A man.
You may experience couple drops as if it keeps raining.
Got a couple little leaks.
But I just want to make clear that if you do get sprinkle today,
that doesn't count.
You still got to get baptized.
In this series,
going through the book of Matthew, we're in chapter five today,
and we're going to look at the first portion of that chapter
and what are called the Beatitudes.
Chapters five, six, and seven
are commonly known as the sermon on the Mount.
It's a message Jesus preached
to those who would follow him,
who were learning to follow him.
And as I've been preparing for this message,
I've really been struggling,
with the preparation of it and now the preaching of it.
And here's why.
This is a sermon Jesus preached
and for someone to
to have the audacity to try to explain
what Jesus meant.
That's a struggle for me.
I've debated just not teaching through Matthew five
six and seven and and just telling you as a church, study it on your own.
Like who am I to try to explain what Jesus's intent was in this?
You understand?
I'm saying, like the other parts of Scripture, I get
in all the epistles that that the Apostle Paul wrote
in the historical documents in the old Testament
and then all the rest of you, we can read those and glean truth
from them and and try to understand what the original author's intent was
when they penned, and, and, and interpret Scripture
through a scripture, which is appropriate.
And you're supposed to do that and, and kind of glean truths from Scripture.
And the gods are in the revelation of God's heart, and that's all fine.
But when we're looking at a sermon Jesus preached
and the
arrogance to say, let me tell you what Jesus meant.
It just feels odd to me.
You understand what I'm saying?
Like when I let these Jesus words just be Jesus
words like you knew what he was saying.
And so I've really been struggling with,
with even the work of, of, of this message.
But we're going to do it.
And by God's grace, you'll have mercy on my soul.
Not truly,
you you can
you can misrepresent and misspeak on people's behalf all you want.
But this is Jesus.
And to misrepresent
his his spoken word and his message
and to think that we
that I that you would listen to me
as far as what his intent was, is
it's a little bit scary.
And so I appreciate your prayers as we go through this and Holy Spirit,
just do the interpretation that I'm a mess up.
Matthew five,
we're going to look at the first,
probably 16
verses or so, and Matthew five one and two.
Let me just read these two verses.
Seeing the crowds, he Jesus went up on the mountain.
And when he sat down, his disciples came to him.
And he opened his mouth.
And he taught them, saying, those are the first two verses,
of Matthew five.
I want us to understand that we didn't go through the sermon on the Mount.
Matthew five six and seven,
the sermon that Jesus preacher does not necessarily do with salvation.
Okay?
He's not dealing with salvation issues.
It details how the disciples of Jesus live ethically in their daily lives.
That's what he's talking about.
In essence, he's saying, look, you want to follow me?
Let me tell you the implications of how you live now daily.
These are the ethical implications of how you live.
This is what I
expect the beatitudes that we're going to look at.
He's going to say, blessed are the blessed are the. Blessed are the.
That's commonly known as the Beatitudes.
Everybody say Beatitudes.
Beatitudes.
The Beatitudes are literally the blessings, okay?
They're the be attitudes, the attitudes
that should be in disciples lives.
They give the disciple their be attitudes.
How what are attitude as we go
daily through this life and interact with each other and with God,
they're the standard expectation for every disciple as we read through these.
Blessed are the. Blessed are the, blessed are the.
This is Jesus's expectation for every person
who would say, I'm a citizen of the kingdom.
I'm a follower of Jesus. So get ready.
Jesus knew what he wanted from his people.
He knew his expectation.
If we're going to follow him, he said, I'm going to tell you what I expect of you.
There's your attitude,
and these beatitudes will
produce the Greek word Makarios, literally translated happiness.
It's not it's not happy.
Like, oh, I got a new puppy happy.
It's a joy that is serene and untouchable.
It's a joy that is independent
of the chances and changes of life.
It's constant and consistent.
That's what these beatitudes will produce.
That's why Jesus starts them with blessed are the.
These are the attitudes that's going to produce this serene
and untouchable joy and contentment in life.
The Bible says Jesus sat down
and he taught
in that culture
when what a when a rabbi would teach, he would sit
and the hearers would stand.
