Sep. 11, 2016 Afternoon Service Beatitudes Part 10 by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Personal Testimony of Conversion and Membership

It was a little over three years ago that I entered this place for the first time. I had just finished my freshman year, and I was interning here for the summer. I was 3 ,000 miles away from home, and during a great time of transition, I was able to be here full-time, and I'm excited to be able to apply to membership.

And as such, I'd like to share a little bit about how the Lord saved me and has been working in my life. For those of you who have saved, I pray that this will be an encouragement for you all. And for those of you who do not know Christ, this will be an opportunity for you to listen to the gospel in fresh ears and see if what it says is true.

So I was born to William and Regina Bailey in Atlanta, Georgia. And then one year later, my sister Marie was born, and four years later, my baby sister Evelyn was born. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with family, because both my mom and dad worked from home, and we were all homeschooled.

And so I spent a lot of time with them, particularly my siblings, and with my classmates, my running buddies, and best friends. And I greatly appreciate the environment, because it shielded me from any sins, that I could very easily see looking back on the throne of God in my life.

However, I was also ignorant of Christianity. But my dad was not saying that I was too ignorant or too much about the gospel, or what it meant to be a Christian. But if my mom did share a little bit with me, and I prayed a prayer of salvation when I was younger, I didn't have a conviction of what I was saying, just merely words coming out of my mouth.

And so I remained far from God. But when I was 12, I started playing basketball in an upwards basketball program. And I went to the church to lead a combined mass, teaching children how to play basketball, but teaching them that we need to be Christian.

And so during the award ceremony, we had something similar, different performances, and all the teaching of what it means to be Christian. And so there, I heard that God will indeed judge sin, and the proper judgment and the proper penalty for sin is returned to God.

What is sin? Well, sin is actually disobedience to God, disobedience to God's blessing on the body of the Son of Man. But nevertheless, having God's grace, even though we deserve death, He sent Christ into the earth, that Christ, being God, became man, was 100 man, 100 man, lived a perfect life, and then died upon the cross for our sins.

Then was raised again from the grave. And so if we turn from our sin and place our faith in Christ, we will indeed be saved. And so listening to this, I was convinced, because I knew I had done wrong, and I also knew I deserved hell, and I deserved heaven.

I was also convinced that last time that I had prayed with God, it was not something that I truly meant, and that His sincerity and honesty were necessary. And so it was then when I accepted Christ as my Lord and my Savior.

My father accepted Christ roughly around the same time, right? And we then started attending church a month after. And that was the church that I was baptized in, that I would grow up in, until I left for college.

And kind of one of the things that I value most about what I learned at that church is in teaching about what Christianity is, that it's not a religion or just a mere ethical system, but it's a living, breathing relationship with God.

And as such, it's important to cultivate that relationship just as we do with anyone else. That through prayer, we might be able to let our requests be made known to God, and let Him know what it is that's on our hearts.

That through reading up His words, we might see what it is that God desires, what does He value, what does He want for us, and what does He want for our lives. And then we can go out on our way. That as the pastor once said, it's hard to be close to God if you're a disobedient Christian, and thus personal holiness is key.

That through it, we may be able to grow closer to God, and let His light so shine upon us. And so in 2012, I graduated from Christian, and I made the 1 ,000 mile journey up the East Coast to Taino, and that journey just ended this past May when I graduated.

Now, Yale is definitely a precious time in itself. I'll kind of summarize it as having the opportunity to personally experience many of the truths that I learned when I was younger. I learned that I was a much greater sinner, that Christ is indeed a great Savior, that He would be faithful to me even though there were times when I was faithless, that He would stand with me even during times when I had to stand alone before Him, and that He would also be there with me even though I was miles away from family, completely unfamiliar with the environment, and awful.

Nevertheless, He would remain there and walk with me, and reach that broken heart. And so I would say one of the greatest lessons that I learned in high school was typified during freshman year. So freshman winter break, I would come back home, and I had learned that one of my great uncles was dead with cancer.

And so we went to the hospital, and we had a chance to visit him, and he passed away the day afterwards. So fast forwarding to the spring semester, I was taking the English course, and I had to write an article, a persuasive article, for the Indian class.

I decided to write on the nature of the afterlife, and kind of using reflections of the great uncle's death to springboard into talking about Christianity. And it was a good opportunity for myself to have dedicated class time to dive deeper into the Gospels.

