Sermon on the Mount – Blessed Are You When They Speak Evil Against You

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

The Good Life Belongs to the Peacemakers

The good life goes to the peacemakers who are struggling to find a way to join in unity despite strong differences. Finding a way to recognize that their enemy or their opponent or the different person out there is an actual human being just like them. Remember we spoke about Fred Hampton and the Young Patriots a few weeks ago. Some of you are still bringing that up. That was a shock. We had no idea that type of history existed in the United States. And it's encouraging. The good life belongs to the persecuted that would rather endure violence than let injustice go without criticism. Doesn't sound very blessed. And that's the very Jewish way of teaching that Yeshua implements here, a sense of irony to drive it home. You are the ones who are on the threshold of the kingdom of God. You are the ones that will slip in easily. How fortunate you are. As the kingdom comes, you are on the threshold already. And Yeshua here blesses three types of people. Those who are humbled, those who pursue righteousness and justice, and those who create peace.

We Love to Measure Things

It's challenging because we love to measure things. We love to evaluate people, don't we? We love to look at people and size them up. We all do it. I'd like to blame the world, but we all do it. And we do it for many different reasons. But when it comes to measuring up or evaluating someone's spirituality, their faith in God, how religious they are, how good of a Christian they are, we tend not to use the same measuring sticks that Yeshua used, do we? We'll see someone who knows a lot about the Bible, who has memorized a lot of verses. Oh, they definitely are— that's definitely a higher-up person on the list.

People who are very gifted speakers, charismatic, can get people excited. Oh, God's with him. Those who tithe... Yes, you definitely get some holiness points for that. But that's not the measuring rod that Yeshua uses. Most of us would never use that rod because we like to create God in our image and we like to bring our own rods to measure people on. But the type of standards that Yeshua implements, he's looking for people that love God. They love themselves and they love other people. That's the basis. He says those are the qualities that you need to look for. What are they doing? What's coming out of their heart?

I say all that as a master veteran. And these are the types of people he addresses in the Sermon on the Mount who are waiting to enter into the home that they've been searching for.

Blessed When They Insult You

And we get to the last section of the Beatitudes, verse 11, which states: You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me.

Be glad and rejoice. Rejoice! Because your reward is great in heaven, for that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you. It is so difficult for our flesh to agree with things like this. You ever been made fun of in school? People get picked on, right? Be bullied even. And you're trying to figure out a way to respond. I don't know how to respond, whatever. And did anyone ever have someone try to encourage you, like, "Hey, everyone gets bullied. It's okay." Or why don't you laugh with them? Tell that to an eight-year-old. Yeah, it didn't work. Yeshua says, listen, you're standing up for what's right because you're following me.

And you have a problem keeping your mouth shut when you see evil in the world. And you're going to make waves because of it. And people don't like that. They want their world to be uninterrupted because they've become cozy. And when you keep scratching, they will respond. They will speak evil toward you. They'll do whatever it takes to get you to stop. And Yeshua says, be glad and rejoice. Not only is your reward great, but man, they did the same thing to the prophets. So you're good. Kind of ironic, but also mildly encouraging. See, when we read this and verse 10 specifically, it's like, "Oh, because of me."

And I grew up thinking, "Oh, okay. If I claim to believe in Jesus, people are going to speak evil to me. If I have the title of a Christian, that's going to be it. I've got my WWJD bracelet. I've got my No Fear shirt. Was that a Christian thing? We're going to make it a Christian thing. I've got all my paraphernalia. People are going to hate you." So you'd walk out as a martyr ready to be persecuted.

Because of Following Me

And here's the thing. In the first century in the Roman Empire, nobody cared what you believed in. The Romans sure didn't care. They believed in lots of gods. That's fine. Cool. That's not what got Christians killed. Because of me. Because of following me. Because of doing my teachings. Because of emulating me. It was their actions and their restraint from the world that caused a disruption. That caused them to speak evil against you. That caused persecution. Believe what you want. Just fit in. Don't challenge anything in the world. And don't challenge injustice when it happens. Don't challenge unrighteousness when it happens in the community or in the world.

