Happiness Is... B

You can't live the Sermon on the Mount unless you know the King. So Jesus taught His disciples, because they alone could live it out. They alone could fill it out.

They alone could carry it out. And you and I who know that same Christ can know the same blessings. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Someone once said, happiness is nothing more than good health and a poor memory. Well, that's one view.

And ask a hundred other people, you may get a hundred other definitions. But there is only one source of true happiness, of deep joy that stays with you no matter what your circumstances are. Today on Grace To You, John MacArthur shows you how to rest in the spiritual resources God provides, and to know the peace that goes beyond your ability to understand, even when life turns upside down.

John's current study is called simply true happiness. John starts today in Matthew chapter 5, and here he is with a lesson. Now we have to get the basics before we can understand this absolutely fantastic sermon.

First of all, I want to set for you the context. We have to get a biblical context. By that I mean a biblical background. Where are we in the Bible? Where are we in the flow of God's revelation? Where are we in God's plan of revealing His truth to man? Well, this is a new point. This is a dramatic change. This is a tremendous thing that God is saying, that whereas the old covenant ends with a curse, the new one ends with the potential of the very character and nature of God indwelling a believer.

Now let me take you to another thought about context. There is a political context here too that's just fantastic. The Jews were looking for a Messiah, only their definition of a Messiah was a political ruler, right? They were looking for somebody to come, you know, riding into Jerusalem on a white horse and zap all of the Romans and they'd all fall over dead and he'd lead a great revolution infinitely beyond anything they'd ever heard of, even that of Judas Maccabeus and his sons that had overthrown Greece temporarily. Boy, they expected some really whirlwind deal to happen when the Messiah arrived.

They were looking for political things. They tried to make Jesus a king there in Galilee when He first began His ministry, John tells us, because they saw...they saw a welfare state. He fed the 20,000 people and they showed up the next morning for free breakfast. They thought it was the greatest thing they'd ever seen. This guy was going to feed them.

It's going to be constant welfare, never have to work again, he just makes food. They were looking at the politics of it. They were looking at the accommodation to their own humanness and the Lord passed through and left them and didn't want to be that kind of a king. Listen, the Jews were looking for a political kingdom but Jesus never offered one. There's no politics in the Sermon on the map, none. There is not one reference to the social, political aspect of the kingdom made here, not one. The Jews were so concerned about the politics and the social life, Jesus makes no reference to that at all. The stress, I want you to get this, the stress is on being. That's the word you're going to have to see.

The stress is on being. It's not on ruling or possessing, it is on being. In other words, He's not after what men do, He's after what men are...what men are because what they are will determine what they do. All of the ideals that are given in the Sermon on the Mount are contrary to human ideas about government, human ideas about kingdoms. In fact, the most exalted people, the most exalted people in Christ's kingdom would be the lowest of the low in the world's evaluation. Do you know who the greatest man was who ever lived up until this time?

Who was it? John the Baptist. As far as the world was concerned, he was nothing but a raving maniac running around in a modified Tarzan suit eating bugs. I mean, he wasn't even a part of the religious system. Jesus said He was the greatest man that ever lived.

And then He went on to say, but there's one greater than He, you know who it is? The least in My kingdom. The poor in spirit, the mourning, the meek, those who hunger and thirst, feel empty inside, those full of mercy, those pure in heart, those who make peace, those who are persecuted, those who are reviled, those who have all manner of evil spoken against and fall.

You know, that sounds to me like the biggest list of losers I ever saw. Well, by the world's standards, they are. The world says, exert yourself, demand your rights, be a big shot, push yourself up, hold on to your pride. This is a different kind of kingdom. It even advocates persecution without retaliation and blesses those who live that way.

It's a spiritual kingdom. So the political aspect of this message was devastating. It was absolutely everything was the opposite of what they expected a Messiah would say. Now I want to talk just one more area about the religious context, and you'll have a general idea of the thrust of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus was confronting a very religious society, in fact a whole society full of religionists. They were professional ritualists.

