Chapter 5, Matthew chapter 5, verse
13.
Ye are the salt of the earth, but
if the salt have lost his saviour, wherewith
shall it be salted?
It is thenceforth good for nothing but to
be cast out and to be trotted under
foot of men.
Let's go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, there is no use in all of
this unless you show the greatness of it.
God, our hearts are dull to understand the
truth that's on my heart.
God, use these pleasant words to bring us
down, to break our hearts, that we might
be restored, that we might be on the
right way.
There is no strength in anything except you,
O Lord.
So please help us.
I desire that your people see the things
that so burden my heart tonight.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Some of you who like very, very strong
preaching will wonder at tonight.
Some of you who maybe are here for
the first night and you heard that there
is a hell and fire and brimstone preacher
at this church will walk away disappointed.
Some of you will think that the message
is not hard.
But if you believe that the message you
hear tonight is not hard, your ears are
very dull and you do not understand that
the hardest, most pressing, most cutting thing I
have said thus far will be said tonight.
The reason why I'm so hesitant to go
on and just feel like I need to
explain and explain before we even start is
that you and I simply, we do not
see sin as God sees sin.
And regardless of what we say with our
minds in our theology about there not being
categories to sin, we do have categories of
sin in our minds.
But yet for God, all sin is an
abomination.
All of it.
Now, that's the first thing I want to
say.
The second thing I want to say is
this.
Several years ago, several, many, many years ago,
the great experts of the athletes declared that
they thought no one would ever break the
four-minute mile.
That it was just a human impossibility.
And then someone broke it.
And as soon as he broke it, it
was just within a few weeks, someone else
broke it.
And then someone else broke it.
Now, it's no big thing to break the
four-minute mile.
Now, what does all that have to do
with this?
When you set a standard in your mind,
you'll never be hard-pressed to go any
further than that standard you've set in your
mind.
And so, you need to have the highest
of standards in your Christian life.
Because if you have low standards, you'll have
low accomplishments with regard to godliness.
If you have high standards, you're more apt
to have higher accomplishments.
Now, another thing that must be said, and
this is true, nothing, nothing, nothing,
nothing, nothing, nothing is more
important in the heart of God than your
conformity to Jesus Christ.
And don't say amen.
Because I'd be hard-pressed to find a
person here that believed that.
You young men, you think more of ministry
and preaching than you think of being conformed
to the image of Jesus Christ.
We think more of having power on our
lives than we think of being conformed to
the image of Jesus Christ.
And yet, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing is more
important.
There is no higher goal than to be
conformed to Jesus Christ in character.
We chase down truth, and that is a
virtuous thing to do, but most of us
have more truth than we'll ever be able
to live.
We want to know great things, and yet,
it's like the horse runs a thousand miles
ahead of the wagon.
We run for truth, but young men, truth
is not an end in itself.
The knowledge of truth is not the goal.
The goal is with that knowledge, being conformed
to the image of Jesus Christ.
And what burdens my heart is I know
that apart from the Holy Spirit, this truth
will not be impressed upon you, because it's
been turned into nothing more than a little
cliché.
But it's the acropolis of the Christian faith
with regard to us.
Yes, in all things, the purpose of all
things is the glory of God, but it
seems in Scripture God gets most glory out
of demonstrating His power to conform the wickedest
of beings to the image of His Son.
And if you want to chase after something,
why is it that when I hear men
talking about praying and seeking the power of
God, it is always praying and seeking the
power of God for their ministry?
And yet, their lives are no validation whatsoever
to what they preach.
Any fool, any wicked man can deceive any
number of people from a pulpit.
The question is character, conformity to Jesus Christ.
You're so hard-pressed.
What are you hard-pressed towards?
Ask yourself, in all your striving, in all
your pressing in, what are you striving for?
What are you pressing in for?
Now, some of you can answer that question,
and others can answer it for you.
You're striving and pressing in for things of
this world, and things like that, it's quite
clear.
That the multitude of your thoughts go towards
the things of this world, the multitude of
your activity is toward the things of this
world.
And I'm not speaking to you tonight.
I'm speaking to those of you who believe
in your heart that the multitude of your
thoughts and the great majority of your energy
is in pressing in to the things of
God.
But I'll submit to you that maybe in
pressing in to the things of God, you've
got your eyes turned in a wrong direction.
Pressing in to ministry, pressing in to goals
of ministry, pressing in to make a name,
pressing in to do something, pressing in to
be used, but not pressing in to be.
Pressing in to be like Jesus Christ, because
I can assure you that's what God is
working in your life.
To be like Him.
God does not need talented individuals.
God does not need gifted men.
And a man with gifts can be more
dangerous than them all.
More dangerous than them all.
If he not have the character of Jesus
Christ.
Now, look at verse 13.
How is verse 13 usually preached?
Now, I know I'm always saying this.
I'm always coming at it from a different
direction.
Not always, but a lot.
But do you realize how this passage is
usually preached?
How is it usually preached?
As a motivation for evangelism.
As a motivation for getting out there in
the world and being salt.
You know, out of the salt shaker.
Let's get out there.
Let's be a preserving, sanctifying influence in the
world.
But never forget, when you interpret a text,
it always must be in context of what's
around it.
Now, if you go further past 13, there
seems to be some indication that that type
of interpretation is correct.
You are the light of the world.
A city that is set on a hill.
It cannot be hid.
And so, he is talking about us being
a light.
Being out there in the world.
Shining forth.
Influencing.
Affecting those around us.
But we fail when we only look forward
at the context.
And we do not look backward.
Now, look at 13.
You are the salt of the earth.
But if the salt have lost his, what?
Wherewith shall it be salted?
It is henceforth good for nothing.
But to be cast out, to be trotted
under foot of men.
Now, you take a careful look at this
text.
You study it hard.
You open up your Greek text.
Do whatever you have to do.
