Pete McKenzie 0:07
He broke it off. Now you’ll have some talk about afterwards.
We’re talking about the Beatitudes. And getting into the Sermon on the Mount eventually. But you can’t get any of that before you go through the Beatitudes. And it’s what Jesus said at one time in the chosen. This is a path that people can get used to get to me, who really want to know Jesus Christ. This is the gate in the narrow way that you have to walk. To get to him. I want to read a few quotes by CS Lewis. As we go into this, we’re talking we’ve talking about bless it are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied. That’s the message today. CS Lewis said, one, one road leads home and 1000 roads lead to the wilderness. So we’re talking about that one road that leads to home and home is in heaven. He also said if you want a religion that’s going to make you really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. Can I get an amen from the congregation, especially when you start talking about these quits preaching and goes to meddling in this sermon on the mount, he starts messing with things in our lives that we don’t want to have to mess with. He opens doors to things in our lives that we don’t want opened. And it makes us uncomfortable. Matter of fact, it seems to be unattainable. And it is apart from Christ. Aim in heaven, and you get the earth thrown in Hemet, earth, and you get neither aim in heaven and you get the earth thrown in aiment Earth and you get neither. And finally, the Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. And that’s what he’s doing in the Sermon on the Mount. He saying this is what a son of God looks like this is a lifestyle. This is a character. This is a profile. This is the image. And this is who I am is basically what he say. Jesus never asked us to do anything that he wouldn’t do himself in the nRd done. Here’s another quote, the more the world sinks into madness, and it seems to be doing more daily, the more God’s man must draw closer and closer to Jesus Christ in His gospel. It’s the world’s only hope. It’s the only way to real peace. With all the fights divisions, partisanship, gender wars, ratio, wars, church wars, political wars, nations warring, it seems that the world is divided between blacks and whites, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, men and women, husbands and wives, children and parents, doctors against doctors. Just keep in mind that when all the dust settles, and the last wars have been fought, there’s only one war that really matters. In Jesus’s incarnation, death, and resurrection, if it means anything at all. It means that there are only two kinds of people saved and unsaved. For a day will come when the wars will cease. The swords will be converted into proshares, the lion will lay down by the lamb, and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father, Amen. There are so many fronts at the war these days, the gods man are going to have to fight. Just make sure you’re fighting the right war. Never try to take a hill that doesn’t need to be taken or you can’t be taken, choose your battles carefully that strategies of war. And what did what is that right war? Well, Paul in Ephesians, six said, finally be strong in the Lord in in the strength of his mind, but on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. That’s the war. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers against powers against world forces of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. And then in First Timothy as Paul was writing, Timothy, his protege Fight the good fight Timothy, it’s a good fight of faith, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called. And you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses, fight the good fight of faith.
In Second Timothy four, four, I am already being poured out as a drink offering in time of my departure has come. I fought the good fight. At the end of your life, you want to make sure you can say I fought the good fight. There’s a lot of good fights these days. There’s a lot of things it seems worth fighting for. But you can’t fight on every front. And if you’ve got to fight, make sure you’re in the right war. Make sure in the war that makes a difference. If there’s only two kinds of people saved and unsaved make sure you’re fighting that war. I think that’s what these men are saying. So bless it are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. You know, we don’t know a lot about hunger and thirst. In our culture today. There are some people that do but not like third world countries. And when Jesus was teaching these men about tongeren, and thirsting for righteousness, he’s what he was talking about man that know what hunger was. The average worker in those days in Jesus’s days, made about a nickel a day. So he was very poor. He couldn’t go to his tap in his house and turn it, turn the water on and get clean drinking water. Water was rare, and he didn’t want to be caught out in the desert in a place where you couldn’t get to water, there wasn’t an oasis close by, or you didn’t have your pig skins full of water on your camel, if you had one. So these people understood thirst, they understood hunger. Most people have an instinctive desire for goodness and righteousness, but not really, if it means to pay a price. Robert Louis Stevenson said, it’s the malady of not wanting or not being needy enough to be willing to pay a price to have it. So hunger and thirst. And I think we have to ask ourselves the question, What am I hungry for? What am I thirsty and after? Usually, it’s something to gratify the flesh or the ego, something to make us feel safe and comfortable.
