Tag Archive for: Gospel of Matthew

Then Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, who was lying in bed with a fever. This time He again physically touches her.

He then heals many people who were brought to him in the evening, who were demon-possessed or sick and He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. Here He moves into the supernatural realm of spirits.

Jesus calms a storm on the sea of Galilee, where he and his disciples were in a boat. This demonstrates His power over nature and over natural forces.

He then casts out demons from two men who lived in the tombs near Gadara, on the other side of the lake. This is a very different kind of command over the spirit realm than the other case where He drove out spirits.

Let’s begin in Matthew 8:1

Large crowds followed Jesus as he came down the mountainside. 

Notice that “Large crowds” followed him. There weren’t just a few folk.

He was up in Capernaum at this time, where his headquarters were established.

This leads to many theories about where the sermon on the mount occurred because the text infers that these happenings occurred as soon as He came down from the mountain, the mountain being where the sermon on the mount was taught.

There’re many different theories but the location’s not important for us to know.

We’re just told that when He came down from the mountain, great crowds followed Him.

Verse 2,

Suddenly, a man with leprosy approached him and knelt before him. “Lord,” the man said, “if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.” 

Leprosy is symbolic of sin in the Bible and up until the 20th century, leprosy was thought to be highly contagious, and it was considered incurable. Even in Brisbane, Australia’s recent history as late as 1959 lepers or sufferers of Hansens disease as it was known as in later times, were isolated to Peel Island in Moreton Bay.

It was the most horrible disease.

When this leper came to Jesus, he didn’t ask, “Will You make me clean?” or “Are You able to make me clean?” He had faith. He recognised the lordship of Christ, and on that basis he said, “If You will, You can make me clean.”

What we ask is not always the Lord’s will. It’s not His will just because we ask for something. What we ask for may be the worst possible thing for us and those around us, but if it is His will, He can do it. He is able.

It’s most important that the will of God comes first and it’s not always an easy thing to put the will of God first.

We sometimes approach God with the words, “Lord, will You do this please because I want You to do it?” But the leper says, “I know You can, but will You?” In other words, is it according to Your will?

This is a bit different from what we hear a lot of today where people demand that the Lord do something for them.

Some believe that we have the right to ask God boldly and confidently for what we need, based on His promises in His Word. The trouble is many confuse exactly what the promises in His Word are.

Others think that we should accept whatever God wills for us with humility and submission to that will.

Jesus prayed this way Himself in the garden of Gethsemane, “Not my will, but yours be done”, and the apostle Paul prayed three times for God to remove his thorn in the flesh, but received the answer of, “My grace is sufficient for you”. His thorn in the flesh was not taken away.

So how should we pray?

Well, we should pray with faith and confidence, knowing that God is able and willing to do more than we can ask or imagine, according to His power that’s at work within us, but we should also pray with humility and reverence, recognising God’s sovereignty and wisdom, and understanding that His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts.

We can’t ever manipulate God. We honour Him and trust Him.

Verse 3,

Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. 

“Jesus reached out and touched him.”

I love the picture that J Vernon McGee painted of a possible behind the scenes look into this leper man.

Bear with me as I relate it to you because it gives an insight into the more human aspect of this terrible disease. Here’s.

Have you ever stopped to think that this man not only had the physical disease of leprosy but that he had a psychological hang–up that was terrible?

I don’t know this man’s background, but I imagine that one day he noticed a rash breaking out on his hand.

Perhaps he’d been out ploughing, came in, showed his wife, and she put some ointment on it.

The next morning it was just as red as it could be, and he went out and ploughed again. This went on for about a week, and his wife started getting uneasy.

She suggested he visit the priest. He went to the priest who isolated him for fourteen days. At the end of this period of time the disease had spread. The priest told him he had leprosy. He would need to be isolated from other humans.

The man asked the priest if he could go and say goodbye to his wife and children, but the priest said, “I’m sorry, you can’t go to them. You can’t put your arm around your wife ever again or hold your children in your arms anymore. When anyone comes near you, you must cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’”  From now on you’ll be isolated from all other humans.

He saw his children grow up from a distance. They’d leave food in a certain place, and he’d come and get it after they withdrew because he couldn’t touch them.

He wasn’t able to touch anyone, and no one was able to touch him.

Then one day he came to Jesus and said, “Lord, if You will, You can make me clean.” And what did the Lord Jesus do? He touched him.

May I say to you that the touch of Jesus was one of the most wonderful things that ever had happened to the man. It not only cleansed his leprosy, but it brought him back to his beloved family and also the family of mankind. It also bought him into the family of God because, “Immediately his leprosy was cleansed.” Now in case you think this behind the scenes take on the leper is a bit farfetched, search the heartbreaking story of Phyllis Ebbage who was isolated at the Peel Island leper colony in Moreton bay in the 1950s. This is very close to where I spent a big part of my life at Victoria Point.

To verse 4 now,

And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one; but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” 

I’m surprised that a lot of Bibe commentators don’t touch this verse. I think it’s because it’s largely been a puzzle as to why Jesus would tell this fully healed leper not to tell anyone. However, there’s really no puzzle if we’re taking the full context into account. Context is king in this case.

Again, we must realise that this incident took place under the Old Covenant, under the law of Moses. In relation to that law, why did Jesus come?

We saw in Matthew 5:17 that Jesus explained why.

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

Everything Jesus does while He’s on earth perfectly follows the law.

He had to in order to fulfil it completely and perfectly.

So, we find that in that law, in Leviticus chapter 14 we see 52, yes, 52 verses that are related just to the ritual that was required under the law for the healing of a leper.

They’re highly complex so we won’t go through them here, but they are the law and Jesus’s role is to fulfill the law. Now remember that James 2:10 says,

For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.

If Jesus had not been obedient to the entire law and all its complexities he wouldn’t have fulfilled it. The result would be that Jesus couldn’t have been raised from the dead because he would’ve been justly receiving the wages of sin, death, and we, you, and I, could not have been saved. Eternal life would have been impossible.

So, in our lingo today this instruction to the leper might sound something like this, “Mr leper, I know you’re so excited and in absolute wonderment of what’s just happened to you, and I know you’re itching to tell everyone, but you need to tell everyone in a particular way. You must tell them while still being obedient to Moses law. This law you already know. So, tell these people in the way God instructed by going to the priest and making the offering that the law provides for.”

In the record of this healing in the Gospel of mark we find that this man didn’t do as Jesus commanded but he was so overjoyed that he went out and told everybody he met. We can’t blame him for that. but Jesus was following the law by His instructions.

The crowds pushed in on our Lord, and He was forced to retire from the city and stay in desert places.

This incident can easily be used as picture of Israel and of sin and forgiveness and healing.

The leper can be seen as Israel hopelessly and desperately lost in its sin.

As we’ve said leprosy was closely aligned to sin in the bible.

Then Israel, the leper, finally sees God as He really is, as the saviour, and falls at his feet and worships him. One of the meanings of the word worship in this context is to kiss, like a dog licking his master’s hand. The leper, Israel, finally understands their complete inability to heal themselves and bow down to the master, something they don’t do today.

They reject the Messiah Who God sent to them to take away their sin. One day that’ll change and just like the leper they’ll be healed of the disease of sin by the One who perfectly fulfilled the law, something that they’re presently trying to do themselves.

Many, if not most Israelites, even believe they’re succeeding at it.

Thank God that a multitude of them are in fact coming to a saving knowledge and trust in their Messiah, Jesus Christ.

Jesus now enters into the city of Capernaum in verses 5 and 6,

Now when Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, pleading with Him, saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed, dreadfully tormented.”

The centurion had undoubtedly heard about the leper’s healing.

A centurion, a Gentile, was a professional military officer in the Roman army who commanded a platoon of troops called a “century”.

A century could be anywhere from a hundred to several hundred men. The number of centurions in a legion was 60. The ordinary duties of the centurion were to drill his men, inspect their arms, food, and clothing, and to command them in the camp and in the field of battle, often leading then into that battle.

Luke’s record tells us that this centurion built a synagogue for the Jews so there’s something else about this man besides his obvious military qualities. He was no fool and he wouldn’t have been afraid of anything much and yet here he’s humbled by his obvious love for his servant and his complete inability to help him.

Verse 7 tells us what Jesus said to him.

And Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.” 

The centurion answered and said, “Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed. 

For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” 

The centurion recognised authority. He could say to a soldier under him, “Do this,” and he did it. Why? Because of power, which is authority. He looked at Jesus and said, “You have that kind of power.” He recognised that Jesus had that kind of authority over physical illness.

Verse 10,

When Jesus heard it, He marvelled, and said to those who followed, “Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel! 

There’re only two recorded occasions where the Lord Jesus marvelled.

One was at the unbelief of Israel, and the other was at the faith of this gentile centurion.

Verses 11 and 12,

And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

Jesus is stating here that a time is coming when many Gentiles, non-Jewish people, will be saved by faith in Jesus and enjoy fellowship with the patriarchs of Israel in God’s kingdom.

However, many Jews, who were supposed to be God’s chosen people, will be rejected, and condemned because of their unbelief and disobedience to God through their rejection of the Messiah, Jesus.

These verses show that God’s salvation is universal, to the Jew and the Gentile and faith in Jesus is the only way to enter his kingdom for both.

Jesus is also warning against a person relying on their ethnic or religious heritage to get God’s favour. The wailing and gnashing of teeth are a picture of the depth of despair and anger of these people who find themselves condemned forever. These are people who really thought they were saved by doing the law, that they were good enough in themselves and that they didn’t need a Saviour.

Now verse 13,

Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go your way; and as you have believed, so let it be done for you.” And his servant was healed that same hour. 

Although the afflicted servant wasn’t physically there, the centurion’s faith in Jesus caused him to be healed. Jesus touched a leper, and he was healed. Now He heals the centurion’s servant from a distance.

Now we come to the third miracle of healing in verses 14 and 15.

Now when Jesus had come into Peter’s house, He saw his wife’s mother lying sick with a fever. 

So He touched her hand, and the fever left her. And she arose and served them. 

Peter’s mother–in–law was sick with a fever. In the version in Luke 4 verse 38 the fever is described as a great fever. It could well have been life threatening.

Jesus touched her and healed her. This was in an instant, not slowly and even though she was laid low with this fever her strength returned so that she could rise up immediately, prepare a meal for them, and serve them showing that she was perfectly restored.

These 2 verses also display the error and misunderstanding promoted by the Roman Catholic church in relation to priests and marriage.

Notice this healing was performed on Peter’s wife’s mother?

This is the Peter who the Catholics pretend was the first pope and on who the catholic church was built. They force celibacy on and forbid the marriage of priests and nuns, and yet here’s their iconic Peter, a married man, with a wife.

Our Lord may have been staying at Peter’s house at this time, but this is only speculation.

Matthew 8:16

When evening had come, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed. And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, 

Notice here how they brought “many” to Him. Matthew makes it clear that there were literally thousands of people healed in that day. For instance, there were thousands of blind men who could now see. There were thousands of crippled folk who were walking around normally. There were thousands of deaf folk who could now hear. This is the reason that Jesus’s enemies never questioned whether or not He had performed miracles. How could they? The healed people were everywhere.

Verse 17 is a direct carry on from verse 16,

that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: “HE HIMSELF TOOK OUR INFIRMITIES AND BORE OUR SICKNESSES.” 

Here we come to a verse that’s used more than any other verse by modern day healing ministries.

The verse includes part of the prophecy of Isaiah 53:4-6.

