Text: Matthew 5:1–12
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
A Kingdom of Blessedness
Go ahead and turn with me, if you would, to Matthew 5. This morning we’ll be taking a look at the first 12 verses. And what I hope to do while you’re turning there is to make you mildly uncomfortable by saying some things that might make you think I’ve turned into a TBN, megachurch prosperity peddler. But hang in there with me and I’ll explain.
Humanity is a wildly good thing.
God would have this wildly good thing called humanity live life, and live it abundantly. He would have humanity flourish under the solid, heavy, firm weight of his divine blessing.
Let me particularize that for you: God would have you live an abundant, blessed, glorious life—a life wherein you would be like a fruitful, green, growing tree; a life wherein you would be what it is that you were made to be, namely, human. Which is to say, a living, technicolor image bearer of God himself, a partaker of the divine nature, an imitator of God, a beloved son.
You may have made a mess of your life. Your life may be a howling waste and desert and wilderness, but if you are in Christ, not only is that what God would have for you, but in the fullness of time, that is the inevitable destination he is inevitably bringing you to.
This morning, as we take up the first 12 verses of Jesus’ sermon on the mount, we will hear Jesus announce the restoration of sin-captive, cursed mankind to glorious, restored blessedness in himself and his Kingdom. Look at verse 1. This is the Word of the Living God:
“Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to 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 those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for
they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.’”
-Matthew 5:1–11
Thus ends the reading of God’s Word. May he write it on our hearts by faith. Let’s pray.
Let me begin dealing with this text with a thesis statement, or a statement of what it is that we just read: The good news of the Kingdom of God is that God is, in Christ, restoring mankind from cursedness to blessedness. The arrival of that Kingdom with the arrival of Christ is the beginning of the long-promised and long-awaited restoration of mankind to this state of blessedness.
To see this, we need to begin by understanding the sheer glory of the word Jesus says nine times in this passage—the word “blessed”—and its opposite, cursed.
Born in Blessing
Let me begin by repeating myself and saying a sentence that will possibly strike some of you as wrong: Humanity is a wildly good thing.
In Genesis, God not only made mankind, but he called his creation, crowned with mankind, “very good.” Let me read this section from Genesis 1, this foundational paragraph,
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him
male and female he created them.And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
-Genesis 1:26–31
God makes man, and the very first thing we read after he makes them is that he blessed them and then that he gave them the earth. Man was made to rule over creation in God’s name, bearing his image and his blessing, and to bring it to flowering glory.
Man was made for blessedness. Man was made very good.
But we know what happened: Rather than subduing the earth in God’s name, man was subdued by the Serpent, and fell into sin—a process Martin Luther described as man become curved in on himself.
Instead of looking to God with unveiled face, beholding his glory and reflecting that glory and character into the world, we turned inward, looked for our own, independent glory, sought blessing in our own resources, and found that it wasn’t there.
So mankind, made for blessedness, became a cursed thing.
The story continues in Genesis 12, where God calls Abraham, again promises him the earth—the Promised Land—and a people—nations to come from himself. And that people multiplies from Abraham and his wife into a nation journeying to that land by the book of Exodus. And again, God lays before Israel blessing or cursing, blessedness or cursedness. As God tells the people in Deuteronomy 11,
“See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known.”
-Deuteronomy 11:26–28
This story of Israel is like the story of Adam and Eve, retold in a parable—a story where they do as their father and mother did, and choose cursedness over blessedness.
And over and over this plays out, as Israel rejects God, receives the curse, goes into exile, and suffers. But over and over, God keeps promising them that he will bring restoration, that he will restore them to blessedness and be their God again.
In fact, this is the core message of the entire section between Isaiah 40–66, the end of the book. Israel is not as she should be; humanity is not as it should be—but God is going to bring restoration to the sin-cursed peoples.
And then Jesus arrives. And he arrives preaching the good news of the Kingdom. He arrives healing. He arrives casting out demons. He arrives and begins to both announce and embody this message: Blessedness is returning. Restoration from curse is here. And then he climbs this mountain, sits down like a King, and teaches,
“Blessed are…” nine times.
Jesus brings blessing by obeying his own blessings. He is going to embody these beatitudes, bear the curse that humanity has earned by doing their opposite, and then make a Kingdom and a people who colonize the world with the way of this Kingdom by grace and through faith. Blessing is returning. The curse will be broken through the one who bears it on the cross.
Blessing & Cursing
Let’s take some time now and walk through the first seven of these Beatitudes of Jesus.
And next week, we’ll take up the last two, which I hope you will see are the key to the whole of the Beatitudes. But this morning, we will aim to see three things about these first seven Beatitudes of Jesus:
First, we’ll look at what they are—partly by looking at their opposite.
Second, we’ll see how the Lord Jesus perfectly models, or perfectly incarnates, each of these attitudes and commands. Another way to say this would be that we’ll see how the Lord Jesus is expositing himself in these nine Beatitudes.
Third, we’ll sketch out what they might look like as Jesus re-embodies them in his body, in us, in his Church.
1. The Poor in Spirit
Verse 3,
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
See, what’s happening in each of these Beatitudes is that two ways, and two kingdoms, are standing in contrast with one another: The Kingdom of God, and the Kingdom of Darkness. Each one has their own Beatitudes.
The world thinks that it doesn’t need God or his blessing. The world says “I am enough. I am rich. I am self-sufficient. I am god.” We get a picture of this in Revelation 3:17, where God warns the church in Laodicea,
“For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”
-Revelation 3:17
Cursed humanity, in its arrogance, believes itself to be rich. But those who understand that they are in fact desperately poor before God—those are the ones who will be paradoxically blessed of God. Why? Because they will inherit—not the passing away, ephemeral riches of the world’s treasures—but the eternal glory of God and his Kingdom.
Jesus perfectly embodies this poverty of spirit. Even though he is no sinner himself, he lowers himself, empties himself, and identifies himself with humanity—even with cursed humanity—and bears our curse for our arrogance.
He is not arrogant like the rich in spirit of this age, but humble and lowly.
And so he aims to make of us, and he promises his blessedness to those of us, who will freely admit our poverty and seek for the Kingdom of God and its treasures.
Every time you hit the end of your resources, every time you make eye contact with your own poverty of righteousness and cry out to God for his help, his blessing—then you are under his heavy and strong hand of blessing. See, God delights to magnify the glory of his own riches by pouring out those riches on those who see their own need for them.
But every time you arrogantly hide your sin; every time you arrogantly act as if you are enough; every time you walk in haughtiness of spirit—you are saying, “Let me secure my own blessing.” And you’ll find that your own blessing is a curse.
The second Beatitude expands and illuminates this first one:
2. The Mourners
Verse 4,
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
It is not the confidently jubilant of cursed humanity who will see their curse reversed and turned to blessing, but those who look into their own hearts, who look out at the world and what we have made of it by our sin—and mourn, weep, cry out—who will be blessed.
Just this last week, I was talking for half an hour or so with a young woman named Victoria, who was at the Planned Parenthood to have her unborn child killed, and she exuded, she radiated a glee and jubilation in her sin.
She said that she was a goddess, that she was a glorious thing, that she was great, that she was the god of her own soul, and she was so jubilant at the thought of being able to kill her own child that several times she tried to high-five me.
It is those who, in poverty of spirit, see through the thin veneer that humanity has built over our own kingdoms of sin, and mourn who will be blessed.
So for those of you who know, maybe even right now, those of you who feel deeply the weightiness of your sin—you will be blessed if you turn to God in that mourning for grace and help. Don’t despair and try to hide or justify your sin when you are confronted with it; no, mourn deeply and cry out to God for grace. God delights to comfort those who mourn for their sin and for the cursedness of the world.
3. The Meek
Number three, in verse five we read,
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
The meek are the longsuffering, the patient, the gentle. Again, the contrast is stark: The way of the kingdom of darkness and its people is the way of violence and force. It is the way of bloodshed and murder and evil and genocide and torture. It is the way of sword and bullet and bomb and tank and poison.
But this Kingdom which Jesus has come to build is going to triumph over all of those things—not by a show of greater shock and awe—but by what men call weakness. Jesus is going to establish his Kingdom by dying.
And the point isn’t that Jesus is going to lose. Don’t miss that. The point is that all of those things that seem really strong to us—think, a Minuteman nuclear weapon—actually turn out to be pathetic. This meek, lowly, crucified King is going to tear it all down—by dying.
Jesus says in Matthew 11:12 that, “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” There’s this innate desire in sinful man to try and win blessedness through force of arms.
But that’s too easy. It dislocates the problem and the enemy. The solution of human force acts as if the problem is something other than our sinful hearts. And so Jesus will come, strong, bold, courageous, righteous—and meek—and he will throw down the enemy kingdom, even put it to open shame, through his own death.
Now, notice what Jesus promises to his people here: The earth. The meek will inherit the earth. The Kingdom of Heaven is coming for earth. It’s colonizing the earth. It’s aiming to win the earth.
4. Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness
In verse six,
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
In John 4, Jesus told his disciples that his food is to do the will of God. Cursed mankind’s god is his belly. He is like an animal, driven by his appetites. But Jesus shows us that the blessed man is the one whose food, whose longing, whose strength is to do the will of God
There’s a vestigial longing even in fallen man for righteousness. We all carry around a profound sense of wrongness.
This is the instinct behind everything from marketing to politics. Everyone carries around this profound sense of wrongness, that things aren’t as they ought to be, and so tries to move ourselves and the world to rightness by various means.
It’s like we know that we’re hungry and thirsty, but we don’t know what bread and water are, and so we’ll put anything into our mouths to try and satisfy the longing.
We’ll spend our money on thing after thing after thing trying to be filled. We’ll medicate with food and sex and career and kids and whatever it is to try and be filled.
But Jesus says, “Hey, if you want to be filled, you need to recognize what it is that you’re lacking, what it is that you’re hungry for—righteousness. If you hunger for that food, you’ll be filled.”
Jesus is the bread of life. He is the corresponding food to the longing of our souls. He is the manna. He is the wine. He is the fat of the land. If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you will find that the only way to get it is through him. Only his righteousness will do, not the counterfeit imitation righteousness of humanity.
5. The Merciful
Number five, we read in verse seven,
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
Every night at our dinner table, one of the things I tell my kids before we eat is something Jesus says in Luke 6, “Give and it will be given back to you, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your bosom. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.”
That’s what Jesus says about his Kingdom. That’s what Jesus himself is like. That’s what Jesus shows us about authentic love: It gives itself away. It bears the costs of others. It extends mercy where it could demand payment.
So we are taught to pray as if your salvation depended on it, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Jesus’ Kingdom is a Kingdom where blessing doesn’t come from demanding our rights and demanding what we are owed, but by means of mercy, of self-giving love—the same thing that saves us.
So we need to hear this. The stingy and unforgiving need to hear this. The unmerciful need to hear this: Don’t dare to withhold mercy and forgiveness and restoration to those by whom you have been wronged, lest you receive that which you extend.
The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of forgiven whores and thieves and liars and murderers and blasphemers and vainglorious sinners. Blessed are those who see that they are numbered amongst the sinners and so use a generous measure in forgiving sinners.
6. The Pure in Heart
Number six, Jesus says,
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
In John 1:18, we’re told that nobody has seen God, but that Christ has made God known. In John 6:46, Jesus said that he alone had seen the Father.
Only the pure in heart can see God. Only the perfect, pure, righteous man can live in the blessed presence of God. This should tell us something about the gospel, right? The demand of God isn’t for sin-cursed humanity to clean up a bit. It’s not for sin-cursed humanity to be morally rearranged. It’s not for sin-cursed humanity to do better and try harder.
No, by verse 48 of this very chapter, Jesus will say that you must be perfect, just as the Father is perfect, if you would be saved.
Only the pure in heart shall see God, not the wicked at heart. That should tell us that our only hope is a new heart—because manifestly, all of our old hearts are wicked. They long to sin. We sin because we want to.
And so right here, Jesus dashes the self-salvation efforts of sin-cursed humanity. If you want to see God, you need a pure heart.
7. The Peacemakers
Finally, Jesus says,
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
In the cursedness of sin, men are anything but peacemakers. After sin came into the world, Cain murdered Abel in envy, and humanity became a race that perfected the art of murder to a terrible degree. The natural state of man is not peace, but war. It’s not love, but hate. It’s not unity, it’s division.
Even a single congregation of Christians has to work constantly to maintain unity and not devour one another over little squabbles and quarrels. You should read my emails, guys. Where does all of this come from? James 4:1–4 is plain,
“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
-James 4:1–4
But Jesus is utterly unlike this, isn’t he? He is the one, single, sole man who has every right to war against us, and what does he do? He dies to save us. He gives himself up. He is the only righteous one, yet he dies at the warring, bloody hands of unrighteous warmongers in order to make those warmongers into peacemakers.
And that is what he is doing in us, saints, and what he will perfect in us. Therefore put off all quarreling and strife. Stop it. The Kingdom of God is not a Kingdom of warring, but of peace. So put down your quarreling. Go make peace with your brother and sister—even in this room if you need to.
And as you do so, what will help you is to remember that you are nothing, that you are weak, that you are a sinner, and that you’re probably much less smart and wise and glorious than you currently think you are, deep down inside.
Neither am I. We’re all, if I could borrow a Narnia reference for a second, like the stupid Dufflepuds of Coriakin’s island, thinking our own speeches and wisdom to be quite grand, but really fairly ridiculous if we could just gain God’s perspective.
Blessed are the peacemakers, because only true sons of God can triumph over. The folly of human arrogance, the folly of the sons of Adam, and put on the true wisdom of humility.
So may the Lord rebuke and correct each of us through these Beatitudes, and may he bring us to faith in his obedience to them, credited to our account, and may he bring us to walk in them by grace and through faith.
Remember: This is the way to abundant life: Cheerful, faith-filled obedience to the words of Christ through our unity with Christ and his Spirit in us.