Well, we'll be in Matthew chapter 5 and we call this ministering on the mount. Jesus ministered to a whole multitude of people when he went up on the mount. The sermon on the mount, the Beatitudes being the introductory verses to the sermon on the mount. I don't want to cover the whole thing. I want to do kind of an introductory message to it and we'll read the first 16 verses of Matthew. Beginning in verse number one, it says, And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set, his disciples came unto him, and he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Notice that word kingdom. It'll be important later on. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, that phrase also being important, inheriting the earth. Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Can I just stop there? It's not part of the sermon, but can I just tell you, every church, every family needs a peacemaker. Husband and wife might not both be peacemakers, but at least one of them need to be a peacemaker. And among families, somebody in the family needs to be a peacemaker. In a church, there needs to be people who make it their job to be a peacemaker. When two brothers or two sisters are at odds with each other, boy, somebody needs to step in there and be the adult and say, in their heart, they say, I'm gonna try to bring these two back together again, the peacemakers. And then in verse 10, blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. There's the word kingdom again. Verse 11, blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you ye are the salt of the earth but if the salt have lost his savor wherewith shall it be salted it extends forth good for nothing but to be cast out to be trodden under the foot of men ye are the light of the world a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid neither do men light candle and put it under a bushel but on a candlestick and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Lay your light so shine before men that they might see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." That last phrase, that they might glorify your Father, everything that you and I do as believers, it ought to have the aim to glorify God. If I set out to glorify me, I'm stealing His position. If I set out to glorify somebody else or something else, I'm creating an idol. And so everything that we do, brethren, ought to be to glorify God. Let's pray together and see what the Lord will teach us from this passage. Father, I pray that You'd bless us, fill us with Your Holy Spirit. Lord, You said that He would come to bring us truth Here we are, Lord, gathered together in your house, reading your Word, which is truth, and your Spirit can enlighten our minds so that we can see the truth and embrace the truth. And Lord, that same Holy Spirit can empower us to practice the truth. I pray that you'd bless us tonight, help us to learn, and to glorify the Lord Jesus, for it's in His name we ask. Amen. Well, where Saint Sauftrade has been our Wednesday night series through the summer, and so I'd like to move us into the New Testament where saints have tried in the New Testament, and now we have multitudes of people following Jesus, following in His footsteps. Some turn away, but these are people who are following Him up to the mount to hear this sermon. And this mount was undoubtedly in Galilee. If you read back in the previous chapter in verse number 23, you'll see that Jesus is making His way around the Sea of Galilee into some of the little port towns along the edge of the seashore. And it was apparently near Capernaum on a place which was evidently smooth enough where people could sit fairly comfortably, maybe not as good as the seats you're sitting on tonight, but they would have to be able to sit in somewhat of an orderly fashion and be able to hear since they didn't have a PA set. And so this mount on the side of the Sea of Galilee would kind of provide a natural amphitheater so the sound of Jesus' voice would carry so that great multitudes could hear Him. I was privileged to visit that site or at least the traditional site where the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount occurred a number of years ago. And the tour guide showed us this mount. It was kind of a sloped hillside coming down. There was a plain, I guess, up on top and a sloped hillside coming down to the seashore. And so the people could be seated on Jesus' special occasion here. Those people could be seated kind of like in a stadium up that sloped hillside. And you know what we saw when we were on that tour a few years ago at this traditional site? Nobody knows really for sure exactly where it was but they at least sell you tickets to tour Israel based on the fact that this is where it really happened as though they had some kind of stamp of approval. But you know what we saw there on that sidling place going up from the seashore where they say that Jesus preached the sermon? You know what was there? Anybody got a guess? What do you think? Banana groves. I didn't even know bananas grew in Israel, but they do. And they had a crop of bananas growing on that sloped hillside. The land there is very fertile, and when we drove up on the Golan Heights, we could see all down in the valley in Israel, and just orchards and vineyards and crops growing everywhere. Man, it looked like a fertile place to grow things. And so they had bananas growing there in the place where they say Jesus preached this sermon. And we got some images that we can show you on the screen. The first image is to anchor in your mind kind of the geography of Israel. You've probably been seeing a lot on the news the last few days. The maps of Israel hadn't changed a lot. If you look at this map, you can see down here in the