Remember Your Why (Part 2)

Beautiful song, beautiful words, beautiful concepts contained therein. Certainly do appreciate that very, very much. Would once again remind everybody that if they have special music they would like to send in. We would love to have the submissions and be able to put them forth and to play them here for services while we're in this virtual space.

It's certainly nice to have the special music. It's wonderful to be able to do so. And it is truly a blessing to be able to enjoy the music that is provided. Well, brethren, a couple of weeks ago, I gave a message that was entitled, Remember Your Why. And in it we discussed this concept of remembering our why as it related to our calling and particularly to our desire to enter God's kingdom. Just kind of by way of reminder because it's been a couple of weeks.

The concept is one that has been coined by Simon Sennick. And he's a gentleman that does work with corporations around mindset. He does work with them around institutional vision and leadership. And he makes the point that in order to best understand this concept of beginning with why, what you want to do is draw a bull's eye on a paper with three rings.

The first innermost ring is the why. The next ring out from that is the how. And then the final ring, which is on the outermost ring of the bull's eye, is the what. And he refers to this as the golden circle. And Simon Sennick, as he discusses these concepts, he says most corporations do a pretty good job of identifying the what.

What they do. That's the product that they sell, the service that they provide. You might say that's their bread and butter. That is what they do. And a number of organizations are able to be able to move beyond their what and be able to identify the processes by which they do it. They're how. And these are the things that make them special or set them apart from others who ultimately do the same thing. But his point is that fewer corporations still are able to identify why they do what they do.

In fact, he asserts that most corporations approach their business model backwards. They begin with what they do. Then they identify how they do it. And finally, they try to move to why, but the result in going backwards is that many corporations never discover their purpose for existing aside from profit and happy shareholders. Which, frankly, isn't a why. It's a what. It's a product. A result. Instead, what Simon Sinek advocate, or advocates, I should say, I tried to say advocates. It's not a word. But what he advocates is that a corporation should consider their why before they consider anything else. Because ultimately, when they know why they do what they do, when they're convicted as to what their beliefs are, what their motivations are, what drives them forward, then naturally the processes and the results, or the how and the what, will follow.

He says, when they know their why, it will guide them forward in their mission and in their values. And so, two Sabbaths ago, I asked you all to reflect upon a question. And that question was, why do you want to be a part of God's kingdom? Why do you want to be a part of God's kingdom? And as we discussed in the first part, you know, of the message, everyone's why is different. Chances are good. They're similar. I mean, chances are very good that they're similar. And chances are good that they revolve around a few kind of central concepts.

But what I didn't want to do in the message was I didn't want to influence your reflection by going through possible answers and examining this aspect of things in the last message. Instead, what I'd like to do today is to take a look at this, to consider the why and our follow-through, and what that looks like as we consider the process and the results, the how and the what, our words, ultimately, and our actions.

Now, as you reflected on this question, and I hope you did, I hope you took the time to really sit down and contemplate it, to really sit down and dig through the layers and peel back the onion, so to speak, to really get to the core of the answer of why you desire to be a part of God's kingdom. But in answering the question, you may have thought about it and answered and responded that you desired to be a part of the solution, that you desired to teach and to instruct people in God's way.

Maybe you desired to experience the joy of the family of God, or to have eternal life in that kingdom. You may have answered that you desired to see and experience a time of peace and prosperity like none other, to be able to truly and viscerally experience the blessings of the millennium. You may have considered and said, you know, I want to be a part of God's kingdom because I love God, and I love his way, and I want to see that way and the knowledge of him poured out upon the earth like the waters of the sea.

Many of these responses that you had likely boiled down to a centralized concept, I mean, really, if you boil them down, many of them likely boiled down to the idea that you wanted the rest of humanity, the rest of this world, to be able to ultimately experience the gift that you have been given now. That they simply have not been given that opportunity at this time, and that you want them to be able to experience it, to be able to see that God's way works, to be able to see that mankind's ways lead to nothing but death and destruction.

But God's way leads to salvation, and it leads to blessings. It leads to a relationship with your Creator. His law of love will govern their lives. His mercy, the joy of his salvation and the prospect of eternal life in his kingdom. That, brethren, is a gift that's been given to you now. Right now, that gift has been provided to you.

