Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) as a roadmap for a Kingdom lifestyle, urging believers to engage in a conversation with the Holy Spirit about its teachings. He highlights the eight Beatitudes as essential virtues that define a vibrant spiritual life and calls for a commitment to a hundredfold obedience to the light we have. Bickle explains that spiritual growth involves both resisting temptations and actively pursuing kingdom activities, with the promise of God's grace enabling us to fulfill these commands. He encourages believers to cultivate these virtues in their lives, assuring them that their dedication to these principles will be recognized by God. Ultimately, the sermon serves as a call to align one's life vision with the teachings of Jesus, fostering a spirit full of light and purpose.

Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus. We ask you for the Spirit of grace. We ask you for living understanding. We ask you for inspiration from your Word to touch our spirit. In Jesus' name, amen. Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7 is one of the most important passages of Scripture that gives us insight into where the Holy Spirit's leading the church. I call it a road map. It gives us understanding where it's going. This is the thing the Holy Spirit wants to talk to us about. This is the conversation that He wants to have with us. It's one of His favorite subjects, the Sermon on the Mount. Now, it's called the Sermon on the Mount because Jesus gave the sermon on a mountain. It's just that simple. But it's the most concise and precise presentation of what He wants in terms of kingdom life. It is the clearest description of a kingdom lifestyle. Now the Holy Spirit, He wants to talk to us more about this. Now the way the Holy Spirit leads us is this, that as a rule, He will talk to us if we start the conversation. Usually He will wait until we start the conversation. And He will talk as long as we keep talking, or He will go as deep as we want to go on the subject, but He won't bring the subject up usually. Now every now and then, He starts the subject, the conversation, and when that happens, that's normally bad news. But the rule of the kingdom, this is actual, that He waits until we engage, and then He'll say, okay, I'll stay in the conversation with you, but I want to tell you this, the Sermon on the Mount is one of the subjects He likes to talk about most. It's one of the top subjects. He has so much to say if we're interested in the conversation. Paragraph A, I refer to the Sermon on the Mount as the constitution of the kingdom of God. It is the most comprehensive statement by Jesus on how a believer cooperates with the grace of God. Now the grace of God is offered to us freely. But receiving it in the sense of experiencing it, we must cooperate. And receiving the free grace of God involves more than just acknowledging the truths of the benefits that the Lord is offering to us. We must participate in order for those benefits to touch our mind and to form our emotions. Now the primary calling in this three chapters is found in Matthew 5, verse 48. There's one verse that is the absolute pinnacle of what all the others point to. It would be chapter 5, verse 48. Jesus said, be perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect. Now, what that means is, is that we are to walk in all the light that we have in the way that the Father walks in all the light He has. Now this is something that a brand new believer can do. What Jesus is saying is, walk in all the light God has given you because the Father, He walks in all the light He possesses. Now He possesses all light, all truth, but He walks it out. There's nothing that He does not fully walk out in terms of His action, His plan, His character, His wisdom. So the exhortation in verse 48 is that we would embrace a lifestyle of a hundredfold obedience. Now a new believer, the light they have is, it's not much, but they're to walk in all that they have. And as we obey the light, the light increases. And as the light increases, our responsibility increases, but so does our ability to encounter God. It increases too. Therefore, I have more requirements, more responsibility. That doesn't sound like a good deal. Yes, it is, because your ability to experience and encounter God and to feel God's presence and to understand Him, it also increases when the light does. So we are to set our heart to walk in a hundredfold obedience to the light that we have. Again, that light increases as time goes on. Now this is what the Lord wants, and there's many implications to setting our heart in this way. Now, setting our heart is not the same as attaining. I mean, committing ourself to obey in these specific areas, we come up short, we acknowledge we come up short, we repent of it, we ask for forgiveness, we recommit ourself to obey in that area, and we push delete on yesterday's failures, so we have the confidence of a first-class citizen standing before God with full confidence. We fail again, we acknowledge it, we declare war on it, we recommit ourself to obey, we push delete, and we have confidence in the present tense again. That's what this sermon, that's the pinnacle, the high point of the sermon, is that it would motivate people to have courage that they can walk in all the light God gives them. And again, the light increases as we obey more, we see more, but then we feel more and experience more as well. Paragraph B, now we talk about the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle here at IHOP quite a bit, and what do we mean by the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle? The heart of it, I would sum up in this one sentence here in paragraph B, that Jesus calls us to walk out the eight beatitudes, there's eight beatitudes we're going to look at in a moment, you know, blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God, blessed are peacemakers, those are two of those beatitudes. Jesus calls us to walk out the eight beatitudes as we pursue a hundredfold obedience