I'm gonna back up just a little bit and cover the ground that we covered last week first. Let me read it, we'll pray, and then we will begin. Matthew 5 1. Seeing the crowds, He, that is Jesus, went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. O gracious Father, we gather again in remembrance of the work of your Son to recount and to recall and to proclaim his life, his death, his resurrection, and ascension to your right hand, his current intercession and reign, and to recall again and to confess together our one hope in his return. O gracious Father, we thank you for Jesus. We thank you for sending your Son, and Lord Jesus, we thank you for coming. Father and Son, we thank you for sending the Spirit to claim your people, applying to your children the full work of your Son, Jesus Christ. We thank you, Holy Spirit, for being at work here among us, and we ask that our Our eyes might be opened, our ears might be opened, that we might hear and that we might see and that we might respond in a way that brings you glory. O gracious Father, O faithful Son, O powerful Spirit, would you be at work here among us, we ask in Jesus' most precious name, amen. All right, so we saw last week, we started with the context of the Sermon on the Mount, and really it's Old Testament promise fulfillment would be an easy way to summarize it. The things listed here as character, or as qualities, I should say, as qualities of this blessed people are a description of the remnant from the Old Testament, those who heard and believed the words spoken by the Lord to his people through the prophets. And so you can go to each one of these and find the description of God's faithful people, what I'm gonna refer to as the remnant in the Old Testament that lines up with, in multiple passages, that lines up with each of these, what we refer to as the Beatitudes. And so we began last week by just looking at this fits well within the context of Matthew, which in its opening lines, we didn't actually go all the way back here last week, but in its opening line, you know, points to Jesus as the fulfillment of everything from Genesis through to the end of Chronicles or Malachi, depending on your ordering of the Old Testament, but the whole Old Testament He is the son of David, son of Abraham, the Christ. He is the yes to all of God's promises in the Old Testament. But I do want to draw our attention to one specific promise, and that is the promise that more or less is paradigmatic for all of the other ways in which this promise comes to God's people and then through God's Son Israel is meant to be extended to the whole world and that is the promises it's found in Genesis chapter 12 verses 1 through 3 as God calls Abram out of Ur. He calls him and promises him that he is going to make him a great nation and that he would be blessed that he's going to make his name great and that he would be a blessing. All right? And so God's purpose is, from the beginning, is to bring blessing as far as the curse is found. This is reiterated, of course, throughout the Old Testament in multiple ways, primarily revolving around God's calling to himself a specific people and giving them a specific place where they abide with God in his land under his rule. And this is really, I think, the way in which the Bible, God's word, invites us to think about the kingdom of God. What does his kingdom look like? It looks like God's people in God's place under God's rule experiencing God's blessing as they walk in all of his ways. God's people in God's place under God's rule. This is the kingdom of God foreshadowed in the Old Testament and we hear it, we see it being proclaimed by Jesus at the outset of his ministry. These opening chapters in Matthew have picked up all sorts of promises from the Old Testament. I'm just gonna point you to some, and I'm only, I'm not pointing to any allusions here, any echoes, I'm only pointing to direct quotations. I just want you to feel the sense, the emphasis from the perspective of Matthew on the fulfillment of the Old Testament in Jesus Christ. So, for example, I've already pointed out chapter 1, and really all of chapter 1, but chapter 1, then chapter 1 verse 23, where Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14 is quoted, and Matthew says that this is fulfilled in the the coming of Christ and the incarnation that Isaiah 7, verse 14 is being fulfilled. I'm not gonna take time, because if I do, then I'll do what I did last week. So I'm not gonna take time to point out how these are being fulfilled. I'm just gonna point out that they're present and that they're being fulfilled. Matthew 4, verses 15 through 16, by the way, I know I'm jumping a bunch here, but that picks up Isaiah 9, verse one, and I'm just pointing out that the beginning and the end of kind of the prologue in Matthew, you have this reference to Isaiah chapter seven and Isaiah chapter nine, clearly depicting that in Isaiah's mind, I'm sorry, in Matthew's mind, he understands that whole pericope to be pointing towards Jesus and what Jesus is doing. Matthew chapter two, verse six, which is a quotation of Micah, chapter 5, verses 1 through 6, verse 15. I'm just going to be in chapter 2 for a moment. That's Hosea 11, verse 1. Chapter 2, verse 18. Jeremiah 31, verse 15. 