I'd like for you to take your
Bibles and turn with me this morning to Matthew chapter 5.
Matthew chapter 5 is the beginning of our Lord's Sermon on the Mount. There's probably no one in here
who has not heard the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, but a lot
of people mistake it for what these first 11 and 12 verses
talk about, which is the Beatitudes, and they call that the Sermon
on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount actually goes through chapter
5, 6, and 7. It's actually three chapters,
all one sermon delivered to this multitude by the Lord. But in the first 12 verses, He
gives us what is also or equally well known as the Beatitudes. We've heard those since we were
young, those of you who have attended church from your youth.
And what these Beatitudes are, the Beatitudes that are given
to us here in verses 3 through 12, are eight distinct characteristics
of those who are blessed of God. Not those who will be blessed
of God, but those who are blessed of God. And it's critical to
a right understanding of these verses to know that they describe
the work of God in us. in us. And they're not talking
about something that we can do or have done to gain the favor
and blessings of God. Now that's how I heard it taught
when I was a child. If you want to be blessed, you
have to be poor and If you want the kingdom of God,
if you want to gain the kingdom of God, you have to seek after
His righteousness and meekness and all of these things. And
then you'll gain the favor of God. But that's not what this
teaches at all. He didn't say blessed will be.
He said blessed are. Or blessed could be or blessed
might be. He said blessed are. And the
attitudes here describe, they always attend the effectual calling
of God's elect And they are the sure results of the sweet experience
of grace in our hearts. All that God calls, all that
God does His work in. You know, we say, well, you know,
and I look around, and I know that we're all not equal in maturity
in grace. But we all have the same God
who works in us. And that same God does the same
work. His hand's not stayed at all
to do this work. But we are of all different ages
of maturity and grace, and we may not all display all of these
things in the same percentage that somebody else does, but
we all experience these things. All those called of God experience
these things. Notice this again. I mention
this. He didn't say blessed could be
or blessed might be, but he said blessed are. Blessed are. So as we go through these eight
blessed attitudes, by the grace of God, let us examine our own
hearts and make, as Peter said, our calling and election sure.
All right. In verse 3, he begins these attitudes. And he says, blessed are the
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. the Kingdom
of Heaven. Oh, Rowland Hill, you heard me
tell you that story of Rowland Hill's dream and how he sat on
the mountain and saw the judgment of God. Oh, Rowland Hill was
a minister of Christ and he said this on these Beatitudes and
especially on this verse right here. He said, poverty of spirit
is the bag into which God puts all His heavenly treasure. Poverty
of spirit. He's clay vessels. See, we don't
really, natural man don't see that at all. He may talk about
his being a sinner, but if you tell him what this book says
about a sinner, he'll get angry. Even those who are drunks and
guilty of all kinds of stuff, they're quick to come to you
and say, now, I'm a sinful man and all this. But when you tell
him what the Bible says about sin, he gets angry. Now, wait
a minute, preacher. I ain't always doing the right
thing, but I don't hate God. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, you do. Yeah,
you do. You wouldn't disobey God at all
if you loved Him, would you? Huh? If you could keep that first
commandment, love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul,
mind, and strength, you wouldn't have any problem at all with
the rest of us, none whatsoever. But the fact that we do have
problems with them means that we're guilty of the first one.
And if we're guilty of the first one, then we're guilty of the
whole lot. This is the first work of grace
in the hearts of chosen sinners is to convince him of sin. Sin
is what, that's the reason we're bankrupt before God, is sin. We're bankrupt beggars before
God. We've got no claim to any benefits,
no claim to any blessings, no right to anything. I heard a
preacher in the church I used to attend years ago, and he said,
God's only obligated to call you one time. God's not obligated
to call you at all. We're beggars, just like blind
boy that may sit on that blanket begging. That's where we are,
blind beggars. It wasn't anything to do with
blind Bartimaeus that brought the blessings. It was Christ
coming to him. He came to him. He came to the
beggar. And the beggar understood that. He understood that the Lord of
Glory was passing him by, didn't he? And he wasn't going to be
denied. He cried out and cried out and
cried out the more. That's what beggars do. They
cry out. They don't come before Christ
and say, now, you need to consider this. I'm ready to preach. I'm ready to do anything. No.
No. No. You cry out for mercy. Mercy. That's what he's talking about
here. Poor in spirit. Not the poor. He's not talking
about all the poor. Not all the poor are blessed
of God. Some of them are, but not all of them. But he's talking
about poor in spirit, poor in attitude. Understanding, John,
that I'm bankrupt before God. And sin is the reason. Now Calvinists,
and I'm a Calvinist, Calvinists, they all like to assert and argue
over total depravity. That's the T in TULIP. That's
where we want to start, isn't it? Total depravity. And they
love to engage in arguments and debates about total depravity.
But this is not talking about a point of theology here. This
is talking about your attitude and spirit of heart. This is
talking about depravity experienced. And as you go through these,
you'll find this out. These are not points of doctrines
here. This is the attitude and spirit of all those who truly
believe. Professing the doctrine of depravity
will in no way bring any kind of a blessing or an evidence
of being blessed unless this depravity is experienced and
is real. It's real. You understand yourself. You quit considering what this
guy did and what that guy said and what this guy acts like,
and you start seeing yourself before God bankrupt. Bankrupt. A sinner. Now, if I don't fit
the character of those described in these verses, then I cannot
attempt to claim the benefits that's described with the character. And as you go through here, you'll
find that each one of these things that he describes has a blessing
attached to it, has a benefit attached to it. And as they attach
literally in the verses, so they're inseparably connected with the
experience of our heart. And then notice also that these
verses read in the present tense, blessed are, blessed are. These are always and continually
the attitude of those who are born of God. This poverty of
spirit never goes away. Never goes away. You understand
each time you come in here before God to worship, each time you
open this book to read, you understand that God's not obligated to you
in any way and there's nothing in you to bring that blessing
of God to you that it's all of grace. You understand that? You
see what I'm saying? It's a continual thing. It's
a living principle within you, this poverty of spirit. Now talking about something we
did 20 years ago, talking about our present attitude and spirit.
David wrote in Psalm 51, he said, the sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit, a broken and a contrite heart. Oh God, he said, thou
wilt not despise. Of all of Adam's race, not one
among the entire race, not one among that fallen sons of Adam,
not one can produce this poverty of spirit on his own. He can't
produce it. It ain't something you can just
work up. There's something revealed in
you, something God does in you, enlightens in you. And a broken
heart, what is that? Well, a broken heart is a heart
made to see his sins against the holy, and a loving God. A
broken heart is a heart convinced of its total ruin. A broken heart
is a heart brought to know that all it can ever do, all it ever
has done, is sin against God. Man at his best state, the Scripture
said, is altogether vanity. Do we know that in here? Huh? A broken heart is a heart made
subject to the loving rule of God. And before God will raise
up by His grace, He's going to first bring down. He's going
to bring us down. Brought in the power of God's
Holy Spirit to know that nothing can do nothing and have no potential
to produce anything. I don't know how many times David
said, for I am poor and needy. That's what he said, poor and
needy. They need righteousness. They need atonement. They need
mercy and grace. They need enlightenment. They
need to be made willing. They need everything because
they have nothing. We need everything. You know,
that's probably the biggest problem in prayer when we go to God.
We don't know what to ask for. We need everything. Huh? I need everything. It's not like
I have something and I'm asking for a little more. I need everything.
And I need it every day. I need it every hour. I need
it every time I open the book, every time I stand here to preach.
I need from Him. I'm poor and needy. That's that
spirit. But I say this, what a blessed
thing it is to know our poverty of soul and spirit. This knowing
is of God. It's of God. Blessed are the
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Not will
be, not might be. It is. It is the kingdom of God. That man who truly poor in spirit,
he has been translated into the kingdom of God. What is that?
That's that loving rule of Christ and that submission to Christ.
All right? Secondly, in verse 4, he said,
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
And I say this again. This is not a thing settled,
but a present attitude of heart. The new man mourns over his sins. He mourns over them. Now, this man regenerated of
God, he's a new creature. That's what the Scripture said.
A new creature. And he's got new and loftier
goals and greater and higher standards and new and deeper
understanding and better and improved motives. He has all
of these things. But in spite of those new things,
his condition seems worse because knowing all those things, he
still continues to sin. You see what I'm saying? And
he mourns over that. It's not like before when he
didn't know that he was a sinner, that he didn't know that his
motives and intents of his heart was sin. That's before he knew
anything about the spiritual perfection that God requires
of heart, mind, and soul. He didn't know all them things
back then, but now he knows them. And he continues to sin. You
see what I'm saying? And he mourns over that. He mourns
over that. Paul said what he would do, he
didn't. You go on back a few verses and
you'll find out there he's not talking about a natural man.
He's talking about himself, an apostle of Christ. And he said,
the things that I would do, that's the very thing that I don't do. And the things that I wouldn't
do, I'm not going to do these things. I'm determined not to
do them. That's what I do. Isn't that what he said in Romans
chapter 7? Well, what was the end result
of that? He goes all down through there talking about that. All
down through chapter 7, talking about these two eyes. There's
a new man and an old man in you. And he talks about that. And
neither can go to the perfection that it would because of the
other. The good can't be as good as it would. It can't do that
perfection of God that it would do because the old man is there.
And the old man, he can't bring him all the way down either.
And he can't be as evil as he could be because the new man
is there. He said, so that I cannot do the things that I would. What's
the end result of that? What did he say? Oh, wretched
man that I am. You sound to me like somebody
mourning over his sins, don't you? Huh? That's what I'm talking
about. That's what this verse of Scripture
is talking about. Talking about that understanding
of heart that you can't do. Even in the light of His glory
and grace, even in the light of the glory of Christ, we can't
do what we would do. And we're condemned of ourselves.
We condemn ourselves and we mourn. The believer mourns over his
unbelief, his dullness, his lack of understanding, his lack of
zeal, his lack of love, his lack of gratitude. He mourns over
those things. Looks to me like if the Lord
of Glory sought me out. Just think about that for a minute.
The Lord of Glory sought you out. Clear over here in the middle
of nowhere. He passed up all these theologians
and all these righteous people and all these people over here
that's working and doing and he passed all them by and all
these smart people and intelligent people and he come over here
and picked you. Huh? Look at me like you can just
serve him forever. It won't last five minutes. It
won't last five minutes. And then you think about it.
Can you imagine David, the man after God's own heart, after
all those blessings and sin against God? God sent His prophet, put
His finger in his face and said, Thou art the man. Can you imagine
how David felt? Or Peter when the Lord turned
to look at him? Look at him with those loving
eyes, been so gracious to him. And Peter had forsaken him. Can
you imagine how he felt? This is part of what this is
talking about here. Mourning. Mourning. They mourn
because of who their sins are against, and they mourn because
of their continuation, even after mercy is shown. And they mourn
because their sins dishonor the Savior and God they love. I don't
want to dishonor God. Do you? But I do. I do. God help me, I do. mourn and continually mourn,
He said, shall be comforted. He is going to comfort them with
the grace and righteousness of Christ. He comforts. Let me say this. He said they shall
be comforted. They shall be comforted. All
those that mourn shall be comforted. And God comforts true mourners. He comforts them in three ways.
He comforts them, first of all, through His Word. I tell you,
when the Lord brings you down to see what you are and convicts
you of your sins, and then shows you His grace, and with just
that knowledge you begin to mourn over your sins, you can't be
comforted apart from this book. Somebody's not going to pat you
on the back and say, now, it's going to be all right. No. No,
it ain't going to be all right. I remember that like it was yesterday,
all the hour walking and all the talking and trying to get
you down front. And I came down front, and I
prayed, and I did all those things. And I went back to my seat after
about 20 minutes of the elders of the church and all that confusion
of religion around me. And I went back there, and the
old pastor said, everything all right? I said, uh-uh. No, it
ain't. Well, it'd be all right. No,
it won't. No, it won't. Ain't nothing changed. Nothing
changed. You have to hear from God. You
have to hear from this book. You've got to know in your heart
that what's being said to comfort you is God's Word. He comforts
through His Word. And then He comforts through
His Gospel. Huh? He comforts through His Gospel.
We're ignorant. We're unlearned. We don't understand. And we sit there, and God sends
a message to your heart. And you're comforted. Isn't that
what he told Isaiah? He said, comfort ye, my people. Tell them the warfare is accomplished.
It's already accomplished. And then he comforts us through
the fellowship of other saints. I don't know any way to explain
this. There's a comfort when we assemble ourselves together.
We comfort one another. We talk to one another. We have
common ground. You know, I meet so often with
people when I go out to visit. And they introduce me to their
children and their cousins and their friends and people they
invite out to the meetings. And they come and they talk to
me. And they'll fish and fish and fish and fish trying to find
some common ground. And there just ain't no common
ground there. Only place a believer can find common ground is in
here. That's it. That's it. That's
where he finds it. And I don't care where you go.
You can go to Wichita Falls. You can go to Danville, Kentucky. You can go to any of these places,
any of these churches. You don't know these men from
man to man. You can walk in there in 10 minutes. You're just in
total agreement. You're sitting there and you're
in fellowship. And what they say comforts you
and what you say comforts them. There's comfort in these things,
and we encourage one another, love one another. And of course,
all true comfort comes by way of the Holy Spirit of God, whose
very name is Comforter. Comforter. He's the only one
who can truly comfort. He's the one who blesses that
fellowship and blesses that gospel and inspired that word. And then all true mourners take
comfort that there's coming a day when their mourning shall be
over. We're not going to mourn forever. Listen to this, Revelation
21.4. And God Himself shall wipe away
all tears. God Himself is going to comfort
in that day. He's going to wipe away those
tears. All tears from their eyes. And there'll be no more death,
neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain,
for the former things," he said, are passed away. They're not
going to be here forever, but there's coming a day. And then
secondly, he said, blessed are they that mourn, for they should
be comforted. And then thirdly, look here in
Matthew 5, verse 5. Blessed are the meek, for they
shall inherit the earth. I remember nearly 30 years ago,
Brother Mahan brought a message on the Beatitudes. And when he
was on this point of meekness, I'll never forget what he said.
He said, meekness is not weakness. We get a wrong idea about meekness.
Meekness is not weakness. Moses, he pointed out in the
scriptures, was the meekest man on the earth, Moses. I'll tell
you, read the history of Moses and he wasn't weak. He wasn't
weak. He killed one of his Egyptians
down in Egypt because they offended one of his Israelite brethren.
He killed a man with hand to hand. He went out there into
the desert and his future wife-to-be was drawing water from the well
and some people come in there and he jumped right in on that
whole outfit. There wasn't no backup in Moses.
Moses was confronted out there in the wilderness by Koridathan
and Abiram, powerful men whose whole tribes were behind him.
And he withstood them to the face. He walked into Pharaoh's
throne room and defied him by the power of God. Weakness is
not weakness. It's not weakness. Well, what is meekness? I love
what this fellow said. He said, meekness is the mark
of a man who is mastered of God. Moses was mastered of God. He mastered Him. And then he
sent Him down to Egypt. The man who has been mastered
of God is not going to be mastered by anybody else. He's master
of God. He knows who His master is. And
He knows who you are in relationship to that. Huh? That's right. Can you imagine
Abraham took a hundred men, went out and defeated those kings
who come down and pillaged down in Sodom and Gomorrah. He went
out there and defeated them with a hundred men. Can you imagine
walking into Abraham's camp and going up there and just punching
out one of his servants or something? Huh? There ain't no way. Why?
Because you know who Abraham is. You might not be afraid of
that servant, but you've got respect to Abraham. Those who
know God, it's the same thing. Same thing. That meekness is
a man mastered of God. He understands his relationship.
And he understands who God is. And he finds in his master everything
he needs and understands it to be the gift of God's sovereign
grace. And so in spirit, he is now not easily provoked. That's what Matthew Henry said.
He's not easily provoked. And he'd rather forgive 20 offenses
than try to revenge one, because he has an understanding of that
grace. And he's quickly and easily pacified. Rile him up, but he's
easy to be pacified. He's a meek man. Those who are easily offended
are those who hope and trust in themselves. Now, it's just
so. It's just so. Well, you'd be
hard-pressed to offend old Blind Bartimaeus when you couldn't
offend him. While you stink. Yeah, I know.
I know. You couldn't offend him. Huh? Those who are easily offended
are those who hope and trust in themselves. Those who flare
up quickly are those who still dictate their own ways. He tells
us in the scripture, when he's talking about his stewards and
preachers and elders in the church, he said they're not self-willed
or soon angry. That's the words he used. Just
watch them. You can tell if that meekness
of God is in him. He don't rile up that easy. You say, a lot of you folks come
in here and say things to me. If you said it to somebody out
here, they'd be squaring off. Huh? They'd be rolling up their
sleeves. They don't raise their voices
an octave when someone tries to pick a fight. Why? Because they got nothing to prove. Moses didn't have anything. He
wasn't there on his business. He was there in God's business. And meekness is the experience
of every believer who has been brought under the rule of Christ.
All right, fourthly, blessed are they which do hunger and
thirst after righteousness, for they should be filled. Now, not
only is this a present and continual attitude and spirit of that man
called of God. He needs the righteousness of
Christ, because he don't have one of his own. And he can't
produce one of his own. And I tell you this, the more
mature you get in the grace of God and the gospel of Christ,
the more that faith matures, the more hungry you get for his
righteousness because the more of your inability is exposed.
And you'll find down at the end that the old man, the old established
man, he's as hungry as that newborn baby was for the righteousness
of Christ. You still got to have it, don't
you? In all these years, you haven't figured out how to produce
one of your own. You still need it. You still need it. And you're
a lot worse now than what you thought you was at the beginning. If you've ever experienced these
first blessings, you know that this is not talking about a hungering
to produce a righteousness by your own works. And I want to
be careful here. Because believers do long to
be made like Christ. They do long for that. They do
hunger for that. They hunger for that perfection,
but they understand they can't produce it and to be accepted
of God. And so you have to have his righteousness. That's the righteousness you
want. And not only that, that's the righteousness that you hope
to have in that day is his righteousness. And so we hunger for it now. Believers do long to obey God
in all things. In 1 John 3, verse 2, he said,
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear
what we shall be. But we know that when He shall
appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
This is the righteousness we want. We want to be conformed
to His image. And this is the predestinating
purpose of God, that we all be conformed to that image. So now
we're in perfect agreement with God. And we thirst and hunger
after that righteousness. That's the righteousness I have
to have. Don't get bogged down in this righteousness of the
law. Paul said, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I
live, yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me. And the life which
I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith, the faithfulness
of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I
do not frustrate the grace of God. If righteousness come. Now, he's not talking about the
righteousness that came. He said, if righteousness come
by the law, then Christ died in vain. That's just how serious
it is. The righteousness for whichever
true believer hungers and thirsts is the righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Actually, we don't even have
an understanding of the righteousness of God apart from Christ, do
we? We don't even know what it is. Do you know what Paul called
righteousness before his conversion? He called his blood relationship,
being able to go back and trace his roots all the way back to
Abraham. That was his righteousness. He
was circumcised the eighth day. That was his righteousness. He had righteousness in his catechism,
as he said, under old Gamaliel and learned that Jewish law and
learned all that self-righteous religion that they taught. That
was righteousness to him. All of those things. Those were
righteous. That was his righteousness. But
he said, when I come to know Christ, when I come to know Christ,
he said all these things, all these things, he counted but
dung. But dung for what? For that knowledge of the glory
of God in Christ. He said, oh, that I might be
found in Him. Now listen, not having my own
righteousness. which is of the law, but that
righteousness which is of faith, the Lord Jesus Christ, His righteousness,
that's the righteousness we hunger for.