Modern Worship | April 18, 2026 | Church of the Resurrection

37:38 The Sermon on the Mount is the single most important concentrated set of Jesus' teachings on both ethics and morality, but also on spirituality. And you know it already. So the Sermon on the Mount has material, even if you're not really, maybe you haven't read the entire Sermon on the Mount for a while, it's got the Lord's Prayer in there. It's in the Sermon on the Mount, you'll find the golden rule. You're gonna find Jesus say, you can't worship both God and money. You're gonna hear him say that you can't, that be sure to take the log out of your own eye before you take the splinter out of your neighbor's eye. Love even your enemies, he's gonna teach us in the Sermon on the Mount. And today we're gonna turn to the Beatitudes, the opening of the Sermon on the Mount. But before we do that, some of you know, I'm kind of an Apple nerd, Apple computer nerd. And I got my very first Apple computer, I bought it in 1985, and yeah, 1985, it's over 40 years old. It still sits on my desk in my office. I've got almost everything I ever bought that was an Apple device. But I was thinking about TV spots. And in 1997, they came out with a television commercial that to this day is still probably my favorite TV commercial of any kind.

38:36 Take a look. Here's to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. The crazy ones and the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. I think about Jesus when I think about that. So when he walked on this earth, people thought he was crazy. Literally, his family at one point thinks that he has lost his mind. Other people think that he was possessed by demons. They listened to him. They watched what he did. They saw how he lived. And there were people who criticized him routinely. and yet he ended up changing the world.

39:32 And the things that he taught and the things that he did and then what he demonstrated by his death on the cross and what he accomplished by his death on the cross and then the resurrection, all of that changed the course of world history. Particularly we see that in Western civilization, but you see it in the East too. And even people who are not religious have been shaped by the things that Jesus said and did. And the Sermon on the Bout is pivotal to that. E. Stanley Jones, who's in our window up here, if you look up, he is the fellow who is sitting next to the river just above St. Teresa or Mother Teresa of Avila. E. Stanley Jones, he once said this. He's a great missionary to India. He said, the Sermon on the Mount seems dangerous. It challenges the whole underlying conception on which modern society is built. Imagine, that's what you're going to hear as we study the Sermon on the Mount and read it together over these next five weeks. English priest and theologian John R. W. Stott said, the Sermon on the Mount is probably the best known part of the teaching of Jesus, though arguably it is the least understood and certainly it is the least obeyed. It is the nearest thing to a manifesto that he ever uttered, for it is his own description of what he wanted his followers to be and to do. So today we're going to embark on a journey for the next month, a little over a month. We're going to study the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. We're going to take the time to read them. If you receive the GPS, the Grow, Pray, and Study Guide, our daily devotional, which by the way, you can go online and sign up for that. You'll receive every day in the morning text from the Sermon on the Mount.

40:51 You're going to have a chance to read the entire thing, Matthew chapters 5 through 7, over the coming weeks. I'd like to invite you, if you brought your Bible with you today, to turn to Matthew chapter 5. We're going to look at verses 3 through 12. But before we jump into that, I want to mention that right before this happens, Jesus is beginning his public ministry in chapter 4, the end of chapter 4. And Matthew tells us that the people who came to see him were the paralytics, the epileptics, the people who were demon-possessed, the people who struggled with mental illness, the people who were broken, hurting, the sinners and the tax collectors. And Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom to them, and he healed their sicknesses. So these were the people that Jesus, you know, was hanging around with. These were the losers, the nobodies, the misfits. These were the people who came to Jesus, which gives you some background as to why he says what he says in Matthew chapter 5, the Beatitudes. These were the people who were hurting the downcast, and now he's going to speak about their blessedness and our blessedness as well.

41:44 So again, if you'll turn to Matthew chapter 5, verses 3 through 12, and in the sermon, I've entitled the sermon, The Pursuit of Happiness. And you, of course, recognize that phrase. we're going to celebrate the document that comes from this summer, July 4th, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And you remember that one phrase. Most people don't remember the 27 statements to King George of the things we were unhappy with. What we remember is that preamble. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are, join me, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So the pursuit of happiness. So what is happiness exactly? And how do we pursue it? And what we're going to find is that Jesus offers us a very different path to happiness and really defines it differently than what we find in the world. So the word happy in Greek is actually in Latin is beatus. And this is where we get the name beatitude from. Beatus is the Latin word for happy or fortunate or blessed.

