What comes to mind when you hear someone described as blessed? You think of a successful career, or great wealth, or a happy marriage.
Well, those things may be evidence of God's blessing, and there's nothing wrong with them. They are strikingly different from what Jesus points to when he talks about blessing. And today on Truth for Life, Alister Beg examines the countercultural teaching of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. The brief that has been given me for this morning is to fly over these twelve verses at fifty thousand feet, and I understand that. I am going to try and say one or two things in introducing it, and then run across the surface of these eight characteristics, and then put the landing gear down.
And stop. Christ, as Luther says, is saying nothing in these verses about how we become Christians. Christ is saying nothing in these verses about how we become Christians, but only about the works and the fruit that no one can do unless she already is a Christian. And in a state of grace, that fundamental distinction, that point of departure, is crucial, because, as will be quickly apparent, it is possible for people to use the beatitudes, and they do, as a sort of moralistic code, as a call to one another to say, "Come on, wouldn't you like to?" Exchange one set of external circumstances for another set of external circumstances. Instead of spending your time in this way, why don't you spend your time in this other way?
As if somehow or another, we could attain to the level of righteousness that Jesus identifies in the sermon and particularly in the Beatitudes on our on our own strength. And of course, the great door closer on that is when he says to the folks in verse twenty, "I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." And there is in the Beatitudes a tremendous opportunity for those of us who are very disciplined to fake it. And to combine our own temperament with our own drive and initiative, and so Luther's word is important. Jesus here in Matthew is teaching the the whole nature of the kingdom. In Matthew four seventeen, I think it is, he says Jesus began to preach, repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.
In verse twenty three, he's going through Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the good news of the kingdom. And the Sermon on the Mount; these beatitudes are a description of the lifestyle of those who belong to that kingdom. You don't try and do the beatitudes, and at the end you get your grade. And if you get a good enough grade, you're welcomed into the kingdom. But you read the Beatitudes and you say, "I'll never get in." And the answer is, "That's right.
Never on your own will you get in." That's why Jesus came and lived as He lived and died as He died.
Now, if you will entrust your life to Christ and He will regenerate you, make you new from the inside out, then you can come back up to the top of the page and discover what it means to be poor in spirit and to mourn and to hunger and thirst for righteousness. What we have here is essentially a call to a Christian counterculture. That's the title that was given to John Stott's book, which I have in front of me here. goes back to the seventies, I think. The Christian Counterculture by John Stott is tremendously helpful, and he says in just one brief paragraph, the followers of Jesus are to be different, different from both the nominal church and the secular world.
Different from both the religious and the irreligious, the Sermon on the Mount is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian counter culture. Here is a Christian value system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, lifestyle, and relationships, all of which are totally at variance with those of the non-Christian world. And this Christian counterculture is the life of the kingdom of God—a fully human life, indeed, but lived out under the divine rule. In other words, when we begin to take seriously the words of Jesus here concerning these principal marks of Christian character and conduct, we declare our alien status. I had to, in May of last year, turn in my resident alien card, which I had had since 1983.
I was happy in one sense to give it away, but I was sad too because I wanted to keep it for posterity's sake. But they wouldn't even cut it or give me a piece of it. No, it was gone, and with it, my resident alien status. No longer could I claim, "Well, I don't belong here." No longer could I say, "Well, you know, I don't vote here." I had all of that dragged out from underneath me, and I was I was right in it with everybody else.
Well, the fact of the matter is that we all carry a resident alien card. Christian women are resident aliens, and that ought to become apparent because our world says to the Christian woman: assert yourself, be proud of yourself, defend yourself, avenge yourself, serve yourself, promote yourself. And the Sermon on the Mount turns that whole thing on its head. In fact, when you look seriously at these eight characteristics, you could actually say that these are the marks of losers. The average gathering of women who are responding to All of the pressures on them in relationship to marriage and and everything else that goes along.
