Who does Jesus call blessed?

Not who you might expect. In Matthew 5:1-16, Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount by blessing the poor in spirit, the mourning, and the persecuted. Dr. Toby Holt explains the surprising heart of the Beatitudes.

Many in the crowd were ordinary, hurting people pushed aside by the religious leaders. Instead of more rules, Jesus offered blessing. The Beatitudes lift up the humble and broken — the very people the Pharisees looked down on. Holt contrasts these eight blessings with the eight "woes" Jesus later pronounced on the proud. Then Jesus calls His followers to be "salt" and "light."

Questions this study answers:

1. Who was Jesus speaking to? Ordinary, broken people, many poorly taught by the Pharisees. He met them with blessing rather than burden.

2. How do the blessings differ from the woes of Matthew 23? The Beatitudes bless the humble and lowly; the woes warn the proud religious leaders. One lifts up the broken, the other confronts the self-righteous.

3. What does it mean to be salt and light? To live in a way that preserves what is good and shines God's truth into the world — making a visible difference, not blending in.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." — Matthew 5:3 (NKJV)

Dr. Toby Holt is President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio. Find more verse-by-verse Bible teaching at newgeneva.org; support this ministry at newgeneva.org/give.

Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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In Matthew 5-7, Jesus preached His most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount.

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In today's study, we'll consider the first portion of that sermon,

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which is referred to as the Beatitudes or blessings that Jesus extended to the poor, the meek, and the hurting.

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Today we are looking at the very first part of the Sermon on the Mount.

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We're looking at a set of verses that is referred to as the Beatitudes.

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We're actually going to look a little past the Beatitudes in today's text.

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But largely, we're looking at the Beatitudes.

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Now, if I was to ask you, the book of Matthew, does anyone know how many chapters are in Matthew?

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28. 28 chapters.

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With that said, guess what?

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Today's text occurs in the fifth chapter, which is very early on.

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You see, if you look in the book of Matthew, you've got chapters 1 and 2.

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And chapters 1 and 2 deal largely with Christ's birth.

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and the events that followed immediately thereafter.

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Then you go to chapter 3 and you see Christ's baptism.

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And then as we saw very recently last week in chapter 4, you get the temptation.

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He goes out into the wilderness and he is tempted by the devil.

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Now, at the end of chapter 4, which we didn't look at last week,

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after he's tempted, he returns and he commences his public ministry.

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And his public ministry involves going from place to place throughout the region,

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traveling and teaching and healing the sick.

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So, with that said, he had just begun, at the end of chapter 4, he had just begun his public ministry.

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Well, today's text occurs at the very start of chapter 5, so it's very early on in his ministry.

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He hasn't even recruited all his disciples yet.

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If you look in chapter 4, you'll see he recruited a few of them, a few fishermen, right?

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He hadn't even recruited Matthew, the guy who wrote this book, by the time we get to chapter 5 here.

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Matthew comes later in chapter 9.

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So the point is that everyone he's talking to are brand new to the faith,

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or at least brand new to what he's teaching.

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He's laying down information that no one has heard before.

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So at this point in the Sermon on the Mount, in order to understand it correctly,

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you have to understand that he's teaching theological newbies.

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He's teaching theological novices here.

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He's teaching fishermen and hurting broken people who have sought him out,

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many who have sought him out just for the miracles, not even for the teaching itself per se.

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But these were not people who were well-versed in faith.

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And to the degree they'd heard anything, to the degree they had any understanding of religion,

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do you know who their primary teachers had been?

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The Pharisees.

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Can you guess how well that teaching had gone?

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If the Pharisees were your instructor, how well-formed would your faith be at this point?

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Probably not too much.

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So here you have broken fishermen, hurting people, paralytics, demon-possessed people.

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You have all sorts of folks who have gathered around him.

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And among them, there's not really a learned individual to be found per se, or at the very

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least, there's not many. The bulk of those who are sitting there around him when he gave the

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Sermon on the Mount did not understand some of the very things that were going to come out of

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his mouth. And we know they didn't understand because if you fast forward to the end of chapter

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seven, when the sermon's done, he closes the book and he stands up. What happens? We read that they

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were astonished. The very end of the Sermon on the Mount concludes that people are astonished.

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And they were astonished in part because he taught with authority and also because they

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had simply not heard this before. If you've ever taught, then one of the things you know as someone

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who's been a teacher is that when you introduce a concept to someone, you really have to do two

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things. Number one, you have to introduce a concept. You have to teach truth, right? But

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simultaneously, you have to dispel falsehood. Because everyone comes to whatever issue you're

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going to talk about, they already have formed some opinions on it. There's nothing you'll talk

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about, from religion to politics to finances, that people don't have some opinion upon. The

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problem is that many of the opinions that they have are ill-informed or just wrong. So when you

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teach, you have to introduce truth. You have to say, thus saith the Lord, and point chapter and

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verse and give the theology. You have to teach truth, but at the same time, you have to dispel

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falsehood. You cannot believe how much the Sermon on the Mount deals with the dispelling

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of falsehood, teaching over and against the wrong-headed mentality that the people had.

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They had not only bought into a bunch of lies and malarkey, I think that's Hebrew,

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lies and malarkey from the Pharisees, but they had the culture. They had to fall in the old

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pagan world around them. When Jesus says, blessed are the meek, this is the most counter-cultural,

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counter-intuitive thing you can teach. If someone comes to you and said, you know what,

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blessed are those who are persecuted. At some level, you go, huh? From one end of this sermon

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to the other, Jesus is telling people things that rock their world, that rock their understanding of

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the way that the world works. And that's why, when you fast forward to the end, it says the people

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were astonished. Now, one other thing I'll mention before I get into the Beatitudes. You've probably

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heard of the Beatitudes before. There's eight of them, depending on how you do the count. I come

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up with eight. Eight Beatitudes that we're seeing in today's passage. However, have you ever heard

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of the bookend to the eight Beatitudes? If you go way back to the book of Matthew, to Matthew 23,

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you encounter something called the eight woes. The eight woes. You have the Beatitudes, the

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blessings that start the sermon. But then if you look way in Matthew 23, you come across something

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called the eight woes. In today's text, we're reading the blessings. In today's text, God is

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going to affirm godly behavior. He's going to bless those who do what's right, and that's why

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it's called the Beatitudes. It's a blessing upon those who hear these words. It's a blessing upon

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God's elect, his righteous ones. But if you were to go to Matthew 23, he does the exact opposite.

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In Matthew 23, we read a series of eight, depending on how you count them, eight woes or judgments

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that he proclaims upon largely the Pharisees. In the Beatitudes today in Matthew 5, Jesus will say,

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blessed are the merciful. Well, in the woes of Matthew 23, Jesus says, woe to those who have

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neglected mercy. So you can find, it's not a point-for-point comparison, but you can find in

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Matthew 5, Matthew 23, you can see blessings and woes, blessings and curses. And both passages in

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Matthew 5 and then in Matthew 23 begin by saying this, that Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to

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the disciples. Both of the segments open up in the same way. They're both structured reasonably

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similarly. With that said, it's a whole lot better to be on the receiving end of a blessing than a

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curse, and we're going to consider the blessings this morning. All right, let's return to verses

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one through four of today's text, which are the start of the Beatitudes. Verses actually one

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through three. Verse one, and seeing the multitudes, he went up on a mountain, and when he was seated,

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his disciples came to him. Then he opened his mouth and he taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor

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in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. All right. In the days immediately leading up

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to the Sermon on the Mount, we already mentioned that Jesus had recruited his first disciples and

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he began to do various healings. Matthew 4 says that he healed all kinds of sickness and all kinds

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a disease among the people. Now, as he did so, word spread. And the reason word spread is because

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no one was doing what he did. With a word, with a touch, his shadow passing by, people were being

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healed. And not just healed of like a, you know, a lingering cough or something like that. There

