Matthew chapter 5.
And seeing the multitudes, he went up unto
a mountain, and when he was said, his
disciples came unto him.
And he opened his mouth, and he taught
them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit,
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.
We'll hold it there, because we already know
we're not going to get that far.
But let's pray, and we'll look at it.
Lord Jesus, how we thank you that when
we come before you, we come before the
God of time and eternity.
The God who loves us, the God who
created us, and Lord desires us to know
the greatest joy in all the world.
That no one outside of you will ever
even dream of a joy like you have,
of a happiness like you know.
And Lord, how we thank you, and we
praise you that that's the joy that you
have for us.
And Lord, as we look at it tonight,
I pray that even if we look at
all the creature human joys that we're so
often enticed by, Lord, may you give to
us the capacity to look and say, I
want to see your joy, and Lord, how
we thank you, we can set all the
other joys right next to yours, and hands
down, yours is deep and rich and pure
and real.
And Lord, we ask that you would make
us to know that.
For Father, we ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, as we have been seeing so far
through the first three Beatitudes, is that the
first three, essentially, you might call them negative.
Essentially, ultimately, they're all positive, because that's how
they all work out.
But through the process of it, the coming
to happiness, and remember, once again, the Beatitudes
are not, they don't constitute happiness in and
of themselves.
The word blessed means, oh, how happy, as
we have said, you know, reminded ourselves each
time.
But the greatest happiness in the world, here
it's broken down into its parts.
Essentially, all of the attributes, you might say,
of true, deep, profound happiness.
And that's the greatest joy that the human
soul can ever know.
The greatest happiness that any be, any person
ever will ever discover, is right here.
And here Jesus says, the first three of
them, as we've already looked at, but just
to reflect for a moment, there that, oh,
how happy are the poor in spirit.
Oh, how happy are they who mourn.
And oh, how happy are the meek.
Now, these are things that none of them
are difficult to have.
Anybody can have any of these anytime they
want to.
All you need to do is stand before
God.
One day, every, one day, everybody will stand
before God.
And even people that have never known poverty
of spirit, they'll never, never have mourned, maybe,
before.
And there'll never have been a meekness in
their life.
I'll tell you, these three will be there.
When you look at the book of Revelation,
you realize there that one day, you see
this awesome line.
It tells us there, before the throne of
God, the great white throne, the judgment seat
of Christ, and he says, and there I
saw the small and the great, the great
and the small.
Imagine this line of people, all of the
great leaders, all of the great rulers, all
the great kings and princes, all the great
of wealth and power and fame and fortune,
all the great athletes that the world admired.
You see all the great and all the
small, all just in line together, and none
of them are even thinking about each other.
They're all standing before God.
And standing before God, every one of them
will have realized the utter poverty of spirit
that they all have.
They'll realize next to God's power and his
majesty and his glory and his throne and
his eternality, his whole being there, as you
just stand before it, any man who will
ever find himself, be measuring himself by God,
he'll always be poor in spirit.
He can't do anything else but doing that.
Jesus once told the Pharisees, he says, you
know, you measure yourselves by one another.
In most of the world, it's always measuring
itself and it's, you know, by one another
and the human pecking order of, you know,
life in one way or another.
But when a person stands before God, they'll
always be poverty, poor of spirit.
It'll also produce an instant sense of mourning.
Not only when they see the absolute poverty,
but there will be a mourning over the
sinful state they're in.
The sin in their own life that has
brought this on and kept this and sustained
that poverty stricken spirit all through their life.
They stayed poor in spirit because they never
mourned over it.
And then they'll look there and realize their
sinful state, their separation from God and they
will mourn.
And that will produce some meekness.
There's a lot of people that don't think,
you know, it's hard to be humble when
you're as great as I am, so the
little button says and some people think.
But when a person there who's never been
maybe humbled and never been meek in this
life, they'll be it before God.
And here essentially what is happening, the first
three you might say they've been negative, I
suppose.
But they're not really.
But they're wonderful.
They're keys to life and something there that
when we discover them, it's a great blessing.
But then from now on you might say
they're positive.
