Pete McKenzie 0:08
Alabama National Guard, they don’t care about those kinds of things.
We’re talking about the Beatitudes being the attitudes, Warren wispies wrote a beautiful outline about attitudes in the book of Philippians.
But what we’re doing is we’ve been talking about a kingdom living in the Sermon on the Mount. And it starts with the Beatitudes.
And we got a little introduction to the Beatitudes today. I don’t know if you are in Oswald Chambers, my utmost was highest guy. But today, I thought this morning as I read it, I thought, Boy, I got to read these this to the guys today because it’s such a good introduction to what we’re talking about. And so let me read that for you. God’s grace produces men and women with a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, not pampered sport, or weaklings. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline to live the worthy and excellent life of a disciple of Jesus, in the realities of this life. And it’s always necessary for us to make an effort to live a life of worth in excellence. If we’re going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all efforts of worth in excellence are difficult. The Christian life is gloriously difficult. But it’s difficulty does not make us faint, or cave in. it stirs us up to overcome. Do we appreciate the miraculous salvation of Jesus Christ, enough to be our utmost for his highest, our best for His glory? I thought that was interesting. God’s grace produces men and women with a strong family likeness to Jesus. And that’s what we’ve been talking about in here. That when you’re living the Christian life, it’s very distinctively different. And it’s very difficult. The reason is difficult is because we don’t want to have to work hard to get it. We want on a silver platter, we want it easy to attain. But we’ll never get God’s character in an easy way. Because to get his character, we have to forsake ours for his, we have to deny ourselves for what he has to build that into us and give us we have to forget who we thought we wanted to be for and let him make us into the man that he created us to be. So there’s a giving up, there’s a surrender. And that’s what makes it so difficult. I think. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. That’s what I tell guys about ministering to men in churches. 10% of churches have ministries demand and 80% of them are struggling. But I tell them if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. But only 10% are even trying it. Because it’s not an easy ministry. It’s the only target of ministry that doesn’t want to be ministered to. Everybody else is clamoring for their pastor to women, director, to their children’s ministry to their special ministries, whatever they are, and they’re all good. But you didn’t hear too many guys clamoring for a ministry to man and man of the end and that’s a part of the spiritual warfare that we’ve been going through. It’s always been going through neutralized men. Make them compromise. marginalize them, relegate them to a place of dishonor and disrespect in a group or family or culture, or church, especially in family. Get the get the Warriors out the field. If we’re going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all the efforts are worth of worth and excellent or difficult. Everything that you ever want to aspire to that snowball is going to be hard to attain. If you’re going to take that mountain you’re going to have to give up something, you’re going to lose some men. It’s called warfare, spiritual warfare. So when we come to the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, and he says these audacious sayings, things that if you actually live that way would make you different and distinctive from everybody, you know, even other Christians. It’s difficult to because we live in a very casual comfortable coming to you Do as you want Christian culture. It’s like the church in Laodicea.