If if I understand this sort of contemporary noise that comes, especially from the world of mainstream American femininity, then the kind of things I hear are addressed directly by these eight characteristics, eight expressions of conduct. That's what makes them so exciting, so challenging to study, and so revolutionary in their impact. Think about the impact of a group like this getting out into our communities, involved with other people, and challenging not in a bombastic way, but in a kindly way, and particularly by our lifestyle, the very principles, the the mo of our of our friends and neighbours.
Now the context into which this was written. I'll say one more thing about context. The religious context was marked by four particular groups. I mention them to you not just for effect, but because they relate to where we are. First of all, it was written in the first century into a context where the Pharisees were at the forefront of things.
The Pharisees, remember, were traditionalists. They were always committed not only to the law of God, but to a whole bunch of laws that they had added in order to make sure that people towed the line. Then, part of the the group that would have been on the receiving end of this gospel were Sadducees, and they were modernists. They were people who didn't actually take seriously the idea of the supernatural, and they tried to combine their sort of contemporary views of the world with little bits and pieces of scripture. A third group were the zealots, who were political activists.
They were fanatical nationalists, and they saw everything through the lens of their zeal for the nation. The fourth group were the sinners. They were separatists. They were you like they were dropouts. They were concerned with contamination, and particularly the contamination of their bodies, so that they couldn't allow their bodies to be, you know, in touch with any of these dreadfully bad people that were around there.
And Jesus challenged all of that in this little sermon. He challenges the Pharisees, who are committed to the externals, to recognize that true spirituality is internal, is not external. He challenges the Sadducees to realize that the only way to go is God's way, not man's way, with a little touch of God's. He challenges the zealots to realize that God's interest is not in some fierce form of nationalism. Not in revolution, but in worship.
And he challenges the hippies their sins with the fact that that the matter is the is an affair of the heart and not an affair of the body. Blessed are the pure in heart. I mean, you can keep your bodies as far away from everything. You can be you know up on a high hill somewhere, but unless you have a pure heart, then of course you have no standing with God.
Now you don't have to be brilliant to realize that these four things that mark the first century are still present in the twenty-first century. Right now, this morning in church, as I observe it as a pastor, we have Pharisees. I know that because they write to me and they tell me, say, you know, there are not enough rules and regulations around here. We can't possibly be doing anything properly. Why don't we have forty rules at the back of the the church covenant or whatever else it is?
We got to get some rules in here. That's the key. Then we have the Sadducees who really don't believe very much about the Bible or about supernatural things. They might not believe in a literal resurrection of Jesus, but they like the idea. And so they come around, and they're trying to combine a worldly perspective, a view of philosophy, a contemporary world view, with little bits and pieces of Christianity, which they kind of like.
And they come around like birds and pick up little bits and pieces and add them into their box, and then they go away again. And we have the zealots, who are always telling me, you know, you got to phone a one eight hundred number. I mean, we're we're we're not politically involved in this church. We're going to have to get this done. If America goes down, the whole world's going to part.
Don't you understand? Come along, Pastor. They're challenged by the Beatitudes as well, and then we have the Essenes, the dropouts, who think that the answer to their Christian life is going up a high hill somewhere and avoiding everybody that ever said damn or hell or swore or did anything at all. And the only thing we need to do is just completely remove ourselves from the culture, and if we'll do that, then we'll be fine. And all four perspectives are here, and all four perspectives are challenged by these beatitudes.
And that's what I want to show you in my fifty thousand feet flyby. What a wonderful thing this is! It provides, doesn't it? Immediately, God's pattern for happiness, blessedness. If you want to know joy and peace and contentment in the Christian life, does involve that, then here says Jesus is the basis for it.
The obedient life is the life that pleases God. Therefore, be obedient. There is a real parallel, isn't there, here between Moses sitting with the Ten Commandments and Jesus up on a high hill on the mountain side here proclaiming this principled ideal. That directly relates actually to Jeremiah thirty three, thirty one, thirty three. You know, on that day says the prophet, "You know, I will take my law and I'll write it in their hearts." And Jesus is saying, "This, this is the kind of thing you need to have written in your heart." And here in the embodiment of these things is a tremendous opportunity for evangelism.
