The Kingdom Constitution - Bring Heaven to Earth Jesus' Way - John D. Martin

This thing of letting it all—see, we live in a society where freedom is letting it all hang out. Just be casual, do whatever, make your hair, make your socks, whatever, whatever. That's free. No, no, no, no, no.

That won't lead to freedom.

For only Thou art ruler over earth and sky, for Thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory. For ever and ever, Thy praises we will sing. For Thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory. For ever and ever, Thy praises we will sing. Yes, Thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory. For Thou art Almighty, and Thou art our King.

Well, good morning. I've been very blessed by this service so far. This message is by request of Brother David on the Kingdom Constitution, so you can turn to the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:6-7.

It's been a special interest of mine to listen to preaching, to ask people questions, to find out what their motive is for being a Christian. And most of what you hear, in fact, I'd say almost exclusively in certain situations, "I want to be a Christian so I can go to heaven when I die." Well, I picked up the concordance this morning and looked up the word heaven and went quickly down through it. I don't know if Jesus ever said something like that. Now, it is true that in Thessalonians 4:14, we have the saints coming with Christ when He returns, so we can assume they're with Him somewhere. So I'm not ruling out the idea of going to heaven.

I'm just simply saying that didn't seem to be the focus of any of Jesus' teachings. He talked more about getting heaven connected to earth and taught us to pray, "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." And when He began His ministry, His first word was repent, usually followed by this statement when most people say that term, "If you want to go to heaven when you die or escape hell." Jesus did not say that. He said, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It's right there for you to grasp and experience now." So, and six verses later, after He said that, it says He went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of sickness and disease.

And that, of course, was right before the Sermon on the Mount. And then He gave this constitution. Now, some say we're living in the church age. This is not the kingdom age. I spent some time in Virginia, and there are a lot of people there who have that view. Some very respected leaders would never have called the church the kingdom of God. However, Jesus said, "Verily I say unto you," in Mark 9:1, "There be some of them that stand here which shall not taste of death till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power." That has to be Pentecost. I know right after that you have the Transfiguration, and some people say that's what He was talking about.

That can hardly be called the kingdom coming with power. I think that was a Pentecost. So that settles for me pretty well. The issue is the kingdom here and now, or is it something in the future, and we're living in some sort of a parenthesis called the church age? Now, the rulers of the kingdoms of this world usually lay down the law when they take over to tell their citizens what their rights and privileges and responsibilities and duties are.

And I think that's what Jesus did right after He began His ministry here. We had this as a constitution, a magna carta for His kingdom. Now, in the Old Testament, the magna carta of the kingdom was the Ten Commandments. And the Sermon on the Mount, I think, is very comparable to that. In fact, it's interesting. There's a lot of connection made in the Sermon on the Mount between that Old Testament kingdom and the kingdom of God. And we'll see that as we go along.

The Sermon on the Mount is the constitution for the kingdom. And it's very interesting that it's a constitution for a universal kingdom, an everlasting kingdom. And yet it's about half the length of the constitution of the United States. In fact, some people think that this constitution actually ends at the end of chapter 6, because after that we have instruction how to apply the constitution in chapter 7, which I think is a very unique part of His Sermon on the Mount. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. But so if you're going to just take chapters 5 and 6, it is a very short constitution for a very huge kingdom.

Now, everything in the New Testament flows from this Sermon on the Mount. A constitution usually gives a bill of rights. And I think we have that here. We call them the Beatitudes, but I think it's the bill of rights, because after every one of the blessed statements of blessing, it tells a result. And it tells us that we have a right to comfort. We have a right to fulfillment. We have a right to see God. We have a right to have a status as the children of the kingdom. I think the privileges of the kingdom citizens are right here in this passage. It's tremendous privileges to be part of this kingdom, to be a citizen, to receive comfort from the universal Creator, to receive fulfillment, complete fulfillment.

In fact, He says, "If we hunger and thirst after righteousness, we shall be filled." That word is gorge. It means stuffed. It means overflowing. And so there are tremendous privileges implied in these Beatitudes that we call them. Now, most constitutions have a preamble. The word preamble means walking or ambling in front of something.