Just keep on keeping on. Lesser of two evils, right? The prophets before you. Yeshua goes on to revise this beatitude in Matthew 23 when he spends an entire chapter scolding and condemning the religious leaders. The ones who knew the Bible verses, the Torah, the Pharisees and such. And here's what it says in Matthew 23, verse 34. He's speaking to the Pharisees and he says, "This is why I'm sending you prophets and sages and scribes." So he's speaking about his followers. "Some of them you will kill and crucify and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. So all the righteous blood shed on the earth will be charged to you from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah."

Standing Within the Prophetic Tradition

Yeshua seems to frame Christ followers proclaiming the gospel and living out the gospel to their fellow Jewish neighbors as standing within the prophetic tradition of the scriptures, one that had a frequent hostile response. Just like Israel persecuted its prophets in the past. See, the prophets, when they came and challenged Judah and Israel, they were not challenging them to sing more worship songs. They weren't challenging them to do less work on the Sabbath. They weren't challenging them to stop eating pork or bring more sacrifices. No, the people were doing all of that. The prophets were calling them out for ignoring and not standing up for what was right.

And while wrong things happened, they turned a blind eye. The mistreatment of the vulnerable. The lack of justice by their hands. And the prophets challenged them to take a stand on moral issues and to support the controversial and unpopular causes that are right. And when you do that, you should expect to be ridiculed, maligned, and persecuted. Yeshua gives us the same hope that the prophets had when they spoke with such boldness to the corrupt world around them. And the one thing I think we can draw from that theme is that even though the world saw one person, if that one person stands with God, that person outnumbers everyone, those that speak evil against you.

Why would anybody speak evil against you? Maybe they don't like you. Why don't they like you? People tend to speak evil against you when you're standing for something and you're not backing down and you're an annoyance in their worldview.

The Tap Dance We Do in the South

We got a real problem with that in the South. We got the Southern hospitality. We don't speak truth. We're trained not to because you want to avoid offense externally, right? You know what I'm talking about? It's the tap dance we do in the South. Every time you meet someone and engage, you've got to put on the mask, you've got to do the dance. And there's a protocol of greeting: how you doing? You've got to put on the mask, smile. Oh, yeah, you're blessed. How you doing? Engaging. Hey, is that all right? Can I do this thing that's going to inconvenience you? Oh, yeah, go ahead. That's no problem at all. I hate you. You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah. If someone wants to pay for your meal, you have to argue with them. Right? You have to. No, I cannot. And you're always like pulling out your wallet, but you're never opening it.

The Dance of Social Courtesy

You're like, "Oh yeah, I can't. I'll get it, please. No..." And then protocol dictates that they in turn refuse and say, "No, no, I got it." And then optionally, you can argue again for a super humble presence, or you can resort to "Are you sure? Are you sure?" A couple of you understand. The whole while, we're just like, "Oh, thanks? I really appreciate that." Could have been done. Got to follow the dance. And the dance gets us in trouble when we don't speak truth about things that are bugging us or annoying us or so on and so forth. But yeah, sometimes people don't want to consider you as being a fully human being like them.

So they do their best to squash you with evil speech, slander, fabricating lies about you and what you believe and why you do what you do, and eventually violence. Because how else are you going to get them to stop, right? Sometimes you've got to give them the old piece of lead. So the world does. And Yeshua's call only gets more difficult for someone of the world. Yeshua says, if you find yourself in that position, don't fight back. Yeshua says that if you're following me, then you're walking on the same path as me, and I've been down this path. I've stood for what was right. They spoke evil against me, and eventually they used violence.

You do the same by not responding in violence. You don't stop carrying. Do not drop your cross. You continue because I showed you how. Do not mirror the evil that is coming upon you by resembling it.

The Paradox of Change

And that's how the world has changed. Because every other way has proved itself ineffective. And we talk about violence a lot through this series because Yeshua mentions it quite a bit— persecution, oppression, forced to be humbled in the world. The thing about violence is violence only produces stinks, doesn't it? Violence only produces more violence. Because the 12-year-old son of the man that you killed is now going to pick up that mantle in the name of justice in his eyes. And now he's going to bring all his siblings after you. Violence doesn't just produce more violence, it multiplies it.

An Example: Mining Country

A great example of this was a time when a whole bunch of rednecks in Appalachia weren't grateful for their jobs that the Amazon of mining companies were providing them with. If someone gives you a job, you should be grateful, right? I mean, there's a lot of people out there looking for work. I just hate it. I hate it when people are not grateful for things when they are so generously given to them, right? Workers in a minefield in West Virginia had homes, had consistent work jobs from their company, had food on their table. I mean, it was the early 20th century, right? The early 20th century. The mining companies didn't really have a big understanding of OSHA yet, but that's not their fault.

Not their fault, right? Safety—I mean, we try to...I'm not quite there yet. Didn't quite have the safety yet. Not the company's fault. Not their responsibility. They needed the workers to continue traversing through those caverns to get everything out. And sometimes they'd hit some dead air—this stinks. Sometimes the caves would collapse, kill a bunch of people, but it's part of the work environment, right? You agreed to that when you signed up for it. Water was sometimes hard to come by; you'd get thirsty out there. It was a little dangerous, but they should have thought about that before they accepted that job, right?

I mean, the company secured them homes that were local to the mines. And the issue with that is that they had to travel so far to get groceries and supplies from the general store. So they built a general store right in the middle of the community there. How gracious of them. And they even created their own monetary system in the form of work credit. So instead of just making real money, you would earn credits internal to the company that could only be used at the company stores and the general store. How convenient! Seems like a good setup. I mean, the mining company started inflating the prices of everything in the general store, and they made it so no one could afford to quit and move, but they should have been more grateful.

A Radical Uprising

See, in the early 20th century, this was before labor laws existed. And this was also a time when unionizing and negotiating with your companies wasn't really a right. It was a radical thing. What are you doing? You need to be grateful for your job we're giving you, even though we're exporting every single ounce of your life, driving you into poverty just enough so you can't escape, yet you can keep working well beyond 10, 12, 16 hours. You need more work, more credits? It's okay. It's a nice 10-year-old son you've got there. He looks pretty strong. And he's already here.

The workers began to organize a union, which means they came together collectively to leverage power in numbers to negotiate with their employer for better work conditions, better pay—can we just have a water fountain that's consistently full over here, something? So they did it. They did it. And an incident took place because of that known as the Blair Mountain Conflict, also known as the Battle of Blair Mountain, and it was one of the largest labor uprisings in the United States. It was the largest armed uprising since the Civil War, and this occurred in 1921 in Logan County, West Virginia. Coal operators used their power to influence everything from local governments to the provisions available in the company stores to inflating the prices, not allowing them to use real money, paying them in faux money, and the miners were faced with extremely dangerous conditions.

And if you died, okay? I mean, if you were living nearby with your family, you all can go now. And a symbol of solidarity and resistance helped unify the miners during their struggles and has actually continued to be an emblem of labor rights movements throughout history. And this symbol was a red bandana worn around their neck to show their support for the Union.

The Redneck Army

Now we can slow down and show this slide. Yup. They were called the Redneck Army. I love this story so much. And it seems this is where the term came from before it became a slur against the same people. Love it. A bunch of working class men and women standing up to corporate greed and threatening to cease production. Go on strike. That's good. A bunch of West Virginian liberals. Look at that. And I love the picture that we have there because it speaks volumes in 1921. The protests began as strikes and peaceful demonstrations, as they should be, against the coal company. However, these companies responded with aggression, employing their own police force, if you will—private security firms intentionally there to intimidate, evict, and physically attack the striking workers.

The non-violent effort was strong among these workers, thousands of them, eventually 10,000 of them. But unfortunately, it escalated dramatically when a pro-union sheriff of Matawan, Sid Hatfield, was murdered on the steps of McDowell County Courthouse in August of that year. And his death, of course, was widely seen as a martyrdom for the miners' cause, and it galvanized the miners to take up arms. A threshold has now been broken.

