The Beatitudes, Pt.

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King and Kingdom: The Gospel of Matthew
March 19, 2023

I recently finished the Wheel of Time series and have begun

reading through it again. It is striking to see how I regard
certain characters now that I know the end of the story. That
makes sense, right? Once you know where the story is headed
and how that impacts the various characters, you begin to
evaluate the characters’ station in the middle of the story in
light of where you know they are headed. The characters who
start high, but end up humiliated, are not enviable in their
loftiness, are they? On the other side, those on the side of
good, however weak and limited they seem in the middle of the
story, they are the enviable ones, right? Because you know
they get the glory and honor in the end. That’s kind of what
is going on in these Beatitudes. That’s why last week, Pastor
Funmi kept bringing us to the end of the history to consider
how these Beatitudes are proven true. Jesus is guiding us into
true flourishing in light of eternity, in light of the end of
the story. But there’s a twist: the story has folded on
itself; the end has entered into the middle of the story. When
Jesus declared, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” He said,
“That final state of affairs, when God reigns and all His
promises are fulfilled, is present through me.” We must
evaluate the good life by where it ends, and the end, the
kingdom of God, has arrived in Jesus. Jesus has given these
beatitudes to help us with that.
This morning, we will cover the last 5 of the Beatitudes and
Jesus will show us that We flourish as we follow Jesus in
pursuing open-hearted peace in the face of pain, pollution,
and persecution. That’s our big idea this morning. But before
we come to these Beatitudes directly, here are some helpful
guideposts to help us further understand the Beatitudes.
First, remember again that these virtues mark flourishing in
light of the fact that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. In
other words, these Beatitudes are a sure guide to the good
life because Jesus has brought and is bringing God’s end-time
reign into history, albeit in a “seedling” sort of way. Which
means, secondly, all the “for” statements, “for theirs is the
kingdom…for they shall be comforted…etc.,” are aspects of life
in the kingdom. What’s it like to live in the kingdom of

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heaven? It’s to be comforted, to inherit the earth, to have
God’s compassion, etc. Jesus is showing us how we begin to
experience kingdom life now and forever. Finally, these
declarations of flourishing, “flourishisms,” if you would,
depend on those “for” statements. You can translate that “for”
in your head as “because.” Jesus is saying “People who are
merciful are flourishing because they shall receive mercy.”
Jesus knows these virtues describe flourishing because they
describe the lives of those who repent and believe that the
kingdom of heaven has come in Jesus.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy

So that leads us to the fifth beatitude in verse 7. This
beatitude declares you are flourishing if you are merciful,
because you will receive mercy. Now what is mercy? We
sometimes think of mercy as not getting what you deserve in
terms of punishment. But in Scripture, mercy often refers to
compassion. It refers not only to action, but to having an
open heart towards the pain and suffering of others. God is
the Merciful One par excellence. Most of the time the word is
used in Scripture, God is the merciful one. The word used here
is used in Exodus 34:6, when God Himself declares His name.
This is the most definitive statement of God’s character in
all of Scripture, so much so that subsequent biblical authors
quote it throughout Scripture. God, speaking of Himself, says,
“The LORD, the LORD, a God gracious and merciful, slow to
anger and abounding in steadfast love…” To be merciful is to
bear God’s character. Little wonder, then that mercy is one of
the marks of righteous love towards others throughout the Old
Testament.
This challenges us, because we simultaneously live in a
society that yearns for compassion, but also craves to cancel
people. We practice selective compassion. We are fine showing
sympathy to those who are on our side,, but what about the
other side? What about seeking to have compassion on those who
hurt us? No, no. We cancel those folks; we cut them off. This
beatitude calls us to open our hearts to EVERYONE, even our
enemies, and to see that they are suffering and in need of
loving restoration, just like us.
How do we do that? We follow Jesus. By far the most frequent
emotion He experiences in Scripture is compassion. This is
true in His life, detailed for us in the 4 Gospels. But even

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in heaven, Jesus is a merciful high priest for sinners,
Hebrews tells us. And how does He show mercy? He sees and He
joins. In the Gospels, over and over again, Jesus doesn’t just
look at people, He sees them. He views them with an open
heart, unsheltered from their suffering, not insulated from
their pain. But He doesn’t just see and move on, He joins; He
moves towards the one He sees. He sees the leper and reaches
out His hand. He sees the woman with the issue of blood, and
His heart goes out to her and He calls her daughter and heals
her. He joins us in our humanity. He suffers with us, suffers
like us, and suffers for us, all because He is merciful
towards us.

