Matthew: Behold | Guest Speaker: Bryan Robinson

Good morning.

My name's Brian Robinson, and I'm one of the elders here at Christ the Redeemer.

And I am here teaching because we believe at this church that one of the roles of an elder is to teach.

Scripture says that in Timothy and in Titus.

So that is why I'm here.

We also believe that it's healthy for our pastor to have some rest.

And we believe that it's healthy for our church to not be focused on one guy.

So that's why I'm here this morning.

I'd like to start with a prayer.

If you'll bow your heads with me.

Heavenly Father, I'm so grateful for a beautiful fall morning.

Thankful for what you're doing in Marietta.

I pray that you would be with our church friends on the square in Marietta and throughout the city and throughout the state and the country.

I pray that your name, that your son's name, would be glorified and brought high this morning.

And I pray that you would speak through me clearly so that we would all know you, not just in our heads, but in our hearts.

I pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So I have, we've been going, Russ has been teaching through Matthew chapter 5, which is Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

And I'm going to continue.

This is the last five verses in Matthew.

And the verses are about loving your neighbor and even loving your enemy.

And I have some personal experience with having a difficult time loving one of my neighbors.

And this is a rather, please laugh at my expense of this story.

This is, I can't believe I'm going to tell this story at church, but I am.

So my across the street neighbor puts out food for cats, okay, on his front steps, and has been doing this for several years, about since we've lived in this house, and does not do anything to control the pet population.

So we have about 20 feral, we're down to about 20 feral cats in our neighborhood.

And that brings with it some problems.

I have a daughter that's allergic to cats.

And also my entire yard is a litter box.

It smells like cat poop.

Is poop?

It smells like cat poop.

Poop is a safe word here.

It smells like cat poop.

The whole yard.

And so I have a lot of anger in my heart towards my neighbor when I open and go sit on my front porch swing and I want to read a book, and it just reeks of cat poop.

Okay?

So then I'm angry.

When I'm mowing the lawn and I mow over a pile, I have anger in my heart.

It smells horrible.

Um, I have even, well, let me back up.

My daughter has stepped in cat poop on her way to get in a c in carpool, in another person's car.

She tracked cat poop all in the car.

I got to call at work.

Mandy's calling me asking me if I know of any mobile car cleaners that we can help clean this poor guy's car because of my neighbor that is um feeding the cats.

Um it it came to a head, I think I was at my low point when I got on Amazon.com.

I've done a lot of researching on Google as to how you get rid of these cats in my yard.

And uh I'm gonna have a confession.

I got on Amazon.com and I ordered a product called Coyote Urine.

Okay?

That's what I bought.

I bought Coyote Urine on Amazon.com.

You should if for a laugh check out the customer the customer reviews of coyote urine are fantastic.

Um they're very funny.

Um I digress.

Um the coyote urine helped for about a day repelling the cats, but more so repelled any human being that was near our house.

Um my daughter was on a walk and she had to cross the street.

It smelled so bad in my yard.

Um all that to say, um, I have a problem loving my neighbor, even.

Uh so.

Um anyway, as I've prepared for this talk, um I've read that the Beatitudes are some of the most misunderstood and mistaught verses in the entire Bible.

So everyone just relax.

You have a dentist who's just confessed to ordering coyote urine that's going to try to teach these verses to you.

So buckle up.

Um, we'll get into the verses.

First, before I do that, I want to talk about the Beatitudes, and Russ has taught it this way, but just in case you haven't been here, I think the primary purpose of these verses are to drive us to Christ.

They're to show us that we cannot do these things on our own.

We need help.

I think there is a secondary purpose that these verses can direct us in Christ.

Once we realize that we need a Savior, now we can go back over this and look and see a description of what God wants for us.

And that can be very practical to us.

So, some context for chapter 5.

This is Jesus going up onto a mountain and reciting parts of the Old Testament law to his followers.

He's saying, You've heard it said.

His audience would have immediately thought of Moses.

Um, and Jesus is asserting his authority here.

He's saying, but I say to you.

He's saying, You've heard it said, but I say to you.

And I think it's also something we need to note.

He's not contradicting the Old Testament and what Moses said.

Verses 17 through 20 in this chapter say, I've not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

And I think he makes it very clear.

He says, You have heard that it was said.

He doesn't say, It was said.

So Jesus is calling out the scribes and the Pharisees that were teaching the law this way, in such a way that we could do it.

Matthew 43 and 44, I'm just going to go verse by verse and teach through this passage.

Um, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your enemy, you love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

So he's referring back to Leviticus 19, 18, you shall love your neighbor.

And humans have added this unwritten companion, hate your enemy, because we want to be able to accomplish the law.

Jesus is teaching here that loving your enemy is actually the fulfillment of what it means to love your neighbor.

I think it's important also to note, right after he says, to love your enemy, he says, pray for them.

And I don't believe that that's coincidence.

I believe when we pray for our enemies, that's the beginning of love.

