The Blessed Man

Well, it's a privilege to be here with you this morning, and the only thing that really matters that's been said about me is that I'm a sinner saved by God's grace, and the

Lord has showered grace upon grace upon me and upon my life, and what a privilege it is then to be able to open up God's Word and to preach the

Word of God unto God's people. If you'll take your Bibles with me, your copy of God's Word, and turn to Matthew chapter 5.

In just a moment, I'll read for us verses 1 through 10 of Matthew chapter 5.

Well, happiness, according to the world, goes something like this, a happy man is free from authority and inconveniences.

He receives everything he wishes. He lacks nothing and is self -sufficient.

He lives a joyful and easy life. He never bears a cross, and he always flees any hint of cross -bearing, but this happiness is fixated on present circumstances, present pleasures, present desires, present comforts, and it's an unstable and a godless view of happiness.

It has no room for present suffering and future glory.

It is allergic to joyful, patient endurance and delayed reward, and this happiness is completely contrary to how

Jesus defines happiness. In fact, happiness, or we could say freedom, apart from God, is absolute misery.

Absolute misery. And Jesus here, in his longest recorded sermon that we have in the

New Testament, Jesus here, with the crowds surrounding him, sits down on the mountain, and he turns, and really he's not speaking to the crowds at all.

He turns and he speaks to his disciples, and he begins to lay out for them what the blessed man looks like, and according to Jesus, and according to this passage, and of course other places in the

New Testament, a happy man is marked by a profound spiritual need.

Isn't that totally contrary to how we think in our flesh and how this world thinks? The happy person, according to the world, has no need at all.

They lack nothing. And yet Jesus here, in his longest recorded sermon, and we're going to read it in just a minute,

Jesus here begins teaching his disciples, the kingdom of God has come, and do you know what the blessed man, do you know what the blessed woman looks like?

It's the one who is profoundly aware of their spiritual need. Jesus says things like, blessed is the man, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, and they shall be comforted.

This is the same word that's used in the book of Psalms, in the translation of the

Old Testament into Greek, in Psalm chapter 1, verse 1, blessed is the man. This is the same word used in Deuteronomy 33, verse 29, happy are you,

O Israel, who is like you, a people saved by the Lord. And this blessed state, this blessed man, this happiness that Jesus here is talking about is grounded in God's objective favor that they've received in Christ.

Not circumstances, not worldly favor, not temporary happiness.

The blessed man, according to Jesus, has an otherworldly, heavenly happiness that is applied by the

Spirit, secured by the Son, and given by the Father, and therefore no experience, no suffering in this present moment, no circumstances, no sickness, no creature in heaven or on earth can steal or alter this happiness.

That's captured well, isn't it, in that great Reformation hymn, Martin Luther's hymn, when he says, when it says in that verse, no power of hell, no scheme of man.

It can't be robbed, it can't be altered, it can't be shaken. And Jesus here teaches his disciples not, hey, the kingdom of God has come, and so you're going to triumph, there's going to be no suffering, it's going to be all victory, it's going to be ease, it's going to be your best life now, you're not going to get sick, you're not going to get sick, you're going to have abundance, but it's in the midst of living in this present evil age that Christ's disciples can experience the blessings of salvation and have an unshakeable joy in the

Lord, even as they wait for the Lord Jesus to return. But when we think about this sermon, and in particular about the

Beatitudes, which is really the introduction to this sermon, I want to give a couple of clarifications, because these

Beatitudes are often misunderstood. Jesus here is not teaching or promoting perfectionism, or some kind of higher life for those who are already saved.

Rather, he's giving a concise character description of what a blessed man by God looks like.

These Beatitudes then are not, you must do these things and be perfect and then God will give you grace, but rather these

Beatitudes are marks of the citizens of the Kingdom of God. And these Beatitudes, by the way, are not something that you can just pull up your bootstraps and grow in.

