July 10, 2016 Afternoon Service Beatitudes Part 1 by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the

Lord, against His anointed, saying, Let us burst their bonds apart, and cast away their cords from us.

He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. Then He will speak to them in His wrath, and terrify them in His fury, saying,

As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will tell of the decree.

The Lord said to me, You are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like fire. Now therefore,

O kings, be wise. Be warm, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way. For His wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in Him. Please turn with me now to Matthew Chapter 5, and we'll read verses 1 -10.

Matthew Chapter 5 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 peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Please be seated as we pray. Precious Father, we thank

You, Lord, for the gift of Your sons to us, and we thank You, Lord, for Your spiritual revelation to us.

Lord, we thank You that You have spoken clearly, Lord, and we ask that You would bless the teaching of Your Word today, the proclaiming of Your truth today,

Father. It would not only be a blessing in spoken, Lord, but that it would be those who hear

Your Word and do it, Lord, and therefore we cannot conceive of ourselves. Help us, Father, to listen with open ears and with eyes, which say to us,

I fall not, Lord, for those who are Your children, Lord, and for those who are not, Lord. Pray that they would be able to hear You, Lord, and that they would be able to say

Your Word and to hear Your beauty. I ask that You would bless us this time, Lord, and do the same. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Jesus. You know, it is said that a

New York Times editorial once posed a question, and I say it is said because if you research what

I'm going to relate in a moment, you'll find that there's some doubt as to the facticity of this, but it's widely believed, and if it's anecdotal, it's a really good anecdote, so I'm going to use it to open this message this morning as we continue going through the

Sermon on the Mount and after an introductory message last Sunday, the first four of the

Beatitudes. But to open this, here's the anecdote. The New York Times editorial once posed this question, what is wrong with the world today?

Now G .K. Chesterton, who lived from 1874 to 1936, he sent in an answer to this question.

He said, dear sir, I am. In answer to your question, what is wrong with the world?

Dear sir, it's me. As I said, there's some doubt as to the complete accuracy of this, but it is a wonderful anecdote, and it is completely consistent with G .K.

Chesterton. If you read his works, this would be very much his personality to have answered like that.

So let's ride this train for just a short while, just a short while, understanding it's an anecdote, maybe.

The problem with the world, it is me. What a wonderful place to start, is it not?

To start with something that is not only rightly humble, if we say this meaning it, rightly a humble response, but also

I think a Christian sort of response. I'm the problem. It starts with me.

The problem with the world, it's me. The problem with me, what's the matter with me? How can I be the problem with the world?

What's the matter with me? The problem with me is I am not Matthew 5, verses 3 -10.

The problem with me is I'm just not the Beatitudes. I don't think this way.

I don't do like this. Why is the world the mess it is? Because we do not do the

Beatitudes. We do not live according to the descriptions therein. We studied this last week, or we opened it up last week, and we saw that we're not commanded to be poor in spirit.

We're not commanded to hunger and thirst for righteousness. These are adjectives. These are descriptors.

And yet, as I would like to bring us this morning, we'll develop this thought a little bit, they are to be desired.

They are to be yearned for. They are something that elsewhere in Scripture is commanded to us.

We're being a little bit myopic and focused just on the Beatitudes, so we're not going to go into a lot of those other places.

But it is something to want. And why? Why would we want to do that? If for no other reason than because Jesus said, blessed is this one, all those eight descriptors flowing into a holistic, singular person.

We are this, not those. We are this. We cannot pick and choose. But also, as we learned last week, and I'll try and emphasize again just a little bit, blessed, makarios, indicates

God's approval. These are, as John MacArthur so well says, royal proclamations.

Not commandments in this one context, not commandments. Proclamations by the

Son of God speaking for God the Father. The problem with the world, it is me.

The problem with me, I am not this. What's the problem with the church? It is us.

And what's the problem with us? We don't yearn enough for this.

Because Jesus says, such for these, this is the kingdom of heaven. This is the way we look.

This is the way we act. This is what God proclaims is the citizen of heaven. Jesus here is telling us the truth, as he always does.

It's impossible for God to lie. A royal proclamation of blessing and approval.

This is the one in whom and with whom God is pleased. Not because he came down from heaven to see for himself what we're up to or what we're like or how we're behaving.

As with Babel, he has no need to send an angel to reconnoiter the place and report back.

As with Sodom, the Lord knew before the angel arrived that they were not to be found in Sodom 50 or 45 or 40 or 30 or 20 or 10 righteous, enlightened individuals there in that city.

The Lord already knew that. If the Lord came today to find those he would destroy or save, where would we find the dividing line?

Well, I say the latter. The ones he would save are those upon whom his blessing rests.

And who are those? Those are the ones described here in the Beatitudes. At the end of this message, the

Lord Jesus says so very clearly. And almost no one misses this when he says to the wolves and false professors,

I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. And those awful words are for those who are not described here in this first opening portion of this sermon.

It is for those who are outside of God's pleasure. Their lawless deeds are judged as such, not because of the deeds themselves, or I should say so much because of the deeds themselves, but because God could not but be pleased with those he has blessed.

These false men who Jesus says to depart, when they left their house to go, they proceeded along a sandy walkway.

And as today, they went to work for themselves, and not the Lord they purported to represent.

They were not those described in Matthew 5, 3 through 10. So again, the word for blessing, makarios, blessed is this one.

I said last week, poorly translated is happy. Blessing, God's approval resting upon this one.

But that said, this position with God is without a doubt a happy one to be in, is it not?

Would you not be in a happy position knowing that you had God's approval resting upon you? This has to make us happy.

And consider for a moment what it would mean to your daily life to really be confident of this, to really, really know

God's approval. Now we know how we attain that, don't we? We know where that comes from.

For me personally, well of course it's from the Lord Jesus Christ. It says that we are accepted by God the

Father in Ephesians 1 as we are found in the Beloved, in Jesus Christ.

It is because we are in Him that we find approval, not because we are approvable ourselves, but because Jesus Christ in whom we are,

He is the one approved by God. We understand that. Even so, it has to make us happy, even though I do think that's a poor translation of the word for blessed.

Our Bibles don't have it. Our Bibles rightly say blessed. But to know

God's approval has to make a difference in our daily life. Your prayers when you rise up, when you lie down.

Just think if you know deep down in your spirit that God hears them and approves of them as ineloquent, as stumbling, and inarticulate as we are.

Because if we say at the end of our prayer, whether it's silently to ourselves or in the assembly, in Jesus' name

I pray, and we mean it, then this rises up to God and He hears the name of His Son and sees the faith we have in His Son.

That prayer is accepted by God, is approved by God. What a difference it would make to know for sure this blessing, this approval from God upon us.

Think of how we would pray. Think of your satisfaction in your work where you have no more gratitude from your efforts than knowing that you have done it heartily as to the

Lord. Your ability to endure the imperfect obedience of your husband or your wife.

Consider how your attitude and endurance in all these areas of life might change if you were thoroughly convinced, no doubt, that you had

God's approval in the way you were behaving, the way you were praying, the way you were responding to your husband, your wife, your children, your parents, your boss, your neighbor, whomever.

Just think of it. God approves of me. Think of Galatians 2 .20

where the Apostle Paul says that Jesus Christ died for me. This is personal apprehension of the gospel that we're speaking of.

Jesus says, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven in the first and the eighth beatitude. These are the citizens.

These are the saved ones. These are the ones who have entrance into the throne room of God. Citizenship in heaven.

He's satisfied with me. When I stand before him, we know he has to see

Jesus first. We know he has to see Jesus and me. I'm making this distinctly personal.

Blessed is this one. Blessed is this one who is poor in spirit.

Blessed is this one who mourns, who is meek, who hungers and thirsts for righteousness.

That's me personally. And we know his pleasure has all to do with his son, none with us.

We know that in me nothing good can be found. No one is good, said Jesus, except God alone.

But even so, it's impossible to read the opening of this sermon, this Sermon on the Mount, and then say that God is displeased with such a one.

God's approval is found in the one who is poor in spirit, who mourns his woeful state before God, who is meek in his dealings with men because he is humble before God, who hungers and thirsts for God's righteousness to spread his life in the world, the merciful, the peacemaker, the persecuted, because it is he who remakes the soul.

It is God who remakes the soul, who recreates us to be just this, exactly what

Jesus is describing. And as with creation, God who does all things well, he looks upon his own work of creation, of recreation in the soul of individuals, when he brings sinners from the darkness of this world into his light, this new creation, and just as in Genesis 1, he looks upon it and sees that it is good.

It is good. It is good. So with that, let us describe, let us desire what to be what

Jesus here describes as like. Let us want God's blessing. Let us want to please God by being what

Jesus says here. This afternoon, we'll simply describe what these are in the

Beatitudes. Jesus tells us what pleases God and what allows for entrance into his kingdom.

And with God's blessing, with his help, we will look at the first four of these and Lord willing, next week, the last four, and then we'll move on to the rest of this sermon.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom, of course, means membership.

It means citizenship. It means acceptance. It means that we are part of Christ's reign.

It's a kingdom. Jesus told Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would be fighting.

So obviously, we're speaking of a spiritual kingdom, an inaugurated kingdom. When Jesus came, he did inaugurate the kingdom.

Before he preached the sermon, he said, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and hereby him inaugurated.

And to be finalized upon his return, and then a literal, physical place will be his kingdom.

But for now, we have to acknowledge that his kingdom is 100 % spiritual. It is yet to come, yet it is here amongst his people as we gather together.

It is here in his church where his reign is known. The poor in spirit, we don't wrestle and fight.

Jesus said that. If my kingdom were this world, my servants would be fighting. The poor in spirit don't fight in that way, not against flesh and blood, as in warfare against men.

We fight our own flesh and blood, but our warfare in that way is against our human nature.

It's against the flesh that's indwelling us, that brings us the constant temptations. We pummel and beat ourselves spiritually as citizens of Christ's kingdom.

So how are we to understand poorness of spirit? D .A.

Carson says rightly that it doesn't mean we walk around moping with long faces. We'll get to that in a moment.

What is poorness of spirit? I think of it as the billboard at the entrance to the celestial city.

If Dante's sign into the opposite place, if his sign into hell read, all ye who enter here, this one, the billboard that leads to the entrance to that city says,

Not abandon hope, all ye who enter this other place, because we have hope as Christians, our hope in Christ and all his word that says where we will ultimately be.

But this first beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, that sign has to say, blessed are those without pride of self, the pride of life, as John says in his first letter.

The word is ptokas. Ptokas, kind of a PT at the beginning there.

It comes from a word that means to crouch or cringe. It has the flavor of being destitute of anything except what comes from the hand of someone else, a benefactor.

Luke used it for poor Lazarus in Jesus' parable, the one where he hoped for crumbs to come his way.

He hoped that a dog would lick his wounds or his sores and give him some relief by doing that.

It's used in Proverbs 25, 16, I am lonely and afflicted. In Vincent's word studies, which is a very good reference, it says, precedes the entrance into the kingdom of God and which cannot be relieved by one's own efforts but only by the free mercy of God.

Did I mention abandon pride, all ye who would enter here? Abandon all self -sufficiency.

A Christian is not the one who pulls himself up by the bootstraps. A Christian is the one who says, I have no straps to pull with.

I have nothing. If I'm going to be any of this, it has to be by God's proclamation, by the working of his spirit and that alone.

Utter spiritual destitution, consciousness of which precedes entrance into the kingdom and which cannot be relieved by our own efforts but only by the free mercy of God.

You see, the kingdom of heaven begins here. Confess your pride, disavow your pride.

In a word, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And repent of your desire to have the opposite of poorness in spirit.

All of us have this, don't we? Do we understand what it really means to be poor in spirit before God?

Do we understand the glory, the majesty, the holiness, the perfection that God truly is?

Well, no, none of us can. None of our minds can expand that far to really comprehend that.

And if we don't comprehend that fully, we don't comprehend the sinfulness of man and what it meant for God to save us.

We just can't understand what that gap really is.

And yet, poorness of spirit, it's beginning. If we truly are poor in spirit, it's at least a start at it.

Nothing will keep us away from growing into the image of Christ.

Nothing, if you have not fallen down before the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing will keep you further from that than your tenacious grip on pride.

Pride will keep you from the kingdom. If you're in the kingdom, pride will keep you from growing as quickly as you might or growing at all into the image of the

Lord Jesus Christ. In the sci -fi novel Dune, there was a refrain.

It was, fear is the mind killer. Fear is the mind killer, and I won't bother explaining the context of it, but I would piggyback on that a little bit and say pride is the spirit killer.

And that's not science fiction. Pride is the spirit killer. Pride keeps us from prayer.

Pride informs our prayers with the wrong things. Pride gives us the slightest bit of credit for what

God alone has done in Christ alone. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who cringe thinking of how little we have to bring, those who bow our heads and raise our hands above and put them together and say, these are empty hands, and I can't come away with anything lest it be

God, because of his grace in Jesus Christ, who would fill my hand with anything.

As a Syrophoenician woman told Jesus, give me a crumb from your table, and it will be enough.

Give me a crumb. I have nothing at all. There's a logical flow here from poorness of spirit to the next one, which is blessed are those who mourn.

Those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. If we see ourselves for what we are, if we understand how our pride, our ego, our arrogance, how all these before God consign us to eternal darkness outside of the kingdom, then mourning is really the next logical step.

It speaks of a grief that is too profound to be repressed or ignored.

It's used in Mark chapter 16, verse 10, of the disciples when they're mourning over Jesus' death.

But remember also that we're in the spiritual realm.

Think forward to how Jesus will soon teach us to detest any outward show, whether it's a long face or blowing trumpets to show off our contributions to the temple, whatever the case.

Outward shows he detests. What he speaks of here is anguish that emanates from deep within.

Its beginning point is poorness of spirit, the realization that nothing in my hand I bring but only to thy cross

I cling. Blessed are those who mourn, but God does not leave us here with our hearts bereft of anything.

He doesn't leave us there. Whereas word crushes us, it also then picks us up off the ground.

What does Jesus say immediately? If you mourn, you shall be comforted.

Mourning before God equals comfort. Remember, this is all spiritual. We're not speaking of for the loss of a loved one, for which we can properly mourn.

That's not what he's speaking of here. It's mourning over our state before God, our condition spiritually before Almighty God.

He doesn't leave us flat on our faces. They shall be comforted.

It's a wonderful word, comforted. It's parakaleo, where we get the name for the

Holy Spirit, the comforter, the paraclete, the one who comes alongside, the one who ushers us along the path to the righteousness of the kingdom, the one who reminds us of all things whatsoever

Jesus preached and commanded to us, the comforter, the one who could be grieved by our sin, but the one who is pleased when we abandon sin, repent, and come back to him.

That's the word here. They shall be comforted. They shall be comforted. It's the promise of God. He does bring comfort, not by grinding us over and over with our depravity because that would be no comfort at all.

Instead, he urges us along. He comes alongside. He transforms us into the image of Christ through acknowledging our sin and repenting and doing both of these more and more consistently.

When we come up from our knees after our prayer of confession and knowing the forgiveness of God, which is the promise of his word in 1

John 1, 9, then truly comforted because we know that it is

God himself who did this work in us and is continuing to work through us. If you don't mourn, though, one who does not mourn has no need of comfort.

You wouldn't walk to see some self -satisfied, happy person on the street just stand there minding their own business and walk up, put your arm around them, say, let me comfort you.

I'm so sad that that happened to you. Of course, we wouldn't do that. You mourn those who are, or you comfort those who are mourning.

If you don't mourn your sin, you are absent this comfort of the

Spirit of God. And I would go so far as to say if you're not poor in spirit, you won't be mourning your sin.

The one leads to the other. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

The meek means to be mild or gentle, not weak, meek. Aristotle said that it's that place between stubborn anger and a negative or cynical character that is incapable of even righteous indignation.

It's that place between stubborn anger, being pugnacious, and being negative or just cynical.

Meekness, I think he's getting at, is an inward quality. But it is one that's seen outwardly.

Poorness of spirit is a matter between you and God alone. Mourning over sin is the same.

Jesus bars us from disfiguring our faces or doing anything that makes a display of our humility before God because as soon as we make a display of it, it's no longer humility.

Meekness, though it's an inward grace of the Spirit of God, meekness is something to be displayed.

