The Beautiful Life

Matthew 5, verses 1 to 12, this is the word of the Lord.

Matthew 5:1–12

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

This is God's holy word.

Last week we started a new evening series on the Sermon on the Mount.

And Flynn opened up looking at the Beatitudes.

And he focused on the very center of the Beatitudes, verse 6.

And tonight I'll step back and broaden and look at the whole of the Beatitudes as we enter, again, another intro into the Sermon on the Mount.

And he mentioned this last week, that the word Beatitude, this is what these blessings, these eight ways to be blessed, they're commonly called the Beatitudes.

And that is a Latin word.

They were named by a Latin word.

And the Latin word for Beatitude just means happiness or to be blessed, blessedness.

And so this word blessed gets used a lot, and so they called them the Beatitudes.

But another way that people throughout church history have talked about the Beatitudes is they've called this the description of the beautiful life.

The beautiful life.

And in the old world, the classical world, people would often talk about this, the reality, these principles of truth, goodness, and beauty.

And how in truth, goodness, and beauty, you find the three great attributes of God.

God is truth.

God is good.

God is beautiful.

And God has made the world and gifted the world with truth, goodness, and beauty.

And all three of these things work together.

Truth, goodness, and beauty.

You really need to have all three to have one.

The beautiful life.

You've got to have all three, truth, goodness, and beauty, to have one.

So let me make this more concrete.

Maybe you're talking to your friend, your spouse, your partner, your parent, your sibling, and you say something to them, and it can be true.

You can say something that's true, but your intention was to hurt them.

And so you can say something that's true, that's not a lie, but it's not good because you had a bad intention, and therefore it's not beautiful.

It's not beautiful speech.

So you see, if you want to speak beautifully, you've got to speak not only truth, but also goodness.

You've got to have the right intention, goodness about it.

And so in the old theologians, the pre-modern philosophers, they talk about how you need all three.

You need truth, goodness, and beauty to just have one.

And Christians of old have come and said, Jesus here gives you the prescription for the beautiful life, where truth and goodness meet in order to see what's beautiful about life.

In other words, it's not just that art can be beautiful.

It's not just that paintings are beautiful.

It's not just that landscapes are beautiful, but that you can be beautiful in your person, how you live.

A life can be beautiful.

And this is what Jesus is talking about here at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

We started a new series this morning as well on practicing the Christian life.

And this semester you'll see that quite often morning and evening will really come together and coalesce.

This morning was quite broad on taking up the Christian life and what it means to change.

And tonight is also quite broad in that.

But as we go through the Sermon on the Mount, it gets more and more specific.

And you really get into the weeds, the details about living as a Christian through lots of specific topics.

But tonight we'll take a panorama view of the Beatitudes and see that Jesus here is talking about the beautiful life.

And let's think about that.

He teaches us something.

He teaches us that to live the beautiful life you need truth.

You need goodness.

You need the good life.

And then you've got to learn from that how to live the beautiful life.

So let's look at the truth himself, the good life that he teaches us about, and then how we can live beautiful lives.

So first, the truth himself.

The question really here is who, let's back up to verse 1 and say, who is giving the Sermon on the Mount?

Who's the one speaking it?

And it's Jesus.

And you know that in other places like John chapter 14, Jesus says, I am the truth.

John 14 · chapter mention

And so here you've got the truth himself telling you about the good life.

And Matthew is, in the very short introduction you have in verse 1 and 2, to verse 1 especially, to Jesus as he speaks the Sermon on the Mount.

There's so much background there to help you.

I think Matthew is trying to get you to ask the question, who is this speaker as he gives us the Sermon on the Mount?

And here he is in verse 1 preaching on top of a mountain, on the side of a mountain, next to the Sea of Galilee.

And so far in Matthew, Jesus has not taught yet.

He's not given any teaching at all.

So Jesus was born in the first four chapters.

He was born, he was baptized, and then he went into the wilderness and was tempted by Satan.

And now he comes up the mountain and he starts teaching.

But so far there's been no teaching from Jesus.

And now you've got three very full chapters, long chapters, of Jesus teaching.

And in some sense all the action that's taken place in the first four chapters has been prepping you for the teaching that you're about to get.

And three full chapters from Jesus.

And just think about that action.

What's led up to this moment for a second with me?

In the first four chapters, who is Jesus?

Matthew's writing to a Jewish audience primarily in this gospel.

And he opens Matthew chapter 1 with the genealogy.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

And he says, Jesus Christ is the son of Abraham from the Old Testament.