42:45 And in Latin, it's meccarios. So each of these statements of Jesus, these beatitudes, begins with that word, beatus in Latin. Happy or blessed or fortunate are those who are, and then he describes who's happy. Now, these are not the only beatitudes in the Bible. There's about 45 in the Old Testament and another 20 in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, you find statements like this in the beginning of the book of Psalms. Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord. so you can see, happy are those who do or don't do certain things. This is how it's laid out. And these are typically, they're kind of like Proverbs. You find most of them in the Old Testament in the book of Psalms. Psalm 2 ends with this one. Happy are all who take refuge in him. Now, Jesus is going to offer a different set of beatitudes when we get to the New Testament. But what's interesting is these ideas of like where happiness is found, or at least the way we live, often thinking it's going to make us happy, are often, you know, in our society, are often the very things that make us more miserable. So here's a set of beatitudes that we might think, you know, at least I see often at work in the world around us. Blessed or happy or fortunate are the rich and greedy, the indifferent who never weep, the proud and the powerful, the ambitious and the self-absorbed, those who show no mercy, the narcissistic and the hedonists, the bullies and the warmongers.

44:05 Blessed are you when people flatter you and say only kind things about you. And if they don't, you criticize them back and you crush them, right? That's the sort of beatitudes that we might think of, you know, in our world around us. At least it's the way sometimes we live, thinking this is the path to happiness. But Jesus offers us just the opposite. Listen again to his words. Blessed are the poor in spirit, or the brokenhearted, or the hopeless, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed or remember happy is the same word. Happy or blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed or happy are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed or happy are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely in my name.

45:03 Okay, we're gonna break up these eight or nine beatitudes, maybe nine, the last two might be one, so eight or nine, but we're going to break these up into three groups. The first group is these first two Beatitudes, and they are speaking about something that seems really nonsensical. Jesus is saying that the brokenhearted or the hopeless are happy or blessed. That doesn't seem right. And those who grieve or mourn, they're happy? How does that work? So let's unpack these first two, and then we're going to jump into the Beatitudes that teach us how we're meant to live, what character we're meant to demonstrate, or how we're meant to live our lives. So when it comes to blessed are the poor in spirit, poor in spirit, often we think that means the humble, but actually poor in the Greek, in this verse, there's two words for poor in the New Testament. One of those is, you know, you're just kind of poor. And the other one is that you've been knocked to your knees. This actually, the Greek word here is that you've been knocked to your knees.

45:56 So it actually has to do with crouching down or falling on your knees, as though somebody took a baseball bat to the back of your legs and you fell on the ground and you couldn't walk anymore. That's the poor that is used here. This is the word that Jesus, well, in the Greek translation of Jesus' words is used. And so this is somebody who's groveling, somebody who's on their knees begging. And then Jesus doesn't say, blessed are the poor. In Luke's gospel, that's what it says, in Luke chapter 6. But here he says, blessed are the poor in spirit, which means that in their spirit, they have been so knocked down by life that they'll feel hopeless. Hopeless. Happy are the hopeless. That just sounds bizarre. Happy are the hopeless. for God himself will lift them up. For these hopeless, to them belongs the kingdom of heaven. So I want to pause there for just a moment. I want us to think about how this works. In these first two parables, our first two Beatitudes, the second one is blessed or happy are those who mourn or grieve.

46:51 And that could be mourning or grieving the loss of a loved one, or it could be mourning or grieving something that's been taken away from you, a divorce or something else where you just, again, find your soul crushed or your spirit filled with heaviness and pain. And what Jesus is saying, what he's pointing to is a truth that's found all the way through the Bible, and that is that God cares for the brokenhearted, that God sees the people who are cast down or the people have been beat down by other people. He sees them, he remembers them, and he lifts them up. I love that story in the book of Genesis where Hagar, remember Abraham has a child with Hagar because Sarah can't have a child. And then when Sarah conceives, she says, you've got to send Hagar away, and Hagar and Ishmael are sent away. And Hagar is out in the wilderness and she's weeping by herself and God sees her. And God sends a messenger to her and says, the Lord sees you and he cares for you. And you're gonna be okay. You can't see it yet, but you're gonna be okay. And God is gonna lift you up and bless the son of yours.

47:43 It's gonna be okay. And by faith, she finds her heart lifted up. She says, he is the God who sees. He is the God who sees me and knows me. He's walking with me. And you know, throughout the scripture, we find this picture in grief. He is the God who walks with us even to the valley of the shadow of death. And so when Jesus talks about these first two Beatitudes, he's saying this is the heart of God. God's heart goes out to the people who are downcast, beat down, broken down. The people who are hopeless, or the people who are in despair, or the people who find themselves weeping. God's heart is for them. And when you believe that, and you trust that, and you trust that God is on your side, he's going to care for you in ways you can't see, and he's going to deliver you and lift you up. And as we say at Easter, the worst thing is never the last thing. then you find that there's a hope that begins to well up in you. You find that your faith sustains you because even though your present circumstances aren't clear, you can't completely see it, you know that God is with you and somehow he'll sustain you and see you through.

