Today we continue in our study of the Word of God, in the Sermon on the Mount, and we shall continue to consider the Beatitudes, because there are more riches here which we have yet to consider. Now last week, when we looked at the Beatitudes, we saw that there is a close connection between the fruit of the Spirit and the Beatitudes. We saw that, as Paul says in Galatians chapter 6 and verse 8, that if we sow to the Spirit, we shall of the Spirit reap eternal life.
Now what does it mean to sow to the Spirit? Well, we saw that there we find the answer in the Sermon on the Mount, and especially in the Beatitudes, so that many times as a young Christian I asked myself this question: when the Lord says, "Strive to enter in at the narrow gate," what does it mean to strive? What exactly do I have to do? Now if I see a gate, and I'm told to strive to get through that gate, I know what I'm supposed to do. I expend a certain effort to get through that gate. But in spiritual terms, I don't know what that means. I don't know what it is I have to do to strive to enter at the narrow gate. But now we find the answer precisely here, in the Beatitudes, that we are to aim to be poor in spirit. We are to aim to mourn for sin, to be meek, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. And all these things become the goal and aim in our life that we seek to attain to.
But now, immediately a question arises. And the question is this: if you were listening to the expositions on the Beatitudes, you might immediately say, "But did you not say that these things are God's work in us? That it is God who makes us to be poor in spirit? He enables us to be meek. He enables us to mourn for sin. He helps us to see sin as it is. He it is who inspires our thirst and our hunger for righteousness. So is it something that we seek to attain? Is it something that we strive for? Or is it something that God does in us?" How can you say on the one hand that it is something that God does in us, and on the other hand, you say it is something we have to strive for?
Now, if you think that there is any kind of contradiction here, then you have not yet understood a vital principle in the Scriptures. And so, take for example, the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit, we are told, is love — first and foremost, love, joy, peace, and all these wonderful things. But although it is the fruit of the Spirit, it is still a command to us. "You shall love the Lord your God. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. You must love one another." The Lord says in John 15, "I give you a commandment, a new command, and that is that you shall love one another." So on the one hand, it is a command that we must obey, that we must strive to obey, we must seek to attain. And on the other hand, it is something that God enables us to do.
Well, there is no contradiction here in Scripture at all. But we find the same thing time and again in Paul's words. That on the one hand, he tells us it is the fruit of the Spirit. But then he also tells us that love is something that we must pursue, that we must strive after, that we must seek to attain. For example, in 1 Corinthians 14, verse 1, he says, "Make love your goal. Aim for love." The Greek word there is "to pursue." To run hard after love. To attain it. So on the one hand, it is a command. But on the other hand, it is something that we must attain. But attain by God's grace. So there is God's work and our desiring of God's work in us. It is always complementary. It is never contradictory in Scripture. It is something always seen to be parallel with each other, and never something that are two contradictory issues.
In the same way, for example, the fruit of the Spirit — we are told in Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 and 23 — is love, peace, joy, faith, gentleness, meekness, and all these things. In 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 22, Paul tells Timothy that he must make these things his goal. He must strive after love and peace and faith and holiness. These things he must strive for. In other words, we are to strive for the fruit of the Spirit. We are to seek to attain the fruit of the Spirit. It is to be our goal, our direction.
We find the same situation when we come to Scripture. The Scripture tells us, of course, that it is God who saves us. And yet we are also told to save ourselves. Acts chapter 2, verse 40. The Apostle Peter preaching to the people in Jerusalem in Acts chapter 2, verse 40, says, "Save yourselves from this perverse generation." So who saves? Is it God who saves, or do we save ourselves? Well, again, you see, Scripture sees no kind of contradiction in it. It is God who saves us, but He doesn't save us in spite of ourselves, against our own will. Or if we reject that salvation, God doesn't force His salvation down our throat. He saves us, but with our cooperation.
Now how do we save ourselves then? Well, in the same passage, Peter tells them that first of all, they are to repent. God doesn't save us without our repentance. So verse 38 of Acts chapter 2 says, "Repent and be baptized." And then even before this, in verse 21, we are told another thing we need to do: we are to call upon the name of the Lord. So we save ourselves by availing ourselves of God's salvation. And we avail ourselves of His salvation through repentance and through calling upon the name of the Lord. These are things we must do if God is to save us.