I don't mean advertised. I don't mean look at me, how wonderful I am because I'm so meek. I mean that it informs our behavior.

It does something. It flavors the way we deal with others. Meekness is something that others should receive from us.

It's not something silly where we say, well, let me give you a meek answer to that question that you asked so aggressively.

It's simply the way we are. A meekness of spirit simply responds that way.

Galatians 6, 1 through 3, I think, exemplifies this. Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. If God's good pleasure is not enough to entice, consider the reward, which is to inherit the earth.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. I don't mind speaking of rewards here because Jesus does in several places in this sermon.

God willing, we will get to them. He speaks of those who have the reward now and we who from God will gain a reward.

I just want to look at one more this afternoon. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

You think for a moment of hungering and thirsting. It's the very stuff of life.

Hunger, you think of food. Thirst, you think of water. The very things that keep us alive. You can go about three weeks without food.

That's technical. Technically, you can go about three weeks without food. I think I can go about three hours. But you can go about three weeks without food.

And you can go maybe one week without water. The thing hungered for here, as though it's life itself, the thirst that Jesus pictures is for God's righteousness.

Here in the Beatitudes, I think it's a very personal matter. I want to know your righteousness. I want to take it in more and more.

I just can't live without it. For man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

I want to know God's righteousness better by studying his word. I want to know him better by knowing

Jesus better. I want to know his righteousness better by proving what is the good and acceptable will of God in my life constantly.

It's the cry of the psalmist, lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness. It's the hope of Proverbs 11, 15, the righteousness of the blameless keeps his way straight.

It's a desire well -pleasing to God, which is why he blesses it, which is why he creates it in us in the first place.

And so Jesus says he will be satisfied. Psalm 107, 9 has it, for he satisfies the longing soul and the hungry soul he fills with good things.

In this case, what's the good thing? Jesus. Simply more of Jesus.

More of his image in us. More of his word assimilated by us. I have hidden your word in my heart,

O Lord, that I might not sin against you. That I might, can I say, know your righteousness and live according to it.

And God doesn't make us wait for this longing to be satisfied. We're never going to achieve perfect righteousness in this life or complete sanctification.

We'll pursue holiness, for example, without which no one will see God, but our attainment will be less than complete until we see

Jesus. But there is a respect.

There is a way in which this righteousness is completely and perfectly fulfilled in us.

2 Corinthians 5 .21 says it clearly. For our sake,

God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him, in Jesus, we might become the righteousness of God.

Is this speaking of in the eschaton, in the final time? Are we the righteousness of God when

God calls us to himself? Or is this speaking of now?

That we now, because we walk with the spirit of God residing in us, we live this way individually and as a body.

And is he not the spirit of righteousness? I don't say that our every act is as righteous as Christ's.

That would be blasphemy. Speaking of an imputed righteousness, we're speaking of the way

God sees us. We're speaking of God looking upon the work he has done in us, a new creation, and being pleased with what he himself has done.

Listen, if we're the person or the people pictured in the

Beatitudes, that's not something we did. It's something that God has done.

And if God has done it, I would argue he has done a good work. And just like creation, he looks upon what he has done because he did it, and he does nothing wrong, he would say it is good.

God put Jesus on the cross in order that we might be forgiven of our generous assessments of our own spirits, our pride, our arrogance, of our glorying in our own independence, forgiven for rejoicing rather than mourning over our sin, for being bombastic and pugnacious rather than meek, for not desiring

God's righteousness above all else, even life itself. Now how can we be what

Jesus describes? How can we come to enjoy God's blessing? To have the kingdom of heaven, to know

God's comfort, to inherit the earth, to be filled with all good things? I think

Jesus explained it in John 3, 3 when he spoke to Nicodemus. He said, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the

Spirit is Spirit. If you've been reborn by the Spirit of God, bringing repentance to your soul, you are then what

Jesus here describes. And because you are this, you are blessed by God because of this, and at every point.

You ask, how can these things be? Well, Paul answers. He says, behold, all things are new.

You are a new creation. Which I was alluding to so many times. Jesus says, God has recreated you and made you by his sovereign grace, made you acceptable to him by placing you in his

Son. Amen. We will close with 04 ,000 tongues and we'll take the