2003-05-09
Good Morning Dear Ones,
In last week’s message, we began looking at the actual Sermon on the Mount to see what Christ tells us about who will live in the Kingdom of Heaven. I’m led to continue doing that today. MT 5: 3 identified those who know they are “poor in spirit,” for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them. I wrote about the issue of humility, because of its obvious importance in Christ’s words to us and in Paul’s. The “poor in spirit” are those who acknowledge their own helplessness and need to rely on God’s omnipotence (power). If we look at sinning mankind, mankind that has either rejected God or not yet had the chance to embrace faith in Him, we see people who are slaves to sin. That is because of they inherited sin from Adam and Eve, who acquired it by being deceived by the serpent (Satan) in the Garden of Eden [GN 3: 1-6]. To that inherited sin, these people add their own sins. Only FAITH + NOTHING = SALVATION. Nothing that we do can make a difference. Salvation is a gift of grace from God that comes to those who repent and have faith in Christ through Christ’s Atonement [His suffering and death on the cross]. If the question of where do good deeds come into the picture arises in our minds, we must understand that good deeds are a natural outgrowth of faith in Christ; but, they don’t bring us salvation. Only God’s grace in giving us faith and our willingness to turn from sin can do that. Once we realize our utter poverty of spirit without God, then we can see our need to rely completely on Him. Christ alone paid the ransom price to release us from the marketplace of slavery to sin. This was an essential part of God’s plan to bring as many of mankind back to Him as would listen and come to faith in Him.
MT 5: 4, “Blessed are those who mourn; God will comfort them!” This mourning is not due to losing one of our loved ones. This is mourning due to one’s fellowship with Him for the suffering that Christ had to go through. It is also mourning for the horrific moral condition of the world which has rejected faith in Christ. We need only look around us to see what is in the media to understand the ever-widening gap that exists between believers who are called to lives of holiness in 1 PET 1: 15 and those who think that God should be totally excluded from schools. When we see ads on TV, we see ads for body enhancing, sleek cars, and urging toward materialism. The shows promote excessive violence, foul language, and sex. Fewer and fewer programs promote healthy family life and reverence for God. And, TV is only one aspect of our ever morally deteriorating society. The second phrase, “God will comfort them!” doesn’t actually use the words “Kingdom of Heaven.” But, if we think about it, God would not be comforting people who are headed for the lake of fire. So, these people will inherit the Kingdom. This notion is furthered by REV 21: 4, “He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more grief or crying or pain. The old things have disappeared.”
We’ve already looked at MT 5: 5, so let’s go on to MT 5: 6, “Blessed are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires; God will satisfy them fully!” Those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires are those who live lives of righteousness. These people believe implicitly in the principle of PS 36: 9, “For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light.” They understand Christ’s words in JN 14: 6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by Me.” The darkness once in their lives is illuminated by God’s truths practiced. They have fit the descriptions already discussed here in the previous MT 5 citations. These are the people who have yielded up their own agendas in favor of God’s, and they have been given the gift, through the Holy Spirit, of God’s perspective on life issues. They hunger for God’s word, read it often, pray about it, and put it into to practice living lives of holiness. How did they become righteous? All they had to do was to repent and come to faith in Christ. Once that was done, they were justified. Christ empowered and authorized them to battle the forces of evil [EPH 1: 18-20; EPH 6: 12] to victory in Christ’s name. They endured in their faith! These people trust and obey God, even when it doesn’t totally make sense.
PS 107: 43, “Those who are wise will take all this to heart; they will see in our history the faithful love of the Lord.” God really does reveal Himself in our daily lives when we trust and obey Him. We must remember that we are in a covenant relationship with our Lord. We need never concern ourselves that He will break a promise or not live up to His covenants with us. Our real concern is how reliable a covenant partner we are to Him. The only way we can insure that we are keeping our end of this two-way covenant relationship is to know His will through daily time in the Scriptures and through prayer and then, to follow through with it in our decisions and actions. God is eager for us to do this, because He knows it is the only way His plan to bring us back to Him through Christ [COL 1: 19-20] will be fulfilled. We must meditate on this and see how our own lives conform to the life that Christ exemplified for us.
PRAYER: O Lord, each day that we live in faithfulness to You, You shower us with blessings. There are so many kinds of blessings beginning with our very faith itself. We strive to be both Your servants and Your friends. As such, we recognize our need for Your guidance and acknowledge the invitation You have given us to join You in the work of building faith in both ourselves and others. In addition, You have called us not to be ashamed, as Paul was not ashamed, of the Gospel and to bring it’s truths with accuracy to others who wait to hear it. RO 1: 16-17, “I have complete confidence in the Gospel; it is God’s power to save all who believe, first the Jews and also the Gentiles. For the Gospel reveal how God puts people right with Himself: it is through faith from the beginning to end. As the Scripture [HB 2: 4] says, ‘The person who is put right with God through faith shall live.’” Life with You in the Kingdom of Heaven is what we want more than anything else. You have told us to put our riches in heaven where rust and moth cannot destroy [MT 6: 19-21], and we pledge to do this. We recognize that without You, we are locked in the hopelessness of slavery to sin; we are utterly dependent upon You. We mourn for the moral deterioration of the unbelieving world around us and for the suffering that Christ had to do to make salvation possible for us. We know and trust that You will eventually comfort us. We recognize that we are sinners and that, in humility, we must confess our sins. Our understanding of Your will is that we should live our lives in humility and in love, just as Your Son did while He was incarnate and does now at Your right side “until You put His enemies as a footstool under His feet” [PS 110:1]. Dearest Abba, our greatest desire is to do what You require. This is true even when it is inconvenient for us, forces us to face areas where we are vulnerable, or takes us to places where we are not comfortable. There are times when we don’t fully understand the reason for a command You give us, but, like Abraham, who had faith that Your agendas are always righteous, we will obey them. You are an awesome, compassionate, loving, just, and righteous God. That is why we can say what we have in this prayer. We pledge You our adoration, loyalty, worship, glory, honor, diligence, trust, obedience, thanks, and utmost praise. In Christ’s name, amen.
In the next message, we will pick up at MT 5: 7, continuing our examination of who Christ says will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. As many times as we may have read the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord reveals more each time we revisit it. That is one of the supernatural attributes of God’s word; one can never stop learning more about God’s will from it. God reveals these things to us, as He knows we are ready to understand them. God is to be praised eternally for sending us the gift of the Holy Spirit to guide, encourage, and teach us. Even a message with as much violence and evil as we find in Revelation, turns out in the end to be a great message of consummation of prophecy and encouragement for all believers. God’s protection of those who believe and must endure the Tribulation is an example of this. For the rest of us, who I believe will not have to endure the Tribulation (since we will be gathered to Christ in that great “meeting in the air” discussed in 1 THESS 4: 13-17), we will see first-hand how our Lord keeps the promises He makes to us. The hunger believers experience to be in God’s word is a gift from God, just as our very faith is. Praise be to God for the great love He shows us every day of our lives! His perspective on our lives makes the battle we fight with Satan a victory in Christ’s name. We are truly a blessed people. Peter and I send each of you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn