Happy Are the Holy

Matthew 5:8

Matthew Chapter 5 and verse 8.  I want to read to you all the verses in the Beatitudes as the setting for our thoughts and then we'll have prayer together and we'll look together at this one verse.  Beginning in verse 1, Matthew records "And seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain and when He was seated His disciples came unto Him.  And He opened His mouth and taught them saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.  Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.  Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.  Blessed are the merciful for the shall obtain mercy.  Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.  Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God.  Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.  Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven.  For so persecuted they the prophets who were before you."

Let's share together in prayer.  Father, we come to You tonight with deep sense of need in our own lives.  It only takes a cursory look at the verse to know that we in and of ourselves can't qualify.  For Lord, in our lives there are things that are not pure.  There are always those things that are not right.  And Lord, we are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness.  A righteousness we know in and of ourselves is an absolute impossibility.  We are those who desire to be pure in heart Lord, but the battle is so hard.  And the purity that we seek is so elusive.  Just when we think we have it, we lose it.  Lord, I pray that You'll help me by the search light of the word of God in the hands of the Holy Spirit of God to look at my own life tonight.  And everyone of these dear people gathered here to look at their lives as well.

Father, I first of all am so grateful that this people would come to be exposed to the truth of this word.  Thank You for the kind of people who will bring their lives to the test of the word of  God.  Who will come not to hear some fascination discussed or some theme unrelated to living.  Not to deal in just some kind of tickling of the fancy, but who will come when they know that they'll be dealing with purity of heart and will place their life under the scrutiny of the word of God.  God, for that kind of Spirit, I'm thankful and I know that's the kind of attitude with which You can deal and work and the kind of life that you can perfect and conform and mature to the image of Jesus Christ.  And so Lord may what I say not be man's word, may I not speak in the power of my own mind and my own spirit, but may I be nothing but a mouthpiece through which the Spirit of God can speak.  May we not listen for the cleverness of men, but may we listen for the voice of God.  May we not apply things to others, but may we apply them only to ourselves.  Give us the honesty to do that.  Help us not to think of another, but only of us.  And Father, we pray that when we're done we will be better equipped to serve You, more committed to Your glory than ever we have been before.  With that anticipation we thank You for what You'll do in Christ's name.  Amen.

There are some things in the Bible that you feel you can sort of handle.  There are some truths in the Bible that you feel you can get a grip on and transmit.  But then there are those things that seem like they are bottomless pits.  They are wells whose depths are immeasurable.  They are truths the breadth of which are impossible to encompass.  This is one of those.  To attempt to deal with such an incredible statement as "Blessed are the pure and heart for they shall see God."  In one brief time would be an insult to God and to the power and the depth and insight of His own word.

This is one of the greatest utterances I believe in all of the Bible and there's no way that I can even begin to deal with it let alone exhaust it.  It's one of those all encompassing things that stretches over everything else that's revealed in scripture.  The subject of purity of heart can be tracked from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible.  As one little boy put it "from geniuses to revolution."  The them of purity of heart being necessary to see God is something that is vast and infinite.  And it draws in almost every single biblical theme.  There's no way we're going to be able to discover all that's here.  But we've asked the Lord to help us to be able to at least focus on a central meaning that will be rich and meaningful for us.

Now our format in discussing the Beatitudes has been to ask some questions and then answer them.  As we've said to you, you can't outline a simple statement like that really.  All you need to do is just kind of turn it loose.  And I find that the best way to approach something like this is to ask questions.  That's what I do.  In fact, what I'm giving you in these weeks is simply what I have asked of these verses.  And the first question I asked of this was this question.  What is the context for these words?

What is the setting in which Jesus said them?  First of all, in its historical setting, what did Jesus refer to and to what issue was He speaking when He said this.  And then, not only that, but in chronology why does this one appear here in the list of Beatitudes.  To me this seems so crucial and so fantastically important and so utterly absolute in its necessity that it doesn't seem right at first glance to see it just sort of stuck in there indiscriminately as it appears.  I'm wondering why it doesn't have a more strategic place perhaps at the beginning or the middle of the end.

