Best Sermon Ever: The Beatitudes

Best Sermon Ever! We're talking about the Sermon on the Mount for like 11 weeks. We're talking about the Sermon on the Mount. This is a major investment on my part because you know about four weeks into a series, I get BORED! I'm ready to move on, but I believe that the Sermon on the Mount in particular, is probably the most relevant passage in the entire Bible for where our world is at right now. We are going to talk about oppression and we're going to talk about worry and anxiety and fear and judging. We're going to talk about what we do with truth, and we're going to talk about how we handle people that are different than us. Totally irrelevant for the world that we're living in. (Pastor using sarcasm)

Before we get there, I want to just celebrate a couple of things. First of all, we have, I think two baptisms today and this week, we're like 21 or 22 weeks into the year at this point, and this is what's cool. All of those weeks with the exception of three, we've had baptisms every weekend, which is huge! (Congregation clapping) I know that a lot of you, you know, we're spread out over three services and some people do it first, second, third service and people do after service or during the week or whatever. That's amazing, God is on the move and we're getting to be a part of God doing things in people's hearts that are really, really special. I think we need to celebrate that because, that doesn't happen everywhere, it just doesn't happen everywhere. God is uniquely moving in people's hearts here and I'm so thankful to be a part of that.

Here's the other thing that I want to honor, and then we got we'll have a pseudo family meeting. I don't have a chair but we'll have a meeting. We'll have a meet. So, it's Memorial Day this weekend, and so, first of all, what I want to do is if you're here and you serve, I just want to honor you and say, thank you for your service. (Congregation clapping) But here's the deal, Memorial day is specifically here for us to remember those who gave their lives in service to our country. For the families that are here trying to put the pieces back together after losing a loved one or a family member for you, I want to say, thank you for your service as well. (More clapping)

That being said, we've had a crazy 15 months, right? It's just been a wild 15 months, nothing like we could have ever anticipated being a part of, and I have searched the Lord's face for a biblically grounded way to help, “God, how do you feel about all of everything and, how do you want your church to represent you in this world that we're in?” Because I don't care what your political affiliation is. I don't care about any of that. What I care about is what does the kingdom of God call us to do and to be and that should put both sides of the political aisle on notice. But that being said, I've been wrestling with this biblically, like how do we stand? I think where we're at as a country and the world is starting to reopen, and there are some people that, I mean, the people are all on the spectrum, right? All the way from, “coronavirus doesn't exist”, all the way to, “the coronavirus is the antichrist”. There's this  spectrum of people all over, they're all over, and everybody has their people that they listen to, and what they're willing to accept as information, and not information and disregard this information, but accept this. It's just been a really convoluted time for us and I would just want the Bible to speak. So, here's what I think the Lord gave me and I'll share it with you.

Biblically, there are at least four pieces to a human. You could probably have more, but there are at least four. There's the spiritual side of a person. There's the physical part of a person.  There's the mental part of a person, and there's the emotional part of a person. Those are all part of us. They're all significant parts of us. If you were to read biblically, how do you prioritize those? How do you one, two, three, four, you know, put them in a like if I can't choose all of them, I have to choose this one first. Number one obviously is the spiritual part of a person that's biblically the most important thing. That's the part that's going to live on after we die. That's the part that we want to foster and nurture and that we want to develop and see maximized for eternity. So there's no question about that. I think what's also very clear biblically. Again, this is biblically speaking, is that the least important part of a person is their physical part. Now that doesn't mean it's not important. It's the temple of Holy Spirit. We need to take care of it. We need to we be mindful of how we treat our bodies, and we need to do the right things and all that that matters. But on the scale of importance, it is the least important piece of those four pieces. Now the mental part and the emotional part, they can kind of flip flop back and forth on two and three, and you can make a case kind of both directions, but here's what we know. If you were to prioritize them, it would go spiritual part, mental, emotional part, and then the physical part of the body. That’s why Paul says, put the death, the deeds of the flesh. Like he doesn't say put to death, the appetite to the flesh. He says, “Put to death the deeds of the flesh”. That's a different conversation, another sermon for another day, but he's says, “I buffet my body and make it my slave”. We put this part of our body, of our human hood in under subjection. Then there's the spiritual or the mental and the emotional part here. Here's what I think we've done over the last 15 months is that we've tried really hard to protect this physical piece, which isn't wrong, but we've done it at the expense of these other three priorities. The problem for me is the Denver post just released an article this last week on the epidemic of mental health issues going on in high schools. Just our counseling center is overrun right now with new clients. It's overrun because there's a mental health crisis, like an emotional health crisis going on in our country. In the name of protecting someone physically we've destroyed these other three. So, here's, what I want to say. We’ve got to reclaim the whole person again. In order to do that, we need connection with one another. We need connection with one another. There are people who, you know, had threw open the door and were like, “I dare you to tell me to put a mask on”. Then there are people that are just now starting to crack the door open. Even on our own staff, we have people that are all over the spectrum of  where they land on how comfortable they are with reopening and how it's being done. It's still very complicated, but here's what I know, in order to get our humanness back, and in order to get ourselves ready to move forward together, in a healthy way as a community, and I'm not talking about Southeast, I'm talking about us as humans, as mankind; we need one another’s connectedness to do that.

