How To Receive Blessings: Beatitudes 1 and 2

I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but if I asked you, is there anyone here that would like some more blessings from God, I think, you know, our hands would go up, right? We would like some more blessings from God. And especially when you look at, you know, if you're living from paycheck to paycheck, or you've been stuck in a job, or you just can't, you know, make enough money, and of course, financial difficulties. A lot of people are going through financial difficulties just because of inflation, and the problems it's having with that. Maybe it's your health. You say, God, I really would like some help here, a blessing in my health. Maybe it's, well, I'm looking for a husband, and I really, God, could you please send me one? I mean, and those are blessings. And God does do that. I mean, God gives us physical blessings all the time. He gives us health. But you know, sometimes, as was mentioned in the sermonette, sometimes He doesn't give us health. Sometimes He doesn't give us the physical blessings. Sometimes certain things just don't get fixed. And we wonder why. Why don't we talk about how to get blessings today? How to receive blessings. Now, probably it's like, oh, good. This is going to really help me, because I'm going to go home, and I'm going to pray, and I'm going to hit the lottery. Now, I don't want to steer you wrong from the very beginning. That's not going to happen. Okay? But we are going to talk about how to receive blessings, because Jesus told us how to receive blessings. Let's go to Matthew 4. Matthew 4. This is at the very beginning of His ministry. And let's start at verse 23.

And Jesus went about all the Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of diseases among the people. So every place He goes, there's a message that is bringing a blessing to people's lives, and He's actually bringing physical blessings into people's lives all over the place, where God's performing miracle after miracle, public miracles, private miracles. Then His fame, because of this pouring out of blessings, He became quite famous overnight. Then His fame went throughout all Syria, and they brought Him all sick people that were afflicted with various diseases and torments, those who were demon-possessed, epileptics and paralagics, and He healed them. People who had been paralyzed were suddenly able to walk. People whose arms were withered suddenly had hands that were functional. People who could not see. I mean, the greatest gifts, the greatest blessings you can imagine. And every place He goes, He's doing this. And great multitudes followed Him from Galilee, from Decapolis, from Jerusalem, from Judea, and even beyond the Jordan. All over that part of the Middle East, people were coming to receive blessings. We know that some of them were the wealthy of the land. Some of them were great leaders. Most people weren't. Most people were average. A lot of them were poor. A lot of them had difficult lives. They began to gather. And so we have then, in the next chapter here in Matthew, where He stands up on a hill. There's probably thousands of people. We know from other cases there's up to 5,000 people coming to hear Him speak and to receive blessings. And some blessings He fed them with miracles. They actually ate food. They received these incredible blessings of eating food that just kept multiplying. So this is called the Sermon on the Mount because He got up on a hill because He could then see everybody and talk and His voice would carry. In verse 1 it says, "...and seeing the multitudes He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him. And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying..." So all these people gathered up and He began to teach them. He began to tell them about life and how to live life, how to respond to God. And the first part of this sermon is usually called in English, Beatitudes. Now that's not what they're called in the Scripture, but that's an Old English word. They're the Beatitudes. And what Beatitude literally means in its Old English form is Ultimate Happiness. Jesus taught them how to be happy. Jesus taught them how to actually be blessed. I'm going to teach you now about blessings. They had come for healings and for food, and they had come because He gave out blessings. And He starts with, let me tell you about perfect happiness. Let me tell you about real blessings. And what He says, you won't find in any self-help book. What He says, you're going to find in any book on psychology. What He tells them is radical. I think sometimes we have become removed from the totally radical concepts that Jesus taught, and they are radical in today's world. And sometimes we're too influenced by society to recognize how radical His teachings are, how revolutionary they are. He says, I'm here to tell you how to receive blessings so that you're truly happy. Now, I could make a list of things I could give to God that I think would make me truly happy. And I can tell you, if I made that list when I was younger, it wouldn't contain very few of the blessings He mentions here. Maybe one of them, two of them. But it would have a whole other list there. There were blessings, by the way, that God wants to give us. I mean, I believe that God gave me my wife. That was a blessing. I believe that. There's lots of things He's done in my life that are blessings.

