Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of the eight Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12 as a pathway to experiencing God's love and grace. He explains that these Beatitudes are not just moral guidelines but a response to God's overwhelming love for us, calling believers to engage deeply with the Holy Spirit for spiritual growth. Bickle encourages the congregation to actively seek the Holy Spirit's guidance in understanding and living out these Beatitudes, which define a true kingdom lifestyle. He highlights that anyone, regardless of their background or status, can embody these virtues and experience the blessings that come with them. Ultimately, the sermon calls for a commitment to pursue a deeper relationship with God through the practice of these Beatitudes.

Turn to Matthew chapter 5. Lord, I ask you, you would inspire our hearts to love you more, to receive your love more. Lord, we thank you for the exhilaration of loving you and being loved by you. And I ask you to mark our hearts even now, Holy Spirit, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, paragraph A, as we prepare to talk on the eight Beatitudes, you have to begin with the first commandment. And we must never lose sight of the first commandment, the call to love God with all of our heart. But it's important to understand that that's the responsive side of a bigger reality. And the bigger reality is that God originally, initially, it's God who loves us with all of his heart. And so the commandment is that he wants us to respond in like kind. That's the most amazing reality, that God loves us. Jesus loves us with all of his might. Beloved, that is indescribable with that, the implications of that. That the fellowship within the Godhead, the way the Father loves the Son, the way the Son loves the Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father, one God in three persons, loving each other with all of their might and all of their strength. And then that love overflowing to the human race. And then the commandment comes and the Lord says, now respond back to it. So the first commandment is actually a response to a greater reality, that we're called into that dynamic reality of the fellowship within the Godhead. We actually participate in that. That's what this thing called salvation really is. And we begin now in this age and we participate in that indescribable joy and delight forever and forever and forever. Paragraph B, it's in that context that we understand the Sermon on the Mount. Because the Sermon on the Mount is actually Jesus' way of having, he breaks it down very specific. He says, if you want to love me and participate in this dynamic fellowship between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, this is the pathway to participate with it. This is how we cooperate with the grace of God, to have our heart liberated in the grace of God and exhilarated in the love of God. Look at this, Matthew 5, verse 3 to 10. The eight beatitudes, to be poor in spirit, to spiritually mourn, to be meek, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful, to be pure in heart, to be a peacemaker, and to be steady and joyful under persecution instead of drawing back and quitting in discouragement and despair and fear. Now again, these eight beatitudes, they are actually the pathway into experience, receiving and experiencing the love of God in the greatest way possible. These eight beatitudes are the clearest statement in the whole of the Bible as to what love looks like. And then throughout the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, he gives us practical ways to walk out these eight beatitudes. They define love, these eight beatitudes, what loving God and loving people looks like. They defined what the kingdom lifestyle is. Now I want to encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to be your teacher on these eight beatitudes. Not only your teacher, but your escort to take you by the hand and walk you through them all of your days. You know, I've read a lot of different commentaries on these eight beatitudes, some of the great teachers of church history, men and women in whom the Holy Spirit has released insight into. And as much as I appreciate what they say, because they are vessels of the Holy Spirit, I say, Holy Spirit, these eight beatitudes are so essential that I want you to teach them to me. Yes, I want to learn from them, but I want to learn directly from you. I want you to mentor me in these eight beatitudes. So one thing that practical to take away this morning for the beginning of this year is not only setting these eight as your goal for this year to grow in, but actually consciously asking the Spirit to teach you what they mean. I don't want to just trust the teachers through church history. I want to know what the Spirit says directly from the word to me. And then to ask the Holy Spirit to escort you this year, day by day, into what these things look like in our marriages, in our families, in our ministries, in the workplace, in our neighborhoods. Now, I want to ask you, don't answer, but if you closed your Bible right now, could you tell me those eight beatitudes just off the top of your head because you know them that well? And my point isn't to point out that you can or can't, but I don't