The Key to True Joy - Part I Matthew 5:1-5

The Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes

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 you when you 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 great is your reward in heaven. For so they did to the prophets who were before you.

What I just quoted was the beginning of the greatest sermon ever preached by Jesus Christ. The sermon known as the Sermon on the Mount. And what I just quoted to you are verses 3 through 12 in Matthew 5.

These are also known as the Beatitudes. And what we're going to be doing the next three Sundays is looking at these Beatitudes. Then there's eight in all. And this morning what we're going to be looking at is the first two Beatitudes in verses 3 and 4.

And what this sermon is calling each of us to do is to follow God in Christ is the only path to true happiness. This is what it is telling us. To follow God in Christ is the only path to true happiness.

And we're going to see eight ways forever joy is produced in these Beatitudes. And the first way how is by humbling yourself before God. And we'll see this in the first Beatitude in verse 3. But before we jump in to our text this morning let me give you a little recap of last week's sermon.

We looked at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. What we saw is that Jesus began his ministry in the Galilee region. And what the text told us is that he was a light shining in a dark place. In our world we often hear the word hope and sometimes that word can be thrown around too loosely.

When Jesus comes into the world he brings real hope. We saw three ways how last Sunday. The first way how is by shining his light in a dark place. The Old Testament predicted that he would come to this people in the Galilean region and bring the gospel to them and this came to pass.

The second way how Jesus brought hope was calling his messengers to send out. This is very applicable to us. Just as Jesus called the disciples to send out with the gospel. So he sends us out with the good news to those in darkness around us.

What we also saw and this is the third way how Jesus brings hope to a lost world is that Jesus models preaching the gospel everywhere. As we think about our church we are called to preach the gospel to the St. Croix Falls area first and foremost but we're not to stop there.

This is why we support six missionaries. Because our ministry is extended to those places to get the gospel to the ends of the earth. Now let's begin looking at our text this morning. We saw last week that the crowds were drawn to Jesus and as the crowds surround him Jesus preaches a sermon that we will see in chapters five six and seven.

We will be spending, as I mentioned a week ago, that we will be spending the next couple of months in these three chapters known as the Sermon on the Mount. Now the location where Jesus preaches this sermon was a mountain near the Sea of Galilee.

We don't know precisely where it was. And as verse one tells us the audience are the crowds and his disciples. When it says disciples this is not just referring to the 12 disciples but anyone who became a follower of Christ at this time.

We can be sure that this is a mixed crowd of believers and unbelievers. He's calling these people to this forever joy. If they will just hear the words he says and believe and follow the words he says.

And as we notice here he gives this sermon as he is sitting down. This is what the first verse says. Seeing the crowds he went up on the mountain and when he sat down his disciples came to him. Now in the introduction you heard me quote verses three through twelve also known as the Beatitudes.

What Beatitude means is a blessing. In other words if you do what he says you will be blessed. What does it mean to be blessed? There are two different words for blessing in the New Testament and each of them carries a little bit different meaning.

The Greek word eulogetos carries the meaning of favor and prosperity. When we pray for the Lord to bless someone we pray that the Lord's favor would be upon him or her. And we pray that he would prosper that person.

And this could be materially or it could also be that the Lord would prosper them spiritually. So this is typically how we use the word blessing. However this is not how the word blessing is being used here.

The other Greek word makarios carries the meaning of happy. In other words if you do what Jesus says you will be happy. So Jesus focuses on the personal experience of those who live this out. Those who live out the Beatitudes will have true genuine joy.

The great desire in every human heart is to be happy. And only the Bible gives us the answer as to how to truly experience this happiness. There was a 17th century philosopher named Blaise Pascal who said, Everyone's desire is to be happy even the man who hangs himself on the tree.

So as we read these verses these truly are a treasure. Everyone wants to be happy and Jesus tells us the only way to be fully happy forever. These verses are indeed a guide to everlasting happiness. Let's begin by looking at the first Beatitude in verse 3.

Poverty of Spirit and the Kingdom of Heaven

As you've already heard but Jesus says, Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. As we read this as we read poor in spirit and we see the word blessed attached to it. This may catch us by surprise.

To be poor in spirit does not seem like a positive thing. When our world thinks about happiness and only thinks of things going well for someone. If times are good then you will be happy. And if times are bad or you experience any kind of pain or discomfort then you will be sad.

