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It's always a privilege to have
the opportunity to expound the word of God. It's also a great
privilege to be with you all here tonight and the next couple
of days. Some of you I know, some of you
I do not know. I hope to get to know you a little
bit better. I want to preface everything
we do here with a statement first. Apostle Paul gives the self-identity
of a gospel preacher when he writes the Corinthians and says,
Let every man regard us as stewards. of the Gospel. You don't believe
anything that I said because I say it, some supposed authority
that resides in me. There is none. You believe what
you are to believe because the Word of God teaches it and the
Holy Spirit, working with that Word in your heart, convinces
you that that is indeed the truth of the Bible. So if you have
questions about what I present, please feel free to ask me or
ask Pastor Paul. And it may be I've said the bin
correctly. Maybe I misunderstand. Maybe
that you misunderstand. Maybe that we both misunderstand.
But if anything is offensive or new or weird, please feel
free to discuss that issue. Our consciences are bound only
by the word of God. Jesus Christ alone has the authority
to bind your conscience. No man, no councils, no church
courts, but the Word of God alone written. Please take your Bibles
and turn, if you would, to Matthew 3. My assignment, as Paul and
I were discussing this conference, is to set forth the contrast
between the gospel, the authentic, genuine gospel, and the counterfeit,
synthetic gospel of men that has become so prevalent, so well
known, so loved in our day and time. So I mentioned to him that
we would spend the bulk of our time, though not exclusively,
in the Sermon on the Mount, because it deals very clearly with the
gospel that Jesus came to preach and perform in his life. Matthew 5, and I'm going to read
verses 1 through 9, and just that far, our focus actually
will be on the third verse. And when he saw the multitudes,
he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples
came to him, and opening his mouth, he began to teach 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 gentle, 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. Let's pray. Great and
holy God, who from all eternity has existed
in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,
From eternity did design all that you purpose to do. From eternity before the foundation
of the world did set your love upon a people, not a few, O God,
but a multitude which the angels are incapable of counting. You
did assign the Lord Jesus Christ as the mediator, as the Great
Shepherd, as the prophet, the priest and the king, as the one
who would come and live a perfect life in the stead of his people,
the one who would die upon the cross in the place of his people,
thus satisfying the requirement of righteousness and thus dealing
with the demerit of sin and fulfilling the jot and the tittle, your
holy law. Father, we thank you for the
precious gospel, which is the only remedy of man's situation. We do lament that in our day
the gospel is clouded, unclear, veiled. There are many who are
proclaiming, O God, a false gospel. Wormwood is plentiful. We ask that by your Spirit you
would again pour out the truth of the gospel. Open the eyes
and the ears of those who are your sheep that they may discern
and turn away from that which is harmful and love the truth
of your holy word. Grant understanding as we examine
your word on this particular issue these several days. Father,
not only may our hearts be thrilled and warmed with that which Jesus
has done and Jesus has revealed to us as the great preacher of
the Gospel, may we have discernment and be the better able to help,
in some cases, our own family members and relatives or our
friends and associates out of the deception in which they presently
do labor. to the praise of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and to the salvation and enlargement of His kingdom,
the church we do pray, in His name alone, Amen. You will remember Abraham, of
course, in his life, an early incident. Well, it's not actually
an early incident, but an incident in Abraham's life when he was
traveling. And he came into an area of the country in which
he knew the people were not particularly moral. and he feared for his
life, and so he equivocated. Now, many people do not think
of equivocation as lying, but it is one of the many, many forms
of lying. It is forbidden in the ninth
commandment. You might remember his equivocation. What he did is he actually told
the truth, in part, and said to this individual, or through
his messengers, she's my sister. Implied, of course, not my wife.
And the guy took her and began to do all the process of getting
ready to take her as his wife. And God spoke to him and preserved
Sarah. Abraham equivocated. Gave a partial
truth. Said something in such a way
that those who heard would draw a conclusion. Abraham consciously
knew was wrong. But he skirted the line of truth
to do it. And he was wrong to do so. But
God was faithful even when Abraham was not, and protected both he
and his wife, and ultimately brought great blessing to him.