to all the light we have. That is the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle summed up, the very heart of it is in that sentence. Now those eight beatitudes are being poor in spirit, spiritual mourning, walking in meekness, hungering for righteousness, showing mercy, embracing purity, being a peacemaker, and enduring persecution. Now this is invaluable, these eight beatitudes, because we're not aiming in the dark, we have a clear target as to what God wants. This is remarkable, I mean the helpfulness of having this clarity, we can have confidence what God's after in our life, so that we're not aiming in the dark, but we're aiming at the right targets. Now in each one of these eight virtues, and I'll say it this way, each of these eight beatitudes, they have a virtue and they have a blessing, a promise. Now the blessing, blessed are the poor in spirit, the word blessing means happy. Happy are those who are poor in spirit. Now the biblical view of happiness is to have a vibrant spirit. The biblical view of happiness is not based on circumstances being easy and going well. If our spirit is vibrant, our circumstances can be difficult, but we still have a happy spirit. But the opposite, if our circumstances are easy, but our spirit is dull, we're still not happy. And so Jesus combines a very specific virtue or character trait that he wants us to develop, and he puts it together with a specific promise, and he says the promise and the virtue together when you pursue them, there will be a vibrancy in your spirit called blessed or happy. This is to be our life target. These eight virtues, and to walk in the promises related to them. Now these virtues and their promises, we experience them progressively, little by little. We grow in our experience of them as we seek the Lord and commit ourself to walk in them. But we can also diminish in our experience of the virtue and the blessing as well by neglect neglecting or refusing to focus on these eight beatitudes. Now most of our problem in life, even as believers, are rooted in our neglect of these eight beatitudes. And Jesus, the master teacher, is giving us insight. He goes, you want to see things in order. These eight is what you must focus on to have your life in order from God's point of view, and for things to work right in a kingdom way. That doesn't mean everything will be easy when we're responding in these eight. Let's read them. Matthew 5, verse 3 to 10. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom. Blessed are those who mourn. Now that's spiritual mourning, by the way. That's not mourning over a crisis circumstance. You know, some tragedy happens and we're sad. That's a legitimate response, but that's not what he's talking about here. This is spiritual mourning. Verse 5. Blessed are the meek, or the humble. You can use the words interchangeably. They will inherit the earth. Now this is a remarkable promise that Jesus is actually quoting from Psalm 37 from King David. King David was the first one to say this in the Bible. The inheriting of the earth is to impact the earth or to actually be involved in the government of the earth. Now most of this inheriting the earth is in the age to come. When literally the saints will be in the government of every sphere of life, they will have the full government. And that's actually what he's talking about in fullness. However, there is a significant release of this promise right now in this age. To inherit the earth means to impact it, to influence it, to have some of God's, a sphere of God's government over it. Even if you're only impacting three people, that's part of God's government over the earth is touching those three lives. What Jesus is saying, I'm going to give the government of the earth, the influence of the earth to the meek. Now right now we look around, most of the government of the earth isn't under the hands and the influence of people who are meek. Some of it is in the kingdom, but most of it isn't. But the day is coming where the entire earth will be fully inherited by those who walked in meekness in this age. They will have all the positions of responsibility and authority. Verse six, blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for their personal life, a breakthrough of righteousness, but also for a breakthrough of righteousness in society, in the church, a breakthrough of righteousness imparted through their ministry as well, that righteousness would be imparted to others through their influence. Verse seven, blessed are the merciful. They shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, they shall see God. I can't imagine anything more dynamic than verse eight. The ability to see and encounter God, to experience Him more and to reflect His glory, to express His likeness, that's all wrapped up together in seeing God. Those nearest the throne, the seraphim, the twenty-four elders, they see God the most. And that's the highest privilege, to be able to see God, to encounter Him, to experience Him and to express and reflect His likeness. Verse nine, blessed are the peacemakers. They shall be called sons of God. Even unbelievers will say to peacemakers, those that heal relationships, they will say, you look like your father. There's a family resemblance. You act like we imagine God acts. That's what is said about the people who are peacemakers. And then the eighth beatitude, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now, these eight beatitudes, they answer the cry throughout the ages of the philosophers. The question has been asked, you know, how then do we live? How are we supposed to live? How do we achieve happiness? How do we attain greatness? How do we please God? How do we do things in this life that carry over and are remembered in the life to come, in the age to come? Those are questions every human being wants to know. What's the purpose of life? What am I supposed to do down here anyway during my 70 years on the earth? In one sermon, Jesus answers those questions in a very specific and intentional way. Even more specifically, in