Lets Pray…
So we just finished going through the Beatitudes.
Where Jesus told us what a Christ follower looks like.
Here’s a quick review.
Once we have truly come to recognize our sin, our need for a Savior — and as we turn away from that sin and toward God — we will begin to take on the attributes or characteristics that we saw in Jesus while He was here on Earth and the attributes of God the Father as He has revealed Himself in Scriptures.
— We will be gentle and humble toward others, even those who come against us.
— The more we discover about God, the hungrier we will get for more of Him (Think of the old Pringles Advertisements).
This hunger will be filled as
We seek to know more about Him in the Scriptures, As we pray and meditate on the word,
And this hunger will be filled as we find and foster relationships where we can serve.
— We will show mercy to others because we will have a glimmer of understanding about what God has done for us.
— We will become purer by God’s grace — first through the work of Christ on the Cross — and then by the continuing work of the Holy Spirit who is sanctifying us and progressing us toward perfection (Sanctification is a lifelong process).
— If we are His, we will seek to bring an end to confusion and disorder (be peacemakers) in our spheres of influence, and by doing so, we will be recognized as God’s children.
And Jesus closes out the Beatitudes by teaching that once people see a resemblance to Jesus (even a very slight one) in our transforming lives, the world will treat you and me the way they treated Jesus (at least to a degree).
So the question comes up, at least it does for me.
Why? What for?
Why are we going to take on these characteristics of God? What are we going to do with these characteristics of God?
“Why?” is a question I asked all the time when I was a kid
It’s a question that still rises up in me at least once a day.
“Why do I have to do this?” “Why are they doing that?” “Why do we need to go here?” Why? Why? Why?
My parents used to answer the question as well as they could up to a point before the answer became, “Because I said so!”
God knows that I am built that way, with that curiosity, and since our next passage is in the Bible, I’m guessing that He knows I’m not the only one who wants to know why.
Here’s the questions I hear and they’re the same questions I have asked more than once, “Why doesn’t God just take us up to Heaven as soon as we come to faith?
Why do I have to deal with this broken world? Why do I have to wait on Heaven?”
Jesus’ answer is, I’m going to let you stick around to show others the true answer to all their questions.
He’s going to keep us in to the world to bring others to the Kingdom.
Please read with me:
Matthew 5:13-16
Why are we still here?
I. We are here to be the salt of the earth. V. 13
a. Salt was used for flavor food.
i. We all get that. If you add salt to your food, it brings out the best flavors of the food (that is, as long as you don’t over do it)
b. Salt was used to dress wounds.
i. When men would come in from the battle, they would rub salt into the cuts and scraps as a way to fight infection and speed up the healing process.
c. And salt was used as a preservative.
i. There were no refrigerators back in the day, so if they wanted their meat or fish to keep, they salted it.
d. So if we are to be the salt of the Earth. If that is why He’s keeping us around, then when we go out into the world tonight and tomorrow morning, as we go back into the “real world” this week remember we are to season the situations and people we encounter with God flavor
i. This will bring out the best in the situation and person just like a sprinkle of salt will make a fresh tomato taste its best.
ii. But remember to salt to taste.
iii. Some people will not be ready for the “on fire for the Lord” experience that we sometimes feel like putting out there.
iv. Some people need a few shakes of salt at a time, before they’re ready to take the cap off the shaker.
But, if you feel the Spirit telling you to go nuts, I’m not going to tell you not to. Just make sure it’s the Spirit.
(Moving on)
e. We should also be like the salt that they used back in the day to rub into the wounds.
i. God will put us into situations to be that shoulder to cry on for a hurting friend, to be that comforter when someone has been wounded.
f. Finally on this point, we are to be like the salt that preserves
i. We are to help one another as we work to preserve one another. In this we aid the Holy Spirit, we keep one another on track — that is, focused on Christ — lovingly correcting one another in humility and kindness so that we might all be in a closer walk with Him.
g. If we do not do these things as the opportunities arise, if we are not being the salt of the earth we risk becoming good for nothing.
i. The salt from the Dead Sea was good for a time, but if it sat too long without being used it began to degrade because of the other minerals that were found in it.
ii. So what was gathered, had to be used. It couldn’t just sit around for years and years.
iii. In the same way, we are to distribute what God has given us, out to others.
iv. We don’t get saved and then lock ourselves in a church waiting for Jesus to come back.
v. We go out and pour out as much salt as we can.
h. But don’t worry, He will keep refilling us. We won’t run out of what we’re are giving away.
i. One other risk we have to look at — the risk to the usefulness of salt — is dilution.
i. We need to make sure that, in trying to be the salt of the earth, we don’t become diluted with the world.
— That means going back to the purity of heart piece in the Beatitudes. For example:
— It’s hard to be the salt of love, or compassion when we’ve got hatred or malice, or unforgiveness in our hearts.
— It’s hard to be the salt of self-control when we dive into that same old sin at the drop of a hat.
— If there is sin in us that is diluting our saltiness, we need to purge it by giving it up to God, by pleading with the Holy Spirit, by working with a brother or sister in Christ to heal that brokenness so we represent Him better.
Lets move on and ask the same question again because Jesus answers it in two ways. Why are we still here?
II. We are here to be the light of the world. Matt. 5:14-16a
a. This is something we talk about all the time here at the Church in the Grass. We believe that we are to reflect the light of God into the world.
b. This was God’s original reason for choosing a people, Israel, to be His chosen ones.
Look with me at: Genesis 12:1-3 and turn to Isaiah 60:1-3
c. The nation of Israel was chosen to lead others toward God, but they didn’t do to well at this, by the time Jesus came around, most of the Israelites were practicing a strict exclusiveness that shut them off from the rest of the world.
d. Now, those who trust in Jesus as their Savior and Lord, are to walk out that faith so that the world can see His light, be drawn to it and come into a saving relationship with Him.
e. A pastor from Georgia named Andy Stanley points out that people who are in the darkness will respond in one of two ways to a bright light after life in the dark.
i. They will squint and eventually adjust to the light.
ii. Or they will be shocked by the brightness and turn back to the darkness.
iii. The outcome is not up to us. We have no control over someone’s reaction. We are called to simply be the light and it will draw in those who are His.
iv. So we are to go shine the light in the dark places.
f. So many people say they will shine when they figure out where God wants them to go, what their mission field will be.
i. Maybe it’s Kenya, or maybe Haiti — if God would just show them where to shine then they’d shine for sure.
ii. But, I’m here to tell you — We are in our Mission Fields right now.
iii. Whether that be at home, at work, in the coffee shop, around our friends, wherever God has placed us in each moment is where He wants us to shine.
So Shine!
Finally, remember that we are God’s salt and God’s light in our mission fields.
We are not salt or a light unto ourselves.
So, once and for all, why are we still here? Why doesn’t He just take us up to Heaven right away after we are saved?
We are here to do everything for the glory of God. Matt. 5:16b
— The problem I face is I like to be praised. It is a constant sin in my life. So even when I begin with pure motives I tend to drift back into my pride — I say, look what I’ve done, look how well I’m doing this or that.
— This verse doesn’t say, do these things, be a positive influence so that people will give Ken the glory or Andy the glory.
— All of the Glory is to go to God!
— It seems to always go back to the idea of making Him ultimate. God is to be ultimate in every aspect of our lives even in who gets the credit for the work of our hands.
There’s an old story that a man moved into England in the 1800’s and he visited a church where the pastor brought it. He was up there at the pulpit, in front of thousands of people and He had the visitor and all of the congregants on the edge of their seats.
When the man left the church he said, “What a great preacher!”
The next week, he had gotten settled in and had his apartment situated and a man at work invited him to another well know church where a guy named Charles Spurgeon was preaching.
In a similar fashion, Spurgeon held the attention of the crowd with his proclamation of the Word of God.
But when the man finished listening and made his way outside, he didn’t say, “What a great preacher!”
Instead he said, “What an GREAT GOD!”
That should be our goal. Not to puff ourselves up, but to put the attention, hope and expectation on God.
Whether you are singing and playing guitar, or caring for a struggling family member, or loving the unlovable co-worker, or leading a business, or serving up french fries, or working on the assembly line, or teaching a class, or whatever God has given you another breath and a continued heartbeat to do today, do it for His Glory.
Let’s pray…
Apr 30, 2009
Apr 23, 2009
Matthew 5:10-12 — Series on the Mount #9
Lets Pray…
I had a friend who told me, last Wednesday that they didn’t like church because all they ever heard from preachers when they were growing up was what horrible little people they were,
that God was mad at them
and that Hell was real and that Hell was in their future.
The problem wasn’t that the preachers were saying the wrong thing. The problem was that they seemed to have forgotten the other half of the message. They forgot to give the good news, the Gospel.
If you believe Scriptures to be true, The Bible does tell us that we are sinners, that we deserve death and Hell for that sin.
But the reason we gather is because we have a shared hope, a shared promise a shared expectation.
It is because of our brokenness that Jesus came to live a perfect life and die on the cross. He knew we were unable to make up for our sins against God, so while we were still dead in our sin, while we were hopeless and helpless and slaves to our sins — He rescued us.
God gave us the gifts of mercy and grace. If we trust in the work of Christ on the cross to take away our punishment, to cleanse us of our sins, to adopt us into God’s family
— If we trust in the Lord, He casts our sins away, there as far from us as the east is from the west.
I have to admit, I can’t really relate to my friend’s experience.
I’ve heard that story a lot from many different people, but I grew up outside of the church. The only glimpses of preachers that I usually got, when I was a kid, were the ones coming across the television on Sunday mornings.
I’d be flipping through the channels looking for cartoons, and once in a while I’d stop on some preacher man, smiling a slick smile on the screen.
