The Core Values of Happiness Part 4: Matthew 5:9-12 - Matthew: Kingdom of God Revolution

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Everyone of us this room has something that you're you're messed up in and you're working on.

And yet, he calls you his son.

He calls you his daughter.

He says you're still on the team.

I'm sure you love me with all your heart, even though it's broken.

Love me with all of your heart, even though you still have shame.

Because of sexual abuse, or because of that abortion, or because of that divorce, whatever it might be, we all carry shame.

And as we become more vulnerable with God and with some blood-stained allies in our life, we've become wholehearted.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Well, you know, I've talked about uh the Beatitudes.

We're in the middle of the Beatitudes.

We're coming, we're going to close with the Beatitudes today.

The first 12 verses of Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

If you're a guest with us, this is the most famous sermon that Jesus ever gave.

It could be that these 12 verses are the most important values ever given to humankind.

One Jewish scholar said that the history of the Christian church is a continuous pursuit of not doing what is found in the Beatitudes.

It's really sad.

And we live in a culture today that's angry, vitriolic, full of unforgiveness toward each other.

And then we come to this value statement.

This value statement of Jesus about what really matters to be a kingdom citizen.

What it means to be a kingdom of God citizen, to be a part of the values and the and the glory of the kingdom by the way we live.

And I'll just be honest and say this is not easy to do.

It's difficult to live the Beatitudes.

And if you've been with us over the last few weeks, I've compared it to like American Ninja Warrior.

If you've watched that TV program where they have the rings, and the way it works in the Ninja Warrior series, at least a few years ago, when I saw it, is you had you grab the first ring, and then you have to kind of swing yourself back on the first swing, and then you release, and there's momentum to grab the next ring.

Then you pull yourself up with this ring, and then you swing that ring, again, getting momentum to come through and grab the next ring.

And if you recall, if you saw it, the rings get a little further apart each time.

So each one determines your ability to catch the next one, right?

So that's the way Christ set this up.

So turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5, and we've gone through the first six or seven, but verse 3, where Jesus talks about, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is the first ring.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

If you're not poor in spirit, church, you won't mourn, that's the second one, for the things that break God's heart.

There's a lot of believers today, and you guys know how many have been hurt in the church?

How many of you have been hurt at some point in the church?

For the rest of you, it's coming.

It will happen.

Church can be a very mean place.

Church can be a very hurtful place because so often it's filled with people just like you and me.

And the Beatitudes here, this blessed, this idea of happiness, which is what the word means, beatus in Latin, it has the idea of overwhelming joy, Jesus is saying, starts with being poor in spirit.

In other words, poor in you but rich in him.

Poor in you to be rich in him.

So he says, blessed are the poor in spirit, or happier are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, you get the resources of the kingdom of heaven when you realize you don't have the resources.

So it all starts with humility.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

And I talked about the fact that the more we're poor in spirit, the more we're connected with Christ in intimacy with Him, the more we begin to take on the mourning and the pain of those that are mourning and pained, because we get the heart of God.

You start to get the heart of God.

If you find yourself too often pointing fingers at those that are disenfranchised and those that are that are hurting, you need to go back to verse 3 and get God's heart, because God always had a heart for those that are on the that are on the marginalized in society.

Blessed are those who are meek.

And we talked about the fact that this has the idea of renouncing all rights.

We live in a rights culture, don't we?

It's no different.

Men and women, it's no different than in the past.

Back when I was a young man and I was smuggling Bibles in Europe, and I was in Hungary, and I was in France, and I was in all these different countries in Europe, everybody was still fighting for their rights.

I remember going to 40 days of prayer with Dr.

Yonggi Cho in Seoul, Korea, with the largest church in the world at that time.

I think it may be it maybe still is.

Went out to the Prayer Mountain and we'd go to the university because I was with Campus Crusade.

And so we were in the universities, and there you are, you know, and it was the Communist Party in the Red Wing of the Communist Party with their placards, and they would all line up, and police would and tear gas would get shot off almost every day when we were there, fighting for their rights.

Fighting for our rights.

And yet Jesus says, Blessed are those who renounce all their rights, and all you want is the kingdom of heaven.

