← ArchiveSunday, September 27, 2015DateSeptember 27, 2015Speaker—TextRomansPassages in this sermonMatthew 50:00Romans 78:571 Peter 216:14Numbers 12:2317:10Ephesians 417:48Deuteronomy 10:1719:411 John 5:121:59John 3:1626:23Romans 627:11John 10:1037:18TranscriptMachine transcribed. Click any line to jump there.0:00thank you guys appreciate it thank you so much if you brought your bible turn with me to matthew chapter 5 matthew chapter 5 fantastic thank you guys they do such a great job with the human video so to speak in the drama it's been a kind of a hodgepodge of worship experience today0:27huh baby dedication the drama and great biblical musical worship and then the hack gets to come up and preach so anyway i do pray that you will lock in to this message today because i think this is kind of our turning point of this whole beatitude series we've been the first couple have been set up today and this sets us up for the next five weeks and we're excited about that matthew's gospel0:54chapter 5 as we have every week we're going to read the entire text and then come back and look at verse number 5 seeing the crowds in verse 1 he went up to the mountain where he sat down and and sat down his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth and taught them saying blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted1:20blessed are the meat for they shall inherit the earth blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see god blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of god blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of1:45heaven blessed are you who are who others revel against you against you and persecute you and utter all kinds of the evil against you falsely on my account rejoice he says rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you you are the salt of the earth2:09if a but if salt has lost its taste how shall it salty saltness be restored it's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet you are the light of the world a city set on a hill cannot be hidden nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket put but put it on a stand and it gives2:33light to all in the house in the same verse 16 in the same way let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven let's pray father let the words of my mouth and a meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight today lord we love you we praise you we bless you3:00we thank you for this day that we have set aside to come and gather as the body of christ here in this room worshiping you in spirit and truth thank you for the musical worship that we had the baby dedication starting this process with the nurturing of this wonderful wonderful young man god i just thank you for a church who set aside this kind of worship gathering this type of worship event that we can come and and dedicate3:27children and also lord that we can come and celebrate with our student ministry as they lead us to a beautiful beautiful portrait of where our nation might be where our nation is and father i pray that we will draw our attention back to the savior of the universe god you are our only hope and we thank you father we can call upon you today lord i pray you remove any obstacles standing in the way from us hearing from3:56you today and i pray lord jesus that we walk away from this place completely different than we came and we give you all the glory in jesus name we pray and the church said amen we have to admit that some of us in this room are kind of messed up wouldn't you admit that we got some messed up people in this room we got a pretty good sized crowd here this morning we need more we've got plenty of space we've got plenty4:23of room we need to go bring some more in here for sure but in this room we have to admit we've got some messed up people we got some messed up people now now you may say yeah there's some messed up people look at the person next to you that person right there's a whole lot more messed up than i am right and some of you are nodding at your spouses and saying yeah he is definitely messed up right one way or another we all are experiencing pain and hurt and distraught and situations in our lives4:51you know some of us have gone kind of uh past the messed up level we're just catapulted ourselves just close to the whacked out level we're just underneath the nut job level and i'm telling you some of us in this room are just like that right and we all have pain we all have experienced that pain let me ask you this question if you've had pain or you're experiencing pain to one degree or5:17another or some form of hurt i'm talking about being wounded to some degree or another would you raise your hand just go ahead and raise your hand come on now let's see how many of you in this room some of you hadn't even raised your hand man where are you you're hiding under a rock well let me tell you something you're in a safe place bethel baptist church is a safe place if you're going through an emotional distress you're going through some pain and suffering in some situations in your5:42own personal life you have come to the right place welcome to bethel baptist church because we are just a bunch of messed up people trying to serve a risen savior who ultimately will because of our christ follower in our lifestyle being a as a christ follower we will ultimately be glorified and all that pain and suffering will all go away that's what we believe because that's what the bible tells us6:08if you're here today welcome you are in the right place at the right time you know all my years of ministry i've been in ministry 32 years now and all my years of