The Discipleship Attitudes
Matthew 5:1-12
For the last two weeks we have been looking at the topic of discipleship. Jesus called 4 fishermen to follow Him, and as they grew to know Christ and His ways, He transformed their lives into fishers of men. Shortly after this account of Jesus calling his disciples into a deeper commitment, large crowds began to follow Jesus. Seeing the crowds Jesus climbed to the highest point he could find and sat down. When His disciples had seen that he had withdrawn to this hillside, they followed him and he began to teach them.
Some have called these the BE-ATTITUDES. This comes from a Latin phrase which means perfect blessedness or happiness. Because of this some have described these statements of Christ as the way to happiness, but the word” Blessed” means so much more than what we normally think of when we think of happiness. It means to live a life of blessing or fortune because you are living your life in step with God. It is the opposite of a cursed life. A blessed life is not always an easy life or a jovial life, but it is a life full of the strength and peace that comes from a right relationship with God and with man.
If the disciples were to truly follow Jesus, if they were to learn how to live as spiritual men in a material world, they would have to learn a new set of priorities. They would need to develop a new way of thinking and a new attitude about the world around them. They would need to live life God’s way, not the way of this world. And if they would make this journey with Jesus, these be-attitudes would provide them with the eternal blessings of the kingdom of heaven.
The challenge of this way of life is that it is so contrary to the life we have been taught.
Sami Dagher, one of our leading C&MA Pastor’s in the Middle East had been a maitre’d at the world famous Phoenicia Hotel in Beirut before Lebanon’s terrible civil war. Just before the war broke out he left the hotel to plant a small church in one of the poorest areas of the city. When he approached the hotel manager to inform him that he was resigning, the following dialog occurred:
"God has called me to preach," Sami told the manager. "I’m leaving the hotel."
"Leaving? You’re a fool! You’re crazy! A man in your position making good money, and you quit?"
"I leave for something more important than money. I’m going to preach the name of Jesus Christ."
"You’re going to give up this good position to preach for some god? You must be crazy. No! I’ll tell you the right thing to do. You stay here and make money, Sami. I need you."
"No, I can’t stay any longer. I’ve prayed and this is what I must do."
Then the hotel manager grew angry and shouted, "I curse you! One day, Sami Dagher, you will come to the threshold of my door, and you will beg for a crust of bread, and I won’t give it to you. I will let you starve! Do you hear my words? Not a crust!"
Quite sometime later, during some of the heaviest fighting of the war in Lebanon, Sami heard a knock at his door. It was late at night, so Sami told his wife and children to stay in bed. He answered the door himself. When he opened the door, the hotel manager stood before him.
"I couldn’t sleep," the man said. "I wanted to see how you are doing and talk."
Sami made coffee and they discussed the old days they enjoyed at the Phoenicia. Sami sensed the man had come for another reason, but the man wouldn’t say. Finally Sami said, "My friend, it is late. Why have you come to me?"
"Oh, nothing, Sami. I just wanted to talk of old times."
The man walked to the door and opened it. As he stood in the doorway with his head hung low, he turned to Sami and said, "I have no food. I have not eaten for two days. Do you have anything you could spare?"
The hotel manager had cursed Sami for following Christ, but Sami’s life had been blessed by the Lord. It had not always been easy, but Sami choose the way of Christ as a disciple. The hotel manager chose the way of this world, and it led him into eventual poverty of spirit and life.
These be-attitudes have been described in many ways. Some have described them as the worlds’ thinking turned upside down. Others have described them as steps towards peace with God and with man. I see in these statements a progression of our submission to God and the resulting expression of that relationship seen in our interaction with the people around us. Another way of saying this is to say that the first 4 attitudes describe the journey inward as I look at my heart in relationship to God, and the last 4 attitudes describe the journey outward as I relate to the people God has called me to reach.
Let’s look at these blessed attitudes together. Read Matthew 5:1-12
1. Blessing flows out of a right attitude towards God.
A. Notice where Jesus begins: He calls His disciples to be poor in spirit. The word picture here is of one who has crouched down as a beggar. This is the poorest of the poor. There are some poor people who still can hold a job and make a meager living for themselves. But the poor that Jesus is describing do not even have the ability to do that. They have absolutely no resources. They possess nothing. They can only beg.