I see you have the five solas here marked in your sanctuary. Well, I've been joking, in the Christian life, we often begin to think that there's a sixth sola of the

Reformation, it's sola bootstrapa, I'm going to pull up my bootstraps and I'm going to do this in my own power and my own means and my own wisdom and my own effort and my own energy.

But if we're going to grow in these Beatitudes, we must understand that they are produced in us supernaturally by the

Spirit. And that's why Jesus often says, what did he say to Nicodemus in John 3, unless you be born again by the

Spirit, you cannot see the Kingdom of God. And these then Kingdom marks, these

Kingdom virtues, if you will, of God's, the citizens of this Kingdom are produced in us by the

Spirit. Well, let's look at this text and then we'll begin to walk our way through it. In Matthew chapter 5, verse 1, hear

God's word this morning. 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.

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.

May God bless the reading and the preaching of his word this morning. The chief thing I want us to see from this introduction to Jesus' sermon, the chief thing

I want us to see is that Christian, your happiness and your identity as a citizen of this kingdom must be defined by these beatitudes.

Nothing more, nothing less. And by the way, these beatitudes apply throughout the whole time of the last days.

From the moment that Jesus ascended and went to glory until the moment that Jesus descends in his return, these beatitudes ought to mark

God's people. If you want to be salt and light in the midst of this dark and decaying world, pray for the spirit of God to help you excel in these things.

And to find your contentment in the Lord in these things. And when it is, we live by faith and not by sight and we are filled with trials and suffering and persecution and all the things that happen to come upon us, of course by God's providence, but also by virtue of the fact that we live in a sin -cursed world.

Even the very function of our body is cursed with the effects of sin. We must set our eyes and fix them upon these marks of what

Jesus says is a blessed man. Well, I need to start working through this text or we'll never make it through it.

Well, because we're jumping into the middle of Matthew's Gospel and because Jesus here has a crowd gathering around him and he's up on this mountain,

I think we need to understand what has gone on so far in Matthew's Gospel. And I'm not going to read for us the first four chapters, but I want to give you sort of the context.

How did Jesus get to this mountain? Why is there a crowd now surrounding him? Well, we know that in Matthew chapter three,

Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist. He says after John refuses to baptize him,

Jesus says, allow it so that I might fulfill all righteousness. And then we hear this voice from heaven say, behold, my beloved son, hear him.

And John says, and the Gospel writer says, he saw the Holy Spirit descending like a dove upon Jesus.

This is, in a sense, Jesus's ordination service. He is now being proclaimed.

He is entering into his ministry as the Messiah, as the Redeemer, as the one who will come to save his people from their sins.

And then immediately in John chapter four, where does Jesus go? He's driven by the

Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tested. Why? Well, to show that he is indeed the one who can come and fully obey all that God requires from him.

Unlike Adam, who was in a perfect garden, had original righteousness, and yet sinned.

Unlike Israel, who God gave great revelation to, appeared upon Mount Sinai, gave them these laws, and made them his holy nation.

And yet in the wilderness, what did Israel do? They sinned, and they sinned, and they sinned, and they sinned.

And really, the whole story of Israel is marked by one word, unfaithfulness. Well, here comes this promised

Messiah. And the question is, will he be like Israel? Will he be like Adam?

And the Holy Spirit then drives him into the wilderness, and he's tested three times by the serpent. And all three times, he quotes from the book of Deuteronomy, and shows that he will indeed obey his father.

And then by the middle of chapter four, Jesus begins his ministry.

John the Baptist is thrown into prison, and Jesus begins to proclaim that the kingdom of God has come.

The kingdom of God has come, and not only does he proclaim that it's come, but he begins to do signs to show that it has indeed come.

And the crowds begin to gather around Jesus. They begin to hear about the things that he's saying about this kingdom, which if they were

Old Testament Jews, and they were reading their Old Testament, they would hear that. They would think of Isaiah.

They would think of Ezekiel. They would think of Daniel. They'd say, the day has finally come. And so his fame begins to spread, and the crowds begin to gather around him.

And that brings us to our chapter, where it says in verse one, seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

Now you could read those two, that first verse there, and you could think

Matthew is just giving us a throwaway line. He's just simply describing to us the geography and where Jesus happened to be when he gave this sermon.

But if you're a good student of the Bible, and if you're a close reader of the Bible, and in particular of the

Old and New Testament, what Matthew is doing here is showing us that Jesus is a new and better Moses.

The exact language here is used in the Old Testament in several places. In Exodus chapter 19, verse 3.

Exodus chapter 24, verse 18. Exodus chapter 34, verse 4.

And in all of those places, Moses is going to ascend Mount Sinai.

He is going to speak with the Lord, and he's going to come down from Mount Sinai, and then convey to the people what it is that the

Lord has said. But again, Moses is simply an intermediary. He is not

God himself. He is speaking simply what God has said, and yet there is one greater than Moses here.

He is God in the flesh. He is the promised prophet that Moses spoke about in Deuteronomy 18, verse 15.

He speaks with greater authority than Moses because he is God in the flesh. He reveals the glory of the

Father to his people with unveiled faces in John chapter 1, verse 18.

He's the fulfillment of the Mosaic law. And you would see that in this very sermon in Matthew chapter 5, verse 17.

And he teaches the heart of what the law requires. And the point that Matthew is making here is someone greater than Moses is standing here.

Someone greater than Moses is speaking here, and you must hear him. And in one sense, that fatherly cry from heaven at Jesus' baptism, behold my son, hear him, is really the cry of the whole of all of Scripture.

If all of Scripture is centered on Jesus, if the Old Testament is pointing to Jesus, and the

New Testament is pointing back to Jesus, and one sense, all of Scripture is saying to you and me, especially on the

Lord's day, when we sit underneath the preaching of the Word, you must hear him.

You must hear him. You must hear him. He is the mediator.

Well, let's look then at these beatitudes. This morning, we're going to simply look at the first four beatitudes, which begin in verse 3 all the way to verse 6.

These first four beatitudes, all of them have something similar. They are beatitudes of need.

They are beatitudes that indicate to God's people that they lack something.

And these beatitudes of need then ought to mark God's people. And the first beatitude

Jesus gives here is in verse 3. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Well, the materially poor are those who lack. They're dependent upon others.

They're dependent upon others to meet their physical needs. They're dependent upon others to meet the needs of just simply shelter, and food, and clothing, and water.

But here, Jesus is talking about something more significant than simply material poverty.

Those who are poor in spirit. This is a spiritual neediness.

And here he says, interestingly enough, a blessed man is marked by a fierce spiritual neediness.

A fierce spiritual neediness. A blessed man is dependent on God's grace.

Oh, I need God's grace to live. I need God's grace every day. I, no matter my perceived areas of strength, grace is what

I need for my weak and needy soul. There's actually never a time that the

New Testament talks about where you as a Christian are going to arrive at this place where you no longer need grace.

Where you're no longer spiritually needy. But rather, day after day, we are in need, and we are dependent, and we move, and we live, and we, in a sense, feed upon God's grace.

It is grace that we need. And Jesus here says, perhaps to a crowd, after hearing his proclamation that the kingdom has come, they think

Jesus is about to deliver them from the Romans. Jesus is perhaps about to set up a physical

Davidic kingdom again. He's going to rule on a physical throne. He's going to crush all of his enemies right then and there.

There's going to be no more suffering for his people. There's going to be no more need for his people. The Messiah's come.

And Jesus, as his crowd was gathering because they're interested, what does he mean the kingdom has come? Jesus then, in some of his first teachings on the kingdom, says, blessed are the poor in spirit.

And then notice what he says, for theirs. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not the powerful, not the one who has it all together, but not the one who is independent and self -sufficient, but is the one who is poor in spirit who has the kingdom.

This first beatitude, Jesus is probably drawing from Isaiah 66, verse 2, which says, but this is the one to whom

I will look, he who is humble and contrite in spirit that trembles at my word.

