This sermon was preached on Sunday, 7 September, 2025.
Text
Matthew 5.1-12
Introduction
This morning we are returning to the Gospel of Matthew, and beginning an exposition of what we know as the Sermon on the Mount.
It was Augustine who gave it that title 1600 years ago, and it’s stuck.
I want to do two things this morning, in our time together.
[1] I want to introduce the entire Sermon to you.
[2] I want to introduce the first section, known as the Beatitudes.
If you can remember back to the first part of this year, when we looked at the first four chapters of Matthew’s account of the life of Christ, we saw that Jesus fulfilled many Old Testament prophecies, types, and shadows.
Types and Shadows
Most importantly, we identified Him as:
The Greater Adam, as the Head of the New Covenant people, who defeats the devil
The Greater Moses, as the Mediator and law giver of the New Covenant, who leads a greater Exodus
And the Greater David, as the King of the Kingdom of Heaven, who will rule with righteousness and justice forever
Then we spent four months in Isaiah, where was saw Christ as the Messiah, the promised King who will sit on David’s throne and rule over a renewed kingdom.
Now we turn to Matthew 5 and the Sermon on the Mount to hear the King speak.
Moses had gone up on the mountain to receive the law from the hand of God. Here we see Christ
…went up on a mountain…then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying:
He doesn’t receive the law, He gives it.
A greater than Moses is here.
And when we listen to His words in this Sermon, what we find is that:
Christ’s Word is the scepter by which He rules His people, teaching us the New Covenant blessings of life as citizens of His glorious Kingdom.
The Sermon as Kingdom Law
Make no mistake, this Sermon is the law of the Kingdom.
In it, Christ explains how we are to live our lives as citizens of His New Covenant Kingdom.
We find the moral law of the Old Covenant, the Sinai Covenant, brought forward into the New Covenant, but explicitly applied to the life of the inner man, not simply the external, outward, actions in society, but the desires of the heart, the thoughts of the mind, and the words of the mouth.
The life of the forgiven sinner, adopted by God, welcomed into New Covenant in union with Christ, and made a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, cannot be separated from holiness throughout, inner and outer, attitude and action, belief and behavior, conception and conduct, design and deed, ethic and exploit.
These are two sides of the same coin. They make up the whole person, body and soul.
Unlike worldly kingdoms which are ruled from the outside, and only to a minor degree affect the thoughts and attitudes of the inner man… Christ’s kingdom is an inside-out kingdom. He rules in the hearts of His New Covenant people, and therefore governs both soul and body.
In this first Sermon, Christ clearly articulates what is expected of His citizens.
As Sinclair Ferguson has written:
The message of the Sermon on the Mount is, ‘This is what it means to repent and to belong to the kingdom of heaven.’ The sermon is a description of the lifestyle of those who belong to that kingdom. [Ferguson. The Sermon On The Mount, 2]
And since the kingdom is the rule of the king, to be a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven is to belong to the people among whom Christ’s reign has already begun.
Which is to say, that each citizen of the Kingdom is in direct relationship with the King. He rules and reigns within them.
In chapter one of Matthew we saw that Jesus is the long awaited King.
In chapter 28, we find that all authority in heaven and on earth is His.
So when Jesus says:
Blessed are you when they…persecute you…for My sake. [v11]
And
You have heard that it was said…but I say to you…[v21,22]
Jesus is claiming both centrality and authority.
He is the One who gives meaning to your life, as a citizen of His kingdom.
He is the One with the authority to interpret and apply God’s word.
And by the end of the sermon, in 7.21-23, Jesus claims for Himself the role of Judge over every person’s final destiny, based on whether a person is known by Him, has experienced intimate relationship to Him as their King.
Savior and Lord
Away with this nonsense of having Christ as Savior, but not as Lord!
To have Christ as Savior is to belong to the Kingdom of God. And one cannot possibly live as a citizen of the Kingdom and reject Him as King!
He is your King, or you do not belong to the Kingdom!
And if He is your King, then you are bound to obey Him in all things. And…
Christ’s Word is the scepter by which He rules His people, teaching us the New Covenant blessings of life as citizens of His glorious Kingdom.
The Sermon on the Mount is simply a description of life as a citizen of the Kingdom. If you reject Christ’s authority as King in the Sermon, then you lack the fundamental evidence that Jesus Christ is your Savior.
Kingdom Life
But, the Sermon sets a standard… so high it’s unachievable!
Matthew 5.20
The Pharisees tithed from their herb gardens! They kept the law with outward rigor. You must keep it both outwardly and inwardly!
That doesn’t sound like good news. It sounds like law. It sounds like a recipe for despair, for failure, for hopelessness.
And it’s true, we can’t avoid some sense of guilt as we read Jesus’ words. We all fall far short of the lifestyle of holiness He calls His citizens to.
