Kingdom Living

Jesus came to introduce his disciples to a new kingdom… a kingdom that is not of this world. The standard of Christ’s new kingdom is the unconditional love of God…. to love God above all and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

According to 1 Corinthians 13, Love is patient, love is kind, is never selfish, rude, or proud… it never demands its own way. The unconditional agape love of God is not of this world. It is one of the qualities of God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. The love of God is not touchy or irritable. It is not resentful or bitter. The love of God rises above human frailty… it transforms and transcends worldly standards, morals, and conventions. The love of God suffers injustice, always thinks the best of others, never holds grudges… it never fails to bless, to encourage, and to edify. Love never fails.

The devil is the accuser and the deceiver. He reminds us of our fallen nature and the things we’ve done that fall short of God’s righteous standard. However, even while we were yet sinners, Jesus Christ who was without sin became the perfect sacrifice for sin on our behalf that we may be made the righteousness of God in him. For even though our heart condemns us… God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things… that our righteousness is in Christ.

What calls a man to repentance… to turn from darkness unto light? Is it the threat of death and eternal damnation? Is it guilt, shame, pain, and suffering? Romans 2 says, it is the goodness, kindness, love and mercy of God that calls a man to repentance. The love of God is what attracts a son of God to run to the Lord and not away from him.

Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. When Pontious Pilate asked Jesus, Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus responded, “You said it.” Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” He could not perceive that he was looking the truth in the eye… for Jesus Christ himself is the way, the truth and the life.

After Jesus healed a man born blinded, the religious leaders asked the blind man, “Who healed you?” He said, “I don’t know who he was, but this one thing I know, I was blind, but now I see.” Jesus came to open the eyes of those born blind… physically and spiritually. To perceive truth we must be born again… to see and perceive from Christ’s eyes behind our eyes.

Many men hear the truth and casually agree with it. However, they are not willing to commit their lives to Christ. They want to be their own master and are unwilling to subject their hearts in submission to the Lord. The kingdom of self is heavily defended territory. When a man repents, God brings him to the realization that, “I have found the enemy and he is me.”

The thief cometh not but for to steal, to kill, and to destroy. When the devil attacks, this assault is either an invitation to join the devil’s pity party, or the point of repentance to turn from the darkness of this world unto the glorious light of the gospel of salvation through faith alone by grace alone in Christ alone.

Living the Christian life gets the attention of this world. The love of God is not of this world. Jesus said, blessed are they when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake, for great is your reward in heaven. The love of God turns the other cheek… it gladly goes the second mile. It does not return evil for evil. It is full of grace, mercy, and forgiveness. The love of God is the nature of God himself… for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Christianity is not about the cost. Rather, it’s about the value…. what is it that you value most? The valuable things of this life are priceless… we could not afford either the payment for sin or for eternal live. Therefore we have been bought with a price… the priceless precious blood of God’s only begotten son. Because Jesus Christ paid our debt of sin, we can live in the glorious light of the gospel of peace. For he who was without sin became the perfect sacrifice for sin on our behalf that we may be made the righteousness of God in him.

Jesus said, I always do my father’s will. His father’s will was your redemption and mine. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed, not my will but thine be done. The answer to Jesus’ prayer in the garden is in Hebrews 11, Jesus Christ for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is set down on the right hand of the throne of God… God showed his son the joy of your redemption and mine.

We love him because he first loved us. Because God has given us his spirit of life in Christ, we can Love God above all. Then when we love others, Jesus said, in that ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. To love others, we love Jesus himself.

Jesus came to proclaim liberty to the captives and to set free them that are bound. In an upside down world, the greatest freedom is to subject ourselves captive to Christ… casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. According to Galatians 5, stand fast therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage of the law of sin and death. Only use not liberty as an occasion to sin, but in love, serve one another.

… That in loving God above all, we may live according to the his kingdom’s purpose… that we may live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ,
Michael

Pete McKenzie 0:08
Hey, man.

Well, we’ve already had a full morning with all the great announcements and interviews and prayer that’s been going on the fellowship. It’s been a good day. We’ll finish it off with a few words from the Sermon on the Mount. And I have some quotes. From Oswald Chambers. He did a lot of writing on the Sermon on the Mount. And he’s got a section in his one of his books called the studies in the Sermon on the Mount.

Thank you, we got to look after each other. It’s like monkeys picking fleas off each other in the zoo. Yeah, you’re the big monkey.

Monkey. Moving right along. introductory thoughts by Oswald Chambers to the Sermon on the Mount. Only the Holy Spirit can expand the teachings of Jesus Christ. Beware of placing our Lord his teacher first. Instead of Savior, we must know him first his Savior before his teaching can have any meaning for us are before it can have any meaning other than an ideal that leads only to despair. In other words, basically what he’s saying here, this is a new kingdom that we’ve been born into. It’s not like the kingdom that we know is in the world. It’s a brand new kingdom that’s sprung in our hearts. It’s something from the inside out, not from the outside in. And what he’s saying here is only the Holy Spirit can teach about Jesus Christ in. It’s what Jesus told his disciples, I’m going away, but I’m going to send a comforter to you and he’ll teach you the truth is he’ll lead you to all truth. If Jesus is only a teacher, then all he can do is tantalize us by erecting a standard we cannot come anywhere near. But by being born of the Holy Spirit above and knowing him first as Savior. We know that he did not come to teach us only he came to teach us what he teaches we should be. So the Sermon on the Mount. Basically, if you’re born into a new kingdom, and you go, what have I gotten myself into here? Just read it in Chapter Five, six, and seven of Matthew. And then he makes it really clear now it’s not really easy, but it’s really clear what the new kingdom is all about that the kingdom he came to introduce and usher in to the world is really all about, it’s an upside down kingdom. It’s an inside out kingdom. It’s not like anything, anybody ever could sit in a room with a bunch of leaders in the church and go, let’s come up with a lifestyle that fits the kingdom of God. What lifestyle did he come up with? And he started that out by sending his own son down here, and he demonstrated in was an example of the kingdom. And he was confusing people all over even his disciples, and you know all about that. Now, they had no idea what he was talking about, in most cases, he’s taught in parables, why would do what he did? If you’re keeping up with the chosen, they do a really good job in that of seeing how confused the disciples were. In now. carnal they were they were worldly thinking and they had to be changed. But so did you and I, I was once one way, and now I’m different. They have a T shirt in the chosen calls. It says that now I’m completely different. That was what Mary said, after Jesus had cast the demons out of her. Remember that our Lord’s teaching only applies to those who are His disciples. We talked before about not holding a standard up for people who’ve never been born again that don’t have the Holy Spirit. Don’t try. Don’t expect them to be able to live the Christian life. Don’t expect them to be able to have the power to turn the other cheek and go the second mile and bless those who persecute him. They can’t do it. I remember the frustration in my life. Maybe you can remember experiencing the same thing. When I was trying To be a good little credit Southern Baptist boy. And I couldn’t do it. I could keep the rules some of the time. But I had a really hard time keeping the rules. And it was frustrating to the point where I got desperate at one point, I got it put it in my heart as he told the exiles from Jerusalem when they were conquered by Nebuchadnezzar and he was taken them back to Babylon. And he said, I’ll put it in your heart to know me, it’s going to take for 70 years for you guys to get these out of worship, and all of your disobedience out of your system, and then I’ll bring you back to Jerusalem. But I’ll put it in your heart to know me. Now, I don’t understand all I know about that. But I know God put it in my heart to know him. If you know him today, he put it in your heart to know him. You didn’t do a thing. And I don’t understand all I know about that. But I believe he puts it in our hearts. Now that doesn’t mean you’re gonna come to know him. I don’t believe but it means if you do come to know him, he put it in your heart. He’s the one that did it. And if we you know, the thing that shines light on this is in Romans 12. And it’s a very familiar to verses Romans 12. One and two.

This look at them for a minute. Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So that you may prove what the will of God is. That which is good, and acceptable, and perfect, in the will of God. So, here Paul is dealing with a bunch of Romans in every church it’s ever existed with its emphasis of fellatio, Romans are current, no matter where you find the church, Paul started, they got trouble. They got false prophets coming in, they got old ways that are coming in, say, yeah, you need Jesus. But you also need to keep the sacrifices, you need to keep the traditions going, you need to do the Jewish sacrifices and offerings. And so Paul had to battle that in every church that they had. And so here, he’s given him a overall, really, it’s a play, it’s not as much a teaching is it is pleased. He says, I plead with you, brother. And that’s a sense of urgency. I urge you brothers, by the mercies of God. Now, he wouldn’t urge them to do it on their own power. The only way that we do spiritual things and accomplish spiritual things is through the power of the Holy Spirit, and the mercy and the grace of God. And that’s what he’s calling on here. He’s not just say, go out and do it. He said, by the mercies of God, by the grace of God go out and do it in his power and his wisdom and his understanding. So I plead with you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies. Now I’m pretty picky about present my body, at least I thought I was. I didn’t have much to present there. But what I had, I was a little picky about presenting it. But then what do you say in here is I have to do that. It’s something I do, I present my body a living and holy sacrifice. Now you realize in the Old Testament, and before Jesus came, that they sacrificed animals on the altar, and they shed the blood of those, and it covered the sand, it didn’t forgive the sand, it covered the sand of the Jews, and they would sacrifice animals. And Jesus ushered in a new sacrifice. He said, we’re done with all those sacrificing animals in covering sand, I’m going to completely forgive sin, I’m going to shed blood that will cleanse you from all sin. But I want you to present your body just like I presented my body and that God so loved the world, he gave his only son to sacrifice his body. Not his spirit, but his body. Beside marriage is a physical relationship, and the two become one flesh. So you sacrifice your body to your mate to your wife, in marriage. But in the spiritual context, what he’s talking about here is I want you to present your body’s a living and holy sacrifice. Now, I was a sacrifice at how long the cross and shared the blood and no more animal sacrifices need to be given. That’s done. We’re not doing that anymore. That Lamb of God has come. He’s been sacrificed. We don’t have to do those animal sacrifices anymore. He accomplished it. He said, it’s finished. It’s done. You don’t have to do that. But here’s what you do have to do. You have to decide to present your own body to God. In a holy and living sacrifice, not a bad sacrifice, but a holy sacrifice which has been cleansed by the Holy Spirit and found righteous in God’s eyes. And that’s what happens when you give your heart to Christ and you confess your sin and he forgives your sin and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. So he said, you present that holy body to him is a living sacrifice, not a dead sacrifice. It’s one thing to die for Christ. It’s another thing to live for Christ. And it might be a lot easier to die for Christ and to live every day and the day in and day out challenges of life and trials and trouble and tribulation, irritations and interruptions that come to our life, you have to live that out every day. And it might be easier just to die. And he’s saying go ahead and die. But die is a living sacrifice. Present your body before the Lord, give your body to him. Now you’re going to give your body to somebody, you’re going to serve somebody. Now he’s saying serve the Lord. And that’s what Joshua said in Joshua 28. He says,

