All Saint's Day

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0:00 For us too, I want to look at the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5. This is the gospel reading for all things day, which was closer to over 31st. But it's observed on the Sunday, of course it's under to it all things day. And the gospel reading that they give us is Matthew chapter 5 verses 1-12,

0:35 which is kind of beautiful. So we'll read it and then think about it. But before we read it here, let me pray and then we'll set some context. Here, Lord, thanks for the chance to be your church that's marked with pulling us together, all in this year, for the way that you have made a church for a heaven, or that you have given this group of people all that you need to be church.

1:07 Thank you for your faithfulness towards us and your commitment to meet us this morning. They meet with us now, good Lord. And fire us, convict us, love us, and encourage us. It's only you can, in Jesus' name, you pray. Matthew records this Sermon on the Mount. Luke has a similar set of teachings, but in a different context, it's worth reminding you that the gospel writers take stories,

1:41 some written records, some firsthand accounts, some like in Matthew's case remembered from his own experience, and they assemble them. The biographies of the first century are less worried about chronology and more worried about communicating things with it through about the person they're writing about. So they take true stories and put them in order to communicate an idea. And part of Matthew's big idea is to show his readers that Jesus is Israel reduced to one,

2:14 that Jesus completes that first covenant on, so that second covenant on Sinai, where he says, you'll be from the original priest in the holy nation, if you allow me to be your God, then you will be from the original priest in the holy nation. And Matthew wants to communicate that Jesus fulfills all of the expectations of Israel, most fully, and then on the other side of the resurrection opens it up broadly into a new covenant. And so when he gives this session right here in Matthew chapter 5,

2:49 like if you look on my copy, oh, thank you for passing these prayers around, don't hesitate if you have a prayer that you can all be praying for together to come down to the book for us. And it's not even. In my paper copy, the picture is right on the other side of the page. I can see the flights of Egypt. You know, Matthew is the only one that describes that Jesus goes down into Egypt to escape parallel. Just as Israel goes down into Egypt to escape parallel.

3:19 And he comes up to the Jordan River, crosses through the river, and into the desert for a period of trial and temptation. Just as Israel crossed through the river into the desert for a period of trial and temptation. And then he comes out from the river and to a sermon on the Mount to a second getting of the law. Just as when they go into the desert, then they go to Sinai for a first giving of the law. All of these places Matthew and tried to stone that Jesus does what Israel couldn't.

3:50 But Jesus is fully the city on the hill now. That Jesus is the emblem and example. In here, by the way, in this case, by the way, is how you come a side step like a sense of Christian Matthew. That Jesus said he came to set up a kingdom that is now in this world. We used to have kingdom of this world of part Israel. And this fulfills the covenant Israel, releases a new covenant onto the world that is of a new world.

4:24 So, Stravon now eats its key critical second giving of the law, Matthew chapter 5. Seeing in the crowds, he went up on the mountain and when he sat down, he was the cycle of sin. And he opened his mouth and taught them sin. I love the way it sprays there. He opened his mouth and taught them. These words, I've told you before that I tried to measure and use it in college.

4:55 But what I really like to use is that in order to measure and use it in theory, you have to have a performance instrument. And I was not a U.S. performance piano person. I had the full confidence to ask to go in and out to. On this and as a piano performance with my little hymns that I would play, let's say he was looking for memorized sonata.

5:25 When I set the music up on the piano, he said, oh, you have the music. I was like, yeah, hmm, he said. I find people that can't memorize pieces, it doesn't really come from the heart. I have it memorized. But I remember he told me that in one of those music series boxes that I took, the professor was so amazed at the music that happened over all of the generations from the same set of notes.

5:57 That people just kept rearranging the same notes and coming up with these master pieces. And I love the idea that Jesus sat that on the mound and had a finite set of ideas. And he opened his mouth and out came the beat of the beat of the music. This assemblage of learning that has inspired and motivated and enlivened and released the creative spirit of God upon people from one generation to the next, that he thought of those words.

6:27 That the word blessed and poor and spirit all existed kind of in the ether and Jesus landed together and empowered them with the spirit of God that he opened his mouth and said this at one point. And it hangs there still because you can put it together. I love that. I freedom. I mean, open his mouth and taught them things. Blessed are the poor and spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

7:01 Blessed are the meat for they sell in the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful for they shall be mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven and blessed all humans. Blessed are you, when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you, fall free on my account, rejoice and be glad.

