You’ve Heard That It Was Said…

Here it is in each one of us, and then we can trust you to guide us. We are in all that we do. In Jesus’ name, amen. For this. Let’s just do this, shall we?

Okay. This reminds me of Wednesday night. In the middle of the night, I woke Bonnie and I up because I was banging against my nightstand, which was really disorienting me because just moments before when I was asleep, I was doing pretty effective battle with the Tyrannosaurus Rex at the time. So you can imagine my surprise when I realized I was just pummeling a piece of bedroom furniture. Okay.

They’re different. I’m going to pull this thing off my head if it doesn’t keep going. There’s going to be some other magic I can work. Go ahead. Is that working?

All right. With that and with this. No? No? No?

Okay. This thing. Sermon on the Mount this morning, where it starts, Matthew 5, 17 to 19. I was talking about how the brain works a little better. Our storytellers.

Their tasks. It’s task. Just to make sense of what comes into our head. That’s what God made it there for. It’s a gentleman that takes disparate pieces of information that come into our head.

What’s that? I am how much this is going to work. How long this is going to work? He’s about to teach. Yes, Sermon on the Mount.

And on all of chapter 5, he uses the phrase in a number of places. You’ve heard that it was said, but I say to you. Now, Jesus knows that what he’s about to teach is going to be very new to the hearers. It’s going to affect their very understandings of the nature of righteousness. So he begins with this foundation in verse 17 and 19.

Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For I truly say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the law until all is accomplished to ever then a null is one of the least of these commandments. And so teaches others shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

So he’s going to teach them new things. And what’s important here is he says, here’s the ground rule for what’s coming. This is not annulling anything in the commandments or the scriptures. It’s going to be teaching it to its fullest. I’m here to fulfill these things and give you a fuller understanding.

But he’s about to reshape their thinking about Hebrew laws and commandments that they’ve been taught their entire lives. He’s going to change their entire approach to these laws from obedience being that which is just exercised externally to that which is internal. There’s an inner life to God’s people to the believers. And this is totally different. They have never been held accountable for what’s in here in the written laws or as the scribes and Pharisees would teach.

What was in here and what was in here was not something they were accountable for. It was all that which was out here that they did. So this is different. And he’s about to pull the rug out from that teaching. And this is the kind of teaching that has gained him the following that he had up into this point.

Quite a bit. It’s new, it’s vibrant, it’s effective, it’s applicable and it applies to everybody. I mean, how many of you have been tempted to murder? Don’t raise your hand. That’s like saying, how many of you have been married?

No, that’s not right. It’s really uncommon. We don’t live in that world most of us. And then if that wasn’t going to be difficult enough, he starts with this bomb in verse 20. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses you, is that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Now most of us were raised listening to records as a youth. How many of you remember those little round things with grooves in them and you put the little needle on there and everything would go fine until there was a scratch or something in it and then something would go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong until you knock that needle off that spot and it would go right. And they would start playing again. That’s called a record scratch. That sound effect is used today in movies and stuff when the story needs to stop and take a reset because something is going wrong in the brain.

Something just didn’t make sense. So when Jesus said, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, think records scratch in their brains because that’s what it was because scribes and Pharisees had all these laws that were written down in these practices that were enumerated in their laws and their traditions and they were full-time workers at obeying these things. That was their profession. And they were so detailed that it took a full-time worker to obey all those things and normal people frankly could not do that. And if righteousness was determined by their obedience to all the oral tradition and everything they had about these commandments, then forget it.

So right away his hearers are wondering how do I do with this? Okay, record scratch. Jesus’s speeches, talks, stories often use this kind of a technique, this record scratch, this shock and awe statement to knock people out of their comfort zones. And they’re thinking that’s impossible. How can I possibly do that and wait a minute?

He can’t really mean that can he? And then he starts it. You’ve heard that the ancient were told. And Jesus’ choice of words here is interesting because he does this in a number of sections and I’ll get to those in a moment. You’ve heard that the ancients were told.

