Sermon on the Mount: Blessed
Text: Matthew 5:1–11 ESV
Some of you may know this but some probably don’t: for the first two years of my and Katie’s marriage, I taught third grade. Here is a shot of me back then. (There is also another Table Rock member in that picture, but you’ll have to figure that out on your own). I was 21, no kids, freshly married. I am sure I was both too strict, too ambitious, too idealistic, and at times, too unsympathetic. There is a longer story about how God providentially brought me there, but that is for another sermon someday.
I found out in mid-August that I was going to teach, so I had exactly two weeks before school started to prepare for a class of 23 third-grade students. I did have a teaching degree, so I was not completely unprepared, but thank God for the two other third-grade teachers who graciously gave me their lesson plans so I could borrow and steal from them to make my plans for the first couple months and not be underwater. One great piece of advice I was given was that the first week of school in grade school was not about getting anything done (per se), but rather about setting expectations. It was training kids how to come inside and properly get their stuff stored and in their seats without it taking 30 minutes or with a cacophony of stampeding feet. It was about how to transition from one subject to another. What to do if you finished before everyone else and were just sitting there bored. What to do if you got in trouble. What time was recess and lunch. When not to bother Mr. Eagy and when to bother him.
My co-teachers were very right. The things I spent a good amount of time on in that first week and was consistent with usually went very easily for me for the entire year. The aspects I forgot or didn’t know to talk about or didn’t know to train subsequently had to be talked about again and again until they became a new habit for my students. Things like some first-year lesson I didn’t think to teach: it’s okay if you think you are literally going to pee your pants to just run to the bathroom… no need to wait to talk to me and pee on the floor. Same rule with puking—just go straight to the garbage can. My carpet was cleaned many times that year.
Matthew 5:1
God has been very gracious to do this type of training for me and you. He is after our heart as more than our outward actions. As we start in the opening pages of Genesis, we see God lay out the purpose of mankind—to image him rightly to all of creation, to work and keep the garden, and to help expand his reign and rule on the earth. Page after page we see God engage one issue after another and help his people continue to know him better and walk rightly in his desires—even though they constantly fail. He is the master teacher. When we get to Moses and the people of Israel coming out of Egypt, we finally get this classroom-like moment. All the people of God are at the bottom of Mount Sinai. They are forbidden from coming up the mountain themselves, rather Moses goes up and hears directly from Yahweh his heart and plans for his people. Moses then brings them down the ten commandments, his other rules and laws pertaining to all of life and how they should live, and how to build the tabernacle. He teaches them about God and how they are to be his people. But more than that, he teaches them about himself:
“[they] said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.” (Exodus 20:19–21 ESV)
God is testing his people to see if they rightly want to be oriented to what he is oriented to. Will they fear him—rightly understand his righteousness and justice—and follow him with all their heart, soul, and might? If you remember the story at Mount Sinai, they don’t. They immediately follow their idols.
People rightly notice the connection between Jesus here and the giving of the law. Look at how our passage starts:
“Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:” (Matthew 5:1-2 ESV)
Matthew shows Jesus’s ministry starting with Jesus—God himself—on a mountain, speaking to his people. There is an obvious connection here, but also some obvious differences. The ground does not shake, the people are not in fear. This is God come in humility that his people might come right up to him and listen. Jesus takes the posture of a traditional teacher of his time and sits, and the people press in to hear from him. Jesus’s major teaching discourse here definitely images Sinai, but there is more than that. Some commentators have noticed how Jesus is acting much like Joshua—his name sake (Yeshua). In Joshua 8:30–35, the people of Israel have crossed the Jordan and are in the promised land. Joshua assembles the people between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal and sacrifices to God and then proceeds to read all of the Law that Moses had written down to the people. It is considered a covenant renewal moment God is renewing his covenant with the people and they are reaffirming they are his people.
Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount has the same sense—a covenant renewal yet with a covenant change. We will see this as we continue through Matthew 5, 6, and 7, but we need to start with this specific realization today for our passage. No longer is he going to let his people think this is a covenant of works to strive for. In Jesus’s covenant renewal with his people here, he sets the standard so high that, if we take it seriously, we cannot achieve or merit salvation. What Jesus does in his retelling of the law and the covenant is actually the end of the law as Israel understood it and is driving us to seek salvation in the Messiah. As one pastor says:
“No man can live the Sermon on the Mount in and of himself, and unaided; There is nothing that so leads to the gospel and its grace as the Sermon on the Mount” (Lloyd-Jones, I, pp. 14, 18)
As we talked about last week, Jesus is pursuing his people (the offensive ones) and calling them repent and follow him (with hope and great cost and death to themselves), that they might be aligned with his kingdom and see his very power at work in them—largely through their salvation and sanctification (or growth). And he starts here with their hearts!
We call the first part of this address in Matthew 5–7 the beatitudes from the Latin “beati sunt” or “blessed are”—or the “macarisms” after the Greek word for “blessed.” (You can imagine why most people preferred the term beatitude over macarisms.) Jesus is telling his disciples that those who have the blessing of God—those who are his people—are identified by this type of life, this type of living. Again, this is not how we can earn salvation or pleasure from God, rather what the people of God who are saved and have God’s pleasure on them through their faith in Jesus Christ look like. It is like describing the fruit you see on an apple tree—not the roots of the tree. Christianity is rooted in our faith in Jesus Christ alone by faith alone. The fruits are what Jesus is describing here—the outworking of their salvation in their life.
We can know this because of how he starts and ends this section:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3 ESV)
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:10 ESV)
These are all about the “kingdom of heaven”—what it looks like to be repentant and rightly aligned with the reign and rule of our God.
This sermon shouldn’t be hard to follow—with each beatitude we see another aspect, another angle of the beautiful fruit that those rightly aligned with our Lord’s rule in our life will exhibit. They each build on one another and connect with each other in beautiful ways, so for that reason I won’t try to give you a short saying, one sentence summary, or acronym to track these. Instead, we will just look at each one and unpack them as we go.
#1: Poor in Spirit
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3 ESV)
A quick glance at this statement and we are immediately drawn to the word “poor.” This often goes along with our desire to see Jesus as the underdog champion. He started his ministry in “Galilee of the Gentiles” —those who were in darkness and in their sin. Not the religious elite. It seems consistent to imagine him gathering to himself those who are poor in possessions and money as well as the sinners. That is true, the physically poor did come to Jesus often, but this is saying something different. It is saying the “poor in spirit.”
David wrote Psalm 34 and says:
“This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.” (Psalm 34:6 ESV)
David was obviously not poor in the physical sense. What he is talking about is the same kind of poor in spirit we see here in Matthew 5:2. Here, poor does not equal physical poverty, rather it is talking about our spiritual disposition. Our spiritual state. We have to realize that we bring nothing to the table spiritually. To be poor in spirit is not related to courage or physical resources, rather, realizing that we are spiritually bankrupt. Our fruit of kingdom life starts with a fruit that shows our willingness to confess unworthiness before God and man, and our utter dependence on him.
It is becoming more and more obvious to me that Matthew seems to be doing his personal devotions in Isaiah, because he keeps going back there again and again. Or perhaps Matthew realizes Jesus is thinking of Isaiah often. Either way, it seems there is a connection with Isaiah 66:1:
“Thus says the LORD: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:1–2 ESV)
God doesn’t need anything from me and you—he has made everything and holds it in existence by the power of his will today. Those who are humble and contrite in spirit he will look on. Those who tremble at his word he will care for.
What is your challenge in being poor in spirit? When we think about ourselves and hear passages like this, it can call out our pride—it’s always there! We are constantly thinking much more of ourselves than we ought. And we often think the solution, the antidote, to pride is self-hate, shame, guilt. “If I just despised myself more, then I would demonstrate how little I think of myself.” But that isn’t being poor in spirit. Satan is just as happy if you stay away from God because you pridefully think you bring enough to the table to justify yourself before a righteous God or if you stay away from God because you live in self-doubt, hate, and guilt. Being poor in spirit is seen as we cry out—come to a loving Father who has open hands, knowing we bring nothing. That is what he expects and that is what he wants.
This first beatitude rightly orients us that the kingdom is first one of the spirit, not of external actions. Those who look inward to their spiritual state are those who have aligned with God’s rule as king. In fact, the first four beatitudes speak to our internal spiritual state. This makes it difficult—you are the one who knows this best about yourselves. I can guess at it, others can wonder, sometimes our words betray us, but we need to come to these again and again and self-assess our state before God. Are you one who views yourself as poor in spirit, aligning with what God would say about us?
#2: Those Who Mourn
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4 ESV)
We are tempted again to think of the physical and external world. To think of the mourning that comes with the grief loss—property, possessions, people. Death. It can include this but mourning has to be read in this context not just about external problems, but in connection with being poor in spirit. Mourning here is the emotional counterpart to being poor in spirit.
“My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law.” (Psalm 119:136 ESV)
When we know our own state, when we see our inability to bring anything of spiritual worth to the Lord, we also realize that is the state of others around us as well. And we should mourn. We should see the seriousness of life and the grief of others who seek self-satisfaction instead of grieving their sin and evil and turning to their Lord and Savior in repentance.
I don’t know about you, but mourning is not usually my first reaction to sin—neither my own nor those around me. When my sin is revealed I am usually very justifying of my position. I want to explain that it wasn’t my desire to sin, and to explain why it happened. When I see sin in others, I rarely mourn but rather am indignant that someone would sin against me or others. Maybe you are different. Maybe you cry at your sin but because you weren’t perfect, not because you offended God. There are many ways to react that aren’t truly mourning over sin—our sin and others’ sins.
This world is full of people—sometimes even Christians—who are trying to find an answer and comfort anywhere but in God. Does that break you? If you aren’t broken, you are likely not that concerned about your own sin and the sin of others. If you aren’t broken, you likely think you can fix your own life or others, so why point them to God. Mourn the state of our world and our own heart outside of the work of Jesus Christ. And find comfort in Jesus. That is the promise here—a sweet promise that as we mourn our state and the world’s state, Jesus is the one who brings comfort to us. He will ultimately comfort us as he makes all things right in his forever reign.
#3: The Meek
This third beatitude is a direct outworking of the first two:
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5 ESV)
Jesus seems to be thinking about Psalm 37:11:
“In just a little while, the wicked will be no more; though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there. But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in an abundance of peace.” (Psalm 37:10–11 ESV)
When we realize that we come with nothing, and when we realize our mournful state of sinfulness, but we see the great power of God in Jesus Christ’s life for our life—what worries can we ever have again! This God, who saved me, who saved you, who overcame not only our emptiness but also our debt and still works in our life, he can do anything he wishes. Every promise he makes will definitely come true for us in Jesus on the final day. This is what meekness is all about. We are able to be both self-effacing and supremely confident. We know who we are and put no confidence in our own ability (Philippians 3:1–4), but we have every confidence in our God and what he can do. That is meekness—great strength and assuredness accompanied by great humility. This is how the sons and daughters of the king live—they are those who will inherit this earth the Lord has made! You and I will inherit everything as the people under the reign of the king.
As one scholar has said, these first three beatitudes (The Poor in Spirit, Those Who Mourn, The Meek) all point out that:
“the follower of Jesus does not aggressively insist on his own rights, but displays genuine humility.” (Leon Morris, Matthew, Pillar Commentary)
We are to be humble people. How can one be proud when you bring nothing? How can one be proud when we can’t fix our mournful actions and the mournful sins of others? When you or I find ourselves fighting for the value you bring to everyone and everything, when we are fighting for our personal rights, we are not very aware of these first three beatitudes. And, we are not very aware of who our Savior is:
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5–8 ESV)
#4: Seek Righteousness
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matthew 5:6 ESV)
It is here, at righteousness, that I think we see the core of these beatitudes. It’s not that all the others aren’t important. The three that were before and the three that follow are all speaking of the heart and actions that spring forth from those who have aligned themselves with the king’s reign. Those who have repented and who have followed his call to discipleship. We cannot act like being poor in spirit, mournful, meek, or even merciful, pure in heart and peacemakers are lesser qualities, but they cannot be found without this one.
Righteousness speaks, at its core, of being totally aligned to the will of God. Doing only what he would have us do in the ways he would have us do them. And we are not to just add this to the list, as though it is just number four of seven. Rather it says we are to hunger and thirst. Jesus doesn’t say that about any of the others. The image here is one of starvation—we need this type of righteousness or we will die. From it flows all these other attitudes and on it is built the fruit of this kingdom life.
I dare say this is not often our desire. And maybe rarely at the level of hunger and thirsting… needing it, desiring it passionately. Perhaps it’s because many here have never really been hungry. There might be something to commend us all to fast more regularly, that we would know what it means to long in hunger and thirst, that we can know what we should feel in our desire to know God’s righteousness.
