Be Kingdom People (Jake Enns)

I heard a speaker one time make this comment and he said, what

if Jesus meant what he said? What if Jesus really did intend

for us to love those who hate us, who are unkind to us, and be

kind to those who mistreat us? What if he really meant that?

What if Jesus meant what he said when he told his audience to

have treasures in heaven means you can't be attached to

treasures on earth? What if Jesus meant what he said

when he said that for a man to look at another woman with lust

in his eyes was committing adultery with her in his heart?

What if Jesus meant what he said when he said that?

For a person to be angry with his brother that was committing

murder in his heart. What if Jesus meant what he said

when he said that? To hear his words and not do

them was like building a house on sand and in the storm it

collapsed. But then to hear his words and

do them would be like building a house on the rock that

withstands the storm. What if Jesus meant what he

said? We're beginning a new sermon

series this morning out of the Gospel of Matthew chapter 5 to

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

7. And for the next three months we

want to spend time to dig into what did Jesus mean with what he

said this morning. We will not actually go into

Matthew 5, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

We won't actually go into it, but I want to do an introductory

sermon on the content of this passage.

Kind of an fly over view if you said if you could call it that.

More of the question, why take this journey?

Why would we take a preaching journey through this passage of

Scripture? Matthew 5-6 and seven?

What would be the purpose of taking a journey through the

Sermon on the Mount? We do believe in moral

absolutes. We believe the Bible is relevant

today. We believe the words of Jesus

mean today what they meant for the people of his time when he

preached them. God's plan for creation has not

changed since the day he said behold, it's very good.

When he finished it, it was very good.

He did not somewhat change his mind.

OK now, well, he doesn't like his creation anymore and things.

It's over. We know when you sent Jesus, he

still has the same plan for humanity he did when he created

Adam and Eve. God's reason for his creation,

his why for creating the world is still the same as it was when

it was a brand new planet when Jesus came and preached his

sermons on this earth. His purpose then is still the

same today. So this morning before we start

actually going through the Sermon on the Mount, which we

will start next Sunday, today we want to do an introductory

sermon. And why is this important?

We read much in the Gospel of Matthew about the Kingdom of God

and the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus

tells his disciples, when you pray, pray this way, our Father

in heaven, hallowed, be your name, your Kingdom come.

In his audience, Jesus told his people that God's Kingdom is

here. It's among us today.

Our theme for this morning is our title is Be Kingdom People.

That's the theme for the sermon series.

To all of it, Be Kingdom People. And as we will make our way

through Matthews 5-6 and seven, we will see that Jesus puts out

an impossibly high standard of life that he expects from his

audience to be Kingdom people. And it's not going to be easy.

Anybody who wants to follow Jesus is going to have a hard

road ahead of them. It's just the way it is because

we live in a fallen world, in a broken world.

That's why it's a hard Rd. But it's a good road and it's

the only Rd. Humanly speaking, yes, it's

impossible. But by God's grace, through

Jesus Christ, the blood of Christ cleanses us from our sin.

His Spirit comes and helps us and through that we can do this.

And it's not a one time only. Stamp it, you're good to go for

now. There's no more work to do.

It's a growing process. It's a journey that will not

finish on this side of the grave.

We're always in need of help on our journey.

So for this journey and the Sermon on the Mount, let's go

way back in the early years when God revealed Himself to the

people, He chose the people of Israel.

In the book of Exodus in chapter 19 verse five and six, we find

that God had some serious instructions for His people and

they were just starting out on their journey from Egypt to the

promised land as God's people. It says in Exodus 19 says God is

speaking here to Moses to tell the people.

He says Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and

keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to me

above all people, for all the earth is mine and you shall be

to me. Listen here, a Kingdom of

priests and a holy nation, these are the words which you shall

speak to the children of Israel. God's instruction to Moses to

tell the Israelites there were very high conditions to be met

for God's people to be his Kingdom of priests and to be a

holy nation. And just a way of reminder,

God's never lowered the standards.

The standard is still the same as it was for them.

In fact, in the New Testament, Jesus upped the ante.

Later in the New Testament we find Peter writing about God's

holiness. He was very much in line with

Moses in the book of Exodus and he said Peter writes therefore

girt up the loins of your mind, be sober and rest your hopefully

upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation

of Jesus Christ as obedient children, not conforming

yourselves to the former lusts as in your ignorance, but as he

who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct

because it is written the holy for I am holy.

