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

Pete McKenzie 0:02
Well, thanks for finding this place today, guys. You gotta want it bad. And we do want the fellowship that we get here in the mornings and the worship and the getting to see guys. It’s really what it’s all about. And you know, we finished up that series on the five goals that we have in the wheel illustration. And Jesus is Lord of our life and going over each one of those God’s words a final authority in my life, I’m committed man of prayer. I’m linking together with like minded men, and I’m giving it away. And then we have the rim of the wheel, we talked about obedience. I’m going to start a new series, and it’s called Kingdom living. And we’re going to be looking at the Sermon on the Mount. You know, Rocky Fleming made the comment. He said, You know, there’s a lot more to God than we’ve gotten to yet. Can I get an amen from the congregation? You know, as I look around the room, I see a lot of mature guys, I see guys that have been in church a long time. You’ve been Christians a long time for the most of us. We’ve heard 1000 sermons, we’ve been to workshops and retreats, and Malibu’s and we’ve gone to marriage classes, read books, heard podcasts, listen to the preachers on Sunday. And still, there’s a lot to God that we haven’t gotten to yet. It’s a lifelong process is following Christ and being his disciple. And it’ll never end until we get to heaven. we all strive and strive to be perfect, because he is perfect, but it’s an unattainable goal here and on Earth. But you know, we need to be reminded every day and I get a chance to remind you every week of who we are, and why we’re here and where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.

So, you know, I was asking the Lord, and I happened to be asking him after I’d watched some news, which I hardly ever do, and I swore off of it again after that. But it made me hate my enemies. And so I looked at it up in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus was talking about that. Because you know, what he’s doing is he’s constantly calling me up higher, to live a life that he died on a cross to give me. One of the things that he did, wouldn’t teach it on the Sermon on the Mount and didn’t did it. It goes against all logic, our sense of fairness, all worldly wisdom, in ways and right practices. The sermon on the mount is talking about a new kingdom. And that’s what Jesus came to give. If you ask him why he came, it’s a I came to introduce people to a new kingdom. It’s the kingdom of God. And that’s what john the baptist preached. And that’s what Jesus preached. And they were preaching a message of repentance. They were preaching the gospel message. And that’s the message I need to hear all the time and be reminded and be grateful. I’m thankful for that I have in Christ, all that he’s done for me. And john 15, he was talking to his disciples, and they, they understood the whole process and hierarchy of, I’ve got a guru, and I’m his disciple, and I’m his follower. And the whole point of following the Guru is to listen to him teach and watch him live his life and become just like him, and have a strong family resistance to their father in heaven. And so Jesus told his disciples in john 1513, he said, Greater love has no man than this, and he would lay his life down for his friend. I have called you friends. You’re no longer servants, but friends. You know, what these young man had been taught all their life in Torah school, and all that they were taught about the Pharisees. They’ve been taught Well, I’ll get to that in a minute. Now, I want to make a few more introductory comments. Peter said, I’ll lay my life down for your sake. Jesus, I’ve been telling them and I’m going to go to Jerusalem and they’re gonna arrest me and beat me and mocked me and spit on me and humiliate me strict medicine stripped me naked and hang me on a cross and they said, Peter goes, I’m not gonna let that happen. I’ll lay my life down for you. And you know, Peter minute. And I’d like to be able to say things like that I lay my life down for you. I really believe I would for my wife. I believe I would for My children but well I for Jesus Christ. And what does that mean anyway? That I’m going to lay my life down for you? Well, Peter had a sense of the heroic magnificence. You know, something like I’m going to be a martyr, I will always stand by you and be loyal to you. And that’s what we say in our wedding vows in that I’ll be there through good times, and bad and rich times in poorer in sickness and in health, I’ll be faithful here. Well, those are the kinds of things that we say. And we really mean him when we say him, but living them out is a whole different ballgame, a man actually being that guy that’s going to be there in good times, and especially in bad and rich times. And how about those poor times, and those healthy times? But how about those sick times, and we got a lifetime of living with our wives and children. And living as faithful dads that they can depend on that they can write poems about. The sense of our duty is, is what most of us respond to, I have a duty to do this. And you know, when we’re following Christ, or you’re following someone, you have a officer and your army, or coach that you played for. And I can remember the coach who we played for when I was growing up, and I had him as a coach from time I was 11 years old until I went to college. And I would have had him for a year in college if I had gone to Florida State because he left our high school and took an assistant coaching job at Florida State. But I learned a lot from him. And he gave me a lot of truth. He gave me a little bit of grace. But he gave me a lot of truth. And he taught me a lot. He told me

