Sermon Transcript
From that time on, Jesus began to preach, repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw 2 brothers Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. Come, follow me, Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people. At once they left their nets and followed him.
Going on from there, he saw 2 other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee preparing their nets Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and the region across the Jordan followed him.
Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them. He said, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Back in the dark ages when I was a young man in school, we had a class that I was required to take. Nowadays, I think it’s an elective, and you can elect to not take it, but I was required to take art. Any of you remember having to take art? I loved art. I loved going to art, which is ironic, ’cause I’m awful, awful at art.
I shouldn’t be allowed within 5 miles of a Michaels or a Hobby Lobby. I shouldn’t be allowed onto anybody’s Pinterest board or Etsy or whatever it is that crafty people do, but I’m impressed by people who can make something out of of nothing. And I was introduced in the course of preparing for this message to 2 British artists that I’d never heard of before. Last week I heard about Tim Noble and Sue Webster, and what is so interesting to me about their particular brand of art is that they take ordinary things that by themselves look like utter junk— garbage, discarded cups, cans, plastic, scrap metal, wood, half-eaten food. And all by itself, it just sort of sits on a table or on the floor, and you walk into a room and you just see the junk, and it looks disgusting.
But what they do is they arrange the junk in some sort of a pile or into some sort of shape, and then whenever you turn on the lights, the light shines on this, this junk, this mass of stuff, and the right position, spotlight on the wall, and the results are stunning. I think we have an example of some of their artwork that we’re gonna show you all. Just a bunch of junk on a table and you have like a skyline. And as they run through different scenes here, the art— I just think the whole thing is stunning. I wish I could create something like this.
And I think about it, I just stare at it for a few seconds and I’m like, what? How? How did How did they do that? I could take the junk, I just couldn’t do what it is that they do with the junk. Their art, as I read an article about them, is largely, they say, about perception, right?
That through their art, what you and I perceive to be trash actually becomes a vehicle of meaning and of beauty and of significance, and it’s very moving. And the moment that the spotlight comes on just reframes and flips our expectations and everything that you or I have thought to be true. It surprises you. It disorients you. It turns your expectations upside down, and that’s what they’re trying to do.
All they’re doing is using pre-existing material and they’re arranging them in all of these crazy unique ways. But once the surprise hits, you’re like, okay, didn’t see that coming. It’s impressive. It’s amazing. We’re starting a new sermon series today that will run for the next several weeks, excluding around Thanksgiving and Christmastime.
We’ll be speaking about those particular subjects, but for the next several weeks, we’re going to be talking about Jesus’ most famous, best-known sermon, the Sermon on the Mount. It’s my favorite passage of Scripture in all of the Bible. For me, the message of the Sermon on the Mount is like this artwork, in a sense, in that Jesus’ words are completely in the sermon. And counterintuitive. They’re not what you expect.
They’re surprising. They’re intended to shock us and to make us say, didn’t see that coming. Jesus’ words don’t make sense on the surface. They go against the grain of all worldly wisdom and common thinking. And I’m not so sure that for me, and perhaps for you, that Jesus’ words have quite the same impact on me or on us today that they would have had on the people in the crowd when Jesus first spoke these words or when the people were hearing them for the very, very first time.
And that’s why I think it’s important for us to acknowledge immediately at the beginning of this series, before we even get into the actual Sermon on the Mount text, that we’re going to be dealing with material that is utterly familiar to us.
It’s familiar territory. These words are known even by people who’ve never cracked open a Bible These words are known by people who have a scant understanding of Christianity or who didn’t grow up in church. But the very knowledge of this sermon, the fact that we think, oh yeah, no, I know that, is potentially and immediately dangerous for us because this material, we think, is just a series of external commands which, if I obey them strictly and I adhere to them rigorously, then they will provide the means of entry into Christian faith and Christian living, or so I think. In other words, we treat this aspect of the New Testament, these words in the Sermon on the Mount, much the same way that we’re tempted to treat the 10 Commandments in the Old Testament. That is, instead of viewing these words as a means of confronting us with our sin and our need for a Savior, what they do is we tend to view them as a ladder that we’re going to try to climb so that then we would be welcomed by God, having done so well at following each of Jesus’ teachings, which is the exact opposite of what Jesus intended in the sermon.
