1. "We're going to understand what Jesus thinks the kingdom of God is, and how that's supposed to, not only bless us, but bless our world, bless everybody around us. After World War II, people were wondering, how is it that the German nation, folks that had really been, they had a long history of Christianity. Martin Luther came from Germany. How was it that they gave themselves to murder of the Jews? How was it that they caused so much trouble?" [01:15] (29 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




2. "When we don't have moral clarity, you guys know this, relationships begin to break down. Not only relationships, but people with power, because there's nothing, they begin to leverage their power and they cause injustice for many. And when there's no moral framework, even families that are very close begin to fight and deteriorate. And then institutions and society begin to fight and deteriorate and more and more chaos erupts." [03:44] (25 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




3. "Blessed are the nobodies. Blessed are the people that nobody else cares about. Blessed are the people that we would overlook, because we don't think they stand out in any way. Jesus says, I came for you. To me, you're the important ones. You're the ones who are, just right. You're ready for the message of the kingdom of God. You know you don't have much, therefore, you'll allow me to do it all for you." [08:49] (24 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




4. "In light of who Jesus was, and in light of the fact that he's resurrected, who should we be? What was he trying to get us to become? And this is his answer in the sermon on the mount. And what we're going to find out is it's the nobodies of the world who will live an unapplauded life right now who ultimately gain heaven's applause." [11:18] (23 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




5. "Everybody cares about human flourishing, but do you know the best way to see humans flourish is for them to embrace the kingdom of God, because the kingdom of God releases people. It releases them from selfishness. It releases them from having to get their own way and taking wicked ways to get there. It's God's plan. If people were just acting this way, this is what they would look like, and it would release not only them personally, but everybody into a greater level of human flourishing." [12:37] (27 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




6. "If we're reading the Sermon on the Mount, if Jesus is coaching us, that he's going to say, yeah, there's things, dude, you just have to be way more aggressive than that. You just have to say, no, I'm living up to here, and I'm going to do it imperfectly, but I'm still aiming there. I'm not going to aim here just because that's what my friends are doing or the world is doing." [20:04] (18 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




7. "Jesus says, with the Sermon on the Mount, I want the insides to match the outsides, and this is what people who are pursuing the virtue of the kingdom begin to figure out, oh, I need to be on guard, not just about what I do. I need to be on guard of what is happening in me while I'm doing even good things because I can be doing it for all the wrong reasons." [21:40] (25 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




8. "Do it so that you will be sons and daughters of your father in heaven. Do it because of what it does to you. See, there's moral choices that have consequences and there's moral choices that are our duty. Moral choices that change us, not just the consequences. There's evil that I can choose that, yeah, not only did that evil happen out in the world, it changed me." [24:37] (25 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




9. "The kingdom virtues, oh, they're connected to the king. What's so powerful about the Sermon on the Mount is it's Jesus that's preaching it. If it was anybody else, they'd be like, yeah, I mean, I hear you, bro, but you ain't doing that, are you? They're not fulfilling it. They can't do it. They can't entirely pull off the law. The only one who can do it is Jesus." [27:13] (18 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




10. "The only way to be better than them is to have my righteousness. The only way to be better than them is to, see, they're not righteous on the inside. They're only right on the outside. And Jesus is saying, you're going to need me to do the sermon on the mount. You're going to need to trust me that I forgive you, that I give you my own righteousness. I gift it to you. It's yours forever. There's nothing you can do to rub it off. It'll never go away." [28:21] (22 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

We're going to talk today about having some moral clarity, and we're going to go to a place called the Sermon on the Mount. Many of you have heard of it. This is Jesus' most famous sermon, the most famous things that he said. We're going to take several months, actually, and walk through them in a series called The Applause of Heaven. I'm super excited about this. I have not preached on the Sermon on the Mount, I think, in about 11 years, and I was listening to an 11-year-old message yesterday. I was like, doggone, Carter, you were so bad. You were so bad. And so I just want, can I, if you were around back then, can I just apologize to you? Hey, thanks for sticking with me, man. Sometimes I'm just surprised Jesus doesn't throw me out the window or something, you know, because I'm like, golly. But by the grace of God, he stuck with me.