Now He is not talking about material wealth, although even the richest of men must acknowledge that they are utterly bankrupt in their spirit. The realm of this poverty is the spirit.
Jesus had quoted the prophet Isaiah in the beginning of His ministry in declaring that He had been sent to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to free the captives, and to declare the year of the Lord’s favor to those who were groping in the darkness.
He cries out to the poor and naked: “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
The opposite of this poverty of spirit is the one who arrogantly declares that they can do it on their own. Jesus had declared to the church in Laodicea that he was sick of their lukewarm religion and that he was about to spit them out of his mouth. In Revelation 3:17 he said: “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so that you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”
The kingdom of heaven belongs today to those who have repented of their bankrupt lives and have come broken and spent before the throne of grace, crying out for the forgiveness and mercy of God.
This is the starting point of our journey with God. We can go no further until we are willing to admit that we are lost, dead, nothing, and totally incapable of living our lives apart from Christ.
Are you poor in spirit? Or do you think you still have anything to offer the Lord? Do you believe that you’re not so bad and that you can please the Lord on your own and in your own strength? You will never know the blessing of God, until you acknowledge your own spiritual bankruptcy. You are poor, naked and blind until He puts on you His robe of righteousness and adopts you as His own.
We all must come as the prodigal son or daughter leaving the pig slop of this world behind.
B. Once we have admitted our own poverty of spirit, the next step is to mourn for our sin. Not only am I incapable of saving myself I am also ruined by sin. It is in my very bones. Those who mourn, weep bitter tears for the way sin has ruined their lives and ruined mankind. They are aware of how sin has offended a holy and righteous God. They are broken over the effect of sin upon this world. They weep for themselves and they weep for mankind.
Do you weep over sin? Does it break your heart to see sin in the world around you? Do you mourn over how far short you fall of the glory of God? If you do, then God’s spirit is at work within you, and you will be comforted. There is a comfort that comes immediately through the forgiveness and mercy and grace of God. We know that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That is an immediate comfort God gives to those who mourn.
But there is also a future comfort that will come one day when ever wrong will be righted, every tear will be wiped away, and every sin will be forever removed from this planet as God creates a new heaven and a new earth. Until that day, as believers walking with a Holy God we will continue to mourn over the sin in our own lives and in the world around us. But Jesus declares that those who have this heart attitude are blessed by God. It pleases Him when we hate sin as He hates sin. Do you? Maybe you need to ask God to give you His heart? Maybe you need to have Him remove the heart of stone, and replace it with a heart of flesh that weeps over the sinfulness of man. I think that much of our lack of zeal for prayer, for evangelism, and for ministry stems from the lack of mourning in our lives for sin. We need to say with the psalmist: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
C. When you learn to mourn then you will become a meek person. Jesus declares that the meek will be blessed by God and will one day inherit the earth. It is not the proud, or arrogant, or powerful, or strong who will rule this planet in the end. It is those who have learned to follow the meekness of Christ.
Meekness is not the same thing as humility. It is so much more than that. It is the submissive obedience of a student to his master, or of the creature to the creator.
The prophet Zephaniah connected meekness with faith. He wrote in 3:12
‘I will leave within you the meek and the humble, who trust in the name of the Lord. The remnant of Israel will do not wrong; they will speak no lies, nor will deceit be found in their mouths. They will eat and lie down and no one will make them afraid.”
Meekness before God will result in meekness towards our brothers and sisters. Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:2
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient bearing with one another in love.”
And in Colossians 3:12
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with one another and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
When we are meek before God we understand that we are sinners in need of His grace. We submit our lives completely to Him as the only one having words of Life. We don’t make excuses and we don’t shift the blame. We admit our failures and we look to Him for help.
D. We’ve moved from the poor in spirit who understand their total spiritual bankruptcy, to those who are broken and mourn over their own sinfulness, to those who submit themselves to Jesus Christ as their only hope of redemption, and now to those who hunger and thirst to be like Him.
This intense inner longing or craving to be right with God and to possess His righteousness leads to a blessed life, because God promises that He will fill them with His own righteousness. When we seek Jesus with all our hearts, he forgives us and gives to us his holiness. This filling happens at the moment of our salvation, but there is also a future sense to it. One day we will see Jesus face to face, and in that moment we will be changed into His likeness. We will possess in reality the righteousness that is ours now through the promise of our salvation.
I think it is significant that Jesus used the words hunger and thirst. He had fasted for 40 days in the wilderness, so He knew by experience what it was to be physically hungry and thirsty. In the desert He was desperate for water. Every fiber of His being cried out for the water of life.
There are so many things to crave in this world. You can hunger for the perfect body. You can hunger for love and acceptance. You can crave material wealth and security. You can cry out for inner peace. But what we all really need is righteousness (a right relationship with God.)
God made us for himself. The problem is that we don’t believe this in our inner core. And so we have this incredible appetite, and we look around us at the things of the world and think – that’s what I need, that’s what I am longing for. But really what God has made you crave is righteousness.
Pascal described it as a God-shaped vacuum in our hearts that can only be filled by Him. You will never know filling, you will never have real peace, and you will never be satisfied, until you stop chasing after the things of this world and start hungering for God and for His righteousness in you.
Do these attitudes describe you?
- Do you see yourself as bankrupt spiritually apart from Christ?
- Do you cry out for deliverance from sin?
- Have you submitted your life completely to the Master?
- Are you craving to be like Jesus? To know Him?
When you do, Jesus promises the Kingdom will be yours, you will have a rich inheritance, you will be full of peace, and He will fill your life to overflowing fullness. This inner journey will change your outward relationships.
2. Blessing flows out of a right attitude towards people.
Jesus now turns His focus away from the inner cravings of one who is seeking God, to the outer attitudes we have towards the people around us.
A. When we have pursued God, changes will begin to take place in our hearts and in our lives. We will begin to interact with the world around us in a different way. One of the first ways we will change is that we will learn to be merciful. When you have experienced the incredible mercy of God as a person who is poor in spirit, mourning over your own sin, meek in your submission to Him and craving righteousness, then you will understand God’s grace and mercy and you will be sympathetic towards the struggles of other people.
To be merciful means to feel pity for the struggles of others and mercy is not just a feeling but an action. A merciful person doesn’t just stand by and shake their head saying: “Look at those poor people. They are struggling so much. Someone should help them.” A merciful person steps into the raging water with a lifeline and pulls them to safety.
Jesus declared that it was the Good Samaritan who was truly merciful and acted as a loving neighbor. He chided those who called Him Lord, but who never offered him a cup of water or visited him while He was in prison. Mercy requires action.
The merciful, in other words, those who act mercifully towards others will be blessed by God. They will have their needs met and they will receive God’s mercy. One of the things we struggle with when confronted with the needs of others is the temptation to take care of ourselves. We may say: “I can’t help you. I have enough of my own problems and struggles.”
But Jesus declares, if we will minister mercy to others first, God will take care of us and minister mercy to us. When we do the opposite, and turn a deaf ear to those who are hurting and think only of ourselves, then what ends up happening is that we lose. We don’t receive God’s mercy and we are left to make it on our own.
Which way would you rather live? Think only of yourself and be stuck with your own resources to solve your problems. Or think of others first, and let God provide for your needs.
B. Jesus moves from this action and attitude of service and love for others, toward the heart of man. The truly blessed person is the one whose heart is pure. That person will see God.
David wrote in Psalm 24:3-4
“Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift His soul to an idol or swear by what is false.”
David, who was an adulterer and a murderer could say that only those with pure and undivided hearts for God are able to see God’s Holy Face. David mourned for his sin, and cried out for God’s mercy and grace.
The word “pure” has a number of interesting uses in Greek. It was used for soiled clothes that had been washed clean. It was used to describe grain and flour that had been carefully sifted of all impurities. And it was used when describing wine that had not been watered down.
So we could rewrite this phrase to say, blessed are those who have been washed clean of all impurities and who now stand as the genuine thing, they will see God.
What has been washed clean? (Our hearts, the real person inside.) The heart is the real you, not the mask you wear on the outside. We all can play the part of a good and genuine person. We can wear masks and behave properly in public. But God knows the heart. God knows what you really think and feel and do. God sees the secret things in your life. Have those things been washed clean by the blood of the Lamb? Has Jesus transformed you in the inside?
