About this sermon
The Beatitudes open the Sermon on the Mount with a blessing on the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Like Psalms 1, 2 and 40, they pronounce blessing on those who trust the Lord in lowliness. They move from need to transformation to the virtues of mercy, purity and peacemaking, and they reverse the world’s values, so that those who know they lack God receive his kingdom. Jesus teaches with the authority of the eternal Son, and he gives his people the power to live the life he describes.
Sermon transcript
You cross me not, even as I cross thee, but I will not confess to you. Should I declare it wrong, the number is too great. You want no offering, no sacrifice. What you have given, We are ready to hear. I say, here I come, as in those glory days. Due to your will, O God, to me is my delight. The Lord is strong among we, deep in my heart, O God. He congregates on great high court of righteousness. You may be seated.
The Word of God comes to us from two great texts. One is the one we’ve just sung from, Psalm 40. The other is the Beatitudes, Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 through 10. And the sermon shall be entitled, Blessed are the poor in spirit, from the first of the sayings of the Beatitudes. Let’s then hear the word of God as it comes to us from King David. One of the great Psalms, Psalm 40.
For the leader of Psalm of David, I put my hope in the Lord. He inclined toward me and heeded my cry. He lifted me out of the miry pit, the slimy clay, and set my feet on a rock, steadied my legs. He put a new song into my mouth, a hymn to our God. Many will see it and stand in awe and trust in the Lord. Blessed is the one who makes the Lord his trust, who turns not to the arrogant nor to followers of falsehood. Oh, Lord, my God, have done many things.
The wonders you’ve devised for us cannot be set out before you. I would rehearse the tale of them, but they are more than can be told. You have opened my ear to understand that you do not desire sacrifice and meal offering. You do not ask for burnt offering and sin offering.
So I said, see, I come in the scroll of the book. It is written. To do what pleases you, my God, is my desire. Your teaching is in my inmost parts. I proclaim your righteousness in the great congregation. I did not withhold my words. O Lord, you know it. I did not keep your beneficence to myself. I declared your faithful deliverance. I did not fail to speak of your steadfast love in the great congregation. O Lord, you will not withhold from me your mercy. Your steadfast love will protect me always.
For misfortunes without number envelop me. My iniquities have caught up with me. I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head. I’m at my wit’s end. Oh, favor me, Lord, and save me. Oh, Lord, hasten to my aid. Let those who seek to destroy my life be shamed and disgraced. Let those who wish me harm fall back in frustration. Let those who say, aha, aha, let them be desolate because of their frustration. But let all who seek you be glad and rejoice in you. But those who were eager for your deliverance always say, extolled be the Lord. But I, I am poor and needy. May the Lord plan deliverance for me. You are my help and my rescuer. My God, Do not delay.
And now the reading from the New Testament, Gospel of Matthew chapter five, verses one through 10, beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. 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.
He opened his mouth and said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, For they will be called the children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So far, the reading of God’s own word. Thanks be to God.
What’s happened in recent time is that I’m preaching accidentally a series to you. I didn’t know it was a series. Now it’s a series. And the series is how Jesus preaches the gospel. We’ve been looking at passages where we have the opening statements of Jesus in his proclamation. We looked at Matthew chapter four, the opening words of Jesus in his public ministry. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent. We looked at Mark chapter one, verse 15. The time has come. The kingdom of heaven is, the kingdom of God is drawn near. Repent and believe the good news. We looked at Luke four. where after the reading of scripture in Jesus’ own home synagogue in Nazareth, he says, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
Isaiah 61, the text that’s been read. Here we have the opening of the most famous sermon by Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew five through seven, presented in both Matthew’s gospel and Luke in somewhat different words, but the same basic content. And in Matthew’s gospel, the large chunk of, well, if you’ve got a red letter Bible, and some of you might, okay, the actual words of Jesus in reading for about four pages of text. And so here we have how Matthew presents the preaching of the Lord. In our story, we have Jesus presented as the master teacher. The crowds have been following, they’ve seen miracles, they’ve heard some teaching, they’ve heard the basic call that the time has come, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent, believe the good news.
But so far in Matthew’s gospel we don’t have details of content. Now Matthew gives it to us right between the eyes. And the things that we think are most blessed are the very things that Jesus does not begin to speak about. Jesus, the master teacher actually engages in ironic reversal.
And whereas we might think that blessing comes best and most upon those who are rich in the deeds of piety and kindness and righteousness. That’s not how it is as the words begin. Not blessed are the rich in spirit. That’s how we might expect the sermon to begin if we’re going to have blessings upon people. Blessed are the rich in spirit, that is, blessed are those who have made great progress in the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who know and keep the commandments.