48:37 That's what Jesus is saying here. I remember years ago taking a youth group, like our youth group that's here with us today from Kearney. I was a youth pastor and I was taking my youth group to South Dallas. And this was a community that was impoverished and we were repairing homes there. And there was this woman who was there and she lived, she was elderly. She had very little. She lived on what little bit she received from social security. And she didn't have the money to paint her house. She didn't have the money to build a ramp to get her into the house, you know, when she couldn't go up the steps anymore. And so we were doing all these kinds of things. And yet when we saw her, the dignity that she had, the sense of hope that she had, she was living an impoverished life, living below the poverty level. And yet she had such wealth in her heart, in her life, the way she treated us, the way she cared for us. It was remarkable. And what she said was, I know what many people don't know, that despite my circumstances, the Lord is by my side all the time. And that's what gives me strength. That's what lifts me up. And so that kind of hope, I was thinking about this week, Ben Sasse. He was the senator from Nebraska a number of years ago, then went on to be the head of a university in Florida. And Ben, just this past December, at the age of 53, today he's 54, but at the age of 53, he was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, found that it spread all the way through his body. And the doctor said, you know, you probably have three months to live.

50:00 Now he's been around for four months. So he's outlasted them by a month, their predictions. But so what did he do with that? He has a 14 year old son and two daughters who are in their 20s. And he decided, you know what? I really do believe this gospel, that this life is not all there is, and there's hope beyond this life, and that God is going to walk with me through the valley of the shadow of death. And I'm going to do all I can to let his light shine through me in whatever time I have left. And the last few weeks I've been seeing interviews with him popping up all over the place. He's been on the morning TV shows, the news shows. He's been on the New York Times. He was on Focus on the Families podcast. And I wanted to hear just a little bit of what he talked about when it came to his faith that sustained him. And you can see, you know, he's been receiving treatment. His face, you know, reflects the treatment he's been receiving. But take a listen. the opportunity in that time of uncertainty to rely on the Lord. It's a blessing. We don't, we don't know the outcome A versus B on a whole bunch of choices. And is my clinical trial going to last a few extra months? We're all going to die. We're all going to be pushing up daisies, but then we're going to get a glorified body and we're going to be at that adoration feast again.

51:06 And it is going to make the sufferings of this present age seem too infinitesimally small to even try to recall. I go to things like Amazing Grace. When we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing his praise than when we first begun. Death is an enemy. Death is wicked, but it's the final enemy. It's our last battle. And after that, there will be no more tears. The first two Beatitudes speak to us about God's care and concern for us when we're at our lowest. And by faith, we trust in that. And then we see his spirit bearing us up. And then we have this promise that even if the worst thing happens, it's not the last thing. There's always hope. Blessed are the poor in spirit and blessed are those who mourn. Now, the next five beatitudes take us through character, qualities of character that God desires from us and are the source of happiness and or actions that we might take that spring forward from those characters have those qualities of character. So I want to mention at this juncture, this last week while I've been working on the sermon, I have been praying through the Beatitudes. So each day I would pray through them and I would pray, Lord, help me to remember when I'm poor in spirit that you're with me. Help those who are poor in spirit to be reminded that you are with them for those who grieve and mourn. But then I would walk through these next five and I would pray, please help me be more like that. So we thought, well, maybe we would give you an opportunity to have the Beatitudes at your own fingertips.

52:36 So we've created them as wallpaper for your phone. And if you'll put that up on the screen, this is what it looks like. This is my phone from just this morning. And as you walk through it, I know it's a little harder to see there, but when you've got it in your hand, every time I pull up my phone and I lift it up, I see the Beatitudes. And then I have a chance to stop and pray them. Well, let's just read them, the next five. Blessed are the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers. So these are qualities of character that God intends for us, and they are the pathway to finding blessedness or happiness. New Testament scholar Grant Osborne translates these same beatitudes in this way in his commentary on the book of Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew. He says, instead of happy are or blessed are, he translates it, God blesses the meek. God blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. God blesses the merciful. God blesses the pure in heart. God blesses the peacemakers. Or God brings happiness to these people. So part of what I've been praying each day was, Lord, help me to be meek, gentle, humble. Help me to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Help me, Lord, to be merciful, to be pure in heart, and to be a peacemaker. All right, so let's talk about each of these briefly.

53:52 Meekness. Meekness is a word that in the Greek signifies, well, it signifies two things. First of all, it signifies a great strength covered in a gentle spirit. Sometimes it's described as a steel covered in a soft material or in velvet. It was a word that was used to describe horses that were stallions. I mean, these were like really strong thoroughbred horses, and yet they were perfectly trained by their masters or their owners so that they could harness their power and use it. And this is the idea that to be meek isn't to be weak, it's to be really strong. And that strongness is reflected in gentleness, in humility towards other people, knowing where our strength comes from and knowing that when we hold onto that, we harness that strength in humility when we respond to other people in meekness. It changes us and changes the world. Paul says this, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. You know, we live at a time where meekness is often lacking. Instead of what we find, and I'm just going to pick social media for a second.

