I would invite you this evening to open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5. And this evening we're going to consider verses 2-12 of Matthew chapter 5. A very familiar passage to all of us. Actually, let's begin in verse 1. Seeing the crowds, Jesus 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. And 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. Please pray with me. O Lord, our God, as we conclude this Lord's Day, it is a great privilege that we get to come and to hear your Word read. Lord, as we give attention now to this passage from Jesus' own lips in Matthew chapter 5, I pray, O Lord, that you would anoint this hour. I pray, God, that you would give us insight into your Word. I pray, O Lord, that you would take the message hear in Your Word and impress it deeply upon our hearts for the glory of Christ our Savior. For we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, as you all know very well, the Beatitudes function as a preface, as it were, an introduction, to put it even better, to the Sermon on the Mount, a very familiar passage, as I said, beginning this evening. And it's probably one of the better known passages throughout Scripture, both inside the church and in the secular world alike. And in this majestic sermon, we have wonderful themes that again, most of us have heard even from our childhood. Themes such as love your enemies. You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." These are themes that we're very familiar with, yet perhaps you're wondering, yes, John, this is a familiar text, but what does this have to do with missions? This is missions weekend. This is a missions conference. But I think as we consider Jesus' words here and we see that He is not merely listing a bunch of different characteristics, but he's describing the very life and fiber of what it means to be a Christian. We'll see that this has everything to do with missions. So, this evening, just to give you a cap of where we're going, we're going to notice one thing about the Beatitudes that I think is important for us all to see. then we're only going to deal with two aspects about the Beatitudes. We're not going to plumb the depths of the Beatitudes. We would be here for several weeks. This is an amazingly deep passage of Scripture. Yet, I want to emphasize two aspects that I think will reveal the missionary heartbeat of the Beatitudes. We begin by first noticing that beatitudes don't happen exclusively in Matthew chapter 5. Now, we don't always call them beatitudes, and I think the best way to see this is in the Psalms. You're very, very familiar with Psalm 1, and it begins, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. This is a beatitude. Psalm 32, Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Psalm 33, verse 12, Blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh, the people whom He has chosen as His heritage. Beatitudes are scattered throughout the Scriptures, and in particular, we see them throughout the Psalms. And this leads us to the first aspect. As you consider the beatitudes as they are throughout the Bible, you begin to notice a very common theme. They all start with what word? Blessed. It's this idea of being blessed. That is to say that the beatitudes are answering the question, What does it mean to be blessed? What does it mean to be fulfilled? What does it mean to be happy, truly, lastingly? And I think at this point we see that the world, we need to notice, the world is completely caught up with this idea of being happy, being fulfilled. Why do they run after the things that the world runs after? It's to be satisfied. They're running after satisfaction. They're trying to fill a void that is deep and evident. Every corner that they turn, here it is. Will I ever be satisfied? So, the world longs to be satisfied. Yet, as you look around you, you also notice that in spite of all of its longings, all of its runnings, all of its pursuits to be satisfied and fulfilled, they always end up empty-handed. there's never lasting fulfillment. There's never true happiness obtained. And there's a reason for this. The reason for this is that the world in all of its pursuit is not addressing the true problem of man. Now, we know that the Bible adequately addresses the very problem of man, and it's the brokenness of man. It's the sin of man. Yet the world says, if you want to be happy, perhaps you should try a new outlook on life. Perhaps what you need is some self-confidence, some self-esteem, some more determination. Change the horizon a little bit. Maybe you need a new car. You need to move to a new house. The new, the allurement of new. All the new things that you can fill your life with. Maybe this will bring true lasting happiness and satisfaction. But again, at the end of the day, we all know that new houses get old. Old cars need oil. New cars need oil changes. They get flat tires. They depreciate in value. They, quite frankly, don't stay new much longer than when you drive it off of the lot. There's always something that's bringing about the decay and the worthlessness of the very object that you're running after. There's something wrong with trying to handle this issue with the things that you see around you. The Beatitudes are saying then, do you want to know where true blessing lies? Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity. Blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh. So we see right from the beginning here, this first very important aspect for us to see, is Beatitudes are concerned with true blessing. And immediately, you see, this has direct relevance to the world around us that is seeking to be satisfied, seeking fulfillment, and to have its longings satisfied. The second thing, and the final thing, can you believe it? I'm already at the final point, but we're going to illustrate the point in just a second. The second point is that the language of the Beatitudes is a covenant language. It's the language of covenant. And with a covenant, there are always two sides. There's the blessing, and there's the curse. In the Beatitudes, what we see emphasized then is the blessings of being a covenant member in the kingdom of God. As you notice in Matthew 4, verse 17, you see from that time, referring to the arrest of John the Baptist, Jesus began to preach saying, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then he begins this majestic sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with the Beatitudes, describing what the man is that belongs to this kingdom. You want to know what the believer's like? Look at the Beatitudes. This is what the true believer is like. Every believer relates to these qualities. And he's beginning with covenant language. This member of the covenant, this kingdom of God, is a partaker of the blessings of this covenant. Another way that you could illustrate this is you could say, who is the man whose transgressions are forgiven? Who is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, but delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night? Who is the man whose God is Yahweh. It is the man who has a saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a man that is a member of the Kingdom of God. And this is our partaker, then, of the blessings of the covenant. And it's also the man described in Matthew 5, as we've just said. In each of the nine Beatitudes, Jesus goes on to describe qualities of the members of His Kingdom. And as He does this, Are you not struck with how contrary the church is, the believer is to the ways and the teachings and those objects esteemed by the world? Look at this happy man. Jesus says that the happy man is a man who's poor in spirit. The language is that of a beggar. The truly happy man is the man that is nothing more than a beggar who's fallen under the condemnation of the gospel. And he continues, the happy man is a man who mourns as if over the death of a loved one. He's mourning over what? He's mourning over the black sinful heart that he has. He weeps knowing that he's prone to wonder. prone to leave the God he loves. He knows what it is to cry out with the psalmist, O Lord, if you should mark iniquities, who can stand? He's face to face with the glorious holiness of God. And inward, he sees nothing more than a beggar. He sees nothing more than reason to weep. He continues. You want to know what a happy man is? The happy man is a man who's humble, a man who's meek. As the great hymn puts it, nothing in my hand I bring simply to your cross I cling. This look at our own sin, weeping over our own sinful heart has produced this deep humility before a holy and righteous God. And it produces in the heart of the believer then a hunger and a thirst for righteousness. You see that in verse 6. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. And then, following that in verse 7 and beyond, you see really an overflow of what happens. Having been satisfied by the very righteousness of God, having received mercy, you're now showing mercy. experience peace with God, you now make peace with those around you. You're not defending your own cause anymore. You know what you are in the eyes of God. You're a recipient of grace. You're a recipient of mercy. It's only the blood of Christ that has made you clean. You have nothing by which you can boast. It's all His and His alone. Lastly, one that we probably all wish that Jesus had left off of his list, he speaks of persecution. We will be like our master. The servant is not above his master. They persecuted him. They will persecute us. The reason for this is not because they hate you. They hate what they see within you. It's offensive to someone that only has a self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is offended by Christ's righteousness. So we see this outworking in this truly happy man. He mourns for his sins. And as I've said before, and I want to reiterate now, every one of us that know the Lord Jesus Christ in a saving way relate to each and every one of these Beatitudes. It's not like you can pick a few and say, yeah, I know what it's like to hunger and thirst. No, Jesus begins with poor in spirit for a reason. There is a position by which you come to the cross, and it's not proud and lifted up, it's poor, mourning, humble. You know your situation before a holy God. So this is the heart of the man that is truly blessed. And I suggest that if you propose this to the watching world, that if you want to be happy and you want to be blessed, this is what you must become. That is insane. That's completely contrary to what the world sees as successful. Try to integrate this into the business world. How does meekness and a successful businessman go hand in hand? Everything about this seems to be vulnerable. Why would I not defend myself anymore? You see what I'm saying here. But as I said, this has everything to do with missions. And you may be