As I said last week, when we
look at these Beatitudes, what we're looking at is the product,
the power, the goodness, and the gifts of God's grace given
to His people in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. When we
look at the pronouncement of blessing in verse 1, and seeing
the multitudes, He went up into the mountain, and when He was
set, His disciples came unto Him. He's mainly preaching to
His disciples here. but others who profess belief
in him. He opened his mouth and taught them saying, blessed,
blessed, blessed, blessed. And he goes down through. And
that's the beatitude. That's a pronouncement of spiritual
blessings upon the people of God. And connected with each
blessing is an evidence of those who are blessed by their character.
And none of the descriptions of the blessed are natural to
man, or I said natural to man, I'm repeating myself, natural
to man by nature, the same thing. But by nature, we don't have
these qualities. Now, but understand that Satan
and self-righteous people, they can counterfeit these things
as men and women naturally define them. But we're talking about
how we stand before God and our state in this world by His grace
through the blood and righteousness of Christ. So for example, in
verse three, now there's a logical order to these two. The way he
starts out, verse three, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. So there's the blessed, blessing,
the pronouncement of spiritual blessing. Here's the character,
poor in spirit, and here's the reward, and it's a reward of
grace It's not a reward that we earn because this is given
to those who have nothing to offer God. How do you know that? They're poor in spirit. They're
spiritually poor and poor in spirit. And as I brought out
last week just in introducing these, every one of us by nature
are spiritually poor. That's the plight of man as we
fell in Adam. We all fell in Adam into a state
of sin and spiritual death and depravity. We have no righteousness
by our works. We have no goodness. We have
no spiritual life by which we would seek the Lord. There's
none that seeketh God. No, not one, Romans 3 says. And so that's our state as we
fell in Adam. And the only way that we can
be delivered from that state is by the power of God's grace
in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit in the new birth.
And that's what happens when the Spirit brings us under the
preaching of the gospel and gives us life. Not only are we just
poor in spirit, that's our state, or not only are we spiritually
poor, But man by nature doesn't realize how spiritually poor
he is. Anyone, for example, who thinks
that salvation or any part of it is conditioned on his works,
his will, or anything he does or chooses to do, does not realize
how spiritually poor we are. None that seeketh after God,
the scripture says. That's our state. And so that's
what the Bible says. But when the Holy Spirit comes
under the preaching of the gospel wherein the righteousness of
God reveals, he convicts us of sin and shows us how spiritually
poor we are and he brings us to be poor in spirit. In other
words, we realize our poverty. We realize like that old publican,
God be merciful to me the sinner. I have nothing to offer God.
by which to earn or to deserve any of the blessings of his grace.
I have no righteousness, no goodness, no power. And what I have by
the way of this blessing is what God freely and fully and unconditionally
gives me through the Lord Jesus Christ. So he says, blessed are
the poor in spirit. And he says that's a conviction
of sin by the Holy Spirit who shows us the reality of our sin
and depravity, our need of God's grace, our need of His mercy. God said, I'll be gracious to
whom I will, I'll be merciful to whom I will. The Spirit brings
us to see our need of the blood of Christ to wash us clean from
all of our sins. Nothing we do can do that. Nothing
we try to do can do that. We see the need of His righteousness
for our justification, His righteousness imputed. He shows us the impossibility
of salvation or any part of it if it's conditioned on us. What
He shows us that if it's conditioned on us, it's a failure. That's
how spiritually poor we are. But He brings us to realize that
He humbles us. That's what humility and salvation
is all about. He makes us submit to God's will
and God's way of salvation in Christ. You know, it says in
Romans 10 that the Jews would not submit to the righteousness
of God. because they thought they could
work a righteousness of their own by works of the law. But
what God the Holy Spirit does in this blessing of poverty in
spirit, poor in spirit, he brings us to submit to Christ as the
Lord our righteousness in the preaching of the gospel. And
that's all, he gives us faith to believe and repentance to
turn away from ourselves. So there's the first one, blessed
are the poor in spirit. And he says theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. Those who are poor in spirit made so by the Holy
Spirit and driven to Christ are true citizens of the kingdom
of heaven. We're subjects of the king. We
don't serve self, we don't serve the world, we don't serve Satan,
we serve God. And we possess the kingdom of
heaven. It's a possession that we have
and cannot be taken away. And we can't even give it away
in the sense of leaving it because we didn't earn it and we didn't
deserve it. It's freely given to us by God through Christ.
