Narrator: You are listening to the LifePointe Church sermon of the week. For more resources, visit us at lifepointe.cc.
Pastor Drew: Matthew chapter 5 is where we'll be this morning. We're learning the ways of Christ. This is part 2 of, I think, 25, I think, parts that we're going to be learning about the ways of Christ through the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew's chapter Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7 over the next number of weeks and or months. I still hear quite quite a bit of ringing here in my microphone. We wanna submit our hearts to King Jesus.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7 is the most comprehensive collection of Jesus' teachings in scripture. And so if we're seeking to submit our our lives to King Jesus and learn about his ways, this is a this is a great place for us to tap into to understand the heart and the priorities of our King, King Jesus. And so 2 weeks ago, we we kicked this off and we we learned about, how blessed are those that are poor in the spirit, how blessed those are who mourn in this kingdom. How blessed those are who who are meek, who surrender their agenda for the agenda of King Jesus. We tackled all those in our prior time together.
If I need to switch to handheld Mike, do I need to? Okay. Let's pray. There's demons in the sound system maybe. So, Lord, we thank you for your presence in this place.
How you've been exalted. Lord, you've been so exalted and the voices of your people here, you've been glorified. You're the head of the church. You are the beautiful one. All the eyes of our hearts are towards.
I feel like, oftentimes, Lord, we close our eyes, not as religious posturing, but to focus the eyes of our heart on your preeminence and your priority in our midst. There's so much significance as we gather together surround surrounding your presence, centered around your presence. And so Lord, I pray right now over your word that it'd be alive to us, that we come alive in this place, that it'd be living and active, cutting into our hearts. In your precious name, Amen. Let's read these 2 verses Starting in verse 6, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven for so for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Amen. So imagine King Jesus being here, sitting here, maybe on the front of the stage, talking about what His kingdom is like. That's what He has just done here. He's described the ethos of His kingdom.
The values, the priorities, the the attitudes of the heart that are, most celebrated in the kingdom of God, that are honored in the kingdom of God. That's what we that's what we've just experienced. In a lot of senses, it's tough for me to teach through these because they kind of go in a number of different directions. So we're gonna try to, touch on each of these 5, verses that we just read. They're 5 aspects of the Kingdom of God.
But I I want the Lord rather than extensively teach on each one of these aspects of, call them Beatitudes or the blessed life and the Kingdom of God. I I want the Holy Spirit, like a good teacher, as king, as father, to draw your heart into greater obedience. I feel like there's one of these aspects that's gonna perk one person's heart that's gonna be different than another person. So I just want you to be open to the leading of the Lord this morning as He brings alive His word to be very relevant to you. So there's gonna be nobody on the sidelines this morning.
God is gonna speak to your heart. He's gonna draw you to himself in greater loyalty and greater submission to him. He wants you to be greater, to be drawn to him in greater devotion and greater loyalty and greater allegiance. And we're all in different places in our walk with Jesus and our walks with the Lord, and so it's gonna touch us differently. Just as way of review, when I started talking through Matthew chapter 5, I highlighted 4 truths of learning the ways of of Jesus that I just want to reiterate that I'm gonna be repeating week after week that help give us the right heart posture to receive these teachings about the ways of Christ and the ways of his kingdom.
The first truth is that Jesus came. These are not teachings from just another teaching, or from another teacher, from another voice. This is, this is on another level. This is our King. King Jesus, the one we just exalted through song.
So much is revealed in our worship and our song. We're not just singing about a man who came and died. We're singing about a man who right now rules and reigns in eternity, in heaven. Like right now, that is the glory of the church. It's our King who is exalted.
And so we're receiving teaching from this high and exalted King who sits on a throne, and graced us with the opportunity by him coming and telling us about what his kingdom is like. So all of our hearts should just be humbled right now. Kind of shuddering in the presence of our King, who is who is allowing us to catch a glimpse of of the priorities of his kingdom. So that's number 1. Jesus is King.
