Turn with me, if you would, to
Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5, and let's
read the first 12 verses together. And seeing the multitudes, he
went up into a mountain, and when he was set, his disciples
came unto him, and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they
shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger
and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed
are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are
they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men shall
revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil
against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad,
for great is your reward in heaven. For so persecuted they the prophets
which were before you. Now, for most of my life, I've
heard that these verses are referred to as the Beatitudes. And for most of my life, I have
had no idea what that meant. I've always heard that. And I've
had no idea what that meant. until last Friday, two days ago. You may or may not have ever
heard that term. That is not a biblical word. That is a worldly term that has
been associated with this portion of scripture. And I always assumed
that it meant This is what our attitude ought to be. The B attitudes. And that's if you've thought
the same thing, that's a fine assumption. This is what our
attitude ought to be. It is. But last Friday, I thought,
you know, I read this and I immediately thought in my brain, well, that's
the Beatitudes. And I thought, what in the world does that mean?
So I looked it up, I Googled it. And again, it's a worldly
term. It doesn't matter what it means.
It's a worldly term. But I'm telling you this so you
can know. And I'm telling you this so that
I can give you the title of this Sunday school lesson. Beatitude
is an early 15th century French word translated from the Latin
word beatitudinium. Now that's as impressive as I
get. That's all my Google impressiveness. This is what the word means.
It means supreme happiness. It means the state of blessedness. It means this is happiness. This right here is happiness. That's what I want. And I know
that's what you want. So for that reason, I've titled
this Sunday school lesson, how to be happy. That's the title
of this. How to be happy. I could also title this what
our attitude ought to be. That would be fine. But because
of this new definition that I've learned, I'm going to title it
how to be happy. Supreme happiness. The state
of blessedness. This is happiness. This right
here is happiness. Now I've just spent about five
minutes on my intro. All right? For the next 25 minutes
that I have for this Bible study, I would love to spend 24 of those
minutes declaring from the scripture,
proving from the word, that we are not saved by our works. We are not. That is not what
saves us. The blood of Jesus Christ is
what saves us. It's the only thing that can
be offered to God. People read these verses And
they think, well, that's what I need to offer to God. That's
what, you know, if it, this is it. The only thing that can be
offered to God as a payment and a remedy for our sin is the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is it. That's it. And Christ offered that payment
to the Holy God by himself. On the cross of Calvary. He did
that while we were still dead in trespasses and sins. That's
when he did it while we were dead, while we were yet dead. All right. Being dead in sin,
we had no actions. We were dead. We had no attitude
in the matter except for a dead attitude and a sinful attitude.
We were dead. So I really would love to take
the time to set forth that these good works, and that's what they
are. These are good works that we
ought to do. I'm gonna really encourage us
to do this and be this way. Verse 16, if you look at it,
it says, let your light so shine before men that they may see
your good works and glorify your Father, which is in heaven. We
ought to do this. And I'm going to encourage us
very strongly to do this. But I'd love to really lay the
foundation that our works are not the cause of our salvation. They're the response to our salvation. Because Christ has saved us,
this is how we ought to be. And this is how we want to be.
We truly do. I pray God will convince us of
that foundational truth. And I pray if anybody hears this
on the internet, that God will convince them of this foundational
truth. It is not by works of righteousness,
which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us by
the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.
Christ did it. And with that, with us being
His workmanship, He creates a desire in us for good works. And in this, I want to very,
very strongly encourage us to really enter into what this is
saying. I want us to really see this ought to be our attitude
if we want to be happy. If we want to be happy, this
is happiness. I want to learn this personally.
This is happiness. Now with each one of these, I
want us to see our great accomplisher of these. The one who truly did
this, I'm going to tell you that of these right here, no sinful
soul can do any of the commandments of God to their fullest. But one man did the great accomplisher
of this, the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want us to see him in this. And I also want us to see our
need of striving for this because of him, for Christ's sake. All right, so if we want to be
happy, this is what our attitude ought to be. Verse 1, Matthew
5, verse 1, And seeing the multitudes, our Lord went up into a mountain,
and when he was set, his disciples came unto him. And he opened
his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Happiness is being poor in spirit. Poor in spirit. You know, the
world is everything that's opposite to poor in spirit. The world
tries to teach people to be the exact opposite of that. Sometimes, and I do want to point
out, that's not saying poor in material things, that's saying
poor in spirit. When you're poor in material
things, if you truly are a poor man, It's a little easier to be poor
in spirit because you don't have anything to lift you up. Does
that make sense? When you're really are poor,
um, it's a little easier to be poor in spirit because you don't
have anything to be lifted up about. But the problem for all
of us is we're not poor in material things. None of us are. We are
rich and increased with goods. And it can be a very dangerous
thing. We're rich in family, we're rich
in friends. And the more materially rich
that we are, the harder it is for us to be spiritually poor.
