Latest / The Rhett Palmer Show / Sermon on the Mountain, Part 1

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Sermon on the Mountain, Part 1 · The Rhett Palmer Show

• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the peace of the Lord be with you, and we're back with uh Amret Palmer and my friend Mike Bagby.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: We call him uh Rabbi Rabbi Bagby.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: I hope that's okay and acceptable with our Jewish viewers and listeners.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, uh we're all supposed to be ones that accurately handle the word of God and uh in our life experiences.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we have come to have deeper understanding of God's words to us, and hopefully you're and my conversations over these uh months have been helpful uh to others because uh Rhett and I have spent uh it's been really the last five, six years, seven years uh meeting on Tuesday morning and on Thursdays and sometimes on Saturdays, and we've been discussing uh different aspects of the Bible and and trying to understand it within the cultural context, trying to understand uh just the language because we're reading the Bible in English, but sometimes the Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic words give us different nuances that really bring the message of the Bible uh home, at least it does for me.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: So uh of course, Michael is a biblical historian, he's gone to Israel multiple times, he's married, has four beautiful children.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: He has been a missionary for over 40 years.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a radio talk host in my 32nd year.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: Also, I was a very part-time missionary to Haiti and Africa, and maybe some other places would be considered as that.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, we're here to uh Mike has a great gift of opening up what's hidden in the scriptures.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I think we all want to know what the truth is.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh let's get going, Mike.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Rhett, uh, I want to ask you a question as we begin here.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, when you think of all the teachings of Jesus, all of his words that are recorded in the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, uh, what is the one you think is the most impactful for you that you think back on and you refer back to often?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: What would that be?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, my friend, my friend Bobby Vendetta became a Christian uh before me.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: He was a young uh bass player in a group that I had, and he he said, I'm born again now.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: I said, What is that?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: He said, uh, I've had an experience with Jesus, and and he told me that it's written that uh I wish above all things that thou were either hot or cold, because if you're lukewarm, I'll spew you out.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: And that scared me.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh, of course, heard about Nicodemus.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: So Jesus says to Nicodemus, make sure you're born again.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I I try to tell people gently that if you don't know that you know that you know, then most likely you're not born again.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_03: And born again really means uh that you've had uh an intimate uh encounter with Jesus and you know that you have surrendered your life to him.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: And you sometimes for me, I felt an indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: Some people may not feel anything, they don't need to feel anything.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's just but they know that they know.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so I just urge people to have you uh you know surrendered your life to Jesus.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that you're I think you're what you're referring to is that conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus in uh John chapter three.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, where the teacher of Israel came to him at night.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: This was like the the chief Pharisee uh and said, We know that you're from God, because otherwise, how could you do the things that you do?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, Well, uh, let's cut to the the the quick here.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you must have a spiritual birth if you're ever going to see the kingdom of heaven.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: That one, that conversation, that's what you're referring to, right?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Nicodemus, of course, is a bit confused by that.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: What uh what do you mean I must have a birth, be born again, or bore actually the Greek word is born from above.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he said, Should I crawl up into my mother's womb again?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Jesus says, No, we're talking about spiritual things here.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And as the wind blows and you don't see it but you feel it, this is kind of the things of the spirit.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and basically what Jesus was describing is an experience with uh God that you actually acknowledge Him as Lord, you are walking in a certain direction, guided by your own instincts and the earthly uh culture around you, and then you stop, you consider your state, you consider your need for God, and then you actually repent, you turn around, and you walk toward God, and you ask for forgiveness of your sins, and God hears your uh your cry, he considers the sincerity of your heart, and then he receives you into his family, and he gives you his Holy Spirit, and now that becomes part of you.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I think this is what Jesus was describing, the spiritual birth of all of us being born.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And once that happens, according to so many uh passages of scripture in the uh Christian scriptures, now begins a process of transformation, a process where we're changed from this natural person that we were into a true son and daughter of God, and we slowly become more and more like him and less and less like the old self.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Paul often uses the image of walking to your closet in the morning and what are you gonna put on?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: This morning I decided to put on a slightly pink and white uh Rio Coco Cafe shirt.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I had a choice of what I was going to put on.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Paul says in a few places to his friends, put on the new self, take off the old self and just toss it away.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a process.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, this is uh I I agree, Rhett, this is one of the most significant teachings that Jesus gave is you must be had you must have a birth from above, a spiritual experience and become part of God's family.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Jesus said, make sure that you're born from above.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: So by the way, you notice between Mike and I is a bag of coffee.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we do not solicit funds on this on this broadcast, but we do have a cup of friendship.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: We have both decided that throughout the world, people get to know each other by a cup of friendship.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh drinking coffee is a convivial, which means a social experience.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_03: And Mike has been in the business, so now we have our own line.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: There are three three flavors.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: I forget what they are.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Three blends.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we have uh kindred spirits, a hearty uh handshake, and um, our other blend.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll think of it in just a moment.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: What's the website?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh a cup of friendship.com.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: And that's all you need to know, folks, that we're enjoying a cup of friendship right now on YouTube.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: CupofFriendship.com, yes.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this this one uh that we're uh this morning is a hearty handshake.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's a blend of our Honduras Blue Mountain Dark Roast, our Sumatra Rain medium roast, and our Columbia Mile High uh Medium Roast.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this is all roasted right here at the Rio Coco Cafe Roastery in Vero Beach, Florida.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: We roast on Tuesdays and Fridays.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: We roasted yesterday, and we actually sent out some bags of a hearty handshake to one of our friends and another of a kindred spirit to another friend.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so thank you very much for uh enjoying our coffee.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we encourage you.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um this whole process of discipleship and evangelism is a very natural one.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very relational one.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's all about spending time with people that God has placed around you and being uh friendly.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about this a little bit, I think, later uh in our session today, but just the friendship that comes over sharing meals and sharing coffee and tea, uh, getting to know one another and letting God do the work that He very naturally does.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, let's now we're going to start off in the Beatitudes.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: Did you want me to read all of them at once?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let me just uh follow up with just what you said, uh Rhett, uh, as we get into this, because once you have a born-again experience, a birth from above, now begins a process of discipleship where we actually are disciples, followers of Jesus.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And now what does that look like?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: What w w how how are we going to walk this out as we're living in this world?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think one of Jesus' most famous teachings took place at a place uh uh along the northeastern, excuse me, northwestern shore of the uh Sea of Galilee.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you can go to this spot today.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Mount of the Beatitudes.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's a church there with a red uh or a pink dome, and it overlooks an area that you're looking down over this kind of con uh cave, a little valley, and uh the shoreline is there.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's uh when I first saw it back in '97, it was just uh uh agricultural growing different crops.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's been a banana plantation there for a number of years.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: But the interesting thing about this area, Rhitt, is the basaltic rock has these sound attenuation qualities that you can actually be 600 yards up the slope of the hillside, and you can hear the voice of a man standing down by the shore.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one company put place microphones around this whole area, and they actually uh determined that you could be 600 yards away and still hear a person talking in a normal voice.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I find that to be extraordinary that the creator of this universe would uh just arrange the geological formations, knowing that at some point in history he would become a man and give one of his most significant teachings to a large crowd, and everybody would be able to hear him without any sort of uh electronic amplification.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's really cool.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if if you just think of these little details, like okay, well, Jesus is gonna give this great teaching, and all these people are gonna be listening, and they can all hear him.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think it's pretty sweet.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: The other consideration is we have to remember that Jesus is speaking in probably Aramaic.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um He might be speaking in Greek.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Matthew is writing it and recording it in the Greek language, and we're reading it in English.