Who does the Lord give his attention to? The proud, the arrogant, the one with great means, the one with no needs, the one who's convinced themselves and others that they have it all together, which, by the way, that's not true of anybody.

It's the one who is contrite in spirit and trembles at his word.

This first beatitude is absolutely contrary to the world's beatitude of self -confidence and self -reliance.

The Lord does not save the proud and arrogant. He saves the brokenhearted. He saves the crushed in spirit.

Psalm 34, 18, the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

And the kingdom, then, Jesus here teaches belongs to the poor in spirit. The kingdom belongs to the spiritual needy.

Think about a man who's in denial of his sickness. This probably has never happened to you, man,

I'm sure. You're wiser than this man. And his wife is pleading with him to go to the doctor so that the doctor might tell him what it is that's going on with his body.

And he's not convinced at all. I'm fine. It's not a big deal. It's just a cold.

It's just a cough. It's no big deal. It's gonna pass as the symptoms continue to grow worse and worse.

The man's so blind and so foolish, he eventually says to appease his wife, I'll go to the doctor. But then he says to the doctor when he comes to the room, you know why

I'm here. I'm here because my wife wants me to be here. Whatever you say, it doesn't really matter. I know that I'm fine.

Well, that is what it's like for the sinner who is unaware of their spiritual need. And that's what it can be like even for God's people.

Perhaps they begin to become spiritually sleepy for a season and they begin to convince themselves.

They have it all put together. They're no longer vigilant and taking care and watch over their own soul. They're no longer actively seeking to put to death those fleshly passions as Paul talks about in Colossians 3.

They're no longer God's grace. Oh, that is great. I'm glad I'm a Christian, but it's no longer amazing anymore.

And we begin to lose sight of our spiritual neediness. Or we've convinced ourselves that spiritual need is a mark of an immature

Christian. And I'm a mature Christian. So I don't want anyone to be aware of the fact that I actually am spiritually needy.

But that's not the way that Jesus or the New Testament talks about the Christian life. And Jesus here says the kingdom belongs to those who are in spiritual need.

So do you see your spiritual need this morning? You say, well, how would I know?

What, what, what, what tasks could I do? Well, I think one of the easiest things you could do to answer that question is ask the question, what does your prayer life look like?

It is the saints in my church that are keenly aware of their spiritual need, who are most fervent to the

Lord in prayer, who are most faithful to the Lord in prayer, who are faithful and coming to our corporate prayer meeting on Wednesday nights, but are also faithful for praying to the

Lord for the saints in the church, but also faithful and simply praying for themselves because they are keenly aware of their spiritual need.

And it is probably a temptation of us as Christians living in the West and the land of abundance that need and dependence are something, it's something that's foreign to us.

I mean, why is it that the prayer meeting, the corporate prayer meeting is the least attended meeting often in a church?

I would say because we don't really believe how spiritually needed we are. We think we've got the right forms, we have a good preacher, we have a good confession of faith, we have a good order of service on Sunday, we have all of the right things, all the right externals, and therefore we're good, we have it all that we need.

You know that even a pastor in preaching the Word is absolutely dependent upon the Spirit of God to take the words that he is saying and preaching, to be of any benefit to the hearer's soul.

I could say everything right and true about the text, but if the Spirit of God is not working through the preaching of the

Word of God, then it will fall upon deaf ears. We are absolutely dependent upon the

Lord. Well, that brings us to the second beatitude Jesus then gives in verse four.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. The second mark of a blessed man is sorrow.

Again, that's contrary to the world's way of thinking. It is sorrow that is informed by the values of the kingdom.

It's a sorrow that is opposed, it is a sorrow over anything that is opposed to Christ, opposed to his kingdom, and opposed to the glory of God.

And Jesus here is probably drawing on Isaiah 61. And it says this, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the

Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind out the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the

Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God. Listen to this, to comfort all who mourn, to grant to those who mourn in Zion, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes.

This sorrow that Jesus here is talking about must not be confused with worldly regret.

This godly sorrow is a sorrow over sin. It is a godly sorrow that leads to true repentance.

It's not simply a sorrow because I'm facing the consequences for my sin. It's not simply a sorrow because people now know about my sin.

It's not simply a sorrow because any of those worldly fleshly things, but it is a sorrow because I have sinned against God.

I have profaned the very gospel that my life is a testimony of, and it is a sorrow over that.

It's a sorrow that's produced by the Spirit. It's bound to the law of God, and it's concerned with the very name of God, even above your own name.

What are some things that we should mourn over? Well, we should mourn over our personal. Sins. We should mourn over those besetting sins.

Those sins that seem to always have a hold of us. Those sins that we often make excuses for.

We often categorize them as something else. It's a bad habit. It's the way that I was raised. It was because this person did this to me.

Kids, maybe you've done that before. Your mom and dad come, and they begin to get on you, and instead of you saying, you're right, mom and dad,

I sinned. You say, I did it because she or he did that to me.

And we see our children do that, and we say, oh, that's not the right way. But then we look at our own hearts, and we do that all the time.

We should mourn over our personal sins. The conviction of sin is the most needful and blessed wound in the life of the believer.

Oh, for the unbeliever, where there is no discipline of a father in the Hebrews 12 sense, where God gives the unbeliever up over and over to their sin, to their guilt, to their bondage, that is a miserable place to be.

But it is a blessed wound when the Lord comes through the convicting work of His word by the

Spirit and wounds us. And wounds us. We should mourn over sins in the church.

False doctrine, unbiblical practices, unbiblical preaching, division within the body, not actually seeking to maintain the unity of the

Spirit and the bond of peace, Ephesians chapter four. By the way, unity is not something that happens in a church simply because you all believe the right doctrines.

It doesn't happen simply by osmosis and possibly saying, well, I'm just not going to say anything hard to my brother and sister, and I'm just not going to say anything that they've done that actually offended me.

But unity in the body is actively pursued with the grace of the gospel.

And we should mourn over the sins in the church, whether they're sins in doctrine, sins in practice, sins in fellowship.

We should mourn over the sins in our nation. And we should mourn over indifference to the gospel.

And we should mourn over our own, and this goes back to the first one, our own cold hearts to God's truth.

It is easy for us in the midst of familiarness, Lord's day after Lord's day, sound doctrine sitting underneath the preaching of the word, entering into our private, quiet times and times of devotion to become cold hearted to the truths of God's word.

And you know what often reminds us is when we then meet a new believer and their zeal for the

Lord and their hunger for God's word, they don't know much, but they know that Jesus died for them and they know that this book here tells them more about who

God is and they can't get enough of it and it ends up chastising us, doesn't it?

Because we remember a time when that was me and we become cold and callous.

We should mourn over what I call a T -Rex Christianity. Kids, you know what a

T -Rex is? Tyrannosaurus Rex. It's a big dinosaur, but it's a weird dinosaur because it has a huge head, it has a small heart in comparison to the size of its body, and it has small hands.

And there is a kind of Christianity in Reformed churches that have big heads, small hearts, and small hands.

Oh, they're ready to enter into the finer points of theology. They're ready to talk about those difficult doctrines that theologians have wrestled with for centuries, but in terms of actual practice, in terms of actual love for the

Lord and love for their unbelieving neighbor, love for their wife, love for their children, and so on and so forth, they don't have time for that.

And that is a godless approach to theology and it is a godless approach to Christianity.

But Jesus here says, blessed. Blessed are those who mourn.

And what is the promise he gives for this beatitude? For they shall be comforted.

There is a sense already, brothers and sisters, in which we already are comforted with the balm of the gospel, right?

We've been declared righteous by the work of Jesus Christ, receiving it by faith, no condemnation, and yet there are tears that still stream from our eyes because of our battle with our own sin, because we see our brothers and sisters in Christ suffering.

I think of your pastor and his beloved bride and suffering this sickness and this cancer and seeing that.

