Introduction
Let me begin with a discipleship question: will we trust and obey Jesus in the real decisions of everyday life? Christ forms us through truth received, repentance practiced, and obedience lived out.
Main Points
Grace and Justification
all right so you guys are doing uh summer on the mount uh summer on the mount series uh i kind of had something i was praying about think about it i come and then they sprung it on me again that i had an assigned teaching uh and i and then it was like yeah uh the beatitudes i'm like oh something easy simple no big deal so uh yeah just the greatest sermon ever uh taught spoken preached um you know if the sermon on the mount were a meal it would be an italian meal uh i don't know if any of you are familiar i wasn't familiar with italian mills until i got there and the first time i sat down with our landlords we could barely speak a word of english that they are italian they could not speak a word of english and they set us down to a meal me and my wife and they had this amazing lasagna like you know what i'm saying when i say lasagna like that has got to be one of my favorite meals on the planet well it's italian mama home cooked lasagna one of the best i had ever eaten and time eating and they're like you want some more and i'm like of course you know and they're bringing and then so i'm stuffed and then they're like okay and they clear the plates and they get ready to bring in the second course which is the meat course you know so they're just getting started and i'm sitting there thinking oh no so now as a kind of more acclimated roman i typically kind of ask if they offer me seconds of the pasta i always say is there going to be a meat dish and if they say yes i'm like no i'm good i'm good sermon on the mount though if it were to be a meal it would be an italian meal you would get the premo the first that would be the lasagna the baked lasagna you'd get the second the meat and potatoes and you would finish it off with a delicious tiramisu and here you have these eight attitudes the bee attitudes they're not the dew attitudes they're the bee attitudes it's not something that you strive to attain and accomplish to obtain something from god to get saved but instead it's just something that you are because you're born again because you abide in the vine there are these natural ways of thinking and outflows from your life that reflect as tucker even shared this idea you know the constitution of christianity the very things that the values of god and of his kingdom these are kind of the what ought to be in your heart attitudes you know not something like oh man i gotta get uh i gotta become more meek here it's like no meekness should be a part of the process and it is a process these are not moralistic behaviors but the thing here that we see in verse three is uh here he says blessed are you if you have these attitudes uh kind of bearing out in your life and the word blessed here is a word makarios and the greek it's happy it's supremely blessed and what i want to point out to you as we get moving into this is that i think sometimes in christianity especially in what we think is balanced christianity calvary chapel kind of thing trying to strike a balance between the word and the life of the spirit uh sometimes we kind of get this pharisaical kind of mentality like oh you know god doesn't want you to be happy you know and it's like nothing could be further from the truth uh god's ultimate goal is not our happiness it is holiness he's transforming us into the image of his son jesus christ but god does want us to be happy not in the american sense not the american cultural sense you know like if i get a boat if i get that house if i get a new phone i'll be happy but it's more this rich deep blessed um supreme happiness we might call it joy it has nothing to do with circumstances or luck but i just want you to know this morning that god wants you to be blessed he wants you to be happy so let's get into these you know tucker kind of touched on the first two um the poor in spirit and those who uh mourn uh what i want you to understand too before we get moving here is that you kind of have the condition or the attitude which would be you know the poor in spirit and then you have the reward which is what happens when you're walking in these kinds of attitudes how do you become why are you blessed why are you happy why are you so content and so the poor in spirit would be the condition and that was that desperate brokenness the bankruptcy over uh self and sin coming to the realization that i have nothing i am nothing i need someone i need something i need god and over my brokenness i then find god i repent i become born again the spirit dwells in me and now i've inherited this kingdom and so you see these paradoxes right you see to be rich in the kingdom you gotta first be poor so the poor become the rich the beggars become the heirs those who mourn if you come to that brokenness if you come to the darkness of self and pride and life apart from jesus christ you will weep if you get to see that about yourself just how ugly it is how selfish it is how destructive it is and especially in light of his goodness and his glory and his kindness and his love and his sacrifice and these kinds of things then you will end up weeping and mourning and so you have this uh broken heart over your sinful condition and yet what's the reward you will be comforted you don't just get the comfort of hey somehow that bill got paid or whatever it is you know like phew you get the comfort of god you get the comfort of the god who is the god of all comfort and i can assure you as one who's been through many grievous experiences in my life even as a missionary uh many people i lost a couple of brothers uh way before their years should have ended that kind of a thing many people in my family dear to me and near to me nonetheless whatever the brokenness