Who Will Save Me From the Sermon on the Mount

Hey everybody.

welcome and thank you for joining me for this, uh, sermon.

I have two things I wanna say by way of introduction.

Just, uh, briefly.

number one, just thanks to all the prayers, uh, all the

generosity, all the thoughts and just your guys' tangible love.

Um, this has been a very difficult time physically, and I just

can't say enough and how much I love and they, our community.

number two, this is a sermon that I have been, Working on for years.

So I'm not sure how it's gonna be, it might be too overblown.

I've spent a lot of time writing on it, and it's gonna be less of

a free flow off my head in kind of just what I've written down.

And so I don't expect this every time.

Uh, this has taken an incredibly amount of time, uh, to, uh, put together.

But, uh, I just, uh.

I hope it blesses you.

So I'm gonna read our passage for us and, uh, our passage

is, uh, Matthew chapter five.

The Sermon on the Mount, really focusing on the beatitudes will only

be, looking at the first three verses really, but I'm gonna read to verse 12,

seeing the crowds.

He went up on the mountain and when he sat down, his disciples came to him

and he opened his mouth and taught them saying, blessed are the poor in spirit

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.

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.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil

against you and 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 the word of the Lord.

We went to Israel in 2005 or oh six.

We got to visit the Sea of Galilee and the hillside specifically where the

Sermon on the Mount was preached, at least where they think it was preached.

And there's some pretty good thought that it was there.

Kind of an area in dry land, but the wind sweeps up on the surface

of the water and the cool breeze wraps around you like a hug.

But what's interesting is there's these eight stones set up in the area

and each one has a beatitude on it.

And it gets you thinking.

And it used to be how I thought, but are these.

Beatitudes, eight separate things.

Are these just kingdom ethics we aspire to?

which line do you get into?

I mean, I've told you my story where my therapist said, just focus on

blessed are the poor in spirit and how helpful and comforting that was.

So I get in that line, but then I started thinking for how long?

When can I move to another one who gets in line for blessed or the pure in heart?

Do you pick your blessing and promise?

I want to inherit the earth.

I want to see God.

Some might say, well, we don't need this teaching, this autopsy

of kingdom ethics, but the writers of the epistles take up this very

sermon and wrestle with it, expound upon it, live on it, and out of it.

In fact, it informs vast amounts of the rest of the New Testament,

let alone the early church.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many hailed the sermon.

The sermon on the mound is splinted in an ethical blueprint,

something anyone could endorse.

I mean, doctrine aside, but when people first encounter it without a lifetime

of Christian cultural haze, they recoil.

In fact, Virginia Stem Owens, a literature professor, had her unchurched students

read the sermon and write essays about it.

Their verdicts.

Its demands are absurd in human and impossible One complained.

It made me feel like I had to be perfect and no one is another

called it the most extreme stupid statements I have ever heard.

Virginia Owens concluded that finally, biblical literacy has come to the point

where people in America are able to respond to Jesus Christ without filtering

him through 2000 years of cultural haze.

In other words.

Honest, ignorant ears can finally hear the Sermon on the Mount as it really is.

And they hated it.

They were terrified of it, and they were disgusted by it.

Dr.

Martin Lloyd Jones, who's informed a lot of this, who preached through the Sermon

on the Mount, he lived through a time in which everybody was saying, oh, you don't

have to be a Christian to believe in.

All the doctrine, all you have to do is love and admire and live

according to the Sermon on the Mount.

He says, anybody who says that has never read it, because if you look

at what the Sermon on the Mount actually says and you grasp it, you

will say like these students, which is the title of the sermon, God saved

me from the Sermon on the Mount.

They said, get it away from me.

Take it away.

It exposes me.

It reveals me, it condemns me.

And until you actually feel the terror of the Sermon on the mount, you

haven't really seen what it's saying.

So the title of this is Who Will Save Me from the Sermon on the Mount.

I wanna look at tonight, Newman.

Awe be happy, poor Things, and the preacher of the sermon.

Numan as awe Ru Rudolph auto coined the term.

And then here, here's what it means.

A profound trembling and deeply emotional experience of a holier supernatural

characterized by a feeling of being in the presence of a mysterious, awe

inspiring power that is completely other.

It blends terrifying dread.

With captivating, fascination, unimagined, beauty and mask stripping, light, tender

gentleness, and hurricane rebuking strength, the one who let the children

tackle and wrestle 'em to the ground, and the one who patiently fashioned the

whip to drive out religious robbers.

Remember talking to a college student after a sermon, actually

an Easter service, and he kept telling me that he liked Jesus.

He wasn't a believer.

He hadn't put his faith and trust in Christ, but he liked Jesus.

And I kept telling him, did you don't know or understand Jesus?

And he was so confused because I kept.

Telling him, yes, that is what is beautiful about Jesus.

Yes, that is amazing.

But he also demands your full allegiance.

He says that there is no way to the Father, except through him.