This is teaching on another level. Not because it's coming from me, because it's coming from the revelation of God's word. It's on another level. Jesus King. 2nd is love and obedience are inseparable.
So important for us to understand that, because both of these ideas, both love and obedience, are often so misunderstood. The love and obedience are inseparable. Jesus said, if we if we love, we'll obey him if we if we love him. If we love him, we'll obey his commands. And so that's important for us to understand.
Otherwise, we'll fall into one ditch or another. We'll fall into a ditch of legalism or we have obedience without love. Our hearts are not motivated and moved by true love and affection for for King Jesus, but rather, we're just doing, we're going through the motions. We're doing this stuff. Maybe you're familiar with that.
I've been there. I've I've done that. There's no life there. Or the other ditch is obedience, is is love without obedience, is license. And that's caught in a lot of momentum right now in the church where people misunderstand grace, where they they remove it from any sort of true relationship with a living, loving God, but rather they just allow the grace of God to be a license to do whatever they want.
And so in the Kingdom of God, we see both love and obedience tied hand in hand inseparable and that's important for us to continue to understand as we're as we're seeking to be obedient children in the Kingdom of God. 3rd is this, obedience his ways leads to abundant life. This is the declaration of our, of our understanding of his true character, that that God really is good. That little rebellious child in all of us comes and and submits itself to the goodness of the Lord. That He He really wants what's best for you.
He's not a killjoy. He's not trying to stifle and, kill all the the fun that you're that you're trying to have in this life, nobody, But he truly came to bring life and life more abundant. And in order for us to experience that blessing, the blessed life, we have to submit our hearts to His ways and to His, and to be obedient. And 4th is this, Jesus is leading us to complete transformation. We're gonna experience this over the next number of weeks.
You kind of get a preview of it in the Beatitudes and these these beginning verses, that the the the ways of the kingdom, the good news of the kingdom is relevant to every aspect of our life. Praise God. He didn't just come to change your Sunday morning routine. Jesus came to transform your life. The entirety of your life.
Not just Sundays, Monday through Sunday. Everything and that's beautiful. It's also painful in many ways. He's coming to revolutionize and reorient every aspect of our life from the inside out, not from the outside in, but from the inside out. And, praise God for that.
That's important for us to keep in mind. There's no parts of our life if we're talking about King, the King of Kings, the King of the Universe, there's no aspect of our life that's off limits. From submission and allegiance to King Jesus. So all that's in review. I'll be, I'll be repeating that ad nauseam over the next number of weeks.
So But, we started in verse 6. Blessed are those that are that hunger and thirst for righteousness. These ones who are satisfied in Christ alone, who who realize that ultimate truth about our existence that God has created us as beings that feel and experience and can hunger and can be satisfied, and ultimately, that will never be fulfilled outside of Christ. He alone is the one who satisfies us. So there's a blessing in not just acknowledging it, but allowing that to be a guiding motivation of our of our hearts and our lives.
The Lord himself. So I wanna ask you that question. How intense is your hunger for the goodness of the Lord? To bless are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness. His right ways, you can think of that as his goodness.
The good and perfect right character of the Lord. How intense is your hunger for the Lord? It's been said that most people suffer from the malady of not wanting because our palates have been so disoriented or numbed by lesser pleasures, by lesser delights. I get down here on the floor because I'm talking to myself as well. I'm talking to all of us.
Like this is the kind of the difficulty of walking this journey in this world. There are so many there's so much eye candy, so many things drawing our affections in so many directions. But Jesus says, blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness because they figure out a key. They figure out that Jesus is the pearl of great price. That he is that treasure buried in the field worth our everything.
Worth us surrendering anything else, everything else to experience him and his rightness, his goodness. So the language here, similar to the spiritual poor, the poor in spirit that we talked about last time, blessed are those that are poor in spirit. He's not talking about just a partial hunger, partial thirsting, like the partial poverty, but it's a complete and utter hunger and thirst for for all of the Lord, for the entirety of the Lord. For all that he is and all that he has for us. That's the sort of hunger that he's talking about.
