So we've been looking at this idea of the kingdom of heaven here in the Beatitudes. And the idea of the kingdom of heaven is that this is something that Jesus said was arriving when he was on this earth. When Jesus was walking this earth, he said, the arrival of God's kingdom is right now. Now, he also talked about it, saying that there's, we can't just like, unless you approach it the right way, you won't just naturally see it. In other words, if all you're doing is turning on, I don't care if it's CNN or Fox News or anything in between or, you know, whatever it is, you know, you get to Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, wherever you get your updates about what's going on in the world.

For a long time, I got my news from watching what people would post on their Facebook wall, specifically different memes or jokes that they would put up, little comics and cartoons. That's where I would get my news. I would see these jokes and I'd say, wait a minute, what happened? You know, I have no idea. And then I would have to go look it up.

I'm like, what's going on with this thing? You know? And then I would find a news article. And so that was where I was getting my headlines from. And I'll be honest, it was a lot funnier way to do it than watching the news.

But sometimes if I travel, I'll be in a hotel getting the little free breakfast, which is always a letdown. I mean, even the good ones are a letdown, right? But it's, I paid for it. I figure in the cost of the room, and I'm going to eat my fill. You know, I come back heavier than when I left.

So anyway, I'm in there and they always have the news on. And you're watching these headlines and you're watching, they don't have the volume up half the time, so you don't know what they're saying. And you're just watching the headlines. And I think, man, this world just seems to be getting worse. Sometimes I'll get on Twitter or now called x.

I really wish that they hadn't changed the name of that because everybody still wants to call it Twitter. But, so I'll get on Twitter and I'll read some of these people that I've decided to follow on there, and I'll read what they're saying. And it's like the story, way behind the story behind the story. And I'm reading this stuff and I'm at least trying to cipher through which parts of it are true and which parts of it are not true. And I look at that and I'm like, that's so much worse than what the news headlines show.

The news headlines are made to actually divide you. They're made to unite you into different groups on opposite sides of a spectrum and make you believe that the people on the other side are the ones that are evil and that they're ruining the world and that your group is the good group and their group is the evil group. And that likely may be true. It might be true that they're both a little bit evil, that both of them have gotten off the plan of what God had for humanity. And so as we look at that, you know, I'm looking at it behind, like, what's the story behind the story behind the story?

And I realize they're all working for the same team, and it happens to be power and money. You know, they're not that famous, because the ones who are really controlling things around the world are you pushed by those desires. Power and money. They don't care about fame. They don't want you to know who they are, because once you know who they are, you see them.

And so I get to looking at all those things, and I'm like, it's so much worse than MSNBC or Fox or Newsmax or whatever all these groups are even say, it's so much deeper than that. And I look at that and I say, where's God in the middle of this? You know, if Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is here, what hope do I even have of seeing what he's talking about? Because if you read through these gospels, these stories in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in your New Testament, and you read through them and you see what Jesus says specifically about the kingdom of heaven, you wonder, how is it that I can see that? I mean, I have these reading glasses up here because I have this Bible that when I bought it to use up at the podium, I could read it really well.

That was about eight years ago, and now I can't see it at all. It's just. And some of you guys are like, yeah, I know, it happens. You know, get used to it. So I'm looking at this, though, and I'm like, I have to put on these lenses to be able to read it.

And the thing is, when we read scripture, when we watch the news, anything that we do, we have lenses that we wear. In other words, we have ways of seeing the world that are unique to our experiences, our background, where we come from, you know, all these different things. We have family that's up in the south, you know, this isn't really south. There's too many northerners down here. You know, we kind of all moved here and so it doesn't really feel like real, real southern.

And that really offends some folks that are like 5th, 6th generation Florida cracker. But you know, when you get into it, it's like we go up to Tennessee and see some relatives and that feels like the deep south, you know, it really is. And we'll go up there and visit them. Well, we come back here and there's, you know, a tropical storm that comes through and they're, they're texting and they're calling, hey, are you guys okay? What's going on?

We're like, yeah, we're fine. You know, it was just a lot of rain, a little bit of wind, no big deal. Like, I didn't even recharge my flashlight batteries or fill up the propane tank. You know, in the end, it wasn't really a big catastrophic deal. But people that don't live here, they have the lenses of, I'm looking at the Weather Channel and I'm seeing scary stuff.

