The Model Citizen

One final thing before we jump into the message.

There is a very, very special person with us in the room right now.

He's been part of our family for quite a while, but his name is Aiden Holsey.

Aiden's right here in the front row.

Everyone make some noise for Aiden real quick.

Aiden's part of our youth group.

15?

Is that right, Aiden?

15?

And Aiden was in a bicycle accident back in June and severely damaged his spinal cord.

And so he's been in recovery, been working with doctors ever since.

This kid works insanely hard.

And we're praying for a miracle, Aiden.

We want you to know that.

We want you to know that we believe that no matter what, no matter what our world says is final, only God has the final word.

But to you and your whole family, we're so for you guys.

We're so excited to come alongside and help out.

Aiden comes home this Tuesday, which is uh which is really exciting, guys.

He's he's been in the hospital ever since that, early in June.

And a lot of you have helped out working on their home.

Uh Glenn helping out, make redoing their driveway to prepare for Aiden coming back, people doing renovation work to make it accessible for you, Aiden.

But uh, I just want you to know we have all been praying for you.

You are incredible, and we are we are so honored that you're part of our family, dude.

So I'm proud of you very, very much.

Thank you for being with us.

Aiden, this is the first time back since that happened today.

And so we got to give you some love, man.

Love you a lot.

I want to ask a question just to get us going in what we're talking about today.

A really simple question.

Raise your hand or just make some noise if you've ever been part of an orientation of some kind.

If you've ever been involved.

Yeah, there you go.

All right.

Um I don't know what orientations you've been a part of in your life.

Like I can remember, I can remember my college orientation.

It was about 20 years ago when I was a freshman in college, but I can still remember vividly the freshman orientation experience at my college.

My daughter just started kindergarten, and so I got to go to kindergarten orientation again.

It's my third time.

Really exciting.

Did it once myself, once with my son, once with my daughter.

So when all said and done, I'll end up doing five kindergarten orientations.

It's really, it's really something I'm proud of.

Um, a lot of us have probably had jobs that had orientations.

How many of you had a job that should have had an orientation, but did not?

Anyone?

But in that situation, they just thrust you in and like, good luck.

That's actually how I became the pastor.

So, like, that happens.

That happens sometimes.

Um I've had some friends that have had have had orientations that were very intense because of the nature of what they did.

I've got some friends that are firefighters, police officers.

And you know, if you go through an orientation process as a police officer, that's a little different.

Generally, you get like tased and pepper sprayed as part of that orientation, so you get to experience that.

That's a thing.

Orientations are really, really important because sometimes we need to get oriented to what we're supposed to do.

And today we're gonna start looking at an orientation class of sorts that Jesus himself taught.

For some context, we're in a series right now called A King and His Kingdom.

We're studying the teachings of Jesus, plain and simple.

We're gonna be in this for a while.

I don't know how long.

It'll be a while.

Because we're talking about Jesus.

We just we want to learn from him.

How many of you, how many of you are big fans of Jesus?

Anyone like a huge fan of Jesus Christ?

Awesome.

You should be.

He's amazing.

He really is amazing.

I love the things that Jesus did.

I love the things he did, like Matthew chapter 14, verse 14.

Matthew 14:14

Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat and he had compassion on them and he healed their sick.

The context of this story is that Jesus has just lost a dear friend.

His cousin, John the Baptist, was beheaded, and he needed to go pray and process and mourn and grieve.

And so he went on a boat to be alone.

And he didn't get to be alone.

Because as soon as he got off the boat, there's thousands of people, and they're not there to offer their sympathies or condolences.

No one's there to say, Jesus, how can we help you?

Jesus, how can we pray for you?

We know you're hurting.

No, no one's there for that.

They're all like, Jesus, I need this, I need that.

And Jesus would have been completely justified in that moment to say, guys, not today.

I need some time.

He didn't do that.

He had compassion.

And he put his needs aside and he served people and he loved people and he laid his hands on people and he prayed for them and he healed them and he taught them.

That's Jesus.

I love stories like John chapter 2, verses 14 through 16.

John 2:14–16

It says, in the temple area, he saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices.

