MK040 Sermons
Blessed - Part 2 (Audio)
He was entitled sitting at the feet of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' most famous message. He had recently been baptized by John the Baptist and when he was baptized, the Bible says that he fulfilled all righteousness, he fulfilled God's requirements for him. And then immediately after that, he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness and then he began to preach and his message was very short. It simply said this, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near," repent for the kingdom of heaven is near. Repentance was kind of an odd word for them to hear because they were good Jewish people. They went to synagogue, they read the Torah, they prayed on a regular basis, they gave alms to the poor. So what did they have to repent? What did they have to turn from in their lives? And that's what Jesus is about to present to them in this Sermon on the Mount. And as he begins to do that, he also says the kingdom of heaven is very near. And he was describing this season that was about to begin in which things were going to change. Things would go back to the way that really God designed them with God being the king of this, Jesus being the king of the earth. And it was going to change the way things had been for them for a season of time. When I was a kid, we would occasionally go and spend a week with my grandparents and during that week we would usually get to eat things we didn't get to eat at home. And occasionally my grandmother would try to make us eat things we didn't eat at home and we just got to say no, which we didn't get to say at home. And she was okay with that. And they would take us to places we had never been and get to do all these kinds of fun things that we didn't necessarily get to do at home. And then when we went back home kind of reality said and everything changed and it was all back to the way it had been. And there's a sense that when Jesus is coming and he's arriving that things are going to change. They're going to be very different than the way that they had been. And that's what he introduces in the Sermon on the Mount. He begins in the Sermon on the Mount by giving us a glimpse into the kind of people that are going to be a part of God's Kingdom. We tend to think that well who's going to be a part of God's Kingdom? What's going to be the people that raise their kids well and the people that don't get involved in a lot of sexual issues and the people that are part of the church and the people that give on a regular. Those are the people that are going to be part of God's Kingdom. But God says no, no, no, no, no. I want to give you a very different way to look at this. And last week we started by looking at some of the individuals who are going to be part of God's Kingdom. And the first ones we looked at are people who are poor in spirit. These might be described as people that are broken hard to hear, people that are beaten up by this world. Another group was those that mourn, those that face great difficult loss in this life. A third group that he talked about was those who are meek, those who are meek, those who don't force their way, those who don't try to climb over top of others or demand that they get what they deserve, but those who are gentle and those that by their demeanor put their trust in the God of the heavens. Some people that we might not have expected that Jesus would be inviting to be a part of his Kingdom. And this morning we're going to look at a few more of those. If you have your Bibles turned to Matthew chapter 5, or if you have a wireless device you, there's a password inside the program there. The word connected I believe if you don't have a Bible, our guys have some of those and they'll pass those out to you. Matthew 5 page 958 in the Bibles that they're going to pass out to you. Two chapter 5 is where we're going to be this morning. As you turn there, we're going to begin in verse 6, Matthew 5, begin in verse 6, and the first group of people he says are that are blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. I just took a drink of water up here, I tried to have some water up here so my mouth doesn't dry out when I'm speaking to you, but thirst is something that we all know. We all know. Hunger is something that we all know. We can go for a long period of time in spite of what your teenager tells you without food. They can go for a long period of time, we've heard of hunger strikes in the past and people going for a long period of time. Can't do that with water, can't do that with water. When I'm out training, I carry water all my longer runs with me and they say that if your mouth starts to feel dry, you should be drinking and that means you're already getting close to being dehydrated. Your mouth starts to feel dry because we can't go very long. Our body requires and needs water. Jesus here is talking about individuals who they demonstrate the same kind of need for those things that our body needs to survive for righteousness, for God's ways, for the things of God. He said they have a consuming desire for God's ways to be lifted up on this earth, for wrongs to be right, for injustice to be punished, for the downtrodden to be lifted up, for sin to be dealt with in our lives. David describes it in the Psalms in this