I wonder if in your heart of hearts if you’re one of these crazies who, like me, want to follow Jesus. I wonder if in your heart of hearts when you hear that word “blessing” your default position, your default understanding, your instant response is to equate the idea of blessing with success.

A MISMATCH OF EXPECTATIONS

You know what I think is one of the hardest things about following Jesus? It’s that God doesn’t always dish up what I expect Him to dish up. The hardest thing for me is that I, like most other people, well I’ve grown up in a world where we want to be successful. The world’s definition of success is all around us. We’re influenced by our culture and our culture tells us, society tells us, the advertising industry tells us, that we’re successful if we have lots of money, a nice house, a happy life, two cars, big flat TV screens dotted all round the place, all that stuff.

We’re successful if life’s going really well and people can look at us and say, “Wow, he’s successful”, or “she’s successful”. And we kind of equate this idea of success, an idea that’s been so deeply ingrained in our nature day after day, with God’s idea of blessing. We imagine that when God blesses us then we’ll be successful. If we’re being successful God must be blessing us, it goes without saying.

Does that sound vaguely familiar? And today and over these next few weeks we’re going to chat about why that one thing, this idea of success and blessing, as it turns out, is one of the toughest things about following Jesus in this day and age.

I wonder if in your heart of hearts if you’re one of these crazies who, like me, want to follow Jesus. I wonder if in your heart of hearts when you hear that word ‘blessing’ your default position, your default understanding, your instant response is to equate the idea of blessing with success.

I think there’s some of that in each one of us. Yeah, yeah, we kind of know that Jesus said in this world we’d have tribulation, John 16, verse 33, we know I guess that following Jesus in theory is going to be hard but surely that’s for other people.

You and me we want to pull up next to this idea of success. We so want to equate God’s blessing to success that we kind of ignore the other bits about suffering, about persecution, about laying down our lives, about taking up our cross and following Jesus because success is such a powerfully alluring concept and when God talks about blessing the two seem to go so well together that before we know it we’ve got our own little prosperity doctrine tucked away in our hearts.

We go through all the religious motions on the outside but on the inside we firmly believe that God’s going to bless us with success. Now of course sometimes He does but no ones life is a complete success. There are people listening today whose marriages are falling apart. There are people listening today who are serving the Lord in some far flung dark hole of a place and nothing they seem to be doing, just at the moment, is having any impact.

There are people struggling through things at work, through relationships, through family breakdown. There are people who have loved ones who’ve just died. There are people that … and when you’re in that place you kind of want to scream out and say, “God? Blessing? How dare this bloke on the radio talk to me about Gods blessing, I am not blessed by God, look at the mess and the pain that I’m in”. We all go through trials, we do.

And now I want to come right back to why this is one of the hardest things for me in following Jesus and I suspect for you too. It’s because deep down we expect God’s blessing to equal worldly success and when God doesn’t stump up with the success we’re expecting then if feels like everything we believe about God, everything we’ve struggled for in following Jesus is like a lie, like a false promise.

You and I know, when we stop and think about it, that a mismatch of expectations is always going to cause pain and conflict. If you expect me to do something or to say something or to behave in a certain way or deliver something and I don’t meet that expectation you’re going to be disappointed or angry or any number of other things with me, right?

And if I do it over and over again, if I miss your expectations over again eventually you’re going to get really, really cheesed off with me. And that’s where a lot of people are with Jesus right now.

“Well I tried following Jesus BUT …”

“But what?”

“Well … but He didn’t deliver what I expected. It was hard. I still had to suffer. I feel like He abandoned me.”

We all go through that, I’ve been walking with the Lord now almost two decades. A good proportion of that has been studying and preaching God’s Word. If anyone should be over that sense of disappointment it should be me right? And yet when I have to walk through trials and some of them go on for a long time, for years, the thing my natural “me” always wants to do is to act up and struggle with the fact that I’m going through some trial or another.

Why can’t everything just fall into place for once? Why can’t things be easier than what they are? So this series of messages that we’re kicking off today is called God’s Abundant Blessing and it’s all about God’s abundant blessing but it’s going to strike at the very heart of this mismatch of expectations. And we’re going to do that by unpacking exactly what it is that Jesus had to say about Gods blessing. So lets have a listen, Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 to 12:

When Jesus saw the crowds he came up the mountain and after he sat down his disciples came to him, then he began to speak and told them saying, ‘blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they’ll be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they’ll be filled. Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they’ll be called children of God and blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people 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 the same way they persecuted the prophets who went before you.

Now forget that perhaps you may have heard that many times before and let’s just take it face value what Jesus is saying here. He is saying, “You are blessed if you are poor in spirit, if you’re mourning, if you’re meek, if you’re persecuted, all that stuff”. Does that sound anything like the worlds version of success to you? No me neither.

Obviously Jesus has something different in mind and since He was talking to His Disciples when He said this stuff, His closest followers, those who were prepared not only to listen to His sermons but to model their lives on Him under His mentorship then my hunch is this is something we need to get our minds around. What Jesus means about blessing because His blessing is utterly amazing, it’s not what we expected it to be.

His blessing is amazing because it’s for real. He doesn’t sugar coat stuff, He’s in the business of speaking His blessing right in the middle of the stuff that we’re going through in our lives.

BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT

What I love about Jesus is that He doesn’t kind of pussy foot around. He doesn’t shy away from telling us the truth about things in our lives that other people wouldn’t dare to broach with us. Sometimes we need to be told just the way things are. When you or I have something really important wrong, a real friend is someone who fronts up and tells us.

And that’s exactly what Jesus was telling His disciples in the much famed Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, and interesting the chapter before is the record of Jesus calling His closest twelve disciples out of the thousands of people, these huge crowds who were following Him.

And right off the back of that comes this Sermon on the Mount. Now it’s kind of hard to see exactly who that sermon was for. Was it for all the people who’d gathered on that hillside to hear Him or was it just for His closest inner circle of Disciples? Have a listen to how Matthew kicks off his account of this event:

When Jesus saw the crowds he went up to the mountain and after he sat down his disciples came to him then he began to speak and taught them saying, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

It’s not quite clear is it? But what is clear is that this dissertation is meant for His disciples. Whether they were the inner group of twelve or a much wider group. A disciple is literally a learner so it’s for the people who want to follow Jesus, to learn from Him and model their lives on His life and the very first thing that Jesus has to say about blessing, what was it again?

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

Now that right there brings the old ego down with a thud, It’s a great place to start because it talks about how we see ourselves. What Jesus seems to be saying here is that His blessing isn’t for those who are full of themselves, for those who think themselves really someone but for those who are real about who they are without Him.

Now we could easily make the mistake here of thinking, “Well that’s it, that confirms it, this Christianity thing is just a crux for losers. You have to be poor in spirit, you have to be somehow into self deprecation. See, religion is all about treading on people, manipulating people, making them feel small”. But that’s not what Jesus is talking about here because that’s not what He was into. In fact the religious leaders of the day were into that form of religion and Jesus tore shreds off them for being like that.

So what does He mean “poor in spirit”? What’s that all about? Who are the poor in spirit? John Wesley puts it this way:

They are the unfeignedly penitent. They who are truly convinced of sin. Who see and feel the state they are in by nature, deeply sensible of their sinfulness, guiltiness and helplessness.

The people, in other words, who truly recognise that they’ve fallen short of the glory of God and that they are totally, completely and utterly helpless to do anything about it to save themselves from the consequences. I wonder if you’re one of those people. For a long time I wasn’t. For a long time I thought of myself as being something of a hot shot, clever, capable, competent, self sufficient. God? God, who needs God?