So it is somewhat like this: God stretches out His hand to save us, but we also must reach out our hand to take hold of His. That is the act of faith. If He were not there to save us, we have no hope at all. We can stretch out our arm in vain. If you were sinking in the sea and there was nobody there to save you, you can keep stretching out your hand and yelling at the top of your voice — that would not help you at all. But if there is a hand there ready to save you, you can stretch out your hand and take hold of His hand. That is the part that we must do.
And so, for example, it says, "Strive to enter in at the narrow gate, for the narrow gate and the narrow way lead to life." Now, life is a gift. But we must strive to enter into it. In other words, that door is open to us. It is open. But God doesn't push us through the door. We must strive to enter in through the door. Now, if God in His grace did not open the door, you could strive all you like. You wouldn't be able to get in. If He did not in His grace open that door, then you couldn't get in, no matter how much you strive. But in His grace, He has made that door open to us. He has opened that door. He has made life available to us. He gives us this life in Christ Jesus. Yet we must strive to enter in through the door.
So I would like you to bear very clearly in mind these two factors: that there is no kind of contradiction in Scripture between God's grace on the one hand and our effort on the other. Both are required. Now there is so much error in this matter, that we emphasize grace in such a way that man has no kind of responsibility at all. Or we emphasize effort to such an extent that grace does not figure at all. Now we must avoid both these errors. The error of stressing grace in such a way that man becomes entirely passive — man does nothing at all — and there we come close to a predestinarian teaching that if God wants to save you, He will sort of grab you out and save you whether you like it or not. There is no scriptural teaching like that that I can find in Scripture. On the other hand, we must avoid the error of the other side: that it is all our effort, that we save ourselves. That is equally false. Equally absurd.
No, no. In Scripture, we have always both. On the one hand, it is God who takes the initiative. It is God who reaches out to save us. It is God who makes His grace available to us in salvation. It is God who presents to us eternal life in Christ Jesus. But on the other hand, it is our responsibility to accept that grace, to take hold of it, to possess it, to make it our own. As Paul says, "As Christ has made me His own, I make Him my own." I make eternal life my own. And so that is why Paul says, "I press towards the mark. I strain every nerve to get to the mark." But if it were not for God's grace, I would not have the strength to press forward. If it were not for God's grace, there wouldn't even be a mark to press forward to. But now that God has given me a goal in life, and He has given me the strength to attain that goal — as Paul says in Philippians 4, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" — but still I can do it. It is I who have to do it, though it is His grace who enables me to do it.
Dear brothers and sisters, we must maintain a perfect balance of understanding. We must not fall into one error or the other: the error of saying that God does everything, and we are purely passive, we do absolutely nothing; or on the other hand, we do everything, and God does nothing. Both are false. God — let me say it one more time — God holds the initiative. He is the one, first and foremost, who made His eternal grace available to us in Christ Jesus our Lord. But He doesn't stuff it down our throats. We must strive to attain it. We must strive to take hold of that grace. We must strive to make it our own.
There we can see that that is why both these aspects in Scripture are constantly placed side by side. That is why Paul is able to say on the one hand that love is the fruit of the Spirit, and on the other hand to tell us that we must pursue love, that we must strain every nerve to get hold of love, to make love our own. Paul sees no kind of contradiction there at all. And that is why, when I was expounding on the Beatitudes, I was saying that only God can enable us to become all these things — to be pure in heart, to be meek, to become, in short, a new person. But it is for us to desire these things, and not only to desire it in a vague sort of way, but desire it intensely, to press forward, to strive, to press towards the mark, to use Paul's strong words in Philippians 3, verse 12.
So here we find then, that we must bear carefully in mind both these aspects. And only when we have both these aspects fully and clearly in our minds are we going to avoid all kinds of spiritual errors. Now, once we have understood this, we are in a better position to understand the Beatitudes. Because first we must will it; we must desire to be poor in spirit. If you don't even desire to be poor in spirit, how is God going to make you poor in spirit? Is He going to somehow force you to become poor in spirit? If He would do that, we would all, all automatically, as it were, be saved. We would all automatically become poor in spirit, we would become meek, everything would be fine, even in the church.