is if it's over your own sin your own self or uh over the world the condition of the world you know once your eyes get open once you step into this kingdom you're not so uh focused in on yourself and lost in self and you begin to open up your eyes and see the destruction and the brokenness around you and the need for um deliverance and the need for salvation and the need for comfort uh to others around you that also brings about this kind of mourning but uh once you've been comforted with it what does the apostle paul say in ii corinthians chapter 1 now we can comfort others with that same comfort with which we have been comforted so we're going to look at verses 5-7 blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled and blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy and if we get to all three of those it will be a miracle of god uh so yeah you know i'm gonna be heavy on the front end and probably super fast on the back end so buckle up and get ready that's my typical style and i've tried to break it many for years here but somehow i just say okay god just somehow use it by your mercy anyways uh first one here the blessed are the meek they will inherit the earth the condition or the attitude is meekness you have the greek word prous it means kindness of spirit mildness of disposition the quality of being quiet or patient in nature mild moderate submissive it speaks about a willingness to be submitted to authority we're not talking about weakness here don't confuse weakness with meekness but rather we're talking about power under control or strength under constraint it's a sort of choosing to hold back even though you have the power to act um you know i was watching a thing recently am i allowed to wander here tucker i felt a little stuck to the pulpit there for a minute but i'm gonna break out here last time they put a mic up here and i was stuck i was like oh gosh i'm stuck and then the lights i'm not used to this i'm used to a little church where we're all kind of huddled up together but um yeah i was watching this video any wrestlers in the house greatest sport ever on the planet right good to see that hand back there i see that hand tommy v he was a big wrestler as well i was a wrestler uh i saw this video of a state champion high school wrestler he was on his way to another state title he was wrestling a kid that was very um equal to him inability he was losing and the kid got hurt and this kid this returning champion he forfeited the match at that point because he felt he was beating me he was winning so the kid got hurt that meant that he could have taken advantage and really destroyed the dude but instead he held back he pulled back that's meekness that's a good picture of meekness you always have the image of the wild horse being brought under restraint if you take a wild horse a wild stallion you're never going to want to get on that bad boy you're never going to want to you know just try to take it for a ride i grew up in idaho here for a couple years when i was a kid and we did try to ride the ponies like it's like i don't care if they block or rock you know look at how bad can it hurt i'm gonna fall from you know this height or whatever but you know you don't ever want to just step in and hop on a horse that is not broke or broken and so here the idea is you have this power that has been trained or brought under restraint and don't let the idea or the word brokenness escape you know we've come from being poor in spirit broken to then mourning and receiving comfort and now we've come to this place of meekness you know the wildness in us has been broken and so now we know better who we are and we don't have to go wild we don't have to work so hard at proving ourselves and knocking down others to lift ourselves up and these kind of survival tactics of the flesh to kind of gain approval these kinds of things but rather now i'm accepted by god approved i know who i am i know where i'm going i often think you know you ever see these kind of um images where like you get the street punk he runs up to the ufc fighter like he's been drinking or something you know and he's like you want a piece of me man you know and it's like oh he doesn't even know who he's you know getting in the face of here and yet maybe the ufc fighters just kind of like oh hey sorry i didn't mean to offend you or disturb you or get in your way you know what i mean there's this kind of and he knows the ufc fighter right he knows dude i could destroy you like in five seconds i could end your life put you in a hospital you know and shut your mouth but meekness power under control spurgeon said something about this value this attitude he said charles hayden spurgeon he said there is something positive in it concerning virtue the first two speaking of porn spirits and mourning he said the first two are rather expressive of deficiency right it's pointing out you're in a bad condition you're broken you're bankrupt you're empty you're desperate you're weeping you're mourning uh he points out that these are expressing deficiency but he says but here there is something supplied a man is poor in spirit that is he feels that he lacks a thousand things that he ought to possess the man mourns that is he laments over his state of spiritual poverty but now there is something really given to him by the grace of god not a negative quality but a positive proof of the work of the holy spirit within his soul and then he finishes out his thought by saying although he is sinking concerning personal humiliation he becomes gracious that's a nice image of meekness is coming out of that insanity coming out of that brokenness coming out of that morning receiving the kingdom receiving the comfort and then being like grace is upon me in the old testament the bible says that moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth numbers chapter 12 verse 3 why well you know the guy only did