Matthew 5 Principles of the Kingdom

In a summary of the transcription, Wayne and Bernadine are facing a serious surgery due to a tumor. The community is praying for their recovery. The speaker then transitions to discussing the disciples' call by Jesus and the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, highlighting its revolutionary and challenging teachings. The Sermon on the Mount is seen as a guide for believers and a constitutional layout for the Millennial Kingdom. Jesus emphasized the importance of living by these teachings with the help of the Holy Spirit despite opposition and disbelief. The disciples initially struggled to believe in Jesus' resurrection, highlighting human doubt despite knowing the truth. Well, good morning. You'd think when we get this old that we'd know when to set our clocks up. So, lots of folks not here this morning that probably will come an hour later. But anyway, good to see you. Now, I'll pull that back up. All right. Okay. Wayne Lee and Bernadine were in Houston this last week. They went down on Wednesday. And all day Thursday and half a day Friday they were having pre-operation tests and things that you do plus additional tests. And they came back Friday night. They'll go back tomorrow. And the surgery's set for the first thing on Tuesday morning. It'll be a five to seven hour surgery. He has a tumor in his right temple area, one inch by three inches. And when they did an MRI two weeks ago, it was a certain size. And four days later when they went to Houston, it had grown enormously. So, they decided not to do the radiation. They were going to try to shrink it and then do surgery. But it was growing too fast to do that. So, we just need to be praying for them. They're good spirits, of course, ready to get it over with. But they'll be going back in the morning. And surgery will be Tuesday morning. So, let's have a prayer especially for them. Father, we just thank you for Wayne and Bernadine. They've been here for so long and we know them so well. And we're grateful for them, their friendship, their example, and their guidance and all that we've shared together. We're grateful. We pray especially now for Wayne and for Bernadine, especially Wayne, as they do the surgery. We pray that you would grant healing and health and strength and recovery and a full recovery, full strength. And Lord, we just commit them into your hands and thank you for it. Bless Bernadine and all the family as they anxiously walk through these days. And just thank you that we never take a step in any direction in our lives that you're not with us. And we thank you for that. Thank you for your love and grace and provision and healing in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, you can relax. Not that you're not relaxed, but you can. Because I have fewer notes on those 48 verses than I do on most chapters. So, we'll make it in time. We do want to finish up with the previous lesson last week. We did not get to the place past the calling of the disciples. And in chapter 4, we have the disciples. We just read it for you here. As he was walking along the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who's called Peter, his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea. So, they were fishermen. Follow me, he told them, and I will make you fish for people. Immediately, they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat with Zebedee, their father, preparing their nets. And he called them immediately. They left the boat and their father, and they followed him. And then it proceeds to give a summary of the Galilee ministry that he had. In chapter 9, I believe it is, Matthew gives his own call. There's when the Lord called him, but he called his disciples. And their response was immediate, which is a good indication they knew each other. They had apparently had some relationship to his ministry there in Galilee. And so, when he said to follow him, they immediately left their nets, their parents, and followed him. Galilee is not a large area. It's 63 miles long, east to west, and about 33 miles wide. Now, you can say that's not much different than Dallas-Fort Worth, apparently Dallas County would be close to that. So, it was not a big area. But Josephus reported to us that there were about 3 million people in Galilee at that time. So, you had a lot of people in a small area. And so, when it says large crowds followed him, we're probably talking about thousands followed him around. It was a big deal. And he summarizes in these last verses about the ministry there in Galilee. It says, and beyond the Jordan. So, that is a simple report of his ministry in Galilee, which probably took about 18 months or so. And a remarkable ministry there in Galilee. But he sums it up very simply in those words. And the message that Jesus presented was the message of the gospel. There were many physical healings. The most serious was demonic possession. Almost universally in the culture at Jesus' day, they believed in possession of demons. And it was considered different from other illnesses. And so, that's why it's listed differently. It was different from any physical ailment. It was actually referred to a time when an evil spirit just took over an individual. And without that person's consent, speaking and acting through them is a very real and a very serious attack. And so, even those, as difficult as it would be, he healed those. So, it was an effective