eight verses, he answers those questions. Now the Holy Spirit would say, I want to talk to you about these eight, but I'll wait for you to start the conversation. Part of my goal today is to exhort you to take each one of these eight and make it part of your dialogue with the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, teach me what it means to mourn. Teach me what it means and then empower me, inspire me, help me to actually do it. Teach me what it means to be poor in spirit. Help me walk this out. And the Holy Spirit has an application of this for our individual lives, but these eight Beatitudes also have a corporate application for families, for churches, for even society. Each one are vast in their implications. It's like just a quick read, we won't get it. We could meditate on this sermon our entire life and still there would be much we would not see. It has that many layers to it. Paragraph C. Now we're not going to go through the overview of the three chapters, but I just wanted to kind of give you a sneak preview, because we're going to be focusing on the Sermon on the Mount for some weeks to come. So I just want to kind of, I mean to stir you up to begin to think Sermon on the Mount, to read it, to get more familiar with it. Now everybody's familiar with the fact that it exists, those three chapters, and they're really important. We kind of know what they mean, a little bit, but I want us to bring our awareness and our focus and our understanding of these three chapters to another level as a spiritual family. So a quick overview. We won't look at this whole paragraph, but I want to encourage you to kind of get the big, the feel of the big picture. It's where the whole roadmap is aiming. Again, just to repeat, the Sermon on the Mount is a call to walk out the eight beatitudes. Your father's perfect. Walk in all the light that you have. Now we do this by resisting six specific temptations. Jesus identified six temptations in a very strategic way. He said you will only develop in the eight beatitudes if you continually resist these six temptations when they knock on your door. But it's not enough to say no to the negative. We also have to pursue five very specific kingdom activities. So we say no to the negative and yes to the positive, and it's very specific here. But it's not enough to even just say no to the negative and yes to the positives. We need to do it with a spirit of confidence because we can say no to sin and yes to kingdom activities and still, if our spirit is filled with fear and we don't have confidence that God is watching, that God cares about what we're doing, that He is our source, then we will be tripped up because Jesus is now relating in Matthew 6. He says you do the five positives, resist the six negatives, and you are seeking your destiny in God in these eight beatitudes, but you do it specifically with the right biblical mindset related to money and your possessions. Because in chapter 6, the anxiety, the fear factor that God isn't watching or God won't intervene, God won't help, and so it changes the way we say no to the negatives and yes to the positives. So Jesus addresses the issue of having the confidence that God's eyes are on us, He will reward us, He will provide for us. Then one more point is that chapter 7. Chapter 7 is mostly about the relational challenges that happen when we pursue chapter 5 and 6. When we seek to walk out what Jesus said in chapter 5 and 6, the eight beatitudes, say no to the six negatives, yes to the five positives, when we do that, it creates relational challenges because some of the people closest to you, they don't want you doing those things. And so they say, I'm not in agreement with that. I don't want to give up our personal rights. I want to attack my enemies. And you know, we've got to get in unity here. You say no, we're going to do it the biblical way, and they go no, I'm in disagreement. There are tensions that are created when an individual wants to walk this out. And in chapter 7, it's not only about relational tension, but that is one of the, that's the primary subject is the relational challenges that come up when you seek to walk these things out. Look at paragraph D. Now these eight beatitudes, I compare them to eight beautiful flowers in the garden of our heart. God wants these eight beautiful flowers, meekness and purity. He wants them to come to full blossom in our life. And again, the Holy Spirit is saying, I will help you. I will help you. Now these eight beatitudes, they define love. They define the kingdom lifestyle. They define what real ministry impact is, meaning in which people are inspired and instructed to embrace these eight beatitudes. We could have 25,000 young adults at the one thing conference, have a great time. I mean, have great, you know, uh, the whole media, great, everybody excited, music, phenomenal place packed out all the bills paid, everything is happening good. But if they are not motivated, if they are not stirred up to walk in these eight beatitudes, the conference has not been a success from God's point of view, no matter how much money or how many people or how much enthusiasm there was, it is not a success. Now, we don't have to say the eight every time. We don't have to use the terminology of these eight, but this is what ministry impact is measured from God's point of view. This is what spiritual maturity, how it's measured from God's point of view. If you want to see how you're growing, you know, every five or 10 years, you want to look back and measure, measure your spiritual growth by your growth in these eight beatitudes. Now the good news is that whenever God gives a commandment, there's always the promise of the enabling to obey the commandment. When God says, blessed are the pure, in essence, I want you to be pure. He's saying, I will help you be pure. When he says, be perfect, he's saying, I will help you be perfect. I will help you walk in the light I give you. There's a promise of enabling that goes with every command of God. That's good news. So