Kingdom Come: LIGHT

How would you like to hear Jesus teach?
What do you think He would say?
How do you think people would react?

We do not have to wonder.
This Sunday-and for a number of Sundays to come-we will open our Bibles to the very words of Jesus to hear his “Sermon on the Mount.” These are possibly the most powerful words ever spoken, and the people reacted with “astonishment.”

Come, let’s ponder this marvelous, mind-blowing, turn-the-world-upside-down manifesto of King Jesus for the first week of our Summer Together.

Come, let’s be astonished!

Podcast: Download (Duration: 46:03 — 31.6MB)

Subscribe: Email | RSS

Downloads

Sermon Transcript

Grace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: Kingdom Come: Sermon on the Mount
June 15, 2014

Light
Matthew 4:1-25

Good morning. If you have your Bibles, open them up to Matthew 4. If you don’t have a Bible, feel free to slip up your hand, and we will put a Bible in your hand. We’re going to be in Matthew 4. We are kicking off this Kingdom Come series that will focus on the Sermon on the Mount. That’s why we’re calling it Summer on the Mount. If you think that’s clever, I came up with it. If you don’t, I don’t know who came up with that.

Of course, the Sermon on the Mount is probably the greatest sermon that has ever been preached. At the center of that sermon is perhaps the best-known prayer, maybe some would even say the greatest prayer in our faith history, which is the Lord’s Prayer. At the center of that prayer is a very simple request. You guys know how it goes. “Our Father in heaven. Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

That phrase, that prayer, that request, “God, your kingdom come,” we’re praying that that request would arise in new and deep ways from all of our hearts as the summer goes on and that we would begin to see more and more the invasion of God’s kingdom into our own lives, our families’ lives, and the community around us. We’re just praying that God’s kingdom would come.

As we get going here in Matthew, before we can start reading the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, we need to do a little bit of prep work. Of course, Matthew himself, in his gospel, doesn’t begin the gospel of Matthew with the Sermon on the Mount. Rather, he gives us four chapters to introduce us to the big picture of what’s going on. Who is this Jesus? What do we need to know about him going into the Sermon on the Mount?

So we’re going to spend out most of our time this morning in Matthew 4, getting our heads around preparing to hear that Sermon on the Mount. But as we go, just so you know our basic outline, it’s Father’s Day, and in general we men like to keep our spirituality simple and brief. In general…not all of us, but a lot of us.

I talk to men all the time, “Tell me about your life with God?” “I love God; love people.” Which is a great response. I mean, Jesus. They said, “What’s the most important thing?” He said, “Love God; love people.” So that’s a great response, but in general we like to keep it relatively simple and if at all possible brief.

This is where we’re going to be heading this morning, quite simply and rather briefly. As we read the Bible, it’s very clear that when all else is stripped away and boiled down there are in fact only two kingdoms, only two ways of living. There is God’s way, God’s kingdom, the kingdom of heaven as we shall hear from Jesus, and then everything else that is sort of lumped into a big category of the kingdom of darkness. There are only two ways of life, two ways of being. There is God’s kingdom and the kingdom of darkness.

The way out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God is discipleship, following Jesus. That’s it. It’s very, very simple. When everything else is boiled down, there are only two kingdoms, only two realities in which we can live. If we’re going to move from the kingdom of darkness and be transferred, as Paul says in Colossians, to the kingdom of his glorious Son, the way is discipleship, following Jesus.

So what does it look like? Well, Matthew of course begins with the genealogy of Jesus. The very first words list how Jesus came from the line of royalty, beginning with Abraham, working down through to David. But it’s not just a line of ancestors who are royal, it’s also a line of those who have been redeemed. As you read that story, you see the stories of people who really should have no business being in the heritage, the genealogy of a Messiah, and yet in fact they’re there because God is incredibly merciful, incredibly gracious.

Then we hear about the birth of Jesus, and this in the book of Matthew is through the eyes of Joseph, who finds out the rather disturbing news that his fiancée has become pregnant and it wasn’t his fault. An angel comes to him and says, “Don’t be afraid. This is something the Holy Spirit has done. Stay with her, and when she gives birth, you should name the child Jesus because he is going to save his people from their sins.”