And then if you just flip over to some of the stories, I'll just highlight a few.

In chapter 2, verse 13, an angel comes to Joseph, the Lord.

An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said,

Rise, take the child and his mother and go down to Egypt and remain there until I tell you why.

Because Herod is killing all the little boys.

He's committing a genocide against the little boys because he thinks he's been told the prophecy about this Messiah.

And so one of the very first things that happens to Jesus after he's born is he goes into Egypt.

And why does he go into Egypt?

He goes into Egypt because there's an evil king who is killing all the little Hebrew boys.

And when you read that, you start to think, that sounds a lot like the story of the Exodus.

How when Moses was born, he went into Egypt because an evil king was killing all the little boys.

And how did he escape?

Well, his mom put him in a basket and sent him not away from Egypt, but deeper in, all the way to the palace.

And Jesus, at the beginning of his life, he goes into Egypt because the evil king is killing all the little boys.

And then right after that, in chapter 2, verse 14, it says that after Joseph rose, he took the child and his mother and they went into Egypt.

They remained there until the death of Herod.

And this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken.

This prophecy, Hosea 11, out of Egypt I've called my son.

And in Hosea 11, that prophecy was looking back at who?

It was looking back at Moses and Israel being called out of Egypt.

And now, in Jesus' life, we're being told, Jesus went down into Egypt at the beginning of his life, but then God took him up out of Egypt to the promised land.

And you start to get this picture.

Jesus looks a lot like Moses.

He looks a lot like Israel in these stories.

And then right after that, we could go on for a little while, but I'll only give you two more.

Right after that, he comes up out of Egypt, back to Israel, and immediately he's baptized.

In other words, he comes up out of Egypt and he goes down into the water, and then he comes back up again from the water.

And in the Old Testament, when Moses and the Israelites left Egypt, they went down into the Red Sea and they came back up out of the Red Sea in salvation.

And then right after that, what's the very next story?

You could probably guess it.

Jesus is driven from the Red Sea into the wilderness.

And how long is he in the wilderness?

He's in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, just like Israel was driven up out of the Red Sea into the wilderness for 40 years.

And here we are now.

Jesus comes and sits on top of this mountain.

And you're starting to get the picture, I think, that we're being told Jesus Christ is reliving the Exodus story.

He is like Moses.

Jesus Christ, we're being told here, is the true and the better Moses.

And Moses was a very great mediator, a very great savior for the people of Israel.

But Matthew is trying to tell you that Jesus Christ has come to be the true and better Moses.

And not only that, but he's actually also, it's not just Moses that went into the wilderness for 40 years.

Jesus went into the wilderness and he was tempted and he withstood it.

And that means that he's not only, Hosea 11, one says, he's not only the true and better Moses, he's the true and better Israel.

He is, he's taking on the very life of the people of God.

But he's living it in their place without sin.

And that means that we're being told so far, when we come to the Sermon on the Mount, very important for reading the Sermon on the Mount, that Jesus Christ is the true mediator.

The true and better mediator.

The better Moses.

But he's also the true substitute.

He's come to literally live the life of the people of God.

That they never lived.

They were tempted and they succumbed to that.

But he never did.

He's come not only to be mediator, but also substitute as he comes to the Sermon on the Mount.

And then, it doesn't stop there.

When he comes here in Matthew chapter 5, verse 1.

Matthew 5:1

We're told here that in verse 1, there's four verbs.

In verse 1 and 2, it says that when he saw the crowds, here they are.

He went up the mountain.

And then he sat down.

That's the second one.

And then in verse 2, he opened his mouth and he taught.

Very stark Greek.

Very sharp.

Four action verbs.

Jesus went up the mountain.

After he came out of the wilderness, he sits.

Very important.

He opens his mouth and he teaches.

Why?

What's going on here?

You can't pass by this.

Because Matthew is saying, this is the true and better Moses.

And when Moses and the Israelites came up out of Egypt, they went and Moses came up the side of a mountain.

He gave the second law before they entered the promised land.

Deuteronomy.

It's the book of Deuteronomy.

And you remember when Moses went up the Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, the great teaching on how to live life?

He had to go up the mountain and he had to bow down before the Lord and hear the Lord tell him the law.

Hear the Lord tell him how to live.

But Jesus Christ here, the new, the true, the better Moses, he goes up the mountain and he doesn't hear teaching.

It says he sits down, the position of authority, the throne, and he just gives it.

You see, Matthew is trying to get you to see that this is not just the true and better Moses.