And she is already comforted with the gospel, but there's a sense in which we are longing and waiting for that day that Revelation 7 talks about when the

Lord Jesus returns and he will wipe every tear from his people's eyes and he will give them a comfort that is eternal and that will endure forever.

No longer mixed with our own sin, no longer mixed with living in a sinful world, no longer mixed with anything that comes with living in this present evil age.

And Jesus here says to the one who is mourning, he says, you will be comforted.

Sure thing. Guaranteed. That brings us to the third beatitude of need.

Jesus here says in verse 5, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

The meek are those who undergo suffering and evil against them without retribution.

The meek are those who humbly do good to their enemies. Jesus here talks quite a bit about loving our enemies and not returning evil for evil in the

Sermon on the Mount. Chapter 5 verse 38. Look what he says. You have heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile or go with him two miles.

Or go with him two miles. Verse 42. Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.

You have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. I just want to say, friends, there are professing

Christian pastors today who are saying that right now. Love your friend, hate your enemy.

It's a time for Christians to learn how to hate their enemies again. And Jesus here is saying the complete opposite.

Verse 44. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who's in heaven.

For he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good. He sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?

Do not even Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

If your engagement with the culture and seeking to be salt and light causes you to abandon this beatitude of meekness and loving your enemy, then you have completely missed it.

You've completely missed it. The meek are those who not only love their enemies and do good to their enemies, the meek use their strength for others.

Meekness is an expression of humility. It's the opposite of ambition or envy.

It is the gentle, humble, unassuming approach of one who knows his spiritual poverty and lets it guide his behavior.

The mark of meekness is not the absence of assertiveness. It is the absence of self.

Self -assertion. Self -assertion. As you notice, it's those who mourn over their sin and those who know their spiritual need who are also those who are meek.

And it's a person who is not meek, who is full of themselves, who is prideful and arrogant, and they assert themselves above others always in every way.

It is those who do not see their spiritual need. They are not mourning over their sin and therefore they act in a prideful and presumptuous way.

A lack of meekness in the Christian is a sign of a lack of spiritual self -awareness and pride.

And there's kind of a paradox here because in the one sense in our Christian lives we're called to examine ourselves, to be spiritually self -aware so that we do not think more highly of ourselves than we ought, so that we do not begin to live in a way as if we're not dependent upon God's grace or to be spiritually self -aware, but on the other side we're to be self -forgetful.

It isn't about me. If you ever talk to somebody and no matter what you're talking about it could be an area of conversation you know that this person has no experience, no expertise, and you're in the conversation, they've asked you the question and now you're answering the question and they always find a way to make it about themselves.

That isn't what Jesus is talking about here. The Christian is to be self -aware of their spiritual need and at the same time self -forgetful because they are, because of the gospel, seeking to serve others rather than serve themselves.

And think about the gospel with me for a moment if you will. Doesn't the gospel free us to be the most meek and humble people on the earth?

Doesn't the gospel free us from self -righteousness, pride, envy, and ambition? Think about it. Who are you apart from Christ?

I don't even, we don't even need to give the answer right. Let me ask you another. Why is it that you've received

God's grace and mercy in the first place? Was it because the Lord looked down the quarters of time and said this brother,

I'll just say Ben because I know Ben, brother Ben is going to be this uh awesome and righteous man and therefore he deserves and he's earned my grace and mercy.

No, no it's actually because we were dead in our sins and it's according to God's great mercy that he has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

He has brought us from death to life from being a rebel and being hostile towards him to being made his sons and daughters and he has showered grace upon grace upon us.

Doesn't that then free us then to be the most meek and humble people? Well we're not always fighting for our quote what's rightly ours or what we deserve or the way that we think that we should be treated or all those things.

No, the one who is meek says you know what I deserve nothing and God gave me his son and therefore

I may not receive what is justly mine in this life. I may be ill -treated,

I may be underappreciated or fill in whatever sin that you might experience in this life but I am right with God through his son

Jesus Christ and my greatest need has been met and it was met because of pure grace and nothing more and nothing less.

And what is the promise Jesus gives to this beatitude? Notice what he says in verse five, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

Now in the New Testament the promise of inheriting the earth is not like in the Old Testament where there was a physical land that God promised to give his people, his holy nation

Israel but the land of Israel, the promised land in the Old Testament was a picture of a greater land that God's people would inherit and that is the new heavens and the new earth.

And so in this life you may be meek, humble, people may take advantage of you, people are not may, they will, people are going to sin against you and Jesus here says to his disciples blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

You may inherit nothing here. When your parents pass away you may inherit nothing.

You may have nothing in this life of any value monetarily speaking but Jesus here says blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

Well that brings us to the final beatitude. Verse six, the final beatitude of need.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.

Now because we can walk to a grocery store and we can pick the grocery store we want to go to and we walk into that grocery store and there's an abundance of food and there's abundance of water on the shelf for us to just put in our little cart walk to the cash register, check it out, take it to our house and when we run out generally speaking we can go back to that grocery store and there's food and water again but in the ancient near east scarcity of food and water was a real concern.

One bad harvest, one drought, one bad storm and that whole region could suffer want and hunger and thirst for a whole year for a whole season, for a host of years.

But let me ask you this how would you search for food or water if you were desperately hungry or dehydrated?

Quick little glance you certainly wouldn't search for it in the way that men search for something when their wife sends them to the pantry.

You've never had that? Your wife says go, can you go get this thing? It's right there, this shelf.

You go, men you look, you open it up you're looking at the shelf you said it's not here, you didn't buy it you forgot it, it's somewhere else then you hear your wife get up and you're frantically searching because you know when she gets there she's going to go right to that place and she's going to look it's right here where I sat.

But Jesus here is talking about hungering and thirsting after righteousness. How do you search for that?

With what intensity would you search for that? If you would search desperately for food or water if you were hungry or dehydrated how much more so should we long and search for righteousness?

This hunger and thirsting after righteousness is grounded in already having received the righteousness of Christ by faith.

And this hunger and thirsting for righteousness really is the same thing Jesus is talking about in Matthew chapter 6 verse 33 but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.

It's a seeking for righteousness in my own life and growing in sanctification it's a seeking and longing for there to be righteousness in the world and it's then connected to the way that Jesus tells us to pray.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Do we really pray that prayer?

With a zeal and with the energy and with an urgency? Or think about how the book of Revelation ends.

Come Lord Jesus, come. I think if we long for righteousness more and we were abhorred in our souls by sin or we would pray that prayer more fervently that wouldn't be just a prayer we pray every now and then when we remember there's this thing called the

Lord's Prayer and Jesus gave us some principles that direct us in our prayer but daily as we're confronted with our own sin as we see the sin in our family as we see the sin in the world we would say, come

Lord Jesus, come. And what does Jesus say here? What is the promise?

For they shall be satisfied. When Jesus returns the kingdom will be consummated sin will be dealt with and forever in his presence righteousness and peace will dwell.

Well, I want to conclude just giving us a couple of points of application some specific things as we think about these beatitudes.

First, I want to apply this text by warning you of specific counterfeit beatitudes that often creep into the church.

The first is a beatitude of triumph where we have replaced the cross of the

Christian life with the crown. Whether it comes in the form of health, wealth and prosperity, false gospels or it comes in certain views of culture in the end times there is this temptation in our day to say things like well, what

Jesus said here in the beatitudes applies to first century Christians it applies to Christians living in third world countries it applies in countries where the gospel hasn't gone but in our country in our nation the beatitudes simply do not apply.

This language here in verse 10 about suffering for righteousness sake just doesn't apply.

That's not the way that the New Testament talks about the Christian life. Following Jesus is marked by dying to self and cross -bearing from the moment

Jesus went to heaven until the moment Jesus returns. That was actually the expectation of the first century

Jews. They thought Jesus was coming to get rid of all suffering and all sin and he was going to set up his kingdom.

The second counterfeit beatitude though is a beatitude of legalism where we replace the heart with a false religion.

