Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth

Some years ago, a man and his wife, who had dreamed all their lives of taking an ocean cruise. So they scraped and scrimped all their lives. And in their older age, they finally had enough money to pay the tickets to take a cruise.

But after he paid for the tickets, he had almost no money left. So how were they going to eat? Well, he didn't think they had enough money to pay the tickets for the dining hall. Also on the cruise ship.

So he went to the store and bought peanut butter and bread. And they ate peanut butter sandwiches, going and coming. When he got home, somebody said, well, how did you enjoy your cruise? Well, he said the cruise was fine, but it would have been so much better if we could have eaten in the dining hall.

But we didn't have the money to pay for the dining hall. And he said, didn't you understand? The dining hall was in your ticket. You paid for it with your ticket.

That is such a story of Christian life for many people. They go through life on a very meager spiritual experience, because they don't know what is in the ticket. They don't understand the rich experience God has planned for us.

Their concept of the Christian life is all about hanging on by your fingernails so you can go to heaven when you die. That's their concept of Christianity. They don't realize that the Christian life is not a preparation for death.

It's a perspective for living. It's not about going to heaven when you die only. That's an important part of the message.

I don't want to minimize it. But that's not even beginning almost to get the real message, which is bringing heaven to earth while we live. And people don't understand that.

And so Jesus, when he announced his message, he did not say, repent if you want to go to heaven when you die, although that's true. I don't want you to go away from this meeting saying, I don't believe that. I believe that.

And that's important that you be prepared for that. But that's not what he focused on. He said, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

You are about to experience the blessings of living the kingdom of heaven on earth, heaven on earth. And then immediately after that, just a couple of verses later after he did a few miracles to demonstrate his power and who he was, he gave what I call the constitution for the kingdom. And I want you to turn to that.

That's Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Now, often we hear messages on parts of this sermon. And I'm going to attempt to do in less than an hour a survey of this sermon because it is an amazing sermon. It includes all of life.

And it is fitted together in the most amazing ways. Like many constitutions, it has a preamble. A preamble is that which ambles before the introduction.

It has a preamble. We call it the Beatitudes, and we'll talk about that. Then it tells the reason for this kingdom.

It gives the purpose. And it gives a kingdom pledge. There's a certain pledge that's involved with this kingdom.

And then it gives kingdom precepts. And finally, it gives the kingdom piety. And then at the last, it gives some kingdom cautions, which I call the kingdom prudence.

So we're going to talk about the preamble, the purpose, the pledge, the precepts, the piety, and the prudence. So we'll try to do it quickly. The kingdom of heaven is the message people do not hear.

People call me from the billboards, and they say, what do I have to do to go to heaven? And I say, well, you need to join the kingdom of heaven. What's that? They never heard of such a thing. And as a boy growing up, I never heard a sermon on the kingdom of heaven.

It was the Save Me gospel that you need to get saved so you could go to heaven when you die. What is the church? Well, the church is to be, as I understand what Jesus said and what the rest of the epistles say, the church is to be a little colony of heaven on Earth, showing exactly how people live if they do what heaven would want them to do on this earth, and show to the whole world what it would look like if man had never fallen. Now, it won't be perfect, because sin is here, and we will have our failings.

But it can be a credible picture of the basic outline of what the communities would have looked like before the fall. Jesus came to restore that ideal. And the church is here to show to the whole world what it could look like if everybody obeyed the king.

That's the missing message of the gospel. And everybody else is eating peanut butter sandwiches. If you would have asked me, well, then what's the importance of the church if you're not going to talk about it as an entity in itself giving a picture to the world of an ideal society? What's the church then? Oh, I just said the church is necessary to get you ready to go to heaven when you die.

That's all I heard growing up. It was all about making sure that you go to heaven. And we were eating peanut butter sandwiches.

And if you would go to the church I grew up with and meet the people that I grew up with, most of them have lost it. That's not enough to keep us going. For a young person especially to live for a future that's probably 50 years out there, and here they are in the middle, tremendous temptation, but we have no present inspiration for them to live by.

The kingdom of heaven is a tremendous concept. In fact, if this church would ever get it through their head that that's what it's all about, you would give all other priorities to make this a beautiful pristine example of a perfect community. It would never be perfect.

However, I want you to look at the last verse of chapter 5. Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. What most people don't understand is perfection is the goal of Christianity. Paul says, I labor to the point of exhaustion to present every man perfect in Christ.

God says, be holy for I am holy. That is the goal. The goal is perfection.

Will we ever reach it? Paul said, no, I have not reached it. I have not attained it. But I press toward that mark.

And that's what God's looking for. He's looking for individuals. He's looking for churches that are pressing toward this mark.

And every person is driven by a passion to be perfect individually and to be part of a perfect church. Now, it will never happen completely. But when you move toward that kind of goal, you see constant improvement toward the goal.

So here we have this preamble. And I used to look at the Sermon on the Mount and I would say, why doesn't it begin with the new birth? Jesus said you must be born again in John chapter 3. But this doesn't say anything about a new birth. And here it's the most important sermon that Jesus preached.