encourage people to memorize the eight. I don't think that's the way forward. I encourage people to learn them because they're wrestling with them. If you wrestle with these eight and you ask the Holy Spirit, these are non-negotiables. I have to walk in these and Holy Spirit, show me where I'm coming up short and show me how to do them better. You will learn the eight automatically. You won't have to put them on a little card and walk around and memorize them. It's just like you don't have to put the names of your family members on a card and memorize the name of your spouse and your children, you know, your grandchildren. You don't have to do that because there's a different relationship to them. And these eight need to be that to the body of Christ because Jesus has said in them, in essence, this is the pathway to the first commandment. This is the pathway to spiritual maturity. This is what greatness looks like. Beloved, I can't afford not to be locked in and wrestle with them day by day by day and to try to walk them out in all my spheres of relationship. Paragraph C. Now he says you're blessed. On all eight of them, there's a blessing of God. Now, the amazing thing about these eight is everybody can do them. You don't have to have a degree in college. You don't have to have any amount of particular gifting in leadership or ministry or in the marketplace. You don't have to have a lot of friends. You don't have to be uniquely impacting people. You can be the most ungifted, loneliest person, and still you can walk out these eight beatitudes. That's what's amazing. And they define what God calls a great life, a great quality of life. Now, paragraph D, one of the foundational points of the grace of God is this, a premise. Whatever measure of grace we are walking in, in terms of experiencing it in our mind and our emotions and our character, whatever measure of grace we walk in, there's always another level to break through it. So whatever breakthrough of grace you get today, go for a greater breakthrough tomorrow. So all through our life in this age, we're constantly pressing for more breakthrough in our heart, more breakthrough in terms of the grace of God in our experience, in our mind, in our ministries. And so James chapter 4 verse 6 tells us God gives more grace. Now He's made grace available freely to everybody, fully and freely to everybody the day we're born again. But what He says here in James 4 6, there's more grace to experience if you'll go after it. Therefore, God gives grace to the humble. Now, the humble that He's talking about, He's not talking about people with low self-esteem who don't like each other or maybe have a timid personality. That's not what He's talking about. In this context, the humble are the people who acknowledge their need before God to encounter Him more and they pursue Him on His terms. That's the humble He's talking about. Here's my point. To those that are born again, the fullness of grace is given to them, but there's still more grace to experience season by season in our life. And the way that we experience it is by this word that we use so often. It's the word prayer. Now there's many facets of prayer, but the most foundational type of prayer in the Bible is talking with God. Not even just talking to Him, talking with Him. I'm talking about dialoguing with Him. That's that abiding life that John 15 talks about. Abide in me, I abide in you. Talk with me and I will talk with you. And the Scripture makes it clear that to the degree we simply talk with Him, little phrases through the day, focused times where we shut other things out and we talk to Him in a focused way and just little incremental parts of the conversation throughout the day, that is the way we grow in grace. That is the way the humble actually receive more power experientially to walk out these eight beatitudes. Paragraph E, Jesus highlighted six temptations we have to say no to. Paragraph F, He highlighted five different activities we have to say yes to. So if we're going to walk out these eight beatitudes, if they're going to develop in our life, we have to say no to six temptations that are highlighted and we have to say yes to five different activities. Now these activities are often called spiritual disciplines. And the term spiritual discipline puts a lot of people off. They don't like the word discipline because they automatically protest. I don't want to earn God's love through prayer and reading the word, et cetera, et cetera. Well, I can't emphasize this too much that we don't earn God's love by discipline. What spiritual discipline does, it puts us in the presence of God. It positions us so we can experience more. We don't earn more, but we're positioned to experience more. And the reason I say that, I've said this so many times over the last couple of years, is because the minute you say prayer, the minute you say focus time with God, there's a certain group of the body of Christ will say, no, no, no, I don't want to earn anything. I want to receive it freely. And what the Lord wants us to do is to put our cold heart before His bonfire of His presence. The power is in the fire, not in the putting of ourself in front of the fire. There's no power in positioning ourselves, but to access the heat, the flame that causes our cold hearts to