Really, as Augustine said long ago, that man was created for God, and we are lost until we find ourselves in Him. There is a yearning in the heart of people, and there is an unquenchable desire for the Lord that is placed there by the Holy Spirit. And it's certainly great praise to offer Him this morning. We remain standing for the reading of the scripture this morning. We will be reading from Genesis chapter 15. This is God covenanting with Abraham, well, with Abram at this point. After these things, the word of Yahweh came to Abram in a vision. saying, Do not fear, Abram. I am a shield to you. Your reward shall be very great. And Abram said, O Lord Yahweh, what will you give me as I go on being childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram said, since you have given no seed to me, behold, one born in my house is my heir. Then behold, the word of Yahweh came to him saying, this one will not be your heir, but one who will come forth from your own body. He shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, now look toward the heavens. and number the stars if you are able to number them. And he said to him, so shall your seed be. Then he believed in Yahweh and he counted it to him as righteousness. And he said to him, I am Yahweh who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess it. And he said, O Lord Yahweh, how may I know that I will possess it? So he said to him, bring me a three-year-old heifer, and a three-year-old female goat, and a three-year-old ram, and a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. Then he brought all these to him, and split them into parts down the middle, and laid each part opposite the other. But he did not split apart the birds. Then the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. Now it happened that when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram. And behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. Then God said to Abram, Know for certain that your seed will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation to whom they are enslaved, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation, they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete. Now it happened that the sun had set, and it was very dark. And behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch, which passed between these pieces. On that day, Yahweh cut a covenant with Abram, saying, to your seed I have given this land. From the river of Egypt, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, the Kenite, and the Kenizite, and the Kadmonite, and the Hittite, and the Perizite, and the Rephaim, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Gergesite, and the Jebusite. Father, we thank you for the privilege that we have this Lord's Day to be in your house with your people, for the purpose of singing your praise and proclaiming the word of the Lord. We pray that you will have your way in every heart here this day, that you will make the time here spent be eternally profitable. that we will grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we will grow in our understanding of you and in our capacity to serve you in a more satisfactory and profitable way. Pray that you will bless your people for having come this day, that they might hear from you as your word is unleashed here. We pray for the unbeliever in this room. Whomever they may be, that you will cause the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to shine in their heart, that they might recognize their great need for a Savior, that they might recognize the great glory of the only Savior of men, our Lord Jesus Christ. It is for His glory that we have met. And it is in His matchless and all-sufficient name that we pray. Amen. There are some things that we have to wait until we get to heaven to do. But there are other things that we can do here and now, things that we will do in heaven. The Bible says that we will be with the angels, praising the Lord Jesus Christ, all of the time, singing a new song. We can do that here as well. Maybe not to the same degree as it will be in heaven, but certainly the reality that we have to praise our Lord in this life is, if anything, a foretaste of heaven. It is now the time that we have to open the Word of God together, to deploy the sword of the Spirit in this place, to unleash the Word of God, and allow it to accomplish what only it can do. So open your scripture book with me to John's Gospel in chapter 4. John chapter 4, we will pick up again where we left off last week in verse 46. I will read verses 46 through 54, and then we will petition the Savior to make our time all that he desires it to be. Because friends, when we come to the Word of God, we need some help. But there is help available and help on the way. We're reading in John's eyewitness account of the life and times of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're reading here of his encounter with a Roman official. He was an official servant of Herod Antipas. And he has come to Jesus on Jesus's terms. This is in the succession from Jesus dealing with Nicodemus, Jesus dealing with the Samaritan woman at the well, and now dealing with this Roman official. And there is a contrast and comparison that must be made. And as Jesus deals with this man, he has far less dialogue with this man than he had with the woman at the well. He has far less dialogue with this man than he even had with Nicodemus in John chapter 3. That would have most likely been the whole night through that Nicodemus had questions and was being taught by the Savior. that night in Jerusalem. And the longest recorded conversation of Jesus in the Gospels is John chapter 4, the woman at the well. And we've seen one of them has responded in doubt and left in unbelief. The religious leader left in unbelief. The seemingly irreligious woman at the well with all of her Moral problems from the scripture readers perspective. She came to faith in the Savior because of what he told her She left in belief and we see this man in a different scenario different situation where there is a sign Attached to the Lord's dealing with this man. He spoke to a Nicodemus, and he did not believe, he spoke to the woman at the well, and she believed, he spoke to the people in the town, and they believed. He speaks to this man about a sign that he claims to have done, and this man's response is what John has put here to be a sign for you and I. A sign points you in the right direction. The sign tells you how to get where you need to go. And you all know that we live in a time where the sign mongers are everywhere. Signs and wonders seem to be what they want to entice people to come to church for and come supposedly to the Savior for, and by the way, bring your money. The Lord deals with that idea in this passage in a way that should leave everyone uncomfortable with the idea of showing up to see signs and wonders because the signs that the Lord has put forward are all in the past to direct us to him not to direct us to anything else we will see in this passage the relation between signs and faith as we began last week let us begin Reading this