not because you’re well-off, well-fed, well-dressed, well-educated. But because you’re in a messed up, goofed up, junked up, knee-deep, desperate, choking condition. Good news, good news! Blessed are you. Blessed are you. The Kingdom is coming and if you’ll just receive it as a broken needy person, then out of that broken needy blessedness, then you become a blessing to other people. And in your life and your life and your life, and then

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eventually in my life and in our life as a community, there’s just this giant welcome sign. And everybody, every background every education, every culture, every language, everybody says, God, I can be a part of them. That is the good news. Would you pray with me. Maybe you have been running after the wrong good life for a long time and Jesus is coming to you today and saying, Would you just let go of that? And in your brokenness and neediness, would you just say, “Yes” to Me and the blessing is yours. And if you’ve never don’t that, then now is your time just to say, Jesus, I confess my own need, my own brokenness, my own sinfulness. And I want to be forgiven of my sins because of what You did on that cross when You died for me. I want You to be my companion and my friend through life. I want the real good life. And Jesus, for all of us whom You have touched with the good news of Your Kingdom, we acknowledge our brokenness and our neediness. We are so grateful that one day You came to bring the good news, the blessing of the Kingdom. Make up there come down here in our lives, in our world. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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