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's often problems that come up when you're going from one language to another, okay?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one of my most humorous uh situations in uh dealing with multiple languages is uh back in uh 1989, I was living in a refugee community in the remote eastern corner of Honduras among the mosquito culture.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And a friend of ours from La Ceba, a young uh girl named Maria Belinda Montoya, wanted to learn English.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we invited her to come and live with us in our community called Alca, which is south of Portal Impera, and it's uh just close to Cabo Gracias a Dios, which is that pointy end where the Cocoa River comes into the Caribbean.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And Maria Belinda came and she was learning English.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I'm gonna just hold this picture up here, if I can.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe uh we can see it.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a picture of me with my spider monkey Oogly.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: On the radio, on the radio, they can't see it, but you saw a uh oh wow, that's a spider monkey on your chest.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm holding Oogly.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we got him as just uh some kid brought him to us.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's just uh literally a little baby monkey.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: We raised him and uh he ran around our house, and he was a very friendly guy.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Maria Belinda was holding Oogly and she made a sudden move, and Oogly sort of jumped, and he bit her right here on the arm.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And blood started flowing, and Maria Belinda started crying, and I excitedly said, Maria Belinda, tieni mierda?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And she started laughing.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And she looked at me and she said, Yes, Mike, I have poop.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I meant to ask her, tieni mielo, are you afraid?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, instead I said, Tieni mierda, do you have excrement or poop?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: And she started laughing.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we still laugh about that because Maria Belinda is a uh dentist in La Seva, and she has a scar on her right forearm where Ugli bit her.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I see her uh on occasion when I'm in uh La Saba uh working.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: We have a cafe on the island of Utilla, uh which is just uh 18 miles offshore of La Saba.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when I see Maria Belinda, she'll smile and she'll come up to me and she'll say, Mike, I still have poop.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: But it was so funny that I just juxtapostapositioned a couple of letters and I came up with a completely different meaning of a word that caused the whole situation to change.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why everything that the way it is written in the Bible is very important.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes one little word or a remark uh can change everything.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: For instance, when Jesus spoke to the uh the the um the uh thief on the cross, we don't know really to this day.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: He said, Today I tell you, you will be with me in paradise.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: Now, did he say, today, comma, I tell you, comma, you will be in paradise with me, or today you will be, I tell you, you will be in paradise.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, does it mean he'll be there today, or does it mean today he's telling you?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And these are the challenges for us reading it in English.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: So um I've been fortunate to have uh on my phone, I use a um a Bible app called Olive Tree, and I've got like at least four or five different dictionaries plus seven or eight different commentaries that I can refer to, because there's guys a lot smarter than me that have been studying the scriptures and have been able to really discern the nuances of the Hebrew and Greek language.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, talking hold on, talking about smart, though, I do want people to know uh, you know, uh I I was a high school dropout, uh, got an eighth grade education, but I did go back to college.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: But Mike, uh on the other hand, is uh an intellectual guy.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: You were a first of all, well, no, no.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you you don't get to be a fighter pilot if you're dull of mind.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, so it's just quick quick reactions, okay?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but no anyway.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: I want people to know that your background also you you are a biblical historian, you studied uh history over in Europe, right?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I did, yes.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: And but I've been to Israel multiple times.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: I just want people to the credibility to understand where you're coming from.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Red, I I've been very fortunate over the years.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I did uh study European history at Miami University in Ohio and at the Luxembourg campus.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was there for a year, and I've been fortunate to have traveled.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up living, my dad was in the military, so I lived in Germany, I lived in Turkey, and then I joined the Navy and became a pilot, and I lived in the Philippines.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I traveled throughout the Indian and uh Pacific region.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I've had a uh background of different cultures and different languages, and then I became a follower of Jesus in 19 uh 81.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: Which is remarkable because the Bible says not many royal, not many, in others, essentially my interpretation, not many intellectual, because a lot of people idolize their brains, and that becomes their God.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: And uh even the Bible says the mind of man is enmity with the spirit of God.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_03: How is it that God uh God uh I don't want the long version, but a very succinct short version.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: How did you, Mike Bagby, come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh Rhett, uh I at the time, you know, I uh didn't I got out of the Navy uh um after being in for seven years.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to stay in for a career.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I I was coursed by my friend Joe Tanner to uh join him and become a ski bum in Colorado.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: We thought we would do that for a season.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um we really uh didn't we thought we'd get jobs with the airlines, but neither of us really wanted to become a bus driver, so uh that didn't work out.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I ended up going to Hawaii to open an ice cream uh business with a friend of mine in the offseason.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: My cousins had lived on the island for a number of years, and they had just become part of a new church called Hope Chapel, and I got pulled into that, and I had a pretty incredible experience uh with God, and my life took a big turn.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you if you looked at uh my lifestyle in that time, you would not consider me to be an intelligent person.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I was a very I was making very stupid decisions in my life.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: There was no sign of any sort of intellectual um propriety in my life at the time.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I think uh those of us that are uh uh often uh off the path and out there were the we are the most likely candidates to become uh ardent followers of the Lord.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because once we find the reality and truth of life, and we know we're the the uh the source of all happiness, contentment, peace, and all the things we really desire and unfailing love, then it's very obvious that we would run with that.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've met a number of ruffians uh like me that have become followers of Jesus, and uh and there's nothing uh that supersedes that in our life.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: But um so let's uh let's get into the let's get back on the path here, but but words are important, and so I want to I want to just uh give you one more example.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um the first translation of the Bible uh was done by Jerome, and this was done in the fourth century.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jerome actually went to Bethlehem, he lived in one of the cave homes that was very close to the cave home where Jesus was born, and he did an incredible translation from the Hebrew into Latin.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: But Jerome was also uh challenged in his uh interpretation and understanding of the Hebrew language, because when you read it, you know, you have just the consonants and the vowels are these little tick marks.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when he was reading Exodus 34, 30, which says, So when Aaron and the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the word in Hebrew for the word shine is Quran, and uh my one of my Hebrew dictionaries means shining, admitting light.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the next word in that my dictionary is Karen, uh, which means a horn, a bony growth.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and uh these two words are so close in their spelling that they could be translated either way.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Jerome chose the horns and said that Moses had horns, and so the result of that was 1200 years later, Michelangelo makes this famous um uh statue of Moses uh for the tomb of Julius in that church, uh St.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Pietro in Vicoli in Rome, and Moses has horns.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so people for the last 500 years have been looking at this, going, How the heck did Moses get horns?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: What what does that mean?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was a choice in translation that uh Jerome had, and he chose the word horns, and the result of that our image of Moses is forever changed.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: So uh that's why I really like to uh jump into uh what the Hebrew and Greek words actually mean so I don't miss any of the nuances.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: So here is here is the scene that uh we're looking at the Mount of Beatitudes, and though you can see the banana pant plantation down at the bottom of the hill.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is where Jesus gave uh this most famous teaching that we call the Sermon on the Mount.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: So let's try to join the crowd as we read these words.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the question is who's in the crowd?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, we got the Sadducees.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is a sect of Judaism.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: These were the elite society of Israel.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: They believed in the first five books, the Torah, but they didn't uh uh accept some of the other uh prophetic words and uh some of the teachings.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't believe in an afterlife, they didn't believe in angels.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's why they're sad, you see.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little way to remember that.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: I never heard that one.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my word.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh if that's all you have, you're gonna get in this life, you're gonna go for the gusto.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: So they were the rulers of the temple and they were the high priests.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Then you had the Pharisees, and this was the religious Jews who um they focused on a state of righteousness by obeying all of God's laws.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they even came up with their own laws, and they literally built a fence around God's laws by making their own so they would never get close to breaking God's law.