54:57 So on social media, how easy it is for people to be able to say harsh things to one another on social media, right? What is needed is gentleness. Now, somebody says something harsh to you and you find it so hard not to say something harsh back to them, isn't it? I mean, like you just wanna zing them back. Somebody zings you and you're gonna zing them back. But I'm reminded of what the book of Proverbs says, a gentle answer, a meek answer turns away wrath. It's amazing when you feel defensive or you feel like you've been attacked, when you respond with gentleness, how things begin to change, how the other person maybe feels a little ashamed of what they said or what they did, or maybe they don't. Maybe they just continue to attack. But we live in a world and a time where meekness is in short supply, gentleness and humility is in short supply, and instead we find people feeling really courageous because they can say whatever they wanna say on social media or whatever venue it might be. What the world needs today is greater gentleness, greater meekness, and greater humility. So let me just ask you this question. We're talking about what makes us happy, the pathway for happiness.

55:51 Which person is happier? The person who is constantly zinging people, saying cruel things about people who's harsh and just almost obnoxious. Is that person happy or is the person who's gentle and humble and responds with gentleness? Which of those two paths lead to happiness? And you know it's this path, right? This path just makes us miserable. This path leads to peace. Jesus was right. That leads to the second one, hunger and thirst for righteousness. So let's put it up on the screen. And if you'd say this with me, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. All right, so first hunger and thirst. I don't know when you've been hungry. Most of us in America don't know what real hunger is like. There are people in the world who will go two or three days sometimes without a meal. That's real hunger. But, you know, for us, we might fast a meal. During Lent, I was fasting a meal and praying every day. And as I was doing that, you know, I came to evening and like I found myself super hungry. And whatever Levon fixed, it was awesome. You know, it was just like everything tasted so good when you hadn't eaten all day. And, you know, when you're thirsty, when you've gone without something to drink for a while, you're just parched. And Jesus is taking something we all understand. We've all been hungry. We've all been thirsty. And he says, you know, what would happen if in your heart you were hungering and thirsting to do the right thing? And righteousness has two dimensions. One is what we do in our private, personal life. So doing the right thing personally, living our lives in a way that honors God. And so that's one path. But righteousness also in the New Testament, actually in the entire Bible signifies justice.

57:21 So the word is translated both in Hebrew and in Greek. It's sometimes translated righteousness, sometimes it's translated as justice. Justice is fairness or it's help for people who are struggling or the people who are vulnerable or the people who are powerless. And so Jesus is saying, you know, happy are those who hunger and thirst both to do the right thing in their personal lives, but who hunger and thirst for the right thing to be done in our society, in our communities, and in our world, who care about the people who are vulnerable or the people who are powerless Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. One of the things I love about you is I believe you get this. I mean, I'm really proud as your pastor of the ways that you're constantly trying to hunger and thirst after righteousness. I think about Easter Sunday. So Easter Sunday, you know, we mentioned to you that the entire offering, whatever you gave on Easter was going to be used for, first of all, a grant of $100,000 to Pharmacy of Grace.

58:12 And so, you know, we were able to do that and that provides medications for people who are uninsured or underinsured and can't afford their medications. And then we said the rest of it's going to be going towards our help ministries. So when people come and they're in need of help with their utility bills or, you know, whatever it might be, their need of emergency housing for a short time, that that's part of it's going to go towards that. Part of it's going towards our support groups and our care ministries for people who are downcast or hopeless or feeling, you know, like they're grieving or mourning. And you do this routinely. On that day, you know, we hope that there would be $200,000 come in the offering on that on Easter Sunday. You gave $375,000 towards these things. And I'm just so proud of you. You feel that. You know that. Today, Pastor Glenn mentioned a few moments ago this postcard. Did you receive this when you walked in? So, you know, I love this. LaVon and I do this. We've been doing this for years where we sponsor classrooms of children. In our case, we're sponsoring them in Honduras at a school that Church of the Resurrection built some years ago. But we also do this in Malawi. We do this in South Africa. In South Africa, there's a preschool built on a trash dump. I've shared the story with you before.

59:11 and so you provide support for these children who generationally have grown up living on a trash dump. And for $39 a month, you have a chance to do that. You know, you might provide one month or maybe you say, I'm gonna do that all year long. And I love how in the postcard it gave this, if you look at it on the one side, it says $39 a month is equivalent to one family trip to McDonald's. But it's also equivalent to providing for a classroom of children in living on a trash dump or in Honduras or in Malawi or in Uganda. And, you know, so not everybody can do this, but we wanted you to think about it. Like maybe today I want to hunger and thirst for righteousness by doing that in a way of helping children who are living in some of the most impoverished communities in the world. By the way, you can go to court.org slash next again to find out more about that. So I want you to notice what Jesus says. Happy are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, after piety, personal piety and justice, because they're filled.