He also saw dealers at tables exchanging foreign money.

What's going on here is that people would come to the temple and they would come to offer a sacrifice.

Animal sacrifices was how they worshipped at this time.

Anyone glad that we've moved to songs?

Anyone at all?

No one?

Okay?

Um makes the church smell a lot better, I promise you.

So, like, that's what they did back then.

And what would happen is the priest had to inspect your animal sacrifice to determine whether or not it was spotless enough.

And spoiler alert, it never really was.

So the good news was they happened to be selling pre-inspected animals on site for about five times the going rate of that animal.

And so they would reject your sacrifice, make you buy one of theirs.

It's basically extortion.

The money changers thing, you had to make offerings at the temple in the official temple currency.

And so you had to exchange your money for their money, and the exchange rates did not favor anyone but the temple.

It's thievery.

And Jesus sees this happening, sees greed standing in the way of people experiencing the presence and the love of God, and he will not stand for it.

So verse 15 says, Jesus made a whip from some ropes and he chased them all out of the temple.

He drove out the sheep and the cattle, scattered the money changers' coins over the floor, turned over their tables, and then going over to the people who sold the doves, he told them, Get these things out of here.

Jesus does not like doves.

Stop turning my father's house into a marketplace.

I love that.

I am not ashamed of the intensity of Jesus.

I have times in life where I feel like doing things like that, you know?

Usually when I'm driving on the road, like things that I want to say and horns that I want to honk, but oftentimes I don't do it because I know that my anger is not righteous many times.

The things that bother me are only things that bother me because I'm concerned with my convenience.

Jesus, no, no, no, no.

His anger is righteous.

When he comes a little unhinged from our perspective, it's it's not.

It's not being unhinged at all.

It's it's perfect control.

It's the right thing.

Jesus is intense.

I love the things he does.

I love Mark chapter 2, where Jesus has dinner with some people that all the religious leaders hated.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

They hated these people.

They actually called them scum.

And they asked Jesus' disciples, why does your teacher eat with such scum?

And I love what Jesus says.

He goes, I didn't come to help people who think they're righteous, and that's kind of a dig, right?

It's heavily implied.

I came to help people who know they need help.

And Jesus ate dinner with those people and he treated them with respect.

And these are people who had been completely and totally disregarded by everyone else.

And he said, I am for you.

I'm with you.

I love the things that Jesus did.

But we have to remember as Jesus' followers, and I know not all of us are, some of us are still figuring that out.

And if that's you, we are so glad you are here.

Be here.

Take it in, process, ask God to show you something.

Even if you don't believe if he's real, just be like, hey, if you are real, show me something.

And then I believe he will.

But those of us who are Jesus' followers, we should be excited by the things that Jesus did, but we should also pay very close attention to the things that he said.

And something that's descriptive of the American church right now, it's just true, is that we we tend to be far more familiar and far more interested with the cool things that Jesus did than we are with the challenging things that Jesus said.

And if we're not familiar with what Jesus actually taught, there's gonna be holes in our understanding of who he actually is and what he came to do.

And we're gonna fill those holes with something.

We're gonna fill them with some idea that's dear to us, but maybe isn't dear to God.

That won't work.

We're gonna fill them with ideas that are very dear to our culture.

A lot of people fill those holes with their favorite Disney song.

They just take some things that Jesus said, some things from their favorite Disney songs, blend them together, and it's like that's the gospel, and it's not quite.

I don't know.

If we're really gonna follow Jesus, we gotta know what he said.

He's a teacher.

And we have his teachings.

And so what we're doing in this series is we're just opening up the teachings of Jesus and saying, Jesus teaches something.

Now we're calling it a king in his kingdom because there is a thread that runs through the teachings of Jesus.

We see it in Matthew chapter 4, verse 17.

Matthew 4:17

This is early in his ministry.

It says, From then on, Jesus began to preach.

This is the summation of all of Jesus' teachings.

Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the kingdom of heaven is near.

That's what Jesus was saying.

You see that phrase, kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God.

So many of Jesus' teachings start with the kingdom of heaven is like this, or the kingdom of heaven is like that.

He's always talking about the kingdom.

