1 00:00:00,660 --> 00:00:01,350 Hey everybody. 2 00:00:01,599 --> 00:00:04,570 welcome and thank you for joining me for this, uh, sermon. 3 00:00:05,350 --> 00:00:07,299 I have two things I wanna say by way of introduction. 4 00:00:07,299 --> 00:00:08,590 Just, uh, briefly. 5 00:00:09,665 --> 00:00:12,364 number one, just thanks to all the prayers, uh, all the 6 00:00:12,364 --> 00:00:17,145 generosity, all the thoughts and just your guys' tangible love. 7 00:00:17,205 --> 00:00:22,514 Um, this has been a very difficult time physically, and I just 8 00:00:23,294 --> 00:00:26,715 can't say enough and how much I love and they, our community. 9 00:00:27,744 --> 00:00:32,253 number two, this is a sermon that I have been, Working on for years. 10 00:00:32,884 --> 00:00:36,424 So I'm not sure how it's gonna be, it might be too overblown. 11 00:00:36,784 --> 00:00:42,034 I've spent a lot of time writing on it, and it's gonna be less of 12 00:00:42,034 --> 00:00:45,394 a free flow off my head in kind of just what I've written down. 13 00:00:45,394 --> 00:00:48,154 And so I don't expect this every time. 14 00:00:48,184 --> 00:00:52,504 Uh, this has taken an incredibly amount of time, uh, to, uh, put together. 15 00:00:52,504 --> 00:00:54,844 But, uh, I just, uh. 16 00:00:55,114 --> 00:00:56,014 I hope it blesses you. 17 00:00:56,014 --> 00:01:00,125 So I'm gonna read our passage for us and, uh, our passage 18 00:01:00,125 --> 00:01:01,804 is, uh, Matthew chapter five. 19 00:01:01,804 --> 00:01:05,425 The Sermon on the Mount, really focusing on the beatitudes will only 20 00:01:05,425 --> 00:01:09,395 be, looking at the first three verses really, but I'm gonna read to verse 12, 21 00:01:11,615 --> 00:01:12,365 seeing the crowds. 22 00:01:12,425 --> 00:01:15,664 He went up on the mountain and when he sat down, his disciples came to him 23 00:01:16,265 --> 00:01:20,645 and he opened his mouth and taught them saying, blessed are the poor in spirit 24 00:01:20,645 --> 00:01:22,085 for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 25 00:01:22,895 --> 00:01:25,535 Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. 26 00:01:26,164 --> 00:01:28,715 Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. 27 00:01:29,285 --> 00:01:32,104 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 28 00:01:32,195 --> 00:01:33,695 for they shall be satisfied. 29 00:01:34,384 --> 00:01:37,175 Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. 30 00:01:37,175 --> 00:01:39,545 Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. 31 00:01:40,085 --> 00:01:43,025 Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. 32 00:01:43,715 --> 00:01:47,225 Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for 33 00:01:47,225 --> 00:01:48,410 theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 34 00:01:49,445 --> 00:01:53,375 Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil 35 00:01:53,375 --> 00:01:56,645 against you and falsely on my account. 36 00:01:57,035 --> 00:02:02,255 Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted 37 00:02:02,255 --> 00:02:04,445 the prophets who were before you. 38 00:02:05,015 --> 00:02:08,405 This is the word of the Lord. 39 00:02:10,225 --> 00:02:14,725 We went to Israel in 2005 or oh six. 40 00:02:15,325 --> 00:02:20,125 We got to visit the Sea of Galilee and the hillside specifically where the 41 00:02:20,125 --> 00:02:23,454 Sermon on the Mount was preached, at least where they think it was preached. 42 00:02:23,454 --> 00:02:25,885 And there's some pretty good thought that it was there. 43 00:02:27,235 --> 00:02:30,325 Kind of an area in dry land, but the wind sweeps up on the surface 44 00:02:30,325 --> 00:02:32,935 of the water and the cool breeze wraps around you like a hug. 45 00:02:33,565 --> 00:02:37,015 But what's interesting is there's these eight stones set up in the area 46 00:02:37,555 --> 00:02:40,465 and each one has a beatitude on it. 47 00:02:41,725 --> 00:02:42,865 And it gets you thinking. 48 00:02:42,865 --> 00:02:44,845 And it used to be how I thought, but are these. 49 00:02:45,820 --> 00:02:47,920 Beatitudes, eight separate things. 50 00:02:47,920 --> 00:02:50,920 Are these just kingdom ethics we aspire to? 51 00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:52,620 which line do you get into? 52 00:02:52,620 --> 00:02:57,240 I mean, I've told you my story where my therapist said, just focus on 53 00:02:57,240 --> 00:03:02,460 blessed are the poor in spirit and how helpful and comforting that was. 54 00:03:02,820 --> 00:03:05,670 So I get in that line, but then I started thinking for how long? 55 00:03:05,670 --> 00:03:10,650 When can I move to another one who gets in line for blessed or the pure in heart? 56 00:03:12,300 --> 00:03:14,550 Do you pick your blessing and promise? 57 00:03:14,680 --> 00:03:15,940 I want to inherit the earth. 58 00:03:15,940 --> 00:03:17,290 I want to see God. 59 00:03:17,920 --> 00:03:21,850 Some might say, well, we don't need this teaching, this autopsy 60 00:03:21,850 --> 00:03:25,630 of kingdom ethics, but the writers of the epistles take up this very 61 00:03:25,630 --> 00:03:28,990 sermon and wrestle with it, expound upon it, live on it, and out of it. 62 00:03:29,680 --> 00:03:32,650 In fact, it informs vast amounts of the rest of the New Testament, 63 00:03:32,650 --> 00:03:34,120 let alone the early church. 64 00:03:36,325 --> 00:03:41,125 In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many hailed the sermon. 65 00:03:41,275 --> 00:03:44,755 The sermon on the mound is splinted in an ethical blueprint, 66 00:03:44,755 --> 00:03:46,885 something anyone could endorse. 67 00:03:47,095 --> 00:03:51,325 I mean, doctrine aside, but when people first encounter it without a lifetime 68 00:03:51,325 --> 00:03:54,715 of Christian cultural haze, they recoil. 69 00:03:55,345 --> 00:03:59,665 In fact, Virginia Stem Owens, a literature professor, had her unchurched students 70 00:03:59,695 --> 00:04:02,365 read the sermon and write essays about it. 71 00:04:02,935 --> 00:04:03,955 Their verdicts. 72 00:04:05,380 --> 00:04:09,970 Its demands are absurd in human and impossible One complained. 73 00:04:10,030 --> 00:04:13,960 It made me feel like I had to be perfect and no one is another 74 00:04:13,960 --> 00:04:18,399 called it the most extreme stupid statements I have ever heard. 75 00:04:19,240 --> 00:04:23,020 Virginia Owens concluded that finally, biblical literacy has come to the point 76 00:04:23,020 --> 00:04:27,250 where people in America are able to respond to Jesus Christ without filtering 77 00:04:27,250 --> 00:04:30,760 him through 2000 years of cultural haze. 78 00:04:31,030 --> 00:04:31,810 In other words. 79 00:04:32,185 --> 00:04:38,095 Honest, ignorant ears can finally hear the Sermon on the Mount as it really is. 80 00:04:38,635 --> 00:04:39,685 And they hated it. 81 00:04:39,925 --> 00:04:43,135 They were terrified of it, and they were disgusted by it. 82 00:04:44,215 --> 00:04:44,515 Dr. 83 00:04:44,515 --> 00:04:48,565 Martin Lloyd Jones, who's informed a lot of this, who preached through the Sermon 84 00:04:48,565 --> 00:04:52,825 on the Mount, he lived through a time in which everybody was saying, oh, you don't 85 00:04:52,825 --> 00:04:54,205 have to be a Christian to believe in. 86 00:04:54,745 --> 00:04:57,835 All the doctrine, all you have to do is love and admire and live 87 00:04:57,835 --> 00:04:59,185 according to the Sermon on the Mount. 88 00:04:59,965 --> 00:05:04,945 He says, anybody who says that has never read it, because if you look 89 00:05:04,945 --> 00:05:09,625 at what the Sermon on the Mount actually says and you grasp it, you 90 00:05:09,625 --> 00:05:14,665 will say like these students, which is the title of the sermon, God saved 91 00:05:14,665 --> 00:05:15,865 me from the Sermon on the Mount. 92 00:05:17,005 --> 00:05:18,295 They said, get it away from me. 93 00:05:18,295 --> 00:05:18,925 Take it away. 94 00:05:18,925 --> 00:05:19,855 It exposes me. 95 00:05:19,855 --> 00:05:21,655 It reveals me, it condemns me. 96 00:05:22,225 --> 00:05:25,615 And until you actually feel the terror of the Sermon on the mount, you 97 00:05:25,615 --> 00:05:27,865 haven't really seen what it's saying. 98 00:05:28,555 --> 00:05:31,105 So the title of this is Who Will Save Me from the Sermon on the Mount. 99 00:05:31,105 --> 00:05:33,055 I wanna look at tonight, Newman. 100 00:05:33,055 --> 00:05:37,130 Awe be happy, poor Things, and the preacher of the sermon. 101 00:05:38,335 --> 00:05:41,815 Numan as awe Ru Rudolph auto coined the term. 102 00:05:42,175 --> 00:05:43,555 And then here, here's what it means. 103 00:05:43,825 --> 00:05:48,655 A profound trembling and deeply emotional experience of a holier supernatural 104 00:05:48,835 --> 00:05:53,635 characterized by a feeling of being in the presence of a mysterious, awe 105 00:05:53,695 --> 00:05:57,295 inspiring power that is completely other. 106 00:05:57,715 --> 00:05:59,425 It blends terrifying dread. 107 00:06:00,120 --> 00:06:06,900 With captivating, fascination, unimagined, beauty and mask stripping, light, tender 108 00:06:06,900 --> 00:06:11,610 gentleness, and hurricane rebuking strength, the one who let the children 109 00:06:11,610 --> 00:06:15,180 tackle and wrestle 'em to the ground, and the one who patiently fashioned the 110 00:06:15,180 --> 00:06:17,760 whip to drive out religious robbers. 111 00:06:18,760 --> 00:06:24,230 Remember talking to a college student after a sermon, actually 112 00:06:24,230 --> 00:06:29,540 an Easter service, and he kept telling me that he liked Jesus. 113 00:06:29,960 --> 00:06:30,950 He wasn't a believer. 114 00:06:31,010 --> 00:06:34,909 He hadn't put his faith and trust in Christ, but he liked Jesus. 115 00:06:34,909 --> 00:06:39,440 And I kept telling him, did you don't know or understand Jesus? 116 00:06:39,770 --> 00:06:42,110 And he was so confused because I kept. 117 00:06:43,790 --> 00:06:47,750 Telling him, yes, that is what is beautiful about Jesus. 