It's an introductory statement indicating what is to follow. And that's interesting because I have, for years, I looked at this little constitution, and I wondered why the new birth is not pictured there. We all say that you must be born. Jesus said, "You must be born again." This is a most important initiating experience into the kingdom of God. And so I wondered for years why that is not here at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. And then it struck me one day when I was studying. That's precisely what this preamble is.

This preamble, these so-called Beatitudes, have you entering the kingdom by being poor in spirit, humbling yourself, becoming teachable, becoming a disciple, giving up your rebellion, your pride, your resistance, and opening yourselves to be taught that that brings you into the kingdom. You put Christ on the throne, self on the cross. That's in verse 3 of this chapter. And then what follows is the dynamics that flow from that experience. What actually the new birth produces.

The new birth, as some people see it, is an event. You come to the front of a church, you cry some tears, and you make some statements. And I'm not saying that nothing happens. I'm not minimizing that experience. But for some people, that's what it is then. That's an event. You're now, in fact, in the worst form. You have an irrevocable ticket, and you're good to go no matter what happens after that. Jesus never pictures this as an event. He pictures it as a process. And so that's what we have here.

We have the dynamics of the new birth pictured in this preamble, this introductory statement to the new birth. It pictures salvation as a means and not an end. If you make it an end in itself, the song ends on T. You'll never be completely fulfilled as a Christian. The story is told of Mozart that he loved to come home late at night, sit down at the piano, play a song with a rising motif, and then on the next to the last note, get up and go to bed.

And his poor old dad, Leopold, who also was a musician, would toss and turn and fret and worry and not be able to sleep until he went downstairs and played the last note, and then he could go to bed and sleep.

While most people who see salvation as an event, I think most of their lives live without that last chord. They live with their life ending on a T, which for any musician would be excruciating punishment. So the Sermon on the Mount is a perspective for living, not a preparation for dying.

If you had asked me as a young person growing up under the what I call Save Me Gospel, which was what I heard in almost every sermon, and certainly in almost all the revival sermons, you've got to get saved so you can go to heaven, which I'm telling you was not the emphasis Jesus had, although that's true. If you'd ask me what the church is, I'd have said, well, the church and man of baptism always focused on the importance of the church. I grew up with a strong emphasis on how important the church was. But if you would have asked me, I would not have said it's important as an entity demonstrating a society redeemed people so the whole world could see what God originally had in mind.

And this is really to be a beautiful, ideal community. For that reason, I would have said the church is something you need indispensably to get you ready to go to heaven when you die. See how that Save Me Gospel permeated all of our thinking, no matter what we were trying to talk about.

So it's a perspective for living, and not only it is a preparation for dying. I'm not minimizing that. Don't leave here and say I minimized the end of life and its importance to have that resolved. I'm not saying that. I'm simply saying that when Jesus taught, and even if you go to the epistles, I challenge you to find one verse, for instance, in the book of Ephesians that say, "All of this is to get you ready to go to heaven." It's just not there. The focus is on the kingdom of heaven here and now, embodied in a society of redeemed people. And this kingdom is based on character.

That's what we have at the beginning. It's based on character. Somebody has said the character of influence is the influence of character. And so Jesus banked all of His kingdom's success on the character of His citizens. And that's why there's so much emphasis in all of the teaching that Jesus gave and the epistles on the subject of character. The purpose of the kingdom is influence. You're the salt of the earth. You're the light of the world.

You know, that is a God-given instinct. We have been raised with sort of the idea that if you want to be an influence, you want to account for something, that's somehow carnal. No, that's a God-given influence. Man was created to have dominion. That's an instinct that's built into every one of us to want our life to account for something, not to just be a cipher in this existence that we have here.

However, the devil perverts that, and people want to be noticed. They do all kinds of strange things to get people's attention and to be somebody. That's the devil, of course, frustrates and perverts everything. He love, he turns to lust. I mean, all of these things the devil perverts. But let's not get away from the fact that we are here to make a difference. Every person that joins the kingdom of heaven is here for the sake of influence.