This is not just the substitute of the people reliving the life of God's people but doing it without sin.

This is God.

He is able to go up to the top of the mountain and he doesn't have to be taught in order to teach you.

He can just tell you this is the beautiful life.

This is the way to live.

In every way, wow, the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament has been talking about.

Right here in this moment.

And that's very important for us.

It's very important in this series as we approach the Sermon on the Mount.

Because we are, all of us in this room tonight, no matter how long you've been a Christian,

you are a late modern human being.

You exist in the period of late modernism.

And late modernism is an age where we are constantly being told all the time

that the ideals of the enlightenment, the revolution away from authority,

are the most important thing in our lives.

Where we're being told that we are made, we exist to seek true individual, rugged individual freedom.

And that means that we want maximum choices in our lives.

We want to have choice without constraint.

We want to be people who are free from burdens, free from commitment, free from constraint at all costs.

And that's the lessons that our culture is constantly telling us.

And that means that as late modern people, even as Christians,

we can come to something like the Sermon on the Mount and read what the blessed life looks like

and read what Jesus teaches about things like lust and forgiveness and reconciliation

and all sorts of moments and say,

you know, Jesus' teaching, the Sermon on the Mount feels a little bit like a net closing in on me.

It feels constraining.

You know, I feel like I'm a person made for freedom.

Options.

I don't want to be constrained by law, by rules, by being told what to do in my life.

And you've got to see that what God is saying here, what Matthew is saying here,

is that this is the true and better Moses, God himself speaking with such authority that says to you,

everything you've been taught about the modern life, the sense of freedom that our culture gives is not true.

And that the only real path to freedom is through constraint, but the kind of constraint,

the kind of constraint that leads you, that gives you the ability to love.

That true freedom is coming and submitting to the true and better Moses,

the God himself who really can teach you what it's like to live a beautiful life.

And so that's this verse first.

He came up the mountain.

He sat down.

He opened his mouth.

And he spoke.

He's the true and better Moses.

He's the great lawgiver.

And it's the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount.

And we've got to submit.

We've got to see that what he teaches us is beautiful here

about the way to live life.

All right, secondly, so what is that good life that he teaches us about?

And we'll move through it very quickly, these Beatitudes.

One of the ways you can talk about it, if you look down at verse 2,

he says in verse 2, sorry, verse 3,

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And then down in verse 10, one of the very last Beatitudes,

Blessed are those who are persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And so this idea of being a person fit for the kingdom of heaven

is the bookends of the Beatitudes.

So what is the Beatitudes talking about?

It's talking about the life of a citizen of the kingdom of God

or the kingdom of heaven.

And really what it's talking about is bringing your citizenship as a Christian

from the kingdom of heaven into the now,

reaching into the future when the kingdom of God will be fully realized in this world

and bringing it into today.

That's the Beatitudes.

That's the blessed life.

And the commentators, I think, have been very helpful to look at this

and show us that the Beatitudes are broken down into two sets.

There's four negative Beatitudes and then four positive Beatitudes.

And they're telling a story, the Beatitudes are.

And you've got to really see that to get the deep meaning of the Beatitudes.

And so let me show it to you.

Just look at the first three.

The first three, he says,

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are the meek.

So he's saying, first of all,

if you want to live the blessed life, the happy life,

the life of the kingdom, the good life,

you need to know that you are in poverty.

You need to be in poverty.

You need to mourn.

You need to be sad.

And you need to be meek.

Meek here is a word,

praous,

that just means powerless.

It means so humble that you know you don't have any resources.

All right?

That's the good life.

Sadness, poverty, and powerlessness.

Is that the good life?

What is he doing?

These are the negative Beatitudes.

You see what's going on in the Beatitudes.

To read them correctly,

you've got to see that he's telling a story.

And what he's talking about here is the process of the good life.

In other words, the process of faith,

of coming to faith,

of exactly what we talked about with the kids,

of what it means to be saved.

And a real key here is to see the first one.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

And you can see in your Bible,

it should be at least,

that in verse 3,

the word spirit is not capitalized.

And that's because poverty of spirit

is not talking about

blessed are the poor in the Holy Spirit.

It's saying blessed are the poor

who know they are poor in their spirit,

in your soul.

The first step is saying,

the first key to the good life,

the blessed life,

is to say,

I am poor in my soul.

I have a poverty.

I have a lack.

I am a rebel against God's will.

I am not who God made me to be.

And I am poor.