look at paragraph E, again, a little repetitive, but I just want you to get this clear, particularly as you are, these next weeks, we're going to be looking at this Sermon on the Mountain in more detail. Now these eight flowers, so to speak, need to be cultivated. They don't grow automatically in our life. They grow progressively, but they can be diminished too, if we don't focus on them. I use the analogy of we water our garden and we weed the garden. Now by weeding the garment, I mean the garden, we are removing the hindrance to the growth of these flowers. So that's the six temptations. We resist them. We are removing the weeds, the hindrances to our growth. We must remove the weeds. Again, it's very strategic. These are not arbitrary. Jesus thought these things through thoroughly, but it's not enough to move the weeds. A garden, you get all the weeds out. The garden still won't grow properly if it's not nourished properly. So we have to water. We have to add the things that enhance and provide for the growth of that garden. Number one, the six temptations. Now each one of these have quite a few levels. There's a whole range of meaning and implication to each one of them. And the Holy Spirit will talk to each of us at different seasons of our life with a different measure of clarity. But He will always help us in what He highlights. First thing is anger. Now anger ranges from subtle anger, which is defensiveness, criticism, that's rooted in anger, to the most extreme anger, which is murder, and everything in between. He says, I want you to resist the spirit of anger in every way that I show it to you. Then immorality, then the disregarding of the marriage covenant. This is something that Jesus said, this is a very important that the marriage covenant is honored. Not only for the sake of marriage, that's what He's focusing on, but a man or a woman, through difficulty, that honors that covenant, it will affect all the other relationships in their life as well. Because they will have a kingdom view of relationships, even when they're tough. Jesus is saying, you honor the marriage covenant, even when it's tough. Now the Bible makes it clear through the lips of Jesus that adultery breaks the covenant and nullifies the covenant. That if a person, if their spouse has committed adultery, they are free from that covenant. That's another subject for another time, but here's the point. The muscle that we work in honoring that covenant, it changes our paradigm of relationships, and we view relationships through God's eyes in every sphere of life, even through working the muscle of the covenant relationship in marriage. He talks about resisting the temptation of making false commitments, demanding personal rights, living with a spirit of retaliation. There's six specific issues, and Jesus identifies them, and we will address each one of these in the weeks to come, by the grace of God. Number two, there's the kingdom activities, the nutrients that we put in the garden. We can't just pull the weeds and expect the flowers to grow. We have to put nutrients. These five kingdom activities are identified by Jesus, prayer, fasting, giving, serving, and forgiving our enemies, but I put the word here, blessing our enemies, because the fullness of forgiveness is not only to release them from their debt, but it's actually to seek redemptive blessing of God upon their life, of which Jesus says in Matthew 5. Now these five kingdom activities, they are spiritual disciplines. Now some people think spiritual disciplines are opposite of the grace of God, because they're confused about the doctrine of grace. There's a very distorted view of grace that's very popular in our nation today, and it has been for some time. The grace of God talks, I mean, in the subject of the grace of God, the work of Jesus on the cross, the finished work of Christ on the cross, He provided marvelous benefits for us, and they're free. He loves us, He forgives us, and He has many things He wants to do to us and through us in this life. Those benefits are provided, and the work has been done for us. But for that work to be released in us, to where our mind and our emotions line up with it, where we can feel and understand and be vessels to release the fullness of what God's grace provided, we have to cooperate with God. So that our mind and our emotions come in unity with the grace of God, we cooperate with God. That's called spiritual disciplines. I call it grace-empowered discipline. There is no presentation in the New Testament of the grace of God that is not connected to the disciplines that cooperate with the grace. The grace is freely provided, but our experience of the grace requires our cooperation with it. Jesus did everything necessary for us to have an increased experience, now we have to respond so that we actually do. Now if we don't respond much, we'll still go to heaven, and in the resurrection we'll see all the benefits. But beloved, I don't want to spend decades with a dull spirit, claiming everything's free, but I never enter into the experience of it in my mind and my emotions, and I live with a dull spirit and then get to heaven and everything's alive. I want to live with a vibrant spirit now. I want to understand God now. I want to live in the fullness of what he wants to release through me now, and that requires that we respond to the grace of God in the way that Jesus describes here. These five kingdom activities are not optional. They are not earning the love of God. We do these five because God loves us, and he freely loves us. That gives us courage to press into him in these five ways. Now some people, they try to earn God's love by these five kingdom activities, and that's a non-biblical concept, but because a few people are in error in their approach of it, we don't throw out these five kingdom activities that Jesus insisted on. And I tell you, Jesus taught about the grace of God better than anybody, and he requires our participation with grace, our cooperation with it, in these five ways. Now that people over