In 'Blessings from the Mouth of Jesus,' Scott Brown expounds on the Sermon on the Mount, focusing specifically on the Beatitudes from Matthew 5. He explains that these blessings are foundational to understanding the Christian life, offering a blueprint for spiritual character and conduct. The sermon highlights key qualities such as poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, and a hunger for righteousness as essential traits of believers. Brown draws parallels between Jesus' teachings and those of Moses, emphasizing the continuity and fulfillment of the law through Christ. He underscores that true happiness and comfort are found in acknowledging one's spiritual bankruptcy, mourning sin, and living a life of meekness and righteousness. The sermon also addresses the misconceptions about the law and the importance of genuine worship. Brown stresses that these teachings are not just theoretical but practical, guiding Christians to live distinctly in the world as salt and light.

Matthew 5 verses 1 through 6. And seeing the multitudes, he went up on the mountain. When he was seated, his disciples came to him. Then he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Father God I do just pray that you would bless Scott as he comes and shares your word with us. Father just help us to have hungry hearts to hear from heaven. Father and just help us to listen to what you would have have us to hear.

In Jesus name. We're open now to the Sermon on the Mount, the longest recorded sermon of the Lord Jesus Christ, where He comes and he teaches his disciples, and it's such an unforgettable sermon and easily memorizable as we've been trying to do. The Lord Jesus has just told his disciples, I will make you fishers of men. And now he's upon a mountain and he's teaching them how to be fishers of men and much, much more. Now What's here in the Sermon on the Mount and what's here in this first section of the Attitudes is really an explanation of the Christian life, what it is, what it looks like, what it feels like, what you do.

It's really a full-orbed picture of the work of the Gospel. And I pray that our church is a church like this, a church full of those who are poor in spirit, A church full of those who are poor in spirit. A church full of those who mourn. A church full of the need. A church full of those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.

That we would become a church like this. Now the Sermon on the Mount runs from chapter 5 to the end of chapter 7 and what you'll find here is really a logical sequence And I'd like you to open your Bibles if you're not there, too, Matthew chapter 5, because I want to take us through 5 through 7, just so we can see the big picture here. As we deal with the Beatitudes, we have to be careful to understand we're not just dealing with an isolated thought. We're dealing with something that fits into a larger picture. And what we find with the Lord Jesus Christ is he's very logical.

He moves from the beginnings to things more mature and then to final things as well. And so what we find here are the Beatitudes run from verses 3 through 12, and it really explains what it looks like to be a Christian. What is it like? And so all the various qualities of Christian character are spelled out there. And then, when you get to verse 13 through 16, we're told what we are to be like in the world.

There's a certain way that we are in our character, but then what are we like in the world? And the Lord Jesus teaches us what we are to be in the world, and that is salt and light. And then, he moves into an exposition of various commandments to correct various corruptions and wrong ideas that the Pharisees had been teaching and the wrong ideas that you know rise up in our own minds. And so the Lord Jesus first sets the record straight by saying that He's not come to destroy the law or the prophets, but rather to fulfill them. And, and even more than that, if you reject them, or if you embrace them, it matters a lot.

You'll be either called the least or the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And so here Jesus is clearing out various confusions about the use of the law. And he shows us the perfect continuity of the law and the usability of the law. And then he illustrates it by dealing with the third commandment and then the law of retaliation, the sixth and the seventh commandment and then he ends up with the whole nature of the law. It was interesting when we were out on the street preaching the gospel in downtown Raleigh, I was really struck by two things.

One was just the absolute moral confusion, the absolute misunderstanding of right and wrong, the insanity of the way that people think about right and wrong. And so Jesus here is dealing with that. Also, just a complete misunderstanding of the law. I think I had Deuteronomy and Leviticus quoted to me and preached to me more yesterday than perhaps in the last year. But there was incredible confusion about the use of the law.

Here Jesus sets that straight. And when we get to that section, we'll see how Jesus arranges our thoughts about how to handle the law and how it applies. So that concludes chapter 5. Then in chapter 6 what we find is what true worship and fake worship is all about. And that includes how we pray, how we give alms, how we fast, how we handle our money, and even how we deal with anxiety about money is all about worship.

And then in chapter 7, Jesus takes us to a whole other category of thought, and that is about judgment. How one is judged and how one makes judgments in the world. So it's really a full picture of the Christian life and what happens here particularly in the Beatitudes and really in the whole sermon, is that Jesus is giving a picture of what true Christianity is. And what he does with the Beatitudes is he starts with the beginning of Christianity. He starts with what true conversion is, what happens to you.