They go to Bethlehem. Jesus is born. You guys know the story. Immediately, he is causing division, strong and opposing forces. In fact, you could even say there are two kingdoms at work and revealed from the time Jesus is born. One is the way of Herod. He finds out there’s a threat, potentially another king who has been born. So what does he do? He says, “Go kill all of the children in Bethlehem and the region. Wipe them out.” Vehemently opposed to Jesus.

On the other hand, you have these magi coming from afar, the wise men. They wanted worship, and they do. They find Jesus. They give him gifts. Because they were warned in a dream, Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt until Herod dies. They escape the massacre of the infants. Then after Herod’s death, they go back, but they don’t want to go back to the same area where Herod’s direct descendant is ruling, and so they go up to the north.

Joseph takes his family up to the northern part, into Nazareth, and for about 30 years, Jesus is raised there. He lives a life of basically a construction worker. He’s a blue-collar guy. Tekton is the word used to describe him in Greek. It means a woodworker, carpenter, stone mason, general contractor sort of guy.

Then we get to Matthew 3, and John the Baptist shows up on the scene, and John the Baptist is the one who is the forerunner of the kingdom. He’s the one who goes before the Messiah to awaken people to the reality that Messiah is coming. He prepares the way of the Lord. He makes straight crooked places. So he comes in, and he’s from the wilderness there at the Jordan River baptizing people. He says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

As he’s baptizing people into that repentance, Jesus comes down the River Jordan, and against John’s protestations says, “No, no. I too need to be baptized.” Jesus is baptized. You guys know this story. When he comes out of the water, it says Jesus sees the Holy Spirit like a dove descending, a sign of the anointing and favor and empowerment of God resting on Jesus. Then the voice from heaven that says, “This is my Son, my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Immediately after that, Jesus is led, or even some translations say driven, by the Holy Spirit out into the wilderness. Now these two ways of life, these two realities, these two kingdoms at work, they’ve been hinted at up to this point in Matthew, they come into full light in the showdown between Jesus and Satan, the Tempter. So we’re going to read these temptations.

Starting in verse 1, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.” I would be too. “And the tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”‘

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you,” and “On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.”‘ Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”‘

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”‘ Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.” (Matthew 4:1-11)

There are many things we could say about these temptations. We could talk about how the Enemy comes to Jesus and tries to draw him away from God at so many points, where in our own flesh, in our experience, we have proven weak. In the area of appetite, he says, “Turn these stones into bread.” Jesus says, “No. I’m going to live on God’s words.”

In the area of approval, so often we stumble here. Satan says, “Here we are right here at the temple. There are people all around. Why don’t you just jump off, and the angels will save you, and everyone will go, ‘Whoa! That guy’s the Messiah.'” Jesus says, “No. I’m not going to test God that way. I don’t need to jump off of a tower, off of a pinnacle, to make this big scene so everybody recognizes me. No, I’m going to let God do it in his timing. I’m not going to test him.”

So finally Satan says, “All right, how about the area of ambition? Do you want all these kingdoms? I’ll give them all to you if you just sell out and worship me.” Jesus again resists. Each time he resists he quotes the Scripture, which is great because we look at Jesus and we can follow this pattern.

If Satan had come to tempt Jesus and Jesus just sent down a lightning bolt, “Because I’m the Son of God,” that would be hard for us to imitate. I’ve tried that. Nothing happened. But Jesus actually is quoting from the Scripture, and this is something we ourselves can do. In the same way, we can answer the Enemy, answer temptation with the power of the Word of God.

But beyond the avenues of appetite and approval and ambition, there is one unifying factor in Jesus’ resistance to temptation, and it is his focused attention and devotion to God. In each of those passages he quotes, God is the center. Every word comes from the mouth of God. Jesus says, “No, no, no. Don’t put the Lord your God to the test. Worship the Lord your God.” His whole life, Jesus is so unified and connected to God that even though Satan comes and tries to pry him away, Jesus knows the ultimate reality, the total devotion, is that focus on God himself.