And there's nothing about the new birth. And then I looked at it again. I said, sure enough, that's exactly how it begins.

It says, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. What does it mean to be poor in spirit? What means to become totally aware that without me, you can do nothing, what Jesus said. You've totally come to the end of yourself.

You are destitute. You have nowhere else to turn. And you're ready to do whatever Jesus tells you to do.

Francis Schaeffer said, in every home, in every heart, there is a throne and there is a cross. Before a person is a Christian, self is on the throne and Christ is on the cross. And to become a Christian is to change that, to put self on the cross and Christ on the throne.

This is the new birth, my friends, spelled out in great detail. Now we're going to not only have a beginning, we're going to have a blow-by-blow description of what the new birth looks like, what kind of characteristics begin to come forth in this life. But this is a problem.

Self wants to constantly get off of the cross. And that's why Jesus said, you have to take this up every day. Let's say this is the way of self and this is the way of Christ.

And you're going along here with self. You have a plan. You're a young boy.

You're going to buy your first car. I'm going to talk about boys because I was a boy and I remember this. What kind of car are you going to buy? Well, you're going to buy a really nice car, one that gets people's attention, maybe makes a little more noise than some others, and certainly is something flashy.

And so you dream and you dream and now you're on the car lot looking and there's the car. There it is. It's a car I dreamed about for years.

But it's three times as expensive as the money I have in my pocket. Over here's a car. It's an older car.

Nobody's going to look twice at it. But it's a car that everybody knows that kind of car has many, many miles left in it. Maybe even has a little rust on it or something.

No one's going to pay any attention to your car. But it's going to give you good service for many years for the least amount of money and you have the cash to pay for it. And you have the sneaky suspicion from what you know of Jesus that this is the car he would buy and this is the car he wouldn't buy.

And so you have to say no. And you have to say, Jesus, I'm going to put that dream on the cross and I'm going to go this way. How many understand what I just said? And so why do we have to do this every day? Because we are facing decisions every day.

All day, every day, and many of them are like this. And so that's what Jesus said. If you can accept this, if you can embrace this, if this can be part of your life, you can join the kingdom.

Nobody else will be able to join because Jesus has a lot of things to teach. He has a lot of situations like this to bring to your life. And if you're not committed ahead of time, you're going to keep going this way.

And you're not going to take Jesus' way. So that's how we enter. We enter by a complete surrender of self to Christ.

Well, then I need to move quickly here. We'll never get through. The next thing is blessed are they that mourn.

We're going to get a blow-by description now of what this looks like, what this new birth looks. I love this because this really, really gives pictures of what this new birth looks like. So blessed are they that mourn.

Well, I thought everybody said that if I give my heart to Christ, I will be so happy. And here it says mourning. Well, what happens is when this change takes place, you begin to see reality.

You see God in His holiness like Isaiah. And He's on His face before such a holy God. You're going to see self with all of its hatred and ugliness.

You're going to see the world not as a playground anymore. It's going to be a battleground. It's going to be an awful place of tragedy all over the place.

And it's going to cause you to be sad when you see God in yourself and the world. But then it says you'll be comforted. There's a promise with each of these.

Why? Because once you start to see reality, you begin to live reality. And guess what? You start to change. Your family starts to change.

The people around you start to change. And you begin to see things happen that make you very happy and you're comforted. The next thing it says is blessed are the meek.

Well, this person with this experience is starting to realize the tremendous influence in his life that he does not have to manipulate people anymore. He just simply has to live heaven on earth and good things begin to happen. This idea of meek is the idea of defenselessness.

It's the idea of gentleness. He doesn't manipulate people anymore. He doesn't try to control people.

He can trust God. And he's gentle and he's kind. He may have to tell truths sometimes that hurts people.

I talk on the telephone to people all the time and I have to tell young couples, well, if you want to be a Christian, you're living together and you're not married, you're living in sin. You have to separate. And that's hurtful, that's very hurtful.

But the Christian will not say hurtful things in a hurtful way. He doesn't hurt people anymore. By the way he talks and the way he acts.

He may say some very hard things, but he does not have a judgmental attitude. See, judgmental attitude is a condemning attitude. It's always putting people down and, of course, putting yourself up.

That's done. He doesn't do that anymore. In fact, Jesus said he didn't come to condemn the world.

Even Jesus does not do this. In fact, later on in John, he says, the words that I speak in the last day, I'm not gonna judge anybody. It'll be the words that I speak that will judge.

And so this person now is a meek person. And then what's next? Hunger and thirst after righteousness. He's had enough experience with this life that he wants to do what's right.

And he has a passion to do what's right. What's the promise? He shall be filled. The word filled here is the word gorged.

What does gorge mean? Abundant, stuffed, overflowing. Why? Because that's what you were made for. You were not made for sin.

Even physically, the Bible says, envy is a rottenness to the bones. Even your physical body was not made for sin and selfishness and all of those things. Our medical doctor, who was a German Baptist, plain man, said, 80% of the people come into my office and most of them were Anabaptists, plain, conservative Anabaptists.