So we're going to try it again for the next few months, Sermon on the Mount, Applause of Heaven. And we're going to understand what Jesus thinks the kingdom of God is, and how that's supposed to not only bless us, but bless our world, bless everybody around us.

After World War II, people were wondering, how is it that the German nation, folks that had really been, they had a long history of Christianity. Martin Luther came from Germany. How was it that they gave themselves to the murder of the Jews? How was it that they caused so much trouble? Historians would tell you, many believe, one of the things that went wrong was they began to compartmentalize. They began to say, hey, there's really two kingdoms. And they'd heard this, like Martin Luther himself even taught this. There's really two kingdoms. There's the kingdom of Jesus, and then there's the kingdom of the world, which includes governmental authorities.

And they didn't really play that all the way out, because they said, you should always obey the authorities in the world, because they're instituted by God, and you should always obey God's word. But they didn't really think that out into the 20th century, when the authorities would be getting more and more evil. The appropriate biblical response is to resist evil tyranny and governments that are doing things the opposite way of God. But because it was baked into their thinking, they did not have moral clarity about what to do. And so they just, even though they knew it was wrong, they're just like, well, but it's not really wrong because I'm doing what my authorities tell me to do.

And you guys know the effect that it had on our entire world. I know that you guys aren't there, but we all can get confused. We can all lack moral clarity sometimes. And one of the reasons is the kingdom of the Lord, the kingdom of the Lord, this world, the system of this world, the way it's done out there. There's a lot of great stuff that happens, but one of the things it's trying to do, it's trying to synchronize all of our brains to its way of thinking and valuing all the time.

When I was a young man, you know, I had never talked back to my mom until I saw my friends talk back to their moms. And being around them put some dissonance in my mind. I was like, oh, maybe there are situations where it's appropriate to talk back to your mom. I never got high until I saw my friends get high. I would have resisted it. I would have said, man, don't keep that crap away from me. But then I saw my friends do it and do it and do it enough.

And it became true of me that you know this. It's been said, take a look at the five people closest to you because that's who you're becoming. That's what you're going to be like. And my friends, we not only have people around us that don't necessarily want to do the ways of God, we have an entire universe in this thing that is preaching to us all day and trying to synchronize minds to the ways of the world.

That's why it says in Romans 12:2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind through the scriptures. The world's always trying to conform our brains every single day. And that's why Jesus comes in and man, like a shot, he gives moral clarity. That's what he's going to do.

When we don't have moral clarity, you guys know this, relationships begin to break down. Not only relationships, but people with power, because there's nothing, they begin to leverage their power and they cause injustice for many. And when there's no moral framework, even families that are very close begin to fight and deteriorate. And then institutions and society begin to fight and deteriorate and more and more chaos erupts. And it just trends that way until a generation says, we've got to change this. We've got to bring back some moral clarity. We've got to have a framework for what is right and what is wrong.

And Jesus, here's what's about Jesus. It'll surprise you a little bit. He doesn't come in and say, I've got a solution for society. He doesn't come in with any campaign slogans. He doesn't just say, hey guys, here's my eight-step plan to get society back on track. That's not what he does. He says, I have a moral vision and it starts with me. It doesn't start with transforming society. It starts with me and goes into transforming the humans, the individuals within society to think like me and do what my heart would always do.

And he paints this beautiful picture. If someone were really living under the authority of God all the time, this is what it would look like. And that picture is the Sermon on the Mount. That's what we're going to study. And what we're going to find out is the true subjects of the King, King Jesus, are becoming something else. They're not just learning new rules. They're not just getting some religion. They are being transformed on the inside. They're becoming a different thing than they were. And because they're that different thing, they act differently in the situations that they find themselves in.

