Latest / Redeemer Students Podcast / Matthew 5:1-3 | August 2nd, 2026

Transcript

Matthew 5:1-3 | August 2nd, 2026 · Redeemer Students Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_00: It's everybody.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have to be back.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: I'll have a full room.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: Gonna light the room now.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: A little different.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, killing me.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: My name is Keel Thompson.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: First name is Keel, that is what it should be called.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm a Sintanster here.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: This is my first year being a part of Redeemer Students.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Just really crazy, but my first year of being a Sint Tester.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: So the minute um a little bit about me.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: I grew up right here in Mariana.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: Um I lived most of my life in Lee's crossing channel on my cyclones.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: Just a lot of silence after that.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: Also went to youth group in Marietta all the way from Ace through high school.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: And so I spend all that um for y'all to know and to hear that.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: I know what it's like to be in your shoes.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: At least two a little bit.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Maybe not all the way, but I know what it's like and what it feels like to live in Marietta, to grow up in Marietta, to go to school in Marietta.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: And most importantly, I know what it feels like to be a Christian and get youth group in Marietta.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: And so do most of your leaders.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if y'all know this, but me and Sam and Grace and Gil and Maddie and Ellie, we all went to youth group together.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: Like we were y'all like 10 years ago.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty crazy.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: Um so we're all here, and and I view and a lot of your leaders know what it's like to be Rush, right?
1:29
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we want here tonight is for y'all um to feel welcome um to be able to connect.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, we have some new leaders here we're very excited for.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, but see, I didn't really grow up going to church like many of you might have.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: We were what's called a creaster family, which means we go to church twice a year on Christmas Eve and Easter, right?
1:47
SPEAKER_00: Priester.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember hating or loving church necessarily.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: I just kind of would show up and not think much about why I was there, what I was doing.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: God seemed real enough, I guess, but I didn't have any strong feelings.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: I went to youth group some in middle school, made a couple of good friends, on a few retreats, um, but had a similar feeling.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Like I had a good time.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: I was fairly excited to show up, but I certainly wasn't there to grow in my faith.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: I honestly didn't really even know what that phrase meant.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what it meant to do that.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: But around seventh or eighth grade, I started going to first press on the square.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: That was like the really big fun youth group at the time.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: Like if you don't know the mirror at a market anymore, like that was our youth space.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: So like this room, we were like in the market.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: We had a lot of people, it was crazy.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's how I started going.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: And looking back, it was mainly social.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: And I mainly went to the friends, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing at all.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: But I think I was still pretty lost when it came to the whole being a Christian thing.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: I just didn't really know what people were talking about when we talked about God.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: And I I didn't have any sort of animosity or anger or hard feelings towards God.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: I just I just didn't really know what was happening when we were singing songs of worship or when we were reading the Bible or hearing about the Bible.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: I didn't I didn't know what I was supposed to do.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how I was supposed to feel.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: But things started to change in high school for me.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: I joined a discipleship group and youth group and started to study the Bible on my own.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: I remember one distinct moment in the summer of 2016.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: We were on a mission trip to Miami and we had a prayer walk one night that some of the leaders put together and we walked with the church and we prayed for the city of Miami that we were serving, the people we were serving, we prayed for Marietta and our church, the global church, the Persefeated Church.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: Like it was a really emotional night.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: And rather than walking away from that feeling, feeling like super moot and emotional, I kind of felt the opposite.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: I think I was finally able to be honest with myself and realize that I kind of was just faking it.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't really have any emotions connected to this.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: I was just kind of floating through the youth group, nodding along, pretending maybe that I believed everything that I sang and that I heard.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: And that was the moment for me that I began asking questions like when you say the gospel, like what are you talking about?
3:49
SPEAKER_00: Right?
3:49
SPEAKER_00: Who is Jesus?
3:50
SPEAKER_00: Why would he die?
3:51
SPEAKER_00: Like, why would somebody do that?
3:52
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean for me?
3:54
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, the questions that I started to ask, the questions of things that I would just normally nod along to and agree with, I was really asking, what do I believe?
4:03
SPEAKER_00: Like, what do I believe as a person?
4:06
SPEAKER_00: And that's around the time that Sam and I met, we started reading the Bible together, asking questions over the course of a few months, somewhere in the summer or fall of 2016.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: My heart became alive to these things that I was really like curious about, didn't know much about.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: My heart started to catch fire, have a hunger for God and His Word.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: And my story is not really like a song or in the Damascus kind of thing, right?