And what does it mean to be a Christian? What does it mean to be clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ? And here, you actually find the wardrobes of the Lord Jesus Christ in all of these various qualities. The poverty of spirit, the mourning, the meekness, and the hungry and thirsting after righteousness. All these things the Lord Jesus Christ has shown us, but also He has shown us that so that we would be like Him.

But even more, He has shown us that He has been victorious in all those things because We never were poor enough in spirit. We never mourned enough. We never were meek enough. We never hungered and thirsted after righteousness enough. But Jesus Christ did.

And so all of these things that are here really explain what it means to repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And you know the sermon teaches us so many different things. It helps us repent and get straight on you know wrong ideas about the Christian life. It helps us to understand how different we are to be in the world. It shows us how to really engage our everyday life.

And so what happens here in this section is that Jesus, he's seeing the multitudes as you've already read, the multitudes were following him. The Lord Jesus had no place to lay his head and they were chasing him around all gallally and he went up on a mountain to teach his disciples. And while all these people are gathered around, it's explicitly stated that he's teaching his disciples, but the multitude is there as well. Was he just teaching his disciples alone? He was at least teaching his disciples.

How much did the crowds hear all of it? I believe they heard, if not all of it, some of it. Because when all is said and done, the crowd follows him off to the next place. So you have a situation here where the disciples are being explicitly taught by the Lord Jesus Christ. This was his method.

He chose 12. And he is instructing the 12 disciples in order to teach them how to become fishers of men. You know, as Moses taught the twelve tribes of Israel, so Jesus now takes his twelve disciples. As Moses went up on the mountain to give the law of God. Here the Lord Jesus Christ goes up onto this mountain.

We don't even know what mountain it was. And we know that the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth were given through the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, on the mountain there was, you know, fiery, you know, fire and thunder and threatenings and lightning. On this mountain was the voice of the shepherd. On the mountain of Mount Sinai there was, you know, there was separation.

You couldn't go very close to the mountain. On this mountain it was, you know, come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden. I mean, this was a different kind of mountain. This is the mountain of the New Covenant. As the Lord Jesus begins to explain what true discipleship means, what it means to be converted, and how to interpret the law, how to deal with your worship, how to deal with your money, and how to deal with the judgments that rise up in your heart and the judgment of God.

And so here, see, He sees the multitudes and he begins to teach his disciples. And he really is very much like Moses. First of all, he speaks of the blessings in the same way that we saw Moses doing in Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy 28 in particular, he begins with the blessings, and then in the last three-fourths of Deuteronomy 28, he expounds on the curses. Jesus Christ does the exact same thing here.

He begins with, blessed are you, blessed are you. He begins with the blessings of salvation and relationship with God. And then he ends with the cursings. The Sermon on the Mount ends with the man who built his house upon the sand, And it was wiped out because he rejected the law of God. Not building your house on the rock is equivalent to not building your life on the law of God.

So the Lord Jesus is doing the very same thing. He goes up on a mountain in the same way that Moses did. He teaches the twelve as Moses did, and he also speaks of the blessings and the curses that are there for those who either reject or embrace the law of God. And so we find here these eight characteristics of the blessed people, the people who are truly blessed. And he's speaking of the things that make one happy.

And you know, we live in a world where everyone is longing for happiness. And the truth is, everything we do, we do for happiness. We're wired for happiness. You've heard of seeking missiles. We are happiness-seeking beings.

You know, We just want to find out where the happiness is. And the problem with humanity is that it doesn't know where it is. So it's in a constant search. It searches for happiness where it doesn't exist. It says, go for all the gusto you can, but it doesn't exist there.

It exists in a totally different place. Jesus Christ here is explaining how you find genuine happiness, Because if you seek it anywhere else, you won't find it. And so he is such a good shepherd to lead us to the clear water. He leads us to the very best pastures. And he shows us how we can find the very things that our hearts long for really every second of our lives.

Was there ever a second in your life that you didn't long for happiness? I don't think so. This is just something that is built into us. We are constantly seeking ways to gratify ourselves. And so the Lord Jesus begins with this fundamental urge for gratification, this urge to be happy, to find the things that we so long for deep within our souls.

And so he is telling us that it is found in poverty of spirit. So he says, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." And with this, he begins eight or some say nine, nine qualities that bring forth true happiness. And so here what we find is that Jesus is bringing his disciples to the fundamental principle of the Christian life and that is that a person enters the kingdom of heaven by admitting that he is totally bankrupt, that he is devoid of goodness. And Martyn Lloyd-Jones stated it, I think, so helpfully, when he said, What does it mean to be poor in spirit? It means a complete absence of pride, a complete absence of self-assurance and of self-reliance.

