We read in Matthew 5:1-12:
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: and he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Lord willing, I would like to begin working through this chapter and trying to go verse-by-verse as much as possible. Let us look at the first couple of verses here to start. In Matthew 5:1-2, it says:
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: and he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
This is speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ who is eternal God. If you read the Bible and are just careful to notice this, throughout the Bible you will find that God loves to teach. God loves to teach.
If you had to think of one characteristic of God, you would have to say that He is a great teacher. Of course, God has many characteristics and there are many things that He tells us about Himself as He reveals Himself through His Word, but all of the way through the Bible, we find that God is teaching.
If we go back to Deuteronomy 4:1, it says:
Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers giveth you.
God loves to teach. Look at Deuteronomy 6:1:
Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it:
Throughout the Bible, if you were to get out a concordance and look up the word “teach” or “taught” or anything similar to this, you would find that God is teaching man. Again and again, God is teaching man.
Look at the life of Jesus Himself. What did Jesus do primarily? He went into the synagogues and taught. What did He do with His disciples? He taught them. Continually, He was instructing them regarding the Kingdom of Heaven, regarding the Kingdom of God itself. So it is not unusual that here we find that Jesus is taking a seat and beginning to teach.
By the way, when you think about how God loves to teach, what do believers love to do? What does the true child of God love to do? He loves to learn and to listen and to study the Word of God. We sit back and we read the Bible and we are all ears. What is God saying? What is God teaching me? We want to learn as much as we can.
What is a joy for the Christian? What is a true joy for the child of God? As God saves us and brings us into His kingdom and we become a child of God, we start to lose interest in the things of this world. The things of this world were fine when we were living in this world, when we were unsaved like the rest of the people out there. Of course, we could not find true satisfaction. There was always a lusting after things and desiring things, but that was what we were interested in. Yet after we became saved, we started to focus on a Book and having a great interest in a Book—the Bible. We started reading the Scriptures.
People who are in the world do not understand this. Have you ever told someone, say on a Friday evening when they ask you what you are doing tonight, “I am going to go home and study the Bible.” Have you ever said that to someone on a Saturday night?
What is the world doing? They want to go out and party. They want to go out and have as much fun as they can. They look at you with this strange look and respond, “You want to go home and study?” They have no understanding of the joy that a believer can experience when he is under the teaching of the Bible and he wants to learn what God has said.
By the way, when we think about Heaven and when we think about the new heavens and the new earth and entering into the Kingdom of God, what can we gather about God loving to teach and God’s people loving to learn? What is going to be our primary occupation in Heaven? We are going to be learning about God. He is going to be with us and He is going to be telling us about Himself and revealing Himself more and more throughout eternity.
Do not worry. We are never going to come to the end of God, because He is eternal. Keep in mind that God has been active and busy from eternity past doing who knows what. We will be learning about all that God has done and all that God is, and we will learn face-to-face. We will learn directly in His presence. He will instruct us. It is going to be one of the greatest pleasures and joys of Heaven that Christ, the great and only true teacher, is going to be teaching us.
Even when believers teach, if we are teaching properly and if we are teaching rightly, it is not us teaching. This is what the Bible says. We compare Scripture with Scripture and the Holy Ghost teaches. The Holy Ghost is the One who teaches, if we are doing it properly. If we are following God’s methodology, then the full credit and the full responsibility goes to God. God is the One who teaches from His Word.
Here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is beginning to teach. He is going to begin instructing the people of God. In Matthew 5:3, it says:
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Actually, through the next several verses, each verse will begin with this word “blessed.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” What does it mean to be “blessed,” to be a “blessed” one?
If Jesus is using this word to describe anyone, then that person would be someone who is saved. In other words, you can not say that someone is unsaved yet they are “blessed.” They are not “blessed” by God, because they are going to end up in Hell. They are going to end up under the wrath of God forevermore, so how could they be “blessed”?
When Christ says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” He is indicating that this means that they are a child of God and that they have become born again. For instance, turn to Romans 4:7-8, where it says:
Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
This is what the meaning of “blessed” comes down to. This is what God has in view when He says that some are “blessed.” This is because their sins have been forgiven. They have been saved. God has bestowed His grace upon them. They can now enter into the “joy of the Lord.” They can receive all of the promises that God has laid out in the Bible “concerning things to come.”