In Jesus' time, there was a big question in everybody's mind. And it was, what happened to the promises of God? The nation Jesus lived among, it was the Jews. And they'd been through a lot. We discussed it in a previous series, the book of Exodus. We went through a lot of it. And it was a lot about the promises of God. It was about the promise of God is, hey man, I'm going to rescue the whole world. I'm going to create one nation. And in that nation, I'm going to teach them my ways of holiness. And then I'm going to bless all people in the earth. That was the plan. There are all kinds of promises attached to that.

Well, eventually, this very nation, it did get raised up, but then it backed away from God. It began to do the ways of the world. And then God, just like he promised, he decided to kick them out of their own land for 70 years. But like he promised, he brought them back after that period of discipline. But then a little bit happened and 400 years went by and no word from God. And so all the people are asking, what happened? Well, I thought we were like on God's program. What happened now? Where's the promises? Why haven't they come to pass?

And there's one group of people, they were like the religious leaders at the time, but they weren't religious leaders like they should have been. Okay. They weren't like gentle and filled with love. They were just very narrowly focused on, look, you got to get it right. And one of the reasons they thought that was because they thought the reason the promises of God had not happened was because people weren't getting it right enough. They weren't obeying enough. That's why there was this other nation, Rome, that was really had its boot on their neck. They weren't an independent nation like they were when David was king. Their whole game was, hey, let's all just start obeying more and more.

Well, then you also had the desert people. They were a different group. They had a different theory. Their theory was, you know what? We're just not, we're not isolated from the world enough. We're too interacted with it. So we're going to withdraw into the desert. These are people like the Essenes. And they said, we just need exclusively very monk-like focus on God, nothing else. It's only God.

Then there's the folks called the zealots. And they said, oh, I'll tell you the problem. The problem is Rome. The problem is, the problem is they're always keeping us down. They're taking away our rights. They just come in and take whatever they want. They're powerful and we're not. And so what we got to do, baby, look, look, we just got to kill them. That's what we got to do.

But most people, most everyday people, they were just going to work, providing for their families, getting sick, trying to not get sick, get better, doing normal everyday things. They weren't famous. They weren't really important to society. They weren't like the folks that we think are important today. You can probably list in your mind, things come to you. Here's the important people in the world. The Elon Musks of the world. The Taylor Swifts of the world. The people, the movers and shakers. These are the ones that are very important. These people were the opposite of that. They're the ones, they figured, nobody knows about us. Maybe our God cares about us, but we are nothing special.

Enter Jesus. Sermon on the Mount. And it's really important the way he starts the Sermon on the Mount, because he says, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the ones who, when they look at their pockets spiritually, they say, I don't think I have much. I'm not really doing a ton right. I'm not amazing. I'm not brilliant. I'm not an Elon Musk. I'm kind of a nobody. And Jesus says, then this is for you. If you feel like a nobody, if you feel like nobody sees you, if you feel like, yeah, everyone else is important, everybody else's stuff gets liked, everyone else's, they've got a career that's amazing, everyone else is doing awesome stuff. If you've ever thought that, this is for you. If you felt like, I'm nothing special, great, because that's who the kingdom is for.

Blessed are the nobodies. Blessed are the people that nobody else cares about. Blessed are the people that we would overlook because we don't think they stand out in any way. Jesus says, I came for you. To me, you're the important ones. You're the ones who are just right. You're ready for the message of the kingdom of God. You know you don't have much, therefore, you'll allow me to do it all for you. You'll allow me to come into your heart, and from the inside, I'm going to train you to be my subjects in the new and expanding and wonderful and awesome kingdom.

And so people are, Jesus is getting really popular, man. People are following him around. And there's rumors. They're like, geez, we haven't seen anybody like this since Elijah. It's been almost a thousand years since anything like this has happened. And Elijah was cool, but this guy's doing cooler miracles than Elijah was. In fact, he reminds me of Moses. And nobody's more authoritative than Moses, and yet he talks with authority. He talks like a Moses or more. I don't know, could it be possible that this is the Messiah? That's what they're wondering. And we're going to find out that they're right. It is the Messiah.

