Matthew 5:8 God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God.

Last week (in what felt like one of the most awkward messages I’ve ever shared):

1. We should—be poor (in such a way that we leave space in our lives for relationships—with people and with our Heavenly Father)

2. God blesses—those who are poor

3. Those who—are poor will realize their need for God (which of course leads to their inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven)

This week:

1. We should—have pure hearts

2. God blesses—those whose hearts are pure

3. Those who’s—hearts are pure will see God (a clearly different promise than any of the previous payoffs)

This beatitude, in my opinion, is the most difficult. It’s almost impossible to gauge. It’s almost impossible to simply change. Our ability to adhere to this as if it were a command is limited to our actions because we can only indirectly affect the desires of our hearts. We can change our priorities in terms of what we do, (i.e. how we spend time, money, talents, etc.) but we can not make our hearts pure about those changes. We can give more but part of us will expect more in return (selfish ambition). We can spend more time helping others but part of us will expect more frequent pats on the back (vain conceit). It would seem Jesus is calling us to keep in check what we cannot control.

It is really only possible to see any real progress in this beatitude as a byproduct of careful adherence to all other commands listed here (for a really long time). Your heart, I would suggest, will become purer as you intentionally live a purer life (doing the things Jesus has laid out for us to do). Please note that when I say purer I do not mean it in the stop-smoking-and-cussing-and-listening-to-Van-Halen sense but in the doing-what-God-has-called-you-to-do-simply-because-he-has-called-you-to-do-it-and-you-want-to-honor-him-with-your-life sense.

For a clearer image (single example) of what it looks like to live with a pure heart we’ll take a brief look at the life of Jesus:

In Luke 22 Jesus has just been betrayed by Judas and handed over to the Roman guards. They moved in and grabbed Jesus violently (this I’m assuming judging by how the disciples reacted) and declared they were arresting him to take before the judges: 49-51 When the other disciples saw what was about to happen, they exclaimed, “Lord, should we fight? We brought the swords!” And one of them struck at the high priest’s slave, slashing off his right ear. But Jesus said, “No more of this.” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him. This is an event I’m sure you’ve all heard before (as with every other story I’ve used to illustrate these teachings). This event is a perfect image of a man whose heart is pure. Very simply we see Jesus being attacked, reacting with compassion, then… This ellipsis is the most important element of this story for our purposes this time around. What happens after Jesus reacts with compassion? He’s taken before a judge, sentenced to a cross, and killed. That’s makes for a really great lesson in the payoff of compassion. But here’s what I want us to see. Jesus reacted the way he did in this situation knowing full well it would not benefit him later. He helped and healed a man that was still going to beat him and kill him. We know Jesus’ heart is pure in this story because we see him reacting in such a way that he has nothing to gain from doing what is right. Jesus isn’t operating under some strategic pretense. He’s not trying to earn anyone’s respect as a way to get out of all of this. He’s not playing mind games with these people. He’s doing what is good and right and beautiful because his heart is pure (there is nothing else to read into this).

So, for us, the question becomes how do we start to live with pure hearts? How can we control something as deeply engrained and as painfully unmanageable as our (hidden and selfish) motives? I’m going to offer what sounds like a really simple answer to that complicated question but I hope I don’t make this sound easy. It is simple; it is not easy. This beatitude is, I would argue, the desire of every one of our hearts (or we would not ever bother opening a Bible or coming to church at all). We do not always do what is best in our pursuit of this, but it is somewhere down deep, exactly what we desire. We wish we wanted to do what was right just because it is right but we can not seem to silence our “selfish ambitions and vain conceit” (as Philippians depicts it).

Here’s the simple (but not easy) solution: live the other beatitudes. A pure heart is the end result/byproduct/payoff of living the other beatitudes Jesus has called us to live (for a long time—over the course of a life). And we won’t really know how we’re doing on this one except insofar as we see God in everything. Our hearts are becoming purer when we feel God’s beauty and love in every aspect of our lives. When we live out of the overflow of a pure heart every menial task becomes worship and it’s meaningful and powerful.

My word of encouragement to you in light of this, though it may sound hypocritical, is pretend your heart is pure (do what you know is right and good and holy whether you mean or not—pretend to mean it). In time you will start to forget your impure motives, your selfish ambitions, and you your vain conceit. And instead you will see God.

In the Kingdom of God none of us see God completely but we’re trying and little by little our hearts are becoming purer and his face is becoming clearer.

Matt 5.3

Matthew 5:3 God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.