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was paralytics who were springing up. There was blind people who now are seeing. There was people

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who were possessed by demons. And back then, they knew the signs to look out for. Those people were

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possessed by demons, and Jesus was just casting them out and bringing them back to physical and

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spiritual health. No one had done that before. No one. And because no one had done that before,

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because this wasn't a charlatan, and because he wasn't a fake faith healer, because what he was

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doing was real and the people saw it was real, they followed him. Because everyone's hurting

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and everyone's broken. And if you're not sick now, you'll be sick later. There was a whole lot of

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people who had needs, and so they pursued him wherever he went. They sought him out. Now, let

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me ask you a question. Do you think they sought him out for his preaching, for his teaching?

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Well, as I've just hinted at, not really. I'm sure his teaching was amazing. And the end of

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Matthew 4, it says he went from town to town and he spoke. So I'm sure what they heard was amazing,

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but it's the miracles that routinely drove people to Jesus. It's like when you fed people the 5,000

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on the hillside, the fish and the bread, right? What happened? Well, they went cruising around

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the other side to meet him again because they wanted to be fed. When he did those sort of

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miracles, people lined up. But oftentimes when he spoke, that's when people left. Oftentimes when

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he spoke or taught or preached, that's when people said, all right, I'm out of here. If you're going

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to give the handouts, I'll take that. But if, man, you're going to preach to me, you can keep that.

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You know, Charles Spurgeon, do you know what his nickname was? The what? The gardener, what's he

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called? The Prince of Preachers. Man, that's a cool name. The Prince of Preachers. Charles Spurgeon,

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and the Prince of Preachers. Now, it's been thought that Charles Spurgeon preached to

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cumulatively maybe up to 10 million people. And in fairness, especially in the time in which he did

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it, that's a lot. Of course, he preached all day long throughout the week, but it's said that he

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preached to 10 million people. The Prince of Preachers, the greatest preacher of the past

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number of centuries, or at least probably one of the most well-renowned preachers who made 10

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million people. Well, guess what? In our day, we have faith healers. Oh, I don't know. Let me pick

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Benny Hinn. You know how many people Benny Hinn says he testified to on his website? One billion.

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Now, I don't know who's doing the counting, but what I know is this. He's probably not terribly

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far off, because here's the thing. You can fill stadiums. You can have people going up and down

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the block if you promise to swing your coat around and heal them of whatever sickness is ailing them.

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With that said, when people pursued Jesus, it was largely for the miracles. However, here in

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Matthew 5, he sits down, which is customary for what teachers did in this day. He sits down and

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that's the sign. The teaching is about to begin. So where does he begin? He's looking at a few of

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his brand new disciples, you know, some fishermen that don't know their left hand from the right

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hand. He's looking at this rabble of folks that's really just broken in so many ways.

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Where does he begin? Where does he start? Well, he looks out at all these lost, hurting, frail,

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fallen sheep, and he starts with the words of a shepherd. He starts with blessing. He starts with

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provision. He's looking at people who are hurting and broken, and they pursued him with tear-stained

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cheeks and great obvious needs. He's looking at folks that are just lost and hurting and broken

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and wounded and confused, and he starts, rather than immediately convicting them of all the silly

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things they bought into or whatnot, he starts with the shepherd's heart. He starts by blessing them.

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He starts with what we call the Beatitudes, and he starts with this blessing in particular.

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Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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The audience that he was looking at were probably literally poor, but more to the point, they

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were poor in spirit.

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He says, blessed are you, for as such as you belongs the kingdom of heaven.

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Now, let me stop right there.

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You know, the people who had been in synagogues, never once in their life had they walked in

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the synagogue and heard anyone, anyone ever say that. The Pharisees were renowned for going in

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and sitting in Moses' seat, which was, you know, the big kind of lofty seat where they'd sit and

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expound and the like. But when they expounded, they tended to put barriers between the people

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and God. Through legalism, they managed to cast walls before people. They weren't interested in

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the poor and the broken and hurting. And if you were poor in spirit, if you were hurting and

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broken, then here's what the Pharisees told you you need to do. You need to get right with God.

