Matthew 5:5-16

Although the sermon on the mount is not TO us today, it’s FOR us today. It was given to a Jewish audience, who trust in the Mosaic law for their forgiveness and their righteousness.

It was given while mankind was still under the Old Covenant. Jesus had not yet given His life, been buried, and risen on the third day you see. That’s what bought the New Covenant into being. It was sealed in His blood.

So, this whole section of the Word of God is a “Pre Cross” message. It was given before the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus and before the Holy Spirit came to indwell believers at the new birth. The new covenant that would be validated by the shed blood of the King who was talking here hadn’t yet happened as Luke 22 verse 20 says,

“This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you”.

These were not reborn sons of God.

The “Post Cross” message is that we today have the Holy Spirit within us who seals us and strengthens us and guides us. These people who were listening to Jesus were no more capable of bringing about these spiritual changes without the indwelling Holy Spirit than you and I today.

It’s His job to bring these spiritual changes about not ours.

 

We finished last time in the Beatitudes, where we saw that they are describing the condition of a person’s heart. It’s a spiritual journey beginning with our poverty of spirit when God shows us the impossibility of our ever knowing Him through our good works. Then each Beatitude rises on top of the previous one.

 

Now we come to the 4^th Beatitude in Matthew 5:6,

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

 

Here again we see this Beatitude rising above the one before it.

It’s a higher thing to hunger and thirst after righteousness than to be meek or to mourn or to be poor in spirit.

But we never become hungry and thirsty for righteousness unless we’ve first passed through the other three stages where we’re convinced of our poverty of spirit, mourn for our sin, and been made humble in the sight of God, contented with whatever God’s given us in this world.

Our ambitions and our hunger and thirst for the things of this world have ended. We hunger and thirst for that which is heavenly and eternal. Righteousness!

The Spirit of God within us works in us and makes us blessed as we long after righteousness before God. We hate the sin that constantly rears its ugly head within us, and we keep wanting that reassurance that our iniquity has been removed and the past blotted out.

We’re never satisfied in this world until once again we remember that Jesus Christ is made wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption to us.

Then, we see once again that Christ died in our place and again we rejoice as we understand how our sins are put away and that we’ve been made righteous in the sight of God through the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Until we know and grasp that, we hunger and thirst after that righteousness and we’re blessed in that hungering and thirsting.

Although we’ve been made righteous by the blood of Christ and that our sin is forgiven, we know that sin is still within our nature and bitterness continually flows from that old nature.

We understand this battle within us by the revelation of the Apostle Paul in the greatest document ever written on the subject of Grace versus the works of the law. That’s Romans chapter 7 where Paul opens himself up with amazing honesty and humility. In verses 18 to 20 he says,

For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.

For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.

Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

 

We long for a change in our nature so that we, a lover of sin, could be made a lover of that which is good. We begin to cry out for this, and we’re blessed in that crying out as we again confirm from God’s Word that the Spirit of God has already renewed us.

We see the last cry of Paul at the end of the 7th chapter of Romans where he says,

O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

 

We see Psalm 103:1 and realise that as far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our transgressions from us.

God has given us what we hunger and thirst after. Righteousness!

Blessed is the man who hungers and thirsts for righteousness because he will be filled.

 

To verse 7 and the 5^th Beatitude,

Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.

 

This is another beatitude that’s misunderstood today, and it’s twisted to mean if we’re merciful then and only then will we obtain mercy.

Let’s listen to the Apostle Paul yet again in Titus 3 verse 5,

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.

You see we’re merciful because we’ve obtained mercy.

 

1 Peter 2:9 and 10 tells us,

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

 

So, what we have here is the condition we find ourselves in as we progress through the changes in our spiritual state.

We discovered that we’re poor in spirit, that we have nothing and can do nothing to please God. We mourned for our state of sin that had us condemned. That made us meek, more gentle, less inclined to strut our stuff and push ourselves and our greatness forward. We’re humbled by our true state and willing to submit to God’s will. Then we wanted to please God and we became hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Each state was a result of the previous one.

 

Now, we should recap to realise that in the Beatitudes the Lord’s not telling us how we’re to be saved but He’s describing those who are the saved. It’s not the way of salvation but the signs and evidences of the work of grace in the soul.

So, it would be wrong to say that we must be merciful in order to obtain mercy and that we must only hope to get the mercy of God through first being merciful ourselves.

Notice that these people are blessed already, and they’ve obtained mercy already long before they became merciful.

God was merciful to them right from when they became poor in spirit but now they’re going to obtain yet more mercy.

They had already obtained the mercy of a renewed heart which has made them merciful as we see by connecting that flow through the spiritual states. First they were poor in spirit, and it was mercy to be emptied of pride and brought to see how undeserving they are in the sight of God.

Then they obtained mercy enough to mourn over their past sins.

They had also obtained the grace of meekness and had become gentle, humble, contented, and free from the world’s way of living. They submitted willingly to the Lord’s will and were ready to overlook the offences of others.

They received yet more grace when they began to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and they were filled. What were they filled with? Righteousness which is of God by faith. This was all by God’s mercy.

Now, out of this grows the character of being merciful and it’s another gift of grace another fruit which grew from the special fruits already given. Already the kingdom of heaven is theirs, they’re comforted, they’re filled and now they’ve received mercy.

It goes beyond merciful in the human sense where we’re merciful to the whole of humanity which should be common to all mankind. It’s merciful in a higher form with a mercy which only the Spirit of God can work.

It’s aligned closely to how merciful God is towards us!

We’re able to show mercy when we don’t get irritated or angry with people’s personal quirks. This takes some patience, sometimes a lot, but we each have our own quirky behaviours!

In Luke 10, Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan to make a point that helping the hurting around us is the meaning of mercy.

When someone hurts us or frustrates us or angers us, our natural reaction is to either get even or write them off. But this merciful characteristic leads us to be kind and merciful, forgiving others as God forgave us.

While there may be little of this kind of mercy in our society today, we the redeemed, show mercy by giving people what they need, not what they deserve. God didn’t give us what we deserve – he gave us what we needed, forgiveness, comfort and righteousness. When we have mercy on someone who’s hurt us we’re duplicating the mercy Jesus lavished on us. Has anyone hurt us in life? They may need our mercy the most and God gives us that ability through His Spirit.

If we’re merciful to someone who offends us, great things can happen! Our response may just be the entry way to an encounter with Christ – and God’s mercy may change their life as it changed ours.

We should remember that Jesus spent time with the social and spiritual outcasts and misfits. He had the mercy that He’s now passed on to us.

 

Now Matthew 5:8,

Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.

Look, any man knows today that his heart’s not naturally pure.

Jeremiah 17:9 reads,

The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?

 

How then, can the heart of man which is desperately wicked be made clean?

The teaching of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior was continually aimed at the hearts of men.

Other teachers had been, and still are today, content to deal with the outward appearance, how to clean ourselves up, but Jesus makes us aware of where that evil is centred from which all sinful thoughts and words and actions come from.

His purpose is to cleanse and cleanse for an eternity.

He insisted over and over again that until the heart was pure the life would never be clean.

The Beatitude “poor in spirit” was Christ dealing with mankind’s spirit, with their inner spiritual nature.

 

This was the purpose of all the Beatitudes and this one strikes the very center of the target.

Jesus doesn’t say blessed are the pure in language or the pure in action or blessed are the pure in ceremonies and traditions or in clothing or in food, but He says blessed are the pure in heart.

His message to all men is still that we must be born again. That is the inner nature must be renewed or else you cannot enter or even see that kingdom of God which Christ came to set up in this world. And only God through the Holy Spirit is able to do that.

If your actions and words appear to be pure from the outside but the motive behind those actions should be impure that’ll nullify them all.

 

Jesus explained in Luke 6:45,

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

The promises and blessings of grace belong to those who are made pure in heart.

An impure heart is the cause of spiritual blindness, but a pure heart gets us a magnificent blessing, the pure in heart shall see God!

A pure heart can’t be created by us, it’s the work of God through the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that it’s the Word that makes us clean and it’s by the washing of regeneration that we’re made clean.

Only the blood of Christ can cleanse us from all sin, thereby creating in us a pure heart.

In Psalm 51:10 King David cries out to God,

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

Now we see the incredible blessing opened to the pure in heart. They shall see God!

What does that mean?

It means many things. First, the person whose heart is pure is able to see God in nature. He’ll see God everywhere on the earth from the mountains to the sea, in every leaf and flower.

They see Him in the amazingly complex animal world, in the insect and sea creatures and in the birds.

They see a documentary showing the wonders of the earth where the narrator explains how they evolved, but the pure in heart don’t hear a word, they simply see God.

They see Him and in the air they breathe, in the rain, the storm, the sunlight and in the night sky.

They see His power and majesty in all creation.

To the pure in heart God can be seen everywhere while to the impure heart God can’t be seen anywhere.

The pure in heart see God on every page of the scriptures, His Word, while the impure mind can’t see any trace of God in them at all.

The pure in heart also see God with their inner spiritual eye and that’s a more certain “seeing” than seeing with the natural eye.

They see Almighty God, who is a spirit, and they have spiritual but very real communion with Him. They have a right given to them to go in and see their King Christ Jesus at all times because they have boldness and access with confidence in coming to the throne of grace cleansed by His precious blood. They have become the ministers of God and His ambassadors.

Then the time will come when they’ll see him face to face in heaven in all His splendour and majesty, something that’s impossible for the natural eye to see.

Once again we remind ourselves that no man, except Christ Jesus, was ever born with a pure heart. All have sinned and all need to be cleansed there is none good, not one.

We also need to be aware that a pure heart can never be the result of any ceremony or tradition of man. Water baptism or by sprinkling a baby’s head nor any other outward ceremony can ever affect the heart. No process that tries to work from the outside to the inside can purify the heart.

The one and only process that cleanses the heart is through the water and the blood which flowed from Christ on that cross.

Only there through faith in that shed blood can we find the double cure from the guilt and power of sin.

And in this the pure in heart see God again clearly in His plan for salvation. That being sinners they deserve God’s wrath but that wrath was put on Jesus Christ in their place so they wouldn’t need to suffer it. Yes folks the pure in heart see God!

 

Verse 9,

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

 

Could any of us name just 1 peacemaker in the world right now?

This is the seventh Beatitude and there’s always a mystery connected with the number seven.

It’s the number of completion or perfection and it seems as if the Lord put the peacemaker here as if it represented the completed, perfect man in Christ Jesus.

It follows the blessings of the pure in heart who shall see God and we should understand that we’re to be made pure in heart and then peaceable.

Also we’ll add to the blessing of seeing God to the blessing of being called a son or a child of God.

A peacemaker is someone who reconciles people who’re in conflict. The heart of Jesus’ earthly mission was to make peace between God and man.

 

No one today is able to make permanent, lasting peace. Jesus Christ alone is the great peacemaker and He shed His blood to make peace between a totally righteous God and unrighteous, sinful man.

Romans 5:1 tells it like it is,

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

 

No person other than Jesus could have made that peace and this is not the peace Jesus is talking about in this Beatitude.

Christ was the ultimate peacemaker in that He made this peace “by the blood of his cross” as Colossians 1:20 tells us. In other words, His death in our place on the cross paid for our sins. It removed the barrier between humanity and God. Everyone who comes to God through Christ and the cross finds they have peace with God as we’ve just seen in Romans 5:1.

The peacemaker in this Beatitude, the one who’s pure in heart makes peace between others, and in this way imitates what Christ did.

The peacemaker is peaceful in his own soul and the great blessing that results from this characteristic is that he inherits the blessing of being called a son or a child of God. It’s like a double blessing in the sense that he’s blessed but he’s also called or known as a child of God as well.

He’s a child of God through adoption.

Listen to the wonderful verses of Galatians 4:4-7 for a moment,

But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. 

And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” 

Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. 

This is truly wonderful friends.

 

Now to verses 10 to 12 where the 3 verses all deal with the persecuted,

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

 

Here again we have process where we’re led here from being peacemakers. In this the 8^{th and 9th} Beatitudes there’s a difference to the others because each of the others deal with the spirit and soul of the person who comes to Christ. They’re poor in spirit which is the knowledge of how far they are from God and how impossible it is for them to change that by their own efforts. Then they mourn for the state they’re in, bringing about meekness and humility. They look at others differently and have less cockiness and pride in themselves and are open to be led by the Lord. They hunger and thirst for the righteousness by which they can be up where they belong, in a right relationship with God the father. They’re then merciful to others who may fail and lose themselves in life and they are pure in heart which makes them natural peacemakers.

 

Here we see an outward action, something that’s done to that person from those on the outside. Persecution.

Christians are persecuted today just as at any other time in history and the nation Israel is under constant persecution from virtually all its neighbours and the rest of the world.

We also know that during the Great Tribulation many, if not most of those, who come to believe in Christ and His salvation during this time will be persecuted and martyred for their faith.

Notice that these people are blessed because theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

These ones are persecuted for righteousness’ sake and for Jesus’ sake not for their own stupidity or fanaticism.

The apostle Peter knew that suffering might come to some Christians for these reasons, and he tells us this in 1 Peter 4:15-16. but this isn’t the persecution Jesus is talking about here.

The spiritual traits described in the Beatitudes aren’t valued by our modern culture. We don’t give prizes for “Most Pure in Heart” or “Most Poor in Spirit.”

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Jesus brings insults and spoken hatred into the description of persecution. We shouldn’t limit persecution to just the physical.

These people are persecuted for righteousness’ sake for the sake of Jesus. This shows that Jesus expected that their righteous lives would be lived after His example, and in honour to Him.

It certainly didn’t take long for these words to ring true. Early Christians had many enemies, and they said all kinds of evil against them falsely. Christians were accused of:

• Cannibalism, because of gross and deliberate distortion of the Lord’s Supper, communion.
• Immorality, because of gross deliberate distortion of the weekly “Love Feast” and their private meetings.
• They were branded as revolutionists fanatics, because they believed that Jesus would return and bring an end to history.
• Splitting families, because when one marriage partner or parent became a Christian there was often disruption in the family.
• Treason, because they wouldn’t honour the Roman gods and participate in emperor worship.

Jesus tells these people to rejoice and be exceedingly glad and many did rejoice and were exceedingly glad when persecuted. Why? Because the persecuted will have great reward in heaven, and because the persecuted are in good company. The prophets before them were also persecuted.

The world persecutes these good people because the values and character traits shown in these Beatitudes are so opposite to the world’s way of thinking. Our persecution may not be much compared to others, but if no one speaks evil of you, are these Beatitudes really traits in our own lives?

 

Now we come to the part of the sermon that speaks of salt and light, Matthew 5 verses 13 and 14,

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.

 

God’s people in any age and under any condition are both salt, which speaks of seasoning, and light in the world.

Christians should be the salt in the earth and the light of the world and have an influence for good in the world wherever we go. We have no light within ourselves, of course, but the Word of God is light. Being a light means giving out the Word of God in one way or another.

This doesn’t mean that we should be quoting Scripture all the time or bible bashing everyone we meet, but it does mean that we’re to share the light that God’s given us.

Philippians 2:14 and 15 says,

Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. 

There’re many ways in which you and I can be light in the world.

 

Matthew 5 verse 15 and 16 continue on with this theme of light.

Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

 

Does this verse say, “Let your light so shine before men so that they all see your good works, and glorify you and pat you on the back, and give you a gold medal and a heap of adoration and awards?”

No! This verse says that you and I are to let our light so shine in this world that we may glorify our Father in heaven, or in other words bring glory to God and that should be the aim and purpose of our lives.

So, we see that the beatitudes reflect the inner character of believers down through history. Do we always succeed in displaying these character traits? Absolutely not and we fail even more when we try to act them out in our own strength. Only to the extent that you and I really grasp the simplicity and the magnitude of God’s mercy and grace do we begin to allow these traits to appear in us.

 

When we know deep down inside that we’re free from sin simply by believing that we’re forgiven by God and made righteous through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we wake up and leave our futile life of trying to be good and acceptable to God through our own works.

 

But there’s something else very important that we’ve got to be aware of and this is again why we need to see the Word of God in its fullness.

We can often times get anxious and even doubt our salvation when we don’t feel that we’re performing to the tune of the Beatitudes. We feel we couldn’t possibly be acceptable to God and that He’s mad at us because we’ve failed either momentarily or for a long time to display the outward person that the Beatitudes describe.

But we must know, we must be absolutely sure that if we’ve believed and we trust Jesus Christ for our salvation that God is NOT mad at us.

We all stumble in many ways. We just sort of fall short of this perfection mode in our daily walk.

We must see that daily walk in the light of Paul’s writing in Romans 7 that we discussed in the preview of this episode.

John chapter 1 verse 12 says this,

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name.

Jesus dying on the cross absolutely paid for our sins and made us right with God.

He remembers our sins and lawless deeds no more. As far as the West is from the East Jesus has literally taken our sins away and we have a new heart. We have a new spirit that actually wants to behave in the way God wants but we stumble in many ways and when we do mess up God is not mad at us. Our life is just not a balancing act of some law and some grace, sometimes up sometimes down, as some would try and have us believe.

The incredibly freeing verses in Romans 8 verses 1 to 4 show us that. Let me read them.

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 

For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 

You see, God sent his only son in the likeness of sinful flesh as an offering for sin.

The Bible also calls Jesus a propitiation. That means to satisfy deity. To satisfy God, friends.

We may not always hear this in church, but God is satisfied. Our sin has been dealt with and there’s our reason to go out and live out a good godly life because that’s who we are at our very core and as I said, God is not mad at you my friends.

 

In our next episode, Jesus sharply changes the sermon on the mount and deals with the fact that Christ came to fulfill the law and we’ll continue to see this whole passage of scripture in a different light than most of us have been taught.

Until then my friends may God give us revelation knowledge of who we really are.