And what Jesus is saying here to His Disciples, what He’s saying to you and me now is, that those with the attitude of who needs God, those who are full of themselves will not inherit the Kingdom of heaven and as a result they won’t be blessed.

Every time I fall short of God’s glory, every time I let Him down, every time I sin in my life I’m so disappointed with myself, I just know that in and of myself I can’t make it right. I’d like to but I can’t. I know the right thing to do, I just can’t seem to do it. It seems to me to be one of those basic principles of life, that whenever I want to do good, whenever I want to honour God, sin kind of sneaks up behind me and it’s ready to pounce.

And so I for one keep short accounts with God. I go and ask Him to forgive me not because I’m a great bloke but because Jesus died for me and paid the price of my sin on the cross. That’s what it means to be poor in spirit. It means to be real about how we truly are, who we are, what state we’re in and what’s going on in our hearts, in our minds, in our lives.

Jesus put it another way when He was talking to a Church, Revelations chapter 3, verse 17. He said:

You say, ‘I’m rich, I’ve prospered, I need nothing’. You don’t realise that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.

The ones who are truly blessed are the ones who recognise who they truly are. The ones who are prepared to nail their wretched pride and their false sense of self sufficiency and success to the cross and go before God and say, “God I’m not good enough, that’s why I’m coming to ask for your forgiveness in Jesus name. Not because I deserve it but because Jesus died to purchase it and I believe in Jesus.”

So does that mean that I’m a loser? That I’m somehow less of a person than someone who says they have it all together, am I? That’s what the critics would say. But what Jesus is saying here to the critics is that they’re delusional, they’re kidding themselves, they’re claiming something about themselves that’s not true. You say I’m rich, I’ve prospered, I don’t need anything. You don’t realise you’re wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.

My friend if you’ve never taken that step of admitting the truth about yourself, to yourself and to God, today’s the day, the very day to do it and if you’re someone who’s admitted it and today again you find yourself falling short of Gods glory then today’s the day to go before God and admit again. Why? Because:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.

It’s the only way we get into the Kingdom of heaven, by trusting in Jesus and there quite simply is no greater blessing on the planet or off it, than that.

BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN

Jesus went on to say:

Blessed are those who mourn.

When we lose a loved one or when we’re retrenched or when a fire or flood destroys our house or whatever other loss or hurt would cause us to mourn because when we’re mourning a loss it’s at that time in our lives, perhaps more so than any other time, that we experience a sense of disappointment with God’s promises of blessing.

Here’s what Jesus talks about in His Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, verse 4 says:

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

Now if ever something Jesus said seems crazy this would have to be it. Think back to the last time you were mourning a loss, what was it? Was it a death, was it a breakdown of a relationship, was it retrenchment, unemployment, what was it?

You know immediately what it was because you remember the pain, you remember the loss, you remember that sense of hopelessness and feeling completely alone. You can remember how dark and cold and lonely that place felt even if perhaps you had some people around you to comfort you, you can remember that can’t you?

So can I ask you, right in the middle of the last time where you were mourning some great loss, you were grieving, were you happy? Did you feel blessed? I didn’t think so and yet Jesus has the temerity to say:

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

Now let’s unpick that just quickly so we understand the full force of what He’s saying. Firstly that word “blessed”, now there are a few Greek words used in the New Testament which are translated into the English word “blessed” and in many respects this is the strongest one, it’s the most direct one, it literally means ‘happy’. In fact some of the older translations of the Bible, you may have heard it put this way:

Happy are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

And please note with me that that word happy is set in the present tense. So right in the middle of that time of loss and grieving and mourning Jesus is saying, “You can be and you should be happy because you will be (that’s future tense) comforted.” Let me ask you something, can that be true? I mean come on, really.

Grieving is grieving, it’s a process, there are different stages of grieving that are well understood by psychologists and counsellors. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, it’s the traditional model although there are some variations round that. But pretty much anyone who’s ever been through grief and mourning will recognise those, it’s really, really tough. So is it really possible for us to stick this label “happy” right in the middle of that?

I’ve had one major episode of loss in my life, there have been other ones, smaller along the way but one really significant one and it was in the middle of the darkest period of my life, that time of mourning, that time of loss, that time of desperation that I met Jesus. I can attest to the fact that in the middle of the darkest days of my life what Jesus says is true.

I’ll get to that, my personal experience in a moment but over the years I’ve spoken with many, many people who’ve been through times of mourning. In fact as I read and answer many emails we receive here at Christianityworks in response to these radio messages, one of the most common questions that I find myself responding to is this, how does what you had to say the other day relate to his particular loss or grief in my life?

Now it’s not always those words but that’s kind of what lies behind the heart of many questions and it’s my great privilege to be able to speak God’s love and God’s truth into those situations in people’s lives. And most often the response I receive after that is this sense of revelation and comfort at the powerful way in which God’s Word ministers into people’s lives at that difficult time of mourning.

You know what really strikes me, without God’s Word apart from knowing the truth we’re so completely and utterly lost. We’re in this dark place and there seems no way out until the light of Jesus shines into that place and all of a sudden we can see and feel and experience His warmth. For me it’s so often, in fact almost always begins with knowing the truth in the middle of our mourning and grief.

My friend if you’re mourning a loss right now please listen to the truth, you are blessed because Jesus means to comfort you, that’s the truth and in a very real way, I remember in the darkest places of my life during mourning and grief, during that process of bereavement, it went on for a good many months, it was awful.

There were so many days when it felt like I was being torn apart and yes there were some well meaning friends around me who tried to comfort me but when you’re in that place and if you’re in that place right now I think you’ll relate to this, nothing other people say seems to be able to make a difference, seems to make even a dent, it’s like this black shield around us and no one can get through.

It was like the grief had put this impenetrable invisible barrier between me and every other human being. It’s the best way I can describe it but in that inky blackness I decided to start reading my Bible, it was a weird response I know but that’s what I did.

In that dark place I started to pray and I was totally bowled over, the very presence of God Himself was palpable, God was present in that place with me and the fact that there was a shield around me that no one else could get through and here I was in my dark place and only God could get in, made Gods presence even more powerful and wonderful and I look back on that with great joy.

He encouraged me, I discovered later the word that Jesus used to describe the Holy Spirit to His disciples when they were in fear for their lives, literally means ‘encourager and comforter’. And that’s exactly what God was to me in that place.

It’s kind of bizarre to look back on because the pain and mourning went on as I said for a long time but in the middle of that was God, very real, very present, to comfort me through and I came out of that time a totally different person. Can I tell you? Far from perfect, right, but totally different. Perhaps you’ve heard me say this before but whilst I wouldn’t wish that much pain on my worst enemy I wouldn’t swap that time in my life for all the tea in China.

Pain is never easy, mourning and grief are never easy, they’re not meant to be but whatever their cause if you will just sit still before God we will discover the greatest blessing of all. See God Himself is the greatest blessing of all, God Himself is the one who comes and consoles us in our grief, who sits with us in the dark place, who shines light and warmth into our hearts in the middle of that inky blackness of mourning.

Jesus said:

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

I just pray that you’ll be blessed in that way in your life. If you’re mourning right now or maybe there’s going to be a time of mourning that comes later on in your life, you know we all want our lives to go along happy don’t we? We all want our lives to go along, everything’s going well but it’s not like that.

Accidents happen, people die, people leave us, people betray us, all sorts of things happen in life and when they happen and we’re in that dark place I pray that as I’ve spoken God’s Word into your life right now you’ll remember this one verse and the Holy Spirit will bring it back to you just at the time that you need it.

This is what Jesus said, these are Jesus’ very own words, remember this ain’t Berni saying this to you, this is Jesus saying this to you and me, to the disciples of His:

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

My friend to me this is one of the most powerful messages I’ve ever been able to share with anyone anywhere because I remember so vividly my time of mourning and I remember how much I needed someone to tell me this and how much I needed the Holy Spirit to write this truth on my heart to get me through.