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And after you get right with God, then, then your future will be better. Then things will start

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working out. But as long as you haven't got right with God, as long as you're not keeping all these

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laws, as long as you're failing here, here, and here in your life, in fact, don't even come into

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the synagogue until you got that stuff figured out. That's the message they would hear. You weren't

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worthy until you'd righted your ship, and then you could approach God. And until you did so,

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don't you bother. Have you ever heard that message? There are swaths of Christians that

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preach that exact thing, and it is wrong. The message of the gospel is the message we see when

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Jesus opened his mouth and said, blessed are you. Blessed are you who are broken and hurting and

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meek and fallen. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

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The Pharisees put the kingdom of God up on a shelf out of reach. And to prove that, remember I

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mentioned Matthew 23, where he talks about the woes to the Pharisees. In Matthew 23, Jesus says

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this to the Pharisees. He says, woe to you, you scribes and Pharisees. You know, the ones sitting

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in Moses' seat and keeping the people at arm's length. Woe to you. I think in English we lose

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the word woe doesn't mean quite what it should. You know, cursed, you terrible goofballs. Something

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a lot stronger than that. Woe to you, you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. That word we get.

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for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men you neither go in yourselves nor do you allow

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those who are coming to enter in you see that the ministry of the pharisees and the scribes and the

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religious elite in christ's time the ministry to people in galilee and judah and everywhere else

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was a ministry where the religious elite would keep the people at arm's length and jesus says

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no woe to you who would dare do that woe to you who would shut up the kingdom of heaven against

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men. You neither go in yourselves nor do you allow those who are entering to go on in. The people had

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heard countless leaders put walls between them and God. But here in Matthew 5, when he opens his

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mouth for his first major teaching segment in the entirety of the book, God himself and the person

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of Jesus Christ, he shows up and he tells them the exact opposite message from that which they had

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heard. In Matthew 5, God tells those broken in spirit that the kingdom of heaven belonged to

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them. This morning, there may be some in this room or those that we care about who think that God

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wants nothing to do with you. Wrong! That's not the message of the gospel. It's not a message of

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grace, and it certainly doesn't fit with the Beatitudes. Just as Jesus sat on a hillside

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looking at a broken, hurt, lost sheep with his arms extended preaching blessings to them, so is the

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message of Jesus a blessing to all we who are broken. He does not want to keep your arms like

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he wants you to come in. Jesus is not a gatekeeper. He is the gate, and there is a difference. Let's

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look at verses 4 through 10. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed

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are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for

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righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

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

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shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake,

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for theirs is the kingdom of heaven you know i had a teacher at seminary he was trying to express

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very difficult thing about this fallen world in a very vernacular sense so that everyone in the

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room could get it and he said this he says look this world is one big spanking machine and i sat

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back and i never heard that before i'm a theologian but i understood what he meant dear heavens if you

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live long enough this world will take all the things you hold dear and rip them from your arms

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if you live long enough you'll outlive the people that you love if you live long enough you'll lose

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that which you'd gain if you'll live long enough you'll lose your health if you live long enough

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you'll be sitting there laying in a bed unable to even care for yourself if you live long enough

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this world is a giant spanking machine it will take that which we love from us it will remove

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the strength from our bones and in time what we've lost will outnumber what we still have

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with that said there's a biblical word that's really encouraging and when we think through

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that depressing thought. When we think about loss, there's a biblical word that's really

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encouraging, and it's the word redemption. Now, when we think of redemption, we tend to think

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of redemption with regards to our soul. Jesus redeemed me from sin and death, right? I've been

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purchased with a price, redemption. With that said, the redemption Christ brings isn't limited

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to our souls, although I'm really glad it includes our souls, but it's not limited to it.

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The redemption that Christ brings us is really to the entirety that created the realm around us.