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for example, uh, one of the commandments is you shouldn't work on Sabbath.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Pharisees decided, well, what is work?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they decided in Jesus' time that dragging a chair across a dirt floor was considered to be work because you're digging a little trench in the dirt.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: But you could drag it across a pavement, a stone pavement, and that would be acceptable.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, these things get to be ridiculous.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was, and Jesus, of course, uh his uh main opposition in his uh ministry was these Pharisees.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then you had the Essenes, which were uh kind of a spiritual uh sect that uh lived down in the desert by Qumran.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: They worshiped the one true God, but they were definitely in conflict with the temple authorities.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: They had their own calendar.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they considered the uh them to be heretics.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then, of course, there's the Herodians.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: These are the uh follower, the part of the government of Herod the king and the administration.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh these are the uh the ruling class, the uh these are Jews that don't obey the Torah.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: They uh they're in conflict with every religious group, and especially the Pharisees.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're in uh the allies of the Romans, and they're the ones that uh are managing the country.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then, of course, you have the zealots, and these this is the group that really resist the the Herodians and the Romans.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: They want the restoration of the Jewish kingdom.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're assassins, uh, they kill Romans and Herodians.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, because of the location of this teaching, right along the northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee, this is the main trade route from Egypt going to Damascus.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: So all of the caravans are coming, passing through this area, and that's why the Romans set up their tax station in Capernaum because this is this is like I-95 in Florida.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is the main trade route.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you have Romans and Greeks, uh pagan people that don't really uh know the Torah, they don't uh understand uh the God of Israel, but they're uh getting to know him.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: If I might say just add a little something here, sure.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: And that lesson is here uh for the novice, and that is you've got all these different sects, S-E-C-T-S.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: And um man tries to make uh religions.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the truth of God comes upon people, and then they want to make religions and tell people they need to dress a certain way or act a certain way.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: And uh Jesus certainly doesn't want you to be encumbered with that.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: Paul was converted by literally being knocked off his horse.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: He was a Pharisee.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, he was also a uh Roman uh citizen, he was a very smart man, and uh he um was very religious.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so when he became converted, he warned others of watch out, you don't get entrapped again with men.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: So all I can say is King David said, Blessed is the man that maketh the Lord his trust, cursed is the man that maketh man his trust.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: I urge everyone listening to this, uh, listen to us, uh, listen to your preachers or teachers or rabbis, but uh eat the meat and spit out the bones, and you will know internally God speaks to you.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: He wants a one-on-one relationship.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: Do not follow men, uh, follow the Lord.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: You can learn from men, but take everything men say with a grain of salt, correct, Mike?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, and it's because it's all about the grace of God in our lives.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing we can do to earn our way into God's favor.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: He's already granted that to us, and as his children, we we walk in that favor.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: So there's nothing we can do to earn more favor.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: God does give us his principles to that we should live our life by, uh, because uh he's w woven his logic and his wisdom into this creation, and when we do things God's way, things seem to work better, and that's what he desires for us.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: But in the back in the crowd, the the last group we have are the shepherds, the fishermen, the vine tenders, uh we got tax collectors, we got uh prostitutes.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: And up to this point in Jesus' ministry, he's done many miracles.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, he turned water into wine.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's his first miracle that John records.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: And please, if you don't remember anything else about Jesus, remember this he loves a good party.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: He turned water into fine wine at a marriage uh celebration.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: He loves a good party, okay?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's cast out many demons.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, this I mean, sometimes we get a false uh impression of who Jesus is.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we get this idea that he's some uh strict, uh stuck in the mud uh person that never smiles and he's very stern and he demands obedience.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: He wants obedience from us.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of benefits to obedience, but but Jesus, uh, first of all, is love personified, wisdom personified, and he loves a good relational party.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he loves people.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: I remember when I was first born again, I was up in the Catskills, and there was an event with a uh church, I won't mention the name, they're throughout the United States.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: And a bunch of people there, my grandfather, who was uh in his late 80s, said, What a miserable bunch of people, all kind of walking around with no smiles and stuff.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I realized later on I'd gotten myself involved in a church that was religious, but maybe not as spiritual, uh denying the power of the spirit thereof.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: So with the Lord, the Lord is you'll have joy.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so at this point, uh Jesus uh has done all of these things, so people know he's somebody.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: He just finished speaking at his hometown in Nazareth, where he quoted uh from Isaiah a messianic uh prophecy, and he said, Today, in your presence, this scripture is fulfilled, and suddenly they realize that he's claiming to be the Messiah.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: But we know this is a son of Joseph, the carpenter.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: We know his brothers and his sisters, and they took offense and they took him up to the top of the hill, and they were going to throw him off the cliff behind Nazareth, and he'd sort of walk through them.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, he's like this is what they do to the prophets.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_03: Anybody comes along that's the real McCoy, they kill, they kill the prophets, they want to kill Jesus.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's crazy, is it not?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it's when you go against the religious structure.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I mean, here a mere man is claiming to be God.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's an extraordinary thing.
• 30:04
  unknown: Yeah.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yet when you look at the prophecies that I, especially Isaiah uh and others, we knew God was going to come in into earth in the form of a man.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And when it actually happened, uh it caused a lot of surprise.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just put it that way.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, Jesus uh he got in big trouble when he was in a synagogue on Sabbath, and there was a man with a deformed hand, and Jesus looked at the Pharisees and said, Is it is it uh lawful to do good on the Sabbath?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and then he healed this man's hands, and they got really ticked at him because why why couldn't you wait till tomorrow to do that?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they went out, and that's when they began conspiring with their arch enemies, the Herodians, as to how they're gonna get rid of Jesus.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: So now we're in the crowd.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're surrounded by this multicultural crowd with varying religious beliefs.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: So now we're going to hear Jesus tell us some very significant things about discipleship.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna tell us about the process of what it bec means to become a true follower of Jesus.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna instruct us on how we're to interact with the people around us.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna give us an importance of the Hebrew scriptures and how we're to understand them.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he's going to encourage us to grow up spiritually and become mature in our thoughts and our attitudes.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's going to turn to our relationship with our Heavenly Father and how to communicate with Him and what our attitude should be toward material possessions, how to avoid anxiety, how do we deal with personal issues, how to discern false prophets and teachers, and what's the criteria for getting into heaven?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, these are the points that he's going to make, and Matthew records it in chapters 5, 6, and 7.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's an incredible teaching, but it's all focused on the walk of a disciple.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: So as he begins, uh we come to this section that Matthew starts.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Rhett, would you would you just read those first uh nine verses of uh Matthew, please?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'd love to.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: The Beatitudes uh Matthew 5, 3.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: Blessed are the pacemakers, the peacemakers, not pacemakers.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_03: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_03: Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: And just before you start off on blessed are the poor in spirit, I would just like to say this, folks.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_03: People hear that and they think, blessed are the poor.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: No, blessed are the poor in spirit.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: And it just simply just means, are you are you know that you have need of a power greater than yourself?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: So blessed am I, because I know I'm poor.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that that word, well, the word blessed, first of all, is to uh is is this transcendent happiness to actually be in relationship and connected with God.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the word makariae is the uh Greek word.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: It has this transcendent sense of our peaceful, happy, and contentment that we are connected with God.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: And as you point out, Rett, um there's some nuances to the words that are really significant here.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, as I read this as a brand new believer, I'm thinking, wow, these are uh virtues uh individually that I don't think I could ever achieve on my own, uh these virtues of poor in spirit, of mourning, being meek, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh but uh fortunately, uh one of my great sources of understanding Greek grammar and Greek language is uh Dr.