But what He wants to do in your life is more than that. He wants to give you those things. He doesn't give you everything you ask for. He doesn't give you every physical blessing. But He's now going to, Jesus is going to explain how to have this perfect happiness. How to be blessed with perfect happiness. So we're going to take a couple, just look at a couple of these blessings. I don't know, maybe in the future I'll go through a few more of them. I looked at this and I thought, you know, maybe over the next year, I'll just, every once in a while, let's talk about how you can get some more blessings from God. But we'll look at a couple of them here today. So Matthew, chapter 5, verse 3. Blessed! Here it is. Or in the Bible, blessed. Blessed! This is the blessing from God. This is, you are blessed when this happens. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who are millionaires. That's not what he says. Blessed are those who have a really nice car. I love the car. I know I'm weird. I love Taurus's, the old Taurus's. This is the third Taurus I've had, so I always buy it and use. And I feel blessed by it. But, you know, that's not perfect happiness. I mean, Taurus's break down. You get little scratches in them after a while. They get old. It's a blessing, but that's not what he's talking about. Blessed are the poor in spirit. So this is now the core teaching of Jesus on what blessings really are. And you receive some fruit from this. There's an enormous blessing that comes from this in your life, but you have to be poor in spirit to receive the blessing. And the blessing is the kingdom of God, God's interaction in your life now, and the kingdom when Christ returns. So, yeah, but I want some blessings now. And his answer is, then be poor in spirit.

Well, no, I need more money. I need more, be poor in spirit, and I will give you what you actually need. What's it mean to be poor in spirit? Understand, as we go through this, you're going to realize that every blessing that Christ wants to give us is from the inside out. We're always looking from the outside in. We're always looking from the outside in. If I just had a new dress, I would be happy. And, yeah, God may give you a new dress, and you may be happy. For how long?

I mean, that's a blessing. But for how long? He says, I want to change you so that what happens, perfect happiness, comes from the inside out. So whether you get the new dress or not, you will still be happy.

See, that doesn't compute. That's not how we think. It comes from the inside out, and it starts with being poor in spirit. David talked about being poor in spirit in Psalm 51, so let's go there. We'll come back here in a minute.

Psalm 51. We know this is his great repentance psalm after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed. And lied. And, you know, broke everyone in the Ten Commandments. And he's realizing that God could take his spirit away from him, literally turn away from him, take his spirit, and he would then suffer eternal death. He knew that. He understood it. Suddenly, being king and having all the... no matter how many meals he had a day, they were the best. Nobody in Israel was eating better than David. Nobody had better wine. Nobody had better entertainment. Nobody had better furniture. Nobody had more fame. Think of all the things we think make us happy. Nobody had anything that we think makes us happy more than David. And David realizes at this point how meaningless that is without God. And he prays... because that's what this is. It's a prayer. He writes down as a song and sings it. And then says, I want people to sing... if you forgive me, I want people to sing this forever. And so we do. As I've said before, that's one of the ways God answered his prayer. Okay. Everybody will know your sins. And they will sing about my forgiveness. But in order for this to make sense, we have to know David's sins. People say, how come David got off so lightly?

I truly believe in the resurrection, all humanity will sing some version of Psalm 51, and everybody will sing about David's sins and the greatness of God's forgiveness. This man now received the ultimate blessing because none of the physical things meant anything anymore. It didn't mean anything anymore. And he says in verse 17, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. These, O God, you will not despise. Now we can read that and think, oh, I guess God wants me just to be broken and sad all the time.

Is that what the point here is? That we're to be broken all the time. We're to be, I know, Christians supposed to, you know, just wear drab clothes and live in poverty. Is that what God wants? God doesn't want us to have any physical blessings? That's not true. God gives physical blessings. But we've got to think of the context in which he is writing this.

Contrite literally means repentant, absolutely, completely void of any value unless God forgives me. He says, I am broken, but why is he broken? Why is David broken? Look at what he says in verse 10. Create and be a clean heart, O God. This is something. If you want a blessing from God, you have to pray this. There are times you have to go to God and say, create and be a clean heart. I want this blessing. I'd rather have the Mustang. No. I'm with a few people left that still want a blessing. Anybody here want a Mustang? Okay. All the old guys. Not the young guys want a Mustang. All us old guys. We still want a Mustang, right?

I think it's the only car that Ford still makes, isn't it? Yeah, that's it. They make trucks now, but for old guys, Mustangs. Actually, I don't care anymore. You know, it's funny how there's things you think you want, and it's like, yeah, I don't care. That's just wisdom. You get after living long enough. But, He reached this point. I am broken because I need a clean heart. There are times in life where God has to take every one of us to this point where the physical blessings are not the center of what we're looking at. What we're looking at is, I want you to bless me with a clean heart.

You go ask for that, and sometimes you'll have some trials. Sometimes it'll seem like God's not blessing me at all, but He is. He says, Create me a clean heart and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Now, notice what He's praying. Renew me so that I am not in this depression, in this lost feeling, in this absolute guilt. I am worthless. I am nothing.

Change that in me. See, this poor in spirit isn't, God wants me to feel like all the time I'm worthless nothing. No, the point is that your value comes from God. That's the blessing. But as long as we're arrogant, we can't receive that blessing. As long as we're prideful, we can't receive the blessing. So we have to be poor in spirit. And what David is saying is, I'm a broken man. Please help me not to stay broken. This is the blessing. So you can try to fix your brokenness with alcohol, drugs.

I was in a halfway house this week talking to a man who wanted to come to church. And he didn't show up for a while, so Matt Puckett and I sat there for over two hours and had conversations with five different messed up human beings. With a lot of crimes and sins. Actually, it got amusing after a while.

I found myself lecturing one of them. You need to go to your meeting tonight. Because you're teetering on using here. I'm thinking, Matt said, you shouldn't have told them some of this stuff. What are they going to do to us? They're used to preachers coming in and telling that. In fact, I told one of them, if you keep this up, I'm going to start preaching. He said, okay, I shut up.

Broken people, giving each of them a million dollars, is that going to solve their problem? No. That won't solve anything. They're broken inside. And what David said, I'm broken inside. I understand the evil I'm capable of and I wish to be fixed. I wish to be healed. I want this blessing because living in a palace and having servants and eating off of gold ware means nothing at this point.

I received all these blessings and I realize this is what I want. In fact, he says in verse 11, he says, please don't take your Holy Spirit away from me because if you do, I'm lost. Restore to me the joy. Here's what happens with a poor in spirit. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit. It is God's spirit. It is God in us that leads us, that takes care of us through the ups and downs of life.

That we have this joy in him and his salvation, this joy in Jesus Christ. This is the blessing God is concerned with. Oh, he might give you a nice house. But you know what? In the end, he's ultimately interested in this blessing and all the blessings that are in the Beatitudes. You're blessed, Jesus said, of your poor in spirit. Not depressed, not sad. Poor in spirit before God.

He even says in verse 16, deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed. You have to forgive me, or I am lost because I am. See when he says he's broken? He sees sin. He sees sin within himself, and he realizes how broken he is.

And that's the context of the sacrifices of God, or a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart.

David understood. Here's a few ways that you receive this gift, this blessing from God. One, you have to become acutely aware of your need, absolute need, desire for God's greatness and goodness and love. You have to become acutely aware of that on a daily basis. That you need God's greatness, and you need God's goodness, and you need God's love. Because without that, no other blessings, living in the grand building, eating on goldware, having servants, having the best entertainment, becomes nothing. I'm not saying that Teddy Roosevelt was a very converted guy. I do find him fascinating. One of my favorite stories about him was given by a friend of his. He said they were out, they were in the West someplace. He would go there and have these sort of get away from D.C. and bring a bunch of his advisors, and they would have meetings all day, and talk about government, and talk about plans, talk about everything. And he said afterwards, he would ask his friend to go with him, and they would go out away from the lights, away from the building, the ranch where they were on. And he would just stand there and stare at the stars. And he'd say, that's the Big Dipper, and that's this constellation. And Roosevelt would always give him this little, you know, this is what this is. And he said, of course, there it was so bright, you could just see the Milky Way. I've been in West Texas, where you can't pick out individual stars, because the Milky Way is so bright at that point, and with no other lights, that it's just the sky of places looks white. And he would just stare at that, and then he'd finally look at his friend and say, okay, I think we're small enough now, let's go inside. The blessing from God is when we can say, okay, God, I see you, I'm small enough now, and I really don't care if this other dude got my job, which I should have got, and he got it because he's sleeping with the boss's daughter, okay? I don't care anymore, because that blessing is nothing compared to this one. Then you understand the Beatitudes. We read through the Beatitudes just like they're trite little statements. Blessed are you, if you have this, because this is what God will give you. The second thing is being acutely aware of the devastation of sin in our lives. We have to go before God regularly and say, I am not totally right. You've done a work in me, but I'm not totally right, and I still have this attitude that's wrong, or these thoughts that are wrong, or I've treated this person wrongly. I didn't steal today, didn't lie today, didn't kill anybody today, but I am acutely aware of I'm not a finished work yet. So I'm asking for a blessing from you, is that you will finish me. See, a lot of times we have stress in our lives. We don't recognize because it's coming from a spiritual place. We recognize the stress that comes in our lives from the physical things. There are times when we have stress in our lives because we're not poor in spirit before God, but we're just being arrogant and prideful and going about our lives. And not constantly saying, help me to be better. Not locked into, oh look what a rotten person I am, I'm worthless. Understand, being poor in spirit leads to not being worthless.

Because why? Because God's blessed you. What is the result of being poor in spirit? I'll give you my entire kingdom. That's what God's blessing is. I will give you my entire kingdom. Oh boy, I guess being poor in spirit means I just have to be depressed all the time and look at my sins. No, we look at our sins and we receive the forgiveness.

We receive something. The blessing from God is forgiveness. So we are acutely aware, just like David was. Also, being acutely aware of what David called the salvation of God, the salvation in our lives. What greater gift can God give us? What greater blessing than the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and His involvement in our lives? What's greater than that? I mean, would you want a relationship with God where you've got to get up every morning and God say, okay, what's your one blessing today? That jerk at work, I want him fired. No problem. He's fired. Next morning you get, what's your blessing today?

I want to hit the lottery. Okay. 30 million. And that's your relationship with God. I mean, that's bizarre. That's not what God wants and that's not what God's going to do. It's just not going to happen. I read, and in fact, I use this in the BT program. It was a woman, her and her husband. I might have told you this. A woman, her and her husband who went, they had been raised in the Christian community. They had never had sex before marriage. They had never got drunk. They went to church every Sunday. They were very serious. They went to a seminary. They got married. He became ordained and started as a minister in a church. He was so dynamic in his speaking and he was so good in his administration that by age, in the early 30s, he was the head pastor of Omega Church of over a thousand people. They just came to listen to him speak. Then she found out she couldn't have children. They wrote an article explaining why they were stepping down from the ministry. Because, you see, they had their contract with God. We obey you and you give us blessings. We've obeyed you for 30 years to the point where thousands of people knew about this guy. He was famous. They said God just didn't uphold his end of the bargain by blessing them. So he quit. There were two of them. I don't know what happened to him. They were searching for God. Well, the problem was, the whole concept of God was wrong. We have a contract with God where we do these things and he gives us blessings. It means it's terrible that she couldn't have a child. That's a terrible thing to go through. That's not easy.

But God doesn't promise every person to have a child.

He doesn't.

It's what happens when we forget what the real blessings are. Now, if God would heal her and give her a child, that'd be incredible. I've seen that happen. You've seen that happen. People couldn't have children and God blessed them and healed them.

But if a person says, well, that's it. God, I don't have to obey you because you don't do this for me. Because I've done my part. They've forgotten the real blessing. And I don't know, maybe they never had a relationship with God. You know, they obviously didn't understand a lot about the Bible.

What they thought was a relationship with God wasn't correct.

We have to understand the joy of salvation. That's what David called it. The joy of salvation. The happiness that comes in this relationship with God through Jesus Christ, because he's the one that makes it possible. With our Father and with our brother Jesus Christ. That relationship is the core of the blessing God wants to give you. And it's eternal. He says, I'll give you everything I have. That's what the kingdom of God is. He says, I'll give you all things. Everything I have I'll give to you. Everything. $30 million is nothing. It's nothing. I'll give you everything. That's the blessing He wants to give us. But, you know, right now, there's times in my life I would have been happy with a couple hundred dollars. God, can You give us a couple hundred dollars to pay the bills? Okay.

He said, okay, but that's nothing with the blessing I want to give you. What happens is, if we're not poor in spirit, this pride. We take great pride in our religious experiences. We take great pride in the knowledge we have. But if it doesn't have a corresponding relationship with God, all that knowledge doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything. Now, God uses that knowledge to do what? Bring us to Him. I'll just give you an example. There are lots of Jews who keep the Ten Commandments and have no real close relationship with God because they deny Jesus Christ. I'm not saying they don't receive blessings. You know, every time you obey a commandment, there's a blessing that comes from it. You don't murder. You don't go to jail. You don't commit adultery. I mean, adultery just destroys lives. It just destroys lives. You don't steal. You don't get shot robbing. There's blessings that come from doing the law of God. But God wants for you are those blessings and a whole lot more.

The ultimate understanding of being poor in spirit is based on the blessing of realizing our meaninglessness without God. He's the life-giver. He makes us. He calls us. He saves us through Christ. He's the only one that can make you a whole person. We are bits and pieces of a person. Only God, through His Spirit, can make us a whole person. And it's a lifetime of work on His part. He makes us a complete whole person. And in that, we have our hope. And that's perfect happiness. Because there's lots of people with lots of things who have no hope at all.

The ultimate blessing of being poor in spirit is to receive the kingdom of God. He says, well, that's in the future. I say, I'm a young person. That's in the future. I mean, I haven't received the kingdom of God yet. You haven't received the kingdom of God yet. That's the thing about blessings, right? We always don't get immediate gratification. The blessing is learning to be poor in spirit. Now let's go back to Matthew. This will get another blessing. Oh, man, that's not a blessing. He just made me depressed.

Verse 4, blessed are those who mourn. What do you mean, blessed are those who are sad? For they shall be comforted. Many times we're still looking for pop psychology to tell us the answers to what's inside of us. We're searching. We're searching. I was looking and doing some research for a Beyond Today program a couple months ago, and I came across a website, how to find the goddess within you. And I guess every woman has either Athena or... There's like 25 or 30 goddesses, and you've got to find which one's in you and then serve her, and you'll be a complete person.

I thought I was rather sexist myself, but... Find the goddess within you. Many times people get into crazy religion. What are they trying to do? Discover why I'm not a complete person. Why I am fragments of good and evil, fragments of being a true person. I'm just... I'm a puzzle that doesn't fit together. That's who we are. Blessed are those who mourn. We keep trying to find and discover the key to happiness, to have a complete life of happiness. The problem is, you and I both know bad things happen. And in this world, good doesn't always win. Good doesn't always win in this world. Bad things happen, and bad things happen to all of us, and sometimes you can't explain it. And you don't know why. And you ask God, and it seems like you don't get an answer. Why is this bad thing happening to me? Why am I mourning? I mean, we mourn over a lot of things. We mourn, of course, the death of a loved one. We mourn over the loss of health. We mourn... I mean, if you suddenly lose your job, or lose your house, and you mourn, you're sad. We mourn the loss of things. That's what mourning is. It's when we lose people. You can have a friend that turns their back on you, or feel betrayed by somebody. And you mourn that. If your husband or wife would leave you tomorrow, you would mourn. In fact, I've had people tell me, the mourning sometimes of some... you know, the husband or wife leaving you for somebody else is worse than mourning for death. Because they chose to do that. They chose to leave me and be with somebody else. Blessed are those who mourn. But remember the promise. The blessing is, you are mourning because you live in this corrupt world. And you mourn. I mourn. We all mourn. We're mourning the loss of Kim's dad. We all mourn. But the blessing is, you shall be comforted. That's the blessing. I've been amazed that... I've had this experience numerous times. I've gone in to do a funeral. I remember one time, I walked in a funeral. It must have been the biggest funeral. It was the biggest one I've ever done. There must have been 400 people there. I was the only person in the church, and I was the only white person. And there was a lot of weeping and crying and, you know, going on. And I got up to give the funeral, and I started reading from the Bible, and everybody stopped. I have never seen so many people staring with absolute interest, as I read from the Scriptures. And later I had to hug almost everybody. And they thanked me. It was in Houston. Even Mary was black. I was there. They didn't know who I was. And who's this man? And yet they responded to the Word of God. They were mourning. Their loss was real, and it hurt. And what gave them that little bit of comfort for that little bit of time? Not me! They didn't know who I was. Just some guy that knew the family.

And the woman had called me one day. I get this call. This woman, I don't know. She's in the hospital. She wants you to come annoy her. So I go in, and there she is. Her daughter's there. Her daughter says she won't last the night. I said, okay. I don't know you. And she said, no. But what I've done is I've been studying the Scripture, and it says I'm to be anointed. She said, now God may have me die. I don't know what He's going to do. But I am commanded to be anointed. So I have searched and searched all over to find a minister of God, and you're supposed to anoint me. Now I have no idea she found me, and I didn't even ask.

I said, okay. So you believe in God? Yes. You believe in Jesus Christ? Yes. You believe if it's God's will, He'll heal you? Yes. She said, it's okay if He doesn't. He still expects me to get anointed. I mean, she's instructing me. Right? I say, yes, ma'am. So I anointed her.

She went home. It was about four months later, four or five months later, that they said she just died in her sleep. And her daughter told me that was the happiest four or five months of her life. God has given me a little extra time. She never came to church. I didn't even know what her religion was. I was going to ask her because I was supposed to be there an anointed because God says so. And I said, yes, ma'am, and did it. And it was her funeral I was doing. Why was there comfort in their mourning? Because the Word of God touched them somehow.

God did that. I've heard people say, well, God's never going to heal people or interact with people that aren't totally obeying Him or converted. And that's just not true. God deals with whoever He wants to heal. That's the truth. God deals with whoever He wants to deal with. He helps whoever He wants to help.

And sometimes He gives blessings to whomever He wants to bless. And we say, oh, no, you can only give that to us. We're liable to lose every blessing He's given us. God is God. And He'll comfort those who mourn, who reach out to Him. The promise of God is, you will mourn.

The promise of God is, I will comfort you. That's the blessing. We miss the blessings because we're too worried about what restaurant I get to go to or other things that are blessings. I like physical blessings as much as anybody. But that's not the main purpose of God in those whom He calls. Jesus said He came to bring the good news, to heal the brokenhearted.

So, oh, yeah, well, He wants us to be brokenhearted. That's right. You read what Jesus' first sermon was in Luke 4. He says, I'm here to heal the brokenhearted, to comfort those who mourn. That's what I'm here for. That's what He's here for. That's what you've been called for. That's the blessing He wants to give you. Not that you'll never mourn. That's going to happen. Not that you'll never suffer. That's going to happen. But to take care of you in the suffering and comfort you in the mourning, why do we not always receive comfort? Why don't we experience the comfort of God?

A couple of reasons why. One is, we just lose sight of the greater picture of God. And He understands. I mean, we get lost in the pain of the moment. I mean, there are certain things in life that the mourning, the sadness is so great, you just can't break out of it. I mean, that's why telling somebody, snap out of it is the worst thing you can tell them. They can't. It takes time to heal from any loss. It takes time. But the thing is, God says, I will comfort you.

I will make it possible for you to learn, to be healed. Now, there's some loss we carry forever, right? I mean, everyone here has someone close to you that's died that you still carry that. I still carry the loss of my parents. Kim's going to carry the loss of her parents for the rest of her life. But it's not debilitating. The loss of friends who turn their back on you. It hurts. But it doesn't have to be debilitating, because God, through time, promises to bless you with comfort. You have to go asking for the blessing.

You have to do what you have, you know, certain things. But it's interesting. He says, well, when you're mourning, you'll be blessed. We think a life without loss, without mourning, would be perfect. And it would be. And I wish that was true. But in Satan's world, it is not. And so we will suffer loss, all kinds of loss. And in doing so, we have to trust that we'll be blessed by God's comfort. We lose this great picture. Sometimes we lose God's comfort or we don't experience it because we've centered our lives so much on experiencing creating happiness in our lives all the time. Chris, the more you spend your time trying to create happiness, the more unhappy you become.

It's just because all you care about is yourself. If your whole purpose in life is to be happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, who are you thinking about all the time? Me, me, me, me, me. In which case, you won't be happy. So what we have to do, we have to realize is that part of comforting is to give ourselves to God and to other people. It's sharing with each other.

You know, if you've ever had great sadness in your life and someone shares it with you, it's a blessing, isn't it? You can sit and cry with somebody else when you're at a great loss, or they understand and you know they understand. Sometimes they don't have to say anything. They're just there. And in that moment, you share that and you feel better. What? It gives you the opportunity to do that to somebody else. To share their mourning because you've mourned also. You share it. And it helps you heal. Sometimes we don't experience God's comfort because we just won't stop looking at the troubles.

You want to look at troubles all day long, you know, and then wonder why it takes, you know, six shots of bourbon to sleep at night. Well, yeah, that's all you're doing. It's filling your mind with the troubles of the world and your troubles around you. Sometimes it's just because we think things will solve everything. We need physical things when we hurt. I mean, that's why we give food to people at a funeral, right? They need that.

They need to eat. They need to rest. But sometimes we want God's impact in our lives to be dramatic. And sometimes it's not. It comes in quietness. And this is what we don't have enough of in our lives, is quietness. I know every time Kim and I here went on our wedding anniversary, we went away for four days, five days. It took me about a whole day to be able to be quiet.

I should check my email. No, I'm not. I should see how many phone calls I have. No, I'm not.

You mean we're walking down the street and we're going to go into this little French bakery and get some kind of pastry and sit and drink coffee for 45 minutes?

And after a while I was like, oh, I like this. But we don't have quiet time, and we don't have quiet time with God. We have to have quiet time with God all the time. Every day we have to have quiet time with God. And that can happen. It can happen when you're raking the leaves and you start praying. You start thinking about God. You start thinking about it and you start praying. But that quiet time with God has to be a daily thing. It's hard when you have little kids.

My wife used to tell me that all the time. It's so hard to have that quiet time with God. But when she did have it, she was strengthened by it. She was comforted. I won't go there and read it, but in 1 Kings we have the story of Elijah. 1 Kings 19. Here, Elijah, God did all these great, dramatic things through. I mean, brought down fire from heaven to burn up an offering that he was making. He actually outran a chariot. God gave him superhuman strength and he outran a chariot. Now that's dramatic. But you know what happens, too, when God works in us? It exhausts us. And then he stood up to the king, had no problem standing up to the king, and God says this, and had the king back down from him. And then the king's wife said, kill him. And it was the last straw. He ran away, ran out to the desert, and went into a cave, and just, that's it. I'm never leaving the cave.

He was mourning. He was upset. He was depressed. And he was now just plain scared.

And he was in the cave. And what God did next was interesting. Some birds showed up and gave him food. Now, I believe this is true. I believe it's here for a reason. Birds showed up and gave him food. And he slept. And he woke up. Some more birds showed up and gave him some food. We don't know how long this went on. But God took care of him physically. This is God comforting him. This is God. Blessed are you. Let me show you some blessings. Some food brought by birds. You've got to say, well, this isn't usual. This isn't normal. And you sleep. And you physically recover. Part of dealing with mourning, with sadness, with a sense of loss, with anything. You lose a job. Whatever happens to you. That sense of loss is that we have to physically take care of ourselves. You know, sometimes when you have a sense of loss, what do you do? We don't eat at all. Or we put on 100 pounds. Because that's all we do is eat. Or we go from drinking a beer once a week to drinking a six-pack a night. That's how some people deal. And then they wake up one day and say, I'm an alcoholic. That's how they're dealing with this.

Well, my dad died, my mom. She lived with, we took care of her for over three months just to get her back into sanity. And she liked this cheap burgundy wine you could buy by the gallon. So we bought a gallon of it. It was like three days later I went in and said, what happened to all that wine? Kim said, what? What do you mean? It's there. It's gone. When she'd do it, in the middle of the night, and she wouldn't even remember it, she was so devastated. She'd be walking through the house sort of asleep. And she'd get out. I watched her one night. She'd get out a ten-ounce glass, pour it for the wine, drink it down, and wander back into bed. And I tried to explain it to her, and she says, I don't do that. I mean, she really didn't know she was doing it. She was really... it... it just... the grief had just knocked her down so hard. So I bought another jug and then poured it out into other jugs and put about three-fourths of it water.