In the Old Testament, God wanted a nation to show what a nation looked like whose God is the Lord. That's Psalm 33:12. That was the whole purpose of the nation. Well, I shouldn't say the whole purpose, but a main purpose of the nation of Israel to show what a nation looks like whose God is the Lord. And of course, the queen of Sheba came, and she looked at this nation, and she said, "I heard about this nation of my own land.

I realized I hadn't heard the half." And by the way, under Solomon, we know it wasn't the greatest example of what God would have had in mind. But even then, even in the state of imperfection that it was under Solomon, it was far superior to any other nation. She said, "What other nation has law so just? What other nation has people so happy that promotes the well-being of its citizens like this nation does?" That was the purpose of the Old Testament nation of Israel. What is the purpose of the kingdom of heaven, the nation of heaven? Well, Peter says it. He says, "You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people."

Why? For the same reason in the Old Testament, that you should show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. The world should look at the church, and they should feel like the queen of Sheba.

That's how they should see the church. A very favored, beautiful group. Even if they're being persecuted, they watch them burn at the stake, and they, "Hey, what's this? This is something different." That's what the world should see when they look at the church.

Now, I've talked about the Beatitudes a little bit. Let's look at verses 17 to 20. This, to me, is a very interesting part of the Sermon on the Mount. This shows the relationship of the kingdom of God to the Old Testament. How are these two constitutions related?

When Jesus started teaching, you had people asking what people always ask. Is He a conservative, or is He a liberal? That was the question. What's He going to do with the law? Is He a conservative, or is He a liberal? Is He playing fast and loose with law, freeing people to do whatever? And Jesus came out clearly, very clearly here. He said, "I am on the side of law." He said, "One jot or one tittle shall not pass from the law to all people filled." And if anybody breaks and teaches even the least law to be broken, he should be called least in the kingdom of God. By the way, I one time checked what did the Jewish people consider the least law in the Mosaic law?

That's an interesting question. Well, they did. They had it figured out. It was that law that says, "If you find a nest with birds in it, you may take the little ones, but you may not take the mother."

Well, we would say, "But wait a minute." The ecologists would say, "That was pretty perceptive." Because if you take the little ones, the mother may have more little ones. But if you take the mother and something happens to the little ones, that's the end of the species. So that was a very, even though they considered it the least, it's like all of the laws that God gives, they have some importance. We don't always understand, but they are important. Well, anyway, Jesus said, "This kingdom will not have anybody in it who plays fast and loose with the law."

Now, let's just get something clear here. The law of Moses was added because of transgression. We're talking about the law that Abraham lived under. We're talking about the laws that were built into creation. Because Jesus says here, "That law will not pass till the creation passes because it's built into the creation." The Mosaic law was not. And of course, I didn't make any comments in Sunday school, but there are a lot of comments to be made about the relationship of the Mosaic law to today. But anyway, later on, Jesus made this comment, "Because iniquity, which is lawlessness, shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold."

So that's what destroys. That's what destroys the fervor and the love and the passion of the gospel. Lawlessness, rebellion, resistant spirit, selfishness, self-expression, individualism. And you can make a long list. Those are the destroyers. And Jesus said, "Because of that, at the end of the age, the love of many shall wax cold." You won't see the same fervency. You won't see the same fire in their spirit as what you would have seen at the beginning of perhaps of their Christian experience. There's no place in Christ's kingdom for people who play fast and loose with law.

Jesus said He Himself would fulfill all righteousness and be baptized, which I wouldn't—we often wonder why did Jesus need to be baptized? Well, He said He came to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus was not a lawbreaker. He was a person fully committed to a disciplined ordered life according to the way God originally intended for it to be. So that's interesting how He makes that connection with the Old Testament, with the concept of God's people living under law. He's saying, "I'm not changing that." In fact, He's about to give us the greatest, the highest level of law that anybody ever gave. This is much more demanding than the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, you were guilty if you committed murder.

Jesus said, "You're guilty if you're angry with your brother." In the Old Testament, you were guilty if you committed adultery. Jesus said, "You're angry if you lust." That's a very high standard. That's a very high law to contemplate and keep.

