The Qualities of the Kingdom

Introduction

I was taking a walk in my neighborhood recently and I noticed a lot of construction projects underway. That’s not surprising since in Toronto we famously have two seasons: Winter and Construction season. Now, I live in a former industrial part of town where there used to be a lot of factories and fabrication plants. For as long as I’ve lived there, there has always been this large vacant lot - just north of Bloor and Lansdowne. I am curious about these sorts of things so I did a bit of research and learned that for about 50 years, it was a fabrication plant for General Electric to make refrigeration equipment and after that it was a repair yard for the TTC. Since then it's been vacant for about 30 years. Over the decades of hard industrial use, toxic chemicals seeped deep into the soil, contaminating it with dangerous material that made it unfit for further use. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered on my walk that this lot is going to be a retirement home. I checked online again and learned that there has been a lengthy decontamination project to make this lot usable again. So I wondered, how do you clean all of that land? It’s a truly massive undertaking. You do it by first digging out all the contaminated soil and then applying just the right solvents to break down the toxic materials, so you can separate the good soil from the contaminants. Those developers can’t build a retirement home on contaminated soil and, brothers and sisters, you can’t build the blessed life Jesus talks about without first being emptied and then filled by the Holy Spirit.

As David mentioned last week, we are beginning the section in Matthew’s gospel focusing on the teaching ministry of Jesus. In the previous section, Jesus begins his public ministry in Galilee to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 9 that a light has dawned for those dwelling in darkness. It is at this time that Jesus began to call disciples to himself and began teaching and proclaiming the kingdom of God. Over the next few weeks, we will be focusing on Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, where he instructs us as to what it looks like to live under the reign of God in his kingdom.

We are at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount and just as Jesus was a carpenter familiar with how things are built, he starts with a focus on the foundation. The beatitudes represent the foundation of Christ’s teaching, on which everything else will be built, and what you immediately notice is that Jesus begins with the end in mind. He lists eight blessings that come to people who display a certain character and who live a certain way, and all of these blessings relate to involvement in and inheritance of God’s kingdom.

Now in our culture, we see and hear beatitudes all the time. When you go on Instagram and see beautiful people living exciting lives, you are meant to think, this is what it means to be blessed - “hashtag blessed”. Or when you see political campaigns crafted by experts and politicians making lofty promises, you are meant to think this is the path to blessedness. But all of it, at its foundation, is rotten. It’s rotten because you cannot build such a life on a foundation of sand or on soil that’s been contaminated. It’s rotten because the heart we’ve inherited from our forefather, Adam, is rotten.

Jesus directs our eyes to what blessedness in the Kingdom of God looks like, and it is completely at odds with the world’s vision for the blessed life: Poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, hunger and thirst. How can this be the blessed estate of God’s kingdom and is it possible to want this, let alone to live this way? Today we will be looking at each of the beatitudes in their relationship to one another, and we will see that each of them is a solvent that breaks down the toxic presence of sin in our heart to prepare us for life in God’s kingdom. For those taking notes, the first four beatitudes will focus on the Quality of Repentance in God’s Kingdom and the Second four beatitudes will focus on the Quality of Righteousness in God’s Kingdom.

The Quality of Repentance in God’s Kingdom

Blessed Are The Poor in Spirit For Theirs Is the Kingdom of God (v3)

The first blessing Jesus announces is for those who are “poor in spirit.” Normally, it is the rich that are called blessed, but Jesus inverts that expectation and turns it on its head, highlighting the opposite quality of richness and looking inward rather than outward. This sets the tone for all the beatitudes because we will see in all of them that what’s important is not what a person has or does… but who he is. So then, what is poorness of spirit and where is the blessing in it?

If you’re poor, it means that you lack something you need to get along in the world. Usually we use the word to mean lacking money, but Jesus focuses on a poorness of spirit. Greatness of spirit, magnanimity (that’s what the word literally means), was one of the highest virtues in Greco-Roman society. People like Julius Cesar were examples of people who displayed this greatness of spirit - It was associated with dignity, honor, self-reliance, and an ability to face adversity. Aristotle famously said of the virtue “Now a person is thought to be great-spirited if he claims much and deserves much.” This is the opposite of what Jesus is speaking of.

