Jesus has just launched His public ministry. He’s been going around declaring:
“Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near.”
He’s saying that God’s rule and God’s reign is breaking into our fallen and broken world so that one day all of the darkness of the world and the brokenness of the world, everything that is sick and twisted and distorted in our fallen and broken world because of the way that we rebelled against God in the garden, all of that is coming to an end.
The Lord is going to crush the devil, destroy the forces of darkness, and He is going to put the world right again.
He is going to make everything exactly the way that it is meant to be again.
So there will be no more grief, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain, no more suffering, no more sickness, no more loss, no more injustice.
All of that is coming to an end.
He is on a mission to redeem humanity and restore our world.
That is what we’re talking about when we talk about the kingdom of God.
The Sermon on the Mount
As Jesus comes up to the top of the mountain in Matthew 5 through 7, He begins preaching and teaching.
He’s teaching His disciples primarily, but there would have been a giant group of people in the background who were listening in as well to learn and understand.
So He’s talking to His disciples and all of the people out in this crowd, and He is saying, “If you follow Me, you become one of My kingdom workers.”
If you are a follower of Jesus, you are a kingdom worker for Jesus.
You become a citizen of His kingdom, and He works with you and through you to accomplish His good kingdom work in the world.
And as He’s preaching the Sermon on the Mount, He’s saying, “This is how you live as one of My kingdom people.”
He says 10 things.
In Matthew 5 and 6, He laid out nine principles of what it looks like to live as a kingdom person with Jesus.
- As kingdom people, we are called to live for reconciliation and restoration instead of broken relationships and grudge-holding and hatred.
- As kingdom people, we are called to live lives of faithfulness and loyalty instead of lust and the pursuit of power, instead of treating people like objects for our gratification, instead of treating them like sex objects, treating them as disposable. Instead, we are called to image and reflect God’s faithfulness to us through our faithfulness to our spouses and partners.
- As kingdom people, we are called to live lives of radical honesty and openness and trustworthiness instead of lies and manipulation.
- As kingdom people, we are called to be peacemakers. We love and we serve our enemies and our persecutors. We don’t seek vengeance. We love them and we serve them. When our enemy is struggling, we help them. When our enemy is thirsty, we give them water. When our enemy is hungry, we give them food. And that even applies to the way that we resist and fight back. When we resist an enemy or a persecutor, we do it in ways that demand dignity but that end the cycle of violence and conflict.
- As kingdom people, we are called to live a life of generosity for its own sake, not for the praise of others.
- As kingdom people, we’re called to pray to the Lord not as a way of impressing everybody with how spiritual we are, but as a way of communing with our Father in heaven. We pray intimately and reverently and expectantly and obediently. We pray trusting the Lord to care for us. We pray confessionally, owning our failures and mistakes. We pray in preparation. We pray knowing that we are going to be tempted and tried and seeking the Lord’s deliverance. We pray thankfully. We look closely for the ways that the Lord has been working in our lives, and we pour out our gratitude to Him.
- We are called as kingdom people to spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting and studying the Word, not as a way of feeling superior to others, but as a way to grow in our faith.
- As kingdom people, we are called to use our earthly power and possessions and wealth for God’s kingdom work and kingdom purposes, like helping the poor and pulling them out of the cycle of poverty, like bringing healing to the sick, like bringing the good news of Jesus to the lost, and so on and so forth. We are called to use our power, possessions, and wealth for kingdom purposes, not for acquiring more and more riches, not for stockpiling more and more and more money and goods and power.
- As kingdom people, we are called to trust the Lord to take care of our needs instead of working ourselves to death in pursuit of security and comfort.
That is Matthew 5 and 6.
And as we come into Matthew 7, Jesus finishes up His sermon.
10. As Kingdom People, We Don’t Judge People Harshly
There is one last principle that He dives into, principle number 10.
He says as kingdom people, we don’t judge people harshly.
As kingdom people, we do not judge people harshly for their failures.
As kingdom people, we show great grace when someone else fails. We remember the ways that we failed, and we say, “Let me help you up.”
When someone else falls short, we remember the ways that we have fallen short, and we say, “I know what that is like. That is not the end for you. Get up and keep going. Let me help you.”
There’s two things that He lays out here.