left-hand corner is Gaza, the city of Gaza. And so the strip along the edge of the seashore there, the Mediterranean seashore, is where all the fighting is going on now, or not all of it, but most of it. And so the Gaza Strip is what you're hearing about on the news. But if we can get that map kind of stuck in our mind, and that's one of the reasons we're doing this series is so that we can become familiar enough with the Holy Land because this is an important place. This is where Jesus was. This is where the people of God have been for so many centuries. And this is a place where when you see it on the news now, it's good to be able to kind of connect the dots where things are. And one of these days, when Jesus comes back, guess where He's gonna rule and reign from? Jerusalem, right smack dab in the middle of that country, which is, I don't know if you can see it from where you're sitting or not, but it's at the top, over to the left and top of the Dead Sea there, just a little ways. It's an important piece of geography. Now, our second image brings us in a little closer. It's going to zoom in on the northern corner, northwestern corner of the Sea of Galilee, and you can see about middle ways from the top to the bottom of that right-hand image. Can you read that, the Mount of Beatitudes? Can you read that from where you're sitting? It's probably too little, but where the red dot is, about middle ways from the top to the bottom, from the Sea of Galilee, that's the Mount of Beatitudes or at least where they believe it occurred and according to the biblical record it should be at least close to there. Now, we've got another image and the next one is the final image that's going to kind of give us a little bit of a kind of an artist's interpretation of what the Sermon on the Mount might have looked like. Do we have that picture? There it is. Now, Jesus, I don't think, probably looked like this guy, but at least it's an artist's conception of what the Beatitudes would have been like. Now, the sea would be down to the right behind them, and the multitudes would be scattered all up this way, and there must have been a whole bunch of those folks. And so this was the way Jesus would have been speaking that day. He didn't have a pulpit, did he? Thank God for pulpits. It gives me something to lean against. There's some questions that we need to answer about the Sermon on the Mount before we can interpret and apply those principles and truths that lie within it. And so we've got to ask some questions. So that's why the sermon tonight, this message, is an instructional to kind of get us anchored in the Sermon on the Mount so that we kind of know what the whole thing is about. And then later on when you try to interpret some of the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, you'll be able to have a good eye view, a biblical eye view of it. And so we'll try to answer some of those questions tonight. First thing I'm going to do, number one, get the setting. Get the setting. The setting, the time, the people, and the place. This happened early in the book of Matthew. Jesus has just begun his ministry not too long before, and here he is now. Multitudes are beginning to follow him, and so he goes up into the mountain to teach them. Matthew is primarily a Jewish book. Now, it's for us, don't get me wrong. There's a lot of stuff in it that's good, things that we can use as Christians. But it's written by a Jew, to the Jews and this is before the cross. So the church is not prevalent in people's minds at this point because Jesus hadn't died on the cross yet. And so the kingdom, Jesus still, he's presenting the kingdom to the people. And he presents the kingdom of God. Now, what would have happened if the people in Israel, what if the people said, yes, man, this is the Messiah. This is the one who has come to set up his kingdom. And we believe on him. What if the whole rulership of Israel had said, yeah, we're going to follow you, Jesus. We believe in you. What if everybody? Now they didn't, of course, but if they had, the kingdom was being presented. So if the people had accepted his messiahship and his kingship of that, it would be what we're going to experience in the millennial reign of Christ, that thousand years is yet future prophesied, it would have occurred right then if the people would have said yes. So it was a legitimate offer, the kingdom was. And so the setting is early in the book of Matthew, it is spoken to the Jews and so we're going to learn some principles from it eventually that's going to help us. In Matthew, if you look back in the previous chapter, Matthew 4 25, you'll see that there must have been an awfully big number of people. In verse number 25 it says, and there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan. That sounds like they had a bigger crowd than we've got tonight, wouldn't you say? I mean, they had multitudes. They had folks covering that mountainside up, man. They come to hear the preaching of the Word of God, and they came to hear it from the best preacher that ever walked on the face of the earth. They were there to hear, and he gave them what they wanted, or what they needed. chapter five and verse number two, watch this. It says in verse number five, verse one, and seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain and when he was set, notice that phrase, we'll come back to that in just a minute. When he was set, his disciples came unto him. Now these disciples were not just the 12 that we know as apostles. These disciples was the big body of people who were following him, those people who were trying to learn from him, and it's way more than just his little select 12. And it says, and he opened his mouth, and what's the next word? And taught them, taught