SS09-07-03

STUDY THEME: KINGDOM LIVING 9-07-03

“KINGDOM QUALITIES.” MATTHEW 5: 1-16.

MATTHEW 5: 1-2, 3-6, 7-10, 11-12, 13-16.

PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO MATTHEW 5.

1, PLEASE READ MATTHEW 5: 1-2.

When John the Baptist was put in prison Jesus left Judea where he had been baptized and tempted and came to dwell in Capernaum of Galilee. From there he began to choose His disciples. During this early ministry in Galilee Jesus went about teaching, preaching and healing. As a result of this ministry great multitudes began to follow Him. Having announced in Matt. 4:17 that the Kingdom of Heaven was “at hand,” the King now, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matt. 5-7 declares to His disciples the principles of that kingdom.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ sets forth the perfect standard of righteousness demanded by the law, thus demonstrating that all men and women are sinners, habitually falling short of the divine standard, and that therefore, salvation by works of law is an impossibility. Most of the Sermon on the Mount is addressed directly to the disciples as subjects of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Sermon on the Mount was not given to tell lost people how to live because there is no way they can do it! Jesus gave it to teach His followers how they were to live and what type of persons they were to be. It is wrong to ask anybody who is not first a Christian to try to live or practice the Sermon on the Mount. No man can live the Sermon on the Mount in and of himself, and unaided.

Some of the titles for the Sermon on the Mount are: A.“The Ordination Address of the Twelve.” B.“The Manifesto of the King.” C.“The Magna Charta of the Kingdom.” D.“The Constitution of the Kingdom.”

In it Jesus declared those qualities, and practices, which should characterize Kingdom citizens. In this Ch. 5 the Son of God describes the ideal man of this kingdom, which is in reality a self- portrait of Jesus. The Lord lived by this standard and died to enable us to live the Sermon on the Mount.

Nothing shows us the absolute need of the New Birth, and of the Holy Spirit and His work within us, so much as the Sermon on the Mount. The more we live and try to practice the Sermon on the Mount, the more we shall experience blessings. If you want t have power in your life and be blessed go straight to the Sermon on the Mount.

There are certain teachings that say that the Sermon on the Mount has nothing whatsoever to do with modern Christians, or nothing to do with us. This is not true.

The Sermon on the Mount is nothing but a great and grand and perfect declaration of what our Lord called His “new commandment,” “That we love one another even as He has loved us.”

2, PLEASE READ MATTHEW 5: 3-6.

There are certain general lessons to be drawn from the Beatitudes. First, all Christians are to be like this. Read the Beatitudes, and here you have a description of what every Christian is meant to be. It is no merely the description of some exceptional Christians. Our Lord does not say here that He is going to paint a picture of what certain outstanding characters are going to be, and can be in this world. It is His description of every single Christian. We are mean to exemplify everything that is contained here in these Beatitudes. This is not merely a description of the Hudson Taylors or the George Mullers or the Whitefields or Wesleys of this world; it is a description of every Christian. We are all meant to conform to its pattern and to rise to its standards.

The second principle is that all Christians are meant to manifest all of these characteristics. Not only are they meant for all Christians, but of necessity, therefore, all Christians are meant to manifest all of them. The moment we analyze each Beatitude, it becomes quite obvious that each one of these, in a sense, demands the others.

The third principle is that, None of these descriptions refers to what we may call a natural tendency. Each one of them is wholly a disposition, which is produced by grace alone, and the operation of the Holy Spirit upon us. No man naturally conforms to the descriptions here given in the Beatitudes; nobody by birth and by nature is like this.

Any one of us, every one of us, whatever we may be by birth and nature, is meant as a Christian to be like this. And not only are we meant to be like this; we can be like this. These descriptions indicate clearly the essential difference between the Christian and the non-Christian. The glory of the gospel is that when the church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. That is how revival comes. The truth is that the Christian and the non-Christian belong to two entirely different realms. The first thing you have to realize about yourself is that you belong to a different kingdom. What is this kingdom? It is Christ’s rule or the sphere and realm in which He is reigning.

