Bible Text: Matthew 5:1-12 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus
Heaven is not a consolation prize. It’s not, “if I can’t have life on this earth, at least I get heaven.” Heaven is the goal. It’s the prize. It’s what we run the race of life for. There is nothing, absolutely nothing good in this life, that will not be greater in heaven and the resurrection. Every stream of good and joy and peace you have ever experienced here are only little individual rivers flowing from the ocean that is God. Here you taste in part, there you have the full feast. Heaven is God. It’s not a geographical place discoverable with telescopes, obviously. Heaven is God, it is the pure enjoyment of God. You enjoy God here only in part, because all your experience of Him, in His creation or in His church, is tainted by your sin and your doubt and your false expectations. But there, the goal, heaven, God Himself, there will be nothing to interfere, you will see God fully, all goodness, all beauty, all righteousness, you will see, in a way we simply can’t now because this frail corrupted body and soul could not take it. So St. Paul says, “I press forward toward the goal of the heavenward calling of God in Christ Jesus.” We sing this, “All worldly pomp begone, to heaven I now press on. For all the world I would not stay. My walk is heavenward all the way.”
The saints in heaven are not wishing they could be here. They’re not thinking they’re missing out. This is the way the pagans thought. When Odysseus sees Achilles in the underworld, Achilles complains that he’d rather be a slave in the world than a king in the afterlife. It’s the absolute reversal of Psalm 84, where the saints confess to God, “A day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.” Raskolnikov, speaking for all atheists in Crime and Punishment, says that if he had only a little ledge on a cliff to live on for a thousand years, he’d take it, just to live, just to keep existing on this earth. That’s how strong the flesh clings to this sinful life. That’s the desperation of unbelief.
And this is what it means to be cursed. It’s the religion of our cursed flesh. The opposite of being blessed. To be cursed is to put your heart and soul into things that are themselves cursed. What did God say in the Garden? When Adam and Eve first sinned? Cursed is the ground because of you. Dust you are, and to dust you shall return. So false religion makes the goal of life enjoying this stuff, which obviously ends. It’s a religion of regret. And beautifully, the stuff itself that our flesh falsely worships, it groans to be delivered from its bondage. Creation itself waits to see the revealing of the sons of God, St. Paul says. Creation is waiting for heaven. That’s the goal of everything. A new heavens, a new earth, where God is all in all.
Every single time Jesus says “blessed” he points us to heaven. He doesn’t say, Blessed are you because you paid off your mortgage. This is how “blessed” gets used today all the time with American Christians. “I’m blessed” ends up meaning, “God gave me this job, this house, this husband, this wife, these kids, these Ug boots, this suburban, my caramel macchiato, and my health.” I’m blessed. It’s not that it’s not true. Children are a blessing from the Lord, the Psalm says that. The Bible talks about blessing Israel with land, with wealth. God does bless us with stuff.
But God blesses unbelievers with stuff too. Obviously. Jesus says, “My heavenly Father makes his rain fall on the just and the unjust. He makes his sun shine on the good and the evil.” It’s no special sign of God’s favor whether or not God blesses you with children or marriage or wealth or health, or not. Look at Hannah who couldn’t have babies and wept to the Lord. Was Peninah who mocked her more blessed because she had kids? Look at Josiah, the most faithful of the kings of Judah, and he dies in his early thirties. You won’t find a single example in the Bible of Christians praying for wealth. Solomon gets wealth. But he prays for wisdom. He asks for a heavenly thing, and God gives it and adds health and wealth.
So yes it is true that God is blessing you if he gives you house, home, wife, children, good government, health. But God gives that even to evil people. And if God instead gives you hard times, and cancer, and bad government, and keeps you single or childless, and finally gives you death, it is no sign at all that he does not love you or care for you or hear your prayers. He gives you the blessing that far exceeds it all, that all other blessings He gives only faintly point to, and it’s to this blessing you cling to, no matter what else God is doing in your life.
Greek has two different words for blessing, and the word Jesus uses for “blessed,” makarios, never, ever refers to this “I’m blessed” of suburbia and pop American Christianity. Not in the Bible. It’s always a blessedness that looks to heaven as the goal of life. That sings and means, “And take they our life, goods, fame, child, and wife, though these all be gone, they still have nothing won, the kingdom ours remaineth.”
Look at the first four beatitudes. Everyone of them says you are blessed precisely because you lack things. Jesus is awesome. He turns all philosophy on its head here, everything the wisest men have ever said about what it means to be happy. He just dismisses it. It’s all nonsense. They all say you are blessed if you have things, whether that’s stuff or your own virtues and works. Jesus says the opposite. You are blessed when you have nothing. Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, that means the lowly, the despised, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for a righteousness they don’t have.
You lack and Jesus fills your lack. Completely. That’s blessedness. It begins in the present, here on earth, and it ends in eternity where you see God fully.
He says blessed are the poor in spirit. He doesn’t say poor in stuff, poor in body. He says poor in spirit, which means no matter what you have, you have absolutely nothing to claim before God. And you know it. You’re a sinner. You might have all sorts of stuff, be rich even, might have outstanding virtues, but you come to God with no claim on Him, no status, no works, no wealth, nothing you can give to God or show Him to impress Him. You come to Jesus with nothing, and He makes you own His Kingdom, His rule over you, where He gives you all His wealth and makes your share in everything good God is.
You mourn over your sin, the pain in your life, the corruption of your body, the death that waits for you, and there’s nothing you can do about it, you’re powerless, but Jesus does. He comforts you. He takes all your sin on Himself. He bears your every pain on the cross. His body never sees corruption, He lives forever, and He gives that body to you and He joins you to Himself in the holy communion.
Blessed are the meek, the lowly, because all the recognition of all the world means nothing, it’s only the praise and favor of sinners, it will fade away like everything else, but Jesus shows you the favor of God, which you did not deserve, but He gives it because He is love. The Father gives His Son for you, and in Him you inherit the earth, because it belongs to Him and you are His. This world, God’s creation, waits with you to see you inherit it uncorrupted in the new heavens and the new earth.
You hunger and thirst for a righteousness you simply don’t have, no matter how much you strive to love God and love those around you, there is always this glaring failure, and the guilt and filth of sin sticks to you, you can’t wash it off, but Jesus gives you His righteousness, His innocence, He washes you clean by His blood, He clothes you in it. Where He is there is no sin or guilt or filth. There is only His purity and beauty that He gives to you and it’s perfect, complete, avails before God forever.
Blessed are the merciful, because you live by God’s mercy, it’s your greatest treasure, and so mercy flows from you to those around you. This simply is a description of Christians, because it is a description of Christ and we live from Him. Blessed are the peacemakers, because God has made peace with you, He has reconciled you to Himself by His cross, all His anger has passed away in the agony of His Son’s suffering, and the peace He gives we want for the whole world. Blessed are the pure in heart. Because you have prayed, Create in me a pure heart – same word, katharos, and God sends His Holy Spirit to you and He makes you put your trust in the One who is pure, Jesus Christ, who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth.
This is all in the present. Theirs IS the Kingdom of God. You have it now. But what you have is a foretaste. What you taste here on earth in the present you will experience fully in heaven. It’s why you want heaven so much. Because you’ve already tasted the first fruits. Everything good you have experienced in this life He will give you fully in heaven. Because there you will see God. How my heart yearns within me, Job says.
You sing every Sunday, “For mine eyes have seen your salvation.” You do see God now, because you see His love, you see His mercy, poured out on you in Jesus and because you see it in Jesus, you see it in every blessing God gives. They all, even the earthly ones, becomes heavenly blessings when you receive them in faith in the Son of God. “No one has ever seen God, but the only God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has shown Him to us.” Who, what is God? How do you see Him. He is Love, Mercy, Peace, Eternity, Goodness, and you see Him when you sit at His cross and marvel at how God could so love you, that He gave His only Son. You see Mercy and Peace and Eternity when He feeds you with the body and blood that have conquered death and ended sin and live forever. You look forward to heaven because you have tasted it on earth, and there in heaven is the full feast, where all mourning ends, all lack is filled forever, all questions are answered, and no sin or pain veils the joy that flows constantly from your God. O Christ, whom now beneath a veil we see, May what we thirst for soon our portion be: to gaze on thee unveiled and see Thy face. The vision of Thy glory and thy grace. Amen.