together, verse 46, John writes, So he, Jesus, came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. So Jesus said to him, unless you people, unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. The official said to him, sir, come down before my child dies. Jesus said to him, go, your son will live. The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. So he asked them the hour when he began to get better. And they said to him, yesterday at the seventh hour, the fever left him. The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, your son will live. And he himself believed and all his household. This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee. Pray with me. Father, as we approach your Word, we realize that we are not coming to a book like any other book. We recognize that this book is indeed the inspired, inerrant, God-breathed Word that has been once and for all delivered to the saints. It is the fully sufficient, indispensable necessity in the life of every believer. It is the necessity in bringing anyone to faith in Jesus Christ, for it alone is the revelation of the Only Begotten of God, the Savior of the world. As we recognize and freely and willfully proclaim that to be the truth, we at the very same time recognize our inability to approach this book on our own, to glean what the Holy Spirit of God has eternally recorded here through the pen of your men. Father, we pray that you will give us eyes to see and ears to hear, that you will give us pliable hearts, not judgmental and condemning hearts looking for a way to argue with the scripture, but that we would come and bow before you and your word and and bend our wills as necessary, we might find ourselves rightly related to you through the preaching of your word. I do not ask you to help me. I ask you to make me effective. I ask you to use me this day as an instrument to accomplish your eternal purpose in this place and in the hearts of these people that are gathered here this day, that you would bless them, that you would make my thoughts your thoughts. that my words might be what you desire your people this day to hear, and that, Holy Spirit, you would cause this to fall on fertile ground, to accomplish the purposes that only you know, in every heart, in every home, for your eternal glory. And we pray it in the eternally sufficient name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. As I've said, signs are indispensable to us in this life. We have to follow the signs to know where we are going. And when these signs that John points to in his gospel are signs that are pointing us to the reality that Jesus is the Christ, he is the Messiah, he is the sent one of God come to provide the necessary salvation for mankind to be reconciled to God, for God to find men acceptable in his sight that he can have in his presence. Spurgeon said of these sign miracles that they were parables to the eye. There were parables to the side, and these sign miracles, especially these that John outlines as these sign miracles to point us to Christ, he tells us in chapter 20 that these miracles have been recorded that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and in believing in him that you might have salvation in his name. And we want to remember that as we look at this, what should come to the forefront of our thought, of our intellectual vision, is the glory of Jesus Christ in this. Everything else is a peripheral issue. The agony of the man, the healing of the son, the near death of his son, all of those things are peripheral. What should be front and center to us is the glory of Jesus Christ, this sign that points to Jesus being the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Savior of the world. We want to view it from that, and that these sign miracles are to be parables that we see, not a parable that we hear, but an action that took place that points to a greater spiritual reality. And Jesus healing this man's son, both of these, the man and his son, all of his family, all were in the most desperate place possible, humanly speaking. They had no way out. They had exhausted every effort, they had exhausted all that they could do, and they come to Jesus on his terms, And He provides for them what only He can provide. And that is how each and every one of you that are in Christ came to salvation. You came to Him empty-handed, petitioning Him for what only He could do, and you would not be driven away until you received from Him what you desperately needed, because you had nowhere else to go. And when you leave from that spiritual transaction, friends, there is a levity to your life that you have never known outside of Christ. There is a joy and a peace, a satisfaction that cannot be known outside of that. And that is what this man exemplifies for us in all of these things as he comes to the Savior. And all of it is the need that comes from him, and all of it is a praise and a peace that goes back to what he has done for us, and it elevates Christ to the center place. And the sign becomes a peripheral issue because all that does is point to his glory and not to the entertainment and enjoyment of the man and his family, as we will see. How far we will get today, heaven only knows. I expected to get farther last week, and this week there's more than there was last week. It's kind of how it is when you study the scripture. It is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. It is a book like no other book. And I don't understand why people want new revelation as though they're bored with 33,000 verses of revelation from the mouth of God through the pen of God's men and as though we're going to master it in this life. A book that Jesus said, not one jot or tittle, not one comma or apostrophe will pass away through all of eternity. And that is a book that we are going to get bored with, I think not. And as we study it, the more that we study it, the more that the Holy Spirit causes this book to wash over our own heart, the more it becomes to us and the more that we see in it. So we will see how far we get today. We began last week looking at what begins in verse 46. Well, really what we see in verse 46 is a dire situation. Jesus is back in a familiar place. He is in Cana in Galilee. where he made the water to wine. That was the first sign. This is now the second sign. He does both of them in Cana of Galilee. Now, from your perspective and mine, we would think that he would have wanted to have accomplished that in Jerusalem, in the big metropolis where all the people are. You want to get as much fame as you possibly can, but he comes to this hamlet in northern Israel around the Sea of Galilee. And he is revealing himself through signs that he is indeed the Messiah. He has just gotten to Cana, coming up through Samaria, stopping in this little town of Sychar, and bringing a revival to that town. He comes to Cana. He's back home. The curious observers are very excited to see him there, to see what else he will do next. They're curious. Not serious. We're introduced to a formidable person here in verse 46. It says, at Capernaum there was an official. This is a royal official, a