But you take a look at this text
and study it hard as to what you
find.
Salt has certain characteristics that give it its
flavor.
Salt has certain characteristics.
I mean, it is not a chemistry class,
but it is true.
Salt has certain characteristics.
We can even say that salt has certain
elements.
Not only that, we can say that salt
has certain essential elements.
That means if you take those elements away,
it is no longer salt.
It is those essential things that make up
salt.
And if you take those essential things away,
you no longer have salt.
Now, you can take those essential things away
and replace them with other good things.
But it is no longer salt.
You can take those essential elements away and
you can call it salt all day long.
But it is not salt.
Let me submit to you that what Jesus
is teaching here in the forefront of this
context is this.
There are certain essential characteristics or elements to
true discipleship, to true Christianity.
You take those away and you replace them
with any other thing.
You no longer have Christianity.
You have something useless and worthy of judgment.
Call it Christianity.
But it is not Christianity.
Call yourself disciple, but you are not disciple.
Now, the question is, what are these essential
characteristics?
Let me read them to you.
Verse 3.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall
be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit
the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst
after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain
mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be
called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness'
sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye when men shall revile you
and persecute you and shall say all manner
of evil against you falsely for my sake.
Many old preachers would take this text and
use it as we used 1 John last
night as a test of whether or not
you're actually in the faith.
Because these are the essential characteristics of what
it means to be Christian.
And I would submit especially to those who
are thinking about the ministry that if you
will give all your attention to these things
right here, you'll have no problem with preaching.
You'll have no problem with needing power for
the ministry.
We have all kinds of men with all
kinds of so-and-so power.
What we lack are Christ-like men.
I have seen, and I have seen it,
and you have seen it.
If you have any eyes at all, any
spiritual discernment at all, I have seen men
get in pulpits and be nothing more than
a parade of flesh talking about the size
of their church, talking about the largeness of
their ministry, their Christian schools, their universities, absolutely
everything.
And it's nothing but stinking, vile flesh.
And it is not the thing for which
a man is exalted or a woman is
exalted on the day of Christ.
But it is character.
Now, just let's apply this.
Let's look for a moment.
Let's look at the reality of this.
How much of your seeking after all you
seek after in Christianity, how much of it
is seeking after the very things that Jesus
said, if you do not have, you're not
even Christian.
You see?
You know, apart from the Holy Spirit pressing
this upon you, everything I say is useless.
If you can't see the urgency and the
cutting blade on what I'm saying, your eyes
and your ears are dull.
This is amazing!
That you can have a preacher who can
speak with eloquence of an angel, but if
he's not poor in spirit, every word is
like a pig sacrificed.
He doesn't mourn over sin.
He's not even in God's camp.
You see, we put so much emphasis.
You know, for example, let me give you
an example.
You preach one time, you know, and I
don't know what old preacher said that, you
know, any dumb fool can shoot a big
gun off once.
But you get up and you go to
a church and you preach with power and
might, such that it even surprises you, and
you come down from the pulpit and people
gather around you, hailing you to be some
great man of God.
How ignorant are the people of God!
For a lack of knowledge, God's people are
destroyed.
I preached one time in a church, and
I came down, and they were looking for
a pastor, and I'm not a pastor.
They were looking for a pastor, and a
group of them came up to me and
said, you need to be our pastor.
I said, you're out of your minds.
You know nothing about how I treat my
wife.
Because it's all about show.
It's all about external.
It's all about vocabulary and what comes out
of someone's mouth.
The Apostle Paul wouldn't be given five minutes
in any of your conferences.
It's about this, guys.
It's about this.
And you can't jump over it.
You can't jump over it.
That's why, you know, someone hears a young
man, he's 20 years old, he preaches with
fire, unusual sense of understanding, and they think,
man, he's ready.
Well, ask him about his character.
Ask him about his Christ-likeness.
And then when he says something foolish like,
yeah, I'm ready in that too, observe his
life and show him he's not.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Sir, do you know what your wife needs
more than anything on the face of the
earth?
A husband that is poor in spirit.
Do you know what your children need?
Do you know what this congregation needs?
Woman, do you know what your husband needs?
A woman who is poor in spirit.
Young men, do you know what God desires
in a pulpit?
Men who are poor in spirit.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.
No one else.
Look at this.
It doesn't say, blessed are the poor in
spirit, for they have a greater reward.
It doesn't say, blessed are the poor in
spirit, because they get a bigger crown.
It says this.
No one but the poor in spirit will
even be saved.
That's what it says.
The kingdom belongs to them and no one
else.
That's all.
Now, what is poor in spirit?
What is poverty of spirit?
It is the absolute opposite of an independent
spirit.
It's the absolute opposite of an independent spirit.
I used to tell young men, in order
to preach God's Word, you've got to have
the power of God on your life.
My dear friend, to tie your shoes, you've
got to have the power of God on
your life.
You can't breathe apart from the power of
God.
Behold your arrogance.
Behold my arrogance.
That we do so many things without even
a thought of dependence upon God.
It's like the Chinese Christian, after visiting this
country, said he was absolutely amazed at all
that American Christians could do without God.
All they could accomplish without God.
Dependence upon Him.
When your eyes fly open in the morning,
you ought to have such an attitude that,
Lord, I shall not move a quarter of
an inch to the right, nor a quarter
of an inch to the left.
I shall not drop from this pillow.
Because I know only in that short of
time, without your grace and without your power,
I could deny you and commit the most
heinous abominations.
Need thee every hour?
No, my dear friend.
Every millisecond.
Sometimes when I'm teaching preachers, I say, OK,
now all of you, breathe in.
And they'll breathe in.
I say, breathe out.
And they'll all breathe out.
I say, now from whom did that breath
come?
And they'll say, well, from God.
I say, OK, knowing that, now go out
there and do something great for God.