And so in light of Jesus' unique authority, and ultimately, his resurrection, the question they're asking, the original readers of this, see, Matthew is the compiler of all these sermon chunks of Jesus's. He's putting it in the book of Matthew, and he's displaying it. Jesus has long been resurrected by now when Matthew's finally putting this together. See, Matthew was an apostle. He was a teacher. He'd been teaching this all this time. And so this beautiful, well-ordered book of Matthew, he says, I'm going to put all these awesome sermons that he did on the mount all together. Here they are. And I'm going to do it to demonstrate that he really is the Messiah.

And I'm going to do it to demonstrate that he really is the Messiah. He really is who he said he was. And in light of that, I'm going to let everybody know who's alive today and who's alive in the future generations. In light of who Jesus was, and in light of the fact that he's resurrected, who should we be? What was he trying to get us to become? And this is his answer in the sermon on the mount.

And what we're going to find out is it's the nobodies of the world who will live an unapplauded life right now who ultimately gain heaven's applause. The nobodies of the world. The nobodies of the world who will live a largely unapplauded. It's not that we'll never be applauded, but the things that we do for the kingdom are not necessarily applauded. There's a day coming when they will be applauded. But you know, it's trippy. What's paradoxical about it is it will be applauded. But by the time you get there, you won't care for applause because you'll want all the applause to go to the king of the kingdom, because that's what a subject would want.

This kingdom of God, what is it? It's this thing that in Jesus' time, breaking out. It's breaking in. It's like tidal waves coming through the windows. It is the rule and the authority of God in people's hearts that you can't necessarily see. They're deciding. They're willing. They're not following the rule books. They want to be the king's subject. And you can't always tell by what they say, because people say a lot of stuff. You really can tell by what they do and what they end up doing over the long haul. That's who the kingdom is.

And what living in the kingdom of God is, it's the rule of God. It's the rule of God. My friends, we got to understand this because in some ways our world cares about this right now, but not all the way. Everybody cares about human flourishing, but do you know the best way to see humans flourish is for them to embrace the kingdom of God, because the kingdom of God releases people. It releases them from selfishness. It releases them from having to get their own way and taking wicked ways to get there. It's God's plan.

If people were just acting this way, this is what they would look like, and it would release not only them personally, but everybody into a greater level of human flourishing. It's causing, it's a seed planted that causes us to act now like what we ultimately will perfectly act like in the future. It means we become and act like a citizen of heaven now, even though it's not obvious that we are citizens of heaven like it will be later.

Those of you familiar with the Lord of the Rings, use a classic illustration here, man. Aragorn. Aragorn is the king. He's the king of Gondor, but almost nobody knows him. Aragorn is the king of Gondor, but almost nobody knows him. He doesn't go around flaunting it, but you know what he does? He acts like it in his character, in his courage, in his willingness to lay his life down for others. Dude, he's been the king the whole time, and then finally at the end, he's revealed as the king to everybody, but you know what? He was always the king, and that's what God is after with the Sermon on the Mount.

He wants later people to say, you know what? They were really always his subjects. They didn't just become his subjects in heaven. They were acting like it to begin with. It was just veiled. You couldn't see it, but the true subjects of the kingdom, they're in the process right now of becoming something else.

So when we look at the Sermon on the Mount, because we're going to take a lot of time on it, guys, I want you to see it as this is the picture. If you're a Christ follower, this is the picture that Jesus is painting you into. This is where he wants you to get. By his power, this is the perfect smile after the braces. Right now, you have a lot of the braces still. You have the trials of life. You have the difficult times. You have the difficulties. That's the braces, but you're going to get there, and I'm going to get there.

And it is not just amplified more laws, more laws added to what Moses said. It is Jesus training our heart to think and feel and act from a place that would act like him.

Now, if we're going to talk about this, we got to talk for a minute about ethics. In our time, one of the most popular ways people make ethical decisions, we could call it consequential ethics. That means they say, what's the ultimate outcome? If the ultimate outcome is good, that's the one we want to go with. So no matter what we have to do to get there, even if we have to do some things that someone might have one time thought was wrong, as long as it ends up that we can say, well, that's alleviating suffering, then that's great ethics. And it can be. There's certainly times where that absolutely works.