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there's not a molecule, then God's time is not redeemed. It also applies to every precious

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thing that we've trusted into God, that we've given over to God. Redemption is one of the hinges

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on which the Beatitudes turn. No one wants to mourn. No one wants to be hungry or thirsty or

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be sick. No one wants to face persecution. No one wants to be reviled by anybody. But if you are,

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which you will at times, that's just for a season. And in time, God says, I will redeem

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all that you've lost will be redeemed back to you and then tenfold a million times more

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blessed are the poor blessed are you who don't have two nickels to rub together blessed you who

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are poor in spirit who are feeling very down blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom

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of heaven i don't know what poorness looks like to you but i know what reward sounds like

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and the kingdom of heaven itself lays in the balance if you are poor today it won't last

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forever and in eternity, which is a long time, we inherit the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those

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who mourn, the Beatitudes say, for they shall be comforted. Sometimes we feel that comfort in spots

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here and now. Many of us are mourning. If it was long enough, we would do a lot of it. But it's only for a

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season. In due time, the promise of your maker himself is, although you mourn now, blessed are

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you, for you will be comforted and your comfort will exceed that which you mourn. Blessed are the

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meek or gentle or mild, for they shall inherit the earth. Napoleon, Alexander the Great tried

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to conquer this earth through strength and violence and sin. But God says, you know who's

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actually going to get it? It's going to be the meek. The meek are the ones that I'm going to

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give this to. So in due time, not only will your losses be redeemed, in due time, not only will

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you have reunion with loved ones and joy to your soul, but in due time, you inherit the earth

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itself. I don't know about you. That sounds pretty good. Now, imagine that you're part of that

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audience. You're there sitting on the mount. You've traveled goodness knows what distance even be

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there. This is just some hillside in Galilee. You could have come a long way. Chapter four said

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people even as far as Syria were traveling and hearing this news. There were undoubtedly people

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who had been mourning for weeks and months and maybe years. There were people who were broken

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and hurting. Remember the tear-stained cheeks we talked about before? There was people whose bodies

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were wracked with various diseases. And here, as they're standing there, this one, who not only has

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the ability to decree this truth, but who apparently has the ability to fulfill it,

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this one tells you that there are better days ahead, that there's hope on the other side of

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your tears. And he told them with a spiritual resonance that cut to the divisional soul and

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spirit. There's no preacher on earth today that can do justice to what this original sermon,

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This text meant to those who first heard it.

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However, its echoes still are relevant to us today.

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All right, let's look at verses 11 and 12 now.

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11 and 12 are an extension of that last beatitude, the eighth beatitude.

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Verse 11.

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prophets that were before you. All right, back in verse 10, Jesus had said, blessed are those who

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are persecuted for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Then in verses 11 and 12, he expands on that

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blessing, which is a timely thing because when he talked about persecution, he was looking at some

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of the very men that were going to die for his sake. He was looking at some of the very disciples

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that ultimately would be martyred for their faith. He was looking at many perhaps on that mount who

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ultimately would be persecuted for what they heard that day and what they would later repeat.

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And so he looks at sheep that he knows are going out amongst the wolves, and he says that when you

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go amongst the wolves, and when they come against you for having the will to repeat what I've told

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you, when they come against you for having the will to proclaim that which I've proclaimed to you,

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when they do so, remember, remember, blessed are you. Now, in our own day, not every believer

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will lose their life for their faith. I would hope it's not true of those in this room. Not

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every believer will lose their life for their faith, but even in our Christianized culture,

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whatever that means, even the Bible Belt, and even our Christianized culture, you can lose your job,

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you can lose your friends, you can lose more if you dare to raise the flag of King Jesus.