He says, you have to deny yourself.

Take up your cross and follow him, and just pushed him on that.

Notice this one, and the setting that he's in.

This one, Jesus.

This incomparable Christ, the setting.

Verse one, seeing the crowds.

He went up on the mountain and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

Just a short walk from where Jesus is to preach.

This sermon is a little cave naturally carved into the side of a rock.

We learn Luke, his account the night before the sermon he spends all night

in prayer in this little hiding place.

Luke 6 12, 13, 12 to 13.

In these days, he went out to a mountain to pray.

And all night he continued in prayer to God and when day came,

he called his disciples and chose from them 12 whom he named apostles.

Just a cool note, we find out in Matthew 28 in the great commission

that the same place that he called him, he commissions them.

Now the 11 Matthew 28, 16 to 20 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain

to which Jesus had directed them.

And when they saw him, they worshiped him.

But some doubted.

And Jesus came and said to them, all authority and heaven

and earth has been given to me.

Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the

name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe

all that I have commanded you.

Behold I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.

We see this in Mark three 14 and he appointed 12 whom he also named apostles.

And this is what it's all about.

Church, so that they might be with him and he might send them

out to preach the good news.

And then we find out in Luke's account Luke six, verse 17 to 19.

and he came down with him and stood on a level place with a great crowd of

his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem and

the Seacoast of Tyra who came to hear him and to be healed to their diseases.

And those who were.

Troubled with unclean spirits were cured and all the crowds sought

to touch him for power came out from him and he healed them all.

There is this attraction, this drawing, this gathering, this

pushing the throng to get to Jesus.

People gathered too and were drawn to him.

This incomparable Christ fascination, wonder, awe, and delight.

But it's been this way since the beginning, since he

wrapped himself in human flesh.

I think the shepherds, there was always the surprise that made

them gas the way the stars over Bethlehem seemed to shiver and pulse.

When the shepherds half drunk with fatigue and the tart aftertaste of

sheep's milk stumbled toward the cave.

Behind the end, the air was raw.

The earth's breath was cold, and the only light was a lantern's flicker.

They entered expecting a birth.

But not a coronation, not the loing of cows as fanfare nor the indelicate,

unhurried, snuffling of a baby as the overture to an entire new creation.

They came with nothing in their hands.

They left with the knowledge that the sky could split open

and pours glory into feed trough.

I think of Mary, she had rehearsed this moment only for only in the

fearful silence behind closed doors.

And the way she watched leaves spiral down, well, water and

the sudden catch of her heart.

When Joseph touched her cheek, she felt the ache of the world's gaze

pressing on her, all those years of stories and laws and staring eyes.

And for a moment as she watched the child, she almost believed

the world's story and not her own.

But then the baby yawned a trembling ridiculous motion that wobbled

his lips and made him look like every other child in the village.

And then he hiccuped and then he slept, and his breath rose and fell

in the rhythm of all living things.

And she knew God had let himself be reduced to the size of her arms.

He had let himself be weighed on the scale at the market.

He had let his hair stick up and his nose run and his mouth root for her breast.

She wrapped him in everything she was, and she laid him in the straw

And the straw ignited a thousand silent revolutions.

I think of old Simeon in the temple, there was old Simeon the day they

brought the child to the temple.

His beard was the color of the desert.

His hands, the color of the dust.

And when he lifted the infant above his head, it looked for all the world like

he was offering a lamb for slaughter.

But Simeon's cry was not the cry of accusation or old wounds.

It was the sound of a man who waited all his life for the taste of mourning.

And at last, he held it.

The dawn naked and squirming in both hands.

The dawn had come, he wept not for what the child would become, but for what this

meant for every foot sore pilgrim who had ever whispered a prayer into the bruised

air of the temple courts, and that moment, he was every parent who ever dreamed

their child might outlive the curse.

Joseph teaching the creator of the world how to hold a hammer.

The look on Andrew's face at the lunch pail that never came up empty.

The dozing wedding guest who drank the wine that had been watered.

Jesus walking through waves as casually as you walk through curtains on the

leper, the leper there was a leper.

His hands withered claw, his face lost behind the mask of scar

tissue, who watched Jesus approach and embrace themselves for the

usual look of horror or revulsion.

But Jesus nel.

Touched his ruined skin and smiled.

The touch was a jolt, a shock of electricity, like the crack of

thunder and the dry summer air.

The leper watched, stunned as his fingers grew back before his eyes, as the

memory of pain was erased from his body.

When Jesus had told him to keep quiet and not to tell anyone,

the man laughed until he sobbed.

How could he not speak?

How could he not run his hands over every surface, every tree, every

living thing, and shout to the sky that he had been unmade and remade.

The memory of that moment was brighter than the sunlight and sharper than any

shame, I think, of the windows sun who had died in the middle of a funeral.

Jesus walks up, there's a widow bent double with grief trailing behind the

funeral procession of her only son.