way, look at Psalm 42.1, he says, "The deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, oh God, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God?" Jesus is describing people that just have this overwhelming desire to be with God, to meet with Him, to spend time with Him. Look at Psalm 63.1, he says this, he says, "Oh God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you and my body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water." You see in the Jewish community, they had all the rules, the Old Testament law, the Torah, and as long as they followed the rules, they assumed they were okay with God. They assumed they would be blessed by God. We looked at that last week in the book of Deuteronomy that the law says, "If you obey my commands, then you will be blessed." Jesus is saying, "There's another group of people that I'm going to bless." These are individuals who have a heart that longs for God in ways that when you're with them, you think, "My heart doesn't long for God in that way." They're not as concerned, it is consumed about things on the outside, but they're really concerned about what is going on on the inside. When you talk to these individuals, you say, "What is the challenge is you're facing?" They describe one of their own personal struggles, you're like, "Really? That's what you're struggling with? That was not even on my radar. You don't even want to know my list of the things that I'm wrestling with." Jesus says those are the individuals that he is going to be blessed. It's often people that are overwhelmed by their own sinfulness, and they have this overwhelming sense of their sin, and they're coming up short, and they're longing for God to change them. What he says in that verse, if we can go back to verse 6 on the screen, it says, "They will be filled up. Somehow God is going to fill their lives with this mercy and goodness. Somehow they are going to know God in ways that most of us may never experience because of their longing for him." I put it this way. I've said, "Blessed are those who feel a powerful longing for God to transform this world that we live in and commit to making a difference in us because God will become more real to them than most of us will ever experience." So blessed are those who hunger in thirst for God's ways more than anything else. The second group that he blesses is in verse 7. He says, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." The merciful are those that follow the good golden rule due to others as you want to have done to you and they understand, expressing compassion to other people. And mercy is when we get something that we don't deserve. That's what mercy is. Mercy is when we don't get what we do deserve. Mercy is when we don't get what we do deserve. That's what mercy is. We don't get what we do deserve. This summer I was traveling down south and I was in North Carolina and my sister just moved to South Carolina. So it wasn't that far away and I thought I should stop by and see them. They just recently moved and so I was driving down to see them and I was probably about 45 minutes away. And I was on the phone with her. I said, "I'll be there in about 45 minutes." I said, "And these are my exact words." I said, "I'm trying to make sure I drive slowly through the little towns because I don't want to get a ticket." And as I got off the phone with her, I saw the speed limit drop from 60 to 40. You know, I'm all my sabbatical, no rush, no hurry, no deadlines. Slow down to 40 miles an hour and you guys know where this is going, don't you? As soon as I slowed down to 40 miles an hour, I entered this little town called Society Hill. Sounds like a wonderful little town. You know, some Julia Roberts movie about that, you know, or something. I don't know. But, you know, I entered this little town. There's a steep grade. I see a truck up at the top and I don't know about it in front of me so I start to accelerate to go up the grade. As soon as I get to the top of the hill, the blue lights come on. And I was like, "You have got to be kidding." All right. So, you know, I pull over and I'm waiting for the officer. So, you know, where are you going today, sir, and why are you in such a hurry? And, you know, I'm preparing to give my whole reason. You know, I'm all my sabbatical, not really in a hurry, but just out for a nice drive and, you know, all he said was, "53 and a 40, I'll be right back." That's it. You know, I just wanted to even plead my story, but there was not even a chance for any mercy. I knew I was speeding. I knew I was over the speeding limit. Okay. But can you not give me what I deserve? What did I deserve? A fine, right? But it was I hoping for mercy, mercy, and I didn't get it. And he even had tattooed on his arm, "Blessed are the peacemakers," but I wasn't feeling very peaceful towards him, and I didn't think he was doing a good job of being a peacemaker that day. But law enforcement officer, yes, but not a peacemaker, but, you know, and there's something inside of all of us that we know when we mess up, we know when we blow it. And sometimes we just long to experience mercy. And Jesus said those individuals that are able to extend this to other people, to not give them what they deserve, there's something remarkable about them. There's a story in the Gospel of