And quite frankly, that is a gift that has been given to us, which allows us to view the world with very different eyes. We're going to spend the vast majority of the message today in a single location. That single location is Matthew 5. If you would begin to turn over there, please. We're going to spend our day today digging into one of the foundational pieces of the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes. And I fully recognize, I'm going to just lay this out at the very beginning, each of these concepts could be a sermon in and of itself.

There is so much depth to each of these things, and so much to consider, and so much to think about and meditate on. I really hope that this survey of these things today will inspire you to study them further into the future. The Sermon on the Mount has been described as the essence of Jesus Christ's teachings.

Some have gone as far as describing it as the Magna Carta of the Kingdom of God, or the Manifesto of the King, or if we want to use the analogy that Mr. Buchanan brought out today. Brethren, the Sermon on the Mount is the sheet music from which we're all singing. It is within this section of the Book of Matthew and part of the Book of Luke, it is within this section of Matthew's Gospel where the teachings of Jesus Christ, which were radical at the time and, quite frankly, are equally radical today, were provided to His disciples. Now, some scholars believe that instead of this being kind of a long-winded single sermon in which Jesus taught all of His disciples these things all in one sitting, that this represents a summation of Jesus Christ's teachings to His inner circle.

That these things were uttered over a period of time with His disciples, they were cataloged by Matthew in a single location, while Luke has the vast majority of them in one place, but some of the others kind of sprinkled throughout. It's impossible to know for certain the exact timeframe in which Christ gave these to His disciples, whether it was a single sitting or whether it was in multiple sittings, but one thing is absolutely certain.

These things that are contained in the Sermon on the Mount represent the official teachings and the official doctrines of Jesus Christ. Matthew 5, we'll go ahead and we'll pick it up in verse 1 if you turn over there once again, Matthew 5, and we'll pick it up in verse 1. Matthew 5 and verse 1 gives us a clue as to how and why these are official teachings of Jesus Christ. Matthew 5 and verse 1 says, And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him.

Then He opened His mouth and He taught them, saying... There's two big clues found in this first couple of passages here that the Sermon on the Mount are official teachings, as opposed to just words that He happened to speak to His disciples. And the first of those clues is the fact that Jesus taught them these things while He was seated. Now, it's really easy for us to overlook the significance of that statement and just assume that Christ happened to be reclining with His disciples to shoot the breeze, but that's not the case at all.

You know, this past year, I've had an opportunity to take a weekly Gospels class that is taught by Scott Ashley, and it has been a fantastic opportunity. It really has. In the class, we've delved into the customs and the archaeology and the traditions in order to make the Gospel accounts come alive. And the reality is, we have to recognize, you know, these were things that were spoken in Aramaic to a group of Hebrews, you know, to a group of Jews that were written in Greek and ultimately translated to English.

Now, the core of the concept is always there. You know, Scripture is God-breathed. It is inspired. It is there. But some of the subtle nuances of the passage can be lost in translation, especially as time goes on, and we get further and further away from the, you know, customs of that time. And so, examining things in the context of the Scripture is essential. And when we do that with this section of passage, which we've done recently in the class, there are certain interesting aspects of it that were brought out that I didn't realize. Additionally, if you take a look at these passages through the lens of William Barkley's daily Study Bible commentary, it's extremely helpful because a lot of the Greek language that's used throughout has certain nuances that is just not found in the English.

And so, first off, we want to recognize these things that Matthew recorded. They are official teachings of Jesus Christ. And I say official in quotes. They are official teachings. He sat when he gave these teachings. In Jewish custom, when a rabbi wished to provide an official teaching, they sat down to do so. Now, that doesn't mean that they didn't also teach and provide commentary while they were standing up. It doesn't mean they didn't do it while they were walking down the road. But the custom that existed at that time, in the time of Christ, was that the rabbi would purposefully be seated when official teaching was to be given.

And that signaled the disciples that this was something official. That signaled to the disciples that they needed to pay attention to what would come next. A number of archaeologists have actually uncovered, throughout Judea and some of the excavated synagogues, chairs ultimately that are carved that bear the inscription, Moses Seat, in Hebrew.