We come now to a consideration of the first of the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” This is the first because it is the key to all that follows. There is, beyond any question, a very definite order in these Beatitudes. Our Lord does not place them in their respective positions haphazardly or accidentally; there is what we may describe as a spiritual logical sequence to be found here. This is the one which must come at the beginning for the good reason that there is no entry into the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God apart from it. There is no one in the kingdom of God who is not poor in spirit. It is the fundamental characteristic of the Christian and of the citizen of the kingdom of heaven, and all the other characteristics are, in a sense, the result of this one. We cannot be filled until we are first empty.

It is an essential part of the gospel that conviction must always precede conversion; the gospel of Christ condemns before it releases. I would say that there is no more perfect statement of the doctrine of justification by faith only than this Beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs (and theirs only) is the kingdom of heaven.” This is the foundation of everything else.

The poor in spirit are those who recognize that they possess nothing spiritually that makes them worthy to approach God.

There are those who tell us that it should read, “Blessed in spirit are the “poor.” The Bible nowhere teaches that poverty as such is a good thing. The poor man is no nearer to the kingdom of heaven that the rich man, speaking of them as natural men. There is no merit or advantage in being poor. Poverty does not guarantee spirituality. Clearly therefore, the passage cannot mean that.

What our Lord is concerned about here is the spirit; it is poverty of spirit. In other words, it is ultimately a man’s attitude towards himself. That is the thing that matters, not whether he is wealthy or poor. This is something that is not only, not admired by the world; it is despised by it. The world places emphasis on its belief in self-reliance, self-confidence and self-expression! If you want to get on in this world, it says believe in yourself. Jesus taught the if one feels anything in the presence of God save an utter ‘poverty of spirit’, it ultimately means that you have never faced Him. That is the meaning of this Beatitude.

To be “poor in spirit” is not as popular even in the church as it once was and always should be. Let us realize from the beginning that we are in the realm of a kingdom, which is unlike everything that belongs to this ‘present evil world.’ If any man in the O.T. demonstrated “poor in spirit’ it was Moses. God said of him that he was the meekest man on earth. But of course we see this most of all as we look at the life of our Lord Himself. He became a Man. He took upon Him ‘the likeness of sinful flesh’. He decided that while He was here on earth He would live as a man, though He was still God.

How does one become ‘poor in spirit?’ The way to become poor in spirit is to look at God. Look at the Lord Jesus Christ; view Him as we see Him in the Gospels. Look at Him and the more we look at Him the more shall we become ‘poor in spirit. Then you say to Him, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.”

The second Beatitude “Blessed (or happy) are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted, like the first, stands out at once, and marks off the Christian as being quite unlike the man who is not a Christian and who belongs to the world. Indeed the world would, and does, regard a statement like this Beatitude as utterly ridiculous—Happy are those who mourn! The one thing the world tries to shun is mourning; its whole organization is based on the supposition that that is something to avoid. But the gospel says, “Happy are they that mourn.” Indeed, they are the only ones that are happy. This Beatitude promises blessing and happiness, joy and peace to those who mourn. We have something here that is entirely spiritual in its meaning.

As we saw that poverty of spirit was not something financial, but something essentially spiritual, so this again is something entirely spiritual and has nothing to do with our natural life in this world.

It is of the greatest importance that we should know exactly what our Lord means when He says, “Happy are those who mourn.” We shall discover the answer as we look at the teaching of the N.T. in general, with regard to this subject. Let us start, for instance, with our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. We, as Christians, are made, we are told by the Bible, after the image and the pattern of the Lord Himself. A Christian is one who is to be like the Lord Jesus Christ. He is ‘the first-born among many brethren’; that is the ultimate standard of what you and I are like. Let’s look at Him.

One thing we observe is that we have no record anywhere that He ever laughed. We are told that He was angry; we are told that He suffered from hunger and thirst; but there is actually no record of laughter in His life. We remember the prophecy concerning Him in the Book of Isaiah, where we are told that “He was to be a ‘man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”. We are told that He wept at the grave of Lazarus. We are told that He wept over Jerusalem. That is the picture you have as you look at our Lord in the Gospels, and we are meant to be like Him. What does it all mean?

