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 which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” (Matthew 5:3-12) The word “blessed” is translated from the Greek word “makarios,” which means blessed, happy, or fortunate.  Jesus is telling us who the truly happy people are, and His intention is for His people to be happy.  Human beings in general desire happiness.  We seek happiness.  There’s a bestselling book called “Flow” by a psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi that begins like this: “Twenty-three hundred years ago Aristotle concluded that, more than anything else, men and women seek happiness.  While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal – health, beauty, money, or power – is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy.  Much has changed since Aristotle’s time…yet on this most important issue very little has changed in the intervening centuries.  We do not understand what happiness is any better than Aristotle did, and as for learning how to attain that blessed condition, one could argue that we have made no progress at all.”  Then he proceeds to lay out his theory for how to be truly happy, and it involves you taking control and making it happen by entering into a state of consciousness that he calls “flow” where you become engrossed in some activity that brings you joy.  This is just one example of how the world tells you how to be happy, and it happens to be the exact opposite of the first beatitude.
 
Poor, mourners & meek in spirit juxtaposed to the opposite of these in the flesh:
 
GodSmack!
 
Just a few general observations before getting into them specifically, so we don’t miss the forest for the trees: 1. All these beatitudes describe all His people.  It’s not that some of His people possess some of them and others possess others.  Every single sheep of God possesses all these attributes; however, we may not possess all of them to the same degree all the time.  While we live in these bodies of sin, we certainly don’t fulfill all of them as we ought to.  We may look at them and feel ashamed and totally inadequate.  We may pursue some sin for a season and stray away from them.  But the general bent of our lives after we’re saved is that we all possess all of them to some degree.   2. They are not natural proclivities.  Rather, these are gifts of the Spirit.  For example, some among us are, by nature, meeker in character than others.  That’s not what this is talking about.  Your biological tendencies are not what’s at stake here.  This is a spiritual matter, and the spirit can be renewed only by God. 3. They are not mere ethical statements.  This is not general advice on how to live a moral life.  This isn’t talking about something that you can accomplish by changing a few outward behaviors.  It’s talking about changes in the deepest recesses of your heart. 4. They are not laid out haphazardly.  There is a definite order to them.  They are all interrelated, and they build on each other.  It starts with spiritual poverty, which leads to mourning over our sins, which leads to a meek heart.  In that state, we hunger and thirst for righteousness, which is something that we don’t have and can’t produce on our own.  This results in us being merciful, pure in heart, and peacemakers, and we will consequently produce hostility from and be persecuted by a God-despising world.  The first three have to do with our need, the fourth shows how that need is satisfied, and the remaining show the result of that satisfaction.   How you react to these beatitudes says a lot about you.  Do you see these attributes in yourself?  Do you realize that you fail at them, but you nevertheless strive to be this way?  Or, in your heart of hearts, do you rebel against them, become angry, and try to explain them away to justify your sin?  Do you secretly despise and have contempt for the character of people that are described in them? “Examine yourselves” (2 Corinthians 13:5). 
Hunger, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers juxtaposed to the flesh:
 
Like every other verse in the Bible, it’s dangerous to take this beatitude out of its context, and to not compare it to other scripture.  This verse is commonly misapplied to anyone who is going through some trying time that results in them mourning and grieving and sorrowing.  The immediate context is that it comes right after “blessed are the poor in spirit.”  There is a direct link here.  If I see what God requires of me, and I see that I’m incapable of meeting that standard without Him, then I’m poor in spirit.  And if I’m poor in spirit, then I’m going to mourn about that state of sin that I know I’m in and that I can’t fix on my own.  And I’m not going to just do this once…I’m going to live my life like that.  Any time I sin, it’s going to produce mourning in my spirit, which leads to repentance.  We can read about this kind of mourning and sorrow in 2 Corinthians 7: “Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.” (2 Corinthians 7:9-10) In fact, I would go so far as to say that the longer you follow God, the more mournful you become, because the more you know about God and your own wretchedness, the more you understand how spiritually bankrupt you actually are.   
 
We cannot ignore today’s responses by God towards the flesh of man for disregarding his fair warnings:
BOLO for Part TWO of the Beatitudes Sermon.