Yeah, well, that's not where we live. I've got the lenses of being quite a few miles inland up a little higher in elevation, and we don't have the issues here in Zephyr Hills or East Pasco county that they have out on the coast. And so for us, we're looking at it and saying, nah, we'll probably be fine. A little bit of wind damage, maybe a little awning or you know, some, some shutters or something flopping around, but we're going to be okay. Those are some of the lenses that we look through when we approach something like that.

But when we approach the scripture, we all have lenses. And what I encourage us to do so many times as much as possible is to strip off the lenses that we have and try as much as we can. And this is partially my job to help you with that, to put on lenses that they had. When they wrote this, specifically, when Jesus spoke these words, he was speaking to a group of people that really weren't at all like us. Most of them spoke at least two, maybe three languages.

Some of us don't have a good grasp on our primary one, you know, our only one. So it's like they were already kind of a leg up on us in that way. We think so many times that people that lived a couple thousand years ago, must have been kind of idiots, because, well, we have the Internet, we have all these, you know, curriculum, textbooks, all these things that we went through school and college, surely were more educated than they were. Folks. Their kids, by the time they were twelve years old, in these jewish kids, in their hebrew school, they would have memorized the first five books of the scripture.

Some of us have never read through them on our own, you know what I'm saying? Like, they weren't dumb. And so, yes, they were limited to the accumulated knowledge of the day, but they weren't idiots. They knew a lot of things. So Jesus didn't speak to his people as if he expected them to be ignorant.

He spoke to them knowing that they had some knowledge. But the way they lived their lives was totally different than ours. They didn't have everything written down. It was spoken a lot, which means if you want to remember it and you want everybody to remember it, well, you will spend a lot of time in groups, not one to one, but in groups, repeating things, reciting things so that they remember it. You're going to spend a lot of time ingraining that, drilling that into their mind so that it becomes part of who they are.

Every morning, every evening, jewish people would recite the prayer from deuteronomy, chapter five, called the Shema. Hear, o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord, he is one you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might and with all your strength. They would have that not just as a mantra, but as a way of life. It was, to use a greek word, it was their ethos, their way of themselves living. And so Jesus, when he spoke of things like the kingdom of heaven, he talked about it quite a bit.

And so this is one of those times I would encourage us to put our lenses on, but to, specifically to filter out or to look for a certain phrase in the book of Matthew in this gospel is always going to be called the kingdom of heaven. In the other three gospels, it's called the kingdom of God. They're talking about the same thing. They just use a different term for it. And so as we look at this, I would encourage you to read the gospels sometime.

It won't take that long. And read through them and look specifically for the instances that Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God. And as you start to do that, you could even take a notepad and write them down or a notes app on your phone or your computer and, and just kind of jot it down and look at all the places where the Bible talks about God's kingdom and then start to paint for yourself and your mind a picture of what that looks like. There's one that I keep getting a hold of in my mind that I can't let go of that says, jesus has. He's somewhere.

And there's these little children. Their parents are bringing the kids to Jesus, and Jesus is a kind of busy guy, and so his disciples are there saying, hey, shoo. Go away, kids. Don't you know this guy? He's important.

Don't you know that? Jesus is a. He's got big stuff to do. He doesn't have time to. What's a kid gonna accomplish for him?

You know, this kid isn't gonna be any help. Get rid of these guys. And Jesus says, are you kidding me? Don't hinder them from coming. Don't stop them from coming.

Don't put a roadblock in their way. Bring the children to me. Bring the children to me and don't stop them from coming. He says, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to ones such as these. He said, if you don't approach the kingdom of heaven with the eyes or the spirit of a child, you'll never see it.

And I keep asking this question about that, by the way, when we read our scripture, we should be asking questions of it. Don't be scared to ask the hard questions either. Don't be scared to ask the difficult questions that maybe in some other place you were told you can't ask that of God. You can't challenge that. If you think you can't challenge God, read the book of Job.

He challenged God on just about everything. In the end, God put him in his place and said, where were you when I created the world? And he's like, I confess, I wasn't there. He's like, yeah, I know. In other words, job's saying, I really don't know everything.

I guess I really thought I knew some stuff. God, I thought I knew of you. I really have a long way to go. So he says, you know what, God, I'd heard of you before, but now I've seen you. He saw God in the immenseness of how God presented himself.