But the first three have been kind of
an emptying.
They've been kind of a draining.
Anybody there that kind of goes through these
first three, they exhaust you, they kill you,
they wound you, they grieve you, they bring
great sorrow to a heart if a person
really allows themselves to stand before God.
But that's part of God's work.
And we on one hand, we say, Lord,
you restore our soul, you resurrect our life,
you regenerate our spirit, you're there to do
all these wonderful things.
But when you stop with thinking about restoring
a soul, you always have to strip it
first.
In a sense, if you've ever thought, if
any of you have ever restored anything, maybe
some of you restore furniture.
And what do you have to do with
that furniture?
Maybe some of you restore cars.
I have a brother and brother-in-law,
both loved restoring cars.
They'll get these old cars that are in
kind of shape that nobody else may want
them.
But then they'll take them and then virtually
every nut and every bolt will come off
it.
The paint is all stripped off, the engine
is completely taken apart, and it's all ground
down and the valves and the pistons and
everything within it all redone and everything is
stripped and ground and grinded down to virtually
nothing, down to bare bone.
And then when you're restoring it, then you
start putting it back together again.
If you're really going to restore something, and
as Christians, I look and say, I want
a restored life.
Well, the only way I can have a
restored life is allow my life, first of
all, to be stripped.
If I can just like a, you know,
God looks at me and he says, here
you were created in my image and you've
fallen a long way from it.
You need to be restored, to be regenerate,
to be renewed.
All these words in the Bible.
But they all suggest there the process of
restoration as we know it in the rest
of our life.
You've got to strip it.
You've got to cleanse it.
You've got to break it down.
You get to sand it and grind it
and get down to the core of it
before you can then build it back up.
And when a person will allow their heart
to be broken, when they allow themselves to
be stripped down, then is when God begins
to do wonderful things.
Because one of the wonderful things you see
in the Bible, when you look at all
God's great leaders that we look at, the
great saints of old of the Bible, you
realize with all of them, God always pretty
much does the same thing.
It seems if God always reduces a man
to a minimum and then he puts in
the maximum, but not until he's reduced.
Every one of them, he takes them down
to the core.
He takes them down to brokenness.
He takes them down to absolute surrender, to
great meekness and humility before God.
And whether or not it's not my mother
and my father, it's nobody else I'm blaming.
It's not my neighbor, it's me.
And until we know this, until we discover
it, the filling, I don't think it's as
real as it could be.
In any work that God still goes on
to do, it's nothing, it's all based on
the ability of somebody to allow somebody to
take it down.
And the farther it'll be willing to go
down to humility and to brokenness, the greater
the life will come.
But until that brokenness, until we almost despair
of life in and of itself, we're not
really ready to have another life and to
grasp on to it, I don't believe.
One of the most wonderful experiences, I look
back on it, it wasn't wonderful at the
time, but in the 60s, I was going
to a Bible school in England.
I was a new Christian.
I was determined.
I really wanted to serve God.
I was starting to try to get things
together.
And I had actually been accepted to a
seminary here in the United States.
But when I saw all the courses, a
lot of which you couldn't even pronounce, hermeneutics,
homiletics, pneumatology, and all these things, and I
had no idea what they were.
And I even read the description of them.
And at the time, I thought, I don't
need this stuff.
I don't even know the Bible yet.
And I need to know the Bible.
And I ended up going to a Bible
school in England, where five hours a day,
they taught the Bible.
And there as I sat, and I would
take notes in class, and then I would
record it.
And then I'd go listen to it afterwards.
I'd also get up every morning.
And I had this little prayer journal that
I'd put together.
And I had this daily reading that I
would do.
I was convinced that with this year of
my life, I was going to so dedicate
myself to God, that as a consequence of
this year, my life was going to be
transformed.
I was going to be God's gift to
the 20th century, you know, or something.
I don't know what it was, but I
wanted to be something there.
And so I was giving it everything I
knew, everything I had.
From the moment the alarm went off, and
all through the day, there wasn't really any
other interest, any other pursuit.