And that's an important backdrop. Let me just divide them into four groups. There were four main groups within the religion of Judaism, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes and the Zealots. First of all, the Pharisees.

Now here you go. The Pharisees believed that happiness was found in tradition or legalism. They believed that real happiness came through obeying the tradition of the fathers. Then there were the Sadducees. And the Sadducees believed that happiness was found in the present.

Modernism, liberalism, can the past, man, we're here, we've got to do it now, an updated religion, brand new liberalism, chuck the old stuff. You know, in a sense, they both had a little tiny bit of truth. The Pharisees were right. True religion has to be based on the past. The Sadducees had a little bit of truth because true religions also got to work in the present. And then there were the Essenes. And the Essenes said, no, happiness is in separation from the world.

Oh, that sounds good, doesn't it? Only they were talking about geographical separation. They just moved out of town. Years ago, there was an ad in a Christian magazine put in by one of our very, very fundamental Christian colleges that said the school was located 15 miles from the nearest sin.

It's just offhand I'd say that's wishful thinking. But the Essenes believed we've got to get out of town where there's no sin. So there were the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes, and then there were the zealots. And the zealots said happiness is found in the political overthrow. Happiness is found in revolution. Happiness is found in knocking off Rome. Jesus was confronting a whole society full of religionists.

They all had their own little thing going. And the point that Jesus was making is, hey, you know, you're all wrong, every one of you. For the Pharisees He was saying religion is not a matter of external observance. And for the Sadducee He was saying religion is not a matter of human philosophy invented to accommodate the new day. And to the Essenes He was saying believe me, religion is not a matter of geographical location.

And to the zealots He was saying and neither is religion a matter of social activism. What He was saying is this, my kingdom is inside. You see?

It's inside. That's the whole point. That's the whole message of Jesus to the world. That's the whole basis of the Sermon on the Mount.

It's inside, not outside. What Jesus is saying right here, I believe, is cracking open the door on the new covenant of which Jeremiah said God would write His law on their inward parts. You see?

Going inside. And so Jesus summed it up by saying to them, look, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the zealots and everybody who was either a conglomerate of all of that or stood underneath those four areas, I want to tell you all something. Unless your righteousness exceeds that kind of righteousness, you will in no case enter my kingdom, you see? Unless you've got more going for you than that external stuff, you've got no part in my kingdom. Because as I said before, there is no source of blessing in the cursed earth. It's beyond that. All that religion was dealing with externals, and the Sermon on the Mount invades Jewish thinking with the blast that true blessedness comes from the inside, not the outside.

And it's the same true today. Don't comfort yourself in the fact that you've got the right theology. The liberals can't comfort themselves in the fact that they've spun off this great new theory. The Bible's not the Word of God. They've really updated it. Boy, they're really contemporary.

They're flowing with the age. A man cannot comfort himself in the fact that he's moved away from the world and moved up into a monastery and he sits there and contemplates God, undistracted by the things of the world. Nor can a man comfort himself because he thinks that he's a social activist and he's running around all over the place trying to straighten out society. Those are not the things Jesus is after. Oh, ultimately all those things have a corner on a part of the truth, don't they?

We need to be socially involved, and we need to be set apart unto God, and we need to be contemporary, and we need to be based on the past, but in and of themselves they are external and God's after what's inside. Way back in 1 Samuel 16, 7, the Lord laid it out when He said, The Lord looks on the heart. And Proverbs 4 23 says, Keep your heart, for out of it are the issues of life. Well, you better guard your heart.

That's the issue. Well, you know, if you took care of your spiritual heart like you take care of your physical heart, it'd be amazing, wouldn't it? People are there literally going crazy over protecting their heart.

Joggers everywhere. People riding bicycles, running up and down hills, got to take care of the heart. You know, when the Bible says you better guard the heart, that's the real issue. That's the real heart. And the Hebrew thinking it was the seat of all your knowledge of God, the mind. Listen, if we did as much to protect our spiritual heart as we do to protect our physical heart, we'd be in great shape.