One is that we do not judge other people harshly for their failures. We show other people the same grace that God has shown us.
And two, instead of judging, we examine ourselves.
When we see someone who is doing something we don’t approve of, instead of saying, “Oh man, I’m glad I’m not like them,” we say, “Are there any ways that I’m like them? Are there any ways that I am falling into the same sin that they are falling into? Are there any ways that I am falling into the same mistakes that they are falling into? Have I ever been selfish the way that they’re being selfish? Are there ways I’m being selfish right now? Are there ways I’m being inconsiderate right now? Are there ways that I am falling short right now that I need to fix?”
Instead of constantly pointing out specks in other people’s eyes, we are looking for the logs in our own eyes.
As kingdom people, we don’t judge people harshly.
We show grace, and we examine ourselves.
Those are the 10 principles Jesus gives for how to live as a kingdom person.
God’s Generosity Should Drive Us to Pray
In here, just kind of wedged within chapter 7, Jesus goes back to an earlier topic.
Specifically, He goes back to two things.
He goes back to prayer, and He goes back to generosity.
Very specifically, He talks about the fact that God’s generosity should drive us to pray continually.
He says knowing that our God is a generous God should actually motivate us to pray to Him more and more, that we should be constantly bringing all of our needs to the foot of the Lord with zero embarrassment, zero worry, zero thought that we may be annoying Him or something like that.
That shouldn’t even enter our minds because we serve and worship a radically generous God who is open-handed towards us and wants to give us what is good for us.
That doesn’t mean He’s going to give us every single thing we want, but He is going to give us what we need.
He is going to give us what is good for us in this moment.
And because that is true, Jesus says:
“Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened for you.”
—Matthew 7:7 (WEB)
He says, “You know, you guys may not be perfect fathers or perfect mothers, but if your kid comes up and asks you for a fish, you’re not going to be like, ‘Actually, I’m going to give you a snake,’ right? If your kid comes up and asks you for some bread, you’re not going to be like, ‘No, but you can eat this rock.’ That’s not how you’re going to work,” right?
Jesus is literally making a joke here.
You may have noticed this as you’ve read through the Gospels, but Jesus has a good sense of humor.
He’s almost like a stand-up comedian, and He likes to use, like, shock-jock humor. He likes to use stuff that would really kind of, like, jolt you out of your seat, that would make a polite housewife blush.
But Jesus says God is like this.
God is radically generous, and because that is true, you should go to Him in prayer constantly and boldly, with zero shame and zero embarrassment.
He’s not grading you.
He is welcoming you, and He is eager to hear from you.
God’s Generosity Should Make Us Generous
And at exactly the same time, because of God’s generosity, we as kingdom people should be a radically generous people.
So God’s generosity should drive us to pray boldly as kingdom people, and God’s generosity should drive us to give boldly as kingdom people.
He says God’s generosity to us should make us generous to others.
He says:
“Therefore, whatever you desire for men to do to you, you shall also do to them; for this is the law and the prophets.”
—Matthew 7:12 (WEB)
He’s saying that is literally a one-sentence summary of everything that God commands throughout the entire Old Testament.
All of it ultimately comes down to this: do to others what you want them to do to you, or do to others what you should want them to do to you.
Honor the Lord by honoring others.
Honor the Lord by honoring the people around you created in His image.
We honor God by loving the people that He has created all around us.
His radical generosity to us should make us radically generous to others.
How Do I Become a Kingdom Person?
So Jesus has preached this sermon.
It’s probably been all day. They’ve probably been out there from sunup to sundown.
And now He answers the question that is on everybody’s mind:
How do I become a kingdom person?
He has spent all day telling this giant crowd of people, “Here’s what it looks like to live as My kingdom people.”
Now the question on all of their minds would be, “I want to be Your kingdom person. How do I do that?”
And Jesus says it’s very simple:
Follow Me.
In Matthew chapter 4, Jesus went up to Peter and Andrew and James and John, and He said, “Follow Me, and I will make you fish for people.”
He is giving that same call in different words to everybody listening to the Sermon on the Mount now.
He says, “Come, follow Me.”
Enter Through the Narrow Gate
What are the words He uses to say that?
He says:
“Enter in by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter in by it. How narrow is the gate and restricted is the way that leads to life! Few are those who find it.”
