Sermon — Pastor Ian Bayne – Sunday 11 January 2026
The Beatitudes
Matthew 5:1–12
The Sermon on the Mount; The Beatitudes
5 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. 2 And He opened His mouth and began to teach them, saying,
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the gentle, for they will inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
10 “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in this same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Sermon on the Mount — Part 1
As you know, those of you that do know and are here regularly, I’m in the middle of a series in Ecclesiastes — The Measure of a Man. However, what happens during the summer months around Christmas here in Wellington is that people come and go far more. And so, what I normally do I turn out a series of more standalone devotional sermons. Nevertheless, this year I have decided — hopefully with the Lord’s help — to come to the Sermon on the Mount and do a little mini-series there, until we get back into our full series on Ecclesiastes.
The reason why I’ve done that is because in my own heart and life, I realised it’s a necessary thing for me to return, as it were, back to the basics of my life and my Christian conduct. And there are good reasons for that.
Why Return to the Fundamentals?
The first reason why is that the fundamentals of our Christian life and conduct would seem to me in my life anyway, and I gather because in my life it is the same in your life they are easily forgotten in the busyness of life. These are funny days. We often work — whole families are at work, mum and dad — and we have children, we have play centres, and we have school. The demographic of our church here is full of such people, as you can see by the numbers of children around. There is a busyness of life that would mean we wouldn’t stop to think and consider the fundamental lives we ought to be living. Some people have termed the Sermon on the Mount “the Christian manifesto” — the way we should live as kingdom people — and we don’t disagree with that here. So, let’s remind ourselves of some of these basics.
The second reason is that our lives are full of being often reactive rather than proactive. We used to, years ago, talk much about “the tyranny of the urgent.” You’ll know what that means, what happens in life is that we go about the living of our lives and things get so busy that we end up reacting to every situation that comes along, rather than planning and looking forward and being purposeful about the way we live and the things that we do, we end up just reacting to every situation that comes along, and we don’t want to be like that, we want to be in control in our lives and be proactive rather an reactive to the things that are around us.
The third reason is that in churches such as this — because there are so many very wise theologians here — the lofty doctrinal matters often occupy our lives, and we have neglected the simple act of just living our Christian lives. In other words, walking humbly with our God.
The fourth reason is the advent of instant communications in which we live in through the internet, via email, and often via social media, it has produced an environment where we are inclined to speak before we think, and act before we have considered the ramifications of our conduct and relationships. That is something that we all do battle with, these are funny days. I remember some years ago, around the year 2000, we were overseas and my mother was left behind — and we were able to communicate with her via text, via the internet, and that was big stuff. Now we pick up the internet and call our family in Scotland and talk to our grandchildren there and it’s just instant. Now, these things are good. The difficulty is that they tend to dominate our lives. As a result, we tend to be quick on the lip, fast on the keys when it comes to communication. That’s good in one hand but can be dangerous in another — and that’s the reason why we need to be reminded of these fundamental principles as we go about the business of living our Christian lives. How should we react when we are communicating one with another, how should we think, what should we take into account.
Fifthly, we have become accustomed to comparative ease and comfort comes before confronting the important issues of life. We don’t like to paddle upstream. But as Christians, we’re called to paddle upstream. It is difficult and is so easy to go with the flow but to be reminded of the fundamentals of our Christian walk in life are good in these days.
Sixthly, when life becomes hectic or throws us a curveball, it’s the basics of our Christian life which will carry us through — those scriptures we know best, those things we know most about from the Scriptures and the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ which will carry us through, not complicated doctrines and theological discussions.
The Beatitudes or the Sermon on the Mount as a whole — address not just the outward conduct of our lives, but also the inward motives of our hearts. And that’s important because we don’t want to be like hypocrites who say one thing and do another thing, but whose hearts are not right with God. Essentially, the Lord is not interested in the first instance in the things that we do, but in the relationship, we have with him and the inward heart and motives that are driving us from the inside out.
The Sermon on the Mount is full of hard sayings which flow out of the character of God, not our ability to obey them.