We need to be clear of what’s being healed in the passage in Isaiah.

“Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”

Of what are we healed here? This passage from Isaiah clearly states that we’re healed of our transgressions and iniquities. We’re healed because God laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all.

The apostle Peter uses this prophecy as well in 1 Peter 2:24,

“who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.”

Healed of what? “Sins.” Peter’s making it very clear that he’s talking about sin.

Isaiah 53:6 says,

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all”.

1 Peter 2:22 repeats this part of the same prophecy by saying,

For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. 

It was your iniquity and mine which was laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ and obviously, both Isaiah and the apostle Peter are referring to the unimaginably high price that was paid to remove the great disease of mankind, sin. Sin is the one and only sickness or disease that Jesus heals every single time, without exception, to whoever asks.

As we’ve said, this verse in Matthew 8:17, seems to be the foundation on which many healing ministries are built.

The problem is that in these verses, as in many others where Jesus healed the sick, it’s Jesus Himself doing the healing not men.

These are signs that would, or at least should, have convinced the nation of Israel just Who Jesus really was.

Only God had the power over the natural world and over physical illness.

Many individual Jews, and later, many gentiles would believe that Jesus was none other than God in the flesh, the promised Messiah, but as a nation, Israel would reject that.

In this day where sin and Satan still have a powerful foothold, Jesus is just as able to heal as He was back in the sermon on the mount days. He still has power over all the dimension, seen and unseen, in this universe.

But we really need to separate fact from fantasy and romance from reality. Jesus simply did not promise to heal our every physical sickness. Nor has that healing power ever been transferred to a man.

Sure, there were many miraculous healings recorded through the apostles and others in the early church, but we notice in all of these cases it was when they prayed and used the name of Jesus. They never claimed that healing power had somehow been passed onto them.

Also healing certainly didn’t always occur.

The most famous example is the apostle Paul himself in 2 Corinthians 12:7-9,

And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. 

Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. 

And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 

There’re other examples recorded in scripture and there are a great many powerful and wonderful preachers and teachers around today that, in spite of their preaching and teaching ministries, have not been physically healed.

I remember the awful illness of my brother Pete. As he was in hospital in the last days of his life he had a flow of people from the local church coming into his room and almost all of them fervently prayed for his healing. Of course, this didn’t happen and later many of these people, who were so sure they’d see Pete jump out of bed and leap for joy at his healing, were quite shaken. They found it very hard to come to terms with the fact that their prayers had been so powerful and full of hope but that they’d failed to heal Pete.

Pete himself had more compassion and felt more for these people than he did for himself.

My brother Pete is dead as is my brother Barry and many others whose physical condition didn’t respond to prayer for the sick.

Did God love the leper, the centurion’s servant, and Peter’s mother more than my brothers? Were they more worthy of God’s touch? Did they have more faith? No, No and no!

We need to face the fact that it’s simply not always God’s will to heal. Sometimes it is God’s will to heal but instead of going to an auditorium and rely on some human, we should go directly to the Great Physician, the Lord Jesus Christ?

Today we see huge crowds following this or that preacher and it’s heartbreaking to see just how little knowledge of God’s Word many of these precious people have. There seems to be a lot of what I call “secondary teaching” associated with today’s healing ministries relating to why not everyone gets healed and why in fact few, if any, really get a medically confirmed physical healing. This is always designed to make it the fault of the person who didn’t receive rather than the error of the healing ministry.

Jesus Christ, during His earthly ministry, performed many miracles as we’ve seen in this chapter of Matthew, and we’ll see many more in the other gospels.

Even His enemies acknowledged this. We find that the New Testament says that Jesus’ apostles, as well as certain other Christians, also performed miracles. Nobody could deny this either.

After one particular miracle, the religious leaders asked among themselves in Acts 4:16,

What shall we do to these men? For, indeed, that a notable miracle has been done through them is evident to all who dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.

No one can argue the fact that the same level of miraculous works as early Christians did does not occur today and it’s a fair question to ask why.

One view says that these miraculous signs were to confirm the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There was no written New Testament of the Bible then of course, and these signs confirmed that Jesus was truly the promised Messiah who’d come into humanity.

Many people believe that this was the only reason miracles were performed and once the message of Christ had been confirmed, miracles of that order stopped.

When Paul wrote to the Romans in Romans 15 he stated in verse 9 that the signs and wonders followed him wherever he preached. So, even though they weren’t recorded every time Paul preached these miraculous signs were present. This gives strength to the case that the main purpose of the miracles was to confirm the message of Christ at the beginning.

Others disagree that miracles ceased with apostles. They believe miracles are still possible. The lack of miracles among believers today is explained by these people as a problem with Christians, not God.

It’s due to sin and lack of faith rather than the Lord. The line goes that if Christians would only believe what God says in His Word then we’d see more miracles.

The problem with this view isn’t that are very few miracles occurring today like those in the New Testament, it’s that no miracles like this are taking place in our day and age. So, what are they saying? That in the huge crowds that attend these meetings all around the world there’s absolutely no one with any faith in Christ.

While it’s true that no Christian truly takes God at His Word all the time, even though many might say they do, we read that the apostles and the disciples, along with many others in the early church, were not always spiritual giants either. Many of these struggled between the things of this world that we exist in and 100% belief in God’s Word. We could write endless stories about Christians whose faith in God and Christ was great but who suffered physically. In fact many great ministries, many wonderful hymns and many great writings may never have come into existence if were not for these physical challenges.

If the Lord wants to perform miraculous signs, for whatever reason, He can always find some way.

Although not the norm for the church age, physical healing can still occur when God sees fit. This view says miracles did have value in confirming to the gospel of Jesus. However, it doesn’t assume that since we now have the written New Testament, God no longer works miracles.

Miracles weren’t the norm for most people in the early church and they certainly are not the norm today. Yet there are occasions when the Lord, for His own reasons, will still choose to do the miraculous and we shouldn’t presume to know God’s will in every situation and rule out this possibility.

We also need to be aware of the fact that miracles didn’t always cause everyone to believe. In fact, there were always doubters who could come up with alternative explanations to the miraculous deeds which they witnessed. Thus, miracles, by themselves, are not enough. Any miraculous sign must be accompanied by a clear presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The verse in Acts 4:16 that we saw just before confirms this. These religious leaders could not deny the miracles, and I believe many saw them firsthand, and yet they reject Jesus as the Messiah as did a host of others.

As we’ll see shortly in chapter 12, after seeing firsthand Jesus heal a demon–possessed man, the Pharisees even accused Him of being Satan’s servant. They were so confident in their assessment of Who Jesus and so desperate to explain away His miracles that they actually accused Him of casting out demons through Satan’s power.

See it’s not the miracles that make a person believe, It’s the good news, the gospel, that’s  the power of God that leads people to salvation.

Instead of joining the many who’ve placed their faith in a human down here on earth who claims to have the power to heal, let’s take our case to the Great Physician and say with the leper, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” Then whether we’re healed or not healed, He gets the glory. We trust Him to never leave or forsake us even in an hour of great physical need.

Until next time my friends may The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

Now we today as the Church can still learn a great deal from these passages. It’s like if I was invited to attend a seminar for, say, financial advisors. The room may be full of financial advisors and the speakers may be talking to them in terms that they’re familiar with and which I’m not. However, it’s probable that I’d still pick up a lot of detail that I could use in my own life.

Something else that’s very important to notice is that this chapter doesn’t start a new concept. It’s not separate from the previous chapters. Jesus didn’t give this sermon in chapter and verse. The chapters and verses, as valuable and indispensable as they are, are man’s invention.

This is all part of one passage and the audience, and the context hasn’t changed.

In order to get the flavour of the real message Jesus is teaching we need to see them in that context, as a continuation of chapter 6.

Now, it’s actually very hard to get the full context of this passage unless we read the entire sermon as one but it’s a bit impractical to do that every time we introduce a new verse for study. We’d be constantly repeating the entire previous chapters over and over again. So, let’s read from, Matthew 6:32 to Matthew 7:6.

For after all these things the Gentiles seek. (What things are these? Well food, drink, and clothing. Jesus has just branded those who worry about these things as having little faith because they don’t trust God to provide them, and they, being Jews and knowing scripture, should know to trust Him. We read on,

For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. 

“Judge not, that you be not judged. 

For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. 

And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? 

Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? 

Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. 

“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces. 

Here we have another commonly misused teaching of Jesus.

We often see this verse being used as a sort of weapon in a debate. This verse might be plucked out by saying, “Well the bible says do not judge. How about you take the log out of your own eye before trying to take the speck out of mine. You call yourself a Christian?”

But, if we’re going to use scripture in debates or discussions we need to present it in the right context.

So, what’s really going on here?

We are in fact called to judge poor behaviour, and we’re supposed to do it in love.

But this “do not judge”, when taken in the right context, is talking about judging people’s salvation.

It’s judging whether or not they’re saved, whether or not they have received God’s forgiveness for sin and whether or not they have eternal life. And it’s making that judgement based on a personal summing up of what that person’s doing or saying. It’s judging them by their actions, their works, not their belief.

We really must keep in mind keep in mind that Jesus hasn’t gone to the cross yet. These people who Jesus is teaching don’t realise the full picture He’s painting here.

They will understand later, and we who are on this side of the cross understand because we’re reading past tense. To us today these things have now happened, so we know how the story unfolds. But these people here at this time don’t know.

Now if we go back through chapter 6 to verse 32, Jesus refers to the gentiles, “As the Gentiles do,” He says.

At this time the Gentiles were known to be unbelievers, deeply embedded in all manner of sin and quite often sin that would even turn our heads today.

They’re certainly not seeking God and they don’t even know what the Mosaic law is, and they generally don’t care.

Jesus says that these Gentiles, these lower than the low people, eagerly seek all those things. But for you, you who are the chosen people of God, you should know that your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things and if you worry about them you have little faith in your Heavenly Father.

So, seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.

You see, the context is seeking the kingdom, the kingdom of God, and seeking God’s righteousness through which is the only way you can enter that Kingdom.

By the way, as Christians we need to know that if there’s ever been a time that we’ve called on Jesus to save us, we’ve already fulfilled Matthew 6:33, But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

To seek first the kingdom of heaven is to recognize that this needs to happen prior to looking for anything else to fulfill us. This includes food, clothing, money, all our needs.

So, in light of the context here there’re these Jewish leaders Pharisees, scribes and probably many ordinary people as well who’re judging other people by their performance, by their outward appearance.

They’re judging others and their position with God, their ability to inherit the kingdom, by what they do. They’re judging on the outward appearance. They have, and never will have, the slightest knowledge of the true state of the heart of these people they’re judging.

Now, again they don’t know how the full story unfolds yet, but Jesus nonetheless is telling them something very simple. He says don’t judge so you won’t be judged. Don’t judge how they get saved based on their outward performance and appearance, because if you do, in the way that you judge whether or not they’re right with God you’ll be judged.

It’ll be by your standard that you yourself will be judged.

You see these pharisees, these religious hypocrites viewed their own standard as the highest possible that man could achieve and so therefore they were totally acceptable to God.

Their outward performance was wonderful and that was the standard they themselves used to judge whether or not a person was saved and was righteous before God.

You see they judged a person’s relationship with God against their own performance which they considered spotless. I think they genuinely believed that. That their own good works were sufficiently goof for God to save them.

How Jesus must have rocked their boat when He told them they must seek first the Kingdon of God and His righteousness. What? You mean Us? We don’t need to do that! We’re already righteous and you should know that!