It's not just a desire for a little tasting of the Lord. It's a there's a there's a blessing reserved for those that want all the Lord has for them. This is why on a regular basis, I pray for a hunger in my heart. God's will for your life, you can know it because we just read it. Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied, or some translations say, they shall be filled.
You can know God's will for your life is for you to continually hunger for the Lord. Not just in your your early years with the Lord, not just when you're just getting started, but God's desire for your life, his will for your life is for you to continually hunger and thirst for the Lord. So I I make that a regular practice in my life. Lord, give me a hunger. Put a hunger in my heart.
I don't desire you even like I should. So God, would you just give me a grace. I've just found that the Lord pours out his grace on my life to give me a hunger for him. It's like the things of this world have have a greater distaste in my mouth and I begin to hunger for the Lord. It's not always instant.
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But the Lord is so good to meet us in our honest prayers. So I would encourage you to pray that way. Lord, give me a hunger for you. Your word says, those ones are blessed.
I wanna experience that blessing. Right now, it's a mystery to me. So God, give me a hunger for you, for your right ways, for your goodness. Make that a regular part of your life and what you'll find is God will answer that prayer. When you open up his word, all of a sudden things will jump off the page and begin to feed that hunger.
Both stoke the hunger and feed it. Hunger begets hunger. As the Lord will highlight things in his word and he'll like quicken you to say, what if I can experience that myself as well? And he'll draw you to himself as you begin to seek him and find him and it becomes this lifelong journey of seeking after the Lord. Your ears will begin to perk up and recognize what the Lord is doing on the earth.
Testimonies will become your food as people share about how God is working on the earth and how God is moving. People are encountering the Lord and experiencing him in reality, or being healed, or being touched by him, or delivered. Your ears will perk up and you'll recognize it and you'll live in this this place, this blessed place of being satisfied in the Lord alone. I remember in my teenage years being so inspired by my younger brother when I was around him. He had this insatiable hunger for the Lord in those days that that was, that was contagious, I felt like.
And I hung out with him. He had experienced the Lord in some significant ways, and and I was going after the Lord as well chasing after Jesus as best I knew how, but when I was around him, I was just drawn to give give the Lord my all, and when he began to talk about what the Lord was doing, I was stirred myself. Surround yourself with people that are hungering for the Lord, not people that are just apathetic. You can inspire them, hopefully. You can, draw a hunger out in them, but get around people that are testifying of what God is doing and how he's working in their lives, and you will be drawn to hunger after the Lord yourself.
Leonard Ravenhill said this, that a man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge, but he prays because his soul is hungry for God. So get alone with God. Shut shut the door in your room and get on your knees before the Lord. The Lord will answer that prayer. He'll meet you.
He'll draw you to himself because blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness. You'll be satisfied in Christ alone. The second one was this in verse 7. Blessed are those who are merciful for they shall receive mercy. So this is a principle repeated in the New Testament and the Gospels that only those who are only the merciful have the humility to receive mercy.
Only those who are humble enough to forgive can receive the forgiveness of the Lord because it's a revealer that we understand rightly that we ourselves are recipients of grace and mercy. We ourselves are ones who are recipients of the forgiveness of the Lord. There's a principle repeated that Jesus himself repeats and here he says it succinctly. Blessed are those who are merciful, for they shall receive mercy. It's just a fact.
You cannot receive the mercy of the Lord if you can also extend mercy to others because it it it communicates in your life and your actions a complete misunderstanding about the gospel, about your need for the Lord, your need for forgiveness, the mountain of debt that was forgiven of you and of me. It's all communicated through our actions when we can't extend mercy to others. We can't extend grace to others. So the blessed life is a life that lives in a constant revelation of the mercy of the Lord. That that second song we sang.
Thank you, Lord. For your mercies that are new, we can always come into a gathering. In fact, we can wake up every day saying, thank you, God. Even if everything else is crashing around us, everything else is burning around us, we can say, thank you, God. Your mercies are new today.
