Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Don't you love mercy as long as you're receiving it? Remember, grace is getting what you don't deserve and mercy is not getting what you do deserve. You see, and don't we just love that? Someone says you're okay.
Trooper bends down over your window and says, it's just a warning. Mercy. I just love mercy. Yeah, the receiving end we love, but Jesus isn't speaking about the receiving end. He's speaking about the giving end. Happy are the merciful.
Extend to people what they don't desire. People who are relationally generous. Forgivers. Happy are those who forgive. Maybe the most prevailing, damaging thing I've seen in believers' lives over all these years is a spirit that's unforgiving. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's word meets our world.
For some time now, I have been speaking on the subject. What makes you happy? Not the question. What makes you happy? But the statement.
What makes you happy? We've covered a lot of ground. I've talked about the idea that happiness is much more about a who than a what in your life. And also that we need to bathe ourselves in God's grace every day, not allowing past failures to take the happiness we have away from us today. We need to be thankful people, thanking God for our blessings rather than constantly praying to God for our desires and wants. I also said that we need to trust God for today. God's grace is sufficient for today and we need to trust him for today.
This is the day the Lord has made. We need to rejoice and be glad in it. I also said that if you are going to be as happy as God intends you to be, you have to give yourself away. Happiness is truly the idea of giving yourself away. I also said that you're as happy as you think you are. That happiness is really a state of mind. And last time I gave the warning, do not choose pleasure as a priority over happiness, because if you do, you won't get either.
And I'm sure and I'm hoping and I'm praying that those are helpful steps for all of us, including you. But I'm still left with a single question. Why aren't more of us as children of God happy?
My experience with believers for all these years is we're not the happiest group I know. And the question is why? It's bothered me. I've thought about it a lot. And I think at a fundamental level, we all want to be happy.
So that's not it. But I think we all want to be happy on our own terms. I think we've decided that we would define happiness and we'll be happy on our terms. And the problem with that is, of course, you end up extremely disappointed because when you set it up that way, then either God disappoints you or other people disappoint you or the circumstances disappoint you and you end up not happy, but just basically disappointed.
I really believe that what we have is and what we need most is a paradigm shift. I think we need to understand that or come to the conviction that I will allow the Lord to define happiness. And then I will see all and do all that I can in order to fulfill that kind of happiness in my life.
If I had to come up with a single line for not just this message for before the whole series is simply this. What I've learned through the study these last couple of months is at the end of me. I can find happiness in him. And that's an important thing to remember at the end of you.
You'll start to find happiness in him. Open your Bibles to Matthew Chapter five. Matthew Chapter five. The beginning of what is described as the greatest sermon ever preached.
Who could argue with that? It's the Sermon on the Mount. The sermon is so important to Jesus that it appears that throughout a three and a half year ministry, he repeats large segments of this sermon over and over.
This is kingdom living. The irony of it is that it sort of starts in a very unusual way. It sort of starts like a psalm does, where in the psalm, the psalmist starts with a conclusion and then goes to the body and then another conclusion. And that's sort of the way that Jesus starts the Sermon on the Mount. He says, when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up to the mountain and after he sat down, the disciples came to him, not just his, but all those learning and a big crowd of people.
And he opened his mouth and he began to teach them all. And he starts out with a word that regrettably doesn't seem to help us too much in English. He starts out with the word blessed. That's a nice religious word. And we think about it in religious terms.
But the word is micarius. And if you look it up in a lexicon, what you'll find out is the normal use of the word is simply this, happy. That's what the word means. It can mean being fortunate, but basically it means the word happy. So Jesus is going to start the Sermon on the Mount in a sense with the invitation and a description of what does a happy person look like. And I think what you'll find is it's so counterintuitive to what you think a happy person is like that one of the reasons that we're not happy is we've never really made the paradigm shift to pursue happiness on the basis of what Jesus Christ says will make you happy. But we pursued on the basis of what we intuitively think will make us happy.
So he starts out and the paradox begins pretty early. Happy, he said, are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Now, two words that don't go together in our culture, happy and poor.
You see, in our culture, no, no, no, no, no, that's not how you get happy, you see. And I actually saw a commercial not long ago that they used these words, but only some of them. And they said this, it showed on the screen, it said, blessed are the poor. And that's all it said. Then it showed a bunch of poor people. Now, I'm not against showing poor people and I'm not saying that the poor aren't blessed, but he's not talking about money here. And in any sense, he is saying, blessed are the poor in spirit.
That is a very different kind of thing. To be poor in spirit is to acknowledge your dependence on God regardless of your personal assets. To be poor in spirit is to acknowledge your dependence on God regardless of your assets. You see, what you're going to see in the Beatitudes that really help me understand them is I kept on wondering, why do all these things seem so odd to me and so different? The Beatitudes are a description of Jesus Christ.