ministry i in life to be honest with you we are i've found a lot of people including myself we've gotten real good at covering up our pain have we not we've gotten a real good to covering up our pain and our hurts and our distresses and how we do6:34that is not by by disguising the pain we do that by creating bad habits oftentimes we think that bad habits are a character weakness in our life when in reality they're just bad habits we've just had bad habits creating we create those we do that so we can hide or disguise the pain and the hurt in our life6:57we skip over the pain and go straight to the disguise or the bad habits we run to drugs we run to alcohol we run to illicit affairs we run to pornography we run to shopping of all things we run to television lying overeating cheating all kinds of things that we do these bad habits that we've created we run to that to disguise the pain that's deep with inside our lives and the pain and the hurt that's inside our7:23lives we won't get to the root of the matter because we have run to the bad habits and the pain in our life the pressure starts mounting up and starts building up and we say boy i sure need a drink oh i need a smoke i need a pot i need dry i need this i need that vicious cycle keeps leading it leaves us right at the doorstep of pain and misery rather than us dealing with that i've got some good news for you7:50though i've got some good news for you today brothers and sisters in this room the good news is that we can make some choices in this room today we can launch into a new atmosphere of our own personal walk with jesus today but it's a choice we have to make we have the opportunity to have something profoundly to change our life and god can do that right here in this room he can radically8:16change that now if you'll recall if you've been here and i know we got a lot of guests here because of the data dedication and others and you weren't here for the first session if you want to you can go back online and listen to it but our first installment of this series we dealt with this one idea of realizing that we're not god we aren't god and we're powerless to control the tendencies and the situations in our own life and and and our life is unmanageable that we needed some that one was8:45easy to realize that we're not gods in this room right that was real real easy and so then we we realized that romans 7 was a reality when when paul even said he says i don't understand myself at all for i really want to do what's right but i don't do it instead i do the very thing i hate when i want to do good i don't when i when i try to do not do what's wrong i always do it anyway so we9:10realize that we need god to fix that right that we have no control in that we are unmanageable we need somebody to direct and order our steps every step of the way and then in week two we talked about the earnestly to believing that god exists and that he has a that we actually matter to him last week we discussed that that we matter to god and that he has a a wooing a love he's crazy in love with us9:39and crazy love for us why because the bible says because i knew in while we were yet sinners christ died for us he demonstrated his crazy love for us that he died for us amen that'll make a baptist shout hallelujah you see we realized that last week when we understood that he's in crazy and love basically we're not god we don't have the power to change but god can change us if we did have the power we would have made to10:06change we don't so we can't that's kind of what we got out of the gist of the message last week but praise god praise god we have a savior a savior in the person of jesus christ that is wooing us that's drawing us to his his love relationship with him he wants to make those changes that are radical in our lives10:29he wants to but see just knowing that is not enough just knowing that is not enough i know that if you can't find it in walmart target walgreens cvs lowe's or home depot it probably doesn't exist amen if you can't find it in those stores you probably can't find it anywhere on the planet10:58church let me tell you something it's not a matter of just knowing that he loves us we have got to make the choice to love him back and allow him to intercede in our lives hence the message truth i want you to want you to choose to commit my life and will to christ's care and his control i consciously say i11:17will commit my life my total life to him and my will to christ and his care and his control blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth now let me gather you into and give you a little background11:43about this those of you bible scholars you can take a nap on this because you already know this but matthew 5 is one of the most powerful teachings of our lord it carries about three chapters but the beatitudes are about eight verses and the beatitudes he began by sitting down doing the following the levitical court of the day he always stood to read the scriptures but brad you know this from teaching12:09from seminary that that that when he began to teach or preach what did he do jesus always followed the levitical court of the day he sat down and the bible tells us in verse one of matthew he sat down and began teaching his disciples his disciples came up to him this message started out being for that small intimate group and then the crowd continued to grow and he starts saying happy are the poor in spirit12:32blessed are those who mourn blessed are though are the meek for they shall inherit the earth now let me tell you something this crowd that began to gather around jesus they were not looking for