Luke, very familiar story to probably most of us, a story called "The Good Samaritan," in which a man is injured by the side of the road and two men will go completely past him, and one stops. And he doesn't just patch the guy up and said, "You're going to be okay." He takes him to an inn, he pays for him for a couple of days. And Jesus asked, he said, in the end of the story, he said, "Who was the one who cared for them?" And the answer was the one who showed mercy. One who gave him what he didn't really deserve, he didn't really, this guy had not done anything wrong to this guy, really didn't need to help him, but his words went beyond words, there was actions that were associated with that. And these are people who show mercy to those in need, those suffering in justice, those who are poor, they go beyond just being nice to people, they choose to enter when another person is struggling and walk with them in whatever that struggle is. There's a verse on the screen, Galatians 6-1, it says this, "Brothers, if someone's caught in a sin, you or a spiritual should restore him gently." They've had experiences like this at CCC, where individuals have made bad decisions, and they've wrecked parts of their lives. And there are these amazingly gifted people who walk into their lives and walk alongside them in spite of the mess that they have made, and they show mercy. The hard part is for us, the world says, "If you show mercy, somebody's going to take advantage of you," between services, somebody was telling me, "Well, John, what do you do if you show mercy?" And they won't listen, and they keep taking advantage of you. That's what our culture says. They got themselves into this, they can get themselves out of it, you reap what you sow, right? Doesn't the Bible even say that? And in the Old Testament, the law provided for people's needs when they were going through difficult times. The story of Ruth and Naomi and the Old Testament, two women, lost their husbands. They come back to the land of Israel, and they're basically destitute. They don't have anything, because the husbands would provide for them. And the crops were being harvested, and the farmers were instructed to leave some crops on the edge so that they could live. The people in this situation could live off of that. But Jesus is talking about not just doing what's in the law, not just doing what's required, what's expected, it's being willing to go beyond that to meet the needs of others. And they're risk involved in that. In the Old Testament, there's laws. If you helped someone who is sick, if you helped someone who is dying, you would be contaminated and you wouldn't be clean. And there's a whole long process you had to go before you could be clean and come back into God's temple, his presence again. But God says no, he says, "Their people are going to be blessed because they can move towards people with great needs." I've stated it this way, "Blessed are those who get their hands dirty, helping people who may appear to be undeserving. When the time in your life comes, when you need great help, it will come to you." Did you catch what it said there? It said, "Blessed are those who are merciful, for they will receive mercy." The truth is, all of us are going to find ourselves at a point in time in our lives when we need that from someone else. We know what we deserve, we know where we've messed up, and all we want is a little mercy. We know how rare that is because when we offer it extended to someone, they're like, "Really? Are you sure?" You know, when my son does something and he kind of knows what's coming, and I say, "You're going to experience mercy this time." I don't do that every time, but every once in a while, I want to just give him a taste of what is it like to be the recipient of mercy in our lives, because that's what God makes available to us. He says, "Those individuals that choose to live that way, that choose to not protect themselves, not stay clean, not stay inside the boundaries of the law, but choose to walk into people's lives where they've made a mess of it." Those are the people that God looks than blessing to. So those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, those that are merciful, look at the verse 8, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." This one's a little bit tougher because Jesus doesn't say, "Blessed are the pure," which we would think, "Okay, those people that don't sin, but doesn't everybody sin, okay, maybe pure is innocent, so maybe he's talking about children," which we know how much Jesus values children. He talks about that. He says, "Let the little children come to me when the disciples are pushing away." So what does he mean about the pure in heart? Well, remember what Jesus is talking about is he's talking about people who are blessed who don't appear to deserve to be blessed, or don't have not done anything to earn blessing. So what is he talking about here? I want to suggest to you that he's talking about people who believe that they are pure in heart. Dallas Willard said this, he says, "These individuals are perfectionists, and they're a pain in the butt to everyone." These are the people that believe that they are pure in heart. They're the kinds of people that will find errors in your doctor, and they'll find errors in your practice, and