3, verse 3, Isaiah chapter 40, verse 3, actually a reference to John the Baptist, but John the Baptist is preparing the way for Jesus, so I'm going to include that here. All of these are, in other words, signaling to the reader that Jesus is the fulfillment of all of these prophecies. And not only, I would argue, these specific prophecies, like he just came and to fulfill chapter 7, verse 14 of Isaiah, but again, in Matthew's mind, he's fulfilling all that's being promised in those larger passages, in those pericopes, and to a certain extent, all that Jeremiah proclaimed, all that the Lord promised through Isaiah. Now, part of the reason I want to draw your attention to that is because In the original context, as Jesus is beginning his earthly ministry, if you're familiar with the Old Testament, it's not hard to understand that there's a reasonable expectation that this fulfillment is going to include a political, military, victory. Okay? We know that this was the expectation of the Jewish people during the Second Temple period. We know it was the expectation of the Jewish people at the time when Christ comes. And that's often pointed out, but I just want to make sure that we understand that that this was, on just a very honest reading of the Old Testament, this was to some extent a very reasonable expectation, right? How had God redeemed his people in the Old Testament? What did every redemption look like? It had included a very, you know, as you think about, for instance, the Exodus. as you think about the new exodus through Cyrus. All of it had included some type of political, military action. So you can't fault the Jewish people, you can't fault Israel at this point as their Messiah comes, you can't fault them for expecting some type of political military action. Yet, Jesus opens with his very first teaching with words which do not fit well with the, they're not contrary, just hear me out, but they're going to, to some extent, challenge that narrative from the outset. All right, hear these words again. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. I think the original hearers would be following right along so far. All right? Yes, absolutely. Those who recognize the poverty in which they find themselves individually and corporately, those who mourn to see better days, those who are meek and hunger for the righteousness of God, which is used in Isaiah synonymously with the salvation of God. Think Isaiah chapter 51. And then on the back half of these beatitudes, I think it becomes a little more strained. That is, if your expectation is the political military victory that God is going to bring through the Messiah, you can follow, you can track along because you're anticipating that ultimately those who are waiting upon the Lord are going to receive this political military victory and then it defines or describes these blessed people as merciful. Still okay, all right, but it's not exactly clear how that's going to fit into the breaking of the yoke of the Roman Empire and the throwing off of that bondage into and the subjugation of their enemies in their immediate and extended environment. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Now, here, specifically, I think that there are some who are at least cocking their heads. peacemakers, we just automatically interpret that in a very Christian way, and understandably so. But in the original context, that peace, a reasonable expectation would be that that peace would come through, again, political and military means. The Lord working some great victory, specifically through the Messiah, through the Christ. And so the idea of reconciliation, it was actually not uncommon. There were some in the Jewish community who actually promoted a peacemaking posture towards Romans. But that wasn't a popular view. And it wasn't the majority view. It was a little hard to reconcile with the hope specifically of the Messiah, the son of David. You have to understand that the hope for the Messiah, which is the son of David in the Old Testament, it comes with a throne. And that throne comes with a reign. And that reign comes unimpeded by another reign over that reign and would almost certainly cast its reign over others as well. So this idea of reconciliation, if that's how we interpret peacemaking, and I'm not saying we shouldn't yet, I'm just pointing out that it already is beginning to describe a people who are not necessarily going to rise up and throw off the yoke of their oppressor and establish the righteous reign of God on earth on a throne in Jerusalem as the son of David comes to reestablish what was lost. That is the kingdom of Israel on earth. This was not Jesus' program from the outset. From