In a sense years and years ago when I started out in ministry preaching in a church that spoke much about “rightly dividing the word of God.” They would speak of looking at the Scriptures and saying that applies to the Jewish people and that applies to the Christians. They would say that chapters 1 through 11 of Matthew’s gospel were for the Jews and they weren’t for Christians, and so they would conveniently look at those but ignore them from an application purpose for the Christian Church. But we don’t want to be like that. We believe that all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. And so, these scriptures are given to us. The difficulty they have, and many people have with these words is thy contain some hard sayings, too difficult for us. But the reality is that all of God’s Word is too difficult for us to obey and therefore the law of God does its job when it drives us to the grace of God. So, remember that as we work through the Sermon on the mount in a quick fashion is that when you come across something there can be hyperbolic types of statements in there, for instant “If your hand causes you to sin, chop it off. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.” These are hyperbolic statements given by the Lord, not to be taken literally — but whether literal or not, they’re too hard to do, and we don’t do it. What really matters is that the law of God and the teachings of Christ drive us to the grace of God and to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember that the impossibility of obedience is calculated to drive us to the cross.
The Beatitudes
The first few verses are introductory in saying that this is the situation that Jesus finds himself in. The Lord is teaching His disciples, he has got his following and he gathers his disciples and the people, and he begins to teach them. He begins in verse 3 with the word blessed.
What does it mean to be blessed as believers? It’s more, of course, than an emotional state of happiness. It includes spiritual well-being, the knowledge of God’s approval, and a happy end. I would add to that also: to be blessed is to see our Father God glorified through his Son’s achievements and the body of Christ’s obedience to him. The reason I add that is that is like basking in the light of another in this instant Christs.
Here’s an illustration. I have children, and they have children, so I have six grandchildren. The thing that you notice is, and I notice this when I grew up and got married and had children, is as a grandparent you don’t care about the children anymore, you have already done the damage, you have made all the mistakes possible and so you’re not cared about them so much. But if they have children then that is different, all of a sudden, your children’s children become the focus of your life and what pleases us as Grandparents more than anything is our children’s children achievements. When they do something well — even just getting a certificate at school or being acknowledged for their politeness — that stuff makes me glow because I am a Grandparent. I glow in the presence of what they do and what they achieve. And so, I understand this: to be blessed is also to glow in the achievement of those near and dear to us — whether that is the primary focus on the Lord Jesus Christ and what he did for us, or whether it’s our brothers and sisters in Christ, or the church of the Lord Jesus Christ representing him that is why I have added that point.
These verses have been named Beatitudes that we have spoken of here and by no means are we going to exhaust them all today.
1. Blessed are the Poor in Spirit
As someone once said: before you fill something up, you must empty it first. The first beatitude, blessed are the poor in Spirit, is an emptying of what we are, so we can fill ourselves up with good things — empty, empty of hope, save in God’s provision. To be sick before we can be healed. To be a sinner before we are forgiven. To be helpless before we can be helped. To be devoid of hope until God alone gives us hope.
That is what it means to be poor in spirit. And in a very real way, that first beatitude puts an enormous gulf between true believers and unbelievers. The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit, the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2 and indeed he cannot, and the reason why he cannot receive the things of God is because he’s still full of himself, he is a natural man. It is only you and I as believers, when we come, as it were, to the Lord Jesus Christ — only to thy cross I cling, nothing else do I bring — that it sets the foundation for us to live Christian lives. That is why it is important that this one must come first. Blessed are the poor in spirit We must empty ourselves to prepare ourselves to be filled with what God would have us to be filled with.
2. Blessed are Those Who Mourn
This is not talking about mourning in terms of those who mourn as in having a death in family, someone’s mother or father dying or Grandparent. Sometimes we use that in terms of mourning but here it is not talking about that, the context would not demand that as an example. What it’s talking about is blessed are those who mourn over their personal sins and condition — to be aware of one’s sinful state. To understand that when Isaiah says in Isaiah 53, all we like sheep have gone astray, he means all of us. And that everyone has turned to his own way, but the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. And when Moses wrote in Genesis 6:5 that when God looked upon mankind in his natural state and saw that every thought and intention of his heart was only evil all of the time — to feel and understand and mourn over that, and to be convicted of our sinful hearts, is an important part of our Christian experience.
