you remember I said to you there are four great questions one is what is reality and we spent I guess more time on that than anything else and uh Jesus's answer to that is God and his kingdom and everything under that is real you depart from that you become increasingly less real now then we've been looking at the question who's well off that's a big question a lot of people have different answers to it want to be very conscious I think about how people answer those questions in your work and in yourself uh because that will that will mean the difference often between peace and not peace for you if you understand where your well-being lies and if you understand that it lies in the kingdom of God see human beings tend to think that well-being lies somewhere else and so uh for example those of us who are in Christian service full-time service often spend a lot of time wor worrying and wondering about whether or not we're in the right place and uh just let me encourage you to think in terms of Jacob you remember Jacob's wonderful story about how he uh was this crooked guy who was always cheating somebody body out of something um got in bad trouble as people tend to do when they live that kind of life and wound up on the run and wound up sleeping in a ditch with a stone for a pillow and if he had worn his cap backwards he could have run faster maybe made it to the Motel 6 by Nightfall they wound up in a ditch and as he slept he had a dream and the dream was Jacob's Ladder remember Jacob's Ladder a kind of staircase ascending into heaven and angels coming and going wonderful dream you remember Jesus said people are going to see that in his case you remember that they're going to see the heavens open and Angels ascend Ing and descending on the son of man let me ask you to put yourself in that place and think about that the Angels ascending and descending on you when Jacob awoke you remember he said God was in this place and I did not know it he said this is the gateway to Heaven God was in this place and I did not know it and it's very important for us to understand that God is where we are we don't need to be someplace else getting someplace else may turn out to be something that will happen it can be good but the truth of the matter is God Is Where We Are we do not have to say who will Ascend into heaven to bring him down or who will go across the sea to bring him or who will Ascend Into the Depths the word is nigh thee it is even in your mouth it is the word of faith which we preach so I really want to encourage you to think that and that God is where you are and that where you are is the doorway to Heaven remember heaven doesn't mean what happens after you die okay Heaven means the presence of God the kingdom of God it's here and it does not matter what you are who you are what you've got for you what's got you got against you none of that matters none that's the lesson of the Beatitudes that's what the Beatitudes are about and you only understand the gospel of the kingdom of God if there's no limit to who you can go to to whom you can go and say blessed No Limit why don't you write some Beatitudes tonight if you were to write some Beatitudes with what you know now about the kingdom of God what would you write what would you write take a moment and write one blessed are the now you're going to put on there somebody that in the human scale is thought to be nothing nobody it's thought to be someone who is not blessed who can you put on your list now remember they're not blessed because they're in the condition they're in they're blessed because the kingdom is available to them blessed are the unemployed blessed are those who are pregnant too many times blessed are those who can't get pregnant at all blessed are those who are overemployed underemployed blessed are the fat can you do that one in our culture that's a big one isn't it blessed are those cellon blessed are those who have cell phones for they shall be [Laughter] called G they [Music] if gamble if gamblers are are considered to be those who are unbless then you could apply that remember you're looking for people who are thought to be unbless maybe those who are addicted to gambling but now the reason would not be because they're addicted to gambling remember remember the blessing is not in the condition it's in the Kingdom you understand that that's the key that's how it works now if you uh if you have trouble with going to people who are considered unbless and pronouncing their blessing in the Kingdom then you haven't gotten the message of the Kingdom yet because the message of the kingdom is precisely that all of those that human beings regard as unbless are not unbless if they enter into the kingdom if they don't it's another story because the Beatitudes are all about the kingdom and entering into the Kingdom so now that's a radical message folks and it will upset most churches if you preach it because that would that would mean that you're breaking down the social barriers the pecking order that most people in our churches assume to be valid so now the New Testament struggles with that you remember what James for example says about respecting rich people and dissing dissing poor people that that goes on in our churches all the time who are the nobodies in our churches and how do they get treated does Jesus way of treating them meaning treating them all the same is that something that is a part of our teaching in our faith so those are huge issues now and I know that they are and uh I don't pretend that I have settled them all but I do encourage you if you have a copy of the Divine conspir conspiracy at some point sit down and read chapter 4 just sort of let it come over you and see what it does for you see the the issue of well-being is fundamental who is well off that idea is fundamental to human life because we are responsible for our lives we have choices to make we have to know how to relate to God in our world uh and uh we may feel like we are shut out from God because we are among the unbless bles and that is where we have to understand the extent and what is contained in that phrase