Persecution: A Badge of Honor--Sermon on the Mount Series

            In the early 1900’s, a man organizing an exploratory journey to the South Pole is said to have placed an ad in a newspaper that read like this: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness. Constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.” There’s nothing quite like the truth, huh? I suppose that captain could always tell his crew, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

            Throughout the Gospels, we see a similar honesty from Jesus concerning the troubles that his followers could expect to suffer because of their testimony for him. With apologies to Joel Osteen, if Jesus had been a published author, he certainly would not have entitled his book, “Your Best Life Now.” Jesus consistently told his closest followers that following him would result in suffering in the here-and-now. Consider just a few examples:

·         Matthew 16:24-25—“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

·         Matthew 24:9—“…they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.”

·         John 15:20—“Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

Of all the statements Jesus ever made, perhaps none have been proven true with more consistency than statements like these about persecution. The history of Christianity has been written in the blood of men and women who have faced hatred simply because they have faithfully followed Jesus Christ. Even today, one organization estimates that 100 million Christians around the world are being persecuted for their faith—and that number doesn’t even include people like you and me, who may not face violence because of our faith, but may still face insults and other forms of rejection.

But predictions about persecution were not Jesus’ only words on this subject. In fact, we will see in the Beatitudes today that Jesus pronounces a blessing on those who face persecution for him, and we’ll find out why as we take a closer look at Matthew 5:10-12 [READ Matthew 5:10-12]. Let’s break down these verses by talking through three questions that will help us get to the heart of the matter.

WHY IS THE PERSECUTION MENTIONED HERE TAKING PLACE?

            We should note that Jesus is not talking in these verses about suffering we may face from a health problem or from world events like a tornado, a drought, or a downturn in the economy. I do think we will be blessed if we maintain a good testimony in those events, but that simply is not what Jesus is talking about at this time. He is thinking specifically about moments in which we become a target for the hatred of others because we are living by his standards and proclaiming his message.

            It is easy to think that we in the United States really don’t face persecution for our faith, and I will admit that the rejection we face does seem like nothing compared to Christians in other parts of the world who face imprisonment or death because of their faith. But notice that in v. 11, Jesus mentions examples of persecution like insults, slander, and gossip. Those are precisely the forms of persecution that we are most likely to face in our lives today, so I think these verses are more directly applicable to us than we might think.

            We should also note that Jesus would not be talking about times where we might face hostility for representing him in a way that’s just downright obnoxious! Sometimes we find ourselves in heated conversations about religion where we lose our cool or act with arrogance and a lack of love. We may be insulted by others in those moments, but that’s not really persecution—that’s just a case of people responding with the same attitude that we displayed through our tone of voice or choice of words or our actions.

So, I am a target of persecution only if someone makes me the target of their hatred because they see the character of Christ in me.

HOW SHOULD WE RESPOND TO PERSECUTION?

            It is never a pleasant experience to be the target of someone’s anger for any reason, so how should we respond when we find ourselves being persecuted for our faith? The Lord’s answer is very clear—“rejoice and be glad!” That sounds strange enough, but wait ‘til you get a load of this—the Greek verb translated “be glad” really encourages expressions of gladness. One Greek dictionary says it conveys gladness that often involves verbal expression and appropriate body movement. In other words, we’re talking about doing a touchdown dance!

Now why in the world would we respond this way to something as unpleasant as persecution?

WHY SHOULD WE RESPOND THIS WAY?

1. We have a great reward to look forward to

            This is why we can have such joy and gladness during persecution despite the pain of the moment. All persecution hurts, whether you face insults, slander, abuse, or even death, but Jesus is not calling us to some sadistic love of pain or even to a denial of the pain of the moment. He is simply calling us to change our perspective from the present to the future; to lift our eyes from the suffering of the moment to the satisfaction that will be ours down the road. Enduring persecution in a God-honoring way today will produce benefits for us in heaven.

            We have already talked about this concept of rewards in some of the earlier Beatitudes. Now sometimes it sounds “unspiritual”—almost selfish—to think about obeying God with the motive of receiving a reward, but the Bible actually leads us to the opposite conclusion. Hebrews 11 says that Moses made the choice to stand up for his people “because he was looking to the reward (Heb 11:26).” The Apostle Paul wrote that he presses on toward a deeper knowledge of Christ “for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil 3:14).” In the very next verse he wrote, “Let those of us who are mature think this way!”

            So its actually a sign of maturity to be motivated by the rewards that God promises. And why is that? Because it reveals that we believe the promises of God! So we can celebrate when we face persecution because the experience produces a reward for us which we will claim when we one day see the Lord.

We can also respond to persecution with joy because…

2. We are in great company

            Jesus reminded His audience in Matthew 5:12 that the Old Testament prophets faced persecution for speaking up for God. Those men were godly men, faithful servants, and it is an honor to be placed in the same category as them even if we’re placed there because we face similar persecution.

            Hebrews 11:32-38 contains a description of the accomplishments and the sufferings of the prophets. Why don’t you look at that passage with me? [READ Heb 11:32-38]. I think the parenthetical statement of v. 38 says it best—these were men of whom the world was not worthy. Now in some ways, we’d rather not be in a group like that because of what they had to suffer. That’s okay on one level because we’re never told to seek for persecution. But if it comes to us, we find ourselves in the company of people of whom the Bible says the world was not worthy.

            This is why we can have such great joy and gladness even in the midst of persecution. We can look to the past and see ourselves stepping into the company of great men, and we can look to the future and see the reward from God that awaits us. Its really all about a change of perspective, isn’t it?

            John Chrysostom provides us with a great example of the perspective that we should have during persecution. Chrysostom was a pastor in Constantinople in the late 300’s AD, and his faithful gospel preaching got him into trouble with the Roman Emperor. At one point, he was called before the Emperor because he had denounced the Emperor’s wife, and he was threatened with banishment if he did not recant his statements:

            “Sire,” he replied, “you cannot banish me, for the world is my Father’s house.”

            “Then I will slay you!”

            “No, you cannot, for my life is hidden with Christ in God.”

            “Then your treasures will be confiscated!”

            “Sire, that cannot be, either. My treasures are in heaven, where no one can break through and steal.”

            “Then I will drive you from men and you will have no friends left!”

            “You cannot do that either, for I have a friend in heaven who has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’”

What a difference our perspective can make!

            Allow me to close our time now with a couple of thoughts on the application of these verses to our lives. There is some irony in the fact that this statement “blessed are those who are persecuted” comes directly after the statement “blessed are the peacemakers.” We might think that if we’re trying to live at peace with others, we won’t face persecution. If only that were true! But this statement about persecution reminds us of the tremendous importance of living at peace with each other in the church.

            We’re not all that surprised when we face insults and rejection from people outside of church. In fact, the Apostle Paul told his young assistant, Timothy, “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Tim. 3:12).” We’re going to face it in some form, but when we face insults and rejection from people inside our own church, the pain can be almost unbearable. After all, where else can we turn to find love and acceptance? If we do not have peace with each other, our great temptation then is to make our peace with the world. It is very tempting at that point to stop living an obedient Christian life just to feel acceptance from someone, even if it comes from people who do not hold Christian values.

            Our church should be like an oasis from the rejection that we face in the world. That is why we must be peacemakers, as Jesus said. On so many levels, we simply cannot afford to fight with each other.

            Finally, as we take some measure of comfort in the fact that we rarely face the most severe forms of persecution in our country, let us never forget that many of our brothers and sisters around the world cannot say the same. Many Christians at this moment face imprisonment, physical abuse, and even death because of their faith. In Hebrews 13:3, we are commanded to remember our brothers and sisters: “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” There are a number of good organizations today that work to help us remember the plight of our persecuted brothers and sisters. I would recommend to you The Voice of the Martyrs—you can find out more about their work at www.persecution.com. Let us remember to pray for our Christian family.

A Chip Off the Old Block--Sermon on the Mount Series

            There was once a man who attempted to sail all the way around the world by himself. He didn’t make it very far before a storm in the Pacific Ocean destroyed his boat and washed him ashore on a deserted island. A massive search-and-rescue effort was launched, but the man wasn’t found until five years later when a low-flying plane spotted his campfire. The plane radioed the location back to a US Naval Base, who sent a boat out to rescue the man.