118 00:06:47,750 --> 00:06:49,130 Yes, that is amazing. 119 00:06:49,310 --> 00:06:51,920 But he also demands your full allegiance. 120 00:06:52,070 --> 00:06:55,730 He says that there is no way to the Father, except through him. 121 00:06:55,880 --> 00:06:57,470 He says, you have to deny yourself. 122 00:06:57,470 --> 00:07:01,770 Take up your cross and follow him, and just pushed him on that. 123 00:07:03,390 --> 00:07:06,030 Notice this one, and the setting that he's in. 124 00:07:06,030 --> 00:07:06,870 This one, Jesus. 125 00:07:07,515 --> 00:07:09,135 This incomparable Christ, the setting. 126 00:07:09,135 --> 00:07:10,605 Verse one, seeing the crowds. 127 00:07:10,605 --> 00:07:13,695 He went up on the mountain and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. 128 00:07:14,325 --> 00:07:16,365 Just a short walk from where Jesus is to preach. 129 00:07:16,365 --> 00:07:20,475 This sermon is a little cave naturally carved into the side of a rock. 130 00:07:20,775 --> 00:07:24,915 We learn Luke, his account the night before the sermon he spends all night 131 00:07:24,915 --> 00:07:27,555 in prayer in this little hiding place. 132 00:07:27,585 --> 00:07:30,585 Luke 6 12, 13, 12 to 13. 133 00:07:31,215 --> 00:07:33,795 In these days, he went out to a mountain to pray. 134 00:07:34,784 --> 00:07:38,115 And all night he continued in prayer to God and when day came, 135 00:07:38,115 --> 00:07:43,185 he called his disciples and chose from them 12 whom he named apostles. 136 00:07:43,575 --> 00:07:47,355 Just a cool note, we find out in Matthew 28 in the great commission 137 00:07:47,685 --> 00:07:50,925 that the same place that he called him, he commissions them. 138 00:07:51,465 --> 00:07:56,055 Now the 11 Matthew 28, 16 to 20 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain 139 00:07:56,055 --> 00:07:57,555 to which Jesus had directed them. 140 00:07:57,855 --> 00:08:00,615 And when they saw him, they worshiped him. 141 00:08:01,245 --> 00:08:02,175 But some doubted. 142 00:08:02,835 --> 00:08:04,845 And Jesus came and said to them, all authority and heaven 143 00:08:04,845 --> 00:08:06,285 and earth has been given to me. 144 00:08:06,525 --> 00:08:10,005 Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the 145 00:08:10,005 --> 00:08:13,395 name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe 146 00:08:13,395 --> 00:08:14,685 all that I have commanded you. 147 00:08:15,165 --> 00:08:17,835 Behold I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. 148 00:08:18,735 --> 00:08:22,875 We see this in Mark three 14 and he appointed 12 whom he also named apostles. 149 00:08:23,505 --> 00:08:24,525 And this is what it's all about. 150 00:08:24,525 --> 00:08:28,245 Church, so that they might be with him and he might send them 151 00:08:28,245 --> 00:08:29,865 out to preach the good news. 152 00:08:29,940 --> 00:08:35,010 And then we find out in Luke's account Luke six, verse 17 to 19. 153 00:08:35,059 --> 00:08:39,034 and he came down with him and stood on a level place with a great crowd of 154 00:08:39,034 --> 00:08:43,190 his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem and 155 00:08:43,190 --> 00:08:47,180 the Seacoast of Tyra who came to hear him and to be healed to their diseases. 156 00:08:47,480 --> 00:08:48,380 And those who were. 157 00:08:48,860 --> 00:08:53,150 Troubled with unclean spirits were cured and all the crowds sought 158 00:08:53,150 --> 00:08:59,360 to touch him for power came out from him and he healed them all. 159 00:09:01,310 --> 00:09:06,230 There is this attraction, this drawing, this gathering, this 160 00:09:06,230 --> 00:09:09,140 pushing the throng to get to Jesus. 161 00:09:09,200 --> 00:09:11,330 People gathered too and were drawn to him. 162 00:09:11,330 --> 00:09:15,290 This incomparable Christ fascination, wonder, awe, and delight. 163 00:09:16,400 --> 00:09:18,290 But it's been this way since the beginning, since he 164 00:09:18,290 --> 00:09:19,970 wrapped himself in human flesh. 165 00:09:20,330 --> 00:09:22,700 I think the shepherds, there was always the surprise that made 166 00:09:22,700 --> 00:09:26,240 them gas the way the stars over Bethlehem seemed to shiver and pulse. 167 00:09:26,240 --> 00:09:30,680 When the shepherds half drunk with fatigue and the tart aftertaste of 168 00:09:30,680 --> 00:09:32,960 sheep's milk stumbled toward the cave. 169 00:09:32,960 --> 00:09:35,450 Behind the end, the air was raw. 170 00:09:35,450 --> 00:09:39,980 The earth's breath was cold, and the only light was a lantern's flicker. 171 00:09:40,700 --> 00:09:42,110 They entered expecting a birth. 172 00:09:43,040 --> 00:09:47,630 But not a coronation, not the loing of cows as fanfare nor the indelicate, 173 00:09:47,630 --> 00:09:52,790 unhurried, snuffling of a baby as the overture to an entire new creation. 174 00:09:53,450 --> 00:09:55,460 They came with nothing in their hands. 175 00:09:56,030 --> 00:09:59,150 They left with the knowledge that the sky could split open 176 00:09:59,150 --> 00:10:01,370 and pours glory into feed trough. 177 00:10:02,390 --> 00:10:06,170 I think of Mary, she had rehearsed this moment only for only in the 178 00:10:06,170 --> 00:10:08,000 fearful silence behind closed doors. 179 00:10:08,630 --> 00:10:11,300 And the way she watched leaves spiral down, well, water and 180 00:10:11,300 --> 00:10:12,590 the sudden catch of her heart. 181 00:10:12,590 --> 00:10:16,430 When Joseph touched her cheek, she felt the ache of the world's gaze 182 00:10:16,430 --> 00:10:20,270 pressing on her, all those years of stories and laws and staring eyes. 183 00:10:20,270 --> 00:10:22,910 And for a moment as she watched the child, she almost believed 184 00:10:22,910 --> 00:10:24,290 the world's story and not her own. 185 00:10:25,580 --> 00:10:30,290 But then the baby yawned a trembling ridiculous motion that wobbled 186 00:10:30,290 --> 00:10:33,380 his lips and made him look like every other child in the village. 187 00:10:33,935 --> 00:10:38,465 And then he hiccuped and then he slept, and his breath rose and fell 188 00:10:38,465 --> 00:10:40,115 in the rhythm of all living things. 189 00:10:40,115 --> 00:10:45,215 And she knew God had let himself be reduced to the size of her arms. 190 00:10:45,665 --> 00:10:48,245 He had let himself be weighed on the scale at the market. 191 00:10:48,275 --> 00:10:52,565 He had let his hair stick up and his nose run and his mouth root for her breast. 192 00:10:52,655 --> 00:10:55,865 She wrapped him in everything she was, and she laid him in the straw 193 00:10:56,045 --> 00:10:59,255 And the straw ignited a thousand silent revolutions. 194 00:11:00,155 --> 00:11:03,695 I think of old Simeon in the temple, there was old Simeon the day they 195 00:11:03,695 --> 00:11:04,955 brought the child to the temple. 196 00:11:04,955 --> 00:11:06,455 His beard was the color of the desert. 197 00:11:06,455 --> 00:11:08,315 His hands, the color of the dust. 198 00:11:08,555 --> 00:11:12,215 And when he lifted the infant above his head, it looked for all the world like 199 00:11:12,215 --> 00:11:13,745 he was offering a lamb for slaughter. 200 00:11:13,925 --> 00:11:17,525 But Simeon's cry was not the cry of accusation or old wounds. 201 00:11:17,945 --> 00:11:22,025 It was the sound of a man who waited all his life for the taste of mourning. 202 00:11:22,265 --> 00:11:23,735 And at last, he held it. 203 00:11:24,410 --> 00:11:27,740 The dawn naked and squirming in both hands. 204 00:11:28,400 --> 00:11:32,780 The dawn had come, he wept not for what the child would become, but for what this 205 00:11:32,780 --> 00:11:37,100 meant for every foot sore pilgrim who had ever whispered a prayer into the bruised 206 00:11:37,100 --> 00:11:41,810 air of the temple courts, and that moment, he was every parent who ever dreamed 207 00:11:41,810 --> 00:11:43,550 their child might outlive the curse. 208 00:11:44,390 --> 00:11:46,910 Joseph teaching the creator of the world how to hold a hammer. 209 00:11:46,910 --> 00:11:50,540 The look on Andrew's face at the lunch pail that never came up empty. 210 00:11:50,810 --> 00:11:54,110 The dozing wedding guest who drank the wine that had been watered. 211 00:11:54,110 --> 00:11:59,090 Jesus walking through waves as casually as you walk through curtains on the 212 00:11:59,090 --> 00:12:01,710 leper, the leper there was a leper. 213 00:12:01,740 --> 00:12:04,980 His hands withered claw, his face lost behind the mask of scar 214 00:12:04,980 --> 00:12:08,220 tissue, who watched Jesus approach and embrace themselves for the 215 00:12:08,220 --> 00:12:10,410 usual look of horror or revulsion. 216 00:12:11,100 --> 00:12:11,910 But Jesus nel. 217 00:12:12,705 --> 00:12:16,005 Touched his ruined skin and smiled. 218 00:12:16,575 --> 00:12:19,425 The touch was a jolt, a shock of electricity, like the crack of 219 00:12:19,425 --> 00:12:20,805 thunder and the dry summer air. 220 00:12:20,805 --> 00:12:24,855 The leper watched, stunned as his fingers grew back before his eyes, as the 221 00:12:24,855 --> 00:12:26,895 memory of pain was erased from his body. 222 00:12:26,895 --> 00:12:29,955 When Jesus had told him to keep quiet and not to tell anyone, 223 00:12:30,045 --> 00:12:31,695 the man laughed until he sobbed. 224 00:12:32,175 --> 00:12:33,585 How could he not speak? 225 00:12:33,765 --> 00:12:37,185 How could he not run his hands over every surface, every tree, every 226 00:12:37,185 --> 00:12:41,145 living thing, and shout to the sky that he had been unmade and remade. 227 00:12:41,910 --> 00:12:46,110 The memory of that moment was brighter than the sunlight and sharper than any 228 00:12:46,110 --> 00:12:52,980 shame, I think, of the windows sun who had died in the middle of a funeral. 