Let's open up our Bibles to the book
of Galatians, the book of Galatians chapter 3,
verse 27.
For all of you who were baptized into
Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is
neither slave nor free man, there is neither
male nor female, for you are all one
in Christ Jesus.
Let's pray.
Father, I come before you in the name
of your Son, and I know that apart
from him I would have no part with
you.
And as always, Father, you know me, you
know who I am and you know what
I am, that I stand in need of
grace upon grace and mercy upon mercy.
I pray that in this day, Lord, you
would prove yourself wise, prove yourself strong, in
using this day, the weakest among us.
Lord, I trust thee that you have been
an ever-present help for me, and that
you have done so for your own glory
and because you are love.
Father, I will preach a message today that
I myself have trouble living.
Lord, do not allow me to be in
the hypocrisy of making people believe I'm something
I'm not.
For I know, Lord, there is no such
thing as a great man of God, only
weak, pitiful, faithless men of a great and
merciful God.
But, oh Lord, if you would provide the
power through your Holy Spirit to change my
life through this message, and to make me
more conformed to the image of Christ through
this message, Lord, I would greatly appreciate it.
Help us all, Lord, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
You may be seated.
For all of you who were baptized unto
Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
Paul is speaking out of the book of
Galatians, a book in which the church is
being attacked by Judaizers, legalists.
Now, make no mistake about it.
There is a need for law and rules
and wisdom in Scripture.
We have the law of Christ.
We have the commandments of God.
All these things are true.
But I'll tell you something.
It is so easy to cross all the
T's and dot all the I's.
It is a quite different thing to be
clothed with the scent, with the life of
Jesus Christ.
Usually when there is no power of God,
we go to rules.
And we say, because we do this or
don't do that, we're spiritual.
My dear friend, the mark of spirituality is
the fragrance of Christ in our lives.
And the fragrance of Christ in every aspect
of who we are as a person.
I have spent many, many years of my
life preaching the gospel around the world.
I have known a measure of success, people
would say.
But I want you to understand something.
That preaching and ministries and great things are
not the mark of success.
It's the fragrance of Christ on your life.
It's the love that you have for the
people of God.
Once I was preaching and after a move
of the power of God in a certain
place, a lady came up to me and
she said, surely you are a man of
God.
I said, have you ever seen me with
my wife?
She said, what?
I said, how can you say I am
a man of God by listening to one
puny sermon?
You must watch.
You must see.
You must look.
Any fool can preach.
But to be like Jesus Christ, that's the
question of my life.
I have got to the point where ministry
matters very, very little to me.
I want you to know it matters very,
very little to me.
Because if I look in the mirror with
accolades hanging off my shoulders and medals around
my neck, but I look in the mirror
and I do not see Jesus Christ.
And I must confess to you that many
times I look in the mirror of God's
word and I do not see Jesus Christ
in Paul Washer.
Then what does all the ministry matter?
What does all the noise and the banging
of drums matter?
The question for me is this.
Am I conformed to the image of Christ?
And not just in the realm of church.
I know how to put on a show
with my wife and with my children.
With your wife and your children, your husband
and your children, those around you, those closest
to you.
That will determine.
That will determine are you clothed with Jesus
Christ?
This is the challenge.
God can win the world.
God can do all sorts of things.
God does not need me.
But he commands me to be like his
son.
And that is all.
And my dear friend, that is enough.
That is enough.
Now what does it mean to be clothed
with Jesus Christ?
We're going to go back to our principal
text now.
I want us to go to Matthew chapter
5.
Look in verse 13.
Matthew chapter 5 verse 13.
You are the salt of the earth.
Now I want to put special attention just
for a moment on something.
You are.
It is an affirmation.
He does not say that the Christian is
to become.
He does not even say in this point
that the Christian is to act like.
He says you are.
What we have to realize today.
There's a very important word in philosophy.
Comes from a Greek word ontos.
It is ontology.
It is the study of being.
Today we are too much about what we
do.
And not enough about who we are.
What we are.
What am I?
Who am I?
Am I like Christ?
Am I this?
In my own life.
And even before you today.
I appear much more spiritual than I actually
am.
It's not about what I do.
It's about who I am.
Being in the very depths.
The core of my person.
Says you are the salt of the earth.
