Blessed & Convicted

Matthew 5:1-6

INTRODUCTION

Series Kickoff.

The Sermon on the Mount is probably the best-known part of the teaching of Jesus, though arguably, it is the least understood. It is the nearest thing to a manifesto that he ever uttered. The emphasis of the Sermon on the Mount will be on inside-out transformation. Jesus will continually go to inner motivation, not external performance. Jesus is teaching that inner life will naturally transform the outer life. Here in the Sermon on the Mount is a Christian value system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, lifestyle, and network of relationships, all of which are totally and completely opposite to those of the non-Christian world.

Now, if the Sermon on the Mount is the least understood of Jesus’ teachings, the Beatitudes are the least understood of the sermon on the Mount. Over the next two weeks, we will examine these often-quoted but often misunderstood sections of scripture.

Matthew 5:1–6 ESV

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.

SCRIPTURAL ANALYSIS

Let's take some time this morning to set the stage for the entire summer study on the Sermon on The Mount. We need to understand that the Jews had just come through the “400 silent years.” There has been no Word from God since Malachi 4. The Old Testament focused on the sin in all our lives and our inability to achieve God’s righteous standard. The New Testament opens with the coming of Messiah, grace, and salvation for all. The Old Testament looked toward Mount Sinai, while the New Testament looked toward Mount Calvary.

We also need to consider the social context of this message. The Romans conquered Israel, and all Jews were under the authority of the Roman Empire. The Jews utterly detested the Romans and desperately desired to be freed from their rule. Many times in the gospels, we find the people wanting to make Jesus their king. They did not view Him as the Messiah, the Savior of the world; most viewed Him as the one who would bring about their deliverance from Rome.

The Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount as a whole must be interpreted according to Jesus’ original intention, or else we will find ourselves going contrary to his objective of establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth. When approaching the Beatitudes, we must avoid sliding into two extremes. (1) We must not conclude that Jesus is calling his listeners to a meritorious attempt at earning salvation by living out these character qualities in order to enter the kingdom. Jesus’ Beatitudes are statements of grace, not law. (2) We must avoid making these into burdensome ethical demands on members of the kingdom. There are no imperatives here except to “rejoice” when one experiences the blessing of God.

The Beatitudes summarize the essence of the entire sermon’s message. While each Beatitude stands alone, it is linked progressively to the one following it. Each beatitude builds on the previous one. Our modern idea of “blessed” is a diluted version of the joy implied by Jesus here. Our idea of being blessed is dependent on circumstances, while God’s idea of blessing is dependent on God.

Verses 1-2

Matthew’s purpose is to present Jesus as the long-awaited king. The coming kingdom is so central to the book. This is the king’s manifesto, his statement of the kingdom’s moral principles. Jesus is not proclaiming a new law but announcing what he believes is the legitimate interpretation of God’s will as contained in the already-existing Torah. Identifying the disciples as Jesus’ audience is crucial for recognizing that the ethics of the sermon apply to those already committed to Jesus as a group of his followers trying to live together in the community.

Verse 3

“Poor in spirit,” as a virtue, doesn’t refer to a poor quality of faith. To be ‘poor in spirit’ is to acknowledge our spiritual poverty, indeed our spiritual bankruptcy, before God. For we are sinners, under the holy wrath of God, and deserving nothing but the judgment of God. We have nothing to offer, nothing to plead, nothing with which to buy the favor of heaven. We are poor as it pertains to what we can offer God.

Jesus explained that “God blesses those who realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is given to them.” Only those who humbly depend on God are admitted into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Verse 4

The loss of anything that a person counts valuable will produce mourning, whether it’s one’s financial support, loved ones, status in society, or even one’s spiritual standing before God. It is plain from the context that those here promised comfort are not primarily those who mourn the loss of a loved one but those who mourn the loss of their innocence and their righteousness. It is not the sorrow of bereavement to which Christ refers but the sorrow of repentance. This is the second stage of spiritual blessing. It is one thing to be spiritually poor and acknowledge it; it is another to grieve and mourn over why: their sin.

When Jesus’ followers mourn for their sins, God promises that they will be comforted. Only God can take away sorrow for sin. Only God can forgive and erase it. Only God can give comfort to those who mourn for their sin because they know the depth of their sin.

Verse 5

Here Jesus cites Psalm 37. It is not those who try to bring in the kingdom politically or militarily but those who humbly wait on God that will “inherit the earth.” The words translated as gentle and lowly convey humility and trust in God. Gentle and humble people do not look down on themselves, but they know they are not God, either. Ironically, it will not be the arrogant and wealthy people who get everything. Instead, the whole earth will belong to the gentle and humble.