What does it say? And it allowed me to realize that the Gospels are not just something that we get as Christians, and we move on to more mature things in the faith, but it's something that we must continually come back to and remind ourselves of.

And it's that message which fuels our love, and fuels our patience, and fuels our desire to be pleasing unto Him. And so, to kind of summarize the two main things that I've learned, of kind of looking at death, many of the things that we hold on to in this life, whether it be house, prestige, our jobs, our family, even certain sins that we might hold on to, all of that will be gone when death comes.

And then we will have to stand before God and give an answer to Him. And not only that, when we see ourselves not just as good people, but as rich in sinners and in need of righteousness, then we can see the true weightiness of the Gospel.

And when we see that the Lord sees all of our deeds, that He sees our lives, our bitterness, the times when we fight and tussle with one another, blaspheming others, using His name in vain, and He sees that.

But He also looks at our hearts, that He sees our pride, that He sees our bitterness, our lust, our malice, our lust, anger and desire to be rich. But that most of all, that we, like Satan, have said to ourselves, I want to be God-like in all of this.

I want to live as though I was the Sovereign, and I don't want to see that you're a human being. That we have put ourselves as if we were human beings. But nevertheless, Christ in His great love for us, was willing to die for us.

David and I live for the righteous. But not for the righteous, but for sinners. And so when we see that He was beaten for our lives, that He was pierced for our transgressions, that He was mocked and rejected, because we mocked and rejected God.

Then we see the great love of God, and it's that love that fuels us to obey Him. Because then we realize, this great Savior died for us, and thus I want to be pleased with Him. We also feel His own assurance, because we know it's on the basis of our righteousness, not literally Savior, but solely based upon love, not based upon faith.

And so that's why I say that, that E .L. taught me most, to more greatly appreciate my Savior, and to be more attentionable about following Him. I've grown to love Him more. Amen. And so, since I've graduated now, and moved back to the Bay Area, and so we're here full-time, and so it's a great delight to be able to apply to membership.

As mentioned earlier, I really appreciate the love and care that you all have, and the fact that you all allow God's truth to be manifested in your lives. I also appreciate the high standards in which you value God's Word, and particularly the right to interpret it.

I'm definitely looking forward to growing more in the ability to properly interpret God's Word. And then I move into membership. I see membership as a way to express my commitment to Christ, and my commitment to His Body.

And particularly through joining a local church. And so that's what I'm looking forward to, being able to walk with Him more, to continue to love Christ, to know Him more personally, and to let His light still shine.

Amen. And I want to conclude with a scripture, one of which is one of my most favorite scriptures, and it is Ezekiel 36, 22, and a little bit longer. And so it says, Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you profaned among the nations to which you came.

And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, the place of the Lord.

When through you I vindicate my holiness, in their, in their lives. I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be cleansed.

From all your uncleanness, and from all your idols, I will cleanse you. And I will give you a name, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I give to you, and you shall be my people, and I will be your Lord.

May the Lord bless you. Prophets 5.

The Authority and Aim of Christ’s Righteousness in the Sermon on the Mount

Verse 520 of course I read first, because in my estimation, this is the key to the entire Sermon on the Mount. The words of our Lord Jesus Christ,. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Mark well, that the issue at stake here is not just being righteous better than somebody else is righteous. The issue at stake is not just doing stuff. There's plenty of stuff to do. The issue at hand is heaven.

What is in play here, is eternal souls and destiny. Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never, in the most emphatic negation terms that Jesus had available in the language in which this was written, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Our text this morning, beginning in verse 43,. You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.

For he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good and sends his reign on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even tax collectors do the same?

And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. So ignore this to your peril.

When Jesus says, But I say to you, Mark well, that he cites no authority to support some novel approach. He doesn't come as an iconoclastic itinerant preacher who's come up with some new and exciting way of looking at things.

He's not a radical. But note this well. He stands on his own authority. It is he who is the arbiter. He will separate sheep from goats. One might even say it is his voice that thundered the demands of Sinai.

And now from another mount the law is given once again. Some people say that in the Sermon on the Mount, especially this portion of it, what he's doing is interpreting the law for us. Did he interpret the law?

For me, that sets his sermon too low. To say that God sent his only begotten Son to simply tell us in plain language what had been missed for so long. That he's just telling us here's what the law said and here's what you missed in it.

