Charlie was a regular visitor at the racetrack. One afternoon he noticed an unusual sight. Right before the first race, a Catholic priest visited one of the horses in the stable area and gave it a blessing. Charlie watched the horse race very carefully, and sure enough the blessed horse came in first!
Charlie followed the priest before the next race, and again the priest went to the stables and performed a similar procedure.
Charlie played a hunch and put a couple of dollars on the blessed horse. Sure enough, the blessed horse came in by two lengths and Charlie won close to fifty bucks!
The priest continued the same procedure through the next few races and Charlie won each time. He was now ahead $1000 so between races Charlie left the track and went to the bank and withdraw his life's savings, $20,000.
The biggest race of the day was the last one. Charlie followed the priest and watched carefully which horse he blessed. He then went to the betting window and put his whole $21000 bundle of cash on that horse to win. Then Charlie went out to watch the horses' race. Down the stretch they came and as they crossed the finish line, the horse Charlie's fortune was bet on fell over and died on the race track.
Charlie was crushed. He located the priest and told him that he had been watching him bless the horses all day and they all became winners except the last horse on which he had bet his life savings.
Charlie then asked, "What happened to the last horse which you blessed? Why didn't it win like the others?"
"That's the trouble with you Protestants," sighed the priest, "you never can tell the difference between a blessing and the Last Rites."
So what does it mean to be blessed
• Jesus starts out His “Sermon on the Mount” by telling us
• He gives us a whole list of things that will bless us
• We refer to this as the beatitudes and I would like to share them with you now
The Beatitudes
Mt 5:1 Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him,
Mt 5:2 and he began to teach them, saying:
Mt 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Mt 5:4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Mt 5:5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Mt 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Mt 5:7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Mt 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart,for they will see God.
Mt 5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers,for they will be called sons of God.
Mt 5:10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Mt 5:11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
Mt 5:12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Can you imagine what these people must have been thinking after hearing this
• After they got done hearing Jesus’ definition of the kind of person God blesses,
• They gotta be thinking that no matter how bad they may want these blessings
• There is no way we are ever going to be able to pull it off
• And this must have really messed a lot of them up
• Probably upset a lot of them as well because they wanted to be blessed
• And now they are faced with the reality that they can never achieve it
These people want to know how they can have this righteousness.
• Where does it come from?”
• How does Jesus’ teaching go along with what we’ve been taught all our lives.
• So Jesus takes this opportunity to teach them
Now a lot of times today we get asked about Moses and the Law?
• Questions like are we still obligated to obey that law
• Didn’t Jesus do away with the law when He paid the price on the cross
• Through the Law of Moses, God revealed His standards for holy living.
• In Jesus’ day The Pharisees defended the Law
• And not only did they defend it but they spent every waking moment trying to obey it.
• But Here Jesus is telling them and us that true righteousness
• The kind of righteousness that pleases God has to exceed the righteousness of the scribes / Pharisees / and the common people,
• But if the scribes and Pharisees were the holiest men around
• And they couldn’t get it right
• How can there be any hope for anyone else?
Teaching about the Law
Mt 5:17 “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to fulfill them.
Mt 5:18 I assure you, until heaven and earth disappear, even the smallest detail of God’s law will remain until its purpose is achieved.
Mt 5:19 So if you break the smallest commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But anyone who obeys God’s laws and teaches them will be great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Mt 5:20 “But I warn you—unless you obey God better than the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees do, you can’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven at all!
What Jesus is doing is taking the oportunity to explain His attitude about the Law
• And He does it by describing three possible relationships.
First we can seek to destroy the Law (v. 17a).
Mt 5:17 “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets.
• This is what the Pharisees thought Jesus was doing all along.
• The problem begins with the fact that Jesus’ authority did not come from any of the recognized leaders or schools.
• In those days you were know by who you studied under
• You were associated by that persons view points
• But here Instead of teaching “from someone elses authority”
• Like the Scribes and Pharisees,
• Jesus taught with His own authority.
And not only did Jesus teach through His authority, He also taught with His activity,
• A lot of the time it seemed that Jesus defied the Law.
• It seemed like He was a rebel with His own way of doing things
I mean think about it
• He deliberately healed people on the Sabbath
• He paid no attention to the traditions of the Pharisees.
• The people that He hung out with weren’t the most desirable
• In fact you could say that the people that He hung out with were the least desireable
• Fishermen, tax collectors, Women and children, prostitutes
• The Pharisees would never be caught talking with these type of people
• Much less associating with them
But at the same time it was the Pharisees who were destroying the Law!
• They were destroying it through their traditions,
• And because of this they were robbing the people of the Word of God;
• Through their hypocritical lives, they disobeyed the very Law that they claimed to protect.