I wanted to know God, and I wanted
to know the Bible.
And then I wanted to be able to
come away from there and do something with
it.
So I'd get up, and I'd pray.
And then I'd go to class, and I'd
write, and I'd study.
And then after class, I'd take my tapes
out, and I'd go over them.
And I'd think, and I'd study.
And this had gone on for a couple
of months, we'd been there.
And after about a couple of months, one
day, I got tremendously depressed.
So depressed, I stopped going to class.
I didn't get up to pray.
My wife immediately knew something was wrong.
And then, next thing you know, it's kind
of, it was a small school, maybe 120
students at the most.
And I've always seemed to have been a
person that somehow or another makes people notice
me, I guess.
But somehow or another, you know, it kind
of got out that I was having a
problem, and people would talk, and I'd just
ignore.
I didn't go to class.
And I got very depressed.
I kind of thought I knew why, but
I wasn't sure.
But I came to my wife, and I
said, we're going home.
I'm through.
I've had it.
And she talked to me, wanted to know
why, and I couldn't really tell her.
But I just say, we're, that's it.
We're gonna go home.
And then she came, and she told me,
she said, look, we've sold everything we have.
We don't have anything to go home to.
And then we told everybody, the family and
friends, we're gonna go off and learn how
to serve God.
And now we just got enough money to
go back home.
Are you sure you want to do this?
What are you gonna tell them?
Well, at that point, it's not often pride
saves somebody, but I, because I thought, well,
man, I don't want to go look bad
there, too.
And so I decide, all right, I'm gonna
give it a week.
I told her, I'll think about it for
a week.
But still that week, I didn't do anything,
and I already went to anything, and just
drug through.
And then the night before, I was going
to get the tickets.
I woke up, couldn't sleep virtually all night,
at about three or four in the morning.
There, out of one last act of desperation
or something, I grabbed my Bible, and I
grabbed my little prayer journal that I'd written
all these little gems down, that kind of,
you know, excited me when I heard them.
And I took the best tapes of any
of the sermons that I'd heard, and I
took them, and I went down to the
lecture hall in the corner where I'd oftentimes
go, and it was dark and quiet.
And there I started listening to these things,
and reading these things, and meditating on these
things.
An hour went by, and two hours went
by, and three and four.
Finally, it was time for breakfast, and everybody
was up and moving around, and school was
going.
And I'm turning things off, and putting my
tape player away, and folding up my Bible.
And as I'm about to walk away, I'm
just, here, I'm gonna go back home.
And I was so depressed I was so
frustrated, because, you see, what had happened is,
I had read the Bible, somehow or another.
I don't know what I'd been thinking, and
what I'd been hearing, but all the way
through it, I was convinced I was supposed
to grow.
I was supposed to become better, and better,
and better, and I wasn't.
And no matter what it was, this was
the plague of our life, I think, all
of us.
I don't know that it ever really, sometimes
lays out there, and we see this.
But my frustration was so intense in this,
and I'm just, finally, I'm walking out, as
I'm going, I, just turning to the Lord,
almost, I said, okay, Lord, I said, listen,
all I know is, is, is, here, I
sold everything, I came over here, and I
thought I did my part on this thing,
and wanted to learn the Bible, and try
to help people.
They live their life, and things, but all
I know is, is that right now, my
life is a lie.
Everything I see, I ought to be.
And the quality, and the depth, and the
life of power, that ought to be there
within me, it isn't there.
And I've given it my best.
I haven't, I didn't, to me, I hadn't
felt like I'd laid anything back, and I'd,
had everything that there was to give, to
do my part.
And I'm there, and thought, why in the
world should I go on preaching a lie?
Wanting to preach a lie.
Doesn't work.
I believe you died, and I believe you're
real, but it doesn't work for me.
And why spend the rest of my life
preaching a lie?
And I'm walking away, I'm literally turning, and
out of nowhere, but as clear as if
it was audible, the Lord spoke to me,
and He told me, well, I know that.
Just as clear as anything.
I was almost startled.
I've always known that.
And instead, I mean, you're just typical of
my nature, at any rate.