1:00:06 Some years ago I interviewed a psychologist who worked, she was actually a psychology professor, at Avila University. And I said, I was doing a series of sermons on happiness. And you may know there's a whole field of study at a California, University of California, Berkeley, and others have done this, you know, a lot of research on what makes humans happy. And, you know, it's counterintuitive, although I think intuitively we do know it. But we think if we have more and more and more stuff, we're going to be happy. If we take really cool exotic vacations, we're going to be super happy. If we can have, you know, the house we always dreamt of, we're going to be happy. But what all the studies have said is that's not really, that happiness only lasts for a little while. Like you feel really awesome about that new car for about a week or two weeks. But before the new car smell is gone, it just doesn't make you happy anymore. And you gotta go and find something else to make you happy again. And as I was interviewing her, she said, you know, it's interesting. People come to me and they struggle.

1:00:57 They're struggling with depression or other things. And she said, now, you know, she's a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, but she said, you know, the psychiatrist can offer a pill to help you with depression. And sometimes that's absolutely essential. We have to have that. Our bodies are not working properly. our brains are needing some help in order to get over some of these, you know, some of this. But she said, when it comes to what I do as a psychologist, what I can tell people is that the pathway to being able to find, one of the most important pathways to being able to find a lifting of depression and happiness coming back to your life is serving other people. It's just that simple. You know, you take your eyes off yourself and you look at other people and you're trying to help them. And all of a sudden you find the endorphins are released in your brain and you find your heart is lifted up and you're lifted beyond your present circumstances. which reminds me that in the Beatitudes, Jesus was right. He was really right when he said, blessed are those or happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Merciful, blessed are the merciful. So mercy is several dimensions of mercy. One of those is forgiveness, right? So you're being generous of spirit in being merciful. You're extending something someone else doesn't deserve. That's in essence what the word means, is giving something to someone that they don't deserve. So forgiveness is a part of that. Blessed are the merciful. And Jesus teaches us regularly to forgive, to forgive not just seven times, but 70 times, seven times. He hangs on the cross and he says, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. And because we have two options, right? One is to forgive and the other is to hold on to bitterness and resentment and anger and hold on to that stuff, right? And try to get even with people. So the scripture calls to be forgiving towards other people. And you've seen me share before, I've carried a bag of rocks around on my back. Some of you have seen that sermon and filled it up. And it's like all the things people have done wrong and you can carry that thing around with you forever, or you can be merciful and drop it. And which way brings you happiness and which way brings you misery, right? And it's holding onto those things that makes you miserable. But mercy is also compassion towards other people.

1:02:52 So again, there's this spirit or this idea of, you know, somebody who needs something and they don't have, you know, they don't really have a right to ask it. You know, like there's no, you know, you don't know them. They've done nothing for you. You have no, you know, you don't think you have an obligation, yet Jesus is saying, no, if you want to pursue happiness, then it's having compassion for people who are in need. It's showing mercy to them. It's helping people. So it's interesting, the Hebrew word for mercy is hesed. One of the Hebrew words for mercy is hesed. And this is a word that shows up hundreds of times in the Old Testament, including one passage of scripture we memorized a few years ago from Micah 6.8. Micah 6.8 says, what does the Lord require of you? And this is a great verse. Like, what does God actually want from you. He wants you to do justice. That's righteousness. He wants you to do justice and to love kindness. That's mercy. Chesed. He wants you to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. What does the Lord want from you? Justice, mercy, and humility. And interestingly enough, if you think about this, which person is happier? The person who is vengeful or resentful or holds everything to themselves and doesn't share with anybody else? The Scrooge, the Ebenezer Scrooge?

1:04:04 Or is the person who has open hands, regularly forgiving, and showing mercy to people? And you know the answer to that, right? So we tend to think if I hold on to things, and I hold on to that anger or bitterness, or hold on to my possessions, I'm going to be happy. But really, it's over here when your hands are open and your heart is open that you find the path of happiness. That leads to the pure in heart. Let's say this one together, put it up on the screen. Blessed are the pure in heart, pure in heart. So this is interesting. Our hearts, and by heart, of course, we're talking about our motives, our secret thoughts and our motives, right? And when I think about my heart, I want my heart to be pure. That is to be focused on God, to love God, and to love my neighbor, and to just have, I want to have a pure heart. I don't have a pure heart. I have an impure heart. It's getting purer as time goes by across the course of my life. But, you know, it starts off, you know, we struggle, we talk about sin, and we talk about a tendency to go the direction we're not supposed to go, and we all struggle with that, even when we do the good things. So sometimes we do the right thing, and we do it for all the wrong reasons. Have you ever known anybody who did the right thing for the wrong reasons? And sometimes, yeah, so we find ourselves, and sometimes we do the wrong thing, but we were doing it for the right reasons. And so, you know, Jesus is talking about the motives of our heart and our purity of heart. And when I think about this, I think about, And so I have a little book I wrote on the Holy Spirit.