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Spyros Zodiades, who was a uh guy born in Cyprus, came to the US, got a degree in theology and in uh linguistics, wrote over 200 books, uh half of them in the Greek language.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the key one of his uh greatest uh accomplishments was key words of the Bible and the keyword study Bible.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Spiro says that as we read these Beatitudes, these we must read them in a progressive sense of each virtue being built upon the other, the next, the next.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if you read them in a progressive sense, then the whole significance I think really takes a turn and it becomes very personable.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: So let me let me just explain that.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um because you point out that poor in spirit, this is the word tochos in the Greek language.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a helpless person, it's a helpless person who has no physical resources and they are unable to help themselves.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says the first step in blessedness is our having an encounter with God and understanding that we are far from Him, and as we're dealing with the issues of life, we recognize we are powerless to make any changes uh in the things that we're doing, and that we desperately need God in our life.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, all of us who have walked with the Lord have gotten to places where we uh recognize we cannot do this on our own strength.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the point where we must uh understand that we are broken, we are unable to accomplish anything, and we have a desperate need for God.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um David actually echoes this in Psalm 51.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You don't desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: You do not want a burn offering.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O Lord.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the first step in uh true discipleship is a humility and a brokenness and a dependence on God Himself in all the areas of your life.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I think your comment about the misunderstanding of that is an economic sense.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, brokenness, uh tochos is you're without resources.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you have no relationships, you have no economy, you're you're in a situation where only God Himself can get you out of.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: And that's one because in the 12-step program, they say you have to, the very first step is saying my life became unmanageable and that I needed a higher power, which exactly mirrors what the Lord said here.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: I never realized that to this very moment.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, just remember the guys that wrote the 12-step were ardent followers of Jesus, and they understood this process.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if in fact we are desperate and uh for God's presence and power in our life, the next uh virtue here is blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: This word is hoy pentothes.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: It means to lament and have sorrow for one's sins as well as the sins of others.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm dealing with some issues of sin in my life.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm desperate for God to help me because I can't do anything.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: I come to this place where I'm mourning the effects of sin in my life.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now the next uh line says, Blessed are the meek or the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this word is the word pratis.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Pratis, P-R-A-U-T-E-S.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, according to Aristotle, who I think is a really good source of Greek language, pratis is the position between getting angry without reason and not getting angry at all.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: In this context, prratis means having anger at sin.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm desperately needing God to intervene in my life because I'm in behavior that is causing uh damage to me and the people around me.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm suddenly mourning the effects of my sin.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: Now I want to I would like to say this about the word meek.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: I remember Pat Robertson teaching this.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_03: He said, a meek horse is not a weak horse.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: A meek horse can be a mighty Clydesdale, but a meek horse is one where the master will say, Move to the left, will whisper, and the and the uh the it's it's power under authority, and the horse will do what its master says.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_03: So uh meek does not necessarily mean weak, but it means surrendering your power to your master.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Chuck Swindall uh uh gave me a translation, um, power under strength.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I think this in the context of what we're reading here, I think Aristotle's is to me the best understanding is I'm dealing with issues, I can't do it on my own, I'm I'm mourning the effects of sin in my life, and suddenly I get angry at sin.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: I decide I'm going to do something about it.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: The next line says, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this hunger and thirst are these two words penao and desayo, which means to crave ardently, to seek with eager desire the things by which the soul is refreshed, supported, and strengthened.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: And what are we hungering and thirsting after?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's diacosine, it's integrity, virtue, purity of life, rightness, correctness of thinking and feeling.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: So recognizing our own spiritual brokenness and mourning the effects of sin in our lives with a sudden anger at sin and a desire for change, now we're seeking God and His ways of thinking and His ways of acting at a very basic human level.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: Where we're hungry and thirsty, and we realize only God has the solutions to our life problems.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: The next line says, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this word is elimon, kindness and goodwill toward those affected, afflicted by sin, and indicating a desire to help.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if we have personally felt the effects of sin and we're sorry and angered by it, we now realize that those around us, they're basically in the same boat that we're in.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're dealing with their own issues.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: And before, maybe we pointed our fingers and were judgmental toward them, but now we realize they're just like us.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we can't be judgmental anymore.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're merciful, we're compassionate, we have empathy.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we're no longer uh looking at them with uh just uh why can't you get it together?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because we realize we don't have it together.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: We become merciful, and that is a huge change.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: The next line is Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: As a result of this process of us recognizing our own spiritual helplessness and our sorrow for sin and our anger at the effects of sin, combined with this desire to lead a righteous life and having compassion for those around us that are caught up in their own sin.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: In this process, we are being transformed.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: This word pure of heart is carthoscardia.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: It means a purification by fire, or it means also the condition of a vine that has been pruned and ready to bear fruit.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful phrase because this is the process that's happening.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Our heart is being purified.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're being pruned, we're getting ready to bear some fruit.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: And this goes along with what Paul is saying, one of the great themes of the Christian scriptures.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh 2 Corinthians 5, 17, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creature.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Old things have passed away.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Behold, new things have come.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the the uh new creature is this word, conos kistis.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: It literally means a previously unseen biological creation that comes from God Himself.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Rhett, this is the born-again experience.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is the spiritual birth from above.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly there's a new process, a new creature is is present in us, and literally trying to break out of our old natural self and become the child of God that we are destined to be.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: See?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the beauty all world religions are a process saying, make yourself acceptable to the deity, and he will accept you by your good works, by your words.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some cults think it's by the color of the clothes you wear, by how much you meditate, uh, the things that you do.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: But Christianity is completely different than world religions.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Christianity says God loves you and he's pursuing you, and all you have to do is stop and receive his love and his sacrifice, the blood sacrifice for the sins and the separation.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're connected with God.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he puts his Holy Spirit inside you.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this whole process begins that is completely different than.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Mankind trying to make himself acceptable to God.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_03: Many of the religions say you must die for God and give up and sacrifice your life.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas Jesus, the only one comes along and says, No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: I came, I died for you.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: All you need to do is accept my gift of relationship that we will have eternally, should you surrender.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: But I give you free will, you can reject me or choose me, because that's the only way you can.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's like Mike, if uh if we had a dictator in the United States of America, and he says, Mike Bagley, you've got to be friends with Rhett Palmer.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, but does that mean we're really friends?
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas if we meet each other and we choose to be friends, we have free will, then we're really friends.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_03: So you can either choose to reject Jesus or choose to accept him.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh this this whole process of transformation in Scripture is defined as, well, let me just read this uh incredible passage out of Philippians chapter two, where Paul is saying, So then, my dear friends, just as you've always obeyed, not only in my presence, but even more in my absence, continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: For the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort for the sake of his good pleasure is God.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, see, it's God that is bringing forth the desire to make these changes, and then he's given you the power to actually do it in.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a personal example in my own life.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm married to a Japanese girl, born in Honolulu, raised in a Hawaiian-Japanese culture.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I have friends that are married to Asian women, and it seems we all have a same issue, us howlies, us Caucasians.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that we speak in a different manner, that our tone of voice is different.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in uh Asian culture, that's often considered harsh and disrespectful and uh not kind.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: What is?