the very beginning he came, and we know this because Matthew tells us in Matthew chapter one, that the words of the angel to Joseph, that he was to be named Yeshua, Jesus, Joshua, it was precisely because he was going to deliver his people from their sins. From their sins. So, we have an emphasis upon a people, if you will, or really a description. Let me say it this way. We have eschatological blessing promised. So in other words, theirs will be the kingdom, it'll be comfort. I pointed out last week, think Isaiah chapter 61 verse 2, if you haven't If you haven't looked at that, just make a note. You need to read that in light of this. They will inherit the whole earth. They will be satisfied. They will receive mercy. This is what is promised to God's people. And think of places like Hosea, for instance, those who, as I said, have no mercy, I will have mercy. Those who are not my people will be my people. This eschatological promise of the redeemed people of God abiding in the presence of God, the whole kingdom of God, God's people in God's place under God's God's rule, this is an eschatological blessing. This is a end times blessing. Mercy, they see God. So many Old Testament passages that are significant in regards to seeing God. They'll be called Sons of God, I'm just gonna move through this quickly. that theirs will be the kingdom of heaven. I believe we're to interpret this as a whole, the whole eschatological blessing. Another way to think about it is that everything that God has promised in the Old Testament, Jesus is saying, belongs to this people that he is describing, okay? And so, what is this people that he is describing? And I'm using people because it's plural, those, those, right? All right, this people is the Old Testament people that we often hear referred to as the remnant, right? Who is this remnant? The remnant is those people who hear the prophetic word, hear the word of God. The prophets speak and they believe. Though their leaders don't, though a majority of Israel doesn't, these people, this remnant people, here, and they're waiting upon God. They know that God will be faithful to his word, both in judgment and in redemption. So they're placing their whole hope in God. So I'm just gonna call this a prophet profile, because it describes the prophet and his people. I think one of the best illustrations of this comes from Isaiah. And remember, this passage was quoted already twice, Isaiah 7 and Isaiah 9 in Matthew, and in Isaiah 8, right in between those two. And this is all one passage, one extended, larger pericope. We find Isaiah, and the Lord commands him after judgment is issued against Israel, the Lord speaks this to Isaiah. For the Lord spoke thus to me, this Isaiah speaking. So now the Lord, Isaiah has delivered this message of judgment, and Isaiah says, the Lord said thus to me, with a strong hand upon me, and he warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, do not call conspiracy what this people call conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread, but the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. He directs the word directly to his prophet, Isaiah, and he directs him to be faithful in exactly the same way as Ahaz was supposed to be faithful and Ahaz failed. And all those whom Ahaz represented, Judah, and those who followed him, those who were calling conspiracy to conspiracy, how they failed to stand firm in faith in the word that God spoke. So God speaks this word to Isaiah, and Isaiah is told not to fear what they fear, but instead to make the Lord his fear, to honor him as holy. Let him be your fear and let him be your dread, and he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling. That should sound familiar. That's applied directly to Jesus Christ. He is this stone. that is referred to here, rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and many will stumble on it, they shall fall and be broken, they shall be snared and be taken. Okay, so you have the prophet, but listen to what Isaiah then says after that. I'm gonna introduce the people, who I've been referring to as the remnant. Bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among, this is Isaiah speaking, my disciples. Isaiah says, so this is Isaiah's, all right, this is Isaiah chapter 8 by the way, I don't remember if I told you verse 11, I'm in verse 16 now. So this is Isaiah's response. So the way this whole passage works, starting in chapter 7, is that the Lord sends Isaiah to Ahaz, with a word, and Ahaz has an opportunity to respond, and Ahaz does respond, and he responds with unbelief. And then the Lord turns from Ahaz, and he turns after issuing judgment, he turns to Isaiah, and he says basically the same thing. Okay, you hold fast to my word. And he does. And now this is Isaiah's response. Isaiah says, bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples. So he has, here's Isaiah and his disciples. Here's the prophet and his disciples. Here's the remnant. Seal the