00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
and your copy of God's Word to
the Gospel of Matthew. walk through Matthew, and we've
come now to chapter 5, which is the beginning of the Sermon
on the Mount. This is the first of five major
discourses that we find in the Gospel of Matthew, and it is
the most famous of His discourses. In fact, the Sermon on the Mount,
which is chapters 5, 6, and 7, is the most well-known sermon
anywhere throughout the history of mankind. It is easily the
most familiar and most beloved sermon. And today, as we start
here in chapter 5, we're going to deal with the most well-known
part of the most well-known sermon, which is the Beatitudes. And
we're not going to be looking at all of the Beatitudes at once.
We'll just examine the first three. So, we're going to be
reading verses 1 through 5. So, Matthew chapter 5, let's
start 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." Thus far, the reading of God's Word.
May He bless it to our hearing, especially as it's preached to
us this morning. Well, people of God, you don't need me to
tell you that over the last few weeks it has become abundantly
clear, if not just to us, but indeed to the whole of the world,
that we live in a truly broken world. We have seen horrific
things, young people being killed on their commute home. political
figures like Charlie Kirk being assassinated simply because he
was doing actually what Jesus talks about in the Sermon on
the Mount, which was loving his enemies and engaging with them. And many, many other things that
we have been seeing of late that reminds us that this world is
broken, that this world is incapable of fixing itself. And many people
have looked and said, we've had enough, we've had enough of the
chaos in the streets. and the broken families, and
government overreach, and all these other things that we can
look at and we can complain about and we can see that are truly
wrong with the society and the world in which we live. And many
people, especially even Christians, are saying, how do we respond
to these events? What should we do? They keep
saying that the assassination of Charlie Kirk is a turning
point, a play on words that his political organization was called
turning point. But I do think that certainly
is true. There does seem to be a response of people saying,
no more. And as we talked about last week,
the question for us as believers then is, how do we respond? Do
we respond as the world responds, or is there some other way? in
which Jesus calls us to engage. The Sermon on the Mount, as we've
said, is ultimately about kingdom life. And it's directed to us,
those who are the followers of Jesus. In fact, you'll notice
that in verse 1, it says that the one whom Jesus is addressing
is His disciples. He was, in the Sermon on the
Mount, not addressing the crowds. It is His disciples, those who
are committed to following Him. That is, He is speaking to us.
And what he lays out in the Sermon on the Mount is what is life
like for those who are in the kingdom? The King has come to
tell us what He expects of us and how we are to behave, and
it is different from the way the world calls us to live, the
way the world calls us to react to the things that we have seen.
And over the next several weeks as we unpack the Sermon on the
Mount, you will see the many demands that Jesus makes of His
people. He's laying out here the conduct
of His disciples, how they are to behave. However, what's really
interesting is that He starts with the Beatitudes which is
where He tells us not so much how we are to behave, He will
get to that, but He first tells us who we are. Who are these
disciples of the King who are in His kingdom? Or to put it
another way, before He describes the conduct of the disciple,
He first describes the character of the disciple in the Beatitudes.
So as we look at it, what we're going to be seeing is what are
we supposed to be like as followers of Jesus? Who are we? Later he'll
tell us how we are to behave, but he starts by telling us who
we are. So as we look at these first
three Beatitudes, we're going to see three things. We're going
to see that we're blessed by God. that we are broken before
God and that we are blessed through Jesus. We're going to see those
three things, blessed by God, broken before God, and blessed
through Jesus. So, let's take the first of these
points, blessed by God. And what I want to do here is
I want us to give a brief overview of all the Beatitudes, not just
these three, but these are things that are going to apply to all
those that we have before us that we're going to be looking.