What are you going to do?
You can't even breathe.
You say, people ask me, Paul, what must
I do to develop this attitude of prayer
without ceasing?
I say, that's not the battle you have
to fight.
The battle you have to fight is the
battle with independence.
Because once the war with independence is over,
that's all you'll do.
You will literally, and this is something that
is so very important, you will literally be
walking around constantly calling upon God and constantly
praying for a greater and greater fullness of
the Holy Spirit in your life.
Absolutely everything.
You're in the ministry and you see someone
coming towards you and you know they're going
to be asking counsel or you know they
have a problem with you.
You're automatically, as you're walking towards them, in
your mind you're crying out to God, God,
give me wisdom according to James chapter 1.
God, fill me with the Holy Spirit.
God, I cannot do this.
Praise is going to start in the congregation.
And what do you do?
You mindlessly enter into it when you should
be saying, oh, what an awesome, terrible responsibility
lies before me now.
I'm to go before Yahweh, Jehovah of Scripture,
and to lift up my voice.
Oh, God, that it not be with hypocrisy
and dullness of heart.
Fill me with the Holy Spirit.
I can do nothing.
You say you can do nothing, but you
don't know what that means and neither do
I.
Poverty of spirit.
Oh, Lord, I am capable of everything wrong.
Without you, everything wrong.
I need you.
Many people say that Luke is the charismatic
of the New Testament.
I don't mind using that word just because
it's used by a bunch of other people
that twist it and give false meaning to
it doesn't mean I'm going to throw it
away.
It's a biblical word.
They call him the charismatic.
Why?
Because Luke points out continuously in his gospel
the dependence of Jesus Christ upon the ministry
and work of the Holy Spirit.
He constantly points out in the book of
Acts the dependence of the apostles upon the
work of the Holy Spirit so that it's
not the acts of the apostles.
It's the acts of the Holy Spirit through
the apostles.
And it's this attitude of constantly breathing in
God's strength.
Have you ever run through the woods or
walked through the woods hunting and you see
a little vine just run across your path?
Or a little branch take off and just
running through the woods by itself and then
all of a sudden it jumps back on
the tree?
No, the branch is cut off.
It dies.
John 15.
Scripture, one of the things that breaks my
heart is Scripture when it's very, very beautiful
we treat it as poetry and we don't
take it seriously.
When Jesus said, I am the vine, you
are the branches.
Apart from Him you can do nothing.
And you say, well, I've been grafted into
Him.
Yes, you have, but there is a principle
in Scripture.
If you do not open your mouth, you
won't get fed.
If you don't cry out to Him, He
will not give.
It's just a principle.
It's there.
It's all over Scripture.
God gets great glory out of answering prayer.
It's just constantly crying out to God.
Why?
Because you know something of what you are.
You know something of what you're called to
do.
You know something of the great commands laid
before you.
You know something of the enemy who is
going to wage war against you.
Poverty of spirit.
And this is why.
This is the whole why of Christian suffering.
I would submit to you this is the
whole why of Christian suffering.
That God sends strong winds.
That God allows the gravel to slip under
our feet.
That God allows enemies to approach.
Yea, they're even sent by His providence.
Why?
To drive us to dependence upon God.
For example, there's no persecution in the church
today here in the United States of America.
But, when some dearly loved saint in the
congregation falls ill and there is no cure,
you watch the people of God hit their
knees.
And you watch spirituality in the congregation shoot
through the roof.
Should you not, if you were hearing what
I'm saying right now, should you not all
be on your faces weeping because of your
independent spirit of addressing so many things that
you can do.
Do you realize what a practical atheism it
is when there are some things that you
call upon God for power to do them
and other things you do not.
Don't worry about this God, I can handle
this problem.
To develop a spirit of brokenness.
A humble, broken people.
I'll never forget I was in Peru and
this man came down to do a conference
and he was a pastor in Houston or
something.
He walked in there and he basically said,
I'm a man who gets things done.
I'm a man who says lead, follow or
get out of my way.
And this is what we've achieved in my
ministry, in my church.
Oh, what a demon makes words come out
that way.
They introduced Hudson Taylor one time as a
great servant of God.
And he said no, a pitiful poor servant
of a great God.
And he didn't just say it because it
would be applauded.
He said it because it was a reality
in his life.
As I've said before, one of the greatest
things to understand is that work that Jesus
did with Peter observing when he said, cast
that net over.
And when that net was cast over and
it was filled up with fish and Peter
was drawing it in and Peter looked up
at Jesus and says, depart from me, I'm
a sinful man.
I'm not worthy to behold the great thing
you've done.
I am not worthy to participate in it.
And it is wrong that my eyes should
even look upon it.
It's the same way, young preacher.
If you're preaching and God truly moves, your
greatest desire will be to do the only
thing that King Saul ever did right, to
hide yourself among the baggage and say, away
from me.
And that if someone were to come to
you and say, oh, what a mighty job
you did tonight, in your heart you want
to literally run out the door screaming, those
are not my words, Lord!
Those are not my words!
It has not entered into my mind.
It's one of the reasons why in your
life, in your ministry, although you can drive
this to an extreme, you ought to actively
seek to cut yourself away from all hope
in men.
It's why we never send out a prayer
letter that says, we want you to pray
about this need.
Because that's not what they're saying.
What they're saying is, we want you to
meet this need.
But to shut your mouth and to call
upon your God, to depend upon Him, your
children, to realize you can cross every T,
dot every I, do everything that the experts
say, be the greatest of greatest when it
comes to parenting, and your children will wake
up in hell one day.
That it is not your administration of some
special gift, but it is upon God who
willeth.
Now that does not mean we should throw
up our hands and say, I'll have nothing
to do with it.
No, we should work with all our might
in all these things.
We should work with all our might.
You should work with all your might that
this church might grow.
But if it grows, it is He that
gave the increase.
