Calvary Chapel Staten Island

Guest (Male): Hello and welcome to God in Our City, the daily edition. Your host and Bible teacher is Pastor Dave Watson. Pastor Dave has been the pastor of Calvary Chapel on Staten Island for 35 years. In addition, he is the co-founder and president of the New York Institute for Biblical Studies. To receive a special downloadable gift from Pastor Dave, please go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. That's calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Now here's Pastor Dave and our show.

Pastor Dave Watson: Welcome everybody to the daily edition of God in Our City. It’s always great to be with you. It’s a Monday, a beautiful Monday here in our city, and we're just glad that you have joined us. We begin today another series, another study. We'll be looking for the next few months at the Sermon on the Mount. Hopefully, it'll be a huge blessing to you. If you're just joining us, welcome. We study the Bible verse by verse, usually. We do it line upon line. Sometimes we're a little slow, but we are always going back to the text of scripture and showing the truths of scripture to God's people.

We have resources. We try to always have resources that we can provide for you that help you to follow along with us. Again, if you're joining for the first time, you'll want to take advantage of our free resources. All of them are free. We're studying the Sermon on the Mount for a little bit. It'll be a little bit to get through the Sermon on the Mount in a way that I would like us to do it. That's Matthew 5 through 7 if you're wondering where you'll find it in the Bible. We provide a study guide for every lesson. We're going to try and upload all the study guides or near all the study guides to this series in advance so that you can download them and then just have them there and print them if you want. The study guides are very helpful. They help you to follow along and help you to know where we're going in this series.

Beyond that, we also want to give you the book of Matthew in the Journal Bible form. It's just Matthew. It has the Matthew text on one side and a place to write on the other. It's the whole book of Matthew, though we'll only be studying chapters 5 through 7. If you'd like this, please let us know. The study guide is at calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. You can get our resources there. You just have to go there and download the study guide or request Matthew. We will send it at no charge. Shipping and handling is on us. This is an incredible series that we're going to do, so I encourage you to be part of it.

Please also consider giving a donation to God in Our City. You can do that at calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. We are a local church-sponsored broadcast. We need to become both local church-sponsored and listener-supported. We've made some progress in that realm but not as much as we need to. Please consider making a gift. You can make a reoccurring gift, which would be greatly appreciated. You see the donate button at calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Just follow it, and it will take you right to where you need to go.

Matthew 5:1-12 is actually a very poignant set of scripture when it has to do with the Christian experience. I want to read it in your hearing at this time, and then we want to pray and get into our study. Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 through 12: "Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.'"

Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for your word, and we're grateful for the opportunity we have to study it, to get to know it better, to apply it to our hearts, and to be changed people because of your word. We need you, Lord. We need you every hour. We need you in this time. Our listeners need you. They need to draw closer to you, and they need to experience more of your love, your grace, your forgiveness, and your help. We need you every hour, as the song so proclaimed. Help us in this time, in this new study, to just allow you to speak to us and allow you to change us. We pray these things in Jesus's name. Amen.

As we start our study on the Sermon on the Mount, it's important for me to say just a couple of simple things, and hopefully, they'll be helpful to you. Number one, the Sermon on the Mount is an incredibly powerful message given by Jesus. It helps us to see into the heart of God for true righteousness and righteous living. Much like the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount is a shift. It's a shift for the people of God, and it is giving us a culture shift, a different way that life should be looked at.

You'll remember the children of Israel were in Egypt, and they were in Egypt for 400 years. The Egyptian world and its worldview were not that of monotheism. They were polytheistic. Not only were they polytheistic, they were polytheistic and weird. They worshiped gnats and snakes and frogs and the like. In fact, when you read the story of the ten plagues, please remember that each one of those plagues was coming against another Egyptian god. So what the Lord is doing in Exodus chapters 3 through somewhere near 15 is beating back Pharaoh's gods in the eyes of God's people.

Then having brought them out of Egypt, he brings them to Mount Sinai, and he gives them a brand-new worldview, a brand-new culture. We call that culture the Ten Commandments. The first commandment is that you'll have no other gods before me, messing with the polytheism that they had come out of. The second one is that you're not to make any graven images. That's all they had were graven images, and so on.

Just as in the Old Testament, the people of God after 400 years in Egypt are brought into a new way of thinking, a new worldview, a new way to live, so when we get to the Sermon on the Mount, we have virtually the same thing. What has happened to the people of God? They've had 400 years of silence. Their sincere religion has become religiosity. It has become rote. It has become really messed up. So when Jesus comes to speak to them, he is changing their worldview. He's changing what they understand righteousness to be. He's laying out a brand-new culture for them to live.

I see the Sermon on the Mount as being the culture of the kingdom of God, what we're supposed to do within it. It's a different worldview. Now, let me just say something else that I think sometimes is lost. Some people like to take the kingdom of God and say that Matthew 5 through 7 is how we will live during the Millennial Kingdom, that is when Jesus reigns on the earth, but it doesn't have anything to do with us now. We should not get all excited about it, hyped up about it. We shouldn't be following it strictly. It's for the kingdom when Jesus comes to reign.

I would say this: Matthew 5 through 7 was put to paper sometime around 60 AD. Some would say even a little bit earlier. Some see it as the very first gospel because it has such strong Jewish roots. But it is written to the churches so that the churches will have it. The churches are going to take it, and they're going to apply it. In fact, every one of the gospels has as its end a purpose with reference to the churches. So Matthew 5 through 7 is giving the churches a way that they ought to be living in the middle of the culture that they are in. It's been 400 years since they've heard from God. Their religion, as he's primarily talking to Jewish people, is a mess. It's legalism at its worst. Now the Lord is giving them the requirements of righteousness in the kingdom.