Spiritual. But sometimes we just ignore that area. That's what Jesus is after. In Luke 11 39, Williams' translation is great on this passage.

This is what it says. Jesus said, Now you have the habit of cleaning the outside of your cups and dishes, but inside you yourselves are full of greed and wickedness. You fools, did not the one who made the outside make the inside too?

Dedicate once for all your inner self, and at once you will have everything else clean. See? That's what Jesus' message was. That's the heart of the Sermon on the Mount. Now, on the basis of that context and that overview, I want you to know it's important to study this.

Don't you see? Really important. I believe there are at least five reasons why it's important.

I'm just going to give them to you real quick. Number one, because the Sermon on the Mount will show you the absolute necessity of the new birth. The Sermon on the Mount will show you that you can never please God on your own, in your flesh.

Never. Listen, the Sermon on the Mount to me goes way beyond the law of Moses in showing us the need for salvation. You can't live one day in a blessed condition apart from the new birth in Jesus Christ. It is the greatest thing in the New Testament to show man the desperate situation that he's in without God. The second thing, I think we ought to study the Sermon on the Mount, not only because it shows the absolute necessity of the new birth, but because it clearly points to Jesus Christ.

It is perhaps the single greatest insight into the mind of our dear Lord Jesus Christ. You want to know how He thinks? Study His Sermon.

You want to know where His heart really beats? Study His Sermon. You want to know what He really feels about living and about the standards for life? Study the Sermon. Third thing, we ought to study the Sermon on the Mount because it's the only way to happiness for Christians. If you want to be happy, if you want to be really filled with the Spirit, you don't go seeking some mystical experience. You don't go chasing some elusive dream. You don't go popping from meeting to meeting trying to catch it in the air. If you want to know happiness and blessedness and bliss and joy and gladness, then you just study the Sermon on the Mount and put it to practice.

I'll add another thing. I think we ought to study it because it's the best means I know of evangelism. You say, what do you mean evangelism? I'll tell you this, if we ever live the Sermon on the Mount, it'll knock the world over. It's the greatest tool of evangelism there is to live this kind of a life. And then lastly, we should study the Sermon on the Mount and live it because it pleases God. And you know, that's a privilege that sinful John that sinful John MacArthur, just plain old me, just ordinary me could please God. What an incredible thought. Plenty of reason to study the Sermon on the Mount. Plenty of reason to give ourselves to it. Let me have you look as we close at the first two verses, just to take it a step further. The occasion, we've seen the context. I want to just share some other points very briefly. The occasion, verse 1, and seeing the multitudes.

We'll stop there. Jesus always cared for the multitudes. And you know, it says in Matthew 9, 36, Matthew 14, 14, and Matthew 15, 32, that when He saw the multitudes, He had what?

Compassion. Jesus saw that multitude of people. The multitude is described in verse 23 to 25 of chapter 4. Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, healing all manner of sickness, all manner of disease among the people.

His fame went throughout all Syria. They brought unto Him all the sick that were taken with diverse diseases and torments, those who were possessed with demons, and those who were epileptics, and those who had the palsy. And He healed them and there followed Him a great followed Him rather great multitudes of people from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and even beyond Jordan.

Here is this mass of humanity coming from north, south, east, and west, following them. And when He sees them, as always, His heart is broken. You know, when He saw them hungry, He gave them food. And when He sees the spiritual hunger of their hearts, the deepest thing that's in Him is God reaches out to give them what they need. There was a wonderful attraction to Jesus Christ. Crowds just surged after Him, sick, demon-possessed, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, zealots, ritualists and harlots, Pharisees and publicans, scholars and illiterates, refined and degraded, rich men and beggars, a motley bunch. But Jesus is always the attractor of men, and there's some strange attractiveness in Jesus Christ that knows nothing of class, knows nothing of money.