Many preach the gospel in the same way. Paul wants me to set
very clearly the antithesis, the gospel and the antithetical
gospel. Actually, my title is different
than is in the brochure. Paul did not know that, so he
has not erred here. Poor and Spirit Explained is
what your brochure says. The title that I'm using is actually
The Christians' Anti-Works Heartset. Now, by using that title, I've
already told you what the Bible means, what Jesus means by poor
in spirit. The basic heart set of a Christian
is anti-worse. That is the root, fundamental
presupposition of a Christian in terms of his understanding
of who he is and what the gospel supplies in Jesus Christ. And we're looking at the Sermon
on the Mount to deal with the gospel, the authentic gospel,
contrary to or set against the synthetic gospel, because Jesus
here is not equivocal. Jesus speaks very plainly, very
clearly. This is his first public sermon,
at least as we have recorded, so we assume, I think with warrant,
that this is his first public sermon. It is an entire sermon. You can go to seminaries or you
can read the intellectual books about how Matthew just picked
and chose. various pieces from here and
there and put it together in a literary form of a sermon. And it's not really a sermon
of Jesus. They're lying to you. This is
a sermon of Jesus. Matthew makes it very clear.
He is inspired by the Holy Spirit. When he says Jesus sees the multitude,
he comes up the mountain, sits down, and after he's done, they
say, wow, this isn't the way the rabbis teach. Matthew's not lying. Matthew's
not equivocating. The Holy Spirit has told him,
has inspired him to write it that way because he's recording
truth, real historical truth. This is one sermon. As one sermon,
it has a very obvious structure. Somewhat we'll deal with that.
We're not going to have the time, of course, to deal with the Sermon
on the Mount. I've now preached my 40-some
sermon on the Sermon on the Mount in my home church. But it is
one sermon of Christ that's important because it has a structure. It
has a logical order. It has a connection. And one
must understand the connections between things to understand
the details of those things in this sermon. Jesus here enters
into his public ministry. Now, if I asked you, why did
Jesus come to earth? You all would give me half right
answers. Some of you may give me whole
right answers. Every one of you would say Jesus came to earth
to die on the cross. Absolutely, positively correct. But there's something else Jesus
makes a comment about. When he's in one town and has
preached, he then says to his disciples, let's get up and go
from here and go to the other towns, for that is why I came
to preach the gospel. Why was Jesus incarnate? One,
to die on the cross, live a perfect life, fulfilling the law, to
die on the cross for justification. Second purpose that sometimes
is lost sight of is he came to earth to preach the gospel. And
so we come to this Sermon on the Mount, which is his opening
sermon. Jesus very clearly and plainly
speaks the gospel, preaches the gospel. He very clearly and plainly
defines what a Christian is in this whole of the sermon, this
first public sermon. He is very self-conscious about
setting before these people the antithesis between Christian
gospel, the true gospel, and the non-Christian gospel, the
gospel of men, a sense-filled, sense-appealing gospel that men
make up on their own authority. And the fact that there is confusion
about this sermon, whether or not it even is one sermon of
Jesus, whether the organizational structure is from Jesus' mind
or from Matthew's mind as some sort of editor of collected notes, That confusion is because men
either ignore the truth that Jesus teaches or they deliberately
rest the truth that Jesus teaches. Jesus is not responsible for
the confusion. Jesus is exquisitely plain and
clear about the gospel in contradiction to the synthetic gospel of the
Pharisees. Of the first century. The sermon may be outlined in
five broad statements. Need to do this because we're
going to have used the context to define some of the other things
that are in this sermon. So you need to understand the
flow of the sermon, at least in the broad outline of it. And
you can outline this sermon in five broad statements. The first
section is dealing with, and this goes from verse 3 of chapter
5 to verse 16, and this first broad statement or broad headline
for the structure of the Sermon on the Mount is, Jesus is describing
here the recreational work of the Holy Spirit in the believer.
The Beatitudes are not a new law of Christianity. They are
not a new law of religion. Do these things and you will
advance. Do these things and you will
earn entrance into heaven. But Jesus saying here is, in
essence, what the Holy Spirit does in an unbeliever as he recreates
him, regenerates him. So the Beatitudes are a description
of the work of the Holy Spirit. And that goes through verse 16. Now, to make a little finer sub-point
here, verses 10-16 are an exhortation not to grieve the Holy Spirit.
We're going to come back to this, I think, Sunday when we look
at salt of the earth. You are not to become the salt
of the earth. You are not to be the salt of
the earth. Jesus says, by virtue of the recreational work of the
Holy Spirit, He has made you salt of the earth. And how dare
you not behave like salt? Verses 10 and the same with life.