1:05:24 It just came out. It actually comes out this coming week, I think, tomorrow maybe. But I know we have it in the bookstore today. But on the Holy Spirit, one of the chapters is on sanctification, the Holy Spirit's work in sanctifying us. To sanctify us is to make us holy. That's what the word sanctification means. And what the Holy Spirit does, so we can't make ourselves holy. I can't will myself to have a pure heart, but I can invite the Holy Spirit to purify my heart. And so the chapter on sanctification, the Holy Spirit's work of sanctifying us, begins with this word, 1947, or really it's 1947. What's 1947? It's the temperature at which gold melts. So if you are, today when you're mining gold, you know, you don't usually find gold that looks like gold. It's all, it's ore. It looks like rock and it's crushed and then it is melted. It's smelted to 1,947 degrees. And all of a sudden, the gold is liquefied, and it separates from everything else.

1:06:22 So the other stuff is called the dross, and then you end up with gold. And what you do to get 24 karat gold is you do this process over and over and over again. You superheat it again, and you burn off a little more dross. You superheat it again, you burn off a little more dross. And then finally what you get is 24 karat gold, which is not even pure gold. It's 99.99% pure gold. There's still just a little bit of dross, even in 24 karat gold. In our hearts, this is what the Holy Spirit does. The scripture speaks about the Holy Spirit's work as a purifying fire burning away the dross. And so this is why prayer plays such an important role. Every morning I'm on my knees praying for the Holy Spirit to purify me, to make me the person God wants me to be. And so inviting the Holy Spirit in and recognizing the places where my heart isn't pure yet and inviting God to purify it. There's a prayer that was written in the 900s that shows up in the Catholic tradition, in the Episcopal tradition, Lutheran church, It's in our United Methodist Book of Worship as well.

1:07:15 And I want to put it on the screen. And I'd like for us to pause for just a moment at this juncture and just pray this prayer. I'd like for you not just to say it, but to actually mean it. Let's pray together. Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hidden. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord. Amen. Now we're nearing the end of the Beatitudes. We're going to come to the peacemakers. So let's say this together. Matthew 5, 9, Jesus' words, blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God. Blessed are the peacemakers. Now you've heard this, if you've listened to the news at all in the last week, you have heard this beatitude because it was on the lips of Pope Leo. Pope Leo, he preaches this, not just in response to what's happening in the Middle East.

1:08:12 This has just been a part of the rhythm of his life. He's been preaching this long before the war in Iran broke out. He was preaching this week in Cameroon, and he was preaching this, and in other parts of Africa where he's been preaching, blessed are the peacemakers. He said, somebody's got to do this. This is what Christ is calling us to do. War happens. There are going to be wars that happen. Ecclesiastes says there's a time for war and a time for peace. But war grieves the heart of God. Even when a war is a just war and it has to be fought, war grieves the heart of God. You may remember in the book of Genesis, so in the window up here, we've got Noah bidding the animals onto the ark, and back behind Cain and Abel, you can see an ark back there, and a couple of giraffe, and a couple of lions. Well, before that, you see Cain killing his brother Abel. Do you see that up here on this side? Cain's getting ready to kill his brother Abel. So right after Adam and Eve sin, you know, they have children. Those children, one brother kills the other. You get to Genesis chapter 6, and the story of Noah and the flood begins this way. God saw humanity and was grieved that he had made us, excuse me, because humans were violent all the time.

1:09:16 That's what the scripture says in Genesis. That's why the flood comes. The story of God's judgment is because humans were violent towards one another all the time. In the prophets, in Isaiah, and also in, I'm trying to remember, maybe not Hosea. I can't remember which, the other one. Maybe Amos. we read that when the Messiah would come, or in the Messianic age, the people would beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they would make war no more. Look to the right-hand side of the window. On the bottom right, you'll see a Native American beating a sword into a plowshare. They would turn their swords into farm implements. Because this is what God's intention and will for us, is that we not be war makers, but peacemakers. so Pope Leo and and uh and our president got into it a little bit on uh on the news but I appreciated Pope Leo he's like this is not and I heard I think you said this morning like this wasn't about calling out the president of the United States it's just about saying this is how we're meant to be as humans we're meant to be peacemakers and and that has to do with global events but it also has to do with what happens in our daily lives right I'm thinking that some of you in this room probably have people who are frustrated or irritated with you or you're at odds with them right now? I mean, I'm thinking of somebody right now that I need to write a note to, and I just need to reach out. I just know that there's a conflict there, and to be able to say, hey, I just want you to know I love you, and I'm sorry if I've offended you or hurt you in any way, but whether you feel like you did anything wrong or not, to be able to say, look, I just care about you. I want you to know that, and I'm just wondering which of you today might need to be, this particular beatitude is just for you, that you need to go home, and if you can't make a phone call, maybe that's too hard, maybe it's a text or an email to say, I just want you to know, I really care about you.