whosoever will may come whosoever will may come and what that means all right well let's move on now to the other question of The Sermon on the Mount Sermon on the Mount de deals with the two Central questions that I listed earlier uh when I talked about the four main questions and those two Central questions are who's well off and who is a good person so now having and the first question is primary because you can't really go onto the second question until you deal with the first one but now we want to turn to the second question which is the question of who is a really good person so you start with Matthew 5:20 and there Jesus uh in continuity and I I can't go back and and build the bridge here but I hope you will in your studies I hope you will build the bridge between uh Matthew 19 and 20 actually between Matthew 17 and 20 and make that a part of your faith and your teaching uh but Matthew 20 gives us this startling word unless your righteousness now righteousness is di is not an easy word to translate think of it as your goodness what makes you a really good person what makes you a really good person and no that is agape love is constitutes goodness but I say to you unless you your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees you shall not enter the kingdom of the heavens now remember first that that's not saying you won't go to heaven when you die it's a different topic it's talking about entering into an engagement in your life and practice with the kingdom of the heavens the kingdom of the heavens is the kingdom of God that's the phrase that comes out of the Jewish experience with the kingdom of God and it's standardly used in Matthew uh Matthew does use the praise of kingdom of God but it's very rare it's normally the kingdom of the heavens that's because it expresses the Jewish experience of God and that experience was in the first Heaven it was in the god appeared in the atmosphere which is the first heaven and of course that goes all the way down to ground so entering the kingdom of the heavens means to engage with what God is doing in the world around us now here's what the verse says is that unless you get out of the Scribe and Pharisee mode unless you come to a different level of goodness you will not be in interactive relationship with the kingdom of the heavens now there are other passages where Jesus talks about entering and of course the one that's most familiar is John 3:5 unless you are born again you cannot enter the kingdom of the heavens the kingdom of God that case and once again in Matthew 18 unless you repent and become like a little child you cannot enter the kingdom of the heavens in that case so those are three ways of describing what it means to enter the heavens and our task now is to try to understand as best we can uh what he's saying here in Matthew 5 and following about entering it and going beyond the righteousness Of The Scribe and the Pharisee so let's think first about what is the righteousness Of The Scribe and Pharisee and it is the righteousness or the goodness of the deed and mostly of what one did not do because most of the these Commandments were negative Thou shalt not k th shalt not commit adultery th shalt not bear false witness and so on from The Ten Commandments but um the overwhelming number of The Commandments are negative and they led into a system of righteousness which is the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees which referred to what you did and so what does it mean to go beyond the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees it means to locate your righteousness in something other than what you do um in order to try to help my students in ethics understand this I often tell them a thief is not just someone who steals a thief is someone who would steal if the situation were right now obviously that's to make a point and there are some qualifications to be had but the truth of the matter is there's a great difference between a person who would steal if the situation were right and a person who wouldn't steal no matter what the situation was it's a great difference it's a difference in the soul of the person one can have the soul of a thief a murderer or an adulterer and never do it perhaps just because of the fear of what would happen if they did now it's better not to do it but what Jesus is saying is unless you get Beyond just not doing it you're not going to be any interaction with the kingdom of God so conversely if you want to get in interaction with the kingdom of God you have to move to a different level and that is the level of your thoughts your feelings uh your character your habits habitual way you live in your body and in your world so the cases that you have in Matthew 5 are murder and you have the that's the the righteousness Of The Scribe and the Pharisee was don't kill anybody but that's not the kingdom righteousness and then so Jesus goes on to contrast the righteousness Of The Scribe and the Pharisee with Kingdom righteousness and we are going to talk more about that tomorrow in detail because I what I want to go is from The General and the abstract right down to the most concrete and we're not going to hit the concrete until tomorrow uh maybe this evening we'll get a little more into it but the the general idea here is Thou shalt not commit adultery okay I didn't Comm commit adultery on the righteous scribes and the Pharisees I'm okay and that out of that comes language like I did not have sex with that woman do you ever hear that language like well it depends on what the meaning of is is that's classical righteousness of scribes and Pharisees depends on what the meaning of is is that's the way and Bill Clinton learned that language unfortunately in church right because in the sexual behavior of young people over the last decades there has emerged a whole list of legalistic distinctions between what you do and what you don't don't do and what counts as what see that's all phariseeism and that I think is something that's pretty generally known uh but um it has become a stock in trade now of of young people who are dealing with sexual issues