229 00:12:52,980 --> 00:12:56,760 Jesus walks up, there's a widow bent double with grief trailing behind the 230 00:12:56,760 --> 00:12:58,710 funeral procession of her only son. 231 00:12:59,310 --> 00:13:01,830 The crowds parted to let the body pass some weeping. 232 00:13:01,890 --> 00:13:07,170 Others looking away, all of them certain that this was the end of her story, but 233 00:13:07,170 --> 00:13:09,330 Jesus interrupted the dirge with the word. 234 00:13:09,765 --> 00:13:13,485 He touched the coffin and the dead boy sat up coughing as if he had 235 00:13:13,485 --> 00:13:15,285 swallowed a mouthful of river water. 236 00:13:15,795 --> 00:13:19,180 The whales turned shrieks of disbelief and into laughter, and the kind of 237 00:13:19,180 --> 00:13:21,460 singing that makes the air itself tremble. 238 00:13:22,300 --> 00:13:24,580 That night, the widow hosted a feast. 239 00:13:24,580 --> 00:13:30,280 The food meant for a wake now fueling a celebration that spilled into the 240 00:13:30,280 --> 00:13:33,310 streets, a paraplegic doing somersaults. 241 00:13:33,310 --> 00:13:37,510 Jesus healing the blind with spit paying taxes with a coin found in 242 00:13:37,510 --> 00:13:40,990 the fish's mouth and coming back from the dead disguise as a garden. 243 00:13:41,865 --> 00:13:45,945 The God man entering our mess, wearing diapers, riding donkeys, washing feet, 244 00:13:46,095 --> 00:13:50,055 dozing in storms, or think of the day they accused God of having too much fun, 245 00:13:50,295 --> 00:13:53,920 attending too many parties, and spending too much time with the happy hour crowd. 246 00:13:54,625 --> 00:13:57,265 The story is that revealed his heart toward us. 247 00:13:57,325 --> 00:14:00,445 The days wage paid to the workers who would've worked only one hour. 248 00:14:00,565 --> 00:14:04,165 The father scrubbing the pig smell off his son's back, the shepherd throwing 249 00:14:04,165 --> 00:14:07,705 a party because the sheep was found a discovered pearl, A multiplied 250 00:14:07,705 --> 00:14:09,685 talent, a heaven bound beggar. 251 00:14:09,955 --> 00:14:10,975 Oh, and then thi he fell. 252 00:14:10,975 --> 00:14:13,705 In the cross there was the thief. 253 00:14:13,705 --> 00:14:17,725 His wrist still chafed by the rope of justice, the taste of gold, yet 254 00:14:17,725 --> 00:14:21,715 not faded from his tongue, who found himself blinking at the impossible. 255 00:14:22,645 --> 00:14:27,925 That the kingdom would open for him before the nails cooled in the grave. 256 00:14:28,795 --> 00:14:32,845 I think the highways and the byways and all who were invited to the wedding feast, 257 00:14:33,025 --> 00:14:34,495 everywhere you looked, it was the same. 258 00:14:34,495 --> 00:14:38,845 The shock of street rabble when the Royer crier pointed their way, the rattle 259 00:14:38,845 --> 00:14:40,555 of their lungs as they coughed out. 260 00:14:40,555 --> 00:14:43,325 Laughter, the crash of unfinished chores and s. 261 00:14:43,515 --> 00:14:47,835 Spilled grain as they followed blinking toward the palace. 262 00:14:47,835 --> 00:14:50,205 The king's table was absurd with them. 263 00:14:50,595 --> 00:14:53,715 Gamblers and fish, mongers, monger, mothers with tears 264 00:14:53,805 --> 00:14:55,185 still wet on their cheeks. 265 00:14:55,185 --> 00:14:57,615 Hard eyed women with faces set for battle. 266 00:14:57,615 --> 00:15:01,875 Children so sticky and wild, they could only be bribed by the promise of dessert. 267 00:15:01,935 --> 00:15:04,365 These were the guests, the afterthoughts, the ones who scrubbed 268 00:15:04,365 --> 00:15:05,655 the floors and trampled the lawns. 269 00:15:06,385 --> 00:15:10,615 And now found themselves blinking at gold plates and warm bread choking 270 00:15:10,615 --> 00:15:14,875 up joy before the first toast could be called the woman at the well. 271 00:15:14,875 --> 00:15:16,255 There was the woman from Samaria. 272 00:15:16,255 --> 00:15:20,215 Her jug trembling her grip as she realized a stranger at the well saw right through 273 00:15:20,215 --> 00:15:22,945 her every secret and did not flinch. 274 00:15:23,545 --> 00:15:27,355 She had practiced her comeback for years, kept her eyes lowered, but now they were 275 00:15:27,355 --> 00:15:32,095 huge and glassy, or a mouse mouth parting as if learning speech for the first time 276 00:15:32,905 --> 00:15:34,525 the woman caught in the act of adultery. 277 00:15:35,995 --> 00:15:39,565 There she is caught in the act, heart pounding as she waited for the first 278 00:15:39,655 --> 00:15:42,685 stones cold kiss, but it would not come. 279 00:15:42,805 --> 00:15:47,965 What came instead was the hush, the air sagging with grace and the quiet 280 00:15:47,965 --> 00:15:50,185 voice that told her to go free. 281 00:15:50,485 --> 00:15:52,315 She left the temple steps barefoot. 282 00:15:52,315 --> 00:15:55,675 The sound of her transformed heart louder than the rumors that would 283 00:15:55,675 --> 00:15:57,205 chase her for the rest of her life. 284 00:15:57,535 --> 00:16:01,195 Ha Peter always, Peter never more himself than in disgrace. 285 00:16:01,435 --> 00:16:04,315 The night firelight flickering across his denials. 286 00:16:04,315 --> 00:16:05,635 The sun barely risen. 287 00:16:05,845 --> 00:16:09,625 When he saw the figure on the shore, the breakfast fire, the glimpse of 288 00:16:09,625 --> 00:16:13,735 forgiveness, even before the words were spoken, he jumped into the 289 00:16:13,735 --> 00:16:17,605 water, gasping with each stroke, and shivering in the dawn desperately. 290 00:16:18,020 --> 00:16:21,560 Looking to only be close enough to say he was sorry, or perhaps just to look 291 00:16:21,560 --> 00:16:23,390 once more into the eyes he knew best. 292 00:16:23,630 --> 00:16:27,770 These were the stories that shook the city, that rippled out in whispers 293 00:16:27,770 --> 00:16:32,450 and laughter and faint hope among the villages among ones who needed it most. 294 00:16:32,450 --> 00:16:35,330 The stories had a occur in a pulse and unspoken code. 295 00:16:36,280 --> 00:16:40,990 That the kingdom was a party for the uninvited, that the only 296 00:16:40,990 --> 00:16:45,400 price of admission was thirst that the host enjoyed most. 297 00:16:45,400 --> 00:16:49,930 The surprise of the guests when they realized they belong, the 298 00:16:49,930 --> 00:16:51,580 ones least likely most broken. 299 00:16:51,580 --> 00:16:54,130 The ones who made themselves repulsive are invisible. 300 00:16:54,205 --> 00:16:56,245 Or a by word among the righteous. 301 00:16:56,485 --> 00:16:59,395 They were the ones who found themselves front row at the feast. 302 00:16:59,725 --> 00:17:03,295 The sober could not stomach this, but the drunk on longing. 303 00:17:03,355 --> 00:17:04,765 The starved for kindness. 304 00:17:04,765 --> 00:17:06,295 The dope sit for hope. 305 00:17:06,444 --> 00:17:09,234 They sopped it up like gravy, let it drip down. 306 00:17:09,234 --> 00:17:14,335 Their chins laughed and how, and sometimes wept right into their king's chest. 307 00:17:15,010 --> 00:17:16,119 And it never stopped. 308 00:17:16,390 --> 00:17:19,420 There was the father scrubbing filth from his boy's neck and calling for 309 00:17:19,420 --> 00:17:21,910 fresh clothes, not for an inquisition. 310 00:17:22,060 --> 00:17:24,970 There was the shepherd who hoisted the found sheep on his shoulders 311 00:17:25,030 --> 00:17:29,020 and threw a rager for his neighbors spending more than the sheep was worth. 312 00:17:29,020 --> 00:17:30,640 Just to prove a point about joy. 313 00:17:31,025 --> 00:17:34,205 There were pearls and pennies and fields and lost coins, and last 314 00:17:34,205 --> 00:17:37,355 minute labors and lepers made hole and children climbing onto laps. 315 00:17:37,355 --> 00:17:40,835 All of it always was an upside down off kilter. 316 00:17:40,835 --> 00:17:44,285 A kingdom whose laws made no sense except the ones who 317 00:17:44,285 --> 00:17:45,845 would run out of other options. 318 00:17:46,145 --> 00:17:47,345 It was the same truth. 319 00:17:47,435 --> 00:17:48,635 Told a thousand ways. 320 00:17:48,815 --> 00:17:51,455 The first last, the losers winning the dead. 321 00:17:51,455 --> 00:17:51,935 Rising. 322 00:17:51,935 --> 00:17:53,345 The unclean called beautiful. 323 00:17:53,495 --> 00:17:56,675 The outcast crowned is kin. 324 00:17:57,670 --> 00:18:01,300 In every case, the ones who saw it most clearly were the street folks, 325 00:18:01,300 --> 00:18:04,960 the drunks, the attics, the exhausted, the ones with dirt under their nails, 326 00:18:04,960 --> 00:18:08,140 and no story to tell except how the miracle had happened to them. 327 00:18:08,545 --> 00:18:12,595 That was a story all along, but no one expected how it would play out that the 328 00:18:12,595 --> 00:18:17,065 Christ would arrive, not wielding a sword, but offering his own wrist to the shackle. 329 00:18:17,545 --> 00:18:20,215 Not demanding tribute, but washing filthy feet. 330 00:18:20,365 --> 00:18:23,575 Not roaring from the mountaintop, but wailing for a city that would 331 00:18:23,575 --> 00:18:27,805 not listen, that he would be broken like bread and poured out like wine. 332 00:18:27,805 --> 00:18:31,435 A feast for the tired, a drink for the dying that he would be. 333 00:18:31,560 --> 00:18:35,490 That he would make himself the guest of the worst house on the block, 334 00:18:35,490 --> 00:18:38,340 and in doing so, become the host of the best table in the world. 335 00:18:39,330 --> 00:18:43,380 So people flock to him and he heals them and meets their needs. 336 00:18:43,560 --> 00:18:48,360 And so this attraction, and you see as he healing them, he's also giving them 337 00:18:48,360 --> 00:18:50,310 the credentials that he's the Messiah. 338 00:18:50,340 --> 00:18:51,930 Isaiah 35, 5, and six. 339 00:18:54,055 --> 00:18:57,595 Then the eyes of the blind shall be open and the ears of the deaf unstopped. 340 00:18:57,925 --> 00:19:01,165 Then the lame man shall leap like a deer, and the tongues of the mute sing 341 00:19:01,165 --> 00:19:05,425 for joy for waters break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. 