He speaks on his own authority. Something we'll deal with at the end of this series when we get to chapter 7 and verses 28 and 29 at the end of the sermon. That's where it says and when Jesus finished these sayings the crowds were astonished at his teaching for he was teaching them as one who had authority not as their scribes.

Now there's no room for any but God to define the righteousness that is fit for his kingdom. Emphasis on his. It is his kingdom. He defines who will come in. He defines. He sets the standards. And this is exactly what Jesus is doing.

Righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees here in these six antitheses described for us. Now Paul belabors for us in Galatians the purpose of the law. Why was the law given? Many reasons actually that he gives and it's a very big subject.

I just want to read Galatians 3, 21, 22 for you. I think it relates to the portion of the Sermon on the Mount that we're in right now. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not. For if a law had been given that could give life then righteousness would indeed be by the law.

But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. There seems to be here two ways to break free of this imprisonment that Paul is speaking of.

You can ignore it altogether and feel like you're free but you can ignore it. Many in our day do just that. They claim that it all came by oral tradition. It was only codified by the man Moses. The Ten Commandments are good words.

The sort of words that many societies and cultures and religions have had for many, many centuries. So they're really good but nothing special. They ignore it, not in its contents but in its divine origin.

That's one way of breaking free of what Paul says. Every man is held by this. You can break free though also by manipulating the Word of God to fit your purposes. This is more than just a disagreement on the place of the law in the church today, for example.

It's a wholesale renovation of what was revealed. And that is how the scribes taught. As part of that inferior righteousness they had where they went to the Law of God, they went to the Word of God and they did some gymnastics with it.

And it ended up fitting what they wanted it to fit. Jesus taught not like that. He taught with authority. Not the scribes whose scrupulous compliance was not to the law, not to its intent, not to its original plainest meaning, not to anything that might incite humility or imbue them with a dread at their constant missing of the mark, not to anything that would place the law as a tutor to drive men away from themselves and their self-made righteousness, but to the arms of the Savior, the arms of the Savior spread out on the cross.

Their compliance was nothing of that sort. But they drove men to easy-to-follow rules, man-made rules, made by men who searched the Scriptures to force them to say, well, yes, what you've determined is true.

Go in peace with hatred in your heart. Continue with the adultery in the heart. Continue taking false oaths because we can usually, if we try very, very hard, to force the Scripture to say whatever we look for it to say if we go in with the wrong beginning premise, which is the word to us that we can do with as we please rather than the word of God.

When I say easy-to-follow rules, I mean only that they required only the outer man's involvement. The gospel-ridden inner man has nothing to do with such legalism. We who've fallen victim to Jesus Christ cannot go along with something like that.

So what then was the law? This law that Jesus, but you have heard, but I say you have heard, you have heard. We have it at the end of this section of the Lord's Sermon. Before he moves to the specific practices that he demands of us, we have that last verse I read a moment ago.

Therefore you must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. That's the purpose of the law. That is the purpose of the law, to form man into the image of God. So we who believe in Jesus Christ might be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.

That's what it's for. And this verse, you must be perfect, it looks all the way back to the Beatitudes. This pronouncement of blessings upon those of a certain character, this godly character. To those whose works shed glory unto God, heavenly perfection sees the whole law as the necessary and proper demand upon us.

Well Jesus, in these six antithetical statements he's made, he takes us way beyond mere compliance with a rule. If the purpose of the law, and in my simple terms this morning, is to make us sensible of our sin, that's the purpose of the law.

If we're to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, if we're looking at God and we're comparing to us, well we have to come up short, don't we? Constantly, we have to come up short. If that's the purpose of the law, if this is correct, then it would seem like our case is very hopeless, wouldn't it?

Jesus says you must be perfect. You shall be perfect. He's not talking about in the Eschaton, he's talking about now. Everything in the Sermon on the Mount is about the here and now until we get to the end of it.

It's about our ethical, moral behavior in this life. And if it's to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, then we need to be driven to complete and utter despair. The example Jesus gives here comes from Leviticus 19 .18.

You have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Well in Leviticus 19 .18 it says you shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord. And from there they added to that such passages as Psalm 139, 21, and 22. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with a complete hatred.

I count them my enemies. Or Deuteronomy 37, let's add that to it where you have to love your neighbor as yourself. Let's remember the Lord your God will put all these curses on your foes and enemies who persecuted you.

