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As the little ones are departing the service for right now. Let me introduce myself. My name is Brent Avery and I used to preach here back in 2024. And Chris told you last week I asked for the month of December off. I meant just from preaching.

I didn't know that this was going to turn into a two and a half month disappearing act. So. Ta da. So I'm glad to be back. I'm glad to see you, Glad you're all here this morning and I hope and pray you're ready to dive in.

I also need to give one word of explanation. Last week I heard a voice from on high, well, at least a voice that was taller than me, tell me to tell you that it was a cable fellowship day. And when you hear a voice from on high at least 8 inches higher than you, you do what that voice tells you to do. So I am happy to announce correctly today that there is a table fellowship. And if last week's announcement caused you any angst or sorrow or church hurt because you went out there expecting to be fed, I apologize for that.

I never really believed, to be honest, it had never crossed my mind that I would have the opportunity, the privilege, to actually teach the words of Yeshua in the very places that Yeshua taught them. When I went to Israel in 1990, it was my first trip and I had everybody kind of has their list in their head things that they think the place that's really gonna be the place for them. One of the places that turned out to be one of my most favorite places, and still is to this day, is the Mount of Beatitudes. That's what call it in the Holy Land. Just a little bit to the west of Capernaum and up a hill, there's a Catholic church, the Church of the Beatitudes.

And it occupies this really cool kind of natural concave amphitheater. And it's one of the reasons why they think that might be the place where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount. I'll never forget going there for my first time in 1990 and being given the opportunity to read from the text of Scripture. One of the reasons, another reason it was so special to me, was because I was just coming to the end of my first youth ministry at a church in Liberty, Indiana. And in fact, two weeks after I got home from that trip, I transitioned into the interim preaching minister and ultimately became the preaching minister of that congregation.

But towards the end of my youth ministry, the Holy Spirit really began to work in my heart about the things that I was Taking time to teach the youth of that church and community. I finally, I guess I just ran out of me. I ran out of moralisms, I ran out of ways to plead with them, you know, to not do drugs and to not have premarital sex and all the do's and don'ts. And I finally came to the conclusion, and you would think a Bible college educated person would have come to this conclusion a lot sooner, that what they really needed were the words of Jesus. And there is no concise sermon bigger or better than the one that Jesus teaches on that mountain.

And I really, as special as it was, and it really became special too when in years after that, to be able to take some of the young men from that youth group and then extend that privilege to them. Because some of them to this day will tell you they don't remember anything I taught except the Sermon on the Mount. And they may not be able to remember what I exactly said, but they at least remembered that there was a change. There was a difference in that moment as we began to dive in and invest in that message. I didn't realize at the time that the way I had been ministering was that I had taken a page out of the playbook of the scribes and the Pharisees.

You see, every time the scribes and Pharisees stood up to teach, there was a thing that was more important to them. Even though they feigned that the most important thing to them was to fulfill the word of God. The real most important thing to them was to make themselves relevant in the eyes of the people and to make sure that the people saw them and only them as the people to whom they should turn for the correct interpretation of Scripture. They wanted the people to be dependent on them. Now it wasn't that I wanted my youth group to be dependent on me, but I wanted to come across as relevant.

And I finally came to the end of that and I realized what's more relevant than the words of Yeshua. Now all God's church said, well, duh, now you would think that we would figure that out. And again, a Bible college educated guy should have figured it out a lot sooner than he did. But I'm so glad I did. Having gone to Israel, the Lord began to impact me in so many ways, showing me the relevance of Israel and the Torah.

And I fell in love with that. And that really began a journey, diving into the depths of the Torah and into the prophets of the Old Testament. And I fell in love with it. And I fell in love with a movement that was falling in love with it. And then I fell out of love with that movement because I saw them doing what I was doing as a youth minister.

There was no more teaching the Torah so that it could point us to Yeshua the way Jesus says the Torah does. It became, who can be the most relevant? Who can drop the next Hebrew bombshell? Who can. Who can be the bring the verse that wows everybody.

Man, I wish I had a dime for every time I heard someone say, well, this changes everything. And I got to the place where I just wanted to scream, it changes nothing. Jesus is still Lord, yesterday, today, and forever. It changes nothing. Because at the end of the day, that's what the Torah points us to.