ministry that created a great deal of popularity for him as he went about in Galilee. Now, in chapter 5, we begin the Sermon on the Mount. And that is, without doubt, the greatest sermon or message that the world has ever heard. It's the greatest, greater than any philosophical message or moral or ethical or religious message fades into the background when you compare it to the Sermon on the Mount. Greek philosophy had failed to correct the moral and spiritual affection. It was a vulgar and base and evil world. Eastern religions had proven incapable of pulling the world out of the disgrace and the deception of the culture. The best that the ancient world could offer had not solved the deceit, the brutality, the hopelessness, the helplessness in the ancient world. And here comes the Sermon on the Mount. And I don't know why I came to this, but it's like watching Mount Everest in the midst of the plains of Kansas. Now, when you compare it to any other piece of literature that the world has ever seen, it was a remarkable message from Christ. Mankind found itself imprisoned in a culture of pagan darkness with only a vague hope for some future dream yet unborn. And into that world, Jesus, through the Sermon on the Mount, injected an undeniable hope in a hopeless world. Oh, and it was also one of the most revolutionary messages in all of history. He declared things that are impossible without his help. The Jews had the Ten Commandments. They couldn't keep them. Jesus did the Sermon on the Mount. They're impossible in human strength. Not any one of us can live up to the message on the Sermon on the Mount. Now, there's a lot of discussion about exactly what the Sermon on the Mount really is. Some think that it's the Constitution of the Millennial Kingdom. I personally believe that it was the way Christians ought to live who can't live that way without the Holy Spirit. But since the Holy Spirit is in us, we have the power to fulfill what Jesus commanded us to do in the Sermon on the Mount. But it also has, I think, it is a constitutional layout for the Millennial Kingdom. That's the way it's going to be perfectly in the kingdom that Christ establishes. But we have the opportunity through the Holy Spirit to align our lives with the teachings of the Ten Commandments. That's what Brother John is talking about today, about putting off the old self, putting on the new self. And that's essentially what Jesus is talking about. And it's a very practical message, and it's meant to be a pattern for believers and for the coming kingdom. And Jesus practiced what he preached in the Sermon on the Mount for three and a half years of his ministry. Every day in every way, he fulfilled the teachings of the Ten Commandments. And then he gave us the Holy Spirit to empower us to do the same. Another thing that really happens in the Sermon on the Mount is that it dealt with the Mosaic Law and the new interpretation of it. The Mosaic Law, with all of its minute details for maintaining a relationship with God through sacrifices and ceremonies and rituals, was lifted to a higher area. The revolutionary teaching was not well received by the Jews. You can understand why. In spite of all the miracles and mighty wonders he did, his attacks upon the Jewish leaders, exposing their hypocrisy, created a deep resentment and violent opposition. And they began to attack his person and the ministry of Jesus. So the Sermon itself is not focusing on Jews as Jews. It was directed to Jews who'd been saved and transformed by the Holy Spirit. It was for those with a heavenly focus instead of an earthly focus. No one of us can keep the Sermon on the Mount. But Jesus took people from the earthly perspective and planted them in the heavenly perspective. And these teachings, impossible for us in our own strength, are possible through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We can live like Jesus described here. Jesus spoke to his disciples, by the way, about the opposition that the Jews were going to give him. He told them that the Jews would triumph temporarily and succeed in having him crucified. He told them clearly that he was going to die, but that his resurrection would come soon after the crucifixion. They heard it, but they didn't believe it. They didn't believe it. The most surprised people in Jerusalem following the resurrection were the disciples. They were hiding in fear of the Jews, afraid the Jews would come and capture them like they had Jesus, scared to death. And when he appeared in the midst of them, it scared them to death. They were the last ones to believe he was alive. And they just didn't believe that he had risen, even though he'd told them over and over again. They didn't hear him. They didn't believe him. Isn't that kind of like us? We hear it. We know it. Sometimes we don't believe it. But it's real. They didn't believe he was risen until he miraculously appeared to them in their hiding place. Judas, leading up to that, had finally broken ranks with the disciples and betrayed Jesus to his enemies and facilitated his capture. And then you have that mockery of trials five times in the night and finally ending up in the high priest's prison. Finally, they crowned him with the crown of thorns and nailed him to a Roman cross. And he died. And three days later, he rose victorious over death and Satan. His cry, you heard many of us speak of the word tetelestai, means it is finished. His payment for our sins