7:41 For great is the reward in heaven. So they persecuted the prophets who were before you. That's a cool little setup of words. I love it. Well, I think because they have out this and in the past you have, you know, we could separate each of the attitudes and spend 30 minutes on each of them and still not be done with one of them. But a couple of notes about them taking them as a group.

8:15 The first thing to thinking about the Beatitudes is to realize that all the Beatitudes describe a single person. This is not eight or nine different people. It's not like blessed are you if you happen to be one of those people whose personality aligns with becoming a peacemaker. Not some blessed are you if you are someone who happens to have periods of mourning in your life. Blessed are you. It's not blessed are you. You happen to be someone who is new.

8:50 Jesus is describing for us what these people look like. The ones for whom there is a great reward in heaven. The followers of Jesus look like these words. You know, in the original giving like the kids caught on that original 10 commandments is always in the Hebrew called the 10 words. Really interesting.

9:20 If you look at the super script in your text, you go back to Exodus and see where they're given even in Deuteronomy. The headings the publisher puts on that stuff in my state 10 commandments. But if you look at the way they're referred to in the body of the text in your original Hebrew, they're always called the 10 words, the 10 deviline. And they have a way of making commandments when you look at the original giving of them. They have a way of making commandments that they don't use when they say you will not kill.

9:51 Or you will not steal or you will not cover. It doesn't say do not kill, do not steal, do not cover. It says you won't. When you look at the way that God spoke at Sinai in the first time, it looks almost like he's saying, hey, you are my people. I brought you on Eagle's wings out of the questions of Egypt to Sinai. You are my people.

10:21 Now, when you live in my people, this is what your life will look like. We've 10 words. And so Jesus emerged from the desert walking up to the mountains and his disciples gathered before him and the crowds beyond them. It says this is what people look like. Blessed are the ones who are poor and still, who are meat and peacemakers, who mourn and hunger and thirst for righteousness.

10:56 I said, are these ones. I said, are you when you are persecuted and you're a vile, a boy, a people? So the first thing to think about is that all these Beatitudes are your idealized version. You use Beatitudes are you.

11:26 For in spirit, mourning, meat, hunger and thirst for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart. That was hard to decipher. Back when we look at it in depth, it talks about like the pure in heart being a solidarity or a singularity. I mean, not solidarity, a singularity of worship. It has one thing that you worship and adore. When you are pure in heart, God is the key thing that you worship.

11:57 The peacemakers, of course, are persecuted and revived. These are not really a great lift for getting ahead at you. You know what I mean, Mike? Or succeeding in something? I mean, meat, merciful, mourn peacemaker, persecuted under violence.

12:33 I mean, when I'm like sketching out my hopes and dreams for the next 10 to 20 years of my life, I mean, maybe I put merciful in there. I'd like to be a merciful person. I don't really think about actively being a peacemaker in the world. I certainly don't. I'm not signing up for any sort of persecution, right?

13:03 Or I use, if I'm reviled, I'm very uncomfortable. I prefer people to like me, not revile me. Let's do. This is a really hard lift. A really hard lift. I don't know when the last time you looked at this lift and thought, is this me? Could this be me?

13:33 In what way might this be me? Would I like to be me? I don't know. You've looked at the beatitudes that way. We're at least counter-cultural. I mean, if we just had them seriously, it would be. They'd at least be counter-cultural if we were like the peach makers of the world.

14:05 If we were merciful enough that it was notable, if we had a hunger or thirst for righteousness, I don't know how often people are concerned and the culture is concerned about that. If we valued meat-ness as a badge, they're very counter-cultural. I mean, the heroes of these, if I was like, I was lifting the heroes of people who would embody these things,

14:36 I think first in Jesus, of course. I mean, D, like the incarnate God was reviled, persecuted. It was me, remember when they tried to make him king, when he was able to feed and he left, he didn't want the chance to be kidding me, remember that? It was me. And then John the Baptist. John the Baptist, Jesus says there's no person born of a woman greater than John the Baptist. They wanted him to be the Messiah.