And so thousands of miners, including thousands from other counties, marched toward Blair Mountain for the cause, ready to confront the hired forces of the coal companies, who stood prepared with artillery, machine guns, and even planes with bombs to drop on the workers. They faced off against 3,000 armed security in a five-day battle involving gunfire and explosives, which ended only when federal troops intervened. Yeah! Then it came up and they told the big corporation to stop this, you're in the wrong. That's not what happened, you know it. They pointed all their guns at the workers, and the workers didn't surrender. "Fine, I mean, okay." Huge victory for corporate America. Union workers were thrown in jail, prison for who knows how long, hard labor increased. Can't make credits now either.

When Violence Seemed Justified

And this victory stood for about a decade until that very event festered in history and laws were finally passed to give workers the right to unionize as well as an ever-evolving list of labor rights in our country. Stand for the right cause. But they used violence, and they justified using it back, which is acceptable in the world we live in. That's where it's hard. That's where it's hard. And I wouldn't have expected them to act any other way.

A Different Path: The Sit-In Movement

In 1960, there was a movement started in Nashville known as the Sit-In Movement. It did not involve guns, knives, or fists. It involved sitting down. Supporters of the Civil Rights Movement would walk into segregated operations and sit down. I can feel how frustrated the others were. "We don't serve you here. Please leave. We're not going to give you anything." "Okay." "Go!" What are you all doing here? You're taking, you're running off people—people aren't coming. Listen, get out. Brilliant. They would not move. And it was a dare. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Do it. Use violence. Let the world see who you really are. Let the world see how you would rather be an animal than a human being. Let the world see. Do it. We will wait. Another incident a year later involved nine black students from a local college that walked into McCrory's Five and Dine, a little lunch spot. They sat down at the lunch counter and were denied service. As you know, we don't serve you here. We understand. Okay. I love it. They refused to leave.

See, the county had already had measures in place to stop the sit-in movement, right? And it was genius. I mean, we'll arrest the protesters, take them to jail, and then we'll say, "Hey, you can stay in jail or go to the labor camp—the hard labor camp with the chain link barbed wire fences around it. You won't be able to leave and you can work all day long because you were part of a specific group or movement that we felt threatened us."

The Cost of Speaking Evil

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, that is the very definition of a concentration camp. So you can either go there, you can stay in jail, or you can pay a fine or post bail and not have to do that. And so what are you going to do? Yeah, I'll pay the fine. 50 bucks. It's 100. It's 200. And the genius behind that strategy is you've now created a financial burden on protesters for protesting, right? And it was beginning to impact the civil rights movement as a whole. But these nine men were two steps ahead. They wanted to be arrested and they wanted to go to jail. And when they were arrested, they were given the choice—pay the fine or post bail.

We choose jail. And they were forced to work in the camp with hard labor. Here's a picture of one of the camps. That's there. These nine men walked into a restaurant that is still standing in downtown Rock Hill, two and a half miles away from this very spot. They attended Friendship College, and they were known as the Friendship Nine. That's where they went. Chilling image, if I say so myself. They wanted to go there, though, because they had a new strategy. Jail, no bail. Jail, no bail. It's a strategy that had already been in the grassroots, just working its way through the civil rights movement.

It was made famous by these nine men. See, the idea is that we will go to jail and we will refuse to work and they will do isolation, whatever. They'll do all kinds of stuff, but it costs money to have inmates in jail. They flipped the financial burden onto the counties that were putting them in prison. Two and a half miles away from here in downtown Rock Hill, the restaurant has changed its name, but there's still a sign out front. And the lunch counter at which these nine courageous men, against all adversity, sat is still there. And you should take a look at it one day if you're in that area. But here's the thing.