—Matthew 7:13–14 (WEB)
Jesus says, “I am the gate. If you want to get to God, I am the gate you have to go through to get there.”
He says something very similar in John 14:6:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.”
—John 14:6 (WEB)
If you want to know the God of the universe, you have to go through Jesus.
Jesus brings you into God’s presence.
Jesus introduces you to the God of the universe.
Jesus gets you through the gate.
He gets you through the guards.
He gets you through all of those things.
He brings you into God’s family and God’s presence and God’s people and God’s covenant and God’s kingdom.
He says, “Follow Me. Place your faith in Me, and you will be reconciled to God. I am the gate. Enter through Me.”
How do we become kingdom people?
We become kingdom people by faith in Jesus Christ.
Our sin goes onto Jesus’s shoulders, and it is done away with forever.
All of your guilt, all of your sin, all of the punishment that was over you, all of it goes onto Jesus, and all of His goodness, His righteousness, His holiness is given to you.
God treats you not like a sinner worthy of condemnation.
God treats you like you’re perfect.
He treats you like a faithful son or daughter.
He treats you like you were obedient the way that Jesus was obedient.
So Jesus got your punishment.
You get Jesus’s reward forever.
You become a child of God.
You become a citizen of His kingdom.
And when you begin following Jesus, He enlists you into His kingdom work.
He makes you a fisher for people.
He says, “If you want to be a kingdom person, come follow Me. Enter through the narrow gate.”
That is Jesus.
Watch Out for False Prophets
But with this, He issues a warning.
He issues two warnings.
Number one, He says other people are going to claim to be the Savior, and they’re lying.
He says other people are going to claim to be the Messiah.
Other people are going to claim to be the one God sent to save us.
Look, throughout history, there are so many cult leaders.
There are so many founders of false religions.
There are so many people who claim to be God in the flesh.
There are so many people who claim to be some great prophet of God.
There are so many people who claim to be the one that God speaks through, the one that God works through, and so on and so forth.
And Jesus says:
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits you will know them.”
—Matthew 7:15–16 (WEB)
You’ll be able to identify them from their fruit.
You’ll be able to identify them from the way they live their lives.
You will be able to identify them because they are going to act like false prophets.
They’re going to act like cult leaders.
David Koresh had a whole stable of underage girls that had to sleep with him every night. He claimed to be the great prophet of God, to be the Messiah, to be a kind of God incarnate.
He was crazy, right?
There’s so many other examples.
Jim Jones made similar claims.
So many others.
And you look at the bitter fruit of these false prophets’ lives, and it’s unbelievably clear that these are not people God is working through.
They are living like the devil.
Jesus says, “Watch out for false prophets. You will know them by their fruit.”
Not Everyone Who Says, “Lord, Lord”
But He says there’s another kind of false prophet, and this one’s actually even more insidious in its own way, because there are going to be false prophets that represent the right religion, but in a wicked and insincere way.
He says there are going to be false prophets who claim not only to speak for God, but to speak for Me.
There are going to be false prophets who claim to speak for Jesus, false prophets who claim to speak for God the Son.
He says there are going to be people who claim to speak for Jesus, but they are using Jesus as a way of gaining power and gaining prestige, not to do the will of the Father.
He says:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
—Matthew 7:21 (WEB)
He says there are going to be plenty of people who claim to prophesy in My name, people who claim to drive out demons in My name, people who claim to do miracles in My name, but they are not from Me.
He says the only one that is truly from Me is the one who does the will of My Father in heaven.
In other words, the only prophet or teacher who truly comes from Jesus is someone who has submitted their lives to God’s will and God’s call and God’s commands and God’s leading and guiding.
He says, “Don’t be led astray by either of these false prophets.”
He says instead, “Follow Me. Not Ryan. Jesus. Follow Jesus. Enter through the narrow gate.”
Build Your Life on the Rock
And what happens when you enter through the narrow gate?
When you pour yourself into following Jesus, when you throw yourself on His mercy to be redeemed and restored, when you crown Him as your King and start following Him as your teacher and your Rabbi, what happens is you root your life in God’s will and God’s purpose.
He says it’s like you’re building your house on the rock.
You’re building it on a firm foundation.