So, here's my punchline. For those of you that are just barely getting to think about coming out of your house, we're going to continue to offer a wonderful online experience that will never go away, but I want to invite you back to church. We need you and you need us. So, we want to do this together. We want to get through this together. My heart isn't to call anybody out. If you feel like you want to wear a mask here, you're welcome to do that. You guys know what to do, probably better than I do. I don't know if that's true. (Pastor using a line for comic relief) You know what's being said, but we want to do this together because we need each other. So, we want to invite you back. So that's all I want to say about that. I think we need to start talking about things in a healthy way, not in a calling out way. I get it that people are still nervous about everything. That's fine, but we need to start talking about it in a healthy way. What does it look like for us to reconnect with one another? Because it's going to matter going forward. We need each other. 

Okay, so we're going to jump into week one of the Sermon on the Mount, and we're going to begin at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, which doesn't actually start at chapter 5:1. I think it's important for us to get that because the chapter numbers and the verse numbers are not inspired, those were added much later as a way to help us navigate the books easier. Honestly, I think to our detriment. They were added later and now, we don't actually have to know the context anymore. We can cherry pick versus which is expedient, but not good scholarship. So, those are not inspired and here's the story. There were three monks that were trying to get their version of the chapters and verses published. They were all kind of on their way to Rome at the same time. The one that got his picked was a monk from England who did most of his work on the back of a donkey while he was riding from England to Rome. I think there are times in the numbers of the chapters and verses where the donkey hit a bump, and he was like, oh, and then it missed. He picked the wrong because there's some parts where it's like, really? You broke that there? Okay. Now that being said, here's why his got picked, the monk from England. Here's why his got picked. This is how spiritual it is. Because he showed up first, true story! That's why his got picked. So, we have a little bit of freedom to play with those things. They're not the numbers, the chapter and verse numbers are not inspired. So we have a little bit of finesse there. So, we're going to read the end of chapter 4 of Matthew, and then we're going to look at some pictures and then we'll jump back into chapter 5. We're going to look at the Beatitudes today. Now, before we get rolling too far I want you to know I'm going to recommend a book for you to read. It's called, The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. Now it was in our bookstore. It is sold out for today, so you can get it on Amazon. Or you can wait, and we'll get more in the bookstore later, but it'd be a good companion for you to read as we're working through this sermon series together. Here's the end of Matthew chapter 4, starting in verse 23. Here's what it says, “Jesus went through Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom”. Now I want to say from the get-go on this whole thing, this is all about the kingdom. This is not about these are sage truisms, this is good ideas, this is about if you want to be in the kingdom of God, here's the gospel. That's what it is. Good news is the word “euangelion”. It's the same word as translated “gospel” Jesus's gospel was not a gospel of salvation only. In fact,  I'll pay you 10 grand to show me any place in the Bible that says the gospel of salvation. Doesn't exist, but I'll show you a number of examples that say the gospel of the kingdom, because that was Jesus's message. “The good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people and news about him spread all over Syria”. Syria! If you don't know where Syria is, Syrians are not favorable to Israelis. I'll leave it at that. No different in the first century, by the way. “News about Jesus spread all over Syria and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering from severe pain, the demon possessed, those having seizures and the paralyzed, and he healed them, and large crowds from the Galilee, the Decapolis”. Wait, what? “Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan, followed him”. Now let me show you some pictures, okay? So, this is picture number one. This is the Galilee. So this is the sea of Galilee. It is 12 miles from top to bottom. So, you're looking East. So, the Northern end is here, and the Southern end is down there. It's 12 miles this way, seven miles this way. It is not a very big lake to call it a sea is rather ambitious, but the Jews are desert people, so, they have one word for any body of water. Why? Because it doesn't need to be too descriptive in the desert. When you're talking about a body of water, it's all the same, right? It could be the Mediterranean sea. It could be a bird bath. It's all the same. It's one word. It's one word. Okay? So, this is the sea of Galilee, which is aggressive, but what you're looking at, and here's why this matters, you're looking at 75% of Jesus’ ministry. Which