And I'd want to get... and wander back to bed. Then after a while I said, mom, you know, you're drinking too much wine. By the end of the three months, she was fine. But I had to water it down at first because she didn't even know she was doing it. Because grief, loss, and it's not just death. Any sense of loss can be overwhelming to us. And what did Jesus say? Blessed are those who never mourn. That's not what he says. Now, I don't like that. But he said, blessed are those who mourn, for you shall be comforted. I will comfort you. He doesn't promise to keep us from everything. He promises to make it okay to get us through it. That's what he promised. Blessed are you. And of course, what happens, of course, with Elijah is fascinating because God shows up and there's an earthquake and there's a basically a tornado. And there's all this stuff going on, all the dramatic stuff of God. And then it all stops. And he hears this still small voice that says, what exactly are you doing here? Why are you hiding out in the cave? And it's interesting because Elijah has all the reasons. I'm alone. I'm abandoned. I have nobody to trust. There's not even any other person in all of Israel that obeys you. I'm absolutely alone. I've lost everything. And God does it. You yell at him? God does it. He just says, no, I'm with you. And by the way, there's 7,000 other people following me. You just don't know about them. There's 7,000 of them. He says, okay, you slept. You've been fed. You're physically okay. You and I have had a good talk. This neighboring country over here, I went to ordain their king. So I'm going to send you over there. Go ordain this king. He put him back to work. He says, there's still functions you have to do with me. And Elijah was comforted. I mean, his sense of loss was he had lost everything. He had nothing left. No family, no friends. No one else followed God, his country. And now this wacky queen was trying to kill him. So I've lost everything. The ultimate sense of loss, of mourning. And God says, nah, it's not true because I'm here. Look, I showed up. Oh, I showed off a little bit. Earthquake, you know, big tornado. But I'm here. I'm talking to you right now. I'm here. Now, let's go get some work done. And he did. He went and he did it. The opposite of those who mourn is to simply seek not to ever have to deal with negative emotions through selfish means. We try to hide it. We try to destroy it. The thing is, certain loss, any loss, takes time. It takes a lot of things, physical things, emotional things, and most of all, it takes the comfort of God.

Blessed are those who mourn. Because God says, I'll comfort you. It's a whole different concept of blessing, isn't it? Wow. I feel a little... I do feel a little ashamed of some of the blessings I've asked for in life. You know, help me to get a deer. I'm not saying you shouldn't do that. I'm sure Mark Smith has prayed that a hundred times. My dad told me one time when I was a teenager, he said, you know, I thought, God, I'm being selfish, praying that you give me a deer, so I prayed that you would get a deer. But I didn't get one. He said, yeah, doesn't always work that way. Dad always used everything as a teaching tool. He says, I've been praying, I thought, man, it's a little selfish, I'll pray that Gary gets his first deer. I was like 16. Actually, I saw one, but it was running and I was afraid I'd wound it and I wasn't going to shoot it. I mean, I was always going to make a kill shot. I was never going to wound a deer. I just wouldn't. Now, dad could. He brought down a deer, a running deer one time with a .30-06 on his hip. That's, you know, that's that old ex-marine. I couldn't do that. Blessing of God is He'll give you comfort. He's not going to take all the blossom away. So we've only looked at two of eight blessings. Two. Blessed, who are poor in spirit, which means that we realize our nothingness without God. We cling to Him as our life-giver, as our Savior. Jesus Christ is the one who came and died for us and intercedes for us now. That only through God's Spirit can He make us a whole person. And in being poor in spirit, we're not arrogant, we're not prideful, and the ultimate blessing, actually being poor in spirit is a blessing itself because you have a better life because of your relationship with God. But the ultimate blessing of that is, I'll give you the kingdom. I'll give you everything. God said, I'll give you everything I have. And we learned that, blessed are those who mourn. We're all going to mourn because we're all going to go through times of loss of something. Multiple times in your life, you're going to mourn the loss of something. Sometimes we mourn because of the evil in the world around us. Think about it, don't we? We mourn because of the evil. We feel oppressed by the evil in the world around us. And actually, there's times when we should. There's times when we should mourn that. You say, well, where does that leave me? Depressed and upset and angry. No, it leads you to be comforted by God. People say, I can't even watch the news anymore. It makes me so angry and mad. All the time, I'm just angry. Okay, wait a minute. You're oppressed. You mourn because of the evil in the world. Blessed are you if you receive comfort from God. That's the blessing. So, I hope this maybe helped you think of blessings a little different. We go through two blessings that Jesus blessed are these people. And remember, he's talking to basically a lot of those people who are poor. They're the downtrodden of Jewish society. They were under the rule of the Romans who taxed them, mistreated them. And these people came together to the man who fed them and healed them and gave them all these physical blessings and said, now let me tell you what blessings really are.

This is the real blessing since they come from God. So maybe sometime in the future, we'll go through a couple more of these blessings. And we'll look at what God wants to do to bless your life.