not to get picked off you remember when almost got picked off in a game he had sent me into pinch Ron for a catcher that just got to hit and we were late innings in a close game. And he sent me in I was just 15. And they were most of the guys on the team right Team 1718 years old. And now I’m getting to play much but I went into pinch Ron for the catcher when he got on first base. And the guy tried to pick me off almost got me a matter of fact, it was so close, we got a call it out just as well as he did say it but he called me say and then I was brushing the dirt off and I looked up and there was a guy trotting out of the dugout. And he sent a pinch runner in for the pinch runner. It was 17,000 people there. Of course, I wasn’t embarrassed trotting back to the dugout.

But those are the kinds of lessons that we learn as we’re going. We’re going through life.

And Oswald Chambers said this, it’s far easier to die physically than to lay down my life every day, out of the sense of his high calling on my life. In other words, he’s saying it’d be easier for you to just say I just want to die, and now die for Christ. And many people have done that. But he says it’s a lot harder for me to live every day fulfilling vows and promises living the life that Jesus Christ came to give me. That’s a lot tougher assignment takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of commitment. And he says we’re not made for the brilliant moments, but we have to walk every day in light of them. For 33 years, Jesus laid out his life to do the will of the Father and john says, We ought to lay our lives down for the brethren. But it’s contrary to human nature to do. If I am a friend of Jesus, I must deliberately and carefully lay down my life for him. It’s difficult. And thank God it is difficult. Salvation is easy, because it costs God so much but the living it out every day. And that’s what Paul said over in Philippians two, the philippian church. He says work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

God saves a man and gives him the Holy Spirit and then says to him in effect. Now work it out. be loyal to me. While the nature of all things around me would tell me to be disloyal. Jesus has called us as friends. Stand loyal to your friend and remember That his honor is at stake in your bodily life.

You know, if you look in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew five, what you find is where Jesus was teaching this saying and and tell you the truth, or as we’re crossing, when they heard this says, Just let me read it you have to you have heard it said, that your love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies. bless those who curse you. do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you, and persecute you. Why, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he causes his son to rise on the evil in the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you What reward is, do not even tax gatherers do the same. If you agreed only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same? therefore your to be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. So basically, Jesus is saying something that they were awestruck, I don’t think they even knew what to say or how to respond when he was teaching this. Because the Pharisees had taught that you love your neighbor and hate your enemy, and they define neighbor as Israelites. And everybody else was their enemy. So your neighbors Israelites, and they had a hard time getting along together, not to mention hate now everybody else it wasn’t it. So if you weren’t an Israelite, they hated you. And they, they justified it. But you can’t find anything in the Old Testament scriptures that link those two together that ever says, Love your enemies. Love your neighbor and hate your enemies. It’s just not there. What they did is I took a judicial thing where it’s God when he God was talking about it. And then in purgatory Psalms, where David is having all these evil, people come in against him. And these Collin fire down from heaven and asking God to judge them and to drop their crop, stop the rain and drop their crops and all the things that he prayed. It was it was a national thing. It was a judicial thing. It wasn’t a personal thing. And what the Pharisees did is they took it personally, David meant it for the glory of God judges people for Your glory, for the glory of the church. And that Pharisees took it it made it a personal thing, that now we get to and they were justifying hate and their enemies doing that. But I say to you love your enemies and bless those who curse you. The Pharisees said that neighbor was an Israelite even though the Pharisees tried to justify this teaching by the Old Testament. These two statements are not found anywhere in the Old Testament. The Psalmist is always referring to God’s church and for God’s glory. He was judicial, judging people for their sins. It was the honor of God that he was concerned about. So they deliberately destroyed the principle of God’s law, which is the great principle of God’s love. You know, my testimony about my dad is my dad was a country boy from Parish, Alabama, which is up in the hills of North Alabama. His dad died, his mom died when he was pretty young, his dad remarried. He cannot live grew up living with half brothers and step brothers and sisters. He played football in high school and had an opportunity to go to University of Alabama but by the will of God he didn’t and play football. But he didn’t even have enough money to go to college and on a scholarship. So he took the job with the Alabama power company and he worked for them for over 50 years till he retired. In the main while married mom and dad not me and my older brother. My dad was an alcoholic. He wasn’t a full blown raging alcoholic or anything like that. He was kind of a when I was growing up, it was more of a binge alcoholic. He might go two or three months without drinking and then he’d go on a tear and up on the couch in the den and have to sleep it off and where let it wear off for a week it take a week off work. But you know, my dad loved me. My dad would grab me by the leg when we’re riding in the car and go Let me show you how the horse eats corn. I’d be wiggling around. He grabbed me by the ear lobe and it said and finally one day I said dad that’s irritating. I want you to quit doing that. He said Don’t you know what that means said, Why means I love you when I do that.

