Please turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5, and this is perhaps one of the most familiar passages in all of God's Word to many of us, and we want to spend some time together looking at what is commonly known as the Beatitudes. A sermon, as a matter of fact, it's the sermon that has been recorded for us most completely of all the sermons of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Matthew 5, this being part of the Sermon on the Mount, we'll just read the opening of that sermon known as the Beatitudes, Matthew 5, beginning in verse 1 and reading through verse 12. And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain. And when he was seated, his disciples came to him. Then 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 filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain 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. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. And thus far, the reading of God's holy and inspired word in our hearing. And may the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his word. Our hymn of preparation for the Word of God preached is hymn 340, and we will stand together as we sing 340. Unleashed for restraint and love, I think of love in every breath. Then shall we know and taste and feel, The joys that burn the fiend's breast. Come fill our hearts with inward strength, Make our indulgent souls content, And learn the highest breadth and length Of your unmentionable grace. Thou didst honor whose power can do More than a ghost or witch can do The everlasting honor's due Please be seated. And if you are not still there, turn with me once more to what we read in our scripture reading, Matthew 5, verses 1 through 12, and the attitudes The Beatitudes were given to us and Matthew records them early on in the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you look in Matthew chapter 4, the previous chapter, you will see that it deals with the temptation of the Lord Jesus in the wilderness. And it was shortly after that temptation when John the Baptist was imprisoned and the Lord Jesus with his disciples went up north away from King Herod who had arrested John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus began what we know as his Galilean ministry. And it was there that the Lord Jesus, there at the Sea of Galilee and in that region up north, that the Lord Jesus preached this sermon very early on in his ministry. Now, it's easy for us to misunderstand what the Beatitudes are all about. I think many of us are inclined to take these statements that the Lord Jesus makes into Beatitudes, to take them for commandments. And we should be very careful to see that they are not laws that are laid upon us to obey, as for example, the Ten Commandments are. What our Lord is doing in giving us the Beatitudes is He is giving us the very atmosphere, if you will, of the Kingdom of God. The spirit in which the Kingdom of God exists. It's the nature of the Kingdom of God and life within it that is given to us in these Beatitudes. And because they are so basic to life in the Lord's kingdom, that's why Matthew places them right at the beginning of the Lord Jesus' public ministry, the very next chapter after his temptation in the wilderness. The Beatitudes do have a definite order to them. I have hesitated and I've wrestled with this. whether I could give you like a bird's eye view of the Beatitudes. Any sermon that I have ever heard on the Beatitudes, and I've heard a number of them over the years, have dealt with one particular Beatitude. And certainly many sermons can be preached about blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. But sometimes by being so focused on one or two beatitudes, you lose the larger picture. And I did want to labor with you this morning, hoping to open up at least something of that larger picture of life in the kingdom of God, the very spirit and nature, the very air we breathe in the kingdom of God. I do want to spend most of my time with the first two because I believe they are so basic and I believe that from those first two all the others flow almost as a natural consequence in life in the kingdom of God. So let's look at the first one then, blessed are the poor in spirit What does it mean to be poor in spirit, we ask ourselves. And we may gather, I think, from what is attached to it, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, we may gather from that, that it has to do with the spirit in which we walk with our Lord Jesus Christ and with God our Father in heaven. The spirit in which we carry ourselves. before them as we live our Christian lives and it wouldn't be just before a father in heaven and the Lord Jesus would it but it's also before one another because the Lord is a covenant God and Wherever we find him, we find his people also. One cannot have a relationship with the Lord without also being rightly related to the Lord's people. And so these Beatitudes have to do, as you will see from the ones that follow, not only with our walk with the Lord, but also with the way we carry ourselves before the Lord. Those poor in material things, as we think of poverty, People poor in material things don't have the resources to enjoy life and to secure the enjoyments and the blessings that we commonly think of when we think of enjoying life and having a good life. They don't have them. They can't secure them for themselves and it's just a very meagerly existence that they live. Similarly, those who are poor in spirit, in and of themselves, lack the resources of enjoying the Lord and walking with Him in a rich and meaningful relationship. It goes to the heart of the matter of what it means to be a sinner. Sinners