I get angry.
I get upset.
What do you mean, you, you mean you've
always known this?
You've really, I was talking back and forth
with this, you know, sense there, what do
you mean you've known this?
Well, you let me sell everything, and you
let me move over to the other side
of the planet, listen to all this, plan
to go into something, when you knew it
was a lie in me?
Oh, yes.
Always known.
Your flesh has always been a lie, and
it always will be a lie.
But I'm not a lie.
I never have been, and I never will
be.
That's why I'm a live and risen, and
I live within you.
I'm not a lie.
Just you.
And you know, the, it's funny to you,
but it wasn't funny to me.
But the, but it hit me there all
of a sudden, for the first time.
I mean, it's the most interesting thing about
most of us as Christians is, is I
find is that my problems are pretty common
many times.
But in the sense there, the amazing thing
about us is that we will invite the
finest and the only true Christian that's ever
lived, who we believe died on the cross,
rose from the dead, ascended the right hand
of the majesty and high, ever liveth to
make intercession for us.
We will allow him and invite him to
come into our life.
We'll ask him to come in.
We'll invite him in.
Have a seat.
Be my Lord and Savior.
And then we'll turn to him and say,
now watch me be a Christian.
And you know, what an absurd thing to
do.
Here we've already got, you don't need two
Christians in one body, first of all.
You only need one.
And why in the world with the one
that's alive and risen there, you know, do
we spend so much time trying to show
off, or trying to perform, or trying to
achieve, or trying to do anything?
The issue that God is so often waiting
for us to come to is the day
that finally I'll confess I'm a lie.
We'll confess I've been a lie.
I'm a fraud.
I'm a phony.
Leave me to myself and everybody's in trouble.
And here the wonderful thing is, is that's
what the Beatitudes are all about.
It's God saying, I know that about you.
I've always known that about you.
You won't surprise me.
Some of us, sometimes we come to God
as if we've got something to confess to
God.
Hold on.
This is going to be a heavy one.
You know, as if, whoa, we've got a
heavy one here.
You know, or something.
Or we come to God as if, you
know, we're going to surprise him with sin.
You know, and I think someday the surprise
is going to be when God says, you
want to see sin?
I'll show you yours.
And then you'll, you'll be surprised, not me.
But when we come there to where we
really, truly, something happens within our heart, in
our life, where we find ourself poor in
spirit, and we mourn over, and it produces
a humility, a brokenness, a meekness within us.
Those are some of the most wonderful things
that'll ever happen in a human life.
When we finally despair of life as we
know it under our own self-rule, and
it produces a sorrow and an emptiness.
And out of that there is when something
wonderful can happen, when something dies and I'm
crucified with Christ.
You know, all a Christian ought to be
is a dead man on furlough.
But God's waiting for us to die.
You know, he's waiting for something to give
up.
And then thereafter, Jesus has stripped us down,
down to the core.
He's, he's, so he can really do the
work of restoration.
He's got the gunk out and the, you
know, the rust and the corrosion and the,
and the stains and the spots and the
blemishes.
And he's just scrubbing and cleaning and grinding.
And he gets down to the core of
the human soul to where I'm broken and
I'm honest before him.
Then Jesus says, Oh, how happy are they
that hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Let me tell you, one of the things
that's gonna happen to this person.
There is, there's gonna be a hungering.
There is gonna be a thirsting.
But it first starts there with the draining
and the emptying and the truth.
You don't, all you gotta do is stand
before God.
If you're having trouble being humble, well, then
you're measuring yourself by somebody else than God.
If you're having trouble, you know, being poor
in spirit or mourning over your own sin,
then you're standing in the wrong light.
But when we find ourself truly standing before
God, oh, it may hurt.
And we, it will hurt.
Not may hurt, it will.
The sorrow, the realization, I was made in
the glory of God.
I was made in his image.
God said, let us create man after our
own image, for our own likeness.
It, you know, they, by that word image,
it's a wonderful word, image.
But it's, it's, the word essentially, it's a
derived image.
And to be in the image of God,
though, it required, man was a derivative of
God.