And He also talked about a righteousness that exceeds. It doesn't have any limits in its commitment to discipline and order. It exceeds. It goes beyond. All right? And now, after that, I'm giving you—I'm just—we're doing an overview of this constitution.

So you have the preamble with all of its rights, responsibilities, and duties, and promises. And then you go into the purpose of the law, which is—or the purpose of the kingdom, which is influence. And then you have this connection. How is it related? What's Jesus doing here with the whole concept of law?

Then you come into chapter 5, verses 21 to 47. And here you have the kingdom statutes. And it's very interesting that Jesus targets the things that everybody would say would make a perfect society. In fact, when I describe these, and people, of course, on the telephone that call me don't know I'm talking about the Sermon on the Mount, but when I describe these characteristics of the kingdom, they often say, "I bet you voted for Bernie Sanders."

Why? Because a perfect society—now I don't know if they liked the first one, but I think they would have to acknowledge if they were honest—a perfect society does not admit to any broken families. I'm not saying that broken families don't have to be brought to restoration. I'm not saying that they never come into our purview and we have to deal with them. But the goal is that marriage is permanent.

Families are stable. Children are secure. There's genuine love and a strong, unbreakable bond of marriage. I think most people looking, especially at the mess we have in our country today, would say, "Well, yeah, that would be ideal if all families were perfect, if they were like they should be."

Suppose we got rid of anger. That's a major problem in society. Suppose we got rid of lust. That's a major problem in society. In fact, two-thirds of the people who call me are involved in sexual sin of some sort.

It's an astounding problem in our society. Suppose we got rid of dishonesty.

Suppose we got rid of people who want to coerce other people. And whenever somebody pushes back against them, they just pour coals of fire on their head. When I describe that, people recognize this would be a wonderful society to live in, Brother David.

And it's interesting that the statutes of the kingdom actually set the boundaries, the moral boundaries of an ideal society. And even our world, who don't want to buy into this and submit themselves to it, will admit that if you had a society where marriages were permanent, people were always honest, nobody used violence against their enemies, and people shared their wealth. It's interesting. That's not in this chapter. It's in the next chapter, and I'll tell you why when I get there. Okay. But anyway, if you had a society like that, it'd be the perfect society. And that's why that socialist ideal has the tremendous appeal that it has, because it promises that. But it's going to do it by force.

And it'll turn into a nightmare of a few elites forcing everybody else to be equally miserable while they pocket the cash. That's the shortest way I can describe that. That's how it always turns out, because selfishness has never been dealt with. This constitution deals with selfishness right in the first verse, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."

And only by that salvation, salvaging supernatural act of God, can these things be practiced voluntarily and actually have a beautiful society. So that's chapter 5. That's the kingdom statutes. Then we turn over into chapter 6, and we have the kingdom spirituality.

And what's interesting is Jesus endorses—I told you there's a real connection between Judaism and what Jesus teaches. Jesus gives the three pillars of Jewish piety: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. I might say a word about fasting. I've come to see fasting as what I call the great reset.

The great reset. Oh, I wanted to say this. It's interesting. If you take those in reverse, or well, they cover everything. Fasting covers our personal spirituality. Praying covers our relationship with God. And almsgiving covers our relationship with people. So there you have it. If you have the three pillars of Judaism, which Jesus endorsed, He put them right there in His kingdom, you have everything pretty well covered. All right?

I wanted to say a word about fasting. You know, our flesh just tends to wander away. I like to use the example of the beds we sleep in. Are you aware that most of the world does not sleep in a bed?

Only in Western civilization do people sleep in beds. In most of the world, they don't have a house big enough for beds. And if they didn't have a house big enough for beds, they wouldn't be able to afford them. So they sleep on mats that they roll up and put under the table or under the chairs, and they roll those out at night and sleep on the floor.

We have beds. That in itself is a luxury. But what does the flesh do? A bed is not enough. You've got to have a bedroom suite. And it's got to match. It's got to make a statement. And then you've got to have a mattress that just caters to every little desire of the body when you're—I use that as an example of what the flesh is always doing. You could take it with food.