Thank you, King Jesus. There's always mercy for those ones who recognize the mercy of the Lord that's been extended to us and that's the the blessed life is those that live in a constant revelation of the mercy of the Lord because there, we have the capacity to extend mercy to others. You'll find yourself a lot less on edge. You'll find yourself a lot less, easily offendable when we live with a constant revelation of the mercy of the Lord towards us. This right now, in this moment in human history, this is a season of mercy.
Judgment is coming. There is a day of accounting coming, Like tax day, it's coming. It's the big April 15th that's coming in the in the age to come. When we all have to give account, but right now this is the season of mercy. This is the season of grace that's being extended towards all of us.
So let us live in a place acknowledging the revelation of the mercy of the God the mercy of Lord. The grace of Jesus. So if you wanna be in a place to receive mercy from the Lord, there has to be a baseline self awareness of our own need for the Lord. You just think of the the parable of the Pharisee and the tax letter. Jesus tells a story.
I'll read part of it. In Luke chapter 18, he tells this parable about these 2 guys who come into the temple to pray. Just imagine being hearers of this parable in Jesus' day because the the 2 characters that he describes are really extreme extremes. There is there's one who is the Pharisee. This is the religious leader.
This is the one who does all the right things. This is like the de facto Christian by name only. They got the t shirt, they do the things, They come to church all the time. They're always active. They're doing all the stuff, but inside, they're like dead bones.
Dead man's bones inside of them. There's there's no life in them. This is the Pharisee, and he comes into the temple, and this is what he says. Pharisee standing by himself, he prayed to God. He said, God I thank you that I'm not like other men.
Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I give. That's the end of his prayer. The other man in this story is a tax collector.
And to these 1st century Near Eastern Jews, the tax collector would have been the scum of the Earth, the traitors, the dishonest cheaters. That's the tax collectors. I mean these these people were the worst of the worst in the in the minds of his hearers, but this is the prayer of the tax collector. The tax collector standing far off. He wouldn't even lift his eyes to Heaven, but he'd beat his breast saying, God be merciful to me, a sinner.
He recognized his need for the mercy of the Lord. And therefore, the tax collector could actually receive mercy where the Pharisee could not, because he had in his mind no need for the mercy of the Lord where the tax collector acknowledged it. Now Jesus comes to transform us. Jesus is not trying to teach us in Luke 18 that we need to continue to claim ourselves as sinners for the rest of our lives, but he comes to deliver us from our sin and live a life of freedom in a trajectory of greater and greater holiness over our lives. But all of that is doused, baptized in humility all the time.
Acknowledging our testimony and our story of where we've come from and where we're headed, all by the grace of God. It's all by the mercy of the Lord. God is so good. We've been experiencing I've been really missing this summer not having House of Prayer for the last number, 4 weeks or so. I know many of you are as well.
We're starting here soon. In 2 weeks, we're starting House of Prayer again. So get ready. We're expanding House of Prayer to Wednesday nights. So we'll have House of Prayer Tuesday during the day, Wednesday night, and then Thursday during the day.
So come and experience the presence of the Lord. So much of the life of the church should be a people devoted to prayer. Like if we if if you were just to have like a cross section or survey of the life of a community of believers, prayer should be a major element of it. But so often in the modern church, it's a complete afterthought. It's like a blessing on a t model.
That's what prayer is. But as you look at the book of Acts, as you look at what the church should be, prayer should be the engine of of who we are. It should be the it should be the the declaration of our dependence on the anointing of the Lord, the presence of the Lord in our midst. And so that's what House of Prayer has been over the last a year as we've as we've started ambitiously devoting more and more time to corporate prayer, but as I've been experiencing House of Prayer with you all, I've seen this pattern of us ministering to the Lord, exalting him in his goodness and his kindness, and God revealing his grace to us. Like, oh, wow.
We are all recipients of his grace and mercy. That comes and refreshes us all. And as we're refreshed by his grace and his kindness and his mercy, what it does in us is it begins to release in us a desire to see that mercy poured out on our city. That's when we begin to intercede rightly. Like, we begin to intercede for our city with such compassion, because we've just revealed it or it's been revealed to us in a fresh way how much we have received from the Lord.