Because me talking about it is not going to make a difference, the only difference that’s going to happen when the Holy Spirit takes the Word of God and writes it on your heart. So let me say it again that you may never ever, ever, ever forget it.

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

I received an email from a woman in the UK the other day who’d been going through some really tough times, not just for a few weeks or months, but for years. And she asked me, “how come me? What’s God doing?” Fair question … and yet when I read Jesus’ Sermon on the mount – it hits me that we can discover His blessing in some out of the way places. We can discover His blessing, in the midst of some of the worst circumstances that we are ever going to travel through in life. Isn’t that just like Him?!

Blessed are the Meek

Some would say I’m a bit of a tough old nut. I’ve never really been afraid of a stoush. It’s not that I go looking for a fight, but when push comes to shove, I’m prepared to stand up and fight battles with people if I think they’re worth fighting. And sometimes they are. Now that may sound a little bit odd coming from a guy whose full-time job is telling people about the love of Jesus. Well to tell you the truth, I’m hopefully a somewhat mellower version of what I used to be before I met Jesus.

There’s a reason for that (I’ll come to that a bit later). But for much of my life I would plough straight over the top of people or through them or both, to get to where I was going. So if you were in my road, watch out. My reason I guess, was that in this dog-eat-dog world you had to do that to get to where you wanted to go. Now there are plenty of people who live their lives that way, so imagine my distain and surprise then, back in those days before I knew Jesus personally, when I heard this little quote from something Jesus once said, what I now know to be the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew Chapter 5 verse 5:

Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth

Well, that confirmed it for me. Religion, which was what I called it back then, is a crutch for the week and the downtrodden. Definitely not for me. “Blessed are the meek …” I mean, seriously!

I love this saying, “No man is a total loss because he can always be used with a bad example”. I fit really well with that. But change for me was when Jesus came into my life. It was really profound. Other people I know, many other people I know, were blessed to always have known Jesus all their lives. Christian parents, grew up in a Christian home, they couldn’t remember a time when they didn’t believe in Jesus. And that’s fantastic.

But it was totally different for me. It was a dramatic encounter with Jesus on Berni’s road to success. The Lord did much to get my attention and a huge part of that was to humble me. I was a man with an ego the size of a small planet. Before God could do anything with me He desperately needed to bring me down from the pedestal that I’d stuck myself on. We all do that to some degree. With me it was a disease. There’s a big difference between a sober assessment of ourselves, “I’m pretty good at this … I’m pretty good at that … but I’m pretty much awful at that thing over there”. That’s okay. Versus being full of yourself, because when you’re full of yourself it makes a huge amount of sense just to roll over the top of people.

Now I’m telling you this stuff because it sets the scene for the struggle I had to come to grips with this rather bazaar blessing that Jesus is talking about here. Let’s have another listen to it:

Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.

Can you see how a bloke with my makeup and my background would struggle with that? But you see there’s another bunch of people who struggle with it as well – the poor, the marginalised, the persecuted – the people who by their very nature are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to personality type. See those people perhaps feel like others are always walking over the top of them and treating them like a doormat. And if any of those describe you, then of course you’re going struggle with this blessing too. And for the same reason that I struggled with it. The great character in the long running series, “Mash” put it really nicely when he one day said, rather angrily, “The meek may inherit the earth but it’s the grumpy who get promoted”. I guess that’s one way of saying it.

The reality is that we don’t expect the meek to get anything because meek people get walked over. It’s the powerful, the strong, the rich – those with privilege and position who end up owning everything, the week get nothing. There was an interesting article in my local newspaper, The Australian, recently talking about the greatest risk to the world economy, in fact world peace, over the coming decade. One of the top two risks identified by the World Economic Forum was severe income disparity between the developed nations and the developing nations. In other words, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Nothing new in that.

You think about it. Africa is one of the richest continents on the planet when it comes to natural resources and yet home to countless millions of poor, oppressed, threatened people. So how can it possibly be that the meek are going to inherit the earth? I guess the first thing in coming to try and understand what Jesus is saying here about the meek, is that “meek” doesn’t equal “weak”. The original Greek word used here literally means “mildness of disposition and gentleness of spirit”. The most powerful explanation, this came to me in a sermon of a pastor at the first church I attended after I gave my life to Jesus – Pastor Phil. He told us meekness is actually strength under control.

See, meekness has nothing to say about how much power we have or don’t have, but it has everything about what we do with the power we do have. The most powerful person who every walked this earth was of course Jesus. Go read about Him. He wielded amazing power; the power of life and death over people; the very Son of God in our midst. But how did He use His power? John Chapter 10 verse 17:

For this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again. I’ve received this command from my Father.

Where Jesus saw injustice, where He saw religious hypocrisy and oppression, He was like a lion – He tore it apart. And yet this same Jesus used His power, not to create an organisation or to gain power in the contemporary political context, but instead He used His power to die for you and me. It is for this reason that Jesus says of Himself:

Come to me all you who are weary and heavily laden for I will give you rest. But take my yoke upon you and learn from Me for I am meek and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

Jesus was powerful and meek – the Lion and the Lamb. The meek are those who use what power they have, not for their own benefit but for the benefit of others. The meek are those who humble themselves under the mighty hand of God and do His will. Sometimes they must wield great power, other times they must sit silence and suffer loss and abuse. The meek are those who with all their heart want to see God’s will done and not theirs. They are those to whom their own comfort, their own success, their own agenda, their own wellbeing are all placed well below the will of God.

God’s always opposed the proud, but He gives grace to the humble – to the meek, which is why Jesus can say:

Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.

God has such a different perspective to you and to me, doesn’t He?

Blessed are Those Who Hunger and Thirst

There are plenty of times over the course of my 50 something years that I’ve come to the conclusion that life’s not just fair. No doubt you’ve been in that place too. One of those times, for some reason really sticks in my mind, when I was about 10 years old we had a soccer game at school one afternoon. It wasn’t a competition, just one afternoon the teacher took us down to the park, set up some goals, split the class into two teams to give us a bit of exercise and some fun. Now the teacher’s name was Mr Moore. I remember him well because he was one of my favourite teachers and naturally he refereed the game that afternoon.

We were playing happily enough until he blew the whistle and made a decision that went against my team and I absolutely knew that it was wrong. I was so angry. I threw a fit, man, I let him have it. Remember, I’m 10 years old. Right? He was firm, he stuck to his guns and he said that if I didn’t want to accept the decision I could sit the game out. And that is exactly what I chose to do. I went off in a huff and sat under the willow tree and grumped all afternoon.

Funny how I remember, it’s as though it was yesterday. And still, as I talk about it I can feel that sense of anger and indignation rising up within me because he was just plain wrong. Now, hopefully I’ve grown up a bit since then, but isn’t it funny how that sense of right and wrong is within us. Not always perhaps, but certainly when the wrong affects us, when the decision goes against us.

You see sometimes life just isn’t fair and when we’re on the receiving end of that unfairness we so want the right decision, the fair decision to be made. But what about when the shoe’s on the other foot? What about when we’re the ones dishing out the right and wrong to others? It’s funny, but it seems that we’re prepared to apply a different set of rules to right and wrong when we’re on the dishing out end rather than the receiving end. We’re prepared to cut ourselves a bit more slack, give ourselves a bit more latitude in making the right and wrong choices, and we’re often prepared to accept a greater middle ground – more shades of grey between right and wrong instead of the black and white attitude we have when we’re on the receiving end.

One of my former business partners, a qualified psychologist, referred to it as “situational ethics”. Our ethics, our definition of right and wrong, often depends on the circumstance we’re in, who’s on the receiving end and who’s on the dishing out end.

