Please be seated. If you would please turn in your copy of God's word to Matthew chapter five. Matthew chapter five. We will be looking at the first of the three Beatitudes this morning. So that will be verses one through five of Matthew chapter five. Seeing the crowds, he 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 the meek. I'm sorry. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Oh, Lord, we thank you that you have given us your word that you came to earth to teach us to live among us to suffer and die for us. We ask now, Lord, as we consider the word that you gave on this great and wonderful sermon that you would bless us, Lord, cause our hearts to desire that which you desire to glory in that which you exalt. And may we become more faithful images of you, Lord Jesus. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. In our passage this morning, we find Christ beginning what is commonly known, as I said before, as the Sermon on the Mount. And it commences simply enough by Christ looking at the crowds and moving to a higher elevation. And this may seem like a mundane detail that Matthew just includes in his text, but it's actually important. It's evoking an image, an Old Testament image of Moses speaking to the people of Israel and bringing God's word to them from the mountain. As Moses brought the law of the Old Covenant to the people, so now Christ is ushering a new age with further revelation from God. The opening words of this sermon are weighty with paradoxes. Now to be clear, when I use that term paradox, I'm using it very specifically. Some people think when you hear the word paradox that it means contradiction, but I'm using it in its more historical sense to mean something that looks like a contradiction, but when you look at it a little closer, you see there's actually a resolution. So the paradox at work in our passage this morning is a simple principle, humility inherits greatness. Christ is turning the natural assumptions of every age of the world on their head. He is inviting those who are listening to him to experience real and true flourishing, not as man defines it, but as God defines it. And so that is what we are going to see as we examine these first three Beatitudes. Let us begin with the first one. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. One of the first hurdles to understanding exactly what Christ is saying in these statements is the very first word, blessed. When we hear that term in English, we tend to think of an action of God to show his approval. And because of that, it is very tempting to read these verses as suggesting that God is blessing the poor in spirit by giving them the kingdom of heaven. And in a sense, that is true. However, the original Greek word which Jesus uses in all of these verses doesn't have this connotation. It is more like our idea of congratulations. That is to say, these statements of Christ are not formulated as promises. They are instead statements of fact. Because of that, some commentators prefer to render these verses with terms like happy or flourishing are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, et cetera. And while this may seem just like a nitpicky point. It is important for a couple of reasons. The first is because if we read these Beatitudes as promises, we will be tempted to view them through a lens of quid pro quo. That is through a lens of, if I do this, I earn that. Christ teaches that if you are poor in spirit here, then you'll get the kingdom of heaven. So be poor in spirit. Well, you see the problem. with this, friends. It is in danger of making salvation something that we earn by embodying these characteristics that Christ lays out. After all, how can one be saved if he misses out on the kingdom of heaven? That said, implicitly in these statements is an invitation. There is an invitation to live a life united with and following Christ. Hence why I said there is a sense in which the idea of blessing is present here, but it is not as out front and center as many of our English translations might suggest. The second reason this understanding is important is because it is the only way that we can fully appreciate the counterintuitive nature of these beatitudes. Almost every single beatitude in this passage begins in a state that we do not want to be in, or at least we do not naturally want to be in. This is most obvious with traits like mourning and persecution. However, in the ancient world, this would have also clearly included meekness and being poor in spirit. Just think about the great men of the world. The great men of the world were not known by and large for being poor in spirit. Even those in our day are not known generally by this trait. Interestingly, in the parallel passage of Luke, Luke simply records Jesus as saying, blessed are the poor. Now, Matthew includes the qualifier in our passage to clarify that Jesus was not talking about people in low economic status. After all, there are a lot of temptations for people who are poor. There's also a lot of ungodly poor people, as we all know. However, the use of the term poor in this passage indicates the attitude Christ is talking about is not generally seen among the rich. and prestigious of the world. To be poor in spirit is to be characterized by a godly brokenness. It is a humble as opposed to a self aggrandizing disposition, especially as one comes before God. As one commentator put it, it acknowledges spiritual bankruptcy. The person who is poor in spirit is not the person who insists on his own way. Rather, as the Apostle Paul says, the person who is poor in spirit tries to put the needs of others above his own. They are not out to conquer the world and subdue it to their own will. They do not draw attention to themselves. They are the ones who belong to the kingdom of heaven. Do you see why this might have been counterintuitive to Jesus' audiences. This description did not match their concept of what a Messiah was supposed to be. The Messiah was supposed to be a conquering hero, coming in and delivering them from the oppression of the Romans. Nor did it fit their idea of what a spiritual leader was supposed to be. This description did not match the Pharisees and religious leaders of the day whom everybody looked up to. Jesus, in other