I don't have the resources

to ever achieve that.

I have a poverty of soul.

And it moves on from there.

The commentators will say that

in spirit controls

the rest of the meaning of the passage.

And so this also happens

in the Lord's Prayer.

But here,

you're supposed to read it like this.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

And then,

blessed are those who mourn

in their spirit.

Blessed are the meek

in their spirit.

In other words,

the negative beatitudes are negative

because they're saying at every level,

I lack all resource.

I have nothing to offer to the Lord.

I'm without hope.

I'm without resources.

Blessed are the poor

who know they're poor in spirit.

And then,

blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are those,

do you have,

listen,

does your sin make you sad?

Do you have,

in your heart,

at all,

the Holy Spirit working

and saying to you,

grieve.

Grieve over your sin,

over your struggle.

And then that makes you,

wakes you up and say,

blessed are the meek.

Blessed are the powerless.

To do anything about it.

Can you get to a place

where you say,

I have no hope to fix this.

That's what he's,

that's the negative beatitudes.

I love the essay competition.

I've said this a couple times in 2024,

but not in 2025.

So I'm free to use all the illustrations again.

New Year.

What G.K. Chesterton said

when the essay competition was put out

from the times in the early 20th century,

the essay competition,

that said,

write an essay

that answers the question,

what is wrong with the world?

And G.K. Chesterton wrote,

dear sir,

I am.

Yours truly,

G.K. Chesterton.

He got it.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are the meek

who know that they're powerless to fix it.

And then the turn,

the climax,

the crux,

the hook

is the fourth beatitude.

And it's the one that Flynn focused on last week.

And in the fourth beatitude,

it says,

blessed are those

who hunger

and thirst for righteousness.

Meaning that when you're poor in spirit,

when you're mourning over your sin,

when you're meek

and you know you can't do anything about it,

you've got to come to a place

where you say,

I must hunger and thirst

for a righteousness

that I cannot provide.

A hunger and thirst

for an alien righteousness.

It's only somebody else's merit

that could ever be enough

to bring me into the good life,

into the blessed life.

Now Flynn touched on this last week,

but I want to come back to it

just for a moment

before we turn to the final point.

This metaphor

of food and drink,

blessed are you

when you get to a place in your life

where you can say,

I hunger,

I thirst

for righteousness

that I do not have.

Why this metaphor

of food and drink,

hungering and thirsting?

And Flynn pointed out last week

that in Genesis

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1, 2, and 3,

the very first context,

God put in front of Adam and Eve

two trees,

the tree of life

and the tree of the knowledge

of good and evil.

And they were told,

you know,

you can take out

and you can reach

and you follow the Lord,

you give yourself away to God,

you be who you were made to be

and you eat

from the tree of life.

You take and you eat.

You hunger and thirst

for God,

righteousness,

you eat something

that will satisfy you forever,

the tree of life.

But when the serpent

came into the garden,

he said,

do you want to be like God?

In other words,

do you want to have autonomy,

freedom,

true freedom,

where you can define

who you are?

You don't have to listen

to the constraints

that God has put on you.

You can become like God,

knowing good and evil.

That's the temptation

to be truly free,

to have all your options,

to be self-defining.

You can determine

your own essence.

It's the essence

of the modern life.

That's the great temptation

of the serpent.

And what did they do

to get it?

Do you hunger and thirst

to live a life

that's not,

where you're not told

by God who you are

and how you should live?

And they took out,

and Derek Kidner,

as Flynn quoted last week,

Derek Kidner said,

when they took,

when she took,

when Eve and Adam

took and ate,

so simple the act,

such a simple act,

but so hard it's undoing.

Such a disaster.

And one of the things

you can do

is you can ask yourself,

what do I hunger

and thirst for?

Here's the test

that we give.

What do I hunger

and thirst for

when I am alone?

When nobody's around me,

when nobody's holding

me accountable,

it's me standing

before the presence

of God by myself.

What is it that I desire?

And boy,

I bet some of us

can say,

I don't usually

sit by myself

and think,

I want God

above everything.

I want to know Him.

I want to see Him.

I hunger and thirst

for a vision of God

to see,

what did David pray?

I long to gaze

upon the beauty

of the Lord

all the days

of my life.

And when you're alone,

what are your desires like?

Where does your heart go?

What do you hunger

and thirst for?

Now here it is,

the beauty of the gospel.

The great,

this is,

the fourth beatitude

is the gospel.

Why?

How?