Then he quotes scripture verbatim from Exodus 20 on this command. You shall not murder. What he’s going to do is he’s going to, well let’s say what he’s going to do. He’s not saying you’ve heard that it was written or you’ve read that it was written. Most of these folks probably couldn’t read.

And they’ve only heard these commandments in their lifetime. But he didn’t say you’ve heard that it was written. And then the number of times he uses that phrase throughout this chapter, he never says you know that it’s written. He says you’ve heard that it was said because what he’s about to do here is he’s about to counter what they were taught about what was written. You’ve heard that it was said.

You’ve heard what you were taught about these things. You’ve heard what the leaders and the teachers and the Pharisees have taught you about what was written. You’ve heard that it was said. You shall not murder. Period.

And that’s it. There’s a huge difference between what people say about the scriptures and what the scriptures actually say. Think of the Bible as a sphere, as a ball, in which all kinds of wonderful, treasurable things are written in there. And place that in a larger ball that people say it says. There’s a huge difference in that which Jesus dealt with his entire ministry on earth.

What people say versus what is written is something totally different. Now we’ve got to be careful that we make that distinction for ourselves. The Jews had oral interpretations and application to the law. They had this thing called the oral Torah where they added things to the scripture and they taught as doctrines of the precepts of men Jesus said later in his ministry. And they placed a high value on that.

About 160 years after Jesus was crucified, somebody finally wrote all these things down. It was equivalent of about 2,700 double-sided pages, 5,400 pages of additional text that they added. Now some of it was junk, which Jesus dealt with as he was ministering, but a lot of it was actually pretty good. When it comes to murder, there was a lot written about the sanctity of life. There was legal distinctions between intentional murder, unintentional manslaughter, self-defense, and all that other kind of stuff.

There were moral and ethical considerations regarding the roots of violence, the importance of preventing bloodshed, obligations to protect innocent life. There were different legal procedures laid out for the different kinds of killing that was there that had to go in before the courts. And there was large sections on preventing violence and the responsibility to protect others. So all this oral tradition isn’t bad, but some of it was. But it all depended on external obedience to the simple command you shall not murder.

None of it was devoted to the internal part of the person. And that’s what Jesus’ teaching is going straight to the heart of. It’s going to the practical. There’s more to it. Matthew 5, 21, he says, “But I say to you, “that everyone who is angry with his brother “shall be guilty before the court.

“Whoever shall say to his brother, “Rocka, shall be guilty before the Supreme Court. “Whoever shall say you fool “shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” Now this Rocka and Fool thing, that’s simply where we hold somebody in contempt either because we don’t like them or because we think they’re worthless or whatever. That’s what he’s referring to. He does the same thing in verse 27 regarding adultery, verse 33, regarding vows, verse 38, regarding vengeance and verse 43, regarding how we regard our enemies.

So Jesus is changing their understanding of righteousness as that which is in our heart and what comes out of it. What we say to each other, not just some narrow legal compliance with it. And all of us commands in chapter five do this. It lays out how we’re to think, perceive, understand, feel, and value. And that our actions stem from these internal foundations.

He’s saying that there’s an internal life to a believer by which righteousness is judged. And that’s of core importance because he said later on in his teachings, “By their fruits, you shall know them.” Guess I have to turn my head with this when I go home. 15, 18 to 20, Jesus says, “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart and those things defile the person for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, acts of adultery, other immoral sexual acts, thefts, false testimonies, and slander statements. These are the things that defile the person.”

He’s laying the foundation there. And so all of chapter five, he pulls the rug out from this external compliance mindset to this internal accountability mindset. And then if obedience surpassing, righteousness surpassing that of the scribes and theresies wasn’t difficult enough for them. He ends with verse 48, “Therefore you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Record scratch.

Good night. So he lays out this high and lofty, absolutely impossible standard for external compliance, but he lays out these commands for internal attitude change. And so it’s that internal life that I want to focus on today. And oh look, I have all kinds of time. It’s 10.30.