342 00:19:05,425 --> 00:19:09,175 Isaiah 42 7, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners 343 00:19:09,175 --> 00:19:12,625 from the dungeon, from the prisoners of those who sit in darkness. 344 00:19:12,685 --> 00:19:16,615 Not only is this preacher irresistibly fascinating, but so 345 00:19:16,615 --> 00:19:18,175 too is what he says in the sermon. 346 00:19:19,180 --> 00:19:23,380 He talks about salt and light, which is an identity thing, that we are 347 00:19:23,380 --> 00:19:29,170 salt and light, that preserving effect that we rub into what is decaying 348 00:19:30,700 --> 00:19:33,790 love for individuals sexual integrity. 349 00:19:34,870 --> 00:19:40,420 Our speech integrity, our response to hostility, generosity to the 350 00:19:40,420 --> 00:19:44,600 poor, our private prayer life attitude to our wealth, freedom 351 00:19:44,600 --> 00:19:46,700 from worry, judging others. 352 00:19:46,850 --> 00:19:52,630 This, this beautiful kingdom of, this citizens of heaven. 353 00:19:54,460 --> 00:19:55,900 but when you read the Sermon on the Mount. 354 00:19:57,295 --> 00:20:00,835 This is exactly how you want the people who live around you to be. 355 00:20:02,635 --> 00:20:05,965 You suddenly realize that all your life you've been demanding the 356 00:20:05,965 --> 00:20:07,915 people around you to live like this. 357 00:20:09,385 --> 00:20:10,375 So deep down. 358 00:20:11,215 --> 00:20:13,015 You know, this is how you should be living too. 359 00:20:13,015 --> 00:20:15,385 At the same time, the Sermon on the Mount is so clear. 360 00:20:15,385 --> 00:20:19,675 It is so detailed, and it also spells things out by looking at the motives 361 00:20:19,675 --> 00:20:21,835 as well, not just the outward actions. 362 00:20:22,015 --> 00:20:24,685 And it's so revealing there that nobody can escape. 363 00:20:25,135 --> 00:20:29,845 The terrifying, holy standard of the living God is ratcheted up. 364 00:20:30,445 --> 00:20:33,835 You can't even come close to what you've been demanding of other 365 00:20:33,835 --> 00:20:37,705 people, and it condemns you and exposes you and disgusts you. 366 00:20:38,755 --> 00:20:39,955 Matthew five 20. 367 00:20:40,165 --> 00:20:42,355 Before I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the 368 00:20:42,355 --> 00:20:45,235 scribe and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of God. 369 00:20:45,235 --> 00:20:46,495 You're like, okay, I could do this. 370 00:20:47,725 --> 00:20:49,465 Scribes and Pharisees exceed their righteousness. 371 00:20:49,465 --> 00:20:50,455 Okay, I got this. 372 00:20:51,295 --> 00:20:54,355 But then he goes to, if you hate, that's murder. 373 00:20:54,505 --> 00:20:59,425 If you look at a woman with lust, that's adultery, he talks about judgment. 374 00:20:59,425 --> 00:21:04,225 He's getting down into the very motives of why we do what we do. 375 00:21:04,495 --> 00:21:07,435 In Matthew 5 39, he says, what I say to you, do not resist the one who 376 00:21:07,435 --> 00:21:11,185 is evil, but if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn him the other. 377 00:21:11,185 --> 00:21:12,625 Also what? 378 00:21:13,495 --> 00:21:14,635 That would be difficult. 379 00:21:15,775 --> 00:21:16,855 That may be hard. 380 00:21:17,890 --> 00:21:18,760 Matthew five 40. 381 00:21:18,760 --> 00:21:24,190 If anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 382 00:21:25,240 --> 00:21:27,370 Guys, my tools have been robbed multiple times and I've 383 00:21:27,370 --> 00:21:30,070 never thought good for them. 384 00:21:30,850 --> 00:21:31,960 I'm like my livelihood. 385 00:21:32,920 --> 00:21:33,760 I've earned that. 386 00:21:33,760 --> 00:21:37,840 It's mine, my precious Matthew 5 41. 387 00:21:37,840 --> 00:21:41,350 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 388 00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:48,160 There was this guy I remember, who had coming to the church and we loved 389 00:21:48,160 --> 00:21:51,040 helping him, but he kept coming for help. 390 00:21:51,940 --> 00:21:57,100 And in my lesser, pastoral moments after months, I pulled him aside and 391 00:21:57,100 --> 00:21:58,720 I said, man, you're such a taker. 392 00:21:59,740 --> 00:22:01,210 And he just was stunned. 393 00:22:02,530 --> 00:22:07,120 And, you know, if you're a part of community, there's, there's that stuff. 394 00:22:07,120 --> 00:22:07,810 But man. 395 00:22:08,230 --> 00:22:09,130 It was my heart. 396 00:22:09,160 --> 00:22:10,570 My heart was so wrong. 397 00:22:11,200 --> 00:22:14,260 I just was like begrudging every time. 398 00:22:14,590 --> 00:22:19,450 Like, why are we and Matthew 5 41, if anyone forces you don't wanna go. 399 00:22:19,530 --> 00:22:20,160 Go with them too. 400 00:22:21,030 --> 00:22:24,360 Like, man, how exposing is that, Matthew 5 48. 401 00:22:24,360 --> 00:22:24,780 Here it is. 402 00:22:25,020 --> 00:22:29,700 You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father. 403 00:22:30,435 --> 00:22:32,115 Is perfect. 404 00:22:32,475 --> 00:22:34,485 And that's in the first part of the sermon, guys. 405 00:22:35,115 --> 00:22:38,055 Guys, you don't impress the officials at NASA with a paper airplane. 406 00:22:38,355 --> 00:22:42,705 You don't boast about your crayons, sketches and the presence of Picasso. 407 00:22:43,395 --> 00:22:48,195 You don't claim equality with Einstein because you can write H2O and you 408 00:22:48,195 --> 00:22:50,350 don't boast about your goodness in the presence of the perfect. 409 00:22:52,020 --> 00:22:55,530 And in many cases, I mean, if you really read it and you read it, 410 00:22:55,530 --> 00:22:56,850 and this is how I used to read it. 411 00:22:57,180 --> 00:22:59,520 People say, this is ridiculous, this is unfair. 412 00:22:59,520 --> 00:23:00,360 This is just silly. 413 00:23:00,360 --> 00:23:03,180 This is who in the world can live like this. 414 00:23:03,540 --> 00:23:04,710 Just get it outta here. 415 00:23:05,520 --> 00:23:08,970 One of the great mistakes we make when we get into the main part of the Sermon on 416 00:23:08,970 --> 00:23:13,920 the Mount is treating it like a spiritual self-help manual or a divine checklist. 417 00:23:14,340 --> 00:23:16,440 These teachings turn the other cheek, love your enemies. 418 00:23:16,440 --> 00:23:17,050 Give to those who. 419 00:23:17,640 --> 00:23:21,150 Ask can seem as ethical prescriptions carved into the 420 00:23:21,150 --> 00:23:22,500 Mountain Satellite commandments. 421 00:23:22,500 --> 00:23:26,040 They describe patterns of living so impossibly high that they 422 00:23:26,040 --> 00:23:27,660 seem to scrape heaven itself. 423 00:23:28,230 --> 00:23:28,590 Again. 424 00:23:28,590 --> 00:23:28,860 Dr. 425 00:23:28,860 --> 00:23:30,240 Martin Lloyd Jones helps us here. 426 00:23:30,240 --> 00:23:34,860 He warns that we become so mesmerized by these lofty standards that we 427 00:23:34,860 --> 00:23:36,545 forget the sermons fundamental message. 428 00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:39,810 What's the fundamental message? 429 00:23:40,440 --> 00:23:44,970 Before we can scale these holy heights, our very souls must be transformed. 430 00:23:45,270 --> 00:23:48,600 Before we can live like citizens of heaven, we must become citizens of 431 00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:50,430 heaven and receive heaven's power. 432 00:23:50,700 --> 00:23:54,510 Before these impossible man demands become as natural as breathing 433 00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:58,560 or as natural as a tree bearing. 434 00:23:58,865 --> 00:24:02,525 Fruit, something supernatural must happen within us. 435 00:24:02,555 --> 00:24:06,395 And that divine transformation is precisely what Jesus 436 00:24:06,395 --> 00:24:08,585 describes in the Beatitudes. 437 00:24:09,395 --> 00:24:10,745 The beatitudes, yes. 438 00:24:11,645 --> 00:24:17,315 I didn't see it until recently, but man, Jesus opens with the gospel in the 439 00:24:17,315 --> 00:24:19,355 sermon and he closes with the gospel. 440 00:24:20,195 --> 00:24:24,905 So verse two, and he opened his mouth and taught them saying, and so 441 00:24:25,265 --> 00:24:27,185 moving into the next point, be happy. 442 00:24:29,385 --> 00:24:31,965 First, I never understood that Jesus begins with the gospel and 443 00:24:31,965 --> 00:24:33,165 ends the sermon with the gospel. 444 00:24:33,255 --> 00:24:38,085 I was listening to Tim Mackey, the guy who's part of the Bible project and just 445 00:24:38,085 --> 00:24:40,575 kind of in the background while I was doing something and he was talking about 446 00:24:40,575 --> 00:24:42,345 the Sermon on the Mountain and I, I. 447 00:24:42,795 --> 00:24:45,885 Been studying the Beatitudes for a while, and so I just kind of had 448 00:24:45,885 --> 00:24:50,055 'em on, and I'm sure I've heard of multiple times, but it just all of 449 00:24:50,055 --> 00:24:51,645 a sudden clicked and came together. 450 00:24:52,305 --> 00:24:56,475 The Bat Beatitudes are not things that are separate from one another, Okay. 451 00:24:56,565 --> 00:24:58,035 Do this one for a while. 452 00:24:58,065 --> 00:24:58,605 Okay? 453 00:24:59,025 --> 00:25:02,745 But there are golden links in the chain of salvation. 454 00:25:02,745 --> 00:25:03,285 Think about it. 455 00:25:03,525 --> 00:25:04,485 Poor in spirit. 456 00:25:05,010 --> 00:25:05,910 Nothing in my hands. 457 00:25:05,910 --> 00:25:07,650 I bring only to your cross eye cling. 458 00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:10,260 The only need is need spiritually bring up. 459 00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:11,460 That's how we all start. 460 00:25:11,820 --> 00:25:15,030 Those who mourn, not grieving because you've been busted, but 461 00:25:15,030 --> 00:25:16,980 because you realize you are busted. 