9/13/26 - Matthew 5:1-12: The Blessed Life - Skyler Flowers

Well, good morning, Redemption Church.

If you have your Bibles, you can turn to Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

My name is Skylar Flowers.

I was here a couple weeks ago, but if you weren't here, I am an elder at Grace Bible Church in Oxford, Mississippi.

I work full-time for the Gospel Coalition.

Uh, and it's been a joy to be with you guys last week, and I'll be with you guys for a few more weeks over the next few months.

But if you have your Bibles today, we're going to be looking at Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

And while you turn there, I'm going to read just the first line, because while it may seem so, you know, plain and normal, it really sets the scene for the sermon in such a dramatic way.

Not my sermon, the sermon on the mount.

It says, seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

Now in the Bible, when someone ascends a mountain, it's often for a direct encounter with the Lord.

They're going to meet with him, they're going to hear his word.

This is most famously seen when Moses, Israel's greatest prophet, ascends Mount Sinai and he receives the law and he sees the back of God.

He hears the divine name proclaimed.

In the narrative of Matthew, Jesus has been anointed by his baptism.

He's defeated Satan during his temptation in the wilderness.

He's the great prophet.

He's the one greater than John the Baptist.

He's the one greater than Moses.

And as we're told in chapter 4, he's come preaching the good news of the kingdom.

Jesus' kingdom is advancing.

And now, there in the narrative of Matthew, he ascends the mountain.

The Lord is going to speak to his people again as he has before.

So over the next couple weeks, we're going to spend seven weeks looking at Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

It's Jesus' longest recorded teaching in the Bible.

So what is it?

You know, in this in this message that's the longest of Jesus' in the Bible, what is the main point that Jesus for all time would want his people to know?

He invites us to the mountain to hear.

He invites us to sit at his feet, as he does his disciples, and hear from him.

Today we're going to look at the first section of the Sermon on the Mount, famously known as the Beatitudes.

And though they're well known, I'm sure, you know, maybe some of you have like a picture of them in your house or something.

They can actually be quite difficult to interpret.

And today we're going to look at them as a whole, and we're going to see how this first section, these Beatitudes, give us the core meaning not only of the Sermon on the Mount, but really of Jesus' whole teaching ministry.

So I'm going to read verses 1 through 12, and then we'll dive in.

Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 through 12.

Matthew 5:1–12

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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

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

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

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

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

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

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you, and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Now, when I came to Olness as a freshman, I can't say that I had thought too deeply about the meaning of life.

The meaning of life up until that point had largely been baseball, or you know, and like practicing baseball, thinking about baseball, being a baseball player.

And then, you know, it maybe transitioned to getting the attention of girls.

And just a little bit of just like, don't look like an idiot, or you know, don't look stupid in front of other people.

But there wasn't some like deep underlying thought I had about, you know, what is life all about that kept me up at night.

And then within the first months at Olness, I was required to go to a freshman convocation for honor students.

And it was headlined by this well-known Harvard philosopher, his name was Michael Sandell.

And you might think of, you know, some Ivy League philosopher and think, okay, you know, dry, boring, stuffy, but I mean, Sandell was really quite charismatic and engaging.

And the way he conducted these sessions is he would, you know, walk out on stage, he doesn't have a podium, there's no notes or anything like that, and he would just pose a simple question to the crowd.

And there'd be mics set up all over the room, and as people would come up and answer his question, he would begin to ask them questions.

And he would poke and he would prod, and he what he was trying to do is get to the core of their answers, and really trying to, in some ways, expose their underlying commitments beneath their answers, the inconsistencies, the things they had not considered in their answer that felt so easy to them.

The first question he posed during this lecture was so simple, but it stuck with me.

He asked, What is the good life?

What is the good life?

Again, people are coming up to the mic and they're answering.

There was no way I was ever gonna go to the mic.

But in my seat I thought, I mean, how would I define it?

What is the good life?

How would you define it?

I could, you know, do what Sandell did.

I could go around the room and you guys could raise your hands and you could each answer the same question.

And I'm sure there'd be all sorts of different answers.

You know, for some of you, it may be uh, you know, I go to work every day and I want to help people, I want to be part of changing the world, changing the world, being doing good in the world, that would be a good life.

For the others of you, it may be I want to make enough money to be comfortable, to be happy, to make sure that my family has enough to be comfortable and happy, even after I'm gone.

For others of you, it might be just as simple as, I just, you know, want to marry someone I'm in love with and I want to have a family.

And these all would be, in their own ways, good lives.

But if we were to take these descriptions and we were to, you know, pick and prod and poke at them, as Sandell did, you know, what would be at their core?

What would be the animating idea that defined what the good life is underneath these things that we would all recognize as probably good in some ways?

That would be the most important thing to know about somebody.

What they believed is the good life.

And that's why it could be said that the central question of all of human philosophy, from ancient wisdom to Plato and Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas to Immanuel Kant, all of them are really trying to answer that question.

What is the good life?

And from that one question, all the other important questions about life flow.

Who are we meant to be?

How are we meant to live?

How do we attain the good life once we know what it is?

These are the questions the Sermon on the Mount answers.

And it puts it right up front.

Life, like the good life, is a blessed life.

A blessed life.

Now hear the way I'm saying that.

It's a blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, rather than blessed.

And that's on purpose.

Uh, it's obscured in many of our English translations.

Uh we have, you know, we spell these two words the same, but they're actually two different words.

The word, you know, blessed means to give or receive a blessing.

You know, he blessed them.

They were blessed.

This language is common in the Gospels, including in the Gospel of Matthew.

But the word blessed is actually a much larger concept.

Is anyone in here named Asher?

Do we have an Asher?

You can throw your hand up, Asher?

No?

Is anyone named Beatrice?

It's my daughter's name.

Is anyone named Makarios?

I doubt it, but I thought I'd see.

The word underlying the blessed in each of those 11 lines of the Beatitudes is the Greek Makarios.

It's a Greek version of the Hebrew word Ashre, which is where we get the name Asher from.

And in the Latin, it's translated as Beatus, which is where we get Beatrice from.

So if you have an Asher and a Beatrice and they get married, they have the same name.

To be blessed is to be more than merely happy.

It's getting at, it's it's it's it's getting at the idea of happiness, but it's getting at an all-encompassing, all of life, total personhood, happiness, or flourishing.

You know, it's more than just like laughing at the beach, you know, or going crazy when your favorite team scores a touchdown.

It's its whole life, it's every part of you.

It's flourishing.

That's why the book of Psalms opens, and the first word in the book of Psalms is Ashre.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked.

And how does it describe him?

I think this image is so clearly communicates what Jesus sees as the life that humans were meant to live.

Psalm 1 says, He's like a tree planted by the streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and his leaf does not wither.

And all that he does, he prospers.

And that's blessedness.

And that's that's flourishing.

That's that is the good life.

I mean, isn't that how you want to live?

Jesus gathers his disciples, and the thesis of the whole Sermon on the Mount is developing from this idea.

Life in the kingdom of God will lead you to the good life.

But it's only found in following Christ.

Only in Christ can you truly flourish.

So that's what we're gonna look at today in two points.

What it means to flourish in the way that Jesus describes, and then how we can attain it.

We're gonna do it in two points.

First, we'll look at the world's path to flourishing, and then second, we'll look at the true path to flourishing.

So, first, let's look at the world's path to flourishing.

From the dawn of human history, humans have gotten their ideas of the good life through stories.

You know, this was kind of uh really neatly portrayed even this past summer with the movie The Odyssey.

This is an ancient, you know, Greek myth.

And the Greeks had these mythologies and plays, and sure to us they're just you know really good stories or something like that.

But the function that these mythologies and these plays had in Greek society was that they portrayed to them.

This is the way the world works, whether you believe these gods are real or not, according to each Greek person, it still was saying this is how the world is structured, this is how you relate to the divine, this is how you attain a good and satisfying and purposeful life.

We can understand the world of ancient Greece, the animating life center of how they lived through their stories.

The same is true of trying to understand Victorian England through Charles Dickens, or 19th century France and Victor Hugo, or the South through the writings of William Faulkner.

Our values come through in our stories.

So, where should we look to understand the world's vision of the flourishing life?

What stories should we look to?

I think for America, there is one storyteller or one storytelling organization rather, that stands out above the rest, and it's the Walt Disney Company.

I mean, Disney's been capturing the American soul in stories for nearly a hundred years, and while we could probably pick any one of the last the Disney movies made in that hundred year span to illustrate the you know the world's idea of flourishing, all the stories really are kind of the same at the end of the day.

I'm just gonna pick one.

And I'm gonna pick Moana, and that's because I know it better and I kind of like it.

And uh so it makes it a little bit easier to pick on uh because it has really catchy songs.

So, in the opening song of the movie, we're introduced to the village that Moana grows up in.

You know, everyone on the island has a role.

Uh you know, it's it's her it's her role to be to grow up to be the chief.

But you guys, come on, you know the story.

Moana wants to go out, she wants to adventure, she wants to travel out past their island.

But her dad, who's the current chief, reassures her one day you're going to look around and realize happiness is right where you are.

But that doesn't sit right with Moana, right?

She knows she was meant for more than the idea that this village has for her.

The village is holding her back.

There's more to life than this.

Happiness cannot be found here.

And so the resolution, you know, the person you're supposed to resonate with is Moana.

And so later in the song, her kooky grandma shows up and she gives her the wisdom she needs to hear.

Um, you know, you guys can sing along if you want to, but you are your father's daughter, stubbornness and pride.

Mind what he says, but remember, and here it is, you may hear a voice inside.

And if that voice starts to whisper to follow the farthest star, Moana, that voice inside is who you are.

The message of the world today is that the voice inside, that's who you are.

The path to the good life is to follow that voice at all costs.

The voice inside is gonna tell you where success is, it's gonna even tell you how to define success.

You know, whether that be money or comfort or education, whatever.

The voice inside is gonna tell you where fulfillment is, whether that be sex or acceptance or romance or experiences.

The path to the world's flourishing, I mean, it runs through you, through your heart, through your will, through your desires, through your mind.

But there's, I mean, there's many things we could point out as being wrong with this approach, but I just want to mention two of why this approach fails, at least in this life.

For sure in this life, we'll talk more about the next life in the second point.

And the first point problem is that as much as you think you can find the good life within yourself, you'll always still be looking for acceptance.

Do you guys uh you does anyone you know who Arthur Miller is?

Maybe his name like rings in your head, like a you know, uh some awful book assignment you had when you were in high school.

I doubt people are, you know, high school students are really still reading uh Arthur Miller, but at the height of his fame, he was one of the most famous people in America.

I mean, he was married to Marilyn Monroe, but what he was known for in his own career was being a playwright.

He wrote the famous play, Death of a Salesman.

Uh, you know, we may not think of a playwright as being celebrity status, but he had reached the upper echelons of American society.

And even at the top, this is what Arthur Miller had to say.

Despite all his success, his high-profile marriage, all the that goes along with that lifestyle, he said, I feel like I've carried around the sense of judgment.

I could not escape it.

I still felt like I needed to prove myself to others.

To have somebody tell me I was okay, that I was acceptable, that I was approved of.

I mean, Miller should be the ultimate testimony to a life of fulfillment.

You know, a person who they who's achieved who they were meant to be.

But he still lacks the acceptance he's longed for.

The first problem is you're always gonna look for acceptance.

Even if you think you can get it through yourself, you can't, you'll always be looking for more.

The second problem is similar.

Because the second problem acknowledged is that even if you get it, it's not gonna last.

You may not have heard of Arthur Miller, but you're likely more familiar with Madonna, right?

Even now she's known for being an iconic and controversial pop star.

Her testimony should surely be by the world's logic, this path works.

But listen to her testimony.

All of my will has been able, uh, all of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy.

I'm always struggling with that fear.

My life, or my drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre.

And that's always pushing me, pushing me.

Because even though I've become somebody, lowercase s, I still have to prove I'm somebody, capital S.

My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.

I mean, God, that's so depressing.

This is where the world's vision of flourishing leads you.

I mean, we could rewrite the Beatitudes.

We could we could offer the world's Beatitudes, and they would read something like this it's not the poor of spirit, it's not the meek, it's not the peacemakers who are blessed, but blessed, you know, happy you will be if you're noticed.

