The Sermon on the Mount 2

Introduction

Last week as we began studying Matthew 5, we saw the King sit down and begin to teach with divine authority. As He began to teach, Christ does much more than deliver us a moral code or a vision of human goodness, He makes a declaration concerning the life, character, and righteousness of those who belong to His kingdom. The Beatitudes do not describe what men must make themselves in order to be saved. They describe what grace makes men once the saving reign of Christ has taken hold of them.

That is essential. If we read the Beatitudes as entrance fees, we will either become self-righteous or despairing. The proud man will imagine that he has achieved them, and the honest man will know that he has not. However, if we read them as marks of grace, then we see both the searching holiness and the transforming mercy of Christ. The same Savior who pronounces these blessings is the Savior who produces this character in His people by His Spirit.

Once again the scripture reveals to us that there is an order to God’s revelation and the order in which Christ unveils this teaching is no exception. Last week we sat that He began with poverty of spirit because no sinner comes rightly to God until he has been emptied of self-confidence. He then moved to mourning because the soul that sees its poverty before God grieves over the sin that has made it poor. Today we will see how He speaks of lowliness, because the one who has been humbled before God cannot continue to live by the proud self-assertion that marks the world; and then of hunger and thirst for righteousness, because the one who knows his emptiness and mourns his sin longs for a righteousness he does not possess in himself.

We need to use caution here to avoid the viewpoint that the beatitudes are describing different types of people as is often the case when this passage is presented. What we see are not separate categories of people, rather they describe each person who is a citizen of the kingdom. Believers are the poor in spirit which leads them to be those who mourn. Those who mourn are then made lowly. The lowly hunger and thirst for righteousness. The merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted are not separate classes of Christians, but the same kingdom citizens seen in the varied graces that God works within them. In all of this teaching Christ is revealing to us what grace does in the heart of all believers

This is why the Sermon on the Mount lays an axe to the root of all false religion. False religion wants to polish the visible life, happy to produce outward discipline, religious language, public devotion, and moral respectability, but it can never produce what is produced in the regenerate heart by the grace of God; poverty of spirit, godly mourning, true lowliness, or hunger for the righteousness of God. The flesh can imitate many things, but it cannot make itself humble before God. Only grace can do that. Which brings us to our text for this morning, Matthew 5:1-12; as we said last week, each week as we study through this section we will read the entire text and then focus in on the specific verses we will be dealing with this morning. By now you should have found your places and having done so, I invite you to

Text

Please stand for the reading of God’s holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, sufficient, complete and certain word.

Matthew 5:1–12 LSB

Now when Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. And He opened His mouth and began to teach 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 lowly, 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 those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Prayer

Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we thank You for the reading of Your holy Word. We confess that Your Word is true, searching, sufficient, and good. As we come now to the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, humble us beneath His authority. Teach us what it means to be lowly before You, no longer grasping for our own way, our own honor, or our own control. Awaken in us a true hunger and thirst for righteousness, not the righteousness of man, but the righteousness found only in Christ. Feed us now by Your Word, conform us by Your Spirit, and cause us to behold the beauty and sufficiency of our King. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Blessed Are The Lowly

As we open up verse five, the third Beatitude we read, “Blessed are the lowly, for they shall inherit the earth.” Many translations and most of us sitting here this morning that are familiar with this text use the word “meek,” and that word is helpful when rightly understood. Yet meekness is often misunderstood. The world tends to confuse meekness with weakness. It imagines the meek man as timid, passive, even fearful, or easily manipulated, and unable to stand with conviction. But biblical meekness is not cowardice. It is not softness toward sin. Nor is it the absence of courage. Meekness is, however, strength brought under the rule of God. It is the humility of one who has been subdued by grace and as a result does not need to exalt himself, or defend his pride, or have a need for control.

Rightly understood we see that this beatitude flows directly from the first two. The lowly or meek man is the man who has been made poor in spirit and who mourns over sin. He has stood before God with empty hands. He truly understands that he possesses no righteousness of his own. He has grieved over sin as rebellion against God. Such a man cannot remain proud in the same way he once was. Grace has broken the back of his self-importance. He may still battle pride, and every honest Christian knows that pride is not easily slain, but the dominion of pride has been broken. He no longer sees himself as the measure of all things.

Biblical lowliness begins with our posture before God. The meek man receives God’s Word without argument. He bows beneath God’s providence without accusing the Lord of wrongdoing. He submits to God’s dealings with him, even when those dealings are painful. This does not mean that he never cries out in sorrow, asks questions, or feel the weight of affliction. Scripture gives us the language of lament. But meekness refuses to put God on trial. It says with Job, “Yahweh gave and Yahweh has taken away. Blessed be the name of Yahweh.” It says with Eli, “It is Yahweh; let Him do what seems good in His eyes.” It says with our Lord in Gethsemane, “Not as I will, but as You will.”

A. W. Pink wrote, “Meekness is the opposite of self-will toward God, and of ill-will toward men” (A. W. Pink, An Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount). That is a fitting description. Toward God, meekness does not insist upon its own way. Toward men, meekness does not burn with bitterness, malice, or retaliation. The meek man does not see every disagreement as an attack upon his dignity. He does not have to answer every slight, expose every critic, or win every contest of words. He can suffer wrong without being consumed by wrong. He can speak truth without a quarrelsome spirit. He can stand firmly without being harsh.

This is not natural. It is contrary to the spirit of the age. The world says, “Assert yourself. Defend yourself. Demand your rights. Never let anyone disrespect you. Make sure your voice is heard. Build your platform. Protect your name.” Christ says, “Blessed are the lowly.” The world admires the aggressive, the self-confident, the dominant, and the ambitious. Christ pronounces blessing upon those who have been brought low by grace and now live under the rule of God rather than the tyranny of self.

The Old Testament background for this Beatitude is Psalm 37, where David says, “But the lowly will inherit the land and will delight themselves in abundant peace.” That psalm is written to people tempted to envy the wicked. Evildoers seem to prosper. The arrogant appear to succeed. The violent seem to gain ground. The righteous may be tempted to worry, to rage, or to imitate the world’s methods. But the Lord says, “Do not worry” Trust in Yahweh. Dwell in the land. Cultivate faithfulness. Delight in Yahweh. Commit your way to Him. Rest in Yahweh and wait patiently for Him. The meek inherit because they do not grasp. They wait upon the Lord.

Jesus says the lowly shall inherit the earth. He does not say they shall conquer it by worldly force, manipulation, scheming, or seize it. He says they shall inherit it. An inheritance is received. It is given. It comes by promise. This promise looks backward to Israel’s inheritance of the land, but it also looks forward to the full inheritance of the redeemed in the new heavens and new earth. It points to the day when Christ’s kingdom is finally fulfilled, when the wicked will be cut off, when righteousness will dwell, and when the people of God will be face to face with Him.

The inheritance that is contained within this promise is seen throughout all of scripture. Adam was created to exercise dominion under God, but through sin he forfeited the blessing of obedient sonship. Israel was brought into the land, but Israel’s possession of the land exposed the same problem of sin, rebellion, idolatry, and unbelief. David received a kingdom, but David himself needed a greater Son. Christ comes as the last Adam, the true Israel, the Son of David, and the heir of all things. As we are united to Him we share in His inheritance. Since the descriptions of those who are blessed in the beatitudes describe the people of God, and the people of God are those united to Him in Christ then we can see how the meek inherit the earth because Christ inherits all things, and they are in Him.

Having a right understanding of this helps to guard us from confusing meekness with weakness and defeat. Those who are meek may appear to lose in the present age. They may be overlooked, slandered, mistreated, and pushed aside. They may refuse to play the games that seem necessary for worldly advancement. They may suffer because they will not lie, flatter, compromise, or retaliate. But Jesus says they are blessed. Their inheritance is not measured by present circumstances. Their portion is secure in Christ. The world may take much from the believer, but it cannot take the kingdom.

John Calvin, commenting on this promise, observed that the children of God “may be reckoned the filth of the world, and yet they do not cease to be heirs of the earth” (John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists). Calvin’s point is that the promise of Christ stands even when appearances seem to contradict it. The meek are not blessed because their lives are outwardly easy. They are blessed because God has secured their inheritance through Christ.

The supreme example of meekness is the Lord Jesus Himself. He is not merely the teacher of meekness; He is meekness incarnate. In Matthew 11:29, He says, “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.” The word translated gentle here is the same Greek word and lets be honest there has never been one was ever stronger than Christ and at the same time, there has never been one was ever meeker. He have seen his authority over demons, disease, nature, and death. He could summon legions of angels. He spoke, and storms were silenced. He called, and the dead came forth. Yet He did not use His power for selfish display. When reviled, He did not revile in return. When suffering, He uttered no threats. Christ wholly, fully entrusted Himself to Him who judges righteously.

At the cross we see meekness in its highest earthly display. The Son of God is mocked, spit upon, falsely accused, scourged, and crucified. Yet He does not answer with sinful rage. He does not defend His honor according to the standards of fallen men. He lays down His life willingly. But His meekness is not weakness. The cross is not the triumph of human power over divine helplessness. It is the sovereign obedience of the Son to the will of the Father. It is strength under perfect submission. It is love, holiness, justice, and mercy meeting in the sacrifice of the Lamb.