And I’m way ahead. That ever happened, Ed. It never happens. Ed always comes afterwards and he goes, “Drinking from a higher fire hose yet again.” So internal life of the believer.

Many of us avoid looking inward. It’s uncomfortable. There’s regrets there. There’s guilt there. It’s just a lot of work, to be honest.

Because it’s certainly easier to, what, dance through life. Living the unexamined life, as I spoke of before. Living on autopilot, lacking self-awareness. But in Matthew 5, Jesus has taken great pains to force people to look inside of themselves and evaluate their hearts towards each other. Because he knows that what comes out of the heart are the actions that are in compliance.

And of course, that internal change that I’m talking about here comes from cultivating a life with God. A deep personal relationship with him. And allowing that relationship to shape our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions. And my encouragement to us is that we make this an intentional thing. I’ll be speaking about meditation here a little bit.

And we should be looking at that intentionally. This whole idea of behaving on the outside. You’ve heard this sermon many times before. It’s worthless. It’s worthless.

It doesn’t do us any good. Oh, it may socially smooth over whatever’s happening at the time. But internally, we’re just the same old ugly person, perhaps. We’ve always been nothing really new there. And being perfect, like Jesus commands them to do in verse 48, is not something you can decide to do.

It’s not a January 1st New Year’s resolution. From now on, I’m going to be perfect. This kind of a relationship with God is something we have to grow into. You’ve heard me teach of this before. We have to grow into this.

We can’t just choose to do it. So this morning, we’re going to look at two areas. We’re going to look at one that builds on that relationship with God in the quiet times that we have. And another that can help the character developed in those quiet times to come out in the moment. When we need it.

Because if you think about these things in Matthew 5, about murdering, being angry, and calling you fool, and the lust, and the other things that go in here, making a vows, and thinking about enemies, those things happen in the moment at a time of conflict. And so if we’re going to be righteous before God, we have to be righteous in the quiet times, is it easy times? Be righteous in the moments, in the times of conflict. Anyway, we’re going to get to both of those. So for the first one, for that quiet time, long term sort of thing, I want you to show me your Bibles.

Who’s got them? I want everybody to put something up in the air. If either it’s your phone, or it’s the Bible, or it’s whatever. It’s in front of you. Now close them.

Your page will be there when we’re done. We’re going to talk about the hand illustration. How many of you have ever heard of the hand illustration? One, two, a couple of us. All right.

You’ll like this, Doug. Doug likes my hand works. The hand illustration. I was taught this by the navigators, by the way. We have a hand.

This is based on the whole idea that the Bible is the sword of the spirit, the word of God, and we’re to be handling it with authority and with power and so forth. So the hand illustration goes like this. The little finger is hearing. My hearing we know is a pretty weak way to learn things, because we retain how much, but we hear? 10%.

Is that what you’ve heard? 10%. Okay, everybody grab your Bible with your hearing finger. Go ahead. See, this is where this isn’t going to work for me.

This is what I was taught. You don’t really have much of a grip with just your little finger. Now the second finger is reading. Now it’s also a weak finger, but you got two of them now. I don’t know about you, but there’s different ways to read, and sometimes you retain what you read, and sometimes you don’t.

Your brain doesn’t always, anyway, whatever. So pick your Bibles up now with two fingers. Look at the phone. People with the phones can do it. People with the Bibles, not so much.

Dan has got it. Okay, this big thing, not so much. And the balancing, it’s not much better than just hearing. Ooh, you got it. Marissa’s got it.

Reading and hearing. The third one, the middle finger, is study. Study. When you study something, you’re intentionally putting something in your brain, and you’re learning what it means, and learning how to do it, and all that kind of other good stuff, and now you’ve got three fingers. So now lift it up.

Most of you can hold it. Let me see your Bibles. Hold them with your three fingers. You can balance them, you can grip them. All right, I can’t do it with a microphone.

What’s the fourth finger? Memorization. Memorization. A lot of value in memorization. In my heart that I might not sin against thee, okay?