But do we see people in the church poor in spirit? Do we see people in the church meek? Do we see people hungering and thirsting with that intensity for righteousness? Does everyone in the church hunger in this way? No. Is it God's fault? Of course not. Then is His grace insufficient for us? Or is God after all doing nothing at all? Is He simply saying, "Well..." What happened to His grace? In other words, is His grace ineffectual? Of course not. Then why are we not all poor in spirit? Why are we not the spiritual giants that we ought to be? Of course, the responsibility — once you have understood what I have said so far, it becomes very clear — the responsibility rests with us. It is because we have not desired this poverty in spirit. We have still gloated in our pride. We have not wanted to be poor; we wanted to be rich in spirit. We want to be self-sufficient, self-reliant. We want to be autonomous in ourselves. We don't want to be dependent upon God. And when we do not want these things, then of course we cannot become poor in spirit, even though God by His power could make us so, but we don't want this.
Now therefore, it is important to understand, even in the matter of salvation, that the Scripture always puts the responsibility back, even on the unsaved man, let alone the Christian, who has even more responsibility. There is a verse in Paul, in Romans chapter 7, verse 18, which has often been poorly grasped. In Romans 7, verse 18, the last part of that verse, Paul says this — Romans chapter 7, verse 18c, we might call it, a, b, and c, the last part — says: "I can will what is right, but I cannot do it." I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.
Now that sums up in a nutshell everything that Paul wants to say in Romans chapter 7. That is the key to the whole thought of Romans 7. You see, to will is present with me. To do it is what I cannot attain to. Now that is the whole problem of man. Man does not have a bondage of the will, in the sense that he cannot will what is right. Now if we expound bondage of the will in this sense, it is false, it is contrary to Scripture. The bondage of the will only can be expounded — if we use that misleading term, and I would say it is misleading, because Paul does not say the will is under bondage — "I can will what is right." My problem is not that I can will it; it is that I cannot do it.
We all know about good New Year's resolutions. Good resolutions for the New Year: "I am going to, the coming year, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do that. I'm going to get up at 7 o'clock in the morning instead of 8 o'clock, so I can read one hour Bible more, and I can pray longer, and I'm going to do some jogging, and then all this." And then of course everything fades away. I can will it. But to do it, I know not how. I just can't get to doing it.
There is no bondage of the will, in the sense that we cannot will what is good. Even the unregenerate man can make good resolutions. He can will what is good. He discerns what is good. His problem doesn't lie in not being able to will it. It is that he cannot do it. Now, that is true not only of the unregenerate man. I'm sure you have discovered it is true also of the regenerate man. In fact, when it comes to spiritual things, we can always will wonderful things. We can simply not do it. That's the problem.
So I can — the question is, we may not even will it. I may not even will to be poor in spirit. But if I do, I can will to be poor in spirit. Paul said, this is perfectly possible. There is no bondage of the will, as far as that is concerned. Only in the sense — the will is under bondage only in the sense that though it can will it, it cannot do it. In that sense, the will is under bondage. In other words, the will is not effectual. You can will a thing, but you cannot will it effectually. You cannot actually get it done. And here it is important to distinguish between these two meanings of the bondage of the will. Otherwise, you end up in serious error.
Because if we mean that the bondage of the will means that man cannot even will what is good, he cannot even desire to be saved, then of course, he cannot even so much as call upon the name of the Lord to be saved. Then of course, we are back to a predestinarian position: man is entirely passive, and whether he is saved or not saved is entirely a matter of whether God chooses to save you or not. And if He wants you to go to hell, you go to hell. There is nothing more you can do about this. You cannot so much as desire to be saved. Now that is not Scripture. Paul says in Romans 7, whether of the regenerate man or the unregenerate man, he says very clearly: "To will is present with me. I can will what is good. I cannot do it. I simply cannot do it."