people always say, when we go there, and we're standing on the top of Mount Arbel here. So come with me to Israel and you'll get this photo for yourself. I had to put that in (Pastor smiling) So this is the Galilee. This is Jesus' ministry. Now off, down here to the right corner is Magdala. You might've heard of Magdala. There was a gal named Mary who was from there. They called her Mary the Magdalene. Here's how they found Magdala. The Catholic church wanted to put in a pilgrimage prayer center. They went over there and they're like, there's nothing here. We can dig here. They took a scoop out of the ground and found a first century synagogue, Magdala. Everybody's like, we wondered where that was at. This is how so much of the stuff in Israel is found. It's crazy how they do that. If you go along the shoreline that first big clump of trees, there's a kibbutz called (inaudible) which actually has a hotel. It's where we're staying when we go in October. Then if you keep going down the shoreline, you're in the plains of ganeserith, and then where it starts to look like you have a hill kind of where that patch of sun is there. You see that? That's called eremos topos, It means “a certain place”. It's also known as the Mount of Beatitudes. Just down from that as Capernaum, and if you keep going down the shoreline, you can see where there's an inlet there on the other side of that is Bethsaida. Then, just over the hills this way is Corazon. Let me show you one more picture. We're going to zoom in on eremos topos. We are at the Mount of Beatitudes, and you can see today it's a banana grove, but you can see where there's this large area where large groups of people could sit at a natural amphitheater where somebody could speak and be heard by a large number of people. Now, many of the things that Jesus does are believed to have been done here. Feeding of the 5,000, Sermon on the Mount, and a lot of other things, are all believed to have happened here. So let me show you a map. This is the Sea of Galilee, the whole thing, and you can see some of those places that we mentioned Magdela down here to the left a little bit, and right above that to the left is Mount Arabel, and if you follow Magdela, go to Capernaum, Bethsaida, Corazon. If you follow that chunk down, it makes kind of a triangle. So let's look at the next piece. This triangle becomes known by the crusaders, as the Gospel Triangle. Here's why, this is where Jesus pours his life into people. The people who live in the triangle are very fundamentalist Jews. They're legalists, they're rule following, Torah observant, black and white, don't mess. Their response to Roman oppression was just keep the rules, that's who they are. So, they're very dogmatic. They're very aggressive and abrupt about the rules, because if you break the rules, then God will step in and send this out to captivity. How do we know that? Well, we know that from Babylon. So, they want to keep the rules, so God doesn't put them into slavery again This is their fundamental reality. Now, over here on this side of the sea, next photo, is the Decapolis. The Decapolis was brought in by Alexander the Great, and the way that Alexander the Great ruled was that he would build cities in the areas that he conquered, and in those cities, he would put all of the best. That is Greece. He brought in education, he brought in theater and sport. He brought in a first century form of healthcare. He brought in this idea that when you have an appetite, you should indulge it. So much so, that today you and I have a McDonald's on every street corner in America, to which we chuckle, but the idea that you can have it your way, at its core, is rooted in Greek paganism. What we don't understand is that the world knew that we hold to as evidence of God's blessing is the very worldview that our ancestors in the faith died fighting against, because they wanted no part of a worldview that allowed me to be selfish.

The Decapolis was so pagan, so twisted, and disgusting to these fundamentalist Jews, that to say the word Decapolis made your mouth unclean for seven days. You can even still, they had these euphemisms that they would use to describe it. They would call it a far-off land, which changes some things about how we understand a certain story about a dad who had two sons. The younger son said, “I want you to give me my share of the inheritance”. Then he went and left. Where did he go? To a far-off land. Now remember that first photo. You could see the opposite side of the lake. You could see the Decapolis. It's not like the son takes off and goes halfway around the world. It's like the dad can come outside of his house every single day and look and see right where his son is and know what he's doing. And he still waits for him. These people do not have barbecues together. These are not people that are going to tailgate at the local game. And the Syrians, don't forget them. And yet all of them come together under the teaching of Jesus, which by the way, is the mark of the kingdom. When we try to bring people into the church and make them look and act and talk and be just like us, that's not the kingdom. Universal uniformity is not what the kingdom is. Diversity is what the kingdom is. Diversity is what it is. The thing we have to understand about that is, it’s in the teaching of Jesus, diversity gets space. It's okay.

