Eight Steps to the Kingdom, Part 1

Good afternoon to all of you. It's a bit of a catacomb back there. Waiting for special music to come out disappeared.

We are here a little bit unexpectedly, my wife and I. This spring I was reading some of the Ministerial E-letters, and Canada put out a plea for assistance. I didn't know that Canmore was going to be a site this year. I figured with Kelowna, it would take Canmore's place. And I saw the announcement that said we had two full-time speakers in Canmore and Midland and one other site. And I looked at my wife and I said, we enjoyed it so much two years ago. I'll let Home Office know that we'd be more than happy to come up. I said, it's an easy drive. So this time, two years ago, when we left, we went north just a little bit about Lake Louise to Canada 1. And I told my wife, I said, before we leave, there's one lake that I've got to see, and it's just a little bit north of the turnoff. So we went up to Lake Pitot. And as we were driving up, she was saying, ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Every time we went over a little rise, and she was looking at the scenery, and it got to be so consistent, I started laughing and I began to sing, The Bear Went Over the Mountain. And I said, dear, it's 170 miles of ooh! Ooh! Ooh! So I told her that, I said, one day, I'll let you see the rest of that. I didn't realize one day would come so quickly. So this time, we went up to Seattle, Kamaloops, and entered through Jasper and came down the Iseo Parkway. And she got to see all of the area that she was ooh-ing and aww-ing about that didn't get a chance to see two years ago. Delightful part of the world. Get up in the morning, take a look out, and the majesty of the Canadian Rockies are unlike any mountains I've seen anywhere in the world. And I think it's because there's, because of the variety. You go from great granite to up-thrust mountains that are like Mount Rundle, and some of those up the Isefield Parkway that are like Mount Rundle. And then some of them that are, I don't know how to describe them, there's one in Jasper, and there are several here that look like conglomerate. There's grays and rusty reds all mingled together. So the collection is unlike anything I've ever seen. But it does remind you, when you look at the metaphor in the Bible, that it says, The mountain of the Lord's house shall be exalted above all the mountains. And the majesty of the mountains here allow you to think in terms of how grand God's kingdom will be. Mr. Saloma last night was referring to the three sisters over here, and alluding to the fact that in our home feast site and bend, every year, about this time of year, we have a dip in the weather, just a cool spell, and the first dusting of snow. And when you go to bend, the three sisters all have a new white coat. Our sisters are different than your sisters. Your sisters are rather calm and majestic. Ours are more temperamental. Yours are granite, and ours are volcanoes. Literally. And they do act up once in a while. In fact, one of the sisters was acting up about a decade ago, and they weren't sure whether she would get temperamental enough to blow her top. But she decided not to.

Let me ask you a question. From his first message to his last message, and I mean that literally, from his first message to his last message, what was Christ's focus? As you look at Matthew, just to pick one of the Gospels, we see Christ baptized in Matthew chapter 3. You see him tempted in Matthew chapter 4. And as soon as the temptation was over, his ministry began. And it began in the 17th verse of Matthew 4, the very first words that are recorded, out of the mouth of Jesus Christ, in a ministerial setting, are, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

On his final day, he stood before a Roman prelude, being interrogated. The charges that had been leveled against him were treason, and Pilate asked him whether these charges were correct by asking him, Are you a king? And Jesus Christ said to him, Yes, I am, but my kingdom is not of this age. So from the very first recorded public statement of Christ, in a ministerial capacity to the last, he never wavered in terms of his message. His message was the kingdom of God.

Starting today, on this first holy day, last night, with the setting of the sun in our first message, we will celebrate for eight days the coming of the kingdom of God. My question to you today, and I get the rare privilege, is that it is an opportunity when you speak twice in the feast, and both of them are within the Feast of Tabernacles period, you get the opportunity to cheat and give a part one and a part two.

Don't get to do that at the feast very often, but when both of them are within, it gives me the opportunity to give you half of a message today and half of a message on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. But my question to you today is who is going to be there? Christ's message from start to finish was about the kingdom of God, but the question for us today is who is actually going to be there?

The nice thing about Scripture is you don't have to guess. There is a literal checklist, and we're going to go through that checklist in these two sermons. It is the message that all of us recognize, and all of the Christian world recognizes, by the familiar title, the Beatitudes. But the Beatitudes are looked at as simply a beautiful part of the Bible, a lovely piece of literature, but it's really the formula for entering the kingdom of God.