You should work with all your might that
your children be godly, but if they are,
fall on your face in gratitude to God
and do not claim one thing for yourself.
You should work with all your might that
your marriage might be a demonstration of the
relationship between Jesus Christ and His Bride.
But if you attain any amount of success,
say, not unto me, O Lord, but unto
Thee be the glory.
Dependence upon Him.
Would your life, if someone were to look
at your life, would it be marked by
dependence upon God?
Now, here's the thing.
If just now, if just now I had
preached on fornication, or adultery, and one of
you were in an adulterous relationship tonight, and
I had preached on adultery, and you had
heard the Word, what would it have done
to your heart?
Probably broke you into a million pieces to
the point you would have vomited.
Is that not true?
Is this a lesser sin?
You see?
This is not a lesser sin.
As a matter of fact, I submit to
you that all other sins may be spring
forth from this one.
It was Satan who wrote the first Declaration
of Independence.
It was Adam who followed him in his
government.
But it should not be that way with
us.
We should depend upon our God.
We should call upon Him.
Someone asked me one time, what does it
mean by living by faith?
And I told him, I said, every moment
you will be destroyed if God does not
supernaturally move on your behalf.
You have put yourself in such a position
that if God does not move on your
behalf, you're gone.
Dependence.
But there is a drawing forth of such
strength.
How many problems?
And not just in the ministry, but how
many problems in your family?
How many problems in your relationship with your
wife or relationship with your husband?
How many problems with your children?
And you'll read books and you'll mourn and
you'll do all sorts of things and you'll
talk to every expert on the face of
the earth, but how much just crying out
and crying out?
There's never been anyone who has cried out
to God, persevered in crying out to God,
that God has not delivered them.
The problem is everyone starts off well.
Very rarely do you find someone who finishes
in persevering before the throne of God until
they get an answer.
You know how I can tell when there's
a genuine move of God?
Well, let me tell you how I can
tell when there's not.
When after the service, a man gets up
and starts praying, and as he gets louder
and louder and louder and more emotional, more
emotional, more emotional, everybody else rides the wave
with him.
And when he stops praying, everybody rides the
wave down with him.
If it's truly a work of God, you'll
keep moaning even after that brother has gone
home.
You see?
Crying out to God until there's an answer.
Until there really is an answer.
Not just when you cry out to God,
but not until there's an answer.
What you're basically doing is crying out to
God for a few minutes or an hour
or a day, and then even though He
hasn't answered, you stand up and pat yourself
on the back because you've done more than
most.
But you haven't believed your God.
To believe your God is to cry out
until your God brings deliverance or at least
an answer or at least peace and says,
be still.
I will not remove this problem, but be
still.
And I will show you who God is.
Dependence upon Him and the fullness.
So many times people believe, you know, I
hear parents tell their children, you know, God
created them because He was lonely.
You blasphemed God when you said that.
God's never been lonely.
God did not create out of a need.
He created out of the overflow of His
superabundance in the same way God overflows with
superabundance.
I am a sovereign grace preacher.
I do not believe there is a maverick
molecule in the entire universe.
I believe that all things are ordained by
God.
And at the same time, I believe you
have not because you ask not.
And you say, well, put that together.
I'm not a philosopher.
I'm a theologian.
I just tell the truth as God puts
it out there.
I can't figure it out.
And if you don't believe both those truths,
you're going to go off in a wild
direction.
It is true God is sovereign over your
life.
It is true that He's going to do
with you exactly what He desires.
It is true that you are much more
beggarly than you should be because you're much
more satisfied with the little He's given you.
Oh, that God would give us men and
women who are not satisfied with the last
gift they received, but they want more and
more.
Why does He say, taste that you might
see that the Lord is good.
Why?
So that you'll want more and more and
more.
Another thing about seasons of prayer that you
have to be very, very careful of.
God will bring sovereignly into the life of
a person seasons of prayer.
Be times when maybe you can give yourself
to three and four hours of prayer daily
and then it seems that God begins to
direct you so that your prayer life returns
to somewhat of a more normal stage of
maybe an hour or so and then maybe
there'll be another time in your life when
He'll bring great seasons of prayer.
But here's something that you tremendously need to
understand.
Many people will meet with God in a
season of prayer, a season of seeking Him
in the Word.
God will fill them.
He will strengthen them.
He will do all that to them.
And then they stop and ride on that
experience.
It doesn't work that way.
I'll tell you why.
You don't say to yourself, look, I am
going to eat for 14 hours today so
that I don't have to eat the rest
of the week.
Because even if you eat 14 hours today,
you're still going to be hungry tomorrow.
And that's the way it works in the
Christian life.
It is not I'm going to depend on
you, get my tank filled, and then take
off.
No.
You don't have a tank.
Branches don't have a tank.
It is a constant flow from the vine.
You don't fill up your tank and then
take off running independently from God and then
come back when you're empty.
You're never supposed to be empty.
My wife, after she was saved, she came
to me and she just started this explosion
of growth, explosion of wisdom.
She came to me one day and she
was sitting there and she had been reading
her Bible and she came to me and
she goes, we got it all wrong.
Husbands hear that all the time.
We got it all wrong.
I said, well, what?
She goes, have you ever been confronted with
a sin in your life and God confront
you in such a way that you seek
Him, just seek Him in prayer and seek
Him in the Word and cry out for
deliverance?
I said, yeah.
She goes, and what happened?
Well, He delivered me.
And then what did you do?
I'll tell you what you did.
I said, well, what did I do?
She goes, then you went on to something
else, didn't you?
I said, well, yeah.
And what happened to that sin?
Came back, didn't it?
I said, yeah.
She said, you want to know why?
Because God doesn't want you to go and
get deliverance once and for all.
That's not the way it works.