you guys serve the gods that you serve back in Egypt serve the gods, that you are the idols that your forefathers served. But for me in my house, we’re gonna serve the Lord. And so Joshua made a decision to present his his family, his house, his to be living sacrifices for God. So you and I have to decide that he’s urging and pleading us to do it, and then we have to decide to do it, I can’t decide for you. You can’t decide for me, I couldn’t decide for Susan, I had to decide for me. And she had to decide for her, I was responsible for my own spiritual walk. She was responsible for her own spiritual walk, you’re responsible for your own spiritual walk, you can walk in the light, or you can walk in darkness, you can walk in newness of life, or you can walk in death. Dead Man Walking when you’re walking without Christ. So this is acceptable to God, when you’re living and holy sacrifice that’s acceptable to God. And it’s our spiritual service of worship. Now, we just had a great time of worship and singing. But a greater worship is when we present our bodies to God is a sacrifice. And that’s acceptable to God. And it’s our spiritual opportunity and even duty to worship Him in that way. If you’re a Christian, if you put your hand at the Christian life and plow, if you will, then you’re obligated to live that life out. Then you’re going to be pretty frustrated trying that if you’re casual, or lukewarm, or backslidden, or not even a Christian and think you are. So you can be just as desperate and back in backsliding as you can be in not knowing him. But you can know Him and not knowing Well, you can know Him and follow Him but not following him closely. That’s your choice in my choice every day. And so he’s urging us to make that decision. And then he said, Look, here’s a problem going on in the church, and they were having that problem in the church. We’re having this problem in the church. And it’s Don’t be conformed to this world. They were being conformed to the world they were in. Now, you can know Jesus Christ, but you could be carnal and worldly in knowing Jesus Christ. Or you can profess to know Jesus Christ and be carnal and worldly and you don’t know Christ at all. And only God can sort that out and who’s in which camp or category. But what he’s doing here says be conformed and I looked up conformed in a means assuming an outward expression that does not reflect what’s really going on inside. That’s another def another definition for that is hypocrite. You know, we’ve we always will have and have had a problem living what we say we believe. We believe things in weird saying about things and we hold our hands up to things and we amen to things that we really, truly believe. But then, you do and I do oftentimes really well. We’re really man of God, until we face opposition. And then not so much. until things aren’t going our way until we have that health issue, that financial issue, that neighbor issue, that marriage issue, though children issues are those car issues. They’re always issues, they’re always irritations. They’re always challenges every day. You’ll never be without them this out of heaven. And he’s saying, Look, don’t be conformed and tree in respond to those things like the world. Don’t be conformed to the world’s ways, the world’s attitudes, the world’s values. You’ve been called out of that. to a higher standard, to a different life, to a new life, to a more powerful life. But it’s a harder life and a more challenging life because it attacks everything in us. Everything that we try to save in, that’s what Jesus said, If you try to save your life, you’re going to lose it. But if you lose your sake for my life, for my sake and the gospel, then you’ll have eternal life, then you’ll find true life. So don’t be conformed. It’s a kind of masquerade act to be shaped and fashioned or brought into harmony with to be similar or identical. So you could be similar or identical to the world, or you can have a strong family resistance resemblance to Jesus Christ. And here’s Paul is saying, look, present your bodies a living, holy sacrifice, it’ll be acceptable to God. And then you will have a life that’s not just acceptable to God, but a life that similar and identical to who he is. He put it this way, after he taught him the Beatitudes, and he went through the Beatitudes, and he says, You’re the salt of the

earth. You’re the light on a hill, you’re the light of the world. Now, let your work light shine. Don’t put it under a bushel basket. Don’t be backslidden. Don’t be ashamed of the gospel, live the life. It takes courage to live the life, encourage one another and listen, in doing that, you’ll never be the man of God, you could be or should be without the man in your life next to you now, right here, without other godly men in your life. That’s the reason we have 4am groups. It’s a face to face group, you guys sitting over here, don’t know the guy sitting over here, you’ve been together 10 years in here and you don’t know each other. But you get guys in a forum group and they’re sharing their hearts. They’re sharing their troubles. They’re sharing their victories. They’re sharing life together. That’s what we call Heart to Heart groups. If you don’t have a heart to heart group, you’re never going to be the man you could be or should be. Whatever the heart to heart group is, you need godly men in your life that will push you out of that plane when you’re supposed to parachute over that Warzone. Because you’re not gonna jump out on your own. But if that guy behind you is counting on you to get out of his way, so he can jump and he puts a boot in your rear end. If you got a boot in your rear and leave recently, as if you hadn’t it’s not called you don’t need it. It’s because people don’t think you can take it.

Don’t be conformed to the world. Well, what’s my other option, be transformed. transformed, from this world’s age from all the beliefs and values, be transformed as changes and converted in character and condition? changed in outward appearance, you know, you’ve ever had anybody say to you, What’s your deal? What is it? What do you mean? We use the same to have a piece about you. It is there’s something about you that’s different is accounting us on your face. And when you have the light of Christ in the inside, He shines out through your countenance through your faith through the peace that you have. It’s very evangelistic to be filled with the Holy Spirit. To have peace. It surpasses all comprehension. And it shows in your face. shows in your eyes when we were traveling in and out of Romania back before the wall came down, and we’d go through the border from Austria to Romania, or Hungary to Romania. And that always stopped for passport control. They want to see your passport and sometimes it’s the middle of the night and they slam the door of your cabin open and they password control while you’re waking up like that. And so we had and we had our little Bibles and our coats hanging on the wall and stuff so they wouldn’t find them. And then we’d go do our ministry and then the wall came down. And some of our guys were still count going in and out. But it one is dangerous as it was or precarious. In one of our guys was being checked with his passport one day and this guard who was a guard for years in that same border pack crossing, said to him said your missionaries, aren’t you? He says as you know, he says I could tell it by your eyes. Can they tell it by your eyes. If you’re transformed they can if you’re transformed and outward appearance to bring over a different point of view or belief to alter from one form of function to another and that’s where in the chosen Were Matthew was talking to Jesus and Jesus had just done something that was upside down that one what they were used to. And he says, But indeed, this is what, that’s what I did. And he says, Yeah, but this is different. And you said get used to different. It’s a different life. If you want to live, you have to die. If you want to be First, you have to be last. If you want to be great, you have to be a servant. It’s that difference. It’s a paradox. You have to leave your practical thinking, your rational thinking, you have to leave that at the door, when you come into the this new kingdom. It’s a live live by the Holy Spirit in you and through you. And it’s different. It’s not the same as it was, you’ve been called to something higher and different, more powerful and more Earth shaking and more life changing. That’s what it’s all about. He didn’t just give you a different countenance and a different power to be patient and turn the other cheek and go the second mile for you. He did it so you could show people what the power of the gospel can do in a man’s life. When he comes in and changes his life. People want to know what you got and they want it. Well, how do you get transformed? Well, by renewing your mind to restored a freshness and vigor and perfection, that’s what the Word of God does when you get in. But you have to get in it to get hungry for it. You don’t get hungry for the word and then go read it. You go read the word and get hungry for it. You get hungry for it, you taste and see that it’s good. If you’re not in the if you don’t have a hunger for the word is called you’re not in the word. And I mean, you got to get in the word. It’s it’s a like in Psalm one. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And he meditates on it every Sunday morning. And then he’s a godly guy. By Sunday afternoon, when he’s criticizing the pastor for his message, he’s already lost it. You got to be on the word every day. he meditates on it every day. And every night that it did, you don’t become a man of God, in a man of the word in a spiritual, mature guy. On the backstroke, you can take a pill and get it you can’t even take a class and get it. You get it by spending time in his presence.

You know the character of God by experiencing the character of God, the way he deals with you and the way he deals with you. When you’re praying. When you journaling. When he you hear him speak, and it changes your life. And you have something to give to others. You have something when they’re going through their child their problem. You’ve been there, you’ve done that, you know what God said to you? God, I think I made an idol out of Susan. I think I love her more than I love you. I miss her so much. And he says you then make an ad a lot of her. You love her more because you love me more. See, that’s where you learn God’s character and grace. God are committed to sin again, he said, What’s in? You know, the one I’ve confessed this morning? But what was that? Adele do what it was? And he said, Did you confess it? And I said, Yeah, did I forgive it? He said, Yeah, well, then I put it behind me as far as the east is on the west. I don’t remember it anymore. What do you do? And I thought, good grief. He doesn’t keep score on me. He forgets my sand when I confess it. He doesn’t want to hear it about that anymore. It’s as a brand new sand as far as he’s concerned. What a god. Are you that way when people will offend you? Can you forgive them and not even remembered anymore? Are you putting it in a resentment back? You let in toxic jealousy and fear, bitterness and anger, resentment? You let that loose in your life because it will be toxic. And wisdom when I say are you letting it loose go like that. You got resentment banks with different people’s names on it. And God says empty that bank, I empty my bank. Why are you having your bank? Why are you claiming your right to say if he would save his life will lose it. But who loses his life he’s hard to be offended. You can’t make him mad easily. He’s not overly sensitive about how he’s treated. He didn’t take it personal all the time. He doesn’t get wounded easily. He’s got a tough skin and tender heart. That’s what God’s trying to make out of you and me. to regenerate to a better higher or more worthy state. change occurring to the Holy Spirit how he transforms our thinking through the study and meditation of the word Taylor in his Living Bible paraphrase says it put this way. And so dear brothers, I plead with you, by God’s mercy to give your bodies to God. Let him be a living sacrifice, and holy, the kind he can accept. When you think of what he’s done for you, Is that too much to ask, don’t copy the ways and behavior and customs of this world. But be a new and different person with a fresh newness. You know, you’re going to follow the customs and the values and the ways of the world if you don’t know the word of God, if you’re not a man of the word, if you don’t know what God’s Spirit heart and attitude is, if you hadn’t gotten wisdom, let’s see in life from his point of view, and if you haven’t gotten understanding that’s responding in any situation, the way Jesus would respond, then you have no other recourse but be worldly, casual, carnal, backslidden you may be a Christian, but you’re not spirit field. Christian, you’re not, there’s not a dynamic about your life. There’s not a power in your life, to live the life to make people hungry. And it’s not about you. If we could just get over ourselves. We just didn’t care what people thought of us didn’t care how we come across, didn’t care how they judge us, or accuse us or understand or misunderstand us. getting past that, but you don’t get past that overnight. You get past it by spending time in God’s word. You don’t know the will of God. Unless you know God, unless you know his word. And then you pray according to His will. In the greatest way to pray and endure prayer is not my will. But your will be done. This seems like a good thing to me, Lord, it seems like you would bring revival seems like you would heal. It seems like you would set free. But God had other plans. So I have to pray not my will. But your will be done. It didn’t matter what I think. Chambers puts it in more powerful terms. Why shouldn’t God break your heart? If God has to break your heart to accomplish His purpose in the world, and thank him for breaking your heart? Is that where you are now in your spirit, spiritual life? Are you at a place where you could thank God for the problems in the troubles in the tribulation in your life.