This is him. He basically is saying, you want to be happy? Happy are the people who are like me. That's what Jesus is saying. Happy are people who are like me.
Think of this. He says, happy are those who are poor in spirit. Dependent on God, Jesus came and said, I did not come to do my own will. I came to do the will of him who sent me. Paul wrote to the Philippians and said that Jesus, in the kenosis passage, he emptied himself of many of his divine prerogatives.
You see, even the Garden of Gethsemane, it was right down to that. Father, if it was my personal happiness, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will be done, but yours. You see, there is a poor in spirit element here.
It's kind of an interesting thing. That really doesn't work so well for us, people who are completely dependent on God. So much happiness in our culture is defined as on the basis of what you can accomplish and accumulate for yourself. That's what will make you happy. If you accomplish a lot and you accumulate a lot, you're going to be happy.
The problem with that is it's got all kinds of issues. First of all, how much do you need to accomplish and accumulate before you are happy? Any kind of empirical study says pretty much just a little more. See, it really doesn't work that way. The other thing is once you have accumulated your successes or your assets, now you've got to protect them. And then what becomes really stunning as you get older and older is you realize no matter what I've accomplished or what I've accumulated, I can't take it with me.
You see, I'm going to leave it all behind. It's a different view of happiness. One writer this week wrote this. He said, the less you see your poverty, the poorer you are.
What a great statement. Poor in spirit, they trust God for each and every day's provision. Many years ago, Dr. Joe Harvey, who we support in the Congo, said to me at a lunchtime or something after service, and he just said, I feel sorry for your people.
And I thought, wow, Joe gave his life in the Congo, you know, and that's a really tough spot. But he felt sorry for my people, and he said, the reason is they're so self-sufficient. He said, they believe that they can handle everything in life on their own.
He said, what I love about the people in the Congo is this. When they say, Father, this day give us our daily bread, they mean it, they need it, and he provides it. And he said, their dependence on God is every single day of their life.
And if you think about it, that's one of the problems we have with the fluency. We don't find ourself dependent on God for every single day. Jesus says, happy are those who are poor in spirit.
If you think that's kind of hard to understand, how about the next one? Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Wow. Did you wake up today and say, boy, I hope it's one of these days I can mourn? You don't see a lot of bumper stickers of this either, do you? Jesus said that.
I mean, see, that seems so counterintuitive to us. He says, happy are those who mourn. You remember when I first saw it, I thought it can't quite mean mourn. So I thought, I'll look up the word, you know, do a lexical study because, you know, there are other words that could be just translated by the English guys saying mourn. So I looked it up and found out that the word, the Greek word here for mourn is the strongest Greek word for mourning that exists in the Greek language.
So I didn't get any help with that at all. He says, happy are those who mourn. Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 3, there's a time to mourn. You see, what is it about mourning? It's a natural reaction to reality. That's what mourning is.
You see, that in a sense, he says, don't go in some form of denial, don't pretend. He says, right here, he says, blessed are those who mourn. I think it's, you and I should have our heart broken about what breaks God's heart. And I really believe that when you think of what sin is and then what sin does, the consequences of it, how can you not mourn? Jesus wept over Jerusalem.
He said, boy, I'd love to have got you together, sort of like a hen pulls the chicks in, but you will not do it. He understood the judgment that was coming. Jesus even wept when Lazarus died. And Jesus knew he was going to resuscitate Lazarus. And he still wept. And the reason he wept is he saw what it did to Mary and Martha and those who love Lazarus. He saw the consequences of sin. And he mourned over it.
The other question I have is, does that describe you? You know, I'm astounded so often at what we end up seeing on television. And by the way, much of the news that you see are things worth mourning about.
I get that. But we don't mourn. We usually have outrage. I just can't believe that. That's just horrible.
They had to get those guys. That's not mourning. But even more importantly, do you mourn your own sin?
You see? That's not exactly a very popular thing in the day and age in which we live. We live in a day and age that sort of celebrates sin.
We're right at a time right now where a whole city is going to celebrate it. But if you think of our culture, what happens when it could? They don't even use the word sin in our culture. They'd use the word like mistake. We're not sinners, we're mistakers. We just make mistakes. Or if it's a really serious one, I didn't sin, I have a disease.
You see, I'm a victim of my own disease. That's what we do. We do anything. But we celebrate sin as a culture. I mean, we parade it on national TV and call sin the modern family.
It's amazing. We give awards to the show for celebrating sin. But the real question for us is, what about us?