If we do that, if we reduce this to a formula or to a ladder, what we’ve done is we’ve missed the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount. John Stott warned us about this when he wrote, the Sermon on the Mount is probably the best-known part of the teaching of Jesus, though arguably it is the least understood. And certainly it is the least obeyed. Why is that? Maybe it’s because the sermon— I’ve heard somebody describe it this past week in studying for this message.
They described it as, the sermon just seems rather simple. It doesn’t seem all that complicated. In the same way, this person described it, it’s like a swimming pool is not complicated. You just get in and then immediately you get wet, which is precisely what you would expect to happen. Maybe you start off in the shallow end, but then you start taking a few steps and you start asking questions like, well, Jesus mentions being poor in spirit.
What does that mean to be poor in spirit? And why does he talk about being meek? Nobody talks about being meek. Like, what does that word even mean? Nobody, nobody uses that word.
And as you ask questions, you begin to get deeper and you start to realize, well, now the water is up to my waist. And so you maybe take a couple more steps and you say, now, why would Jesus pronounce a blessing on people who mourn, as if that was something that we should try to do or something that people should enjoy doing? Why would Jesus do that? And why is he blessing people— we’ll see, um, in a few verses— why is he blessing people who get beat up and persecuted? Isn’t that something we should try and avoid?
And then you realize, oh, you’re up to your neck And you start wondering, Jesus is talking a lot here in these opening verses about being blessed. What does that even mean, to be blessed? Blessed by whom? Blessed for what? Blessed with what result?
And who is Jesus saying this to? And why would His most famous sermon begin with these blessings that are so counterintuitive? And then all of a sudden, you’re wading, and you realize, well, this pool is 12 feet deep.
The larger point for us is that while these sayings of Jesus don’t seem very complicated, there’s a lot more to them than meets the eye. And the more time you spend and I spend trying to wrestle with these blessings or teachings, which I hope that you and I will do in the weeks to come, the more deeply challenging we’re going to find them to be. And if we hear them or understand them incorrectly, these words unfortunately have the potential to lead us to think, okay, I figured it out, when actually we haven’t, or to emphasize or to prioritize the wrong things. And you’re like, okay, emphasize what? What would we prioritize?
Well, for one, I think a lot of us think of the sermon as a new set of rules for living that Jesus is giving us. But I would ask, would a new set of rules actually be good news to you or to anybody else? If someone were to give you a list of 47 things that you have to do in order to be a good person, and acceptable to God. Would that be good news? No, it wouldn’t.
Jesus did come proclaiming good news, but it wasn’t good news of just more stuff you have to do.
Jesus didn’t say, come unto me and I’m gonna give you a bunch of things that you need to start doing if you want to have any chance of being a Christian. To begin hearing the sermon correctly, as Jesus intended, and unlocking the meaning of it for our lives today, Rather than looking at it as just another sermon or just another laundry list of things that you have to do to be accepted by God, which again is missing Jesus’ point entirely, I think we need to start out by backing up for a moment and looking at the larger picture and the larger context, the setting of the Sermon on the Mount. Because we tend to lift the 3 chapters of the Sermon on the Mount— Matthew 5, Matthew 6, Matthew 7— out of their context. And when we do that, that we risk missing what Jesus is trying to say in the Sermon on the Mount. Because what happens in chapters 5, 6, and 7 is intended to flesh out the implications of, and how we should respond to, Jesus’ core message in chapter 4.
And what was Jesus’ core message? It’s what His core message was throughout His ministry, the Kingdom of God. The whole entire message of Jesus is summarized for us in chapter 4 of Matthew, verse 17. From that time on, meaning after Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, after John the Baptist was imprisoned, after Jesus started his ministry, Jesus began to preach, repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.
Now, the Gospel of Matthew, we’re going to see, uses the term kingdom of heaven. Everywhere else in the New Testament uses the term kingdom of God. Kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God mean the exact same thing. And the message of the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, was the single central theme of Jesus’ preaching and teaching, and even his actions. That may not be what is foremost in your mind when you think about Jesus, but it was foremost in his mind every time he spoke.
Jesus actually talked throughout his ministry about 2 kingdoms, right? The kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. And these 2 kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world, stand in stark opposition to one another, as we’re going to see as we make it through the sermon. For instance, we’ll see that the kingdom of this world values things like power, self-sufficiency, comfort, gloating about your successes, and recognition. And we’ll also see that the kingdom of this world detests tests and seeks to avoid things like weakness and sacrifice, discomfort, grief, and exclusion.