Verses 10 to 16 are an exhortation of Jesus. How dare you contradict
the work of the Holy Spirit? How dare you fight against what
the Holy Spirit has done in your recreation? How dare you grieve
the Holy Spirit? He has sovereignly, as God, made
you to be salt and light. How dare you not be salty? How
dare you not be light? You are working in antithesis
to the very job of the Holy Spirit. That's verses 10-16. But all
that, the first section of this Sermon on the Mount is the Holy
Spirit's recreational work in the life of one whom He is making,
a saint, a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Second main division
is chapter 5. You remember there Jesus speaks
of the law, specifically cites the law. and corrects the people's
understanding as they have been falsely taught in some part by
the ancients and also present tense in Jesus' time by the Pharisees. And there you can give a headline
for chapter 5, 17 to 48, The Christian and the Law of God. Now, we'll come back to this
because we have to, but not tonight. But notice Jesus moves from the
work of the Holy Spirit in your heart. This is what he does to
you. Convinces you that you cannot save yourself, that you're utterly
dependent upon God's grace and all the things that flow out
of that. The desire for an alien righteousness, because you can't
be righteous in anything you've done. You must find an alien
righteousness, which can only be found in Christ and applied
to you by faith, through faith. Jesus describes this work of
the Holy Spirit. This person now has been brought
to life. He's now been redeemed. He's
now been saved. He's now the child of God. And
then he moves over to the law of God and says, because of what
you are, because of who you are now by God's sovereign work,
this is how you ought to live. Man-made religions reverse those. They start off with the law and
say, do these things, a little self-work, a little self-reformation,
and then you can become a child of God. Jesus says, the Holy
Spirit makes you my child, a citizen of heaven. And now, as a result
of what he has done in your life, this is how you ought to live.
The law is in its proper place, which you would expect in Jesus'
sermon. follows upon the Holy Spirit's
work. There's a reformation of heart, a recreation of heart.
And then the life follows the heart. The third broad headline for
the sermon, the sections, chapter six, verses one through twenty
four, is the Christian in the presence of God. You remember
Jesus there uses three images, three figures, of that he refers
to that describe you in the presence of God and how understanding
God's presence. Well, just look at this. I'm
not wanting to take too much time with this outline. Six,
one, beware of practicing righteousness before men to be noticed by them.
Otherwise, you have no reward with your father who's in heaven.
So Jesus' concern is now that as you do your life, as you live
your life out, you recognize that you live your life in the
presence of God. It's not men whose eyeballs you're
concerned with. It's God's eyes you're concerned
with. He talks about your life under
the image of all. your dealings with others, merciful
to others, kind, loving your enemies. And then he deals under
the aspect of prayer with your personal relationship with God.
And then he deals with fasting, your relationship to yourself,
others, God and yourself. He covers all areas of life.
And he drives home the fact that as a Christian, you must realize
you live your entire life under the presence or rather in the
presence of God. Fourth, chapter 625 to the end. You're familiar, I'm sure, with
the things there. Again, some persecution, treasures
in heaven, the sparrows, the birds, the number of hairs on
your head. You can put a title on that section,
the Christian in submission to God, content, utterly content
with the providence of God. God will take care of me. I am
his. My duty is simply to do what he has revealed is pleasing
in his sight. And what comes from that is in
God's hands. And those are good hands. The
final section, chapter seven. Well, you have the urgent exhortations
to take to heart what Jesus preached, to commit yourself to the truth
of the gospel and the truth and him of whom the gospel teaches,
Jesus. It is then that section you could
call a chapter 7 Christian in fear of God. God is to be feared
even by the bride. by the church. It's amazing how
often we are exhorted to fear God throughout the scriptures. Saints are to fear God, though
the fear of God that a saint has is a fear that causes a saint
to run to God and to serve him and worship him. Now, this evening,
We begin to look at some of the particulars of the sermon which
Jesus preached. Our concern is the very concern
of the Lord Jesus Christ. When Jesus was on the earth,
men were dying and going to hell. When Jesus was on the earth,
men thought they were in a right relationship to God, but were,
and were dying and going to hell. Jesus, when He was on earth,
understood, knew very well that men were eating and drinking
wormwood. False gospels. Their whole life
and their whole souls were being poisoned by false gospels. And though many of them thought
they were okay in the sight of God, they were dying. Sound familiar
today? Multitudes believe they're right
in the sight of God. And they're deluded. They're
deceived. Apart from a saving faith in Jesus Christ when they
die, they will not wake up in bliss and glory, but in hell. A real place for
real souls, eventually reunited with real bodies forever. So our concern is Jesus' concern.