It is nothing then that we can produce. It is nothing that we can do in and of ourselves. So this is an opposite of pride. The truly converted person comes to a place of recognizing that there is something very, very wrong in their soul and that they have no righteousness in them. At least, certainly, not enough to make them acceptable before God.

You know, when you preach the gospel on the streets to people, the thing that you recognize immediately, that almost everyone has an over-exalted view of their own righteousness. They really think that they are good. I'm trying to remember an occasion where I witnessed to someone and they did not tell me that they were good. And that's the fundamental problem. And you can, you can wrestle with them about evolution.

You can wrestle with them about what about the natives and you know, in some remote part of the world that never heard the gospel. You can wrestle with them about evolution. You can wrestle with them about what about the natives in some remote part of the world that never heard the gospel. You can wrestle with them about the integrity of Scripture. What about those German critics who said that scripture was not written by those who said it was written by and it never really happened?

You can wrestle with them about all those things. But really, there really is only one argument that they have, and that is that they are righteous and that they are good. And until you can destroy in their minds their own sense of goodness, and until God opens their eyes to see that they have no righteousness in themselves, All your arguments about evolution and the authority of the Bible are absolutely nothing and you can spend all your time wrassling with those issues. Now, I would just say it's important to explain the details of those issues. Those are really important questions that need to be answered.

But the reality is that the heart of the problem with man is that he believes he has a righteousness of his own. We have such an exalted view of ourselves, we think much more highly of ourselves than we ought. And so we have this pride in us. You know, well, what God has said to us here is that blessed are the poor in spirit. In other words, blessed are those who see no righteousness in themselves, who have come to the end of their own righteousness and can only trust in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

This is the fundamental principle of the Gospel. Now, do you see the logical manner in which Jesus is moving through the Sermon on the Mount? He begins with absolutely the most important thing in all of life, that you have the right self-image, That you see yourself as you really are. That you really have nothing to bring to God. That only Jesus Christ brings what's necessary for one to be justified before God.

Isaiah said this of the Lord, but on this one I will look on him who is poor and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word." The Lord Jesus Christ Himself was this way, Please turn in your Bibles to Philippians chapter 2. You see the Lord Jesus Christ speaking of this very thing and He actually demonstrated it. He is our good shepherd, He's our great high priest who has suffered in every way that we've suffered, tempted in every way that we've been tempted. And here the Lord Jesus Christ is explained, beginning in verse 3, Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not for his own interest, but also the interests of others.

And in verse five, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bond-servant, and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and of those on earth and those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father." Here what we find that Jesus Christ made Himself in the form of man. He made Himself poor in spirit in this sense. And before His Father, He submitted completely to Him. You remember the Lord Jesus told the story of the public and the sinner in Matthew 18, where He says, be merciful unto me, a sinner.

You remember the Church of Laodicea. They thought that they were so well ordered. They thought things were going very well. You turn in Revelation chapter 3. If you have your Bibles, Revelation 3 verse 15, what we find here is a picture of actually a church that was not poor in spirit.

And when we consider this whole matter of being poor in spirit, we have to understand that not only is it a quality of a believer individually, but it also either is or isn't the quality of a church of the Lord Jesus Christ. As the people in the church are not poor in spirit, neither will you have a church that is poor in spirit." And to the angel of the Church of Laodicea, write, These things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I can wish that you were cold or hot. So then because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth, because you say, I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich in white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed. And anoint your eyes with eye-sab, that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent." What Jesus is saying to this church is that they're not poor in spirit. That they do not understand this.

It's a church full of unconverted people who have a righteousness of their own, but really they're poor and naked and blind. And the Lord Jesus is saying, be clothed, be completely clothed by the righteousness of Jesus Christ because all of your pride and your riches and your self-confidence cannot clothe you. And so here what we find is that a happy person is a person who is poor in spirit, that they recognize that they have nothing to bring to the Lord Jesus Christ. And at the same time, I think we would just have to say, not only is a person happy because he's poor in spirit, but a church is happy when they are poor in spirit. And it says here, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

What does he mean by that? For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Well, he's speaking about membership in the family of God. He's speaking about membership in the body of Christ. How do you become a member of this kingdom?

Because remember Matthew is all about the kingdom. How do you enter in the kingdom and what are the issues? Jesus is just explaining this further, that you enter the kingdom of heaven by becoming poor in spirit. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This is the first requirement for salvation, is to recognize that you are completely poor and wretched and blind and naked, to see yourself as you really are.