The thing he had against that church is they were lukewarm. He said, I wish you either hot or cold, be better if you were cold is out of it not trying backslidden. But because you’re lukewarm, because you keep coming, you keep doing you keep participating. But you’re not excited about it. You’re not engaged, you’re present but not engaged in what he said, to another church, he said, You’ve lost your first love. What was the first love that was Jesus, but you’ve lost that first love, and you’ve given yourself to other things. Things that cannot pay off things that aren’t fruitful, don’t satisfy, they’re temporarily happy. But they don’t satisfy the Beatitudes is an outline of the Christian man in his essential features and characteristics. In other words, this is something we look at, and you might read it in this go, who could ever live that life? Who could ever attained that standard of living? And it seems impossible. And we look at it like it is impossible. We must understand the whole before we look at the individual parts. Sometimes we wanted to rush ahead to the sermon without going through the Beatitudes. The sermon says turn the other cheek and go the second mile if you look at a woman and with a desire to possess her for yourself, that’s adultery. You’ve heard adultery is when you have sex with a woman outside of besides your wife, but I’m telling you, if you look at a woman with the desire to possess or lust after her, then that’s adultery and we’re going well, golly, there’s all i knows adulterers, we’re all adulterers. So where do you go with that? Sermon on the Mount tells us where to go with that. So let’s don’t rush to those parts and try to understand those. We’ll get to those. But we have to understand the Beatitudes and you have to start with them before you’ll ever get in there progressive. We’ll look at that in a second. You know, Martin, Lord Jones is he was preaching through this, the Beatitudes, said there’s another word you could use for blessing. It’s happy, happier though the truly happy man, the truly man that has peace, the truly man that you can depend on. He’s happy. Happy means fortunate, characterized by well being or contentment, having your desires satisfied. The scripture in Psalm 37 says trust in the Lord and do good dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness Delight yourself in the Lord and he’ll give you the desires of your heart and that make you happy. But you know before he gets to then I hear people quote all the time that passage but they leave out the first part is saying God wants me to have it I’ve had people tell me this before God wants me to have the desire my heart in the same person was saying, No, my wife is no longer the desire of my heart and my husband is no longer the desire my heart but he wants me to have the desire my heart so I need to get rid of them and find the desire by heart. I’ve literally had people say that and they want to be happy, happy confronts all mankind. We do everything to be happy to be have fun. If it’s not fun and happy then we’re not and we’re looking for something else that will provide that happiness and the fun and the problem with happiness is it’s temporary. When I hit it I remember hitting the line drive up the right centerfield alien knocking into Ronson went into ballgame, man I was happy. Also remember having a slow roller roll through my legs at third base. I remember a pop up over by the bleachers at third base and I was patting my glove and looking up and I hit 10 feet behind me. Which one is bad is the next pitch which he did the same thing and it hit 10 feet behind me. I remember my coach coming out and saying, you know, Mackenzie, thank you the worst third baseman I ever saw. didn’t make me happy. So you could you could win the ballgame in one game and strike out to end the game in the next game and you lost your happiness. But we’re not talking about a happiness you can lose. We’re talking about a happiness. When loser draw. You can still maintain that is that peace. It surpasses Is our comprehension.
But the kind of man that is living the Beatitudes is a man to be graduate, congratulated and envied. He’s happy he’s bless, bless it, are
Unknown Speaker 10:14
you
Pete McKenzie 10:15
when you’re poor in spirit, bless it are you when you mourn over your sin, bless it are you and your humble and make Blessed are you when you hunger and thirst for righteousness. Bless you and you merciful. Bless you when you’re pure in heart, bless it are the peacemakers, blessings to you and you’re persecuted for my namesake. And they say all manner of things against you, happier you. When that happens. That’s a truly happy man. But you’re never going to get to that place of happiness and persecution if you hadn’t started with poor in spirit. So the Beatitudes are progressive. But you know, guys do a lot to try to find happiness. And most of the things we do to try to find happiness end in misery. I know what is drugs, and tobacco and alcohol and all those things, entertainment? What are they all about it trying to find places of happiness, places where you can have fun places where you can chuck, all the hurts