Our meekness is therefore to be Christ-shaped. We become meek as we are humbled by the gospel and conformed to Christ. The Spirit teaches us to put away anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech and to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. In the home, meekness refuses to dominate by harshness or manipulate by sulking. In the church, meekness receives correction, pursues peace, and refuses to turn every preference into a matter of war. In suffering, meekness bows beneath the hand of God without charging Him with evil.

J. C. Ryle wrote, “Humility is the very first letter in the alphabet of Christianity” (J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Matthew). The lowliness Christ blesses is not a decorative addition to Christian character. It is fundamental. The proud man may be religious, but he is not walking in the spirit of the Beatitudes. The self-defensive man may know doctrine, but he has not yet learned to wear doctrine with humility. The quarrelsome man may speak truth, but he often damages by the spirit in which he speaks it. The lowly are blessed because grace has taught them to stand low before God and therefore to walk gently among men.

Blessed Are Those Who Hunger And Thirst For Righteousness

As we move to verse 6 we find the fourth beatitude which reads, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Here our Lord moves from the lowliness to the holy appetite of the kingdom citizen. The poor in spirit know they have no righteousness in themselves. Those who mourn grieve over their sin. The lowly have been humbled under the hand of God. Now Jesus describes them as those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Hunger and thirst are not casual desires. They are necessities. A hungry man does not treat food as a mild preference. A thirsty man in a dry land does not regard water as an accessory. Hunger and thirst describe craving, longing, need, and pursuit. This is not about people with a polite interest in righteousness, or those who admire holiness from a distance. This description is of those who know that without righteousness they perish, and with righteousness they live.

We must ask what righteousness means here. In Scripture, righteousness has both forensic and transformative dimensions. There is a righteousness we need before God, and there is a righteousness God works within us. The sinner needs a righteousness that can stand before the judgment seat of God. He does not possess it in himself. His best works cannot justify him. His obedience is not perfect. His motives are not pure. His repentance does not atone. His tears do not cleanse. Therefore, his first and deepest need is the righteousness of Christ received by faith.

This is the doctrine of justification. God declares the believing sinner righteous, not because the sinner is righteous in himself, but because Christ’s righteousness is imputed to him. Christ obeyed where Adam disobeyed. Christ fulfilled the Law we have broken, bearing the curse due to His people. Christ rose for our justification. The hungry soul must first be satisfied here, in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ counted to him by faith alone. Without that, all talk of righteousness becomes either despair or self-righteousness.

Martin Luther called this an “alien righteousness,” not because it is strange or unreal, but because it comes from outside of us. It is not produced by us. It is given to us in Christ. This is offensive to pride, but it is life to the poor in spirit. The man who still believes he can establish his own righteousness will not hunger for Christ’s righteousness. But when the Spirit shows a sinner the holiness of God and the insufficiency of self, that sinner begins to hunger for a righteousness he cannot produce.

John MacArthur writes, “The righteousness that satisfies is the righteousness of God, not the righteousness of man” (John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Matthew 1–7). That is exactly the point. The world has many versions of righteousness and men are always inventing standards by which they can pronounce themselves acceptable. But the righteousness that matters is the righteousness defined by, provided by and pleasing to God.

Yet we must not stop with justification as though this hunger has no concern for sanctification. Those whom God justifies, He also sanctifies. Even as we rest in the imputed righteousness of Christ we long to be made practically righteous in life. We want sin Christ formed in us. We does not hunger for righteousness in order to become accepted by God, we hunger for righteousness because, in Christ, we are accepted by God.

This is one of the great evidences of regeneration. The natural man may desire relief from guilt. He may desire heaven as escape from hell, religion as a comfort in trouble, and moral improvement if it benefits his life. By contrast the regenerate man desires righteousness, to be holy because God is holy, to grieve the sin remains, to be conformed to Christ. His hunger is not merely for God’s gifts, but for God Himself and for the righteousness that reflects His character.

Thomas Watson wrote, “A man may hunger after the world, but he does not hunger after righteousness till God has changed his heart” (Thomas Watson, The Beatitudes). That statement cuts deeply to hunger for righteousness is the mark of a renewed heart. It is the appetite of the new creature, and it also exposes the emptiness of the world. The world promises satisfaction without delivery. It offers pleasure, but pleasure fades. It offers achievement, but achievement cannot quiet the conscience. It offers wealth, but wealth cannot reconcile a sinner to God. It offers distraction, but distraction cannot remove guilt. It offers self-expression, but self-expression cannot heal the soul. It offers endless bread that does not satisfy and broken cisterns that hold no water. Christ alone gives the water of life. Christ alone is the bread from heaven. Christ alone satisfies the soul because Christ alone gives us God.

Augustine said it famously: “You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You” (Augustine, Confessions). The hunger for righteousness is a result of the Spirit’s reordering of the soul. It is the heart being turned away from self-made coverings toward the garment of Christ, and away from sin’s passing pleasures toward the beauty of holiness.

Jesus promises that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be satisfied. This is a sure promise. He does not say they may be satisfied. He says they shall be satisfied. The satisfaction begins now in the gospel. The believing sinner is satisfied in justification because Christ’s righteousness is sufficient. He does not need to add to it. He does not need to improve it. He does not need to supplement it with religious performance. The righteousness of Christ is perfect, complete, and accepted by the Father. Therefore, the justified believer can rest. His standing before God is not unstable. His peace rests upon Christ.

But this satisfaction also continues in sanctification. God does not leave His people unchanged. The Spirit works in them both to will and to work for His good pleasure. The hunger for righteousness is itself evidence of grace, and God feeds the appetite He creates. He feeds His people through the Word, through prayer, through worship, through fellowship, through the Lord’s Supper, through discipline, through suffering, and through the ordinary means of grace. The Christian who longs for righteousness must not neglect the table where God has promised to feed him.

At the same time, the believer’s satisfaction in this life is real but not yet complete. We are justified fully, but we are not yet sanctified completely. We know real growth, real communion, real comfort, real victory, and real transformation, yet we also know remaining sin, weakness, temptation, sorrow, and longing. The Christian life is therefore marked by both satisfaction and hunger. We have tasted that the Lord is good, and that taste does not end desire. It deepens it.

Charles Spurgeon said, “The more you have of Christ, the more you want of Him” (Charles Spurgeon, Sermons on the Beatitudes). That is the testimony of every true believer. The satisfied soul becomes a hungering soul because divine satisfaction does not dull holy desire; it intensifies it. A man who has never tasted honey may not crave it. But once he has tasted its sweetness, he desires it again. So it is with Christ. The soul that has tasted grace longs for grace. The soul that has seen righteousness in Christ longs to be righteous like Christ.

This Beatitude also speaks to assurance. We should not measure our spiritual condition merely by the intensity of our feelings at a given moment. Feelings rise and fall. But we should ask honestly: What do I hunger for? What do I thirst after? What do I pursue when no one is watching? What grieves me? What satisfies me? What do I believe I cannot live without? The answer to those questions reveals much about the heart. A Christian may be weak, struggling, and often sorrowful over his lack of zeal, but if he truly hungers for righteousness, that hunger is evidence of life. Dead men do not hunger.

The final satisfaction will come in glory. One day the believer’s hunger and thirst for righteousness will be fully answered. We will be like Christ because we will see Him as He is. Sin will be gone. No proud thought, no cold affection, no wandering desire, no unbelieving fear, no impure motive, no divided heart will remain. The justified will be glorified. The sanctified will be perfected. The hungry will feast at the marriage supper of the Lamb. The thirsty will drink freely from the river of the water of life. The promise of Christ will be fulfilled without remainder: they shall be satisfied.

Conclusion

Here again our Lord continues to overturn the values of fallen man. The world says the strong, the assertive, and the self-promoting will gain the earth. Jesus says the lowly will inherit it. The world says satisfaction is found in pleasure, success, comfort, and self-fulfillment. Jesus says satisfaction belongs to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

The lowly are blessed because they have been humbled under the gracious reign of Christ. They no longer need to grasp for control, defend their pride, or build their life upon the approval of men. Their inheritance is secure because they belong to the King who inherits all things. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed because Christ Himself is their righteousness before God, and by His Spirit He is making them righteous in life. They are satisfied now in the gospel, and they will be fully satisfied in glory.

So the question before us is not merely whether we admire these words of Jesus, but whether these marks of grace are being formed in us. Are we still grasping for the earth in pride, or have we become lowly before God? Are we still trying to satisfy our souls with what cannot save, or are we hungering and thirsting for the righteousness found only in Christ?

Closing Prayer

Father, we thank You for the words of Christ, who speaks with perfect authority and mercy. We confess that we are often proud where we should be lowly, self-defensive where we should be humble, and satisfied with lesser things when we should hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Forgive us for the ways we grasp for control, seek the approval of men, and try to satisfy our souls with what cannot save. Make us meek under Your mighty hand. Teach us to trust Your providence, receive Your Word, and walk gently with others because we belong to Christ.

Give us a deeper hunger for the righteousness found in Him. Cause us to rest in His perfect righteousness for our justification and to pursue holiness as those being conformed to His image. Keep us from empty religion and worldly appetite. Satisfy us with Christ now, and strengthen our hope in the day when every longing will be fulfilled in glory. In Jesus’ name, amen.