Very few people are satisfied to just eat regular vegetables. And I'm not saying you have to be. It's not wrong to sleep in a bed. But the flesh just—those thick books are recipes, something new to tickle the palate. And if you're going to a certain restaurant, well, you've got to go to one that has a little more exotic. That's every aspect of the flesh, and of course, in the world, sex. It's not good enough to have a wife. You've got to broaden everything. The flesh is always doing that. And I think this is a very wise thing that Jesus put in here. This is the reset button.

If you're not enjoying your food, then just quit eating.

And after about three days, you will enjoy potatoes with no salt and no butter. It'll reset your sensitivities. And take that into any other area of life. If you think your bed isn't good enough, get yourself a mat and sleep on the floor.

And then maybe after a little while, you'll say, "Hey, this bed is a tremendous luxury." I think this is an ingenious thing that Jesus put in here. A tremendous reset to the constant wandering of the flesh in every area of life. Just quit doing it. And let your sensitivities come back again to where they should be. And then you'll enjoy the plain pleasures of life the way they're supposed to be. Well, that's for extra.

I just want everybody to know what fasting is all about. And I had a chance to give that. Not that I practiced it the greatest. Just take a look at me. But anyway, so Jesus said almsgiving, which, by the way, it's very interesting. The Greek word for righteousness is—I hope I have this right. David, you'll have to check me.

Is that the Hebrew word? It's not the Greek word. I think that's the Hebrew word for righteousness. And I checked this this morning just to make sure I wasn't saying something I shouldn't say. In the Septuagint, righteousness is sometimes, not always, but sometimes translated almsgiving.

And if you look at the Hebrew definition for righteousness, that's sort of there. The idea of practical charity. I think that's very interesting. And I think that explains why Jesus picked out this one pillar of Jewish righteousness and expanded on it and gave it the longest treatment in the Sermon on the Mount, which is what comes next.

All right. So that is very interesting. This is the Hebrew word for righteousness, if I have it right. And I tell people, I'm not a Hebrew scholar at all. I have to use these awful helps that he talks about all the time, commentaries. Sometimes his own commentary.

But they tell me that this word righteousness is in the Septuagint, sometimes translated almsgiving, and that that's not a violation, that the word itself has that concept of almsgiving. All right. So this explains why Jesus next—the next thing we have here is an elaboration of that one pillar of righteousness, which is almsgiving.

All right? Christians are givers, not takers. Christians are inveterate givers. They hate to be takers. They will take if they have to, but that's much more difficult for them than to be a giver. They are givers. They are not takers. In fact, John the Baptist says in Luke 3:11, when they came to him and they said, "What evidence are you looking for, John?" He said, "Bring forth fruits of me for repentance." I want to see evidence you've repented. I'm not going to baptize you until you show me evidence. Hard evidence. And they said, "Well, what kind of evidence are you looking for?"

Well, he said, "If you have two coats, give one away. And if you have extra food, give it away." I wonder how many people would give you that definition for repentance. I wonder how many sermons on repentance focus on that as probably the best practical evidence of repentance.

Now, we know Zacchaeus, when Jesus came to his house, we don't know what Jesus talked about with Zacchaeus. All we know is at the end, Zacchaeus said, "I'm a giver. I'm going to give half my goods to the poor. I'm going to restore fourfold that which I've taken wrongfully." And Jesus didn't say, "No, wait a minute, Zacchaeus, you're getting the cart before the horse.

You really need to get born again first or something else, some spiritual awakening." No, he said, "This day. Right now, salvation has come to this house." And of course, we all know that at the end, we're going to be judged not because of the many things we preach about. Nothing said about the ones being born again, they're going to be okay, and the ones that aren't, nothing. Holiness, none of that's discussed.

If you gave your coat to the naked, if you fed the hungry, you know what Jesus said. So what's he saying? He's saying, "If you didn't do those things, if that was not your attitude towards your stuff, you really never were born again. You really never were doing all those things you heard in sermons preached all through your life."