So I never had a problem with dad tugging on my ear lobe anymore after that. When I was a teenager and starting to go out on dates, he had always asked me that, in a way, he didn’t have a lot of money. I can remember mom and dad one night when I heard some talk, and I crawled out of bed. And I was listening to what they were talking about. And they were talking about, she had four sisters and three brothers. Some of them are pretty successful and wealthy. And they were talking about which one they’re going to ask if they can borrow some money to pay the back rent on our apartment. So we didn’t have a lot of money, but dad worked real hard, and mom got some jobs, and we did better and later high school and college years. But you know, I told my dad one time and I wrote him a poem to I read it at the memorial service for him. But I told him in that, I don’t think I told him in the poem, but I tell I wrote about him dead. If you are drunk, and we’re sitting and I was sitting in the floor with your head in my lap, and everybody that I wanted to think well of me was surrounding us. I couldn’t be more proud of you. Love covers a multitude of sin. And my dad loved me. The Pharisees were kicking that under the bus. They were stopping it on the curb. They were violating God’s great principle of love. Love covers a multitude of sins. And I want to thank my dad. I don’t think of him being an alcoholic. I think of him loving me. Tell, you know, my air coming into all my ballgames. He worked out of town all week and come home on the weekends. And I remember playing basketball in high school and I’d be standing there. It midcourt was somebody shooting free throws, and I’d keep my eye on that door to see when he had come through the door to my game. He went to every game I ever played that if he was in town, mom carried us all over and wheel the car, fell a little lagers and take us to games. So that’s the kind of stuff I remember about dad. And what the Pharisees were doing is they were trying to trample under the kind of grace and compassion and love that God had for his children. And they made it legalistic and they turned it into hate, and bitterness and resentment, and spit known people. They felt that way about tax gatherers, they felt that way about anybody that one Jew, and they were wrong. And it caused a lot of misery in their life that caused a lot of fear. And that’s what it does. If you don’t have love, and you have Hate, hate is a terrible thing. It’ll kill you, physically kill you. It’s a burden that you don’t want to have to carry around. And we spend a lot of time trying to help men and girls. And great as a grown up to be grown men and women to still get over the wounds they have from their fathers. They get over the ones they have from their mothers, the ones that are supposed to love us and care for us and take care of us and encourage us and build us up. And they didn’t do it. And God was there all along. in every circumstance. If you read Psalm 139. He was making the difference and he makes a difference in her life today. Now you have to let him make a difference. And you have to acknowledge that difference because your mom or dad may have passed away without you ever getting things straight. ever find it in your heart to forgive them. To love them anyway. To sit to pray for them. And say Father, forgive them. They didn’t know what they were doing. Your dad’s dad probably didn’t love him. His dad probably didn’t love him the way he needed to be loved. And it’s generational sometimes. But you know, we get over all that’s those things in Christ. He comes he comes with his son and he has rain on the just in the dunk ninja so righteous and the unrighteous. So you got unrighteous guy over here and it’s rain and sunshine on his crops and they’re growing and you have a righteous cow over here and there’s rain and sunshine on his crops and they’re growing. And sometimes the this guy the unrighteous guy gets the rain and the righteous sky. unrighteous guy doesn’t get it. And then the righteous guy, unrighteous guy won’t share his water with him. And he won’t take care of him and he sees him as an enemy and so he withholds doing good. And that’s why life is if you want enemies, she has plenty of reasons and why As in times to get them in plenty of opportunities. So