then you have other cases like divorce you had someone who said well I divorced my wife and I did it according to the law I gave her a bill of divorcement pink slip gave her a pink slip I'm righteous Jesus no no you're not righteous if you do that Moses set up that Arrangement because it was important to keep women alive among other things and they could easily be killed if they didn't have that but that's not a good thing he says um keeping your vows I've kept my vows well Jesus says no it's not a matter of keeping your vows it's a matter of making them in the first place why do you make bounds and so letting your yes be yes and no be no means that you go beyond just the finess of the wording and keeping your wording and you go into the heart of why you're saying things to people in the first place what does that mean let your yes be a yes and your no be a no it means don't try to manipulate people by saying yeses which are Nos and NOS which are yeses or say saying yeses which are yes yes yes yes yes yes yes right trying to wear people down just say it's this way it's not that way plain speaking simple allow others to do what they're going to do take their stand and that is the righteousness of the Kingdom what he's really talking against here is trying to manipulate people by using impressive language inv God invoking the devil and then he goes on to spell out some more particular kinds of things what I want you to just see the cases there to get contrast now why is the leaven of the Pharisees hypocrisy this will help us understand more about what the righteousness Of The Scribe and the Pharisee is and Jesus talks a lot about the scribes and the Pharisees and he really warns us about the leaven of the Pharisees and doing what the phares es Doo so in Luke 11 there he says Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees what's leaven stand for you know we talked about Levan or Yeast when we started out here and we talked about how the kingdom of God is like yeast or leaven that a Womanhood woman hid in a bushel of dough or something of that sort and just put it in there and then pretty soon everywhere in that dough there was leaven it's a moving living Force so when Jesus speaks of the 11 of the Pharisees he's talking about the moving living force in phism our language today we might say the spirit of the Pharisee is hypocrisy it's what moves and drives everything they do but the question is why is the leaven of the Pharisee hypocrisy two things you have to understand one's good the Pharisee is really concerned about doing the right thing that's good that's commendable and we want to do justice to the Pharisee and you want to remember that probably the best followers of Jesus were Pharisees they were soon ex Pharisees but he started out from phariseeism and these were good people and they meant well so that's that first part that's good they were very serious about doing the right thing and not doing the wrong thing the second part is not good and explains why with the first they're driven into hypocrisy and that was that if you just try to do the right thing or not do the wrong thing you will certainly fail you cannot succeed on that path you have to go to a deeper level of the self than controlling your action there are many lessons that Jesus teaches us about this for example he says out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks and means what there's a lot of in your heart comes out your mouth and what comes out your mouth is what there's a lot of in your heart remember Mike Tyson bit off Holyfield's ear and his explanation was I blew it that's very common of people they will that's supposed to explain some I blew it it's supposed to let them off the hook oh that wasn't me yeah but it was him that's why he blew it blowing it came out of his heart Holyfield didn't bite his ear off you know he wasn't that wasn't in him but Mike Tyson did did that now you look at Mike Tyson you get a sense of what's in the man see what's in the person comes out if not the mouth in the action our actions do not come from nowhere they come from somewhere and the Pharisee always fails because they do not know that and they do not practice that they keep trying to control their actions rather than change their heart and their mind and their feelings now we almost ought to pause over this for a moment and just have a have a moment of meditation because this is the this is the Crux of the matter we talked about intention earlier and we'll have to talk about intention again but the intention has to be applied at the right place I have to become the kind of person who Not only would not kill or does not kill but who would not kill not only who does not commit adultery but would not see that so my intention has to be applied at that level and that's what Jesus is saying because when you turn to that level then the kingdom of the heavens will interact with you and you will find that you can change but if you stay at the ACT level the kingdom of the heavens will not cooperate with you and you will fail now of course one of the great things about Grace is Grace actually operates at this deeper level it operates at the other level too but it is through Grace that we can become genuinely transformed and our intentions can be fulfilled to become the kind of person that Jesus was and that he has called us to be and given to us now the indictments of the Pharisees were pretty awesome and I think we ought to take some time to look at that so let's turn to Matthew 23 I mean this isn't the only one but this is the one where Jesus this is coming towards the end of his ministry and this is where he really begins to spell it all out and I have to tell you that this is one of the passages that really got after me uh when I was U as I say a young Minister trying to do something and I kept coming across this passage and is this talking about me and I I began to suspect Maybe all the Pharisees weren't dead you know maybe there are few maybe I'm one of them now here's what he says in chapter 23 of Matthew the scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses that is to say they profess to teach the law therefore all that they tell you do and observe but do not do what they do for they say things and do not do them would you agree with me that the clear implication of this passage is that you ought to do what you say is the clear implication of this passage that we can do the things that Moses said would you think that is it he's giving them a criticism here it says they tie up heavy loads and lay them on men's shoulders but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a little finger would put out a little finger and lift see they do all now then he begins to analyze their case here's why they fail here's why they fail they do all their deeds to be noticed by men they broaden their felies this were ritual clothing and lengthen the tassel of their garments this was supposed to show that they were very righteous imagine that they love the place of honor at Banquets remember the Luke 14 passage about not taking the place of honor but go sit down at the card table out in the kitchen and wait till someone calls you they love the places of honored Banquets the chief seats in the synagogues they love respectful greetings in the marketplace being called by men Rabbi Rabbi is Professor right I mean it's no deal not to come someone Rabbi today if you're not if you're in our circles Rabbi is teacher Professor doctor don't be called Rabbi you have one teacher and you're all Brothers do not call anyone on Earth father or one is your father he's the one in heaven do not call them leader or teacher for one is your leader that is Christ but the greatest among you shall be your servant and whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted see people uh people who do things to be seen of men are seeking to be exalted now one of the greatest burdens that will ever fall off of your back is when you learn to not do anything to be seen of men your life will be much easier don't do anything to be seen of men Jesus taught about that in Matthew 6 didn't he talked about doing your arms to be seen of men talked about praying and about fasting to be seen of men he said don't do that if you do it to be seen of men what'll happen men will see you wow God will disregard you because you will have got what you wanted which was to be seen of men so men will say wow that guy really gave a great prayer oh he gave a wonderful contribution fundraising around universities are interesting you can get people to give rich people to give money but they want their name on the building the one thing you can't raise funds for is mops and vacuum cleaners to keep the buildings clean after they built them I guess if you put their names on mops that might help why do people give to be seen of men so a fundraiser normally has to play on that motivation or people won't give this is a great trap well Jesus gives us some very severe woes now you know he's he's he's into giving woes woe to you scribes and Pharisees Hypocrites because you shut off the kingdom of the heavens from men for you do not enter in yourselves nor do you allow those who are entering to go in woe to you scribes Pharisees Hypocrites you devour widows houses and even while for a pretense you make long prayers therefore you shall receive greater condemnation woe to you scribes Pharisees Hypocrites because you travel about on land and sea to make one proelite and when you he becomes one you make him twice as much a son of hell as you yourselves are well from a human point of view you can see why they killed him can't you right I mean this is not the way to win friends and influence people so on he goes um and it continues on through the rest of the chapter now I mean it heats up you serpents you brood of vipers how shall you escape the sentence of hell this is for Pharisees and it winds up in this great lament over Jerusalem Jerusalem which did not understand what God was doing and put itself crosswise so now you compare that to the goodness of the Kingdom loving God with all your heart your soul your mind and your strength and your neighbors yourself see now that's that's the difference is it's internalized the righteousness scribes and the Pharisee is in terms of Deeds it is primar for the benefit of being observed and recognized it means that you manipulate your social relationships in that way that your standing before men is the important thing your standing in God is pushed away that leads to hypocrisy so now what is Kingdom goodness well I've said earlier now and say it again that Kingdom goodness means that every aspect of our being is permeated with agape love don't worry about perfection okay because probably that is process which will not be completed in this life but we can make progress and so when you see that bumper sticker Christians aren't perfect just forgiven remember that there's a lot of distance between being perfect and being forgiven and that the issue is not being perfect the issue is getting better and the way we get better is by following uh internal um trans formation and I bring back now this diagram because I want to emphasize again that in all aspects of the self love comes to predominate now what would that mean let's say in Social relations relationships between people well it would mean uh it would pull together a lot of stuff we've already talked about uh for example it would mean that rejection goes out of our relationships to others that we don't reject people even people we disagree with and people we think are wrong we don't reject them see to reject someone means to distance them put out of our relationship that's what the Pharisees did that's why they were mad at Jesus about him sitting with people and eating with them rejection means to push away to push away we don't do that a good question for Christian practice is a question I often get in presenting this material to Christians how can you fire someone in love how can you fire someone without rejecting them now that's very similar to the question that came up yesterday about can you be a soldier can you kill someone in battle in love what's the answer the answer is yes can you fire