The Mindset of a Christian
A Manual for Kingdom Life • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Today, as we continue our study of the Sermon on the Mount by looking at the last four of the Beatitudes, I want you to think for a few moments about how it is that you define “success.”
What makes a person a success in life?
The late Eugene Peterson, who authored the popular Bible paraphrase known as The Message, once wrote about this matter from the perspective of Jesus’ disciples, and he made a couple of surprising, but accurate observations.
In a 1984 article for the journal Leadership, Peterson wrote the following:
“Among the apostles, the one absolutely stunning success was Judas, and the one thoroughly groveling failure was Peter.
“Judas was a success in the ways that most impress us: he was successful both financially and politically. He cleverly arranged to control the money of the apostolic band; he skillfully manipulated the political forces of the day to accomplish his goal.
“And Peter was a failure in ways that we most dread: he was impotent in a crisis and socially inept. At the arrest of Jesus, he collapsed, a hapless, blustering coward; in the most critical situations of his life with Jesus — the confession on the road to Caesarea Philippi and the vision on the Mount of transfiguration — he said the most embarrassingly inappropriate things.
“He was not the companion we would want with us in time of danger, and he was not the kind of person we would feel comfortable with at a social occasion.
“Time, of course, has reversed our judgments on the two men. Judas is now a byword for betrayal, and Peter is one of the most honored names in the church and in the world. Judas is a villain; Peter is a saint.
“Yet the world continues to chase after the successes of Judas, financial wealth and political power, and to defend itself against the failures of Peter, impotence and ineptness.” [As quoted in: Tim Kimmel, Little House on the Freeway (Portland, Ore.: Multnomah Press, 1987), 192.]
Peter clearly got the point of the Sermon on the Mount. Judas, sadly, did not.
And, as we learned last week, the point is that the Kingdom of God is something completely different than the kingdoms of this world.
Therefore, all who wish to be a part of the Kingdom of God — or the Kingdom of Heaven as Jesus calls it in the Beatitudes — are called to likewise be completely different.
We must not measure success in the same way that the world measures it, because our king, King Jesus, does not measure it that way.
In His upside-down kingdom, the weak are strong, the humble are lifted up, and the persecuted will reign.
As one commentator puts it: “Welcome to Jesus’ narrow-gate theology, teaching that separates the ‘crowds’ who want health and wealth in the here and now and the ‘disciples’ who are willing to deny themselves, pick up their crosses, and follow Jesus.” [Douglas Sean O’Donnell, Matthew: All Authority in Heaven and on Earth, ed. R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 110.]
Turn with me, please to Matthew, chapter 5, and let’s read together the beatitudes from verses 3-10.
As you’re turning there, I will remind you that this passage serves as an introduction to this most famous sermon of our Lord’s. As such, it will introduce the themes that we will encounter in the coming weeks, as we delve into the main body of the Sermon on the Mount.
Now, beginning in verse 3:
“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 gentle, 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 have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
You might recall that I said last week that we could break these eight blessings into two sections. Last week, we talked about the first four, which deal with the proper relationship between subjects of the Kingdom of Heaven and their King. They represent the marks of a Christian.
This week, we will take a look at the second set of four blessings, which describe the proper relationships among members of the Kingdom of Heaven. They represent the mindset of a Christian.
And please remember that this isn’t a pick-and-choose kind of list. Each of the eight qualities that Jesus mentions here should be a characteristic of each one of us who is a subject of this Kingdom, of each one of us who is called a Christ-ian.
And each of these characteristics builds upon the others.
We can only be a part of the Kingdom of Heaven if we acknowledge that we are spiritually bankrupt — that we have nothing to offer God and that we rely wholly upon His grace and mercy to be allowed to pass through its narrow gate.
Having acknowledged our spiritual bankruptcy, we must also be people who mourn over sin — both as it is seen in the world around us and as it appears within our own lives.
As we mourn over our brokenness, we submit our will to God’s will, giving Him every part of our lives to do with as He wishes.
And as we find our wills and our priorities coming into alignment with those of God, we find that we now yearn for things to be right in this world, just as He does.
In short, when you are in a right relationship with God, your values will be His values, and your character will mirror His character, as reflected by His Son, Jesus Christ.
And as we will see today, the characteristics that Jesus describes subjects of His Kingdom demonstrating toward one another are exactly the characteristics He demonstrated in His interactions with others during his ministry on earth.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy,” He says in verse 7.
In the Old Testament, this word is translated variously as compassion, love, pity, or mercy, and it is found time and time again in prophetic writings about the day when the Lord will establish His Kingdom on earth in a restored Israel.
Writing about this kingdom under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the prophet Ezekiel said:
Therefore thus says the Lord God, “Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name.
Isaiah also described it:
“They will not hunger or thirst, Nor will the scorching heat or sun strike them down; For He who has compassion on them will lead them And will guide them to springs of water.
And Isaiah wrote that one of the signs of this new Kingdom would be healing:
Isaiah 35:4–6 (NASB95)
Say to those with anxious heart, “Take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance; The recompense of God will come, But He will save you.” Then the eyes of the blind will be opened And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer, And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy.
Just prior to going up onto the mountain to share this message with His disciples, Jesus, as Matthew records it, had been “going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.”
He had proclaimed the good news that the Kingdom of God was at hand, and then He performed miraculous healings that would attest to the truth of what He had proclaimed.
One day, He will come with vengeance to judge the earth and all those in it. One day, He will come as the conquering king, riding a white horse into a battle that He will win by the word of His mouth.
Then, we will see the fulfillment of this already/not yet Kingdom that Jesus inaugurated in His years on earth. It will be at that time that those who have followed Him in faith and have hungered and thirsted for righteousness will finally be satisfied.
But in Jesus’ first advent — when He lived a sinless life and then died on the cross to pay the penalty for the sins of mankind — He came as the Suffering Servant the prophet Isaiah had foretold.
In His first advent, He came with mercy in His wings. He came to bind up the brokenhearted and to set free we who were captives to sin.
He came on a mission of mercy.
And we who are His followers are called to the same mission.
As we have been forgiven, so we are to forgive. As we have been shown compassion, so we are to show compassion.
This beatitude connects to the one in verse 5. “A meek person acknowledges to others that he or she is sinful, but a merciful person has compassion on others because they are sinful.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Mt 5:7.]
There is no room in the Kingdom of Heaven for the servant whose master has mercifully forgiven a debt the servant could never possibly repay and who then goes out and mercilessly demands repayment from one who owes him a paltry sum.
There is no room in the Kingdom of Heaven for such hypocrisy.
And hypocrisy is part of what Jesus seems to have had in mind in the next beatitude.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Surely, to be pure in heart means to have an inner moral cleanness.
In fact, the word for “pure” here can be translated as “clean” and would have been used to describe the ritual of cleansing that was necessary for one to take part in many of the temple ceremonies during Jesus’ time.
And it makes sense that Jesus would expect us to be morally pure in order to serve Him. So, being morally clean is surely part of what He was talking about here.
But since we can see that these four beatitudes tend to focus on our relationships with one another, there’s probably something more going on here, and I think the key to understanding it is to be found in the blessing that Jesus pronounces for those who are pure in heart: They shall see God.
"No one has seen God in His pure essence without some type of filter. The body of Jesus was such a filter. Seeing God is a synonym for having intimate knowledge of and acquaintance with Him.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Mt 5:8.]
This is the kind of seeing that sees someone for who they really are — and, in turn, being seen for who WE really are.
There is no room for hypocrisy in this kind of seeing. And I think that’s the other part of what’s going on with this beatitude.
Blessed are those who are genuine in their dealings with one another. Blessed are those who are “transparent before God and men. Their very heart—including their thoughts and motives—is pure, unmixed with anything devious...” [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 49.]
They are free from hypocrisy and deceit.
So much of our lives is spent refining the masks we wear. We have one mask that we wear in front of our families, another that we wear at work, and a special one that we put on Sunday mornings before we head out to church.
We try so hard to keep the world from seeing our pain; we try so hard to keep the world from seeing our brokenness; we try so hard to put on a happy face.
How much better might things be if we were simply honest with one another?
“You know what? I’m doing pretty lousy right now. I’m struggling with my faith, and I could really use your prayers.” “I’m fine. Well, no, I’m not. What I am is hurting, because my cat died, and I could really use a hug.” “How am I? I’m glad you asked. I’m struggling with sin, and I could use an accountability partner, someone who will love me through this battle.”
This is what it looks like to bear one another’s burdens. This is how we have been called to live in this already/not yet kingdom, where we have also been called to make peace.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
We serve the risen Savior who IS peace. While we were still at war with His Father in our sinful rebellion, He came to offer peace through His own atoning sacrifice. He came to reconcile lost sinners to His gracious and loving Father.
And we who have been adopted as sons and daughters of God are likewise called to be peacemakers, makers of peace, both within the community and within the church.
I want to say here how pleased I am with the peacemaking that has been taking place within this church during the past couple of years.
I no longer see divisiveness and dispute around every corner. Instead, I see the body of Christ, committed to working together in love and harmony to display His Kingdom within the walls of this building and out in the community, and He is magnified in it all, and it is a beautiful thing.
“Instead of delighting in division, bitterness, strife, or some petty ‘divide-and-conquer’ mentality, disciples of Jesus delight to make peace wherever possible.” [D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 135.]
And part of making peace is proclaiming the gospel to others so they can find the peace with God that we have found through Jesus.
But the fact is that, despite what so many people claim, peace is not what most of the world seeks.
“The world enjoys its cherished hates and prejudices so much that the peacemaker is not always welcome. [And therefore,] opposition is a normal mark of being a disciple of Jesus, as normal as hungering for righteousness or being merciful.” [D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 135.]
That’s why the next beatitude is about persecution.
“Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Now, this is where the rubber meets the road. This is where we see just how different the kingdom of heaven is from the kingdom of this world.
The world says, “Blessed are those whom everybody likes.” But Jesus, in the parallel passage in the Gospel of Luke said:
“Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man.
In fact, he added, “Be glad in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven.”
Now, the key to the blessing here is in the reason for the persecution. There is no blessing for being persecuted for doing wrong. That’s called consequences.
The blessing here is for those who are persecuted “for the sake of righteousness,” those who are persecuted “for the sake of the Son of Man.”
“Righteous people, those whose conduct is right in God’s eyes, become targets of the unrighteous.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Mt 5:10.]
Jesus knew that His disciples would pay a high price for following Him. That’s why He shifted to the second-person pronoun, “you,” when he expanded upon this last beatitude in verses 11 and 12. He wanted them to personally understand the blessings they would receive because of their persecution.
Peter and Paul were executed by the Roman Emperor Nero, Paul by beheading and Peter crucified upside down. Andrew is said to have been crucified in Greece.
Christians in India believe that Thomas was killed by the spears of four soldiers there. Philip was arrested in North Africa after converting the wife of the Roman consul, who then had him put to death for his preaching.
Matthew was said to have been stabbed to death in Ethiopia. James, the son of Alpheus, was said to have been stoned and then clubbed to death.
James, the son of Zebedee was executed by King Herod. Simon the Zealot was said to have been killed in Persia after refusing to sacrifice to the sun god there. Tradition says that Matthias was burned to death in Syria.
Only the Apostle John is thought to have died a natural death, and he was exiled to the island of Patmos.
In the face of those stories and the stories of countless others through the centuries who faced death because of their witness for Christ, we should all be humbled.
The persecutions we face are minor in comparison. Would that we could face them with half the joy they demonstrated.
“Rejoice and be glad,” Jesus said. Not “gripe and complain.” Not “demonstrate and riot.” No, what He said was this: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great.
This introduction to the Sermon on the Mount begins with self-awareness, the awareness of our own spiritual poverty. And it ends in these four beatitudes that we’ve studied today with self-denial.
"God has actually designed us to find fulfillment and blessing when and only when we stop living for self—only when we stop hungering and thirsting for wealth, position, status, fame, or whatever else our world thinks matters most.” [Douglas Sean O’Donnell, Matthew: All Authority in Heaven and on Earth, ed. R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 115.]
We who have followed Jesus Christ in faith are still IN this world, but we are no longer OF this world. Our citizenship is in the Kingdom of Heaven, and our King is Jesus,
who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
The world says, “Look out for Number One.” But Jesus said:
Matthew 16:24 (NASB95)
“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
Do you want to find true fulfillment in this life? Jesus tells you how to do that in these eight verses. It will not be easy, and it will look nothing like the way the world tells you to find fulfillment.
But haven’t you learned by now that the things of this world are never really fulfilling? Don’t you long to experience true comfort, real satisfaction, genuine mercy, and enduring joy?
These things can be yours as followers of Christ. He has promised them, and He has told you here in these eight verses how you can have them.
Deny yourself, and take up your cross, and follow Him. That’s how you will considered a success in the Kingdom of Heaven.