Satan’s overarching temptation of Jesus is to come to Jesus and say, “Hey, Jesus, take matters into your own hands. Jesus, just do it your way. Just get what you need to get, whether it’s food or approval or kingdoms.” Jesus says, “No, no. I am going to do it God’s way. I’m going to seek God’s will. I’m going to trust God.”

So the way of Jesus and the way of his kingdom is a way that often results in stones that remain stones, and it results in not this big dramatic display of the miraculous saving at the bottom of this terrifying leap, but rather Jesus just walking down the stairs, and not this dramatic sell-out scene where Jesus gets all the kingdoms for himself but loses his own soul.

Rather Jesus says, “No, I’m going to wait on God, and I’m going to walk a different route, and I know God’s will is for me to go all the way through the way of suffering and even death on a cross so that on the other side through resurrection I would actually become the Lord of all of those kingdoms without having sold out.” So this is Jesus’ way. He’s showing us the heart of the kingdom, that devotion to God and his way, in his rule, in his will.

This really struck me this week. I was preparing and praying, trying to figure out what to preach. I knew this passage is there, but I was just asking God, “Okay, many of us have read these before. What’s the thing that really you’re doing in my life in this Scripture?” So yesterday I was driving and doing some errands. It was about 4:30 on Saturday, and if I don’t know what I’m going to talk about on Sunday but 4:30 on Saturday, you can ask Amy, it’s not pleasant at our house. I get home for dinner. “How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

“Do you know what you’re going to talk about?”

“Not yet.” (It’s 10:30 or 11:00 Saturday night.)

But this is how I was feeling yesterday, and I was just stressed and frustrated. I’d been reading this and I was driving, running my errands, and I was just like, “Lord, what is going on? Why do I feel so…? I just can’t get my head around it. I feel like I’ve drifted. I don’t know what to say out of this passage.”

It has been an interesting week for Amy and me, because we’ve done a lot of budgeting stuff this week. I don’t know if you have these times in your lives, in your families, when it’s like, “Wait a second. We need to get the budget out.” I’m not a financial genius by any means. I have a few spreadsheets, so I put various numbers into these spreadsheets like, “This is what we’d like to spend in these areas.” Then I have statements over here, and these just never line up. Do you ever have that?

So all week long as Amy and I feel like the Lord is calling us into some new stuff with our money in just how we spend it and everything else, we’re looking at this. All week long I’d been looking at spreadsheets and statements, statements and spreadsheets, like that. So yesterday, I’m driving along. I’m like, “Lord, what’s going on?” The Lord said, “All week, Jon, you’ve been meditating on money and not me.” “All right.” But it’s so true.

This is what’s so powerful about Jesus’ response to these temptations, that’s it’s every time it’s to God, it’s to God, it’s to God. Before we know it, it’s so easy for us to lose that connection, that communion, meditation, relationship, whatever it is, with God and just drift over here and start meditating on other stuff. Before we know it, we get to Saturday night going, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” Yet here, Jesus is laying out the pattern.

The beautiful thing, if you notice in verse 11, it says, “Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.” (Matthew 4:11) Carried along in that idea of them ministering to him is they’re actually providing food for him at this moment. So we see in verse 11 that what Jesus refused to take by sin was given to him by grace.

Satan came along and said, “Oh, jump off. Make the angels come help you out. Oh, turn these stones into bread.” Jesus says, “No, I’m not going to do it. I’m going to let God be God and I’m going to trust God. I’m going to follow God. I’m going to love God only.” So what he refuses to grasp or take by sin is given by grace.

On the other side of the temptation, the Lord sends angels and sends food. Eventually, as we know, Jesus will also receive all the kingdoms of the world because he is the true Lord. He is embodying what we’ll see here in a couple of weeks when we get to the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says, “Seek first God’s kingdom, it’s righteousness, and all the rest will be added.” Maintain that focus to God. Seek first the kingdom, and what you refuse to grasp through sin shall be given through grace.