Lives that are marked by these kind of characteristics are going to cut ice in every generation. I don't know who it was. Probably someone like Saint Francis of Assisi who turned to a couple of his friends and he says, "Let us go and proclaim the gospel. Speak if you must." And here in these principal points of character, we have this wonderful challenge.
So first of all, blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Is this a call to material poverty? Is this an indication that destitution is the key to usefulness? Is it?
No, of course it isn't. That's why he said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," those who recognize their spiritual poverty. There's no there's no surprise in the fact that this is, if you like, the gateway into the Beatitudes, because humility or poverty of spirit is the soil in which all these other elements grow, and absent poverty of spirit, any endeavor at the rest of them will prove futile. What does it mean to recognize spiritual poverty?
Well, it means to see myself as I really am.
Well, what am I?
Well, I'm I'm by my nature lost and hopeless and helpless, and I can't believe that as as much as I have sinned, that God could ever love me. And then at the same time, I can't believe that God could ever love one someone so much. It has done so in the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, the poor in spirit are those who come to recognize this. If you were to go on through the Gospels, you would come to that wonderful illustration eventually in Luke, where you have the the story of the two men that Jesus told going up to the temple to pray.
And remember, the one fellow who was a Pharisee prayed to himself. It says in Luke's gospel, "I thank you, God, that I'm not like other men, and that I give my tithes, and I'm doing a very good job, and I'm certainly not like this this tax collector here." And then Jesus says, "And the tax collector refused to even lift up his face to heaven, but he prayed, 'Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.'" And the the people are listening to Jesus, and they're always waiting for the punchline. And what a punchline it is! Because remember, the people are listening, and they're assuming all the time that religious people tip the scales in their favor and will go to heaven. And bad people, sinners, and tax collectors are at the front of the parade, at least in their minds.
Tax collectors don't have a chance. And Jesus says, "Okay, you've got the picture of the two people praying.
Now he says, 'I want you to know that it was the tax collector that went home justified.' But that's that's against everything that we believe. On what basis could he go justified? On the basis of what Christ achieves, not on the basis of what he attains, and that." Experience that perspective is not something we move on from in our Christian lives. Not if we're maturing. My experience of Christian maturity is hopefully that one may sin less, but one actually becomes more dreadfully aware.
Of the enormity of the offense of our sin, even though we may be sinning less, and therefore becomes more grateful to God for the wonder of what He has done for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Calvin says, "The she—I'm making it she—he actually said he, but this is the women's Bible study. I'm sure he would have changed it. She only, who is reduced to nothing in herself." She only who is reduced to nothing in herself and relies on the mercy of God, is poor in spirit. She only who is reduced to nothing in herself and relies on the mercy of God is poor in spirit.
It's interesting when you think about it that that what was it that kept Augustine and Luther from the gospel? Augustine was a profligate. Augustine was a mess, wasn't he? His mother was praying with tears constantly for her boy, and he was kept from the gospel. He didn't trust in Christ.
He wouldn't trust in Christ. Luther was kept from the gospel. Luther was the antithesis of Augustine. Luther was a monk. Luther was zealous.
Luther was consumed with a fastidious interest in religious affairs and righteousness.
So here we've got Augustine over here sleeping with anyone he can find. Here we've got Luther living as a monk, and they're both kept from the gospel by what? Pride. Pride. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Augustine had to recognize that his life was a wreck and a shambles, and he needed Christ. And Luther had to recognize that all of his religious zeal didn't add up to anything, and he needed Christ. And that's why, you see, at the cross, when we come from the variety of our backgrounds, we share together in the wonder of who Jesus is.
Someone says, "You know, I was a horrible religious Pharisee, and I met Christ, and He's changed me." Someone else says, "You know, I was a party animal, and I met Christ, and He changed me." What's the unifying factor? We're poor in spirit. We both know that we needed Christ, and we both rejoice in all that He is to us. Secondly, and sorry, I spent longer on that, but I always do on the first one. You know that, but I'll pick it up.