From Scripture, we know Christ acknowledged the scribes in the Pharisees sat in Moses Seat. They sat in chairs at the synagogue. They taught the people, and the teachings they provided from the seat were perceived to be authoritative and binding. They were sitting when they delivered these things in the seat, which provided the authority to bind these things. Now, there were examples of this occurring throughout Scripture as well. In fact, we see it in Christ's life also.

In fact, turn over to Luke 4. I want to just examine one of these, because I want to show you that this phrase and the way that Matthew wrote it was intentional. It wasn't just something that he happened to write, oh, and then Christ reclined. This was intentional, and he did it on purpose. He did it on purpose so that the people would recognize and the people would understand afterwards that they ultimately, that these things were official and that these things were very important information to go through and look at.

I'm getting a message here that says my internet may have gone out. I don't have a good answer. As far as I know, the internet hasn't gone out. As far as I'm aware, I still have it. So hopefully those of you that are out there are still getting the message and are still able to go through and be able to get that information. But we have examples of this occurring in Christ's life. Let's look at Luke 4 and verse 16.

In Luke 4 and verse 16, we see an instance of Christ in a synagogue. It's his first official public teaching. And ultimately, the understanding of this particular custom will help us to understand why it was so offensive to those who were gathered in the synagogue at that time. Why that was something that was so offensive to them. So Luke 14, or 14, I'm sorry, Luke 4 and verse 16, we'll go ahead and pick it up there. Luke 4 and verse 16, yeah, it sounds like we're still good. Hopefully everybody's still getting this. It sounds like we're still good.

I got a couple messages from folks, you know, the one time that I'll take a look at texts when they come in, making sure that things are good. But yeah, it's one of those things where many of you were doing everything on this end. So in the middle of things, it's hard to check the watch and check the phone sometimes. Luke 4 and verse 16 said, so he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. So he's returned now to his hometown. He's returned to where he was raised. And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read.

So Christ has entered the synagogue, as was his custom. He went to synagogue on the Sabbath. He stood up to read. He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, verse 17, and when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written. Verse 18, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

So he stood up. He read a section from Isaiah 61. He stood up. He read this section. And in verse 20, notice what it says. Then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And it says, the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him. Why? Why were they fixed on him? Because he had sat. And at that point, he was about to provide official commentary. While he stood, he was reading the hafterer portion of the service, but now that he was sitting, he was going to comment on it, and they were all ears.

Now, of course, you think about this. The fact that this was the passage that was up at that point in time, the timing and the planning that went into it on God's end is simply mind-boggling. That Christ would be in this place at this time. This is the reading that was that day. You know, some of those readings were prescriptive. Some of those readings were read at certain times. But this is a section where he read through Isaiah 61, which would have been known to the Jews at that time as being messianic in origin.

We know Messiah means anointed one. He read this prophetic portion, and then he sat down. All the eyes were fixed on him, and they waited for his official teaching, and he uttered the next words in verse 21 while seated, and he began to say to them, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Of course, the crowd came unglued as he went on. The home crowd got more and more hostile. They questioned who he was to claim such things.

Isn't this Joseph's son? Don't we know him and his family? He went on, and he laid bare their lack of faith, their unwillingness to accept the prophets, and they grew incredibly angry, dragging him from the synagogue by force to the brow of a cliff on a hill that they might throw him off of it to kill him. But he managed to escape through the crowd. He taught officially from that chair that he was the figure identified in Isaiah 61, that he had come to preach the gospel to the poor, that he was sent to heal the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who were oppressed to declare the acceptable year of the Lord, and that he was the Messiah of whom Isaiah spoke.

Another example of this can be found in Mark 9, verse 35. We won't turn there. You can jot it in your notes. But in that passage, Christ called the twelve. He sat down, and it specifically records that he sat down, and then he taught them on the importance of servitude. In another location in Matthew 13, he sat to deliver the parable of the sower.

And then in Matthew 26, he reminded those who came to arrest him in his final night that he sat daily with them in the temple teaching, and yet they didn't come to grab him then. The act of sitting down in Jewish custom indicated an authoritativeness to the teaching that was to follow. Now, we do things opposite in the church. We stand up to deliver most of our things. Though for the last twelve weeks we've been seated, that doesn't mean that anything you've heard over the last twelve weeks is anything more authoritative than before.

