The Key to True Joy - Part III Matthew 5:8-12

The Sermon on the Mount as the Path to True Joy

The last two Sundays, we have looked at the first five Beatitudes. And this morning, we are going to look at the sixth, seventh, and eighth. What we have seen is that this is the beginning of the greatest sermon ever preached.

This famous sermon known as the Sermon on the Mount preached by Jesus. As we might expect, the greatest sermon is going to have a good beginning. I remember taking speech class in the eighth grade where our teacher stressed that we begin a speech with an attention getter.

When you are giving a speech, you are going to be speaking for several minutes, and sometimes even up to an hour. The speech giver does not want to be stuck up in front with no one listening. This is why it is so important to grab the attention of your audience right from the get-go.

When you do this, you are much more likely to have their attention for the remainder of the speech. We would expect the greatest sermon ever preached to have an attention getter, and it does. Jesus starts the Sermon on the Mount with a bang.

As he is speaking on this mountain overlooking the Sea of Galilee, he meets people right where they are at in life. Jesus knew that everyone's deepest longing is to be happy, and so what he does is tells the crowds how to be happy.

In order to be truly happy, where your joy is full and never comes to an end, you need to find it in your Creator. So Jesus tells the crowd that in order to be happy, they need to be in a right relationship with God.

They do this by humbling themselves before him and repenting. Then Jesus explains that once this happens, believers are sent down the road to experiencing happiness. On this road, believers are meek, they hunger and thirst for righteousness, and they are merciful, as we have seen.

Now today, we are going to see the last three ways to true joy, according to Jesus. At this time, I encourage you to turn with me to Matthew 5, where we will be looking at verses 8 through 12. And if you're using a Red Bible in the pews, it's on page 962.

Once again, this is the end of this big three-part sermon that introduces the Sermon on the Mount. This sermon is titled, The Key to True Joy. The Key to True Joy. And our big idea, as we have seen, is this.

To follow God in Christ is the only path to true happiness. And the sixth way how is through pursuing holiness to truly see God. We'll see this in verse 8, the sixth beatitude. We have already seen Jesus say in verse 6, the fourth beatitude, that those who pursue righteousness in every way will be satisfied as they pursue God and reflect him more.

Then in the previous beatitude to this one, the fifth beatitude, Jesus focused on one aspect of that righteousness. That is that those who are forgiven are the ones who forgive others. Now in verse 8, we will see Jesus talk about righteousness in a general way once again.

Let's see what Jesus says in the sixth beatitude in verse 8. He says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. When we hear the word pure, a few things may come to mind. From our experience, we often think of purity when we think of our drinking water.

Some towns have cleaner water than others. Brianne and I came from Spring Park, a west suburb of Minneapolis right next to Mound, where we did not have clean water. So much so that we had to purchase our own drinking water from the grocery store.

If you're wondering what was wrong with our water, we got a letter from the town that said that there was a paint solvent in the water, which is not a pleasant thing to know. We were glad to move here where we can drink clean water, which of course is the well water, and we drink it right from the faucet.

The cleanest water I've ever seen in my life was when my family and I took a trip to Alaska. We stayed at a cabin in Denali National Park. That's the park where Mount McKinley is. And there was a restaurant we went to several times while we were there.

And the water at this restaurant came from a fresh spring nearby. The water was so pure and refreshing that we did not even want to order sodas or lemonade or tea or anything like that. The water was that enjoyable.

So the opposite of pure water is dirty water. We also use the word pure to describe morality. We call a rated R movie with lots of raunchy stuff in it a dirty movie. And we call a family-friendly movie a clean or pure movie.

In fact, there's a Christian movie producing company that only produces clean movies, and so they call their company Pureflix, which intentionally is a play on the company Netflix. The way that Scripture often uses the word pure is to describe one who is morally upright.

This is how the Apostle Paul uses it in 1 Timothy 5 .22, where he writes,. What he is saying to Timothy in this letter is to keep himself pure by not taking part in the sins of others. This is how Jesus is using the word pure in this beatitude.

