Sermons

FILTER BY:

← back to list

Jan 27, 2019

Beyond the Good as a duty to the Good as a beauty

Beyond the Good as a duty to the Good as a beauty

Passage: Matthew 5:6

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: The Highest Good

“Righteous” sounds like such a throwback word--or one only used in pejorative contexts: “don’t be so self-righteous.” How do we hear from Jesus about a desire for righteousness without glazing over, shuffling our feet, or giving into cynicism?

Artwork by Stacey Chacon

Order of Worship

Pre-Service Text: Psalm 34:8
Call To Worship: 1 Chronicles 16:8-11
Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 55:1-3
Sermon Title: Beyond the Good as a duty to the Good as a beauty.
Central Text: Matthew 5:6
Response: Special song: “If I Stand” by Rich Mullins
Benediction: 2 Corinthians 13:14
Post-Service Text: Romans 14:17

01.27.2019 Sermon Notes

Illustrations:

"Happiness: Kids Interviews"

Happy_ from Graceworks Media on Vimeo.

Shawshank - Free Song

Related Scriptures:

  • Psalm 34:8
  • Psalm 42:1,2
  • Psalm 119:5-7
  • Isaiah 55:1-3
  • Matthew 6:33
  • John 7:37
  • John 14:13-15
  • Romans 3:10
  • Romans 8:1--7
  • Romans 14:17
  • Philippians 3:8-9

Discussion Questions & Applications:

  1. Why is what you want even more revealing about you than what you say or what you do? Name some instances when what you say or do doesn’t necessarily reveal what you really want.
  2. How, if at all, have your deep hungers changed over time? Why?
  3. We’re nearly half way into the beatitudes. Do you think these are individual statements of what life in Christ looks like, or do they tell a kind of story? Why do you think so?
  4. On first glance, what might this “righteousness” be?
    1. The righteousness we receive from God in Christ?
    2. The righteousness He works into us--and which we in turn imperfectly reflect--through faith in Christ?
    3. God’s righteous purposes at work in the world?
    4. Or some combination?
      1. Why do you think so? How might the rest of the Sermon on the Mount--or even subsequent beatitudes--help you know?
  5. Which is God’s gift to us--the hungering and thirsting for righteousness, or the satisfaction of that desire?
  6. What is it to hunger and thirst for righteousness if we take the metaphorical language seriously? Is it to have that righteousness, or only to want what we do not have?
    1. What might it look like to long for what we do not have and still understand ourselves as blessed--in the true and living way?
  7. How does the righteous work of Jesus relate to His righteous way in which we’re to follow Him? Why is the latter impossible apart from the former?
    1. How does His righteous work on our behalf both console and compel?

Quotes:

  • All men seek happiness. This is without exception. . . . there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present[.] But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. He only is our true good. . . . - Blaise Pascal, Penseés VII
  • The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the giver of all good things. - Rich Mullins, “If I Stand”
  • As soon as I have wept for my sins, I begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness. - St. Ambrose
  • The only way to live is on your knees because humility is endless. - T.S. Eliot
  • The purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is to demolish all attempts to believe that we have anything of our own that we can achieve or contribute to the divine equation. - David Zahl
  • [We are] so loved that we don’t despair when we do wrong, but so sinful that we have no right to be puffed up when we do right. - Tim Keller
  • When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. - C.S. Lewis

Sermons/resources: