F4F | John Maxwell Mountain Climbing With Jesus

Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith here on YouTube. If you've ever sat through somebody, yeah, maybe a pastor, a preacher, or like a special guest speaker like John Maxwell, preaching from the message, paraphrase, and trying to explain to you what God says there in his word, yeah, go ahead and hit the subscribe button and don't forget to ring the bell.

Yeah, you can't learn sound doctrine and what the Bible really means from the message. You can't learn it from the Passion Translation either, but that's for another episode. Case in point, we're gonna be heading over to Christ Fellowship Church as we listen to John Maxwell deliver a sermon supposedly based on the Sermon on the Mount, and it's just boneheadedly bad is the best way I could put it, but I mean, of course, he always gets a pass because, you know, he's like an uber best-selling author, and he writes all kinds of books and stuff, you know, that are all about self-help and, you know, leadership and things like that, but a biblical exegete, he is not a teacher of sound doctrine.

He is not, and this is like case and point. So, let's get to it. Here's How to Have a Blessed Life by John Maxwell. Hope you are sitting down. Here we go.

The Beatitudes Describe Those Who Are Already Blessed

About 20 years ago, I spent an entire year just reading, studying, and just allowing the Sermon on the Mount to penetrate my heart. It was very... It took a whole year?

So, you set aside an entire year to studying the Sermon on the Mount, 20 years ago. Okay.

...changing, and I would like to talk to you a little bit today about just a little part, just a very small part of that great message of Christ, and I would like to talk to you about how to have a blessed life, how to live a blessed life.

We hear a lot of times, people, you know, they'll say blessings and, you know, bless you, and it's a wonderful phrase. I love for somebody to say, bless me, and, you know, every once in a while when you sneeze, somebody says, bless you, you know, and this is going to be a little deeper than a sneeze, okay?

But how many of you want to live a blessed life? Let me just, let's do a little survey here. Come on, folks. Let's get with it here, you know.

Do you think the Sermon on the Mount's about how to live a blessed life? It's not, by the way. Let me explain what the Sermon on the Mount, especially the opening portion, is all about, the Beatitudes.

The Beatitudes are a description of Christians. Yeah, people who are truly penitent believers in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. And so let's take a look at it using the English Standard Version, which is a perfectly good translation.

It's not the only good one out there, but it's a good modern translation, and one that is worthy of studying from. But Matthew 5, verse 1 says, Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain, and when He sat down, His disciples came to Him.

He opened His mouth, and He taught them, saying, Blessed are—note that you are already blessed, you are currently presently blessed—blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Poor in spirit, I like to, you know, if I were to paraphrase it, I would paraphrase it as those who are spiritually bankrupt, those who recognize they have nothing to offer to God in exchange for their salvation.

Their pockets are empty, and they have nothing. They are literally destitute in spirit. And theirs is the kingdom of heaven, not the spiritual, you know, superstars and superheroes. No, the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn, they shall be comforted. Mourning, by the way, here is—everybody mourns, pagan and Christian alike. This is the mourning that comes over sorrow for sin, having transgressed God's holy law.

Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth. Meek here has to do with the humbling of yourself before the Lord, humbling yourself in order to be forgiven, and crying out to God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

Just like the tax collector did in the parable of the Pharisee and tax collector in the Gospel of Luke. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, they shall receive mercy.

And Christians have received mercy, and we pray daily. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Blessed are the pure in heart. Pure in heart, you can only receive that from God, by the way.

Ezekiel talks about how God will remove our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, and that God is the one who purifies our hearts. They shall see God. And blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called the sons of God.

You think of 2 Corinthians 5, where it says that we Christians have been given the ministry of reconciliation, and that God Himself is making His appeal to the world through us to be reconciled to God in Christ, because God made Him, Jesus, to be sin, who knew no sin, so that we might be the righteousness of God.

And then blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So in reality, the Beatitudes are not some steps to follow in order to have a blessed life. No, Jesus is announcing those who are already blessed.

And if you are a penitent believer in Jesus Christ, destitute, calling out to God to forgive you, you're mourning over your sins and trusting in Him for the forgiveness of your sins, this is describing you.

You are in a state of blessedness. That's the idea behind the Beatitudes. But what John Maxwell's going to do here is embarrassing, is the best way I can put it. We continue.

John Maxwell's "Climbing Companions" Reading of the Sermon on the Mount

Well, what's so beautiful is Jesus teaches us how to live a blessed life, and we're going to talk about it today. We're going to talk about climbing with Him, being His climbing companions.

On 60 Minutes. What? Being Jesus's climbing companions? Do I need carabiners and stuff?

What are you talking about? They did an interview several years back now of where a man who had just climbed at Mount Everest with a party of people, and it was a very difficult climb. In fact, they lost a couple of members in that climb.

And so the 60 Minute interviewer was talking to and asking him, why do you go through such danger, such difficulty? Why do you risk your life to get to the top of the mountain? And the mountain climber just looked at the interviewer on 60 Minutes, and he just said, it's obvious to me you've never been on the top of the mountain.

And when you go to the top of the mountain and you climb, you become a climbing companion with Jesus. It begins to be...