4:28
SPEAKER_00: Like I was a pretty good kid.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a radical transformation, I didn't I didn't get in a lot of trouble, but I was still dead in my sin at the end of the day.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: My way of life, however, good or socially acceptable I may have seemed, it was never gonna satisfy the longings of my soul.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: And when I started asking those questions, I started to see that God would, the Spirit showed up, and He showed me my sins, showed me my need for a Savior, and my heart was made alive to Jesus.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: And then it's as if my heart caught on fire, right?
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Like I couldn't get enough Bible, couldn't get enough study, I couldn't get enough youth group.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: I became very involved, like anything I was able to be a part of, I would have done it.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: And it was a really sweet season.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: I looked back really fondly at that season, and it's one I'm grateful for because in a lot of ways that season continues to be proof of my salvation, right?
5:15
SPEAKER_00: Like when I was on fire, that's evidence that God was working in my heart.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: But I went to college and I kind of noticed the shifts.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: My desires for reading the Bible kind of waned a little bit, right?
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Worship felt a little more stale, community was a little bit harder, the conversations that I had didn't seem the same.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: It kind of seemed like I had to work harder at being a Christian than I did in high school.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: And there can be a hundred reasons for this, but I think the main thing that I have learned over the years, and I'm sure your leaders have as well, and maybe do even resonate with this, is that being a Christian is hard.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: It's hard.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: And there are seasons when it feels really easy, but there are also seasons where distance feels more like in reality.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: And if you're anything like me, it's extremely easy to float through youth group, float through going to church, float through going to small groups and SEAL team without knowing what you believe about God, why you believe it, and what it means for your life.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Those are the questions that it's easy to kind of float through and not ask them.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: What do you believe about God?
6:13
SPEAKER_00: Why do you believe that?
6:15
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean for your life?
6:16
SPEAKER_00: They're very important questions.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: And there may be no better plays to explore the question of what does it mean to be a Christian than on the Sermon on the Mouth.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the question I want to like start looking at tonight.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus, a Christian?
6:31
SPEAKER_00: The Sermon on the Mouth is found in Matthew 5 through 11.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: We're going to study it over the next few weeks, certain parts of it.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: If you're not familiar, this sermon, Sermon on the Mouth, it's a Sermon on the Mountain, very unique name, is Jesus' first public sermon.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like the announcement of his ministry, right?
6:44
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus, although he was born 30 years before he started his ministry, right?
6:52
SPEAKER_00: Which means that God in the flesh came down and formed a person, and he was just like a guy for 30 years, right?
6:57
SPEAKER_00: Living, he was a carpenter, living life, doing things.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: But then when his ministry started, right?
7:03
SPEAKER_00: He started to do miracles.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: He had called his first disciples to him and began teaching in synagogues, healing people from diseases, signs and wonders.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: The name of Jesus in Nazareth kind of started to make its way in and around town, but he hadn't formally started his ministry yet.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: And this sermon is where it really begins because at this point, Pharisees, religious leaders, people in the town were confused, frustrated, like, who is this guy?
7:27
SPEAKER_00: Why is he doing these things?
7:29
SPEAKER_00: What is he talking about?
7:29
SPEAKER_00: What is the point?
7:30
SPEAKER_00: What is he trying to get across?
7:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we find Jesus here answering those questions.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: So, Matthew, where we find it in Matthew 5 1, he writes, Seeing the crowds, he, Jesus, went up on the mountain.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: And when he sat down, his disciples came to him.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus had kind of noticed some crowds growing around him, forming around, and he decided to use this chance to kind of set the record straight.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: Like, here's what I'm about to do, here's why I'm here.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: So setting up shop and on top of this hill, Jesus began to teach.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: There's a famous painting of what this scene might look like.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: I think, I think we have it.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of helpful to end uh to visualize.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: And Matthew makes it clear that there's them questioning why Jesus is teaching.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: His intentions are very clear.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: Jesus withdrew from the large crowds so that he could have a ton of concentrated teaching with his desires.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: So we see even in this scene, like his disciples are his primary audience.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: There's people around him, but he's talking to them.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: The twelve who he's called, the twelve who he's been leading.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: He's talking to his students.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: He's talking to us.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: And so, just like the disciples did 2,000 years ago, I think the invitation is for us to lean in and listen to the same words.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: Because the words that his students then are the same words that his students now to us.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: And he gives answers to our question of what does it mean to follow him?
8:47
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to be a Christian?
8:50
SPEAKER_00: And so all is set up, right?