basilikos in Greek. It speaks of someone that belonged to the king. This is a direct servant of the king. This is a royal servant, an official. One of the reasons that we need to know that is that this man didn't go and ask permission of anyone, he summoned people to him. When he wanted to speak to you, he sent a servant to get you to him. He doesn't send a servant to Jesus, he comes himself. This was too important of an issue for him to entrust to anyone else. This formidable person is also a frightened parent, and we see a scenario that we don't ever want to experience in our own life, a scenario that causes us to shudder when we think of another family dealing with an illness. In a child, it says that his son was ill. Not only was he ill, he was at the point of death. We see in verse 47, this man has come as a frightened parent. No doubt he has not eaten or slept in days. And he arrives. Verse 47 says that he went and asked Jesus to come down. This is not a word that is as simple as the idea of asking. He comes and he entreats Jesus. He beseeches him. He pleads with him. He's begging him in a constant manner, please, please come and see about my son. Friends, when your need for the Savior arrives heavily on your heart, it is not a minuscule task that you are tasked with to go to him for forgiveness. It is something that needs to take front and center attention over everything else in your life. You must be saved. You need the Savior. That is not a peripheral issue in your life. That is the issue. The Savior is the issue because your sin is dragging you farther and farther away from Him and will bring you into an eternal separation from Him if it is not dealt with on His terms in this life. It's a 20-mile journey from Cana to Capernaum, and from Capernaum to Canaan. You'll see why that's important in a moment. That issue's in a direct scolding in verse 48. This dire situation elicits a direct scolding from the Lord. We see rebuked observers, and they are rebuked observers over their demand of a required overindulgence. Come and give us more of what we want. We looked at that in great detail last week. They want to see signs and wonders. He says, unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. And this you is in the plural. Unless you all, unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe. This is a rebuke coming on the heels of a man's request for provision. We look at this and say, that's not how you do that. Jesus, you need to get with the times, man. You have to tell people what they want to hear, not tell them what they don't want to hear. You can't give them the bad news until you've given them the good news. You would not imagine how many people believe that. But don't talk about sin, talk about salvation. Salvation from what? Salvation from your bad economic situation? Let me tell you something, coming to Christ on his terms may not cure your bank account at all. It might cause you to lose your job. Like it very likely caused this man to lose his job, ultimately, because Herod Antipas wanted nothing to do with Jesus except to have him perform like a circus monkey for him. No, you need to understand that the bad news is far worse than you think, rather than be told that things are better than maybe you think, and we'll deal with the bad later. No, Jesus starts out the way that we need to start out. And he brings the bad news to these people, and he says, you've got a problem. This required overindulgence that you are bringing to me is unacceptable to me. You people will not believe unless you see signs and wonders. You simply will not believe. It is a refused obedience. You simply will not believe. Not a new problem, not a new concern for the Lord. He has not changed his opinion about it. We looked at Luke 11. He says, this evil and adulterous generation demands a sign. It will receive only the sign of Jonah. Three days in the belly of the fish, so will the Savior be three days in the heart of the earth. Herod Antipas, the one that would have been this official's boss, brings him in Luke 23. Herod receives a visit from Jesus at the hand of the Roman centurions that Pilate sent to have Jesus interviewed by Herod, and Herod only wanted him to do some fancy trick for him, and when he would not, Herod sent him away. And he gave the same rebuke to Herod that he gave to the people in Luke 11. He left both of them in unbelief. Another thing that we get from this particular passage that is unmistakable is the fact that Jesus owes no man any good thing. And he doesn't have to give or take anything from you. All he has to do is leave you where you are. And he does that with Herod. Look at Matthew chapter 16. Left those people in unbelief. And here in verse 48, he does the same. These people refuse to believe. He says, you simply will not believe. The Greek construction is very emphatic. You will not believe. You simply will not believe. You refuse to believe. In this verse, we see selfish faith condemned. He's looking at people that have been, for whatever reason, they have come to the conclusion that faith is something that they can use for their own aggrandizement, their own elevation. We see that everywhere today. So I'm trying to tell you what Jesus will do for you to make your life better. Friends, it's not your life that needs to be better. It is your eternity that needs to be sealed. It is your relationship to the Creator that needs to be mended, and that is what Christ came to do. Now, whether that makes your life better or worse is up to you. One of my children asked this week, why did God not get rid of the snakes? Now, that question was not asked maybe in the context that you're thinking. That question was asked while they were watching a snake devour one of the eggs that my chickens laid in the yard. What is that wretched snake doing eating that egg? And we tend to look at things through our own prism and say, well, why would God allow these bad things to happen? I was reminded of a young man this morning. I was just thinking about it in Sunday school during the lesson in Sunday school this morning. I know a young man who God called into the preaching ministry after the greatest disaster that could have befallen that young man's life when he was young. And he can look back at that and say, this was an absolute disaster in my life that happened between my parents, but had that not happened, I would never have known what sound doctrine and sound preaching were, and I would have remained in the same era that I was raised in. Now he would not tell you that it was a good thing necessarily that happened in his life by human estimation, but it was good by God's estimation because it was putting this man today where he needs to be through something that he viewed as being very bad. What you need is to be made right with the Creator, and that may mean that some very seemingly bad things have to happen in your life first. But friends, it does not matter what the Lord has to use to get your attention to bring you into the kingdom, because you are better off in the kingdom in any condition than you are in the best condition outside of the