Until you get to times when folks say, okay, well, I'm suffering, and I just want to be able to kill myself, or I want you to kill me. I want you to kill me. I want you to kill me. I want you to kill me. So I can get done with this. And that's where you start to run cross-grain with God's word. Because God says, I've not delegated to you the task of taking other people's lives. Unless you're like a judge, I've not given that to you. You don't get to do that. That's not really ethical, even though it might seem so, because the result you get seems to, on some level, alleviate human suffering.

Because you can keep on following that. Do you know that? You can exterminate a nation based on that reasoning. I say, well, we're all suffering because of what these people did to us in the last war. It's their fault. And if we would just get rid of these guys, we'd just gas them all, then we'd alleviate our suffering, and we'd be all good. You see where that goes? Yeah, you can wickedly twist that into a lot of things.

There's also duty ethics. These are very good. This is where you're like, hey, man, I got to do my duty, right? And it's everything from the captain is going down with the ship. That's just like, it's not written anywhere, but they have to do it. If you're a good captain, if you're a good captain, if the ship goes down, you're going down with it. But it's also, it's an agreement, hey, fulfill your contracts, man. Don't back out of a contract. What kind of louse are you? It's your duty to fulfill your contract.

Yeah, I mean, that's pretty good. Even here in America, because it was so costly, get out there and vote, man. It's your duty, right? So duty ethics can be very good, but there's something more powerful than that, and it's kingdom virtue ethics. It is something Jesus does deeper in the heart, not to give us rules, but to train us to become someone who has a lot of different things going on in front of them, a lot of different moral choices, but because they're operating out of the heart of Jesus, they're able to navigate it.

Sometimes it's this way, and sometimes it's this way, but their heart has been trained to know what God would want. They're focused on character, and Jesus is the only one who can do it. He's the only one who can perfectly pull off the Sermon on the Mount, and he's the only one who can train us. So what I'm inviting you into is the mentoring of the Son of God.

If you're listening in the future, go ahead and go back some in the podcast and find the beginning of this series and go through the whole thing. We're going to be mentored by Jesus himself. And so for this first message, we're just going to look at, let's look at the big picture of the Sermon on the Mount. Next week, we're going to start going in much deeper, but here's what we're going to find.

As we survey the entire mountain of the Sermon on the Mount, I'm going to walk you through some trails right now. We're going to say, this is what this is going to show us, what you're going to find on this mountain. Kingdom of virtue is number one. It's ideally aimed. It's ideally aimed. One of the reasons sometimes people get discouraged when they read the Sermon on the Mount is they say, nobody can do that. That's impossible, man. Matthew 5:48 says, but you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. Perfect? I'm supposed to be as perfect as God?

What that is, is it's hyperbolic language. It is language to stir us up to say, I have to really aim at something powerful, something strong, something specific, something high. I have to choose the highest moral space I could go. I have to live up to the highest morality I could get to. Because if I don't, I'm just going to give myself an out. I'm going to say, well, you know, no one can really do it, so that's not serious.

Yeah, but Jesus is going to say it because he's like, yeah, but I am serious. You really need to aim at this. You're not going to do perfect, but you still need to try to go that direction. And this is really hard, especially, I think, for young ones nowadays, because the world seems entirely built to suck you into compromise. It's, well, you can just do this. It's okay for now. Well, you can just do this. It's okay for now.

And what we just got to understand is, if we're reading the Sermon on the Mount, if Jesus is coaching us, that he's going to say, yeah, there's things, dude, you just have to be way more aggressive than that. You just have to say, no, I'm living up to here, and I'm going to do it imperfectly, but I'm still aiming there. I'm not going to aim here just because that's what my friends are doing or the world is doing.

That means I'm going to forgive and reconcile when I'm sick and tired of it. That means I'm going to pursue sexual purity when I'm just, I feel like it's everywhere in front of me. How can I not give over to this? I'm going to resist retaliation, even though TV certainly tells me I should not resist it. YouTube certainly tells me I should not resist it. I'm going to resist it anyway. I'm going to walk in integrity. I'm going to live like Jesus is telling me the truth, and I shouldn't invest all my resources here. I should invest many, many, many years of my life in helping other people get to heaven by finding Christ.

