AN INTRODUCTION TO THE BEATITUDES
MATTHEW 5:1-12
INTRODUCTION
If
you are interested in this sort of information, and you should be, at least a
little bit, the time that this Sermon was delivered was in the middle of the
Summer in the second year of Christ’s earthly
ministry. So even though it occurs very
early in this gospel, it wasn’t the first message He delivered. And for what it’s worth, we are working
through it around the same time Jesus originally delivered it.
Jesus
must not have been a hip relevant vision-casting innovative megachurch CEO
either, because if He had been, he would have known that the Summer is the time
of year you are supposed to preach a sermon series based on blockbuster
movies. But, as un-hip as it may be,
I’ll just try my imperfect best to do what He did.
As
we saw last week, there is abundant confusion about the purpose of the
SOTM. And well-intentioned people have
attempted to come up with interpretive keys to help themselves and everyone
else to be able to properly understand it.
Last week I more or less jettisoned both the modernist and post-modern
liberal views as well as the early, extreme and hyper dispensational views. I don’t want to overwork the point, but I
have a little more yet to say about that.
IS
IT ABOUT A NEW LAW?
In
an attempt to give some perspective on the SOTM, one well-known commentator
remarked that the SOTM holds the same
place in the NT that the 10 C. holds in the OT. But I don’t know if I can
agree with that. Maybe I’m just a
curmudgeon, but I don’t think I can see that.
To
begin with, let me just say plainly that after
years of working with the Bible, preaching and studying preaching, I’m skeptical
about any alleged key to unlocking something in the Bible unless that key is
named Jesus. It doesn’t matter at
all how clever we are, any interpretive key that isn’t Christ Himself, that
isn’t Christ-focused and doesn’t point to Christ is insufficient. It won’t lead to greater understanding. It will lead to greater confusion.
So
what about that idea? It sounded good to
me once upon a time. Now, not so
much. It doesn’t point us to Christ, but
to Moses. Think about the place of the
10 Commandments in the Old Testament. Few things can be said to be as
important, and virtually everything that comes after them is a record of
failure to keep them and chastisement for breaking them.
Every
bit of the OT, from that point on, is either an elaboration on some moral
requirement given in them, or is an account of how God had to chastise His
servant, or people for not keeping them,
or, more importantly, how He graciously
worked in spite of their disobedience to Him to bring salvation to them anyway. And
this goes on, literally for CENTURIES.
To
put it in “Dick and Jane”, “Look See” reading style, the OT is all “See
David kill Goliath”. Good
David, good! David is good. Goliath was bad. See David see Bathsheba. See David sin. Sin David sin. David was bad. Sin is bad.
David is sad. Sin made David
sad. Sin made God sad. David is a sinner. So are you.
See David repent. See God
forgive. You must repent. And that’s pretty much the way it goes with
all the O.T. characters. I don’t really
see that replayed with the SOTM in the NT.
Now
you could say that in the New
Testament, we see Jesus living sinlessly, and dying violently in order to save
all of us sinful human beings for failing to live up to the SOTM. But the SOTM is basically just Jesus’
commentary and exposition of the law.
Or,
to put is another way, “The law according to Jesus”. But it isn’t new law at all. On the
contrary, He doesn’t dispute anything Moses said. Moses stuck in the knife with the 10C. and
Jesus doesn’t pull out the knife, He drives it in even farther. He kicks it, hammers it and jumps up and down
on it.
But
even at that, I really don’t see a linear narrative that follows God’s people
after the SOTM is given, describing what a bunch of losers and failures they
were at keeping it. Nor do I see them
all saying, as Israel did at Sinai, “All that the Lord hath said, we will do.” So I think we’ll put that key over to the side
and look for another.
IS
IT ABOUT A NEW KINGDOM?
BTW,
it’s ideas like that one that makes it not surprising that other Bible students
have ended up in the ditch on the other side of the road, and come up with
names for the SOTM like “The Magna Carta of the Kingdom of God” or “The
Manifesto of the King”. But those titles
reveal almost as much ignorance of history as they do of the real message of
the Bible. I haven’t been able to line
up with that “Constitution of the Kingdom” view for years. As I explained last week, that approach only
recognizes the “Not yet” dimension of the Kingdom, and throws out the
“Already”.
And
just what is this Kingdom of Heaven anyway? That’s a question I need to answer, and here
is as good a place as any. Some
dispensationalists like to draw a distinction between the “KOG” and the “KOH” –
making the first one spiritual and inward, and the other one physical, outward
and limited to some future fulfillment.