I think the best way we can put it is this. To “mourn” is something that follows of necessity from being “poor in spirit”. As I confront God and His holiness, and contemplate the life that I am meant to live, I see myself: My utter helplessness and hopelessness. I discover my quality of spirit and immediately that makes me mourn. The man who is truly a Christian is a man who mourns also because of the sins of others. Indeed, he goes beyond that and mourns over the state of the whole world. He knows that it is all due to sin; and he mourns because of it. That is why our Lord Himself mourned, that is why He was ‘a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief’; that is why he wept at the grave of Lazarus. The astounding thing about the Christian life is that our great sorrow leads to joy, and without the sorrow there is no joy.

This third Beatitude causes real surprise because it is so completely and entirely opposed to everything which the natural man thinks. “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” World conquest---possession of the whole universe---given to the meek, of all people! The world thinks in terms of strength and power, of ability, self-assurance and aggressiveness. That is the world’s idea of conquest and possession. But here comes this astounding statement, ‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth’—and they alone. Once more we are reminded that the Christian is altogether different from the world. It is a difference in quality. He is a new man, a new creation; he belongs to an entirely different kingdom. And not only is the world unlike him; it cannot possibly understand him.

There is an obvious logical connection between these different Beatitudes. Each one suggests the next and leads to the next. I would point out that these Beatitudes as they proceed become increasingly difficult. The first Beatitude asks us to realize our own weakness and our own inability but now we are reaching a point in which we begin to be concerned about other people. I myself have been looking at myself. Now, other people are looking at me, and I am in a relationship to them, and they are doing certain things to me. It is more humbling and more humiliating than everything that has gone before to have other people put the searchlight upon me instead of my doing it myself.

Who is this meek person? What is he like? Look at the portrait of that great gentleman—in many ways, I think, the greatest gentleman in the O.T.—Abraham, and as you look at him you see a great and wonderful portrait of meekness. It is the great characteristic of his life. You see it again in Moses, who is actually described as the meekest man on the face of the earth.

In the N.T. look at the portrait of Stephen, and Paul, that mighty man of God. But of course we come to the supreme example, and stand and look at our Lord Himself. “Come unto me,” He said, “all ye that labor—and I will give your rest…I am meek and lowly in heart.” You see meekness in the whole of His life.

Let us notice again that meekness is not a natural quality. It is not a matter of a natural disposition, because all Christians are meant to be like this. Meekness is compatible with great strength. Meekness is compatible with great authority and power. The meek man is one who may so believe in standing for the truth that he will die for it if necessary. Meekness is not merely a matter of outward manner, but also, and still more, of inward spirit. It is true Christianity; it is the thing for which we are called and for which we are meant. Meekness is essentially a true view of oneself, expressing itself in attitude and conduct with respect to others.

Now notice what happens to the man who is like this, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” A man who is truly meek is a man who is always satisfied; he is a man who is already content. All things are yours if you are meek and truly Christian; you have already inherited the earth. But, we can never make ourselves meek. It cannot be done. Nothing but the Holy Spirit can produce this true, right view of self and give us this very mind of Christ Himself.

“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for thy shall be filled.” If every man and woman in this world knew what it was to “hunger and thirst after righteousness’ there would be no danger of war. The greatest need in the world now is for a greater number of Christians, individual Christians. It is righteousness that exalts a nation, and the most important thing for all of us is to discover what righteousness means.

This 4^th Beatitude again follows logically from the previous ones; it is a statement to which all the others lead. In this verse we have one of the most notable statements of the Christian gospel and everything that it has to give us. It is very doctrinal; it emphasizes one of the most fundamental doctrines of the gospel; namely, that our salvation is entirely of grace or by grace, that it is entirely the free gift of God. This is its great emphasis.

‘Blessed—or—happy are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness.’ They are the only truly happy people. They alone are happy who are seeking to be righteous. Put happiness in the place of righteousness and you will never get it. To hunger and thirst after righteousness is nothing but the longing to be positively holy. I cannot think of a better way of defining it. ‘Happy’, ‘happy’, ‘blessed’, ‘to be congratulated, are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Why? Well, “they shall be filled”, they shall be given what they desire. It is only this righteousness that can fit us to be right with God and to go to heaven and to be with Him and to spend eternity in His holy presence. Without this righteousness we are lost and damned and doomed.

3. PLEASE READ MATTHEW 5: 7-10.

This particular statement, “Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy”, is a further stage forward in the description, given in these beatitudes, of the Christian man. But here there is a kind of turning point. Now we are concerned more with his disposition, which results from everything that has gone before.

“Blessed are the merciful.” What a searching statement that is! What a test of each one of us, of our whole standing and of our profession of the Christian faith! Those are the happy people, says Christ, those are the people to be congratulated. That is what man should be like—merciful.

A Christian is something before he does anything; and we have to be Christians before we can act as Christians. Now that is a fundamental point. Being is more important than doing; attitude is more significant than action. Going a step further, we can put it like this; We are not meant to control our Christianity; our Christianity is rather meant to control us. The whole of our life is an expression and a proclamation of what we really are. And as we confront a list like these Beatitudes, or we look at the portrait of the Christian drawn by our Lord, we are forced to look at ourselves and examine ourselves and ask ourselves these questions. Are we merciful?

The great N.T. illustration of being merciful is the parable of the Good Samaritan.

We come now to what is undoubtedly one of the greatest utterances to be found anywhere in the whole realm of Holy Scripture. Anyone who realizes even something of the meaning of the words, “Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God”, can approach them only with a sense of awe and of complete inadequacy. Once again it is important, I feel, to consider it in its setting and to study its relationship to the other Beatitudes. As we have seen, our Lord did not select these statements at random.

Now the first three Beatitudes were concerned with our need, our consciousness of need—“poor in spirit,” “mourning because of our sinfulness”, “meek as the result of a our understanding of the nature of self and its great ego-centricity, that terrible thing that has ruined the whole of life. These three emphasize the vital importance of a deep awareness of need. Then comes the great statement of the satisfaction of the need, God’s provision for it, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” From there on we are looking at the result of that satisfaction, the result of being filled. We become merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers. After that, there is the outcome of all this, “persecution for righteousness’ sake”.

Who are the pure in heart? They are those who are mourning about the impurity of their hearts. And exactlythe same way, when we come to discuss the “peacemakers” we shall find that the peacemakers are those who are meek. If a person is not meek he is not likely to be a peacemaker.

“Blessed are the pure in heart.” It starts with the heart. Our Lord put it, “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” It is “out of the heart” that these things arise. All our troubles arise out of this human heart which, we are told by Jeremiah, “is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Being pure in heart means to be like the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. There is this glorious promise that, in some way or other, the pure in heart shall see God. The only way in which we can have a clean heart is for the Holy Spirit to enter into us and to cleanse it for us. All I have tried to say can be put like this “You are going to see God!”

As we come to consider this further characteristic of the Christian man, we are once more constrained to suggest that there is nothing in the whole range of Scripture, which so test and examines and humbles us as these beatitudes. Here in this statement, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” we have a further outcome and outworking of being filled by God. We are reminded once more that the outworking in the Christian of the Christian life is altogether and entirely different form everything that can be known by any man who is not a Christian. Only a new man can live this new life.

Never, perhaps, was there a more appropriate word for this modern world of ours than this Beatitude: “Blessed are the peacemakers.” There is no section of the N.T. that has been so misunderstood and abused as the Sermon on the Mount. Why are peacemakers blessed? The answer is that they are blessed because they are so absolutely unlike everybody else. The peacemakers are blessed because they are the people who stand out as being different from the rest of the world, and they are different because they are the children of God. It is only the man of a pure heart who can be a peacemaker. To be a peacemaker is to be like God, and like the Son of God. He is called the ‘Prince of Peace’.

We come in Vs. 10 to the last of the Beatitudes, “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake.” It is generally agreed that Vs. 11 and 12 are a kind of elaboration of this Beatitude, and perhaps an application of its truth and message to the disciples in particular. In other words, our Lord had finished the general portrayal of the characteristics of the Christian man by the end of Vs. 10, and He then applies this last statement in particular to the disciples.

“This is what is going to happen to you because you are a Christian”, says Christ. You are different. It is interesting to observe that this particular Beatitude follows immediately the reference to the peacemakers. In a sense it is because the Christian is a peacemaker that he is persecuted.

The promise attached to this Beatitude is the same as the promise attached to the first, ‘theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” This is a further and additional proof of the fact that this is the last Beatitude. You start with the kingdom of heaven and you close with it.

As we suggested earlier, Vs. 11 & 12 are an extension of the statement in VS. 10. We see here the Christian’s reactions to this matter of persecution. There are three principles which emerge very clearly from what our Lord tells us. The first one is that he is unlike everybody who is not a Christian. The second is that the Christian’s life is controlled and dominated by Jesus Christ, by his loyalty to Christ, and by his concern to do everything for Christ’s sake. The third general characteristic of the Christian is that his life should be controlled by thoughts of heaven and of the world to come. “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad: for great is your reward in heaven,” and “so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

5. PLEASE READ MATTHEW 5: 13-16.

We now come to a new and fresh section in the Sermon on the Mount. In Vs. 3-12 our Lord and Savior has been delineating the Christian Character. Here at Vs. 13 He moves forward and applies His description. Having seen what the Christian is, we now come to consider how the Christian should manifest this. Or, if you prefer it, having realized what we are, we must now go on to consider what we must be. We pass from the contemplation of the character of the Christian to a consideration of the function and purpose of the Christian in this world in the mind and the purpose of God.

Now the Bible has always taught, and the Lord put it perfectly when He said, “Ye are the Salt of the earth.” What does that imply? It clearly implies rottenness in the earth. That is what the Bible has to say about the world. It is fallen, sinful and bad. Its tendency is to evil and to wars.

He function of Salt is to prevent putrification.

The principle function of Salt is to preserve and to act as an antiseptic. Another subsidiary function of salt is to provide savor, or to prevent food from being insipid or tasteless. The Christian is to function as the salt of the earth by his individual life and character, by just being the man that he is in every sphere in which he finds himself.

In Vs. 14 we have one of the most astounding and extraordinary statements about the Christian that was ever made, even by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Himself. When you consider the setting, and remember the people to whom our Lord uttered these words, they do indeed become most remarkable. “Ye”, said our Lord, looking out upon those simple people, those entirely unimportant people from the standpoint of the world, “Ye are the light of the world.” The “ye” referred to in this statement means simply ourselves. It is ourselves to whom it refers, if we truly claim to be Christian.

At once you see here are certain things implied. The first is that the world is in a state of darkness. There is no point at which we see this striking contrast between the Christian view of life and all other views more clearly than in a verse such as this.

Our Lord not only pronounced that the world is in a state of darkness. He goes so far as to say that nobody but a Christian can give any helpful advice, knowledge or instruction with respect to it. That is our proud claim and boast as Christian people. There is obviously no light at all, in this world, apart from the light that is provided by Christian people and the Christian faith. The darkness of the world has never been more evident than it is now, and here comes this astonishing and startling statement, “You and you alone are the light of the world.”

Having described the Christian in general in the Beatitudes, the first thing He then says is, “You are the salt of the earth.” Now he says, “You are the light of the world, and you alone.” But let us remember that it is a statement concerning the ordinary, average Christian, not certain Christians only. It is applicable to all who rightly claim this name.

NEXT SUNDAY FROM MATTHEW 6 WE LOOK AT KINGDOM ATTITUDES. ‘ATTITUDES AND MOTIVES IN WORSHIP’. A.V. DAUGHERTY 9-07-03