Jesus came to replace those values, to turn them upside down, to flip our expectations when he became the king and came onto the scene and began proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. So I thought one of the best ways that we could kick off this new sermon series is to by spending just a few moments thinking about the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven. First, I want us to notice in these verses the crux of the Kingdom. The crux of the Kingdom. What is the Kingdom of God?
In summary, the crux of the Kingdom of God can be summed up with 3 words— King, people, and reign. The crux of the Kingdom of God is King, people, and reign. What do I mean? Well, the very first time we find any mention in the Bible about kings and ruling and reigning, it’s at the beginning of your Bible. God spoke the universe into existence, bringing beauty in a garden and order out of chaos.
And the capstone to God packing this amazing world full of potential and goodness at the beginning of chapter 1 of Genesis and beginning of Genesis 2, where God sets these creatures called humans over the creation, and he says in Genesis 1:28, 27 through 28, that these creatures who are like God and who image God and who represent him are to enjoy creation. They’re to be fruitful. They’re to multiply. They’re to harness all of the raw potential that is packed into the creation. And by so doing, they are to rule.
The word rule in the Bible is similar to how you and I would use that word rule in English. Ruling is the language of kings and queens, and the humans at creation are charged by God to rule. The earth on God’s behalf. They’re installed as kings and queens of creation, essentially. Basically, they’re to bring out of creation all of its potential and to help it make it even more incredible than it already is.
And that’s how the Bible begins. The story of the Bible is a story about God wanting to set up the world as a partnership with these creatures so that they rule together with him as his representatives and vice-regents. And this works great for a couple verses. Chapter 3 of the Bible falls apart. In Genesis chapter 3, the humans rebel and see their opportunity to rule as an opportunity for their own self-advantage.
They begin to stop trusting God. They begin to question God’s motives. They don’t trust God’s definition of good and evil anymore. What do they do? They start saying, I want to define good and evil on my own terms.
And what they end up creating, as the Bible narrative goes on to tell us is an alternative kingdom, the kingdom of this world. The Apostle Paul called it the age of sin and death. Jesus called it this age. All of this is the Bible’s way of explaining why the world is the way that it is today. The way the world is today— the world is the way it is, excuse me, today is because human beings have rejected God’s kingdom and God’s rule have tried to build our own kingdom and to rule things our own way instead.
That’s why the world is the way that it is today. So what is God’s response to this? God forms a people, right? Out of all rebellious humanity, God takes one people and says, these are going to be my people. I’m going to liberate these people out of the kingdom of this world.
I’m gonna make them my own people, and I will be their king. These people came to be known as Israel. Now, how does Israel do as we read the Old Testament? How do they do at living obediently under God’s reign with God as their king? Not so great.
They don’t submit to the reign of God any more than you or I do. But Israel’s prophets and poets just kept alive this hope that one day God would take His world back and He would send a true king, a godly king, a perfect king to rule rule over His people. The prophet Isaiah described this anticipation and this hope, painting a beautiful scene that despite the fact that humanity and Israel have rejected God’s kingdom, God would come back one day and He will reclaim His world. He will form a people who will live under His reign, and He will bring salvation to His people. So, the crux of the kingdom of God, the crux of the kingdom of heaven, in essence, is God’s rescue operation for the entire world.
And it is taking place through Jesus as the King. In Matthew 4:17, Jesus is inviting all people to live once again under the rule of God, under the reign of God, and to be part of God’s people. Jesus came to confront evil. He came to confront especially spiritual evil and its whole legacy of oppression and disease and death. Jesus came to restore God’s rule and to reign over the whole world by creating a new family of people who will follow Him and who will obey His teachings and who will live under His rule.
And what does it look like? What does it look like for the King, Jesus, to reclaim the world and to reign over it? Chapter 4, those verses that Laura read a little bit ago, give us an idea. It says that Jesus went around throughout Galilee doing 3 things. Teaching, proclaiming, and healing.
And through Jesus’ teaching, proclaiming, and healing, the people begin to realize who Jesus is, that he’s the King. And they have these encounters with Jesus, and they walk away completely transformed. And notice who the people who flocked to Jesus were. It were those who were at the bottom, the most vulnerable, the most sick, the most hurting, the most overlooked people in that society. These were not the elite.
These were not the wealthy. These were not the healthy. These were not the wise. These are the people who started following Jesus coming from every place on the compass because they had never seen or heard someone who could teach and proclaim and heal like Him. And the reason why Jesus’ fame spread so quickly among these people is because Jesus was saying and showing them through His actions that because Jesus was now on the scene, the kingdom of God was accessible even to them.
That was surprising.
In the kingdom of God, there are no privileged members. The poor, the nobodies, the wealthy, the religious— everybody is invited and called to turn and to repent and to join God’s family and to follow Jesus’ rule. And these are the people who flock to Jesus because they found life, they found healing, they found hope, they found good news about who God is and about what God was about to do on their behalf. So the crux of the kingdom is Jesus as King, God forming a new people, and the King reigning over and through these people. And that’s also the context and the setting for the Sermon on the Mount.
The Sermon on the Mount is not a little brochure about morals and ethics. It’s really about the character and the values of the kingdom of God and what it looks like for God to reign over his people. Sounds great, right? It sounds amazing. Not so fast.
If you haven’t noticed, contemporary people like us aren’t exactly thrilled about the idea of someone having authority over us and ruling We actually tend to resist that idea. It reminds me of the scene in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Some of you are waking up, oh, okay, yeah, Monty Python, where King Arthur is riding through the countryside. He’s trying to convince people that he is their king, and it doesn’t go very well. He finds one guy named Dennis, and he says, oh, yeah, king, sure, very nice.
How’d you get that? By exploiting the workers? By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogmas? Which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society. And King Arthur is flustered, so he turns to a woman.
He says, I am your king. And she says, I didn’t know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective. I didn’t vote for you. The point is that we tend to dislike somebody else calling the shots.
We don’t want a king. We want to be our own king or queen. And if you think about it, everybody does have their own kingdom. In the biblical sense. Your kingdom is that little sphere in which what you say goes.
And from an early age, little kids begin developing their own kingdom, don’t they? They develop a favorite word: no. And their second favorite word: mine. They’re learning early— they are learning early on that they have a kingdom. You ever heard the phrase, you’re not the boss of me?
Like, where do we get that? That’s kingdom language. On car trips, kids who are told, you have to share the back seat. Good luck with that. They’re gonna— what they’re gonna do is they’re gonna draw an invisible line saying, don’t you dare think about crossing over that line.
So our kingdom— we do this even as adults— is where things go the way we want them to go. We’re in charge. The Kingdom of God, though, is where God is in charge and where God’s will is done. It’s the sphere in which everything that happens meets with God’s approval and delight, and where everything is precisely as God wants it to be. And that’s what Jesus is announcing.
In saying, repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near, the implication is, well, now that God’s Kingdom has come among us, us, those who follow Jesus are to take on a new perspective, a different attitude and an outlook than the one we had when we lived under— or when we lived under our rule and before we lived under God’s rule. And that’s what the sermon is really about. It’s where Jesus describes what it looks like to live under the reign of Jesus as King. The sermon is really just Jesus teaching and proclaiming the good news of God’s Kingdom. The sermon teaches us to focus on the things that are important to God and to adjust our thinking as a result, to adjust our perspectives, our goals, our worldview to be in alignment with Him and His will, because He is the King, and He’s come to reign over His people.
That’s the crux of the kingdom. The second thing we see here in these opening verses are the values. Values of the kingdom. The values of the kingdom. Matthew 5:1 says Jesus saw the crowds.
Who were the crowds? They’re the people we just saw in chapter 4 flocking to Jesus. These are the people to whom Jesus is speaking and to whom Jesus brought the kingdom as he healed them, as he delivered them, as he ministered to them. And when Jesus saw these crowds, it says Jesus went up on a mountainside. He sat down, and his disciples, it says, came to him.
Well, who were Jesus’ disciples. We automatically think, well, that must have been the 12, the 12 kind of inner group. We haven’t even met those people yet at this point. That doesn’t happen till Matthew chapter 10. Chapter 4, we meet 4 of those 12.
But who are the other disciples mentioned here in this crowd? Well, a disciple is simply someone who follows Jesus. So who was following Jesus at that point? Lots of different types of people. The sick, the hurting, the poor, the unimportant, the insignificant, those who were just scraping by, people who did not matter in that society.