I always did see problems with that because there are just too many
places where the Bible speaks of the KOG as though it was physical, outward and
unfulfilled, and just as many that speak of the KOH as though it was inward and
spiritual. And the explanation “Well,
the 2 kingdoms are alike in those particulars” simply doesn’t withstand
scrutiny.
I’m
glad I finally realized that the tension is not
between the KOG and the KOH. They are
the same. But there is a tension, but
that is between the already and the not yet . When Jesus walked upon the Earth
He declared “the Kingdom of God is come unto you”.[1] That’s
past tense.
In
yet another sense, it is now and present in that His dominion is being
felt in new hearts and places all the time (“the Kingdom of God is within you”
– Lk. 17:21).
.And
then there is always that not yet sense
of the Kingdom. That’s coming too, and
when it shall have been, completely and entirely and Satan and all evil and
wickedness will be removed, the tension will no longer be there. But until then, we enjoy and serve in what is
partial while we await what is perfect.
A
CHRISTIAN ACCORDING TO CHRIST
I
will at least tip my hat to this description, especially when
it comes to the Beatitudes - “A Christian according to Christ.” We can find something Christ-centered there
tow work with, although unless we begin with a right view of the gospel, I’m not
sure that’s where the title would lead us.
But it can work, because a Christian is supposedly a “follower of
Christ”. Some say it means “little
Christ”, which no real Christian would claim to be, BTW. But the idea is there that we are, or at
least aspire to be like Him; Jesus “in miniature”, hopefully close enough to
give other people an idea about what He is like – the same way a scale model
can give you information about the real thing.
Taking
that view seems safe enough, because there is no claim then that we, ourselves,
or anyone else besides Jesus Christ
Himself has ever measured up to the moral standard given here. He could be saying, “This is what I require”
without expecting anyone to ever reach it.
I think that’s the only possibility.
He’s not telling us what we can do, if we try hard enough, but rather
the level of perfection that He would requires of us.
Certainly,
if anyone could live up to it, they
would actually deserve to be called a
Christian. This is the kind of
righteousness that God requires, and to fall short of this – to live in any
other way than in perfect conformity to this, is to commit sin deserving of
eternal punishment. As the Westminster Smaller
Catechism, and the Baptist Catechism put it,
Q. What is sin?
A. Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.
Now
think about it for a minute. The
righteousness Jesus describes here is not just superior righteousness, but perfect righteousness. And why
wouldn’t it be? Anything less than that
would be imperfect righteousness, am
I right? And, if imperfect righteousness
was acceptable to Him, what would that make Him? IMPERFECT.
So yes, a Christian, according to Jesus, is someone who has PERFECT RIGHTEOUSNESS. Anything less is something else. That puts us all in the position of being
practically and actively less than what Jesus wants of a Christian.
And
so, He did something about that for us.
He lived out perfectly the perfect level of righteousness that He
demands, and then He gave it to us as a gift for believing on Him to do exactly
that. What a deal!
THE
BEATITUDES AS “LAW LARGE”
Now,
back to the comparison between the SOTM and the law, having said all that, I
would point out this similarity
between the Beatitudes and the Decalogue.
Jesus says “Blessed are…” 9 times, but many take the last 2 of those to
be one beatitude. So, depending on how
you work the last of them, there are either eight or nine beatitudes. And, like the 10 Commandments, they divide
roughly in half. The first four of them
relate us toward God, the remainder relate us toward our fellow men.
And
central to the entire Sermon, including the Beatitudes is an ideal of moral
“non-conformity”. Jesus would have from
those that bear His name a morality unlike those around them that don’t bear
His name. That’s not to imply or suggest
that the world has no concept of morality, or that they don’t respect real
virtue and principle, or that they never live by any moral standards. That’s simply not true. Man, at his best, can live at a level that is
impressive to other men. He can get it
right enough on the outside to win the admiration and respect of others, to get
it right often enough outwardly so as to do little harm and some good. And I applaud all those that do, especially
when they don’t even profess to be believers.
That’s not what I mean by moral non-conformity – that only Christians
can live a life that man would call “good” and that all non-Christians are
faking it.
What
I do mean is that the level of moral integrity Jesus describes here gets past
the level of living up to what duty and common decency demands, and gets at the
things that compel a man to performing those duties. Ideally,
a Christian, according to Christ, is fully and truly compelled to perfect
behavior by perfect motives. Ideally,
it would be doing the right thing the right way for the right reason all the
time. Let me know when you get there.
But
even admitting how far short we come, there should be something different that
underlies all that Christians do, as shown in the first four Beatitudes.
·
Something different about
their spirit (5:3)
He
means the humble, and lowly-minded, and self-abased. He means those who are
deeply convinced of their own sinfulness in God's sight. These are they who are
not "wise in their own eyes and holy in their own sight." They are
not "rich and increased with goods." They do not imagine that they
need nothing. They regard themselves as "wretched, and miserable, and
poor, and blind, and naked." Blessed are all such! Humility is the very
first letter in the alphabet of Christianity. We must begin low, if we would
build high.
·
Something different
about what causes them to mourn (5:4)
They
that mourn are those who sorrow and grieve daily over their own sins and
short-comings. They grieve over the
memory of it, and find it an intolerable burden. Unlike unrepentant sinners, who side with
their loved sins against a hated God, they side with a loved and reconciled God
against their hated sins. One day “they
shall be comforted."
·
Something different about
the way they manage injuries and offences (5:5)
Meekness
is defined as strength under control, calmness under pressure, a soothing influence. The meek are slow to misuse their power and
position, willing to put up with little or no honor or respect, and to wait for
their rewards.
·
Something different about
the thing after which they pursue the most (5:6)
They
desire above all things to be overtaken by the mind of Christ. More than wealth, influence or happiness,
they desire holiness.
Each
of these virtues has a suitable reward coming.
And these things don’t come from us naturally. They are all unnatural gifts of grace
communicated to us by God by the impartation of the Divine nature in us at the
New Birth. And the rest of them (4, or
5), and whatever else we might get right from the rest of the SOTM flow out of
that change wrought in us by God’s own artistry.
None
of these things Jesus names can be said of any natural temperament. Certainly not if we understand them
rightly. These things are dispensed by
the Holy Spirit and developed within the child of God through the workings of
God. If you know a man who seems to be
meek or a woman who appears to be merciful, and that person is not a believer,
you are not seeing a beatified person, but the natural outworkings of the
person’s own natural disposition.
But, if you should
happen to see a man who naturally tends to be proud, who has a reputation
history of pride, becoming poor in spirit,
or a man who is naturally aloof or callused, becoming mournful, then you are
looking at a work of grace. There you
have the beatitudes being played out as God directs.
You
may have noticed that the expression “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” is
used twice – in v. 3, and in v. 10.
That’s a “literary device” used to set off a series of ideas. The first and the last are tied to one
another by that declaration. And that
accentuates the fact that these verses are not speaking of eight (or nine) different
people, but rather 8 or 9 marks of a blessed individual, or a blessed
life.
And
please don’t get the idea that the Beatified life is reserved for only a select
few super-saints. In other words, all believers can, or could,
live according to the beatitudes. But
neither should you assume that all will. I tend to think that beatified saints –
even imperfectly beatified ones (that’s the only kind) are more rare than
common.
That
should be no surprise, because these days, love for the world in the professing
Church could not be any stronger, and all at a time that the world, as it is
today, couldn’t be much more ungodly.
Ideally, Scripturally, the things that the World admires and adores at
any given point in time are not to be of any consequence to us, and the things
the we are to aspire to are things derided by the World. Look at the man the world admires and you
have something as far removed from the beatitudes as you can possibly be. But find a man who embodies the beatitudes,
and you have found someone who is, in the eyes of the world, a weakling, a
fool, and a loser.
The
Beatified Christian desires righteousness, humility, compassion, purity.
The
Beatified Christian depends upon different means and methods to get ahead –
things such as faith, meekness and mercy rather than assertiveness,
self-reliance, target-marketing, and adaptation
The
Beatified Christian is an ex-patriot, a foreigner, and an alien. “Thiers is the kingdom of heaven”
Who hath delivered us from the
power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear
Son: Col. 1:13
CONCLUSION
To
which Kingdom do you belong? If you are
part of the “Kingdom of Heaven”, you should be noticing some beatified changes
taking place in you. Do you, by the grace of God, recognize these
things taking shape in you? Have you
discovered them, un-pretended and real, as a benefit of the gospel? If not, then perhaps you need to repent and
believe the gospel, so that you may be saved.
If so, then thanks and praise are in order.
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