We’re chatting today about God’s blessing, what it really means to be blessed by God. And as I said earlier, one of the toughest things for us to accept is this apparent disconnect between our ideas of success and God’s idea of blessing. We want to imagine that success, according to our definition, is exactly the same thing as blessing according to God’s definition. And when that simple and powerful formula doesn’t lay itself out in our lives the way we think it should – when we imagine that blessing means good health and prosperity and we find ourselves battling say, a major illness or struggling in our finances – then it’s a double whammy. Because not only do we have to deal with the stuff we’re dealing with, but we end up battling our disappointment and our disillusionment with God.

And that’s what we’re talking about in this series, so that we can really understand what God means by blessing. Because when we understand that then we enter into His blessing no matter what our circumstances are. Up, down, good, bad – God’s blessing doesn’t depend on our circumstances.

My childhood tantrum back on that soccer park is kind of a great little parable of our childish understanding of God’s idea of blessing. There was Mr Moore, one of my favourite teachers of all time, in my childish mind I expected that in order for him to live up to who he was in my life, in order for him to demonstrate that he was worthy of being my favourite teacher, when I pointed out the error of his umpiring ways as I saw them, he should have automatically blessed me by capitulating and agreeing with me.

We can see how childish that is. Can’t we? And yet so often our expectations of God and His blessings are no different to that 10 year old kid back there kicking the ball in the park. We want to throw a tantrum when right and wrong, good and bad, as we see them, don’t fall our way. I missed out on the fun of that afternoon through my tantrum and I know many a Christ-follower who is missing out, at least in part, on the fun and the vibrancy of life through the same immature decisions in their relationship with God. How can we blessed? Really? Here’s one way. Matthew Chapter 5 verse 6:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.

Now righteousness is a funny word. Not one we use in conversation much today. In part it means what we’ve been talking about: right and wrong, that sense of justice, that’s part of it but not all of it. In part it means integrity and virtue, purity of life. But that’s still not all of it. The other great part of what this word means as it’s used here by Jesus is about who we are; about whether we’re in a condition that’s acceptable to =God; it means having a right standing with God. Let’s take someone accused of a crime: if they’re convicted they’re now on the wrong side of the law, but once they’ve served their sentence they’re back on the right side of the law again. That’s what righteousness means, to be on the right side of the law.

And we notice here that as Jesus talks about righteousness He makes no distinction to the situation. He doesn’t specify if I’m a kid on the soccer park, having to swallow some tuff decision or whether I’m the umpire dishing out that decision. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who literally want it so much that they’re suffering, that’s the sense of the words ‘to hunger and to thirst’ here. Those who are suffering for and longing for righteousness right now are blessed right now because they will be filled. They will be satisfied.

Those who hunger and thirst for justice to be done, those who hunger and thirst for a right standing with God whatever it will cost them, those who hunger and thirst not only to be righteous through their faith in Jesus Christ, not only to have a right standing before God because they believe in Jesus, but to do righteousness, to live out righteousness, to sacrifice their lives to be like Jesus, as much as they will have to suffer along the way to live that out, they are blessed because they’ll be filled. Their longing will be satisfied, that’s what Jesus is saying.

So the next time we’re grumbling and complaining about injustice – and I know that there are some people listening today who are suffering such great injustices in their lives – the next time we’re feel as though somehow God’s deserted us, we can, by faith lay hold of this blessing. Because by faith we can know that we will be filled:

Faith is the assurance of things we hope for and the deep conviction of things we actually can’t see yet. (Hebrews 11:1)

Do you see how disappointment and disillusionment are by products of a lack of faith in the promises of God? Do you see how childish and narrow we’ve become when we’re on the receiving end of injustice or we’re dishing out something which really we shouldn’t be dishing out? Over and over in the New Testament we read about rejoicing in our suffering. “Consider it nothing but pure joy when you suffer”, writes James in his letter. “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice”, writes Paul to his friends in Philippi from his dark cell on death row.

Friend, when you and I suffer an injustice, an unrighteousness, whether it comes from someone else or it comes from ourselves, it hurts. We can throw a tantrum and miss out on the rest of the game or we can go to God and thank Him for the incredible blessing we have right now in the faith knowledge in the absolutely assurance in the deep conviction in that which we know is coming but we can’t see yet.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.

God is Real

One of the things you will hear me banging on about if you regularly join me here on Christianityworks is the fact that God’s real. That there’s a reality about what He has to say. I remember when I was in the Information Technology business is used to attend quite a few IT conferences around the world, and often the speakers, it was like they were sanitising things when they spoke. They’d talk about this great project or that one, they’d tell us how successful it was and how it had achieved it’s objectives and how wonderful their products or services were. And I used to sit there and the more experience I got under my belt, the more I started thinking, “Either I’m an idiot who gets things wrong all the time, and that’s a distinct possibility or they’re dishing up a version of IT projects that just isn’t true.”

I’ve never been involved in a single large IT project that didn’t have some problems, that didn’t have conflict between the end users and developers, that didn’t run over budget or over time, because when they first estimated it, they were afraid to tell management what it was actually it was going to cost and how long it was actually going to take.

There was a gritty reality that these slick conference presenters were skimming over. And they were doing a disservice to us and a disservice to themselves. And to be truthful, that’s the temptation that I’m often confronted with in doing what I do on this program. Because, you know what, I’d love to tell you that God always wants to bless you and that it’ll be a bed of roses and it will always be wonderful and honky dory when you give your life to Jesus, or when you get to know Him better, or when you get to the next stage in your discipleship training course, or when …

But life’s not like that, is it? In a week or two’s time I’m going to be sharing with you some insights from a man who’s ministry’s involving conflict resolution because conflict is almost a daily fact of life. The point that I’m making here is this. Here we are, about half way through this series that I’ve called, “God’s Abundant Blessing”. I’m not sure what you expected when you heard this series title, but the one thing we are not going to get is some sickly sweet, sanitised version of what blessing is in this world.

The best summary of God’s blessing, the intent of God’s blessing in a nutshell, in a single verse is John Chapter 16 verse 33, where Jesus says, “Look guys, in this world you’re going to have tribulations, pressures that are going to squeeze the life out of you, but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.”

See, God’s blessing comes in the middle of tribulations. Take this executive summary and apply it to this list of unlikely blessings in the Sermon on the Mount, and you know what, that Sermon on the Mount starts to make a bit of sense, because Jesus is a realist. He’s speaking, not into a perfect loving, all sweetness and light kind of world; He’s speaking into a lost world full of conflict and of pain and disappointments as well as joys and achievements and fulfilments, because we only want the last half of that equation. But life’s not like that and Jesus knows that, and that’s why He tells us about blessing in the gritty realities of life. That’s why He says:

Blessed is the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness sake for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

He’s for real. He understands what its like down here. And the richness of His blessing, the exquisite beauty and wonder of the blessings of God are that they come not amidst the sham of what promises, not based on the lie of only half the truth about life, but God’s blessing come when we realise there’s a different way – a Jesus way. A way of taking a total poverty of spirit and going back to God with that and asking Him to fill us because without Him we just know we’re empty. A way of embracing meekness is a powerful way of living our lives for Jesus.

Can I encourage you today? Your Jesus is for real. Your Jesus has blessing untold for you that don’t conform to the world’s measure of success. But you see the blessings of Jesus reach deeper, far deeper into who you are – into your heart, into your spirit – and they deliver a peace and power and a provision of plenty in a way that nothing in this world can. See, that’s your Jesus. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you’re going through that precisely there is your Jesus.