teaching among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. I don't know how you feel about tattoos, but I'm fine with them. My daughter has weight and hope, or hope and wait, weight and hope on her forearm. And it is from this specific passage, which is one of my favorites. I will wait, I will hope. Behold, and listen, behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts and who dwells in Mount Zion. And so Israel has his literal children, but he also has his figurative children. I'm sorry, Isaiah. Isaiah has his literal children, but he also has his figurative children. And Isaiah is leading, if you will, this group of people who are waiting and hoping in the midst of trial and tribulation Judgment is coming, and that will not stop. God's word, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God stands forever, refers both to judgment and redemption. What God has spoken in regards to judgment will come to pass. What God has spoken in regards to redemption will come to pass. And what matters is which word do you believe? Do you believe the word of the kings of Israel and Syria? Or do you thereby go and trust in Assyria? Or do you hold fast the Word of God? Do you wait and hope in Him? Anyway, that's the problem with going to a text like that. I start preaching that text and I need to, my only point there was to show just from one passage how this functions, not just in Isaiah, but really throughout Israel's history. You have Israel, and then especially as you start moving into kings, for instance, and the failure of the kings and the kingdoms, kingdoms, I mean by that the northern and the southern after their division. But you have the Lord beginning to work, these prophets come, they bring an indicting word against the kings, and nothing changes, and then they become in themselves this, this, this term I'm looking for. Remnant, yes, but it's something that gathers people. I don't know, like a magnet or something. I don't know anyone. No, people gather to them and the prophet and the prophet's people become the remnant. All right. So this is, that is the Beatitudes, a description, a prophet, a prophetic profile, if you will, a profile of the prophet and his people, but here, But if it is that, it is also this. So if it is that, if this is a description of the prophet and his people, then it is also a description of the very character of God. Of the very character of God. I know God is not poor in spirit. God is infinitely rich, as it were, in spirit. And yet, the description of this people reflects the character of God precisely or exactly because in their state and condition, their poverty of spirit is actually a response to the excellencies of God. His greatness, His worthiness to be fully trusted and loved, and the failure of the people to do so, individually and corporately. Those who mourn, there are some of these that apply very, very directly. The Lord Himself, often in the Old Testament, mourns over His people, grieves their condition. You think of the, as early as Exodus, right, or Numbers, as they're leaving Mount Sinai, how long, Exodus, Exodus 16 as well, how long will this people despise me? How long? It sounds very similar to the words of Jesus. He laments over Jerusalem. Oh, how long I have desired to gather you up as a hen gathers up her chicks, but you would not. Meekness, right? I'm gonna have to be selective here. Mercy should be clear, purity, undividedness. Hunger and thirsting, by the way. There's no one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness more than God, right? There is no one who prizes or values righteousness more than God precisely because God is righteousness and as God rightly prizes or values himself above all else must, must by his very nature and power do so. It would be contrary to his very nature to deny the prize of place, if you will, to his glory, his honor. Righteousness is a reflection of that which he is in all of his perfections. relationship, seeing God, being communion with his people. The reality is, again, each of these, God's righteous reign, the kingdom of God itself, each of these reflect the very character of who God is. And they are a description of the prophet, Jesus the Christ. So we've made, this is our third move here. We see first that this is a description of the prophet and his people. Old Testament, that is this pattern of the Old Testament prophet speaking a word to which some adhere but many reject. And those who adhere to that word, the prophet's word, that is the word of God that comes through the prophet, those who adhere to that word appear, sometimes specifically being called the remnant, other times we just, we see the concept present. The first move is to see that this is the profile of the prophet and his people. The second move is to see that they are a reflection both in the Old Testament and here in Jesus' description of the very character of God. The third move is to see that this is Jesus' self-identification. He is the