I never saw any of them preach fire and brimstone, what I saw were the fellas with tacky clothes, with wives with too much make-up and the personalities and methods that you might associate with the cliché of a used car salesman. I didn’t know anything about God, but I did feel like these guys were not telling me the whole truth. No, they were just trying to close the sale.
Today, many — not all — but many of the Christian T.V. personalities dress in a more normal attire, but there is still a bit of uneasiness that rises up in me when I hear them preach.
Concepts from many — not all — but many of those televangelists include the ideas that:
— God just wants you to be happy, (as the world defines happy)
— That if you are sick, or struggling in any way, it’s because you don’t have enough faith,
— That the mark of a Christian is a nice car, or house, or more stuff.
— And, that if you are having troubles in your life, they can solve all of your problems with their new book, or a prayer cloth, or some holy anointing oil — if you’ll just send them a love offering.
They may not be shady. They may have a sincere heart to do God’s work — I’m just saying I get a slimy feeling from the whole thing. It may be my sin there, let’s move on and get to the point of today’s message.
You see, Jesus was not a used car salesman.
And as much as we as preachers, both in the community and on television, want to bring people into the fold, into the church, into a saving relationship with Jesus, we must follow His lead
We must let non-believers know what they are in for if they surrender their will and their lives to God.
Jesus NEVER preached that you should expect your best life now, He said this life. Your life and my life on this side of eternity, is going to be tough.
He said, in this tough life, persevere,
in this tough life trust in Him,
in this tough life Love one another through the trials and in Heaven — in Heaven — in the future we will find our best lives. Not now.
We have been going through the Sermon on the Mount for several weeks.
The Sermon on the Mount is one of the top ten, one of the greatest hits of the Bible.
So far we have gone over the First several Beatitudes, Where Jesus tells us what we will be like if we are truly following His lead.
He says we will find real happiness, the happiness of those who are secure in our faith with God,
secure in our faith that Jesus is our Savior —
We will have that happiness if we are:
— Poor in spirit — that is, if we understand our sinfulness and the fact that our sin separates us from relationship with God before we are born again, and separates us from fellowship with God after our salvation. That is going to bring us happiness, or blessings, because that will bring us to God.
— We find happiness when we mourn those sins — when we are repentant, ready to turn our backs on sin and pursue God,
o To act out our faith in gratitude for His glory and to honor Him.
— He said we will be humble if we are His and find happiness in that humility or meekness.
— Jesus said if we are His we will hunger and thirst for righteousness — that is we will desire a closer and fuller knowledge in our head and in our hearts for the things of God. He said if we are His and we have that hunger and thirst for Him we will be blessed or happy because we will be filled,
o that hunger and thirst will be satisfied.
— If we are His it is because we have been shown mercy.
o And that mercy is not only a blessing, it doesn’t just make us happy, it fills us to overflowing so that we then pour mercy out to those around us — Out of our blessing we bless others. Mercy can be seen when we forgive people who have hurt us, when we provide for neighbors without food, or shelter or clothing, and most of all we show mercy by sharing the Gospel with those who have yet to be saved and with those who have been saved and need to be reminded where they are to find their joy and encouragement.
— He reminds us specifically that we find our happiness in the relationship with God by being pure of heart. And that purity cannot be something we get on our own.
o It comes through the work first of Christ on the cross, washing us clean of our sin
o And secondly, we find purity through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, who is moment by moment, glory by glory helping us to conquer the habits and behaviors that turn us away from God. The sanctification process will not be complete until we are done with this life in this world.
— And as we talked about last week, we will find happiness, we will be blessed when we are called sons (and daughters) of God.
o And we’ll be called sons and daughters of God when we strive to make peace in our world.
o That is, when we work to get rid of confusion and disorder.
o And, we don’t only find happiness or blessedness because God adopted us into His family as His children,
o We will also find joy in those moments (however rare they might be) when the people around us see the family resemblance.
And that leads us into tonight’s passage, it is the last beatitude and it is the longest of them all, the other 7 were all one verse each. The last beatitude is stated in one verse (Matthew 5:10) and then Jesus restates and fleshes that verse out in the next two verses (Matthew 5: 11-12).
Lets read:
Matthew 5:10 (New International Version)
In other words, Jesus is building on the statement he made about being a son (or daughter) of God.
And He’s telling the crowd that if people in the world see the family resemblance,
If they see His, love, compassion, righteousness, meekness, humility, forgiveness — if the see Jesus, in us; and iff they hear the fact that Jesus is their only hope for salvation, then persecution is the next logical step. Persecution will be the world’s reaction.
In other words, faith in Christ, produces joy because we know our eternity is one where we will be walking with God, free of sin, pain and sickness —
But, that same faith is going to produce something much different here.
He makes no guarantees of a nicer house,
He makes no guarantees of perfect health,
He makes no guarantees of a life of wonderful relationships where no one betrays you, where no one lets you down.
What Jesus guarantees His followers, what he guarantees you and guarantees me, is persecution.
Then He unpacks it a little bit more:
Matthew 5:11-12 (New International Version)
A wonderful preacher from the late 1600’s and early 1700’s by the name of Matthew Henry, points out the distinctions that Jesus makes here when He restates the Beatitude.
Throughout the Beatitudes, Jesus is saying, “Blessed are those.” But here, in verse 11 he transitions to, “Blessed are you.”
And in verse 10 He says, “blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.” While in 11. He says, “blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”
The distinction is this. He is not talking to everyone, it is not a generic crowd of faceless somebody’s.
No, He is talking to His disciples, to those who trust in him to the point that they resemble the family of God, those who produce the fruit that connects them with the Father and distinguishes them as different in the world’s eyes.
If you have been saved, if you have put your faith in Jesus as your Savior and Lord, And if you are living out that Faith. He is saying this message to you and to me today.
And what’s more, in case any of the people then or if any of us now haven’t caught on. We will suffer persecution for righteousness. That’s where we find the blessing.
And in verse 11 He clarifies that when He speaks of righteousness, He is talking about Himself.
This is important. Because you suffer in this world even if you are not a believer.
Even if you are an antagonistic atheist like I was before my salvation, you can testify that you already deal with persecution.
He’s not saying that we will be blessed because of those struggles or that persecution.
We are only promised blessings in this passage from the persecutions that are born out of our faith in Jesus.
To quote Matthew Henry, “It is not the suffering, but the cause, that makes the martyr.”
We are going to suffer for all kinds of things, but it is only suffering for Christ that brings blessings.
Jesus then goes on to explain what that persecution will look like.
People insult you — We will be called things like bible thumper, self-righteous, holier-than-thou, close-minded, naive, hypocritical, and the list goes on. Some insults will be to our face, and others behind our back.
People Persecute you — they rise up against you. It was common in the days of the early church to be killed for your beliefs, because if you were under the control of Roman rule, being Christian meant denying the total sovereignty of anyone but God, and that made you an enemy of Caesar.
Today you don’t hear about Christians being crucified, but there are pastors who are physically attacked in the states, men and women are fired from their jobs because of their beliefs, families turn away from their brothers, sisters, children and parents because of their faith. And that’s here, in the U.S.
In India, churches are being burned and Christians are being killed. In China, there is an explosion of new believers, but they have to meet in secret or else they can be put into prison. Persecution is still a reality.
Then Jesus says People will falsely say all kinds of evil against you —
The truth is most of us give people plenty of ways to discredit us and rise up against us without ever going directly after our faith or without having to make up false accusations.
If they can’t find a way to tear you down, don’t be surprised if they do make stuff up. Don’t be surprised if they lie about you to discredit you.
So all of that is a huge downer right? You can’t build a church with that kind of message. But, here’s the thing. This is the kind of stuff Jesus was always putting out there.
Matthew 10:34-35 (New International Version)
34 "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn
" 'a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law –
In other words, Jesus wants our total allegiance and while that will draw some into the same kind of relationship, it will cut other relationships apart.
He tells them, if you want to follow me, this is what could be in your future.
He wants us to know that if we make Him ultimate in our lives, we may deal with persecution — even from those people we are closest to.
And then comes the blessing.
Matthew 5: 12
If persecution is born from the world’s reaction to our faith — We are blessed in our persecution.
We are blessed in the knowledge, that we are not the first to be persecuted, the prophets of the Old Testament suffered too. They were the mouth pieces for God and they suffered terribly.
But, like the prophets, we can lift our eyes up! We can focus on the prize. The prize is God and Heaven!
And one day, we will all be up there and sharing stories, about how hard it was, but we will share that in light of the reality of Heaven
In the reality of Heaven we will grasp how worth it, it all was.
We’re almost done but I can’t let you go without re-emphasizing that the blessing is for those who are persecuted for Christ.
We are not blessed when we are persecuted for being jerks who preach God’s wrath and forget to follow up with God’s mercy and grace.
We are not blessed when we are persecuted for casting judgment and condemnation on our neighbors for their sins.
It is our job to proclaim God and rely on the Holy Spirit to convict people of the sin in their lives.
We are blessed when we are persecuted for our resemblance to Jesus.
We are blessed when we are persecuted because we display love, when others hate.
We are blessed when we are persecuted because we display forgiveness, when others seek revenge.
We are blessed when we are persecuted because we pledge our ultimate allegiance to God before ANYTHING else, when others bow first to a nation, or a political party, or even to a family over God.
We are blessed when we are persecuted because we reach outside of our churches to draw others in, while other church members would want to make church more exclusive.
We are blessed when we are persecuted because we love sinners and tell them about Christ while they are still in bondage to sin, while others dictate that the sinner must clean up his act first.
We are blessed when we are persecuted because we reach out to solve problems while others do their best to ignore problems.