1:11:06 Blessed are the peacemakers. Now, one of my favorite quotes about the Sermon on the Mount comes from General Omar Bradley. He was the general of the army during World War II. That means he was the top general in the army, and he went on to become the first chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he said this about the Sermon on the Mount. He said, ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We've grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. War, even if it's justly fought, you know, the idea of humans killing one another grieves the heart of God. And sometimes war is necessary, But, boy, we better make sure that it's necessary before we step into a place where we're harming other people, killing people, you know, in the name of whatever. So, blessed are the peacemakers.

1:12:01 Blessed are the peacemakers, the Pope was preaching this last week. Now, that leads to two final beatitudes. And these two, so we've covered the first two, blessed are the hopeless and blessed are the grieving. And then here are blessed are people who do these kind of things. And the last two return to being like the first two. It's kind of strange things. Jesus says, blessed or happy are you when people insult you and harass you and speak all kinds of bad and false things about you all because of me. Let me ask you a question. You can raise your hand if you want. How many of you have ever been insulted or harassed by somebody unfairly? Almost everybody, right? Now, when you're insulted or harassed by somebody unfairly, if you're insulted, Jesus says, because you were a follower of Christ, because you were trying to do the right thing, because you stood up for what was right and somebody harassed you, know that you're blessed, right? It doesn't feel like a blessing.

1:12:52 It doesn't feel like, you know, it doesn't feel happy to have people criticize you. But if you were criticized for doing the right thing, in the eyes of God, you were blessed, right? And you can hold your head high and you can say, you know what? I did the right thing for the right reasons. And I've thought of this over the course of my life as your pastor for 36 years. There are a few places where I feel like, you know, I did what I just absolutely believe was the right thing to do. And sometimes people criticize that. Sometimes people were angry about that or said harsh things or mean things. But you know, when you did the right thing and people criticized you, you can hold your head high and you can say, you know what, that's what they did to Jesus. That's what they did to the prophets, Jesus says. And somehow, whether somebody's angry at you or says something cruel to you, but you did the right thing, God smiles and looks upon you. And so happy are you when people have done or said these things about you. So I want to begin to wrap this up. Some of you know in 10 days or so, LaVon and I will announce a decision that we've been wrestling with for the last three months about whether to run for the U.S. Senate.

1:13:54 And I've gotten plenty of comments from people, you know, that's the best idea, please run. And you're an idiot, please don't run. And, you know, all the reasons why. Every day I get this kind of stuff. And I appreciate it, thank you, and thank you for your prayers. And, you know, I post things on social media. If I post things about that on my personal Facebook page, what I've learned is and what people taught me is don't read the comments after you post it. Some of them are going to be good and positive and encouraging and then there's going to be some that are going to be you know question your motives or your you know whatever but there's going to be a lot of critical things that happen there. And the thing is if we live our lives so that we'll never be criticized you're never going to do anything. Like if you live your life as though I just don't want anybody to ever say anything bad about me. I don't want anybody to ever you know think the wrong thing about me. I promise you you will accomplish nothing in your life.

1:14:42 And so you've got to decide, you know, am I going to live my life in fear of being criticized, or am I going to try to live my life in fear of God being displeased with me, or in fear of not doing the thing I was supposed to do? And God, give me the courage to go ahead and do that, right? And so, you know, I had people ask me, like, if you decide to run, do you know what this is going to do to your family? Do you know how hard it's going to be, how many horrible things people are going to say? They will make stuff up. They will create things that are absolutely not true, and they're going to put these things out there. And, you know, are you prepared for that? And, you know, it's interesting at 61, I'm more prepared for that than I was at 35. At 35, things just, I mean, they just really eat at you. And today at 61, every once in a while they eat at me, but most of the time I'm like, it's okay. You know what? I may be doing the wrong thing, but I'm going to try for the right motives to do the right thing. Not just about this, but about anything, right? But I wanted to make sure, LaVon, are you going to be okay? And she's like, I'm okay. I think, you know, if this is what we feel like God is calling us to do, we're going to do this. So then the question was our kids. People said, what about your kids? Are they going to be okay? And one of our kids is, you know, she's got a really thick skin and she's like, dad, like, I'm, you know, go for it. And my young, my younger daughter has a really tender heart. And at first she was like, I don't know, dad. I don't know if I could handle people saying mean things about you, you know? And then, and then finally she came to the place. She said, dad, like, if you decide to run, I'm all in. I'm going to be okay.