But if the salt has become tasteless.
How can it be made salty again?
It is no longer good for anything except
to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by
men.
This text terrifies me.
It truly does that.
Now we all know of the doctrine of
the perseverance of the saints.
But at the same time, we cannot deny
that throughout Scripture we are warned to be
careful.
We are warned to be careful.
Now when this text is usually preached, it's
all about doing something.
We're the salt of the earth.
So as the salt of the earth, we
need to get out of the salt shaker.
We need to be this influence in the
world.
We need to do all these things.
I would like to submit to you that
that's not the contextual interpretation of the text.
When you pull a verse out and simply
use it as a cliche.
Lose its meaning.
I want us to look at what he's
saying.
He says you are the salt of the
earth.
But if the salt has become tasteless.
How can it be made salty again?
Now the point that he is making is
this.
Now I'm not a chemist.
As a matter of fact, I didn't do
very well in chemistry at the University of
Texas.
But there are certain properties.
Elements, if you will.
To salt.
If you take away those elements, you might
and replace even put something better in their
place.
You might have a fine thing, but you
no longer have salt.
There are certain characteristics of salt.
And if you take those characteristics away, it's
no longer salt.
So what is he telling us?
There is certain.
There are certain characteristics.
To being Christian.
That cannot be replaced.
They are principle and necessary elements of what
it means to be Christian.
And those things cannot be replaced.
Without making the name Christian.
Without meaning.
Now we ask ourselves, well, what are these
necessary elements?
To Christian.
To being Christian.
Not to doing Christian things, but what are
the necessary elements to being Christian?
Now this is not how do we enter
into the Christian life.
We enter into the Christian life through faith
in Jesus Christ.
But once we're there, what is it really
all about?
It seems like every week it comes down
the pike.
Some new teaching about what Christianity is really
all about.
But what is it really all about?
According to Jesus.
Well, he's just laid for us that there
are certain characteristics.
To Christian.
To being Christian.
But if those characteristics are removed.
Oh, my friend.
As the English say, you might have a
fine thing.
But you don't have Christianity.
So what are they?
Now do we have to just ramble all
through the Bible and pick out certain verses?
No, again, context.
What does it mean to be Christian?
What does God want from you?
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the gentle.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the pure in heart.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are those who have been persecuted for
the sake of righteousness.
I have just described the clothing, the fabric,
the fragrance of Jesus Christ.
I am so tired of just doing.
So tired of having my Christian life reduced
down to how I perform and what I
do.
Jesus Christ comes to me.
His yoke is easy.
And his burden is light.
And he tells me this.
It is not what you do.
For I can raise up rocks to do
what you do and do better than you
do.
But it is Paul.
The seal I have set upon you.
The decree and the hope is that you
be conformed to my image.
That you be conformed.
That is what he desires.
And I submit to you today that all
the problems, if not all, most of the
problems in your life come from who you
are not.
From your character.
Who you are as a person.
Our squabbles in our marriages come from fleshly
outbursts.
They come from not reflecting Jesus Christ.
The problem between brothers.
The problem in life.
The problem in the destruction of our own
conscience.
Everything comes down from we are not putting
enough emphasis where emphasis belongs.
And it is on becoming like Jesus.
Everybody wants to do something when we ought
to be wanting to be something.
Now I want you to look at something
that is very important in verses 1 and
2.
When Jesus saw the crowds he went up
on the mountain.
And after he sat down his disciples came
to him.
He opened his mouth and began to teach
them saying.
Now there is something very important here.
Something extremely important.
Have you ever been to Jerusalem?
There just aren't a whole lot of mountains.
If we were in Colorado right now this
church most definitely would not be called High
Point.
You're not really sitting on a very high
point.
There are not many mountains in Jerusalem.
Yet Matthew, inspired by the Holy Spirit, uses
the word mountain.
He says Christ came up on a mountain.
And why is he doing that?
I'll tell you exactly why he's doing it.
Matthew was written to the Jews.
And Matthew is telling the Jewish people.
Now listen to me.
The one prophesied.
The prophet.
The one greater than Moses has come.
He's gone up on the mountain.
He opens his mouth.
And God says this is my son.
Hear ye him.
What Matthew is doing for us is he's
saying.
The one greater than Moses has come with
a law greater than the law of Moses.