But I fell into that trap of wanting to be relevant. I've learned over the years that we ended up doing to the Torah what many of the Jewish people had done to the New Testament, failing to see its relevance. Guys, that's why I'm so pumped about today and what we're about to do. Because you've heard me say this many times. I'm not interested anymore in telling you what I have to say.

I am much more interested in looking at the words of Yeshua or one of the apostles who were fully inspired by the Holy Spirit to say what they said. And so, as we get into this today, there's two contexts before we pray. There's two contexts that I want you to become very, very familiar with from this moment forward. In the 10 to 12 weeks that we're going to be looking at the Sermon on the Mount. The first is this.

John the Baptist came preaching to prepare the way of the Lord. And what was his message? The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Everybody say malchut Hashemyim. Malchud Hashemyim means the kingdom of heaven.

And it was what dominated the message of John the Baptist until Jesus came along. And guess what Jesus started preaching. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. It was the dominant theme in every single thing that Jesus said and every single thing Jesus did. So much so that when it came time to send out his Talmudim, his disciples, he told them to go and heal and do all these things.

But the message they were to declare in harmony with those miracles was simply this. The kingdom of heaven has drawn near. It's here. God has drawn near, and he is available to you. That's the first context that everything about Jesus ministry doesn't matter if it's a miracle, doesn't matter if it's a sermon.

Sermon on the Mount. Sermon on the sea Sermon on the Go doesn't make any difference. It's all about the Kingdom of God and its availability to those who will receive it. The second thing I want you to understand as we go into Matthew's gospel and we see how he lays out the sermon that Jesus presented, is that while the Sermon on the Mount is revelatory meaning, it's going to show us the true interpretation, the true way to walk out the righteousness of God. It's also inflammatory because it is going to inflame a group of people who are in these crowds because they know instinctively they are literally the exact opposite of what he's teaching and preaching.

And they are going to know, and the people of the crowd are going to know. Huh, that doesn't sound anything like my rabbi. Now, I want you to know I try to be fair to the Pharisees, try to be kind, but this is the context that everything Jesus is going to say in this Sermon on the Kingdom is going to create a juxtaposition, a comparison to what these people had been hearing their entire lives for generations from these rabbis. And quite honestly, in a generation that represented probably the most Torah observant generation in the history of the world, nobody was trying harder to dot the I's and cross the T's than the scribes and Pharisees. At least that's what they said.

And yet, and I want you to let this sink in, they were the ones who would become the focus of the negative juxtaposition, that somehow they had taken God's incredible Torah of righteousness given to Moses, that somehow they had taken it and had perverted it so much that they become the antithesis of everything Jesus is saying. Now, I know that many of you here have heard the Sermon on the Mount, preached and taught more times than you care to remember. And there are places in this sermon that I am not gonna stop to parse out every. When we get to salt and light, I'm not gonna do a sermon and tell you all the unique things about salt and light. You've heard that ad nauseam.

Amen. We are gonna try to look at the greater context of what he is saying. So I come to you before we pray this morning with this request and this challenge. I ask you to bow your head and close your eyes and consider this. Are you just going to be here to listen to another rendition of the Sermon on the Mount, or are you going to be like those people who gathered on that mountainside 2,000 years ago, who had come from all over The Decapolis and the Galilee and up from Judea, they had come to hear what the Master says.

We sometimes think we've heard it all before. Am I right? Well, I'm not going to try to wow you with new stuff. I want us to hear what Jesus said and I want us to understand why he said it. And if hff we are truly to be a kingdom seeking church and the priority, the primacy of his ministry and message was to declare and to manifest the kingdom, then I would suggest to you that we need to discard everything we think we know and come to this moment like those people came to that moment.

The Son of God is about to open his mouth and he, not me, is about to be our teacher. Will you pray with us? Abba? Father, it's so good to be back in the house of the Lord with these people just resting in you on this Sabbath and thankful for all of the blessings that you have bestowed upon us. Abba Father, I come to you in the name of Yeshua and I ask in this moment and from this moment your spirit will invade our hearts and our minds that you will make clear the juxtapositions that we need to see in our life.

