The question of the good life is a question that many of us ask, and once we've found a satisfactory answer, we sort of strive after it. This is the core of ancient philosophy. If you read Greek philosophers, you'd know that they are seeking to answer the question, how do I live the good life, the flourishing life? For Aristotle, he was on the search of what he called is eudaimonia, which can be translated as the pursuit of happiness or striving for human flourishing. Though we don't sit in our living rooms or parks and ask this question, this is something that runs at the core of the human experience. Whether it is jobs, marriages, where we should live, we are all striving in some sense, on a miniature level, as what is the good life. Blaise Pascal comments that all people are wired for this pursuit, saying, all men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all intend this end. Many are seeking to answer the question, what is the good life? And depending on how they're questioning and how they're answering, they might say it's where knowledge is, where wealth is, where comfort is. These are all in miniature the pursuit of happiness. As a culture, we have a shorthand and we say that we want to live, and in a Canadian context we say we want to live the Canadian dream, not the American dream. And in our hearts and our minds we might say that that dream is good health, a job, education, so on and so forth. These are not bad things, but if we had them in our hearts and our minds, we'd likely say that we're living the good life. The question is, is that all the good life is? Because many who have these things still question what is the point of them. Whether it be the rulers of our day, like King Charles or our Prime Minister Mark Carney, they strive to tell us that they are governing for the good life. That they're defending it, supporting it, seeking to provide it. If you are struggling to conceptualize what I mean by this, all politicians in some way, I would argue, with their policies and programs are trying to lead us to the good life. Prime Minister Carney, while he was running last year, articulated his campaign slogan as Canada Strong. His version of the good life was the strong life. Here Jesus speaks to his citizens of his kingdom, proclaiming not strength as the means of leading to the good life, but Jesus' path to the good life is humility, justice and peace. When you think of a kingdom, we often think of high walls and moats and a king and armies and more. Unlike the kingdoms of old or even today, where the good life is found is not in self-protection or possessions or status. Jesus flips the script. He tells us that the kingdom is different from the inside out. He is not concerned with conquests. He is concerned with conduct and character. He presents to us here the path to human flourishing. It's one that we don't often think of, with characteristics that often people don't value. He presents us the blessed life, that it is experienced in humility, justice. He presents to us the blessed life, and that it is experienced by the humble, just and opposed. We will look at the nine beatitudes that Jesus presents here and take them in three, seeing that each set of three has one unified theme. Seeing that the good life of the kingdom is different than this world. We see that Jesus tells us this, that the blessed life is experienced by the humble, just and opposed. Which will serve as our outline this morning. You can follow along in your bulletin that is printed in the back middle portion. Let's look at our first point, the humble. Look at me at verses one to five. Jesus enters the scene. He is sitting on the side of a mountain and his disciples come to listen to him to hear what he teaches. And he teaches on the blessed life. But before we look at the three beatitudes of this first section, we must understand what Jesus means by the term blessed. When we use the term, we're often speaking of something good taking place that we have somehow maybe received favor. Though that is true to the semantic range of the word blessed. Here, Jesus is speaking of the state of blessing. Not the word of good fortune. Though both present a promise, they're different. Let me explain. Living in the blessed state is the language of Psalm one, which we sung today. Where the blessed man lives his life like this tree that is flourishing. Whereas blessing from God, this divine favor of life that is found in covenants or in Genesis one with Adam and Eve is the word of favor. In Greek and Hebrew, these are two different words. But in English, we translate them both as blessed, which is a little confusing. The state of flourishing in the Hebrew language in the Greek is a share in the Hebrew and in Greek, it's Mercurios. The word for God speaking out blessing is the word baroque in Hebrew or in Greek. It's going to be hard for me. You go. The opposite of Barack and you go. Are curses the opposite of a share or Mercurios are woes and actually in Luke's. Description and recollection of the Sermon on the Mount. He actually has three woes and three blessings in Matthew's gospel. We don't see that here, but later in Chapter 11, we will see Jesus pronounce woes. The Sermon on the Mount is a blend of Hebrew wisdom, literature and Greek virtue literature. Both speak to how humans are to thrive or to flourish. And its intent is telling people how to live best in the world for the Greeks. They were on the pursuit of eudaimonia, the pursuit of happiness for the Hebrews. They are trying to live in a state of a share. They're trying to live this happy or flourishing life or thriving life. Jesus has a good king. Is telling his people how to flourish in his kingdom. How they can flourish in it today and how it will come about in the future. There is a question whether this passage is speaking simply spiritually or if this could be known now, or if this is simply something that everybody will know those who believe in Jesus in the future and that this has no value today. But like I said last week, what Jesus articulates about the kingdom of God is in the state of the already and not yet. The blessed life is both now and we will see the fullness of it in the future. And so Jesus tells them that the blessed life, the flourishing life is for the humble, the poor in spirit, the mourning and the meek. You think if you're a king addressing people, you'd speak first to the powerful, the self-sufficient, the tenacious people. Instead, Jesus speaks to the powerless, the mourning and meek. To all hearers, they would see that Jesus is flipping the world upside down. These people would have thought that God had turned his back on them because they were in a position of weakness. But what Jesus says is, these are my people. The blessed life is for the poor in spirit because theirs is the kingdom. The flourishing life is found in knowing your spiritual poverty. The kingdom of heaven is not for people who are sitting in a posture of, of course I'll get in or look at all the good I've done. One commentator says to be poor in spirit is to recognize your utter spiritual bankruptcy before God. It understands that you will have absolutely nothing of worth to offer God. Being poor in spirit is admitting that because of your sin, you are complete destitute spiritually and can do nothing to deliver yourself from your dire state. Pride will tell us that we're all good, that we have no need for God. Whereas humility recognizes our brokenness, that we are sinful, that we have nothing to offer God. The blessed life begins with seeing our sin and our need for a savior. Which leads us to crying out to God in mourning. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. The comfort we want for our souls, for our sins and our failures is not found in doing better and sucking less. It is found in mourning over our sins, crying out to our God, knowing that we've offended him in our thoughts, words and actions. Many of us try to comfort our souls, not with crying out to God, but instead, sometimes dulling our consciences with more sin. Or maybe it's not sin, you're trying to comfort your soul with entertainment or relaxation. Not bad things, but the thing that is not going to lead to true comfort. The comfort for our souls cannot be bought. It is given by God. God's comfort is given to those who cry out to him. Too often we are busy, too busy to even cry out to our God in prayer. We live under the weight of anxious toil, of trying to comfort ourselves, to try and quiet our consciences. But the truth is that none of these actions, apart from crying out to God, will lead to true blessed comfort. And so what we should see is that we are to turn to God and mourn for our sins. This is the same thing and same posture that James was speaking of, of why the people should turn from their laughter to mourning. So much of what we believe when it comes to human flourishing is that it depends on strength. That if we are strong, then we will be thriving. And Jesus corrects that. He particularly addresses now the temptation of success and strength being the model of striving with his mention of meekness. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth in the first century. And still today we can think that we gain the good life by being strong and conquering. Taking it for ourselves in some way. But Jesus here says that earthly wealth and inheritance, it is for those who are meek. We don't use this word often in our common vernacular. But to be meek is to have your rights or your power restrained for the betterment of others. This can take place in us being gentle or patient or forgiving or loving or kind. Meekness is submitting our wills to God and trusting that he will do what he needs to in a particular situation. Not abusing our power and our rights, but subduing them to God for what he pleases to do in and through us. This doesn't mean that we are lazy. It is simply our servitude and subjugation to our God. Jesus wants the people to see that true human flourishing in this life is one that comes for the person who looks to God, cries out to God and submits to God. His kingdom, his comfort and his inheritance is not for those who proudly boast in their good deeds or have no concern for their sin against God. Or for those that just somehow try and take what they can from this world for themselves. He gives so much more. He gives so much more and so freely to the humble. The scriptures you read before the sermon, not Matthew five, but in James, it says that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. The blessed life, the flourishing life in this world is one that comes and is found in the humility towards God. And I haven't defined this word for us, but I hope that you've heard it as I've explained it is that humility is not thinking less of yourself, but is thinking accurately about ourselves. Seeing our sin, seeing our need for the Lord and living in submission to him. Do you want to flourish? Then see your spiritual bankruptcy. See that you cannot save yourself and cry out to God and live with all that you're given under his dominion. This is where the blessed life begins. And so we've seen where it begins. May we see where it continues in our second point. The blessed life is experienced not just for the humble, but also for the just. Look at me at verses six to eight. The blessed life, according to Jesus, is for those who are just those who are seeking justice in the world. These characteristics in this triad, we would often associate with godly individuals or particularly religious individuals, religious people. But I doubt the original hearers would have thought that the religious in that day, the Pharisees, particularly the