And so when you know that you're poor, then something happens to you. And That takes us to the next beatitude. When you recognize that you are poor, that you have no righteousness to bring to the table to be accepted before God, then you mourn. And so Jesus says, blessed are those who mourn. There's a logical sequence that Jesus is taking his disciples through.

And he's beginning at the beginning, and he's taking them very systematically through the whole process, the whole walk of a believer. So a true believer will see himself as bankrupt, not full, not proud of himself at all. You know, one of the things that can characterize the people who claim to be the people of God is that they're very proud of themselves. As we were on the streets witnessing to sodomites yesterday, we have to recognize that there have been many people who have witnessed to these people and they've done it with a pride of spirit. They've done it by thinking that they're so righteous that because they don't engage in the sin of homosexuality that somehow everything is just right with them.

And so when they come into their time of spreading the gospel among these people, they completely disfigure the gospel because they are isolating this one thing as if it was the most important thing. And somehow they've come with righteous anger and righteous judgment. And so they speak with them angrily. They rebuke them with a proud spirit. And it does not betray the Gospel.

On the one hand, as we preach the Gospel, we do say repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. But there's a certain way that we say that. We don't say that as if we haven't needed that same repentance in every area of life. One of our brothers was reading the Ten Commandments through the microphone, because he was doing that to make it clear that we have all broken all of the commandments. It's not just this one commandment of adultery and sexual impurity that is the point.

The point is that we are thoroughly filthy and we need a thorough cleansing. And so what happens When you are converted is that you become poor in spirit and then it bears a fruit in your life It does something for you That's so helpful and and and it actually makes you makes you happy and that is that you mourn you mourn Blessed are those who mourn For they should be comforted now when the Lord Jesus said blessed are those who mourn my expectation is that the disciples had a thought going through their mind, just like the thought that you and I have going through our minds when we read about this. And that is, it just sounds wrong. How can you be happy by mourning? I mean, the whole world desires to get away from mourning.

You want to take your sins and forget about them. You might want to do that by just ignoring them, or you might want to do that by drinking them away, or by various drug inducements to get away from them, or just constant activity and jabber and travel and entertainment so that you can forget the pain that's there. And so when Jesus says, blessed are those who are mourned for they shall be comforted, they're happy and they will find comfort. It just sounds so contradictory. It just sounds so counterintuitive that you could somehow be happy while you're mourning.

And the Lord Jesus is saying, yes, that's true. My kingdom is not of this world. My ways are not your ways. God's ways, the way that He's wired us, the way He's wired His world, is different than the way that the devil wants you to wire your world. The devil wants us to wire our world by just forgetting about it.

If you're mourning for your sins, then Consider that a blessing. This is the way of comfort. Often when Christians find themselves in times of deep mourning, for their sins they wonder, am I converted? Am I saved at all? I am so grieved over my sins.

Now I would actually rather say, if you're grieving over your sins, that it means that the comforter is there, that you're going in the right direction, that God means for us to mourn over our sins so that there would be comfort. And then there is happiness in it as well. And so a true mark of Christianity is that I am mourning my sins. Now the question that we should always ask when we read this verse here in verse 5 is this question, do the things that grieve God grieve me? Do the things that grieve God grieve me?

Or am I one of those people who freely does the things, looks at the things, listens to the things that grieve God and it doesn't grieve me. Now if that is sort of the general thrust of your life, then you should ask yourself whether you are converted or not. If you desire to participate in, to look at, to listen to the things that grieve God, you ought to ask yourself whether you have mourned in this way. It's appropriate for us to mourn our own sins, first of all, and then to mourn the sins of our culture around us. It's appropriate for us to do that.

But the opposite of mourning is just an unfeeling insensibility and kind of like what's spoken of in Proverbs 2.14, you know, who take pleasure in iniquity. He's setting these two things, you know, apart from one another. Those who would take pleasure, happiness, comfort in iniquity, rather than comfort in mourning of sin. Often what we find ourselves doing is we are seeking these things that bring us comfort. And often we're seeking comfort where it doesn't exist.

If you're seeking comfort from some thing that you're looking at or listening to, some song, some film, if you're seeking comfort there, you will never find it. You might find it the way that it was described in the book of Hebrews where Moses turned away from the passing pleasures of sin. So there's a certain kind of pleasure, but it's an underweight pleasure. It's passing away. It doesn't compare at all with the pleasures of God.

Because when one mourns for sin and deals with sin honestly, then there is this comfort and this happiness that takes place. Thomas Boston wrote very clearly about what is right gospel mourning. And I'll just read to you what he says. I think he's right. Right gospel mourning is mourning for sin, in particular, instead of sin just generally.

Secondly, gospel mourning must be joined by a hatred of sin. Next, gospel mourning, in some cases, is joined with restitution. Next, gospel mourning must be speedily engaged in. And lastly, gospel mourning for sin is perpetual. In other words, we as sinful human beings, we never escape mourning for sin.

We won't escape it until we're given a new body, and then we will have escaped this need for mourning. And so the Christian should never think that he can escape mourning. If he ever escapes it, then he either, his soul is in danger, and he needs to return and begin to mourn for his sins. And maybe that's the case of some of us here, that this passage is before us here today so that you have a greater sensitivity to sin, the things that grieve God, and that you turn to Him and mourn for your sins. As I've been looking at this this week, I've been asking the Lord to help me to grieve and to mourn for my sins.

There's so many examples of this in Scripture. David said, rivers of tears run down my eyes because they do not keep your law. He said, purge me with hyssop, make me hear joy and gladness, restore unto me the joy of my salvation." We even find this kind of mourning for sin in Lot when we learn in 2 Peter chapter 2 that Lot's righteous soul was vexed by the filthy lives of the wicked. We saw it in the prodigal son who found the taking care of his hunger with the pig's food. And then he turned, and he realized that he rather needed the food of his father.

And so he said, I will go to my father. That's a sign of mourning for sin. The prodigal son found that moment where he began to mourn for his sins, and he sought out his father. Now, we need to understand that we are made happy by mourning for our sins. And our churches perhaps might do well by having more mourning than they do.

You know, there's this idea about among church leaders and people in the church that what you want to do in the church is you want to make it such a jovial and a happy place. Because that way people will know that Christians can be happy too. Christians can have fun too. So there's this garish attempt to try to make everyone think that everyone is so happy, when in fact there are sins burdening that can only release unhappiness through true mourning. And so there's this false joviality that church leaders often try to produce in a church.

And so they want it to be such a happy place. And I'm not arguing against a happy church. Jesus is arguing for a happy church. So that's not what we're really talking about. But to try to manufacture it in a wrong way, by trying to create antics and games and things like that in order to try to create some sort of fascinating time.

I remember a friend of mine told me that someone left his church in order to find a better church. And he came back and said, oh, I found the coolest church. What do you mean by that? Well, at the beginning of the service, they had a beach ball and they were passing it all around. It was just so funny.

He said, well, So what about it? He said, oh, it was just so cool. Well, I mean, this is just an attempt of bankrupt leaders to try to create something that doesn't ever work. It doesn't ever get you what you need. And what you need is a mourning for sin.

So it would do us better to... If we mourned better, we would be happier. And all of the antics that we might try to create to sort of be, you know, happy or, you know, have fun so that other people can see that Christians can have fun too. In actuality, it's found in a totally different way. It's found through a mourning for sin.

And so this is just speaking of the futility of trying to have a happy and a jovial atmosphere. You know, Christ was a man of sorrows and he was acquainted with grief. You know, when we were at this festival yesterday, I'll tell you, there was a theme that ran through every single conversation that I had at this festival. And the theme was this. And this theme was preached to me over and over and over again.

I was preached to so effectively yesterday about a number of issues. One of the most powerful preaching points that was coming to me, whether it was the policemen, or whether it was the conference organizers, or whether it were the individuals that we were relating to on the street, the overwhelming theme of every single conversation I had was please do not say anything that will make me feel uncomfortable that was that was the greatest sin on that street yesterday was making you feel uncomfortable. If anything happened to be sin, then that was anathema. Well, actually the only sin was making you feel uncomfortable. And that's the essence of what Jesus is speaking about here.

The world wants to make you comfortable in your sin when the Lord Jesus Christ says, your only hope for happiness is to mourn for your sin. And so that was our message yesterday, That sin makes for slaves and bondage and unhappiness and suicide and depression and broken relationships and confusion about who you are and longing for something that you can never have the way that they want it. They will never ever have a moment of true happiness if they say, if they say, do not offend me. Do not make me feel uncomfortable. We were actually, you know, threatened many, many times that we would be thrown out of this geographical footprint if we made anyone feel uncomfortable.

Now I was talking to one of the policemen, I said, well, could you define that? Can you help me understand what it makes? I mean, I'm uncomfortable. There's certain things happening around here that make me feel uncomfortable as well. And I know I'm going to evacuate the whole place of everyone because I am now uncomfortable?