was made. And now we could become, we who are sons of men and daughters of men, could become daughters and sons of God. A miracle of that. You know, there are a lot of songs that have been written about that, but I can never get away from Dallas Holmes' song, Rise Again. I'd never heard that song. We had one of our single adults came to me and said, well, I want us to have a single musical concert on a Friday night. And my first response was, well, who's going to come to it? I mean, how are we going to play? He said, just trust me, we'll have a good crowd. And he made the contact with Dallas Holmes and Dallas came. I'm sitting on the front row. I've never heard Rise Again. When he gets there and finally in his concert, he sang Rise Again, I think the hair stood right up on the back of my neck. It's just an unbelievable song. But by the way, Dallas is still ministering. He lives over in Lindale. I talked to him the other day. His wife died several years ago now, so he's in a new normal for him. He's doing well, though, but that song was worth everything else he wrote and everything else he did. But the disciples, like I say, they were surprised that he had risen from the dead. And the Jewish leaders didn't like him because he condemned them. He exposed their hypocrisy and they resented it. And they opposed him severely and violently. And we see that hostility playing itself out now as he begins with the Sermon on the Mount. Now, the Sermon on the Mount is primarily in Matthew. It's also seen in Luke, but Luke only wrote 30 verses about it. Matthew wrote 110 verses about it. And our passage begins in this fifth chapter with the Beatitudes, which really are the introduction or the foundation of the whole Sermon on the Mount. The word blessed, by the way, or blessed, really means happy. So here we have Jesus giving us a recipe for a happy life. These Beatitudes form the introduction to the Sermon. And as Jesus first speaks the blessing to the disciples, that's important because he's about to make some severe demands of them in this sermon. So first the Beatitudes and then the sermon itself. Now, the first Beatitude, let me just read these Beatitudes for us. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the humble, for they will inherit the earth. Some translations use meek instead of humble there. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, they'll be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Simple, practical blessings that result in happiness. The first Beatitude demands just genuine humility. Without genuine humility, the prevailing cultural cancer of the world will be simply adopted into the church. When one is saved, the Holy Spirit removes every vestige of the spirit of the world and places the believer in the very presence of God himself, plants the Holy Spirit in us, and that causes us to face the reality of our own sinfulness and our spiritual weakness apart from the Holy Spirit, and so the sermon is saturated with godly sorrow for sin and sincere humility. Second Beatitude speaks of comfort for those who mourns. Now, the Holy Spirit plunges us into a deep sense of our own sinfulness and of the sinfulness of our culture and our environment, and it breaks our heart as we're walking with the Lord. It breaks our heart as it breaks the heart of God. So those who mourn over the evil and the sinfulness of our own lives and our culture mourn will find comfort in their grief. Second Beatitude speaks, well, the Beatitude of those who mourn. The third one reinforces this as it tells us that the meek or the humble will inherit the earth. This meekness does not suggest weakness, but rather strength under the control of the Holy Spirit, and I think to inherit the earth points to the time when the kingdom of God will be a reality and we will rule with Christ over all the earth in his completely recreated earth in heaven, Revelation 20 to 22, and I still believe that heaven's going to be here. With all the thorns taken off the rose bushes and the earth healed and transformed and the new Jerusalem coming down, this is a beautiful world. I mean, it's just incredibly beautiful. Think of what it would be like when God cleanses it and purifies it, and we may very well find heaven on earth in his kingdom. Now, is there a scripture for that? No, but I think it makes sense to me, and it's a comfort to just think about God cleaning up things and make it look like he created it. It'd be great to see creation. And so he talks about it. Then he talks about it in the beginning about those of us to desperately hunger and thirst for righteousness. That is a very vivid description. The two most powerful cravings of the human body is for water and food, and so he says, I want you not to hunger and thirst after the water and food of this earth. I want you to hunger and thirst after me. Now, just imagine being desperately, desperately seeking to have relief from hunger and thirst. Now, that's what God wants us to have for him. There ought to be in our hearts a desire, a hunger, a thirst for him and for his work in our lives, and we're blessed if we desperately hunger and thirst for righteousness. The fifth beatitude speaks to the necessity to be generous in what God's entrusted to you, forgiving others, demonstrating compassion for those who are suffering. Such a person who gives mercy will receive mercy, and that's what we all want to do, be a generous person. You know, one of the