15:07 He was not interested. He was me. He was about, if you remember, he was he headed, bursally, the head on the platter. Paul, I think about Paul as a temple of this. Really another brilliant guy, did a lot, I mean, stone, twice, and left for dead, remember? Just, these guys. These are the heroes of the page. Not the guys who put together the mansion and the coast.

15:44 I'm saying. Which, if I think about the next mind 10 to 20 year vision, which kind of sounds, I mean, not a mansion, but comfort, comfort and coaching, saying. I'm not saying that we need to be uncomfortable or persecuted, but I am wondering, like, how much is the vision that Jesus gives in the reality of shaping my notion of the person that I want to be in the world? And I'm realizing that if it's going to do that, it's going to run out of minimum power

16:19 to the cultural load of things. I'm going to, if I do nothing and kind of, if I don't intentionally pull myself back to the reality on a regular basis, I will float along with the culture towards some norms that look like comfort, entertainment and isolation. And they don't look like meekness and peacemaking, right, and mercy. If I don't intentionally pull myself back here, and even actually looking at it a bunch

16:56 will only make me feel crummy. It actually won't transform my heart, soul, mind and strength. If I just look at it a bunch, it'll just make me feel bad that I'm floating along with the culture into a deeper cow, in a bigger city, in a darker, colder room. This is why, when we teach the kids the 10th of the man in confirmation,

17:28 we talk about the first commandment in the doorway that we have to go. The first commandment, you still have no other gods performing. You want to know how to not have it, your neighbors are dying. Reorient yourself to God. You want to know how to not be consumed with anger towards those who have followed you, you really want to get yourself to the ground. And the same is true with the attitude. You want to be a person who is genuinely responding to the world in a merciful way?

18:03 Reorient yourself at the beginning. You are poor with your spiritual things. You have very little means or capacities to transform your own heart, soul, mind and strength. You have a pull-up of what it takes, of resources, to evolve your heart, your mind and your spirit. You are poor in spirit. What I said are you, when you recognize and own your poverty of spirit.

18:40 When we start there, these other ones open themselves up. But this is the kicker, where I was going with the kid. Okay, maybe I buy it, that I can become a person who is described by the beyond to. And I see what you're saying. It is God who meant to be a person who tried to be that bad, not the force of my own way. This is classic of Paul, right?

19:11 He saw, he's a zealous, he's murderous, he's brilliant, but he's also brown and ambitious. And he's aggressive. Jesus grabbed him on the road to the basket, right? And transformed him, changes him into something else.

19:44 Maybe you and I begin to believe that like Saul, we could be faithful. That the peculiarities of our character could be leveraged for the Beatitudes and for the work of God. Maybe our particular places of the zero could be set loose for the reign of God. Maybe the Holy Spirit is big enough to make use of us.

20:19 But if he moved towards the Holy Spirit, recognize our poverty of spirit, let God at work in us. And what we get is revile and persecution. Why bother? I'm saying. I heard an interview with this guy that I have read on and off over the years. I guess you can name Shane Cadeborne. Anybody heard this guy? He's making the rounds right now because I think he's got a book coming out of something.

20:53 I listened to your interview back in college now, twenty years ago, reading the book of his, met in once a little workshop that he did. And then inspired by the beginning of his work after college, he called the Sisters of Mercy in Calcutta and has a story about spending time with Mother Teresa there and the Sisters of Mercy and her peculiarities. If you hear stories about people that ask me, you're really funny because she's a pretty gross woman.

21:30 But just had the sense of mercy to sit with people as they were dying so that they didn't die alone. I heard her say, I don't have enough food to feed all the hungry. So I feed the ones I can and I sit with the ones who I've been at. He came back and started what's a little, they called it at the time, I don't know what they call it now, but they called it at the time and the elastic movement in Philadelphia where they had a group of people that decided they would hold things in common.

22:02 They would not have individual ownership of anything. They would have common ownership of everything. They would make full clothes. I mean, they were like, they were not Catholic, but living kind of as monastic in Philadelphia. He's still a part of that community, but the tagline and the interview is that they're going to live until Jesus mentions the things that he said, which is particularly convicting for me. Yeah. And he gets a little bit, he calls it, he has, he does protest, but he calls it, he misses it with proclamation, so he calls it protestifying.

