The Upside Down Kingdom | Matthew 5:3-5
Brian Hedges | October 26, 2025
Turn in your Bibles this morning to Matthew 5.
Have you ever seen something that made you do a double take, something that was out of the ordinary? Maybe it was a familiar face but in an unusual setting, or maybe a recognizable object but in a surprising location? I had this experience a few weeks ago when I opened up our kitchen trash can and there was a huge spider, sitting right there on the top. It really startled me; I had to do a double take. I immediately cinched that bag up and took it out to the trash; I don’t do spiders, don’t like spiders.
Maybe you’ve had that experience. You’ve seen something that seemed a little out of place or seemed a little bit strange, so you did a double take; something that seemed like a paradox, two things that did not belong together.
G.K. Chesterton once defined “paradox” in this way—he said it is “truth upside-down calling for attention.”
And Jesus was a master of paradox. Jesus taught in such a way that it made people do a double take, listen a little more closely to understand what he was saying. That is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the Sermon on the Mount.
We are continuing this series. We began just a few weeks ago the Sermon on the Mount. I want to just remind you quickly of where we have been. I think this series in particular it’s been important to lay the foundation for how to read and understand this portion of Scripture together. So in the last three weeks we’ve seen essentially these things:
- That Jesus is our king, our sage, and our savior. We receive this teaching from Jesus as filling all three of those roles.
- We’ve seen that his teaching in the Sermon must be understood within the narrative context of Matthew’s Gospel, which shows us how Jesus is bringing a new exodus through which we get deliverance from sin, he’s bringing a new creation through which we receive life in the Spirit, and he’s bringing a new covenant through which we receive transformed hearts. There is the gospel in the Gospel of Matthew, as it gives us the life and the teaching of Jesus Christ, leading up to his death and resurrection, through which these great new events take place.
- Then we saw last week that the beatitudes, the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, hold out for us Jesus’ invitation to the good life of flourishing in the upside-down, inside-out, already-not yet kingdom of God.
So this morning, in light of all that’s gone before (and if you haven’t heard those messages, they’re online; I encourage you to go back and listen to them), we dig into Matthew 5. This morning I’m especially focusing on Matthew 5:3-5, but I want to read the entire opening section, and then we will look at the first three beatitudes together.
“Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.
“And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
“‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
“‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
“‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
“‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
“‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
“‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
“‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“‘Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.’”
This is God’s word.
Those are strange words of Jesus that would have caused his original hearers to do a double take. They’re paradoxical words that invite our close study in order to understand.
To do that this morning, I want to ask three questions about this kingdom, this upside-down, paradoxical kingdom. Here are the questions:
1. Who Is the Kingdom For?
2. How Do You Get In?
3. What Does It Promise?
1. Who Is the Kingdom For?
I want to just focus on those first three beatitudes, the first half of those beatitudes, and the things that Jesus says about those who are flourishing, those who are blessed, those who have the good life; because it’s not what people would have expected, and maybe not what we would expect either, except that many of us are overly familiar with these verses and maybe haven’t paid close enough attention.
(1) Jesus says, first of all, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” What does Jesus mean by that? The word “poor” means poor. It means those who are economically disadvantaged, those who are without material resources.
We have to just examine the parallel text in Luke 6, where Jesus says something very similar. This is the so-called “Sermon on the Plain.” It’s Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount. This plain very well may have just been a level place. Some scholars think it was a plateau. It may have been the same mountain; it may have been the same sermon.
In that context, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” and what follows a few verses later is, “Woe to you who are rich.” It’s really clear in that passage that the poverty in mind is material, economic poverty.
Now, we don’t know for sure whether these are just two different versions of the same sermon or whether Matthew and Luke gathered these various sayings of Jesus and kind of put them into this sermonic context, or whether they’re two different sermons. I rather think they are two different sermons, because I know as a preacher that I have preached the same sermon many different times. I’ve used the same illustration more than one time! I’ve said similar things in different contexts. Jesus very well would have done the same, so we probably have two different versions of Jesus’ teaching, but similar teaching.
Nevertheless, Luke says, “Blessed are you who are poor,” while Matthew’s Gospel says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” But it has something to do with those who are poor, and I think another confirmation of that would be Matthew 11:4-5. This was when John the Baptist is in prison; he is wondering if Jesus really is the Messiah, and Jesus says,
“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.”
