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Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Matthew 5.  Matthew 5 is gonna be our home for the next nine weeks.  And I'd like to read for us this morning the words of Jesus found in Matthew 5:1-12.  Commonly known as the Beatitudes of Jesus.  Beginning in verse 1.  “Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down.  His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.  Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.  Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.  Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.  Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

 

0:02:02.1

On the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee there sits a Catholic Franciscan chapel called the Church of the Beatitudes.  It sits on that location where tradition says Jesus spoke to a crowd of people on a hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee and he delivered his famous Sermon on the Mount.  Ironically, this little Franciscan chapel was built with the help of an Italian dictator named Mussolini back in 1938.  Pope John Paul II celebrated mass there in the year 2000, and even President George W. Bush visited this church in the last year of his presidency.  

 

0:02:46.6

Now, this little church, this Franciscan chapel has unique architecture.  It's octagonal in shape.  There are eight sides to it.  And it's intentionally built that way because the chapel is designed to reflect and to point us to the eight simple but sublime beatitudes that Jesus spoke from that hillside overlooking the beautiful sea.  And I'm told that as you step into the church, up high along the walls there are eight beautiful stained-glass windows, and each one has one of the beatitudes etched into it.  And if you can imagine the rays of sunshine coming through those beautiful stained-glass windows illuminating the elegant and eternal and immortal words of Jesus that were spoken from that place.

 

0:03:40.8

It's a strange place to find the secret to happiness, wouldn't you think?  But that's exactly what Jesus did, was introduce us to a highway to happiness and to introduce his audience 2,000 years ago to it.  And as he was speaking to them he blessed them.  He blessed them eight times.  And in doing so, friends, he reversed the common notions of happiness.  He took happiness, as they understood it then and as we understand it now, and he turned it upside down.

 

0:04:17.4

Today I'm beginning a brand new series of messages called “The Highway to Happiness,” and we're beginning what I would call a surprising trip through the beatitudes of Jesus.  We'll be here for nine weeks.  Nine weeks to go through 12 verses of Scripture and eight beatitudes.  And some of you already are saying, “Pastor, how can you get an entire sermon out of a single sentence?”  And I was wondering that too until I began to study these beatitudes.  And now I'm wondering, “How can I plumb the depths and the riches of what Jesus was saying here in a single beatitude with only about 30 minutes each week.”

 

0:04:54.9

Now, friends, as you read through the beatitudes, you won't find any empty clichés.  You won't find safe sentimental platitudes in the beatitudes.  If you're looking for a feel-good message, you won't find them here.  You won't find behavior modification tips.  I like to say that these are be-attitudes, not do-attitudes.  All right?  In other words, the beatitudes are not commands for us to do and perform, but they are a state of Divine fulfillment that results in being rightly related to Jesus Christ.  That's what the beatitudes are.  

 

0:05:33.0

And you won't find the word “beatitude” anywhere in the text of Scripture.  That may perplex you a little bit.  You won't find the word beatitude, but the dictionary definition of beatitude is, “Supreme blessedness and exalted happiness.”  I love that.  Jesus is talking about how to experience supreme blessedness and exalted happiness in your life.  Is that even possible?  And so over the years and over the centuries the beatitudes have been called “the be happy attitudes,” they’ve been called “beautiful attitudes.”  Some see them as a road to recovery.  The whole Celebrate Recovery program that you might’ve heard about that's been existence for about 18 years is a take-off on the 12-step program and the beatitudes.  Some call it “the secret to happiness.”  One author refers to the beatitudes as “the applause of heaven.”  I love that.  “The congratulations of God” is one way of looking at it.  And one author even views the beatitudes as a staircase, one step after another ascending toward God.  Some even see in the beatitudes the very character of Christ.  But whatever you want to say about the beatitudes and however you look at them, they talk about supreme blessedness and exalted happiness.  

 

0:07:00.9

And this whole idea of happiness is a popular pursuit, isn’t it?  In some of my research getting prepared for this series, I was interested to find out that authors, songwriters, movie-makers, even universities are selling happiness today.  Because it's a popular pursuit.  Everybody’s pursuing happiness, and happiness is a marketable commodity.  For instance, in 2006 The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith, was a Hollywood blockbuster film.  How many of you saw The Pursuit of Happyness?  Yeah.  It was a great movie, and it was a story of Chris Gardener who became a success on Wall Street as a Wall Street broker.  But his background was that he was once homeless, and somehow he climbed the ladder of success and achieved “the pursuit of happiness,” as we would define it in our world today, by becoming a successful stockbroker on Wall Street.

 

0:07:54.2

Cheryl Crow wrote a popular song titled, “If it Makes You Happy.”  Any Cheryl Crow fans here.  In 1988, do you remember this one, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” a little ditty?  Okay.  It became the first acapella song to reach number one on the Billboard Top 100 Chart, and held that position for two weeks.  Get this, in 2008 there were 4,000 books published on the subject of happiness.  Compare that to the year 2,000, just eight years earlier, only 50 books published on the subject of happiness.  And I was interested to find also that the most popular class at Harvard University is on positive psychology.  Interesting, isn’t it?  At least 100 other universities offer similar courses.

 

0:08:41.9

And then, of course, this July 4th weekend, or the Sunday before, we're thinking about out liberty as a nation.  We think about the Declaration of Independence, and that phrase, “The pursuit of happiness,” one of three unalienable rights that our founders said were endowed by our Creator.  But have you ever met somebody who says, “Yeah, I've really achieved it.  I am truly a happy person.”  In fact, do an experiment this week as you're walking down the street.  Just come up to a person and say, “Are you a happy person?”  And just see what they say.  Just ask yourself, “Am I really a happy person?”  Somebody once asked Madonna, the pop-music icon, “Are you a happy person?”  And she replied, “I'm a tormented person.  I have lots of demons I'm wrestling with.  I want to be happy.  I have moments of happiness,” she says.  “I'm working toward knowing myself, and I'm assuming that will bring me happiness.”

 

0:09:40.8

Chris Evert was a commanding figure in women’s tennis back in the 1980s, and I think in 1986 she was actually ranked number one.  By age 31 she was internationally famous.  It was reported that she was making $3,000,000 a year, which was a lot of money for an athlete back then.  She had homes in England, California and Florida, she had everything that this world would say you need in order to be happy.  She granted an interview to Life magazine and she admitted, “I've had enormous success, but you have to find your own happiness and peace.  You can't find it in other things and people.”  And then, she said, “I'm still searching.”  Is anyone here still searching for happiness?  

 

0:10:28.0

The Declaration of Independence guarantees your right to pursue happiness.  But if you read the Declaration of Independence carefully, do you know it doesn't guarantee your right to obtain happiness?  And there's a reason for that.  Because Thomas Jefferson believed that it was our right, our God-given right to pursue happiness, but Jefferson never believed that we could actually obtain happiness.  And he was influenced by a guy named John Locke, who at that time was also, you know, kind of teaching the idea happiness was the foundation of liberty, but there were too many contingencies associated with pursuing happiness for anyone to realistically claim that they have obtained happiness.  And so the language in the Declaration of Independence talked about pursuing happiness, but fell short of us actually obtaining happiness.  Locke and Jefferson believed that happiness was elusive.

 

0:11:23.8

Ever wonder why it's so elusive?  Why we really can't seem to nail it down and say, “Yes, I am supremely blessed and I possess exalted happiness”?  Why is it so hard to obtain?  Well, maybe it's because we have the wrong definition of happiness.  Maybe because our notions of happiness need to be reversed, they need to be turned upside down.  And this is what historian David McCullough was talking about.  He says in a lecture at Hillside College on John Adams…and some of you may have read McCullough’s book “1776” and “John Adams.”  McCullough noted that when Adams and the other founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that, “All men possess the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” McCullough says that, “What was meant by ‘happiness’”—listen to this—“was not longer vacations or more material goods, but rather the enlargement of the human experience through the life of the mind and the life of the spirit.”