Now with four fingers, with those four, you can do a lot. Okay, you can balance it. Let me see it. Can you do it? Four fingers.

The reason I ask you to do that is because it’s cemented in your brain. When you do something physical, it’s cemented in your brain. That’s how our brains, God made us with these brains, and these brains work a certain way, and doing things physically when you’re talking about learning about it, it helps you retain it. It helped me. Anyway, so we’ve got four fingers, but now we have the opposable polyx.

I’m sorry, the thumb. And that is meditation. And meditation is what gives you the power. Meditation not alone, but meditation with the hearing, with the reading, with the study, and with the memorization. Gives you the power to handle the sort of the spirit, the word of God.

Meditation alone is not much better than just the thumb, or the finger, the little finger, I’m sorry. Meditation without these is just sitting with your legs crossed and saying, oh, not much is happening there, or just focusing on your breathing. Maybe some physical benefits, but you’re not gonna handle the word of God with that. The hand illustration, where meditation is the key. So I was taught that, but nobody ever taught me how to meditate on scripture before.

So I’m gonna teach you how to do that, how to meditate on scripture. But I’m gonna start with Job 38.36. Who looked that up when you got your Bibles there? Job 38.36. Who has put wisdom in the innermost being or given understanding or standing to the mind, and the idea there is God has done it.

Now those of you with the NIV, how many of you have the NIV version? You’re not seeing that, are you? You’re seeing something about ibises and storks and things like that. The NIV chose to translate that colloquialism literally, rather than referring to what it means. It’s like reading in the Bible something that says you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

Whereas another translation might say, you can lay out a teaching to people, but you can’t make them apply it. Okay? It’s that in Job 38.36. They talk about a rooster, ’cause the rooster knows the dawn is coming, there’s some insight there, and they talk about the ibis, ’cause the ibis knows that the Nile is about to flood, and there’s some understanding there. But the meaning of the phrase, the meaning of that idiom is that who has put wisdom in the innermost being God has?

Who has given understanding to the mind God has? So you have to understand this about your brain. What’s happening up there, God is doing. That’s a tool. Many of you lift weights.

Nobody lifts weights, or Steve, Steve lifts weights. A lot of people lift weights, okay. You’re exercising that part of your God-given ability. Body, because he built our muscles to grow stronger with exercise. He’s given you the brain also, and I’m encouraging us to use the brain in the same way we use our muscles to exercise that thing.

Now that it just rattles around in the cup up there, but we exercise it. So recognize how the brain works. And I talked about this in the past. We have a fast in the slow brain. There’s a reactive and a reflective.

We’re talking about using the reflective brain. In this case, meditation is the use of our slow, reflective brain. What does that brain do? It pulls disparate pieces of information together to form a cohesive story. Now when we sleep and you end up thinking about things like fighting off dinosaurs, that story may not make sense, but nonetheless your brain is still pulling stuff together.

So thoughts, feelings, fears, whatever. By the way, I was whooping up on that dinosaur. He wasn’t getting the better of me. He wasn’t just a defensive action. So anyway, which is why my nightstand holds scars today.

Anyway, that’s how our brain works. And so meditation that I’m going to teach you here is intentionally putting our brain to work knowing that that’s what happens. So we’ve got five steps. Is it five steps? Is that what it says there in your notes?

Okay, five steps. Here’s the first one. Identify. Identify what it is you need an answer to, you want to understand, you need clarity on, and so forth. It could be simple as what does this passage of scripture mean?

Or how do I mend this relationship? Or what decision do I make here, given all these variables? Those are the kinds of things your brain tackles all the time and every single one of them can be assisted with this technique. So you acquire the raw material is the second one, you acquire. I’m going to go back to the first one, identify.