8:51
SPEAKER_00: All the anticipation for this moment.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: What are the first words of Jesus that Matthew records in his sermon?
8:58
SPEAKER_00: He says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: What a weird phrase, right?
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are the poor in spirit.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: Like, what does that mean?
9:08
SPEAKER_00: What kind of teaching is this?
9:11
SPEAKER_00: I think it's really profound and helpful.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: See, the the word used for blessed here in the Greek is actually better translated as happy, right?
9:19
SPEAKER_00: Happy are the poor in spirit, which makes even less sense, right?
9:23
SPEAKER_00: Because our modern understanding of the word happy, it doesn't quite capture what Jesus has in mind.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: So what do y'all think of when you think of happy?
9:30
SPEAKER_00: You probably think of happy as a nice feeling, right?
9:34
SPEAKER_00: That's directly tied to something happening in your life, to a circumstance, to a scenario.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm happy because this thing's going on, or this thing's going well, or I'm happy when I listen to this song, right?
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Or have this food.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: But that understanding of happy doesn't fit here because that would be translated, happy are the poor in spirit, happy are the poor in spirit, and that's a ridiculous sentence to our ear.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: Happy are the poor in spirit.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: I think joy is actually a better word.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Specifically, gospel joy, Christian joy.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Right?
10:05
SPEAKER_00: Gospel joy is different than happiness because it it transcends our life circumstances.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: You can have gospel joy when your life is falling apart.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: Matt Chandler puts it this way.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: I think it's helpful.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: He says in Job 1, if y'all aren't familiar with Job, it's a man who suffered a lot, lost a lot of things, lost his wife, his kids, his job, everything he loses.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: In Job 1, we see Job lose everything, tear his clothes, and worship God.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: That is joy, not happiness.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: This is more of what's in view in the sermon under Beatitudes, the part we're looking at.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: A joy born of knowing and trusting God rather than a subjective view.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus is talking about.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Christian gospel joy.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: So, what does Jesus mean when he says, blessed are the poor in spirit?
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think right off the bat, Jesus is trying to get across the message and disassociate, separate the idea of Christian joy and circumstantial happiness.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: He's saying these are two different things.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: The joy that I have, the joy you have in me, is different than being happy because things are going wrong.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: He's saying you are poor in spirits, and you actually won't have true joy until you admit.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: He's saying we cannot make ourselves happy and give ourselves the joy that we desperately need.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: It has to come from him.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: And the main point that we see here, the main point for tonight, is that the Christian life begins when we see and admit our need.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: The Christian life begins when we see and admit our need that we are poor in spirit, that we need something from God.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: There's an organization called Alcoholics Anonymous that maybe some of you are aware of.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've got a family member involved or a friend.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: See, this group's been around for almost 100 years, and this group exists to give people who are struggled with alcohol abuse a place to grow, a place to change, a place to come as they are and find transformation.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: But now you don't end up somewhere like AAA without knowing that you want to change.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: You don't go there without knowing you want to change.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: The first step of their 12-step program is acceptance.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: They have to know they want to change.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: Other words that are used for this step are admission, surrender.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And they all communicate the same thing.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: I accept that I am powerless over my struggles.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Or even more briefly, I can't.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: That's step one, admitting that I can't do it.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and how radical is this?
12:38
SPEAKER_00: Where else do you hear this in your life, right?
12:40
SPEAKER_00: How countercultural is this idea?
12:43
SPEAKER_00: I accept that I'm powerless.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: But it's the words of Jesus, right?
12:48
SPEAKER_00: In John 15.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: Apart from me, you can do nothing.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: You can do nothing.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: But I think we could learn a lot from the AA community, right?
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Because if you're anything like me, you love to think and appear like we have it all together.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: And even maybe you can take that step and admit that things aren't perfect.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're not ideal, but there's a part of you that believes if I just work a little bit harder, I just lock in a little bit, right?
13:17
SPEAKER_00: Sure, school's hard, but I'm doing all right.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: I'll figure it out.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: I just need to hunker down.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: Sure, this this past season didn't ago as planned, but we gave her the good run.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: I like our odds next time if we just work harder, we grind harder.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: And there's nowhere that this shows up more than in our relationship with God.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: We say if I just hunker down and commit to my reading plan when January 1st comes around, right?
