Speaker 1: Well, welcome tonight.
Speaker 1: What a beautiful song.
Speaker 1: Holy, there is no one like you.
Speaker 1: I hope that tonight, as I am teaching from God's Word, that you guys would truly be able to know holy, there is no one like you.
Speaker 1: Be able to know.
Speaker 1: Holy, there is no one like you.
Speaker 1: What an amazing thing once a Christian realizes who his true master is, that it's not himself, but it is Christ who is his master, that it is not him who rules his life anymore, yet it is Christ.
Speaker 1: And when you are met with this truth, the only thing that we can bear to say is Holy, holy, holy.
Speaker 1: There truly is no one else like the God whom we serve.
Speaker 1: Well, good evening.
Speaker 1: If you don't know who I am, garrett kind of introduced me, but my name is Caden Brown.
Speaker 1: I co-lead the junior-senior group with Andrew.
Speaker 1: What a wonderful leader he is.
Speaker 1: I'm delighted to be speaking here tonight, and tonight we're going to be going over Matthew, chapter 5, and continuing the series of the Sermon on the Mount, and I get so excited to come and teach every time.
Speaker 1: Garrett asked me to come, because I get to do one thing, and my one thing and my one desire for tonight is to simply lead you to Christ and leave you there for you to make a decision whether you're a believer or whether you're an unbeliever, whether you recognize Christ as Lord and Savior or whether you don't.
Speaker 1: My prayer for this time is that I can lead you to a place to accept Him or to dismiss Him, and I pray over everyone that everyone would accept, but that is your choice.
Speaker 1: Tonight we're going to read from Matthew 5, starting in verse 38 and going through 42.
Speaker 1: Let's pray, lord, we just thank you for tonight, we thank you for your word and we thank you for the truths that are in them.
Speaker 1: Lord, I pray that I can accurately display these truths and, lord, we pray that you would be moving in the hearts of everybody here to come into a closer dependence upon you.
Speaker 1: Lord, we just pray these things in your name, amen.
Speaker 1: If you guys don't get anything I say here tonight as we go through this text, this is the one principle, the one thing that I wish and I desire and say I get it.
Speaker 1: This is my main encouragement for you and it's very simple.
Speaker 1: It's three words, and these three words are you need Jesus.
Speaker 1: Whether you're a Christian or not, your need of Christ never changes.
Speaker 1: You needed him for salvation and you need him for sanctification, which is the process of becoming more like him, which is the process of becoming more like him.
Speaker 1: Jesus has built a standard in Matthew, chapter 5.
Speaker 1: His whole point of this sermon is to bring you to a place of saying how am I supposed to live this life?
Speaker 1: This life seems impossible.
Speaker 1: This life seems like I can't do it.
Speaker 1: He says, if I just look at a woman with a lustful eye, I've committed adultery.
Speaker 1: What If I have anger against my brother in the sense of wanting to hurt him?
Speaker 1: I am a murderer?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 1: How am I supposed to live this life?
Speaker 1: And he gives us the standard in the end of chapter 5.
Speaker 1: The standard here that Jesus is preaching is in verse 48.
Speaker 1: He says, therefore, you are to be perfect, for your heavenly Father is perfect.
Speaker 1: That's the point that Jesus is trying to get across to us.
Speaker 1: That's the desire for his heart to see that his standard is perfection and you cannot come to the Father unless you're perfect.
Speaker 1: It's impossible, it's literally impossible.
Speaker 1: The Christian life is not difficult.
Speaker 1: It's impossible.
Speaker 1: No matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you strive to live this life that God has called us to live, you can't.
Speaker 1: It's impossible.
Speaker 1: There's nothing within you that is able to be able to live out all the commandments of the New Testament, everything that Jesus desires for you, because we're all going to mess up.
Speaker 1: None of us are perfect.
Speaker 1: Anybody with two brain cells in this room is not going to sit here and say I'm perfect, because we would all know you're a liar.