The crowds parted to let the body pass some weeping.

Others looking away, all of them certain that this was the end of her story, but

Jesus interrupted the dirge with the word.

He touched the coffin and the dead boy sat up coughing as if he had

swallowed a mouthful of river water.

The whales turned shrieks of disbelief and into laughter, and the kind of

singing that makes the air itself tremble.

That night, the widow hosted a feast.

The food meant for a wake now fueling a celebration that spilled into the

streets, a paraplegic doing somersaults.

Jesus healing the blind with spit paying taxes with a coin found in

the fish's mouth and coming back from the dead disguise as a garden.

The God man entering our mess, wearing diapers, riding donkeys, washing feet,

dozing in storms, or think of the day they accused God of having too much fun,

attending too many parties, and spending too much time with the happy hour crowd.

The story is that revealed his heart toward us.

The days wage paid to the workers who would've worked only one hour.

The father scrubbing the pig smell off his son's back, the shepherd throwing

a party because the sheep was found a discovered pearl, A multiplied

talent, a heaven bound beggar.

Oh, and then thi he fell.

In the cross there was the thief.

His wrist still chafed by the rope of justice, the taste of gold, yet

not faded from his tongue, who found himself blinking at the impossible.

That the kingdom would open for him before the nails cooled in the grave.

I think the highways and the byways and all who were invited to the wedding feast,

everywhere you looked, it was the same.

The shock of street rabble when the Royer crier pointed their way, the rattle

of their lungs as they coughed out.

Laughter, the crash of unfinished chores and s.

Spilled grain as they followed blinking toward the palace.

The king's table was absurd with them.

Gamblers and fish, mongers, monger, mothers with tears

still wet on their cheeks.

Hard eyed women with faces set for battle.

Children so sticky and wild, they could only be bribed by the promise of dessert.

These were the guests, the afterthoughts, the ones who scrubbed

the floors and trampled the lawns.

And now found themselves blinking at gold plates and warm bread choking

up joy before the first toast could be called the woman at the well.

There was the woman from Samaria.

Her jug trembling her grip as she realized a stranger at the well saw right through

her every secret and did not flinch.

She had practiced her comeback for years, kept her eyes lowered, but now they were

huge and glassy, or a mouse mouth parting as if learning speech for the first time

the woman caught in the act of adultery.

There she is caught in the act, heart pounding as she waited for the first

stones cold kiss, but it would not come.

What came instead was the hush, the air sagging with grace and the quiet

voice that told her to go free.

She left the temple steps barefoot.

The sound of her transformed heart louder than the rumors that would

chase her for the rest of her life.

Ha Peter always, Peter never more himself than in disgrace.

The night firelight flickering across his denials.

The sun barely risen.

When he saw the figure on the shore, the breakfast fire, the glimpse of

forgiveness, even before the words were spoken, he jumped into the

water, gasping with each stroke, and shivering in the dawn desperately.

Looking to only be close enough to say he was sorry, or perhaps just to look

once more into the eyes he knew best.

These were the stories that shook the city, that rippled out in whispers

and laughter and faint hope among the villages among ones who needed it most.

The stories had a occur in a pulse and unspoken code.

That the kingdom was a party for the uninvited, that the only

price of admission was thirst that the host enjoyed most.

The surprise of the guests when they realized they belong, the

ones least likely most broken.

The ones who made themselves repulsive are invisible.

Or a by word among the righteous.

They were the ones who found themselves front row at the feast.

The sober could not stomach this, but the drunk on longing.

The starved for kindness.

The dope sit for hope.

They sopped it up like gravy, let it drip down.

Their chins laughed and how, and sometimes wept right into their king's chest.

And it never stopped.

There was the father scrubbing filth from his boy's neck and calling for

fresh clothes, not for an inquisition.

There was the shepherd who hoisted the found sheep on his shoulders

and threw a rager for his neighbors spending more than the sheep was worth.

Just to prove a point about joy.

There were pearls and pennies and fields and lost coins, and last

minute labors and lepers made hole and children climbing onto laps.

All of it always was an upside down off kilter.

A kingdom whose laws made no sense except the ones who

would run out of other options.

It was the same truth.

Told a thousand ways.

The first last, the losers winning the dead.

Rising.

The unclean called beautiful.

The outcast crowned is kin.

In every case, the ones who saw it most clearly were the street folks,

the drunks, the attics, the exhausted, the ones with dirt under their nails,

and no story to tell except how the miracle had happened to them.

That was a story all along, but no one expected how it would play out that the

Christ would arrive, not wielding a sword, but offering his own wrist to the shackle.

Not demanding tribute, but washing filthy feet.

Not roaring from the mountaintop, but wailing for a city that would

not listen, that he would be broken like bread and poured out like wine.

A feast for the tired, a drink for the dying that he would be.

That he would make himself the guest of the worst house on the block,

and in doing so, become the host of the best table in the world.