He's not going to lower the bar.
He's going to raise it.
But he's going to raise it.
Not in a rule keeping legalistic sort of
fashion.
As we go through the teachings of Christ.
He's going to raise it in this way.
It's going to come down to one thing.
There's an old pastor who.
Well he's not that old.
If he hears this message he'll be mad
at me.
But there's a pastor who's been a mentor
of mine for years.
Now I know men who have PhDs all
over the world and everything else.
This man pastors a church of about 80
people.
God's got his hand on his life like
no one I've ever met.
And he always tells me this.
He'll tell me Paul.
In the new covenant.
Love is not a thing.
It is the thing.
And everything Christ commands us comes down to
this royal law.
Of loving God and loving your neighbor.
And being conformed to the image of Christ.
Not on a mountainside where it's easy.
But in the context of a bunch of
people who are not very easy to love.
This greater than Moses.
This captain of the hosts of God.
Is now standing before us.
The scribe of scribes.
The teachers.
Let me just share with you something.
Jesus makes this quite clear.
There's never been a real teacher.
Except one.
And it's Christ.
There's never been a real prophet.
There are all types.
Of one greater than themselves.
Christ.
There has never been on this earth a
real king.
Except for Christ.
Hear ye Him.
Recognize His voice and hear ye Him.
He speaks to you through His word.
But this king is going to come to
you.
With words quite different than you ever imagined.
Words that at first will seem almost easier
than the law of Moses.
And then as you grow you'll begin to
understand.
These are the most difficult sayings I have
ever heard.
They cost more for me.
Than the law of Moses ever could.
Let me just give you a brief example.
Law of Moses says tithe.
Law of Christ says if your brother's sinning
you sell everything you have and give it
to him.
Law of Moses says give God a day.
Jesus said give Him every moment of your
life.
Every beat of your heart that does not
beat unto the glory of God is apostate.
You see how the standards raised?
We're throwing out all the elementary principles of
the law.
Because why?
There's no need for shadows when the light
has come.
When the star and the sun have appeared.
And Christ is both bringing light to day
and night.
Now the rule is this.
Love each other as Christ loved you dying
on a tree.
That's why so many people would rather go
back to rule keeping.
Now let's look at these characteristics.
We won't have time to go through all
of them.
But maybe we'll get through some of them.
Blessed.
You know, I've studied this word.
I remember about 150 years ago when I
was in seminary.
Just, you know, we had to do this
entire sermon on the mountain Greek.
And looking at this word and sitting there
with Greek scholars and such.
And no one ever could really come up
with a meaning.
Well, I've got one.
It's not very proper.
It's not very eloquent.
But the term blessed just seems to be
God's face looking my way.
Please.
That's not.
Why do we think that blessed has to
mean all these things?
Isn't God enough?
A dear friend of mine was preaching in
Romania and was speaking about heaven.
And I was sitting there and I cried
through the whole message.
I just, I sat there and I go,
This is wonderful because the whole thing was
the glories of Christ.
That's all he talked about was the glories
of Jesus Christ.
The presence of Jesus Christ.
The life of Jesus Christ.
And when he was done, a man raised
his hand and said, This is wonderful, but
what else do we get?
And I saw that old preacher just, his
heart just break in two.
You've understood nothing.
Blessedness is God looking down upon you.
My little boy Ian is three years old.
He doesn't do a whole lot right.
But when he does do something right, I
can be assured he's going to look up.
Did you see that, Dad?
Look hard because it probably won't happen again.
Blessedness.
Divine favor.
This is my son.
I'm pleased.
Big cars and fine houses and prosperity teaching
is kind of weak in light of just
having God look at you with light in
his face.
Another way you could look at it is
take all the blessings, all the good things
of God that come down from the Father
of life, put them all in a bag.
And that's what this means.
That's what this means.
How much blessedness do you and I miss
out on?
Not because we haven't done ten things to
the victorious Christian life.
Not because we haven't had our quiet time.
But we miss out on it because we
have not grown in character.
We have not grown in conformity to Jesus
Christ.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Poor.
We don't like that word.
We live in the Roman Empire.
We brag about steel and metal.
Strength and brawn.
Power.
Don't tread on me.
Pride.
Wealth.
Fame.