they believe it’s working, there we go. If you agreed only your brothers, what more do you do and then that if you love Only those who love you, what good is that even tax gatherers do that. So what Jesus was doing is he was calling me and you up to a higher lifestyle in this new kingdom. They all things are passed away, we have a whole new ballgame now. And that new ball game requires us going up higher. And what does that mean? That means that I got to come closer. And Jesus described that in john 15, two, he said, If you abide in Me and my word abides in you, if you don’t, then if you come after me, he must deny yourself, take up your crops every day and follow me. And so it takes self denial to go up higher, you have to be done with yourself. You’ve heard it said before that you need to have tough skin and a tender heart instead of a sensitive skin to easily offended, easily hurt, easily wounded. And so Jesus was not easily wounded because he knew what was in the heart of man. It says Scripture says that he had people promising all the time, like Peter, I’ll lay my life down for you. But when it came down to doing it, Peter ran off and betrayed him and denied him three times. But he never was angry with Peter or he didn’t get resentful. He didn’t say I knew you would let me down. He never did any of that. is a God of mercy and grace and loving kindness and compassion. He’s gentle, and tender. And understanding. He accepts us away we are. So when when my dad, if and when my dad or your dad let you down. They don’t know what they’re doing. Forgive them that Father, they don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve been hurt and wounded themselves. And you start seeing life from God’s point of view. And you started watching and looking at people from God’s point of view. And God says give them grace. Do they need the truth? Yeah, sometimes. But if you’re giving them more truth than they’re asking for or ready for and you’re not giving them grace, you’re gonna have a problem. Give them counsel when they ask for counsel. Give them counsel when they’re open to counsel. But if they’re not open, don’t be throwing your pearls before swine. The Scripture says, just love them. The understanding of them, look for opportunities to serve them, that’s the new kingdom living. You don’t you love your enemies and those who persecute you, and you do good to them. When they’ve done bad to you, you do good to them. And that’s a higher up living. But to do that I have to deny myself, I have to tell myself that you’re dead to your you’re going to be dead to your own ability to be offended and hurt. Do you take it also personal because when you take everything personal, you’re going to get bitter and angry and resentful. You’re going to have pity parties. And that’s the way it takes you and that’s a road you go down. And God wants us to be free. And how do you be free by loving your enemies instead of hating and resenting and being bitter toward them? That’s a heavy burden to carry. And when Jesus says come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, what do you think he was talking about? He wasn’t talking about guys has been working construction and lay in bricks in both flooring and they get worked up sweat and worked hard all day, although he they need rest is people that care around hate and bitterness and resentment, revenge. That’s a heavy burden. And it tears us down physically, and it certainly destroys our spiritual life. It’s so difficult to go to a prayer meeting when you just hate people. But to get over that, rather than go to Christ and repent, what we do is we justify and rationalize that. We get a resentment bank. And because that resentment bank is full of resentments things they’ve done, they’re actually guilty of it. It’s not like I misunderstood their comment, or the thing they did or did didn’t do. It’s all in my resentment bank so I can justify it. Because it’s so out there. I rationalize it. It’s okay to feel this way. It’s okay to hate them. So you just follow the fair Sacco legalistic rules of law. They deserve it.

