It's good to be with you today here in Ringgold.
Something else I was very excited about.
I got to sleep in my own bed last night.
Now, you may take that for granted,
but last Sabbath ended 11 days of being gone.
And so last Sabbath I was down in Peachtree Hills,
so I was looking at my calendar, I was like, sweet, next week I get to sleep in my bed
all week long. So I was very excited about that,
but it is good to be here with you all today.
And I was trying to think the last time I was in this church,
I believe I came up here, I've come up here a couple of times for meetings during the week.
But were any of you members in this church back in the late 90s?
Anybody here? Okay, we've got a few.
The last time I was here for a church service was when I was,
it was either when I was a junior or senior at Southern.
And we came over here, the theology majors came over here and got to do a church service here
and had a great time. And I remember this, you fed us afterwards.
And for those of you who know Southern students, you know food is very important.
So you all gave a lasting good impression in my mind, but it is good to be here.
I also bring you greetings from Georgia Cumberland Conference.
You know, around the conference as we looked at our numbers last year,
we had a lot to be thankful for.
Last year we had 886 baptisms in Georgia Cumberland Conference.
Can you say amen?
We had 272 professions of faith.
And we ended up with a membership of 44,701 members
spread throughout Georgia, Eastern Tennessee, and a little bit of North Carolina.
Well, I want to thank Pastor Aaron for inviting me to be here with you today.
And today we are going to talk about a benediction.
But before we do that, let's pray.
Father, it is so awesome to be together as the family of God.
Father, it is great to be able to open Your Word
without fear of someone coming through those back doors
threatening us that we need to close it.
Father, and right now, my prayer is that the words not be mined,
but may they come from Your throne room on high as we get in to the Word of God.
In Jesus' name, amen.
When you hear the word benediction, what comes to your mind?
If you look in your bulletin, after I speak,
there is a closing song and then a benediction.
Now, as a kid, I'm just going to be honest,
that word brightened my life because it meant something was over.
It meant there was food coming.
It meant that I was perhaps going to my friend's house,
my best friend Chris.
I would go over to Chris' house.
I found out there's another Chris here I've become friends with today.
And my best friend Chris, we would go over,
and his parents had a lot of acres, and we would go play in the woods.
And so I never really focused much on this word benediction
other than thinking things are about over.
It's time to go.
I remember a school program, Madison Campus Elementary, third grade.
We were doing a school program entitled Down by the Creek Bank.
There used to be a record that was Down by the Creek Bank,
and our kids did it.
And I remember we had to do this twice.
And I remember standing up there in the stage in the middle of the program,
and one of the little boys in my class made a mistake.
And I remember us standing there and all of us saying,
I can't wait for this to be over.
And we knew when our teacher stood up to have the closing prayer,
the benediction, that program was going to be over.
So this week I've been looking at something.
And I got into it more this week, but this really came up in my mind
about a month and a half ago in studying something else that we'll get to in a bit.
And so this week I decided I'm going to look at what does this word benediction mean.
When you see it here in your bulletin, that's typically where we see it,
it means this, the utterance or bestowing of a blessing.
Huh. Interesting.
So the benediction is really, we might even change the title to say blessing.
You know, we bless our food.
But a lot of times how many times do we think about the last thing in the program being the blessing?
Scripture is filled with powerful blessings, aka benedictions.
You can go to Ecclesiastes 12, 13, 14, Psalms 150 verse 6.
David ends the Psalms by saying, let everything that has breath praise the Lord, praise the Lord.
Acts 28, 31 ends with preaching the kingdom of God,
teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding Him.
Paul loved to use benedictions in his letters.
Read through them. Over and over he says, here's Romans 16,
to God alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.
Here's one that he fills with a lot of them.
Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ephesians, Hebrews, grace be with y'all. Amen.
James 5. Now this is an interesting one.
Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone turns him back,
let him know that he who turns a sinner from the air of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sin.
That's the benediction in James.
And then we have the benediction in Scripture.
Revelation 22.
What are the last books in the Bible? The benediction that God leaves for us.
