The Lord has just begun His public
ministry. You know, there's some awesome
things to consider about Christ in His incarnation, God in human
flesh. It's a mind-boggling thought,
isn't it? Something we cannot really explain. We know it's
true. It's just something, you know,
when we think about the word was made flesh, and then the
Bible says he grew in wisdom and stature. Now he's God, and
God is omniscient. That means God knows everything.
He is the God who decrees all things, and yet this person,
The Lord Jesus Christ grew in wisdom and stature. And how do
you explain that? Well, we can't. We just know
what the Bible says. He grew up as the perfect God
man. And then around 29 or 30 years
old, he came up on the scene and he appeared when John the
Baptist was baptizing outside of Jerusalem. And that's recorded
over in Matthew chapter 3 and verse 13 when it says, then cometh
Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John to be baptized of him.
And you remember what happened. John said, well, John recognized
him by the power of the spirit. John recognized who this person
was. This is the Messiah. And of course,
you know, John the Baptist had come according to prophecy himself. Malachi chapter 3 and Malachi
chapter 4 speaks of John the Baptist as the voice, the forerunner
of Christ and how he would come, he would be the appearance of
Elijah. Now, you know, a lot of people
say, well that means Elijah's coming back again. No, Elijah
represents the school of prophecy in the scripture and John the
Baptist personally was the fulfillment of that prophecy. In other words,
all the prophets spoke of the future Messiah coming for the
salvation of his people. And John the Baptist was the
capstone. He was the fulfillment of that. And so he said, I'm
not worthy to baptize you. You need to be baptizing me.
And of course, John was instructed then by the Lord himself, and
Christ said, allow it to be so. For thus it becometh us, or it
behooveth us, to fulfill all righteousness." Now, that's the
statement of his mission. Now, we're in the Gospel of Matthew.
So, well, and you know, after his baptism, you know what happened.
The Lord, the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove, and the
Father spoke from heaven, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm
well pleased. And then Christ went up on the
mountain to be tempted, tested of the devil. And of course,
the devil was no match for him. You know, years ago, they started
a religious TV station up in northeastern Kentucky, and these
silly preachers got on there, and they had a dummy with horns
and a thing, and they called it the devil, and they started
beating up on it. You know, I'm just gonna beat up on the devil.
I thought to myself then, I said, son, if you ever confronted the
devil personally, he'd twist you up like a pretzel. That's
the truth. Remember what we talked about
in The book of Jude, the Lord rebuked thee. I'm no match for
the devil, and you aren't either. But I'll tell you, the devil's
no match for our Savior. And there's your key, right there.
The victory belongs to him, the world. We're not even a match
for ourselves, the flesh. But Christ is overcome. So you
read about him, and of course you see the ways of the devil
there. Think about the devil. quoting
scripture to the incarnate word of God. So should it ever surprise
us that false preachers quote scripture, read the Bible? The devil quoted it to Christ.
Who's the revealer? The word of God himself. Well,
as he began, he called his disciples in and all of that, and then
in verse 23, look at chapter four in verse 23, It says, And
Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues,
and preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Now it's important that
we understand the gospel of the kingdom. Healing all manner of
sickness and all manner of disease among the people. The healing
ministry of Christ was an affirmation of his power and authority as
the king of kings. That's what the healing ministry
was all about. It wasn't about just relieving
illnesses. He healed the sick. He gave the
blind sight. He gave the deaf hearing. He
gave the dumb was able to speak. He made the lame walk. He even
raised the dead. But all of that, all of that
is great and is glorious and is desirous of things like that
that we are, All of that was for something much, much, much,
much more important. And that was the salvation revelation
of the gospel of the kingdom. And that's what it's all about.
That's why I've always talked to people. You know, you see
these faith healers today. First of all, their healing is
always in question, isn't it? You know, his healing, Christ's
healing was never in question. There was never, when he healed
a sick person, there was never a question in people's minds,
and I know people lied on him now, I know all of that, but
there was never a question in those people's minds that this
is a sick person and now that person was healed. They didn't
have to call all that and get proof. I mean, it was obvious. You see that throughout the gospels,
where he healed and all of that. But it was all for the purpose
of something infinitely and eternally more important, and that's the
Gospel of the Kingdom. Now, the Gospel of Matthew is
a very Jewish book. You know, some people will wonder
why you have four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew
is mainly written to the Jews, and it's a very Jewish book.