13:40
SPEAKER_00: If I just shift my priorities, if I just get a little bit more consistent, then I'll be good.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: It's the part of us that believes that we actually can produce the change in our hearts that only Jesus can.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: Because that's ultimately what we're confessing in those moments by our actions.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: We're saying, whether we're conscious of it or not, we are confessing and we believe that God approves of me based on how good I am doing.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: I think if we're honest with ourselves, we believe that.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: God approves of me based on how good I'm doing.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: And any problem that I have, I can fix with trying harder.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: I can fix with my willpower.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: You know that's exhausting.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: And I spent many years of my Christian life asking the same things, right?
14:25
SPEAKER_00: What can I be doing for God?
14:28
SPEAKER_00: Am I making God proud by being a good Christian?
14:33
SPEAKER_00: I was measuring how good of a Christian I was by how much I was reading my Bible, how many evangelistic conversations I was having, how engaged I was during worship, how much I desired or felt connected to God.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: And all of these are good desires and good and necessary, but they are actually good and necessary fruits of my security in Jesus, not the things that cause it.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: These things don't cause growth, they're proof of it.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Matt Chandler, again, he says it while he understands.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: He writes, if you are judging how we are doing by victories and losses, then joy is nearly impossible.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: Man, I wish 16-year-old Kiel could have heard that.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: And gospel joy happens when we freely surrender the illusion that we're good, that we have it together, and when we finally embrace what Jesus is saying here, that we are whore in spirit.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: We have a great need.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: We can learn from Alcoholics Anonymous, right?
15:40
SPEAKER_00: They understand it.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: They know the power for change does not come from within.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: Because, see, they they typically meet in the basement or spare rooms in local churches.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: And there's a saying that I've heard pointed out.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, they say this, they say, you can go upstairs to hear about miracles, or you can go downstairs to see them.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: You can go upstairs to the sanctuary and hear about the change that can happen.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: You can go to these meetings and see people who understand their need and are actually finding real change.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: I want to show you maybe what this could look like.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: See, the Christian life, I think when we think about it, we think about it as an up and to the right graph, right?
16:23
SPEAKER_00: Of a picture for us of what we think it could look like, right?
16:26
SPEAKER_00: That the longer I'm a Christian, the better I hand that being won.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Up and to the right.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Constant growth, more and more feeling.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: It gets easier and easier.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: But maturing as a follower of Jesus, growing in Christ, does not mean needing help and grace less and less and doing better and better.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean using God's grace, those training wheels that we eventually grow out of.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe this other graph is more helpful.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: I didn't make this up, but I think it's really good.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: Where although our need for God and his love continues, we pretend things are better than they are.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: Less sinful, or less broken.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: We say things like, this sin struggle is not that big of a deal.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: I can stop whenever I want to.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm not that going.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't really need humanity that badly.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: Things aren't that bad after all, pretending that things, that our need is not as great as it is.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: And on the other side, we then therefore perform to try and fix ourselves, to justify ourselves before our peers and before God, to make ourselves right, saying, if I appear like my life is great and put together, then maybe it is.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Or surely my follower account or my internet interactions or my friendships mean that I'm loved.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: If I read my Bible every day next week, maybe God will forgive what I did last week.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: Pretending and performing, trying to fill the need ourselves, but true relationship with God, true life with Jesus looks more like this.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: The second graph.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: That as we continue in our lives and followers of Jesus, we actually grow deeper and deeper and deeper into our understanding of our need.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: And in that love place, that is where we experience a sweeter and greater sense of God's rescuing and redeeming love for us in Christ.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: Maturing and growing as a follower of Jesus.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: Being a Christian is a growing in grace, growing deeper into our need for Jesus and His mercy and finding His loving embrace in that place.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: In our need.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: See, the Apostle Paul is a great example of this.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: You guys probably know Paul, right?
18:40
SPEAKER_00: He wrote 13 of the 27 New Testament books.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: Like this is a great Christian.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: He planted over a dozen churches in the first century.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: He is an A plus all-star Mount Rushmore Christian.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: But if you read his letters, what's interesting is that Paul's view of himself actually doesn't get higher and better.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't see his need for Jesus growing less and less as he matures, but it's actually the opposite.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: Before coming to faith in Jesus, he considered himself blameless.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm good, I don't need anything.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: That's what he says.
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SPEAKER_00: Blameless.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: But he sees his need in Jesus when he met him on that road.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And there's three different times where he kind of describes his view of himself.
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SPEAKER_00: First is 1 Corinthians 15, verse 9.
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SPEAKER_00: It says, For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called the apostle.
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SPEAKER_00: The least of the apostles, the least of the leaders.
