“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart— these, O God, You will not despise.” Psalm 51:17
We want to stop after the first four beatitudes and look at them as a group. The Lord said these were characteristics of those who would
enter the kingdom of God. As He presents them we see a theme develop. First the Lord talks about one who does not approach God in pride but comes in humility. We see a person broken in their spirit. They are broken over their sin and mourn over their sin which separates them from God. As a result they are meek toward God’s authority, commandments and direction. They submit to His authority
and are meek to accept His free gift of salvation. As a result they are adopted into God’s family and inherit as children of God all that belongs to His Son, ” the earth and all that is in it”.
We see from these four characteristics of the true children of God that this brings joy to God’s heart. It pleases Him for His creation to accept Him at His word and to accept the free gift of redemption His Son paid for all mankind. These first four beatitudes also bring joy into
the heart of the believer. To know that we are accepted by God, that our sins are forgiven and that our penalty has been paid for is “joy unspeakable and full of glory” to the believer.
This stands in stark contrast to the pride and arrogance of Judaism and the Pharisees who had turned God’s grace into a false religion of rules and regulations. So we see in these first four beatitudes that they fulfill the first great commandment of God. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
What can we learn? Israel hoped and prayed that Jesus was the Messiah. They expected Him to overthrow the Romans and establish a physical kingdom on earth. They expected, at least the Pharisees did, to be praised for their dedication to God’s law and to be ushered
into the kingdom because of the holiness in their lives. Therefore in His very first recorded sermon the Lord discusses humility and brokenness over sin that must exist before a person can enter God’s kingdom. When a person realizes what God has done for them they then hunger and thirst after righteousness. They want to live the way God lives (and follow the example which Christ showed them). They crave to know God more and thirst for His word, the living water. They want to be righteous, not like the world system they came out of. The rest of the beatitudes and the remainder of the Sermon on the Mount give details of what that means. As Christ presents the true believer’s life, His listeners (as well as us) recognize how far short we fall – in fact how incapable we are of living this way in our own strength. Thus we realize we must seek God with our whole hearts. We need Him to fill us so we can live the life that pleases Him through us. “Without Him we can do nothing.” If we read the first four beatitudes and
are not emptied of our own self-righteousness, we completely miss the Lord’s main point.