But then you’ve if you’ve think you’re a Christian, and you’ve said that you’re a Christian and a follower of Christ, and you don’t acknowledge that this is sin, In your heart, that my bitterness and my anger is sin. And if it sin, then you need to repent. You need to ask forgiveness, you need to start doing good and looking for opportunities to serve those who despitefully use you who have, who have cheated you who have broken into your house and stoled your stuff and violated you. And that seems like too much to ask until you go to the cross, until you realize it not just all our centers, I’m a center. And I deserve to go to hell. I heard a recording, it was a 17 second recording the other day. And in that 30 years ago, the Russians tried to drill down to the center of the earth and they drilled with a drill seven and a half miles down into the core there. And then they broke through a chasm. In for 17 seconds before the microphone burned up. It called nothing but shrieks and crying and yelling, the most horrible things you could ever hear. And so you get the idea that matter broken into hell. Where I deserve to be. If I’m judged on my merit, I deserve to be in hell. I’m judged by my spirit, heart and attitude that’s fallen and sinful, insensitive and easily wounded, and wants revenge, and sarcastic and critical spirit, and contempt, and all those things that go along with it, then I deserve to go to hell. I can’t be good enough, I can’t keep the rules enough to get myself into heaven. So what I deserve is hail. And until I understand that what I deserve is hail. I’m not going to be a patient with you. But I think I deserve heaven. And I’ve worked hard and I’ve been a good boy. And I’ve given and I’ve served and that’s going to get me into heaven. I’m not going to be patient with you. Matter of fact, I’m going to judge you because you’re not doing as much as I’m doing. You’re not laying off the drinking or the smoking or the chewing or the profanity or the jokes. They still are filtered and salted in. So I’m going to judge you for that rather than pray for you rather than encourage you. Because judging if you want to judge them, are they guilty? Yeah, they’re guilty. The word God say, love those people that persecute you, that have attacked you. You need to start with your wife, and your children. And you can’t do anything right now about their heart towards you unless you know what you’ve done and you guilty and you need to go back and ask forgiveness and make it right the best you can. Maybe you can maybe you can maybe they’ll forgive you, maybe they won’t. But it’s up to me and you to go back and make it right if we know we’ve been wrong, and name our sin and ask forgiveness and hope that God will mend the relationship. And I mean, if it’s just a small thing, and they’ve they’ve there, they’ve got a wheelbarrow full of stuff they’ve done they need to ask forgiveness are but that’s not your business has trained them and God, your business is to take care of that one thing you got in your world, there are two or three. And that’s why God has called us to be and if you don’t do that, what good are you? Here’s an opportunity to go back and give grace where they’ve not given Grace is an opportunity to do good when they don’t wish your well. Here’s an opportunity to come up higher and live a lifestyle that the world takes notice of. And he goes ahead in this passage and says if they slap you on one cheek volunteer to turn the other cheek if they forced you to go one mile volunteer to go to. And we’ve talked about this before, but we need to be reminded that God calls us up to a higher place. And when I go that first mile I’m that’s a law. That’s what I have to do that. But when I volunteer to go to they don’t Well, they wonder what I’m all about. Why would you ever do that? That’s unusual. I have never had anybody volunteer to go the second mile. And I just slapped you on one cheek and you just turn the other? How could you do that? Most people feel the room for uppercuts. They curse they say I’ll get even but you didn’t do that. You turn the other cheek. Why would you do that? For the sake of my father in heaven so that you know that I’m a son of My Father in heaven. And when I slapped him on the cheek, he turned the other cheek. When I spit on him he did not curse me in return.

And when I put nails in his hands, he prayed for me and said Father forgive him. And when I jam the thorns on his head, it nothing Not enough, none of this teaching in the kingdom of loving your enemies is never going to make sense if you don’t go to the cross, if you don’t see yourself putting the nails in his feet in his hands, is the one that was Romans one those Jews, it was me driving the nail in his feet. It was me driving the nails in his hands. He was me sticking the sword in his side. And if I can’t get to that place, I’m never gonna love my enemies. because that’ll crush me. If I really own that, I really understand that it was my sin that nailed Him to the cross. He did it for me, so I wouldn’t have to carry around hate and bitterness. I could love those who don’t love me. He called me up to set me free. And this is a truth that sets men free. It’s the truth who can live and have peace in that peace that surpasses all comprehension, that grace, that patience and goodness and gentleness. Back in the GOP, I love people. I don’t just have to be arrows and that doesn’t last or phileo friendships and that doesn’t last. I can have a gap a love for people. Unconditional Love Love that can leap over any building or any offense or any wound. I don’t have to be wounded. I don’t have to be hurt. I don’t have to be insensitive. Are they wrong? Did they hurt me? Yes. How am I going to receive that? How will I respond? And if you’re not abiding in Christ, and if you’re not going to the cross, if you’re not spending time in his presence, if you’re not a real man of prayer, if you’re not hanging around with guys that are seeking to live higher lifestyles, higher meaning Holy Christ, like their life does. Jesus said you’re the salt of the earth, the the light of the world, let your light shine before men in such a way that they all see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. What are your good work, so they start teaching them out there in the Sermon on the Mount and he started with this. You’ve heard it said you could hate your enemies in love your neighbor. And Jesus says, but I say that’s not Kingdom living. That’s just the opposite. And that’s why one at one time he looked at the Pharisees and says, your of your father, the devil and your desires to do His will. And every time you open your mouth, all you can do is lie because that’s your native language. You’re a brood of vipers. And then the chosen the other night they john the baptist was talking and Jesus was talking to him and he says that brood of vipers got man that was classic. He says, You know what a viper. He says, don’t use it. Yeah, they’re they threw their mother’s stomach to be born, and they kill their mother in the process. And you call them a brood of vipers. You’re going to be nice to those guys or not. And so Jesus saw them they were trampling underfoot this lifestyle that he came to give us the Pharisees were just tearing it apart. And Jesus called them a brood of vipers, set my people free. Let them be free from all this hurt and bitterness and anger and resentment. You don’t need to live that kind of life. Jesus came to give us another life a higher life, more fruitful life, a peaceful life where our hearts are at ease before him. And he gives us power the Holy Spirit when the Spirit is come upon you you’ll receive power to do this and live this kind of life. And people will want what you’ve got. And what do we got, we got Jesus Christ. We have the Holy Spirit. We have Father God. We have a father, our earthly father may not have been the perfect guy I’ve yet to meet that guy. But we can still honor them and love them, we can still have a heart of respect for them when they’re not even respectful. We can still choose to do that. We get to choose how we live the decisions we make what we let in our heart and what we don’t. And we’re gonna let a lot of selfish sayings go in our heart. We’re going to get hurt, we’re gonna get wounded. We want to get even will but gossip and slander and