So people flock to him and he heals them and meets their needs.

And so this attraction, and you see as he healing them, he's also giving them

the credentials that he's the Messiah.

Isaiah 35, 5, and six.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be open and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

Then the lame man shall leap like a deer, and the tongues of the mute sing

for joy for waters break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

Isaiah 42 7, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners

from the dungeon, from the prisoners of those who sit in darkness.

Not only is this preacher irresistibly fascinating, but so

too is what he says in the sermon.

He talks about salt and light, which is an identity thing, that we are

salt and light, that preserving effect that we rub into what is decaying

love for individuals sexual integrity.

Our speech integrity, our response to hostility, generosity to the

poor, our private prayer life attitude to our wealth, freedom

from worry, judging others.

This, this beautiful kingdom of, this citizens of heaven.

but when you read the Sermon on the Mount.

This is exactly how you want the people who live around you to be.

You suddenly realize that all your life you've been demanding the

people around you to live like this.

So deep down.

You know, this is how you should be living too.

At the same time, the Sermon on the Mount is so clear.

It is so detailed, and it also spells things out by looking at the motives

as well, not just the outward actions.

And it's so revealing there that nobody can escape.

The terrifying, holy standard of the living God is ratcheted up.

You can't even come close to what you've been demanding of other

people, and it condemns you and exposes you and disgusts you.

Matthew five 20.

Before I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the

scribe and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of God.

You're like, okay, I could do this.

Scribes and Pharisees exceed their righteousness.

Okay, I got this.

But then he goes to, if you hate, that's murder.

If you look at a woman with lust, that's adultery, he talks about judgment.

He's getting down into the very motives of why we do what we do.

In Matthew 5 39, he says, what I say to you, do not resist the one who

is evil, but if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn him the other.

Also what?

That would be difficult.

That may be hard.

Matthew five 40.

If anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.

Guys, my tools have been robbed multiple times and I've

never thought good for them.

I'm like my livelihood.

I've earned that.

It's mine, my precious Matthew 5 41.

If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.

There was this guy I remember, who had coming to the church and we loved

helping him, but he kept coming for help.

And in my lesser, pastoral moments after months, I pulled him aside and

I said, man, you're such a taker.

And he just was stunned.

And, you know, if you're a part of community, there's, there's that stuff.

But man.

It was my heart.

My heart was so wrong.

I just was like begrudging every time.

Like, why are we and Matthew 5 41, if anyone forces you don't wanna go.

Go with them too.

Like, man, how exposing is that, Matthew 5 48.

Here it is.

You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father.

Is perfect.

And that's in the first part of the sermon, guys.

Guys, you don't impress the officials at NASA with a paper airplane.

You don't boast about your crayons, sketches and the presence of Picasso.

You don't claim equality with Einstein because you can write H2O and you

don't boast about your goodness in the presence of the perfect.

And in many cases, I mean, if you really read it and you read it,

and this is how I used to read it.

People say, this is ridiculous, this is unfair.

This is just silly.

This is who in the world can live like this.

Just get it outta here.

One of the great mistakes we make when we get into the main part of the Sermon on

the Mount is treating it like a spiritual self-help manual or a divine checklist.

These teachings turn the other cheek, love your enemies.

Give to those who.

Ask can seem as ethical prescriptions carved into the

Mountain Satellite commandments.

They describe patterns of living so impossibly high that they

seem to scrape heaven itself.

Again.

Dr.

Martin Lloyd Jones helps us here.

He warns that we become so mesmerized by these lofty standards that we

forget the sermons fundamental message.

What's the fundamental message?

Before we can scale these holy heights, our very souls must be transformed.

Before we can live like citizens of heaven, we must become citizens of

heaven and receive heaven's power.

Before these impossible man demands become as natural as breathing

or as natural as a tree bearing.

Fruit, something supernatural must happen within us.

And that divine transformation is precisely what Jesus

describes in the Beatitudes.

The beatitudes, yes.

I didn't see it until recently, but man, Jesus opens with the gospel in the

sermon and he closes with the gospel.

So verse two, and he opened his mouth and taught them saying, and so

moving into the next point, be happy.

First, I never understood that Jesus begins with the gospel and

ends the sermon with the gospel.

I was listening to Tim Mackey, the guy who's part of the Bible project and just

kind of in the background while I was doing something and he was talking about

the Sermon on the Mountain and I, I.

Been studying the Beatitudes for a while, and so I just kind of had

'em on, and I'm sure I've heard of multiple times, but it just all of

a sudden clicked and came together.

The Bat Beatitudes are not things that are separate from one another, Okay.

Do this one for a while.

Okay?

But there are golden links in the chain of salvation.

Think about it.

Poor in spirit.

Nothing in my hands.

I bring only to your cross eye cling.

The only need is need spiritually bring up.

That's how we all start.

Those who mourn, not grieving because you've been busted, but

because you realize you are busted.