Again and again, Jesus is going to point this out to these people. When we get to chapter 23 of Matthew we’ll see Jesus doesn’t hold back on them. He says in verses 27 and 28, and I read,

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 

Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. 

See, ever and always it’s the inner man, the heart, the soul that Jesus is concerned with. We may do good works because of a right heart before God but never, ever to make the heart right with God.

Some of these scribes and Pharisees would later partake in real salvation. After the cross and the resurrection, they’d realise Who Jesus really was and that only through Him could they be righteous.

Sadly, most would not come to this understanding.

Therefore, they could never be judged righteous at the great Judgment because their righteousness, although great in their own eyes, was as filthy rags to the Lord.

Therefore, at the final judgement of the world they’d be judged the same way they currently judged others, by outward appearance and performance, by their works. Countless numbers of people have gone, and will go, to their graves and into eternity thinking their good works made them righteous.

Then Jesus says, “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye?”

What’s that spec? In context this spec would be an outward sign, the performance, the appearance of righteousness. Jesus says to them, “Why are you looking at that spec in other people’s eyes, but you completely fail to notice the plank that’s in your own eye.”

Jesus then says, How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite first take that plank out of your own eyes see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

See, we can apply this teaching to us as Christians today.

Jesus didn’t say that it’s wrong to help a brother with the speck in his eye. It is a good thing to help a brother with his speck, but not before dealing with the plank in our own eye.

Before I start going around deciding about whether a person’s saved or not, I need to know how people are saved. I need to always know that nothing a person does or says outwardly can give me any certainty of their state of the heart and whether or not they’re saved.

I need to never forget that my own salvation, my own righteousness, and relationship with God relies purely and entirely on my believing In Jesus Christ.

I am righteous and therefore have an eternal relationship with God by no other means, not by anything I do, not by any good works. I’m saved only through my faith in Jesus, and I recognise my utter inability to sin less as a means of saving myself.

Relying on my own good works and my own outward acts in order to be righteous in God’s eyes IS the plank in my own eye just as it’s the plank in the eye of anyone who judges another person’s salvation by their own standard of good works.

Until we fully understand what the only way to salvation is, through the blood of Christ Who Is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, we have no business judging anybody else’s salvation.

Jesus then says, “Do not give what is holy to dogs.”

So, what is holy? The gospel, the good news of the way to salvation.

So, who are the dogs?

Well, the dogs in this context are Jewish people who have heard the gospel. They’ve tasted it and they’ve been enlightened to the only path to acceptability by God, but they’ve said no thank you. I reject Jesus as messiah.

Don’t give what’s holy to the dogs and do not throw your pearls before pigs. Again, the pearls are the gospel, and the pigs are those who’ve rejected Jesus as the promised and now arrived Messiah.

Now, these are not unbelievers who haven’t heard about Jesus. They’re the unbelievers who’ve heard about and by choice have rejected Jesus and His sacrifice.

When you give the gospel, that which is holy, to the dogs and the gospel, your pearls, to the pigs what will they do? They’ll trample them under their feet and then they’ll turn on you and tear you to pieces. They’ll hate that which they’ve rejected.

In the first 10 chapters of Hebrews, which is a letter written to Jewish people seeking for salvation, you won’t find a single mention of outward sin.

No lies, no cheaters, no thieves, no adulterers, no murderers.

The only sin ever mentioned is the sin of unbelief.

These folk went to the temple. They relied on the law.

We already know that no one’s found righteous through the works of the law, not one. So, in this letter the writer’s pointing this out and showing them how no one can be forgiven of sin through cutting up animals, but that how Jesus Christ was the last and ultimate sacrifice for sin.

In verse 28 of Hebrews 10 these Jews are reminded that when under the Mosaic law those who rejected that law died without mercy. Then in verse 29 they’re told that how much worse, how much more severe punishment will be to those who have trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?

You see here that in order to reject the Mosaic law they had to first hear it.

Likewise, in order to trample the Son of God underfoot, the gospel, the pearl, that which is holy, they must have first heard it.

This trampling isn’t about an outward sin, it’s about an inward rejection of Jesus Christ. They’ve heard and rejected the free gift of salvation. They’ve said No, not for me thank you. I believe in the old ways and I’m going to keep slaughtering animals and sprinkling their blood and use the temple sacrifices to get right with God.

That’s why Jesus says to these people here in Matthew chapter 7 not to give what’s holy to dogs or throw your pearls before pigs or they’ll trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces.

See how this is all lining up with salvation as we just read in chapter six, seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Not their righteousness, by their works.

Then Jesus assures them in verses 7 to 11,

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 

For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 

Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 

Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! 

What are they to ask for here? His, God’s righteousness.

Whoever calls on the name the Lord will be saved.

What are they to seek? The way to Salvation!

Knock and the door will be open to you. Today if you hear his voice if you hear the Gospel, don’t harden your hearts like those Jewish unbelievers.

Everyone who asks receives. Now contrary to a lot of teaching around today this doesn’t mean asking for a better job, or more money or a bigger house or any other earthly wealth and riches. This is about something infinitely more important and valuable.

While the Lord does promise to supply our needs and He regards not relying on Him as a lack of faith as we’ve already as in Matthew 6:25, this’s not what Jesus is talking about here.

It’s about asking God to save us. To save us from eternal death into eternal life and into a perfect relationship with Him. Everyone who asks to be saved, everyone who asks for forgiveness everyone who asks the Lord Jesus to rescue them will receive.

The one who seeks finds and to the one who knocks that door will be open to them.

Then Jesus assures them by saying, “What person is there among you who, are just humans, when your son asks for a loaf of bread will give him a stone? Look you treat your own kids better than that don’t you? Don’t you think God is going to be much more gracious than you?”

“Or if that son asks for a fish would you give him a snake?”

So, what we see here in this passage when we look at it in in the correct context it’s about judging whether or not someone is made right with God based on the only thing anyone can see about them, their outward actions and appearance.

If that’s the way a person thinks then that person’s got a big log in his eye because he’s judging by his standards not God’s. He’s condemned another by his view of what the way to salvation is.

We see this in the words, “Call yourself a Christian? You’re not a Christian!” These are words often used when a believer fails at something or falls into anger or some sort of sin. You see that person is judging based on their own idea of what it takes to be a Christian, not God’s and that’s the plank in their eye.

To remove that plank that persons got to come to the realisation that the only way to get right with God is through His grace, by calling on Him, not by what a person does.

Whoever calls on the name of the lord will be saved.

That’s removing that log from their own eye, that log that’s stopping them seeing the true way to salvation.

Then and only then can a person start talking to other people in a loving way about outward sin.

There’re many Christians who have believed, but who live appalling lives on the outside and it’s easy to condemn them and judge them as unsaved, however that’s not the true measure of their salvation.

It’s the belief of the heart not the outward sign that renders us saved and that is an incredibly difficult concept for those outside of Christ and even for those IN Christ to grasp. And of course, we can’t grasp it until we understand the infinite grace and mercy of God.

Let’s back this up with scripture otherwise it’s a useless personal insight and nothing more.

Let’s go to 1 Corinthians 5:3

You’ll notice the context of this is that the apostle Paul has judged a man in the Corinthain congregation. By the way he’s already been disobedient to the “Judge not” scripture if we see it the way most do.

This chap is committing a sin that even the gentiles, those ratbag unbelievers wouldn’t do.

Even the worst unbelieving people wouldn’t commit this sin, which was that this bloke’s sleeping with, having sex with his mother. Possibly this chap’s father had remarried, and it may have been dad’s new wife he was sleeping with, but we don’t know that for sure.

So, Paul says that though he’s not actually there he’s judged him, the one who’s committed this sin, as though he were present, and the story goes on to say that Paul tells them to get him out of the church. He’s an embarrassment and he’s flaunting his sin in their faces.

So, we see here that there is some judgment that Christians are supposed to make. God’s not asking us to be silly and sit there and watch a guy commit open sin in the church. There’s a time where we’re called by God to go, in love, to a brother and talk to him about it. In this particular case the bloke was chucked out of the local church.

But look! In spite of this evil His spirit is saved!

Now we come to Matthew 7:2 and the famous golden rule,

Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Firstly, we have to notice the first word, therefore.

Many people treat this golden rule as an entire doctrine in itself and some even believe it’s all you need to be saved. But most people don’t notice the word “therefore” which directly ties this verse into the previous ones. It’s still about salvation by works, how trying to keep the Mosaic law cannot save a person, judging people based on their works and judging others when the person doing the judging has the exact same problem, but they don’t know it or they don’t think they do.

This verse makes the law easier to understand, but it doesn’t make it any easier to obey. No one has ever consistently done to others as they would like others to do to themselves. We’ve all failed dismally at this, and since Jesus said this sums up the entire Law and the prophets, we’ve all broken that law. So, if our salvation relied on keeping the law, no man born from Adam has ever been able to do it so there would be no salvation for mankind.

But thanks to God and His plan before the foundation of the world to enter into humanity in the flesh of a man and willingly die as the all time sacrifice for sin we can be free of the law of sin and death.

To Matthew 7:13-14,

Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 

Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. 

The picture given here is a bit like a funnel, a funnel of life if you like. We can enter in through the wide part where there’s lots of fun and all the good things this world offers. After we enter it keeps narrowing down until we come to the only exit death, destruction, and hell.

But we can enter another funnel and this funnel can only be entered at the narrow part. You see we’re already entering FROM the death, destruction, and hell that is already ours. That narrow entrance is Christ. He’s the narrow entrance. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He’s the way out of our natural state of death, destruction, and hell

He says in John 10:10,

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

And the longer you walk up that funnel with Him, the wider it gets.

There’re a lot of people telling us that the way to get right with God is by human effort. Some are saying we do it by avoiding sin. Some say we do it by having a list of good works. Some say it’s a combination of both, plus repenting, then begging and pleading for forgiveness each time we mess up.

We rarely hear any love in these voices, just condemnation and the promise of hell if continue to mess up. They have a hundred and one methods and lifestyle lessons and does and don’ts and they brag about how they found the proper ritual to live perfect human lives. In their eyes God’s amazed at how awesome they are. But it’s clear their focus is not on Jesus, but rather themselves. The next verse applies to many of these people.

Matthew 7:15-16,

Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 

This is talking about the teachers who were, and are today, pushing this self-improvement junk. They’re FALSE PROPHETS.

Israel was warned against false prophets, and the church is warned against false teachers, but both classes come in sheep’s clothing.

Jesus isn’t talking about the congregation’s fruit here. He’s talking about the fruit of teachers.

In context, he’s talking about people teaching the wrong way to getting saved. If you teach people that the way to inheriting the kingdom is by human effort, there’ll be no fruit because no one can be saved that way. Noone’ll seek after Jesus if they believe the inheritance comes from us through our own human effort.

2 Peter 2:1 tells us

But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. 

The only way for teachers to produce fruit is by teaching that salvation comes from hearing and believing.

It comes from hearing the word about and trusting in the Lord Jesus and recognising that there’s nothing a person can do to work out their own sin problem. We are to recognize teachers by their fruits. That’s what we’re to watch for in their lives.

Now we jump to Matthew 7:21-23,

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 

And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ 

Just because a person calls him Lord doesn’t mean they’re actually a believer and their collection of good outward works doesn’t mean they actually know Jesus either.

Let’s look at some very important passages about the will of the father.

John 6 verses 28-29,

Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

John 6:40,

For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

Matthew also writes about God’s heart and his will in Matthew 18:14,

In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.

Now there’s no questioning that we should avoid sin. It’s a plague. But that’s not how we get saved.