 

0:12:27.2

Now, that's pretty good stuff.  And I think McCullough is on the right track.  Okay?  And it could safely be said that our notion of happiness today is certainly not what Jesus meant by the word, “blessed,” which we'll look at in a moment.  But our notion of happiness today has been reduced to instant gratification through Happy Meals, happy hours and happy pills.  But it's a far cry from what Jesus had in mind when, 2,000 years ago, he gave these eight blessings to these people on the hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

 

0:13:10.1

This highway to happiness could also be called “the blessed life.”  And let's take a look at that for a moment.  Let's take a closer look at the beatitudes here.  And one of the first things that you need to do as a good student of the Bible is to circle those words that are repeated in the text.  And Jesus uses the word “blessed” nine times in 12 verses.  It is the key to unlocking our understanding of what he means by a highway to happiness, or the pursuit of happiness.  The word “blessed” is the Greek word markarios, and it generally means “blissful, or happy.”  But again, we've sort of reduced that to some level of instant gratification.  If you do a little bit of study on how the word was used in the 1st Century, and especially in extra-biblical literature, you'll discover that this word markarios was used to describe two kinds of people. One was the super-rich.  A markarios person, a blessed person in the 1st Century was somebody who had the means to create an experience for himself or herself that was sort of an arm’s-length distance from the cares and the worries of the common folk.  Those were the blessed people, the blissful and happy people.  The other usage of this word in extra-biblical literature was to describe the gods of ancient Greece.  They were the markarios, they were the blessed.  Because of their god-like status they were able to create for themselves a celestial experience full of peace and contentment and exalted happiness and supreme blessedness.

 

0:14:51.7

Now, Jesus wasn't speaking to a crowd of super-rich and wealthy 2,000 years ago, nor was he speaking to a group of people who were the gods of ancient Greece.  Much to the contrary, he was speaking to people who were poor and persecuted.  And so when they heard the word “blessed,” they heard it through their understanding of how that word was used in the 1st Century.  And essentially what Jesus was saying was, “This idea of supreme blessedness and exalted happiness, a contented, fulfilled life is within even your reach as the poor and the persecuted.”  And contrary to what Jefferson and Locke thought about the pursuit of happiness, Jesus never taught us something that we could pursue but never obtain without his help.  In fact, if you look at the backside of the beatitudes…let's just go through them again.  Just reading the backside of these statements, what you find is that there are assurances on the backside that tell us that there's something for us to obtain, not just pursue.  For instance, “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  For they will be comforted.  For they will inherit the earth.  For they will be filled.  For they will be shown mercy.  For they will see God.  For they will be called sons of God.”  And then, it comes full-circle on the eighth one.  “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  You see, it's not just something for us to pursue and not obtain and end up frustrated and disappointed.  This highway to happiness is something to pursue, and there is something to obtain on the other side.

 

0:16:48.9

But you got to ask the question, “Who are these blessed people?  Who are the people that receive this experience of supreme blessedness and exalted happiness?”  Well, you're gonna be surprised.  In fact, I got to thinking this week if Gomer Pyle had read the beatitudes, he might come to the end of it just grinning from ear to ear, saying, “Surprise, surprise, surprise.”  Who are the blessed?  Let me read the surprise list to you.  “The poor in spirit.  Those who mourn.  The meek.  Those who hunger and thirst.  The merciful.  The pure in heart.  The peacemakers.”  And are you ready for this one?  “The persecuted.”

 

0:17:49.9

Now, I don't know how you're receiving that, but I kind of imagine the folks in the 1st Century sort of scratching their head at this point and saying, “What in the world is Jesus talking about?  He's got this all turned around and backwards.  I mean, I'm poor, I'm persecuted.  How am I gonna be happy?  How can I be happy and sad and mournful at the same time?”  And when was the last time you were inspired by Mr. Meek and Mild?  I mean, what's that all about, “Blessed are the meek?”  Aren’t the meek just weak people?  We'll have to explore that one.  But who are the blessed?  Who would've thought that this was the list of blessed people that Jesus talked about.