some kind of meek messiah they weren't looking for some kind of passive person they were looking for macho messiah they were looking for brave heart messiah they were looking for blue face and a guy riding12:59on a horse screaming freedom that's what they were looking for they weren't looking for that and then he says third verse into the sermon blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth they didn't understand this concept whatsoever they didn't grasp this meek was weak in their viewpoint ladies that are you are13:23you there are in the marketplace and man you're not just out there swimming around in the pool of the marketplace you're out there amongst the sharks amen how many of you ladies work outside the home great i'll use that term outside the home because i don't want to exclude those that work inside the home i i used to say how many of y'all got a job how many of you ladies got a job and i had a lady come13:50up to me one time she said hmm i've raised five kids how many of you raised that's pretty good job i said well god bless you so i changed my terminology right then and there she discipled me right on the spot how many of y'all got a job outside the home so i say see you're you're not in the pool of just laziness you're out there in the pool of sharks around there so you got to be tough in those areas men you know god's your coach if you played sports he's not asking you to go in the game and say now14:16listen i want you to go after the quarterback if you're on defense but i want you to nurture him and i want you to love him and i want you to disciple him i don't want you to be gentle as a lamb i i want you to go after him but i i don't want you see meekness rubs us all in the wrong way does it not man we want to go after the quarterback we want to pound him we want to get the superstar and drive him into and that's what happened in jordan hair last night but anyway i we we want to get past this meekness why14:44because that rubs us raw that rubs us wrong does it not but that's what jesus has said but if you're a christ follower meekness now follow in here getting close is not an option meekness is not an option we're talking about somebody walking around walking around saying oh praise the lord hallelujah you've been around some of those people everything is just hallelujah amen praise the lord i want them15:09folks to come back into the real world with the rest of us amen because it's not always hallelujah and amen right some of us are going through some real difficult situations in our lives we got wayward kids we got un ungodly spouses we've got family members that are crossed we're crossed with other church members in the greek the word often is it translated meek or meekness is also describing as an15:34animal an animal an animal who's naturally wild spirited has to be broken and trained to be used it's like a stallion to be used it's like a work mule so if you're filling in the blank the first blank i want you to see is the definition of meek meek is strength under control strength under control our15:58courage under fire strength meekness is strength under coal now let me give you a verse of scripture peter says it so beautifully in first peter chapter 2 look what he says in verse 21 and 23 christ who suffered for you isn't it your example follow his steps he never sinned he never deceived anyone he16:20did not retaliate when he was insulted when he suffered he did not threaten to get even he left his his case in the hands of god who always judges fairly so meekness is strength under control so how does that launch us from this point forward i want you to gather in with me and fill in some blanks and let's16:47look at this word meekness meekness number one has always been god's way uh for humanity meekness has always been god's way for humanity i want you to look with me now put it in your script in your handout numbers chapter 12 verse 23 now the man moses was very meek more than all men17:10that were on the face of the earth now folks let me tell you something moses was a great leader it has been said studied that founding that he had a speech impediment he had a little trouble with his speech it's it's been recorded that me that moses probably had some kind of speech impediment but moses was a strong strong leader you know he was he wrote the testaments he is a strong leader moses did not have false17:35humility but a vast understanding of god's holiness and folks let me tell you something look with me over to ephesians chapter 4 i want you to notice what paul writes to the church in ephesus when he's talking about the unity of the body of christ he says i therefore a prisoner of the lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all say it with me humility17:59and gentleness and patience and bearing one another's burden in love church meekness is strength under control meekness has always been god's way for humanity secondly meekness means that i acknowledge god's holiness that's kind of what moses was doing he acknowledged god's holiness it was always greater as god than greater as us yes what greater is he that is in what in us than he that is in the world18:28we have a savior that is greater than all of us so we must understand that meekness is is acknowledging god's holiness number three meekness is confidence of in who i am now some of us just need to realize who we really are i can tell you right up front on my watch as long as i'm here we probably are not going to have any self-help seminars we do not need another person to stand up18:55with funky hair and say some kind of deal that's your best life now we do not need