Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

After his return from church one Sunday, a small boy said, "You know what mommie?

I'm going to be a preacher when I grow up." "That's wonderful," said his mother.

What made you decide you want to be a preacher?"

The boy said thoughtfully, "Well, I'll have to go to church anyway on Sunday, and I think it would be more fun to stand up and yell than to sit still and listen."

Happiness is yelling rather than listening from the perspective of a small boy.

From the perspective of a mother, however, happiness is a small boy who sits still and listens.

Happiness is obviously different things to different people, and even different things to the same person under varying circumstances.

Someone has said, to be happy with a man you must love him a little and understand him a lot.

To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot, and not even try to understand her.

Whatever you think of that, there is no doubt that happiness means something different to each of the sexes.

It also varies according to the interest of persons.

The poet Gray said, it would be a paradise of happiness for him if he could lie on a sofa and read new French romances forever.

Doremas Hayes, the great Mennonite scholar wrote in response to that ideal of happiness: "To lie on a sofa and read French novels forever would be no paradise for some of us.

It would be a purgatory by the end of one month, and it would be the blackest depth of hell in less than a year."

We met a couple who bought a shirt for their overweight boy, and it had these words printed on it-Happiness is suppertime.

Not long ago the sign at the Holiday Inn read, "Happiness is eating in the Camelot Room."

But we all know that the pleasure of eating does not make life happy in any lasting sense.

And there are many in poor health who do not even enjoy the temporal blessing it can be.

Happiness, as we generally think of it, varies with the winds of circumstance.

We tie happiness so closely to emotion, and nothing could be more variable than feelings.

We can feel happy today, and depressed tomorrow, depending on the news, the weather, or any number of circumstances.

Jesus is not interested in this kind of subjective haphazard happiness.

He goes to the inner man, and speaks of a happiness, or blessedness, which is a matter of character and being.

It does not depend on external circumstances.

Happiness rises and falls, but blessedness is a kind of happiness that remains steady in spite of the variations in feelings.

The Beatitudes of Jesus are attitudes of being.

Happiness in the highest sense depends on what you are and not what happens to you.

There are many others who have arrived at this conclusion, but no one has been so paradoxical as Jesus.

He tells us that happiness is found in just the opposite direction that men are going in search of it.

It seems like nonsense to the world to find happiness in poverty, mourning, meekness, and persecution.

Even Christians wonder what Jesus means by these apparently contradictory statements.

We must recognize that Jesus is challenging the world's whole system of values.

Many worldly people speak highly of the Sermon On The Mount and the Beatitudes because they are not aware of the radical nature of what Jesus is saying.

A true understanding of His concept of happiness will transform the life of any person, and radically alter their character and conduct.

The Interpreter's Bible says, "The Beatitudes, far from being passive or mild, are a gauntlet flung down before the world's accepted standards.

Thus they become clearer when set against their opposites.

The opposite of poor in spirit are the proud in spirit.

The opposite of those who mourn are the light headed, always bent on pleasure.

The opposite of the meek are the aggressors.

The opposite of the persecuted are those who always play it safe."

If we intend to be happy, from the perspective of Jesus, we will come into direct conflict with the standards of the world.

This can and does lead to opposition, and persecution, and a great deal of subjective unhappiness for the Christian.

Any way you approach it the Christian life, at its best, is a paradox.

By means of what the world calls unhappiness, we can be happy in the highest sense, but the consequences may be subjective unhappiness in relation to the world.

This paradox becomes easier to grasp if we distinguish between subjective and objective happiness.

Almost everyone who writes about happiness thinks only of the subjective side-that is how a person feels and thinks.

Jesus deals with objective happiness, that is how God thinks, for He alone can see life from God's perspective, and know the ultimate consequences of all we are and do.

Objective happiness is not based on how you feel, but how you measure up to God's standard.

Notice how Jesus just lays it down as a fact and law of life when He says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."

He does not say, may they be blessed, or they should be or will be, they just are.

But what if they don't feel like it, or are not aware of it?

That is beside the point.

Jesus is not talking about how people feel.

He is speaking of the objective standard of happiness, and if you measure up, you are happy whether you feel like it or not.

In fact, it is impossible to feel happy when are mourning, or when you are being persecuted, unless you are neurotic or psychotic.

Subjective happiness at all times would be abnormal for anyone.

The poet was right who wrote,

If you can smile when things go wrong, and say it doesn't matter.

If you can laugh off cares and woe, and trouble makes you fatter.

There's something wrong with you.

For one thing I've arrived at, there are no ands and buts,

A guy that's grinning all the time must be completely nuts.

To be subjectively happy all the time would be unchristlike, for Jesus felt sorrow and grief.

He wept, and He felt frustration over the failure of His disciples.

He was angry and upset by evil and oppression.

The world longs for perpetual subjective happiness.

They want to feel good all the time, regardless of the sin and evil in the world.

The Christian cannot and dare not even try, for that is to go in the opposite direction of true happiness according to Jesus.

The truly happy Christian will be miserable at times in a world so full of evil and folly.

The Christian naturally wants his share of subjective happiness, but this is secondary, and is to be a byproduct.

Our goal is to be objectively happy according to the standard of Christ.

This means a Christian might feel terrible, and yet be very happy.

He might say, I feel so ignorant and helpless, and it is so discouraging to have so little capacity to serve God.

He feels subjectively unhappy, but Jesus says that this poverty of spirit is just what God wants in a person, and so whether he knows it or not, he is a blessed person headed for great reward in the kingdom of God.

On the other hand, the Christian who says, I am satisfied with what I know, and feel happy about my service for the Lord, is really far less happy by God's standard, even though he feels better than the other Christian who is poor in spirit, and who mourns over his inability, and who hungers for more of God's righteousness.

It is one thing to feel happy, and another thing to be happy.

The mature Christian is one who is able to see from the perspective of Christ, and be able to feel subjective joy even when the circumstances of objective happiness are not joyful.

When he knows he is what God wants him to be, he is happy even if he doesn't feel it.

This calls for an eternal perspective, and a faith in God's ultimate plan.

Jesus went this way before us, and our happiness depends on our following Him.

Heb.

12:2 put it, "Looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."

Jesus was not subjectively happy on the cross, but He was the most objectively happy person that ever lived, for He was fulfilling everything God wanted Him to be, for He was the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world.

This is our goal as we study these beatitudes.

Being what God wants you to be is the highest level of happiness.

The first of these paradoxes is, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Poor and poverty are words which the world flees from like the plague, for they see them as the enemy of happiness.

Jesus says there is a form of poverty which is the key to happiness, and all are in general agreement that this is the basis on which all of the beatitudes are built.

There are three attitudes which, when combined, give us a good picture of the person who is poor in spirit.

First there is-

I. THE ATTITUDE OF DEFICIENCY.

No person can be truly happy who does not recognize he has a lack in his life.

We often think it would be wonderful to be totally satisfied with no sense of deficiency, but Jesus says this would be a curse.

The Christians in Laodicea made this mistake.

Their attitude was one of proud self-sufficiency, and this is what Jesus says to them in Rev. 3:17, "You say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I have need of nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked."

Failure to recognize their deficiency led them into pride.

They were blind to their poverty, and the result was a subjective feeling of satisfaction, but objective unhappiness in the eyes of Christ.

However they felt, they were miserable according to Christ.

If they had recognized their deficiency, and been poor in spirit they would have been dependent on Christ and His sufficiency, and, therefore, prosperous and happy.