So it is ours. And though we live in this world
until we die or until the Lord comes back again, we're citizens
of the kingdom of heaven. We're aliens in this world. But
we have a possession, an inheritance, a kingdom that can never be taken
away. Never can be taken away from
us. Look at verse four, here's the next beatitude. Blessed are
they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. And this mourning
is mourning over sin. Now, we talk about mourning,
we talk about grieving, all of that. We can talk about godly
sorrow over sin. That mourning, he brings us to
mourn over our sin. Now, we have to be careful with
this because I've heard preachers say, you know, they talk about
how much they hate sin. And I heard one preacher say
one time years ago, he said, it's not that we hate the effects
of sin, we just hate sin. And I got to thinking about that.
Now, wait a minute, we still have a sinful human nature in
the flesh. That loves sin. That desires
sin. And we have the Holy Spirit who's
given us life. This is what some people call
the new nature. If you don't take it too far,
that's okay. But we love righteousness. We have these battling desires
within us, don't we? Paul wrote about this in Romans
chapter seven. And it grieved him. He wanted
to be like Christ. He wanted to be perfect in every
way. But he could not achieve that because of the presence
and corruption of the remaining sinful flesh. And so we do mourn,
and the thing that reminds us of what sin really does is the
effects of it. Look at what sin is doing to
all of us. Look at what it does to each
of us. I mean, and especially as we grow older and we become
afflicted with the disease and age and all of that, we see loved
ones die, all of that. And don't you hate that? I hate
it. And in that sense, I can say I hate sin. Does that mean
I never get any pleasure out of sin? I do get pleasure out
of sin, and I'm ashamed of that, but that's of the flesh. And so we do mourn over sin.
And this mourning here is that which the Holy Spirit uses to
continually drive us to Christ for salvation, for relief, for
comfort. for assurance. I've got this in your lesson.
All people mourn over many things, but not all mourn in this way
over sin. Unbelievers mourn, don't they?
They mourn the loss of loved ones. They mourn the loss of
life and sickness and loss, all of that. But their mourning doesn't
drive them to Christ. For salvation, for forgiveness,
for righteousness, for life. And that's the difference. Blessed
are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Now that's
the reward. Again, not that we earn it or
deserve it. How are we comforted? Well, Christ
is our comfort. The word of God is our comfort.
See, this mourning over sin, this realization, shows us that
we have no hope of salvation. but in Christ, by the grace of
God. We have no assurance, no sure healing of sin, but the
righteousness of Christ imputed to us. And so we grieve over
this as we feel more and more the effects of sin. And as we
grow in grace and in knowledge of Christ and we understand the
heinousness of sin, And therefore we can say honestly we do hate
sin, even the sin that we find pleasure in that's to our shame. We hate it because of what it's
doing to us. Look at what sin is doing to
this world. Do you watch the news? I've gotten to the point
where I don't even watch the news anymore hardly. But you
watch what's going on in our world and don't you grieve over
that? I do. It doesn't consume me because
I have a hope. And I know the only remedy that's
going to fix this world is for God to destroy it and make it
anew. And in that new earth, the inhabitants
are going to be the righteous only. And that's the comfort
that we have. in our own individual persons.
We get sick, and we hurt, and we pain, and all of that. We
have the comfort to know that when we die, when the Lord takes
us out of this world, we'll be with Christ. So blessed are those
who mourn. Now let's look at the next one,
verse five. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Meekness and humility are virtually the same thing, but the idea
behind meekness more so than anything else is submission. You know, I think about what
Ezekiel said when he was prophesying of the new covenant that would
be brought in by Christ. And one of the things that he
says that the Holy Spirit will do for the people of God in their
new birth, as he imparts spiritual life and knowledge and faith
and repentance, is that he'll remove the stony heart away. Now the stony heart there represents
the rock-hard heart, the mind, the affections and the will,
that will not bow. to the way of God, to God and
His way of salvation. His sovereignty won't bow. It's like those who said, we
will not have this man to rule over us from talking about Christ.