We manipulate the Word of God. We add to it things that are out of context. We miss the point which is plain on the text. And we come up with a saying, a teaching. You can love your neighbor, oh good.

Gotta love my neighbor, that's what the Scripture says. But you get to hate your enemies. You go, I get to give vent to my anger or something like that. They mixed all these together. They throw them into the fire and out comes this calf.

A good rule to live by. A precept mixed and tinged by just enough Scripture presented with just the right combination of eloquence and confidence and mind-numbing sophistry to make it all seem plausible.

And praise Almighty God, they say, now I can hate my self-defined enemies. And this is exactly the righteousness that Jesus warns us. If it is yours, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. That's how serious it is.

Their mistaken definition of a neighbor was smashed when Jesus forced one of them to say that the Samaritan, the one who showed mercy, we all know that parable, he was the neighbor. He was the one who follows God's heart.

They're forcing themselves to read that one verse and determine that only a fellow countryman, a Jew, could be a neighbor, ignoring, for example, verses 9 and 10, which say that the gleanings of the harvest are to be left in Leviticus 19.

You shall love your neighbors yourself, and they say, my neighbor is only my countryman. But what does it mean when it says earlier than that, the gleanings of the harvest you must leave behind for the stranger and the sojourner.

Not your neighbor. For the Gentiles wandering through your land, they should find the gleanings available for themselves. So we have these few words, these few happy words, you shall love your neighbor.

This is for us, this is for the church. Think of how high this law is. Think of how high it is. In Mark 12, 28 to 34, Jesus is asked by a scribe, which commandment is the most important of all? Listen to Jesus' answer.

He says, the most important is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

That's number one out of some 639 laws, that's number one. And Jesus goes on, he says, the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Then he says, there is no other commandment greater than these.

Think of it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself, number two out of 639 laws. The scribes of Pharisees were manipulating a law that places second in order of import. James and Paul both write that this one, this is number two law, this one that's second in order, it fulfills the whole law.

I mean, this is heady stuff. It's one not to be manipulated, one not to be added to. Well, this is the end of the Lord's six examples of that righteousness that gains entrance to heaven. And I said that before, yeah, I just want to close with a few thoughts on the last verse there.

I don't want to give you a lot of examples of here's how you love your neighbor and here's how you excise hatred for people out of your heart. We could do that another time, maybe, not today. Some thoughts on what Jesus meant when he said, and these words ought to get us, give us a jolt, really.

You must therefore be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. We should stop dead in our tracks with those. Remember verse 520, the righteousness here demanded by Christ, if on that great day when we see him, if we are found with that sort of righteousness, that righteousness that we hope will satisfy God because of the quality and the quantity of our efforts, then for that one, heaven is shut.

He says you must be perfect. Say perfect, most of us would admit to having improved if we could progress just to being pretty good most of the time or some of the time or maybe a few times or on occasion or two sprinkled here and there in our journey.

So perfect. If Jesus' authority is what it seems to be here, then we're doomed, if that's the way to satisfy verse 520. So let's think about this for a moment. How are we to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect?

What Jesus says here, and I want to set you at ease with this. I don't want to lower the standards of how we live our lives. I just want the terror that we must be like God, which would be almost blasphemous, to be taken away here.

Because what Jesus says here, is by way of comparison. As, meaning in the same manner. As, by analogy being perfect in the way that he is perfect. It's a comparative word, it's not an equality. Understand that.

As, meaning in the same sorts of ways, in the same types of behaviors, following the ethos that God reveals to us here. It's not an equality. It's a comparison. So how do we do this? Just use the Lord's examples.

We'll go through them quickly. Verse 44, I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. I won't bring in Jesus' prayer for forgiveness for the nail drivers, nor Stephen's prayer for forgiveness for those who are hurling the stones at him.

Just take it at its plainest meaning, meaning love and prayer for those who are against you, for those who don't know you or you them, but they insist on contending against your faith. Pray for them. Love your enemies as God loved you, while you were yet his foe.

Verse 45 says, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. See, a son does the works of his father. Jesus did all his earthly life, the works of his father. In John 8, 39 -44, the Pharisees did the works of their father who was the devil, which is to oppose Jesus as the Christ.

See, loving and praying for our enemies and persecutors is a work that shows whose sons and daughters we truly are. What does it mean to be sons of our father? Well, how did he treat his enemies? How does he treat his enemies?