them. When we hear the teaching and preaching of the Word of God, the instruction from the Word of God, and this on Jesus' day, it was coming from the very God Himself. So whatever He spoke was the Word of God. And so when we hear the Word of God, according to what happened here, we ought to get something from what's being taught, the teaching. He taught them. He had something He wanted them to know. And it's interesting that he sat down to teach. He sat down. Where's my recliner? He sat down. Well, that's kind of different than we do today, isn't it? I mean, most of the time a preacher's standing up on a platform where he's elevated, people can see him, and he may be anchored in a pulpit, or he may be one of those guys that runs back and forth, or he may be one of those Alabama wind suckers. And the Lord said, ugh! That could be all kinds of different kind of preaching going on today, but Jesus evidently sat down and taught. So would there be a problem with a preacher sitting down? What do you think? Jesus did it, didn't he? So if one of these days I get too old and decrepit to run back and forth on the platform like a hyena, I'll get me a stool and sit on it. And you won't feel bad at me for it, will you? Shake your head. I know preachers who can't stand up. Maybe they're anchored in a wheelchair. Maybe they've had a stroke. Maybe there's something wrong with their knees and they can't stand to preach anymore. Does that mean they can't be used of God anymore? No. Jesus sat down and preached. I think it would be okay for people to do that today. I prefer to stand as long as I can. And I just think a lot of it's expected today and so we do it. But what about his teaching? Was he preaching or teaching? Preaching or teaching? How many say he was preaching? Raise your hand. How many say he was teaching? Okay. Nobody thinks he was preaching? Rod's in there with me, I think. Yeah, let's see. We think of teaching and it's not easy maybe for us to discern or enunciate, describe the difference between teaching and preaching. Now, I believe they're different. You've all heard preachers who could get pretty teachy, right? And you've probably heard teachers who could get pretty preachy. I went to Bible college where the college professors, man, they'd get up, sometimes they'd get wound up and man, they'd be yelling and swinging their arms and yelling and turning cartwheels and everything. Maybe not the cartwheels, but they were pretty excited. So you can have preachers who are teachy and teachers who are preachy and vice versa. I think we tend to see teaching, see if I'm right on this, I think most of us in this modern day when we think of teaching we think of maybe lecturing, of the inculcation of facts and information, the teacher is trying to impart information to the hearers and so if you sat in a class in school, you know, Your history teacher in high school probably didn't get up and rant, rant and rave and snort and spit and yell, stomp on the floor and all of that. They'd probably just given you the facts. I had the most boring, I went to ASUBB, Brother Chad, back in 1969. I mean, this was before Noah's flood. And I said, what was that lady's name? She was an older lady. She was the college historian. This has been so many years ago. I'm sure she's been dead probably for 50 years now. She would sit on the edge of her desk and she knew history, world history, so well that she could just rattle it off and she's just kind of looking around the room and she never looks at a note or anything. She's going through the whole world history. But her voice was kind of plain, not a lot of inflection. It was easy to kind of doze off in there. So we kind of think of that in teaching. But teaching doesn't have to be that way, does it? Teaching can be interesting, teaching can be engaging, teaching can be, you know, it can be more of a dialogue than a monologue. Would you agree with that? In fact, we may have a better success, those of us who do this, we might have a better success if we tried to draw people into the dialogue more in a teaching situation But we think of preaching then as yelling, getting excited, hooting, hollering, laughing, crying, doing all kinds of stuff. And we think of it maybe a little bit differently than we do teaching, maybe not having, you know, maybe as much detail in it. Are you with me? We think maybe preaching is just, man, you're hitting those high spots. It's like running across the lake, a rough lake with a motorboat, man, you're just hitting those high spots going across there, where teaching gets down in between the waves and digs out the little minute particles of information. I think that's kind of the way we may think of it. A lot of people do in our modern time. I have investigated as best I could in the Bible to see if I could discern a difference between preaching and teaching. In biblical days, the word preaching comes from heralding. The king would send out heralds. They didn't have printing presses. They didn't have TV and cell phones. didn't have newspapers and radio, so the king would send out a herald and he'd walk down the street, maybe stop on a street corner, and he'd holler loud enough that everybody could hear him because, well, he had to. There was going to be people to hear him. He had to get loud. And so he didn't give all the fine details, though, that herald would, he would hit the high spots. And if you wanted to know more, then you'd have to come to whatever event he's advertising to find out the details to it. So the preaching of heralding would be hitting the high spots and then inviting people to come in later to the teaching where they got more detail and put some meat on the bones of that skeleton. And so there's places in the Bible, I thought maybe that's