462 00:25:17,190 --> 00:25:21,300 The tax collector who beat his chest and cried God be merciful to me the sinner, 463 00:25:21,300 --> 00:25:24,030 this man went away justified the meek. 464 00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:26,610 That word meek, it means strength under control. 465 00:25:26,730 --> 00:25:29,100 The picture we get is of a bit bridled horse. 466 00:25:29,190 --> 00:25:29,880 What does that mean? 467 00:25:30,030 --> 00:25:33,030 It means those who have given the reins of their life. 468 00:25:33,435 --> 00:25:37,995 Over to another hunger and thirst for righteousness and 469 00:25:37,995 --> 00:25:40,425 new standing and new desires. 470 00:25:40,785 --> 00:25:44,805 Guys, man, I've had surgery before and getting outta the hospital even 471 00:25:44,805 --> 00:25:49,065 this last time in the hospital, even though you're hydrated and their gut, 472 00:25:49,065 --> 00:25:53,835 you in an iv, your mouth gets so dry and they can't give you water, and 473 00:25:53,895 --> 00:25:56,835 all you can think about is water. 474 00:25:56,835 --> 00:25:59,405 It's like this deep drive. 475 00:26:00,155 --> 00:26:04,865 And that is what he's doing, a longing for him and a realization 476 00:26:05,135 --> 00:26:11,345 that he alone satisfies a new standing and new desires merciful. 477 00:26:12,425 --> 00:26:15,395 Uh, blessed or the merciful who show mercy, right? 478 00:26:15,545 --> 00:26:17,525 Uh, Ephesians two, one, I gotta read this to you. 479 00:26:17,525 --> 00:26:21,035 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, which you once walked following 480 00:26:21,035 --> 00:26:23,765 the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the 481 00:26:23,765 --> 00:26:28,115 spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once 482 00:26:28,115 --> 00:26:31,535 lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and 483 00:26:31,535 --> 00:26:35,825 the mind, and we're by nature, children of wrath like the rest of mankind. 484 00:26:37,325 --> 00:26:44,315 But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved 485 00:26:44,315 --> 00:26:48,245 us guys, we are now starting to move out into the world because those of 486 00:26:48,245 --> 00:26:52,595 us who have received mercy, we begin to show mercy the pure in heart. 487 00:26:53,660 --> 00:26:56,330 It's an identity statement that all mission flows out of. 488 00:26:56,840 --> 00:27:00,500 We don't do things to get a pure heart, but because of the great exchange, 489 00:27:00,500 --> 00:27:04,160 we're clothed with the purity that Christ won for us at the cross. 490 00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:08,810 And every fruitful thing flows from that abiding identity. 491 00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:13,670 We read in Ezekiel 36 that he rips out the heart of stone and he gives the 492 00:27:13,670 --> 00:27:15,950 heart of flesh two Corinthians five 17. 493 00:27:16,130 --> 00:27:19,550 Therefore, if anyone is in crisis, a new creation, the old has passed away. 494 00:27:19,790 --> 00:27:23,780 Behold, the new is come the peacemakers all. 495 00:27:23,930 --> 00:27:27,710 Uh, let me keep reading in second Corinthians five of 18 to 20. 496 00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:31,430 All this is from God who through Christ, reconciled us to himself 497 00:27:31,430 --> 00:27:34,430 and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that is in Christ. 498 00:27:34,430 --> 00:27:38,420 God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses 499 00:27:38,420 --> 00:27:42,560 against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 500 00:27:42,740 --> 00:27:45,260 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. 501 00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:49,250 God making his appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be 502 00:27:49,250 --> 00:27:53,150 reconciled to God, the persecuted there will be resistance to the mis, this 503 00:27:53,150 --> 00:27:57,080 message and the citizens of heaven, but in the upside down kingdom and often 504 00:27:57,080 --> 00:27:58,970 flourishes when the heat is the hottest. 505 00:27:59,180 --> 00:28:00,440 John 1224. 506 00:28:00,890 --> 00:28:05,000 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the 507 00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:06,830 earth and dies, it remains alone. 508 00:28:07,220 --> 00:28:09,020 But if it dies, it bears much fruit. 509 00:28:11,120 --> 00:28:12,230 blessed, be happy. 510 00:28:13,415 --> 00:28:14,135 Matthew five, three. 511 00:28:14,135 --> 00:28:16,895 Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 512 00:28:17,975 --> 00:28:18,305 Blessed. 513 00:28:19,175 --> 00:28:23,555 I always heard in the tribe I grew up in that this could be translated. 514 00:28:23,675 --> 00:28:26,045 Oh, how happy, maybe. 515 00:28:27,155 --> 00:28:29,825 But I always felt pressure in these circumstances to be happy. 516 00:28:31,295 --> 00:28:37,805 Blessed from the Greek Rios describes a state of supreme wellbeing and 517 00:28:37,805 --> 00:28:40,955 spiritual satisfaction that comes from. 518 00:28:41,540 --> 00:28:45,830 Being under God's favor, it's Hebrew equivalent. 519 00:28:45,860 --> 00:28:49,790 ASRA conveys the idea of living a flourishing life that 520 00:28:49,790 --> 00:28:51,500 is aligned with God's ways. 521 00:28:52,340 --> 00:28:56,360 The Greek is meant to communicate something celebratory and affirming. 522 00:28:58,130 --> 00:29:00,290 In fact, the Living translation, I love this. 523 00:29:00,290 --> 00:29:01,515 It translates it. 524 00:29:01,615 --> 00:29:04,220 Humble men are very fortunate. 525 00:29:04,820 --> 00:29:10,040 He told them, for the kingdom of Heaven is given to them. 526 00:29:10,700 --> 00:29:14,510 One of the best, simple and helpful translations that I've heard that 527 00:29:14,510 --> 00:29:20,420 gets the idea across is fortunate, are you or, congratulations. 528 00:29:21,380 --> 00:29:22,340 Congratulations. 529 00:29:22,370 --> 00:29:23,210 Why point this out? 530 00:29:24,350 --> 00:29:26,330 Because it's not quid pro quo. 531 00:29:27,050 --> 00:29:27,320 Okay? 532 00:29:27,320 --> 00:29:29,990 I'll be poor in spirit and then God will bless me. 533 00:29:30,755 --> 00:29:35,945 But when you realize you are spiritually bankrupt and have nothing but need, 534 00:29:35,975 --> 00:29:40,175 which is a work of God himself to reveal to you, congratulations, you 535 00:29:40,175 --> 00:29:41,735 are on the path to full flourishing. 536 00:29:41,885 --> 00:29:43,595 You're moving from death to life. 537 00:29:44,825 --> 00:29:47,405 To be honest, from my earliest memories, even before I could parse the 538 00:29:47,405 --> 00:29:50,735 difference between the hollow phrases scattered across the Sunday school 539 00:29:50,735 --> 00:29:55,985 felt board and the raw unpronounceable ache I carried inside me, the word 540 00:29:55,985 --> 00:29:58,925 blessed was always accompanied by a kind of forced plastic grand. 541 00:29:58,955 --> 00:29:59,255 Oh, how happy. 542 00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:04,540 As if every time Jesus said blessed, he was sticking a smiley face sticker on the 543 00:30:04,540 --> 00:30:06,910 forehead of some hollowed eye disciple. 544 00:30:07,750 --> 00:30:10,750 We used it as a shield against discomfort, a bullet point against doubt. 545 00:30:10,780 --> 00:30:13,030 Blessed are the poor spirit the preacher would read pounding the 546 00:30:13,030 --> 00:30:14,170 pulpit with his wedding ring. 547 00:30:15,070 --> 00:30:17,530 For theirs is the kingdom of having the subtext. 548 00:30:17,650 --> 00:30:20,650 You better act happy about it even if you wake up every morning feeling 549 00:30:20,650 --> 00:30:26,920 like the only thing you've got in your spiritual cupboard is dust and debt and 550 00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:29,950 the crumpled receipts of past mistakes. 551 00:30:30,370 --> 00:30:30,730 Smile. 552 00:30:30,730 --> 00:30:32,020 Anyway, you're blessed. 553 00:30:32,950 --> 00:30:36,160 I'd sit in a pew hands folded pretending to drink from a bottomless cup of 554 00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:40,030 gratitude while on side I was running a black market trade in shame and guilt. 555 00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:43,990 The pressure to be happy was attacks levied on every honest 556 00:30:43,990 --> 00:30:45,610 admission of pain or confusion. 557 00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:49,210 I learned quickly that the only acceptable motions were the ones you could 558 00:30:49,210 --> 00:30:51,310 laminate with the scriptural proof text. 559 00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:55,180 It wasn't until much later after I'd wandered a few wildernesses and found 560 00:30:55,180 --> 00:30:59,200 myself gnawing on the bones of my faith in a city far from home that 561 00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:00,760 I started to ask if this is what. 562 00:31:01,720 --> 00:31:09,520 Jesus really meant Blessed Rios is always tossed around like confetti and Christian 563 00:31:09,520 --> 00:31:12,370 circles, but for all its tinsel and shine. 564 00:31:12,370 --> 00:31:13,550 It had never stuck to me. 565 00:31:14,635 --> 00:31:18,235 Not until I heard someone explain that me, curios wasn't about circumstantial. 566 00:31:18,235 --> 00:31:22,045 Happiness wasn't about being the poster child for Jesus's self-improvement 567 00:31:22,045 --> 00:31:26,665 plan, but instead describing a kind of deep, moral level wellbeing that came 568 00:31:26,665 --> 00:31:31,645 from being known and favored even while everything else was falling apart. 