Turning from sin is a normal outward result of an inner change at the moment of salvation. So, let’s look at these people who have apparently called Jesus ‘lord lord’ but who’ll not inherit the kingdom.

By paying attention to how they think they were performing we see that this performance is how they think they’re getting into heaven.

We see a group of people bragging about what they did. Didn’t we prophesy in your name? Jesus, didn’t you notice we cast out demons in your name? Jesus, weren’t you paying attention when we performed many miracles?

As we’ve said so often through these passages, salvation’s not about what we do for Jesus. It’s about what Jesus did for us.

These people genuinely think they’re doing all kinds of good works for Jesus.

They all think their human performance is enough. Lots of people miss that, and as a result, they miss the context of Jesus calling them workers of iniquity.

If we pay attention to the text we’ll discover that this inequity is not referring to outward sin. He’s referring specifically to the sin of unbelief.

Now notice something else.

These were not people who used to know Jesus, and then suddenly started messing up.

These people never knew Jesus. The keyword is NEVER.

Now remember there’s not a single mention of a lack of works or too much sin. This was about not knowing Jesus. Unbelief. And that was the inequity. And this brings us full circle back to the narrow gate.

The Jewish people were all about law-based salvation. They were not looking to the promised Messiah; Jesus and they certainly weren’t teaching Jesus as the way to the father.

Human law-based methods were what they believed in for righteousness.

Romans 3:12 tells us that ‘through the law no one will be found righteous, no not even one’.

That’s a wide gate and it only leads to destruction. There’s no fruit from that message. No one will be saved. And sadly, many people who buy into that message will likely stand before Jesus on judgment day, bragging about all the things they did for him, and Jesus will tell them plainly, Depart from me, I never knew you.

That’s frightening!

Now, these verses do not refer to believers today.

Every believer, living or dead, will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. None will hear the Lord say, “depart from me.”

We’re saved by trusting God. Trusting that He sent Jesus to rescue us from our sins. What the law could not do, God did, sending His only begotten son that whoever shall believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

Now to verse 24 and 25,

Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock:  and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. 

Christ is that rock, that immovable foundation.

1 Corinthians 3:11 says,

For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

When we’re resting on Christ, we’re on a firm, immovable foundation on which to build our life on.

To verses 26 and 27,

But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.” 

What is that sand? It’s human goodness and human effort.

It’s the old weakness of the flesh. My friend, we need something better than this flesh has to offer.

Matthew concludes this section by saying in verses 28 to 29,

And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:

For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

Our Lord Jesus taught with authority; He wasn’t just repeating something He’d read.

You and I have nothing worthwhile to say unless it’s with the authority of the Word of God and unless we believe it’s the Word of God.

We don’t want to hear manmade theories, and rituals and lifestyle messages. There’s a gospel to give and receive, a message of salvation and we know it’s real.

Friends, the Sermon on the Mount is a glorious passage of Scripture which we shouldn’t bypass but we must read it in its right context. When we do it’ll bring us to the person of Jesus Christ. It’ll show us how we fail to measure up to it. It will show us that we’re weak and guilty. It’ll make us cry for mercy and it’ll bring us to Christ for salvation. When we accept Christ as Savior, He’ll give us the Holy Spirit and through His power our works’ll become good works, acceptable to Him. But they’ll never be the method to get to Him.

Until next time my friends may God bless you with His revelation knowledge.

As we said when we finished up last time, anyone who speaks or writes on the so-called Lord’s Prayer has entered a field of controversy. Why is this and why do so many well read and highly knowledgeable bible scholars differ so much when it comes to this prayer.

There are those who believe it has no place in the Church today and those who believe it’s a good model that we should base our prayer life on today, and there’s many opinions all along the spectrum between those points.

So, with the understanding that all these good scholars the majority of who Love God and believe in the salvation provided through Jesus still differ where this prayer’s concerned, how can you and I be sure to get it right?

Well, I think there are two important truths we should be aware of.

First, we should always look at the whole counsel of God. Very few passages in the bible remain a mystery when taken in the context they were given in and when viewed within their place in the whole Word of God.

Second, we should never think that praying the Lord’s prayer word for word as Jesus gave is somehow wrong and that our salvation rests on getting it right.

So, with those things in mind let’s take a closer look shall we?

Should this really be called “The Lord’s Prayer”? It’s not named that in the Bible of course, that’s just the name man’s put on it and it’s stuck through the ages.

Technically, John 17 is the Lord’s Prayer which is the prayer that Jesus prayed just before His betrayal by Judas and His journey to the cross.

This prayer could be more accurately named the disciples prayer because Jesus is teaching it to the disciples. In fact, in the version in Luke 11:1 the disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray as John (that’s John the Baptist) taught his disciples to pray.

This prayer sample was given to Jewish disciples, and it was included in the sermon on the mount which we’ve seen is a “pre cross”, “pre new covenant” sermon.

You see at the time Jesus taught this prayer there was still about 31/2 years of the Old Covenant left to run and the New Covenant, which is the covenant we’re under today, is not yet a reality because Jesus is still alive. His shed blood, His death, burial, and resurrection, all which bought in and ratified the New Covenant, hasn’t yet happened.

So, this prayer sample was given to Jewish people, in this case Jewish disciples, still under Old Testament law. They were in the final stages of the Old Covenant’s existence, but it hadn’t passed away yet. The New Covenant was not yet a reality because the One with Whose blood it would be sealed was still alive, standing there doing the talking.

In light of this we should try and see how much of this prayer Jesus intended you and I, as members of the Church, The Body of Christ, to pray today and how much was given for the disciples to pray in this period up till the New Covenant comes into existence.

The more we look at the Lord’s prayer the more we realise that the petitions the disciples are taught to ask for, the requests they’re making to God we already have today. After Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection and the arrival of The Holy Spirit these request have already been fulfilled in Christ, but they weren’t at this particular point in history.

Could the Lord have given this prayer for the disciples to pray together? And could the purpose have been to pray for those things that would all be fulfilled when Jesus’ earthly ministry was completed in about 31/2 years from that time?

The Lord’s prayer doesn’t mention praying in Jesus’ name.

We’re told in John 14:13-14 by Jesus Himself,

And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 

If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.

Then again in John 16:23-24, spoken by Jesus again,

“And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. 

Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. 

What did Jesus mean by “In that day”?

Well, the earlier verses, 16 to 22 of the same chapter, John 16, tell us what “In that day” meant. He was telling them of His soon coming death and His returning to be with the Father.

Also, from the book of Acts, there’s no record of the disciples, the apostles or the early church ever praying the Lord’s prayer, but they did pray in the name of Jesus in Acts 3:6, 4:30, 9:34.

In Jesus Name actually means “On the authority of Jesus”. Why do we have this authority? Because the kingdom of God, that the Lord’s prayer was requesting from God, for is already here in the hearts of the believers, even though the Kingdom will also be on earth in the future when Christ rules on earth from David’s throne.

Why do we have this authority? Because we have already been delivered from the evil one. And we can use this authority only because God (through Christ) has unconditionally forgiven us and there’s no longer a barrier between Him and those in Christ, Christians.

The people who were receiving this prayer model from Jesus didn’t yet have that authority.

Jesus starts teaching the prayer starting in verse 9 and for the sake of easy understanding, let’s continue to use the title, “The Lord’s Prayer.”

In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.

One of reasons why we know that the Lord’s prayer couldn’t have been the Lords own prayer that He prayed himself is His use of the first two words, Our Father.

You see, He, personally, couldn’t have used the Word “Our”. Why?

Well, His relationship with God the Father was, and is, much different than ours. Today, as Christians, we can call God “Father” because of our adoption through regeneration, or the new birth and we may call Him “Our Father” because He’s our common Father to all of us that are united in One Body, The Body of Christ.

However, individual Israelites didn’t call God “Father”. The Jewish nation as a whole called God “Father” but never individually. Why the Jewish nation didn’t call God “Father” has to do with the fact that they don’t use the name of God at all, believing that it is too holy to be uttered by humans.

Jesus called God “Father” because of His place in the Godhead.

He was always careful to use the terms, “My Father” or “The Father” when speaking of His own relationship with God.

Then He used “your Father” when He spoke about God to the Jewish nation collectively, but never “Our Father” as in yours and mine together. That would’ve meant that he was on the same level as the ones He was talking to, and He clearly wasn’t.

He was the Son in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of the Godhead.

He used “Our Father” in this prayer model purely as a sample to the disciples.

The term “Our father” also shows us that the prayer was not given as a prayer for personal use so much as it was a corporate prayer and we can also see this by the number of times “our”, “we” and “us” is used.

For us today, God is still the mighty sovereign of the universe who created all things and keeps all things in place and will judge all things – but He’s also Father to us who believe. He’s our Abba Father as Galatians 4:6 explains, which signifies the close, intimate relationship of a father and his child while still retaining the reverence due to the All Powerful and All Mighty God. I became a son of God or a child of God only through faith in Christ.

There’s nothing wrong with recognising this incredible relationship believers have today with God.

“Hallowed be Your name,” could be more correctly translated, “Let your name be made holy.”

The name of God stands for all that He is.

“Our Father in heaven, or Which art in heaven, as other versions translate, refers to God’s holiness and glory.

God’s not a prisoner in this universe, He’s beyond and above it. He’s in the air, in space and in the hyper spaces, in the atmosphere and in every tiny cell in the universe and has perfect command over all of the dimensions that we know exist along with the ones we don’t know of. He’s more than creation! He’s the One sitting on the throne of the universe, and He has it under His control!

Again, there’s nothing wrong with recognising the wonder of God in our worship of Him.

Verse 10,

Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.

Now this term “kingdom” in Scripture causes so much confusion. What’s the meaning behind this? What’s actually being asked for here?

Identifying what “kingdom” means, could be of more help in getting a correct view of the Word of God and of life than almost any other single thing.

When John the Baptist appeared with the Lord Jesus Christ, they began with the message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Remember they’re both speaking to the Jewish nation still under the Old Covenant.

The Kingdom of heaven is now at hand.

The time for its arrival had come and it’s logical that the King must have arrived first because there simply is no Kingdom without a king. The King had most definitely arrived.

The kingdom of God, also called the Kingdom of heaven and sometimes the Kingdom of Christ, is simply the rule of the heavens over the earth.

This kingdom, like the King who rules it, is eternal. It has no beginning or end and so it crosses over all of the time periods that we as natural humans live in. It has a past, a present and a future.

King David knew this when he worshipped God when he was handing over the building of the temple to his son Solomon. We see that in,

1 Chronicles 29:11,

Yours, O LORD, is the greatness, The power and the glory, The victory and the majesty; For all that is in heaven and in earth is Yours; Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, And You are exalted as head over all.  

In the present the Kingdom is in the hearts of regenerated believers.

In Luke 1:20-21 we read,

One day the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the Kingdom of God come?” Jesus replied, “The Kingdom of God can’t be detected by visible signs. 

You won’t be able to say, ‘Here it is!’ or ‘It’s over there!’ For the Kingdom of God is already among you.” 

In Matthew 13:24-30, Jesus likened the kingdom of God to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but his enemy came and planted tares among them. Tares are what’s called a darnel which is a weedy rye grass with poisonous seeds, often found in grainfields.

Note that an enemy and tares were a feature of this kingdom.

In the interpretation of the parable in verses 37 to 43, Jesus says the enemy is the devil and the tares are his children meaning evil is still mixing with good in the Kingdom of God.