The harder it is. Richness promotes pride. It just does. Richness promotes
pride. You know, some some people can
be rich in popularity and we know it promotes pride. There is no happiness in pride. And I sincerely, let's listen,
not me, this. Let's listen to this. Let's honestly
listen to this. For the good of ourselves, for
the good of our families, for the good of this congregation,
there is no happiness in pride. None whatsoever. If we are asking
ourselves, if you ever find yourself asking this question, And I believe there will come
a point when you will. But if we're asking ourselves,
why am I not happy? Why am I not happy? Number one,
let's check our pride. Number one, let's check our pride. Listen to our great example and
our great accomplisher of this, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Go with me over to 2 Corinthians 8. 2 Corinthians 8. Verse 9. It says, for you know the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, he was rich
in knowledge, he was rich in wisdom, he was rich in purity,
he was rich in perfection. Though he was rich, yet for your
sakes, because he loved you, And you'll do this for people
you love because he loved you. And because he cared for you,
he denied himself. He denied his self worth. And for your sakes, he became
poor. That you through his poverty
might be rich. And honestly, do you know why
he did that? The joy set before him. He did it because it brought
such Supreme happiness to him. He delighted to do that. Pride is in every single one
of us. every one of us. And if we would
like to be happy, we need to strive to get rid of it. We need to strive. You will notice
it everywhere. Recognize it. When you sit down
at the dinner table and there are four pieces of chicken on
there, every soul at that table wants the biggest piece. Why
did you take that? How dare you take that? Can't
you see I'm bigger than you? We need to honestly, From the
smallest detail to the largest detail, we need to recognize
it, and we need to get rid of it. Why don't you have that piece? Why don't I deny myself? Why
don't I, in every, not only with those who you truly do love sitting
right there, but with all men, with everybody, especially those
who are of like precious faith, especially brethren, Pride is in all of us and we
need to fight it. We need to fight against it.
We need to fight against it. Listen to what Arthur Pink said
about this verse in this subject of being poor in spirit. He said,
the spiritually poor are those who realize before God that they are nothing They have nothing. They know nothing. They deserve
nothing. That's the spiritually poor before
God. They are nothing. They have nothing. They know nothing. They deserve
nothing. are people who truly realize
that. Blessed, honestly blessed. Go back to Matthew 5. Matthew 5, verse 3, it says,
blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven. That's the attitude that God
gives to all of his people. And that's the only attitude
that will remain in glory. That is such a precious thought
to me. That is the only attitude that will remain in glory. Verse
four says, blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. Now, again, everything that our
Lord is saying here, he's talking about spiritual things, not physical
things. Every soul on this earth mourns
over physical things. Every soul does. We lose things. We lose people. Heartbreak sets in. And that's not a state of happiness.
That's not, that's not a, um, A blessed state mourning over
all the troubles of this life. That's not everybody endures
that. And that's not a blessed state,
but our Lord said the soul that mourns over his sin, his or her
sin. How many people do you think
there are in the world who mourn over their sin? who really spend
time in wretched sorrow over their sin. How many people do
you think there are in the world? I don't think it's very many.
I really don't. But our Lord said, the soul that
mourns over his sin, just crying out to God for forgiveness for
my sin. He said to that soul, I'm gonna reveal Christ, the sufferer for your sin. And once that mourning soul sees
Christ, the one who bore and suffered for my sin, he said,
that soul's gonna be comforted. If we want to be happy, this
is a sorrowful world we live in. Oh, it's so sorrowful. It
is so sorrowful. And if we want to be happy in
this sorrowful world, all that we truly can do is enter into
how Christ suffered and mourned for the sin of the ones that
he loved. If utter sorrow has taken over,
if you find yourself in a place and you will, I promise you will,
When you find yourself in a place where sorrow has taken over and
it has brought you all the way down to the bottom, the only
thing that will lift you back up, the only thing is knowing
and thinking on and dwelling on and entering into the sorrow
and the mourning that the Lord Jesus Christ endured to lift
us up out of all that sin. That's the only thing, everything
he had to go through to save our wretched souls. I'm sure
most of you know the story of the man, Horatio Spafford was
his name. Years ago, he sent his family
across the Atlantic Ocean in a ship. And he was a businessman,
and the story is longer, I'm going to condense it, but he
sent his wife and three children over to England, and he was going
to meet them a week or so later. He had business to finish up.
And as the ship crossed the Atlantic, it went down. The ship sank. And Mr. Spafford finally received
a telegram from his wife, Anna, that had two words in it, saved
alone, meaning our three children are gone. And he immediately
got into a ship. and crossed the Atlantic to go
be with his wife. And about halfway into his journey,
the captain came to him and he said, I just want to let you
know that we are currently over the shipwreck where your family
went down. And that man sat down and he
wrote a song. He just started writing, and
this is the words that he wrote. He wrote, when peace like a river
attendeth my way, or when sorrows like sea billows roll. Whatever
my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with
my soul. Though Satan should buffet, though
trials should come, let this blessed assurance control. that Christ hath regarded my
helpless estate, and hath shed his own blood for my soul. My sin, O the bliss of this glorious
thought, my sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the
cross, and I bear it no more." Even in that moment, he said,
praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. In a physical loss, a physical
loss, that man had spiritual comfort. And he could say, though
all my happiness is right here drowned in the sea, I have the
comfort of knowing that Christ has saved my wretched soul. Saved my soul. The only true
state of happiness is entering into what Christ has done for
my wretched soul. And the only way we'll enter
into that is if we enter into that sin, that mourning over
sin. Verse 1 says, Seeing the multitudes,
he went up into a mountain, and when he was set, his disciples
came unto him. And he opened his mouth and taught
them saying, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn for
they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they
shall inherit the earth. Our Lord said in Matthew 11,
he said, learn of me. Oh, I want to do that. He said, I am meek. I am lowly in heart. The word meek means humble. That's what it means. Just like
poor in spirit. You can't have one without the
other. It is a poor spirit that opens the door for meekness. And our Lord said, learn of me
because that's what I am. That's what I am. I'm gonna be
quick, but go with me to Matthew 18. Matthew 18, verse one. At the same time came the disciples
unto Jesus saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
And Jesus called a little child unto him and set him in the midst
of them and said, verily I say unto you, except you be converted
and become as little children, you shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble
himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom
of heaven. Whoever humbles himself the most,
that's the greatest. Now who humbled himself the most?
Who condescended the most? Who is it that went from the
highest place that there is to the lowest place that there is. Christ Jesus, our Lord. Though
he was equal with God, made himself of no reputation. Brethren, let's
learn this. All men and women try to do come
the end of their life is build a reputation. That's all they
try to do, build a legacy. He made Himself of no reputation
and took upon Him the form of a servant and humbled Himself
all the way down to the death of the cross. And because of
that, God the Father has declared, He's the greatest. He is the
greatest. And concerning us, our Lord said,
whoever exalts himself is going to be put down. And he that humbles
himself is going to be lifted up. And that's a, that's a true
application. Even with God's people, even
with believers, obviously prideful unbelievers are going to be put
down eternally, but prideful believers are going to be chasing
temporarily. And the chastening of the Lord
is not a blessed state. It's not a... Whom the Lord loves,
He chastens, but... Peter said from experience, all
right, Peter had to learn meekness the hard way. The Lord said,
you're gonna deny me. Peter said, no, I won't. They're
going to, but not me. That night, oh, the Lord looked
at him as Peter was just foolishly spouting off and the Lord brought
him down. The Lord really brought him down.
And Peter said from experience, In 1 Peter 5, 6, he said, humble
yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you
in due time. Don't exalt yourself, he said,
humble yourself that He may exalt you. I'll tell you another man
who had to learn the hard way, King Nebuchadnezzar. That man
was lifted up, just so lifted up, and the Lord brought him
down for a while, When he finally raised him back up, Nebuchadnezzar
said, I now bow and I praise and honor and extol the King
of heaven, all whose works are truth and his ways judgment. And he said, those that walk
in pride, he is able to abase. And I'm telling you, that's the
truth from experience. That's the truth. Those that
walk in pride, he is able to abase Lord. Teach us this, help
us, help us. Please help us teach us this
without having to teach it to us the hard way. I don't want
to experience this the hard way. I just want to learn this. I
pray the Lord will give us a heart of meekness, a heart of lowliness,
and let us be humble like a little child that it may be well with
us. and that he won't have to deal
sharply with us. Our Lord said, blessed are the
people who realize this. Blessed are the people. Happy
are the people who realize this. Empty, mourning, low before God. That's the way. That's the way. That's who God feels. That's
who God comforts. That's who God lifts up. All
right, we're going to stop right there. Clearly, there are more
of them. We'll make that a part one of more lessons like it. So Lord willing, we'll pick up
with that next Sunday. You're dismissed.