Principles of Attitude

Introduction

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. May I take a moment of your time and thank you for your kind invitation to come and be here again. I am so glad that this is not an abbreviated gospel meeting. Uh I have preached I don’t know how many times here, but it’s always been shorter than I wanted. It was all I could do at the time, but the elders and their ingenuity uh twisted my arm into coming on and off year and coming for a whole uh nearly week. And so I’m so pleased that they did that because it has uh afforded me the opportunity to do some things that I could not have done otherwise, and mostly it has given me the opportunity to be with you and to enjoy our time together.

I hope you’ll uh if you haven’t already get acquainted with my Norma. She’s the little white-headed lady that’s with me. I used to say gray-headed, she said, don’t say that anymore. So I quit. But she is the joy of my heart, the wind beneath my wings, and my beloved woman. And so I want you to get acquainted with her if you already have it. She’s uh really been a tremendous value to me through the years. What a joy it is to be with uh Robert Narlene again, your ex-preacher.

I I uh I appreciate Robert for so many different things. He and I have been many friend been friends for many years, and I just have a uh high regard for both he and Arlene. They are people of the book, and they’re people of the cross. And they’re not ashamed and not afraid, and they’ve done great good and have great good yet to do. And I appreciate so very much what you’re allowing him to do, because uh what you’re what you’re doing with him is uh is giving him the opportunity to make lasting impressions that could not be made in another way, perhaps, through his work of writing. And he does that about as well as anybody I know. So I appreciate so much what you’re allowing to do.

It says something really good about you. And it’s good for Arlene, too, because she’s about as good as he is, and uh they uh make a wonderful team together. I appreciated what Sean had to say. That makes me feel good that there was one impression still left on his mind, and it was an illustration that I gave. It’s good to be with Josh and his lovely lady, too, and I uh admire your choice for a preacher. Good to see you. Let’s dispense now with the trivia, be about the good things for which we’re come together. I want to read for you, and I want you to listen carefully because I’m going to read from the Word of God. I’m saying to you again that this is God’s word from which I’m reading, and it’s intended for your mind.

It’s intended for you to listen to. I’m reading from the twelfth chapter of the book of Romans. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another, having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith, or minister, let us minister, wait on our ministering, or he that teacheth on teaching, or he that exhorteth on exhortation.

He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity, he that ruleth with diligence, he that showeth mercy with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation, abhor that which is evil, cleave unto that which is good. Be kindly affectioned to one to another with brotherly love and honor, preferring one another, not slothful in busyness, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer, distributing to the necessity of saints, given to hospitality. Bless them that persecute you, bless and curse not. Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. Recompense to no man evil for evil.

Provide all things honorous in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as life in you live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him drink, for in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. We spoke this morning in the Bible class about the necessity of good thinking, of wholesome thinking, of the higher kind of thinking, of a sublimated sort of thinking that results in higher actions, that results in a higher kind of life, that results in ramifying these principles of goodness and piety in all directions.

And as a result of that, we’re able to deal with the society in which we live. The devil is very efficient. The devil is very sagacious. He’s very wily and cunning. And in his craftiness, he plants simple little subtle thoughts into our minds, and they germinate there if we’re not careful, and they make us go in a direction that we should not go. And the world has been given over to evil thinking in this age. We live in a time of a decaying, rapidly decaying society. We live in a time where immorality is accepted as the norm. We live in a time much like Isaiah said in Isaiah chapter 5, when he said, They call evil good and good evil. Sometimes I hear somebody say something about a good song and they say that’s bad.

Really, what we’re seeing is the subtlety of the devil at work all the time. He wants us to think bad thoughts. Then, if he can get us to think bad thoughts, the thing that falls into line with that is a bad attitude. Romans chapter 12 is the chapter on the good attitude that a person ought to have. And if you’re going to deal with a society in which we live in this day and age, if you’re going to live a life that is pure and holy, then you’re going to have to adopt a good attitude about everything that life has to offer. And Romans chapter 10 deals with all of those things. Attitude is so important. Let me begin by taking a moment of your time to define our word.

It’s always good to come to terms before we begin. Attitude is a man’s disposition. Our English word attitude is from the same word that we have our word aptitude. And aptitude is what we say sometimes a man is apt to do. We will say he is apt to do this. That means that he has the disposition for that kind of activity. This idea of attitude then has to do with disposition or it has to do with inclination. And it is our attitudes are something that we trim. Our attitudes are something that we formulate. They’re a choice. You have a right to have a right attitude. Now, it is so that some people are predisposed to certain kinds of personalities. But no matter what your personality is, you can have the right attitude toward the things that really matter in life.

