It's important to set forth what
was happening here because if we're going to understand who
the Lord's teaching and what He's teaching and how it applies,
we have to know something about why He went where He went and
set up Himself like He did so we'll know who it is He's talking
to. Alright? Let's look here first of all
and consider who the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking to. Well,
let's begin reading here in verse 23. Chapter 4, verse 23 of Matthew. Jesus went about all Galilee
teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the
kingdom and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of
disease among the people. And his fame went throughout
all Syria, and they brought unto him all sick people that were
taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were
possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those
that had the palsy, and he healed them. And there followed him
great multitudes of people from Galilee, and Decapolis, and Jerusalem,
and Judea, and beyond Jordan. And seeing the multitudes, he
went up into a mountain, And when He was set, His disciples
came unto Him. Now, the first thing I want you
to realize is there's a difference here between the multitudes and
His disciples. Look over with me in Luke chapter
6. Luke chapter 6. And notice here, that the Lord's
apostles and His disciples were those who, by His grace, believed
on Him and heard His words and followed Him. And the multitudes
here are those who followed Him for various Reasons other than
a grace of his grace working in their heart. Let me show you
that there's a distinguished distinction made Luke 6 17 and
he came down with them that is his apostles and Stood in the
plane and the company of his disciples That's the Apostles
and his disciples those who were the disciple means to be taught
of the Lord These were those who were taught of the Lord the
Apostles were taught of him And a great multitude of people were
there as well, out of all Judea and Jerusalem, from the seacoast
of Tyre and Sidon. Now it tells why the multitude
came, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases.
And they that were vexed with unclean spirits, and they were
healed. And a whole multitude sought to touch him, And the whole multitude sought
to touch Him for there went virtue out of Him and healed them all.
And He lifted up His eyes on His disciples. And then He begins
to teach them. What I want you to see here,
the reason I want to make this distinction is because we won't
understand what He's teaching if we don't enter into this.
You see, The multitudes here show us something about why our
Lord had to correct so much of what had been taught as He delivered
this sermon on the mat. When we see the multitudes, we
understand why He had to correct so much of what had been taught.
The multitudes, it says, came to hear Him, not to believe on
Him. Let me explain what I'm saying. What's the difference in that? They came. You remember the waters
of Bethesda where it says sick people would come or be brought
there and they would sit there beside that pool. And once in
a year, the angel of the Lord would trouble the waters and
they would wait for those waters to be troubled so they could
get into those waters. The Lord Jesus Christ was to
a great multitude of people a novelty, sort of an oddity, just like
the Pool of Bethesda was. And they came to hear Him, but
they didn't come to heed what they heard. And there's multitudes
in our day who do the same thing. They come to hear. They come to His Word. They come
to His service. They come to an assembly where
He is preached. not to hear Him, but to hear
something that will give them a leg up tomorrow with their
fellow man, or in this world, or what have you. They came to
hear Him for those reasons. The multitudes did. And then
it says, they came to be healed of Him, physically, but not spiritually. Well, there were some who came
to be healed of Him physically that were healed spiritually.
But the majority came because they wanted to be healed. They weren't interested in being
His disciples. They weren't interested in confessing Him and following
Him and worshiping Him and submitting to Him. They wanted to have something
done about their flesh to make life easier on them. That's another
reason a great many come to this Word and come to an assembly
of His saints is because they just want something. that's going
to help them according to the flesh, that's just going to make
life a little easier on them. Well, and then it says, they
sought to touch him because when the woman with the issue of blood
touched his garment, they had heard that virtue went out of
him. They heard him say, virtue went out of me. Virtue is really,
you can sum it up and say it's the power and wisdom of Christ. He is the power and wisdom. I
believe that a great many who had heard that and heard him
say that and saw the difference in the woman who had the issue
of blood and was healed and truly worshipped him. It wasn't that
they wanted, they recognized that he had some kind of power
and he had some kind of wisdom. And when they heard him say that
that went out of him, they thought that it went out of him and that
this woman got it apart from him, apart from having him. He's the wisdom and he's the
power of God. We can't have, it's not that
the virtue was diminished from him. It's that when the virtue
went out of him and into her, she became one with him. And
we can't have the power and wisdom of God unless we have Christ.
