Blessed are the poor in spirit, our focus of the day, and our focus, yes, also in the supper of the Lord, where only those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God, of God's kingdom, are to come. For to enter the heavenly kingdom, we must recognize our own spiritual poverty. That's the only way in. that precisely here at the most crucial point of life, that precisely here we are helpless to help ourselves. For God grants his heavenly kingdom only to those who know that they have no right to it. As Jesus says, I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. The kingdom of heaven is for those who know their need. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Who are the poor in spirit? The opposite of those who think they are rich in spirit. Jesus, in the opening words of the most famous sermon by Jesus, speaks in ironic reversal of all that the crowds and the disciples expect. They think that the rich are blessed by God and that wealth is one of the great marks of God's blessedness. And so many of the Pharisees who will prove to be the rivals of Jesus and in fact his enemies will trust in their own moral power in the Beatitudes. It's all the other way. Those who trust in their own moral power will find themselves last. Whereas those who know their need of God and who think they do not belong will end up first. And so we have that saying of Jesus so many times said, the last shall be first, the first last. And so let us look then at our text, its setting, its teacher, its irony, and the spiritual claims it makes upon our lives. First the setting, the mountain. We have Jesus seeing the crowds, says our story, going up to a mountainside. We are in Galilee, and ancient Christians marked the place by memory and tradition. And so when Christian pilgrims began to arrive in the fourth century in the age of Constantine, when, yes, holy tourism begins in the land of the Bible, they point out a hillside. That is, the Galilean Christians point out a hillside on the northwestern shore. of that lake called Galilee. And they say that's where it was. That's where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. And ancient Christians built a church there, an octagon church, eight sides. In fact, the most ancient Christian buildings are persistently eight-sided churches. The eight sides seem to reflect the eight Beatitudes preached in that place. The earliest octagon church we know of happens to be in Capernaum and the expansion of a fisherman's house that is marked in ancient graffiti as the house of Peter. So Peter's home house, okay, fishing business, fishing home, fisherman's house gets expanded by late first century into an octagon church and that is still visible in the excavation of that place. The eight sides seemed to reflect the eightfold Beatitudes. And now on that mountain itself, the Mount of the Beatitudes, in the 1930s, ironically, Benito Mussolini built an eight-sided church. Mussolini? Yeah, that fascist of Italy? Yes, ironically. Yeah, the fascist dictator builds an eight-sided church, and inside each of the eight walls is a beatitude in Latin, paid for by one of the tyrants of the history of Europe. It's ironic, but then again, this sermon is full of irony, isn't it? That Jesus does not start with a blessing upon those who are rich in virtue. It's the other way around. And that's gospel to our ears, isn't it? That Jesus begins with those who do not have him. That's gospel. And so we have the mountain and the mountain and the crowd and the teaching all evoke an earlier mountain and crowd and teaching, Moses on Mount Sinai and Moses on the mountain coming down with the law of God and teaching the way of life for biblical Israel, a nation that had already been brought to that place, not because of their works, No, but because of the grace of God and the covenant with Abraham and the fact that they had been the chosen people by mercy and that even in Egypt when they nearly forgotten all this, God had brought them out. And so Exodus 19 says, the word of the Lord through Moses to Israel, I have brought you to myself. That's the chapter before the 10 commandments. And even the preface of the Ten Commandments focuses upon the grace of God. Before any commandments are ever given, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of that land of slavery. That's how the commandments begin. Declarations of grace. I brought you to myself on eagle's wings. Exodus 19. And so we see that the gospel, Old Testament and new, is not premised upon our spiritual power. but upon the opposite. When we were powerless, Christ died for us, so asserts the apostle Paul, and that ironic truth is enshrined here in the sermon. And so Jesus, the master teacher, better than Moses, the incarnate son of God, Moses, the servant of the kingdom, Jesus, the very son of the kingdom, yes, Jesus, the better teacher, teaches then the way of life on that mountainside in Galilee. And we see in the grammar of our Greek text that it's not Jesus teaching the crowds, oddly enough. His disciples came to him, says our text, and he opened his mouth and began to teach them. The them is the disciples. They are already entering. The crowd is allowed to hear and the sermon becomes the invitation to all who recognize their spiritual poverty to come and enter the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the poor in spirit. The kingdom of heaven belongs to them. Wow. That's gospel. And so we see that Jesus is actually the master poet. Did you notice that the eight lines are actually poetry? And Bible translations traditionally print them in poetical form, which is exactly right. Jesus often speaks in poetry or in semi-poetry, and we find that Jesus is the best of all poets. When the Bible breaks into poetry, you know something important is happening. The first poem in the Bible, what is it? Let us make man in our image. According to our likeness, Genesis 1.26, second poem in the Bible, at last, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, she shall be called woman for she was taken from man. Hey, that's important. When the Bible breaks into poetry, pay attention. And when