Well, it's actually an impossible thing to achieve because everyone there did feel uncomfortable. Their consciences were crying out to them, except they had been seared and had become deadened over time. But you cannot completely put out the voice of conscience. You can't have your eyes so darkened that you cannot understand that your only hope for happiness is to mourn for your sins. And really, I mean, this whole worldview that says, don't make me feel uncomfortable, has really gripped our whole culture.

And major corporations have embraced this idea that it's sinful in a corporation to make anyone feel uncomfortable about sexual sin. And our government has embraced the idea almost comprehensively. This, this, the misunderstanding of verse four runs through every part of our culture from the civil government to our major corporations to great institutions in our culture and every person walking the street. This is a gigantic problem. There is such moral confusion that the greatest sin is to mourn over a sin.

But Jesus says, no, if you want to be free, if you want to be happy, if you want comfort, mourn for your sin. And so there's a transition here, because again, we're moving in a logical pattern on to verse 5, because once someone has had a poverty in his spirit, once someone has mourned for his sins, then something happens to him. And that brings us to the next. Blessed are those who are meek. Something happens to him.

He has a meekness about him. And meekness is a work of the Holy Spirit. Blessed are those who are meek. Now, what is meekness? Meekness is not weakness.

Jesus is not talking about timidity. He's not talking about nousiness. He's talking about a certain kind of power. And I just want to suggest it is the power of the Holy Spirit. Meekness is one, is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness is this exact same word for meekness. Gentleness or meekness is a work of the Holy Spirit. So once one has seen the poverty of the Spirit, once one has mourned for his sins, then something absolutely wonderful happens. And that is that they receive the power of the Holy Spirit. And so this is a picture of a certain kind of power, a kind of power from on high of the Holy Spirit.

The term is really clearly explained by something like power that is under control. And the word is used in the Greek language to picture a horse that has been stilled. Here you have a wild horse that has finally been broken, and now he's become meek. A picture of a broken horse is a picture of this word that Jesus is using. And so imagine a horse.

Horses are very, very powerful. They can kill you very, very easily and very, very quickly. And they're so powerful that they need to be broken. And so this word picture that Jesus is giving of meekness depicts a broken horse that has been stilled and quieted in his soul. So meekness is not weakness, but it's power under control.

And The meekness that the Lord Jesus is speaking about here, it moves in two directions. It's a meekness toward God, looking to Him for control and for His government. And also meekness toward man. When the Lord Jesus Christ, it is said, I delight to do thy will. When he said, I only say what I hear my Father saying.

I only do what I see my Father doing. Jesus was demonstrating a spirit of meekness. He was setting himself under the government and the power of his Father. And that's what meekness is toward God. It's a conscious setting yourself as an under-servant before God, where He is the shepherd, He is the King, He is the authority, He is the master, and you are His humble servant.

That's the juxtaposition that this word implies when it's when it's toward God and it's also something toward man as well man toward man woman woman to wood woman Thomas Boston again he says that that meatness toward man consists of bearing of injuries, forgiving sins, recompensing good for evil. And so, you know, meekness is the quality of being under the government of God. So to be a meek man would be a tamed man. To be a meek woman would be to be a tamed woman. This quality is also spoken of explicitly about women.

The gentle and quiet spirit is this same kind of thing. It's this meek and quiet spirit. This is a quality of being still before God and also before man. You know, God blesses, he says in Psalm 25 verse 9, the meek, he will guide in judgment. The meek, he will teach his way.

What a wonderful thing to think about, that this quality brings you into a position where God teaches you. He will teach you His way when you find yourself in a disposition of meekness. This is why Jesus said in Matthew 11, He said, he said, take my yoke upon you, for I am meat and lowly of heart. And this is the way that we deal with people. It's not just a disposition toward God, but it's also so clearly a disposition toward man.

Like for example, maybe there's someone that you know who has fallen into sin. How do you deal with them? How do you treat them? Well, we learn in Galatians 6, verse 1, that if any man is taken in a trespass, that you who are spiritual are to restore such a one in a spirit of meekness or gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also should be tempted. So this meekness also is something that is a blessing in human relationships as well.

It's also the way that we're supposed to have govern our conversations about controversial issues as well. We have a church full of people who would like to discuss things and who have no problem discussing controversial issues. That's a good thing. We learned in 2 Timothy 2 that it has to be done in a certain way. But avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife.

And the servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, and humility correcting those who are in opposition." So there's a quality of leadership in relationships that requires this whole matter of meekness. The Lord Jesus Christ was a picture of meekness. In Matthew chapter 21, when Jesus was coming into Jerusalem on a donkey, He was fulfilling prophecy and we read there in Matthew 21, behold your king is coming to you lowly or meek, sitting on a donkey. This was a quality of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, you know, we see this in the Lord Jesus.