This is his most important statement in the Sermon on the Mount in terms of practicality. We're talking about the kingdom piety that underlies the kingdom morality.

You understand? And that's interesting to me that this is in the kingdom piety. It's not in the category of the kingdom morality. It's the piety. It's part of the dynamic that underlies the living out of chapter 5. In fact, I think what we're looking at here is values. You know, most of Christianity is defined in terms of morals. All my life, I heard basically Christianity as being a good person, being honest. And that's right. There's nothing wrong with that.

But values is something different. That's why this is not in chapter 5, because this is talking about values. This is something different from morals. Values has to do with what is most important to you. That's what values is.

And probably, if you want to know what that is, ask your family, ask the people who work with you, "What gets me the most passionate? What do I get the most excited about? What do I spend most of my time talking about?" You know, you have those situations where somebody's sitting in a corner and there's a discussion, a spiritual discussion, they're not saying anything. And then somebody says fishing or some vacation activity. And I mean, they come alive. And all of a sudden, you realize they do have passion. There is something that's important to them, but it's not the gospel.

Well, whatever that is, that's what you're worshipping. Because the word worship is the idea of worship. And the interesting thing to me is in Hebrews 11, there's nothing said about morals. That chapter is all about values. Read it. In fact, some of the people in that chapter had some real moral failures.

And probably the most striking value statement that anybody ever made is that statement where it says, "Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ, something nobody would want, of more value than the treasures of Egypt." That is quite a value statement.

And that chapter says, "This is the faith chapter." So could we say that faith has more to do with values? I don't like this because it also has to do with morals. I kind of think if you have your values right, your morals will be right.

Does that make sense? So I think values is probably the foundation of morals. And it's interesting that that whole chapter is about values related to faith. Not morals related to faith, but values related to faith. I know I'm on my favorite subject, and you can just say, "Well, that's John. He likes to talk about materialism." Anyway, then we have the end of the Sermon on the Mount there, according to some people. And then we go into chapter 7.

And chapter 7 is showing how to live ideals in a realistic world. I tell people we should be like the oyster. The oyster is an idealist and a realist at the same time. If a piece of sand gets into that oyster shell, that's ugh, and there's blood there, and it's irritating. But the oyster doesn't just rebel and finally get that sand out fighting.

The oyster just begins to deposit a milky substance on that sand until he finally has created something so beautiful that people risk their lives. A pearl. I think it was, I forget what preachers described a pearl, and this is what I always remember. Wondrous beauty wrapped around trouble.

That's what I'd like to see happen in all of our church experience. We all have troubles. There's friction. We're human beings. If we could have a vision of wondrous beauty because of the trouble, not in spite of it, but the trouble, you had it in the Sunday school lesson. Wondrous beauty wrapped around trouble.

And so we have four kingdom warnings, and that's where I want to concentrate this morning, and I'll try to make it as short as I possibly can. And then after that, and I'm not going to talk about this, we have four kingdom warnings.

Jesus was a realist. He was an idealist. But he said, "These ideals will fall flat on their face unless you adopt the realism that I give you here at the end of the Sermon on the Mount." And that's why I love the Sermon on the Mount. It just ends with this wonderful note of realism.

And so then I'll just give you the warnings at the end. There are four of them. Beware of the undisciplined life. And I'd love to talk about that all morning. I spent all my life trying to teach young people, "Beware of the undisciplined way."

Any freedom that is not based upon discipline is a false freedom. Okay? If you want to learn to play the piano and have perfect freedom on that keyboard, you subject yourself to hours and hours and hours of discipline. If you want to have freedom with a foreign language, you subject yourself to hours and hours of discipline. If you want to be an artist that can go up and with a few strokes make something that looks beautiful, you have hours and hours of discipline. This thing of letting it all hang. See, we live in a society where freedom is letting it all hang out. Just be casual. Do whatever. Make your hair, make your socks, whatever.

That's free. No, no, no, no, no.

That won't lead to freedom. Freedom is a result of disciplined living. And he warns us about the people who are not disciplined. Next, he warns us about false prophets who are false prophetic personalities. They have a wonderful message. They have seminars where it's all packaged beautifully and everything is just absolutely hunky-dory. And people flock to hear it.