But the goal of the Sermon isn’t to defeat us. It’s to give us hope! It sets before us the New Covenant blessings of life as citizens of His glorious Kingdom.
A kingdom which has come near… and is in us, as He reigns as King in the hearts of His people.
At the same time a Kingdom which is yet to come in its fulness, and for which we are instructed to pray:
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done.
On earth as it is in heaven. [Matthew 6.10]
Throughout the Sermon Jesus contrasts the way of life in His kingdom with that of the kingdoms of this world.
The struggle is that we are to live as citizens of the Kingdom of heaven, while residing as foreign residents of an earthly kingdom.
We speak the same language, we eat the same food, we work the same vocations, but there are a multitude of subtle differences between the culture of the Kingdom of Heaven and the culture in which we live on earth.
It’s confusing, complicated, at times counter-cultural, and often accompanied with conflict.
As a Christian, one who bears the name of the King, you will often feel like you don’t belong here on earth, and that’s because you don’t. We’re pilgrims in this world (I Peter 1.1).
You will often feel a longing for your homeland, the Celestial City.
But this Sermon is not about life in the coming Kingdom. It’s about kingdom life in a fallen world.
It’s about how to live as foreign residents… in the kingdoms of this world, while maintaining our national identity as citizens of heaven.
The sermon is demanding…it’s true. But it’s also exhilarating! It speaks to that sense of longing and belonging that we have as Christians.
It answers the questions we all ask about the Christian life…
What is our place in the world?
What is the place of the law of God in our lives?
How are we to relate to the citizens of the world around us?
How are we to pray and communicate with our King?
How are we to use the foreign currency and the treasures of this world?
And what might the exchange rate be?
How are we to deal with anxiety, fear, and worry, in a world awash in these things?
How are we to recognize imposters, and exercise spiritual discernment?
And how can we build a sure foundation for the future?
This sermon is highly relevant to our lives today, as Christians.
The Messiah of God, promised by Isaiah and the other Old Testament prophets, has come.
He has taken up residence in the temple of God, which is the church.
The hearts of the people are His, and He rules His people with the scepter of His Word.
He is not a distant King in a faraway land, but an ever present Monarch, in intimate relationship with His people.
And He begins His Sermon by…
…teaching us the New Covenant blessings of life as citizens of His glorious Kingdom.
The King sits to teach
Matthew introduces the Sermon by setting the stage.
In chapter 4 he told us:
Matthew 4.23-25
As we’ve noted previously, this is a mixed multitude of Jews and Gentiles. Galilee and Decapolis were both home to many people that had been resettled into the region by Assyria, back in Isaiah’s day. While Jerusalem and Judea were home mostly to Jews and Roman officials.
Matthew 5.1
Jesus went up on a mountain and sat down to teach.
This was the common posture of synagogue teachers, they would stand to read the Law, then sit to teach it.
Jesus said in chapter 23.2
The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.
We still use the language of endowed “chairs” in universities.
By sitting, Jesus indicated to the crowd that He was going to teach them as one who had authority.
And the local of a mountain, brings to mind Moses receiving the law on Mount Sinai.
So here is Jesus, sitting as a teacher with authority, about to expound the law of His kingdom.
Verse two contains a Hebrew idiom.
Matthew 5.2
We see this language of opening the mouth used throughout Scripture when something important is about to be said.
In Acts, we see it used of the teaching of Philip (Acts 8.35), Peter (Acts 10.34), and Paul (Acts 18.14, Eph 6.19).
In the Old Testament, we find it in Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and Ezekiel.
In Proverbs 8, Wisdom,
takes her stand on the top of the high hill, [Proverbs 8.2]
She opens her mouth, cries out, and says:
`Listen, for I will speak of excellent things,
And from the opening of my lips will come right things;
For my mouth will speak truth; [Proverbs 8.6-7]
Christ, the living embodiment of the Wisdom of God, does the same.
He goes up on a mountain, opens His mouth and teaches as one with the authority of a King:
Christ’s Word is the scepter by which He rules His people, teaching us the New Covenant blessings of life as citizens of His glorious Kingdom.
The Beatitudes
Which brings us to the Beatitudes, in verses 3-12.
Now, despite what you may have heard, the Beatitudes are not about our attitude.
The word beatitude doesn’t appear in scripture. It’s derived from the Latin word beatus, which means blessed.
And since each of these statements opens with,
Blessed are…
They came to be known as the Beatitudes, or the Blesseds.
Which means, we ought to ask the question: what does it mean to be blessed.
In preparation for preaching this text, I read Sinclair Ferguson’s book, The Sermon on the Mount. It’s a helpful book, but one thing that made me chuckle was his Scottishness.
