Main Idea: What is a disciple?
Truth: Disciples are humbled before God.
Key Verse: Matt. 5:3
Reading Assignment: Matthew 5:1-20
Four traits of a disciple:
Humbled before God (5:3-6)
Transformed (5:7-12)
Different from the world (5:13-16)
Obedient to the word of God (5:17-20)
Prayer suggestions:
I am poor and needy before Jesus.
Jesus, You welcome those who are humbled and poor before You.
I hunger for more righteousness in my life, more of Your holy character in my life.
Teach me and train me to become a godly person who will make a difference in this world.
Transcript
We'll begin. Let me pray for us and we'll dive into God's word together.
Our Lord, thank You that You are our shepherd. You, out of Your grace, You care for us. You guide us. You protect us. You feed us. Every way You treat us as Your own people. Thank You that You are this way toward everyone who clings onto Jesus Your Son. Our God, we pray that this morning that You would guide us, that You would indeed feed us from Your word, and that our hearts would be deeply connected with You, the holy and awesome God, and that we would be strengthened and encouraged to live a life that honors You this day. Thank You for Your word that evermore speaks Your truth to us, to keep us grounded and anchored in that which is eternally real and true. Keep us from being swayed by the ideas of this world and the allures of sin and this world, and firmly anchor us in You and in Your truth. To that end, we give ourselves to You and we pray for Your blessing and Your guidance now. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
The passage to be read for these next couple of days is Matthew 5, one through 20. And the main idea here is what is a disciple? What is a disciple? And there is one truth I want to draw out of this longer passage, though there is so much here, you could probably spend an entire week just meditating on all the different aspects of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. But the one truth I wanted to point out is the very first thing Jesus mentions in verse three of Chapter 5, which speaks of how a disciple is a humbled person, not just a humble person, but a humbled person. This is a person who's come to realize their need of God. That they recognize they are spiritually poor in the sight of God. And that they need the Savior. And that they need God's mercy. And this is a person who has been so humbled that they are now totally yielded to God. And so this is the truth that I wanted to point out from verse three, and the words go like this from verse three, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew had told us that Jesus preached in Chapter 4, but he hasn't really given us a taste of Jesus's preaching, not quite yet. He's given us a very concise summary of Jesus's preaching in the words, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” But he hasn't given us an actual example of a sermon Jesus preached until he gets to Chapter 5. And here Matthew gives us for the first time, in a sense, what Jesus's voice sounds like, what His words actually sound like.
In the beginning portion of this sermon, Jesus shows His disciples what their lives will become. Now, I want to put it in those terms that Jesus is explaining what their lives will become, not what their lives are. Because nobody starts the Christian life as a mature and perfected disciple. Certainly, Jesus' own 12 disciples didn't start out that way. Peter certainly wasn't humbled until later, when he comes to realize what a sinner he really was after he had denied the Lord three times. And so the disciples weren't there yet, but Jesus told them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” And what Jesus is showing them here is that this is what they will become as they continue to follow Him.
Now, in the passage before us, in these 20 verses, Jesus shows us 4 traits of a disciple. I'll summarize them this way. Number one: A disciple is humbled before God. That's verses 3 through 6. Number two: A disciple is transformed. That's verses 7 through 12. Number three: A disciple is different, that is, different from the world. This is verses 13 through 16. And number four: a disciple is obedient to the word of God (verses 17 through 20). Again, these are traits of what a disciple becomes, not how someone starts off.
Starting with the very first idea here, the disciples are humbled before God. As I quoted from verse three a little bit earlier, a disciple is someone who recognizes their spiritual poverty before God. They are not self-righteous. They are not proud of themselves. They're also not self-willed. They are spiritually hungry and they recognize their need of God. And this is so important, because if a person who wants to follow Christ doesn't understand this about their spiritual condition before God, then they will become a Pharisee. They will tell themselves, “I can live up to Jesus's standards. I'm going to try really hard. Maybe I'm not perfect, but I'll get pretty close.” And they'll become a very, very proud person and a self-righteous person. But that is not what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is meant to do. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is meant to humble people. And so Jesus begins with words that speak to this state of humility before God. Before we move on from this first trait, let me clarify one thing that comes up in verse 5. NASB translates it as “Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.” The better way to understand “gentle” is what the NASB footnote says, “meek.” This is describing meekness or humbleness. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” is the idea. The meekness here is talking about one’s yieldedness to the Lord. It's not just saying that you’re a gentle person who doesn’t get angry with another person or something like that. This is talking about your disposition toward God that you are yielded to the Lord. And so meekness is really the idea there.
By the way, one more note with regard to these eight blessed statements, these are called the Beatitudes. There are 8 of them. And at the end of each one there is a reference to different facets of heaven. You can see this by looking at the very first and the last Beatitude in both the beginning and the end, final statements, Jesus promises the Kingdom of heaven for His disciples, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The conclusion to the rest of the 8 statements just highlights a different facet of the Kingdom of heaven. But this first half of the Beatitudes underscore the humbled condition of a disciple of Christ.