Of course, we’ve already seen that it’s in Matthew 4 that Jesus arrives on the scene and begins his earthly ministry by preaching the good news of the kingdom.
Yet this phrase says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and that’s using a formulation of words that you find common in the Old Testament, where people are described to be something “in spirit.” For example, “troubled in spirit” (1 Samuel 1:15), or “crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18), or “lowly in spirit” (Proverbs 29:23). The closest example we have to this language is from Isaiah, Isaiah 66:2, which says,
“But this is the one to whom I will look:
he who is humble [and the Hebrew word is the word for poor] and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my word.”
Then, the closest New Testament parallel we have to Matthew’s language, apart from Luke’s Gospel, is found in James. We’ve already seen in this series that James often repeats the teaching of Jesus, or at least alludes to it. The same ethical teaching, the same teaching for the Christian life, you find often in James. So you have this passage in James 2 where he’s warning people not to show partiality to the rich. Don’t privilege the rich and neglect the poor. James says, “Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?”
I had never noticed that, actually, as a parallel to Matthew 5:3 until I was reading through James in my devotions a few weeks ago. I read that, and I thought immediately, “Oh, that’s Matthew 5:3.” There you have it: heirs of the kingdom, but they are the poor in this world who are rich in faith.
I put all of those passages together to make this basic argument: that when Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” I think he means both those who are economically poor, materially poor, but who also, because of their desperate, destitute situation, depend on God and so can be characterized as poor in spirit.
Let me just give you one quotation. This is from the commentary by Scot McKnight. I wouldn’t follow Scot McKnight in everything he says, but I found him helpful in this. He says,
“‘The poor in spirit’ describes an an economically, physically impoverished, or oppressed person who not only recognizes her or his need but also trusts in God for full redemption. Rather than being forced to choose between economic or spiritual poverty, it is wisest to see here a both/and; both spiritually dependent and economically needy. Jesus has in mind the Anawim, a group of economically disadvantaged Jews [and he gives a list of Old Testament passages]. The Anawim had three features: (1) they were economically poor, (2) they trusted in God, (3) they longed for the Messiah who would finally bring justice.”
That is Jesus’ audience. Jesus comes preaching the good news to the poor, and when he begins to talk about the good life, the blessed life, the flourishing life, the first thing out of his mouth is, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom…” It’s not what people would have expected. They would have expected it’s those who are rich, those who are wealthy, those who do not have needs—those are the ones who are blessed. But Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” not because they are poor but because the poor in their destitution depend on God, and they trust in him.
(2) Then Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn.” This is the word for the grieving, for the sorrowful. As we saw last week, the background to this beatitude is Isaiah 61. These are words that Jesus read when he began his earthly ministry in the synagogue of Nazareth. You have the words repeated in Luke 4. Here’s just an excerpt from Isaiah 61:3-4:
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor [there it is again]...
to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit…”
The context in Isaiah’s prophecy, this word of comfort is for the exiles. It’s for those who, under God’s judgment because of their sins, have experienced exile in Babylon.
Now, all of us probably know the words of that great Advent hymn—we sing it every year:
“O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice, rejoice…”
That exactly gets at the condition of these people in Isaiah’s context. And Jesus once again is speaking to the lowly, he’s speaking to the sorrowful, the grieving, the mourning. He’s speaking to people who, though they are in their homeland, they don’t really feel that they have full possession of it. They are still under the dominion of Rome. But they are mourning.
One of the reasons the exiles would have mourned was because of their sin, mourning and asking God to bring renewal and redemption and comfort and restoration. So once again James gives us a parallel passage when he says,
“Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”
This is mourning for sin.
Perhaps one of the greatest biblical illustrations of this is that story in Luke 18 where you have two guys that go to the temple to pray. Do you remember this? One of them is a Pharisee. He is religious, he feels like he has his act all together, and when he starts to pray to the Lord, he just rehearses all the good things he’s done. “Lord, I’m a Pharisee. Lord, I fast twice a week. Lord, I give a tithe of all that I possess. I’m certainly not like this poor tax collector,” the other guy at the temple. “I’m not an adulterer, I’m not an extortioner; I’m not like the tax collector.” So he prays with himself before the Lord.
In contrast to that you have the tax collector, one of the most despised in society, and he comes to the temple, and he’s so ashamed, he’s so sorrowful he cannot even lift his eyes up to God. Instead, he beats on his chest and says, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” And Jesus says, “This is the one who went down to his house justified.”
“Blessed are those who mourn.”
(3) Then third, Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek.” The Old Testament background for this beatitude is Psalm 37. Psalm 37, very similar to Psalm 73, is one of those psalms where the righteous are crying out to the Lord because they see the prosperity of the wicked, while they themselves are experiencing trials of various kinds. There is this reversal theme that runs through Psalm 37, where those who wait on the Lord and trust in the Lord and delight in the Lord, they will eventually experience a reversal of fortunes.
You can get just a little hint of it in these verses, Psalm 37:10-11.
“In just a little while, the wicked will be no more;
though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.
But the meek shall inherit the land
and delight themselves in abundant peace.”
That seems pretty clearly to be the passage that Jesus refers to when he says, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
There are other ways we might translate that word “meek.” The Christian Standard Bible says “gentle,” the New Living Translation says “humble.” It is the word that Jesus uses in Matthew 11 when he says, “I am gentle and lowly in heart,” and it’s the word that is used in the prophecy quoted in Matthew 21:5, “Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey.”
This is the humble person, the lowly person, the gentle person, and Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek.” These are those who are not characterized by retaliation, by easily being angered when they are wronged. Instead, they are humble, they are lowly, they are gentle.
Now, you put those three beatitudes together—we’re asking the question, “Who is the kingdom for?”—and it’s a surprising answer, because Jesus does not say that the kingdom is for the rich, for the powerful, for the strong, for the rejoicing. He says the kingdom is for the poor, the sorrowful, and the humble. I think this suggests two applications for us this morning.
First of all, this means that there is hope for the down-and-out, because the kingdom is for all who depend on God. There are these reversals. It’s the upside-down kingdom. It means that the people who are in are not the people you would expect to be in. It’s not the rich, the powerful, the influential, the wise, even the outwardly religious and righteous; but it’s the poor, the humble, the sorrowful, the desperate, the down-and-out, the bankrupt and broken, the foolish of the world who depend on God alone.
Isn’t this what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 when he says it’s not many wise, many noble who are called? I like Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of this. It’s just a paraphrase, but I think it gets at the sense. This is from The Message, 1 Corinthians 1. He says,
“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’?”
You see the reversal, the upside-down nature here of the kingdom of God. This is good news for the poor, for the down-and-out. It gives hope, because it means no one’s excluded who depends on God. It’s not based on race, it’s not based on class, it’s not based on your income level, it’s not based on your pedigree, what family you came from. It doesn’t matter which side of the tracks you grew up on, it doesn’t matter what your level of education is. None of those things are what qualifies you for the kingdom of God! Anyone can be a part of this kingdom if they depend on God alone. So there’s hope for the down and out.
But—here’s the second application—it also means humility for everyone, because the kingdom is only for those who depend on God.
We have to feel the tension here, and maybe you do feel it. The tension that Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” “Blessed are you poor.” It’s the poor of this world who are rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom.
You hear verses like that, and there maybe are a few of you here this morning that would say, “That’s me. I am poor. I’ve never had much. I haven’t been characterized by a lot of economic success; I don’t have a lot of material possessions. That is me.”
But for many in this room, and for most people in this country, that’s not us, because, if you just look at what we have, what we own and the kinds of privileges we have, compared to the rest of the world, we’re in the top seven or eight percent of the world’s most wealthy people. Certainly, if you look at us within the context of all of human history, we are vastly more wealthy than most of us the people of the world.
So you hear verses like this, you hear an explanation like this, and you feel the tension: “What does that mean for me? I don’t know if I qualify, because maybe I’m not this poor.”
I think what it means is that the kingdom is for us only if we trust in God. You may not be materially poor, but you can still be poor in spirit. You can still feel that you are destitute of anything apart from God’s mercy, and if you do have riches then there is an exhortation. The rich are not excluded from the kingdom, but they are exhorted to trust in God and not in riches.
Listen to Paul in 1 Timothy 6. He says,
“As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty [or arrogant], nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.”
Of course, that’s echoing Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, who talks about laying up for ourselves treasures in heaven rather than treasures on earth.
So, there’s hope for the down-and-out, humility for everyone. The kingdom is for anyone who will depend on God, but the kingdom is only for those who depend on God.