Speaker 1: We all know that we mess up in some sort of way.
Speaker 1: We all know that we have some sort of flaw, even the most simple commandment that Jesus has given us love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind.
Speaker 1: Not one person on earth has ever been able to truly live this commandment out, because at some point in your life, in some point in the time that you'll live on this earth, you are going to love yourself more than you love God.
Speaker 1: But the one person that was able to live this commandment perfectly pure was Jesus.
Speaker 1: Now you're probably sitting here and saying, well, where's the encouragement in that?
Speaker 1: That sounds terrible.
Speaker 1: You're telling me that this is a waste of time.
Speaker 1: You're telling me that I can't live this Christian life.
Speaker 1: I come to church, I come to Wednesday Night Youth Group and I learn these principles.
Speaker 1: I learn these things that I need to apply to my life.
Speaker 1: And now Caden gets up on stage and tells you I can't do it.
Speaker 1: Well, there's only two possibilities from that it's either I'm a liar or there's something more to this.
Speaker 1: There's something more than my striving, there's something more than my discipline in the faith.
Speaker 1: Let me encourage you now.
Speaker 1: Listen up.
Speaker 1: I'm going to crack the secret of the christian life.
Speaker 1: You wonder why you don't experience all the joys and the blessings that we come up here and we talk to you and we say the joy of the lord is yours, just accept it.
Speaker 1: And you go back home and you say I'm not experiencing the joy of the Lord.
Speaker 1: Where is it?
Speaker 1: Well, the secret of the Christian life is you need Jesus.
Speaker 1: And if you don't get anything that I have to say today through Matthew, chapter five, I want you to get this.
Speaker 1: That is why I've camped out on this message, on this simple truth of we need Jesus.
Speaker 1: It should never get tired of us hearing it, because it is the most important truth in all of our lives, in every area of our life.
Speaker 1: Now you may say what's this got to do with the text that you have to go through?
Speaker 1: What does this have to do with Matthew, chapter 5?
Speaker 1: What's got everything to do with Matthew, chapter 5?
Speaker 1: Because the principle Jesus talks about here are imperative or vitally important to Christian living.
Speaker 1: But if we just hear the principle and say, okay, okay, now I'm going to live this principle out, now I'm going to do it, I'm going to go out and I'm going to strive and I'm going to be this humble person, or I'm going to be this person who doesn't get mad at my brothers, or I'm going to be this person who doesn't look at a woman with a lustful eye.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to do it with all my strength, with all my might, with all my power.
Speaker 1: I am now going to live this life.
Speaker 1: You've missed the point.
Speaker 1: It's not about you, it's not about your strength, it's not about your power, it's not about your discipline, it's not about your striving, christ and Christ living in you, as you've accepted him as your Savior.
Speaker 1: Now he is able to live through you, and it's through Christ's power, christ's might, christ's perseverance, christ's striving we can now live these commandments out and bring these principles in.
Speaker 1: There's a teacher at his hill, which is the place that I work, and he says this this life is all about him, it's not about me.
Speaker 1: He just simply allows me to live in who it's all about.
Speaker 1: So let's read this text verse by verse, and now let's get into it with this in mind that it's not about me, it's not about my striving, but it's about Christ.
Speaker 1: Verse 38 says this the Old Testament law was a fair law.
Speaker 1: It was a law in which you committed a crime and your punishment equals the crime that you committed A tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye.
Speaker 1: And I think it would be very profitable for us to churn there in Leviticus 24 just to see how just and how fair God's law truly was at this time.
Speaker 1: This comes from a passage in Leviticus, chapter 15, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
Speaker 1: Just as he has injured a man, so shall it be inflicted on him.
Speaker 1: Thus the one who kills the animal shall make it good, but the one who kills a man shall be put to death.
Speaker 1: There shall be one standard for you.
Speaker 1: It shall be for the stranger as well as the native, for I am the Lord, your God.