Do you get it? We are blessed when we are persecuted for our faithfulness —
Not for our worldliness,
Not for our churchliness,
Not for our sins —
For Christ and His righteousness.
This week, when you feel persecution coming up against you, figure out if it is because of your faith, or because of consequences of a broken world or your own sin.
Let’s pray…
I had a friend who told me, last Wednesday that they didn’t like church because all they ever heard from preachers when they were growing up was what horrible little people they were,
that God was mad at them
and that Hell was real and that Hell was in their future.
The problem wasn’t that the preachers were saying the wrong thing. The problem was that they seemed to have forgotten the other half of the message. They forgot to give the good news, the Gospel.
If you believe Scriptures to be true, The Bible does tell us that we are sinners, that we deserve death and Hell for that sin.
But the reason we gather is because we have a shared hope, a shared promise a shared expectation.
It is because of our brokenness that Jesus came to live a perfect life and die on the cross. He knew we were unable to make up for our sins against God, so while we were still dead in our sin, while we were hopeless and helpless and slaves to our sins — He rescued us.
God gave us the gifts of mercy and grace. If we trust in the work of Christ on the cross to take away our punishment, to cleanse us of our sins, to adopt us into God’s family
— If we trust in the Lord, He casts our sins away, there as far from us as the east is from the west.
I have to admit, I can’t really relate to my friend’s experience.
I’ve heard that story a lot from many different people, but I grew up outside of the church. The only glimpses of preachers that I usually got, when I was a kid, were the ones coming across the television on Sunday mornings.
I’d be flipping through the channels looking for cartoons, and once in a while I’d stop on some preacher man, smiling a slick smile on the screen.
I never saw any of them preach fire and brimstone, what I saw were the fellas with tacky clothes, with wives with too much make-up and the personalities and methods that you might associate with the cliché of a used car salesman. I didn’t know anything about God, but I did feel like these guys were not telling me the whole truth. No, they were just trying to close the sale.
Today, many — not all — but many of the Christian T.V. personalities dress in a more normal attire, but there is still a bit of uneasiness that rises up in me when I hear them preach.
Concepts from many — not all — but many of those televangelists include the ideas that:
— God just wants you to be happy, (as the world defines happy)
— That if you are sick, or struggling in any way, it’s because you don’t have enough faith,
— That the mark of a Christian is a nice car, or house, or more stuff.
— And, that if you are having troubles in your life, they can solve all of your problems with their new book, or a prayer cloth, or some holy anointing oil — if you’ll just send them a love offering.
They may not be shady. They may have a sincere heart to do God’s work — I’m just saying I get a slimy feeling from the whole thing. It may be my sin there, let’s move on and get to the point of today’s message.
You see, Jesus was not a used car salesman.
And as much as we as preachers, both in the community and on television, want to bring people into the fold, into the church, into a saving relationship with Jesus, we must follow His lead
We must let non-believers know what they are in for if they surrender their will and their lives to God.
Jesus NEVER preached that you should expect your best life now, He said this life. Your life and my life on this side of eternity, is going to be tough.
He said, in this tough life, persevere,
in this tough life trust in Him,
in this tough life Love one another through the trials and in Heaven — in Heaven — in the future we will find our best lives. Not now.
We have been going through the Sermon on the Mount for several weeks.
The Sermon on the Mount is one of the top ten, one of the greatest hits of the Bible.
So far we have gone over the First several Beatitudes, Where Jesus tells us what we will be like if we are truly following His lead.
He says we will find real happiness, the happiness of those who are secure in our faith with God,
secure in our faith that Jesus is our Savior —
We will have that happiness if we are:
— Poor in spirit — that is, if we understand our sinfulness and the fact that our sin separates us from relationship with God before we are born again, and separates us from fellowship with God after our salvation. That is going to bring us happiness, or blessings, because that will bring us to God.
— We find happiness when we mourn those sins — when we are repentant, ready to turn our backs on sin and pursue God,
o To act out our faith in gratitude for His glory and to honor Him.
— He said we will be humble if we are His and find happiness in that humility or meekness.
— Jesus said if we are His we will hunger and thirst for righteousness — that is we will desire a closer and fuller knowledge in our head and in our hearts for the things of God. He said if we are His and we have that hunger and thirst for Him we will be blessed or happy because we will be filled,
o that hunger and thirst will be satisfied.
— If we are His it is because we have been shown mercy.
o And that mercy is not only a blessing, it doesn’t just make us happy, it fills us to overflowing so that we then pour mercy out to those around us — Out of our blessing we bless others. Mercy can be seen when we forgive people who have hurt us, when we provide for neighbors without food, or shelter or clothing, and most of all we show mercy by sharing the Gospel with those who have yet to be saved and with those who have been saved and need to be reminded where they are to find their joy and encouragement.
— He reminds us specifically that we find our happiness in the relationship with God by being pure of heart. And that purity cannot be something we get on our own.
o It comes through the work first of Christ on the cross, washing us clean of our sin
o And secondly, we find purity through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, who is moment by moment, glory by glory helping us to conquer the habits and behaviors that turn us away from God. The sanctification process will not be complete until we are done with this life in this world.
— And as we talked about last week, we will find happiness, we will be blessed when we are called sons (and daughters) of God.
o And we’ll be called sons and daughters of God when we strive to make peace in our world.
o That is, when we work to get rid of confusion and disorder.
o And, we don’t only find happiness or blessedness because God adopted us into His family as His children,
o We will also find joy in those moments (however rare they might be) when the people around us see the family resemblance.
And that leads us into tonight’s passage, it is the last beatitude and it is the longest of them all, the other 7 were all one verse each. The last beatitude is stated in one verse (Matthew 5:10) and then Jesus restates and fleshes that verse out in the next two verses (Matthew 5: 11-12).
Lets read:
Matthew 5:10 (New International Version)
In other words, Jesus is building on the statement he made about being a son (or daughter) of God.
And He’s telling the crowd that if people in the world see the family resemblance,
If they see His, love, compassion, righteousness, meekness, humility, forgiveness — if the see Jesus, in us; and iff they hear the fact that Jesus is their only hope for salvation, then persecution is the next logical step. Persecution will be the world’s reaction.
In other words, faith in Christ, produces joy because we know our eternity is one where we will be walking with God, free of sin, pain and sickness —
But, that same faith is going to produce something much different here.
He makes no guarantees of a nicer house,
He makes no guarantees of perfect health,
He makes no guarantees of a life of wonderful relationships where no one betrays you, where no one lets you down.
What Jesus guarantees His followers, what he guarantees you and guarantees me, is persecution.
Then He unpacks it a little bit more:
Matthew 5:11-12 (New International Version)
A wonderful preacher from the late 1600’s and early 1700’s by the name of Matthew Henry, points out the distinctions that Jesus makes here when He restates the Beatitude.
Throughout the Beatitudes, Jesus is saying, “Blessed are those.” But here, in verse 11 he transitions to, “Blessed are you.”
And in verse 10 He says, “blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.” While in 11. He says, “blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”
The distinction is this. He is not talking to everyone, it is not a generic crowd of faceless somebody’s.
No, He is talking to His disciples, to those who trust in him to the point that they resemble the family of God, those who produce the fruit that connects them with the Father and distinguishes them as different in the world’s eyes.
If you have been saved, if you have put your faith in Jesus as your Savior and Lord, And if you are living out that Faith. He is saying this message to you and to me today.
And what’s more, in case any of the people then or if any of us now haven’t caught on. We will suffer persecution for righteousness. That’s where we find the blessing.
And in verse 11 He clarifies that when He speaks of righteousness, He is talking about Himself.
This is important. Because you suffer in this world even if you are not a believer.
Even if you are an antagonistic atheist like I was before my salvation, you can testify that you already deal with persecution.
He’s not saying that we will be blessed because of those struggles or that persecution.
We are only promised blessings in this passage from the persecutions that are born out of our faith in Jesus.
To quote Matthew Henry, “It is not the suffering, but the cause, that makes the martyr.”
We are going to suffer for all kinds of things, but it is only suffering for Christ that brings blessings.
Jesus then goes on to explain what that persecution will look like.
People insult you — We will be called things like bible thumper, self-righteous, holier-than-thou, close-minded, naive, hypocritical, and the list goes on. Some insults will be to our face, and others behind our back.
People Persecute you — they rise up against you. It was common in the days of the early church to be killed for your beliefs, because if you were under the control of Roman rule, being Christian meant denying the total sovereignty of anyone but God, and that made you an enemy of Caesar.
Today you don’t hear about Christians being crucified, but there are pastors who are physically attacked in the states, men and women are fired from their jobs because of their beliefs, families turn away from their brothers, sisters, children and parents because of their faith. And that’s here, in the U.S.
In India, churches are being burned and Christians are being killed. In China, there is an explosion of new believers, but they have to meet in secret or else they can be put into prison. Persecution is still a reality.
Then Jesus says People will falsely say all kinds of evil against you —
The truth is most of us give people plenty of ways to discredit us and rise up against us without ever going directly after our faith or without having to make up false accusations.
If they can’t find a way to tear you down, don’t be surprised if they do make stuff up. Don’t be surprised if they lie about you to discredit you.
So all of that is a huge downer right? You can’t build a church with that kind of message. But, here’s the thing. This is the kind of stuff Jesus was always putting out there.
Matthew 10:34-35 (New International Version)
34 "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn
" 'a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law –
In other words, Jesus wants our total allegiance and while that will draw some into the same kind of relationship, it will cut other relationships apart.
He tells them, if you want to follow me, this is what could be in your future.
He wants us to know that if we make Him ultimate in our lives, we may deal with persecution — even from those people we are closest to.