another self-help seminar do we what we need is a healthy diet of expositional preaching and understanding god's word and surrendering to his lordship we've seen all of those they confuse us they confuse us with cockiness19:18they confuse cockiness and confidence with with cockiness and arrogantness to be quite honest with you i am in need of a savior i want to surrender to his lordship so meekness means i acknowledge who i am deuteronomy chapter 10 verse 17 says god your god the god of all gods he's the master of all19:41masters god immense and powerful and awesome meekness is confidence in who i am and i am confident that i am not god so i wrote something yesterday yesterday morning i wrote this out for you and it's a declaration of dan moran i want you to listen to me what i wrote yesterday it's that long so don't don't go to sleep on me i am dan moran i am a sinner i thank you for not saying amen to that20:08i am a sinner i am not perfect i have evil thoughts i have misused words i've wounded other people i am fearful at times i struggle with people pleasing i have things about myself that i don't really like i wrote that out yesterday morning you're probably saying wow i pray the pastor search committee is20:35not looking for somebody like that yeah i'm sure that's what you're thinking right now i think we should be praying god i pray we should be praying wow we need somebody like that not me but somebody that's that way that is open and honest i am so tired of un honest preachers when they'll stand up and they act like and they smell like and they dress like and they got all the21:05makings of everything being perfect in their world folks let me tell you something i trust the process and i trust the pastor search committee they are going to call the right man for the right job because you got the right people in the right spot doing the work amen and they're going to call a sinner that is saved by god's glorious grace to lead us to understand that we are all in this same boat we are21:28all sinners saved by his grace and if you're not we're going to offer you that same opportunity that someone offered to us his glorious grace meekness is meekness is confidence of who i am not only meekness is confidence who i am but meekness is confidence in whose i am i want you to look with21:52me to first john chapter 5 verse 1 it says everyone who believes that jesus is the christ is a child of god now stop right there i know what some of you bible scholars going to say well there's a lot of people that believe he's the christ but they haven't accepted him yeah exactly exactly that's a choice that's a choice you make or do not make so if someone has presented the glorious message of how22:17you can become a christ follower in this room today and you have said no it's on you it's not on us i'm witnessing to a buddhist right now it's been wonderful i'm in an open dialogue with a professing buddhist he works for a supply company of office supply company here in our city and i just struck up a conversation with him because he was helping me with some supplies the other day and we struck up a22:46conversation he said so what do you do and i told him i said well i'm a i'm a teacher of god's word he said really is that what i'm sorry do you teach at the university level i said no no i'm not smart to do that he said what do you do i said well i had the privilege of standing week in and week out to proclaim god's word and i gave him this church gave him this church and he said wow that's great i said what do you do he said well i work here he said my wife goes to this other church and i won't give you the name because i'm not here to plug them big church and i said well do you go with23:15her he said no i don't go because i i i don't believe that way i said you don't believe that way why he said because i'm a buddhist and i have to admit i've been around i've had been to a couple of hog calling contests and you know i've been to some watermelon cuttings and i've been some places man i've been to some pretty good events steward it kind of took me back for a second this guy just didn't look like what i would think a buddhist ought to look like and he just didn't look like a buddhist23:38i said well why is that why are you a buddhist he said because i want to be a buddhist i said well that's great well tell me why do you think that you're right he said he went on to his whole thing and he said i'm going to come back and i pray i come back as a dog and all this kind of stuff wow this is great gonna come back as a dog man that's awesome so i started talking to him and so at the end of the conversation i didn't try to do the you know frontal on hey attack24:05mode evangelism i said you know what this guy is a manager here so i want to be friends with him and i want to have this opportunity i'm going to come back by and i even gave him my card and i said here's my cell phone let's have some coffee let's have some dialogue about this because i want to know more why you think you're right and so i said but before i leave can i just ask you one thing he said what i said let me let me just put this seed in your head for a second i want you to think24:32about this if i'm right in choosing to follow jesus christ as my personal savior and lord and you're wrong it's pretty bad if you're right and i'm wrong i've just taken my lifestyle my lifetime to follow a good communicator a nice guy named jesus christ but if i'm right24:57based on his word and you're wrong the consequences are pretty severe hey man i appreciate you helping me out i turned around and walked away you say wait a minute you could