Reputation.
Status.
Some of you possibly tasted of that.
Doesn't taste very good.
Poor.
Humble.
Broken.
Servant.
Unassuming.
Someone you would just pass over quickly.
Poor in spirit.
What does it mean?
Well, let me just read a passage to
you.
It is one of my, as my little
boy says, most favoritest verses in the whole
Bible.
I think I remember where it is.
Thus says the Lord, Heaven is my throne
and the earth is my footstool.
Where then is the house you could build
for me?
He says, I don't need a thing from
you.
Now, to some of you, that might be
offensive.
To me, that makes me very, very happy.
And where is the place that I may
rest?
For my hand made all these things.
Thus all these things came into being, declares
the Lord.
But to this one I will look.
To him who is humble and contrite of
spirit.
Who trembles at my word.
You see, if it was any other way,
there'd be no hope for me.
I don't know about you, but for me,
there'd be no hope.
If he said, I will look to this
one.
The one with an exemplary prayer life and
who knows the word of God like the
back of his hand.
If he said that, there'd be no place
for me to go.
If he said the one bold and courageous
who can stand against the enemies without fear.
Again, there would be no place for me
to go.
If he said the man of great faith,
able to believe great things.
Then I'd have to go somewhere else.
That's not what he says.
He says to this one.
Who's humble and contrite of spirit and who
trembles at my word.
And why is he this way?
Because he knows he's not.
He knows he's not spiritual.
As he ought to be.
He knows he's not right.
He looks at God's word.
And he says, my failings, my shortcomings, my
everything about me.
And yet faith.
Causes him not to fall into despair.
Because he looks into the face of Christ.
I had a seminary student write me a
while back.
He said, and I know this young man,
he's very godly.
It seems he's immature like young men are.
But he's got God's hand on his life.
And he said, Brother Paul, I'm just so
unholy and unrighteous and so ignorant of the
things of God.
And I have the gift of mercy.
So I wrote him back.
And I said, young man, you are much
more ignorant and much more unholy than you
now know.
He wrote me back and said, thanks.
I think.
And I called him up and I said,
listen.
I said, I've looked at your life and
much of the way you live convicts me.
Of how as an older prophet I have
become dull.
I said, young man, you're probably more spiritual
than I am.
We'll know probably about it.
But I said, young man, I'm happier than
you are.
And he said, I don't understand.
Now listen to me.
This might set some of you free.
Do you ever get up in the morning
and you have your quiet time and feel
the presence of God?
And you're studying the Word and God seems
to speak to you.
And then, you know, you go out and
you witness to everybody and you're obedient.
And boy, you just you did it right
that day.
I mean, you were just on top of
the world.
You loved your wife.
You didn't kick the cat.
You're just you're walking with God.
And you're so full of joy at the
end of the day.
And the next day you get up.
Well, you overslept.
You shouldn't have watched that program the night
before.
You should have been in the Word.
You didn't witness when you had an opportunity.
And there's a real sense in which you're
filled with sorrow.
You know what that is?
Idolatry.
You have become the source of your own
joy.
Your joy comes from you and your continuous
work.
My joy comes from the finished work of
Jesus Christ.
Now, I want to be obedient.
I want to witness.
I want to love my wife.
And there is a real sense in which
the Holy Spirit convicts me when I do
not do those things.
But the point is, poverty of spirit is
a wonderful thing because when you realize...
It's like I used to tell young preachers.
I'd say, in order to preach, you've got
to have the power of God on your
life.
Now I tell them, in order to tie
your shoes, you have to have the power
of God on your life.
You cannot breathe.
Sometimes I get invited to church growth conferences.
Not very often.
But they'll talk about all these great things
they're going to do.
And then I'll get up and I'll say,
let me ask you a question.
I go, from where does every breath come?
From God.
Where does every beat of your heart, from
where does it come?
From God.
Oh, so you characters out here, all you
pastors and preachers and evangelists and missionaries with
all these great plans.
Now tell me something.
You can't even breathe.
Your heart will not even beat.
Except for the power of God on your
life.
Apart from any measure of grace in my
life, I will be here to you today.
Nothing more than a seething demonstration of egotistical
flesh.
That's all I will ever be.
I was reading through Galatians this morning.
And I was so convicted.
