Matthew 5:6-9 - The Beatitudes Part 2
Tom Shrader continues his series on the Sermon on the Mount, examining the beatitudes in Matthew 5:6-9. He explores what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness with all-consuming passion, to show mercy through love in action, to be pure in heart without hypocrisy, and to make peace through our reconciliation with God. Shrader emphasizes these characteristics flow from being a Christian rather than making someone a Christian.
“The more I hunger and thirst for Him, and the more He just gives me a taste of what it means to be righteous and to be in communion with Him, the more I experience it, the more I want it.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Sermon on the Mount
Recorded: February 14, 2002
Duration: 41 min
Themes: righteousness, mercy, peacemaking, purity, hunger, thirst, holiness, character, new believer, struggling with sin, seeking spiritual growth, wanting deeper faith, parent, mentor, young adult, pastor
Scripture: Matthew 5:6-9, 2 Corinthians 5:9-10, Matthew 6:33, 1 Corinthians 7, Psalm 107:9, Psalm 23:1, James 2:14-16, James 1:27, Romans 12, Proverbs 20:9, Psalm 51:10, 2 Corinthians 13:11, Romans 15:33, Philippians 4:9, Romans 5:1, Romans 5:6, Romans 5:8, Romans 5:10, Romans 8:17, 1 Corinthians 15
Theological Themes: beatitudes, sanctification, christian living, spiritual formation, christian character, holiness, righteousness, discipleship
Full Transcript
We are working our way gradually through this Sermon on the Mount, a little slower than I thought we would. If you've got your Bibles, I invite you to open them to the Gospel of Matthew in the fifth chapter.
Let me just say a couple of things by way of introduction. This is a pretty sobering lesson. Sometimes when we get together there's humor and fun, wit and wisdom as part of what we do. The wisdom part may be here, but some of that humor is gone. This is really serious stuff.
We have opened the last two weeks by reading a section from John Stott's introduction to his book on the Sermon on the Mount, where Stott identifies what he calls a Christian counter-culture. Stott's point is that the Sermon on the Mount gives us the radical way that a Christian ought to live and engage his society. We are different. We're different from the nominal church, we're different from the religious, we're different from the irreligious, we're different from the secular society.
Stott opens, I think the very first sentence, saying that without question, this is the most powerful teaching of Jesus, but probably the least understood. This to me is an indictment—and the least obeyed. So this is really serious stuff.
A Time of Self-Evaluation
What we want to do every week is have you look at your life. This is really a time of self-evaluation. We begin with what we know as the Beatitudes: blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the gentle, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are you when they persecute you.
The word "blessed" means happy in the divine sense. It's a non-circumstantial happiness. It's happiness that flows out of a vibrant, living relationship with Christ. It's a true happiness in this life.
Two Important Points About the Beatitudes
We said two things about these Beatitudes. Number one, this is not a smorgasbord. You do not have the freedom to say, "I'll be gentle and I'll be merciful, but I don't want any of these other ones." You either take them all or you don't take any of them.
The second thing, and this is really significant, is that these are in a very important sequence. One builds on the other, builds on the other, builds on the next. These are not put together in some haphazard way. Jesus is speaking here about the genesis of the Christian life, and then He's given us really a Magna Carta of how we're to live.
Again, one more important distinction: we live this way because we are Christians. It's not that we live this way and that makes us a Christian. You got that? That is a very important distinction.
The Core of Christian Faith
When we talk about the Christian faith, we're talking about what we believe, and there's those core doctrines upon which the Christian faith is built. As we're heading toward Easter—it sounds so weird, we published this week at church the Easter schedule already, and it's six or seven weeks away—at the core of that is obviously the fact that Christ died. Paul's very specific in 1 Corinthians 15, and then they buried Him.
That burying's very important. It validates what goes before it and after it. It validates His death, and it explains the resurrection. We believe that Jesus Christ literally died and was buried and physically rose from the dead. If you don't believe that, you're not a Christian. That's what it says: "Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead."
So when you get to this Easter time and you're reading the paper and listening to the radio about Christians or people who identify themselves as Christians—they may be major denominational players, pastors, etc.—but they believe that the resurrection is a picture or metaphor, you need to know that whatever those guys are, they aren't Christians. They don't meet that test. We believe this, and because we believe this, we behave this way. See that? Very important.