He derived his image from God, as in
a mirror.
In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul says, all we
with an unveiled face continuing to behold, we
reflect like mirrors the glory of the Lord.
You and I are in the image of
God.
We are created in the image of God
as, as you would see your image in
a mirror.
Tomorrow morning, when you get up, you go
look in that mirror.
You walk in there, and after you've taken
the first couple minutes in wonder, love, and
praise for what you see, you know, and,
and start the projects of repair, you know,
or whatever else you do.
But all you're going to see is your
image.
You're going to see you, the one that
you're going to spend the next half hour,
that nobody else has to see that one,
you know, painting and plastering and doing that
or else you do.
But, but the thing is, is you're going
to, but that, they all, but it isn't
you, you see, it's a reflected image of
you.
It's a, it's a, a mirrored image of
you.
That's what God made when he made man.
That man was somebody you could look at
him, and you could see what God was
like.
You could see a reflection of him.
You could see his love and his character
and his nature and his joy and his
peace.
It was awesome in there, and, and, and
as man was, that's what the glory that
God made us to have.
But when we sinned, we broke the mirror,
essentially.
But we walked away, and all of a
sudden, you know, there was nobody there who
we reflected him any longer.
But it required God's presence.
Just like tomorrow morning, it'll require you in
the room, if you want to see your
mirror and see you in it, you got
to go to the, you got to go
in the room.
Just try it, just for the fun of
it.
Tomorrow morning after you go in there, smile,
don't say a word to the mirror, don't
tell it what you're going to do, but
just after you stand there for a moment,
just as quick as anything, jump out of
the room and then peek back and see
if you're still there.
If you are, I want one of those
mirrors.
But if you, but if you are, you,
but obviously you're not.
Because it requires your presence.
And that's, that was how God made man,
in such ways that when we require his
presence, when there's something that happens within us
that to live and breathe and move and
have our existence, it's in him.
That's what God wants for man.
And it's only until somehow or another we're
poor in spirit and we're sorrowful and we
mourn and say, God, have you seen what
I've seen in my life?
Oh, yes.
But would you like to see me in
your life?
Because one of the things is after we've
been drained and drained and drained, it'll produce
a wonderful hunger.
It'll produce a hunger as well, a specific
kind of a hunger.
This hunger there will happen, it'll produce a
hunger for righteousness.
Rather than we realize the devastation of sinfulness
and of self and of corruption and of
rebellion and all these things, what they did
to us, now the hunger, it's not just
any hunger that's created, it's a hunger for
righteousness.
And that righteousness, it's not just, you know,
straight dealing, fair play, morality, ethics, you know,
do good.
I mean, that's in part, that's a fruit
of righteousness, it ought to be there.
It's not just respectability and good ethics and
righteousness, hey, I'm going to go out into
God, I'm going to be right, I'm going
to live right and do right.
That all ought to be there.
But here, essentially, this is a righteousness that
comes because a person longs for deliverance from
sin, longs what this did to me, look
what happened, look what my sin and my
rebellion's done to me, look what my self
-righteousness, look what my ego, look what my
pride, look what my independent spirit that needs
no God, that needs no power, that needs
no mercy, needs no forgiveness.
And when I find myself, God, I'm hungry,
and this time I'm hungry, I've been stripped
down and broken down, but I'm hungry, I'm
starved to death, but I'm starved to be
right.
I'm starved for righteousness.
And the wonderful thing here about the righteousness
to me that I believe God's talking about
here is not just superficial righteousness, not just
behavioral righteousness, but spiritual righteousness, which is produced
only by God, produced only by the life
of Christ within me, a righteousness that puts
me right with God and right with, you
know, with his Son, right with his Lordship,
right with the Holy Spirit, right with all
that God wants to be within my life.
This is a righteousness that comes because I'm
before God and saying, I want you, and
I want all of you I can have.
I want to be in right, you know,
heart with you, right attitude, full surrender, full
yieldedness, full offering, full consecration, not just superficial.
Sometimes we can be right, still be wrong,
still be wrong.