But let's go ahead and turn back to Matthew 5. Hopefully you left a bookmark there in Matthew 5. Matthew 5, we'll go back. We'll see. Again, Matthew records these things purposefully. Because Matthew knew what it meant. He knew what it meant for him to sit down. Verse 5, or verse 5, verse 1 once again of Matthew 5, "...and seeing the multitudes he went up to a mountain, or on a mountain, and when he was seated, his disciples came to him, and then he opened his mouth and taught them, saying..." The second clue, we won't take the extra time to examine it, but the phrase, "...he opened his mouth," in Matthew 5, verse 2, is also a phrase that was used frequently to describe an important utterance was to follow.

That that was something that was to be noted. Acts 8, Acts 10 both make this point as well. Philip opened his mouth. This phrase is found in other places also that indicate that these things are going to be an authoritative utterance. And so Matthew, who was well versed in these concepts, is purposefully taking the time in the way that he wrote his gospel, describing that Christ sat to deliver the words of the Sermon on the Mount, and that he opened his mouth to let the readers know that what follows and what is going to follow is official teaching of Jesus Christ.

That they are the revelation of the mind and the heart of Messiah. Now, each of these phrases that we see in the Beatitudes begins with a common phrase that would have been understood by the people of that time, and recognized as a phraseology of a number of passages that are found in the Psalms and in the Proverbs.

Again, these are spoken in Aramaic, but there's a phrase in Aramaic that is similar to that in Hebrew, which is, and essentially it means, Notice in the translation in your Bible, the word, the word, is in italics. The verb isn't present in the original language. So it's important to consider these phrases that we're going to look at. They're not just promises of a future blessing. They're promises of a blessing now, today, for those who follow these teachings. In fact, they're not just a recognition of a promise of blessing. They're a congratulation to those who are called now. Oh, the blessedness of the one who follows Jesus Christ and who exhibits these attitudes in their lives today.

These are the things which will make them happy, which will make them content in life. So with that preface, let's dig in. Verse 3. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Greeks had a couple of words that were used to describe poverty. And while some of them describe what we would actually consider nowadays to be the middle class, people who had to work for their living. Now, they're obviously contrasting it with individuals who are wealthy who did not need to work for their living.

So a person who actually had to work for their living in the Greek world was considered poor, because they didn't have the wealth that someone who did not have to work for their living did not have. But they had another word that described poor and poverty as absolute destitution.

A crouching and cowering poverty of a person who has been beaten to their knees. And it's this Greek word that is chosen here to describe being poor in spirit. The word that describes absolute destitute poverty. This person in this situation has no choice but to cry out to God. Now, we know Christ isn't talking about a physical poverty here. He's talking about a poverty of spirit. But implicit in this is the recognition that our earthly possessions mean nothing, and that God in His way means everything.

And so, again, while it's not describing abject physical poverty, there is a recognition of priority that's important to note here. William Barkley writes, he says, He goes on to say, He says, So in that sense, it all begins here. It begins with a recognition of our own utter inability to help ourselves, and a leaning into trust and to obey God, not placing our trust in our own material possessions, our abilities, or the abilities of other.

Putting our trust in others, putting our trust in our government or our human politicians and policies. We must learn to trust what God has said. Frankly, whether we agree with Him or not, and obey implicitly. And when we do, when we do these things, when we reach that point where our spirit is poor in this way, we're promised the Kingdom of God.

On to verse 4, You know, similar again to the Greek word used for poverty, the word chosen here for mourn is the deepest level of mourning that can be described in the Greek language. It's not a sort of mourning. It is absolute rip your clothing, fall to the ground mourning. In fact, it's the word that was chosen in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament in Genesis, when Jacob believed that his beloved son Joseph was dead. Think back to that account and think of the way that Jacob responded. It is that Greek word that they chose to represent that level of mourning, and it's the same word that's used here.

It's representative of being just absolutely gutted over something. Now, it seems kind of contradictory at first when we think about it to consider mourning to be a blessing. Obviously, when we're mourning, we don't feel blessed when we grieve in the least bit. We don't feel blessed at all. Grief is hard. Mourning is hard. But there's benefits that come from sorrow.

We talked about it last week briefly that there are certain aspects of patience and endurance, the Greek word hoopomone, that can only come through trial and difficulty. They can only be built through challenge and through stress in our lives. It can't be built in any other way.

