Matthew 5:2-12
Are You Sure About That?
Woodlawn Baptist Church
February 8, 2004
Introduction
This morning I have a fun exercise that I want you to help me with before we get started with the message. I know that some of you will feel kind of silly doing it, but try it anyway. I want us all to sing a song you know: “If you’re happy and you know it.”
If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.
If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.
If you’re happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it.
If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.
Do you guys want to keep going? I think maybe some of you have become too dignified to relax and enjoy a kid’s song! Oh how we need to have the heart of Jesus and be able to enjoy some of the more simple things! I love that song – “If you’re happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it.” I wonder how that song would go if a dog sang it. “If you’re happy and you know it, then your tail will surely show it.” Did you ever watch a dog when he’s happy? Down at our house you can get beat to death by Sparky when he gets to wagging his tail. He gets so happy that it just wags ninety-to-nothing.
I heard a story about a little puppy that noticed that whenever he was happy, his tail wagged, so he thought he had found the secret to happiness. One day he shared the secret of happiness with an older dog. He said, "I have learned that the best thing for a dog is happiness, and that happiness is in my tail. So I am going to chase my tail; and when I catch it, I shall have happiness!" The old dog replied, "I too, believe that happiness is a marvelous thing for a dog, and that happiness is in my tail. But I have noticed that when I chase it, my tail keeps running away from me; but when I go about my business, it follows me wherever I go."
There’s a lot of wisdom in that little tale. The Bible has a lot to say about being happy, and whether you realize it or not your life is an open window to what you really believe will make you happy. Many of us are like that little puppy chasing his tail – trying to find true happiness that is always just out of our reach. What we need to do is learn is that Jesus has a wonderful plan that will lead to a rich and full life, and if we will learn to trust Him and make His plans our plans, happiness will follow us wherever we go.
Today we are going to take a look at the Beatitudes, found in Matthew 5:3-12, and in our next few messages we’re going to take a close look at each of them. Last week I laid a foundation for the Sermon on the Mount in its entirety. Today I am going to continue laying that foundation by taking a broad look at these Beatitudes, and as we do, I want you to realize that if you want the richest, fullest life possible, you’re going to have to be willing quit “chasing your tail.” God has something better for you.
Now I realize that we are a people who are doers. What we often want in a sermon or from God is some three-step plan for a better marriage, or a 10-point action plan for raising your kids. We like to be told what we need to do for better financial success and how to get along in the workplace, but I want to suggest to you today that God is more interested first in what you are, not in what you are doing. Certainly He cares about what you do, but what you do and your success in doing it is dependent on who you are in Christ. It is my desire to see you grow as a people who above all are spiritual, who are spiritually minded, and who are concerned about spiritual matters, and that is what these Beatitudes address. Let’s read our text and see what Jesus said.
“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 ye, 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.”
It seems that when we first read these statements of Jesus they seem wonderfully simple and unobtrusive, but allow them to sink into your minds for a moment. “Blessed are the poor in spirit? They that mourn? The meek, merciful, or the peacemakers?” Most people read these statements looking for some warm, fuzzy feeling to get them through the day and they think that our world might be a better place if we could just get ungodly people to abide by them, but there’s more here than meets the eye. In this short passage of brief statements by the Lord, we are told what we must be if we are to enjoy the richest, fullest life possible. You want better relationships with your spouse? your children? or your parents? Are you tired yet of the endless pursuit for a happiness and satisfaction that is always just out of reach? Are you really committed to being a counter-cultural, close follower of Jesus Christ? Do you hear the Holy Spirit prompting you to be a person who is above all, spiritual? If so, then there are three decisions you absolutely must make today.
Change Your Focus
Like the puppy in our story a while ago, many of us are chasing our tails. We spend our lives in pursuit of the next thing, but the next thing is always just out of reach. Remember how it was when you were growing up? You just couldn’t wait to start school, then to start Jr. High. You just couldn’t wait to turn 13 so you could be a teenager, then start High School. Boy, you would just be happy when you turned 16 and got your driver’s license. Oh, how happy I’ll be when I graduate. Or when I turn 18, or when I finish college, or land that job or get that girl. When we are kids we just know that being an adult will bring us great happiness, and as adults we just know that our childhoods were the happiest days of our lives!
