On Trinity Sunday (May 26th, 2024), Rev. Matt Sapp discusses the importance of the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, emphasizing the need to understand and live by Jesus' teachings.
Chapters
00:00 Call to Worship
01:24 Re-defining Happiness
18:43 The Benediction
Matthew 5:1-12
Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them. He said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
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[00:00:01]
Steve Cothran:
Well, I've worshiped already. Henry, thank you. And I don't that melody sounds familiar to me. I couldn't pull the words from my memory banks, but, looked these up for us this morning to start us. In you all fullness dwelling, all grace and power outpours, the glory all excelling, oh, son of god, is yours. We worship you. We bless you. To you alone, we sing. We praise you and confess you, our glorious Lord and King. That is why we gather here today and every day at Central Baptist Church. We are so glad that you've chosen to join us on this holiday weekend, and we are thrilled that you and we all have the opportunity to have our lives alive in this place every single time we gather for worship.
If you happen to be a guest with us on this weekend, if you would take just a moment during the service and reach in the pew rack in front of you, there are guest cards that we would like for you to fill out so that we might have a record of your visit and so that we can contact you later in the week and let you know some of the many, many opportunities for worship and service that we have every single day here at Central.
[00:01:25] Matt Sapp:
Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up to a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him and he began to teach them. He said, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. As we begin summer at central on this Memorial Day weekend, we're starting a summer study on the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most important and extended bodies of teaching in all of scripture. It's so important, in fact, that its impact moves well beyond our faith. These three chapters chapters have gained influence over the larger culture and even over the entire western world.
They've gained an influence that continues to this day even as the overall influence of our faith continues to wane. In a day when fewer and fewer people are attending church and fewer and fewer people are familiar with the history or the basic teachings of our faith, most people continue to have at least some passing familiarity with the teachings of Jesus presented in the Sermon on the Mount. Turn the other cheek. The golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Blessed are the peacemakers. Do not judge or you too will be judged by your own standard. No one can serve 2 masters. You cannot serve both God and money.
Don't worry about tomorrow. Today has enough cares of its own. Don't cast your pearls before swine. Even the lord's prayer. All of these sayings are found in 3 chapters of uninterrupted teaching from Jesus. In Matthew chapters 5 through 7, and the teachings have enough punch in them individually and collectively that they have found ways to bleed into the larger culture. So that even people who aren't sure about the Christian faith recognize these teachings when they hear them. And even recognize them as good advice about how to live a a fulfilling and worthwhile life. So we're going to spend all summer talking about them.
This week, we're just looking at the very first part of the sermon. The blessings, we call them the beatitudes. A lot of us are familiar with them. We've just read them out loud. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who mourn. Most scholars think that Jesus specifically crafted the beatitudes to shock his hearers. That he wanted to shock his audience into attention, into listening to what he had to say. Scholars know that when Jesus spoke the beatitudes, he was specifically upending much of what his audience believed to be true.
And even though through repetition the shock value of the beatitudes may have worn off on us, I don't think any of us can deny that they upend much of what we believe to be true as well. Is it really a blessing to be poor as Luke says or poor in spirit as it's rendered in Matthew's gospel? If that's a blessing, most of us don't seem too bothered to be missing out on that particular blessing. Right? The Greek word for blessing here is makarios. It's the Greek rendering of the same Hebrew word that appears at the beginning of Psalm 1, which we've also read in worship today. Jesus is following a formula from the Psalms which could just as easily be translated as fortunate or happy as blessed.
Happy are those who mourn. Fortunate are the poor in spirit. Are those who mourn really fortunate? Are the meek really happy? Are the merciful really blessed or is mercy just a character flaw, a weakness in a dog eat dog world? There's no place to hide in the beatitudes. When we hear them, when we hear the beatitudes read, our first reaction ought to be that Jesus is teaching something radically different from what the rest of the world teaches. This is something new and important, perhaps even transformative. This is an introduction to a new vision of how the world works.
It's a story about how the world works that's different from the ones we've been told before And we ought to also get a sense that Jesus really believes it. In this formulaic way that Jesus begins to talk about happiness and blessings and fortune, a formula borrowed from the psalmist, we ought to get a sense that Jesus really believes this stuff and that he expects us to believe it too. We'll discover as we go through the Sermon on the Mount together this summer that it's not enough to say that we believe in Jesus. It's not enough to say we believe in Jesus. We have to believe the things that Jesus teaches too.
