Grace On The Mount – Part 4 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Praise God friends, I’m so glad that you’ve tuned into the broadcast. Today, we’re talking about Grace on the Mount, and we’re gonna talk about how grace has really revealed to us when we put our total competence in the Lord Jesus Christ. We gotta keep our eyes fixed on him and not on the things of this world. And when we do that, everything else will be added to us, stay tuned and blessings. Friends, I’m so glad that you’re with us today and we’re continuing to teach today on Matthew chapter 6, and we’re sharing from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

 

  Awesome, so we’ll start here right at Matthew 6:19, and here Jesus is just pointing out, you have to serve somebody. You know, I realized just growing up and going to college and things, everyone serves somebody or serves something. And there’s even a song about it, “It might be the devil, it might be the Lord,” a lot of people just serve themselves, they’re their own god. And Jesus just starts here in Matthew 6:19, just basically saying, pointing people towards eternity. “What can you take to heaven?” All of us, you know, this life here on earth is temporary and we need to think about the big picture, and what can you take to heaven? That’s a good thing to remind yourself of. What can you take to heaven?

 

  Right?

 

  And a lot of things that we shoot for here, make goals of here won’t translate into heaven, but you can take souls into heaven. So we should be very conscious of eternity. It remind me of this joke I heard before about a man who had a lot in savings, he worked really hard to save everything up and not spend anything. Kind of reminds me of my dad, he’s a saver. Dave Ramsey says they’re savers and they’re spenders, but this guy was a saver and he was pinched every penny, saved every penny, he had a million dollars in savings and he told his wife and the minister, “When I die, I want that million dollar savings to be buried with me.” So it was a closed casket funeral, and the minister asked his wife, his widow, “Did you honor his request?” And she said, “Yeah, I did, I wrote him a million dollar check and stuck it inside the casket.” So we see here at Matthew 6:19, Jesus says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” So he is saying, there are problems here on this earth, whatever your treasure might be, there might be problems. You know there are moths here in Colorado, all of Eastern Colorado actually gets really bad moths every now and then, it’s like a plague. Like what the Egyptians saw these moths, and if you’ve been in eastern Colorado, you know what I’m talking about. It’s usually in May and it’s usually when there’s like a late snow storm in May, it usually kills off a lot of the moths, but if there wasn’t that late snowstorm, there’s just like a plague of moths for a few weeks. Even here in the church where there’d just be dead moths everywhere, and the kids would be running around collecting ’em and playing games with them. So moths, they’re disgusting, you know, they’re flies from hell, they’ll eat holes in your nice clothes. You might have a $10,000 suit, but you know, moths will eat that $10,000 suit, they’ll eat a $10 T-shirt hanging up.

 

  Right.

 

  They don’t make any distinction. Rust doesn’t really care about how expensive something is, my middle brother Andrew is in the oil and gas industry, he’s a project manager, he builds like $500 million plants and he actually takes classes, and does studies on rust management. Just because rust can eat away at a $500 million plant and cause this plant that’s making millions of dollars a day to just shut down from rust. Thieves, you know, there are thieves here on the earth, they break in and steal. When I was in high school, this is probably 20 years ago, we were at a high school football game watching my brothers play a football game and a thief broke into our house. And I actually have a background in classical music, I play the flute, I had my professional level, solid silver flute, like worth $6,000 sitting in the case right in the middle of the kitchen table. And this thief didn’t grab that, but he went down in the basement, went to my brother’s room, store their piggy banks, their coin jars, and thieves aren’t always the smartest people.

 

  Stole $40 or $45-watches.

 

  Yeah, stole some stuff that wasn’t worth that much.

 

  God really protected us, because I had the keys to the van laying on the dresser, and the van was parked in the garage, and he could have just unloaded the house in the van and drove off. But praise God, they didn’t get a whole lot, but I liked you said, we got answer for these things in your notes, praise God.

 

  Yeah, for moths, I remember growing up in Cape Carson, that’s where my parents first planted a church, began ministry town of 300 Eastern Colorado. There’s not much to do for fun there as a kid, but I remember this one kid who was a year older than me, what he would do during moth season in eastern Colorado, he would take a can of hairspray and like a little torch, he’d light a fire on the end of a stick and take this hairspray and just have these fire bombs, and light these moths on fire. So God’s given us things to combat what the enemy tries to do, which is steal, killing the destroy. So moths, you know, there are things to combat that rust, there’s things to combat rust. Thank God for WD 40, and thieves, there’s things to combat that as well. We have the second amendment here in the United States, so there are things to combat thieves and to protect things here, but we need to be conscientious of eternity. Jesus says in Matthew 6:20, “Layup for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieve do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also.” I love that.

 

  Yeah. And so we need to keep our heart on things of God. And when you treasure the things of God, your heart’s gonna be on the things of God.