and trials and difficulties and burden of life and find fine times of happiness. A lot of people have turned to drugs, but it only turned to misery. A lot of people have turned to alcohol, but it only turned to misery. A lot of people have tried everything you can imagine sex, pornography for a little relief, but it only leads to guilt and shame and misery. And so the things that we try, are only missing it not missing anything but the boat. And so we’re here he tells us if you really want to be happy. And that’s that makes sense to the world, it makes sense to me before I came to know Christ. If you really want to be happy, you got to be humble and poor in spirit, you have to know that apart from him, you can do nothing. You have to know that you have no hope. There’s nothing in you that could save you, deliver you redeem you that only he can do that blessing to the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So what’s he saying? You’re not getting into heaven unless you’re poor in spirit. Simple as that. But if you are poor in spirit, bless it, are you because you’re going to have and you’re going to spend eternity in Heaven with Him? because no one’s going to stand up at the gates of heaven. And they say why should I let you in because I was such a good guy. Because I did so many good things. Because I helped so many hurting people. Maybe you did. But Lord, we cast out demons in your name and prophesied in your name and heal people in your name. He says I know my name is pretty powerful in it. But I never knew you. You did all those things. But you would never pour in spirit, you did them for the wrong motive for the wrong reason. You did it to draw attention to yourself, put notches on your belt. But I can’t bless and won’t Bless you. We’re never humble you’re never given me the credit. You’re never bowing before me. I never knew you. The pattern of looking for happiness is the understanding of the secret of sin. It’s rooted in sin. So always offering happiness and always leads done happiness. the Sermon on the Mount says it’s really want to be happy, this is a way to do it. And there’s some general lessons that we need to look at before we get into next week poor in spirit. Here’s one lesson all Christian so to be like this. You know one of the mistakes we’ve made in has been made in religious sects and denominations and just about anywhere you found Christians gathering under whatever banner flag or name is we separate people into two categories. We have the really religious professionals that are pastors and missionaries, the apostles. You have those guys, the priests, Pharisees had this and they turned it into a doctrinal work. And then they got the regular guys.
And it got so bad You call that clericalism. It got so bad in the Catholic church for years centuries. They wouldn’t let the laity which is the nonsense. professionals, they won’t let down, even read the Bible only with priests good read the Bible and preach the Bible. So they didn’t encourage it. But they held that for themselves that made them different and put them up above where they were ministering down to instead of getting under like Jesus did and lifting up. And so that’s been one of the dangers of religion, in religious orders in sects and denominations. And we tend to do that, don’t we? We look at the pastor like he’s something really special. Like, he’s really great Pete preacher, he’s got it all together. He knows the word is wise and counsel in at all may be true. But he’s just a guy. And it doesn’t do him any good or us any good when we put him on a level that he really can’t attain to on a consistent basis. So that when he falls in, they do and we do. When he falls, he falls on people. He disappoints him because he had put him at a level that he just couldn’t attain to. Now some can in some are real and genuine, authentic. What you see is really real in that guy’s life. He really does know Christ, he really does walk the walk, because he’s talked the talk. And we see a lot talk the talk, but not walk the walk. We see them that are fearful. You see them, they want power and glory and control. You see them that are threatened. They’re inadequate. They’re isolated, they’re lonely. And they’re just guys. And when we put them up higher than they should be, then they fall further than they should fall. So the average guy in the average church, if he falls or commits adultery, or is caught in some sin, that’s a ripple in the church. But that’s why the scripture says letting out many of you be teachers, for you will incur a stricter discipline and judgment. So if we’re teachers, and we’re up here pontificating every week, then rightfully so people expect you to live it out. They expect you to be they won’t hope that this can actually be done. Someone can live this life, give me some hope. That’s what your parents were supposed to do. They’re supposed to give us hope, hope that we could survive hope we could make it Oh, good. We could be something we could attain to. They didn’t always do that. It’s Matter of fact, some did the opposite. But this is for all Christians. It’s not a description just for exceptional