Kingdom Connectedness (2)

Good morning, we are in a sermon series entitled, The Upside Kingdom and we are looking at sermon on the Mount. The sermon on the mount has been called the greatest sermon ever preached.. Jesus spoke and taught with authority and power — and there is a crowd that has gather from all over the region to listen to him teach.

The Sermon on the Mount begins with 8 beatitudes...The beatitudes are written in a literary form called an inclusio meaning that the last verse and the first verse end with the same phrase. "For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."

The reason that is significant is that the sermon is complete body of knowledge... TIt it ompared to Moses and giving of the law on Mt. Sinai.

Moses was giving instruction how to relate to God and others in the New Nation... Jesus in the sermon on the mount is showing us how to relate to God and others.. Each of the beatitudes is connected to each other... starting with Spiritual Poverty... blessed on poor in spirit... blessed are those who mourn - repentance -- blessed on the meek they will inherit the earth...humility, Blessed are those who Hunger and thirst for God.. This how we relate to God in the Kingdom of God... There is dependance and longing for more of His presence...

We find within the beatitudes the Great commandment... Love God with all your heart and Soul... and to love your neighbor as yourself...

In many ways it is easier to love God than love one another... Jesus tells us that being part of the Kingdom of God.. means being part of a Kingdom community...

This morning we are going to be looking at Kingdom Connectedness and the ways we relate to others...

How Do We Relate to each other in the Kingdom of God?

T/s The beatitudes... are Be-attitudes -- It is our attitude towards God and towards others..The first attitude of Connectedness is

1. An Attitude of Compassion

Jesus lived out of a compassionate heart..

Matt 9:36.

Whether it was for the crowd... He wept over the city of Jerusalem... or an Individual The woman caught in adultary...or the woman at the well... we find Jesus showing mercy and being compassionate

Matt 5:7

Jesus says supremely blessed... is the merciful person for they shall receive mercy..

The Beatitudes present an upside down Kingdom .. In the world Mercy inmplies weakness...

In the Roman world in which Jesus spoke these words, mercy was despised and something to be ashamed of, if you expected to be a success. Mercy was considered a weakness.

It is into such a world that Jesus speaks when he says, “Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.” In yet another paradoxical statement Jesus promises it is the person who lives and walks in mercy that will be “blessed.” The word “blessed” means much more than happy. It is the idea of hearing the applause of Heaven or of being approved by God.

There are two sides to the coin of mercy..

1. Be Merciful Towards Others.

Matt 5:6

First of all to be Merciful towards others...

Always in need of God's grace, I must also offer it. - Greg Holder

Other synonyms for mercy are kindness, grace and favour... Jesus was often moves with compassion and he bids us to have heartfelt compassion towards others...

After Jesus gave his disciples what we call “The Lord’s Prayer,” he said, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” (Matthew 6:14). To forgive and to be forgiven, to show mercy and to receive mercy: these belong indissolubly together, as Jesus illustrated in his parable of the unmerciful servant.

What does it look like to be without mercy...

Mercy implies there is a debt to be paid..

in the story of “The Unmerciful Servant”(Matthew 18:33-35. The unmerci-ful servant put himself and his family in prison because he could not forgive a friend.

The obvious question that comes to mind when we hear this story is why the forgiven servant couldn't see the hypocrisy of his behavior. The answer is a simple one: he had a legitimate complaint against the other man. He wasn't trying to steal something from this servant that didn't belong to him; the other man really owed him the money, and it was not an insignificant amount—about 100 days worth of wages. Presumably, the debtor had agreed to pay the money back, but perhaps he was a deadbeat. This is precisely the problem with mercy. There is only one kind of person to whom you and I can show mercy: a person who doesn't deserve it.

If we were to contemporise this story we wuld say there was a unforgiving debtor who, having been forgiven ten million dollars, was unwilling to forgive another man a mere twenty dollars

The most miserable prison in the world is the prison of our own making, when we refuse to show mercy.

Such people find themselves; tortured by anger, choked by bitterness, and consumed by revenge. Such is the punishment for one who tastes of God's grace but refuses to share it!

Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world. — Francis Schaeffer

What does mercy look like.

Matthew 25:34-36

The word carries the meaning of identification in the suffering of others, of going through something with another, of entering into another’s problem with understanding and acceptance. And this is what God did for us in Christ; identifying with humanity and suffering on behalf of our sin.

“We think we can be neutral—not merciful, but not unmerciful. But to be not merciful is to be merciless.” – Peter Adam

Second Part of Mercy is to be on the receiving end of Mercy.

Matt 5:7 Because they will be shown Mercy...

It means that merciful person will be the recipient of lienancy from others.

God is the Father of mercies.

2 Cor 1:3-6

John Stott puts it this way, it is “…not because we can merit mercy by mercy or forgiveness by forgiveness, but because we cannot receive the mercy and forgiveness of God unless we repent, and we cannot claim to have repented of our sins if we are unmerciful towards the sins of others.” [John Stott. “Essential Living: The Sermon on the Mount.” Leicester, England: IVP, 1988) p. 47]

T/s How do we relate to others.

**2. Grow in attitudes that promotes Right Relationships**

Jesus teaches an upside down kingdom.. We would say blessed are unihibated... Jesus says blessed are the pure in heart.