And then comes the blessing.
Matthew 5: 12
If persecution is born from the world’s reaction to our faith — We are blessed in our persecution.
We are blessed in the knowledge, that we are not the first to be persecuted, the prophets of the Old Testament suffered too. They were the mouth pieces for God and they suffered terribly.
But, like the prophets, we can lift our eyes up! We can focus on the prize. The prize is God and Heaven!
And one day, we will all be up there and sharing stories, about how hard it was, but we will share that in light of the reality of Heaven
In the reality of Heaven we will grasp how worth it, it all was.
We’re almost done but I can’t let you go without re-emphasizing that the blessing is for those who are persecuted for Christ.
We are not blessed when we are persecuted for being jerks who preach God’s wrath and forget to follow up with God’s mercy and grace.
We are not blessed when we are persecuted for casting judgment and condemnation on our neighbors for their sins.
It is our job to proclaim God and rely on the Holy Spirit to convict people of the sin in their lives.
We are blessed when we are persecuted for our resemblance to Jesus.
We are blessed when we are persecuted because we display love, when others hate.
We are blessed when we are persecuted because we display forgiveness, when others seek revenge.
We are blessed when we are persecuted because we pledge our ultimate allegiance to God before ANYTHING else, when others bow first to a nation, or a political party, or even to a family over God.
We are blessed when we are persecuted because we reach outside of our churches to draw others in, while other church members would want to make church more exclusive.
We are blessed when we are persecuted because we love sinners and tell them about Christ while they are still in bondage to sin, while others dictate that the sinner must clean up his act first.
We are blessed when we are persecuted because we reach out to solve problems while others do their best to ignore problems.
Do you get it? We are blessed when we are persecuted for our faithfulness —
Not for our worldliness,
Not for our churchliness,
Not for our sins —
For Christ and His righteousness.
This week, when you feel persecution coming up against you, figure out if it is because of your faith, or because of consequences of a broken world or your own sin.
Let’s pray…
Apr 16, 2009
Matthew 5:9 — Series on the Mount #8
Welcome,
Let’s Pray…
“You look like your daddy.”
That’s what my son is told every time he goes anywhere with me.
We go get groceries and the checkout lady says it. “You look like your daddy.”
We go to the bank, and the old man in front of us in line says, “You look like your daddy.”
We go to church on Sunday morning, and everyone we see says, “You look like your daddy.”
It’s something we knew would happen, from my Pap down to my son, all the men in our family look the same.
My uncle, my brothers, my self and my son — we’re a bunch of clones.
Luckily, we’re gorgeous.
Today, we are going to look at a passage that brings up this idea in a much greater way. It says to us, if we are part of a particular family tree, we take on a resemblance of our daddy in heaven.
And, just as I look down at my son, when he walks beside me and I say, “Yes, you’re my boy.”
And just as I am filled with love and pride when people notice the resemblance,
So to our Father in Heaven is pleased to call us His children and to say about each one of us, “Yep, that’s my boy!” And, “Yes, that’s my girl!”
Please turn in your bibles to Matthew 5:9
My son smiles when he is told that he is the spittin’ image of me. If I am wearing my baseball cap, he wants to wear his. If I am carrying my camera, he gets his little fisher price camera to carry too.
I long to resemble God in the same way.
We long to be called the children, the sons and daughters, of God because our resemblance to Him.
We want people to see Him in us.
We should desire to reflect Him in such a way that the family resemblance in unmistakable.
I rejoice in the times when I feel I am properly representing Him. Even those times are few.
I rejoice in those times when I realize — “Oh. I didn’t react the way I used to. I didn’t respond in that same negative manner. I didn’t fall into that temptation. Oh, Praise God!”
I long to resemble Jesus more and more in life.
That is what the process of sanctification is all about.
We talked about it a few weeks ago.
It’s the process by which the Holy Spirit — the Spirit of God is perfecting us from moment to moment from glory to glory so that one day,
Once we are done with this part of our existence,
When we are finished with this side of eternity, and we shed this old sin nature,
We will walk with our Father, as children in His house.
We want to be called the children of God. And He’s made that possible through the cross.
He promises that we can look to Him in that familial way.
Paul explains it in Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6 that once we have been saved by faith in Christ, we are no longer slaves to our sin, but we now belong to God.
And God is not just to be our master, but our Father — for we have been adopted by Him out of His grace to us.
So if we are Christians and we are reading this text (Matthew 5:9), we are already called the children of God. We are only, now, waiting for the completion of what that will ultimately look like.
So here’s the question. The question that we get from the text, “If we are already the children of God,
Adopted at the time of our conversion —
Adopted because of God’s great mercy and grace in giving us the faith —
Then what’s our right response in the light of that truth?
We are to be peacemakers. “Blessed are the peacemakers".
It’s in this act, according to Jesus, that we will be recognizable as His children in the world.
We are to strive for peace in this world in many different areas.
But first lets define peace.
We’ll look at the Peace of God, that attribute of the Father
And see what we can take from His example and live it out in our lives.
One of my favorite Bible scholars, Wayne Grudem, defines the Peace of God as His being separate from all confusion and disorder, yet He is always active in innumerable, well ordered, fully controlled actions. (read the whole definition in Systematic Theology Page 203.)
Lets look at that attribute of God and see where we can make it happen — where we can be peacemakers, by God’s lead in our lives. Tonight we will look in two areas, the family and the church.
We should be separate from all confusion and disorder
— In the family — I don’t want to add confusion or disorder at home. Home should be a refuge from the storm of the world. It should be where we come to encourage and build one another up, where we feel safe and secure and at peace.
o That means I should not do my own thing, without regard to the way it affects my family.
o I should communicate with them — they are not mind readers.
o That means we don’t snap at our kids or our spouses or our parents. If there is a problem, we are to deal with it constructively — with love, gentleness, and humility.
o Ephesians 5 and 6 give us a blueprint for a peaceful home
— Ephesians 5: 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
— Ephesians 5: 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
— Ephesians 6: 1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
— Ephesians 6: 4 Fathers, do not exasperate (Frustrate) your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
o Finally we avoid confusion and disorder in that we don’t abuse our family, physically, mentally, emotionally, or sexually.
— Some of you may have been in those homes. Some of you may BE in those homes where there is abuse.
— Some have been the victims, and some have been the perpetrators.
— If you are dealing with that, get with me after the service. We will get you some help.
— Abuse robs the family of peace. And, it does NOT resemble our loving God.
(Moving On)
— I don’t want to add confusion or disorder with my church family either.
o I don’t complain about the things that are wrong or need to be changed if I’m not willing to take positive proactive measures within my capacity to make the changes.
o I don’t want to spread gossip masked as prayer requests.
o And, this is the one where a lot of people walk off from the church. I don’t add to confusion or disorder in the church by turning a blind eye to sin — whether it is my own or someone else’s.
— This is important and I think it has been under taught in the church today.
— Jesus, and His apostles call on us to maintain church discipline.
— This is a sermon in itself, but lets go to: Matthew 18: 15 –17
o I think there are four big reason this has repelled people historically:
— 1st – We seldom follow this path. We go to others and gossip (pray for) our sinning brother or we go public before we have done the one on one work.
— 2nd – We forget that we are also sinners saved by grace and if we forget that, we lose humility and compassion and then we need our own correction or discipline.
— 3rd – We may also be living in blatant sin and we come across as the hypocrites that Jesus was constantly confronting. It’s to the last two that Jesus told to remove the plank from our eyes before we deal with the speck in the other person’s eye.
— So those are the three big ways the church has dropped the ball. The 4th reason church discipline goes bad is on the side of the person being disciplined. It’s the outright rebellion that says “I’m doing what I’m doing and you’ve got no right to tell me to stop.”
— What we forget is that God understood we would need constant gentle correction from one another, because we are ALL still carrying around this baggage that causes us to drift from God’s path.
— If we are operating out of gentleness, concern and love, not pride or self righteousness we can do nothing kinder than correct one another.
o Getting back to the children of God part of our passage, discipline from God, is one of the true signs that we are His children.
o In Hebrews 12:5-8, we read,
Then skip down to verse 11:
Finally, before you or I or anybody can have the peace of God in their family, in their church, or even in the workplace — we must first come to peace w/ God.
Because you can do all the right things, you can treat your family well, you can go through the motions and even be a productive and well liked member of society, but, God is clear that all of our good works and all of our nice looking lives are garbage without a foundation of faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior.
In fact, without Jesus interceding on our behalf, we are actually enemies with God and cannot find peace.
Please turn to:
Colossians 1:19-22 (New International Version)
If you haven’t accepted the gift of Jesus’ saving work on the cross, I pray that you would take that step tonight. It is the only way to come to peace with God. It is the only way to be on His side.
It’s the only way to be adopted into His family.
Through that adoption, we will know peace.
Then we will walk it out – to reflect His peace to our little slice of the world. In our family, in our church, in our workplace and in the grocery store.
And we will be called — by God — sons and daughters of God.
And IF we truly grasp this. If we really hear the words of Jesus and PUT THEM INTO PRACTICE (Matthew 7: 24-27), we will be recognized as different from this world.
And then when people ask you what is different about you, why you can rejoice in trials, why you don’t add fuel to the fire with gossip, why you don’t try to get revenge, why you aren’t acting selfish — why you aren’t that way anymore.
You can say, I think I’m starting to look like my daddy.
Let’s Pray
Let’s Pray…
“You look like your daddy.”
That’s what my son is told every time he goes anywhere with me.
We go get groceries and the checkout lady says it. “You look like your daddy.”
We go to the bank, and the old man in front of us in line says, “You look like your daddy.”
We go to church on Sunday morning, and everyone we see says, “You look like your daddy.”