have closed the deal right there no no i planted the seed i pray to go back and water it25:20some more god knows what we're in the conversation about and hopefully somewhere along the way maybe his wife's pastor will say something that he will grasp folks let me tell you something i meekness is being strength under control courage under fire is saying i know i am confident in whose i am i chose it i made a decision to follow jesus christ i also have been around some people that says man25:48i've been a christian all my life really all your life that's a big word all a double l all since you were born you've been a christian folks that didn't work that way if i walk into my garage that does not make me a toyota amen you know you've got to choose jesus christ as your personal savior lord you've got to be wooed by the holy spirit which he does and is willing the bible says there is no not one that should perish26:17all come to saving grace all come to fellowship with him john 3 16 for god so loved the world that he gave his own begotten son that whosoever believeth to him should not perish but have everlasting life believe on the name of the son of god and thou shalt be saved call upon the name of the lord and thou shalt be saved you got to do something i've seen it i've seen guys come up to me my brother's a preacher so i'm a christian really no you're not unless you've truly invited jesus christ into your26:46life so you have got to choose to make a conscious decision to have christ's care and his control let him come into your life as we unpack this we need to choose a commitment over and over and over we must choose that over and over and over i want you to look with me at romans romans chapter six uh chapter six romans chapter six notice with me real quick and i've got something really important for you27:15romans chapter six i want you to look at verse 16 let's what it says do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves you are slaves to the one whom you obey either of sin which leads to death or obedience which leads to righteousness folks we have to make that choice we have to choose that we're going to follow in the steps of the lord jesus christ that is meekness27:41under control you see folks let me tell you something that when they break a horse that horse follows the master it follows the person who's got the lead line in their hand they follow them when they're broken under spirit they're under control so we choose that over and over and thirdly i choose to commit all all of my life in my will now that word all sometimes makes some of us want to choke you see we have this28:10brand of christianity in north america that we want to choose god the way we want to choose god i call it the 280 culture we got all kinds of stuff got everything available to us out there but we're not willing to have a blank check laid out and say god i choose all of you because you died for all of me there's a young man in your youth ministry that and i and y'all have a phenomenal group28:38of teenagers and i'm not singling out one he's kind of a representative of a collage of the entire group now they're not perfect by no means they're teenagers amen don't don't look at me spiritual after adults you were once a teenager and most of us in here at teenagers we were worse than this bunch amen but we've got a great bunch of students caleb where are you man come on up here man y'all give29:05him y'all know this young man y'all have watched him grow caleb parker right here y'all give him a hand i want to talk with him for just a second i think this is yellow brothers is this on is this on do i need to do anything no it's not on okay what am i doing here brother off the music stand right here this is a music stand there you go caleb into about two weeks29:36right three weeks y'all notice he's in part of his uniform and uh because he was in the drama and i asked him if we could i asked his parents to do this and i asked his youth pastor if this would be okay we're not step up here man i want to step these people here to see you right here they haven't seen you in a long time since you're back in the nursery caleb in about three weeks will will will obtain something that takes a lot to get you notice he's a scout and he has a certain period of time to earn30:05the highest rank in scouting and that is the eagle scout so in three weeks he will have earned his rank as eagle scout y'all give him a hand amen now you say what if he doesn't well we're gonna make sure he does amen because we've put him on spotlight right here right but caleb not only is an eagle scout but his father is an eagle scout y'all give him a hand30:33huh and the brother is too that was a weak applause right i think scouting's in their blood or something i don't know but scouting is an amazing thing and i know that there's been a lot of negative about scouting but scouting has more positives than than negatives uh i wasn't in scouting i but i i highly respect those who are30:59involved in that to earn the badges now let me ask you a couple questions caleb what made you other than probably the gun that your dad was holding on your head but what made you decide to go into scouting well uh i've always been in scouting actually since i was a always really but at birth huh oh no just kidding go ahead since kindergarten kindergarten there we go31:23there were cub scouts that was that was i didn't really find that interesting actually until i uh entered the boy scouts you didn't like the snacks and cub scouts you had a poor den mother didn't you bless your heart bless your heart go ahead we got the the only thing cool