Speaker 1: We see that the Lord has established His law in the Old Testament to be a fair one, that if you do something, something's going to happen to you equal to the crime that you committed.
Speaker 1: But yet Jesus challenges us here in verse 39 of Matthew, chapter 5.
Speaker 1: And he says the law says a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye.
Speaker 1: But I say to you, verse 39, do not resist an evil person, but whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him.
Speaker 1: Also.
Speaker 1: The scripture often gets used against us as saying oh look, christians can't fight back.
Speaker 1: Oh look, christians can't say anything back.
Speaker 1: Christians, if I slap a christian, he's not allowed to retaliate.
Speaker 1: Well, that's simply not true.
Speaker 1: That is not what jesus is talking about here.
Speaker 1: Look at the specifics of the cheek the right.
Speaker 1: Well, what's that have to do with anything?
Speaker 1: Well, if I'm going to want to physically harm someone as someone who gets mad, I guess and I want to punch that person, and I'm right-handed, which most of the population is right-handed, and at this time, actually being left-handed was looked down upon.
Speaker 1: So a lot of left-handed people tried to become right-handed.
Speaker 1: And so if I'm going to physically hurt someone with my right hand and I punch them, which is a physical assault, what side of their face am I going to hit?
Speaker 1: If I throw my right hand, I'm going to hit their left cheek.
Speaker 1: So Jesus isn't talking about a physical assault here.
Speaker 1: So what's he talking about?
Speaker 1: Well, what he's talking about is, in this day, or even to today, if you were to get backhanded, it's not really a physical assault as much as it is an insult.
Speaker 1: It's embarrassing to get backhanded by somebody.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys, but my mom, several times when I talked back to her, backhanded me because I was being a little brat.
Speaker 1: And it's embarrassing even when you're only in the presence of your mom because it's like you don't mean anything, you know.
Speaker 1: And so Jesus here is not talking about a physical insult.
Speaker 1: He's talking about a disrespect.
Speaker 1: More than the pain of the backhand, you're going to feel disrespected.
Speaker 1: Jesus is talking about a verbal insult, not physical.
Speaker 1: Jesus calls us not to return insult for insult, but to be like and to not be like the law in verse 38.
Speaker 1: To not return insult for insult.
Speaker 1: When we're walking around school and someone insults us because of something that we do, are we so quick to insult them back?
Speaker 1: Are we so quick to bring them down because we were just brought down?
Speaker 1: Jesus says don't do it.
Speaker 1: Turn the other cheek Allow for another.
Speaker 1: But yet Jesus also says do not resist the evil one here.
Speaker 1: And that's interesting to me because later on in the gospel Jesus tells his disciples to go to a city and says if this city refuses you, flee.
Speaker 1: Well, fleeing is a type of refusing.
Speaker 1: So Jesus isn't saying that in all situations that we just need to be a doormat for people to walk on and to step on.
Speaker 1: So what's the balance, caden?
Speaker 1: How do I know when to defend myself?
Speaker 1: Comment slide.
Speaker 1: It's a great question.
Speaker 1: And that question comes back to the simple answer of I don't know, you don't know, nobody knows, but you know.
Speaker 1: Who does know is christ.
Speaker 1: Christ will lead you and guide you moment by moment when to say something and when not to say something.
Speaker 1: Jesus is drawing us here in a place of dependence upon him.
Speaker 1: Verse 40,.
Speaker 1: If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat.
Speaker 1: Also, jesus is saying if someone wants to sue you and take something from you, don't just let them take that thing, but give them something.
Speaker 1: Also, in this time, everybody literally had a legal right to their coat.
Speaker 1: It's back in Leviticus.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to turn to Leviticus again.
Speaker 1: But they had a legal right to own a coat.
Speaker 1: It was like their God-given right in this time, because the coat was to keep you warm and safe at night.
Speaker 1: And Jesus says if they sue, you don't only give them the shirt off your back, but give them your coat also.