Now verse 12. Jesus, after passing the test in the wilderness, comes into Galilee. We’ll read down to verse 17. Starting in verse 12, “Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. And leaving Nazareth he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

‘The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.’ From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'” (Matthew 4:12-17)

Now Matthew is beginning to even sharpen our awareness of these two realities. On the one hand, you have this darkness and on the other hand Jesus, the Light dawning into the midst of the darkness, Jesus proclaiming the arrival of the kingdom of God. There are some interesting things going on here in this quotation from Isaiah 9 in the details here. What is it about this kingdom of darkness? What is Jesus moving toward, moving into here when he comes to Galilee?

I have a couple of maps for you. This is the big picture of the land of Israel. The south, that body of water is the Dead Sea. If you go straight north from the Dead Sea, the smaller sort of heart-shaped or harp-shaped (they say in Israel it’s kind of the shape of a harp) body of water is the Sea of Galilee. Just to the west is the region of Galilee.

So when it says Jesus went to Galilee, he’s actually moving away from Jerusalem, away from the spiritual center, the place where the temple was, and in many ways and in the eyes of many as we see Jesus’ ministry, they feel like he’s probably moving the wrong way. Lots of religious leaders and Pharisees and scribes actually say, “Ah, you’re from Galilee. That’s the roughneck place. That’s the redneck place. That’s the place where people don’t really know what it means to follow God.”

In fact, Galilee had been a seedbed for revolution. Just a few years before Jesus was on the scene, a guy named Judas (not that Judas; a different Judas. It’s a common name), the Galilean, tried to start a revolt against the Romans, and it was quashed. But Galilee is kind of a place of revolution. It’s a rough place. That’s where Jesus is headed.

You see up at the top there Capernaum on the very north side of the Sea of Galilee. In Galilee, that region, the two main cities would’ve been Tiberius, which you can see just south along the Sea of Galilee there, and also Sepphoris, which is straight west or left if you don’t do cardinal directions. I found out down here in the South people don’t talk about north, south, east, and west very often. It’s more like, “Take a right at the big chicken.” That doesn’t show up on your compass.

But anyway, to the west of Tiberius is Sepphoris. Those two would’ve been the main cities, but Jesus doesn’t settle there. He settles in Capernaum up on the north there, Galilee of the Gentiles. Now it says twice in our text that this is the traditional land of Naphtali and Zebulun. So let’s go to the next slide. If you remember all the way back in the Old Testament when the people first came into the land under Joshua, they crossed the River Jordan, and they conquered Jericho, Ai, all of those things.

After they conquered all of the land, God gave portions of the land to each of the tribes. So two of the tribes, sons of Jacob, were Zebulun and Naphtali. These two tribes got that area right there which corresponds there. You can see the Sea of Galilee in the middle of our map. So that is the land.

What’s going on here? What does Matthew want us to see as he’s giving us all this geography, these maps? Jesus goes to Capernaum, Galilee, Zebulun, Naphtali. Well, there’s a key, and we see it twice. Matthew doesn’t want us to miss it. First of all, John the Baptist is arrested. That means the good guys who want God’s will are going to jail. That’s not a good sign in general about the culture.

But then also, there’s this phrase in Isaiah 9 that’s being quoted, “Galilee of the Gentiles.” It doesn’t just mean that this area of Galilee has lots of different people in it, Gentiles, non-Jewish people. It’s not like it’s a really diverse place. It also means that it’s Galilee of the Gentiles, Galilee being ruled by Gentiles. So what you have is land of Naphtali and Zebulun that have been given to God’s people by God. It was a gift, and yet this land that rightfully belonged to them was currently being occupied by foreign pagan rulers.

This is Matthew’s working definition of the kingdom of darkness. This is what he says, “The people dwelling in darkness.” His definition here is in our lives, in our communities, in our homes those places that rightfully belong to God but are currently occupied by the Enemy. Does that make sense? It took us a little while to get there, but that’s what Matthew is saying.

I love Jesus. Jesus moves right to that place, right into the heart of the occupation. In fact, when the northern kingdom was invaded by Assyria in 722 BC in the years previous, the first place where the Assyrians came and conquered was this region of Galilee. It was like the first place the enemy came and occupied, the given land. That’s where Jesus goes. He says, “I want that place back.” He’s walking in and he’s making his residence, and this is the place where he is going to shine light that dispels this deep darkness.