If we have been listening to wrong voices, Father, that you would inspire us for the hope that you present to us in the kingdom of God. And Father, somehow that you would make what was priority for Jesus our priority. Seeking first the kingdom. I pray this in Yeshua's name. Amen.

One of the things that I really want to stress is this moment should feel familiar to us. Let me just jump on in with this and just read from the first verse of Matthew chapter 5. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. That moment that should feel like something. It wasn't that people just didn't want to get in Jesus way.

There's a formality to this moment. There is a sense in which they are waiting on the king to go and take his seat. And then they will approach after he has been seated upon the throne. That's kind of what happened at Sinai. The Lord descends and it is not until he has taken his seat on the mountain, when he is dwelling on the mountain, that he then the people then gather to the mountain Jesus.

By this point in Jesus ministry, news of his miracles and the message had spread throughout the land, even to the gentile cities.

While the crowd was predominantly Jewish, there were Gentiles there. This was an incredible moment. And that's the first Thing I want you to take into account as a New Covenant believer. Hear me. This is your Mount Sinai.

Does that. Does that say it clear enough for the new Covenant seeker of the Kingdom? This is equal and greater to what happened in Sinai. Why? Because the Word of God made flesh has taken his seat on the mountain to open his mouth.

And when that happens, what are they gonna hear? They're going to hear the voice of God because he is the Son of God, because he is the Word of God through which everything was created. Now he is going to reveal the truth of why he created all these things. I think sometimes we just don't understand the significance of this God moment. And that's what I want this series to be.

I want it to be a God moment in your life. Not because of me, but because you get laser focused on wanting to hear what the Master says. That's what I think this moment is, and I think that's what it should be. I want to be on the edge of my seat as much as they were to hear what the Master said. Years ago, four of us stopped.

We let two people off at the base of that mountain, and two of us went ahead and took the car and went around to the top and we went out into that natural amphitheater to do a sound check, to check the acoustics. And sure enough, we could speak at the top of the mountain, back and forth with those who are at the bottom, with barely raising our voices, and we could hear each other. Now, I'm not saying that that is definitively the place where it happened, but you can understand why we were there. Those people were there, and Jesus opened his mouth and they heard the words of the Master, verse 2. He opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, now some translations don't think they need to include such obvious words like he opened his mouth.

I mean, most of you aren't going to go away from here and say, oh yeah, Brent preached today when he opened his mouth. And all God's people said, well, duh. I mean, how else am I going to speak if I don't open my mouth to do it? But there's no useless word in scripture that one you can say amen to not well done. The new international version thinks it's redundant or unnecessary, but I think it's pointing to the magnitude of this moment like we've been talking about.

This is the Son of God speaking and he has taken his seat. You know, whenever you're reading in the Bible where it talks about the Lord came and dwelt in a particular place almost every time. The word, the Hebrew word that will be used to describe that is the word for to sit. We read it like he came and he dwelled. He sat among us.

That's why when I see Jesus going up there and taking this posture of kingship and yet humility seated and people then coming to him, it's like I've seen it before. Now Matthew points us to this God moment when the Word opened his mouth to be heard. Two things we need to clue in on we're about to hear. If what I have said is true, that the kingdom of God is his primary message and ministry, then it should be reflected in what he preaches and teaches. Amen.

It just makes sense. He's not going to run around declaring the kingdom of God is at hand. Hey, let's talk about something else. That's not what he's doing. Throughout the prophets especially, but also in the Psalms, mountains are symbols of kingdoms.

So you have another interesting layer that he's going to go to the mountain and that's where he's going to teach us about the kingdom. I love this. I've said this before. I don't just love what God's word says. I love the way it says it.

I love the way it reveals it. Verse 3.

If I'm correct, the kingdom of God should show up shortly. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Boom. Man, he didn't waste any time, did he? He goes right to the central.

Right now I am trying. I am 10 years into a process of trying to finish a thesis. Yeah, I'm a little slow. I get distracted. Squirrel.

You know, I'm like a child. But one thing that they just keep hammering is you have to have a rock solid thesis. If I had a dime for every time my professor had, you said that to me and you'd think by now I would have one. But I wrestle. What do I want to say?

How do I want to say it? Jesus just comes right out and in one sentence says, this is about the kingdom and the ones who are to receive it are the poor in spirit. He starts off, and I want you to think about this. I want you to think about all these people who've come to hear him and see these miracles. Now, some are just looky loos, you know, some are there for the fight, some are there for the show.