Sometimes I find myself, I'll be talking to
somebody and I'm right.
Nobody else agrees, but I know enough to
know I'm right.
I don't need to know an awful lot
to know that, I found through the years,
but have you noticed sometimes, I mean, we've
heard it, we've assessed the situation, and this
is right, and yet at the same time,
you're outside a real communion and fellowship.
with God, not filled with the Spirit, not
in that right place.
You may be technically right.
You may be one that is ethically right
or morally right or what you're talking about
is right, and yet at the same time,
you're not spiritually right.
You know, you're just kind of in that
land where you're right with other people sort
of a thing, in the sense of your
diagnosis or evaluation of life, and this happened,
and this happened, and this is right, and
this is wrong, and this is terrible, and
you know, and all these things are right,
maybe, but that's not righteousness.
Righteousness is somebody that has a right relationship
with God, a right life in His Spirit,
a right yieldedness to the Lordship of Christ,
a right desire for Him to be all
that He wants to be within us, and
when somebody, the person that's got a hunger
for that is a person who's sick and
tired of himself.
He's tired of his mouth, he's tired of
his arrogance, he's tired of his behavior, he's
tired of what he thinks and what he
does and why he does it, the people
that he hurts in the process, and saying,
God, how I'd love to be right.
This is why, Jesus says, this is a
person on the road to joy like you
can't believe.
The person there that wants these qualities, he's
going to be happy, he's going to be
happy and right with God, he's going to
be happy and right with himself, and he's
going to be happy and right with others,
because he longs for it with all of
his heart.
And there, when somebody hungers and thirsts, you
know, there, it's such a wonderful thing.
God wants that within us.
A healthy person is somebody there, just like
if you're a healthy human being, you hunger
and thirst, and then you hunger and thirst
again, and then you hunger and thirst again
and again, until you're filled.
And then you're not hungry and thirsty for
a time, maybe, but you are soon again.
And this is what I believe Jesus is
talking about here, is that there is a
true hunger that comes within somebody after they've
been emptied.
But now there are great hunger and a
great thirst there for God, and to be
filled with God.
And the wonderful thing is, is here he
tells us, he says, these people that hunger
and thirst after righteousness, they shall be filled.
And you might, to me, when you ask,
with what?
Well, essentially, there's only one thing God has
to fill anybody with.
Himself.
That's what he's looking for.
He, his presence was removed from man, and
that's his spirit.
His spirit who was to fill man, who
brooded over man, who took up residence within
his heart and his life, and gave him
the life of God.
Now the spirit of God wants to come
and fill us yet again.
And when somebody there finds God, I want
to be filled with you and with your
spirit.
In Ephesians 5, Paul says, be not drunk
on wine, whereas in excess, but be ye,
you know, being filled.
It's a constant fill, be, it's present progressive
tense, but it means there, there be filled
and then filled and filled.
It's a, it's a continuous thing.
Not that somebody is just filled with the
spirit back in 1974, you know, and now
you're doing still filled.
I don't think so.
You know, the, you maybe had a nice
day in 1974 and other people might have
enjoyed you that day too.
But the thing is, is that this is
something that you constantly desire to have.
It's a continued and continued and continued throughout
our lives to be, to be desiring, to
be present, progressively filled.
God filled me and then filled me again
and again and again.
And it's not just a, it's something that
anybody, whatever you had yesterday, shouldn't make any
difference to you today as far as what
you had with God in one sense.
I imagine today when you got up, you
might've had a nice meal yesterday, but that,
your body didn't care much today about that.
In fact, if you even told your body,
when your body's hungry and said, ah, you
fed, you ate good yesterday.
Your body would tell you very quickly, so
what?
I want more.
You know, and, uh, and you're going to
get it from me or I'm going to
ruin your day.
And, uh, I will, I'll make you moody
and cranky and all sorts of things until
you make me happy.
And however we were filled before, and this
to me, when Jesus said, oh, how happy
are they, the hunger and thirst.
This is a cycle of life.
It's God's created this, not just for an
experience, but constantly there.
Wanting to be filled.