greatest things about this church is it's always been a generous church. We've always enjoyed giving, giving money. When I was here, we'd have singing groups come in, and that was back when they used to take love offers. Then they got to where they had a fee, but they never charged us a fee because they knew we'd get more with a Sunday night love offer than they would with a fee because we're generous people, and we ought to be. God blesses us today. I'll tell you something you don't know. We once had a youth director here that was bipolar, and nobody knew it. He didn't know it. It expressed itself after he'd been here 60 days, and, of course, we had to remove him. What you don't know is that we paid his salary and all of his counseling for his family for 12 months, and he'd only been with us 60 days. That's the spirit of this church. That's one of the reasons why there's such a sense of happiness and joy and unity in the church because we've always been a generous church, and we ought to all be generous, forgive one another the tragedy. I mean, in this passage, Matthew's going to tell us, well, maybe I'm thinking about the pastor's sermon, but anyway, he says don't go to take your internal squabbles among believers to the sacred court. Settle it among yourselves. We ought to be able to do that, and this is an important thing. We ought to be generous people. Generosity is a great, great blessing. The sixth one is a blessing for those who are pure at heart. This speaks of a single-hearted devotion to God. Holiness is a requirement if we're going to enter God's presence. Righteousness is an imperative that we have if we're going to enter God's presence, and we don't have any of either. But through faith, our unrighteousness becomes the righteousness because Christ plants that in our hearts, and that's what the Beatitude is talking about, that being single-hearted, devoted to God, and holiness, which is the requirement, will be provided for us by God's Holy Spirit. The seventh Beatitude declares that those who are peacemakers are to be cherished, that they seek harmony and unity rather than strife and discard. Such persons are true ambassadors of the Lord, and we certainly ought to be peacemakers. I guess I'm known for a lot of things across the country, but one of the things is that I always try to intercede and bring peace. That doesn't mean you don't have strong convictions. It doesn't make you take strong stands, but you don't have to be mean about it. You don't have to be ugly about it. My dad used to say, son, strong convictions don't have to be brutal. And when it gets to where our convictions become brutal and angry, that's not the spirit that Jesus wants us to have. We're to seek peace, be peacemakers. By the way, this has nothing to do with being a pacifist. It's not talking about, you know, Jesus at one point said, someone slaps you on the cheek, let them slap you on the other. But if he takes your coat, give him your shirt. If he takes your shirt, coat, give him your shirt. Now, the reason is that in Jewish law, you couldn't take a man's coat, because the coat was also sort of a blanket or a pillow. He could sleep with it, cover with it. But you could take his shirt. So if someone takes your shirt, give him your coat. Go the second mile. We're going to talk about that here, the second mile. And we might as well talk about it briefly here, because who knows if we'll get to it in a minute. But at the second mile, Roman law said that if Rome needed anything, their soldiers could compel you to go a mile. Whatever it was, if they needed to have something move somewhere, they could say, you pick it up and you take it, and you had to do it. So Jesus said, look, someone makes you go a mile, go two miles. In other words, we ought to do more than expected. One thing about the Christian life is whatever is expected, we ought to be better. We ought to do more. We can never do more than Jesus did for us. So we ought to be generous, and we ought to be seeking harmony and unity Go the second mile. Go where we're not expected to go. People might expect you to do something. Whatever they expect you to do, do more. We ought to do more than is expected. Oh, and the last beatitude is one that proves that this is not intended for the millennial kingdom alone, because there'll be no persecution in the millennial kingdom. But he says here that the blessed are the persecuted. When you're persecuted for righteous living, verses 10 to 12, and the reward that these individuals receive is best seen as heaven itself, not some status in life, but being heaven itself. Then he moves on to talk about salt and light, verses 13 to 16. This, again, is an introduction to the servant itself. Jesus provides the goal of greater righteousness that is required of believers. Salt can't change corruption, but it does keep corruption from spreading. It not only seasons food, but it preserves food. In a world without refrigeration, salt was what you used to preserve food. Salt speaks of our character. Light speaks of our conduct. Salt deals with what we are. Light deals with what we do. We are to live in such a way that people will be aware of God's existence and authority. We'll be just like a city that's on a hill. You can't hide it. You don't light a lamp and then cover it with a bushel. You release it from being covered that it gives light to a room or wherever it is. So our witness is salt and light is to be consistent, continuous, and conspicuous. That's John Phillips' description of it in his book on Matthew. As salt, we are to improve every moment we experience in life. As light, we are to shine and must be put on a prominent place to serve its purpose. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. A lamp does not belong under a bushel. It belongs to be exposed where it can light whatever is around him. Now, Christ here very clearly says that he did not come to abolish the law. He's dealing with the Mosaic Law, but he says, I didn't come to destroy it. In fact, he says in this passage that not a jot or a tittle, that's like an exclamation point or an apostrophe, no small Hebrew letter or notification, none of that's going to pass away until it's all fulfilled. And so Jesus didn't come to destroy the law. He came to tell us what the law was intended to do. Of course, as I said, man couldn't keep the Ten Commandments. He couldn't keep the law. And now Jesus interprets it in a way and says, here's how you're supposed to do it. And it doesn't help us any because we can't keep what Jesus said either. We're completely dependent upon what God does in us. God plants the Holy Spirit in us, and very few, it seems to me, of people who say they're Christians live in the awareness that they're living with the presence of God within them. But that's what God says, that he lives within us. And that's why he can say, and he reminds in this sermon in verses 17 to 20, that the righteousness of believers has to be better than that of the scribes and Pharisees. To even get into heaven, verses 17 to 20 says, self-righteousness seen in the lives of the scribes and Pharisees is to be abandoned, it's to be repudiated, it's false righteousness. The kingdom of God required God's own righteousness, and he freely gives it to us. We don't deserve it, but he gives it to us. I like to say, and I think many of us certainly feel this way, I don't want justice. I want mercy. I don't want what I deserve. I want what God gives that's grace, and that's why grace is something we all need but we can't get by ourselves. That's what Jesus is talking about here. Now, in rapid succession, Jesus addresses murder and adultery and divorce and integrity going beyond what is expected by going the second mile, loving our enemies. The act of murder, Jesus says, originates with anger in the heart. Anger is as great a sin as the act of murder. There's no place for anger aimed at other believers. You know, one of the sad things, and I've preached in the last 70 years over a thousand churches, is it's rare to find a church that's happy. Many of our churches are filled with chaos and discord, anger. I told you once before, my mother was born in Coolidge, Texas. My granddad was in seminary. Now, Coolidge is down near Mejia, so it's not far from here, about an hour. And I preached in Mejia and met the pastor at Coolidge at an associational meeting and later preached in Coolidge at the church my granddad pastored 100 years ago. But I'll never forget the meeting in Mejia because the pastor met me at the door. Actually, a lady met me, a very nice lady, and smiled and welcomed me to come in. And the pastor was standing there, and she went back in the kitchen or wherever she had been, away from where we were, and he said, that woman last Wednesday night in a business meeting screamed and hollered and cussed me out in a business meeting. That has no place in the church. We're going to disagree about things, of course. Not everybody's as smart as I am. I know what's right, but I don't always get my way. And we don't have to get our way. You know, one of the things I learned, that I didn't have to be in charge. And I always thought it'd be nice to be in charge and have a lot of authority. I went to Sunday School Board, and I got it. I was president of the Sunday School Board. My personal budget was a million and a half dollars a year. If I even whispered something, they did it. Scared me to death. I found out that authority is not always what it's whacked up to be. And when Harry Truman said the buck stops here, I know what that's like. Buck stops there. Authority needs to be something we handle with grace and gentleness and not with anger and bitterness. And Jesus is dealing with an issue here in the Sermon on the Mount that is very, very prevalent and very, very much something that we need to always guard against and deal with in this life. And he talks about murder being the product of anger, and there's just no place for anger to be aimed at believers. Jesus didn't deal with murder and say capital punishment would be required because that was already in the law. It was already a Jewish law that so you kill somebody, you'd be executed. And so he didn't have to deal with that. But he urged believers to be reconciled. He used an illustration. He said if you have a gift that you want to give at the synagogue to the church and there's someone, notice how he says it, someone who has something against you. Didn't say you had something against somebody else. But if you have a gift to give and somebody has something against you, leave your gift at the altar. Now, he doesn't say don't give it. He says leave it there and go and be reconciled. Then come and make your gift. Jesus really believes that believers ought to get along, ought to behave, and he makes it in the Sermon on the Mount so vivid for us. The Roman world was characterized by sexual