And the first thing to notice is that there's a pattern to
all of them, right? Blessed are the… for they shall…
right? That's the pattern we see. The
first half, blessed are they who, and that tells us something
about who we are, and then for they shall, and then it tells
us something about how we are blessed. So, if you look at that
first half, Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those
who mourn. Blessed are the meek." That's
describing what we are, what we are in the eyes of God. It
is not describing what we do. That comes later. So, these are
descriptions of us, the character of the disciple, not demands
that are made. Now, another thing that's important
to point out is that all eight of these, blessed are, boom,
boom, boom, Each one of these is not a separate type of disciple. In other words, it's a unified
whole. These are all descriptions of
what every follower of Jesus is like. So, it's not that some
followers of Jesus are poor in spirit, while others mourn, while
others are meek, while others hunger and thirst for righteousness.
No, these are unified. They are descriptions of each
and every disciple. They're just different aspects.
of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Another thing to notice
about these descriptions of who we are is that they're not physical
descriptions, they're spiritual. So when He says that we are poor,
He's not talking about material poverty, but we are poor in spirit.
And we haven't gotten to this one, but in verse 6 when He says
that we are those who hunger and thirst, it's not physical
hunger, we hunger and thirst for righteousness. So, what we
have here is a spiritual description of what a disciple is like, a
spiritual description of… or a description of our spiritual
character as followers of Jesus. That's what we see in the first
half of all these Beatitudes. And when it says, blessed are
the, boom, it tells us something about us spiritually. And then
the second half, it says, for they shall, and then it describes
the blessing that we receive. That makes sense? The word beatitude
is just a Latin word for blessing. Now, I just want to say something
about what it means when you say blessed. To be blessed does not
mean happy. I've seen some translations that
translate this as, happy are those. But happiness is a feeling. Happiness is subjective. Happiness
comes and goes. There are many who are blessed
who do not feel happy. After all, he even speaks about
mourning and grieving. When Jesus is saying in the second
half of each beatitude, it's not a subjective feeling. He's
making an objective statement about who we are. He's stating
something about us, a concrete fact, something that we receive. That's what it means to be blessed.
It's not a feeling. Well, what exactly does it mean?
Well, in the Bible, one of the things that we see is that to
be blessed is always the opposite, surprise, to be cursed. So, for
example, in Genesis chapter 12, when God is speaking to Abraham,
he says in verse 2, I will make you into a great nation and I
will bless you. I will make your name great and
you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless
you and whoever curses you, I will curse and all the peoples on
earth will be blessed through you. To be blessed in scripture
means that you are not cursed by God. And when we look at its
use, it always shows that it means to be in fellowship with
God, to have a right relationship with God, to enjoy God as He
should be enjoyed. So when we see, blessed are those,
and then it tells us something about that blessing, it's describing
something about that relationship that we have with God. And it
tells us that our relationship with God is, in fact, a blessing. And just like the first half
of every beatitude, the second half is also something that applies
to every believer. There aren't some believers who
inherit the earth. There aren't some believers who
then see God, but not the same. It's something that describes
all of us. So those are, again, just some general facts that
we can say about all the Beatitudes. And when we talk about the blessing,
we might also ask, is it a present blessing or is it a future blessing?
And the answer is it's actually both. These promises of blessing
have both a present and a future fulfillment. Remember we talked
about last week the already, not yet, the idea that the kingdom
is already here. When Jesus came, He brought the
kingdom with Him. The kingdom has arrived for God's
people, but it is not yet here in all its fullness. That awaits
when He returns. And when He returns, the kingdom
and all the aspects of it will be maximized. And so, in the
same way, these blessings have a present fulfillment, but they
still have more yet to come. And as I said at the outset of
the sermon as we jump into them, it's very significant that that
is how Jesus begins His Sermon on the Mount, with His beatitudes.