That's what it is to aim high. It's just saying, hey, dude, look, don't settle for the easy road. You're going to find the Sermon on the Mount, it pops it up there. It says, go here. Here's the aim. Go for it. Kingdom virtue is ideally aimed, and it's also internally aware. It's internally aware. Jesus is going to talk a lot about the heart in this Sermon on the Mount, and the thing is, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? I'm even doing a rightish thing, but why am I doing it?

Okay, see, I didn't technically commit adultery. Jesus says, yeah, but in the inner person of the heart, internally, you did when you lusted. You say, well, I did give. I demonstrated in front of everybody. I gave a ton, and everybody knows about it. He says, yeah, but that's why you did it. You did it so everyone would know about it. I pray so beautifully. I pray so eloquently in front of other people. I'm obviously usually the most spiritual person in the room, and Jesus says, that's great that you prayed so beautifully, but it's a lie because you're really talking to yourself.

You really just want everyone to know how deep and profound and cool you are, and if it's not prayer, it's something else where you're pretending to be humble, but really, you're just applauding on the inside, and Jesus says, with the Sermon on the Mount, I want the insides to match the outsides, and this is what people who are pursuing the virtue of the kingdom begin to figure out, oh, I need to be on guard, not just about what I do. I need to be on guard of what is happening in me while I'm doing even good things because I can be doing it for all the wrong reasons.

Many of you remember Lance Armstrong. For seven years in a row, he won the Tour de France. He started this organization called LiveStrong, raised a ton of money for cancer research, and yet it was found out, even though he denied it for a long time, that he'd been doping through a lot of that. He was accelerating via drugs, not because he was really that good, and what happened was it came out. He was stripped of all his titles. He was banned for life. Pretty embarrassing thing. I feel bad for the guy.

I mean, you know, I know he did it to himself, but I'm just thinking about the rest of his life. You're living with that. That's hard. Now, imagine what it's going to be like. What was he doing? He was pretending something was true that wasn't true. He was saying, my performance is really this, but it wasn't really that because it was helped by this other stuff. If that's what happens even on earth, now that's an extreme example, but the world didn't like that. If that's what happens on earth, what happens when God exposes all the secret motivations of our hearts?

What happens when we get to heaven? We're like, man, didn't I rock that Lord? And he's like, no, no, you didn't. Let's take a look. Let's take a look at the monologue that was going on there. We got the tape, roll it. Because Jesus said, everything that's been whispered in the back room is going to be shouted from the rooftop someday. And he doesn't want that to go bad for us. He wants us to go good for us. So he says, if you're going to be my example, if you're going to embrace the virtue kingdom ways, I need you to also pay attention to what's happening here, not just what's happening here.

The world will applaud this. Sometimes nobody will applaud what's happening on the inside, but that's what matters to God because true subjects of the king are becoming something else. I think y'all are still good for one more. You think so? Yeah. So kingdom virtues are ideally aimed. They're internally aware and they're interested in becoming. They're interested in becoming, not performing. Matthew 5:44. We're going to go through all these later, but just to show you that it says it here.

But I say to you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. And that way you will be acting as true children of your father. Why did he say to do it? He didn't say do it because of the consequences. He didn't say do it because it was your duty. He said, do it because it reveals who you are and it practices who you are. Do it so that you will be sons and daughters of your father in heaven. Do it because of what it does to you.

See, there's moral choices that have consequences and there's moral choices that are our duty. Moral choices that change us, not just the consequences. There's evil that I can choose that, yeah, not only did that evil happen out in the world, it changed me. See, when I stole that thing, yes, that hurt them because I stole it. But it also hurt me because it makes me a stealer. And Jesus is saying, I want you to do the opposite of that. I want you to be someone who is becoming.

