I heard a speaker one time make this comment and he said, what
if Jesus meant what he said? What if Jesus really did intend
for us to love those who hate us, who are unkind to us, and be
kind to those who mistreat us? What if he really meant that?
What if Jesus meant what he said when he told his audience to
have treasures in heaven means you can't be attached to
treasures on earth? What if Jesus meant what he said
when he said that for a man to look at another woman with lust
in his eyes was committing adultery with her in his heart?
What if Jesus meant what he said when he said that?
For a person to be angry with his brother that was committing
murder in his heart. What if Jesus meant what he said
when he said that? To hear his words and not do
them was like building a house on sand and in the storm it
collapsed. But then to hear his words and
do them would be like building a house on the rock that
withstands the storm. What if Jesus meant what he
said? We're beginning a new sermon
series this morning out of the Gospel of Matthew chapter 5 to
7. And for the next three months we
want to spend time to dig into what did Jesus mean with what he
said this morning. We will not actually go into
Matthew 5, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.
We won't actually go into it, but I want to do an introductory
sermon on the content of this passage.
Kind of an fly over view if you said if you could call it that.
More of the question, why take this journey?
Why would we take a preaching journey through this passage of
Scripture? Matthew 5-6 and seven?
What would be the purpose of taking a journey through the
Sermon on the Mount? We do believe in moral
absolutes. We believe the Bible is relevant
today. We believe the words of Jesus
mean today what they meant for the people of his time when he
preached them. God's plan for creation has not
changed since the day he said behold, it's very good.
When he finished it, it was very good.
He did not somewhat change his mind.
OK now, well, he doesn't like his creation anymore and things.
It's over. We know when you sent Jesus, he
still has the same plan for humanity he did when he created
Adam and Eve. God's reason for his creation,
his why for creating the world is still the same as it was when
it was a brand new planet when Jesus came and preached his
sermons on this earth. His purpose then is still the
same today. So this morning before we start
actually going through the Sermon on the Mount, which we
will start next Sunday, today we want to do an introductory
sermon. And why is this important?
We read much in the Gospel of Matthew about the Kingdom of God
and the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus
tells his disciples, when you pray, pray this way, our Father
in heaven, hallowed, be your name, your Kingdom come.
In his audience, Jesus told his people that God's Kingdom is
here. It's among us today.
Our theme for this morning is our title is Be Kingdom People.
That's the theme for the sermon series.
To all of it, Be Kingdom People. And as we will make our way
through Matthews 5-6 and seven, we will see that Jesus puts out
an impossibly high standard of life that he expects from his
audience to be Kingdom people. And it's not going to be easy.
Anybody who wants to follow Jesus is going to have a hard
road ahead of them. It's just the way it is because
we live in a fallen world, in a broken world.
That's why it's a hard Rd. But it's a good road and it's
the only Rd. Humanly speaking, yes, it's
impossible. But by God's grace, through
Jesus Christ, the blood of Christ cleanses us from our sin.
His Spirit comes and helps us and through that we can do this.
And it's not a one time only. Stamp it, you're good to go for
now. There's no more work to do.
It's a growing process. It's a journey that will not
finish on this side of the grave.
We're always in need of help on our journey.
So for this journey and the Sermon on the Mount, let's go
way back in the early years when God revealed Himself to the
people, He chose the people of Israel.
In the book of Exodus in chapter 19 verse five and six, we find
that God had some serious instructions for His people and
they were just starting out on their journey from Egypt to the
promised land as God's people. It says in Exodus 19 says God is
speaking here to Moses to tell the people.
He says Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and
keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to me
above all people, for all the earth is mine and you shall be
to me. Listen here, a Kingdom of
priests and a holy nation, these are the words which you shall
speak to the children of Israel. God's instruction to Moses to
tell the Israelites there were very high conditions to be met
for God's people to be his Kingdom of priests and to be a
holy nation. And just a way of reminder,
God's never lowered the standards.
The standard is still the same as it was for them.
In fact, in the New Testament, Jesus upped the ante.
Later in the New Testament we find Peter writing about God's
holiness. He was very much in line with
Moses in the book of Exodus and he said Peter writes therefore
girt up the loins of your mind, be sober and rest your hopefully
upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation
of Jesus Christ as obedient children, not conforming
yourselves to the former lusts as in your ignorance, but as he
who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct
because it is written the holy for I am holy.