Before He starts laying out commands, imperatives, demands for us,
and He will have those. He first lays out who we are
and what we're going to see today. It's always in the context of
grace. Now, why does that matter? Here's
why it matters. Because He's going to be asking
you to live in a certain way that is separate from the way
the world expects you to live, perhaps even separate from the
way that you want to live. He's going to put what almost
seem to be impossible demands, but first He wants to let you
know who you are and that what you are It happens because of
His grace. Think of the Ten Commandments,
right? If you turn to Exodus chapter 20, and you look at the
Ten Commandments, and we know them, right? And it asks us that
you have to have no other gods before me, you're not to make
any images, you're not supposed to use the Lord's name in vain,
and you're to honor the Sabbath day, or keep the Sabbath day,
and remember it, keep it holy, and then you're to honor your
father and your mother, and you should not kill, and you should not
commit adultery, and you should not steal, you should not bear
false witness, and you should not covet. All those commands
are laid out in Exodus chapter 20, but do you remember what
the prologue is? What God says before He lays
those commandments on His people? Does He say, here you are, slaves
in Egypt, and if you obey these commandments, if you live up
to these commandments, then I will deliver you from Egypt, I will
save you from oppression. No, that's not what it says.
He gives the commandments to them on Sinai, after He's drawn
them out from Egypt, after He has saved and delivered them,
and He says, I am the God who has delivered you from slavery
in Egypt. Therefore, this is how saved
people behave. And that's exactly what's happening
here in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is going to begin by telling
us, He's going to be telling us, this is what you're to do.
You're supposed to turn the other cheek when somebody slaps you
on one side. You're supposed to love your
enemies. All these things like, you know, this is nearly impossible
for me to do. And he doesn't come and say,
do that, and if you do that, then I'll save you. Instead,
he comes to you and he says, this is who you are because of
my grace. Therefore, this is how you behave.
And that's so important on how you approach what we're going
to be reading in the Sermon on the Mount, your ability to keep
it. is only possible because you
have been saved in grace, united to Jesus. With that, let's look
at the next point and begin to look at these first three beatitudes.
And we have that under the point broken before God, so that should
tell you something about what it's going to show us. One of
the interesting things about these eight beatitudes is that
they are not in a random order. They're very specific. Back in
the 4th century, the preacher John Chrysostom once said that
they form, the Beatitudes form a golden chain. There's a sequence
here. And the sequence, what it's doing
is, yes, it's describing the character of the disciple, but
it does so by demonstrating how grace works in your life as a
follower of Jesus. And it goes from point to point.
Just as you came to know Christ and you were drawn to him through
a process, that process is actually unpacked here in the Beatitudes. So with that in mind, let's take
a look at these first three, and what it's going to be describing
is who we are and what we are before God. Look at the first
one, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. So let's take the first half,
the description of our spiritual character. It says that we are
poor. Now, that's not a physical poverty,
as we've already said. It is a spiritual poverty, poor
in spirit. And you see this all throughout
the Old Testament, where the word poor is used not for a person
who lacks worldly goods, but a person who is reliant upon
God, who has nothing to offer to God, and so he looks to God
for deliverance. So, for example, Psalm 34 verse 6, this poor man
cried and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his
troubles. And it's exactly the same thing
when here, when it says poor in spirit, it means that we are
spiritually destitute. We are spiritually bankrupt. It means that we recognize that
we have nothing to offer to God. We have no merit. We don't get
to go to God and say, look God, look at how good I, look at all
that I have done for you. Look at how I keep your commandments.
Look how I treat other people. No, we recognize that we're sinners
without any standing before God in and of our own strength and
merit. Blessed are the poor in spirit." I like the way the New
English Bible translated this. It wasn't a literal translation,
but it really captured the flavor when it said, how blessed are
those who know their need of God. When you're poor in spirit,
you recognize, I have nothing to offer God. I can't go before
Him and bargain with Him or barter with Him. I simply have to rest
wholly upon His mercy. So if you are poor in spirit,
you recognize your true condition, that you have no righteousness
of your own, and when you're left with nothing, you can only
hope in God. Reminds me of those wonderful
words from that great hymn that we often sing, Rock of Ages,
by A.M. Toplady. You remember these words. Maybe you'll repeat them with
me. We'll say them slowly. He says, nothing in my hand I
bring, simply to your cross I cling. naked come to you for dress,
helpless look to you for grace. Foul I to the fountain fly, wash
me, Savior, or I die." There's a man who is poor in spirit and
recognizes he has nothing to offer and he is wholly dependent
upon the mercy of God. And John Calvin, when he referred
to this beatitude, said, he only who is reduced to nothing in
himself and relies on the mercy of God is poor in spirit. Of course, that attitude of being
poor in spirit, it's repugnant to the world. Remember, the world
values self-reliance. The idea of self-reliance is
a virtue in the eyes of the world. But Jesus says, if that's the
attitude that you have, if you do not recognize your poverty
of spirit, if you really do think that you can make it on your
own, then you are spiritually blind. You are spiritually naked,
and you're headed towards ruin. You remember what He said in
Revelation 3, verse 17. He was speaking not to the world.
He was speaking to the church, and He said, you say, I am rich. I have acquired wealth and do
not need a thing, but you do not realize that you are wretched,
pitiful, poor, blind, and naked." Of course, he wasn't talking
again about physical richness. He was talking about those who
think that they have something to offer to God, and he says, you're
so blind you don't even see it. You've got nothing. You're naked. You're helpless. You're poor.
You're blind. You can't even see it. And I
think it's little wonder why we see so little of God's blessing
in our lives, and it's because we're so full of ourselves, and
we think we are so rich, and that we can create our own blessing
rather than saying the only hope I have is fully in God. So that's who we are to be as
God's people, poor in spirit, recognizing we have nothing to
offer. And then we see the second half of the Beatitude, and we
see the blessing for those who are indeed. poor in spirit. He says, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. And it's interesting that the language, the way it's
used here in the original language, this was written in Greek, is
it literally says, to the poor in spirit, them and them alone
belongs the kingdom of heaven. It's very emphatic. They only
are the ones. to whom the King, Jesus, allows
into His kingdom. And at first you say, well, that
doesn't make any sense. How can those who have nothing to offer
earn this wonderful blessing of being in the kingdom? And
that's the whole point. You don't earn it at all. It's not a reward
for what you've done. It's a free gift. It's not based
on your merit. It's holy grace, unmerited favor. We have nothing to offer, so
clearly it's not a reward. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, that
wonderful wartime preacher in London during the Second World
War, once wrote, I would say, or rather he preached this and
then it's been written down. He said, I would say that there
is no more perfect statement of the doctrine of justification
by faith alone than this beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit
for theirs and theirs only is the kingdom of heaven. Very well
then, this is the foundation of everything else. And he says
this summarizes the doctrine of justification by faith. And
you know what that is? Justification is where God declares
us to be righteous, not because we really are righteous and have
our own merit, but because in His grace, He has taken our sin,
our demerit, And he's given it to Jesus, who paid for it by
his substitutionary death on the cross. And then he takes
Jesus' merit, the fact that he was perfectly righteous and obeyed
in every way, and he gives that record of righteousness to us,
even though we don't deserve it. It's what the Puritans used
to call the great exchange. And so even here in this very
first beatitude, we already see clearly salvation by grace. God
will bring you into his kingdom even when you have nothing to
offer, and it's all by grace. The kingdom is given to the spiritually
poor, not the spiritually rich, to those who recognize that they
are feeble and not those who think themselves to be mighty.
In Jesus' day, the Pharisees believed that they were rich,
spiritually rich in merit. The zealots, another group at
that time, thought that they could bring in the kingdom of
God by physical force, by political might. And yet, to whom does
Jesus say the kingdom belongs? To the tax collectors and to
the prostitutes, those rejects of society who have absolutely
nothing to offer. And nothing's changed. It's the
same today. There are many people today, many who sit in churches,
who believe that they are spiritually rich, that they're not as bad
as those others. Oh, we mess up here and there,
but we're not like fill-in-the-blank. There are many people today who
believe that we will bring the kingdom into play through politics
if we just get the right people in office. Some even saying that
perhaps we'll bring it in by violence. But it is only those
who recognize that they have nothing to offer to God, and
therefore cry out to Him for mercy, only those will enter
the kingdom by grace. Charles Spurgeon once said, the
way to rise in the kingdom is to sink in ourselves. Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The
next beatitude in verse 4 is, blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted. Now, that first half, those who
mourn, He's not talking here about grieving over death or
grieving over suffering. Again, it's a golden chain. It's
looking at us in our different stages as we move along. This
is another part, a second stage of that golden chain. It's one
thing to acknowledge that you're poor in spirit, that you have
nothing to offer God, but it's a completely other thing to then
grieve over it and to mourn over it. The mourning here, therefore,
refers to spiritual repentance. You've discovered that you're
poor in spirit, that you have nothing to offer to God, and
you grieve because of it. You mourn because of how broken
you are, of how rebellious you have been. The problem we have
in the church today simply is too little sorrow for our sin
among God's people. We need true repentance. We need
to be able to say, like Paul in Romans 7 24, wretched man
that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? But
we don't feel that way. We need to be more like David
Brainerd, that missionary to American Indians in the middle
half of the 18th…or the middle part of the 18th century. In
18 October 1740, he wrote in his journal, In my morning devotions, my soul
was exceedingly melted and bitterly mourned over my exceeding sinfulness
and vileness." Do we see that about ourselves? Recognize we
have nothing to offer and then grieve. Unfortunately, I don't
think it happens enough. And what we often do find in
ourselves is worldly sorrow, not godly sorrow. How do we distinguish
between those? Worldly sorrow is the one that
simply says, I'm sorry. And that comes at little cost.
Some can't say that, but just say, I'm sorry, little cost.
But godly sorrow means that you die to yourself, and that's a
great cost. I want to do a little exercise
with you. I want us to compare worldly
sorrow to godly sorrow, and I want you to look at your own life
and to look at your own sin and examine yourself on whether you
truly do grieve for it in the way that Jesus says that we ought
to. Let's compare worldly to godly sorrow, and I want you
to look inside yourself and to weigh this. Worldly sorrow says,
I am only sorry for what I do. Whereas godly sorrow says, I
am sorry for what I am. Worldly sorrow says, I only confess
after I've been called out for my sin. But godly sorrow says,
I repent continually because of my sinful nature. I recognize
it's always there. Worldly sorrow says, I focus
on my behavior. Whereas godly sorrow says, I
focus on my character. Worldly sorrow says, I want quick
resolution to this matter so you'll get off my back. I don't
want to deal with it. Whereas godly sorrow says, I
want deeper insight into my sinful heart. So, please hang in there
with me and let's unpack this together. Worldly sorrow says, I cannot
believe that I'm like that. Let's not talk about this anymore.
Whereas godly sorrow says, I can believe that I'm like that. Let's
talk about it more so I can address it. Worldly sorrow says, I have
an explanation for my behavior. Whereas godly sorrow says, I
am sick of all my explanations. Worldly sorrow says, I'm sorry
because I was found out. Whereas godly sorrow says, I'm
so thankful that you brought this to my attention. Worldly sorrow says, I'm sorry
you were offended, whereas godly sorrow says, I'm sorry my sinful
heart is so offensive. Altogether, too often we have
worldly sorrow, not godly sorrow, and that's why we don't see the
blessing. There was a godly woman who had to wrestle with this
some years ago, and she made a comment. She said, you know,
there's a huge difference between confession and repentance. Much easier to confess, much
harder to repent. She wrote, confession is a lot
more comfortable than repentance. I can handle confession without
too much of the Holy Spirit, but I cannot do repentance without
the Holy Spirit working in my heart. Confessing is humbling,
but repenting is death. And she's absolutely right. You
are being called to die to yourself because you recognize the darkness
and vileness of your heart and see that you have nothing to
offer God and only in Him is there hope. And what happens
when you do that? He gives us the blessing of the
second half of verse 4, for they shall be comforted. What a wonderful
thing. We mourn over our sin. We mourn
over the brokenness and the blackness of our hearts. We mourn over
the sins of others. We mourn over the bitter consequences
of sin, both our sin and when we feel the effects of somebody
else's sin. And we do mourn over those things.
But we don't have to mourn forever, because all throughout the New
Testament, the promise is that God is triumphing over evil,
and the day will come where all this is set aside, and all those
promises come to us through Jesus. You can take comfort in that
promise right now. If you are going through the
hardship of dealing with the consequences of your own sin,
and they're heavy upon you, or you're dealing with the consequences
of somebody else who has hurt you, and you're the one who carries
it, Or perhaps you're dealing with the consequences of living
in a fallen world as you deal with disease and illness and
brokenness of your body that may not be due to somebody's
moral failure, but is just part of living in a broken world.
You can take comfort in the fact that one day this will be no
more for God's people. And of course, the ultimate fulfillment
of that is on that final day when sin will be no more, and
our Lord has returned, and the new heavens and the new earth
have been created. He's brought us into the fullness
of His kingdom. And like Revelation 7, 17 says,
God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. God comforts
us even now with that promise through Jesus because of what
He's done. And that brings us to the last of these beatitudes
for today in verse 5, "'Blessed are the meek, for they shall
inherit the earth.'" Again, the golden chain. When you recognize
that you're poor in spirit and have nothing to offer God, then
you mourn over the brokenness of your sin, and you realize,
I am nothing. I have nothing better, nothing
to offer God, and that makes me no better than this other
person. And you can be meek and gentle to others because you
recognize that they're broken sinners just like you, even when
they hurt you. Even when they sin against you,
you realize they're just like me and I'm just like them. Meek does not mean weak or effeminate
or disadvantaged or powerless. Meek means being able to see
yourself as you truly are before God. That's one of the toughest
things. We don't want to see that. We want to pretend. But once
you see yourself as you truly are before God as He sees you,
then you can finally see yourself as you truly are before others. And that makes you meek, that
makes you humble, that makes you gentle towards them. Again,
it's comparatively easy to be honest with God about our sin,
but it's so much more difficult when you allow others to see
your own sin, or even more when you allow others to speak to
you about your own sin. It's one thing like, you know,
we just did a confession of sin a few moments ago. I can read
a few words and say that to God, but to have you tell me that
I'm a miserable sinner? That's a lot tougher. True meekness
not only acknowledges our sin before God, but acknowledges
it before others. Let's face it, people of God,
there's not a single respectable person in this room, including
the pastor. There isn't. So why do we pretend? Why do we hide it? Why do we
constantly wear the mask? But when we recognize our poverty
of spirit, and then we mourn over our sin, and we surrender
our rights before God, and we submit to His will, that makes
us gentle with other sinners. And it's this kind of gentleness,
this kind of meekness that actually makes you strong, not weak, strong.
Because it's a strength that's accompanied by genuine dependence
upon God and His strength. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians
12.10, when I am weak, then I am strong. And what did he mean?
When I recognize my own weakness and rely upon God, then I have
real strength. It's a strength that's never
used to domineer others, never used to assert yourself over
others. It's a strength that is used to serve others. And
when you have that kind of meekness, he says, then the blessing of
the second half is you shall inherit the earth. Again, wholly
unexpected, right? Because in our culture, we're
told that it's those who are self-assertive, those who are tough, those who
don't, you know, get in the front. You know, if you lead the way,
if it's all about you, you will succeed in life. That's the message
we have everywhere we turn to. Meek people get nowhere. They
finish last. Everyone ignores them. Everyone
tramples over them. That's why Jesus says, the first
will be last and the last will be first. On that last day when
you see those people that you consider to be nothing according
to worldly standards, and they're in the front of the line, and
all the people like me who think very highly of themselves are
going to be all the way in the back. That's what the Scripture
is telling us. It's a paradoxical blessing because,
again, it's not given to you because of anything that you've
done. It's not your merit, but it's given to you because of
grace. We don't inherit the earth in this life. It comes when Jesus
comes on that last day, the triumph of His last day. And He tells
us then that everything, everything will be ours if we belong to
Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 3, 21, Paul
says, let no one boast in men, for all things are yours, and
you are Christ's and Christ's gods. All these things are ours. And He gives it to us as a blessing,
not because we deserve it. So, people of God, we look at
all three of these, and they show us broken people who deserve
nothing, who have nothing to offer God, and who are so broken
by their sin that we are willing to admit it to others and to
point to the only one who can give us what we need, which is
Jesus. And that leads us to our last point, that in the end,
we are blessed through Jesus. All the blessings that we've
read come to us through Him. And they're all unexpected, I
might even say even paradoxical to the way the world thinks.
It's the poor who receive the kingdom. It's the meek who inherit
the earth. It's a complete reversal of all
the values of society. And the reason we can say that
is because you don't receive them because you earn them. You
don't receive them, the second half of the beatitude, because
of what happens in the first half. It simply comes to us because
of grace, and that grace comes to us through Jesus. One of the
things you need to see in this passage is Jesus is not just
the one who is preaching about these blessings, but He's the
one who makes them so. He is the doer. He is the agent.
He is the one who accomplishes and brings those blessings into
effect. In verse 3, when we talk about
the poor in spirit, Jesus is the one then who supplies our
need because He Himself is perfectly rich in spirit. Paul says in
Philippians 419, my God will supply every need of yours according
to His riches and glory in Christ Jesus. How rich is He? He takes, as we said a moment
ago, His fullness of His merit, and He gives it to you who don't
deserve it, and He takes upon Himself fully your sin, and He
bears the consequences of it so that you never will taste
even one drop of God's wrath. That's why this king can then
sit there and say, come into my kingdom. It's because of His
grace and what He was willing to do for you. What about the
second beatitude? Mourning. Was there ever anyone
who wept more over the sins of others than Jesus? Anyone who
wept more over the consequences of judgment and of death, and
especially over those who would not receive Him? He mourned as
He looked at Jerusalem and said, this is John's translation, you
boneheads. You don't get it." And he cried
because they were rejecting him. He didn't sit there and just
start, oh, you guys. Okay, that's the way you want
to be? Well, no. He wept over them. He wept when
he saw what sin had done to his friend Lazarus. He saw him in
the grave and he wept because he saw the consequences of our
sin. And yet this Jesus who mourned over our sin didn't sit there
and say, huh, but instead He came to comfort us. One of the
most amazing stories that's only found in the Gospel of Luke,
in Luke chapter 4 verse 16, Jesus goes into the synagogue in His
hometown in Nazareth. It's the Sabbath day, they're
in worship, they hand Him a scroll, He opens up to Isaiah 61, and
He reads it. This is what He reads, "'The
Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed
Me to preach good news.' To whom? To the poor. He has sent me to
do what? To bind up the brokenhearted,
to comfort all who mourn, and to provide for those who grieve
in Zion. To bestow on them a crown of
beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. This
prophecy looks forward to the coming of the Messiah and says
He's going to comfort you in all your distress and in all
your hurt, and some of you really need to hear that. And you don't
need to wait in for the future because at the end, Jesus rolled
up the scroll and Luke 4, He says, this passage is fulfilled
in your hearing. Even as you've heard it, it's
come to pass because the King has arrived, the King on a cross. That's how I comfort. because
I forgive you of your sins, and because you're forgiven of your
sins, I bring you into my kingdom, and I will make all things new,
and I will erase all that suffering." That's how He comforts us. He
is in the process even now of reversing all the effects of
the fall of everything that you and I have done. You see, all
these blessings come to us through Him. The last one then, briefly,
meek. Jesus is the epitome of meekness,
who never thought of himself more highly than he ought, who
always relied on God. There was no arrogance in Him.