What God does is He wants you abiding
in Him and drawing on His strength every
moment of every day for absolutely everything all
the time because you're never going to overcome
something and do away with it as though
it will never come back.
But you must live dwelling and depending upon
God for absolutely everything.
And that is true.
That is true.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Why?
Because they live this kind of life.
Oh, God, you know, Lord, provide me strength
because I've got to preach tonight.
You're walking with God when you go, oh,
God, provide me strength because I need to
breathe.
I need to breathe.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
That's why the Apostle Paul talked about he
was at his strongest when he was at
his weakest.
Oh, that God would take everything in us,
all our fleshly hope, all our fleshly strength,
all our gifts, everything else, and grind them
to powder.
As I always teach young Christians, God, I
tell them, they hear all this stuff, you
know, you've been saved, now God just wants
to fill you with life.
And that's true.
But I come along and tell them, you've
been saved, now God is going to work
a work of death in you.
Because only to the degree that you die
will you be filled.
And you should never be satisfied.
Someone asked me, they said, and I learned
this from a very, very wise theologian, someone
asked the question one time, well, if God
fills me, then how can I ask Him
to fill me some more?
I mean, if I'm filled, I'm filled.
Well, no, you need to understand, in a
sense it's like a balloon.
You get a balloon, blow it up with
two breaths.
And what happens?
There it is.
It's about this big.
And it's full.
It's full.
But blow it again.
What happens?
It's bigger and it's full.
Blow it up again.
What happens?
It's bigger and it's full.
I believe that is a great illustration of
the way God works with the Holy Spirit
inside the believer.
God, fill me.
Fill this cavity.
And then increase the size of it and
fill it some more.
Fill it some more.
My capacity.
My capacity, Lord.
My capacity to be filled.
And He will make that cavity by bringing
trials into your life, strong winds into your
life, whatever is necessary.
Whatever is necessary.
That's why oftentimes in Scripture we see with
many men of God, and I'm saying this
for the sake of the young men here
tonight, with many men of God, we will
see what we call the birth, the death,
and the resurrection of a vision.
Moses had from the very beginning, it seems,
the magnificent deliverance in everything as a child.
It seems that it was instilled in him
some sort of messianic idea that somehow God
was going to use him to deliver His
people.
And so what does he do?
He grabs an Egyptian, kills him.
And what happens to him?
He's exiled from Egypt, sent out into the
wilderness.
And what happened?
Well, there was the birth of the vision.
Now it's the death of a vision.
So he's walking around that wilderness 40 years.
Death.
When he started out, he had a vision
that he was going to accomplish by the
strength of his own right arm.
Forty years in the wilderness.
God, You're mistaken.
I can't speak.
I don't know what...
No.
I can't.
Birth.
Death.
Go, Moses.
What's in your hand?
Resurrection of a vision.
I've seen that in so many people's lives.
I've seen it in my own.
I've seen it in so many people's lives.
God has got to destroy your right arm.
And He will because He hates it.
He hates independence.
Because He's a jealous God.
He's jealous for His own glory.
But not only that, He is a God
of love.
And He knows independence is the worst thing
that could ever happen to one of His
children.
So He will work in you.
Almost every time you can mark it.
Find someone who thinks they are specially gifted
in certain ways so that that area of
their life is going to turn out well
and God will destroy it.
God only has one right arm and it
is His Son, Jesus Christ.
And it is to Him you are to
look.
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.
For theirs is the kingdom.
It belongs to no one else.
Now, I don't want to say, Are you
poor in spirit?
That would either bring condemnation or an arrogant
answer out of your mouth.
I will ask this.
Is God working in your life in such
a way, can you see over the years,
that He is creating more and more poverty
of spirit in you?
Cry out, Oh God, create in me this
thing.
But oh, hold on.
Hold on.
It could cost you everything.
The most dangerous prayer a man can ever
pray is, Oh God, make me like Jesus.
Blessed are they that mourn for they shall
be comforted.
Folks, modern day preachers, I do not care
what they say, they are trying to create
some form of utopia on this fallen planet.
They are trying to convince Christians that we
ought to just dance and we ought to
be full of joy, and we ought to
be happy-go-lucky, and everything ought to
work out right, and everything ought to be
good, and we ought to die in a
ripe old age, and everything ought to be
just fine.
They have forgotten where we are.
We are on a fallen planet with a
fallen humanity, with a fallen creation that literally
groans.
And although we have been redeemed, there is
an aspect of us that is unredeemed, that
is awaiting redemption.
We are still, in a sense, a broken
people, a needy people.
We still, even though we are the people
of God, must deal with sin, and it
is a horrible, vile abomination that at times
clings to us.
It makes sense to mourn.
I know you won't grow many churches that
way, but it's true.
What does he mean, blessed are those who
mourn?
Mourn about what?
There is only one thing to mourn about.
Sin.
Sin!
But we are a people who do not
understand how vile sin is.
We are like fish.
Fish don't know they are wet.
And we are like a people who drink
down iniquity.
Look, it was water.
Now, you've all heard, I'm sure, the illustration
of the frog in the kettle.
You know, you take an old bullfrog.
You throw him in a pot of boiling
water and see what he does.
That whole kitchen floor will be wet.
He'll jump out of that pot so fast
it will make your head swim.
You take that same bullfrog and you put
him down in some nice, just lukewarm water.
And then you turn up the flame, ever
so gradually.
And eventually, as it gets hotter and hotter
and hotter in that water, his body becomes
accustomed more and more to the temperature until
he is laying there boiling and doesn't even
know it.
That is the power of sin.
Sin can grab you.
Sin has coils.
Sin will not let you go.
But I do not see that that is
usually the manner in which sin works.
In the same way, when I hear a
man of God has fallen, I know that's
not true.
He's been sliding for a long time.
You see, that is why when you see
sin coming, you must run.
Why?