Jesus goes on. He makes his son rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. God sustains those who are against him, rebels, enemies, haters. Now, we can't do this. We cannot sustain them in that way, but as we saw, being as our heavenly father is perfect is comparative, not unequality.

If God is doing good for them and if we are to be perfect in the manner of his perfection, which Jesus is describing here for us, and if our analogical perfection is love and prayer and blessing, let us be diligent at it.

When you pray for those who persecute you, when you pray for those who you might otherwise hate, when you do good for your enemies by praying for them, you are being perfect as in the manner of, not in the quality, not in exact quality like God, nothing even close, but in the comparative way that Jesus means here.

When someone's against you, a neighbor, a coworker, anybody, and you're on your knees, you go to God for them, that is being perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. Jesus goes on, if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?

Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? What effort was that to show goodwill to someone who already loves you and you them?

A fair question to ask whenever the opportunity arises where we might bless an avid detractor, an enemy who despises religion, ask yourself, before you set your attitude towards them, ask yourself, how is God treating that one?

Is he there in your office? That means that God has granted him or her employment. God is sustaining them. Does she live in your neighborhood? God has ordained that she might have shelter like you or this.

What would be my state right now if God had treated me as I am about to treat this person? Treat your enemies as God treated his enemies, beginning with how he treated his enemy when you were his enemy.

Jesus calls for a different spirit to be in us than that of the scribes and the Pharisees in his day, the pundits and the leaders in our days. He calls for a God imitating perfection that at each step shows us to be his sons.

And that spirit is only possible with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit given to us who belong to him. Do you desire to be perfect? Do you desire to put away your sins? Do you desire to be able to pray for those who persecute you?

To bless your enemies? To treat your enemies the way God treats his enemies? Now, I didn't say we'll treat his enemies. We know judgment's coming. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, it's an awesome picture that Jesus paints, and we will get there.

We'll never be perfect in this world, but with the Holy Spirit, we have the promise of perfection in the world to come. But we can turn to Jesus. We can receive his Holy Spirit. We can have the strength to do these things with the right spirit, with the right heart, not just as a doing to gain us the righteousness, but a doing because God has imparted to us Christ's righteousness.

So when you turn to Jesus at every moment, even as I said this morning, we need to every moment remember these things. To turn to his Holy Spirit and say, Father, I want to fire back against this person.

I want vengeance against this one. We can go elsewhere in this sermon that we've been going through. Father, I want to give vent to the adultery in my heart. Father, I want to take a false oath because I want this person off my back.

If you know Christ, you have his spirit, we can stop that second. Say, Father, make me perfect as you are perfect. That's a fair prayer because it's not a prayer for equality. I need to say that again.

I'm not saying we're praying that we will become perfectly sanctified in this life. Father, give me a prayer that will meet with who and what you are for this one. That's what these six antitheticals are really about.

This righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. A righteousness available to you. Second Corinthians 5 .21. It says that God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

We all know what that means. This is what it means, though, to be perfect even as our Heavenly Father is perfect. In the same way, doing the same acts, trying to have the same demeanor and attitude for the people that Jesus brings up as all these examples here.

Amen. It's a good thought for us to have before we go to the table. Go to the table which, if it symbolizes anything, it symbolizes what God has done for we who were his enemies. We who, by nature, were children of wrath.

We who willingly thumbed our nose at him, blasphemed his name, derided his people. We all did this before we came to know Christ. Did we not? And yet, there's the cross. There's his broken body and the suffering he endured for an enemy, for you.

For some reason, I can't quote it right now. If somebody can do it, you can just call out right now. Scarcely for a righteous man would one die. Who's got that? I can't get my mind on it right now. Is anybody going to get that?

I see Bibles flipping. Call it out when you have that. I have to have that before us before we go to the table. Romans 5, thank you.

Nice and loud, please. Perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us, and yet, while we were still sinning, Christ died for us.

Amen, thank you. I apologize for not having that one right at the tip of my mind, but that's the one I meant. Isn't that what the table shows us? This is what God did for us while we were his enemies.

The broken body, his suffering on our behalf, not for the righteous, but for his enemies. The wine, the fruit of the vine, his blood, his life poured out for us. He died for us. We can't die efficaciously for anybody.

Not like Jesus did. We can pray. We will remember, though, as we come to this table, what he did for us. And therefore, in accordance with verses 543 to 48, how we then must treat others. Let's have these thoughts on our minds and on our hearts as we partake.