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SPEAKER_00: Then he goes in Ephesians saying, To me, although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given.
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SPEAKER_00: And then finally, in 1 Timothy, near the end of his life, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of who I am the foremost.
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SPEAKER_00: Further translations, I'm the chief, the chief of sinners.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: So we see on the timeline of his life, 55 AD, when he wrote in 1 Corinthians, says, I'm the least of the apostles, right?
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SPEAKER_00: I'm the least of the best Christians.
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SPEAKER_00: 60 AD, five years later, I'm the least of all the saints.
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SPEAKER_00: And finally at the end of his life, I'm the foremost sinner.
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SPEAKER_00: I am the worst sinner.
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SPEAKER_00: As Paul aged and matured in Christ, we see that his understanding of his need only deepened over time.
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SPEAKER_00: And I think this is the starting point of what he's calling us into when he says be imitators of me.
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SPEAKER_00: We also follow this pattern.
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SPEAKER_00: We don't stop being in need of Jesus.
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SPEAKER_00: It's the opposite.
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SPEAKER_00: Matt Chandler says we don't graduate from our need, we just come to realize it more quickly and surrender to it more deeply.
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SPEAKER_00: That is what growing as a Christian means.
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SPEAKER_00: Knowing your need more deeply and surrendering more quickly.
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SPEAKER_00: If you've ever been to New York City, you've probably noticed that almost all the buildings are covered in scaffolding, right?
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SPEAKER_00: Have y'all seen this?
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SPEAKER_00: Any streets in New York?
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SPEAKER_00: All covered in scaffolding.
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SPEAKER_00: And I think in some ways this is a really helpful picture of our spiritual lives.
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SPEAKER_00: Because the truth is that we're not yet perfected.
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SPEAKER_00: We're not yet how we wish we were.
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SPEAKER_00: God is still working in your heart, but you're not done.
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SPEAKER_00: Not yet perfected.
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SPEAKER_00: Constantly being built up into the likeness of Jesus, being called into obedience, being called to grow in him.
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SPEAKER_00: But we still fail.
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SPEAKER_00: We're not perfect.
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SPEAKER_00: And your shortcomings, your sufferings, your pain, your failures, those are not back steps or regressions in your Christian life, but they are calls to go deeper into the grace of Jesus.
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SPEAKER_00: Those times where we feel like we're not enough, they remind us of our deep need and serve as a reminder of God's promise to us that he made in Philippians, where Paul says, I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: There's a good work started, but it's not finished.
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SPEAKER_00: Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.
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SPEAKER_00: So the call here is to admit your need at the feet of Jesus.
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SPEAKER_00: Not pretend it's not there.
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SPEAKER_00: Don't pretend, don't perform.
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SPEAKER_00: Admit your need.
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SPEAKER_00: Collapse in his grace because his love for you does not rest on your performance.
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SPEAKER_00: Because he's already decided how he feels.
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SPEAKER_00: It was accomplished 2,000 years ago on a Roman cross atop Mount Calvary, where every single excuse, every single case that could be made against you for not deserving his love was nailed to the cross and buried.
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SPEAKER_00: It's been decided.
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SPEAKER_00: God is not calling you to save yourself.
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SPEAKER_00: He entered into your brokenness, lived in your poverty, and died for it.
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SPEAKER_00: So the call now as we go into worship is to just come to the feet of Jesus.
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SPEAKER_00: To come to him honestly, to surrender your shame, to surrender your pride, your guilt, your willpower, to admit in your need before him and say, I am poor in spirit, but you are a God who meets me in my lord.
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SPEAKER_00: The truth is you have a Savior and Jesus who is gentle and lowly in heart, and he died to give you and give your heart the very things it needs.
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SPEAKER_00: The love of God in the name of Jesus Christ.
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SPEAKER_00: That is the call.
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SPEAKER_00: You are poor in spirit.
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SPEAKER_00: We have a great God who loves us in that very place.
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SPEAKER_00: So let's pray together.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for your word.
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SPEAKER_00: Thank you for tonight and that we're back here worshiping you.
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SPEAKER_00: You would meet us there.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: I pray even now that we could we could ponder those places where we are pretending that we're better off than we are.
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SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we thank you that you know us, you see us, and you love what you see.
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SPEAKER_00: Lord, because you see you see someone who is redeeming you.
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SPEAKER_00: That when you look at us, you're not disappointed.
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SPEAKER_00: You're not you don't see us with with shame, with regrets, but you see us only with love.
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SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that we would know our need and we would know your love even deeper.