And he says, in so doing, you shall inherit the earth.

You know why I think he says that is because God wants those who don't want power to have power.

Because when we don't have power, usually we use it rightly.

Verse 6, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

So the more we hunger and thirst for the things of God in his kingdom, God fills up such people.

Have anybody anybody learned that it's not easy to hunger and thirst for righteousness?

Do you realize you have to stimulate that?

You have to constantly stimulate that?

Like you could have a really good week and then things start to bombard us and our schedule and stuff, and then we forget.

But that hunger and thirst for righteousness has to constantly be stimulated.

You know what I've been doing lately?

I like to do this from time to time.

I read biographies.

Biographies make me hungry, hunger and thirst for righteousness.

I read about Mother Teresa.

I read about William Carey.

I read about Jay Hudson Taylor.

I read about these guys that really went after God, and it just stimulates in me a passion to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

So everybody's different.

And I went up to a cabin this week to seek the Lord.

And I was just sharing with one of our members here before the service.

I didn't go, I didn't, I don't need any more vision, right?

I don't need vision, okay?

I I know that my staff, whenever they hear, hey, I'm gonna go spend some time with the Lord, there I can see tension fill the room.

Because it's it might be more work when I get back.

No, I'm only kidding.

A little bit.

Okay.

Nervous laughter throughout.

No, but this was this was one of those times where I didn't want to get, I don't need vision, I don't need to, I don't need values articulated in my heart.

I just wanted to worship God.

And I just wanted to spend time with Him.

So it was really cool.

So I got my music list and everything and just worshiped.

And for almost for 24 hours, it seemed like I was in the Word or in worship the whole time.

It was awesome.

So hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

We've talked about that.

Blessed are the merciful, verse 7, for they shall obtain mercy.

It's compassion.

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

I want to use the word wholehearted here.

I want to use the word wholehearted.

I started on this a little bit a couple weeks ago.

But wholehearted is a favorite word that I like a lot.

And I really got turned under the word wholehearted through Brene Brown.

How many?

Raise your hand if you've heard of Brene Brown.

Okay, the rest of you need to get into the flow here.

Brene Brown is a qualitative sociologist at the University of Houston.

Her at one time her message, uh, and it may still be true, on shame and vulnerability, was number one TED Talk with 25 million views.

Really encourage you to avail yourself to Brene Brown.

I don't agree with everything about Brene Brown's teaching.

I don't agree with every pastor's teaching.

I don't even agree with my own teaching half of the time.

But the reality is she has some really good insights about being wholehearted, and God really used her in a dark time in my life.

And so this word wholehearted, what does it mean?

Many times we think of wholehearted.

You know what?

Let's just stop for a second.

What does wholehearted mean to you?

Stand up if you got a if you got an opinion.

Wholehearted.

What does wholehearted mean?

What?

Making faith vocation?

Heart and mind.

Okay, great.

Good, Jay.

Yes.

Huh?

All in.

Okay, great.

All in.

Somebody else.

Yes.

Passionate.

Okay, one more.

They're all great.

Yeah, way back in the back.

I know I'm not going to hear you.

Vulnerable.

Yeah, you've read Renee Brown.

That's awesome.

Okay, here we give you three characteristics of being wholehearted.

All of that's true that was said.

I'll give you three characteristics.

Number one, I believe being pure in heart, six kingdom value, I'm calling whole-hearted, is number one, listen, it's not what you expect.

Authentic assessment of oneself.

Authentic assessment of yourself.

And what I mean by that is that most of us struggle, listen, most of us struggle with being posers and pretenders, especially in the church.

Now here's what's here's the interesting thing is that we now live in a culture where it's like I saw this ad that someone showed me at AIM, our morning, our morning at 6 a.m.

time that we have with the men on Tuesdays, it says, question everything but yourself.

Whoa, that's so authentic.

That's so cool.

I'd say question yourself first.

How you doing, guys?

How are we doing as a church?

It's okay to question yourself.

Get an authentic assessment.

The only way we can be changed, and if you're married, you're always wanting your spouse to change, but not you, right?