Many of you are familiar with the story. Jesus is watching people put coins into the offering. They're offering into the offering. They're offering into the offering. They're offering into the offering. He's watching. He even points it out. This widow comes along, sticks in two pennies. He says, boys, whoa, whoa, whoa, watch this. She just gave more than anybody. Now, if we were going according to consequential ethics, we'd be like, no, she didn't. That's not going to do anything. She should go buy a stick of gum for that and try to survive because that's not going to help anybody.

If we were just about duty and said, well, you know, it's her duty to give to the temple. People would say, no, it's not her duty. It's her duty to take care of herself. Why does she save her money? That'd be her duty. But Jesus says, there's a higher ethic. That ethic is she's acting out of who she is. She is a daughter of the most high God. She's acting as a truster. She's acting as a giver. What would Jesus do? He would trust and he would give. She's acting out of who she really is. And that's who we got to be.

There's a false version, guys. I'm sure you've seen this, but just to demonstrate it. You've been to a doctor, probably. They were very smart, but they were kind of a jerk. Their bedside manner was horrible. And you were like, are you sure? I'm sure you've seen this, but just to demonstrate it. Are you a doctor though? I know you are, but are you? Because you're misrepresenting it.

Or you've been to, you had a teacher and that teacher was, man, yeah, they were really smart, but they're also really critical. They didn't really help you learn. They just protected the knowledge from getting to you. They just kind of were disappointed in you. Or you had a coach that they knew how to run the drills, but they didn't really care what happened to those young men and women. They didn't care about their lives. They didn't care about their character. They just wanted to win.

And Jesus is saying, I don't want that to be true of you. I don't want people to say, I don't want that to be true of you. I don't want people to say, well, I know that they like the Bible or something. I never sensed the king in them though. I didn't sense that they would do what the king would do.

Now, one more asterisk. The kingdom virtues, oh, they're connected to the king. What's so powerful about the Sermon on the Mount is it's Jesus that's preaching it. If it was anybody else, they'd be like, yeah, I mean, I hear you, bro, but you ain't doing that, are you? They're not fulfilling it. They can't do it. They can't entirely pull off the law. The only one who can do it is Jesus.

And so he invites us relationally. He says, come walk with me. I'll show you how to do this. I'll live in you and help you do it, but it's always connected to me. It's not a list of chores to go do. Stay with me. I'll teach you how to be a son and a daughter of God. You're not going to be able to do it on your own. In fact, he warns them in this very sermon, verse 20, but I warn you, unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you'll never enter the kingdom of God.

Everyone who heard that, who didn't think they were all that in a bag of chips, just sunk. They're like, are you serious? I have to be better than the Pharisees? They're our best guys. They're the superheroes. I have to be better than them? He says, this is the gospel right here. He's revealing it. The only way to be better than them is to have my righteousness. The only way to be better than them is to, see, they're not righteous on the inside. They're only right on the outside.

And Jesus is saying, you're going to need me to do the sermon on the mount. You're going to need to trust me that I forgive you, that I give you my own righteousness. I gift it to you. It's yours forever. There's nothing you can do to rub it off. It'll never go away. You're going to have to trust me. I'm going to patiently walk this out and forgive you when you stumble, but I'm going to keep calling you up. I'm going to keep raising the standard to be a son or a daughter of God.

So you can demonstrate to the rest of this world, Jesus is the king. I want to do it hand in hand and I want to do it together.

Let's bow our heads. King Jesus, we just want to declare, right now, while it's still a version of invisible, you are the king. And God, we want to recognize there's things in us that don't always act like you're the king, but you're so merciful. You didn't just give us a list. You didn't give us a chore. You didn't send us an email. You yourself died in our place so that we could have right standing with you.

And now you could train us to walk as sons and daughters of God. We're so thankful, God. There's nothing we could ever do to repay you other than walk with you, enjoy you forever. We ask, Holy Spirit of Jesus, would you pour out your anointing on this series? Would you pour out your anointing on us as we read, as we're transformed? God, help us to cooperate with you. Help us to get back up when we fall. Help us to aim at nothing less than the virtues of the kingdom. In Jesus' name.