Sermon Transcript
Do you want to be blessed? Of course. Yeah.
Sounds great. I’d love that. Right. And I don’t know very many people that would say, well, no, sorry, I have enough blessings in my life. I’ll hold off on that for now.
But what does that mean? Right. What does it mean to be blessed? Maybe for you. You’ve kind of.
You’ve done the whole, like, hash blessed thing before. Like, you know, just feeling really good about your day or your family or whatever’s going on. You post about it, and, you know, you’re like, you want people to know that you’re blessed, and you want to share in that blessing. One story that I love comes from dutch priest and writer Henry Nouwen, who’s passed on. But he wrote in his book Life of the Beloved, he tells a story of a personal experience that he had about blessing.
And Nouwen was a part of this community of special needs people and people that worked and served them. And so he was with this community, and this woman named Janet, who was a member of the special needs community there, came up and asked to receive a blessing. And Nouwen is a catholic priest, right. And so he, you know, he kind of automatically went into the ritual, took his thumb, and, you know, did the sign of the cross and. And blessed her right.
In the way that he knew how. I have no, like, if you’re formerly catholic, I don’t know if I did that right or not, so I apologize if I messed that up. So. But he just kind of went into the ritual, and she said, no, no, no. And she was, like, offended.
Like, she wasn’t happy to receive this blessing. He was kind of taken back, and she said, no, that doesn’t work. I want the real thing. So he was just kind of like, oh. And he was apologetic, and he said.
He said, I’m sorry, janet. He said, well, I’ll tell you what. During our meeting, I’ll give you a real blessing. We’ll give you a real blessing. And so they went into their prayer meeting with their group, and as Nawan is sharing with the group that, hey, Janet has asked for a special blessing, and she wants to be blessed by the group.
He’s explaining this, and he admits in his book, he said, I didn’t even know what was going on, what she wanted from me. And so. But he says, it didn’t take long. He kind of figured it out that without missing a beat, Janet gets up as he is explaining what they’re about to do, and she comes over, and she gives Henry Nouwen a hug and puts her head on his chest. And he just kind of was caught in the moment.
And he said these words to her. He said as soon as Janet did that, he told her, janet, I want you to know that you are God’s beloved daughter. You are precious in God’s eyes. Your beautiful smile, your kindness to the people in your house and all the good things you do. Show us what a beautiful human being you are.
I know you feel a little low these days and that there is some sadness in your heart, but I want you to remember who you are. A very special person, deeply loved by God and all the people who are here with you. And Nouwen writes that Janet raised her head up and looked in his eyes as he was saying these words, and she just smiled from ear to ear and showed that she had truly heard and received this blessing. And so, you know, she finished giving him a hug, and she went and, you know, went to sit down in her seat, and he said, just as she was sitting down, without missing a beat, another lady in their group named Jane raised her hand and said, I want a blessing, too. And so Jane gets up and walks over to now and gives him a hug and puts her head on his chest.
And. And they’re, you know, they’re celebrating these blessings. And one after another, people in this group, I think there was about 20 or 30 people in this group, one after another, they get up, and I want a blessing, too. I want a blessing, too. And so they walk over, and they give Henry Nouwen a hug and put their head on his chest, just like Janet did, just like Jane did.
But the most special one, Henry Nouwen says, was a man named John. And John was a college student. He was about 24 years old at the time now, and said, and he was serving there in this community as a volunteer, and they got kind of close to the end, and now and says, john raised his hand and said, well, I’d like a blessing, too. And so this. I just imagine, I don’t know how tall John was, but, you know, this big, tall, you know, like, big guy coming over to a catholic priest and, like, giving him a hug and, like, putting his head on his chest.
But now, in wrote what he said to John. He said, as John sat there, and they sat there giving each other a hug, John, it’s so good that you are here. You are God’s beloved son. Your presence is a joy for all of us. When things are hard and life is burdensome, always remember that you are loved with an everlasting love.
And as these words are spoken now and said, john looked at him with tears in his eyes and he thanked him sincerely. He wrote that later that night, that experience changed his understanding of what it means to be blessed and to be a blessing to other people. That the blessing that he said we can receive, that Jesus, as we’re going to say, he says we can receive, comes from being the beloved children of God, our father. Now, instead, we need an ongoing blessing that allows us to hear in an ever new way that we belong to a loving God who will never leave us alone, but will remind us always that we are guided by love on every step of our lives. Now, I don’t know about you, but I want a blessing like that, right?
I want to experience that kind of blessing, like Janet and Jane and John saw it, not a ritual, but a lasting blessing that comes directly from God, who is a loving heavenly father. And he calls us to be his beloved children despite our circumstances. Right? A blessing that surpasses my conditions, my circumstances. And the good news is that God wants to bless us in exactly that way.
And he revealed that to us when Jesus, his son, came into the world preaching about the kingdom of God. Jesus came to initiate this kingdom and invite everyone who would believe in him to be a part of it and to live forever in the presence of God. And that is our true blessing. So today we’re going to start a journey to discover how in Christ we are truly blessed. We are called God’s children, and we’re called to live in an eternal kingdom in the kingdom of God.
And during this series, our father, we’re going to look at the teachings of Jesus in the sermon on the mount to understand exactly what we are called into when we’re called to kingdom living. We’re going to start today with the beatitudes in Matthew, chapter five, if you want to turn there in your bibles. And we’re going to find that however, however we want to view blessing, the world views blessing in a different way, what it means to be blessed in a very different way from what Jesus teaches us it means to be blessed. The sermon on the mount is what some authors have called Jesus kingdom manifesto, right? It turns the world upside down on its head.
And so these three chapters of Matthew, Matthew five, six and seven, they contain what some have called the ethos or the ethics of God’s kingdom. Michael Wilkins, in his commentary, explains that in order to understand this sermon on the mount, that we must seek to do so in the context of what’s happening in Jesus overall ministry, we have to understand it especially in the context of the redemptive work of the cross of Jesus Christ. And so at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel, we read that Jesus came proclaiming the coming of this kingdom of God’s kingdom, or the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God. We’re going to use throughout this series, we’re going to use all of those terms interchangeably. And he came preaching this to the people of Israel.
We read in Matthew, chapter four that Jesus, from the time he started preaching, he preached, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near, has come near. Jesus traveled throughout Judea, throughout Israel, throughout the region of the sea of Galilee, proclaiming this message of the kingdom, calling people to be a part of it by following him. And these followers were called, in the Bible, disciples. They were the ones who, including the twelve that we’re familiar with, the twelve disciples that you probably have heard of, but they were other followers of Jesus as well. It started with a few, some names that you’re familiar with.
Simon, called Peter. Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, and then James and then his brother John, the sons of Zebedee, they left their father’s fishing business, they’ve left the family business, in order to follow Jesus. But these men and these other disciples followed Jesus as he taught in the galilean synagogues, as he healed those who were diseased and suffering from all kinds of physical illnesses. And even as he cast out demons from those who are demon possessed. And so Jesus ministered to these people, to the poor, to the marginalized, the oppressed.
And naturally, as he did, this news about him started to spread far and wide. The crowds started to gather to see what all this commotion was that was surrounding Jesus. And as the crowds formed, Jesus preached the same message to them that he had preached all along, that the kingdom of God was near. And in order for kingdom living to take place, a transformation had to take place in the hearts of those who would follow him. They needed to leave their lives of sin.
They needed to follow him to be a part of this kingdom. John writes at the beginning of his gospel that Jesus was the word. It was in the world. And though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, John writes, but his own did not receive him.
Yet to all who did receive Jesus, those who were disciples, those who were followers of Jesus, not just those who were following him around, but who were following his way of life, to those who believed in his name. John writes, he gave the right to become children of God. Now, this commitment to Jesus, to receiving who he was and what his teaching was, that separated Jesus disciples from the crowds. Jesus followers experienced a transformation that started on the inside and it moved to the outside. It was a change of motivation in their hearts that naturally changed every part of their lives to align with the life of Jesus.
In order to make this possible, Jesus taught his disciples how to live as a part of the kingdom, even if, as he was calling them, their circumstances didn’t line up with what they expected, with what they had hoped for. And even as he called those who would be his disciples, even those who were not his disciples, he was still calling them into the kingdom. And so we pick up in Matthew chapter five, having that context in mind so that we can understand the sermon on the mount. Matthew writes, now, when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.
And so all of the context of the sermon on the mount is this teaching of Jesus to those who want to be or who have already committed to following him as their lord and savior. As Jesus called his disciples, he taught them how to live in this kingdom. His teaching explains in detail the life that’s available to us, to those who would respond to the arrival of God’s kingdom by receiving Jesus as savior and lord. And so the sermon on the mount begins with a well known group of sayings called the beatitudes. Beatitude comes from the latin word for blessed or blessing, which itself is a translation of the greek word that’s in the original manuscripts, makarios or makarioi.
Michael Wilson defines Makarios as a state of existence in relationship to God, in which a person is blessed from God’s perspective, even when he or she doesn’t feel happy or isn’t presently experiencing good fortune. All of the beatitudes follow a similar basic structure, these two part phrases. The first part starts with the word blessed, and that’s where we get the like we said the word beatitude from. It describes who is blessed, hence the name beatitude. And the second phrase explains why those described in the first phrase are blessed.
And so we read in Matthew chapter five, Jesus said, first of all, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now, pausing here for a moment, there are eight beatitudes in total, and the first and the 8th beatitude, they follow a similar phrasing. They both have this phrase, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. But notice who the kingdom of heaven belongs to, right? This is intentional, that Jesus is pointing us to who the kingdom of heaven belongs to.
And what does he say? He says, first of all, that the poor are blessed. Now, that seems a little off, right? The poor are blessed. How can the poor be blessed?
Those who have experienced misfortune and marginalization, not only materially, not only economically, but also spiritually as well. Why are the poor blessed? Those who come before God in poverty, in physical and spiritual poverty? What is true about them that makes them blessed? The reality is that when we are poor, when we are bankrupt, physically or spiritually, we come before God with nothing in our hands.
We come before God with nothing to offer. And it’s in that state in which we can rely fully on God, in that state of poverty, emptiness of ourselves. What this tells us about our heavenly Father and his kingdom is that God reigns in a heavenly kingdom where he is presently honoring those who must fully rely on him. When you have nothing, you have nothing of yourself to rely on. And so Jesus is saying that those who are empty, those who come to God without their own solutions, their own answers, their own problem solving for their own problems, when we come before God fully in reliance of him, that we will be blessed, whether that’s for our physical needs or our spiritual needs, that God will bless us when we come to him into his presence to receive what he has for us that only he can give.
And the thing is, this would have been this flown in the face of people’s understanding of what it meant to be blessed in Jesus day. This is completely turning upside down. What it means to be blessed. First century Judea, right? In their eyes, someone who was poor, someone who was poor, deserved to be poor, right?
They probably did something, or they probably didn’t do something, or maybe even worse, maybe their sin or the generational sin of people who had come before them in their family. Maybe that’s why they were poor. We see this elsewhere in the gospels, that even Jesus disciples had this understanding of poverty, that poverty was caused by the person who was impoverished. But Jesus says that’s not so. In fact, those who are empty of themselves before God, that they are blessed, our father calls us in our emptiness to be blessed by him.
And Jesus turns this idea, poverty, on its head. The second beatitude. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. You know, who has mourning hand in hand with their situation, those who have nothing and so mourning goes along with being poor. Being poor assumes that you’ve probably lost something.
Maybe you’ve lost everything, whether that be possessions, material wealth, or that be work, or that be relationships that have caused that poverty, that relational poverty that maybe you’re experiencing, maybe even in Jesus day, you’ve lost the relationships that you had in your life because you’re following Jesus. That could be true even today. And so those who are poor go along with those who mourn, but they will be blessed because they will be comforted. Most scholars see a spiritual element to this mourning as well. It’s not only loss of material possession, but of standing before God, which those who are poor in the spirit mourn.
And so our mourning doesn’t mean that we are absent of joy. It doesn’t mean that we only have mourning as we mourn our losses in this world. And even as we mourn the destruction that is caused by our own sin, as we stand before God convicted of it, we can find joy from the Lord Lord, because he’s a merciful God and he’ll show us mercy. We’ll get to that again in a minute. Our father is calling out to us, though, to comfort those who understand the weight of their sin, who understand the weight of their loss and their need for a savior.
Jesus says, blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. The meek are rarely honored in our world. Often the world exalts those who exalt themselves. The aggressive, the harsh, even the tyrannical, frequently find themselves in positions of power in our world. And yet, in the kingdom of God, our father exalts the gentle and the humble by rescuing them from their oppression and placing them over his creation.
We can apply this meekness even on the smallest scales of our lives every single day by seeking to rid ourselves of self centeredness. We can live this out by looking to live our lives in a way that benefits of others over ourselves. Jesus said in verse six, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Righteousness is a key aspect throughout all of the scriptures and in the kingdom life that Jesus is calling us to. Jesus is teaching us that our father is holy and just, and he longs to fill us with his righteousness.
And that means that we must seek justice along with holiness, according to God’s definition, not our own. One of the best ways that we can apply the meekness that we just talked about in our lives is to start with righteousness and justice in our own lives. It’s hard to advocate for what’s holy and just when it doesn’t exist within us in our own lives first. And what Jesus is describing here, this hunger and this thirst, it speaks of a desperation. It suggests that we are desperate for what God’s will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven, beginning with ourselves, with our own lives.
In this righteousness, it is central to all that Jesus teachings teach us, and especially to the teachings of the sermon on the mount. Jesus said, blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. God is merciful. He forgives our sins. Our father is a merciful God who longs to restore us through his grace.
And God’s mercy is also central to the whole story of the scriptures. God doesn’t give us what we deserve due to our sin, but he forgives us because of his grace. He takes away our sin through the cross. And because God is merciful, we should also be merciful even to those who sin against us. Jesus said in verse eight, blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Ritual purity was of vital importance in Jesus day. People would go to long lengths to make sure that they were ritually and ceremonially pure. And Jesus wants that purity for us. But he wants it to go deeper than just clean hands. He wants it to go deeper into our hearts.
The purity that Jesus longs for goes so deep that it even purifies our own sinful human hearts. And so our heavenly Father is without sin and longs to purify us and make us free from sin through the cross so that we can enter his presence and stand before him. He accomplishes this once and all, once for all, through the cross, through the blood of Jesus Christ. Verse nine. Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Peace and reconciliation are also major themes in the scriptures, nearly every page of the Bible, all the way back in the beginning. God’s plan from the beginning was to reconcile us to himself, to restore the peace, to restore the shalom that existed between us and his creation. And that restoration of peace begins in our hearts as God purifies us from sin, but it’s made complete in a life lived for Jesus Christ. And so we were once called enemies of God because of our sin. But now he calls us through Jesus.
He calls us his children. And so our father has reconciled us to himself and calls us to help others to be reconciled to him as well. And finally, Jesus says, blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And in repeating that phrase, Jesus completes this structure, pointing us to the reality that is the kingdom of God for those who are in Christ. The 8th and final beatitude makes it clear again that Jesus is teaching his disciples who have already entered this kingdom, how to live accordingly.
And these are not requirements for entry into the kingdom, but these are qualities of a life that’s submitted to Christ. Persecution here simply means to be pursued or to be harassed, and it can take many forms. Elsewhere in the scriptures, we even see that persecution can actually come because of our own actions, because of our own sin, because of our own foolishness. But that’s not the kind of persecution that Jesus is talking about here. He’s talking to his disciples who’ve left everything in order to follow him.
Many of them have lost everything in order to follow him, their family connections, their relationships with loved ones. Jesus isn’t saying that we must be persecuted in order to be saved, but he’s saying that that’s a very real possibility when we are. Instead, what he’s saying is that living for him in God’s kingdom means the world will likely turn against us in many ways, just like they did against him. Our father sent him, though, as a light into the world that the world would reject. But Jesus calls those who stand in the light, out of the world and into the light.
And this final beatitude is also different, because jesus goes on to make this personal. All these others, all these other beatitudes were talking about, they, the ones that all it was kind of these other people. Jesus was speaking to it in that way. But in verse eleven, he says, blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you. Because of me, he says, rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.
In the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Even though following Jesus may lead to suffering persecution in this world, even that does not exclude us from the joys and the blessings of being a part of God’s kingdom, the kingdom of our heavenly Father. All of our earthly pain, all of our suffering, all of our mourning, all of our losses, pales in comparison to the glory and the reward that’s everlasting in heaven with Jesus. And so Jesus disciples are called to impact the world that they live in, for the kingdom that they belong to, that they are living for. And this will inevitably lead to conflict and temptation to give in and to give up.
And so Jesus gives us two metaphors for how we should have a lasting life. As kingdom livers, as kingdom workers, we’re to be salt and light. Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
Now, salt had a lot of uses in the ancient world, and we could spend a lot of time just on this metaphor, right? Not to mention the fact that, like, chemically speaking, salt is salt, okay? And so salt does not lose its saltiness or it isn’t salt. Like, it’s just like. So that’s confusing.
Like, am I saying, well, jesus is. Are you saying Jesus is wrong? No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is it’s a metaphor, right? So the metaphor, without going too deep, is the idea that this can’t be true of Jesus’s true disciples, that those who are truly in Christ, they won’t lose their saltiness, because what good would it be, right?
There’s all sorts of different things that we could dive into, but just an oversimplification, right? Because honestly, to overemphasize or even to oversimplify any of these things, salt was one of the most vital products in the ancient world, right? It was a preservative for food, it provided nutrients, and it was even used for fertilizer in the soil in smaller amounts. So what is clearly being stated by Jesus here, without overemphasizing or underemphasizing any of these pieces of what it means to be salt, is that we, as Jesus disciples, we are spiritually vital to the world, but the world needs us to live as a part of his kingdom. The same way with light.
Jesus says, you are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven.
When we become disciples of Jesus, he says we become the salt of the earth and the light of the world. He uses that same term of himself. He says that he is the light of the world, but he says we are, too. Being light of the world means that we shine the light of Jesus in the darkness of the world. We can’t shine the light unless we’re reflecting the life of the one who rescues and transforms us, unless we are reflecting that light that God sent in his son Jesus out into the world.
That transformation is what separates us as followers of Jesus from the crowds. And it’s full of blessings. Despite our conditions, despite our circumstances, the call to believe in Jesus as savior and follow him as Lord are practically inseparable as far as the scripture is concerned, are concerned. And what we learn is this, that the blessings of God’s kingdom are both a present possession and a future hope for those who have received Jesus. If we truly want to experience the full blessing of the kingdom, if you truly want to be blessed, then Jesus says, we must repent.
We must turn away from our sinful flesh and acquire the life of the kingdom as a child of God. We must receive Christ as savior and as Lord. We can comprehend what that means and what we must live out as a part of the kingdom of God in this moment of his history. Even when it’s invisible to us, even when the kingdom of God is eternal, it’s without physical boundaries. It crosses every age and every culture that has ever existed or ever will.
But we can know what it means to live as a part of the kingdom of God. By examining the teachings and the life of Jesus, we have a perfect model and mentor for kingdom living in Christ. As Jesus says in the Gospel of John John 13, he says, very truly, I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. You’ll be blessed if you do them.
But do you want to be blessed? I want to be blessed like Janet and Jane and John were. I want to experience the blessings of being a child of God that are eternal, that lasts beyond my circumstances, beyond my conditions. And we can experience that in Christ by putting into play the actions of a kingdom living disciple of Jesus. Michael Wilkinson, in his commentary, says, Jesus disciples will participate in real forgiveness of sins through the redemptive work of Christ on the cross.
They will experience the real beginnings of kingdom life that comes through the new covenant, regenerative work of the spirit. And they will experience real transformation by the spirit into the image of Christ and Jesus displays in his own life in teaching the perfection of the father that is laid before his disciples as the ideal goal toward which they are to strive. The wonderful truth, Wilkinson says, behind the goal is that there is a realistic promise of initiation and ultimate realization, even though they will not attain the goal perfectly in this life. The ideal life that Jesus lives and teaches becomes the goal that all of his disciples are to strive toward in this life. And so what we learn if you’re gonna take anything away from today’s message.
It should be this, that God’s children are blessed by living for his kingdom daily like Jesus does. God’s children are blessed by living for his kingdom daily like Jesus. Jesus teachings, found in the gospels and especially in the sermon on the mount, instruct us on how we should live. And so when we see Jesus teaching his disciples, we should consider how we can apply those principles to our own lives. We can start, and I want to give you some practical ways that you can do that by applying what we’ve learned through the beatitudes today.
First of all, we learned from the sermon on the mount that from Jesus teaching that we need to make a commitment. And that’s what a kingdom life of a disciple means, that the disciple has made a commitment to following Jesus and experiences the blessings of eternal life in Christ. Before you do anything else, before you offer anything up to God, we come to him empty handed, empty of ourself, impoverished in our physical and our spiritual ability to do anything for ourselves. We come to God relying fully on him. And because we do that, empty of ourselves, God blesses us with a kingdom life.
He calls us into his presence through his son Jesus, and he gives us eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. The second way that we can apply this, if we haven’t, if we’ve already made that commitment, if you haven’t made that commitment, I would encourage you. Today may be the day where you could make that commitment to follow Christ, to accept that offer of an eternal life in Jesus. But if you’ve already accepted that, then you need to receive Jesus teaching on the kingdom. You need to live according to the model that he’s given us to live in his life.
We could start by applying the beatitudes. We can be blessed by coming to the Father, empty of ourselves every day and accepting what he has to offer to us. We can continue by mourning the losses that are caused by our sin in the world, by weeping for the destruction that we’ve caused before God, taking that sin to him, confessing it to him, and being forgiven for it. We can humble ourselves and seek to walk gently, as Jesus did before others. We could seek holiness and justice according to God’s definitions, not our own.
As he fills us with his righteousness, we could be merciful as he is merciful. Probably the simplest way that we can do that is just to forgive others that have sinned against us. Maybe there’s somebody in this room today that you need to offer the forgiveness of Christ to for sins that they’ve committed against you. We need to let Jesus purify our hearts by confessing our sin to him and receiving that forgiveness. We talked before about how every night we can lay our head down on the pillow and confess our sins to God, and he will offer us forgiveness in return.
It’s the best, the best switch ever. Our sin for the grace and the mercy of God. We could be reconciled to God and seek to help others be reconciled as well. Who in your life needs to be reconciled to Jesus? How can you help them find that?
And finally, we can endure hardships as a result of our faith, not complaining, not mourning our own sorrow, but turning it over to Jesus and realizing that our reward in heaven is great. And finally, we can encourage and teach others to do all these things as well. Life in the kingdom of God is a blessing, and we can all receive that.