Because just one little entrance and it enters
farther and it enters farther and it soothes
and it calms and it coaxes and it
convinces and it supplies excuses so that eventually,
within a period of just a few months,
you find yourself comfortable with things that before
made you vomit.
It's true.
In every aspect of life.
It's true with regard to immorality.
Young people, let me tell you, I could
preach a whole week just on dating, that
it is not biblical in any shape, form
or fashion.
Dating is not biblical.
Not only is it not biblical, it's not
even found in civilized culture until about 80
years ago.
And we can see what fruit that has
been reaped from that, can't we?
It's why a young man came to me
and he's crying and he said, you know,
my fiancé, and he was a godly young
man, my fiancé and me, we want to
be so godly, but you know at times
I'm taking her home from church and just
there in the car and maybe we'll hold
hands and then I'll kiss her, I'll do
something and then it's just so horrible and
what can we do to escape?
How can we be strong enough to endure?
And I tell him, you can't.
You're praying for the Holy Spirit to give
you strength to be pure when you're together
alone.
That's like me praying for the power of
God to rob a bank.
God has told me never to get in
that situation.
He has not told me to pray for
power that I might endure in the midst
of it.
You see, why?
Because young people, you have no idea.
I have sat with preachers that at times
preach down, it seemed, the very power of
God and then it doesn't take a little
bit of compromise and a few months go
by and they're sitting there wallowing in the
filth of the world.
It is that powerful.
You should be terrified of sin.
It's deadly.
And for the sake of your children, if
you're not terrified for yourself, be terrified for
them.
No, I hear people say, well, we can't
protect our children.
No, but you don't have to pump filth
into your house.
We're, in a sense, to be a people.
We're behind enemy lines, folks.
We really are.
Now, there is joy and there are so
many things in the Christian life and so
many blessings for God.
You know, the true theologian doesn't marvel why
bad things happen in this world.
They marvel at the fact that anything good
happens in this world because it really shouldn't.
It's fallen.
It's condemned.
It's cursed.
Why should we mourn?
Because we are beholding the Word of God.
We have become sensitive to sin and, as
the Puritan said, the sinfulness of sin.
And when the Word of God, like a
mirror, shows us our sin, we mourn.
We mourn.
But, as I said last night, we are
not mourning or repenting with a repentance unto
death.
But that gives us the opportunity.
This seeing of ourselves in the Word of
God by the power of the Holy Spirit,
it gives us an opportunity to see ourselves
as we truly are and it gives us
the blessed opportunity to repent.
The blessed opportunity to get counseling.
The blessed opportunity to cry out for other
brothers that we can trust in to pray
for us.
This mourning does not lead unto death as
it did with Judas, but it brings about
a new mourning as it did with Peter.
A new hope.
Let me give you an example.
One thing about fasting that you need to
know about.
People talk about fasting in order for so
many different things to happen.
I fast for the power of God will
be on my life or I fast for
this reason or that reason.
Let me give you the best reason, in
my opinion, to fast.
And it's this.
You ever meet somebody and they just one
day get mad at you or get angry
or they say something to you that really
is just out of character, as we say.
And they'll come to you later and instead
of really apologizing, they'll go, look, I'm sorry.
I'm just not myself today.
I've got all these problems or I'm sick
today or I'm nauseous or I haven't eaten.
My sugar level is low.
Something.
I'm not myself because of all these adverse
circumstances in my life.
Well, the truth is, because of all those
adverse circumstances, you are finally really seeing them
as they are.
And one of the things that fasting has
been such a blessing to me, even though
I have not made much progress, is this.
When I fast and I have no food
to comfort me and I have no social
interaction because in America, if you don't eat,
you don't have social interaction.
And I'm set apart by myself with no
comfort.
Guess what happens?
I get cranky.
I get quick.
And guess what?
I'd like to introduce to you the real
Paul Washer.
And when all that comes out and it's
exposed and I look ugly, it gives me
the opportunity to mourn about who I really
am and then to go up to the
thing that precedes this and cry out in
poverty of spirit, Lord, deliver me.
Now, I know I'm teaching a lot of
unusual things tonight, but I believe they're necessary.
I believe they're truly necessary.
And also, what is it?
We also mourn, not only for ourselves, but
we mourn for this world.
How many of you have ever mourned for
Hillary Clinton?
I don't mean criticized.
I don't mean hated.
I don't mean cursed.
I mean mourned.
God will honor your mourning a lot more
than your criticisms.
What are you?
Apart from the grace of God, you'd make
Hitler look like a choir boy.
Who are you?
Every man in here is an Ahab waiting
to happen.
Every woman here is Jezebel.
Apart from God's grace.
We shouldn't be just looking out at the
world and cursing them.
We should be mourning them.
And I want you to know, Baptists, you've
lost your heritage with regard to this.
Baptists have never trusted in political strong-arming.
Matter of fact, it's been political strong-arming
that's left the blood of Baptists all over
the world.
We cry out for our enemies.
We bless those who curse us.
And we look at a persecution as an
opportunity to witness for our Lord.
No, I'm not a Democrat, but I don't
put any hope in the Republicans either.
I put my hope in my God.
Like one old Christian preacher said one time,
he goes, I don't trust in the left
wing or the right wing because both wings
are on the same old bird.
We're a spiritual people.
We're not a Geneva.
We believe that the church is a spiritual
organism created by Jesus Christ, and she will
always be strange, and she will always be
left out, and she will always be persecuted,
and she will always be hated until the
day she's revealed in glory.
What kind of Christianity do you want?
Join the Reformers and put a lance and
a spear in your hand and go kill
everybody who doesn't agree with you.
Or join the Baptists who defended even those
who hated them.
We mourn for the world.
We cry out for them.
We pray for people.
I'll never forget one time there was a
woman in this church and she had committed
heinous crimes against so many people in that
church.