Surely I am coming quickly.
Even so, come Lord Jesus.
So today we're going to look at something and remember this word benediction with me.
If you would, take out your Bibles.
If you don't have your Bibles, but you have some technology device that you have your Bible on,
take that out and turn with me to Matthew chapter 5.
Matthew chapter 5 and these three chapters, 5, 6, and 7, are an interesting story.
A little background.
Alone upon a mountain near the Sea of Galilee, Jesus prior to Matthew chapter 5 had spent all night in prayer
for his chosen disciples.
At dawn he called them to him and with words of prayer and instruction laid his hands upon their heads in benediction.
Setting them apart for the gospel work, just like we did here today.
This ordination of Anthony, the prayer we had was really a benediction.
It was a blessing.
Then Jesus repaired with them to the seaside where in the early morning a great multitude had already begun to assemble.
So what happened leading up to Matthew chapter 5?
Jesus spent the night in prayer.
Prior to that he had just officially chosen the disciples and that next morning he calls the disciples
and has a special blessing for them.
And then the multitude begins to show up.
They were from all over.
They came asking for healing.
There Jesus was and he was on the beach at first.
But the beach didn't afford standing room and so he led them back to the mountainside.
Reaching a level space that afforded a pleasant gathering.
He seated himself upon the grass and his disciples and the multitude followed his example.
I've been to the place in Israel where they feel this could have happened.
It's a beautiful hillside there in Galilee.
And as you sit there and you imagine, it's so neat to be the places where Jesus was.
And as you sit there and imagine Jesus talking to the multitude.
If Jesus was down below them, down the mountain a little bit, which naturally was a bull.
How many of you have been to Cahudah Springs?
Okay, Cahudah Springs our youth camp, not far from here.
Cahudah Springs, the end of April we're going to have a big Pathfinder Camperee.
There's going to be over a thousand Pathfinders there.
And there is a bull area there at Cahudah Springs that you can sit as a Pathfinder.
And you can see the speaker, but behind the speaker you see the Life Center.
You see the lake and then you see some of the mountain right behind.
Well there at the multitude that we're talking about here in this story.
A person listening could look out and see the Sea of Galilee.
A sea that I dare say many of them had been on sometime in their life.
And as the crowd gathered they had a feeling that something more than usual might happen.
The disciples had pressed their master.
What's going to happen?
And with the events that happened this morning, where he had this special blessing
or benediction on them, they were pretty sure that an announcement was coming.
In fact, the announcement they thought was coming was an announcement in regards to his kingdom.
They fondly hoped he would soon establish that kingdom.
And that feeling also pervaded the multitude that were there.
As they sat upon the green hillside awaiting the words of the Divine Teacher,
their hearts were filled with thoughts of future glory.
There were scribes and Pharisees who looked forward to the day
when they should have dominion over the hated Romans.
The poor peasants and fishermen hoped to hear the assurance that their wretched hovels
and scanty food, life of toil and fear of want were to be exchanged for mansions
of plenty and days of ease.
In place of one coarse garment, they dreamed that one day soon they were going to see,
receive a rich article of clothing.
Everybody gathered there that day on that hillside had hope that Israel was soon going
to be honored among the nations.
And Jesus had led them there.
He was seated.
They were seated and they were waiting what was going to happen.
But before we get to what was going to happen,
the story that happened that day doesn't begin there in Matthew chapter 5.
Instead, it begins earlier.
In the book of Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy was Moses' last reminder to the children of Israel.
It's almost his opportunity to write the highlights
of what Israel really needed to remember from their journey.
You'll remember Deuteronomy 5, 10 commandments are mentioned again.
So Moses goes through this review.
It's almost like, you know, it's almost like my kids.
Whenever I take my kids to school, there's last reminders
that I'll sometimes shout to them as they're going inside.
You know, drink your water.
I have to tell one of my children, drink your water.
Every time I drop her off at GCA, so those of you
that know my kids know which one that is.
Ava, drink your water.
Another one, I have to tell, remember to listen to your teacher.
