WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.280 Let's pray before we look at this passage. 00:00:03.280 --> 00:00:09.279 Our Lord and God, we ask now that you would give us eyes to see, ears to hear, 00:00:09.279 --> 00:00:12.280 that the Word of God would not go forth void, 00:00:12.280 --> 00:00:17.120 but in power, that you would pierce our hearts, 00:00:17.120 --> 00:00:20.719 that we would be broken, poor in spirit, 00:00:20.719 --> 00:00:25.719 and rebuilt, refreshed in the light of the Gospel. 00:00:25.719 --> 00:00:31.719 Let's pray this in Christ's name. Amen. 00:00:31.719 --> 00:00:42.719 So in October, we start our series on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation at nighttime in October 00:00:42.719 --> 00:00:47.719 on the five solas of the Reformation with a few guest preachers. 00:00:47.719 --> 00:00:51.719 Until then, we were doing stand-alone sermons at night. 00:00:51.719 --> 00:00:55.719 Last week, Derek looked at Matthew chapter 5 verse 13, 00:00:55.719 --> 00:00:57.719 you are the salt of the earth. 00:00:57.719 --> 00:01:01.719 So I thought I would make it a little bit of a series 00:01:01.719 --> 00:01:06.719 and do the beginning of Matthew chapter 5, the Beatitudes. 00:01:06.719 --> 00:01:10.719 The word Beatitude is not an English word, it's a Latin word, 00:01:10.719 --> 00:01:15.719 and we borrowed it to describe what's happening here in Matthew chapter 5. 00:01:15.719 --> 00:01:22.719 It's because the word Beatitude means blessed or happiness and more modern lingo, 00:01:22.719 --> 00:01:29.719 and many describe the Beatitudes, though, many commentators, as the description of the beautiful life, 00:01:29.719 --> 00:01:31.719 of the most beautiful life, 00:01:31.719 --> 00:01:38.719 and that's because beauty happens at the intersection of goodness and truth, 00:01:38.719 --> 00:01:40.719 and Jesus Christ is the truth, 00:01:40.719 --> 00:01:45.719 and He's giving us in the Beatitudes a prescription of what the good life is like. 00:01:45.719 --> 00:01:50.719 And so when the truth talks about the good life, there you have beauty, the beautiful life, 00:01:50.719 --> 00:01:53.719 truth, goodness, and beauty. 00:01:53.719 --> 00:01:57.719 And not only that, it doesn't just tell us about the beautiful life, 00:01:57.719 --> 00:02:01.719 it points us to something meaningful actually about the Lord's Supper. 00:02:01.719 --> 00:02:07.719 And so I just want to look at three things briefly with you to unveil those two points. 00:02:07.719 --> 00:02:10.719 First, we're going to look at the Sermon on the Mount in general, 00:02:10.719 --> 00:02:13.719 that it reveals who Jesus is, 00:02:13.719 --> 00:02:18.719 and then secondly, the Beatitudes specifically, they reveal the hope for a beautiful life, 00:02:18.719 --> 00:02:24.719 and then hopefully if we have time, thirdly, the prescription for a beautiful life from the Beatitudes. 00:02:24.719 --> 00:02:29.719 So first, the Sermon on the Mount reveals who Jesus is. 00:02:29.719 --> 00:02:31.719 If you look at verse 1, 00:02:31.719 --> 00:02:37.719 seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain and He sat down with His disciples, and His disciples came to Him. 00:02:37.719 --> 00:02:43.719 This is Him going up on a mountain in the region of Galilee, next to the Sea of Galilee, 00:02:43.719 --> 00:02:49.719 and so far in the Book of Matthew, Jesus has basically said nothing. 00:02:49.719 --> 00:02:55.719 There's been no direct speech that's come from Jesus' mouth up to this point in the Book of Matthew, 00:02:55.719 --> 00:03:00.719 except for Him calling a couple of people's names in the last chapter. 00:03:00.719 --> 00:03:07.719 But then all of a sudden, Matthew gives us three chapters of nothing but Jesus' words. 00:03:07.719 --> 00:03:13.719 And the four chapters that are preceding this have been preparation for this moment, 00:03:13.719 --> 00:03:19.719 and the question that's coming from the Gospel, from all the Gospels, is who is Jesus? 00:03:19.719 --> 00:03:21.719 Who is this man? 00:03:21.719 --> 00:03:26.719 The man who has yet to speak in the Gospel so far. 00:03:26.719 --> 00:03:30.719 Matthew's Gospel was likely written for a Jewish audience. 00:03:30.719 --> 00:03:37.719 It's a first-century book written 20-plus years after Jesus had resurrected from the dead and ascended. 00:03:37.719 --> 00:03:42.719 In the very first chapter, you get a picture of Him talking to His Jewish audience, 00:03:42.719 --> 00:03:45.719 saying, Jesus Christ, He's the Son of David. 