So, we’re looking here at the part of the Kingdom that’s present today and where evil still exists, not the part of the future Kingdom where the devil is bound.

I doubt that anyone’d disagree that there’s something wrong in this world and getting “wronger”. Although God, through His Word is holding all things together, He’s certainly not ruling the earth today.

Jesus also stated in Mark 9 verse 1 and Luke 9 verse 27 that some members of His audience wouldn’t taste death till they saw the kingdom of God come with power.

You see these people were looking for a powerful, physical, Jewish led Kingdom to come that’d be ruled by the Messiah who’d finally cast off all the bonds of their current Roman rulers.

So, to clarify, we know that the Kingdom is a reality today.

The kingdom of God is the rule of the heavens over the earth and today that’s in the hearts of regenerated believers.

The Church, the body of Christ is part of that kingdom but it’s not the only part, in fact there’re probably many parts that’ll be revealed throughout eternity.

We could say it’s like Brisbane is part of Queensland but it’s not Queensland or Queensland is part of Australia but it’s not Australia.

Another part of the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of heaven is yet future.

That’ll be the reign of Christ over the earth where He rules from the throne of David from Jerusalem in the millennium. That is the facet of the Kingdom that’s yet to come. It’ll come after the Great Tribulation and not only will Christ rule as the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, but Satan will be bound for the duration of this earthly rule, 1000 years.

People today are disillusioned, disappointed, fearful, and confused with world events that includes endless war, the explosion of government control and the struggle to find a purpose but, many people still talk about the Church building God’s kingdom here on earth that’ll change all this.

Christians have largely turned away from the teaching of the millennial rule of Christ where He’ll rule His people, the nation Israel, in their promised land from the throne of David. They’ve either forgotten or rejected the teaching that the Church and the nation of Israel are different, with different destinies. The Church has in no way replaced the nation Israel or somehow taken over God’s eternal promises to Israel.

Many think, without really thinking at all, that “Your kingdom come” is referring to the rapture when the Church meets the Lord in the air, but we need to get specific and find out what’s really being said.

Keep remembering here that we’re in the Old covenant still.

It’s that kingdom which was first told to David through the prophet Nathan in 2 Samuel 7:12-17, when God said to him,

“I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 

He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”

And then in Isaiah 9:6,

For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

Of the increase of His government and peace There will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, To order it and establish it with judgment and justice From that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. 

God is saying He’ll bring the Messiah, and He’ll reign in righteousness and justice and peace over this earth forever.”

A day was coming when Jerusalem would become the very center of this earth, the Capital City, if you like. It was a brilliant ray of hope in what was the darkest hour of these people.

The entire earth would be ruled over by this One who was to come. Even nature would be affected. The desert would blossom as the rose. Even the sun, moon and stars would be affected.

This event on the Lord’s calendar is coming, despite some catastrophic events that will take place before it comes.

In the Lord’s prayer as it was given to the disciples, the instruction is to pray for that spiritual Kingdom that would come in about 31/2 years from that time when man was finally reunited with God through the New Covenant which came into existence with through the sacrifice and the spilled blood of the sacrificial Lamb of God.

It would come into the hearts of all mankind who would nothing more than believe.

If we pray “Your kingdom come” today, we’re not praying for the part of the Kingdom which is already here in the hearts and souls of believers. We should in fact be thanking God that we who believe already have that Kingdom in us.

Praying “Your kingdom come” today is praying for the eventual setting up of the rule of the heavens on the earth, the millennium, but associated with that we’re actually praying for all the events on God’s calendar which must be fulfilled before that kingdom arrives including the rapture of the church, the revealing of the man of sin (The Antichrist) the great tribulation and the second coming of Christ to earth. And we must remember that the second coming is not the rapture. Christ doesn’t come to the earth in the rapture, we meet Him in the air. He comes to earth at His second coming after the terrible events of the Great tribulation.

Verse 11,

Give us this day our daily bread.

This request seems simple if we view the bread we’re asking for as simply everything we need to sustain us in this world today.

We know that in Luke 12:22-24 after Jesus told His disciples the parable of the rich fool who concerned himself only with his worldly goods He said,

“That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food to eat or enough clothes to wear. 

For life is more than food, and your body more than clothing. 

Look at the ravens. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for God feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than any birds! 

In Philippians 4:6-7 Paul is definitely speaking to born again believers, you and me, (if we have believed) and he says

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. 

In Philippians 4:11-13 Paul goes on to say and I’ll read from the New Living Translation,

Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. 

I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. 

For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength. 

So, in asking to give us this day our daily bread in today’s environment, wouldn’t we be better thanking God for what He’s already promised us?

Now, if we look at this request from the Old Covenant viewpoint we see it in the light of John 6 verses 26 to 35 after Jesus had fed the 5000,

Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. 

Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” 

Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” 

Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” 

Therefore they said to Him, “What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do? Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘HE GAVE THEM BREAD FROM HEAVEN TO EAT.'” 

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 

For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 

Then they said to Him, “Lord, give us this bread always.” 

And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.

Then after the Jews murmured and complained amongst themselves Jesus said to them in verses 47 to 51,

Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life. 

I am the bread of life. 

Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 

This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. 

I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” 

In light of this, we see that asking God for daily bread is a plea for the soon coming time when the true bread would be freely given.

Verse 12,

And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors.

As we’ve already stated, Our Lord Jesus couldn’t pray this. You see He had no sin, no debts to be forgiven.

In some churches today they use “forgive us our debts” while others use “forgive us our trespasses” or even “forgive us our sins.” There’s no difficulty here at all since they refer to the same thing, and that thing is sin.

We’ll look at this closer after the next verse.

Verse 13,

And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

“Lead us not into temptation.” This word “lead” gives us the wrong impression because God does not tempt any man and we see that in James 1:13. A better translation would probably be, “Leave us not in temptation.” It doesn’t mean to keep us out of it, but when we’re in it, don’t leave us there.

“Deliver us from evil”. This deliverance is from the evil one. Deliver us from the evil one, deliver us from the Devil.

Satan is the same awful reality today as he always has been. The world’s tried many times to deny his existence and it’s easy to see that His most effective lie is “I don’t exist”, but any person who stands for God knows the reality of Satan.

Now, we know that in John 12:31 Jesus when heading to the cross said,

Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.

He also said in John 16:7-11,

Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. 

And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

Then Paul writes in Galatians 1:4-5,

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, that Jesus died so that He could deliver us from this present evil age.

If the evil one has been overcome already, why pray for deliverance from him?

However, to those people who were in the death throes of the Old Covenant but not yet in the New, the events that occurred just before Jesus said these things, just before the cross, hadn’t happened yet, neither had Pauls started his ministry to the gentiles which he had in these verses in Galatians.

Prayer should be communication from the heart based on a relationship with God so it can’t be confined in a box or restricted to a chant or mantra.

James 5:16 says, and I’ll read from the amplified version,

Therefore, confess your sins to one another [your false steps, your offenses], and pray for one another, that you may be healed and restored. The heartfelt and persistent prayer of a righteous man (believer) can accomplish much [when put into action and made effective by God–it is dynamic and can have tremendous power].

This is not to say anyone praying this prayer is wrong or that it somehow damages a person’s relationship with God. No way!

God looks at the heart as 1 Samuel 16:7 tells us.

For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” 

We just need to be aware that tradition is never far away from religion and a real and true relationship with God is never religious.

Our Lord gave the Lord’s Prayer as a model to the disciples. He’d like us to learn to pray in our own words when we talk to Him and using our own words when we pray.

As the Lord Jesus said in the verses before the Lord’s Prayer, prayer shouldn’t be for public display, and neither should it be vain repetition. The most effective prayer is in privacy between you and God only.

Now to the very important verses of 14 and 15,

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

These verses are usually always considered with verse 12 and they’re almost always interpreted and taught as that our forgiveness from God is conditional upon us forgiving others first. If we don’t forgive we won’t be forgiven.

It’s possible to see this line differently from a deep word study, but this is the way it’s normally understood.

However, all throughout the new testament our forgiveness is unconditional. The entire New Testament, in fact the whole Bible hinges on that.

For instance, Colossians 2:13-14 tells us this,

And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Then Ephesians 2:8-9,

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

And Romans 3:24,

Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

We could go on and on.

If forgiveness from God is a free gift, then it can’t be based on our own personal track record of forgiveness to others.

Just like the rest of the sermon on the mount this is raising the bar on the law and it’s really raising it in this case.

As Christians I think we all agree that it’s very, very important that we forgive each other and to have a forgiving heart that forgives others that have sinned against us.

It’s a part of the natural Christian life, and God calls on us and encourages us to forgive others.

Unfortunately, though some church messages approach these 2 verses a bit differently to make them sound like not only should we forgive but we better forgive because if we don’t we can’t be forgiven.

So, if someone, even a Christian, was to do something very bad against me and even just for a little time I had a bit of unforgiveness in my heart, this teaching would imply that until I resolved it God would be turning from me and punishing me or if I were to die with that unforgiveness in my heart I’d be thrown into hell.

It’s a frightening message and it’s bad teaching because it’s at odds with the rest of the New Testament.

Not one of us can ever live up to this demand and therefore if that teaching related to salvation today no one could be saved.

No, my friends. This is the sermon on the mount. Jesus is showing us over and over again that trying to earn salvation by works is impossible.

Our hope today lies in just one of many, many New Testament scriptures like Romans 10:12 and 13,

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him.

For “WHOEVER CALLS ON THE NAME OF THE LORD SHALL BE SAVED.”

You see, He doesn’t wait for us to forgive others before He forgives us. This is not His method of settling the sin question. He gave His Son to die, and it’s on this basis that God forgives.

Next time my friends we’ll continue this journey through the sermon on the mount and until then may God give you revelation of just how great His mercy and Grace are to us wo do not and cannot earn it by our own works.

Although the sermon on the mount is not TO us today, it’s FOR us today. It was given to a Jewish audience, who trust in the Mosaic law for their forgiveness and their righteousness.

It was given while mankind was still under the Old Covenant. Jesus had not yet given His life, been buried, and risen on the third day you see. That’s what bought the New Covenant into being. It was sealed in His blood.

So, this whole section of the Word of God is a “Pre Cross” message. It was given before the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus and before the Holy Spirit came to indwell believers at the new birth. The new covenant that would be validated by the shed blood of the King who was talking here hadn’t yet happened as Luke 22 verse 20 says,

“This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you”.

These were not reborn sons of God.

The “Post Cross” message is that we today have the Holy Spirit within us who seals us and strengthens us and guides us. These people who were listening to Jesus were no more capable of bringing about these spiritual changes without the indwelling Holy Spirit than you and I today.

It’s His job to bring these spiritual changes about not ours.

We finished last time in the Beatitudes, where we saw that they are describing the condition of a person’s heart. It’s a spiritual journey beginning with our poverty of spirit when God shows us the impossibility of our ever knowing Him through our good works. Then each Beatitude rises on top of the previous one.

Now we come to the 4^th Beatitude in Matthew 5:6,

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.

Here again we see this Beatitude rising above the one before it.

It’s a higher thing to hunger and thirst after righteousness than to be meek or to mourn or to be poor in spirit.

But we never become hungry and thirsty for righteousness unless we’ve first passed through the other three stages where we’re convinced of our poverty of spirit, mourn for our sin, and been made humble in the sight of God, contented with whatever God’s given us in this world.

Our ambitions and our hunger and thirst for the things of this world have ended. We hunger and thirst for that which is heavenly and eternal. Righteousness!