Go like this if you know what I'm talking about, and the rest of you are living in la la land.

You know, isn't it true?

I've been married 33 years, and and I'm and I'm the last one to assess me.

But it's an authentic assessment of ourselves because that's the beginning of allowing and releasing the Holy Spirit in our life.

So here's number two, characteristic number two, being wholehearted, is aware of your own darkness.

Aware of your own darkness.

That's sec put if you're taking notes, write down 2 Corinthians 4.

Read 2 Corinthians 4.

Because 2 Corinthians 4 is talking about renouncing the shame and being wholehearted, and it talks about the light shining in the darkness.

Now, Christine and I've talked a lot about this, and we've been together, she's been on this journey with me, Denny and Christine have, and Liz and Christine and I and Denny have talked about it many times.

The fact that wholehearted, actually, in the measured terms in which I think it means in Scripture, is Jesus saying, love the Lord your God with all of your heart.

Now he says heart, soul, mind, and strength.

But for the sake of right now, we'll just say heart, love God with all your heart.

And your neighbor is yourself, and all of the prophets and all of scripture is fulfilled if you'll just do that.

But then we know from Scripture that our hearts are deceptive.

They just are.

Right?

So, what does it mean to love God with all of your heart when not all of your heart is lovely?

I think it means you still love him with all your heart.

I think Jesus is exactly, he's saying exactly what he means.

That to love him with all of our heart means that we do love him even in our darkness.

It means we love him even in our sin.

I mean, he says Abraham is the father of our faith.

The dude was a liar.

And his son was just like him.

And Jacob, another one of the fathers of our faith.

His name means supplanter.

He was a deceiver.

Now that's good news.

Right?

Because every one of us in this room has something that you're messed up in and you're working on.

And yet he calls you his son.

He calls you his daughter.

He says, you're still on the team.

I'm for you.

Love me with all your heart, even though it's broken.

Love me with all of your heart, even though you still have shame because of sexual abuse, or because of that abortion, or because of that divorce.

Whatever it might be, we all carry shame.

And as we become more vulnerable with God and with some blood-stained allies in our life, we become whole-hearted.

Isn't that exciting?

Give me a little yummy.

Yeah.

Because true.

That's being whole-hearted, men and women.

And you say, well, I'm not all in, Steve.

Well, you don't have to be all in with me.

You have to be all in with him.

And being all in with him often means we confess our sins, even as we worship him with our sins.

So what happens when our heart becomes open in 2 Corinthians 4?

It's very clear the light shines in the darkness.

And men and women, the more time you spend in worship, the more time you spend in a fellowship like this where hopefully we're authentic and real, and we're learning to break that power of posing and pretending and that religious spirit that so pervades the church today, you're getting healed, and you don't even know it.

You just wake up one day and you go, man, I haven't struggled with depression in like two weeks.

Or I haven't struggled with lust in like 10 days.

And then you just keep doing it, you keep doing it, and God's healing you.

That's being wholehearted.

It's not being perfect.

It's not having your act together.

You hear what I'm saying?

It's being real and authentic with Him.

And then guess what?

You start seeing His power show up.

And that's the third point.

Acute focus on healing.

Number three, an acute focus on healing.

I want to change.

I want to be transformed.

I'm an angry person.

I struggle with anger.

And God, I'm giving you my anger, and I'm going to go after this thing through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And guess what?

You start getting better.

You start getting healed.

We recently had someone in our church who I got permission to share this, but this person's involved in some stuff that was pretty shady.

And they shared with me how they never, they knew it was wrong.

They knew it was hurting others.

But in the process of coming here and learning to worship and learning to pray and being a part of some of the different activities in a small group here in the church, they said one day they realized that it had been like three months and they weren't involved in that stuff anymore.

But it wasn't like they they necessarily just focused on that, but they focused on him.

Hello?

They focused on Jesus.

They focused on him.

They invited the Holy Spirit into these things, but they focused on him, and God did the healing.

And he's doing the healing.

An acute focus on healing.

That's being wholehearted.

And he says, you shall see God.

Because here's what I think happens when we start focusing that way is God gives us wisdom.