Because if you’re not as cold you don’t want to be. It’s not because you’re self centered and self preserving. And all those you go look up self in the dictionary, there’ll be about 30, self things that refer to ourselves. Forget about yourself. Don’t think highly of yourself. Don’t think more highly of yourself than you should. Don’t try to save your own life. But give it up for new life. That’s a whole message of the Scriptures. So how do you know these guys that have done that? What are their characteristics? Well, one is a they’re concerned about keeping God’s law, they want to be obedient. They want to be obedient to the word. They’re not always obedient. They can’t be consistently 100% of badian. No one can this out of heaven. But the tenor of their life is obedience. They fear God’s law, they want to keep God’s law. We’re not under the law anymore. But we’re under grace. But that doesn’t mean we don’t keep the law. That doesn’t mean we do away with the law. The law is still good. But it’s not the law that saves us its grace, it saves us and that makes us want to keep the law and be obedient. Not only want to we have the power to do it, because of the grace of God. So that guy wants to do that. In Romans eight for what the law could not do. Week is it was through the flesh God did. So I couldn’t keep the law. Law couldn’t save me. So God saved me by grace through faith. And then the law started kicking in, in my power in my life to obey the law started kicking in. Another thing about this guy, he lives keenly aware that he’s in the presence of God all the time. God’s constant viewer of his life, God’s omnipresent. So when the Holy Spirit comes to live in your heart, he’s with you and everything you do everywhere you go everything you think everything you say. And so the Psalm is finally in 139 said, search me O God and know my heart, try me and know my just thought, see if there’s any hurtful way in me and lead me in the everlasting way. Search me I know my heart. He’s gonna search me and know my heart anyway. He knows everything I think and do and why I do it. Every good thing every bad thing he understood And so he knows, he knows my struggles. He knows the number of hairs on my head or not. You can’t run and you can’t hide. You can run but you can’t hide. Let’s put it that way. So if you can’t hide, and he knows everything, why not just walk out into the light. When I just walk out into the light and say God, you know my heart, against the end alone, have I sinned and done what’s evil in your sight? I didn’t break man’s law broke your law. I haven’t been disobedient demand. Although I have been did that because I’ve been this disobedient to you. The big difference in the world that the world does not live in this way. He’s always aware that he is a blood bought soldier, under orders of his lord and savior and above all things seeks to please Him in all things. This is why the man of God views everything that happens to him differently from everybody else. So this man is not concerned with his daily needs. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says You guys are so worried about what you’re going to wear and what you’re going to eat and what you’re going to drink. Now to know that I love the birds of the air and I take care of them. If I’m going to take care of them. Don’t you know, I’ll take care of you. When we were going to Eastern Europe, we were raising a whole lot of money to do it and to move the whole family over there and found a place to live and do the deal. I was journaling one day. And I started panicking. What am I doing? What was I thinking? Going all the money we have to raise and the 30,000, I’ve got 10. And I said God, I don’t know why I’m going over here and putting that I don’t know what my family is going to go through in this move. I know what’s going on here. I know the life that I have. I know I get to speak and teach and speak at retreats and teach classes and do the things that I do that you’ve gifted me to do over there. I’m not going to get to do any of that I’ve worked through translators traveling around teaching stuff.

And we only have $10,000. We need 30. And I happen to have my Bible open to Matthew 17. And that’s where Jesus and the Pharisees came to Peter and they said, Does your master pay the temple tax? And Peter said, of course, then you went to Jesus and said, do we pay the temple tax? And Jesus said, Well, we shouldn’t have to. But we will. And so you go down to the sea and pull out a fish and there’ll be money in his mouth. And that’ll pay for yours and mine. In God’s in Peter did and they found the money and paid the temple tax. And God said to me, don’t you understand that if I called you to go somewhere, and I’m going to take care of you and I’ll provide for you to do it. That same week, another guy wrote a check for $20,000. And we were off to Europe, to Eastern Europe. God says You guys are so worried about your daily needs. But you better be worried about your spiritual needs. There’s a lot more important things in what you’re going to wear and what you’re going to drink and what you’re going to eat. He’s not this man is not concerned with his daily needs. Not that they don’t matter, but they’re not his main concern and are not what he lives for. The Christian man sits in differently to worldly affairs. Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus, Paul said, No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. So this guy is keenly aware that he’s in the presence of God. And he needs to forget about himself and trust God by faith to provide him protect and do all that he’s called him to do. And finally, he’s always in walks in the fear of God. In the fear of God means that he realizes that what I do and how I act and the things that I decide or have consequences or blessings. If I’m disobedient, there are consequences to pay. David was disobedient with Bathsheba and killed her husband Uriah. God forgave him because David repented and confessed and broke before God. And so he didn’t take his kingdom away like he did Saul’s who never did repent. But David had consequences the rest of his life because of That sin, and the consequences were in his house with his own children, for the most part, certainly he made himself gossip for the anti King movement for his enemies and those who didn’t wish him well. But this man walks in fear of the judgment of God, the consequences if he’s not obedient. It’s not that God doesn’t give him grace, even to face the consequences. But he walked in the fear of God that there are consequences, he’s keenly aware of that. Don’t Be Dumb, don’t be deceived, God will not be mocked, but whatsoever you so that way you reap and whatsoever you reap, has been sown in your own heart, before the Lord, that man’s keenly aware of that, and it makes him want to be obedient, another reason to want to be not just to please Him, but so that he doesn’t have to discipline us as His children because he will. And he does.

For It’s time for judgment to begin in the household of God. So guys, God’s called us to a higher lifestyle, he’s called us to another kingdom. He were in this world for a little while. And then we’re going to be taken out of the world. And if we truly know Jesus, he said, You will not perish but you will have eternal life. We got heaven to look forward to that’s our hope. But while we’re here, we have to live as citizens of a new kingdom, your citizenship is in heaven from which we eagerly await the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I’m a citizen of heaven. We have too many Americans who happen to be Christian, rather than Christians who happen to be American. And we have to be careful about that. It’s a subtle difference. But am I more committed to this country? Am I more committed to this, this worldly flag that I sing about and cry when I do? Or am I more committed to a heavenly kingdom? A kingdom that he started when I came to know Christ and then never end. Married Susan that it ended. I still feel married. I still love her. But she left But Jesus said, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll always be with you. This life is temporary. It’s short. We don’t have much time left looking at most of the gray hair in this room. Let’s make it count. Amen. Let’s make it count. Let’s make every day count as live like citizens of the kingdom of heaven that we’ve been called out out of the darkness into His marvelous light. Father, that’s what we pray this morning. We want to be citizens of your kingdom. We want to be men of God for such a time as this. Want to live that life we want to see revival come and it’ll come not because we have crusades and evangelism outreaches. But because we started living the Sermon on the Mount, we started being these kind of men, we started having those kind of countenance that the Holy Spirit brings when peace and grace and joy and love is in our hearts. We start forgiving those who don’t deserve to be forgiven because we found grace in you and we can give grace to others, especially in our own home. We’ve been called to live different lives, exemplary lives. In Lord we could only do that through your power and your Holy Spirit do it Lord. In us even today in Jesus name and Norma God’s man said give them Heaven, guys.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Pete McKenzie 0:01
Well, we’re still going through the introductory stages of looking at the Sermon on the Mount. And I know you’re just like me, I’ve known you long enough to know what are good things and bad things and challenges are as men. And so we’re looking at the Sermon on the Mount because it teaches us about Kingdom living. You know, one of the things that I love about the chosen is the things that Jesus says that aren’t in Scripture. But that make scripture come alive. He cast a demon out of Mary and Nicodemus thought he had cast a demon out of her and she had been in terrible condition and Jesus cast the demons out over and she was a different person, Nicodemus are and couldn’t believe it. And he asked her what had happened? And she says, Well, I was one way. And now I’m different. That’s a good testimony for the gospel in that I was one way and now I’m different. And that different means that we have to get used to different if we’re coming to Christ. That’s another thing that he said, one of his disciples, I think it was Matthew said, Yeah, but that’s different. He goes, you have to get used to different. Different What? Different everything when you come to know Jesus Christ, you’re born into a supernatural kingdom that doesn’t establish itself on logic and best practices and things that tend to make sense in the world. There are other worldly, it’s a different lifestyle, it’s a call up higher. And so we need to be reminded of that, because it’s really easy to drift into the ways of the world. We’ll look at that in a few minutes. And just by way of introductory thoughts in reminding, so I’m going to read a few quotes at Oswald Chambers said about the Sermon on the Mount. Only the Holy Spirit can teach can expound on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Beware of placing our Lord his teacher first instead of Savior, we must know him first as Savior before his teaching can have any meaning for us are before it can have any meaning other than an ideal that leads only to despair. So if you don’t know Jesus Christ, if you haven’t received the Holy Spirit, then all of the things Jesus said that they’ll either won’t make any difference in your life are you’re not going to understand them. Or if you do hear them, you’re going to be led to despair. That means you’re going to try to keep them but you don’t have the power to do that. And that will be lead you to despair. If Jesus is only a teacher, then all he can do is tantalize spy, anti erecting a standard we cannot come anywhere near or hope to attain by being born of the Holy Spirit above. And then knowing him first as Savior. We know that he did not come to teach us only he came to teach us what he teaches we should be. So if you want to know what the Christian life’s all about, if someone ever asked you the question, Well, what does it mean? What do I have to do? What do I have to give up? What do I have to join? He say, Well, let me read you what the Sermon on the Mount says, because that’s what Jesus taught us. He taught us what we should be. And it’s a lifestyle that we’ve entered into. The sermon on the mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is having his way in our life. So this is how you’re going to live. When if and when the Holy Spirit is having his way with you. You will turn the other cheek you’ll go the second mile and you’ll be blessed.