            The man was ecstatic when he saw the ship coming to the island. He ran out to the beach and started jumping up and down, and when the sailors stepped foot on the island he just started hugging all of them. They were about to take him out to the ship when the man said, “Could I take a few minutes to show you around at what I built during the last five years?” The sailors figured it couldn’t hurt, so the man took them over to an impressive cabin that he had made for himself. Then he said, “Here’s a garden that I planted, and I even diverted a stream that flows down from the mountain so I could irrigate my crops. And here’s a canoe that hollowed out from a log so I could paddle out into the ocean and go fishing. But let me show you the best thing of all!”

            So he took the sailors up to the highest point on the island, and there they saw a small hut with a cross on it. The man said, “Here is my church! This is where I come to worship God. I built it on the highest point of the island because I feel so close to God up here.” As the man was speaking, the sailors noticed another small hut with a cross on it about 50 yards away, so they said, “What’s that over there?” The man looked a little annoyed and said, “Oh, that place? That’s the church I used to attend.”

            Sometimes that joke seems all too real—that if a Christian were by himself on a deserted island, he would still find a way to have a church split! We are not universally known for our ability to get along, which is very sad on so many levels—especially in light of the next Beatitude that we’ll be discussing today. In Matthew 5:9, Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” As we study this Beatitude today, we’ll see just how attractive this idea of being a “peacemaker” really is, and it should inspire us to have that kind of reputation in our own lives and in our church.

“BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS…”

            This phrase presents us with a clear example of how easily ideas can sometimes get lost in translation. Jesus was quite possibly speaking these words in Aramaic, which was a dialect of Old Testament Hebrew, Matthew then recorded them in Greek, and this morning we are reading them in English. Our English word “peace” doesn’t capture everything about the concept of peace of Jesus and his fellow Jews would have had in mind.

            We basically define peace as the absence of something—the absence of war or the absence of fighting. Its good to be in that kind of state of peace, but the Jewish people would have said that we have a pretty wimpy idea of peace. After all, by our definition, a nation like Haiti has enjoyed peace for a long time, but obviously they still haven’t had very pleasant conditions in their country. The United States was technically at peace with the Soviet Union during the Cold War because we never issued a declaration of war, but no one would say that our nations had a good relationship.

            Instead of defining peace as the absence of something, the Jewish people defined it as the presence of something. To them, peace was really the presence of all good things. The Hebrew word for this idea was shalom, and I don’t think we have any single word in English that’s just like it.

            When the Jewish people spoke of shalom, they probably would have pictured two things—the Garden of Eden and the kingdom of the Messiah. In the Garden of Eden, there wasn’t merely the absence of war, there was the presence of all good things. Adam and Eve enjoyed perfect relationships with God, each other, and the animals all around them. They had perfect health and perfect strength; they were surrounded by natural beauty that had no trace of death or decay. The ground was fertile and cooperative for growing good things.

            The Jewish people also looked forward to shalom in the kingdom of the Messiah. Isaiah 9:6 called the Messiah “the Prince of shalom,” and the prophecies about his kingdom describe not merely the absence of war (although that’s included as well), they describe an almost complete return to Edenic conditions—long life, good health, sincere worship of God, godly behavior, peace between men and animals, and fertile, productive ground.

            So when we read this Beatitude, we should think of a “peacemaker” as someone who works toward shalom in the lives of others—someone who not only removes a bad thing like hostility but actually replaces it with good things in the lives of others. When we think in these terms, we start to see how woefully inadequate our concept of peace really is compared to the concept we find in Scripture. This is never more obvious than when we have a fight or a disagreement or a misunderstanding with someone else. Our concept of peace tells us that as long as we are not actively hostile to someone else, then we have fulfilled the biblical commands. In other words, as long as I’m not doing bad things to you, then I’ve forgiven you and I’m living at peace with you.

            But then Scripture comes along and says, “Wait a minute! Don’t stop there! That’s the first step, but now how are you seeking to do good for that person?” That’s a much different way of thinking than our normal concept of living at peace with each other.

            I’m going to hit very close to home for just a moment. I think in a small town like ours, we are very good at maintaining this appearance of “peace” where we’re not actually doing bad things to each other because we know that’s wrong, but under the surface we’re not quite getting along as well as we let on. In larger towns and cities, when people have fights or disagreements they normally just end up avoiding each other. If two people in a church butt heads, one of them normally just ends up leaving. If you’ve lived in a larger town, you know what I’m talking about—there’s practically an invisible conveyor belt between churches that just takes people from one church to the next. People just sign their kids up for a different baseball team, or they join a different health club. They just avoid each other.

            Well around here, we don’t really have that option so much. You’d basically have to move away if you wanted to avoid someone completely, so in some ways I’m tempted to think that we’ve perfected the skill of putting up a good front. We mumble “hello” to each other and then we pat ourselves on the back for the great thing we’ve done, when all we’ve really done is the bare minimum that we could do to truly have healthy relationships with each other.

            I’m not going to lie—living at peace with each other is one of the hardest things that God calls us to do. But if we’re going to hit the bull’s eye on this one, the first thing we have to do is make sure we’re aiming at the right target! Peacemakers are those who work to see good things come about in the lives of others. Jesus pronounces a blessing on such people because, as he says, “they shall be called sons of God.”

“…FOR THEY SHALL BE CALLED SONS OF GOD.”

            In Jewish culture, calling someone a “son of” something was simply a way to describe what kind of character they were displaying. For example, Jesus called the Apostles James and John the “sons of thunder,” probably because of an incident when they wanted to call down fire from heaven on a village of Samaritans. Judas was called the “son of perdition,” which means utter loss or ruin.” In Acts 4, the apostles gave a man named Joseph the nickname “Barnabas,” which means “son of encouragement.”

            So to put it simply, I think Jesus was saying that peacemakers are blessed because they display the same character as God. Its like saying that peacemakers are “a chip off the old block.” After all, God has set an example of doing good things even to those who are hostile to him. Notice what Jesus says just a short while later in this sermon in Matthew 5:43-45 [READ 5:43-45]. When Jesus says, “love your enemies…so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven,” He reveals that the idea of showing love is synonymous with the idea of being a peacemaker. That connection shows us that being a peacemaker is central to our mission as Christians.

            In John 13:35, Jesus told us as plain as day how other people would know that we are his “disciples”—a word that means “student.” How will people know that we are students of Jesus, that we are learning His ways? Here’s what he said: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:35).” When people see us loving each other, then they will know that we are students of Jesus because they will see that we have learned his way of life.

            On the night before Jesus died, he prayed a very moving prayer that’s recorded in John 17—why don’t you turn there with me? In that prayer, people just like you and me came to his mind at one point, and what do you suppose his prayer request was for us? Let’s read it, beginning in v. 20. The Lord had been praying for the apostles, and now in v. 20 he says, “I do not ask for these only (meaning the apostles), but also for those who will believe in me through their word”—that’s you and me and all the other people who have been saved since Jesus returned to Heaven. What was his request for us? “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us.”

            But why? What would be the result of this unity? “So that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Why is it that some people refuse to believe that Jesus came from Heaven? Could it be because they see nothing heavenly among the people who call themselves His students? Let’s go on to v. 22: “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

            Do you know why some people don’t believe there’s a loving God in Heaven? Its not because they see tornados or earthquakes or because they get cancer or because they lose a child. Its because they see Christian people who can’t get along, and then they hear us say, “We’re God’s children!” If you see grown-up siblings who can’t get along, does it lead you to think that their parents must be kind, gracious, and loving? No, you’re led to think just the opposite.

            My friends, we do unimaginable damage to our proclamation of the Gospel if we cannot live at peace with one another. What does it do to our testimony if people see us fighting and then hear us say, “You know, you can have peace with God, too, just like we do?” Living as peacemakers—according to a biblical standard of peace—is absolutely essential to Christ’s mission for us to make disciples of all the nations.