And what does Jesus say to them? He tells them, you’re blessed. You’re blessed. Which we would have to guess is not what these people were expecting to hear. Not what the poor and the downtrodden were expecting to hear, and especially not what the religious leaders of Jesus’ day who might have been in the crowd we’re expecting to hear.
And Jesus says, you are blessed. We throw around that word blessing a lot in Christian circles. Have a blessed day. Blessings to you. Somebody just blessed me the other day with their kindness.
How’s it going? Oh, we’re so blessed right now. We use that word all of the time without really thinking about what it really means. We usually think of blessing as something good has just happened. To me.
Many in our society commonly think of being blessed as everything being in sync. They post something and say #blessed because great things just keep on happening to them, like that celebrity who buys an unbelievable sports car and posts a picture of it with the caption #blessed. Or your friend who always seems to be on some incredible trip somewhere and you’re jealous and they post #blessed and you’re like, really? Is that what Jesus is talking about? Are those really the images of what a blessed life looks like?
What does it mean to say that someone is blessed? Not just blessed in general, but what did it mean for Jesus to say it to this particular group of people?
The Greek word translated blessed in this section, you may have heard, means happy, blissful, or literally to be enlarged.
As opposed to superficial or circumstantial happiness, though, this word blessed is referring to something much more deep-rooted. It’s a deep-rooted gladness in God that is not based on circumstances. It’s a deep joy of the soul. Anybody able to benefit from that today? Whatever it is that you’re going through, need a deep joy of the soul?
Being blessed means that you’re in right relationship with God. But it’s not just about being in a relationship with God. It’s about enjoying the fruits and the consequences of being in that relationship with God. That’s what it means to be blessed by God. It means He is showing favor to you.
It means He is for you. It means that He is with you. And when Jesus started talking about who was blessed, the people in the crowd would have likely thought, okay, I know what’s about to happen. Jesus is probably going to talk about the healthy people and the wealthy people and the wise people. People and about how God was with them, and so maybe Jesus is going to tell us how He can help us to get there too?
That’s not what Jesus does.
Instead, Jesus affirms everything about the current condition of the people in the crowd— the poor, the mourning, the meek, the unimportant, people who long to see righteousness done in the world but don’t have the influence to really do anything about And Jesus says to these people, the kingdom is being offered to you. You are the fortunate ones, Jesus is saying, because of your value to the Father and because the King is right here in your midst. Now, we’re only going to just briefly touch on the first 3 of Jesus’ declarations of blessedness in this chapter today. We call these the Beatitudes. You may have heard that phrase.
Pastor Dan will get into some of the other ones next week. But as we go through these blesseds, these Beatitudes, I came across a commentator— I’m not sure I can pronounce his name correct— Stanley Hauerwas makes a really important point that I think we need to hear. He says, too often these characteristics, these Beatitudes, these characteristics of the blessings listed here by Jesus, too often they have in Christian history been turned into ideals or virtues that that we must strive to attain. And when we do that, we turn these things into formulas that help us gain status and favor with God, so we think, which is, of course, precisely the opposite of what Jesus is trying to say. Rather, what these are are descriptions of the kinds of people to whom Jesus, in fact, first brought the Kingdom of God.
Nowhere does Jesus tell us in these statements that we should try to be poor in spirit. Nowhere does it tell us that we should mourn all of the time or try to get ourselves persecuted. He simply announces the great surprise that these people who are not significant or honored in that society are precisely the ones who have received the honor to be first among those called into God’s kingdom. And one of these groups, Jesus said, are the poor in spirit. Verse 3, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the poor in spirit. So what does that mean? There’s one group of people who believe that Jesus is primarily talking about an economic situation. I mean, some of these people in the crowd were in fact economically poor, were they not? And so it would make sense to suggest, as many have, that Jesus is talking about their being poor in spirit is just sort of a way of talking about how because these people are economically poor, their being, their attitude Their mindset, their hearts are all affected in some way.
In other words, that Jesus, people are suggesting, is saying that these people are crushed, that they’re beaten down, that they don’t think highly of themselves because nobody else in that society did either because of their economic situation. And then there’s another group of people who hear poor in spirit and believe Jesus isn’t talking about the economically poor, but He’s instead talking about the spiritually poor. As in these people in the crowd were not leaders, that they weren’t significant in that spiritual community. In other words, these people were the spiritual zeros. They were outsiders.
And so there’s a whole group of people who read Jesus’ statement in that way. So which is it? Which is it? Is Jesus talking about the economically poor, the poor in spirit, or is he talking about the spiritually poor, poor in spirit? Is he talking about finances Or is He talking about religion?
And this is really, if you think about it, such a 21st century Western way of looking at this, as if this has to be one or the other, as if our economic circumstances are ever separated from our spiritual experience. Again, think about who are the people that Jesus is talking to? Are they economically poor? Yeah. And because they are poor, are they the people to whom that Jewish community is looking to for leadership or insight?
Did anybody care what these people thought about the Bible or how they would have interpreted scripture? No. These people were both economically poor and spiritually poor. These 2 aspects of their lives, of course, were intertwined. They are the poor in spirit.
They are the people that nobody admired or looked to or thought is important, and it is totally bound up with their difficult financial circumstances. And Jesus is saying that that experience of being in that lowly, insignificant condition is actually the most favorable position you could be in, because the Kingdom of God is yours. You’re blessed. Here it is, He says. It’s being offered to you.
And that’s the thing that Jesus repeated again and again throughout His teaching ministry, that it is precisely those who are in the most difficult, desperate circumstances who tend to be the most open-minded and ready to receive help from God, right? It tends to be true more often than not that people who have less to lose are more open to Jesus’ help. But people to whom following Jesus would actually mean humbling themselves or totally rethinking how they deal with their financial resources or how they think about themselves in terms of their career, their identity, their reputation, how they treat people, they have a lot more to lose. And they tend to be the ones who say, no thanks, to following Jesus and living under his rule. And that’s why Jesus, I think, is highlighting here in verse 3 that it is the poor and the insignificant and the humble who are the first to receive the offer of the kingdom, because they will be most likely the, the first to respond.
And that was the case here. The poor in spirit are not simply financially poor people. And they’re not simply people with a false sense of humility. They’re not simply people with poor self-esteem. Jerry Bridges said, the poor in spirit are those who have become convinced of their spiritual poverty.
The poor in spirit see their continued sinfulness, even as believers. In contrast to the self-righteous Pharisee who prayed, God, thank You that I am not like other people, the poor in spirit identify with the tax collector, who will look up to heaven and cry out, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. That’s where humility begins, with a deep sense of our continued sinfulness. So the first step towards finding inner happiness or blessing in life, you could say, is remembering that we, apart from God’s mercy, are spiritual beggars. Spiritually, we have nothing on our own that we can stand on.
Spiritually, we cannot plead our case before God based on something we’ve done. Without God’s intervention, we are spiritually bankrupt. And as strange as that sounds, that mindset is actually what Jesus is commending and looking for. And then we have verse 4, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. So, a reasonable question to ask is, mourn over what?
What counts as legitimate mourning that would be blessed by God? And given that where this verse Verse 4 falls right after verse 3, Blessed are the poor in spirit, and right before verse 5, that we’ll see in a moment, Blessed are the meek, and verse 6, we’ll see next week, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Given where verse 4 comes, it seems reasonable to assume that the kind of mourning Jesus is referring to is a softness of heart that grieves over sin.
Blessed are those, Jesus is saying, who are deeply bothered by their own sin, their selfish ambition, their lame excuses, their self-righteousness as an affront to God, not as some sort of character flaw or because it’s embarrassing to them, because simply it’s an affront to God. Blessed are those who mourn about that. Blessed are those who are honest about their own sinful condition and are humble enough to ask God for forgiveness and healing. Blessed are those who don’t try to hide their sin or to justify it before God. Blessed are those who are so bothered by the tragedy and the evil and the broken relationships we see happening in the world that it grieves them.
Blessed are those who are paying attention to everything that is horrible about our world, and instead of ignoring the tragedies happening around you, blessed are those who internalize it and grieve about it. You’re the ones whom God is with and for. You’re the ones Jesus is saying who will be comforted because you know that one day God will right all that is wrong with the world. And then verse 5, Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. The Greek word for meek here refers to mildness, gentleness of spirit, and humility.
To be meek is not to be unimportant, but is to not think of yourself as important. You don’t think of yourself as important whether you have influence or not. God shows his favor on those who don’t measure themselves by their position, their job title, their bank account, or who they know. Meekness is having the right or the power to do something but refraining from it for the benefit of someone else. It may seem counterintuitive, but striving for power and attention and the applause of men is not the path to blessedness.
Meekness of spirit is. And these are some of the values of the kingdom of God: poor in spirit, mourning over sin, meekness. And you might be thinking, well, these descriptions sound an awful lot like Jesus, and you would be correct. Jesus was extremely important and influential, but He didn’t think of Himself. Philippians 2 says, as being important.
And as we’ll see as we go through this sermon, Jesus not only embodied verse 5 about being meek, but He embodied all of these blessings. He came— Jesus did— from poor, insignificant circumstances. He mourned and He grieved over the source of sin and the state of this world and over the people that He met. He was extremely important, but He didn’t think of Himself as important. And he longed to see the wrong in the world set right.
And so, with small acts of mercy to hurting individuals, Jesus showed his true devotion to the cause of the kingdom of God. And he inserted himself into dangerous situations. He was persecuted and he was killed. And the death of Jesus is not the unfortunate death of Jesus as some great miracle worker, social worker. His death is actually the way.
That He epitomized the values of the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom of God, the throne is a cross. In the Kingdom of God, the King reigns with self-giving love. He set aside His status, and as the representative for us all, He died in our place. And Jesus is the epitome of these blessings, and that is good news, really good news, for unimportant, insignificant, hurting people like you you and like me.
So what should our response be to all of this?
Great question to ask yourself is, are you a citizen of the Kingdom of God? Are you a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven? You’re either a citizen of the Kingdom of God or you’re not. There’s not a third option. And those who are not citizens of the Kingdom of God are separated from God?
How do you enter into the Kingdom of God? How do you enter into the Kingdom of Heaven? A man named Nicodemus came to Jesus in John chapter 3 and asked that very question, and Jesus said, you must be born again to enter the Kingdom of God. You must be transformed by the Holy Spirit in your heart. It’s not a moral change of mind.
It’s being transformed from within, being born again.
You’re not just, when you become a Christ follower, asking Jesus to live in your heart so you can go to heaven one day. What you’re really doing is you’re saying, I want You to be my King.
I recognize I have a kingdom and You have a kingdom, and I’m laying my kingdom down.
You are the King. That’s what you’re doing. And so, a reasonable question to ask is, am I a citizen of the kingdom of of God? Have I been born again? Jesus also says, we saw in Matthew 4, that one of the requirements of the kingdom of God being made available to us is to repent, to turn from our own kingdoms, our own rule, our own reign, to align ourselves to live under God’s rule and reign.
And even if you are a citizen of God’s kingdom, you can You can still live under the influence of the old kingdom, can’t you?
That’s why we’re told to live in the light and to not be fooled by the darkness. That’s why we’re told to lay down our lives, to lay down our kingdom each and every day. If you’re going to live as a Christian in this world, this absolutely has to matter to you. The kingdom of God has to be present in our mind as we think about, who am I following? My own kingdom or Jesus?
For all of us, we’re to lay down our kingdom as we know it. Those who hold on to their kingdoms and their lives will only produce superficiality, religion. But if you’re willing to give your life for Jesus’ sake, if you’re willing to offer him your kingdom in exchange for his, you will find true life. You will be blessed. Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the King, that after our many attempts to rule and to do things according to what seems right in our own eyes and for our own self-advantage, you once again sent the King.
To once for all create a new people who live under Your rule and Your reign. And You didn’t have to do that, but You did because You are merciful and good all the time. I pray that this message would remind us to think about the kingdom as we think about this sermon, that as we think about what does it look like to live as citizens of the kingdom, what are the things we should value, what are the things that we should aspire to? What are the things— not in order to be made right with You, that simply through our obedience, that that doesn’t make us right. Our good works are worth nothing.
We’re saved by grace. But at the same time, there should be something different about our lives. And so, I pray that You would help us to live as citizens of Your kingdom, not as citizens of this world.
Jesus is the King, and I pray that we would consider the Kingdom. We pray for Your Kingdom to come, not to come into existence. It already is in existence. We’re praying for it to come in all those places of our lives and in this world where it is not yet ruling and reigning.
May Your Kingdom come, and may Your will be done. We pray all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