 

THIS SECTION REPEATS THE EARLIER SECTION THAT STARTS AT 0:14:51.7

0:18:32.9

Now, Jesus wasn't speaking to a crowd of super-rich and wealthy 2,000 years ago, nor was he speaking to a group of people who were the gods of ancient Greece.  Much to the contrary, he was speaking to people who were poor and persecuted.  And so when they heard the word “blessed,” they heard it through their understanding of how that word was used in the 1st Century.  And essentially what Jesus was saying was, (0:19:00.0) “This idea of supreme blessedness and exalted happiness, a contented, fulfilled life is within even your reach as the poor and the persecuted.”  And contrary to what Jefferson and Locke thought about the pursuit of happiness, Jesus never taught us something that we could pursue but never obtain without his help.  In fact, if you look at the backside of the beatitudes…let's just go through them again.  Just reading the backside of these statements, what you find is that there are assurances on the backside that tell us that there's something for us to obtain, not just pursue.  For instance, “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  For they will be comforted.  For they will inherit the earth.  For they will be filled.  For they will be shown (0:20:00.0) mercy.  For they will see God.  For they will be called sons of God.”  And then, it comes full-circle on the eighth one.  “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  You see, it's not just something for us to pursue and not obtain and end up frustrated and disappointed.  This highway to happiness is something to pursue, and there is something to obtain on the other side.

 

0:20:29.8

But you got to ask the question, “Who are these blessed people?  Who are the people that receive this experience of supreme blessedness and exalted happiness?”  Well, you're gonna be surprised.  In fact, I got to thinking this week if Gomer Pyle had read the beatitudes, he might come to the end of it just grinning from ear to ear, saying, “Surprise, surprise, surprise.”  Who are the blessed?  Let me read the surprise list to you.  “The poor in spirit.  Those who mourn.  The meek.  Those who hunger and thirst.  The merciful.  The pure in heart.  The peacemakers.”  And are you ready for this one?  “The persecuted.”

 

0:21:31.0

Now, I don't know how you're receiving that, but I kind of imagine the folks in the 1st Century sort of scratching their head at this point and saying, “What in the world is Jesus talking about?  He's got this all turned around and backwards.  I mean, I'm poor, I'm persecuted.  How am I gonna be happy?  How can I be happy and sad and mournful at the same time?”  And when was the last time you were inspired by Mr. Meek and Mild?  I mean, what's that all about, “Blessed are the meek?”  Aren’t the meek just weak people?  We'll have to explore that one.  But who are the blessed?  Who would've thought that this was the list of blessed people that Jesus talked about.

 

0:22:12.9

But before you scratch your he'd too long, just remember that Jesus spoke with authority.  And with authority unlike these folks on the hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee had ever heard before.  In fact, if you fast-forward through the Sermon on the Mount and you go to the end of chapter 7, in verse 28 and 29 Matthew gives us a glimpse into how these people responded to this sermon, this sermon on the mountainside.  Look at it, verse 28.  “When Jesus had finished saying things the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.”  “As one who had authority.”  They had never heard teaching like this before from the rabbis in the temple or from any of the Pharisees. 

 

0:23:08.1

And if you go back to chapter 5, in verse 1 Matthew give us this small but significant detail about how he postured himself in front of the people.  Look at this in 5, and verse 1.  “Now, when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down.”  Now, there are no wasted words in Scripture.  The Holy Spirit puts them here for a reason.  And if do a little study into the rabbinic culture of the day, what you find is that the seated position was the common position for a rabbi to teach.  And in doing so, being seated communicated, “I'm speaking with authority.”  This is why the Pope always teaches and communicates from a seated position.  The Catholic Church says he speaks ex cathedra, or “from his chair.”  In a university setting a professor may reach a certain status where he is the chair of a certain department.  That's because he is able to speak with certain authority on a particular subject.  Now, by the way, that's not why I have a chair on the platform here.  Okay?  I just want to be clear.  I don't want anybody to go away from here, “That preacher at Immanuel thinks he's the pope.”  No, that's not the case.  All right?  Just clearing up any letters I might get.

 

0:24:30.8

Jesus spoke with authority.  We know that because he was the Son of God.  He was the Creator who endowed us with the right to pursue happiness, and also obtain it.  He spoke with authority.  But friends, I say this because in our culture today we are lost in a sea of mushiness called “pluralism” and “relativism,” and to say that the words of Jesus Christ are authoritative, that just gets lost in our culture today.  And I want to make sure as we begin this series, as we enter the ramp onto the highway of happiness for the next nine weeks, that we understand that what Jesus is saying here, again, are not just safe, sentimental platitudes.  These are not empty clichés.  This is the authoritative word of God.  And if we receive it as anything less than that, we run the risk of traveling this highway to happiness and pursuing it with all of our might, but never actually obtaining it.  And I don't want us to do that.