be warmed and tenderized. Now know this, God doesn't love us more when we're more disciplined. He doesn't. We experience more, but He does not love us more. Let's just settle that once and for all, so we're not intimidated by the voice that comes along and tells us, why is your life ordered and disciplined? Why are you doing these things? You're trying to earn something. Say, no, no, that's, God doesn't love me more for doing it, but I am absolutely zealous to experience more. I want to experience these eight beatitudes in a greater way. Paragraph G. Now at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, at the very end, the final exhortation in terms of activity that Jesus gives to end the sermon, and then He gives a final warning to make sure we follow through on everything. It's in chapter 7, verses 7 to 12. It's really a call to the abiding life, and Jesus develops that abiding life more in John 15, but He ends the Sermon on the Mount with His final exhortation, and here it is in Matthew 7, verse 7. It goes on clear to verse 12. Ask and keep on asking. Seek and keep on seeking. Knock and keep on knocking, and it will be open to you. Now the the verb here, ask, seek, and knock, is in that continual present tense where we ask and keep on asking. We knock and keep on knocking. We seek and keep on seeking. Here's what Jesus is saying. He's saying the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle, these eight beatitudes, and all of the practical things that are related to it in the Sermon on the Mount, you will not be able to walk this out simply by the force of your dedication. Your dedication won't be sufficient. Even your education, learning the Bible, that won't be sufficient. You can study the Bible. You can be fiercely dedicated to obey it, but you're going to need a regular dialogue with the Spirit for that extra dimension of the supernatural spiritual dimension that empowers you, that sustains you, and so Jesus ends the Sermon on the Mount, and he says, lest you think that dedication and training are sufficient, you're wrong. You're going to need to ask and keep on asking. You're going to need to have a dialogue with the Spirit that some part of the day will be focused, and it'll spend more time, and it'll have a longer period of time. Other parts of the day will just be just whispers in your heart talking to Him, but don't stop asking. Don't stop seeking. Don't stop knocking. You need supernatural spiritual help in order to walk this thing out. So as the great pastor, he ends the Sermon on the Mount exhortation with a call to abide, to enter into that ongoing dialogue that ebbs and flows throughout the day. Beloved, it takes the Spirit's work in us. Jesus's work on the cross made it available for us, but we have to engage with the Spirit in dialogue again intermittently through the day. It ebbs and flows, sometimes more intense, sometimes less intense. That's the only possible way we can walk out these eight glorious attitudes or virtues that position us to experience this love of God from Him and this love back to Him. Turn to page two. Now we're going to look at the eight. Now I'm going to spend more time on the first one, then a little bit on the second, and then the rest I'm going to be, the last couple I'm just going to just give a few sentences on. My point isn't to try to give a comprehensive explanation of each one, but just to remind us again this is what our life is about. This is how we walk out the first commandment. This is how we respond and enter into that two-way experience of Him loving us and us loving Him with all of our heart. The first one I'll spend the most time on. The poverty of spirit, verse 3, Matthew 5, verse 3. Now this is not financial poverty. It's not what it's talking about. It's not talking about the virtue of living without any money. It's not talking about money at all here. But it's this first beatitude is actually foundational to the next seven. The other seven grow out of this one. So if we don't, if this one is not established and sustained in our life, we'll never ever walk out the seven that follow from it. It says, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom. Now when he says theirs is the kingdom, he's saying in essence they will experience kingdom power and kingdom reality in their heart, in their mind, in their life. They will experience the kingdom to the degree that they walk poor in spirit. So what does it mean to be poor in spirit? It means I have here in paragraph A, it's to be aware of our great spiritual need. Now everybody is sort of aware of their great spiritual need. I mean born-again believers. We are, he's talking to his disciples here, that we to the degree that we live aware of our great spiritual need. We need the Holy Spirit's help. And I don't mean just in a kind of a vacuum like Holy Spirit help me please break in. I'm just trusting you to break in. Holy Spirit's saying I will break in and touch your heart and your mind to the degree that you talk with me. If you will dialogue with me, I will touch you more. And so to be poor in spirit is to recognize that without that help of the Holy Spirit, we don't have a chance to be victorious in our spiritual life. That's what it means just in a most practical sentence. Now being poor in spirit is the way into the