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh speaking in a normal tone of that I'm speaking to you now.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's something urgent, like I say, Laura, please get in the car because something's gotta something's happening.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh speaking urgently to my wife comes across to her as unkindness and sometimes anger.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so for many years.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: My wife, the same thing.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Is she Asian?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: No, but she I tell you what, you know, Jerry Seinfeld, I went to see Jerry Seinfeld when we first met, and she'd been saying your tone, your tone to Barbara, to me.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: Barbara, your tone, your tone.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, anyway, we go, we go down South Florida and we go to see Jerry Seinfeld, and he gets up and he goes, You know, he said, I waited till I was 50 to get married.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_03: I waited all my life to get married.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: But he says, You know, now I can't talk like this in my own home.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_03: I can't even speak like this because she says, It's your tone.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_03: We started laughing.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe it's uh it's it's probably a female thing, but what I noticed in uh at least in Japanese culture, yeah, my wife was being withered by the words that I spoke and the manner, the manner in which, and I could just watch her wither.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: And for a number of years, I just said, come on, this is the way I am, just get over it.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because even in our discussions, I'm a person that likes to have a discussion.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: And when in the middle of exchanging thoughts, I will very naturally challenge her in her thinking, uh, which is a normal uh back and forth uh polemic of um normal conversation.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: But in her culture, it's uh very withering, and it's when inner interruptions are disrespectful, and uh I found myself uh sort of justifying my behavior.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_03: Are you sure you don't have a microphone in my automobile you've been listening in?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I found that uh it was it was causing great uh disruption in our relationship.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'd like to add this though, and I'll send this to you later today.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: We can post in the future.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_03: I've just done a whole study on the gentleness.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, it says in Samuel, thy gentleness hath made thee great.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's written in Psalms, Thy gentleness hath made thee great.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_03: And uh a soft answer turneth away wrath.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, we've got to rest up about 12 of these scriptures, realizing late in life um that uh a gentle, well, even the Bible says in a woman of uh a gentle and tender spirit is of great value in the eyes of God.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm also thinking, you know, we've had a lot of people on radio and TV who have been yellers, and I think we're coming into a a new a new wave, and that wave is uh is is it is one of gentleness.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: I think at least we're working with me, he's been, you know.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh well the the the point I think for me was I didn't really want to change.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was I didn't want to change.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: How dramatic! And I found dramatic well I found I was caught up in my habitual behavior.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is the way I am, and so I prayed, Lord, please help me change my language, please help me change my attitude.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, because I didn't even have the desire, writ.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: And over the next few weeks, I had a great desire suddenly that appeared in my life that I should be very mindful of the words that come out of my mouth to my wife.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_03: Did your did your children, because you're known as Poppy, and uh it's was a very friend, and you seem to be a very gentle man.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: I'm attracted to that as a friend with you.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're you're catching a later version of me.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_03: So would you would your children agree that maybe you were a little harsh of nature and dramatic when you were younger?
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's I'm uh the I think the point of of uh me confessing this is I didn't have a desire to change.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: I told my wife, get used to it, this is the way I am, and I saw withering and I saw just uh it wasn't good for and so I asked God to change my heart.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is what this verse says that He is the one bringing forth the desire, okay?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, the desire to change and the power or the effort to actually do it.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: So first I had to have the desire.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've applied this principle to many other areas of my life since then because suddenly the desire to be more gentle in my language with my wife appeared.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is after many years of marriage, I would say probably 20 years of marriage.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the desire suddenly appeared, and then by golly, I was able to catch the words before they left my lips and stop them, pause for a second or two, and replace them with a much softer tone, a more gentle tone, a pause without interruptions, and a listening tone.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: I like that too.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I gotta say, that changed everything in our relationship.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I just want to encourage uh any of uh you that you're coming up on issues in your life that you know are not the best way to go about relationships or anything.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh things that you look at on your phone, things that you're reading, uh where your mind goes, uh just the way you're handling relationships, business, uh all these things, dietary things.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, give me a desire to change and do these your way and not my way.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when you ask for that desire, my experience is he gives it to you.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: And not only that, he follows it up by giving you the power or the ability to actually do this.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is what I think the kanos kistis, the becoming a new creation.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, I'm gonna hold up this picture here of uh this is a mountain uh that um in the Bavarian Alps that I was walking with some friends, and it was a rainy day, and uh we're walking around this lake, and all of a sudden the clouds parted, and this mountain just suddenly appeared, and we all ran out on the dock and took pictures of this mountain.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: I call it Mirror Mountain, because look at the reflection.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: The reflection is so incredible uh to the actual issue or to the mountain.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh 2 Corinthians 3 18 says, as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like him and reflect his glory even more.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that is an incredible image of reflecting his glory even more.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is, I think, Rhett, this is the process of this uh purification of your heart.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I you know, Francis, you know, this reminds me of Francis of Assisi, who said, preach Christ at all times, but only use words as a last resort.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, as we get older, I realize that the right kindness opens hearts.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: It does.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: But just remember, uh, Francis also spent almost a year in Egypt trying to convince one of the Muslim leaders there to accept Christ.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: He used plenty of words in his ministry.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but actions uh do speak louder than words.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: So so here we are uh going through a process of recognizing our own brokenness, of getting uh realizing the effects and mourning the effects of sin in our life.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: We are now getting angry at sin.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're deciding it's time to do something, and this is where the Lord now gives us a desire and he starts giving us an action.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're hungering and thirsting for his ways rather than our ways.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're looking around us and we're not judging the people that are uh caught up in their own behavior because we're all in the same boat.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: As this process is going on, we're being transformed, we're becoming more pure in heart, we're becoming this new person.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, verse 9 says, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this word peacemakers is not those that stop fights.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is a word that means those who bring the peace of God that they have experienced to those around them who have yet to receive it.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: We become peacemakers.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: We become people that are bringing the message of having a relationship with God, a peace with God.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so you see the process here?
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is um the beatitudes are not individual uh virtues that we have to strive for.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think when we look at them in a progressive sense, they describe the process that we're all involved in of coming to our end, end of our wits, desperately needing God, realizing there's things going on in our life that are not going well.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: We get, we're mourning that, we're asking God, please help us, give us a desire.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: And by golly, we're not being judgmental to the people around us.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he's giving us the power, the ability to walk with him, and our heart is being changed, and we get transformed from self-serving people to people that are looking at the needs of the people around us, and we become good ambassadors, good witnesses, because now we have a peace with God, a relationship with him, and we very naturally want to bring it to others.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I'd like to add this little aside here, don't ring the bell yet.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_03: But when I uh when I encountered Billy Graham, Dr.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_03: Billy Graham, and I interviewed her for him for my radio show, I sort of melted in his presence because he was the kindest, nicest man.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_03: Now, he looked me directly in the eye.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_03: He was firm, he was not weak, but he was there.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_03: You could see he had no agenda for self.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_03: It was all about me and my listeners.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I I would look back at some of the programs now they play on YouTube of him preaching.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_03: He spoke with authority, but he did not yell at people, and he did not point the finger.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_03: He said, you know, we sin.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, his gentleness really melted my heart.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I think what Jesus is describing here is something that Billy really personified.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: And because he recognized his own desperate need for God.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you and you notice so much of the messages that he gave were very simple messages.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I just uh I have a book at uh that I found uh that my dad purchased years ago, and I was looking through some old books, and it was about Billy Graham's campaign in England, I think it was 1955 or 56.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when he and he was speaking to large crowds, there was a huge revival.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: But when he went to Oxford, uh there was so much uh criticism of this brash young man from North Carolina bringing a very simple message of the gospel, and the intellectuals of uh Oxford uh were scoffing at the simplicity of his message.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: So Billy sort of boned up on his um uh quotes from famous uh Christians and philosophers, and he really the first four days of his uh uh ministry there, he he was going down the intellectual persuasion route, and there was nothing happening.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, on his last day, he started off in Genesis and he went through the Bible and he went through every place where a blood sacrifice was required for uh rectification of the relationship with God, and he spoke about the blood of Jesus and how it purifies our sins, and it's the blood of Jesus, him dying for us on the cross.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a very profound message.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what happened?