the years, you know, they've come through and they've said, wow, that's a totally biblical view of Christianity. There isn't another version of Christianity that's biblical. People could be born again, have large ministries, not pursue these five things, and they'd still be born again, but what they're doing is not proclaiming New Testament Christianity. So I'm not interested in the fact that thousands might not want to go through, or maybe millions, I don't know, may not want to pursue this, but there is no other version of Christianity. This is normative to any believer, not just for the fiery kind of Rambo believers. Top of page two. Let's just be very brief on each one of these beatitudes, these eight, because these are the ones, these are the character virtues and the promise that as we grow in them, there's a blessedness, there's a vibrancy that increases in our spirit. And there's a blessing in the age to come as well, not just a blessing in this age. First, Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit. Now being poor in spirit means that we are poverty stricken in a spiritual sense, meaning we see our great need, that God has more for us that we're not experiencing. And in and of ourselves, we can't experience it without his help. But we set our heart to experience all that God has for us. Now the way that we become poor in spirit is that we learn what God wants to do to us and through us. And when our vision increases as to what God wants to do to us and through us, then we see the gap between what God wants to do with us and what we're actually experiencing. We look at our own human resource and we go, we can't close the gap. I mean, God wants to manifest his presence on our heart, that we would have a vibrant spirit. He wants his manifest presence through us as we impact others, meaning when we serve and impact others, he wants a spirit of inspiration and understanding to touch them too. He wants this presence of God released in his church at large. We look at that and we go, wow, there's a big gap between what God wants for us individually through our ministry in the church, in society, and what actually happens. Man, we need to see change come. Things as they are, are not good enough and we don't have the power in ourselves to correct it. So Lord, we need your breakthrough. We're reaching for more. We're reaching for the fullness. Now I began to grow in my understanding of what God wanted to do through reading biographies when I was younger. Read a lot of biographies in my late teens and early twenties. And wow, I read them and went, wow, I didn't know God wanted to do this. And then I found those very truths in the Bible. You're supposed to read them in the Bible first and then find them in other words, but I did it backwards. I read them in biographies and then found them in the Bible and said, what about me? I want a vibrant heart. I want the presence of God in my ministry to inspire others and to empower them. And I want to see it in the church. I began to get a vision for revival. The vision for revival left me poor in spirit. I said, I can't make it happen. And the Lord says, that's the point. Keep the vision high, but be aware that business as usual will not be good enough. Prophetic preaching that makes known what God wants to do with his people and his church produces poverty of spirit. That's how it starts. B, the thing that happens when we see more, that's poverty of spirit. We see more. B, then we feel differently. We feel pain about it. We mourn. This is spiritual mourning. We feel the pain of the gap. We go, it's not okay. We refuse to be comforted by any substitute. No, I want a vibrant heart. I want a ministry. Even if you're touching three people in your ministry, they don't have to be touching thousands. I want people inspired and moved by the presence of God when I minister, when I serve them, when I talk to them. When I'm talking about his manifest presence, I'm not talking about manifestations. I'm talking about their hearts are moved and inspired is what I mean by his presence being released through us. And we feel pain about it. And it's a desperate feeling, but we feel desperate enough to be extreme. That pain of mourning. Okay, I'll rearrange my life. I'll spend my time, my money, my energy different. I am so desperate. I feel the pain of this beloved. This mourning is a gift of God to you. Don't let some well-meaning guy come and give you false comfort and, and extinguish this feeling of anguish to have more because you know that God has more for you and to do through you. Many, well, many, many people will come along and offer you some false comfort. But when this gift of God is operating in you called mourning, I tell you, it's worth, you couldn't get it for a million dollars. You couldn't buy it. Your desire for God is actually his gift to you. It's a precious gift. Now this is an offensive thing to some people. It's offensive to them when you say there's so much more to have and we're not entering into it. Some guys get really offended by that. I remember on two occasions hearing with my own ears, two famous ministries at different occasions, a couple of years apart that had millions of people following them. They said, this statement, it was horrifying. They said, this is as good as it gets. No way. You know, because the Lord was moving in a certain way. I go, no, this is good, but this is not as good as it gets. And they were offended by the idea that there was not only more, much more on God's agenda than what we were walking in. They thought, well, are you saying that I'm not, I'm deficient? I go, yeah, there's nothing wrong with being deficient. We're humans. Isn't that a big deal? Is that a new idea that you're deficient? Are you saying this is not good enough? I'm grateful for what's happening, but so much more on God's agenda. Anyway, some people don't like this. So just kind of, you know, be aware of that. But it's a glorious operation of God and a lot of people will like to give you false comfort and extinguish that fire burning