The Beatitudes: Blueprint of a Christian

There’s a little two-letter word that we use constantly in the English language: it’s the word UP. It’s easy to understand the word UP, meaning toward the sky or toward the top of a list.

But when we waken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? And why are participants said to speak UP? Why are officers UP for election? And why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

This little word UP is not really needed, but we use it anyway. We brighten UP a room, light UP a cigar, polish UP the silverware, lock UP the house, and fix UP the old car.

At other times, the word has special meanings. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, think UP excuses, and get tied UP in traffic.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special. It may be confusing, but a drain must be opened UP because it is clogged UP.

We open UP a store in the morning and close it UP in the evening. We seem to be all mixed UP about UP.

In order to be UP on the proper use of the word UP, look it UP in the dictionary. You’ll find that in one standard dictionary, the word UP takes UP half a column, and the listed definitions add UP to about 40.

If you’re UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways in which the word UP is used. It may take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP, you may wind UP with UP to a thousand or more!

Now I’ve said all that to say this: at one point in his ministry, Jesus went UP onto a mountainside, pulled UP a seat, and spoke UP to the crowd some of the most UPlifting words ever spoken. (UP til then!)

I’m talking about the Sermon on the Mount, and you can look it UP in Matthew 5. The Sermon on the Mount is an extremely important piece of teaching, because it sums UP the essence of what it means to be a Christian.

Over the next several weeks and months, I want to walk through this Sermon with you. (If you’re UP to it!) Because I think that this Sermon has tremendous lessons on living for us today. The issues that we’re struggling with in our lives are issues that Jesus dealt with in this Sermon; things like priorities, money, worry, prayer, being a person of integrity. You’ll find all those things in this Sermon.

The Sermon on the Mount begins with eight short statements about the Christian life. We call them the Beatitudes, because they all start with the word blessed, which in Latin is the word “beatus”. (Over in Israel, they’ve built an eight-sided church on the hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee where Jesus was supposed to have given the Sermon on the Mount.)

Now these eight statements called the Beatitudes have been often misunderstood. (People tend to get mixed UP about them.) Let me tell you what the Beatitudes are NOT:

1. The Beatitudes are not optional for a Christian.

If you have ever shopped for a new car, you may be suffering from what the consumer experts call “sticker shock”. Every new car comes with a price sticker on the window. When you walk into a dealer’s showroom and look at the sticker, you go into shock!

That’s because the sticker tells you that the base price of that new car gets you practically nothing. If you want extras, like wheels, or an engine, or seats, you have to pay extra. The sticker has a big long list of options on it, which add up to the bottom line price of the car.

Now some people think that the Beatitudes are to a Christian like options are to a new car; they’re nice if you can afford them, but they’re not absolutely essential. Let me tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. The Beatitudes are about the essentials of the Christian life.

That’s why I call the Beatitudes a “blueprint of the Christian life”. And that’s why Jesus started his Sermon here. These characteristics are the basic building blocks God uses to make a Christian. If the attributes referred to in the Beatitudes are not true of you, then you are not a Christian.

2. The Beatitudes are not about natural character traits.

When Jesus talks about meekness, and mourning, and mercy, he’s not talking about those things as natural characteristics, or personality traits.

We all know people who are particularly kind or big-hearted. I knew a lady who loved to take in stray cats. She never met a cat she didn’t like. Her house was just full of cats. You might say that she was especially merciful in that way. But this is not what Jesus is talking about here. He’s not talking about natural human tendencies.

When he talks about peacemakers, he’s not talking about people like Boutros-Boutros Ghalli and the diplomats of the United Nations who have given their lives to promoting world peace.

The Beatitudes are supernatural characteristics that you can only get because God gives them to you. It takes a work of God in your life to produce the quality of mourning and meekness and mercy that Jesus is talking about here.