Let me give you a good illustration of what an attitude is. Brother James I.

A very interesting fellow. He flew, he flew a Japanese Zero in uh in these Tora Tora Torah shows, the air shows. He was a wing commander of the Confederate Air Force, if you know what that is. And not only that, he was he wore uh he wore uh a bandana and drove a Corvette, which he had restored himself. He was a uh he was a scientist at NASA and a well-known one. He had a presidential citation for helping bring Apollo 13 back. He was a retro officer, responsible for re-entry with three others like himself. When they were trying to land a man on the moon, he used to let me go out and sit right at that console that you see on television, and I would sit there and watch as they flew with the computer, simulated landings on the moon.

And when they got ready to bring the spacecraft back, I was there one morning and they were doing that kind of activity. And he kept talking about the attitude of the spacecraft over and over. He talked about it. I said, Jim, when we took a break, I said, what do you what is the attitude of the spacecraft? He said, Well, he said, we have around the earth what we call an atmosphere. It’s an envelope that goes around the earth, and he said, if the attitude of the spacecraft is such that it’s pointed too far down when it comes into that atmosphere from outer space, it will delve into that atmosphere and burn up from the friction. Conversely, if the attitude of the spacecraft, the nose of it, is pointed the wrong way as it re-enters that atmosphere, it’ll bounce off the atmosphere and go out into space and we can’t retrieve it.

So we have to have the attitude of the spacecraft just right before it enters the atmosphere. I said, would you define for me the word attitude? Jim had a kind of an ashen complexion. He was slightly balding, had a handlebar mustache, as you might well imagine. And he twitched his mustache for just a minute and he went into deep thought, his brow furrowed, and all of a sudden a wry smile came across his face and the brow smoothed all out. And he said, Bowman. He said, attitude is where you are in relation to where you ought to be. Attitude is where you are in relation to where you ought to be. Romans the twelfth chapter tells us where we are in relation to where we ought to be.

1. Our Attitude Toward God

It brings us right to where we need to be in regard to attitude. Now listen to me. Here’s the lesson. He speaks about our attitude toward God. He speaks about our attitude toward ourselves. He speaks about our attitude toward others, and he speaks about the attitude that we ought to have toward our enemies who are opposed to us. I want to discuss those with you for just a moment. First, our attitude toward God. He said, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body as a living sacrifice. Our attitude toward God, ladies and gentlemen, is one of presenting ourselves to God as a living sacrifice. First of all, I want you to notice that it is a self-presentation. It is a predetermined activity.

It’s a choice that we make in accordance with that idea of free moral agency about which we spoke this morning. We choose to serve God. You have to present yourself to him. He will not come in and take you over. He will influence you. He will give you reasons to come to him, but he will not take you over. He will not impede your will.

You have to present yourself to him as a living sacrifice. And that is done because you have decided to do it. He says, present your body as a living sacrifice. That deals with time. That deals with this world. He said, in this world, amongst all the decadence and filth that we see in society today, you are to present yourself to him. Do you do that? Do you actually present yourself to God every day as a living sacrifice? I’m aware of the fact that we usually think of this passage as being in contradistinction to the old dead sacrifices of the old law. I’m inclined to think there’s more to it than that. I’m inclined to think when he says present your body as a living sacrifice, what he’s saying is that you present yourself daily to him as you live.

You present yourself as you live as a living, active sacrifice to him. That means that every day you make a self-presentation of all that you are to him. That’s exactly what Jesus had in mind. When he said the greatest commandment of all is this thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy mind. And the second is likened to it, thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. If you’re going to give himself to you give yourself to him, you’re going to have to make yourself available to him. You’re going to have to put yourself at his disposal. Now the question is, do you do that? Do you actually say, Lord, here am I, send me? Do you actually say to God, okay, Lord, I will do that.

Or here I am, Lord, use me in your service. Do you actually say every day, I’m yours? I want to relate to other people in accordance with your will. I want people to see Christ living in me. Do you do that every day? Present your bodies a living sacrifice. Then he says, holy, acceptable unto God. Holy is sanctified. Holy is separated. I fear that one of the problems that we have in churches today is that we look, act, and are disposed to be too much like the world. We do not make ourselves in contradistinction to the world. We do not many times take up a stand for the truth of God Almighty. We are afraid, ladies and gentlemen. We are a little bit embarrassed. We’re a bit diffident.

We’re timid a little bit. We’re feckless. We just don’t want to incur any kind of uncomfortableness. We are society that is absolutely total to totally dedicated to comfort. Did you ever notice that? The water has to be lukewarm. It has to be just right. The food has to be just right, or we’ll send it back. We want everything to be comfortable. You cannot be comfortable and serve God. Do you hear what I’m saying? You cannot be comfortable in this world and serve God. It is an impossibility. You have to make up your mind that you’re going to take a stand, and that means be holy. That means be separated from the world. That means be sanctified. It means sometimes to actually be cut off from where you really would like to be.

So he said, be holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. The translators have had a hard time with that word reasonable there. It’s translated reasonable in the King James, translated spiritual in the key in the American Standard, New American Standard. I don’t think spiritual is a good enough translation of that. The Greek word there is a form of the word from which we get our word logic. And I really believe what he’s saying here is present your bodies a living sacrifice to God, wholly, acceptable to God, which is the only service that makes any sense. I believe that’s what he’s saying. He is saying this is reasonable. This is this hacks, this has uh some real support for itself. You this life of living a living sacrifice to God is the only life that connects to eternity.

Do you know that? It’s appointed to man once to die, and after this the judgment. That’s an inevitable interview that everybody’s going to meet. And the man who has presented himself as a living sacrifice to God need not dread the judgment. The man that has given himself in a living sacrifice to God is not afraid of the judgment because he has prepared for it. That’s the only thing that makes any sense, folks. Let me tell you something. It doesn’t make any difference what you accomplish in this life. It makes me no difference. If you become the richest man in the world and the stock market moves one way or the other at your behest. I don’t care how powerful you become. I don’t care if you become so powerful that when you say the word armies and navies move.

I don’t care if you become so powerful that nobody dare question your word about anything. I don’t care if you become so reputable, so popular, that your face is known everywhere, that your visage is known to every person on the earth. I don’t care if you become all-powerful and all-rich and all reputable, if you miss heaven, you’ve just missed all there is. That’s the end of the matter. That’s the end of the matter. That’s reasonable, people. That’s reasonable. It’s reasonable to present yourself a body uh uh your body’s a living sacrifice because it makes sense, it attaches to eternity. I don’t I had a couple of guys say out front, boy, you’re really looking good. You know the difference between the 20s and the 70s? You’re good looking when you’re 20, you’re looking good when you’re 70.

And the difference is about 50 years and 50 pounds. But I’m gonna tell you here and now, everybody is going the way of all the earth. And I have a mirror at my house, and I know I don’t look like the first time I came here. And what that’s called is deterioration, and what it’s really called in the ultimate reality is dying. That’s what we’re doing. We’re dying. And if we don’t prepare for eternity, we are being illogical to a fault. We are being foolish to a fault. And so he says, present your body’s a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Be not conform to this world. That’s what we’re talking about this week. Be not conform to this world. Con in the Latin is with.

Forma. Don’t be formed with the world. Don’t let the world choose your being for you. Don’t let the world choose your attitudes. Don’t let the world choose your hopes and your goals and your inclinations and your suppositions and your thinking that we talked about this morning. Be ye not conform to this world, but be ye transformed. We all know that word. I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you it’s a form of metamorphosis. He says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Did somebody this morning talk about having your mind renewed by the right kind of thinking? That’s right. So be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God.

The will of God for man is man might be saved. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Don’t tune that out. Listen to me. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Is another way of saying that this is God’s will for man. This is what God purposed. This is the eternal prothecies of God. This is what he had in mind from the beginning. And so we need to live in accordance with what he had in mind, which is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God. So what is your attitude toward God? Present yourself to him. Give yourself wholly to him. Don’t hold back anything.

2. Our Attitude Toward Ourselves

Give yourself over to him. He will treat you right. He will give you what you need. He will take you where you need to go. He will send you on a path of holiness and piety. He will give you something that will ensure your eternal destiny so that you can just have this anchor for the soul that reaches off and just throw it off into eternity and it’ll land right at the throne of God. And then you’ll have something to pull on in this life. So then, your attitude toward God is very important. But then he deals with your attitude toward yourself. You notice that? Look what he said. Verse 3: For I say, through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you.

Who is that? That leave anybody out. To the grace given me to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think. But to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. It’s interesting to me. That humility is such a hard thing to achieve. And yet humility is the basis for the right attitude. Humility is the basis for learning. Sean was a good student. And the reason he was a good student is because he had an intellectual humility. He was willing to say, I don’t know, teach me. Show me. Let me understand. That’s what we have to do. We have to have that kind of intellectual humility before God can deal with us.

God can’t deal with proud persons. God can’t deal with people that are so impressed with their own being, with their own talent, with their own proclivities, that they’re special. He can’t have that kind of people. Do you know who was that way? Pharaoh was that way. Do you know who was that way? Herod was that way. Do you know who was that way? Pilate was that way. And so was Annas, and so was Caiaphas. And these fellows all had this pomposity about them. You can’t be pleasing to God with that kind of an attitude. It is absolutely impossible. You need to see yourself for what you really are. And I’ll tell you what you are. When you’re divorced from Jesus Christ, you have no value at all.

That’s the end of the matter. When you’re divorced from a relationship with God, your value is just absolutely nothing. You’re dust to be blown around. That’s all you are. The fact of the matter is that God has made you into something really special. Humility is a funny thing, isn’t it? The minute you say you got it, you lost it. You ever notice that? We had a guy that wanted the plants down there at Houston, those petrochemical plants that are along the ship channel there. They gave this guy a reward. They gave him a plaque for being the most humble man at the plant. And then they took it away from him because he accepted it. You can’t do that, see. I made that up, but it works, doesn’t it?

You see, you see what I’m saying, don’t you? That’s the idea of humility. We all profess it. We all kind of say we’ve got it when we don’t really got it. You need to humble yourself. Now that does not mean that you kick yourself to the extent that you have no personal worth. That’s not right. It is not wrong to love yourself. It is wrong to inordinately love yourself. Self-preservation is based on self-love. The fact of the matter is, he says, as you would that other men should do unto you, that’s ordinate self-love. Do ye even also unto them. And so it’s not wrong to love yourself, but we need to see ourselves as we really are. And that is as somebody that God can use.

3. Our Attitude Toward Others

As somebody that if we will subordinate our will to his will, if we’ll bend ourselves to him, he will make us into what we never could become by ourselves. He will bring us to a height of goodness and piety, of a realization of what is really holy and dignified, that we could not reach in and of ourselves. No matter how far we aggrandized ourselves, we could never do that. There is no place in the kingdom for self-preservation, for self-bloviation and that kind of thing. It just is not there. So then we need to have a proper attitude toward ourselves. Then he speaks about our attitude toward others. Did you notice that? He says, We have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office.

So we being many are one body in Christ, and every one member is one of another, having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given us, and then he enumerates several things that people have gifts about. Now I’m not unaware that these very likely were spiritual gifts that he’s talking about here. But I’m not particularly interested in the uh origin of the gift. I don’t care if it came by the Holy Spirit as it did here, probably, or if it comes by some genetic accident. Every man still has a gift. You have a gift. You owe that gift to God. That’s the point he’s making. You owe that gift to the body. The body is all together. Look at what he says. We being many are one body in Christ.

And listen to this statement. I didn’t see this for the longest time. Maybe you didn’t either, or maybe you were way ahead of me. But he said, everyone members one of another. I hate jigsaw puzzles. I can’t do the dumb things. They don’t make any sense to me, and I see no sense in doing them. Norma loves jigsaw puzzles. So does our daughter Denise. So she comes over on a Sunday rainy afternoon and they say, let’s get the puzzle out. So they get this puzzle out. 712,246 pieces. And they put it out on the table here. We’re going to put this together. Does that make sense to you? Anyway, they start. Come, Daddy, she says, and help us do the puzzle. Nah, I don’t want to do that.

I’m watching the ball game. All of a sudden, all of a sudden the cowboys are behind 38 to nothing. So I meander over to the table, you know, and I think, well, I’m going to impress them. I find one with a flat edge on it. You know how that is? And I put it in there. And Norma says, that won’t fit there. That doesn’t fit there. So I said, Well, I didn’t think it did. I was just looking at it there. You know. And then I find another, and I don’t. She said that doesn’t fit. And it never does. And so finally, after trying three or four times, I say, Where’s the box? I know there’s a picture on the front of the box. So I can get the box, and I’ll find me a color place and I’ll put it in there and they’ll be impressed, you know.

So I get the box and they hand it to me. Popcorn. The box is a picture of popcorn. That’s the puzzle. Do you not understand that every piece of popcorn looks like every other piece of popcorn? How are you going to do that? I finally find a piece that I think fits. It’s got a little kernel on it and a little white at the top of it, and I put it in a place. And Norman says that won’t fit. And I say, You want to bet it doesn’t fit. Now listen to me. We should not try to fit where we don’t fit. And did you ever notice that we’re so closely akin to one another that we’re like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle? Every piece of a jigsaw puzzle protrudes in order that it might be received.

And it is indented in order that it might receive. And that means everybody is important. And every piece fits somewhere, and that’s our attitude toward one another. We are members one of another. It’s just axiomatically so that there’s always somebody who can do it better than you can. And you can always do it better than somebody else can do. There’s always something you can do that he can’t do, but there’s something he can do that you can’t do. There’s always somebody in front of you, and there’s always somebody behind you. And what we need to have is the kind of intellectual humility, the kind of brotherliness, the kind of humbleness of family that says, I am just a part of this. I need to do my part.

And if it is teaching, that’s what that’s what I do. There are not many Harkwriters, you know. There are not many Joshua’s. A lot of people can’t do that. But we don’t need a lot of people to do that. We need the ones that can. We need people to listen. We need people to do the work. We need people to sweep the floor. I’ll tell you what you do, folks. You go out here and let the garbage people go on strike, and you sound important. Here’s a guy out here that does nothing but sweep up trash all the time. But I’ll guarantee you, if he’s not sweeping trash, the city of Orlando is in a big mess in a hurry. Because the trash picker uppers are out doing their job.

That’s the same as it is with the church. It’s the same it is with this church, with the church where I am and every other church. To whatever extent the members are not functioning as parts of the body, to that same extent the body is functioning is not functioning. So we need to understand where our place is. It takes a lot of humility to look inside yourself and say, here’s where I belong. Here’s where I don’t belong. It suddenly appeared to me, occurred to me one time that the church was doing really well before I came on the scene. And it’ll it’ll do really well after I’m gone. And what that means is I need the church more than the church needs me. And and and the fact is we just need to do what we can do.

4. Our Attitude Toward Those Who Oppose Us

Every man serves his own time. Every man serves his own opportunities. And that’s the attitude that we have to have. Then we have to have an attitude toward those who oppose us. We didn’t have time to talk about everything that has to do with our attitude toward others, but he said, be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love and honor, preferring one another. All of that just has to do with a man’s attitude toward his fellows, and as particularly toward those parts of the body to which he uh directly relates. Then he says, uh, bless them that persecute you. Bless and curse not, rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep, be of the same mind, one toward another. That’s still attitudes toward others.

Mind not high things, but condescend to men of lower state. And then he comes to verse 17 and he says, Recompense to no man evil for evil. The necessary implication is that if we live in a close proximity to one another, both spiritually and physically, we’re going to eventually bump into one another. It’s just that way. We read this morning from Philippians, the fourth chapter, where Paul said, I beseech you, Odious, and I beseech Sentaiche that they be of the same mind. The implication is that Sentache had bumped in to the other lady, and they were as a result estranged. And he said, You don’t need to be estranged. You be of the same mind, and you get back together. We’re all one in this. We all indented, we all protrude.

We need to understand that. But we also need to understand that it is not going to be the case that we live at peace all the time. It just is not going to happen. So he says, recompense to no man evil for evil. If somebody does you evil, then don’t retaliate in kind. Here’s the scenario. Somebody didn’t speak to you this morning. I’ve seen churches ruptured because somebody leaves the assembly and said, Well, she sure was snippy this morning. She didn’t speak to me at all. Did you ever think about the fact that maybe she just had a bad day? We need to give one another some credit. We need to give a little bit of rope before we make a settled conclusion about one another.

And when we bump into one another, just say excuse me until things can be worked out. Don’t let those things fester. Don’t let those things make a sore. When they make us sore, then treatment has to come. And that’s always painful. Try to let it happen and take care of it. He said, recompense to no man, evil for evil. If it be possible. Is there an implication to that? Yes, sir. It’s not always possible, is what that says. But as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Don’t go looking for trouble. There’ll be enough without looking for it. That’s the point. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath. Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord. It suddenly occurred to me one day that I’m not fitted for judgment.

I’m not fitted really for any kind of vengeful activity or any kind of meeting out of wrath or punishment. I’m not qualified. If it’s somebody that I really like, then I won’t do enough. If it’s somebody I don’t like, then I’ll put it to him. So I’m not qualified. So what I have to do is wait on the Lord. I would to God I could get my brethren to see that around the country. We are so quick to condemn one another, so quick to hurt one another, so quick to judge in matters without having all the facts. We cannot be that way. So he says, you wait and let the Lord take care of him. That is not to say, that is not to say that you tolerate ungodliness or unlawfulness.