about that was like the cars and the boats well okay cool there you go there's some parts of it good right so when you got into the scouting what what grade were you when you31:49became into the scouts instead of got out of the cub i believe i was in sixth grade sixth grade yeah dad's saying yes he's always right so he says okay sixth grade so you're about to graduate high school right yes sir yeah so how are you doing in school uh i've got a 4.1 right now that's disgusting and and you and a bunch of those over there sitting there's got that 4.0 stuff brad and i don't relate32:17to that at all that that 4.0 stuff if we got for anything it was we got never mind anyway uh so how many how many ranks from the start of eagle uh start of to eagle how many ranks are there count them okay32:49okay it was the seventh i believe seventh that's it takes a while to do that too and you have to have that done by your 18th birthday if i'm if i'm correct right yes correct eight so when you really got into the the to the to the run on this eagle scout run you you saw the goal at the end right yes so there was was there ever a time that you said i choose not to do this please say yes because every kid does that right well yeah yeah i didn't i didn't well not exactly actually it's kind of like backed33:15off a little bit backed off a little bit that's like saying i don't want to do this just yet but maybe but you also saw how close the goal was right yes so what was the identifying mark that made you want to do that i saw the impact it had on others and the scholarship opportunities and the benefit of eagle scout and it just i couldn't have gone through all the work i had all the years i had gone through scouting33:42and not to get my eagle scout yeah um he's being very modest it is from from from friends of mine who have sons and that are eagle scout it is a tough get it is a tough tough get and to do that along with that's all you do right you don't do anything else you just go to school and do scouting well now um okay i do a little bit more yeah most most and most of our kids are multiple multi-talented34:10kids and i'm telling you this this is a solid group of students and uh they're not it's not it's not the biggest group in the area but it's a solid group and i'd stack them up against anybody and he's just part of them and it takes they're all doing more you saw the the the the witness that they have there they're not just witnessing here doing that he's not just becoming an eagle scout just to become an eagle scout he's going to use that to parlay that into uh presenting the gospel in a34:40in a manner because when he is interviewed and i've done that look at job application interview of people and when i see eagle scout they kind of get into a different different uh stack of employment opportunities so how can we pray for you uh you can just pray for me to uh get him a ball about it because i've still got to get my get a few things out there and uh hopefully gonna finish that up to uh like today thank you for the confession35:10because we are absolutely going to see you through this okay but guess what you're gonna have to do you know why because you've got to make the choice to finish it and we know you are anyway y'all give him a hand you say why why in the world why in the world did we put caleb on front and center why did we do that but we could have picked out 20 of those kids over there and there's other things that they're doing as well35:37it's just because it's a ranking situation what he's done he chose to become the eagle scout he didn't just inherit the eagle scout he put all into it he gave everything to do that i love what luke's gospel chapter 14 verse 33 says no one can become my disciples without giving up everything for me36:00you say wow that's pretty narrow yeah it really is it really is i think we're going to be shocked when we all step over to glory that some people didn't make it they gave a lot of money to church they gave a lot of money to causes and they gave sang solos and some even preached messages yet they're not there because they did not surrender completely to the lordship of christ and he gave they gave all to be his36:30disciples so i choose to commit all my life in my will everything to the lord jesus christ and finally i choose to commit my life to christ's care and control why do we do that why would somebody do that it's because he loves us he has that wooing relationship with us he is crazy in love with us everything36:51from financial loss to wayward kids to untamed tongues to anger management to issues of every kind he loves us where we are and has the power to change us to delete us and shape us the way he wants us to be that's called a love relationship john 10 10 jesus says i came that you might have real life37:18eternal life more and better life than you ever dreamed of there is a phenomenal place in orlando florida there's a couple of them one's called disney world the other's called the uh um the other entertainment park what's it called universal i had it right on the tip of my tongue i lost it universal but disney37:44says this is a place where dreams are made of not really it's a great park it's a fun thing to do the rides are spectacular the food's overpriced i mean it's a wonderful thing to go to but that's not where dreams are made of jesus says i've come that you might have life and life more abundant more than38:10you could ever imagine more than you ever dreamed of but to be meek you got to be you got to choose to be meek blessed are those that are meek for they inherit the earth let's pray38:27youMore sermons on Romans →