Um, what? Just looking at this climbing companion with Jesus. Sermon on the Mount is not about being a climbing companion of Jesus. Where are you getting that? I know where he's getting it, by the way.

The message. We'll see that in a minute.

Really awesome. And there's a passage of Scripture that is just going to be foundational for us today. It's in Matthew chapter 5. It's on your screen. Jesus is just coming off the lake. And now he's seeing that his ministry is beginning to draw huge crowds.

So what did he do? At the lakeside, when he saw the large crowds, he climbed a hillside. And those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with.

Him. The committed climbed with him. Yeah. Let's take a look at that ESV again, which by the way, follows the Greek pretty well. Yeah, you'll note that the message is adding all kinds of stuff here. And what's he doing?

He's exegeting the message here, which is not a sound biblical text.

At all. It just makes up stuff, you know. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught, I love this phrase, his climbing companions.

I love this phrase, man. Climbing companions. It's not in the Greek. It's not in any of the modern translations. Yeah, nothing about climbing companions. I mean, just if you do a comparative study here.

So there's Matthew 5 from the ESV. Let's take a look at the NASB. And let me make that a little bit bigger. So he saw the multitudes, he went up on the mountains after he sat down, his disciples came to him and they opening his mouth, he began to teach them.

All right. Nothing about climbing companions mentioned there. That phrase that he just loves. And of course, he spent an entire year, 20 years ago, studying the Sermon on the Mount. And yet he doesn't seem to recognize this ain't there.

The NIV, the 1984 edition, doesn't mention anything about climbing companions. Now, when he saw the crowds, he went up on the mountainside, sat down, his disciples came to him, he began to teach them, saying, yep, no mention of climbing companions there.

So I think you see the problem here is that John Maxwell's making a big to-do about something that is unique to the message paraphrase, which no Christian heard or believed or taught until that catastrophe was published.

Now, here's what the message paraphrase says. I don't even own a copy of it. I have to go to biblegateway .com if I want to see it. It says, when Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside.

Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him, arriving at a quiet place. He sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said. You are blessed when you're at the end of your rope.

With less of you, there is more of God and his rule. Oh, this is terrible. You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the one who is most dear to you.

You know, with friends like this within the visible church, who needs the devil and demons and stuff, you know? You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink and the best meal you'll ever eat.

Yeah, you know, John Maxwell spent an entire year studying the, you know, the Sermon on the Mount here. And so now his favorite phrase is.

Jesus' climbing companions. And in my bible back on June the 8th, 1996,.

I wrote an aside. Was the message paraphrase published in 96? I don't remember when that thing came out, to be honest with you. I had to think about that. Was it out in, hmm. I thought.

It came out later than that, but what do I know? The bible, I want to be a climbing companion of Jesus. I want to take that climb. I want to, I want to, I want to go up that hill with him.

You can't. He already climbed it. We're not called to climb that hill with anybody. You know, we weren't there. That's a historical narrative that Matthew wrote.

Because it's obvious to me when you really see this scripture in context that there were a mass of people at the lake, but as he began to climb, the committed went with him. In other words,.

As you begin to study this in context from the message, I'm losing my mind here.

Sermon. Not everybody enjoyed what a few enjoyed. Those that were willing to take the energy, make the effort, take the time to climb the mountain. And so I'm going to share with you in this session five ways to live a blessed life.

Salvation Is a Gift, Not a Climb

Okay, number one. And what's so beautiful about these five things I'm going to share with you is that they're very reachable. Every one of you here on all the campuses, every one of you, you can reach these.

These are all achievable.

This is a confusion of law and gospel, by the way. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes is describing Christians, and they are already blessed. Note he's emphasizing, oh, Jesus is climbing companions, and oh, I want to be a climber with Jesus.

And so he thinks the Beatitudes are things you have to climb to in order to have a blessed life. Jesus didn't say you will be blessed if you do this. He says you are already blessed, you who mourn, you who hunger and thirst for righteousness, you who are spiritually poor.

You can scale this. You can get here. It's not above us. It's not beyond us. It's not too hard for us. In fact, look at your neighbor and say to them, even you can have this blessed life. Go ahead and tell them that.

Yeah, even you can have it. Number one, if you want to live this blessed life, number one, make an effort to spend time with Jesus. We've already seen that illustrated in the very beginning of this story as it unfolded to us, that it was the climbing companions that got to hear him.

Often you've heard me talk about, because I wrote a book called Intentional Living, and when I talk about intentional living, because I think it's absolutely the essence of a successful life, I do a visual, and the visual is very simple.

I just hold my arm up in the air like I am doing right now, and basically I tell people what I'm telling you. Everything worthwhile is uphill.

Yeah, that has nothing to do, and I mean absolutely nothing to do with the Sermon on the Mount. So note, he referenced his book, Intentional Living or whatever. By the way, I was googling, trying to figure out when the Message Paraphrase was published, and it was published in segments starting in 1993 and finished in 2002.

So clearly the time frame that he was talking about. I wrote this in my Bible. I want to be a climbing companion with Jesus. He was reading the Matthew edition of the Message Paraphrase before the whole thing was finished.

