Your Blessed Life Now intro
Your Blessed Life Now
Matthew 5:1-11
If I asked every person who wants to be blessed today to raise your hand, I doubt there would be a single person who didn’t raise their hand. We all want to be blessed. But if I asked each person who raised his or her hand to define what “blessed” means, I know we would probably get a wide variety of answers. We use the word “blessed” all the time, but I wonder if we really know what it means.
We often use the word to refer to what we would define as favorable circumstances. If we have a good year financially, we say we are blessed. If we narrowly escape an accident on an icy road, we say we are blessed. If we get a favorable diagnosis from the doctor, we say we are blessed. Sometimes we use the word to describe our feelings and emotions. We see a beautiful sunrise and we say we are blessed. We look at our spouses and children and say we are blessed. So, normally, we connect our idea of blessing to positive external physical circumstances or to favorable emotions.
What if I told you that the true understanding of the idea of blessing had nothing to do with your present external circumstances or your current feelings? What if I told you that you could be penniless and be blessed? What if I told you that you could get laid off and be blessed? What if I told you that you could get a terminal diagnosis from the doctor and still be blessed? That runs against the grain of how we are trained to think about blessing doesn’t it.
The title of this message today is a bit tongue in cheek. Perhaps you are familiar with the best selling book Your Best Life Now. In this book, Joel Osteen describes what he considers to be the principles of enjoying your best life. It includes things like enlarging your vision, having a positive self-image, speaking positive words, having a mindset of prosperity, and so on.
The problem with these kinds of books is that they reinforce wrong thinking about what it really means to be blessed. In fact, I would suggest that the title of his book pinpoints the contrast I am trying to make today. The idea of your best life is really a man-centered way of evaluating your life. Best is one of those words we use to grade people. We want to have the best, be the best, and be around the best. These kinds of self-help messages are designed to get us to achieve our potential and experience all the success we can achieve.
But then we come to the Sermon on the Mount and we see Jesus talk about those who are blessed. There is a vast difference between being best and being blessed. Best is our way of evaluating ourselves or others. Blessed is God’s perspective on things. The truth of the matter is that some of the people we would consider the best, God would in no way pronounce “blessed.”
I want to be very up front with you today about my purpose in this message. I want you to stop trying to be the best and focus on being blessed. I want you to change your thinking about what is really important in life. I want you to reorient your attitude from a man-centered way of looking at life to a God-centered way.
We are going to make our way for the next several weeks through the Sermon on the Mount. What we will discover is counter-cultural, hard-hitting, and convicting. And it all begins with a total reorientation of our idea of what it means to be blessed.
Now, before we take a closer look at the idea of blessing, I want us to take a minute to note the context of this sermon. The sermon on the mount, as it is called, is the first discourse of Jesus recorded by Matthew. It stretches from 5:3 to 7:27. Matthew sets the stage for it in vv. 1-2.
- The sermon is directed to the disciples but overheard by the crowds.
- Great crowds were following Jesus (4:25).
- Jesus’ example is a good one for us to follow. His focus is on teaching disciples but he welcomes the crowds to listen. He knew the difference between disciples and crowds.
- This sermon is all about what it means to be a disciple in God’s kingdom.
- Jesus taught them in an authoritative fashion.
- Jesus sat down in the fashion of the rabbis of the day. He taught with authority.
- The concluding remarks of Matthew in 7:28-29 makes this clear. Jesus taught as one with authority.
So, we need to listen up. Jesus, the Authoritative Teacher, is teaching us what it means to be a disciple in His kingdom. He is telling us what kingdom people are like. As Ligon Duncan stated, It is not about a Christian living an ideal life in an ideal world. It is about a Christian living a kingdom life in a fallen world.
As I said earlier, this is a sermon about being blessed. In other words, this sermon from Jesus describes for us what God considers a blessed life.
A. Blessing is a real condition not a fleeting feeling.
1. Jesus uses eight descriptive statements of those who are
called blessed by God.
2. It is not that they feel blessed. They are blessed. God says
they are blessed.
APP: This is very important. Jesus is not describing a feeling that comes and goes. He is describing an objective reality. When God pronounces you blessed, you are blessed, regardless of how you might feel. So many of us base our understanding of our condition before God or our relationship with God on our feelings. Blessing is not a feeling. It is a fact. Do the poor in spirit feel blessed? Do those who mourn feel blessed? Yet, they are. God pronounces them blessed and they are truly blessed.
B. Blessing is a condition of truly being in God’s kingdom.
1. Note that the first and eighth beatitude state that “theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.”
2. Those who are blessed are those who belong to God’s
Kingdom.
3. They do not earn a place in God’s kingdom by exhibiting
these qualities, they exhibit these qualities as evidence of
being truly born again into the kingdom of God.
4. We recognize there is an “already but not yet” aspect to
God’s kingdom. We are already blessed but we also see
that the ultimate fulfillment of the kingdom is yet future.
C. Blessing is focused on inward spiritual qualities not on outward
physical ones.
1. Look at the list. They all have to do with inward spiritual
Qualities.
Think of how different the beatitudes would look if written from the prevailing man-centered wisdom of our self-help culture.
Blessed are the self confident who have it all
Blessed are those who are always laughing
Blessed are the powerful and in control
Blessed are those who hunger for wealth and material things
Blessed are those who insulate themselves from pain
Blessed are those whose hearts are divided
Blessed are those who win the argument
Blessed are those who avoid persecution by fitting in
APP: Think of how counter-cultural this is for us. We normally associate blessing with the accumulation of material wealth or with the acquisition of power, or with success and recognition in our given field, or with physical beauty or athletic prowess. Jesus explodes our ideas about blessing.
Jesus tells us that a really blessed person is one who has a right relationship with God. That right relationship with God produces right inward attitudes which are then expressed in outward actions which are pleasing to God.
You can be rich, famous, successful, beautiful, strong, educated, powerful, popular, gifted, creative, and on and on but still not be blessed. If you don’t have a right relationship with God, you are not blessed. Not by God’s standard.
On the other hand, you can be poor, sad, meek, needy, persecuted, and a real loser by worldly standards but be blessed.
Some of us here today have been using the wrong measuring stick to evaluate our lives. We view ourselves as wildly successful but God sees us as missing the mark altogether. Why? Because our focus has been on external measures of blessing instead of internal attitudes of godliness.
D. Blessing is revealed by outward actions which are motivated by the
inward spiritual qualities.
1. Throughout the sermon, Jesus indicates that inward attitudes
which please God will be expressed in outward actions
which please God.
- Good deeds and glorify God (5:16).
- A desire to reconcile with an offended brother (5:23-24).
- A commitment to marital fidelity (5:31-32).
- Mercy and generosity (5:38-42).
- Loving our enemies (5:44).
- Giving to the needy (6:2).
- Prayer (6:5-15).
- Proper priorities (6:16-34).
- Refusing to be judgmental (7:1-6).
APP: A blessed person is one whose inner attitudes and outer example line up for the glory of God. This is the key to the Christian life. It begins with inward things, with the heart. But then it works its way out to the mouth, the hands, the feet, and so on.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones compared the Christian life to playing music. He talked about how both right notes and the expression of the heart together make music. One could play a piece of music with all the right notes but still miss the design of the composer without the dynamics of the heart.
This is what Jesus teaches us in this sermon. It is not just outward conformity to the letter of the law that pleases God. It is when our outward actions are matched up with God-pleasing motives of the heart which yearn to glorify Him that we have truly captured the essence of Christian living.
CONCLUSION
The problem with chasing your best life now is that you are chasing a shadow. When my kids were little, we used to go in the back yard sometimes and blow bubbles. They would chase the bubbles across the yard and try to catch them. But as soon as they grabbed them, you know what happened. They popped and they were gone.
The sermon on the mount is designed to get us to stop our bubble chasing and start looking at life from God’s perspective. It is intended to show us how to live as a true resident of God’s kingdom. It shows us the stark contrast between the world’s values and God’s values.
The beginning of blessing is to know Jesus Christ by faith. Only then can you start the journey of a blessed life.