INTRODUCTION
Last week we started a new series on the Sermon on the Mount.
The Sermon on the Mount starts with nine statements that Jesus made which begin, ‘Blessed are.’ ‘Blessed’ means ‘happy’ or ‘fortunate’. We often call these statements ‘the Beatitudes.’
If we asked people in the world today for their list of ‘blessed are’ I think they’d come up with something like this. ‘Blessed are you when have lots of friends. Blessed are you when you’re successful in your job. Blessed are you when you’re wealthy. Blessed are you when you have a pretty wife.’ And so we could go on. If we went to the scientific community we might come up with a slightly different answer. Here’s one. In 1938, Harvard Medical School started a study of 268 Harvard students, looking for clues to leading healthy and happy lives. It’s one of the longest-running studies of adult life ever done. The study found that the happiest (and healthiest) people were those WHO CULTIVATED STRONG RELATIONSHIPS with people they trusted to support them. So, according to the Harvard scientists, ‘Blessed are you when you have healthy relationships with people close to you.’
REVIEW OF LAST WEEK
Last week, we looked at Jesus’ first three Beatitudes. I’m going to review those and then we’ll go on to the next three.
I have a feeling that the Harvard scientists I mentioned would nod their head in agreement at Jesus’ first Beatitude. In the first Beatitude Jesus’ focus is on our most important relationship of all: our relationship with God. Getting that right is where being blessed starts.
BEATITUDE 1
Jesus’ first Beatitude is, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’
‘THEIRS IS the kingdom of heaven’. Wow! People in right relationship with God don’t simply ENTER the kingdom of heaven, God’s kingdom. It becomes THEIRS! That’s the result of a right relationship with God.
What leads to that right relationship? There are verses in the Old Testament which talk about people being ‘broken-hearted’, ‘crushed in spirit’, ‘humble’, ‘contrite’ [e.g. Psalm 34:18 and 51:17, Isaiah 57:15 and 66:2]. Jesus describes this as being ‘poor in spirit’. Those Old Testament verses then say that God draws near to such people, saves them and dwells with them.
This is a REALLY important understanding. I can’t stress it enough! WE DON’T GET OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD RIGHT BY BEING GOOD. WE GET IT RIGHT BY COMING TO GOD POOR IN SPIRIT. Or, as the Old Testament expresses it, ‘broken-hearted’, ‘humble’, ‘contrite’. We have nothing to offer God. We can only seek his mercy.
You want to come back to God? Don’t try to be good. Or at least, that’s not the starting point. Humble yourself. Be contrite. Say sorry.
BEATITUDE 2
The second Beatitude is, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’
We know that God hates sin and he grieves over the suffering which sin causes. We also should mourn sin and the suffering which it causes. We shouldn’t always wear a broad smile. If we do mourn, God promises comfort. Just as in the case of the first Beatitude, this is also an Old Testament idea. Last week we looked at a passage in Isaiah [Isaiah 61] where Isaiah looks forward to the coming of the anointed one, Christ. Christ would ‘comfort all who mourn’; he will give ‘the oil of gladness instead of mourning’. And Isaiah goes on to talk about a time of restoration. One day, Christ will deal with the brokenness and hurt that sin has caused.
BEATITUDE 3
The third Beatitude is, ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth’. Again, this is an Old Testament idea. David wrote, ‘But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace’ [Psalm 37:11]. Jesus’ statement is almost word-for-word the same as David’s!
As God’s people, I hope we don’t chase after money. But we value enormously this beautiful and amazing world which God created and entrusted to our care.
Imagine your parents have a lovely little cottage somewhere on the Jurassic Coast. It has a pretty garden, full of flowers and butterflies in the summer. It has a view through a wooded valley towards the sea in the distance. One day, you’ll inherit that cottage. If that was your situation, you’d count yourself blessed.
As Christians we tend to think in terms of spiritual blessings and there’s a danger that we can be dismissive of physical and material blessings. But here Jesus is talking about a physical and material blessing. We, the meek, will inherit not just a cottage on the coast but the earth!
THE OLD TESTAMENT
Let me make a brief observation about these first three Beatitudes and their relationship to the Old Testament.
Many Christians think that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus introduced new teaching which supersedes the teaching of the Old Testament. If that’s true then it means the Old Testament is redundant; we can disregard it.
But Jesus tells us that the opposite is true. A little later in his sermon Jesus says clearly and emphatically that Old Testament law stands. He did NOT come to abolish it! We’ll look at that in about four or five-weeks’ time.
This is one reason I’m so keen to show that what Jesus teaches here is the same as the Old Testament teaches. The fact that Jesus’ teaching corresponds with the Old Testament shows that Jesus affirms the Old Testament. He isn’t giving us a new and better teaching. He isn’t doing away with the Old Testament!
Let’s now move on to the fourth, fifth and sixth Beatitudes.
BEATITUDE 4
The fourth Beatitude is ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.’
The Beatitudes so far follow a natural progression.
Our starting point is that we’re POOR IN SPIRIT. We can’t stand up and say ‘I, I am big and clever!’ The reality is the opposite. We’re sinners. We can’t fix ourselves. Our only hope is God’s mercy.
Knowledge of our spiritual poverty leads to MOURNING. We see sin in our own lives and in the world around us. We see the damage it does and we mourn over it.
Knowledge of our spiritual poverty also leads to MEEKNESS. If we ’re genuinely conscious of our failings, our weaknesses and inadequacies, then it’s natural to be meek.
This fourth Beatitude also continues naturally. We mourn our sin and the sin in the world. But of course, we want to do something about it! We HUNGER AND THIRST FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS.
What does Jesus mean by righteousness?
I’d like to try an analogy. Let’s imagine a football player in a club. I’ll call him Enzo. One evening, Enzo gets into a fight in a pub and causes quite a bit of damage. The manager drops him from the squad. But Enzo apologizes unreservedly and does some community service. After a few weeks, the manager puts Enzo back in the squad. ‘The pub is forgotten’, the manager tells him. Now Enzo’s back in the squad he’s training five hours a day, five days a week to improve his football skills.
Now let’s put this in a Christian context. Let’s imagine Martina. Martina isn’t very proud of her life. She’s a single mum. She’s got two young children but she often shouts at them and sometimes neglects them. She gets depressed and when she does, she drinks heavily. But then, someone tells her about Jesus. She decides to say sorry. Jesus says, ‘OK. I forgive you. What happened in the past is in the past. It’s forgotten. You’re welcome into my family.’ But that isn’t the end of the story. Martina now wants to sort things out. She works hard to learn how God wants her to live. Her children notice the difference. The neighbours do too.
When someone genuinely repents, God forgives the person AND COUNTS HIM OR HER AS RIGHTEOUS. But if the person genuinely repented, they won’t be happy to be simply counted as righteous. They’ll want to fix the things they had to say sorry for. That, I hope, is where we are. We’re hungering and thirsting for righteousness. And if we do, what happens? We’ll be satisfied! We’ll get what we’re hungering and thirsting for!
I said earlier, ‘You want to come back to God? Don’t try to be good.’ Being good doesn’t get you entrance into God’s kingdom. But now you’re in, give it all you’ve got! Hunger and thirst for righteousness!
BEATITUDE 5
Let’s move on to the fifth Beatitude. It is ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.’
This is another natural progression. We’re recipients of God’s mercy. Therefore, we should be motivated to be merciful.
Being merciful means that we show kindness to a person who has no right or claim to receive kindness.
It could apply to someone who’s found guilty in court. Judges usually have some discretion in sentencing. A judge could give a more lenient sentence or a harsher one while remaining within the sentencing guidelines. A judge might be in a position to show some mercy. None of us are judges in court. But we judge in other situations. A teacher judges children’s behaviour all day long. Parents judge. Churches sometimes have to judge! Of course, we must judge justly. But God also calls us to be merciful. That means that we need to look for ways to satisfy the requirements of justice and mercy.
But we can be merciful in many other situations too. Right now, people in Eastern Europe are welcoming Ukrainian refugees. They are showing mercy.
What’s the result of being merciful? It’s certainly good for the recipients of mercy. We can probably imagine Ukrainian refugees’ relief when people in Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova welcome them and help them.
But showing mercy is also very good for the people who show mercy. Jesus said ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.’ Jesus didn’t say WHO will show mercy to these merciful people or WHAT KIND of mercy they will receive. All we can say is that there will be a return. Merciful people will receive mercy. Showing mercy is a good deal!
I was thinking about this Beatitude many years ago and made a note to myself. I wrote: ‘It’s interesting … I’ve given more to God in financial terms than I’ve ever given before this year, and ended up with more in my account than I’ve ever had!’
BEATITUDE 6
The sixth Beatitude and the last one we’re going to look at today is ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.’
I like the idea of seeing God! But this Beatitude is hard to understand. Surely no one really has a pure heart? Not in this life, anyway. And surely no one can see God? Not in this life, anyway.
But if that’s what we think then this Beatitude makes no sense. If the requirement to see God is a pure heart and no one has a pure heart then no one will see God! In some sense, it must be possible to have a pure heart.
That seems right to me. The evening before he was crucified, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. He told Peter, ‘He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet; OTHERWISE HE IS COMPLETELY CLEAN. AND YOU ARE CLEAN – but not all of you.’ So it IS possible for a Christian to be ‘clean’ in this life.
Arthur Pink, in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount writes: ‘That purity of heart does NOT mean sinlessness of life is clear from the inspired record of the history of all God’s saints. Noah got drunk, Abraham equivocated, Moses disobeyed God, Job cursed the day of his birth…’ – and so on. These people had pure hearts but they weren’t sinless. You don’t have to be sinless to have a pure heart. That’s not the requirement.
Martyn Lloyd Jones comments, ‘the Christian faith is ultimately not only a matter of doctrine or of understanding or of intellect, it is a condition of the heart … Christianity is … not primarily a matter of conduct and external behaviour. It starts with this question: What is the state of the heart?’
Lloyd Jones sees purity of heart as undivided, pure love for God. Perhaps that is something we CAN have for God.
If a pure heart IS possible, not only in our future, glorified state but in THIS LIFE, then in some way it’s possible for us to see God in THIS LIFE. That’s what the two commentators I went to think. The pure in heart ‘see’ God in this life – and then see him even more clearly in the life to come.
The writer of Hebrews tells us that Moses ‘left Egypt … he persevered, as though seeing Him who is unseen’ [Hebrews 11:27]. Moses saw God with the eyes of faith, going before him, leading him on, working out his purposes around him. We can also see God, not just in the resurrection but in our lives now. But to do so, we need to come to him with pure hearts. Not sinless perfection, but undivided love.
So, let’s now seek to do the things Jesus is encouraging us to do. Let’s hunger and thirst for righteousness. Let’s show mercy. Let’s offer God a pure heart. Doing these things will delight God. And they are the path to blessing.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 6th March, 2022. Quotes are from NASB.