When a rabbi would preach, he would stand.
And so the teaching position
in the New Testament for rabbis was to sit, and he touched.
So Jesus sits down, and they're probably standing, and he teaches them.
And he opened his mouth and he taught them.
Verse two says, he taught them that verb to teach
is in the imperfect tense in Greek,
which literally means
He used to teach them in an ongoing manner.
This wasn't a message Jesus taught on a weekend and then never came back to it.
The implication is that this message that we'll look through in chapters five,
six, and seven is the message that Jesus continually brought his disciples back to.
He continually taught them.
He continually reminded them
it was so important and so central to what it is
to be a follower of Jesus, that it's the message he started with.
And he continued for three years of his public ministry.
Continue to teach them over and over and over because they had to get it.
These are the attitudes that
would shape their life, that would shape what it meant for them to follow Jesus.
They had to get it.
And so he continually brought them back to it
over and over and over.
And he starts in verse three, blessed are the
what he's saying
is right now, this these are the things that I expect.
And right now these are the, the, the results of these things.
He's not saying, blessed will you be you.
Some blessed are you.
And so the blessings that accompany these beatitudes,
he says, are yours, right now, happy right now, content right now.
Now, as he moves through these Beatitudes,
in essence, there's nine of them.
I would encourage you to memorize them in order.
If these are the attitudes that Jesus says, this is what I want
for my people, shouldn't we know what those attitudes are?
Yeah, let me ask that again.
As if it's not rhetorical,
if these are the attitudes that you said, these have to characterize
my followers, shouldn't we know what these are?
Okay, so to repeat them to me from memory right now go.
So I thought
and so this is why we have to study this over
and remind ourselves over and over and over. Okay.
You understand in.
Yes. Yes.
Okay.
Here's something else I want to say about these
shoes.
To make these part of your attitudes right now.
Those first words of John the Baptist in preparing
the way for Jesus is public ministry was to repent
means change your attitude, change your life, change your direction.
The first words of Jesus were repent,
the first words of the disciples and their messages was repent.
The first words of the church was repent.
The first words of Paul the Apostle in his messages were repent.
So these are not
we're not capable to produce these in and of ourselves,
except for the the regeneration of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
But at the same time, we have to choose these.
They have to be our choice.
And so right from the beginning, for if any of us are going to claim
I follow Jesus, choose these attitudes right now
and stand.
Well, let's see,
blessed are the poor in spirit.
Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
To be poor in spirit
means that it's the confession
that I am sinful,
that I'm rebellious against God,
that I am without moral virtue,
that I have no spiritual assets
that would commend me to God.
I am completely devoid of any good.
The Bible says there is none that is righteous.
No not one.
There's no good that lives in any person.
And there's the knowledge
that I am completely and utterly
without virtue before God,
completely and utterly condemned
and worthy of hell in and of myself.
It's the acknowledgment that I am spiritually
bankrupt.
I'm a pauper,
and I'm a beggar before God.
This is the place that every person must start.
It's the lowest rung on the ladder because it's the easiest thing,
and it's the primary thing that every person must start with in coming to God.
The realization I have nothing to offer him.
Does this sound like any message?
If you would hear in our culture,
not in the least.
We want to believe there's something good in us.
We want to believe there's something in us
that is beautiful.
Matter of fact, as parents, we try to convince our kids,
oh, you're good, you're good kid. No, they're not.
Your children are spiritually bankrupt
because they're just like their parents.
There's no good in any of us before God.
The only thing we deserve before God
is damnation.
That's what Jesus means
when he says, blessed are the poor in spirit.
How can he say, happy?
Are those who are spiritually bankrupt?
Because this is the starting point
to being made right with God.
If any of us comes to God and say, God, I,
I want you to do what you can in my life, but I'm giving you a lot to work with,
automatically disqualified.
We have to get to the place where we acknowledge
and confess and admit and agree with.
I'm an utter wretch
before God.
Nothing of value.
Spiritual poverty
is the prerequisite for receiving the kingdom of heaven. Why?
Because only beggars are. Get in.
And if we can start in this place,
I am absolutely spiritually bankrupt.
