Today we continue our study in the Word of God as we study the Beatitudes, that is, the blessings that we read at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. The words which begin, "Blessed are." All these blessings are called the Beatitudes, and just now you heard the Witness in Song team singing these Beatitudes. These Beatitudes were witnessed in song.
Now, we have studied all of these nine Beatitudes, but we must come to the question as to whether there is some kind of sequence, whether there is some kind of order, whether there is some kind of direction in these Beatitudes. Not that we just study them individually and singly, but that we also understand whether there is an internal relationship between these Beatitudes. Whether they form some kind of entity, some kind of unified whole. Now, many suggestions have been put forward as to how each Beatitude might relate to each other. And having looked at these suggestions, I must confess that they don't really satisfy me. They don't really answer my questions, and I find that they are exegetically inadequate.
What then is this internal unity of these Beatitudes? And so I kept pondering over these Beatitudes, meditating about them, to see whether there was some internal connection that is not superficial, that is exegetically sound — that means it is a correct exposition of the Lord's teaching — and yet does not miss out any part. In other words, an explanation that does not just account for two or three of the Beatitudes relating to another two or three of them, but that serves as a unified whole.
Now, how shall we understand these nine Beatitudes? I must say to you that the more I meditate in the Word of God, the more I am amazed at the beauty and the structure of the Word of God. My only regret often is that I am not always equal to the task of conveying to you or describing to you what I might perceive myself. In other words, the task of seeing one thing is quite different from being able to translate what you see into words. That is why when you come to, for example, the Apocalypse, the Revelation, and you see John trying to describe his heavenly vision, you can see that John is really struggling. He is having a very hard time trying to describe what he does see. And so the reader looks at it and all he can see is strange beasts and animals who climb out of the sea or go into the sea and doing all kinds of strange things. And the more you read it, the more you wonder, what is John trying to say? But then, when you ponder it, you realize that John is trying to describe something that is most difficult to put into words in the human language.
I do not at all claim to have reached anywhere near the spiritual heights of John. Whereas he is way up there, I am hovering somewhere much nearer the ground. And I pray that perhaps in God's grace I shall progress more and more as time proceeds. But I still also feel the same problem, that many times, though you perceive something, you see it, it is very hard to put it across clearly and easily in a way that is easy to understand. So, God helping me, I try to see if there is some means by which we can get a panoramic view, as it were, a kind of spiritual vision of the content of these Beatitudes.
I say again, as I confess many times, even in the last few weeks when I preached on the Beatitudes, I went away feeling discouraged in the sense that I felt that I had not really succeeded in translating what I saw into a message that you might be able to see what I saw. That is where the problem is. But I pray that you may not therefore only depend upon my word to get the vision, but that the Spirit of God will help you as you listen to the exposition of God's word to see what it is that the Lord wants to say directly to you. And thus, perhaps, through the work of the Spirit, any inadequacies in my attempt to convey the meaning of the word of God to you will be made up, or more than made up, by the work of the Spirit in your heart.
Here are nine Beatitudes. I am sure you have already observed that there are nine of them. What is the internal unity of these nine? Following a principle that I have often mentioned to you, a very important principle, I have many times mentioned to you that Paul is the commentator par excellence, the commentator extraordinary of the teaching of the Lord Jesus. In other words, what we have in the New Testament is the text, which is the teaching of the Lord Jesus, and the commentary, which is Paul's exposition and application of the words of the Lord Jesus. And I have found time and again that when you are somewhat in difficulty about understanding precisely the meaning of what the Lord Jesus is saying, you will find somewhere in the teaching of Paul the matter much better expounded and much more clearly set forth than we could do it ourselves.
There are nine Beatitudes, and so when I reviewed in my mind what Paul had expounded and taught elsewhere, I looked to see whether there was something that had a ninefold application in Paul's teaching. And I am sure that when I say ninefold, something immediately jumps to your mind. Because immediately many of you will be aware that the fruit of the Spirit is also ninefold in Galatians chapter 5 verses 22 and 23. Is this a coincidence, that there are nine Beatitudes? And nowhere else that I know of in Paul's writing is there a ninefold order such as there is in the fruit of the Spirit.
Now, when you put the Beatitudes, nine of them, on this side, and the fruit of the Spirit, nine on the other side, you will immediately be inclined to say, "No, I don't see any correspondence." One starts, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," the other says, "The fruit of the Spirit is love." Well, not so fast. Because Paul is, of course, a commentator. Remember, he does not simply repeat the Beatitudes. He is going to describe their content. And that is a very different matter altogether.