Now, Jeff.percival@southeastcc.org. (Pastor expressing that this is heavy material) I'm just getting warmed up. You guys know that I believe that a good sermon, it ought to unsettle you, right? Like, I don't think you should be able to hear a sermon and go “oh, that was nice. I agreed with everything, and I don't need to think about it anymore”. You should go, “ooooo, I have to go, I don't know what to do”.

Our life groups should be lively over the next 11 weeks. Lively! Now let's start with chapter 5:1. “Now, when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain side and sat down”. Why? Because rabbis sit down when they're about to teach, it's a sign that they're going to teach something. So, in a Jewish setting, the rabbi sits while the people stand, I would like to have much better.

But the thing is you wouldn't, right? You'd be like, “I'm going to a different church”. The rabbi sits and teaches until he's tired, and you have to stand there and listen, because it's disrespect. It's shameful to walk out in the middle of a sermon, just like today. (Pastor sounding humorous) So, he went up on the mountain side and sat down. Now, look at this. He has all these people from all these different walks of life, all this opportunity to make this massive, broad, sweeping change, to rearrange people's mindset and do everything. This could be huge! Right? His disciples came to him, and he began to speak to them. What?!? He has all these people there and his disciples come to him, and he starts talking to his guys. (Pastor expressing how this sounds crazy) There's not an American pastor that would do that, just so you know. Why does he do that? Here's what I think. This is my thought, because Jesus understands that what he's about to say, if these 12 guys don't get it, then the foundation upon which the whole church is going to be built is going to be jacked. They have to get it right, and this is an opportunity for Jesus to show them how to choose the more important thing.

So, his disciples come to him, and he began to teach them. He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. Now, let me say this clearly. I have about 10 minutes left in this sermon, which is probably going to stretch out to 15, but I'm about to give you the nine most important statements in history ever written. Each one of them could be its own series, okay? So, we're going to look at all of them and we're just going to glance on them. There's a lot more to be said about all of these things, right? I want to touch them just a little bit. “Blessed is the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. Wait, what? For the Jews, not unlike us, for the Jews, they believe that God is good to those who are good and he's bad to those who are bad. So, when bad things are happening to you, it's because God's upset with you in some way. You go, “Well, I don't believe that”. Really? The next time you're having a hard time in your life, what's the first thought you're going to have? What did I do wrong? Why has God treated me this way? Come on. Are we so different? What Jesus immediately begins with is, “Blessed are the poor in spirit because there's is the kingdom of heaven”.

Now, I want to do a quick little Greek study and I'm going to butcher the Greek. So just be patient with me. This is actually significant because I think it gives us a picture of what Jesus may be saying, okay? So, the first word is “Makarios”. Makarios doesn't mean blessed. It means happy, but not happy as we think happy. If you think about it, it would be better understood- “God's favor”. God's favor is where people are poor in spirit. These people would be there, which that is the revolution for them. So then, if that's true, then the question is, “Why did they translate it blessed”? There is an actual, intentional reason why historically, the church made the switch to blessed. You will not like the answer, but it's another sermon for another day and I don’t have time for it. So, “Makarioi  ptochoi pneumoti”.  Blessed or happy are the poor in spirit. “Ptochos” is this really interesting word for poor. I don't have a ton of time to talk about it, but it's this poor that is completely incapable of changing its that they're in. Whatever's going on, the people that are so poor in their spirit, they're so devastated in their own internal sense of being, that they can't help themselves out of it. For those people, God's favor is there.