And often, that is missed by those who read it simply as beautiful Christian literature. So let's begin today with the first half of the eight steps to the kingdom of God. True Christianity, and before I begin the steps, it's good to set the stage. True Christianity, as we know, is a religion of actions and attitudes. I still remember, as a freshman at Ambassador College, in our journey through the Gospels and then into the Book of Acts, that one of the things that was hammered into all the students in the semester of the Book of Acts was that Christianity is a way of life.

At that time, Mr. Armstrong had been annoyed by Bishop J. Fulton Sheen, and for some reason Bishop Sheen had made the comment that Christianity is not a way of life, and he had put it in those words. And it was quite an irritant. Mr. Armstrong made it a point to go through the Book of Acts and point out all the places where it says, this way, the way, the way which they call, and all of the way, the way, the way, and to make the point, Christianity is a way of life.

Well, as a result, it is also a way of actions and attitudes. We understand that Christ wants to see our actions, but you know, even more so, he wants to see the underlying attitude that motivates those actions. I love to see good actions, but I'm far more impressed by knowing there's an underlying attitude from which those actions spring, because that underlying attitude will govern a person's conduct under all circumstances, good and bad, prosperous and times of need, times of rejoicing and times of sadness. So when that attitude is underneath those actions, it will prevail. And the beatitudes are really nothing more than eight mindsets.

Eight mindsets. Eight ways of seeing life. And when they're internal, when they're a part of the very fabric of who we are, they show to God that here are people who are marching toward the kingdom of God at the most elementary and at the most fundamental level, a frame of mind, an attitude, a heart. So let's begin our investigation. Matthew chapter 5 is our home base for the sermon.

So obviously it would be good to put a marker in Matthew 5, since that will be where we come back on each transition. As the beatitudes begin, the very first says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now, I don't need to go through with us as an audience the fact that anywhere else in the Gospels, Mark, Luke, and John, we would see kingdom of God.

Matthew's unique approach isn't because he has a different viewpoint of where we're going, but deals with ownership. And so we are speaking of the kingdom of God, and he says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, and if I may take the liberty to do a little altering of Matthew's way of saying things, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

Poor in spirit. What is it? Not the same as being physically poor. Has nothing to do with what you have in your bank account. Has nothing to do with your annual salary. Has nothing to do with whether you're too young to be a wage earner, or you have retired and you're on some form of pension or social security. You can be poor, physically, and not poor in spirit. And you can be tremendously rich, and you can be poor in spirit.

So, poor in spirit is not connected to what you have in your wallet. It's not directly connected to your net worth. Now, generally speaking, based upon what we see in Paul's epistles, we can argue that it can be harder to be poor in spirit and to be physically wealthy.

But you can be physically wealthy and still be genuinely poor in spirit. And you can be physically poor and not remotely poor in spirit. So, if I thoroughly confuse you, that's okay.

David was poor in spirit. I'll give you an individual that we can work with who appears to be a dichotomy. David was poor in spirit.

We really, in this day and time, don't realize how phenomenally wealthy David was. You know, wealth is not a part of David's personality and his profile that is normally focused on in the Bible. Solomon, that's a different story. But David, when you see David's name come forward, you don't normally see dollar signs.