The tax collector who beat his chest and cried God be merciful to me the sinner,

this man went away justified the meek.

That word meek, it means strength under control.

The picture we get is of a bit bridled horse.

What does that mean?

It means those who have given the reins of their life.

Over to another hunger and thirst for righteousness and

new standing and new desires.

Guys, man, I've had surgery before and getting outta the hospital even

this last time in the hospital, even though you're hydrated and their gut,

you in an iv, your mouth gets so dry and they can't give you water, and

all you can think about is water.

It's like this deep drive.

And that is what he's doing, a longing for him and a realization

that he alone satisfies a new standing and new desires merciful.

Uh, blessed or the merciful who show mercy, right?

Uh, Ephesians two, one, I gotta read this to you.

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, which you once walked following

the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the

spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once

lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and

the mind, and we're by nature, children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved

us guys, we are now starting to move out into the world because those of

us who have received mercy, we begin to show mercy the pure in heart.

It's an identity statement that all mission flows out of.

We don't do things to get a pure heart, but because of the great exchange,

we're clothed with the purity that Christ won for us at the cross.

And every fruitful thing flows from that abiding identity.

We read in Ezekiel 36 that he rips out the heart of stone and he gives the

heart of flesh two Corinthians five 17.

Therefore, if anyone is in crisis, a new creation, the old has passed away.

Behold, the new is come the peacemakers all.

Uh, let me keep reading in second Corinthians five of 18 to 20.

All this is from God who through Christ, reconciled us to himself

and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that is in Christ.

God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses

against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.

God making his appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be

reconciled to God, the persecuted there will be resistance to the mis, this

message and the citizens of heaven, but in the upside down kingdom and often

flourishes when the heat is the hottest.

John 1224.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the

earth and dies, it remains alone.

But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

blessed, be happy.

Matthew five, three.

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

Blessed.

I always heard in the tribe I grew up in that this could be translated.

Oh, how happy, maybe.

But I always felt pressure in these circumstances to be happy.

Blessed from the Greek Rios describes a state of supreme wellbeing and

spiritual satisfaction that comes from.

Being under God's favor, it's Hebrew equivalent.

ASRA conveys the idea of living a flourishing life that

is aligned with God's ways.

The Greek is meant to communicate something celebratory and affirming.

In fact, the Living translation, I love this.

It translates it.

Humble men are very fortunate.

He told them, for the kingdom of Heaven is given to them.

One of the best, simple and helpful translations that I've heard that

gets the idea across is fortunate, are you or, congratulations.

Congratulations.

Why point this out?

Because it's not quid pro quo.

Okay?

I'll be poor in spirit and then God will bless me.

But when you realize you are spiritually bankrupt and have nothing but need,

which is a work of God himself to reveal to you, congratulations, you

are on the path to full flourishing.

You're moving from death to life.

To be honest, from my earliest memories, even before I could parse the

difference between the hollow phrases scattered across the Sunday school

felt board and the raw unpronounceable ache I carried inside me, the word

blessed was always accompanied by a kind of forced plastic grand.

Oh, how happy.

As if every time Jesus said blessed, he was sticking a smiley face sticker on the

forehead of some hollowed eye disciple.

We used it as a shield against discomfort, a bullet point against doubt.

Blessed are the poor spirit the preacher would read pounding the

pulpit with his wedding ring.

For theirs is the kingdom of having the subtext.

You better act happy about it even if you wake up every morning feeling

like the only thing you've got in your spiritual cupboard is dust and debt and

the crumpled receipts of past mistakes.

Smile.

Anyway, you're blessed.

I'd sit in a pew hands folded pretending to drink from a bottomless cup of

gratitude while on side I was running a black market trade in shame and guilt.

The pressure to be happy was attacks levied on every honest

admission of pain or confusion.

I learned quickly that the only acceptable motions were the ones you could

laminate with the scriptural proof text.

It wasn't until much later after I'd wandered a few wildernesses and found

myself gnawing on the bones of my faith in a city far from home that

I started to ask if this is what.

Jesus really meant Blessed Rios is always tossed around like confetti and Christian

circles, but for all its tinsel and shine.

It had never stuck to me.

Not until I heard someone explain that me, curios wasn't about circumstantial.

Happiness wasn't about being the poster child for Jesus's self-improvement

plan, but instead describing a kind of deep, moral level wellbeing that came

from being known and favored even while everything else was falling apart.

And when Jesus sits on the hillside and says, blessed are the poor in spirit,

he's not wagging a finger, not giving us a checklist, but throwing a party for

all the losers and spiritual deadbeats.

He's saying, this is it.

You made it.

The jokes on everyone who thought the system was rigged against you.

The gate of the kingdom is so low, only the humble can crawl through.

When you realize you've got nothing, you're on the guest list.

All your hunger, all your lack, all the places you thought were disqualifiers,

they're actually invitations.

I'd always heard the Beatitudes is a list of impossible entry requirements.