Because Jesus Christ

came,

the true and better Moses,

the mediator,

and took on

the very life

of the people

of God of Israel.

And in that,

what was He saying?

He was saying,

I've come to live the life

with the desires

you should have had,

but you never did.

Jesus Christ came

and not only lived

in perfect obedience,

He desired God

perfectly

at every way,

at every step,

across every step.

And the gospel says,

look,

here it is,

the gospel is not that,

it's not this,

it's not that if you

really,

really,

really,

really desire God,

if you really,

really,

really look into your heart

and say,

I'm a sinner

and I want God,

that God will forgive you.

Not at all.

The gospel says,

you were never,

ever going to merit

God's favor

by your desires.

You were never going

to desire God,

you were never going

to work through

these beatitudes

and ever do it good enough.

Never.

But Jesus Christ came

and lived for you,

desired for you,

hungered and thirsted

for God the Father

for you.

And then He went

to the cross

and He was murdered

in your stead,

in your place.

You know,

the one person

in all of world history

that deserved to be heard

by God the Father

because He desired God the Father

perfectly,

heard silence

in the moment of the cross.

He came and desired

in your place

so that you could have

the righteousness

that you don't have,

an alien righteousness.

And that means here

that Derek Kidner,

I'll finish the quote,

Kidner says this,

in the beginning,

the Garden of Eden,

Adam and Eve,

they took and they ate,

so simple the act,

so hard it's undoing.

God Himself

had to taste

poverty and death

before take and eat

would once again

become verbs of salvation.

Now lastly,

if you've got that,

you can live

the beautiful life,

and we'll finish

with this.

How to have

the blessed life.

Four negative beatitudes

that lead you

to the gospel,

four positive beatitudes

to respond.

And here's how

we can respond tonight.

One commentator

points this out.

When you get to

the negative beatitudes,

when you get to

really all of them,

what it doesn't say,

it doesn't say this,

blessed are those

who hunger and thirst

for blessedness.

In other words,

it doesn't say,

blessed are those

who hunger and thirst

and long

for a happy life.

No, it says,

blessed are those

who hunger and thirst

for a righteousness

that is not their own.

In other words,

one writer

puts it this way,

if the happy life,

if you've,

if right now

in your life,

you desire

above all else

to seek the things

that you think

will make you happy,

if the happy life

is your ultimate goal,

you will never get it.

You will just put

so much pressure

on every object

that you're chasing,

every person

that you think

is going to make you happy,

that they will all

be crushed

by the weight

of that burden.

By the weight

of that job.

If you say,

I just want to be happy,

that will never

make you happy.

What are the Beatitudes

saying?

They're saying,

not,

blessed are those

who hunger and thirst

for happiness.

They're saying,

blessed are those

who hunger and thirst

for a righteousness

that's not their own,

that leads them

towards the four

positive Beatitudes.

And what are they?

Blessed is the person

who seeks

to give mercy.

Blessed is the person

who seeks purity

in their heart,

who wants to kill

their sin.

Blessed is the person

who is the peacemaker.

And blessed is the person

who's willing to suffer

for the name

of Jesus Christ.

In other words,

you don't get happy,

you don't get a blessed life,

you don't get contentment

in your life

by chasing contentment.

You don't get happiness

by chasing happiness.

You get happiness

by getting out

of your own head,

by getting out

of your own heart,

by getting away

from yourself

and becoming a person

who wants to give mercy

because you've gotten mercy.

Becoming a person

who wants to seek purity,

seek to kill your sin

because Jesus Christ

became impurity for you.

You want to become

a person who's a peacemaker

precisely because

Jesus Christ came

and made peace with you

while you were at war

with Him.

You want to give yourself away

and even suffer,

even be persecuted

for the name of Jesus Christ

because you say

He suffered for me.

In other words,

He's saying

the truly blessed life,

the truly content life

is actually to get

out of yourself,

to get out of your head

and to give yourself away

because He gave

everything away for you.

That's the positive Beatitudes.

Speaking of illustrations

that we used in 2024

in a new year,

C.S. Lewis'

wonderful book,

The Great Divorce,

it's a thought experiment

about heaven.

It's not a theology.

Do not build your theology

of heaven on C.S. Lewis'

Great Divorce,

but it's a helpful

thought experiment at times.

And in one instance

in the book,

there's a man

and he's taken up

into heaven

to see a vision

of the heavenly life

and he sees a woman.

He sees a parade

and he sees a woman

and this woman

is described as

having lived out

the Beatitudes.

This is my paraphrase.