permissiveness and immorality very much like the world we live in today. He dealt with the issue of divorce. Now, you have to understand why he's doing that. Among the Jews, there was a great debate that raged between Rabbis Shammai and Hillel. Now, Hillel was the liberal, and he thought that a man could divorce his wife for any reason. She burned the toast for breakfast. He could divorce her for any reason. It didn't matter. And Shammai thought that adultery was the only cause for divorce. So in a context where divorce was just common, if you just got irritated at someone, you could divorce them. He said, no, no, marriage is a covenant. It's not something that exists just because you agree with someone or like someone. It is a covenant. And immorality is what breaks the marriage vow, and Jesus confirmed that. But it is the result of lust in the heart that indicates, just like anger in the heart is the foundation and the ground for the murder, lust in the heart is the foundation for immorality and adultery. And Jesus concluded that adultery was the permissible cause for divorce. Moses agreed with that, too, by the way. But he didn't demand divorce in that case. And so you get on down toward the end of the chapter and in verse 33 again, he's just talking how practical this is. Listen to what he said. You have heard it said that you must not break your oath, but you must keep your oaths to the Lord. You don't take an oath at all, either by heaven, because it's God's throne, or by earth, because it's his footstool, or by Jerusalem, because it's the city of the great king. Do not swear by your head, because you cannot make a single hair white or black, but let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. Anything more than this is an evil one. In other words, what he's saying is, tell the truth. Don't lie about people. Don't lie to people. You say something, yes, make it. You know, the property that our auditorium, new auditorium, is sitting on is ours today because a Jewish lawyer in Fort Worth shook my hand and said, I'll sell it to you for a certain amount and call me the next day and said, I have had an offer to increase the sale price of it by 50%, but I shook your hand and told you you could have it, and I'll honor what I told you I would do. Tell the truth. That's what Jesus is saying. Quit dilly-dallying around. Just, you know, if you tell the truth, you don't have to remember what you said. No one is smart enough to be a liar and get away with it. We're going to be messed up, stumbled down somehow, but if you just tell the truth, you don't have to remember what you said. When you tell a lie, you've got to remember which lie you told. Jesus says don't do that. Just, if you say yes, let it mean yes. If you say no, let it be no. Handshake will do. Not very many deals are made with handshakes, but our church is a living illustration that sometimes a handshake is as good as a written document, and that's the way we ought to live, openly speaking the truth wherever we are. We want to come down to these last verses, again, to tell the truth. The second mile, we've talked about that, but then the most revolutionary thing he said was there in verse 43. You have heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don't even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers and sisters, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don't even Gentiles do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. That was a revolutionary thing to the Jews because they had a culture of hatred for their enemies, and he didn't say tolerate them or get away from them or don't be like them. He just said that you're to love them and pray for them. That's even pretty good advice for us. I wonder how many of us prayed for Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden or Khomeini. I mean, it's not something we practice all the time. We don't have that on our daily prayer list is praying for people who are our enemies. That's what Jesus said we're to do. We're to pray for them and to treat them with respect, and God will bless you for that. So that's good advice that we are to love our enemies and those who persecute us, and we can know that God is going to bless it in a special way. We all live in a hostile world. We have come, humanly speaking, into an anti-Christian day. Christians around the world are being murdered today simply because they're Christians. We can hardly go a day without getting some word of someone in Nigeria or other pagan third-world country where churches are burned and Christians are martyred. We even saw the hating on television of Christian men during part of the squabble in the Middle East back in its beginnings some years ago. It's a dangerous world, and the world hates us. Why would they hate us? We're the one to pay our taxes and pray for our leaders. We vote in our elections. We help the poor. We encourage others. We pray for our police and thank God for them. We're the citizens that everybody ought to have, and yet we're in a culture that hates us. At one time, the Homeland Security of the United States, within the last 10 years, declared Christians as terrorists. That's the world we live in. Now, Jesus doesn't give us a whole lot of advice about that, but he does say pray for them, treat them with respect, do good to them. It's kind of hard to do it. You know, we all can find people that we really don't like. I'm not going to name any, but