I was reading through Galatians and it talked
about dissension and disputes, things like that.
And I realized that sometimes I do that
with my wife.
And it just showed me, it wasn't that,
well, you know, we just have a problem
or we don't agree.
Fact of the matter is, I'm in the
flesh.
I'm in the flesh.
And I'm not relying upon the power of
God.
And the reason why I'm not is because
I'm not poor in spirit.
Someone says, well, I'm poor in spirit.
How much do you pray?
How much do you tremble?
How much do you rely upon the wisdom
of God revealed in His Word?
Poverty of spirit.
But isn't it wonderful, church?
Listen to me.
Isn't it wonderful that you don't have to
be something big?
Actually, what you have to be is something
low.
Something broken and humble.
Take the back seat.
Wash the feet.
Be timid and afraid of any task put
before you.
So that it drives you to your knees.
Realize when you wake up in the morning
that I shall not move to my left
or my right one quarter of an inch
because without the power of God upon my
life, surely I will fall.
That's what the passage means in the prayer.
Lead us not into temptation.
It's a recognition of weakness and a recognition
of a tremendous need of grace.
Grace.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
is the kingdom.
Oh, what a place.
What a place.
You know, back when I was a young
man, not so much preaching about it anymore,
but people used to preach all the time
about crowns.
You know, crowns.
You're going to get your crowns.
There's this crown of evangelism.
There's this crown of this and a crown
of that.
I always wondered, would I really want to
walk throughout all of eternity with like 400
pounds of crowns on my head?
Do you remember when Jesus said the first
will be last and the last will be
first?
When the first is last and last is
first, there is no first or last.
You draw a rabbinical circle.
I am an itinerant Bible preacher.
That's all I am.
No one's ever going to know your name
either.
You're not big.
You're not Charles Spurgeon.
You're not George Whitefield.
You're not a great theologian.
You haven't swum across swamps in the Amazon
to preach the gospel.
You're just you.
So what does that mean, this kingdom of
heaven?
Is it a place that you almost ought
to dread because, well, there's a pecking order
there?
You know, there's these big shots.
And then there's you.
You know, there's all places.
There are places that all of us can't
go.
You realize that.
I mean, I remember I was no good
at sports.
You know, I never got picked for the
team.
Felt bad about that.
There's certain places I don't go because I
don't have the reputation.
I don't have the money.
There's all these places where I'm shut out.
There's this pecking order in this world where
I always have to take at least fifth
or sixth or seventh place or down at
the bottom or something.
And many people think that that same thing
is going to be carried over into heaven.
Well, you know, when I get to heaven,
I won't even see George Whitfield or Charles
Spurgeon or anybody like that because they'll be
so close to the throne and I'll just
have a cabin on a hillside somewhere.
Do you really think heaven is that demonic?
Kingdom of heaven brings such joy to me
because it is a place where the poor
and spirit finally find rest and absolute acceptance.
Let me tell you something.
If you're a Christian, you finally walked through
a door where there's no longer any pecking
order and where you no longer have to
be anybody.
And you don't have to score a perfect
score or anything else because everybody is only
there because of Jesus Christ.
That is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful place to
be.
I had a pastor friend of mine one
time is also a teacher, a wonderful Bible
teacher.
And he looked at a group of of
us who were young students and he said,
how many of you have been called to
preach and raised our hands?
He says, first of all, he says, I'm
not the prophet or the son of a
prophet, but I can conclude this from your
calling into the ministry.
There's something terribly wrong with every one of
you.
He could not have spoken any clearer with
regards to many broken.
People, at first you get into Christianity and
you think, boy, you know, I need to
do this and I need to do that.
And well, there are things we need to
do.
But then you get this idea that, well,
the kingdom of heaven isn't much different than
the kingdoms of this world have been shut
out of most of them.
My dear friend, it's not that way.
The young person baptized here today has the
same status and glory as the greatest missionary
who ever walked on the face of the
earth.
I like that.
Maybe if you're in first place, you don't
like that.
But if you're in last place where I
usually come in, you like that a lot.
Freedom from these morbid chains that the world
puts upon us and find no place at
all in genuine Christianity.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.
Wow.
You say, well, I can't wait.
Well, then don't, because he's talking about now.
Oh, I can't wait till I get there.
