Series: The Hands and Feet of Jesus
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02104
The Hands and Feet of Jesus
Matthew 5: 3-5
The Great Sermon by the Great King
I. Introduction
A. Opening Illustration
B. Review last week’s material
1. The meaning of “Blessed.”
a) A Spiritual Joy and Satisfaction that endures regardless of Circumstances or Conditions; that carries us through Pain, Sorrow, Heartache, Loss and Grief. – To be blessed is what men seek. The problem is that they seek it in the things of this world.... money, position, power, fame and material things
b) The fundamental question that everyone who reads the Sermon on the Mount is faced with is, who’s approval will you seek? Will you seek man’s approval, or God’s approval?
c) True blessedness is on a higher level than anything in the world, and it is to that level that the Sermon on the Mount takes us.
(1) Here is a completely new way of life based upon a completely new way of thinking.
(2) It is in fact based on a new way of being.
(3) The standard of righteousness, and therefore the standard of happiness, is the standard of selflessness – and a standard that is completely opposite to man’s fallen impulses and unregenerate nature.
2. It is important to remember that the Beatitudes are pronouncements, not probabilities.
a) Jesus did not say that if men have the qualities of humility, meekness and so on that they are more likely to be happy.
b) Nor is blessedness simply Jesus’ wish for His disciples.
c) I think also, you will see that they are progressive. Each leads to a logical leap to the next one.
II. Body
A. Blessed are the humble (poor in spirit)
1. What it means.
2. It’s place in the order
a) Jesus put it first because humility is the foundation of all other graces, a prerogative for salvation (cf. Mt. 18: 3-4).
b) Pride has no part in Christ’s kingdom and until a person begins to surrender his pride he will not enter the kingdom.
3. How to achieve the attitude of humility
a) How then do we achieve “poor in spirit” or humility?
(1) Almost, by definition it is not something we can achieve on our own power.
(2) It is not by putting ourselves down, we are already down, humility is simply realizing the truth.
b) Although genuine humility is produced by the Lord in our salvidic experience, it is also commanded of men.
(1) The first step to humility is to turn our eyes off of ourselves and on to God.
(2) Second, starve the flesh of what it desires. Don’t seek praise or man’s approval.
(3) Ask God for humility.
4. It’s result
a) Those who come to the King in this humility inherit His kingdom, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
b) When the Lord called Gideon to deliver Israel from the Midianites, Gideon replied, “O Lord, how shall I deliver Israel?” Behold, my family is the least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house” – to which God answered, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat Midian as one man” (Judges 6:15). When Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted,” he cried in despair, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips.” Then an attending angel touched the prophet’s mouth with a burning coal and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven (Isa. 6)
c) Those who come to the Lord with broken hearts do not leave with broken hearts! God wants us to recognize our poverty so He can make us rich. He wants us to recognize our lowliness so He can raise us up. “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord,” James wrote, “and He will lift you up. (Jms. 4:10)
d) In giving up there own kingdom, the poor in spirit inherit God’s.
B. Blessed are those who mourn
1. Perhaps this verse more than any other, shows the paradoxical nature of the beatitudes in that what they demand seems incongruous and upside down in the eyes of natural man.
a) In the routine of ordinary, day-by-day living, the idea seems absurd. The whole structure of most human living – whether by the primitive or sophisticated, the wealthy or the poor, the educated or the uneducated – is based on the seemingly incontrovertible principle that the way to happiness is having things go your own way.
(1) Pleasure brings happiness, money brings happiness, entertainment brings happiness, fame and praise bring happiness, self-expression brings happiness.
(2) On the negative side, avoiding pain, trouble, disappointment, frustration, hardships, and other problems brings happiness.
(3) Throughout history a basic axiom of the world has been that favorable things bring happiness, whereas unfavorable things bring unhappiness.
(4) The principle seems so self-evident that most people would not bother to debate it.
b) But Jesus said, “Happy are the sad.”
(1) He even went so far as to say, “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep” (Lk. 6:25) – the converse beatitude of Matt. 5:4.
(2) Jesus turned the world’s principles exactly upside down.
(3) He reversed the path to happiness.
c) To understand what Jesus meant, and did not mean, in this verse we will look at the meaning of mourning as it is used here, the result of mourning, the way to mourn as Jesus teaches, and the way to know if we are truly mourning.
2. The meaning of Mourning
a) Certain kinds of sorrow are common to all mankind, experienced by believer and unbeliever alike.
b) There are kinds of sorrow, legitimate sorrows that are common to all mankind and for which reasonable mourning is appropriate.
(1) To express these sorrows and to cry over them opens an escape valve that keeps our feelings from festering and poisoning our emotions and our whole life.
(2) It provides the way for healing, just as washing out a wound helps prevent infection.
(3) An Arab proverb says, “All sunshine makes a desert.”
(4) We often learn more and mature more from times of sorrow than from times when everything is going well.
(5) A familiar poem by Robert Browning Hanilton expresses the truth:
I walked a mile with Pleasure,
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she,
But, oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me. (Cited in William Barclay, The Gospel of Matt. 1:94)
c) The loss of a loved one can make us sorrow.
d) How do you explain death?
PEOPLE OFTEN WONDER WHAT IT’S LIKE TO DIE …..
-YEARS AGO, A WISE CHRISTIAN MOTHER EXPLAINED IT BEST …..
HER SON DEVELOPED A FATAL DISEASE. THE DISEASE PROGRESSED RAPIDLY. AT FIRST HE WAS UNABLE TO GO TO SCHOOL. THEN UNABLE TO GO OUTSIDE TO PLAY AND FINALLY CONFINED TO HIS BED. ONE DAY THE QUESTION HIS MOTHER DREADED MOST CAME. “MOMMY, WHAT’S IT LIKE TO DIE?” THOUGH SHE’D PREPARED HERSELF FOR THAT MOMENT, BUT SHE COULDN’T HANDLE IT WHEN IT CAME. SHE LEFT HE ROOM, AND THERE IN THE BATHROOM SHE PRAYED FOR STRENGTH AND WISDOM. WHEN SHE CAME BACK INTO THE ROOM SHE SAID, “HONEY, REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE AND YOU WOULD FALL ASLEEP IN THE CAR? THE NEXT MORNING WHEN YOU WOKE UP YOU WOULD BE IN YOUR OWN BED. DO YOU KNOW HOW YOU GOT THERE? YOUR FATHER CAME AND LIFTED YOU UP AND GENTLY CARRIED YOU TO YOUR OWN BED IN YOUR OWN ROOM. THAT IS WHAT IT’S LIKE TO DIE.”