Oh there are pockets of difference, but often the Church runs from culture instead of engaging it.  We boycott rather than build up, we picket rather than purify, and we seek to form others into our own images rather than pointing them to the Glorious One.  We tend to either dress, talk, and act so much like the world that you can’t see a difference or we separate to the point that we just look plain weird and instead of being inviting we start to repulse the very ones who should be able to look at our lives and taste and see that the Lord is good.

But when we come to the Beatitudes we are forced to step back and recalibrate—we have to look at the person in the mirror and do a little soul searching.  This just runs contrary to everything the world teaches.  Think about standing in line at the grocery store.  On both sides of you are magazines—can you imagine one that points to the blessings according to Jesus.  Imagine the cover of the Beatitude!  A poor and lonely woman—clinging to a limp child covered with flies and dying of malnutrition and the heading under the picture simply says, “Blessed!”  Article titles—“Blessed are the poor,” “Happy are the Sad,” “The Strength of Meekness,” and “The Joy of Hunger.”  Would you pick it up? Would you be attracted?  And yet Jesus focused His ministry, His teachings, and His life on people like that.

The Church tends to shun the strung out, those with HIV, the drug attics, the drunks, and those who sell their bodies to the highest bidder.  Maybe instead of shunning we should seek to embrace them and maybe we should remember the words of Jesus, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Jesus operated according to a totally different set of rules—He was dominated by a Kingdom Agenda and that is really what the Sermon on the Mount is all about.

There are several men at FBC who love Jesus and they minister to my heart, but for the most part we are like so many other places–there is a famine of men who follow hard after God.

We have a Men’s Weekend coming up September 17-18 and to this point we’ve had about 20 men sign up. I wonder how many would sign up to go watch a football game, or a Braves game, or to play golf? This past week we kicked off our Fall Discipleship University and had 92 adults show up–3o of them were men. I praise God for those 30 and for the 62 women, but where are all the men?

I hope you’ll watch the following video and see the great need and then I hope you’ll join me as I pray for a band of brothers who will love God with all that they have. I also hope some of the men reading this blog will buy a ticket for the Men’s Weekend.

Even Hollie, who was holding my hand, noticed it—she said quietly, “Everyone stopped talking.”  We crossed the threshold of something spectacular and instantly became aware of our insignificance. 

On any given Saturday one team will hit a field goal and one team will miss one—thousands of hearts will rejoice and thousands of hears will sink, but the sun will come up on Sunday and God will still be God.  In the daily activity of our lives we really need to catch a glimpse of the eternal.  It changes everything.

Luke 12:31 says, “But seek his kingdom and these things will be given you as well.”  Jesus goes on to say, “Don’t be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.  Sell your possessions and give to the poor.  Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there you heart will be also.”

Why bother with the stuff that makes us seem rich in the world’s eyes, but won’t last beyond your last breath?  Why not look at the Greatness of our God and see your poverty instead.  In seeing that you are able to call out to Him and when you do He will give you the Kingdom!  That will last forever!!

We struggle with this don’t we? Our culture tells us that being blessed begins with what you have.  If you don’t have it—go get it and then you’ll be happy, but Jesus goes against all of that.  If you are going to be Kingdom Minded you will have to let Him get rid of the earthly mindset.  Poverty of Spirit is foundational to salvation.  I have nothing to give, I have nothing I can do, I have nothing because I am nothing without Him—I am simply in need.  I am a man dead in sin in need of life and I have no hope of bringing it to myself.

The word Jesus used for poor isn’t just poor—it is beggar poor.  It pictures someone crouching and begging.  It describes someone who is totally dependent upon others for life.  Have you come to that place spiritually?  Do we really think we have something to bring to God’s table that will make us worthy of sitting there?  Have we developed a theology that somehow makes us equal with God—worse yet, have we developed a theology that makes God subservient to us?  Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit—for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Where does it all start?  Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  Chapter four tells us that Jesus was going about preaching and teaching and healing every disease and sickness among the people.  “News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pains, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them.”  As a result, people were coming from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem and Judea.  We can be sure that many, if not most, of the people were poor and considered to be outcasts in their society.  Maybe Jesus looks over at one of the poorest of the poor and says, “Blessed—happy—are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Phillips translates this verse like this—“How happy are those who know their need for God, for the Kingdom of heaven is theirs.”  That is the meaning Jesus is getting across—He isn’t talking about financial poverty—He is talking about spiritual poverty.  The life of abundance starts with realizing and seeing our spiritual bankruptcy before God.  We are sinners, were dead in our sin, we are under His wrath, and we have nothing to offer God, nothing to plead, and nothing to earn His favor, but when we get to that place we find it isn’t about us at all—it is about His loving grace.