Sorrow and grief, if you consider the benefits and the results of sorrow and grief, it can result in deep introspection about one's place in life. I don't know how many of you recognize this, but as you lose someone you love, you end up in a place where you often stop and think. It forces you to consider your own mortality. It forces you to consider your priorities and that which is truly important.

And there's times where that sorrow and that grief can lead to very deep introspection about a person's place in life. Grief and sorrow can also help us to build empathy towards others who are experiencing the same thing. And sorrow and grief will bring about growth if we allow it to change us. As an example of this, godly sorrow is what brings us to repentance. That we come to the understanding that we have deeply grieved God as a result of our actions contrary to His will and His way.

That conviction, either through His Spirit or His Word, should drive us to our knees in sorrow. And we should be striving to approach things differently going forward. That's the attitude that we should be developing. But all too often in this life we justify our position. We decide that the situation warranted the response, so it's acceptable. Or we determine that it's really not that big of a deal. Or we claim, well, that's just who I am.

People are just going to have to live with it. When we came to God to accept His covenant of baptism, we promised to bury that person. We promised to bury them. We promised to obey, and we promised to align ourselves with God, becoming more like Him. 2 Corinthians 1 and verse 3. You can jot it down in your notes. We won't turn there. But in 2 Corinthians 1 and verse 3, God is described as the God of all comfort. The God of all comfort. That He provides us with the comfort that we need in times of crisis. And just like the first beatitude that we examine, being poor in spirit, being destitute in spirit, so to speak, mourning in this way and in this fashion helps us to recognize our need for God, and for the comfort that only He can provide.

God's comfort heals us. It provides peace in times of crisis. It enables us to be able to approach God with the appropriate frame of mind and with us in the appropriate place. Let's take a look at verse 5. It says, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. You know the word that's translated meek in the Greek language has a couple of contexts.

One of them, Aristotle, actually used to describe an in-between of two extremes. On one hand, you have the person who doesn't get angry for any reason, even when he should be morally outraged, you know, based on circumstances. So you got, on one hand, somebody who doesn't, is completely unruffled, completely and totally unruffled, even though they probably should be ruffled by certain things. On the other hand, you have an individual who hops from outrage to outrage to outrage.

Aristotle used this word for meekness, préotes, as the in-between of these two extremes. An even-keeledness, if you will. An even-keeledness. That a person is even-keeled. Now, interestingly, the other context of the same word is that of an animal who has been domesticated and has learned to obey commands. So this particular beatitude is describing the blessedness of a man who has brought himself under control, who controls his own thoughts, his own impulses, and is willing to obey the instructions of his God.

And so within this attitude of humility, or of meekness, is a humility that God can work with, and ultimately a removal of the pride that leads us individually to believe that we have all the answers. The promise of God is that the meek, those who display these attitudes, shall inherit the earth and ultimately the kingdom of God that he is bringing to it. Now, these individuals control their impulses, they control their actions, they consider the implications of the actions they take before they make the calculated decision to make them.

Now, with all of that said, I want to make this abundantly clear. Meekness is not synonymous to weakness. Meekness is not weakness. Sometimes we consider this word, we think of meekness as kind of a person who's like a kind of milquetoast type attitude, where someone just allows themselves to be walked all over, and we know that isn't the case. Moses was described as one of the meekest men to walk the face of the earth. He wasn't spineless. He stood up for things. He became angry at times. The importance is knowing the right times to become angry, and the wrong times to become angry, as Moses himself discovered.

There are hills that are absolutely worth dying on, and there are hills upon which we choose to die sometimes that were not worth the fight. The characteristic of meekness is knowing the difference, and having the wisdom to know the difference, to stand up when it warrants, but not to be outraged by everything that comes across the table. Verse 6 says, There are times in our lives where we experience incredible hunger or thirst.

Often after we fasted, or when we've worked outside on a really hot and dry day, we need water bad. You think about just how good that water tastes after a hot and dry and dusty day. After a fast, we might be so lightheaded that we need food, and we use words to describe it. We say, I'm parched. I'm famished. But have we ever experienced true starvation?

Or the near-death experience of dehydration? Maybe you have. I'll have to say, in my own experience and in my own life, I've not. I've done some extended fasts, and I've felt quite hungry and thirsty as a result of those things. But under controlled circumstances, they were all done under controlled circumstances where I knew I could partake of food and water at any point in time. They didn't have the urgency of not knowing whether there's food or water to come around the next corner.