Now, God doesn't do that to be arrogant or to make Job feel little. He does it to remind Job that God ultimately is in control of him. Job says this famous line, and I use it usually at the graveside Burials service that we have for people where Job says, you know, I know that in the end, my redeemer lives, and in the end, I will stand on the earth. I will see him with my own eyes. I won't behold him through some knowledge that I had.

I'll behold him with my own eyes. I will see my redeemer and know that he lives. And so when we read the gospels and when we see this stuff about the kingdom of heaven and we see Jesus saying, approaching it through the eyes of a child, I think, how does a child approach this idea of heaven? How does a child approach the idea of leaving this earth, departing from this fleshly body, and meeting Christ with a risen body, a resurrected body? And I know that that's a hard thing for a lot of times for people to grasp and say, really?

You believe in a resurrection? You believe that somehow we're going to be raised again? I'll tell you, first of all, they had a problem with that. In the time of Jesus, there was a whole group of people called the sadducees that that was kind of like one of their biggest things was saying, hey, you know what? When we're dead, that's it.

Like, there's no hope beyond this life. And so I say, if that's the truth, then why aren't you just living for you? Like, do whatever you want, smoke anything you want, drink anything you want, drive as fast as you want, you know, shoot stuff up, rob people, do whatever you want. If that's all there is, is this life here and now. But if there's a life to come, if there's a resurrection, then we have something to live for.

Jesus says that our wealth isn't just here on this earth. He says that will all perish and pass away. But he says we can make deposits into that next life to come. We make deposits into heaven, by the way. We serve others here today.

And so as Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven, he's talking about it as if it's already here and yet it's still arriving. In other words, we look around us and we don't see what we would call the biblical picture of heaven. And I'll be honest, I'm not so sure that it's, that the heaven to come is the picture that most of us have in our minds. The Bible doesn't paint a complete picture of it and say, see, this is it. Now, we've sung plenty of songs that talk about streets of gold, about the pearly gates.

You know, we have all the cartoons. Somehow Peter's the gatekeeper for heaven. I don't know where we got that idea, I guess Jesus subbed that out to one of his main disciples as if Peter got everything right. You know, like, his. His mouth was shaped like a foot.

He stuck his foot in his mouth all the time with all the stuff that he said and all the stuff that he did. I don't know if Jesus puts that guy in charge of the pearly gates. You know, I'm not sure. In fact, I think he actually talks in revelation about there being a dozen different gates. So I don't know why we think there's only one.

But anyway, getting beyond all that, my point is saying that the picture we have of heaven in our minds probably isn't what it will honestly look like. So when Jesus is painting a picture of this kingdom of God on earth, I think it's important for us to read those gospels with our particular lenses on, looking for those sayings, and then reading it together and saying, okay, God, what does that kingdom look like here on this earth? And so what we've been looking at with the Beatitudes is looking at that and saying, okay, each one of these beatitudes are, blessed are those who fill in the blank on each of these. Blessed are you, when each of those sayings is one ladder rung to get us to be able to see into the kingdom of God. And so Jesus starts out, as we had looked at it, just a very quick recap.

He had started out saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. See, he starts out with this kingdom of heaven idea, and he says, those who are poor in spirit. And we talked about being poor in spirit as, like, when you're so poor that you don't even have money for food and you have that hunger that's been building up for a couple days, and, like, you've eaten all the ramen noodles with ketchup you can find and call it spaghetti, you know, like, that's all gone, and now it's just saltines and ketchup. Like the movie the terminal of Tom Hanks, where he's stuck in the airport terminal, you know, and he was just putting ketchup and mustard on saltines crackers, because that's the only thing that was available to him. If you've never seen it, that's literally the whole movie.

You know? Like, he travels out of his country, and then his country has this big, like, civil war, and the government falls. So now his passport doesn't count for anything. And so he's a man without a country, stuck in this terminal in the United States until his country settles out. So, you know, that's pretty much it.

That's the whole movie. But, yeah, like the ketchup and mustard, saltine crackers, you know, that was his meal, and he wasn't allowed to go anywhere else in the airport. So that was, you know, once when you're that poor, though, that you've, you know, your ramen's gone and you're down to saltines and ketchup, you know you're hungry, you know, you're poor. Similarly, when we talk about being poor in spirit, when you're that spiritually needy, that you're like, God, I'm just looking for a crumb from you. Like, I'm opening the scriptures, and I'm like, okay, God, show me something in here.

And you flip to it, and then you find, like, you find the book of Jeremiah, and they're throwing the guy down in a pit in a cistern, and he's sinking in the mud with no food or water, and you're thinking, great. How am I supposed to learn from that? God, I need something. Yeah. By the way, that's in here.

It's great times. So, you know, it's like, God, I need something that's spiritually poor. When you recognize that you're at the end of your rope and that there's no hope that you have in this life except for what God alone can give you, that's when you are poor in spirit. And so then blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted, especially in times of the death of a loved one or in times where we look at the condition of the world around us and we mourn the conditions of it and say, God, we need you. He says, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Meekness is something we discussed quite at length that's found both in. In a gentleness of spirit and in a. In a calmness and a kindness. But it also, if we look at the life of Jesus Christ, he lived out a life of meekness, but also was able to really throw down when needed.

When there were people that were mistreating and abusing worshippers, he kicked them out of the temple, flipping over their tables, whipping the animals for their that were there. They were selling to people for the SacrificeS, but charging them exorbitant rates. And all these things. He's like, get these out of here. He really took people to task over things like that.

He called people a brood of vipers sons of Satan. All these things. He was able to step out of what we might have thought was Meekness. And yet he also says things like when you're mistreated or abused, when somebody forces you to carry their burden for a mile, which is what a Roman soldier could conscript a Jewish citizen to do. He says, if somebody forces you to carry their burden for a mile, go ahead and carry it 2 miles.

And we think, well, that's just like being a doormat, isn't it, Jesus? And he says, you know, really what he's saying is you're actually carrying it more than they're legally allowed to force you to do it. And so they're gonna think twice the next time because you might actually get them into trouble by carrying it, because it looks like they're forcing you to carry it 2 miles when they're only allowed to force you to carry it 1 mile. And so now you've put them in a place where they might get in trouble over, apparently forcing you to carry their burden for 2 miles. Jesus isn't saying to get walked all over.

He's saying you can stand up for yourself in a peaceful way that looks like subservience, but is really standing up for yourself and showing them the inhumanity and the injustice of what they're doing to you. And so Jesus shows us an example of what meekness looks like. That's not being walked all over, but it still comes from a position of gentleness and humbleness of heart. He says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. In other words, when you're looking for the righteousness of God in your life, which includes seeing his sense of justice in this world, then when you're hungry and thirsting after that, in other words, when the bread and butter of your day is seeing the presence of God or the justice of God and the righteousness of God at work in this world, he says, you'll be filled up.

You'll be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. You know, we don't like to be merciful. We don't like to show mercy to others when we have the right to exact some kind of justice out of them or some type of repayment out of them. But he says, when you're merciful to others, you will be shown mercy.

Then he says, blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. As we talk about this as different rungs on a ladder, we recognize that being, having your heart purified through this process that when your heart is purified is when you actually begin to truly see God. This is what I talked about with the man job, where he went through all this, and at the end, his conclusion was God. I'd heard of you, but now I see. You see, what we're talking about is climbing up into this, seeing the kingdom of God and seeing God himself.

Then he said, blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Peacemakers are in short supply these days. People don't want to make peace. They don't want to make peace with other nations. They don't want to make peace among people of warring political parties.

Sometimes they don't even want to make peace in their own households. Jesus doesn't just say, blessed are those who live peaceably or live in peace towards one another, but those who are actually peacemakers, those who live their lives in such an example that they help to bring peace among others. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. So today we get to the last rung on this ladder. We get to this one.

And I want to tell you that we've talked a lot about off ramps. I think of the game chutes and ladders. If you ever played that. I played it as a kid and I played it with my kidde. And, you know, the thing is, there's these ladders.

You can get to kind of skip over parts of the game board, but then you also, if you land on a certain space, there's a chute or a slide, and it slides you back down a little ways. And there's these times as we're going through this beatitudes lifestyle, this beatitudes ladder, this ladder of it's not just being blessed, but it's living the good life, is what Jesus talks about. There's all these. These off ramps or these chutes on it, these slides that are in it. They're not built into it, and God didn't put them there.

But it's things that somewhere in our heart, we say, I don't like that one. I can't go beyond that one. And the moment you try to skip a ladder rung and say, you know, I'm good with hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I'm good with pure in heart, but I don't want to be merciful. Well, you can't really be pure in heart if you haven't learned how to show mercy, like God has shown you mercy.