He says, 80% of the people come into my office are not there because of the pathogen. They're there because of the way they lived. They were deep business and all the stress or maybe they were living in sin.

He said, the way they're living breaks down their resistance and then the pathogen takes over. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be gorged because they are living the way they were intended to be. Most people are living like somebody who says, I need to make a little bit of stone dust for a science experiment.

I'm not gonna go to town. It's just a little handful. I'm gonna go out there and get some stones and I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna turn on the blender and I'm gonna put the stones in the blender and I'm gonna make me some stone dust.

Some of you are smiling. Why? You will not have any stone dust and what else won't you have? The blender was not made to make stone dust and most people are living, trying to make stone dust with a blender. And Jesus says, when you live the way you're supposed to live, you will be gorged, you will be satisfied.

But all of us know about situations where God called us to do something and we were tired, oh no, and we went and did it and we just were completely rejuvenated. We all know that. That's what righteousness does.

And this person knows that and he just has a passion. I want more of this. I can't get enough of it.

And then he says, oh, but we missed the promise for the meek. The meek shall inherit the earth. That's quite a promise.

I would say that a person who's gentle and kind, people would wipe their feet, but no, no. No, the early Christians won the heart of the Roman Empire within 300 years. Not by being forceful, hurtful people.

Not by the sword. They won it by sacrifice, by dying, by serving. That's how they won it.

Until Julian, the apostate who tried to revive paganism finally threw up his hands in despair and said, thou hast conquered, O Galilean. But they did it. Thank you so much.

They did it by being defenseless and gentle and kind and serving. They out-served their generation. I forgot that one.

All right. Hungry and thirsting after all. So now we come to merciful.

What is merciful? Merciful is a propensity for pity. To not want to have anybody hurting. Like I said, if you have to say something hurtful, you want to make sure that the way you said it is kind.

You want to be a merciful person. The Bible talks about God having bowels of compassion. When I was a little boy, I thought that's pretty earthy language for the Bible, talking about bowels.

But that's exactly what it means. How many have ever been so concerned about something that your whole digestive system was not working very well? Uh-huh. That's what this is.

A merciful person. Quick to forgive. Generous with his resources.

Never condemning. Slow to criticize. And if he has to say something, he tries the very best way he can think of to be kind and gentle in the way he gives it.

He's a merciful person. It says they shall obtain mercy. I mentioned Sundar Singh that wrote the text for that song.

I have decided to follow Jesus. One day he and a fellow evangelist decided to go over the Himalayan mountains to the next valley to preach the gospel. They started up the mountain.

They realized they weren't dressed warmly enough. A storm came up, and they thought they would freeze to death. And sure enough, they came upon a form in the snow, and Sundar Singh put his ear down, and he said, this man is still breathing.

We have to take him with us. And the other man said, oh, if we take him with us, we'll all die. No, no, we can't do that.

And he went walking on by himself. Sundar Singh picked the man up, put him on his shoulder. As he was heaving up, pretty soon he got pretty warm, and so did the man.

He thawed out. And soon they were walking together. And then they came on a form that was not breathing.

It was the man who went on by himself. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart.

Well, something's pure doesn't have any mixture. So these disciplines we've been going through that I've been describing bring a person to purity of heart. What's the mixture that spoils the purity? Self.

The very thing we started out with, dealing with. Here's a person finally that self has been pretty thoroughly dealt with. And he can see God.

I call, have people call me all the time, what is the evidence that God exists? And I say, it's everywhere, but they can't see it. Because self is still there. And if they would ever allow themselves to see God, it would mean they would have to change.

And so they can't see God. They don't want to see God. But the person who has been purified in his heart and is ready to make any changes God asks him to make, he shall see God.

We see what we're trained to see. The astronomist that goes out looking at the sky, he sees all kinds of things in the sky I don't see because he's trained himself to see. I have a friend who's a biologist.

If you go with him with a walk through the woods, he'll tell you all the plants, what medicinal value they have, how to take care of them, how to take care of the diseases. I walk through the woods and I enjoy that, but I don't see all of that because my eyes are not ready to see it. The person who's pure in heart, the person who's dealt with self, and I want you to remember, self is the great issue here, sees God, okay? What causes salt to lose its flavor, which we're gonna get to in a little bit? Mixture.

Sodium chloride is always sodium chloride. You cannot dilute it unless you mix something with it. And what's the mixture? Self is what dilutes the salt and makes it less salty.

And so we have so much individualism. I mean, as I go through the church, I see the church as being destroyed by individuals who don't want anybody to tell them anything, don't want the church to tell them anything. They want just their own relationship with God and whatever God tells them they will do, but nothing else.

Then it says peacemaker. Wow, we need to move here. A peacemaker is not a peace lover.

A peace lover will avoid all problems just to keep peace. And finally, those problems build up and there's a huge explosion in the church. A peacemaker is someone, when he sees a problem developing, he goes and gets it solved.

And that's costly. Jesus made peace by the blood of his cross. And so the person who goes out to make peace is risking his own blood because he may get in bad trouble trying to solve a problem between two brothers.