If that's where we start,
then we can be inheritors
of the Kingdom of God.
And because that's
the acknowledgment of where I start,
then Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit.
And then blessed are those who mourn.
For they'll be comforted.
We usually use that verse
when it comes to funerals, when it comes to our loss.
And we think, we think it means that when I'm sad, Jesus comforts me.
That's not what this verse is talking about.
Jesus is saying, this
when you realize that you are completely bankrupt
before God, worthy only of hell in and of yourself,
it will cause you to mourn your own station.
And when you mourn for your spiritual poverty,
then you can be comforted because of what Jesus has done.
But we have to get to this place of mourning.
Now that this Greek word for mourn, is this the most intense word for mourning?
That the Greek language has?
It's spoken of in the same vein, when you lose a loved one,
now some of you have lost.
People in your life,
and you know what it means to mourn
in tensely right?
That's what Jesus is talking about.
But not in the sense of mourning my lost
mourning over sin and the effects of sin.
I am so overwhelmed.
With the acknowledgment of my spiritual poverty before God because of sin.
And I'm so overwhelmed at what sin is, what is done in me,
what is done in the society
that I'm experiencing this incredibly deep sense of mourning.
If you've ever had the
the dark night of the soul,
when there's complete
bankruptcy before God and a sense of of
of of of peril and darkness
over your own soul in the morning of God,
please have mercy.
That's what Jesus is saying.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, and blessed
are those who mourn.
Not just here's,
here's here's our here's our standard.
We mourn over sin because of the consequences of it.
That's not what Jesus is talking about.
Even devoid of consequences.
Simply mourning over sin because of sin.
And not just personal sin, but sin of the courts.
Sin of the society.
When when you look at the world being like God, have mercy on us.
We are oh wretched sinners.
So pervasive.
It's horrible.
Morning like that
and that type of morning is good.
Like we resist it so much.
We don't want one. We don't want to be sad.
We don't want other people to be sad.
Okay, let's just talk about the love of Jesus.
That's good.
Jesus saying that's not worth.
Like, we can talk about that, but it means nothing if you don't understand
how spiritually poverty stricken you are and mourn sin.
That morning is good.
The Bible says godly grief.
This type of mourning and grief produces
a repentance that leads to salvation without regret,
whereas worldly grief produces death.
Like, this type of mourning is good because it leads us to repentance.
That grief allows us to live.
Said in another way,
for God sometimes uses sorrow in our life to help us turn away from sin
and seek eternal life, and we should never regret his sinning. It.
But the sorrow of the man who is not a Christian
is not the star of true repentance and does not prevent
eternal death.
Like I encourage us, sit in the realization
of the depravity of your own soul and mourn
over the effects of sin.
Experienced
this type of deep and profound mourning,
because only then will lead you to repentance.
I'm not talking about
feeling bad because of the consequences.
That's simple.
You know as well as I do when we have more of the consequences
of sin in the moment, the consequences are there.
We like a dog back to its vomit,
right?
This too heavy for you this morning?
These are Jesus words said.
Look at you. Want to follow me? This is the attitude you got to have.
Blessed are the.
What was the first one who got to memorize these
poor in spirit.
Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the what?
Those who mourn.
They'll be comforted.
The next one.
Blessed are the meek.
Here's what I want to understand.
This process,
especially poor in spirit and mourning,
God allows that
in your life as a path, not a destination.
We gotta go through this process
to understand that he didn't want us to stay there,
but we gotta go through there to get to these others, okay?
It's like it's like you want to go down to Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth.
You got to go through Bakersfield.
We don't stay there,
all right?
It's a path. It's not the destination.
And so we got to go through that.
Most of us, we were like, I don't want to.
I don't want, like, poor spirit more.
That's horrible.
Yeah, it's part of the destination as part of the path.
But we're getting to a destination
and part of that destination that we're going through, like poor in spirit mourn.
And then blessed are the meek.
For they will inherit the earth.
Now, we don't have a good translation for the Greek word Prowse meek.
We don't.
We can't translate it well at all in English.
Only thing we can do is use a bunch of worst kind of explain what it looks like.