the way it was in the Bible. Maybe when it says that they were teaching, they were just kind of sitting down and doing the lecture method and preaching was they'd get up and holler and hit the high points. There's places where that's true in the Bible, but not every place in the Bible. And the reason I'm telling you this is because it matters if we know where we're going in a ministering situation. We know what to expect. And so Jesus is doing that here and we're trying to learn a little bit that'll help us in our modern day times. You'll remember in Acts chapter 8, the last part. Anybody remember what's that? Acts chapter 8, last part. Ethiopian eunuch. Who's the preacher there? Who? Philip. Philip's the preacher, and who's the learner? The eunuch. He's on his way back. He's interested in religion, so he goes up to Jerusalem, and being a eunuch and being not a Jew, he probably didn't get in the temple, but he was interested enough to kind of gather what he could, and he's on his way back to Ethiopia, and the Spirit of God tells Philip, go down to the way between Jerusalem that leads down to Gaza, and I've got somebody there I want you to speak to. And so Philip sees this Ethiopian eunuch in the distance, he's sitting in the back of his chariot, he's reading Isaiah, and the Spirit of God says to Philip, go and join thyself to his chariot. And so he does, and he asked the Ethiopian eunuch, you understand what you're reading? He said, how can I except some man guide me? Now look, what's the eunuch looking for there? He's looking for some guidance, teaching, teaching. He's wanting some detail. He's been up there and kind of heard the high spots at Jerusalem, erroneously, of course, because Jesus is the high spot now, not the temple. So he's looking for some detail to Isaiah. How many of you say that Philip spoke to him about Jesus? You believe that? Would you say it's teaching or preaching? You say, it's trickery. I don't trust you, preacher. Leading you like a mouse into the trap. You're going to reach for the cheese and then wham. He had to be giving him some detail. It had to be some teaching in that because the guy's reading from Isaiah and the Bible indicates that Philip took that scripture and began to expound to him about Jesus and how he suffered and how everybody's a sinner and needs a savior and how Jesus would die for other people's sins. So he did some teaching there. Wasn't just hitting the high spots. Are you with me? And so he's doing some teaching, but you know what it says? In that past scripture, if you want to know the exact word that it used, what did it use, Brother Paul? He preached unto him Jesus. Preached. He preached. But now wait. Let's confuse this just a little bit more. Here they are sitting in the chariot. Here's Philip. Here's the eunuch. They got the scriptures out. The Bible clearly says that he preached unto him Jesus. Do you think Philip said, and the word of the Lord said, thou must be saved and baptized to go to heaven. Do you think he did that? No, he didn't. I mean, he's right there in his face. He probably wasn't yelling at him, was he? What was he doing? He's teaching. So you can see a little bit of overlap there. Preaching means he's heralding the good news about Jesus, but it doesn't follow the pattern that we have in our minds today about the method of preaching. So there you have an overlap of preaching and teaching. Let me just say it this way. I don't want to belabor the point, but I want you to know that teaching gives details and facts that's not always in a sermon, because a sermon is trying to hit the highlights, and a sermon tries to go directly for the heart. The sermon is trying to move people to a decision. And instruction comes from teaching, but preaching also has some instruction. So there's overlap. Not all teaching is preaching, but all good preaching has some teaching. I mean, if you go somewhere and hear a sermon and you don't get any teaching out of it, you don't get any instruction out of it, you don't get any detail from the Word of God, how can you make a decision to do anything? You've got to get some detail from it. So good preaching has teaching. There might be places where it hits some of those high spots a little more than teaching will. And look, when Jesus gave the Great Commission in Matthew 28, 19, and 20, he said that we're to go into all the world and preach the gospel and to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, teaching them all things whatsoever, teaching them all things whatsoever I've commanded you. So what's the job of the Christian? What's the job of the preacher? What's the job of the teacher? We're supposed to herald the good news of Jesus. but later we get into discipleship a little bit more. There's more to getting saved. Let me rephrase this. There's more to the Christian life than just knowing how to be saved. We had a sweet lady that went to church here. She's an elderly lady. She went to church for several years here. And when she finally got anchored into our church, she told me one day on her way out, she said, Pastor, I'm so glad I came here. She said, when my husband was still living, we just went to this church where all they did was preach how to be saved every Sunday. And that's all we ever heard. And she said, we hear more of the Bible here, and I'm excited about that. She said, I'm learning new stuff. And she was in her 80s. been going to church all of our life. You know what that tells me? That tells me that a lot of preaching had been taking place that didn't have much instruction or detail in it. We need the good news of people hearing how to be saved, but then we have to take them over into the discipleship area. See, what we do here a lot of times is not just preaching a sermon that hits