kingdom, but it's also the way of the kingdom. What I mean by that, the unbeliever is poor in spirit. I need a savior. I need someone bigger than myself to save me from the penalty of sin. I don't go to hell. I could be in God's family. Well we get saved from the penalty of our sin and eternal hell by acknowledging we need another and by submitting to that person's leadership as Jesus. That's the way into the kingdom, but the way of the kingdom is the same way. I don't want to just be delivered from the penalty of sin. I want to be delivered from the power of sin day by day in my life so my mind and emotions are both renewed and I can experience the reality of the Holy Spirit who lives in me. So I'm saying Lord I have great need. We see the vastness of what Jesus made available to us by his work on the cross. The fullness of grace is available to us, but there's a great gap between what's available and what we actually experience in our renewed mind and our renewed emotions and what we experience in our interaction of ministering the Holy Spirit to other people. I look at the Word of God. I say you made so much available. Then I look at my life and I go oh my experience is so much less than what's available and I need help because I can't bridge that gap and Jesus is saying acknowledging there's a gap and that I have much more for you and that it will come as you interact with me and you need spiritual impact by the Holy Spirit in your mind and in your heart. Your dedication is not going to be enough, though it's important. Your training in the Bibles is important. That's not going to be good enough. Your fellowship with other people, that's very important, not enough. We need that extra dimension, that extra element of the Spirit touching us and the Lord says he will if you will talk with him, he will. Again that's how he ends his Sermon on the Mount. Ask and keep on asking. Knock and keep on knocking, etc. And so I developed that thought a little bit here in page two. You can read that on your own if you want later. Paragraph D. Now Jesus, it's still Jesus talking here in Revelation chapter three. The famous successful church in Laodicea, they were popular, they were big, they were prosperous, they had things going. They thought they were doing amazing and Jesus talks to them. Revelation 3 verse 16 and 19. Notice verse 19. He goes, I love you. I'm only rebuking you because I love you so much. He goes, the problem is, verse 16, you're lukewarm. You say you're rich. You think you're doing good spiritually because your numbers are up. You think you're doing good spiritually because there's momentum in your ministry. He goes, but you're not doing good spiritually. You're not loving me in the way that you used to. He says, your spiritual maturity is lacking, but you're, you can't see it because you have blessing on your circumstances. Everything seems to be increasing. So you think things are good spiritually because circumstances are increasing. The people are responding and Jesus is saying, you think you're rich because externals are good, but he goes, your spiritual life is weak and it can be corrected if you would repent. I find that one of the, I mean, he's talking about being poor in spirit. He's in essence saying to the church at Laodicea, you're not poor in spirit. You don't see the gap between what I made available and what, how little you're experiencing of it. Yes, your circumstances are blessed, but the spiritual dimension of your heart and your ministry is not where it could be. And I want you to seek me like you did in the early days is what he's saying. Now this issue of being poor in spirit, seeing there's more and seeing that Jesus wants to give it if we'll go after it. This is not just for quote a ministry in a church like Laodicea. This is for whatever sphere God or every sphere of our life that God has, he's called us to himself. Now, whether you're in the pulpit or whether you're in the marketplace and the workplace, whether you're a mom at home, we need a spiritual breakthrough to be effective. Beloved, if you could have the best success in the marketplace, the money can be up, your leadership might be amazing and everybody's talking about it. But Jesus says, but I have more than externals for you. I actually want you to impart things spiritually through your assignment in the marketplace. You can be the most dedicated mom in the home with your children. I mean, it's just, you're totally locked in and focus, but without a breakthrough, you can't impart the spirit's influence on your children's heart. It's going to take more than skills of parenting and devotion. There is a spirit dimension, whether you're in the marketplace, whether you're in the home, whether you're in the university, whether you're in the pulpit, there's a dimension that's bigger than our training, our skill and our dedication. And so whatever assignment you have in the kingdom, being poor in spirit, we're saying, I can't obey you the way that you want me to. And I can't impart the influence of the spirit to others. And what I mean by impart the influence of the spirit, I'm not even talking about miracles. I'm talking about motivating people to righteousness by our influence in their life. Dads and moms can't do that to their children without the spirit helping