Let's pray, Father, as we come before you, pray that you'd open the hearts and minds of all of us, that we would hear your word, that we would be changed. In Jesus' name, amen. When God spoke to Israel through Moses, he was leading them out of 400 years of slavery to the Egyptians, slavery to pagan deities, slavery to a way of living which naturally resulted from such a culture. But when God led them out, he cursed the false gods of Egypt by sending 10 plagues, each to assert his superiority over the false gods. For instance, when God darkened the sun, he was showing his supremacy over the Egyptian God Ra. Then after he led them out of Egypt, he gave them the 10 commandments. He did this because the Israelites needed to learn how to live as free people again. The law was given so that people would be able to look at it and say, this is how free and happy and joyful people live. A free and happy person loves God above all else, does not worship false gods, does not become enslaved to them all over again by trying to make his or her own deities. The 10 commandments then were a law of freedom and joy and a cause to be successful. You don't believe me? Look at Joshua 1, when Israel was being led into the Promised Land, Moses was not allowed to go because he had sinned in a specific way and so Joshua was leading them and God said be careful to do all the law according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have success. For then you will make your way prosperous and successful. Proverbs 29, 18, where there is no vision that people are unrestrained but happy, happy is he who keeps the law. Praise the Lord, how blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commands. So God intended for his people to be happy and free and the law was given at least in part for that purpose. So after a long slavery of 400 years God spoke through his prophet Moses and he freed his chosen people from their oppression. Now we see in the Sermon on the Mount the first recorded Sermon of Jesus, Jesus is the word of God, the first word from God after another long silence of approximately 400 years. The silence has been since the last prophet in the Old Testament, Malachi had spoken and the first Sermon of our prophet, priest and king, Jesus. Listen to the words of Malachi, remember the law of Moses my servant, even the statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all of Israel. Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse. Now whenever you're reading anything it's important to understand who it's written for, who it's written against. For instance Exodus is in large part written against, at least the beginning, against the pagan gods of Egypt. A lot of the instruction that is given to Israel in terms of how they are to live, the things they are to do, the food they are to eat and not eat, were also that they would be different from Egypt. They would be set apart. People would be able to tell that they were not the same as the culture they came out of. So now here is Jesus who like Moses, only better than Moses, he comes to free his people from their sin. And who does he speak against? The pagans? Not really. Who? He speaks against the Pharisees. After 400 years Jesus breaks the silence and like Moses he comes to lead people out of slavery, slavery to sin, and slavery to a religious system that had so polluted the true religion of God that leaders are called vipers and wolves by Jesus. Far from leading people to spiritual freedom, the Pharisees had led them into another slavery. Jesus in Matthew 23 spoke to the crowds and to his disciples saying, the scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses. Therefore all they do, all they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds. For they say things and do not do them. They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. Then in verse 12, whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted, but woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people. For you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Do you see what he's saying? You're making up all of these rules. You are not keeping them yourselves. And in so doing, you are preventing people from knowing and understanding the true word of God. Several times Jesus says, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? The religious leaders of the day had enslaved people all over again, not with the pagan deities of Egypt, but with a false religion of works, righteousness. They had exalted their own traditions above the word of God. From the gospel, the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat the bread with impure hands? He says, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. Do you hear what he said? Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. Don't do this, don't do that, don't touch this, don't eat that. Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold the traditions of men. You are experts at setting aside the commandment in order to keep your tradition. Even today, many non-Christians equate Christianity with this very kind of self-righteousness, because so many professing adherents of the Christian faith practice a kind of Phariseeism, a kind of legalism, that has more to do with tradition and works and attitudes of moral superiority than it does with the gospel of Jesus. I can remember the first church that we planted in Indianapolis. I had preached the sermon on the grace of God and how we are all sinful. I might have quoted Jonathan Edwards who said, the only thing that we provide for our salvation is the sin that made it necessary. After the sermon, this older lady came up to me and she said, I'm sorry, but I'm not a sinner. I'm a Christian woman. I resent being called a sinner. She was serious. Unfortunately, many Christians have the same attitude. We might not say it out loud, but if that's the way we behave and that's the way we look at others. So important for us to understand that Jesus spoke against sin, everyone's sin, but he reserved his harshest criticism for the religious leaders of his day because they were tying up heavy burdens and laying them on men's shoulders, the burden of legalistic rules that have the appearance of righteousness. Paul wrote about this in Colossians chapter two, if you've died with Christ and the elementary principles of the world, why as if you were living in the world do you submit yourself to decrees such as do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, which all refer to things destined to perish with use in accordance with the commandments and teachings of man. These are matters which do have the appearance of wisdom and self-made religion and humility and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. Hear what Paul is saying. You can set up all kinds of rules and we like to do that. We like to set up rules, rules which make it seem like we're righteous. We might even think we have good intentions. One example is there's a commandment in the scriptures to not get drunk. Yet there's another commandment to say during one of the celebrations to spend money on whatever you wish, one of them is hard drink. But some people, they want to put a fence around the commandments. So if the commandment is do not get drunk, they put a fence around it and say don't ever have more than one drink. Other people say not good enough. They put a fence further around it and say don't ever drink anything. Then they have another fence further around it and it says don't even go into an establishment that sells alcohol. And