But there are those who are there who are really seeking the kingdom. Some are there just for the novelty of it. But for those who are Truly seeking and wanting to know, well, what is this Jesus movement? What is this all about? I don't know about you, but I would be one in the crowd that would want to know.

How do I participate in this? How do I connect with this?

Yeshua starts off with the very first sentence. It begins with the poor in spirit.

The poor in spirit does not mean that they have no wealth.

It means Anya Ruach means that they are not devoid of the Spirit, but that they possess what heaven values. Church, please hear that. Jesus says the kingdom already belongs to those who share the same economy as the kingdom. The things that God values. The world values wealth.

The world values power. The Kingdom values humility. The world values and celebrates hubris. Hubris, however you pronounce it, which is arrogance. Jesus says it is the poor in spirit who are already rich in the kingdom of Heaven.

The kingdom is for those who are about serving rather than being served. It is for those who want to come to someone else's aid more than they want someone to come to theirs. You see, this is righteousness and this is where the kingdom of Heaven starts. It starts in the hearts of people who look around and realize this world does not have with all of its wealth that which I need to have peace for my soul and connection with my Creator. It comes from people who are humble of spirit.

May I pause for just a moment and speak some hard truth? Sometimes people in the body of Christ get stagnated in their walk with Christ. Anybody ever been there? It's happened to all of us. The problem is they get petty and self obsessed and they wonder why there's no kingdom manifestation in their lives.

They wonder where their joy has gone. I promise you, if you want to find your joy, don't look this way, look this way. If you want to encounter the power, the manifest power of the Kingdom of God breaking out in your life, get your eyes off yourself and go do something for somebody else. Because that's where the Holy Spirit shows up when we're doing righteousness. He does not show up when we are filled with hubris, with our own self awareness.

You know we love the nice and poetic beatitudes, but if that is all you think this is, you don't understand the context in which it's been given. Remember that juxtaposition, the religious leaders, not all of them, but the majority of the scribes and the Pharisees, live in a world of their own self importance. We are the scribes, we are the. One of the things that bothered them was Jesus didn't Bother to go check in with them and get their permission to be the Messiah. Oops.

These Beatitudes are more than just poetry. They are prophetic blessings. But they are also spiritual truths where Jesus is calling to the hearts of those who want the kingdom and are willing to step back even from what you have been taught. To listen to the King and what he says.

Now, that's tough. I'm a preacher's kid. I would never say anything to dishonor my father. Thankfully, I had a father who, when he was confronted with the word of God, was willing to say, yep, I was wrong about that and I want to honor that. Jesus begins his kingdom by boldly declaring, it is not for the arrogant.

And quite honestly, it's not for everyone.

You've heard it said, God loves us unconditionally. Have you ever heard that? That's partially true. God does love you unconditionally in the sense that he will accept you. He died while you were still a sinner.

But God does not love our condition. That's why he died. And the condition is we either come and respond to the unconditional love. Our heart longs for that. And if we don't long for that, we never really come to Him.

He's looking for that humble heart that says, I have to have more of you.

Verse 4. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Mourn for what? Well, he doesn't really say, but knowing what the sermon is about, I think it's mourning because of the sin in this world. Mourning because of the condition of this world.

Mourning because they know instinctively in their heart and mind this is not the way life is supposed to be. Mourning when they're going through all. They're dotting all the I's and t's of the statutes and the decrees of the Torah, and they're finding no joy.

I thought there was joy in serving the Lord. There is until someone perverts what you're doing with it.

Yeshua is looking for people who are looking for something better. A people who mourn the condition of this beautiful world that God created us. And he says they shall be comforted. Do you know what you comfort people who are mourning with? Hope.

Christ in you, the hope of glory. Let me tell you what this is not. This is not about people who love to point out everyone else's wrongs. A lot of us are. Well, we're not so grieved by the state of the world as we are mad.

Come on, sit there and scroll and scroll and ooh this guy's gonna rip her. Go ahead. Yeah. Boom.

Oh, man, she made that politician look stupid.

Being mad at the world is not the same thing as mourning for its spiritual condition.