But there were many, and you know this is true, that if you
heard of somebody walking around on the streets in your town,
and you heard that them had done some miracles like this, and
you heard this power and this wisdom about them, and that he
had said it went out of them and it went into another girl,
and they didn't understand it, they didn't understand what had
taken place there, Many came there because they wanted to
touch Him. They thought, if I can touch Him, maybe I'll get power
and wisdom. Not because they wanted Him who
is the power and wisdom, who is the virtue, because they wanted
to have it themselves apart from Him. So many times in Scripture,
when Scripture speaks of add to your faith virtue and all
of those things, people think that's something that you and
I as sinners can have apart from Christ. And so they look at sinners,
they look at the flesh and they put so much emphasis on an outward,
some kind of outward sign that shows these things. We can't
add those things unless we learn about Him who is those things.
And that's how those things are added. Christ is increased in
our heart, and we learn more of Him, and our faith grows towards
Him. Our virtue grows towards Him. It's from Him and to Him. This
is a growing up into Him. It's not a growing up apart from
Him or away from Him. So that's what I wanted to point
out to you because it says in our text now, back in Matthew
5.1, and seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain. The
Lord Jesus Christ separated Himself from a great many of these multitudes. And it wasn't that there was
not some that heard Him speak. He preached to the multitudes. There was an occasion He went
into a ship and sat down and the multitudes were there for
Him and He preached to them. And there may be some multitudes,
other multitudes were here and He was elevated on this mountain
so they could hear Him speak. That very well may be the case,
but he separated himself from this group so that he wouldn't
be distracted by them and they wouldn't be a distraction to
others so that he could teach those disciples who he was instructing
in power. so that He could instruct them.
And then if others heard Him that He also instructed in power,
so be it. But He knew who His disciples
were. We read Scripture says where
two or three are gathered in His name. There may be hundreds
gathered. There may not be but two or three
gathered in His name that He's gathered. in that midst of hundreds.
And so when He says He lifted up His eyes on His disciples,
He knew who they were even if they didn't know who they were.
And that's who He separated Himself from so that He could teach and
not be distracted and not have distractions from others. Now,
I want you to see something here too about Him going up into a
mountain. You know, the majority of the time when our Lord walked
this earth, when He prayed, He separated from the multitude
and went up into a mountain to pray. And second thing is, here
He's getting sent to teach His disciples. And He goes up into
the mountain away from them and sets Himself to teach them. Well, here's the first thing.
In this setting Himself apart to pray and to teach, I see a
foreshadowing in this of what our Lord has done and is doing
right now. Our Lord Jesus has ascended into
His holy hill, into the holy mountain, into heaven, and He's
seated on the throne of His majesty. And He's doing two things there.
He's making intercession for His people to God. And he's teaching
his people. That's the work of a high priest.
The work of a high priest is to offer up sacrifices, offerings
and sacrifices to God on behalf of the people. And it is to teach
the people. And he's doing both right now
from his throne in glory. And we read in Psalm 24, 3. Who?
Turn there with me. Psalm 24, 3. I want you to see
this. Who shall ascend into the hill
of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy
place? He that hath clean hands and
a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor
sworn deceitfully, he shall receive the blessing from the Lord and
righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation
of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Sila, think
on this long and hard. This is the generation of them
that seek Him. This is their inheritance. This
is what makes up their generation. I don't know how to say that,
but it is that they have clean hands and a pure heart. They've
not lifted up their soul into vanity. They've not sworn deceitfully.
I can't say that about me. I can't say I've never done any
of that, but keep read on. Lift up your heads, O ye gates,
and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory
shall come in. There's who has clean hands and
a pure heart. There's who's never lifted up
his soul unto vanity. There's who is righteous throughly,
through and through, and there is the one in whom all those
things can be said about me. Who is the King of Glory? The
Lord, strong and mighty. The Lord, mighty in battle. Lift
up your heads, O ye gates, even lift them up, ye everlasting
doors, and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King
of Glory? The Lord of hosts. He's the King
of Glory. So, when He ascends to this mountain,
on earth. I keep rehearsing this with you
over and over and over that what he did when he walked this earth
he is doing right now just as surely as when he walked this
earth. Now he's not in a hill somewhere on this earth. He's
ascended to glory and he's all present He's teaching His people
from glory right now through His Word in the heart just like
He did right here. And He's separating His people
just like He separated Himself and called His disciples unto
Him. You read in another place if you'll look at the marginal
reference there to this about Him going into the mountain.
Let me read it to you in Mark 3.12. Listen to this reference, Mark
3.12. Is that right? 3.13, he goeth into a mountain and
calleth unto him whom he would. And they came to him. That's
who he set his eyes on. That's who he drew to him in
this mountain. Now, there may have been others
that came there for these other reasons, but those he set his
eyes on, they came to him for this reason, because he drew
them and he brought them there to teach them. Right before this,
it says he came to his apostles and he said, follow me. And you
know what they did? Just what he said do. And as
we go through this, we're going to see he's going to say, blessed
are those. That's what blessing is. He says,
follow me. And you follow him. You follow
him. Now, let me show you here. If
we want to be a disciple, one taught of Christ, then follow
after him. Don't come looking for some kind
of wisdom for the world, worldly wisdom. He'll give you wisdom
that's beyond this world and it'll help you in this world.