And so we can't skip a ladder rung. And so, so many times we end up kind of sliding down off of it and starting over or just saying, I can't do this. A lot of times, I believe part of our issue is that we don't think that God actually has what it takes to make me righteous. We think that God doesn't have. I'm not saying you guys don't think God can make me righteous.

I'm saying you think that about yourself. You might think that about me, too. Thank you. Try to throw in a little humor just to make sure everyone's awake. Okay.

So would you believe it if I said all that was just the preamble? Okay. I'm just kidding. It was. But we're gonna blast through this last part real quick because it's pretty simple.

Jesus says these words, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. Remember, we started with the first one. The kingdom of heaven belongs to them. And now we end with this one. I think at this point, once you work through all these ladder rungs, you find yourself just with another ladder, and it's like it starts all over again with the same thing.

Because you realize at that point that you really need God. And so you start back over. I'm poor in spirit. I'm mourning now even more so, because I've seen all this stuff, and I've seen a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven, and now I see the world and how much I see the kingdom of heaven around me. But I see people living outside of it when it's in their midst.

It's right there. And yet they can't see it because they haven't lived this blessed life. So Jesus says, blessed are you who are persecuted because of your righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to you. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil things about you on account of me. Rejoice and be glad, because your reward is great in heaven, for they persecuted the prophets before you in the same way.

I want to say a prayer for you guys real quick. Lord, this is a hard one for us today. This one. We don't want to think about persecution. We don't want to think about bad things that may come or times where people might want to harm us because of our faith.

And yet, Lord, you said we're blessed. You said we're living the good life. When that happens, Lord, help us to see that. Give me the words to help explain that. Help us to understand how this can be part of this good life that you have blessed.

And, Lord, more than anything else, we need you. We want to see you, and we want to see your kingdom come. In Jesus name, we ask. Amen. See, there was this time after Jesus had ascended into heaven, he had told his disciples these things.

He had sent them on a mission to go out into all the world. And as they were going to make disciples, a disciple is simply a follow or a learner, somebody that's learning how to live this lifestyle. So Jesus says, as you're going, wherever you go, whether that's in Jerusalem, where they were at at that time, or the surrounding region of Judea, or that kind of half foreign area of Samaria, where they really didn't like those people and they didn't. It was kind of reciprocal, you know, or whether it's just the entire world, wherever you go, when you go there, make disciples. Now, somebody recently told me there's no such word as discipleship.

We use that in churches. We say, oh, we have a discipleship program. The Bible doesn't have that word. It just says, make disciples. There's no such thing as a discipleship program.

It's literally a way of life. Go and make disciples. So in your conversations, in your comings and goings with other people, of course it was easier for them in a lot of ways because they walked everywhere, and they would usually walk in caravans or groups together. And so you could have this conversation literally on the road as you're going from one town to the next or one thing to the next. And it made that part of discipling people a lot easier.

Today, we don't even like to share a car together, you know? Now, I know some of you ladies went to lunch yesterday and met here and carpooled there, but, you know, I'm kind of at this point. I think you hit that in your forties. I've learned where you're just kind of like, not only do I not want to go, but I also don't want to ride with you, no matter what it is. I've got my own car and my own gas, and you might want to leave early or stay later than I want, you know, like, I go to bed earlier and earlier, and I might not want to stay as long as you want to.

You know, some of you guys that are in your thirties are party animals, you know, to us. And it's like, no, 09:00 p.m. i want to be, like, brushing my teeth by then. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm done at that.

At 09:00 p.m. some of you are thinking, like, how do you stay up so late? You know? Some of you don't even sleep anymore because you're like, no, it hurts too much to lay down for more than 3 hours, you know? So, anyway, yeah, okay.

I hear the laughter. I'll take that as, like, that's the majority. I'll pray for you. Pray for me. I'm probably gonna get there sooner than I know, so.

Yeah, but, you know, it's like, you know, we don't have the opportunity or the methodology to make disciples in the ways that Jesus did or that the apostles did in the time of Jesus. We live our lives quite differently. So, to me, that's this nagging question that I'm constantly asking others and myself and just saying, God, how do we do that today? Like, what does that look like when we all work somewhere or live somewhere and they're scattered around? It's not like we're all huddled in the same little part of a village or a community.