But but really, if you're noticed, really what you'll get is a kingdom of isolation.

Blessed are the beautiful, but you're never gonna feel seen.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for acceptance, but you'll remain unsatisfied.

Blessed are the impressive, but theirs is a kingdom of comparison.

Blessed are you when others praise you.

But that's all the reward you're gonna get.

We could go on and on.

Each one of these worldly beatitudes promises to give you happiness in yourself, but it ends up living, you end up living for others.

You end up for that constant striving for an acceptance that you'll never reach.

If you pursue the world's path of flourishing, that's where it's gonna live.

You can try it out, maybe you'll be as successful as Arthur Miller.

That would be great.

Maybe you'll be as successful as Madonna, and that would be wonderful.

And yet, if you pursue it, you might still find yourself with their same testimony.

Looking for acceptance and yet never feeling like you have it, and even if you have it, it never being enough.

We so desperately need a better way.

We need the words of Jesus.

And so that's what we look at now is second, the true path to flourishing.

Let's read the beatitudes again.

But as we do, I want to offer us some guidance on how we should read them.

Because the structure of each beatitude is not immediately apparent to us on how we should understand the relationship to the first half of the line, blessed are blank, to the second half of the line, for theirs is blank.

You know, for instance, when Jesus says, Blessed are those who mourn, should we then understand, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted to mean something to the effect of, look, you know, like death is just part of life.

You know, it's just, it is what it is.

It's gonna be bad on this side of life, but you just gotta, you just gotta grin and bear it.

You just gotta get through it.

But blessed are those who mourn, you just gotta get through it because things are gonna get better in the future.

Is that what it means?

I mean, that doesn't, that doesn't seem to be Jesus' general ethos in all of his teaching.

You know, just grin and bear it, it's gonna get better.

Okay?

Maybe that's one way to read it.

Or another way would be to confuse the blessed, you know, the flourishing Jesus invites us to with blessed.

So it would read something like, uh, you know, blessed are, you know, blessed are the meek, um, you know, and and the thing you're going to inherit is you're gonna inherit the earth, uh, but you know, is that blessing for is the blessedness for now or for later?

Are do you flourish now or is the flourishing only later when you actually receive the thing?

You know, blessed are the meek, so they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna actually be blessed in the future, they're not blessed currently.

Again, if if that's the case, then this is really just a forward-looking sort of proclamation.

The sermon has very little to do with this earthly life because it's saying you're you only the only blessings you're gonna get or the blessedness is gonna be in the future.

Or there's a third approach, which you could read it and say, if then, you know, it's an if-then statement.

If you are pure, then you will see God.

Or if you are a peacemaker, then you will receive the right to be called the sons of God.

But read in this way, you know, the first half are read as a command.

You know, you live in this way, the second half is read as the result of your obedience, so you can have these things.

And this is probably, I would guess, one of the more common ways that you're used to reading these.

Command equal, you know, obedience equals gift.

But if I might be critical, I think this is an overall problematic way to read the Beatitudes.

Because it leads us down a works-based faith.

You know, you have to earn the right to be blessed.

You have to earn the right to be the sons of God, you have to earn the right to be, to receive God's mercy.

So let me suggest another way.

And it comes from, and this is uh Jonathan Pennington, he's a New Testament scholar, he works at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky.

And this is what he writes.

He says, the unexpected claim of flourishing found in the first half, unexpected because they're not exactly portrayed as these really nice things, needs an explanation, or else it makes no sense.

The second half of each beatitude explains why the paradoxical first half is true and not meaningless.

These statements perplex us.

We look for easy ways out.

But the perplexity is the point.

Jesus calling us to wrestle with a kingdom that the reality of life in that kingdom is that it is the exact opposite of what you would expect.

This is why Tim Keller famously refers to the Beatitudes as the upside-down kingdom.

True flourishing, contrary of what the world says.

It's not found in material comfort, it's not found in ridding, you know, the absence of all anxiety, the shedding of all difficulty.

True flourishing can be found even in the midst of these things.

And for the Christian, it often is.

Jesus actually kind of makes us say, actually, you should expect that life's gonna be hard and you're gonna hope and that flourishing will come in the midst of that difficulty.

Okay, so with that, now let's read them again.

I'm not gonna read them from the English Standard Version, which I've been reading from this whole time.

I want to read from Pennington's translation because it helps, I think, bring out the meaning of that word blessed a little better.

But as we read, I want you to close your eyes, maybe, you don't have to, but just focus for just a moment.

Just hear Jesus' words, hear them wash over you.

Flourishing are the poor in spirit because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

Flourishing are the mourners because they will be comforted.

Flourishing are the humble because they will inherit the world.

Flourishing are the ones who Hunger and thirst for righteousness because they will be satisfied.

Flourishing are the merciful because they will be given mercy.

Flourishing are the pure in heart because they will see God.

Flourishing are the peacemakers because they will be called the children of God.

Flourishing are the ones persecuted on account of righteousness, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

Flourishing are you, whenever people revile and slander and speak all kinds of evil against you on account of me.

Rejoice and be glad because your reward is great in heaven.

In the same way, people slandered the prophets who came before you.

The Sermon on the Mount will teach us many things about life in God's kingdom.

We're going to explore those over the next few weeks, but these beatitudes, they lay it out so plainly.

The flourishing life can only be found here.

It can't be found in following the world.

It's not only for the next life.

It's not in the grit and grind.

It's not by your good deeds earning it.

It's found nowhere else.

The good life is found only here in the words of Jesus.

You know, that's why at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, when it's like, you know, the inclusio at the end, how he's wrapping up the sermon, what does Jesus say?

Build your life on the foundation.

What is the foundation?

Is my words.

The good life is found only in the words of Jesus.

But as I pointed out, you may have noticed these beatitudes, the first half of that line, the things you're being called to live, you know, flourish in the midst of, are not exactly positive.

You know, first he says, Blessed are the poor.

Like I've been poor, you know.

I'm not exactly rich now.

Being poor is not a comfortable and happy experience.

The second one says, Blessed are those who mourn.

I mean, have you ever mourned?

Like, actually, have you ever seen or even seen someone truly mourn?

I mean, I've had loss in my life, but I can't say that I've really had some extremely, extremely just viscerally painful mourning experience.

But I've been close to someone that once was.

I once I was, we were supposed to be going to a conference that we were speaking at, and this guy that I was going with, his mom had died two weeks before.

And we thought, surely, you know, he's gonna cancel, and you know, we just won't go on this conference.

But he had told his mom he was speaking, and she was so proud that he was doing it.

So he felt like he had to make this conference as a as a to keep the promise he had made to his mom.

And uh we get to the airport, we wait for hours, our flight's delayed, and ultimately we find out later that the flight had actually been canceled hours before, and the airline had not told us.

So I mean, I still have major beef with an airline.

I'm not gonna say its name, but it has the same name as one of the persons of the Trinity, so you can figure it out later if you want to.

But and so we had to drive, and it was a 14-hour drive because again, this guy had made this promise, and we're driving, and this guy's in the midst of this deep mourning.

So, sure, we're laughing and we're telling stories, but then there would just be these moments where you could the wave of grief would wash over him.

And I just remember sitting in the pastor's seat, and we're going, you know, we're in Chattanooga, and there's this beautiful scenery as we're driving, and and it's like he just starts reaching forward towards the windshield, and he's just like, it's just, it just feels like she's it can't be real.

Like she's still like he said, it's like she's so real, it's like I could touch her.

I mean, that's mourning.

I mean, I don't think, I don't think you can be that close to mourning and ever forget it.

Mourning is not something you can just grin and bear it, or you know, just you can make it through.

It's deep and it's visceral.

It's I mean, it's certainly at minimum the opposite of happiness.

As, you know, blessed are those who mourn.

That is the most paradoxical statement you could possibly say.

Blessed are the meek.

I mean, when I think of this one, I always feel like Jesus is saying, be a doormat.

You know, just get walked over in all of this life.

The rest go on to mention hunger and thirst and persecution, being reviled.

Again, it's not exactly something I want to hear Jesus say when he says, the core of your being should be this.

This is the life you're meant to live.

But before we get too panicked, let's look back at the Beatitudes.

Look back at the second half of those lines.

Those who inhabit this world as Jesus calls them to, they get what?

They get the kingdom of heaven, they get comfort, they get the earth.

They're gonna inherit the earth.

Satisfaction, mercy, they see God, they're called sons of God, they receive the reward of heaven.

So in this, in this world, you may mourn and you may be persecuted and you may suffer, but you can still flourish.

Why?

Because did you notice who the second half of the line is centered on?

It's not centered on us.

The world's vision of flourishing is centered on us, but the beatitudes, the second half of the line is centered on God Himself.

Whose kingdom do we inherit?

It's God's kingdom.

Who is the comforter?

It's God.

Who satisfies the hungry?

It's God.

Who gives mercy?

It's God.

Who do we seek?

God.

Whose children are we?

We're called God's children.

It's his kingdom, it's his reward, it's his love.

And the beatitudes are telling us, and he gives it to us.

He gives it to us freely.

The worst part of following the world's path to blessedness is not merely that you won't be satisfied in this world, as I had, you know, we had portrayed in the first point.

It's that you won't get God in this world.

And you won't get God in the world to come.

You won't flourish when you pass through the valley of the shadow of death, as the psalmist, you know, in Psalm 23 writes, because you'll have no confidence that there's goodness and mercy that's following you.

There'll be no shepherd whose rod and staff they comfort you.

When you pass, you know, there'll be no one who prepares a table for you in the presence of your enemies.

When you pass through the valley of the shadow of death, you won't be able to look through that valley of the shadow of death and see on the other side of it that you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

You'll be consumed by your enemies.

You'll be consumed by the valley.

When we live a life that is centered on ourselves, and it's guided by ourselves, and it's its one goal is to elevate ourselves, it's a rejection of God.

We're rejecting God, we're rejecting his mercy and his comfort.

We're blinding ourselves so that we might not see God, as the Beatitude says.

We're living lives of unrighteousness.

We're following a kingdom of sin, we're you know, causing chaos rather than peace everywhere we go.

We're created to be sons of God, and instead we're living as children of wrath.

There'll be no mercy for us on that last day.

All those gifts of the second half, think of it's we're the inverse, and there'll be no mercy for us on that last day.

We'll follow, if we follow the path to its end, we'll find ourselves permanently separated from the love of God and from all of his benefits that he promises here.

But do you see why the beatitudes are so beautiful?

Because the beatitudes, Jesus on the mountain speaking to us, is an invitation.

It's an invitation back to the life that we were always meant to live.

And you could see the vision.

This is who I was meant to be.

And you can see the invitation.

This is who God intends to make me.

God invites us back to the true path to flourishing.

And not only does he invite us, but he has come himself in the person of the Son in Jesus Christ to bring us back.

The only way we can be rescued from this path that we've been talking about, this world's path that leads to destruction, from our condemnation, from our separation from God, is through God Himself taking on flesh in Jesus and dying in our place.

If it was by works, if it was something you could earn if these beatitudes were meant to call you to earn this life of blessedness, he wouldn't have had to do all that.

But he comes and invites us, he takes on flesh, and he and he lives a perfectly righteous life.

I mean, he never sought his own happiness in this world, but only in God.

He perfectly embodies the beatitudes.

Jesus was poor in spirit, he was always elevating others.

Jesus mourned.

I mean, he felt the pain of this world, he longed for its resurrection, his restor its restoration.

Jesus was meek, he served others, he hungered and thirst for righteousness, and in fact was perfectly righteous.

He was merciful even to the worst of sinners.

Jesus was pure in heart, his motives were never self-serving.

Jesus was a peacemaker.

He brought people together.

And all through this perfect, beautiful, blessed life that Jesus lived, Jesus grounded his identity, his whole life, on one thing, the ultimate pursuit of the kingdom of God.

Even in the face of death on the cross, Jesus doesn't turn away from the path that God has laid out for him.

He goes to the cross, and at the cross, he lives out that last beatitude in verse 11.

Jesus is reviled and persecuted.

All kinds of evil are brought against him on false accounts, and he's crucified.

But verse 11 turns over to verse 12.

But great is your reward in heaven.

Do you know why Jesus can promise you that a life lived in this way will lead to flourishing and will ultimately lead to rewards in heaven?

It's because he's walked the path ahead of you.