them. It's going to take more than just Bible lessons. It's going to take more than dedication. A husband and wife can't impart spiritual things just because they love each other in the human sense. There is a Holy Spirit dimension that's critical for this to work. A worship team, we have so many of them here, can have the best singers, musicians. They can have the most trained and organized arrangement, but there's not going to be an impartation of inspiration for righteousness without the spirits working it. A lot of folks, they think, hey, if my skill's good and the people responding, the numbers are up, the money's coming in, the crowds are happy, my wife is happy, my kids are happy. Hey, if it's not broke, don't fix it, Jesus said, but there's more influence of the Spirit that I would release through you if you had a vision for it. So we never graduate from this beatitude. I mean, 20 years, 40 years, 60 years in the Lord, we should be more aware of our spiritual need the deeper we are in God, not less aware. And I find that many in the body of Christ, they don't really like this because it feels a bit negative. They want to just focus on the externals are going pretty good. Hey, let's just not, it's not broke, don't fix it, let's just keep going business as usual. But I want to tell you, beloved, there's more. There's more Holy Spirit inspiration that God wants in our life, in our relationships, again, with our friendships, our family, the people we impact in our neighborhood, in the marketplace, etc. Let's go to number two. Blessed are they that mourn. Now this is odd because society, our culture doesn't like mourning. Our culture likes feeling good. I mean, nobody wants to join a ministry or a business or anything where people are mourning like mourning. No, people want to feel good and they want their circumstances blessed. And Jesus says this paradoxical statement. He goes, actually, the blessing is partially found in the morning, like morning. I mean, well, I don't want to be the wet blanket on the fire. I don't want to be the downer. I just want to be upbeat and keep everybody positive and happy. Paragraph A. Now to mourn, this is how we feel about what we just saw in the verse before. In verse three, spiritual poverty, we see there's a gap between what's available and what we experience. So verse four, mourning, we feel pain over that gap. Here's the point. We're deeply engaged at the heart level, meaning it's not kind of a casual indifference. You know, some people are like, oh, of course there's more, but so what? You know, I just chill out and just kind of see what happens. And they don't even use biblical language. I'll just trust the Lord to give it to him if he wants. They see the gap from verse three. They have a little bit of the poverty of spirit, but verse four, they say, I'm not going to engage in that in a deep way. Do I feel the pain of it? I'm just going to just kind of casually be indifferent about it. Now we mourn over a number of things. One thing we mourn over, well, in our lives personally, over failure in our spiritual life. Now we don't lose our confidence with God when we mourn over our sin because when we repent of it, we have the full confidence that Jesus completely forgives us, removes it, and we can have the confidence he enjoys our relationship. So we're not talking about mourning over past sin because we're fearful we're not forgiven. That's not what we're talking about. We're assured we're forgiven. We're assured that he enjoys us. What we're mourning over is our deficiency in love. I know you love me and I know you forgave me, but I want to love you with all of my strength. And I know I'm forgiven, but I want to respond with all of my might. That's where the mourning is. It's in the deficiency of our love because those that truly love want to love with all their might. Part of the reward of love is loving with all of our power. And this mourning is related to that. Well, it isn't limited to mourning over our own deficiencies. We look at the deficiencies of the church, of society at large. We see that zeal for Jesus that he's so worthy of is at a low tide. And we look at that low amount of zeal across the nation in the body of Christ for Jesus, and we're troubled by it because we love his name. He's worthy of more. Oh, that you would be loved in all the cities of our nation by all the congregations of the Lord. Now it's not our business to know which group does and which group doesn't. That's none of our business. But when I look at America, I feel sadness. There's more for the church. I look at this distorted grace message that's increasing and it hurts my heart. And I can imagine the Lord saying, good, you want more of that. I want you more engaged than you are now. We look at society and we look at the cultural trends and the cultural wars that the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage, sanctity of sex is being undermined in the culture. And much of that slipping over into the church, some in really grievous ways and others in just the beginning ways that will get more grievous as time goes on. And we look around and we say, this can't be. It's mourning, human trafficking, abortion, social injustice, the economic plight of different peoples in our nation. And we go, Lord, it's not okay. And