the high places, but what we need to do is do some teaching to help people grow in grace after they get saved. Well, all of that was free, it didn't cost you any extra. Let me move on. Ephesians 4, 11 says, and he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists. Talking about churches, he said, I gave some churches apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers. Now some Bible students say pastors slash teachers, it's the same person. But it says pastors and teachers in my King James Bible. So I'm going to separate the two and say that there are teachers who are not preachers. But every preacher ought to be somewhat of a teacher as well. So the speaking ministry is one that does both. This message tonight is intended not only to instruct, but to try to lead people to a decision on how to understand the Sermon on the Mount, which brings us to number two. And this is going to be the final point, so we're not going to be here all night. Another unwritten rule is don't preach a long sermon, right? Number two, the various views of the sermon you might hear about the various views of the Sermon on the Mount. See, there's different people who think different. I'm talking about scholars and commentators and preachers and theologians, instructors of all kinds. They have various views of how they see the Sermon on the Mount. But look, if we don't have the right view, it's just like your view of the age of the earth. Now, we're talking about two different things. I'm going to come back to the Sermon on the Mount. But right now, this is just an illustration. We have Christian scientists who believe in a young earth that's not more than 6 or 7,000 years old. And they look at the same fossils and same evidence that the secular or atheist scientists look at. They all see the same evidence. but they interpret it two different ways. These guys don't believe in God, so they're not giving Noah's flood or anything biblical any credit at all in the fossil record. But over here, you've got the Christian scientists, like Ken Ham. He's looking at the same material, same evidences, same fossils they are. But he says, well, I see Noah's flood there. I see a lot of Bible right there in that same fossil record. Two different views of the same thing. Now, getting back over to the Sermon on the Mount, you'll have different views of the Sermon on the Mount. Let me give you some of them. First of all, there's those who believe this. They believe it's just a moral code that sums up the entire Bible. They say the Sermon on the Mount is just a condensed version of the 66 books of the Bible. In other words, if you read that Sermon on the Mount, I mean, it's got creation, it's got the Exodus, the Ten Commandments, it's got everything through Revelation, everything you need to know is right there in the Sermon on the Mount, because Jesus preached it, so that's all you need to know. And there's some that settle in on it that way. I don't think that's right, but there's some people that believe it. There's a second way of viewing Sermon on the Mount. Some say, well, that's the way you get saved. The Sermon on the Mount, if you do all those things, see, there's some that think if you follow the Ten Commandments, you'll be saved. And there's some that, well, they're New Testament Christians, they say, well, I don't believe in Ten Commandments anymore, but I do believe you've got to follow the Sermon on the Mount or you won't be saved. If you don't do everything the Sermon on the Mount says, you're not going to heaven. In other words, some of our friends who say, that you get saved by works. They say, if you don't live it, you're not going to make it. Well, the problem is nobody lives it 100%. And the book of James says that if you fail in one point, you've failed in all. If you're going to keep the whole law, you've got to keep it all, not fail once or you've lost it all. Who can keep it all? Only Jesus. That's why we place our faith in Him because He's the one who fulfilled the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. But there's some who say, well, you just got to do what it says. And that's the basis of what we call the social gospel. In other words, if you just live it, you live it out. And we ought to live it. I mean, every Christian ought to live a separated holy life, a life of obedience to God. But that's not what saves you. And some people say, well, if you just live it out, Christian, then other people will see your fine example and they'll want to be Christians too. You're right. How's that working nowadays? No, they need to hear the gospel, how Jesus bled and died on the cross at Calvary and was risen again after three days. That's what they've got to hear. Well, there's a third way. People think it's just an elaboration of the law of Moses. You know, all of those 600 and some odd laws in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, there's some who say, well, this sermon on the mouth that Jesus preached, it just encompasses all of that Old Testament stuff and it's all rolled into one short sermon or one long sermon. Arthur Pink says, its larger part was a most searching exposition of the spirituality of the law and the refutation of the false teaching of the elders. Now that might be somewhat true because Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees and the elders because they professed to know God and they professed to live for God, but he said that it was lip service. He said your hearts are far from it. And so Jesus was rebuking them, but that's not to say The Sermon on the Mount is just a repetition of the Law of Moses or the Ten Commandments. Then there's another group that says the Sermon on the Mount is the kingdom truth. Since Jesus was preaching the kingdom, now the