In doing it. the bedrock of Jesus Christ kingdom is poverty, not possession, not decisions for Jesus Christ, but a feeling of absolute futility of futility that says I cannot begin to live this life. And then Jesus comes along and says bless it, are you. That’s the entrance. And it takes a long time for us to believe that we are poor. The knowledge of our own poverty brings us to the moral frontier where Jesus works. the Beatitudes which we’ll look at in the next few weeks, starts with blessing of the poor in spirit, the poverty stricken spiritually. He’s not say bless it are you if you’re poor financially, or if you’re rich financially may in fact he has more warnings against rich Sound poor, but it can be you can be wrong in both directions. But what he’s saying is poor in spirit. This is how the Holy Spirit works. He works in the hearts of his disciple. His teaching comes with astonishing discomfort to begin with, because it’s out of all proportion to the natural way of looking at things. But Jesus puts in a new sense of proportion. And slowly we form our way of walking in conversation on the line of his precepts. Remember, that our Lord’s teaching only applies to those who are His disciples. So he was teaching Kingdom living to people that have been born into the kingdom and born again into His kingdom. How many of you have been despairing before you came to Christ because you couldn’t keep the rules. Anybody besides me in here have that experience? You the in Taurus, the natural way of living is you get what you deserve. So you have to be good. If you’re going to go to heaven, you have to keep the rules, you have to be adherent to all that you’ve been taught is from the childhood up, that you’re supposed to do to be a good little boy. And then you find out you can’t keep the rules. You keep them sometimes, but can’t keep them all the time. Even when we come to know Christ, we have a hard time keeping the rules and living out what we say we believe that we have recourse at that point. Before I came to Christ, I just had despair. When I couldn’t keep the roof there was nowhere to turn and nowhere to go. in futility and frustration was my lot. But then one night, and because I was desperate, and right in Christianity, Jesus Christ is a rescuer of desperate man. And because I was desperate, I prayed a desperate prayer, God, I must total failure. Being a Christian, I can’t live this life. I can’t keep the rules. And I know I’m not the man You created me to be. But I want to be God put I want to be in my heart. Just like if you’re a Christian today, he put a want to be in your heart, his knowledge, his sense of his presence is sincere. He’s real. This calling on our to our souls to that enter man. And if we’re going to understand this fully, we need to look at what Paul said in Romans 12. And it’s very familiar verse, but it’s verse we need to go over and over and be reminded over and over again. You don’t read the Bible through just once. You just keep reading, you need to read it over and over again before it really sinks in and has its way with you. Let’s do that with Romans 12 here. Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies that living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So that you may prove what the will of God is that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Will of God. Well, I urge you, he said, that means come alongside of you, I want you to help me and I’ll help you. urge, I beg,

it says, Is that important? Well, it’s what’s important. It’s my to my brother, and those who know Christ with me, those who are brothers and sisters in Christ. I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God. Now you can’t do this and you can enter in and you have no power without the mercy and the grace of God. So what he is going to tell them can’t be done apart from God’s mercy and grace. Well, what’s it going to tell them? present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice? If God hadn’t given you the mercy and the grace to understand spiritual things, you’re not about to obey that command, or that urging, in it’s more of an urging than a command. And he said, present your bodies. That means you do it voluntarily you do it because you want to do you hesitate in doing it. You wonder what it’s going to cost you and doing it. But you do it. present your bodies, I can’t present your body for you. Or you may you have to do it, I have to do it. We have to take control of our own decisions in making that kind of decision. When you say present your mind he said present Your bodies, your actions where you go, what you do present your bodies, a living and holy sacrifice. If you look up sacrifice, it means an act of offering to a deity something precious, well, I got a feeling that you think that your body is something precious. And you’re not going to offer it up just to anybody for any reason, you’re going to have to have a good reason to offer up your body to give up control of your life. its destruction, or surrender or something precious for the sake of something else, you’re probably not going to give up your body either. If you there, you’re not going to get something better in return. Not just something as good, but something better. And that’s what got Jesus is offered us. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, I’ll give you something better, what’s better than weary and heavy laden will rest. I’ll give you rest. God always gives us something better when we sacrifice the good. And the good is the enemy of the better. Because we may be satisfied with good when we could have better. And that’s what Jesus is calling us to always. Sacrifice means to give your present self up for the hopes of something better. Well, that’s the only way to be acceptable to God, a holy and living sacrifice acceptable to God, what was acceptable to God and rooted in our redemption? What sacrifice was worthy? Well, his own son, he gave up his own son. And so Paul is not hesitating or embarrassed or nervous about asking me to sacrifice my body for something better. When God sacrificed his own son, then it’s not a stretch for me to sacrifice myself. And that’s the context of it, which is your spiritual service of worship. We just worship had a wonderful worship guys do a great job, singing songs, and we call that worship. But and it is, but what he’s the worship he’s talking about here is the worship of presenting your own body as the sacrifice, to live in a way and in this kingdom, living, that changes the world. That changes people’s attitude toward God, that makes people want him and hunger for him, by the way, they see him in your life. And that’s what he said. And when he said, You’re the light of the world, so let your light shine in such a way that man will see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven. So God has called us to a kingdom, Kingdom of sacrifice, the entrance to the kingdom of being poor in spirit.

And then he gives him a warning. It’s a warning the church is needed for 2000 years, Paul was writing to the church in Rome and to the Christians in Rome. And you know, what were their problem was they were being conformed to the world. Another translation says, Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold. You know, this is something you do on purpose. You don’t stumble into it. You don’t get up one morning, say, I think I’m just going to be world and carnal and casual today. But because you haven’t purposed not to be, you go through that day, being worldly and carnal and casual. That’s where you naturally default to, when you’re not moving ahead and when Christ and you’re not growing in him, and you’re not spending time in his presence in His Word in prayer and fellowship. When you’re not committed to the Great Commission, you’re going to find yourself being conformed to the world. That means assuming an outward expression that does not reflect what is really on the inside. Now the Pharisees did it in one direction, they had an outward expression that Jesus is outwardly your widened, set flickers, but inside your dead man’s bones, so they had been conformed to a religiosity that was dead, had no life had no grace had no hope. It was power and control. It’s what’s going on in America today. It’s what’s always going on in the world power and control. So you can have things your way. And the more you’re threatened with your power and control the manner the last year you become, the more fearful you become. The more you’re threatened, the more your power is threatened. The more rules you make, the more laws you make. The more people you hurt, jail, incarcerate destroy, you have to kill him. Feels in Cambodia, the gulags in Russia, the death camps in Nazi Germany. That’s what it’s all about power and control. And the more they get threatened, the more power and control they exercise as the devil, that’s what that’s a fruit of his flesh and spirit. To be conformed as a kind of masquerade act to be shaped fashioned or brought into harmony with to be similar or identical to similar or identical to the world. So I have a choice, I’m going to be similar and identical to Jesus Christ, or I’m going to be similar and identical to the world. And, you know, Billy Graham said, 90% of people in church are carnal Christians, they might come to church, they may do good things they may serve and help here and there and they may give to a missionary or put some money in the offering plate. They may stand up during worship. But inside their dead men sit inside their casual. Yeah, I’ve had guys come to me on occasion, over the last 20 years, 25 years. And they say, I know so and so’s on your leadership team. But you want to see how he treats people at work. You see how he acts when he’s in the marketplace, now always breaks my heart when I hear that. He’s one thing in the men’s group, that is a totally different thing at home with his wife or in the office with his business colleagues. That means he’s been conformed to the world never been transformed. Don’t be conformed to the world in its ways, but be transformed. And that transformed the world he’s talking about refers to the beliefs and the values, the right practices, the fear based world that we live in. Be, don’t be conformed to that, their habits, the way they talk their values. You’ve been there, you’ve done that you’ve been called out of that you’re a new person in Christ. Don’t go back. Don’t be conformed to that. And if you’re not going to be conformed, you need to be transformed. To change your converting character and condition or a change in outward appearance, to bring over to a different point of view, or belief, to alter from one form or function to another transfiguration. It’s the same word that Matthew use when he wrote about Jesus’s transfiguration. When he got in his heavenly body, and that Peter and James and john were there to see it. In Matthew use that word, transfigured, we should outwardly express our inner redeem nature’s daily. Don’t be conformed to the world be transformed. Now, how am I transformed begs the question, well, I have to have my mind renewed,