kingdom. and to turn to this idea of selfish faith and begin to try to entice people into the kingdom. Friends, that is a mistake. It is always a mistake. We read Psalm 23 to begin this morning. You didn't read anything in there that said, I'm going to be healthy and wealthy and wise. What you read in there was, I will never be alone. I will not fear, for you are with me. And friends, outside of Christ, he is not with you. He is against you. And that is what this man is confronted with. Selfish faith is condemned in verse 48. This idea of, come to Jesus for what you can get out of him. And that is compared and contrasted with a selfless faith. And we see selfless faith rewarded. This man came to Christ for what only Jesus Christ can do. And we come to him for what only he has done in the present. Let's move to verse 49. We see a delicate sincerity here in verse 49. Now capture the moment. The man has come from Capernaum to Cana. Everyone knows that this is a royal official. He's come to Jesus, and He is pleading with Him. It didn't just walk up and say, Hey, Jesus, could you do me a favor? No, that's not what's conveyed here. A constant barrage of petition. We see a desperation in this man, desperately pleading with Jesus for what he knows only he can do, and he says, if you cannot do it, the situation is hopeless, because I've tried every other avenue and nothing can fix the problem that I have. Friends, there are many people that come to Christ that way. They've tried every way possible. They've tried every religion possible. I talked to a guy recently that told me, he said, I need to get back to reading the Bible. He said, I used to read the Bible. I'd read it through from start to finish. Now how true that is, I don't know, but I would read it from start to finish. Then I would get another version and read through that. And he said, I guess I kind of got bored. So I started reading the Quran and started naming these other religious books. He said, I just love religion. I said, man, that's the most dangerous thing that's ever come out of your mouth. You don't need to fill your head with evil, you need to fill your head with the truth. There's enough that the Holy Spirit has to fight in your natural born flesh for you not to be filling it with more ammunition. This man comes and he said, I've tried everything and there's no hope. I have no hope but you. And like Jacob at the river Jabbok, he would not let him go until Jesus blessed him. We see in verse 49 a humble plea. This is delicate, delicate sincerity coming out of this man. This man is in a very delicate place because this is a man that had reason to be proud in life. He was a Roman official. It was very hard to get a Roman official taken out of their place. That's just the way the Roman government worked. Scandals were were very hard to find anything that was terrible enough to be scandalous in that society But this man comes with a humble plea and in verse 49 he continues What we saw in verse 47 he came and asked him and in Jesus says says Jesus said to him He says to this man in front of the crowds unless you all see signs and wonders you will not believe and Now friends, if this man were not in the desperate situation that he was in, if Jesus would have been his first stop, this would have been enough to make him leave. Oh, but if you won't give me what I'm begging for, I ain't begging no more. Okay, you're not ready yet. If you're not ready to beg for what only he can do, then you're not ready yet. He does not come to you in a partnership agreement. He comes to you, and you bow the knee to him, and he takes you as his slave, his servant. Just what we see in Egypt as he's rescuing the Israelis from Egypt, he tells Pharaoh, let my people go that they may be my slaves. Let them go that they may serve me. They're serving you, but they're my people. They're to serve me. And when he saves us from slavery to sin, he brings us into the sweet slavery of Jesus Christ. Friends, there's no better place to be. No better place to be. And this man is not willing to leave. He's not insulted by this remark in verse 48. He's too desperate. He realizes that he has to come to Jesus on Jesus's terms. And friends, this is the only way to come to the Savior. This is the only way to come to the Savior. If we're going to call him the Savior, he's not the addendum. He's not the spare tire. He's not something that you add to the rest of your life to just complete your life. He's not like that one little missing piece. He's not the missing link in your life. He is the link in your life. He's the only link that will link you to God. You have no part in it. And this man knew that there was no way that he had any capacity to fix the problem that he had. What this man recognizes in this situation, in a physical reality that has a spiritual parallel, what he realizes is his own poverty and inability in the situation that he is in. He has no way to affect in any positive way the situation that he is in. He has exhausted all of his efforts. He has no doubt spent every dime that he could spare, and then some. He is at the end of his rope. And that is how we come to the Savior. Turn to the left to Matthew chapter 5, Matthew's gospel. You're going to want to turn there. We're going to be here for a minute. We refer to Jesus as the Savior, and rightly so, because he is the Savior of the world. The people in the Samaritan village just prior to this encounter with this Roman official said exactly that. That was their profession of faith. We have come to know that, indeed, this is the Savior of the world. The Savior was, in his earthly ministry, first and foremost, a preacher. And in Matthew's gospel, the first and greatest recorded sermon in the New Testament, the greatest recorded sermon in history is here in Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7. And you take preaching classes and exposition classes and take all of these public speaking classes to help polish you in the pulpit. They want you to start with a great introduction and you want to end with a tremendous conclusion and have all of the parts break out perfectly. It is said of Alexander McLaren, Scottish preacher in the 19th century, that he had a golden hammer with which he would tap the text and it would break out into its equal parts. He just had a tremendous ability to dissect and break into easy to digest parts of scripture as he would preach. No one ever began a sermon the way that Jesus begins this sermon. Jesus begins this sermon with the gospel. Doesn't backload the gospel, doesn't try to get people's attention and entertain them. He has their attention and he tells them the most important thing first. And after that, he starts telling them how the gospel fits into your life. But the first issue at hand is you must be saved. You must be saved from God. You can only be saved by God, and you are only ever saved for God. Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. You see how far we've come? We need to elevate where you're sitting where you can see me sit down up here, that would be far better. You can stand and I'll sit. Anybody for that? No, I don't see any. Okay, we'll keep doing it this way. He sat down, his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and taught them. What is the first thing out of his mouth? Blessed. I don't know what you think blessing means in this life. Typically, blessing means that you'll get whatever you want and feel great about it. There are a lot of people that get what they want and feel terrible about it. Have you been there? I wanted this so bad and when I got it, this is not what I expected once I got it. Some of you experienced that after you got married. Ladies, I'm sorry. Tim Hawkins said he woke up one day and said, why is your voice so annoying to me now? It's not what I signed up for. Friends, this is the God-man speaking about being blessed. Blessed are. Not blessed will be. Not blessed could be. This is a blessing by God's estimation that comes from God's provision. And the next five words out of his mouth totally defy the modern evangelical idea of blessing. Blessed are the poor in spirit. This is speaking of a realization of the poverty, the spiritual poverty that you exist in. You come to the Savior and you realize that I have nothing to offer that would interest you. You know, when you come to the Savior, we sing the song, in my hand, no price I bring, simply to your cross I cling. You know what you bring to the cross? You bring a life of sin, because that's all you have. It is depicted so clearly by Pilgrim and Pilgrim's Progress when he comes to the cross with this enormous burden that he can barely make it up the hill and he is so exhausted carrying it around when he comes to the cross. You remember what happened? The burden fell off and rolled down the hill. That burden of sin was erased and taken away from his life. He came there understanding his poverty of spirit This man has come to Jesus as an illustration of one that has come in the poverty of spirit. This man was at the end of his rope. He had nowhere to go. He had no other hope. He could not do it. He had tried everything. Every doctor, every witch doctor, every soothsayer, every traiteur, if he was a Cajun, went everywhere that he could go. You may have to edit that, man. I can't do it. I have nothing else that I can do. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Why? That word for is very important, always is. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Oh goodness. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those that recognize their poverty in this life, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Heaven belongs to them. Not heaven will belong to them, blessed are the poor in spirit. Right here, right now, the kingdom of heaven is the possession of every believer in Jesus Christ. And you say, oh, well, how does that compare to all the wealth of this world? All the wealth of this world is going to be used for pavement in heaven. You can't begin to understand. the degree of opulence that heaven will have. It will not be any flesh-derived, arrogance-producing type of wealth in heaven. We will be in the place where God is. Gold won't matter. Silver won't matter. A bigger house won't matter. The better car, clothes, whatever it is that drives you will not matter. When a person comes to realize their poverty of spirit and their desperation for what only Jesus can do, not Jesus and fill in the blank. There is no blank to be filled in. It is Jesus and him alone. That is what the Bible says. Now, religion says it's Jesus and names a bunch of other stuff, your good works, the works of people that went before you, maybe your sincerity, whatever it may be. Friends, the Bible says it is Christ and him alone. He is the Savior of the world. He is not the co-Savior of the world. He is not the partial Savior of the world. He didn't pull himself up in John chapter 19 and say, well, that'll save some. I'm out of here. What did he say? It is finished. Nothing left to be done. And good thing, because there's nothing that you and I could do in addition to what he's done. Poverty of spirit. He continues in Matthew chapter five, blessed are those who mourn. I know that Gordon McKernan, boy, I hope the Lord saves him before he gets out of here, because he's got a hot place in hell for several reasons, but he has begun to take the word of God and blaspheme it all over the highways. Blessed are those who mourn, because they come to Gordon and he's going to sue the pants off of whoever you don't like. And you can buy a new car and he's going to buy a beach house in Malibu. Friend of mine was working on a job where somebody had a little accident at work and they called an attorney. And this guy in a managerial position told this person that was under him, said, look, before this is over, you and this company are going to hate that lawyer. Because you ain't about getting what you think you're going to get. He's going to get it all. This is not talking about people who mourn because they were in a car wreck or a big truck wreck or some workman's comp. thing that Gordon is talking about. He's talking about people who are in mourning over their spiritual inability. I'm in mourning over my sin. Friends, that's the opposite of what the world does. What does the world do? Yeah, I did it, but. I don't care what comes after that contrasting word, but. There's no ands, ifs, or buts about it. You are a sinner and you are condemned before God, no matter what your neighbor does or doesn't do. No matter what your parents did or didn't do. Well, you know, my daddy was a deacon. My grandfather was a preacher. I'm in a pretty good place. No, you're not. You're in a very dangerous place because you are more prone to lean on what went before you than most other people are. You must come to God on his terms, and his terms are surrendering to his son. His terms are poverty of spirit and mourning over your sin. But what he promises to that poverty of spirit and that mourning over sin is that you are blessed. You are blessed. In your poverty of spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to you. You are blessed and you are mourning over your sin because you will be comforted. That's what we see in this man's life. In John chapter 4, he comes to Jesus mourning over, I can't fix the problem. So Jesus fixed it for him. And the man went away comforted. He was so comforted, I don't think we'll get there today, but I'll go ahead and spoil it, or I'm gonna tell you what he does. He got out of Capernaum as fast as his horse could carry him, and he got to Cana out of breath, and he runs and pleads with Jesus until he tells him, okay, and when he tells him, your son will live. It was one o'clock in the afternoon. He's got 20 miles back. You know how fast a man can run if he really wants to? Before dark, he could've run back. And if that man was that worried about his son, what would he have done? He would have run back. But he didn't run back. He gets back the next day. He hadn't slept or eaten in days, but this man comes in this state of mourning, and he is so comforted by the Savior that he is able to rest and relax. And what the Savior has done for him is that he took care of it. I don't need