Matt 5:8 A pure heart is heart that has a clear conscience... A heart that is free of guilt... It is Taking a relationship as face value... accepting that person for who they are... Without placing a layer of our expectation..

When we do this in a relationship we set ourselves up for disappointment..

The opposite would be those who hold onto a grudge....

When I close my heart to people, I close my heart to God. - Carey Nieuwhof

How do we become people who have purity of heart... We get hurt and offended easily.

“Guard your heart more than anything else, for from it come the sources of life” (Pr 4.23).

The King of kings is the greatest of cardiologists. He is able to check your heart for purity.

Hughes explains that “‘pure in heart’ means that not only our minds but our feelings and actions are to be concentrated singly on God. If our focus is merely intellectual, we are not pure in heart. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones paraphrases it, _‘Blessed are those who are pure, not only on the surface but in the center of their being and at the source of every activity_._’_ This is a daunting requirement—_a radical cleanness of heart, totally focused on God_.”3

The promise is that the guiltless are those who will see God...

The blessing of the pure heart is that we shall see God

1 John 3:1-3

C.S. Lewis said "It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to."

Blessed are the Pure in heart.

**3. Blessed are the peace makers**

Jesus presents us with an upside down Kingdom.. Blessed are those who don't back down... those who hold onto an opinion...

Mat 5:9 Blessed are the Peace makers...because they will see God.

The Greek word used for “peacemakers” means the founders of peace. Bruce Metzger points out that the emphasis is on the verb “make.

Peace doesn't just happen; we _make_ peace. In that sense it is a goal—something we desire, something we strive for. In this beatitude Jesus doesn't bless those who have a peaceful disposition, as good as that might be. He doesn't say, "Blessed are those who are peaceful." The focus is not on the personality but on the action of the person Jesus describes. Those who are blessed are those who "make" peace.

If we are not peacemakers, but instead are troublemakers, there is every likelihood that we are not true children of God. **_– Kent Hughes_**

Paul writes in Ephesians 2:14–17, “For he is our _peace_, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us… . for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making _peace;_ and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: and came and preached _peace_ to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh” (kjv).

The word peace, _shalom_ in the Hebrew, is not a negative state; it denotes not simply the absence of evil, but is a positive word which has to do with the well-being of another, seeking for him the highest good. Consequently, being a peacemaker is to work for right relations between persons, all persons

The message of peace is the message of the gospel; for people find peace within themselves and among themselves as they enter right-relatedness with God in Christ. Such persons are known in society as _“the sons of God_

They wil be called sons of God carries the idea of being desciples and followers of Jesus...

one who is a disciple or follower of someone, with the implication of being like the one whom he follows.

**4. Blessed are the perscuted**

Jesus came with an upside down message.. we say blessed are the agressors.. Jesus says blessed are the perscuted.

Jesus challenges the very selfishness that determines so much of our social behavior.

The progress from one beatitude to the next is obvious here. Being a peacemaker by practicing justice and love and living by kingdom standards is initiating a confrontation with society which can be taken as a judgment

Matt 5:11-12

When it comes to horizontal relationships they may not always go as planned.. There are different levels of persecution... those who literally have been maryted for the faith....

Dietrich Bonhoeffer recognized the evil of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement from the beginning, even in the early days of the movement when most of the Protestants in Germany were Hitler supporters. As a result, he found himself unpopular, even with other Christians. As restrictions and then persecutions came in waves upon European Jews, Bonhoeffer cried against it and warned the church and the German people of the emerging evil. But no one listened. Finding himself in danger, he fled to America, but he felt all the while that his place was with the believers in Germany, and in the early 1940s he returned to the fatherland, only to be arrested and taken to the extermination camp at Flossenburg, where he was stripped and hanged at age thirty-nine

Jesus points the to the Kingdom of heaven as a reward...

Another level of persectuion are those who utter false words..

What is the response to persectution.. Unside Kingdom says Rejoice.

Conclusion

Does your heart beat for Jesus? - David Platt

The heart of the gospel is the cross, and the cross is all about giving up power. - Tim Keller

Rene Girard was the head of Anthropology at Stanford University and studied the nature of culture for many years. In the course of his research, Girard made a discovery that astonished him: he learned that the very things that destroy a culture are ingrained in human nature—things like selfishness, violence, and greed—things we Christians would call "sin." More amazingly, Girard found that the thing that holds culture together is the need for a scapegoat.

Everybody, he discovered, needs somebody to blame. Girard found this principle deeply embedded in every culture he examined. When he came to the culture of the Old Testament, he found this principle of the scapegoat acted out in the law of [Leviticus 16](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+16%3A1-16%3A34 "view Scripture passage at BibleGateway.com"), where the priest confesses Israel's sins over a literal scapegoat and drives it into the desert. As Girard read on into the New Testament, he discovered something even more incredible. In the New Testament, the scapegoat had a name. What was symbolized in the Law of Moses was personified in the death of Jesus Christ. He was the ultimate scapegoat. He is God's son, who [Hebrews 9:28](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+9%3A28 "view Scripture passage at BibleGateway.com") says was "offered once to bear the sins of many."