 

  Yeah, and your priorities need to be from God. You need to ask God for his desires to be your desires. You know, if you’re just living for money.

 

  That’s a poor god.

 

  And some people are like that, you’ll have a poor life. If you’re just living for fame, you’re gonna have a poor life, but if you’re living for Jesus, you’re gonna have a very rich life.

 

  Amen.

 

  Amen. Verse 22, here, Matthew 6:22, it says, “The lamp of the body is the eye, if therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.” So Jesus is really, I think he’s talking about your spiritual sight. He wants you to have eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to understand. And he says in verse 23, “If your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” “If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?” So he wants you to be able to see things, how he sees things. Jesus sees things.

 

  Yeah.

 

  He sees people with love, “For God so loved the world.” He’s not just out to see what’s wrong with people, “How can I judge people?” “How can I condemn people, but how can I save people?” “How can I draw them into the kingdom?” “How can I heal people?” “How can I bring heaven to these people?” And that’s how we need to see people. We need to see people at the eyes of Jesus.

 

  Amen

 

  To the pure, all things are pure.

 

  Praise God.

 

  This is Titus 1:15, “To the pure, all things are pure,” so we should see with this pure heart that Jesus talks about.

 

  You know, when it says the light of the body is the eye, the Greek word that’s used here is the word ophthalmos. But I believe he’s talking about our spiritual lies, And you know, sometimes people said, “Faith sees the invisible.” And we have a vision, we have a direction, and the word “eye” also talks about, if you study it out in the Greek, vision or sight, so we have a spiritual direction that our life is headed by what we are focusing on. So we need to keep our focus on the things of God, and that’s what Jesus is really saying. “Don’t lay up your treasures on the earth, where moth and rust, that’s corrupt, where thieves break in.” It’s not like you can’t have anything, but it don’t treasure. Your treasure needs to be the things of the kingdom of God. And he says, “Where your treasure is, there’s your heart gonna be also.” Your heart needs to be for the things of God. Now, he says this, “If your eye is evil or double, your whole body will be full of darkness.” “If the light that’s in you darkness, how great is that darkness?” And he says, “No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the wine and love the other, or hold the one and despise the other, and you cannot serve God and mammon.” And Aaron, when you taught this, you really defined what mammon is. And I have never heard a definition in my life that I felt adequately described it, but I think you nailed it on the head, so talk about that.

 

  Yeah, mammon, it’s a very unique word, and I study the origins of this word, and the origins, it doesn’t just mean riches, but it means riches personified. And to personify something means to take something that’s non-human, non-living, and to give it living humanistic quality. So, in literature we see that writers sometimes personify something or poets will personify something, they’ll take the ocean and they’ll personify it. They’ll say the ocean’s like a, like a stormy woman, they’ll take something that’s non-human and give it human qualities. So mammon, I mean, it’s not just riches, but it’s when riches take on a human quality or the riches take on a spirit about them,

 

  Right, so you said it’s like riches personify.

 

  Yeah.

 

  So ultimately what I believe Jesus is saying here is don’t worship money. And you know, the Bible talks about this in Colossians chapter 3:5, that covetousness is idolatry. Don’t worship money, God wants to bless you, God wants to give you good things, he wants to help you. And I can give you all kind of scriptures about that, but at the same point in time, we are not to worship money, we’re to worship God.

 

  It’s about what’s in your heart and what’s motivating you. God needs to be your motivator, not money. If money is motivating your major decisions in life, you’re worshiping money. You’ve given it a quality that it shouldn’t have.

 

  I’ve seen this happen and too many people are working just for money. Money is a sorry god. And I made a decision when I was a young man that I would never let money be the number one reason that I made a decision. When I’m making a major decision in my life, and you know what, I made that when I was a young man, I was offered my grandparents ranch that was worth several million dollars when I was just a young man, and after my dad had died and I said, “You know what? I can’t do that, because I’ve got to follow the call of God on my life.” And then when we moved to Colorado Springs, I made this decision, that I am never gonna let money be the number one reason that I make a decision. And so I made a decision when we moved to Colorado Springs, and you know what? We left everything, and we left our church, we left our house, we left our things, and of course we sold ’em, and put that towards the house here. But I made that decision that money is never gonna be the number one reason that I make a decision. And you know what? I believe God has ultimately blessed me because of that. And so I wanna let my relationship with God be the number one reason that I make decisions. And I believe when you live outta your relationship with God, then you can truly be blessed and not only truly be a blessed, but you can be blessed and be a blessing to other people. So we’re gonna come back in just a few seconds and we’re gonna continue to share from Jesus’ teaching, and so stay tuned, we have great things to share in the last half of this broadcast. Friends, we’ve been sharing from the Sermon on the Mount about Grace on the Mount. And you can get the fullness of this teaching absolutely free of charge on our website at charischristiancenter.com, downloadable video, downloadable audio. And we’ve actually got hundreds of hours of teaching there for you free. Thanks so much, and blessings.