What would that seeing sympathy look like in your family? What
would it look like for you to entrust your pain to God so that
you can see and sympathize with your spouse or your toddler,
or your teenager? Who is sinning against you at work? Towards
what enemy has your heart grown calloused and cold? If we will
truly flourish in these relationships, we must be merciful.
But why does mercy mark flourishing? Because those who are
merciful shall receive mercy. This refers to receiving mercy
from God. Now this isn’t talking about earning mercy from God.
Remember, these “for” statements describe life in the kingdom.
What Jesus is saying is this: God’s mercy is available to all
who enter the kingdom by repentance and faith. For those in
His kingdom, Jesus is a merciful high priest. Friends, this
means that no matter how heavy the grief, no matter how
daunting the circumstance, no matter how alluring the
temptation, you will NEVER have an experience where God will
not sympathize with you. Through every pain, you have a Father
of mercies and a merciful Savior. But this also refers to
experiencing God’s mercy at the end of history, when we all
stand before God at the Last Judgment. We will not earn God’s
mercy then by being merciful now, but God will be evaluating
to see the effect His mercy had on us. Pastor Josh said this
when He preached on this passage a few years ago, mercy
receivers are mercy givers. And mercy givers receive mercy in
the end, and that’s why they flourish. Flourishing are the
merciful, because they will receive mercy.

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Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Purity is such a vivid concept. But what does it mean to be
pure in heart? This word for pure refers to being unmixed,
literally unadulterated. It refers to having a heart towards
God that is singular, uncontaminated, unalloyed. There are no
other devotions, no other trust aside from God and God alone.
This is what we yearn for isn’t it? To pursue God with
everything we’ve got, with no distractions, no hindrances, no
hiding and no hypocrisy.
This same purity applies to our hearts towards people. To have
a pure heart before people is, really, to keep it real. To be
honest and sincere in our dealings with one another. There’s
no putting up fronts, no deceiving one another. When we are
pure in heart towards one another, there’s a simplicity of
relating that comes because I am just focused on loving you as
God calls me to in that relationship. Again, with this purity,
this sincerity, there is a freedom to love and enjoy one
another, to say what needs saying, or be silent, because you
are focused on one thing: love. And much of the reason we need
to have mercy, to tie this to the previous beatitude, is
because of the pain caused from our lack of honesty and
sincerity with one another.
What gets in the way of this sort of purity before God and
others? Well, lots of things. But I want to focus on two words
that pollute purity: Manipulation and sin.
By manipulation, I mean trying to control other people’s
experience of you, or control the way they perceive you and
respond to you. This lies at the root of all people-pleasing,
pretending, and performing. We want people to look at us a
certain way, so we act like salesmen, presenting ourselves to
others as a product. This often lies at the root of our
hypocrisy and hesitation to confess sin to others or
apologize, because we are afraid of how people will see us or
treat us. But it’s hard to move towards people with sincere
love if we’re insincere about our own fallenness and need for
mercy.
But even more important is the pollution of sin. We can try to
manipulate God, but our biggest hindrance to purity and
sincere love is entertaining sin. When we entertain sin, we
pollute our hearts by dividing our love. We try to devote our

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hearts to Jesus and a lil bit of sin. We end up pretending,
trying to persuade God and others of our goodness, all the
while knowing that we have something in between us. And
pretending before God is how we end up pretending before
people. Whatever the hindrance, the pathway to purity and
sincerity is confession, repentance, and faith. Tell the truth
about your sin. Be honest with yourself, with God, and with
others. Put your cards on the table, even if you’re afraid of
rejection. Because the pure in heart are the ones who see God.
In a collection of letters called “The Heart of a Servant
Leader,” Jack Miller talks about the freedom and joy that
comes from a heart solely devoted to God’s glory, a pure
heart. The first few letters discuss the wrestling of heart
and anxiety that come from a mixed, impure heart. I remember
reading these letters at a time when I was hiding some sin and
needed to confess. But I was so gripped by this vision of
God’s glory, and my lack of experiencing it, that I confessed
through many tears to my wife, and several others. I will be
honest. Purging the impurity of hidden sin felt like death.
And it was. I couldn’t be impressive anymore, couldn’t be
exemplary to people. I opened myself up to mistreatment and
vulnerability. It was actually through this time that Pastor
Josh and I forged a stronger friendship and he encouraged me
with this beatitude. And friends, it was worth it. And it
still is worth it today. But you don’t have to take my word
for it. Listen to what John says in 1 John 3:2-3:
“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has
not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be
like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who
thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” You see,
God’s glory is so wonderful, so all-consuming, only Jesus has
seen God as He is, though we do see Him with the eyes of faith
now. But friends, if we are God’s children, members of God’s
kingdom-family, we will see Him AS HE IS! In the fullness of
His glory! Angels cover their faces in Isaiah 6, and even
still they cry out “Holy, Holy, Holy,” but we will see Him
with unveiled faces. The God who is altogether lovely, who
would make the most radiant sunset look like a grainy black
and white photo.Those who are pure in heart towards God,
confessing their sin, being real about who they are, they
receive the mercy of God, and that mercy gives them access to
seeing God - in all his majesty and glory. We see Him now with
the eyes of faith, but one day faith will give way to sight.

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The pure in heart are flourishing, because they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of

God
Verse 9 presents the next Beatitude, and it is no less
challenging than the previous two. If being merciful
corresponds to other people’s pain, peacemaking corresponds to
the pain other people cause me. A chief way we show mercy is
through making peace with those who’ve sinned against us. And
we need to be pure in heart towards God and others to make
REAL peace, not just sweep pain under the rug. Now what is
this peacemaking?
Peacemaking is forging reconciliation out of a broken
relationship. To see reconciliation best, we look at God. Paul
describes the reconciling work of God in 2 Corinthians
5:18-21. Paul just declared that if anyone is in Christ, a new
creation has come. He then says, “All this is from God, who
through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the
ministry of reconciliation; that is in Christ God was
reconciling the world to himself, not counting their
trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of
reconciliation…” God made peace with us, and His reconciling
ministry to the apostles and the church. How did God make
peace with us? By, “not counting our trespasses against us.”
That’s the means of reconciliation right there. But God didn’t
just throw our sin out. The reason God didn’t count our sins
against us is because He counted them against JESUS. That’s
why verse 21 is there, “For our sake he made him to be sin who
knew no sin,” that’s Jesus, “that we might become the
righteousness of God in him.” So instead of treating us as
enemies, God treats Jesus as an enemy on the cross, thereby
dealing with our sin and making peace with us.
So in order to make peace, we have to deal with the offense,
with the sin. Either Jesus paid for it on the cross, or that
person pays for it. But at some point, we have to stop
counting others’ trespasses against them. This is not being
naive. If we are dealing with those who are in Christ, we have
to acknowledge that every sin a brother or sister commits
against me has already been punished. I’ve never heard an
“Amen” uttered in a courtroom, and God doesn’t need help

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making sure their sin is adequately punished. Not only that,
but God has said, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” in Romans
12 and Leviticus 19. So God has got the justice side of things
covered. This frees us to pursue peace when someone offends
us. This is also why Jesus tells the disciples in Luke 17:3-4,
if your brother sins against you 7 times in a day and repents,
you forgive him. We don’t have to hold it against them because
God will take care of it. This also means we can confess sin
to others and apologize when we’ve wronged them. We don’t need
to grovel and wallow in shame, but we can face our wrongs with
honesty, with sincerity and purity of heart, because they
cannot condemn us.
But at the same time, God did not sweep sin under the rug. He
doesn’t ignore our sin, He placed it on someone else, on
Jesus, so that we can enjoy His fatherhood and friendship. But
He definitely confronts our sin. And in the same way, we must
confront our sins against others, as well as their sins
against us. The saying is true, “No justice, no peace.” This
is why Matthew 18 is in the Bible so that we can have tangible
ways of confronting sin for the sake of peace. We go to one
another one-on-one in love first. If that doesn’t work, we
bring one or two others into it. This is when it’s helpful to
reach out to your leaders. If they persist, we tell it to the
church, and then excommunicate them if the sin is persistent.
This is the kind of peacemaking in the family of God that Paul
talks about in Eph. 4, exhorting us to bear with one another
in love by being eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit
in the bond of peace. Are we willing to pursue this kind of
peace, or are we quick to cancel the people who have wronged
us?
God is the Great Peacemaker, and Jesus is the Prince of peace.
Little wonder, then that peacemakers are called “sons of God.”
This isn’t speaking of earning our adoption. It’s a way of
saying, “You look like your Father.” And what higher title is
there to achieve? To be sons of God is to be heirs of His
kingdom. To be sons of God is to be objects of God’s delight.
To be sons of God is the most fulfilling identity we can bear,
because it’s what we were made for.
Flourishing are the peacemakers, because they will be called
sons of God.