in your soul. I remember I almost did this once to my wife. We're in our early years of marriage. We've been married 35 years. So this was way in the early years. We were reading biographies in our twenties. On all these men and women of God, we were stirred up. We had a vision for a vibrant heart to feel God, understand God, and to be able to impart it to other people, his presence by the things we said and did. So I came home one day and she was at a prayer time and she was all sad. She goes, oh, I feel miserable. I feel so backslid, meaning my heart's not vibrant at all. I'm not imparting any of this stuff I'm reading. And just, you know, I mean, Diane is one of the most guileless and godly women. Even in her twenties, she was just a picture of seeking the Lord. And I went, what are you talking about, you know? So I was putting my arm around her and say, no, no, don't, don't, don't do that. Don't say that. You're, you're amazing. And I put my arm around her and the Holy Spirit just, he just kind of bypassed my thinking. You know, you got to be careful with that claim. And I heard myself say something exactly opposite of what I was about to say. I was going to say, no, you're amazing. I mean, you're, you're going hard after God. And I put my arm around her and I heard myself say, yes, you are backslidden. And so am I. And she, her head was down and she had a tear in her eye and she goes, yeah. She goes, I know. I mean, she knew I was backslidden too. I was thinking, how long have you known? And she didn't even look up. She didn't. I just thought I wasn't going to say that at all. I literally, I said, yes, you are backslidden and so am I. She goes, yeah, I know we are. Let's get a vibrant heart. And that's what she was referring to. She goes, let's go for something that when we talk to people, they get moved to God at a whole nother level. I went, wow. Well, that, that, that, that was a, a key moment in our spiritual life even because we took that very seriously together. So the B, the mourning is feeling this pain. Being extreme enough because of the pain, you're not, we refuse every substitute, comfort. We don't want to lower our vision to get comforted. We want to keep the vision high and we want to feel the ache. Now this mourning isn't the only emotion you feel. It's a key emotion, but you still have joy. You still have confidence that God, uh, and gratitude for what he's doing in and through you. So it's not only mourning, but mourning is a key part of our emotional chemistry when the spirit is touching us. Now, some people, all they have is mourning. They have no gratitude. They have no joy, no sense of confidence with God. And so they've got a beginning of this, but they need some other truths alongside to balance it. Paragraph C, walking in meekness. Now meekness in, in a sentence is it's not weakness. Meekness is not weakness. Meekness means power under control. That's what meekness is. When a horse that's very powerful is bridled and trained, it's said to be meek. It uses its full force under the restraint of the bit and the bridle and the, and the reins. The power's not diminished, but it's focused. And when we're meek, it means our power is restrained under the Holy Spirit's values in his direction. That's what meekness means. We come under that yoke of the Holy Spirit's leadership. You don't lose any of your strength, but you use your strength differently. You aim at different targets as he directs us, like the rider would direct the horse. We use our resources and our authority under the Holy Spirit's leadership, not just to increase our sphere of influence and our sphere of blessing, but we use our, our power, our resources to actually benefit others with no regard to it coming back to us. That's meekness. Now, meekness has more than that. Meekness is a reference to a teachable spirit, the most learned man or woman. If they're meek, they will be a, a, a, a learner and a listener all of their days. They will be preoccupied with God's agenda for others, not only themselves. They will be a learner and a listener. A meek person doesn't draw attention to themselves. Jesus addresses this very strong right here in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6. He goes, don't sound a trumpet to show everybody how dedicated you are. Don't sound the trumpet at the synagogue, in the meetings where the saints gather, and don't sound the trumpet out in the streets just as you come and go. He said that several times, not in the gathering and not out in the street. He said, don't sound a trumpet to let everybody know how dedicated you are, how much you give, how much you fast, how much you pray, how zealous you are for God, how sensitive you are to the Holy Spirit. Don't draw a trumpet to blow a trumpet, put a neon sign and say, look at me. I'm in the meeting. I'm in the room. I'm out in the street. Aren't I dedicated? Aren't I generous? Don't I fast and pray a lot? Don't I move in the Spirit? Aren't I zealous? Look at all the fanfare that I make to show my zeal. Isn't it amazing? Jesus says, don't do that. Don't do that. Now, we all know about the guy that walks in the room, whether the room's ten or a thousand, and everyone in the room knows he's in the room, because he makes sure that everybody knows he's in the room. Jesus says, no, go the other direction. Draw attention to me and draw attention to others, meekness. And the meek will enter into my government a little bit in this life, but in fullness in the life to come. Paragraph D, hunger and thirsting for righteousness. Walking in the grace of God is not passive. Walking in the grace of God involves pressing into God, hungering and thirsting. It is not passive. You know, again, it's this distorted view of grace. Well, I'm just going to receive what's already done. Yes, it is done and you need to receive it, but you receive it by positioning yourself to press in, press it with all of your might, your might. Jesus called it hungering and thirsting. Now, there's nothing more focused than a man that's famished with hunger