Another set of spiritual metrics designed to remind me how much I was failing.

I never heard them as congratulations.

Never as the voice of Jesus, warm and delighted saying, you're

exactly where you need to be.

Picture it guys.

A crowd of spiritual rejects.

This is who's listening.

Blue collar laborers and religious dropouts gathering on

a hillside, not expecting much.

They're there because they have nowhere else to go.

They're drawn, they're fascinated.

They're the ones who have been told in a thousand different

ways that they're not enough.

Not wholly enough, not smart enough, not worried enough.

Jesus looks.

Out at them and instead of confirming what the world says, he flips the script.

He gives them a standing ovation.

Congratulations.

He says, the kingdom of heaven is only for you, but it's already yours.

Think about my own faith.

So often a patchwork of long and in contradiction there are ca I'm a mess.

There are days, many days when I feel like the only thing I bring

to God is a handful of failures and a nine hunger for something more.

If I listen to the voice that says, blessed means happy,

so get your act together.

I will always fail, but if I hear congratulations, the wild delight of Jesus

breaking the news that the kingdom is for the empty handed, I can finally exhale.

I can be honest.

I can let myself be filled.

Blessed are the ones who know they need help.

Blessed are the ones who can't stop mourning the gap between

what is and what should be.

Blessed are the ones who wake up every day with an ache for something better.

This is not a how-to manual for sainthood, but a love letter to

the spiritually bankrupt a trophy ceremony for the last place finishers.

If you hear nothing else, hear this.

You don't have to make yourself worthy to be congratulated.

You can't.

The very fact that you know your need is evidence that God is on

the move in your life, James four six says, but he gives more grace.

Therefore it says God opposes the proud.

But gives grace to the humble congratulations.

You're on the path to full flourishing.

You're moving from death to life.

Okay?

Poor things, poor in spirit.

I wanna give you two examples, A rich young ruler and Peter, uh, rich

young ruler we see in Matthew 19.

I'm just gonna kind of, remind us A wealthy ruler awkwardly

approaches the carpenter's son

teacher.

He asks, what good thing must I do to inherit internal life treating

salvation like a transaction?

What must I do?

He wants the bottom line.

Jesus replies, if you want life, obey the commandments confidently.

The man demands lifts.

Tell him, do not murder, Do not commit adultery.

Do not steal.

Do not bear false witness.

Honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself.

He's certain he's passed the quiz.

Then Jesus shocks him.

If you want to be perfect, so all you have give to the poor and follow me.

those words leave the young man shaken and despairing, and he walks away

and the disciples are speechless.

Their unspoken questioning could be ours.

Then who can be saved?

Jesus rep reply slams into them with people.

This is impossible, not unlikely, not difficult, impossible.

No wiggle room, no loopholes, no hope on human strength alone.

It's like swimming across the ocean without a boat.

We're used to earning everything by performance grades for study,

pay for work, praise for success.

So why should an eternal life be another transaction?

But Jesus says, no, you can't pay the price.

You need grace.

Not credentials.

A savior, not a system, a redeemer, not a resume.

It wasn't the young man's wealth that blocked him, but his self-sufficiency,

his pride, how hard Jesus says is it for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.

It's no easier for the educated, the powerful, the religious,

or anyone who trusts in their own self-sufficiency and worth.

Rather than in God's mercy, he walks away sad.

Simon Peter,

the last thing he wanted to do was fish.

But that was exactly what Jesus wanted to do.

Peter had fished all night.

His arms ached, his eyes burned, his neck was sore.

All he wanted to do was go back home and let his wife

rub the knots out of his back.

It had been a long night.

Peter didn't know how many times they'd thrown that net into the blackness

and heard it slap against the sea.

Peter didn't know how many times they had held the twine rope as the

net sank into the water all night.

They had waited for that bump, that tug, that jerk that would

clue them to haul in the catch, but it had never come at daybreak.

Peter was ready to go home.

Just as Peter was about to leave the beach.

He noticed a crowd coming toward him.

They were following a lanky fellow who walked with a broad swing and a wide gate.

He saw Peter.

And called his name.

Morning, Jesus.

Peter called back though he was a hundred yards away.

He could see his white smile.

Quite a crowd, eh?

He yelled, motioning.

At the mass behind him.

Peter nodded and sat down to watch.

He stopped near the edge of the water and began to speak.

Though Peter couldn't hear much, he could see a lot.

He could see more and more people coming with all the pressing and shoving.

It's a wonder Jesus didn't get pushed down into the water.

Peter didn't have to think twice.

He helped Jesus climb into his boat.

When Jesus finished teaching, Jesus said, push out into the

deep and let down your nets.

After all they had caught or rather hadn't caught.

Peter Groaned Still, there was something in Jesus' calm voice.

So with a grunt and silent prayer, John and Peter rode out.

Peter muttered doubts with every stroke they anchored.