So if you are mourning at the moment, if you’re mourning a loss, mourning grief, the blessing of God is there for you because Jesus means to comfort you. If you’ve realised the deep poverty of your spirit and you don’t know which way to turn and you’re embarrassed and ashamed to go to God – the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to you, because God is looking for someone just like you to bless. If you’re being persecuted for Christ’s sake, if you’re struggling with persecution the blessing of God is upon you because Jesus is there with you in that place. See, Jesus is a realist and He blesses in the ups of life and He blesses us in the downs of life.

Coming up on Christianityworks, we’re going to take a look at three types of people Jesus wants to bless – those who show mercy, those with a pure heart … and the peacemakers. God delights – I mean absolutely delights – in blessing His people. And the plan for us today in the next half an hour or so, is to dive into what Jesus had to say, to discover how to lay hold of those blessings.

Blessed are the Merciful

I was chatting with a good friend of mine, Paul (who’s a magistrate in the children’s court) the other day over coffee. What must it be like to have to make those sorts of judgements that a judge or magistrate makes, day after day on the bench. As he shared the sorts of cases that come before him, what struck me was the incredible human tragedy and so many of them. So often when you and I perhaps watch or perhaps listen to the evening news and we hear about this murder or that rapist or the latest tit-for-tat gang shooting we judge those people so quickly. We do.

And of course, when people are found guilty of crimes like that, you have to look at the crime and say, “That’s terrible!” And yes, the people should pay the price of justice. But as Paul shared some of the tragic circumstances that some of the children who come before him have grown up in, you have to say, “There … but for the grace of God, I go.” If I’d grown up with those abusive parents who taught me their trade of crime and violence, would I be at all different from that kid that Paul just put away for knifing someone.

It’s a dilemma isn’t it? On the one hand crimes do have to be punished; on the other the circumstances into which people are born and in which they grow up and live are often 99.9% of the cause. That’s why courts so often take those circumstances into account. Why is it difficult? Why does justice walk such a fine line? I guess when we’re the judge, albeit through the evening news, we’re more likely to come down on the side of a heavy penalty – punishment, retribution. Why should that murderer walk free after just 25 years in gaol. But this is what I think about.

What if it was me being sentenced by Paul? What if I’d committed some terrible crime in a fit of rage or stupidity or because of something that had happened to me in the past? What if it was me standing in that sentencing dock? What if it was you? Guilty for all the world to see but with this terrible, unspeakable pain in our hearts over what we’ve done; with a remorse beyond words. If only we could turn the clock back. If only we could undo it. If only we could take that one instant back. If only I hadn’t done that.

So there you are standing in the dock awaiting sentencing. You never ever thought the shoe would be on this other foot, not in a million years did you imagine that you’d ever find yourself in this place. You’re trembling, you’re shaking like a leaf, you’re pale, you’re detached; the whole thing is surreal. The judge opens his mouth and begins to pass sentence. What’s the one thing you want to hear come out of that judge’s mouth? Well, I’ll tell you what you’d be looking to hear. I know what I’d be wanting to hear. I’d want to hear compassion in his voice. I’d want to hear words of mercy, wouldn’t you?

Well, let’s step out of that terrible scenario and come back to the here and now. Don’t you feel you’re quick-to-judge attitude towards those people on the evening news is maybe a bit rash … a bit harsh? It’s all about which foot the shoe’s on. Have a listen to how Jesus unpacks this terrible reality. We’re reading from Matthew Chapter 18 beginning at verse 21:

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.: When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him: and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made.

So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt.

When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

This is a story about which foot the shoe is on. It’s a story about judgement and mercy. And you and I are that first slave – the one who’s been forgiven but refuses to forgive. The one who’s shown mercy, but refuses to show mercy in return.
Do you feel your quick to anger, quick to judge, slow to forgive attitudes being put fairly and squarely in the spotlight here? Do you see them for what they are? I do – and frankly it makes us both squirm in our seats, because Jesus is cutting right to the bone here. He’s dealing with something that needs dealing with in our heart, in our attitudes, in our actions. Over the last couple of weeks on the programme we’ve been chatting about the strange blessings that Jesus talked about in His famous Sermon on the Mount.

Blessed are the totally, spiritually bankrupt.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those hungering for justice.

And today we’re looking at the very next one on that list. Matthew Chapter 5 beginning at verse 7:

Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.

And when you listen to that story of Jesus, that blessing needs no more explanation either, does it? It’s pretty obvious. God is a God of mercy and pours His mercy and forgiveness out on us at great cost to Himself, at the cost of the death of Jesus on that Cross – and all He asks in return is that we keep pouring that same mercy, that same love, that same forgiveness out on others.

But that person who hurt deserves what’s coming to them! Of course they do, that’s the whole point. You can only show them mercy when they don’t deserve it. And every time you and I show mercy – listen to this – it costs us something. It costs us being right, getting our own way, getting compensation or justice or retribution or whatever else we would like to call it. Mercy can only be shown and received when it’s not deserved. And mercy always, always costs us something when we show it and give it.

These are two laws of the universe that God created because mercy is an attribute of God. Psalm 103 verse 8:

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

As I was praying earlier, the thing that I prayed is that you and I, when confronted with hurts and injustice would remember this picture that I painted of us trembling in the dock awaiting sentence; that you and I would remember the heart of God through that parable of Jesus:

Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.

Blessed are the Pure in Heart

The next blessing that Jesus talks about in His famous Sermon on the Mount is the blessing coming to those who are pure in heart. Now purity is a funny concept in this day and age. On the one hand, as consumers, we want to know that what we’re buying is pure. I mean, if you are buying a wedding ring you want to know that it’s pure gold. If you’re buying bottled water, you want to know that it’s pure. Purity means that what we’re buying is free from contaminants. It means it’s the real thing. We’re getting what we paid for. So as a consumer, purity is something we value incredibly highly, wouldn’t you agree?

The moment, the instant we apply the idea of purity to people, to ourselves, what you get is this: “Oh come on. Just hang on a minute. This isn’t the 1950’s religious state you old people grew up in. None of that old fashioned moralising – my private life is exactly that. It’s private; it’s none of your business. And don’t give me that sexual purity thing, get with the times.”

When we apply that idea of purity to people mostly what that brings to mind is sexual purity – The idea of no sex before marriage and staying faithful to your husband and wife when you are married. And in most people’s thinking, that all went out with the ark. But for me, purity’s much more than that. If we take that same definition of purity for water and for gold – free from contaminants; getting what we paid for – when it comes to people, that can’t be a bad thing. Jesus said:

Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.

That can’t be a bad thing. But in this day and age, what does it really mean? Well, I guess I tried to figure out what Jesus meant, I kind of tried to look at who we are, you and I, from the outside in. And what struck me was the connection between our tongue and our heart; between the things we say and the stuff we do. And working back from the tongue I thought about foot-in-mouth disease – how what we say is in fact a reflection of the purity or otherwise of our hearts.

So here are my three steps to curing foot-in-mouth disease in reverse sequence from the outside in. And I’m using this to illustrate the concept of purity in our hearts. So here they are

Step No. 3 (starting at the outside). Never write an email that you wouldn’t put on facebook. Talking behind people’s backs is just about one of the worse things we can do. It doesn’t diminish them, it diminishes us. Gossip is like poison, and the person it ultimately kills off is the gossiper because people stop trusting us when we gossip. They figure if that’s what we say about others behind their backs, what do we say about them when they aren’t there? Paul writes in Ephesians:

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what is useful for building up as there is need so that your words may give grace to the ones who hear. (Ephesians 4:2)

So simply don’t say bad things about people. Check the tongue. But that’s not always easy to do because our tongue so often runs out of control. That’s exactly what the Bible says. James Chapter 3 verses 1-8. So what’s the answer?