And so the best we can come up with is meek
means a powerful person, properly controlled.
It means a perfect balance
between anger and indifference.
There's a tension here
in the one who is meek.
They're not passive,
but they're not pushed either.
The best way you can see it is it's.
It's strength under control.
It's a person free from malice
and free from a vengeful spirit.
It's it's it's the ability to suffer
without malice and without seeking revenge.
To be meek
means I will willingly disregard
my own rights.
It's the power
and authority that says you will not take my rights,
but I will gladly give up my rights.
I have that much power
and it's under control.
Why would someone say
I don't have to assert my rights?
I will gladly give them up
because they know that they will inherit the earth.
And because I know I will inherit the earth,
I have nothing to prove and no one to impress.
That's meekness.
That's the tagline we use for our men's ministry.
Because men, we've got to be meek.
It's not being walked on.
It's the ability to say, look, I have complete power
to assert my authority over you, but I'm going to choose not to.
Why? Because I got nothing to prove.
I have enough power
and authority that God has given me.
I don't have to prove myself to anybody.
I'm surely not going to try to prove myself to you.
You don't deserve me to prove myself to you.
Not arrogant.
I'm just saying, like I don't.
I have no one to impress.
Why would I try to impress you?
You don't deserve me to try to impress you.
And I don't feel obligated to.
I certainly am not going to prove myself to God.
I only think I'm going to prove myself to God is that I'm.
I am poor in spirit, and I'm mourning that.
And I'm certainly not going to try to impress God.
Do you think any of us could impress God?
And so, likewise,
I'm like, blessed are the meek.
They don't have to prove anything.
They don't have to impress anybody.
They don't have to hold a grudge.
They don't have to be vengeful.
They don't have to assert their power and might over anybody. Why?
Because they're going to hurt the earth.
Does does meekness
sound like anything that our culture has ever propagated?
Not at all.
So I will be meek
before God and completely submit to him,
and I will be meek before man,
which means I will be longsuffering,
powerful, and strong,
yet humble.
And so Jesus is saying, if you're going to follow me,
you first have to admit that you were completely,
utterly, spiritually bankrupt and poor in spirit,
and that has to cause you to mourn
and out of response of your realization and who you are
and where you are before God.
You're a meek.
Blessed are those who first one is what
poor in spirit. Blessed are those who.
Blessed are the meek.
And when you're meek,
you realize who you are before God.
Then blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they'll be filled.
Our desires and our drives come into line.
And I hunger and thirst for righteousness.
They will be filled when when the Bible talks
about being filled.
It it's it's being filled.
Where you experience this profound hunger
that can never be completely satisfied.
But in its satisfaction,
it intensifies for more.
And what Jesus is saying here is, blessed are those
who have this profound hunger
that's never completely satisfied.
That always draws one to more.
Here's here's what I know.
Many of us get hungry often during the day, right?
Right.
Some of you missed breakfast this morning and you're thinking, okay, how long?
Because oh my goodness,
all of us get hungry.
None of us in this place suffer hunger.
Please understand, all of us get hungry.
None of us
suffer hunger.
And this is what Jesus is saying.
So I'm not talking about you getting spiritually hungry.
You get spiritually hungry, you come to church
and then you have your snack and you're good for the next week or so.
So that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about this profound, intense hunger
as if you are starving and dying of thirst.
And the moment you partake, it's satisfying,
and all it does is make it intensified for more.
It's that type of hunger and thirst,
and it's a hunger and thirst for what?
Righteousness.
We talked last week about righteousness,
and I challenge you to pray.
God intensified my desire to be a righteous man
before you, to be a righteous woman
before you intensify, grow my desire for righteousness.
And this is what Jesus is saying.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst.
This ongoing, intense, insatiable desire
to be a righteous man and a righteous woman.
Not I believe in Jesus.
So I got my fire insurance from hell.
But I am intensely desiring
the righteousness of God.
We hunger for a lot of things
other than righteousness.
We hunger for
for God to step in.
We hunger for
God to do something in our lives.
God to rescue God to save this. God to make us so.
We hunger for a lot of things other than righteousness.