The Spirit of God within us works in us and makes us blessed as we long after righteousness before God. We hate the sin that constantly rears its ugly head within us, and we keep wanting that reassurance that our iniquity has been removed and the past blotted out.

We’re never satisfied in this world until once again we remember that Jesus Christ is made wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption to us.

Then, we see once again that Christ died in our place and again we rejoice as we understand how our sins are put away and that we’ve been made righteous in the sight of God through the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Until we know and grasp that, we hunger and thirst after that righteousness and we’re blessed in that hungering and thirsting.

Although we’ve been made righteous by the blood of Christ and that our sin is forgiven, we know that sin is still within our nature and bitterness continually flows from that old nature.

We understand this battle within us by the revelation of the Apostle Paul in the greatest document ever written on the subject of Grace versus the works of the law. That’s Romans chapter 7 where Paul opens himself up with amazing honesty and humility. In verses 18 to 20 he says,

For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.

For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.

Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

We long for a change in our nature so that we, a lover of sin, could be made a lover of that which is good. We begin to cry out for this, and we’re blessed in that crying out as we again confirm from God’s Word that the Spirit of God has already renewed us.

We see the last cry of Paul at the end of the 7th chapter of Romans where he says,

O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

We see Psalm 103:1 and realise that as far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our transgressions from us.

God has given us what we hunger and thirst after. Righteousness!

Blessed is the man who hungers and thirsts for righteousness because he will be filled.

To verse 7 and the 5^th Beatitude,

Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.

This is another beatitude that’s misunderstood today, and it’s twisted to mean if we’re merciful then and only then will we obtain mercy.

Let’s listen to the Apostle Paul yet again in Titus 3 verse 5,

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.

You see we’re merciful because we’ve obtained mercy.

1 Peter 2:9 and 10 tells us,

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

So, what we have here is the condition we find ourselves in as we progress through the changes in our spiritual state.

We discovered that we’re poor in spirit, that we have nothing and can do nothing to please God. We mourned for our state of sin that had us condemned. That made us meek, more gentle, less inclined to strut our stuff and push ourselves and our greatness forward. We’re humbled by our true state and willing to submit to God’s will. Then we wanted to please God and we became hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Each state was a result of the previous one.

Now, we should recap to realise that in the Beatitudes the Lord’s not telling us how we’re to be saved but He’s describing those who are the saved. It’s not the way of salvation but the signs and evidences of the work of grace in the soul.

So, it would be wrong to say that we must be merciful in order to obtain mercy and that we must only hope to get the mercy of God through first being merciful ourselves.

Notice that these people are blessed already, and they’ve obtained mercy already long before they became merciful.

God was merciful to them right from when they became poor in spirit but now they’re going to obtain yet more mercy.

They had already obtained the mercy of a renewed heart which has made them merciful as we see by connecting that flow through the spiritual states. First they were poor in spirit, and it was mercy to be emptied of pride and brought to see how undeserving they are in the sight of God.

Then they obtained mercy enough to mourn over their past sins.

They had also obtained the grace of meekness and had become gentle, humble, contented, and free from the world’s way of living. They submitted willingly to the Lord’s will and were ready to overlook the offences of others.

They received yet more grace when they began to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and they were filled. What were they filled with? Righteousness which is of God by faith. This was all by God’s mercy.

Now, out of this grows the character of being merciful and it’s another gift of grace another fruit which grew from the special fruits already given. Already the kingdom of heaven is theirs, they’re comforted, they’re filled and now they’ve received mercy.

It goes beyond merciful in the human sense where we’re merciful to the whole of humanity which should be common to all mankind. It’s merciful in a higher form with a mercy which only the Spirit of God can work.

It’s aligned closely to how merciful God is towards us!

We’re able to show mercy when we don’t get irritated or angry with people’s personal quirks. This takes some patience, sometimes a lot, but we each have our own quirky behaviours!

In Luke 10, Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan to make a point that helping the hurting around us is the meaning of mercy.

When someone hurts us or frustrates us or angers us, our natural reaction is to either get even or write them off. But this merciful characteristic leads us to be kind and merciful, forgiving others as God forgave us.

While there may be little of this kind of mercy in our society today, we the redeemed, show mercy by giving people what they need, not what they deserve. God didn’t give us what we deserve – he gave us what we needed, forgiveness, comfort and righteousness. When we have mercy on someone who’s hurt us we’re duplicating the mercy Jesus lavished on us. Has anyone hurt us in life? They may need our mercy the most and God gives us that ability through His Spirit.

If we’re merciful to someone who offends us, great things can happen! Our response may just be the entry way to an encounter with Christ – and God’s mercy may change their life as it changed ours.

We should remember that Jesus spent time with the social and spiritual outcasts and misfits. He had the mercy that He’s now passed on to us.

Now Matthew 5:8,

Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.

Look, any man knows today that his heart’s not naturally pure.

Jeremiah 17:9 reads,

The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?

How then, can the heart of man which is desperately wicked be made clean?

The teaching of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior was continually aimed at the hearts of men.

Other teachers had been, and still are today, content to deal with the outward appearance, how to clean ourselves up, but Jesus makes us aware of where that evil is centred from which all sinful thoughts and words and actions come from.

His purpose is to cleanse and cleanse for an eternity.

He insisted over and over again that until the heart was pure the life would never be clean.

The Beatitude “poor in spirit” was Christ dealing with mankind’s spirit, with their inner spiritual nature.

This was the purpose of all the Beatitudes and this one strikes the very center of the target.

Jesus doesn’t say blessed are the pure in language or the pure in action or blessed are the pure in ceremonies and traditions or in clothing or in food, but He says blessed are the pure in heart.

His message to all men is still that we must be born again. That is the inner nature must be renewed or else you cannot enter or even see that kingdom of God which Christ came to set up in this world. And only God through the Holy Spirit is able to do that.

If your actions and words appear to be pure from the outside but the motive behind those actions should be impure that’ll nullify them all.

Jesus explained in Luke 6:45,

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

The promises and blessings of grace belong to those who are made pure in heart.

An impure heart is the cause of spiritual blindness, but a pure heart gets us a magnificent blessing, the pure in heart shall see God!

A pure heart can’t be created by us, it’s the work of God through the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that it’s the Word that makes us clean and it’s by the washing of regeneration that we’re made clean.

Only the blood of Christ can cleanse us from all sin, thereby creating in us a pure heart.

In Psalm 51:10 King David cries out to God,

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

Now we see the incredible blessing opened to the pure in heart. They shall see God!

What does that mean?

It means many things. First, the person whose heart is pure is able to see God in nature. He’ll see God everywhere on the earth from the mountains to the sea, in every leaf and flower.

They see Him in the amazingly complex animal world, in the insect and sea creatures and in the birds.

They see a documentary showing the wonders of the earth where the narrator explains how they evolved, but the pure in heart don’t hear a word, they simply see God.

They see Him and in the air they breathe, in the rain, the storm, the sunlight and in the night sky.

They see His power and majesty in all creation.

To the pure in heart God can be seen everywhere while to the impure heart God can’t be seen anywhere.

The pure in heart see God on every page of the scriptures, His Word, while the impure mind can’t see any trace of God in them at all.

The pure in heart also see God with their inner spiritual eye and that’s a more certain “seeing” than seeing with the natural eye.

They see Almighty God, who is a spirit, and they have spiritual but very real communion with Him. They have a right given to them to go in and see their King Christ Jesus at all times because they have boldness and access with confidence in coming to the throne of grace cleansed by His precious blood. They have become the ministers of God and His ambassadors.

Then the time will come when they’ll see him face to face in heaven in all His splendour and majesty, something that’s impossible for the natural eye to see.

Once again we remind ourselves that no man, except Christ Jesus, was ever born with a pure heart. All have sinned and all need to be cleansed there is none good, not one.

We also need to be aware that a pure heart can never be the result of any ceremony or tradition of man. Water baptism or by sprinkling a baby’s head nor any other outward ceremony can ever affect the heart. No process that tries to work from the outside to the inside can purify the heart.

The one and only process that cleanses the heart is through the water and the blood which flowed from Christ on that cross.

Only there through faith in that shed blood can we find the double cure from the guilt and power of sin.

And in this the pure in heart see God again clearly in His plan for salvation. That being sinners they deserve God’s wrath but that wrath was put on Jesus Christ in their place so they wouldn’t need to suffer it. Yes folks the pure in heart see God!

Verse 9,

Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God.

Could any of us name just 1 peacemaker in the world right now?

This is the seventh Beatitude and there’s always a mystery connected with the number seven.

It’s the number of completion or perfection and it seems as if the Lord put the peacemaker here as if it represented the completed, perfect man in Christ Jesus.

It follows the blessings of the pure in heart who shall see God and we should understand that we’re to be made pure in heart and then peaceable.

Also we’ll add to the blessing of seeing God to the blessing of being called a son or a child of God.

A peacemaker is someone who reconciles people who’re in conflict. The heart of Jesus’ earthly mission was to make peace between God and man.

No one today is able to make permanent, lasting peace. Jesus Christ alone is the great peacemaker and He shed His blood to make peace between a totally righteous God and unrighteous, sinful man.

Romans 5:1 tells it like it is,

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

No person other than Jesus could have made that peace and this is not the peace Jesus is talking about in this Beatitude.

Christ was the ultimate peacemaker in that He made this peace “by the blood of his cross” as Colossians 1:20 tells us. In other words, His death in our place on the cross paid for our sins. It removed the barrier between humanity and God. Everyone who comes to God through Christ and the cross finds they have peace with God as we’ve just seen in Romans 5:1.

The peacemaker in this Beatitude, the one who’s pure in heart makes peace between others, and in this way imitates what Christ did.

The peacemaker is peaceful in his own soul and the great blessing that results from this characteristic is that he inherits the blessing of being called a son or a child of God. It’s like a double blessing in the sense that he’s blessed but he’s also called or known as a child of God as well.

He’s a child of God through adoption.

Listen to the wonderful verses of Galatians 4:4-7 for a moment,

But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. 

And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” 

Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. 

This is truly wonderful friends.

Now to verses 10 to 12 where the 3 verses all deal with the persecuted,

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Here again we have process where we’re led here from being peacemakers. In this the 8^{th and 9th} Beatitudes there’s a difference to the others because each of the others deal with the spirit and soul of the person who comes to Christ. They’re poor in spirit which is the knowledge of how far they are from God and how impossible it is for them to change that by their own efforts. Then they mourn for the state they’re in, bringing about meekness and humility. They look at others differently and have less cockiness and pride in themselves and are open to be led by the Lord. They hunger and thirst for the righteousness by which they can be up where they belong, in a right relationship with God the father. They’re then merciful to others who may fail and lose themselves in life and they are pure in heart which makes them natural peacemakers.

Here we see an outward action, something that’s done to that person from those on the outside. Persecution.

Christians are persecuted today just as at any other time in history and the nation Israel is under constant persecution from virtually all its neighbours and the rest of the world.

We also know that during the Great Tribulation many, if not most of those, who come to believe in Christ and His salvation during this time will be persecuted and martyred for their faith.

Notice that these people are blessed because theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

These ones are persecuted for righteousness’ sake and for Jesus’ sake not for their own stupidity or fanaticism.

The apostle Peter knew that suffering might come to some Christians for these reasons, and he tells us this in 1 Peter 4:15-16. but this isn’t the persecution Jesus is talking about here.

The spiritual traits described in the Beatitudes aren’t valued by our modern culture. We don’t give prizes for “Most Pure in Heart” or “Most Poor in Spirit.”

