July 3, 2016 Afternoon Service: Beatitudes Part 1 by Pastor Josh Sheldon

The Beatitudes as the Character of a Christian

He was sleeping on the trees in the black forest. Seeing the crowds, he 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. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peace-seekers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you, or persecute you, and other all kinds of evil against you. Thank you, on my behalf. Pray for the preaching. Dear Holy Father, this is Josh, the Supreme Father. You teach us what it is to bless another without the grace of the Lord.

Amen. Please be seated. You know, when I was a boy, I was in the Boy Scouts. I never finished. I never got to the point of an Eagle Scout, though I received some merit badges. I was honestly trying to remember how far I advanced in Boy Scouting.

And I don't remember if I received the Life Badge or the Star Badge. And again, to be honest, although I know that those are both beneath the Eagle Badge, I don't remember which one was in which order.

But I was in Boy Scouts, and I enjoyed it. And I had some great long hikes in the Sierras and made a lot of friends. And I studied the manual quite carefully. You have a Boy Scout manual, and it takes you through all the things you need to do to advance and get to the goal, which, of course, is the Eagle Badge, the one I never attained to.

And you do things. You remember the Boy Scout pledge. You stay involved in your Scout troop. You do good deeds. You know, the old proverb of the Boy Scout being the one who helps the old lady across the street and, of course, in the cartoons and the comics, the old lady's beating him over the head with her umbrella because she doesn't want any help, and she doesn't need it.

But the Boy Scout insists on doing his good deed for her, because I never got to that point, though I was willing enough to help anybody across the street who needed it, because I was a Boy Scout. And as I began preparing for this series of messages, which we will begin here in this afternoon service and go through, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter five through seven, as I began preparing this, this was brought back to my mind, this memory of when I was a Boy Scout.

And I asked myself, well, why didn't I get to be an Eagle? Now, those of you who know me a little bit, and I'm not the most disciplined person in the world, but generally, when I set myself to do something, I get it accomplished.

And I don't mean that in a boastful way. It's just sort of the way I'm wired, and I'm not perfect at it. But generally, when I set my foot on a path, I finished the path. I said, now, why didn't I finish Boy Scouts?

Why did I never become an Eagle? My father would have been so proud. He had been an Eagle Scout. He had been an Explorer Scout, which is a whole other level. I didn't do it, so I asked myself why. And I kept asking myself why as I was studying what we're going to be in for a while in this afternoon portion of our service, the Sermon on the Mount.

And most especially, this first portion of that series, the Beatitudes, these blessings called out to God's people by Jesus Christ when he stood on the Mount. And an answer sort of dawned on me, and I want us to have this in mind as we go through this first introductory message, not just to the Sermon on the Mount, but to the Beatitudes even more specifically.

You see, for me, Boy Scouts was a matter of doing. It was a matter of doing. It was accomplishing things. It was going through the list of things, checking them off, getting the badge, having my mom sew it on the shirt, and being able to show it off at the next Scout meeting.

And actually, on days we had Scout meetings, I even wore that to school. I was so proud of that uniform. But see, it was a matter of doing. I never understood that the whole idea of Boy Scouting was becoming.

It was a matter of being something more than someone who does things. And so, with the Sermon on the Mount, with the Beatitudes especially, we have a picture from the lips of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ of a single thing, of a Christian, of being something, not doing things, but of being a thing, a disciple, a child of God, His son or daughter, by faith in this one who here in the Scripture speaks to us, Jesus Christ.

It describes a person, a composite whole. You can no more be what Jesus describes here if you choose to be mourning over your sin, but not meek in the way you deal with your fellow Christian. You can no more say, well, I'm not gonna be pure in heart, but I will be, let's see, which one do I like?

I will be a peacemaker. Jesus describes a composite whole. Everything that follows in the Sermon on the Mount depends upon this. The one who's going to be able to obey the commands that follow, the specific things Jesus says when He finally says, do not do this, therefore be this way, and do this, is impossible, lest we are what is here described.

The Beatitudes describe a Christian in a holistic sense. You will notice as we go through them, and you can see this, the English brings it through extremely well. You don't have to be a Greek scholar to have seen this.

There's no command here. As a matter of fact, the only verb, technically, is in the last part of each of those. For theirs is, or theirs shall be, or they shall be. That's the verb. These are all adjectives.

Blessed is an adjective, which is the word we're going to focus on mostly this afternoon. Blessed is an adjective. Poor in spirit is an adjective. They are not verbs, they are not commands. It describes a state of being that God imbues in a person when they come to faith.

It's not doing. You are not going to be told this afternoon, or the next afternoon as we go through these, therefore, start being poor in spirit. And you over there, I need you to be humble. So seek humility.

We have those commands elsewhere in the scripture. Seek holiness, pursue holiness, says the apostle, without which no one will see God. The Sermon on the Mount has a different focus. It doesn't conflict with anything else.

But what Jesus is saying is, such are the ones blessed by God. They're a unit. The Beatitudes are a unit. With Lloyd-Jones, I think we should be very little concerned with whether there are eight of them, 10 of them, as some say.

Some say there are only seven of them, because that's a more perfect number. I'm going to preach this to you as eight Beatitudes. I choose eight because number one and number eight, the first and the last, an inclusio, both end with the same thing.

For theirs is the kingdom of God, or kingdom of heaven in some translations. So it's an inclusio. It's a unit of thought. It describes something. And Jesus brings them all together with that same ending.

For theirs is the kingdom of God. What he describes here is not a bargain bin at the store, so you can sort through and choose the one you want. This is more like the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 .22.

Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Which of those could the Christians say, well, this fruit I don't have or desire? It's impossible. The fruit, singular, of the Spirit is these things in the person.

You can't pick and choose amongst these. The Beatitudes give us the constituent parts to describe a disciple of Jesus Christ. They are each as critical to the whole as, for example, a rudder, a sail, a hull, and a helm are to a yacht.

Because without all of those working together, because I have no experience with yachtsmanship, but it's not a yacht, is it? It won't work. It won't do anything. So we're gonna take these as the way, I believe, Jesus meant them, a hull.

Let us not sort through and say, well, God hasn't gifted me with meekness, but he's given me these other two that I really like. Let us not ever do that. I wanna make another point, too, and then we're gonna jump right into some exposition on this.

When this is pictured in films or in the children's cartoons, you have a gentle, meek, mild, lowly in spirit Jesus saying something with an intonation like, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek.

He's so gentle. You can almost get that medieval picture of him where he's doing the thing with the two fingers, and he's so slender and gentle and almost effeminate looking in those pictures. I don't believe that that's the way we should take these.

I think what we have here is a firm, hard-cast description of the Christian. Jesus is not saying, oh, blessed is. He's saying, blessed is this one, and I add, parenthetically, and not the other. In other words, if God's blessing is upon the poor in spirit then the exalted in his own spirit is not blessed by God.

It's this one, not the other. The opposite doesn't work. Jesus is not giving some gentle, little encouragement for us to be these things. He is warning that this is what you must be to be his disciple.

As we push forward in coming weeks and we get to chapter seven and the end of this sermon, and Jesus says, depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. I never knew you. Who is he speaking to? Does that not tie back to right here in the Beatitudes?

Those who are not poor in spirit, those who are not meek, those who are not seeking for God's righteousness? And does that not tie beautifully into the middle of the sermon? We're warned not to seek righteousness the way the Pharisees did, which is to get glory from men.

Everything in this sermon that follows, all the commands in which must follow, all the doing that we must do comes right from here, from the Beatitudes, from these blessings. They all start with the Greek word makarios, makarios, blessed, in some translations, happy.

You'll see as we go through, I'm not as happy with happy as a translation for it. Blessed is really the best translation of it. We're gonna go through a little history of this word makarios so you can understand how profound it is, not just so we understand the etymological development of the word from back in Homer's time to when Jesus used it in the first century in Koine Greek.

Not for that reason, but I want you to understand how powerful this word is as it developed and the way it was meant when Jesus used it. It's an adjective here, blessed, it's an adjective, and it probably doesn't mean what you think it means.

Each word of blessing we have here flows from Jesus' pronouncement of blessing and the description of the one who is thus blessed into a consequence of that state of being. For theirs is, for theirs shall be.

So while some of these have a sense of a future fulfillment, blessed are those who hunger and thirst, for they shall be filled, it's really all current. Jesus is talking about the here and now in this life as he does in most of the Sermon on the Mount, chapters five through seven.

It's here and now, this is for us to live with in our current pilgrimage. And that's controlled, really, like I said at the beginning by this inclusio, theirs is, present, active, right now, at the beginning and the end.

Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Everything in between is as those two are, current, present, active, for you to have now in this life reality.

Let us look at this one word. The message this morning, this introduction to the Beatitudes, which are the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, this word, makarios, blessed, is interesting to me. It was actually a bit flabbergasting to me to notice that Psalm 1, in the Greek translation of that original Hebrew, starts with this same word.

Blessed is that man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly. The same word was used to translate it, makarios, blessed. And do you see that Jesus Christ, when he begins his public ministry, he stands on the Mount, as did Moses, and gives law to his church, as Moses gave to Israel.

He opens with that same word. And as I use this Sermon on the Mount, correlating to Mount Sinai, one thing we need to understand as we go through this sermon, I do not believe, especially in the rest of chapter five, that Jesus is simply given the deeper meaning of the law.

That he's taking what Moses gave us, and he's showing something elevated about it. Because that makes Jesus no more than a successor to Moses. Like a new and improved model. He doesn't cast away the old law.

I don't advocate that. I'm not antinomian. I feel like President Nixon's saying that when he says, well, I am not a crook. Well, I am not an antinomian. I do believe that the law has place in our life.

Psalm 1, and this will start with the same word, makarios. Blessed is the man, Jesus says, blessed are the. We'll talk a little bit about the first of these. The one that begins the psalm. In the Hebrew, that's the word ashare, ashare, ashare.

Blessed is the man. It's one of two words that you get, one of two primary words in the Hebrew for blessed. The other one is baruch, baruch, blessed. The difference between the two, ashare, which Psalm 1 opens with, ashare, which is translated as makarios, that, and baruch, is that ashare is reserved for man.

Ashare is reserved for man. God, baruch, God, the other word, baruch, he blesses man. And man, in turn, when he blesses God, I will bless the Lord at all times, as the psalmist says. When we bless God, it's that word also, baruch.

Ashare is never used in that context. When it is man towards God, it's always barach or baruch. And the reason is, the reason for that is, ashare is a word that has a feel, a context, a connotation of envy.

Envy, even desire. You see, what the psalm, this songbook of Israel opens with is to be envied. Something to be desired is that man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, whose joy, whose meditation day and night is in the law of the Lord because he delights in it.

That's a man to be envied. That's someone almost to be jealous of. He prospers in all he does. Proverbs 31, 25, he laughs at adversity. He is in an enviable position. Couple of examples of how this word is used elsewhere.

Thus says the Lord, keep justice and do righteousness. This is Isaiah 56, verses one and two. For soon my salvation will come and my deliverance will be revealed. Blessed, ashare, makarios, approved by God.

Blessed is the man who does this and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil. Blessed, ashare, makarios, enviable. Psalm 44, blessed, ashare again.

Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray for a lie. See now, we don't earn God's blessing by doing anything. As I said, in the Beatitudes, there's no verb there in blessed is the man.

Blessed is the man who becomes poor in spirit? No, blessed is the man who pursues after righteousness. It's always the same, blessed is the man who is these things. We don't earn here. But what we do, if it's to be acceptable in God's sight, what we do when we get to the rest of chapter five and chapter six of this sermon, and we start getting the therefore do these things, therefore be a light on the hill, therefore, Jesus says, you must accomplish something in my name.

It's accomplished by him who is makarios, blessed by God and holds that position. Which is to say, if Jesus first describes the attributes of the Christian in the Beatitudes, and then the consequent duties in the rest of this sermon, then what is the upshot of this to us?

What's the application? What does this mean to me, preacher? Be what you are. The upshot is simply this, be what you are. Do those works that if you really are this one and hear described, these works that you ought to want to do.

Why do we have the proverb about boy scouts walking old ladies across the street? Because if you really are a boy scout, it's not just the doing, it's the learning to want to do the right thing. And the idea of the old lady across the street, that's just a proverb.

That's just a proverb. Sorry, I have a little trouble with this thing. Excuse me. I'll hold my head still. The sound booth guys get nervous whenever I touch any equipment. What is this? This is a matter of character.

It's a matter of character that Jesus is describing here. Behavior does not make character. Character leads to behavior. As the Lord means when he says that good fruit cannot come from a bad tree or vice versa.

By their works you shall know them. And what is known by the works? It's the character, the inner man that led to the works that we see. That's what he means by that. You see, behavior can change from moment to moment.

Behavior is almost contextual, isn't it? But not character. Not character. You know, in A Man for All Seasons, it's a true story. Charlton Heston did one version. I won't say it's a recent version, but it's very old.

And before that, a British actor, I can't remember his name. They're both fabulous movies. Man for All Seasons, a true story. And in it, Thomas Moore refuses to endorse Henry VIII's divorce from his wife.

And it's very important because of the position he holds in the court and in the country. And because of that refusal to endorse that, to publicly say it's okay for him to divorce. Now, of course, he was a Catholic.

And he held to no divorce, not really because so much the scripture said it, but because the Pope said it. So we don't agree with that part of it. But because of his character and his commitment to this idea that God says no divorce, and he would not change that because of the character of the man, he gave up his fortune, his position, his estate, his freedom, and finally his life.

And for what? I mean, it'd be easy to say he did it because he followed a false religion that emanated from Rome. That's not the case. He was a man of character. And when the crisis came, because he had the character that he did, he had no choice in how to react.

His behavior was not contextual. His behavior was not contextual because of the character of the man. And so in the Beatitudes, if we look at it as a composite, this is the character. And the behavior that later Jesus insists upon will flow quite naturally, if we use that word, quite naturally from it.

Blessed, makarios. Blessed is from a word that actually, way, way back in the day, way before the Koine Greek of the first century meant great. It was originally meant for outward prosperity. And that's where the idea started that it was something to be envied.

The Greek idea of divine blessedness in this mode had essentially nothing to do with anything moral or ethical in your conduct. It was all what you had. And eventually, it was what you had not just in terms of your wealth, your estate, but your knowledge.

We'll get to that in a little bit because it does bear in the way Jesus uses the word. A quick example, they thought the gods were blessed because of their power and dignity. The gods were makarios because they were stronger than men and had greater dignity.

But interestingly, not their holiness, not their ethical behavior, not their character, if you will. William Gladstone, who was a noted scholar of the 19th century, he wrote about this. He said, in general, the chief note of deity with Homer was emancipation from the restraints of moral law.

You see, their morality was actually even acknowledged to be inferior to those that they judged. And of course, we're talking about Greek gods, we're talking about false gods, but we're talking about how this word came about to mean what it will mean when Jesus uses it.

It's after Homer's time, the idea of makarios became less and less of outward prosperity and more of inner correctness. For Socrates, for example, blessedness, makarios, came from knowing things, from knowledge, from intellect.

They had no concept then of sin in any biblical sense, and that's why in Acts chapter 17, the Epicureans and the Stoics, remember when they mocked what Paul preached to them? Well, it was when he mentioned the resurrection.

I was convinced a few years ago when I preached that, and I'm convinced now that they mocked the resurrection not just because someone came up from the grave, but because what it said about the sin that led to the death of that one.

They had no concept of sin. Socrates, virtue and blessedness, makarios, it was the purview of an elite few. It was only their prerogative. So we get to the biblical use of the word, and over time, as it progressed to the time of the first century, it's lifted entirely into the spiritual realm.

In the Old Testament, it was more of an outward idea than in the New Testament, but even then, the emphasis is on God's approval, founded in the person's love for God, and because of God's approval, therefore one to be envied.

So that idea of envy when the word first came out in Homer's time remains, but not for the same cause. In Christian thought, meaning the first century, in the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, it's a gospel-laden word.

It would now be strange to the pagans who first use it. It's shaken free of any idea of outward good. Knowledge is the path to happiness is set aside in favor of faith and love. The pure-hearted vision of God drives the whole use of the meaning here of this word.

Well, once it hinted toward a stoic, strangling repression of emotion, now it enhances and embraces the way man is made in God's image. Where the stoic asserted that escape from the corruptions of the world might rightly lead even to suicide, the Christian says, no, escape is not necessary.

So because of what Jesus says, we don't escape, but we thrive in persecution because Jesus says, blessed is that one. We thrive in meekness and humility and those sorts of things which, Lord willing, we will go through.

I said earlier the word blessed might not mean what you thought it meant. Blessed makarios is not so much a state of what we do and even really a state of being as it is an actual statement. Now what I mean by that is something John MacArthur puts really well for us.

He says the beatitudes are divine judgmental pronouncements. The divine prerogative of God to make a person this way and say because I've done this, you have my approval, therefore blessed are you. God's approval.

Like Isaiah 57, 15, thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.

You see, the light on the hill, the salt of the earth, all the things to do come after the beatitudes. They're not a list of gentle aphorisms that say if only you'll repress the spirit of pride just a little bit, then God will bless you.

It's not a smorgasbord of spiritual delicacies from which we choose. They together describe a disciple. They are stern stuff. They say blessed is this one and not the other. I agree with D .A. Carson that happy is a poor substitute for the word blessed.

You see, a Christian is poor in spirit. Otherwise, he or she is no Christian because if you're not pure in spirit, you think you have something to offer to God. Don't try to grow in meekness here. Oh, elsewhere we have that command, but here, don't try to grow in weakness, in meekness, excuse me.

Rather, ask yourself if you are in fact meek. And none of us are perfectly any one of these, any more than we are perfectly love, joy, peace, and so forth. But now you might expect me to say, well, but that's okay, you don't have to be perfect.

It's okay, God understands. He does understand. But as I said a moment ago, this is stern stuff. This is not meant to be gentle, easy, kind of namsy-pamsy stuff. This is hard stuff. God does understand our weaknesses, but it's really not okay.