are not rich in spirit. They are poor in spirit if they know who they are before God. Perhaps the clearest example in scripture in the teachings of the Lord Jesus about a person poor in spirit would be his teaching on the Pharisee and the publican who both went to the temple. The Pharisee was a man rich in spirit. He enumerated his blessings and how he accounted himself as being so much better off than the publican who was standing next to him. He thanked God that he was not like the publican. He thanked God that he was able, he paid all his tithes, he said his prayers, he fasted, he knew the scriptures, and on and on. It goes with his credentials, if you will, and his good and right standing in which he thought himself to be in relationship to the Lord. And a publican simply said, Lord, be merciful to me, the sinner. He was the one who was poor. That's all he could say. He had nothing to offer to the Lord. He came with empty hands. He was looking to receive something. He had nothing to give. And that, brothers and sisters, is what it is to be poor in spirit. It means that we have no righteousness to commend ourselves to the Lord with. By nature, we are even repulsive and odious in His sight. Even having become Christians, it doesn't get any better for us because even as Christians, our very best works are subject often to coldness of heart. We may read our Bibles, but our hearts may be cold. We may have half-hearted hearts like the Laodiceans who were neither cold nor hot. We may be shallow in heart, ignorant in heart. Hearts that are defiled and divided. Divided loyalties. We want the Lord in this kingdom, but we want the world too. And all these things are within us. And the Lord looks at that. How do you present a heart like that to God? Isaiah was right when he said to the Lord's people, he said this, all our righteousnesses, not our unrighteousnesses, but our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. And so it doesn't get any better over the course of our Christian lives. These words remain true that those who would walk with the Lord, those who would really know him and live in fellowship with him of necessity must be a people that are poor in spirit. Martin Luther, who had certainly a rich and colorful walk as a Christian, comes to the end of his days and the very last words that people heard from his lips were these, Martin Luther said this, we are beggars. This is true. And it shows us that even at the end of a man like Luther's life, he was still a man poor in spirit. And so it is with us. If we would walk with the Lord, if we would truly know him, We can only know him as those who are poor in spirit and have learned what that means, have learned something of that, have grown in that. It may be a bit of a puzzle to us that the Lord says that those are blessed or happy. You can translate that either way. Happy are those, blessed are those, of which this is true. What then is the blessedness of these people? First and foremost, I know that this blessedness is never something that they own inherent within themselves. They are blessed, however, but it's not something that they possess as something that comes from themselves and it never will be in this life as we've already seen. If we would rightly walk with the Lord and know him rightly, we must remain poor in spirit, but they are blessed because what they could never be in and of themselves, that is blessed. That blessing has been secured for them by the Lord Jesus Christ. He has become their righteousness. He has become their acceptance with the Father. The Lord Jesus at the end of His earthly ministry tells His disciples that the day will come when they will go to the Father and pray to the Father, and He says to them, and the Father will hear you, and the Father will receive you, because the Father Himself loves you. And why is that so? Why does the Father love and receive us and shower His blessings upon us, His grace and the work of His Spirit and so forth? It is because of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our acceptance. He is our peace. He is our joy. He is everything to us. And we are blessed and we are happy because of being joined to him and being accepted in him. And so there is a poverty of spirit which we don't normally associate with being happy. But alongside that, in the heart of a Christian, there is that fullness of joy. There is that happiness. There is that peace. There is that contentment. There is that rest, which are the blessings of the gospel. And I believe, brothers and sisters, that only a Christian can experience that. whenever I think of that mystery of these two things, being poor and destitute and yet being full and happy, whenever I think of that, the mystery of those things coexisting, my mind goes back to the day when I in a hurry flew back to the Netherlands when my dad passed away and I got the phone call and the next day I left and went over there and being in my mother's house where my father had died very suddenly, very unexpectedly of an aneurysm. I was there like two days later after he passed away. And it was so strange to walk around in his house and he wasn't there. And I said to myself, if only I'd been here two days earlier, I could have seen him and talked with him. But now he was gone. And it was strange. But thinking over his life, there was a profound sense of joy but there was sorrow at the same time and I remember that night, that first night that I was there laying in my bed and I had a hard time going to sleep and I discovered this about myself that I was about the most joyous and happy person one could be and yet perhaps at the same time one of the saddest people Because my dad was gone. And