you break into poetry, other people should pay attention. At least we hope the poems are good. We hope the poems are good. But we're moved to poetry often by the deepest of feelings and the most ardent of emotions and the greatest of our thoughts. And so it's no surprise to discover that one third of the Bible is poetry. Yeah, God's a pretty good poet. And we have entire poetical books, the book of Psalms. We've sung from it already in our opening hymn, Psalm 103, paraphrased. We've sung from it already in the hymn on the Beatitudes. And so in the Gospels, Jesus speaks not only as master teacher, but as master poet. And in this particular poem, eight pairs of lines, all beginning with blessed, a blessedness, a beatitude, from the Latin term for blessedness, a beatitude upon some class of person, and then the particular condition or the particular result of the beatitude, okay, the kingdom of heaven, or inheriting the earth, or being shown mercy, or astonishingly, most of all, they will see God. All right, so the class that is blessed and the content of the blessing eight times in our text. Now, in the Old Testament, the supreme blessing of all is the sevenfold blessing. When Abraham is called, again, the text breaks into poetry. Genesis chapter 12, verse 2. All right, the text is said in verse 1, go from your home, the land of your birth, the house of your father, go to the land that I will show you. And then the text breaks into poetry. And I'll make your name great and you will be a blessing and those who bless you I will bless and the one who curses you I will curse and in you all the families of the nation shall find blessedness. I think I left one out. There are seven. There are seven, and the idea is that Abraham is to be blessed as completely as anybody could possibly be blessed within the mortal world, the sevenfold blessing. And so in the Bible, the number seven is the number of completeness, the number of entire holiness, and the sevenfold blessing becomes the magisterial blessing, the greatest blessing, the supreme blessing, Old Testament style. Notice, Jesus outdoes it by one. That's on purpose. He's giving you, disciple of Jesus, a greater blessing than even Abraham had. And so the eightfold blessing outdoes the seven by one. And in ancient Christian teaching, the idea was that seven plus one meant the consummation, the final victory of God. The defeat of evil, the resurrection of the dead, the final reign of Christ in all heaven and earth. That was what the ancient fathers called the eighth day, which was the everlasting Sabbath. So the eight lines evoke that, at least in ancient Christian teaching, and there's a point to it. So Jesus the teacher, Jesus the poet, the poem itself, And as I've already pointed out, Jesus the ironist, that is the overturning of the expected order of things, not God's blessing upon the rich and the virtuous, which is what the crowds expect, but the upside down blessedness of God's right side up kingdom. In the Beatitudes we have the upside down world set right and those who are poor in spirit Blessed with the heavenly kingdom. Again, the thesis, to enter the heavenly kingdom, we have to recognize our own spiritual poverty, that here at this most crucial point of life, we are precisely powerless. And unless we understand our spiritual poverty, we do not enter in. And entering is entirely a matter of grace. That's the best news of all. The best news of all. When I was in high school, I tried to set these to music, these beatitudes. I didn't succeed very well. I do write music and sometimes it actually gets sung. Yeah, okay, that's good. My beatitude song just didn't work. And I thought in those days that these were eight roughly independent sayings, rather like the individual proverbs of the book of Proverbs, which sometimes track in context one after another, but usually do not. Proverbs is very clearly a collection of the sayings and precepts of the wise, very much a collection. Sometimes you have themes within a single unit or a single chapter, but independent sayings is most of the collection that starts in chapter 10 of that book, the individual sayings. And then when I was a brand new prof at Geneva, I think you've heard of that place, 1992, I was given the task of lecturing on the Beatitudes and I was given a lecture handout, an outline And in that outline, the Beatitudes were given a plot line, an order, and as soon as I saw the order, I knew it was right. And I wondered why I had never seen it before, and I felt just, yeah, I'll say it this way, dumb. that I had never sufficiently meditated upon the Beatitudes to see their spiritual unity and the plot line that Jesus weaves for us in these eight blessed sentences. The plot line is clear. Why hadn't I ever seen it? At last I did. And it's confirmed in a great amount of the commentary literature and it's actually easy and you will see it I think. Maybe you know it already. In the eight blessings we have a pattern of three plus one, three plus one, that makes eight. First, three plus one, we begin with beatitudes of need. Blessed are the poor in spirit. That's certainly something needy. Blessed are those who mourn. Those are people who lack something precious to them. Blessed are the meek. Those are the people who know they have no power of their own. Three beatitudes on need and deficiency. And then what happens? Three plus one, I said. A beatitude of transformation. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Now that begins with a statement of need, doesn't it? If you're hungry and thirsty, you don't have it. What do you not have? You don't have righteousness. But notice the next clause. They will be filled. God sits us down at the banquet table, the spiritual banquet. like this one, and he fills them with righteousness. A transformation happens in the fourth beatitude. So beatitudes of need move to divine transformation. God answers us in our need. But wait, there are four more, and it's three plus one. Beatitudes 5, 6, and 7, what are they all about? They're about virtues and righteous action within the world. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. And because you've received mercy and are now a partaker of the heavenly vision, How can your life in the world then be what it was before? And instead of the pettiness and the rivalries and maybe even the outright hatreds that has characterized your life in the past, now you reconcile the warring partners of your neighborhood, of your life, of your family, maybe even of the world, and you become the peacemaker. And the virtues of God now spread from you to others. And people begin to call you, oh yeah, that's God's child. Beatitudes 5, 6, and 7 are beatitudes of virtue or virtuous action. One more beatitude to close the poem. How does the world sometimes respond to those who now love God and exercise mercy and live with purity and seek to make peace among the warring neighbors and nations of the world? How does the world sometimes respond to such people? Well, they persecute them. Hating God, they also hate those who love God. And so the last beatitude is blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. The very thing you lacked in the first beatitude, now you've been granted by heavenly gift, righteousness. And you're now exercising that heavenly gift within daily life in the mortal world. And sometimes that raises the world to oppose you. So there is Leah Shibiru held by Boko Haram, the only one of her 100 classmates who did not renounce Christ for Islam. All the others released. She alone enslaved. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. And now we know that we've come full circle because the very first bit of content in the Beatitudes, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is also the content in the last. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And when we hear that phrase repeated at the end of the eighth Beatitude, we know the poem is over. We've come full circle. And those who've been transformed because of the mercy of God are now those who own the heavenly kingdom. Three plus one, three plus one in a transforming grace and a grace that does not lead to spiritual pride Pharisee style that says, yeah, I did this. I earn it. I am more deserving. Thank you, God. I'm not like this other guy over here. No, no, no, no. but a virtue that remains humble and poor. And then we have the content of blessedness. Eight gifts, no, seven, because one we see twice. The kingdom of heaven, what does it mean? Here within the mortal world it is already given and it is citizenship under God the king. alongside all angels and saints in earth and heaven, reconciled, holy, righteous, blessed forever and ever, a kingdom that is both within this world and beyond this world, in present mortal life and beyond mortal life, that's the kingdom of heaven. And so Jesus says in Matthew's gospel, if I cast out demons by the spirit of God, then the kingdom of heaven has come upon you. That kingdom can be here. And it is here by faith in Jesus. And those who are poor in spirit naturally mourn that poverty. So blessed are those who mourn. And who will comfort them? God. And such persons mourning their spiritual poverty are naturally meek. And notice the gift here. For it is not as though God will throw away the earth. There's no late great planet earth in God's plan for the world. The earth, precious, beloved by God, will be inherited by the meek. For heaven embraces earth, and earth is not despised by God. Even the earth is embraced within the heavenly kingdom. Earth shall never be disowned. And so the meek inherited. The fourth blessedness, righteousness. We've hungered and thirsted for it. We hunger and thirst still for its perfection. But the gift has begun. And life now is different in Christ. And those who have this story in their soul therefore always exercise mercy upon those who lack it. And mercy becomes a characteristic of life. Blessed are the merciful, they will receive mercy. And so yes, even Stephen being stoned in Acts chapter seven, prays, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. Yeah, even the murderers. Lord, do not hold this sin against them. That's mirroring Jesus in his own cross. Blessed are the merciful and the pure in heart. All right, we're working on it, right? Not there yet, are we? But in God's grace, the virtues of God are replacing those old things that once ruled our lives. And the end result is that we will be pure at the hour of our death. And we will see God. In the meantime, such persons are peacemakers, and will be called by the rest of the world that understands it a bit, the children of God. And yes, sometimes persecuted, but the kingdom of heaven is theirs. So comfort, mercy, righteousness, membership in God's family, earth and heaven freely given, the beatific vision, the vision of God himself, soul to soul, in all the endless ages yet to come. And Jesus, the son of God from heaven, source of all blessedness, who opens both earth and heaven to those who know their need. To enter the heavenly kingdom, we must recognize our own spiritual poverty that precisely here, we are precisely powerless to help ourselves. And by the grace of Jesus Christ, by his life, by his death, by his resurrection, God grants his transforming kingdom into the midst of our mortal life for everlasting blessedness. Thanks be to God. Shall we pray? Lord Jesus Christ, we bow before you with awe, with reverence, with love, with devotion, because you were the one who came in poverty and in need, born of the manger, crucified ignominiously by Roman tyranny, the crowd shouting insults upon you. And you did these things in deepest love that we might become rich and enriched forever by your mercies. So bless us now within our earthly pilgrimage, in the midst of our humility and our lowly life, and grant us, Lord, that blessed faith that leads to the virtues of God within our own lowly way, that we should be called the children of God, and that we should receive the blessed vision of God forever and ever and ever. We pray these things, Lord, not only for our own good, though that be true, but also for the greater glory of the triune God, who is glorified by such deeds in our lowly life. Hear our prayer through Jesus, we pray. Amen.