Then Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place. When he saw the crowds, Jesus went [back] up the mountain. After he sat down his disciples came to him. Then looking up at his disciples, he began to teach them by saying:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
Blessed are those who mourn or weep, for they will be comforted and laugh.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst now for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you and insult you and reject you as evil and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things about you falsely on account of me. Rejoice in that day and jump for joy because your reward is great in heaven. For their ancestors persecuted the prophets before you in the same way.
There are two Greek words that Matthew could have used for blessed; Matthew chose the word makarios. This word was used by the Greeks for the kind of happiness and well-being the gods themselves enjoy. When Jesus talked about the makarios, the blessed ones, he meant those who participate in life with God, as God intended.
The “blesseds” follow an interesting pattern. Starting with the poor in spirit, they seem to lay out a progression of how to move into deeper spiritual, relational, and emotional life. We are only going to cover the first three this morning, but I think you will see that progression emerge.
You might also notice that the qualities described and approved are the opposite of those that empires typically value. Per A. W. Tozer:
“A fairly accurate description of the human race might be furnished one unacquainted with it by taking the Beatitudes, turning them wrong side out, and saying, ‘Here is your human race.’ ”
So as we go through the Beatitudes, we are going to look at what characterizes a blessed Kingdom life with God, and by implication, what characterizes an unblessed life without God.
We begin with the “poor in spirit.” These are the ones who understand their spiritual situation: they are broken. They are struggling with the chains of sin; they are in a spiritual battle against principalities and powers, and they have at times fought with the enemy instead of against him. But in spite of this, they are living in a blessed state. Recognizing the problem is the first step in inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven.
The fact is that each person was once dead in sin and will continue to take damage points from sin on this side of heaven. As Switchfoot would say, “There ain’t no drug to make me well, ‘cause the sickness is myself.” The first beatitude gives the correct diagnosis: we need a doctor, not just to save us from death, but to continue to heal us. We have to see this to find life. We will see this later in Luke’s gospel.
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)
I think this first beatitude is meant to be one on which the others are built. If the original sin was pride; the original virtue – humility - is the opposite of it. And, I might add, a powerful way to engage in spiritual warfare.
The most powerful weapon to conquer the devil is humility. For, as he does not know at all how to employ it, neither does he know how to defend himself from it. (Vincent de Paul)
Kingdom people recognize their own inadequacy and insufficiency apart from God. To quote from the first step in a lot of recovery groups, “We admit that we are powerless, and our lives have become unmanageable.”
This kind of humility or ‘poorness of spirit’ is not self-loathing. It’s not incessantly focusing on our weakness, or thinking of ourselves as less than we ought. We are, after all, image bearers of God. If we are a follower of Jesus, we are an ambassador, a son or daughter of God, a temple – so much language in the Bible explaining our worth.
Humility involves not thinking more highly of ourselves than we should. It’s being realistic about the broken and sinful parts of who we are. It’s knowing the limit of our abilities; it’s seeing where we are weak and acknowledging it. The poor in spirit are very much just…honest about themselves.
The opposite is pride. The proud live in a cursed state; they think they are okay, that they are all put together. They would say, if they were in a group, “I admit that I am powerful, and my life will be what I make it.”[1] They don’t see how they are damaged and enslaved by sin, or how this unaddressed sin is hurting those around them.
If there is one sin which God hates more than another, and more sets Himself against, it is the sin of pride. Like a weed upon a dung-heap, pride grows more profusely in some soils, especially when well fertilized by rank, riches, praise, flattery, our own ignorance, and the ignorance of others…
Those, perhaps, who think they possess the least pride, and view themselves with wonderful self-admiration as the humblest of mortals, may have more pride than those who feel and confess it. (J.C. Philpot)
One of the hardest things to deal with is people who say, “I’ve got this!” when you know they don’t got that. The hardest kids to coach are not the ones who knows they are terrible; it is those who can barely dribble who think they have a shot at the NBA. The hardest person to counsel…the hardest musician to train…the hardest spouse to live with… they all follow this pattern. They have so much to prove; so much weight of being amazing; so much perfection to defend.
Here’s how C.S. Lewis describes God’s plan for the poor in spirit:
[God] wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble—delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life.
He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are.
I wish I had got a bit further with humility myself: if I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy-dress off—getting rid of the false self, with all its 'Look at me' and 'Aren't I a good boy?' and all its posing and posturing. To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.