Then he says, “auton basileia ouranon”  because “Hawsee altone”-of them, is the kingdom of heaven- “basileia ouranon”. You can see where they translate it this way because, “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven” is not a wrong translation to understand, but there's another way to understand it, that I think is actually really significant. That is this, “Blessed are the people that, in their spirit, are incapable of changing their own status, unless somebody dramatically intervenes on them. Because of them, the kingdom of heaven exists”. Are you with me on that? The kingdom of heaven exists for people like that. When we want to make the kingdom something else where it's this thing where we're like, “Hey, everything's happy and blessed, #blessed”, and we want to make it all about God's joy and happiness and fuzzies and rainbows and unicorns. That's not the kingdom!  I don't know what it is. I don’t know what definition of Christianity that you're looking at, but read the Bible, look at your history. That's not the kingdom! God's presence is in the margins. God's presence is with people who don't want it, who don't understand how to lift their heads. God's presence is with people who it doesn't make sense. We want to experience God in our joy and our happiness and our blessed life in our ease. Then we wonder where God is. God's in the margins. He keeps calling us to those hard places! Of the 10 minutes I had left, we just took five on the first one. Can you see how these are so layered? There's so much going on here, but we got to go. “Blesses are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”. We live in a culture that does not grieve well. We try so hard to avoid it. Yet it's in the grieving that we experience the comfort of God. As long as you avoid what's really going on in your heart, you'll never be able to see God at work in it. God doesn't want to work on the plastic, fake version of you. He wants to work on the truth. “Blessed are the meek for, they will inherit the earth”. Now meekness is not weakness. They are not the same thing. Meekness does it make you get walked over. It doesn't mean you're a doormat. It doesn't mean you're going to get used in life. The idea of meekness, the definition as, “Power under restraint”. Think of the picture of like an ox submitting to a yoke. An ox is this massive, powerful animal that, if it chose to, will crush you. Yet they submit themselves to the yoke. Why? Because power under restraint is productive. Power unrestrained is devastating to everyone around it. You don't ever want to have power without meekness. Those two things must go together. “Blessed are the meek for, they will inherit the Earth”. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”. Righteousness is more than following the rules. Okay? We talk about righteousness as if  righteousness is when I’m following the rules, right? Righteousness is the Hebrew word “tsadaq”. Say tsadaq. It means, “Right-standing in relationship”. Right-standing in relationship with God and equally right-standing in relationship with one another. That's what righteousness is. It's right-standing in our relationship with God. So does it include following the rules? Sure, it does, but it's also right-standing in our relationship with one another. People who hunger and thirst for right-standing in relationship, people who are so desperate for it, that they're like a person who's been wandering around the desert for days without food or water. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for right-standing in relationship”. We don't want to have right-standing in relationship. We just want to be right.

There's a running joke in marriage, right? Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be happy? It's funny because it's true, right? It is unrighteous. It is unrighteous to force them to admit your rightness. You're like, well, that's not just, well, hang on. That's coming. Just not this week. I told you this is going to unsettle you. It should because some of our values that we live in our culture are not godly. They need to be addressed. Here's the deal preachers, and I'm guilty of this over the years, have sidestepped and soft shoot around some of these major issues. The church in America is in trouble. If we don't step up and be Jesus’ church, we won't be here in a decade. I'm not worried about it for me, I can go make money in lots of ways. I'm worried about it for my kids and my grandkids. Are they going to know the Jesus of the Bible? So, we’ve got to address these issues! You may not like it, but I can tell you this. I will always believe that everything I'm saying is 100% grounded in the word, not my opinion. I hope you can say the same.

“Blessed are the merciful for, they will be shown mercy”. Now the beatitudes are a giant chiasm, which is actually, really cool. The brilliance of it is that they're also linear, which is a whole other level of “whoa”, but a chiasm is that the outsides match, then the next layer is matched, and you moved towards the center, and in the center, you find the point. The point of it is, “Blessed are the merciful for, they shall be shown mercy”. What is mercy? What is being merciful? Mercy is not getting what you deserve. That's what mercy is. Grace is getting what you don't deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. When we live our lives demanding that people pay for how they've wronged us. That is not mercy.

It's not mercy. I'm not talking about violating the law. I'm not talking about those things. I'm talking about the grudges we hold. That's not right-standing in relationship. I'm talking about sayings like, “You cut me off”, and the way we chastise the grocery store cashier, because they didn't ring things up right. I'm talking about, “I’m not tipping that waitress because she didn't have good service”. Give me a break. Every dollar you have is a gift from a generous God, maybe you ought to model that. That would be kingdom. “Well, but they need to learn”. Well then let somebody else teach them. You represent Jesus for a change. (Congregation clapping)

I'm so tired of the “We got to call them to account”. “Blessed are the merciful”. That's what Jesus said. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God”. I think so many of us wonder, “What does it mean to be pure in heart”? Here's what it means. It means that you don't have a heart of war. It means that everything's not a fight. When you step into a situation, you're not trying to figure out how to fight everybody. You cannot talk about a God of love and peace from a heart of war. You can't! Because you're not representing him accurately. I think for a lot of us, we go into these scenarios with the heart of war. “We're like, where's God? I don't see him at work!” I'll tell you where he is. He's with the pure in heart. Jesus said, “God is always working, and I can only do what I see the father doing”. Maybe the problem isn't that God isn't at work. The problem is that I don't have the lens to see him because I want everything to be a war. Which leads us to our next thing. “Blessed are the peacemakers for, they shall be called sons of God”. By the way, peacemakers don't run from conflict, peacemakers, step into conflict and make peace.