The First Three Beatitudes: A Review
When we started, we said blessed are the poor in spirit—those are the ones who understand that we're unable to save ourselves. We're spiritually impotent. We're spiritually totally bankrupt, and there's nothing we can do, no act we can perform, no church we can join, no money we can give. There's nothing we can do in and of ourselves. We're poor in spirit.
And He says blessed are those who mourn. That is, they're broken over this sin. They see the effect of the sin in their life. There was a guy in my office several weeks ago now, and he was involved in some sin, and he was just weeping, just heaving, weeping. He said, "I've destroyed myself, I've destroyed my family." He was crying so much, very uncharacteristic for me, I went over to put my arms around him, just to tap him and say, "You'll be all right." You could feel him settle, like when the girls were small and something bad would happen when they'd cry, and you could feel them settle.
That's what He says: blessed are those who mourn, for they'll be comforted. God is there to comfort them. And blessed are those who are gentle. We said that gentleness is strength under control. Perfect picture of that is Jesus and the cross. If Jesus wanted to, He could have come down off of that cross. But He didn't, and He saved us as a result of it. Strength under control.
Today's Focus
We pick up in verse 6 today. I had anticipated going through verses 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. We didn't make it yesterday. So we're doing verses 6, 7, 8, 9 this week.
Verse 6: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy." "Blessed are the pure..."
We begin in verse 6. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are those whose desire and who crave and who please God and His righteousness. That's what they're after. That's their deepest desire.
2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 9, "Therefore also we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him." To please God. Wherever we are, our deepest desire is to please Him.
Now let me read you the verse after this. We're in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 10. He says this, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be compensated for his deeds in the body according to what he's done, whether good or bad." Now you understand that's written to Christians. It's Christians who will be judged.
The Christian's Judgment vs. Condemnation
If you are not a Christian, when you die, there is no judgment for you. There's only condemnation for you. When a non-Christian dies, they go to hell, straight to hell. There's no judgment. They're condemned. But the Christian is judged.
Paul uses the term there, what's good or bad. That's how it's translated. What it really means is different than that. It's what's valuable or not valuable. It's useful or useless.
In other words, your life—this is very important. Listen closely if you would, please, because for some of you, this is new stuff. Your life will be judged by God. Your life, not from the time before you were a Christian, or not your sins. Your sins have already been judged. I presume when you go and you pray, you don't say, "God, forgive my sins." You don't pray like that. Your sins are already forgiven, right? Christ died for your sin. You're not going to suffer for your sin. Your sins are forgiven.
What you pray when you pray is, "God, I'm sorry for my sin. I know my sin breaks your heart. God help me not sin." But what's judged are those things that we've done since our conversion, and somehow in God's value system, there is this reward, whatever that reward is. And that's the judgment that you'll receive at the end of your life.
Making God's Agenda Our Own
So what Paul says is whether I'm here, there, wherever I might be, my desire is to please God and to please Him alone. So all of a sudden, my life looks different. Matthew 6:33 says it this way, "seek first His kingdom, and all these things will be added unto you." All of a sudden, your agenda is the same as God's agenda.
There was a young man in my office Tuesday, I believe, and he's from Australia. He is convinced that God has called him to start a church work here in Phoenix. He's been to the states, he's been all over, and he's convinced that this is the place to be. He's 29 years old, and he's just doing information gathering. He was asking about our intern program and would we have something for him at the church.
I said, "Well, when's your date?" And he said, "It'll be two years. It'll be two years from now." I said, "All right, well, we ought to probably wait closer to that date and see, because we don't know what we're doing a month from now. So that would be good for us."
I said, "Are you married?" Here's what he said. He said, "I have found the perfect girl." And I said, "Really, tell me about her." He said, "She is absolutely beautiful. She is the most handsome, beautiful woman I've ever seen. And she loves the Lord Jesus, and she's as beautiful on the inside as she is on the out." I said, "But she doesn't like you?" And he said, "No, she loves me." And I said, "So are you getting married?" He said, "I told her last month that I thought it was God's desire that we not marry. In line with 1 Corinthians 7, if I'm truly going to serve God, I think I need to be single."