preeminent prophet. who is drawing to himself the people. So the remnant will be redeemed through Christ, who is not, in the first place, describing what people must do in order to receive, if you will, some reward, but ultimately proclaiming a word that helps us to anticipate who Christ is going to be revealed. So what I mean by that is that in Matthew, specifically, Matthew is going to use this as the profile of Christ in such a way that you can actually take all of these and follow them through and see Jesus doing exactly what he says the blessed person is going to do. Why? Well, because Jesus is the Psalm 1 blessed man. Jesus is the Psalm 2 anointed the Christ. He is first the fulfillment of what we are supposed to be and in in and through that, the one who actually brings it about in us, apart from him, you look nothing like this. So, I've already mentioned Jesus mourning over Jerusalem in chapter 23, Jesus hungering for righteousness, multiple passages as well, but you could go to chapter 26, verses 36 through 46. He's the only one who has fully and really, truly, genuinely had a pure heart, undivided. He has not lifted his hands to another, right? Yes. Yeah, so Corey's asking how badly you butcher this if you take up the dispensational lens. And he said, really badly. And I'll just say yes. Okay. Yeah. No, I agree. If you don't read this in context from left to right, seeing that Christ arrives on the scene as the promised Messiah who is about to, in his life, death, and resurrection, fulfill all the promises ever promised to Israel in their eschatological form, that is, with real escalation, so that nothing, nothing is lacking in what Christ has accomplished, then you inevitably misunderstand all sorts of things. And I would say for sure this is one of them, although I think that from a covenantal perspective, I think we can also misunderstand this, oddly enough, simply by not reading it contextually. That is, what I mean by that is that when we when you take the steps that we're taking here this morning, when you consider first the original audience, Jesus shows up on the scene, and he is the promised prophet from Deuteronomy chapter 18, and you hear this description of a people that aligns with those who throughout the ages have hungered and thirsted for the kingdom of God, who have heard and responded by faith, to the word that has been spoken through his prophets. So a profile of the prophet and his people, if you will. And if you don't take the step of seeing Jesus first as the fulfillment of it, then you have a temptation to, oddly enough, take this and just apply it directly to the church without first going through Christ. And I would argue that that is a misstep. I would argue that if you don't first see Jesus as intentionally describing himself and secondarily those who will be united to him by faith, absolutely, even as he's describing that Old Testament people, that step is possible precisely because he is the greater and the truer of that pattern. So we identify the pattern, We see that Jesus is the escalation of that pattern, so whatever's said here, again, the easiest one's probably just taking the purity of heart, those who have a pure heart. By the way, just so you know that in the Old Testament, people had a pure heart. Psalm 73, for example. Psalm 73, verse one. Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. So this idea is present. And so you have the pattern, and then you have Christ, the fulfillment of that pattern, involving not just another iteration. This is important. It's not just another iteration. It has to involve escalation, In other words, it has to be more than everything that came before it. It's not just, oh, this happened again. Like Jesus came and he took people out of Rome and he led them someplace else and he put them in a new place and he's like, okay, we're gonna do this over again. That's, no, so there's the pattern of the Exodus, for instance. You had another iteration of the pattern when God took them out of the land of Babylon and brought them back to that land. In some ways, there's de-escalation in that, by the way, but that's not the point. The point is you have the pattern, kind of a, That's basically the same thing. And then with Christ you have escalation. That escalation is critical to understand. That escalation is eschatological. That is that it involves the inbreaking into this present evil age of the end result. Already present now is the new creation. Already present now is the prophet and his people in their final and full form. That is, we who will see God, if you will, will see Jesus face to face, are already perfect because of his sacrifice. We who are being sanctified. And so there's this present reality of the final fulfillment that has already been initiated through Christ. So, as we think about how this works out in the Sermon on the Mount, what that does is, again, it keeps us from reading the Beatitudes and thinking, yeah, okay, so Jesus is telling me