We're kind of spread out, and yet we can call each other, we can text each other, we can drive to each other's homes. And yet how often do we actually do that? Not just to sit down and say, oh, let's have another bible study, but how often do we sit down and say, you know what? There's this election coming up, and there's more than just, you know, a president that we're looking at. Although I sent out a thing last week.

I don't know how many of you did it. I spoke with Elise Elaine. You know, she said she had kind of gone through it. But there's a website called eyesidewith.com, and it's a really neat thing that you can go in and take this little quiz or kind of extensive quiz and answer a few questions about what you believe about different positions, and it will show you in what percentages you align with different candidates specifically for president. And I believe there's maybe a few other things, depending on what the race is, that you can see where you align with different candidates and different races.

But I'll tell you, there's more than just that that's coming up. I mean, there's different things that are coming up, both on the local level, like county commissioners and. And different elected officials, judges, and things like that. And that plays into our daily lives a lot more than we recognize. I mean, sometimes what a judge might do in sentencing people or in not sentencing people has an effect on the way that we live our daily lives, and it's worth digging into those things.

I guess that's also something that gets important to you in your forties, is you look around and you say, wait a minute, I'm partially complicit in the condition of how things are going right now because I haven't dug into these things. I just kind of, like, if I don't know them, I either leave it blank or I just randomly fill one out that I think other people weren't voting for because their name's weird. So I just vote for that one, you know, and think maybe, you know, maybe this one, they're not getting any votes, so I'll help them be a little more popular. I mean, like, what's a county clerk, you know, civic, whatever, you know, that's how I would look at these things. Now I've learned a little bit more.

And I look at some of these things and I think, you know, if you don't like the way the roads are or how many neighborhoods, they keep popping up everywhere in Pasco county, look at your county commissioners. They directly have an impact on that. If you don't like the way things are going in your city, look at who your city council people are, things of that nature. And so I look at those things. There's more than just that.

There's amendments that happen on your state constitutions and things like that. We've got one coming up that's considering abortion and things like that and is very trickily worded. It's confusing. And so it's like, that's amendment number four. You need to look at that and understand what you're voting for when you vote on these things.

So when you think, yeah, they're just, they're going to pick a president no matter what I choose, probably, yeah, most of the time that happens. Most of the time is kind of already pre selected in some way. I mean, there might be some margin of error, but there are some people that have a lot more say so than me, and I'm not getting too far into that. But a lot of people say I don't vote because I don't think my voice matters. It might not matter on that part of the ticket.

Still vote, still do whatever God has put on your heart and conscience to do. But there's so many other things on that ballot, and you need to vote for those things. Like right now, we're in a primary season for, specifically for county commissioners and circuit court judges, and I encourage you to look into that. Early elections going on right now, whatever your precinct might be, you can go vote there. And, of course, later on, we'll have the big elections in this fall.

But Jesus, he talked about. He wasn't talking about our politics and our vote. He was talking about things like persecution and the way that we live as christians, not the way we vote, not the things we say, not the t shirts that we bought from some christian shop that have some saying on them or something like that. But how is it that we actually live as followers of Jesus? Do we live as a follower of Jesus in such a way?

In other words, has the words of Jesus, has the teachings of Jesus settled into the way we live our lives in such a way that we are identified with Christ? In other words, that people see Christ in us? In other words, Jesus, he had these followers, and he had told them, like I said earlier, he had told them to go and make disciples wherever they went. They were doing this so well. They were preaching about Jesus and living the gospel out in the way they carried their daily lives so well that people started hurting them, persecuting them, locking them up in jail, flogging them.

There's a story in acts where it's chapter five, verses 17 through 42, specifically where Jesus, he or not Jesus, the disciples, they're teaching about Jesus so much that they get locked up, but an angel of God opens the jail cells, leads them out, closes the door behind them, which is hilarious because it's like, didn't just leave the door swinging open for them to get looked for, but they wake up in the morning, and they're like, hey, go get those prisoners. And they're like, they're not there, but the door is locked. I don't know what happened. And so they find them, and somebody else comes in. They're like, hey, those guys you locked up, they're over in the temple courts teaching about this guy Jesus again.

So they summoned them, and they're like, okay, guys, seriously. We said, don't do it. And they're like, well, we told you, seriously, we're gonna. You know. And persecution doesn't mean that we just say, okay, well, if bad times are coming, I've got to run away.