Christians. And you look at some Christians that are fired up. And y’all should have heard Brent today, man, he went out there and led this couple to Christ. Well, he’s an exceptional Christian. Well, not supposedly, supposedly, that’s what we’re all doing. That’s just like normal Christian life. Did you see how you responded when he got slapped across the cheek and put down publicly and humiliated, and he just was at peace with it and didn’t strike back and then try to get even or field around, fill our pockets. That guy’s different. We’re all supposed to be that way. We’re all supposed to be this kind of Christian. We’re all supposed to turn the other cheek and go the second mile. It’s not just for exceptional Christians. We’re exceptional because we are Christian. We don’t become Christian and then become exceptional. The second lesson that we need to learn and keep in mind about the Beatitudes. all Christians are men meant to manifest all of these characteristics. It’s not a buffet line, where you go through the buffet and you pick what you want, well, I’ll be, I’ll be peace, I’ll take peace. I don’t want that love. And they are lovely though. I don’t want that blessing those who persecute you or I don’t want to pray for your enemies. If you knew my enemies, you wouldn’t tell me to pray for him. If you knew how my husband treated me, you didn’t tell me to stay with him. If you knew how my wife undermine me, with the children, and didn’t trust me and ran up the money on the credit card. You didn’t tell me to bless her. And honor her is my wife. Yeah, what? It’s not how she’s treating you. It’s how you treat her. God’s never gonna have her stand up before him and say, and make excuses for you or,
and die to. You’re going to stand before God and answer for your own attitude regardless of hers. Your own response, your own behavior, your own character. You’ll never have to answer for your wife’s character. You’ll have to answer for yours. I’ll have to answer for mine. It’s that judgment seat of Christ. In this Christian man lives like he’s going to face judgment, he never forgets the fact that one day I’ll stand before God. And I’ll never be able to say, God, you didn’t give me enough translations of the Bible. I never had the new iPhone, so I couldn’t get that out that app. Or they cancel my app, because they upgraded my iOS. I mean, I’m sitting there minding my own business, and I’m on a zoom call the other day, we’re having a zoom marriage builder. And I’m talking about giving flowers to your wife and I had my phone sitting there and the phone said, if you’re looking for flowers, I can tell you where to get it. I said, My stinking phones, listen to them the conversation into the internet. Why don’t they put in these phones when they upgrade your is? Nobody No. I know one thing that can tell you where to get flowers.
the Beatitudes are a progressive dynamic. In other words, you got to start with poor in spirit, you don’t start with hunger and thirst for righteousness. You’ll never get hunger and thirst for righteousness unless you start with being poor in spirit. Bless it to the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And you’re never going to get to bless it are those who mourn. If you hadn’t been poor in spirit to begin with. Nobody that’s not poor and spirit is going to mourn over their sin.
So once you’re poor in spirit, then you start to be brokenhearted. When you sin. It’s not that you’re never gonna sin. But when you do, you’re broken about it. You’re repentant. And you don’t wallow around and guilt and shame you turn and face the Lord and he said, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. If you will confess your sin, I’ll be faithful. I’m a faithful God, I’ll always do this, you can trust me for this. I’ll be faithful and righteous to forgive you of all sand, don’t wallow around in your guilt and shame. That’s one of the things that men deal with it. This destroys more man’s walk with God. And their sense of self worth is there I don’t know how to deal with their sin. And they don’t deal with their sin. And they beat themselves up in some others may beat themselves up, but we won’t forgive ourselves. So why would God forgive me? You’re never going to get to mourning over your sin, nor will you get to the next one. blesser the poor in spirit, bless those who mourn. Blessed are the meek or the humble. You never get into the make of the humble unless you’ve been poor in spirit, you realize you can’t do it. You prayed that desperate prayer. God, I’m a total failure of being a Christian, I can’t live it out. You’ve probably prayed that prayer somewhere along the line, and maybe not those same words. But you felt like a loser. You just can’t attain to that high standard. Can’t live that life. until you realize you can’t live that life, you’re never going to say Come into my heart and live that life in me. And that’s the way we come to Christ. That he comes into our heart to give us life that we can’t have apart from him apart from me said you can do pretty much anything you want to you can be what you want to be if you work hard enough you can get there. In that what they say how