1:16:04 I'm all in. And so here's what I want to say to you. If we end up doing this and we'll announce in 10 days, if we end up doing this, there's going to be people who are going to criticize. And that's just got to be okay. Because that's the world we live in today. And can I tell you, when it comes to politics, we've turned politics into something toxic. And that toxicity is killing us. And there's a whole lot of really great people should be running for office instead of me.

1:16:28 But I think a lot of people say, why would I put myself and my family through that? But here's what I want you to know. For me, I'm not worried about whatever happens to me. It's going to be fine. It's just words. You know, what has woken me up almost every night for three months is I'm worried about you. I'm worried about how will you deal with people saying bad things about your pastor or people coming up with stuff to make up about your church or questioning who you are as a congregation because they will do that. And I thought maybe I shouldn't do this because it could hurt you. That's, you know, and finally somewhere along the way, I'm like, you know what? I think these are strong people. If we do run, I think these are strong people, and I think they know who they are and who their pastor is. And even if there's TV spots or something else that says horrible things, I trust that they're strong enough that they're going to be able to say, you know what? This is my church, and I'm proud of my church. I talked to Raphael Warnick. He is a senator from Georgia, and he's also pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the King family's church, Martin Luther King Jr.'s church. His father pastored it.

1:17:36 And I said, you know, how did this work out for you? And he preaches there regularly, you know, while serving in the Senate. And he said, you know, at first there were people who came out with signs. They said horrible things about our church. And that backfired because our church people stood up and said, that is not who we are. And this is the people we are. And this is what we're like. And all of a sudden, those people who were critics couldn't say anything anymore because they found our church was strong.

1:17:57 And that's what I think about you too, if this happens. But it'll be hard. It'll be hard. Okay, so I want to end with this. Which of these paths to happiness are you going to choose? We heard them already. Blessed or happy or fortunate are the rich and greedy, the indifferent who never weep at the suffering of others, the proud and the powerful, the ambitious and the self-absorbed, those who show no mercy, the narcissistic and the hedonist, the bullies and the warmongers. Blessed are you when people flatter you and say only kind things about you. Are you going to live your life so that you're always going to play it safe and nobody criticizes you. That's one path to happiness. And here's the other. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful and the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the harassed. Which pathway will you take in your pursuit of happiness?

1:18:49 Let's pray. God, we thank you so much for everything. We pray that you would pour out your spirit upon us and burn away the dross inside of our hearts. Help us to be pure and heart, Lord. Help us when we're poor in spirit, when we've been beat down and broken down, to remember that you come alongside the broken and the hurting and to trust in you. When we're grieving and we're in pain and suffering, help us to know that you walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death. Help us to be gentle and humble, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful, to be pure in heart and peacemakers. And when we're harassed, to know that we are blessed because you see us and walk with us. And you too were harassed. Draw us near to you, we pray in your holy name. Amen.

1:19:38 Thank you so much for worshiping with us today. We're so glad you were here. I want to encourage you in several ways. First of all, next week, come back and invite your friends. If you have friends who don't go to church, your neighbors, your kids, your grandkids, your parents or grandparents, why don't you reach out to them? Invite them to join you for worship. And next week, we're going to talk about Matthew chapter five, verses 13 through 17. This is where Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. I don't want you to miss it. It's gonna be a powerful weekend of worship. And these messages will speak directly to your heart and to your friends' hearts. So I wanna encourage you to do that. I wanna invite you to go to core.org slash next and you can download there the Beatitudes as your wallpaper. So I have it now on my phone. And every day when I pick up my phone, I can say those again. I can pray those. Lord, help me to be poor in spirit. When I'm poor in spirit or mourning, be with me, help me. Help me to be meek and hunger and thirst after righteousness and all the rest. They're right there. They could be on your phone.

1:20:29 I'd like to encourage you to do that. You'll also find more information about something I mentioned in the sermon, and that is the chance to sponsor a classroom of children in Honduras, in Malawi, in South Africa, in Uganda. For $39, you can help an entire classroom of children for a month. And so I'd like to encourage you to think about doing that. And again, go to core.org slash next. You can click on the link and find out more about it there. And now I'd like to invite you to bow for the benediction. Oh Lord, as we leave this place, Please help us to live our faith. Help us to know that when we're downhearted, brokenhearted, you are with us. When we're grieving and experience loss, you are there. And help us, O Lord, to be meek, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and to not give up when people harass us or insult us and not to return insult for insult, but blessing instead. In Christ's name.