 

  Listen, storms come to everyone. The man that built his house on the rock and the man that built his house on the sand, and the storms came, and the wise men’s house stood strong, and the foolish man’s house fell, blaa! You know what the difference was? What they did with the Word.

 

  Friends, it’s so good to have you with us, glad you stayed with us, and we’re gonna continue to teach from Matthew chapter 6, some phenomenal teaching of Jesus here in Matthew 6:25-34, so Aaron, go ahead.

 

  Yeah, and Jesus, he’s just talking about when you put God first and just really serve him, he’ll take care of you. People worry way too much, and Jesus trying to get people to just not worry, if you’re worried, you’re focusing on the wrong things. And he’s just showing people, “Hey, don’t worry, be happy.” Just like that song says, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Verse 25, it says, “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, nor about your body.” “What you’ll put on is not life more than food in the body, more than clothing.” “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor rape, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them, are you not of more value than they?” “Which of you by worrying, can add one cubit to his stature?” So he’s just saying worrying isn’t gonna accomplish that much, and a lot of people worry in the world, that system of fear, it’s a very worldly type, actually the world uses it to motivate people to make people worry, to make people fear. And God doesn’t put fear on people, you see it all throughout scripture. “Fear not, fear not, fear not,” God is not the author of fear, He must have set people away from fear and that’s what Jesus is saying, don’t worry. I remember when I was growing up, I think I was in the sixth grade, but I remember I dealt with a lot of worry, a lot of anxiety. I remember just even at sixth grade, about 11-12 years old, staying up all night just with random things I’d be worried about. I was worried about seventh grade math next year, how hard it was gonna be, and I heard it such as, algebra is such a hard thing. And I remember once I got there, I realized it wasn’t really that hard, just people were saying. A lot of people like to complain and pass their worry on to other people. But just when I was sixth grade, I remember one night I was just dealing with worry, not able to fall asleep. And God just spoke to me from John 14:1, He said, “Let not your heart be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me.” And that just really just sunk into my heart, and I’ve never dealt with worry and anxiety like that ever again.

 

  Amen. Praise God, now, Jesus gives us some great examples. He goes on and he said, “Hey, your body’s more than what you put on, your life’s more than the food that you eat.” And he says in verse 26, “Behold the fouls of the air, look at the birds for they so not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” “Are you not much better than they?” And if you realize  birds eat a lot. Now we feed birds here, you know, in Colorado Springs, and it’s amazing how much food that they eat, but I remember when we were in Kit Carson and I had a small feedlot where I fed cattle, that when I would get semi-loads of grain in, and I would put that in these grain bins to feed the cattle, through the winter and stuff, that if you didn’t get out there with some five gallon buckets and clean up the little piles on the ground afterwards, the birds would come and they would just devour it. And we’re talking, they would eat 30 or 40 gallons of grain pretty quick. And I mean, flocks of black birds, different thing, crows, different things, they’d come. And it actually takes a lot of feed to feed all the birds, but he’s saying, “Listen, God takes care of the birds.” And really, I’ve never seen, you wake up early sometimes hear the birds chirping. They’re not worrying, they’re not frightened, and they’re not wondering where their next meal is gonna come from. And he says, “Aren’t you better than they?” “So if God takes care of the birds of the air, and if God takes care of the flowers of the field, won’t God take care of you?” So don’t pray about it, don’t worry about it. He goes on and says this, “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?” You can’t add a half inch to your stature, let alone a foot and a half. You know, you just can’t do it, so you gotta just trust God.

 

  Verse 28, Jesus says here, “So why do you worry about clothing?” “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” I got it, He’s a God of beauty. There’s so much beauty in creation, there are places that are just covered with menus of flowers that people haven’t even seen, but God just does it because He is a beautiful God and it’s just for His own glory, so He’s gonna take care of you. So verse 30, “If God so close the grass of the field which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you of little faith?” “Therefore, do not worry saying, what shall we eat?” “What shall we drink?” “What shall we wear?” “For after these things the Gentiles seek.” The other night, I had kind of a long day at work and it was around 5:30 PM, and I could tell my wife had been busy throughout the day too, and I just said to her, “Hey, I’m gonna ask you,” every wife loves to hear this question, “But what are we gonna eat?” And I knew it would kind of annoy her ’cause I knew she was busy and I was busy and there weren’t any plans for dinner. But I just kind of did it to—

 

  See what her response would be.

 

  See what her response would be, and I prepared it by saying, “I’m gonna ask you this question that I know you’re really gonna love to hear, but, “What are we gonna eat?” And I think I just went to Chick-fil-A, that’s God’s mammon or God’s manna from heaven. So we had a good meal even though nothing was prepared, I didn’t need to worry about it. Verse three, two, after all these things that Gentiles seek “For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things, but seek first,” this is the key here. What’s your priority? “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” And we know that God’s righteousness, it comes from faith in Jesus.