But it's this desire of which this attitude speaks. Do we desire righteousness as a starving man desires food and drink? Or do we only sort of desire it? Again, I use William Barkley's Study Bible in much of this because he does a fantastic job of analyzing the Greek language in this section. And the Greek is very telling in this particular passage. And this is going to be a little bit...

some of you may begin to snore here because it's a little bit of a grammar thing, and I'm not going to dig super into the details here. But what would ordinarily follow the words hunger and thirst in Greek would be a genitive case. In English, that's like the word of.

So which when that phrase were translated into English in Greek, if you were to say, I am hungry for bread, it would say, I hunger for of bread. In English, it doesn't really make sense because it's difficult to express. But typically, in Greek, the genitive which follows hunger and thirst is a partitive genitive. A partitive genitive which expresses a relationship of a part to the whole. By expressing it in this way, it indicates that an individual is hungry for a piece of bread or thirsty for a drink of water.

It indicates that this person desires a part of the whole. Now, abnormally, but I want you to recognize, absolutely purposeful in the way that it was written. In this passage, righteousness is not in the partitive genitive. It is in the accusative tense, which doesn't indicate a part of the whole. It indicates the whole, the entire thing. So, a person who was to be saying it in the accusative would be saying, I want the entire loaf of bread.

I want all the water in the tank. In the accusative, this is saying, blessed is the individual who hungers and thirsts for complete righteousness. Not partial righteousness, not a little righteousness, but for complete righteousness. Can we say that about ourselves? Can we say that we hunger and we thirst like a starving man hungers and thirsts for complete righteousness? Do we think, do we speak, and do we act in this fashion that we are seeking complete righteousness?

Verse 7 says, blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Mercy is one of those concepts that's fascinating, and again, one that could be an entire series of messages in its own right. We know that it ultimately extends from God. We know that it's ultimately from His Spirit, because mercy is not a natural human desire. Our natural human desire is for justice. When we've been wronged, we want justice. Of course, when we wrong someone else, it's kind of the interesting thing, when we wrong someone else, well, that's when we want mercy. But if somebody wrongs us, we want justice. We want that person to get their just desserts. Mercy, at its core, is a type of forgiveness, and it's a forgiveness that's extended to someone when it's unmerited, when they absolutely deserve what they receive. But instead, in mercy and in grace, the punishment or the consequences withheld, and their act is forgiven. James 2, verse 13, again, reference, James echoes Christ's statement here that if we refuse to show mercy to others, that we will not receive mercy in return. James goes on to say that mercy triumphs over judgment, but it's important to recognize that receiving mercy is conditional upon our willingness to grant it to others. Christ telling his disciples here to be rich in mercy, to be rich in forgiveness, to approach their lives with a merciful attitude towards those around them. But it's even more than that. The Hebrew concept of mercy goes back to the word chased. Again, this teaching, the way that these things were provided, were originally in Aramaic, and this concept of chased is a connection between Hebrew and Aramaic. The concept brings to mind the idea of seeing things through the eyes of someone else, coming to the point that we can see, that we can think, and we can feel the way that someone else does. And in doing so, when we understand them, when we know them, we're able to forgive. We're able to be merciful towards the other person because we understand them. We understand where they're coming from, and we can essentially recognize the reasons why they did what they did.

Our modern vernacular describes this as walking a mile in someone else's shoes.

This degree of sympathy enables us to understand the things that others experience, and to approach them with very different eyes. To be able to approach that individual with understanding, with sympathy, with comfort, with mercy, with forgiveness, so that we can help, and so that we can meet them where they are and work to lead them to Christ. Mercy is a crucial component of the aspect, but it has to be purposeful. It has to be purposeful. We have to take that step. We have to be willing to step out and show mercy, to show forgiveness. Sadly, today, you look at the world around us, mercy is in short supply. When you look at society around us, judgment is the immediate response. All it takes is to watch, as Mr. Buchanan mentioned in the sermon, all it takes is 10 minutes of a news broadcast or a quick scroll of your newsfeed on Choose Your Social Media Platform. You will see a place where motives have been attributed to someone based on something that they said that cannot be proven.

Judgment is the way of the world. And it's really easy to fall into that trap. It's really easy to fall into that trap. It's a lot harder to take the time to see it through someone else's eyes. Yet, that is the blessedness of being a Christian, being called to be merciful and sympathetic and understanding, not attributing motive but giving the benefit of the doubt. We could all, myself included, do better in this aspect of our lives. Must be merciful. Verse 8, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. The Greek word here for pure is katharos. Greek word is katharos. And it's used to describe purity in this particular beatitude. And it can be used in a lot of different ways in the Greek language. It can be used to describe the concept of clean. When you wash soiled clothes, the end result is katharos. They're no longer clean, or they're no longer soiled, they're clean. It can be used to describe corn or grain, which has been winnowed. And the chaff has been removed, so it's just the corn or just the grain now. That can be katharos. It's been used at times in Greek literature to describe a group of soldiers which have been purged of their discontented and unruly and inefficient soldiers, leaving only the most elite of warriors. That's also katharos. Now, the word is often accompanied by another word, akaratos, which implies something that's unadulterated. Milk that is free of water, for example, or metal that is free of dross. So the word itself implies a heart that is free of adulteration. A heart that is pure and clean, with the chaff or the dross removed. Might say a heart in which only the good and the purer remains. It's an incredibly hard-hitting beatitude. Because when we reflect on our own lives, is our heart pure?

Is it clean?

Has all the chaff, all the rough edges of our life, all the things that are not a part of the final product, have those been removed? Or are they actively in the process of being removed in order to purify our heart? Or do we find ourselves right in line with the rest of the world? Telling ourselves, I'm good, mostly. I'm doing better than the vast majority, so good enough? Is it? Is it good enough?

Or does an aspect of living God's kingdom on this earth, in accordance with Christ's teachings, require us to do everything that we can in our power to remain unadulterated? To live our lives in such a way to avoid the contamination of the world's attitudes? These are God's attitudes, and they are in sharp contrast to the attitudes of the world around us. Verse 9, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. The Hebrew notion of the concept of peace is different than we consider it in English. In English, the notion of peace is an absence of conflict. Peace exists if there is no conflict. That's our understanding of the concept of peace. But in Hebrew, the concept of peace brings with it the importance of the presence of all good things as well. So when a person wished another person shalom, wished them peace, he wasn't simply wishing for an absence of conflict. He was wishing for the outpouring of positive things as well.

You also note that the terminology as it's written is peacemakers that are blessed. It implies an active role. It implies a role in which people are making attempts at making peace and solving the issues which men face. The conflicts and the struggles which come about as a result of bitterness and strife, and the person who makes peace with others or between others is doing the work of God, as God is a God of peace. Barkley records the following. He says, But there's another meaning for this word peace. It's a meaning upon which the Jewish rabbis loved to dwell, and it is almost certainly the meaning which Jesus had in his mind. The Jewish rabbis held that the highest task which a man can perform is to establish right relationships between man and man. That is what Jesus means. There are people who are always storm centers of trouble and bitterness and strife. Wherever they are, they are either involved in corals themselves or the cause of corals between others. They are troublemakers. There are people like that in almost every society and every church, and such people are doing the devil's own work. On the other hand, thank God, there are people in whose presence bitterness cannot live, people who bridge the gulfs and heal the breaches and sweeten the bitterness. Such people are doing a godlike work, for it is the great purpose of God to bring peace between man and himself and between man and man. The man who divides men is doing the devil's work. The man who unites men is doing God's work. Which man are we? Which man am I? Are we the man who makes peace, or are we the man who stirs up trouble? Brother, it's a question we need to ask ourselves. Are we peacemakers? Are we fulfilling this attitude and this role and this characteristic of God? Finally, verses 10-12, it says, For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. The vast majority of the world around us cannot and will not accept the kingdom of God at this time. When we do these things, when we live our lives in this way, when we go back and we look at all the aspects of these beatitudes, when we live our life with these characteristics in place, they will identify us as followers of Jesus Christ. And, frankly, brethren, that will, at some point in time in the future, have consequences for us. There will be a price to pay for our commitment to God. And as we talked about in the Bible study Last Sabbath, before we even enter into that covenant, we count the costs. We consider the price and we conclude our willingness to pay it whatever it might be. Christ takes the final few passages of the beatitudes here at the beginning of this Sermon on the Mount to let His disciples know that those who endure this persecution, for righteousness' sake, are blessed. But it's incredibly important to recognize sometimes we endure persecution as a result of our own words and actions. When we allow our humanity to get in the way, and we receive consequences for our words and our actions, these things have nothing to do with living this way of life. It's because we did or said something out of our own carnality, and there are consequences for those actions. It's important to note it's not the same thing. We can't go out and say or do horrible things to people, and when they respond in kind, claim that we're being persecuted.