Get my attention.
It would be obviously make all the difference in the world if we desired goodness or righteousness to the point of being desperate for it. And I think if you’ve ever really truly come to Christ, you’ve been desperate. You tried it all. You tried being good, you tried getting baptized, you tried walking the owl, you tried reading good books, you tried going to the conferences and retreats. And nothing seemed to satisfy nothing. got it done. And finally, you were desperate. You were desperate enough to pray a prayer prayer prayer. I’m not sure what that is. But don’t let it by the
way. Now, looking at the Beatitudes this way, makes it the most demanding and frightening of them all. At the same time, it’s the most comforting it means that the man who is most blessed is not necessarily the man who achieves goodness. But the man who longs for it with all his heart. Sometimes you can feel like well, I’ll never get to be that good. I can’t be good enough. I can’t do enough serve enough. give enough no enough. Attend enough. And so you feel like a second or third class citizen you feel like you just can’t attain to what’s been the standard being held. But you know what God looks at our heart. And God looks at the fact that you add to what you want. cite my centers prayer. God I know I’m not the man You created me to be but I want to be so I want that man. But I wanted to be that man and God honored my wannabe. And God knows hearts. You can’t fool God. You can fool most some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool God anytime. He knows everything you’re thinking before you think it insane before you say it. Look at Psalm 139. You can’t run from him and hide. You can’t go the highest mountain they say or the lowest desert or ocean and he’s there. And when you get there, you’re on long trip. He’s in there waiting on you. You go to sleep at night and you wake up and he’s been thinking about you all night long. So there’s no, there’s running but no hiding from him. If blessedness only came to those who achieved, then nobody would be blessed. So he’s not putting a non attainable standard up here. But what he’s saying is, if you want to be if you’re desperate in your heart, and you’re striving in that direction, well, that’s what he said to David David always wanted to build the temple if you remember, and God wouldn’t let him build a temple. And David, heard God say this in First Kings, you did well, that it was in your heart to do so. God told the children of Israel when they were taken captive into Babylon, he said, I will put it in your heart to know me. We’ve talked about that before. God looks at the heart. You and I this out of heaven will never achieve complete righteousness will never be holy enough, will never be obedient enough, will never serve enough. Steady enough, give enough. But God looks at our heart. And he knows that when we repent, for not doing enough, he forgives. He encourages he comforts. So on one hand, this is a frightening beatitude, I’ll never get there, I can’t attain to it. On the other hand, it’s a very comforting beatitude where he says, you have a heart to do so and I’ll honor that. The meaning of righteousness in this Beatitudes means the whole thing blesser to those who hunger and thirst for all of righteousness. Now, you will never attain to that. But that’s your goal. And if that’s your goal you’re going to attain and more than you would attain if it’s not your goal. In other words, you don’t want to eat half the sandwich, you won’t eat the whole thing. And back in my day, I didn’t want one beer on the whole six pack. That’s thirsty now after the wrong thing. But it’s the same goal. It’s kind of like you don’t want one drink from the jug, you want the whole jug. And that’s what the kind of righteousness that we’re talking about. Now, there’s partial righteousness, and you’ve seen it, maybe you’ve even been it. Hope you’re not now. Partial righteousness is there’s a guy who’s good. He goes to church, goes to the Bible studies goes to the concerts, maybe a trade conference. But then he goes to work and his language is foul, and he treats people unkindly. And I’ve had guys come up to me before, in one of the leaders years ago in our ministry, and he said, I know so and so’s one on your leadership team, but you have to see him at work and how he treats people. See, that’s partial righteousness. You’re righteous here, but you’re not righteous there. I saw that mon dad’s life, I never heard my dad use profanity around my house. But when I saw him with the guys he worked with, he would use four types of profanity. And I’ll never forget noting the knowing the difference. And he was a great Dad, I’m gonna want to put him down. Because he his love covers a multitude of sins, and he loved me.
