persecution (Matt5:10-12)

Matthew 5:10-12

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for you reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets that were before you.

We should not be surprised to be persecuted for being a Christian. Whatever form that takes - mockery, isolation, rejection, financial, torture or even death - the prophets were persecuted, Jesus was persecuted and he said we would be as well. A life marked by the characteristics in the beatitudes will attract persecution in itself because it in itself is a criticism of the life lived outside of Jesus. Recognising our spiritual poverty is a criticism of other's pride. Mourning over our sin points out that there is such a thing as sin. Being meek causes selfishness to stand out. Being hungry and thirsty for righteousness is a comment on the other things people hunger and thirst for. Purity of heart highlights the impure. Making peace can cause conflict with those who don't want to. 

But not being surprised when persecution comes is a lot different to describing it as being blessed! True happiness can be found through persecution?! Jesus tells us to rejoice and be glad because of our great reward in heaven. Persecution makes us long for our future, it reminds us not to get too comfortable, it makes us more aware of our spiritual poverty, more mournful over our sin, more humble, more desperate for God.

We are not to be happy about the persecution itself, but the presence of persecution drives us to the source of true happiness - God. We might think that a life free from persecution would be happy, but there is far more danger that we would take our eyes off God. We look at the seen instead of the unseen and so persecution seems bad. But:

¹⁶ So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, ¹⁸ as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 corinthians4:16-18)

peacemakers (Matt5:9)

Matthew 5:9

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God

To be a peacemaker is not the same thing as wanting a bit of peace and quiet. It is not "anything for an easy life". That is essentially selfish. To be a peacemaker requires the selflessness already described in the beatitudes (meekness etc). Making peace will be difficult. It may often require some conflict, not pretending that the conflict isn't there. It may require words that are hard to say and receive instead of bruching things under the carpet. Peacemakers will be called sons of God. THE son of God came on a mission to bring peace between us and God. It involved him loving people who everyone hated, confronting religious leaders, violating social conventions, being hated by others and ultimately dying a brutal death on a cross. The peace that his death purchased for us should motivate a pursuit of peace with others.

pure in heart (Matt5:8)

Matthew 5:8

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

The heart is what you are, in the secrecy of your thought and feeling, when nobody knows but God. 

Piper

Man looks at the outward appearance, God looks at the heart. We try to look pure to impress others and maybe God. God requires a clean heart. A pure heart will result in seeing God, being welcomed in to his presence. So all those with a pure heart form an orderly queue!

If we think we meet this criteria, that is a clear sign that we don't - we haven't recognised our spiritual poverty, owned our sin, responded humbly and hunger and thirsting for God. If those things are true then we will cry out like David "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." (Psalm 51:10). Fortunately, God can and will do that. The only person to ever live with a pure heart, died in our place so that we can be washed clean and enter into God's presence.

mercy (Matt5:7)

Matthew 5:7

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy

Is this works-based salvation straight out of the mouth of Jesus? If you want to receive mercy then make sure you're merciful? That can't be the case for a number of reasons. Firstly, it would not fit in with the message of the entire bible. Secondly, it makes know logical sense - if you showed mercy in order to receive mercy then you would have earned it... in which case it is no longer mercy! Thirdly, this comes within the context of the other beatitudes. The merciful person is someone who has recognised their own spiritual bankruptcy (v3), owned their sin and repented (v4), humbly entrusted themselves to God (v5) and recognised their absolute dependance on him (v6). Merciful people are people who have received mercy. If you don't recognise your need for mercy, you are unlikely to show it to others. 

This verse also does not promise that if you show mercy to someone they will return the favour. If it did then Jesus' own life would have disproved it - he was the most merciful person that ever lived, yet he was brutally murdered. But we are assured that we will recieve God's mercy for eternity. True happiness is found in a life marked by mercy - receiving and giving.

satisfaction (Matt 5:6)

Matthew 5:6

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

Satisfaction is the elusive goal that motivates the modern world. A wife, a husband, a different wife, a house, a different car, a job, a promotion, a reputation, more money, more power, more sex, more comfort, more control - these are the things we chase thinking that, when we have got them, we will be satisfied. But when they are achieved they leave us hungry for more.

Jesus says that those who will be satisfied are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness. This is not people who want to appear righteous to gain approval from others or God, but people who have recognised they have no righteousness of their own and their absolute dependance on God. Not people who have a passing interest in theology or a vague belief in God but know they need God's word like they need bread, who know they need the Spirit like they need water. This is not Christianity as an beneficial add-on to life - it is life itself.

meekness (Matt 5:5)

Matthew 5:5

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth

To be meek is to be gentle, humble, not pursuing our own agenda, seeking other's interests before our own (Phil 2:4). Numbers 12:3 describes Moses as the meekest man on the face of the earth and the context of that chapter is Moses refusing to defend himself in the face of accusations and entrusting himself to God. Meekness is not weakness, Moses was the greatest leader of Jewish history. It is the opposite of self-centredness. It grows out of the first two beatitudes - when you recognise your spiritual poverty and take your sin seriously, you will be meek.

The meek will inherit the earth. This is the exact opposite of conventional wisdom. If you want to inherit the earth, if you want to achieve happiness and satisfaction, surely you've got to look out for number one? Surely you've got to aggressively pursue your own agenda because, if you don't look after yourself, who else will? Jesus says the opposite is true. True satisfaction, true happiness, true joy comes to the person who has been humbled  by their own brokenness and thrown themselves on God's mercy. We are then free to do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Philippians 2:3

mourning (Matt 5:4)

Matthew 5:4

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Surely mourning can not be part of true happiness? Maybe churchgoers have done their best to be mourn*full* but have done so out of a misguided notion of asceticism, not in an attempt to attain greater joy. Those who mourn take their own sin seriously, take other peoples sin seriously and are greived by a sinful broken world. The world might tell us to ignore this as much as we can - that you are a good person, that people are generally good - but when life doesn't match up to those ideas, things start to fall apart and we end up crumbling in despair or deluding ourselves.

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.  2 Corinthians 7:10

True happiness, true comfort is found in taking sin seriously and taking it to the cross. Repenting and knowing our sins are forgiven. Knowing that the sins against us and those we love can be entrusted to the one who judges justly (1 Peter 2:23). And knowing that one day "[God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." (Revelation 21:4)

poor in spirit (Matt 5:3)

Matthew 5:3

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

Poverty of spirit is the personal acknowledgement of spiritual bankruptcy. It is the conscious confession of unworth before God. Carson

To be poor in spirit is to recognise our own sinfulness before God, to have no confidence in our own ability to make ourselves acceptable to God, to recognise that we need help, we can not sort it out ourselves. This is the starting point for understanding and recieveing the gospel, entering into the kingdom heaven where true life is found, finding true happiness.

To be proud or hold out some hope in our own goodness is to miss this entirely. To have confidence in ourselves is not liberating, it is enslaving. The advice of the world would be that you can change yourself, you can try harder, just believe in yourself. This places a crushing load on your back and leads to misguided self-righteousness if you think you're doing better than someone else, or despair as you repeatedly fail to meet the standards you have set for yourself, let alone those God has declared. Or maybe the world would say that you should cast off those moral expectations, true happiness is found in doing what you want to do, but this can not deal with the nagging guilt and shame. The church tends not to do much better, holding up religious performance, external efforts as the way to enter the kingdom of heaven, and happiness doesn't really have much to do with it.

Confessing our own failure and relying on Jesus performance, not ours, brings freedom, life and a happiness that is not dependent on whether we have had a good day or a bad day.

The sermon on the mount (Matt 5:1-3)

Matthew 5:1-3

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus sits down and opens his mouth to teach - what he is about to say is big. The sermon on the mount is one of the most important pieces of teaching ever delivered. It is widely admired, even outside of the Christian faith. The fact that Ghandi loved the sermon on the mount suggests that the sermon on the mount may be one of the most misunderstood pieces of teaching ever delivered as well as the most important! 

Two important ideas are introduced straight away:

• Blessed - Jesus is going to describe who is blessed, what being blessed is like. The greek word is makarios which means happy or fortunate. If we want to think of this as happiness, then we need to think of it as true happiness (Calvin) rather than the fleeting happiness of the world that is dependent on circumstances. This true happiness is not found in what is happening around you but it is a gift of God, it is God's favour shown towards you, God's approval shown towards you.
• The kingdom of heaven - In one sense, the whole universe is God's kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. But the kingdom described here is found within that wider kingdom, where Jesus rules and reigns, where true life is found. At the moment there is an overlap between this kingdom and the world but in the future this kingdom will endure forever. The kingdom of heaven is now and not yet (see Carson)

Jesus will talk about what it means to live in his kingdom and what it means to be blessed by God. His teaching will be quite different to what the world considers happiness to be