That we are aware when we grieve God by our conduct in our lives, even doing that which we don’t want to do — such as the Apostle Paul in Romans 7. But comfort is coming it says Blessed those who mourn, comfort is coming. Jesus ultimately fulfilled the Lord’s requirements. My sin and filth have been dealt with on the cross. His blood was a sufficient sacrifice for me. Blessed are those who mourn — comfort is coming.
3. Blessed are the Meek
Probably drawn from Psalm 37, as we read earlier. Blessed are the meek, to be meek is to have an attitude of humility, to have an attitude of submission to God, a heart of gentleness like Jesus. In Matthew 11:29, Jesus says: Come to me, all who are weak and weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And then he says: I am humble of heart, I am gentle, to be like Jesus. To be meek is not to be weak. It is to exercise strength under control. Power is exercised with restraint and righteousness — not harsh, not self-asserting. It involves a deep trust in God’s higher purposes in all things and situations, and it enables the Christian to endure mistreatment with patience, and to apply their strength constructively while remaining teachable. Like a lamb, a lamb is a meek example and that’s why our Lord Jesus Christ was called the Lamb of God — because of his meekness, exercising his strength through weakness.
Those that are meek have an interest in the inheritance of the saints, like Abraham who was promised the land. But we are promised a greater land — a complete fulfilment in Christ Jesus.
Three Applications for the New Year
Take these home, dine upon them, and use them for encouragement to live a Christian life. It’s a new year — and therefore a new opportunity to refresh the fundamentals of our Christian lives.
First: Don’t Be Distracted
Don’t let the busyness of this life and all the things that would distract you, distract you from what is truly important — that is your obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ and his commands.
Second: Obstacles Become Opportunities
It’s a new year in which obstacles in our way will become opportunities to glorify God, so that we might profit in our lives, not just individually but as a church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Obstacles are an opportunity to praise Him.
I’m not standing here saying everything will be easy in 2026. It won’t be. There’ll be difficulties. There will be times you have doubts. Times when you have a rough time in relationships. Times when you feel like sin is overcoming you rather than you overcoming sin. But please don’t let those obstacles in your Christian life become anything other than opportunities. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Some of you, I know, already have big obstacles coming, some of you already have big obstacles in your lives but don’t let them become anything less than large opportunities to honour God and bring him glory.
Third: God’s Mercies are New Every Morning
It’s a new year in which we can recognise freshly that God’s mercies are new every morning. As we look back on 2025, we know and we recognise that we haven’t been as we ought to have been. We haven’t lived as we ought to have lived, we haven’t spoken as we ought to have spoken or haven’t acted as we ought to have acted. We’ve been discouraging rather than encouraging. We’ve let gossip rule our lives rather than words of encouragement. We’ve counted others’ sins but failed to consider our own sins. Yeap we have done all of that for sure but don’t let that hold us back any longer from looking forward to living a life that is even more pleasing to our Lord Jesus Christ.
God’s forgiveness is so big that he’s willing to forgive everything we have ever done. His blood was sufficient. The fountain of blood contains enough for every one of us and for all those who would believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s love for us is never ending. He will never allow anything to take us out of his hand, he will always be faithful to us. And God’s desire for us, of course, is our ongoing sanctification — that we will live better lives inwardly and outwardly for the Lord Jesus Christ in 2026 than what we did in 2025.
Closing Prayer
Father, we thank you again for all that you’ve done for us. We thank you for the year gone by and for the successes and for the conquering of personal sin. But we know that 2026 presents even more issues and obstacles. But Lord, help us to consider those obstacles as opportunities to praise and honour you. Lord, you’re good and we’re not. You’re great and we are small. You are amazing and we are nothing. But we trust in you to help us, and to continue to help us to grow, and to become like the Lord Jesus Christ in every way. Help us as we consider again in these few weeks the fundamentals of what it is to live in your kingdom and bless us as we do so. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.