Mourning is longing for something lost. And Jesus comes and gives hope because of what can be found here. The righteousness is for the love of all that's holy, giving people righteousness.

Can I tell you how we some of us need to learn how to do righteousness. And righteousness always involves an act of giving. Are you ready for this? Give it a rest.

Go home and do righteousness this week. And rather than being mad at the world and posting about it, pray for the world. Pray for those politicians who just aren't as enlightened as you, but give it a rest.

Verse 5 Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Growing up, this made no sense to me at all. I was taught that when our Messiah king returns, it is only to gather us up so he can annihilate from existence this planet that he created. And so when I read this, blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Well, if you're going to come and obliterate it out of existence, that's kind of a rotten.

That's, you know, that's a lump of coal. I mean, I don't want that. Sorry, I can use that illustration because of how I look. Anyway.

The kingdom promises that this world will one day be free of the corruption of sin and those who polluted the world by their arrogance. But this kingdom will. Will not be taken by force. It will be taken by faith. Faith that something better has been promised, and faith that something better is coming, and faith that what we need to endure it in its current condition has already been given us.

Because in his righteousness, he didn't just give me forgiveness of sins. He gave me the ruach Hakodesh, the Holy Spirit, to help me war against unrighteousness, even in my own flesh. Again, Jesus opening words to the people is about whom the kingdom belongs to and to whom those who will inherit it a restored earth. It's not those who impose their opinions and dogmas on others. It's for those who teach and instruct and live out as a manifestation of the Spirit's presence in their lives.

It's the people who live the kingdom that inherit the kingdom. Verse 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. The Church speaks often about the sinful nature. Judaism calls it the yetzera, or the evil appetite. I like that definition better.

Kind of me and appetite kind of have a love hate affair. And so I know a little bit about appetite. And yet, while all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, because we are all born with that fallen appetite to do the opposite of righteousness. In spite of all that, you are not so depraved that you cannot long for something better. You see, I'm not a Calvinist.

I'm not trying to pick on anybody. But I'm not one of those people that believes you are so depraved that you cannot respond to the love invitation of God. I'm not one of those people that believe that you cannot respond to God's grace because that's why he's putting it before you, so that you can respond. I am not one of those people who believes that even in your fallen state, I think because of your fallen. Why would God let our fallen state go so bad?

So that we would finally look up and want something better and we would begin to hunger. There's got to be more than this.

God told Cain. Sin is knocking at your door, but you must master it because it wants to consume you. The kingdom is for those who, once confronted with the grace and mercy of God, hunger and thirst for his righteousness so that they can overcome the one knocking at the door.

Hungering for righteousness happens in two ways. We hunger for only what he can give. We come to the place where we realize and Jesus is gonna. He's gonna deal with all these topics that he's introducing. He's gonna deal with commandments directly related to them throughout the sermon, hungering to live and to give as he gave to us.

Verse 7. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Yeshua will say at the conclusion of the kingdom prayer that if we do not forgive others, then our heavenly Father will not forgive your transgressions. Throughout Matthew's Gospel, we're going to see the scribes and the Pharisees do exactly the opposite. Every one of these blessings, they were very good about thumping the Torah.

They were not very good at giving mercy to the broken. They didn't know that the Torah was a gift of grace. And if the Torah is a gift of grace and righteousness, then that's how it should be shared with others. Come on. You want to know why I fell out of love with that movement?

Because we became a movement full of bulldozers running roughshod over people's hearts when people were just trying to find out, what does God require of me? How do I connect with God. And the sad thing is, the last thing on the list that they seem to want to talk about is the one who could bring hope and comfort, the Son of God.

Blessed verse 8. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. By the way, you've all been through, you know, blessed means, you know, just satiated, saturated with favor. You, you've, you've gone through the series where they handle all these words right. We're not, we're not doing that.

I want us to step back and see the Kingdom message. He's talking about people's hearts and the condition of their hearts. And listen to what he says. I mean, what. Talk about putting something out there.

I don't want to call it a carrot, but putting something out there. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Wow. Now, I don't know exactly how that's going to play out in the Kingdom when heaven and earth become one, because to date, the only one that has seen the Father is the Son. But I know.