or thirst. They are very focused. They won't take any substitute if they're on the verge of death because of hunger or thirst. You picture a man coming out of a desert or being rescued at the last moment and he hasn't had water for days. He is parched and at the, just hours away from death. The thing that he wants most is his thirst to be quenched. Hey, bro, how you doing? You know, I was thinking we could plan our schedule today, maybe catch a few movies, maybe go out and get some, I got some ways we can make some more money and hey, there's some new networking opportunities going on. The guy's going, you know what? Tell me all that later. Those things are all cool, but quench my thirst. I'm about to die. A thirsty man is a focused man. Jesus says, I want you focused. I want you passionate, not passive. I want you going after it because a thirsty man will lose sight of everything going after quenching his thirst. Again, it's this idea of the grace of God. Jesus is the best grace teacher that's ever existed. He's saying, I want my people thirsty. I want them passionate. I want them passionate in the sense of that they're expending all of their strength seeking me, not letting things just happen as they will. They are going to use what's within their power to seek me, that their mind would be filled with the word, their emotions would be transformed by the power of the spirit. Some people have the idea that, well, if God wants my mind and emotions changed, he has my address. He'll change them. And the Lord says, no, the work that I did for you, I want to do in you, but not without you cooperating with me. I want you to feel and understand so much more, but you've got a hunger and thirst for me. Paragraph E, relating to others in mercy. Now the way that we relate, we're tender to people in their failure, and we're tender towards people in their need. So there's a failure dimension, and there's a need dimension. You know, we look at all the plight of the fatherless, and not just our nation, and the nations, and we see that, we feel merciful, we feel touched. It's not like, oh yeah, that's just too bad. There's a mercy dimension related to needs and injustice, and there's a mercy dimension related to being tender with failure. The way we become more tender with people's failure is by seeing how tender God is to us in our failure. And Jesus said, there's a relationship to your tenderness towards people, and the tenderness you will actually receive. God says, I'll even give you more mercy as you show mercy. I've given you sufficient to make you merciful, but I will actually increase your experience of mercy from me directly, and I will even raise up others around you that will be merciful to you. Being pure in heart. I just can't imagine anything more glorious than seeing God. Greater capacity. Now we will grow in our capacity to see God, to encounter Him forever and forever. We will never, ever exhaust our ability to increase our capacity. Those that are nearest the throne see Him the most. The most privileged and honored. Now when we see God in this age, at whatever measure, we actually experience Him more. And we reflect His likeness more. We express His glory more. But we want to be pure in our thoughts and in our motives. We want to expend energy to cultivate purity in our thoughts. And it takes energy because our thoughts by nature and our motives by nature are impure. It takes a clear, definitive, focused cooperation with God for purity to grow in our thoughts and our motives. And when the Holy Spirit highlights something, we don't want to be defensive. We don't want to blame shift. We don't want to come up with religious answers why it's okay to be impure. We want to say, thank you, Holy Spirit. Now help me. And the Holy Spirit says, you do that, you'll see God more. You'll feel God more. You'll express God more. Job said it so well, we've quoted the verse many times, Job 31, 1, he said, I made a covenant with my eyes, Job 31, verse 1. I will not look on anything that stirs up immoral lust in my thinking. Beloved, we want to make a covenant with our eyes and maintain the covenant. And if we fail in the covenant, don't get into condemnation. Just call it failure, recommit to it, receive forgiveness, push delete, and be fully committed again to the covenant. Paragraph G, becoming a peacemaker, a person that puts time and energy and risk, it's a key word, risk, to heal broken relationships. You know, you get brother number one and brother number two together, or they don't even have to be people that are born again. This is healing relationships at many levels. Takes time, it takes energy, it takes listening, it takes care, it takes love to do that. Now I've done a bit of that over the years, and many of you have, and here's the risk involved. I get brother A, why he has a conflict with brother B, and so we get brother B, and he's got a different version, it takes hours and hours and hours, and so finally we've got it kind of summarized, brother A, you changed this and these two things, brother B, you changed these two things. I've seen this many times. They don't change either, they stay divided, now they're both mad at me. I said, Lord, what good was it? And the Lord's answer is, it's good because love is an end in itself. You know, God loves for love's sake, because he is love, I mean for his own sake. The reward of love is love itself. God loves many times, and there's no response to it, no receptivity, but love is still glorious when it's expressed. And the Lord's answer would be to us, that even if they don't reconcile, you are an expression of my likeness. You're showing the family traits. You're showing what it's like to be like me. So reconcile, it takes a lot of time and energy to do it. I believe with the financial crisis that's mounting up in the years, and I believe even decades to come, that there's going to be more and more civil unrest related to lack of economics in governments. Financial crisis, there'll be civil unrest, and the peacemakers will be some of the most