John Woolman was a Quaker and he thought it was horrible that some Quakers had slaves. Now, they were household slaves. They were treated well.

They weren't like the slaves you read about that were mistreated. The Quakers treated their slaves very well, but they were slaves. And John Woolman said, this is a disgrace for a man who calls himself a Christian to own another human being.

So what did he do? Did he get up behind a pulpit and rail on people and condemn people and create a movement? No, he didn't do any of that. He had a dry goods store and he was aware that the dyes for the dyed clothing and the dyes he was selling were made by slave labor in the South. So he decided in his dry goods store he wouldn't sell any dyed clothing.

He would not sell the dyes. And guess what? His business suffered. Not only that, but Quakers always wore brown and black and gray, very somber colors.

Here's this man that stands up to preach in a Quaker church with a white suit. Can you imagine the disgrace? But he bore all of that. The business that he suffered, the misunderstandings he suffered.

But at the end of his life, there were no slaves that owned, there were no Quakers owning slaves. He completely abolished slavery from the church. He was a peacemaker, but he suffered.

He was willing to take that to make peace. Notice, you'll be called the children of God because there's nothing God wants more on this earth than peacemakers. Be you reconciled to God, be you reconciled to each other.

That's what he wants. He wants reconciliation of sinful man to himself and to each other. And he says, once you get to the point where you have this passion to make peace wherever there's trouble, when you get to that place, you're a child of God.

That you have God's very characteristic at that point. And then finally, the persecuted. I just described it.

The peacemaker's gonna be persecuted. He lives in a world of sin, of hatred, misunderstanding, and all of those things that he wades into with his peacemaking to reconcile people to God and each other. Okay, that's the kingdom preamble.

It's a description of the character of the people who make up this kingdom. And now we have the purpose. What is the purpose? The purpose is influence.

God intended for the church to have a tremendous influence. A society like I'm picturing has a tremendous influence. Somebody says the character of influence is the influence of character.

And here's a group of people that have the character of Christ. And they're gonna have an influence. But first of all, they have to have salt.

Before they have light, there has to be salt. Salt preserves and salt purifies. And until you have salt in your character, you will not be a light to the world.

But if you do, that light will go out into the world. And they will see what humankind is supposed to be like. There is what God intended for a man to be.

And they'll see that they're not that way. They'll see their lost potential. They will see the beauty of the potential that God gave to human beings.

You know, the self that we're to deny is not our true self. This self that we keep denying is a false self that wants to create itself. God wants the world to see the true self that he created.

And so when you're denying self, you're denying an imposter. You're denying a false self that wants to parade itself as John Dee. But there's a true John Dee that God wants the world to see.

And this process we talked about will bring that out. And it will have tremendous influence. Everywhere it goes, it will have tremendous influence.

It will stand out as a beautiful ideal that will attract people and help them see the lost condition that they're in. The next thing we come to, so that's the kingdom purpose. We have the kingdom character in the preamble.

We have the kingdom purpose. The whole thing is God wants us to have a tremendous influence on the world. Like I said, the early church basically won the heart of the Roman Empire.

Not everybody, it was a minority, but it still was enough of the heart of the Roman Empire that the Roman Empire finally had to recognize Christianity. Same thing happened with the end of baptism. You had a small group of people who took a stand on the Sermon on the Mount.

A minority of people, the first people in modern history to say church and state should be separate. Martin Luther didn't say that. He still used the state to persecute the people who disagreed with him.

Zwingli didn't say that. He still used the church to persecute. He was the person who approved the drowning of Felix Mons.

John Calvin didn't say that. He burned Cervetus at the stake. These men were state church people.

Our people were the first people in modern history. It was gonna be another hundred years before anybody even talked this way. That church and state should be separate, there should be freedom of conscience, there should be voluntary church membership, and there should be adult baptism, and they nicknamed us Anabaptists, re-baptizers.

And then some people followed a man named Mennonites. I tell people all of our names are nicknames. We never got a chance to choose any of our names.

Our enemies nicknamed us, and we're stuck with it. Anyway, so what happened with Anabaptism? Well, Leonard Verdine. How many have ever read The Reformers and Their Stepchildren? The Anatomy of a Hybrid? You've not read any of those.

He was a reformed man who learned about our people and was very inspired and wrote these books. The last book he wrote when he was 102 years old was the First Amendment and the Remnant in which he tries to show that it was that influence of the Anabaptists that brought freedom to all of Western civilization. The meek shall inherit the earth.

We're talking about some powerful stuff here, but who dares, who dares to live this way? Absolutely live this way. That's what we're talking about. So what is the kingdom pledge? Well, I think we're gonna read this one.

Verse 17, think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I'm not come to destroy but to fulfill. And the idea here is the idea of completion.

You have a seed, then you have a plant, then you have a flower, and then you have a fruit. And Jesus was the fruit of everything that preceded it. Judaism was moving toward this fruit and Jesus was finally the fruit.