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Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when
others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of
evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the
prophets who were before you.
The last Beatitudes are the oddest of them all. Until this
point, all the Beatitudes have been virtues, aspects of our
character, habits of relating to God and others. But this one
is a situational one. And it’s pretty much the worst situation
imaginable. It says if people are aiming to undermine your
flourishing because of your allegiance to righteousness and
Jesus, you’re flourishing! Isn’t that odd?
This prompts a question for us in America, because we don’t
tend to think of ourselves as persecuted. Here are three
things to think about. I’ve been really influenced by Karen
Ellis, who teaches at RTS Atlanta and works with Christians in
places hostile to Christianity.
1. Persecution is just the manifestation of the opposition
between Christ’s authority and the pretending powers of the
world. This means the question isn’t “Are we being
persecuted?” but “How are we being persecuted?” That leads me
to…
2. The nature of persecution here in America is subtle. Karen
Ellis said she spoke with a Christian from a more hostile
context and they said they found the nature of persecution in
America to be just as sinister, because it achieves the same
end of death threats and family alienation: IT MAKES YOU
SILENT ABOUT JESUS. That’s the point of persecution. That’s
the nature of it, to silence the spread of the gospel. Our
culture doesn’t do that through death threats, at least not
now. No, now it threatens to shame us by labeling us as bigots
for our sexual ethic, or tells us we have to justify the sins
of those who used the name of Jesus to oppress others. It
tells us, “You must tolerate everyone’s beliefs. You can even
tell us about your Jesus. But don’t call people to repent and
turn to Him.” So we get quiet about Jesus because we find
ourselves trying to work around these parameters. And
persecution has achieved it’s goal, to slow and silence the
word about Jesus.

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3. Karen Ellis said in an interview with Nancy Guthrie that
the most important number to think about when we consider
persecution is not the number of Muslim countries. It isn’t
the number of Christians martyred each year. It’s the number
1. There is one body, one faith, one baptism. One holy,
universal, apostolic church. From God’s vantage, THERE IS NO
PERSECUTED AND UNPERSECUTED CHURCH. TThis means that because
we are apart of the one body of Christ, the pain and suffering
of our brothers and sisters across the world is OURS too. They
are our family, and there is a real sense in which they are
suffering for Jesus, so are we, because we are all in the
Christ whom they persecute.
So persecution is a byproduct of kingdom conflict. It aims to
silence the gospel and is an experience of the unified body of
Christ. Is the Lord calling you into this kingdom conflict?
Does your fear of being called weird or a bigot silence you
from sharing the gospel at school? Are you like me, struggling
to share the Gospel with cousins and uncles because you don’t
want to make them too uncomfortable, or risk their rejection?
Let’s do what Thomas said, let’s go face the opposition to die
with Jesus.
But why? Jesus gives us 2 reasons. First, because those who
are persecuted for righteousness’ sake currently possess the
kingdom. That will never not be striking to me. It means, in
Jesus and the apostles’ day, that those killed by the Roman
empire actually possessed the kingdom of heaven, even as they
suffered. How untouchable this kingdom is! How invincible and
durable it must be, such that even the fiercest worldly
opposition cannot take it away, because Christ can never be
taken away! When you are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
you are just like Jesus, whose kingship was most clearly
displayed when he was persecuted to the point of death on a
cross. But there’s a second reason. You’re in good company.
Whenever those friends and family reject you, whenever society
stigmatizes you, you’re in good company.
Jesus says “Look around and see who is in this club with you.”
You look and see Moses, whose brother and sister and nation
rejected his leadership. You look again and see Elijah, who
was chased by Jezebel. You see Jeremiah and Ezekiel. You see
Paul and Peter and John the Baptist. And you see Jesus. Now I
ask you, who could say, in light of history, that this isn’t
coveted company?

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Flourishing are you when others persecute you for Jesus and
for righteousness, for you have the kingdom and esteemed
company.

Conclusion
I recently heard a philosopher talk about the power of story
and how we are all innately drawn to the same type of story,
stories that move through suffering into glory. He spoke of
giving a lecture to a group of college students at a secular
university. At a certain point, he asked all the students
which story they’d rather be apart of, a story that began with
glory, with money and fame and pleasures galore, but ended up
in emptiness shame and destitution, or a story that began with
lowliness and humility but ended in glory and honor. Not a
single student preferred the first story. You know why?
Because it’s apart of our nature. We were made for this. To
embrace humility with Jesus in His kingdom, because we know
where the story is headed.

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