Jesus has walked ahead of us and he has secured those benefits through his death on the cross.

At the cross, he takes the punishment for the sins we have committed, for our rejection of God, for all of the following of the world's path.

He takes the punishment so that we might receive his perfect righteousness.

And he does it so that we might see God, that we might know God, that we might be God's children.

He did it so that we might be blessed.

So the Beatitudes, they don't give you, you know, a new plan for life.

It's not a lifestyle blog, you know, that this is this is the way you're supposed to live, and you know, follow this.

You know, you do these things and you're gonna be happy, you're gonna be prosperous, this is how you're meant to live.

They require faith.

If you want to live to be who you were meant to be, you have to place your faith in Jesus Christ.

He alone can rescue us from the path of destruction we find ourselves on.

And when we follow him down this path, we follow his way of life, we follow his words here, we see how these non-happy, suffering, painful concepts, we see how they're transformed.

You can flourish while being poor in spirit, because though you're poor now, a rich kingdom awaits you.

So you can live free from promoting yourself.

You can you can live free, you can build up others, you can devote yourself to others because you have a God that's going to build you up and lift you up.

You can flourish while mourning, confronting deep suffering with hope because you know one day Jesus is gonna make all sad things untrue.

You know that you have a comforter who himself was called a man of sorrows, who himself has suffered, and you know that he is bringing a resurrection from the dead.

Death will remain, but it won't consume you because death itself has been consumed.

It's been swallowed up in victory.

You can flourish while experiencing the deep, painful hunger, pangs, and desperate thirst for righteousness, even when you're aware of how constantly you fail.

You're like, I'm hungry, I'm and I'm thirsting for righteousness, but I'm just constantly failing.

And yet you can still flourish in that because you know your righteousness will be complete one day.

You've been given the perfect righteousness of Christ, and Christ, and the Holy Spirit dwells within you, and he's making you holy, but ultimately one day you can know I'm gonna be sinless.

My hunger and my thirst, it will be satisfied.

And what's more, if you live like this, your life will be beautiful.

I mean, it will be a beauty that will be seen by all.

I mean, think about it.

I mean, who are the people in life, you know, that we find the most inspiring?

The stories that we're most drawn to.

I know the people that I'm the most drawn to.

It's not the most impressive, the person that's the most wealthy, the most famous, or whatever it may be.

The people you're really drawn to that you want to spend, you're just like, I just want to be in their presence are people that elevate others.

The people that that suffer bravely.

They're the pure, they're the humble, they're the righteous, they're they're the peaceful.

That's the kind of person I want to be around.

That's the kind of person I want to be.

Follow Jesus.

Make the Beatitudes your way of life.

And speak of the God who enables you to flourish even in the hardest of circumstances.

And people will be compelled to follow you as you follow Jesus.

They'll see the gospel in your life, they'll hear the gospel from your lips, and they'll see that the gospel is a good news for human flourishing.

The world tells you you can have blessedness in yourself.

But Jesus says you can't have blessedness and not also have God.

The whole idea of human flourishing is wrapped up in God.

So if you want to answer the question, what is the good life?

And answer it with confidence, the choice before you is clear.

You're on a path.

You are walking a path.

And you are either placing your hope, you're placing your hope in something, and you're either following the path of this world, or you're following the path of Jesus that leads to God.

So God's invitation to you today, Jesus' invitation from the mount of God speaking to his people, is to follow his true path.

Follow Jesus, and in him you will find all the goodness that this life has to offer.

Let's pray.

Father, we praise you that Jesus has spoken to us.

We praise you that you have sent him to us, that we might know you, that we might see you, that we might uh understand your original intention for creation and who you made for you made for us to be in relationship to you and knowing you and in life in this world.

And so, Lord, we pray that you would free us from sin.

We pray that you would free us so that we don't have to be while we're so tempted to follow the world's path, that we can be free from that path and free to pursue you in lifelong obedience.

And Lord, we pray that in the moments when we suffer, in the moments when we are hunger, the moments when we feel that the meekness and purity of spirit is just not worth it.

God, we pray that you would remind us of the cross where we see our Savior suffering and dying for us to secure for us all the goodness and benefits that you've promised.

We ask all this in your name.

Amen.