they'll probably question your heart and motive. The truth is, they're even harder on themselves, and they never feel like they really measure up. Nothing's good enough for them. Foods never cooked right enough, coals are never right enough, never, you're never quite in style or accessorized properly, nothing is ever good enough. And if you think about this, and you think about individuals in this situation in life, it really leaves you scratching your head because you're like, "Well, they're pretty proud and arrogant. They think they've got it all together." And maybe they have the wealth and success to follow that. And what's our thought? Do they deserve blessings from God? They don't need any blessings from God. They've made their own blessings. What do they need from God? It's starting to get the picture of how these are individuals that could be on the outside that we think they do not deserve something from God, and God says, "No, there may be something that they deserve that you might not see." These are kind of individuals that are like the CEO at your company that really doesn't know or care about you, or the big business that doesn't care about your struggle, or the boss that only cares about his success and not the challenges you're facing to make him successful. These are the people that in their hearts and in their minds, they've got it all figured out. They've got it all together, and they don't need God. And yet look what it says about these individuals. It says, "They will see God." They will see God. This is one that kind of leaves me scratching my head. I'm like, "I really don't understand this. I don't get this." First of all, the Bible seems to talk about the fact that God is someone that we can't see, but we know and we're aware of, and I think I can understand that concept. It's a little bit like the sun. This is a great time of year. The sun is out. It's warm. You can kind of sit outside. I've done this recently, where you can kind of sit outside in the sun, and even for a fair redhead like me, I don't get sunburned. It's really, really nice. You feel the warmth of the sun, you enjoy all the benefits of the sun, and yet you don't get burned by the sun, but you can't do what with the sun. You can't, what? Look at the sun. And so you experience all the benefits, all the good things, but it's so brilliant. You can't quite see it. And somehow God gives these individuals a glimpse of Himself. They can see God. I really don't know how that happens. I know of one individual in the Old Testament, a guy by the name of Nebuchadnezzar. He was a king, a very well-known, very powerful king in the ancient Near East, and the Bible tells us that He built statues for Himself, and He had people bow down and worship these statues of Himself. But there was a point in His life where He was so arrogant and so filled with pride that the Bible describes it in the book of Daniel that He literally lost His mind, and He wandered away from His kingdom. He describes Him living out in the woods. It describes His fingernails growing long, and His hair being all unkempt and shaggy until He got to the point that He recognized that there was someone greater than Him, and that was the God of the heavens. Does God do that? Well we certainly have illustrations in our recent history of people who thought they were above the law, right, and they discovered they were not. So sometimes God can do that. I'm not really sure how God does this to these individuals. Maybe it's a near-death experience, maybe it's a great loss that they face, but somehow He gives people who believe that they are good in themselves, a glimpse of Him, and that is an unbelievable blessing from the hand of God. So the third one is "appear in heart." Those that hunger in thirst after righteousness, those that are merciful, and those that appear in heart. And I've said it this way, "Blessed are those who think they have it all figured out in life. They discover they don't, and God gives them a glimpse of Himself." This next one's a little more obvious. This one says, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God." Now let me see your hand. How many of you are? Let me see if you're a peacemaker. You're the one that's always in the middle, you're trying to solve problems. You're a middle child. Let me see a few more hands, okay, a couple of you, you're trying to figure out what's going on and get everybody to come to a common solution there and get us all on the same page. You're not the stubborn firstborn, and you're not the carefree last child that doesn't really care. You're the one in the middle trying to find that happy medium. Those of you who are in this situation, this kind of feels a little bit like a curse, doesn't it? It does, because you don't really want to, but you just can't handle the conflict that is going on. You have to enter it in somehow, in some way, and try to bring people together in that experience. You might experience at a young age between siblings and maybe even parents as you get a little older with co-workers, extended family, neighbors, maybe even a small group setting. It's tough because you're in the middle, and sometimes when you're in the middle, you lose. Even though you were just trying to help, you lose friendships, you lose relationships because of that