Secondly, disciples are transformed. Again, this is not describing how disciples start out, but what disciples become, what Jesus makes them to become. What we find here are all the wonderful traits of someone who is pursuing Christ's likeness: they are merciful (Jesus is merciful). They are pure in heart (Jesus is pure in heart). They are peacemakers (Jesus is a peacemaker). They are persecuted for the sake of righteousness (of course, Jesus was persecuted for the sake of righteousness). What stands out about these facets of a transformed life is that they are largely talking about deeply internal changes. We're not talking about taking on a few religious habits or performing certain religious ceremonies. This is a person who is pure in heart. This is a person who knows how to show mercy because they've experienced the mercy of God. These are deep changes. And everyone who truly pursues Jesus Christ and follows after Him and daily listens to Him, they are deeply changed, and they become peacemakers who really want to have peace with other people. They actually become people who are willing to suffer for the Lord. And this kind of deep internal transformation results in God's people, the disciples of Jesus, becoming wholly different from the world. This brings us to the third facet.
The disciples are different. And this brings us to the next portion of Jesus's words. By the way, verses 11 and 12 just elaborate on the final beatitude. When you read it, you'll know what I mean. Then from verse 13 through 16, Jesus tells us that disciples are different from the world. That they will be persecuted, that they will stand out like salt stands out from all the everything else in the world. There's nothing like salt. There's nothing like salt that can flavor food. And so saltiness of salt is unmistakable. It's conspicuous. It's noticeable. And Jesus's argument is that's exactly the way His disciples will be. He also says that His disciples will shine like light in a dark world, like a city on a hill, like a lamp on the lamp stand. They will make a difference in the world such that if someone claims to be a disciple (again, this isn’t how everyone starts off, but what they will become), but if they do not stand out as salty or bright for Jesus, something is seriously wrong. And if anything, the way Jesus describes it, their claim to being a disciple of Jesus is questionable. Because, He says, if a salt has lost its saltiness, it is not good for anything except to be trampled under foot by men. So Jesus shows that those who truly follow Him with a genuine heart, they will be transformed and as a result they will stand out from the world. They will be salty and they will be bright. If anyone who claims to be a disciple never becomes salty, never becomes bright, they remain tasteless and dim. They are not a disciple and they are in dire need of true repentance from sin and they must turn to Jesus genuinely from the heart.
Finally, Jesus underscores this last aspect of being His disciple, which is to keep His word. This emphasizes how, when Jesus came to Earth, He did not come to abolish, or to destroy the law of God in the Old Testament. He came to fill it up, that is to say, He came to give its true and deep meaning, and this is exactly what He does in the remainder of the Sermon. And the Lord's expectation from His disciples is that they will be committed to keeping the word of God, and not only keeping the word of God, but also to teach others to do the same. And you'll hear these words when you read this section. And Jesus shows that His disciples will live by a standard of righteousness that is heavenly. This is far superior to the standard of the religious hypocrites of Jesus' day, the Pharisees and the scribes, which Jesus points out. Those who are truly reconciled to God recognize that they are accountable to God, the Holy God, and His word will shape their lives. We will not be looking at other people to see whether I am average or I am better than other people. No. We will always look to the word of God and, therefore, the righteousness exhibited by biblically faithful disciples will always exceed that of religious hypocrites, as Jesus points out in verse 20.
There's one more thing about all of these traits. Jesus again and again emphasizes that it is His disciples who are on their way to heaven. And that those who are not disciples, they are not saved. And so this is not just a matter of just becoming a little bit better of a person or something like that. This is actually a part of being saved. All those who are going to heaven will walk the pathway of the disciple of Jesus Christ. And I'm certain that all of you are here because you really want to live the disciple’s life. With all this said, there are lots of things for us to pray about from this section and I can't cover all of them, and I trust in the Holy Spirit that as you read He will draw out of you prayers of response to Jesus as you read this passage. But certainly those four aspects are key topics we can pray to Jesus about.
And as I've emphasized many times over again, you know, with the prayers that we pray, the words mean something because they really are true and real and authentic from our hearts. And that is what makes or breaks prayer. If you find that prayer is humdrum and dull, and you don't sense that you're connecting with God, in all likelihood, the problem is that you are speaking words, but they don't mean much to you. But you know, the more you are dead honest before God and you speak to God from your heart and the words are the vehicle by which you communicate what's really going on in your heart, the more you will sense that you have deeply connected with God. And with each of these, you know I'm just praying as I would pray. Your prayers may be different. Maybe you might say, “Jesus, I don't know whether I have been sufficiently humbled. I am still very stubborn and unwilling, and I think too highly of myself.” And if that's what you sense is your condition, then you should absolutely just confess that to Jesus. And tell Him, “I need Your help.” It's a scary prayer to pray, but you should pray, “Lord humble me. Show me that I'm a sinful person who needs You, who needs to change, who needs a transforming work of Your Spirit.” On the other hand, if you sense in your heart that before God, “I am nothing, I have nothing to offer God, I am spiritually poor before Him,” then I think you can pray such a prayer before God. So with that, let me just share a prayer with you.
Jesus, I come to you as someone who is poor and lacking before You. I don't have the power, the wisdom to flaunt before You, as if I deserve to be accepted by You. In the words that You spoke, I know I am poor in spirit. But I thank You that You welcome those who are poor in spirit. I hunger for more of Your righteousness in my life. And I want more of Your holy character to be made visible in my life. To that end, I give myself to You. Train me and teach me to be a godly person. And help me to shine and stand out in the world to make an influence in this world for You, for Your glory, and for Your name’s sake. Amen.
And so I encourage you to respond to the Lord from what you read in this section over the next two days. And by the way, I don't know how strictly each of you are sticking to the reading plan, but if you are and you feel like, well, Sundays, I don't have anything to read, then I'd say go back and review what's been read throughout this past week. And once again, just call out to Jesus in prayer. All right. The Lord bless you all, and we are done for today. Bye.