You know that rich, full life you are pursuing? The one that ends with the new car or truck, the one that leads you to build or buy that new house? The one that says the paint on the walls is never quite right or that you’ve got to loose some weight to be happy? How long will you go down that road? When will you see that none of those things lead to the life we want? The whole world is chasing after that life, and you’d think that with all the stuff we’ve accumulated and the achievements we’ve accomplished, all the places we’ve been and all the affluence that is spread throughout our country we’d be the happiest people on the face of the earth, but you know as well as I do that’s just not the case.
When we can’t catch up in our pursuit of happiness, we decide to escape all together. This husband can’t make me happy, maybe that one will. This job isn’t bringing me satisfaction, perhaps that one will. Fine Christian people are forsaking the Lord’s churches for the bottle, for drugs, for recreational activities, for affairs, and if not bodily, at least spiritually and mentally and emotionally. Some of you today wouldn’t consider leaving, but your head and your heart checked out a long time ago, because all your searching has brought you up empty – and I want to tell you today that you’re a prime candidate for what Christ has to offer!
You see, Jesus comes along in this sermon and says that what He has to offer is vastly different than what the world has to offer. Just think about your definition of happiness, the one I’ve been using so far in this message – it is conditional on our circumstances. When things are going our way we’re happy. But the happiness, or blessedness Jesus has to offer is quite different. Opinions vary concerning what Jesus meant when He used the word “blessed.” Most people will agree that the word in its simplest form means happy, but what else does it mean?
One writer says that “[Jesus] is declaring not what [we] may feel like, but what God thinks of [us] and what on that account [we] are: [we] are blessed.” There may be some element of truth to that. In historical writings, the Greek word was used to describe a wealthy man, or one who was successful in business. It was also used to speak of the Greek gods who were happy because they were unaffected by the world of men – who were subject to poverty, disease, weakness, misfortune, and death. This being the case, the fullest meaning of the word “had to do with an inward contentedness that is not affected by circumstances. That is the kind of happiness God desires for His children, a state of joy and well-being that does not depend on physical, temporary circumstances.”
Now, we might criticize the Greeks for their false notions of the gods, but this one thing they understood: God is the only being who can experience blessedness or happiness to the fullest degree. He is and always will be the happiest being in the universe. Why shouldn’t He be? After all, He alone “works all things after the council of His own will.” God does what He wants when He wants the way He wants. I want to tell you something: that makes God happy. The Scriptures speak over and over about the blessedness of God. Blessedness is a characteristic of God – it is His very nature, and there is no blessedness outside of Him. In fact, the Bible says that to be without Him is to be under His wrath and condemnation.
I want you to turn to 2 Peter 1:2 with me as we think about this blessedness of God. Peter said,
“Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
Do you see it? If you are a child of God, you have been made a partaker of God’s divine nature. Because blessedness is fundamentally an element of the character of God, when you partake of His nature through Jesus Christ you partake of His blessedness. Listen, the blessedness Jesus offers, the happiness, the fullness and richness of life that Jesus offers is only available to believers, for it is at the point of trusting faith in Christ that you are made a partaker of His divine nature.
“To be blessed is not a superficial feeling of well-being based on circumstance, but a deep supernatural experience of contentedness based on the fact that one’s life is right with God.” Now granted, this doesn’t always make sense to us. It doesn’t make sense to us how mourning and humility and desiring righteousness and suffering persecution brings about happiness. If most of us would be honest, being the kind of person Jesus speaks about only brings grief and misery. But I want to tell you that it’s not always going to make sense. You’re not always going to be able to work it out on paper or in your head. The philosophy of the world, consequently, the one you and I have grown up accepting as our own, says that things satisfy and bring happiness, but Jesus offers a much different path to the happiness we long for.
“Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?”
Who said that? You’re right – Solomon – a man that we aspire to be. He had it all, had done it all, had seen it all, knew it all, but he admitted that in his pursuit of happiness and satisfaction, all he found was misery and frustration.
Now I said that you’ve got to change your focus, so now you need to determine what your focus has really been. Think back over where you’ve been and the direction your life has taken. “To expect happiness from the things of this world is like seeking the living among the dead…True blessedness is on a higher level than anything in the world, and it is to that level that [Jesus] takes us. Here is a completely new way of life, based on a completely new way of thinking.”
Now I’m going to assume that you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, “Ok, Brother Kevin – I’ll give you that one. I admit that my focus has not been what it ought to be. I’ve been pursuing happiness, and while I’ve enjoyed it from time to time, I want the life Jesus offers, rich and full and happily contended in the midst of my circumstances; but if I am not to pursue happiness, what then?” That leads me to the second decision you need to make:
Choose The Road Less Traveled
I’m thinking of what Jesus said later in the Sermon on the Mount about the two gates, the wide gate that most people go through, but leads to destruction, and the narrow gate that few find, but leads to life. Most people in this world, and even most Christians are just going to keep on doing what they’ve been doing and going in the direction they’ve been going. For whatever reasons, they just can’t seem to admit that it’s the wrong road. However, for those of you who will turn around and take the road less traveled, there are three common mistakes about the Beatitudes that I want you to reject.
First, there is the idea that the Beatitudes are a beautiful picture of an ideal world, but they are not really practical in the mean world in which we live. Think about your workplace – can you get ahead in that place by being poor in spirit when it’s a dog eat dog environment? When people all around you are vying for attention and want to be noticed, how can you possibly be meek and get the attention you need or want? Let me tell you what this mistake is really all about – its about you and me asserting our rights to our lives, driven by a fear that we’re going to go unnoticed and be treated unfairly. You know what I mean: you work just as hard or harder than the next guy, and if you don’t watch out for yourself no one else is. We do this in our marriages and in our churches, but what we’re trying to do is produce heavenly results by using worldly methods. That’s the road most people are on, and the one Christ wants you to get off of.
The Beatitudes will work – but only as you believe and trust God, and only as you are willing to minister and serve and give your life a ransom for others. It’s really a matter of whom you’re trying to please. Yes, the Beatitudes are most practical and useful, but it’s a lonely, deserted road.
The second common mistake is this idea that the Beatitudes are for the spiritually elite – like only some select group of super-saints can live them. This is terribly wrong – they are not. All Christians are to be like this. These are not exceptional Christians. Jesus does not come along and say that this is a picture of what a group of outstanding Christians are to be – it is a description of every single child of God. We have done a terrible injustice to Christianity by creating some spiritual hierarchy: some people view the pastor or other church leaders as walking in the presence of God and he demonstrates all these things, while others in the church resign themselves to being like they are – after all, “I am just an average Christian.” Listen, the easy way is to explain them away by laying the responsibility to manifest these characteristics in the lap of someone else – but the road less traveled is the road of accepting these sayings of Jesus as belonging to you. You are to be poor in spirit, you are to be meek, you are to be merciful, you are to hunger and thirst for righteousness, and you are to withstand persecution – these are for you!
The third mistake people make is that they try to divide the Beatitudes like offices we hold in our churches. You take this one and I’ll take that one, but this is another false view – all believers are to manifest all the Beatitudes, we cannot pick and choose. Now there are two things that come up here: first, these are spiritual characteristics, not natural tendencies or personality make-ups. Some people are naturally humble, but notice that Jesus says, “poor in spirit.” It is a spiritual characteristic. Some people are naturally merciful, but that is not the same as the spiritual characteristic that comes from Christ. You may know some people who are not Christians but who naturally lean this way. They may be nice and polite, always doing good, never saying a harsh word, but are encouraging and willing to be in the background.
Be careful – for what you are observing in those things is simply a man or woman’s natural tendencies; we can be just as different in our temperaments as we are in our looks. If Jesus is promising rewards for those with natural temperaments, then He is rewarding people for something over which they have no control, and I want to suggest to you that this is not what He is driving at in these Beatitudes – these are spiritual characteristics that are manifested when you and I are in right relationship to God. The road most traveled just chalks up this characteristic to that man and that characteristic to this woman and I can never be like those things – and so long as that is your thinking you will not. The road less traveled recognizes that you can never be what God wants you to be until you are walking with and filled with the Spirit of God who produces these characteristics as fruit in your lives – a harvest of righteous character for a live sowed unto God. Your natural man has to die as you yield your life to God.
Now, all of this leads me to the last decision you must make today. You must…
Come To Grips With Who You Are
Let me ask you just as simply as I know how. I want you to think seriously about this question, because regardless of which way you answer it, there are going to be consequences to it. The question is simply this: Are you a Christian? You see, the Beatitudes show clearly the difference between the Christian and the non-Christian. Because they are fundamentally spiritual matters, no man or no woman can be like this unless they belong to Jesus Christ. Unless you have partaken of His divine nature you cannot be like this.
Let me say it another way – Jesus presents these things in such a way that you ought to be able to see what He desires you to be. Look down through those spiritual characteristics – that is what pleases God, and if you are not like that you are not pleasing Him; but you cannot be like that unless you know Him as your Savior. Go ahead and try – you’ll fail every time – you cannot measure up and you never will outside of God’s redeeming grace. Listen to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. He is trying to help you to see through these things that you need help; you need a Savior. Won’t you call on Him today? Won’t you look at the road you’re headed down and realize that its not getting you where you really want to go? Won’t you repent, which means to turn around on that road and start going the other way? Realizing that your only hope is with Jesus Christ?
If you realize today that you are not a Christian, you have never been saved, never called on Jesus to rescue you, then today I want you to come to grips with who you are without Him. Quit hanging on to your self-sufficiency, to your hold on your life – give it up and give it over to Christ.
So what about those of you who claim to be Christian? Are you really? Do you know how the name Christian came to be? You see, we go around claiming to be Christians, but the believers and followers of Christ in the first century didn’t do that. After they trusted Christ in salvation, they gave their lives over to Him in such a way that they identified with Him in every way possible, so much so that other people, the lost people around them began to call them Christians. It wasn’t a complement – it was a derogatory word that meant that a person was like Jesus Christ. It meant that you were known by association – association with Christ: His person, His character, His conduct, His attitudes, His beliefs, His convictions, His purposes, and so forth.
So let me ask you again – are you a Christian? Are you really a Christian? I’m not asking you if you are saved – I’m asking you if you can be known by your association. Are you more than a believer? Are you committed to following Jesus Christ in every way? Are you determined that He will have every area and moment of your life? So that you are like Him in character, conduct, convictions and so forth?
Come to grips with who you are – you are a child of God – and like the perfect, loving parent He is – God wants to see you grow up and be like Him. We read this passage last week, but I want us to read it again today in 1 Peter 2:9 and following.
“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light: which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims…”
Peter is going to go on and plead with his readers to live a certain way, and it’s not so much how he tells them to live that I want you to be concerned with as much as it is the basis on which he makes his argument. Peter makes his case on the basis of who they are: a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, strangers and pilgrims. Do you see it? Come to grips with who you are and it will change everything about how you spend your life between now and the time you meet Jesus.
Who are you? Who does Christ want you to be today? And what does He want you to be today? We’re going to bow and have a word of prayer in just a moment, and as we do, I wonder whether you are willing to examine whether you’ve been chasing the right things in this life or not. If you haven’t been, are you ready to do something about it? Change your focus? Choose the road less traveled? Come to grips with who you are? Is your spiritual life what God wants it to be? Is it a life that He can bless? Are you experiencing the fullness and richness that God has for you? Only you are standing in the way – aren’t you ready for the change of your life?
Works Cited:
Introduction adapted from The Happy Puppy: http://www.sermons4kids.com/happy-puppy.html
Stott, John R.W. The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Inter-Varsity Press: Leicester, England) 1978 p. 33
MacArthur, John. Adapted from The MacArthur New Testament Commentary Matthew 1-7 (Moody Press: Chicago, IL) 1985 p. 141-142
ibid
ibid; This quote and other thoughts are taken from MacArthur’s notes.