The kingdom is what it looks like to live under the authority of God.

When you give your life to God, you recognize his reign, his rule, you submit yourself to him, and now you're part of the kingdom because you have a king.

You have to have a king to have a kingdom.

And our king is Jesus.

Now, the thing about his kingdom is that it's very different, very different than anything we see in this world.

Jesus just does not think the way that we think.

He doesn't see the world the way that we see the world.

In fact, his kingdom is often described as the upside down kingdom because take whatever the world values, flip it on its head, and you're probably a lot closer to the way Jesus thinks than you might realize.

It's the upside down kingdom.

And it's hard for us to get oriented to something that's upside down.

Have you ever been upside down for long?

It's confusing.

It's super confusing.

And you have to like reorient to everything gravity, all that, but but thankfully Jesus gave us an orientation class to help us understand what his kingdom is all about.

We often call this the Sermon on the Mount.

That's a word, a phrase rather, that we've given it, not really in Scripture.

Early in his ministry, we find this in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Early in his ministry, Jesus sees that crowds are coming.

It's happening.

People are showing up.

It's exciting.

And rather than go, guys, we've arrived, we've made it, he goes, Oh man, I better take my disciples, my people, more than just the original 12 disciples, a good number of people.

He took them aside, they went up a hillside and he taught them.

He gave them a crash course, an orientation class on the kingdom of heaven.

This is how it works.

Now we're gonna spend some time kind of doing a series within our series as we talk about the kingdom, specifically going through this teaching.

It's affectionately known as the Sermon on the Mount.

It's powerful.

It's powerful.

I want to prepare you guys for a few things.

This is more next week and the week after.

Jesus is gonna, he's gonna mess with some stuff.

He's gonna challenge us.

If you don't want to be challenged, just skip the next two weeks.

If you're like, nope, I'm good, just don't come.

It's not because of what I'm gonna say, it's because of what Jesus is gonna say.

Jesus is like, hey, you think you think you've got God figured out?

Well, how about this?

And you're like, ooh, okay.

Thank you, sir.

May I have another?

Like that's sort of how it feels, you know?

And so we're gonna go through that.

This is powerful stuff.

If you want to see your life transformed and changed, please understand, Jesus is not that interested in improving your life.

He's very interested in transforming your life, making it completely different, unrecognizable from what it could be without him, but like slight improvements and tweaks, that's not really his thing.

He's transformative.

If you want to see life get transformed, then man, pay attention.

I do want to say someone clapped, yes, that is worthy of a single clap.

I agree.

Transformation gets one clap.

Yeah, come on.

I always love it when someone claps and then no one else claps with and it stops so fast.

It's like clap, clap, oh, no one else is clapping.

Okay, I gotta stop.

All right, that's all good.

You clap proudly.

Um, I do want to give a quick shout-out before we we actually start reading the teaching.

That's important.

It's the longest setup ever.

The message is not an hour long, I promise.

Um, there's a pastor named Tim Mackey who I've listened to a lot over the years, and he did a teaching on what we're gonna talk about today that was extremely influential for me.

And so I believe pastors need pastors, and I have people that mentor me.

I also have people I listen to that I've never met, probably never will meet, but their teachings have influenced me and inspired me tremendously.

And if for some weird reason Tim Mackey ever listened to this, I just want to say thank you, Tim, because his teaching on this is very influential.

So there's that.

You guys ready to jump into orientation?

Okay, here we go.

2,000 years ago, I want to set the scene.

2,000 years ago, there's this Jewish rabbi named Jesus.

And he he gives this teaching on this idea of being blessed.

He says, You're blessed if this, you're blessed if that.

People like this, they're blessed by God.

The word for that is beatitudes.

It's a Latin word that means a statement of blessedness.

This is how you can you can tell if someone's blessed by God, if this is what their life looks like.

They're blessed.

So I want to read to you, this is a very famous teaching.

I want to read to you the beatitudes of Jesus.

Here we go.

Blessed are those who rejoice in their children.

Blessed are those who live to see the downfall of their foes.

Blessed is the man who lives with an intelligent wife.

Blessed are those who have not made a slip of the tongue.

Blessed are those who do not have to serve someone inferior to them.