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to give them my coat too.
Speaker 1: What are you trying to tell me to do?
Speaker 1: Let's continue on and maybe we'll get the full picture.
Speaker 1: Verse 41,.
Speaker 1: Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him too.
Speaker 1: Romans back in the day on the Roman roads could stop anybody that they wanted and make them carry their bag one mile.
Speaker 1: Any direction that the Roman was going Didn't matter if it was the direction that civilian was going and it didn't matter if it was the total opposite direction of that person.
Speaker 1: But a Roman soldier could place their bag down and say you pick it up, come with me for a mile.
Speaker 1: And they had to do it.
Speaker 1: They had to do it.
Speaker 1: And Jesus says if he forces you, if he gives you the inconvenience of you walking past this Roman soldier, and he says walk a mile with me.
Speaker 1: You should not only go one mile, but go two.
Speaker 1: Don't just do the natural thing.
Speaker 1: Don't just do what you have to do, but do the supernatural.
Speaker 1: Jesus here is attempting to stir in us to do the supernatural life.
Speaker 1: A normal person who is insulted is most likely going to throw an insult back.
Speaker 1: A normal person who is sued will most likely serve them more than what they're asked for.
Speaker 1: A normal person who is forced to go one mile is going to drop the bag at a mile and continue on with their day.
Speaker 1: But Jesus is calling for his believers, when insulted, to allow it sometimes and churn the other cheek, allowing for another.
Speaker 1: Jesus calls for his believers when sued, to give more.
Speaker 1: Jesus calls for his believers here when forced to go a mile with the Romans and to even go the extra mile.
Speaker 1: Now the big question is why?
Speaker 1: Why would Jesus want us to do this, these three things that I've laid out?
Speaker 1: Why is Jesus calling us to do this?
Speaker 1: In my Bible I have this section Actually, not this Bible, my other Bible I have this section underlined and underneath it says the ultimate servant slash humble walk.
Speaker 1: Jesus has called us to be nothing more than servants.
Speaker 1: It is when pride creeps in that we think that we're better than the person in front of us when they are insulting us, when they are suing us, when they're forcing us to do something that we don't want to do.
Speaker 1: Jesus is calling us to live in radical humility towards others.
Speaker 1: A prideful man will not go above and beyond to serve those who are around him, but yet he will have the attitude like everybody around him should serve him.
Speaker 1: There's a book called Humility by a man named Andrew Murray, and he says that humility is the beginning of all virtue.
Speaker 1: Virtue simply just means character.
Speaker 1: You cannot have the character of Christ if you are not humble.
Speaker 1: Remember the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.
Speaker 1: Jesus said blessed is the poor in spirit.
Speaker 1: What's he saying?
Speaker 1: Blessed is the man who realizes that he needs me.
Speaker 1: Blessed is the man who realizes their depravity, their reliance upon Christ.
Speaker 1: Blessed are they, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Speaker 1: Only a humble person can recognize that they need Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: A prideful man will not accept his need of Christ, and Christ is only limited to your availability to him.
Speaker 1: That is the only limitation that he has, because he desires to work through you.
Speaker 1: He desires to work through you, he desires to work in you, and if you're not willing to let Him, you're not allowing God to work.
Speaker 1: It's impossible, not just in appearance but in heart Without the inward working of the Spirit of God and realizing that there is nothing within ourselves that is good.
Speaker 1: The only thing that is good that is in us is Christ, as we talked about in the beginning of this sermon, we cannot do it.
Speaker 1: We cannot live this radical life that Christ has called us to live.
Speaker 1: It is only by the power and grace of jesus christ working through us that we may live in humility.
Speaker 1: The humble man is only humble because of the spirit of god.
Speaker 1: Our outward expression or the way we behave around others is simply just an example of our inward reality towards Christ.
Speaker 1: If you're willing to serve and to be a servant to others, we can see that your inward reality is not because you strive to serve, but it's because you know who your master is.