00:03:45.719 --> 00:03:47.719 He's the Son of Adam. 00:03:47.719 --> 00:03:51.719 But even more than that, before you get to the Sermon on the Mount, there's preparation for the reader, 00:03:51.719 --> 00:03:56.719 for us the reader, to come to understand who this guy is as we prepare to listen to the Sermon on the Mount. 00:03:56.719 --> 00:04:03.719 And there are three significant moments in the first four chapters that tell you something pretty specific about Jesus. 00:04:03.719 --> 00:04:08.719 The first one is in chapter 1, verse 20. 00:04:08.719 --> 00:04:15.719 It says this, when Joseph and Mary had departed, and Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, 00:04:15.719 --> 00:04:21.720 Rise up, take this child and his mother and go down to Egypt and remain there until I tell you. 00:04:21.720 --> 00:04:27.720 And so he rose, he took the child and his mother by night and they went to Egypt and he remained there until the death of Herod. 00:04:27.720 --> 00:04:30.720 And this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. 00:04:30.720 --> 00:04:35.720 And here's the quote, out of Egypt I called my son. 00:04:35.720 --> 00:04:38.720 And that's a quote from Hosea chapter 1. 00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:40.720 Out of Egypt I called my son. 00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:45.720 In Hosea chapter 1, who is the son that God called out of Egypt? 00:04:45.720 --> 00:04:47.720 And the answer, of course, is from Exodus. 00:04:47.720 --> 00:04:49.720 It's Israel. It's the nation of Israel. 00:04:49.720 --> 00:04:52.720 That's his son that God had called out of Egypt. 00:04:52.720 --> 00:04:57.720 And now Matthew is giving Jesus the same idea, the same title, the same concept. 00:04:57.720 --> 00:05:00.720 Jesus is the son that God called out of Egypt. 00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:01.720 Do you see the point? 00:05:01.720 --> 00:05:06.720 What Matthew is saying is Jesus is the new Israel. 00:05:06.720 --> 00:05:11.720 This boy, the son of Carpenter from Nazareth, he's the new Israel. 00:05:11.720 --> 00:05:14.720 And then in the next chapter, why Egypt? 00:05:14.720 --> 00:05:17.720 Why did they have to go down to Egypt and then come up out of Egypt? 00:05:17.720 --> 00:05:21.720 And the answer we're given in chapter 2 is because of Herod. 00:05:21.720 --> 00:05:32.720 Because a king said to all of Israel that I'm going to kill your sons, two and under, your Hebrew boys. 00:05:32.720 --> 00:05:41.720 And just like in Exodus chapter 1, when another king said, kill all the Hebrew boys, 00:05:41.720 --> 00:05:45.720 don't leave a single Hebrew boy alive that's two years old and under. 00:05:45.720 --> 00:05:51.720 And at that stage in history, Moses was put in a basket that he might be protected from a king. 00:05:51.720 --> 00:05:58.720 And now Jesus Christ, a boy, two years and younger, is being protected from an evil king, a genocide. 00:05:58.720 --> 00:06:02.720 And so the point in Matthew 1, Jesus Christ is the new Israel. 00:06:02.720 --> 00:06:06.720 And then in Matthew chapter 2, Jesus Christ is the new and better Moses. 00:06:06.720 --> 00:06:10.720 He's reliving the life that Israel lived. 00:06:10.720 --> 00:06:12.720 He's reliving the life that Moses lived. 00:06:12.720 --> 00:06:17.720 And then in the third, the final moment before this passage, chapter 4, as soon as he gets baptized, 00:06:17.720 --> 00:06:20.720 the spirit drives him out into the wilderness. 00:06:20.720 --> 00:06:26.720 The spirit drives him out of, he comes out of Egypt and the spirit drives him into the wilderness. 00:06:26.720 --> 00:06:28.720 And how long is he there for? 00:06:28.720 --> 00:06:30.720 For 40 days. 00:06:30.720 --> 00:06:32.720 For 40 days. 00:06:32.720 --> 00:06:35.720 And so he's the son of the Exodus. 00:06:35.720 --> 00:06:38.720 And now he's in the wilderness just like the Israelites were. 00:06:38.720 --> 00:06:39.720 They were there for 40 years. 00:06:39.720 --> 00:06:41.720 He's there for 40 days. 00:06:41.720 --> 00:06:47.720 And what Matthew is telling us up to this point in the Sermon on the Mount is this is the better than Israel. 00:06:47.720 --> 00:06:49.720 This is the better than Moses. 00:06:49.720 --> 00:06:54.720 This is the man who is reliving the life that Israel lived, 00:06:54.720 --> 00:06:57.720 but doing it in a way that they never could have. 00:06:57.720 --> 00:07:00.720 At every point in that instance, the Israelites grumble. 00:07:00.720 --> 00:07:02.720 Jesus is reliving that life for them. 00:07:02.720 --> 00:07:10.720 Oftentimes the word, the kind of fancy word that gets used for what's happening here in Jesus' life is the word recapitulation. 00:07:10.720 --> 00:07:14.720 Jesus is recapitulating the life of Israel. 00:07:14.720 --> 00:07:15.720 He's reliving it. 00:07:15.720 --> 00:07:20.720 He's going through exactly what they went through because the picture is, he's true Israel. 00:07:20.720 --> 00:07:24.720 And what that means is that he's becoming them for them. 00:07:24.720 --> 00:07:26.720 He's a substitute. 00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:28.720 He's a substitute. 00:07:28.720 --> 00:07:30.720 That's what it's saying. 00:07:30.720 --> 00:07:31.720 He is what they can never be. 00:07:31.720 --> 00:07:33.720 He's doing what they can never do. 00:07:33.720 --> 00:07:34.720 He's their substitute. 00:07:34.720 --> 00:07:36.720 He's their mediator. 00:07:36.720 --> 00:07:41.720 He's come to represent them is the picture that Matthew is presenting. 00:07:41.720 --> 00:07:46.720 And now in Matthew chapter five, as we come to this passage, 00:07:46.720 --> 00:07:53.720 seeing the crowds, it says that he goes up onto the mountain and then he opens his mouth and he teaches. 00:07:53.720 --> 00:07:55.720 He teaches law. 00:07:55.720 --> 00:07:56.720 He teaches ethics. 00:07:56.720 --> 00:07:58.720 He teaches what a kingdom life looks like. 00:07:58.720 --> 00:08:02.720 And in the same way that Israel came out of Egypt, they crossed the Red Sea. 00:08:02.720 --> 00:08:09.720 Another man, Moses, went up the mountain to be able to teach the Israelites what the law was. 00:08:09.720 --> 00:08:12.720 He's doing what Moses did. 00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:15.720 He's reliving the life of Moses here. 00:08:15.720 --> 00:08:18.720 He's doing, but there's a difference. 00:08:18.720 --> 00:08:19.720 There's one major difference. 00:08:19.720 --> 00:08:24.720 And the difference is Moses went up the mountain to give Israel the law. 00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:29.720 And the only way he could give Israel the law was by hearing the law from the mouth of God. 00:08:29.720 --> 00:08:33.720 He had to get the law from God in order to deliver the law to the people. 00:08:33.720 --> 00:08:40.720 And in this passage, Jesus goes up the mountain, he sits down and he simply opens his mouth. 00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:42.720 He doesn't have to receive the law from God. 00:08:42.720 --> 00:08:43.720 He gives it. 00:08:43.720 --> 00:08:47.720 You see, so what do you think is this guy is a human? 00:08:47.720 --> 00:08:52.720 He is the recapitulation, the reliving of Israel and Moses and he's God. 00:08:52.720 --> 00:09:02.720 He has the authority of God, the speaker, the one who gave Moses the law at Sinai in Exodus chapter 19. 00:09:02.720 --> 00:09:17.720 Now, getting this as the identity of Jesus up to this point in the gospel is important for us because it's important for how we approach the Sermon on the Mount. 00:09:17.720 --> 00:09:22.720 Because we are late moderns. 00:09:22.720 --> 00:09:24.720 We are people that live in the late modern era. 00:09:24.720 --> 00:09:28.720 And that means that we are people that are touched by the Enlightenment, 00:09:28.720 --> 00:09:35.720 touched by Enlightenment values, famously expressed by the French in liberty, equality, fraternity. 00:09:35.720 --> 00:09:37.720 We are late moderns. 00:09:37.720 --> 00:09:39.720 We live in a world of democracy. 00:09:39.720 --> 00:09:43.720 And we live in a world of liberty, equality, fraternity. 00:09:43.720 --> 00:09:52.720 And when you live in that world, there's a particular idea of freedom that arises in the late modern world, that has arisen in the late modern world. 00:09:52.720 --> 00:10:01.720 And it's this, that as long as you don't do harm to anyone else, you are totally free to live the way you want to live. 00:10:01.720 --> 00:10:03.720 It's called the harm principle. 00:10:03.720 --> 00:10:06.720 Freedom in the modern world is defined this way at a popular level. 00:10:06.720 --> 00:10:13.720 As long as you don't do any harm to others, you are free to live the way that you want to live. 00:10:13.720 --> 00:10:16.720 Oftentimes in philosophy, this is called negative freedom. 00:10:16.720 --> 00:10:18.720 It's a freedom from. 00:10:18.720 --> 00:10:20.720 You're free from restraints. 00:10:20.720 --> 00:10:22.720 You have no restraints imposed on you. 00:10:22.720 --> 00:10:27.720 You're free to do what you want as long as you don't harm anybody else. 00:10:27.720 --> 00:10:35.720 Aaron, Aaron Halt, who's a sociologist in Chicago in the mid-20th century, he put it like this. 00:10:35.720 --> 00:10:42.720 The modern mind, the modern Western mind says this, choice is a good thing in life. 00:10:42.720 --> 00:10:44.720 It's the best thing in life. 00:10:44.720 --> 00:10:49.720 And the more of it we have, the better. 00:10:49.720 --> 00:10:53.720 But the Sermon on the Mount. 00:10:53.720 --> 00:11:02.720 The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus, the authority coming to us and saying, this is what you are to do with your mind. 00:11:02.720 --> 00:11:05.720 This is what you are to do with your body. 00:11:05.720 --> 00:11:08.720 And this is what you are to do with your emotions. 00:11:08.720 --> 00:11:16.720 And to late modern people with late modern sensibilities that have soaked in a definition of freedom that the modern world offers, 00:11:16.720 --> 00:11:19.720 that feels like a net closing in on us. 00:11:19.720 --> 00:11:20.720 It feels like restriction. 00:11:20.720 --> 00:11:25.720 It feels like limitation of the concept of freedom. 00:11:25.720 --> 00:11:32.720 And so under the modern guise of freedom, we're tempted to look at the Sermon on the Mount, to look at the law, 00:11:32.720 --> 00:11:36.720 to think of ethics, Christian ethics as restrictive. 00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:39.720 That's something that's choking us out and closing in on us. 00:11:39.720 --> 00:11:50.720 But all I want to simply say at this point, the biblical idea of freedom, the biblical idea of living under authority, 00:11:50.720 --> 00:11:54.720 it's different from the modern world's definition of freedom. 00:11:54.720 --> 00:12:01.720 And it's a definition of freedom we live under in the modern world that is brand new in history, that has just come upon us. 00:12:01.720 --> 00:12:07.720 Freedom is not freedom from restraint, according to the biblical idea. 00:12:07.720 --> 00:12:10.720 Now, we already know this. 00:12:10.720 --> 00:12:13.720 Every one of us already knows this from experience. 00:12:13.720 --> 00:12:18.720 I really, I love donuts. 00:12:18.720 --> 00:12:20.720 I've always loved donuts. 00:12:20.720 --> 00:12:24.720 When I was a kid, I used to just destroy donuts. 00:12:24.720 --> 00:12:27.720 And I wish I could all the time now. 00:12:27.720 --> 00:12:35.720 And on my birthday, in fact, my wife bought me a half dozen bacon maple donuts, 00:12:35.720 --> 00:12:40.720 especially made that literally had strips of bacon wrapped around the top of them. 00:12:40.720 --> 00:12:41.720 Unbelievable. 00:12:41.720 --> 00:12:44.720 And I would eat that every day. 00:12:44.720 --> 00:12:50.720 But you know that the modern definition of freedom, freedom from all restraint, 00:12:50.720 --> 00:12:57.720 freedom to do whatever you want, it doesn't even work because our own desires within us conflict with each other. 00:12:57.720 --> 00:12:59.720 Our own desires limit our freedoms. 00:12:59.720 --> 00:13:04.720 When you're 18, if you want to eat donuts every day like I did, 00:13:04.720 --> 00:13:06.720 okay, that's fine. 00:13:06.720 --> 00:13:12.720 But when you're 30 and you go home to see your family, it starts to make a difference. 00:13:12.720 --> 00:13:15.720 And when you're 40, there's more of a difference. 00:13:15.720 --> 00:13:20.720 And by the time you're 50, you go to the doctor because you eat maple bacon donuts all the time. 00:13:20.720 --> 00:13:21.720 And what does the doctor say? 00:13:21.720 --> 00:13:26.720 The doctor says to you, do you want to see your grandkids? 00:13:26.720 --> 00:13:29.720 And you say, of course I want to see my grandkids. 00:13:29.720 --> 00:13:32.720 Well, then you better stop eating maple bacon donuts. 00:13:32.720 --> 00:13:34.720 And it's a silly point. 00:13:34.720 --> 00:13:38.720 But the point is that your desires constrict you, they limit you. 00:13:38.720 --> 00:13:40.720 Sometimes they're set against one another. 00:13:40.720 --> 00:13:44.720 The desire to see your grandkids limits the way that you have to eat in life. 00:13:44.720 --> 00:13:46.720 You can't just eat the way you want to. 00:13:46.720 --> 00:13:47.720 You'll kill yourself, right? 00:13:47.720 --> 00:13:49.720 Our desires conflict with us. 00:13:49.720 --> 00:13:52.720 This idea of freedom doesn't work more seriously. 00:13:52.720 --> 00:13:54.720 More seriously than that. 00:13:54.720 --> 00:14:05.720 There was recently a French magazine, Lumanda, The World, a French novelist was asked this question by the interviewer, 00:14:05.720 --> 00:14:10.720 have you had the freedoms that you wanted in life? 00:14:10.720 --> 00:14:16.720 And her answer was this, I was free until I fell in love with someone. 00:14:16.720 --> 00:14:22.720 You see, the modern notion of freedom, of being able to do whatever you feel, whatever you desire, 00:14:22.720 --> 00:14:25.720 no limits as long as you don't harm anyone else. 00:14:25.720 --> 00:14:28.720 It's not compatible with the most basic human relationship. 00:14:28.720 --> 00:14:30.720 And that's loving another person. 00:14:30.720 --> 00:14:34.720 Loving another person demands that you give yourself up, that you lose your freedoms. 00:14:34.720 --> 00:14:40.720 There's no marriage without losing freedom, without denying self dependence, without giving up autonomy. 00:14:40.720 --> 00:14:45.720 And that's why it's so difficult to have relationships in the modern world. 00:14:45.720 --> 00:14:53.720 While a relationship is so under constraint, because of this modern sense, there's a redefinition of freedom. 00:14:53.720 --> 00:14:58.720 And so ultimately, the assumption of the Sermon on the Mount, the biblical idea is this, 00:14:58.720 --> 00:15:03.720 that no one in the modern sense of the term is free, 00:15:03.720 --> 00:15:08.720 because either you are enslaved by your sinful desires, 00:15:08.720 --> 00:15:16.720 you're under the authority of an evil slave master, or you're under the authority of a better master. 00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:20.720 And those are the only two options that the Bible presents. 00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:27.720 My family, I've said this one other time, I think, a couple of years ago, 00:15:27.720 --> 00:15:35.720 my extended family, they decided they were going to adopt a little girl from China some time ago. 00:15:35.720 --> 00:15:41.720 And they went through the process, it was an extensive process, it's a big need in the world. 00:15:41.720 --> 00:15:47.720 There are lots of young girls, and orphanages is there, and so they wanted to do that ministry. 00:15:47.720 --> 00:15:53.720 And they went, and they knew that they were going to get a little girl that had serious medical problems. 00:15:53.720 --> 00:15:57.720 And they didn't know what, but that's just the way things go. 00:15:57.720 --> 00:16:03.720 And they got there, and they came to pick her up. 00:16:03.720 --> 00:16:08.720 And she needed a series of surgeries. 00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:15.720 And they came and they got her, they spent thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars for this little girl. 00:16:15.720 --> 00:16:19.720 And when they got there, she hated them. 00:16:19.720 --> 00:16:26.720 She didn't want to touch them, she didn't want to be picked up by them, she ran away, she wanted to stay at the orphanage, 00:16:26.720 --> 00:16:30.720 she didn't want to get on the plane, the 15-hour journey was absolute misery, 00:16:30.720 --> 00:16:36.720 she felt like her freedoms had been taken away, like she was in a prison. 00:16:36.720 --> 00:16:41.720 For her, it was catastrophe, it was limitation. 00:16:41.720 --> 00:16:48.720 But look, my cousin, he's a doctor. 00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:56.720 He could give her the only thing that she needed in all the world to live her life. 00:16:56.720 --> 00:17:01.720 The only path to freedom was to go under a different authority. 00:17:01.720 --> 00:17:09.720 You see, true freedom, the greatest freedom, is not getting out from under authority, it's living under liberating authority. 00:17:09.720 --> 00:17:11.720 It's living under liberating authority. 00:17:11.720 --> 00:17:17.720 And what Matthew is saying is that Jesus Christ is the creator of the universe, 00:17:17.720 --> 00:17:26.720 then true freedom isn't having tons of choices, but being able to live under the authority of the creator, 00:17:26.720 --> 00:17:30.720 under the purpose that the creator has made the world to be. 00:17:30.720 --> 00:17:32.720 That's true freedom. 00:17:32.720 --> 00:17:37.720 So that's the first thing, two more things, and briefly. 00:17:37.720 --> 00:17:42.720 Secondly, the Beatitudes reveal the hope for a beautiful life. 00:17:42.720 --> 00:17:48.720 Okay, so if you look down at verse two, Jesus opens his mouth and he teaches them saying, 00:17:48.720 --> 00:17:54.720 blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 00:17:54.720 --> 00:17:58.720 What the Beatitudes are describing is a particular type of person, 00:17:58.720 --> 00:18:03.720 and that particular type of person is a person who lives in the kingdom. 00:18:03.720 --> 00:18:09.720 It's a kingdom person who lives in the kingdom of God, where God is the king. 00:18:09.720 --> 00:18:14.720 And so the question that's being presented to us is what kind of a person is a kingdom of God person? 00:18:14.720 --> 00:18:21.720 And the answer here begins with what commentators typically call the negative Beatitudes. 00:18:21.720 --> 00:18:24.720 And those are the first three. 00:18:24.720 --> 00:18:30.720 And the reason they're called the negative Beatitudes, if you just look at the grammar, at the words that are presented there, 00:18:30.720 --> 00:18:37.720 it says, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn and blessed are the meek. 00:18:37.720 --> 00:18:45.720 In other words, happy, blessed is one who has poverty, poor, it's the language of poverty. 00:18:45.720 --> 00:18:50.720 It's the language of sorrow, blessed are the sorrowful. 00:18:50.720 --> 00:18:52.720 And then thirdly, blessed are the meek. 00:18:52.720 --> 00:18:58.720 This is a peculiar Greek noun here, prouas. 00:18:58.720 --> 00:19:05.720 When it's used for animals, it's used for being tamed, coming under the lion tamer. 00:19:05.720 --> 00:19:12.720 In other words, it means being powerless, being tamed, being shown that you have no power. 00:19:12.720 --> 00:19:16.720 And so here's the blessed life. 00:19:16.720 --> 00:19:21.720 Poverty, sorrow, and powerlessness. 00:19:21.720 --> 00:19:24.720 Now, go be happy. 00:19:24.720 --> 00:19:26.720 That's the happy life. 00:19:26.720 --> 00:19:29.720 That's why these are called the negative Beatitudes. 00:19:29.720 --> 00:19:34.720 What they're describing as a disposition, is a particular disposition of the heart. 00:19:34.720 --> 00:19:39.720 In order to understand what's happening here, you have to look carefully with me for just a moment 00:19:39.720 --> 00:19:44.720 at the structure, the way they're organized and what order they're organized. 00:19:44.720 --> 00:19:50.720 And what commentators will often say is, what's happening here is that the process of faith is being described 00:19:50.720 --> 00:19:55.720 in the first four Beatitudes, the process of coming to faith. 00:19:55.720 --> 00:20:00.720 So the first one, you must be poor in spirit. 00:20:00.720 --> 00:20:03.720 What does it mean to be poor in spirit? 00:20:03.720 --> 00:20:12.720 It means to admit that you have problems and that you don't have the solution for them. 00:20:12.720 --> 00:20:14.720 It means to be bankrupt. 00:20:14.720 --> 00:20:20.720 It means that you deny all sense of entitlement. 00:20:20.720 --> 00:20:27.720 It means that you don't have self-dependence or autonomy. 00:20:27.720 --> 00:20:31.720 It's simple. It's to understand that you are full of sin. 00:20:31.720 --> 00:20:35.720 That's what it means to be poor in spirit. 00:20:35.720 --> 00:20:41.720 Now, the term in spirit is key for understanding the rest of the Beatitudes. 00:20:41.720 --> 00:20:45.720 Something like this happens in the Lord's Prayer as well. 00:20:45.720 --> 00:20:54.720 In spirit is meant to be implied in the remainder of the Beatitudes at the end of every first clause. 00:20:54.720 --> 00:20:57.720 So the Beatitudes are meant to be read like this. 00:20:57.720 --> 00:21:06.720 Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn in spirit, blessed are the meek in spirit, and so on and so forth. 00:21:06.720 --> 00:21:11.720 In other words, in spirit is a controlling idea for the rest of the Beatitudes. 00:21:11.720 --> 00:21:18.720 It's letting you know that what he's talking about is something that's going on in the inside, something that's going on in the heart. 00:21:18.720 --> 00:21:20.720 So you have to be poor in spirit. 00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:30.720 Secondly, that means you must mourn, and this is not a reference to simply being sorrowful or sad all the time, but it's mourning in spirit. 00:21:30.720 --> 00:21:35.720 What that means is that you're broken over your sin. 00:21:35.720 --> 00:21:44.720 It's specific. It's saying, blessed is the one who mourns because they are broken in spirit, who mourns over their sin. 00:21:44.720 --> 00:21:47.720 G. K. Esterton says it like this. 00:21:47.720 --> 00:21:53.720 What the Beatitudes are saying in a nutshell, the problem of the universe is me. 00:21:53.720 --> 00:22:02.720 Or John Calvin at the opening, the very beginning of his institutes, his famous book on religion. 00:22:02.720 --> 00:22:11.720 He says there are two conditions for being a Christian, for living a Christian life, for doing the Christian life, that you know God and that you know yourself. 00:22:11.720 --> 00:22:19.720 And when he says, when you wake up to who God is, who God really is, his perfections, his holiness, his majesty, then you wake up to who you are. 00:22:19.720 --> 00:22:26.720 And that makes you mournful in spirit, broken, confessing, a confessing person that knows who they are. 00:22:26.720 --> 00:22:30.720 And then thirdly, blessed are those who are meek. 00:22:30.720 --> 00:22:36.720 And John Nolan, he's a commentator on this passage. He says it like this. 00:22:36.720 --> 00:22:52.720 This word here, this Greek word here means powerlessness. It means this, to go to God and yearn for a provision that is not your own, to look for hope that is outside of yourself. 00:22:52.720 --> 00:22:59.720 And so in other words, the Beatitudes are saying that the first point of the Beatitudes is to show that there is a beautiful way to live. 00:22:59.720 --> 00:23:07.720 There is a beautiful type of person, and you can only become that person by first realizing that you aren't that person. 00:23:07.720 --> 00:23:11.720 That's the point of the negative Beatitudes. 00:23:11.720 --> 00:23:16.720 And that's why the fourth Beatitude is there. 00:23:16.720 --> 00:23:20.720 So there's a transition from Beatitude 3 to Beatitude 4 from negative to positive. 00:23:20.720 --> 00:23:26.720 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. 00:23:26.720 --> 00:23:38.720 In other words, the only way to become blessed, the only way to become a blessed person, the person of the kingdom, is to look toward a righteousness that you don't have. 00:23:38.720 --> 00:23:44.720 That's what the negative Beatitudes are pointing to when you get to the first positive Beatitude, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. 00:23:44.720 --> 00:23:50.720 Now, the language of hungering and thirsting is the language of desire. 00:23:50.720 --> 00:23:54.720 It's expressing what the human heart wants most. 00:23:54.720 --> 00:24:00.720 And so the question that it's asking you is, what do you want? 00:24:00.720 --> 00:24:10.720 What it's saying is it's not offering unlimited freedom, any answer to any of your desires, but it's offering a very specific, what do you want? 00:24:10.720 --> 00:24:17.720 True hunger, true thirst for the beautiful life, for the blessed life is wanting righteousness. 00:24:17.720 --> 00:24:24.720 In other words, it's wanting God as master. 00:24:24.720 --> 00:24:37.720 It's important to not fail to see that what this is saying, what this is calling you to, what this is calling human beings to, is to lose yourself. 00:24:37.720 --> 00:24:40.720 It's to lose your freedom. 00:24:40.720 --> 00:24:43.720 It's to completely come under authority. 00:24:43.720 --> 00:24:47.720 It's to lose any notion of the modern idea of freedom. 00:24:47.720 --> 00:24:50.720 It's to come under total authority and it's serious. 00:24:50.720 --> 00:24:53.720 It's big time. 00:24:53.720 --> 00:24:55.720 It's to become something you're not. 00:24:55.720 --> 00:24:59.720 It's to lose your freedoms and to come under total authority. 00:24:59.720 --> 00:25:05.720 Now, why the metaphor of food and drink here? 00:25:05.720 --> 00:25:08.720 It says hunger and thirst for righteousness. 00:25:08.720 --> 00:25:11.720 Why the metaphor for food and drink? 00:25:11.720 --> 00:25:25.720 The reason I think that it puts this in the language of hunger and thirsting for righteousness is because Matthew is picking up on a theme that's developed from the very first chapter of the Bible, from Genesis, the first story of the Bible, 00:25:25.720 --> 00:25:28.720 Genesis chapter 3 all the way through at the very beginning. 00:25:28.720 --> 00:25:40.720 The serpent comes to Adam and Eve and offers them freedom, freedom from God, autonomy, self dependence through the concept of food. 00:25:40.720 --> 00:25:50.720 In other words, whether you're going to obey God or be your own master depends on what you choose to eat and drink in Genesis chapter 3. 00:25:50.720 --> 00:25:59.720 Derek Kidner, one commentator, he puts it like this, the woman, Eve, she took and she ate. 00:25:59.720 --> 00:26:05.720 She hungered and she thirsted for a freedom she had not been given. 00:26:05.720 --> 00:26:10.720 So simple was her act, so hard was its undoing. 00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:17.720 It destroyed the world in the moment of taking and eating. 00:26:17.720 --> 00:26:24.720 And that means a good way to know who you are. 00:26:24.720 --> 00:26:34.720 A good way to know what you truly want is to ask yourself, what do I want in the quiet spaces of life? 00:26:34.720 --> 00:26:42.720 When nobody else is around me, when I am all on my own, what is it that my heart calls for the most? 00:26:42.720 --> 00:26:48.720 What are my desires in those moments when I'm free to act without being seen? 00:26:48.720 --> 00:26:52.720 And that tells it, what are we hunger and thirst for in that moment? 00:26:52.720 --> 00:26:57.720 That's the key, that's the clue. 00:26:57.720 --> 00:27:05.720 The question is, how do you get desire, hunger, thirst, craving in your soul for righteousness? 00:27:05.720 --> 00:27:08.720 That's what the Beatitude is asking us to ask. 00:27:08.720 --> 00:27:15.720 And the answer, again, is filtered throughout the entire, by using the concept of hungering and thirsting, 00:27:15.720 --> 00:27:19.720 the concept of eating and drinking throughout the whole Bible. 00:27:19.720 --> 00:27:26.720 Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Genesis 3 frames the blessed life in terms of food and drink, of hungering and thirsting, 00:27:26.720 --> 00:27:33.720 of wanting the good, of craving it, of being your satisfaction, your water, your food, your bread. 00:27:33.720 --> 00:27:37.720 But then it picks up on it throughout the entire Old Testament, Psalm 22. 00:27:37.720 --> 00:27:40.720 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. 00:27:40.720 --> 00:27:43.720 When shall I come and appear before God? 00:27:43.720 --> 00:27:47.720 Isaiah 55, which we did our call to worship, come to the waters. 00:27:47.720 --> 00:27:54.720 You who thirst, you who thirst for fulfillment, you who thirst for better life, come, eat bread, drink water. 00:27:54.720 --> 00:27:59.720 If you are truly hungry, if you are truly thirsty, come drink from the river of life. 00:27:59.720 --> 00:28:05.720 And extends the same thing John picks up on it in the book of Revelation, quoting Isaiah 55. 00:28:05.720 --> 00:28:13.720 But then in the Gospels, in John chapter 7, Jesus turns to all the people in Galilee and says, 00:28:13.720 --> 00:28:17.720 on the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up, he cries out, 00:28:17.720 --> 00:28:25.720 if anyone is thirsty, let them come to me and drink. I have the water, I am the river of life. 00:28:25.720 --> 00:28:30.720 If anyone is hungry, come and eat. 00:28:30.720 --> 00:28:41.720 And of course, the ultimate fulfillment of this craving comes to us in Matthew chapter 26. 00:28:41.720 --> 00:28:48.720 Jesus sits down, not on a mountain, but at a table. 00:28:48.720 --> 00:28:53.720 And he asks the disciples, are you hungry? Are you thirsty? 00:28:53.720 --> 00:28:58.720 Eat my body. Drink my blood. 00:28:58.720 --> 00:29:05.720 This is the blood of the covenant that's being poured out for you. 00:29:05.720 --> 00:29:16.720 Jesus had to eat and drink, death, wrath, and blood, so that we could share the meal of the promise. 00:29:16.720 --> 00:29:26.720 And what's happening at the meal of the promise, the communion meal, is that God is pledging himself to change you. 00:29:26.720 --> 00:29:30.720 He's promising that by his spirit he will come and he will reorient your desires. 00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:34.720 He will make you into a person that hungers and thirsts for righteousness. 00:29:34.720 --> 00:29:38.720 By the spirit, that's why we call the Lord's Supper a means of grace. 00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:43.720 It's a space in which the spirit acts on us to change our desires. 00:29:43.720 --> 00:29:52.720 Derek Kidner, the commentator on Genesis, he put the whole picture this way to repeat part of the quote I read before. 00:29:52.720 --> 00:29:59.720 Eve, she took an ape, so simple the act, so hard was its undoing. 00:29:59.720 --> 00:30:12.720 God tasted poverty and death, so that take and eat can now become verbs of salvation instead of verbs of death. 00:30:12.720 --> 00:30:18.720 And that means that Jesus is the better than Israel. He's the better than Moses. 00:30:18.720 --> 00:30:21.720 He is the hope for the world. 00:30:21.720 --> 00:30:29.720 He became Israel for us so that you could come and partake of the communion meal tonight. 00:30:29.720 --> 00:30:33.720 Let's pray. 00:30:33.720 --> 00:30:37.720 Father, we thank you for the gospel. We thank you for the cross. 00:30:37.720 --> 00:30:41.720 We thank you for the righteousness of Christ that is for us. 00:30:41.720 --> 00:30:48.720 And we ask, O Lord, that as we come to the table, you would reshape our desires that we would want you more. 00:30:48.720 --> 00:30:52.720 And we ask for this in Christ's name. Amen.