But what the Bible teaches is the road to true happiness comes through sadness. So what does it mean to be poor in spirit? The Greek word literally means to be reduced to beggary. What this Beatitude tells us is that those who are reduced to beggary possess the kingdom of heaven.

And I will explain what kind of beggary this is in a second. A couple of months ago we talked about the kingdom of heaven when I was introducing Matthew to us. The kingdom of heaven is the same thing as the kingdom of God.

It is two different ways of saying the same thing. And the kingdom of God is the place where Jesus Christ, the Messiah will dwell with his people in the future. What Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount and throughout Matthew is that even though the kingdom comes when Jesus returns in the future, he calls for people to live as kingdom citizens now.

So as you follow Jesus in the present you are living like kingdom citizens. The kingdom is a place where everyone lives joyfully for God. But what does it mean to be poor in spirit or to be reduced to beggary?

Anyone who has a relationship with Christ knows what this is. You have experienced this. One of my missionary friends used to say when he did evangelism that all I am is a beggar trying to show other beggars where to find bread.

16th century reformer Martin Luther said on his deathbed that all I am is just a beggar. To be a beggar is to know that your only hope of entering the kingdom of heaven is through the work of another.

You and I bring nothing to the table. Only the finished work of Jesus Christ counted to you and I will give us entrance into God's kingdom. Every one of us are wretched sinners. We are in a position of pleading for God's mercy.

There is only one way to dwell with God and it is not through your own merit. Isaiah 64 6 says about our seemingly good works that sprout from our sinful nature. Isaiah describes them as filthy rags. To be poor in spirit is to recognize this.

So in other words to be poor in spirit is to come to God humbly recognizing your great need for him. Without believing in Christ, we cannot be considered righteous before God. And we can extend this even further.

To be saved takes humility. Yes, very much so. But even more than that, our entire lives should be one of humility. Only God is worthy of the highest praise and so often we want the highest praise for ourselves.

Our world is a cesspool for pride. And pride is so often not condemned but rather promoted. It's rare to see a humble person. Very rare. This is a virtue. It's like seeing or it's like finding an endangered species.

Humility is something that we should all pursue because we are commanded to be humble in scripture. James 4 10 says to humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Now, it's not bad to get praise.

It's just what kind of praise are you getting? If the Lord praises you as you humbly walk with him and he gets the ultimate glory, then this is a holy praise that you receive. This is a good praise. When another person praises us, we should not reject the praise.

And in fact, to reject praise is arrogance. What you're saying is, well, I'm too humble for that. I'm too good to be receiving praise. But rather, we should receive the praise and say thank you, recognizing God's work in your life and giving glory to him.

You'll notice that when we don't receive praise, what we're doing is we're saying we're not acknowledging the work that God has done through us. We should say, you know what? Thank you to God be the glory.

That's the correct way to receive praise. But the problem is too often our world and even us in this room are hungry for praise for ourselves with no thought of God receiving the highest praise. When this happens, we get the glory, not him.

The Bible commands us to be humble. And recently I found helpful instruction from a Puritan by the name of Thomas Watson. Puritans often get a bad name, mainly because of the Salem witch trials, which rightly they did wrong there.

But the Puritans truly are some of the best people who have ever lived. These are people who love the Lord and their writings are treasure. But Thomas Watson, he gives us seven ways how we know that humility is being produced in our lives.

And this will be helpful for each of us. So I encourage you to write these down. The number one way that we know humility is being produced in our lives is one who is poor in spirit, loses his self preoccupation.

Self is nothing and Christ is everything. Galatians 2 20. I have been crucified with Christ and it's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I live in the body. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Number two, humility leads us to be lost in the wonder of Christ. Our aim is to reflect Christ more. Our satisfaction will be in the prospect of one day being fully in the likeness of our Lord. As 2 Corinthians 3 18 says, with unveiled face, beholding as in in a mirror, the glory of the Lord being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

As that was number two, number three, we will not complain about our situation no matter how bad it may become because we know we deserve worse than anything we can ever experience in this life. We will consider no circumstance to be unfair.

God's grace is a gift to us that we do not deserve. Oh, if we lived with that in mind. Number four, we will more clearly see the strengths and virtues of others as well as our own weaknesses and sins.

As Philippians 2 3 says, with humility of mind, we will regard one another is more important than ourselves. Number five, we will spend much time in prayer. Just as the physical beggar begs for physical sustenance, the spiritual beggar begs for spiritual.

We will knock often at heaven's gate because we are always in need. First Thessalonians 5 17 tells us to pray without ceasing. Number six, we will take Christ on his terms, not on ours or any other. We will not try to have Christ while keeping our pride, our pleasures, our covetousness or our immorality.

We will not modify his standards by ecclesiastical traditions or by our own inclinations or persuasions. His word alone will be our standard. Because his word alone is without error and comes from him.

Second Peter chapter one verses 20 and 21 say. No prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man. But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

And lastly, number seven, when we are poor in spirit, we will praise and thank God for his grace. He knows that he has no blessings and no happiness, but that which the Father gives in love and grace.

As First Timothy 1 14 says, God's grace is more than abundant with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. So may we live out and be humble, truly be poor in spirit by being marked by those seven ways there.

The people who dwell in God's kingdom will be those who are humble. They humble themselves, realizing that only God can save them. And the life of the humble is marked with dependence upon God, realizing that apart from him, you are lost.

And without him, you can do nothing. As Jesus says in John 15 5. And we also know that we are humble when we realize how small we are. We are just specks. And God is enormous. When we realize how big God is and how small we are, that ought to make us humble.

The one who lives for him completely depends on him. And Jesus remarkably praises his servants as he is glorified through his work and his servants. As it says, humble yourself and he will exalt you to humble yourself before God in salvation and for the journey through the life of faith.

This is the road to happiness. This is happiness taking place to depend on yourself and to seek your own glory does not lead to happiness. It only leads to misery in the end. So as we have seen, to follow God in Christ is the only path to true happiness.

And the first way how joy is produced is by humbling yourself before God. The second way how joy is produced and to following by following God in Christ is the only path to happiness is feeling sorrow for your sin.

Godly Grief and Comfort in Repentance

And we'll see this in verse four. Now in the Beatitudes, all of these are tied together. The first three Beatitudes are from what we call a negative perspective. We see this through the descriptions of poor in spirit, those who mourn and the meek, as we will see next Sunday in verse five.

What I mean by negative is that we need to be brought low before we can be built up and go in a new and much better direction to live as kingdom citizens. The next four Beatitudes in verses six through nine are what we might call positive Beatitudes.

As we are broken down in verses three through five, we can positively live out verses six through nine. I say this now because verse four is related to verse three. As we just saw in verse three, those who belong to the kingdom of heaven are those who humble themselves before God.

These are those who realize they can bring nothing to the table. With this in mind, let's read what Jesus says in verse four, as you've already heard this morning. He says, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

As I mentioned in the first Beatitude, these are counterintuitive. As Jesus was preaching this, you can imagine what the crowds must have been thinking. How in the world are those who mourn happy? When we think of grief, we don't think of happiness.

So what kind of mourning is he talking about? We already saw that in order to enter a relationship with God, we need to humble ourselves. But in order to do this, we need to come to him with sorrow. Why is this?

This is so because we are sinners and God is holy. When we realize that God is perfect in purity and we are not, this presents an enormous problem for us. God made us holy. Adam and Eve were 100 pure.

Ecclesiastes 7 .29 says, God made man upright, but they have devised many schemes. God's standard for us is holiness and we have fallen way short. This should make us feel deep sorrow and those who become kingdom citizens experience sorrow.

And this is a good sorrow to have since it is godly grief. The Apostle Paul helps us here with his letter to the church in Corinth in 2 Corinthians 7, verses 9 and 10. He wrote to them, I rejoice not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting.

For you felt a godly grief so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. Whereas worldly grief produces death. There is a good grief when it comes to our sin and a bad grief.

Let me explain the bad grief before we get to the good grief. Worldly grief or bad grief is sorrow that one experiences when it leads you to look bad in the world's eyes. We see this all the time. Recently, we've seen it in the Me Too movement.

We've seen so many people busted after years of immorality behind closed doors. There have been some big names that have been exposed. I'll give you one name that you know, Matt Lauer, from the Today show, the star from the Today show for many years.

Now, this is how worldly grief works. The world says, what a bad person this is for their immorality. And the person apologizes to the world to regain their approval. And then kind of the funny part about this, maybe the sad part is the ones who are shaming this person are doing the same things.

They're not any better, but we must understand that this is what happens. So when this person apologized to try to get the world's approval back, this is a kind of repentance, but it's a false repentance.

It's not a repentance to God. The desire is for the world to once again approve and accept the one who has fallen. This is not godly grief. Bad grief also takes on another form. That's when one feels sorrow for their sin, but they only feel sorrow because they were caught.