That brings me to Step No. 2. Never think something that you wouldn’t say to the person’s face. It’s amazing how what we think, we end up doing. Just about everything we say and do begins with a thought. Thoughts become actions. And so when you really annoy me and I start wanting to think some bad things about you – destructive thoughts, angry thoughts, vengeful thoughts that will turn into actions or inactions – that’s what will ruin our relationship, it diminishes both.

When that happens I try and remember Paul’s advice as he sat in a dungeon on death row and I try and put it into action sooner than later. Paul writes this to the Philippians Chapter 4 verse 8:

Finally beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there’s any excellence, if there’s anything worthy of praise, then think about those things.

So when I’m thinking bad stuff, I decide to start thinking about good stuff, because while I’m thinking good stuff, you know what? There’s no room for thinking bad stuff. But there’s another level, a deeper level at play here.

So my Step No. 1 for avoiding foot-in-mouth disease, never allow something dark to fester in your heart. See, even deeper than our thoughts are our emotions. It turns out that our thoughts not only go outward into actions – things we say and do, but also downwards in our hearts, into that place where we live, that place where we feel things so deeply. That place where hurts accumulate and turn into hate and vengeance or sacrifice and love.

The good person, out of a treasure of a good heart produces God. An evil person out of evil treasure produces evil. For it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

That’s what Jesus said. Luke Chapter 6 verse 45

Now whilst I seem to be able to choose what I think about, as determined and as strong willed as I am, I can’t seem to control what I feel in my heart. Have you noticed that too? So I go to the only person who can make a difference in that place and I say to Him:

God, create in me a clean heart. Put a new and right spirit in me. The sacrifice acceptable to you, oh God, is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:10,17)

It’s the only thing I’ve ever found that works. Jesus.

Blessed are the Peacemakers

I met a guy a few months back who runs a ministry called “Peacewise” – his name is Bruce Burgess. “What’s ‘Peacewise’ all about?” I asked Him. Conflict is all around us, conflict is a fact of life. And Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God. So, he reasons, if that’s the case, then being someone who makes peace is like being an image bearer of God. People look at us and they see something different. They see God. The problem is, most of us don’t know how to respond to conflict Biblically.

It made a lot of sense to me, what he said. So I just want to unpack a few things that Bruce shared with me as we try to understand what Jesus means by this blessing that he bestows on the peacemakers.

Generally our response to conflict isn’t all that well thought out; it’s just a gut reaction. At first there is the group of escape responses. Denial – let’s pretend it’s not there; flight – let’s run away; and sadly in some extreme cases, suicide – when people use all hope of resolving a conflict; they can’t see a way out.

And now at the opposite end of the spectrum to the escape responses are the attack responses. Assault – a full frontal attack; to roll over the top of someone and get them to yield. Sometimes it goes into litigation. Law suits ruin relationships, they diminish our Christian witness and often they fail to achieve complete justice. And again, at the extreme end, people may be so desperate to win, they will try to kill their opponent.

Now, none of those, whether they be an escape response or an attack response are particularly effective. The problem is, when we’re in conflict it’s not a good time to start trying to figure out how to handle it. But if we can learn God’s wisdom and make it part of who we are, then we can head into conflict armed with godly wisdom. Can you imagine what a powerful and effective witness that is? That’s what the ministry of Peacewise is all about. You just google them on the web and you’ll find them there.

What really struck me were the godly principles that he’d put into his life and which formed the basis of what he teaches. He said to me, “When people are reconciled to God by the death and resurrection of Jesus, so we believe we are called to respond to conflict in a way that’s remarkably different from the way the world deals with conflict.”

So out of all that, the ministry of Peacewise grows these four Biblical principles. They all start with the letter “G” – the four “G”s’. Even just spending a half-an-hour with Bruce I’ve managed to remember these four“G”s’ and when I find myself in a conflict situation they’re what I fall back on. They’re a huge help. So here are the four“G”s’, the four principles he shared with me.

The first principle, GLORIFY GOD. Instead of focusing on our own desires, instead of dwelling on what others may or may not do, let’s rejoice in the Lord and bring Him praise by depending on His forgiveness, His wisdom, His power, His love. Just faithfully, as best we can, set out to obey Him and maintain a loving, merciful, forgiving attitude and everything, no matter how terrible the conflict, no matter how much people come against us.

King David was no stranger to conflict. He spent many years on the run with King Saul trying to kill him. Many battles and wars, even his son tried to kill him. David wrote these words in Psalm 37. He said:

Don’t fret because of the wicked, do not be envious of wrongdoers for they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good so that you will live in the land and enjoy security. Take delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord and trust in Him and He will act. He will make your vindication shine like the light and the justice of your cause like the noonday.

That’s the very first “G” – GLORIFY GOD above all other things. That really sets us on firm ground as we deal with conflict.

The second“G”, the second principle – GET THE LOG OUT OF YOUR OWN EYE. I guess most of us know this one. Let’s just hear it again from Jesus in case we’re a bit rusty. Matthew Chapter 7 beginning at verse 3:

Why is it that you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye but you don’t notice the log in your own. Or how can you say to your neighbour, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye’, while there’s a log in your own. You hypocrite. First take the log out of your own eye and then you’ll see clearly enough to take the speck out of your neighbours eye.

Pretty confronting! How easy it is to blame everyone else and resist correction instead of trusting in God’s mercy and taking responsibility for our own contribution to the conflict. Confessing our sin to those whom we’ve wronged asking God to help us change any attitude or any habit we have contributing to the conflict so that we can see the whole thing clearly, so we can respond in a godly way.

So, the first “G” is upward – GLORIFY GOD; the second “G” is inward – GET THE LOG OUT OF YOUR OWN EYE. And only when we’ve done those two can we move to the third principle, which is GENTLY RESTORE. Instead of pretending that the conflict doesn’t exist, or talking about people behind their backs, we overlook minor offences, or we talk personally and graciously to those who’s offences too serious to overlook. Try and restore them rather than condemn them. That’s the key – trying to restore them rather than condemn them.

When a conflict can’t be resolved in private, then just as Jesus taught, we ask others to help us settle the matter. Psalm 19:11 puts it this way:

Those with good sense are slow to anger and it’s their glory to overlook an offence.

And the last of the four“G”s’ is GO AND BE RECONCILED. Instead of accepting premature compromise or allowing relationships to wither, we actively pursue genuine peace and reconciliation, forgiving others for God’s sake as Christ has forgiven us, and seeking just and mutually beneficial solutions to our differences. Matthew Chapter 5 beginning at verse 23:

So when you’re offering your gift at the altar, if you remember your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother or sister and then come and offer your gift.

Here are the four again:

1. Glorify God
2. Get the log out of your own eye
3. Gently restore
4. Go and be reconciled

You know, this isn’t the easiest path. This path to conflict resolution takes courage, it takes humility, it takes sacrifice, and it will often cause us pain to be a peacemaker. Look at what it cost God to make peace with you and me – the life of Jesus on the Cross. But there’s blessing in this place. And not only that, it’s one of the most powerful witnesses of our faith that we can possibly have, because people notice the difference, people notice how we behave in conflict, people notice how we behave under pressure. Jesus said this:

Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God.

Why will they be called “children of God”? Because people notice the difference. May you be blessed as you become a peacemaker.

Jesus always meant for us to live an extraordinary life. Now– that doesn’t always mean a successful one as we would define success – money, reputation – all those worldly measure. But a life that goes beyond the ordinary. A life that has an impact in this world for His glory. But if we’re going to live that sort of a life, we’re going to need His blessing. That’s right God’s blessing isn’t just some optional extra. It’s not merely the icing on the cake. It’s absolutely vital, if we’re to live the life that He’s called each one of us to live.

