Fantastic News for Living from the Sermon on the Mount PART 1
Matt. 5:1-5
A man walks up to the bar with an ostrich behind him, and as he sits, the bartender comes over, and asks for his order. The man says, "I’ll have a beer," and turns to the ostrich. "What about you?"
"I’ll have a beer too," says the ostrich. The bartender pours the beer and says "That will be $3.40 please," and the man reaches into his pocket and pulls out exact change for payment.
The next day, the man and ostrich come again, and the man says "I’ll have a beer," and the ostrich says, "I’ll have the same." Once again the man reaches into his pocket and pays with exact change.
This becomes a routine until, late one evening, the two enter again. "The usual?" asks the bartender. "Well, it’s close to last call, so I’ll have a large scotch" says the man. "Same for me," says the ostrich.
"That will be $7.20," says the bartender. Once again the man pulls exact change out of his pocket and places it on the bar. The bartender can’t hold back his curiosity any longer. "Excuse me sir. How do you manage to always come up with the exact change out of your pocket every time?"
"Well," says the man, "several years ago I was cleaning the attic and found an old lamp. When I rubbed it a Genie appeared and offered me two wishes. My first wish was that if I ever had to pay for anything, I just put my hand in my pocket, and the right amount of money will always be there."
"That’s brilliant!" says the bartender. "Most people would wish for a million dollars or something, but you’ll always be as rich as you want for as long as you live!"
"That’s right! Whether it’s a gallon of milk or a Rolls Royce, the exact money is always there," says the man.
The bartender asks, "One other thing, sir, what’s with the ostrich?"
The man replies "My second wish was for a chick with long legs."
God wants to bless us, not like the Genie who can trick us and gives us what we deserve. According to the Bible, God "is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine". Can u sense the power of that "immeasurably more" and in combination with "more than ALL we ask or imagine." What God gives is incredibly awesome. It is not a mere ostrich! Larry Crabb (2001, p.1) said:
“There’s never a moment in all our lives, from the day we trusted Christ till the day we see Him, when God is not longing to bless us. At every moment, in every circumstance, God is doing us good. He never stops. It gives Him too much pleasure. God is not waiting to bless us after our troubles end. He is blessing us right now, in and through those troubles. At this exact moment, He is giving us what He thinks is good.”
That is the rub, Crabb continues, what He thinks is good may not be the idea we have of what is good. Illus: We say ice cream is good, not spinach.
We want immediate feel good remedies often dislike what is in fact good for us. Rather than seeing God as one who gives us heavenly ice cream with the nutritional value of spinach, we pursue our own ways of getting earthly ice-cream that melts away in the heat of the day.
Our greatest happiness is to be found in God. But in our hearts we question that. We are like Jeremiah’s audience who prefer broken cisterns and walk right pass the refreshment and enjoyments of the cool Springs of Living Water. Prefer controllable digging of our own cisterns and not the offer of free cool water of the Spring.
That God wants to bless us is so evident:
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God BLESSED THEM, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. “Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so. Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was VERY GOOD. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Genesis 1:27-31 (NKJV)
When God made people to populate the earth, the idea behind it is blessing… so that things are perfect or “very good.” This was the original intent of creation: blessing! Even when people turned away from that Eden, His will is to bless. There is no doubt left in scripture that God’s will is to keep the blessing coming. So we find it in Genesis 12:1-3 (NLT)
“Then the LORD told Abram, “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you. I will cause you to become the father of a great nation. I will BLESS YOU and make you famous, and I will MAKE YOU A BLESSING to others. I will BLESS THOSE WHO BLESS YOU and curse those who curse you. ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH WILL BE BLESSED THROUGH YOU.”
Is there any doubt that God wants to bless us? Bill Hybels (1998,p.22) wrote: “Don’t think you have to figure out a way to wrench a blessing from him, somehow to trick him into giving up what he would rather keep for himself. God’s Word teaches that God loves to bestow blessings on his children, It’s his nature; it’s who he is – a giving God, a blessing God, an encouraging God, a nurturing God, an empowering God, a loving God.” What is the blessing God wants to bestow on us, the people made in His image? Ephesians 1:3-5 (NLT) brings it out well
“How we praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has BLESSED US with EVERY SPIRITUAL BLESSING in the heavenly realms because we belong to Christ. Long ago, even before he made the world, God LOVED US AND CHOSE US in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by BRINGING US TO HIMSELF through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure.”
The blessing of knowing His pleasure to have a loving relationship with us His people specially chosen and
thought of even before the world was made. He wants us to know the greatest pleasure, to find in Him our
pleasure, His pleasure. Now wonder the Word of God declares in Psalm 37:4 (NLT): “Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires.” Second century theologian Irenaeus said “The glory of God is a person fully alive.”
And so the first sermon Jesus preached according to Matthew (4:17, NIV) is just one line “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” That God wants to be near His people is evident, for Jesus Himself is a big living billboard that announces God is near, not far, touchable, reachable, not distant. This is His heartbeat, and passion! And He wants people to turn around to know this awesome grace, which is what the word “repent” means, i.e. to and about turn and find God’s pleasures are close by, within their reach. So when he got a big crowd with him (Matt.5:1) what does He do, went up to a mountainside and sat down, i.e showed Himself to everyone around Him and sat down (symbolically showing that He is with them, not above them) and tells them about, guess what, God wanting to bless people! As Swindoll (1991,p.23) noted:
Most sermons are more negative than positive, more like scathing rebukes than affirmation. Not this one. With beautiful simplicity, using terms any age could understand, Jesus brought blessing rather than condemnation. No fewer than nine times, back-to-back, He used the same phrase: “Blessed are those…,” “Blessed are you…,” “Blessed are these…” Having endured a lifetime of verbal assaults by the scribes and Pharisees, the multitude on the mount must have thought the had died and gone to heaven.
What is meant by Jesus when he said “Blessed”? According to Swindoll (1991,p.24), in the Greek usage of the term, it seems to imply 2 different conditions: “First, it was used to describe the social stratum of the wealthy who, by virtue of their riches, lived above the normal cares and worries of lesser folk. Second, the term was also used to describe the condition of Greek gods who, because they had whatever they desired, existed in an unbelievable state of well-being, satisfaction and contentment.” So Christ intended for the people to understand the delights that seem to belong to the gods and richest of the rich are theirs to claim.
Blessings are …
1. Especially to those who are “poor in spirit.” (v.3)
This is spiritual poverty that Jesus is talking about, illustrated by Jesus Himself in Lk.18:9-14 (NLT):
9 Then Jesus told this story to some who had great self-confidence and scorned everyone else: 10 “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a dishonest tax collector. 11 The proud Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else, especially like that tax collector over there! For I never cheat, I don’t sin, I don’t commit adultery, 12 I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ 14 I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For the proud will be humbled, but the humble will be honored.”
Can you imagine the jaw dropping that must have occurred when the good news such as this came from Jesus. It must have caused a stir with the religious types. It is especially hard for those who are spiritually self-sufficient. How does one become spiritually impoverished? As D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1959,p.52) once wrote:
The way to become poor in spirit is to look at God… Look at Him; and the more we look at Him, the more hopeless shall we feel by ourselves, and in and of ourselves, and the more shall we become ‘poor in spirit’… You cannot truly look at Him without feeling your absolute poverty, and emptiness. They you say to Him “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.” Empty, hopeless, naked, vile. But He is the all sufficient One – Yea, all I need, in Thee, I find, O Lamb of God, I come.
2. Especially to those who “mourn.” (v.4)
Gk. word is the strongest word for passionate lament, broken heart, utter sorrow, pain and ache of the anguished soul. In light of the context of this word, it seems to lend itself to mean “a lament of the heart.” Does this mean to be become miserable, look miserable and go about life with no joy? Of course not, Jesus despised superficiality. It means we mourn the condition of our waywardness, how our sin destroys community with God and others. What is meant here is the conviction of our sin. There is no comfort and joy apart from acknowledging our sinfulness. To want joy apart from the conviction is sin, is foreign to the Bible. The Bible urges to a spirit of contrition like Paul who uttered in a moment of sheer lament over the condition of his own heart in Romans 7:24 (NKJV): “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Are there any that mourn over their sins and wretched condition? Are there more moaning, complaining and sour grapes over God not doing this or that for the convenience of people? Are there any who like Peter wept bitterly over his sin in betraying Christ (Lk.22:62)? As Swindoll (1991, p.27) noted: “To mourn is to acknowledge the overwhelming sinfulness of one’s own sin, feeling indescribable sadness and brokenness over the wrong that has transpired.” Faith in Christ requires a complete confession and those who mourn are blessed. Listen to this in Psalm 51:16-17 (KJV)
16For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. 17The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
What a breath of fresh air, eh? That He desires broken people, not perfectionistic professionalism, high in religious self-sufficiency. All God wants us is to pour out mercy, on all who really wants His mercy!
3. Especially to those are the “meek” (v.5)
This is not a call to be a doormat, or a wimp. Swindoll (1991,p.29) writes: “Rather than today’s meaning of insecure, unsure, weak or effeminate” this word “meek” or translated as “gentle” has the idea of “true inner strength under control.” And the promise attached is to inherit the earth, i.e. we do not need to protect our rights and grapple for control, the Lord will give us whatever “land” we need. The greedy and the aggressive ones will grab and lose and the gentle and meek will gain and inherit. Those of are of Christ, follow Him to be like He is, as He said of Himself “for I am gentle and humble in heart” (Matt.11:29 NIV). So we learn to leave things in the hands of God when we are treated in a bad way, just as Christ did when He suffered unjustly. Instead of striking back, we let God be the avenger (Rom. 12:19-20). The Apostle Paul in Romans 8:16-17 (NKJV) says: “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and JOINT HEIRS with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.”
Conclusion:
Do we know in our hearts that God’s will is to bless? It comes right from His heart to us! And He is willing to do it, free of charge, if we would turn around and trust Him to do it. His kingdom is indeed near. Christ came to proclaim blessing. This was His mission always, even from the start in Genesis. To the poor in spirit, the ones who mourn and the powerless meek ones, God promises blessing.. To the ones on the outside with no hope, His will is to come to our aid, for we cannot make it without His blessing. This is fantastic news!
References:
Crabb, Larry. (2001). Shattered Dreams: God’s Unexpected Pathway to Joy. Colorado Springs,
WaterBrook Press.
Hybels, Bill. (1998). To Busy Not to Pray: Slowing down to be with God. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP.
Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. (1959). Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. Grand Rapid, MI.: Eerdmans.
Swindoll, Charles R. (1991). Simple Faith. Dallas: Word Publishing.