God gives us insight when we seek him.

And we have insight that we didn't have before.

This is not easy, folks.

This is not easy.

This is discipleship 201.

It really is.

A lot of people don't want to go there.

But here's the deal: when we are becoming wholehearted and we're seeking Him, you start to see God in a new way and you start to have wisdom that you didn't have before.

So I believe what Jesus is saying to us today is you'll be so happy if you'll be pure in heart.

You'll be so happy if you'll be wholehearted.

You shall be, you shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, verse 9.

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

Seventh kingdom value is a maker of peace.

I want you to note something.

I'm not saying peacekeeper.

I'm talking about being a peacemaker.

Guess what?

The more you become a maker of peace, the less you'll be a peacekeeper.

The more you're a maker of peace, the less you'll be a peacekeeper.

What I mean by that is that actually, the more we become makers of peace in our lives, church, you're gonna stir up some stuff.

Where there's turmoil and you come as a peacemaker, people don't want that.

They get angry with that.

But when we come to make peace, because that's what Paul says in Ephesians, shodding our feet what?

With the gospel of peace.

We're called to bring peace in our marriages.

We're called to bring peace at our job.

We're called to make peace wherever we go, to work as much as we can to make peace.

It's called the Ministry of Reconciliation.

If you have your Bibles, turn with me.

If you don't, it's fine, I'll read it to you.

2 Corinthians 5.

I love 2 Corinthians 5.

2 Corinthians 4 and 5 are two of the most powerful chapters in the New Testament, in my opinion.

But 2 Corinthians 5, 17 says this.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

Old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.

What it's saying here is that when we become a Jesus follower, and some of you in this room right now are not Jesus followers yet.

You haven't made Jesus Lord.

But when you do, you get a new heart.

And when you get a new heart, you become a new creation.

But here's why.

Verse 18.

Now all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

Now then, we are ambassador.

For Christ, as though God were pleading through us, we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

So where we represented in our life just ourselves, we now represent Christ.

It's a family business.

That's why he says, and you shall be called sons of God.

Because you are now in the family business.

And the family business is called reconciliation.

If we could put one word over the family business, it is reconciliation.

So we are now renouncing our rights, being poor in spirit, taking on the mourning heart of God, and now, pure in heart, we would say, I want to reconcile you to God and to people.

I'm here to bring unity.

I'm here to bring peace.

Because your natural tendency, every one of us you in the room, and I'm looking in the mirror too, our natural tendency is it's all about me.

All of you in this room struggle with an addiction called being a self-haholic.

You're all self-haholics.

Right?

You are.

I mean, I am too, man.

I'm a self-haholic.

I care about what you think of me.

I put this on today and I had something cooler to wear.

Where'd that come from?

This is about as cool as it gets.

I mean, what we did, I mean, I love it.

All you guys that wore your shirts, it's awesome.

And then I felt, this is, I'm being, I'm totally being honest with you, man.

I looked in the mirror and I bought this at the when we did the first Springs Initiative because I couldn't find mine.

So there's no pain on it.

So I thought, this is dumb.

I'm wearing this thing.

It looks like I didn't do anything.

Look, there's not one, there's not one thing of pain on it anywhere.

And the day I wore it, I took it off because I wanted to keep it clean, and I wore another one that kind of looked like it.

But then I put this one on because I couldn't find the other one because I think I threw it away.

I mean, that's like eight or ten minutes of being a self-aholic this morning about a dumb shirt.

I know none of you guys struggle with that, but you're a self-aholic.

I know you are.

You need a self-help group.

You know, you need a God help group.

But the Prince of Peace is called the Prince of Peace because he's the Prince of Peace.

And as a Prince of Peace, when he becomes Lord of your life, you become a reconciler.

You become now an ambassador for Christ.

You represent the kingdom of God.

You bring the values of the kingdom of God.

Men and women all over these neighborhoods, all through these apartments over here, are people yearning for the Prince of Peace.

They just fought all night last night on Saturday night.

Somebody got drunk, somebody did cocaine, and somebody smoked pot, and they got angry at each other, and the kids are weeping and they're crying because mom and dad are at each other's throat.