Addressing this question of what it means to be blessed, he wrote:
We do not normally speak about people as being blessed. [11]
Maybe not in Scotland, Sinclair, but here in America, particularly in the South where my wife grew up, we often do speak this way.
We say:
Bless his heart.
Just before we say something depreciating about a person.
What we mean by it is usually a criticism.
I don’t think that’s what Jesus means by it here.
So the question is, what does Jesus mean when he says:
Blessed are those…
Blessed is not the same as happy
You’ve probably heard that it means something akin to happy.
But as D.A. Carson has said:
As for “happy”, it will not do for the Beatitudes, having been devalued in modern usage. The Greek “describes a state not of inner feeling on the part of those to whom it is applied, but of blessedness from an ideal point of view in the judgment of others”. [Carson. EBC, 8.131]
It’s not primarily about a feeling of happiness in the person, but it’s a statement of something from outside, applied to the person.
Happiness is one of the results of blessedness, but not the sum total of it.
The Greek word means, one who receives divine favor and is therefore privileged and happy.
But we need to consider the Old Testament context for Jesus’ words. Consider the parallels to Psalm 1.
Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper. [Psalm 1.1-3]
Blessed is…he shall.
It’s the same formula Jesus uses in the Sermon on the Mount. And Hebrew word for blessed, one of several used throughout the Old Testament, means to walk straight, or be guided in a straight way.
Someone who is guided in a straight way may be happy as a result, but it’s not the primary meaning of the word. Happiness is the result of being blessed.
Blessed in the Old Testament
So let’s take a look at how the Bible uses this idea of blessing and blessedness.
The fist time it’s used is in Genesis 1.
On the fifth day, God created the sea creatures and the birds.
And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” [Genesis 1.22]
We see the same thing on day six, after the creation of mankind.
Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” [Genesis 1.28]
In Matthew, blessed is a noun paired with the “to be” verb are, describing the state of the subject of the sentence, they.
They are blessed.
It’s how they are, the state in which they exist.
In Genesis, however, blessed is a verb, describing an action on God’s part. He blesses, or bestows blessing on.
The nature of that blessing is the favor of God imparting to His creature the power to do the thing they are blessed for.
The creatures and mankind were blessed by God with the power to procreate. Man particularly was blessed by God to subdue the earth and take dominion over the creatures.
We find similarly that God blessed Noah after the flood.
But two important texts for our understanding are Genesis 2.3 and Genesis 12.3.
In Genesis 2.3, God blessed the seventh day.
Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
This means something different that the other instances. In the other cases, God blessing His creatures endowed them with power to do that for which He blessed them.
That is not the case with a day. A day isn’t empowered to do anything.
He blessed the day because He rested from all His work on the seventh day. And He blessed it for man.
The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. [Mark 2.27]
He blessed the seventh day, to be a day on which man was to rest. That’s important.
Herman Bavinck defines blessedness as:
The unity of thinking and thought and completely above all craving, striving, and willing…absolute blessedness is a condition of rest. [Bavinck. Reformed Dogmatics, 2.211]
In other words, to be blessed is to know shalom, to be at peace in the soul. To have rest, contentment, wholeness, completeness, and joy. And since God is the ultimate good, shalom is only to be found in communion with Him.
And the person who communes with God by resting in Christ has peace with God, is brought to completion in Him, and is made whole by the benefits and graces of redemption, above all forgiveness.
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
Whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity,
And in whose spirit there is no deceit. [Psalm 32.1-2]
This is blessedness, to know God, to be known by Him, to have peace with Him, to enjoy the light of His favor, forgiveness, and fellowship.
So now, return to Genesis with me for a moment.
In chapter 12, God made a promise to Abraham.
Now the LORD had said to Abram:
“Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
[Genesis 12.1-3]
Here we see the promise of the blessing to all men through the Seed of Abraham. There is the promise of blessing and the threat of cursing.
We’ve already seen that in the Biblical story in Genesis 2 and 3. God blessed man and commissioned him to tend the garden, expand it’s borders, and fill the earth with worshippers.
We call this the Covenant of Works with Adam.
And when Adam broke the covenant, God pronounced a curse.
Covenants are always attended with the promise of blessings, and the threat of curses.
The covenant with Abraham contains a blessing for those who regard Abraham’s Seed, who is Christ (Galatians 3.16), favorably; and a curse for those who despise Him, or hold Him in contempt.
The Old Covenant, made with Israel through Moses also contained blessings and curses. They are annunciated most clearly in Deuteronomy 28.
In verses 1-14 we find blessings for those who keep the covenant.
And in verses 15-68 we find curses for those who break the covenant.
Listen to a few verses.
Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the LORD your God will set you high above all nations of the earth.
And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the LORD your God:
Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country.
Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks.
Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.
The LORD will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.