So what is its setting and what is the context for these words?  First, historically and then literarily.  Now let's look at history first of all.  And I don't need to spend too much time on this because you're becoming great historians as we're going through the setting in which our Lord is speaking here, but I'll try to refresh your memory.  Remember first of all, that at the time of Jesus Christ's entrance into the world and the time that He began His ministry in Galilee and Jerusalem, Israel was in a desperate condition.  Israel was in a desperate condition economically, politically, and most important of all, spiritually. 

Now, we've talked in some great detail about the political situation in Israel.  We've talked about the fact that they were anticipating a Messiah who would come and set up some kind of a political overthrow, knock off the Roman oppression and establish the kingdom.  We've dealt with that, but tonight, I want to kind of focus in on Israel's spiritual condition at the time that Jesus came, because this is the issue with which our Lord is dealing predominately in the Sermon on the Mount.  He is talking about spiritual things here.  They're not political, they're not economic, they are spiritual.  Particularly, verse 8, this Beatitude has at it's heart a spiritual reality.  Now let me talk about Israel's spiritual condition at the time Christ began His ministry.

They were for the most part, burdened by an oppressive, authoritative character on the part of the Pharisees.  The dominant influence and the dominant force on Israel at the time of Christ's ministry were the Pharisees.  A legalistic system, in fact, usually tends to dominate the scene wherever it exists.  It tends to draw such absolute parameters around what is spiritually acceptable that by virtue of its definitive character it tends to be the oppressive and reigning thing.  And so in this particular time of Israel's history the Pharisees were the dominant force on the life of the people. 

They had misinterpreted the law of Moses.  They had, because of inability to keep the law of Moses, invented new laws that they could keep and so they could pacify their conscience by keeping their traditions if they couldn't keep God's laws.  And so out of their misinterpretation of mosaic law and out of a sort of a quasi commitment to mosaic law and out of an addendum which they had added to mosaic law, they had formed a relentless and imposing rigid system of legalistic duty on the people.  And by the way, it was absolutely impossible to perform it.  And that was something of the frustration of the lawyer who came to Jesus and finally said in the last gasp effort to try to acquiesce to a legalistic system that he couldn't handle, "Lord what is the one thing that we can do?  Just give me one thing that I can do and please You.  What is the one thing?"  And the Lord said, that's easy, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself.  And if you've done that you've fulfilled all the law and the prophets."

Well, it wasn't so easy was it?  But it was a frustrated lawyer that came to that point, because there was no way that they keep all the law.  In fact, the leaders themselves had decided, if you read history you'll find out, that if you could just keep a few of the laws God would understand.  And then they couldn't even do that, so they said if you could just find one law and keep it, God would understand and that's what that lawyer was really after.  What's that one thing we can do?  So what is interesting is that as you look at the mass of people in Israel, it seems apparent to me that they were somewhat frustrated by a legal system which they could not keep.  And it produced in them tremendous guilt as well as frustration and anxiety.  And it would in a people who were really committed no matter how superficial it was to the reality of God and to the fact that God revealed Himself in laws.

So here they were given a set of laws.  They were already a religious people, and they knew they needed to obey these laws, that's what their society was telling them, they knew they couldn't do it and so they lived with a tremendous amount of frustration, anxiety and guilt, just as anybody does under any legal system.  That is a...that is an impossible system.  Now you can invent on that just incorporates the things you can do and justify yourself.  But in this case, they were hopeless.  And so the oppression of the legal system had created a tremendous amount of guilt.

Now personally, I believe this is one of the things that contributed so dramatically to the power of the ministry of John the Baptist.  I think John the Baptist had a ready audience because people were literally looking for some place to go to relieve the burden of sin.  When John the Baptist was preaching in the wilderness, you remember that multitudes flocked to John the Baptist.  That they literally came to him in huge crowds.  And even, it says, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and scribes would show up.  I believe that the reason it says all Israel, all Jerusalem was coming to John was because there was this tremendous oppression and the consequent guilt from the legal system and the people's hearts were literally aching for a sense of forgiveness, a sense of salvation, a sense of tranquility to their very troubled souls.

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