passages, censures these men for their pride and hardness of heart. In the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, it's the lowly tax collector who beats his breast and cannot bring himself to look up to heaven who walks away justified, not the Pharisee. In Matthew 23, Christ goes even further. and he pronounces a woe upon the scribes and Pharisees, which is essentially the opposite of a beatitude, because they do all of their good works to be seen by others. They have exalted themselves before men, and so they have received their reward. God will humble them. This description also did not match the disciples during Jesus's ministry. They are constantly trying to vie for positions of honor against each other. They get into ridiculous arguments like children as they travel. James and John, in concert with their mother, you will recall, try to petition Christ for places of honor at his side in the kingdom of heaven. And in each of these situations, Christ rebuffs their attempts and defines greatness as servitude. Ultimately, Jesus himself is the greatest example of being poor in spirit. Instead of seeking his own will, he sought the will of his father. Instead of staying in heaven where he was receiving the praises of cherubim and seraphim, he came to earth as a humble child. And he stayed on this earth and suffered, he suffered to the point of death on the cross, not to seek earthly fame and power, but to do the will of his father who sent him. In fact, he refused all attempts by the people to make him king. Instead, he served his own disciples by patiently bearing with them, even stooping to wash their feet in the upper room, a task that was dirty and reserved for the lowest of slaves in that society. But Christ did not do this. I'm sorry, but Christ did not do this because he does not possess glory. That's not the reason why he served. Rather, it is because he looked for a greater glory, a glory which was to come. And as he humbled himself, the Father would eventually exalt him. Well, similarly, friends, we must not strive for greatness through self-exaltation. And this is especially true for those of us who claim the name of Christ, those of us who are in the church. Our greatness, first and foremost, should not be found on this earth, but it should be found with Christ in heaven. And that reorders our priorities and enables us to serve one another without concern to establish our own earthly glory. We can rest assured that it has already been established. So we do not need to vie for power with one another. We are at our most exalted when we are mirroring our Savior who served us. It is when we show the love which we have received from Christ to others that we are at our best. The lack of this perspective today, I think, explains some of the slippage we have seen in relation to church offices In particular, the desire of many women to become pastors. Now, I do not want to suggest that every woman who aspires to be a pastor does so with nefarious intentions. I think some of them probably have a legitimate ambition and desire to serve the church. But that said, it is a misdirected desire. Titus 1, 1 Timothy 2 and 3 clearly prohibit women from holding church offices, and so when We encounter people who have this desire and yet are prohibited. We have to ask, why do they need the office to serve the church? They don't. Technically, no one does. There are millions of ways to serve Christ's body by simply being a church member. In fact, the men who actually fit the qualifications in Titus and Timothy and the even fewer who are called to the office should be the type of men that would serve Christ with or without the office. Sadly, the movement to change the historic practice of the church and ignore scripture's clear teaching is motivated by a concern that women are oppressed by not holding these offices. And there are certainly occasions where that has been true historically. But just because men have abused the gifts of God in the past does not negate scripture's clear teaching. While some men have used church offices to their own advantage and glory, they have sought earthly glory through spiritual means. We understand from Matthew 5 that this is an abuse of the offices. The leaders of the church are meant to be servants of the church. They should be the models of men who come to God with broken spirits, ready to show the love they have received their fellow Christian. and enabling them to do the same. While church officers will do this in certain ways that are special to their jobs, this is the goal of every Christian, man or woman. Thus, every member should be serving their brothers and sisters. So, dear friends, how has God called you this time in this church to show the love of Christ to your brothers and sisters here. How have you been called to do that this morning? As counterintuitive as this first beatitude may be, the second is even more so. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. It's no exaggeration to say that We do not tend to look at those who are in a state of grief or wretchedness and consider them to be flourishing. We don't look at them and say, oh, they're in a great state. In fact, when we are mourning, in those occasions when we are mourning, it is those occasions that we tend to say that we are not flourishing. After all, when we feel this way, it is usually because something terrible has happened. So how can we possibly understand this statement of Christ? that those who mourn are flourishing, are blessed. It would be wrong to understand him as saying that mourning in itself is a good thing. It's not. Mourning is only necessary because this world is not as it should be. Grief is the right response to a world that is broken due to sin. But in a perfect world, there would be no need for grief of any kind. In fact, we know that in heaven, there will no longer be any tears for this very reason. Nor is Christ saying that we are to pursue grief or wretchedness in order to receive God's blessing. That again would be to see a quid pro quo kind of relationship to this statement of Christ. And so we should exclude any kind of idea that Christ is calling Christians to self-harm. Christ is not promising to bless those who mourn. Rather, he is stating that those who mourn are blessed. They are flourishing. However, they are not blessed because of the action of grieving itself, but because they will be comforted. This is not the first statement like this in scripture either. Christ in this beatitude is clearly referencing the passage that we read earlier from Isaiah chapter 61, which is a detailed promise to Israel that God's servant will be sent to comfort all who mourn, to grant to those who mourn in Zion, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit, that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. Just as Israel in exile was promised a complete reversal from their state of defeat and destruction to one of victory and gladness, so Jesus in this passage says that those who live lives of mourning now will experience the comforting of the Lord in the life to come. Thus, this beatitude states something intrinsic to the Christian life, which separates it from the lives of non-believers. Believers have a full assurance that there are better things to come. Their suffering is only for a time and it therefore serves as a reminder that this world is not all there is. One of the few things we can be sure about is that our lives are going to come to an end. Benjamin Franklin famously said that there are only two certainties in this life, death and taxes. The preacher of Ecclesiastes, I think, would agree. He wrote, of course, it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting. For this is the end of all mankind and the living will lay it to heart. However, we as Christians know that this earthly sinful life, as I said before, is not all there is. We have the comfort of God's promises that after death we will join him in heaven and that we await the future resurrection. And so we should reject any theological scheme which teaches us to live our best life now. Jesus tells us that if we are going to follow him faithfully, then we will face the opposition of the world and we will have trouble in this life. The Christian life, if it lasts for any significant length of time, will involve times of suffering and weeping. Nevertheless, when these times come, these times of mourning, we can look to God and his promises for a sure and unbreakable comfort that it will come to an end. This truth can be palpably seen by those around us. I remember once when I was a teenager listening to a couple of nurses in my hometown who had worked in departments like hospice care. And they said they could often tell which patients were Christians because there was a discernible difference in the way that they face death. They had a peace and a hope which others simply did not possess. If we understand promises of the gospel, the promises of Christ. This is not surprising to us. Even as these saints faced the end of their earthly lives, they were not distraught. What is more, the families who are around them, while they grieved, they grieved as ones with hope. They showed the same hope that their loved ones had, since they were sure that God would raise their loved ones from the dead. We see from this then that suffering generally has a purpose for the Christian. It causes us to take our eyes off of this world and to look instead to the world that is to come. To take our eyes often from the things that distract us, that cause us to lose our focus from our savior and to cast them upon God who came to this world and modeled for us what it means to mourn. However, Christ also comforts us since we know that just as he suffered and died for our sins, he was also raised from the dead by God the Father through the power of those Holy Spirit. And so because he was raised and we are united to him through faith, we too have the hope that we will be raised with him. Now, before we move to the next point, I must make the qualification once again that this beatitude does not negate all grieving on the part of the Christian. It assumes it. And so it would be completely inappropriate to go to a Christian brother or sister who is suffering or mourning in some way and to tell them to cheer up because Christ says they are blessed. That would be a complete misapplication of this text. That is not how Christ treated mourners in his ministry and it's not what he does even here. What this text says is that even as we grieve, we do not mourn as those who have no hope, to borrow the Apostle Paul's famous phrase. And so it's appropriate to come alongside our grieving brothers and sisters and to join them in mourning, while also carefully and with great sensitivity pointing them to God's promises. In some cases, This may be something that you do over a long period of time. As always, scriptural truth must be applied with wisdom and discernment. With that, we will now come to our third beatitude this morning. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Once again, that the paradoxical nature of this beatitude is palpable. Much like those who are poor in spirit, the meek do not try to compel others to do their will. They do not insist on their own way. It is a known fact that empires only progress on the ambitions of powerful men, the kind of men who compel others to do their own will. Men like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte. It is these people who do not, as one commentator put it, throw their weight around, that Christ says are somehow also the people who will inherit the earth. To understand what Christ is saying here, we must once again look back to the Old Testament. The psalmist in Psalm 37 verse 11 makes a very similar statement to Christ. He says, but the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace. However, just before that, in verses nine through 10, he sketches out what meekness looks like. He says, for the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. In just a little while, the wicked will be no more. Though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there. What we see in this psalm then is that the meek, unlike the wicked, do not trust in their own strength. They look to the Lord and trust him to provide the land. Well, in the same way, Christ is teaching that the meek do not seek to compel people to get what they want, but rather wait for the Lord. Once again, our Lord's teaching finds its concrete application in himself. The son of God took on human flesh, not so as to do