Now once we understand this thing, we understand the whole matter of grace. In order to do it — that is precisely where grace comes in. I can desire to be saved, but I cannot save myself. Yet I must desire to save myself. I must desire to be saved. And then God's grace comes in, effectually, and does it. So there are two stages. First, you must so much as desire to be saved. You don't even desire to be saved — what can we do about that? But once you have desired to be saved, you must then actually call upon the name of the Lord. That is very important.
So now when we come to the Beatitudes, there the principle applies again. It is there. The first question is whether we desire to be this blessed man that the Lord Jesus speaks about. Now, if you do not even desire to be poor in spirit, you don't hunger and thirst for righteousness, you are content with unrighteousness, you love sin so much — sin is so delightful, so sweet — well, of course, you don't want to hunger and thirst for righteousness. That's clear. Now here, even then, through the Word of God, and through the preaching of the Word, or through maybe hard experiences, you realize how bad sin is. Then you desire righteousness. You desire meekness. You desire these qualities. But you can desire it. You cannot attain it. That is where God's grace and God's power comes in.
So nonetheless, the thing that we must notice here concerning the Beatitudes is that we must long for, we must desire to be this kind of person the Lord Jesus speaks about. If you do not yet desire it, then pray that God may open your eyes to see the desirableness of such a person, to be this kind of person, to be this blessed man in God's eyes, the man that God can bless.
Therefore, we would expect — and here is an important point as we study the Beatitudes — we would expect, and what I would do, is to make the Beatitudes a subject for prayer. I don't know what you pray in your quiet time. Sometimes you may run out of ideas of what to pray for. Well, the Beatitudes is something to pray for. Most essential to pray for. Pray that the Lord will make us poor in spirit. Pray that the Lord will enable us to mourn for sin, to see sin as it really is, and to mourn over it. Pray that the Lord will make us meek. Pray that God will make us to hunger and thirst for righteousness. This should become the subject of prayer. Every day we can pray for this, that God will enable us to be these things. Or you could pray one day for one item, and the next day for the other. So you have nine items to pray for in a rotating sequence.
Now, here I find something emerges. The Beatitudes then should be for us a subject of prayer. Not just to say, "Well, I'm not poor in spirit, so what can I do about it, since God has not been pleased to make me poor in spirit?" That would be a very wrong attitude. We must pray that God will be pleased to give us the grace to be this kind of a blessed man, blessed in God's eyes.
But how is it then that we don't find this actually mentioned as an item of prayer? Or is it mentioned as an item of prayer? Well, to my mind, to my knowledge, no one has actually ever connected the Lord's Prayer with the Beatitudes. Yet have you ever noticed how many items there are in the Lord's Prayer? Nine items. Coincidence? No. You see, here we noticed — so far as I know, no one has actually connected the fruit of the Spirit with the Beatitudes. And we saw there is a very intimate and internal connection, an integral connection between the two. But as I meditated and prayed about this thing, I realized suddenly that there was an internal connection between the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes too.
Let us look at this connection. Some of the items, the connections are so obvious that it is amazing that no one, to my knowledge, has ever noticed it. For example, it says right there in the middle of the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day our daily bread." Had we understood the meaning, we would have immediately seen the connection with hungering and thirsting for righteousness. And yet, most people have thought of daily bread as the literal physical bread. Quite a mistake, of course. And those of you who had heard our exposition on the Lord's Prayer will remember that we were saying in that exposition — of course, when we expounded the Lord's Prayer was some three years ago — we pointed out that the bread that the Lord is talking about is not the physical bread, but the bread from heaven. "I am the bread of life," the Lord Jesus says. "Labor not for the bread that perishes, but for the bread that endures to eternal life," the Lord Jesus said in John 6. Had we understood that point, we would already have seen the internal connection of the Beatitudes with the Lord's Prayer. But we didn't.
Or take the last two — it would have been so obvious. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." What are the last two Beatitudes? They're exactly... the last two concern persecution for righteousness, which is where the temptation comes. And the last Beatitude says, "And they shall say all manner of evil against you." "Deliver us from evil." There we would have seen the connection straight away. But amazingly, so far as I know, no expositor that I have heard of has ever seen the connection. Yet the connection seems to be staring at us all the time.