First, let us consider the question whether this matter of nine in each case is purely coincidental. We don't have very far to go to look for a confirmatory answer. Because in Galatians chapter 5, in the same chapter, a few verses earlier, the Apostle Paul speaks of the works of the flesh. Perhaps we should turn to Galatians chapter 5 for a moment. Galatians chapter 5 and verse 19. "Now the works of the flesh are plain. What are they? Fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, carousing, and things in this kind of category." And then he goes on to say, "I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God," no matter what kind of Christianity they profess, no matter how often they go to church, no matter how big a Bible they lug around.
I'd like you to notice that the subject here is the kingdom of God, exactly as in the Beatitudes. The first Beatitude begins, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God." And the eighth Beatitude also says, "Blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for then these people shall inherit the kingdom of God." Now, while I was reading the works of the flesh, I wonder whether you gave it a count. How many did Paul mention? He mentioned fifteen categories. Now, again, I was interested to see whether Paul had simply invented the fifteen categories from memory, or whether these fifteen categories were also based somewhere in the Lord's teaching.
Immediately, of course, the Lord's words in Matthew and Mark come to my mind. And so what I do is I look at the list of the Lord's teaching in Mark. Mark chapter 7, verses 21 and 22. And if you look at Mark chapter 7, verses 21 and 22, you will see a list there. "For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness." How many did you count? Thirteen. You say thirteen. Paul got fifteen. Two missing. Not so fast. Because, of course, we have what are known as synoptic parallels. This same passage is repeated in Matthew, but, interestingly enough, with two differentiations. And if you add the two differentiations in the parallel passage in Matthew, what do you get? You get a list of fifteen. Was I ever surprised when I compared the two lists and counted them! Paul was a very thorough man. He missed nothing.
What are the two things in Matthew that are not mentioned here in Mark? Well, in Matthew chapter 15, verses 18 and 19, where you have Matthew's list, you will find two things that are not mentioned in Mark. One of these is in verse 19, which is "false witness." The term "false witness" does not occur in Mark's list. There is a second distinction, which if you depend on an English translation, you will miss. That is why I say to the training team, time and again, you have got to learn to work in the Greek. And they are working very hard in the Greek right now. If you depend on an English translation, you will have completely missed the point. The English translation has obliterated an important difference.
You see, in verse 18 of Matthew, the word there is "evil thoughts," and here you have dialogismoi poneroi, that is, the thoughts are evil. But in Mark, the word is quite different in Greek. The word is not poneros but kakos, a different word. And yet, if you look at the RSV, you will find both translated as "evil thoughts," as though the original had exactly the same word. That is why no commentator, no Bible expositor, can depend upon the English to expound the Bible. Because important distinctions are obliterated with no regard for the difference in the words. The difference is not only that there is a different word there; the difference extends to the fact that one has the article and the other does not have the definite article.
Now, anyone with some degree of familiarity with Greek will know that the distinction between evil and bad is not at all the same in Greek. Let me put it to you as Archbishop Trench, in his study on the synonyms of the New Testament, puts it. The distinction between the word in Mark and the word in Matthew can be summed up like this. The kakos, which is the word that occurs in Mark, means bad. The bad person may be content to perish in his own corruption. But the evil person, that is the word used in Matthew, is not content unless he is corrupting others as well and drawing them into the same destruction with himself. So what you have in Mark is the word that somebody is bad — he is content just to corrupt himself or let himself be corrupted. But in Matthew, the word is evil — somebody evil is distinct from somebody who is bad in that he wants not only to be corrupted himself, but he wants to corrupt somebody else. He wants to drag somebody else into sin. That is a big distinction.
Having seen this, we will immediately notice then, to come back to the point, that the two lists — the one in Paul has fifteen items, and the one in Mark and Matthew put together, because they are parallels and belong together, in fact also have fifteen items. Wouldn't that be a coincidence? So the fruit of the Spirit both have nine items, and the works of the flesh have fifteen items in each case. I think you must begin to realize that it can't be a coincidence. And of course, as we already noticed, Paul in Galatians, as also in the Beatitudes, is talking about the kingdom of God. This is all the more significant when you realize that the term "kingdom of God" is not that frequent in Paul, occurring only fourteen times.