saying, well, this has everything to do with the life of the believer. But now you're about to see how it has everything to do with missions. And the reason I went to this passage this evening is, as we've been in Greenville, this has been where I said, Judy, I'm going to camp right here, largely because of Dr. Kelly at seminary. He said, if you want to find a place to camp right after seminary, go to the Sermon on the Mount get Martyn Lloyd-Jones' book, and you just start working through it. And I have been. And this has been an amazing process for me to think about, Lord, You're calling us into missions, and what does Your Word have to tell me? And in particular, what does the Sermon on the Mount have to tell me about this? Well, the other half of the covenant, as we've said, we've addressed the blessing, the blessing that falls on those that are a member of His kingdom by God's sovereign grace, The other half, curse. You begin to look at the blessings that you have in Christ, and it becomes very difficult then to look at those outside of the covenant community and happy about it. And they're running as if nothing's wrong, and they're going to be happy one day, they just haven't made enough money yet, or they haven't done this yet, or fill in the blank. To say this a different way, blessings fall on the covenant are the members of this covenant, and that's only half of the picture. The rest of the picture is the curses of this covenant fall on those outside. So while it is certainly true that blessed are the poor in spirit, it's also true cursed are the haughty. Cursed are those who are happy now, as Luke's Gospel puts it. Cursed are the proud, that's puffed up in their own self-righteousness. This is a man that does not know what true, lasting satisfaction and fulfillment is. Whenever they think about God, they do not know what it is like to be at peace with God. All they know about God is war, enmity, strife, division, separation, far off, And to say it a little more pointedly, this has everything to do with missions because as we think about the blessings that we have in Christ, and whenever we view them properly, it fuels, it passions, it gives us an ambition that this would be the blessings of all people. Can you keep these to yourself? Do you want this just to be yours in your little secret? Why is this man always happy even whenever bad things come upon him? Don't want that to be my secret. No, I want all men to know what Christ has done in me. That I was guilty, vile, sinful, not only not deserving, but not wanting grace. That was all of it. And we've been brought in to this covenant. And I want to illustrate this with just one beatitude, and one that I think speaks very prominently to missions. And then we'll be done. Verse 9 says, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. The Christian is described in this way because he knows what it's like to have peace with God. He not only knows what it's like to have peace with God, but he also knows what it's like to long for others around him to have this peace with God. He is a peacemaker. And if we don't stop and just consider that peace, I think that it's easy to overlook it and think of it as something very little and insignificant, this little word, peace. But Paul tells us in Ephesians 2, verses 11 and 12, to remember that we were at one time separated from Christ. We were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. We were strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Indeed, at one time we did not have peace. Yet, in Christ Jesus, now we who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Jesus. For He Himself is our peace. And He has made us both one and broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility. Consider what it means you have peace with God. In our life, we get caught up in all of the responsibilities that we have, and those are good things, but if we get too busy, sometimes we just need to stop and think. What does it mean that we have peace with God? What did that cost? It was the blood of Christ. And He came and He covered all of our sins, all of our shame. We were guilty, vile beggars, mourning over our sins. And Christ came and so surprisingly lavished His grace upon us. And now you and I can sit here this evening. And indeed, He put a song of praise on our lips. And we sing our praises to Him for what He's done. But it doesn't stop there. That's the me and God relationship now that once was filled with war and hostility that is now peace, reconciliation. I can now come before Him and cry out to Him as my Father. Now I long for those people around me in Turkey, in Pakistan, in Spain, in our own neighborhoods, in our workplace, our family members, our very close friends that were terrified that if we bring up Jesus it's going to make everything awkward and they're never going to talk to me again. We see the lack of peace in their own life and we long for peace. between them and God. This is another thing that we pray for. So well, the oars brought up to our attention, praying Scripture over our friends. The Beatitudes would be a wonderful place to camp and pray for ourselves, that the Lord would deepen our poverty of spirit, our mourning over, yes, we've been saved by grace, but I still have this longing for sin and selfishness and pride and arrogance And the list goes on. Deepen these qualities in me, O Lord. That would be a wonderful place to begin. Then pray for your