Unleashing Kingdom Values

Everybody ought to know that you're a Christian.

There shouldn't be a question mark. Dr. Tony Evans says it's time to affirm your faith in Jesus. If he can go public on the cross for you, you can go public in the culture for him. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. A ship's rudder is crucial for the safety of the vessel and its crew.

Without it, the ship is at the mercy of the wind, waves, and currents. God's values are the rudder for his people, and today Dr. Evans discusses how we can make sure those values are guiding us to safe harbor. Let's join him as he begins. The greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever proclaimed is the Sermon on the Mount. It is a sermon about the kingdom of God.

In this sermon, Jesus Christ wants to tell his disciples first, and then later he speaks to the whole crowd, about the virtues of kingdom people. Over and over again, we're introduced to the word blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed nine times. He recites the word blessed. The idea of blessed has to do with divine favor coming to you that's designed to flow through you. One of the false narratives about blessed that most people gravitate to is they want divine favor to them without concern of whether it flows through them. God told Abraham in Genesis 12, I'm going to bless you.

Your name is going to be great. And through you, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. The moment you become a cul-de-sac Christian rather than a conduit saint, the moment you want God to flow to you and you could care less whether he flows through you, is to limit what he's interested in doing to you because now you are a self-centered saint. So I will offer all of us a bit of advice. When you ask God to do something for you, let him know if he does it to you, how it's going to flow through you to benefit somebody other than you.

Because then he is a lot more interested in the conversation. But the first thing he says is blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God. He says there is a reward for spiritual poverty.

He's not talking about economics. He says blessed is the poor in spirit. That is, blessed is the person who recognizes their own insufficiency because you're poor.

You don't have enough on your own. Spiritual insufficiency means I am dependent on God because I can't get it all together on my own. The moment you are self-sufficient, you have become God's enemy. Then what you have said is, God, I can make it without you.

When you, me, we and us become dependent as a lifestyle, not merely as an event when things are going bad, but as a lifestyle, he says, then I'm going to give you something. I'm going to give you the rule of heaven operating in your life. Now, the reason why that is important is the rule of heaven overrules what's happening on earth because the Bible says heaven rules earth.

So if you recognize you're dependent, that means I'm not looking for earth to be my sufficiency. He says as long as I see you're not looking at earth to be your sufficiency, I'll let heaven be your sufficiency. Yours will be the kingdom of heaven. That is, heaven will get involved in your earthly reality. Secondly, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Sadness over sin. You're mourning because of your sin or the effects of sin, even if it's on others.

The negative effects of sin are no joking matter. You are blessed when what hurts the heart of God hurts your heart too. You are blessed when you feel about evil the way God feels about evil, where it's not dismissed, but it hurts. And he says, you're blessed when you feel about it like I feel about it. Blessed are those who mourn, but then he says, for they shall be comforted. He goes on and says, blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Some versions say blessed are the meek.

Okay, so let's get this straight. Meek doesn't mean weak. Meek doesn't mean weak.

It gets misconstrued. Let's define meekness. The best way to understand meekness is a horse that needs to be broken, a stallion. The average full-size horse is like 1,500 pounds. If you're trying to break that horse, the cowboy gets on his back and the horse says, get off me, get off me. I don't want you riding my back. So the horse mucks and throws the cowboy off. But if the cowboy is trying to break the horse, the cowboy gets back on the back. The horse says, get off of me, bucks. Throws the cowboy off, cowboy gets back up, throws the cowboy off, cowboy gets back up until the horse gives in. They call that breaking the horse. The horse is still 1,500 pounds. The horse can still run fast.

It's just now under the control of another. In other words, the rider is now calling the shots, not the horse. To be meek is to submit to the will of God. To submit means I'm not going to buck you anymore. To submit is I'm not going to resist the will of God. Meekness, gentleness is submission to the will of God because we all have by nature bucking in us. Not wanting God to tell us what to do.

Not wanting God to control us. So we buck him off, but he gets, he going to get back on until he can say, this is where we're going today. This is where we're going tomorrow.

This is how we're going to roll up in here. Moses is called the meekest man who ever lived. He's called that in Numbers chapter 12.

That's very interesting. Moses marries an African woman. It's an interracial marriage. We're told twice he marries this African, this Ethiopian woman.

And his brother and sister don't like it. They don't like this interracial marriage and they're upset with Moses for marrying this black woman. It says they were so upset they came out against Moses. After it says he married this woman, they come out, Miriam and Aaron, against Moses, the next verse says, now Moses was the meekest man on the earth. So next verse, after talking about the problem, it says, now Moses, why would you insert that Moses was the meekest man right then after talking about the problem?