And I think it's so beautifully summed up in the words of the Apostle Paul that in Jesus Christ there's neither male nor female, Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free, neither Greeks or barbarians. So there was a general thrust toward Christ of the multitude, and He saw the multitude, and He spoke. And I add this, His message really wasn't to them even, but He wanted them to hear it.

They couldn't live it out. They couldn't know this blessedness, but they could at least know that it was available. And so they were the secondary audience, but they were what prompted the message because He wanted them to hear it and be attracted to it.

So we see the context and the occasion. And then a word about the preacher. Who is the preacher? He went up into a mount. He was seated. His disciples came to Him and He opened His mouth and taught them saying, folks, the greatest preacher that ever lived, that's who the preacher is, of whom they said, never a man speak like this man, of whom they said He spoke as one having authority, not as the scribes and the Pharisees.

You know what they meant? He didn't quote any sources. He didn't quote any old rabbis.

He spoke like He had authority on His own, of whom the woman of Samaria said, come and see a man who told me all things whatsoever I have done. Oh, what a preacher. This sermon is one of the greatest illustrations of homiletics I've ever seen. It's got three points. It can't get any better homiletics than that. A fantastic introduction, the introduction, and then the first point, the citizens of the kingdom, and then the second point, the righteousness of the kingdom, and then the third point, the exhortation to enter the kingdom, and then in the last part of chapter 7, the effect that the sermon had. It's homiletic. It flows beautifully. It moves from one thing to the other.

The transitions are magnificent. The master preacher, he had structure. He had power. He had a divine commission. To one of the Old Testament prophets, God had said, I will make thy tongue cleave to the roof of thy mouth.

Thou shalt be dumb and not be to them a reprover. Ezekiel 3. But later on, God came back to that same prophet in chapter 33 and said, Now the hand of the Lord was upon Me in the evening. My mouth was opened and I was no more dumb, and then the word of the Lord came unto Me. You know, our Lord Jesus Christ, with all the power that He had, with all the intellect that only God could have to develop a sermon like no other sermon, yet restricted His mouth until God's sovereign will and timing opened it. He had not only power and structure, but a divine commission. The context, the occasion, the preacher, the setting. Look at verse 1 again. He went into a mountain.

He found a pulpit. And by the way, it's beautiful to note that the Greek adds the mountain, the mountain. What mountain? Oh, no mountain in particular. It's just a slope that slopes right down the north shore, the Sea of Galilee, right to the water.

Lovely, beautiful, green, sunlit. One of the most magnificent scenes you'd ever see in your life to sit right there on the mount where Jesus gave this tremendous sermon and just look down to the rippling waters of the Sea of Galilee, surrounded by the gentle hills of Galilee on the right and the golden heights on the left and at the beginning of the Jordan River ascending down the Jordan Valley until it finally comes to the Dead Sea, to the right and over the hills to the west, the Valley of Sharon, and then the Mediterranean. And there on that little hill sat Jesus and spoke. And it wasn't anything but a mountain, but the Greek says, the mountain. And it isn't the mountain because of what mountain it was, but of what mountain He made it to become. It wasn't the mountain until He gave this sermon and then it was the mountain. It was the mountain when Matthew wrote it and it was the mountain because that's where Jesus taught. He made it the mountain. He had a way of sanctifying the very insignificance of the place and setting it apart as the mountain. And throughout all the hundreds of years since, the Christians have always remembered where that mountain was. It's just a little slope, but it's the mountain.

Why? He made it the mountain. And the style? What of the style? Not just the context, the occasion, the preacher, the setting, but the style? He was seated. And when He was seated, He opened His mouth and taught them, saying. He sat down because, you see, that was the traditional way a rabbi taught. And when a rabbi was just talking and standing and walking around, it was unofficial. But when he sat down, bang, boy, that was official. That was official.

We even have that today. When a professor is given an assignment at a university, we say he is given the chair. And from the chair, he teaches. When a man sat down to teach, that was authoritative. That was official. And what Jesus was saying was not some random thought.