Tonight as we sang, uh, cause me to
come to thy river, oh Lord.
Cause me to drink from thy river, cause
me to live by thy river.
That's something there that we, we constantly, God
longs for us to desire that from him
and from his spirit.
Our heart would be open and longing, uh,
for a great continuous work of his spirit.
The great evangelist of the past, D.L.
Moody.
Uh, he used to always preach constantly about
being filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with
the Holy Spirit.
This need to be refilled again with the
Spirit of God.
A lady came up to him afterwards one
time and said, Mr. Moody, you're always preaching
about the need to be filled again and
again with the Holy Spirit.
Why is that?
He looked at her and he says, woman,
I leak.
And, uh, well, I'm not sure of the
theology of that, but I understand, uh, I
understand the reality of that.
The issue there is that God has created
you and I in such a way that
just as our body hungers and thirsts, and
a healthy body will hunger and thirst again
and again and again, and so too will
the hungry, healthy Christian.
The healthier the Christian, the hungrier, the greater
the thirst.
It's the constant longing, Lord, fill me.
I know you've filled me before.
And I know you've immersed me in your
life and your spirit.
I know you've given me so much, but
I want more.
I can't, I want more of your power
and more of your life.
And there, you know, when somebody's saying, you
know, did the meal work yesterday?
Well, if you're here, probably did.
But what it also means doesn't mean there
that we don't want more.
And I think to me that when we
find ourselves, God, fill me with your spirit.
Fill me with your love.
Fill me with your life.
I need it again and again and again
and again.
And I think the person that longs for
that the most and has the greatest happiness
is the one that also has that when
they mourn over their poverty of spirit, they
mourn over their sins and they're meek.
Sometimes I think the Holy Spirit will do
works with anybody that will open their heart
to him.
But I think the ones that have the
greatest experiences are the ones that have just
despised their own heart, their own life, their
own existence, and have come to find there's
this marvelous substitute that was actually the one
designed to be there in the first place
that we shoved out, took his place and
said, I'll run it.
I'll run it.
It's the flesh.
But when the flesh begins to be poor.
You know, Paul makes an interesting comment to
me in the New Testament.
He says the flesh lusts against the spirit.
And the spirit against the flesh.
Now, I understand why the flesh lusts against
the spirit.
I mean, the spirit has all the qualities.
The flesh sits over here and it rules
and reigns.
But the spirit's got the life and the
power and the love and the joy and
the wisdom and the guidance, the understanding, the
strength, all that's required.
So I understand why the flesh sits over
here with nothing and covets the things of
the spirit.
But why would the spirit ever covet anything
against the flesh?
If it isn't the fact that the flesh
seems to always have the throne.
The flesh has first right of refusal of
thought, plan, behavior.
The flesh kind of sits there constantly saying,
well, let me think it over.
If I'm really in a jam, I may
think about the spirit.
But I'm first.
And to me, the great thing that happens
is when I think that the spirit of
God, he looks over there with all this
life and all this power and all this
love.
And there how he covets, oh, I wish
I could be first.
I wish I could be the one that
you long for and you let speak and
you relied upon and you trusted in instead
of your own flesh.
But the man who's poor in spirit and
he mourns over and he's meek about it,
what he's actually done in that process is
the spirit of God has set the flesh
aside and opened a wonderful cavity within the
soul to reign.
The throne has been, the king flesh has
been dethroned and the spirit is there ready
to move.
And how you and I to be able
to look and say, God, am I poor
in spirit and do I mourn over it?
And is it produced a meekness so much
so as I'm just amazed that you would
want with your Holy Spirit to fill me?
Because I'm sure hungry.
I'm sure thirsty for to be right with
God and right with the spirit of God
and right with the lordship of Christ.
And when we can come and surrender to
him, yielding our life over to Jesus Christ
through the Holy Spirit.
And it's a daily thing, a constant process.
It opens up our life to a whole
new experience.
A whole new discovery, I believe, of Jesus.
A daily discovery of what he's all about.
One day we end up, as somebody once
wrote, discovering daily who God really is.