And what about our own sin? Hold your place there and go with me to Psalm 32. Psalm 32, David. This is a Psalm David wrote after committing adultery with Bathsheba and having Uriah the Hittite murdered. It took some time, but he has two confessional Psalms and this is one. Notice he starts out with his conclusion, just the way the attitudes start the Sermon on the Mount. He says, how blessed, same kind of word, it's a Hebrew though. How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
He said, how blessed or how happy is the man whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Isn't it great to be forgiven? Yes. Isn't that wonderful?
Yes. But notice when he talks about his sin. He said, when I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away. He said, through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me.
That's called conviction. My vitality was drained away as with fever, the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you and my iniquity I did not hide. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the guilt of my sin. See, right in the middle of that, right before his confession, what did he do? He mourned.
He mourned. I think sometimes we are grace abusers. We know that the grace of God covers sin, so we have a very flippant way of viewing our sin. You see, it's just almost like, hey, I acknowledge that as sin. I had a tough day.
Let's move on. Sin killed my Lord. Sin caused him to cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Sin is serious matter. The question is, do you mourn?
On a national, international, worldwide scale and a personal scale, do you mourn sin and its consequences? Now, back to Matthew chapter 5. Happy, he says, of the poor in spirit. Happy are those who mourn. Then he says, happy are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. I think the word gentle was used because we like it better, but I think a much better word is in most of the other translations, but is meek. Happy are the meek.
The reason is we don't like that word much. When I grow up, I want to be meek. I just want to be meek. When my children grow up, I want you to be meek.
You see, it just doesn't seem to sound right to us, does it? Boy, it sounds right to the Lord, though. Meekness is this. Meekness is a proper estimation or evaluation of yourself within a broader context of how you relate to God. You see, once you see yourself, a proper view of who I am in relation to who He is, that's what meekness is.
Remember what Jesus said? Talking about the yoke, and He said, for I am meek. Same exact word, I am meek and humble of heart.
That's a description of Him. Meekness is clearly not weakness. That's not the case at all. John the Baptist was a powerful man, but he had exactly this trait in his life, meekness. They wanted John to sort of become, take along the ride of all of the groundswell of enthusiasm about being Messiah. And John said, absolutely not, I'm not the Messiah.
That is not the case. I don't care what you think. John said, I'm not going to strive to be more than what God intended me to be. What a lesson to learn. I am not going to strive to be more than God intended me to be. That's meekness, a view of Himself. Six, happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Two things about that. Hunger and thirst, boy, those are powerful motives, aren't they?
Some of you may be experiencing one or both of them now. But you'll notice that if it gets bad enough, you will almost push anything aside to get water, to get food, almost anything. And he says, happy are the people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Happy are the people, two things, one, who hunger and thirst to do the right thing. My motivation is to do the right thing.
I'll let the consequences fall where they may, but I'm going to do the right thing, that kind of person. There's another aspect to it, too. It means possessing a spiritual appetite. Do you have a spiritual appetite or not? You see, if you don't have a spiritual appetite, you'll never be spiritually satisfied. And if you're never spiritually satisfied, you'll never be happy.
You see, that's just the way this works. He said, you have to have an appetite for this. You have to hunger and thirst, maybe the strongest of all human motivations. You have to hunger and thirst, he says, for righteousness. You see, you just don't absorb it. You don't absorb it.
You have to initiate. Verse 7, happy are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Don't you love mercy as long as you're receiving it? Remember, grace is getting what you don't deserve and mercy is not getting what you do deserve. You see, and don't we just love that? Someone says you're okay.
Trooper bends down over your window and says, this is just a warning. Mercy, I just love mercy. You have the receiving end we love, but Jesus isn't speaking about the receiving end. He's speaking about the giving end. Happy are the merciful.
Extend to people what they don't desire, people who are relationally generous. Forgivers. Happy are those who forgive. Maybe the most prevailing, damaging thing I've seen in believers' lives over all these years is a spirit that's unforgiving. It's amazing what it does.
It just comes into your life like one little seed, and then just like one cell going bad with cancer, it begins to metastasize and spread. And before you know it, you're an old, bitter person, and your bitterness defines you. All because you would not show mercy. Paul wrote to the Ephesians and said, we need to forgive as we have been forgiven.
Wow. Every single day, God forgives me. Every single day. And what's amazing, and you know it in your own life, He forgives you for the things you do over and over and over and over and over again. And we say, look, I can forgive you once, but not twice. See, if that's your attitude, you're not happy, and you won't be.
You know why? You are surrounded by sinners. They're everywhere.
There are people that will hurt and offend you everywhere. He says, happy are the merciful. And God says, that's so important to me.
Notice what He said. He said, but happy are the merciful. They'll receive mercy. You don't want to be merciful. Don't expect a great deal of relational mercy from God.
He might turn it up on you just a little until you learn this lesson. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called OnePlace.com. That's OnePlace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.
At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast, but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.
That's fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-12-30 15:12:44 / 2023-12-30 15:22:16 / 10