He was reviled, but He did not revile back. This is the whole quality of meekness in human relationships. And the promise is here that the meat shall inherit the earth. The meat shall inherit the earth. Now what does that mean?

What does it mean to inherit the earth? I mean, how in the world did the meat get to inherit the earth? And so here, Jesus is quoting Psalm 37. And if you want to know what it means, what He meant when He said that He shall inherit the earth, you have to turn to Psalm 37. Please turn there and we're going to walk through this great Psalm to help us understand exactly what he meant.

So what is meekness? What does meekness look like? What does it feel like? What is it, you know, How does it appear in your life? This psalm shows you the various ways that this meekness is expressed and especially what does it mean that the meek should inherit the earth?

He shows us here by quoting this psalm. As you read this Psalm, think about this. What does it mean that the knee shall inherit the earth? Because the answer is in this Psalm. Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity, for they shall be soon cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb." Now here is a picture of the proud, the non-meek.

And what's going to happen to them? They're going to be cut down. And then in verse 3, the essence of meekness, trust in the Lord and do Good. Dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." Here, this whole matter of meekness includes just trusting in the Lord in your life.

Now we're driving to verse 11 where he quotes this. But let's understand the context. Verse 5, meekness is committing your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass, and shall bring your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him." I can't think of a better definition of meekness than that.

Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Do not fret because of Him who prospers in His way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass. Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret, it only causes harm. For evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait on the Lord, they shall inherit the earth." There's your phrase right there, and it's repeated again.

They shall inherit the earth. For yet in a little while, and the wicked shall be no more. Indeed, you will look carefully for this place, but it shall be no more. But the meat shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace." So once a person has seen themselves as poor in spirit when they have mourned for their sins, then they find themselves as a trusting person, like this here. Look also with me, because he continues in verse 21.

We'll skip ahead. The whole Psalm breathes of this principle. The wicked borrows and does not repay, but the righteous shows mercy and gives. For those blessed by him shall inherit the earth, those cursed by him shall be cut off. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delights in his way.

Though he fall, he will not be utterly cast down. For the Lord upholds him with his hand. I have been young, and now I am old, and yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread. He is ever merciful and lends, and his descendants are blessed. Depart from evil and do good and dwell forevermore.

The Lord loves justice. Do not forsake his saints. They are preserved forever, but the descendants of the wicked will be cut off. The righteous shall inherit the land and dwell in it forever." You'll notice that three times this phrase about inheritance is spoken of in Psalm 37. And when Jesus is talking about inheriting the earth, he's speaking of this exact same kind, that the wicked will be cut off.

And we shall inherit the earth. It's like what Paul said when he said, all things are yours, where corruption puts on incorruption. It's really a picture of the final state of things. But I think it's actually not just a picture of heaven. I think it's a picture of earth as well.

Because those who have repented of their sins, they do have a happiness. They do have a comfort. They do have a strength that no one else can have on the earth. God gives them success. They look unto Him, they rest in the Lord, they wait patiently for Him, they do not fret, they cease from anger.

They are free people and as a result they're inheriting the earth even while they are on the earth, as they're doing the work of God. And then finally, the fourth beatitude that we'll deal with this morning, In verse 6, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Again, you can see the logical sequence that Jesus is moving through here, that When one submits to the work and the power of the Holy Spirit, when one finds himself ordered under the authority of God and just desiring the government of God, then there's something that happens in his soul. He hungers and he thirsts for righteousness. That a beautiful thing happens in his heart.

That he desires something wonderful. Now, notice that there's kind of a turn here to the positive. There's a positive force in your life here. You're hungering and thirsting after righteousness. It's a little bit different quality than the ones that have come before.

And so here's what he's saying, is that when these things have happened, then you desire an order for your life, you desire something far better for your life than you ever desired before. And it manifests itself in a hunger and a thirst for righteousness. Now Jesus uses these two, these two, you know, bodily drives, hunger and thirst, for a reason, To show us what this looks like. That it's like hunger and thirst. It never ceases in your life.

It just continues on. It's like what David expressed when he said, as the deer pants for the water brook, so my soul pants for thee, O God. This is the spiritual hunger after conversion. And you can't hunger until you have seen yourself as poor in spirit and mourned and finally come to this state of being here. And it's speaking, I believe, of the whole range of justification by faith.