People are still alive here today in Rock Hill who spoke evil toward not simply these courageous men, but the entire demographic of Black people in the area. This was not a century ago. And we love to pretend like it was. We love to pretend like everything has been fixed, but no, it's just changed its mask. The structure has not been changed. Evil was spoken against these people trying to stand up for justice because we didn't like it. It irritated us. It brought to the surface something that we didn't want to acknowledge even though we were happy to let it happen. Just like the cows of Bashan that Amos speaks about.

They didn't want to acknowledge their existence and would do whatever it takes for it to remain that way. Speaking evil, speaking hatred, speaking bitterness.

The Power of Speech

The power of life is the tongue. And it's so significant when we speak about speech that's in the story of the Bible. Because God spoke, Psalm says, and life occurred. Vitality. We call it creation. I like the big, just amazing. And what is speech? Speech. You've got to push air through it. You've got to use the air. We've got to use the breath. Who gave the breath? Oh, that's right, because the ancient Israelites struggled, in a way, to identify and label this life-giving force that tends to animate everything in the world, and they don't know how it works, but they know it's a part of God and it's something God gives them.

It is a life-giving force. What do we call it? Is it the wind? It's the wind, right? Because we know the wind blows and it brings life to the trees. Animation. But it's breath. Yeah, because God spoke it. Breathe into the nostrils. I think the word for ruach has, what, four or five different meanings, just all jumbled up. This is the power of God that brings forth life. And we see the authority that speech has throughout the scriptures in speaking life. When the prophets are told to put coals to their lips so that they can speak the word of God, to purify their mouths so that the spirit of God that is already in them can come through them and out to the world.

Speech all the way to how John concludes his magnificent account of Yeshua's ministry, when he was raised from the dead and instituted the first female evangelist to go tell his disciples the gospel. And then he appears before them and he breathes, enacting miracles. A similar but better creation story where God is once again launching a new humanity and he's breathing in the breath of life so that they can go to the world and speak truth and speak life. Or death and bitterness and evil. One brings vitality, one brings death.

Devaluing Humanity Through Words

Speaking evil, speaking hatred, speaking bitterness. We know it's not right, but we always make excuses. Right? We always love to negotiate with how we're going to implement this commandment in a time when we feel justified to not listen to the words of Yeshua. And it's so subtle when we do it. And it's full of hypocrisy. And that's what makes the story of the Bible and the rescue mission of God so incredible.

When you speak evil towards another person, you devalue their humanity. That's what you're trying to do, right? You're trying to make them be less—less than you or your people group or whatever movement. Less. Why do we do that? I don't know. I've thought about that for quite a long time. Is it that we enjoy the comfort and security of identifying ourselves as being on top and in control of everything? And that's great if you can walk around thinking that, creating your own Truman Show. But what does that require when you interact with other people in the world? Oh, I got to make sure I'm still on top, so I need to size them up, maybe say some things about them.

Maybe think some things about them, we'll just turn their value down. No big deal, I'm still on top, I still feel good about myself. And sometimes we develop such a pattern of doing that that it becomes a subconscious thing when we walk into a room. We look around. We might look at demographics such as race or age. We might look at what we perceive as income levels, because that's how the world measures. We always find a way to be critical of other people. And I think this is rooted here.

Propaganda and Dehumanization

That's what propaganda is—when you try to influence someone to believe that the lives of others don't matter, they're not real. Remember the Nazi propaganda against the Jews? They did not accurately illustrate anybody that was Jewish. The propaganda that we put out in World War II against the Japanese? I can't believe we did that. It's horrible, because we didn't want to show them as people. We didn't want to show them as human. They're animals, and therefore, they're easier to slaughter. Amazing how we're so good at that. But Yeshua says that when people speak evil against you, because of what you stand for, you are in line with what a kingdom citizen looks like.

And that's encouraging. Here's what it says in Matthew 12, verse 33. It states, Oh yeah, we know that, Matt. It's good. Skip ahead. No, you brood of vipers. Here we go. How can you, who are evil, say anything good? For the mouth speaks what is in the heart. Oh, snap. A good man brings good things out of the good that's stored within him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil that is stored up within him. But I tell you that everyone will have to give account for the day of judgment, for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.

