Will you please turn to the Gospel according to Matthew?
Matthew 5:3.
Blessed are the poor in spirit:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
And will you please turn to Matthew 11:12.
And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence,
and men of violence take it by force.
Lord, we want to thank Thee for inviting us to Thy table. Who are we that we can come even to Thy table of love?
We want to thank Thee for the tremendous love that Thou hast shown us. Thou dost not love us by word only. Thou dost love us by giving Thy very life for us.
We thank Thee for Thy precious blood that was shed for the remission of our sins. We thank Thee for giving Thy body for us, that we may live no longer by ourselves, but by Thy life in us.
We are here today, not because of what we are, but because of what Thou art. We pray that Thou wilt fill us with Thyself. Deliver us from everything that comes from ourselves, that we may truly testify, “For to me to live is Christ.”
We do not want to live for ourselves, to satisfy our own longings. We want to live for Thee, and only by Thee, that Thy purpose in our lives may be realized and Thy heart may be satisfied.
This is the longing of our heart. Do hear our cry. Bless this time as we together study Thy Word. May glory be unto Thyself. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
How we want to praise the Lord for even allowing us to meet this morning. I really feel that every time He gives us an opportunity, that is His love for us. He knows us so well that He wants to continue to speak to us, to deliver us out of ourselves, that we may be fully filled with Christ and Him alone.
Because this is God’s eternal purpose. Brothers and sisters, we do not live for time; we live for eternity. For that reason, how we need to be filled only with Christ, because everything is passing away, but our Lord Christ is eternal.
This is our prayer before God. As we said yesterday, our burden this time is to share on the gospel of the kingdom of the heavens.
The reason for it is because I do feel that probably it is because of the lack of knowledge of the kingdom of the heavens that our Lord Jesus seems to delay His return.
Because, as we read yesterday in Matthew 24, the Lord said that the gospel of the kingdom of heaven shall be preached in all the habitable world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then the end shall come.
Brothers and sisters, as we look at the gospel of the kingdom of heaven, we see its importance to us. It is not only the gospel that transfers us from the age of law to the age of grace.
I believe that we all know we do not live under the age of law. But unfortunately, we often still live in the age of law because we have not been fully delivered from it.
But so far as God is concerned, the age of law is over. We are now in the age of grace. What brought in the change? It was brought in by the gospel of the kingdom of the heavens.
It was when John the Baptist began to preach, “Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” that the King came. With the coming of the King, the age changed to grace.
Dear brothers and sisters, I hope every one of us is clear: we are now living in the age of grace.
Not only so, but we are living at the end of the age of grace. The Lord tells us that He is coming back, and when He comes back, He will establish His kingdom of the heavens upon this earth.
In other words, there will be another change—from the age of grace to the age of the kingdom. Now we are on the very brink of it.
Even the world somehow has that feeling. There have been false prophecies saying that the end of the world would come at a certain time. We recently heard about such a prophecy, but it did not happen.
But anyway, the world is conscious that something is going to change, because the world cannot go on anymore. By all indications, and especially from the Word of God, we know that the Lord is coming back soon.
The sign of it is the gospel of the kingdom of the heavens being preached to all the nations.
Now, brothers and sisters, one thing we really realize is that the gospel of the kingdom of heaven has not been preached to all the nations. Even among God’s people, many have never heard of the gospel of the kingdom.
I believe this is the reason why we are not yet prepared for the coming of the Lord, because it is that gospel which prepares for the return of the Lord. It should be a witness to the world, and then the end shall come.
So this time we want to concentrate on this matter.
As you read the New Testament, you will find that the gospel of the kingdom of heaven is especially written to us in the Gospel of Matthew. In the other Gospels, it is called the gospel of God; but here it is specified as the gospel of the kingdom of the heavens.
Aside from two places elsewhere in the Bible, the gospel of the kingdom of the heavens is especially written in the Gospel of Matthew.
We know that, so far as the four Gospels are concerned, the Gospel of Matthew was not written first chronologically speaking. Mark was written first. But why is it that, when you open the New Testament, the first book is the Gospel of Matthew?
I believe there is something of God in this. So far as we are concerned, we may be interested in the Gospel of Mark; but so far as God is concerned, He is interested in the Gospel of Matthew because He wants us to enter into that kingdom.