569 00:31:32,650 --> 00:31:35,350 And when Jesus sits on the hillside and says, blessed are the poor in spirit, 570 00:31:35,350 --> 00:31:39,340 he's not wagging a finger, not giving us a checklist, but throwing a party for 571 00:31:39,340 --> 00:31:41,020 all the losers and spiritual deadbeats. 572 00:31:41,020 --> 00:31:42,340 He's saying, this is it. 573 00:31:42,400 --> 00:31:43,120 You made it. 574 00:31:43,180 --> 00:31:46,270 The jokes on everyone who thought the system was rigged against you. 575 00:31:46,930 --> 00:31:51,970 The gate of the kingdom is so low, only the humble can crawl through. 576 00:31:52,570 --> 00:31:55,450 When you realize you've got nothing, you're on the guest list. 577 00:31:55,540 --> 00:31:59,440 All your hunger, all your lack, all the places you thought were disqualifiers, 578 00:31:59,650 --> 00:32:01,360 they're actually invitations. 579 00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:06,520 I'd always heard the Beatitudes is a list of impossible entry requirements. 580 00:32:06,610 --> 00:32:10,570 Another set of spiritual metrics designed to remind me how much I was failing. 581 00:32:11,260 --> 00:32:13,120 I never heard them as congratulations. 582 00:32:13,120 --> 00:32:15,760 Never as the voice of Jesus, warm and delighted saying, you're 583 00:32:15,760 --> 00:32:16,625 exactly where you need to be. 584 00:32:17,785 --> 00:32:18,955 Picture it guys. 585 00:32:19,055 --> 00:32:20,525 A crowd of spiritual rejects. 586 00:32:20,585 --> 00:32:21,575 This is who's listening. 587 00:32:21,755 --> 00:32:24,665 Blue collar laborers and religious dropouts gathering on 588 00:32:24,665 --> 00:32:26,525 a hillside, not expecting much. 589 00:32:27,035 --> 00:32:29,345 They're there because they have nowhere else to go. 590 00:32:29,345 --> 00:32:31,085 They're drawn, they're fascinated. 591 00:32:31,535 --> 00:32:33,815 They're the ones who have been told in a thousand different 592 00:32:33,815 --> 00:32:34,835 ways that they're not enough. 593 00:32:34,835 --> 00:32:36,815 Not wholly enough, not smart enough, not worried enough. 594 00:32:37,055 --> 00:32:37,985 Jesus looks. 595 00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:42,190 Out at them and instead of confirming what the world says, he flips the script. 596 00:32:42,190 --> 00:32:43,780 He gives them a standing ovation. 597 00:32:44,020 --> 00:32:44,980 Congratulations. 598 00:32:44,980 --> 00:32:50,320 He says, the kingdom of heaven is only for you, but it's already yours. 599 00:32:51,370 --> 00:32:52,360 Think about my own faith. 600 00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:58,180 So often a patchwork of long and in contradiction there are ca I'm a mess. 601 00:32:58,180 --> 00:33:01,960 There are days, many days when I feel like the only thing I bring 602 00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:06,610 to God is a handful of failures and a nine hunger for something more. 603 00:33:07,625 --> 00:33:10,745 If I listen to the voice that says, blessed means happy, 604 00:33:10,745 --> 00:33:11,975 so get your act together. 605 00:33:12,575 --> 00:33:19,025 I will always fail, but if I hear congratulations, the wild delight of Jesus 606 00:33:19,025 --> 00:33:23,915 breaking the news that the kingdom is for the empty handed, I can finally exhale. 607 00:33:23,915 --> 00:33:24,995 I can be honest. 608 00:33:25,925 --> 00:33:27,170 I can let myself be filled. 609 00:33:28,535 --> 00:33:30,485 Blessed are the ones who know they need help. 610 00:33:30,485 --> 00:33:33,425 Blessed are the ones who can't stop mourning the gap between 611 00:33:33,425 --> 00:33:34,625 what is and what should be. 612 00:33:34,865 --> 00:33:38,165 Blessed are the ones who wake up every day with an ache for something better. 613 00:33:39,425 --> 00:33:43,085 This is not a how-to manual for sainthood, but a love letter to 614 00:33:43,085 --> 00:33:46,865 the spiritually bankrupt a trophy ceremony for the last place finishers. 615 00:33:47,195 --> 00:33:48,635 If you hear nothing else, hear this. 616 00:33:48,635 --> 00:33:51,965 You don't have to make yourself worthy to be congratulated. 617 00:33:51,965 --> 00:33:52,685 You can't. 618 00:33:53,930 --> 00:33:58,070 The very fact that you know your need is evidence that God is on 619 00:33:58,070 --> 00:34:03,320 the move in your life, James four six says, but he gives more grace. 620 00:34:03,830 --> 00:34:06,080 Therefore it says God opposes the proud. 621 00:34:07,295 --> 00:34:13,295 But gives grace to the humble congratulations. 622 00:34:13,295 --> 00:34:15,094 You're on the path to full flourishing. 623 00:34:15,304 --> 00:34:18,965 You're moving from death to life. 624 00:34:18,965 --> 00:34:19,264 Okay? 625 00:34:19,264 --> 00:34:21,065 Poor things, poor in spirit. 626 00:34:21,304 --> 00:34:25,955 I wanna give you two examples, A rich young ruler and Peter, uh, rich 627 00:34:25,955 --> 00:34:27,665 young ruler we see in Matthew 19. 628 00:34:27,665 --> 00:34:32,855 I'm just gonna kind of, remind us A wealthy ruler awkwardly 629 00:34:32,855 --> 00:34:34,385 approaches the carpenter's son 630 00:34:35,467 --> 00:34:35,888 teacher. 631 00:34:35,888 --> 00:34:41,257 He asks, what good thing must I do to inherit internal life treating 632 00:34:41,257 --> 00:34:42,578 salvation like a transaction? 633 00:34:42,578 --> 00:34:43,447 What must I do? 634 00:34:43,447 --> 00:34:44,618 He wants the bottom line. 635 00:34:45,818 --> 00:34:49,507 Jesus replies, if you want life, obey the commandments confidently. 636 00:34:49,507 --> 00:34:50,828 The man demands lifts. 637 00:34:51,308 --> 00:34:54,467 Tell him, do not murder, Do not commit adultery. 638 00:34:54,467 --> 00:34:55,188 Do not steal. 639 00:34:55,188 --> 00:34:56,268 Do not bear false witness. 640 00:34:56,268 --> 00:34:59,028 Honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself. 641 00:34:59,328 --> 00:35:00,798 He's certain he's passed the quiz. 642 00:35:01,578 --> 00:35:02,778 Then Jesus shocks him. 643 00:35:03,948 --> 00:35:07,758 If you want to be perfect, so all you have give to the poor and follow me. 644 00:35:07,993 --> 00:35:12,403 those words leave the young man shaken and despairing, and he walks away 645 00:35:12,613 --> 00:35:14,443 and the disciples are speechless. 646 00:35:14,533 --> 00:35:15,838 Their unspoken questioning could be ours. 647 00:35:16,543 --> 00:35:17,923 Then who can be saved? 648 00:35:18,763 --> 00:35:21,973 Jesus rep reply slams into them with people. 649 00:35:22,663 --> 00:35:27,133 This is impossible, not unlikely, not difficult, impossible. 650 00:35:27,223 --> 00:35:30,553 No wiggle room, no loopholes, no hope on human strength alone. 651 00:35:30,643 --> 00:35:32,563 It's like swimming across the ocean without a boat. 652 00:35:33,838 --> 00:35:36,478 We're used to earning everything by performance grades for study, 653 00:35:36,478 --> 00:35:38,038 pay for work, praise for success. 654 00:35:38,128 --> 00:35:40,678 So why should an eternal life be another transaction? 655 00:35:40,678 --> 00:35:43,108 But Jesus says, no, you can't pay the price. 656 00:35:43,168 --> 00:35:44,158 You need grace. 657 00:35:44,158 --> 00:35:45,268 Not credentials. 658 00:35:45,598 --> 00:35:48,058 A savior, not a system, a redeemer, not a resume. 659 00:35:48,928 --> 00:35:53,908 It wasn't the young man's wealth that blocked him, but his self-sufficiency, 660 00:35:53,908 --> 00:35:59,548 his pride, how hard Jesus says is it for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. 661 00:35:59,548 --> 00:36:02,608 It's no easier for the educated, the powerful, the religious, 662 00:36:02,698 --> 00:36:07,468 or anyone who trusts in their own self-sufficiency and worth. 663 00:36:07,918 --> 00:36:11,398 Rather than in God's mercy, he walks away sad. 664 00:36:11,398 --> 00:36:12,088 Simon Peter, 665 00:36:14,248 --> 00:36:16,048 the last thing he wanted to do was fish. 666 00:36:16,828 --> 00:36:19,288 But that was exactly what Jesus wanted to do. 667 00:36:20,248 --> 00:36:21,448 Peter had fished all night. 668 00:36:21,448 --> 00:36:23,818 His arms ached, his eyes burned, his neck was sore. 669 00:36:23,848 --> 00:36:26,548 All he wanted to do was go back home and let his wife 670 00:36:26,548 --> 00:36:27,958 rub the knots out of his back. 671 00:36:28,408 --> 00:36:29,248 It had been a long night. 672 00:36:29,248 --> 00:36:32,098 Peter didn't know how many times they'd thrown that net into the blackness 673 00:36:32,098 --> 00:36:33,658 and heard it slap against the sea. 674 00:36:34,378 --> 00:36:37,618 Peter didn't know how many times they had held the twine rope as the 675 00:36:37,618 --> 00:36:39,718 net sank into the water all night. 676 00:36:39,748 --> 00:36:43,138 They had waited for that bump, that tug, that jerk that would 677 00:36:43,138 --> 00:36:48,898 clue them to haul in the catch, but it had never come at daybreak. 678 00:36:49,558 --> 00:36:50,698 Peter was ready to go home. 679 00:36:51,268 --> 00:36:52,768 Just as Peter was about to leave the beach. 680 00:36:52,768 --> 00:36:54,148 He noticed a crowd coming toward him. 681 00:36:54,148 --> 00:36:58,258 They were following a lanky fellow who walked with a broad swing and a wide gate. 682 00:36:58,258 --> 00:36:58,978 He saw Peter. 683 00:36:59,713 --> 00:37:00,583 And called his name. 684 00:37:01,213 --> 00:37:01,843 Morning, Jesus. 685 00:37:01,843 --> 00:37:04,483 Peter called back though he was a hundred yards away. 686 00:37:04,483 --> 00:37:06,703 He could see his white smile. 687 00:37:06,703 --> 00:37:07,543 Quite a crowd, eh? 688 00:37:07,573 --> 00:37:08,563 He yelled, motioning. 689 00:37:08,908 --> 00:37:10,048 At the mass behind him. 690 00:37:10,048 --> 00:37:11,968 Peter nodded and sat down to watch. 691 00:37:12,388 --> 00:37:14,638 He stopped near the edge of the water and began to speak. 692 00:37:14,758 --> 00:37:17,518 Though Peter couldn't hear much, he could see a lot. 693 00:37:17,608 --> 00:37:20,278 He could see more and more people coming with all the pressing and shoving. 