The same meaning in Exodus is now repeated in here in in in
first Peter. It's a command.
It's a command we have to choose to obey if we want to follow
Christ. In Hebrews as well.
We read Hebrews 12/14 pursue peace with all people and
holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
It's impossible to see God if we're not pursuing this, if
we're not pursuing holiness. So times we must pause on our
hearts and minds and think to ourselves, what are we pursuing?
To be holy means to be set apart, to be set aside.
It means to be dedicated for a special purpose.
Holiness is not an option for the believer, it is mandatory.
Put it this way, Jesus did not come to this earth to make us
comfortable or happy. He came to save us, to have a
relationship with us, and to make us holy.
A question that some people may inwardly be asking themselves
might be, how holy do I have to be to be a follower of Jesus?
Or they may ask, how holy do I have to be to get into heaven?
I have news for you. Those are the wrong questions.
They're the wrong questions because the key part of that
question is I you maybe noticed it.
You see, no matter how well-intentioned a person may
be, self focused will never get a person where God wants that
person to be. Self focused will never bring a
life of fulfillment, peace, joy and satisfaction and
contentment. Self focused in the end always
leaves us empty, dry and starved and disappointed because we're
not created for self, we're created for relationship.
The true answer is to be holy, To be truly what we are created
to be, we must walk the path of Jesus.
It's only through faith in Jesus that we can be holy and follow
Jesus in this faith in Jesus that we talk about.
It's not something that sits on the shelf to be admired and
looked at once in a while and admired.
It's a character trait that's in US, lived out in obedience to
God's call on our lives. And how it works is this.
Jesus died for our sins. He paid the debt we could not
pay. Now He invites us to repent and
to walk with Him. And our part simply is repent of
our sins, put our trust in Him, deny ourselves, take up our
cross and walk with Him. Only a person who has a desire
to follow Jesus can do that. And it's only by his grace from
him towards us that it's possible.
He accepts us when we repent. Kingdom people serve Jesus by
following Jesus example. So for us to be Kingdom people,
our question we must ask and answers.
Do we want to be holy? Do we?
And I think it's like this many people want to get to heaven on
a minimum holiness requirement basis.
Let me use a simple analogy. Trying to be a Kingdom person
out of duty, obligation, I have to.
That does not work. It's kind of like a young man
finding a beautiful young woman he wants to marry and he's
asking her and he says, hey, sweetie, how committed to you
would I have to be for you to marry me?
Imagine that. Imagine a young man asking a
woman a foolish question like that.
How committed to you would I have to be to marry you?
Just the question alone. Such a turn off, such a rude and
bargaining demand. And if you ask that, any wise
young lady would say just turn away in disgust and walk away.
And yet that's often times what people who go to church somehow
think. Well, how much?
How good do I have to be for God to be pleased with me?
That's the wrong question. God does not want 99.9% of me,
He wants all of me. A young woman does not want
99.9% of her man, she wants all of him and that's often times
what happens in the church. The question is not how holy do
I have to be to get to heaven. It's a self focused question.
The question is this, Our entry into heaven will not be decided
by any other standard than our relationship with Jesus.
The question is am I in relationship with him?
Only Kingdom people will get to heaven and only Kingdom people
are in relationship with Jesus. One of the one of my favorite
authors, his name is Dallas Willard.
He's passed on. He had a conversation with a man
one time about going to heaven and they were having a
conversation and how people understand this and and people
want to live good now and hopefully make it to the other
side and enjoy heaven with Jesus when the time comes.
And Dallas pointed out that's the wrong way of looking at it.
He said not only should we wanting to go to heaven when we
die, but we get to heaven now, today.
Eternal life is that Kingdom life.
It's not about going to heaven when you die, it's going to
heaven before you die. He tried to point that out.
He said that the correct way of looking at it is when we die to
self, when we die to sin, we become Kingdom people, and then
we enter eternal life. And that's a continuation on
past the grave. It's a transition through the
body dies, but the spirit goes on living.
This whole goes on living. There are only two kingdoms.
There's the Kingdom of heaven and the Kingdom of darkness.
One is the Kingdom of darkness, the other is the Kingdom of
light. One is the Kingdom of death, one
is the Kingdom of life, one is the Kingdom of now, one is the
Kingdom of eternity, 1 is the Kingdom of this world, and one
is the Kingdom of heaven. There's an eternal, endless
chasm between these two kingdoms.