Blessed are those who have gained good sense.

Blessed are those who speak to attentive listeners.

Blessed are those who have gained wisdom.

But no one is more blessed than the person who fears the Lord.

Sound familiar?

Sort of?

Does it sound a little off to anybody?

Just a little bit?

Okay, well, here's why.

These are the beatitudes of a famous Jewish rabbi that lived a little over 2,000 years ago, named Jesus, just not our Jesus.

Not Jesus of Nazareth.

There was a Jesus, Yeshua, in their language, that lived about 150 years before Jesus, who wrote this.

His name was Jesus ben Sirach.

And by the time our Jesus steps onto the scene, Jesus ben Sirach's teachings were very well known.

Everyone would have known this.

Everyone in Jesus' day would have would have known this.

If you would have said the words, blessed are those, people would have just connected the dots and immediately started to think about all the statements of blessing that Jesus ben Sirach had taught.

Now, with that said, let's look at what our Jesus says at the beginning of his orientation class.

This is the Jesus.

Matthew 5, verses 3 through 11.

Matthew 5:3–11

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

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

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

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

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

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

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Everyone who's who's standing there listening to Jesus, as soon as he says those words, blessed are those, they're thinking of Ben Sirach, and if you read the Ben Sirach blessings, it kind of rules most people out pretty quick.

Like, let's look, look at these some, like real fast.

Ben Sirach said, Blessed are those who live to see the downfall of their foes.

You're blessed when you get to watch your enemy lose.

You know?

Like I'm a huge Duke basketball fan.

And I'll be completely honest with you.

I enjoy watching North Carolina lose every bit as much as I enjoy watching Duke win.

That's how rivalries work, right?

That's human nature.

But listen to what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5, verse 44.

Matthew 5:44

I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Well, that's that's different than living to see the downfall of your foes.

It's almost like it's upside down.

Penserak said, Blessed are those who do not have to serve someone inferior to them.

Jesus said, The greatest among you, Matthew 23, 11.

The greatest among you must be a servant.

Pensar said that you're blessed when you speak to attentive listeners.

You're blessed when people want to hear you, when people listen to you, when people celebrate you.

In our day, it's like the more Instagram followers you have, the more blessed you are.

If your Twitter account has that little blue check, you are supremely blessed.

That's what he would have said today, maybe.

I don't know.

But Jesus says, nah, you're blessed when people reject you.

You're blessed when people persecute you and refuse to listen to you because of your relationship with God.

See, it's upside down.

The structure is the same, but the concepts are completely different.

Ben Sirach's beatitudes, they're they're just religion.

This is what religion is.

Religion is it's some good stuff.

Like there's some good stuff in there, you know, gain wisdom and fear the Lord, and that word fear means like live in awe of, like live in awe of God.

Absolutely.

But then it mixes with the value systems of our world.

And our world very much values wealth and power and comfort.

And so we're tempted to believe that the people who are the wealthiest and healthiest and most successful and most powerful and most comfortable, those are the ones that are the blessed ones.

They must be God's favorites because they're blessed.

Now, let me say this.

I know some wealthy people who are greatly blessed by God and have been blessed with that wealth.

They just so happen to be people who are generous and faithful long before they had the wealth.

God trusted them with more.

God does that sometimes.

I know some people who have power.

They have been entrusted with power by God.

But they didn't crave it.

They didn't desire it.

They didn't elbow their way to it.

It was given to them by God.

I know some people who are very comfortable, and God is not against comfort.

It's just not his priority.

But what Jesus is doing is he's flipping everything on its head here and he's saying, hey, look, our understanding of what a model citizen in God's eyes is, our understanding of what a blessed life really looks like, it's not what you think.

It's so different.

It's so different.

This is what the model citizen in the kingdom of heaven is.

This is the blessed one.

Let's just go through it.

Matthew 5, 3, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

This phrase poor in spirit, it just means people who are down and out.

These are not people who are who are important.

They don't come from important families.

They don't they come from obscurity.

They're not the people everyone wants to listen to.

They're not the ones invited to speak.

They're not the ones whose opinions are sought out.

They're just normal, everyday people struggling to get by.