Poorness of spirit is the opposite of a self-assertive and self-sufficient character. It is the reverse of that defiance in the human heart that says with Pharoah, “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice (Exodus 5:2). To be poor in spirit is to realize that I have nothing, I am nothing, can do nothing, and have need of all things. It is being brought low and acknowledging our utter helplessness before God. It is the first work and first evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work in our heart and it matches the experience of the prodigal son in Luke 15:14, who in the far away country began to be in need.

The blessing of God’s kingdom begins with the humble acknowledgement of our complete inadequacy and dependence on God. It is the starting point of repentance and regeneration, a turning from a self-sufficient and self-seeking disposition of the heart to one seeking satisfaction in what God can provide. So I must ask, have you been brought low and realized your utter helplessness? Or, like Pharoah and Cesar, do you want to continue to chart your own path, trusting in your own abilities to get you to that blessed estate? Pharoah drowned in the sea and Cesar was stabbed in the back. Do you think you can chart your path to happiness and satisfaction better than them?

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn, For They Shall Be Comforted (v4)

Mourning is a miserable experience that hollows you out. My family is in mourning right now because of loss, and I can tell you that there is no joy in being emptied out through loss. It's natural that we want to fill our lives with happiness and to avoid loss, so this beatitude is another anomaly to the unregenerate heart, but yet is a blessing to those in God’s kingdom. What Jesus is referring to here is not mourning in general but the mourning that follows the recognition of our poverty before God. It is a mourning that sees God’s goodness and holiness and by contrast the depravity of our hearts and the guilt we bear before him. It is this mourning that Christ comes to provide comfort for because as Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 61:2, the messiah has come to “comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion - to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness.” Christ comforts us because he clothes us in his righteousness and fills us with what has been hallowed out.

Mourning directly follows the recognition of our poverty before God because it is only when we realize that we are helpless to do anything about our condition that godly sorrow can dawn in our heart. It is a blessed state to mourn in this way because, as we pass through it, we are led to true comfort, true freedom, and the forgiveness that Christ provides. While this certainly refers to the initial experience of the Holy Spirit regenerating our heart, this godly sorrow is not a one-time event. Remember, Jesus is speaking about these qualities as blessings, not something terrible to pass through. It is a blessing to mourn in this way, and in the Christian life, we should continue to mourn with godly sorrow. Until the kingdom of God is fully realized, we will continue to face the world, the flesh and the devil, and we should continue to mourn that we live in this condition - to mourn that we sin before the face of God, to mourn the hundreds of babies that are murdered every day in Canada through abortion, to mourn the many millions lost in darkness and that we pass over with indifference, to mourn the way that we boast in our morality and self-righteousness.

In Luke 18:9-14, the Pharisee looks up to God and says “God, I thank you that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess.” This pharisee may have been true in the way he saw it, but he went home condemned. His fine clothing were rags, his white robes were filthy, but he did not know it. The tax collector, in the language of the psalmist, was troubled by his sin (psalm 40:12), looked down, beat his chest and cried out, “have mercy on me, a sinner” That man went home justified because he was poor in spirit and mourned for his sin.

Blessed Are The Meek, For They Shall Inherit The Earth (v5)

What is meekness? It is not a word we use very often. Some people think of it as an attitude of resignation or unselfishness, but this doesn’t quite get to the root of it. We see in Numbers 12:3 that Moses was very meek, more meek in fact that anyone else in the world. Earlier in that account, Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses, saying, “Has the Lord only spoken through Moses? Has he not also spoken through us?” This was evidence of the pride in their hearts, which Moses is presented as the opposite of. We learn of Moses in Hebrews 11:24-26 that he chose to be mistreated alongside God’s people rather than enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He chose a life of adversity over the comfort that would come to a member of Pharoah’s court, and when God commissioned him to lead Israel to the promised land he responded, “who am I that I should go to Pharoah to lead this people out of Egypt.” What I think meek means based on the example of Moses, who we read is an example of meekness, is a character of humility and selflessness.

Now, each beatitude is connected to the previous one so it is after the experience of mourning for sin that we arrive at meekeness. That natural man does not want to bow down before God, he does not mourn the guilt he bears, and he does not acknowledge his nakedness before God, but blessed in the person who knows he has no ground for boasting. He has been emptied out and knows that there is nothing in himself that is endearing to God. The poverty stricken, mourning man knows that he does not deserve anything and makes no attempt to justify himself. He is content to bow before a gracious God and receive whatever is given to him. It is this frame of heart that the Lord delights to bless. God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble (James 4:6) and he adorns the humble with salvation (Psalm 139:4).

But what does it mean that the meek will inherit the earth? This is a reference to Psalm 37:11, where the psalmist says, “the meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant peace.” There is a future looking promise here when the Lord returns in glory, but there is also a present fulfillment of the promise as well. By being delivered from a greedy, grasping heart, the meek are able to get the greatest enjoyment of the simplest things in life. I deeply desire to grow in the contentment that follows meekness, but I am a bit of a foodie. I love good food - how to make it, learning why some things taste good while others don’t, and of course eating it. Good or bad, I’ve passed a bit of that along to my wife, Sierra, but early on in our marriage, there were some differences of opinion on food. We were shopping together and when we got to the pasta aisle Sierra’s face lit up. Kraft Dinner was on special! To me that stuff tastes like wet cardboard covered in powdered plastic. But for Sierra, a 50 cent box of KD was sheer delight. There was no pretense about it and truthfully, I kind of wished I could be happy with it. It’s a bit of a silly example, but let me ask you, do you feel entitled to certain treatment, the good things in life? Do you grasp for what you feel is in reach or are you willing to accept what the Lord has given you? It may be the job you have or don’t have, the spouse you have or don’t have, or maybe even the gifts God has given you. There are many gifts, and all have their use in serving one another.

Blessed Are Those Who Hunger And Thirst For Righteousness For They Shall be Satisfied(v6)

This is the final beatitude in my first point, the quality of repentance, and it caps off the work of the Holy Spirit in preparing our heart for the Kingdom of God. To recap, there is first a sense of need and a realization of our emptiness. Then there is sorrow and grief over our helpless condition before God. Third, we stop with all attempts at justifying ourselves before God. At this point the soul turns from looking at itself and upwards to God. Hunger and thirst are visceral desires that come before the thinking mind. As the Holy Spirit makes us aware of the requirements of God and our utter lack, a deep and profound hunger is created in the convicted sinner to look for relief outside of himself. And it is here that the believing eye turns to Christ! In Romans 10:4, Paul tells us that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. To the destitute sinner lacking in righteousness, he knows there is none righteous, not one. God has provided in Christ the perfect righteousness to satisfy both the demands of the law, but also the deep hunger and thirst in everyone who knows their lack. It is a righteousness given for us to take, eat, and drink, and in doing so we find the blessed satisfaction Jesus promises.

Like the previous beatitudes, this is not just a description of the initial experience of turning to Christ, but also a continual desire to be like him. When do we stop hungering and thirsting for righteousness? It is only when we are completely sated, but just as we wake up every morning with a renewed hunger and thirst, the regenerated believer wakes up with this same feeling, knowing that he must turn to Christ each day for his nourishment. When you neglect time in his Word and you stop praying, do you not feel that hunger and thirst drain you of your spiritual life? All you need to do is eat what God has already provided. He has given us his Word to eat. “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth,” the Psalmist says in Psalm 119:103. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may group up into salvation - if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” we read in 1 Peter 2:2-3. There is no ceasing in our turning to Christ because it is in him that we shall be satisfied.

The Quality of Righteousness in God’s Kingdom

Blessed Are the Merciful For They Will Be Shown Mercy (v7)

We turn now to our second point, the quality of righteousness in God’s kingdom. The first four beatitudes outline how a soul is awoken and transformed through regeneration and this happens through an awareness of what’s lacking and our need for Christ. The next four beatitudes are the fruits of salvation that God produces for the heart that’s been prepared.

Jesus begins with a blessing on those who are merciful. This should be stated at the outset that this is not works based salvation and we are not looking at some sort of transaction where we are shown mercy when we show mercy. Remember, the beatitudes are a description of the character of a genuine disciple of Christ, and the first fruit of characteristics is mercifulness. Mercy is an essential feature of a transformed and holy character. When the saved sinner, who had nothing, was nothing, and could do nothing is shown mercy from God, he in turn shows mercy to those in need because he understands the predicament of having a debt he could not pay. The saved sinner feels the miseries of others and looks with compassion on the afflicted with an eye to share the same benefits that he himself received.