Having established this, let us return to this matter of the Beatitudes, to search for an internal unity, an internal spiritual element that connects all of these nine Beatitudes. What might it be? What could it be? If you put these two lists of nine side by side, you will see that of course they do not correspond to each other. Why? Very important. When you study the Bible, look carefully at the Word. These two lists are distinct from each other. The teaching of the Lord Jesus and Paul have an internal connection but are distinct from each other in a very important way.
What way? Well, if you looked at the lists of evil, what did you see? The Lord Jesus says, "Out of the heart" — heart! — "out of your heart, as a natural man, proceeds all these fifteen kinds of evil things." The Lord Jesus is talking about the heart, about the heart attitude. But that is not what Paul is speaking about. He says, "The works of the flesh are," and fifteen categories follow. Now do you follow what happened? The Lord Jesus is talking about the inward source — thoughts. But Paul, as an expositor, is explaining what will be the consequences of those evil thoughts. Therefore, of course, you do not expect the two lists to correspond exactly, because one is speaking about what you think. The Lord Jesus is describing your inner attitude when you are unregenerate, when God has not come into your life and changed you, whereas Paul is talking about what happens when these thoughts bear fruit in action, when the thoughts become works.
Bear this important distinction in mind. One is talking about the thoughts of the heart, the other is talking about the works of the flesh. When we come to the spiritual parallel, we see exactly the same point. When you look at the Beatitudes, you see that they are talking about inner attitude. "Blessed are the poor in spirit." "Blessed are the pure in heart." Again, the Lord Jesus is talking about the heart attitude. He is talking about the internal attitude of the man spiritually. But Paul is not speaking about that. He is talking about the fruit of the Spirit. Again, the counterpart of the works of the flesh. The fruit is something that has come forth from the tree. It is not still inside the tree. It is born outward. It becomes a manifestation of the life of the tree.
In each case, the Lord is speaking about inner attitudes. And in Paul's case, he is expounding and explaining what happens when you have these kind of inner attitudes. If you have sinful inner attitudes, then you will have the works of the flesh, which he describes in these parallel fifteen items. So a commentator is not there simply to repeat what the Lord Jesus said. Paul is not going over the attitudes, repeating them. He expects his hearers, who are Christians, to have been instructed in the teaching of the Lord Jesus already. He is expounding to them what happens. What are the works that come out of these kind of evil thoughts? What are the fruit that come out of these holy thoughts?
The Lord Jesus does not emphasize the aspect of works of the flesh or fruit of the Spirit for one very simple reason. Because He knows that if you have these holy thoughts, which He describes as blessed, then you will have the fruit of the Spirit. That part you leave to the Spirit to do. You cannot produce the fruit. By definition they are the fruit of the Spirit. But He tells you what you have to do in order that God can do something in you. So He leaves that part to the work of the Spirit.
Now, once you perceive all this, something very wonderful happens. Let us now try to follow through this observation. The first Beatitude says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." And the first fruit of the Spirit is love. I would like you first of all to notice that the first Beatitude is a foundational statement that in a way includes in itself the other eight Beatitudes which follow. The same is true of the fruit of the Spirit. The first fruit, love, is in a way a fruit that contains all the other eight within itself. That is why Paul did not say "the fruits of," plural. He says "the fruit of the Spirit," single fruit, which has an eightfold language, a cluster of grace. There is just one cluster, but nine grapes on it. They are all part of the one thing. The poor in spirit is a foundational statement from which all other Beatitudes derive. Love is the foundational fruit from which the other eight follow. If you don't have love, you will not have joy, you will not have peace. None of the others will follow. If you are not poor in spirit, then neither will you mourn for sin, neither will you have this hunger and thirsting for righteousness, neither will you have the meekness.
What a commentator or a Christian does when he studies the teaching of the Lord Jesus is not that he rushes to a commentary. The way to study the Bible is to ask yourself one question and apply it to yourself. And see what happens. When you study the Bible, think of it like this. The Lord Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God." I say to myself, "Lord, help me to be poor in spirit. Lord, by Your grace, I will be poor in spirit. I will make it my aim to be poor in spirit. What will happen to me, Lord, when I am poor in spirit?" The answer will come. If you come to Him, and come to Him in poverty of spirit, you will know from experience what God will do with you. You know what He will do with you? When you come to Him in the sense of utter dependence — "I come to You in poverty of spirit. That is, I come to You, Lord, like a spiritual beggar. I have nothing in myself. Have pity upon me, as You would have upon a beggar, for that is what I am spiritually" — you know what God will do? He will pour forth His kindness and His love upon you. That is what He will do. And you will experience it.
You don't have to get a commentary to understand what that means. You will experience the inpouring of His love into your life. And then you understand. To be poor in spirit means that God's love will be poured into my heart. That is why Paul says exactly those words in Romans chapter 5 verse 5. That God has shed abroad His love into our hearts by His Holy Spirit. Paul is speaking about experience. He says, "I know it because He has shed abroad, He has poured forth His love into my heart by the Holy Spirit." You see how perfectly it follows. If you will come to Him as a spiritual beggar, you will experience His generosity, His lovingkindness, His spiritual bounty that He will pour forth upon you.
What happens to those who mourn? Who mourn over their own sin? Who mourn over the sins of other people? Who mourn over the sins of the church? Just as Ezra and Nehemiah mourned over the sins of Israel. When Ezra said, "Lord, we have sinned. We, Your people Israel, have sinned wretchedly. Have pity upon us." What happens when you mourn for sin? He will pour forth His forgiveness upon you. And what happens when you are forgiven? You will be filled with joy. That is exactly what the parallel passage in Luke says. In Luke chapter 6 verse 21, the parallel passage to Matthew, the second Beatitude says this: "Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh." You shall laugh. You will be filled with joy. You see what Paul is doing? He is drawing forth the consequences of applying the Sermon on the Mount into your life. If you come forth mourning for sin — mourning for the sins of others, mourning for the sins of the church, and never forgetting to mourn your own sins lest you become self-righteous — then, as the Lord Jesus also says in Luke 6:21, "Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh," that is, you shall be filled with joy. There you find it. The second fruit of the Spirit corresponds exactly with the inner attitude of the disciple that mourns.
The third: the attitude, "Blessed are the meek." What happens if, instead of studying this passage academically, you think to yourself, "What will happen to me if I come in meekness? If my arrogant attitude is removed from me? If I become meek, humble, contrite before God?" What will happen is that you will experience God's peace pouring into your heart. You are going to see what God will do in your life. You will experience a peace that you never understood before. And of course, that is exactly what the Lord Jesus says in Matthew 11:28-29, where He links meekness and peace in the very words of the Lord Jesus. Paul had not failed to notice that. "Come unto me, all you that are weary and heavy laden, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in spirit, and you shall find rest, peace unto your soul." Now that is the consequence of meekness: peace unto your soul.
What happens then, as we press on, if you hunger and thirst for righteousness? When you hunger and thirst for God? Hungering and thirsting — notice the present continuous tense. You keep on hungering and thirsting for righteousness. What will that do for you? It will build for you spiritual endurance. What is translated sometimes as steadfastness, sometimes as endurance, and sometimes as what I like to translate as "stickability." Being able to stick the thing through. Stickability — that is what Christians need. I find so many people, they can't stick it. They run into some difficulties and immediately the white flag goes up. They say to Satan, "Okay, I surrender." We have got so many surrendering Christians. They have not experienced what Paul says concerning our life in Jesus, that God always gives us the victory through Christ Jesus our Lord. Paul was one who never understood spiritual defeat, because he applied the spiritual principles in his life and he always gained the victory. Sometimes he got knocked down, but that is not defeat. In a boxing ring, you don't win by just knocking the other guy down. You have to knock him out. But Paul says, "I get knocked down, but no one has ever knocked me out." Because he gets knocked down, he comes up on his feet again and knocks the other guy out. That is the way to do it.
So what happens to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness? They learn endurance. What trains us so well in spiritual endurance? Learning to persevere in our hunger and thirst for righteousness all through our spiritual life. Never complacent. Never satisfied. Never to say, "Well, I know everything. I've studied the Bible for twenty years. It's enough for now." We must never be satisfied and comfortable.
Let us go to the next point, the merciful. In the Beatitudes you have "Blessed are the merciful," and the corresponding fruit of the Spirit is kindness. These two words are so close in meaning that there is hardly a need for drawing the connection. In fact, the words merciful and kindness are constantly linked in the New Testament. Take, for example, Titus chapter 3 verse 4, you have this word for kindness which is the fruit of the Spirit here. And in verse 5, you have the word for mercy. Kindness and mercy are simply, one is simply the consequence of the other. Or take Ephesians chapter 2 verse 7, there you have kindness. In Ephesians chapter 2 verse 4, you have mercy. Kindness, mercy, constantly linked. In 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 3, you have kindness. In 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 10, you have mercy, constantly linked to each other.
The connection between pure in heart and goodness hardly needs any kind of explanation or exegesis. The connection is so obvious. It is even explicitly stated, for example, in 1 Timothy 1:5, where you find the word "pure," just as we have here in the Sermon on the Mount, directly connected with the word "good," as in the fruit of the Spirit. The pure in heart, the good of conscience. Pure and good — these are simply synonymous terms.
If we come to the seventh one, "Blessed are the peacemakers." The corresponding fruit of the Spirit is faith, more specifically faithfulness. The Greek word for faith is the same word for faithfulness. There is in fact no difference in the Greek. And you will find that, for example, the RSV sometimes translates the word as faith, sometimes as faithfulness. There is not any real distinction from the point of view of the lexicon. The peacemaker is a person who can be described as faithful, because such a person is one who is walking faithfully in the footsteps of the Master. Why did the Lord Jesus take up the cross? In order to be a peacemaker, to reconcile us to Himself. Why do we take up the cross? Why does the Lord Jesus call us to take up the cross? Because we also are, as Paul says, given the ministry of reconciliation. So when you are following exactly in His footsteps, doing the work that He does, being a reconciler, a peacemaker, that is the test of faithfulness. And in fact the words faithfulness, faith, and peace are linked together in 2 Timothy 2:22.
So if we press on now to the eighth Beatitude, persecuted for righteousness' sake. What is the corresponding fruit of the Spirit? Gentleness. The correspondence is extremely clear. Why? How should the Christian behave when he is persecuted for righteousness' sake? Should he shout back? Shall he revile back? Should he behave in an aggressive manner? No. His attitude is to be one of gentleness. As Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 23, he says that when Jesus was reviled, He did not revile again. He was gentle. He was meek. That is what meekness is about. He does not strike back. And Peter says to the Christians, "You be like Him. When you are ridiculed, when you are mocked, when you are trampled upon, you don't revile back again." That is why Paul speaks of the meekness and patience of Christ in 2 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 1.
And this is the pattern of Paul's own life. Because under persecution, look what Paul says about how he behaves when he is persecuted for righteousness' sake. In 1 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 12, I find this passage so Christlike. "To the present hour we hunger and thirst. We are ill-clad and buffeted and homeless. And we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless. When persecuted, we endure. When slandered, we try to conciliate. We have become, and are now, as the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things." We are treated like garbage. And we take it meekly, gently. There you see the parallel between the attitude and the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is gentleness under persecution. Where can we see the true gentleness of a person, his true character? It will be under persecution.
What is the last? "Blessed are you," the Lord Jesus says, "when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on My account." You are slandered. False stories are told about you. All kinds of lies are reiterated about you. There is no truth in them at all. And you are just having your reputation blackened. How should you behave? See the fruit of the Spirit. Whenever did you need more desperately that fruit of the Spirit? Under those circumstances: self-control. How easily when we are falsely accused we fight back. We are willing to take it when we are correctly accused. But the one time we can't take it and we will not take it is when people slander us and say false things about us. Then our anger arises. Then we are going to strike back. But the fruit of the Spirit when you endure false accusations is self-control. That is the time when what you most desperately need is that fruit of the Spirit of self-control, that you do not allow yourself to become angry or lose your temper. Rather keep well under control. Let the Spirit of God help you so to live as to show forth the beauty of Christ.
Now I think you have seen by now how obvious, how clear is the connection between the fruit of the Spirit on the one hand and the Beatitudes. We see this internal spiritual connection right there.
# The Beatitudes and the Fruit of the Spirit
There's hardly any kind of explanation, exegesis. The connection is so obvious that there is hardly anything that needs saying. The connection is even explicitly stated, for example, in 1 Timothy 1, verse 5, where you find the word "pure," just as we have here in the Sermon on the Mount, directly connected with the word "good," as in the fruit of the Spirit. The pure in heart, the good of conscience. Pure and good — they are simply synonymous terms.
If we come to the seventh one: "Blessed are the peacemakers." The corresponding fruit of the Spirit is faith, more specifically faithfulness. The Greek word for faith is the same word for faithfulness. There is in fact no difference in the Greek. And you will find that, for example, the RSV sometimes translates the word as faith, sometimes as faithfulness. There isn't any real distinction from the point of view of the lexicon. The peacemaker is a person who can be described as faithful, because such a person is one who is walking faithfully in the footsteps of the Master. Why did the Lord Jesus take up the cross? In order to be a peacemaker, to reconcile us to himself. Why do we take up the cross? Why does the Lord Jesus call us to take up the cross? Well, when we were studying this beatitude, we saw it already. Because we also are, as Paul says, given the ministry of reconciliation. So when you are following exactly in his footsteps, doing the work that he does, being a reconciler, a peacemaker, that is the test of faithfulness. It is so obvious, so clear. And in fact, the words faithfulness, faith, and peace are linked together in 2 Timothy 2, verse 22. These words are again linked right there.
So if we press on now to the eighth beatitude: "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake." What is the corresponding fruit of the Spirit? Well, the corresponding fruit of the Spirit is gentleness. Gentleness. Persecuted for righteousness' sake — gentleness. The correspondence is extremely clear. Why? How should the Christian behave when he is persecuted for righteousness' sake? Should he shout back? Shall he revile back? Should he behave in an aggressive manner? No, no, no. His attitude is to be one of gentleness.
As Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 23, he says that when Jesus was reviled, he did not revile again. That is, when he was abused, ridiculed, laughed at, he did not retaliate in any way. He was gentle. He was meek. That is what meekness is about. He does not strike back. When he was reviled, he reviled not again. And Peter says to the Christians, you be like him. When you are ridiculed, when you are mocked, when you are trampled upon, you don't revile back again. You don't shout back. You don't talk back. You will be like him. Meek. Gentle. And that is why Paul speaks of the meekness and patience of Christ in 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 1.
And this is the pattern of Paul's own life. Because under persecution, look what Paul says about how he behaves when he is persecuted for righteousness' sake. In 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 12. I find this passage so Christ-like. I would like to read it to you. 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 12, maybe reading from verse 11. This is what Paul says: "To this present hour, we hunger and thirst." You need a lot of endurance for that, as we noticed. "We are ill-clad and buffeted and homeless," as Christ had nowhere to lay his head. "And we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled," what did he do? He did not revile again. "When reviled, we bless. When persecuted, we endure. When slandered, we try to conciliate," make peace, that is. "We have become, and are now, as the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things." We are treated like garbage. And we take it meekly, gently.
Now this I find is so beautiful. There you see the parallel between the attitude and the fruit of the Spirit. "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake." And then the fruit of the Spirit — when the blessing comes, the spiritual blessing comes forth, now in the form of gentleness, then in the form of inheriting the kingdom of God. The fruit of the Spirit is gentleness under persecution. Where can we see the true gentleness of a person? His true character? It will be under persecution. We can all smile when times are good. What we really are will appear when times are hard.
What is the last? "Blessed are you," the Lord Jesus says, "when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account." You are slandered. False stories are told about you. All kinds of lies are reiterated about you. There is no truth in them at all. And you are just having your reputation blackened. Your name is downgraded. You are falsely treated in this way. How should you behave? See the fruit of the Spirit? Whenever did you need more desperately that fruit of the Spirit? Under those circumstances — in self-control. Self-control.
How easily when we are falsely accused do we fight back. We are willing to take it when we are correctly accused. We can still be gentle because we feel that we are suffering justly and we wanted to suffer like this. It is nice to have the feeling of being a martyr in some ways. We are suffering for Christ. We can take it gently. But the one time we can't take it and we will not take it is when people slander us and say false things about us. Then our anger arises. Then we are going to strike back because we feel this is not correct. This is not true. I did not do this. And you have not the right to say that about me. No, no, no. Don't worry. The fruit of the Spirit when you endure false accusations is self-control. That is the time when what you most desperately need is that fruit of the Spirit of self-control. That you do not allow yourself to become angry, to lose your temper. None of this will be glorifying to God. Rather, keep well under control. Let the Spirit of God help you so to live as to show forth the beauty of Christ.
Now I think you have seen by now how obvious, how clear is the connection between the fruit of the Spirit on the one hand and the Beatitudes. We see this internal spiritual connection right there. But we have not finished at this point if we are going to understand the matter correctly. We have noticed already so far that one has to do with internal attitudes. The Beatitudes have to do with internal attitudes, whereas the fruit of the Spirit is something that God does in us.
