Let me ask you to turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew Chapter 6, Chapter 5, Verses 1 through 12. Matthew 6, 5, Verses 1 through 12. Hear the Word of God. Let me ask you to stand. And seeing the multitudes, He went up on 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." Before you sit, let me lead us in prayer for the preaching of God's Word. Our Heavenly Father, how we thank you. for this portion of your holy, inspired, inerrant, infallible word. We pray that you would, by your spirit, bless it to our understanding and apply it to our hearts for your glory. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. The Beatitudes begin the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is in chapters 5 and 6 and 7 of Matthew and contains some of the most familiar things that we read in the Bible, things that we're fairly familiar with, though sometimes we don't think so much about them. But sometimes we don't. And sometimes some of those things just roll off our tongues without any thought on our part. I wonder if that may have happened even as you prayed the Lord's Prayer together a few moments ago. And we'll be looking at the Lord's Prayer tonight and thinking about that. But for this morning, we want to be looking at the Beatitudes. That's what it's known as, is the Beatitudes. comes from the Latin for blessed. And so that's what we will be looking at, but I want to set a little context for you first. The whole Sermon on the Mount is worldview-ish. It basically gives much of what underlies a Christian worldview. That's true of the Beatitudes. It's true of the Lord's Prayer that we'll be looking at tonight. But it's true of the whole of it. And in particular, it sits before us, and we'll be seeing this this morning, A worldview that sees as part of the reality of the world that we live in a heavenly dimension, a spiritual dimension, a worldview that not just includes but begins with God. God who created everything that we see in the here and now, but God who is beyond and behind all of it and above all of it and who basically lays out for us what we ought to believe and how we ought to live. And the Sermon on the Mount does that in a beautiful, beautiful way. The Sermon on the Mount focuses particularly on ethics. but it is also extremely God-centered and Christ-centered. I want to just, before we get into the specifics of the Beatitudes, want to talk a little bit about the Christ-centeredness of this whole passage. And I want to start with the last verses of the Sermon on the Mount. After the sermon itself, what Matthew declares about it in verses 28 and 29 in chapter 7, where he says, and so it was, when Jesus has ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. The scribes normally would give their lectures in a somewhat academic way as professors and lecturers, and basically, like many of those who lecture that way, they were seeking to be modest. So they would give their opinions on things, but not in any kind of absoluteness, as though you had to believe their opinion, though they really thought you should. But Jesus' preaching is different. And for many of them, this would have been their first exposure to his preaching. And it's preaching that was as somebody who had authority, as indeed he did. If you're in chapter 7 still, look at verses 21 and 22 and 23. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say, to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done any wonders in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. Jesus is claiming to be the one to whom we answer at the judgment day. The Pharisees couldn't make that claim. None of us can make that claim, but Jesus did. And so I'm just saying that to illustrate. how this passage teaches us to focus on Christ himself and on God the Father. Very interesting in Chapter 5, after the part where we'll be focused this morning, you find Jesus saying, you have heard that it was said to those of old, and there are several things then, and then he says, but I say to you, And he says that with authority. So I want us to understand that the person who is preaching the sermon that we are beginning to look at today and this morning is someone who preached as indeed the eternal son of God, God the second person of the Trinity. And the Sermon on the Mount, as I said, focuses largely on ethics. Now, I want you to think about ethics. I want you to think about the ethics of the Pharisees. Because the first words out of Jesus' mouth were to the Pharisees a bombshell on their playground. It's something that they would never have said certainly wouldn't have thought anybody would have said first. Look at the first words in verse 3 of chapter 5, where Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now, if the Pharisees were going to say, blessed are certain people, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, Where would they have started? Blessed are the law keepers. And Jesus starts somewhere else, somewhere else entirely. He does come back to that idea. He does emphasize the law in verse 17. He says, do not think that I come to destroy, came to destroy the law and the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill, and goes on to say they'll never be destroyed, not a jot or tittle. And so he talks about the law. He even amplifies the understanding of the law in a more spiritual direction, as he does, for instance, especially with the Sixth and Seventh Commandments, the commandments not to murder, the commandments not to commit adultery, and basically says if you do these in your heart, you've broken that law. So he takes a different slant. on righteousness and on ethics and on the law than the prophets, but he puts something else first. And he does that in his first words and in the Beatitudes. I want to talk about two characteristics of this passage. There are eight Beatitudes, and the last one is amplified a little bit in verses 11 and 12. But there are eight of them. They all begin, blessed are, and he talks