his own will, but rather to do the will of his father. In direct contrast to an emperor seeking to glorify himself, Jesus took on the form of a servant and humbled himself to the point of death on a cross. Therefore, as the Apostle Paul says, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. It is because Christ humbled himself to the earth. that he has been exalted above all earthly powers is because he humbled himself to be born in a stable that someday he will descend from the clouds in the viewing of all. In a similar way, we too have been promised an inheritance in the new heavens and the new earth. You may have noticed when I quoted from Psalm 37 11 earlier, that there was a subtle difference between what the psalmist promises and what Christ says in our passage here in Matthew 5.5. The psalmist states that the meek shall inherit the land, while Jesus says the meek shall inherit the earth. This subtle change on the part of our Lord is loaded with significance. The psalmist, of course, is writing to Israel, where the land has immediate, concrete, geographical significance. It is the land which God had promised to their father Abraham, and it's the land which Joshua led the people of Israel to conquer. But Jesus, by changing it to the earth, reveals an eschatological dimension to the inheritance of the meek. That is to say, he is showing that this original promise in Psalm 37 has a greater fulfillment at the end of time. The inheritance of the land which Israel experienced in the old covenant was a small foreshadowing of the new earth which Christ will inaugurate in his return. Thus we see from this beatitude, like the two before it, that Christ is reorienting our focus and our priorities. The meek, like the poor in spirit, do not look to their own strength to bring about their own glory, but rather trust God and seek his. Similarly, the meek and those who mourn do not focus on the things of this world, but rather wait upon the Lord to deliver his promises in the world to come. Our treasure is in the new earth and the new heavens. The combination of both of these factors, the humility to trust the Lord and the heavenly or new earthly mindedness give the Christian incredible freedom because we don't have to worry about what tomorrow might bring. In fact, Christ in Matthew 6 commands us not to worry. We know who holds tomorrow and we also know that nothing can break the promises he has made. He has said it and it will be done. This is a truth, which I think is especially important to remember in an election season. For the past few months, we have been bombarded as various political candidates and media sources tried to tell us that this election is the most important election in the history of America or the history of the world. They told us that if one political party wins, it means the end of our country as we know it. And they will often use semi-apocalyptic language to describe What happens if their candidate fails? Now, of course, elections do have consequences, and some of those can be quite serious. And Christians should desire and seek the good of their earthly country. And so it's good for us to engage in activities like voting and even listening to political debates to be well-informed. That has its place. Nevertheless, in the midst of doing this, we must not fall to the scaremongering tactics of the world, which so easily cause us to focus on our own strength and the things of this world instead of the things of heaven. This election, like all the previous elections before it, was under God's sovereign hand. And our greatest hope is not that we will overcome our earthly political opponents. Our greatest hope is that God's will shall be accomplished. And he will eventually write all that is wrong in this world when Christ comes back. Four years from now, nobody will think about the unbridled optimism or pessimism that a lot of people are showing right now. That will be shown to be as silly as it really is. But we will still, should the Lord, Terry, be looking forward to his coming. And the one who places their hope in Christ has a founded and sure hope. There lies the greatest paradox, I think, of the Beatitudes. We have seen how each of these Beatitudes teach that the humble and the selfless inherit greatness. And in each of these Beatitudes, we have seen how Christ himself embodies the principle he is teaching in some way. He, like the poor in spirit, did not come to the earth in glory and great pomp to exalt himself. He did not come as Julius Caesar, nor did he come to earth in order to conquer it like an emperor, just as we saw. Rather, in submission to the will of his father, he took on the form of a servant. Even though he was the eternally glorious God himself, He joined us. He shared our griefs and suffered and died, not only with us, but for us. And because of that, God has not only exalted him, but he will exalt us with him. Because, dear saints, we are united to Christ. not only share in his sufferings, but in his glory as well. As we saw earlier, Christ is not making promises in the Beatitudes in a this for that manner. Rather, he is stating divinely established truths and implicitly inviting those who hear them to follow him. Therefore, brothers and sisters, if you have put your faith in Christ and you are striving to follow his commands, rest assured these beatitudes describe you because you have been united to him and nothing can change that. And if you have not put your faith in him, this is your invitation. Seek the things that are above, not the things that perish where moth and rust destroy. But look to him who came in humility, cast your faith on him, take up your cross, and you too will truly flourish in Christ. Let's pray. O Lord, we thank you that your ways are higher than our ways, that you have shown us the true path of glory. Not the glory of man and of this earth, which passes away like grass in the field, but a glory that extends to eternity. Oh God, continue to form in us the faith to desire this kind of glory, the kind of exaltation that only you can give. We ask that you would cause us to show forth the image of Christ with such glory and brilliance that those around us will see him through us and bring praise to you. We ask all this in Christ's glorious and exalted name. Amen.