2. How Do You Get In?
That raises another question, doesn’t it? How do you get into this kingdom? If the kingdom is upside-down and it’s for the nobodies of this world who depend on the Lord, how do you get in? How can you know that you are an heir of this kingdom?
What I want to do in this point is just briefly point out a few passages that discuss entering the kingdom of God, that I think help us understand how to interpret the Sermon on the Mount.
(1) I want you to see, first of all, the difficulty, or what Jesus actually goes on to say is the impossibility of entering the kingdom for those who are rich. You see it in this familiar story in Matthew 19. This is the story of the rich young ruler. He comes to Jesus and he’s asking, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus says, “Keep the commandments,” and he lists them, and the guy says essentially, “I’ve done all this from my youth up.” Jesus says, “You lack one thing: sell your possessions and give them to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” And the guy walks away really sad, because he has a lot of possessions, and he doesn’t want to give them up.
Then Jesus says these words: “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven.” Now remember, the kingdom of heaven here is the saving reign of God, something that’s experienced now but with a full and final fulfillment when Jesus comes again. “Only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
You say, “That makes me uncomfortable. That’s shocking to hear.” Well, it was shocking to the disciples. The disciples heard this. “They were greatly astonished, and said, ‘Who then can be saved?’ And Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”
We should feel the same astonishment that the disciples felt, prompting us to ask, “Who can be saved?” and hear Jesus’ answer: “Impossible with man, but possible with God.”
So, what’s necessary, then? If it’s so difficult to enter the kingdom, what’s necessary? What’s necessary is heart change. You have to be changed.
Look at another passage now, Matthew 18:1-4. The disciples come to Jesus, they ask, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” and Jesus takes a child, puts this child in the midst of them, and says this:
“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn [or the NIV says, ‘unless you change’] and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Unless you change, unless you turn. What’s Jesus saying? He’s saying there’s something that has to happen in our hearts that change us, so that we have this inner disposition of humility, like a child.
Now, let me set one other passage alongside it. This one’s more familiar. The reason I’m doing this is because we are less familiar with the language and conceptual categories that you find in Matthew than we are with those that are found in, say, the apostle Paul or in the Gospel of John. So here’s one more passage set alongside; this is John 3, when Jesus has his conversation with Nicodemus. Nicodemus is a Pharisee, and he comes to Jesus by night. He’s very interested in the teaching of Jesus, and Jesus says to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus is confused by this. He says, “What do you mean? A man cannot enter into his mother’s womb again and be born!”
Jesus clarifies in verse 5,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”
There it is. How do you enter the kingdom of God? You have to be changed. You have to have the disposition of the child, the humble, the meek, the gentle child. You have to be poor in spirit even if you are not poor in fact. That only comes through this work of the Spirit bringing new birth.
So that’s the application for this point. How do you get into the kingdom? It’s only through new birth. So I want you to ask yourself, have you experienced this new birth? Have you experienced the change? Older generations used to say this about people. They would see someone grow up in the church, and maybe they mentally professed faith in Christ, but they say, “Has he experienced the change yet?” Because any experienced Christian knows there’s a difference between knowing it in your head and experiencing it in your heart. There has to be a change.
New birth—have you experienced that—the gift of new life? Transformation of heart such that, as a new creation in Christ, you can say, “The old has passed away, the new has come. I’m a new person in Christ! I have new desires, I have new loves, I have found new joy in Christ. The world doesn’t mean so much to me anymore because I’ve found something better in Jesus.” That’s what it takes.
Do you treasure Christ? This is a good test whether you have experienced this new birth or not. Have you found your treasure in Christ?
Listen to John Piper, from his classic book Desiring God, from the chapter on conversion. He says,
“Conversion is what happens to the heart when Christ becomes for us a treasure-chest of holy joy. Saving faith is the confidence that if you sell all you have and forsake all sinful pleasures, the hidden treasure of holy joy will satisfy your deepest desires. Behind the repentance that turns away from sin and behind the faith that embraces Christ is the birth of a new taste, a new longing, a new passion for the pleasures of God’s presence. It is what Thomas Chalmers famously called ‘the expulsive power of a new affection.’”
It’s something new in your heart that so changes you that Christ becomes your treasure.
The kingdom is for the nobodies, the down-and-out in this world, the humble who depend on God alone. You get into this kingdom through change—new birth, faith and repentance, the work of the Spirit in the heart.
3. What Does It Promise?
Final question: what does the kingdom promise? Or we might say what does the king promise? What does Jesus promise to those who are in his kingdom, under his saving reign?