694 00:37:20,278 --> 00:37:23,248 It's a wonder Jesus didn't get pushed down into the water. 695 00:37:23,788 --> 00:37:25,048 Peter didn't have to think twice. 696 00:37:25,048 --> 00:37:26,698 He helped Jesus climb into his boat. 697 00:37:27,238 --> 00:37:29,668 When Jesus finished teaching, Jesus said, push out into the 698 00:37:29,668 --> 00:37:31,108 deep and let down your nets. 699 00:37:32,428 --> 00:37:35,218 After all they had caught or rather hadn't caught. 700 00:37:36,073 --> 00:37:39,523 Peter Groaned Still, there was something in Jesus' calm voice. 701 00:37:40,003 --> 00:37:44,413 So with a grunt and silent prayer, John and Peter rode out. 702 00:37:45,043 --> 00:37:48,133 Peter muttered doubts with every stroke they anchored. 703 00:37:48,133 --> 00:37:52,333 And Peter Hef did the heavy net and caught Jesus looking at him, 704 00:37:52,333 --> 00:37:53,953 beaming like a boy, offering a gift. 705 00:37:54,733 --> 00:37:57,223 Peter flung the net, expecting the usual empty weight. 706 00:37:57,223 --> 00:37:59,983 Instead, it yanked tight, nearly pulling him overboard. 707 00:38:00,553 --> 00:38:03,163 John and Jesus lunged to help him haul on net. 708 00:38:03,163 --> 00:38:07,153 After net, the boat strained under the weight of the fish until it began to sink. 709 00:38:08,383 --> 00:38:11,413 At the end, it was quite a scene, four fishermen and two boats, knee deepened 710 00:38:11,413 --> 00:38:16,303 fish, and one carpenter seated on our bow, relishing the pandemonium. 711 00:38:16,963 --> 00:38:17,923 That's when it happened. 712 00:38:17,953 --> 00:38:20,863 The realization struck with such force that it nearly sent 713 00:38:20,863 --> 00:38:22,393 Peter reeling into the fish. 714 00:38:22,633 --> 00:38:25,783 It wasn't just the impossible load that jarred him. 715 00:38:26,833 --> 00:38:31,123 Peter looked at, Jesus, really looked as if for the first time he seemed 716 00:38:31,123 --> 00:38:36,793 impossibly old and impossibly young, a contradiction in every line of his face. 717 00:38:36,913 --> 00:38:40,153 The sunlight, I mean, made a halo of the spray behind his head, 718 00:38:40,153 --> 00:38:45,823 and Peter felt equal measures of terror and longing, numan as all. 719 00:38:46,333 --> 00:38:50,053 That's when Peter realized who Jesus was, and that's when 720 00:38:50,053 --> 00:38:51,763 Peter realized who Peter was. 721 00:38:53,518 --> 00:38:56,188 Peter was the one who told God what he couldn't do. 722 00:38:57,058 --> 00:39:00,778 The words came out of him like a drowning man's cough AGAs from 723 00:39:00,778 --> 00:39:02,968 the deep well of his own poverty. 724 00:39:03,268 --> 00:39:06,058 Go away from me, Lord, I am a sinful man. 725 00:39:06,538 --> 00:39:08,068 There wasn't anything else he could say. 726 00:39:08,068 --> 00:39:12,448 He felt suddenly naked, as if every secret skepticism, every hollow 727 00:39:12,448 --> 00:39:17,293 boast, every piety that was only paint on rotten wood had been stripped 728 00:39:17,298 --> 00:39:18,748 away by that net full of fish. 729 00:39:19,663 --> 00:39:20,773 His knees buckled. 730 00:39:20,953 --> 00:39:25,183 He knelt in the trembling massive miracles, unable to formulate a single 731 00:39:25,183 --> 00:39:29,563 prayer that did a taste of ash and salt and old unredeemable shame. 732 00:39:30,283 --> 00:39:35,383 Peter didn't know what Jesus saw on him, but Jesus didn't leave. 733 00:39:38,588 --> 00:39:42,433 Maybe he liked the way Peter blurted out his feelings, his inability 734 00:39:42,433 --> 00:39:46,273 to get it right, his reluctance to feign surprise and his own smallness. 735 00:39:48,118 --> 00:39:51,148 Maybe he just liked being around people who weren't finished stories yet. 736 00:39:53,608 --> 00:39:54,058 Whatever. 737 00:39:57,268 --> 00:40:02,698 Whatever the reason he stayed, he reached out those battered craftsman hands. 738 00:40:03,058 --> 00:40:08,698 Hands that had splintered timber or cradle a drop sparrow, and pulled Peter upright. 739 00:40:09,448 --> 00:40:13,918 His eyes held Peter's not with judgment or colluding, but with a kind of delighted 740 00:40:13,918 --> 00:40:18,928 recognition as if he'd been waiting for Peter to finally admit the obvious 741 00:40:19,648 --> 00:40:27,328 that he was in over his head, and that was exactly where Jesus wanted him. 742 00:40:28,018 --> 00:40:31,188 I use those two examples on purpose because there's kind of thread between it. 743 00:40:31,188 --> 00:40:32,028 Do you notice it? 744 00:40:34,098 --> 00:40:35,448 It's their names. 745 00:40:36,318 --> 00:40:37,878 Their names Simon Peter. 746 00:40:38,898 --> 00:40:39,978 A rich, young ruler. 747 00:40:40,848 --> 00:40:44,598 Think about it, the rich young ruler who cared about making a name for 748 00:40:44,598 --> 00:40:46,878 himself, we never know his name. 749 00:40:48,723 --> 00:40:52,773 But Simon, he gets a new name, Peter, and you see this thread through 750 00:40:52,773 --> 00:40:58,113 scripture, Abraham to Abraham, Sarah to Sarah Saul, to Paul. 751 00:40:58,163 --> 00:41:03,623 Lazarus in the rich man, and people ask in that story, why does Lazarus have a name? 752 00:41:03,773 --> 00:41:07,643 And the rich man doesn't have a name because that's his name. 753 00:41:08,333 --> 00:41:12,293 That's what he pursued and that's what he's known for. 754 00:41:12,533 --> 00:41:14,153 His name is Rich Man. 755 00:41:16,643 --> 00:41:17,838 Blessed are the poor in spirit. 756 00:41:19,088 --> 00:41:23,138 That is blessed congratulated favored are those who stand before God 757 00:41:23,288 --> 00:41:25,178 with their hands turned inside out. 758 00:41:25,178 --> 00:41:26,858 Hearts emptied of self regard. 759 00:41:26,948 --> 00:41:31,298 Voices cracked in hoarse from the long, humiliating confession of their own 760 00:41:31,298 --> 00:41:36,428 inadequacy, the jewel of joy, so precious and rare, and a world of striving is 761 00:41:36,428 --> 00:41:38,408 not handed over to the self-sufficient. 762 00:41:38,808 --> 00:41:41,718 It's not given as a medal for the spiritually athletic. 763 00:41:41,928 --> 00:41:46,158 Those who have sprinted up the slippery steps of self-improvement and can see 764 00:41:46,158 --> 00:41:50,208 their own reflection in every shine of virtue, know the jewel is set deep in the 765 00:41:50,208 --> 00:41:52,008 crown of those who have failed to know it. 766 00:41:52,938 --> 00:41:56,958 the ones whose best efforts have collapsed, whose promises frayed, 767 00:41:57,108 --> 00:42:01,908 whose private ambitions now wrought unburied in the field of their past. 768 00:42:03,233 --> 00:42:06,233 Take the words as a stethoscope to your soul. 769 00:42:06,443 --> 00:42:08,093 Blessed are the poor in spirit. 770 00:42:08,633 --> 00:42:13,643 It is a benediction that feels at first like a curse until you realize 771 00:42:13,673 --> 00:42:16,313 it's the only honest diagnosis. 772 00:42:16,613 --> 00:42:19,313 The way of the kingdom is not a conquest, but a surrender. 773 00:42:19,403 --> 00:42:21,893 Not an acquisition, but an abrogation. 774 00:42:22,523 --> 00:42:26,603 The first step toward joy is not an achievement, but an abandonment, 775 00:42:26,663 --> 00:42:30,683 a relinquishment of the fiction that you could ever have made 776 00:42:30,683 --> 00:42:32,933 yourself whole or even wish to. 777 00:42:33,323 --> 00:42:37,463 It is the plea for help a palm up surrender, a collapse into the 778 00:42:37,463 --> 00:42:41,303 arms of a God who never ask you to bring anything but your need. 779 00:42:41,593 --> 00:42:45,883 It is a confrontation with your own bankruptcy, a recognition that you're 780 00:42:45,883 --> 00:42:50,113 always closer to empty than full, always on the verge of insolvency when 781 00:42:50,113 --> 00:42:51,913 it comes to goodness or faith or hope. 782 00:42:52,063 --> 00:42:55,573 These are not the self-possessed, the negotiators of the spiritual 783 00:42:55,573 --> 00:42:59,353 market, but the beggars in the street outside the banquet, wearing rags 784 00:42:59,353 --> 00:43:03,013 and dreaming of crumbs, they have stopped pretending their hunger is 785 00:43:03,013 --> 00:43:05,653 temporary or their thirst self supplied. 786 00:43:05,743 --> 00:43:07,093 They have stopped demanding justice. 787 00:43:07,093 --> 00:43:09,073 Justin was who burned them to the ground. 788 00:43:09,938 --> 00:43:13,568 They're shouting with the last ragged breath in their lungs. 789 00:43:14,588 --> 00:43:15,488 For mercy, 790 00:43:15,778 --> 00:43:21,748 the Pharisee polished and prayerful recites the catalog of his virtues. 791 00:43:22,078 --> 00:43:26,608 The tax collector wretched and despised can only beat his breast and mutter God 792 00:43:26,608 --> 00:43:30,448 have mercy on me as sinner or the sinner. 793 00:43:31,858 --> 00:43:37,048 The kingdom throws open its doors to the tax collector while the Pharisee is left 794 00:43:37,048 --> 00:43:39,478 outside, still rehearsing his resume. 795 00:43:39,778 --> 00:43:44,098 The great reversal is not just that the late comers are welcome, but 796 00:43:44,098 --> 00:43:50,098 that the finish line is only visible to those who know how far they've 797 00:43:50,098 --> 00:43:52,638 fallen short to be poor in spirit. 798 00:43:53,208 --> 00:43:58,028 Is not to be morose or self-flagellating or mired in shame. 799 00:43:58,478 --> 00:44:03,218 It is to be lucid to see with terrifying clarity, the gap between 800 00:44:03,218 --> 00:44:08,198 what is and what ought to be the abyss between the infinite holiness 801 00:44:08,198 --> 00:44:10,928 of God and the shabbiness of the self. 802 00:44:11,378 --> 00:44:12,638 Those who taste. 803 00:44:12,878 --> 00:44:17,408 God's presence have declared spiritual bankruptcy, have signed 804 00:44:17,408 --> 00:44:20,468 the papers, and the presence of witnesses have agreed to the terms. 805 00:44:20,588 --> 00:44:22,238 Nothing in my hands I bring. 