The Sermon on the Mount
exemplified in Jesus and His disciples make God infinitely attractive to those who appreciate beauty of character over muscle and forcefulness. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled,” How strange this beatitude must sound to the ears of non-Christians! Righteousness is intrinsically bound up together with the word holiness which is one of the primary attributes of God alongside love and truth. God n His inner being is holy and in His actions he is righteous. Righteousness is His holiness in action. The laws of God represent His holy character and demand integrity, truth, honesty, truthfulness and so on. The heart of the Christian has been regenerated and now reproduces the character attributes of God which results in righteous living on a personal level and in our relationship with others. The person who has been touched by God and his conscience awakened hungers and thirsts for righteousness to characterise his private behaviour as well his relationships with others. The person described by Paul in Rom.ch7 has come to recognise that the laws of God are righteous and holy, but he is powerless to live righteously before God and men. Regeneration re-constitutes our nature, enabling us to live righteously and so hunger and thirst are replaced by fulness, the promise of Jesus is now fulfilled in our life, we have deep satisfaction in the knowledge that we are now living righteously in accordance with God’s holiness. According to Jesus’ promise our lives are blessed by being filled with righteousness. There is of course a future eschatological significance to Jesus’ promise of blessedness related to His future kingdom. “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy,” This blessing naturally follows on from the promise of righteousness which not only applies to actions but also to attitudes. To be merciful to others who demand mercy of us is taken up again by Jesus in the parable of the merciful king and his merciless steward (Mat.18:23-35). This parable is about attitudes which embody mercy. God delights to. Show mercy to sinful men and women who can only come to Him pleading for mercy – casting themselves upon His benevolent kindness and tender mercy. God delights to show mercy to the penitent sinner, the returning prodigal, the weeping prostitute, the maimed, the broken, the sinner and the rebel. We have to trust in the merciful and kind nature of God that He will receive us in our wretchedness and not speak words of rejection to us. The prodigal had to trust in the nature of his father to forgive him. Each one of us has disqualified ourselves, we have made ourselves unacceptable to God because of our sinfulness and so each one of us, like the prostitute in Lk.7 have to implore Jesus’ forgiveness with uncontainable tears of repentance. Did Jesus ever turn away a repentant sinner? When the guilty adulteress was hauled up before Jesus, He refused to pronounce judgement but rather (it was His prerogative), He chose to extent “loving kindness and tender mercy” towards her. King David, guilty before God, pleaded with Him to show mercy towards him, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions” (Ps.51:1). Remember, how I spoke about the Gospels and how they were formed as a direct result of the preaching and ministry of Jesus. He is speaking here to new disciples and therefore to give these blessings of Jesus an evangelistic interpretation is not out of order. Jesus was teaching on the Mount, and He was calling forth disciples, affirming them in their new found faith and He was challenging them to live according to His teaching. It is true that this teaching provided a manual of discipleship for future followers of Jesus but here Jesus is forming/making disciples as He is
New Life Radio – Talk No 36
4 Derrick Harrison
16/06/2021