I said to myself, this is a wonder, I'm a wonder to myself, I don't understand myself. How can these things be that I can be both these things at the same time and dwelling and meditating upon that? My mind went to the Beatitudes where we find these same things. How can you be happy being poor and destitute going on? How can you be happy and yet be a mourner? And it goes all the way to the end. How can you be happy if you are persecuted of all things? The world does not associate these things together. The world says these things cannot be together. And yet, the Lord in His kingdom, He puts all these things together. We are happy not only because we are accepted of our Father through our Lord Jesus Christ, but even our earthly existence has worth. The Apostle says in speaking about the resurrection of Christ, he says, because Christ is risen and has the victory over death and of the grave, because He lives, we will live also. He says, therefore, be always abounding in the work of the Lord, and as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord, because the living risen Lord is risen and reigns, Through Him and through His merits, even our works, even handing something small and insignificant as a cup of cold water to a thirsty child in His name, the Lord says, by no means are you going to lose your reward even for something like that. And He can guarantee that. And because he is living, he is risen and he is ascended to the right hand of the Father. And he uses our works, imperfect and feeble as they often are. And we look upon them and we say they are so imperfect. But nevertheless, through the merits of Christ, he takes those things and he works through them, his grace and his will, and he builds his kingdom. And because of that, at the end of time, we shall have a reward. How does that poverty of spirit that we're talking about come to expression in our lives, in our daily lives? Brothers and sisters, I think it's in a number of ways, but I've just listed a couple in my outline that I want to lay before you. And I think, first of all, it is by discerning the bankruptcy of our own wills and our own ways in life. the blindness that is over our hearts by nature, and thereby fleeing to the Lord and to His wisdom and to His Word, and becoming a people of the Word of God. Don't lean to your own understanding, says the writer of the proverb, but in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths. Indeed, the Word of God It is the light before our feet, the lamp before our feet and the light on our path. Ultimately, we must become a people of the word. We must set aside our own wisdom, our own will and our own way in life and saying, Lord, your will be done. That was the great transformation in Saul of Tarsus when he became the Apostle Paul, wasn't it? When the Lord struck him down on the Damascus Road, the words that Paul, others, and reply to the revelation of Jesus Christ in his heart and life are these, Lord, what is it that you would have me to do? And that's what it all comes down to. We must come to that place where we realize our own poverty, the bankruptcy of our own darkness, and a turn to the light and truth of the Word of God. And then by prayer, a prayer to the Lord for the Lord to teach us and to guide us to protect us and to add his blessing to our often feeble efforts in serving him. Because unless the Lord takes those feeble efforts and somehow makes it account for his kingdom, it will all be in vain. And thirdly, I would say this by willingly and humbly engaging in a life of humble service in the Lord's kingdom. No task is too menial and no comfort too dear for us to part with. Remember the Lord Jesus here when he girded himself with a towel and washed his disciples feet. Well, what about those mourners in the second beatitude? Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. How do we understand those mourners? I would first point out how very different the atmosphere of the kingdom of heaven is from that of this world. These values are otherworldly. They are opposite of what by nature we are used to and what we long for in life and what we give everything for to secure for ourselves in life. A few of us would put our best foot forward to become poor in spirit and to become mourners. Let's face it. And yet, both this world, certainly our Western world, is totally obsessed with the idea of happiness. The pursuit of happiness more and more I think we hold to be an inalienable right as we are taught by the founding words of our country and oddly enough And the Lord himself and in his kingdom is also very concerned with our happiness. Because as I said, these eight Beatitudes, the translation, my new King James has blessed or other translations say happy or, and it's a valid translation either way. So the Lord in the gospel is concerned with the happiness of man. And we should never forget that. There have been churches and Christians who have forgotten that. And they almost measure their piousness by the frown on their faces and how long they can make their faces. But not so the scriptures. The Lord is concerned with our happiness as is the world. But that's where all similarity ends. The two kingdoms are totally opposite when it comes to what happiness constitutes, what blessedness constitutes. Now, understanding these mourners then, these mourners are a people who have been enlightened of the truth of the gospel. They have become a people who are poor in spirit, but there is a difference between the poor in spirit and the mourners. The mourners take it a step further, because whereas the poor in spirit are just that, they are poor, meaning they lack the resources to commend themselves to God, they