the Lord goes, I want it to be not okay with you. I want you engaged. I don't want you passive about it. I don't want you indifferent about it. I want you to see the gap between what I'm willing to give, that's verse three, poverty of spirit. And I want you to feel it. That's verse four, mourning. Let's look at a top of page three. This mourning is a great gift of God to us. This mourning, it propels us with an urgent desperation that is unique. I mean, it has its own impact that nothing else has in us. It's very precious. It's rare. It's a great gift of God working in you. Because when you feel this godly desperation, it propels us to make life changes. It's not okay, business as usual. I'm not going to live business as usual. There's more that God wants to give. Now here in 2 Corinthians 7, this is a glory. You read it on your own. This Paul the apostle elaborates on this godly mourning and he develops it. It's part of New Testament grace message, this reality of godly mourning. Now paragraph D, we hold two truths in tension. One guy says, do we mourn or do we have joy? And the answer is both. We don't mourn instead of joy or joy instead of mourn, but we actually carry both of them on our heart. We have tremendous joy in our confidence over Jesus's leadership. We have tremendous joy that he's working in us and we're actually growing. But we're mourning because we want to grow more. We're grateful for how much we've grown, but we want to grow more because there's more to be had. We're thankful for the way he loves us, but I want to love him back even more. Oh, I want to love you more. I love the way that we relate, Lord, but I want to give more of myself to you. I see breakthroughs in the gospel, people getting saved, tremendous joy, confidence in the ultimate victory. But we're mourning because we want to see more victory now in our city, in our nation, in our in our neighborhoods, etc. So we don't pick one versus the other. One does not substitute for the other, but they actually dwell together in a New Testament believer. They dwell together in tension and some periods of time one of them seems more prominent than the other, then a season goes by and it's the other way around. But we have confidence and gratitude, that's the joy, but we want to have greater breakthrough, that's the mourning. And we're not going to let go. Let's look at our verse 5. Blessed are the meek. Now the word meek and you could interchange it with humble or meek. I'll just kind of summarize this and you can read it on your own if you want to at a later time. It's shifting from just the recognition of our great lack. Now we're recognizing how God views our resources and we're recognizing how God views other people. Meekness is more related to how we relate to people and how we relate to our resources. Now all of us have a certain amount of resources. Our resources includes our money, but it's much more than money. Our resources is our time. Our resource is our physical and emotional energy. Our resource, our words, our giftings, our sphere of influence. Whether you have influence over two people or 200 people, that is part of your resource. Now the fundamental reality, a revelation I mean of the New Testament, all of our resources belong to Jesus. They are under His leadership. So we view our resources, time, energy, giftings, all our money, everything. We view our resources through the lens of His leadership. And we say, Lord, we want to use our resources to build your kingdom. And when I mean build your kingdom, I don't mean you have to leave where you are and go to the church meeting and that's where the kingdom is built. Beloved, we build the kingdom when we're in the university, when we're driving the bus, when we're relating to our neighbor in our neighborhood, we're having family meal together. The kingdom is built in all those spheres. The kingdom isn't something we stop our activity and then we go do the kingdom. I mean, if you're a bus driver, you're building the kingdom if you're driving that bus in a spirit depicting the Sermon on the Mount and you're available to the Holy Spirit. I mean, there's so we use our resources under His leadership and we say, they're not mine, they're yours. And when somebody, Lord, would you highlight different people in different ways? There's different ways He highlights it. I want to use my resource to make them successful in God, not just think of them making me successful in God. So a meek person views people differently than a man or a woman that's not meek. We look at people through the Lord's view of them and we say, Lord, how can we make them succeed in God? How can we help the will of God in their life? Not just how can they help it in my life and how can their resources help me? It's the other way around. So meekness has to do with how we view our resources and how we view people that we relate to. And when we view them through a kingdom lens, it changes everything the way we relate to them. And don't think of just people out in the way somewhere. It starts in your marriage. You know, that person you married is a person. It starts there in the family, in the neighborhood. It doesn't just kick into gear, you know, when you're far away on a ministry trip. It's wherever we are. We're saying, Lord, we want to help the will of