Only by stopping my attempts to rule in the Kingdom of Me, where I must increase while God and other decrease, can I enter the kingdom of God. Only by being humbly and desperately dependent on the saving and transforming grace of God can we become what God has created us to be.[2]
Next come the mourners. The context indicates that these are mourning over sin and evil; they especially mourn their own, but they also mourn the failure of mankind to live righteously.[3]They have moved beyond being aware of the problem to bemoaning the broken state of the world. The godly remnant of Jesus' day wept because of the humiliation of Israel as a result of their sin, both personal and corporate. Weeping for sins, to the Israelites, was a deeply poignant[4] act that covered personal as well as societal sin and all who participated.
Mourners are not only thinking about the situation the way God thinks about it, they are feeling about the world the way God feels about it. God grieves over the sin and brokeness of the world (Ephesians 4:30; Mark 3:5), and we should too.
This is not sadness that leads to despair (see 2 Corinthians 7:10), because God has promised comfort to his people (Isaiah 40:1; 51:3; 61:2 – 3; 66:13). Holy sorrow is part of repentance, conversion, and virtuous action.[5] We are blessed as this drives us to the comfort of salvation. When know we are sick, and we want the cure, and we find the right doctor, we will be okay.
In contrast, “Cursed are the hardened.” They know there is a problem, but they think it is too hard to address it. They convince themselves that they will be okay, or that’s it’s nothing to be worried about, and they detach the proper emotion from this reality, and off they go with a smile fixed on their face. They distract themselves or drown their emotions in a flood of parties, distractions, and work projects. Even if they see the diagnosis, they don’t hate the sickness enough to take the cure.
Because - let’s be honest - the cure is hard. It requires mourning. If you know anything about Old Testament precedent, it was sackcloth and ashes, and fasting. Who looks forward to mourning brokenness and failure? But….not mourning is hard too. The hardening of our lives has its own consequence. The things we use to drown our emotions will eventually drown us. The walls we build to wall off parts of ourselves we want to avoid will eventually be walls that separate us off from others, because - let’s be honest - people who refuse to address their own issues are hard to be around.
Two paths, both of which are hard. Choose the one that leads to life.
“Which is better, to laugh or to cry? Is there anybody who wouldn’t prefer to laugh? Because repentance involves a beneficial sorrow, the Lord presented tears as a requirement and laughter as the resulting benefit…So crying is a requirement, laughter the reward, of wisdom.” - Augustine
If we want laughter (think ‘joy’) the beatitudes teach that we begin by embracing transformative sorrow. Counterintuitive, I know. But it’s the way to life, because God is at work in the midst of that process. In fact, the word used for “they shall be comforted” is parakaleo, from which we get parakletos, the Holy Spirit, our comforter who is also an advocate[6] for those whose mourning has led them to repentance and into salvation.
These first two beatitudes deliberately allude to the messianic blessing of Isaiah 61:1-3, which we have seen used by the gospel writers before. It’s the one Jesus read in his hometown to announce who he was. Here it is again:
The Lord has appointed me for a special purpose. He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to repair broken hearts, and to declare to those who are held captive and bound in prison, “Be free from your imprisonment!” 2 He has sent me to announce the year of jubilee, the season of the Eternal’s favor: for our enemies it will be a day of God’s wrath; for those who mourn it will be a time of comfort. 3 As for those who grieve over Zion, God has sent me to give them a beautiful crown in exchange for ashes, to anoint them with gladness instead of sorrow, to wrap them in victory, joy, and praise instead of depression and sadness.
That’s where mourning is headed: gladness, victory, joy, and comfort. But it starts with mourning.
Then there are the gentle, or meek or humble. The same word is used in the Greek in a variety of ways:
bulls that pull a plow
horses that pull a chariot
the image in Job 39 of the war horse pawing as he waits for his rider before entering the battle.
The meek are the ones who are willing to be harnessed into the service of the Kingdom. Our pattern for meekness or gentleness[7] is Jesus, who submits to the will of His Father.
“Meekness is His enabling strength to do what His Word prescribes. It is genuine, quiet strength comfortable with self by making peace with God.” (Donald Hanna)
Though Jesus set the pattern, we need this harnessing in ways Jesus did not in order for us to flourish in this blessed life. Unharnessed, we are wild and untamed. The humble (the poor in spirit who mourn the effect of sin) know they need to be controlled, because on their own they will just tear things up; they know that they need a yoke; they know that if their life is harnessed in the right cause, they can be strong in the service of something greater than themselves. They began to gain a sense of what their life might mean to others.