Like, we're so brimming and overflowing with the kindness and the generosity of God, that then we, in compassion for our city, say, God have mercy on our city. It's not in judgment. Saying, God just bring bring fire down on our city. You know, let's God have mercy on our city. We have received so much of your kindness and your goodness.
God, would you have mercy on our city and our day. Actually, I was just, reminded of a of a friend's story from House of Prayer. Amanda, would you come forward and share because this is highlights house of prayer, and I believe what I believe the Lord wants to do beautiful the picture of, like, family in the presence of God in multi generationally was. Can you share about how that inspired your heart?
Speaker 3: Yeah. So we were singing about the beauty of the Lord and how beautiful the Lord is, and I was right back there. And there were babies being passed around. There was artwork up here that Alyssa had set up. And, my own kids were actually just sprawled out sprawled out laying on the chair.
1 my teenager was just reading a book. He wasn't even reading his bible, but, it just felt like we had walked into the family room. And that father God was here with us tending to us. And I was just overwhelmed with how beautiful being a part of the family of God was in that moment and being a child of God and that this is open to everyone and that this space is for everyone. And so
Pastor Drew: Amen. That's so amazing. And can you give it up for Amanda? Thank you so much. That has become so foreign, I believe, in the modern church, because church is so much about performance and what happens on a Sunday and stages and all that silly stuff, when what church should be is family and there should be a rawness to us in our devotion to the Lord and devotion to prayer, and then the expression of that in the context of family that is experienced when we gather together in corporate prayer.
And as she shared that's that kinda how the Lord ministered to her heart. I felt like it captured it perfectly. And so I would encourage you to come, especially as we expand the House of Prayer to Wednesday nights. I would encourage you to come. This is not a commercial break.
This is this is my my heart coming out of me. As I've been in ministry for the last 13 years, like, the culmination of so much comes in this expression of the house of prayer. I'll I'll just be honest with you. This is like a dream being fulfilled before my eyes. I don't believe it's just a personal dream.
I believe it's the heart of the Lord. Even when me and my wife were in the Seattle area, so I was a nuclear engineer just working in the marketplace. In our church, I would gather our church pray in sim in a similar way, except we'd pray through the night, and that became our our call. Hey, let's gather for prayer. These are marketplace people praying through the night, devoting themselves to prayer, and there's something raw about it.
There's something that's so needed in the church today. And I believe God is setting us up for beautiful things in the days to come. But I believe so much of the revelation of the mercy of God is gonna be experienced corporately. When we gather and we minister to him, we see his goodness and his kindness, and then from there, we can extend mercy to the world. We can experience compassion for the world.
This urgent cry in our hearts for the mercy of God to be poured out upon our city. It comes from a revelation of the Lord's mercy. You know, judgment is needed in the church. Paul gives those instructions about how judgment starts in the church, but I have found with both, biblically and I believe from experience, I've learned that that judgment is meant to be exercised collectively, not from any singular person declaring judgment over a person, but collectively as elders or pastors. There is a judgment that is, given in the church context to bring about discipline and correction.
But that has to be handled with great care, with great love, with great fear and trembling. But it is needed, and that's something God has dispensed to the church, even in this age, and it's for peoples, the building up of the church. Amen? Could preach an entire message there on the mercy of Lord, but we'll continue verse 8. It says, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
There's a blessing reserved for those who have a purity of heart. That could also be translated a clean heart. That could be also speaking to the motives of our heart, unmixed motives. In some translations, it refers to unmixed motives. So there's a blessing to those who have a purity of heart.
This is all again by the grace of the Lord, by the mercy of Lord that we can have pure hearts. It's only done by the Lord. But I've seen this testimony time and time again as I've walked with the Lord that God restores hearts with innocence and purity. So regardless of your story, how long you've been away from the Lord, where you've been, I've seen the Lord tenderize and purify hearts. People who are cold and angry towards the Lord, God's grace poured out upon their life in such a way that their hearts become tender and pure and clean.