But they're divorced and remarried. And their lifestyle requires thousands and thousands of dollars for extravagance. The life is just wrong. He says, "Beware of those people." People who for years asked me, "What do you think of this TV evangelist?" And I said, "All I have, I don't know much about him, but I've seen his Rolodex watch and I've seen the car he drives and I've heard about his lifestyle. And that's all I need to know. That's all I need to know."

I don't care what his message is. I don't care how impressive he has it packaged. If his life does not prove the superiority of that package, I'm not interested. Number three, these are people that realize it's got to be evident in life. So they're miracle workers. They produce the practical evidence.

But they're not obeying Jesus.

Beware of those people. And number four, well, yeah, I'll leave that. Number four, beware of foolish people who build the kingdom of God on something other than what Jesus actually taught. So there we are. Well, let me quickly give the four kingdom cautions.

Jesus knew that he had set lofty ideals. He knew he had talked about a new kind of person, free of anger, lust, dishonesty, revenge, and violence. He knew he had talked about a new kind of society where people don't value their possessions except what they can do to use them to help other people. He knew he was talking about a society where faith is vital, no hypocrisy, a colony of heaven on earth.

And many people say, "Is it real?" Some relegate it to the future because they say, "This is unrealistic." In fact, some of them say, "Well, this is actually part of the Old Testament law to drive you to grace."

They say all kinds of things because it doesn't look real to them. So Matthew 7 tackles the practical problems that we have to overcome. Jesus saw what was ahead. He saw that in the kingdom of God, in the church, there would be a mixture of the weak and the strong, the true and the false, the faithful and the unfaithful. He knew this would be a mixture that we constantly struggle to bring to that beautiful ideal. You know, Ephesians 4 pictures a church starting out and working its way till it finally comes to the perfect stature of Christ.

Unfortunately, they usually start here and go that way. But God does not tell us things that are impossible. So if he talks about a church moving toward a perfect ideal, then that is possible. And if it does not happen, it's because we have not paid careful attention to what Jesus has told us. So what are these cautions? Well, we're going to look at them. Would you turn to Matthew chapter 7? And we'll read here a little bit.

The first thing he does is tells us how to relate these teachings to our fellow Christians right here. And this is what he says, "Judge not that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged. And with what measure you meet, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, 'Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye,' and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." You know, the Anabaptists have been pretty passionate about perfect churches.

But that very pursuit often turns into the very opposite, often turns into a nightmare. There have been hundreds, hundreds of intentional communities formed, especially back in the 60s with the hippies era. Every one of them has failed. Every one of them. Except, of course, the Hutterites were there long before that, but every one of those intentional communities have failed.

Galatians 5, you're in Galatians. You're going to finally get to this verse. "For all the laws fulfilled in one word, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed one of another."

Jesus understood what we don't see. He said, "Do not judge." That word is the very same word as the word where it says, "Jesus came not into the world to condemn the world." That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about discriminating. I mean, we just said, "You're to discriminate false teachers. You're to discriminate all kinds of things that are wrong." We are to discriminate, and we're to apply them to our own life. But we're not to condemn anybody. The Bible says, "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world." Jesus literally never did this. In fact, later he says, "I don't judge any man.

The words that I speak shall judge." So if we have something to say that's difficult and hurtful to somebody, and we will, if I tell that young couple who are living together who want to be Christians, they have to separate, it's going to tear their hearts out because they love each other. If we have to say things like that to people, let's make sure we have studied to say it as kindly and unhurtfully as possible. The words themselves are going to hurt. Let's not add to that hurt by the way we say them. And that's what Jesus is saying here. Don't condemn. Condemning is putting other people down. In fact, if you change one letter here, you basically get the meaning of the term.

And it's a term our world uses very freely with each other. We don't use that term. We just do the action. We put down the person that we think isn't living it as well as we are. And that's what Jesus is saying here. Do not judge. Do not judge.