But there's a little telltale place, and I'm not going to turn there. I'll give it to you as a reference. It's 1 Chronicles 22.14. And as I said, there's no need to go there, but I'll give it to you so you have a point of reference. You know that David desired greatly to build God a house, and God said to David, he said, No, you're not going to build a house for me. You're a bloody man, and I will never let you build a house for me. Let your son build it, but you're not allowed. Now, David and God must have had a conversation because God accepted David's contribution to the building of the house. And since monetary differences between Biblical monies and our monies are such that we don't follow it, we don't realize what David gave. He gave a thousand talents of gold, and it measures out the amount of silver that he gave. And I said this was David's contribution in 1 Chronicles 22.14 to the building of the temple. If you take the time to simply take the current value on the spot market of gold and the current value of silver, then you take talents and you convert it into troy ounces, and you do all the mathematics when you're finished. You find that, and I'm not going to take the two wealthiest men in the world right now, but the two wealthiest men who are best known in the world right now. You know, Bill Gates has been in that upper echelon for so long when people talk about richest men in the world. Bill Gates' name is always up there in the top group, and Warren Buffett is another one. Now, Carlos Esalem of Mexico, the telecommunications magnate, is currently the wealthiest man in the world. Bill Gates is worth $81 billion. Or at least he was yesterday. Now, these fellows can lose $100 million here and $100 million there just on the turn of the market. Warren Buffett, yesterday, he was worth $62 billion. David's contribution to the temple, the contribution to the temple, was larger than the total worth of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined. The gold and the silver that God allowed David to give was worth $151 billion. So, David was rich. If that's what he gave as an offering, you'd say, what in the world did he have left over? And obviously it was quite a bit. But David was poor in spirit. So there's a total disconnect between being poor in spirit and poor in the wallet. My first pastor was Mobile, Alabama. At the time, Mobile covered everything from the middle of the Mississippi Gulf Coast between Biloxi and Gulfport, and all the way past the capital of Florida in Tallahassee. Had a part of Mississippi, all of southern Alabama, a little bit of Georgia, and all of the panhandle of Florida. And for five years, I pastored and visited people in those areas, and I became accustomed to a frame of mind that I found very fascinating and very amusing. I met a number of people who were very poor, and they had an affectation. They would talk about being humble. Now, you know, there are parts of the world where the H is dropped off of H words, but it's not normal in America, in the United States. But there was an affectation in that part of the South where people referred to themselves as being humble. And they also referred to themselves as being God's poor.

I found among those people some of the proudest people that I have met in my ministerial career, who had, as the old saying goes, they didn't have two coins to rub together, but they were fiercely proud of being special to God by virtue of the fact they didn't have two coins.

They were not poor in spirit. So ironically, David, who could give a contribution to the temple that was larger than the worth of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined, was a man who was poor in spirit, and a group of impoverished people in the bottom of the South who called themselves God's poor, and called themselves humble, and sometimes humble and proud of it. We're not poor in spirit. Poor in spirit is a mindset.

It doesn't belong to any class of people. It doesn't belong to any gender. It doesn't belong to any age. And it doesn't belong to any economic strata. You see, the spirit of a person who is poor in spirit, I can describe to you best of all by giving you a graphic image. There are charities that advertise in the United States on television on a regular basis. I'm not familiar enough with Canadian television, and not familiar with Australian television at all, so you'll bear with me if you're from Canada or Australia. But there have got to be parallels, because I know the nature of charitable organizations. There are television commercials where they are seeking donations for people primarily in Africa, sometimes in Central America also, to help people who are impoverished. And they will usually show the face of children, young African children or young Central American children. And the young African children that I have seen have had this hollow stare, this look of emptiness, this look of hopelessness, the emaciated body, a head that is disproportionately large because so much of the body mass is not there due to starvation. And those faces depict a spirit that comes closer to defining poor in spirit than anything that I can give you. Because poor in spirit is the property of a person who is hopeless. If it is their own strength, their own might, and their own power that they are looking at to get them somewhere.

Are your bootstraps strong enough that you can pull on them hard enough to get yourself into the kingdom of God? If your answer is no, there's no hope there, you're on the right track. Those who understand their helplessness.

I appreciate the case where somebody came to Christ for healing, and he said, do you have faith? And he said, do you believe? And he said, the Lord help my unbelief. It was interesting that Christ gave him the healing that he asked for. But he was a man who understood his own self, and he said, you know, I want to be where you want me to be, and I'm honest enough in this case to tell you that I am not there, and can you help me get there?

The hopeless, the helpless, the stripped of all pride and vanity. And as I said, the face of a starving African child that is used as the promotional for many of the charitable groups is a face that depicts in physical life where the Spirit has to be in our relationship to God.

Do those who have abandoned their own pride, selfishness, and vanity, they've abandoned their own sense of great personal value, and they can move all of that aside and say, God, without you I'm not going anywhere, without you I am nothing.

They are in the camp of the poor and Spirit. God says, blessed is that individual, I can give that individual my kingdom. You know, the phenomenal contrast when you go back to Ezekiel and Isaiah, the two places that describe Lucifer, his Spirit was exactly the opposite. I will exalt my throne above the stars. I am lifted up. I see my beauty. I see my intelligence. I see my position. I see all of these things. And here was the Spirit being that was dashed down to nothing.

Those who can occupy the opposite frame of mind, God says to those I can give my kingdom.