This is why we have the Gospel of Matthew at the very beginning of the New Testament. If we really want to know what the kingdom of the heavens is, we have to study the Gospel according to Matthew.
For the sake of our understanding, in that Gospel of the kingdom of the heavens there are three peaks. When you look at these peaks, you will be able to understand the whole book.
The first peak is Matthew 5–7. It tells us of the reality of the kingdom of the heavens—what the kingdom of the heavens really is.
Then, in Matthew 13, you find the parables. These are the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens. Why are they mysteries? Because they are hidden from the world. The Lord explains them only to those who are His.
Thus, Matthew 13 gives us the appearance of the kingdom of the heavens today. When we look at the kingdom of the heavens today, it is a mystery, and these mysteries are represented by the parables.
Then in Matthew 24 and 25, we find the coming appearance of the kingdom of the heavens upon this earth. If we are able to grasp these three peaks, then the whole gospel of the kingdom of the heavens will be opened to us.
This morning we would like to concentrate on the first peak, Matthew 5–7.
During His first coming, even though He came as the King of the heavens, His birth was so different from the way of the world.
So far as the world is concerned, a king should be born in Jerusalem. That is why the three Magi went to Jerusalem to find the One born King of the Jews. But our Lord Jesus was not born in Jerusalem; He was born in Bethlehem.
He was not born in a palace; He was born in a manger. Only some shepherds came to visit Him. The very way He came into this world was so different. It shows that His kingdom is entirely different from the kingdoms of this world.
Then you find that He was raised in Nazareth. What is Nazareth? When Nathanael heard that Christ came from Nazareth, he said, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” It was a small place, despised by people; yet our Lord was raised in Nazareth until He was thirty years old.
When He came out for His public ministry, His way of coming forth was also so different. He did not come in a great procession or in a palace. He came to be baptized by John.
Even John the Baptist realized that there was something so great in that Person. He said that he should be baptized by Jesus, rather than baptize Jesus.
Our Lord was perfect. There was nothing for Him to repent of, and the baptism of John was a baptism of repentance. But our Lord Jesus said, “Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.”
This is the way God introduced grace. He came to be one of us and took all our sins upon Himself. It seemed that He had to go through the baptism of repentance. His way of coming out was so different.
When He began to preach, we might think that He would say, “The King has come. Come into My kingdom.” But that was not His message. His message was, “Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Why was it so? The King was here, yet He said the kingdom of heaven was at hand. Because the kingdom was coming, and it was so different from the world.
As heaven is higher than the earth, so the kingdom of the heavens is much higher than the kingdoms of this world. Everything is different; everything is on another level.
Therefore, the Lord said, “You need to repent.” Do not think that you are fit for the kingdom of the heavens. You have to repent, completely turn around, and then you will be able to enter into the kingdom of the heavens.
When you read the Gospels, you will be surprised that when our Lord was on earth, He was always meeting people who were sick, lame, blind, and even dead. These were the people He came for.
But they were not fit for the kingdom of the heavens. Our Lord Jesus had to come first to save the lost. We were the lost in the eyes of God. We were those who were blind, those who were sick, and those who were dead in sins and trespasses.
But our Lord Jesus came for us, and He died for us that we might be saved and receive God’s life.
When He came the first time, He was seeking to establish His kingdom of the heavens upon the earth. But the earth was not prepared for Him, so He had to save some people.
But being saved is not enough. To be saved is our hope; but to be saved and still live by our own selves is not God’s thought. He wants to save us to the uttermost.
After those people were saved, what did the Lord do? In Matthew 4, He began to call disciples.
He found Peter and Andrew casting a net, for they were fishermen. Then He said, “Come ye after Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” They left the boat and followed the Lord.
Then He went a little farther and saw the sons of Zebedee. They were mending the nets, and He said, “Come and follow Me.” They left everything and followed Him, as did others.
After He had gathered some disciples, He began to speak to them about the kingdom of the heavens.
When you read Matthew 5, it says, “Seeing the multitudes, He went up into the mountain: and when He had sat down, His disciples came unto Him.”
In the beginning, when our Lord was preaching, crowds followed Him. When the Lord saw the crowds, He went up into the mountain. The Bible says that He sat down there, His disciples came to Him, and He opened His mouth and taught them.