about that. And then he says what the blessing would be. It's so easy to get this in a wrong direction and think, Well, let's focus on this one and then on this one, and which one of the rewards do I get if I have this particular dimension of Christian character? No. Notice that the first one ends with the reward, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The last one in verse 10 ends with, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And others of the characteristics are things also associated with eternity and eternal life. So what we're supposed to see is not so much that there are certain blessings for certain characteristics in your life, but what Jesus does here is to lay out before us what are the characteristics of a Christian and what is the blessedness of a Christian. The word that's translated blessed is a word that can also be translated, and often is in scripture, happy. These are the happy people. These are the people to be congratulated. And I want to bring that happy idea to the forefront because so many people, including so many Christians, and it's basically promoted in so many pulpits are after happiness. And here's Jesus talking about happiness. And he doesn't give the same prescription for getting happiness as many do in our day. In fact, he doesn't even suggest that happiness is the goal. It is something different. And we'll see that. We'll see how to have that kind of blessedness. But I want us to just get these ideas that, first, it's about character, not rules. All of these are characteristics. They are all characteristics of all Christians. We all should have at least a modicum of each of these. If they're missing, you have to wonder, am I really a Christian, if this is not your description, at least to some degree. And the blessedness and the character both need to be seen as being supernatural. You can't make it happen. It is a consequence of the work of God. And so we learn these kinds of things about Christianity. So I want to put two questions before you, and we'll think about those as we go through the passage. First, are you this kind of Christian? Do these characteristics describe you? And I want you to think about it this way. If they don't, you need to ask, am I really a Christian? If these don't describe me, at least in general, however imperfectly, if they're not what describes me, I have to ask if I'm a Christian. But then secondly, do you aspire to be this kind of Christian. In thinking about being a Christian and living the Christian life is a part of your thinking that I want to have my character formed in this way, supernaturally formed in this way. I mean, we think a lot about I want to follow the rules. Are there things I need to do differently in terms of following the rules? Are there rules that I don't live up to? But here the question is different. It is this kind of character. Do I — do I desire this? Do I seek this in my life? And then we'll think a little bit about what can you do if we do aspire to this. You know, most people don't. Most people aren't particularly impressed with the blessedness that is talked about here, though everybody wants to go to heaven. But I mean, most people are focused on getting it here and now. And they're focused on ways to do that. And even most Christians are not focused on forming this kind of character in their own lives. Let's look at these just a little bit. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now, being poor in spirit is not an attitude of not having enough money and things. You know, it's not your spirit telling you, man, I'm poor, at least in comparison to certain other people. Nor does it really mean saying that I don't have any spiritual blessings. There's a recognition that they are. But being poor in spirit is recognizing that we're sinners, that we fall so far short. that we have a consciousness not of satisfaction with my life. It's wonderful. I'm a wonderful person. I don't have anything that I need to apologize to God for or to repent of. I won't say anything else about the political climate of our day. But being poor in spirit, is having an almost overriding sense of how far short we come. It doesn't mean that we don't recognize that God's done a great work in us. If we're converted people, he has. If we are regenerated, if we're born again, if we're converted, God has done a marvelous work, and we're not trying to depreciate that in the least. but there's still this recognition of how far short we come. That leads to the kind of mourning that verse 4 talks about when it says, blessed are those who mourn, for they should be comforted. It's not saying here that those people who lost a loved one are have a great sickness or something like that, have special blessings for them. No, it's saying those who look at their sin, they're poor in spirit, but they mourn over their sin. They mourn over the sins of other people as well. That idea, which is, I make note now, a God-centered idea, as is being poor in spirit, Those people mourn over their sin, over the sinfulness of the world. That saddens them. Blessed are the meek. You know, meek people are people that get pushed around, right? Who was meek? Jesus was the pinnacle of meekness. And while he did little to defend himself, Yet he would take a stand for God and his glory and his honor. He was the one who turned over the tables of the money changers in the temple and denounced those who were doing that because they were taking the glory away from God. And so a person can be meek without being weak. A person can be weak and unwilling to stand up for themselves so much. but be willing to stand up for God. Why not stand up for themselves? The person who is meek in a biblical sense is not Uriah Heap out of Dickens, but it is the person who sees their sin and says whatever is done to them. I don't really like that. What I've done to them probably doesn't deserve that. but I recognize that I deserve far worse. We all do. The meek person recognizes that about himself or herself, and so is different. I'm going to skip the next one and come back to it. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. The Christian is merciful because they're aware of their own need of mercy, of the forgiveness that comes from God, of what Jesus says even a chapter or so later, though he didn't speak in chapters, when he says, For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, Neither will your father forgive your trespasses. This person's merciful. They are forgiving because they have been forgiven and blessed and shown mercy from God. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who... Wow. I mean, if you're a Pharisee, if you're a CEO in our day, you get down to this one and you say, I knew those Christians were crazy. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. We try to avoid persecution, don't we? And you do see some people who basically look like they want to offend so that you'll persecute them because they think they'll get a blessing that way. That's not what this is talking about. But those who for righteousness sake, their stance are actually persecuted. And then it goes on to amplify that in verses 11 and 12. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely. And Jesus changes the wording here. For my sake, he says, and he makes it become more Christ centered. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven. That's where the reward is. Some people aren't looking for their reward there. They want it now in here. For great is your reward in heaven so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. And so they persecuted Jesus. This kind of person who lives this Christ-centered life, this life of righteousness, will often be persecuted, but it's a blessing. Now let's go back to verse 6. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. I'll just start with that question. Do you? Is that what you hunger and thirst for? Or do you hunger and thirst for happiness, blessedness? And no, the way to get that is these other things, including hunger and thirsting for righteousness. I want to suggest this to you. If all of these are, in a sense, a test of your Christianity, In my mind, the most easily applied test of true Christianity, not just having and checking off on the right doctrines, that's necessary, but the test for a person who would think I'm a Christian and I believe the right things, am I truly a converted, regenerated person? Here's the test, because this you can look into your heart, I think, and see if it's true. Do you hunger and thirst after righteousness? Not do you want to get credit for being a good person. A lot of people want that who aren't Christians. The Pharisees wanted that. People who hold all sorts of heresies or no religion at all want to be credited with being a good person. But do you hunger and thirst for righteousness before God, before the holy God? Is that the desire of your heart? Do you seek that? If you don't hunger and thirst for it, you don't seek after it. If you don't seek after it, you don't hunger and thirst for it. If you hunger and thirst for food and water, you don't just Let that go and if it happens, great. You go after food and water. If you hunger and thirst after righteousness, you go after that. You seek that. You aspire to that. Not that you believe that you'll ever become perfectly holy and the Bible teaches us that we won't, but you learn to do that, to seek that. Is there something you can do if you want to be this kind of Christian, to have these things all characterize you. Well, it all is based and the essence of it is the recognition of God's holiness and our sinfulness in contrast. If you want to have more of this characteristic, you probably need to think more about how holy God is and how far short of it we all come. You come, I come. We should think about that. A vision of the holiness of God is one of the main drivers of Christian character. A recognition of His mercy and grace toward us is as well. It frees us to think about holiness if we know that God in His grace and mercy has forgiven us our sins. If we think it's all about being good enough, we don't want to think about the holiness of God because that's going to show us we're not good enough. But if we know that God is a loving and forgiving God who, not at no cost to Himself whatever, but at the cost of the death and the blood of His Son Jesus Christ forgave us, if we think about Him that way, then that frees us to recognize that I can honestly face my sin and sinfulness and seek to deal with it. And it frees me to hunger and thirst after righteousness because I know I don't have it. It frees me to be poor in spirit and to mourn over my sin and even to be meek when we think about God. And we think about his Christ-centeredness here, that if we're persecuted, it's for his sake. If we are these other things, it's for his sake. Is your life more about Jesus than you? Is it more about character than looking good to other people? Christian people, here is happiness. Here is blessedness. Start not with the rules. Don't neglect the rules. They're in the Bible for a reason. But don't start with the rules. Start. with developing Christian character. It's something you can't do on your own. It's not in your own strength. It's something that's supernaturally granted by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit gives it to those who knock and ask and seek. Seek righteousness. Seek Christian character. Aspire to that. not the things this world says you need to have to get ahead and to be happy. Do it for God in His glory and Christ in His glory. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for the blessedness that Jesus tells us about, for the happiness that the Holy Spirit grants us as we seek Christ. for the blessedness of being those who inherit the kingdom of God, inherit eternal life, are called the sons of God, that we may be those who see God. Lord, bless us for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.