We want salvation, but we want it our way. And it's always a
way that gives us room to glory, to boast. But God has salvation
one way, by His grace through His Son, and unless He brings
us in this grace of meekness to submit and to bow, like I
said before in the issue of being poor in spirit, submitting to
Christ as my whole righteousness before God. That's what meekness
is. And it's not weakness. A lot
of people, they equate meekness with, if you're meek, you're
weak. No. In fact, it's a strength. It's the power of God that brings
us to submit to his way of salvation and to submit to his word. It's
when a sinner is made aware of what he is before a just and
holy God. And our need of righteousness,
our need of grace, our need of mercy. Mercy beggars, I love
that term. First time I heard that term
was from one of the elders up in Ashland who was dying. And
he said, we're all just mercy beggars from God. And that's
what we are. And that brings forth this meekness by the spirit
to glory only in Christ. And here's what he says, they
will earn the earth or they will deserve the earth, no, they will
inherit the earth. An inheritance, don't you love
that? We have an inheritance. What does that mean? That means
somebody else earned it and died and bequeathed it to us. And
Peter called it an inheritance incorruptible that cannot fade
away. There's no way we can even lose it or diminish it. No way
at all. It's ours by His grace. Look
at verse six now. Blessed are they which do hunger
and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. You
know, when you look, I look back on myself in false religion.
And I had a hunger. And you probably did too, didn't
you? You wanted to find salvation.
You wanted to find truth. You wanted to find contentment.
You wanted to find comfort and assurance, but what satisfied
the hunger that you had back then? All kinds of different
things, wasn't it? False religion, walking an aisle,
giving your heart to Jesus, being baptized, rededication, being
sincere, being noble, giving money, all of those things. You
found comfort. Think about the Apostle Paul
in Philippians 3 that we just studied a few weeks back, where
he talked about he was a Hebrew of Hebrews and a Pharisee of
Pharisees and all of that, touching the law righteous. That's what fed his hunger. And so that's what the natural
man, he has a hunger, he wants salvation as I said before, but
he wants it his own way. And he's satisfied with it. And
that's why when he hears the gospel, apart from the power
of the Spirit, he hates it. Because it tells him that what
feeds his hunger is poison. Remember Christ told that to
the Pharisees. He said, you're like venomous snakes spreading
the poison of your false doctrine of salvation by the works and
wills of men. And there's so many of our friends
and our family who are caught up in that. We were caught up
in it. before God saved us. But then the Holy Spirit comes
forth, He convicts us of sin and of righteousness and of judgment,
and He shows us the perfection of righteousness that God requires
in His law, and how far short we fall Just like I was studying
a couple days ago where Christ told him, he said, except your
righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees,
you shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven. Pick the best
people on earth that's ever lived or ever will live. And somebody
would say, well, I know they're in heaven. Why? Because they were so good or
they were so dedicated or they were so charitable, whatever,
so sincere. And Christ says, except your
righteousness exceed theirs, you will in no wise enter the
kingdom of heaven. And so what does he show us here?
He gives us a hunger for a righteousness that we cannot produce. He gives
us a hunger for a righteousness that we cannot attain by anything
we do or don't do. And he shows us the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ. He shows us the perfection of
righteousness, gives us a hunger and a thirst after it that can
only be filled and quenched in the glorious person and the finished
work of Christ. And we'll settle for nothing
less. Nothing less. It's kind of like, you remember
that old commercial that said, how do you spell relief? Well,
we spell it C-H-R-I-S-T. Christ and his righteousness
imputed. And if you can find relief, if
you can fill your hunger and quench your thirst with anything
less than the perfection of the law that can only be found in
Christ, who is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone,
if you can fill it in anything less than him, then you're not
blessed. Not yet, anyway. And we pray
that the Lord will bless you with a saving knowledge of Christ.
Look at verse seven now. Blessed are the merciful for
they shall obtain mercy. What he's saying here is this,
we don't, listen. You cannot earn mercy from God
by showing mercy to others. You cannot do that. If you could,
it wouldn't be mercy. Mercy, by definition, is the
compassion that God has upon his people, which they cannot
earn or deserve. If you can earn it or deserve
it, it's not mercy. Paul wrote about that in Romans
4, when he's talking about grace, because essentially, they're
just alike in that area. He said, if you can earn it,
if it's by works, then it's not grace. It's a debt. So if there's anything I have
to do to earn God's blessing, it's not mercy. So when you read
this, and we were talking about this the other day, whenever
you read the Bible and you see the blessings and the benefits
that come with salvation, you have to read that in the context
of the everlasting covenant of grace. The gospel is the preaching
of the terms and conditions of the covenant of grace that have
been fulfilled in Christ. So we're not talking about what
we earn or deserve. So when you read something like
blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy, that
word obtained is important. It means God has had mercy upon
them. They've got mercy. It didn't
really say how they got it other than the word itself. You couldn't
say blessed are the merciful for they earned it. Well that
destroys mercy itself. Mercy itself shows us what this
means. The gospel shows us what this
means. And here's what he's saying simply
is this. Those to whom God has been merciful
unconditionally through the blood of Christ, they evidence that
by showing mercy themselves. The mercy of forgiveness, the
mercy of patience, the mercy of forbearance. Now, do we do that perfectly?
No. If that's the case, then none
of us have been, God's been merciful to none of us. Is it a fight
within ourselves? Yes, it is. But we know what
we should do. We know what we should strive
to do. And so what he's saying is this mercy that we show to
each other, to one another and to others, is an evidence that
God has been merciful to us. Again, it's not saying that we
obtain mercy based upon showing mercy to others, because if that
were the case, we'd all be doomed. It's simply stating that the
graces of mercy and forgiveness within us, as we show mercy and
forgive others is a fruit, a result, a product of God's unmerited
mercy towards us. And you know what? I believe
one of the main ways we show mercy to others is by preaching
the gospel to them, witnessing the gospel. That's what mercy's
all about, isn't it? God be merciful to me, the sinner,
again, the publican. That word mercy there, is a word
that means the same as propitiation. When the publican said that in
Luke 18, the word mercy here means compassion. So when you
think about this, when you think about how mercy, think about
this, start here, okay? We could start by saying, well,
I need to be more merciful. I need to be more forgiving,
and I do. I need to be more forbearing towards others, even when they
do me wrong. I need to do that. Look at, start
here. How merciful has God been to
you? How merciful has God been to
me? Because there's not one blessing
or benefit of salvation that I can say honestly that I deserved
it or earned it. It's a free gift. Why did he
give it to me? Why did he give it to you? You
can't even answer that question other than what the Lord said
when he said, for so, Lord, it seemed good in your sight. He
will be merciful to whom he will be merciful. So understand that. Now look at verse eight. Here's the next beatitude. Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Well, we know that those who are pure
in heart It's not that we have within us a perfection of thought
or motive or deed because the flesh corrupts everything we
think, say, and do. So when we speak of purity of
heart, what are we speaking of? We're speaking of the heart,
the mind, the affections. the wills, the consciences that
have been cleansed by a saving application of the blood of Christ. That's who's pure in heart. In
other words, we plead nothing but Christ, the grace of God. We have nothing to plead but
him. Hebrews 10.22, I've got in your lesson, speaks of having
our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. Well, how are
they sprinkled? By the blood of Christ. How is
the blood of Christ sprinkled on our conscience? By an application
of that knowledge that brings us unto salvation by the power
of the Holy Spirit, where we see that the only way that we
can be accepted with God is by the blood and righteousness of
Christ. In everything we do, our worship, our prayers, our
obedience, If we brought those to God on our own merits, we'd
be rejected. But he's purified us from that.
You understand that? Purified our minds. We don't
come before God on our own merits now. We used to. And now we come before God pleading
nothing but the blood and righteousness of Christ. We come to God as
sinners. We say, Lord, we believe, help
our unbelief. Lord, forgive me when I don't
forgive others like I should. David said, creating me a clean
heart. That's what he was talking about. He's talking about a renewed
attitude, a renewed knowledge of what God had already given
him. And so I say, I pray, Lord, make me ashamed. when I have
a bad attitude, when I don't forgive as I should, when I don't
forbear as I should. And that's the pure in heart.
And he says, this is what he says, they'll see God. And how
are we gonna see God? You know, the Bible says that
God dwells in a light that's unapproachable. No man hath seen
God at any time. Well, how are we gonna see God?
Well, the same way our hearts are purified through Christ,
through the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ,
God is spirit. How are we gonna worship him?
In spirit and in truth. And how does that come about?
Through Christ. It's all through Christ. You're
not gonna go up to God on your own without a mediator, without
an intercessor. and say, God, I want to have
an audience with you. No, it doesn't work like that.
We're accepted in the beloved. And so we come before God, washed
in his blood, clothed in his righteousness, and to see God
as he is, both a righteous judge and a gracious, merciful, loving
father. We come under the father by him.
That's how we see God. Look at verse nine. He says,
blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the
children of God. Now this is not promoting what people call
pacifism, as if to say that believers cannot even defend ourselves
when we're attacked. There are people who say that.
They say that, you know, and they go back to the turning the
other cheek, and we'll deal with that later on. And we're to be
forbearing now. We're to be peacemakers. We're
not to be warriors in the sense of warring with other people. We're to be warriors for the
goodness and grace of God, soldiers of Christ, wielding the sword
of truth, the gospel. But we're not to be brawlers.
We're not to be ready to pick a fight, ready to argue and put
people down. We're to be peacemakers. The way we promote peace, number
one, is preaching the gospel of peace, which declares the
prince of peace, who made peace between God and sinners by the
blood of the cross. That's what a peacemaker is.
But it also includes being peaceful with other people. And I've put
down here in your lesson Hebrews 12 and verse 14 where it talks
about, I don't know if I have it in this particular passage,
but in another, where it talks about follow peace with all men
and holiness without which no man will see the Lord. We're
to be peaceable and to promote peace between each other and
other people, even unbelievers, without compromising the gospel. The gospel that man by nature
hates and stands against and opposes. The gospel that when
it's preached, Christ said, marvel not when men hate you. Say all
manner of evil against you. And he brings that up here in
the next ones. Blessed are the peacemakers.
We promote peace by preaching the gospel. And we're to be nice,
we're to be kind to other people. And we're to promote peace as
long as we don't compromise the gospel, by speaking peace where
there is no peace. That's the way a lot of people
promote heresy. They want peace and they'll compromise
the gospel, even with those who do not believe the true gospel.
They'll speak peace to them, they'll call them brother or
sister. And you can't do that. There's no peace between those
who are not in Christ, who is our peace. Now, it's interesting
that he puts this this way. But right after, he says, they
shall be called the children of God. Those who promote peace,
promote the gospel, promote peace amongst each other. And then
he says in verse 10, blessed are they which are persecuted
for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. That's
persecuted for the gospel. That's not just being persecuted
for what people call morality. Righteousness in the Bible is
the perfection of righteousness that can only be found in Christ.
And it does refer to right living in many contexts. But what is
right living? Living our lives by the grace
of God, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. This is righteousness for which
one is persecuted. And what did the Lord say about
that? He said, in the world, you'll have tribulation, but
be of good cheer. I've overcome the world. He says
in verse 11, blessed are you when men shall revile you, persecute
you, shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for
my sake. This is in the context of preaching
the gospel, witnessing the gospel. Persecution that comes over the
cross, as Paul said. And how do we, what should be
our attitude toward that? Verse 12, rejoice and be exceedingly
glad, for great is your reward in heaven. Now that's again the
reward of righteousness, the crown of righteousness, the crown
of life, nothing that we earn or deserve. He says, for so persecuted
they the prophets which were before you. The prophets in the
Old Testament, look at what they went through. How they had the
greatest message, that any person could give to a people, and they
were persecuted for it, they were hated for it. Well, that's
a blessing because it separates us from the dying, condemned
world. And it shows that we're in the
kingdom of heaven, that we are those who are recipients of God's
grace and mercy in Christ. Okay.