Now we look at the second half of these first three beatitudes. He says, first of all, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
“Kingdom of heaven” is a phrase that essentially means the same thing as “the kingdom of God.” It’s used only in Matthew, and Matthew probably uses it for a couple of reasons. One, his primary audience would have been Jewish people, who were very careful about speaking the name of God. The pious Jew did not want to name the name of God. So Matthew probably says “kingdom of heaven” as a circumlocution for “kingdom of God,” so as not to offend these pious Jews.
The other reason he probably says “kingdom of heaven” is to emphasize that this is not a kingdom of this world, which many Jewish people were looking for; it is the kingdom from the heavens, it’s the kingdom that Christ is bringing. It is the saving reign of God, who reigns in heaven. As we pray in that disciples’ prayer that Jesus teaches us later in this sermon, “Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We haven’t experienced that in its fullness on earth yet, but it is the sovereign, saving reign of the God whose throne is in the heavens. And Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It means you’re already a citizen, you already are within the scope of the reign of God.
Then he says, “...they shall be comforted.” They shall receive this comfort. Again, it’s Isaiah 61. Instead of ashes, there’s beauty. Instead of mourning, there is joy. It’s God coming to wipe away the tears from his sorrowful, mournful people, comforting them with the forgiveness of sins, with renewal, with redemption. That’s the comfort.
And he says, “...they shall inherit the earth.” In Psalm 37 it’s “inherit the land.” The word here means land, and it probably has in the immediate context reference to the land, but in its greater context, when we think about God’s promise to Abraham and we think about the promise of a new heavens and a new earth, we think about what we are waiting for when Jesus comes again, we can extend this to say this inheritance is the world that is made new, the new heavens and the new earth that Christ will bring in the consummation.
These are the promises of the kingdom. Note here that, as we’ve already noted in this series, these are already-not yet promises. There is this already-not yet dimension to the kingdom. So we are already heirs, but we are not yet in full possession of the inheritance.
We are already heirs. Just think of the text. James 2 says, “God has chosen those who are poor in this world [but are] rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom.” Romans 8 says, “We are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” Ephesians 1 says that if we have received the Spirit we have “received the guarantee of our inheritance, until we acquire possession of it.” That means that we are already heirs, but we haven’t received the fullness of the inheritance yet.
It’s similar to if you were maybe named in someone’s will, and you know that you are the heir of their estate, but you haven’t received the estate yet. Legally, you already have the position of being heir, but you haven’t received the full inheritance. Paul and the other writers are saying that’s our situation.
I think that accounts for the switch between present and future tenses. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” There is a comfort that is yet to come. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” There is an inheritance that is to come. That means we’re still waiting for something.
Again, this suggests some important applications. Here’s one: Beware of eschatology that promises too much now or too little. Eschatology is our doctrine of last things. There are dangers of expecting too much (overrealized eschatology); there are also dangers of expecting too little (underrealized eschatology). Let me tell you what I mean by that.
Overrealized eschatology, expecting too much, would be those people who say, “If you just have enough faith then you shouldn’t have any problems in this world. Since you are a son of God or a daughter of God, you should expect to never suffer, to have all your diseases healed, to never really get sick. You should expect to be prosperous through all seasons of your life. You should never be in need, and if you are in need it’s because of a lack of faith. You should expect constant miracles, immunity from suffering. You should receive your best life now!”
That’s not what Jesus teaches. That’s not what the Bible teaches. That’s an overrealized eschatology. That’s not what the Bible teaches! The Bible teaches us to expect that in this present world we’re going to suffer, we’re going to experience persecution sometimes, opposition sometimes. We will sometimes get sick. We will not always get healed. We don’t get raised from the dead now—we’re waiting for Jesus to come back—so we’re going to experience death. We experience suffering. We continue to mourn. This is our state in this current world! Don’t expect more.
Listen, this is one reason why some people have turned away from faith—false advertising. They were essentially told that if they would come to Christ, if they would believe in Jesus, all their problems would go away. Not so! That’s not the way the kingdom of God works in this present world. That’s not what the Bible teaches, and we need to beware of that.