I could name some Democrats and some Republicans. I just don't like. Jesus said, that's not your prerogative. Pray for them. Treat them right. Respect their position. The greatest sadness about what's happening with the anti-Trump that's so evident in everything in our media and across the country is that it loses, it has lost respect for the office of the president. Listen, I have been voting since I was 17, 18 years old, whatever the rank I was in 1953. I voted for Dwight Eisenhower. I've lost as many elections as I won, but we made it anyway. And in spite of who was the leader, God blessed America and brought us to where we are. And it's still, with all of its warts and wrinkles and mistakes and foolishness and chaos, it's still the best place in the world. I've traveled in 39 countries in the world, and there's not a one of them I'd swap for America. And by the way, I have never been in a country, every one of those 39 countries, never let me just walk across the border and do what I wanted to do. This whole immigration issue is foolishness. Why would you want people from Mexico who are wanting to destroy us voting our elections? Well, the only excuse is that you're going to get people to vote for you, and so it's a political thing. Well, that's stupid. It's ignorant. Countries, Robert Jeffress likes to point out the fact that God established the nations. He drew the boundary lines, and nations live within their boundary. And we ought to have certain requirements. Sure, we saw people starving to death and people being mistreated in other countries. We can't feed the world. We can't take care of the world. There are billions of people in the world. We can't take care of all those people. And we can't handle Europe has already been run over by the Muslims because of immigration security being so lax. They just flood a country. The mayor of London is a Muslim. Of course, New York mayor is too, so you don't have a lot to – but, you know, there's so many things about it that make no sense, and most of what's happening in the world, chaotic today, is political. And I don't mean just that – secular politics. It's just people dealing with issues of what they like and don't like and the alliances they make. But the gospel of Christ is the only thing. Until people's hearts are changed, the world's not going to change. So the greatest thing we can do is to help people come to find Jesus Christ. And he's the Prince of Peace, and peace will only come when he has peace, given his peace to us, and that's given to the world. So we have good news. We ought to feel like the guy that went to sell shoes in Africa and came back and said, nobody wears shoes over here. Another guy went to Africa and said, everybody's a prospect over here. Just how you look at it. You know, things are tough, but God has given us the answer. We live in a world full of opportunity. And contrary to what we're being told by some religionists, people are hungry for the gospel. And we have the opportunity to share the gospel. And that's what the church is here for. Instead, many churches are bogged down in internal squabbles and fussing and fighting, and Southern Baptists still fire 125 pastors every month. Every month. And that doesn't count music directors and educational directors and youth directors. It's just pastors, 125 a month we're firing every year because we kept the record in Nashville at Sunskill Board. I know what those stats are because we were the ones who kept them. That's a travesty upon our faith in God. God never intended for Christians to divide up and fuss and fight. He intended for us to work together. Some of my closest friends over 70 years of ministry have been Assembly of God pastors. They don't agree on a lot of things, but they're wonderful people. I wouldn't do a Bible conference with them, but I'd do an evangelistic crusade with them because they believe the gospel like we do. God never intended for us to divide up and pick favorites and kiss each other around. You don't know two people agree on everything. If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary. No, we're not going to ever come to agreement. Believe it or not, Carol Ann and I don't agree on everything. But she won't argue with me. I'm right. Yes. She says, I know I'm right, so why should I argue about it? So God intended for us to... One of my good buddies here in the Mid-Cities is Mike Evans. Some of you all know Mike Evans. Mike was an Assembly of God evangelist. Up by the post office, he started a church some years ago called Church on the Move up there right by the post office. I used to... He said, I'm going to send all my tongue speakers down here up to you and let you take care of them. He said, I'm going to send them all back to you and teach you people how to speak in tongues. We had a good conversation. I met Mike when we were both in Washington. I was president of the convention. And we were on the same flight coming back. And he said, well, we just met, and he said, would you sit up front with me if I upgrade your ticket? I said, well, sure. So he upgraded me to first class. And so we visited. We've been fast friends ever since. I love Mike. He's a little nuts. But then I am too sometimes. And what a heart he has for the Jewish people. He spends probably four, five, six trips a year over to Israel. He's established a great museum of Christianity in the very heart of Israel on the city block down there. And the