Now here there is often a very serious spiritual error that many Christians commit. The spiritual error is this. We say to ourselves, well, one day when God has done his wonderful work in us, we shall be the ideal kind of person that Paul talks about. I must wait patiently until the Holy Spirit so transforms my life that I have all these fruits of the Spirit, and then I can be poor in spirit, and then I can be meek, and then I can mourn for sin, and then I can do all of these things. But since the Holy Spirit hasn't transformed me yet, then I say, sorry Jesus, I'm not poor in spirit, you see, because the real problem — the real problem in spirit is, if you don't mind me saying so, it's because you have not yet changed me. So really the fault lies, if you don't mind — I may say so most reverently and respectfully — in other words, we pass the buck back for our spiritual failure to God. You see, I am not a Paul because you didn't make me a Paul, remember? Yeah, so I mean, Paul is Paul, I'm me, and I am very original. I'm not like Paul. So if you want to make a spiritual giant out of me, you've got to do it. In the meantime, I will get on with my business, which happens at the present time. But until such time as you have transformed me, then I will become the spiritual giant. But on that day when I stand at the judgment seat, don't say, why aren't you on the level of Paul? Because you didn't make me a Paul. I was never predestined to be a Paul. I just have to humbly say — let me tell you, the Lord Jesus will not allow that kind of talk. No, no, no. He will not allow this. We will not on that day be able to pass the buck back to him and say, well, this is — it's your fault that I am what I am, you see.
Let us look here at this moment at the difference between the Sermon on the Mount. I mentioned to you the Sermon on the Mount talks about the inner attitude in us, and the fruit of the Spirit is what God's Spirit does in us. But which comes first? We would like to say the fruit of the Spirit comes first, and then we will be poor in spirit, and we will do this and we will do that, when God has done all that in us. But since he hasn't done it in us — look at us as a church, we are all pitifully pitiful spiritual beggars. And what can we do because God didn't do anything in us? That is very remarkable up to this point.
Let me tell you here again, you must return. If you don't understand the text, read the commentary. Read what Paul has to say. Let us read what Paul has to say as we return to Galatians again. And Galatians — Paul is continuing to expound his point about the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the flesh, and this is what he says in Galatians chapter 6. Chapter 6, that's the next chapter, and we read from verse 7. Galatians chapter 6, verse 7, reads like this. He says — Paul says to the Galatian Christians — "Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that will he reap." What do you want to reap? Depends on what you sow. It's very obvious. You don't have to be a genius to understand that. Do you want to reap the fruit of the Spirit? Then you've got to sow something to the Spirit. Do you want to become a person who is spiritually powerful and that can be used by God? And that depends on what you sow to the Spirit.
Now that's what he goes on to say in the next verse, verse 8: "For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life." Eternal life is something that we are to reap. But in order to reap it, we have to sow something. Because you don't reap anything if you don't sow anything. And if you sow the wrong thing, you reap the wrong thing. If you sow corruption, if you sow to the flesh, you will reap corruption and death. If you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life. It depends what you are going to sow. Don't pass the buck back to God now. You are not going to become a spiritual giant by sowing to the flesh. All that you will reap from sowing to the flesh is corruption and death.
So then, verse 9, Paul goes on to say: "And let us not grow weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart." There is the patience. You keep hungering and thirsting for righteousness. You've got to have that endurance. You don't lose heart. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good. Do good to all men.
Now I hope that one thing you can see first: what comes first? The fruit of the Spirit is the outward manifestation of what God does in us. But to get fruit, you've got to sow something. The fruit is the harvest. You don't get any fruit if you don't sow anything. So Paul is going on to say, if you sow to the Spirit, you shall reap the fruit. If you don't sow anything, you've got nothing. And if you sow to the flesh, you reap corruption! If you sow sparingly, he says in another place, you will reap sparingly. If you sow abundantly, you will reap abundantly. Whether you get a big harvest or a small harvest depends on what you sow and how much you sow.
You see, Paul, in other words, is putting the responsibility right back to you, right back to me, right back to us. He will not allow us to say, Lord, we didn't get a big harvest because you didn't do much work in me. That would be an insult to God. God's power is fully available to each person. It depends on what you sow. That's very important.
Now what does it mean to talk about sowing? Well, what does it mean to sow to the Spirit? Well, it depends, in other words, what is your spiritual input. The harvest is the output. What you reap is the output. What is your input? And what and where did you put the input? Now the sowing is something we must do. That is obvious. If we are going to get any kind of a harvest, it's something we must do. There is a word that Paul uses time and again. The word is "to pursue," to make it your aim. The reason why Paul was such a spiritual giant is not at all accidental, nor is it a question of predestination. It is a question of what kind of a person he was by the grace of God. And what kind of a person he was becomes obvious when you study his writings, his letters. And there are so many words you could study, but notice one particular word — this word "pursue." The Greek word "dioko" — pursue — which is sometimes in the RSV translated rather weakly by the words "make it your aim." The word "dioko" means pursue. It expresses a certain intensity in which, for example, you are running hard after another person. Say in battle, you are pursuing the enemy. Or, for example, you are hunting down a prey. You are pursuing, running fast so that you don't lose the prey, the animal you are hunting, or else you go without supper. And so you pursue. It expresses a straining of every nerve in order to get to the prize, the goal.
Now this word is used many times, at least eight times, in the letters of Paul. For example, Romans chapter 12, verse 13, or Romans chapter 14, verse 19, or 1 Corinthians chapter 14, verse 1: to pursue love, to make love your aim. Or Philippians chapter 3, verse 12, which is so characteristic of Paul: "I pursue. I press forward towards the mark." There is an intensity. That's the intensity of the input. The reason why we have a generation of feeble Christians is because there is no input. I see Christians who are absolutely unmotivated, who have no goal, no pressing forward, no striving in the Spirit, nothing. They sit back waiting for a harvest when they have sowed absolutely nothing. And no wonder they go through life with nothing. How can I expect God to give me a spiritual harvest when I have sowed absolutely nothing? I'd like you really to think on this point very deeply.
There is — why what happens in the Beatitudes is what comes first — that is the attitude of your input. That is what you sow. If you say, like Paul, I shall make it my spiritual goal, my spiritual purpose, I shall pursue with single-minded determination, by the grace of God, to be poor in spirit, that is, I shall come to God as a person who is completely dependent upon him. I shall come to God as somebody who is wholly committed to him, fully yielded to him, entirely open to him, like a spiritual beggar, that he may fill me with all his fullness. If you come with that kind of an attitude, if you pursue this kind of an attitude with steadfastness, and if I pursue such an attitude with steadfastness, I shall be filled with the fullness of God. He shall pour his love into me in overflowing measure by his Holy Spirit, because now I have opened my heart's doors fully wide to him. I have sowed the spiritual attitude which makes it possible for him to give me the spiritual harvest.
Or if I aim then that by God's grace I shall learn to mourn — mourn for sin in myself and for sin in others. Or if by God's grace I shall learn to be meek, I shall make it my goal to be meek in such a way that he can give me his revitalizing peace. If, though I do not yet love righteousness, I shall learn — I shall make it my object to learn to hunger and thirst for righteousness — then he is going to give me the fruit of the Spirit.
This is what, in other words, what the Lord is teaching us in the Sermon on the Mount is what we are to sow. What is our spiritual direction? What we are to pursue? What is the direction of our high calling that we must press forward to? We don't say, well, we have a high calling and I'm waiting to be lifted up by the scruff of my neck to the high calling. I have a high calling but I'm waiting for God to attach the booster jets to my back so that he can shoot — I press forward! It's what I am doing. I am pressing forward so that God by his grace will then empower me onward.
You see, God cannot do anything in you until you have the right attitude. I'm sure that as a Christian you have discovered that already. You have to have the right attitude. For example, if you don't repent to begin with, he can't forgive you. His forgiveness is there like a vast ocean, ready to forgive your sins. But you don't repent — that repentance is like a dike that holds back the ocean of his forgiveness. That ocean of forgiveness cannot come into your life. That water cannot fertilize the fields of your life because the lack of repentance on your part holds back the whole grace of God. Now if we understand that on the level of repentance, how easy it is to understand it on any other level. The same principle holds true. God cannot do anything for you until you open your heart to him.
It is said, for example, that right at the beginning in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus could not do many mighty works in Nazareth because of their unbelief. Their unbelief held back the grace of God. The same is true all the way through your spiritual life. These Beatitudes, then, brothers and sisters, you've got to understand, is what the Lord Jesus is saying to his disciples: "Blessed are this kind of people." Now you aim to be this kind of person who is blessed by God. He says to his disciples, you make this kind of person the objective of your life. You become that kind of person, because that kind of person is blessed by God. That must be the goal of every disciple.
I hope by now the whole objective, the whole teaching, and the internal spiritual connection of the Lord's teaching and the Beatitudes has become very, very clear to us. These Beatitudes are not meant to be intellectualized. They are meant to be applied into our life as the goal and direction which we are to follow, and then we are going to experience the power of God in our lives in a way that we never knew, never dreamed was possible, until our lives are so open to God through this poverty of spirit that he will fill us with all his fullness. I pray that God will truly help each one of us to understand these life-giving words of the Lord Jesus.
Let us be quiet before God the Lord. Thank you.