Note the progression thus far. Jesus’ kingdom servants are those who (1) recognize they are spiritually bankrupt, (2) are deeply sorrowful for it, and (3) have begun to respond humbly to their lord.

Verse 6

Persons who “hunger and thirst” are in dire need. The words hungry and thirsty picture intense longings that people desire for the items that bring life. Such is the passion of those who desire righteousness. Deep spiritual hunger is a characteristic of all God’s people, whose supreme ambition is not material but spiritual.

Jesus is, of course, speaking of the spiritual, not the physical. A person who is starving for righteousness, whether in one’s own life or one’s environment, is not happy if that person is focused on their own righteousness. Happiness comes from the assurance that all righteousness comes to them from outside of themselves. They hunger and thirst for what only Jesus has: true righteousness.

TODAY’S KEY TRUTH

Experiencing the Conviction of Sin is a Blessing of God’s Love.

APPLICATION

The Beatitudes form an appropriate introduction to Jesus’ sermon, reminding his disciples that God blesses them before he makes demands on them. The exact sequence appeared at Mount Sinai. God redeemed his people from Egypt and reminded them of his blessings before giving them his law.

We can see that the first four beatitudes reveal a spiritual progression of straightforward logic. Each step leads to the next and presupposes the one that has gone before. To begin with, we are to be ‘poor in spirit,’ acknowledging our complete and utter spiritual bankruptcy before God. Next, we are to ‘mourn’ over the cause of it, our sins, and the reign of sin and death in the world. Thirdly, we must be ‘meek,’ humble, and gentle, allowing our spiritual poverty to control our behavior toward God and others. And fourthly, we are to ‘hunger and thirst for righteousness.’ We confess we are not righteous on our own merit. In other words, the way to rise in the kingdom is to sink ourselves.

The beginning of repentance is the recognition of one’s spiritual bankruptcy and one’s inability to become righteous on one’s own. The blessing or happiness that belongs to the poor in spirit is because such a person is, by his admission, already moving toward participating in God’s kingdom plan, acknowledging his need for a source of salvation outside himself.

To be poor in spirit means to admit your problems are beyond you, to admit you cannot deal with your own needs and problems. To be poor in spirit means to be bankrupt, in a sense, and to say, “I do not have the resources with which to make good my debt. My problems are beyond my resolutions.” That’s what it means to be poor in spirit.

The second characteristic is you must mourn, which means you cannot just say, “I have problems,” but you have to identify your problems as not just philosophical or sociological or psychological, but spiritual. You have to be willing to say, “I’m a sinner.” You have to be willing to say, “My problem is sin.” We want to blame everyone for our problems: our parents, our spouses, our bosses, our government, and our society. But to mourn means, like G.K. Chesterton, we admit, “The problem with the universe is me.” You stop blaming everybody else, you stop blaming society, you stop blaming your genetics, you stop blaming your parents, and you begin to say, “Even though I’m a fairly decent person morally, I realize I owe God everything, as he created me, and I no longer want to be the master of myself.” Until you come to admit your problems are not just beyond you, your problems are your sin, and you can’t enter the kingdom.

Once you see your problems are beyond you, and you see your problems are your own selfishness and sin, then you could despair or get angry, or you could go to God and say, “Lord, humbly I admit I need your help. I need your solution. I need your provision because I can’t save myself.” Meekness. In order to be able to receive the blessings of the kingdom, you have to first turn from your self-sufficiency, turn from your sin, turn from selfishness, and realize you can’t help or save yourself. Only God can save you.

The fourth beatitude is the heart of the Bible. This is the heart of the gospel. This is the keystone, the apex in the arch of all the Beatitudes. It’s smack-dab in the center. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” It’s a law of the universe that if you try to be happy by your own means, you never will be. Anything you center your life on except the kingdom, except God and his righteousness, anything you center your life on besides God, you will destroy, and it will destroy you. Not “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after blessings,” but “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after something more than blessings … righteousness.” The heart of the gospel is that if you want to have the blessings of the kingdom and be born again, you have to admit you don’t have a righteousness of your own. Only Jesus alone can give you his righteousness.

Experiencing the Conviction of Sin is a Blessing of God’s Love.

CONCLUSION

This is a radical truth in the first four beatitudes: the conviction of sin is a blessing. Let me share an illustration. Becky Pippert is a Christian speaker, and author of Hope Has Its Reasons. After one of her conferences, a woman came up to say, “I need to talk to you,” and she went into a back room. This is what the woman said. “I was married recently and am a member of a very, very conservative church.” She was marrying a handsome young man who was also a member of that church. The two of them were young but considered godly leaders. They were considered shining lights of Christianity in the church. Just about six months before they were to be married, they discovered she was pregnant by him.