And one day she came down the aisle
and she was broken into a million pieces
and she was on the altar, and I
went down there and I sat beside her,
and in front of all those people I
put my hand on her shoulder and I
began to pray for her.
Afterwards, you can't believe how many people in
that congregation were furious with me.
How could you do that?
And I said, because if there is no
hope for her, we all go to hell.
Blessed are those who mourn.
We mourn.
Not scowl.
Not pick apart.
My mom used to tell me about all
those turkeys that we raised.
She said, turkeys, they're just an abomination.
One little turkey gets a little dew on
its neck that flickers in the light, and
the rest of them will pick it to
death.
What are we?
A refrigerator for the pious or a hospital
for the broken?
Blessed are those who persecute you.
I remember on the mission field, and young
men listen to this.
There are certain things that, when I say,
listen to this, it's for you.
I mean, I got called on the mission
field a charismatic and everything else, and this
was the reason.
Sometimes, some of those old, poor assemblies of
God preachers who had been cast out of
their homes because they left Catholicism, who had
never been taught truth by anybody else.
It's the only Christianity they knew.
They'd suffered horrible things for the cause of
Christ and what they knew.
And when they would ask me to come
over and teach them something, I'd go over
and teach them something.
And because of that, the other missionaries were
angry with me, saying I was having fellowship
with the ungodly and all that stuff.
And I looked at them one day and
I said, you know what, men?
I said, if there was living across the
street a pedophile wife beaten drunk, who was
lost, and I went across the street to
witness to him, what would you all say
about me?
They said, well, you know, you're doing the
work of an evangelist.
You're doing what you ought to do.
I said, here's a man who has limited
knowledge about the things of God, who's never
been taught, but he's suffered horrifying things by
the enemies of God by their hand for
the sake of Christ, and you're telling me
I should not go to them when they
ask me and teach them something?
Isn't it unbelievable?
What on earth are we thinking about?
No, I don't let whoever wants to preach
in my pulpit.
Yes, I make a stand for doctrine and
all these other things, but I am not
going to put out the smallest spark in
a man's heart.
I'm going to love them.
I'm going to tell them the truth, but
not like I'm preaching at them.
When I'm talking one-on-one, I say,
oh, brother, can I just show you something?
Or you teach me what you believe.
You know what's one of the most amazing
things?
I learned this from an old missionary, Thomas
Pace.
He was dealing with a man who I
believe was a seven-day Adventist.
Worked kind of high up in the seven
-day Adventist thing and was all about legalism
and all about the law and all about
food and everything else.
So Tom tried to talk to him and
talk to him, witness to him, all sorts
of things, and the man was just as
hard as a rock.
And Tom said one day, the Lord just
gave him what he needed to do.
So Tom walked up to the man and
said, Sir, I've been studying the book of
Galatians recently.
And you know, that is such a difficult
book and I've talked to you and you're
always quoting Scripture and it really impresses me.
Would you just sit down for about six
weeks and teach me the book of Galatians?
And when that legalistic, self-righteous, basically Judaizer
started studying the book of Galatians in order
to teach it to Tom, one of the
finest Baptist missionaries I know, the man was
converted.
Why?
Because there was a missionary there who was
blessing those who persecuted him.
Was caring.
You know, it's amazing.
We'll love the wickedest man until he'll claim
to know Christ.
And then we'll hate him if he's not
in our camp.
Let me tell you something.
I don't care who you are.
Your theology is really messed up somewhere.
And I don't care who you are.
See, theology is like trying to put too
many clothes in too small of a piece
of luggage.
You get it all fit in on one
side, it's going to come out somewhere.
And if all your theology fits in just
perfectly, you've twisted something.
And you say, well, you're saying God's not
a God of order?
No, I'm saying your brain's not that big.
He's a God of order, but it all
won't fit in your head.
Blessed are those who mourn.
We mourn over what we are.
Good lesson for these young men.
Stand in front of a mirror at least
15 minutes a day and just say one
thing.
It will so help your preaching.
And it just takes all the trouble off
of things.
All the pressure off.
I just don't know.
And then when they get mad at you,
go, well, I thought you said all truth
is revealed truth.
And if it's revealed truth and God didn't
reveal it to me, what can I do
with the sovereign God?
It's not my fault.
But just learn to say, I don't know.
And guess what?
Be one of the first times you're probably
telling the truth.
I don't know.
Blessed are those who mourn.
That's what this means.
But oh my friend, when everyone's a child
and no one has to be a great
teacher and no one has to be a
spiritual father and we're all just children, it
is a lot more fun to live this
Christian life when you don't have to be
anything, but what you are, a recipient of
the grace of God.
Then it turns into a party.
It really does.
I hate to talk, and I can tell,
and you preachers know exactly what I'm talking
about.
There are some men you can talk to
and you know that while you are talking,
they're weighing every word you're saying to find
something heretical.
You ever met a person like that?
Boy, you can spot them that quick.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Now, we have blessed are the meek, but
we do not have to...
I want to skip down to verse 6
because we've gone on.
It takes a long time to preach this.
Isn't that amazing?
It didn't take Jesus 45 seconds to say
this.
It would take an infinite number of preachers
all of eternity to even get to the
first word or the first verse of this.
Tell me it's not inspired.
Tell me this is not the infallible Word
of God.
You know, preachers, young guys, listen to me.
There's all this apologetics and all these different
things and evidence that demands a verdict and
all this stuff out there.
Let me tell you something.
You just go to them with the Bible
open and show them how wonderful Jesus is.
I mean, trying to use all your arguments
to defend the fact that He even exists
is like trying to show someone the sun
with a flashlight.
Just preach Jesus Christ.
Every word is wonderful.
Alexander McLaren said, the dust of this thing
is gold.
But blessed are they who do hunger and
thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Does this describe you?
I mean, just answer the question.
Answer it in your own mind.
Would you say that your life is marked
out in this way?