I've got to go hide. I got to go somewhere else. It means you continue to boldly proclaim the name of Christ and the gospel message, and not with fear or worry about what may come. However, this word persecution is interesting to me because is not just somebody being locked up or mocked, but it actually involves chasing after someone earnestly or following, pursuing them, hunting them down. In other words, there was a time shortly after this had happened in the book of acts where some of the christian believers were scattered out of the city of Jerusalem.

And they went to all these other cities. And then guys like Saul, who later becomes the apostle Paul, they tracked them down, they hunted them down from city to city, wherever they had settled in, and they went to go lock them up or imprison them or even torture and perhaps kill them for their faith and for their witness of Christ. Folks, I told you that there's these off ramps in our lives so many times where we're tempted to slide off of this beatitudes ladder. And part of me fears that this is it. But part of me also knows that if there's not something that our lives are called to that's higher than what this world lives for, this faith is almost pointless or worthless.

In fact, there's a lot of people, we wonder so many times the muslim faith, that a lot of immigrants moved to this country to kind of live out their muslim faith. But they've called a lot of Americans that didn't have a background in islam to join them, some of them actually joining them in their efforts. And as such, we wonder, why is that? Why is it that people would leave perhaps a suburban or an upper middle class lifestyle with all these good things and then join this and maybe even become a martyr for this faith they've adopted? Honestly, I think part of it is because they've called them to something that they are saying is worth giving their life to.

And a lot of times in Christian America, we have lost that. We've said, you join this faith, you accept Christ as your savior, and you'll get to heaven, you'll have good blessings on this earth, things will go well with you. They turn on the tv, they see some of these preachers, and they look like they've got really expensive suits and they got, you know, maybe a nice car that they hop into at the back entrance to their big church. And people think, I want in on that life. And then here's the islamic faith saying, you die for this cause, you'll have a reward later, but you die for this cause because it's worth dying for.

You see, they're willing to do that. That's something that they respond to. No, I'm not saying we should go out and say, hey, we got a cause for you to die for. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am trying to convey is that Jesus says, when you're living out this christian life so well that people start to mock you for being a Christian, not mock you for doing it wrong, not mock you for saying you're a Christian, but you're actually just a hypocrite.

Not mock you because you came to church and you adopted this Persona in church. But then when we see you out in the world, you're living a hedonistic lifestyle, a heathen lifestyle. I don't mean mocking you like that. I mean, like in acts chapter twelve, there's this town called Antioch. Wherever there were some believers that were there, and something unique happened in this town, at least at that time, it was unique.

There were jewish people who became Christians. That was actually the norm. In fact, they weren't called Christians yet. They were called followers of the way. And yet here's what was unique about them.

In this town of Antioch was there was also non jewish people who became believers in Christ, gentile, faithful followers of Christ. And so now you've got Jews and Gentiles meeting together in church, having services together, worshiping the same savior, the same jewish messiah. And the people around them saw this and said, wait a second. There's something different there. They're not just one homogeneous group.

This is quite the blend of people, and yet they're working together, they're getting along, and they're worshiping the same savior, Jesus Christ. Something's different there. And so as they look at that, they start mocking them and saying, these are Christians, which simply meant little Christs, like little Jesuses. And that was how the name first came about, was as a mockery of them. But it's because they lived their lives, so they imitated or lived out the life of Christ so well that they became identified, literally with him.

I wonder how many of us are so closely identified with our lord and savior that people would confuse us with him on account of how we live our lives. I mean, that term Christian can be used as an insult against you, or it can be used in a mocking way, but in a genuine way that says, you're just like Jesus, aren't you, you Jesus freak, you holy roller. If that can truly be applied to you, I mean, in a real and genuine way, then you're living out this christian life that's actually worthy of being persecuted. I pray that you're not hurt for your faith, but if you're somehow at least truly insulted, not because you put on your social media profile that you're a Christian, and somebody says, I don't like that, or not because you said, well, I'm voting for this candidate, and somebody says, I don't like that. And they mock you for it and say, you're weird or something like that.

But if people actually say, man, you're living a lot like that guy Jesus, and say, thank you, I'm glad that I am finally getting there. I want to read a scripture to you real quick. Well, actually, it'll take a couple minutes. And I know we're about at that time, but this is important, and I want to get to it. It's in Hebrews chapter eleven and twelve.