Matthew 5 and 4 gives the second of the attitudes and the second mindset. Bless are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Mourn what? You know, mourn is a big word. I lived a very sheltered life in terms of the loss of family members from trauma. My grandfather died when I was in high school. My grandmother on the other side of the parents' grandparents died about the same time. And it wasn't until I was in my 60s that my mother and father died, and both of them died of cancer. So it was a time of mourning. And I could say these were times when I am mourning. But here, where it says, bless are they that mourn, it doesn't describe mourning what?

Now, you know, if you had personal wealth in the form of stocks and bonds, and you lived in the United States about feast time in the year 2008, you would have come home from the feast to watch your holdings plummet. And half of what you had, very likely, would have disappeared. Now, if you had holdings in stocks, and you went to the feast, and you came back from the feast, and you had half as much, I expected probably mourn.

But this isn't primarily mourning about yourself.

In Robertson's words, there are comments that Robertson makes about Matthew 5 and 4. And he said there's a certain paradox. He said, the verb is most frequently used in the setuagint of mourning for the dead. And also, for the sorrows and sins of others. Now, we come over into the arena of mourning that Christ is talking about. Sorrowing, or mourning for the sorrows and the sins of others. Two very different categories. But both of them very legitimate categories. To sorrow for other people's, excuse me, to mourn for other people's sorrows, and to mourn for the sins of others. There isn't, in my estimate, no greater place to describe the kind of mourning that is being depicted here in the Beatitudes than to go back to Ezekiel 9.

This has been one of my favorite scriptures for many, many years. And it is a description, I think, that all of us can appreciate. Ezekiel chapter 9.

As is not uncommon in Ezekiel, he has shown pictures, and he has a chance to see what is being described. In Ezekiel chapter 9, in verse 1, it says, Then he called out in my hearing, with a loud voice, saying, That those who have charge over the city draw nigh, each with a deadly weapon in his hand. And suddenly six men came from the direction of the upper gate which faces north, each with his battle axe in his hand. One man among them was clothed with linen, and he had a writer's inkhorn at his side. And they went in and stood before the bronze altar. So it's quite an imposing picture. Six angelic beings with battle axes, described as deadly weapons coming to the city. And among them is an individual in a role that he has a writer's inkhorn. So in the days of old technology, an inkwell, but in the form of a horn. Now the glory of God of Israel had gone up from the carob, where he had been to the threshold of the temple, and he called to the man clothed with linen, who had the writer's inkhorn at his side. So six of them with battle axes, and the one in the linen robe with the writing instruments, God called him forward. And the Lord said to him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within it. And to the others, he said in my hearing, Go after him through the city and kill. Do not let your eyes spare, nor have any pity. Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women, but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark, and begin at my sanctuary. With God the thing that distinguished those whose lives would be spared and preserved from those who would not. And he said, This is indiscriminate. It doesn't matter. Gender or age, go through the city and destroy all, except those that you, with your inkhorn, have marked. And why did he mark them? He marked those who sigh and who cry for the abominations of the land. So as Robertson's words were pointing out when it said that the word mourn in the beatitudes, was really about mourning because of the sorrows of others and for the sins of others.

These people were marked because they sighed and cried for the abominations of the land.

What do you go through mentally when you sigh or cry for the abominations of the land?

You go through both of the definitions that Robertson's gave. When you sigh and cry for the abominations of the land, you have a tender heart toward those who are suffering the consequences. And you have a troubled spirit about the causes that wouldn't be there if people respected and obeyed God. And so at one and the same time, you are mourning for the injury that is done to people, and you are also disgusted at the things that precipitate and cause it.

Ezekiel 8 is a listing of the actions of Israel that provoked God to write the next chapter. Chapter 8, he went through a whole group of things that had brought him to the place of being disgusted with Israel's conduct and bringing them to that particular place.