we do that stuff. But we also need to ask forgiveness and keep our conscience before God clean and clear. When you say Lord, I feel this way and I’m hurt. And I don’t want to be hurt and I don’t want to hate him. Would you change my heart? Oh God, make it ever true. Change my heart. Oh god. Make up like you. These are the lifestyles you go to church every Sunday you go to Bible study, you count a men’s group, you go to harvest Crusade, you listen to Christian music, and the world is not impressed. They don’t care. Go, that’s a stupid thing to do anyway. But you turn the other cheek, go the second mile, pay their debt for them. They owe you money, you give it to him, don’t loan it to him. You don’t give it to him at high interest rate you if they ever need give it to them. If they have to haven’t paid you back, forgive them. Love them anyway. They expect you to co shoulder him to feel different around him and you’re giving him a hug and greeting them when you see him. They don’t understand that. And have gone to church in Luton, our Bibles and come into men’s group and come into prayer group doesn’t change our life and we’re not living our lifestyles and what’s wrong? Are they the 10 suggestions? Are they the 10 commandments. So that’s what God wants to know. It doesn’t make any difference if we’re not living the life. And God has called us up higher. So what are we going to do and the turmoil and the chaos and the craziness that’s going on today we’re going to live higher lives. We’re going to bless those who persecute us. We’re going to pray for our enemies, we’re going to crawl through our own blood kiss defeater, the guy that beat us and hate and hates us. Father, I just pray right now that in my own heart, as I’m sharing this with these men, I get convicted. Because there are people in my life that I just don’t want to pray for. I want to I want to be like the Sons of Thunder and call fire down from heaven. But that’s not who you are. And that’s not who you created me to be. And that’s not what you want me to do it pray. What you want me to do is humble myself and ask forgiveness. And so father I do.

If there’s anything we men need, Lord, it’s humility before you and before each other. We need to make peace reality that apart from you, we can’t do any of this. But you’ve called us to live our lifestyles as fathers as husbands, his friends, his employees and employers. His guys on the freeway making peace everywhere we go. And so Lord, we ask you right now to drive this message home to our heart cause us to repent. Give us that gift. If we need to forgive someone and we’ve been hating someone or we’ve been treating them awful the way they treated us. What good is what do we do more than others? So Lord, help us is man your man in such a time as yes to be your disciples that that are following you that are putting our life on the line so that they may see that we’re sons of our Father in heaven. And we have a strong family resistance there yes to his patience and his goodness his love his mercy and may we be showered receive it in great portion so we can give it away. And in the process we want people that come to know you we want you to name to be lifted up. There is no god like our god there’s no king like arcane. And so Lord, may we even do it even today as we go about our business in Jesus name. And all God’s men said Amen, guys, get them heaven out there.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Christian Casualties

A disciple is a disciplined follower. Jesus said, “follow me.” The disciplined walk follows the master in order to master the fundamentals. When Jesus is Lord, he is the center, the hub that transfers the power of the Holy Spirit as we obey his will. Influence means that we must influence our own hearts and minds to follow him.

