Alright, you can be seated.
Thank you, Sam.
That's so good.
I feel like our church has been so blessed to have Sam as a part of what we've been doing for three years and so blessed by Walker to be meeting here.
Just grateful for this time.
I'm excited about moving into the new building, but I think uh I think I'll miss these times a lot.
We only have about five more weeks here.
So anyway, so my name is Brian Robinson.
I'm an elder here at this church, and the reason why I'm up here talking is we believe that Scripture says one of the roles of an elder is to teach.
And that's in 1 Timothy 5.17.
I think when you follow Scripture, there's some side benefits of doing that.
And I think one of these Davis talked about, which is the church doesn't become pastor-centric.
It doesn't become focused on one guy.
Because we've all seen examples of larger churches where the pastor dies or the pastor goes away, or for whatever reason, and the church kind of falls apart.
And we don't desire that to happen to our church.
We want our church to be focused on Jesus.
I think the other reason, or the other side benefit of having a church not so pastor-centric, is for the health of the pastor.
We don't want the whole church, church, the weight of the church to be on Russ's shoulders.
And I think I read a book a few years ago.
One of my favorite books is called Scandalous Freedom by Steve Brown.
And in it, he talks about developing spiritual heroes, like in an unhealthy way.
Like he would he would develop these heroes like C.S.
Lewis or Martin Martin Lawrence.
Excuse me, not Martin Lawrence.
I don't know how many people.
Martin Lawrence might be your spiritual hero, but his work in Big Mama's house was fantastic.
He's not my spiritual hero.
Martin Luther.
Martin Luther might be more of who a spiritual hero would be.
So Steve Brown is talking.
I didn't think I would work Martin Lawrence into the sermon today, but proud that I did.
It's probably the first time in Atlanta that's ever happened.
So Martin Steve Brown said, he said, every time he gained like a spiritual hero, God would reveal something to him that was kind of unhealthy about that person.
And the quote that I liked was God uses flawed and broken people because those are all that's available.
And I think that's true.
And you're looking at one right now.
So let's pray before I start.
Heavenly Father, I am thankful to be here.
It is a privilege to teach your word.
I pray that you would speak through me, that it would not be me, but it would be your word, and people would hear more and know more about your son.
We're so thankful for how good you've been to this church.
Just all the blessings that you've given us.
A full room in July.
It's crazy.
Lord, I do pray for people that are hurting this morning.
I pray for people in Louisiana and Minneapolis, people in Dallas.
I pray that somehow through these tragedies, that you would show people that they need Jesus and that you would give them Jesus, that you would draw near to them.
And again, I'm just so thankful to be here.
I pray that people would understand you in a new way and be astonished that you love them so much that you sent your son for them.
In Christ's name I pray.
Amen.
Okay, so the uh we're going through the Beatitudes.
Russ has preached through the first four.
In the next few weeks, we'll have different folks talking about each one.
And the one I was assigned is Matthew 5.8.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
And when Russ first gave that to me, I was kind of like, oh, pure in heart.
That's tough.
Like I'm definitely not that.
I need help from outside of myself.
There's some other ones that I think we can kind of fool ourselves into thinking that we're doing.
Like maybe I've been meek one time in my life or uh peacemaker.
I think I broke up some fights in college.
Like I did I've done that before.
Um but pure in heart, um, that's a pretty high standard.
Um let's break down the words a little bit.
Pure comes from the Greek word catharos, which means clean, blameless, unstained from guilt.
And I like this, it says the word can refer to that which is purified by fire.
And I think that's not coincidence.
God often uses trials in our lives to show us that we're not in control.
I think usually through a trial, I've usually got my hands on the 10 and 2 o'clock position on the steering wheel.
And when a trial happens, I'm slowly realizing I'm not in control.
And I turn my hands upward and surrender.
And uh God is showing me that I need Him because I'm out of options.
I've done everything I could, everything I knew to do.
So I think that's why God uses trials, because we're all control freaks, whether we want to admit it or not.
Um Heart comes from the Greek word cardia, which means the spiritual center of life.
It is where thoughts, desires, sense of purpose, will, understanding, and character reside.
So it says they will see God.
Is there anything better than that?
I mean, that that's huge to me.
Um so it's kind of a two-part sermon.
I'm gonna talk about why I think that Jesus gave these commands, gave these, gave this sermon on the mount.
Um, the first, I think, is to show us our need for Jesus.
We can't do this on our own.
We don't have pure hearts on our own.
And the other is I think it allows us to know him more and to see what God values, see what Jesus values more.
It shows us more about his character and what he loves.
Um the first the first point I'm gonna talk about is it shows our flesh's brokenness and our need for Jesus because he raises the bar.
It goes beyond just our actions and what we're doing, it goes to our motive and why we're doing what we're doing.
Um, he's concerned about not just exterior, he wants to know why we're doing it.
And at that time, um, Jesus is preaching to a bunch of people that are Jewish, and so they've created a lot of rules.
They they gained righteousness from following the rules.
And for example, one of the rules that they they would have all these little rules around the big rules, like remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy, they they believed that any work done that day was bad.
That was a command, and they kept that, at least on the outside.
Some of the ways that they kept that was they believed that it was work for a woman to wear a hair clip on the Sabbath, like that was carrying something, so you couldn't do that.
Another example of extreme legalism was if you were a tailor, you had to check your pockets before the Sabbath and make sure there were not needles in your pockets, so you wouldn't accidentally touch one, because that's considered work.
So Jesus, that's who Jesus is talking to.
He's talking to people that were trying to follow the rules and gain their right standing with God through that.
And Christ wanted us, He wants our hearts, He doesn't just want our exterior behavior.
I'm gonna tell a story about my own life where this was relevant.
So about seven years ago, I was involved in a group, in a small group at the church I was going to at the time, and the group we would meet once a month for like three or four hours.
It was intense.
I remember the first meeting they said traffic is often a reason to be late, but never an excuse.
And I was like, oh wow, what have I done here?
This is gonna be interesting.
So, but it was a good group.
Um, but each week we'd meet monthly, and you had an assignment to do with your spouse, you had scripture to memorize, and you had a book to read.
And these were all good things, okay?
But um, anyway, I'll tell the story.
So one of the assignments was uh for one month was when you go home, ask your wife what you can do to help her the most.
And so at that time, from what I remember, my wife and I had four kids.
I think they were seven, six, one, and newborn.
So things are intense when I get home.
And what I remember was I would come home from work, we would eat together as a family, and usually one of us would after dinner clean up the dishes, clean up the house, all the messes throughout the house, and one of us would kind of take care of the kids, put the kids to bed, read books, brush teeth, give medicine, all that stuff.
And if you don't know me that well, I need to share with you that I'm a pridefully efficient man.
Like I am very efficient at doing things.
I can do things faster than most of you.
Um and I can definitely do things faster than my wife.
Um and um now some of that might be because I take some shortcuts.
Like there may be teeth that don't get flossed, perhaps, or some paraphrasing of Goodnight Moon, but I would get done first, um, is the point of my story.
And so, whatever task I got to do, I could finish before mandate, and I would end up on the sofa before my wife would.
Probably about 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the books that our kids picked that night.
Um, and so when I asked my wife what I could do to help her the most, she said, What I want you to do is sit down on the sofa.
She's smart.
She said, I want you to sit down on the sofa at the same time as I do.
And I was like, Oh, that's not that's not even fair, you know?
So now I'm gonna have to actually help help you, which was the point of this whole exercise, right, to begin with.
So, for a few weeks at least, I think it was a few weeks, I I did that, I would finish, and then I would go help Mandy, whatever she was doing.
We'd both end up on the sofa at the same time and relax.
And slowly, after a few weeks, I stopped doing that.
I don't remember like making a decision to stop, I just stopped.
And I remember one night in particular, um, I was on the sofa, and Mandy came in the room, and I'd been on the sofa for a while, and I was feeling particularly lazy, um, and particularly like I did not do what I said I was gonna do.
And uh Mandy, a side note, this she had been listening to some sermons and reading a lot about freedom in Christ and Jesus plus nothing equals everything.
And she was finding that her identity was not in Christ and not in her expectations of her husband.
And when we started talking, I could sense, we know our spouses well, I could sense that there was no resentment, there was no, she was just happy to talk to me.
And I'm just sitting there feeling like a sack because I was being one.
And uh and I knew when when I knew that she loved me despite my being a lazy sack, it made me want to help her more.
It made me want to ask, what can I do to help you?
And I think um it's cool that God did that in my life because I think it's a good analogy for the gospel.
Um, the rules can't change our hearts.
They don't have the power to change our hearts, and the rules aren't the problem.
My heart is the problem.
We need help from outside of ourselves.
Um, the problem isn't out there in the world, the problem is in here.
And Jesus says that in Matthew 15, verse 19 for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.