There's a blessing reserved for them. What does it say? It says they'll see God. Those that have pure innocence, that pure clean unmixed motives, they recognize the working of the Lord all around them. They see the presence of God.
We don't we don't None of us will ever see God fully, but we we recognize His presence, His reality in our midst. We recognize Him moving. The pure in heart, that's that's a blessing reserved for the pure in heart. Yesterday, I was up north in my hometown of Fargo, North Dakota. I got to be back in Fargo for a gathering of Chi Alpha Alum in my home, Chi Alpha Fargo Moore, North Dakota State, as we gather to honor my pastor who had been a pastor for 35 years.
He's he's retiring from Chi Alpha Ministry and transitioning to other ministry, and we got to honor him. But as I looked across that room yesterday, just different people's testimonies just began to get get highlighted to me in this room. The testimonies of people who were far from God, bitter at the Lord, people who were addicted to stuff, people who had raised their fists at the Lord and the grace of God had been poured out upon them and they have been drawn back to Jesus. That's all of our testimony, but there was something in rooms of such familiar old faces that I that that was so highlighted to me. That's the testimony of the Lord, his purifying work in all of us to make our hearts clean.
We don't clean ourselves up. It's the work of the Holy Spirit, then our cooperation with Holy Spirit, cooperation with His grace that purifies our hearts, then we begin to see him moving all around us. We don't have purity in our doing. We have purity because of Christ, and then we we live in this growing agreement with the purity of Christ, what he speaks over your life. He paid for for a cleansing of your life.
A purifying of your life for you to be holy. As Jesus says later, be holy as the Lord himself is holy. That's God's call for your life. And that starts in your heart, not just in your actions. Most people think of holiness, think of purity, they think of their actions.
That will happen, but it starts in our hearts. It's pure Purity of Heart. First John chapter 3 says this, See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now and what we will what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.
The Lord's destiny and his will for your life is for you to grow in likeness of the Lord himself. He's the most pure being in the universe, most holy being in the universe, and it starts in our hearts. So there's a blessing reserved to those who submit their hearts to King Jesus and he he draws out of you a purity and a holiness of devotion to him and him alone. Next, in verse 9, it says this, blessed are the blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God, or they should be called children of God. So there's a blessing for those who are carriers of peace, who make peace.
Don't confuse don't confuse this with passivity. That would be my general disposition would be one who is just more passive. I'm very conflict avoidant as a middle child. So I'm still recovering from that. Always be in the middle of all this conflict, but the Lord's identity for each of us is to be a carrier of peace into a world riddled with conflict, riddled with division, riddled with all sorts of tensions.
Like you wake up tomorrow and there will be tension and conflict and difficulties and God's destiny for your life is for you to bring peace, bring this ministry of reconciliation. To bring to be a carrier of peace into these situations. It starts on the inside again, and it's working its way out. As the Prince of Peace conquers our hearts, we with greater and greater conviction and authority and clarity can bring peace into situations with an instructed tongue. And I've that's been my testimony for sure.
As I've said no to passivity and understanding peacemaking, I've understood there to be a boldness there. To face conflict head on and realize that God gives us solutions, heavenly solutions, kingdom solutions that bring an answer. I can I can with confidence know that when Jesus was talking about peacemaking, he's not talking about just an environment that is absent of conflict? He's talking about shalom bringing, carrying shalom, which is not just a neutral position. Shalom is like a land of goodness, a place of the goodness of the Lord.
That's what we bring into situations. Into into our workplace, into our families. Families is oftentimes an environment with lots of conflict, lots of explosive personalities and and collisions. And God's calling for our lives is to for us to live at the blessing of the kingdom, where we bring shalom, the peace of God in the positive and the affirmative, not just in the neutral, but like in the net positive into these situations. We bring the goodness of the Lord, the right understanding of what the Lord is like in these situations.
Isaiah chapter 26 says this, that you keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you. This is God's will for you. This is God's will for each one of us because he trusts in you. So hearts that have been conquered by the Prince of Peace, they're stayed on the Lord. There's a perfect peace there waiting for us to live in.