To be pure is to be holy. The author of Hebrews says the same thing Jesus says when he wrote in Hebrews 12 .14, that without holiness, no one will see the Lord. One thing that we hear over and over again from Scripture, and what you've heard several times as we've gone through the beatitudes, is that God is the author of all pleasure.

If you want to be happy, then pursue Him. The problem is that we are sinners by nature. We do not naturally desire God, but we naturally desire sin in our own way. When we desire sin, we don't desire God, and Jesus is saying that unless we are pure, we will not see Him.

The greatest experience one can possibly have is knowing God, and our sin keeps us from this. The site that this verse is talking about is both figurative and literal. It is figurative in the sense that Scripture speaks of seeing God, as synonymous with knowing God, and to know God is not only to have knowledge of Him, but to be blown away by how wonderful He is.

So to see Him is to love Him. This knowledge of God is something that believers have and unbelievers do not. The Apostle Paul says this in 2 Corinthians 4, verses 4 -6,. The God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul also prays for the church in Ephesus to grow in this knowledge of God in Ephesians 1, verses 17 -20. He prays for them that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might, that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places.

One author I was reading said, when our hearts are purified at salvation, we begin to live in the presence of God. We begin to see and to comprehend Him with our new spiritual eyes. Like Moses who saw God's glory and asked to see more, as Exodus 33, verse 18 says, the one who is purified by Jesus Christ sees again and again the glory of God.

So is this your experience? Do you long for purity so that you can know God more and enjoy Him more? The path to enjoying the one who is most wonderful is through a life of holiness. Another word for holiness is purity, as the text tells us here.

I mentioned earlier that this sight of God is both figurative and literal. We saw that it is figurative through knowing, but how is it literal? It is literal in that one day we will see God with our physical eyes.

The great hope of the Christian faith is that we will be resurrected in glorified bodies. The Bible promises in the book of Revelation that there will be a new earth, and in the new earth, the capital city will be the new Jerusalem.

In this city, Jesus Christ will sit on the throne. His glory will shine physically in the form of a bright white light beaming from His throne. The brightest and most beautiful light anyone has ever seen.

One day we will see Jesus in all of His glory, and we won't die because we'll have a body that won't drop dead after seeing how great He is. In our present earthly mortal bodies, if we see God in all of His glory, this bright light that shines from Him, we'll die.

But in the age to come, we'll be able to experience this, which is such a wonderful reality. Revelation 22, verses 3 -5 tells us, No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His servants will worship Him.

They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads, and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

The only way any of us will ever experience the sweetness of knowing God now and seeing Him with our new bodies in His presence in the future is if we pursue holiness. That's the only way that we will be able to see Him.

Genuine believers are those who are on the path of holiness. And one who experiences this, this vision of God, experiences the greatest happiness. And this experience, of course, is knowing Him now, and knowing Him in the future, but seeing Him with our eyes as well.

To follow God in Christ is the only path to true happiness. And the sixth way how is by pursuing holiness to truly see God. The seventh way how to follow God in Christ is the only path to true happiness, is through becoming a messenger of reconciliation.

We'll see this in verse 9, the seventh beatitude. In this beatitude, Jesus describes another way that leads one to happiness, which is the theme we've seen in everyone. And this is experienced through being a messenger of peace.

This is what Jesus says to the crowd and to everyone in this room. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. In this point, we will dive into what Jesus means by peacemaker. As we just saw, God is holy and He desires His people to be holy.

When God created the world, it was a holy place. Adam and Eve dwelt in the garden, and there was no conflict or turmoil to be seen. The world was a place without evil and war. What changed? The Bible tells us what changed.

Sin came into the world. Historians estimate that in world history, there has been war about 80 -90 of the time. There are almost always conflicts going on. This world is largely not a place of peace.

Once sin came into the world, everything changed. Not long after the fall of Adam and Eve, their firstborn son Cain murdered their secondborn son Abel. This is the beginning of almost never-ending conflict from that point to the present.

Now, Romans 15 .33 tells us that God is the God of peace. He created the world to be peaceful, and humanity rebelled against Him, and this is no longer a peaceful place. What we learn from this is that there is a close relationship between righteousness and peace.

Before Adam and Eve sinned, there was peace, but after, there was not. In order to have peace, righteousness must be present. In other words, sin is the barrier to peace. As long as sin is in the world, there will never be lasting peace, only temporary.

In the history of our country and our world, we have heard of a great desire to bring peace to the world. This is a never-ending problem that political leaders have tried to solve. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States, wrote a 14-point proposition known as the Fourteen Points with the goal of bringing lasting peace to Europe and the world.

And what came from Wilson's Fourteen Points was an organization known as the League of Nations. This took place after World War I, but even before that, World War I was known as the war to end all wars.

This was stated since the goal was to destroy the kinds of governments that supposedly were the cause of wars. If you beat the bad guys, then war will come to an end. But Wilson and others who were influential in forming the League of Nations, what they knew was that defeating enemies with corrupt governments would not bring an end to future wars.

It would only hold them down for a time before new ones would take their place. This is why the League of Nations was formed. However, just like every other effort at lasting peace, it failed. Twenty years later, with the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party, World War II started.

A war that caused more death than the First World War, which is hard to imagine. The First World War had about 40 million deaths. The Second World War had about 70 million. World history is indeed an endless cycle of wars.

What we must understand as a church is that the Bible has the answers to life's biggest questions. The fundamental problem in every nation is the sinful human heart. As long as people continue to rebel against God, there will always be war and no peace.

This is why in order for there to be peace, there must first be righteousness. And we know the only way that righteousness comes. God is the God of peace, and he is the maker of peace in this sinful world.

God sent his son Jesus as a peacemaker to this world of hostility. The biggest conflict in this world is not between man and man. It's between God and men. God is holy, and all of humanity, starting with Adam, has rebelled against him.

Jesus comes to this world to resolve the conflict between God and mankind. As Romans 5 .1 says,. When you come to faith in Christ, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And Colossians 1 .19 -20 says,.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. When you come to faith in Christ, what happens is that the conflict between you and God is over.

Before you are saved, you are an enemy of God. But once you believe in Christ, you are forgiven, and you are adopted into God's family. To be in his family means you are brought into deep, intimate fellowship with him.

You are not only at peace with him, but you are also brought near to have this sweet fellowship. Now Jesus says that those who follow him are peacemakers. How are we to be peacemakers? Well-known pastor John MacArthur has listed four traits that mark a peacemaker, as described in scripture, and it's worth writing these down.

The first one is, a peacemaker is one who has made peace with God. As we just saw, Romans 5 .1, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Number two, a peacemaker leads others to make peace with God.

This is done through evangelism. When Peter was preaching the gospel to the Gentiles in Acts 10 .36, he said that God was sending messengers to preach the good news of peace through Jesus Christ. And Ephesians 6 .15 calls the gospel the gospel of peace.

So you are offering peace when you share Christ with someone. Number three, a peacemaker is at peace with others and aids others to have peace with others. Romans 12 .18 tells us to aim to have peace with all people.

In addition, in Philippians 4 .2 -3, the apostle Paul told the church in Philippi to help resolve a conflict between two women in the congregation. Christians are those who aim to be at peace with both believers and unbelievers.

And the fourth mark of a peacemaker is that they're able to find common ground with others. The Bible tells us, Romans 12 .18, that we are to aim to be at peace with all people. And one evidence of that is if we are those who aim to find agreement, even with those who we disagree with, even those who we strongly disagree with, you can find something that you agree with, which means that you can have a conversation with that person.

If you're just so hard-line all the time, then you can't have conversations with people, and you're not being a peacemaker. What Jesus says is that you are blessed if you do this. This is the way to happiness.

What Jesus says is these peacemakers are called sons of God. These are the true children of God. Not everyone is a child of God, but the peacemakers are. Those who know Jesus Christ as their Lord, Savior, and treasure.

His followers are the ones who will dwell in peace forever. The great reality of the future is that there will be complete peace again when sin, the barrier to peace, is forever banished. As Revelation 21 .27 says, nothing unclean will ever enter.