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: As it ended, people stood around and over 400 people received Jesus that night.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very simple message that he gave.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, who was that that gave that message?
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: Billy Graham, the guy that you're talking.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh this is a reminder of me of what it comes down to.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's the blood of Jesus that has purified my sins.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: He really, really does love me.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the Beatitudes start off with this sort of intimate need of God that we have in our life and him showing up for us and bringing his power into our life through his Holy Spirit, where we actually are able to address areas of our sin and become more and more like him, less self-centered, more other-centered, and much more effective in very naturally bringing this message of restored relationship with Christ to the world.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is the starting point of true discipleship.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so Matthew records this is Jesus' opening to his most famous teaching.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the next area that Jesus addresses is our relationships with those around us.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: So would you uh uh read, start off reading in uh verse uh 13, Arrett, you're the salt of the earth.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_03: Believers are salt and light.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_03: It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_03: Want me to continue?
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_03: You are the light of the world.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_03: A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_03: Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here's a famous passage salt and light.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, salt has a special significance uh to Bible uh people.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um think about it for a moment.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can dissolve salt in water, then evaporate it, it returns to the same crystalline structure.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can try to burn it, but it doesn't burn.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, salt was used for flavoring food and for salting fish and other meals uh to meats to prolong their shelf life.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you can go into a Bedouin uh community today, and you can go into a tent in a Bedouin community, which we have been in, and you will notice there's a clump of salt in a bowl that's on the table.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to show you this picture because you can go to the Dead Sea and you see you can just pick up clumps of salt uh that are lying along the shore.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: And this is my daughter, Michaela, picking up clumps of salt and just piling them up, and you'll notice that the clumps of salt have some dirt mixed in with them.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: You notice that?
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so uh you place that clump of salt on the table and you break it up with your fingers and you sprinkle it over your food for flavoring.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a certain point where there's more dirt in the bowl than there is salt, and that's when the lady of the house, so to speak, or somebody comes and takes the salt, walks over to the door of the tent, and throws it outside and puts a fresh clump on.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, archaeologists can uh identify the streets in ancient communities by the salinity content.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_00: So this this comment of what good is this if it's lost its flavor, it'll be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is what Jesus is referring to.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: This practice of taking the salt bowl that has uh got more dirt in it than salt and just tossing it out the door and putting a fresh clump on it.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_03: So if you get the dirt of the world, too much of the dirt in the world into us, then we have lost our our our preservative flavor.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I think it's just a practical uh measure that uh you're it's there's no uh spiritualization, I think, of that.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's simply that there's more dirt in the bowl than salt, so you toss what's in there out and you put a fresh clump on.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um but he says if you lose your lose your lose, if it loses its saltiness, does that mean that we are capable of losing the sort of I I think we could go down many roads, but let's stick to a practical understanding of what was going on in the culture.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: That you're just taking a bowl that's mixed with salt and dirt because you're losing you've lost a lot of the saltiness, right?
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you toss it out the door because archaeologists can identify the streets of ancient cities by the salinity content, okay?
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now uh in our culture we put salt on the our uh food uh for flavor.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: My friends on the Cocoa River, they uh when they catch fish and they hunt and they make jerky, they put salt on the meat and salt on the fish to preserve them.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: So the normal understanding of this passage of what does being salt of the earth mean?
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: It means to be a flavor of our culture, to be a preservative of our values.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: But as we look in the Hebrew scriptures, we see there's even more significance to the understanding of what salt is.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: For example, in Numbers chapter 18, God makes a salt covenant with the Levites, and he says this is an everlasting covenant of salt before the Lord.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: So from this we understand that salt covenants last forever.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, salt doesn't change.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can uh dissolve it in water and evaporate, it comes back to the same crystalline structure.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: And even uh God makes a salt covenant with David.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: He says in uh 2 Corinthians 13 that the Lord God gave rule over Israel forever to David and his sons by a covenant of salt.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then in Leviticus chapter 2, God instructs the people to sprinkle salt on the grain offerings, uh, on their offerings, as a sign of their eternal relationship.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: Every grain offering of yours, moreover, you shall season with salt, so that the salt of the covenant of your Lord shall not be lacking from your grain.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I think we can see that in this context, salt refers to relationship, our covenant with God.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a book that uh I read and still uh uh reference, uh The History of Salt, Salt, a World History by Mark Kurlansky.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: And on page seven, he says, he writes this salt was to the ancient Hebrews and still is to modern Jews the symbol of the eternal nature of God's covenant with Israel.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: On Friday nights, Jews dip the Sabbath bread in salt.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_00: In Judaism, bread is a symbol of food, which is a gift from God, and dipping the bread in salt preserves it, keeps the agreement between God and his people.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, in Middle Eastern culture, if you're friends with somebody You could say something to indicate that, like there's salt between us, and they would understand that yes, we're friends.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus refers to this uh uh relational aspects where he says in Mark chapter 9, salt is good for seasoning, but if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again?
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_00: You must have the qualities of salt among yourself and live in peace with each other.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: See, he's he's instructing his disciples to be known uh to be known by their loyalty to their friends and their family.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: And even when Paul is instructing his friends in Colossae, he says, Let your speech always be with grace as though seasoned with salt, so that you sh will know how you should respond to each person.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: So so this being salt of the earth has a very relational meaning.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna show you a picture here, Rhett, of a famous uh painting by Leonardo da Vinci.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_03: Make sure you describe it for the people on radio can't see it.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's the uh Last Supper.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is sitting at a long table, and Jesus has just said something.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: Someone is going to betray me, and all the disciples are going, who, who, and they're leaning over.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: Who who is it?
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_00: Who is it?
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Leonardo is painting this, and if you notice the third guy on Jesus' right, uh who's holding the money bag, that's Judas.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you notice in this uh Last Supper painting, Judas has just knocked over the salt container with his right wrist, and it is spilled out on the table.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's no more loyalty between him and Jesus.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now I found that extraordinary when I noticed this Last Supper uh painting that the salt had been spilt out.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: I went, wow.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: Leonardo understood that the sea this flavor, this seasoning that Jesus is calling us to in our culture is to be loyal and faithful, unoffendable friends.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: This should be our attitude and our relationship, and that our good works, our uh service to others, let they should shine before men as light so that people will see the light of God in us, will actually see Jesus in us.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_03: So let me let me let me interrupt here just to say this.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh this is for Dolan.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, by the way, you're listening to uh Cup of Friendship.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I'm Rhett Palmer, uh, been on the radio for 32 years.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_03: My friend Mike Bagby is a biblical historian, and some you can call him a rabbi.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_03: He spent many, many years going back and forth to Israel.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_03: He's also, he and his beautiful bride and four children have been missionaries for, I guess, over 40 years now down in the islands, and they were going to build a church down there.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_03: And the Lord spoke to him to open up a um a coffee shop because some people will not grace the doorstep of a church, but they will come to a coffee shop, and this is the way you can uh build up equity and get to know people and then perhaps let them know about your Lord and Savior.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_03: We also have uh coffee available.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_03: You can see the package between us.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's called Cup of Friendship, and I think it's dot com, is it not?
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and so you might want to order some of our coffee that helps uh support us.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_03: We've we've sold, we've sold actually sold two bags recently.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_03: So Red.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_03: So let's keep continuing on.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_00: So uh now I have an understanding of what being salt and light actually means as I as I uh put it in its cultural context and I and its biblical context of uh unchanging relationships.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine if we followers of Jesus were known as friendly, unoffendable people.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Red, have you met followers of Jesus that aren't necessarily friendly to others?