come with empty hands. But the mourners say to themselves, I'm not just coming with empty hands, I have all kinds of ugly baggage. I have so much against me. It's not just that I come with nothing, kind of as a neutral, empty vessel, but I come filled with garbage. I come filled with all kinds of things that separate me from my God, that indict me in His court, that condemn me before His law. And so they are mourners, and they are rightfully mourners. The Lord is not speaking at all about having a naturally pessimistic outlook in life. He's not talking about the sorrow that comes to us at a time of bereavement or at a time when we suffer the loss of material things. He is talking about the spirit that comes over us when we realize who we are before the Lord. And so you see how these two Beatitudes go hand in hand. We have indeed nothing positive to commend ourselves with. We are poor. But it's worse than that. We have a lot of bad baggage with us. We are greatly indebted. We stand by nature condemned before his law. And as such, there is the spirit of mourning. And the spirit of mourning is there because we learn to realize when our eyes are open to the nature of the kingdom of God that these things should not be so. We have hearts that are so cold and that are so hard very often. We serve the Lord, but we do it so intermittently. We do it so haphazardly and haphazardly. We are so shallow very often. We're so deluded and divided when it comes to serving the Lord with a heart that is right. And we realize these things shouldn't be so. The Lord deserves so much better and the Lord's people deserve so much better. And so there is a profound sadness or the spirit of mourning that comes along with that. And that's why I say that the poor in spirit and the mourners go hand in hand. And I would say to you that these two things together are the foundation stones of the kingdom of God. We must come to grips with these things if we would enter into a right relationship with the Lord. And yet, the promise is that ours is the kingdom and also we will be comforted. And that comfort is not new to New Testament believers. It's at least as old as Psalm 17, verse 15, where the psalmist reminds us, saying, As for me, I will see your face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied when I awake in your likeness. But while we are still in the flesh, we will be a people, if we are rightly related to the Lord, that are first poor in spirit. And secondly, have always something about us, about the spirit of mourning, because there is always ample cause for us to say, I wish it wouldn't have been like this. I wish I could have done better for the Lord. I worked as a security guard many years ago, and I would come on duty at eight o'clock in the morning. And there was an elderly gentleman who had gone before me, and he had gotten off duty. And I got to my post, and there was a piece of paper that he had been scribbling on. And he was a Christian man, obviously, and I read what he had scribbled. And these words that I've never forgotten, he had scribbled on that piece of paper. I don't know what went on that night, but he said, he wrote on that paper, I did it again. I guess I'm in a rut. I missed another opportunity to keep my big mouth shut. Well, there you have it, the spirit of mourning. Right. And you can all relate to that in a thousand different ways. If you look back over the week that is behind us. But the Lord sets before us that promise of comfort. It will not be that way forever. But while we live in this world and in this flesh, This is characteristic of life in God's kingdom. Now, how does that relate? Last of all, and just as a bird's eye view, how does that relate to the other Beatitudes? The third one says, blessed or happy are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. How does meekness relate to being poor in spirit and to mourning? And meekness is the spirit of gentleness and humility based on a true assessment of ourselves. If you have learned to see yourself as coming to the Lord with empty hands, nothing to offer Him, and as you have learned to see yourself as having a lot of baggage that you need to be forgiven for, it ought to enable you not to look down on others, not to see yourself like the Pharisees standing next to the publicans. It ought to help you to discover a new spirit of gentleness and humility in being able to relate to other people. And rather than talking down to them, you stand next to them and you say to them, I understand, my brother, I'm no better than you are. You see, and that's the spirit of gentleness and humility that comes from a right and true assessment of who we are ourselves. It flows out of the other two. Let's move on to the next one. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. If you know yourself to have empty hands, if you know yourself to have so much baggage that you need to be forgiven for, doesn't that make you long and look for a day when it will be no longer so? Doesn't it make you long for the day when There will be no more sin and no more sorrow and no more sadness. The former things will have passed away. And the Lord who sits on the throne will have made good on his words, saying, I am making all things new. It ought to do that for us. And so you see how it flows again out of those first two. And then blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Who are the pure in heart? And I would suggest to you that anybody who has not yet learned to see themselves as poor in spirit before the Lord and who has not yet seen something of the negative baggage, the burden of sin that they carry about in and of themselves as their lives have developed by nature, that there are deluded people. They don't have pure hearts. The people who are pure in heart are the people that know Like the publican, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. I got nothing to offer you. That's a pure heart that can see that. And the heart that discerns something of its own wickedness and sinfulness before the Lord, its own fallenness. That's a pure heart. And they shall see God because they've been redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why they are blessed. Then the peacemakers. We have been accepted in the beloved, in the Lord Jesus Christ. We've been reconciled by the blood of Christ to God. We've come home to him as prodigal sons and daughters. Peace has been restored between a holy God and his fallen man. God is the great peacemaker. What does that mean? What does peace mean? Very often we think that peace is the absence of conflict and turmoil. But peace is better defined in positive terms. Peace is being rightly related to our God, and we are that through the finished work of Christ, to ourselves. Do you ever struggle with yourself, with your own conscience? Conscience comes and accuses you. Martin Luther struggled so much with this very idea, and he always tried, when conscience accused him, he tried to think of all the good things that he did to offset the bad and he never could find peace. And he relates in his life's journey how he found peace. And he says this, that he learned to step into a right relationship with his conscience. He says, now when conscience comes and accuses me, or when Satan comes and accuses me, I am very quick to respond to my adversary saying, you are absolutely right. And it's far worse than you are telling me. So many things are wrong with me that you're not even reminding me of. But the Lord Jesus Christ has come as the Lamb of God, carrying away the sins of the world. And He is my peace. and brothers and sisters, where God Himself is at peace with fallen sinners, and where the law of God in God's court sits down saying to the justice of God, saying to the judge, I make no further demands. The finished work of Christ is sufficient for me. The prosecution rests its case. We also can go to our conscience saying, there is peace. You, my conscience, ought to be at peace as well. Because where the law of God is at peace, and conscience represents the law of God in our hearts, then our conscience ought to find rest there before the bar of God's justice as well in the finished work of Christ. Being at peace then with our holy God through Christ, being at peace with ourselves, our own consciences through the finished work of Christ, taking our consciences to the cross, And then being at peace, last of all, with those around us, our brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbors, people around us through having a spirit, a newfound meekness. I don't know about you, but I find it very hard to pick a fight with people who are possessed of the spirit of meekness. Meekness is an endearing quality. we read in scripture that God gives his grace to the humble and people are made in the image of God and generally speaking and certainly not in every case but generally speaking very often people made in the image of God are enabled in the realm of common grace to extend grace to those of a humble disposition as well and so there is a peace that flows from a life that is, first of all, rightly related to God, and that is rightly related to itself through Christ. We become peacemakers. We become those who not only are peaceful people ourselves, but we are able to promote and extend that peace by pointing others to the great peacemaker, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. But then there is a very difficult one at the end, isn't there? And that has given many of the Lord's children great trouble. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The Beatitudes end the way they started. We started with blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. We end with blessed are the persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The same blessedness is attached to them. But what does that have to do? And it took me some time and some thought to see the connectedness, particularly of this last one, to the previous ones. And brothers and sisters, it is like this, that when we embrace these values of the kingdom of God, the enemies of the gospel will oppose these things. They do not understand us, and they are liable to pick fights with us and arguments with us over the values of the kingdom of God that we have internalized. Now, how do these people that end up in these kinds of persecution situations, how are they ending up being blessed. The Lord even repeats it. He anticipated the trouble that we might have with this one because he spends two more verses saying, blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets that were before you. How does this blessedness come to us in a context of persecution? What is it about persecution that brings this blessedness particularly home to us? And I think it is like this, that in a context of oppression and persecution, these first qualities are particularly tested and refined in our lives. Put yourself in an environment of hostility and you being poor in spirit and meek is going to be tested. You are going to be tempted to give people a piece of your mind. You're going to be tempted to tell them off. Pride And a spirit of hostility toward those who are opposed to you is going to rise in your heart. But it gives you the opportunity to deal with those sentiments. It gives you the opportunity to go to the throne of grace and say to the Lord, Lord. Let me return to my rest, as the psalmist