Again, Matthew 5:3 says:
Blessed are the poor in spirit…
When someone is “poor,” it means that they do not necessarily have something. “Poor” signifies someone who does not have riches or the material things of this world. They lack things, and this is what is in view here.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,” because God is drawing someone. He is reaching out through His Word into the life of an individual somewhere in this world, and He is beginning to use His Word, the Bible, to convict them, to break them, to humble them, to bring them low so that they will begin to realize that they do not have what is necessary within themselves to enter into the Kingdom of God. They do not have righteousness. They do not have justification of any kind. As they look at themselves, they are very needy.
Let us turn to Proverbs 10 to look at one verse that really lays out what it means to be “poor.” In Proverbs 10:15, it says:
The rich man’s wealth is his strong city: the destruction of the poor is their poverty.
This is what God has in mind. Someone begins to see their sin. They begin to be troubled because they know that it is due to their sin that they are under God’s judgment. They know that unless God saves them and has mercy on them, they are going to end up in Hell. So they become “poor in spirit.” They are troubled by their sin. They can not have fun with their sin like they used to. More and more, their sin is beginning to disturb them. It is really something that is troubling them greatly.
In Psalm 51:17, we read:
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
This is what God is talking about. When someone is “poor in spirit,” they become brokenhearted. It is only God who can break the stony heart of unbelief. It is only God who can break the cold heart of a spiritually dead sinner. God does this by transforming the heart. He gives us a new heart and a new Spirit that is patterned after the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then we go to God in a way that God will accept, because He has broken us Himself and has qualified us to come to Him. We go to Him in our spiritual poverty, and we then begin to beseech Him for mercy that He might save us and that He might give us a new heart.
Going back to Matthew 5:3:
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“The Kingdom of Heaven” is what belongs to the one who is “poor in spirit.” They have the “Kingdom of Heaven.”
Is it not a pity that so many people just think so lightly of this? They do not think very much of this at all. “Oh…become a Christian…eternal life? Okay, sounds good.” But the Kingdom of Heaven is the possession of a child of God! You now have this. This is what God has given you. This is a gift from God to you.
It is amazing because this is the most incredible possession that anyone could ever have. This dwarfs and really puts to shame the possessions of the world, whether it be money or houses or boats or yachts or planes. Do any of the riches of the world really stand up or can any of it be said to stand in comparison to the Kingdom of Heaven?
If you are one of these “poor in spirit,” if God has done a work in you, you are going to enter into the Kingdom of God and you will live forevermore. You will be in God’s presence. We know that the language of the Bible is just tremendous as it speaks of a place where there is no more pain and no more tears and no more death, a place where you will have a new resurrected body that will not be able to feel any anguish of any kind.
It will all be joy. It will be all love. It will be all goodness. It will be all purity. It will be the most wonderful place that we could even imagine. But we can not imagine it, of course, because we live in such a filthy world that is contaminated by sin. This world is seeing such corruption that we can not even think of a glorious place where God will be dwelling with us and where we will be just serving Him forevermore in total and complete joy—total joy! We will be in total joy, without a moment of being downcast, without a moment of shedding a tear.
We are so warped by this world that we do not realize how gigantic and enormous it is that God tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven is ours. It is ours. It is really an incredible blessing that God gives each one of His people. It is not given to the great and the mighty and the noble. It is given to everyone who is “poor in spirit,” and it is given equally. Everyone shares in the Kingdom of Heaven. It belongs to you and it belongs to me. It is our possession forevermore.
What a glorious truth this is, yet God is just plainly stating this. Jesus is just throwing it out there, and this is how God does things. He is talking about the grandest thing imaginable as He plainly states, “The Kingdom of Heaven is yours.” It is ours.
The thing is, if this belongs to us, if we know this, if we have assurance of this, if we have confidence of this, then it really affects how we begin to live in this life. This will be due to the fact that we will not be as troubled or as bothered or as agitated with not having everything in this life, with lacking many things, even with trials and tribulations, even with physical pain and suffering or emotional pain and suffering or being persecuted for the Gospel. All of these things will minimize greatly, because the Kingdom of Heaven is ours, and we will comfort ourselves by this. Actually, God will comfort us by this truth, because when we are tried, when we are facing a difficult situation, this truth can come back to us. “Yes, it is true. What I am going through is not easy, but it is only for a moment. It is only for a second, in comparison with eternity to come.”