Secondly, he says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." Or, if you like, "Happy are the sad." Happy are the sad. This paradox here is addressing not the sorrow of bereavement, although there is a comfort for those who are bereaved. The Bible tells us that. But clearly, in the context, what is being referenced is, if you like, the sorrow of repentance. Blessed are those who mourn over their sins, for they will be comforted.
In other words, only those who mourn over their sins will be happy. Why? Because only those who mourn over their sins are forgiven.
So we cry before we laugh. Again, quoting Luther, he said, "The Christian's entire life is a continuous act of repentance and contrition. A continuous act of repentance and contrition.
Sometimes I think, in an environment like this, we've got the idea that that that repentance is is a gateway into the Christian life." And this is something that that we do. We turn around and we walk in another direction, and we've done repentance.
Now we can move on to something else. But the fact of the matter is, repentance is a sixty-second a minute, sixty-minute an hour, twenty-four-hour a day process. Turning from and turning to. And happiness or blessedness comes to sad people because their godly sadness. Leads to godly comfort.
I'm increasingly afraid of an approach to the Christian life that is triumphalistic. That is, we represent to people that we are a we are a company of the together ladies. You know, anybody that came in here that was messed up, fouled up, backed up in any other way. You know, I don't know. I I don't know if there's anything for me in here.
Apparently, these people are. They're just, as far as I can tell, perfect. You know, they're just, they're they're just wonderful. And unless somebody gets honest and says, you know, if I were to open my mind to you and tell you what I think, if you were ever to know the propensity of my heart for envy and for bitterness and for malice, I would be so ashamed. The person says, "Well, surely not.
After all, you're my table leader. Surely not. You're one of our pastors. When I say to you, as I do every so often, if you knew what I was really like, you wouldn't listen to me preach. I am not actually playing with your minds, Brainerd." Who dies as a young man?
We have Brainerd's diaries as a result of him hanging out with Jonathan Edwards for a little while. Brainerd, by any standards, as a as a missionary to the American Indians, was a paragon of virtue. I mean, the guy was was literally killing himself in the cause of the gospel. He slept very little. He was up.
He was moving. He's on his horse. He's everywhere, extending himself in the cause of Christ. Any one of us, if we stood next to him, we would almost be embarrassed even to stand in his company, except that we would share in his reflected glory, inasmuch as he lives so close to Christ. And yet he writes in his diary, October eighteen, seventeen forty, in my morning devotions.
My soul was exceedingly melted, and bitterly moved over my exceeding sinfulness and vileness. Oh, surely not! You're, you're David Brainerd. Do you think he was writing that for effect? No, he was writing honestly.
He was mourning over his sin. You're listening to Alister Beg on Truth for Life, and we'll hear more about the Beatitudes tomorrow. I think most of us have experienced times of waiting, and we know how difficult those experiences can be.
So, what can the Old Testament saints, who were waiting for the promised Messiah, what can they teach us about waiting today?
Well, the Advent devotional we're recommending today explores the prophecies that anticipate the arrival of Jesus. The book is titled "There Shone a Holy Light: Beholding Christ and Christmas in the Old Testament." This 25-day devotional traces the people, events, and symbols from the Old Testament to show how they pointed forward to Jesus. You'll discover how the stories of Noah's Ark and the first Passover reveal Christ's protection. How Bible characters like Job and Samson and Boaz demonstrate different aspects of His character, and most of all, this book will encourage you to trust the God whose plans. Can never be thwarted, even when they require you to wait patiently.
The book they're shown a holy light is yours. When you donate today, you can give online at truthforlife.org/donate, or call us at 888-588-7884. And if you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to Truth for Life at P. O. Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio 44139.
I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. Every day we face a variety of options. Tomorrow we'll learn an important question we should be asking ourselves when we face a decision. The Bible teaching of Aleister Beg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