What's that got to do with the price of tomatoes? Moses was the meekest man on all the earth after he marries a woman of African descent that his brother and sister don't like. So he's got a race issue, he got a family issue, he got a sibling issue, he got all these issues and he is the meekest man on the earth. Because the next verse says, now God came down and said to Miriam and Aaron, y'all got to be crazy.

Y'all have lost your mind. And to let you know how I feel about what you just did to your brother, Miriam, I'm going to turn you white. And from head to toe, the Bible says, she became white. We're going to change your whole shade. He made her totally white until she repented and then her natural skin tone came back.

Now, what is the point? The point was, because Moses was submitted to God, look at what the verse says, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Once they came out against Moses, because he was submitted to the will of God, God entered into the situation and became Moses's defense. See, the reason why we got to defend ourselves is because we not meek. Because we're not submitted to the will of God, God doesn't feel obligated to intervene on earth in our earthly situation. He said, you take care of it then.

You don't want to submit to me, you handle it yourself. Dr. Evans will have more for us on kingdom values when he returns in just a moment. First though, today's lesson is part of a life-changing sermon series called Unleashing the Kingdom. And I want to let you know that all 12 full-length messages in this collection are available to study in depth.

You can download them instantly or get them on CDs that we'll send straight to your home. Along with the audio collection for a few more days now, we're also including the One Kingdom Under God paperback from Dr. Evans. Through these resources, you'll begin to develop a whole new way of seeing the world and your place in it, leading to greater purpose, peace, and fulfillment. We'll send you this package with our thanks for the donation you make to help us keep presenting Dr. Evans' teaching here. Don't wait, visit tonyevans.org today to receive Unleashing the Kingdom and One Kingdom Under God. That's tonyevans.org. Or give our resource team members a call at 1-800-800-3222. They'll be happy to help with your request.

That's 1-800-800-3222. We'll return to the second part of today's lesson right after this. The biblical roles of husbands and wives, the source of our authority as believers, understanding the concept of grace, winning spiritual battles. They're all important subjects, but seem as different as night and day.

Would it surprise you to know there's a common thread running through all four? You can discover what it is by taking the course on Ephesians in the Tony Evans Training Center. One by one, you'll dig into the powerful themes of this book and make new discoveries about what Jesus' death accomplished, how to maintain unity at home and at church, what spiritual armor is all about. The course includes custom content from Tony not available anywhere else. Work through it at your own pace. Collaborate with other students. Get your specific questions answered through our online forum. Connect with the Tony Evans Training Center at tonyevans.org. It's like having a seminary on your smartphone or other device.

Start today, tonyevans.org. He goes on and he says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. He's now talking about spiritual appetite. The body needs food, but the soul needs righteousness. Righteousness has to do with doing that which is pleasing to God. The soul is hungry.

It's just as the body is hungry and it wants to be fed. When the soul is being fed righteousness, the word soul in the Bible means life, the life becomes satisfied. The reason why we have so many dissatisfied people is we have so many spiritually hungry people because they've been feeding their souls the wrong information. And when you feed your soul wrongness and not righteousness, when you feed your soul secular standards and not God's standards, when you feed your soul the world's approach and not God's approach, you stay hungry.

He goes on. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Mercy is undeserved compassion and relief from suffering. Mercy is designed to relieve misery and not give you what you deserve. When a police pulls you over, whether you say it or not, I know you thinking it. I hope he or she shows me mercy.

I may have been speeding, but I hope they don't give me what my speedometer deserves. You want mercy. And do you know the relief that you feel when that policeman or police lady says to you, I'm not going to give you a ticket this time, but drive carefully. You breathe a sigh of relief because you've been shown mercy. You've been relieved from a penalty for what you deserve because you've been shown mercy.

Blessed are the merciful, the expression of compassion. Blessed are the peacemakers, not peacekeepers, peacemakers. These are those who seek to resolve conflict and reestablish broken relationship.

These are the bridge builders, not the bridge destroyers. We have people in our culture today who are making money on keeping people divided, who are maintaining power by keeping people split up. It's in their best interest not to have the races get along or the classes to communicate or the politicians to agree. It is in their powerbroken purpose to keep conflict on the table. Some of us have people in our lives who stir stuff up in order to promote divisiveness. Blessed are the peacemakers. These are the people, the Christians, the disciples, who want to see harmony, who promote harmony because they understand that the call of the cross is the call to be a reconciler, not a divider. Blessed are the peacemakers' divine favor for those who make peace. The only reason you need to make peace is because you don't have it. There's some conflict going on. The question has to be, am I going to contribute to the harmony or am I going to contribute to the disruption because the Bible says strife is the cause of everything else evil.

If the devil can create confusion, he can drop anything else in there he wants. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. In other words, there will be public recognition.