The new earth will be God dwelling with man again. When there is only righteousness, there will finally be lasting peace. And it's going to return for the first time in a long time. The last time there was lasting peace was when Adam and Eve were in the garden.

And a day is coming in the future when it will be here again. To follow God and Christ is the only path to true happiness. And the seventh way how is by becoming a messenger of reconciliation. The eighth way how to follow God and Christ is the only path to true happiness is through enduring persecution for Christ's sake.

This eighth and final beatitude encompasses three verses. Verses 10 -12. As I have mentioned over the last couple of weeks, there is an order to these beatitudes. Jesus isn't just rattling these off randomly.

There's a reason he says the first one first and the last one last and everything in between in the order that those are. The first three come from a negative perspective. As we saw, the poor in spirit, those who mourn, and the meek.

You need to humble yourself, be sorrowful over your sin, and control your strength. These are weak, at least apparent weakness is shown through these. But doing these, in fact, makes you strong. If you do these, then you are able to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

You are able to be merciful. You are able to travel down the road of the pure in heart. And you are able to become a vessel for God as a peacemaker. Now the eighth beatitude ties in with the seventh. We can see why Jesus lists this one last.

We can also describe this one the same way we described the first three, and that is as a negative experience for the believer. As we will read, believers do face hardships in this world because they stand with God.

As believers bring his message of peace with God, they are sometimes met with hostility. Jesus explains in Matthew 10, verses 34 -39, that the gospel of Jesus Christ will divide people, even families.

When the gospel is preached, some will believe and some will not. And inevitably, there will be friction. And in some cases, those who don't believe will persecute the ones who believe the gospel and follow Jesus.

So let's read this final beatitude in verses 10 -12. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Let's put ourselves in the shoes of those listening to Jesus' sermon. He is preaching this sermon on a mountain near the Sea of Galilee.

He is speaking to a crowd of believers and unbelievers and he is calling them to join him. He is calling them to travel down this road of full and lasting joy, but he warns them as they travel down this path that they will face hostility from a world that is opposed to God.

The night before Jesus was crucified, he told his disciples in John 15 -18, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. Then he told them in John 16 -33, in this world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

Jesus warns us that trials will come upon us as we follow him more closely. And the specific trial that he is talking about in the eighth beatitude is persecution. Now what is persecution? When we look at how this word is used in scripture, there is a spectrum.

We see one of those spectrums mentioned here in this beatitude, and then I will explain the other end of the spectrum in a little bit. Verse 11 says that persecution is when one reviles you, according to this text.

This is to accuse someone abusively. What Jesus says is people will utter all kinds of evil against you, and what he says is what they utter against you is false. To be persecuted is when you follow God, or when you follow Jesus, and you are accused by the sinful world of doing something wrong, when in fact you did nothing wrong.

Let me give you a few examples. You are fired by your employer because you refused to cheat to advance the company. In this corrupt company, you refuse to disobey God, and you get shown the door for it.

That would be persecution. Here is another one. There was once an NHL coach who didn't want any Christian athletes on his team because he didn't think they were tough enough. He, of course, had the wrong idea of what strength is.

But for a Christian to be kicked off his team would be persecution. If you are a student in school and a classmate finds out you are a Christian and they make fun of you, or they exclude you from their friend group, that is also persecution.

If you are generally mocked for your faith, you are receiving persecution. This is the kind of persecution that we face in our country mostly. And as you have followed the Lord, maybe you have experienced this to this point.

The persecution that we face now is not nearly as severe as the persecution that Syria and North Korea face as they face the prospect of death for simply being a Christian. Occasionally you hear about this on the news, but sadly the mainstream media does not report Christian persecution nearly enough because it doesn't fit their agenda.

There are Christians right now in prison awaiting death and their crime is that they are followers of Jesus. That's it. It's irrational. In Scripture, the kind of persecution that Stephen faced was death, as Acts 7, verses 54 -60 detail.

