All Saints Day – What does “blessed” mean?

Title: All Saints Day – What does “blessed” mean? By Pastor Lohn Johnson
Text:  Revelation 14:13  13 And I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on." "Blessed indeed," says the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!"   INTRODUCTION: My dear Friends in Christ, Some of you may remember years ago when the irreverent British satirist known as Monty Python produced a movie called Life of Brian. One thesis of the movie was “what would happen if some of Jesus’ teachings had been mis-heard?” [Video: There is a scene which begins with Jesus on a high rock surrounded. We hear his words loud and clear: Jesus says: “How blest are the sorrowful, for they shall find consolation. How blest are those of gentle spirit. They shall have the earth for their possession. How blest are those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail. They shall be satisfied . . .” Then the camera pulls back to the back of the multitude which is a long way off. An old woman shouts: “Speak up!” Her son tries to shush her. But she protests. “Well, I can’t hear a thing! Blessed are the what?” Another man tries to help: “I think it was “Blessed are the cheese-makers.” And the old woman asks, “What’s so special about the cheese-makers?” Another man interjects, “Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.” The Life of Brian portrays Jesus as a sincere teacher and leader, but it is the listeners who get it all wrong and they quarrel and squabble all through his sermon. That is often the case, is it not? The problem is not in the teaching. The problem lies in us as we try to understand and apply Christ’s teachings.
I. Case in point is the word “blessed.”
	A. When we say blessed, we usually think happy, healthy, wealthy, fortunate as we “count our blessings” and consider how “blessed we are.”
			1. When Jesus says, “Blessed.” It certainly doesn’t seem like the world’s idea of “blessed,” does it?  He uses words like: Poor, mourning, meek, hungry, thirsty, merciful, pure hearted, peacemaking, persecuted, none of them seem blessed to us.
				a. Where’s the Bentley, the vacation home, the Jacuzzi, the party life, the glamour, the celebrity?   b. But Jesus is describing God’s way of blessing – back-handed, upside-down, inside out, opposite, hidden. To be blessed from God’s perspective, is to be on the privileged receiving end of God’s good stuff. So God’s idea of being blessed is to recognize an existing state of happiness or good fortune that comes from Him.
			2. So from God’s perspective you are Blessed.
					a. You are blessed even when others revile you, make fun of you, kick you, exclude you, insult you, slander you.  Maybe you will feel a little like this: [Video]   b. But unlike our clip, it’s not you they are insulting, it’s Christ. And that’s cause for rejoicing, because you and Christ are one. Your trust will be vindicated.
	B. When Jesus stood on the mountain to teach His disciples, He was preparing them for the realities of living in the in-between time of the now and the not yet. When he pronounced His blessings over His disciples, they are all tied up in the now but He was looking toward blessings that have not yet come totally into fruition.
			1. The same is true of us. We are “blessed.” But we too are caught in the now.  Some aspects of our “blessings” have not come totally come to fruition yet.  Trouble that does not seem like a blessing still comes to us.
				a. You will be blessed. That is sure. But that blessing will come hidden in, with, and under trouble for now. b. Just as Christ appears in this world weak and crucified, so His church appears in this world as weak, persecuted, deluded losers.
			2. Don’t expect this life to be easy. Don’t expect a divine bailout for your problems. Don’t expect a miracle lurking around every corner.
				a. Expect to feel your spiritual poverty, expect to mourn, expect to be treated like a doormat by this world, expect to be persecuted in response to your mercy and peacemaking and purity of heart.   b. They don’t give Nobel Prizes for being a disciple of Jesus.  Expect trouble, now. In fact, be suspicious when things are going peaceful and well.
II.   But we have to understand one more thing about being “blessed.” Because to get the idea of “blessed” right you have to get Jesus right.
		A.. He alone embodies all the aspects of being “blessed” in Himself.