like miracles like you know plagues all over egypt going up against the pharaoh uh opening up a sea you know i don't know if any of you have tried that lately but you know that's pretty impressive lift up the stick yes you know i wish i would have had that coming into the atlanta airport the other day i can assure you customs was brutal um especially in the era of kovid already it's a nightmare and then you add this on it and there's just craziness going on but you know that kind of power that kind of influence and yet he didn't exude that over others he didn't think himself to be superior above others he considered himself one of them he loved them he interceded on their behalf god looked at them in their rebellion and then their pride and then their idolatry and he said that's it i'm wiping them out and moses was like no no don't do that please consider your reputation what will the egyptians think that you know and moses intercedes i mean this is a man who had a church of like two million people and he wasn't in the two million dollar mansion on the hill and you know with ten harleys and you know white suits and private jets and all these kinds of things he was a man who was submitted to authority the dude was like you know doing counseling appointments 24 7 until finally his father-in-law stepped in and said no you can't do this man you're gonna have a you're gonna die you can have a heart attack there's gonna be health issues your kids don't know you anymore like you gotta do something here what do you suggest i do here's moses the guy that god anoints the guy that god chooses the guy that god is using and he's considering the counsel of his father-in-law a shepherd what should i do well here's what you do get some other guys to be leaders and you know the people can go to them for council if there's a really sticky situation you can maybe step in and deal with it whatever point being that's meekness humility gentleness a man who's under authority and under control i think one of the things you know when we talk we're talking about these things here uh in the covid era the pandemic era the at last days i think scenario um people are going crazy the world's going nuts christians are losing their minds uh if there were ever a time in our lives where we needed to see more of the beatitudes pouring out of our souls where we needed to see more meekness and more self-control i confess i am just as needy as anybody else i can tell you a story about two weeks ago i was driving down the freeway in rome and anyway long story short i think all of us if you're like me all i got to do is say i was driving you know like i used to drive in boise and now when i come back to visit i'm like what the heck happened to this place like you used to be able to drive across town in three minutes oh but you know that you can be really holy and spiritual in the pulpit but man you get out on the freeway you know they say when your cup gets hit and tipped you're gonna find out what spills out i'm like driving this guy comes up behind me like right on my tail and i'm like i'm trying to get out of the way but then the car in front of me did a little maneuver i couldn't get out of the way so i got back oh he got mad at me so i'm thinking geez man i was trying to get out of your way settle down you know i'm kind of trying to keep it under wraps i get on the freeway i go down i'm like kilometers down there's traffic it's congested i finally get a little space in the fast lane i'm like get over there because this guy comes up same guy and he's on me and i'm trying to get out of his way again same exact move it was like what do you call that deja vu i try to get back i can't i get back over then he starts really going at it right and by and then i just i kind of lost it a little bit i pulled over into that second lane let him come up next to me and i'm looking at him and i'm like what do you want you want to go buddy and uh my wife is sitting next to me she is not she hates confrontation of every kind even the most subtle forms of disagreements and i on the other hand can deal with pretty much any amount of confrontation and so i'm like you know and i'm literally just like he's like yeah you're good we're you know italians are like talking with their hand and i'm literally doing everything in my power and in the god's given holy spirit grace and power to not lift any fingers and i didn't i was right there but i was like and i it's like everything he was like i'll just want to pull over and then the holy spirit you know he just comes in he's like it took me a while to calm down you know i was like calm down because that guy is like we followed each other in a way for like miles and i think he was thinking and i was thinking like man you know maybe should we just kind of get this over with somewhere you know and he's thinking is this guy want to do you know this is but moses this meekness this ability i think more than ever now i pray god give me give me the grace to not respond to guys like that give me the grace to not take the bait and uh these are signs of transformation you know you see these are this is a byproduct this meekness this yieldedness this confident quietness is a byproduct of number one and number two this poverty of spirit in this morning weeping over sin and self this recognition that oh god without you i am nothing and i am in big trouble and would you just leave me by me would your yoke be upon me and you know it comes from hitting these walls of self-reliance of exploding and losing it and running in and going oh god it's one thing to need it in the beginning to come out of darkness and rebellion and come into that brokenness and poverty and repent and get saved but then as christians we're constantly in this sanctifying process and growing and continuing to need to be to realize that we're poor in spirit and that we need to weep over saint james you know he got pretty