The LORD will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which the LORD your God is giving you.
The LORD will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in His ways. [Deuteronomy 28.1-9]
It sounds very similar to the way Christ phrases the first part of the Sermon on the Mount. Blessing, peace, rest, and wholeness due to the favor of God, for those who keep the covenant.
The second half of the chapter is not so cheery.
But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country.
Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks.
Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.
The LORD will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me. [Deuteronomy 28.15-20]
Curses, the lack of peace, rest, and wholeness, for those who do not have God’s favor, because they have not kept the covenant.
The curses in Jesus’ Sermon come at the end, in chapter 7, verses 21-27.
The curses are for those who do not know Christ.
And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ [Matthew 7.23]
For those who do know Christ, when we enter the everlasting Kingdom, we will find that:
There shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. [Revelation 22.3-4]
There is no more curse, not because we have been good enough and kept God’s covenant, but because Christ became a curse for us.
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. [Galatians 3.13-14]
All those descended from Adam are guilty of the same sin of rebellion against our Creator, and we are all under the curse because of our sin.
Yet Christ took the curse upon Himself, bore it to the cross,
And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. [Colossians 2.14]
The curses went to the grave with Christ, and He left it there when He rose triumphantly to life.
And now,
Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him. [Psalm 2.12]
They have peace with God, their sins are forgiven, they find rest for their souls in Christ.
To trust Him is to have faith. But what does that mean?
The classic definition of faith is found in Hebrews 11.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. [Hebrews 11.1]
Notice those words, substance and evidence. Faith isn’t blind hope. It’s based on truth. The truth of Christ, found in the Scriptures.
God became man, Immanuel – God with us. He took to Himself a fully human nature, lived a life of perfect obedience under the law, and earned all the blessings promised by the covenant.
Then He took upon Himself the sins of all the elect, suffered the curses of the covenant on the cross, including the final curse, death.
He was buried.
Then three days later, He left sin, and death, and the curse in the grave and rose victorious to enter His rest, His blessedness.
He took our curse, and He gives us His rest, His blessings.
Faith is trusting His work, His perfect righteousness, His life, His death, His resurrection.
John Piper puts it this way:
Faith is the confidence we feel in all that God promises to be and do for us in all the tomorrows of our lives. [Piper. This Momentary Marriage, 129]
It’s confidence in the promises, the promises of what He will be for us, and what He will do for us.
Promises like these:
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. [Jeremiah 31.33; Hebrews 8.10]
For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.”
[Exodus 29.45; 2 Corinthians 6.16]
I will be a Father to you,
And you shall be My sons and daughters,
Says the LORD Almighty.
[2 Samuel 7.14; 2 Corinthians 6.18]
For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.
[Isaiah 27.9; Hebrews 8.12]
Conclusion
And Piper says :
Faith is the confidence we feel in all that God promises to be and do for us in all the tomorrows of our lives. [Piper. This Momentary Marriage, 129]
In all the tomorrows of our lives.
I want you to see something here in the Beatitudes that I’m sure we’ll be talking about more in the weeks to come, and that is the present reality and future promise.
Matthew 5.3-12
There is a present reality.
Citizens of the New Covenant Kingdom are blessed. The Kingdom of Heaven is theirs, now!
If you know Christ, if you have obtained citizenship via union with Him by faith, then that citizenship entitles you to certain rights and privileges now, even though you currently reside in a foreign land.
You have the right and privilege to come before the throne of grace with boldness in His name, to have your petitions heard by the King, to obtain mercy from Him and find grace to help in your time of need. (Hebrews 4.16)
You have the right and privilege wear the livery (uniform) of your Master.
Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil… Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; [Ephesians 6.11,14-17]
Of course, needing grace in time of need, and needing armor to stand against the wiles of the devil, indicates that all is not peaceful in this world.
There are troubles, temptations, spiritual attacks, persecution.
But there is blessing to be had now. In spite of all the troubles of this life, there is blessedness, a condition of peace in the soul, to be had, when you trust in Christ, rest in His finished work.
You can stop striving for acceptance, because
He made us accepted in the Beloved. [Ephesians 1.6]
You can stop craving things, because
God … has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, [Ephesians 1.3]
You can have rest for your weary sole, because Jesus has promised:
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. [Matthew 11.29]
This is the present reality of those who are citizens of the Kingdom. They are blessed in this life.
But there is a future promise as well.
We shall be comforted.
We shall inherit the earth.
We shall be filled with righteousness.
We shall obtain mercy.
We shall see God.
We shall be called the sons of God.
These are promises from the mouth of Him who cannot lie.
Christ’s Word is the scepter by which He rules His people, teaching us the New Covenant blessings of life as citizens of His glorious Kingdom.
Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good;
Blessed is the man who trusts in Him! [Psalm 34.8]