many athletes have you seen? What What do you want to say those people out there that want to be in the Olympics like you are, I just want to tell you, you can have your dream if you just want it bad enough. And if you work hard enough, and that’s a bunch of bull. She did work hard, or he did work hard to get where they got. But there’s a lot of people who’s going to work hard and they’re not going to end up on the Olympic team. They’re going to lose out in the trials. They never got to the trials. What do you tell them? Tell them that there’s a higher goal and being on the Olympic team. There’s a higher place in life that God has for you. And not making the Olympic team may be the best thing that ever happened to you. Or not. the Beatitudes are a progressive dynamic. We really want to get to the place of hungry and thirsting for righteousness. But how do you get there? You don’t wake up one morning and hunger and thirst for righteousness, you hunger and thirst. Because you were poor in spirit because you were meek and humble because you are repentant and mourn over your sin. And then you want something that will give you some headway to attain to something that you can grab ahold of, and actually live out something that gives you Christ esteem. We’re not just self esteem, but Christ esteem. And that’s what we’re living the life in. We’re Bane. And you’ll never totally Live The Life and you’re never going to arrive this out of heaven as far as perfection goes in Christ. But you can make progress you can grow from he says, some of you guys are still thumb suckers, you’re still stuck in your thumb, you ought to be made here to get that thumb out of your mouth and get out of the corner and get in the game. And that’s what Paul was telling him. It’s a complete whole and cannot be divided. So then once you get hunger and thirst for righteousness, then you say Blessed are the merciful because they will be shown mercy is how do you respond to and mercy another word would be grace.
Bless her the graceful besser of those who receive grace and are looking for opportunities to give grace, not get even not hold it against them not put some in your resentment bank. But give them grace. Blessed are the merciful why this is a big one. This is a big reward, they shall be shown mercy. I guess the opposite must be true. If you’re not going to show mercy, you’re not going to get it. If you’re not going to forgive them, then I’m not going to forgive you. You’ve been forgiven. You’ve been redeemed. I put it behind me as far as he sins the West, I don’t keep score on here saying I have no file with your name on it that I’m marking and keeping score on your sin. And if you’re doing it to others, then I’m going to do it to you. If you’re keeping score on others, and you have a resentment bank and you’re unforgiving in your life, you’re not going to be forgiven. The way it works is once you’ve been forgiven, you want to forgive once you’ve been forgiven you. forgiving and not holding grudges is not hard. Because you’ve been forgiven. You’ve been changed. You’ve been redeemed he’s put it before behind him as east is from the west. Blessed are the merciful, happier you and happy to do it. Blessed are the pure in heart. Who don’t we want to be pure in heart. They only want to quit lusting and being fearful and jealous and egotistical and prideful. Loving to hear our name loving to speak our name. Wanting to be noticed in listen to the pure in heart. for they shall see God that’s a that’s a pretty good reward. But if you’re not pure and hard if you have ulterior motives, hidden agendas, ego centric kind of a life. narcissistic they call it. If that’s you, you’re not going to see God, you’re not going to understand God, you’re not going to want to see his face. You’re not going to sing the songs that talk about knowing him open my eyes. Lord, do we want to see Jesus? You’re not gonna sing that song. If you haven’t been pure in heart, if you haven’t been in his presence, if you haven’t hungered in thirst for that, because you see a desperate need for him. He won’t understand God His ways will not be your ways. They’ll seem unreasonable, unattainable. You want to do it your way. Here’s another one. None of these descriptions refers to a natural tendency. Each one is a disposition that can only be produced by the Holy Spirit through grace alone, while some people see seem to make and humble by nature, but these Beatitudes are not natural qualities. You know, you see some people and they’re just naturally humble and meek and mild and mild mannered. And that’s just their nature, their personality. There are others that are lions there, get things done. They use people for attraction. They don’t care what you think about them, they’re getting the job done. They’re committed to the mission. And they better get you they will get you committed to the mission or else. Other people are pretty mild mannered. They don’t like big crowds. They’d rather have quietness and a few friends not a lot. They’re stressed in a big crowd with too many people. That’s their personality, that’s their nature. And then there are some that go by the numbers. They