Am I preaching yet? I had two weeks off. So, I guess I’ve got to make up for lost time. We were supposed to be in Israel. That's why we had the last two weeks covered. They didn't quite get their country open. There was a couple of things going on over there. I don't know if you saw the news, but there were bombs and by the way, total side note. I don't have time for this. This is bonus material. Hamas declared the mosque on top of the Temple Mount defiled. They tried to burn it down. Listen to me, if the Arabs don't want the Temple Mount, I know the Jews do. If they rebuild the temple, fascinating times we live in, I'm just saying, watch your eschatology.

Okay. I needed a break from that because I just feel like I'm punching you in the spirit. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. “Blessed are those who try so hard to be in right-standing in relationship and people aren't having it”. They're saying, “I can't believe you did that”. Even the people you're trying to make peace with, they won't make peace with you, but you are determined to fight for right-relationship. That's where you are because God’s there. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me, rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you”.

So send your emails. (Pastor anticipating that people are being unsettled with this message) These are the words of Jesus. These are the words of Jesus and our job isn't to twist them so that we feel comfortable with our lifestyle. Our job is to upend our lifestyle, to look and act like him.

So, I have some implications for us, probably lots more than we can talk about, but here's implication number 1- The kingdom is incomplete without those on the margins. The beatitudes keep calling us to the margins. It keeps pushing us to these uncomfortable spaces. These places that we don't want to go, but that's where God is waiting for us. Implication number 2- In fact, the kingdom has no margins at all. When we try to make them, we may be building a kingdom, but it's not God's. Implication number 3- Each beatitude is an insistence that the kingdom is most present with those who look and feel most distant. So, if you find yourself feeling far from God this morning, I have good news, good news of the kingdom. God's very close. Implication number 4- As Jesus followers, we leave here today knowing that the further we get from this building, the closer to the kingdom we are. That doesn't mean that this building isn’t important, that the meeting together isn’t important, it is. This isn't the sum total of our religious experience. Out there, when we put the kingdom on display, where we get into the messes of the world and bring Jesus there, that's where the kingdom is. I know you're like, “But I believe in Jesus, and I go to church, and I read the Bible”. So does Satan. Do you hear what I said? You're like, “He believes in Jesus?” He believes in Jesus he just doesn't believe Jesus. What are we using to define our religious experience? I think the invitation is for us to actually be a part of bringing the kingdom of heaven, crashing into Earth. Not just talk about it or read about it or hope it happens, but to actually be actively involved in bringing it about.

We're going take communion together. I need it. I just want to invite you to consider something as we'll take a minute here and talk with the Lord and prepare our hearts for communion. I want you to know Jesus’ heart is for the people that nobody else will love. His heart is for them too. The gospel is most powerful when it gets taken to people that, like the Israelites as slaves in Egypt, they couldn't believe that God loved them because of their harsh treatment and their cruel bondage. We don't live so far from that in our world. There's a lot of people in that same space and Jesus has called you and I to go out and make a difference in those spaces. Where have we sold the gospel short? Because we tried to spiritually bubble wrap our life without difficulty. Let's take a minute and talk with the Lord about that as we get our hearts ready for communion.

On the night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread, and he broke it, And he said, “This is my body, which is given for you. So, whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me”. Let's remember him this morning. Then after the dinner, he took a cup and he said, “This cup. This cup. This cup of redemption, this cup that shows you that you have worth, because I say so. This cup, that marks your value based on who God is not based on who we are. This cup, this is a new covenant in his blood, which is shed for us. So, whenever we drink this cup, we need to do it and remember.

Let’s pray.

Lord, I'm challenged. I'm convicted by your word. And again, I find myself fighting this urge to be a part of something easier. And yet, you call us to a transformational space. Lord, give us courage and God give us your mercy and give us your grace. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Let's stand and sing one more song.

If you want to pray with somebody before you leave today. There'll be some people up here in the front that you can come up and pray with, or you can pray in our prayer room by yourself or with somebody there. I hope that first of all, I hope you're not too mad at me. I love you guys. I really do. I love what God's church could be and I love what the Bible calls us to, and that's really, really hard. And I pray that we would be the people who choose to step into those hard spaces and live out the kingdom as he defined it. Not as we want to. And so may we be people who live the kingdom out in spirit and in truth, thanks for coming. Have a great week.