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there's a cost with being a visible ambassador for a reviled and hated king the more you are

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a visible ambassador for a king that the world around you hates even in a christianized culture

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the more heat you will draw it's inevitable it follows as the night does the day that you will

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face this sort of persecution now because that's true and because you know that's true because you

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know what would happen if you just started calling up friends and neighbors and knocking on doors in

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your own neighborhood, if you started going to the job and you start proclaiming loudly and

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proudly your faith in Jesus Christ, what will happen? You know what will happen. Some will

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receive that well with amens. Others won't speak to you again. Others will revile. And because

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that's true, what's the temptation? The temptation is to take that which we believe, keep it in our

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prayer closet, so to speak. Say, I have a private faith. And guess what? Having a private faith,

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when we buy into that canard, when we buy into this idea that we can have this private faith,

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when we do that, it doesn't bring any heat against us, but it also doesn't fulfill this idea that

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we're called to be ambassadors. You're not just called to be a Christian in the sense of professing

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your belief in your prayer closet. You are called to be an ambassador. You're called to be a priesthood

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believers and the priests did what they did in a public setting the whole picture of jesus carrying

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a cross and when he says you have to carry your cross too is this idea that you have to carry

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a visible manifestation of your faith out into the public circle that's what the cross was when

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you bore a cross through the town it was this idea that your guilt was visible to all who saw you and

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when you were raised up you're raised up and you're mounted upon your guilt well many of us in our age

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we avoid that. We don't want to carry our cross because we really don't want people to filter who

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we are through what we believe because they might not like what we believe or they might not believe

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the same thing. And so we go into our prayer closet and we say, I have a private faith.

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Well, here's the thing. Isn't Christ worth standing up for? What did he say? Blessed are you when they

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revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake isn't his

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sake worth it you know the answer now face value being persecuted doesn't feel that great doesn't

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feel like any blessing however however if you're being persecuted because you dare stand for your

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king, Jesus will not forget your fidelity or your friendship to him, and your reward will far exceed

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your losses. That's what we see here. Rejoice, be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in

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heaven. All right, let's look at our final verses now, verses 13 through 16. Now, these are not

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by necessity part of the Beatitudes, and yet it's a singular sermon, so it does flow. What the

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context of the first 12 verses does have bearing in what he says next, and I think it's relevant

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to what we've studied in the past bit here.

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So verses 13 through 16, he's still talking to the people

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and he's probably looking at his disciples in the eyeballs right now.

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And he says this, he says,

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You are the salt of the earth.

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This idea that we're supposed to have some effect in the world around us.

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You are the salt of the earth.

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But if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?

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It's then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

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You are the light of the world.

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A city that's set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket,

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but upon a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. And so let your light so

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shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

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All right, as I said before, the first 12 verses, the Beatitudes, but here in verses 13 through 16,

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he builds on this idea that we're called to embrace the persecution that by necessity comes

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to those who raise the flag of Jesus. And he says the kingdom of God relies upon people doing that.

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The kingdom of God is not like salt with no flavor. You put salt with no flavor on your steak,

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does it affect the taste of the steak? No, it's worthless. Shouldn't even bother. Throw it down.

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It won't do you any good. Trot it underfoot. What is salt supposed to do? Let me stop here to tell

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is something that some people are already aware of. I am just a terrible, terrible cook. I am

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terrible. Obviously, that's not a shock to some. You know, I can mess up even the most basic things

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like grilling burgers. I can have people come over and watch me grilling and just look at me and just

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shake their head and, you know, grab the spatula. And my wife, you can ask her about this, she

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doesn't trust my barbecuing skills to this day. I've been doing it for a while. We did the foreman

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grill, which probably didn't help my skills improve. But, you know, if I cook up burgers

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on the grill, I put it on the plate, she'll go, oh, it looks good. You know, I feel good inside

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a little bit. But I'm watching out of the corner of my eye, and she'll get out the knife, and she'll

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cut right in the middle of the burger and kind of pry it open a little bit to look inside. You know,

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it's pink in there. With that said, I'm a terrible cook. I am terrible. I truly am. I'm as bad and

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worse than what I'm describing. And yet, even I get the importance of salt. Even I get the

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properties and the characteristics of salt. Salt is good. It gives food flavor. It's the most basic