In other words, the so-called Sermon on the Mount is not for the world. The Sermon on the Mount is exclusively for the disciples of our Lord Jesus.
If you try to teach the Sermon on the Mount to the world, you know what will happen to you. One day, when a preacher was preaching the kingdom of the heavens, a person suddenly came and struck his right cheek.
That person had heard the Sermon on the Mount: if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the left also. Fortunately, that preacher did turn the other cheek.
The Sermon on the Mount is not for the world; it is only for disciples.
There is such misunderstanding about the Sermon on the Mount. Most people think it gives us so-called Christian ethics, higher than the law of Moses. They think that because the Lord gave us the Sermon on the Mount, we must try our best to keep its words.
There are truly people who want to do that. But brothers and sisters, if you have ever tried to keep the Sermon on the Mount, you will see that the more you try, the more you cannot do it.
The demand is higher than any human being can meet. Why is this so? It is because the Lord is showing us how different His kingdom is from the kingdom of the world.
We may be fit for the kingdom of this world, but we are totally unfit for the kingdom of the heavens.
The kingdom of the heavens is telling us who the King is and what He is. A kingdom is under a king. The king rules according to what he is.
If the king is benevolent, the people live a good life. If the king is a despot, the people live poorly, because the kingdom is according to the king. The character of the king rules over his kingdom.
Among the disciples of our Lord Jesus, there was one thing that happened again and again. They had believed in the Lord and followed Him, yet everyone wanted to be the head.
Look at the twelve disciples. They did not have very noble backgrounds, and yet they struggled with one another over who was the greatest.
Even to the very last, when our Lord Jesus was going to Jerusalem for the last time, the disciples thought that the Lord was going to be enthroned there. They felt that this was their last chance.
James and John got their mother to come, because their mother was the aunt of our Lord Jesus according to the flesh. She came to the Lord and said, “I have a request. Promise that You will answer it.” It was as though she brought a blank check for Him to sign.
But our Lord would not write such a check. He asked, “What do you really want?” She said, “When You are enthroned, let my two sons sit, one on Your right hand and one on Your left.”
When the other disciples heard about it, the Bible says they were indignant, because these two disciples had outmaneuvered them.
Thank God the Lord Jesus did not give such a promise. He said, “Are ye able to drink the cup that I am about to drink? Are ye able to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
I think they did not know what that meant, but they wanted to sit on the right and left so much that they said, “We are able.” The Lord said, “Ye shall drink indeed of My cup,” but the seat at the right or left is for the Father to give.
Then the Lord had to tell the disciples: in the world, if you want to be great or to be first, that is what you seek. But in My kingdom, if you want to be first, you have to be last. If you want to be great, you have to be small.
“I came to serve, not to be served, and to give My life a ransom for many.”
You would think that would settle the matter, but it did not. Even at the Last Supper, the disciples were still arguing among themselves over who was greatest.
Brothers and sisters, do you see? We are totally unfit for the kingdom of the heavens. No matter how good we are, we are totally unfit, because the kingdom of heaven is totally different. It takes its character from the King Himself.
The Lord came into the earth to demonstrate to us what kind of kingdom He is going to establish among men.
When you read the so-called Beatitudes, “Blessed” means happy, happy, happy. Who ought to be blessed? Who will become the sons of the kingdom of the heavens?
It starts with the Beatitudes. Brothers and sisters, in these blessings we are told of the character of our Lord Jesus.
At the very beginning He says:
Blessed are the poor in spirit:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Who are the poor in spirit? Remember, it does not say, “Blessed are the poor spirit.” It says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
How can you be poor in spirit? Your spirit is supposed to be rich. If your spirit is really poor, there is nothing to give up.
Here you see our Lord Jesus telling us who He is. In Philippians 2, it says that He, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped.
Yet He emptied Himself. Who can empty himself? Only those who are rich in spirit.
There is no one richer than our Lord Jesus, because He was equal with God. To take that place was not something for Him to grasp. One day an archangel tried to grasp at that place, and Lucifer became Satan.
But our Lord Jesus is equal with God, and yet He is poor in spirit. He was willing to empty Himself of all His glory, all His position, all His authority and power, and He came to take the form of a bondservant.
What is the form of a bondservant? The form here does not refer to outward appearance. The form refers to what His character really is—what He really is.