be transformed by the renewing of your mind been restored to freshness and vigor and perfection. That’s one of the reasons we go to retreats. God does some retreats that he just intend to do every meeting, when we meet in here a Wednesday or Friday, or you go to your Sunday church. God does something he refreshes us. He renews us, we’re reminded in because we’re away, and that’s the purpose of being away. That can’t happen sometimes in the regular meetings, to make new spiritually, to regenerate to a better, higher, more worthy state. So you need to be transformed from that being conformed to the world and its ways to be transformed, spiritually. change occurring by the Holy Spirit transforms our thinking through the study and meditation of the word, a mind saturated in control by the word of God. So then the fruit comes out of your life without you trying because it’s inside and who you are. You’re not dead man’s bones anymore. You’re alive and fresh, and you’re being fresh and about the Word of God. And that’s if you want to get refreshed if you want to have revival in your life. It has to start in prayer and the word saturated but his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law. he meditates every Sunday morning. Now, day and night, all the time. He’s always turned his mind toward the Lord, re being refreshed by the word, staying in the word devotional thoughts, memorization, meditation, reading, studying in hearing all those ways that we get into the word and let the word get into us. So don’t be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of Have your mind. The Living Bible wrote that passage like this. And so dear brothers, I plead with you, by God’s mercy, to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living sacrifice, and holy, the kind he can accept, when you think of what he’s done for you is this too much to ask. Don’t copy the ways behavior and customs of this world, but be a new and different person with a fresh newness. And all you do and say, then you will learn from your own experience, our his ways will really satisfy you. Well, so we’re being renewed, we’re being transformed, you’re on the road, you turn around, you try to live it out what you say you believe what then and you do a pretty good job of it, you’re learning to grow in Christ, you’re in a to seven or journey or whatever kind of Bible study you are in or have been in. And you’re starting to get a hunger for the word, you starting to want to go to the prayer meeting, you’re starting to have that light in you shine brighter. And there are three characteristics that are true of this kind of Christian. One is always concerned about keeping God’s law. We’re not under the law, but we’re under grace. But we’re still meant to keep the law. The Christian man is always concerned about living and keeping the law of God. So you know, their standards, their limits, or boundaries, their instruction, their commandments. And I have to decide if I’m going to obey those or not. Now, if I’m growing in Christ, I’ll be more obedient. And if I’m not growing, if I’m in the word and in fellowship with other guys that are chasing after Christ, I’m making better decisions. I’m saying yes to the things that need to be say yes to and no to the things I need to say no to. But when I say yes to the things that I need to say no to, I’m sliding back, back into the world’s ways, the devil will always try to conform me to the world and get my worldly habits and attitudes and hunger and appetite. He’ll always try to soak me in the world. But I have to choose. And you have to choose what I’m going to read what I’m going to listen to what I’m going to adhere to, who I’m going to hang around with, who I’m going to be friends with, where I’m going to go where I’ll give my money, all those decisions we have to make, and there yes or no decisions. There decisions where I’m saying yes to the spirit in me that’s alive and refreshing me, or to the carnal flesh in me to satisfy my own flesh and own will in my own ways, which makes me very dissatisfied, in the end. Because there’s no rest in that. There’s no peace in that

he’s always concerned about keeping God’s law, he wants to be obedient. Not that he always is what he wants to be. And that gives him a step up an advantage of actually doing what he says he believes in living out what he says he believes. And again, we always have recourse when we don’t just went out, wrote a book called two steps forward, three steps forward, and two steps back, something like that. And it was talking about how we grow in the Christian life, and then we fall back and then we grow and we fall back. It’s a normal process. But going three steps and falling back one is what we’re after, and going three steps in three more steps and then falling back. Until we get to that place where we’re saying yes to the Yes, things more than we’re saying yes to the know things in our life. So we want to be in that process. Romans eight three and four speaks to that. It says for what the law could not do week as it was through the flesh, God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh. So what I couldn’t do, God did, I couldn’t keep the rules. But God gave me the Spirit of Christ, to help me keep the rules so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. So we don’t set the law aside, when we come to Christ, we still are going to obey the law, but in the Spirit of Christ, not in legalism, not to get us to heaven. But because that law is written in our hearts and that we’re reading in the scriptures becomes true in our hearts in lives. And we live it out. It gets to be live in and out consciously, but then we live it out unconsciously because it’s who We are we don’t have to think about it or pray about it. It’s who we are. It’s imprinted in our soul, and our habits and our thoughts. And that becomes a fruit of our life. Who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And that’s what we’re doing. When that happens. We’re walking in the Spirit, not in the flesh. And that’s the goal of discipleship. That’s why we get in Bible studies. That’s why we get around guys that love Christ more than us. It’s why we go the prayer meeting, listen to the sermon. Because it’s discipleship that leads us to Christian holy living. That not displaces God but satisfies us and changes other’s lives. A second thing, it is true of this guy, he always lives in his keenly aware that he is in the presence of God, when he wants to obey God, and he’s always aware of God’s presence everywhere he goes, if you look at Psalm 139, you just kind of lose any kind of heart from thinking you can run and hide from God, you can run but you can’t hide. If you go to the top of the mountain, he’s there. If you go to the deepest part of the ocean, he’s there. No matter where you go, or what you do, he’s there. If you if you go on a trip, he’s there before you get there and closes you behind. He knows what you’re thinking. He knows what his plan for your life is. He knows what’s going on with you. He knows what happened yesterday, today, and he knows where you’re going to go and what’s going to happen tomorrow. He’s omnipresent. He’s omniscient and knows everything. You can run but you cannot hide. So you acknowledge his presence. And when you acknowledge his presence, you say, is like as playing God, I play golf with Jesus and dad and Balan. But I’m always playing with Jesus. And I was hitting some bad shots the other day, I’ve, I’ve kind of started playing pretty good golf. So I’m starting to get more upset when I don’t. When I was out, I was playing crummy golf. I just accepted it. So I’m having a bad day. I had two good holes, three good holes. And then I triple bogey the fourth. And I said some things I wish I hadn’t said today. And I told the Lord I said, Lord, I’m sorry, I just got a bad attitude. And I hit a bad shot off the tee on the next hole. I had a pretty good shot on the second. I got on the green and three. And after that drive, I thought man, I’m really lucky if I double bogey this hole now so let’s talk about a 10 foot putt for bogey and it changed my spirit heart and attitude. So if you want to get your spirit heart and attitude change this go bogey the fourth Oh.

And then I went on to shoot in 87 I’ve got control of myself again. But you know where it started? My point is I acknowledge God that was aware of his presence. He cares about how I respond when I miss putts or hit putts. He cares about my spirit, heart and attitude everywhere I am everything I do. But I have to acknowledge his presence. I have to be keenly aware that he’s there. Do you acknowledge his presence? And now all you’re doing when you’ve said something inappropriate or something you shouldn’t have said or did something you shouldn’t have done? spoke to your wife in a way that was unloving and unkind. Even if you think she deserved it. You acknowledge that and you talk to God about it. Do you bring it before him and ask forgiveness? Do you make that light that you never should have made but it stayed green in you in a hurry? Do you acknowledge God do you pray for a parking place and there it is right in front in a crowded parking lot. Some people think that sacrilegious to think that God cares about where you park I think he cares about where our park that’s a reason they didn’t give me those upfront things all the time. He says you need the exercise. But just acknowledged him talking to him acknowledging his presence. And so that’s a characteristic of the Christian that’s growing in Christ. the Sermon on the Mount Christian, the one that’s having his mind renewed. The big difference is that the word world does not live in this way. He is always aware that he’s a blood brought soldier under orders of his lord and savior and above all things seeks to please Him in all things. This is why the man of God views everything that happens to him differently from everybody else. So this man is not concerned with his daily needs. Jesus said that in the Sermon on the Mount, don’t be concerned about what you’re going to wear and what you’re going to eat and what you’re going to drink. He says I know all that stuff. I’ll take care of that. be concerned about the things that are eternal. So this man doesn’t really care about the daily needs he has. Not that they don’t matter, but they’re not his main concern and are not what he lives for. The Christian man sits in differently to worldly affairs, because he belongs to another kingdom in another way. Like Mary said, I was one way and now I’m different. Get used to different timber Timothy put it in these terms, suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus, no soldier and active service entangled himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. He’s a soldier, he never forgot. He’s a soldier. He finds out His Spirit, heart and attitude, his identity is in Christ. And finally, the Christian man always walks in the fear of God, not faint hearted, or fear or lacking courage, because perfect love casts out all fear. He always lives under the fear of judgment. You know, judgment, meaning, there’s going to be a cost to pay when i sin. I get to choose, usually I get to choose this is a conscious choice of sin, doing what I shouldn’t do what you want, I shouldn’t watch say and what I shouldn’t say. And so he always leaves under the fear of judgment, the consequences of my choices, that consequences of things that I choose to do or not to do that I should do. He does, he does this because the Lord told him to the test of his life, and what he’s building is coming by one who sees and knows his heart, he always walks in the fear of the Lord. Second Corinthians five says, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. And so everything I do is going to be judged one day, everything I thought said did, there’s a judgment seat of Christ as well, great white throne judgment that separates sheep and goat, people that are saved and born again. And the people that not the people that entered the narrow gate and the people that entered the wide gate, it’s a great white throne judgment that will come in the end times. But there’s another judgment for those who know Jesus Christ. And that judgment is called the judgment seat of Christ and will be judged for what we did in Christ. And what we did in the in the world is we lived out our lives in Christ. So as we keep going along in the Sermon on the Mount, we’re gonna keep being reminded of this kingdom living, I need to be reminded, I’m thinking maybe you do, too. We need to not forget who we are, that we find our identity in Christ. And we acknowledge his presence. We’re live in the fear of him.

That means it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love us anymore. But he’s a good father, and he disciplines us when we need it. So let’s don’t have to need it too often. Amen. Father, we just thank you for your word. It’s renewing those spirit. It reminds it for who we are and what we’re supposed to be and how we’re supposed to live. You reminds us that we cannot live apart from you this life, this Christian life, this spiritual life without the Holy Spirit’s help. Thank you for giving us that help. Help us even today to walk in and Jesus name And all God’s men said. Amen. Get them heaven guys.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Kingdom Living, Life Lessons from the Sermon on the Mount

Jesus said, I’ve come to introduce you to a new kingdom. The children of Israel thought that Jesus would be their political messiah… the one sent to deliver them from under the oppressive thumb of the Roman Empire. However, his new kingdom was not of this world… but from heaven above. This kingdom was not founded on worldly political power and the might of earthly armies. His was a kingdom based on the love of God. From the world’s perspective, the kingdom of our Lord is an upside down kingdom.

The world taught that you should hate your enemies and seek retribution against those who wrong you. However, Jesus said in John 13:34-35, A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

The Church of Jesus Christ is the temple of God, God’s dwelling place. The journey to the inner chamber is the journey to the heart of God. Jesus came to live with us and within us… that we would be born again, not of corruptible seed inherited fro Adam, but of God’s Holy Spirt. To live the Christian life is to live from the heart of Christ’s heart behind our hearts. Believers who enter into the inner chamber of God’s Holy Spirit come to the understanding that his spirit of life in Christ has cleansed us and delivered us from the darkness of this world.