People could honestly observe your life and see
that you were a man or a woman
or a young person who hungered and thirsted
after righteousness.
I know people who hunger and thirst after
knowledge, people who hunger and thirst after position,
people who hunger and thirst to be used,
people who hunger and thirst for power.
Most of you probably don't know him, but
he is a great prayer warrior.
He's in the Southern Baptist Convention.
It's T.W. Hunt.
And I knew the man as a professor
and he would pray three to four hours
a day for all of his students.
And just to walk into the room, you
walked into the presence of a man who
knew God and you knew it.
And I used to go to him and
I would talk to him and ask him
questions.
And one day I walked in to his
office and I sat down and I looked
like something the dog had just drug in.
And he looked at me and he always
would do something like this.
He'd always go, Paul, what's wrong?
And I said, Dr. Hunt, I'm just so
wicked.
I'm so ignorant.
I want to know God.
I want to obey Him.
I want to be like Jesus, but I
look in the Word of God and I'm
just so miserable.
I want so much.
I'm not satisfied with where I am.
I just feel like I'm pathetic.
I just hunger, but I just am so
far away.
And he looked at me.
He was sitting down.
And he looked at me.
And he stood up.
He walked around his desk.
And he came over to me and he
laid both hands on my shoulders.
And he said this, In the name of
Jesus Christ, I pronounce thee blessed.
And then he went and he sat back
down.
And I was looking at him.
And he goes, Paul, you don't understand what
I just did.
I said, no, Dr. Hunt, I don't understand
what you just did.
He said, son, have you never read, Blessed
are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for they shall be filled.
He said, son, listen to you.
You've come in here for ten minutes and
the only thing you've done is screamed out
how hungry you are, how dissatisfied you are
with your life, how you want more of
God, more of His righteousness, more conformity to
Christ.
Oh, son.
And listen to me, young man.
Listen to me.
He said this to me and it set
me free.
He said this.
He said, because of these things you are
blessed, but Satan has so twisted your understanding
that he is using the very things that
bless you to condemn you and curse you.
I hear people that go, oh, I'm just
so unrighteous.
I just want to be more like Jesus.
And it just drives them straight into the
ground.
Listen, if you have a true understanding of
your need and in your heart you're crying
out, I want to be more like Him.
I want to be more conformed to His
image.
I hunger for that.
I thirst for that.
It's not going to drive you into despair.
It's going to lift you up to faith.
It's going to lift you up to glory.
It's going to be used by God.
Never forget that when Satan speaks, he will
never, now listen to me, he will never
tell you the truth.
No.
I want to get it so you really
understand.
He will sometimes tell you the truth about
you, but he will never leave you with
hope.
When God tells you the truth about you,
no matter how hard he speaks, and it
might be like those prophets, I mean, they
were rude.
Some of the things the prophets said, you
cannot say in mixed company.
Do you realize that?
They said some hard things against Israel and
Judah.
But even though God would speak that hard,
He never speaks the truth without leaving His
people with hope.
Never.
And that's when you can tell whether you're
preaching prophetically or preaching condemnation in the flesh.
Because if you preach with condemnation in the
flesh, the congregation, God's people, God's lambs, who
you're not supposed to whip, will leave totally
condemned.
But if you're preaching prophetically, incorrectly, biblically, it
doesn't matter how hard you speak to them,
they will not feel whipped, but they'll walk
out that door with hope.
Truth.
I didn't want to start this, and I'll
tell you why, because I knew it would
just be a failure.
Because it's hard to bring across this idea.
Do not delight when in a day you
have not committed adultery, if during that same
day you've walked in independence from God.
Because in the sight of God and His
holy angels, both crimes are as heinous, as
filthy, they really are.
Those of you who have the Spirit of
God, I speak primarily to the gentlemen, you
know that if you fell into adultery, the
Holy Spirit would press upon you so hard,
you would be so crushed in your heart,
that what would happen?
You would literally be at the point of
ripping out your heart or contemplating suicide.
But other sins that are more palatable, less
socially despised, we can walk with daily and
not see a need to shun them and
run from them.
I pray that you men, you women, you
young people, I mentioned one thing last night,
and I'll add another to it now.
The first thing I mentioned last night, that
you would be wholly devoted to the person
of God's Son.
Now notice my language.
Not to an idea, not to a ministry
of the Son, but wholly devoted to Him
as a person.
You will not satisfy a woman to be
wholly devoted to marriage.
It will not satisfy your wife if she
hears and understands that you are completely and
perfectly devoted to the idea of marriage.
It will bless her if she hears that
you are completely and totally devoted to her
as a person.
It's the same way.
It is not to be devoted to a
concept, a theology, an idea, a church, or
a ministry.
Wholly devoted to the person of God's Son,
number one.
The second thing I pray for you is
this, that you might see, above all things
in endeavors, to seek to be conformed to
His image as laid out here in the
Sermon on the Mount.
That you will seek those qualities that God
would impress them upon you, imprint them upon
your heart.
Because these two things are foundational, and without
them, the one who preaches is like one
who sacrifices a pig on the altar of
God.
Without these things, devotion to the person of
the Son and conformity to His image, those
who carry out religious rituals are like those
pagan priests who do so in their ungodly
temples.
Anyone can be dedicated to these external things
because these external things in themselves have reward.
You preach well, people will ask you to
preach.
You have a ministry like this with a
school and a church and all these things,
people will lend you respect for that.
But you'll find no glory for men in
trying to do the things that are most
important before God.
Remember what God esteems men do not esteem,
and that is devotion to His Son and
conformity to His image.
Now this sermon is totally out of whack
with all the other things I've preached, the
way it's preached, everything.
But this was necessary tonight for someone because
last night after preaching, it was so impressed
upon my heart to preach this.
And it has been all day.
I would have chosen something else, but this
needed to be said.