He gathered up all the law. He gathered up all the prophets in himself and lived out exactly what they were to mean. Okay? Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall no wise pass from the law to all be fulfilled.

Hmm. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commands and shall teach men so, he shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whosoever shall do and teach them the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

For I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. So I get the impression that when people were listening to Jesus, they heard these inspiring new concepts, they were probably saying, is he a conservative or is he a liberal? How many think he was a liberal? I don't see any hands. How many think he was a conservative? He said, all the law and the prophets I'm gonna conserve.

He was a pledged conservative, my friends. He didn't wanna lose anything good of what had gone before. Okay? You know, it would be stupid to be a law.

In fact, he was about to give the most stringent laws that anybody ever gave. It would have been foolish for him to give the impression that he was a lawbreaker, that he played fast and loose with laws. He made it very clear he was on the side of the law.

In fact, one of the prophets says, the dregs of society, the head of society is the righteous man. The dregs of society is the prophet that teaches lies. Any person that suggests that to be a Christian, you just throw it all up in the air and you live without any restraint.

That's sort of stupid. In fact, later, well, let me do this first. Here's a little fish swimming around in a pond and he's a happy little fish until he discovers that there are boundaries and he doesn't like that.

He said, well, you know, I certainly was made for a larger perspective than this. We need to get rid of these stupid boundaries. So one day he gets up enough strength and he flips himself out of the pond and he's free.

Yes or no? Dead. As long as he lived within the boundaries and God has created boundaries. Jesus said they're wrapped up in the creation.

They won't pass until the creation pass. There are boundaries that God has set. Whoever lives within those boundaries has all the freedom in the world.

Jesus gave it another way. He said, enter it at the straight gate because it broadens into life. Enter it at the broad gate, it goes into death.

It goes down the narrow end of the funnel. That's true. If you wanna be, I listened to Matthias play the piano this morning.

Matthias, what's behind all that freedom on the piano? What is behind all that freedom on the piano? Hours of discipline. If you walk up to, have you ever seen somebody put a piece of paper on the wall and walk up with some colored chalk and go, and it actually looked like a rooster, the rooster. It was about ready to crow.

How many have ever seen that? What's behind that? Freedom. What's behind that freedom? Hours of discipline. Someone that can speak a foreign language fluently and enjoy hours of learning vocabulary and grammar and syntax and finally they're free.

I spent all my years as a high school teacher trying to convince young people, beware of the undisciplined way. Any freedom that is not based upon actual disciplines is a false freedom, is a disastrous freedom. It's the young people that came to class on Monday morning at Shippensburg University half drunk or maybe they didn't even come to class.

They got their degree but they can't get a decent job. The people who have the decent jobs who are doctors and lawyers in Shippensburg are the people who took this while these guys were out messing around on the weekend, they were there studying. That's a law of life.

You're just as free as you can master the disciplines of life and that's what Jesus is saying. He's saying, beware of the lawless person. The person that you can trust is the person who's gathered up everything from the past that's good and has conserved it and has learned to live it.

That's what he's saying. Oh, I could preach a whole sermon on this. In the Old Testament, you have all those laws that later on they said, well, we couldn't quite live by those laws but those laws were intended that it may be well with you.

All those laws were intended for human flourishing. Now, they didn't go as far as they should have gone and they didn't get the dynamic yet that was coming but all of them were intended for Israel's good. Do you know that Israel was not to eat fat? What did they do with the fat, Jerry? They burned it to the Lord.

Do you think God may have had their cardiovascular health in mind? What did they do with excrement that most people threw into the streets? What did they do with it, Jerry? They buried it. What did they do with something they couldn't purify with fire? They washed it with a water of separation. What was that water of separation? It was pure water with the ashes of a heifer mixed into it.

Now, with the ashes of the heifer, you have a little bit of fat and you have a little bit of sodium hydroxide. What is that? Say it out loud. It's soap.

3,000 years ahead of time when people knew nothing about germs, God's people were washing things with a mild solution of soap. What did they do if someone was seriously ill? They quarantined them. When the Black Death killed one third of the people in Europe, somebody read this in the Bible and said, oh, if we separate these sick people, uh-huh, that's how they ended the Black Death.

This was all intended for man's good, every word of it, even the Old Testament. And Jesus said, I do not play fast and loose with anything God wills for man. Don't expect me to set you loose from law.

Don't expect me to start talking about all these restrictions. We need to be free in Christ and we need to just let it all hang. No, no, no, no.

None of that. None of that. So he was a pledged conservative.

A conservative means someone who does not throw away anything that's good. Now, they sometimes conserve sort of strange things, I will admit, and there's some conservatism that maybe should be evaluated a little bit, but you can trust that this person will not throw away anything from the past that is worth saving. Well, the kingdom precepts, we're not gonna have time to discuss them, I'll just say this.

What if you lived in a society where all the people in that society had victory over anger? All the people in that society had victory over lust. All of the people in that society refused to accept divorce and remarriage. All the people in that society refused dishonesty in every form.

All the people in that society refused revenge. All the people in that society refused hatred. Uh-huh.

