Blessed By God

We have spent the last few weeks focused on what it means for us to be on a journey with Jesus. We have seen the importance of recognizing God at work around us, how we have been baptized for God, the importance of us testifying about God and last week how we are called to serve God. You can find each of these sermons on our You Tube channel

This week we get a glimpse on how we are “Blessed by God.” Our scripture comes from Matthew 5:1-12. The words will be on the screen.

5 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.

Please pray with me…

How many of you have heard the phrase “Oh bless your heart.” This phrase is sometimes used in a way for what I call southern sarcasm. In fact, Amy and I were at a church in the South and the pastor told a story and at the end she said that all she wanted to do was say to the person “Oh bless your heart.”

Our scripture today and many like it that we find within scripture has Jesus’ fixating on his desire to bless our hearts. But in the case of Jesus, this is not sarcasm. This is a desire for us to be blessed because of the love that God has for each one of us.

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Our scripture for today is one of the most famous scriptures that we find in the Bible. We find these statements known as the Beatitudes in two of what are considered Jesus’ greatest messages or sermons to the people around him. They are referred to as the sermon on the mount and the sermon on the plain.

Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes takes place on what is called “The Sermon on the Mount.” This “sermon” from Jesus covers three full chapters and a total of 74 verses. This small portion is the beginning of this sermon and focuses on the word “blessed.”

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What does it mean for us to be blessed in today’s scripture? The word “blessed” has many different ways to be viewed within scripture. The main theme as it relates to those following God is happy or joyful.

When we use that definition within the words expressed by the Beatitudes, we can receive a greater understanding of the power of God. We often don’t view words like poor, mourning, and meek to be related with the word blessed. But that seems to be the point that Jesus is making.

All people, no matter what they are dealing with in this life, are able to be blessed by God. It does not matter the struggles or life circumstances that you are facing, God is with us helping us along the journey.

The blessing may not be felt internally originally. The blessing is that no matter what troubles and turmoil we are facing, we are never alone. God is always with us desiring to help us through life.

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This word “blessed” would have most likely been even more meaningful to the people in Jesus’ audience. This was a blessing and curse culture. This means that if life is good, you are being blessed by God, if things are not going so well you must have done something to cause you to be cursed by God.

Within scripture, Job is one of the best examples of this. We have Job living a blessed life. Scripture tells us that he was “blameless and upright… He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.”

That is how he was viewed before the trouble and turmoil occurred. He lost his livestock, his crop, his children, pretty much everything. Things were so bad that his wife told him he should “Curse God and die!”

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Let’s pause for a moment, when life is not going our way, we might also have those around us that can’t understand how we can still talk to God and trust God. They can’t believe that we could believe in a God that allows bad things to happen.

We need to understand and believe that God doesn’t cause these things to happen to us. We live in an imperfect world. We live in a place that doesn’t always follow the way of God. We have to find a way to believe that God is at work even in the struggles that we are facing.

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Job had three friends that came to see him. By this time, he is dealing with his own health issues. These friends start out by spending time with Job and not saying anything to him. But eventually they can no longer remain silent.

The “friends” eventually tell Job that he needs to admit that he must have done something against God. He has been cursed. He needs to go to God and repent because God will forgive him if he admits what he has done.

This can be a reminder to us that there may be times in which we are better off keeping our mouth shut instead of adding onto the piles of pain that someone may be facing. We may be supposed to be there not to speak but to be present and listen if the person desires to speak to us. That may be the blessing that we can offer to them.

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Jesus removed guilt and shame from our lives. We are not cursed by him based off of what we have done. He loves us as we are and desires to be with us. This is true no matter what you may have done. God loves you as you are.

Our first reading says it this way in Ephesians 1:7, “We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us.” Any guilt, any shame, any possibility of curses has all been removed through the actions of Jesus.

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I say all of this because many people still allow guilt and shame to enter into their psyche. They believe that they deserve to be cursed based off of what they have done. They think that they are being punished and deserve punishment from God.

Our God does not place curses upon us. It is true that it may seem that you are being punished but often it is a natural result of something that we have done or something that was done by someone else. As the saying goes, sometimes bad things happen to good people.

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Jesus is making this point through placing a blessing on the struggles that some may be facing. He is stating as was mentioned earlier that even in life’s struggles he is with us and therefore we are blessed.

We find three distinct categories of people being blessed within the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew. They are emotional, spiritual, and physical. What you may have also noticed is that Jesus not only tells them that they will be blessed, but he also tells them the blessing that they will receive if they find themselves under these circumstances. We will spend some time looking at each of these blessings.

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We first have someone who may be “poor in spirit” being blessed “for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven”. The poor in spirit would be someone who is struggling with life. They may even be wondering at the moment if God is with them.

I would guess that many of us if not all of us have been there. We doubt, we wonder, we feel lost. Jesus wants his audience and us to know that is OK to go through that season of your life. That does not mean you don’t still believe in God.

Peter comes to mind after he denied Jesus three times. He wept because he had failed the one who had been his Rabbi. Jesus responds after being raised from the dead by asking Peter three times “do you love me.”

Jesus wants Peter and us to know that our failures and our feelings after, do not mean that we have failed on our spiritual journey. Jesus through these words to the “poor in spirit” is offering hope that feelings of lossness does not mean you are not still connected to God.

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Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. We will often have the 23rdPsalm be a scripture of comfort during funerals because we are told that God comforts us during our times of grief.

The word mourn is not only speaking of our response to the death of a loved one. We can end up mourning the loss of anything that is important to us. Jesus wants us to know that while we are going through the pain of loss here on earth God is going through that pain with us.

This goes back to a point that was made earlier. The blessing may be that we are never alone. God walks through the pains of life with us. As the saying goes, he never leaves us or forsakes us. He stays with us through the good, bad, and ugly of life.

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Our last example of this group of blessings deals with those who what the scripture calls “meek.” We are told that they will “inherit the earth.” This is somewhat different than our first two. We often view the word “meek” as a negative term.

Jesus is saying those that are meek are blessed. The world often looks positive towards those who are aggressive and trying to get ahead in life. Jesus is saying it is the meek or you could say the humble that are blessed.

It is those that are willing to look towards God and turn their focus towards God that will be the ones who will be able to best overcome the hardships of the world. Jesus is saying trust in me, I will bless you.

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Our next section deals with those that seem to be living lives connected to God. We should not be surprised that they are blessed. Jesus wants his audience and us to understand that no matter where you are in your spiritual journey you can be blessed.

 The first of these three are those that “hunger and thirst for righteousness” This would be those of us that are on a journey with Jesus. A former pastor explained it this way, we should desire to have an “intimate, passionate, growing relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Jesus says that if you are living lives with this desire than you will be filled. The Holy Spirit will fill you with what you desire to receive from God. You will be blessed by God because of your willingness to follow the will of God.

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This is followed by those who are “merciful.” They will be “showed mercy.” The NIV Application Commentary explains the merciful this way. It is someone who “demonstrates forgiveness toward the guilty and kindness for the hurting and needy.”

Our first reading reminds us that “We have been blessed by God with every spiritual blessing.” We should choose to be a blessing to others because we have a God that first blessed us and continues to bless us.

It can return us to the days of the acronym WWJD, What Would Jesus Do? We are supposed to be living lives that would be a representative of Jesus here on earth. We should be people of mercy. People who forgive and who serve those that are around us.

We live this out at The Church of the Good Shepherd through our mission statement in which we state that we will love all people. We are making the statement through these words that there is no one that we won’t welcome that we interact with out in our communities or who come through these doors.

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Jesus next states that blessed are the “pure at heart.” They will be blessed by being able to see God. This is us living our lives in such a way that what people see on the outside reflects what is happening within us.

This is the opposite of us choosing behavior modification as a way to show the outside world that we are a follower of Jesus. This is us having God so ingrained within us that the light of Christ shines out to the world from within us.

This is where the idea of sanctification comes into play. This is a word related to us allowing God to cleanse us within us so that we can become more holy or closer to God each and every day. Understandably when we do this, we see God more clearly because we have allowed him to impact us in such a powerful way.

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The last of this group states that those that are peacemakers are blessed. We have spoken of this before, we are called to attempt to be people of peace. We are to be attempting to live our lives to bring peace instead of conflict to the world.

This role is especially important during our current time where more people are tending to be people of conflict instead of peace. We should strive to bring peace even if those around us desire conflict.

Jesus shows us that even if that is our goal we will not always succeed. We can do what we can but that does not mean that others will choose conflict over peace. Jesus showed the love of God even to those that hated him. We are also to always attempt to be people of peace.

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The Beatitudes end with a blessing for those that have been persecuted and insulted for their faith. The blessing for those who are persecuted is the kingdom of Heaven. Did you notice that the beatitudes start with poor in spirit and now the persecuted both receive the same blessing.

It does not matterwhere you are on your spiritual journey. You can be struggling with your faith, or you can be persecuted because of your faith. Under allcircumstances you will receive the kingdom of heaven.

We have aGod that forgives and forgets. We have a God that walks with us through the good and the bad. Our God desires to be with us and to bless us no matter what struggles or turmoil that we may be facing.

Let us pray…