happening. Jesus extends a blessing to these individuals, and why was that so unusual for that day? There's two reasons that I think that it was unusual because in the first century, there was this group of individuals called the zealots. The zealots were like a first century militia group as the way to describe them, because their goal was to find like-minded people and then find ways to overthrow the Roman government. They weren't about reconciliation or peace, they were about overthrowing the Roman government. There was a lot of conflict in that day, because the religious leaders, because of the way they interpreted the law, had created this group and this group and this group, and if this group didn't agree with this group on all the specifics, then there would be conflict. Boy, that doesn't sound very out of line for our day, doesn't. Another reason is because of the law focused on justice. That's what the law focused on. For instance, if you were doing something in the process of doing something, you killed your neighbor's cow. I don't know what you would be doing in that day, and you killed your neighbor's cow, but somehow you killed your neighbor's cow. You would have to give him one of your cows. That was a justice, right? A cow for a cow, like an eye for an eye. That was kind of the Hammurabi's code of that day. It focused on law and justice. The difference with the peacemakers, the peacemaker is not as concerned about the laws. They're concerned about the people. That's what they're concerned, and they're willing to enter a difficult situation, a situation that may result in loss to them because of their concern for the people and that they find a solution to move forward. The other problem with the law, the law doesn't account for people's hearts being hardened. The law doesn't give any space for what about outside the law? Well, we've got to find a law to find out how that works. This is not just being nice or being tolerant. This is waiting in the middle of a mess, and waiting in the middle of a mess because you care about the people who are involved. You do it because that's just kind of who you are in your heart for the people. Jesus says the people that enter these very difficult situations, these hard struggles, those are people that I'm going to bless. Notice how they're blessed. It says there in the end of the verse, it says they will be called the sons of God. They'll be called the sons of God. That's really a phrase that describes someone who's a part of God's family. You see, someone who enters this really is following the example of Jesus because the Bible tells us that God created man perfectly to live in relationship with God. And man said, "Thanks God for making this perfect world and this great experience, but you know what? I want to do my own thing and I want to turn my back and walk away from you." But God loved the world so much that He said, "I'm not going to let them walk away. I'm going to provide a person named Jesus who's going to come to this earth and live on this earth and die on the cross and his death is going to pay what my requirement is for all of the sins of mankind to be taken care of." And so when you choose to enter that role as a peacemaker, you really follow the example of Jesus and what He came to this earth to do for us. Now this whole idea of peacemaking, it's a little confusing in the community we live in because of the Mennonite and the Anabaptist tradition about not being involved in conflict and pacifism and sometimes this verse gets referenced for those things. The difference is, as I don't see this as someone avoiding conflict, you see when Jesus talked about peace, He didn't talk about avoiding conflict. He talked about entering it and offering something that people in the conflict couldn't see and weren't willing to move towards. And so in our lives, when you find yourself in those situations, when you find yourself in the middle of those situations, you really live out what Jesus has called us to be when you can seek to offer peace to those struggling to experience it. So another way to put this would be blessed are those who enter the mess of conflict with the goal of reconciliation with others as they will clearly stand out as God's sons following His example in Jesus. He says, blessed are those that hunger and thirst for God's ways, blessed are those who are merciful, blessed are those who are pure in heart, blessed are those who are the peacemakers. And lastly, blessed are those who are persecuted and we're going to look at verses 10, 11 and 12 together. So let me read those to you and then we'll talk about them. He says, blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So consider you and people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice in me glad because great is your reward in heaven from the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before me. Now in this passage, there's two blessings that Jesus states. They're blessed, those who are blessed are blessed because they seek God's righteousness and justice and they're blessed because they're verbally harassed and mistreated. And again upon first glance, it's talking about people who are persecuted and our immediate thought often goes to those individuals who live in parts of the world where if you were to follow Jesus and