If we say we If we say we believe in Jesus, but we don't believe the beatitudes. If we say we believe in Jesus, but think of poverty as a curse. If we say we believe in Jesus but we run over the meek every chance we get. If we say we believe in Jesus but fail to comfort those who mourn. If we say we believe in Jesus and see those who work for peace as weaklings. If we say we believe in Jesus but fail to extend mercy. If we say we believe in Jesus but are unwilling to suffer for the cause of righteousness, then to borrow from the next section of the Sermon on the Mount, we are like salt that has lost its flavor useless.
It's not enough to say we believe in Jesus, we have to believe the things that Jesus teaches too. Jesus is teaching us something new about how the world works here in the Sermon on the Mount. It's it's a different story than the one we've been told before. The ABC's, the alphabet are are the basics for how language works. I've I've got 3 children at different levels, different stages of learning how to read now. Sometimes they'll just string together random collections of letters. What is qxrfwbct spell dad? The letters are the are the building blocks of language. If you don't know them you can't form words or phrases or sentences.
The ABC's are the basic units of how we learn to communicate ideas and thoughts. But if you don't know how letters work, you can string letters together all you want. You can develop all kinds of theories about how language works, but if you don't know how letters work, you're not likely to be correct. Numbers are the basic building blocks of math. If you don't understand the individual numerals 1 through 9, if you don't understand how they combine and work together, then you can come up with all kinds of theories about how math works. But you're unlikely to be correct.
Notes are the basic building blocks of music. If you don't understand the basics, and by the way, you can start learning the basics about reading music this Wednesday night at 6. Right, Ronnie? The music suite. Notes are the basic building blocks of music. If you don't understand the basics, you can come up with all kinds of theories about music, but you're unlikely to be correct. Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farms in Americus, author of the Cotton Patch Gospel says of the beatitudes, these are not just bible verses. They're great ideas. These so called beatitudes are not so much separated verses as I was taught in Sunday school. They are great ideas governing the development of the movement.
They are the stages of metamorphosis, the process of changing one's whole philosophy of life. Jordan goes on to imagine the sermon on the mount as the bedrock principles the disciples were all drilled in. The ABC's of their faith. The multiplication tables and the doresmis. These are the parts of Jesus' teaching they could say in their sleep, Jordan says of the disciples. The implication being that we should be just as familiar with them ourselves. The beatitudes are the building blocks for Christian ethics. They're the basics about how human relationships work. They're the basics for our relationship with God. They're the beginning points of how the world works.
If you don't understand them then you can come up with all kinds of ideas about how the world ought to work but you are unlikely to be correct. If they are the building blocks of our faith, if these are the core principles around which our life together is to be built built, shouldn't we at the very least know them? Maybe even believe them? Perhaps go so far as to actually do them. Jesus could have started the sermon on the mount any way he wanted to, but the very first four words of the most important body of ethical teaching in all of human history are blessed are the poor. Sean Dietrich is a well known author. He'll be the featured guest at LitFest right next door. He's actually speaking at the Wadsworth Auditorium. But 2 weeks from now, Lit Fest, Sean Dietrich will be here.
He he's written his own version of the beatitudes. They appeared in our local newspaper just last weekend. They're meant to be humorous in places, touching in others, true across the board. Blessed are the lonely, he writes. Blessed are the librarians. Blessed are the confused. Blessed are the english majors, he said, for they shall not deliver pizzas forever. I'm a I'm a liberal arts grad myself. That one hurts. Hurts. Blessed are the introverts for they shall be seen. Blessed are the black sheep of the family and the surrogate parents and the orphans. Blessed are the cancer survivors. Blessed are those who have lost children. Blessed are those with disabilities. Blessed are the divorcees and the depressed and those who feel beaten down by the world, he writes.
It's a great newspaper column. Blessed are. Tom Petty sings even the losers get lucky sometimes. There's something of that sentiment in Sean Dietrich's newspaper column and in the first twelve verses of the Sermon on the Mount. Even the losers. When Jesus starts in with the beatitudes, he's telling a different kind of story about how the world works. Then the one you're likely to hear at the bank or on TV or in the great halls of power, where money talks and bullies win and aggressiveness pays off, Jesus is saying the world doesn't work the way you think it does. These are the new ABC's. And if you don't get them right, you can come up with all kinds of ideas about how the world works but you are unlikely to be right.