someone in love yes but it rarely is done that way can you as a soldier go into battle and cause people to die and do that as an act of love yes you can but it almost never never is done way and if it were done that way there'd be a lot less people dying and there'd be a lot fewer Wars but you can describe a situation in which one would in an effort to achieve what was loving and good for everyone involved bring about the death of another person you can you don't have to approve of agree with uh people to love them you have to seek their good in the context of everyone that is involved so for example if someone is not performing well on a job and is affecting the well-being of everyone in the workplace the business itself and all of that a time would come when you say as an act of love I have to fire you I have to let you go now if that happened what you would see is not distancing because ordinarily when that happens then the two the people involved never want to see one another again so you have to think about how you if you were going to fire someone would not distance yourself from them and if you're being fired how would you carry that and not distance yourself from the person who fired you even if you disagree right see those are the kinds of things that we rarely have a chance to talk about because we don't even get there to talk about them we just we're out the door or in the case of killing we wind up hating the people that we are opposing that's usually that's what happens isn't it in war and in fact you will see the effort of governments to get you to hate the person on the other side and um so those are things that we can work through and once we begin to understand what love is then that Social Circle there can eliminate attack and rejection as personal matters that involve hatred contempt and so on so uh most of you are not uh you may have seen the pictures of Nazis or Japanese that were used in the second world war by the government to inflame hatred and contempt for the other side and I must say that you have to be well advanced in Kingdom living before you can avoid that but the point is is you can avoid it and it is a good thing for you to do that well that just kind of illustrates that the body for body is very important because the body is normally posed to do things that are not loving and this can this covers all kinds of activities but the body can be transformed so that instead of being ready to do the thing that is hateful and unloving it's ready to do the thing that is loving um and unhate so so the soul now the soul is the deepest part of the self and the Soul has to be retuned uh the law is basic in this because the soul that works right is a soul that naturally follows the law of God that's why the 19th Psalm says the law of the god is perfect transforming the soul the law of the god the law of god is perfect transforming the soul it's because as we come back into order with the law then the deepest parts of our s and the soul is is the part of you that makes all the others come together to form one life and when it's broken life doesn't come together so the healing has to go there and the word thou go to be restored one way is to begin to track with the law of God begin to do the things that the law says like most people who are in trouble in life the first thing they need to do is stop doing things that are wrong now we have a whole system of explanation that sets that aside but no matter what your situation in life is the first thing you need to do is stop doing things that are wrong first thing I need to do is stop doing things that wrong and there will there be many effects of that but most important is my soul will begin to track with the kingdom of God it will begin to track with the kingdom of God and as it does that then the abundance of the kingdom of God will increasingly move into my life now if I have the attitude that I've been insulted and stepped on spat upon sat upon and I have therefore every right to do what is wrong because I've been injured well then you can have that too and it will get you absolutely nowhere but the once once you begin to track with the law then you begin to draw on the abundance of the kingdom of God that is how you seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness and you begin to benefit from that now I'm not a Prosperity Gospel I don't think it'll get you a Cadillac or anything when the Cadillac isn't anything anymore is it you have to go so it shows you how old I am um so that's hardly better than a Chevrolet is it um but what what what will happen is that everything you need will be provided that's Kingdom stuff see it it will be provided if you don't track with it then it won't be because you will not be tracking in the abundance of God's provision well all the other part here like the spirit or the heart surrendered to God willing to love not caught up in having its own way a mind that is not obsessed with what I want what's going to happen to me what's been done to me and so on but a mind that is devoted to Christ and to God that keeps him before the mind um that's going to bring different feelings you're going to have joy and peace and love instead of anxiety and hatred and depression and so on so that's the kind of transformation you get now once you get that kind of transformation then the actions are different the the actions are a natural expression of what is in those circles and so this little diagram is intended to sort of show that and uh you have all the aspects feelings thoughts body social there and then the Soul is the circle around the whole thing and then at the center is the will and out of the heart comes the action so out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks well part that's partly you have to understand that partly in terms of how the Heart restructures by Grace all of those other circles because if there are certain things for example if you're devoted to Christ the love of God loving your neighbor as yourself if you're devoted there are certain things you will not think they will not come to mind and there are certain things