Last week:

1. We should—be humble (meaning we should find our value in our relationship with our Heavenly Father alone)

2. God blesses—those who are humble (with true value)

3. Those who—are humble will inherit the earth (i.e. allow yourself to be ruled and you will rule)

This week:

1. We should—______________________

2. God blesses—those who ____________

3. Those who—are poor will ____________

Did I just lose anybody? Is it clear at all why I would not want to start this series with this teaching? It makes plenty of sense to me why Jesus would find it fitting to begin his teaching here—everyone he’s talking to is actually already very poor. So he starts his talk here with some points that would have been both controversial and counterintuitive to his listeners but ultimately Jesus would have found favor in their eyes by making these statements. The difficult thing we now have to process is that Jesus did not make this statement simply to find favor in the eyes of his audience. He said this because it’s true. And since it’s true we’re faced with a difficult set of questions because we are not poor. I’m going to try to tackle two of the primary questions this raises in this message: (1) What does Jesus mean by poor? (2) If I’m not poor, am I doing something wrong (should I change how I’m living to try to become poor)? In order to get the strongest possible answer for these questions I want us to turn to the life of Jesus as well as another one of his other teachings on the matter. We find when we look at Jesus’ life that every single thing he teaches, he lives.

I’ll give just a few references to Jesus take on possessions and the things that keep us from being “poor” then I want to spend a short while talking about why, perhaps we find Jesus living (and suggesting that we live) this way. Hopefully we will understand more fully what any of this has to do with our spiritual lives.

Matthew 8:19 Then one of the teachers of the religious law said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” But Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Here Jesus is reacting to a statement that I would imagine was becoming a mantra of many in the crowd that followed him. That statement happens to be one that we’re still declaring today. We’ve written countless songs featuring this line and many of us were taught to pray it as soon as we were old enough to talk. The statement of course being, “I’ll follow You wherever you go.” Before we get any further into how Jesus reacted to hearing this coming from the crowds I want to say that this is a great attitude. I’m not going to suggest that we stop singing those songs or praying those prayers but Jesus turns around to the people and reminds them just what this means. “[He] replied, ‘Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place even to lay his head.’” Jesus is actually offering to these people who say they’ll follow him anywhere a picture of what following him means.

BEGIN TANGENT: this is very nice of him considering the fact that many of those called to follow Jesus were called and had no idea what they’re signing on for. He does not tell Peter when he calls him away from his leisurely fishing trip that he will be crucified upside down with his wife if he get’s out of that boat. He doesn’t tell Saul that he will be beaten and imprisoned routinely for the rest of his life (i.e. until he is brutally martyred) if he jumps back on his donkey and rides out to plant and consult for churches. TANGENT ENDED.

So what does this mean? What is Jesus saying here with this talk of foxes and birds? He’s saying, you want to follow me, I’m homeless. This whole encounter is a little bit difficult to understand because we cannot see Jesus’ nonverbal cues or hear the inflexions of his voice but I imagine there was an audible slant to this sentence. He’s saying are you sure this is what you want? Most of the animal kingdom even claims little real estate. But, Jesus says, I don’t. The people (and we) are left to consider what this might mean.

In Matthew 6:31-32a, in what is perhaps an extension of the beatitudes, Jesus begs, “don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘what will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers…”

Jesus reminds us in this passage that the things we build our entire lives around are really of little circumstance. We worry about our bodies—how we’ll decorate them or how we’ll stuff or not stuff them. We worry about our bills which come primarily as a result of our endless pursuit of the things we want and think we need. And what he essentially pleads is you’d be better off poor. And not necessarily in the sense of complete poverty but as it pertains the qualifying element of this beatitude. “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him…”

So, what does Jesus mean by poor? He means that your longing (as demonstrated in the actions and pursuits of your life) is for communion with your Heavenly Father to the extent that the other things you used to want and need start to fade away. Jesus tells his followers, I don’t need a home because it is not necessary for me to accomplish what God has given me to accomplish.

If I’m not poor, am I doing something wrong (should I change how I’m living to try to become poor)? Only you can answer that question for yourself. How many things in your life are you pursuing that have nothing to do with what God has called you to accomplish. Is it easy for you to stop realizing your need for God because you don’t exactly need him? How many of your worries have something to do with your possessions (or things you intend to possess)?

In the Kingdom of God the poor are rich because they’re not fooled into thinking that possessions can make them rich.

Matthew 5.5

Matthew 5:5 God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth.

We left off in this series a few weeks ago with Matthew 5:7:

1. We should—be merciful (predetermine our forgiveness of others whether they deserve it or not)

2. God blesses—those who are merciful

3. Those who—are merciful will be shown mercy (i.e. to them, He extends mercy)

This week is, in a way, a bit of an extension of our last lesson:

1. We should—be humble

2. God blesses—those who are humble

3. Those who—are humble will inherit the earth (i.e. allow yourself to be ruled and you will rule)

The first four weeks of this were pretty challenging for me (and I hope for you). I found myself actually examining many of the things I do every day more carefully—holding them up to the light of these scriptures. Asking myself, as we said we would in the beginning: if this is what Jesus looks like, do I look like Jesus? Turns out I don’t. It seems in fact that there are many elements of my personality that I used to associate with my faith in Jesus that appear to be completely unchristian at a second glance. I bring all of this up now because I have separated this series into two sets of four lessons. The first four (those we’ve already discussed) are blessed are those who: mourn, work for peace, hunger and thirst for righteousness, and are merciful. And these four represent, at least for our purposes, actual life changes that we are capable of making. We can consciously and definitively take on the hurt of others and mourn with them. We can do the awkward work of leveling the playing field in order to work for peace when those around us are quarreling. We can set aside time in our lives to seek (hunger and thirst for) righteousness. And we can predetermine forgiveness and live mercifully. But the four beatitudes that remain don’t fit exactly the same mold. The four that remain are Jesus’ instructions to us to be what we cannot be. I’m sure your understanding of this truth will grow as we get into the weeks that lie ahead but for this lesson we’re focusing simply on Jesus instruction to us to be humble.

The pursuit of humility for humility’s sake, unfortunately, is futile. Humility is unlike the other beatitudes we’ve discussed thus far in that it does not involve a simple change in actions (or reactions) but it entails a change in attitude—in personality. I don’t know how many times in your life you have set out to change your personality but I’ve tried a time or two and it does not come easily. My personality, it seems, is what it is and though I can pretend to change certain elements of it, actually changing is a whole different beast. For example, if I were to decide that I am far too delicate a being and I should become a little tougher around the edges, the very best I could do in terms of making this change would be to pretend to be tougher than I actually am (in hopes that I will become tougher over time). After all, if I’ve spent 24 years being delicate and then I simply decide one day that I’ll be tough it’s very unlikely that I will spit back at the next person who spits at me no matter how much I say I want to. The same principle is true of humility. You are not humble. Your culture has not encouraged humility in you. You have not been taught “the last will be first and the first will be last.” You have been taught, “if you ain’t first you’re last.” You’ve been taught self-esteem and self-respect and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things. We should have confidence and respect for ourselves. We should think we’re important at least to some degree or we could never get anything done. Humility comes into play when we start to determine why we think we’re important. To what aspect of you do you attribute value? To get an idea of what Jesus is communicating to us through this beatitude—what Jesus means when he calls us to humility—I’d like for us to take a look at an event in Jesus’ life when he personified humility.

John 13:1a Before the Passover celebration, Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to his Father. And so here we are in the final days of Jesus’ life before he’ll be crucified and he has gathered his disciples together and we’ve all probably heard the story of what happens here. Before we move on into the story I want to point out how painfully awkward all of this is even for me to just talk about so imagine what it would’ve been like to have been there. Jesus is about to start washing his disciples’ feet and most of us cringe at the thought of it. It’s clear to us that this is a perfect (though terribly uncomfortable) picture of humility. There are two verses in particular in this chapter that stand out to me as humility defined and I want to spend the remainder of our time together discussing what these 2 verses have to say to us where we are. Verses 3 and 4 read as follows: Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. So he got up from the table, took off his robe, [and] wrapped a towel around his waist. If you’ve ever read this before it would be easy to see how you could read verse 3 as simply another reminder that Jesus is the Messiah. But look closer. The statements about Jesus in verse 3 are actually nothing that couldn’t be said of you or me. This is not John saying once more who Jesus actually was in the grand scheme of our redemption. This was John saying these things are, of course, true of Jesus but they are also true of anyone who follows him. So, in essence, what Jesus actually does in verse 3 is he reminds himself of the value he has because of his relationship with his Father. He remembered that his value was found in his connection to the creator of all things and as a result of remembering this truth he did the dirty work of verses 4 and 5.

If we take the time to consider the humility of Jesus we’ll find over and over again that his humble actions and reactions to those around him are always actions and reactions that come as the result of his confidence in his Father. Humility for Christians is not a self-hating lack of confidence or an overall victim mentality. It’s remembering that we only truly have value because of who our Father is. No action or mistreatment or judgment from anyone can take that away. I think if we could really get our heads around this idea, humility would could naturally. We would remember that “the Father [has] given[us] authority over everything and that [we have] come from God and [will] return to God. So… it only seems natural for us to serve the people that God loves who are all around us.

In the Kingdom of God value is in God alone and because of that value we will inherit all things.