Don't talk all day.
Let your teacher do the talking.
There's those last reminders and Moses gives this last reminder
and there's an interesting story there in Deuteronomy chapters 10 and 11.
So now that you already had your Bible opened
and you thought we were going there, put your hand in Matthew 5,
but go back with me to Deuteronomy chapters 10 and 11.
Now we're going to jump through this fast
because we don't have a lot of time here today.
But in Deuteronomy chapter 10, we find this chapter beginning here
where Moses says at that time, verse 1,
the Lord said to me, hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first,
and come up to me in the mountain and make yourself an ark of wood.
And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets,
which you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.
You remember the story?
The first tablets of stone, Moses had come down the mountain.
He saw what the children of Israel were doing with the golden calf
and he promptly breaks the Ten Commandments.
Kids, that's a question my dad used to ask me.
He used to like to ask me trick questions.
Who is the only person in the Bible that broke all Ten Commandments?
The answer?
Moses.
So there we go.
You can go ask your friends that this next week at school.
Moses.
So Moses goes and meets with God and then in verses 12 and 13 of chapter 10,
it says this.
God is saying, and now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you
but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways,
to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,
and to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes,
which I command you today for your good.
This section here, we might term in my Bible, it has verses 12 through 22,
they're in Deuteronomy 10, the essence of the law.
There's some describers of what the Ten Commandments are.
Then we go to chapter 11 and I want to just look at a few verses here
real fast before we talk about them.
Verse 1, Deuteronomy 11 verse 1.
Therefore you shall love the Lord your God and keep his charge,
his statutes, his judgments, and his commandments always.
Verse 8, jump down there to verse 8.
Therefore you shall keep every commandment which I command you today,
that you may be strong and go in and possess the land you cross over to possess
and that you may prolong your days in the land which the Lord swore to give your fathers,
to them, to their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey.
Notice now what the children of Israel are instructed to do with the word of God.
Verses 18 through 21.
When I was in Israel, I saw some of this.
Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart, in your soul,
bind them as a sign in your hand, where do they keep scripture?
And they shall be as frontlets between your eyes,
where do you see that over there sometimes?
You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house,
when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up.
You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates.
Why?
That your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land
of which the Lord swore to your fathers,
to give them like the days of the heavens above the earth.
So why do we read this all today?
Jump with me to verses 26 through 28.
Behold, I set before you today a what?
A blessing and a curse.
The blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God,
which I command you today, and the curse,
if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God,
but turn aside from the way which I command you today,
to go after other gods which you have not known.
So here we have God giving a blessing and a curse to the children of Israel.
The background of these verses that we look at today,
not only in here in Deuteronomy, but when we jump back to Matthew, is this.
God has always given man a choice.
Very important.
There are individuals out there in the world that do not believe God gives us a choice.
God has always given man a choice.
God commands, but man is free to choose whether he will obey the invitation God gives.
And number two, God had a mountain of blessing.
Look at verse 29.
Now it shall be, this is Deuteronomy 11, 29,
when the Lord your God has brought you into the land which you go to possess,
that you shall what?
That you shall put the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal.
Now it's interesting that Mount Gerizim was a mountain in Canaan
that was known for its fertile soil.
And just across the valley there was Mount Ebal,
which was not known for having fertile soil.
So God sits there and tells the children of Israel,
you're going to get the promised land.
And when you go into the promised land,
you're going to have right in front of you reminders,
amount of blessing and amount of curse.
You can remember what I have promised you as you look at these two mountains.
Now we know that Israel didn't do a good job remembering what God talked about.
And we also know that it isn't to Mount Gerizim that we look or think
when we think of Mount of Blessing.
Rather it is an unnamed mountain beside the Sea of Galilee
where Jesus was about ready to speak,
that we think about today when we think about Mounts of Blessing.
You see, Israel had forgotten the first benediction that God had tried to give them.
They had overlooked it.
So here was Jesus on this mountain ready to share something with the crowd.
It's interesting.
