Matthew 5:1-12 – Beatitudes

Well, good morning, everyone, and uh thank you for tuning in, joining us uh online as we begin uh this new sermon series entitled Living as Kingdom People, looking through uh Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Uh that's what we're going to be doing basically on the run-up until uh until Christmas.

I'm excited for this series.

I think it's an important series for us uh as a church as we think about the the culture of the kingdom and where it is that we as individuals and as a body need to uh need to grow and press into and uh and cultivate in our in our life together.

I think it's going to be important for us uh personally on a number of levels, particularly as we get into uh to some of the passages that really speak to uh our anxieties in the world.

I think pastorally it's a really uh important uh sermon series uh and season for us.

And so I'm excited uh to be able to open up God's word uh with you this morning, even though we are uh distanced uh from one another.

Uh why don't I pray?

And then we're going to uh to look at the Beatitudes uh together.

Let me pray.

Uh our Father, we do uh ask that you would be with us now, even while we are not uh by and large with one another.

We thank you that you are at hand, that you are near uh to each one of us by your spirit.

And would that spirit be at work uh in us now, uh not just informing our minds, but enthusiasing our hearts and changing our will so that we might follow you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So everyone who's watching this uh this morning comes uh from a particular culture, don't you?

You come with a set of uh of presumptions, a set of values that you have grown up in, that you've imbibed from uh the the culture in which you uh live or lived.

Uh many of us either come from European culture or uh an American culture or South African cultural background, and those have particular uh sets of norms and values.

That's where culture shock comes from, right?

When when you enter into a different culture and it's there's different values, different norms, different done things and different taboos.

Some of you have uh have grown up actually between two worlds.

Uh either you have spent basically half your life in one place and half your life in another, or your parents came from one culture and uh and yet you live in a different one.

And so your home life and your life outside of home uh always felt kind of slightly different.

Maybe you spoke a different language at home to the one that you spoke at at school.

We all have uh a culture.

Some of us have had the privilege of uh of growing up and imbibing uh Irish culture.

Uh, we know uh the terror of Irish mammies rattle in the drawer that has the wooden spoon in it.

Uh heaven forbid that you would leave the immersion on.

Uh we live in a uh in a culture that is complex.

We don't take ourselves too seriously, we don't really like people who take themselves too seriously, uh, and yet we won't be behind the door normally in uh in pointing out that you're uh an idiot or a muppa.

Um but in saying all of that, it's all uh very lighthearted.

Culture is unavoidable.

And where does it come from?

How do we understand culture?

Well, did you know that it's not an accident that the word culture has uh at the start of it, the word cult, uh, that they are linked to this idea of uh of beliefs, uh religion values uh from the word cult is is there in this idea of culture.

And the way to think about culture uh is this that culture is your belief system externalized, it's your religion put on display, it's what you value on your sleeve.

That's what culture is.

Human beings are culture making, culture imbibing people because we have values, beliefs we're hardwired for for worship, and culture is simply the external expression uh of that.

Christians, those of us who are following Jesus, believe and trust in him, uh, have beliefs about who God is, what he has done for us in Jesus, beliefs about who I am as a person, my place in the world, what the end of all things looks like.

And those convictions, those beliefs give rise to a kingdom culture, a way of living, speaking, thinking, acting that is shaped by the gospel, by that belief system.

It is a culture that is common in some way to everyone who is part of the kingdom of God.

And Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is his is his expounding of kingdom culture, what it means to live as kingdom people.

And one of the things that we'll see as we go through the series is that kingdom culture, regardless of where you live, regardless of where you're tuning in from, kingdom culture will always have points of connection with the uh with the culture of the world, the culture of the country that you live in, but it will also have uh uh elements of tension.

There will always be places where kingdom culture conflicts with the culture of the world.

And so, how do we live distinctively in that?

That's why Peter would say that we are uh exiles, aliens, that this Irish culture that we live in, is not our home if we are the follower of Jesus.

We live in a uh a country with particular values, and uh and yet our kingdom culture, while affirming some of them, transcends or even conflicts others.

