Matthew 5:1-11
Finding True Happiness

Someone has said that happiness is like a dog chasing its tail. The harder you try to catch it the faster it flees from you. When you leave it alone and go about your business it tends to follow behind.

The Beatitudes are Jesus' prescription for true happiness.

Each one of the Beatitudes has exactly the same form. In the Greek there is no verb, no "are". So "Blessed are the poor in spirit" would actually be "Blessed! The poor in spirit." The reason for this is that Jesus probably spoke this sermon in Aramaic or Hebrew and it was later translated into Greek. In Hebrew and Aramaic there is a common expression which is an exclamation "O the blessedness of!..."

It is very important to realize that the Beatitudes are not pious longings for some future state of happiness. Rather they are congratulations on what IS right now. Being a Christian is not just about "pie in the sky by and by"; it is about experiencing blessedness right here and now.

So the Beatitudes are really a way of saying, "O the bliss of being a follower of Jesus. O the sheer joy of knowing Jesus as Lord and Savior!"

The word "blessed" in Greek is makarios and it has a special meaning. It describes a joy which is serene and untouchable and self-contained; a joy that does not change with the circumstances of life. The English word "happy" is actually very different and is based on the Anglo-Saxon root "hap" which means chance and infers dependence on circumstances and situations.

Matthew 5:3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The word used for poor here is pt chos. In Greek there are two words for poor: penes and ptochos. Penes describes the working man who lives hand to mouth. He is not rich nor destitute. He meets his own needs with his own hands.

The word used in this passage, however, means absolute and abject poverty. It describes a poverty that has been beaten to its knees. So the meaning of the beatitude starts to become: Blessed is the man who is abjectly and completely poverty-stricken. "Blessed is the many who is absolutely destitute." The Hebrew that was the original form of the Beatitudes means a person who because he has no earthly resources whatever and who puts their whole trust in God.

With both these senses of the term "poor" combined we come to this meaning of the Beatitude: "Blessed is the man who has realized his own utter helplessness, and who has put his whole trust in God."

The reward for the one who is poor in spirit is "the kingdom of Heaven". The Kingdom of God is a society where God's will is perfectly done in earth as it is in heaven.

It is not financial poverty that is being lifted up here but being poor "in spirit". The kingdom of Heaven is the possession of the poor in spirit because the poor in spirit have realized their own utter helplessness without God. Poverty is NOT good thing except in those cases where a person takes up holy poverty as a spiritual discipline. St Francis of Assisi adopted voluntary poverty as a means of becoming completely dependent and at one with God.

O the bliss of the man who has realized his own utter helplessness, and who has put his whole trust in God, for thus alone can he render to God that perfect obedience which will make him a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven!

This is a complete reversal of the world's view of what makes a person happy and successful!

What is the world's standard for happiness?

Matthew 5:4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." The word used here in this beatitude for "mourn" is the strongest word in the Greek language for that action. It is used for mourning for the dead, a passionate lament for the loss of a loved one. It has been defined as the kind of grief which takes such a hold over a person that it cannot be hidden. So here is the bliss described by this beatitude: "Blessed is the one who mourns like one morning for the dead."

• This can be taken literally. Sorrow can become a blessing because it gives and opportunity for the comfort of God and the comfort of other people to be shown to us. Also SORROW MAKES PEOPLE DEEP. The person who has never suffered great sorrow is a person who has not had the occasion to become a person of depth of character. Sorrow can make us bitter or better.

I walked a mile with Pleasure;

She chatted all the way;

But left me none the wiser

For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,

And ne'er a word said she;

But, oh! the things I learned from her,

When Sorrow walked with me.

Robert Hamilton

God often speaks to us in our sorrows in such a way as we could never hear during times of comfort and ease.

Peter Kreeft says that the saints coped with suffering...

...by expecting suffering, because their Lord has told them to. Our model was the Man of Sorrows. The closer we get to him, the more likely it will be that splinters will rub off his cross onto us. One of the saints says, "The cross is the gift God gives to his friends."

The gospel is not "nice." The false gospel of niceness, prosperity, popularity, peace, and success is an abomination and a lie—no matter how many smiling televangelists assure us it is the truth. God's Word clearly spells out our lot: "In this world you will have tribulations. But be of good cheer: I have overcome the world" (John 16:33 RSV).

The purpose of our lives in this world is not comfort and security but training; not fulfillment but preparation. The world is a lousy home, but a good gymnasium. It's like an uphill bowling alley. The point is not to succeed in knocking down all the pins but to train our muscles. We misunderstand the point of this world if we expect it to be happy. Paradoxically, those who expect happiness in this world are usually the most unhappy people, while those who expect unhappiness are the happiest people. "We have no right to happiness," wrote C. S. Lewis in his last published article. Malcolm Muggeridge calls the phrase "the pursuit of happiness" in our Declaration of Independence not one of the fundamental rights of man but "one of the silliest and shallowest sentences I have ever seen."

The world is a soul-making machine. We had better stop looking for escape hatches from its trials, for this is our hatchery. The world is like an egg, a mother, a birth canal. Birth is a painful process. When Jesus came here he did not make this world into a rose garden, even though he could have. Rather, he wore the thorns from this world's roses. Even Jesus learned obedience through suffering (Hebrews 5:8). Unless we are not his body, unless he is not our head, we cannot expect to avoid this pattern.

Do you know someone who has encountered deep sorrow and found that it created a deeper, more caring individual through that experience? Has this ever happened to you?

• It may also mean a sense of grief and sorrow over the broken-ness and suffering of the world. God sometimes gives us a great blessing – the blessing of sharing His heart's grief over the condition of the world. It comes as a great burden of sorrow, but in it there is a sense of holiness and purity because it represents the heart of the Good Shepherd.

• "It is doubtful that God can greatly use the person he has not greatly wounded." E.M. Bounds

When is your heart broken for the world? What is it like? Do you ever sense God's presence in that time? In what way?

• The most likely meaning for this beatitude is: "Blessed is the man who is desperately sorry for his own sin and his own unworthiness." This is linked with Jesus' command to "repent". No one can repent unless they are deeply grieved over their sins. True repentance comes when we look at the Cross and see what sin can do. True Christian faith begins with a profound sense of one's sinfulness. Blessed is the man who is intensely sorry for his sin, the man who is broken-hearted for what his sin has done to God and to Jesus Christ, the man who sees the Cross and who is appalled by the havoc wrought by sin. This is the person who will receive comfort. So the second Beatitude could be interpreted:

O the bliss of the man whose hear is broken for the world's suffering and for his one sin, for out of his sorrow he will find the joy of God.

Does this represent the world's understanding for how a person is to seek joy? Do you see a pattern developing in the Beatitudes between the world's standards for happiness and what Jesus commends as the source of true happiness?

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