He says in Matthew 11, 29, take my yoke upon you and learn from
me, for I am gentle, and it's, by the way, the same word in
the Greek language as meek, for I am gentle, I am meek and lowly
in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. In Isaiah 42,
as it looks forward to the coming of the Messiah to Jesus, it says
in verse 2, he will not shout or cry out or raise his voice
in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. He's not coming
up with all this bluster where he's going to show up and shout
and make a lot of noise and point to himself and say, look at me.
He comes only to do the quiet things, to care for you. You
know what a bruised reed is? You know, I don't know if you've
ever had reeds. You ever been in a place where you can see
them growing in the water? And they can be very sturdy and actually
very hard to break. But sometimes you'll see one
of them, it says a bruised reed, one that has been bent. And that
bend, boy, you know, you can just then take it and snap it.
And He says, He's going to come to you. Some of you are bruised
reeds in what you're dealing with now. because of your diseases
and your conditions or your broken relationships in your marriage
or because things that have happened to you in your job and your bruise,
and he's saying he's not going to snap you in two, because that's
what the world will do. And some of you are a smoldering
wick. You're like a little candle, and you've got that little bit
of a flame, and you're saying, I don't know how I'm sputtering. And he's
not going to come and say, boom, He comes and He protects you,
and He cares for you, and He provides for you. That's who
this Jesus is. He looks weak, especially when
He was on the cross, and yet the wonder of all that is that
this man on the cross was the creator of all things, the Lord
of the universe, and He is both powerful and meek. He is the
lion and the lamb, and He's the one who comes and says that when
you trust in Him, you will receive all the riches. All of the earth
will be yours on that last day. This is who your Savior is. These
Beatitudes simply describe who you are as a disciple, but it
drives you back to Jesus. When you see yourself as you
truly are, you have nowhere else to go but to Him. We look at
them, and they show that we're broken sinners. When you recognize
that you are poor in spirit and you have nothing to offer God,
then if you are His, you will mourn for your sin. You will
mourn over it, and that will drive you to Him. And you will
recognize that you're no better than anyone else, and you will
learn to be gentle with other people as you mimic His meekness. And all these things drive you
to look to Jesus, to His grace. And all this is because of that
grace. It's all because of Jesus alone. He makes it possible.
Truly people of God, we are blessed. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven,
how thankful we are that we are the blessed people. The world
doesn't think so. The world likes to make fun of
us, mock us, trample over us, and do many things, and yet ours
is the kingdom. Ours will be all the earth. Ours
is even the comfort now, not because we deserve it, O God,
but because Jesus Christ deserves it. And so we give you great
thanks for Him, He who is the King of the kingdom, the Lord
over all creation, Lord of our hearts. And we thank you that
He came to comfort, to not break us in two, to not snuff us out.
but that He came to make us something that we are not, to take ugly
and broken people and make us beautiful once again. Sometimes it seems impossible,
it seems certainly to go against what we see in the world, but
with eyes of faith we are able to see and to trust that Jesus
is in fact doing that. Father, there are folks here,
however, who are going through suffering and through hurt, through
heartache, through distress, where perhaps it becomes very,
very hard to see that your Son Jesus is for them and not against
them. And we pray that the things that we have seen and read today
would remind us once again that He is so much for us that He
gave His life. And if He was willing to do that,
how much more will He not, as Paul himself says in Romans 8,
be willing to give us all other things? Help us to learn to trust. Comfort
us in our distress.
Blessed are You...
Series The Gospel of Matthew
| Sermon ID | 921251310376069 |
| Duration | 42:17 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Matthew 5:1-5 |
| Language | English |
Documents
Add a Comment
Comments
No Comments
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.