When it talks about darkness, Matthew actually uses an interesting word there in verse 16. He says these people are dwelling in darkness, dwelling in the region and shadow of death. The word itself literally means to be sitting. It’s almost like the people who are there living in that region are so wrapped up in the kingdom of darkness because they have no other option. Jesus hasn’t been around.

So Matthew looks at this prophecy about Isaiah 9 and is applying it now to the times of Jesus, and he’s saying these people are in such darkness that they’re sitting. It’s incapacitating. Have you ever felt that in your life, where it just seems like the future or direction or even relationships around you, like there’s so much darkness there that you just can’t see where to go, and so you just get incapacitated? You’re immobilized. That’s the picture of the kingdom of darkness. That’s what Matthew wants us to see.

It’s space that’s a gift from God. It belongs to God. It should be a place of blessing that is occupied. It is being squatted upon by the Enemy. He’s a squatter here, but he’s running the place, and the darkness that is coming out of that, the fear of death and everything else, is so thick that they are completely incapacitated.

But the good news is that Jesus is bringing an alternative to that way of life. Jesus is moving into that space and he is the light dawning into the darkness. If you go back and read that Isaiah 9 passage, the light itself is being described as the one who is born unto us. A Son is given. He’ll be called Wonderful, Mighty God, Counselor, all of these great prophecies, Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus himself is the Light coming into this region. As he’s coming, the way the light is dawning into the midst of this darkness is through his words.

He says at verse 17, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God are synonyms. A good Jewish person typically doesn’t say the name of God himself, it’s just too reverent, and so instead will often substitute something else here. Matthew is following that tradition, kingdom of heaven, substituting heaven for God’s name. But they’re synonyms there, kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God.

Jesus is saying, “Repent,” and that word repent means change. To change the way you think. Turn. Turn your life. It doesn’t even tell you what to turn from. It just assumes that until you know Jesus whatever it is you’re doing is kind of muddled around in this world of darkness, and really in order for whatever we do to have meaning, significance, fulfillment, to be what God made us to be, to be devoted to God we must turn from whatever it is to Jesus. Turn to that kingdom of God he is announcing.

He’s saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The language there, the kingdom of heaven at hand, it’s like it’s so close you can touch it. It’s pressing into the present. It’s a new reality on the scene. The amazing thing about this statement is that the coming of the kingdom does not depend on our repentance. It doesn’t say, “Repent, and the kingdom will come.” It says, “Repent, for the kingdom is at hand.”

That kingdom is there. The light is shining. Jesus is saying, “Now repent, hear my Word, and turn toward it.” It’s not like the coming of the kingdom depends on us. Jesus brings the kingdom and invites us to turn toward it and participate in it.

Now that idea of the kingdom, there are really two elements going on there when it talks about the kingdom of heaven. One of the ways to understand the idea of kingdom is very personal. It’s the King’s domain. This first way of looking at the kingdom is the personal emphasis on the King himself, that wherever the King’s presence is, his rule is going forth.

So the idea here when Jesus is saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” he’s saying, “I, the King, am present, and so the kingdom is just springing out around me. It’s my rule. It’s my reign. It’s the personal presence of the King.” Origen, the old church father, took that Greek word for kingdom, which is basileia, and he says, “Jesus is the autobasileia.” He is the kingdom himself.

In more modern language, we’ve talked about this quote before, but E. Stanley Jones says that Jesus is the kingdom of God wearing sandals. What’s the kingdom like? What is this kingdom of heaven? Jesus. But beyond just the personal understanding of the kingdom, there’s also this sense in which the kingdom is a realm.

It’s a place. It is a dominion. It’s not just King; it’s the King’s dominion. As Jesus tells more parables about the kingdom, we learn that it is this reality in which we can eat and drink together, sit at table together. It’s this reality from which people can be excluded. It’s this totally alternative way of life hinging on devotion to God and his desire. So Jesus says, “This new reality is breaking in to the present.”