3. The Beatitudes are not about “happiness”; they’re about “blessedness”. There’s a big difference.

The word happy is related to the word happening. Both of them come from the Germanic root “hap”, which means “chance”. When we say “perhaps”, we literally mean “per chance”. When we talk about someone being “hapless” - the opposite of “happy” - we mean that they are out of luck. Chance has not smiled on them; good fortune has deserted them. Happiness is based on circumstances. If good things happen to you, you’re happy. If not, you’re hapless.

This is not what the word blessed means. Many modern translations of the Bible have substituted the word happy for the word blessed here in the Beatitudes. That is not a good substitution.

The word blessed, in Greek, is the word “makarios”. It comes from the Gk. word “makro”, which means “large”. We use the word “macro” in English as the opposite of the word “micro”. So to be “makarios” is to be made large.

In the ancient world, the island of Cyprus was a legendary place. Travelers who visited Cyprus were impressed with its beautiful climate. It had rich soil and many natural resources. It was an abundant and fruitful land. Because it was an island way out in the middle of the Mediterranean, it was protected from the wars that raged on the mainland.

The really neat thing about Cyprus was that it was self-contained; it didn’t need to import anything from the outside world. Everything that the residents of Cyprus needed was right there at their fingertips. For these reasons, the people of the ancient world called the island of Cyprus “Makaria” - the Large Land; the Blessed Land. They said “God has smiled on that island and made it what it is.”

Do you see the difference between being blessed and being happy? Blessedness springs from what’s going on between you and God. It’s internal. But happiness is external. Happiness comes from outside. Blessedness is not determined by your outward circumstances but by your inner relationship with God.

A person who is blessed is self-contained - he has resources springing up within himself that have no outward cause. But a person who tries to live for happiness is always going to be a hostage of his circumstances.

Now Jesus says “If you really want to have true happiness; if you want to have a kind of happiness that you cannot lose because it really isn’t happiness at all, it’s blessedness—then these things are going to have to be true of you.

“You’re going to have to be poor in spirit; you’re going to have to mourn; you’re going to have to become meek, and so on…” And people hear that and they say “Hold on, that doesn’t make sense. How can I be happy if I’m mourning? How can I be blessed if people are persecuting me?”

4. The Beatitudes are not the world’s idea of how to have a happy life.

You look at these characteristics in the Beatitudes, and you have to realize that they are not what the world is pursuing. The world places no premium on these things. They run counter to the current of our culture.

Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” But the world says “No… If you want a happy life, you’ve gotta learn to be self-confident. Be self-assured.”

Go into a bookstore some time and look at the number of books that are supposed to help you become more assertive, more successful, more attractive, more dynamic.

Jesus says “Blessed are those who mourn” But the world says “No… If you want a happy life, you’ve gotta laugh. Have a good time. Party hearty.

Jesus says “Blessed are the meek”. But the world says “Meek? Shmeek! You try being meek around here these days, and you’re gonna get stomped on. You’ll end up a doormat for people to wipe their feet on.

“You want to have a good life, you’ve got to go out there and grab it. You’ve got to put yourself forward, elbow your way to the front of the crowd. It’s a dog eat dog world out there, so you’ve gotta learn to be a big dog.”

That’s the way the world thinks. But that is totally the opposite of what Jesus taught. So don’t think that the Beatitudes are going to help you climb the ladder of success the way that the world defines it. Jesus’ ladder is leaning against a completely different wall.

Look at the first Beatitude.

Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for their is the kingdom of heaven.

What does it mean to be poor in spirit?

When I used to live in New York, I’d go into the Bowery Mission regularly to conduct services there. While driving there, I’d pass through some pretty bad sections of the city.

I’d see people living in dingy housing projects, most of them unemployed and on welfare. They didn’t have much. They were poor.

But then I’d arrive in Lower Manhattan at the Bowery. And there I would encounter another kind of poor. I’d meet men and women whose home was the street. They didn’t even know where their next meal was coming from. The only things they owned were the clothes on their backs, and those were filthy and ragged. They were so poor that they had nothing at all.

When Jesus used this expression “poor in spirit”, that’s the kind of poor he meant. Being poor in spirit means standing before God with nothing to your name, and admitting it. You’re utterly and completely bankrupt.