But he sees this parade

and this is what he writes.

If I could remember

the singing

and write down the notes,

no man who read that score

would ever grow sick or old.

Between them,

the angels,

the people in the parade

went musicians

and after these,

there was a lady

in whose honor

all this was being done.

I've forgotten most of it.

Only partly do I remember

the unbearable beauty

of her face

and I asked my guide,

is it,

is that?

He thought it was,

he thought it was Mary,

the mother of Jesus.

And the guide said,

no,

not at all.

He said,

this is someone

you'll have never heard of.

Her name on earth

was Sarah Smith.

She lived at Golders Green.

And I said,

she seems to be,

a person of particular importance.

And he said,

aye,

she is one of the great ones.

You'll have heard,

you've heard that fame

in this country

and fame on earth

are two very different things.

Well,

was she famous?

No,

not like what you mean.

Was she beautiful on earth?

No,

not like what you mean.

All this people,

they must have been

part of her family

or something like that.

No,

not in the way that you mean.

No,

the guide said,

all the boys and girls

that Sarah encountered,

she regarded

as her sons and daughters.

Every single person

was her brother and sister.

She gave to the least.

She forgot herself.

Because of the mercy

she had gotten,

she lived the life of mercy.

She lived the life

of the kingdom

in a place

that the kingdom

was not on earth.

And now,

her true beauty

is on display.

A fierce beauty,

he writes,

at which I could barely

stand to look at.

Now,

in Christ,

the true Moses,

the true and better Moses,

he is calling us

to exchange

the ugly life

of self-seeking,

autonomous freedom,

and personal selfish ambitions

for the beautiful life,

a life lived for something

much better,

much greater,

and you can never do it

apart from the mercy

of the gospel.

But when you come to Christ

and the Holy Spirit

comes into your life,

he's saying,

now look

at the Beatitudes

and say,

I want to be

a person of mercy

and peacemaking.

I'm willing to suffer

for the sake of Christ.

I'll finish with this.

I'll combine this morning

with tonight.

Practicing the Christian life,

we said the one thing

this week you can do

to practice the Christian life

based on Colossians 3,

seek the things

that are above this morning,

was when you wake up

in the morning,

don't touch your phone,

keep your phone

far away from you

in the room,

and get on your knees

next to your bed

and take three to five minutes

to set your mind

on the things above

to talk to yourself

and tell yourself

who you really are in Christ.

That's what Paul means

in Colossians 3.

That's a way to practice it.

But here's a way

to be more specific.

Now you can use

the Beatitudes.

And tomorrow

you can take the Beatitudes

and you can walk through them

in that three to five minutes

twice.

And here's what you do.

Christian meditation,

taking on,

preaching to yourself

in the early morning.

Here's what you do.

You say first,

who am I?

Apart from Jesus,

I'm poor in spirit

and I'm sad

at the reality of my son.

And I am powerless

to do anything about it.

And then you say to yourself,

what do I need?

I need a righteousness

that is not my own,

an alien righteousness.

And then you say,

but what could I become?

And you say,

boy,

because Jesus' righteousness

is enough,

I can become today

a person of mercy

because I've received mercy,

a person that's pure in heart,

because God has pronounced me cleansed.

I can become a peacemaker

because he made peace with me.

I can today seek

to reflect the reality

of my heavenly life

by being willing to suffer

with Christ in his name,

for his name's sake.

In other words,

you gotta wake up tomorrow,

you gotta talk to yourself

and you gotta pray

and you gotta say,

this is who I am

because of the righteousness

that is not my own.

Let us pray.

Father,

help us to practice

the Christian life.

We ask,

help us to

see the truth

about who we are,

to turn outside of ourselves

for a righteousness

that we don't possess.

Lord,

and tomorrow,

do the work

of deep change in us

that we would

be like Christ.

We would see

great examples

in the lives

of other people around us

of mercy and peace

and being willing

to suffer for the sake

of Jesus.

Lord,

we ask,

we wanna be those people.

We long for that.

So,

Holy Spirit,

we ask that you would

come and kill

all the parts

of our deep,

deep desires

that are selfish

and self-interested

and overly attached

to freedom.

Lord,

that we would be trained

far more by the Beatitudes

than by selecting things

on Netflix tonight.

We pray for that.

We want that.

But we also don't want it

in our old self.

And so we ask,

Lord,

that you would just

do a great work in us

to continue to change us,

to purify us,

we pray.

And we ask this

in Jesus' name tonight.

Amen.