We mentioned at the beginning that Matthew is setting up a very simple understanding of the whole world. There’s the kingdom of darkness and there’s the kingdom of God. When everything else is boiled down, boiled away, removed, these two, and that the way from this one to this one, from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God is through discipleship to Jesus.

Here’s where we see it. Verses 18-22. It says, “While walking by the Sea of Galilee, [Jesus] saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.” (Matthew 4:18-22) Two very similar accounts about Galilean fishermen brothers becoming disciples of Jesus.

In the ancient world, they didn’t really have bold font, underlined font, italicized font. I don’t even think they had fonts. They had scrolls and handwriting. So in the ancient world if you wanted to write something and emphasize it, put it in bold, all caps, pay attention to this, they would just repeat it. Repetition was their way of emphasis.

So now Matthew, among other things, is wanting us to see the essential call to discipleship, the importance of being a disciple in this transition from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God. He repeats these two stories here, the calling of Simon and Andrew and then the calling of James and John, these fishermen.

It’s interesting, because a lot of times around church we say, “Okay, well, what is it that distinguishes a disciple? What creates a disciple? What defines a disciple?” A lot of times we say, “Well, it’s our eagerness. It’s our availability, faithfulness.” All of those are really important, but right here we see actually the seed of discipleship, where discipleship begins, what really distinguishes a disciple.

Do you know what it is? It’s Jesus’ words. When Jesus calls these guys, in those words themselves rest the power for them to become disciples. When Jesus says, “Follow me,” and they hear that, yes, they have a choice with what they do with their nets. When they hear that, the words of Jesus themselves do not come back void. Jesus’ words, just like we saw earlier, the words of God, have such power to them.

When they hear, “Follow me,” it pierces their hearts, and there’s a new power resident within them. Now what they do with that power, whether they decide that they’re going to quash it down and reject it, they could do that, or they could let that power land in their hearts and give birth to a full devotion to follow Jesus. Jesus comes along and he says, “Follow me.” Those words land, and they drop their nets, and they follow to be disciples.

Now it’s interesting because it’s Father’s Day, and I was thinking about Father’s Day this week as I was reading this, and I’ve never really read this text from the point of view of Zebedee. It’s kind of a bummer Father’s Day text at first glance. “Happy Father’s Day! Good luck with the family business.”

But actually there’s a beautiful portrait of fatherhood here from Zebedee because Zebedee has his sons in a place where they’re able to hear the call of Jesus, and when his sons hear the call of Jesus, he does nothing to prevent them from following him. That’s a pretty good understanding of what it means to be a dad.

How can we live our lives in such a way with our families so that our children are in a place to hear the words of Jesus calling them to discipleship, and when they respond to that summons from God, that call to follow Jesus, we not do anything to prevent them from following and say, “Go, follow Jesus”? It’s actually beautiful because four more times in this gospel, the gospel of Matthew, James and John are referred to as the sons of Zebedee.

Yeah, they drop their nets. Yes, they leave the boat. Yes, Jesus calls them into a path that was probably different than what Zebedee had been thinking, but even though they’ve dropped their nets and they’re following Jesus, they’re still referred to and known as sons of Zebedee. The relationship hasn’t been fractured. It’s not like they’ve disowned their family name. As they follow Jesus, their honoring relationship to their father has actually increased, if that makes sense.

So then, verse 23 says, “And he [Jesus] went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.” (Matthew 4:23-25)

Now Jesus’ kingdom movement is underway. The revolution is afoot. The light is shining into the darkness, and people with all kinds of disorders, physical ailments, mental ailments, demonic oppression, people who have been struggling and suffering, wandering around in darkness where their lives have been occupied territory for evil are now suddenly coming to Jesus, flocking to Jesus, and he is setting them free.

The summons, the call to even these will continue to be discipleship. “Come, follow me. Learn to live life from me. Learn the way of the kingdom from me.” In fact, it’s amazing because all too often around the church or talking to people in the community, I find people have bought into the idea that it is possible to be a Christian without being a disciple.

Somewhere along the line we learned that all we really have to do is check off a few boxes about what we believe related to Jesus, and that’s taken care of, and you just file it next to your birth certificate and your Social Security card in your file cabinet to pull out on an important day when you stand before God. But in fact, Jesus’ call has been and always will be that we follow him, that we be disciples.