Going back to Matthew 5, we will go on to the next verse. Matthew 5:4 says:
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are they that mourn.” Anyone ever do any mourning? Of course, we all have, to some degree. We go to funerals and we mourn the one who has passed away, the one whom God has taken. Yet God/Jesus is saying, “Blessed are they that mourn,” and we wonder just what exactly God has in mind by this.
I think that we can get a picture of this if we turn to Psalm 38:18. It says:
For I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin.
“I will be sorry for my sin.” Again, we really are not that troubled by our sin. As we grew up in the world and were “children of wrath, even as others,” there were certain things that got us into trouble. We were sorry for those things. We were sorry for all of those sins. But all of those sins that we were able to do and get away with, we were not sorry for them; we enjoyed them. Yet when God uses His Word to begin bringing us to Himself, it is then that we begin to see our sin and we begin to be troubled by our sin and we begin to be sorry for our sin.
Let us also turn to 2 Corinthians 7, where I think that we will see the same idea. 2 Corinthians 7:8-10 explains a little bit more about how the Christian is mourning and sorrowful over their sin. 2 Corinthians 7:8-10 says:
For though I made you sorry with a letter…
Keep in mind that when the Apostle Paul was used of God to write a letter, that is the Word of God. It continues:
…I do not repent, though I did repent: for I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.
This is the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. An example of worldly sorrow would be Judas. After he betrayed the Lord Jesus, he was sorry, but he went and hanged himself, and that was just more sin on top of his other sins.
When God’s Word, the “letter” or the Epistle mentioned here, makes us sorry, when we begin reading the Bible for real or in earnest, diligently, as we are reading it, we are reading law after law after law. As we are doing this, we ought to be seeing, “I break that law; I break that law; I break that law. I do not do it the way God instructs me to do it.” God says, “Keep My commandments.” As we read the Bible, we should be seeing, “I am failing! I am failing! I am failing!” So this is bringing sorrow in our life, yet if God is truly behind it, it will be Godly sorrow that leads us to repentance.
If you are troubled by a sin and if you are mourning in your life because sin is afflicting you and you keep falling into a sin, more and more, and it is just causing you sorrow, if you are miserable because you are falling into a sin, what is God going to do? Is He just going to take it from you and just deliver you from it? No, He may let you continue to fall into it…another time…more affliction…more grief…more misery, until finally, Godly sorrow leads you to turn from it. Then you say, “The last thing I want is this sin. I would rather, like the old expression, I would rather have a hole in my head! I would rather do anything but this sin. I have just had it! I am fed up with this sin, because it is making me miserable.”
So there is a turning, but we know that God worked this all out, if we do turn. We repent, and it is all God moving in us “to will and to do of His good pleasure.” Yet sometimes the method that God uses is not the method that we would want—it was allowing us to fall in a sin and be greatly troubled by it. So the life of a believer is one of mourning, many times. We are all seeing sins. We are always going to God, “Help me! Turn me from this sin!”
We are mournful, also, because we are learning the truth of the Word of God. We are learning that when God speaks of a Judgment Day, when He speaks of a time when mankind will stand before Him to give account for the things that they have done in their body, that this is very real. This is going to happen. These words are true and faithful. Yet all around us, we see many who are going on, day after day, in their sin, and their sins are going to take them right down to Hell, so there is much sadness when we bring the Gospel.
It is a time of mourning when we are carrying the Gospel to a lost world, yet God says in Matthew 5:4:
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
“They shall be comforted.”
Let us go over to 2 Corinthians again. In 2 Corinthians 1, God speaks of comfort. We read in 2 Corinthians 1:3-5:
Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.
…and then it goes on. So God is “the God of all comfort.” He will afflict. He will lead us to times of shedding tears and being cast down in soul. But then, the same Word that is troubling us by that “letter,” by that Epistle, leading us to Godly sorrow, is the same Word that comforts, that applies the soothing balm, that applies the Word of God to our lives, where God says in the Bible that He will remove our sins “as far as the east is from the west” or where He tells us that He will “cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” or where we read that God is a God who “pardoneth iniquity,” who will forgive sins. There is “no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.”
Again and again, as we are reading the Bible and we see our sins, God is there with words of comfort, with words of great encouragement to the sinner. If we are one of God’s elect, the Holy Spirit will apply those words to our hearts and we will be comforted by the Word of God, by the Bible.
Let us also go to Isaiah 61 and read the first three verses there. Isaiah 61:1-3:
The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.
So God is laying it out here. When the Gospel goes forth, one of the blessings of the Gospel is to comfort those who have been brought to a place of mourning. God is going to soothe every ache and pain of His people, spiritually speaking.
Let us go back to Matthew 5. In Matthew 5:5, it says:
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
The word “meek” is a word that is related to humility, to gentleness. It was used of Moses. We read in Numbers 12, “Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.” It is a word used of the Lord Jesus when He made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We read in Matthew 21, “Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.” It is a word where someone is in submission to God. They are humbled “under the mighty hand of God;” they are humbled under the Word of God. They are brought to a point, as God has brought them there, where they seek to be obedient to keeping God’s commandments, to doing His will.
This is true of every child of God. Every child of God will be meek and humble and will be in submission to God in their heart, because God has given them that type of heart. He has given them that type of Spirit. Again, we are blessed, we are happy, if we are meek.
Why does Jesus say, “Blessed are the meek”? He tells us, “For they shall inherit the earth.” They will inherit the earth.
If it was this earth that we were going to inherit, this world as it is right now, we probably would not consider this to be that much of a blessing. But actually, God is talking about the new heavens and the new earth. This is what He has in mind, after He destroys this world with a “fervent heat” and then He recreates it, which is close at hand. This is coming; it is very shortly until this will be accomplished. At that point, He will create a glorious new heaven and new earth, and the people of God will inhabit it. We will inherit it.
None of the people of the world who are not saved will be there. We will be removed, but this is their inheritance. If someone is not born again or saved, they have this life and all that they can gather out of this life. All of the riches and all of the things that they can collect, they have it for however long they live or until Christ returns. For 50, 60, 70 years, they can accumulate wealth. They can try to have as much of this world as possible, but then, they die or the Lord returns, and then everything is removed—everything.
We have all heard the saying, “You can not take it with you.” This is exactly how it is. You can not take your wealth from this world with you. You can not even take your clothes. Nothing! Everyone will be standing naked before God on that Last Day in the body that God has given them, and they will have to then give account.
One of the horrible things about Hell is that when mankind is then cast off, he is cast off with nothing. Absolutely nothing! He can not bring anything. When you talk to some people, they say, “Well, yes, but I have memories.” But those memories will be more of a torment than anything.
Can you imagine, if it were possible to think back to this life, if you could remember what was going on in this world and remember the things you had, but now, you are in a place of torment, you are in a place of eternal damnation, you are being afflicted forevermore, and you are trying to comfort yourself by thinking about what you once had in this world. If you could remember anything, it would just be more cause of further torment to your mind.
Without question, I think, as unsaved man is cast off into Hell and he is in the pit of Hell and he is considering, if it were possible…I do not know…this is a little speculation here…but he is considering this life, do you know what his mind is going to focus on? I would say that I think we can gather this from Luke 16 as the rich man is thrown into Hell, his mind is going to focus on the Gospel that he heard, the Word of God, the Bible, the Sundays that had come and gone. Maybe he had a friend who had witnessed to him, or maybe he will think about a radio program that he heard, or whatever. Whatever Gospel, to whatever degree he heard it in his life, he is going to think anything, anything, for that opportunity once again, anything for that drop of “water,” as the rich man desires that Lazarus, a diseased beggar, “dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue.” Just a little bit of the Gospel, this will be his overwhelming desire, I think we can gather from the Bible, but he will be denied. There will be no mercy on the Day of Judgment or thereafter. Never again will God be a God of mercy to the unsaved. They are going to be judged forever and condemned to Hell.
Matthew 5:5, again:
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
If we turn to Psalm 37:9, it says:
For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.
And Psalm 37:11:
But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
And further down, Psalm 37:22:
For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off.
Then Psalm 37:29:
The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever.
And Psalm 37:34:
Wait on the LORD, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.
The “land,” the promise to Abraham that this land would be his eternally, is exactly the same as “they shall inherit the earth.” They are one and the same promise, because the Kingdom of God was in view when God told Abraham that his seed would inherit the land. The seed of Christ, the children of the Lord Jesus, will inherit the new heavens and the new earth. We will enter in, if we have become one of His children.
Let us move on to the next verse, and I think that we will stop after this verse. We read in Matthew 5:6:
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
This goes back to what we were saying earlier, that God’s people have a “hunger and thirst after righteousness.” What is this? Let us look at the first couple of verses of Psalm 42. We read in Psalm 42:1-2:
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
You see, “as the hart,” as this animals pants after a water brook on a hot day…I added that part…but here is a stream of cool water. The hart goes and it is so thirsty, so it just starts lapping and drinking up the water. This is how the child of God feels towards the Word of God. This is a good way of describing the desire that God has instilled in place within the heart of someone whom He is dealing with.
The unsaved can not understand this. They really just do not get this. Someone said to me one time at work, “There are other books in the world, you know?” because I would be reading the Bible at lunch constantly. He said, “There are other books out there.” This came from a man who is Catholic, and he just did not understand.
Yes, there are, but there is no book like this Book! There are no other books out there that God wrote. There are no other books out there that are inspired and that tell you things to come, perfectly and accurately, that are true and faithful. There is nothing that is on the same level as the Bible.
God has given this desire to the people of God where we want to learn more and more. We want to study. We want to check out each word, every “jot,” every “tittle.” We go to the original languages, and so forth. You can hear people talking happily about doing searches in the Strong’s Concordance.
If someone did not have this instilled in them, if someone did not have a heart patterned after God’s heart and if they did not thirst and hunger after the Word of God, they might be a little bored. They just would not understand. They could get in a conversation where they could hear someone talking about word studies and word searches, and they would not get it. They would not get it because it is something that no man can do. No man can put this desire in themselves. God has to put this in man. God has to give them a true, deep desire to learn of Him, and it is like hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
Let us go to John 6:33-35:
For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
You see, Christ is that Bread of Life. He is the One whom we are really desiring to know, more and more. We want to “feed” upon Christ. We want to “drink” in the Lord Jesus. I know that this is strange language, but this is the language of the Bible.
What we discover is that Jesus is the Word. He is “the Word…made flesh.” So as we are reading the Bible and studying the Bible, we are hungering and thirsting after the righteousness of Christ. He is the One who will satisfy the hunger and thirst of His people.
Let us go over to Luke 6. Luke 6 is a parallel passage to Matthew 5. We read in Luke 6:20-21:
And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.
Then in Luke 6:25:
Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.
You see, the believer is going to God. We are going to Christ for our righteousness. We desire that He be our covering, that He be the “breastplate of righteousness” that covers us and protects us, the One whom God sees instead of our sin, that He would be pleased to see the righteousness of Christ covering over us.
But you see some, they do not hunger and thirst after righteousness, because they have developed their own. They have their own plan. They have their own system. They make up gospels that bring it to themselves, and they think, “Well, if I take these steps, if I do these things, if I accept Christ, or if I partake of the Lord’s Table, or if I am baptized, whatever system it is, then I have righteousness.” It is as though they are full. They are full. They need nothing more. They do not need the righteousness of Christ. They come to the Bible as though they have full bellies, and God says that they can fill themselves up and have no desire for the Gospel of the Bible and the Lord Jesus, but “Woe unto you…for ye shall hunger.”
This is just like the rich man in Hell. He thirsted. He thirsted in Hell, and therefore many will hunger in Hell because they have their own righteousness, and this just is not acceptable to God. We have to have the righteousness that is only the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us stop here and have a word of prayer. Also, if anyone has any questions or comments, this is something that we want to start doing. Whenever anyone is speaking here, just as a check against the speaker, if anyone has any questions or comments, we will have a time of a few minutes when they can be addressed. Let us have a word of prayer first.