 

0:25:35.6

Now, there was one author by the name of Jim Forest who wrote a book called “The Ladder of the Beatitudes.”  And I like some of his thinking here.  He was the one who saw the beatitudes as kind of a staircase ascending toward God.  And Forest is the one who says we need to be careful that we don’t isolate a beatitude and say, “Okay.  I'm gonna work on this one, but one day when my spiritual whims get around to it, I'll, you know, do these others as well.”  No.  Forest said that they build on each other and they're in a particular order that we need to understand.  Sort of like a staircase that ascends towards God.  And it was Forest’s thought that inspired me to kind of write down and to get my mind around this sort of sequence of thought that is going into the beatitudes here.  And I penned these words down this week.  And think about these steps in a staircase.  “After we admit our spiritual poverty and begin to mourn genuinely over our sin and helplessness, meekness and humility arise in our being.  This creates in us a deep hunger and thirst for doing the right thing.”  Now, are you with me so far?  We just traveled up four steps in the staircase.  “We now have the inner qualities that manifest mercy, purity and peacemaking.”  Three more steps.  “And as we live this way we will irritate people who choose to live opposite the way of Jesus.  The poor in spirit who mourn over their sin and walk humbly before God will become, like the prophets, the object of persecution and insults.  False accusations will come against those who are agents of mercy, purity and peace.”  And you say to yourself, “Oh, happy day?”  Oh, yes.  Happy day.  This is the blessed life, friends.  This is the pursuit of happiness, this is the highway to happiness that we will travel in the weeks ahead.

 

0:27:43.8

So what can you expect from a study of the beatitudes?  I want to leave you with three thoughts this morning.  First, you need to expect positive results in your life.  That's true of any study of the Scriptures.  We should always positive results in our life.  But I want to go back to that word “blessed.”  I love the word.  As you study the depths and get into just the sense of this whole word “blessed,” the supreme blessedness, the exalted happiness that Jesus is talking about here…that word “blessed” is a supremely positive word, is it not?  And I don't know about you, but I love positive messages that encourage me more than negative ones that discourage me.  In fact, one author put it this way, “A pinch of positive blessing does more for our souls than a pound of negative bruising.”  And I need to remember that more often, and maybe some other preachers do too.  A supremely positive word that will carry us throughout this study.

 

0:28:51.8

There was a lady that was part of the first church that I served in Houston many, many years ago.  And when I met her…and she was always kind of in and around the church serving in a variety of ways.  I would bump into her and ask her how she's doing.  And she would always say, “Oh, pastor, I'm so blessed.”  I'm just being honest with you.  Okay?  I used to think, “Come on, lady, get real.  All right?  For the rest of us, life is kind of hard.  It's difficult.  And don’t give me this kind of super-sanctimonious, spiritual-sounding thing just because you're at the church and in the presence of the pastor and say, ‘I'm blessed.’”  And oh, how I wrong I was to think that way.  Because as I got to know this lady and the depth of her relationship with Jesus, and learned some of the adverse circumstances of life that she went through, I learned that the only appropriate response for her was, “I'm blessed.”  So this is a supremely positive word, and I want to encourage you to come to this study expecting positive, positive results in your life.

 

0:30:12.5

Secondly, expect rearrange your value system.  Jesus reverses the notions of happiness, doesn't he?  Turns is upside down.  And he's gonna rearrange our value system.  And for some of you that may be difficult, because you don’t like anything rearranged in your life.  Not even the furniture.  You like things the same.  But this will rearrange your value system, it will rearrange my value system, it will rearrange my understanding of happiness and your understanding of happiness.  Somebody once called the Christian life “the exchanged life.”  Have you ever heard that before?  I'm exchanging my life for the life of Christ.  I'm exchanging my dreams and my goals and my happiness for his happiness. I'm exchanging my definition of happiness for his definition of happiness.  It's the exchanged life.  And it's an extremely odd way to live.  The world around us doesn't understand this.  It just seems backwards, doesn't it?