It's very important then that we understand that this is a paradigm shift for everybody. Just like the Ten Commandments was, this is a paradigm shift. Jesus is changing things up, and it ain't going to be easy. It's going to be tough. It's going to be tough for some people to accept. Think about Jesus coming to earth, living his life, and now when he's a little over 30 years old, he begins his preaching ministry. What he's going to share with these people is life-changing.

Also, I would want to say that many of the sayings that we have in our culture come from the Sermon on the Mount. Have you ever heard "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you"? Where do you think that's from? It's from Matthew 7 in the Sermon on the Mount. Have you ever heard "judge not"? That's found in Matthew 7. Ever hear of the Lord's Prayer or the Our Father or the Disciple's Prayer, however we want to refer to it? That's found in Matthew 6. Ever hear someone say "blessed are the peacemakers"? It's found in the Beatitudes.

Much of our culture has been influenced by the Sermon on the Mount. I am told that the foundations of AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, come from the Sermon on the Mount, that the very foundations of that 12-step program are found right there in Matthew 5 through 7. Luke records the Sermon on the Mount. Some people call his something different, but I think they're the exact same instance. We'd love to have you look at the Luke passage as well.

But we're going to now dig in a little bit to Matthew chapters 5 through 7 on the Sermon on the Mount. If you just tuned in, this is Pastor Dave Watson. You're listening to God in Our City on YouTube, Facebook, and on 570 AM The Mission and 102.3 FM. You can get a study guide and sermon notes on what we're sharing as well as a free book of Matthew by simply going to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. While you're there, please consider making a donation to God in Our City.

Let's now proceed with what I call Kingdom Quest, that is seeking to live out the kingdom of God in our lives. He's going to talk here in the first 16 verses of Matthew chapter 5 about the essentials for kingdom living. I just want to give you a bit of context because that's important whenever we study the scriptures. Matthew 4:17 says, "From that time, Jesus began to preach, saying, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" From that time he started living in Nazareth of Galilee of the nations after John's imprisonment.

In Matthew 4, Jesus is tempted in the wilderness by Satan. He leaves that temptation and is about to really proclaim that the kingdom of God is at hand. Directly after this, he calls his disciples. His ministry officially begins. John has been put in prison. Jesus is living in Galilee of the nations in fulfillment of Isaiah chapter 9. When it calls that area of the world Galilee of the nations, in all sincerity, I think what that means is armpit of Israel in the Jewish minds because the nations had so infected that area.

Remember, in 722 BC, Shalmaneser and the other kings of the Assyrian empire took the ten northern tribes and scattered them throughout their kingdom. They brought in people who were less than honorable to live in the northern part of Israel. That group of people, in some cases, intermarried with the Jewish people who were there, who were the poorest. In some cases, if you go a little bit further down, they married a group of people called the Samaritans. The word "Samaritan" comes from the idea of the capital of the northern kingdom, which was Samaria. Those people are called Samaritans.

Above Samaria is Galilee, and Galilee was so affected by the world around it. There was all this intermarrying and all this incredible worldliness in the Jewish mind that it was known as Galilee of the nations, Galilee of the goy, of the pigs, almost the unkosher part of Israel. But Jesus is living there, and he's preaching, "Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand." Shortly thereafter, he calls his disciples. He's walking by the sea and calls them, tells them he's going to make them fishers of men.

Matthew 4:25 through 5:2 records this: "And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, the ten cities, and from Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan. Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying..." We're going to see what he said in a minute.

The location is significant. People are following him from all over Canaan, from all over Israel. He goes up on the mountain. A traditional location is like an amphitheater. It's possible the crowd was above him and he's speaking up to them. The disciples came to him when he sat down. That's what you do when you're a rabbi. You sit down, and your followers sit around you. Rabbi simply means teacher. He opened his mouth and literally it says he began to teach. He will utter the most amazing of sermons. He's sitting at the bottom of that amphitheater-like hill, that natural amphitheater. He's speaking up and sharing with them the very important message of the kingdom, a message that is just as poignant, just as relevant, just as important today as it was in his time. Jesus is resetting the culture. Jesus is resetting the worldview. Jesus is resetting what is expected of people who follow the Lord. We're going to have a good time studying it.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your goodness. Thank you for your truth. Thank you for the way you work in our lives. Even in our time together, speak to each of us. Help us to grasp what you're saying to us. Help us to act on it. Help us to be doers of the word and not hearers only. Change us into the image of your son. Lord Jesus, there are so many needs represented by our listeners. Some are discouraged. Some are broken. Some are hurting. Some are happy and shouldn't be. Some are happy and should be. In each case, touch our listeners with the ministry of your Holy Spirit for the glory of God. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

Thank you for joining us today. I trust you'll join us again tomorrow as we actually get into the text. Please go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Get our free resources so you can follow along with us. While you're there, seriously consider making a donation to God in Our City. Every donation is appreciated. Every donation makes a difference. By the way, it's tax-deductible. I hope you enjoyed your time with us today. I know I did. I'm really looking forward to digging into this very important sermon by Jesus. God bless you. Hope to see you again tomorrow on another edition of the daily edition of God in Our City.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to God in Our City with your host, Pastor Dave Watson. We hope the show was a blessing to you. Again, to receive a downloadable gift from Pastor Dave, go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. That's calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Please check out Pastor Dave's blog at nycshepherd.com. That's nycshepherd.com. Please invite a friend and join us every weekday for another edition of God in Our City.