It is to say in matters of personality differentiations, in listen, we all have warts. That’s what it’s saying. You have to put up with one another’s warts. We all have idiosyncratic differences. You have to put up with that. We have personality differences. You have to put up with that. It’s just the way life is. And he said, don’t go around judging everybody, or you’re going to be in a heap of trouble. And that is the case. And then he gives a most marvelous illustration. He says, Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirsts, give him drink. For in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. I just love that. He says the best way in the world to take care of an enemy is to try to make of him a friend.

What a wonderful kind of an idea. That is Christ like to the core. I had a fellow come to me one time and he was all bent out of shape with another fellow. He said, What I need to do about that. He said, he just makes me sick. He said, I just have trouble not hitting him sometimes. I said, What you need to do is go do something nice for him. You need to go and do something really kind for him. And first thing you know, things will work out. I saw him about three months later. He was in another church. And I saw him about three months later, and he said, Boy, that really worked, Brother Bowman. He said, I was so nice to that guy.

Said every time he turned around, I was doing something good for him. Said, I really fixed him. I said, You may as well stuck him with a stake. That’s not what he’s saying here. When he says he cold a fire on his head, what he’s trying to say is the reconciliation will come as a result of the penitent attitude. We don’t go after somebody to fix them, to hurt them, even if it’s doing good to do it. That’s not the right attitude. He says, be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Now then, that’s my introduction. But it’s not going to take very long to preach the sermon. Here is the sermon. Paul, to my knowledge, did not hear the Sermon on the Mount.

Conclusion

But he was guided by the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of God gave Jesus the words on the Sermon on the Mount. I want you to listen to the Sermon on the Mount, just the beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. What’s that? That’s your attitude towards yourself. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness. That’s attitude toward others. Blessed are those who are merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Attitude toward others. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Attitude toward those from the outside. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall rebile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake, rejoice and be exceeding glad, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Don’t you see that that’s just a restatement of the Beatitudes? Romans 12 is Truth always works with all other truth. Attitude is so important, and it is no accident that Jesus puts attitude right at the front of the Sermon on the Mount. The conduct follows along, but the attitude is what it’s based on. So as we begin our series this week to talk about the idea of living in an increasingly decadent society, let us understand the importance of having a right apness, a right attitude, of getting our minds straightened out toward God, of getting our minds on the straight and narrow toward ourselves and toward others and others toward us.

When we do that, we have a platform on which to launch our lives, and nobody ever may hear about you, and nobody may ever know your name, and there may never be a street name for you, or you never may be quoted on the evening primetime news, but one of these days he’ll say to you, Well done, good and faithful servant, come on in. And that’ll be the important consideration. And it all starts with your attitude. Let’s make sure that we’re doing right. How do you feel about your relationship with God this morning? If you’re not a child of the king, if you’ve just been languishing out here, living life with reckless abandon, don’t you think it’s time to leave the old sinful life and come to Jesus?

Don’t you understand that when he said, Come unto me, all ye that labor in a heavy laden, I’ll give you rest, that he’s talking about relieving you from sin and deprivation and all the ungodly filth that and what a wonderful thing to contemplate that Jesus can forgive everything that you’ve ever done in all your life. You can leave this place this morning as clean as a babe. You can leave here with so why don’t you come this morning and give your life to him? How do you do that? Well, if you believe he is the Son of God. If you’re willing to repent of your sins and just say, I’m not going to serve this old life anymore. I’m going to serve God from henceforth. If you’re willing to just leave all of that and confess your faith in Christ as the Son of God, acknowledge Him.

Present yourself to God through Him. Then He’ll make you a fit subject for baptism. That means that you can be born into the family of God. What a glorious thought that is, to have God as your Father and Jesus Christ as the propitiation for your sins. Don’t you want that? Why don’t you come to him? And if you’ve languished out here having been a child of God, and you’ve just gotten in all kinds of pits and you got your feet stuck in the muck and mire of the world again, and you need to come back and make that right. We’re not going to look with disdain on you. Look, we’ve all been there. Come on back. We’re just a fellowship of forgiven sinners. That’s why we all are.

Come on back. We’ll pray with you, and we can all go to heaven as we clasp our hands. And we can walk like a juggernaut over this land with the gospel of Christ if you’ll come and help us do it. Why don’t you do that this morning? While we’re standing saying for your encouragement.