They cannot and never will reconcile.
Our eternal destiny is only one of them and the choice we make
here in this life today. And you and I are invited to be
Kingdom people, God's Kingdom. Early on, I mentioned we looked
in Exodus, what God spoke to Moses and what God demanded of
his people. Let's dig a little deeper.
Let's go back into that a little bit.
Let's peel back another layer, the layer of creation.
Let's look at creation. Look at what God did and why he
did it. This world as we know it is
God's creation. It's beautiful, it's glorious.
As human beings, we've been given the joy of being here and
we're actually told to manage it, take care of it, enjoy it,
rule it. In Genesis chapter one, verse
26, God says let us make man in our image according to our
likeness. Let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle,
over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps
upon the earth. So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God. He created him, male and female.
He created them. You and I are made above
everything else that's been made.
We are made in God's image. And I'm not talking about
physical features, we're talking about characteristics, character
traits, God like qualities. One of those is the character
trait to be creative to do things and as God's created
image, we've been given the responsibility to have dominion.
Remember the part where I don't have it here in my my notes, The
part where God says to puts Adam in the garden.
He brings the animals to him and it says to see what he would
name them. God's not saying, OK, he'll name
that a lion, he'll name that a bear, he'll name that a cat.
It's not what happened. God stepped back his God like
image quality in Adam at work naming the animals.
That's huge folks, that's huge. We are responsible and God's
going to step back. OK if he's not taking
responsibility I will no we by default respond either for or
against. I'm reminded of a story of a
young couple wanted to get married and boyfriend girlfriend
and they were getting along just fine and he loved her, she loved
him. And one day they were going to
go out to eat. And young man says to his
beautiful girl, he says, so where would you like to go
tonight? And she said, I don't know.
I'm I'm good with where you want to go.
And they're driving along. And then he asked her again,
where would you like to go? She said, I don't know, I'm good
with where you want to go. He pulled over, parked the
vehicle and stopped, stopped and parked the vehicle.
She said, what are you doing? He said, I'm waiting for you to
decide. I'm good with Reona, though.
No, he said, no, you decide. And she wrote the story many
years later and she mentioned how that had been a turning
point for her in her life and understanding her, her what has
been her husband. And she said that he refused to
take that role in her life, what should be hers.
And he and she mentioned this young man who became her husband
had been wise, not allowed her to slip into this one sided or
he'll take care of me or he's the boss or what?
I'll be the servant. No.
And hindsight, she reflected that he wanted a relationship
partnership and he forced it in the sense that I'm not going to
make this decision for you. He made it clear.
We're A-Team, we're both participants, and she mentioned
in her story how this helped her to mature and grow into the wife
that she now was and how wonderful had been that her
fiance had taken that step in that early relationship before
they got married. I was thinking about this story
this last week as was getting ready for this sermon, and I
thought about it and I thought, this fits.
And marriage is a small Kingdom, a couple Kingdom, if you will.
She was a Kingdom woman. He was a Kingdom man.
This is not just related to marriage, although marriage is a
very good analogy, but and marriage is a reflection of
God's creation on earth as a husband, wife, unity with God
the Father and the and the couple together.
This does not mean that singleness is is less than
marriage, but this is an image. This is a reflection.
We're all designed and created to be Kingdom people, partnering
with God in His work. He gives us responsibilities
which we choose how we're going to respond to, and we will not
do well until we embrace it. And as we'll go through Matthew
5 in the coming sermons, we'll see how important it is that we
embrace the teachings of Jesus as he calls us into relationship
with Him. Live out the blueprint He's
called us to live out. We see this in marriages.
Just look at marriages where this is not working.
And here's where it becomes steep in the steep climb, so to
speak, because relationships are difficult in this world.
It takes sacrifice. It takes self denial.
Because of what the world is, a sinful place.
It has to be a free choice. It has to be Unchained, as it
were. It has to be reciprocal.
Let's just let that sink in for a second.
And if we're Kingdom people, that's what it will be, living
in relationship with God and with one another.
And in our series, we'll go through the sermon.
As we go through the Sermon on the Mount, we'll see what it is
that Jesus requires of his stewards or his managers.
And he always led by example. I mentioned Dallas Willard
before, and I'll continue with that.