Jesus' concern that the people with whom He spoke could discern
between the authentic gospel and the counterfeit gospel. You
and I are concerned with the exact same thing. Can people
discern between the authentic gospel and the counterfeit of
the authentic gospel? The false, man-made, man-centered,
humanistic gospel. You must keep clearly in your
understanding four truths which govern the interpretation of
the Beatitudes. Again, these Beatitudes are the
description of the Christian. They are not an ethical system. They are not a new law. Ethics
will come in its proper order. Secondly, as you discuss and
seek to interpret these Beatitudes in which Jesus is making a very
clear distinction between the true and the false gospel, these
Beatitudes are descriptive of every Christian, not a few. You
may not comfort yourself and say, well, first Beatitude, I'm
a little shaky on that one. Second Beatitude, yeah, I think
I got that one down. Third Beatitude, well, so-so. These Beatitudes are the description
of every true Christian. This is not some sort of class
of super spiritual Christians, some sort of class that some
churches call saints. They're true of every saint biblically
used the word saint. Now, it is very true that you
and I will each have different developments and different degrees
along which these things have progressed in our own understanding,
in our own life. There is a progression in sanctification. Some grow fast. Some grow slow. Some who are growing slowly.
Certain things will happen. The Holy Spirit will work in
certain ways and suddenly they'll shoot up very fast. So, there
are differences in the development how much these particular Beatitudes
evidence themselves in our lives. But at root, every Christian
is described. By every one of these Beatitudes.
If you do not mourn for sin in yourself, you're not a Christian.
If you do not mourn for sin in those around you within the covenant
community of God. You're not a Christian. You don't
mourn for sin and its consequences and those of the world. You're
not a Christian. Now, again. The issue isn't how
much do you mourn, some people are very touched with these things
and they become more and more deeply aware of sin and its consequences
as they mature and as they're sanctified. The issue is. Is
the reality there in your life? So as we discuss these Beatitudes,
some of these Beatitudes, we're not going to do them all in the
next three days, recognize they're the description of the Christian
non-ethical system, that they are true in every single Christian. If the Beatitude isn't true,
you're not a Christian. So again, remember we said Jesus
is setting apart very plainly, enabling us to discern a Christian
and a non-Christian. And he's very clear. It's very
plain about the differences and how to identify the Christian.
It is a very, very sad state of affair when you can ask another
brother or sister in Christ and and they say, well, pray for
Aunt Margaret. She's been diagnosed. They just
found that now it's already stage three cancer and And then you're asking prayer
meeting or church Sunday school, well, is Margaret a Christian? And when the other Christians
say, well, I don't know. That's sad. Now, there may be
times when we have some warrant not to be sure. But most often, to be unsure
about that question, His evidence for that answer is evidence that
we have not come to grips with the plainness and simplicity
of the definition of Jesus Christ concerning who is a citizen of
heaven because Jesus was very clear He did not equivocate. Third thing you need to keep
in mind as you interpret the Beatitudes is that, again, these
Beatitudes are the work of the Holy Spirit and you always must
be defying them with that viewpoint. Jesus is saying this is what
the Holy Spirit produces as he recreates the sinner. making him sent forth the Beatitudes,
delineated clear distinction. This is what we've been saying
over and over between the Christian and the non-Christian. This is
a great text. This Sermon on the Mount is the
great thing to really come to grips with. I know Pastor McDade
has preached. You've completed the whole thing,
has preached through this. This is a passage of scripture
to really get to know well. Because this is where you can
take people who have questions. What is a Christian? Well, let
me show you what a Christian is. Here you have Jesus' description
of a Christian in contradistinction against those who have deluded
themselves that they're in a right relationship with God. What then
does Jesus mean by poor in spirit? Let me start, answer that question
by giving it in a negative. What it does not mean. Jesus
does not mean, first, that one is a financial pauper. You can
find a number of people that teach, a number of papered people
that teach, that Jesus is saying here that a real godly Christian
person is somebody who has taken a vow of poverty, or is somebody
who does not have riches, or having had riches, has freely
given them up. That is not what Jesus means
to you. If it is what he meant, do you
realize when the greatest revival ever occurred in the United States? October 1929. And the next ten years as the
federal government usurped unconstitutional power and tampered with the economy
and kept it in the doldrums. Because people felt pretty badly. Some. Some made out very well. There are many who couldn't buy
food, even as they watched the government
destroy food to bring the prices up. Many who couldn't buy an apple,
even an apple to eat, and would labor and be willing to work
all day just for one meal. If Jesus is saying the Christian
is one who is in financial straits, then the greatest revival was
the Great Depression in these United States, in terms of our
history. Jesus indeed does not agree with
monasticism. Jesus does not agree with socialism. Jesus does not agree with communism. He is very clear here in his
sermon what a Christian is. And again, you understand these
views are all wrong if you recognize that this is the work of the
Holy Spirit. Not some sort of monastic vow
a person takes. Second wrong answer. The Christian
wimp. The one who is poor in spirit
as a Christian is the kind of individual that always keeps
his eyes cast down and or always whimpers about their lack of
talents. Sometimes we think such people
are particularly godly and humble. It's not a biblical definition
of humility. Who is one of the boldest men you ever read about
in the scriptures? Who is a guy that could stand
with just a stick and stand in front of the most powerful man
in the world? And say, I'm going to tell you
what you're to do. I'm going to tell you what God has told
me to tell you what to do. And if you don't do it, you're
in trouble. Who was it? Moses. Did you read what God
says about Moses? He was the meekest of all men
on the earth. Poor in spirit is not somebody
that just kind of walks around like this and always says, well,
I don't have any talent. I don't have anything I can do.