It’s something we knew would happen, from my Pap down to my son, all the men in our family look the same.
My uncle, my brothers, my self and my son — we’re a bunch of clones.
Luckily, we’re gorgeous.
Today, we are going to look at a passage that brings up this idea in a much greater way. It says to us, if we are part of a particular family tree, we take on a resemblance of our daddy in heaven.
And, just as I look down at my son, when he walks beside me and I say, “Yes, you’re my boy.”
And just as I am filled with love and pride when people notice the resemblance,
So to our Father in Heaven is pleased to call us His children and to say about each one of us, “Yep, that’s my boy!” And, “Yes, that’s my girl!”
Please turn in your bibles to Matthew 5:9
My son smiles when he is told that he is the spittin’ image of me. If I am wearing my baseball cap, he wants to wear his. If I am carrying my camera, he gets his little fisher price camera to carry too.
I long to resemble God in the same way.
We long to be called the children, the sons and daughters, of God because our resemblance to Him.
We want people to see Him in us.
We should desire to reflect Him in such a way that the family resemblance in unmistakable.
I rejoice in the times when I feel I am properly representing Him. Even those times are few.
I rejoice in those times when I realize — “Oh. I didn’t react the way I used to. I didn’t respond in that same negative manner. I didn’t fall into that temptation. Oh, Praise God!”
I long to resemble Jesus more and more in life.
That is what the process of sanctification is all about.
We talked about it a few weeks ago.
It’s the process by which the Holy Spirit — the Spirit of God is perfecting us from moment to moment from glory to glory so that one day,
Once we are done with this part of our existence,
When we are finished with this side of eternity, and we shed this old sin nature,
We will walk with our Father, as children in His house.
We want to be called the children of God. And He’s made that possible through the cross.
He promises that we can look to Him in that familial way.
Paul explains it in Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6 that once we have been saved by faith in Christ, we are no longer slaves to our sin, but we now belong to God.
And God is not just to be our master, but our Father — for we have been adopted by Him out of His grace to us.
So if we are Christians and we are reading this text (Matthew 5:9), we are already called the children of God. We are only, now, waiting for the completion of what that will ultimately look like.
So here’s the question. The question that we get from the text, “If we are already the children of God,
Adopted at the time of our conversion —
Adopted because of God’s great mercy and grace in giving us the faith —
Then what’s our right response in the light of that truth?
We are to be peacemakers. “Blessed are the peacemakers".
It’s in this act, according to Jesus, that we will be recognizable as His children in the world.
We are to strive for peace in this world in many different areas.
But first lets define peace.
We’ll look at the Peace of God, that attribute of the Father
And see what we can take from His example and live it out in our lives.
One of my favorite Bible scholars, Wayne Grudem, defines the Peace of God as His being separate from all confusion and disorder, yet He is always active in innumerable, well ordered, fully controlled actions. (read the whole definition in Systematic Theology Page 203.)
Lets look at that attribute of God and see where we can make it happen — where we can be peacemakers, by God’s lead in our lives. Tonight we will look in two areas, the family and the church.
We should be separate from all confusion and disorder
— In the family — I don’t want to add confusion or disorder at home. Home should be a refuge from the storm of the world. It should be where we come to encourage and build one another up, where we feel safe and secure and at peace.
o That means I should not do my own thing, without regard to the way it affects my family.
o I should communicate wit
h them — they are not mind readers.o That means we don’t snap at our kids or our spouses or our parents. If there is a problem, we are to deal with it constructively — with love, gentleness, and humility.
o Ephesians 5 and 6 give us a blueprint for a peaceful home
— Ephesians 5: 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
— Ephesians 5: 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
— Ephesians 6: 1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
— Ephesians 6: 4 Fathers, do not exasperate (Frustrate) your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
o Finally we avoid confusion and disorder in that we don’t abuse our family, physically, mentally, emotionally, or sexually.
— Some of you may have been in those homes. Some of you may BE in those homes where there is abuse.
— Some have been the victims, and some have been the perpetrators.
— If you are dealing with that, get with me after the service. We will get you some help.
— Abuse robs the family of peace. And, it does NOT resemble our loving God.
(Moving On)
— I don’t want to add confusion or disorder with my church family either.
o I don’t complain about the things that are wrong or need to be changed if I’m not willing to take positive proactive measures within my capacity to make the changes.
o I don’t want to spread gossip masked as prayer requests.
o And, this is the one where a lot of people walk off from the church. I don’t add to confusion or disorder in the church by turning a blind eye to sin — whether it is my own or someone else’s.
— This is important and I think it has been under taught in the church today.
— Jesus, and His apostles call on us to maintain church discipline.
— This is a sermon in itself, but lets go to: Matthew 18: 15 –17
o I think there are four big reason this has repelled people historically:
— 1st – We seldom follow this path. We go to others and gossip (pray for) our sinning brother or we go public before we have done the one on one work.
— 2nd – We forget that we are also sinners saved by grace and if we forget that, we lose humility and compassion and then we need our own correction or discipline.
— 3rd – We may also be living in blatant sin and we come across as the hypocrites that Jesus was constantly confronting. It’s to the last two that Jesus told to remove the plank from our eyes before we deal with the speck in the other person’s eye.
— So those are the three big ways the church has dropped the ball. The 4th reason church discipline goes bad is on the side of the person being disciplined. It’s the outright rebellion that says “I’m doing what I’m doing and you’ve got no right to tell me to stop.”
— What we forget is that God understood we would need constant gentle correction from one another, because we are ALL still carrying around this baggage that causes us to drift from God’s path.
— If we are operating out of gentleness, concern and love, not pride or self righteousness we can do nothing kinder than correct one another.
o Getting back to the children of God part of our passage, discipline from God, is one of the true signs that we are His children.
o In Hebrews 12:5-8, we read,
5 And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons:
"My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
6 because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son." [Quote from Proverbs 3: 11-12]
"My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
6 because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son." [Quote from Proverbs 3: 11-12]
Then skip down to verse 11:
Finally, before you or I or anybody can have the peace of God in their family, in their church, or even in the workplace — we must first come to peace w/ God.
Because you can do all the right things, you can treat your family well, you can go through the motions and even be a productive and well liked member of society, but, God is clear that all of our good works and all of our nice looking lives are garbage without a foundation of faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior.
In fact, without Jesus interceding on our behalf, we are actually enemies with God and cannot find peace.
Please turn to:
Colossians 1:19-22 (New International Version)
If you haven’t accepted the gift of Jesus’ saving work on the cross, I pray that you would take that step tonight. It is the only way to come to peace with God. It is the only way to be on His side.
It’s the only way to be adopted into His family.
Through that adoption, we will know peace.
Then we will walk it out – to reflect His peace to our little slice of the world. In our family, in our church, in our workplace and in the grocery store.
And we will be called — by God — sons and daughters of God.
And IF we truly grasp this. If we really hear the words of Jesus and PUT THEM INTO PRACTICE (Matthew 7: 24-27), we will be recognized as different from this world.
And then when people ask you what is different about you, why you can rejoice in trials, why you don’t add fuel to the fire with gossip, why you don’t try to get revenge, why you aren’t acting selfish — why you aren’t that way anymore.
You can say, I think I’m starting to look like my daddy.
Let’s Pray
Apr 9, 2009
Communion
Lets Pray…
My brothers and I love to get together and whether it is for holidays, or birthdays, or just regular visits.
My wife usually spends those hours rolling her eyes or sharing knowing sympathetic glances with others in the room (this is especially true for Monica and my older brother’s wife).
They roll there eyes and they impart mutual sympathy because when my brothers and I get together, we become fairly juvenile, we are silly, we throw dumb jokes and awful, silly, puns.
We have a lot of fun, and regardless of how old we get, we still seem to gravitate to a distinct level of silliness whenever we get together.
One other common phenomenon, between my older brother and I is an amazing ability, some might call it a gift, in that we can have entire conversations based on references.
We reference old movies, old songs, old experiences; we even reference old conversations that we had decades (that’s right) decades ago.
And each time, we laugh. And this isn’t the laugh that you give to be nice.
It is genuine laughter, sometimes laughing to the point that beverages spray out of our noses.
We’re nerds.
This weekend Easter will be celebrated, and with that, many families will be getting together.
If your family is reuniting keep track of your conversations.
I’m not saying to bring a white board and put a notch for every reference, or familiar joke, or reminisce of times gone by.
But, just keep track of the times that the “good old times” come up as a springboard into conversation.
And keep a mental tally of how many “do you remember when’s” are brought up as fillers.
I think you’ll see that my brothers and I aren’t the only ones that like to relive the past.
You probably do it too.
God knew we were this way. He built us this way.
He knew that we were people who like to look back and remember our past.
We find comfort in it. We find strength in it.
It’s true, even if we have a troubled past.
When we have been through that trouble with someone, we can both look back with a sense of solidarity, a bond of similar struggles.
That’s a reason why the Lord always had the Israelites building altars.
Please turn in your Bibles tonight to Joshua 4: 1-9 for an example:
If you are not familiar with the Old Testament, Joshua was the new leader of the people.
Moses had been used as God’s man to lead the Israelites out of slavery, out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.
And, long story short, the people made bad choice after bad choice once they were free.
They stopped trusting God, they fell away from Him and into their sin and He allowed them to deal with the consequences of those choices.
It went badly.
So, except for a couple of people, that first generation were dead and buried before they actually got to the Promised Land.
So Joshua’s got this crew and God tells them to cross the Jordan.
He is demonstrating His might and strength similar to the way he helped the slaves, the older generation, cross the Red sea, some forty years earlier.