In meekness, we see the beginning of a sense of community.
Because the meek are God-controlled, the Holy Spirit brings about the strength to have mastery over passions and emotions. Meekness is not passive weakness, but strength directed and under control. The meek don’t become emotionless; they have emotions harnessed to bring about good. The meek don’t become weak; their strength is harnessed to bring about good.
If you physically bully people, the problem isn’t that you are too strong; it’s that you use your strength to break the world instead of fix it.
If you verbally abuse people, the problem isn’t that you can speak; it’s that you use the power of your words to bring death instead of life.
If your emotions lash out in a way that manipulates or wounds people, the problem isn’t that you have emotions; it’s that your emotions are unharnessed and destructive.
The problem with Hurricane Ian wasn’t that there was wind and rain; it was that it was untamed and destructive. It left devastation in its wake. None of us look at that think, “Well, rain was a terrible idea.” No, we look at it and say, “Two feet of rain in a hurricane is a problem.”
So it is with the things constrained by meekness. Holy Spirit empowered meekness orders our lives for our good and the good of others. The whole world flourishes when we surrender to God’s constraint to fulfill His design.
In contrast, it is a curse to remain wild, living an unconstructive or an unstructured life. The wild don’t want authority over them; they want to do their own thing, follow their own heart, put their strength toward themselves and not bring their lives into submission to others. They are all about the self. I remember years ago watching a video for a Bon Jovi song called “It’s My Life.” It starts with, “This ain’t a song for the broken hearted,” so, well, shots fires toward the poor in spirit. The chorus notes that, “Like Frankie said, ‘I did it my way,’ and concludes with “It’s my life.”
Catchy song, entertaining video that tells a story of young man doing anything he can to make it to a Bon Jovi concert. But if you watch the video, the main character who embodies the song leaves a trail of chaos in his wake. The simplest is how he scatters a pack of dogs a lady is walking. He disrupts a race. He creates havoc as he runs through traffic. He vandalizes cars by running over them. He almost causes a semi with what looks like a load of fuel to crash because he jumps in front of it. He’s mayhem from the commercials.
When I teach my ethics class at NMC, a key question that keeps coming up is this: “What would it look like if everybody lived like you?” or “Would you like other people if they lived by your standards?” It’s a way of talking about the Golden Rule: “Do to others what you would like for them to do to you.”
The meek have a sense of community. They see how their lives are situated in the midst of the lives of others. The meek seek to live out the Golden Rule: they want those around them to live with constrained power that brings about the flourishing of everyone, so they do it to.
The law of meekness is: If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, not only give him drink, (which is an act of charity), but drink to him, in token of friendship, and true love, and reconciliation; and in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, not to consume him, but to melt and soften him, that he may be cast into a new mold. (Matthew Henry)
The meek, the harnessed, the blessed, will experience reward.[8] The earth that the meek will inherit is not power or possession in this world, but the new earth, which is everlasting (Rev 21:1).[9] One day the owner of the earth will pass an inheritance on to them. The ones who know what it’s like to be stewarded know how to steward well in turn, both in this life and the next. [10]
* * * * *
The first three beatitudes lay a foundation:
honest brokenness over our sin
humble mourning that leads to repentance and salvation
harnesssed servanthood that leads to flourishing
We see here three requirements for entering into life with God and building the kind of Kingdom God has planned.
_________________________________________________________________________
[1] Psalm 10:4 “In his pride the wicked man does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.”
[2] The kingdom of heaven, where self-sufficiency is no virtue and self-exaltation is a vice, belongs to such people. (Believers Bible Commentary)
[3] They mourn over both personal and corporate sins (see Ezra 9:1–4 as an example from the Old Testament).
[4] Ezra 10:6; Psalm 51:4; Daniel 9:19-20)
[5] Orthodox Study Bible
[6] It’s not like God doesn’t know about our repentance and salvation. It’s an earthly analogy (the biblical audience knew what a parakletos was and did in society) to illustrate a spiritual reality.
[7] The same Greek word is translated “gentle” elsewhere.
[8] The specific OT allusion here is Ps 37:9, 11, 29. Entrance into the Promised Land ultimately became a pointer toward entrance into the new heaven and the new earth, the consummation of the messianic kingdom. (Expositors Bible Commentary)
[9] Orthodox Study Bible
[10] The ultimate fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, whom Paul calls “heir of the world” (Rom. 4:13; cf. Heb. 11:16). (ESV Global Study Bible)