fly the 740 sevens. They hit all the buttons. They will go to the routine they need a plan and they work the plan. They are the people you aren’t taking care of your taxes taking care of your fine your airplane and putting the there the guys I won’t screw in the bolts in the airplane putting the gas in the airplane making sure all the answer Let’s work. So they’re all that by nature, they may be calm, they may be peaceful, but that doesn’t mean that they’re saved. That’s their nature to be that way, these Beatitudes can’t be attained by natural tendencies, they can only be attained to the power of the Holy Spirit. And so we have to make sure that we can distinguish between the two. That guy must be a Christian look at peaceful he is. Well, he may be. But that doesn’t mean he is. And so natural gifts of personality don’t measure up to what we’re talking about here. What we’re talking about is being pure and hard. And, you know, it’s like, I’m a man of God until I face opposition. Then all of a sudden, I’m
not that man of God that I thought I was. It bothers me, it makes me angry. It makes me upset. You slapped me on the cheek, you’re gonna get roomful of advocates. I’m not gonna turn the other cheek. You can’t treat me like that you won’t get away. If I let you get away with it. You just keep slapping me. When he was reviled, he reviled not when he suffered, he uttered no threats. That’s a hard one to buy into. To buy into that you have to data something you write to yourself. It’s Supernatural. The data you write to yourself, I don’t care how peaceful you are in your nature, how jovial you are, how personable you are, they’ll come a point where you’re personable to a point, you’re patient to a point. And then you’re not patient anymore. So we want to keep these things in mind. But as we start the, in the family, these descriptions clearly indicate the essential utter difference between the Christian and the non Christian, you’re the light of the world. You’re the salt of the earth. I go out there and be salty. What does that mean? live it. Martin, Lord john says, you know, we have all these evangelistic campaigns, we have all these events to attract those outside of the church. He said, but you know, we wouldn’t have to have those things. If every Christian we just live the Christian life. You’ll be distinctively different. You’d make people hungry for what you’ve got. Sometimes you can do that best in failure, rather than in winning the game and losing the game. Or then being on the all star team, not making the all star team because you didn’t live up to what they’re paying you for. Now, when I played baseball, I experienced just about everything you can experience. I was drafted, I was signed, I was reassigned. I was released, assigned again. And I was told as the worst third base and he ever saw. I went through every bit of that. But you will remember my story. And I’ll close with this. I had the worst year ever had my final year, which usually is the final year of the guys. That’s when you’re experienced release. And I retired before they could release me. So there you go. So I’m having this terrible year and I’m making errors at shortstop and didn’t hit that. Well. He had about 250 last game of the year, this guy comes out to my locker. He’s one of the pitchers on our team. He goes, I’ve been watching you all year, whatever you got on me and said What have I got man, I just had the worst year that I ever had. What do you need that I have? We went to dinner that night. And I found out that what he had seen is watching me fail. So my worst year in baseball became my best year for the gospel. He came to Christ at night over dinner. I tracked him down a few months ago on Google. He’d been a Hall of Fame high school baseball coach in Pennsylvania for years. But what do you do? How do you come to Christ? Now there are other people that might look at me on the golf course and never come to Christ looking at me but that guy came to Christ because he saw something distinctively different. I had no idea. I wasn’t aware that anybody was watching me except my manager told me I was the worst third baseman ever saw. But he’s this is meant to make us distinguishing distinguish slightly different, distinctly different. We live a different life. We’re not the same guys. We used to be And that’s really evangelistic. That makes people want what you’ve got. And that’s what the Beatitudes are talking about. This is a lifestyle that you live to make people want what you’ve got or not. Amen. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for calling us out of the darkness into the light with Thank you for calling us to be just mend but to not just men but men of God. Man who are distinctively different from the way we used to be in the life that we’re living now. Help us not to be casual thumb suckers. Help us not to be poor, just poor in spirit, but beating ourselves up. Help us attain to that life in Christ. It could only be attained to the Holy Spirit, even today, Lord, we want to make a difference for you in Jesus name And all God’s men said get heaven guys
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