Jesus taught the sermon on the mount so that those who follow him could live according to his righteousness, godly in this present age according to the blessed hope of his return. He taught his disciples by his example how to live with him and within him…. motivated by the love of God.

The first lesson of the sermon on the mount is the absolute need for His Holy Spirit living within us. When we are born again of God’s Holy Spirit, we can see and perceive from Christ’s eyes behind our eyes. Jesus did not come to minister to the unbelievers who would reject him, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel who would choose to accept spiritual life on his terms, not the world’s. Without being born of God’s spirit we cannot love God because love is beyond our own natural ability… love is empowered by his gift of Holy Spirit.

Titus 2:11-14 says, “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, 12 Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; 13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; 14 Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.”

The second message of the sermon on the mount is that those who are blessed live according to the beatitudes…. Jesus Christ’s blessed beautiful attitudes. The blessings are “the kingdom of heaven” for those who are meek to receive his word. The blessing is in God’s comfort for those who mourn. It is in God’s mercy and grace for them who are merciful. The blessing is in seeing God and being called the sons of God for peacemakers and those who are pure in heart. The blessing is for those who have been persecuted, wounded, reviled and slandered for Jesus’ sake, for great is their reward in heaven.

The third message of the Sermon on the Mount is our witness of evangelism…. the good news of the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Living the gospel message is the way of an evangelist. As Paul said, ye are our epistles, God’s love letters, known and read of all men.

Even though the church looks for better methods, God looks for better men. The best evangelistic method is to live as a testimony for the Lord…. to live according to the sermon on the mount as an example of God’s love made manifest. Instead of praying for revival, we need to be the answer to Jesus’ prayer… that God sends us as laborers into his harvest, making disciples of all nations through the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

Christianity is a rescue mission for desperate men. When men come to the place that they are starving, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, then God can fill them with the power of His Holy Spirit. When men become desperate enough to to forsake the pain, suffering, strife, contention and confusion of this world and run to the Lord for deliverance, Our loving Heavenly Father will run to embrace them.

You can’t have a testimony without a test. The trials and tribulations of this world bring us to the place where we understand that we cannot overcome the pain and pressure on our own. Christianity is a rescue effort for desperate men. When we approach his throne of grace with a broken and a contrite heart of repentance, he will save us, rescue us, and deliver us from trials and temptation… from the darkness and depression of this fallen world.

When others see the God’s transformation in our lives… When we turn around and live according to Christ’s heart behind our heart, this will win others to the Lord… For it is God who works in us to will and to do of his good pleasure.

In an upside down world, what the world meant for evil, God meant for good. When we see things from God’s perspective, he’s concerned for our integrity and righteousness as we set our affections on things above and not on the things of this world. When we live according to the blessed attitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, we will live according to His purpose…

… to live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ,
Michael

Kingdom Living: The Beatitude of Love

Rocky Fleming said, there’s a lot more to God than we’ll ever get. According to Isaiah 55, God’s ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts than our thoughts. Paul said, I count not myself to have attained, but this one thing I do, pressing toward the prize of the upward calling of Christ Jesus. We look forward to the hope of Christ’s return. For when that which is perfect is come, at his return, then shall we know also as we are known.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke a new message about a new Kingdom… a kingdom that is not of this world… a kingdom whose beautiful attitudes of love (the beatitudes) transcend worldly attitudes. Jesus said to his disciples in John 15:9-13, “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. 10. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. 11. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. 12. This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. 13. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

When Jesus told them that he was going to Jerusalem and he would be shamed, persecuted, arrested, tortured and crucified, Peter said, “I’ll never let that happen.” He said, “I’ll be faithful until the end even unto death.” In moments of heightened emotion, like Peter, we make promises with our mouths that our hands and feet cannot keep. Even though we sincerely mean these vows, the spirt is willing but the flesh is weak.

Those who teach us about life, come along side to encourage us and to pick us up when we fall. Thank God for godly men who by their examples taught us to love, not in word but in deed and in truth.

Many people say they’ll give their life for a worthy cause. However, it’s more difficult to walk the talk than talk the walk…  to walk within his will faithfully day by day, doing the little things he’s called us to do. Salvation is easy because of the price Jesus Christ paid on our behalf. The daily walk is more difficult…. to work out our own salvation step by step according to the path that God has prepared in advance for us to walk.

Jesus said, “If you love those who love you, what good is that. Don’t even the despised tax collectors do that?” The Pharisees taught that you should love your neighbors who were other Israelites, but hate your enemies who are not those of the twelve tribes of the house of Israel. The new message from Jesus said you are to love your enemies and bless those who curse you and despitefully use you.

The Old Testament was given to Israel because God loved them. The Ten Commandments were God’s wedding vows… His “terms of endearment” to Israel.

Pete recalls that even though his dad was an alcoholic who binged periodically and sometimes took a week off work to recover, his dad loved his children. He would grab Pete’s ear until Pete said, “that’s “ear-itating.” His dad replied, “Son, don’t you know what that means? That means I love you.” Pete’s dad earned his son’s respect as a faithful worker for the Alabama power company and for faithfully and diligently supporting his family. His dad taught him to love unconditionally and that love covers a multitude of sins. Even after working overtime for the whole week, his dad never missed one of Pete’s baseball games.

The Ten Commandments said, “Do not use the name of the Lord Jehovah thy God in vain.” God’s intent was that they use his name as a term of endearment in love, honor, awe and reverence…. to run to his throne of grace, mercy, forgiveness and love. However the Pharisees hardened their hearts and took this verse to mean, “I won’t use the name of God at all.” They took the vowel points out of God’s Hebrew name so that no one could pronounce the name of Jehovah. They missed completely God’s intent that they use his name as an expression of affection, awe, and honor… to love Him above all.

Jesus said, If my word abides in you I will abide in you. You need a tough skin a tender heart. His disciples needed to allow persecution and ridicule to “roll off their backs.” It’s not about seeking vengeance upon those who despitefully use you. Instead, it’s an opportunity to show them that the light of the love of God overcomes the darkness of sin and iniquity.

Freedom is in the love of God, it is not in the bondage of hatred, bitterness, revenge and retribution. To get over the resentment bank that’s full of things that people have done to hurt us, we must learn the meaning of forgiveness.

This is such a hard lesson to learn. Chris, Pete’s son fell into depression even though he was serving as a pastor in Scotland. His wife perceived that his heart was filled with anger and resentment. She prayed for his deliverance. Then she enrolled him at a pastor’s retreat in Aberdeen. At the retreat, his assignment was to write a letter of forgiveness to each person who had angered him and filled his heart with resentment. He had written two letters and then as he was writing the third letter, he heard God’s voice saying, “they didn’t do that to you. I did. I needed to break your heart so that you could come to me with a broken and a contrite heart.” As he prayed for God to forgive him, he felt a weight lift from his shoulders as the resentment drained from his heart. By God’s mercy and grace he discovered, “I have found the enemy and he is me.”

It’s easy to fall into the trap of victimhood and to rationalize that those who have wronged me deserve my resentment and bitterness. However, unforgiveness is like drinking poison and wishing that the other person will suffer the consequences.

Which is the high road, to retaliate with upper cuts or to turn the other cheek? Romans says, “be not overcome with evil but overcome evil with good.” How can I forgive those who have wronged me? Paul said, our example is Jesus Christ. In that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. We were dead in trespasses and sins for the wages of sin is death. However, God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Jesus said the Pharisees were a brood of vipers. In their mouth was the poison of their father, the devil.. He is a liar and a thief from the beginning and they inherited a lying tongue from their father. They took the word of God and twisted it to their father’s ends… to steal, kill and destroy.

Jesus Christ recompensed to no man evil for evil. He came not into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. Amid the turmoil and confusion of the world around us, he’s called us unto a higher calling…. to love with Christ’s heart behind our heart… to humble our hearts in meekness and humility, that we may love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength…

…to live to serve our Lord to the glory of God our loving heavenly Father. Your brother in Christ,
Michael

Pete McKenzie 0:01
Give you another one to another 25 cents on the dollar for a kiss, we have to draw a line somewhere.

You know, I appreciate what Steve said about hearing from God. What I typically do is when I’m asking God what to teach, I just say, God, whatever it is, just give me a message from your heart to my heart to their heart. And that’s what I pray every week. And if I can own it myself, I really have a hard time teaching it. If it doesn’t, if it doesn’t strike me and my devotional life and I’m not living in are trying to live, what I’m teaching, then I have a hard time with that. And I know you do too. But what we started last week was a series on the Sermon on the Mount Kingdom living. You’ve probably heard a lot of messages on that over the years, you’ve even heard from me in the past, depending on how long you’ve been coming. You can’t get away from the Sermon on the Mount when you if you’re serious about Christian growth, learning to become like Christ having his attitude, his character, responded in every situation, the way he would respond. You can’t get away from the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus says, came to introduce a new kingdom, people thought that he was going to be a king like Herod was a king. And he was going to take care of its place and he was going to run the Romans out he was going to establish Jewish people who were chosen by God, His chosen people, and better than others. We talked about last week, how they taught that you hate, you love your neighbor, but you hate everybody else. And the neighbor was answer Israel and Jews and everybody else you hated in it. Not only did you suppose to hate, it was your duty to hate. Jesus came to set all that on Etsy, or Jesus came to establish a new kingdom. And in john 1334, and 35, he said, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another. Even as I’ve loved you, that you also love one another. By this, all men will know that you are my disciple. If you love one another, so he was establishing a whole new kingdom in the kingdom was going to build on the foundation of loving each other. And it’s not just a suggestion, it’s a commandment, a new commandment I give to you a command is something that you’re obligated to obey. So if you’re a believer today, and you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, he said, if you’re not loving others, you’re not living according to the kingdom I came this stablish. And that love is an unconditional love. It’s not the arrow. So the phileo the friendship, love, the romantic love of the family love. It’s, it’s God’s love. It’s a Ngapuhi. And that’s what the love is, if you look it up in the Greek, a new commandment, I give you that you got a one another, that means love each other, like I love you, and how to He loves us, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. So this is a giving love, not just giving a little bit but giving the best that you have. And all that you have, he only had one son, and he gave him. And that’s the kind of love He came to establish. The kingdom is common. It’s primarily something that is within you. And so that’s what he had a hard time getting over to the disciples and then to the churches, it began to grow after Pentecost that this is a this is a church that is within you. It’s not something that I’m going to have a palace over here and that’s where I’ll live although he has one in heaven and a throne in heaven. On Earth, he came to establish a kingdom that was inner kingdom is what’s inside of you. It’s a in so he told his disciples when I’m gonna leave, but I’m gonna send you a comforter, the Holy Spirit who will lead you into all truth. And that comforter will live inside of you. And I don’t understand all I know about that. But I know he lives inside of me. If he lives inside of you, you know it. And if you’ve been if you’ve indicated that you come to know Jesus and you’ve been back dies and you go to church and you do other Christian things, then that doesn’t mean that you know him. You know, and when the Holy Spirit is come into your life and that he used this term to Nicodemus, you must be born again.