to fret anymore. And friends, when you come to Christ in faith, you don't have to work anymore. You don't have to worry about it anymore. You now have the shepherd from on high that is leading you beside still waters and into green pastures. And even when you do have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you need not fear evil because he is with you. Now, these first two Beatitudes are different from the following seven. These first two Beatitudes are the Beatitude attitudes that get you into the kingdom. They are what bring you to Christ. You recognize your poverty of spirit, your mourning over your sin. It is the ministry of the Holy Spirit that brings conviction over sin and a realization that you cannot get there on your own. And then you bow the knee to Christ, and something happens to you. Something that can't happen any other way. Something that can't be explained any other way. You are no longer the you that you used to be. You are a new you because there is a new master in your life and he has come to dwell within you. We are sealed by the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption. You didn't ask him to come in. You didn't stop him from coming in. He moved in. And you can't throw him out because he has claimed you for himself. And when you are in the Father's hand, no one can pluck you from that, not even you. We're going to see in verse 6 why the idea of how legalism still becomes a problem for us because of what he says in verse 6. But in verse 5, if verse 3 and 4 are the root, and they are, verses 3 and 4 are how salvation starts. It's where it begins. It begins with a recognition of your poverty of spirit. It begins with a recognition of your sin, and you mourn over that sin, and then that comforting comes as you come to the Savior in your mourning, and He saves you, and something new happens. Once that root is started, friends, you begin to produce a fruit. Verses 5 through 12 are the fruit. Verses 5 through 12 are not how salvation starts. Verses 5 through 12 are how salvation looks. your life. Well, preacher, I don't know if I'm saved. Well, did you pray this prayer and ask Jesus into your heart? Yep, just like the Bible said. My Bible doesn't say that anywhere. Now, do you petition the Savior to save you? Yep, You come to him on his terms, and those are his terms. You don't come in and say, hey, okay, bro, I'm in. No, you don't come that way. Jesus told the people in this same sermon to enter by the narrow gate. That was the first thing. Hey, enter by the narrow gate, for broad is the gate and wide is the way that leads to destruction, and many there be that are on it. But narrow is the gate and hard is the way that leads to righteousness, and few there be that find it. Steve Lawson says, no one giggles through the narrow gate. It is not a half-hearted, light-hearted, jovial thing. It is something that is the most serious concern in your life. Friends, when that happens, when you come to him on his terms, things change. I don't mean that things get necessarily better in your life. You're not taller, better-looking. I mean, for some of us, it's hard to be any better looking. You don't need to edit that. It's impossible to take this and make it better looking. Not because it is good looking, it's just impossible. I can't work with that. No, just leave him where he is. There's no hope. Perspective matters. No, something different happens. You run into people that you used to know, and they say, man, what happened to you? I recognize you from a hundred feet off, but there's something different about you. You know that the difference is not you. The difference is another that's making you into someone else. Romans chapter 8 says that God God calls his people into his kingdom to mold them into the image of Jesus Christ, that he, that Christ, not for your good, but for his name's sake, that Christ might be the firstborn among many brethren. It's never been about you. It's been about him and his glory. And he saves the likes of you and I for his glory. Not because he felt sorry for us in our condition, but because he chose to love us in that condition and to bring us to himself. Friends, there is no way to overstate the glory of God. This change begins to happen. Verse 5, blessed are the meek. You know what meekness is? Meekness is power under control. Some of your translations will render this gentleness, and it can be gentleness. That's accurate. It's speaking of a meek and gentle spirit. Get this. It is a meek and gentle spirit toward what the Lord now wants in my life that causes me to respond to the rest of life in a completely different way. I'll give you an example. You've said these words, no doubt. You made me so angry. You made me do this, fill in the blank. You know what meekness says? Meekness says, yes, what you did to me was wrong. It was irritating. It was discouraging. Whatever the negative effect of it was on my life, that's what you did. But the Lord allowed it. And I'm going to let it go because this is what he has sent to my life. One of the most well-known and overused verses, I say overused, it's not overused in a negative way, Romans chapter 8 verse 28. God is only ever going to bring good to your life, what this verse says in some people's mind. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. That doesn't say that only good will happen to you. That says that God is at work in all things for what he deems to be good in your life. And a gentle and meek spirit toward the Lord that is extended to those that are around us says, the Lord allowed this in my life. Yeah, it hurts. Yeah, it's going to be a struggle. Yeah, sometimes life is difficult, but I'm going to see this through the prism of the Lord having allowed it, and it will change my reaction to everything. It will be power under control. Yes, I have the power. I have the capacity. I even have an excuse to do whatever I feel like in retaliation to what you just did to me, but I will not do it. That is meekness. Friends, that is not natural. That is a supernatural reality in your life. When you have the opportunity and you choose not to use it, how often do we do that? The only answer to that question, by the way, is not often enough. Let's move. Meek's the first one. What does it say about the meek? Blessed are the meek. Why? For they will inherit the earth. This type of meekness is a meekness that is produced in the heart of the people of God by the Spirit of God, and it says that these people are going to be with Him for eternity. And Paul says that we're going to judge all the earth one day as the people of God. We will inherit the earth. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven, poor in spirit. The meek will inherit the earth. You know what the world says? The meek get run over in this life. That's kind of true sometimes. But there's more to life than this life. In verse 6, I told you we see where and how and why the idea of legalism can take a foothold even in a person that truly understands grace. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Friends, there's a reason that I mourn over my sin. There's a reason that I have a desire to see the Lord honored. I have a hunger and a thirst, an internal compulsion, just like you do if you are in Christ. You want to do what is right all of the time. The problem is that we barely do what's right any of the time. Amen? We seem like we never get it right, but I want to, and I have this hunger and this thirst, this yearning for righteousness. And along comes somebody and says, hey, man, I'll show you the trick, follow these list of rules that I came up with from studying the Bible. This is straight from the Bible, you'll follow these rules. I wanna be right, so I'm gonna follow these rules. The problem is this, if there was a list of rules that you could follow, that God would accept, there would have never been a cross. There would have only been a rule book. He gave the most perfect, the most innocent person ever created was Adam. Adam was not holy, he was innocent. He was in a state of perfection because sin had not entered his life. He had one command. And by the way, that command was not, don't get aggravated at your wife for talking too much. It was not that command. Some of y'all not laughing, that's funny. Woman, I just got done working all day and I come in the house and the first thing you do is jump on me like a chimpanzee and start gnawing on me with all these words. I just need to have some quiet for a little while. Amen? Come on, fellas. Yeah, laugh. No, Adam had one rule. One rule. Don't eat that fruit. Not don't eat any fruit. And the first thing he told him was everything in the garden is for you. Everything, the whole world is yours. Enjoy. But that one, stay away from. That one that's in the middle of the garden where you have to be going to get there. You don't wander around and find it. You have to aim for it. And what did Adam do? He couldn't keep one. So God solved the problem. He come back and give him 10. The best one couldn't keep one. I'm going to keep 10. Nope. They were never intended for you to be able to get to God on your own. They were intended to point you to the Savior when you realize that I can't keep even one of them. But friends, there is one that lived that kept all of them perfectly. He didn't keep all of them on the outside like a Pharisee, He kept all of them on the inside where it matters. Because God doesn't look at the outside, He looks at the heart. And He lived that perfect life and has provided for us a righteousness that God will accept that has been imputed to us. So that when God looks at a person, a child of God who has been saved by the Savior, He no longer sees you. He sees Jesus. You say, preacher, you don't understand about my life. Oh yeah, I do. You don't understand about my life. But we both understand about one another's lives. We're not getting there from here on our own. We need a savior. And even when we have the Savior, there is still this yearning in our life, this hunger and thirst for righteousness. You know, the unbeliever only wants to get God off their back. They don't want to be better. They want God to leave them alone. You know what the unbeliever wants? What's the bare minimum? It's like doing your taxes. It's okay to be this way doing your taxes. What's the bare minimum? I got to give these wretches in Washington to continue to ruin this country in my life. What's the least I can get away with? You go to an accountant, he knows the rule book. They got thick books that the lawyers make in Washington because there are people like me always looking for a way out. What's the least I have to do? Friends, you don't get to heaven by doing the least. You get to heaven by meeting God's standard. And God's standard is what Jesus Christ did. And until that, if and until that reality is not superimposed over your life and God's book that he is keeping records in, you don't have hope. And you don't have a desire and a hunger and a thirst for righteousness. You just want God off your back. But friends, when God invades your life, When the Holy Spirit of God comes and invades your life and brings the love of God that is shed abroad in your heart and now you love God for the first time in your life and you love other people completely different than you ever did, you have a meekness of spirit, you have now a hunger and a thirst for righteousness that no one can explain, you're not concerned about being good enough so much to get to heaven, you want to be good enough to please God. Not get him off your back so that he doesn't throw you in hell. You want to please him right now. And that is a fruit of salvation. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Disclaimer, it won't be satisfied in this life. Not fully. It is satisfied to the degree that we recognize that our righteousness before God is our standing in Christ, and he sees us as fully acceptable before him. There is therefore now no condemnation for those that are in Christ. We recognize that in this life, but friends, there's coming a day when there will be no sin in me or around me. You may not recognize me in heaven. That's how much different it's going to be. Verse 7, blessed are the merciful. Why would somebody be merciful in this life? Because of the mercy that we've been shown. When we realize what Christ has had to save us from, the reason that he had to come and die for us, it creates in us a capacity to be merciful to other people. The Holy Spirit comes in and gives us a capacity of mercy toward others that are suffering so that we bear one another's burdens, we rejoice with those that rejoice, we mourn with those that mourn. Again, no credit to us. This has happened to us because these first two beatitudes, this root has been set, this fruit begins to come out of our lives. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Not blessed are those who are pure in their behavior. Not blessed are the religionists who get this stuff right on the outside. Nobody has ever had a stronger religious concern and a more direct religious perspective than did the Pharisees of Jesus' day. And you know what he told them after all their efforts were exhausted? Woe to you. You know what woe means? Cursed are you, to hell with you. You are on your way to hell. You do all of these ostentatious things on the outside, but you've neglected the weightier matters. And what are the weightier matters? Concerns of the heart. Mercy for the widows and the orphans. Mercy for people that need it. You have these people come to you for help, they're bearing these religious burdens, and he says, you won't lift a finger to help them, you only condemn them more. And somebody along the way figured out that you can bilk money out of people if you tell them, well, you can't get it right physically, but if you give me enough money, I'll talk to the big guy and see if we can work something out. And the more money you bring, the more I can talk to him. Blessed are the pure in heart. That's not something you can do on your own. That's something that only the Holy Spirit can do. And you now have a concern. You know how it is as a believer. You may get it right on the outside, but you know that you did it with a wrong motive. You know that