He who is the image of God took the form of a bondservant. A bondservant to whom? A bondservant to God His Father.
Throughout His life, He never tried to exert His own will. Even to the very last, when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane, He realized that all the sins of the world would come upon Him.
He who knew no sin was to be made sin for us. As a human being, He could not bear it, because He never knew sin. Yet He said, “Not My will, but Thine, be done.”
Outwardly, He took the form of a man; inwardly, He took the form of a bondservant. He was obedient to the Father even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.
This is poor in spirit.
Brothers and sisters, what do we have in our spirit? Before we believed in the Lord Jesus, our spirit was dead in sin and transgression.
Even by the grace of God, when our dead spirit was renewed into life and our spirit began to commune with God the Spirit, how rich is our spirit? How much do we really know the Lord? How much do we really obey Him?
Do we obey Him to the uttermost? How much do we still think of ourselves? We still want to have our own way. How much do we murmur before God?
Our spirit is really a poor spirit. We have almost nothing to empty of, except the evil things within us: our self-will, our self-opinions, and our self-feelings. That is all we can do.
Brothers and sisters, we find it so difficult to do that. Humanly speaking, it is impossible to be a child of the kingdom of the heavens.
But thank God, He who has begun His salvation in our lives will continue to work in us until our spirit becomes richer. Because it is richer, it is possible to be poor in spirit.
When, by the grace of God, we enter into that, then the kingdom of the heavens is ours.
You can go down through the other blessings, and the spirit behind them is the same. In the beginning, it shows us who our Lord Jesus is—how He is poor in spirit and how He mourns.
When Lazarus was dead, our Lord came, and people told Him about it. The Bible says, “Jesus wept.” He wept for our sake. The Bible says that those who mourn shall be comforted.
Brothers and sisters, the problem with us today, even though we are saved, is that the life of Christ in us is still very restricted.
We try to be Christians on our own. We may try to do our very best, and the result is that sooner or later we find ourselves failures.
We have just sung that consecration hymn. It is a beautiful hymn. But the problem is that we do not really know what consecration is.
When you read, “Take my life, and let it be,” and, “Take my eyes,” and so on, it may give you the impression that God wants all your talents. If you are musical, you conduct the music in the church. If you are able, you become an elder. You try to give the Lord your best.
But the best of yourself is still all of yourself, and the best of yourself is the worst in the sight of God.
What we really need to do is give ourselves completely to the Lord and let Him purify us, displace ourselves, and place Himself in us. Then whatever comes forth is of Christ and not of ourselves.
Then this is true blessing.
Dear brothers and sisters, if you read Matthew 5, the Lord Jesus says, “Ye are the salt of the earth.”
When we believe in the Lord Jesus, there is an element of salt within us. Salt has a special flavor. If you put salt in something, you know it is there, because salt preserves from decay and gives a special flavor to food.
But salt can become saltless. How can that be? When you are in such close fellowship with the world, gradually you become less salty, less salty, until you are no longer salty. The power of preservation is totally gone.
We are the salt of the world. We should preserve the world from decay. Yet we are so in friendship with the world that we have lost our flavor. We can no longer affect the world; the world affects us.
That is why our Lord Jesus says that if you become saltless, what can you do with it? It is no longer fit for anything. It will be cast out and trodden under foot by men.
That is what happens among Christians. Instead of the world admiring Christians, the world despises Christians because they say, “You are no longer different from us. You have become even worse than us.”
Then the Lord says, “Ye are the light of the world.” We are supposed to be sons of light.
Where do you put the light? You do not put it under a bed. A bed means that you want the comfort of this world; then the light will be hidden. Neither do you put it under a bushel. A bushel means the business of this world; again the light is hidden.
It is to be put on the stand, and then the light will have its result.
The Lord said in Matthew 5, “Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil.”
In other words, the law and the prophets tell us something good, but it is the Lord who makes it good in us.
The Lord uses different illustrations in Matthew 5. He tells us what the law demands, and then He tells us what He demands. His demand is so much higher than what the law requires.
At the end of the chapter, in Matthew 5:48, He says:
Ye therefore shall be perfect,
as your heavenly Father is perfect.