you were to make that known, that would go against the law of the land and you could lose your life. And that's very, very true. And those individuals are incredible examples of courage and faith for all of us. But I think Jesus is talking about something a little bit different. I don't think he's talking about a religious persecution in a foreign land because look at the punishment that takes place in verse 11. If we go back to that, it says, "Bless you and people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you." I don't think he's talking about physical harm. I think he's talking about you being verbally mistreated. And I think what Jesus is talking about because he says at the end of verse 12, he says, "You will be just like the prophets who are before you." Now, if you know anything about the prophets, these are individuals in the Old Testament that God would tap on the shoulder and he would say, "I have a message for you to give to the people of Israel." And if you got tapped on the shoulder and were told by God that you are a prophet, probably your heart sunk. You say, "Why would your heart sink?" Well, because nobody likes you. Everybody hates the prophets. They just hate them. So when God came to you and said, "I have a message," you're like, "Oh, no, God. Not me. Not me." But because that was true. I mean, they were hated. And you read the stuff they did to the prophets. It wasn't very nice stuff. You know, I think it was Jeremiah. They stripped him. Nega stuck him in a hole for our eye. Who knows how long? You know, I mean, Jonah had to be sent to some foreign land. I mean, all kinds of horrible things that happened to these guys. And why was that? Because they had a message from God that conflicted with the way of life of the religious community. That's why the prophets were hated so much. That's why the prophets were rejected. And Jesus is saying to His disciples that there are some of you that are going to have a message that's going to come to the religious community that's going to disrupt them in such a way that you will be verbally mistreated, despised and hated by everyone who's there. And so in Matthew chapter 23, Jesus talks about the religious leaders and will come back to this over and over again. He says, "You guys clean up really well on the outside, but inside you're a mess. You're a mess." It would be like if we cleaned up the outside of that building in Reinholds, but we didn't do a single thing to the inside. And you guys would walk through and say, "Well, it's nice to have a building, but it needs a little attention. Has anybody, did anybody realize that, you know? Anybody do anything about the paint peeling off the ceiling because of the leaky roof or you know, the carpet that's all torn up? Anybody see anything like that?" But one of the things that's true about religious communities is I have this great capacity to be blinded to the things that everyone else can see. It's like the emperor without any clothes on. Everybody could see it, but they can't see it. And religious communities are prolific for that. The one that stands out to me the most in recent, the last couple years, is for many, many years, the Catholic community was found guilty of sexual crimes and activities that took place among the priest. And more evangelical communities, evangelical circles and groups, they would easily look to that and say, "Oh, that's a horrible thing. That's an awful thing. That shouldn't happen." And they're right. But in the last couple of years, if you pay attention to news at all, some individuals have come forward and appointed the finger at other religious communities. Mission organizations, Bible colleges, large churches, and have said, "There's some things just like that that have happened here that should never, ever have happened." And sadly, for many, many years, 15, 20, 30, 40 years, individuals were blinded to this and said, "It's really not that big of a deal or it's in the past and no one needs to be held responsible and it's okay." And if you read any of the blog posts about some of these things that have been pushed into the media recently, they're still being said. Unfortunately, we have a culture that has recognized that that is never appropriate and that someone needs to be accountable for those wrongs and it's never to be swept on the carpet and dismissed. So religious whistleblowers don't get any more grace than a whistleblower in the secular marketplace. And I think what Jesus is talking about is He's talking about those individuals that because of their way of life, they see things that are not exactly the way they should be. And it raises a red flag for them. It raises a question mark for them instead of saying, "You know, maybe I'm just missing this and they go on or saying, "You know, I'm not going to make waves. I'm just going to go out." They say, "I have to say something about this. I can't just ignore it." And they're mistreated and misaligned because of it. And in the end, everybody loses. People of faith lose. The gospel of Jesus Christ loses. And God says those individuals are people that are going to be blessed. Not everybody is willing to stand up and rock the boat. Not everybody is willing to say, "There's something wrong with what is happening here." But Jesus says those that do will be blessed in