You're already there.
It doesn't mean that because you're already there,
there's no trials, no sicknesses, no struggling with
finances, no other things like that.
It means this because you're already there means
this.
This is eternal life.
You know him now and he knows you.
And that is not.
That's not.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Why are we so in our generation of
wanting to have self-esteem?
We are so afraid of this word.
Mourn, so afraid.
Oh, my dear friend, God wants us to
be whole and complete, but we will never
be whole and complete by molding some false
self-esteem in us.
We will be molding complete as we look
into his face and forget about ourselves and
look to him.
But what does this mean to mourn?
Blessed are those who mourn.
Let's say that I have a statue of
this man right here in stone, stone statue.
I can walk up to that stone statue
and reach under that tender part of the
human arm and pinch with all my might.
And what's going to happen?
Absolutely nothing.
Why?
He's inanimate.
It's a stone.
Has no life in it at all.
But now, if I reach over and grab
that man by the back of his arm,
that man in the flesh right there and
I pinch with all my might, I am
sure we will have a fantastic reaction out
of our brother.
Why living mourning could be the greatest evidence
of true conversion simply means this a sensitivity
to sin.
First of all, your own.
And second of all, the sin of this
sinful fallen world around you.
I was preaching a while back in Tennessee
and some people got sort of angry with
me.
I preach in a lot of places once
and they actually these group of ladies and
they were leaders.
They came up to me and they said,
brother boy, we're having a real spiritual battle
here.
We're just a debate.
We're kind of we're in division and we
don't know what really God would think about
this.
And we just want to hear from you.
And I said, well, I'll do my best.
What's the question?
I'm bracing myself for some tremendous theological question
that would probably take hours of study.
And they said, we don't know whether or
not it's the will of God that we
take our daughters to a Britney Spears concert.
I look at him, I said, you're all
lost.
You're lost and you're going to hell.
Now, I said that, please understand, I didn't.
I said that in a nice way.
OK, I mean, I.
But the fact of the matter is, I
said, you have no sensitivity.
Sensitivity to sin.
You know, one of the marks of true
Christianity, according to First John, chapter one, is
not that the believer is sinless, but that
the believer recognizes sin.
Let me give you a perfect example.
There have been times here when when the
pastor has preached, I'm not sure, because the
man who preaches the word of God, when
the pastor is preached and the Holy Spirit
has been moving in people's lives and begin
to deal with people about sin.
Is that not true?
That's happened.
Isn't it amazing?
And if there are pastors here, they're all
recognized that this is true.
Isn't it amazing that when a pastor preaches
a message and God begins to do a
special sovereign work dealing with sin in the
lives of the congregation, it is always the
most holy, most devoted and most godly people
in the church who come forward weeping and
broken over sin.
And it is always the most ungodly, carnal,
wicked church members that sit back there cold
as a stone.
Why is there?
We're seeing the difference between church membership and
conversion.
The one thing about a believer is they
will be sensitive to sin.
Now, sometimes as believers, we can become dull
and we will need the rebuke of another
and all sorts of things like that.
But in the end, we will have a
sensitivity to sin and God who began a
good work in us will finish it and
bring us some morning, even if he has
to use extraordinary means.
I remember it was probably 15 years ago.
I was preaching a sermon and I want
to tell you.
It was it was powerful.
And when I finished the sermon, a dear
brother, an older, older Christian in the congregation,
I stepped down and he said, Paul, you
look at me like this.
He said, you preach the truth today.
And you did it in the flesh and
you need to get down on your knees
right now and ask God to forgive you
because God did not place a whip in
your hand to kill the people of God.
You know what?
He was absolutely right about me and I
didn't see it when I walked down those
steps, but I saw it when he told
me that.
Let me ask you a terrifying question.
When was the last time you wept over
your sin?
You say, well, I haven't fallen.
My friend, no one falls.
We slide.
You say, well, I haven't done the big
stuff.
Everything's big stuff.
Being insensitive to my wife needing to hear
I love you and a hug before I
walk out the door is big stuff.
When was the last time you wept?
When was the last time you were broken?
When?
I can only draw two conclusions.
If you haven't been one, you're perfect.
Or two, your heart, like mine does many
times, has become dull.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Now, why are they blessed?