You see I can fake mercy. I can be nice to people who are going through difficult times. I can get involved in caring for the poor, and volunteering for all kinds of missions and projects. But how is my heart? Is my heart right with God? Or am I just playing religion?
God looks for honesty. God looks for the person who is broken and admits their sin. God looks for the person who weeps with a desire to change. God looks for a person who by faith accepts the free gift of God’s forgiveness and grace. God looks for a person who is covered by the blood of Christ and who now lives only for Him. No other devotion. No other god. Only Jesus.
That purity of heart comes with a promise. You will see God. Think of it. One day you will be able to stand before the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. You will be able to be face to face with the Creator of the Universe. Are you ready? How’s your heart?
C. The pure in heart are different because of the change God has brought about in them. They walk with Jesus and therefore, they behave like Jesus. They think like Jesus. They love like Jesus. Jesus says that an evidence will be that you will be known as a peacemaker, a son of God.
Perhaps you have heard it said that there are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who act as a thermometer to the world around them. If things are going bad, then they are miserable. If things are going good, they are happy. They react, but do not change anything.
The other kind of person is a thermostat. A thermostat can cool down a room that has become too hot with anger, and warm up a room that has become to cold with indifference. A thermostat changes the world around it.
Those who are sons and daughters of God will make a difference in their world. They will not be shaped by the world and its circumstances. They will shape the world around them through the power of the Holy Spirit.
They will not only possess peace in their hearts, they will promote peace in the world around them. We are to be peace-makers. First and foremost we call people away from war with God, to peace with God. We are given a message of reconciliation, and we strive to help people find peace with God.
But secondly, we also promote peace among men. Christians are not to be about destruction or death or creating divisions. That means that I should be a peacemaker in my family, in my neighborhood and in the workplace. I should look for ways to resolve conflict and to bring people together, whenever possible.
There are times that peace is not possible. There are times that to compromise truth or to ignore sin and its consequences is not the loving thing to do. Sometimes we must take a stand for what is right and holy, and that leads us to the last be-attitude.
D. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, the kingdom of heaven belongs to them! Jesus even expounds upon this and makes it personal. Blessed are YOU when people persecute and attack you and are against you because of your stand for me. “Rejoice and be glad” because you have a great reward waiting for you in heaven.
We can be merciful to those who are in distress, and we can maintain our personal purity of heart, and we can seek to make peace with others, but there are times that our Christian faith will fly in the face of the beliefs and attitudes of this world and they will hate us for it. It is during those times that we must maintain our loving and gentle spirit, watching our own lives that we are living lives of integrity, but maintaining the path of righteousness.
I don’t know if you noticed our insert today about the church around the world, but it is obvious that in many places of our world it is increasing dangerous to be a believer. In Pakistan, if you attend church you take your life into your hands. As recently as last year a gunmen went into a church in Pakistan and murdered about 20 people.
In Turkey attacks against Christians are increasing. One of our own missionary couples, the Tofilon’s have been forbidden from returning to that country. Gary Witherall’s wife worked in one of our Alliance Clinics in Lebanon and was murdered point blank a few years ago. All around the world our brothers and sisters are facing increasing opposition to their faith. In fact in the last century it is estimated that more than 100 million Christians were murdered simply because they believed in Christ.
Here in the United States we do not know much of persecution, but that is changing. How do you maintain your faith and purity of life in a country were sexual promiscuity is rampant, where marriage is now being redefined, were violence and vulgarity are becoming commonplace, and were the almighty dollar reigns supreme over ethics and morality?
Jesus is separating the sheep from the goats, and many are falling away from the church today. Will you be counted among those who stand with Christ, or will you retreat into the comfort of your own home keeping silent about Christ and the ways of the Lord? The blessed person is the one who stands with Christ.
As we approach our time of communion, I think it is important that we follow Paul’s instructions and examine ourselves. Where do we stand with Christ?
- Are we poor in spirit?
- Do we mourn over sin?
- Are we meek and submissive to the Lord?
- Do we hunger and thirst for His righteousness?
- Are we merciful towards others?
- Is our heart pure before God?
- Are we at peace with God and man?
- Will we stand for Christ even if it means we will suffer with Him?
Let’s Pray