Our underestimation of the importance of what it means to be a disciple has resulted in some rather unfortunate perspectives on what it means to follow God and to follow Jesus. You talk to people, and sometimes it sounds like they are discouraged or even disappointed with the way their faith has turned out. It’s almost like someone overpromised on the gospel, but the gospel under delivered. Or people say, “Well, everybody said it was going to be like this and this and this, and my life is over here. It’s kind of rotten. Is Jesus even that great?”

The missing link there is what Dallas Willard calls the great disparity. He says there’s a great disparity between on the one hand the hope for life expressed in Jesus and on the other hand the actual day-to-day behavior in our life and social presence of most of those who now profess to adhere to him. He says there’s often this big gap between the hope for what the kingdom could be like and the way most of us usually live.

Sometimes it’s really disturbing actually how people you meet can profess Jesus, “Well, yeah, we’re Christians. We checked off all the boxes,” but their soul is almost entirely unaffected, and their presence is sometimes even nasty.

I’m not ripping on people; I’m just saying it’s unfortunate that so many of us have bought into this concept that we can just check the boxes and say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m good,” but then never put ourselves in a position to learn life from Jesus, to let him speak to us, to call us into discipleship through which we are healed in every way and brought more and more into a place where our inner life, our minds, our way of being is shining light outward into darkness.

This is really what’s happening here. Matthew is setting us up for the Sermon on the Mount. He’s setting us up by showing us, “Hey, the important thing, the essential characteristic and ingredient here in the transfer from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s glorious Son is discipleship, walking with Jesus, hearing that call, ‘Follow me,’ and that call giving birth, a new power within us, a gift of repentance from God that we would begin walking with Jesus more and more into the reality of the kingdom of God.”

That of course is what the Sermon on the Mount will be all about. How do we live out this life of the kingdom? Perhaps the very best news about this Sermon on the Mount is that the first 10 verses are devoted to blessings. We know them as the Beatitudes. The word beatitude means supreme blessedness. So when Jesus is describing here the life of the kingdom as he begins in Matthew 5, he’s describing that first and foremost the kingdom is a gift of blessing to those who need it most. They’re not the Do-atitudes; they’re the Be-atitudes.

Sometimes we read these Beatitudes and we think, “Oh, I need to do something to become more mournful. I need to do something to become more poor in spirit.” That’s not what Jesus is talking about. What Jesus is talking about is that the kingdom is available to those of us who are this way already, that the blessing comes to those of us who need it most, who recognize, “Yeah, we’re living in darkness.” The kingdom is available to those of us who’ve heard that call of God, the call of Jesus in our hearts, “Follow me.” “Yes, okay.”

This is how we’re going to close. So what I want to do is just read these Beatitudes. We’ll talk about them more in depth next week, but I invite you just to listen and put yourself amongst the crowd. We just heard about these great crowds who have been coming to Jesus from every side, and he’s healing them, he’s touching them, transforming them, changing their hearts, helping them.

Now Jesus begins to speak, and he begins to teach them, “This is what it looks like to be a disciple in my kingdom. It starts with the blessing of God right where you are in the midst of your brokenness, whatever it may be.” This is a picture of Galilee. That’s the Sea of Galilee there. The hills on the far side of Decapolis. Here you have just a hillside. Maybe it would’ve looked something like this the day Jesus taught the Sermon on the Mount.

So maybe just imagine for a moment you’re among the crowd, and maybe the breeze is blowing. That’s your view. Birds flying around. Probably some livestock not too far away. Flies buzzing around. A lot of people. A lot of people. Then Jesus begins to speak, and as he speaks (I’m going to read these words again) my hope is that his words will lodge in our hearts and give us fresh power and blessing to be the children of his kingdom in a deeper way than we’ve ever known.

So starting in verse 1 of Matthew 5, it says, “Seeing the crowds, [Jesus] went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.” Are you a disciple, one who desires to sit before Jesus and hear from him? Listen. Verse 2: “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.'” (Matthew 5:1-12) Let’s pray.