Even the losers get lucky some times. So watch out. This summer, we're going to aim very intentionally to to learn what Jesus teaches and we're going to be challenged to do it. It's important that we hear that here and get that challenge here because this is a message you won't get anywhere else. The story Jesus is teaching about the way the world works in the Sermon on the Mount is different than any story you've been told before. A woman named Pam Kearney tells this story. I visited Matthew, she writes, the owner of Lucy's Flower Shop. That's f l o u r, flour. A little play on words for a local bakery. Lucy's Flour Shop. I visited Matthew there a little while back, she writes.
As I nibbled on an enormous chocolate chip cookie, I began to tell him a story. A few years back on a bitterly cold December evening, there was a visitation at the funeral home across the street from his bakery. The people bundled up in coats and scarves and blankets were lined up around the building waiting to get in so they could hug the family of the deceased. Seemingly out of nowhere, a man showed up and began giving away hot coffee to the people outside. The people who entered the funeral home with coffee in their hands, whispered to those inside about the man handing out free coffee and how much they appreciated it. I looked at Matthew and said, I have a suspicion that man was you. Is that right?
Nodded. I felt so bad for them and wanted to do something, but all I could do was make coffee. So I made coffee. Pam writes, I responded that he blessed so many people that night by helping them warm up and by showing them there's good in the world. He added a positive note to a devastating situation. I paused and then added that visitation was for my 16 year old son. Thank you for being so kind. Not thank you for being so rich. Not thank you for being so successful. Not thank you for being so arrogant or so strong. Not thank you for looking out for yourself so well. Not thank you for being such a winner.
Thank you for being so kind. Know what Jesus teaches and do it and encourage others to do the same. That's our goal this summer. I hope every last one of us leaves this hour of worship encouraged and emboldened to be faithful representatives both of our church and of our Lord Jesus Christ and that we're faithful in this way, that we work together to know what Jesus teaches and to do it together. Katie.
[00:18:44] Katie Faison:
God did not promise it would be easy to bring the good news to all people, but God did say that God would be with us. So now, may we all go in peace, walk humbly with God and bring the good news of true happiness to all people. Amen.
Well, I've worshiped already. Henry, thank you. And I don't that melody sounds familiar to me. I couldn't pull the words from my memory banks, but, looked these up for us this morning to start us. In you all fullness dwelling, all grace and power outpours, the glory all excelling, oh, son of god, is yours. We worship you. We bless you. To you alone, we sing. We praise you and confess you, our glorious Lord and King. That is why we gather here today and every day at Central Baptist Church. We are so glad that you've chosen to join us on this holiday weekend, and we are thrilled that you and we all have the opportunity to have our lives alive in this place every single time we gather for worship.
If you happen to be a guest with us on this weekend, if you would take just a moment during the service and reach in the pew rack in front of you, there are guest cards that we would like for you to fill out so that we might have a record of your visit and so that we can contact you later in the week and let you know some of the many, many opportunities for worship and service that we have every single day here at Central.
[00:01:25] Matt Sapp:
Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up to a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him and he began to teach them. He said, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. As we begin summer at central on this Memorial Day weekend, we're starting a summer study on the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most important and extended bodies of teaching in all of scripture. It's so important, in fact, that its impact moves well beyond our faith. These three chapters chapters have gained influence over the larger culture and even over the entire western world.
They've gained an influence that continues to this day even as the overall influence of our faith continues to wane. In a day when fewer and fewer people are attending church and fewer and fewer people are familiar with the history or the basic teachings of our faith, most people continue to have at least some passing familiarity with the teachings of Jesus presented in the Sermon on the Mount. Turn the other cheek. The golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Blessed are the peacemakers. Do not judge or you too will be judged by your own standard. No one can serve 2 masters. You cannot serve both God and money.
Don't worry about tomorrow. Today has enough cares of its own. Don't cast your pearls before swine. Even the lord's prayer. All of these sayings are found in 3 chapters of uninterrupted teaching from Jesus. In Matthew chapters 5 through 7, and the teachings have enough punch in them individually and collectively that they have found ways to bleed into the larger culture. So that even people who aren't sure about the Christian faith recognize these teachings when they hear them. And even recognize them as good advice about how to live a a fulfilling and worthwhile life. So we're going to spend all summer talking about them.