Well, we can debate that whole thing. I wanted to say, "Let me just really see how pretty she is." But in this whole process—you know what? First of all, I think that's the right interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7. And secondly, what you've got is a picture of a man who says, "God's agenda is more important for my life than my agenda." There's some things I would like, and I'd like desperately, and this woman may be one of them. But more importantly than that, I want to please Him.
A Growing Hunger for Righteousness
That's what He's talking about here, this idea of hungering and thirsting for righteousness. It's a desire that grows as it's satisfied. In other words, the more I hunger and thirst for Him, and the more He gives me a taste of what it means to be righteous and to be in communion with Him, the more I experience it, the more I want it. And the more I become sensitive to those things in my life.
Especially—here you go—we're talking about righteousness. Righteousness just means right living. We're talking about righteousness. The more sensitive I become to right living.
We have in our house an alarm. And when they were putting it in, they said we're going to put a couple mats through the house, so that if somebody somehow got in, they'd be walking around in there. And if somehow they got by the outer system, this would trigger them in the inner system. And so I said, "Well, that's great." So they said, "How sensitive do you want these things to be?"
I said, "Well, I don't know." And I said, "What can you do?" And they said, "Well, here's the mat over there. Walk over there." So I kind of walked over, kind of gently, and nothing happened. And he said, "Walk a little more firmly." So I put my feet down and it went off. And I said, "Well, you know, I mean, I don't want to have to have the thief tiptoe through the house like this before we catch him."
And he said, "Well, let me show you what else we can do." And he took something—I don't remember what it was. It wasn't much pressure. And he threw it down there. And it was nothing like a walk. And he threw it down, and it just landed. It was heavier than a coin. I don't remember what it was. Heavier than a coin. And that thing just went crazy.
The Growing Sensitivity of the Spirit-Led Heart
"We can take this mat, and we can make it as sensitive to pressure as you want it to be," the technician told me. I said, "Well, put it somewhere in the middle." But thank you, sir, because you just gave me a great illustration of how the Holy Spirit begins to work in a person's life.
When I first come to Christ and I'm first converted, all of a sudden it takes some pretty big sins stomping around in there before that alarm goes off. But the more I walk with Him, the more I become closer and closer to Him. The more I see righteousness—His righteousness—the more sensitive I am.
J. Vernon McGee tells a magnificent story of being in his office one day. J. Vernon McGee is dead, by the way. I always add that because he's on the radio and people are still going to Pasadena to meet him. The phone rings, and there's this 80-year-old lady from the church. She said, "I need to come in and see you right away. I have sinned greatly."
McGee said, "Well, come on over." And then he confessed: "I'm kind of excited, in a sense. I can't imagine what this woman could have possibly done. She's the most godly woman I know, and she's 80. I just can't imagine." So she came in, and he said she was just distraught. He said, "Are you okay?" She said, "I didn't sleep all night."
"Tell me," he said. She said, "Remember yesterday at church when I saw you?" "Yes." "Remember when we were leaving, you shook my hand?" "Yes." "Do you remember when I said I really liked the solo?" "Yes." She said, "I didn't. It stunk."
A Heart Truly Broken Over Sin
Now, you and I are throwing stuff out like that all day long. But in her mind—I can just play this out. That's the end of the story J. Vernon McGee gave us, but I can play it out. That lady at home, and all of a sudden she starts to think about that. All of a sudden she sees that she's lied to her shepherd. She can't sleep at night, and she's so driven by it that the next day she says, "I've got to confess that to you."
You may want to just dismiss that. Let me tell you what that is: that is a person who's hungering and thirsting for righteousness. That's not a silly illustration. That's an illustration of a heart that's truly broken over sin.
The Progression of the Beatitudes
The idea here is that you and I, in this process, hunger and thirst. Here's the progression so far. Let me just give it to you. I'm poor in spirit—that means I'm dying to myself. I mourn over my sin—I'm face to face with my sinfulness. I'm meek—I begin to surrender to God's power. And now, we put aside what we have to pursue and long for what God has for us.