When you follow Jesus as your King and your Savior and your Rabbi, you are rooting your life in God’s will and purpose in a way that sets you on solid ground.
And every other way to live your life leads to collapse.
Come Follow Me
So Jesus has laid out for us exactly how to become His kingdom person.
Come follow Him, just like Peter did, just like Andrew did, just like James did, just like John did.
And He is calling you and me to come follow Him in that exact same way.
He is calling you and me to come be His disciples, be His kingdom workers and kingdom people.
And then He has shown us how to do it.
He says:
“Come follow Me and learn how to be a kingdom person who lives for reconciliation and restoration.”
“Come follow Me and learn how to be a kingdom person who lives for faithfulness and loyalty.”
“Come follow Me and learn how to be a kingdom person who lives for radical honesty and openness.”
“Come follow Me and learn how to be a kingdom person who loves their enemies and serves their enemies and persecutors.”
“Come follow Me and learn how to be someone who gives radically generously just for generosity’s sake, not in order to gain praise, but because of the way that I’ve been generous to you.”
“Come follow Me and learn how to pour yourself out in prayer as a way of communing with the Father in heaven, not as a way of impressing people with how spiritual you are.”
“Come follow Me and learn how to do spiritual disciplines like fasting and prayer and Bible reading, not as a way of being superior to other people, but as a way of growing spiritually.”
“Come follow Me and learn how to be a kingdom person who uses your possessions and your power and your wealth for My kingdom work to help others rather than trying to chase riches.”
“Come follow Me and learn how to be a kingdom person who trusts Me to take care of your needs instead of working yourself to death chasing after security and comfort.”
“Come follow Me to learn how to be a kingdom person who does not judge other people harshly for their failures and their falling short, but instead shows them grace and who examines themselves sincerely and honestly.”
“Come follow Me and become a fisher of people.”
Become a kingdom person.
Being Discipled by Jesus Through His Word
So that is the call Jesus gave out to all of the people gathered around to listen to Him preach the Sermon on the Mount.
And that is the call that He is giving to you and to me.
We are here reading through God’s Word a chapter at a time because we want to be trained and taught and discipled by Jesus.
We want to learn how to be kingdom people.
And if you continue on trekking through God’s Word day in and day out, week in and week out, and allowing the Lord to speak to you through it and guide you through it and challenge you through it, to call you out on your sin through it, to correct you through it, to change your lifestyle through it, to change your attitude and your mindset through it, then He will make you into someone through whom He can radically change lives and transform our world.
We want to see our whole surrounding community turned upside down by the Gospel of Jesus.
And step one of that is opening up God’s Word and reading it.
If you have missed a few days, that’s okay.
You can catch up.
It’s not a big deal.
If you are confused, that’s okay.
You’re not going to understand everything that you read right now.
But if you keep at it, then what’s going to happen is that one year from now, you are going to understand so much more than you do today.
Two years from now, you are going to understand way more than you do today.
Three years from now, you are going to understand more than you ever thought was possible.
And four years from now, you are going to be teaching God’s Word to other people around you so that the Lord can grow them in wisdom and understanding through you.
That is the track that you are on.
That is the direction that you are heading.
And the way to get there is not by becoming some sort of expert overnight.
It is not by spending 10 hours a day studying the Bible.
It is by spending about 30 minutes reading His Word, soaking in it, turning it over in your head, meditating on it, praying about it, asking the Lord to explain things you don’t understand, talking to Him about the things that confuse you, and then going with the rest of the body of Christ, talking to the rest of God’s people, asking your brothers and sisters, “Hey, do you know what this means? Because I’m having a hard time with this. Hey, what do you think this is all about? Because I don’t really get this.”
Getting together with the rest of your brothers and sisters and allowing them to walk with you and guide you and teach you as you go on this journey together.
We finished the Sermon on the Mount, and now we move on in the story, beginning with Matthew chapter 8.
What is one thing that confused you?
What is one thing that challenged you?
What is one thing that you just could not wrap your head around?
What is one thing you want to know more about?
What is one thing that surprised you?
What are some ways that the Gospel of Matthew has changed the way you think about your faith in Jesus Christ, what it means to follow Jesus, and what it means to serve and worship the Lord?
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
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