This was the persecution the first disciples of Jesus faced. In fact, there was a 4th century historian. He was the first really well-known Christian historian named Eusebius. And what he said was that 11 of the 12 apostles were martyred.

So they were killed for their faith. And the only exception was John. And he didn't have things much better. He was sent to an island in the Mediterranean. But this isn't the persecution that we experience right now in America.

My old pastor used to say that in America, we are more likely to receive a raised eyebrow than a raised fist. This is so because the founding of our country was greatly influenced by Christianity. And we live in a nation that was founded on people's right to practice whatever religion they want.

For centuries, the United States has been a safe haven for Christianity. But what we must understand is that those days are gone. We live in a post-Christian America. More persecution is happening now than at any point in history, in the history of our country.

And right now, it is rare to hear about anything physical. But that could change in the future. And before Christ returns, this will change. But His return may be soon. And we need to be prepared for the persecution that may come.

As 17th century Puritans used to say, when there are calm seas, mend your sails. The times we live in now are calm compared to what may come in the future. And what I've been stressing from this pulpit is that we need to take Jesus' word seriously.

When He tells us that we need to give ourselves fully to Him. We need to give up what is holding us back from putting both feet in for Him. If you have one foot in for Christ, you probably are facing little to no persecution.

And when greater persecution comes, you won't be ready. So prepare yourself for this now. But as we ponder the reality of persecution for Christians in this life, we must be reminded that like every other beatitude, this is the road to happiness.

Jesus says in verse 12 to rejoice and be glad for great is our reward in heaven for faithfully enduring persecution. What Jesus says is the prophets of the Old Testament were persecuted. And as I just explained, the apostles were persecuted and these have gone on to their reward.

And so will you for your faithfulness in the face of the world showing hostility to you. The future is bright for those who are willing to be persecuted for Christ's sake. As Romans 8 .18 says, I consider the sufferings of this present time not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Whatever you lose in this life, you will be paid back a hundredfold in the age to come. Some of you know the name Jim Elliot. He was a missionary who was killed along with five others as they tried to evangelize the Harani people of Ecuador.

He and the other missionaries risked their life to evangelize these people and they did lose their life. Jim Elliot, who later gave his life, said this famous quote. He was only 28 years old when he died, but this is what he said.

He is no fool to give up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. He is no fool to give what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. What Elliot said is exactly what Jesus is saying in verse 12.

For those who are persecuted, they rejoice and they are glad because their reward is great in heaven. These are the people who are storing up a lot of treasure in heaven. As Jesus says later on in the Sermon on the Mount when he talks about us storing up rewards for our faithfulness to him while we live on earth.

And to pursue the path of persecution is indeed the road to happiness. So as we've seen over the last three Sundays, to follow God in Christ is the only path to true happiness. This comes through pursuing humility, repentance, meekness, living holy lives, which includes being merciful and peacemakers, and standing for Christ in the face of persecution.

This is the key to true joy. Our world is constantly trying to sell people the way to true happiness. But all of these efforts will be shallow at best and will not last. But Jesus promises a true joy that is deep, full, and lasting.

Eureka Baptist Church, I love you. And as we go through this life, may we be reminded of Jesus' words. These eight blessings that are ours, if we follow him. May each of us have both feet in as we travel on this journey with Christ.

Jesus will not let you down. When he makes a promise, he fulfills it. And he says, you will be happy if you're all in for me. He will deliver the fullness of joy that he promises. To remind you what he said in John 635, I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

May we listen to those sweet words and follow him.

Follow him.

And if you're not saved, may you follow him. And if you are, follow him more closely. Now next Sunday, we will look at how God uses us to display his light to the unbelieving world. When this happens, the world looks on and says, I have never seen anything like it.

And I look forward to opening that with you next Sunday.

Pure in Heart and Seeing God

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. What a treasure it is. I thank you for this instruction. Truly, Lord, these words are music to our ears. Because all of us want to be happy. And may we go down this path with Christ and experience the blessedness of following him.

And we will experience it now in this life and without the hindrance of sin in the next. In Jesus' name, Amen.