significant ways. And I said it this way, I said, "Blessed are those willing to live with the abuse that comes their way when they have the courage to expose religious frauds." It's almost a little embarrassing because our culture seems to be able to see religious frauds. But we can't. We can't. And sometimes God enables individuals to see that and have the courage to speak into that. And they will be blessed. And God has something great planned for them. As I said to you last week, these are not commands for us to aspire to, at least not in this place. I don't think Jesus is saying to you, "You should hunger and thirst for righteousness." You should be merciful or a peacemaker or a pure in heart or persecuted. He talks about some of those in other places. I think what Jesus is saying here is he's saying, "I want you to recognize that the people that I'm going to welcome, the people that are going to enter my kingdom, are people that you might be surprised are the ones that I'm going to invite in." You say, "Well John, what are we supposed to do?" Just say, "Wow, Jesus, I was kind of surprised by that. I didn't expect you would have that person in the room, you know?" No, I think what Jesus is doing is he's not only giving us an example to see who's going to be in, but I think he's giving us an invitation. You say, "What do you mean an invitation?" What Jesus does is it says he blesses them, and in some cases he physically heals them, but that's not something I believe that God enables many of us, if not all of us, to ever be a part of. But I think what Jesus does do is he does heal the brokenhearted, the people that don't think anybody cares or knows about their struggle or what they're going through. And he says, "If you want to follow me, if you want to live like Jesus, if you want to do what Jesus did," he said, "Take an opportunity to enter the life of someone who's on the outside, who's on the fringe, who's maybe tried to do something really hard, who's maybe had bad things happen in their life, who's maybe struggling, who's maybe arrogant and proud, and you think doesn't deserve it. And make an effort to enter their life and bless them." You say, "What does that look like?" It might mean listening to their story. It might mean serving them in some way. I was talking to a guy afterwards, he's like, "That's really hard for me, because I just want to know their problem and fix it and move on." I said, "Well, that's where a lot of us are. We don't want to hang in there with people through long struggles. We're going to fix it. Let's get it going. Let's figure out what's the problem, what's the solution, let's move on, be done, that's what we want to do?" I don't think that's what Jesus is calling us to do. I think He's calling us, first of all, to have our eyes open to say, "Who are the people in your world that are on the outside that get ignored, that get left out that nobody's paying attention to?" And will you do what I would do, which is move into their lives and extend them some kind of a blessing by maybe simply being with them for a short period of time and listening their story and caring about them? You say, "John, is that going to change their lives?" I don't know that it will change their lives, but it may give them a glimpse of a God in heaven who loves them more than they would ever know. His son, Jesus, who longs to have a relationship with them, that could change their lives. I want us to close, and as we do so, just look at this list that's going to come up. These are the people that we've talked about this morning, those that hunger and thirst for God's ways, those that are merciful and care for others, those that are pure in heart, they don't need anyone, those that are the peacemakers, they help solve conflict, those that are persecutors persecuted, they stand up for God's ways with religious hypocrites. As I was talking this morning, you thought of someone who's in those, that list of categories. Maybe they don't even fit that list of categories, but you just know they're not in the mainstream, they're out on the edge. Jesus is asking you today, "Are you willing to move towards them?" I'm going to ask you to bow your heads with me and just give you a moment to talk to God. Maybe as I was talking, someone came right away to your mind and I just want to invite you to ask yourself, "Am I willing to enter their world to this week?" Jesus probably would if he was here and if he was walking in my shoes. If no one's coming to mind, maybe your prayer is God helping my heart to be willing and my eyes to be opened to see the people you want me to walk towards, they were just like the ones you walked towards. God as we've spent this time looking at the people you will bless. I think it might have surprised us, confused us, even made us angry because some of those people don't seem to deserve your blessing. God, you know something about what's on the inside that we don't know. Help us this week when we encounter and move towards and are confronted by people who are in those places in life where they're successful and accomplished or broken and alone. That we might walk towards them and find a way to bless them as you hope to. Help us to do that, we need your help because we can't do this on our own in your name we pray. Amen. Join. >> Thank you, John.