Blessed are the Persecuted

We have our ideas of what life is meant to be like; what makes sense and what doesn’t. And can I tell you, so often I listen to what Jesus has to say and first up He just doesn’t make sense. Jesus. Matthew chapter 5 verse 11:

Blessed are you when people 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 in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Of all His statements about who would be blessed in His famous Sermon on the Mount – the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness sake – this one’s the hardest to fathom by a country mile. More Christians were martyred for their faith in the 20th Century than in the whole 19 centuries leading up to that put together.

What is this “blessed are the persecuted” all about? Is it religious extremism, the sort that has terrorists flying planes into towers? Or is it something entirely different? We’re going to do something a bit different today. I’m going to read you a story, a true story of the martyrdom of a man by the name of Polycarp in AD156, taken from an eyewitness account. I don’t have any comment to make on it at all at this point in time, but as I read this powerful, powerful story I want you to ask yourself, “Was Jesus right? Was Polycarp cursed or blessed?” Here’s the story:

Polycarp’s the Bishop of Smyrna on the west coast of what’s today Turkey. Part of the generation of church leaders who succeeded the Apostles. Christians were being persecuted, executed; search parties were searching for this bishop. And finally they found him at a farm house. He could have escaped to another place but he decided to stay there. “God’s will be done”, he said. When Polycarp heard the police were there, he went downstairs and talked to them. Everyone was amazed at his age and his courage and they wondered why there should be so much haste about arresting an old man like this.

Despite the lateness of the hour, he’d set the table for them to eat and to drink as much as they desired. He asked them to give him an hour to pray undisturbed and they agreed. So Polycarp stood and prayed out loud. He was so filled with the grace of God that for two hours he couldn’t be silent. Those who listened were astounded and many were sorry they’d come to arrest such a venerable old man.

When Polycarp had finished his prayer, after remembering everyone who’d ever crossed his path, both small and great, high and low, and the whole church throughout the whole world, the time came for them to leave. They set him on an ass and led him into the city.

Now the chief of police named Herod and his father, Niketas, met Polycarp and took him into their carriage. Sitting beside him, they tried to persuade him to change his mind. “What harm is there in saying, ‘Lord Caesar’ and offering sacrifice and saving yourself from death? Save yourself.” At first Polycarp didn’t answer them, but when they kept at it he said, “Look, I’m not going to do what you advise.” Then they gave up trying to persuade him and began to make threats. They forced him out of the carriage so fast that he scraped his shin getting out.

Without even turning around, as though he felt nothing, Polycarp walked on quickly and was taken into the noisy stadium. As he entered a voice from heaven came to him saying, ‘Be strong Polycarp and act like a man.” No one saw the speaker but our friends who were there heard the voice. Polycarp was brought before the pro-consul who also tried to persuade him to deny his faith. “Look, respect your age,’ said the Proconsul. “Swear by the divine power of Caesar, change your mind”. Say, “away with the atheists!”

But Polycarp, with a solemn look at the unruly crowd in the stadium pointed to them, and looking up to heaven said, “away with the atheists!” The proconsul urged him harder. Take the oath and I’ll let you go. Curse Christ. “Eighty and six years have I served Him and He never did me any wrong”, said Polycarp, “How can I blaspheme my King who has saved me.”

When the Proconsul kept insisting, “Swear by the divine power of Caesar!” Polycarp answered, “If you vainly suppose that I will swear by the divine power of Caesar as you say, and if you pretend that you don’t know who I am, listening plainly. I am a Christian and if you wish to learn the Christian message arrange a meeting and give me a hearing.” “I have wild animals”, said the Proconsul, “I’ll throw you to them unless you change your mind.” Polycarp replied, “Call them, for we are not allowed to change from something better to something worse.” “Scorn the wild beasts and I’ll have you burnt alive”, said the Proconsul, “if you don’t change your mine.”

Polycarp said, “You threaten me with fire that burns for a short time but soon is quenched. You don’t know about the fire of the coming judgement and the eternal punishment that awaits the wicked. But why are we waiting. Come on do what you will.”

Polycarp radiated courage and joy as he said these and many other things. Not only did his face show no sign of distress whatsoever, it was full of grace that the Proconsul was astounded at and sent his herald into the middle of the arena three times to announce, “Polycarp has declared he is a Christian.” At the herald’s announcement the whole crowd roared with wild anger and a loud cry, “This is the father of the Christians, the destroyer of our gods who teaches many to stop offering sacrifices to the gods.” Shouting with one voice they demanded that Polycarp be burnt alive.

This happened incredibly quickly, faster than it takes to tell the story. The mob hurried to gathering wood and kindling from the shops and bath houses. When the pyre was ready, Polycarp took off his outer clothes, unfastened his belt, and tried to take off his shoes. Immediately they began to pile the wood around him. They were going to nail him to the stake as well, but Polycarp said, “Leave me as I am. He who gives me power to endure the fire will help me to remain in the flames without moving, even without being secured by nails.”

So Polycarp put his hands behind him. He was bound like a noble ram out of a great flock ready for sacrifice – a burnt offering prepared and pleasing to God. Looking up to heaven he prayed an awesome prayer glorifying God. When he had said ‘amen’ and finished his prayer the men in charge of the fire lit it and a great flame blazed up. We who had been given privilege to witness it saw great miracle and have been kept alive so that we might report to other what happened.

The fire took the shape of a vaulted room, like a ship’s sail filled with wind and surrounded the body of the martyr like a wall, and he stood inside it, not as a burning flesh but as bread being baked or as gold and silver being refined in a furnace and we smelled a fragrant aroma, like the scent of incense and other costly spices. Seeing that his body could not be consumed by the fire, the lawless men commanded an executioner to go and stab Polycarp. So Polycarp died a martyr. And that’s the story as it’s recorded. Let’s come back to what Jesus said; that difficult saying:

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on My account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward in heaven is great. For in the same way they persecuted the prophet who went before you.

Let me ask you again, was Polycarp blessed or not? You choose, you decide. From where I sit, this isn’t about religious fanaticism, like people who fly planes into towers; this isn’t about some stupid escapism where we detach ourselves from reality. The fact is that people are persecuted. In the wealthy west it may mean some smear or scorn. But in other parts of the world it means financial ruin; it means being disowned by your family, and in large parts of the world, declaring that you believe in Jesus, let alone telling others about Jesus, is punishable by death either by the law of the land or the hands of an angry mob.

And Jesus asks us to declare our faith, not to deny it. Jesus said:

Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before My Father in heaven. But whoever denies me before others I also will deny before My Father in Heaven.

Sometimes we can’t avoid that. Sometimes that’s going to lead to persecution, for some, extreme persecution. And right there, in that place as Polycarp discovered …

… blessed are you when people 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 in the same way they persecuted the prophets who went before you.

Salt and Light

Over the last few weeks on the program we’ve been looking at what Jesus means by blessing, by joining the crowds on that Mount somewhere near the Sea of Galilee and listening intently to that famous Sermon He preached there about blessing. Now the crowds, the thousands, who’d come from far and wide – whole villages had shut down and emptied out, people were giving up a day’s wages to come and see this amazing Jesus.

Now for the most part they were humble folk, farmers and labourers, unimportant people in the geo-political scheme of things – The Roman Empire, Caesar, power, wealth and might. These people were of no significance, no consequence to the Empire. And generation after generation lived their simple lives in the most meagre of circumstances.

And today, this day, they’ve left their homes and their workplaces and come to hear this Jesus; come to hear this amazing miracle man heal and bless and speak the most profound truths into their lives. They’ve come why? Hoping to be blessed, hoping beyond all hope somehow to be lifted out of oppression – political, social, economic oppression in which they lived their short lives. They’ve come to see and to hear and to judge for themselves this extraordinary man – Jesus.