What Matthew emphasizes in his Gospel is that Jesus of Nazareth
Jesus of Nazareth, the one that they saw grow up, that He is
the fulfillment of all the prophecies and all the types and all the
pictures and all the promises of the Old Testament. And you
see more quotations from the Old Testament scriptures in Matthew
than any other gospel because it's written to the Jews for
that reason. Remember how Matthew started
off back over here? He does it in three ways. I've
got them listed there in your lesson. But he first talks about
the glorious person of Christ. Who is Jesus Christ? And look
at Matthew 1.1, the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the
son of David, the son of Abraham. That's messianic, you see. He's
identifying him as the Messiah. And then look at Matthew 1 and
verse 17. So all the generations from Abraham
to David are 14 generations, and from David until the carrying
away into Babylon are 14 generations, and from the carrying away into
Babylon unto Christ are 14 generations. What's Matthew doing? Is he just
trying to give a math lesson there? No, he's showing that
Christ, and that word Christ means the anointed one, that's
Messiah, Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah. Here is the one
who was set up before the foundation of the world to be the savior
of sinners. He's the one to whom God gave
a people and conditioned all of their salvation upon him.
He is God in human flesh. And that's what Matthew said,
look down at verse 21. She shall bring forth a son,
thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people
from their sins. That's what Messiah is. And then
verse 23, ask yourself the question, is he able to do that? Well, verse 23, and he quotes
from the book of Isaiah. Behold, a virgin shall be with
child and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name
Emmanuel, which being interpreted as God with us. That's how he
starts it out, the glorious person of Christ. He then goes, and
I'm not talking about, you know, point one, I've got point one,
point two, and point three, and that's not the way Matthew does
it, he just says it, you know, and it's all intermingled, and
it's all emphasized throughout the whole book. But secondly,
the miraculous mission of Christ. What would he accomplish for
his people? Now there's the rub that people
need to understand, there's the issue that people need to understand
today. It's not just who he is now, but what did he come to
do, and what did he actually accomplish? And of course, we've
already seen it there in verse 21 of Matthew 1. He shall save
his people from their sins. But over there, and I mentioned,
that is baptism, Matthew chapter 3. He said, in Matthew chapter
3, he says, suffer it to be so, verse 15, for thus it becometh
us to fulfill all righteousness. That's what he's going to do.
He's going to fulfill all righteousness. How's he going to do that? By
his obedience unto death, for the sins of his people charged,
accounted, reckoned, imputed to him. He's going to suffer,
he's going to bleed, he's going to die. He's going to, as the
surety and substitute of his people, he's going to take upon
himself the full measure of God's wrath upon him for his people. That's his mission. Now did he
accomplish that? Yes. The scripture says he did.
It's finished. For by one offering he hath perfected
them that are sanctified forever. Hebrews 10, 14. He accomplished
it. He was made a curse for us. He
was made sin. Why? That we might be made the
righteousness of God in him. So in his obedience unto death
as the surety and substitute of his people, he fulfilled all
righteousness, satisfied justice against their sins based on our
sins imputed to him. And what do we have in return?
We have his righteousness imputed to us. And that's the mission of Christ. What I did is I put some passages
in Matthew there, but then I listed a few of the Old Testament passages
that kind of relate to that. But you understand, I could have
filled pages and pages with verses of Scripture on this. And then
the third thing that Matthew emphasizes, the glorious person
of Christ, the miraculous mission of Christ, The third thing is
the wonderful message of Christ. What did he preach? What did
he say? What did he teach? Last few weeks
we've been talking about where Christ in John chapter 8, he
said, if you continue in my word, you're my disciples indeed. Well,
what was his word? Well, Matthew tells us here in
Matthew 4.23, the gospel of the kingdom. The gospel of the kingdom. Now, the word gospel means what? Good news. This is good news. And yet we know this, and we
know it from God's testimony revealed in his word, it's not
good news to everybody. And why not? Well, because it's
an exclusive bit of news. You see, if I got up here this
morning, and I told people, I said, now there's 20 different ways
to get to heaven. There's the Buddha way, there's
the Mohammed way, there's the Methodist way, there's the Baptist
way, there's all these different ways, and you choose your way. Not too many people are gonna
get angry, are they? But if I get up here and say there's one way,
just one, And every other way is a way of what? Death. Then
people get to thinking. Well, you know, he preached that
in the Sermon on the Mount. He said the straight and narrow
way, Matthew chapter 7, the broad road that leads to destruction,
one way, that way is the way of righteousness, and it can
only be found in Christ. He said, I am the way, the truth,
and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. Now, if
I tell you this, though, let's go further. If I say not only
is there one way, the way of the cross, the way of the blood,
the way of righteousness imputed, wherein Christ fulfilled his
mission and secured the salvation of his people, that's the one
way. And every other way is not only wrong, but it's evil. Remember John 3, 19? Lights come
into the world and men love darkness. They hate the light. because
their deeds are evil. Why is it evil? Because it denies
the glory of God. Christ is the revelation of the
glory of God, and the glory of God is in His revelation of Himself,
of how He can be both a just God and a Savior, based on one
way, the righteousness of His Son, the God-man. Every of the
ways, it denies the glory of God. It's evil because it denies
Christ. Christ came to this earth and
took upon himself a sinless human nature and walked in a humble
way. You might even say a humiliating
way. Philippians chapter 2 describes
it that way. He made himself of no reputation.