The same meaning in Exodus is now repeated in here in in in

first Peter. It's a command.

It's a command we have to choose to obey if we want to follow

Christ. In Hebrews as well.

We read Hebrews 12/14 pursue peace with all people and

holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

It's impossible to see God if we're not pursuing this, if

we're not pursuing holiness. So times we must pause on our

hearts and minds and think to ourselves, what are we pursuing?

To be holy means to be set apart, to be set aside.

It means to be dedicated for a special purpose.

Holiness is not an option for the believer, it is mandatory.

Put it this way, Jesus did not come to this earth to make us

comfortable or happy. He came to save us, to have a

relationship with us, and to make us holy.

A question that some people may inwardly be asking themselves

might be, how holy do I have to be to be a follower of Jesus?

Or they may ask, how holy do I have to be to get into heaven?

I have news for you. Those are the wrong questions.

They're the wrong questions because the key part of that

question is I you maybe noticed it.

You see, no matter how well-intentioned a person may

be, self focused will never get a person where God wants that

person to be. Self focused will never bring a

life of fulfillment, peace, joy and satisfaction and

contentment. Self focused in the end always

leaves us empty, dry and starved and disappointed because we're

not created for self, we're created for relationship.

The true answer is to be holy, To be truly what we are created

to be, we must walk the path of Jesus.

It's only through faith in Jesus that we can be holy and follow

Jesus in this faith in Jesus that we talk about.

It's not something that sits on the shelf to be admired and

looked at once in a while and admired.

It's a character trait that's in US, lived out in obedience to

God's call on our lives. And how it works is this.

Jesus died for our sins. He paid the debt we could not

pay. Now He invites us to repent and

to walk with Him. And our part simply is repent of

our sins, put our trust in Him, deny ourselves, take up our

cross and walk with Him. Only a person who has a desire

to follow Jesus can do that. And it's only by his grace from

him towards us that it's possible.

He accepts us when we repent. Kingdom people serve Jesus by

following Jesus example. So for us to be Kingdom people,

our question we must ask and answers.

Do we want to be holy? Do we?

And I think it's like this many people want to get to heaven on

a minimum holiness requirement basis.

Let me use a simple analogy. Trying to be a Kingdom person

out of duty, obligation, I have to.

That does not work. It's kind of like a young man

finding a beautiful young woman he wants to marry and he's

asking her and he says, hey, sweetie, how committed to you

would I have to be for you to marry me?

Imagine that. Imagine a young man asking a

woman a foolish question like that.

How committed to you would I have to be to marry you?

Just the question alone. Such a turn off, such a rude and

bargaining demand. And if you ask that, any wise

young lady would say just turn away in disgust and walk away.

And yet that's often times what people who go to church somehow

think. Well, how much?

How good do I have to be for God to be pleased with me?

That's the wrong question. God does not want 99.9% of me,

He wants all of me. A young woman does not want

99.9% of her man, she wants all of him and that's often times

what happens in the church. The question is not how holy do

I have to be to get to heaven. It's a self focused question.

The question is this, Our entry into heaven will not be decided

by any other standard than our relationship with Jesus.

The question is am I in relationship with him?

Only Kingdom people will get to heaven and only Kingdom people

are in relationship with Jesus. One of the one of my favorite

authors, his name is Dallas Willard.

He's passed on. He had a conversation with a man

one time about going to heaven and they were having a

conversation and how people understand this and and people

want to live good now and hopefully make it to the other

side and enjoy heaven with Jesus when the time comes.

And Dallas pointed out that's the wrong way of looking at it.

He said not only should we wanting to go to heaven when we

die, but we get to heaven now, today.

Eternal life is that Kingdom life.

It's not about going to heaven when you die, it's going to

heaven before you die. He tried to point that out.

He said that the correct way of looking at it is when we die to

self, when we die to sin, we become Kingdom people, and then

we enter eternal life. And that's a continuation on

past the grave. It's a transition through the

body dies, but the spirit goes on living.

This whole goes on living. There are only two kingdoms.

There's the Kingdom of heaven and the Kingdom of darkness.

One is the Kingdom of darkness, the other is the Kingdom of

light. One is the Kingdom of death, one

is the Kingdom of life, one is the Kingdom of now, one is the

Kingdom of eternity, 1 is the Kingdom of this world, and one

is the Kingdom of heaven. There's an eternal, endless

chasm between these two kingdoms.