You know, there are times, and I'll give you an interesting illustration, there are times where we will read through a prophetic place, and there will be a disconnect. The disconnect is, well, that was back in those times, and we have no parallel today. Let me give you one of those that causes that kind of thinking. It's in chapter 8. God was taking Ezekiel through the land and showing him the things that he found contemptible, and contemptible to the place that Ezekiel 9 then brought on the scene six angelic beings with battle axes and the linen-clothed man with ink corn. Verse 13, he said to me, turn again, and you will see greater abominations than they are doing. So he had already shown them abominations. He said, come with me, and I'll show you even greater abominations that they're doing. And so he brought me to the door of the north gate of the Lord's house, and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for tamas. And he said to me, have you seen this poor son of man? Turn again, and I will show you other abominations. Women weeping for tamas. Ancient practice. I marvel every once in a while when I see a Christian commentator who goes counterculture. In other words, he has a theological or religious system under which he lives and operates, and yet when it comes to explaining something, he abandons that and he gives a candid and honest answer that in itself condemns even his own practice. I've just described to you an ancient picture being brought into a room where women were weeping for tamas. I have a copy here of a well-respected modern dictionary of the Bible. Vine's complete expository dictionary of Old and New Testament words. I'm going to read you a comment from Vine. The comment is under the Greek word translated in our translations, cross. And here's his comment. He said, on such malefactors were nailed for execution. Both the noun and the verb stalru, to fasten to a stake or pale, are originally to be distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of a tube-beam cross. The shape of the latter, the tube-beam cross, had its origins in ancient Chaldea and was used as the symbol of the god Tamas, being in the shape of the mystic Tal, the initial of his name. You know when boys or girls wear friendship bracelets or necklaces or insignias and they wear the initial of their loved one? The cross is simply the initial of Tamas. He goes on to say, or let me go back and get a running start, the shape of the latter had its origin on ancient Chaldea and was used as the symbol of the god Tamas, being in the shape of the mystic Tal, the initial of his name, in that country, and in adjacent lands, including Egypt. By the middle of the third century AD, the churches had either departed from or had travestied certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system, pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence, the Tal, or T, in its more frequent form, with the cross piece lowered, was adopted to stand for the cross of Christ. End of quote.

Quotation from a Christian scholar who simply says, as you read Ezekiel chapter 8 verses 13 and 14, that the same abominations are alive and healthy and well, as he said, and among those things which we should mourn. Now, all of us sitting in this room, in fact, I'm sure when the last day or the eighth day comes, it will be woven in somewhere, but all of us have family members who have neither been called, had not been given the opportunity to see or understand in this way. And it is a source of phenomenal delight if God chooses to call them at this time. But it's a certain heaviness that we carry and the wish that we would like all of them to be in this room with us. We'd have to have a bigger room. But we'd like all of them to be in whatever big room it would take to hold everyone that we love, who is an aunt, an uncle, a sister, a brother, a son, or a daughter, whatever connection that causes. And though we don't go around with a long face, it is a heaviness that we do mourn.

When will we be comforted?

Isaiah chapter 40.

You'll recognize Isaiah 40 immediately because of its connection with Handel's Messiah, one of the beautiful tenor pieces from the Messiah. Comfort ye, Isaiah 40, verse 1, comfort ye my people, says your God. Speak comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare is ended and that her iniquity is pardoned.

When will those who mourn be comforted? Isaiah 40, verses 1 and 2 tell you when that comfort comes. Verses 9 and 10, O Zion, you who bring good tidings get up into the high mountain. O Jerusalem, you who bring good tidings lift up your voice with strength. Lift it up. Be not afraid. Say to the cities of Judah, behold your God. Behold, the Lord God shall come with a strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him. Behold, his reward is with him.

When the beatitude says, blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted, brethren, our comfort comes when the kingdom comes. Every single solitary part of this world's current sorrows, every single part of this world's current sins that cause grief to you and to me, we all know as we sit here, will not be resolved until the kingdom comes. And if your comfort is in seeing that change, then your comfort arrives with the kingdom. Matthew 5, 5. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Meekness is a tough quality to grasp. A world that doesn't place a high value on meekness. Again, when my wife and I lived in the South, there was a Southern comedian called Jerry Plour, who was very popular at the time. And I never forgot one of Jerry Plour's comments. He said he played football for one of the teams in Mississippi, and he was a lineman. And he was lined up against a great big lineman from Southern Methodist University, who just stomped all over him. And being a Southern comedian with the color that he had, Jerry Plour, a great beat-tide describe what it was like to pick his face out of the mud with cleat marks all the way down his back. And he finally lamented to this fellow that he was going to a Methodist University, and why was he being so brutal to him? And the lineman from Southern Methodist said to him, don't you know the scripture, the meek shall inherit the earth.

Well, he had his face planted in the earth and mugged from one end to the other for that entire football game, and that was the view of meekness.