Sound familiar.

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

Matthew 5.4, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

He's not just talking about personal mourning.

He's saying, Blessed are those who look at the brokenness in the world and it makes them mad.

It stirs their hearts.

When they see hurt, when they see division, when they see hatred, when they see oppression, they mourn.

They cry out.

Something inside of them says, This is not the way it's supposed to be.

That hurting person for the brokenness around them, that person is blessed.

We don't tend to think we're blessed when we hurt.

He says we are.

Matthew 5, 5, blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

The word meek, it means someone who doesn't view themselves as important.

The Bible actually describes Moses as meek, and Moses, if you know the story of Scripture, is a pretty important dude.

Not as important as Jesus, but he's like top five.

If you're coming up with like a starting five in the Bible, Moses better be on your starting five, okay?

He just better be.

The Bible described Moses as meek.

Though he was greatly important, he didn't view himself as such.

He didn't wear that on his sleeve, he didn't act more important than other people.

That's meekness.

Our world, right?

Our world says, no, no, no, no.

Don't be meek.

Talk yourself up.

Like if you have a resume, is it embellished just a tad?

Mine has been.

When I got the job here years ago, on my resume was the title Vice President of Marketing.

I worked at a company with three employees.

And I was the vice president of marketing at a company with three employees.

All of us were either the president or the vice president of something.

Right?

And like it's just what we, it's what you're supposed to do.

That's what the world teaches you.

You know, talk yourself up, embellish it, make yourself look good.

Make yourself look more important than you actually are.

Blessed are the meek.

Matthew 5 6, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Now notice it doesn't say, blessed are those who are righteous.

Blessed are those who want to be.

And this has a lot of meaning.

All of us have issues, all of us have all of us have.

Sin all this stuff that's not right.

We can either pretend like we're perfect or we can admit it that we're not.

But if you have a deep hunger inside of you to be right with God, to do what's right, to be who you're supposed to be, who God created you to be, that is hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

It's not just with God, though, it's with people the word righteous means right relationship, right standing.

These are people who want to be right with the people around them.

I'm not talking about people pleasing, I'm not talking about performing.

I'm saying that you want to have, you want to have such a reputation among those around you because of your faithfulness.

You desperately desire people to be made right.

That's hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

Jesus says, Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Now, this is kind of connected to mourning.

This is not just someone who sees a broken world and goes, Man, someone ought to do something about that.

Somebody needs to change this.

Somebody needs to make something happen.

This is the person that sees the brokenness of the world and says, What can I do?

And they they jump in and they do something, they meet a need.

It's kind of like the opposite of the stereotypical politician.

The stereotypical politician, regardless of party or whatever, talks a big game, gets up on a stage or in a video, and is like, I am so, you know, while in a private jet, I am so heartbroken about the state of the world.

When I'm on my way to a five-star restaurant to eat a meal that costs more than what most people make in a week, I see homeless people on the street and it breaks my heart.

And it's like politicians, they just talk about the brokenness in the world.

But what's crazy, it's really interesting, is if you do some basic research, it's really easy and find out how much the average politician gives to hurting people, it's like nothing.

Because the idea is I'm so moved by the hurt in the world, I'm just not going to do anything about it.

That's not what Jesus is talking about here.

He's saying, Blessed are the merciful, blessed are those who just perform acts of mercy.

They help people around them, they do whatever they can they can do.

He says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Pure in heart just means you don't have ulterior motives.

You're not in it to get something for yourself, you're just doing what God would want you to do because God would want you to do it.

It's that simple.

He says, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Sometimes to make peace, you have to insert yourself into situations where there is no peace.

This is someone who's willing to be discomforted, who's willing to step into difficult situations where there's division in order to bring unity.

This is someone who's willing to step into situations where there's hatred to make peace.

I think about Josh Clemens, who spoke here a few weeks back.

Josh leads a ministry called One Race.

And we've been partnering with One Race for the last few years.

They do incredible work because racism is evil.

It's just evil.

And it's not of God.

And the work they do, they're like the front lines of that.

And it's really amazing stuff.

They're peacemakers.

