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