And if we were to misread Psalm 1 and Psalm 2, we might begin to think that. To misread the Psalms. In Psalm 1 we begin with blessing. Blessed is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but rather his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”
All right, well, why meditate upon the law of the Lord? It’s because you need it. Because you are far from the ways of God, it must be brought. And so that person becomes like the tree that grows up nurtured by God, that at last becomes fruitful. But the beginning of the life of that tree is not so. So even Psalm 1 implies a life of repentance, beginning with our spiritual need and having that need addressed by the life of God and the teaching of God in Torah.
In Psalm 2, the nations are in their uproar. The same word about meditating upon the Torah is used about their meditation of their rebellion. The kings of the earth in plots and games. It’s the same verb in Hebrew. They are meditating upon their plot of revolt against the Lord and against His Messiah. And they are rebuked.
And in the last line of the psalm, again we have the word blessed. Same word that begins Psalm 1. So these two psalms are pairs. It’s the right entry into the book of Psalms. And so we are exhorted to rise, to wise up, to kiss the son, that is to declare allegiance to him, to give him our loyal kiss, to repent of our rebellions. And the last line says this, blessed is the one who trusts in him.
The same ashray, blessednesses, that begins Psalm 1 is the one that ends Psalm 2. So even here we are being taught the lowliness of our repentance. In Psalm 40, which we sung and also have heard read, we find a kind of irony at work. We begin with the deliverance. Okay, I waited and waited upon the Lord and he lifted me from the miry clay and set my feet upon the rock.
That’s how the psalm begins. How does it end? I’m poor and lowly and my enemies without number. Oh Lord, do not delay. We reverse the order of the usual psalm. We work not from need to deliverance. We work from deliverance and then go backwards to our need. And the psalm forces us to consider that we are always poor and lowly and always in need.
And that’s what the Beatitudes do. Blessed are the poor in spirit. In contrast, later on in Luke’s telling of the gospel, we have that Pharisee who goes up to the temple to pray. He says, I thank you, God, that I’m not like other people. I fast twice a week. I give a tithe on all I can get. And I’m not like this tax collector over there. And what’s the tax collector say? God have mercy upon me, the sinner. The definite article there is in the Greek text, the sinner, not just any sinner. God have mercy upon me, the sinner, as if he’s the only one. Which one went away justified, says Jesus? Not the one who is proud of his so-called spiritual achievements, but the one who knew his spiritual poverty.
And so Jesus, the master teacher, teaches us the ironic reverse by which we enter into the kingdom of God. The reversal that also says things like this, that those who think they are first will be last. If you think you came to be served, sorry, it’s the other way around. And unless you take up your cross daily, the cross, a means of death, you cannot be my disciple.
Jesus the Master Teacher overturns the ordinary orders of the world, turns them upside down, or rather sets them right side up so that we can at last enter into God’s Holy Kingdom. Not by claims of virtue and mercy and confidence in our own moral power, but only when we know we don’t have any. And that’s the only way in. When we know we don’t have any, that’s how we enter God’s kingdom.
And so Jesus, seeing the crowds following, goes to the mountainside by the Sea of Galilee. We actually think we know the place. It’s marked there by ancient Christians. And the disciples come. And oddly in our story, the text tells us, not that Jesus addressed the crowds, He opened his mouth and began to teach them, that is, the disciples. And the crowds are overhearing as if they are the strangers to it. And yes, they are. And they’re being told the path of entry into the kingdom of God. The parallel that Matthew builds is certainly clear. that there’s another mountain in the past behind all this story and another great teacher on a mountain speaking the will of God.
And we’re meant to think of Moses and Mount Sinai and the declarations of the law, which nonetheless begin also with mercy. But I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Israel begins an utter spiritual deficit. enslaved to tyrannical pagan power, and out of that, in the mercy of God, they come to the holy mountain, are brought into covenant in this new and powerful way, and receive the will of God.
So already in chapter 19 we read that, of Exodus that is, we read that I brought you to myself. 10th commandment is chapter 20. Chapter 19, I brought you to myself. on eagles’ wings. That is, deliverance precedes any moral power. And even the teaching of the law, the Ten Commandments, is withheld until Israel understands that great deliverance that has already happened. So there are the disciples at the feet of Jesus, and He addresses them. Now, you may not realize this, perhaps it’s just too common to note, but this text actually is poetry. The servant begins with eight lines of gorgeous poetry.
And for those who’ve been in my classes at Geneva, you know that I say such things as this, that when the Bible breaks into poetry, you know something important is happening. The very first poem in the Bible is Genesis 1, 26 to 28, begins this way, let us make man in our image. That’s a poem. The second poem of the Bible is given to the voice of Adam, chapter 2 of Genesis, verse 23. At last, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones, shall be called woman, for she was taken from man. These are the first two poems of the Bible. The Bible breaks into poetry at crucially important moments. In Genesis 1, the climax of creation, the human race. In Genesis 2, the solution to solitude, the creation of woman. At last, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.
And a third of the Bible is poetry. You may not think you like poetry, but if you, the lyrics of every popular song you’ve ever loved, that’s poetry too. And all that Dr. Seuss stuff you loved when you were five, that’s poetry. All right, so a third of the Bible is poetry. And so Jesus is the great poet. Our text actually gives us eight paired lines of poetry, each pair beginning with the word blessed, probably the same as in the opening of the book of Psalms, in the verse one of Psalm 1, the last line of Psalm 2, asherah.
In Hebrew, it’s actually a plural, and it’s exclamatory, and it goes something like, oh, the blessednesses of. Jesus would have used the Aramaic equivalent probably. And so, oh, the blessedness is off. And Greek puts that as makarios, blessed, blessed.
Eight times we get it. Now, the number eight was marked by ancient church fathers as important. You may remember that when Abraham was called to be the person of God in Genesis 12, he was given the sevenfold blessing. So seven sentences, seven clauses of blessing in the calling of Abraham.
Go from your home, your father’s place, the place of your birth, your father’s family. Go to the land that I will show you. All that’s prose. And then the text breaks into poetry in seven clauses. And I’ll bless you and make your name great. And you will be a blessing. And those who bless you, I will bless. And the one who curses you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the nation shall find blessedness.
Maybe I left out a clause, I forget. But that’s seven total in the actual text. And the idea is that the sevenfold blessing is the most complete blessedness of them all. Nothing can be more blessed than Abraham with this sevenfold blessing. Well, Jesus outdoes it. Eight. And I think the number’s on purpose.
The ancient Christians of Galilee so noted it that when they built the first ancient church on that site in about the third or fourth century, they made the building eight sides. And nearly all the earliest Christian architecture is eight-sided octagon churches, reflecting, the ancient writers tell us, the eightfold Beatitudes, which describe the fullness of the Christian life.
And so Jesus, the poet, Each of those blessednesses speaks of what God, how God counts us, how God treats us with divine favor. And each of those blessednesses ends with a particular gift. We’ll look at all eight of them, and I hope to be nonetheless relatively brief. And so Jesus, the Son of God from heaven, the source of all beatitude, the source of all blessings, opens up for us the pathway into his kingdom and throughout its enduring life within this mortal world. For years I never noticed that the Beatitudes are actually linked into a plot line.
I always thought they were just individual cool sayings, each one independent relatively, and you could just quote each one at need, like maybe a line from the Book of Proverbs might be quoted at need. It wasn’t until I was called upon to lecture on them at Geneva in 1992 that I had to think about them more clearly. And I was given a lecture outline, and lo and behold, the lecture outline gave them as a plot line, which had a kind of progress from beginning to end. And as soon as I understood what was happening in that outline, I realized, oh, yeah. Why didn’t I ever think of that before? I felt stupid. And the plot line is easy, actually. The eight are grouped in this way. Three plus one. Three plus one. What are the first three?
They are Beatitudes pronounced upon need. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Now the poor in spirit and those who mourn in the meek, these are all statements of weakness, of need. And the first of them gives the clearest clue to how the plot goes. Because these are blessednesses beginning with the ones who know their need of God. To be poor in spirit is to know that you lack the gifts and graces of God’s kingdom, to know that you need God.
And if you don’t know that, you can never begin. One paraphrase, I don’t especially like paraphrases of the Bible, but one paraphrase actually seems to get it pretty good. I don’t like Eugene Peterson’s The Message, but here I have to admire it, at least for one sentence. And here’s how Peterson puts it.
Blessed are those who know their need of God. That’s accurate for the sense of the sentence. Those who are poor in spirit know they are not rich in spirit. They know that they lack. And so we have three beatitudes of need. And then we have one beatitude of transformation.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” That is, those who hunger and thirst for something lack whatever it is that they’re hungering and thirsting for. The metaphor, of course, is famine and starvation even. Okay, no water, no well, no dinner, no refrigerator, no restaurant, no kitchen, no food in the pantry. And you hunger and you thirst. And here you’re hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
The very thing you lacked in the first beatitude. So when you know that you are in spiritual impoverishment, here’s how the plot line goes. You then are in mourning over it. That is, you are in grief Because you know you need God and you know you do not have Him. Therefore, you mourn. And in your mourning, whatever pride you have in your own power evaporates all away. And you become meek.
And God has made you open then. to his kingdom. Only the humble may enter. God makes it his business to humble us. And so three beatitudes of need followed by one of transformation. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, as they know they lack it. And what is the promise? They shall be filled. Notice the next three Beatitudes. These now are Beatitudes of virtue, a virtuous action even. Blessed are the merciful. Now so often in the orders of the world and even of the church when it is worldly in its forms of conduct, judgment upon sinners becomes the dominant mode. One of my students, way back 30 some years ago in the first college where I worked, told me, quote, the church is the expert at judgment. I was glad he was not describing my church. Or rather, I don’t know, let me try that again. I hoped he was not describing my church. OK, I’m a little over the line there. I hoped he was not describing my church.
If the church is the expert at judgment, No wonder the world turns aside. Now of course we must judge and we must exercise clear moral judgments because the world is astray and we have to know that and we have to know it with astuteness. But if judgment overpowers mercy, then we are not doing the deeds of God’s kingdom.
And so after this beatitude of transformation of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness being filled with God’s gift of virtuous life, the love of God, obedience, discipleship, what’s the next beatitude? The first of the action beatitudes, the virtue beatitudes, blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. live life as the expert of judgment, and you will be judged by a like standard.
That’s Matthew 7. And so those who have been transformed by God’s kindness and generosity are merciful to those who are not yet. And those who exercise mercy then, They make a progress of the soul. Beatitude six and seven. What are they? Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Pure in heart. What’s the outcome there?
They will see God. Thomas Aquinas tells us that there is no greater outcome of the Christian life than the blessed vision, the beatific vision. Visio beatificis, I think is the Latin phrase in Thomas’ writings from the 13th century. The vision of God where soul to soul, we are engaged with the living God. That’s the heavenly future. Soul to soul, engaged with the living God. Blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God.
And within the fallen orders of the world, those who are transformed by righteousness then become the peacemakers. Those who reconcile the warring parties, those who bring arguing brothers and sisters back to the table again, and they will be called the children of God. Last, Beatitude, in our second set of four, I said it was three plus one plus three plus one, three of need, one of transformation, three of virtue. What’s the one that comes after the three of virtue?
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. And so often the world responds to those who exercise mercy and purity and peacemaking. The world responds with rejection and hatred and sometimes even martyrdom. Because we witness against the principles that rule the world. And we witness for a better way. And when we come to the end of the eighth beatitude, we now know that we’ve also come full circle. because the first blessedness ends with the saying that theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and the eighth says the same. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And so we see that we begin this matter of the kingdom of God, recognizing that we do not have God, and need him.
And God grants us that grace to enter in. It cannot be done without grace. Only God can do it. But God in his mercy does. And so we begin to be transformed by that righteousness. And to gain a merciful life. and to make progress in purity, and to become peacemaking, and yes, sometimes to be persecuted. But those who are in this spiritual pathway receive immense blessedness.
The kingdom of heaven, first beatitude. Comfort from God, the second one. The earth inherited, the third beatitude. righteousness that shall ultimately fill us, the fourth beatitude, mercy. Now and on the day of judgment, the fifth beatitude, the blessed vision of God, the sixth beatitude, and the right, the privilege to be called the very children of God, the seventh beatitude, And to close it off now with a fine conclusion to the Eightfold Poem, the Kingdom of Heaven.
And so Jesus, the Son of God from Heaven, grants us then this blessedness. He is the source of all blessedness. He is the source of all good. And He can teach such things with authority because not only is He the master teacher, but he teaches us by the infallible knowledge that is his by origin as the second person of the Trinity in the word of the Father. All that he teaches is true and useful. And so we receive from him this teaching which enters us into that ironic kingdom, the kingdom that looks so upside down to the world, but that is at last right side up.
Shall we pray? Lord Jesus Christ, we bow before you with love, with reverence, confessing our own, yes, fatal tendency toward self-exaltation, pride, And if we make any moral progress at all, yes, pride in that as if it is our own. So grant us, Lord Jesus, that gift of an enduring humility to know that we are, by everything in us, impoverished, but by everything in you, enriched by gift. Help us then to be those persons of mercy and purity and peacemaking that you so prescribe. And help us then to receive from you the very powers of heaven by which these things can be done, yes, even on earth. And make us faithful, Lord, to this way of life, so that the world may know that you have come into the world as the Savior of sinners.
Hear our prayer, Jesus, Son of God from heaven, source of all blessing, and bless us indeed. Amen. The hymn is based upon that peace that comes to us from God, the peace that passes understanding, the peace that makes us truly peaceable and peacemaking. Hymn number 580, When Peace Like a River. So we stand. Ladies and gentlemen.
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