It isn’t supposed to happen like that is it?  In our cultural Christianity God is supposed to rescue us from things like that.  He is supposed to take care of our checking account, give us the nicest cars, the best clothes, the biggest homes, and our children are never supposed to be sick.  Truth is, if our version of Christianity were Biblical the cross would have never happened.  How could someone as good as Jesus, be loved by God and at the same time go to the cross?  If there is anything assumed in the Sermon on the Mount it is this—following Jesus changes everything!  How could we expect anything else?  He is now in us and if we are obedient we are in Him.  He is now living in and through us and somehow I just think Almighty God living in us will bring change to our daily lives.

The Sermon starts with a portion of scripture we know of as the Beatitudes.  These eight verses are perhaps the best known verses in the Bible—right up there with the 23^rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer.  We savor these words, we affirm them, we mediated upon them, we even engrave them on kitchen plaques, but how do we live them?  How do we become what they say we are supposed to become?  Let’s start right there—the beatitudes are not something you are supposed to become—Jesus isn’t saying, “Become this and you will be a Christian.”  He isn’t giving us another set of laws—the beatitudes are a set of proclamations. 

Many have looked at these verses as laws and put them off for the millennial kingdom, but Jesus told us to seek the Kingdom in the here and now—it was found in Him.  He ushered in the Kingdom and we must abide in Him to live it.  It was Luther who said, “Christ is saying nothing in this Sermon about how we become Christians, but only about the works and fruits that no one can do unless he already is a Christians and in a state of grace.” 

Do you remember the show, “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous?”  I wonder if we have been guilty of looking at the Sermon on the Mount and thinking Jesus is describing the “Lifestyles of the Saints and Holy.”  We have to remember that the life Jesus is describing is supernatural, but we cannot forget this fact—the normal Christian life is a supernatural life.  It cannot be lived apart from abiding in Him.

Some time ago I read the story of a pilot who was practicing high speed maneuvers in a jet fighter.  The pilot turned the controls for a steep ascent, but flew straight into the ground.  He did not know that he was flying up-side-down.  I read that and couldn’t help but think of today’s church.  We are moving along with big buildings, big budgets, and great programs, but are we flying in the right direction?

Jesus has become big business in the West.  Books, paintings, jewelry, and decorations with His ‘likeness’ make up a billion dollar business, but are we representing the Biblical Jesus?  If you grew up in church you heard about Jesus in song—“Jesus loves me,” you saw Him on the flannel board or in the pictures, and you thanked him for your Kool-Aid and cookies.  He was comforting, loving—a Mister Rogers with a robe and long hair.  The question we must ask is why would that Jesus be crucified?  What would a Mister Rogers Messiah do to make everyone so mad?  No, Jesus was much more than that.  (Idea from Phillip Yancey, The Jesus I Thought I Knew)

Karl Barth tells of a man standing by the window gazing into the street.  Outside, people are shading their eyes with their hands and looking up into the sky.  Because of the overhang of the building, the man cannot see what they are pointing toward.  We who live 2,000 years after Jesus have a viewpoint not unlike the man standing by the window.  We hear the shouts of exclamation.  We study the gestures and words in the Gospels and the many books they have spawned.  Yet no amount of neck-craning will allow us a glimpse of Jesus in the flesh.

Yancey spoke of the Jesus of the Gospels, “…obstinacy frustrated him, self-righteousness infuriated him, simple faith thrilled him.  Indeed, he seemed more emotional and spontaneous than the average person, not less.  More passionate, not less.”  The Jesus of the Bible called us to come and seek His kingdom first and to abide in Him.  If we are going to do that we would do well to find out who He is.  You can tell a lot about who I am by reading or listening to my sermons so I thought, maybe we can see who He is by studying the intro to His best known sermon over the next few weeks.