Now think about it. We spend our lives building up
our reputations. He came to earth to make himself
of no reputation. And in the form of a man, a weak
man, and he walked this earth to do
what? To suffer, to bleed, to die for the sins of his people
and establish the only righteousness whereupon God could be just and
justified. That's what he did. Now, if I
say that I can be made righteous any other way, that's a denial
of him. That's evil. And it's evil because
it's pride, it's self-righteousness. Over in Matthew chapter 5 and
verse 20, he makes this statement. He says, for I say unto you that
except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the
scribes and the Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the
kingdom of heaven. That's part of the theme of the
Sermon on the Mount. Christ says, I'm going to show
you what righteousness really is, and in that process, I'm
going to show you that whatever your most notable, admired, and
most followed religious teachers are teaching you, you've got
to have one that exceeds that, or you will not be saved. Now, we all have religious people
we admire, don't we? I do. What are they teaching? These scribes and Pharisees were
much admired. They were the main leaders and
teachers of the law. And so you need to understand
that. Now what's important here in
this introduction is that you understand not only who's speaking
here, which is the Lord himself, but who he's speaking to. And
his audience is mainly made up of lost religious Jews who had
been taught wrong concerning the Old Covenant law by the scribes
and the Pharisees. And one of his aims here is to
set things straight. The king and his kingdom. Now
think about it. It had already been established
back after the fall that salvation was and is by God's grace based
upon the righteousness of the promised Messiah. That's what
had been established. We take it all the way up to
Abraham. What is that, about a thousand
years? Somewhere around there. There's a thousand years to the
flood and then Abraham later. Well, when God revealed himself
to Abraham in that beautiful covenant, The gospel of the kingdom
didn't change. God didn't come to Abraham and
say, now Abraham, I'm going to reveal to you a new way, another
way. Because the way I've tried to
do it so far, that hadn't worked. That's dispensationalism. No,
that's not the way it is. Same gospel, same way of salvation. The Lord said, Abraham saw my
day. He rejoiced to see my day. He
saw and he was glad. John 8. Abraham believed God
and it was what? Imputed to him for righteousness. What's the it there? The work
of the Messiah, the merits of Christ. That's what was promised.
And then from Abraham go up to Moses. Now from Abraham to Moses
was about 400 years. God gave the law. He gave it
through Moses. John 117 says the law came through
Moses. Grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ. Moses represents the law. In fact, the law is
sometimes referred to simply by the name Moses. I gave you
an example here in John chapter 5, where the Lord, he talked
about the scriptures. He told the Pharisees, you search
the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life,
for they are they which testify of me. And he said, you have
one who will judge you, Moses, in whom you trust. He's talking
about the law there. The old covenant law. Now here's
what you have to understand. Now he's going to talk about
the old covenant law in this sermon on the map. The old covenant law, Ten Commandments,
ceremonies, all of that, was not given to Israel as a way
of salvation in and of itself. It was given to them by God as
a convicting law to show them what? Their sinfulness, their
depravity, the fact that no sinner No imperfect person, no ruined,
fallen sinner can be saved by their efforts to keep the law.
That's why it was given. And so, the law then, along with,
now you think about it, here's the law, the old covenant law. In that law, during their time,
that law lasted about 1,500 years from Sinai to the cross, what
the book of Revelation in chapter 9 calls the Reformation. It's
not talking about John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli and Martin
Luther, it's talking about Jesus Christ coming to fulfill it,
to abolish it by way of fulfillment. So under that law, You had, during
Israel's time, and it was a time of rebellion now, it was a time
of unbelief, there were some moments where you could say they
had a godly king, and maybe the majority of the leaders taught
the law the right way, but they were very few. And even those
godly kings, you know, what do we see recorded in scripture
about them, that they were just weak, sinful men, just like all
of us. I mean, when you think of the
glory days of Israel, what king do you think of? David. I read about David. What happened to David? What
did David say on his dying bed? 2 Samuel 23, verse 5. Although
my house, my family, my kingdom be not so with God, God has made
an everlasting covenant with me, ordered in all things and
sure, and this is all my hope and all my salvation. That's
the sinful man looking to Christ for salvation. So you see what
I'm saying? But there were some believing
priests. The priests taught the law. And
there were prophets that God sent them. What did Christ say
about the prophets of Israel? Look at verse 11 of chapter 5.