Then he says Matthew 5, 10 through 11, he finishes by saying, Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

It greatly bothers me that our Facebook rating is 4.9 stars.

Because there's no way Jesus would have ever gotten above 3.5.

There's just no way.

It wouldn't have happened.

Jesus, he just said things that were true.

And when you say things that are true, and you're willing to go against the norms of society, and you're willing to treat people who society says don't matter like they matter a lot, you just great ratings on your Facebook page.

You know?

I'm half joking.

Please don't go out and like everyone give us a one-star.

You know?

One time someone got really mad at us and gave us a two-star rating, and I was like, that's weird.

Because what they wrote seemed like a one-star.

But then they gave us two, and I was like, thanks for that extra star.

Didn't didn't didn't feel like we deserved that with uh with what you said, but there you go.

Um, Jesus says, hey, you are you're blessed when you're persecuted, when you face resistance.

See, we we tend to believe that God's blessing means there's no resistance.

You'll hear people say that, how are you doing?

I'm blessed.

Everything's going smoothly.

And when I open up the scriptures and I read the stories of the men and women who were greatly blessed by God, smoothness is not like something that they experienced.

I'm not saying that if things are going really well for you, that doesn't mean you're blessed.

I'm just saying that if you have resistance in your life, that doesn't mean you're not blessed.

Because Jesus said you're blessed when there's persecution.

Now, here's what's so powerful about all of this.

Again, these are statements of blessing.

This is the description of the model citizen, the model citizen of the kingdom.

Growing up, if I would hear this teaching, I would always think about it kind of like a menu.

I viewed this as a list of different people.

Different people.

Some people are blessed because they're poor in spirit, some people are blessed because they're pure in heart, some people are blessed because they're meek.

And I would look at this going, like, which blessed person do I want to be?

Do I want to be the meek person?

Or the person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness?

I'd look at this like an option.

I'd see areas of my life that I needed to grow and go, ooh, yeah, I really, I really need to work on being okay with persecution.

And it's not bad to do that, by the way.

It's never bad to do some self-evaluation.

It is better to let God do the evaluating and to pray something that David prayed in the Psalms.

God, examine my heart, point out anything in me that offends you.

That's better than self-examination.

But self-examination is good.

The Bible actually says test yourselves.

Make sure you're in the faith.

So it's fine to do that, but but Jesus is not describing a group of people here.

He's describing a person.

The model citizen of the kingdom of heaven.

He's beginning his orientation class by saying, This is the target, this is the bullseye.

You want to be blessed by God, you want to know that you are like exactly the way God wants you to be.

Here you go, this is it.

And honestly, like, think about this.

Have you ever known one person that's all of those things?

Have you ever known one person that has that much compassion and at the same time humility, and at the same time they're just like okay with conflict, that they'll run into it, you know, to make peace.

And they don't care what people think about them, but they greatly care about people.

Like, I don't think I can say I've ever interacted with one person that could check all these boxes.

And yet, this is the model citizen of the kingdom of heaven.

So, what gives?

Who is this?

Who is this a picture of?

Let me read something that that Pastor Tim Mackey wrote, I told you about earlier.

Can you think of somebody who came from poor, insignificant circumstances?

Who mourned and grieved over the state of this world and over the people he met, and he was extremely important, but did not think of himself as important.

And he longed to see God's world set right, so with small acts of mercy to hurting individuals, he showed his pure devotion to the cause of the kingdom, and he inserted himself into dangerous situations between people who hated each other.

He got persecuted and in fact was killed for it.

This is a picture of Jesus.

And might I just say it's beautiful.

He's beautiful.

In my life, the best messages I've ever heard or books I've ever read, they're not the things that give me some practical life hack for how to have a slightly improved life.

There's nothing wrong with that.

That stuff has its place.

And sometimes we'll throw those things out there.

But the most powerful moments are not when you've when you learn like a little cheat code for life.

The best moments are when Jesus becomes a little bit more clear to you.

See, I love Jesus and I know that I'm in a room filled with people who love Jesus.

Sometimes my picture of Jesus is just fuzzier than it should be, or it needs to be, or I want it to be.

Sometimes my understanding of Jesus is just kind of fuzzy.

It's like it's out of focus.

And I'm trying to see him.

I'm trying my best, but it's just my own filters are getting in the way and it's just not clear.

And then every once in a while I'll read something, or something will happen, or someone will say something to me, or the Holy Spirit will just move, and it's like it's like someone's got binoculars and they're adjusting the focus.

And for a moment, for a moment, Jesus is clear.

And when that happens, I'm like, He's beautiful, he's powerful, he's amazing, he is the model citizen.

I mean, let's read this again.

And as we read this, yeah, clap for him because he's Jesus.

As we read this, ask yourself the question.

Ask yourself the question as we read this: could there be a better person?

Even if you do not believe in the divinity of Jesus, ask yourself the question: could we be describing a better version of a human being?

Because there is none.

Can you think of someone who came from poor, insignificant circumstances, who mourned and grieved over the state of this world and over the people he met?

And he was extremely important, but he didn't think of himself as important, and he longed to see God's world set right, and so with small acts of mercy to hurting individuals, he showed his pure devotion to the cause of the kingdom, and he inserted himself into dangerous situations between people who hated each other, he got persecuted, and in fact was killed for it.

Could there be a better person than that?

Jesus, he is the epitome of everything that we're supposed to be.

He is what we're supposed to be.

He's beautiful, he's perfect, he's amazing.

Moses in the Old Testament had seen God do miracles that we couldn't comprehend.

I mean, he saw crazy stuff.

And after seeing all of these miracles, he got to this place where he didn't really care to see a giant flashy miracle again.

He'd seen those.

I'm sure every time they happened, it was cool.

But his heart's desire was not to see some explosion of fire or some crazy storm that rained meat, because that happened.

Um, he wanted one thing.

He wanted to see God's face.

He said, I just want to see you.

Can I just see you?

Oh, I want I just want to see you, God.

I want to see what you look like.

And God said, No, because you'll die if you do.

God's intents.

He said, I'll tell you what I'll do.

I'll tell you what I'll do.

I will hide you in this rock, and then I'm gonna pass by you.

And right after I pass by you, you can like make a quick glance as I'm walking away.

And so that happens.

And scripture says that after just seeing that, Moses' face shone with light, like it glowed so much so that the people had to put a cloth over his face because it freaked him out.

People aren't supposed to glow, you know.

But just getting a glimpse of God, like in that setting, just just God walking away, God's back, caused Moses' face to shine.

And people noticed it.

And here's what we have to remember: we're so blessed.

Jesus followers, we're so blessed.

Because God let us see him.

He put skin on, he became a person, he walked among us, he lived among us, and he let us look at him.

And whenever we read things like this and we read scripture and we see Jesus as he is, whenever he comes into focus and it becomes clear we should be in awe, wowed, and grateful for the fact that that's God.

He's incredible.

Hebrews says that Jesus is the exact representation of God.

If you want to know what God's like, you look at Jesus and you fall on your knees and you worship him, and you're in awe of him, and you're moved by him because he's beautiful, he's awesome, and he loves you, loves you.

Hallelujah, Nate.

Amen.

He loves you.

But here's what we're gonna do with this.

Today, look, today's not about how to go out of here and just kill it.

Today's about walking out of this place and just being in awe of Jesus Christ.

And my hope and my prayer is that your understanding of him just, if it was fuzzy, it got a little clearer.

Because that's what happened for me when I started diving into this teaching.

If anything, knowing that Jesus is our model citizen, we're just inspired to live like him, to imitate him.

Ephesians 5, 1 and 2 says, Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children.

Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ.

He loved us and he offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.

Anyone here good at impressions?

I'm not gonna call you up on stage and let you do it.

I don't know how good you might be.

You know what I mean?

But like anyone say, I'm good at celebrity impressions.

Raise your hand if you're like, I can do some a killer celebrity impression.

I see like maybe two hands.

Okay.

So you're probably thinking, I'm not, I'm not a good impersonator.

Let me ask you this question.

Anyone here got a pretty good impression of a family member in your life?

Like you can, like, when they're not around, you can you can do them.

Oh, come on.

Anyone here got a good impression of your mom?