I don't have any way I can serve the church. I don't add anything
to the local congregation. Oh, really? Do you realize what
that says? Your New Testament, my New Testament
says the Holy Spirit gives every member a measure of grace and
certain gifts and abilities. So the body meeting together,
working together, supplies everything that's needed and the body grows.
And so for somebody to say, I really don't have any function in the
local body of church. I don't do anything. I don't
add anything to the Christian fellowship in the body while
I'm in the local church. What they're saying is the Holy
Spirit has messed up with me. What the Holy Spirit says about
the individual saint isn't true. It may be difficult to find what
it is you can do for a time, but the Holy Spirit gives all
of his people to provide for the church what is needed. Boldness is not the antithesis
of spiritual poverty. Moses was very bold, but he was
the number one star of meekness, of humility that the Holy Spirit
holds before us as an example in the entire Old Testament.
Boldness is not the antithesis of spiritual poverty. You remember
Peter and Paul in Acts. how people were marveling about
their boldness. Well, I will take you through
some of these passages. Turn to Acts 4.13. This is a lot of confusion in terms
of the evidence of the Holy Spirit and the mark of the Holy Spirit.
What is it? Well, you go through the book
of Acts and you'll find out pretty quickly, if you read with an
open eye, you'll find out very quickly what the mark is of the
Holy Spirit. 413, now as they observed the confidence,
I use a new American standard. The Anglican Bible has a different
word there. The word they have there is,
now as they observed the boldness of Peter and John and understood
their uneducated, untrained men, their marveling, and because
they were bold, the people began to recognize they have been with Jesus. There is the
root of the boldness. They knew Jesus and so they were
bold. The mark of the Holy Spirit is
boldness. Four twenty nine. And now, Lord,
take note of their threats and grant that thy bond servants
may speak thy word with all confidence or boldness. Thirty one. When they had prayed, the place
where they had gathered together was shaken. They were all filled
with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with
boldness. Turn over to Acts 9, 27-29. Barnabas
took hold of him and brought him to the apostles and described
to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, that he had talked
to Him, and how at Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the
name of Jesus. And he was with them, moving
about freely in Jerusalem, speaking out boldly in the name of the
Lord. And he was talking and arguing
with the Hellenistic Jews, but they were attempting to put him
to death. Somebody says that spiritual
poverty, poor in spirit, is this Christian wimp that just,
you know, never asserts himself or does anything, kind of melts
into the background, hides in the shadows. They're wrong. These apostles who were bold,
Moses who was bold before Pharaoh, were poor in spirit. And another
wrong answer so many give today is the unassuming non-Christian. That's pretty close to the unassuming
Christian. The difference here is some people,
when they get this wrong definition, you see you don't need the Holy
Spirit when you have the wrong definition of what it is. It
can be produced naturally. It might be produced genetically.
And there are just some people, some non-Christians, who just
are very mild, very...
The Authentic Gospel and The Synthetic Gospel - Part 1 of 7
Series The Sermon On The Mount
Fall Conference 2009
| Sermon ID | 12509133461 |
| Duration | 36:04 |
| Date | |
| Category | Special Meeting |
| Bible Text | Matthew 5:1-9 |
| Language | English |
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