They cannot and never will reconcile.

Our eternal destiny is only one of them and the choice we make

here in this life today. And you and I are invited to be

Kingdom people, God's Kingdom. Early on, I mentioned we looked

in Exodus, what God spoke to Moses and what God demanded of

his people. Let's dig a little deeper.

Let's go back into that a little bit.

Let's peel back another layer, the layer of creation.

Let's look at creation. Look at what God did and why he

did it. This world as we know it is

God's creation. It's beautiful, it's glorious.

As human beings, we've been given the joy of being here and

we're actually told to manage it, take care of it, enjoy it,

rule it. In Genesis chapter one, verse

26, God says let us make man in our image according to our

likeness. Let them have dominion over the

fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle,

over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps

upon the earth. So God created man in his own

image, in the image of God. He created him, male and female.

He created them. You and I are made above

everything else that's been made.

We are made in God's image. And I'm not talking about

physical features, we're talking about characteristics, character

traits, God like qualities. One of those is the character

trait to be creative to do things and as God's created

image, we've been given the responsibility to have dominion.

Remember the part where I don't have it here in my my notes, The

part where God says to puts Adam in the garden.

He brings the animals to him and it says to see what he would

name them. God's not saying, OK, he'll name

that a lion, he'll name that a bear, he'll name that a cat.

It's not what happened. God stepped back his God like

image quality in Adam at work naming the animals.

That's huge folks, that's huge. We are responsible and God's

going to step back. OK if he's not taking

responsibility I will no we by default respond either for or

against. I'm reminded of a story of a

young couple wanted to get married and boyfriend girlfriend

and they were getting along just fine and he loved her, she loved

him. And one day they were going to

go out to eat. And young man says to his

beautiful girl, he says, so where would you like to go

tonight? And she said, I don't know.

I'm I'm good with where you want to go.

And they're driving along. And then he asked her again,

where would you like to go? She said, I don't know, I'm good

with where you want to go. He pulled over, parked the

vehicle and stopped, stopped and parked the vehicle.

She said, what are you doing? He said, I'm waiting for you to

decide. I'm good with Reona, though.

No, he said, no, you decide. And she wrote the story many

years later and she mentioned how that had been a turning

point for her in her life and understanding her, her what has

been her husband. And she said that he refused to

take that role in her life, what should be hers.

And he and she mentioned this young man who became her husband

had been wise, not allowed her to slip into this one sided or

he'll take care of me or he's the boss or what?

I'll be the servant. No.

And hindsight, she reflected that he wanted a relationship

partnership and he forced it in the sense that I'm not going to

make this decision for you. He made it clear.

We're A-Team, we're both participants, and she mentioned

in her story how this helped her to mature and grow into the wife

that she now was and how wonderful had been that her

fiance had taken that step in that early relationship before

they got married. I was thinking about this story

this last week as was getting ready for this sermon, and I

thought about it and I thought, this fits.

And marriage is a small Kingdom, a couple Kingdom, if you will.

She was a Kingdom woman. He was a Kingdom man.

This is not just related to marriage, although marriage is a

very good analogy, but and marriage is a reflection of

God's creation on earth as a husband, wife, unity with God

the Father and the and the couple together.

This does not mean that singleness is is less than

marriage, but this is an image. This is a reflection.

We're all designed and created to be Kingdom people, partnering

with God in His work. He gives us responsibilities

which we choose how we're going to respond to, and we will not

do well until we embrace it. And as we'll go through Matthew

5 in the coming sermons, we'll see how important it is that we

embrace the teachings of Jesus as he calls us into relationship

with Him. Live out the blueprint He's

called us to live out. We see this in marriages.

Just look at marriages where this is not working.

And here's where it becomes steep in the steep climb, so to

speak, because relationships are difficult in this world.

It takes sacrifice. It takes self denial.

Because of what the world is, a sinful place.

It has to be a free choice. It has to be Unchained, as it

were. It has to be reciprocal.

Let's just let that sink in for a second.

And if we're Kingdom people, that's what it will be, living

in relationship with God and with one another.

And in our series, we'll go through the sermon.

As we go through the Sermon on the Mount, we'll see what it is

that Jesus requires of his stewards or his managers.

And he always led by example. I mentioned Dallas Willard

before, and I'll continue with that.