Little more groundwork there. Most people don’t cultivate this skill. We are often beset by circumstances, by feelings, by things people do, things people say, and they just swirl around in here and in our brains and we don’t really stop and get a grasp on them to clearly define the problem to be solved. Now, if you’ve ever been in a workspace with working with other people, and if you’ve been in a leadership role, you’ve seen things like groupthink take place and other kinds of dysfunction in group dynamics, because people don’t stop and say, what is the problem we’re trying to solve? What’s the question we’re trying to answer?

What’s the deal here? If you can succinctly state that in a single phrase or a single sentence, you’re halfway to winning on all these things. So when you find yourself in personal inner turmoil about something, stop and identify what it is you don’t have an answer to. What the problem is you need to solve. What the relationship is that you need to work through.

Identify. Number two is acquire. What you’re doing here is you’re simply acquiring information to put in your brain for God to use. Now, when you’re dealing with scripture, it’s easy. You can read through the scriptures and just put the text in your brain.

You can read commentaries. Put that in your brain. You can go to Bible Hub and look at the interlinear Greek and you can be like the chimp with the handgun and try to put that piece of information in your brain. It’s just putting stuff in there. You read, you listen, you talk to people, you get counseled, but more importantly, you pray about all these things.

So that you can take very discreet, very identifiable specific pieces of information and play that game I talked about in the past where you put truth on a shelf. This piece goes here, this piece of information is here, this piece of information is here, this piece of information is here. How many of you like to watch crime mysteries or whatever on TV? How many of you have watched crime mysteries? Have you ever seen them use what they call the murder board?

Or they put the murder board up where they put each of the different suspects up there and the pieces of evidence that they have and so forth. And real police don’t ever use these things. It’s a concoction of Hollywood so they can keep us on track with the story they’re trying to tell, by the way. Because a real murder board is something they do in the Navy when they go through some after action anyway. But the murder board’s a good idea here.

We have truth on a shelf and we’re building our own little murder board with all these pieces of information. And why am I doing that? Why are we acquiring this piece of information like this? It’s because our brains were built by God to take different pieces of information and form a story or concoct a story or find an answer. It’s designed to do that.

That’s what he’s done. So you’re feeding it. You’re giving God’s spirit what he needs to work. Now if you’ve ever programmed computers or operated with computers, with inputs, outputs, you know, if you put garbage in you’re going to get garbage out. So this has to be important.

Spirit-filled, prayed through pieces of information that you intentionally put in your brain. You are feeding your brain stuff. And now you have to process it. You’ve got all these pieces of information on the shelf where you have your murder board set up there. Now the goal is to process.

This is where some of the key work of meditation comes in. Processing it is where you come to fully understand each one of the pieces that’s there. How do you do that? Well, I was taught in studying the scriptures that you can do a number of things. First of all, if you’re looking at a passage of scripture, you can summarize it.

If I were to summarize these four verses, how would I do that? And I put my brain to work on how to summarize that. If I were to restate it in my own words or other words, how would I restate that? To be able to summarize and to be able to restate means you have to really have a good grasp of what’s in that text. And getting that good grasp and trying to restate that is a part of the mental process, that slow, reflective process of coming to an understanding of that.

You could even outline a section of scripture. How many of you have done that before? Ever outlined scripture? Take a whole chapter sometime and think, I’m going to outline this. It’s hard.

You can look at each single verse and say, is that relate to the one above? What about the one below it? How does that fit? What’s the main thoughts here? How does it work?

Come on your brain, put your brain through that. When you fully understand each of these little pieces, that’s what meditation is. Meditation you’ve probably heard in the Greek or whatever, Hebrew, I guess, is the same kind of word used for a ruminant that chews its cud. Now, we’re not that. We don’t chew cuds.

It’s like. So let’s think about going around the coast and you get some of that salt water taffy or a caramel. Now chew it. All right? It’s in your teeth and you’re moving around with your tongue and you’re just sometimes just suck on it and melt it or whatever.

That’s meditation. That’s what I’m talking about here. Come into an understanding of each of these little discrete pieces that you’ve put in your brain. Come into a full understanding and chew on them like taffy, each single one of those. Now, this stuff is mechanical.