scribes and the Pharisees, were being satisfied by lavish food and drink. They were merciless people, heaping burdens on them and telling people that they are getting what they deserve in life. That they were living these impure lives as hypocrites, saying one thing and doing another. In our pursuits of eudaimonia and this pursuit of satisfaction and flourishing, we like the Pharisees think that we will be satisfied with wealth, pleasure or power. Doing all that we can to try and get it, gain it and keep it. What we see here is that Jesus says that satisfaction comes from seeking righteousness. This is the pursuit of justice in God's ways. It is both seeking God and how he interacts with people. We can think of righteousness as thinking of a right relationship with God and a right relationship with each other. In this, it is the action of getting our eyes off ourselves and getting our eyes on God and caring for those around us. Satisfaction or fulfillment comes at the end of seeking God and serving others, not ourselves. This is a flip on the paradigm that we naturally live in or the world teaches us. And if you or I fixate enough on ourselves, we won't find satisfaction. Instead, we will live in a state of longing, discontentment and distress. If you don't believe me, you can try it. But what Jesus says is that satisfaction comes when you get your eyes off yourself and on God and those around you. Like the Pharisees of that day, we can think that satisfaction comes from self-indulgence and personal gratification. But God's design for satisfaction and true flourishing is looking to God and the betterment of our neighbor, their just treatment and continued care. The blessed person seeks justice as they long and look for righteousness on earth, hungering and thirsting for it. They live and look for people to be treated as they'd like to be treated with mercy. Jesus goes on to say, blessed are the merciful because they will receive mercy. Mercy is not getting what you deserve when it comes to punishment. We often are people who want to be treated with mercy when it comes to our failures and shortcomings. But are quick to hold others to account. Our forms of justice focus on punishment and penalty more than mercy and grace. Jesus here says that mercy is found for the merciful ones. When it comes to failures of our friends and our families towards us, we are quick to ice them out. But when we fail, we want people to embrace us, to be kind to us, to be loving to us, to be merciful to us. To know mercy in our relationships, in our lives. We need to be ones who absolve instead of blame, uplift instead of push down. Not giving people what they deserve for their shortcomings, but withholding that and giving them mercy, giving them care and love. If God operated with us without mercy, each one of us in this room will be smitten by a lightning bolt like those old cartoons. But God is merciful to his creation, being long suffering with us. If we are individuals who want mercy for ourselves, from our neighbors and God, why do we withhold it from others? Being merciful, we are not subverting justice. Instead, we are submitting to God for his justice. Trusting that he will make wrongs right. Understanding that my ideas of right and wrong can so easily be contorted instead of taking the posture of mercy and leaving it to God. Trusting that he will act. Allowing us to do the work of caring and compassion instead of correction. But does this mean that we are to just be okay with injustice and lawlessness in our society and somehow be cowards? No. But it does require not taking situations into our own hands. Often, what this looks like is referring up, if we can. Maybe some of you in your jobs, you can't do this. But we can do this when it comes to law officials. We can refer up. In the church, you can do this. You can refer to the elders. And most clearly, we can refer up in prayer, asking God to deal with people and situations according to his judgment and not ours. Because we so often get it wrong. Instead, we can err on the side of mercy knowing that we too like mercy. The blessed life is for the just. Those who seek after righteousness, so much so that it is what sustains their very lives. For those who are merciful and for those who are pure of heart. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. This is both a call to holiness and a call away from hypocrisy. The heart is more than just an organ in this context. Jesus is speaking of the heart as the central nervous system of the soul. It is where we think from, where we act from, where we desire from. To have a pure heart is for one to think, act like, and desire as God has called him to. One commentator writes, Being pure in heart involves having a singleness of heart towards God. A pure heart has no hypocrisy, no guile, no hidden motives. The pure heart is marked by transparency and uncompromising desire to please God in all things. It is more than external purity of behavior. It is an internal purity of the soul. Described this way, we can see that we are people who do not measure up. That our hearts are sick, that they are not pure, they are impure. And so, how can we be a people who see God in this reality? Just like the two other blessings in this section, it all depends on God. Left to ourselves, we will not be a people who seek righteousness. We are people who are often merciless. Instead, we are not a people of pure heart, we are people of impure hearts. To know the blessed life of the just, you must ask God to make us just. To change us from the inside out, so that our appetites would change. So that our response to the world would change, and so that our hearts would be changed. We cannot do this on our own. God must work to have a pure heart. We must ask God to give us one. Just as David does in Psalm 51, he says this, Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. For the believer and unbeliever in this room. God calls out to you today, because none of us have arrived. We are all in need of God changing us from the inside out. Just to vary degrees. One is from death to life. For the believer, it's one degree of glory to another. So, we've seen in this passage, God's promise for satisfaction, for mercy, and for His very presence. Now let us turn to our last section, where Jesus explains that the good life, the kingdom, is different from this world. That the blessed life is experienced for the humble, the just. Lastly, it is experienced for the opposed. Look at me at verses 9 to 12. When we think of the good life, and we're making a list in our hearts and our heads, I doubt opposition in any capacity makes it to the top or even near the list. But in this point, Jesus takes into consideration the suffering of this world. Recognizing that on this side of eternity, there will be conflict, that there will be persecution, and that there will be reviling. From the way that verse 9 is written, we can think that if we broker peace in our homes or our workplaces, that we will somehow become a child of God. Though this is the characteristic of the children of God, it is not the way of becoming a child of God. The Bible is clear, especially in John 1, those who believe in Jesus are given the right to become children of God. But here, peacemaking is the evidence of the identity of someone who's been born of God. This is where flourishing is found. It is walking in and being a part of making peace at work, church, and at home. The wartime imagery that Jesus is using here is not being insensitive to people. Instead, he is capturing the reality that conflict is ever-present around us. The question is, how do you respond to it? I invite you now to take inventory of your life. There is conflict in it. I'm certain of it because of this side of heaven. The question you must ask is, are you contributing to the conflict, or are you making peace? Church, if you are contributing, just like I am tempted to, I invite you to repent, to turn to God, to know the life of a peacemaker, know the life as a daughter or son of God. Because peace only comes from God and through God. It is him working in and through us that we would be a conduit of peace. And for the times where peace cannot be brokered, persecution and reviling will take place. Jesus doesn't call his disciples to any form of retaliation here. No, he says plainly that persecution will come and reviling will come. Meaning the options are make peace and if it doesn't, you will likely be hated and harmed. In this blessed life, it's not about avoiding persecution or reviling, it's anticipating it. Knowing that people will not like us because of our association to Jesus and our beliefs. And the promise that Jesus gives here is not retribution or vindication in this life. Instead, he tells us that reward and vindication will come in the world to come. In this, you are given entrance into the kingdom. If you are persecuted for righteousness sake, that is your vindication. Knowing that you are on the right side of the argument, not because you were treated nicely or because you won an argument, no, because you are with God. And the reward, we are not told what it is because the text doesn't tell us, but there is a reward for those who are reviled. Instead, what we should know is that being persecuted and reviled is what God's people have experienced. It's what the prophets of old experience, that's why Jesus goes on to say in verse 12. And if they were persecuted, so will we. But something that we must note is that these prophets were not persecuted by these outside nations. Yes, they were in some extent, but they were also persecuted by their own people. In this statement, Jesus is preparing his disciples to be persecuted not just by Rome, but also by the Jews of that time, God's own people. We often think that persecution is something that this world will do to us, but the truth is that persecution can come even from within the camp. And so with this, you can be prepared and anticipate. And for those who want peace, who want vindication, who want favor. We are to see that we can know that in part today, but the fullness thereof will come in life to come with Jesus Christ. As we close, note this. All the blessings and promises found in these verses find their yes, not in us measuring up to them, but they find their yes in Jesus. It is by him and because of him that those who have faith in him can have the hope of experiencing these blessings now and forever. Jesus, the greater than Moses, as the greatest prophet, as God himself was persecuted for righteousness sake. He related to the lowly. He mourned for our sins and Gethsemane. He looked to the father's will, submitting himself to the plan of salvation in meekness. He strived for righteousness sake, so much so that he gave his very life so that we would be made righteous. Living with a pure heart so that we could be made pure. The merciful one giving us mercy. The true son of God who gives peace with God and one another by the blood of his cross. All of this and more he promises to bless those who believe in him and who walk with him. This ethic of the kingdom is blessed life that is presented to us here is a portrait of the blessed one, Jesus Christ. So would you see the good life, the blessed life is not found somewhere else or in someone else. It is found in Jesus Christ alone. So would you look to him, the truly best of one who lived and died so that we would be blessed now and forever. Looking to the day where we will know comfort in full satisfaction to the uttermost. Experiencing the king and the kingdom. Knowing his mercy, favor and presence with no end. Until that day would we live as blessed ones looking to the blessed one. Must pray.