important ministries in the neighborhoods around the earth. And even when we don't bring Brother A and Brother B to resolution and peace, we have still learned a lot about the process. And we've been transformed and even trained even in the exercise of it. But again, love is an end in itself, even if it's not received. It's love for love's sake under the glory of God. Paragraph H, enduring persecution. Now when we take a stand for the kingdom, we lead someone to the Lord, we pray for the sick, we take a stand for righteousness, there's a counterattack. The enemy strikes back, because what you're doing is you're moving in his domain and taking things from him. He goes, no, those are mine. He goes, no, they belong to God, and we're invading the realm of darkness, we're bringing the gospel, the truth, and the enemy, in a limited way, can strike back in this age. His time is limited, but there is a counterattack. And Jesus is saying, don't be offended. Don't be a victim. Don't quit. You know, the guy says, you know, I took a stand for righteousness, nobody went for it, it's not worth it anyway, everybody's mad, everyone's written me off, I quit. Jesus said, no, take a stand for righteousness for my sake. Not because it will make you popular, or make your ministry bigger, or make things better for you. Matter of fact, they may get worse, circumstantially. Don't draw back in fear. Know that you're blessed. The glory of God, it says, will touch you. First Peter 4.14 says that the spirit of glory will rest on you if you will maintain your stance even when being persecuted. First Peter 4.14. Paragraph I, Matthew 5, Jesus says this. Now, it's only about five or six verses later, he's on the same subject of the eight beatitudes. He says, if you do these, and you teach them, you will be called great in my sight. You might not be called great by men in this age, but when you stand before God, he says, if you do these eight, and you impart them, you take a stand for them, you focus on them, you put labor in on them, I will call your dedication great in the age to come when you stand before me. Now we say our dedication doesn't seem that great, but the Lord is so kind in his evaluation of me, so kind. So I've read this verse, Matthew 5.19, and I go, wait a second, if I teach the eight beatitudes and pursue them in my own life, and I labor to get other people to buy into them, you will do what? I will call you great when we meet face to face. Beloved, I love you, but I'm doing this this morning for me. Well, I'm doing it for you too, but I really take this serious. He goes, don't just do it, convince others to do it. I go, I'm in, I'm in. So for some years, I take time and energy to get people to buy into this stuff, because the Lord takes it personal. He says, I'll take it personal the way you love me by standing for those things. Final paragraph, J, if we do this, we will have a vibrant spirit referred to as being full of light. Just real brief, Jesus says the lamp, or the source of light for the body, is the eye, the spiritual eye. Now here's what he says, if your eye is good, your whole body, your whole person, doesn't mean just your physical body, your whole personhood will be full of light. You'll have a vibrant spirit, if your eye is good, if your eye is bad, you won't have a vibrant spirit, you'll have a dull spirit, plus some. And he said, that's all what I promise you. Now, having your eye good, what does that mean, real simple. It means you, your primary vision for your life is to pursue these eight beatitudes. Yes, say no to the six negatives, pursue the five positives. All that goes together. You say yes to these eight beatitudes and you focus on them with all the other dimensions that go with it, and you teach them, that is your primary life vision. Now you may never teach publicly on a microphone, but you'll teach twos and threes, ones and twos. Teach your children, teach your neighbors, teach your friends. Encourage people, tell your story, tell your struggle about them, you're teaching people. By even just sharing in a friendship context, Jesus said, if your life vision, your main life vision is that, you will have light, you'll have a vibrant spirit. Many believers that I know, many, many, many, their verse 23, their eye is bad, that is not their life vision. It's down the list, their life vision is to have more money, more friends, bigger ministry and an easier life and enjoy Jesus in the process best they can. Beloved, that's called a bad eye. That means their life vision's out of kilter, it's out of order. Where Jesus is kind of like an addendum to their American dream pursuit of having things bigger, nicer, easier, more friends, more ministry, just things working better, easier. Jesus said, I want to promise you something, you will have a spirit of dullness and darkness in your mind, in your emotions. The only way forward is the way that I'm presenting to you, Jesus would have said, amen. So Lord, we say, yes, we want these eight. We want to realign our eye to where it's good. I want to encourage you to stand, we're going to ask the Lord to touch us. Lord, I say, yes, I want a good eye. I want to be full of light. Now this is progressive, it's not all at once. And the Lord's wanting, I'm wanting again for these weeks to follow, to realign, to plumb line our spiritual community to the Sermon on the Mount. This is where a vibrant heart comes from, full of light. I want more than I have right now. I want to experience the light and I want to impart the light. I want more. You want more. I want to encourage you, just close your eyes just for a moment so you're not distracted. Talk to the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, I want to line up, I want to make this number one. You can say this different ways, loving God with all your heart, say it the way you want, but I want to go after these eight as number one goal of my life. And I want to make them known. Holy Spirit, teach me. Holy Spirit says, talk to me more. I'll talk to you about them if you'll talk to me about them.