John MacArthur uses this illustration of hungering and thirsting for righteousness. He's talking about real thirst here. Susan, the other night, I came in and she had—I think it's squash. It's kind of orange. I said, "I hope this is for somebody who's sick that you're taking to them or something." She said, "No, no, this is dinner."
I said, "What are you making?" She said, "I was watching Emeril today." Now, a lot of food has gone into the trash can because of Emeril in our house. But she said, "I was watching Emeril today, and he made this soup. I'm going to make this soup tonight."
"Well, what is it?" "It's squash and sausage." "That's it?" "Oh, there's a little bit of garlic and something else." She said, "I went on the internet. I got the recipe." I said, "Suze, that does not sound very good." It was, aside from chili, the best soup I've ever had in my life. It was absolutely incredible.
But about an hour or two later, I said, "I'm dying. I'm dying of thirst." Probably some salt in there. Well, I knew at the time I was preparing for this, and I thought, that's probably a bit of an overstatement. "I'm thirsty" is the point I was making.
A Consuming, All-Embracing Desire
Here's MacArthur writing: "During the liberation of Palestine in World War I, combined forces of British, Australian, and New Zealand soldiers were closely pursuing the Turks as they retreated from the desert. As the Allied troops moved northward past Beersheba, they began to out-distance their water-carrying camel train. When the water ran out, their mouths got dry. Their heads ached. They became dizzy and faint. Eyes became bloodshot. Lips swelled and turned purple. Mirages became common.
"They knew that if they did not make it to the wells at Shara by nightfall, thousands of them would die, as hundreds already had done. Literally fighting for their lives, they managed to drive the Turks from Shara. As the water was distributed from the great stone cisterns, the more able-bodied were required to stand at attention and wait for the wounded and those who would take guard duty to drink first. It was four hours before the last man had his drink. During that time, the men stood no more than 20 feet from thousands of gallons of water, to drink of which had been their consuming passion for many agonizing days.
"It is said that one of the officers who was present reported, 'I believe that we have all learned our first real Bible lesson on the march from Beersheba to Shara Wells. If such were our thirst for God, for righteousness, for His will in our lives—a consuming, all-embracing, preoccupying desire—how rich in the fruit of the Spirit would we be?'"
That's what Jesus is talking about. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." Psalm 107, verse 9: "For He has satisfied the thirsty soul and the hungry soul, and He has filled that with what is good." "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."
The Outward Turn
Verse 7: "Blessed are those who are merciful," and then the promise, "they will receive mercy." This is a turning point, really, in the Beatitudes. To this point, it's been all inward—poor in spirit, mourning. Now it turns outward. Now we're
The Nature of Mercy
We're talking about mercy. In its simplest definition, when we talk about mercy, we're talking about love and action. We're talking about the idea of identifying with the helpless and the miserable in their misery and coming to provide comfort to them.
William Barclay writes this: it doesn't mean to sympathize with a person in the popular sense. It doesn't mean to feel sorry for somebody. It means to get inside the other person's skin until we see things through their eyes, think things with their mind, feel things with their feelings. Clearly, this is much more than an emotional wave of pity. This demands a deliberate effort of mind and will. It denotes sympathy of intimate identification.
Mercy as Counterculture
In ancient Rome, they would take a baby at birth and hold it up. The father would go thumbs up or thumbs down. If it was thumbs up, the baby lived. Thumbs down, they would drown it. In that culture, any slave owner at any time could essentially do the same thing with a slave. It was a bitter, hard culture. Men, husbands, for any reason, any trivial reason whatsoever, could divorce their wives. One ancient Roman author wrote this simple sentence: "Mercy is a disease of the soul." In other words, to be merciful was to show weakness.
Jesus comes along. See how counterculture this always is? Let me stop and really whack this point home. Christianity has always been counterculture. For those who somehow think Christianity or the Apostle Paul or the Bible has been a document of repression, it's been just the opposite. It's been the cutting edge of liberation. The greatest women's liberation movement of all time has been the Christian faith in terms of restoring to women value and dignity and honor and love.
Rather than say, "Oh, mercy is a disease of the soul," Jesus says, "No, blessed are those who are merciful."
Mercy as a Spiritual Gift
It's also identified as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit—mercy. We, as Christians, have in us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit causes us to be born again and then indwells us. Moved in, sets up shop—the Holy Spirit's in us. The Holy Spirit's also, at a point of conversion, gives you a spiritual gift. That's a special enablement to perform an act with efficiency and effectiveness in the body of Christ.
As you read in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 and 1 Peter 4, you'll see this list of these gifts of the Spirit. One of those gifts is mercy. Now, we're all to be merciful, but some have a special endowment of this thing called mercy, where all of a sudden, they just instinctively see around them people that are hurting. You ever have people like that around you? They're just a magnet for people who are suffering. When people have hard times, somehow it's this person who's always showing them to us and demonstrating that need.
Faith and Works
James talks about this. In James 2, verse 14, He's talking about faith. He's talking about faith that's worthwhile, real faith. Here's what He says: "What use is it, my brother, if a man says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace and be warm,' and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?"
Here's what James is saying. James is saying, if you've got a brother or sister and they come to you with a need, and you just say, "Hey, brother, you be blessed and you be warm and you be fed and I'll be praying for you," James is saying, what is that?
Pure Religion
There's a definition for religion that James provides for us in a sense. In James 1, verse 27, James says this: "This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father, to visit the orphans and the widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world." When He's talking about orphans and widows, He's talking about, in that caste system, the bottom of the social ladder. There's a sense of pain and suffering there. He says, all of a sudden, we come along and we begin to be the vehicle God uses to meet those human needs.
Meeting Spiritual and Physical Needs
Let me be very clear here. As a human being, you have spiritual needs and you have physical needs. You have them both. We don't meet spiritual needs with physical material and we don't meet physical material with spiritual needs.
You've got people who are hungry and thirsty. I don't mean here for righteousness—I mean they need food. They're poor. It may be their fault, it may not be their fault. We don't know that. What we know is they have a need. You don't meet that with a Bible verse. It may be a Bible verse that motivates you to meet that. You see that?
Sometimes, especially among people like myself, who are basically free market capitalists, who are conservative, I guess, politically, we can move toward this idea that everybody needs to be responsible for themselves. But that doesn't change the fact that in our lives we have people who have distinct needs. My preference would be not to have the government meet those needs, but we as churches and Christians meet those needs. That's how that takes place.
We have people that come to see us at the church and sometimes their problem is this: they've made stupid decisions and they need some money to keep the electricity on. We have to look at that.
The Other Side: Material Solutions for Spiritual Problems
Let me get to the other side of this because this is far more prominent. We have people who have a spiritual need and try to meet it with a material thing. That's far more what we see. People who say, "If I can just skate faster and just win this gold, I'll be happy if I have that gold medal." People who are looking for identity, for the meaning of life, for purpose and understanding, for deep-seated spiritual questions that every human that's ever walked the planet has wrestled with, they try to meet it with physical needs. "I'll just get another deal. I'll just get a new spouse. I'll get a new house. I'll move out..."
Understanding Mercy in Action
That doesn't work. But Jesus seems to have in mind here, especially the idea of physical needs. When we're looking at mercy, we're looking at love in action. Paul says it like this in Romans 12, we rejoice with those who rejoice and we weep with those who weep. There's love that's in action.
The idea that Paul puts together regularly is grace and mercy. Grace has this idea of forgiveness for our sins that God gives us. Mercy is the one that has us dealing with the consequence of those sins. We're continually in the process of wrestling through the consequence of sin. When you look around you today, you'll see ministry opportunities that were driven by somebody, typically, who saw a need. And this is their attempt to fill it.
Blessed Are the Pure in Heart
Here you go. Verse 8, blessed are the pure in heart. When Jesus talks about the heart, He's not talking about the organ that's pumping blood through your body. He's talking about the place that's identified as just the center of your whole personality. He's talking about all of who you are.
It's all of you. It's your emotion. It's your thoughts, your action. I mean, this is one of those great emotional days, Valentine's Day. It's that great love day and all that goes with it. What a great day. But that's not what He's talking about when He's talking about the heart. He's talking about something deeper than that. Every day's Valentine's Day at our house, I guess. That's how I view it. He's not talking about this idea of heart. He's talking about all of who we are.
Understanding True Purity
Blessed are those who are pure. The idea of pure here has two aspects to it. It means without hypocrisy. And it means the idea of cleansing. All of a sudden, our motivation is pure.
I'm dealing with somebody right now who does a lot of good things. I am absolutely convinced that this person does those good things just so people will think good things about them. I don't think they care one whit about doing good things for the sake of doing good things. I just don't believe it. Now, I can't look into a person's heart. All I can do is raise that up and say, this is what I see. You have to be the judge. I'm not going to judge it, but I think you need to look at that.
He's talking about without hypocrisy. All of a sudden, my heart is moved by a desire to please God.
Six Types of Purity
I'm going to give you here, quickly, six types of purity. Six types very quickly. Number one is primal purity. It's that purity that's in God and God alone. Just as water is wet and sun is light, God is pure.
The second kind of purity is created purity. That's what this world was before Adam and Eve in the fall. We got in that discussion not long ago, and some guy was saying, I can't wait to get to heaven, and I just want to talk to Paul. I want to find out what he really meant when he talked about chosen by God and all this.
And they were talking, and I don't—for whatever reason, those conversations just never really get me all excited. But his comment, their question to me was, Tom, who do you want to talk to? What do you want to ask them? And I said, if I could really ask anybody anything, I would want to sit down with Adam and say, what were you thinking? What in the world were you thinking about? You screwed this whole thing up for everybody. But I imagine if we get there that's not an issue for us.
Positional and Progressive Purity
Created purity. Positional purity. That's us in Christ. To the one who does not work but believes in Him, He justifies the ungodly. His faith is reckoned as righteousness. In other words, once we believe in Christ we have positional purity.
Here's the fourth kind of purity. It's actual purity. That's the purity that begins to develop in our life. The fancy old word we throw in there is sanctification. We begin to live out what we really are.
The fifth one is practical purity. That's the purity that's going to take an awful lot of effort from us to begin to live this and work this. And then the last type of purity is ultimate purity. That's us in heaven. That's what we're going to experience when we arrive in heaven.
The Promise of Seeing God
Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are those whose life is not filled with hypocrisy, whose life is about truth, who what you see is what you get. Blessed is the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
How do I get, just quick, I want to check, just quickly, how do I get to that pure in heart? Because I think those are great points. Frequently I'll hear somebody talk and I'll say that's a great point. How do I get there?
How to Achieve Purity of Heart
I'll tell you where you find this pure in heart. Number one is you begin to understand it's an act of God. Who can I say I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from sin? Who can say that? That's Proverbs 20 verse 9. The answer is no human being. God cleanses your heart. This is an act of God from beginning to end.
Once that heart is cleansed, now I stay in His Word. I've been a Christian for 22 years and I have to tell you, maybe more now in the last six months than in any time in the 22 years, I just understand how critical it is to be reading this Word and in this Word. I don't mean studying it like we're doing, that's important, but I mean even deeper than that. I mean staying in it. I mean reading it. I mean letting that Holy Spirit apply this to your life.
To pick this Word up and to read it, it's fascinating. At church, we've got these young interns, they're 20 years old. They know absolutely nothing. Nothing. They don't know anything. And you know what's great? They'll say, Mr. Schrader, I don't know anything. And that's a really good place to be. They don't quite believe it yet, but they will after about another month.
The Power of Daily Scripture Reading
You know what we make them do is we make them journal. They're making them journal. And so you know what is amazing? I can be in a staff meeting and say, alright, what are you learning from God's Word? And these kids' hands will go up and they'll say, this morning when I was reading, here's what I wrote. Yesterday when I was reading, it made
That's how you're going to get that pure of heart. It's undivided. It's like I'm just in God's Word. And all of a sudden, God's Word just goes through my life. It becomes the basis of everything.
I was talking to somebody just this morning and he was saying to me, "I know it's a habit and I know sometimes I'm more purely motivated than others, but I start every day in God's Word." What a great way to start. And isn't that true? Sometimes you read it and you just kind of read it and you brush your teeth, and the reading of the Scripture and the brushing of the teeth aren't much different. I mean, we're just going through emotion. But the majority of time, something happens, especially when I begin by saying, "Okay God, just stop for a second, quiet me down and Your Spirit teach me."
That's how you get pure of heart. You understand this is an act of God. You let God begin to work through you through His Word. You're controlled by His Spirit. In other words, you do what's right and then you pray. Continually pray. Psalm 51:10, "Create in me a clean heart, oh God." That's the cry of your heart. And all of a sudden that heart is purified.
Blessed Are the Peacemakers
Last verse for today, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God." 2 Corinthians 13:11, Romans 15:33, Philippians 4:9, all speak about God as a God of peace. This book, the Bible, is really a book of peace. It begins in those first three chapters with the story of creation and the beautiful place called paradise. It's a story of perfect peace. It ends with the peaceful reign of Christ and us being swept into Christ's presence for the rest of eternity.
But from the third chapter of Genesis to the end of Revelation, there's a lot of yuck in here. There's a lot of yucky stuff. And here's what happened. Sin came into the world and sin robbed that peace.
Peace with God Through Christ
If you've got your Bibles, I'm going to let you turn there because we're going to close from here. Romans chapter 5. You're in Matthew. Just turn to the right through the Gospels and the book of Acts and the book of Romans. Romans chapter 5.
When we talk about peace here, what we're talking about is the restoration of a right relationship. A relationship between God and man. Romans chapter 5 verse 1: "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." The Living Bible paraphrases it this way: "We have real peace." Now what that tells me is that there's a counterfeit peace out there in the world. And typically that counterfeit peace comes from saying, "I'll acquire things." But Scripture says you'll have peace, real peace.
Look at verse 6: "For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." Verse 8: "But God demonstrated His own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Verse 10: "For if while we were sinners we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life."
The Purpose of Christ's Death
Christ died. And Paul makes this point for our sins. Let me make this. We've got three minutes. Let me make this point.
No one in this world would debate the fact that Christ died. Everybody who accepts a historical Jesus, and you're a fool if you don't. If you don't accept a historical Jesus, then there's no hope for you. Then history is a blur for you. Everyone who accepts that Christ lived, accepts Christ died.
What Paul gave us here is something extraordinary. He gives us the purpose of His death. Christ died for our sin. That's a very important distinction. Christ didn't just die like all the other billions of people who've lived. He died for a purpose.
In His death, something marvelous happened. In His death, He paid the price for our sin. You see that? You're a sinner and your sin, according to the Bible, has separated you from God. The wages of sin is death. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but Christ died. That means that Christ took upon Himself on the cross the payment for the sin of His people.
Propitiation: Satisfying God's Wrath
There's a fancy word. Let me give it to you. It's a word that even the scholars are beginning to move away from, and it's very bad to move away from this word. The word is propitiation. You need that word. Propitiation. At the core of that is the idea of satisfying the wrath of God.
God is angry. Our sin has caused God anger, and God must judge that sin. And what happens with Christ on the cross, when Christ dies on the cross, He satisfies the wrath of God. There it is, propitiation. If Christ's death did not satisfy that wrath of God, then you're going to hell bigger than Dallas. There is no other way around it.
Christ died for our sin, and now we have peace. We have peace with God, and now we can live at peace with one another. In fact, that's exactly what Paul says in Romans 12: "As far as it depends on you, live at peace with one another."
Living as Peacemakers
How? A perfect example in my life is my wife Susan. I watch Susan live at peace with people all around her. How? Christ lives in her. I'm going to make a quick connection here.
The source of this lack of peace is selfishness. As I live for myself, I'm at war with everyone around me. That's why Paul frequently talks about strife and selfish ambition. They go together. That's what brings that together.
But here's the promise. "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God." Romans 8:17: "Heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ." In Christ we have forsaken the false peace of this world and consequently we will have peace with the world because we have the peace of God.
Right there we pick up next week. He goes from "blessed are the peacemakers" now into really "blessed are those who suffer and are persecuted." That's your future. That's part of your Christian life: suffering and persecution.
Father, help us live this way. Help us understand these truths. Help us be people who are truly blessed, happy in the divine ultimate sense because we know we have this vibrant relationship with You. God, thank You that we can call...
Thank You, Father, not because of an act on our part but because of an act of Your will in saving us. Now we thank You and we trust You and You alone to save us from our sin. We pray to You in Jesus' name. Have a great week. We'll see you next week.