Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

The pure in heart haven’t achieved absolute holiness in their lives. They haven’t stopped sinning altogether. The Bible is clear that that doesn’t happen this side of heaven.

Their sins have been washed away in the cleansing waters of their baptisms, however, waters powered by Jesus’ death and resurrection to pay for their sins. The pure in heart have been converted, they have come to faith, and in that faith there is a new innocence, a new simplicity, a new honesty that acknowledges our sin and keeps going back to God for forgiveness.

These people, Jesus says, are blessed to see God. You realize that this blessing is something of an acquired taste. “Well whoopty-doo,” far too many people would say. “It’s not like that’s what I’ve been dying to see.”

Many years ago my family found a box with letters my grandmother had received from a man she almost married years before she married my grandfather. It was World War I, and the man was fighting somewhere in France. The letters were filled with the longing of two hearts desperate to see each other but forced to be apart. Do you feel the same longing to see this man, or my grandmother for that matter? Of course not. You’re not in love with them.

Only those with hearts purified by God’s grace consider it a blessing to see God, because only they want to see God. You can’t believe that you were a sinner, destined for hell and an eternity of misery away from God, with no way of changing your situation; and that then purely out of his grace God sacrificed the only Son he had to save you from your sins, make you his own child by faith, and give you heaven as a free gift; you can’t come to believe that and not at the same time come to love the One who showed you such love. As the sainted Dr. Becker used to say, “To know him is to love him” is more true of our Savior than anyone who ever lived.

And those who love Jesus know that it is a blessing when he promises, “They will see God.”

Matthew 5:7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”

The blessed have compassion, empathy. They have known spiritual pain and poverty. They have received God’s blessed solutions. And so, their hearts are full of mercy for others.

It is such a feature of being blessed that Jesus will see it as the primary way to describe them on Judgment Day: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father,” he will say, “take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” Why? “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison, and you came to visit me.”

Being so merciful can be expensive. It can mean sacrifice. It means parting with your time, your energy, and your money.

But it is connected to a blessing. “They will be shown mercy.” God still sees your misery. It pains him. When Jesus saw Mary and Martha’s grief after their brother Lazarus died, it even moved him to tears and he intervened with a miracle.

God’s mercy doesn’t always lead to a miracle. But the Father above who loves you still intends to relieve your pain before it becomes too much. He may change your circumstances here. He may change your address to a heavenly one, where “there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain.” Either way, your misery prompts his mercy and ends in his blessing.

Matthew 5:5-6 “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

The blessed are kind and gentle people. They lack the kind of aggressiveness and self-promotion so many successful people seem to have. “Well, this can’t be right,” we might think. “Meek people are going to inherit the earth? Doesn’t everything in our experience say just the opposite?”

It’s true that the meek and gentle may have less than the rough and aggressive. They may be more likely to get run over or taken advantage of.

But step back a moment, and look at some of the world’s ambitious power-brokers and gazillionaires. I won’t name names, but how much do they really enjoy their gigantic piece of the pie? How much of their lives aren’t consumed by scandals, lawsuits, squabbles, personal attacks, public shame, and a thirst for more that never seems truly content? You read the covers of the tabloids in the checkout line.

The meek may have only their daily bread, just enough to live on. But they live in the contentment that God has provided all they need, and the confidence that God will continue to provide. They have inherited the earth, because they can enjoy what they have right now. Contentment is blessing.

Even in their contentment, those God blesses may hunger and thirst: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” These people want to do what is right. They try to live a righteous life. They want it more than anything.

But they have come to realize that we lack a righteousness of our own. So God gives them a better righteousness. He declares them not guilty for Jesus’ sake. He gives them credit for Jesus’ righteous life. He fills them with a righteousness more perfect and more powerful than anything they could have attempted on their own. The more they hunger and thirst for righteousness, the more God fills them. The more God fills them with righteousness, they more they hunger and thirst for it. Ever hungry, ever filled—It is a blessing to be both.

Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

Life is tough for the blessed. They often lack earthly reasons for joy, the things that make you happy. They lose their loved ones to death, their livelihood to unemployment, their families to unfaithfulness and divorce, their property and homes to natural disasters, their children to bad influences, their dignity to bad choices.

And it all grieves them. It makes them want to cry. They aren’t unique in what they suffer. These are all burdens common to man.

What makes the blessed different is that they understand the root cause behind their suffering. It’s sin. And it makes them mourn. They mourn not just the effects of sin, the misery it causes, though they mourn that, too. They are truly sorry that they have offended God and harmed their neighbors. Their tears are a mixture of pain and repentance.

“They shall be comforted.” Do you remember poor Lazarus from the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus? When the two men receive their eternal rewards, and the rich man complains, Abraham explains, “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted…” (Luke 16:25). In Revelation, John describes the people who have left behind the troubles of this world this way: “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 7:17).

But not all the comforts have to wait. God loves you today. His forgiveness is a like a warm, soft blanket of his grace laid over your life with all its bumps and bruises, shortcomings and failures. He seeks you, accepts you, embraces you, and claims you as his own even now. This is what it looks like to be blessed. On the outside our lives give us plenty of reasons to cry. On the inside we are cradled in God’s grace.