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And have you met uh followers of Jesus that sometimes, as we naturally do, hold on to offenses?
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And see, I think what Jesus is calling us to do in this uh teaching on discipleship is first recognize our desperate need of God and allow him to change us.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the first changes that uh we should uh be uh coming to is not being judgmental people that hold on to offenses that are looking out for our own interest, but looking out for the interests of others and being known as loyal, faithful friends in our communities.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned that, yes, we were going to start a church on the island of Utila, which is in the Western Caribbean.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a free dive and scuba diving destination.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna start a church there in the nineties to reach out to the travelers that come from Europe and Asia and Australia and South America, all over the world for scuba and free diving.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the Lord said no, a coffee a coffee shop because we could serve a good cup of coffee and serve a meal and start a relationship of friendship because coffee is the friendship drink, and actually become friends with people.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when we become friends with people, now very naturally as we're asking them questions and getting to know them and about their life, they're very naturally going to ask us questions, and thus begins a very organic process of evangelism, if I can use that word, of them becoming to know the peace of God that we have and us being able to extend that understanding to them.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_03: As opposed to jumping all over people.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So um I believe salt and light is basically faithful, loyal, caring friends who do random acts of kindness and service for others.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, this goes along with so much of the biblical teaching in the Christian scriptures.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Paul says in Philippians chapter two, do nothing from selfish or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Don't merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interest of the world.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you reading from Philippians?
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you reading from Philippians chapter two?
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, could you read that again?
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's really good.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is uh where uh we're uh uh Paul's actually going to give a description of what Jesus did by not regarding the prerogatives of God, coming to earth as a human being, setting aside his his hum his godliness and becoming a human and then serving us and giving his life as a ransom.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_00: He starts that off by saying, Do nothing from selfish or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do not merely look out for your own interest, but also the interest of others.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think what Jesus is saying, if we're going to be his true disciples, that we will indeed consider the needs of others that are much more important than our own.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_00: We won't hold on to offenses, we'll always keep the door open to those who are offended by our words of counsel, our Christian behavior, because there's a lot of that going on, and uh that this should be our lifestyle, and it's uh actually the first step in true organic evangelism.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I I honestly think that when I uh started uh spending time and living in Israel and I saw salt and I was on a camel trip, and I watched that lady toss the uh salt bowl out the door, you know, and uh what was in the bowl, and I began to get an understanding of what Jesus might be saying to his disciples regarding losing its flavor, being trampled upon by men.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And um we can't uh spiritualize words like that.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_00: We have to contextualize them and understand maybe what the disciples were thinking.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the bottom line is we're to be known as loyal, unoffendable friends.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're to be salty people.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Our speech should always be directed toward relationship uh and peace and bringing uh understanding.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is uh the steps of true discipleship.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's yeah, I'm learning uh maybe latently that it's there's much more joy in being in service.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_03: In other words, now I say to my friends, I say, now there's five of us in the room right here.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, uh according to what I've learned now, I'm supposed to be in service of all of you above myself.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_03: And when we do that, it's like when you let somebody else out in traffic, it feels really good.
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_03: Now, if they don't thank you, that they don't thank me, that's none of my business.
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_03: I've done the right thing.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_03: I've dignified others and helped them, or you give to somebody, don't expect something in response, but esteeming others greater than self, and it's quite a joy.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's and in fact, yeah, I think you're bringing up a good point of uh our behavior and traffic.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I just uh I'm uh I'm uh my uh home is now uh here in Vero Beach and in Honduras, but I also uh I am at home in the island of Maui where uh my our home church, Hope Chapel, is.
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_00: We just uh returned from spending uh some time there working with our churches.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And there, the way the traffic patterns are, it works so much better if when someone's trying to pull out on a busy street, you actually slow down, you give them a gap and you allow them to pull in.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much aloha in that uh uh gesture.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_00: I find uh myself challenged uh often here in Vero Beach, uh particularly out by our cafe on 43rd Avenue, the way they constructed a new road, there's a merged lane that suddenly uh uh you're merging and everyone's in a hurry.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh uh You know what?
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_03: I'm from I'm familiar with that spot, you know, and I want to take a picture of it and send it to the city fathers and say, why did you just not complete it when you come up on Aviation Boulevard?
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_03: Who was not thinking properly there?
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's another phase of the project where they're gonna put a culvert in under uh uh 43rd Avenue and 26th Avenue, and there just wasn't room for a right turn lane.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_03: So, but they You know what would be good there really is a circle.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_03: A circle.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_03: They work very well, right?
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is, I was challenged in my Christian behavior, and even my son, everybody was challenged by that.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then we've all finally got to the point where we just we're letting people in.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're not racing down to the traffic light room, we're just pausing and letting people in front of us.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And as you say, there's a lot of uh joy in allowing that to happen.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd like to just kind of finish this uh section, and I think we'll pick up red on our next uh uh session with uh Jesus now turning to help us understand the scriptures and how we're to read them.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this Sermon on the Mount is such a um a valuable teaching for us disciples of Jesus, and it's one that I've been meditating on a lot in these last couple of months.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um God's been teaching me a lot about my own personal attitudes toward things and people, and uh it's a good meditation.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the the desperate need we have for God and our now unself-centeredness, selfishness, our uh becoming other-centered, which is the main theme of the Bible.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_00: God is other-centered, he's all for us.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I love it.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_03: Now, blessed are those who mourn.
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_03: Something I never thought about.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_03: We all have problems in our lives, and I'm sure everybody listening to this, uh, you know, we all tend to think everybody else has a their family, it must be perfect, but we have this, we have this challenge or that challenge.
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_03: But late in life I've realized uh Jesus is written that Jesus learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and also that he was a man acquainted with many sorrows.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well, if if if Yeshua or Jesus of Nazareth had to go through sorrows in order to learn things, how much more will we, as his disciples, need to embrace the valleys that we experience so we can become more Christ-like?
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I think uh that's in reference to his role as our savior.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh obviously, as our as our creator, he didn't need to learn nothing.
• 1:19:04
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's the the embodiment of God's wisdom.
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but to become our savior required great sacrifice on his part.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think uh I think what you just quoted is in reference to him being our savior.
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's my savior, but he's also my Lord.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, good point.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_03: But I know a lot of people want to run from the of the sadness or the sorrow that they may experience, but uh, you know, if we we we certainly don't grow when we're fat and happy.
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_00: We grow when we're we grow, we grow when we have a desperate need of God in our life, Rhett.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I tell you what, you know, because I when I when I uh over these past five, six years, I've been attending classes with you as the uh the rabbi there reading the Bible and this men's group we go to on Tuesdays, and and uh I I perceive you as being uh a gentle spirit.
• 1:19:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I and I hear that your children call you poppy and they have great love for you and respect.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_03: But for you to come forth and say it took you uh it took your life 20 years of battling you to say, you know, just to become more gentle in spirit and a calmer, tender voice.
• 1:20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was I was challenging her to change, right?
• 1:20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, Laura, just change and be like me, okay?
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Be argumentative, be didactic here.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh allow uh allow interruptions to be part of your normal life, you know.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh once I figure out what you once I figure out what you're gonna say, I don't need to hear any more words.
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you what I think because what I think is more important than what you think.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_00: So just listen to my voice and hear my thoughts and agree with me.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_03: I gotta tell you what you have you been reading, have you been reading my my whatever it is what I say, reading my my mail?