I want y'all to think about, not just like loving your enemies, you know, I don't want this to be just some ambiguous talk about enemies.

Think about someone that you have had real anger at as an enemy.

And if someone tells us to love that person, that's usually just not there.

But I believe it can start when we pray for those.

Praying for them can bring about love.

And I think that happens because we begin to see them as we pray to a sovereign God that we know is in control under that umbrella of God's sovereignty, instead of this us and them, when I have an enemy, usually it's me and them, and God is it becomes a very just God, and his justice is usually on my side of the fence.

Um, I think when we pray for our enemies, we we go under his umbrella of sovereignty.

And that breaks the cycle that Russ was talking about last week.

Um, I don't think we should pretend that's easy, and I don't think that God is as concerned with the result of that as much as he is with the process of that.

I can become very concerned with, I want to get there and kind of blast through the process, and I think God wants us to walk with him through the process of loving our enemy.

Umce for all of that has to be Jesus' love for us.

Paul says in Romans 5.8, while we were his enemies, Christ, he died for us.

So not only has he been an example for us in this passage, he is also our motive as Christians.

He lives inside us.

He allows us to do this, he empowers us to do it, not allows us to do it.

I'm gonna tell a story that I think illustrates this point well.

Um you may have heard of a girl named Ruby Bridges.

Well, she was a young black girl, and in 1960, she was six years old, and she was the first black girl to go to an all-white school called the William France School in Louisiana.

And uh she arrived at school her first day, and there were there was a mob basically of people.

The federal government had mandated that they desegregate the school, and she arrived at the school, and she said, as she drove there, she thought it was Marty Girl, because there were so many people there.

She had no idea.

She got there, and it was pretty much the worst of humanity, the worst that we have to offer.

People were screaming things at her, um, just horrible, horrible things that shouldn't be said.

And her mom even remembers what affected her most was someone had brought, I have a six-year-old son, so this is powerful to me.

Someone had brought a coffin that they made and put a black baby inside a coffin to show her that's how much they didn't want her to come to school there.

Well, there was a counselor there.

She was going through, walking through this with a counselor and her parents.

Her parents could not read or write, and her counselor was asking her, she noticed that Ruby one day was saying something to the people.

And she said, Ruby, what were you saying to them?

And uh Ruby Bridges said, I wasn't talking to them, I was saying a prayer for them.

And uh the counselor said, Why?

And she said, because they needed praying for.

And she said, Well, what were you praying?

And she said, These are the words of Christ, please, dear God, forgive them because they don't know what they're doing.

Now, as an adult, they asked Ruby Bridges about this, and uh she said, Um, and remember, her parents were couldn't read or write, and they asked her why she's well how she did that.

And she said, I had heard that someplace before, and it silenced me.

That that's powerful.

Um verse 45, let's move on.

So that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven, for he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

So here Jesus is saying, so that you may be sons of your father in heaven.

Does this mean that I love if I love in this way, I'll be accepted by God?

No, I don't believe it means that.

The phrase son of is a language idiom, which is kind of a cultural reference that they would have understood at that time, that means exhibiting the character of.

So, what Jesus is actually saying is as I begin to live in a way that I'm trusting him and praying for my enemy, even when I don't want to, I begin to exhibit the character of the Father who is in heaven.

He goes on to talk about the rain and the sun are both gifts from God, and he's giving to the just and the unjust.

I think he's making the point here that we don't earn his blessing.

Our God gives us love because he's a loving God.

It's not something that he is choosing to give to these people because they've earned it, and these people because they haven't.

Verse 46 and 47.

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?

Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?

Do not even the Gentiles do the same.

And I think what Jesus is saying here is if you love people that are kind to you, basically people with no morality can do this.

Um and when we th when we do that, when the Pharisees and the scribes were teaching that, we're shrinking God's call of love down to something that's totally doable.

Um, this is also called a low view of the law or cheap law.

And I think we do this today when something that comes naturally to us we can do, and it brings about a lot of pride in our hearts and judgment towards others that can't do it.

Um I think it's important to note that we're I and you are guilty of a low view of the law.

One of my favorite quotes is in your bulletin, it's kind of long, so bear with me.

It's from a friend named John Dink, and he talks about cheap law.

He says, cheap law weakens God's demand for perfection, and in doing so breathes life into our quest for a righteousness of our own making.

It creates people of great zeal, but they lack knowledge concerning the question, what would Jesus do?

Here's the costly answer.

Jesus would do it all perfectly, and that's game over for you.

The Father is not grooming you to be a replacement for his beloved son.

He is announcing that there is a blessing for those who take shelter in his beloved son.

Cheap law tells us that we've fallen, but there's good news.

You can get back up again.

Therein lies the heresy of cheap law.

It is a false gospel.

It cheapens.

No, it nullifies grace.

So the final verse in this chapter, uh, verse 48, you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

So this is how he concludes the whole chapter.

All the things that Russ has been teaching, um, he is um he's teaching that we have to be perfect.