That is heaven on earth. In fact, when I describe this, and people hear me talk about people who do not hoard wealth to themselves, but they try to create equality in the community, they say, I bet you voted for Bernie Sanders. Now, Bernie Sanders is projecting this kind of an ideal, not all of it, but a lot of it, and in every heart, this is why this kingdom message is so terrifically powerful, because every person down deep inside would love to live in an equitable society where everybody lives the way they're supposed to and treats everybody else the way they're supposed to be treated.

Everybody wants that. And so people like Bernie Sanders come along, or Lenin, or Castro, and they start talking this way, and people gravitate. They all want that.

But that turns into a nightmare, because, oh, I'm rid of my cross. This hasn't happened. So a few selfish people convince everybody else to be equally miserable while they pocket the cash.

That's socialism. That's how it always turns out, because selfishness is still there. But in this kingdom, notice how it started.

These are people who have gone through this process before they even get into it. And when they get into the kingdom, selfishness is something that will not be tolerated in my life when I recognize that I will repent, I will deal with it, I will not live by selfishness. And only then can we have a society free of anger, free of lust, free of divorce and remarriage, free of dishonesty, free of revenge, free of hatred, and people live the way God intended.

That's the kingdom precepts. Now, how in the world do people live that way? Well, we move into chapter six. Look at chapter six.

This is the kingdom piety. This is the spiritual dynamic behind that life. This is how these people live.

Jesus embraced the three pillars of Judaism. Judaism said there are three pillars of the blessed life, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Those are the three things they tried to live by.

And Jesus embraced that. He said, that's true. That is true.

If you can embrace those three experiences, you will be a spiritually dynamic person. I will talk about prayer this afternoon. So we'll just leave that one.

I do wanna say a word about fasting. I think fasting is one of the most ingenious things that he put in here in this chapter. Because the problem with us is our flesh tends to drift.

Take eating. Most people are not satisfied to just eat plain vegetables and plain fruit. You've gotta have casseroles.

Now, I'm not condemning anybody. I'm just saying what happens. You have casseroles with cream of mushroom and sour cream, and you've gotta dress it up.

And if you go out into the world, they get to the point where, well, this isn't exotic enough so they find a more exotic restaurant because what happens is our senses dull. And Jesus said the solution for that is not to find something more exotic, is not to find a mattress that is more conducive to your body's senses. The solution to the problem is to quit.

Just don't eat for three days. And guess what? All your senses will come roaring back, and you will enjoy potatoes with no butter and no salt. And that's not all.

Your spiritual senses will come roaring back, and you will love prayer, and you will love singing, and you will love to fellowship with God's people, and you will just have a tremendous spiritual sensitivity come roaring back into your experience. And so Jesus said, when you sense that your flesh is drifting, push the reset button. Sleep on the floor.

Quit eating. Don't look for the next restaurant. And it'll all come back.

This is the antidote for the flesh. We all talk about the flesh. This is the antidote.

Jesus gave a very, and we all know it's true. How many have ever fasted for more than one day? You know this is true. You know this is true, and it's not just physically, it's also spiritual.

Your spiritual sensitivity comes back. That's all I have to say about fasting. Now I wanna talk about almsgiving.

Notice, this is the major subject of this passage. He mentions almsgiving, then at the end of the chapter, he goes into great detail about this whole issue of wealth. Now what's interesting to me, hear me carefully.

I don't want you to forget this. His teaching on the subject of wealth is not in chapter five. It's in chapter six.

Are you seeing what I want you to see? This is part of the kingdom's spirituality. This is not just the kingdom morality. Because, and I had to check this out when I discovered it with a friend of mine who knows Hebrew fluently.

The word for almsgiving in the Hebrew is the word tzedakah. It is also the Hebrew word for righteousness. I don't have that spelled right.

Same word. I find that very interesting. That the Hebrews were saying by their language that the nearest thing you can get to this is this.

And I asked a friend of mine who grew up in Israel who knows also the devout Israelites and also knows the language. He said, that's true. The Israelite believes that the most righteous thing you can do, the best way you can practice your righteousness is this.

And so he said, what you see is Jewish people that are always going around giving money to people. I said, they don't give very much because they wanna do it to a lot of people because they're doing their righteousness. Now, we all know that can be phony.

But I think there's some real truth in it. Jesus is saying, if you wanna have the power to live chapter five, you have to get this under your belt. If you're gonna live for money, if you're not gonna quit accumulating stuff for yourself, forget about living the life we've just been describing.

This is part of the dynamic. In fact, according to the amount of discussion he gives it, this is the major dynamic of the kingdom morality. And here's the message for us Mennonites.

What are we doing with our stuff? A lot of people who are very conservative and very plain are not doing very well here. And I'm not preaching to anybody in particular. I'm just giving a statement.

If you want to live a dynamic Christian life that has the influence we talked about, that produces the society we talked about, you deal with this. Otherwise, you're rich, and here's a person in the same brotherhood who's struggling. And oh yeah, we give a little bit out of our bounty, but we don't make any effort to try somehow to get us all sort of on the same level to demonstrate to the world what a society would look like if heaven had its way.