It was the official manifesto of the King, the manifesto of the King. He opened His mouth. It's a colloquialism in Greek, beautiful colloquialism. It is used of solemn, grave, dignified, serious, weighty statements. This is not just off the cuff. This is dignified, solid, grave teaching. And also, this phrase, He opened His mouth, is used in some extra biblical references to speak of somebody who really shares His heart intimately. So it was official, it was solemn, it was serious, it was dignified, and it was His heart.

And who were the recipients? Oh, it's right here in verse 1. His disciples came to Him. You see, they were the primary target because they were the only ones who could know the blessedness of which He spoke. They were the only ones who could live the Sermon on the Mount. They were the only ones who could follow it through. They were the only ones who could carry it out because they were the only ones who are partakers of God's own power and presence in their life. It was only possible for them.

And by the way, beloved, let me add this. It's only possible for you, as you know, Jesus Christ. It's only possible as you're a partaker of the divine nature. The late Archbishop McGee in England once said that it was impossible to conduct the affairs of the English nation on the basis of the Sermon on the Mount because the nation was not loyal to the King.

He was right. You can't live the Sermon on the Mount unless you know the King. So Jesus taught His disciples because they alone could live it out. They alone could fill it out.

They alone could carry it out. And you and I who know that same Christ can know the same blessings. That's John MacArthur helping you find the biblical path that leads to true happiness. That's the title of John's current study on grace to you, True Happiness, based on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Along with being the teacher each day on this radio program, John is also a pastor, best-selling author, and the chancellor of the Master's University and Seminary. In the lesson, John said that if Christians would simply live out the principles Jesus gives in the Sermon on the Mount, that could knock the world over. John, you're committed to equipping people to do just that and not just in places where English is the primary language.

Definitely not just in English for sure, because we've seen the Lord expand our ministry over the last few decades globally. And it started, of course, with Gracia a Vosotros, which is our Spanish language program. We first began airing Spanish radio in January of 2000.

Wow, it's long ago. And I can explain the format. It's not my voice, but it is my teaching. The voice is Luis Contreras, a fellow pastor at Grace Community Church and a longtime translator for me at many engagements through the years, re-preaches the message that I gave originally, and he does it in Spanish, of course. The Gracia a Vosotros team puts the broadcast together right here in our studio, just as we do for the English Language Grace to You programs.

The reach of this program has grown in amazing ways. We broadcast every day on more than 1,000 stations in the Spanish language, across South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and in Europe, actually more than 20 countries overall. And with so much of the Spanish-speaking world dominated by works-based false religion, Gracia a Vosotros is vitally important. It is making powerful Bible teaching available to potentially millions of radio listeners every day.

And God's truth is penetrating the spiritual darkness. We're equipping Spanish-speaking saints and proclaiming the gospel of grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. I just want to thank you for your part in that. You may not realize it, but in supporting Grace to You, you support Gracia a Vosotros, this amazing, growing, really exploding ministry. Your prayers and your support are what propel the truth in Spanish.

So, thank you for standing with us. Yes, thank you, friend, and hopefully in the years to come, Grace to You will be reaching God's people in more and more languages, unleashing biblical truth and the freeing power of the gospel to as many people as we can. To help make a difference in the lives of listeners throughout the English and Spanish-speaking world, express your support when you contact us today. You can mail your tax-deductible donation to Grace to You, post office box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. You can also give at our website, gty.org.

There also are a number of ways to support Grace to You through your estate planning. You can learn about that at gty.org or when you call us at 855-GRACE. And thank you for helping us in unleashing God's truth one verse at a time across the globe in English and Spanish. Your prayers and gifts mean so much. Again, if you'd like to partner with us, call us at 855-GRACE or go to the website gty.org. And also, while you're online, dig into the spiritual tools available at gty.org. A suggestion, actually three suggestions, three daily devotionals written by John MacArthur that you can follow at our website, encouraging biblical truth for every day of the year. You can also listen to John's most recent messages from his home church. Those Bible study resources and thousands more are available at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day and be here tomorrow when John continues his look at the biblical path to true happiness with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.