Two weeks ago, we looked at the true, everlasting freedom that is found only by being a child of God. Last week, we discovered that not everyone is a child of God. We found that only by accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and Lord is a person able to be adopted into God’s family. Good works won’t do it. Coming to church every Sunday of your life won’t do it. Working in and for the Church won’t do it. Even being a pastor or priest or rabbi won’t do it. Other religions won’t do it. We found in scripture that other than Jesus Christ,
Today, I want to look at just nine of those promises of blessing by God. They are found in Matthew 5:3-12, and are commonly known as the “Beatitudes”. As we hear again these words from our Lord, let’s open our hearts and minds. Let’s listen carefully to what Jesus says. Nine times Jesus uses the word “blessed”. Some translations substitute the word “happy”, but “blessed” goes way beyond just feeling happy or even content. “Blessed” means to receive a gift or favor from God. “Blessed” is the opposite of being cursed. One is a favor, the other is a punishment.
The promise from God here (and it is a truly awesome promise) is that if we, who are His children, will adopt these outlooks on life, these attitudes of living, He has blessings to bestow upon us. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” (Matthew 5:3) This is translated in Luke as “Blessed are the poor” and this has caused some major confusion in the teachings of the Church. This passage is not referring to material wealth. There are blessed and not blessed people who are materially poor for sure. But not all materially poor people are blessed by God. Nor are all materially rich people blessed by God. Some are; some are not. Jesus is talking here about our spirit. The “poor in spirit” are those people who recognize their condition before God – a condition, when comparing oneself to God, of being spiritually poor and dependent on God.
It is more than just being humble. It is comparing myself to the perfection of Jesus Christ, rather than comparing myself to other human beings. It is accepting the truth that not only do I not measure up, but also I am like a miserable beggar standing next to a great King. Remember the story Jesus told about the tax collector and the Pharisee who were praying? The self-righteous Pharisee prayed to God, “Thank you, God, for not making me like those other people, who are sinners” (my paraphrase). He was comparing himself to other humans and felt quite proud that he was “better” than they. But the tax collector – well, that is another story. He was comparing himself to God and couldn’t even lift his eyes toward Heaven as he begged and prayed, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!”
Which one of these men was poor in spirit in his own eyes? Which one of these men received God’s promised blessing? The person who recognizes his own spiritual poverty and turns toward God in humility has this promise from God. “Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
But it does not stop with just recognizing our poverty of spirit. This is only the starting point for abundant blessings from God. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Once a person recognizes his or her true spiritual condition, it should indeed bring that person grief. One who is honest about their spiritual poverty and is not moved to godly sorrow cannot know God’s grace. Have you ever known a person who was living deeply in sin, knew they were, yet were not sorry about it one bit? I have met people who were doing just that. They are living sinful lives, know they are living sinful lives and are perfectly happy to live sinful lives. I do not understand how anyone can know they are deliberately living a sinful life, look at Jesus’ suffering on the cross for our sins and not be moved to mourning, grief and tears.
But to those children of God who do mourn because of their sins, there is the blessing of comfort found in and through Jesus Christ. Oh, we may not “feel” like we are being comforted in this life. But He has promised to personally “wipe away all of our tears” in the world to come. A child of God recognizes his or her spiritual poverty, grieves over it and then comes to God in a spirit of meekness. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.”
“Meekness” is humility. It is power under control. It is the willingness to submit to the will of God. It is not being a pushover for any bully who wants to take advantage of you. Jesus is the best example of meekness ever. He was all-powerful, yet He submitted to the will of the Father, even unto death on the cross for you and me, even though we in no way, shape or form deserved it!
Throughout history, God humbles the proud and exalts the meek, the humble, who are His children and submit to His will. He says, “For these shall inherit the Earth.” I believe He is talking about the “new Earth” spoken of in Revelation.
Next, Jesus says, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled.” God’s child comes to God in submission and meekness and develops a spiritual hunger and thirst for what is right in God’s eyes. Do that and Jesus says you will be “filled”, meaning to be “satisfied”. Nothing in the world truly satisfies. The more you get, the more you want. The world is full of promises it can’t keep. It can pacify, but not satisfy. But God promises to satisfy our spirit in our search, hunger and thirst for righteousness in His eyes, and life in His Kingdom. This hunger and thirst for righteousness has a pitfall that we must be aware of. When we want to be righteous so much that we can taste it, we must be careful of becoming like that Pharisee I spoke of earlier. We can become so self-righteous that we fail to extend God’s mercy to others. So Jesus reminds us about that by telling us, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
If you want it, give it! Mercy is a vital ingredient to any relationship. What would a marriage be like without mercy? What would a church be like without mercy? Children of God must be willing to show mercy to those who are wrong. Now, that does not mean that you look upon someone living in sin and turn your back on them saying, “Oh, that’s okay. Everything will be all right.” It means that you teach them, instruct them, make them aware of God’s will, God’s punishment, but most of all, God’s Way of salvation and God’s love.
To show others mercy is the fruit of a person who has seen his condition before God, grieved over it, submitted to God in meekness, come out hungry and thirsty for what is right in God’s eyes, and sees all of this as a gift of God’s mercy and grace. Merciful are those who have recognized the mercy that God has shown to them. It is this balance of righteousness and mercy that is the most effective way for the children of God to witness to the unbelievers of this world. But, as I said, mercy does not mean sacrificing God’s will for us to be holy, meaning, “set apart”.
Jesus says next, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God.” It is impossible to see God clearly if our heart is not pure. That is, if we do the right things for the wrong reasons, our vision of God will be foggy and blurred. There are, unfortunately, a number of people who seem to be doing God’s work, but in reality, they are simply pushing their own agenda, for their own glory and edification. They tend to take God’s words, twist them a little, put their own spin on them, and then use them to manipulate people into following them rather than the Jesus Christ of the Gospels. Understand this, you cannot be phony and see God. You cannot pervert His righteousness and expect to receive His blessing. A pure- hearted person gets that way by the earlier blessings mentioned in this message.
He is not merely talking about creating a lack of hostility in the world. He is not merely talking about establishing a worldly peace among warring nations here. No, Jesus is talking about the peace of the spirit within each of us. We, who are God’s children, need to be not only “peace lovers”, but also “peacemakers”!
Many people do not love peace; they just hate conflict. Anytime conflict arises, they either stick their head in the sand and hope the conflict will go away, or they turn tail and run from it. God’s children are to share the peace of God with others. We are to enter the conflicts that sin and darkness bring into the lives of others and shine God’s light, bring God’s peace into those conflicts. There are many folks out there who are persecutors of Jesus Christ and God’s adopted children.
Now that is the spiritual maturity that we all should strive for. To be a person who, like Jesus, will endure suffering for God’s purpose and God’s Kingdom. The questions at this point are:
God wants you to be His child. That can only be accomplished through your acceptance of the work on the cross, completed on your behalf, by Jesus Christ. You can accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and Lord, or you can reject Him. There is no middle ground. You either are a child of God, an adopted brother or sister of Christ, or you are a child of the Devil. One is a blessing; the other is a curse. It is your choice. I pray you choose wisely. Amen.