In the book, Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing,
if you haven't read that book, I encourage you to pick it up.
If you have read it, pick it up again.
We're studying that book at the office every Monday.
I have worship at the conference office every Monday for our staff.
So we started that book this year.
There's a very interesting quote that really got my mind thinking.
I went, my ADD kicked in.
I went all over the places when I saw this first line.
This first quote in the preface says this.
Now listen to this, the sermon on the mount is heaven's benediction to the world.
Think about that.
The sermon on the mount is heaven's benediction to the world.
A voice from the throne of God.
Notice that she doesn't begin the book by saying,
we're going to discuss something that's really neat.
You should read it.
She's saying if heaven was going to leave you and me with final words,
it would be what we're about ready to read in Matthew 5 through 7.
It's what Jesus was about ready to say there to the crowd
that gathered there that day.
This is what the verses in Matthew are all about.
So now if you'll turn back with me to Matthew,
we're going to look at this for a little bit.
We are not going to look at Jesus' sermon.
We don't have time to look at these three chapters,
but we are going to do this.
It's interesting that Jesus starts out this sermon with the blessings.
He starts out this sermon with the benedictions.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn,
blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the peacemakers,
blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.
And after he starts out with the blessings, he then gives this invitation.
Again, just like he did back to the children of Israel through Moses,
he gives an invitation, are you going to be salt and are you going to be light?
It's a choice.
He doesn't say, well, you know what, you have to be salt.
You have to be light.
He says, no, you have a choice.
And then as you read through the rest of Matthew 5,
most of almost all of Matthew 6 and the beginning of Matthew 7,
we find life instructions.
It's amazing to me how many of these instructions are rooted in the Ten Commandments.
Read them for yourself.
I read them last night again as I was reviewing for this.
And then we come to Christ's final statements.
Matthew 7 verse 13.
Notice what it says.
Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.
And there are many who go in by it.
Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life.
And there are few who find it.
Two choices.
Which gate are we going to choose?
Notice he doesn't say, well, you know, I'm going to force you to take a certain gate.
He didn't force the children of Israel to do things.
They made their own choices and we can read through scripture.
They didn't do a great job many times.
Then we come to Matthew 7, 15 through 20.
You will know them by their fruits.
True and false teaching.
Again, a choice.
A choice that we all have.
Are we going to follow what's in here?
Or are we going to follow what may be more convenient?
Or what we like?
Then we come to verses 21 to 23.
And we're not going to read this, but what this is, is this is a way to and a way not to enter heaven.
Friends, really what Jesus is trying to say, what heaven is trying to say to us is listen,
I want to bless you.
I want to bless every member of the Ringgold Seventh-day Adventist Church, Jesus is saying.
Heaven is saying, you know what?
I want to bless every single individual here in Ringgold, but I'm not going to force it on them.
That's really what heaven is trying to say here as Jesus speaks to those gathered on the mountain.
Because what did they want Jesus to do?
They wanted Jesus to use force.
They wanted Jesus to destroy the Romans then and there and give them no choice.
Do not pass go.
Do not collect $200.
Romans, you're dead.
Israel, you're now in charge.
You're the glorified nation that we think you should be.
And it's interesting the benediction here in this book, in this sermon I mean.
The benediction is found in Matthew 7 verses 24 through 27.
The story about two builders, the story that applies to you and me.
Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them,
I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock.
And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house.
And it did not fall.
For it was founded on the rock.
But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
And the rain descended, the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house.
And it fell and great was its fall.
There is the benediction of the sermon.
Two choices.
Where are we going to build our house?
On the original Mount of Blessing, God gave him an opportunity.
I'm giving you the land of Canaan.
Choose how you're going to build your house.
Are you going to build it according to this mountain, the Mount of Blessing?
Are you going to do it more with the Mount of Curse than we find through their history?
They chose the other.
But the question still rings true for you and me today is how are we going to build the house?
Are we going to build it on the rock, Jesus Christ?
Or are we going to build it on whatever else might be out there that is currently tempting us today?
