How to Gain the Blessings of God - Part 2
 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, Blessed are those who mourn".(Matthew 5 3-4)

So, we are trying  to find out how we might be blessed by God. I’m going to look at various attributes talked about here by Jesus and it seems reasonable to me if you try and develop these three attributes, you will be blessed, in the way it is described in this passage. As we go through each attribute I’ll try and explain what they are and attempt to explain what the potential  blessings that come our way by developing them. So, let's look at the first in verse three.

 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

(Matthew 5: 3)

This seems counter intuitive, we think we are more likely to be blessed by being spiritually rich and now Jesus comes along and says, blessed are the poor in spirit. This is not a discourse on poverty and the phrase that follows amplifies and clarifies exactly what type of poverty this  phrase refers to. So, this is obviously a spiritual transaction, a poverty of spirit so to speak, but the keyword is poor, what does it mean in this context to be “poor in spirit”. Matter of fact, there are two different Greek words that can be translated “poor”, one is used of somebody that’s in the poor financial situation They may not be destitute, but they may only have just enough money to eke out a basic existence because they are poor financially. 

A second word is a word that means completely destitute, they have no resources, and that is the word being used here, and then applied to a spiritual context. This is about the sort of person who spiritually comes before God with no resources of their own. Many of the commentators explain this by saying this is about complete dependence upon God. You come desperate, dependent on the Lord with no spiritual resources of your own. You are so poverty stricken in spirit you can only rely on God. 

I think one of the best illustrations of this I know of is found in what Paul said in Second Corinthians chapter 12. Paul talks about having a thorn in the flesh, probably some sort of physical infirmity, and he asked God to remove it, and God said “no, my Grace is sufficient for you”. Paul’s response to that was, Well, if that’s the case, then you Lord are going to have to give me the power and the grace to endure this, I will then glory in my weakness because I know, “When I am weak. I am strong”. Because You are strong. That’s what I think Jesus is talking about here. You’re bigger spiritually when your backs to the wall, and you’ve got nothing. You can then come recognizing your spiritual poverty and your lack of any possibility of self-help, and only then do you become utterly dependent on the Lord. That’s the person that’s blessed, the person that is dependent totally on the Lord. 

Now, what’s the blessing you get, when you reach that state? Well. Look again at verse three, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven”. You gain the kingdom of heaven. If you have been following me as we’ve been going through the Gospel of Matthew, you know I’ve suggested that the Kingdom of heaven is a reference to the Kingdom Jesus will set up when he comes back again. This is about the Messianic Kingdom, the 1000-year reign of Christ on the Earth. So, if you are poor in spirit, what you get is the Kingdom of heaven. Some might say, but it says the kingdom is yours is present tense, and that’s true. The kingdom is now, and It also comes later. One of the great Greek experts I read on this, William Barclay, said that we shouldn’t press that present tense too far in verse three, because all the rest of the beatitudes are all  future. I know this sounds strange to us, but in the Greek the present tense can be a reference to the future as well. So, this is in the now but only in so far as to pull you though the trial but will be yours eternally in the future. What he means by yours is the Kingdom of heaven in that when you get to the Kingdom, you will have a great reward. So, if you are poor in spirit, then you are dependent on the Lord. Then great will be your reward in heaven. That is the point of this passage. 

Keep in mind the Pharisees thought that you got blessed by God if you were descended from Abraham and kept the law. They believed their righteousness was earned by their adherence to their strict interpretation of the religious law, mosaic law. Their righteousness was all external. But here Jesus comes along and he puts his finger on the heart of the issue, it about your heart. It’s the attitude of your heart, its internal not external. Are you poor in spirit, do you find you self in a place where you are totally reliant on God then that’s the kind of righteousness that God is looking for, and that’s the kind of person God wants to use, and that’s the kind of person that God believes in and will use.

The artist Paul Cezanne, one day he saw a beggar in the street, and he said, oh, that’s perfect as a central character for my next street scene, so he invited the man to come to his studio and promised he would pay him. When the appointed time came, the beggar walked in, but he had cleaned himself up for his appointment, he was clean shaven and wearing better clothes and the artist said, I’m sorry. I can’t use you like that.

The first attribute you need to be blessed is not an outward appearance of religion but an inward dependence on the Lord. There is a second blessing, and it’s found in verse four.

 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

(Matthew 5: 4)

Does this mean sadness produces gladness, that seemed backwards to me. You mean grief ends up being joy? Let me suggest Jesus is  talking about much more than mourning or grieving the death of a loved one. So, the question is, grieving what?

Anytime we lose something there’s grief. So, what is it that we should mourn over? Let me make a few suggestions because there are several different things that the New Testament talks about mourning over. For example, one is mourning over your own sin. In James Chapter 4 it says. “Let your laughter be turned to mourning”, and in that context, he’s talking about the fact that the people James was writing to were pushing God out of their lives. They were self-sufficient, independent, and he says you think you are having a good time, but you ought to be mourning because your laughter is about to turn to mourning. There’s a sense in which the mourning that he’s talking about here is mourning that come once you have a self-realisation over your own shortcomings. Peter denied the Lord just as Jesus prophesied, he would, and after the third time he denied the Lord the scripture notes in the Gospel of Luke that he went out, and he wept.  He was mourning over his own failure.

Let me suggest that as well as grieving our own shortcomings we also a sense in which we ought to mourn over the sins of other people. This is not about judging them. I once came across a situation a ministers meeting where a pastor shared that a man in the church, he was newly pastoring was having an affair and I know this sounds gross, but he was sleeping with his own stepmother. And the church didn’t do anything about it. It was public knowledge, in the church he just happened to be the first one who felt challenged to deal with it. He and we all grieved for the state of that church.

Paul in his pastoral letters very clearly tells us we should mourn about such things. When somebody sins it ought to be anguish not judgement, grief not joy. I think we could go on and on talking about this, concept of Christian grieving. But just one more final thing, I think that there is a general sense when we ought to also grieve over the suffering in the world. 

In Nehemiah we’re told that Hanani, Nehemiah’s brother, came back from Jerusalem and reported to Nehemiah what was going on. The people were being reprimanded by God and the walls of the city were broken down. If you read that chapter, what you discover is that Nehemiah immediately mourns in the face of the suffering of Jerusalem. He grieved, and he mourned, and he prayed. 

I think there’s a sense in which this really comes down to being tender hearted. In Ephesians chapter four says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger on clamour, evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be tender-hearted. It's when you get to the place when you are tender hearted then you can literally weep with those who weep and grieve for those who mourn. If you don’t know how to grieve and mourn, you’ll never learn the weep with those who weep, and it begins with you grieving your own shortcomings, and then you know how to grieve for other people sin as well as their sufferings. So, what’s the blessing that comes from this, well look at the second half of verse 4, “They shall be comforted”. So, if you mourn, God is going to comfort you. You notice this is in the future tense. I think the primary meaning here is that God will comfort you in not just in the future as you move through the challenges of life but that you will also be comforted in the fullness of time in the completion of all things, in the Millennium. This fits in with what we are told in the book of Revelation where it tells us, “He'll wipe away all tears”. But I think there’s also the truth throughout the scripture that God blesses people today with comfort. 

Second Corinthians chapter one says, he is the God of all comfort. So, God comforts us most when we know that we are forgiven. Remember, I said we should mourn for our own sin. Well, when God forgives us of that sin, then we are comforted. We’re comforted when we know we’re forgiven. We’re also comforted when we seek God’s answer in prayer on our own behalf and on behalf of other people, if we mourn their suffering then we are comforted when we pray for them and see that they are forgiven and see how they too are comforted. 

In First Thessalonians, chapter 4. Paul wrote to a group of people who had experienced grief because some people had died, and Paul opens the passage by saying, remember, “we don’t sorrow like others which have no hope” also reminding them to “comfort one another with these words”. These words are about the Lord’s return and the fact that they’ll be a reunion with believers after the Lord’s return and that should give us the ability to see things from an eternal perspective which at the same time should bring us comfort in the present. There’s comfort, and when we see other people experience that comfort, in that we are comforted as well. The psalmist said in Psalm 30. You have turned for me from my mornings into dancing. You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness. Furthermore, ultimately the Lord comforts us in the Kingdom. As a matter of fact, the Old Testament in the Book of Isaiah talks about the fact that the Messiah will establish his Kingdom on the earth, and in Isaiah he is called the comforter. To put it all simply, God blesses those who spiritually morn by comforting them now as well as in the future.

Notice it does not say, God blesses those who moan, it says God blesses those who mourn. We often gripe and complain and moan and groan and by doing so we just question God’s wisdom. Be careful not to moan over your circumstances when you should be grieving over your sins. 

Years ago, there was a Bishop in England named Latimer. One day his landlord told him that he had never experienced any sorrow, and the Latimer said to him, “then my friend. God cannot be here”. Now, that may be a bit overstated, but the opposite is definitely true. You need to mourn the effects of sin in this world or in your life so that you experience God’s comfort, 

Second Corinthians, chapter one, Paul says. You need to be comforted so that you can comfort others in their reflection. You want to be blessed by God? And you need to just look suffering square in the face and then take it to the Lord in dependence upon him. Because then he will comfort you then, and enable you to know how to bring comfort to others. There’s plenty more blessing to come, we’ll consider some more next time.