Remember what Jesus said to Thomas. Thomas said, lord, master, show us the Father. And Jesus says, you've been with me so long, you don't see him yet. Later in the scripture, it's going to tell us that the scribes and the Pharisees, voided, vacated the purpose of God in their lives. And because of that, because they wouldn't take that first step of humility.

I don't need to be baptized by some unknown prophet in the wilderness. That act of hubris and arrogance. When Yeshua came on the scene, they couldn't see him. They couldn't see the word of God made flesh. They couldn't see the manifestation of God's heart and his love flowing through Yeshua.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Verse 9. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Why call them that? Because true disciples of Jesus Christ know that he came to bring peace into the broken relationship between men and God. That was his priority mission.

That's who the Kingdom is reserved for. And if we're gonna be identified as disciples of Christ, as Kingdom citizens, then he ought to be able to look at us and see the way we act when we go to work, when we go to school, how we interact with our parents, our neighbors, how we post or don't post. He should be able to see that we are seeking peace.

It's a counterintuitive idea to create a kingdom through peace and not a brutal manifestation of power. But that's who we're called to be.

These are the first seven words that Jesus spoke. Remember, in Judaism, they refer to the Ten Commandments simply as the ten words. As we're going to look at the Beatitudes, we're going to break them down. And I believe there are 10 words that Jesus uses. We're going to cover the next three next week.

When Israel finally entered the Promised land and completed the wars of conquest, God gathered them on two mountains. And on one of those mountains, part of the people stood. On the other mountain, the other people stood. One recited the blessings for those who would pursue God and walk in his ways and love him with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. But there were those who were on the other mountain and their job, they had to recite the curses that God told for people who would turn away from his grace and his mercy.

There's going to be some curses that are going to show up in the sermon, not quite as clear, but just true explanations of what happens for people who choose arrogance over humility. But in Matthew chapter 23, we will come to that moment when we hear Jesus pronounce the woes against the scribes and the Pharisees.

Worship team. You can come back.

I just really want this season, this series, to be a time when regardless of what we learned in Sunday school, regardless of what we learned at Sukkot, regardless of who has taught us, I'm asking you to go back to Matthew 5, 6 and 7 and dive in with all the passion that some of you dove into the Torah when you discovered its richness. If the words given to Moses were rich, how much more the words spoken by the Messiah himself. I want this to be a collective journey for our congregation as a people who want to be. We don't just want to be another assembly of people who believe in God. There's plenty of those.

We want to be more than just an assembly of God where, you know, your kids can do fun activities. And we, we want to be the kingdom of God. Amen. And when I look around, even at the body of Christ, I'm not slamming other churches or anything like that, but. But instinctively, we know there has to be more.

And it's not the Holy Spirit's fault.

I mean, I love blaming God for my mistakes. We'll edit that out. Oh, you do it, too. We've been doing it since Adam said, well, the woman.

I want to be a part of a congregation that seeks first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And I want hff to be known as a kingdom Seeking church because we came to the mountain. We heard the invitation to come and sit at the Master's feet. Not Chris, not Brent. Jesus.

I want our lives to be focused on what it means to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount. Right after Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, he says one sentence and I want you to hear it with all of your heart, soul and mind.

We're not a mega church. We're a growing church. We have a mega heart for Jesus. I like that. But listen to what Jesus says.

He says, do not be afraid, little flock, because it was your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. It was the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. When you leave this place today, after you've eaten at table fellowship, when you leave this place today, you go forth into a world where you have been invited to be a part of the kingdom of God. And when everything. Well, where is he?

He doesn't. It was the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Have you ever given a gift to your child? Have you ever had that? You couldn't wait to see their faces when they. When they open their gifts. It is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom of heaven now, not just in the future, but right now.

Question. And the challenge for this week is to go back and listen to those first seven words of Jesus and not evaluate how you know. This isn't a call to be better Christianity. It's a call to check the depths of our heart and mind. What do we really love?

Is there areas where we need to humble ourselves as much as we love those who have taught us? Do we need to step back and let Jesus speak a fresh voice into us? Just take this weekend and look at those seven blessings and remember those blessings are for the people he gave the kingdom of God to receive. As we go into this response time, as we sing this song, let it not just be to wrap up a service. Let it be a time when we focus our hearts on the invitation to be a part of the kingdom of Heaven.