3/24/24 Matthew 5:1-12 “Perfect Happiness for You!”

21 Mar 3/24/24 Matthew 5:1-12 “Perfect Happiness for You!”

3/24/24     Matthew 5:1-12       “Perfect Happiness for You!”

I don’t know if any of you have to deal with this very often, but sometimes I have to call places where there are no human beings left.  Here is what I mean.  It seems that many big corporations and now even small companies, have set up automated answering services so they can save time.  If they ever had to answer their own phones, they would quickly realize how consumer unfriendly they really are.  It is not unlike huge banks that really don’t care about the small depositor like you and me.  They are only interested in the big investor.  Anyway, I had to call an insurance company one time because they finally got our address half right from when we moved 7 years prior to that time.  They finally did get it right but my patience was tattered by the time I finished talking to them and their machines.  My patience has been tattered many times since.  Then I sat down to begin this sermon by reading the beatitudes.  Now if that isn’t a humbling experience, I don’t know what is!  I once read a book about Jesus where one chapter was titled ‘No Ordinary Man.’ Just about every paragraph that we read in the Gospels shows us just how much Jesus was not ordinary in most any sense of the word.  Today, we are going to take a short look at the Beatitudes and see how they apply to us 100% even though we live 2000 years later.

Jerry Shirley tells about a little girl who was riding home from church with her parents when she said to her mother, “Mommy, there’s something the preacher said this morning that I don’t understand.”  The mother replied, “Oh?  What is that?”  The little girl continued, “He said that God is bigger than we are.  He said God is so big that He could hold the whole world in His hand.  Is that true?”  The mother answered, “Yes, that is true, honey.”  “But Mommy, he also said that God comes to live inside of us when we believe in Jesus as our Savior.  Is that true, also?”  Again the mother assured the girl that what the pastor had said was true.  With a puzzled look on her face the little girl then asked, “If God is bigger than us and He lives inside of us, wouldn’t He show through?”  Think about that.  Out of the mouths of our young people come some of the best truths of life.

Before we begin this today, I would like to point out just how Jesus was not an ordinary man.  As we go through the Gospels on our journey through the Bible, I want you to notice how many things are happening.  The trouble with preaching once a week is that I can only cover a very limited part of the text.  Notice all the healings that Jesus does in the parts I don’t cover.  Notice all the demons He drives out.  Notice all the miracles that Jesus performs like feeding 5000, then 4000 and walking on water.  If you had the honor of being around Jesus, you got to see things happening that just don’t happen.  On top of all this, Jesus told parables that have lasted for 2000 years.  There is no other author like this.  And then we have all the wise sayings of Jesus.  The reason that we study the Gospels so much is that this is where Jesus proves exactly who He is. The Beatitudes are just further proof that Jesus is God.

The Beatitudes are these few verses that all begin with the word ‘blessed.’  To the people listening on the mountainside that day, the word ‘blessed’ meant ‘divine joy’ or ‘perfect happiness.’  Talk about a great way to begin a talk to a bunch of people.  It would be like me starting out by saying, “Hey, I want to tell you about how to have perfect happiness.  I want everyone to have divine joy!”  Now I have your attention.

I also want you to note that Jesus was on a mountainside.  There are experts who say that Jesus did this so that He could be heard and that is quite possible.  If you remember how he would take a boat off shore a little so he could speak to people.  We all know how voices carry over water.  The thought came to me, and this might be wrong, that most amphitheaters have the speaker at the bottom speaking up and not the way Jesus was doing it here.  That is just something to think about.  However, we don’t want to miss the symbolism here.  It has been said, and not everyone agrees, that Jesus is on the mountain in the same way that Moses was on the mountain when He gave the Law.  Jesus is giving them a new form of the Law.

First of all, we have ‘blessed are the poor in spirit.’  Jesus was trying to tell these people that if they wanted pure happiness, they would first have to acknowledge that they have little power in contrast to God who has all power.  In other words they needed to be humble.

I don’t think that this was a big problem for the listeners for the most part.  These were poor people.  They didn’t have much.   I have spent a little time being poor, being on the short end of the stick.  I know that when you don’t have anything, then you feel you aren’t worthy of the things that others have.  It is easy to be humble when you don’t have anything to begin with.  So Jesus wants these people to humble themselves before God.  They are to realize that God has everything and He gives to us as He sees fit.  It is not up to us for any of these things.  It is all up to God.  If they acknowledge that God is in charge of everything, then they will inherit heaven.  I think for the most part we all understand and know this.

Now this is a much harder concept to live by when you have a lot or you are rich.  This is the problem we have in this country.  We are very affluent.  If we want something, we just go out and buy it.  As a matter of fact, if we want something that we can’t even afford, we can go out and buy it on credit.  With credit and money, there is pretty much nothing we can’t have.  It gets pretty hard to be humble when we can have anything we want as far as material goods.  We don’t need God because we can do it ourselves.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  When you start to be humble before God is when you really start to live.  If you don’t believe that, then look around and tell me what you have done or what you have made.  None of it is from you.  You are able to do things because of the gifts that God has given you and the grace He has given you.  You often have to work but God supplies the rewards.  Also if you are humble, you are not weak.  When you are humble, you have Jesus with you and you are strong, very strong.

So the first Beatitude deals with us.  The next three deal with sin.  We are to mourn over sin.  We are to despise it.  Jesus isn’t really talking about us mourning over the loss of a loved one or anything like that.  He is referring to our loss of relationship with Him due to our sin.  Then we are to be meek when we come to Him.  Meekness is not weakness.  Like humbleness, it is strength.  Moses was meek.  Jesus is meek.  It means that they know that all things come from God and we are to be submissive to God.  So we mourn our loss due to sin and then we come to Jesus meekly seeking to satisfy our natural hunger and thirst for righteousness.  I think it seems so simple when we state it like this.

However, the world of ancient times and modern times is not wired like this.  Our world in controlled by Satan and he will try to keep us from the Beatitudes as much as possible.  I think that we all know the basics of what the Bible says.  We all know that it is the inspired word of God.  It is our instruction manual and basic building block of our faith.  But we live in a world that goes totally against the Word of God.  Congress passes laws that are right in the face of Christians and we are told to accept it.  We are told we have to change because the world is changing.  The media tells us that what they print is the absolute truth until a new truth comes out.  Or at other times the press just lies from the beginning.  We are to disregard the Bible because human wisdom is so much better.  Just look at our world today and tell me how much smarter mankind is than God!  And the list goes on and on!

However, the Bible tells us, and this is the truth that will not change, the Bible tells us that we are to mourn the sin that is everywhere because so many are lost.  If you are guilty, you are to come humbly before the Lord to ask for forgiveness and not hide your sin under a rock.  Then as you become cleansed, you are to seek the righteousness of Jesus Christ and it will be given to you.  You do not need the so-called righteousness that comes from society or Congress or any other human means. You need the righteousness of Christ.  Following Jesus isn’t always easy but it will always end up being good.

The next section of the Beatitudes reflects how we are to feel about God.  God shows you the most gracious, blessed mercy that you can have.  You don’t deserve this in any way shape or form but God loves you so much that He freely gives you mercy.  Then you are to take this mercy and show it to others.  You strive to keep your heart pure so that you can see the glory of God everywhere.  And when you are not pure of heart, then you go back and mourn your sin and start there again.  Then you are to move on and be the peace makers of the world showing mercy, pureness and peace.  These Beatitudes are so basic and Jesus presents them to all of us.

We have all seen people who need mercy from God.  Chances are we see them every day.  Sometimes what we fail to understand is that God’s mercy comes from us.  We are the carriers of mercy.  Maybe it is the homeless person who needs some help.  Maybe it is the person who has been recently divorced.  Maybe it is the person who is out of work.  It is not hard to find people who need mercy because we are all broken.  We all need mercy.  Some of us need it a little more than others at this particular moment.

Terry Blankenship tells of a man who visited a home where there were 5 children and he was supposed to be a kind of ‘godfather’ figure to them.  As he was trying to get to know them better, he asked one little girl about her doll collection.  As they were looking at it, he asked which one was her favorite.   “Promise you won’t laugh if I tell you?” she asked.  “No I won’t laugh,” said the man.  She went and got the most dilapidated, beat up doll there was.  The hair was missing, an arm was cracked and the nose was gone.  The man didn’t laugh but he had to ask, “Why do you love this one the most?”  The little girl replied, “Because she needs it the most.  If I didn’t love her, then nobody would.”  How many people do we meet who fall into the same category as this broken doll?  If you don’t love them, then no one will.  We all need mercy.

The rest of the Beatitudes tell us how we are to view this broken world as they are trying their best to get rid of us.  The people that Jesus was talking to that day on the mountainside knew all about this.  Following Jesus was not the thing to be doing.  But how could you not follow Him when He performed all these miracles on a regular basis?  How could these people not follow Jesus when He had just cured their father or mother or brother or sister?  These people were just the commoners of the time.  They had no clout but they believed because of what the Scriptures said and because of what Jesus did.  They were persecuted but they had a Savior in Jesus.

In today’s world we have miracles happening every day, right in front of us and we are told that we are superstitious or primitive because we believe in the one who made them possible.  We have healings and other things happening right in our churches and I praise the Lord that He loves us so much.  Jesus Christ has saved many of us.  He has healed us.  He has held our heads above water in critical moments.  The evidence is absolutely overwhelming that Jesus Christ is alive and well and working in our lives.  And yet our neighbors can’t see it.  They laugh at us.  In other countries they kill us.  Persecution against Christians is everywhere you look.

Jesus is telling us that blessed are you who are being persecuted in my name.  You will inherit the Kingdom of God.  That is one bold promise made by the one who has never gone back on a promise.  These Beatitudes are absolutely wonderful as the cover everything from the ancient past until now.

On this Palm Sunday let us remember the Beatitudes and try to live by these simple standards.  Jesus came to Jerusalem so many years ago and He wept before He entered the city.  He wept because He saw how the future would be.  He saw His death.  He saw the destruction of Jerusalem 40 years later.  He saw all the wars of the future before they happened.  He saw how our world today has once again turned our backs on Jesus.  You and I made Jesus weep.

As you enter Holy Week, let’s see if you can follow these Beatitudes for just one week.  When you fail, go back and start again.  We all fail including me.  Therefore, go to Him.  Confess your sins to Him.  Ask Jesus to be Lord of your life.  Ask Jesus to live in your heart forever.  This is Easter.  This is the time of new beginnings.  There is not a better new beginning in the world than when you first come to Him; or when you realize we are sinners and mourn for our loss and come back to Jesus.  When you do this, you will begin to know what joy and peace are all about.  Praise the Lord that He first loved us.  Let’s pray.