And this is the verse that I struggle with the most, honestly, is why is God, who knows our hearts and knows that we are imperfect beings, giving us a command to be perfect.

Um, one thing I think is clear that we can all agree on is God's standard is perfection.

Um I think when we see this and realize that on our own efforts, on our own human efforts, we can't do this and we need his help.

That is where godly righteousness starts.

I've heard someone say, true righteousness begins at the end of yourself.

So can you think of a time where you have truly been at the end of yourself?

It might be this morning.

Um there's a great example in a book uh Watchman Nee wrote of a swimmer that's drowning.

So he tells a story about his friend is swimming in a river, and um he has a cramp in his leg, and this and he starts to struggle.

And there's a lifeguard nearby, and he calls to the lifeguard, go help, go help him.

And the lifeguard just sits there.

And uh he watches his friend just just flailing around, um struggling for his life for several minutes, and the lifeguard just sits there, and eventually the flailing starts to weaken.

And as he kind of takes his last move, the lifeguard goes out, grabs him, and brings him in.

And he says, Why did you wait?

You could have lessened my anxiety.

He he could have been safe a long time ago.

And the lifeguard said to him, A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself.

And that's us.

We need help from another from outside of ourselves.

The problem with the righteousness of the Pharisees is that it needed no divine help.

It was humanly conceived and humanly doable.

Jesus did not have to die and come back from the dead for any of those things.

So the Lord brings us to a place where we realize we can't do it on our own.

But guess what?

There's no power there.

There's no power at the end of yourself.

Uh the power is in Jesus.

He lives in us as Christians, and he is all we need.

Often I find myself praying for like, give me a little bit more patience today, give me a little bit more courage today, give me a little bit more.

And I don't think that's a proper way to pray.

Another quote from Watchman Me, he says, um, he is not a retailer dispensing grace to us in packets, measuring out some patience to the impatient, some love to the unloving, some meekness to the proud, in quantities that we take and work on as a kind of capital.

He has given only one gift to meet all our needs: His Son, Christ Jesus.

And that's what's glorious about the call of the kingdom of God.

It will drive you to the end of yourself.

It will drive you to say the best words that you can ever say, which are, I want to, but I can't.

Jesus, you must.

So how do we do these things?

These are very church words and I'm all over the place.

So how how do you do this Tuesday morning when you go to work or when your baby's crying in the middle of the night on Thursday night, or when you have a test on Friday morning, or whenever?

How how what does this look like on the ground practically?

Um I'm gonna read another quote from the Green Letters, um, and it's it's a book I've been reading.

The author of this quote is a man named Norman Dowdy.

And the Green Letters is a book that talks a lot about um not I but Christ.

And in this section, he is talking about the word behold.

If I am to be like him, then God in his grace must do it.

And the sooner I come to recognize it, the sooner I will be delivered from another form of bondage.

Throw down every endeavor and say, I cannot do it.

The more I try, the farther I get from his likeness.

What shall I do?

The Holy Spirit says, You cannot do it.

Just withdraw.

Come out of it.

You have been in the arena.

Come and just sit down.

And as you sit there, behold him.

Look at him.

Don't try to be like him.

Just look at him.

Just be occupied with him.

Forget about trying to be like him.

Instead of letting that fill your mind and heart, let him fill it.

Just behold him.

Look upon him through the word.

Come to the word for one purpose, and that is to meet the Lord.

Not to get your mind crammed full of things about the sacred word, but come to it to meet the Lord.

Make it to be a medium, not of biblical scholarship, but of fellowship with Christ.

Behold the Lord.

So the word behold, not a very American idea.

I don't really like it a whole lot because I'm not in control of that and I'm passive.

But I think it's it's very healthy and it's very good for us.

So this week, I would encourage you, I'm gonna give you three verses here that I think have helped me to behold the Lord more instead of just rushing through a quiet time or whatever it is that you do.

Maybe don't do any of that.

But I think these verses help us to know who God is, and it takes the spotlight off of the Christian and puts it more on the Christ.

And there's hope there.

Um, Isaiah 40, 11 and 12, and just listen, this talks about he is our creator and he cares about us.

Isaiah 40, 11 and 12, he will tend his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms, he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance.

So next verse, verses I want you to just focus on maybe this week.

Romans 8, 38 and 39 talks about how God feels about us and what he has done for us through Jesus.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

And the last verse, um, and this is actually my 13-year-old Meg, this um since she's been a little girl, this has been her favorite verse, and it has become one of mine.

Matthew 28, 20.

That's the last thing Jesus says in the book of Matthew.

And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

This is good news for us.

And like Ruby Bridges, it has the power to silence us.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, um, we're just so grateful that you love us as we are, not as we should be, because none of us are as we should be.

I pray that um we would be drawn by you uh to know your heart and to know you more.

We pray that we would know that you live inside us, and that is all that we need.

And we're so grateful for that.

In your son's name I pray.

Amen.