There wouldn't be any rich, there wouldn't be any poor. Now I'm not saying it's that time sometimes to talk to the poor person and say you're a little bit lazy. We need to deal with that too.

But there's an effort made to get this leveled off. And whatever excess we have, it goes out to people who have needs. We live in a needy world.

Anyway, so I want you to remember when you read this chapter, if you want to be a dynamic Christian, according to what we just went through in chapter five, you've got to come to terms with alms, fasting, and prayer. Those are the spiritual dynamic. Now we go into chapter seven and I just have a couple minutes.

Chapter seven some people think are not really part of the Sermon on the Mount. Because now what happens is Jesus brings a note of realism to this. He knows that he's painted some ideals that are beyond us.

He knows there will be some weak people, there will be some strong people, there'll be some people that don't last, there'll be some people that will, there'll be a mixture, a constant tendency to have a mixture among us. And how do we handle these differences? How do we correct the problems? And he realized that if we're not careful, we will turn all these beautiful ideals into a horrible nightmare. And I think most of you have been involved somewhat in what that nightmare can be, what can happen in churches where people don't practice what we just taught.

And so Jesus spends a whole chapter explaining how to handle these teachings in a constructive way. First thing he says is don't judge. Now of course we have to discriminate.

At the end of the chapter he talks about false prophets. We're supposed to know who they are. So it's not that we don't make any decisions.

But the word here is the word condemn. Now I want you to look at the last part of the word. Does anybody see another word if you just change one letter? Uh-huh.

That's what this is. And the Christian never does that. Number one, Jesus didn't do it.

He said, I didn't come into the world to condemn the world. He didn't come into the world to put people down. That's what you do when you condemn.

You put yourself up and put them down and you speak down to them and you make them feel like trash. The Christian never does that. He may say some things that have to be said that hurt people, but he will never say them in a hurtful way.

He will never use somebody else's weakness to exalt himself. Self-righteousness is the speck, by the way, that you've gotta get out of your eye. Because when you see somebody in the wrong, it's a tremendous opportunity for you to put yourself up and put them down.

And before that happens, you'd be like a surgeon who wants to operate on somebody's eye. And he knows that if he's not careful, he will introduce a pathogen into that eye and make things worse. How many have ever seen a surgeon wash before he did an operation? Uh-huh, 20 minutes with the strongest detergent possible to make sure there is no pathogen introduced into that wound.

And he's saying, before you correct your brother, you wash your soul. So there is no self-righteousness there. And only when you know you can go without any sense of this, don't go.

You'll do more harm than good. What do you think would happen if all of us just stopped right there and did that? I've had to learn this. I grew up in a setting where there was tremendous conflict in the church between the liberals and the conservatives, and we went at each other with tooth and nail.

And I had the impression that's what you had to do to be a defender of the faith. I have learned since that you get much more accomplished if you obey Jesus. He says, don't try to get that speck out of your brother's eye till you have gotten all the self-righteousness out of your own heart because that's gonna blind you and you're gonna blunder into his eye and you're gonna destroy his eye.

So the first thing we learn is correct with compassion. The second thing we learn is be careful how we give these teachings to the world. Now listen to me.

To the world, the idea that you would have a courtship without any sex is absolute stupidity, believe me. When I talk to people on the phone and I start talking about how courtship should be, they say, well, I thought that's what courtship was all about. This is really stupid.

To the world, not accumulating wealth, that's stupid. How are you gonna live if you don't accumulate wealth? To the world, telling the truth, even if it costs you something, is stupid. You don't do that.

You tell little white lies. And so when you go out to talk to the world, be very careful because if you're not careful, these will sound like stupidity to them. So find a way to talk to them and live with them so they begin to see the truth and not what they would consider the absurdity.

When we went on our wedding trip Sunday morning, we got up, we were in a city where there were no Baptists, so we decided to go to church somewhere. So we went downtown and I guess we went to the church with the tallest steep one. We were too stupid to realize that people in the world don't go to church at nine o'clock.

And so there we were. We walked into this building and the church service was at 10, I think. But the pastor was there having a special Bible study with a few chosen people and they were studying the 10 Commandments.

And that morning, they were studying Thou Shalt Not Kill. And the pastor said, now, he said, the majority view among Christians is there's certain circumstances where you need to kill, the just war theory. Now, he said, there's a very small minority of people who believe all killing is wrong.

I don't think that view is represented here today. So I waited till the right time and I raised my hand and I said, I represent that minority view. Oh, we're so glad to have you here.

We were so afraid to be nobody here to defend that view. We wanna hear what you have to say. Guess what? I didn't talk for more than three minutes and they were thoroughly disgusted with what I had to say.

I wasn't wise. I wasn't wise. He said, don't cast your pearls before spying.

Now, if I went back to that situation, I think I would have discussed it, but I'd have been very careful to say it in ways that they could get at least a little bit of it into their thinking. You follow what I'm saying? Somebody asked a philosopher one day, because the next question they raise is, well, how do you do this? Well, it's prayer. You're gonna have to pray.