somebody else comes along and says don't go down a street where there's a bar. And another one says we need a law to make our entire city dry. One of the funniest things to me is Kentucky, the state of Kentucky and the United States probably produces more bourbon than any place in the world and for the longest time the whole state was dry. You see but what happens when you put fences around the word of God and you get further and further away from the commandment and take away the power of the commandment? Luke chapter 4 says the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim, to anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he has sent me to proclaim the release of the captives and recovery of sight to the blind to set free those who are oppressed. He's quoting Isaiah. Moses came to bring freedom and yes happiness but he has come to show us what it means to be human like Moses, I'm sorry that's what Jesus did. And in the Sermon on the Mount he tells us what a free and happy human looks like, lives like. Moses has been polluted by the Pharisees. Jesus fulfills the law of Moses and gives the people new wine and new wineskins, the freedom and the happiness of the gospel. Now there are a lot of people who can't stand this, there are a lot of people who the idea of grace is abhorrent to them. I remember one young man in India near Chicago that I witnessed to several times and he said to me, so you're telling me that a serial killer, if before he's executed, repents and believes the gospel that he'll go to heaven and somebody like me who's done good their whole life, of course he's overestimating himself, who's done good his whole life but doesn't believe the gospel, he'll go to hell. I said that's exactly right, you got that exactly right. He said that's ridiculous, that's absolutely ridiculous, that can't be right. And that's what so many people think and if they don't say it out loud that's how they live. They live as though their good works, whatever they are, are going to get them to heaven. Do you remember the story of Jacob's ladder? Jacob has left his home, he's going across the wilderness, he is bereft of anyone who cares about him, he's going to live with his uncle Laban and partway there he lays down and uses a rock for a pillow. Then he has a dream and he sees a ladder and on the ladder angels are ascending and descending on the ladder and we made a Sunday school song about that, I don't know how long ago, many many years ago, that says we are climbing climbing climbing Jacob's ladder. There's nothing in the Bible about us climbing Jacob's ladder, Jesus is Jacob's ladder, he came down to us. As a matter of fact one preacher said that if you put one foot on a ladder to try to go to heaven you nullify the gospel. So Moses has been polluted by the Pharisees, Jesus fulfills the law of Moses and he says blessed and the word blesses is mekarios in Greek. You know what it means? Happy, that's what it means. So blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, happy are the poor in spirit, happy are those who mourn, happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, happy are the merciful, happy are the pure in heart, happy are the peacemakers, happy are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The word blessed comes from an old English word that you'll probably be familiar with, bliss. In fact blessed was originally spelled blissed or B-L-I-S-S-E-D or blissed B-L-Y-S-S-E-D and that's the meaning that Matthew intends. Along with the Psalmist Jesus wants to say oh taste and see that the Lord is good and you're present there is fullness of joy in your right hand there are pleasures forever. As we study the Sermon on the Mount we will not get very far without realizing that Jesus himself was most happy. The late Dr. James Boyce quoted the late Billy Graham saying if by happiness we mean serenity, confidence, contentment, peace, joy and soul satisfaction then Jesus was and is supremely happy. We never read of his laughing though I'm sure he did, his happiness was not dependent on outward circumstances he did not have to have an outward stimulus to make him happy. He was able to live above the circumstances of life and the fear of the future. He moved with calmness, certainty and serenity through the most trying of circumstances even death. Actually if anyone had genuine happiness and blessedness it was Jesus. So if Jesus was the only truly free and happy human since Adam and Eve then we have much to learn from him as Paul wrote the imitators of me as I am of Christ. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us how to live as truly free and happy people because he was such a man. He's the only one with credibility to tell us so over the next several weeks we will see Jesus for no one can really be happy without him for no one can know God apart from him. Martin Luther said God does not want to be known except through Christ nor can he be known any other way. Christ is the offspring promise to Abraham on him God has grounded all his promises therefore Christ alone is the means the life and the mirror through which we see God and know his will through Christ God declares his favor and mercy to us in Christ we see that God is not angry an angry master or judge but a gracious and kind father who blesses us that is who delivers us from the law sin death and every evil and gives us righteousness and eternal life through Christ there's a certain and true knowledge of God a divine persuasion which does not fail but depicts God in a specific form apart from which there is no God. Jesus is the way the truth and the life. John 14 6 if we see him we see the father that's what he said to his disciples how is it you say show us the father if you see me you've seen the father in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us how a free and happy person lives and it's his desire for us he says these things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full from John 15. So Jesus was and is happy and joyful and he paid an unfathomable price for us to be happy and joyful with him forever eternally. So Christians should be the happiest people in the world because Jesus says blessed are not blessed will be but blessed are these are the things that are true of you as a Christian but many of us come across like Christopher Robbins Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh whose dour and glum but of all people we should be the happiest the most joyful the most content I'm not saying to fake it or you can never be sad but overall we have more reason to be joyful than anyone. Hebrews 12 says fixing our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of faith who for the joy set before him what was the joy that was set before him the joy was for us to be eternally joyful and happy in his presence in heaven forever for the joy set before him endured the cross despising the shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God that was the price that Jesus had to pay for our joy for our happiness for his joy. The joy set before him is the happiness of his bride the church us pure and stainless free from sin and death he endured the death on the cross and separation from the father to pay the price the ransom for our freedom and yes for our happiness. No taste and see that the Lord is good. Let's pray Jesus as we contemplate this sermon on the mountain for the next several weeks we pray that you would open our eyes and teach us how to live as the people you intended us to be joyful happy believers in Christ. Amen.