And he took care of me, he spent time with me. There’s also that, that righteousness where there’s a guy who uses bad language, and he’s cheats and on his taxes and does a lot of things that don’t replicate Christian behavior. But then if he sees someone down and out, then he’s the first guy to show up to help help them move. Help them physically help them financially, as partial righteousness is not living a very good life, but he’s got a good heart to help people. But what God is saying here is bless it are those who desire and hunger after Complete Whole righteousness. Martin, Lord Jones said, Let me describe it as a great charter of every seeking. So this beatitude is a outstanding declaration of the Christian gospel to all who are unhappy about themselves in their spiritual state, and who longed for order and quality of life that they have never enjoyed before. It emphasizes one of the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, namely, that our salvation is entirely grace, by grace, and for grace, that it is entirely the free gift of God. Bless it in happy or there is a world for the world wants to be happy, seeks after happiness. But the problem with happiness is it’s dependent on circumstance. dances is dependent on things going wide going well, man I hit one up the gap knock into Ron’s I got great happiness. I’m having guys in the dugout. But I got men in scoring position and the last in strike out. That happiness I had in the third inning went left in the ninth inning. But God gives us a happiness, it doesn’t leave. It’s in spite of circumstance, stances in spite of what he puts in and takes out. We can still have a peace and a blessedness.
It is consistently unattainable. You can have it for a short while and then it’s gone because our happiness depends on circumstances. But consider Pain Pain is a wonderful thing in the body to alert to a deeper problem. Now I got a pain in my knee, I don’t know if it’s alerting to a different problem is problem enough. You may have one in your elbow or knee, one between the eyes? What’s the cause of all wars and pains and misery? Well, it would be sin. Treat the real problem of sin in the disease is taken care of. And what we do too often is we treat the symptom rather than the real source of the disease. So if a person’s got a adultery problem or drug problem or line problem, an unfaithful problem, nicotine, alcohol problem pornography, you can take those sins head on and try to help them with them. But what if they change their heart? What if they had no more appetite for that? What if the source was that they’re centers by nature, and they needed to be forgiven and altered, they needed to be redeemed, transformed, conformed to Jesus’s image. And then, and you’ve seen it happen, maybe it’s happened to you. You were one kind of man and then you became different. And that different man, that new man didn’t have an appetite for those things. He used to have an appetite for. He didn’t like the party in in the drinking in the pornography and he will find it out of his life, he will be tempted all his life. But he’s found a new life. He’s found peace and happiness. He’s found that a peace in happiness that you can’t take away from him. No trial, no difficulty. No temptation can remove that from him because that’s who he is. Now, that’s a spirit that’s been put in him. And so he’s got it in there because he was poor in spirit, which is a gateway by sort of the poor in spirit. for theirs is the kingdom of God bless it to those who mourn, who were repentant who are broken and crushed because of their sin. In the first three badly Beatitudes, then bless it at the maker looking at our lives in a negative sense. We’re seeing our sin and we’re crushed over our sin. we’re realizing that there’s no good in us. And apart from Jesus, we can do nothing and we got nothing he needs. But this beatitude is different. This is the one that says once you’ve been through these other Beatitudes, you come to bless it are those who hunger and thirst. So you’ve seen that your poor in spirit, you saying that you have nothing to offer your crust in mourning and repenting over your sin. And that gives you a different kind of heart. Once you’ve been in those saying you’re meek and humble. And you want now, righteousness, you want to be like Christ, you want the goodness, the blessing that comes. You want to be satisfied. You want to be content. You want to be at peace. And that’s what Jesus Christ is saying, if you want to come to me and you want all that you want those blessings. Then you come through that road. You come through those gates, and you get to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Well, this profile this righteous man, hungry and thirsting for righteousness follows poor and mourning and make it means being free from the desire and power of sin. You want to be rid of it. You don’t want to be that sin, sinful guy, you want to keep doing that stuff. It’s not paying off. You’re tired of throwing up. You’re tired of your wife criticizing you and getting on you about this and the other you’re tired and you know it’s true. It’s not like you’ve been accused falsely. And that can happen too. But we’re talking about things that you know you want to shake off. You know, you want to be delivered from the power of sin. It means that desire to be free from sin in all its forms and manifestations because it separates you from God in Too often we have Christian men, and we’ve talked about this many times, and we can’t talk about it too much, because we forget it. That when we say and we have a recourse, you don’t want to say and you’re tired of standing, but you do anyway. Amen. You think it you say it, you do it. And then you feel crummy. You feel the consequences in your guilt meter in your heart. And you know, you did wrong. And Jesus says, Come to me are you are heavy laden,
I’ll give you rest. If you confess your sin, I’ll be faithful and righteous. I’ll forgive your sin and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. You don’t have to wallow in your guilt and shame. Come to me come into the light. And that light will cleanse you from the sin. Because we’re going to fight this our whole life. site, Jesus said, did you think when you came to follow me that you’d never sinned again, wouldn’t be much of a redemption if one or two sins and mistakes, cancelled it all. You don’t lose your salvation, once you’ve come to me and truly have it. The question is, Do you truly have it. And if you truly have it, you’re not going to lose it. It means a man has come to realize that he lives in a world controlled by sin and Satan. He knows what the real battle is. We read it a few minutes ago in Ephesians, six, where our fight is not against flesh and blood is against powers and principalities of the air, it’s against Satan and sin. He knows that he’s under the control of a malignant influence, that he has been walking according to the prince and power of the air, he wants to get rid of the power that drags him down. In spite of himself, in spite of not wanting, in spite of wanting righteousness, it’ll drag him down. He remains free from the bondage of sin outside and inside, because he likes it. And he wants it still. And that’s the battle that we fight every day. The reason we want to be in the word in prayer and fellowship, and well the reason we want to just saturate ourselves with praise, music and the theology. And the truth of that is to keep our hearts in a place where we can hear his voice and where he can protect us from ourselves, not just from the outside world, and all the things that are there, but protect me from me, from my wanting to lust and have what I want. It’s not good for me, tastes good, makes me feel good, temporarily. But then I feel the guilt and the shame and the consequences of it. And you want to be free from that. summing it up to hunger and thirst for righteousness, his desire to be free from self and all its harmful, horrible manifest state stations. It means nothing but the longing to be positively holy. And again, if you don’t want to be positively holy, fully, wholly, completely, wholly, you’re not going to work real hard and confessing your sin. You’re going to justify and rationalize, you’re going to accept it. You’re going to say, well, that’s just me. But if you’re really hungry and thirsty for the whole righteousness, then you’re going to work harder in learning and Time In the Word and discipline yourself or godliness, confessing your sin. So the question is, do you and I really want all the righteousness that God’s got? Oswald Chambers put it in these terms, my utmost for his highest. Do you want his highest so you’re willing to give your most to have it? What are you willing to sacrifice to be fully wholly holier than you are today you’ll never been fully fully holy until you get to heaven? Even so, come Lord Jesus. Amen. It’s an it’s a man who wants to live out the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount and the fruit of the Spirit and everything he says and does in life. Are you going to get there? No, not completely. Are you going to try and give it all you got? Yes, that’s what you and I get to decide. I’m going to give it all I’ve got. I’m going to quit being so lazy. I’m going to least be less lazy than I was yesterday. I’m going to be moving in the right direction. I’m going to be making better choices and stick into them. Now, it really helps if you’re hanging out with guys who are doing the same thing. You got to be careful who your friends are, who you hang out with what environment you find yourself in, because that environment will shape you Make sure you’re creating the right environment for people that come into your environment. That they’re that you’re the kind of guy that people that are really hungry and thirsty for righteousness seek after others who do that. They want to be in their presence, they want to be friends with them, they want to hang on their screen door. They want to influence each other. It’s really matters, who you hang out with, and what the men are like that are your friends. It means that one supreme desire in life is to know God and to be in fellowship with Him, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the light. It means a longing and desire to be like Jesus Christ.