You’re not standing there saying “God, I know I’m pretty poor, but I do have a few good things to my name. I mean, I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve tried my best to be good. I’ve never cheated on my wife. I’ve been a good father and provider for my children. I’ve gone to church all my life, and done a lot of good works. Surely you’re going to give me credit for those things?”

But the Bible says that all our righteousness is as filthy rags in God’s sight.

Jesus painted a word picture of what it means to be poor in spirit. It is found in Luke 18. (page 1038 in the pew Bible).

Luke 18:10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The tax collector was poor in spirit. He realized, as he stood there with his head bowed before God, that there was nothing he could do or say that could take away his unworthiness before God as a sinner.

He felt his own utter spiritual bankruptcy before God. He had nothing, and he knew he had nothing. And Jesus says to us “That is where you have to begin if you would enter the kingdom of heaven.”

To be poor in spirit is the opposite of to be proud. Pride is what C.S. Lewis calls the “great sin”. Pride is the original sin; the root of all other sins. Pride is what made the devil the devil.

Pride is the sin that everyone hates when they see it in someone else, but which hardly anyone ever sees in himself. And the more pride we have in ourselves, the more we hate it in others.

When we are proud, we tend to compare ourselves with others, just as the Pharisee did in Jesus’ story. C.S. Lewis writes “A proud man is always looking down on things and people, and of course, as long as you are looking down, you can’t see something that is above you.”

That is why unless you become poor in spirit, you can never know God. Because when you come up against God, you come up against someone who is utterly and completely superior to you. Unless you recognize God as being that - and as a result, see yourself as nothing, you cannot know God at all.

That is why being poor in spirit is the gateway to the kingdom of heaven. You have to come to the end of yourself, to the end of your self-confidence, to the end of your self-reliance, to the end of your self-justification before God can save you.

The Bible says that God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. God cannot help a proud man, because a proud man does not think he needs God’s help.

Pride is spiritual cancer; it’s a fatal disease. Pride will take you straight to hell. The only remedy is to be poor in spirit. And only God can bring you to that place.

You may remember the name Lee Atwater. Lee Atwater used to be the Republican National Committee chairman. Prior to that he was the director of President Bush’s successful 1988 election campaign.

Lee Atwater was a political animal. He knew how to play political hardball and he didn’t care how many enemies he made along the way. He was the one who came up with the idea for the Willie Horton ads during the ‘88 campaign. Atwater was a hard-nosed Washington insider; hard-driving and highly competitive.

But something happened to Lee Atwater in 1990. He collapsed while giving a speech. The doctors found a brain tumor. It was malignant. They gave him a 10% chance of survival.

Atwater immediately resigned from his prominent leadership positions. One day he was a nationally-known figure at the pinnacle of his career; the next he was just a poor, frightened man fighting for his life.

Somewhere in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death, Lee Atwater began to think about spiritual things. He began to reflect on his life and his accomplishments, and what it all meant in light of his impending death. And through the witness of Christian friends, Lee Atwater received Jesus Christ as His Savior.

When word of his newfound faith in Jesus got out, Atwater’s political cronies in Washington had a field day. They smiled knowingly, and attributed his new-found spirituality to the fact that he knew he was going to die.

But through it all, Lee Atwater—a man who once would have lashed out at his critics—simply held his peace. He began to write letters of apology to Michael Dukakis and all the other people whom he had hurt in political life. His repentance was genuine. He was a man who had become poor in spirit before God, and now had embarked on the process of becoming meek before men. Lee Atwater lived just one more year. He died in April, 1991 at the age of 40, leaving a wife and three young daughters.

Sometimes it takes a crisis like that to drive us to our knees. It may be a physical crisis such as Lee Atwater had. It may be an emotional crisis - the break-up of a marriage, the rebellion of a child. It may be a financial crisis.

But whatever it is, you can be sure that God allows it to happen in order to help you become poor in spirit. He wants you to realize emotionally, as well as intellectually, that you need Him. This is why the Beatitudes begin here.

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