Jesus wanted those listening to him that day to realize the blessings of following him.
But he also wasn't going to force.
You know what I think too often, you know, Laodicea, too often times we want to sort of jump between the two mountains.
Or we want to jump between the two different kinds of houses.
The words of Eleanor Roosevelt ring true.
One's philosophy is not best expressed in words.
It is expressed in the choices that one makes.
In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves.
The process never ends until we die.
And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.
We each have a choice to make.
That's what Jesus was trying to say.
A few weeks ago, my son brought home a stack of papers.
And his papers are, you know, his graded papers, his math papers, his spelling papers.
And my wife was going through these papers at home and she came across a paper that was a letter.
So she started reading this letter and she called Heath over and she said, Heath, come here.
Can you tell me what this letter is all about?
And she said, I wasn't at home at the time, she said when she called him, his eyes got real big.
Because he knew what letter she was talking about.
And so she called him over and she said, well Heath, can you tell me what happened here?
He said, well, I had to write a letter because I got in trouble today.
And she goes, oh, well, I can obviously that.
Well, what did you do?
He said, well, I was standing on top of my desk.
I can't get too mad at him.
He takes after his father sometimes at that age.
And she looked at him and she goes, oh, you were standing on your desk.
Why were you standing on your desk?
Well, because I wanted to, I don't know.
And so she said, well, were you the only one standing on your desk?
No. Okay.
Well, who was standing on their desk?
And she said, he thought about it for a little bit.
And then he said, well, it would be easier if I told you who was not standing on their desk.
She goes, okay, well, who was that?
And he thought about it a little bit more.
And she said, who was not standing on the desk?
And he finally looked at her and he said, the girls.
Which if you know his class, it's not shocking.
And so she said, well, Heath, why did you get up on the desk?
He said, well, everybody else did.
And so she had a little conversation with him about choice.
Unfortunately, listening more to the story, I'm afraid it was him and a couple of his other
best friends in the class that may have started this charge to the top of the desk.
But we talked about him about the importance of choice.
We each have to make our own choice.
When I was a boy, Paul Verratti relates.
My father was a baker and he introduced me to the wonders of music, of song specifically.
He urged me, Verratti said, to work very hard to develop my voice.
Pola, a professional tenor in my hometown in Italy, took me as a pupil.
I also enrolled in a teacher's college on graduating.
Pavarotti went to his father and he said this father, shall I be a teacher or a singer?
My son, his father replied, if you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them.
For life, you must choose one chair.
Pavarotti paused and then he said, I chose one chair.
It took seven years of study and frustration before I made my first professional appearance.
It took another seven to reach the Metropolitan Opera.
And now I think whether it's laying bricks, writing a book or for whatever we choose,
we should give ourselves to it. Commitment.
That's the key, he said, and then he ended this way.
Choose one chair.
That's what Jesus was trying to say to the people there that day gathered on this mountain.
Choose one path.
I'm going to tell you about my path.
The blessings are immense.
The reward is eternal.
But it is your choice.
And then he ends with this story of the two builders.
A story that we sing about as kids.
The wise man built his house upon a rock.
Do any of my kiddos here today know that song?
Do any kids know that song here today? I know there's some kids that know this song.
We're going to do something today and we're going to make the adults join us, kids.
We're going to sing this song with the hand gestures.
With the hand gestures.
So here we go.
You don't usually like me leading music, but kiddos, I want to see you.
You can stand up and you can sing this song.
Let's go.
The wise man built his house upon the rock.
And the rain came tumbling down.
The rain came down and the floods came up.
And the house on the rock stood firm.
The foolish man built his house upon the sand.
And the rains came tumbling down.
The rains came down and the floods came up.
And the house on the sand fell flat.
That story is all about the Sermon on the Mount.
A choice.
That should remind us that there's something better promised.
Jesus has made it available and that's why we can be excited.
And that's why we should be excited when we go out to share that with the world.
That's why Ellen White can write,
The Sermon on the Mount is Heaven's benediction, Heaven's blessing to the world.