Um in a 1910 newspaper in England, um, they sent a letter asking all the people, or asking a few people, like famous authors and theologians, what the biggest problem facing the world today is.
And uh a theologian, G.K.
Chesterton, sent them back a letter, and he said, Dear Times, I am, signed G.K.
Chesterton.
Um Blaise Pascal, Brad told me this quote one time, and I never forgot it, a long time ago.
All Blaise Pascal says, all of humanity's problems stem from man stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Um I think we need a substitute before we need an example.
We want to go to the example, but we need a substitute.
Um Jesus says at the end of Matthew 5, at the end of all these Beatitudes, Jesus says, be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.
And I think that kind of sweeps the leg out from under us.
If we thought we were doing any of these things, I think Jesus wanted to make sure that we knew you're not doing these on your own too well.
Um Christianity is not about us getting a little bit better and needing just a little bit of help, getting improvement.
I believe it's about a death of the old self and new life in Christ.
Um, C.S.
Lewis has a great quote about that that I read this week.
He's not my spiritual hero, but he did say some cool things.
Um He says, For mere improvement is not redemption, the redemption always improves people in the here and now, and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine.
This is so good.
God became man to turn creatures into sons, not simply to produce better men of the old kind, that but to produce a new kind of man.
It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better, but like turning a horse into a winged creature.
Um love that.
Um so that's kind of point one is the Beatitudes show us our need for Jesus.
Um, but I think it goes beyond that.
I don't believe that the Beatitudes just accuse us.
I think that um this verse in particular shows us what he values.
And when we know that we are unconditionally loved despite being known completely by God, we want to find out more about Jesus and what his heart is and what he values.
I think that um when I when I think about the Beatitudes and what he's talking about, the meek and the peacemakers and the pure in heart, I want to be like that.
Like I want to learn, I feel like this is the voice of our Father telling us tenderly, this is this is the best way.
I created the world and this is what I want for you.
This is the best way to live.
Not in a check off the box kind of way, but just a this is my desire for you kind of way.
Um, how is this possible?
Like I've told you all, I don't think we're doing this, I don't think I'm doing this.
So how is it even possible?
Why would he even have put it in there if he knew that we don't have pure hearts?
I think the only way that's possible is when God looks at me because I've accepted Christ, he sees Jesus.
Um Corinthians 1 30 and 31 say, and because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.
So because of him we are in Christ Jesus.
It's the only way this is possible for us to be seen as pure hearted.
Um so what am I to do in Marietta, Georgia, in a preschool building in 2015 or 2016?
What does that mean for me today?
Um I would love to see God.
I want a pure heart.
Um I think practically what this means is um finding out where the impurities are in our lives.
I think impurities are things that muddy the waters a little bit, um, idols in our life.
Uh Tim Keller said, idols can be good things that become God things.
So, what is that in your life that you think about when you wake up in the morning?
Or what is that in your life that you're currently looking to to give you love, acceptance, worth of security?
Where's your heart restless?
Are you looking to the creation to give you something that only the creator can give you?
That might be a job, it might be money, it might be vacation, it might be a relationship, it might be a new car, it might be a house with a pool and a hot tub.
It might be a lot of different things.
But uh we all have them.
And I think those things get in the way of knowing Christ better.
Um, I ask these questions not to condemn, but to help us identify idols and allow Jesus to come and focus and see his great love for us.
I think there's things in our lives that we cannot imagine letting go of because we love them so much, and we can't imagine how Jesus or God would make it worth it for us to let go of those things, but he will and he does.
In conclusion, uh the Sermon on the Mount shows us God's standards of righteousness are high, so high that our right standing with God is ultimately dependent on the grace of the one who tells us about them.
So we declare our dependence on him and surrender to the one that knows us intimately and loves us completely.
And I want to close by just reciting a verse from a song that I heard that I love, love these verses.
Um says, to see the law by Christ fulfilled and hear his pardoning voice changes a slave into a child and duty into choice.
Let's pray.
Just so grateful for your word.
I'm so thankful that you gave it to us.
And just I just pray that for anyone today that's hearing this, that's hurting, that's angry at you, um, that you would draw near to them, that you would show them that in spite of everything that they're doing to run away from you, that you love them.
For the person that is just in a stagnant spot with God, I pray that you would wreck them afresh.
Just show them your great love through Jesus that you have for them.
Um I'm just so thankful for this church and all that's happening.
I pray that you would continue to be with us, help us stay out of the way of what you're doing, and I pray that your will would be done, not ours.
In Christ's name I pray.
Amen.