This is precisely the point: that the Lord Jesus, in fact, makes the Beatitudes the subject of prayer, there in what we call the Lord's Prayer. It is the subject of prayer. Let us trace the connection on the points which seem to be less obvious.
The first item says, "Our Father, which art in heaven. Our Father in heaven." Do you see the connection with being poor in spirit? Now if you were somewhat more familiar with the Lord's teaching, the connection would have clicked very quickly. How? Well, take for example, Matthew chapter 18, verse 3. Let's look at Matthew 18, verse 3. And maybe once you see that, the connection will click in your mind. What does Matthew 18, verse 3 say? The Lord Jesus says here, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like..." Like what? Like children. "You will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
Now what is the first Beatitude? "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." For whom is the kingdom of heaven? The Lord Jesus said, "Except you become as little children, you shall never enter the kingdom of heaven. For of such are the kingdom of heaven." Of what? Of little children. Of such are the kingdom of heaven. Ah, so the poor in spirit are the little children. The spiritual children. What does that mean — spiritual children? It means, unless you become like a child, a nobody in this world, utterly dependent upon God, as a child is dependent upon its father, you would in no way enter the kingdom of God.
Ah, the connection is so clear. "Our Father" — only the poor in spirit, the people who have become like little children. The children are nobodies in this world. They possess nothing. They are nobody. They are poor. In the sense that though they may be heir, as Paul says in Galatians, the heir of all things, they are no better off than slaves, so long as they are children. Children are people who have no status in this world. They are the nobodies. Unless, the Lord says to His disciples, unless you humble yourself and become the nobodies of this world, like these little kids running around there that nobody looks at, nobody has any regard for, because they are nobody. They have achieved nothing. They have attained nothing. Unless you become like them, you will in no way enter the kingdom of God.
Unless you become children, who can say in the poverty of spirit, "My Father, my Father, I am dependent wholly on You. I am nothing. I have nothing. I am simply Your child. Have regard for me." Ah, the connection is so clear. How is it that we miss the connection between the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer? "Our Father." Nobody can truly say — I say, nobody can truly say "Our Father" — except the person who is truly poor in spirit, who has become a child, spiritually, a child in his spirit. In relation to God, he is simply a child, dependent upon Him.
What does your child do? If you don't go out and work, your child will starve to death, because your child cannot earn a living. Your child has not the strength, nor the knowledge, nor the understanding to do anything. It cannot survive in this world. The child depends on the father, so long as it's a child. And that's where we stand in relation to God. We become as children. We have no spiritual self-confidence. We do not try to earn our salvation any more than a child can earn his living. It will starve to death. My little girl often talks to me, and I say, "What are you going to do when you grow up?" Well, it's hard enough to think what job she could do at this stage. Can't even sweep the floor properly. What can you do? What are you going to do to earn a living? A child has no means of survival in this world, apart from the pity and compassion of grown-ups, of course, especially the parents. There's no way to survive.
In the same way, we cannot survive spiritually. We are totally dependent upon God for our spiritual survival. Totally dependent. We have no other way. So only when we recognize our dependence — sometimes the child doesn't even realize its dependence. It thinks, "Well, I can do it." Just let it go out and try. You'll see what it'll do. You just can't do it. And yet sometimes the child imagines that it can. So until we realize our true estate, our real condition, and we become poor in spirit before God, then, only then, can we say, "Our Father, who is in heaven." The connection is so obvious, isn't it? But obvious only when it is expounded.