And he wrote a book titled The Divine Conspiracy, and in it he

does explore the Sermon on the Mount and how God brings his

Kingdom into this world and how it happens through US, you and

me, his people. You see, when God created you

and me, He created us for glory, not for judgement, not for

destruction, not for damnation, but to reflect Him in this

world. His purpose for creating us is

for us to voluntarily, as image bearers, to respond to Him,

engage in Him, and have relationship with Him.

That's the greatest glorious thing that can happen on this

earth, to serve and bring Him glory.

It's not forced, not cursed, its relationship and as he draws us,

we are Kingdom people, Dallas wrote in the book.

The following I quoted, I copied it.

He said we are made to have dominion with an appropriate

domain of reality. This is the core of the likeness

or image of God in US and is the basis of the destiny for which

we were formed. We are all of us never ceasing

spiritual beings with a with a unique eternal calling to count

for good in God's great universe.

Our Kingdom is simply the range of our effective will.

Whatever we genuinely have the say over is in our Kingdom, and

our having to say over something is precisely what places it was

in our Kingdom. In creating human beings, God

made them to rule, to reign, to have dominion in a limited

sphere. Only so can they be persons.

Think about that. Just think of it.

In Genesis, it says God brought the animals to the man to see

what he would name them. As I said before, he gave it up

to Adam to make those decisions. That's deep.

God did all of this in a relationship context.

It also tells us in Genesis that God would walk with Adam and Eve

in the cool of the garden. There was fellowship.

There was relationship. That was true Kingdom living and

through Jesus Christ that starts here today.

Now someone might ask, well, what does it look like today?

It's a life fully surrendered and committed to Christ.

It's the joyful giving up of our earthly physical lives for His

cause in order for us to become totally what He has designed us

as His image bearers to be. What is interesting about this

is we don't have to wait for some time in the future to get

this. We can start right where we're

at. It happens at all levels of

life. It doesn't depend on where you

are. Geographical place to be

somewhere else, then I could do it better.

No, it doesn't mean we have to measure up to a certain cultural

standard, a certain level of living and better opportunities

and so on. To be Kingdom people does not

depend on anything that's temporal.

It does require holiness. To be a Kingdom person is

strictly first and foremost a matter of relationship with God

that works itself out in our daily lives.

There's many powerful stories we can go to in the Bible that

illustrate this. One that comes to mind is the

story of Daniel. I like to read the stories of

the characters of the Bible and they're all different, very

different. Some that very well, some that

very poorly. There's one character that I

really admire, and his name is Daniel.

I was contemplating Daniel this last week.

I was getting ready. I thought to myself, I can't

think of a single time when Daniel faltered or failed in his

faith. Not to say he didn't.

I don't know that. But we know that when Daniel was

a young man, he was taken as a prisoner of war to faraway

Babylon wasn't his doing. He was just as a young, maybe,

probably, probably a teenage boy when he was taken captive.

And here he was a prisoner of war.

And then he got picked as a prisoner of war to be educated

and trained in the language of Babylon and the laws of Babylon,

to be a help with the government, maybe to connect

with the with the land that he had been taken from.

The governments would do that in those days.

He he complied with everything that he possibly could in

Babylonian culture. He took their training, but he

refused to take the food. And in this way he did his very

best to please the king but also not compromise his connection to

God. He went through the training, He

was placed into this environment and he never compromised his

character or his integrity. He was brought.

He brought his Kingdom values into the environment which he

was placed. He didn't adapt.

You see, so often times a person, well, it's so hard,

we'll just adapt. We'll just acclimatize.

And when we're not strong, we do that.

And I'm not here saying that, oh, if you failed or you

faltered, now it's over. It's judgement, it's

condemnation, or there's grace, there's forgiveness.

But this is a reminder of how important this is as Kingdom

people to always put the temporal last and put the

eternal first. That's what Daniel did.

And in Daniel's case, as I mentioned, from as a young man

when he was put into leadership in Babylon to the time when

Darius, the king of the Medes and the Persians had this

foolish law created, actually says advisors did that.

Nobody could worship anybody except the king for a month, for

30 days. Even then, Daniel refused to

compromise his relationship with God.

He stood strong every single time.

You know why? He was a Kingdom person.