Trust in the Lord forever for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. So we encounter the peace of God, the Prince of Peace conquers our hearts little by little, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, and we grow in this authority as peacemakers, carriers of peace in the situations. I'm beginning to realize that God is oftentimes entrusting situations to us to bring peace. Peace in the affirmative. Not again, not just the neutral avoidant of conflict, but peace that brings peace in the midst of conflict.
That there is conflict, there was tension, and God gives us an authoritative solution, a word, or no words that brings peace. So it starts in our hearts and then it's manifest in relationships of our lives. That's a must. You can't just say you have peace in your heart and then there's chaos constantly all around you. Now his shalom peace would have a forward momentum that would would be manifest in the fruit in the lives of the people around you.
There's a wisdom there that God will entrust you. I remember early on in ministry, like my 2nd year ministry, so I had no idea. I still don't know what I'm doing, but then I really didn't know what I was doing. My 2nd year ministry, my lead pastor walked into my office, and he explained this whole conflict that was happening. There's a big disagreement in the church and and he said, Drew, whose side are you on?
And and I said, I'm not on anybody's side. I'm I I love college students. I'm here to love college students. At the time, I was a Chi Alpha Pastor, And I do believe that God gave me a grace in that season to not get pulled into the fray of conflict and disagree personal personality disagreements, but rather speak the peace of the Lord at moments, other times stay silent, the wisdom of the Lord to stay free of personality conflict and keep our eyes on the big picture, keep the main thing the main thing. And we we saw the Lord move despite conflict and despite disagreements and people moved on and God has been glorified as we learned the blessing of being peacemakers.
This next one, this last one may seem to be in contradiction to being peacemakers, but both need to be held hand in hand. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. There's nothing peaceful about being persecuted. This is for theirs is the kingdom of God. This is also our inheritance as children of God.
We will be rejected. Blessed are those or blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is also our inheritance.
And there's a blessing in following in the steps of Jesus who is rejected, who is persecuted for the sake of this eternal kingdom. That's also the blessing that we get to live in, is being misunderstood and rejected and insulted and mocked by this world. We can rejoice. There can be a blessing of intimacy with God, as we experience rejection in this world. As people misunderstand us.
Now please keep in mind, it's it's a misunderstanding that doesn't come from our belligerence or our immaturity. It's it's misunderstandings and rejection that comes because of the testimony of Christ in our life. You guys understand that. Right? So it's not an excuse for you just to say, oh, they they don't get me, and for you to act however you want.
This is a rejection from people, insult from people, because of the testimony of Christ in our life that shines brightly in this world. That stands out. That's different. That makes people scratch their heads. They don't understand.
In this world, we will be rejected. Now for most of us, we won't be physically persecuted. Much of the world right now is experiencing physical persecution. Much of the church world is experiencing physical persecution. So there's an even greater urge and relevance here, but this is for all of us.
We all will be rejected and insulted and misunderstood in this world. We live with our hearts purely devoted to the Lord and at peace with God and at peace with people the best that we can. And we even seek to forge peace in this world, but then we also know that we will be walking a road similar to Jesus and we will be rejected by people. Like we are in the midst of a cosmic battle. There is a battle waging.
And the enemy is not taking prisoners. He wants to steal, kill, and destroy, and he riles up all sorts of pride and ego in this world against. It's Antichrist, so it's against Christ. That's what we're facing and so we will be rejected. I love that Pastor Riley lately as he's been stoking us into evangelism and calling us to evangelism more and more and more.
He he reminds us that rejection in witnessing is something that we can rejoice in. As we witness for the Lord, as we go out and we share the gospel with people, if we're rejected, we can rejoice in that. Like, we can see it as a failure in the flesh, and then after we say, oh man, I guess I I probably messed that up. Or and There's things you can always be learning, obviously. But sometimes we can just rejoice in the fact that we are walking in the steps of Christ as we proclaimed his goodness and his kindness, and it was rejected.