 

  Amen.

 

  From trusting in Jesus, from having a relationship knowing that he loves you and you love him. When that’s your focus, all these things will be added to you.

 

  Amen.

 

  Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow we’ll worry about its own things sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

 

  Yes, so we don’t have to worry, we don’t have to fret. So many people get caught up in worry, they get caught up in fear. And you know, the Bible says that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a power and love and a sound mind. We have a mind that’s well instructed and corrected out of the word of God. And we’ve got the power of God, we know that God loves us and because of that, we just don’t have to live in fear. I like this also in Philippians chapter four. Paul is actually writing from prison where he is been in prison preaching the gospel. But in Philippians chapter four, he’s saying, “Always be rejoicing.” You can’t worry really and rejoice at the same time. And so he says, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say rejoice.” “Let your moderation, let your gentleness be made known to all men. The Lord is at hand.” Ultimately Jesus is gonna come. He says, “Don’t worry about anything, be careful for nothing,” in verse six. “But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” So we’re not to worry, we’re to pray about it. We’re to ask God about it. And he says this, “And supplication,” that means ask God with thanksgiving. If you want your prayers to work, prayers work a lot better when you sandwich them in between Thanksgiving. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 2, “First of all, prayers, intercessions, supplications, thanksgiving be made for all men.” So thanksgiving is a kind of praying, and when you interject between your supplication, right? And intercession with thanksgiving, I believe that we get a lot more of our prayers answered. It’s kind of like us as parents, right? When our kids are thankful for what we give them, what do we wanna do? We wanna give them more. But if they’re unthankful, we’re like, I don’t know whether we should have done that or not. So he says this, he says, “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God and the peace of God, which passes all understanding.” Maybe we don’t know how it’s gonna end up, we don’t know the end from the beginning, but God knows the end from the beginning. So we can thank God, we can have peace. He says, “The peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” We wanna let the peace of God keep our heart, we wanna let the peace of God keep our mind right? And he goes on and says, “Finally brethren, whatever things are true and honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, we need to think on these things.” He says, “If there’s any virtue, if there’s any praise, think on these things.” We need to focus on God, and I believe that’s the same thing that Jesus is really saying here in Matthew chapter 6 is, “Keep your eyes on God, seek he first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these things.” Man, life is not about all of our stuff.

 

  Yeah, just the other day, I’ve mentioned that my wife and I have a 3-year-old and a 10-year-old, but we’re getting ready to celebrate Christmas, and we’re just getting just from extended family outta state, we’re getting like five or six Amazon packages showing up almost every day at our house.

 

  That’s crazy.

 

  And my wife’s been trying to wrap it up each day just to stay on top of it, and we just realized we’re gonna have to get rid of some stuff to make room for these new things. And so we filled up my truck, basically, it was just all this stuff and took it to—

 

  Goodwill.

 

  Goodwill, yeah. My wife and I realized, we need to be a little, gravitate more towards not having so much stuff side of things.

 

  Amen.

 

  And kind of teach our kids that too, it’s not just about having all this stuff.

 

  I have a thing, when I get a new pair of pants, I try to take a pair of pants that I have and give them to Goodwill, or I get a new shirt, I try to take that to give it to Salvation Army, give it to Goodwill, give it to somebody occasionally, just a while back, I took five suits and some sport coats, and I gave them to a volunteer here at the church. And it really blessed him, but you can only have, so you don’t need all this stuff. And Jesus actually says, “Another place that a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And so he’s saying kind of the same thing here, “Seek first the kingdom of God.” Seek his righteousness, his ways of living and being right, and all these things will be added to you, praise God. And he says, “Don’t worry then for tomorrow, for tomorrow we’ll take care of the things itself sufficient for today is the evil thereof,” praise God. So we wanna put our total hope, our total confidence, our total trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t wanna be worrying about what we wear, we don’t wanna be worrying about what we eat. And we just need to surrender our life to the Lordship of Jesus. And when we do that, praise God, I believe all these other things will be added to us. Well, friends, I don’t wanna leave this broadcast today without giving you the opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. So I’m asking you to pray with me right now. Heavenly Father, I believe that Jesus Christ is your son, I believe that he died for my sins, and I believe that you raised him from the dead and made him Lord. So right now, I surrender my life to you in Jesus name, amen.

 

  A revelation of grace will transform your life and enable you to see God for who he truly is. He is our heavenly Father and only has good things to give us. When you look upon the face of Jesus, you behold the grace of God. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of the teaching “Grace on the Mount,” a $30 value free of charge. Download it today at charischristiancenter.com.

 

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