rough with some of those christians that he was writing to and he said you guys need to weep over your sin sometimes we just take sin so uh casually you know just kind of like ah well what are you gonna do you know and sometimes that reveals the hardness of our hearts but i think hitting these walls of self-reliance just like peter like jacob wrestling with god you come out of it limping but it you're happy it's a happy limp you know it's uh i got more of jesus out of this it's paul saying i want to know him the power of his resurrection and also in the communion of suffering together with him you know there's something deep and profound and powerful that we find and learn about and where we grow in that place and it's very productive and positive jesus he uses meekness to describe himself interesting jesus hardly ever described himself but what he did when he did in matthew chapter 28 he says this verses uh matthew chapter 11 verse 28 through 30 come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden i will give you rest take my yoke upon you learn for me for i am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light that the new king james says i am gentle and lowly that's the word the gentle is the word meekness there in the king james and the word that we're looking at here in the original it's this power under control this gentleness of spirit and man if jesus god who being god became a man did not consider it robbery to be equal with god in philippians chapter two if he who has all the power uh the creative power of the universe if he can be gentle if he can be meek if he can keep things under wrap you know if i was hanging out with those pharisees if i was hanging out with the other disciples you know like james and john the sons of thunder i'd be like i'll show you some thunder i'm going to show you boys some thunder but uh jesus you know he was not like that uh he was humble and lowly of heart and this is what we need to learn more of and have more of and have an attitude uh that is similar to this you know he stands before pilate he's the son of god he's god the son he's the creator of the heavens and the earth he's only doing it because this is his mission he submitted and yielded to the father and here is pilate this pontius guy who you know is like you know who i am you know the power i got and you're not gonna answer me and jesus is just standing there like the ufc fighter and the punk right like you only have the power that has been given to you by my father it's powerful he's being falsely accused he's being intimidated his reputation is being slandered quiet silent meek we should be the meekest people on the face of the earth we should know who we are be strong be loving walking god's dunamis power with little to prove demonstrating kindness and walking in self-control fruit of the spirit galatians chapter 5 verse 22 love joy peace patience all that good stuff but man where's the self-control self-control is the fruit of the spirit it's like man i got out of control well certainly weren't under the influence of the holy spirit i had a choice in that car i'm going to yield to the flesh take over baby show them what you got or yield to the holy spirit let it go be quiet the reward here is that they shall inherit the earth god entrusts authority to people who have the right priorities and here he says the meek you see meekness in this world says you want the you want to be first in line do you want to get on the freeway first you want the promotion at work you want okay go fine why because like abraham says to lot right hey you pick the left i'll take the right you take the right i'll take the left why i'm good i trust god he's sovereign if he wants me to have the left you'll go right if he or whatever it may be at the end what happens lot thinks he gets the best land and this and that what i what did lot really get destruction his wife his family insanity living in all that stress what did abraham get abraham get up on the mount i want to show you something look as far as the eye can see it's all yours because you're yielded you're submitted you trusted me and so you see the rewards here far outweigh any reward you know it's everything that people are striving to get in this earth we get it by letting it go by trusting god by being meek poor in spirit mourning over our sin and just saying i have everything because i have jesus christ the apostle paul said i thought i had everything and then i ran into jesus and then i counted everything that i had as dudukaka uh manure because why for the excellency and the grace of the knowledge of jesus christ nothing compares to knowing him we're not thinking about the kingdom we're gonna get we're stuck on the king we're smitten by the king we just get everything else thrown in at the end of this whole discussion he's going to say seek first the kingdom of god and his righteousness and everything that the pagans worry about everything that the pagans strive for that'll be added in it'll be added unto you if you seek after those things you're never going to get the king and the kingdom but if you seek the king you get the kingdom and then he'll take care of everything else amen we'll inherit the earth i kind of like this earth it's twisted it's messed up but man it's spectacular i mean i drive her out you know i was driving around california the other day my daughter graduated from high school there uh you know i'm always like wow look at that you know there's yucca trees there's joshua trees whichever one you want to call them i guess evidently they got these purple trees down there they're like they're just these big jacko something or others jack somethings and man i'm just looking at them i'm like goodness look at that tree this is just amazing it's beautiful you know in italy i drink fizzy water i'm a fizzy water only guy amen and uh so
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.