The Sermon on the Mind is Jesus describing what it's like to be part of the kingdom, what the kingdom values, what the kingdom esteems, what it's like to follow him.

That's why it's such an important series for us.

And the gateway to that series is the passage uh that Fiona read for us.

It's the Beatitudes.

Familiar, I'm sure, to many.

Uh, you might, you know, blessed are the me, blessed are the peacemakers.

You know, we love all of those.

But what do they mean?

What do they tell us about kingdom culture?

I would uh I would suggest that you that you grab a uh a pen, piece of paper, or even the notes uh on your phone, because uh this morning, uh wait for it, uh we're going to make four brief observations.

I promise they will be brief, brief observations about this uh the beatitudes, and then we're going to look at the eight beatitudes in turn.

Okay.

Uh so how many so how many points are there?

There are 12 points.

That's why fresh caffeine is being provided here in the study.

Four brief observations about the beatitudes as a whole, because we want to understand how it is that they all kind of hang together.

Okay.

Number one is this is this question of what does Jesus mean by blessed or blessed?

We see it it starts, each of the Beatitudes starts by blessed are.

What does it mean when Jesus says blessed?

Well, it was it's interesting because it can just mean happy.

Uh, happy is the or happy are the poor in spirit.

But actually, in the Bible, the word blessed has a uh has a slightly deeper connotation.

And I think it's important for us to grasp because the the idea behind the word blessed carries with it the sense of the person that God approves of, the the person who is approved of by God, or the characteristics that are approved of by God.

So you could read it as God approves of the poor in spirit, God approves of those who mourn.

And of course, those things could certainly make you happy, or and it's is happy to be approved of by God.

But Jesus is saying that the person who embodies these things is the kind of person who receives divine approval, it raises for us the question of whose approval do we naturally seek?

If Jesus is saying, here's the kind of life that God approves of, how do you interact with that?

Is God's approval something that you are seeking?

Or actually does somebody else's approval count more?

Whose approval do you want?

Whose approval do you seek?

Whose well done are you looking for?

Who do you want to think well of you?

Is it God or is it someone else?

Who do you want to love you?

Is it God or is it someone else?

The second uh broad observation that we would make is as you look through these uh these beatitudes, as you look through the list of it, what it points us to is our need of grace.

You see, the problem with saying that God approves of those who are poor in spirit or meek or pure in heart or merciful, is that with just a fragment of self-awareness, you realize that actually you don't live up to that standard.

That actually you don't live a life that is completely pure in heart.

You don't live a life, I don't live a life that is completely meek, gentle.

And so what the Beatitudes point us to is to our need of grace.

These are grace given desires, and grace fulfilled desires.

We need God's undeserved kindness in order to think and act and feel in a way that He approves of.

Jesus in the Beatitudes is not setting you a benchmark to attain under your own strength.

It's not that Jesus is saying, be more merciful and God will approve of you, be more meek and God will accept you.

No, no, he's showing you the culture of the kingdom, he's showing you what we need grace in order to embody.

It is only by grace that we can be pure in heart, it's only by grace that we can be make gentle, it's only by grace that we can hunger and thirst for righteousness.

None of us perfectly embodies any of these things.

God gives us his kingdom desires, and he does so by his grace.

We need his grace, otherwise, the beatitudes, the sermon and mind, it's just got to become such a heavy load for us to carry.

If you go away from today thinking, I need to be more meek, Lord, give me the grace to be more gentle in my interactions.

Give me the grace to be pure in heart.

The third uh observation is that in each of the Beatitudes, the reward is not arbitrary, the reward flows from the condition at the start.

And so you see that kind of uh obvious, you know, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, what's the what's the reward, what's the consequence?

It's that they will be filled.

You hunger and are filled, you're merciful and you receive mercy.

And those are an indicator to us that because those are consequential, clearly consequential from the condition, that's an indicator to the reader that the others that don't seem like they have a completely obvious connection, like blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be son called sons of God, that actually there is a connection there to be teased out, and that's what we're going to do.

So that's the third observation.

The rewards are not arbitrary, they flow from the condition.

With me thus far?

Everybody nodding?

Good.

Fourth, fourth broad observation.

Two of the beatitudes, the beatitude in verse three, so that's the first one, and the beatitude in verse 10, which is the it's the last of the beatitudes proper.

I think verse 11 starts to get us into uh uh into another section.

So verse 3 and verse 10 have, you may have noticed it in the reading, have the same reward.

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven, those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake and those who are poor in spirit.

When something in the Bible is is repeated like this, it forms like brackets, it's called an inclusion.

And what that means for us is that the promises encompass all of the Beatitudes.

What that means is for us, is it's not the case of I'll work on one of these, or you think you get to heaven on the last day, and Jesus says, right, uh meek over here, uh parents for it.

Yeah, uh, if you could just if you just say at the back, that'd be great.

Uh no, it's not like that.

It's not like he's going to divide out the peacemakers over here, uh the hungers and thirsts for ice, they're over at the at the at the buffet being filled.

No, no, that's not how it works.

The inclusion points us to the idea that we are to embody all of these things.

That this is the kingdom culture.

That's why we're talking about it, because in both of those, it talks about for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven is what permeates all of these beatitudes.

They are the characteristics of the person who wishes to be part of the culture of the kingdom.

You want to know what it is to follow Jesus more closely, what it is to live as a kingdom person, as a kingdom church.

It's to embody and seek to embody all of these characteristics.

Do you see?

Those are the four brief observations.

That it is those who are approved by God that points us to our need of grace, that they are not arbitrary, but arbitrary rewards but flow from the condition, and that they are part of the entire culture of the kingdom, as indicated by the inclusion at verse 3 and verse 10.

So let's have a look at each of them uh quickly in turn.

The first is there in uh in verse 3.

Oh, you might even uh you might um look at verse 2 and wonder, well, why does Matthew write, and he opened his mouth and taught them?

Like what else did he open?

What were the other options?

Um that is a that's a common way of uh of denoting a rabbi teaching, that they opened their mouth and spoke.

Uh so we have we have Jesus the the the rabbi par excellence, the the perfect teacher opening his mouth and telling us about the kingdom of God.

And the first thing that we read is blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

If you notice, or perhaps you have met those people who are quite clearly uh falsely humble, you know, they uh they are just wonderful at at some sort of sport or uh extremely intelligent.

And uh they might say things, oh well, uh I just put I just put all of my first place ribbons in um in the bottom drawer.

Uh yeah, all of my degrees I couldn't I couldn't even tell you where the certificates are.

Those sorts of the sorts of people are kind of falsely humble.

Is that what Jesus is talking about?

No.

The poor in spirit are simply those who recognize their need, particularly their spiritual need.

The poor in spirit are those who recognize their need of God, they are those who look within themselves and realize that they have no spiritual health, no spiritual strength of their own, and so need to cast themselves on the mercy of Jesus.

This cuts against our culture, the culture of the West, the culture that we live in, that says, you know, you can be whatever you want, but you are you're you're magnificent and wonderful, and you make your own luck and create your own idest uh you know your own destiny, your own identity, that encourages and challenges you to be independent of anybody else.

Jesus says, No, they the life that God's approved that God approves of is the one who recognizes his need of him and throws himself on his mercy.

He receives mercy swiftly, fully, readily.

What is the reward for those who recognize their spiritual bankruptcy?

They receive the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus says, All of heaven is theirs.

You think of uh the incident in Luke's gospel where Jesus tells a story of uh the parable of the Pharisee going to the temple and the tax collector going to the temple.

Tax collector is just just just that scumbag guy, just hated by people.

And they the Pharisee stands with puffed out chests and says, Oh Lord, I thank you that I am uh not like the sinful, the sinful tax collector.

And the tax collector cannot even come close to the place of prayer.

He stands far off and he beats his breasts and he says, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

What is Jesus' question?

Jesus questions to the crowd is who is it that went away justified?

That is approved of by God.

It was the tax collector.

Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Second.

Second beatitude is there in verse four.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

All of us have faced or will face grief in our life.

Griefs of various thoughts, sorts, and kinds and intensities.

And the gospel surely does promise comfort for those who grieve.

But that's not what is in view here.

There's something much more permanent, much deeper here.

Think back, if you would, or allow me to tell you about an incident in the Bible in the Old Testament book of Isaiah.

In the Old Testament book of Isaiah, Isaiah was a prophet, and while he was ministering in the temple, he glimpses a vision of God on his throne.

He sees uh the train of his robe, he sees the the angels, the seraphim, they're crying out, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

And what is Isaiah's response?

Isaiah mourns.

Isaiah says, Woe is me, for I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell amidst a people of unclean lips.

He is aware of not only of his sin, but of the sins of his people.

Or you might again go to Luke's Gospel in Luke chapter 5.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

Such a remarkable incident where uh the disciples are out fishing and they have caught nothing all night.

And Jesus arriving at dawn tells them to put out for a catch.

And Peter says, Master, we've caught nothing all night, but at your word we will let down for a catch.

And they uh and the boat is overwhelmed with with fish, and other boats have to have to come and help them.

And Peter's response to Jesus is so telling.

Jesus' response to Jesus is not, well, great fish, let's go to the market.

It's depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.

That's what it is to mourn.

Mourning.

Morning is a kind of God-given realism.

It's a God-given realism about who we are without God.

What our world is like without God.

It's not about being morose.

There are plenty of miserable Christians, right?

But the world, the culture of the world, is to be frivolous and cheap, to entertain ourselves rather than looking at suffering, uh, to indulge in what you might call gallowous humor, kind of dark humor at death and suffering.

And uh, I can be guilty of that too.

How many of you watching this use laughter as a defense mechanism, use joking as a defense mechanism because you don't want to dwell on, encounter some of the brokenness in in your life, in your family, in the world.

To be one who mourns is one who has the grace given by God to look at the look at those things with a quiet realism, to to grieve what sin has wrought in the relationships with the people that you love, what sin has wrought in our world, and and in grieving to cast yourself again on God.

Because what's the promise of the gospel?

What's the promise of of the kingdom?

It's that you will in the end be comforted.

You will receive comfort.

Don't distract yourself all the time.

Don't just laugh everything off.

Some stuff needs to be wept over.

And that's okay.

Because the promise of the gospel is that you will receive comfort from the coming king.

Third.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

This one, in a sense, goes with poverty of spirit.

If poverty of spirit is a is an internal reality, that internal acknowledgement of uh of one's need, of one's spiritual bankruptcy, then meekness is the uh is the relational outworking of that.

Meekness is is how you relate to people around you, how you relate to the to the world.

Let me be clear: meekness is not to be confused with weakness.

It is not weakness or a character flaw in order to be meek.

In fact, meekness requires great strength of character.

It requires great great strength of character, particularly in a world that doesn't value meekness.

In a world that says, take what you can get.

You ever watch The Apprentice, either in the US or on BBC One?

They are not meek people.

They're they would step over your they'd step over your dead body in order to advance themselves.

The meek person is not like that.

The meek person is not pushy, the meek person does not retaliate.

The meek person doesn't get sucked in in one-upship.

The meek person can have great intellect, the meek person can have great physical strength and yet be gentle.

We need, don't we, more meekness in the world?

Do we need more people to embody what it means to be meek?

To have strength and to keep that strength sheathed, under control, to use it in the defense of others and not in the advancement of our own agendas.

We need more meekness in the world.

You see, meekness would treat others with a little bit more compassion, with a little bit more forgiveness.

Think of our world where you can be eviscerated with a tweet, that your uh past history on social media can be trolled through, and one ill-informed, unwise comment brought up, and your career ended.

Maybe hind it.

More meekness would stop that.

Meekness wouldn't look at figures in our history, figures in politics with loathing, but with a bit of humility.

Meekness would say, I want to be treated with the same level of understanding and humility by people in the future as they look at what I did and my life, and so I'm gonna treat people in the past with a little bit of understanding and nuance and forgiveness.

What is the consequence for those who are meek?

Well, they shall inherit the earth.

Hubris and pride, they will always fail, they will always come to naught.

Those who seek to gain more and more and more it'll become like sand slipping through their fingers, and the make will be given it all forth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

What is the righteousness that's in view here?

What does Jesus mean by the word righteousness?

So that's going to help us understand what this beatitude means.

Is it his first option?

Is it that declaration of innocence that God gives the person who trusts in Jesus?

That's what Paul tends to mean by righteousness.

When somebody becomes a Christian, they are declared righteous, they're declared innocent.

Not only that, they're declared perfect, that they've perfectly obeyed because of their trust in Jesus.

Is it uh an internal righteousness, a pursuit of moral virtue?

Or is it uh that you're uh going to hunger and thirst for justice issues?

Well, I think the answer to what Jesus means by righteousness is yes.

That in a sense, the word in this context embodies all of those ideas, that it's righteousness in respect to God, that's righteousness internally, and righteousness in respect to others and to injustices.

The way that you might think about it, the way that it might be summarized is that to hunger for righteousness is to yearn for the will of God to be done in every sphere of existence.

What is it that Jesus teaches his disciples when they ask to be taught how to pray in the Lord's Prayer?

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

That's what it is to yearn for righteousness, to pray that God's will would be done in every sphere of existence, and to align ourselves with that.

Because God is He is the source, He is the very definition, and He is the guarantor of goodness, of righteousness, of true virtue.

To hunger and thirst for those things is to hunger and thirst ultimately for Him.

And the result?

Satisfaction.

Satisfaction.

That you will be filled, your hunger on that last day will be satiated.

So one way that you might think about it is in your hungering and thirsting for righteousness, are you coming with are you coming with a little tiny ramekin dish of hunger for God?

That that'll do me.

I'll get by with that.

Or are you coming with a with a with a platter and saying, satisfy the longings of my heart, overwhelm me with your goodness.

Fifth.

There in verse seven, blessed, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

This one's hard because it asks some questions of us.

This beatitude looks you straight in the eye and says, Do you hold a grudge?

It looks at you and you asks, and it asks, Do you stew over injustices?

Do you stew over things that people have done or said?

Do you profess to follow Jesus and yet say, I will never forgive him?

I will never forgive her.

Because it is an absorbing of hurt.

We know that it's a brutal business, because we know that it drove the Lord Jesus to the cross.

It cost him his life.

And so I'm not belittling the things that have befallen you.

And yet this beatitude really does drive home the idea of if we claim to follow Jesus and we refuse to press into forgiveness, to even desire forgiveness.

Have we understood what it means to be forgiven ourselves?

The merciful person turns from both pride and bitterness.

And he or she clings to the mercy of God.

The mercy of God who is just, he will see justice done.

That's what we saw in the previous Beatitude.

His righteousness will uh will flow like streams.

And so we entrust ourselves to him.

And as a consequence we receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

How do we know that the culture of the kingdom is all of grace?

Well, uh, if you haven't realized it yet, it's probably because of this one.

Because none of us, if we are honest, are pure in heart.

That is, uh, pure at the very operational core of our being, our thoughts, in our will, in our actions, our speech, in our desires.

We're not we're not pure in heart, we're not completely flawless.

We might be uh moving towards greater and greater virtue, and I pray that that you are.

But we need the grace of God in order to have a heart transformation, to be counted as those who are pure in heart.

To be pure in heart is to be pure at the very core of your being, that is to share the character of God, not in self-expression, but God expression, expressing what his priorities are, his characteristics.

And the promise here is that we will see God.

How are we to understand this?

Well, the simplest way to think about it is this becoming like God is a prerequisite for seeing him.

We must become pure in heart as he is, if we are to behold his wonderful face.

Thank God that it is all of his grace and that his grace is readily available to you.

We seek purity of heart now.

We press into it now.

We ask for the grace to have it wrought in our lives now, so that when we get to heaven, the culture shock of being in heaven will be lessened.

We cultivate it now in our community, in our life together, so that the culture shock when we were all together in the new heavens and the new earth is reduced.

Jesus is inviting you to practice for heaven.

Seventh, penultimate one.

Then we have a slurp.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

We're there in verse 9.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

This is an unusual word, this word peacemaker, because it actually doesn't occur anywhere else.

And it's also unusual because you might be tempted to think of a peacekeeper, you know, someone who isn't quarrelsome, so uh someone who doesn't get into fights, they are a peacemaker.

But no, to be a peacemaker, sorry, you they're a peacemaker, to be a peace, to be a peacemaker, sorry, is something different.

Ask yourself in a dispute or in an argument, do you tend to raise or lower the temperature?

If you are in the middle, if you're the third party between two who are in an argument or disputing, do you seek to calm things down?

Do you lower the temperature?

That's a skill.

Jesus says that God approves of those who do that sort of thing, who seek to reconcile warring factions, who don't escalate situations.

It is no wonder that these people are called sons of God.

That is, that they share something of the characteristics of God.

That's what it means to be a son.

Because to bring two sides together, to resolve a conflict is a godlike thing to do.

That is what he has done through his son.

That is what he has done in the gospel.

Jesus is the peacemaker, the one who makes peace between God and man.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for you shall be called sons of God.

Finally.

There in verse ten blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

To live as a kingdom people, to live out some of these cultural distinctives will bring resentment, will bring a degree of persecution.

This is not general suffering.

This is suffering for being a kingdom citizen, persecuted for righteousness' sake.

And if we live externalizing, because that's what culture is, externalizing some of the values that we have as Christians, people will think us weird, people will sneer, people will think that you are weak when you try to embody meekness.

You need to settle in your heart that this is an inevitability.

As you seek to follow Jesus, that's just going to happen.

Jesus has warned you, warns you all the way through the gospels.

Count the cost, you take up the cross and you follow him.

You will face hardship for aligning yourself with Jesus.

To align yourself with Jesus is to acknowledge your need of him, to recognize and confess your own spiritual poverty.

And so it is no surprise that both this beatitude and the one on spiritual poverty receive the same reward.

To those who suffer loss.

For the sake of the kingdom, for those who are overlooked for promotion, whose friends get up and walk out of the room, for those across the world who lose home or job, livelihood or life, the promise is sure.

They will receive all of heaven.

That is their reward.

Each of these things that we have gone through point us to the Lord Jesus.

They point us either to our need of Him, or as the one who perfectly embodies things like meekness, gentleness, mercy, the one who makes peace, the one who is pure in heart.

These beatitudes drive us to him.

That's why they're a gateway to the whole sermon series.

These next weeks, eight, nine weeks that we have together.

I hope that beatitudes have encouraged you and compelled you that on a Sunday morning you're going to come, spiritually speaking, to sit at Jesus' feet and to say to him, you who embody these things, you who who meet my needs in terms of my spiritual poverty, teach me what it is to follow you.

Do you want to do that with us these weeks?

Which of these things, which of these eight, while they are all things that we all need to work on, which of these strikes you the most?

Is it spiritual dependency?

Is it mourning?

Having that God-given realism about the world that you live in, about you and your need of him, about the relationships that you are in?

Is it meekness?

Is it that you don't, that you lack gentility?

Is it a hunger for righteousness?

Is it mercifulness?

To have that disposition of forgiveness?

Is it purity of heart?

Is it peaceableness?

That you would be a peacemaker in your workplace, as people snear and backbite and bitch about one another.

Which strikes you?

Which is the Holy Spirit impressing upon you now?

Which do you need to ask for grace to lean into and to learn from Jesus from or about?

Whatever it is, what I want us to do is to press into these kingdom characteristics together, and that by the overwhelming and readily available grace of God that He might form this sort of cultural identity in our church, in our church family.

Wouldn't that be glorious?

Wouldn't that be beautiful?

Wouldn't that say something to the world about who we are and the kind of values that we have?

Let's press into these things together by the grace of God and for the glory of Jesus.

Let's pray.

Help us to know our need of you, help us to rightly mourn, to be meek, to hunger for righteousness, to extend and to seek mercy, to be pure at the very core of our being and to make peace.

Thank you that you love us and that you do not just dangle these things in front of us as an impossible weight to bear, but that through Jesus you make it possible to live, to live these cultural values, to embody them.

Help us, we pray, in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen, everyone.