The mercifulness of this beatitude is the necessary outcome of a merciful God indwelling us. I don’t want to upset sensitive consciences and lead anyone to believe that if you don’t have a merciful disposition all the time, then you should question whether you’re really a Christian. Like I mentioned earlier, the blessings Jesus pronounces here are not a one time event that speaks only about our initial salvation. We are blessed by continually repenting and turning to Christ. A heart transformed by God is one that tends towards mercy and where mercy is an unmistakable trait.

I see this on full display during board meetings for WCCA, the school that operates out of this church. Like with any organization, things come up and we have to make tough decisions that are going to impact people, most of the time financially, but relationally as well. Almost every time the opportunity comes to show mercy, everyone’s first instinct is help where we can. Now, we don’t always give people what they ask for - you can’t run an organization that way - but I can tell you that when you put seven Christians in a room as ask them to decide difficult matters, it shouldn’t surprise you to see every effort being made to extend mercy to those who need it. God delights to show mercy to those who need it and so should we. But I want to ask you dear brother and sister, do you delight in showing mercy or are you always looking to come out on top? Is fairness more important to you than giving out of the abundance God has lavished on you?

Blessed Are the Pure in Heart, For They Shall See God (v8)

Does this mean that perfection is accomplishable in this life and that we can be rid of every impure thought, motive, and action? That cannot be in view because we certainly know it by experience, but more importantly, scripture testifies in 1 John 1:8 that “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Purity here is not a sinless life. The Old Testament saints that are called righteous were known for serious failings: Noah got drunk, Moses disobeyed God’s order, Elijah fled in terror, and in the New Testament, Peter denied Christ three times. We have a pure heart in that we have received a pure heart. In Ezekiel 36:26, God tells us that he will put a new heart and a new spirit within us, and he will put his spirit in us to walk in his statutes and be careful to obey his commands. This heart that we received at regeneration is pure. It isn’t like the heart of stone that God removed. Further, it is a heart where the very Spirit of God rests. It cannot be anything other than pure. However, it is a heart that transforms us from one degree of glory to the next over the course of our lives.

The purity of heart that God graciously puts in us is freedom from defilement and divided loves . It is a sincere and genuine commitment, lacking in all the subtlety of fallen human relationships. Genuine conversion abhors hypocrisy as purity is seen, not just in actions, but in words, desires, and motives. I was speaking with a dear Christian brother who shared that he felt as if he was putting on different faces for different people. He confessed his shame at changing who he was so he could fit in. My advice to him is what I believe applies here as well: Whose approval really matters to you? If its people, you are going to be on a roller coaster ride your entire life, going high and low on a track you have no control over. It is nothing short of slavery to people’s personalities and whims. The more you grow in your aloofness to the opinions of others and the more concerned you become with your relationship with God, the more yourself you become. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart, God tells Samuel in 1 Sam 16:7. Because God sees through every mask you put on that fools everyone else, it means that you can only be honest with him. There is tremendous freedom in this. It is this freedom from divided loyalty that empowers us to challenge any authority. It is how, in the 8th century, the missionary St. Boniface in his efforts to bring the gospel to the germanic tribes cut down their sacred oak tree and built a church from the wood. He didn’t care about how the people would respond. He cared about the people absolutely. But he knew that they were oppressed by their superstitions and was willing to accept their scorn. What sacred oaks are you afraid to cut down? Is there anything right now keeping you from an undivided and pure love towards God?

Blessed Are the Peacemakers, For They Shall Be Called Children of God (v9)

The Jewish crowds that Jesus was speaking to looked at their Gentile overlords with hatred and they expected the messiah to come with a sword in hand so that he would bring the Gentiles under their dominion. The crowds believed that blessedness looked like having power over their adversaries, but Jesus instead proclaimed, “blessed are the peacemakers”. While this beatitude has more to do with conduct, a certain character is assumed here. The first four beatitudes establish that a citizen of the kingdom is marked by repentance: an emptying out of oneself and a readiness to receive whatever God gives. Christ’s subjects are not self-satisfied, but hungering and thirsting for the righteousness of Christ. Having tasted mercy, they then respond in mercy in their dealings with others, which draws them closer to God and further away from other loyalties. Now, having been purified, the forgiven sinner goes forth to establish the peace of God on earth.