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, but the reality is my wife is so relational, she's so effective with people.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just uh in awe of uh just how she uh just manages her relationship.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_00: She's such a giving person.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_00: She's always thinking of others, and it's it's embarrassing for me.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_00: The way that she thinks for others, and I don't even give them a care, you know.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, what do I want to accomplish today?
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, this life experience is uh is transformation.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_00: God is changing us uh moment by moment, and we should allow the process of transformation to take place.
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_00: But we are habitual people, you know, we're we're ingrained, there's there's instincts, and you know, we're very earthly.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're we have a this sin nature that we're constantly confronting, and our culture and the uh the world around us is uh is telling us things that are very contrary to God and his wisdom.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have the demons that are actively engaging us and battling against us.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's quite the challenge to walk through this world and and we get 70, 80, 90 years of life, and then we get a choice of where we're gonna spend eternity.
• 1:22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so many people are not making that choice because they have a misconception of what relationship with God is supposed to be.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_03: And and I do want to say this also.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when if you if anybody out there likes to fish, I'm not really a fisherman, but I have I think most of us fish at least once or twice in life.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you don't you don't clean a fish and then catch it.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_03: You catch the fish.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_03: Meaning this, do not presuppose that you have to be somehow uh a holy person or a person without sin to come to the Lord.
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_03: The Lord accepts us right where, I don't care where you've been sleeping, where you haven't been sleeping, what you've done or what you've left undone.
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_03: The Lord says, Come to me.
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then once you accept him as your Lord and Savior, no matter how bad you've been, no matter what wrong you've done, if you are sorrowful for that and just want a new beginning, he will give you a new beginning.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_03: But I will I will tell you this, it may not happen the first year or the second year, but if you have accepted Jesus into your heart, you will begin.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_03: I remember I used to go into Christian bookstores when I was first born again, and I'd read that.
• 1:23:14
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to read that.
• 1:23:15
  SPEAKER_03: I just want to have okay, Jesus.
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_03: I want to, I just want to sing kumbaya, and everything's all right.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to deal with my own issues yet, just yet.
• 1:23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And God is uh He's very gentle and very patient with us, and uh but we come to a place where we start mourning the effects of our own bad behavior, okay?
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And our own ungodly attitudes and actions.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh boy, oh boy, and uh it's a process.
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_03: So uh well, listen, Mike.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Mike Bagby, it's great to see you.
• 1:23:50
  SPEAKER_03: Love you in the Lord, bro.
• 1:23:51
  SPEAKER_03: And uh he's a biblical historian, been to Israel many times.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_00: He's mixed you don't have to say that at Red.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_03: Well, no, but can people tune in and out?
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_03: I want them to give you know to give you the credibility that they understand you know what you what you are.
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_03: I I'm Rhett Palmer.
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a nobody.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_03: But but God has made me so hopefully you still love me.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, um, you too can be loved eternally by accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
• 1:24:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, by the way, we we have a bag of coffee that's between us right here.
• 1:24:20
  SPEAKER_03: We're not going to go on and on like some of these podcasters or other hosts.
• 1:24:24
  SPEAKER_03: We will tell you that this coffee is available.
• 1:24:27
  SPEAKER_03: It you know, we've just started this.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's called uh Cup of Friendship.
• 1:24:31
  SPEAKER_03: And what's the website, Michael?
• 1:24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Cup of Friends, cupofriendship.com.
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Roast of Friendship.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_03: And we have three different three yep, three different flavors, and you actually um cook the coffee.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_03: What do you call that?
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_03: You bake it or yeah, we bake it.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_00: We put it in the oven and bake it.
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, we have a roaster.
• 1:24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Roast coffee.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_00: We do it on uh Tuesday and Friday here in Vero Beach at the Rio Coco Cafe.
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Come by and you can smell it before you uh when you get out of your car, you will smell the roast going on.
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, well listen, uh God bless you, and we'll see it.
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we'll see you maybe either later this week or perhaps next week.
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, adios, you mean go.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_03: Glory to the Lord.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so there we have it.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, Red, when do you want to pick up and uh continue uh the Sermon on the Mount?
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_00: You want to do it on Friday?
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I have I know I have a former diplomat coming in Friday.
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_03: I know Doolan will not be there.
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_03: He's on holiday.
• 1:25:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um that guy's from 10 to 11.
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we have someone else that does a show.
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh uh, they they zoom in from uh Vermont, actually, on Fridays, I think at noon.
• 1:25:51
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Doolin when you let's just wait till next Wednesday.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well, uh I won't be here Friday, but Noah will be in the studio, so he can be here to run the show for you whenever.
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to do some on Friday, Brett?
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Nine to ten?
• 1:26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we can do nine to ten.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:26:08
  SPEAKER_03: And you might want to stick around for this.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he can be a little abrasive.
• 1:26:12
  SPEAKER_03: He is a former U.S.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_03: diplomat, claims that his family was Republican, but he's he's very anti-Trump and and he gives me a lot of contest.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh uh and why are you having him on your show?
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I had him on for eight years straight until uh it just kind of like realized I don't want I don't really want much to do with man's politics.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_03: But he is called to come on once in a while if there's a certain conflict going on.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there is a lot of conflict in the world today.
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_03: So it's inter and I don't mind hearing other points of view because as as a as they say, the proverbial spring, if you stretch it out, it never goes all the way back.
• 1:26:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I should listen to opposing views.
• 1:26:52
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't mean I have to be embrace them, but so it's and he's a he's he's a very smart man.
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he went to the London School of Economics and um, you know, pretty bright fellow.
• 1:27:04
  SPEAKER_03: It'd be good if you were in there, actually, if you could meet him, because I'd like to see him come to know the Lord.
• 1:27:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think he maybe when he was younger had a perfunctory relationship by going to church, which I don't think he attends anymore.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think he really knows the Lord.
• 1:27:16
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think he's been born again.
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, um, you know, uh so uh also, you know, I was just thinking when you were talking about Laura.
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_03: I I hope I hope maybe in the fall or in the spring, maybe it would be really nice if Laura could encounter Barbara and Barbara could encounter Laura.
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh I think we could have Laura at one of our uh segments, you know.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, definitely.
• 1:27:39
  SPEAKER_03: She's a wise woman of the Lord.
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_03: And uh yeah.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_03: So Friday at nine o'clock, we're gonna do that.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Friday at nine o'clock, I'll work for nine to ten, and then if you want to stick around with him, um you know, you can Well, I I can uh I can ask him about the London School of Economics, you know, it was started by Beatrice Webb and her husband, and they were uh members of the Fabian Society and they were very s socialists.
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And when they uh Beatrice wrote in her diary, I think in 1895, that we've placed all our hope in the educational and social development of mankind.
• 1:28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then in 1925, this is like 30 years later, after World War I, she said, We're so disappointed in the experience of mankind, we've so hoped for better responses from all of our time and training.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_00: She was very desperate because all of her life work she recognized was a failure.
• 1:28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh boy.
• 1:28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because it's not going to be economics or social uh programs is gonna change the heart of man.
• 1:28:50
  SPEAKER_03: No, you can't intellect.
• 1:28:52
  SPEAKER_03: But uh um I do want to say this.
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_03: So we watched a movie last night.
• 1:28:55
  SPEAKER_03: We went to the movie theater and the new movie on Washington.
• 1:28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Young Washington.
• 1:29:00
  SPEAKER_03: So please go, please go see it.
• 1:29:02
  SPEAKER_03: I will, I will.
• 1:29:03
  SPEAKER_03: You'll love it.
• 1:29:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard it's a good movie.
• 1:29:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's great.
• 1:29:07
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, all right.
• 1:29:08
  SPEAKER_03: Bless you, bro.
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.