So now, what about the other points? All the points follow in the same way. In fact, I can trace the connection through to so many places, but our time will not avail for this. I can show you, for example, the connection that the Beatitudes are found everywhere in Paul's teaching. Paul's teaching is simply saturated with every item of the Beatitudes, which shows how much the Beatitudes were in Paul's thinking. In fact, his whole doctrine of salvation is based exactly on this point: the poverty of spirit. That we cannot save ourselves through the keeping of the law and through our own efforts. That we, like children, are completely dependent upon God. It is the Spirit of God, Paul says, that is sent into our hearts, that enables us in our poverty of spirit to cry out, "Abba, Father." This is the whole foundation of Paul's theology. It is all based right there. Paul understood the Lord's teaching so well, so perfectly. And everywhere, item by item, of the Beatitudes, you will find it throughout Paul's teaching. In fact, you can find it in one letter alone — Paul's biographical letter, the letter that I call the biographical letter, Philippians. You can find every item of the Beatitudes right in there. For example, he speaks about having suffered the loss of all things. So when you have suffered the loss of all things, you are poor. So he can count them as rubbish. There is the poverty in spirit. That he regards these things as not dear to himself, that he may gain Christ.
Well, let's look at the second connection. And here I notice a transference of order, and this is quite important. The second item here is, "Hallowed be Your name." Now when I compare this to the Beatitudes, I find that the only one that is likely to fit in with it is the item "pure in heart." Pure in heart. Who is pure in heart but he who seeks to hallow God's name, to make God's name holy, both in my life and in the life of others? That God's name is exalted and glorified. The pure in heart. Now we will see a reason for this, that this is the only one of the items in the Lord's Prayer in which you find this — the sixth item, "pure in heart," transposed to the first item of petition. That's very interesting. And the reason for that we shall see next week. But you can see immediately how "Blessed are the pure in heart" and "Hallowed be Your name" are internally connected. That is very easy to see and requires no great exposition.
Or take the next item: "Your kingdom come." Again, if you are at all familiar with the scriptural teaching, Old Testament and New, you'll see how it coincides immediately with those who mourn. Who are those who desire God's kingdom to come but those who mourn because of the present state of sin in the world, who mourn because of sin in their own lives, who mourn because of sin in the church, who mourn because of sin generally? "Day long, will Thy kingdom come." Now, if you don't mourn for sin, you cannot say from your heart, "Your kingdom come." Because you are very satisfied with things as they are. Sin does not disturb you; it doesn't bother you. I don't see many Christians very anxious that God's kingdom should come, that the Lord Jesus should come again. Because I don't see that much concern for righteousness, for holiness. I don't see that much grief over sin. I don't really see it. If we grieve so intensely about sin, we will be constantly longing, "Your kingdom come. Your salvation come. Deliver us from this sin, this bondage of sin that we are in." As Paul says, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Who shall deliver me?" He moans over sin. "Wretched man that I am," he says in Romans 7. And then he looks forward to God's salvation, to the coming of God's kingdom. "Thanks be to God, Christ will give us the victory." He longs with earnest expectation — as he uses the Greek word, with outstretched neck — for the coming of God's kingdom. "Thy kingdom come." Paul longs for the kingdom because he moans over sin. He speaks of himself as wretched man, still, that his body is still under bondage to sin. There the connections are clear.
If we go into the Old Testament, it's equally clear. In Psalm 80, verse 5, for example, the psalmist speaks of tears, mourning over sin. In verse 2, he says, "Come to me, O God, save me. Let Your salvation come. Come and save us." Or in Psalm 6, verse 6, you see the same thing. Psalm 6, verses 6 and 7, we read of the mourning and weeping over sin, of grief over sin. And verse 4: "Turn, O God, and save us. Turn and save us. Turn back. Come back to me. Save me." This longing for God to come, for the coming of the kingdom — of course, it is God's own coming. It is Jesus coming. So you see this constant connection between the mourning over sin and the longing that God should come and save.
For the next passage, as we press forward: "Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as in heaven." "Your will be done on earth." Who speaks that kind of a prayer but the meek? The meek shall inherit what? The earth. "Your will be done on earth, as in heaven." In both cases, you have there the word "earth." Very interesting. And who desires that God's will be done? Who says, "Your will be done"? But the meek. The meek are those who desire God's will to be done. "Not my will, O Lord, but Yours be done." That is the language of the meek. It is the proud who says, "My will be done. I want it this way." The meek says, "Thy will be done, as perfectly as it is done in heaven. So let Your will be completely done on earth."
Or the next parallel has been already so obvious: "Give us this day our daily bread." Who would pray such a prayer but those who hunger and thirst for righteousness? They are the ones who hunger for the bread of life. For where is righteousness but in the bread of life? Everywhere the connection is so obvious.