you did it with a shockingly wrong attitude on the inside. You say, this isn't right. I've got to make this right. And you go and apologize to people for things that they never knew you did because they were done on the inside. By the way, you don't necessarily need to do that. If you come to me to apologize to me for something I don't know about, I'm going to stop you right there. You're forgiven by me. I don't need you to tell me anything else. I don't need to know. It's between you and the Lord, and if you felt like you needed it to be between you and me, that's fine, but it's done. I don't need to hear it. I don't. Because the greater work has already been done for you to feel the internal compulsion to repent. That's this pureness of heart. For they will see God. There are many today that claim they've seen God. There's not a pure hair on their head, so you know they've not seen God. Verse 9, blessed are the peacemakers. Paul said in Romans 12, that as far as it depends on you to be at peace with all people, with all men. The peacemakers, making peace between one another, peace between people and God, bringing others to Christ, those that want to create peace. Now there's some of us that just, we'd rather create peace by having a hammer fight. Some of us, not some of y'all. That's how I'm wired. Let's just go on and get it over with. It doesn't bother me. That's a natural reaction. The supernatural responses. We want to make peace. Paul said to the Corinthians, you get in arguments with one another and you go to a judge? Shouldn't you rather be defrauded by your brother and reconcile that relationship rather than get a pound of flesh out of them? Yeah, that's what you should do. Peacemakers. They shall be called sons of God because there's only one way to explain why they're a peacemaker. Verses 10 and 11, you can take them separate or you can put them together, but this is something that this man in John chapter 4 was going to face when he gets back to Herod Antipas, and he begins to tell people that he has come to faith in Christ. And he begins to live this life of beatitudes that are coming out of his life because the ministry of the Holy Spirit causes him to be weak and to hunger and thirst for righteousness. And he's now in places that he used to go in service to King Herod that used to not bother him. And now he is grieved by what he is seeing and hearing and experiencing, and it's coming out of his life. And people don't want to hear that. Just leave us alone. What happened? You used to be fun. You're not fun anymore. Friends, I'll tell you. The only fun worth having is fun that you have in Jesus Christ. The world thinks they're having fun. There are festivals every weekend around here. But fun by the flesh's desire is not the same as enjoyment from God's desire. And when that reality begins to come out of us, it's going to create a response from those around us. Thus far, he's talked about what is happening in us, meekness, hunger for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, being a peacemaker. That's all on the inside. Now he talks about what the fruit of salvation is going to be from the outside. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. And I'll tell you this, friends, if you're going to live a life of meekness, a life that hungers for righteousness, a merciful life, a life where purity of heart is what is coming out of your life and you can't stand to be around the things you used to be around, and you're trying to be a peacemaker, you will be abused and ultimately because of this, Paul says, it's an aroma that we give off. It's an aroma of life to life and of death to death. It is something that Christians recognize as the Holy Spirit's ministry comes out of one to another. We recognize it as an aroma of life to life, but friends, the world that is outside of Christ recognizes it as a condemnation. Jesus says, I'm going to the Father and you will be my witnesses. And the Holy Spirit of God is going to come and fill your life and empower you to convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. And when that happens, verse 10 is the reaction, persecuted for righteousness' sake. Why are they blessed? For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and other all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad. This man's humble plea in John chapter 4 exhibits to us that the Holy Spirit of God had brought a poverty of spirit to his understanding, and he was mourning over what he could not accomplish, and that is how we come to Christ. We are in a state of poverty. We can bring nothing to the table. We have no way to interest him in us, and we mourn over that. And then he moves in with the comfort of the Spirit and the forgiveness of salvation. Back in John chapter 4, in verse 50, yeah, I know I'm over time, give me a minute. Jesus said, go, your son will live. That's what the man petitioned him for. What do you see come from Jesus here? Do you glean from this that Jesus said, okay, fine, since you keep nagging me, I'll give it to you. That's how we treat our kids. Sometimes it's how we treat our spouse. Okay, fine, if you're going to ask every day, I'll give it to you. I mean, Samson finally gave in to Delilah and said, here, just cut my hair and leave me alone. That's not how Jesus responds here. This humble plea by this desperate man is met with a heartfelt provision. The Lord Jesus Christ, friends, is never reluctant to provide salvation to those that petition him for it. He either lavishes his adoration on his people or he leaves people alone. He's never cajoled, he's never been bullied, he's never been irritated enough to do more. He does as he pleases, and it pleases him to save people, and it pleases him to provide for his people. The question is, which side of that equation are you on? Are you one of his people who has recognized your poverty of spirit and mourned over your sin and has seen the indwelling Holy Spirit begin to create these beatitudes in your life, inexplicable realities in your life? Or are you still one who is outside the kingdom? You need to decide this day what you're going to do with Jesus Christ. Because the Bible has already determined what he's going to do with you. John chapter 2, at the end of John chapter 3, he who does not believe is condemned already. Whoever does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. We can whittle the world down to two groups of people, those that are right with God and those that have the wrath of God still abiding on them. What are you going to do about it? If you stand, we're going to pray. I appreciate your attention today. I hope that it has been profitable, informative. I hope that it has been honorable to the Lord. I pray that you have a great Lord's Day. Father, thank you for the time that you've given us here. Thank you for your word. Thank you that this book is indeed what it is. It is not a book like any other. It is the living and abiding word of God, and I pray that you will cause it to produce the fruit that you intend this day. You will be honored by it. I pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.