He says, blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute
you, say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice,
be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For
so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Somebody say, oh, they just love
those prophets in Israel. Yeah, they persecuted them. Why? because the prophets taught them
the gospel of the kingdom, which was to be established, fulfilled,
and founded upon the Messiah who was to come, who would fulfill
all righteousness, and not by their law keeping, not by their
circumcision, not by their physical connection with Abraham. So what happened was, Galatians,
I think it's chapter three and verse 19 tells us that the law
was a schoolmaster to lead them unto Christ. Now let me give
you the main thing that I believe the Apostle Paul was saying in
that passage. Remember that laughter that he
goes in, he says they were under tutors and now they've grown
and all that? The law was a schoolmaster, a
tutor, to lead them unto Christ. Now the main issue I believe
he's teaching there is this. God gave that old covenant law
to that nation as a means of his providentially keeping them
together as a nation, even in captivity, and bring them up
to the time of Christ. And then, of course, after Christ
came and did his work, you know, they were dispersed. So it was
their schoolmaster to lead them up to Christ. I believe that's
talking mainly about that providential dealings of God with them of
1,500 years, keeping that sinful, rebellious nation And understand
when I say that now, I'm not saying we're any better because
we aren't, as all of us, to bring them up to the time of Christ.
But in each generation during that 1,500 years, there was a
remnant of believers. Remember Romans 11, a remnant
according to the election of grace? And God, the Holy Spirit,
used the law to convict them, to show them their need of salvation
by grace. Salvation by Christ. When the
Holy Spirit in the new birth brings us in conviction, and
that's what it is, it's a conviction, He convinces you of something
that you cannot get away from. And He shows you and shows me
that there is no hope of salvation, of justification, of holiness,
of glory, based on my works, that I have no other hope but
Christ. And that's what this sermon's
all about. Now, the scribes and the Pharisees
were the main leaders who taught the people the false message
of salvation by deeds of the law. Salvation conditioned on
sinners. We say that a lot. Righteousness
by works. And he tells them, he says that's
the broad road that leads to destruction. As we read a while
ago in Matthew 5.20, he said, except your righteousness exceed
theirs. You see, Christ came along and said that our works
under the law have nothing to do with the righteousness that
justifies us before God. And you understand now, what
did the Pharisees say of him? He said, well, he's teaching
people to break the law. That's why he said there in verse
17 of Matthew 5, think not that I've come to destroy the law
and the prophets, I've come to fulfill it. He kept the law perfectly. Well, that's the gospel of the
kingdom. That's the theme of the Sermon on the Mount, the
law and the gospel. The law to convict us, the gospel
to drive us to Christ for righteousness. Now look on the back of your
lesson, I have three things there about the kingdom of heaven. First of all, the kingdom of
heaven and the kingdom of God are the same thing. All right? Christ preaching the gospel of
the kingdom. He's the king, and he talks about the kingdom. And
the first thing there that you need to understand is, first
of all, Christ is the king of creation. He's the king of the
universe. He rules over all, even the wicked
for the day of evil, the scripture says. Ultimately, every knee is going
to bow and every tongue is going to confess. But the gospel of
the kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God here is specifically
talking about the reign of Christ As the surety, the substitute,
the advocate, the mediator, the lord, the savior of his people,
his church. That's the gospel of the king.
That's the kingdom he's going to be talking about. It's the kingdom of grace. It's
the kingdom of righteousness. You know, he has a righteous
scepter, the scripture says. He rules in righteousness. The
foundation of this kingdom is the imputed righteousness of
Christ. That's the foundation of my salvation. Yours too, if
you're saved. So what he's talking about is
his dominion over his church. Now again, he rules over the
whole universe. But this is specifically talking
about salvation. And then secondly, the kingdom
of heaven is a kingdom of salvation whose citizens are blessed as
sinners saved by grace, redeemed by the blood of Christ, justified
by his righteousness imputed, called into the kingdom by the
invincible summons of the king, and he's gonna talk about blessed
are, blessed are, blessed are. And we're gonna talk about that
next week. And then thirdly, the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom
of the heart. It's a spiritual kingdom. He
told his disciples, the kingdom of heaven is within you. That's
the heart. That's the rule of Christ over
the hearts of his people. And when we go to the Beatitudes
here, we're going to see that every description of those who
are blessed describes their spiritual state made so by Christ through
the Holy Spirit. And he'll tell them. Now, not
everybody will enter the kingdom of heaven. Over in Matthew 7,
he's going to talk about a group who thought they were going to
enter the kingdom of heaven, but they don't enter. He said,
Matthew 7, 22, not everyone that says, Lord, Lord, shall enter
the kingdom of heaven. What's their problem? What were
they pleading? Well, they were pleading their
works. Lord, haven't we done this? Lord, haven't we done that? They're not pleading Christ.
The gospel of the kingdom points a sinner away from him or herself
and to Christ for all salvation, for all righteousness.