But, knowing that the people had a way of forgetting who their Lord was, He gave this command to Joshua to help the people retain their focus.
Here we go…
1 When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, 2 "Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, 3 and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan from right where the priests stood and to carry them (the stones) over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight."
4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever."
8 So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the LORD had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down. 9 Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day.
In other words when the brothers got together back then, instead of quoting lines from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for the 700th time like my brothers and I do,
Instead of harkening back to the days of misspent youth like we do,
God wanted His people to reminisce about the day He stopped a mighty river so they could cross over into their promised future.
That’s the Old Testament. You might be asking what’s that got to do with me. I’m not an Israelite, says you. I’m a Christian.
Well we have another great example and this one is from our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Let’s turn to Luke 22: 14-20
At this point Jesus is making it clear that His time in this particular phase of His ministry is nearly over.
All the old prophesies about His suffering are about to come true. He is going to be taken captive, beaten, mocked, spit on and then killed on the cross.
With that in mind He tells them, after all of that after I am gone, don’t forget about who I am, what I’ve taught, and what I’ve done.
Let’s read…
14 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God."
17 After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, "Take this and divide it among you. 18 For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."
19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me."
20In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
In other words, Jesus just gave them a reference point to look back on.
For the rest of their lives
— When things were going well, they could break the bread TOGETHER and drink from the cup TOGETHER and they could do it as a reminder of God’s grace and blessings.
— When things got tough, and they DID GET TOUGH, they could break the bread TOGETHER and drink from the cup TOGETHER and remember that God has provided a way to ultimate healing, to salvation in Jesus. A reminder that in every struggle, in every trial, Jesus is sufficient to get us through.
But here’s the problem.
A problem that was true for the early church, it’s also a true problem for my brothers and I and it’s probably true for you to some extent in family and maybe at church.
Let’s go back to my brothers and I.
We don’t even usually have to discuss all of what happened back in the day.
Sometimes — Most times — we just jump right to the punch line of an old joke because we’ve all heard that joke so many times that it’s funny without all of the set-up.
And even when a painful subject comes up, we don’t discuss what’s on our minds, what’s in our hearts, we don’t share that sort of intimacy.
No, we gloss over it. We share that knowing glance as if it is enough and we move on to better things, back to the fun right. We keep everything surface and manageable.
A lot of the times that is the same thing we do, I do, with God.
He calls us to remember Him when we take communion.
To remember the sacrifice that He made for us.
To come to Him with hearts open, honest, ready and prepared to meet with the Holy God of the Universe that came down to save us from ourselves, from our sin.
And what do we do?
We turn it into a shorthand ritual, and take away the intimacy He would have with us.
Is it just me? Have you ever caught yourself just going through the motions?
We turn this beautiful reminder into religious meaninglessness,
We go through the motions and we think it is the action that makes the relationship and not the heart.
So this is how it looks in our families:
Another thanksgiving goes by and we don’t share any of our struggles with our family, just platitudes.
So the phone call ends and we hang up after having the same silly conversation we’ve had for half our lifetimes.
And in church we just follow the choreography that we’ve always followed.
What’s say we stop all of that tonight.
And don’t blame the church you went to if you’ve shared this same problem with me.
At the end of the day, the church does what it can to create a true fellowship of followship, a true and straight path to the Father,
But we have to prepare ourselves to sit at the table.
That’s not to say we have to prepare our outward appearance.
Where we dress up nice and we plaster a smile on our face regardless of the very real struggles we might be having.
No. We prepare our hearts by coming to the table honest and humble and thirsting for the righteousness of Christ. And then we will be filled.
Tonight we will share communion, we will break the bread in remembrance of Christ’s body — given for us. Given for me and for you.
We will take from the cup and we will drink it in remembrance of His blood spilled out to cover us to cleanse us of all our unrighteousness.
This sacrament that we share is for believers.
Jesus shared it with His disciples.
And if you have decided to follow Him, no matter if you come from a Baptist background, Methodist, Catholic, or even no denominational affiliation, you are welcome if you trust Jesus as your Lord and your Savior.
If you don’t know where you stand, let me make the relationship as clear as I can for you while still being complete.
We come to acknowledge our sin, that is, that we have wronged God, turned away from God.
We come to a realization that our sin cuts us off from God and we earned death and Hell for that sin.
We come to believe that we are unable to make up for our sin, we cannot do enough “good things’ to clean ourselves up.
Then the good news, the Gospel.
We come to believe that Jesus did not just come to teach, but to save us from our sins.
We come to trust in the death of Jesus as being the point in history when Jesus took all of the sins before and after that point in History and He absorbed God’s wrath for those sins, our sins, so that we would not have to face the wrath.
That includes my sins, and your sins,
Your brother’s sins and your sister’s sins,
The sins of your co-workers, the sins of your boss; they were all placed upon Jesus and hung on Him as He hung on the cross.
We have come to believe those sins, our sins, where conquered in His death. They don’t own us anymore.
We believe that that Father God resurrected Jesus and by that Jesus also conquered death for us. We need not fear anything ever again.
We believe that God loved us so much that He gave His only son to save us, and it is our Faith alone in Jesus Christ alone that has brought us to the table; that has brought us into a right relationship — an intimate relationship with our Creator God.
He has done the work, we must only trust in it and walk in that trust. And you can start right now.
For those of you who are not sure and you are not to the point where you can trust him yet, we are glad you are here. We welcome you to this church and pray that you will keep coming back and we pray that you would some day very soon be saved through faith by the Grace of God.
If you are not a follower of Jesus, this bread and the juice in the cup — this celebration is not for you.
We aren’t trying to embarrass you. And we’re not trying to manipulate you; we are just following the commands given to us in Scriptures.
1 Corinthians 11:27-29 tells us:
27 Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.
We believe the Bible and we love you and we don’t want to lead you into any more guilt in your life.
But again, we welcome you here, always.
We would encourage you to keep coming back and hearing God’s word proclaimed.
It is His word that will change your life and direct you to salvation.
If you are a Christ follower, we invite you to join us now for the Lord’s Supper.
We will have each of you come up once I tell you. Then break off a piece of the bread and take a cup and take them to your seat.
Don’t eat or drink until I give that instruction, we will all partake together at one time.
(Distribute the sacraments)
Remember brothers and sisters, we are told in 1 Corinthians 11: 28
A man ought to examine himself (herself) before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.
As we pray, do that — examine your heart.
Examine it for malice or unforgiveness.
Examine it for pride or self-pity.
Whatever might be hindering you from walking in the fullness of the Spirit of God; whatever is keeping you from holding your focus on Jesus as ultimate in your life; turn it over to Jesus, put it at the cross before you take of the bread and the cup.
Let’s pray…
Let’s partake with thanksgiving.
You are dismissed.
My brothers and I love to get together and whether it is for holidays, or birthdays, or just regular visits.
My wife usually spends those hours rolling her eyes or sharing knowing sympathetic glances with others in the room (this is especially true for Monica and my older brother’s wife).
They roll there eyes and they impart mutual sympathy because when my brothers and I get together, we become fairly juvenile, we are silly, we throw dumb jokes and awful, silly, puns.
We have a lot of fun, and regardless of how old we get, we still seem to gravitate to a distinct level of silliness whenever we get together.
One other common phenomenon, between my older brother and I is an amazing ability, some might call it a gift, in that we can have entire conversations based on references.
We reference old movies, old songs, old experiences; we even reference old conversations that we had decades (that’s right) decades ago.
And each time, we laugh. And this isn’t the laugh that you give to be nice.
It is genuine laughter, sometimes laughing to the point that beverages spray out of our noses.
We’re nerds.
This weekend Easter will be celebrated, and with that, many families will be getting together.
If your family is reuniting keep track of your conversations.
I’m not saying to bring a white board and put a notch for every reference, or familiar joke, or reminisce of times gone by.
But, just keep track of the times that the “good old times” come up as a springboard into conversation.
And keep a mental tally of how many “do you remember when’s” are brought up as fillers.
I think you’ll see that my brothers and I aren’t the only ones that like to relive the past.
You probably do it too.
God knew we were this way. He built us this way.
He knew that we were people who like to look back and remember our past.
We find comfort in it. We find strength in it.
It’s true, even if we have a troubled past.
When we have been through that trouble with someone, we can both look back with a sense of solidarity, a bond of similar struggles.
That’s a reason why the Lord always had the Israelites building altars.
Please turn in your Bibles tonight to Joshua 4: 1-9 for an example:
If you are not familiar with the Old Testament, Joshua was the new leader of the people.
Moses had been used as God’s man to lead the Israelites out of slavery, out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.
And, long story short, the people made bad choice after bad choice once they were free.
They stopped trusting God, they fell away from Him and into their sin and He allowed them to deal with the consequences of those choices.
It went badly.
So, except for a couple of people, that first generation were dead and buried before they actually got to the Promised Land.
So Joshua’s got this crew and God tells them to cross the Jordan.
He is demonstrating His might and strength similar to the way he helped the slaves, the older generation, cross the Red sea, some forty years earlier.
But, knowing that the people had a way of forgetting who their Lord was, He gave this command to Joshua to help the people retain their focus.
Here we go…
1 When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, 2 "Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, 3 and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan from right where the priests stood and to carry them (the stones) over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight."
4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever."
8 So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the LORD had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down. 9 Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day.
In other words when the brothers got together back then, instead of quoting lines from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for the 700th time like my brothers and I do,
Instead of harkening back to the days of misspent youth like we do,
God wanted His people to reminisce about the day He stopped a mighty river so they could cross over into their promised future.
That’s the Old Testament. You might be asking what’s that got to do with me. I’m not an Israelite, says you. I’m a Christian.