• The Pharisees thought they were conserving God’s Word,
• But what they were really doing was preserving God’s Word:
• They were embalming it so that it no longer had life!
• And it was though their rejection of Christ, when He came to earth
• That they proved that the inner truth of the Law hadn’t penetrated their hearts.
And now Jesus is making it clear that He had come to honor the Law
• He had come To help God’s people love it, learn it, and live it.
• And He wasn’t going to accept the fake righteousness of the religious leaders.
• Because their righteousness was only an external show.
We see that their religion was a dead ritual, not a living relationship.
• It was artificial; it did not reproduce itself in others in a living way.
• It made them proud, not humble; and it led to bondage, not liberty.
Second We see that Jesus came to fulfill the Law (v. 17b).
• Jesus fulfilled God’s Law in everything He did.
• He fulfilled it through His birth because He was “made under the Law”
• Gal 4:4 But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. (Gal. 4:4).
• Jesus fulfilled it by having every Jewish ritual performed on Him by His parents.
• And there’s no doubt that He fulfilled the Law in the way that He lived His life,
• Because nobody was ever able to accuse Him of sin.
• Even though He didn’t submit to the traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees,
• He always did what God commanded in the Law.
• And we know that The Father was “well pleased” with His Son (Matt. 3:17; 17:5).
Jesus also fulfilled the Law through His teaching.
• And It was this that got Him into so much trouble with the religious leaders.
• When He started His ministry,
• Jesus found that the Living Word of God
• Had become boxed up inside of man-made traditions and interpretations.
• And what He did was to break away this thick crust of “religion”
• And bring the people back to God’s Word.
And after He did that, He opened the Word up to them in a new and living way
• We have to understand that they were accustomed to living by the “letter” of the Law
• Living with all the rules and all the formalities
• They weren’t living by the inner “kernel” of life.
But it was through His death and His resurrection that Jesus especially fulfilled the Law.
• He bore the curse of the Law (Gal. 3:13).
Gal 3:13 But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”
Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament traditions and ceremonies
• And because He did this
• They are no longer a requirement of the people of God (see Heb. 9–10).
• And the reason is because He set aside the Old Covenant
• And brought in the New Covenant.
Jesus did not destroy the Law by fighting it; He destroyed it by fulfilling it!
• Suppose for just a moment that I have an acorn,
• Now I can destroy this acorn in one of two ways.
• 1st I can put it on the ground and smash it with a hammer.
• Or, I can plant it in the ground and let it fulfill itself by becoming an oak tree.
And this is what Jesus did
• When Jesus died,
• He ripped the veil of the temple and opened up the way into the holiest of holies (Heb. 10:19).
• He broke down the wall that separated the Jews from the Gentiles (Eph. 2:11–13).
• And Because He fulfilled the Law,
• We no longer need temples made with hands (Acts 7:48ff) or religious rituals (Col. 2:10–13).
But the question remains how do we fulfill the Law today?
• We do it by yielding to the Holy Spirit
• We do it by allowing Him to work in our lives (Rom. 8:1–3).
• It’s through the power of The Holy Spirit that we are able to experience the “righteousness of the law” in our daily life.
• This doesn’t mean we live sinless, perfect lives,
• It means that Christ lives out His life through us through the power of His Spirit
Gal 2:20 I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So I live my life in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:20).
When we read the Beatitudes, what we see is the perfect character of Jesus Christ.
• And While it’s true that Jesus never had to mourn over His sins,
• He was still a “man of sorrows
• He was still a man that was knew what grief was” (Isa. 53:3).
• He never had to hunger and thirst after righteousness because He was the holy Son of God,
• But He did delight in doing His Father’s will
Jn 4:34 Then Jesus explained: “My nourishment comes from doing the will of God, who sent me, and from finishing his work. (John 4:34).
And what we have to understand is that
• The only way we can experience the righteousness of the Beatitudes
• Is through the power of Christ.
Finally We can seek to do and teach the Law (v. 19).
Mt 5:19 So if you break the smallest commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But anyone who obeys God’s laws and teaches them will be great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
• This doesn’t mean that we dwell in the Old Testament and ignore the New!
• Second Corinthians 3 makes it clear that ours is a ministry of the New Covenant.
Jesus wants us to know about the righteousness of God,
• He wants us to obey it,
• He wants us share it with others.
• Because the moral law of God hasn’t changed.
• 9 out of the 10 Commandments are repeated again in the New Testament
• And they are given as commands to believers.
• The only exception is the Sabbath commandment,
• Which was given as a sign to Israel, see Neh. 9:14.)
What I want us to take away from this message today is
• We don’t have to obey an external Law because of fear.
• As Christians today we obey the internal Law
• The Holy Spirit teaches us the Word
• And He makes it possible for us to obey.
• But the most important thing of all is that we live because of love.