And Jesus says.
Starve for righteousness.
Here's my concern.
Oftentimes good
religious church people are inoculated
from the hunger of righteousness.
Because we're good religious moral people.
And we're inoculated
from the starvation of righteousness.
And that's what Jesus is saying.
Do you realize that Jesus didn't come to make any of us moral?
He can't make us holy.
To be people.
When men and women of righteousness.
And so this feeling,
it satisfies us at it intensifies the desire for more.
Blessed are the
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek that will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they'll be filled
and then blessed are the merciful,
for they'll what
receive mercy.
Listen, the merciful,
get the mercy they give.
Please, my dear friends, let that sink in.
The merciful get the mercy they give.
Once you receive it,
you have to give it.
When I realize
that I'm completely bankrupt and utterly,
devoid of spiritual value,
that would commend me to God.
When I experience that incredible evil
morning for my sinfulness and the sinfulness of humanity.
And it puts me in a position to be meek before God and before people
now hunger and thirst for righteousness.
The one thing I know is that what I need from
God is mercy.
I need his mercy.
And what Jesus is saying is,
you will get the mercy you give
something about King David,
Old Testament King David, he God
was so gracious towards King David, his little shepherd boy,
completely forgotten about by his family
and God chose him to be
the King of, of of Israel.
And God put his hands on King David and blessed him.
Oh, I was ridiculous.
The favor that David had on his life, and in the midst of experience
all this favor from God, he sees this married
a woman named Bathsheba, commits adultery with her, gets her pregnant,
and then contracts to have her husband killed.
And God still
is so gracious and merciful to him.
He was horrible.
Why was God so merciful to him after all of that?
I'll tell you why.
Because before all of that,
when King Saul was the king
and God removed his hand from King Saul
and said, David, I put my hand on you, you will be the king.
David had opportunity after opportunity after opportunity
to dishonor Saul and to remove Saul from power.
And David said, I will be merciful to Saul
until God does what God wants to do.
And because David was so incredibly merciful to Saul,
David experienced the mercy of God.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will. What
receive mercy.
And what Jesus is saying is
that our be attitudes
are those who, for that person who did that to you,
for those who
for that one you will never.
Jesus followers will be merciful.
And as a result,
they'll receive the mercy of God.
To understand. The.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
But for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
blessed are the merciful.
What's the next one?
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
When this word is just pure,
it means a straightness.
It means in and in honesty and a clarity.
It means an undivided heart.
The Bible says that
a double minded man is unstable, and all he does that's not this.
This is a straightness.
There's no division in the heart.
It it literally it's sincere.
Sincere comes from, two words sincerely.
And it literally means without wax.
That's what sincere means. Did you know that?
Let me tell you the context of that, because that's what pure.
And this is what pure in heart means.
Back in ancient times
when Romans and whatnot would,
would, would carve statues out of marble,
they would be commissioned, the artists would be commissioned
by a wealthy person to fashion a statue for the gardens,
and during the crafting
of the statue, oftentimes it happened quite, quite a bit,
right at the end of the statue's completion, right before it's completed.
As the sculptor was sculpting, they would hit some type of fracture
or fissure in the marble and part of the statue would fall off,
rather than starting all over again and losing all the work and time and money,
the sculptor would take the dust,
from the chiseling the marble dust and mix it with wax,
and it would look exactly like the original marble,
and they would fashion that part which fell off
from this substances, this marble dust, wax material.
And it would look exactly like the marble no one would ever know
until
the person brought it home and put it in their garden.
And a hot summer day came
and the the wax would melt
and it would fall off.
And so they made a law
that in every sculpture had to be certified, that it was sensory
without wax.
It was pure, undivided, unbroken.
And what Jesus is saying here is, blessed
are the sincerity of heart.
It doesn't say, blessed are the poor in behavior that will come.
It doesn't say, blessed are the poor and rich or the pure in ritual
says, blessed are the pure in heart and undivided, sincere
heart of clarity, of straightness.
And they will.
What?
Blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God.
They'll see God.
They'll have a greater intimacy with God.
When I was in high school, I vividly remember this.