Well we have another great example and this one is from our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Let’s turn to Luke 22: 14-20
At this point Jesus is making it clear that His time in this particular phase of His ministry is nearly over.
All the old prophesies about His suffering are about to come true. He is going to be taken captive, beaten, mocked, spit on and then killed on the cross.
With that in mind He tells them, after all of that after I am gone, don’t forget about who I am, what I’ve taught, and what I’ve done.
Let’s read…
14 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God."
17 After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, "Take this and divide it among you. 18 For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."
19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me."
20In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
In other words, Jesus just gave them a reference point to look back on.
For the rest of their lives
— When things were going well, they could break the bread TOGETHER and drink from the cup TOGETHER and they could do it as a reminder of God’s grace and blessings.
— When things got tough, and they DID GET TOUGH, they could break the bread TOGETHER and drink from the cup TOGETHER and remember that God has provided a way to ultimate healing, to salvation in Jesus. A reminder that in every struggle, in every trial, Jesus is sufficient to get us through.
But here’s the problem.
A problem that was true for the early church, it’s also a true problem for my brothers and I and it’s probably true for you to some extent in family and maybe at church.
Let’s go back to my brothers and I.
We don’t even usually have to discuss all of what happened back in the day.
Sometimes — Most times — we just jump right to the punch line of an old joke because we’ve all heard that joke so many times that it’s funny without all of the set-up.
And even when a painful subject comes up, we don’t discuss what’s on our minds, what’s in our hearts, we don’t share that sort of intimacy.
No, we gloss over it. We share that knowing glance as if it is enough and we move on to better things, back to the fun right. We keep everything surface and manageable.
A lot of the times that is the same thing we do, I do, with God.
He calls us to remember Him when we take communion.
To remember the sacrifice that He made for us.
To come to Him with hearts open, honest, ready and prepared to meet with the Holy God of the Universe that came down to save us from ourselves, from our sin.
And what do we do?
We turn it into a shorthand ritual, and take away the intimacy He would have with us.
Is it just me? Have you ever caught yourself just going through the motions?
We turn this beautiful reminder into religious meaninglessness,
We go through the motions and we think it is the action that makes the relationship and not the heart.
So this is how it looks in our families:
Another thanksgiving goes by and we don’t share any of our struggles with our family, just platitudes.
So the phone call ends and we hang up after having the same silly conversation we’ve had for half our lifetimes.
And in church we just follow the choreography that we’ve always followed.
What’s say we stop all of that tonight.
And don’t blame the church you went to if you’ve shared this same problem with me.
At the end of the day, the church does what it can to create a true fellowship of followship, a true and straight path to the Father,
But we have to prepare ourselves to sit at the table.
That’s not to say we have to prepare our outward appearance.
Where we dress up nice and we plaster a smile on our face regardless of the very real struggles we might be having.
No. We prepare our hearts by coming to the table honest and humble and thirsting for the righteousness of Christ. And then we will be filled.
Tonight we will share communion, we will break the bread in remembrance of Christ’s body — given for us. Given for me and for you.
We will take from the cup and we will drink it in remembrance of His blood spilled out to cover us to cleanse us of all our unrighteousness.
This sacrament that we share is for believers.
Jesus shared it with His disciples.
And if you have decided to follow Him, no matter if you come from a Baptist background, Methodist, Catholic, or even no denominational affiliation, you are welcome if you trust Jesus as your Lord and your Savior.
If you don’t know where you stand, let me make the relationship as clear as I can for you while still being complete.
We come to acknowledge our sin, that is, that we have wronged God, turned away from God.
We come to a realization that our sin cuts us off from God and we earned death and Hell for that sin.
We come to believe that we are unable to make up for our sin, we cannot do enough “good things’ to clean ourselves up.
Then the good news, the Gospel.
We come to believe that Jesus did not just come to teach, but to save us from our sins.
We come to trust in the death of Jesus as being the point in history when Jesus took all of the sins before and after that point in History and He absorbed God’s wrath for those sins, our sins, so that we would not have to face the wrath.
That includes my sins, and your sins,
Your brother’s sins and your sister’s sins,
The sins of your co-workers, the sins of your boss; they were all placed upon Jesus and hung on Him as He hung on the cross.
We have come to believe those sins, our sins, where conquered in His death. They don’t own us anymore.
We believe that that Father God resurrected Jesus and by that Jesus also conquered death for us. We need not fear anything ever again.
We believe that God loved us so much that He gave His only son to save us, and it is our Faith alone in Jesus Christ alone that has brought us to the table; that has brought us into a right relationship — an intimate relationship with our Creator God.
He has done the work, we must only trust in it and walk in that trust. And you can start right now.
For those of you who are not sure and you are not to the point where you can trust him yet, we are glad you are here. We welcome you to this church and pray that you will keep coming back and we pray that you would some day very soon be saved through faith by the Grace of God.
If you are not a follower of Jesus, this bread and the juice in the cup — this celebration is not for you.
We aren’t trying to embarrass you. And we’re not trying to manipulate you; we are just following the commands given to us in Scriptures.
1 Corinthians 11:27-29 tells us:
27 Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.
We believe the Bible and we love you and we don’t want to lead you into any more guilt in your life.
But again, we welcome you here, always.
We would encourage you to keep coming back and hearing God’s word proclaimed.
It is His word that will change your life and direct you to salvation.
If you are a Christ follower, we invite you to join us now for the Lord’s Supper.
We will have each of you come up once I tell you. Then break off a piece of the bread and take a cup and take them to your seat.
Don’t eat or drink until I give that instruction, we will all partake together at one time.
(Distribute the sacraments)
Remember brothers and sisters, we are told in 1 Corinthians 11: 28
A man ought to examine himself (herself) before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.
As we pray, do that — examine your heart.
Examine it for malice or unforgiveness.
Examine it for pride or self-pity.
Whatever might be hindering you from walking in the fullness of the Spirit of God; whatever is keeping you from holding your focus on Jesus as ultimate in your life; turn it over to Jesus, put it at the cross before you take of the bread and the cup.
Let’s pray…
Let’s partake with thanksgiving.
You are dismissed.
Apr 1, 2009
Pure of Heart — Series on the Mount #7
Let’s Pray…
Please turn to Matthew 5:8
Why are those who are pure full of joy? Because they are able to interact with their Creator!
Purity of heart is freedom found in Christ.
When this verse talks about being pure of heart we can unpack as being:
— Pure: free from corrupt desire, from sin and guilt
— Of Heart: the soul or mind, as it is the fountain and seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes and endeavors.
Remember that this beatitude is focused on those who have come into a saving relationship with the Savior, Jesus Christ.
And, it is only through Christ’s atonement for our sins, that we can be pure.
Right actions, as the world defines them, or even as the bible defines them — if they are apart from Faith in Jesus, are empty.
They are like dirty rags to God. So remember this is the purity that is only possible to believers.
We see purity in two areas.
— Salvation — We are given a covering of Jesus’ purity in order to gain access into the Kingdom
o and adoption into God’s family
o without coming against the wrath that would be due to us otherwise.
— Sanctification — After Jesus ascended to Heaven, the Holy Spirit came down to guide us in a continually closer walk with the Lord
— We are then being purifying from moment to moment, from glory to glory.
— The purification of our mind, will and emotion continues as long as we are in this flesh.
2 Corinthians 3: 16 says
“16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
(That is the veil caused by our knowledge of our sin without the salvation found in Jesus)
Continuing in to...
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
It is important to note here that Paul teaches that we first turn to Jesus — our Spirit is purified — and then, the Spirit works to purify our lives.
Sometimes we try to put the cart before the horse. Understand that salvation comes before sanctification.
If you are here and you are still trying to wrap your head and your heart around what it means to be a Christian, realize that you don’t have to stop cussing and drinking and smoking and shacking up with someone outside of marriage and all the other stuff that God says not to do BEFORE you are saved.
All you have to do is admit that you are a sinner that needs a savior, trust that Jesus Christ is your savior and agree to walk with Him from here on out.
Then, He gives you the Holy Spirit, who is the only one who could ever help you tackle those sins anyway.
You come to Jesus as you are
And then you ask the Spirit of God to transform you into His likeness.
Now, if you are a Christian, and you have taken up God’s marching orders to proclaim the gospel and reflect His light into the dark and lost world, remember that you don’t have to get someone cleaned up before they can come to church, before you talk to them about your story with Jesus or anything else.
Jesus didn’t tell all of the tax collectors, and prostitutes to clean up their acts before He told them about the kingdom of Heaven, and neither should we. (ex. Zacchaeus/dinner, woman @ well/water)
I also need to make a further point on purity,
It always used to me true with me, and I am guessing it has been true for you that once you hear that the Holy Spirit is working to purify us, that we don’t need to do anything.
We say, “the Holy Spirit will take care of it all.” It’s this struggle that pastors have between legalism and license.
We must remember the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross to cleanse, to purify, to SAVE our spirit.
He saved us yes, but we are reminded in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
“19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
Now, Paul is writing specifically to sexual sin, but the same holds true for any temptation to sin that we encounter.
The Spirit gives us the strength, but we fight along side with Him to defeat the sin.
We don’t just keep yielding to sin until, or unless God supernaturally takes the sin away from us. We co-labor with the Holy Spirit.
Okay, so that’s purity, have we got it?
Pure of heart First through salvation and then a continuing walk from glory to glory with the Holy Spirit.
Now we look at the reward for a pure heart. If we have one, we will see God!
We talk about this every week and as Matthew Henry states, this is the most complete of the Beatitudes because in Matthew 5:8 “holiness and happiness (blessedness) are fully described and put together.”
Holiness is the purity.
