Goin' Up the Mount

As a church, we are approaching Jesus’ longest recorded sermon in Scripture—the Sermon on the Mount, with a renewed sense of awe and much anticipation. After a time of preparation Jesus began to preach what Matt 4:17 says, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near!” Jesus came to embody, model, and proclaim his kingdom. Those who come in contact with Jesus both then and now, he makes abundantly clear, need to change their lives/change their direction (repent). His kingdom he purposed to be an invading one and not a competing one in the lives of his kingdom subjects. What Matt 4:17 says he began to preach, Jesus unpacks very carefully and directly in the Sermon on the Mount, his Kingdom Manifesto. We desire to be kingdom minded and directed, so we look to Jesus’ words in Matt 5-7 to show us what his kingdom looks like on earth as it is in heaven.

As a church we want to take this journey together. Jesus went through “sermon preparation” before delivering his comprehensive description of kingdom life and we must too before we are willing to let it take root in us. We have been challenged to spend a period of 40 days in fasting and prayer, observing the Lent season. Not because we have to in a religious way, but because we get to and want to! We believe God will be faithful and will speak loud and clear to us during this time, individually and corporately going through the Sermon on the Mount, as he changes our direction and lives. Will you join us?!

“Your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matt 6:10)

Invincibility "R" Us

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:10)

This coming Sunday we are going to examine the last on the list of the Beatitudes during our series on the Sermon on the Mount, “Up is Down.” “Blessed are those who are persecuted.” “Blessed,” Jesus says! We have a difficult time relating to persecution for our faith. Sure, we know that prayer has been formally taken out of schools. It is frowned upon and even legislated that “In Jesus’ name” be taken out of our public prayers at such events as graduation and high school football games. The Ten Commandments have been taken down from walls in public places where it used to hang as a moral compass for our society. “In God We Trust” is in danger of being removed as a staple on our country’s currency. Retail stores are instructed to hang signage and address people during Christmas with “Happy Holidays,” rather than with the customary, “Merry Christmas.” Freedom of Religion in which our country was founded on seems now to apply to every religion other than Christianity. Still, while we see these disturbing trends escalate and can certainly identify with ridicule and taunting by others because of our faith; overall we are naïve when it comes to persecution. We’ve never experienced the brand of persecution that the church who went before us knew all too well, the torture other Christians are experiencing in other parts of the world today, and the tribulation that awaits the church in the last days.

There is a sense of invincibility in us, like a child never imagining that the dangerous things they do would ever result in injury or death and the prospect of dying of old age is an eternity away. Persecution of the church could not take place now-a-days! Yeah, we hear of it going on in other parts of the world—but not in the good ol’ U.S. of A! I pray that we don’t experience what others have and what others will. The question though is do we love our lives so much as to shrink from death? What or better stated, whom are we living for?

They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. (Rev 12:11)