You’ve put the stuff in your brain. You’ve come to understand this stuff. Here’s the most important step. What is this? One, two, three, that’s processing.

Identify or acquire a process. The fourth one is rest. Rest. Why do you rest? Because it’s God who’s at work within you, both the willing to work for his good pleasure.

It’s he that puts wisdom in the innermost being. It’s he that gives understanding to the mind. Give God time in your brain to work with the stuff you’ve put in there by prayer and guidance, walking in the spirit, for him to pull those thoughts together. Give it time. Now, the trick to this and a lot of people are uncomfortable with this step.

You do this in silence. David did this while he was tending sheep. You know what David didn’t have? He didn’t have a smartphone with earplugs. He didn’t have an iPod.

He didn’t have a Walkman. He didn’t have the distractive things that we have today that keep our brain filled with input that step to acquiring process. He didn’t have that continual distractive feeding of information into his head. All he had was silence, communion with God, the stars, the sheep, the sheep. What you need is go take a walk.

Take your phone. Or spend time, but don’t listen to music. You can listen to music, but don’t listen to music that stimulates lyrics in your head. You don’t want words coming in there. You just want to walk.

I would tell my secretary in the past one of the many times when I was playing this truth on a show, figuring out these problems. I would tell her, I’m going to go on a walking think. Just walk out quietly, silently. There’s a hill behind the office. I could go climb that hill and let these things work in my brain.

God was always faithful and solutions would come and I would come back and they would go, “Wow, okay, good. These things work.” The rest, let time pass. Do something physical, do something mechanical in silence. Heard sheep.

Now, here’s where the magic comes in and I can’t promise when, but your brain will do its thing, whether it comes out as a dinosaur or something. I don’t know, but when you’re intentional about this, God does put wisdom in the innermost being. He does give understanding and answers will come. Now, why doesn’t he do this immediately? Because your brain is cellular.

He wants things to stick and he’s going to work on your brain. He’s going to make things work according to the biology that he created you with. It’s going to take a while and he will do that, but he’ll make it so that it will stick in your head. That’s what I love about this stuff. I understand how the brain works and how God made the brain and how can I work with God and my brain to be productive.

You embrace, that’s the last step. You embrace the thoughts that come and you put them on the burger board. You put them on the shelf with the other side. Or truths and solutions will begin to come many different ways. Now, this isn’t some self-help formula that we’re applying here.

I want you to understand that. This is an, I’m going to read this. This is an intentional application of your mind that God gave you to a need that he’s brought to your attention using an action meditation that he values and works with inside of you. Job 3836. The most overlooked and missed steps here are the process and rest steps.

Now, your daily quiet times can be formed around these steps. Your times before you fall asleep, after you wake up, can be formed around these steps. Then your physical, mindless, sheep tending actions, how many of you wash dishes can be formed around? Vacuum. That’s a good one can be formed around these steps, okay?

We can use these times. Okay, times moving on. How do we apply Jesus’s commands in 21 and 22 and chapter five in the moment? How do we examine ourselves in the moment? How does meditation work there?

These things we see in Matthew chapter five, these are emotions that arise in the moment. Whether it’s lust, anger, vows, vengeance or attitudes towards enemies, they’re all in the moment. These are emotions. They don’t come to us at times of peaceful reflection. They come to us at times of interaction, perhaps conflict.

If we are to be obedient, and if our accountability is based on our heart and internal, we’re accountable in the moment for how we think and see and so forth. So how can we do that? I’m gonna give you a five step process for that application. But first, I want you to imagine yourself in one of these moments you perhaps have had recently. It’ll help you understand how to apply these things.

Put yourself mentally in that situation. Here’s step one. In the midst of that, step one is stop. Close your mouth. Stop talking.

Slow to anger. So step one is just stop. Step two. Stop. Again.

Why? Because most people don’t do step one. So step two is stop. Stop talking. Proverbs 18, 13 says, “To answer before listening, that is folly “shame.”

Proverbs 18, 13. Tame that tongue, James. Read James three, one through eight. So step one is stop. Step two is stop.