that if you think they will shrink any possibility of you're loving your neighbor see we have in this country the idea that what you think in your mind is nobody else's business it's everybody else's business that you affect by your actions because your actions come out of what is in your mind but it's a part of what we call Freedom in our country to think well you can just think anything it's nobody else's business so for example pornography is a private matter no it's not A Private Matter not a private matter at all and when you see people who are in trouble sexually you're going to probably find that it's because of something like that where they have devoted their attention to this and it possesses their mind and then he comes out now pornography is a first level problem for ministers in our country and internet pornography is even stronger because it creates a certain sense of intimacy it's curious how this works but cyberspace is seductive because it creates an aspect of intimacy that makes more powerful the sexual tones that come over and intimacy is what people are looking for in sex they want intimacy and they only keep pushing the physical buttons because they hope to get a little in intimacy out of it but it actually just makes it more and more distant so there are certain things in relationships to other people in churches in business in the community we just won't think the saddest things about our political life is observing what people allow themselves to think about others I mean there's a lot of stuff you should just never allow yourself to think that people of good character have always known that and we even have a little language about that like don't go there right that often refers to the social situation but it's actually advice about our mind and our feelings don't go there just don't go there so as that transformation comes about then the actions will be different now the Pharisees says sit on action Kingdom righteousness says take care of the inside we have to pay P some attention to the actions that's for sure because they have consequences but still if you want to get control of the actions you deal with what is on the inside what is heart okay well I hope you get this picture now and this is just smells out a little bit more of it and see what really is the innermost part of us is this heart and this third Point here the inner tilt click or yes to a more or less extensive course of events that is what really constitutes the innermost phase uh of the self if we pay attention to the will then everything else can be directed from that and so for example with reference to what is in the mind don't be conformed to this world be transformed with a reunion how well you well your will has to come into play with that you have to decide and then you have to do the things that will and that's where uh spiritual disciplines come in which we'll talk more about in a bit so in God's plan the function of the will is to trust God that's the basic issue so that means the surrender of the will to God not to itself the will is something that has to be surrendered in the sense that it must not be taken as ultim timate or it will be poisonous it will turn back on the self and try to devote all of the energies of the self to getting one's own way you will have your kingdom God's kingdom will have to go its way and you'll take your kingdom and go its way so Satan's plan is the U in Satan's plan the function of the will is to be absorbed in itself and when we are absorbed in ourselves then this wonderful phrase in Isaiah 53 all we like sheep have gone astray so now how does a sheep go astray does anyone know how a sheep goes astray one blade of grass at a time one blade of grass at a time one nibble at a time they just nibble and pretty soon they don't know where they are and that's how we go astray if we are governed by our will we just do the thing we want that's it and we go astray if we devote our will to God and through him to the good of others then we don't go astray but each of us has turned into his own way that's the way the sheep goes astray we have to have the larger View and as we have that larger view then all the segments of the self begin to pull pull in line and as a result of that we have a self that is devoted to God now you want to recognize there are two forms the will takes and this is extremely important for our culture today which is as we said last time is absorbed in feeling an essentially uh sensual culture and the first is vital or impulsive will and that is simply will that identifies itself with desire if I want it I grab it a kid has that kind of will will it's typical of a child to have a vital or impulsive will again there's nothing wrong with that and we have to have that as well especially when we're younger because that's what keeps us alive and nourishes us and does things like that so that's important but you can't live by that you cannot live by following your desires for one thing your desires conflict the second thing is your desires conflict with the other desires of others that you're intimately related to and so you have to have a larger picture and that's where the rational or moral will comes in and that's normative for adults typical of adults uh but normative for adults but it uh the failure to have this is typical of adults who never grow up so you need to insert their failure is typical of adults who never grow up typically that's the kind of person who has to have what they want when they they wanted who gets attached to what they want and disregards the larger good the rational or moral will is normative because it looks at the larger picture it says not what do I want but what is good now the person who doesn't grow up is the person who doesn't realize that there is a difference between what you desire and what's good they identify the desired with the good now living in the kingdom of God is the best way to have the larger view as to what is good and that's where this comes together with what is basically just a psychological understanding of the cell now then character is Will settled into