 

0:31:18.9

And that's what an old preacher named A.W. Tozer once said.  Tozer wrote these words, I love this.  He says, “The Christian is an odd number anyway.  He feels supreme love for one whom he has never seen.  He talks in a familiar way to someone he cannot see.  He expects to go to heaven on the virtue of another.  Empties himself in order to be full. Admits when he is wrong so he can be declared right.  Goes down in order to get up.  Is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest and happiest when he feels the worst.  He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible and knows that which passes knowledge.”  And if the world sees you living that way, it'll check you into the funny farm.  But the Christian is an odd number anyway, isn’t he?  And every time we come face-to-face, and our ears begin to hear the authoritative words of Jesus, it will rearrange our value system and, I want to suggest to you, set us on a highway to happiness like we've never experienced before.

 

0:32:30.4

Thirdly, I want to suggest to you that you'll expect to meet Jesus here.  Somebody has noted that the beatitudes really reflect the character of Christ himself.  Billy Graham, in his book “The Secret to Happiness,” says, “The character which we find in the beatitudes, beyond all question, is nothing less than our Lord’s own character put into words.” You're gonna meet Jesus in this text and in this study.  The supreme blessedness and exalted happiness is ours for the claiming and ours for the asking if we're in a right relationship with Jesus Christ.  Remember these are be-attitudes, not do-attitudes.  These are the attitudes, the beautiful attitudes that result from the person who is in a right relationship with Jesus Christ.  Let me say it this way, the beatitudes have nothing to offer the person who rejects Christ as his savior.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  But the supreme blessedness and the exalted happiness that results from being in a right relationship with Christ is available for anybody who will enter into a relationship with him by faith.

 

0:33:56.3

And so I got to ask you this morning, do you know Christ as your Savior?  I didn't ask you whether you attend a church, or your names are on the roll of a church.  I didn't ask you whether you've been baptized or confirmed.  I didn't ask you whether you were a good person this week.  I asked whether you've placed your faith and trust in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation, for the forgiveness of your sins and for your eternal destiny.  The Bible says, “For by grace we are saved through faith, and that not of ourselves.  It's the gift of God, not by works”—not do-attitudes, but be-attitudes—“not by works, lest any man should boast.”  These are not how-to sermons, although we may get into some of that.  But this is not a staircase to climb in our own effort and hope that we have appeased a holy God.  No, this is the extreme blessedness and exalted happiness that is our possession as believers in Jesus Christ.

 

0:35:05.4

The danger might be that even as a believer in Jesus Christ, you're traveling on another highway over here.  You're pursuing happiness in ways that the world says will make you happy and fulfilled and content and supremely blessed.  But what it's yielded in your life is supreme disappointment and discouragement.  You've got the house you always wanted.  You've got the car that you’ve always dreamed of driving.  You've got the perfect family.  You've got the perfect job.  But there's still something missing inside of you.  And maybe it's because you're on the wrong road to happiness and you're pursuing something that you really can't ever obtain and was never meant to obtain.

 

0:35:53.2

So expect to meet Jesus in the beatitudes.  And if you don't know him as your Savior, today is a great day for a day of salvation in your life, where you say from the depths of your own heart, “Lord I may not understand everything you did for me on the cross at this moment, but I'm willing to place my faith and my trust in this Jesus who spoke these exalted words and come into relationship with him today.”

 

0:36:20.7

And, Father, that's our prayer.  That you would not allow a single one of us to leave this place here this morning without knowing Jesus Christ as our Savior.  And then, for many of us who do, Father, that this would be a real turning point in our relationship with you.  That, well, some of the notions we've had about how to live the Christian life and the experiences of life, well, that they'd be reversed.  That you would rearrange some of our ideas and our value systems to align with what only Jesus knew and he was so willing to share with a crowd of people on a hillside overlooking a beautiful sea 2,000 years ago.  Thank you for your word, Father.  And thank you for what it means to so many of us here.  Help us to fill up our tanks and to press on the accelerator and to get on his highway to happiness.  And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.

 

 

Total Time 0:37:50.8

“Every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”

Romans 8:28 MSG