They shall be called. God will make sure you get recognized for the harmony that you are promoting. God will make sure that you're not ignored for sharing his peace in the conflict of others. And finally, verse 10, blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. Verse 11, blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say unkind and evil things about you because of me.

Rejoice and be glad for your reward in heaven is great. Blessed are the persecuted when you are rejected because of a righteous stand and a righteous relationship. Blessed are you, rewarded are you, favored are you when this world rejects you because you're keeping my standard and keeping your identification.

He says, because of me, you're keeping your identification with me. Okay, so you need to understand this. If you're gonna be a public Christian today, you are going to get varying levels of rejection.

So I'm gonna tell you that now. You are now living in a, not just a post-Christian era, you're living in an anti-Christian era. So I'm gonna tell you now, if you hold to a biblical standard, he calls it righteousness, if you hold to a biblical standard, you're gonna be rejected and they're going to try to cancel you. If you hold to a biblical standard, I'm not talking about being mean, I'm not talking about being uncaring, certainly with compassion, certainly with love, but with clarity, if you are absolutely clear, marriage is between a man and a woman, if you're absolutely clear that there's biology created by God that people need help with, but you don't really change the rules in order to fit the culture, you are compassionate with people to work them through whatever the challenges are, but they want you to change your definitions.

They don't just want sympathy, they want definition change. When the culture, your job, your family wants you to reduce something in a way that is non-ethical or non-valid and you take a Christian stand, if you decide to be a visible, verbal follower of Christ and not a cultural Christian, if you're not just trying to play it cool so that everybody likes you because of your faith in Jesus Christ, I'm going to tell you right now, in this culture today, you are going to be resisted, insulted, and persecuted at various levels. But last time I checked, the verse says, when that happens, be glad. He says, I want you to get your praise on when they come against you because every time you're rejected for righteousness or rejected because you're publicly associated with me, I am ringing up the tab on your reward. Your reward going bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

Boom. I'm just ringing that thing up and ringing that thing up because every time I see you don't mind that they're associated with me, you don't mind that take a stand for me, you don't mind for them knowing you're a Christian and a follower of me, you don't mind that you don't cuss like they cuss, act like they act, talk like they talk, walk like they walk, and they can make it fun of you. I just want you to know, I'm ringing that baby up because you my kind of Christian. In fact, you're a disciple of Jesus Christ. What God is not looking for today is more folk coming to church.

He's looking for more church folk going to the culture and letting the culture know this is Jesus. Jesus is Lord. This is Jesus' standard.

I love you and therefore I'm going to tell you the truth. I'm not going to deny the truth in the name of love and I'm not going to deny love in the name of the truth but when you get me, you get truth with love because Jesus has a standard. We're going to keep that standard.

We're going to confess when we fall below that standard, rise back up to that standard and take our stand. Everybody in our audience today when the benediction is given and you go to your different places to live, to eat, to work, to talk, to walk, everybody ought to know that you're a Christian. There shouldn't be a question mark. Shouldn't be doubts.

They shouldn't be wondering who you from, what you believe. You ought to name the name of Jesus Christ. If he can go public on the cross for you, you can go public in the culture for him. It's time for Christians to make their righteous loving stand for Christ. Dr. Evans will return in a moment with a final word to wrap up today's broadcast. First though, a quick reminder about that special resource package I mentioned earlier, the complete Unleashing the Kingdom audio series along with the One Kingdom Under God paperback from Dr. Evans. We'll send the entire collection to you as our gift in appreciation for your contribution to the alternative broadcast. Just visit tonyevans.org to make your donation and request before time runs out. That's tonyevans.org or call 1-800-800-3222 where members of our resource team are always ready to help.

Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. Everyone loves a good mystery, especially that moment in the story when everything finally makes sense. Well, tomorrow, Dr. Evans reveals how we can approach that aha moment in God's plan and how that revelation can have a powerful impact on our lives and those around us. Right now though, he's back with his final thought to close out today's broadcast. If you've been listening to our broadcast and you have not personally trusted Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins so that He can give you the gift of eternal life right now, I want you to go to God and transfer your trust from any and everything else except the Son of God who died on the cross for your sins and arose from the dead. In fact, I'm going to say a little prayer, and you can repeat it after me. You just have to mean it for yourself. Heavenly Father, I know I'm a sinner and that I can't save myself.

I believe Jesus Christ, your Son, died on the cross in my place for my sin, and I now am trusting Him alone to forgive me and to give me the gift of eternal life that He promised to give to anyone who came to Him for it. Thank you for saving me and help me from this day forward to live a life pleasing to you. Congratulations. Welcome to the family. Find a good Bible teaching church so you can grow and we are here to help you with resources to move you forward in your spiritual life. God bless you.