We begin to put stock in our hypocrisy and our traditions of men and our external devotion to God without any real heart for God and a zeal for God without knowledge.

I remember speaking to a man that came to our church and it was clear that there were some things there that some views that were going to that were going to kind of be contrary to what we believe the

Bible teaches and we addressed this man spoke to him and he says don't you understand I'm just really zealous for the

Lord and I said brother I say this as much love as possible so were the Pharisees but it was a zeal for God without knowledge.

In the name of God they fenced the law of God they put heavy burdens on people they were zealous for God through and through and yet they were godless.

They were godless. There's two more counterfeit beatitudes there's the beatitude of temporalism we begin to replace the eternal promises that we ought to long for with temporary promises.

We begin to root our happiness in present circumstances rather than the favor of God and then of course there's the counterfeit beatitude of the flesh self -dependence worldly regret self -ambition seeking the desires of the flesh.

The second way though I want to apply this text it can be tempting for us as God's people to hear the

Sermon on the Mount and these beatitudes and quickly go I'm not doing any of these things and that's true for all of us

I'm sure in some degree or another but if your first step tomorrow morning is

I'm going to try harder to do these things then you're still missing it. The first thing that you must do is look to Jesus.

Did you happen to think for a second in every single one of these beatitudes we see a profound example in our

Savior in his ministry and in his life? Jesus says blessed are those who mourn and he mourned when he saw the people like sheep without a shepherd.

Jesus says blessed are the meek and Jesus was meek and lowly and he laid a gentle and lowly yoke on his people.

Jesus says blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and Jesus his whole life was marked by that.

He literally came to fulfill all righteousness. He said to the disciples in John 4 my food is to do the will of my

Father or in John 17 Father I have completed the work that you've given me to do give me the glory now that I had before I came.

The only beatitude that is not found in Jesus is the poor in spirit because Jesus was never spiritually needy.

He came as the perfect God -man by the power of the Spirit fully did all that the

Father had given him to do. So before you seek to do the beatitudes before you seek to pray and Lord help me grow in these things you must look to Jesus.

You must look to Jesus. Last I want to say to perhaps the unbeliever here this morning the beatitudes are not a call for you to reform your life and then you can be a

Christian. Reform your life and then God will accept you. No, Hansard Knowles says this he says it is not those who reform themselves who will be saved but those who acknowledge they have no hope in themselves.

Those and only those who cast themselves entirely upon the mercy and promises of Christ who will be saved.

So you're hearing the beatitudes this morning you think well I think I can do them well I'm saying Jesus says later on in this very sermon you must be perfect because your

Heavenly Father is perfect. Let me just tell you if you've sinned once you've already you're done you've failed and the word of the gospel is not reform yourselves pull up your bootstraps clean your life up and then you can come to God and then he'll accept you but rather the only thing that you can bring for your salvation is the very sin that made it necessary in the first place.

That's it and faith itself is a gift and you can never receive a gift if you're holding something else in your hands.

So if it's your self -righteousness your parents were Christians your daddy's a pastor you try to help old ladies across the street and you try to give to the homeless you are a sinner and the only thing the only thing the gospel calls you to do is to turn from your sin with empty hands and take hold of Christ.

What is that parable that Jesus says he says there's two men they go into the temple one a Pharisee one a tax collector and what does the tax collector say?

He says Lord he won't even look up to heaven he says Lord be merciful to me a sinner what does the

Pharisee say? Lord thank you you have not made me like that man which one is justifying?

The tax collector and the beatitudes then expose our sin and they remind us of our need for Christ.

Well Christian in these beatitudes we are reminded that despite your need despite your mourning you're a blessed man you're a blessed woman you're blessed because you see your need you're blessed because you know you're fiercely dependent upon God's grace and you're blessed because you already are a member of this heavenly kingdom and you then are awaiting with hope and faith saying come

Lord Jesus come let's pray oh

Lord we come before you we pray Lord that you would draw more lively upon us this picture of a blessed man that you would draw more lively upon us the image of your son