And look at him. On the earth, he’s incarnate in his incarnate state, his human state, look at him in his positive obedience to the Gods Holy law. Look at him in his reaction to people and how he treats them, his kindness, his caring, his gentleness, and humility, is giving spirit. Look at him in his reaction to his enemies, and all they did to him. And after all they did to him. Look at him in his holding the line in his determination to fulfill his mission of dying for the center of the world. This portrait of Jesus is what he through the Holy Spirit is shaping us into its very likeness and heart, spirit and attitude of Christ. Come to me, follow me. And I’ll make you fishers of men. All throughout scripture in the gospels, Jesus is calling men to himself, to free them up, to make them holy, what they were created to be. He left his throne in heaven because we were languishing in sin, and we had no hope, no power, no ability to shake it off. And he came with the power and they gave us the ability and the freedom and the Holy Spirit, to be able to become man of God, the Son of God became a man that he made enable other men to become men as sons of God. And that’s why he is in the business of making us into one of the earlier quotes that I shared with you is, the more desperate this world becomes in matter and crazier and all the lunacy that we see going on. The more we need to draw closer to Christ and other men who are drawn closer to Christ. We need it more than we’ve ever needed it. Thanks for being here today. Thanks for coming in and sitting with other men who are chasing after Christ. You know, other guys would benefit from being the ground men like this, go get them. They need the fellowship. They need the word. They need to be in this environment. So let’s go get them. Because they could be freed up they’re struggling like you and I struggle. Yeah, they may be Christians, maybe they’re not. Maybe they think they are. They hope they are. But they don’t know they are. And they need to come and hear what they hear and hear and testimonies and worship and teaching. Or if not here, get them somewhere where they can hear that. Just go after guys. And let’s ask God to give us a heart for man. Like he had men who are languishing and feeling the guilt and shame but don’t know where to go, that are not enjoying that fellowship with Christ. That cleanness, they’re getting drinks, and they want more. They want more of his righteousness and his character and his nature. They want more of the blessings. They want to inherit the kingdom of God. They want to be satisfied, in come into crisis where that happens. So we have a great guide and a wonderful Savior in Christ. And now we’ve gotten a hunger and thirst for righteousness. The next time we make. We’ll talk about Blessed are the merciful. We’ll talk about what the fruit of all this is. Where is it? Where are we headed with that? Blessed are the peacemakers blessing to the poor in heart. And they will get around to hopefully in time for the persecution not to break out too much. So we’ll be ready for when it comes blesser those who are persecuted for my namesake. So we got a lot of road to travel. But we’ve had a good one up to this point. And Jesus came today which I have to say, Man, this has been good stuff. I need to hear this. And I’ve always told you that I teach what I need to hear. I’ve taught this over the years a dozen times. It’s new every time and I needed more every time. So I figured maybe you do too. Let’s pray. Father, thank You for the word you give us in the home. You give us thank you for the life you’ve given us in Jesus Christ. Thank you for forgiving our sense. Thank you for giving us a heart. Not that we’ll ever holy attain it on this side of heaven. But you’ve given us a heart for righteousness. Give us more of a hunger and thirst for your presence for your nature for your character and us for holiness and righteousness and peace in the fruit of the Spirit. Lord, without that were lost. But with that we can help other men find that themselves. Do that Lord, in Jesus name And all God’s men said amen given heaven guys.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai