***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: . . . the 73rd psalm.
In these days I am speaking to you on the kingdom of God and the general theme is the announcement by John the Baptist and by Jesus, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And I’m most concerned for us to understand that there are two kingdoms. One a kingdom of darkness which we may call the kingdom of man or if we wish the kingdom of Satan. And that is the kingdom that is the organized power and system which we are to turn from and which constantly tempts us to live in that line of power. Repentance is to be a turning from that power to another power.
Now the 73rd Psalm presents the dilemma of the godly person or the person who has faith in God but has to face the tension between the two kingdoms. Truly God is good to Israel even to such as are of a clean heart but as for me my feet were almost gone my steps had well I slipped for I was envious at the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no pains in their lives their bodies are sound and sleek and firm they are not in trouble like other men neither are they stricken like others. Therefore they wear pride upon them like a chain of jewelry and violence they wear like a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness they have more than they could wish they scoff and speak with malice. Concerning oppression they threaten they set their mouths against the heavens their tongue stretched through the earth therefore the people praise them and find no fault with them because they are so successful. And the people say how does God know what is going on and they ask is there knowledge in the most high? Behold these are the ungodly who prosper in the world they increase with riches and the people say verily I have cleansed my heart in vain and washed my hands in innocency and all the day long have I been stricken and chastened every morning.
Now the psalmist turns and says well if that’s what I say then I should offend against the generation of thy children. When I tried to understand how all of this works it was too tiresome for me until I went into the sanctuary of God and then understood I their end. Surely thou did set them in slippery places thou castest them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation as in a moment they are utterly consumed with terrors. They are like a dream when one awakes. When you awake you despise the images or phantasms of the dream. When my heart was grieved and I was pricked in my reigns by what I saw of the prosperity of the foolish I was foolish. I was ignorant. I was like a brute beast towards God.
Now the turn is made complete and the psalmist says nonetheless I am continually with thee thou hast holden me by my right hand thou shalt guide me with thy counsel and afterwards receive me to glory and honor whom have I in heaven but thee and there is none on earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever for lo they that are far from thee shall perish. Those thou thou hast destroyed all of them that go whoring from thee but it is good for me to draw near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord God that I may declare all of his works. Thank God for the blessing that is in the reading of his word.
Wanted to say a few personal things before beginning this morning partly because of questions which have arisen in conversations about me and my family and what we do. I don’t like to talk about me very much. It’s not a very interesting subject for one thing but a number of people have asked questions and if I can ask my wife and daughter to stand I would like to introduce them. Jane and Becky. Jane in the blue and Becky in the yellow. I thought for a moment they had run out on me because Jane just had a new permanent and she’s unhappy with it and she said oh please she said oh please wait for two weeks it will grow out. I have never had the experience of having a lady with a fresh permanent who was happy with it. I can understand the problem but I thought Jane was so pretty that I would go ahead and introduce her anyway and you wouldn’t mind that. We have another child a son who is 21 years old but you know how it is and at that age they don’t hang around you very much and so he probably will be seen here seldom if ever. But we’re thankful for our children and ask for your prayers for our family.
Another thing that has arisen is a question about just what I do. I teach philosophy at the University of Southern California. I am an associate professor in the department there and I feel that that is my main work at least for this present time. I was ordained in the ministry over 20 years ago began preaching when I was 18 in jail houses. From the outside looking in and and on the street corners around Chattanooga Tennessee and was ordained later and one of the highest moments in my life was the time when those humble men that had known me since I was a child laid their hands on me and ordained me to preach the gospel. I had no idea what it meant really to tell you the truth but those men with whom I had worked in the fields and who had known me and suffered from me since I was a very young child ordained me in Thomasville Missouri a little Baptist Church there. I say that to indicate to you that the fact that I teach in a university does not mean that I don’t think of myself as a minister of the gospel. I’m there because of that.
I have felt that I should go there, that I should do that kind of work. It struck me early on as I went to school that there were many many ministers and there were many in fact in the area I was at the time there were something like a 300 people who were ordained in the ministry and were seeking pastorates and so on at one person for every 300 people in that area and it just seemed to me that I should try to do something else. I have pastored and I have song led and youth directed and swept the floor and done about everything else you can do in the way of the appointed ministry of the church and I have not changed that because I do not like it or think it is unimportant and God blesses us in that work but I feel like my work now is in a slightly different area and so I try to combine teaching in the churches as well as a work of writing and teaching in the universities. I just say that because a number of questions have come up repeatedly in conversation I thought it might be helpful to say something about it.
Now I want to relate it slightly to what I’m going to lead into today because what I will say will be something I think most of you have not heard and I introduced my wife and daughter in particular because they are my caretakers and my guardians and if I ever do or say anything wrong you should speak to them so you’ll know who to talk to. Not that I will of course but in case I do.
As I ministered and as I grew I think and read and studied I became conscious of a real difficulty in our relationship with the Bible in the churches which I was in and I can state that difficulty very simply. It became very clear to me that in general the church folk and the ministry by and large really did not know what to do with the teachings of Christ and that the effect of it all was to say that really you can get along without following the teachings of Christ. That what is crucial is that you should believe certain things about Christ but that so far as actually what he said to do probably you couldn’t and probably you shouldn’t really try and you certainly shouldn’t expect anyone else to do what he taught. So that the teachings of Christ which constitute almost everything that is in the first four books of the New Testament along with huge portions of the letters of Paul simply did not have a clear function.
I heard the word of the dispensationalist to the effect that they were not for our time, that they were for another time. I heard various other kinds of explanations that the function of the teachings of Jesus was to beat us into pieces so that we would know we needed to be saved by grace and yet as I read the scriptures I could not reconcile that with the fact that God obviously helped people responsible for obeying or disobeying the law. I could not reconcile that with the fact that Jesus himself clearly said with the clear intent that the people who heard him should believe it. He said to them why do you call me Lord Lord and do not the things which I say in Luke 6 46 and he goes on in Luke 46 through 49 to tell the story of the wise man that built his house upon the rock and the foolish man that built his house upon the sand. And it was very clear to me that Jesus meant for us to understand that he was telling us what life should be like and what it could be like and that we should be open to the possibility at least that he might lead us into obedience which was good and right and not a burden but a life-giving thing.
And I think as I continued to study and live and read and work and pray I began to see that Jesus was talking about the reality of the kingdom of God which is available to anyone who will turn to it and be open to learn and to be led into it. And consequently as I have gone along through the years I have come more and more to believe that the great thing that is lacking in our churches even and especially in those which purport to believe and follow the scriptures is the simple teachings of Jesus as a teaching which is good and right and which gives us life and which holds us before us a way of reality of living in the kingdom of God. And I think that that has been confirmed as I have spoken that word and have attempted to explain as I shall try to do today begin to explain some of the teachings of Jesus.
Now I want to add just this one word before I begin and that is I don’t believe that I’m infallible. I don’t believe that everything I say is absolutely right and the things which I do believe are absolutely right. I don’t hold them over you in such a way that if we disagree there’s something wrong between us. I don’t believe that Jesus lived and taught in that spirit.
As I studied the scriptures I began to see the difference between the Spirit of the Pharisee and the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit of the Pharisee says I will tell you specifically what to do and specifically what to believe and if you don’t believe and act as I say you should do and and believe specifically then I thank God I’m better than you are. The Spirit of the Pharisee is expressed in the 18th chapter of Luke with the two people who went up to the to the temple to pray and if you look at the prayer of the Pharisee he mentions specific actions and specific religious deeds like fasting and tithing and he says thank God I am not as other men. And the Spirit of the Pharisee says if you don’t do it specifically now and stress the word specifically what I do and if you don’t believe specifically what I believe then you’re not as good as I am before God.
The Spirit of Christ tells you to love. The Spirit of Christ tells you to have faith. The Spirit of Christ invites you to enter into a relationship with God where God himself shall teach you and lead you and give you life. The Spirit of Christ believes that the details will come along as God deals with you. The Pharisee tells you to believe in God and says that if you don’t believe exactly the theory of how the atonement works or how the world is going to end then you’re not as good as he is. Jesus says trust God and know the reality of his presence in your life and believe that the actions and the creed will come along as you walk with him.
Man was meant to walk with God as I said last time. Adam, after he had sinned, God came for his daily walk with the people he’d created in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening. And Adam hid. Adam got him some fig leaves to sew together to hide himself. And so much of what we impose upon others are nothing but fig leaves to hide our own spiritual nakedness and want of a real relationship with God.
Oh, it’s important to be right. It’s important to do what is right, but we cannot begin there. We begin by throwing ourselves upon the mercy of God in whatever way it comes to us. We begin by believing in the presence of God and the kingdom of God and his triumph in history, not by imposing upon ourselves and upon others exactly how history is going to end and what is happening in Israel now and just when the rapture is going to occur. And the Spirit of Christ presents a life, and the practice and the doctrine follows from the life and strengthens the life.
You see, it is important, as I say, for us to believe what is right, but we cannot find life by holding correct doctrine. Correct doctrine comes from the power of the Spirit in the speaking of the Word to grasp the life for the reality of God’s kingdom and to bring across to the individual the fact that Jesus Christ died for them individually as a recommendation of the great heart of God to so commend the love of God to the individual that they simply cannot face their own rebellion and their own smallness against him anymore. And so they turn, and it is in the presence of the Spirit of God in the church through the lives of the men and women who have opened their lives to him and his kingdom that the right deeds flow forth from and the right doctrine flows forth from.
You see, we ignore the teachings of Christ because they cannot be bottled up. They can’t be set down in a few simple things which will allow us to think that we are better than other people because we follow them. It is an explosive life that is present in those, and he upsets all of our standards. He comes into the world and says the kingdom of God is the invert of the kingdom of man. He says to us, the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and he says it over and over and over, and he says, he that is greatest among you shall be the servant of all, and he takes all of the system of man’s ideas and turns them upside down. And we have to accept that if we’re going to be the people of God. Above all, we have to really believe in servanthood and come to understand what that means.
Now the teachings which I want to open to you this morning are the clearest picture of the total inversion that occurs in the kingdom of God, and if you wish you can call my message this morning simply the great inversion in the kingdom of God.
Now I would like for you to turn with me to the fifth chapter of Matthew now, and we’re going to read that well-known passage known as the Beatitudes. If you take a course in great literature in a university or in a high school you may read these verses simply because they are great literature. They are beautiful. They have been turned into poetry, and their meaning has been lost. And I want to try this morning simply to set before you what Jesus Christ was saying to us about the kingdom of God in these verses.
In order to understand it you must have you before you a number of things about how Jesus teaches. Above all it is important to understand that Jesus does not teach in the way which we normally teach today in our schools and elsewhere, namely by giving forth a set of generalizations which cover all the cases so that you’ll know what the story is, and you can take it and go and do it, and that’s the way it is. Jesus does not teach in that way. Jesus always teaches in a context, and if you are to understand what Jesus teaches you must always remember to look for what the need is that is being spoken to and what the error is that is being spoken to.
Jesus speaks in understatement, in paradox, to shock the mind out of its lethargy and to open the heart. He speaks in parable as he himself said because of the hardness of men’s heart. You see I used to think that that meant he was punishing them, that he was saying I’m going to talk to you in parable so you can’t understand it, so you really suffer. And that fits many people’s ideas of God, but that is not Christ, and what he’s saying is very simply this. You have a heart condition, dear friends. Everyone has a heart condition, and that condition is diagnosed as hardness of heart, and blessed art thou if you do not have a hard heart. And hardness of heart is not much more than the simple disposition and tendency to believe that you already know what you need to know. You’ve already got it figured out the way things are in so far as you can, and the hardness of your heart is simply seen by the way, or the hardness of my heart is seen by the way I charge through life without ever thinking that I might be wrong. And if anything comes up and says, Willard you’re wrong, my immediate response is, the heck you say, or something worse than that, if you’ll excuse the language, I’m wrong, me? Now that’s hardness of heart, you see, and Jesus knew that if he simply came to people and said, you’re wrong, their hard heart would stiffen up.
But he knew that if he told them a parable, that hard heart wouldn’t know what to hit. He knew that he could soften the hard heart by telling them a story. Let me ask you a question. How can you argue with the parable of the prodigal son? You can’t argue with that. There’s nothing to argue with, is there? You can’t when Jesus gets done say, No! Your hard heart has nothing to hit against, my hard heart doesn’t. I have to take that story and it rings in my ears, and the beauty of it, and all of the little corners and niches and turns of the story ring in my mind, and it gets around my hard heart. And as the Spirit of God works with a parable, with a paradox, with an understatement, it is able to clip the sinew of egoism and self-assertion and protection. And all of a sudden I find that the truth is within the gates.
That’s what Jesus did. He wasn’t punishing people because of the way he taught. And I can tell you a very simple thing as a teacher, and I know many of you teachers and are better teachers than I am no doubt, but I have learned as a teacher that the great secret of most of my failures as a teacher is just to come to a student and tell them the way it is. And that doesn’t matter if I’m teaching mathematics or English or psychology, all of which I have taught. It doesn’t matter what the subject matter is. You can do people very little good by telling them how it is, and Jesus knew that. What you have to do is find where they are and strike them in such a way that you set their mind on fire. And that’s how Jesus taught.
So if you want to understand what he’s doing, you have to understand what the prevailing problem is. And in this section which we’re going to read, that means you have to look at whom he is speaking to. So if you want to understand what he’s doing, you have to understand what the prevailing problem is. And in this section which we’re going to read, that means you have to look at who at whom he is speaking to. The multitudes. Verse 1. Seeing the multitudes. Who are the multitudes?…people. And his fame went throughout all of Syria, and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers, diseases, and torment, and those that were possessed with devils, and those that were lunatic, and those that had the palsy, and he healed them.
Now dear friends, that is the multitude. That’s the same multitude now you want to keep in mind because we’re going to be working on this for several Sundays. That’s the same multitude that is referred to in verse 28 of chapter 7. The people. It’s the same Greek word. The people were astonished at his doctrine. They heard this doctrine, and I stopped to say this because you see one of the one of the things that is often said about the Sermon on the Mount is that it was only preached to the disciples. It was not. It was preached to the masses. People are possibly misled by the little statement in the first verse of chapter 5. He went up into a mountain. That sounds to us like he went to Big Bear, right? And he called his disciples up and said, now I’m going to tell you something, and so that left the masses down in Los Angeles, right? No, I’ve often suggested that people would understand this better if they called it the Sermon on the Mount instead of the Sermon on the Mount. He got up on a little high place, and he gathered his disciples around him. He got up on a high place so people could hear him, and so that he could arrange the situation and do some serious teaching. So he calls them up. The disciples are close to him as would be the nature of the case. This mass of needy people is around him. That’s to whom he speaks.
If you want to give yourself a vivid impression of this type of person, it is hard to do in our time because we sweep these people under the rug, various kinds of rugs. It helps sometimes to go down and stand on Main or Broadway and 7th or 5th and look at people. Every area such as this, there are only a certain number of rugs to sweep people under, and then all the rest of them have to pile together in some area. Go look at the people. That’s to whom Jesus was speaking. He was speaking to the poor, the downtrodden, the sick, the hopeless, the despairing, and those who have the worst of all afflictions, the sense that they were worthless and failures and could not possibly make it. And these people in their despair flocked him.
And he opens his mouth and he taught them saying, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst for justice for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall seek God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake, for those is the kingdom of heaven.
Now I want you to look at that mass and I want to go over these again. I want to tell you who he’s talking about because he’s talking about the people in that crowd. And when he says blessed are the poor in spirit, he doesn’t say blessed are those who think they are poor in spirit. He doesn’t say blessed are the modest, the humble. He’s not saying that. Many of your translations are just simply wrong on this, but the translator is struggling with that verse to make sense of it and it can’t then and it’s a very deep indication of how far we are from understanding the first principles of the kingdom of God that our very translators of scriptures cannot come to grips with this first verse.
I heard a man on the radio this morning saying, Jesus is not saying those who are poor in spirit are blessed. That’s exactly what he says. But the man could not come to grips with it and he said he’s saying those who do not think highly of themselves are blessed, you see.
We are helped somewhat by the passage in Luke 6 which is the parallel version of the Beatitudes because here you just can’t beat around the bush. He doesn’t say spirit. Here he says poor. This, by the way, is a different sermon. If you look at the context, this is the sermon on the plains, if you wish. The other one, look at verse 17, he came down with them and stood on a plain of Luke 6. The other sermon on the mount. Jesus preached the same sermon with some variations over and over. Every person who has anything to say at all does it that way. Again, it doesn’t matter if you’re teaching spiritual things or teaching mathematics. You never run the same lesson quite right, quite the same way twice. You always change it some. Jesus speaks to a different context. He’s speaking to different people. Many people are puzzled why he varies his course. It’s because of the condition of the people he’s dealing with. If you look at his healings, for example, just count up the different ways Jesus healed blind people. And notice the different things he did. Well, you see, the master understood the heart. He understood the circumstances and he spoke to it. He never just ran the recording again, you know. Like many of us, if we’re asked a question, it doesn’t matter who’s asking, we just turn that tape on and let it run. And he never did that.
Here you’ll see verse 20 of chapter 6, and he lifted his eyes on his disciples and said, blessed be ye poor. Now that doesn’t say, blessed are you if you think you’re poor. That just says, blessed are you if you’re poor. And again, blessed are you that weep. Blessed are ye when men shall hate you and separate you from their company. And that passage is helpful.
You see, Matthew 5 23 is saying simply, blessed are those who are not too bright. Blessed are those who are not religiously on the inside and trained. Blessed are those who are not enlightened spiritually. I think the best simple literal translation of the verse is just blessed are you if you are poverty-stricken in spiritual things. That is not the world looks, the way the world looks at it. The world looks at that and says, these people are hopeless. That’s what the religious leaders of the day said about those who followed Christ then. Said the mob is mad. The crowd doesn’t know what they’re talking about. They’re not instructed in the law. This is talking about people who are not too bright. We should say, blessed are the retarded. Blessed are those who have not many talents. That’s what it’s talking about. The word the great unwashed is sometimes used by cultured people to refer to the mass. Jesus is saying, blessed are the great unwashed, the untouchables, spiritually, those who have nothing going for them. They are blessed.
Now I want to say something to anticipate a later point. They are not blessed because they are poor in spiritual things. Jesus never says that.
Blessed are they that mourn. He’s talking about people who have come with grief all over them. Grief is a terrible thing. Distorts our whole world, our face, our bodies, debilitates us, undercuts us, psychically and physiologically in every other way. And Jesus looking at some of these people says, blessed are they that mourn. Blessed are the grief-stricken. Blessed are those who are distressed.
Blessed are the meek. Think of it this way. Blessed are the shy. Blessed are the people who cannot push forward and get what they want. As a teacher, my students divide into two groups, two groups along one line of division, and one is those who will push for everything and those who will stand back. I have a certain class of student and I don’t say this is wrong. If you mark them off five points on a question, it doesn’t matter whether they believe you’re right or wrong. They want to sit down with you and say, why do I get five points off you? They have learned that many professors will give them three points just because they raise a question. And three points may mean a great deal. So they’ll just sit down. It’s a matter of routine for them. I see them coming. And because I believe that I should deal with them in the Spirit of Christ, I don’t put them down or shut them off. I listen to them. I don’t surprise them often by not giving an inch unless I find a real mistake because they’re used to the idea that if you just push a lot, you’ll get a little. Just push a lot, you’ll get a little. And several littles adds up to a lot, right?
See what the world says is, blessed are the pushy. Why do you think that these books on intimidation and success, which have been written by people in the last few months and years, have been bestsellers? The system of this world is based on intimidation. The way you dress, the way you speak intimidates and you can make a science of it. And that’s what Robert Ringer with his book on intimidation and Michael Korda with his book on success and other books of this sort do. They simply observe what happens. They can tell you in detail how pushiness works, how you can use the flesh and the world to get what you want.
And Jesus is saying, blessed are the shy. Blessed are the people who, if anything goes wrong, they think they’re responsible. Blessed are the people who are always saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Blessed are the people who can’t stand to see anything go wrong. They just wilt, you know. They’re so embarrassed they just die. I used to partly laugh at myself and be tired of myself because I watched a lot of the old I Love Lucy shows. And Lucy, as well as Dick Van Dyke and a few others, those shows had the capacity to create situations so embarrassing that they weren’t funny. If you’re the sort of person who’s troubled with that kind of thing.
And Jesus saying, blessed is the person who is so shy that they get off the sidewalk. They automatically assume that if there’s anyone else coming down the street, they should get out of the way. Now I’m not talking about politeness. That’s a different thing. I’m not talking about courtesy. I’m talking about people who, because of the sense of guilt and worthlessness that they bear, feel like they should get out of the way for other people. And let me tell you, that’s a huge mass of mankind. They don’t even have a right to ask for anything, see. They’re always saying, oh please forgive me, I’m sorry. And Jesus looks at those dear people who couldn’t push anything and he says, blessed are the shy, blessed are the meek, because they’ll inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst for justice. Those who have been done wrong, they hurt so badly for what is right. They just, it’s like a constant hunger and thirst, the sense that they have been stabbed, cut, robbed, deprived. Jesus is blessed are they. Why? They shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful. The merciful are not blessed in the world’s way of looking at things. The merciful are there to be taken, there to be run over, there to be used and abused. Merciful are not blessed. We say blessed is the tough guy. Blessed is the one who straps on his gun at high noon and walks down the street, and when he gets done everybody who deserves to be dead is dead. And maybe a few other people too, you can’t worry about things like that. And Jesus is blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the person who, when they are in a situation and mercy is needed, they don’t simply say, listen, right is right, and steamroller their way through.
Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers, I’m sorry, blessed are the pure in heart, and the pure in heart are those dear ones who are so worried about contamination through doing something wrong, who have such a longing to be godly that they simply will not pick up the ways of wickedness and go the way of the world, and they suffer for it. They may even today be treated by a psychiatrist for it, or a psychologist. Blessed are these dear people who have such a sense of principle that they cannot engage in the ordinary course of the world. We say of them, do we not, oh she’s a pure soul. As a way of sort of helping everyone understand, don’t expect too much from her. Don’t expect too much from him. They’re pure souls, you know. Jesus says blessed are those who are pure in heart because they’ll see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers. They shall be called the children of God, and we perhaps think of Henry Kissinger flying back and forth in shuttle diplomacy, and the television cameras waiting upon him, and everyone with bated breath waiting to see what Henry’s going to say. But if you want to know how blessed a peacemaker is, ask a policeman who’s been sent to a home to settle a family quarrel. That’s how blessed peacemakers are in the worldly way of things. To be a peacemaker means to take on other people’s messes, to step in the middle where blows are being thrown. And if things go bad, and they’re already going bad, you’re going to be blamed. And if things get better, you’ll be forgotten. The role of the peacemaker is not a happy lot.
And Jesus saw all of these people, and he saw also those who were persecuted for righteousness sake, and for following him. And he said to them, blessed, blessed art thou.
What Jesus has done is to draw from the list of the world’s un-blessables a list. And he is saying from among this group, some will be blessed. From among this group of un-blessables, others will be blessed. And so on down the line he’s taking the list of those whom the world regards as un-blessable and un-blessed, and he’s saying they too can be blessed.
Now let me tell you some things he’s not saying. It’s very important to understand. He’s not saying that everyone who mourns will be comforted. There are people who mourn and will not be comforted. There are people who fall in love with their own mourning and adopt a way of life. Comfort would simply destroy their plan of action. There are people who are poor in spirit, and they’re not going to be blessed because they will not hear or they will not turn to the kingdom of God. There are the merciful who are going to be stabbed in the back and ruined from time and for eternity because they have not learned.
You see, we must understand that Jesus is not saying everyone who does these things will be blessed. And if you have a problem with understanding that, you have to understand again the general way in which Jesus teaches. He teaches to correct an error. He teaches to deal with the need. He’s not saying everyone who is pure in heart will see God. There are some pure souls that are going to be destroyed by their own drive for purity because they will turn it into a religion of works and a religion of law which will kill them and do nothing but feed their own self-righteousness for being so pure.
I could go on down the list. He is not saying that they are blessed because of the condition. The condition is not good. He’s not saying if you want to own the kingdom of God, go get yourself persecuted. There are people who are not going to be persecuted who will be in the kingdom of God. There are those who do not mourn who will be comforted nonetheless. There are those who are smart and blessed with spiritual things who will be in the kingdom of God. There are those who are not shy and overwhelmed who will also inherit the earth. He is not telling you what to do. He’s not saying go out and become poor in spirit. He’s not saying mourn a bit.
You see, many people would turn it into a simpler way of working your way into blessing, and that is not his way. He is taking a list of the last, and he’s saying the last in man’s world can be the first in God’s world. And he’s saying to these people before him, he’s saying you are the light of the world.
Look at these words. Verse 13, you are the salt of the earth. Verse 14, you are the light of the world. It’s as if the salt had lost its saber wherewith shall it be salted. And again, a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. And verse 16, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
That’s the message of Jesus. He comes to you where you are and to I where I am, and he comes to every individual, and it says where you are you can be blessed because the kingdom of God is available from where you are. The word is nigh thee, it is even in thy mouth and in thy heart it is the word of faith which we preach. Say not who shall ascend into heaven to bring God down, or who shall go into the depths to bring him up. It’s where you are. You are the light of the world. If you are not the light of the world where you are, there will be no other light. If you are not the salt of the earth where you are, there will be a permanent and eternal failure because you did not bring the kingdom of God into that family relationship, that work relationship, that neighborhood, that smallest of personal connections. See Jesus said, I say unto you verily, I say unto you that if a person shall give a cup of cold water to a little child as a disciple of mine, he shall not lose his reward.
Let us pray. Oh God, our hearts are touched. We would like to believe that it is so, and when we see the souls destroying and soul-grinding mechanism of the kingdom of darkness, we cry out for it to be so. Oh God, burn it into our minds that the presence of the thought and the presence of yourself could never be removed from us. In Jesus name. Amen.