			1. You don’t, nor do I. We are anything but meek, merciful, pure hearted peacemakers. Not by nature. Not in ourselves.   2. Christ alone is all of this. He embodies these beatitudes perfectly.
				a. He is poor in spirit. Though rich, He became poor so that by His poverty you are rich. He mourns, weeping over our sin, our rejection, our death, as He wept over Jerusalem, and in His mourning we find our comfort and joy. He hungers and thirsts for our righteousness, and out of His hunger, we are fed. He is merciful, pure-hearted, peacemaking, showing mercy by laying down His life for the world, making peace by His blood. And now He offers His pure life as the sacrifice for our sin. He is the persecuted One, falsely accused, falsely convicted, yet in His conviction we are acquitted, justified, declared righteous before God.   b. Jesus extends the beatitudes to His own death, and by being baptized and believing in Him the beatitudes become yours as well. You are “blessed” to the fullest extent of that word in Jesus, and only as you understand that and cling to that, do you understand what it means to be “blessed.” From this we now know that we are “blessed” even more than the girl in this clip: [or Video]  In Christ we are more blessed than royalty.
	B. And Jesus doing the beatitudes brings us to the beatitude from Revelation, our text. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth.” Yes, you heard it correctly. Blessed are the dead. And not simply any dead, because all indeed do die. But blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. The Lord Jesus has gone the way ahead of them. He has gone to death and the grave, and those who follow Him, trusting Him, are called blessed in their death.
			1. The wages of sin is death; make no mistake about it.
				a. Death is the intrinsic consequence of sin. We die because of sin. There is nothing “blessed” about death itself.   b. But Jesus has done something remarkable with Death. Christ has conquered. Christ has gone into death and became Death’s undoing. Like a fish swallowing a baited hook, Death swallowed up Jesus on the cross, but Jesus turned out to have the upper hand over Death and swallowed it up in victory. Like the great fish that swallowed up Jonah and held him for three days, the Death could not hold Jesus but had to spit Him out alive.
			2. You might say we Christians have a blessed monopoly on the whole business of death and resurrection.
				a. Jesus Christ is the only One to have died and risen from the dead. Moses and Abraham died; they didn’t rise. Gautama Buddha died at the age of 80; he didn’t rise. Mohammed died in 632; he didn’t rise, but Jesus died on a cross and three days later appeared risen from the dead! That’s why we believe in the “resurrection of the body,” because Jesus rose bodily from HIs grave and promised to raise us up from ours on the Last Day when it all comes to its completion.   b. It’s because of the death and resurrection of Jesus that we can use words like “precious” and “blessed” in reference to our own death and the death of all baptized believers. Blessed are those who die in the Lord. It’s not just any death, but “in the Lord.” Those who are united in baptismal faith with Jesus’ death; who have been buried with Him are blessed even in death.  Your death is precious and blessed to God. Not because of you, but because of Jesus. And not because of your works. That’s what it means to be justified by grace through faith.
III. The Spirit says those who die in the Lord rest from their labors. The blessing has come into total fruition.  Their work is done, but their works are not forgotten.
	A. Their deeds do follow them. Take note. The deeds of blessed dead “follow them.”
			1. They don’t precede them, as though they needed their works to get into heaven. That would not be the way of the “poor in spirit.” Instead, their deeds follow them like the long train of a bride in her gown.   2. In that train are found all the works that God had done through them, all the fruit the Spirit bore in them, all the good that Jesus worked as fruitful branches joined to Him.  These follow them in all their shining glory.
	B. In the reading from the Revelation, John is privileged to see the heaven side of things.
			1. He does not see the suffering that we see, but the glory, the triumph, the life that is ours in Jesus. He sees a great multitude, a crowd no one can number, what we refer to as “all the company of heaven.”   2. They are wearing robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb.
				a. They are baptized in blood and wear their baptismal robes as their righteousness before God.   b. As we remember the names of our faithful departed, and remember also those we love who have died in the Lord, bring this image of the Revelation to mind. They are there in that multitude.  Their “blessing” has come to total fruition.
CONCLUSION:  Maybe it will reinforce the real idea of blessing we have in Christ from the perspective of this story: In the church of St. Nicholas in Amsterdam, Holland, there is a wonderful chime of bells.  If you go into the tower of the church, you will see a man with wooden gloves on his hands pounding on a keyboard.  As you listen, you hear nothing but the clanging of the keys and the harsh, deafening noise of the bells over your head.  From that position the bells seem to have no harmony or meaning whatever.  But if you were standing out on the street a few blocks away, you would be entranced by the beautiful harmony of the bells.  So it is with looking at being “blessed.”  So often the way God sees being “blessed” seems less than what we would expect.  But from the perspective of Christ and heaven we see the perfect blessing; we see the beautiful music.  Then we will see the “blessing” without the trouble. Amen.