sinful missionaries that are going out to the field, that these qualities would also deepen. And pray for those outside the covenant, that they would come in, that they would be brought in, and that they would taste and see these things for themselves. This is a beautiful thing. And it's very practical. And it actually works completely contrary to how you naturally engage a situation in which peace needs to be made. And this is my last thing to say. We more often than not are enraged or embittered whenever somebody offends our own pride. our own interests. We have our own little world, and whenever someone invades, we get on the defense. We get back out there, because this is my space. This is my thing. And sometimes this is a little trivial matter. Sometimes on the national level, it's disastrous. And one such example of that is not all that long ago, maybe a month, I read in the headlines that the worst attack from the Muslims against Christians in Pakistan took place right after their Lord's Day worship. They were all leaving for a fellowship meal, and two suicide bombers detonated bombs, and over 100 were killed. How do you respond to that situation? I would argue that the first thing that you probably think of is not, well, I need to be a peacemaker. The first thing that you probably think is, how do you retaliate as a Christian and that still be okay? Is anyone else in that camp? You start to think, can I do something? Or do I just have to sit here? That's one such example. But persecution doesn't have to happen on that grand level. Persecution happens every day in all of our lives, in some degree or another. It happens between family members. It happens between co-workers, neighbors. They know that you're a Christian, or at least they have a hint of it, because they see something alive in you called the Spirit of God that is indwelling you, and something about it is offensive. And the natural reaction of man toward God is not love and I want a hug. It's rejection, and it's offense, and it's attack. And so how does the believer then glorify God in that type of a situation? Well, I think instead of being spiteful, instead of striving to get back, instead of talking behind their back, we're called to be peacemakers. We're called to be Christ-like. As Martin Lloyd-Jones says in his book, we're called instead of of retaliating against them, that's not the appropriate response. What we should instead do is say, Lord, move me with pity for this person. He's still under the power of the enemy. And I really pray that the Lord would make that more of our hearts. That we would see the persecution coming at us, not from, like, this person has something against me and it stops at me. No, this goes far beyond me. This goes to my Lord and Master. They don't like who I serve. And it's something within them that rejects Him utterly. And that should break my heart. And we should pray that the Lord would make us peacemakers. So, from the Beatitudes, I hope that you see that the Beatitudes have, this is one illustration of many that you could pull, have everything to do with missions. And my prayer is that we would be more emboldened to come before our gracious Lord and Savior, who has brought us into His kingdom of light out of the domain of darkness, and that we would pray that the Lord would be merciful to those nations, to those Muslims, that our hearts would beat with mercy, Christ-like mercy and love and grace to them. As we consider the peace that we have through Christ, may this ignite us with a passion for the lost and the dying around us, so that the gospel of grace would go forth through all the corners of the earth. Amen and amen. Please pray with me. O Lord, our God, we come to You and we admit that we are prone to wander. We are prone to leave the God we love. There is much need for humility on our part. And we ask You, O Lord, to forgive us whenever we seek to serve our own interests, whenever our hearts should beat with a passion for those around us, that they would come to know You and to love You, that a song would be placed on their lips, and that they would sing from the depths of their soul the grace and the wonder, the mysterious love of Christ. O Lord, we pray that Your Word would continue to go forth and that You would continue to strengthen Your church around the world. Lord, as this world seems to seek so fervently to snuff out the light of the church, we pray that your light would burn all the more brightly. We pray, O Lord, that your church would continue to spread greatly. And Lord, that you would continue to do a work in this world that would only go to your glory and praise. That all the nations would come to know you. O Lord, would you take the qualities listed in these Beatitudes, and would you continue to deepen each one of these in our own hearts. And I pray that you would give us the boldness, O Lord, to speak to those around us, that we know that they don't know you. There is no peace between them and God. Thank you, O Lord, for that costly peace that we do have through Christ, our Savior. And we pray, O Lord, that you would be glorified as we continue to sing to you this evening. As we go through this week, I pray that you would give us the grace that we need to keep our eyes fixed upon you and, Lord, to live our life to the glory of Christ each and every moment of each and every day. For, Lord, we pray these things in the marvelous name of Christ, our Savior. Amen.