We can't go out and post false information on the Internet, have it taken down by the provider, and then claim we're being persecuted. The persecution that is referred to here is a persecution that comes from living these attitudes and this way of life. We're being poor in spirit and mourning, exhibiting weakness.

In hungering and thirsting for righteousness, in extending mercy, in having a purity of heart, and being peacemakers. Because in doing all of these things, His disciples would be identified as followers of Him. Christ tells them that persecution that they would experience would be because of Him, because of the world's hatred for Him and for His way. But all of these blessings, all of these promises, possessing the Kingdom of God, being provided and promised the Kingdom of God to possess it. A promise of comfort, of inheriting the earth, being filled with the comfort and love of God, being filled with righteousness, obtaining mercy, of seeing God, of becoming sons and daughters of God. All these promises are part of a whole package. These Beatitudes are a series of attitudes and concepts that relate and illustrate the characteristics of the Kingdom of God here on this earth. You might say they're the Kingdom Attitudes, if you will. On the other hand, the opposite of these attitudes are what humanity strives for. Ego, self-righteousness, pride, worldly comfort, impatience and aggressiveness, hungering and thirsting for everything but righteousness. Ego, self-righteousness, justice and vindication and revenge, operating with ulterior motives out of an impure heart, warmongering and strife. Christ's point to the disciples in this preamble to the Sermon on the Mount was that true happiness, true godliness, meant thinking differently. It meant looking at the world in a different way, with a different focus than what the prevailing wisdom of the day taught.

When we considered the reason why we desired to be a part of God's Kingdom, chances are good that your response revolved around desiring to help others to understand the way of God, to be able to give them what you've been given, to help them to understand that there's a better way and a hope for the future. Brethren, what's stopping you now? If that's our why, if that's our purpose, if that's the motivation and the desire which guides us, then why not now?

Why not let our actions and our attitudes and our characteristics now send that message and teach and help now to provide some hope to this world that does not have it?

Why not show this world through our words and our actions? Through a poor and a contrite heart? Through a poor and a contrite spirit, I should say? Through a mournful heart that just aches for the ills of this word? Through an attitude of meekness that is balanced and difficult to disturb? Why not show a hunger and a thirst for complete righteousness and an attitude that comes from seeking that righteousness, extending mercy and extending forgiveness, purity of thought, of actions and of words? A desire to make peace and calm and settle strife rather than contribute to it? A humble willingness to accept the persecution and the hatred that comes hand in hand with living this way? There are times, and there will be a time in the future, in which we will be persecuted, which we will receive these things that are coming hand in hand with living in this way. And we will be brought before magistrates, and we will be brought before ruling powers will be arrested. Brethren, when the court looks back over the record of your life, of your words, and of your actions, when you stand accused of being a Christian, will there be enough evidence in your life to convict you? You know, these things contained in the Sermon on the Mount were given to Christ's disciples. They were official teachings of Jesus Christ. They were radical then, and they are radical now. They and the teachings that follow in the Sermon on the Mount form a core of what it means to follow Jesus Christ. And as a result, we can't cherry-pick the ones we like and the ones we don't. It's all or nothing. I'd like all of us to take a moment this week to sit down and contemplatively read the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5, Matthew 6, Matthew 7. I am assigning it as homework. So, as you read through it, as you consider it, reflect on your application of these things. Consider them in your own life. Reflect on the presence of these attitudes in your life and whether you're living that mindset of the Kingdom now or not. We know that the how and the what will follow the definition of our why. Our why defines for us our purpose and it guides us towards the goals that we have set. And as we are challenged by the events of this life and by the polls of our adversary, maintaining course and remembering our why.

Alright, well, brethren, I appreciate very much your...