I mean, read the Beatitudes as they were meant, as non-negotiable bedrock descriptions of those whom God blesses. And because of his blessing, he has his approval. And because of that, is one to be envied.

It's a matter of character. Boy Scouts, I just wanted to do the stuff and achieve the badges and get the pins. But that's not what it was about. It was about becoming something. It was about being this type of person.

And here we have poor in spirit, mournful, meek, hungering and thirsting, merciful, pure, peacemaker, persecuted. And what does the word of God say? What does Jesus, the very word of God say? If you are this, you are to be envied.

You're to be envied. Now, it doesn't all sound too attractive if you put together. I mean, we're taught to seek fame and fortune and advancement and self-actualization. Yet what Jesus says is that man, that woman, that child who is these things, who is this, is to be envied for the sole reason that God looks favorably upon them.

We'll see as we go through that it's God's work in you that he's looking favorably upon. It's not our work that made us this way. Let's be clear about that. As I said, Jesus doesn't command you, be meek.

He says, blessed are the meek. Those are adjectives. Very different from what we have outside these four walls, is it not? We don't get any adulation for this. Nobody's going to admit looking upon us with envy.

LeBron James, who finally won a championship with Cleveland, is not gonna look upon me and say, I'm jealous of him. He gets to preach to 15 or 20 people all day. He's not gonna say that. He's not gonna look at my salary and say, wish I had that.

He's the one who owns that Ferrari Daytona that I talked about in the beginning. But I suspect, really, if we live this, if we are this, if God has done this work in us and we are the people here described, and then as we go through the rest of the Sermon on the Mount doing the things that the person here described wants to do because of the character of what these are, I suspect there is some envy.

If we say, you can have your millions, I have God's approval, and I want no more, they outside of here might say, well, that's just sour grapes. You're just saying that. But the profound satisfaction is as much a light on a hill that brings glory to God as is any good work.

Understand this. The profound satisfaction of knowing that we have God's approval because of what he has done in us to make us this thing described by these eight blessings is as much a light on the hill as going into a jungle and building a hospital or a poor area and feeding the homeless and the hungry or building an orphanage for poor children.

All those things would please God in their own way. All those things are a light on the hill. And yet I would argue that your personal testimony of being this, not accomplishing this, being this because God makes you this, is a stronger testimony.

Well, this is Jesus. This is Jesus. He's been baptized. He was forced out into the wilderness by the spirit where he spent 40 days accomplishing what Israel never could which is to be tempted to sin against God which he never did and thus becomes true Israel.

And he comes out and the first words out of his mouth, I repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then he proves that he is the bringer of the kingdom of heaven. You can read this at the end of chapter four when he heals the lepers and the epileptics and the people of all their diseases and their demons proving that he is God's Messiah, the one promised and hoped for by the prophets.

And then he preaches this. The royal word from the royal king, from God's Messiah, the anointed one, standing and setting his standards. It is his right to speak for God the Father because he is God's beloved son.

It is Jesus' invitation to enter into the kingdom by the way of his first words. Even before this sermon, repent. Repent of your sins. Repent of your sinful nature. Repent and seek God's forgiveness in his son and trust God to declare you to be one blessed in exactly this way.

More to be envied than riches or fame or much fine gold. Any worldly advantage because this describes the unalterable declaration and determination of the unchangeable God. It's a matter of being. And what is the doing?

It's really be what God has made you. Do what God has made you want to do. If I had been a proper Boy Scout, I wouldn't have wanted to walk the old lady across the street to check it off. It would have been because I had the character that they were trying to engender that I would simply want to do it as a natural outflow of what I'd become.

And these are like this. So we'll spend some weeks here in the Beatitudes before we get to the rest of the sermon because we need to check ourselves from saying, okay, I read them, I understand them, I've exegeted the words, I understand all the definitions.

Now what do I do? What do I do? There was an ad for a very lightweight camping chair for backpackers. I used to backpack a lot and I was fanatic about weight. And so the ad caught my eye. So the thing I think weighed two and a half grams, I thought that's too much.

But it was a chair, it was a super lightweight chair. It had a really catchy phrase in the ad at the bottom right of my backpack magazine. It said, don't just do something, sit there. Usually don't just sit there, do something.

Don't just do something, sit there. And this is what I want us to do, nothing. Let us get through and understand who Jesus says is blessed. This character that does the works in a way that pleases God so that when we get to chapter seven that Jesus will say something other than, depart from me, I never knew you.

But rather, blessed are you and come into my kingdom. Because it was this character that led to the works. Let's just sit there before we do something and hear this word of God, amen. We will, before the Lord's table, sing Amazing Grace.

It's number 402 in your hymn book.