806 00:44:22,748 --> 00:44:25,028 They know the cupboards are bare, the pockets have holes in them. 807 00:44:25,028 --> 00:44:25,958 The options are gone. 808 00:44:26,138 --> 00:44:29,348 Their last and only hope is the kindness of a stranger, or 809 00:44:29,348 --> 00:44:35,018 in this case, the kindness of the one who calls them my name. 810 00:44:35,498 --> 00:44:39,068 And so these blessed ones, these poppers of the soul do not brag. 811 00:44:39,068 --> 00:44:41,888 They beg, they do not compare their neediness to one another, 812 00:44:42,158 --> 00:44:45,908 as if some hierarchy of desperation might impress God. 813 00:44:45,938 --> 00:44:46,628 Do you hear me? 814 00:44:47,108 --> 00:44:51,698 They do not bargain because they know they have nothing to offer. 815 00:44:52,268 --> 00:44:56,558 They plead openly and often for God to do for them what they can 816 00:44:56,558 --> 00:44:58,418 never do on their own behalf. 817 00:44:58,598 --> 00:45:00,698 They're a leper shouting from outside the city. 818 00:45:00,698 --> 00:45:03,968 The prodigals rehearsing their apology in the pigsty. 819 00:45:04,508 --> 00:45:09,278 They are those who have, by grace given up on self rescues and in so 820 00:45:09,278 --> 00:45:12,758 doing have stumbled upon rescue itself. 821 00:45:13,658 --> 00:45:16,748 This is the irony of the gospel, the scandal and the stumbling block. 822 00:45:17,228 --> 00:45:19,718 The door swings open not for those who have climbed the mountain. 823 00:45:21,188 --> 00:45:27,758 For those who have collapsed at its base, to see God is to be unmade and remade. 824 00:45:28,358 --> 00:45:29,978 It is to have every mass torn away. 825 00:45:30,248 --> 00:45:34,058 Every secret exposed it is to stand naked, not only before judgment, but 826 00:45:34,058 --> 00:45:39,008 before the mercy, because the one who judges is the same one who justifies. 827 00:45:39,188 --> 00:45:42,428 And in that moment, all the defenses collapse. 828 00:45:42,428 --> 00:45:46,988 All the pretense is laughable, and the only appropriate response is 829 00:45:47,018 --> 00:45:48,423 all shot through with gratitude. 830 00:45:49,403 --> 00:45:53,123 The poverty of spirit is not only a destination but a doorway. 831 00:45:53,723 --> 00:45:55,103 It's the entrance to the feast. 832 00:45:55,163 --> 00:45:56,363 It's the key in the lock. 833 00:45:56,363 --> 00:46:01,438 The password whispered through the bars of prison cell, but here is 834 00:46:01,443 --> 00:46:03,473 the second irony, the deeper one. 835 00:46:04,313 --> 00:46:07,133 The moment you confess your impoverishment is the moment 836 00:46:07,133 --> 00:46:08,573 you are enriched beyond measure. 837 00:46:09,083 --> 00:46:12,353 Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 838 00:46:12,953 --> 00:46:14,603 The fullness is reserved for the empty. 839 00:46:14,603 --> 00:46:17,303 The kingdom is inherited by those who come with nothing but their need. 840 00:46:17,453 --> 00:46:20,483 The currency of grace is not merit, but mercy, the economy of heaven 841 00:46:20,483 --> 00:46:22,193 mocks every ledger of achievement. 842 00:46:22,643 --> 00:46:25,343 The last become first, not as a consolation prize. 843 00:46:26,693 --> 00:46:28,943 But is it the essential condition of the gospel? 844 00:46:29,693 --> 00:46:32,933 So let's not merely not at these words or file them under the heading. 845 00:46:33,023 --> 00:46:34,853 Well, that's, that's counterintuitive wisdom. 846 00:46:34,853 --> 00:46:35,093 Okay. 847 00:46:36,123 --> 00:46:36,783 That's good to know. 848 00:46:37,353 --> 00:46:39,093 Let's be scandalized by them. 849 00:46:39,813 --> 00:46:44,253 Let them offend our sense of order in the order of this world, this broken 850 00:46:44,253 --> 00:46:49,083 world, our addiction to competence, our craving for applause, let them 851 00:46:49,143 --> 00:46:54,363 detonate the myth of self-rescue and leave us reeling in the aftermath, dazed 852 00:46:54,573 --> 00:46:57,093 by the sheer impossibility of it all. 853 00:46:57,393 --> 00:47:01,083 If salvation is impossible for us, then let us be honest. 854 00:47:01,293 --> 00:47:02,583 It's impossible. 855 00:47:04,148 --> 00:47:06,038 Only God could bridge the gap. 856 00:47:06,638 --> 00:47:08,558 Only God could bear the cost. 857 00:47:09,128 --> 00:47:14,378 Only God could enter the grave and walk back out. 858 00:47:15,388 --> 00:47:20,548 But that leads us away from ourselves and to the true hero of this sermon who will 859 00:47:20,548 --> 00:47:22,528 save me from the sermon on the mount guys. 860 00:47:23,368 --> 00:47:29,398 Well, the preacher himself will notice with me the beatitudes, the preacher 861 00:47:29,398 --> 00:47:33,808 of the sermon, and I close before the Beatitudes describe you and me. 862 00:47:33,808 --> 00:47:34,708 And they do. 863 00:47:34,738 --> 00:47:35,248 They will. 864 00:47:35,248 --> 00:47:38,428 That's the, the life changed by Jesus. 865 00:47:39,568 --> 00:47:40,618 They describe him. 866 00:47:41,368 --> 00:47:42,533 He's who I want you to see. 867 00:47:43,498 --> 00:47:47,008 Why can you and I be as rich as kings? 868 00:47:47,968 --> 00:47:51,868 Because Jesus Christ became poor, spiritually, and utterly poor. 869 00:47:52,018 --> 00:47:53,698 Why can you and I be comforted? 870 00:47:54,088 --> 00:47:58,168 Only because he mourned, because he wept, inconsolably and died in the dark. 871 00:47:58,288 --> 00:48:01,408 Why are you and I as Christians inheriting the earth? 872 00:48:01,588 --> 00:48:05,038 Because he became meek, because he was the lamb before it. 873 00:48:05,038 --> 00:48:05,638 Shears. 874 00:48:05,818 --> 00:48:07,498 why are you and I inheriting the earth? 875 00:48:07,618 --> 00:48:09,148 Because he was stripped of everything. 876 00:48:09,298 --> 00:48:10,888 They cast lots for his garments. 877 00:48:10,948 --> 00:48:12,688 Why can you and I be filled? 878 00:48:12,958 --> 00:48:14,308 You and I can only be filled? 879 00:48:14,308 --> 00:48:17,128 Because on the cross he said, I thirst. 880 00:48:17,488 --> 00:48:19,198 Why are you and I obtaining mercy? 881 00:48:19,198 --> 00:48:22,198 Because he gotten a, not from Pilate, not from the crowd. 882 00:48:22,708 --> 00:48:26,158 He suffered the judicial wrath, even from his father. 883 00:48:26,458 --> 00:48:30,118 Why will you and I be able to see God? 884 00:48:30,118 --> 00:48:31,828 Because he was pure. 885 00:48:32,518 --> 00:48:33,508 On our behalf. 886 00:48:33,508 --> 00:48:35,668 Do you know what the word pure means? 887 00:48:35,668 --> 00:48:39,238 It means to be single-minded, absolutely undivided, laser focused. 888 00:48:39,448 --> 00:48:40,648 why can you and I see God? 889 00:48:40,858 --> 00:48:43,138 Because on the cross, Jesus said, where are you? 890 00:48:43,798 --> 00:48:45,238 Why do we have peace? 891 00:48:45,448 --> 00:48:50,458 Because the whole world turned and wared against Jesus and attacked him. 892 00:48:51,558 --> 00:48:54,108 Now, do you see how all this fits together? 893 00:48:54,108 --> 00:48:54,708 Everybody? 894 00:48:54,858 --> 00:48:57,888 When you see Jesus Christ being poor in spirit for you, that helps 895 00:48:57,888 --> 00:49:01,578 you be in poor in spirit before God and you say, I need your grace. 896 00:49:01,848 --> 00:49:03,078 I am weak. 897 00:49:03,228 --> 00:49:05,058 I need you to be strong. 898 00:49:05,148 --> 00:49:08,778 And he is that once you get it, you're filled. 899 00:49:08,988 --> 00:49:10,878 Then you're poor in spirit toward everybody. 900 00:49:10,878 --> 00:49:11,268 That's it. 901 00:49:11,268 --> 00:49:15,408 You walk out into the world with the humility you didn't have before you even 902 00:49:15,408 --> 00:49:17,748 see the poor and you don't look down on them because you're saying, well. 903 00:49:18,283 --> 00:49:20,683 I was poor spiritually. 904 00:49:21,013 --> 00:49:24,523 Physically I might not be or maybe I am, but physically you may be poor. 905 00:49:24,523 --> 00:49:26,893 We're both brothers and sisters and needed help. 906 00:49:26,893 --> 00:49:27,523 You need help. 907 00:49:27,523 --> 00:49:29,203 It changes everything. 908 00:49:29,633 --> 00:49:34,223 guys remember the gospel is not just the A, B, C, it's the A to Z. 909 00:49:34,958 --> 00:49:36,848 I think of Galatians in chapter three. 910 00:49:36,848 --> 00:49:38,888 Paul writes, who's bewitched? 911 00:49:38,888 --> 00:49:42,218 You, you foolish Galatians, you who begun in the spirit? 912 00:49:42,398 --> 00:49:44,798 Are you gonna perfect yourselves in the flesh? 913 00:49:45,458 --> 00:49:50,258 it's easy even as Christians to leave this behind, 914 00:49:50,476 --> 00:49:56,311 but the way that we begin is the way that we continue I remind us, James 915 00:49:56,311 --> 00:50:00,001 four six, but he gives more grace. 916 00:50:00,991 --> 00:50:06,721 Therefore it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. 917 00:50:07,271 --> 00:50:09,491 Until you see, Jesus is the hero of heroes. 918 00:50:09,521 --> 00:50:16,241 Until you are transformed, until you come to Christ and you will not be able 919 00:50:16,241 --> 00:50:20,681 to live like the Sermon on the Mount, if you don't understand the gospel, 920 00:50:20,921 --> 00:50:24,251 but you're not looking at the Sermon on the Mount through 2000 years of 921 00:50:24,251 --> 00:50:27,851 cultural haze, you're gonna say, God saved me from the Sermon on the Mount. 922 00:50:28,631 --> 00:50:32,711 If you understand the gospel, you're going to say, God saved me through 923 00:50:32,711 --> 00:50:35,081 a true understanding of the one. 924 00:50:35,081 --> 00:50:39,161 The Sermon on the Mount shows me the hero of heroes, the blessed and favored 925 00:50:39,161 --> 00:50:44,141 one, Jesus Christ, who became poor, who mourned, who became meek, who became 926 00:50:44,141 --> 00:50:48,941 empty, so that you and I could be filled. 927 00:50:50,111 --> 00:50:50,561 God bless you.