God succeed in someone's life. That's what meekness is about. And then somebody attacks you or they resist you or they mistreat you and you say, you know what? I don't have any rights anyway. They're all yours. I belong to you. 1 Corinthians 6 verse 20. I'm yours, God. It's all yours. So I'm not going to be all thrown off and set off the path because I don't get the honor and the money and the recognition. That's yours. I'm going to use my resources to invest in others. Even some of the guys who don't treat me right, I'm going to serve them. Beloved, that's meekness. We view people through God's lens, not through our natural lens. Paragraph, I mean, Romans 5, hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Now, this is a very important, well, they all are very, very important. But righteousness in our culture is greatly minimized. It's viewed as old-fashioned and prudish, narrow-minded legalism. I mean, when I'm talking about righteousness, this is not a full definition, but just one part of righteousness, God's morals, the morals that God rejoices in. What happens is the culture has a moral code very different from the Sermon on the Mount. We want to be committed to God's definition of what morality and purity and cleanness is. And we hunger for righteousness to break through in our life, though this hunger for righteousness is far bigger than our life. And I have a little bit about that in the notes. It's righteousness to break forth in the church, in society, in other people's lives, in the suffering, in the oppressed, etc. But let's think about it in our own personal lives right now. The value of our culture is to have blessed circumstances. Get a little bit more money, more honor, more comfort. And beloved, there's nothing wrong with more money, more honor, more comfort. It's when it becomes primary, which it usually is, in the lives of the people, that's when it's a problem, when it's primary and not secondary. There's nothing wrong with money, comfort, and honor that's in the will of God. Nothing wrong with that. So I'm not putting that down. But that becomes the, that's really the national idol of America, is comfort. Just make life easier. That is what many believers, that's the dream of their heart even, get a little more honor and make life a little easier. And Jesus is saying, no, that needs to be readjusted. Righteousness, a breakthrough of righteousness in your heart. You know, there's this prevailing compromise in the realm of immorality that's just right through the nation and the church, including all of the internet expressions of it. Some people dabble a little bit with the internet, immorality, and some do more. And there's just, it's all through our culture. But righteousness is not just an issue of immorality. Righteousness is an issue of financial integrity as well, that we mean what we say and we do what we say. And our word is our bond in the realm of finances. And there's not a spin in any of the realms of our money. That's called righteousness. But it doesn't end with money. It's our words. We can be really comfortable slandering one another as long as we call it a prayer concern. Or we can have the suspicion and criticism as long as we call it discernment. And the Lord's saying, I want you to hunger for a breakthrough of righteousness in your heart. Others it's anger and bitterness. Others it's envy and self-pity. He's saying, I want you to have a breakthrough of self-pity in your heart. I want you to be my servant. I want righteousness to be the premier thing you're going for. Not just comfort and increase in a bigger ministry. I want your heart righteous. That's what I'm after. Now you've seen a famished person or someone who's parched. Maybe you've been on a long fast. A number of you have and you're famished. I mean, at a certain time or well, it's worse if you're not fasting and you don't mean to be famished, but you are, you're actually a little more desperate then. At least when you're fasting, you got a mindset and you're on a certain pattern and you're kind of in a rhythm and you're going or whatever, however that's supposed to work. But by the way, we got a fast coming up tomorrow. But a famished man, I mean, he hadn't eaten in a long time, is he will take, or a parched man, let's say that hadn't drank in a couple days, hadn't had anything to drink for a day or two or three. I mean, intense. He will take water over gold. I mean, if they haven't drank anything for three days, they'll take water over gold. Jesus is saying, I would that you would be that locked in to turn over every stone necessary, to get free from that immorality that's in your heart, to get free from that slander, that self pity, that angry tone in your relationships, to get free from that seemingly low grade spin you put on your finances when you interact in the business world. Oh, I would love that you would love me in righteousness in those arenas of your life. Well, righteousness is bigger than that. But the point is there's a pressing in. Paul's talking about here in Philippians three, pause the paragraph B. I mean, the ultimate preacher on grace is Paul. And he's talking about pressing in hard. He's not talking about earning anything. He's not like confused on his grace message. He's saying, because God loves me, the grace is free. I'm