The problem is self-righteousness. We have said, "We are righteous because we're doing a certain thing." We may not be seeing a whole lot of other things that we really should be seeing. But we've established ourselves as righteous, and this person is unrighteous. And that's the attitude that has to be completely dealt with.

For three reasons. I already gave you one. It's the opposite of what Jesus did. He did not put people on trial. He did not sentence them. He did not punish or avenge. He did not give a final verdict. He did not put them into an unredeemable category. Jesus was a great believer in people. The words on his lips were the least, the lowest, and the lost. He cared about those people. He never put people down. You say, "Well, what about Matthew 23? You vipers. You hypocrites." Did you ever consider how he maybe said that?

Read the end of the chapter. He was weeping over the city at the end. I think likely it was something like this. "Oh, you vipers. Oh, you hypocrites," with tears streaming down his cheeks. I don't think Jesus ever added the hurt of condemnation to what he had to say to people.

"And if any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not. For I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me and receiveth not my words hath one that judgeth him. The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." So even in the judgment, Jesus is not going to pass a personal judgment on anybody. It'll be the words that will judge. And let's make sure that if we ever have to call attention to any problems, that it's our words and not our attitude.

The second problem is it causes us to project our own faults on other people. Romans chapter 2, verse 1 says, "Who are you that judges? Condemns another, you do the same things." And it's very interesting how liars are particularly sensitive to other people who lie. Proud people are very sensitive to other people who are proud, and lustful people somehow are always looking out the lustful sins of other people.

Years ago, we had that horrible spectacle when one TV evangelist found out that another person had committed sexual sin and got on the TV and just excoriated him, only to be found out a year later that he was doing the same that even worse. And I remember I was in an atheist barbershop, and that thing came on the TV screen, and he turned away in disgust and said, "Isn't he a bute?"

This is disgusting. It causes us to project our faults on other people, and often the things we're criticizing in other people were actually the faults that we ourselves had. Correcting carries a high risk of self-righteousness. And that's why the Bible says, "Restore such a one in a spirit of meekness." And finally, it misses the whole goal of correction, which is to redeem the brother and build up the church and edify the kingdom of God.

So what he says is, "Look at yourself. Quit gazing." By the word, that term that's used there means to gaze, to stare at. So what happens is we see a fault in another person, and we stare at it, and we magnify it, and we magnify it, and we magnify. He said, "Don't do that.

Gaze at yourself and be sure that all self-righteousness is scrubbed out of your heart." You know, your wife just had an operation. I'm sure before they did that operation, they did a scrub. How many minutes do you think? 20 minutes usually? With the strongest antibiotics that they can possibly come up with, they scrub and they scrub and they scrub and they scrub. They don't want to introduce any pathogen into that operation.

Well, you do that before you go to a brother. You make sure you have scrubbed every pathogen of self-righteousness and condemnation, whatever it is that you have. And there's a tremendous tendency to use the faults of others to put ourselves up and put people down. You make sure whatever it is that before you go, you can honestly say, "All I want is to reclaim this brother."

And unless you can go with that attitude, don't bother. That's what Jesus is basically saying. Your brother is precious to you. Someday you may need his eyes. And if you eliminate him, he won't be there to help you when you have the need. And he may be the only person who can help you with your problems. Here are some cautions. Hate, greed, jealousy, and hurts are contagious. Avoid the people who are constantly talking about this.

Fight against gossip. Somebody said, "Gossip is that which goes in both ears and comes out the mouth greatly enlarged." And it gives us prestige because if we could talk about the faults of others, guess what it does to us? It's a false concept of self-exaltation.

And then develop a readiness to compliment. Yes, your compliments did embarrass me, David, but we do need compliments occasionally. I remember a friend of mine who was a student at AMC back in his earlier years, and Mrs. M.T. Bracknell, M.T. Bracknell was a famous astronomist down there. He had a wife who taught literature. And my friend had her as a literature teacher. He said, "I never met a person like her." She never missed an opportunity to compliment a student on a good answer, a good paper. She would read it out loud. She just caused me to throw out compliments to her students. And he said, "If she happened to be absent for a day, we were on better behavior than if she would be there because the worst thing that could happen was to have Mrs.