The Bible proclaims a value system that is contrary to that of the world. John Stott the late Pastor and commentator titled his book on the Sermon on the Mount “Christian Counter Culture.” It is an apt title. This is most evident in the introduction of the sermon called the Beatitudes. These are general guidelines that will be worked out further in the rest of the sermon.
These beatitudes are about far more than mere surface happiness. Blessedness has to do with our relationship with the Lord. We are blessed when God is pleased with us and grants us His favor.
These beatitudes are all related. They build on each other. The first four beatitudes show us how a person comes to the Lord. The last five beatitudes show us how that belief impacts the way we live. So, these are not isolated blessings. They are a package deal.
We have already looked at the first beatitude
3 “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him,
for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
We learned that this is not about our financial status. It is about recognizing our spiritual state. The person who is blessed is the one who recognizes that they are spiritually lost. We might paraphrase and say, “Blessed are those who have come to recognize that they are a mess and need the Lord for these are the people who will experience the Kingdom of God.”
This morning we will build on this understanding of what is required to come to God. In order to understand the individual beatitudes you need to see the big picture.
4 God blesses those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5 God blesses those who are humble,
for they will inherit the whole earth.
6 God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed Mourning
This beatitude which focuses on mourning has been a great comfort to many people in their time of loss. And certainly there is merit to that sense of being blessed in our time of loss.
In the book of Ecclesiastes we read these words,
2 Better to spend your time at funerals than at parties.
After all, everyone dies—
so the living should take this to heart.
3 Sorrow is better than laughter,
for sadness has a refining influence on us.
4 A wise person thinks a lot about death,
while a fool thinks only about having a good time. (Ecclesiastes 7:2-4)
Solomon observes that funerals are better places to spend our time than parties because at a funeral you face life squarely and address ultimate issues. This is a good thing.
It is also true that God is our comfort in the time of mourning. He draws us close in these times. However, this is not what Jesus is referring to here.
The mourning that is talked about her can also be called repentance. It builds on the first beatitude. We recognize that we are a mess and caught in sin and we so we mourn with the desire to be set free from our sinful addiction.
When we see our sinful state we mourn over the sin we commit. We hate what we do. We are like Paul who said “the good I want to do, I don’t do; the evil I don’t want to do, that is what I do. O wretched man that I am”. (Romans 7)
The person who is going to receive God’s blessing is the one who is truly sorry for their sin. It is a sorrow that desperately wants to change. It’s the difference between the person who says, “I’m sorry” and the person who works hard to make sure the offense never happens again. It would be the difference between the child who breaks your window and apologizes and the one who apologizes, takes the old window out, gets it replaced, puts it back in and then washes ALL your windows! That is repentance. That is the kind of mourning God honors.
We also mourn over our sinful nature. We mourn that our hearts are bent toward sin and rebellion. Even when we don’t act on it we sometimes have desires that we know are wicked and sinful. We reach a point when we hate what we see inside of us. We hate the fact that even our best acts are tainted with sinful motives (we want to be seen, we want to earn favor, we want to fulfill a requirement or expectation.) We almost never do things in order to honor the Lord.
We also mourn at the sin around us destroying people and the world in which we live. We see what is going on in the world and we mourn and pray over what we see. We see the horror of
• Human trafficking
• Senseless murders anchored simply in hate
• Sexual or Physical Abuse
• People who rip off the system
• Politicians who are corrupt or seem to act exempt from the law
• The seductive nature of false religions
• And the rampant idolatry (sports, hobbies, work, money, pleasure etc) around us
In other words, we mourn over all sin because we recognize that it is an offense against our holy God.
R.C. Sproul summarizes it well,
Real repentance over sin is generated by a profound sorrow from the soul in which we are heartily sorry for our sins. When Christ sees the righteous person who is broken by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, who reveals to us our sins so that our pillows are wet with our weeping, then we know what true contrition is from which God promises His comfort. Those who acknowledge their sins in a glib manner reflect the kind of repentance that Esau had, which was not real. A truly godly person mourns not only the loss of his loved ones or his health but also his sin before God. Therefore, when our Lord said, “Blessed are those who mourn,” the blessing is not in the mourning; it is in the comfort.
Comforted because having seen his sin, he looks for a Savior. . . and finds him.
Do you see why this kind of mourning leads to profound and lasting comfort? In our desire to turn from sin we find a Savior who is willing and able to help us and make us new.
The Blessing of Humility (Meekness)
5 God blesses those who are humble,
for they will inherit the whole earth.
Eugene Peterson paraphrases this beatitude this way in The Message
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
The older versions translated this as “meek” which unfortunately often has a very negative and weak connotation. Humility is a much better and descriptive word.
Humility is not a matter of putting yourself down in front of others. Some people seem to use feigned humility to get people to tell them how great they are!!! Humility is a state of mind. It is seeing yourself as sinful. It is recognizing that apart from the grace and mercy of God you might be in the same terrible position as some of those people we think are so horrible. The humble person realizes that he is much closer in character to Adolf Hitler than he is to Jesus.
The idea is that once we recognize that we are sinful (poor in spirit) and cannot possible save ourselves; and then we mourn over that fact and come to the Lord with repentance and a desire to move in the other direction. At this point we must adopt a humble position that cries out to the Lord for salvation. We must embrace Him as our only provision of eternal life. It takes a great deal of humility to accept the fact that we cannot save ourselves.
This will have some practical effect. If you realize that you deserve Hell but have been granted a grace that is undeserved you will not be boasting before others. You will recognize that even in the worst sinner you can say, “there but for the grace of God, could be me.” This realization should make us soft and humble. It should lead us to serve rather than demand service. It should lead us to help others up when they fall instead of gathering around them to ridicule them. The gospel changes people. It changes our heart and it changes the way we respond to others.
It is easy to see how different this is from the way of the world.
Author Philip Yancey wrote about a time in 1991 when he was preparing a Sunday School lesson and had CNN on in the background. This was the time of Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait. Yancey said he stopped because General Norman Schwarzkopf came on the screen to discuss what was happening.
Schwarzkopf talked about the success of the military in rescuing Kuwait quickly with precision bombs and great soldiering. When the news report finished Yancey reflected on what he just saw.
Blessed are the strong, was the general’s message. Blessed are the triumphant. Blessed are the armies wealthy enough to possess smart bombs and Patriot missiles. Blessed are the liberators, the conquering soldiers.
The bizarre juxtaposition of two speeches gave me a feeling for the shock waves the Sermon on the Mount must have caused among its original audience, Jews in first-century Palestine. Instead of General Schwarzkopf, they had Jesus, and to a downtrodden people yearning for emancipation from Roman rule, Jesus gave startling and unwelcome advice. If an enemy soldier slaps you, turn the other cheek. Rejoice in persecution. Be grateful for your poverty. A man who is meek is always satisfied.(The Jesus I Never Knew p. 107)
So, meekness or humility is not weakness, it is not laziness, it is not being nice and never rocking the boat. It is certainly not peace at any price. However, when we encounter those who disagree with us the growing believer listens and tries to hear what is being said.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones says it perfectly, “Meekness is essentially a true view of oneself, expressing itself in attitude and conduct with relation to others” (LJ 68)
So, if we flesh this out, the humble person
• Comes to Christ not with a resume but with open hands and an open heart.
• They Do not immediately believe their opinion is right or accurate. They trust God’s judgment over their own. They make suggestions cautiously.
• They relate to the downtrodden person or the person who has failed with gentleness and love, realizing that apart from the grace of God this could have been them.
• They remain teachable.
• The humble person is bold for the things of God while at the same time being less inclined to make a stink when they are personally offended. The humble person is starting to tell the difference between the two.
• The humble person is willing to let someone else stand in the spotlight. They don’t have to be the center of attention.
• Does not need to show everyone how smart they are. Instead they listen and are eager to learn from others.
God’s grace, when rightly understood should soften us, drawing us to Him and changing the way that we deal with each other.
Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness/Justice
It is unfortunate that the New Living Translation limits this beatitude to justice. The actual word is the word for righteousness. It means to live in a way that pleases God. Justice is a part of this but just a part not the whole.
Hungering and thirsting for righteousness will happen only when we turn to Christ as our Lord and Savior. Christ gives us a right standing (righteousness) before God. And when he does this we have a new heart and a new desires: to honor Him with the way we live our lives. Notice that we are not good IN ORDER TO BE saved by Christ. We pursue God’s ways BECAUSE we are saved by Christ.
Let’s say you may meet someone and enjoy that first meeting. You say to yourself, “It would be fun to see them again’. You meet them again and have a little better chance to know them. You like them even more so you plan to meet them again. The relationship continues to grow. And as that relationship develops you go out of your way, you cancel other appointments, you make plans around meeting that person. Why? Because love is growing.
As this love grows you may yourself becoming interested in the things your “someone” is interested in. You go new places, try different foods, read different books. Why? Because you desire to share in their life and heart of the person you now love.
Hungering and Thirsting for righteousness is like that. It is not a desire to earn God’s favor… we can’t earn God’s favor by trying to be good. This is different. It is a desire to0 pursue the things of God in the way God would have us pursue them because we love Him. We want to walk with Him in every area of our lives.
Jesus does not tell us to hunger and thirst for happiness or even for blessedness. But that is what most people are doing. They are on a relentless pursuit of happiness. Pursuing happiness or even blessedness is not about pursuing the Lord. It is about pursuing our own desires. It is about satisfying our desires. The person who pursues righteousness is pursuing the heart of God.
Too often we want a Doctor who will treat the pain and we don’t care if they ever really diagnose the cause of the pain. People want to get of their pain but the problem is that they don’t want to be well.
When we turn to the Lord we want to be well. We want to walk with God. We want to be part of His family. We want to spend the rest of our lives honoring Him.
Hungering and thirsting are desires that cannot be satisfied until what they hunger or thirst for has been provided. The only thing that will satisfy hunger is to eat. The only thing to satisfy thirst is to drink. And the only way to satisfy our hunger and thirst for righteousness is to pursue Him relentlessly.
To do this we get rid of all our excuses and our justifications. We look sin in the eye and we prayerfully seek to eliminate it. We do this because we have become convinced that God knows what He is doing. He knows the best road for us. When we pursue Him we find life.
Conclusions
After these first four beatitudes we have learned what it takes to become a child of God.
1. We must recognize our broken condition and accept the fact that we cannot save ourselves.
2. We mourn over our sin and repent and desire to turn in a new direction.
3. We relate to each other with humility rather than arrogance. We know that salvation is a gift and if it hadn’t been a gift we could never gain. There is no boasting.
4. We pursue the things of God fervently. Once you are made free but our Lord Jesus we never want to be enslaved again.
It is our hope that you understand these beatitudes because you have experienced these things in your own life. And if you haven’t, I encourage you to turn to Him today. Be honest with yourself and with the Lord. Ask Him to cleanse you and make you new. Then, follow where He leads you. He will NEVER lead you astray.