Will today be that day I’ll be blessed I wonder? And Jesus stands up and says to these very people, He says:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people 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 in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Do you see how Jesus is speaking right into the realities of their lives; into to the challenges, into their powerlessness, into their pain, into their desire to see some justice, into all their difficulty, into the persecution they suffer under the Empire, for believing, as they do in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

As we’ve seen over these last few weeks, Jesus has come along and turned their world upside down. He’s opened, as it were, the door of heaven and invited them for a moment to stand in the balconies of heaven and to look down and see their lives through God’s eyes. He’s spoken the blessing of God into their lives.

But this last thing that He has to say to them in this part of His message, the thing we’ll look at right now, is perhaps the most foreign, the most difficult for them to understand, the most unbelievable of all. Having spoken his extraordinary blessing, the blessing of His Father in heaven into their meagre, insignificant and difficult lives this is what He now says to them. Matthew Chapter 5 beginning at verse 15:

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste how can its saltiness be restored? It’s no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under food.

You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basked but is put on a lamp stand and gives light to the whole house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

See, these people are listening in their bland, subsistence world, this world where they have the same boring foods day after day – a world devoid of culinary diversity of the affluent west in the 21st Century. Flavour to them was everything. Flavour stood out. When you’re eating the same stuff day in, day out, you really notice flavour. And the primary way that they enhanced flavour, the way they brought the flavour out from the blandness, was to use salt – sea salt. And Jesus says to them, “You are the salt of the earth.”

And when the sun went down there were no city lights, there were no neon signs, there were no 50” plasma TV screens dotted around their houses, there were no electric light bulbs in their ceilings. When the sun went down it was pitch dark, except for small candles and maybe a fire. So a candle stood out; it punctuated the darkness. And a city with its candles and small fires stood out for miles … miles. “You,” said Jesus, “you are the light of the world.”

Now, put yourself in their shoes for just a moment. Poor, insignificant peasants living the same bland, insignificant lives that their forefathers had lived in that same place for generations, the same life they had lived for the 30 or 40 years on this earth, and the same life that their children and their children’s children would surely live for generations to come. And Jesus says to them … to them! Can you believe it? “You are the salt of the earth – you are what brings flavour. You are the light of the world – you bring light into the darkness.”

They’re asking themselves, “What? What does He mean? This is us He is talking about here. Me? Salt? Me? Light? Insignificant me? What did Jesus mean by this?” Well, here’s what Jesus meant. Jesus was saying to them:

I’m here to turn your boring little world upside down because when you believe in Me, when you hear My words and you live them, when you follow the God of Abraham, and of Isaac and of Jacob, my Father in heaven, through Me, something’s going to happen to you, something’s going change.

All of a sudden you become the salt in the bland, tasteless, unchanging, subsistence world of the people around you. All of a sudden, through your relationship with Me, you add flavour to people’s lives because when they’re poor in spirit, when they’re mourning, when they’re powerless, when they’re hungering and thirsting for justice, when they’re persecuted you can be the blessing. You are the blessing because I am in you and you are in Me. You stand out like salt on your lamb roast.

It’s as though you’ve become light to a dark world. You … you are the light of the world because I am the light of the world. You bring flavour and light and meaning and warmth and goodness and kindness and love into this dark, mundane, insignificant corner of the world in which you live.

You are the salt, you are the light. You the marginalized, the oppressed the simple, the uneducated, the lowest of low in the geo-political scheme of things – you have significance because you are in Me and I have something for you to do.

Do you see what’s going on here? Do you hear the power, I mean the awesome power of what Jesus is saying to the? Do you see what He meant to those who were there on that day, on that hill, listening to Him? And do you hear … do you hear Jesus saying those very same words to you today? Do you hear the blessing? Do you see the opportunity? Are you getting some inkling of His plan for your life, a plan to be with Him, and in Him, and through Him, have an impact in this place?

Friend, you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world. Yes … you!

An Extraordinary Life

During the course of this series – in studying God’s Word, in listening to Jesus, trying to understand what He means and trying to apply it to my life – it struck me how differently He sees my world and how differently He sees blessing from His heavenly standpoint, from the way you and I might see it from our earthly standpoint.

What I love is that He brings perspective, God’s truth to life before these peasants, these salt-of-the-earth people as He calls them. He totally astounds them at every turn. That’s what’s coming to life here for me in this Sermon on the Mount as we’ve been sitting some time sitting on the grassy hillside listening to Jesus talking about what blessing really means.

As a separate exercise, something I’ve been doing in parallel over these last few weeks is working on my blog site to improve it and update it. I’ve been using some wisdom from an expert blogger who’s written a great book. And the first step he teaches about improving your blog site is to have what he calls what he calls an elevator pitch. In other words, to be able to succinctly and clearly state the value proposition of the blog so that people can quickly figure out if this is something they want to engage with or not. It makes sense.

Now, the name of my blog is “A Different Perspective” which is why you can find it at adifferentperspective.org and you may be aware that “A Different Perspective” is the name of a daily radio program that I also produce. So the challenge for me was to articulate the elevator pitch – the succinct value proposition of “A Different Perspective” – short, simple, to the point.

Now that name,“A Different Perspective” is one that I chose a long time ago because it struck me that God’s Word is all about helping us to see things from a different perspective – from His perspective. It’s as though He wants to take us up and show us the view from heaven’s balcony. And the elevator pitch – the value statement that I came up with for the blog site is this. It’s about living an extraordinary life by taking a look at the ordinary stuff from a different perspective.

Now, I don’t mean by extraordinary that we’ll all be famous, that we’ll be healthy, wealthy and wise, that we’ll all be No.1 in our field, that we’ll all be rich, that we’ll all be successful. That’s not what I mean. The “extra” in front of “ordinary” is a bit like the “super” in front of “natural”. “Supernatural” means beyond the natural, above the natural. And what I mean by “extraordinary” – an extraordinary life – is a life that goes beyond the ordinary.

You see, we live 99.9% of our lives in the ordinary, in the mundane, in the boring. Just like those people sitting on that hillside listening to Jesus that day. It seems to me that living that extraordinary life that Jesus calls us to, that salt and light significance, an impact kind of life, involves taking a look at the ordinary mundane things of our lives from a different perspective.

So there I was on the one hand studying the Sermon on the Mount and on the other hand improving my blog and coming up with the elevator pitch and in an instant those two things came together. Did you see in the Sermon on the Mount that that’s exactly what Jesus was doing there? Exactly! He’s taking the ordinary things of people’s lives and illuminating them with the light of heaven to show them that when they take a look at those ordinary things there is extraordinary blessing in them.

And when they open their hands and their hearts in faith to receive that blessing because they’ve just listened to Jesus, they’ve just dared to look at those ordinary things through His eyes, from a different perspective, all of a sudden their lives become extraordinary. All of a sudden they become the salt that brings flavour into the ordinary stuff of life. All of a sudden they become the light of the world and shine Jesus into the hearts of those around them.

They start to live extraordinary lives because they dared to open their eyes to see and their ears to hear and their hand to receive and their hearts to be transformed. All because they accepted Jesus in faith, they dared to live their whole lives, the ordinary and the mundane – from His perspective, from His standpoint.

And that’s precisely how we lay hold of the blessing that Jesus offers us here and now. We live an extraordinary life by looking at the ordinary things from a different perspective.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness sake.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the pure in heart.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for Jesus’ sake.

In all of those things, in those difficult, ordinary things, the Word of God from Jesus for you and for me today is this, take a look at it through His eyes, look at our lives through His eyes and we’ll discover an extraordinary life. Not a life of success but a life of blessing in Jesus Christ.