Jews rejected it, so therefore it's postponed, which is correct, and the millennial reign of Christ will be the kingdom that comes after the tribulation time. And that's correct. but there are a group who, I call them ultra-dispensationalists, and they say there's nothing there for the Christian, nothing to see here, move along, move along, nothing to see here. This is just kingdom truth. So during the kingdom age, then you'll have to live that way. Well, wait a minute, let me ask you a question. If Jesus thinks it's important that we live by such a code in the kingdom age, doesn't that reveal what his heart that God feels for us throughout every age? Does he not want us to be moral and good, right, and holy? See, even Siri likes to get in on this. So that group says, it's just kingdom truth and nothing here for you New Testament believers. John Walvoord says it would be hardly fitting for Matthew writing this gospel many years after the death of Christ to introduce material which would be irrelevant to his contemporaries. In other words, if this is just kingdom truth that the Jews have rejected, he's preaching to the Jews, right? Matthew's preaching to the Jews. And why would he be preaching to them how you ought to live in the kingdom if the kingdom's already been postponed and they're not going to get to live in it for a few thousand years at least? Well, let me give you the final one and this is what I believe. It is primarily kingdom truth. The Sermon on the Mount is primarily kingdom truth. It was offered to those Jews if they would have received the kingdom that day, it's how he would have expected them to live. It's also kingdom truth that he will require as he rules with a rod of iron during the thousand year reign, this is what he'll require of his people during the kingdom age. but it also has application to you and me in the church age today because this is obviously what he wants. If he wanted it before and he's going to want it after, wouldn't it please him if we lived that way now? Some people run into the ditch by believing one view that's erroneous. Maybe they'll reject this view and run to that view. It's kind of like a drunk driver. He's all over the road, you know. He's going to run into a ditch on one side or the other. You don't have to run into a ditch on either side. Be sober. There's nothing perhaps directly addressed in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount to church-age saints because he hadn't even died on the cross yet. but it does apply to those of us who are in this church age. If we live that way, it will provide an example. I mean, in 1 Timothy chapter 3, it gives guidelines for a New Testament pastor. It says, here's what a pastor ought to be, this, this, this. I think there are 18 or 19 things there that a pastor, according to Paul, was supposed to display in his life. And if he failed at those things, he wasn't a very good example. And so if God wanted the pastors to have those characteristics and those qualities in his life to be a pastor in 1 Timothy chapter 3, wouldn't it be for the purpose of that pastor providing the example for the people he pastors? So same thing goes for this, even though this is primarily a Sermon on the Mount primarily designed for that kingdom. yet it's for an example for you and me right now. For instance, we're shown in the Sermon how to love one another. Is God still interested? I mean, the Sermon on the Mount, Kingdom Age primarily. He wanted people to love each other, but is He not interested in us loving each other and following that example now? Absolutely. He says in Matthew 5.13 in our text that we read, He says, You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has lost its savor, what good is it? Just throw it out. So if we follow the Sermon on the Mount, we don't do it to be saved, we don't do it to stay saved, and we don't do it because it was written directly to the church, but we do it because we provide an example to the world around us. Have you noticed things have gone kind of crazy in our world today? There's robbery and rapists and there's murderers and road rage and war in the Middle East. Seemingly people who have no conscience whatsoever. Wouldn't it be good if people could have a good example like this to follow? You know why our kids are more likely to turn out? having a heart, having compassion, having a conscience, living for the Lord. It's because they see it modeled in their parents and in the leaders at church. And so that's why we do these things because it makes sense and it is biblical. There is a moral decay going on and that salt is losing its savor. The Christian who gets a view of the Sermon on the Mount right is more likely to understand the rest of the parts of the Sermon on the Mount. We'll address some of those in the future, the parts. Blessed are the meek. What does that mean anyway? Well, we'll talk about some of those things. Blessed are the poor in spirit. What does that mean? Well, we'll talk about some of those things, but we have to get our overall view, our worldview, our biblical view of the Sermon on the Mount before the parts, individual parts, make sense. So that's where we're headed from here. Living like Jesus. Let's pray together. Father, I pray that you'd bless us. Lord, help us to understand the Sermon on the Mount, its implications, its principles, how it affects our life today and how Our following those principles of the Sermon on the Mount might provide the right example for our children, for those around us, even for those not just in the family but those on the job, our friends and neighbors. Help us, Lord, to realize that this is definitely for us. It may not have been written directly to us, but it's for us. Bless us in this invitation time, we pray.