This week, we're just looking at the very first part of the sermon. The blessings, we call them the beatitudes. A lot of us are familiar with them. We've just read them out loud. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who mourn. Most scholars think that Jesus specifically crafted the beatitudes to shock his hearers. That he wanted to shock his audience into attention, into listening to what he had to say. Scholars know that when Jesus spoke the beatitudes, he was specifically upending much of what his audience believed to be true.
And even though through repetition the shock value of the beatitudes may have worn off on us, I don't think any of us can deny that they upend much of what we believe to be true as well. Is it really a blessing to be poor as Luke says or poor in spirit as it's rendered in Matthew's gospel? If that's a blessing, most of us don't seem too bothered to be missing out on that particular blessing. Right? The Greek word for blessing here is makarios. It's the Greek rendering of the same Hebrew word that appears at the beginning of Psalm 1, which we've also read in worship today. Jesus is following a formula from the Psalms which could just as easily be translated as fortunate or happy as blessed.
Happy are those who mourn. Fortunate are the poor in spirit. Are those who mourn really fortunate? Are the meek really happy? Are the merciful really blessed or is mercy just a character flaw, a weakness in a dog eat dog world? There's no place to hide in the beatitudes. When we hear them, when we hear the beatitudes read, our first reaction ought to be that Jesus is teaching something radically different from what the rest of the world teaches. This is something new and important, perhaps even transformative. This is an introduction to a new vision of how the world works.
It's a story about how the world works that's different from the ones we've been told before And we ought to also get a sense that Jesus really believes it. In this formulaic way that Jesus begins to talk about happiness and blessings and fortune, a formula borrowed from the psalmist, we ought to get a sense that Jesus really believes this stuff and that he expects us to believe it too. We'll discover as we go through the Sermon on the Mount together this summer that it's not enough to say that we believe in Jesus. It's not enough to say we believe in Jesus. We have to believe the things that Jesus teaches too.
If we say we If we say we believe in Jesus, but we don't believe the beatitudes. If we say we believe in Jesus, but think of poverty as a curse. If we say we believe in Jesus but we run over the meek every chance we get. If we say we believe in Jesus but fail to comfort those who mourn. If we say we believe in Jesus and see those who work for peace as weaklings. If we say we believe in Jesus but fail to extend mercy. If we say we believe in Jesus but are unwilling to suffer for the cause of righteousness, then to borrow from the next section of the Sermon on the Mount, we are like salt that has lost its flavor useless.
It's not enough to say we believe in Jesus, we have to believe the things that Jesus teaches too. Jesus is teaching us something new about how the world works here in the Sermon on the Mount. It's it's a different story than the one we've been told before. The ABC's, the alphabet are are the basics for how language works. I've I've got 3 children at different levels, different stages of learning how to read now. Sometimes they'll just string together random collections of letters. What is qxrfwbct spell dad? The letters are the are the building blocks of language. If you don't know them you can't form words or phrases or sentences.
The ABC's are the basic units of how we learn to communicate ideas and thoughts. But if you don't know how letters work, you can string letters together all you want. You can develop all kinds of theories about how language works, but if you don't know how letters work, you're not likely to be correct. Numbers are the basic building blocks of math. If you don't understand the individual numerals 1 through 9, if you don't understand how they combine and work together, then you can come up with all kinds of theories about how math works. But you're unlikely to be correct.
Notes are the basic building blocks of music. If you don't understand the basics, and by the way, you can start learning the basics about reading music this Wednesday night at 6. Right, Ronnie? The music suite. Notes are the basic building blocks of music. If you don't understand the basics, you can come up with all kinds of theories about music, but you're unlikely to be correct. Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farms in Americus, author of the Cotton Patch Gospel says of the beatitudes, these are not just bible verses. They're great ideas. These so called beatitudes are not so much separated verses as I was taught in Sunday school. They are great ideas governing the development of the movement.