what I need to be. That's true, but that's not what he's doing in the first place as Matthew records his words in Matthew chapter 5. In the first place, he is gathering his people, his disciples have just been gathered, so the prophet and his people. and he is describing himself and who his people will be as they are conformed to his image, the prophet and his people. That will require, by the way, for that to be fulfilled. That is not plausible or possible unless he dies. No one sitting there listening to this is going to experience the escalation of the pattern from the Old Testament apart from His substitutionary, atoning sacrifice and resurrection. And resurrection, why? Because He must ascend to the right hand of the Father, receive the promise, the Holy Spirit, pour out the Spirit upon His people so that they become this people, not that people, not the pattern, but the real and genuine people to which the pattern pointed to. Now, when you get that, you realize that, okay, I need Christ. I don't need to muster up some more purity of heart, I need more Jesus. I don't need to try to fabricate some more hunger. I need to see Christ in all of his glory because the more I look at him, the more I become like him. The more time I spend with him, like Moses in the tent, the more my face just shines with the same glory that radiates from his face, which is the very glory of our Father. That's a very different approach than just saying this is what Jesus told the church they need to be. Another way of thinking about it is that Matthew chapter five is pre-Exodus. It's pre, it's pre-New Exodus. Jesus is describing what God's people should be and aren't. He's describing what he is. He is describing what he is even unto death. And that is fully faithful. The one, the only one who ultimately can receive the kingdom of heaven. Brother. Yeah, so yes, so in order to see Jesus, we need to be driven into his word. But lots of people are driven into his word, and lots of people read his word, and that's absolutely true, and we say it all the time, but we have to understand that it matters how you read his word. Like it doesn't matter how you read it. And so if you read it understanding that this passage does say a lot about me, and it ain't good. And then this passage also says a lot about Christ and it is really good. And as each passage reveals my need and then demonstrates or testifies to how Christ has met that need, and as I meditate upon the goodness of God, His mercy, His grace, His love, His justice, all that He has demonstrated Himself to be through the salvation of His people preeminently, then I am transformed. There's real work on my part. I have to really consider, what does this passage require? How does it demonstrate how I fall short of the glory of God? How does it point me toward, testify to how Christ did not fall short of the glory of God, quite to the contrary, fulfilled all righteousness, so that I might, again, sitting at the feet of my Savior, and not just like, not just a profile study, like, oh, okay, that's what Jesus looks like. Okay, yeah, okay, I'm gonna try to, okay. Yes, imitation is good, but I mean really just like basking, in his person and work, like who he is. It's true, Jesus loved us and laid down his life for us. He cherished you. He lived the life that you were supposed to live and died the death that you were supposed to die, was raised for your justification so that you might be freed from the bondage of sin. And you have been and are being and will be. So, I'm suggesting that we see Christ first and that we meditate on who Christ is and prayerfully seek God to make us more like Him, to make our faces shine with the glory of Christ just as His shines with the glory of His Father. I have to pray. Gracious Father, We thank you for Jesus. Father, we thank you that he is our whole salvation. And Father, we want to be a people who know him because we believe your word. Father, we believe the words of your son who said that those who know him know you. So Father, would you sanctify us by your truth and your word is truth. But Father, would you also teach us how to read it. Father, we are a people who often can approach things with half-heartedness. So Father, I pray that you would draw us to your word to mine out the treasures of your Son in whom are all the wisdom and knowledge of you. Father, let us not be satisfied with reading your word until we have encountered Christ. Father, bring us to his feet. Father, lift our chins that we might behold him where he's seated at your right hand. Help us in all things to see him who is beautiful, majestic, our love. Father, would you so fill our hearts with the word of Christ that the overflow of our mouths is praise and thanksgiving, The overflow of our hands is good deeds, Father, that all of our thoughts are pleasing to you. And Father, we long for the day when this will be so, fully, completely. Father, we love his appearing. We pray this in his holy name, amen.