And Peter Hef did the heavy net and caught Jesus looking at him,

beaming like a boy, offering a gift.

Peter flung the net, expecting the usual empty weight.

Instead, it yanked tight, nearly pulling him overboard.

John and Jesus lunged to help him haul on net.

After net, the boat strained under the weight of the fish until it began to sink.

At the end, it was quite a scene, four fishermen and two boats, knee deepened

fish, and one carpenter seated on our bow, relishing the pandemonium.

That's when it happened.

The realization struck with such force that it nearly sent

Peter reeling into the fish.

It wasn't just the impossible load that jarred him.

Peter looked at, Jesus, really looked as if for the first time he seemed

impossibly old and impossibly young, a contradiction in every line of his face.

The sunlight, I mean, made a halo of the spray behind his head,

and Peter felt equal measures of terror and longing, numan as all.

That's when Peter realized who Jesus was, and that's when

Peter realized who Peter was.

Peter was the one who told God what he couldn't do.

The words came out of him like a drowning man's cough AGAs from

the deep well of his own poverty.

Go away from me, Lord, I am a sinful man.

There wasn't anything else he could say.

He felt suddenly naked, as if every secret skepticism, every hollow

boast, every piety that was only paint on rotten wood had been stripped

away by that net full of fish.

His knees buckled.

He knelt in the trembling massive miracles, unable to formulate a single

prayer that did a taste of ash and salt and old unredeemable shame.

Peter didn't know what Jesus saw on him, but Jesus didn't leave.

Maybe he liked the way Peter blurted out his feelings, his inability

to get it right, his reluctance to feign surprise and his own smallness.

Maybe he just liked being around people who weren't finished stories yet.

Whatever.

Whatever the reason he stayed, he reached out those battered craftsman hands.

Hands that had splintered timber or cradle a drop sparrow, and pulled Peter upright.

His eyes held Peter's not with judgment or colluding, but with a kind of delighted

recognition as if he'd been waiting for Peter to finally admit the obvious

that he was in over his head, and that was exactly where Jesus wanted him.

I use those two examples on purpose because there's kind of thread between it.

Do you notice it?

It's their names.

Their names Simon Peter.

A rich, young ruler.

Think about it, the rich young ruler who cared about making a name for

himself, we never know his name.

But Simon, he gets a new name, Peter, and you see this thread through

scripture, Abraham to Abraham, Sarah to Sarah Saul, to Paul.

Lazarus in the rich man, and people ask in that story, why does Lazarus have a name?

And the rich man doesn't have a name because that's his name.

That's what he pursued and that's what he's known for.

His name is Rich Man.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

That is blessed congratulated favored are those who stand before God

with their hands turned inside out.

Hearts emptied of self regard.

Voices cracked in hoarse from the long, humiliating confession of their own

inadequacy, the jewel of joy, so precious and rare, and a world of striving is

not handed over to the self-sufficient.

It's not given as a medal for the spiritually athletic.

Those who have sprinted up the slippery steps of self-improvement and can see

their own reflection in every shine of virtue, know the jewel is set deep in the

crown of those who have failed to know it.

the ones whose best efforts have collapsed, whose promises frayed,

whose private ambitions now wrought unburied in the field of their past.

Take the words as a stethoscope to your soul.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

It is a benediction that feels at first like a curse until you realize

it's the only honest diagnosis.

The way of the kingdom is not a conquest, but a surrender.

Not an acquisition, but an abrogation.

The first step toward joy is not an achievement, but an abandonment,

a relinquishment of the fiction that you could ever have made

yourself whole or even wish to.

It is the plea for help a palm up surrender, a collapse into the

arms of a God who never ask you to bring anything but your need.

It is a confrontation with your own bankruptcy, a recognition that you're

always closer to empty than full, always on the verge of insolvency when

it comes to goodness or faith or hope.

These are not the self-possessed, the negotiators of the spiritual

market, but the beggars in the street outside the banquet, wearing rags

and dreaming of crumbs, they have stopped pretending their hunger is

temporary or their thirst self supplied.

They have stopped demanding justice.

Justin was who burned them to the ground.

They're shouting with the last ragged breath in their lungs.

For mercy,

the Pharisee polished and prayerful recites the catalog of his virtues.

The tax collector wretched and despised can only beat his breast and mutter God

have mercy on me as sinner or the sinner.

The kingdom throws open its doors to the tax collector while the Pharisee is left

outside, still rehearsing his resume.

The great reversal is not just that the late comers are welcome, but

that the finish line is only visible to those who know how far they've

fallen short to be poor in spirit.

Is not to be morose or self-flagellating or mired in shame.

It is to be lucid to see with terrifying clarity, the gap between

what is and what ought to be the abyss between the infinite holiness

of God and the shabbiness of the self.

Those who taste.

God's presence have declared spiritual bankruptcy, have signed

the papers, and the presence of witnesses have agreed to the terms.

Nothing in my hands I bring.