going to get my full destiny. I'm going to get my breakthrough in my friendship with God, and I'm going to get a breakthrough and the work assignment he gave me. I'm going to lay hold of that, which I was laid hold of for beloved. God laid hold of you, not just so you'd work for him. He laid hold of you. So you would relate to him too. Paul says, I want to break through on both of those arenas to the full degree. Paragraph six, blessed are the merciful. It's pretty self-explanatory top of page four, but I'll just say this and then leave it to you to read it later. If you want, when I hunger for righteousness, I want to get a breakthrough in all these areas. The thing I'm most aware of when I'm what, when I am desperate parched for a breakthrough in these five or 10 areas. I mean, I want a bigger breakthrough. The thing I'm most aware is my failure. The greater my hunger for breakthrough, the more aware I am of my failure. And that makes me love mercy. And when I see I receive mercy, then it's easy to give mercy. It's hard to give somebody else mercy. If you don't think you've received that much. And if you don't hunger for righteousness, you don't even know how much mercy you're receiving. Well, you could read more of that on your own. If you want paragraph verse eight, blessed are the pure in heart. They see God beloved. There's no greater experience, no greater privilege than that enhanced capacity to see and experience God in this age and the age to come nothing close to this. And there's no substitute for purity. And I have written here is purity of morals. I have it's purity of motives and purity of methods. We can get so used to manipulate to manipulative methods in our marriages, in our homes, in our leadership style. And Jesus saying, if you would make war against impurity and all these three areas, probably some more areas, you know, not that I have it all written out there, you will enhance and increase your ability to experience God. Oh my goodness. I can't fathom the glory of that. Roman number eight, peacemakers. Now the peacemakers, just real simple. This is not comprehensive. They invest time and energy in repairing relationships. The Lord loves this. We repair relationships in the home. We repair relationships with the family outside of our home, our extended family. We repair relationships in the body of Christ, outside the body of Christ, between races, between social classes, whenever we repair relationships without sacrificing the major truths of the word, because we can't sacrifice major truth in the name of repairing and unifying people. But there's a way to do that together. There's great blessing and there's more too much more than that, but I'll end with the last one. Persecuted. That we're faithful to the message. We're faithful to this Sermon on the Mount lifestyle. We're not going to back away. We're faithful to the truths about Jesus and we get people resisting us. And I mean, the resistance hurts. We don't have much physical persecution, but there's financial and there's verbal and social, which are all but the same. Where we're ostracized, we're kicked out, we're put aside, we're slandered. And Jesus says, if you will stay steady and not quit under the pressure, don't quit under the pressure of holding the line. And then finally, paragraph D, just a few verses later here, verse 19, the Beatitudes in verse 12, verse 19, Jesus gives an exhortation. He said, if you will do these eight Beatitudes and more besides, but if you do those eight, you're going to do all the other stuff. If you do these more than do them, you'll teach them. Now in my early days, I thought the doing of them was the hard part and it is. But the teaching of them, standing for them creates tons of conflict. And I don't mean you have to preach them in a public service. I mean, in your one-on-one relationships, in your family, marriage, friendships, and kingdom, in the workplace, you contend for these eight values. You'll have many believers, they won't like what you're saying. And I found that teaching them, taking a stand for them, instead of going with the popular tide of just this distorted grace message that undermines these values, makes the fleshly way of compromise the normative way of the kingdom. I find that if you teach them, you will be brought into conflict way above what you maybe you bargained for. Jesus said, if you do that on the last day, I will call your lifestyle great. Can you imagine the son of man with eyes of fire, the epicenter of all the created order, though himself not created, looking you in the eyes, that burning heart of those eyes of fire, saying, your life was great on the earth. Oh my goodness, I can't fathom anything more powerful than that, except for just entering into that love dynamic of the Godhead. This is all one big reality. Beloved, we don't have to have an education, we don't have to have money, we don't have to have a big anointed ministry, we don't have to have gifting to do this. Everyone can do verse 19 if they want to. So I'm charging you with the beginning of the year. Let's refocus on the eight beatitudes as the pathway to experiencing the glory of the first commandment. Make that the passion of our heart. And then, like I said, make lose 10 pounds second, but throw it on the list as well. Let's stand.