Starting in 1132. This chapter in Hebrews is what's known as the faith hall of Fame, or something like that. And it's been, it covers quite a few people in the the jewish history that were just great people of God. The writer of Hebrews talked about their faith, but then he says, in Hebrews 1132, what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah of David and Samuel and the prophets.

Through faith, they conquered kingdoms, administered justice, gained what was promised, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fires, escaped the edge of the sword, gained strength and weakness, became mighty in battle. And put foreign armies to flight. And women received back their loved ones raised from the dead. But others were tortured, not accepting release to obtain resurrection to a better life. And others experienced mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment.

They were stoned, sawed apart, murdered with swords. They went about in sheepskins and goat skins. They were destitute, afflicted, and ill treated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and in openings in the earth.

And these all were commended for their faith. Yet they did not receive what was promised. For God had provided something better for us so that they would be made perfect together with us. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely and run with endurance. The race set out for us, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

For the joy that was set out for him. He endured the cross, disregarding its shame. And has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Think of him who endured such opposition against himself by sinners. So that you may not grow weary in your souls and give up.

Because you have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed and your struggle against sin.

Jesus calls us to holiness.

It's not easy. I mean, Jesus said, be Holy, therefore, as I am holy, you can't do that. He can in you, though. See, you can't make yourself holy, but Jesus Christ can. And when we're living this Jesus Holiness, this holy life that Jesus gives us, it doesn't sit well with outsiders.

It doesn't sit well with people who aren't living according to that, because you don't have to say anything. And they feel convicted about the way they are living. You don't have to preach at them and tell them what they're doing wrong. They'll see it in your life. And they're either going to respond by wanting to say, I want what you've got.

And that's our prayer for them. That's what the power of the Holy Spirit does, is he goes before us and paves that way. And yet some of them will reject that. They'll lash out against you. They'll persecute you.

We're not at a point in our country or our society where at least right now, we're not being physically harmed or arrested for our faith. There have been some things that you might think are in that category, but it's nothing like what the people in the scriptures faced. Beatitudes. Life is hard. And the more I've studied it, the harder I think that it is.

The more I've gone through it in my studies and in my preaching, the more I reflect on the things that God's teaching me as I'm preaching it. And I realize I'm more convinced than ever that I'm still on that first rung. Maybe I'm on it all over again. I don't know, but I don't think I've graduated. I feel like I'm on that rung where I just say, lord, I need you.

I've got nothing on my own. Maybe I'm at the point of mourning over the conditions of my life in the world. Maybe the words of Isaiah, the prophet in Isaiah six, where he's viewing the throne room of God and he sees the holiness of God, and he says, woe is me. I mean, like, if I could translate, woe is like, I'm ruined. I'm done.

I'm in bad place, I'm in bad shape. I'm a man of unclean lips. I live amongst a people of unclean lips. I used to think that that was other people. Then God started showing me that it's me.

And then once I start seeing that, I start realizing that it's me, like every day, you know, like, oh, my goodness, do the things that I say reflect the things Christ would say or do. I need him to cleanse my lips? As he cleansed Isaiah's lips, the apostle Paul said that he was content to suffer for Christ. He was content no matter what happened, because he knew that if he suffered, that he was able to grow from that, and that he was able to continue ministering to the Christians that he had preached to. He was even content to die for them and for their faith, because he knew that if he died, he would see Jesus.

Jesus says in our last word in the beatitudes here. He says, blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you on account of me. Rejoice and be glad, because your reward is great in heaven, for they persecuted the prophets before you in the same way. So to wrap up both today and this series, I want us to understand what those prophets understood. All those people that had died for the word of God, that they spoke to the people of God, and they killed them for it.

They said, go for it. Take my life. See, you can kill this body. It can be destroyed. It could be destroyed right now.

That's easy. It's easy to kill someone. There's a whole lot of ways you can do it, too. I'm not suggesting you do that. Like, seriously don't have that in your Internet search history.

It's not a good plan. There's a lot of ways you can die. You can kill this body, but you can't kill me. See, there's that part of me that will be with Jesus as soon as it happens. And these prophets knew that.

They said, you can kill me. You can kill my body. You just can't kill me. Your reward awaits in heaven. But Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is approaching this earth right now.

And the way that we live today and the way that we go through the beatitudes gets us to see into that kingdom and to help usher the arrival of that kingdom fully in this earth that awaits you. Won't you live for that? The only way you can see Jesus is to make him the Lord and savior of your life.