Speaker 1: You know who you're serving and you know that it's not in your who your master is.
Speaker 1: You know who you're serving and you know that it's not in your strength and in your power, but simply in Christ's Allowing him to live his radical life of humility that we were called to live through us and abide in him and remain in him for the hope that he would be of abiding in Christ.
Speaker 1: This is the only way for me and you to live up to the standards of Matthew, chapter 5.
Speaker 1: Not by striving, not by being more disciplined, not by having more courage, not by having more power, not by being more disciplined, not by having more courage, not by having more power, not by trying harder, but by presenting ourselves to Christ as a living and holy sacrifice, as it talks about in Romans 12, saying, christ, this life is not mine, but it is yours, god.
Speaker 1: Let your will be done through me.
Speaker 1: Let my desires be put to the side, let my wants be put to the side, for I know who my true God is and I know that there is no one else like him, for he is the holy of the holiest, for he is the most powerful, most amazing king that I could ever serve.
Speaker 1: That I don't even desire to do the things that I want.
Speaker 1: My only desire is the desire of Christ and for him to live in me and to work through me to be able to change the lives around us.
Speaker 1: Able to change the lives around us and when we present ourselves to Christ and we say, christ, this life is no longer mine but yours.
Speaker 1: The discipline will follow, the humility will follow, the striving will follow, because Christ is now able to work in you, because you've realized that it's not you, it's Jesus.
Speaker 1: That's why my greatest desire for you in this entire message is the simple words you need Jesus.
Speaker 1: And as we go through the Sermon on the Mount the next couple weeks or I don't know how long Garrett's going to be in it, but for as long as he's in it remember these words you need Jesus.
Speaker 1: It's not about you, but about him.
Speaker 1: Allow him to live in your life.
Speaker 1: Truly, ask this question If you have not experienced the things that are in the Bible the joy, the peace, the comfort, ask yourself this question have I truly presented myself to Christ as a living and holy sacrifice, saying God, it's not about what I want, it's about what you want.
Speaker 1: You wonder why it's so hard to get up and read the Word in the morning, or to stay up a little bit later and read God's Word.
Speaker 1: It's because you desire something more than the Word of God, desire something that you want more than desiring to meet God in His Word, allowing Him to speak to you, allowing Him to use His Scriptures to show you His beauty.
Speaker 1: Jesus wants you to walk in dependence upon Him.
Speaker 1: Colossians 2, 2, 6 says for as we have received christ jesus, so walk in him.
Speaker 1: We receive christ jesus by faith, so we shall walk by faith.
Speaker 1: Christian life never goes away from our dependence upon the Lord.
Speaker 1: It is always in a place and a position of Jesus.
Speaker 1: I need you.
Speaker 1: It should make us fall to our knees when we get home in our bedrooms and we say, lord, I want to live this life, but I can't.
Speaker 1: I need you, I need your striving, I need your you.
Speaker 1: I need your striving, I need your power, I need your perseverance.
Speaker 1: And the Lord is willing.
Speaker 1: Remember that statement I made.
Speaker 1: The Lord is only limited to your availability towards Him.
Speaker 1: Have you truly been available towards him?
Speaker 1: Ask yourself that question.
Speaker 1: Don't just let me ask it, ask it to yourself.
Speaker 1: Have I truly been available to Christ?
Speaker 1: Let's pray, lord.
Speaker 1: We thank you for today, lord.
Speaker 1: We thank you for the principles that are found in your word, lord.
Speaker 1: But thank you for today, lord.
Speaker 1: We thank you for the principles that are found in your word, lord, but may these principles, but God, may we draw towards you in realization that we need you to live the principles that you've called us to live, lord.
Speaker 1: We pray as we go to groups.
Speaker 1: That conversation would be profitable.
Speaker 1: Our hearts would be encouraged in Christ.
Speaker 1: In Jesus' name, amen.