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ingredient. What is the number one thing? You eat something, you order something at a restaurant,

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and you say, ah, it's pretty good, but needs what? Needs salt. Number one phrase if it comes out of

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people's mind. Salt gives flavor. I don't know how it does so, but it gives flavor. Furthermore,

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salt preserves from decay. And you can see a spiritual connotation there. Salt gives flavor

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and it preserves food from decay it also prompts us to thirst now there are whole sermons whole

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sermons on these characteristics on how salt and light and light apply to christian ministry but

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the main point is this the main point that i think christ has here is that salt salt transforms the

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environment in which is placed salt doesn't conform to the taste of the food but salt transforms the

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food so that it tastes better and that's what christianity is supposed to do as well when

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season upon this fallen world. Salt's supposed to change. Light is supposed to change. You turn on

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a light, it's supposed to illuminate that which was previously darkened. Now, what if you have

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salt that doesn't taste any different or flip a switch and nothing happens? Well, Jesus is saying

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that's the sort of Christianity nobody needs. It won't affect any change in the world around us.

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So, verse 14, he says that salt is by necessity, it transforms, so does light. That light is

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supposed to transform the world around us, and we as Christians are supposed to transform the

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environments in which we've been placed. All right, as we wrap up this morning, let me give a final

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thought. Here in Gulfport, there's a lot of churches. Now, I haven't tried to count them,

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but there's a lot of churches, and many of them are wonderful. Full disclosure, God's doing a lot

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of wonderful things in churches other than ours. Many of the churches in our communities are

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wonderful. Now, there's others that may have stepped afield from doctrine, and I would probably

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not smile on them quite so boldly. With that said, what if? What if tomorrow, just say any five of

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them, pick five, any five churches just closed their doors or disappeared altogether? The churches

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were gone. Would it have any difference to Gulfport? If you're walking in Walmart, would people be

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happy? Would people be sad? Would they even know the difference? One day and one weekend, one month

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and one year, and would they even know the difference that the churches had ever been there

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in the first place. What do you think? Light is meant to illuminate. Salt is meant to flavor.

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If you remove salt and light from the environments in which they've been placed,

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it should cause a discernible difference in that environment. In the same way, when you add salt,

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when you add light, it should cause a discernible difference in the environments in which it's been

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placed. In your kitchen, think of how many lights you have in the ceiling above you.

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in your kitchen, if even one of those bulbs goes out, do you notice? I know I do. I'm a little OCD

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in that, but nevertheless, you'd notice. And you'd notice why? Because suddenly it's dimmer.

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Suddenly it's not as bright as it previously was. Now, if a single bulb in your kitchen can shed a

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noticeable light, then the collective wattage of the churches in Gulfport, including ours,

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should make such a profound impact that if they were gone, you would notice that they had

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disappeared. As a church, we are supposed to do something that extends beyond the four walls of

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the body. As a church, we are supposed to leaven the environment and community in which we've been

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placed. And that's why we do things like missions. That's why we do things like evangelism. That's

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why we do things like mercy ministry. We do things to take the hope that is here, the hope within the

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four walls of the church, and share it to leaven the culture and society in which we've been placed

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just as salt and just as light does.

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When Jesus was preaching the Sermon on the Mount,

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he was preaching to his disciples.

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He was preaching to those who were hurting

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and he encouraged their hearts

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and he gave them promises of a great future that is beyond.

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But he also reminded them of their obligation

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to take that same hope out in the world.

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When they went down from the mountain

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to share what they had heard,

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the objective of the kingdom is not to remain small

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like a mustard seed.

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The objective of the kingdom is to grow

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until it fills every scope of the earth.

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And that's what he closes the book of Matthew with,

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the Great Commission, to go and fill all the earth,

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to make disciples of all the nations.

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This sermon, this sermon, which was the first in the book of Matthew,

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the first time he opened his mouth and begins to preach,

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was a means unto that end, and we'll consider it more

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as we work our way through this gospel record.

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Let's pray.