I was listening to someone teach and they said,
dust in the heart throws dirt in the eyes.
I wrote it down.
I still have it in my Bible in my office.
Dust in the heart throws dirt in the eyes.
When we don't have a pure heart, it gets dusty
and a dusty heart creates blinded eyes.
And what Jesus is saying here, that those who are pure in heart
have unblinded eyes, free
from the blinding pollutants of sin.
So you see God more clearly.
Imagine God is the one who said, nobody can see me and live.
And yet the blessings of the pure heart is to see him,
so that when we open Scripture,
we see God clearly,
not because of knowledge, but because of
sincerity of heart.
That when circumstances happen in life, we don't freak out.
Like, what's going on, God? Why?
Because we see him clearly.
That's not pure in heart.
But there will see God.
So. So let's start at the bottom rung of the ladder.
The easiest step to take.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
That's where everybody has to start.
We don't start with blessed are the pure in heart.
We don't start with blessed are the meek.
Everybody starts on the same rung.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
And the next rung is blessed
are those who mourn.
And the next is blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who hunger, thirst for righteousness.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the pure in heart.
And then he says, and blessed are the peacemakers.
They will be called sons of God.
You know the greatest way and the greatest peace making is evangelism,
bringing peace between a lost person and the God who loves them.
That's what peace. Peace.
When Jesus is talking about peacemaking
here, he's not talking about, hey, let's just all get along and not argue.
He's not talking about
let's just let's not causeless don't talk like, let's just be nice.
And that's what he's talking about.
The greatest act of peacemaking
is, is, is making helping someone make peace with God.
It's evangelism.
It's that ministry of reconciliation.
We're reconciling humans to God.
The Bible says all this is from God, who through Christ reconciled himself to us.
It's evangelism.
And now he's given us that ministry of reconciliation.
And those people who,
who for whom this is their attitude and this is their practice.
These are recognized as children of God.
These are.
And Jesus saying, these are the attitudes of my people.
This is my expectation for everybody who says they follow me.
And then he says.
Blessed are those
who are persecuted for righteousness.
Blessed are you when you're reviled and people
say all kinds of evil against you falsely,
for theirs is the kingdom.
And he says, rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.
For so they pursue the prophets, who before you says, listen,
the results of all this stuff, if you live
this way.
Be joyful
when you're persecuted because of it.
And Jesus puts persecution
not just in physical terms, but in terms of slander as well.
It's going to happen
if you're doing it right.
And, and and he says when this happens,
rejoice literally.
He says, jump for joy.
Like when you're persecuted, jump for joy. Why?
Because you're in good company.
This is what happened to all the prophets.
It's what happened throughout church history, the shoulders
on which we stand as Christ followers all experienced persecution, he said.
So count it all joy, my brothers and sisters.
When you suffer for the sake of the kingdom, you're in good company
and great is your reward.
It's the kingdom of heaven.
And when we live according to these attitudes,
we become something we're not.
You are the salt of the earth,
and you are the light of the world.
Most Christians
know those phrases far more than they know.
The Beatitudes.
And they kind of
say, hey, we are the salt of the earth and we are the light of the world.
No you're not.
If you haven't lived according to the attitudes of the Beatitudes,
that's the result of living according to the Beatitudes.
Do you understand that?
Says when these.
Then.
When these are your attitudes. Now
you're the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
Salt has a preserving influence and it slows decay.
That's what it did in the ancient world.
They'd put it on meat to preserve it and slow decay.
You said this is who you are when you live.
According to these archers. This is who you become.
You become the salt of the earth
and the light of the world.
You have a preserving influence.
Christians ought to have a preserving influence
and so of the key of culture, but not by posting on social media,
not by boycotting stuff, not by marching, not by chanting,
not by berating, but by the Beatitudes.
We naturally become the salt of the earth, the slow decay
and the preserving influence in this world.
And it's.
And the salt in the end times was incredibly valuable.
Some at some points in history, it was more valuable than gold.
Matter of fact, soldiers in the Roman army would oftentimes be paid with salt.
That's where the saint comes from.
He is worth his salt.
It's valuable.