He's one of the best, if not the best example in the Old

Testament. In the New Testament, a story

that comes to mind is Jesus himself, when he left, was ready

to leave this earth. The last act of service that

Jesus did for his disciples was to wash their feet at the Last

Supper. He was God, but also a man, a

truly perfect Kingdom person. When Jesus shared the Last

Supper with his disciples, it's very interesting to read what

went on the last evening on that Thursday night before he was

arrested and bound and LED off to the to the temple.

They're around the table. Jesus had told them that one of

them would betray him and we read that they were not getting

it. They were arguing themselves and

there was just it was not a good evening.

It says in verse 24 of chapter Luke, chapter 2224.

Now there was also a dispute among them as to which of them

should be considered the greatest.

Little did they know in less than 24 hours they'd be again

together out of fear and dread, locked away.

Because who's going to get us now?

Jesus told him one someone of them was going to, he was going

to be killed, he told them on their way to Jerusalem a week

earlier. Then at the supper, he said, one

of them is going to betray me and they have a disagreement.

They were not acting like Kingdom people.

They were very fleshly minded. They were thinking, yeah, Jesus

is going to soon become the ruler and we're all going to

have control and power and influence.

And when he was arrested in the garden, they all fled.

But what does Jesus do when they're having these squabbles?

John 13 verse 3, it says, Knowing that the Father had

John 13:3

given all things into his hands and that he had come from God

and was going to God, he rose from the supper and laid aside

his garments, took a towel and girded himself.

After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash the

disciples feet and to wipe them with the towel with which he was

girded. Then he came to Simon Peter and

Peter said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet?

Then of course Jesus explains it to him.

We know how it continued. Jesus did wash him in everyone

else's feet too. And he reminded them, This is

what I want you to do. That's Kingdom living folks.

That's Kingdom living. That's what Kingdom people do.

The last night of his life on earth, before he was nailed to

the cross, he did this act of service.

He did. He demonstrated Kingdom behavior

to his disciples. And as we will go through the

Sermon on the Mount in the following weeks, we'll find the

Sermon on the Mount. These principles are woven

through and through with an emphasis on glorifying God and

all that we do and all that we are.

Some may be sitting here this morning and think, OK, well,

that sounds good for Palestine, 1st century Jews and the people

of Israel living earlier than that.

What about us today? Why is the Sermon on the Mount

important to us today in our time?

We live in a day and age when life has been so

compartmentalized, so individualized, so disconnected,

where it is less and less a unit, less and less a

relationship. Life increasingly is becoming a

confused pile of disconnected beliefs and disjointed pieces,

and for so many people, discouraging and depressing and

hopeless. Increasingly it's about my

rights and everyone else's rights, and each one for

themselves. And as communities are becoming

fractured more and more, we need the teachings of Jesus in the

Sermon on the Mount just as much as the people did whom he spoke

them to when he was there. When Jesus was here.

The Pharisees, they were the elite.

They were the revered and the respected.

They knew the laws of God. They preached the laws of God

but didn't practice them. They have the letter of the law,

but no relationship. The Pharisees were not Kingdom

people, So what difference does it make for us today?

We live in a time when people say Christians say it well I

yes, I know I should, but and then they engage in lifestyle

choices and actions they know contradict what Jesus taught and

what the Bible says we should do.

No person, people, group or culture can afford to live

successfully in contradiction to the rule of moral truth.

When we hold the teachings of Jesus casually in no regard,

there's no telling to what level we will be dragged down to.

The Bible warns us strong against compromise, and there

are serious warnings. And we are never so good that we

cannot fall. There's a man, the Old

Testament. We exemplified that very, very

much So he's called a manner after God's own heart was King

David. Yet one time he allowed his

feelings, his emotions to direct his thinking and his behavior.

In the end, his family paid a terrible price.

David, king of Israel, committed adultery.

He decided to take a woman, Bathsheba, had her husband

killed and didn't count what would happen?

He tried to cover his sin, arranged for her husband's

death, but God decided not to let him get away with it.

And he paid a horrific, A catastrophic price.

The good thing was he repented and many other people's lives

were affected by what he did. And these things happen in our

day and age. Psalm 11/13, the 11, verse 3.

The writer says if the foundations are destroyed, what

can the righteous do? You see, once the points of

reference are gone, there's no more any sense of direction.

Some years ago I preached A sermon here and I used an

illustration that few will remember.

Some of you will and I want to use that illustration again this

morning. It's again out of the book of

Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard.

He shares this little story. A pilot was practicing high

speed maneuvers in a jet fighter.