And so there’s a lot of people that have walked aisles and prayed prayers and do Christian things and activities. But they don’t know Christ. And they are trying to their slaves to works. And they’re trying to live the Christian life in their own power. If there’s anything the Sermon on the Mount teaches us is That’s impossible. We cannot do that. You cannot live this life. And we’ll make that point as we go along here doesn’t mean that live like this and become a Christian. It means you become a Christian. And so now you’re supposed to live like this. When you come to know Jesus Christ, you will live like this, because the Holy Spirit will help you live like this. He will hold the mirror of Christ up before you and say this is your object, the object of your faith. This is who you emulate, this is who you want to be like, and I’ve given you a Holy Spirit to help you do that. So it’s my job to make sure I’m cultivating and nurturing that spirit within me. In the series, we went over about the wheel illustration in the basics of the Christian life with the vertical spokes of prayer and fellowship, prayer in the word and the horizontal spokes of fellowship and evangelism in the Lordship of Christ is a hub in the realm is obedience. All that is what nurtures us and nurtures a spirit within us when we’re when we’re doing those things. And constantly doing those things, and enjoy and doing those things. You know, the the good example of this is the hopeless broken vow center knows his only hope of Heaven is to freely be forgiven by God. The person who truly knows and believes that is the one who cannot refuse to forgive another. So if you say you have the Holy Spirit in you, but you won’t forgive others, then it’s questionable whether you really truly have the Holy Spirit. If you’re an unforgiving guy, you probably have been Unforgiven. In other words, if you’ve ever been truly forgiven in your heart, you’ve, you’ve repented. And that’s what Jesus and john the baptist both came to preach the gospel of repentance, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. That means I turned from myself. And I realized that I am a vow center, and apart from Christ, that’s all I can do. So when I came to know Jesus Christ, I received the Holy Spirit and he’s making a new man out of me, we talked about Joe over here is a lot of Joe’s in this room. And if you’re not a Joe, like Joe has just had that encounter with Jesus Christ has changed his life and delivered him from alcohol and drugs. And now to not only that, he’s lifted him up to ministry, just like he did all his disciples. And not one of them would have been chosen by anybody choosing leadership in the new kingdom. But it’s an upside down kingdom. It’s not a kingdom that works on earthly values in earthly right practices and earthly wisdom. So you got to ask the question, then, as we get into the Sermon on the Mount, why? Why study the Sermon on the Mount? Why? Let me give you three quick reasons. One is the Lord died to enable us to live the Sermon on the Mount, he wouldn’t have given us a sermon on the mount, if he didn’t give us the power and the ability to live it out. So he died, that we might, that he might purify for himself are peculiar people that are zealous for good works. And so that’s why we study the Sermon on the Mount. Titus two, for the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and a godly in this present age, looking for the blessing of hope, in the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for himself or people for his own possessions, zealous for good deeds. So that’s why he died, and that’s why he preached the Sermon on the Mount. He didn’t just say go out there and live it. He said, here’s what it means to live it. Here’s how you live it, here’s what you live. He didn’t leave us wondering, Well, okay, what do we do? He said, This is what you do. This is how you live. And he lived it himself, and then he taught us how to live it. Second reason is, it shows is the absolute need for being born again for having the Holy Spirit in our life. And so I started with the Beatitudes, which we’ll go through. It’s like the back on the line. I know you’ve heard the Beatitudes before.

But it never hurts to go over them again, I’d run sprints before but some reason the coach thought hard to keep running them. In the run in the sprints one day enough, he didn’t think so he thought I need to run sprints every day. And if I wasn’t playing was worth a flip, I’d have to run more sprints. And so sometimes in the Christian life, we need to go back over and get back on the line and run some more sprints. And we’ll be better than we were when we just ran one sprint shows us the absolute need for the Holy Spirit in our life. Martin Lord Jones says it’s wrong to ask anyone who’s not first a Christian to try to live in practice a sermon on the mount, to expect Christian conduct from a person who is not born again is heresy. In other words, if you haven’t received Jesus Christ, meaning the Holy Spirit within you, then it’s it’s like, last night, I was at a party. And there were a bunch of people there that didn’t know Christ. And I can’t expect them to not be drinking and partying and doing the things that they do at parties. Because that’s what they do. That’s what I did. When I was partying, back in college, in my fraternity, and all the stuff it was going on. And so to expect them to live differently is unreasonable. They can’t live any differently than that. That doesn’t mean that everybody that’s not a Christian parties. Now, there’s a lot of people that don’t party and they’re not Christians. But whatever they’re doing, however, they’re acting, we don’t judge them on the basis of Christianity. Now, if a person is truly born again, and he’s shown the fruit of that he’s been involved in active, then you might expect him to live up to what he’s got inside, to live out what God has put in, in his life. But to expect someone who doesn’t know Christ, we don’t we don’t love them the way that we love each other in their body of Christ. There’s no church discipline for a non Christian, because they’re not in the church. So you give them Grace, Grace, to be who they are, and then share the good news with them, the best we can and have, or God gives us opportunity. So you want to study the Sermon on the mountain, to be reminded of how desperately we need the Holy Spirit in our life to live the life that God has called us to live and given us. A third reason is that the blessings that come from living out this life. And that’s what the Beatitudes are all about. blesses the poor in spirit. So what are all the blessings? Well listen to these blessings in the Sermon on the map. There’s is a kingdom of heaven, they will be comforted. They will inherit the earth, they will be satisfied, they will receive mercy, they will see God, they will be called sons of God, their reward in Heaven is great. Wow. Let me read that again. I don’t know if you were really listening. Here’s a blessing if you’re living out the Sermon on the mountain, and you’re living the life that Christ gave us to give. And I had a guy actually asked me this. Not long ago, as I was sharing the gospel with him. He said, What’s the benefit? What do I get out of it? I didn’t have this list in front of me. But next time I see him, I’m gonna give him this list. Here’s what you get out of it. Yours is the kingdom of heaven. Now the words that’s and that doesn’t mean squat, anybody who doesn’t believe in hell. But if they don’t believe in hail, they don’t believe in the Bible. They don’t believe in Jesus. And there’s a lot of people that don’t believe in hail. It’s comforting not to believe in hell, that you’re not going to be facing judgment. We’ll talk about that later. Here’s the kingdom of heaven. You will be comforted in this world. When you suffer, you’ll be comforted. You will inherit the earth. That means the earth you don’t have to live under the world’s laws anymore in the world’s pool, that you can inherit the kingdom of God, you can live out a different lifestyle. You’ll be satisfied, you won’t need a bunch of things that you need. Now, you’ll find peace. And once you have not watching, not trouble and what you don’t have, you will receive mercy. Be merciful to me, oh God, according to your loving kindness. So if you’re in the kingdom, and you’re living the Christian life, and you’ve received the Holy Spirit, you’re going to be shown mercy and grace. Everybody needs mercy and grace. Every desperate man needs mercy, mercy and grace, you will see God. Well, we’ll talk about that later, when we get to that.

But just the fact that you could see God that you could see who he is what he’s done, you could have a concept of God of God is gracious and good and loving and kind and compassionate. He’s merciful. You’ll see God, you’ll be called the sons of God. If you do these things, then no man will know that you’re my disciple. If you live these things out, and then your reward in Heaven is going to be great. He started with yours is the kingdom of heaven, they finish with yours, reward in Heaven will be great. We just need to keep in mind when we’re trying to live the Christian life. And it’s hard. It’s difficult to turn the other cheek and go the second mile and forgive those who have really hurt you and wounded you. That’s hard. But it’s only hard for those of us who have held on to the kingdom of self. We have been hurt, we’ve been embarrassed, humiliated, wounded. And we won’t let go of it. Because our self is so strong. But when we let go of it, we reward in Heaven will be great when we live it out. So that’s three reasons. One reason was the Lord died to give us that. Then the second one that he shows us absolute need for the new birth. The third is blessings. And here’s the fourth evangelism. The sermon on the mount and living the Sermon on the Mount is the best means of evangelism. We’ve talked about this before. You know, when we Christians are doing the Christian thing, we’re going to Bible studies, we’re showing up at church on a pretty regular basis. We’re giving the missionaries we listen to Christian music, go to conferences and retreats, and we do our Christian thing. And the world’s looking at that and go and stupid Christians are they go again, they’re not impressed. But when they see you turn the other cheek or forgive someone that doesn’t deserve your grace and forgiveness. When they see your pure lifestyle, when they see you miss a three foot putt and not break your cup club over your knee. But you have a good attitude. They’re impressed. They’re impressed when you live this life when you are giving grace and encouraging people and edifying when your temper is under control, and your mouth is under control, that gets their attention. They want to see the real McCoy they want to see us live it out. They want us to see us live what we say we believe and that’s the hardest thing for us Christians to live up to what we say we believe and in our temper and our anger and our language and our attitudes, the way we the way we respond when things don’t go our way. People are always watching you remember the guy that was watching me fail the home last year of playing ball. I had a terrible year and he came up to my locker and said whatever you got I’ve been watching you all year and whatever you got on me I’m thinking What have you got a lot of I got you need I just had the worst year ever had in my life. I felt terrible. I was dejected and and actually ready to retire which I did before they could release me it sounds better to be retired than fired. So we went to dinner that night and shared the guy with the guy had come to know Christ and the difference he had made and he ended up praying to receive Christ that night. I looked him up on Google not long ago and found that he had been a Hall of Fame high school baseball coach in Pennsylvania. So that was a blessing to see and to hear. The imbalances men are God’s method. The church is looking for better methods. God is looking for better man. Martin Lord Jones says the world today is looking looking for and desperately needs true Christians. I’m never tired of saying that what the church needs to do is not to organize more evangelistic campaigns to attract outside people, but to begin herself to live the Christian life.

