Blessed Life

blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And again, remember,

repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Jesus has become to be the king of a new kind of kingdom. The first necessary requirement to be a kingdom is poverty. Blessed are the poor in spirit. If you go back to chapter five, you were with us next last week. Remember he went to the first disciples and said, follow me. And they left their livelihood the way they made money. And they follow Jesus, trusting him to provide there. The poor here isn't money and wealth. The poor here is poor in spirit. Something important. You could have a full bank account, but you could be spiritually bankrupt. Poor in spirit is also not the pride of self-pity, self-loathing, turning yourself and begrudging the goodness of God. It's not saying what God has given is worthless. No, it's a poor in spirit that sees a complete and absolute need and dependence upon God. It's a poor in spirit that recognizes when I look inside, there's There's not a good righteousness. There's nothing that would please God. I have nothing that I could speak of that would be right before God. It's important we realize that it's an emptiness. Spiritual bankruptcy doesn't mean we're worthless. We've been made in the image of God. Spiritual bankruptcy means we have nothing good to boast of regarding our own righteousness, our goodness. That's why it's important we go back and we consider Jesus' baptism. When he, a sinless man, comes to be baptized among sinners in order to fulfill all righteousness, he comes to provide all righteousness. Where we are empty, he is full. It is he alone that the father says,

this is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.

Jesus has a full spiritual account. He is perfectly righteous. We are bankrupt. So he comes to provide for us what we do not have. It's important, you do understand, to be human is not to err. To be human is to know God and to obey him. The most human thing you can do is to know God and seek to worship him. To be human is not to err. To sin is to err. God designed us to be righteous. We've been designed to be good. And what Jesus is coming to provide is renewing us in what God designed. Renewing us to a rightness and a worship and obedience that's good by first dying for our sin, giving us his righteousness, and then calling us into his righteousness. The kingdom is not for those who believe they come in because they're pleasing to God. It's not for those who think they have something to offer. It's also not for those who are just going to have loathing self-pity. The kingdom is for those who cry out to God. I need you, Jesus. I have nothing of my own. I have no righteousness, but Christ alone is the righteousness I need. You see, we need the king, the king who is righteous. He has come to give us himself. This is why the kingdom is ours, who would call out to him who are in absolute need. The second blessing, verse four.

Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

Mourning is a deep emotional response. Recognizing something is lost. I believe there's a way in which we weep with those who weep. And there's a way in which God always sees the hurt of his people. But I believe there's a way in which we should, we should mourn many things, but, but the specific here is tied to verse three. I believe we're mourning how empty we are. I believe we're supposed to have a response, a right response to what we've lost. The kingdoms for those who know they need a king and know they've lost everything. Here are the things we would mourn. We've lost innocence. We are now guilty because we have lived our lives in rebellion against God. We've lost wisdom. The fear of the Lord's beginning of wisdom, those who despise instruction, those who do not live in a way that honors him there. We've lost wisdom. We've, we mourn the loss of wisdom. We've, we've lost true worship. We're all idolaters. We, we worship all our own gods in all the wrong ways. We've lost purity. We're corrupt. God blesses us to see who he is. how empty we are, and to truly mourn and grieve all that we have lost in relation to him, in relation to ourselves. We had a right relationship with God, with each other, with this earth, and with ourselves, and now we're empty. We should truly grieve the state of humanity in Adam that is lost. Now, what's really fantastic is If blessed means happy, it's happier those who are sad. Happier those who recognize how bad this condition is because they'll be comforted. Sadness isn't the end result. Sadness leads us to the blessed state of God giving us all we need and all we've lost. Comforted means healing. Comforted means restoring. When we see how needy we are and we truly mourn that loss, we are comforted, we're restored. This is why the church should be a place of comfort and encouraging. I wanna warn us there's a way in which we're supposed to come and encourage each other that is instill courage. The goal isn't to be as sad as possible at all times, that doesn't make you more spiritual. The goal is to be the blessed people who realize what we've lost, how empty we are, how sad this is, and look up to Christ who comforts us so that we can comfort one another. The third blessing,

blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Now meek rhymes with weak, but you should not associate those two words together. The meekness of Christ that he has and what he speaks of, it's incredibly confident strength. It's tied to humility. It's viewing oneself rightly with sanity. It's not groveling self-pity. It's not promotion of arrogance. It's not self-assertive and it's not self-reliant. Meekness is recognizing oneself rightly in the eyes of God, fully needy, fully impoverished, but fully blessed. Meekness is translated as gentle elsewhere throughout scripture. It's not insisting on one's way. There's a way in which one has meekness. There's a strong, steady confidence of strength, and that allows you to be gentle, not outrageous. It's willing to enjoy whatever God has provided and to let loose whatever God has taken away. Now we can see Jesus as a model of meekness. He's meek in temptation. He could have turned those stones to bread. He was meek. He submitted to the Father's will as the new Adam to not use his strength, but to suffer. More specifically, the word meekness is used with Jesus in the donkey in the triumphal entry. He comes lowly. He comes with meekness. He comes with great strength to die. He's meek before Pilate. Pilate even recognizes, I have authority. Jesus says, no, you have no authority at all. My father has given you this authority. But he's meek, he's strong, standing in front of a governor and then others who mock him, beat him, and falsely accuse him. He was meek and gentle because he was strong. Jesus calls us into his kingdom to be citizens who are meek like he is. Meekness is not flaunting intelligence. It's not boasting of beauty. It's not imposing ourselves on others. It's not always fighting against every authority. It's also not self-loathing and self-pity. It's a strength found in God knowing who he has made us to be and recreated us to be so that we can stand in him. It's confidence in God. Now, meekness is interesting because it's so counterintuitive. A great American author, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote an essay called Self-Reliance. And you might not be a great fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and you might not be aware of his work, but you swim in his waters. He was one of the great influencers of who we have become as Americans. This essay, Self-Reliance, told us we should listen to our inner voice. Your intuition is truth, and it's God's voice, even in your own conscience, that's telling you who to be. Do not conform to others. That gets in the way of your individuality. And the quote,

nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principle.

Well, that's the opposite of meekness. That is self-confidence of the worst kind. And, and, and it's interesting how this idea precedes the essay precedes five years, the first known, uh, declaration about the manifest destiny that we're supposed to go take the rest of this land. And well, that just is interesting because if you look at it, bless her, the meek for they shall inherit the earth. The self assertive who's seeking to take things. That's not kingdom behavior. The meek, they will inherit the earth. Those who submit fully to God, those who submit fully to what he gives and what he prescribes and what he promises and what he expects, they will inherit the earth. And at some level, this is eschatological. There is a new heaven, a new earth, and it is those who are of the kingdom of Christ who will inherit it. This is important as we look at what Satan promised in the last series on the temptation. He promises immediate gratification over and over again. If we seek to take in our own self-assertion, we're denying our King. These three, poor, mourning, recognizing the full feeling of what's been lost, meekness. But before we move on, I wanna make sure we understand that this isn't a prescription to embrace melancholy. There's also a way in which we're growing in all three of these together, along with all the other beatitudes. There's a way in which poor is always the first principle because we don't have meekness unless we realize how impoverished we are. We don't have sanity until we see how we are in such need of God. We don't have the happiness unless we see what we've lost and what God gives in the kingdom. And that allows us to stand firm in who he is and what he's done for us. But there is a lacking in all of these. Poor, mourning, meek. Now for the verse six, the fourth one.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.

God promises to satisfy my hunger and thirst. The king promises to satisfy your appetites and your longings. To remind us of Psalm 37, four,

delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Oh, how many times this has been used? If you just love Jesus enough, he will make sure that that cute girl in homeroom will get your attention. Oh, if you just love Jesus enough, he'll give you that promotion or the financial well-being you really want. We need to be careful with this passage, just like we need to be careful with that Psalm 37, four, because in Romans, as we use scripture to interpret scripture, God giving people over to the desires of their heart was judgment. When we don't honor God or give Him thanks, when we seek to love worship of self and worship loving everything but God, there's a judgment that gives us the desires of our hearts. Here, after we've seen how empty we are, after we've mourned how empty we are, after we've come to a sanity of recognizing who we truly are, well, the hunger and thirst is for what's good. This is the prosperity gospel of God if you hunger and thirst for what he has promised to give you you'll get it It was not an amen there Let's try that again if you hunger and thirst for what God promises to give You will get it That could have been stronger There's a judgment when God gives us over the desires of our hearts that are against Him, what a blessing it is when we hunger and thirst, when our desires are right. It means we've seen the poverty, it means we've mourned, we've grieved, it means we've come to a full humility of meekness, of recognizing our need for Him and confidence in Him of who we are. And again, this takes us to that important word righteousness. Christ came to fulfill all righteousness. To hunger and thirst for righteousness is to hunger and thirst for Christ. Let's not separate those two. To hunger and thirst for righteousness is to hunger and thirst for Christ. Because He is our righteousness. He came to be the righteous King. He comes to give us Himself so that we would receive righteousness and therefore be His righteous people. He came to die for our sin because we are unrighteous, impoverished. He came to rise again to give us his righteousness to our account and so that we might grow up in him to be more righteous. All that we need impoverished, Jesus provides. We must hunger and thirst for righteousness, which means we're hungering and thirsting for Christ. If we seek to delight in God, he satisfies us. If we hunger for his true righteousness, he will provide it. Do we thirst for Christ? Do we recognize how much we need him? This teaching reminds me of Augustine and his confessions.

My heart was restless until it found rest in you.

Every Christian should recognize that it's true. Because we're all designed by God to delight in him, to find some ultimate purpose and meaning, to pursue something with all our being that we hope is satisfying. And the only thing that will truly be satisfying is God. And Christ renews us to that right relationship. It is a blessing to have a right hunger and thirst for righteousness. To know him and to enjoy him because he will truly satisfy you. A hunger and thirst for him who rules us well. It's a Christian, big significant question to talk about the rest of the day. What are you hungry for? I know it's too close to lunchtime, I'm not supposed to ask that question. But it's the question that's pressed in on us. If, if, if verse six is the, the solution to the poverty and the, the, the morning and the mean, is it, it's the directive need that says the solution to my poverty is the righteousness of God. I want a hunger and thirst. That emptiness leads me to Christ. What, what appetite controls your decisions? What, what, what pursuit are you seeking to find satisfaction? And is it working? That's an important question. Is it working? God's word is very practical. He promises it'll be satisfying. Is what you're pursuing satisfying? Is your ambition more friends, more money, more control, more influence, more knowledge, more freedom, more adrenaline, more erotica, more power, more control? What is it you're hungry for? Anything less than Christ is less than satisfying. He is the one who is righteous. This also means we are hungry and thirsty for holiness, to be holy as he is holy. It can't mean we just want to know Jesus who is righteous and not seek to be righteous in him. We are designed to pursue life with purpose. This is your purpose, to know God and make him known. Later in the sermon, we'll see the word righteousness again. Chapter six, verse 33.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all other things are given to you.

Again, there's a primary role of knowing and hungering and seeking God and his righteousness. We need to pursue him. desire to be filled and satisfied with the God who is righteous and gives generously. That generously is important. Your king is not stingy. His rule is good and kind and full. You see, our default setting having been born in Adam is we're We're designed by God to pursue him, to know him with an incredible, uh, abilities, but, but, but the factory settings because of Adam are broken. What Jesus come to do is a new Adam is to, to reset, to, to, to, to establish a new, who we are to remove the corruption, to remove the unrighteousness and to, to give us all that God intended us to be. come to put his back on his way, with his life, according to his truth. You remember what happened in the garden, Genesis 3? This Wednesday night, we'll be thinking about it again. Adam and Eve were blessed in every way. Not empty in any way, but they were blessed in every way. And then they were tempted to believe they could have something better than God. They were tempted to believe they could see something better than God. And the outcome of not trusting God and doing it their own way is they lost everything. Poverty, poor spirit. They lost the sight of God, believing they could see something better. They lost the presence of God, believing they could enjoy something better. Christ has come to restore us to be with God and to see God. Just a little teaser for next week.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Adam and Eve had their appetite turned away because they see the tree could produce fruit that looked good. The fruit looked good to eat, and so they decided to take what God had prohibited, and therefore they became unrighteousness. And so we see Jesus' preaching is summarized simply as repent. Stop doing it your way. Submit to the king. Stop doing it according to sin.

Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Again, the summary statement of what the kingdom is. Is God's people rightly responding to His good rule? Let's just establish this. His rule is good. What He expects of us here is good. The beginning point for you, He died on the cross to give you his good rule that starts with him declaring, I forgive you. He takes the wrath of God from you. That's the first step in learning how his rule is good. And then we learn that recognizing how much we need him and how much we've lost and how much we should be meek and humble before him and how much we should hunger for him. Well, the more we see how good he is, the more we're going to rightly hunger for his righteousness. The question for us today, how much do you see your need for him? And what are you hungry for? Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you did not leave us alone in the misery we have chosen to be outside of your presence, to be in the darkness of our own lives, to head towards your own destruction, to lie about our poverty or to boast in it. Lord, may we truly see our need for you. What a blessing it is when you show your people how much we need you and how much we can depend upon you. Lord, may we Maybe mourn what we've lost so that we can experience the full comfort of how Christ restores us. Or may we have meekness, a gentleness that doesn't insist on its own way, but trust you and what you've commanded. And Lord, bless us to hunger and thirst for your righteousness, and may we rejoice that you satisfy. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.