If you ask, you will receive the wisdom to do this. If you seek, you will receive. If you knock, if you're persistent, God will give you the wisdom you need to do all of this the right way.

A young man one time approached a philosopher. I promise you, I will conclude in five minutes. One day, asked a philosopher, I'd like to be wise.

Could you tell me how to be wise? Sure. They were standing on the seashore, and he took him out into the water until he was about up to here, and then he stuck, pushed his head down and held it there for a long time. And then he left him up, and he came up sputtering and angry.

He said, why did you do this to me? Well, he said, what did you think about when your head was under the water? Did you think about your money? Did you think about your vacation? No. What did you think about? Air. When you want wisdom as badly as you wanted air, you will be wise.

The Bible says if you search as you search for wisdom. There are a lot of shallow people running around with a lot of shallow ideas as to what it means to be a Christian. They have not gone to the hard work of searching and knocking and asking and waiting and learning to know.

But Jesus says if you do, he that asketh, I like the King James Version because those ETH words, not always, but frequently, and here they mean continue asking. It's not just a one-time asking. If you continue to ask, if you continue to seek, if you continue to knock, you put your whole heart into it, you're seeking as for gold.

Somebody says there's gold buried in your lawn behind your house. I'll tell you what, and you knew for sure it was there, you would dig every inch of that up with a teaspoon if you had to to find that gold. And Jesus said, if you have that commitment to learning wisdom, you will be wise.

Most people are too lazy to be good Christians. They will not put the effort into learning what Jesus teaches. And then we have what I call the elastic clause, and I'm almost done here.

In the Constitution of the United States, which by the way is twice as long as this for a much smaller kingdom. Here we have something half as long for a universal kingdom. This is a masterpiece, I hope you get that from what we're saying.

There's an elastic clause. When the people designed the federal government, they knew they could not get everything into that little Constitution. So they put a little clause in that said, if there's anything the federal, the states have the most power.

The federal government has a very, very, very small part, but if there's anything they have to do that's not written here, they have the legal authority to do it. Well, believe you me, that has been expanded unbelievable, but Jesus did that here. He said, if there's anything you're not sure about, whatever you would want people to do to you, do that to them.

What do you call that? Selfishness. Jesus is enlisting the thing that's the worst thing about us to help us understand what is right, because he knew that every person would have it. This is something everybody has.

They're all intensely selfish, and Jesus said, here, you can put your selfishness to good use. Think the most selfish thoughts you can think, and then go do that to the other person. The best example in the Bible is Haman.

Haman, what should be done to the man who the king delights to honor? Oh, that's me. Get the king's horse, get his crown, get his robe, and somebody to lead him through the streets and say, this is the man the king delights to honor. And the king said, Haman.

That's a wonderful idea. Go do that to Mordecai. I love that.

And so if you're in any situation where you don't know what you should do, this will tell you what to do. You'll always be right. Always be right when you do this.

And then he concludes by warning us, and I must do this real careful. Beware of the undisciplined life, I've already told you. Beware of the false prophetic personalities.

I mean, they have wonderful seminars. It's all packaged, it's all so wonderful. But they're driving a brand new Cadillac, and they're wearing a very expensive ring and a very expensive wristwatch and lavish clothing, and they live in a mansion.

Pay no attention to them. People come to me often and say, what do you think of the TV preachers? And I won't mention any of them because I don't believe in condemning. But I say, I just look at their lifestyle.

I'm not one bit interested in what they have to say. Not one bit interested. I will not listen to them.

They are false teachers. So then comes along a group who realizes they've gotta have the goods, so they produce false miracles. Don't listen to them either.

And then there's the group that just pay no attention to what Jesus said. They just ignore the Sermon on the Mount. You can be part of their church.

You can be divorced and remarried. You can swear oaths. You can go to war and kill people.

You can accumulate wealth. Just pray a sinner's prayer. You got your ticket to heaven.

That's what it's all about. You're ready to go. You should live a good life, but you'll get there anyway.

Pay no attention to them. So he gives us those warnings at the end. I'm calling all of you, first of all, to take that first step we talked about, and then to get serious about demonstrating what the whole world would look like if everybody did what the people at Remnant Christian Fellowship do.

That's our calling. We wouldn't be so quick to split. We wouldn't be so quick to drag something into the church, some worldly whatever.

We think twice before we do anything to defile or to ruin the church. Shall we pray? Father, we thank you for this wonderful sermon. We can't study it without realizing the tremendous disaster that happens when self gets involved.

And you've made it possible for us to die on a cross. And you've promised us that where there is death on a cross, there will be new life. You said we're to humble ourselves as Jesus did, but then you said, wherefore God hath highly exalted him.

You said he that humbles himself shall be exalted. Lord, there's this tremendous promise. If we could ever die, we would see the life that we all so much desire, not just individually, but also as churches.

And I pray that you would convict every heart sitting here to know exactly what that means for them. And help me, Lord, to embody this as I teach it. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.