Blessed be

For the next few weeks we are going to be camping out in Matthew. Specifically, we will be covering the beginning of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Today, we are looking the first 12 verses which we commonly refer to as the Beatitudes.

Jesus was speaking to his disciples but there were others who were crowding around listening. He is beginning to prepare them for what they will be facing as well as introducing them to the upside down way things operate in his kingdom.

Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them.

He said:

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Jesus is teaching some strange things to his disciples. He is turning things on their ear. He is teaching them that although there will be suffering, he will bring comfort and blessing to those who suffer. The poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will not only be filled but they will be blessed by God. Jesus is not giving us a list of things to strive for but rather he is telling it like it is. He is not sugarcoating things. People will suffer. There will be persecution because of their association with Jesus. They will be insulted, slandered, and even killed. But Jesus says they will be blessed.

I used to think this was a list of personality traits and I would try to find where I fit or where I wanted to fit. I blew right by the poor in spirit and the mourners because those sounded too unpleasant. Could I be meek? Maybe. But did I want my reward to be inheriting the earth? The world is kinda messed up so I didn’t really like that too much. Peacemaker? Maybe I could do that. I like the idea of peace and of being called God’s child. Pure in heart also appeals to me a little because my name comes from the Greek root word meaning pure and seeing God sounds amazing. But this list of “blessed bes” is not a list of clubs we might like to join or avoid. Rather it is a picture of what it means to be human and what it means to be a follower of Christ. We will find ourselves in each of these categories at one time or another in our lives and while some of them are pleasant, and none of them are easy, we only need to trust that wherever we find ourselves at any given time God is with us and when we trust in him for the outcome in the midst of the storm, we will find blessings we did not expect.

Internal

The first 4 are strictly about the internal condition of the follower of Christ. The next three must begin inside but will be displayed in our actions and the final 2 are all about our reaction to being mistreated on God’s behalf.

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.I have a confession to make before we go any further. Pet Peeves – “Too Blessed to be Stressed” “Twisted Scripture”

“Money is the root of all evil”

“God doesn’t give you more than you can handle”

“I can do all things through Christ”

“For I know the plans I have for you…”

I would love to sit down with the person who coined the phrase “Too Blessed to be stressed” and find out what they really had in mind when they started making t-shirts and coffee mugs with that phrase. Maybe there is a back story I don’t know which would shed some light on it and I wouldn’t be so irritated by it.

What bothers me most about it is that it conveys a message that we shouldn’t be stressed if we are Christians. Like somehow life is so good for Christians that we should never complain about anything or that we won’t have any hardships in our lives. This is not an accurate picture of the life of anyone Christian or not. We all suffer. We all have worries and cares. We all have stress. Jesus opening lines of his sermon on the mount is evidence of the fact that blessing does not mean an absence of difficulties in life.

Jesus begins with telling is followers, “blessed are the poor in spirit”. Poor as in utterly destitute. Blessed are you when you recognize that you have nothing because when you recognize that without God you are utterly empty, you can reach a place where you can live life before God’s face and enjoy his kingdom dwelling in your soul. 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when you let go of everything you think gives you an edge on someone else. Blessed are you when you acknowledge the fact that you cannot save yourself no matter how hard you try or how good of a life you live. Blessed are you when you stand empty-handed before God because then and only then will he be able to fill you up with his kingdom rule in your heart. Eugene Peterson translates this verse this way, “3 “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.There are so many things we can mourn. It seems to me that we have had more than our fair share of mourning around here lately. Death was not part of God’s perfect plan for his creation but it became a reality we all have to deal with when sin entered the picture. We mourn the loss of loved ones – those who are gone far too soon and those who had full, wonderful, long lives. We mourn because they are beyond us. We can also mourn the loss of friends and family when they move far away. We can mourn the loss of dreams when things don’t go according to plan. When a friendship or a marriage ends – we mourn.

We can also mourn when we look at the way the world seems to be moving further away from God. We mourn when we see news reports about the abuse of an innocent, the corruption that enables trafficking of human beings or the exploitation of the vulnerable. Yet Jesus says that those who mourn are blessed. Why? Not because mourning is something we enjoy but because he will comfort us. He sits with us in our mourning and mourns with us and he will put things right in time. Revelation 7:13-17 13 Then[r] one of the elders asked[s] me, “These dressed in long white robes—who are they and where have they come from?” 14 So[t] I said to him, “My lord, you know the answer.”[u] Then[v] he said to me, “These are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation. They[w] have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb! 15 For this reason they are before the throne of God, and they serve[x] him day and night in his temple, and the one seated on the throne will shelter them.[y] 16 They will never go hungry or be thirsty again, and the sun will not beat down on them, nor any burning heat,[z] 17 because the Lamb in the middle of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Someday there will be no more sin, no more death, no more violence or poverty and Jesus will wipe away every tear from our eye. But in the meantime, he will comfort us in our mourning.

5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Meek rhymes with weak. I always used to think that to be meek was to be a mousy sort of person who couldn’t or wouldn’t stand up for themselves because they were cowardly. But meek and weak are not the same thing. The Message translation helps with this misunderstanding of what it means to be meek.

5 “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

To be meek is to be truly humble. Not to think to highly of yourself nor too badly of yourself but to recognize who you really are and where you stand in God’s kingdom. Psalm 37:10-13 mentions the meek, A little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look for them, they will not be found.11 But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity.

12 The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them;13 but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming.

Being meek is tied to being merciful. When we are meek, we might have it within our power to punish someone yet we show mercy instead. Jesus was meek and like Jesus we need to be quick to extend grace rather than aggression. Blessed are the meek…

“Blessed are those who hunger[ HYPERLINK "https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205%3A1-12&version=NET;MSG" \l "fen-NET-23241i" \o "See footnote i" i] and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.

Being hungry and thirsty does not sound pleasant at all. Especially thirsty. If I were a spy with top secret government information, the enemy would be able to get that information out of me quite easily by withholding water from me for a few days…or hours. But Jesus is not talking about regular hunger and thirst here. He is talking about hungering and thirsting for righteousness. We cannot get to a place where we hunger and thirst for righteousness until we have become poor in spirit because we often fill ourselves up with things that make us feel temporarily good and we don’t feel the hunger pangs.

When we recognize that what we are truly hungry for is righteousness, God will fill us to the brim with His righteousness. Hungering for righteousness means shifting our desires so that we are no longer trying to put on a good show of being the perfect Christian. We are no longer trying to earn our way into God’s favor. When we truly begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness, we will recognize that we can never attain it on our own and we allow God to fill us up with his righteousness – not because we have earned it but because he is good and merciful and generous and he delights in giving us good gifts.

Actions

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children[j] of God.10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.

Mercy is something we love to receive but not something we are always willing to extend to others. But mercy is not optional for us. Our God is so incredibly merciful to us. Just think about the ways in which you have failed to live a perfect sin-free life yet God loves you and welcomes you anyway. That is mercy. We don’t deserve the love that God lavishes on us yet he still loves us without condition – that is mercy. Jesus who was without sin, died on a cross because of the sin that was in the world in order to provide a way for us to have life – that is mercy.

The writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 2:14-18

14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. 16 For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. 17 For this reason he had to be made like them,[k] fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

But Jesus says that the merciful will be blessed by receiving mercy. We need to extend mercy to others. We need to recognize that others are hurting and in need of mercy. They might look more like an angry bear than a wounded child but they need mercy just the same. Being merciful sometimes puts us in vulnerable positions where we have to take the risk of being rejected by those we seek to extend mercy to but we need to be merciful just the same. After all, Jesus is rejected all of the time but he continually offers mercy to us and to everyone else in the world.

8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.We can easily misunderstand what it means to be pure in heart or to be pure at all. Pure, we often think means untouched or perfect. But it really has more to do with focus and desire. When we are pure in heart, our desires are fixed on one thing – God. This is not something we achieve all on our own but through the Holy Spirit, as we spend time with God and as we are obedient to what he calls us to, we find that our desires begin to change and where we were once pulled in many different directions, now we find that we see things differently and our first desire is to serve God. This is the goal for all Christ-followers because it leads us into a place of deep communion with God, a place where we can see God. Eugene Peterson puts it this way in the Message, 8 “You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

We cannot live with divided hearts for long. When we try to serve God and still grasp all of the empty things the world promises, we end up empty and frustrated. The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 72

Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.

2 But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold.3 For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

4 They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong.[a]5 They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills.6 Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence.7 From their callous hearts comes iniquity[b]; their evil imaginations have no limits.8 They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression.9 Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth.10 Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.[c]11 They say, “How would God know? Does the Most High know anything?”

12 This is what the wicked are like— always free of care, they go on amassing wealth.

13 Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence.14 All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments.

15 If I had spoken out like that, I would have betrayed your children.16 When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply17 till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.

18 Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin.19 How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors!20 They are like a dream when one awakes; when you arise, Lord, you will despise them as fantasies.

21 When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered,22 I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.

23 Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

27 Those who are far from you will perish; you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.28 But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge; I will tell of all your deeds.

Purity of heart is not something that only a special few Christians have, it is something the Holy Spirit desires to cultivate in every one of us.

Conclusion:

These Beatitudes or blessings are not a list of options that we can choose from and decide what sounds good to us. The blessings come when we are in the midst of struggles and turn to God for our comfort, our satisfaction and our guidance.

Being blessed does not mean that we are free from stress or that we are living in a state of bliss and happiness. Being blessed means that we are deeply connected to the one who knows our hearts and souls better than we do and who wants to make us whole.

We are never promised an easy ride in this life. Jesus didn’t have an easy time of it nor did his disciples but what we are promised is that we are never alone and if we choose to remain in Him, we will live abundantly beyond what we can imagine. Our circumstances do not determine our hope or our joy. We experience hope and joy and comfort and mercy and satisfaction when we abide in Jesus. John 15: 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains[o] in me—and I in him—bears[p] much fruit,[q] because apart from me you can accomplish[r] nothing.

We need to stop trying to figure it all out on our own and abide deeply in Jesus who is the vine – the true vine who desires to bless us and free us to be who he created us to be.

Prayer

Psalm 15

Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain?

2 The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their heart;3 whose tongue utters no slander, who does no wrong to a neighbor, and casts no slur on others;4 who despises a vile person but honors those who fear the Lord;who keeps an oath even when it hurts, and does not change their mind;5 who lends money to the poor without interest; who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.