Thanking him daily, he's mine and I'm his.
Discovering daily God's great love for me, such
mercy and forgiveness, amazingly free.
Discovering daily that God really cares.
Thanking him daily, he does answer prayer.
Discovering daily what grace really means, unmerited favor
beyond all my dreams.
Discovering daily God speaking to me, he speaks
through the Bible once blind, now I see.
Discovering daily each day that I live that
all that I need he freely will give.
Discovering daily Christ working through me, accomplishing daily
what never could be.
Discovering daily that I can't but he can.
Thanking him daily for my place in his
plan.
Discovering daily how real life can be when
I'm living in Christ and he's living in
me.
Discovering daily a song in my heart with
anticipation for each day at its start.
Delighting and basking in love so divine, secure
in the knowledge I'm his and he's mine.
And besides mere contentment, excitement I see, the
daily adventure of Christ alive and living in
me.
That's what he longs for for us.
But the one that knows it the most
is the one that he's hungry and thirsty
to be right.
Maybe that's where you are tonight.
We're going to pray.
But as we do, maybe you realize, God,
I want this joy.
I want this happiness.
I really, truly do.
But realize as well the price that goes
with it.
Alan Redpath tells a story of one time
when he was preaching.
At the end of a sermon, he said
a woman came up to him as he
was standing at the door and she was
just dripping in jewelry as he describes it.
He said, this woman had everything you could
put on somebody it seemed.
And she was the absolute picture of wealth
and accomplishment.
He said, she stood there, though, at the
end and she at the door and she
had tears in her eyes.
And she said, Dr. Redpath, I would give
the world for what you talked about today.
And he smiled and looked at her.
He says, good, because that's exactly what it
costs.
And when you and I, when we would
love to have Lord, I want all you've
got.
I'll give the world for it.
I believe the Lord looks and he says,
good, because that's exactly what it costs.
It'll cost you your world.
And I'll give you mine.
Wouldn't you love to exchange worlds?
You do it by changing thrones.
Let's pray.
Dear Father, how we thank you and we
praise you for your love for us.
And Lord, I thank you that you desire
so much that we would be happy.
I just thank you that you're not some
sort of a chairman of the board of
heaven and dealing in souls, just merely counting
them.
Just stacking up human beings and just tell
them to get in this line and go
through this process and stay out of trouble
or you'll regret it.
But rather than that, you're a father that
you look at us and you're deeply desiring
that we would be immensely happy.
Like any father would just long for his
child.
I long that they would have a joy
unspeakable more than anything.
And Jesus, I thank you that we got
that from you, from your heart, for us.
And Lord, I pray that tonight that you
would open to us the key of real
happiness.
And Lord, to realize that the greatest happiness
is always going to be for the one
that desires to make God happy too.
When we look there and say, God, you
made my life for you.
I'm to be pleasing to you and you're
to sit upon the throne of my life
and you won't be happy until you do.
But God, I won't be happy either.
I'll never know real joy until I have
God on the throne by the power of
his Holy Spirit filling my life.
And Lord, I pray that you would just
take us tonight.
And Lord, may you bring us to that
river.
May we drink from that river.
May we live by that river.
The river of your spirit flowing into our
lives, strengthening us in our homes, our families,
our relationships, our loved ones.
As we go to work, may Lord, a
spirit-filled man, a spirit-filled woman be
living.
Not us imitating you.
Not us trying to be a good Christian
to impress heaven.
But Lord, one that has just simply turned
and said, Jesus, I'm absolutely exhausted.
I'm so tired of being a Christian.
I utterly give up.
And I'm sorry that I've been in the
way.
And I just ask tonight that you just
help me get out of the way and
your Holy Spirit to fill me.
I'm hungry.
I'm thirsty.
For a work of your love, a work
of your spirit to take me, baptize me,
immerse me, fill me with your love and
with your spirit that your joy may overflow.
So, Jesus, we thank you for your love.
We thank you for your word.
We thank you for this sermon.
And now we ask the very reason for
which you gave it would be fulfilled in
us.
Jesus, in your wonderful name we pray.
Amen.