Non-Working Words

So that word for idle words is sometimes translated as worthless words. I like how the King James Version translates it. King James is a more strict translation, and it means not working.

You're non-working words. Not working. Like a computer? They didn't have computers. No, I mean not being productive. You're not labor. You're not working. You're just standing there idle. You're supposed to be working. You're supposed to be progressing, but you're not useful. You're not even useful in any capacity. This is how the words are described. Got to go to work. When you get up, you have to realize, audit yourself, purge, and understand that you're the ambassador of good, the goodness of God to the world. And if you don't work, if you refuse to work, I don't know where you're at or what your status is.

But Yeshua says, you need to fix that. What does Marcus Aurelius say? The second century stoic emperor. He talked about complaining when he woke up in the morning. And he's an emperor. He's the emperor of Rome. He wakes up. He's like, man. I don't want to get out of bed. I want to curl up in my blankie. And he speaks to himself and he quotes. He says, what do I have to complain of here? I'm tired? No. If I'm going to do what I was born for, why am I complaining? The things I was brought into the world to do, why am I just laying here? Except if I was just created to huddle under my blankie and stay warm.

Maybe that's why I was created. And these are the self-motivation words that he encouraged himself in and wrote down, which we found.

Ambassadors of the Kingdom

What is your purpose? Why were you created? He wasn't a Christian, but I think it's a bigger question for us when we wake up, when we walk around all day. We snuggle up in our blankie. Are we doing what God created us to do? And that's being ambassadors of Christ and soldiers of the kingdom and speak life no matter what and stand for his kingdom and show the world that there's another way and another creation that they can be a part of. When someone speaks evil, Yeshua says it comes from the heart. And Yeshua says they are just expressing what and who they are on the inside. Only evil people speak evil things—that's what Yeshua just said. And that's rough. Oh, but surely he didn't actually mean—I know, let's all go down that, let's do it. Yes, you're right. No, I think he very well meant it.

Recognize the Image of God

And so when someone comes against you and they speak evil things towards you, you can recognize that. And then you can pray for them. Matt, I thought you were going somewhere good. Pray for them. Yeah, then you can pray for them. Because as a believer, you recognize them as an image of God, as a human being, just like you. They're irritated with you, just like you. I got to apologize. I was dumb. I was dumb. I'm really good about researching stuff. I was really dumb. Those college protests that are going on, I thought some incorrect things about them. Because everyone around me was telling me, oh, social media, right? I didn't know any of these people. Social media was coming up, and I thought the protests were actually about not allowing Jewish students into the colleges, like it was hating against Jewish students. Yeah, why would they? I mean, look at this erupting all over the U.S., like all these colleges, and no one's doing anything more about this hate towards the Jewish students there.

Learning the Truth

And then I saw an article about a female Jewish teacher who's also the professor of Jewish studies at one of the colleges being thrown to the ground and arrested by the police who were there to, what I thought, protect the Jewish population there. Why was she a part of the protests? And then I saw a picture, a video, of a Passover Seder that was going on on the front lawn of Columbia University that was put on by Jewish students, open arms to allow everyone to come and partake of the meal of freedom. They were part of the protests. This is not right. This is bizarre. Something's not right. Twilight Zone protest.

Then I saw another video where they're doing Shabbat services every single week there because they're not moving. It's bizarre. So I looked into it. I felt like an idiot. There's lots of Jewish students protesting. What are they protesting then? I say this not to justify it by any means, but at least I understand so that if I ever meet any protesters, I can actually be knowledgeable enough to talk to them and have a conversation, influence if I feel like I need to, right? I mean, the reason why it's going on in colleges all over the place is because students want transparency of the finances of their colleges. They pay tuition, or at least the loans that they took out pay the tuition that they're paying for, and they have no idea where the money goes, what it's involved in.

What They're Actually Asking For

And so the overarching, or at least that's the front of it, wants transparency of our universities and where tuition money is going. And a big thing is they don't want their money going to armed conflicts across the world, indirectly or directly. I can kind of understand that. But of course, the pivotal point and the emphasis is the conflict that's going on right now in Israel.