22:44 But the thing he was doing on his interview, he learned how to blast him and he'd been living on a school bus with his wife, touring the country. They both, he and his wife learned how to blast him. But that's interesting. In this message to me, they learned how to blast him and I have a friend in Lake Mary who likes to blast him. I thought that funny, he's got kind of a quirky guy, he's got a Ford splatting him. And on St. Claybourne, this life's going to blast him. And then I'm listening to why, and because he's been on a thing about being the peacemaker, and he's bothered by the fact that Kristen Evangelicals own guns at a higher rate than the rest of the country.

23:28 And so he's driving around with the school, living out of the school bus, driving around the country, holding a ventilary of people who want, they can come and bring their guns and he and his wife will pound them into garden, please. Because he's like, maybe, he's like, it's just funny that a group of people who follow a guy who said, per me, I'd achieve, are better at standing their grounds than anybody else.

23:58 I mean, I don't know what to do with gun rights and the Second Amendment, but it's really interesting to start to think about the reason that we would put out with the spirit transforming us into someone who is unique, who is persecuted and reviled, who is an active peacemaker, a force of mercy in the world. The reason that we would put up with leaders, like leaders of our movement, honorable folks who are killed by the culture rather than killed, right?

24:39 It's because we believe that we live as those, the words that are actually true, that this world's not an actual world. That we are going to some place that is better. He says, great is your reward to heaven. I was looking up other places where Jesus talks about, or the scriptures talk about reward in heaven. And Paul talks about it a little bit in Second Timothy as he's riding the Timothy and he feels like he's run the race.

25:16 And he says he's waiting for the crown of the agencies to be put on his head that went, that he's going to a place where finally he will be given everything that he wants to be, everything that he has thought he might have the capacity to be, but he keeps failing and falling for. He's going to a place where he will be awarded with the reality that he is of the attitudes all the way. That he's exposed and best version of himself. And Peterson is similar thing that he's going to a place where he's given the crown of glory.

25:49 We talked about this idea that glory and things reveal to what the realries are, that you will be going to a place where the parts of you that are dying away, the selfishness and the greed, the end, the hunger and the self-serving will be fully released and through you, the view that is created by God and destined for eternity will come to the front. Peter says he's getting a crown of glory where he becomes most fully himself forever.

26:20 But the one that I wanted to look at real quick as we'll finish is in Hebrews. We all know who wrote Hebrews, we're pretty sure it's a student of Paul because he writes it the same theology but was way better Greek than Paul. In Hebrews chapter 10 he has this really compelling phrase. Right towards the end of Hebrews chapter 10, it's easier.

26:53 Okay. Well, let's just start at verse 32. He's talking about why we might endure in a life of pain. But we call the former days when after you were enlightened you endured hard struggle with suffering. These folks as they were enlightened after you were told about the reign of Christ, beginning now and extending forever and inviting you into it.

27:26 For sure. Sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction sometimes being partners with those who took it for 34, where you had compassion on those in prison. And you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property since you knew that you yourself had a better possession and then a abiding one. Listen, I'm not asking you to come take my stuff but if you do, look, God bless you. There's something better for me down below.

27:57 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance. But when you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised for 37 for yet a little while and the coming one will come and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith and if you shrink back, my soul has no pleasure in him. Verse 39, but we are not of those who shrink back and are just made.

28:33 But those who have faith and pervert their soul. It is a difficult time to take the words of Jesus seriously. It is a hard time and place to be a force of mercy and justice in the world. To recognize that money is fleeting, that even our life takes second place to living faithfully in the way of Christ.

29:09 It is a difficult time. But the writer of Hebrews says that we are part of a long tradition of people who do not shrink back at faith for living when things get hard. But knowing the reward that awaits us is just forward in faith. We lean in to the words of Jesus. We embody the reality, passing through our poverty experience into the people that God makes us.

29:43 I've heard that this place should be one that encourages us to take the words of Jesus seriously. We describe the Bialities to move through our poverty spirit and allow Christ to make us into people who are described by the Bialities. Let's pray that today. Hey Lord, thank you for the gift of your teaching that you would open your mouth and assemble these words in a way that enliven our hearts that inspire our imaginations and give us hope for the future.

30:16 Holy Spirit comes, addressed our poverty of spirit, and turn us into those described by Bialities, for Jesus said that we might live out his calling faithfully until the day that you call us home. God will work. Jesus will be great.