You know, or your dad, or like a brother or a sibling?

Yeah, like you're we're all much better impersonators than we we think we are.

I've got these four kids, they're my children.

I say these four kids like I just found them.

I just four kids, you know.

I've got four human beings that live in my house that are smaller than me.

And uh and my youngest Eli, he's starting to talk.

And uh, it's funny because he's starting to say dad.

But he only says dad one way right now.

Very specific.

When he says mom, he goes mom.

Mom.

When he says dad, he goes, dad, every time, every time.

We're in the car driving here this morning, and he's his his car seats right behind my face.

And it's just dad.

It's so loud.

And I was like, why does he do that?

Why does he only yell my name?

And then it hit me in my house the other day.

I'm sitting in my house and I hear my my oldest son in his room just go, Dad! And then my little my little girl, my daughter, she's like, Dad! And my son Judah, who's he's the terrible twos are just they're extended with him.

He's he's in he's three and a half, and they're just they're they're holding on.

He's just like, dad! All the time.

I'm like, oh, he's just imitating.

Here's Eli, just sitting in his high chair, eating his food, drinking his milk, being like, oh, when we say dad's name, we yell it really loud.

That's what we do.

Point is we're all better at imitating than we think.

You're a naturally good impersonator.

That's actually how you learned how to do everything you do, is you just impersonated.

But here's the thing: I I can do a killer impression of my little brother.

How many of you can do a good impression of my little brother?

Because you don't know him.

But I know him.

So I can imitate him.

If you want to live a life like Jesus, you gotta know him.

You have to know him.

That's the only way.

That's the only way, and you can know him.

You can know him, you give your life to him.

If you if you read this and you're like, I want to live like that, I'm tired of searching for the next show on TV to fill my time.

Like, if you're out of shows on Netflix, how many of you are out of shows?

You're like, I'm out, I've watched them all, they're done, and you're you're desperately seeking something to fill your time.

You're done.

Move on.

Live like Jesus.

If you read this and you're like, I want to live this way, you can, but you gotta know him.

You have to know him, it's the only way.

And that begins in a very simple way.

It just begins by saying, Jesus, I'm yours.

I believe in you, I give my life to you.

And you don't have to understand what that even means.

Like we're all still figuring out what that means.

But you just start by saying, I'm yours.

And he promises that when we do that, that he's faithful.

We talked about that this morning, he's faithful.

And scripture says, anyone who gives their life to Jesus, God's spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are his children.

And he begins to make us new.

We become new creations, and day by day, bit by bit, we know him, we walk with him, and we start to imitate him.

Whether we want to or not.

Sometimes my wife says things that her friends say, and I'm like, You never used to say that.

You never used to say that until you hung out with that person.

And it's not bad things, by the way.

I make it sound like she's like cussing like a sailor.

She's not.

She's like, it's all good.

But it's just like she you pick things up when you're around people.

So be around Jesus.

Spend time thinking about Jesus.

Have you ever been in love?

You know when you're in love, how you think about people who aren't there?

Do that with Jesus.

Just think about him.

He's awesome.

And the more you do that, the more you'll be like him, and it'll change people.

You'll be like Moses.

You won't have to have like a cloth covering your face per se.

But people are gonna notice.

They're gonna see it, they're gonna see something in you.

And you're gonna have an opportunity to speak in their lives and be Jesus to them.

And that changes everything.

He is the model citizen.

He is everything we should be.

He is beautiful and he loves us.

Let's pray.

Jesus, thank you so much for today.

Thank you for this amazing group of people.

Jesus, you're so awesome.

And all we want, God, all I want is for us to be more in awe of you.

God, our world does not need something, it needs someone, and that someone is you.

We just need you.

So, Jesus, make us more like you.

Help us follow you more closely.

Those of us who haven't given our lives to you yet, Lord, I pray that today is the last day that we live disconnected to you.

And those of us who have, God, I pray that we just keep going deeper and deeper, that we take another step and another step after that.

And I pray, Lord, that we leave here inspired by how we can know you better, imitate you better, be more in awe of your wonder.

Make yourself more and more clear in our sight.

And it's in your name that we pray.

Amen.