Or notice the next connection. Next item: "Forgive us our sins." Who are those who forgive sins? Or who long for that forgiveness? And those who have their sins forgiven — they are the merciful. In fact, in the Lord's teaching, mercy and forgiveness of sins are parallel in meaning. What does it mean to be merciful? It is to forgive sins. And why do we forgive sins? Because we ourselves have been forgiven. The connection between mercy and forgiveness the Lord Jesus has made explicit in Matthew chapter 18, for example, verses 32 and 33. Verse 33 speaks of having mercy. In 32, it speaks of forgiveness. Mercy and forgiveness are identical terms in the Lord's teaching.
Or look at the next one: "In the same way as we forgive those who trespass against us." Who speaks such language but peacemakers? Only one who desires peace, who makes peace, readily forgives the offense against us. It is the attitude of a peacemaker that does not hold offense against you, that does not bear a grudge. If you bear a grudge, if you refuse to forgive, how can you be a peacemaker? A peacemaker is one who does not hold another person's sin against him. That's a peacemaker. One who immediately seeks a reconciliation. Who doesn't say, "Okay, we are not on speaking terms anymore. Forget it. You say you are a Christian? Forget it. I am not talking to the likes of you again." The peacemaker is one to say, "Okay, okay. There is an offense against me, but I hold this not against you. Freely forgive." As in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 2, Paul says, "As God for Christ's sake has forgiven you, so you forgive one another. Forgive one another." The peacemaker is the one who freely forgives, because he himself has been forgiven too. So you find that there is an inseparable connection between the merciful and the peacemaker. No wonder they follow one after the other in this way.
Or let's come to the eighth item: "Lead us not into temptation." As we have already seen there, the connections are so obvious that it hardly requires any kind of exposition. "Lead us not." When do we face the most severe temptation? Certainly under persecution, for those who have turned away from sin. Persecution. Have you not often thought to yourself, "Will I be able to survive under persecution?" Have you not ever — even those of you who are training in the Lord's work — how many times have you thought to yourself, "What would happen if I am severely persecuted for the faith? Would I survive this test, this trial, this temptation?" As you know, in Greek, the word "trial" and "temptation" is the same word. There is no distinction in meaning. "Would I be able... 'Lead us not into it.' Would I be able to survive it?" By God's grace.
But then here also, we do not put ourselves in the position of temptation. We do not seek temptation. Even though we love God, we do not go and look for it. The prayer is a caution against looking for trouble. As we see, there is enough trouble coming to you without you going to look for it. It reminds us of early Christians, some of them, who in their untutored zeal went and tempted the tempter. They looked for trouble. And when the Roman emperor gave an edict of persecution against Christians, as you know from church history — those of you who have read some church history — recognize suddenly, the governor found a whole crowd of Christians in front of his office, saying, "Here I am. The emperor said that Christians are to be persecuted. We are Christians. Get on with it." Don't look for trouble. "Lead us not into temptation." He will not lead us, and you don't go and look for it. But temptation trials will come. And above all, of course, the greatest concern is the concern of the temptation, the supreme temptation which faces us under pressure of apostasy. That is above all things that we seek to be delivered from.
And notice then also the last item in the Lord's Prayer, which is so clear and so plain to us. What does the last Beatitude say? Well, read the words very carefully: "Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely." All kinds of evil. Notice the word "evil." "Against you falsely, on My account." "Deliver us from evil." That is exactly what we pray for. "Deliver us from evil." There the internal connection is so obvious that it hardly requires exposition.
But there, I would like you to bear in mind then, that the Lord in His supreme wisdom has shown us what He has done. He has taken the Beatitudes, right there at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, and turned it into a subject for prayer, and yet turned it in such a way as to draw out the internal essence of it. Oh, the Lord's teaching is supreme in its wonder, in the beauty of its construction, in the depth of its spiritual quality and insight. Can you see now the connection? Do you now know what you are doing when you pray the Lord's Prayer?