But don't come looking for something that's just going to help you
get along in this life. And not after just mere physical
healing, not after something that's just gonna make your flesh
more comfortable. It will be better for your flesh,
what he teaches you. But don't come for that. Don't
come for the flesh. Not after a carnal power and
a carnal wisdom, but come after him. Come after him. And go to
him in his holy mountain, right now, where you sit, by prayer. Go to Him in His holy mountain.
You have access to Him in the mountain just like these people
did. Just as real as these people had access to Him in that mountain
where He taught. You have access to Him right
now. Go to Him in His holy mountain
and ask Him. Ask Him. If you come seek, I
guarantee you that if you come seeking Him, you come wanting
wisdom from Him. Him to be your wisdom. You'll
have it. You'll have it. He won't upbraid
you. He won't turn you away. He'll
give it. And you'll have it. And go to Him sincerely to have
Him to teach you, not your ways, not something you can take then
and make a boast in, but have Him to teach you of His works
and of His ways. So that's what he says. Notice
here in Matthew 5, verse 1. Seeing the multitudes, He went
up into a mountain, and when He was sent, His disciples came
unto Him. You see that? When it talked
about the multitudes, it gave all those various reasons that
they came, didn't it? But here when it talks about
His disciples, it says they came unto Him. No other reason. No other thing listed. They came
to Him. You see that? Our salvation is
a person. We're coming to a person. Our
salvation is a person. It's not doctrine, though we'll
have doctrine to learn about this person. It's not a system,
though it's perfectly reasonable, this Gospel is. But you're not
going to have it because of reason. You're going to have it because
of Him who's faithful, giving you faith. Because some of these
things, it's just beyond any human comprehension, any logic,
any reason that you and I can come up with. We're going to
believe Him. And this thing is more than than
something that you do as you walk this earth. We're going
to talk about that in our message this morning. But the thing is
this, is holiness and following after holiness. The very essence
of what that is, is following after Christ. Because the more
you follow after Christ, the more you behold that in me, that
is in my flesh, Profits nothing the flesh profits nothing. There's
nothing good in me and the flesh profits nothing and that's the
only way you're gonna you're gonna desire more and more of
Christ and less and less of this world. And that's truly what
holiness is. It's truly what it is. So, I'm
going to give you one more verse and we're going to end right
here. Turn to Psalm 78, verse 1. Psalm 78, verse 1. In a verse of Scripture like
this, we cannot make too much over it. And I think that we
have a tendency to read over it and think we know what it
means. But listen, Psalm 78, verse 1. Give ear, O my people,
to my law. To the letter? It came from Him. It speaks of Him. To the letter
of the law? To that 600 plus precepts He
gave? to the law written on the tablets
of stone? Is that what He's talking about?
That law was given by Him and speaks of Him. Is that what He's
talking about? Is He saying search the Scriptures?
It's His Word. He gave it. Is He saying search
them and find, heed what they say and do those and therein
you'll find life? Is that what it is? Well, a man
can go to all of these the same way that the multitudes came
but not to Him. These things came from God our
Savior. But a man can go to the letter
of the law, he can search the Scriptures for life, and never
give ear, never come to Him. If you won't hear what I'm saying
to you right now, but your heart says, you feel that bitterness
in your heart that I'm taking away something that means more
to you than anything, your law obedience or the things that
you've searched out and done because of what you saw in the
Scriptures or whatever, then you're not coming to Him. You're
not hearing Him. Listen to me. Read it out now.
Give ear, O my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words
of my mouth. I just wish I could. I wish I
could. I wish I could give it to you
in your heart the way those words ring in my heart. And see the
difference in coming like the multitudes came and coming to
hear the words of His mouth. of a person's mouth, of the Lord
who is speaking. Oh, it's a drastic difference. A drastic difference. His disciples
came unto Him. Now look back at Matthew 5.2.
Now listen to this. They came unto Him, verse 2,
and He opened His mouth and He taught them. You know what we're going to
see as we go through this? That what He taught them out
of His mouth when they came to Him, to a person, was altogether
different than what they had been taught when they came for
all those other reasons, looking at all those other things, and
came to all those other things. They were of Him, but they weren't
coming to Him. But when they came to Him, He
opened His mouth and He taught them His Word. Alright, come
to Him. I want you to come to Him. Alright.