We claim to believe that the Son of God has come into the world and sent his own Holy Spirit into us. His absolute power that will remain in men and make them live a quality of life like his own. He came I say in the lived and died, and rose again and send us the Holy Spirit in order that you and I might live out the Sermon on the Mount. If only all of us were living the Sermon on the Mount men would know that there is a dynamic in the Christian gospel, they would know that, that this is the real thing. They would not go looking for anything else they would say, here it is, this is real. And if you read the history of the church, you’ll find that has always been when men and women have taken this sermon seriously, and face themselves in the light of it, that the revival has come. We pray a lot for revival. But we have to live the revival is what he’s saying. We have to be the real thing. We have to turn the other cheek, we have to love the unlovely. We have to give grace and forgive those who will never ask and never humble themselves. And in our heart, we forgive him anyway. We take that Spirit of Christ, when people would promise like Peter did, I’ll lay my life down for you, will you Peter. And when Peter didn’t Jesus didn’t feel any animosity toward Peter are criticized, criticize him, or have a critical spirit toward him. He forgave him, because he knew Peter had good intentions, Peter minute when he said, I’ll lay my life down for you. But he didn’t have the Holy Spirit to be able to live up to what his passion wise. But he got it. He had to be broken, though, have you been broken? Because before we’re going to vow to the Lord Jesus Christ before we’re going to be able to live this, this sermon out this kingdom living out, we’re going to have to be broken, we’re gonna have to be humble, we got to become desperate. And if you’ve never been that broken, and hunger, hungry and desperate for righteousness, realizing that you can’t do it. And that’s how I came to Christ. As you may recall, I couldn’t live it. I kept trying to be a Christian trying to keep the rules. I was Roman, seven things that I knew I should do. I didn’t do I wanted to do, but I had no appetite. I had no power to do it. And the things I knew I shouldn’t do, I really love doing that and tried to quit them that I did quit a lot, but started up again a lot. And I was desperate. And I prayed that desperate prayer. And that’s what we have to get to that place in our life. And Peter had to get there every man that’s ever come to Christ had some desperation. The first time I walked out eight years old, I was definitely not desperate. I didn’t know what sin was. I didn’t know what salvation was. All I knew is I’m eight years old. And there goes Alford walking down the aisle, maybe I should walk down the aisle to. And I did. And all it did was create animosity in my heart, confusion, frustration. Because I couldn’t live it out. I wanted to be a good little Christian Baptist boy. But I couldn’t be in it. It drove me to a desperate place of praying a desperate prayer. And that’s how men come to Christ. And if you’ve never been desperate, you may be a Christian. But there’s got to be a desperation in there somewhere of realizing I can’t be a Christian in my own power. I can’t do it myself. There are a lot of guys that can keep the rules better than other guys. And they rule keepers. And they expect other people to be rule keepers. And they’re pretty hard on them when they’re not. I got three characteristics here of what a Christian is, is characteristics of a Christian, but I’m saving them to next week. Because if I start them now we’re going to go too long. And I don’t want to go too long. And have that think you’ve had long between what you’ve heard up here up front from the testimonies you’ve heard today and from the music and the sharing that Steve gave us today and the few things I’ve shared with you to talk about the Sermon on the mound and living it out. And that’s when revival is going to come and we pray for revival and we pray for revival and we pray for revival but it hasn’t come. Maybe it’s going to come when we start living the life. Maybe it’s going to come like Martin Lord john says when we start living out the life that God has put in us, we start truly being Christian and our spirit and heart and attitude toward others. God will bring revival people will start coming to Christ in our own homes in our neighborhoods. So let’s do it.

Your name may not appear down here in this world solid fame. You remember that point? It’s God’s Hall of Fame that we’re shooting for. He has a Hall of Fame in heaven. In our name is air if we’re living this out, see, we get a chance to prove our Christianity every day. When the hardship comes in, the suffering comes in the loss comes in the disappointment comes, there are opportunities. I had a guy yesterday that had millions of dollars. And they had a deal. And when they close this deal, his cut was going to be 7 million. And the people that they were doing the deal with backed out, he had told us his partners in business, he said, Look, we can’t trust these guys, that person that’s leading their organization got a lot of concern about and his partners didn’t listen. And then when they backed out and they lost, and now I’m not going to get a paycheck. They put everything they had into this deal. And we as we were talking, I just shared with him what I’ve shared with a lot of guys before, you know God just rescued you. He just delivered you from being in partnership with a bunch of people you saw from the beginning, they weren’t the kind of people you want to do business with and be partners with. And what God has done here, it seems like a loss, it seems like a terrible failure. But it’s really a rescue effort from God. God’s got other clients out there that you can still get to close deals with. And God will give them to you if you’ll trust him. And he’s in business with guys that are Christian, as far as he knows. But they wouldn’t listen to him when he said we don’t need to be partners with these people. I don’t think he’s gonna say I told you so. But he could. So what man made for it mean for evil, God means for good. And Joseph tada said, didn’t he? You guys meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. And so that’s the way a Christian lives, he sees things differently. He doesn’t see it the way other people see it. They see it as a loss and they’re mad and angry and upset and scared and fearful. But Christians don’t look at the things that God puts in and takes out like that we have a whole different kingdom and lifestyle and view of life. We see things differently. We see God in him. We see what God’s doing in them and God is more concerned about our character and our integrity and our righteousness in the living that way then he is about us closing deals, deal smells for God. He uses those sayings to bit make men of God that start revivals book out, because the way they live. So Lord, and here’s a prayer I wrote down, God give us grace to face the Sermon on the Mount. Seriously, and honestly, and prayerfully until we become the living examples of it, and the glorious teaching that it is, so that revival may come and all men will know that Jesus is Lord. And we pray that in his name And all God’s men said Amen. Give them Heaven, guys.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Resentment Bank

There is much more to God than we can even ever know in this life. For God’s thoughts are above our thoughts and his ways above our ways. The aim of education is not knowledge, but rather wisdom. Wisdom is the application of knowledge. Therefore, be ye doers of the word and not hearers only. Obedience to the Lord is where the rubber meets the road.

In Matthew 5 in the sermon on the mount Jesus said, “The Pharisees have told you to hate your enemies and love your friends. But I’m giving you a new message, Love your enemies. Bless them that persecute you and pray for them who despitefully use you. Jesus practiced what he preached…. in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. When he was reviled, he reviled not.. Because of the joy of your salvation and mine, he endured the cross, despising the shame and is set down on the right hand of God.

The gift of Salvation, along with God’s forgiveness, grace, and mercy is not because of our own merit. For the wages of sin is death. We were deserving of God’s judgement. However loving kindness and tender mercy is God’s nature, not ours. We were deserving of judgement and death. However, Christ died for the ungodly… Not because of who we are, but because He is. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Because Jesus Christ paid for our debt of sin, we have been reconciled with God. We have peace with God through Jesus’ sacrifice for sin on our behalf. Jesus said, my peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Even though we have peace with God because we’ve been reconciled through Jesus’ substitution for our sin, we remain in the midst of a spiritual battle. The battle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness from on high. The battlefield is for hearts and minds. The battle is a struggle between the flesh we inherited from Adam’s fallen nature and the spirit of life in Christ we received when we were born again of God’s spirt.

Therefore Jesus said, he who loses his life for my sake shall find it. According to Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

The devil will trick Christians into accumulating a resentment bank, especially against those we love. They are the ones to whom we are most vulnerable. The devil puts us in a defensive mode to harden our hearts when we deal with those who have the ability to hurt us the most. How do you empty your resentment bank?

Pete’s son Chris is a missionary in Scotland. His wife realized that he was angry and falling into depression. She prayed for her husband and then took action… she enrolled him in a pastors’ retreat. At the retreat, his first assignment was to list of everyone who had hurt and angered him along with the wrongs they had committed. Next, he was instructed to write a letter of forgiveness to each person. He completed two letters. While he was writing the third letter he heard God’s “still small voice” saying, “They didn’t hurt you, I did. I needed to break your heart for what breaks mine. Unforgiveness breaks my heart.” Chris felt the anger and resentment drain from his heart. According to Colossians 1:13, “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” It’s a long hard road to come to the understanding that, “I forgave and set the prisoner free, only to find that the prisoner was me.”

Pete’s son in law sent him a devotional about Jim Elliot, a missionary to the Auca Indians in South America who wrote, “he is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep to keep that which he cannot lose. Jesus said, take my yoke upon you… for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Every life has its own burdens. I chose to follow Christ because he bears my burdens with me. What enables a man to turn the other cheek and love his enemies? To love them with Christ’s love, we must die to ourselves. In a world of suffering, loss, and pain, our treatment of others is not to recompense to any man evil for evil, but instead to love them with Christ’s heart behind our hearts… with the unconditional gracious love of God.

Emptying the resentment bank is to embrace the truth that sets men free by giving grace and forgiveness from a heart of love. Pete often says in Marriage Encounter sessions, “there is nothing wrong with my wife that God can’t fix in me.” Pete learned that regardless of his behavior, his wife Suzan gave him grace from a heart filled with the love of God. During his quiet time he realized that if Suzan were married to Jesus Christ, she would be married to the perfect loving husband. He prayed, “Lord please make me more like you so that I can love her with your love.”

God is no respecter of persons… he doesn’t play favorites. God is a respecter of his word. The blessings of this life are on His terms, not ours. Love, grace and mercy are the nature of God himself. Love covers a multitude of sins.

In the battlefield of the mind, the first military objective is to take our own hearts captive to Christ. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual to the pulling down of (spiritual) strongholds. Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

Hurting people hurt others. Jesus Christ himself and the love of God is the healing balm. He said, come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. When we rest in the hollow of God’s holy hand, he will fight the battles on our behalf. If the enemy is sin and love conquers a multitude of sins, then as Abraham LIncoln said, “the best way to defeat your enemy is to make him your friend.”

The perfection of God is in the love of God. According to Colossians 3:13, “Above all things put on charity, the love of God, which is the bond of perfectness.” Jesus said in John 13:34, A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another….

…that in loving others, we may live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ,
Michael