She turned the controls for what she thought a steep ascent and

flew straight into the ground. She was unaware that she'd been

flying upside down. Sometimes happens when pilots

don't pay attention to the instruments when they go by the

appearance by the surround with the see through the cockpit

windshield. You have to know your

instruments and if you don't, you'll use your instruments.

You can, you become disoriented and you do that stuff.

He continued. He says this is a parable of

human existence in our times. Not exactly that everyone's

crashing, though, there's enough of that.

But most of us, as individuals in world society as a whole,

live at high speed and often with no clue to whether we're

flying upside down or right side up.

Indeed, we're haunted by a strong suspicion that there may

be no difference, or at least that it's unknown or irrelevant.

You see, there's some things in life we cannot afford to guess

at or take chances, as in what kind of house or car we buy.

Sure we can. We can.

We can guess at that. But when it comes to

relationship, life's decisions, we must have the right reference

points from where to make choices, or the consequences can

be catastrophic and may be fatal.

It's vitally important for us, both in the here and now and for

eternity, that we make the right choices early to be Kingdom

people, to live by Kingdom values.

And these are our choices. The Bible's full of stories.

How God invites, how God reminds, how God moves people,

how God warns people, opens doors for people, and some

respond and some don't. We're given one life each.

We're responsible for it, how we manage it, take care of it, and

for whose purpose we live it. I'm going to close with one

little story. I'm a university student whom

Dallas Woodard mentions in his book.

She came from a Midwestern town in the US, came from a working

class where things were more traditional.

Right was right and wrong was wrong.

Traditional conservative beliefs were held.

She managed to get into Harvard. You know what Harvard is the big

prestigious university where if you go there, then you've got it

made, so to speak. It was a big deal.

However, as a woman, she was simple.

She didn't have a lot of money. She cleaned dorms to earn money

to help pay her way. She was treated rudely by some

of the students because of where she came from, what she did,

cleaning, and so on. On a number of occasions, she

reported the behavior of her fellow students to the higher

ups and nothing was done. She was disrespected,

mistreated, and repeatedly propositioned for sex.

But one of the young men and who this young man was in the same

class, she was taking the same class called moral reasoning,

doing very well in his assignments, getting taught

marks, but immemorial in his behavior.

The time came, this young woman couldn't stand it anymore and

she quit the school, she quit Harvard.

She had an exit interview with the professor who she had

reported to. And she told him all that had

happened, how she'd been treated.

And she mentioned that the the classes the students was taking

was she was in her class. And she says she had this to

say. She says, I've been taking all

these philosophy courses. We talk about what's true,

what's important, what's good. Well, how do you teach people to

be good? And she added, what's the point

of knowing good if you don't keep trying to become a good

person? She thought that Harvard, of all

places, that would have been a place to be.

And their professor refused to take a stand.

That may happen in a school on earth.

But listen friends, the Bible is different, Jesus different.

What is known is expected. There are no exemptions.

As we go through the Sermon on the Mount in the coming weeks,

we will come across some very difficult teachings.

The question I want to leave us with this morning is are we

Kingdom people? I want to direct our thoughts to

to this concept. Are we Kingdom people?

Ephesians chapter 5 verse 18 Paul writes for you were once

Ephesians 5:18

darkness, but now you are light in the Lord walk as children of

light. For the fruit of the Spirit is

in all goodness, righteousness and truth.

Finding out what's acceptable, acceptable to the Lord and

having no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,

but rather expose them. For it's shameful to even speak

of those things which are done by them in secret, but all

things that are exposed are made manifest by the light for

whoever for whatever makes manifest is light.

Therefore, he says will wake you who sleep arrives from the dead,

and Christ will give you light. As Kingdom people, let's live.

As Kingdom people, let's pray. Lord, we know that you've

created us for glory to live out.

You're calling on us on this earth.

You put us here as your image bearers to reflect your

character in this life on this earth.

We also know that in and of ourselves, due to our sinful

nature, we're not able to do that.

We need you. We need Your grace at all times

for this. Lord, we pray that your Spirit

will go with us, fill us and lead us.

Lord, it is our desire to be Kingdom people.

Now as we'll go forward into the following weeks into Matthews

5-6 and seven, we pray that you will.

We'll be in tune with you and as we go through this week, give us

the grace this week to be surrendered, submitted and voted

to you. Help us Lord, to be Kingdom

people. Thank you Jesus name.