They suddenly realized what that would mean. They suddenly realized they were going to have to show that very conservative church what they were preaching and what they were practicing were two different things. They realized the scandal. They realized the problems, and they decided she would have an abortion. They’re about to get married. They wanted children. They expected to have children. There was no reason in the world to get rid of that life that way. What she did was wrong, and she knew it.

As she walked down the aisle that day, everybody was looking at her like the beaming bride, and she said to Becky, “What I was saying to myself in my heart was, ‘You, murderer!’ ” She said, “All the way down the aisle, I thought, ‘You were so worried about showing these people what you really were. You were so afraid of being exposed that you would murder this life just so you wouldn’t look bad.” That voice kept saying, “God knows what you are.” She came to Becky, and she said, “I have confessed this thing a thousand times, over and over and over again, and I’m just obsessed with it. I’m depressed. It is running me into the ground. I’m emotionally and spiritually a wreck. I don’t know what to do. How could God possibly forgive me? Maybe God has forgiven me, but I can’t forgive myself.”

Becky Pippert swallowed hard, prayed, and she said, “My dear friend, Jesus Christ had to die for all our sins, sins of the religious and the non-religious, sins of the Nazis and their victims, sins of the moral types and the immoral types. We are all responsible for the death of the only innocent man who ever lived. The sin that caused you to destroy that life was pride, and it was pride that destroyed Jesus Christ’s life 2,000 years ago. You were already a murderer before this happened, and it was all totally paid for long ago.”

What happened to that woman? Did she suddenly say, “You’re making me feel worse?” No, because she got the point, and she really began to feel convicted. She turned to Becky and said, “Wait a minute. You’re right. I always in my head believed I was a sinner, and my sins were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, but now I see it. I came to tell you I did the worst thing imaginable, and you told me I’ve done something worse than that. If I’m worse than I’ve imagined, if I killed God’s Son, and that can be forgiven, then anything else can.”

Why was she so depressed? Why did she say, “I can’t forgive myself?” Because all along, she really hadn’t allowed the conviction of sin to take hold of her. She intellectually believed Jesus died for her sins, but actually, she was relying on her niceness for her salvation. She was saying, “I’m sure God will accept me because look at what a great person I am in this church, how nice I am, how clean, and how moral I am.” That was her righteousness. When she did this, because she was still relying on her own righteousness, she couldn’t forgive herself. She hadn’t really allowed the conviction of sin to take hold of her, so she couldn’t see how desperately she needed Jesus.

Of course, she couldn’t forgive herself because she was still relying on her own righteousness. The day Becky Pippert told her she had done something worse and had been forgiven, suddenly, she realized the actual reality of her sin. She was convicted, and she realized how great God’s love really is. That conviction deepened her sense and understanding of God’s love in sending Jesus to die for her sins.

Experiencing the Conviction of Sin is a Blessing of God’s Love.

One of the biggest, if not the biggest, issues in our world today is the lack of conviction of sin. Truth is relevant, everything is okay, every belief is right, and everybody is good. Confronting sinful behavior and conviction of sin is somehow considered wrong. People think if something makes them feel bad morally or spiritually, it has to be wrong. This is another reason why trusting your ‘feelings’ is foolish. The Beatitudes are saying you are blessed when you are convicted.

Conviction of sin is a good gift from God. To not be convicted is when you should be worried. Conviction of sin is God getting our attention. It's God saying, “I love you, and this is bad for you.” When you are experiencing that weight of conviction, that is a blessing because God is saying, “I love you.” Those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are those who have been convicted of their sin and realize that their efforts, their niceness, their church attendance, their good deeds aren’t enough. They realize their sin is beyond them and their abilities to overcome that sin record. In their conviction, they realize that their sins put Jesus on the cross, and there’s no way they can set that right. Only Jesus and His righteousness can set everything right and whole again.

Experiencing the Conviction of Sin is a Blessing of God’s Love.

On the cross, God tells us, “I have seen you at your worst, and I love you. I accept you. Put your faith in me as the only thing you need to do.” Let me tell you, if you see yourself at your worst and know you’re forgiven, nothing can stop you. You are blessed when you are convicted. Do you see and realize the freedom in that?

Be poor in spirit, realizing you are spiritually bankrupt. Be mournful of your sins. Be meek, knowing you can’t save yourself. Hunger and thirst for Christ’s righteousness, knowing yours will never be enough. Be convicted of your sins and experience the ocean of God’s love for you personally.

Experiencing the Conviction of Sin is a Blessing of God’s Love.