Zion Institute. And just a dear friend. We disagree on a lot of things. But we don't fight over. My brother, Charlie, was a five-point Calvinist. I'm not. Maybe three and a half. I'm not five. But we never argued about it. I mean, doctrine and spiritual things ought to never become a point of contention. When they do, we ought to just agree not to agree and either go on or separate. But Jesus says, look, always tell the truth. Don't go to the secular courts. Secular courts were a circus. I mean, they were courts in Corinth. Thousands of people would be the jurors. And they'd make their case before the whole city. And Jesus said, don't do that. If you believe we have some conflict that needs to be settled among yourselves. I think I told you before, but my grandfather at one point could have sued one of the utility companies in a little town he served in Arkansas as pastor. But he wouldn't do it. He felt like it wasn't the right thing to do. He could have won. I mean, it was something that should have been rectified. But he believed too much that he shouldn't go to court. Believers, the Bible says, but he didn't think it was right to go to court against anybody. Well, our faith ought to bring us together. It ought to make us tolerable of others that we disagree with. And we ought to have good discussions, but not fights over it. One of the professors at DBU said, I've got three Calvinists, strong Calvinists in my class. Would you come and debate them about Calvinism? And I said, no. I said, I wouldn't walk across the street to debate about Calvinism. Others don't think that's the thing to do. And besides, I don't think I'm not a debater. He said, well, if I let you bring Dr. Bell with you, would you feel comfortable? I said, well, yeah, that'd be all right. So Dr. Bell and I met at DBU. This was before his last illness. In fact, he had recovered from one serious and he drove himself that day. And we met in a classroom about this size full of students and the vice presidents of the school were there and three young graduating students that were Calvinists. And we had and I introduced it. I said, look, we're not going to have a debate. I said, in a debate, you have winners and losers. I said, we're not going to do that. We're going to have a discussion and we'll differ and we'll explain things, but we're not going to get into a win-lose situation. What was really interesting after it was over with, those three Calvinists wanted to have their pictures taken with Dr. Bell and me. And I found out that one of those graduating Calvinists was going to England to plant a church in London and another one was going to another country. And I thought, you know, I can work with Calvinists like that. One of my dearest friends is Al Mohler. Now, there's not a more notorious Calvinist in the country than Al Mohler. And we tried to hire him one time. Wanted to hire him to come be the editor of the New American Commentary. He was editor of the Georgia Index at that time. And he wisely said, you know, he said, I'm not a – you need a New Testament or Old Testament scholar. I'm not a New Testament or Old Testament scholar. Then he went to Southern Seminary when he was 33 years old and been there like 35 years now and done a fabulous job. Al and I have been dear friends. And, in fact, I mailed a letter to him yesterday. We keep in touch. He's a strong Calvinist. We disagree on things. But that's okay. Dr. Bell and I disagree. He believes the church is going through the tribulation. I said, no way. The Bible says that we're going to be taken out. And he kind of grinned every time. And he'd say, you know, we could both be wrong. Truth is, anything we cling to and disagree with someone, we could both be wrong. No need to get ugly about it. And that's a lot of what Jesus is talking about in the Sermon on the Mount is tell the truth. Don't argue. Don't fight. Don't go to secular courts to settle your disputes. Pray for your enemies and love your enemies. Revolutionary Sermon on the Mount. And we'll be looking at the rest of that for the next two weeks. Who's next? Dr., you're next. Dr. Terry will be in Chapter 6. And, John, you'll be in Chapter 7 or 8. Who's doing 6? 6? And you're doing 7? Well, who's doing 7? Oh, you. Oh, OK. Oh, OK. OK. You're doing 7. OK. All right. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like the Laurel and Hardy comedy skit, who's on first, you know? We've got to have a scorecard to know who the players are. OK. Well, we'll work it out anyway. But we'll be in the Sermon on the Mount for two weeks. Great, great message through that. And books have been written about the Sermon on the Mount. We could really spend the whole year in the Sermon on the Mount, but we're going to move quickly to it. But thank you for understanding. And we're going to get through a little early today. And don't get used to it. But we'll do that. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you that it instructs us how you expect us to live. And, Lord, thank you that we can't do it because we have to depend upon you to do it through us. And you provide the Holy Spirit who works in us to do that which is good and to be obedient and to guide us in all truth. And we're grateful for that. And we thank you. Thank you for the Sermon on the Mount and the incredible teaching that it gives to us. And the way it points all of us to live the blessed life, the happy life. We're grateful in Jesus' name. Amen.