It's a hunger and a thirst that begins immediately at justification. We are justified by faith. And that hunger begins there. But it also speaks of sanctification. All of the implications and the things that follow justification in sanctification.

That something is unleashed in our souls. There is a desire in our soul for His name, for His glory. We desire to understand what is true. We desire to flee from sin. We desire to break free from the power of sin.

And we know how that happens. It happens as we seek the things that are righteous and that are good. We seek the fellowship of the saints. We seek the reading of the Word of God. We hunger and thirst for prayer.

We find ourselves in a completely different way of life. Our whole life has changed. Our whole schedule has changed. We're spending our time to satisfy the hunger and thirst in righteousness. You know, we're here today, you may think, well, this is just very normal.

Not so. Think of what life was like before you were really converted. Did you actually desire to come to a place like this and do this? No. You didn't desire it at all.

You desired to do everything else but. You were like Bill Gates, who said, well, it's really just not time efficient for me to do something like going to church. There's really no profit or value in it. Well, that's a man who doesn't hunger and thirst for righteousness. He's hungering and thirsting for something completely different.

And so his schedule, his priorities in his life, just bear witness to that. When you find people who do not desire that, it's possible that you found a person who has not recognized themselves as poor in spirit or mourning for their sins or nor meek and set themselves under the authority of God. Because all of these things bring forth this hunger and thirst after righteousness. There are so many examples of this in Scripture. The Lord Jesus himself, my food, is to do the will of him who sent me.

And so there's this genuine hunger and thirst for righteousness. This was very, very different from what the scribes and the Pharisees were talking about. The scribes and the Pharisees loved their ceremonies. They liked the way their tassels, all these different outward things that they were trying to put together in order to try to make it look like they were hungering. But Jesus says, no, your righteousness needs to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees.

Because they really, they just are looking for traditions. They're just looking for outward things that you do, not the hunger of the heart that desires righteous things. That's why Jesus said to them, you know, why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? You know, you hypocrites, you know, this people, well did Isaiah prophesied you, this people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me. So this also is critical to the breaking of the power of sin, to hunger and thirst after righteousness.

If you found yourself in a place where you're weak before various kinds of sins, then here Jesus Christ is mentoring you. He's teaching you the way, the way to go. And that is to find your self breaking the power of sin through a different kind of hunger. Hungry and thirsting for righteousness is critical for breaking the power of sin. If you want to break an addiction, first of all, You have to hate that thing.

And you have to hunger for something else. You have to kill one thing and nourish the other. What you feed grows. What you starve dies. And hungering and thirsting after righteousness is something that builds on itself.

We all have struggles and various sins, but let's be very, very clear that Jesus Christ is teaching us the way to break the pernicious powers of sin over us. And that is to do something about hunger. What do we hunger after? And we hunger after the thing that we feed. Whatever you feed, you just want more of it.

And that's the principle that he's speaking of here. But this power of sin must be broken. If you're given to anger, you have to learn how to hate your anger and stop feeding it. Stop doing the things that feed it. If you're given to gossip, you have to begin to hate what that is.

If you're addicted to pornography, you have to hate it. You must loathe it. You must learn to loathe it and hunger for something better. Because your affections are for things that are defiling you and destroying you. But there's a hunger and a thirst for righteousness that satisfies.

All of these other hungers, they don't satisfy. They just debilitate and they destroy us. Now here's the hope in it. If someone has fallen into a great sin, like what I've just mentioned, They can break the cycle through mourning of their sin. And those who mourn and hunger and thirst after righteousness, they will be satisfied.

So here what we've just engaged in in these first four Beatitudes is really a chain of events that has been established by God that is meant to work in the human soul. And it begins with a recognition of being poverty stricken in spirit. And then it moves on to mourning for your sins. And then it grows, and it becomes a desire of meekness to set yourself under the authority of God, where you are a tamed person before God and man. Don't you want to be that kind of person?

Don't you want to be a tamed person? Don't you want not to be so subject to your passions? Well, it comes from all of these things. This is the chain of the gospel of grace. Thankfully, Thankfully, what we have here, though, is another explanation of what Jesus Christ has done for the soul of man.

That He was poor, making many rich. That He mourned over the sins, and He was meek, and He hungered and thirsted after righteousness. Now what I know about myself is that I have never ever seen myself as poor enough. I've never mourned for my sins enough. I've never been meek enough.

And I've never hungered and thirsted for righteousness enough. But Jesus Christ has done all of those for me, and He has become my righteousness, my holiness, my salvation. And that's what these Beatitudes are all about. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we thank you for these words that the world cannot forget.

Oh Lord, that you