Thanks Eugene Peterson. But anyway, oh man, this is just awful. This is not a proper handling of the Sermon on the Mount at all, and boy, he likes to make himself look like he's such a smart fella. Look at the context of what's going on here on the Sermon on the Mount.

You can't do that from the Message. Everything. You have nothing worthwhile in your life that you did not have to climb to get it. Your dreams, they're all uphill. Your hopes,.

They're all uphill. No, they're not. No, not the eternal ones. And what I mean is this, is that salvation is a gift given by God. I didn't climb anything to get it. Jesus climbed Golgotha, bled and died on the cross for my sins so that I can be forgiven and receive salvation as a gift by grace through faith.

And the hope that I have of eternal life with Christ, new heavens, new earth, I didn't climb nothing for that either. Like, not even at all. All of that, that hope that I have is a gift given. I didn't aspire to it.

I sat there with empty pockets, nothing to offer God, and Christ gave it to me as a gift, and he only gives that as a gift. Anybody who tries to save themselves by their works, they are damned. Galatians 5 makes this very clear.

When Paul writes to the Judaizers, he says, you who would be justified, justified means to be declared righteous, you who would be justified by the law, you have been alienated from Christ and you have fallen from grace.

And so I'm actually quite repulsed by the message that John Maxwell is preaching here, because anything worth having, you have to climb a hill or you have to aspire to have it. No, my salvation and the hope of eternal life, I didn't aspire at all, didn't climb anything.

It was given to me as a gift by Christ.

The relationships that are the most dear to your heart, they're all uphill. If you've been successful, it's all uphill. No one ever wrote a book called Sliding to Success.

Since when is the Christian life about success? Jesus says to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him. Just saying.

You've never heard a successful person talk about accidental accomplishment. It's all uphill. And see, to get uphill, you've got to be intentional. No, nobody went uphill. Nobody's ever gone uphill by accident.

You've never seen a successful person interviewed and they said to him, how did you get to the top of the mountain? And you've never seen a successful person kind of look around and go, oh my.

Yeah, by the way, the latency is on their video, not mine.

I have no idea. I just woke up. Here I am. Oh, happy day.

Again, since when is Christianity about being successful?

No. If you get to the top, you do it on purpose. It takes energy. It takes effort. When I wrote the book, The 15 Laws of Growth, the first law...

When I wrote the book, when I wrote the book, notice he keeps plugging his books. Buy more of my books and you're going to learn how to be successful. And that's why he loves the phrase climbing companions because it's all about, well, this fits perfectly into the theology and the practice and the methods laid out in John Maxwell's books.

I did it purposely. The first law is the law of intentionality. And the law of intentionality just says growth doesn't just happen. If you grow, you do it on purpose. If you really want to have a blessed life, you do it on purpose.

And it's going to take energy. It's going to take effort. Several years ago, I had the privilege of being in Jordan and visiting Petra, one of the seven most scenic wonders of the world. And if you've been there, you know it's a hard day.

A lot of walking, quite a bit of climbing. And it happened to be when my left knee was very bad. And in fact, I was knowing I was going to have to have a replacement on it, but I wanted to see it. So I walked it and we had a late lunch that day, probably about two o 'clock in the afternoon.

And I was tired and this knee was just bothering me terribly. And our guide said,.

Did you enjoy it? Oh, it was incredible. Yeah. So notice he's regaling us now with his expedition to Petra in Jordan. Yeah. If you don't know what that is, it's at the tail end of the Indiana, Indiana Jones and the, you know, the last one, you know, with the, with the, uh, the Crusaders.

Yeah. And, you know, and the, and the Holy grail, you know, that one. Yeah.

It's at the very end sequence. So, yeah. And then he said, you know, there's one more thing most people don't see, but, and he pointed to a mountain. He said on top, that mountain is a library just carved out of stone.

That is incredible to see. And he said, most people don't, don't make the effort to go see it. I remember none of this.

Has anything to do like nothing at all to do with the sermon on the mountain and my family. And,.

And I said, I'm going to take the mountain and, and I didn't want to take the mountain, but I didn't want to miss it. And, and you know, you just don't go to Petra every day. Yeah. And so it took me a while and I made that climb and I got up there and I saw that site.

Then I got off that mountain took me two hours to get off the mountain. And then I went to my hotel and I started, started icing and soaking and praying and asking forgiveness and getting a knife to cut it off.

And, and, you know, and, and calling the surgeon immediately and saying, I'm ready. I'm ready. You know, I've uncle, uncle, you know what I'm saying? You see, the only way to, the only way to see that last library is to make the effort.

Right. Yeah. And this has nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with the sermon on the mountain. John Maxwell is a motivational speaker. He should not be preaching anywhere. I mean, maybe he'd be good for, you know, helping some corporate teams, you know, bond and take the corporate mountain or nonsense like that.

But the problem is, is that he twists God's Word to make it look like God's Word teaches these success principles, when in fact it doesn't teach any of them. And he is a false teacher as a result of it, because he's blaspheming.

He's taking God's Word and twisting it and manipulating it in such a way for his own gain, hence all the plugs for his books. I think you get the idea. Now, if you found this helpful, please share this video.

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Amen.