They are the stages of metamorphosis, the process of changing one's whole philosophy of life. Jordan goes on to imagine the sermon on the mount as the bedrock principles the disciples were all drilled in. The ABC's of their faith. The multiplication tables and the doresmis. These are the parts of Jesus' teaching they could say in their sleep, Jordan says of the disciples. The implication being that we should be just as familiar with them ourselves. The beatitudes are the building blocks for Christian ethics. They're the basics about how human relationships work. They're the basics for our relationship with God. They're the beginning points of how the world works.
If you don't understand them then you can come up with all kinds of ideas about how the world ought to work but you are unlikely to be correct. If they are the building blocks of our faith, if these are the core principles around which our life together is to be built built, shouldn't we at the very least know them? Maybe even believe them? Perhaps go so far as to actually do them. Jesus could have started the sermon on the mount any way he wanted to, but the very first four words of the most important body of ethical teaching in all of human history are blessed are the poor. Sean Dietrich is a well known author. He'll be the featured guest at LitFest right next door. He's actually speaking at the Wadsworth Auditorium. But 2 weeks from now, Lit Fest, Sean Dietrich will be here.
He he's written his own version of the beatitudes. They appeared in our local newspaper just last weekend. They're meant to be humorous in places, touching in others, true across the board. Blessed are the lonely, he writes. Blessed are the librarians. Blessed are the confused. Blessed are the english majors, he said, for they shall not deliver pizzas forever. I'm a I'm a liberal arts grad myself. That one hurts. Hurts. Blessed are the introverts for they shall be seen. Blessed are the black sheep of the family and the surrogate parents and the orphans. Blessed are the cancer survivors. Blessed are those who have lost children. Blessed are those with disabilities. Blessed are the divorcees and the depressed and those who feel beaten down by the world, he writes.
It's a great newspaper column. Blessed are. Tom Petty sings even the losers get lucky sometimes. There's something of that sentiment in Sean Dietrich's newspaper column and in the first twelve verses of the Sermon on the Mount. Even the losers. When Jesus starts in with the beatitudes, he's telling a different kind of story about how the world works. Then the one you're likely to hear at the bank or on TV or in the great halls of power, where money talks and bullies win and aggressiveness pays off, Jesus is saying the world doesn't work the way you think it does. These are the new ABC's. And if you don't get them right, you can come up with all kinds of ideas about how the world works but you are unlikely to be right.
Even the losers get lucky some times. So watch out. This summer, we're going to aim very intentionally to to learn what Jesus teaches and we're going to be challenged to do it. It's important that we hear that here and get that challenge here because this is a message you won't get anywhere else. The story Jesus is teaching about the way the world works in the Sermon on the Mount is different than any story you've been told before. A woman named Pam Kearney tells this story. I visited Matthew, she writes, the owner of Lucy's Flower Shop. That's f l o u r, flour. A little play on words for a local bakery. Lucy's Flour Shop. I visited Matthew there a little while back, she writes.
As I nibbled on an enormous chocolate chip cookie, I began to tell him a story. A few years back on a bitterly cold December evening, there was a visitation at the funeral home across the street from his bakery. The people bundled up in coats and scarves and blankets were lined up around the building waiting to get in so they could hug the family of the deceased. Seemingly out of nowhere, a man showed up and began giving away hot coffee to the people outside. The people who entered the funeral home with coffee in their hands, whispered to those inside about the man handing out free coffee and how much they appreciated it. I looked at Matthew and said, I have a suspicion that man was you. Is that right?
Nodded. I felt so bad for them and wanted to do something, but all I could do was make coffee. So I made coffee. Pam writes, I responded that he blessed so many people that night by helping them warm up and by showing them there's good in the world. He added a positive note to a devastating situation. I paused and then added that visitation was for my 16 year old son. Thank you for being so kind. Not thank you for being so rich. Not thank you for being so successful. Not thank you for being so arrogant or so strong. Not thank you for looking out for yourself so well. Not thank you for being such a winner.
Thank you for being so kind. Know what Jesus teaches and do it and encourage others to do the same. That's our goal this summer. I hope every last one of us leaves this hour of worship encouraged and emboldened to be faithful representatives both of our church and of our Lord Jesus Christ and that we're faithful in this way, that we work together to know what Jesus teaches and to do it together. Katie.
[00:18:44] Katie Faison:
God did not promise it would be easy to bring the good news to all people, but God did say that God would be with us. So now, may we all go in peace, walk humbly with God and bring the good news of true happiness to all people. Amen.