And the students want to make sure their colleges, or they believe that their colleges, are sending funds to Israel, supporting Israel in a way that is directly or indirectly supporting the war that is going on that the students don't believe should still be going on. Cool. You don't really agree? Whatever. That's not the point. The point is, I thought these were a bunch of students that hated Jewish people. And there might be some. Might be. But the fact that there's a lot of Jewish protesters is bothersome to me. And so I feel a bit dumb for believing some of the opinions that I held because I would have been unprepared to try to influence people in any way, shape, or form on the way that I think is a just direction because I have remained ignorant.

A Boundary We Can't Cross

And so I say that to say, no, it's not about that. I say that to say we have to be careful because when we size someone else up and we assume their hearts or we assume what they believe or their opinion, it's very easy to justify speaking evil toward them, even if they're speaking evil towards us. That's a boundary line that we're not allowed to cross according to Yeshua. We're allowed to protest. We're allowed to stand for what is right. We're allowed to have zeal and passion on behalf of what is righteousness and what is just. But we're not allowed to use violence to force people to do what we want or believe what we want them to believe.

And equally banned, we're not allowed to speak evil toward them or about them in an attempt to do the same. And that's horrible. That's rough. That's rough. Because there's a lot of people in the world today that I'm tempted and I want to so bad. And I want to justify it because I want to make God in my own image so I can make the rules. And they are the exception. And it smells so good, I want to taste that fruit. And that's not what we're called to do.

Don't Bite

Protest. Stand. Irritate. Sit. And show that you're better than the people that you're going against. Because if not, the world will not see a difference between who you are and what you stand for and who you're protesting against. And so as we come into a very familiar time of tribulation in our country where as Christians we forget the Sermon on the Mount because we want to elect a president that we feel needs to be president, I encourage you. Let's try to be different this fourth year. Let's try not to take the bait. Let's try to have integrity. And let's try to show people that we believe are wrong, that we're not going to resort to the types of tactics that the world tells us is okay to use. I don't know if that hits with anyone. Your zeal is not an excuse to hurt people. Your zeal is an excuse to bring light, to bring salt, and to do the Sermon on the Mount in a way that actually impacts people and causes change instead of death.

How Real Change Happens

There's two roads, and those nine men that stood and sat in that lunch counter, they chose not to use force to harm the people that they were trying to reach. They allowed it to happen to them, but they made a choice, and it brought real change. It brought real change. Recognize injustice in the world. Recognize when you need to stand no matter what. And recognize when you're being tempted to be an animal. And don't bite. Don't show the world that you're not a human. Blessed are those, the good life, are those who have all kinds of evil speech thrown at them and are persecuted for following me. That's the good life of the kingdom. And that's how you produce a change in the world.

Come and Worship

So please stand with me as we conclude services. And I invite you during this time to worship with us, to sing, to meditate on the word. And if you need prayer today, we have a prayer team on either side of the stage, and I encourage you, utilize that. We have prayer warriors here that will lift you up and stand beside you. Alvino Malcano, our father and our king, father, I thank you so much for the opportunity to come together once again on this day of rest that causes us to look forward to the day when it will overtake the world. And every nation and every tongue and every tribe and every people group—everyone has an invitation to sit at the table as the prophet Isaiah says.

Father, I ask that you would change hearts, that you would change mindsets, that you would change spirits, that you would allow us to actually emulate what the Spirit of God is doing in this new creation and that we would be different. And by being different, we would be made more aware of the evil speech that people want to throw at us for restraining ourselves from harming others. Give us wisdom to speak to people that need a new perspective, that need change, that need your love and grace. Give us the speech of life that we would draw all to the base of the cross. In Yeshua's name we pray. Amen.

Let's sing Shema. Israel, Adonai, Adonai, Adonai. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. Blessed is the name of His glorious kingdom for all eternity. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance toward you and give you His shalom. Amen. Hallelujah. Shabbat shalom. Thank you, Lord. Give him praise.