Happiness (blessed are those…) points to those who do not find our happiness in the world around us, but the indwelling of the Spirit in us and the promise of an eternity in the presence of the All Mighty God.
This is the happiness that Paul displayed when, even though he was in chains and in a prison — uncertain of his future, he wrote to his brothers and sisters in Philippi (Philippians 4:4-6)
Paul understood that all this: The trials, the hardships, the pain the tears, the cruelty, it is all temporary, it is a speck in the grand scheme of things.
A speck in relation to our eternity, where we — as believers — will see God FACE TO FACE. Compared to that, everything in this life is small stuff, even our biggest obstacles.
So, knowing all that:
—We can say, “Yes I have a temptation to get my revenge. But the God of the Universe loves me and has told me to leave the justice up to Him. Since I love Him I will obey Him and I will forgive people who come against me.”
—We can say, “Yes I am tempted to lie about where I was, or how I spent my time, or what I did or what I didn’t do or whatever, but each lie I tell takes away from the purity that the Holy Spirit is trying to work out in my daily walk. So I am going to co-labor with the Spirit by telling the truth.”
—We can say, “Yes I am drawn to sin by what I have seen on the internet, our on the streets, or on the television, but the Lord has designed my life to be lived in purity with my spouse, so I will flee from the sexual immorality that has caused so many to fall away from their relationships with people in their lives and with God as well.
Those are just a few of the top ten offenders of a pure heart — resentment, dishonesty, lust — I can’t tap into them all in one hour, but you know what is blocking you from a pure heart.
It may be self-righteousness, or greed, or envy.
Whatever it is, if you are a Christian, you have the power to overcome it if you are willing to work with the Holy Spirit through God’s grace.
Work with the Spirit by reading God’s word,
— By developing an honest and consistent prayer life,
— By letting the people that God has put in your life — in on your struggles, Stop trying to face your trials in secret.
— And work with the Spirit by working with others to assist them in their struggles — in the areas we talked about showing mercy in the last couple of weeks.
But, if you are not yet a believer. None of those efforts will help you apart from Christ. There are a lot of great programs that can help you in your struggles with alcohol, or drugs, or gambling, or whatever vice you have.
But, none of them can save your soul. Jesus asked the question in Mark 8:36
I ask what good is it to live a pure life if it is only external, if your heart does not turn toward Jesus.
And now, this is where a lot of people get mad at Christians and call us narrow minded, they even call us intolerant, but we believe the Bible and the Bible says clearly there is only one way to see God.
Jesus put it this way and it is unmistakable in John 14:6
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
That means you will never get to God by being “good enough” or acting religious.
Before you try to shape up and be “good enough to get to heaven, first:
— Come to the Father God,
— Admit that you are a sinner,
— Trust in Jesus as your Lord and Savior
— And then turn from your sins, (that turn is what the Bible calls repentance).
It will be in that first act of salvation and then those continuing victories over sin by God’s grace that will make you pure and will allow you to see God.
If you need to come to Christ tonight, I or any number of us can walk you through it. Remember, it is not the prayer that saves you it is not coming up to the front or raising your hand in the air, it is faith alone in Christ alone by the grace of God alone that saves.
Let’s pray…
Please turn to Matthew 5:8
Why are those who are pure full of joy? Because they are able to interact with their Creator!
Purity of heart is freedom found in Christ.
When this verse talks about being pure of heart we can unpack as being:
— Pure: free from corrupt desire, from sin and guilt
— Of Heart: the soul or mind, as it is the fountain and seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes and endeavors.
Remember that this beatitude is focused on those who have come into a saving relationship with the Savior, Jesus Christ.
And, it is only through Christ’s atonement for our sins, that we can be pure.
Right actions, as the world defines them, or even as the bible defines them — if they are apart from Faith in Jesus, are empty.
They are like dirty rags to God. So remember this is the purity that is only possible to believers.
We see purity in two areas.
— Salvation — We are given a covering of Jesus’ purity in order to gain access into the Kingdom
o and adoption into God’s family
o without coming against the wrath that would be due to us otherwise.
— Sanctification — After Jesus ascended to Heaven, the Holy Spirit came down to guide us in a continually closer walk with the Lord
— We are then being purifying from moment to moment, from glory to glory.
— The purification of our mind, will and emotion continues as long as we are in this flesh.
2 Corinthians 3: 16 says
“16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
(That is the veil caused by our knowledge of our sin without the salvation found in Jesus)
Continuing in to...
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
It is important to note here that Paul teaches that we first turn to Jesus — our Spirit is purified — and then, the Spirit works to purify our lives.
Sometimes we try to put the cart before the horse. Understand that salvation comes before sanctification.
If you are here and you are still trying to wrap your head and your heart around what it means to be a Christian, realize that you don’t have to stop cussing and drinking and smoking and shacking up with someone outside of marriage and all the other stuff that God says not to do BEFORE you are saved.
All you have to do is admit that you are a sinner that needs a savior, trust that Jesus Christ is your savior and agree to walk with Him from here on out.
Then, He gives you the Holy Spirit, who is the only one who could ever help you tackle those sins anyway.
You come to Jesus as you are
And then you ask the Spirit of God to transform you into His likeness.
Now, if you are a Christian, and you have taken up God’s marching orders to proclaim the gospel and reflect His light into the dark and lost world, remember that you don’t have to get someone cleaned up before they can come to church, before you talk to them about your story with Jesus or anything else.
Jesus didn’t tell all of the tax collectors, and prostitutes to clean up their acts before He told them about the kingdom of Heaven, and neither should we. (ex. Zacchaeus/dinner, woman @ well/water)
I also need to make a further point on purity,
It always used to me true with me, and I am guessing it has been true for you that once you hear that the Holy Spirit is working to purify us, that we don’t need to do anything.
We say, “the Holy Spirit will take care of it all.” It’s this struggle that pastors have between legalism and license.
We must remember the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross to cleanse, to purify, to SAVE our spirit.
He saved us yes, but we are reminded in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
“19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
Now, Paul is writing specifically to sexual sin, but the same holds true for any temptation to sin that we encounter.
The Spirit gives us the strength, but we fight along side with Him to defeat the sin.
We don’t just keep yielding to sin until, or unless God supernaturally takes the sin away from us. We co-labor with the Holy Spirit.
Okay, so that’s purity, have we got it?
Pure of heart First through salvation and then a continuing walk from glory to glory with the Holy Spirit.
Now we look at the reward for a pure heart. If we have one, we will see God!
We talk about this every week and as Matthew Henry states, this is the most complete of the Beatitudes because in Matthew 5:8 “holiness and happiness (blessedness) are fully described and put together.”
Holiness is the purity.
Happiness (blessed are those…) points to those who do not find our happiness in the world around us, but the indwelling of the Spirit in us and the promise of an eternity in the presence of the All Mighty God.
This is the happiness that Paul displayed when, even though he was in chains and in a prison — uncertain of his future, he wrote to his brothers and sisters in Philippi (Philippians 4:4-6)
Paul understood that all this: The trials, the hardships, the pain the tears, the cruelty, it is all temporary, it is a speck in the grand scheme of things.
A speck in relation to our eternity, where we — as believers — will see God FACE TO FACE. Compared to that, everything in this life is small stuff, even our biggest obstacles.
So, knowing all that:
—We can say, “Yes I have a temptation to get my revenge. But the God of the Universe loves me and has told me to leave the justice up to Him. Since I love Him I will obey Him and I will forgive people who come against me.”
—We can say, “Yes I am tempted to lie about where I was, or how I spent my time, or what I did or what I didn’t do or whatever, but each lie I tell takes away from the purity that the Holy Spirit is trying to work out in my daily walk. So I am going to co-labor with the Spirit by telling the truth.”
—We can say, “Yes I am drawn to sin by what I have seen on the internet, our on the streets, or on the television, but the Lord has designed my life to be lived in purity with my spouse, so I will flee from the sexual immorality that has caused so many to fall away from their relationships with people in their lives and with God as well.
Those are just a few of the top ten offenders of a pure heart — resentment, dishonesty, lust — I can’t tap into them all in one hour, but you know what is blocking you from a pure heart.
It may be self-righteousness, or greed, or envy.
Whatever it is, if you are a Christian, you have the power to overcome it if you are willing to work with the Holy Spirit through God’s grace.
Work with the Spirit by reading God’s word,
— By developing an honest and consistent prayer life,
— By letting the people that God has put in your life — in on your struggles, Stop trying to face your trials in secret.
— And work with the Spirit by working with others to assist them in their struggles — in the areas we talked about showing mercy in the last couple of weeks.
But, if you are not yet a believer. None of those efforts will help you apart from Christ. There are a lot of great programs that can help you in your struggles with alcohol, or drugs, or gambling, or whatever vice you have.
But, none of them can save your soul. Jesus asked the question in Mark 8:36
I ask what good is it to live a pure life if it is only external, if your heart does not turn toward Jesus.
And now, this is where a lot of people get mad at Christians and call us narrow minded, they even call us intolerant, but we believe the Bible and the Bible says clearly there is only one way to see God.
Jesus put it this way and it is unmistakable in John 14:6
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
That means you will never get to God by being “good enough” or acting religious.
Before you try to shape up and be “good enough to get to heaven, first:
— Come to the Father God,
— Admit that you are a sinner,
— Trust in Jesus as your Lord and Savior
— And then turn from your sins, (that turn is what the Bible calls repentance).
It will be in that first act of salvation and then those continuing victories over sin by God’s grace that will make you pure and will allow you to see God.
If you need to come to Christ tonight, I or any number of us can walk you through it. Remember, it is not the prayer that saves you it is not coming up to the front or raising your hand in the air, it is faith alone in Christ alone by the grace of God alone that saves.
Let’s pray…
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