The norms of the kingdom of God require this type of passionate pursuit of righteousness. It is so basic that Dr. D Martin Lloyd-Jones said:
“I do not know of a better test that anyone can apply to himself or herself in this whole matter of the Christian profession than a verse like this. If this verse is to you one of the most blessed statements of all of Scripture, you can be quite certain you are a Christian; if it is not, then you had better examine the foundations again.” (Lloyd-Jones)
That is strong language. Desiring righteousness—thirsting and hungering for it—is core to kingdom life. It will be seen in your active pursuit of these other beatitudes, but also in your willingness to let God sanctify you—grow you. Righteousness, like water for the man and woman in a desert, will become the thing you cherish the most. It will often come in correction, discussions, difficult situations, and it will be for you a spring of life to a quenched soul.
And the promise is we will be satisfied. We will be filled with this righteousness. Jesus’s righteousness will be given to us as our righteousness and we will find ourselves no longer desiring sin but desiring God with all our heart. In our pursuit we will see it both today in our growth and tomorrow in our savior face-to-face.
#5: The Merciful
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” (Matthew 5:7 ESV)
Mercy and grace are often used synonymously, but when there is a distinction, grace is often our, or God’s, response to love the undeserving, and mercy is our, or God’s, response to love the miserable. This is consistent with what we have already seen in the beatitudes. How could we not, at this point in Jesus’s sermon, see ourselves as anything other than miserable outside of Jesus? And how could we then refuse to show love to those who are in the exact same state as us? Perhaps this is an outward action we should be looking for in our own lives and the lives of the Christian church around us more often.
“I am persuaded that, should the Spirit of God usher in another period of refreshing revival in the Western world, one of the earliest signs of it will be that admission of spiritual bankruptcy which finds its satisfaction only in God and his righteousness, and goes on to be richly merciful to others.” (Carson)
God was incredibly merciful to us and it should build a fruit of mercifulness to others. We Christians, of all people, find ourselves standing in a middle place. A place where we look backward and know the joy of our sin being forgiven in Jesus Christ. A place where we look forward and know we will need more forgiveness. We forgive and have mercy because we have been forgiven, we also forgive because we need more forgiveness. We need to ask ourselves hard questions about whether or not we are hard-nosed towards others, or truly willing to extend mercy like we have received mercy.
#6: The Pure In Heart
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8 ESV)
It is amazing here that it isn’t the intellectually superior or the emotionally sensitive who God blesses, but the pure in heart. In biblical language, the heart is where all thoughts and emotions occur. And, as Jesus will remind us when we get to Matthew 15:19:
“For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” (Matthew 15:19)
Yet even knowing this reality, God says his people will be known for being pure. Clean. This isn’t outward conformity to rules, but rather, where does your mind go when you shift into neutral? Is it toward others and God, or toward yourself and sinful desires? What do you love the most? What do you spend the most time thinking about and dwelling on?
It’s interesting what John tells us in 1 John 3:3:
“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” (1 John 3:2–3)
We work to purify ourselves today not so that God will be happy with us, but, as John says, because we know that “we will be like him.” We read our bible, we challenge ourselves to be more pure and holy, we encourage our friends. We want to see that purity demonstrate in us now as much as possible because that is who we are destined to be. And because of this promise—those who are pure in heart will see God! It is ultimately true—we will see and know Jesus at his second coming—and it is true today as we behold him better the more we know him and are purified to be like him.
#7: The Peacemakers
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Matthew 5:9 ESV)
Of all the beatitudes, I think this is the one I intrinsically thought about wrongly each time I read it. I read “peacemakers” and thought “peacekeeper.” Someone who doesn’t rock the boat. Someone who can keep quiet. But peacemaker is different. Peacemaker is someone who steps into the problems with a goal to reconcile the evil that they see. A goal to bring people back together.
Our Savior is the ultimate example of this. When after Jesus’s resurrection he greets his disciples with the traditional Jewish greeting:
“Peace be with you.” (Luke 24:36; John 20:19)
Jesus gives it new meaning and depth because he truly has brought peace. He is the one who has reconciled all his people back to the Father (Colossians 1:19–20). And the promise is that those who are peacemakers will be “sons of God.” Not just children, but sons. The distinction is small, but significant. Sons and daughters in Jewish are thought take on the characteristics of their parents. Being called “son of a dog” is not deriding our parents, but deriding you.
It ought to be normal that we are both willing to wade into hard conversations for the sake of peace, and that we will try as best we can to pour water on fire. Is your heart willing to do this for the sake of reconciling? Even more, are you willing to do the hard conversations to reconcile others to God? Are you willing to point out sin, pray for, and encourage those who don’t know the Lord or are walking away? Are you willing to put away your own pride that peace may be won?
Seeing and Savoring Jesus
All of these (The Poor in Spirit, Those Who Mourn, The Meek, Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness, The Merciful, The Pure in Heart, The Peacemakers) point us to God’s future grace. We don’t see all of these completely now. Our poverty of spiritual resources continues while we are still in sinful bodies. We don’t see God destroy every ramification of sin—real death or spiritual death—and wipe every tear away today. We don’t yet see fully the strength we can have in Christ because we consistently stumble and we think too highly of ourselves. We seek righteousness, but it is being worked in us slowly, by the Holy Spirit, that we might be more conformed to God’s true son. We know God’s true mercy for us in Jesus but don’t always exhibit it to others. Our heart is anything but pure, and we rarely jump willingly between evil to try to reconcile it to each other and to God. Yet, this is what God always promised he would do. It was an amazing promise that he would change our hearts:
“And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” (Ezekiel 11:19–20 ESV)
God first changes our hearts so that we can walk and do what pleases him. We don’t strive to walk in the things that please him so that we can have a new heart… it just doesn’t work that direction.
Today, this is what is true for Christians. As Paul says in Romans 2:29:
“But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.” (Romans 2:29 ESV)
If we are ever tempted by these beatitudes or any of Jesus's statements to see them as a way to earn our way to God, Paul kills that. Any of God’s people (in Paul’s example, a true Jew) is one inwardly, in the heart, by the Spirit. We find our praise internally from God, not externally from praises of men. And this is promised to be true for us in the last day:
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” (Romans 8:29–30 ESV)
God will complete this—he will glorify you and me that we are truly like his true son, forevermore in the new heavens and the new earth with him. That is a beautiful promise that makes the slow progress we see in our fruit worth waiting for.
The Reaction
Yet, the beatitudes don’t stop there. Jesus wants to remind us we are blessed even when we see the reaction most of the world will have for us.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”(Matthew 5:10 ESV)
And I think the next beatitude is just an extension of this one—explaining it further:
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12 ESV)
We will be persecuted and reviled. Being persecuted is the idea of suffering evil when you have a just cause. Persecution can include actions and words. Words is what is what the second description emphasizes: reviling and utterances. To be reviled is synonymous with being “upbraided”—receiving verbal abuse, reproach, insult. Uttering all kids of evil encompasses the rest of any verbal insult we could imagine.
We don’t like that and don’t often want to acknowledge it. We try to create cultures that will be accepting of what we say. When our fruit is evident, the world is not usually tempted to stop, smell, enjoy, and see their God. It will often come with persecution in all forms. Now we have to be clear: this is not persecution for your political stance, your bad attitudes, your mistakes, or your incompetence. We all have these moments and we may rightly receive utterances or difficulties. Jesus says the persecution that comes for “righteousness’ sake” and “on my account” come with a blessing. This is a sweet reminder, but again, it is not that we will receive something we didn’t already have in Christ. Rather, he is reminding us what we have already and how wonderful it is.
Those bearing these fruits are God’s people. We already have a great reward in heaven. We see in Scripture the prophets who have gone before us and their steadfast love of God. We have seen how the very Son of God goes to his death in persecution, reviled and hated. We should expect nothing less ourselves (John 15:18–25).
Conclusion
These beatitudes are a sweet reminder of the fruit we should be watching for in our own lives. The fruit we should look for and encourage others when we see. We want to pray that God would make us these people—even with persecution—and do our part to work with the Holy Spirit to see these in our lives. And we should thank God that our Savior is all these things for us.
References
Martin Lloyd-Jones quoted in Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew (The Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press, 1992).
D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Erdmans, 1959-1960, 1:74.)
D.A. Carson, Jesus’s Sermon On The Mount And His Confrontation With The World: An Exposition of Matthew 5–10, 1st edition. (Grand Rapids, MI:Baker Books, 1999), 30.