And he wrote a book titled The Divine Conspiracy, and in it he
does explore the Sermon on the Mount and how God brings his
Kingdom into this world and how it happens through US, you and
me, his people. You see, when God created you
and me, He created us for glory, not for judgement, not for
destruction, not for damnation, but to reflect Him in this
world. His purpose for creating us is
for us to voluntarily, as image bearers, to respond to Him,
engage in Him, and have relationship with Him.
That's the greatest glorious thing that can happen on this
earth, to serve and bring Him glory.
It's not forced, not cursed, its relationship and as he draws us,
we are Kingdom people, Dallas wrote in the book.
The following I quoted, I copied it.
He said we are made to have dominion with an appropriate
domain of reality. This is the core of the likeness
or image of God in US and is the basis of the destiny for which
we were formed. We are all of us never ceasing
spiritual beings with a with a unique eternal calling to count
for good in God's great universe.
Our Kingdom is simply the range of our effective will.
Whatever we genuinely have the say over is in our Kingdom, and
our having to say over something is precisely what places it was
in our Kingdom. In creating human beings, God
made them to rule, to reign, to have dominion in a limited
sphere. Only so can they be persons.
Think about that. Just think of it.
In Genesis, it says God brought the animals to the man to see
what he would name them. As I said before, he gave it up
to Adam to make those decisions. That's deep.
God did all of this in a relationship context.
It also tells us in Genesis that God would walk with Adam and Eve
in the cool of the garden. There was fellowship.
There was relationship. That was true Kingdom living and
through Jesus Christ that starts here today.
Now someone might ask, well, what does it look like today?
It's a life fully surrendered and committed to Christ.
It's the joyful giving up of our earthly physical lives for His
cause in order for us to become totally what He has designed us
as His image bearers to be. What is interesting about this
is we don't have to wait for some time in the future to get
this. We can start right where we're
at. It happens at all levels of
life. It doesn't depend on where you
are. Geographical place to be
somewhere else, then I could do it better.
No, it doesn't mean we have to measure up to a certain cultural
standard, a certain level of living and better opportunities
and so on. To be Kingdom people does not
depend on anything that's temporal.
It does require holiness. To be a Kingdom person is
strictly first and foremost a matter of relationship with God
that works itself out in our daily lives.
There's many powerful stories we can go to in the Bible that
illustrate this. One that comes to mind is the
story of Daniel. I like to read the stories of
the characters of the Bible and they're all different, very
different. Some that very well, some that
very poorly. There's one character that I
really admire, and his name is Daniel.
I was contemplating Daniel this last week.
I was getting ready. I thought to myself, I can't
think of a single time when Daniel faltered or failed in his
faith. Not to say he didn't.
I don't know that. But we know that when Daniel was
a young man, he was taken as a prisoner of war to faraway
Babylon wasn't his doing. He was just as a young, maybe,
probably, probably a teenage boy when he was taken captive.
And here he was a prisoner of war.
And then he got picked as a prisoner of war to be educated
and trained in the language of Babylon and the laws of Babylon,
to be a help with the government, maybe to connect
with the with the land that he had been taken from.
The governments would do that in those days.
He he complied with everything that he possibly could in
Babylonian culture. He took their training, but he
refused to take the food. And in this way he did his very
best to please the king but also not compromise his connection to
God. He went through the training, He
was placed into this environment and he never compromised his
character or his integrity. He was brought.
He brought his Kingdom values into the environment which he
was placed. He didn't adapt.
You see, so often times a person, well, it's so hard,
we'll just adapt. We'll just acclimatize.
And when we're not strong, we do that.
And I'm not here saying that, oh, if you failed or you
faltered, now it's over. It's judgement, it's
condemnation, or there's grace, there's forgiveness.
But this is a reminder of how important this is as Kingdom
people to always put the temporal last and put the
eternal first. That's what Daniel did.
And in Daniel's case, as I mentioned, from as a young man
when he was put into leadership in Babylon to the time when
Darius, the king of the Medes and the Persians had this
foolish law created, actually says advisors did that.
Nobody could worship anybody except the king for a month, for
30 days. Even then, Daniel refused to
compromise his relationship with God.
He stood strong every single time.
You know why? He was a Kingdom person.
He's one of the best, if not the best example in the Old
Testament. In the New Testament, a story
that comes to mind is Jesus himself, when he left, was ready
to leave this earth. The last act of service that
Jesus did for his disciples was to wash their feet at the Last
Supper. He was God, but also a man, a
truly perfect Kingdom person. When Jesus shared the Last
Supper with his disciples, it's very interesting to read what
went on the last evening on that Thursday night before he was
arrested and bound and LED off to the to the temple.
They're around the table. Jesus had told them that one of
them would betray him and we read that they were not getting
it. They were arguing themselves and
there was just it was not a good evening.
It says in verse 24 of chapter Luke, chapter 2224.
Now there was also a dispute among them as to which of them
should be considered the greatest.
Little did they know in less than 24 hours they'd be again
together out of fear and dread, locked away.
Because who's going to get us now?
Jesus told him one someone of them was going to, he was going
to be killed, he told them on their way to Jerusalem a week
earlier. Then at the supper, he said, one
of them is going to betray me and they have a disagreement.
They were not acting like Kingdom people.
They were very fleshly minded. They were thinking, yeah, Jesus
is going to soon become the ruler and we're all going to
have control and power and influence.
And when he was arrested in the garden, they all fled.
But what does Jesus do when they're having these squabbles?
John 13 verse 3, it says, Knowing that the Father had
given all things into his hands and that he had come from God
and was going to God, he rose from the supper and laid aside
his garments, took a towel and girded himself.
After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash the
disciples feet and to wipe them with the towel with which he was
girded. Then he came to Simon Peter and
Peter said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet?
Then of course Jesus explains it to him.
We know how it continued. Jesus did wash him in everyone
else's feet too. And he reminded them, This is
what I want you to do. That's Kingdom living folks.
That's Kingdom living. That's what Kingdom people do.
The last night of his life on earth, before he was nailed to
the cross, he did this act of service.
He did. He demonstrated Kingdom behavior
to his disciples. And as we will go through the
Sermon on the Mount in the following weeks, we'll find the
Sermon on the Mount. These principles are woven
through and through with an emphasis on glorifying God and
all that we do and all that we are.
Some may be sitting here this morning and think, OK, well,
that sounds good for Palestine, 1st century Jews and the people
of Israel living earlier than that.
What about us today? Why is the Sermon on the Mount
important to us today in our time?
We live in a day and age when life has been so
compartmentalized, so individualized, so disconnected,
where it is less and less a unit, less and less a
relationship. Life increasingly is becoming a
confused pile of disconnected beliefs and disjointed pieces,
and for so many people, discouraging and depressing and
hopeless. Increasingly it's about my
rights and everyone else's rights, and each one for
themselves. And as communities are becoming
fractured more and more, we need the teachings of Jesus in the
Sermon on the Mount just as much as the people did whom he spoke
them to when he was there. When Jesus was here.
The Pharisees, they were the elite.
They were the revered and the respected.
They knew the laws of God. They preached the laws of God
but didn't practice them. They have the letter of the law,
but no relationship. The Pharisees were not Kingdom
people, So what difference does it make for us today?
We live in a time when people say Christians say it well I
yes, I know I should, but and then they engage in lifestyle
choices and actions they know contradict what Jesus taught and
what the Bible says we should do.
No person, people, group or culture can afford to live
successfully in contradiction to the rule of moral truth.
When we hold the teachings of Jesus casually in no regard,
there's no telling to what level we will be dragged down to.
The Bible warns us strong against compromise, and there
are serious warnings. And we are never so good that we
cannot fall. There's a man, the Old
Testament. We exemplified that very, very
much So he's called a manner after God's own heart was King
David. Yet one time he allowed his
feelings, his emotions to direct his thinking and his behavior.
In the end, his family paid a terrible price.
David, king of Israel, committed adultery.
He decided to take a woman, Bathsheba, had her husband
killed and didn't count what would happen?
He tried to cover his sin, arranged for her husband's
death, but God decided not to let him get away with it.
And he paid a horrific, A catastrophic price.
The good thing was he repented and many other people's lives
were affected by what he did. And these things happen in our
day and age. Psalm 11/13, the 11, verse 3.
The writer says if the foundations are destroyed, what
can the righteous do? You see, once the points of
reference are gone, there's no more any sense of direction.
Some years ago I preached A sermon here and I used an
illustration that few will remember.
Some of you will and I want to use that illustration again this
morning. It's again out of the book of
Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard.
He shares this little story. A pilot was practicing high
speed maneuvers in a jet fighter.
She turned the controls for what she thought a steep ascent and
flew straight into the ground. She was unaware that she'd been
flying upside down. Sometimes happens when pilots
don't pay attention to the instruments when they go by the
appearance by the surround with the see through the cockpit
windshield. You have to know your
instruments and if you don't, you'll use your instruments.
You can, you become disoriented and you do that stuff.
He continued. He says this is a parable of
human existence in our times. Not exactly that everyone's
crashing, though, there's enough of that.
But most of us, as individuals in world society as a whole,
live at high speed and often with no clue to whether we're
flying upside down or right side up.
Indeed, we're haunted by a strong suspicion that there may
be no difference, or at least that it's unknown or irrelevant.
You see, there's some things in life we cannot afford to guess
at or take chances, as in what kind of house or car we buy.
Sure we can. We can.
We can guess at that. But when it comes to
relationship, life's decisions, we must have the right reference
points from where to make choices, or the consequences can
be catastrophic and may be fatal.
It's vitally important for us, both in the here and now and for
eternity, that we make the right choices early to be Kingdom
people, to live by Kingdom values.
And these are our choices. The Bible's full of stories.
How God invites, how God reminds, how God moves people,
how God warns people, opens doors for people, and some
respond and some don't. We're given one life each.
We're responsible for it, how we manage it, take care of it, and
for whose purpose we live it. I'm going to close with one
little story. I'm a university student whom
Dallas Woodard mentions in his book.
She came from a Midwestern town in the US, came from a working
class where things were more traditional.
Right was right and wrong was wrong.
Traditional conservative beliefs were held.
She managed to get into Harvard. You know what Harvard is the big
prestigious university where if you go there, then you've got it
made, so to speak. It was a big deal.
However, as a woman, she was simple.
She didn't have a lot of money. She cleaned dorms to earn money
to help pay her way. She was treated rudely by some
of the students because of where she came from, what she did,
cleaning, and so on. On a number of occasions, she
reported the behavior of her fellow students to the higher
ups and nothing was done. She was disrespected,
mistreated, and repeatedly propositioned for sex.
But one of the young men and who this young man was in the same
class, she was taking the same class called moral reasoning,
doing very well in his assignments, getting taught
marks, but immemorial in his behavior.
The time came, this young woman couldn't stand it anymore and
she quit the school, she quit Harvard.
She had an exit interview with the professor who she had
reported to. And she told him all that had
happened, how she'd been treated.
And she mentioned that the the classes the students was taking
was she was in her class. And she says she had this to
say. She says, I've been taking all
these philosophy courses. We talk about what's true,
what's important, what's good. Well, how do you teach people to
be good? And she added, what's the point
of knowing good if you don't keep trying to become a good
person? She thought that Harvard, of all
places, that would have been a place to be.
And their professor refused to take a stand.
That may happen in a school on earth.
But listen friends, the Bible is different, Jesus different.
What is known is expected. There are no exemptions.
As we go through the Sermon on the Mount in the coming weeks,
we will come across some very difficult teachings.
The question I want to leave us with this morning is are we
Kingdom people? I want to direct our thoughts to
to this concept. Are we Kingdom people?
Ephesians chapter 5 verse 18 Paul writes for you were once
darkness, but now you are light in the Lord walk as children of
light. For the fruit of the Spirit is
in all goodness, righteousness and truth.
Finding out what's acceptable, acceptable to the Lord and
having no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,
but rather expose them. For it's shameful to even speak
of those things which are done by them in secret, but all
things that are exposed are made manifest by the light for
whoever for whatever makes manifest is light.
Therefore, he says will wake you who sleep arrives from the dead,
and Christ will give you light. As Kingdom people, let's live.
As Kingdom people, let's pray. Lord, we know that you've
created us for glory to live out.
You're calling on us on this earth.
You put us here as your image bearers to reflect your
character in this life on this earth.
We also know that in and of ourselves, due to our sinful
nature, we're not able to do that.
We need you. We need Your grace at all times
for this. Lord, we pray that your Spirit
will go with us, fill us and lead us.
Lord, it is our desire to be Kingdom people.
Now as we'll go forward into the following weeks into Matthews
5-6 and seven, we pray that you will.
We'll be in tune with you and as we go through this week, give us
the grace this week to be surrendered, submitted and voted
to you. Help us Lord, to be Kingdom
people. Thank you Jesus name.