But on the other hand, don’t settle for an underrealized eschatology, either. Don’t live as if you did not have a Father who cares for you, because he does. Don’t live as if prayer makes no difference, because it does. Don’t live as if the Spirit had not been given to give us joy in the midst of these trials of life, because the Spirit has been given, and he does give joy. Don’t live below your privileges, as the Puritans would say. You are a son of God or a daughter of God, he does care for you, and he has promised to meet your needs and, in your trials and in your hardship, he will either hear your prayer and remove it or he will hear your prayer and he will work it out to do you good.
That means that we can live with present confidence in our future hope. We can live right now with confidence that these hopes, these promises will be fulfilled. It means that if we are citizens of this paradoxical kingdom our lives will also look like a paradox to others.
This won’t be on the screen, but listen to Paul in 2 Corinthians 6, where he’s commending himself to those who are questioning his credentials as an apostle, and he does so in the strangest way. He says,
“We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.”
That’s the paradox of life in the kingdom. “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” Sorrowful because we still live in a fallen world and we experience these things—trials and tribulation, suffering and disease and hardship—we experience all of it; but rejoicing because we have the Spirit, rejoicing because we know “what Spirit dwells within [us], / [we] know what Father’s smiles are mine, / [we] know that Jesus died to win [us],” therefore, “why should [we] repine?” This is the way we are to live with hope, because we know that the best is yet to come.
Time for an illustration. Let me end with this. In C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, maybe the most famous—certainly the first, not the second, despite what modern publishers want to tell you—the first of the Narnian chronicles, the first one that C.S. Lewis wrote, the story where the Pevensie children go through the wardrobe into Narnia, this land that is under the spell of the White Witch, where it’s always winter and never Christmas, and they’re waiting for Aslan, the King, to move, to do something. As you know in the story, he certainly does. He comes and there’s this wonderful death and resurrection scene where Aslan dies for Edmund because of Edmund’s treachery against his siblings, eating the Turkish delight and so on; and then he’s raised from the dead. Susan and Lucy are there frolicking with this risen lion; that’s the picture on this particular cover. We know all of that in the Narnian story.
But there’s a chapter near the end that I think is not mentioned as often, and I actually checked this in the movie…there’s like one frame for this entire chapter in the movie. Don’t get your Narnia from the movies, okay? You have to read the book! There’s this chapter near the end called “What Happened about the Statues.” If you remember, the White Witch had put the talking animals of Narnia under a spell, and she had turned them into statues. So this castle is filled with all these statues of animals.
After the great, climactic scene when Aslan rises from the dead, he storms that castle in this chapter, and he goes to the castle and he breathes on the statues, and one by one the statues start coming to life. It’s a beautiful new creation scene.
Friends, that’s what we’re waiting for. We’re waiting for the full unleashing of the resurrection power of Christ in this world, when he will come and he will make all things new, when he will wipe every tear from our eyes, when he will bring this full and final everlasting comfort for the sorrowful, when he will make his poor people rich with all the blessings of the kingdom, when we will inherit a new heavens and new earth, when we will be forever with the Lord, with all the joy that he has promised; and we get this because of what he’s already done for us in his death on the cross and resurrection.
Friend, is that your hope? Are you part of this kingdom? Are you hoping in these promises of the kingdom? Are you living in the present with confidence as you look forward to the promises of God that will yet be fulfilled? I hope you have experienced that change of heart, that new birth that leads you into this kind of hope, into this kind of life. If not, let me encourage you this morning to humble yourself, to look to Christ, and to ask God for that gift of new life, eternal life, that brings you into the kingdom of God. Let’s pray.
Gracious, merciful God, we thank you this morning for the good news of the kingdom of God. We thank you for the comfort that we receive as we hear the words of Jesus and as we bank on the promises that are contained in your word—promises of the world that will be changed when Jesus comes again in glory. Lord, it’s in that hope that we come to the table this morning. Having received your word, we come now to receive the elements of the table, remembering the great sacrifice and the great cost of our redemption as we look back on Jesus’ death and resurrection for our sins, but also anticipating the fullness of the kingdom that is yet to come, as we look ahead to that day when Jesus comes and we celebrate together the marriage supper of the Lamb, and we are joined with our Savior once and for all, to enjoy the blessings of the kingdom of God. Lord, may we take these elements today in that hope, with that faith in our hearts. Help us, Lord, to put our trust not in the uncertainty of riches in this world, but instead to place our hope in Christ and in Christ alone. Draw near to us this morning as we come to the table and as we draw near to you. Work in our hearts by your Spirit. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