This is very, very important.
And we're going to end here.
I was hoping to get through a lot
more, but we'll stop here.
Why is a person blessed in the Scriptures?
We understand there's a repentance unto life and
a repentance unto death.
We know that Peter had a repentance unto
life.
Judas had a repentance unto death, was not
mixed with faith and all sorts of other
things.
But here's the wonderful thing.
If you study the prophets, man, sometimes they
said things to Israel that literally I don't
feel comfortable even speaking about in mixed company.
And if you look at it in Hebrew,
you're really going to see some fantastic things
that they said.
Even Paul, the apostle in the book of
Galatians, makes a few statements that literally will
curl your toes.
But here's the wonderful thing about the mark
of a true prophet of God speaking a
true message of God.
He might come down like a hammer.
He might burn like a fire.
But God will never leave his people without
saying this comes to me.
And I will take it all away.
Come to me and I will fix you.
Come to me.
I am not done with you.
Come to me.
This is how the Christian life works.
Now, this is about as close I get
to a dramatic sermon as you're going to
see.
You begin the Christian life.
How do you begin it?
You begin it with a revelation.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is revealed to
you primarily through preaching.
You see God's holiness that you've never seen
it before, which causes you to see your
sin as you've never seen it before.
But in that revelation, you are not brought
to despair because although you see a revelation
of God and his holiness and a revelation
of your sin.
You also see a revelation of the grace
of God in the face of Christ and
you do not fall into despair, but you
run to Christ, the city of refuge.
All right.
And he makes all things new.
All right.
Now, after you become a Christian, here's a
unique thing that will happen.
You will think you're about the holiest thing
going.
I remember as soon as I became a
Christian, I would go out on 6th Street
and preach.
Man, I thought I was the prophet.
Prophet.
Muppet, maybe.
The prophet.
You know, and I'd look at preachers who
wouldn't preach on the streets and all these
things and fasting and prayer.
And boy, I thought I was just it.
And so God began to do what God
always does.
He began to work death in my life.
He began to pull back and show me
what I really am.
That's why if you talk to a man
of God who's walked with God for 60
years, he will see himself as much more
unholy now than he did when he first
started.
But he will be happier now.
And this is how it works.
As you begin to walk with Christ and
you truly begin to understand him and understand
his character and his grace, you begin to
see as you walk with him more and
more of the holiness of God.
You begin to see more and more of
your own failings, which leads you to greater
and greater and deeper mourning.
But you also see greater, greater revelations of
his grace that picks you up higher than
you've ever been.
And you continue that all throughout your Christian
life so that at the end of your
days, you are more sensitive over sin.
You are mourning greater over the small things
that you would have even dismissed when you
began.
But at the same time, you're happier because
it is all in the face of Christ.
It is all Christ, just Jesus, just Jesus.
I had a young man one time and
I didn't want to put out his fire.
He said, Jesus is all we need.
I said, young man, Jesus is all we
have.
That's all.
Now, I'm not going to give an invitation.
This is why I give invitations, but I'm
not going to give one now.
This is why I don't want you to
take 45 minutes worth of preaching and think
that the spirit of God is done with
you because psychologically you've left it on an
altar.
I don't want you to leave it on
an altar.
I want you to take this home.
I want the Holy Spirit to bother you.
I wanted to deal with you.
I wanted to be looking back at you
every time you see your reflection.
I want you to sit down and ponder
these things.
I don't want you just to superficially listen
to this and let it go, walk out
the door and go eat it.
You know, Ruby Tuesdays.
I want you to meditate on these things.
I mean, after all, if I had to
suffer this stuff all morning, surely you can
suffer it for an afternoon.
Pray with your husband, pray with your wife,
gather your children together.
Think about this.
Sit silent.
The psychologist, you one time said that hurry
is not of the devil.
It is the devil.
And I don't agree with him because I
believe in a personal devil.
But he had a truth in there.
Your hurry, busyness.
Truncates spiritual life.
So I'll pray and just ask God to
help us because we need help.
We need help.
Let's pray.
Father, please help us.
Help us to be like Christ in the
hidden places.
Help us to be like Christ among the
people who know us best.
Whatever it takes, Lord.
And it may take a lot.
Make us like Jesus.
In Jesus name.
Amen.