And when Jesus says you're the light of the world, think about what he's saying.
That title Jesus claimed of himself.
And now he it to the disciples who have who, who live by these beatitudes.
Can you imagine?
He gives that title
to us because we live according to these.
Be out. These are our attitudes. Now.
It's amazing to me.
So here's what I know.
To be effective, we must be distinctive.
And these beatitudes
are very distinctive from this culture in this world we live in, right?
Right.
And so we just have to ask ourselves,
how much do church folks look like?
The culture we live in,
the same goals, the same debts, the same media,
the same schedules, the same stress, the same worries, the same habits,
the same addictions, the same marriages, the same priorities.
If we're going to be effective, we got to be distinctive.
And these beatitudes have to be our attitudes.
And when these are our attitudes,
all of that stuff changes.
I love verse 15.
No people light a lamp and put it under a basket,
but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.
The question we have to ask is if this is what produces
the light of the world in us, and it gives light to all in the house.
How is our light giving light to our house,
to our spouse, to our children?
There's a lot of church folk
who want to be a light at work who aren't first,
a light at home.
Who want to be a light to their coworkers and friends,
and whose kids are still living in darkness.
Who want to be good to people but are bad for their spouse.
And Jesus says, when
these beatitudes are your attitudes, you are a light to the world,
and you will give light to your home.
And he says, in the same way.
Let your light shine before others, so that they will see your good works
and give glory to your father who is in heaven.
Jesus wants people of his kingdom to live visible lives
that attract attention to the beauty of God's work in their life.
They will see your good works because of these beatitudes
and give glory to your father in heaven.
When Jesus uses
this, this phrase here, give glory to your father in heaven.
This is the first time in the New Testament God is called father,
and it's in reference to people seeing the good works of his children.
Did you realize that the way
God gets glory for being the father
is by his kids, having these attitudes?
Do you see how important these are?
You see how important these are?
Oh dear friends,
know these
because these are Christ's expectation of us.
And if we don't know these, how do we ever hope
to fulfill his expectations?
The shot in the dark.
And by our nature, we will miss white.
Because we are poor in spirit.
So high calling in it,
isn't it?
You and I will never get there on our own for doomed.
But by the grace of God
and the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit,
he calls us to a high calling, and he fulfills it
in us.
You ready?
Okay.
These are the attitudes you choose. Now.
When you go home tomorrow, this week.
These are the attitudes.
That will be your attitudes.
Won't you pray with me?
Father, these things.
Sometimes I look at Scripture and I think there's.
There's no way
they're so contrary to who I am.
And I realize that that is the reality
because I am poor in spirit.
And I can't manufacture these on my own.
And I thank you that you don't expect me to.
By your mercy and by your grace, father, I pray that you would
create these attitudes in me, that I would choose these.
And father, right now,
I pray you hear the hearts of your people, your kids
that are choosing these attitudes
to be their attitudes.
Friends, would you just
agree with Scripture and walk through these
in your heart right now?
Father, I admit I am poor and spirit.
There's nothing in me that would commend me to you.
I'm spiritually bankrupt.
God, I mourn the fact
that sin has ruled in my life
and that sin rules in this world.
Father,
I choose the attitude of meekness that I thank you that you've approved of me.
So I have nothing to prove and no one to impress you.
Help me hunger and thirst for righteousness.
God, thank you for the mercy you've given me.
Help me be merciful to others.
Create in me a purity of heart, of sincerity,
an unmixed heart.
God, I want to be a peacemaker
and help other people know you.
And when I suffer, father, I will leap for joy.
I want to be the light of the world.
I want to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world.
And God, I want that light to shine
on my family.
Father, you've called me to a high calling.
Accomplish it in me,
for me and through me.
I choose you today,
that these be my attitudes.
In your name I pray.
Amen.
You all right?
I want you to read this week, chapter five.
Go back to the Beatitudes.
Remind yourselves what they are,
and read the rest of chapter five.
We're going to Jesus, going to start putting the start,
putting the throttle down.
So get ready for it's going to be good.
It can be tough. It's going to be good.
Got it
I love you.
Stand up and let's sing.