            I’ve mentioned over the last few weeks that there are a lot of similar themes in the Sermon on the Mount and in the book of James (that James was actually the Lord’s brother). In James 4, he tells us exactly why it is so hard for people to get along with each other [READ James 4:1-2; when you read “murder,” remember that Jesus said harboring anger in your heart is just as bad as murder].

            It all really comes down to selfishness. It starts with the fact that my desires are at war within me; my sinful desires are battling in my heart for supremacy, and if I indulge them, before long I’ll be battling you for supremacy. My sinful desires put me in that mindset where I want what I want, when I want it, and from exactly the people from whom I feel I deserve it. When I allow that mindset to reign in my heart, its like a conquering general—always looking for new lands to conquer.

            So how can we become peacemakers, so that we can have the blessing of living like a chip off the old block? I think we’ve taken an important step today by realizing that we often assess ourselves by the wrong standard. We’ll never hit the bull’s eye if we aim at the wrong target! We need to repent of patting ourselves on the back simply because we’re not actively doing harm to others. As we learned last week when we talked about purity of heart, our hearts will not be pure as long as we assess ourselves by the wrong standards, because we will ignore the dirt that needs to be cleaned up.

            The next step is fairly obvious—we need to actively do good to others. We need to pray that God will bless them with every good thing in their lives, and do what we can to make that happen as God gives us opportunity.

            May we be a community that presents a convincing case to the world through our unity that God is love because they see the family resemblance in us, his children.

Cleaning up the 56/100ths--Sermon on the Mount Series

            My father spent all of his working years as a general maintenance man at the Proctor and Gamble manufacturing plant in Kansas City. Proctor and Gamble produces a very diverse range of products, but they’re probably best known for making soap. In fact, after they started to produce radio and then television shows to market their products, those shows became known as “soap operas” because they were sponsored by Proctor and Gamble.

            The company’s most famous brand of soap is Ivory, and for years their advertising focused on the claim that Ivory Soap is “99 and 44/100ths percent pure.” I remember seeing an ad about that claim on a Christmas gift box from the company that we had around our house for years. I guess that’s a pretty high standard for purity, but after I learned about fractions, I remember wondering what was in that remaining 56/100ths! After all, rat poison is basically a bunch of harmless ingredients—with just a tiny portion of stuff that’s deadly!

            Obviously, that ad campaign was meant to emphasize the purity of the soap and just how desirable that level of purity should be. In the Beatitude we’ll be discussing today, Jesus also praises purity, but of a very different sort—the kind of purity that no bar of soap can provide. In Matthew 5:8, Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” This statement foreshadows many of the ideas that the Lord will discuss in this sermon. We’ll see some of those connections as we take a closer look at this verse.

“BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART…”

            The word “pure” means to be unmixed, unalloyed—free from any contaminant that may pollute a product or lower its value. Our English word “pure” lines up very well with the Greek word that lies behind this translation. Researchers have found that word in documents where it’s used to refer to wine that has not been diluted with water, corn that has been sifted and separated from all of the chaff, and an army that has been purged of all cowardly soldiers.

            So to paraphrase, we could say that Jesus is praising a heart that is unmixed, undiluted, and uncontaminated. But unmixed with what, exactly? I think the answer becomes clear in the rest of Jesus’ sermon, so let’s draw on those words for clarification.

A PURE HEART IS FREE OF…

1. Improper standards

            Here I’m speaking of standards that judge obedience to God only by external behavior. Jesus speaks extensively in this sermon about the proper way to gauge our obedience to God. We cannot measure our obedience simply by looking at our external behavior—we must also assess the attitudes of our heart. For example, Jesus says that God’s command against murder is violated if we simply harbor anger and hatred against someone in our heart. We don’t even have to commit the physical act of murder in order to violate the command; the attitude of the heart is enough to make us guilty.

            So a pure heart belongs to a person who assesses not only his external behavior, but the attitudes of his heart as well. This person’s heart is pure because it is free of hypocrisy; this man doesn’t pat himself on the back for merely conforming to external standards while his heart remains rotten and filthy.

            This kind of attitude is in direct contrast to the attitude of the Pharisees, which is why Jesus so often butted heads with them in the Gospels. On numerous occasions, Jesus challenged them with various statements like this: “You are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness (Matt 23:27).” The Pharisees had created all kinds of standards to judge whether they were following the Law that God had revealed through Moses, but their standards could only assess external behavior—they couldn’t judge the heart. Nevertheless, they confidently used their standards to proclaim themselves righteous in the sight of God, which is like measuring something with a 12-inch ruler and then confidently proclaiming that its 20 feet long!

            The pure in heart remember that they must assess their heart as well. Thus, they seek to root out hypocrisy so that their behavior is a true reflection on what’s in their heart.

2. Improper motives

            In chapter six in particular, Jesus warns us about doing things simply to receive acknowledgement and praise from other people. If that is our motivation, then according to Jesus, when we receive that praise, we have received all the reward we will ever get for that action—even if it was a religious activity like praying!

            The person who is pure in heart seeks to keep his motives undiluted by such self-serving goals. Rather, his motive is to love God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love his neighbor the way he loves himself.

3. Improper masters

            Later on in this sermon, we will encounter the famous statement, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other (Matt 6:24).” Perhaps you’ve worked in a job before where the people above you weren’t on the same page. That’s not uncommon in companies where you have a corporate headquarters somewhere with a lot of local branches scattered around. Sometimes policies are handed down by the corporate office that the branch manager doesn’t want to keep, so now what do you do as an employee? Two people are asking you to do different things, and you can’t please them both!

            That’s the kind of situation that Jesus is describing. The pure in heart take their marching orders from Jesus. They don’t follow the commands of anyone else, so they don’t have divided loyalties. Often we’re tempted to carry out the wishes of our sin nature, or we’re tempted to carry out someone else’s desires because we want to impress them. But the person who is pure in heart says, “I have one master, and I only take orders from him!”

So this is a sketch of the person who is pure in heart. He or she is free of improper standards, improper motives, and improper masters. Jesus pronounced a blessing on this person by saying...

“…FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD.”

            This statement must have been jarring for those Jewish people who were listening to Jesus. In fact, “seeing God” may not have sounded like a blessing at all! Throughout the Old Testament, people who saw visions of God came to one unanimous conclusion—“I’m toast!” Both Isaiah and Ezekiel were terrified when they first saw their visions of the Lord. It wasn’t until the Lord calmed their fears that they had any measure of comfort at all.

            Perhaps the story of Moses would have quickly come to mind for these people. In Exodus 33, Moses asked the Lord, “Please show me your glory.” God told him that he would hide him in a cave and pass by that place, but Moses would only see him after his glory had passed by, because he said no one can see my face and live (Ex 33:18-23).

            So it must have been an astonishing thing for these people to hear that the pure in heart would see God—and that it would actually be a blessing! This statement was a clear declaration from Jesus that he was introducing something that was superior to what had come through Moses. The Lord had given his commands for the children of Israel to Moses, and as a message from God, those commands were a good thing, but as the Apostle Peter said in Acts 15, those commands became a heavy burden that the people could not bear because their sin nature prevented them from living up to those standards. But now, Jesus was proclaiming something new which would break down the walls that separated sinful mankind from their holy God.

            So what did Jesus mean when he said that the pure in heart would “see God?” I think first and foremost, he meant that they would come to recognize God in Jesus, and would thus learn about what God is like in greater depth. The pure in heart would come to recognize that they were already seeing God right in front of them! This is why most of the Pharisees never came to understand that Jesus was God, because they did not have this purity of heart. As I mentioned earlier, they had their own standards which allowed them to declare themselves acceptable to God, so when Jesus told them they did not, in fact, measure up to God’s standards, they proclaimed that he was a deceiver. As Jesus continues in this sermon, it would have become more and more apparent to the people that if they wanted to see God, they could not follow the path of the Pharisees. Instead, if they would follow Jesus, they would come to understand that God was right there in their midst!

            They would also come to have a greater understanding of what God is like. As Jesus would later say to the Apostle Philip, “He who has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9).” Those who come to understand the truth about Jesus, understand the truth about God. In that statement to Philip, Jesus used the word “see” in the sense of understanding something. We sometimes use the word “see” in the same way. If I ask you the question, “Do you see what I’m saying?” I’m not asking if you see one of those cartoon word bubbles beside my face with words in it! I’m asking if you understand my point.

            I think this idea of greater understanding is what Jesus meant to emphasize in this Beatitude. So if I were to paraphrase Matthew 5:8, I would say it like this: “Blessed are those with a whole-hearted devotion to God, for they shall come to see him as he is.” This “seeing” involves a deeper understanding of God today, and it will be a literal reality for us one day, as Revelation 22:4 says, “we will see his face.” Do you remember? That was the very thing that Moses was told he could not do—see God’s face. But when we are living with God in the New Heaven and New Earth, all barriers will be removed, and we will see God’s glory in the person of Jesus Christ.

            Long after the Apostle Paul had been converted, after he had even seen visions of God and followed him in obedience for many years, Paul stated that his primary goal was still “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death (Philippians 3:10).” Each one of us still has the goal before us of knowing God in a deeper way.

            But remember—that greater understanding is the result of a whole-hearted devotion to God. The commitment to God comes first, and only then does the greater understanding come. That order is very important to remember. As the old saying says, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating!” If God says, “This is the proper way for you to live,” we won’t fully understand why until we choose to live that way! This is just another way of saying that we must follow God by faith. We must choose to believe that his ways are true before we will gain a greater understanding of them.

            You can think of it like an extreme sport. How do you really come to understand what skydiving is like? By stepping out of the plane! You can read all about it and listen to other people talk about it, but you won’t really understand what its like until you take the plunge—and by then you’re fully committed, right? Growing in your knowledge of God works the same way. As long as you try to serve two masters, as long as you judge yourself by standards that are not God’s standards, as long as you have mixed motives, you will not grow in your knowledge of the Lord.

            There’s a verse of the old hymn “Trust and Obey” that puts it well. This verse isn’t as well-known as the others, but it deserves to be! It goes like this:

But we never can prove

The delights of His love

Until all on the altar we lay

For the favor He shows

And the joy He bestows

Are for them who will trust and obey.

"What Goes Around, Comes Around"--Sermon on the Mount Series

            Some people may think the word “Coolidge” is a new slang term, but if you’ve reviewed your presidential history lately, you’ll remember that Calvin Coolidge was our 30^th President (he served during most of the 1920’s). A story is told of how Coolidge was burglarized one night while he was staying in a hotel. He was sound asleep, but was awoken by the sound of a man going through his belongings. He was understandably startled, but he told the man he didn’t want any trouble and simply asked him not to take the chain on his pocket watch because it was special to him.

            Coolidge then noticed that the man was rather young and actually started to ask him about his life. The robber told him that he was a college student on a trip and had simply run out of money, so he was stealing to pay for his hotel bill and a ticket back to campus. The President then proceeded to give the man the money he needed and told him to consider it a loan. He also told the man he had better leave the way he came in so as to avoid the Secret Service!¹ (I hope they’re a little better at their job today!)

            It is easy to admire a man in a position of power who nevertheless chooses to show compassion to others. It is said that power corrupts, and far too often we have seen that statement proven true. But I think that’s why we admire people who can hold power in one hand, yet still extend compassion with the other.

            That is the idea of showing mercy, and mercy is the quality that Jesus blesses in the next Beatitude—“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy (Matt 5:7).” Let’s talk about the message of this verse, and then we’ll focus on some specific situations in which we may have the opportunity to show mercy.

“BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL…”

            An act of mercy is very similar to an act of compassion—there is just one important difference. An act of compassion is an act of kindness that you perform for someone else because you have seen them in a position of need and you’ve been moved to help alleviate that need. Compassion can be shown by anyone to anyone else—that’s actually what makes it different from mercy.

            Mercy is an act of compassion that is done by someone in authority to a person who is under their authority. Mercy and compassion are identical in many ways, the only difference is in the relationship between the two people who are involved. Its hard enough to show compassion to others because we all struggle with selfishness, but when an authority structure is introduced into a relationship, the degree of difficulty is raised to a whole new level.

            If you have siblings, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It was hard enough to get along with each other under normal circumstances, but what happened when your parents went out for a while and left one of you in charge? All kinds of havoc broke loose! When there’s an authority structure in a relationship, it introduces all kinds of new temptations. Now there is the temptation to abuse your authority, or to rebel against the person in authority over you. There may be new temptations toward pride or resentment.

            That’s why we admire people who show mercy. They demonstrate that they have not allowed power to warp their character, but they are still capable of extending compassion to others. And of course, mercy is something that God has extended to us, so when we show mercy, we are imitating God—which is something that Scripture repeatedly calls us to do.

Now, many of us may think that we’re not in any position of power over others, but in just a moment I’m going to mention some situations that you may not have considered. For now, let’s talk about the second half of this verse.

“…FOR THEY SHALL RECEIVE MERCY.”

            It seems here that it literally goes without saying that the merciful shall receive mercy from God. There is no guarantee that you will be shown mercy by other people simply because you have shown mercy yourself, so it seems clear that Jesus means the merciful shall receive mercy from God. This becomes even more apparent when we encounter two similar statements later on in the Sermon on the Mount:

·         Matthew 6:14-15—“If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

·         Matthew 7:1-2—“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”

All of these statements teach us that God will deal with us in the same way that we deal with other people.

            Now this observation brings up a question that we need to address—is Jesus saying that showing mercy is a requirement for getting into Heaven? Many people have that question when they read this verse, and I think it reveals to us how important it is to incorporate the doctrine of rewards for Christians into our thinking. If we fail to incorporate the doctrine of rewards into our thinking, we end up tying everything that sounds good in the Bible with going to Heaven and everything that sounds bad with going to Hell. With that mindset, we end up reading Matthew 5:7 like this—“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall go to Heaven.” But that creates all kinds of confusion for us because we think, “I thought going to Heaven was a gift and we don’t receive it through our works, but this verse seems to say that I have to show mercy to get into Heaven—and that sounds like works!”

            What we must understand from Scripture is that within God’s grand plan called “salvation,” there is a gift and a reward (or perhaps I should say a gift then an offer of reward). If we fail to distinguish between those things, we will have no end of confusion when we try to understand Scripture. When we encounter this confusion, we need to take a step back and say, “Is this referring to the gift or the reward?”

            I think Matthew 5:7 is most definitely referring to the reward. Let me point you to a passage of Scripture that offers an important commentary on this verse. Turn with me to James 2:12-13. Here James is writing to people whom he has repeatedly called “brothers,” and in 2:1 he refers to their faith in “our” Lord Jesus Christ. Then in 2:12-13, he writes about the judgment that we as Christians will face in the light of God’s Word for our rewards. He states [READ James 2:12-13]. The first part of v. 13 expresses the same basic idea as Matthew 5:7, just from a negative perspective instead of a positive one, but the last part of the verse—mercy triumphs over judgment—expresses the same thought as our Beatitude.

            That statement—mercy triumphs over judgment—should give us tremendous comfort. When I think about having my life evaluated by Jesus, I don’t get very optimistic about a good outcome. When Scripture tells me that I will give an answer for every word that I have spoken and every deed that I have done, and when James in chapter 3 says that teachers of the Word will receive a stricter judgment, I have little hope to hear “well done, good and faithful servant.”

            But just as God’s grace and mercy were poured out when He declared me righteous and adopted me into His family, there will be grace and mercy available on that day, and apparently I will receive mercy from Jesus to the degree that I have shown mercy to others. Mercy triumphs over judgment! We do have hope for a good evaluation; we do have the opportunity to have a positive assessment because we are dealing with a merciful Lord, and He has said that we will receive mercy if we will show mercy to others.

WHAT ARE SOME SITUATIONS WHEN ANOTHER PERSON IS IN YOUR POWER?

            Now as I have said, mercy is shown from a person in a position of power to someone who is under their power. Given that definition, many of us may think, “Well, I don’t really have any opportunities to show mercy then, because I’m not in any position of power!” Let me mention some situations that you may not have considered.

1. When someone has sinned against you and has asked for your forgiveness

            Perhaps you’ve never thought of it this way, but when someone wrongs you and then asks for your forgiveness, you are placed in a position of power. They have admitted their guilt, and now the future of that relationship is in your hand. You can choose to forgive or you can choose to hold a grudge or to take revenge. They have humbled themselves before you, and now—at least in that moment—you are in the driver’s seat. That is a position of power, which means it is also a perfect opportunity to show mercy.

2. In your relationship with your children

            While your children are in your home, they are commanded by God to obey you. Thus, you are in a position of power. So how do you exercise that power? Are you reasonable with your rules and your discipline? Do you treat your kids like they exist for your benefit, rather than the other way around? Do you berate, dictate, manipulate, castigate, or otherwise dominate your child? How do you exercise that power?

3. In your relationship with your employees

            Even if you’re not the head honcho where you work, many of us have people who answer to us on the job. How do you exercise that power? Many of you who farm have hired men who work for you—how do you treat them? Do you give them a fair wage? Do you make them work hours that you would never keep yourself? If money gets tight, is your hired man the only one who has to take a pay cut, or do you absorb some of that as well? How do you exercise that power?

HOW CAN WE CULTIVATE A MERCIFUL SPIRIT?

            Now as I also mentioned earlier, being in a position of power brings additional temptations into our lives. Its hard enough to show compassion to someone who is our equal in every sense, so when you add an authority structure into a relationship, it just becomes that much more difficult. So how can we cultivate a merciful spirit?

1. By reflecting on the incredible degree of mercy that we have received from God

            You may remember the parable that Jesus told about the man who was forgiven a debt that was like the size of our US national debt—just a mind-blowing amount that you can’t even wrap your head around. Then that man turned around and punished someone who owed him a few weeks’ pay. The lesson of the parable is that such a lack of mercy is improper in light of the staggering mercy that we have received. The misdemeanors that people commit against us are nothing compared to the outright treason that we have committed against God, yet He has shown us mercy. We can increasingly reflect this mercy in our actions by reflecting on it in our own minds.

2. By walking in the shoes of those under your authority

            I want to point you to a fascinating passage of Scripture in Hebrews 2 [READ Heb. 2:14-18]. By walking around in our skin and facing the temptations that we face, Jesus became a merciful and faithful high priest—a representative for us in the presence of God. Verse 17 says he had to be made like us in every respect, so that he might become a merciful high priest.

            Developing a spirit of mercy requires that you walk around in the skin of those who are under your authority. You must make an effort to mentally step into their world and take a look around. Mercy is an act of compassion, and the literal meaning of the word compassion is “to suffer with someone else.” When you show compassion, you are coming side-by-side with another person to walk down the same path together.

            Power has the tendency to create distance between people. It can lift my ego higher and higher as my opinion of others gets lower and lower. Thus, to show mercy, we have to swim against the current of that tendency and step into the world of those who are under our power.

            So to show mercy to someone who has wronged you, remember how you feel when you’re in their shoes. What do you desire? What’s going through your mind? To become more merciful with your kids, ask yourself, “What must it be like to have a parent like me?” Maybe the next time your child gets frustrated with you, you’ll think, “Wow! You’ve actually shown a lot of patience, kid!” Show greater mercy to people under you on the job by trying to understand what their experience must be like. What must it be like to have you as a boss?

            In short, to become merciful we must act like Jesus! He has shown us mercy, so we must show mercy to others. He became a merciful high priest by walking around in our shoes, so we must follow the same path to grow in this trait.

Notes:

1. www.bible.org, filed in Sermon Illustrations under “mercy,” cited from Today in the Word, October 8, 1992.

Satisfaction for the Soul--Sermon on the Mount Series

            After our need for air, no need is more essential for life than our need for food and water. We cannot let these needs go unmet for long before we start to have serious problems. We also plan much of our lives around meeting these needs. Your daily schedule probably revolves around meal times. Every time we plan some kind of special event at church, we must either plan to provide a meal or plan to avoid mealtimes so that you can take care of that need on your own. Or think about planning a vacation—if you’re driving, you plan your route and your travel time to make sure that you’re near a town when mealtimes roll around. Otherwise, you plan ahead and take food with you.

            Imagine if we gave the same kind of concern to obeying God. Imagine if we woke up every day and thought, “How am I going to plan to obey God today?” You and I have never lived a day in which we didn’t think about eating and drinking, because they are needs; they are necessary for survival. Imagine if we thought of obeying God as being necessary for our survival.

            That’s the kind of attitude and passion for obedience that Jesus praises in the next Beatitude—“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied (Matt 5:6).” The Lord uses the metaphor of a physical need to encourage us to have a spiritual appetite. Let’s look at the two parts of this verse.

“BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO HUNGER AND THIRST FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS…”

            To truly appreciate this metaphor, we have to travel back in time for a minute. The way that we meet our need for food and water today is vastly different than it was for the people in first-century Israel who heard Jesus speak these words. Few of us have ever experienced a life-threatening hunger or thirst. Most of us have far more than enough to eat and far more than enough to drink, and we have very easy access to food and water, but life was very different back then.

            Imagine waking up one day as a person in first-century Israel. To meet your family’s need for water that day, you would have to take a bucket and go down to the river—or more likely to the local well—and haul water back to your home. Perhaps you would make that trip a couple of times, depending on the size of your family. Don’t forget that parasites in that water could kill you, so you may have to build a fire and boil some of it before you could drink it.

            By then, it would be time to get to work cooking food, because after all, you have to do everything yourself. If you want to make bread, you have to grind the flour. If you want to eat chicken, you have to butcher it and prepare it yourself. For at least one member of the household, then, cooking would have been a virtually continuous occupation.

            So for those who heard Jesus speak these words, hunger and thirst were typically a much more urgent need than what we experience most of the time. We can afford to let our need for food and water be almost an afterthought because we can easily run to Subway and have food and drink in front of us in a matter of minutes. But for the first-century Jew, meeting those needs required a great deal of thought, planning, and effort, and their daily reality was far closer to the line between starvation and survival. Author William Barclay put it well when he wrote, “the hunger which this beatitude describes is no…hunger which could be satisfied with a mid-morning snack; the thirst of which it speaks is no thirst which could be quenched with a cup of coffee or an iced drink. It is the hunger of someone who is starving for food, and the thirst of someone who will die unless given something to drink.”¹

            Hopefully now we have a sense of the urgency and intensity in these words “hunger and thirst.” But what is “righteousness?” What is this thing that we’re supposed to long for with such intensity? A basic definition of righteousness would be “that which meets God’s standards.” When the Bible talks about our righteousness, it describes it from two angles.

            First, there is our position of righteousness. This angle refers to our standing before God in light of His commands. To be righteous in this sense means that no case can be made against me in light of God’s commands. This position of righteousness is what we refer to when we use words like conversion, being saved, being born again, being forgiven, or accepting Christ (if you know the big, fancy theological word, this is justification).

            Let me illustrate what I mean. If you looked right now at the laws of the state of Kansas and then examined my life, you could not bring any charges against me or make any case against me because I haven’t broken any laws. That means I am righteous in the eyes of the state of Kansas; I have met the state’s standards for a law-abiding citizen.

            Now I must confess that it hasn’t always been that way. I have received some speeding tickets in my day, and at those times I have broken the law. In those instances, I did not meet the standards for a law-abiding citizen and I had to pay a fine, but once I did, the case against me was closed and I again became righteous in the eyes of the state of Kansas.

            Now according to Scripture, when we receive the gift of salvation from God, He treats us as being righteous in light of His law or commands because He accepts the sacrifice that Jesus made for us as the payment of the fine (so to speak) for all of our sins. This reality is described well in 2 Corinthians 5:21, which says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Don’t miss what this verse is saying. Even though Jesus had never committed a sin, God treated Him like a sinner when He was on the cross. He took our punishment in that moment so that now, after we accept Christ, God can treat us like righteous people, even though we don’t deserve that status simply on the basis of our own lives. So, because Jesus took what we deserved from God, we receive what He deserves from God—that is our position of righteousness.

            But the Bible then goes on to describe righteousness from the angle of our practice of righteousness. This angle refers to our efforts to live in obedience to God’s commands. After we are saved and we receive that position of righteousness as a gift, we can then actually obey God’s commands through the power of the Holy Spirit. This practice of righteousness is what we refer to when we use words like discipleship, walking with Christ, growing in Christ (or sanctification).

            This angle is described well in 2 Timothy 2:22, when Paul tells Timothy—who is already saved—to “flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.” So Timothy, who has the position of righteousness before God, is challenged to live out that righteousness in his life.

            I believe this second angle on righteousness is what Jesus had in mind in this Beatitude. We who are forgiven by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit should hunger and thirst to live in a way that meets God’s standards. The desire to obey God should create hunger pangs in our soul that will not subside until we have met the desire. The Lord pronounces a blessing upon those who have this desire by saying, “they shall be satisfied.”

“…FOR THEY SHALL BE SATISFIED.”

            I don’t think its difficult to understand what Jesus means here. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will receive what they desire—approval from God that they have lived by His standards. We can have this knowledge today as we live for the Lord, but it will be most evident when we stand before Jesus to hear His assessment of our lives. The New Testament makes it very clear that each one of us will be assessed or judged by the Lord Jesus to receive either reward or rebuke from Him (or quite possible some of each!). 2 Corinthians 5:10 states, “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.”

            1 Corinthians 3 talks about building on the foundation we have in Jesus Christ, and it states, “each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire (1 Cor 3:13-15). As one pastor has put it, there are going to be some smoky Christians in Heaven! When you are evaluated by Christ, do you want to come out smelling like roses, or smelling like you were standing too close to the campfire?

            If I want to avoid seeing my life’s work for God go up in smoke, I need to hunger and thirst for righteousness. I must have an arresting passion to obey God that will not leave me alone until I have addressed it. Obeying God cannot be an afterthought in my life, just like food and water could not be an afterthought for the people who heard Jesus speak these words.

            Along this line, I think the scenario I raised earlier is most appropriate—imagine if we woke up every day and thought, “How am I going to plan to obey God today?” I have this appetite to obey God that just won’t leave me alone—how am I going satisfy it? Now when you envision this scenario, you can easily become overwhelmed. Just think of how many commands there are in the New Testament! Here’s what I want you to do—I want you to use this question (How am I going to plan to obey God today?) and simply focus on the commands that present you with the greatest struggle. Focus on the area where you have the most obvious need for growth.

            Its probably not difficult for any of us to pinpoint our area of greatest struggle. Once you’ve settled on that, look up the commands in the Bible that deal with that particular issue, and then let that become—for right now at least—your primary focus. When you ask yourself, “How am I going to plan to obey God today?” make your planning specific to that issue, because here’s what’s going to happen—as you grow in that area, your growth will bear fruit in all areas of your life. A rising tide raises ALL of the boats in the dock, doesn’t it? Well, there’s a very similar effect that takes place when you grow spiritually.

            Its kind of like learning how to play a musical instrument. When you learn how to play an instrument—say the piano, for instance—there are times when you will spend most of your practice time focusing on just one song. On one level, that may seem silly; after all, after you’ve put out all that time and effort, you will still only know how to play one song. But here’s what you discover—when you start to look at other songs, they are easier for you to play. You discover that your fingers are stronger and more flexible. All of the progress you made in that one song now carries over into many other songs.

            Spiritual growth is very similar. When you learn to walk closely with God in one area of your life, it will create a ripple effect that spreads into other areas of your life. That’s why Paul talked about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 rather than the fruits. Have you ever noticed that? Paul says “the fruit (singular) of the Spirit is…” We would expect some kind of singular after that, wouldn’t we? But Paul goes on to list nine character traits—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

            The reason for this is that all of these traits are tied together. If you grow in love, you will also see growth in the area of self-control. If you grow in patience, you will also see growth in the area of gentleness. You will never find a loving person who completely lacks kindness, or a patient person who completely lacks self-control. These traits fit together, and as you grow in one, you will see some growth in the others as well.

            So please don’t feel overwhelmed when you think about having a passion to obey God that is like an essential need for survival. I’m not saying this is easy, because we have the Devil and our own sinful desires working against us, but we don’t need to make it more complicated than it really is. A pebble only hits the surface of a lake in one place, but the ripples that it creates can be far-reaching.

            Start today with a narrow focus on growing, and when the difficulties and temptations do come, we have the promise of approval from Jesus to carry us along. It will be worth it in the long run to remain faithful to Him. Let us pray now for the faith to believe that!

Notes:

1. William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, vol. 1, The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 115.

Written Into the Will--Sermon on the Mount Series

            I’ve always enjoyed the scene in the movie “Cast Away” when Tom Hanks’ character learns to make fire after getting stranded on a deserted island. He dances around his bonfire a bit, then sticks out his chest and says, “I have made fire!!” I can just picture myself doing the same thing.

            Fire has all kinds of beneficial uses. We can cook with it, heat our homes with it, sanitize things with it, even use it to clear land. Of course, it can also be very destructive. It can burn down our homes or run wild across the prairie. So what’s the difference? The fire is exactly the same whether its heating my home or burning it down! The difference is whether it is under control. When we use fire for good things, we harness its power by keeping it in proper boundaries. We channel its heat and energy for a specific purpose. Fire only becomes destructive when it breaks out of those proper boundaries and channels.

            In our study of the Beatitudes today, Jesus is going to praise a character trait called “meekness,” which we can describe as strength of character, properly channeled. The Lord pronounces God’s approval upon meekness in Matthew 5:5, which says, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Here is yet another statement from Christ which turns the wisdom of our age upside down.

I saw that very clearly in a moment during my early teenage years—it’s a moment I wish I could do over. I was over at a friend’s house around the 4^th of July. They had some other family friends over, and somehow the conversation got around to the fact that I was a Christian. Once that became known, a middle-aged man looked at me and said, “Do you really believe all that stuff about the meek inheriting the earth?” Now at that point in my life, I probably hadn’t spent five seconds thinking about that verse, so I had no idea what to say. I wish I had said something like, “I’ll have to look into that one some more,” but instead I just grinned, hung my head a little bit, and said, “Nah, I guess not.”

            I never found out why that man mentioned that particular verse, but the fact that he did illustrates just how crazy Jesus’ words sound to people who don’t believe the Bible. What do you mean the meek are going to inherit the earth? Plenty of people have tried to conquer the whole world, and no one has done it yet. Do you mean that the meek are going to do something that the mighty have never been able to do? Well, we shall see what Jesus means.

In this Beatitude, Jesus begins to talk about the way that we interact with other people. In the first Beatitude, He spoke of the way that we think about ourselves with respect to God; in the second, He spoke of the way that we respond to our sins. Now, Jesus starts to mention the way that we interact with other people. This observation is a great reminder that each part of my life should be tied to every other part of my life. That’s truly what it means to have integrity—your life is a unified whole; you have the same way of thinking and the same way of acting whether you’re at church or home or school or work. The Beatitudes remind us of this. The way that I think about God and my condition before Him is directly tied to the way that I treat other people.

Let’s discuss the two halves of this verse.

“BLESSED ARE THE MEEK…”

            If you can remember the last time you used the word “meek,” you have a better memory than I do. I fill out character references for people every so often, and none of them ever ask me to rate how meek a person is! This is a word that people rarely use any more, so why do Bible translators use it—especially in a very recent translation like the English Standard Version that I use?

            Here’s a good lesson to remember about Bible translations: translators tend to stick to the dictionary much more closely than we do. When we speak to each other, we don’t stand there with dictionaries in our hands! We have a basic idea of what words mean, and for the most part we just rely on the context of the conversation to understand each other. But the people who make Bible translations can’t have a face-to-face conversation with everyone who reads them, so when they do their work, they rely on the dictionary definition of words because we all have access to a dictionary.

            In other words, Bible translators expect us to do a little homework in order to understand the Bible—and that’s exactly what they should expect of us! So, let’s take a look at the dictionary definition of “meekness.” In my dictionary, there were two possible meanings: 1) showing patience and humility; and 2) easily imposed on. The second definition is what most people think of when they hear this word. They think of someone who is a doormat; someone who is spineless; someone who never ruffles any feathers or stands up against anything. They think of Neville Chamberlain as opposed to Winston Churchill, or they think of last year’s Kansas City Chiefs—easily run over.

            But that second definition is certainly not what Jesus is talking about! He has something like the first definition in mind, and we know this because Jesus elsewhere uses this word to describe Himself. In Matthew 11:29, Jesus tells His followers, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.” That word translated “gentle” is the same Greek word that is translated “meek” in Matthew 5:5.

            So Jesus is saying, “Blessed are those who are like me!” Now what was Jesus like? Was He a doormat? Was He spineless? Certainly not! Jesus became angry with people who showed no compassion to others, and He was willing to correct people who were doing wrong and to issue stern warnings to people who heard Him. On two occasions, He chased people out of the Temple with a whip after they had violated God’s intentions for that holy place.

            And yet, Jesus must have had a very approachable demeanor. Little children were not afraid to come to Him; lepers and beggars were confident that Jesus would not turn up His nose at them. The fact that He came to Earth at all speaks of love and humility. Jesus had strength of character, properly channeled.

            Scripture also gives us other examples of people who fit this description. Numbers 12:3 says, “Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.” Moses twice held incredible power in palm of his hand, yet did not abuse it. The first occasion came as he was growing up in Pharaoh’s household. He may have been in line to become the Pharaoh himself, but he chose to take up the cause of his oppressed relatives, and he had to flee for his life for many years.

            The second occasion came after God used him to free the children of Israel from their slavery in Egypt. God performed incredible miracles through Moses. He could have easily declared himself king of his people, but he never did. In fact, when his father-in-law suggested that he share some of his judging responsibilities because he was getting worn out, Moses willingly agreed. He did not jealousy cling to every ounce of power that he could get his hands on.

            Yet Moses also acted decisively in the name of God when it was necessary. I think about the incident with the golden calf. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai after receiving the Ten Commandments from God, he found the people worshipping an idol that they had made. The text says that he melted the idol down, ground up the gold into dust, scattered it onto a source of water and made the people drink it. Moses had strength of character, properly channeled.

            I also think of Abigail in 1 Samuel. Abigail was married to a fool; her husband was Nabal, which literally means “fool.” Yet 1 Samuel 25 says that she was discerning and had an obvious faith in God. She was apparently a good wife to her husband, even though he was a fool. One day, Nabal foolishly insulted David, and David foolishly decided to pick a fight with him. But Abigail diffused the situation by giving David a generous gift to smooth over her husband’s insult, and she undoubtedly saved many lives. Abigail had strength of character, properly channeled.

            So meekness is clearly an honorable trait. It must be so if the Lord Jesus referred to Himself as “meek” (or “gentle” as your translation might read). And so Jesus called the meek “blessed” because of what they have to look forward to.

“…FOR THEY SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.”

            It is easy and common for people to misread this statement. They read it as if Jesus had said the meek shall conquer the earth, but that’s not what He said. He said the meek shall inherit the earth. What is an inheritance? Its something you receive from the person who owns it. Let’s read the verse with that idea placed in it—“Blessed are the meek, for they shall receive the earth from the person who owns it.” And who owns the Earth? God, of course; more specifically, we could say that Jesus owns the Earth, and that will become obvious to everyone when He returns one day to set up His kingdom in this world.

            I think this phrase is saying the same thing as verse 3. We learned that when Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” He was saying that the poor in spirit would share in a piece of His authority over His kingdom. A portion of it would belong to them, and they would be its caretakers for the Lord. I think Jesus is saying the same thing in in v. 5, but now He simply uses the language of receiving an inheritance.

            Most children eventually receive some kind of inheritance from their parents. Since we are children of God, we can expect to receive an inheritance from Him. When the New Testament talks about our inheritance from God, it speaks of it in two aspects. The first is a guaranteed inheritance, which will be ours simply because we are children of God. This part of our inheritance is described very well in 1 Peter 1:3-5 [READ 1 Peter 1:3-5]. Notice how Peter emphasizes the unchanging nature of this inheritance—it is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. This, I think, would refer to our future home with God. It is guaranteed to us as His children.

            But the New Testament also speaks of an inheritance that is conditional. It is not guaranteed to us, but it is available to us based on our faithful service to Christ. This is what we’re referring to when we talk about receiving rewards at the judgment seat of Christ. This conditional inheritance is expressed well in Romans 8:16-17—“The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

            These verses talk about both aspects of our inheritance—we are heirs of God, and we can be fellow heirs with Christ, but notice that there is a condition we have to meet to be a fellow heir with Christ. We must suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. You might remember the statement from Jesus to the Apostles that we read a couple of weeks ago. He said to them in Luke 22:28-30—“You are those who have stayed with me in my trials [that sounds like suffering with Christ, doesn’t it? And how does Christ continue?] and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom [in other words, “this is my inheritance from the Father—a kingdom, and now I assign to you a kingdom] that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”

            The Apostles will be fellow heirs with Christ, and why is that? As Jesus said, they stayed with Him in His trials. He wasn’t talking about His legal trials before Pontius Pilate because those hadn’t happened yet. He was saying that the Apostles had stuck with Him through thick and thin. We know the Apostles weren’t perfect—you barely have to read one page in the Gospels to find that out!—but despite all of their failings, they just kept following Jesus.

            There is an incident recorded in John 6 that illustrates this well. A huge crowd had come to find Jesus because the text says they wanted to make Him their king, but Jesus said some hard things to them because they were not spiritually ready to submit to Jesus as their king. At the end of the chapter, virtually the whole crowd walked away from Jesus, and Jesus turned to the Apostles and said, “Do you want to leave, too?” Peter piped up for all of them and said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

            The Apostles weren’t perfect followers of Christ, but they just kept following Him! That’s what the Lord wants to see from us—He’s looking for us to keep following Him, even if its like a little child following her daddy. He wants us to say, “Lord, my steps forward may be small steps, and you may have to turn around often and say, ‘Come on, keep going this way,’ and I may get distracted by a dandelion now and then, and I may fall down and skin-up my hands and bloody-up my knees, but I’m just going to keep following you!”

            That’s the attitude the Lord wants to see, and that’s the attitude that He will reward. Its not hard to see how meekness ties into that attitude. We need to have our energy properly channeled, don’t we? We need to have our decisions properly channeled to keep us going in the right direction. We need to be like Moses; we need to be like Abigail; we need to be like Jesus! He is our spiritual “big brother,” and we will live with Him someday. And if we live our lives like He lived His life, we will share in a little bit of His inheritance from the Father—He will give us the right to serve as lords and ladies in His kingdom.

The Darkness Shall Turn to Dawning--Sermon on the Mount Series

            If we had the opportunity to never again feel physical pain, I imagine we would all be tempted to take advantage of that opportunity. Just imagine—never having to deal with aches and pains again. No more sore muscles, no more creaky joints. That sounds great at first—doesn’t it?—but in reality, not being able to feel physical pain is a dangerous situation.

            There is actually a very rare medical condition known as CIPA, which describes people who were born without the ability to feel pain. Again, that might sound nice, but think about how dangerous that is. You could sustain a serious injury and not realize it because you couldn’t feel the pain. You know how you can sometimes get a small cut and not realize it until you see yourself bleeding? Imagine that on a much larger scale. Imagine if you couldn’t feel a deep, serious cut. Imagine if you touched something hot and left your hand there because you couldn’t feel the pain. While it might sound nice to feel no pain, pain actually plays a very important role for our bodies.

            In the same way that pain plays an important role for the body, grief and mourning play an important role for the soul. These emotions arrest our attention and force us to deal with things that we would not naturally choose to deal with, but just as physical pain tells us that there is a problem and drives us to deal with it, grief and mourning do the same.

            Our text for today is the second Beatitude, which you’ll find in Matthew 5:4—“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” This is another statement from Jesus that turns worldly wisdom on its head, but it has such an important lesson to teach us. Let’s take a look at the two halves of this verse.

“BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN…”

            We often hear this verse at funerals, but that’s not exactly the kind of mourning that Jesus is talking about here. Don’t get me wrong—God is the source of our comfort when we lose a loved one, that’s just not what this particular verse is talking about. In all of the Beatitudes, Jesus is talking about our spiritual condition and spiritual character traits. Jesus must be talking about mourning over something in our spiritual condition, and that naturally brings up the idea of sin. So Jesus is apparently talking about mourning over sin, and I think we could say that such mourning would include our own sins and the sins of others that we see all around us.

            So, blessed are those who mourn over sin. That is the proper response when we become aware of sin within ourselves or within the people around us. What a challenging and humbling thought this is! An awareness of sin should produce within us a response that may be likened to the grief of losing a loved one. This word for mourning is also the normal word in the Bible for mourning someone’s death.

            This is no light or casual response to sin. This is not, “the devil made me do it.” This is not, “Its no big deal—I’m already forgiven.” This is not “boys will be boys” or “everyone makes mistakes” or “that’s why pencils have erasers.” This is a sense of loss, a sense of brokenness and disruption and dysfunction in the way that things are supposed to be. According to Jesus, this is the kind of response to sin that God approves of.

            Now I will be the first one to raise my hand and admit that I do not always respond to sin this way, and I’ll go out on a limb and say that I’m probably not the only person in this room who needs to admit that! So why do we have this other response to sin? Why do we tell ourselves, “it was no big deal?” Well, the major reason of course is our sin nature. We are attracted to sin the same way that magnets are attracted to your refrigerator, so when we sin that part of us certainly doesn’t feel like anything is wrong or broken.

            Our sin nature is certainly the over-arching reason why we may not mourn over sin, but there are some other factors that are less obvious but still play a big role. Let’s spend some time thinking about them.

WHAT FACTORS MAY DISCOURAGE US FROM MOURNING OVER SIN?

1. Cultural Factors

            a. Heritage

            Many of us in this room can trace our heritage back to Europe—more specifically, to northern Europe; countries like Germany, England, Norway, and Sweden. Within this cultural heritage there has often been disapproval of strong emotions. They have sometimes been seen as signs of weakness and thus have been discouraged. That’s very different from the Middle Eastern culture in which Jesus walked and talked. That’s not to say that mourning over sin would have been natural for His audience, but they didn’t have this cultural barrier that many of us have in our background.

            b. Contemporary Factors

                        1) Fear and disapproval of grief and sadness

            Our culture fears and disapproves of mourning in virtually all its forms. The psychiatric community literally wants to treat grief like the common cold—its okay if it hangs around for a few days, but after that we better start to medicate it! Just last year, the official handbook for American psychiatrists revised its guidelines so that now you could be diagnosed with a mental illness if you grieve the loss of a loved one for longer than two weeks! A number of psychiatrists correctly protested that change, but nevertheless it is now enshrined in the “Bible” of American psychiatry.

            Our society struggles to see how any good can come out of grief, especially something like grief over sin. We are so concerned about having a positive self-image that grieving over our actions sounds dysfunctional and harmful. Yet it is precisely the response that Jesus encourages us to have. Considering that the Devil is active in our world today, it should not surprise us that society points us in a different direction than Jesus does.

2. Factors Within the Church

            a. Misunderstandings about Happiness and Joy

            Within our church and with our church friends, we can feel a lot of pressure to appear happy all the time, but this pressure stems from a misunderstanding about happiness and joy. As we discussed last week, happiness is a good feeling that you get when you like what is happening around you, but joy is more of an attitude that we can choose to embrace. It is an attitude of optimism in light of what God has done and what He has promised to do.

            That is an attitude that we can adopt at all times, but it doesn’t mean that we will always feel happy. For example, in Philippians 4:4, Paul writes, “Rejoice always,” and in the same letter, he tells the Philippian believers that he is writing to them with tears! So was Paul breaking his own command? No, and that’s because happiness and joy are not exactly the same thing.

            I think the pressure to appear happy is also reinforced by some of the songs that we sing. For example, consider the refrain of the hymn, “At the Cross:”

At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light,

And the burden of my heart rolled away

It was there by faith, I received my sight

And now I am happy all the day.

Have you ever sung that song even though you felt like you weren’t being totally honest? I’m not always happy all the day, and if I confuse happiness and joy in my mind, it is easy to feel like something is wrong with me. In reality, there are times when I most certainly should not be happy, like when I become aware that I made a sinful choice. I can still have an underlying optimism because of God’s grace, but I should grieve over the dysfunction of my heart.

            b. A sense of pressure to put on a good face for those who don’t attend church

            We want to present our church in an attractive light to people in the community, but in our efforts to do this we can feel pressure to exude a fake happiness that is just a show. Sometimes we compound this with our outreach efforts. I can remember times when I have invited someone to church by saying, “You should come sometime. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

Now, what kind of pressure does that create if the person comes to a service? Well, I’m going to feel pressure to make sure things are enjoyable for them. After all, that’s what I told them they would find, so now I want to deliver! As part of that, I certainly don’t want them to see me grieving over sin, because that doesn’t seem very enjoyable.

These days, when I invite someone to church, I just try to say, “Why don’t you come sometime? We’d love to have you.” I feel like I can say that with total honesty, and I’m not promising them anything more than perhaps a friendly reception.

So how can we overcome these factors that discourage us from mourning over sin? Let’s talk about a few ways to cultivate this response.

HOW DO WE CULTIVATE THIS RESPONSE?

1. Make the effort to reflect on your life

            We cannot mourn over our sins if we’re not aware of them. Some of our sinful choices are very obvious to us, but perhaps many of them are not, and sinful attitudes can be even more difficult to diagnose. Therefore, we must learn the Word of God and allow it to point out our sins so that we can then respond to them properly.

            Reflecting on our lives is a crucial step for Christian maturity, and I dare to say that this step cannot be fully taken in just a short devotional time each day. We must build a structure into our lives that brings the Word of God back to mind and that allows some time for reflection. With the schedules that we so often sign up for, we cannot afford to have our hearts and minds arrested by grief over sin. We have to keep going on to the next thing and the next thing, and our attention has to be given to the next project. Where are the quiet moments that allow for reflection? We must make an effort to create those moments.

2. Pray for sensitivity toward sin

            I think King David’s prayer in Psalm 139 is a model prayer for us all: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” David’s prayer acknowledges the deceitfulness of sin. Sinful attitudes in particular do not just announce their presence in our lives, and even when we suspect that we may have sinned, it is easy to justify our actions. So we must pray for God to point out our sins and lead us down the proper paths.

3. Reflect on the sacrifice that was necessary for your sins to be forgiven

            When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before He was crucified, He prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me…if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done (Matt 26:39-42).” Jesus was talking about God’s wrath toward sin, and He received a clear answer to His prayer the next day—it was not possible for sin to be forgiven except through Christ’s sacrificial death. If any other means of forgiveness were possible, surely God would have chosen it, but there was no other way. Christ’s sacrifice reveals how serious God considers sin to be, and reflecting on His sacrifice can help us avoid a flippant or non-chalant attitude toward our sins.

“…FOR THEY SHALL BE COMFORTED.”

            We must also remember that mourning was not the final word in this Beatitude. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” How would this comfort come? Well, first it would come through the Holy Spirit. When Jesus spoke those words, the Holy Spirit did not yet live in the hearts of men and women, but when Jesus taught the apostles about the coming of the Holy Spirit, He called Him “the Comforter.” That title comes from the same Greek word that Jesus uses in this Beatitude.

            Romans 8:16 says, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” The Holy Spirit confirms in our hearts the truth of the Gospel—that we are forgiven by trusting in the crucified and risen Lord. This is why joy can remain even as we grieve over our sins. “Though sorrow may last for a night, joy comes in the morning!”

            And yet, the fullness of this comfort will not come until the kingdom of Christ is established on this Earth. Any comfort we receive today can be nothing more than a ray of sunshine breaking through an otherwise dark sky. We are comforted by the forgiveness of our sins, but we will continue to struggle with its temptation. We rejoice to see kindness in our world, but we will continue to see senseless acts of terror. But one day, “the darkness shall turn to dawning, and the dawning to noon-day bright, and Christ’s great kingdom shall come to Earth, the kingdom of love and light!” Then, we will see the fullness of this comfort, as the Prince of Peace reigns on His throne!