They know the cupboards are bare, the pockets have holes in them.

The options are gone.

Their last and only hope is the kindness of a stranger, or

in this case, the kindness of the one who calls them my name.

And so these blessed ones, these poppers of the soul do not brag.

They beg, they do not compare their neediness to one another,

as if some hierarchy of desperation might impress God.

Do you hear me?

They do not bargain because they know they have nothing to offer.

They plead openly and often for God to do for them what they can

never do on their own behalf.

They're a leper shouting from outside the city.

The prodigals rehearsing their apology in the pigsty.

They are those who have, by grace given up on self rescues and in so

doing have stumbled upon rescue itself.

This is the irony of the gospel, the scandal and the stumbling block.

The door swings open not for those who have climbed the mountain.

For those who have collapsed at its base, to see God is to be unmade and remade.

It is to have every mass torn away.

Every secret exposed it is to stand naked, not only before judgment, but

before the mercy, because the one who judges is the same one who justifies.

And in that moment, all the defenses collapse.

All the pretense is laughable, and the only appropriate response is

all shot through with gratitude.

The poverty of spirit is not only a destination but a doorway.

It's the entrance to the feast.

It's the key in the lock.

The password whispered through the bars of prison cell, but here is

the second irony, the deeper one.

The moment you confess your impoverishment is the moment

you are enriched beyond measure.

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

The fullness is reserved for the empty.

The kingdom is inherited by those who come with nothing but their need.

The currency of grace is not merit, but mercy, the economy of heaven

mocks every ledger of achievement.

The last become first, not as a consolation prize.

But is it the essential condition of the gospel?

So let's not merely not at these words or file them under the heading.

Well, that's, that's counterintuitive wisdom.

Okay.

That's good to know.

Let's be scandalized by them.

Let them offend our sense of order in the order of this world, this broken

world, our addiction to competence, our craving for applause, let them

detonate the myth of self-rescue and leave us reeling in the aftermath, dazed

by the sheer impossibility of it all.

If salvation is impossible for us, then let us be honest.

It's impossible.

Only God could bridge the gap.

Only God could bear the cost.

Only God could enter the grave and walk back out.

But that leads us away from ourselves and to the true hero of this sermon who will

save me from the sermon on the mount guys.

Well, the preacher himself will notice with me the beatitudes, the preacher

of the sermon, and I close before the Beatitudes describe you and me.

And they do.

They will.

That's the, the life changed by Jesus.

They describe him.

He's who I want you to see.

Why can you and I be as rich as kings?

Because Jesus Christ became poor, spiritually, and utterly poor.

Why can you and I be comforted?

Only because he mourned, because he wept, inconsolably and died in the dark.

Why are you and I as Christians inheriting the earth?

Because he became meek, because he was the lamb before it.

Shears.

why are you and I inheriting the earth?

Because he was stripped of everything.

They cast lots for his garments.

Why can you and I be filled?

You and I can only be filled?

Because on the cross he said, I thirst.

Why are you and I obtaining mercy?

Because he gotten a, not from Pilate, not from the crowd.

He suffered the judicial wrath, even from his father.

Why will you and I be able to see God?

Because he was pure.

On our behalf.

Do you know what the word pure means?

It means to be single-minded, absolutely undivided, laser focused.

why can you and I see God?

Because on the cross, Jesus said, where are you?

Why do we have peace?

Because the whole world turned and wared against Jesus and attacked him.

Now, do you see how all this fits together?

Everybody?

When you see Jesus Christ being poor in spirit for you, that helps

you be in poor in spirit before God and you say, I need your grace.

I am weak.

I need you to be strong.

And he is that once you get it, you're filled.

Then you're poor in spirit toward everybody.

That's it.

You walk out into the world with the humility you didn't have before you even

see the poor and you don't look down on them because you're saying, well.

I was poor spiritually.

Physically I might not be or maybe I am, but physically you may be poor.

We're both brothers and sisters and needed help.

You need help.

It changes everything.

guys remember the gospel is not just the A, B, C, it's the A to Z.

I think of Galatians in chapter three.

Paul writes, who's bewitched?

You, you foolish Galatians, you who begun in the spirit?

Are you gonna perfect yourselves in the flesh?

it's easy even as Christians to leave this behind,

but the way that we begin is the way that we continue I remind us, James

four six, but he gives more grace.

Therefore it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Until you see, Jesus is the hero of heroes.

Until you are transformed, until you come to Christ and you will not be able

to live like the Sermon on the Mount, if you don't understand the gospel,

but you're not looking at the Sermon on the Mount through 2000 years of

cultural haze, you're gonna say, God saved me from the Sermon on the Mount.

If you understand the gospel, you're going to say, God saved me through

a true understanding of the one.

The Sermon on the Mount shows me the hero of heroes, the blessed and favored

one, Jesus Christ, who became poor, who mourned, who became meek, who became

empty, so that you and I could be filled.

God bless you.