This person would keep doing the sin if it never were revealed. What 2 Corinthians 7 .10 says about this grief is that it produces death. There is no true forgiveness and one standing with God does not change.

The sins remain and this person stands condemned. But what Matthew 5 .4 has in mind is godly grief. Godly mourning leads to eternal life. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 7 .10. What Paul tells the church in Corinth in 2 Corinthians 7 .9 is that he rejoices that their grief led them to true repentance.

Godly grief is when you recognize your sin and you feel bad about it. You truly feel bad. And you don't feel bad because the world looks down upon you, but because you see how offensive your sin is to God who is holy.

And you see your sin as robbing him of his glory as you choose idols over him. This is what Romans 3 .23 says, by the way. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. How do we fall short of the glory of God with our sin?

We fall short by choosing idols over him. And so we fall short of worshiping God and truly giving him the glory that he deserves. If you listen to sermons on Sunday and you feel bad, that's a good thing.

Because when you realize God's purity and you realize your sinfulness, you see that apart from his grace, you deserve hell. Now some sermons are meant to encourage. And if you're a follower of Christ, they should encourage you.

But other sermons, the Holy Spirit will convict you. He will hit you with a ton of bricks. I remember when I was in college and my pastor was preaching through Hosea. As he preached the word, I felt tremendous conviction in my heart.

I wondered if I was truly saved. But you know the beauty of it? The years following, the Lord grew me into a deeper relationship with him. The Lord used my sorrow over my sin to produce good works in me.

The spirit was working on my heart. If you feel convicted for your sin, that's a good thing. It means the spirit is bringing his word to bear on your heart, either to bring you into a relationship with him or to bring you closer to him.

This is true sorrow for your sin. This is godly sorrow. And this is one that leads to true happiness. What Jesus says in the second beatitude is that those who mourn will be comforted. The Greek word for comfort is a future tense verb.

So the question is, when does the comfort take place? Is this something that's far off in heaven, in the future? Or is it something that we experience in the here and now? Well, let me answer that. The way that God created our emotions is interesting.

We have tears of joy and we have tears of sorrow. When we have tears of sorrow, there is no joy when the tears are coming out. But it feels good afterward. We're releasing that which was bothering us and we let it out.

And you feel better. Grief is like that when it comes to repentance. When you are mourning for your sin, it doesn't feel good. And it shouldn't. However, once the mourning is over and you know that God forgives you and you are in a good standing with him, that's when you feel joyful.

What we must understand is that repentance is something that we do throughout the Christian life. You do it when you first come to faith in Christ. That's the big repentance. But there's also smaller repentance throughout the life of faith.

Because when we sin against God, and we know we've sinned against God, there is a fracture in our relationship. It doesn't mean that we're not in a relationship with God. Of course, that's not the case because we're always in a relationship with God if we truly belong to him.

But when we repent, it's a reminder and God reminds us that we are his children and we are in good standing with him. And we are also reminded that it's the righteousness of Christ that makes us right with him.

So the time when you will be comforted is right after the mourning. Right after the weeping. His comfort to you is not only in the future in heaven, but also now in this life as you live a life of repentance.

And so in this way, those who mourn are comforted. Those who mourn are happy. And this is a beautiful thing to see. So to follow God in Christ is the only path to true happiness. And the second way how is by feeling sorrow for your sin.

And through this, God comforts you. So we have seen the first two Beatitudes today. Blessed are the poor in spirit and blessed are those who mourn. And what we've seen is that truly this is the road to happiness as Jesus has made clear.

Blessed are you if this describes you, if you are living this out. And may Eureka Baptist be full of people who are poor in spirit and full of people are those who mourn over their sin. Now next Sunday, we will be looking at three new Beatitudes.

Verses 5, 6, and 7. We'll look at the meek. We'll look at those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And we'll look at the merciful. And I look forward to opening that with you in Jesus name. Let's pray at this time.

Prayer for Humility and Godly Sorrow

Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the opportunity to preach the word and may people hear this. May people be changed by it. May people live it out. Indeed, Lord, may our church be people who humble ourselves before you and people who are sorrowful for our sins.

For those who do this, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And they are comforted and they are blessed. They are happy in you. And so may our church continue to move in that direction. May the spirit apply this, Lord, to each person's heart today in here specifically.

And I ask this in Jesus name. Amen.