As I said, the world doesn't place a high value on meekness. You remember the time just before the crucifixion where Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem, writing on the back of a colt?

And he was described as meek. Come back to Matthew chapter 11.

All of this in the fulfillment of a prophecy. Matthew chapter 11.

Jesus Christ said to his followers in verse 29, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart. The margin says meek. And you will find rest for your souls. You know, when you look at Old Testament personalities, there was not one single solitary, mousy trait in Moses. You wouldn't want to have gotten on the wrong side of Moses. And yet, Numbers 12 verse 3 says Moses was the meekest of men.

And when Jesus Christ said, learn from me, for I am gentle and I am meek. And Moses, who among the Jewish people is probably the greatest person in all of the Old Testament, is described as the meekest of men. There is biblically tremendous value in meekness. So though it may be discounted in society, and in the Jerry Clower spirit, this is a good way to get your face ground in the mud, in the Christian world, meekness is a great value. I appreciate Robertson and Robertson's words. I appreciate his description because I think it captures the essence of it better than anything else that I have read. Robertson calls meekness the gentleness of strength.

I've had in my congregation in the Portland area a man-mountain. And it was amusing watching his children grow up because he produced children mountains. This was a man not only wide, but tall, and no fat, just big. And every time I shook his hand, I felt like a first-grader grabbing the hand of an adult. I'd reach out and grab it, and my hand would disappear in this great, big, huge meek-o-keel. But always a smile on his face, a pleasantness to his personality, a gentleness in his demeanor. And in the spirit of what Robinson describes here, it was easy for me to understand because what has he got to prove? And who has he got to fear? And who's going to get in his way? So, Robertson calls meekness the gentleness of strength, a strength that comes from a deep relationship with God. You see, his is a gentleness of strength because he's just simply a massive man. But we're talking about the strength that is internal in the spirit. So, as Robertson says, it's a strength that comes from a deep relationship with God.

That produces somebody who doesn't have to prove anything.

You know, some of the honoriest and feistiest men are little men. In fact, there's even a term, a little man complex, that describes a little man that's got to prove that I can stand my own. And then you have the gentle giant, who just simply, I don't have anything to prove. Nobody is going to bother me, no one's going to hurt me, no one's going to intimidate me. And so, all of that sloths off, and I can be kind and gentle to people.

God is looking for an inner strength of character. And that inner strength and character marks itself probably as strongly in one area as any. And that is that the person knows his place with God. It's very akin to the first one, where we know our abilities and our liabilities. We know, compared to God, we are a zero, and therefore, we simply start at that particular point. Barnes sees as the ability also to take injury and abuse patiently because we actually believe God will right all wrongs. So, even in your human relations, rather than needing to settle a score, needing to get revenge, needing to make sure that I get my fair share, a person can back away from that and say, I know God is a righteous judge, and he can handle matters better than I. Leave it to him. The meek don't have to get even because they have a trust in God.

One of the parts of the Bible that I enjoy reading, and I won't read it to you, but I will point you to worry, one of the parts of the Bible in this context that I thoroughly enjoy reading is 1 Peter. And I especially like 1 Peter 2. And the reason I like 1 Peter, and especially 1 Peter 2, is because I can sit and read 1 Peter, and I can run the ticker tape. You know, when you watch a television sometimes, and you've got a program on, and then there's a ticker tape running below it with information, you do that with your own mind, don't you? There are times where your mind is one place, but there's also a ticker tape. Well, I have a screen, and I have a ticker tape. The screen is reading 1 Peter. The ticker tape is running the life of Peter and the Gospels simultaneously. And the 1 Peter that I'm reading, and the ticker tape of Peter and the Gospels, are two different human beings. They aren't even related to each other. The impetuous, boisterous, swaggering, I can do it, individual of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, doesn't exist in 1 Peter.