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Jesus brings insults and spoken hatred into the description of persecution. We shouldn’t limit persecution to just the physical.

These people are persecuted for righteousness’ sake for the sake of Jesus. This shows that Jesus expected that their righteous lives would be lived after His example, and in honour to Him.

It certainly didn’t take long for these words to ring true. Early Christians had many enemies, and they said all kinds of evil against them falsely. Christians were accused of:

• Cannibalism, because of gross and deliberate distortion of the Lord’s Supper, communion.
• Immorality, because of gross deliberate distortion of the weekly “Love Feast” and their private meetings.
• They were branded as revolutionists fanatics, because they believed that Jesus would return and bring an end to history.
• Splitting families, because when one marriage partner or parent became a Christian there was often disruption in the family.
• Treason, because they wouldn’t honour the Roman gods and participate in emperor worship.

Jesus tells these people to rejoice and be exceedingly glad and many did rejoice and were exceedingly glad when persecuted. Why? Because the persecuted will have great reward in heaven, and because the persecuted are in good company. The prophets before them were also persecuted.

The world persecutes these good people because the values and character traits shown in these Beatitudes are so opposite to the world’s way of thinking. Our persecution may not be much compared to others, but if no one speaks evil of you, are these Beatitudes really traits in our own lives?

Now we come to the part of the sermon that speaks of salt and light, Matthew 5 verses 13 and 14,

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.

God’s people in any age and under any condition are both salt, which speaks of seasoning, and light in the world.

Christians should be the salt in the earth and the light of the world and have an influence for good in the world wherever we go. We have no light within ourselves, of course, but the Word of God is light. Being a light means giving out the Word of God in one way or another.

This doesn’t mean that we should be quoting Scripture all the time or bible bashing everyone we meet, but it does mean that we’re to share the light that God’s given us.

Philippians 2:14 and 15 says,

Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. 

There’re many ways in which you and I can be light in the world.

Matthew 5 verse 15 and 16 continue on with this theme of light.

Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

Does this verse say, “Let your light so shine before men so that they all see your good works, and glorify you and pat you on the back, and give you a gold medal and a heap of adoration and awards?”

No! This verse says that you and I are to let our light so shine in this world that we may glorify our Father in heaven, or in other words bring glory to God and that should be the aim and purpose of our lives.

So, we see that the beatitudes reflect the inner character of believers down through history. Do we always succeed in displaying these character traits? Absolutely not and we fail even more when we try to act them out in our own strength. Only to the extent that you and I really grasp the simplicity and the magnitude of God’s mercy and grace do we begin to allow these traits to appear in us.

When we know deep down inside that we’re free from sin simply by believing that we’re forgiven by God and made righteous through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we wake up and leave our futile life of trying to be good and acceptable to God through our own works.

But there’s something else very important that we’ve got to be aware of and this is again why we need to see the Word of God in its fullness.

We can often times get anxious and even doubt our salvation when we don’t feel that we’re performing to the tune of the Beatitudes. We feel we couldn’t possibly be acceptable to God and that He’s mad at us because we’ve failed either momentarily or for a long time to display the outward person that the Beatitudes describe.

But we must know, we must be absolutely sure that if we’ve believed and we trust Jesus Christ for our salvation that God is NOT mad at us.

We all stumble in many ways. We just sort of fall short of this perfection mode in our daily walk.

We must see that daily walk in the light of Paul’s writing in Romans 7 that we discussed in the preview of this episode.

John chapter 1 verse 12 says this,

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name.

Jesus dying on the cross absolutely paid for our sins and made us right with God.

He remembers our sins and lawless deeds no more. As far as the West is from the East Jesus has literally taken our sins away and we have a new heart. We have a new spirit that actually wants to behave in the way God wants but we stumble in many ways and when we do mess up God is not mad at us. Our life is just not a balancing act of some law and some grace, sometimes up sometimes down, as some would try and have us believe.

The incredibly freeing verses in Romans 8 verses 1 to 4 show us that. Let me read them.

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 

For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 

You see, God sent his only son in the likeness of sinful flesh as an offering for sin.

The Bible also calls Jesus a propitiation. That means to satisfy deity. To satisfy God, friends.

We may not always hear this in church, but God is satisfied. Our sin has been dealt with and there’s our reason to go out and live out a good godly life because that’s who we are at our very core and as I said, God is not mad at you my friends.

In our next episode, Jesus sharply changes the sermon on the mount and deals with the fact that Christ came to fulfill the law and we’ll continue to see this whole passage of scripture in a different light than most of us have been taught.

Until then my friends may God give us revelation knowledge of who we really are.

Instead, Jesus used the word of God.

He fought this battle as fully man, and He drew on no “special resources” that’re unavailable to us. He chose to say, ‘It is written.’

You and I resist temptation in the same way Jesus did: by countering Satan’s seduction and deception by shining the light of God’s truth upon them. If we’re ignorant of God’s truth, we’re poorly armed in the fight against temptation and against such an enemy, we’ll lose every time.

This is why we’ve undertaken this Why God home bible study, to try and present the bible as what it is, a perfectly integrated message system from God Himself where every tiny and seemingly unimportant detail is purposefully placed there for a reason, and that reason is to reveal Jesus Christ to us.

We also got another insight from the temptations of Satan and that is that Satan knows the Word of God and He knows it better than you and me, but he’s also a master at twisting it. Jesus understood this from His knowledge of the whole counsel of God. He knew how to rightly divide the word of truth as we ourselves are instructed to do in 2 Timothy 2 verse 15. That passage reads,

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 

Sadly, many of us are willing to believe anyone who quotes from the Bible today. A preacher can pretty much say whatever he wants if he quotes a few texts to back it up, and people will assume that he’s really speaking from the Bible.

It’s so important for each Christian to know the Bible for themselves, and not to be deceived by someone who quotes the Bible but doesn’t quote it accurately or uses the wrong application.

The saddest thing to watch today are Christians who’ve been set free by the precious blood of Jesus living in romance with very little reality, fantasy with no fact.

Also, it’s valuable for us to see before we start off today’s verse an insight from the previous passages of Satan’s motivation which is clearly displayed there.

All Jesus had to do to escape temptation, and indeed the journey of the cross, was to give Satan what he’s been longing for ever since he fell from his once glorious position. That’s worship and recognition, and actually obedience, from God Himself.

It’s a very revealing insight into Satan’s heart and what makes him tick.

Worship and recognition are far more precious to him than the possession of the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

He’s the one who looked at himself in the eons of time past and was captivated by his own glory and as a result said, “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. We see that in Isaiah 14 verses 13 to 14.

He desperately craves to be worshiped like God.

We saw another very important fact. Satan genuinely has authority over this world and its governments. He truly is the god of this world as he’s called in 2 Corinthians 4 verse 4.

Our study continues today in Matthew 4 starting at verse 12 and we’ll see more old testament prophecy fulfilled and we’ll also see more of what the phrase the “kingdom of heaven is at hand” means. We’ll also see Jesus begin His public ministry at Capernaum.

Starting now at Matthew 4:12-13,

Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, He departed to Galilee. 

And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali, 

Jesus withdrew from the Jerusalem area because John had been taken by Herod and put in prison.

Now we have the Lord Jesus shifting His headquarters from the south to the north and from Nazareth, His hometown, over to Capernaum.

Matthew doesn’t give us the details of this move in his record, and this is another example of the fact that the four Gospel records don’t attempt to parrot each other. One’s not a carbon copy of any of the others.

When an attempt is made to harmonise the Gospels, as is often the case, it’s a mistake.

J Vernon McGee wrote a booklet about this entitled “Why Four Gospels” which is an expansion of what we’ve already said about each one being for a specific purpose and for a specific audience. We’ve included this booklet in the notes below these broadcasts.

None of the Gospels was intended to be a biography of the Lord Jesus. No one could ever write that.

Each book is designed to reach a certain part of the human family. Matthew was written to reach the religious element and it’s primarily for the nation of Israel. Actually, many scholars believe it was actually originally written in Hebrew.

Although Matthew doesn’t give us any details of Jesus’s move to Capernaum, we do learn from other Gospels that He had been rejected by His hometown. Capernaum became His headquarters and continued to be, as far as we know, until He went to Jerusalem for the final time to be crucified.

Matthew will give us the reason He moved His headquarters from Nazareth to Capernaum. The other Gospel writers don’t tell us this, but Matthew does in order to show that in everything the Lord Jesus did, He was fulfilling Old Testament prophecies.

Matthew 4:14-16,

that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: 

“THE LAND OF ZEBULUN AND THE LAND OF NAPHTALI, BY THE WAY OF THE SEA, BEYOND THE JORDAN, GALILEE OF THE GENTILES: THE PEOPLE WHO SAT IN DARKNESS HAVE SEEN A GREAT LIGHT, AND UPON THOSE WHO SAT IN THE REGION AND SHADOW OF DEATH LIGHT HAS DAWNED.”

Here we go again with Matthew showing where these events were prophesied in the Old Testament. I don’t mean to harp on this but to me it’s just astounding to see how intricate and how accurate these Old Testament prophecies are.

We find this particular prophecy in Isaiah 9 verses 1 and 2 and Isaiah 42 verses 6 to 7.

We won’t take the time to go into the background of this area called Galilee of the Gentiles, but if anyone wants to do some research, you’ll find it very profitable to see the condition of that area at the time the Lord Jesus was there.

He also spent His boyhood there. It was called Gentile country because many people had migrated there from the Roman Empire. There was a beautiful resort section around the Sea of Galilee, but it was a very worldly and even wicked place where the people were far away from God. Maybe very much like a lot of the world today, even our own country?

The great light that was the Lord Jesus broke out and shone upon them, and His very presence created a challenge for them. They witnessed many of His miracles, but there was little response.

Later, in Mattew 11:20-24, we’ll see that He pronounces judgment upon them when He says, “Woe unto thee, Chorazin!”

Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, God’s judgment was fulfilled against these cities. Each one of them was destroyed long ago and has been desolate for generations upon generations.

These cities didn’t openly attack Jesus Christ; they didn’t drive him from their gates, and they didn’t seek to crucify him. They simply ignored Him. They disregarded him. You see neglect can kill as much as persecution can.

In Capernaum Jesus picked up right where John the Baptist left off.

Verse 17,

From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 

Jesus began to preach we’re told here by Matthew.

Jesus’ message was, “Repent, turn around, change your mind and come to Me, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

This was Jesus’ main occupation here on earth. Sure, He healed and ministered miracles to many, but on the whole, Jesus was a preacher and teacher who healed rather than a healer who preached and taught.

This is the priority of Jesus’ ministry as we’ll see in verse 23.

The gospel Jesus preached began where the gospel of John the Baptist began, with a call to repentance as we saw in chapter 3 verse 2.

As John was now in prison, Jesus probably picked up where John left off except that He’d go much further than John ever did, because John announced the coming of the Messiah, and Jesus is the Messiah.

Some people try to make elaborate and complicated explanations between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God, but there’s actually no difference at all. There’s a Jewish custom where God’s not named directly, but instead He’s referred to by the place where He lives, heaven, and this is a custom that Matthew, a Jew writing to Jews, often employs.

The Kingdom of Heaven was at hand in the person of the King, of course, they couldn’t have the Kingdom of Heaven without Him. As we’ve seen the Kingdom of Heaven, simply stated, is the reign of the heavens over the earth.

This is what the Lord Jesus will bring to this earth someday. This earth will become “heaven” for Israel. See they’re an earthly people, they’re eternally tied to the land, and they’ll go into eternity here on earth and in that land.