habitual patterns of action and now this is what we're looking for in terms of discipleship discipleship is the process through which the character of Christ becomes the settled or habitual P patterns of our action and that means where it is largely outsourced to our body and our social context character can be bad or character can be good uh but what we what we want is in the person who's uh transformed inwardly is without thinking they are prepared to do what is good to do what is right without thinking character is to a large degree what you do without thinking but it also in some degree has to do with what you do after you think again see use use Peter here as the illustration because we're all familiar with it why when when G when Peter said to Jesus I will not deny you he meant it he meant it when Jesus said you will deny me three times times he wasn't questioning Peter's intentions but he knew what was in the rest of Peter and Peter did not know that so Peter didn't know his character Jesus knew his character now it is a tribute to Peter's character that also after he did it he went out and wept bitterly right that was his character too but that was not the part of the character that controlled his automatic responses his automatic response was different from his intention and that is typical of the person whose character has not been redeemed and healed and brought to wholeness in Christ is it is inconsistent you ever have someone in your church or on your staff that is inconsistent most of us have had to deal with that sometimes we've had to deal with it in ourself what do we say of such a person you can't count on them you count on the person who is ready to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done that's the person of good consistent character now some people you can count on to do the wrong thing that's bad character it's still character they consistently do what is wrong now this idea of Outsourcing is crucial don't underestimate it that's why I brought up the circle diagram uh in the earlier talk and brought it up again today because you have to understand how character work character involves all of those aspects of the self character is not just a matter of will it's all of those things and you start here you're reborn and you're given a relationship to the kingdom of God and Jesus and then with that you begin to move out and now you hear commands like Peter first 2 Peter 3:18 perhaps all of you memorize that grow in Grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ what does that mean that means as you increasingly allow Grace to come into all of these areas see your character changes and now you can reliably do the thing things that you intend to do self-control is one of the expressions of this in order to have self-control you have to have a self that is in control if you have stuff running wild out here that's not in control because at some point pop and out comes something right and so U the transformation of the self as whole is what we look at when we are cultivating and growing the righteousness of the Kingdom now the Scribe and the Pharisee also has a character it's just the wrong character it's just the wrong character uh what they have the character of doing is intending to do things that are right mainly for appearance and they have a hidden dimension of themselves which they don't want people to know that's why openness and truthfulness become such an important part of growth in christlikeness it is because that openness keeps us from having that hidden Dimension that is running our lives now when I was younger I guess I assumed that you always had to have a hidden Dimension and it's a great relief to know that you can come to the place where you don't well what about all the disg graceful things you did you just open up that's what confession is about you stop hiding you allow people to know who you are see and you you stop saying well I can't let them know that about me or I wouldn't be able to lead I wouldn't be able to influence no one would listen to me any longer well hopefully that's in the past and you can understand that that is governed covered by the blood of Jesus by forgiveness and then you have to count on them to accept that also right now if it's in the future confession is one of the things as a discipline that is so powerful and the reason for that is it opens up the self and enables it to get help to change so confession as they say is good for the soul but bad for the reputation but that's partly why it's good for the soul is it's bad for the reputation and we need to come to the place to where we're not hiding what we have done anymore we are we admit we are sinners right admit that and that's hard for our churches often because we're caught up in the righteousness Of The Scribe and Pharisees I don't mean that you should rub this in everyone's face that comes by but you want to be in a position where you're not hiding from the past and if there's something in the present you want to have someone some group of people that you are opening that to as you ask for help to get rid of that hidden dimension of the celf we speak about people being transparent that's what we want is transparency you can't be transparent unless you have learned to trust God and unless you have received forgiveness unless you're prepared to let him handle your public relations but that's the only place there is any peace is in transparency and when we accept that and we move into it then that helps clear up all of these areas tremendously it strengthens us as we move on in growth and Grace well so then you you would have here how's this how such Love is in the whole person it possesses all those dimensions of the circle and uh poises them towards um what is good and what is right the body is then poised to do what is good without thinking about it see Peter didn't know that his body was poised to do what is wrong without thinking about it that's what he didn't know about himself Jesus knew that about him relations to others purged from withdrawal and attack the soul running smoothly in the tracks of the Kingdom