There is a degree of similarity, but not the same degree. God is perfectly perfect, but our perfection is only comparatively perfect. God is sinlessly perfect; no human being is sinlessly perfect except our Lord Jesus.
What does “perfect” here mean? It means that there is a similarity of nature, because it is His life within us and His character begins to come out of us.
In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul speaks of “the perfect,” meaning the mature. He does not mean sinless perfection, but maturity—growing in the Lord.
Here in Matthew 5, we find that it is to live by Christ. If we live by ourselves, we will never be able to fulfill it. How we need to live by Christ! Only through Him are we able to be light and to be salt.
When you come to Matthew 6, the Lord shows us how we are to live upon this earth. People give alms, people pray, and people have a religious life; but that religious life is for men to see.
For us who live for God, we live for the Father in heaven to see. We do not live before men; we live before God.
Here you find that we serve. We are not trying to serve two masters, because we cannot serve two masters. You either serve God or serve mammon.
Because we serve God alone, we do not need to care what we shall eat, what we shall drink, or what we shall put on. This is what the world seeks for.
But for us, we seek the kingdom and His righteousness first, and all these things shall be added unto us.
Matthew 6 is centered upon this verse:
But seek ye first His kingdom, and His righteousness;
and all these things shall be added unto you.
Then you come to Matthew 7. If you live such a life, what will happen to you? It is like building your house upon the rock. When the storm comes, the house will stand.
Matthew 5–7 tells us what the kingdom of the heavens really is—what the kingdom of the heavens is like.
But how can we get into it? Here in Matthew 11, the Lord Jesus says in verse 12:
And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence,
and men of violence take it by force.
Brothers and sisters, we have seen what the kingdom of the heavens is. But the Lord is now telling us how we can get into it and how we can possess it.
From the time of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of the heavens has come. The King has come, and now we want to possess it. But there is a condition: the kingdom of the heavens is taken by violence.
First of all, we do not like the word violence. But the word itself is neutral. It depends upon whom you do violence to.
If you do violence to other people, that is bad. But the Lord says, “Do violence to yourself.” Are we willing to do violence to ourselves?
Naturally, we love ourselves. We want to protect ourselves. We want to have our own way. Brothers and sisters, who does not love himself? If anyone says, “I do not love myself,” he is telling a lie.
That is what we naturally are. But the Lord requires us to do violence to ourselves. This does not mean neglecting or mistreating our bodies.
In the Dark Ages, people slept on beds with iron spikes and wore clothes with iron instruments, trying to mistreat their bodies because they thought sin came from the body.
But you may mistreat your body until it dies, and it does not help. The violence here is directed toward your soul: your own thinking, your own feeling, and your own volition—anything that represents yourself.
You have to do violence to yourself because of the love of God. You have to lay down yourself, as our Lord Jesus laid down Himself because of His love for the Father.
If we are willing to lay down ourselves, if we are willing even to lay down our talents, our talents should go through the cross. Then God can use them.
Just like Moses: for forty years he was in the palace of Egypt. He learned all the learning of Egypt and was mighty in words and deeds. He tried to save his people by his own might.
The first day he used his strength; the second day he used his words to try to solve the problem among the Israelites. How easily he imagined that he would be accepted, but he was rejected.
Thank God for his failure. He had to flee for his life. After he had been in the wilderness for forty years, keeping a few sheep, he lost his eloquence and lost his might.
When he was eighty years old, he thought of himself as dead. That was the time God began to use him—not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of God.
That is the way to the kingdom of the heavens. That is the only way that can transform us and conform us to the image of Christ.
Brothers and sisters, you can see very clearly that this is the way of God. How many of God’s people are walking on that way? No wonder the end has not come.
The Bridegroom cannot come to a bride who is immature. He has to wait until the bride has matured and reflects His character. Then she can be joined together with Him as one.
Brothers and sisters, what a responsibility we have. Even though we are nobody, God can use us for His kingdom. It is all grace; it is all mercy.
We have nothing to boast of. We can only bow our heads and worship.
Dear Lord, we do want to thank Thee that the kingdom has come. It has come in such a secret way that the world does not see it.
But Lord, do open our eyes that we may see it, that we may learn how to do violence to ourselves, that we may seize upon it.
Lord, it is all grace to us. Give us grace upon grace, and have mercy upon us. In Thy precious name. Amen.