Step three is observe. If you’ve stopped, you now have the luxury, you have the capability to observe. Take some discipline here. How do you observe and what do you observe? You observe the situation you’ve just gotten yourself into.

You’ve pulled into. Somebody dragged you into whatever you simply observe what the situation is. And you observe what you are feeling at the time. What is rising up in you? You observe that.

Put yourself in God’s shoes and look down on you. Put yourself in some observers, some third parties position. And look in at what’s happening. And observe yourself. Observe as step three.

What are you feeling? Step out of yourself. That’s observing. Step four, breathe. This is more than just physical, but physical is good here.

Breathe. Take a couple of breaths. Some people say count backwards from 100. You can put that in here somewhere. But breathe, physically but more importantly, you breathe spiritually.

Remember what spiritual breathing is? Confess out. Father, fill with the spirit. We confess our sins out and we ask him to fill us with his spirit in. Spiritual breathing.

Confession, reception. Confession, reception. Ask God to fill you with his spirit. Tell him what is happening. Tell him what you are feeling.

Confess what’s going on and ask him to fill you with his spirit. Now this takes some presence, which is why we stopped. We stopped and we shut our mouths so he could prepare for this spot. We stopped. We observed and are asking God to fill us with his spirit in the process.

Now the thing you have to embrace about this is don’t worry about your problem going away while you’ve stopped. It’ll still be there when you get back. That’s something I can promise you. What else can you do? He’s promised to fill you.

Trust that he has. We see. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. Don’t you want that for you every time you’re in these conflicts? Pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

That’s what we want. That’s what God gives. 5. Act. Take action.

What action is this? The kind of action a believer takes when he’s there filled with God’s spirit. You’ve gotten this far, you’ve won the battle because from here you can respond. And when filled with the spirit, we respond with what? God’s love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control, the fruit of the spirit.

What we have. That’s the benefits we have that God gives us. James 3.13, “Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom.” So these five steps will bring you victory in the moment so that we’re not caught up in murdering somebody in our brain.

Now you’ll still be emotional in these situations. I don’t know why God does that. He can fill us with the spirit yet some of those emotions still remain. What’s up with that? I don’t quite know.

But he does give us the power to deal with it, right? But you’re now present with God in that moment. And that makes all the difference. And that’s where we take our joy and our confidence and our strength and our ability to respond. Because he’s there with us.

But it does keep us from being angry or for calling people fools and so forth. So these two disciplines of our inner lives with Christ meditating in the quiet and catching the emotional moments have the common thread of actively focusing on matters that impact us with God. It’s intentional. And it’s there that we find grace and forgiveness and find peace and we find life. Our inner being at peace with God in the silence and inner being at peace with God in the conflicts.

That’s what obedience is in Matthew 5, our inward self. We’re gonna have a chance this morning or we’re gonna take the opportunity this morning to reflect on Christ. Servers, we’re siptine, this is our time. In the communion this morning. We’re gonna focus on Christ and remember him.

And all that Jesus suffered, he kept his mind and fellowship with the Father. He never lost that meditative focus. The scriptures say that in the night that he was betrayed, Jesus shared the supper with his followers. Well, there was a lot happening that night. That was a night that he was betrayed.

That was a night that he sweat blood and trepidation for what was gonna happen. That was a night when he was arrested and the physical pain and began. You know how the Romans arrested their prisoners? They would take the right hand and they would pull it behind them and pull it all the way up between the shoulder blades. That’s as far as I can go.

Probably the same with the rest of you, which means it was probably dislocated. Then they would take their foot and they would stamp on the right instep of the prisoner knocking them to the ground, bringing them under control. More pain. The night in which he was betrayed, the night in which he sweat blood, the night in which he was arrested and the pain began. And the next morning, when he was tolerating, despising the shame, all of the insults, all of the false accusations, all of the hypocrisy of the scribes and the Pharisees.

Then there was the pain, the carrying

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 6,548 words.