And you had a complete and total 180-degree transformation of the character of the individual. An individual that wouldn't let anybody walk on him in Matthew, walks in detail through all of the authorities that exist in the land, and says, Honor, respect, and obey for the Lord's sake, because Christ demonstrated it. A transfigured man between Gospels and Epistles. And when you read his writings, you see a man who had arrived at the place where he truly was, Meek. Why would the Meek inherit the earth? You know, here is the most blatant example of, I ask you, who's going to be in the kingdom? And of the Beatitudes so far, this is the most blatant, Blessed are the Meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Why are they so qualified? I can put it in a nutshell. Knowing your place, and knowing your place with God, qualifies you as much to rule in the kingdom as any other quality. I thoroughly enjoy the conversation between Abraham and Christ as Christ is heading down to Sodom. Because it's a description of a relationship. I know you, God, well enough that I can come before you and make requests, and I can demonstrate a care and concern for other people, and I know that I'm stepping into areas that don't belong to me, and I can ask your permission, and you will hear me. But I also will respect the boundaries, and I will always let you know I'm not stepping into something impetuously and aerially. You look at the conversations that Moses had with God while he was leading Israel, and you see strong men, but men who never lose track of their place with their God. Who better to inherit the earth? Who better to delegate responsibility and authority to? Who better to give five cities, ten cities? It makes perfect sense that they should inherit the earth. The fourth is Matthew 5 or 6. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Who are those who hunger and thirst? And how will they be filled is the question here. Barnes makes the point that hunger and thirst is symbolic of an ardent desire to see something attained.

Okay. An ardent desire to see something attained. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. So, we're looking at those who have an ardent desire to see righteousness attained.

Okay. Righteousness is a holistic word. Meaning, it encompasses the whole of a godly life.

Last night, Mr. Salomo was referencing, he mentioned 118th Psalm was the pivot point. Middle part of the Bible. And he made the comment that the 119th Psalm was about the law of God. Longest Psalm in the Bible, an acrostic piece of poetry, every single verse contains one form of the word for law. And probably one of the most important verses, 172nd verse of Psalm 119, All thy commandments are righteousness.

When it says, blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled, is there anything that you would like more to see than a world that lives totally by righteousness? In the sermonette, the statement was made that I pray each year that God will protect my property while I'm gone. In a world that is righteousness, you don't have any need to protect your property while you're gone, because nobody will bother you.

The farther you get away from unrighteousness, the more likely it is that when you leave your house, you don't even lock your doors.

And the more you get into unrighteousness, the more likely it is you can't get enough devices to secure your property. I visited a member in Hong Kong one evening. We went to the apartment building they lived in on the ninth floor. There was an attendant in the lobby. You signed in. There was a jailhouse door, meaning the big round bars and the heavy hinges, over the elevator door, which he had to open so that he could push the button to open the door to get in the elevator. On the ninth floor, on their front door, was also one of the reinforced steel doors with the heavy mesh and the heavy bolt. And on the ninth floor, they also had safety bars on their exterior windows.

As they left their apartment, I thought, I don't know that I could live that way. I guarantee you they hunger and thirst after righteousness.

Hungering and thirsting for righteousness is having a deep, deep long end. To see the day when all mankind will, first of all, be dealt with fairly unjustly, but equally, that they will act fairly unjustly.

My wife and I attended for the first time since we lived in the Hall of Moran, which is 15 years now, a neighborhood meeting. There was a code enforcement officer who was speaking. And down the street, there was a neighbor who was very disgruntled because there was a neighbor next to him who was trashing up the lock next to him. The code enforcement officer, in dealing with a complaint, said, you know, we try to get people to comply willingly. Because if we have to go to the place that we file suit, and she looked at the audience and said, if we have to go to the place we file suit, that piece of paper will simply put under the bottom of the stack, and it will probably be 10 years before that complaint will be heard. Because there are so many more cases that are more important than a code violation in that stack, that it will probably take years before they'll ever get far enough down in the stack to look at your complaint.

Now, see, that was an annoyance. Wasn't life threatening? He'll not lose his life. He'll not even lose his property. But he hungers for a righteousness that says, do unto others as you have and do unto you.

Again, the question is, when will those who hunger and thirst for righteousness have that deep, cool glass of water that quenches that thirst? When there's righteousness.

When you look at your neighbors, you look at your community, you look at your newspaper, and all you see is righteousness. I was a Canadian songbird who was always one of my favorites, Anne Murray. One of the songs that she sang is about, have you heard any good news today? And it sings about nobody burning this down and nobody doing this and nobody doing that. It says it sure would be good to hear a little good news. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are hungering for the day when what she sings about does exist and when she sings about what does exist no longer exists. We're halfway through the checklist. As I said, when I asked the question, who is going to be in that kingdom? I said, you don't have to guess. There is a checklist. We've named four kinds of people in this first message, and why it is that God says, I want them in my kingdom. I'll be back up here on the last day to give you the other portion.