said, the words that we started with this morning in a call to worship. Let me return to my rest. Remind me who I really am. Remind me of my own poverty of spirit and the ample cause for mourning that I have. Remind me of my call to meekness before you, to being a peacemaker. Remind me of the promise of a better world that is coming where there will be no more sin and no more sorrow and no more unrighteousness. And so these qualities, brothers and sisters, are tested and they are refined, particularly in a context of persecution. And as they are tested and as they are refined, the capacity for our eternal happiness, our happiness that we have in fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ and our Father in heaven is enlarged as well. And because of that, we ought to rejoice even in persecution. We glory in tribulations also, James says, because tribulation works patience and so forth. That's actually in Romans, isn't it? But James speaks similarly about that same subject. Brothers and sisters, the happiness and the blessedness that the Lord Jesus speaks about here in this passage is unique in this sense. It is unique in that it exists alongside the hardships, the difficulties, the fallenness, the sinfulness, the ignorance that we are all liable to. It coexists. It runs on parallel tracks, if you will. And when we are poor in spirit, which is nothing to brag about and nothing we by nature would enjoy, yet before the Lord we may rejoice because it is precisely to them that the Lord imparts the fullness of His grace and blessing. And when we mourn because of the wretched fallenness of this flesh, we may go to the Lord and know His joy, even fullness of joy in His peace and His grace in greater measures. Because it is those that know that, that the Lord imparts His grace and His blessing to. It's the meek, those who know what the scoop is with regards to their own lives. They are the ones that can experience again that blessedness. They will inherit the earth. and also hunger and thirst for righteousness and long for a better day to come, saying, even so come Lord Jesus. Well, they have that coming and we rejoice in that outlook, that hope that we have, that blessed hope, and so on and so forth. In conclusion, I point you to the words in 1 Peter, in chapter 1, in verse 5 through 8, where Peter speaks about rejoicing to a people that were going through the hardships. No doubt, they discovered in that context of oppression and persecution, the wretchedness of their own natures and that welling up of the fallenness within their hearts, that that happens to us when things don't go right for us. Peter speaks to them about rejoicing greatly, though they are being grieved by various trials. In this way, says Peter, The genuineness of your faith, that is, of your spiritual dispositions, really these beatitudes, life in the kingdom of God, the genuineness of those spiritual dispositions is made manifest and brings praise, honor, and glory to God and to the Lord Jesus Christ. Looking to Him, Peter says, we joy exceedingly with joy that is inexpressible and full of glory. And again, I say to you, it's a joy that only a Christian can know. because it exists alongside these other qualities that are nothing to brag about. Our fallenness, our wretchedness, our emptiness, and so forth. It exists alongside that. It exists alongside the sorrow, the mourning. It exists alongside being persecuted. But it is every bit as real as that. Every bit as real. And there is the blessedness. Now, in closing, what do we do with that? I think the only thing that we can do is to realize our own empty hands and together to go to the Lord and to ask him to further these qualities in each of our hearts and lives, that we may know on the one hand who we really are in and of ourselves, but that we may know that for those people, the Lord Jesus has come and purchased fullness of happiness and blessedness. And it's only those who know their own emptiness and ample cause for mourning that also can know that fullness of blessing. May God work it in all of our hearts for Jesus' sake. And let's look to him together in prayer. Father, thank you for the blessedness that is ours in Christ. O Lord, grant by the work of your spirit, by the word of your power, that something of this blessedness and greater measures of this blessedness would come home to our hearts. May we know again something of the peace and the joy, the grace that is ours through Christ, and that it comes alongside our fallenness, our emptiness, and the great need that we have, even ending up in the dire straits of persecution sometimes. And so we would entrust ourselves, O Lord, in the hands of the great and good shepherd of Your sheep, even our Lord Jesus Christ, asking that by the power of His endless life He would not only forgive us, but would bring home to us fuller measures of this blessedness. We ask it in His name. Amen. Our hymn of response is 470. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave which bring him gladness. We are redeemed from guilt and shame, and home to the Holy Ghost. For the good works which we have done, what shall we ever do? ♪ God be free of sinful will ♪ ♪ Salvation to restore ♪ ♪ The Lord be yours from birth to death ♪ ♪ With Jesus to be your love ♪ ♪ Joy to ourselves today ♪ of the underground. Our Lord assured the underdog to shed his hide for ever, and grace was given as it will before the world began. This is my will, and in my hope, the answer shall abide. The earth and hell shall not prevail to turn thy word aside. ♪ Along the shores of Greece ♪ ♪ I shall soon entertain ♪ ♪ For I take of you the birthplace of grace ♪ ♪ And then with peace I'll stay ♪ ♪ Amen ♪