In order to allow His word to guide us, we must first humble our hearts in obeisance, bowing our hearts in respect, reverence and awe. Obedience starts with obeisance, deferring our will to his will. Life is a series of choices. As Joshua said, “choose ye this day whom ye shall serve. As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord.” Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” He is the way, the truth and the life. Therefore, choose life.

Prayer aligns our heart with God’s heart. Prayer is the outpouring of praise and thankfulness from a heart filled with love and gratitude. Prayer is confession which means “same word.” When we pray, we make His word our word. What is it that we need? In prayer, we come to know him intimately that all I need is thee. I need thee every hour most gracious Lord… O bless me now my savior, I come to thee.

In church, casual Christians become casualties in the spiritual warfare. To approach the throne of God’s grace, we must forsake the man code of a world that preaches self sufficiency with the emphasis on self. However, they that approach the Lord must forsake their pride and enter his presence with a heart of meekness and humility.

Jesus the Saviour saves when men are desperate and sinking in the crises of this life. He is our lifeline because our life is hid with Christ in God. When he saves us from the darkness of this fallen world, we become eyewitness of his mercy, love and grace. With a heart of thanksgiving, our calling is to call others to the Lord who saves.

Jesus said, “Go ye therefore and teach (make disciples of) all nations…. teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the age.”

James said, “Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving your own selves.” The promises of God are accepted by obedience according to his word. Following the Lord Jesus Christ is on God’s terms, not ours. His promises are unilateral. For nothing really matters in this world except believing faith in action that worketh in love.

Pete recalls that a man in his church came to Pete because his wife had written him a note, “If you want to save this marriage, then go see Pete.” He had the courage to follow his wife’s instruction. Pete said, “Are you willing to do whatever it takes to save this marriage?” In honesty, he answered, “Probebly not.” In order to come to the Lord, we must first confront our own hearts. The heart of man is “desperately wicked.” Repentance requires that we come to understand that we need to be delivered. When we realize that we cannot make it on our own, Then we will run to the saviour and not away from him.

The crises of life produce pain and suffering. When we understand that we cannot alleviate the pain on our own, then we can approach the great physician with an attitude of meekness. When we follow the doctor’s orders, we can appropriate the remedy… the joy of the. Lord. As Suzan said, joy is not the absence of pain, rather joy is the presence fo the Lord.

Jesus had prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “if it be thy will, let this cup of wrath, pain, death, and the weight of the sin of the world pass from me.” Then he prayed, “Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.” Prayer is not asking God to align his heart with my heart but rather aligning my heart with His heart and my will with his will. The answer to Jesus’ prayer is in Hebrews: Jesus Christ, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated on the right hand of the throne of God. The answer to Jesus’ prayer was his Father’s revelation of the joy of your redemption and mine.

When we pray, we come to realize Jesus’ words, “what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?” In prayer we realize that it’s not about the cost, the price we pay but instead it’s about the value of loving God above all. Esau sold his inheritance for a bowl of stew. However, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled with the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

According to Micah, does the Lord require the blood of animals and even our own children? Micah 6:8 says, “He hath showed thee, O man what is good. And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

Confession that Jesus is Lord is to confess that God loves me. God is love and God is his word. When we come to know the love of God and the word of God we can run to the Lord and not away from him. Obedience is to walk circumspectly under the banner, the canopy of the protection of our loving Lord.

As Christian soldiers we are in the midst of the spiritual battle. Casual Christians are casualties of spiritual warfare. We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against the rulers of the darkness in high places. Therefore take the initiative to influence our own minds by putting on the whole armor of God. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual to the pulling down of (spiritual strongholds.) The battlefield is for hearts and minds. Therefore, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

In spiritual warfare we must share our mission with our Commander in Chief, the Lord Jesus Christ. The question is not whether God is on our side, but rather, whether we are on God’s side. Stand up, stand up for Jesus. Stand in his strength alone. The arm of flesh shall fail you, we dear not trust our own.

Beneath the standard, the banner, the shadow of the Almighty’s flag, He will fight our battles against the darkness of this fallen world. For who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us…

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