# The Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer
Without realizing what it is you are saying. When you say, "Our Father," you are praying, "Lord, make me to be poor in spirit." Or on the other hand, if you are not poor in spirit, you cannot pray meaningfully the words, "Our Father." You are not rightly using those words. You are using them without understanding. And you are just using the words in vain.
You now realize how you should pray the Lord's Prayer. You pray the Lord's Prayer in an attitude of poverty of spirit. You realize what kind of people can say, "Our Father." Only the people who are poor in spirit can rightfully say, "Our Father, who art in heaven." And then you realize you need to be pure in heart in order to be able to truly say, "Hallowed be your name." Because if you are not pure in heart and you say, "Hallowed be your name," you are simply being hypocritical. You are being a hypocrite. How can you say, "Hallowed be your name," when you are impure in heart?
I shudder to think of all these people who mumble every day. And in many church services, they finish the service by saying, "Our Father." They don't even know what they are saying. Do we know what we are saying? I was brought up in a Roman Catholic school. And one of the first prayers I ever learned was, "Our Father, who art in heaven." And I didn't even know what I was saying. And every day I knelt on my bed until the time when I finally finished with Christianity. And I no longer prayed, and I no longer thought about church and Christians until many years later, the Lord brought me back again and brought me into his eternal kingdom.
Yet, in the Catholic school, like all children, of course, you simply repeat what you are told. And I used to kneel on my bed and say, "Our Father, who art in heaven." I don't know what I was saying. I thought it was a bit too fast. So I thought I better go through it a second time. And it is pathetic to think — pathetic to think — that there are people in the churches today who use a rosary to count how many times they said, "Our Father." And in fact, sometimes, if you go to a priest to confess your sins, the priest will say to you, okay, seeing that you have confessed your sins, I pronounce on you absolution, but you will say 20 Our Fathers. So the fellow goes there, and he kneels down and says, "Our Father, who art in heaven." The faster you go, the quicker you get it over with, of course. And you press one bead, there's the rosary, and the next one to keep count how many times you said it. And the next bead, "Our Father, who art in heaven." And this way you go through. It is absolutely revolting. It is simply terrible that people should be made to do things they don't even know what they are doing.
No, no. We must pray these things, if we are to pray it rightly at all, only with the understanding of the Beatitudes in our heart, that we rightly understand what it is we are doing.
Finally, I mentioned also that there is one significant change in order. So far, only one change in order. And that is that "Blessed are the pure in heart," the sixth Beatitude, is moved forward to become the first petition after "Our Father." This is very important. The Danish theologian philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, wrote a book with the title, "Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing." "Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing." He is quite right. He rightly understood the Lord's teaching on that point. Purity of heart means you do not serve two masters. You do not serve God and mammon. Purity of heart is you will one thing. That is, you serve only God. With your whole heart, your whole being. Purity of heart means there is no impurity in it. There is no other interest. No other master being served. You serve God and him alone.
Now it is remarkable that this particular Beatitude is moved forward. And there is certainly no coincidence that in the Lord's Prayer it is moved forward. Because as we shall see in our next message, this purity of heart is the single, most important thing we must pray for in order to remain faithful to God. In order to remain faithful to God. Because in the next item of the Lord's teaching you will see that it becomes a matter of spiritual survival. And that is very important for the Lord's Prayer. Spiritual progress, but first spiritual survival.
So from now on I trust that you will be able to pray the Lord's Prayer meaningfully. But not just to repeat that prayer. But that prayer, the Lord's Prayer, as we mentioned when we were expounding it, is a model prayer. That is to say the Lord didn't say just repeat these words, but rather make it the subject of your prayer. A pattern for prayer. Model your prayer upon this model prayer. That is, when you pray other prayers you make this as it were a starting point, a focal point for each item of your prayer. And each time you go through the Lord's Prayer you will have covered every beatitude. That truly is wonderful.
May God truly enable us to enter into the spirit of the Lord's Prayer by understanding ever more deeply and ever more clearly the Beatitudes. Keep meditating on it. And as I said right at the beginning, make the Beatitudes an item of prayer just as the Lord taught us to do in what we call the Lord's Prayer.
Let us now be quiet before God in prayer.