In the Old Covenant, after the law was given and the people were instructed about how to purify themselves, Israel was commanded to go into the land to conquer it. The risen Lord gave a different but related order to his church. To go to all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that he commanded. While the crowds Jesus spoke to were expecting another war with the surrounding nations, Jesus expands the scope of the mission to all the nations and changes the means of warfare from fighting to ambassadorship - This is what it means to be a peacemaker. Peacemaking is as the apostle Paul says in 2 Cor 5:20, imploring the lost on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. This is not a generic command to promote unity or heal broken relationships. It is going forth in the name of Christ to bring the gospel of peace, and how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news! But how is this connected to the warfare of Israel in the Old Covenant? Because it is a challenge to the very gates of hell which hold captives prisoner. When Jesus looked at the crowds later in Matthew 9, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Bringing peace and salvation for the harassed and helpless is the work of God and it is why we are acknowledged as God’s children when we participate in this work. We may be disowned by friends and family, regarded as narrow-minded bigots for our pleading to be reconciled to God, but it is God himself who proudly calls us his children before the host of heaven.

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 (v10-12)

The final beatitude here comes to us in what looks like two blessings for more or less the same and it relates neither to a character trait or a behavior, but instead something that happens to the believer - he is persecuted by others. This blessing follows the previous one because it is connected to what the believer does to bring this persecution upon himself - bringing peace through the proclamation of the gospel. This arouses the anger of Satan more than anything and stirs his children to act. Jesus here prepares us for what to expect when we go out in his name - its warfare.

Jesus mentions three sorts of suffering that his disciples should expect to endure in the line of duty: Reviling - verbal abuse; Persecution (The Greek word means to be pursued, harassed, or even hunted down); and lastly defamation of character. The words “persecuted for righteousness sake” and “for my sake” tell us that the opposition we will experience is purely because we are followers of Jesus, and this is fitting because as Jesus says, “for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you”. Persecution has always been the lot of God’s people - Cain slew Abel, Joseph sold into slavery by his brothers, Moses was reviled again and again. Samuel was rejected. Elijah was despised. Micaiah was hated. Nehemiah was oppressed and defamed. The savior himself was put to death by the people he ministered to. Stephen was stoned, James beheaded.

Jesus tells us in John 15:19 - If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. The blessing that comes from this persecution is knowing that it is what’s promised to those who are most attuned to what God is doing and there is a sweet communion that is experienced with Christ and an ennobling sense that you are in the company of the prophets and saints who suffer with Christ.

I can imagine that not many in the Canadian church have suffered persecution in this way. I could say that it is because we are blessed to live in a free country and can preach the gospel without fear of persecution, but I don’t believe that’s the case. As a congregation we know first hand what it looked like to make a stand for the gospel when we were told that we could not gather to worship. We walked that dark chapter faithfully when so many others did not - I do not say that to boast. It is simply true - but where has that zeal gone? Are we content with the present state of things in our city and our country? Do we actually consider it a blessing when we face persecution? Think about the sweet fellowship we had when we were told we could not gather and the miraculous way God paved the way for us. I want to see more of that. Don’t you? There’s still an opportunity for that. We have an evangelism ministry that goes into the community to share the gospel. We have a food bank ministry where the gospel is proclaimed in tandem with works of mercy. And still there are countless other opportunities I don’t know about that you do to proclaim the peace of the gospel and make holy war against the kingdom of darkness.

Conclusion

Brothers and sisters, we are blessed. We have been brought into God’s kingdom through the new heart that he has given us. The world cannot know and will scoff at what our Lord calls blessed, but you do know. You know the joy of being brought low before the Lord, weeping for your sin, abandoning your claims to self-sufficiency, and seeing in Christ the satisfaction of your soul. It is a joy that has dawned on you because God has opened your eyes to see. And now that you have seen the mercy of God, you can go forth with his mercy, draw closer unto him, share this mercy with others and enjoy the sweet fellowship of Christ who gave himself for you. For those who don’t know this joy, I urge you to consider what’s in your heart. Do you see the need to be emptied and cleansed of what’s in you or are you content with things just as they are? If you see a need, perhaps Christ is calling you this very day. For those who have walked with the Lord for many years, have you lived up to the standard Jesus has set up here? Probably not, but what a joy it is that we get to walk with him and experience these blessings the more we bear fruit in keeping with repentance.