You know what I'm talking about?

They are longing for the Prince of Peace, and the only way they're gonna know the Prince of Peace is with a bunch of ambassadors that get out there and show them what the Prince of Peace is like.

And that starts with us.

And that deserves an amen.

Because as we become more and more the princesses of peace, they're gonna pour into that relationship because God has already given us a harvest.

He said that the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few.

That's what he means here, I believe.

I believe what Jesus is saying here is be a peacemaker.

Church, I cry out, please be peacemakers.

And you shall be called sons of God.

You become a part of the family business.

And then with all of that happening, men and women, here's what naturally happens next.

Verse 10.

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

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

With living the first seven kingdom values, the eighth kingdom value becomes a natural part of our life, and that's suffering for a just cause.

You will suffer for a just cause.

Loyalty to God always results in persecution.

So rejoice in it.

Rejoice in persecution.

It's a coming, baby.

It's a coming.

You signed up for the wrong church.

Because the more we become kingdom citizens, the more the citizens of this world will oppose us.

Different things are in what we do.

I pray that as we were doing Springs Initiative, they saw so much love from those that were out there fixing doors and painting the house, that there was an overwhelming sense that that kind of kingdom value I'm longing for.

I want that.

And to see the tears of both of the homeowners each time we do this is just, man, it's worth it.

It's so worth it.

How many are you familiar with Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

Are you all familiar with Dietrich?

You've been at this church a while, so you know who Dietrich Bonhoeffer was.

But Dietrich Bonhoeffer was secure and set in his position at Union Seminary.

They loved him as a professor there at Union Seminary.

Hitler came to power.

He's a German.

And he decided I can't be a part of the reconstruction of Germany after Hitler if I wasn't a part of the suffering under Hitler before Germany had become Nazi.

And so he went back, and as you know, he was martyred for his faith.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

began to march because it wasn't right what was happening to the African-American community all over the South, and for that matter, all over the United States, and it's still a struggle today.

Martyred for his faith.

A man we all know so well.

Well, maybe you don't know him so well, but John Sanson in Sudan, who gave his life and the strife and the and the murder and the persecution that has swept through the church of Sudan.

When we stand for righteousness, church, when we stand for the things of the kingdom, there will be pushback.

Be a peacemaker.

And as you increasingly are a peacemaker, there's going to be pushback, which actually could mean war even in your own life.

But he says, here, happy.

What?

What?

Number verse 10, blessed.

Verse 11, blessed.

Verse 12, rejoice and be exceedingly glad.

You guys know we had John Shepard here.

We were here, he didn't come here, but we showed the trailer for the movie that he just produced out of Hollywood.

And the producer that lives was a part of leading into the Lord when he was at UCLA, and he's with Empower Pictures.

And we showed the trailer for Emmanuel.

Stephen Curry did the beginning part of that.

And when we talked, there'd been 18 consecutive showings all packed out.

Almost all African Americans in the theater.

And we were talking about him saying, in LA, we can't get any of the African Americans to come out.

It's just white audiences.

But because of that showing in Charleston, and let me just give you a heads up for you that don't know, there was a shooting in Charleston.

Was that three years ago?

I'm going to say it was like three years ago, in which nine African-American believers at Emmanuel AME Church were slaughtered by this white supremacist.

Remember that?

And then those members pronounced forgiveness toward him at the first trial.

I mean, at the first time that I don't know who the judge was, but it was genius what he did.

But he said, Do you guys have anything you want to say?

This is the guy.

He's admitted that he did it.

And the first man gets up and his mom was killed there in that Bible study, and he says, I forgive you.

I pray that you would come to know Jesus like I have.

And then one after another after another.

Man, you guys, that's the kingdom.

And if we start to live that way, our churches couldn't hold the number of people that would pour in because they want to know the Prince of Peace.

Because they're living in war in their hearts.

They know that's what they long for.

And the laborers are few.

And I say, I pray that in our day we might be able to say, that we might be able to say, the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are plentiful.

Wouldn't that be awesome?

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.

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Go to theroad.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.

Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.