The church has a heavenly hope, but the earthly hope of the nation Israel is also a marvellous hope, and it’s the hope of the Old Testament.

Now we need to remember what we discussed two episodes ago relating to repenting.

When dealing with the Bible we need to be specific, we need to understand the intention and the meaning that the Lord’s giving us instead of the meanings we often place on words in our modern day.

Repentance is one of these words. We tend to picture this word in our minds a bit differently to the way it’s intended in scripture.

The word conjures up the image of a medieval monk in a stone walled room and a stone floor whipping himself until he’s bleeding or otherwise harming himself in an attempt to atone for his sin.

There’s no doubt this was a common practice in the dark ages before the common person had access to the Word of God and even today this practice is more widespread than we think.

It’s very important for us who have free access to the Word of God

To understand how absolutely wrong this is. Nothing you or I can do to punish ourselves for the sin we know is in us can atone for that sin. That is not in any way repentance and it’s a terrible misunderstanding of the word.

Only the shed blood of Jesus can take away sin as the old hymn says,

Not the labours of my hands

Can fulfill thy law’s demands.

Could my zeal no respite know

Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone.

Thou must save, and thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to the cross I cling.

Naked, come to thee for dress.

Helpless, look to thee for grace.

Foul, I to the fountain fly.

Wash me, Savior, or I die..

No, friends, the Greek word used for repent is metanoiā and it means to think differently, to change our mind.

In other words, we think something is true then we find it’s not. We learn that something else other than what we thought is the truth, so, we change our mind so that now we believe in that something which we’ve now learned is the real truth.

That’s what repentance means.

There is a further meaning to the Greek metanoiā which is to change one’s mind for better and heartily to amend with abhorrence of one’s past sins.

This is a repentance for after we’ve believed. When we see Christ for Who He really is and we get the revelation of the incredible lengths He’s gone to for our salvation, we begin to detest the sin that it seems we can’t help but commit. We yearn to turn from that sin which we hate in ourselves. We turn to 1 John 1:9, the Christian’s bar of soap, and we confess our sin to God and He cleanses us from all unrighteousness. This is the repentance of the believer. We turn from our sin back to Him.

In this verse of Matthew Jesus, just the same as John the Baptist before Him, is speaking to Jews. The church wasn’t even in existence at that time.

He’s telling them to repent or turn back to God, back to God’s Word, back to that which they know (or should know) is the truth.

Only by doing that can they understand the massive changes that are soon to impact humanity. Only by turning back to God and the Words and the prophecies of their ancient heritage could they understand correctly the soon to come world changing events.

We’ve revisited the subject of repentance again because it’s so vital for us to see it exactly for what it is.

Now Jesus begins to gather disciples about Him. Notice the following verses. Verses 18 and 19,

And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. 

Then He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 

In the Gospels the Lord makes at least three calls to these men, or perhaps it’d be more accurate to say that three meetings took place between Jesus and these men.

The first meeting took place in Jerusalem, and we see that recorded in detail in John 1 verses 35 to 42.

Their second meeting took place by the Sea of Galilee, and apparently this is the record of it in this verse.

They’d seen Him before this, but at that time He hadn’t called them to be with Him.

Now, here at the Sea of Galilee when He meets them again and He calls them to follow Him. And then we’ll find that they went back to fishing and the Gospels of Mark and Luke give us that detail.

Then,  finally, He called them again, and that was to their posts as apostles.

The wonder, and I guess the beauty of it all is that Jesus called men like this. Ordinary, sinful, apt to fail men, far from perfect.

I find this comforting and refreshing, even motivating because if He called imperfect men like the disciples were, He may be able to use me, and He may be able to use you.

It’s encouraging to know that we don’t have to be super saints to be used by Him. Whatever business we’re engaged in, He can use us.

Whatever our talent may be, if we’ll turn it over to Him, He can use it.

I know a wonderful lady who tends to get tongue–tied when it comes to telling people about Christ, but she’s the most marvellous organiser I know, with astounding attention to detail! She sometimes dislikes the fact that she finds it hard to talk about the Lord, especially to unbelievers, but everyone that’s ever known her cannot help seeing her firm and steadfast yet simple faith in the Lord and His guidance. She never fails to give glory to God’s guiding hand over her amazing skill set of organisation and detail that so many benefit from. God uses her every bit as much as a world renown preacher.

The important thing for us is to give ourselves to Him. Under His direction He won’t have us all doing the same thing because He gives us separate gifts.

The body of Christ has many members in it, and they all have different functions to perform. Just as our physical body’s made up of countless parts so is the Body of Christ. Is a leg more important in the functioning of the body than an arm is? Is a red blood cell less important than a nerve cell or neuron? No, they all work together doing their own specific duty while connecting perfectly with every other part, large and tiny.

Verses 20 to 22,

They immediately left their nets and followed Him. 

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. He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him. 

In that day, it was customary for a rabbi to have disciples so there was nothing cult-like about Jesus asking these men to be with Him constantly and to learn from Him.

Notice how they immediately left their nets, and also immediately left the boat and their father, and followed Him. The immediate response of these disciples is a great example to us. These first disciples did what all disciples of Jesus should do, they followed Him.

Following Jesus always means leaving some things behind.

These are very interesting men, and we’ll get better acquainted with them as we move along, especially as we see them in the other Gospel records.

Now remember that Jesus is in the northern section of Israel at this time.

Mattew 4 verse 23,

And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. 

Jesus began to preach we’re told here by Matthew.

This was Jesus’ main occupation here on earth. Sure, He healed and ministered miracles to many, but on the whole, Jesus was a preacher and a teacher who healed rather than a healer who preached and taught.

This is the priority of Jesus’ ministry as we’ll see in verse 23.

Notice that Jesus is teaching in their synagogues, and He’s preaching the gospel of the Kingdom.

What is that? The gospel (good news) of the Kingdom is that it is at hand in the person of the King. They’re to accept and receive Him.

The gospel Jesus preached began where the gospel John the Baptist preached began, with a call to repentance as we saw in chapter 3 verse 2.

As John was now in prison, He probably picked up where John left off except that He’d go much further than John ever did, because John announced the coming of the Messiah, and Jesus is the Messiah.

Some people try to make elaborate and complicated explanations to try and separate the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God, but there’s actually no difference at all. There’s a Jewish custom where God is often not named directly, but instead He’s referred to by the place where He lives, heaven, and this is a custom that Matthew, a Jew writing to Jews, often employs.

Also, He’s healing their physical illnesses. Friend, there were thousands of people in that day whom Jesus healed. Matthew especially lets us know that. If we’ll pay attention to the text, we’ll find that there were not just a few isolated cases, but thousands were healed. That’s the reason the enemies of Jesus never questioned His miracles.

There were just too many of them walking around you see.

Today there’re many so–called faith healing preachers who claim the healing of thousands of people, but we simply don’t see the results of these miracles walking around everywhere as they should be, at least I don’t. Maybe you do. I don’t mean the ones supposedly healed of a cold or a headache or of an invisible pain somewhere, I mean the ones who’re close to death with cancer or other diseases or the crippled and the dementia and Alzheimer’s suffers. The badly burned, the amputees and the endless suffering we see as we walk through a hospital ward, not to mention the cruel disfigurements we see in India and Africa from malnourishment and other causes.

I personally believe with all my heart that Jesus can and does heal today but it’s always God’s doing and in His time and according to His ultimate and eternal purposes. One man can and should pray for another for healing, but that man is not some sort of linked up wire that God uses to pass His healing power through as many would have us believe. The Lord Himself is the only miracle worker and it’s the Lord Himself who heals according to His purposes and it’s the Lord Himself who we go to for our healing, and we go to Him directly.

Verse 24,

Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them.

All kinds of sickness and all kinds of diseases were healed.

Jesus’ ability to heal those with all different kinds of diseases shows that He has real power over the damage done by the fall of man.

His authority over demons (and those who were demon-possessed) shows He has real and genuine power over all creation.

This is the first mention of the demon-possessed in the New Testament, and the concept is rarely recorded in the Old Testament. King Saul was one example. He was troubled by a spirit, as 1 Samuel 18 verse 10 and 1 Samuel 19:9 shows us.

There is obviously much more said about demon possession in the New Testament than either the Old Testament or in the world in which we live today, especially the western world.

Many suggestions have been offered to explain this fact.

Some believe that God gave the devil greater freedom to afflict mankind in this way, in order to give greater evidence of Jesus’ credentials as the Messiah.

Some believe that God gave the devil this power to afflict man to rebuke the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in supernatural beings such as angels and demons.

Others believe that there was no special power to given to Satan at all in those days, and that there’s the same amount of demon possession around today, but it’s just not recognised as much.

Yet others believe that there’s simply far less demon possession in cultures that have been under the influence of the gospel for hundreds of years, and far more in pagan cultures that reject the One God, Jehovah, Yahweh, Elohim.

There are even some who believe that Satan himself isn’t interested in causing widespread demon possession of humans in our current world, because he finds it much more effective to be anonymous. It’s often said by these people that the most powerful deception of the Devil is his message to humans that he doesn’t exist.

All these reasons are just speculation because God hasn’t seen fit to let us in on why demon possession and demon activity seemed common during Jesus’ ministry and in the very early church while it doesn’t show up today much at all.

The only thing we really need to be aware of is the self-styled, quote, “demon hunters” who’re quite common in some churches today. In my own personal experience with these people the main motivation seems to be always self-promotion and a desire to be recognised as some sort of spiritual authority. They want people to think they have special powers that the Lord’s singled them out to possess. These people are usually easy to see through especially since they almost always possess only a very scant knowledge of the Word of God.

Notice the multitudes here in verse 25,

Great multitudes followed Him—from Galilee, and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan. 

Decapolis was a district containing ten cities in the northeastern part of Galilee, east of the Jordan River.

Also, folk came up from Jerusalem and from Judea, the southernmost division of Palestine, and from beyond Jordan, which all means that people came from a long way off. Jesus is ministering in the north of Palestine.

We should keep in mind that Matthew’s not giving us a chronological record of the life of Christ. He’s presenting Jesus in his Gospel as King, and he follows a pattern bringing the King and His claims to the nation Israel.

This is important and if we miss it, we’ll miss the purpose of this Gospel.

Now Jesus had a purpose for allowing such dramatic miracles to attract great multitudes. He wanted to teach the multitudes, not simply to impress them with miracles. We’ve already discussed that Jesus was a preacher and a teacher who healed rather than a healer who preached and taught.

This is the priority of Jesus’ ministry. His fame was spread far and wide, but the main attraction was the miracles, the healings which were performed on ALL that were bought to Him.

These multitudes should have put 2 and 2 together and realised that only God was able to perform such signs and wonders. They should have seen past the healings and the miracles and seen the person Himself, but many did not.

The man who was born blind and healed by Jesus did exactly that. He saw the person not just the healing of his sight. When the Pharisees, the Jewish leadership grilled him he said in John 9:32 and 33, Ever since the world began, no one’s been able to open the eyes of someone born blind. If this man were not from God, he couldn’t have done it.

People from all these areas ‘followed’ Jesus says this passage.

Now this doesn’t mean they followed Him because they believed He was the promised Messiah. They didn’t follow Him in their multitudes to become His disciples. It was more for the miracles either for the fascination of them or for their desire to be healed themselves.

In the next episode we’ll see the beginning of the Jesus’s famous so–called Sermon on the Mount which’ll have some surprises for us.

Until then my friends may the Lord ignite a love for His precious Word in our hearts.