And we wipe the dust from our from our shoes, as we move forward, just seeking to represent Christ as best we can. Just consider 3 different areas of your life and how your witness for Christ should stand out. Consider the workplace. In the workplace, there should be something distinct about your witness that stands out. People may misunderstand your desire to be ethical, to be honest.
When you're not as loyal to the mighty dollar as they are and you're more loyal to other priorities, the priorities of Lord. They may they may misunderstand you as some religious zealot or as some, crazy person. But rejoice in that. Rejoice in rejection and insult. Rejoice in being misunderstood, because you're standing out.
Praise God. You're actually standing out. That's a good thing. If you look at the life of Daniel and in the if you think of that as like a allegory or picture of of the workplace, the secular workplace. There were moments where there was favor that marked Daniel's life.
And there were moments where his him standing out resulted in like physical persecution. So both can happen in a life. It's not always just one thing. So So sometimes, it'll just be tremendous favor and I see that in so many of your lives and your companies and your workplaces. There's a favor on your life, a Daniel like favor.
But there's also gonna be times where you're just misunderstood and you're rejected and you're set to the side or you're demoted or you're or looked over for a promotion because of the convictions that you have for Christ and his kingdom. That's one one one areas, the workplace. Think about your social life. If you're following Christ, your social life should be different than what it was pre Christ. BC before Christ.
Right? Your social life should look different and some of your friends may reject you. Tony, pastor last week, he talked about how that friend shouted in his face saying that he's no different than him and that he'll he'll be back in his life. Maybe it's not that with that much passion and betrayal towards you, but oftentimes our old friends misunderstand us. They'll accuse you of self righteousness, or they'll accuse you of, you know, being out of balance or something in your devotion to Christ.
That's all just walking in the way of Christ. If he truly is King, the devotion should look like something. That sort of surrender should look like something, and people may very well misunderstand that. And therefore, our behavior will also begin to look differently and they may misunderstand. They may mock you.
They may insult you, but just rejoice in it. Experience and encounter the blessing of the Lord in that sort of rejection. 3rd area of our life is think about our family. Family oftentimes misunderstands our devotion to Christ and rejoice in that. Rejoice in the fact that even Jesus himself was misunderstood by his family.
He said and he said, those that follow me will also be misunderstood by their family. You don't hope for this, you don't want this, but it it is part of following Christ. That's been part of our own family testimony. My parents, when they surrendered their life to Christ, in high school, they were completely misunderstood by their families and rejected at the time. But I have found something over the years.
That as you are consistent in your witness for Christ, year after year, decade after decade, there will be a softening. More often than not, there will be a softening in your family's heart. That that is something that I've found to be a consistent testimony. That as you are faithful in your witness to Christ, not perfect, but faithful and humble as you pursue Christ, I've found hearts time and time again are softened to that consistent witness of Christ in your life. So take courage, rejoice in your witness for Christ, even if you're rejected by your family.
I'm gonna invite Pastor Scott to the keys. We're gonna close here, but this is what William Barclay said. He said, Insult awaits the man who insists on Christian honor. Mockery awaits the man who practices Christian love and Christian forgiveness. Actual persecution may well await the Christian in industry who insists on doing an honest day work.
Christ still needs witnesses. He needs those who are prepared, not not so much to die for him, as to live for him. The Christian struggles and the Christian glory still exists, and we see that here in the Sermon on the Mount, as Jesus kicks off the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are those who are persecuted. Blessed are those who are reviled for the for his kingdom.
So if you all stand in this place, The nature of these passages are that we went in many different directions. Hungering and thirsting for the Lord, being merciful, being peacemakers, even being willing to be persecuted for the Lord. And rather than having 1, just 1 or having 5 calls, in response, I wanna have one call, which is submission to the Lord and allowing him to search our hearts and draw us to himself in greater allegiance and greater loyalty. As the Lord has maybe pricked your heart in a specific direction.
Narrator: This has been the LifePointe Church sermon of the week. For more resources, visit us at lifepointe.cc.