Matthew 5:1-12 - The Be-attitudes Intro.
By James Galbraith
First Baptist Church, Port Alberni.
January 7th, 2007
Text
5 Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he 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 meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown 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 are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Introduction
Now that we’ve celebrated the Birth of Christ, it is my habit to spend the Sundays in-between Christmas and Easter taking a closer look at the life and teachings of Jesus.
After all, we certainly don’t want to put away our Saviour at the same time we put away the decorations we use to honour his coming!
We’re going to let his words, his teachings, take front and centre on our stage. We’re going to sit down with the disciples as they heard him speak straight to their hearts.
THE BE-ATTITUDES
Two thousand years ago Jesus spoke words which contradicted many of the destructive expectations that had been placed on God’s children.
Faith had become a show of one’s own virtues and achievements.
Misguided followers made huge donations in public, to show their piety, and how much God had blessed them over others.
Sacrifices were offered in a show of contriteness,
prayers were more rhetoric than petition,
and teaching had devolved into nit-picking over how long tassels should be and how many times one should wash their hands on the Sabbath.
Jesus’ speaks to this mindset in Matthew’s gospel, chapters 5-7,
a body of teaching that has been called, “the Sermon on the Mount, because many believe that he shared these words with his followers while they were camped out on a mountainside next to the sea of Galilee.
The opening to this sermon, this passage that is called the beatitudes,
is the standard for life that Jesus taught to counteract the extravagant pageantry that had replaced true faith in God.
The word beatitude comes out of the word, “Blessed” that we find in almost every verse, and it tells us that the presence of these qualities in our lives will enrich us and sustain us.
I like to pronounce the word “Be-Attitude” because that reminds me that these words are something that Jesus wants me to BE.
They are neither well-wishes nor charms, and contrary to pop culture, they are not the ancient equivalent of that poem, “All in ever needed to know I learned in Kindergarten”
They are at heart a set of qualities and ways of living which come out of a life which desires to see Christ, and not culture, as King.
They are not tickets to Heaven or badges of spiritual achievement, they do not save our souls, but they come out of a heart which is seeking to follow God despite any and all opposition from the prevailing culture.
They are also a two-way street:
1. if we strive to practice them we will understand more of the deepness and difference of a life lived with Christ as King.
AND
2. if we live our life for Christ we will manifest these qualities more and more in our day to day living.
And in the weeks ahead, we are going to take a very close look at each of these standards on their own, and how Jesus modeled them for us.
VS 1-2 - As the Be-Attitudes are introduced to us, we read that Jesus taught them “to his disciples” while “on a mountain side”.
Much attention has been given to these two details - the term “disciple” can be interpreted to mean anything from “The Big Twelve” to the growing group of close followers to the large crowds that gathered around Jesus.
The term “mountain” leads some to wonder if the location was a special place, like Mt. Sinai, where God declared his law thousands of years ago.
In reality, neither detail makes much impact on how we are to understand the message within. The beatitudes are a calling to live differently than the world around us, and they apply to all of us at every stage of spiritual awareness.
And the mountain just happened to be the place he was at, a mountainside in the area of Galilee, one of the poorest regions of Judah. If he had been in a vineyard we might know these words as ‘The Sermon of the Vineyard”.
These first two verses are meant to locate the message within time and space, because the writer was recording these words for the benefit of those, like us, who didn’t get to hear them firsthand.
Once this is established we move onto the heart of Jesus’ words.
Verses 3-10
There is a progression within these beatitudes: they start with deeply personal issues and move outward to how we live in this world.
3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
IN a world where we are expected to be self-confident, competent, and self-reliant, Jesus calls us to be “poor in spirit”.
He means that we should live with an understanding of how much we need him, and of how helpless we are without him.
This is not a call to hate ourselves - that would be directly contrary to the fact that we are made in the image of God himself.
It means that we need to appreciate and take to heart the fact that without Jesus all of our potential and achievements and self esteem and abilities amount to nothing more a temporary distraction from an eternity of separation from anything of any value at all.
We all live understanding our need for food, water, shelter, clothing and other essentials of life. We do not generate these things within us, we seek them from outside sources. Acknowledging our need for these things is part of a normal life.
What Jesus is saying is that we must also see our need to acknowledge our inherent lack of goodness, our sinfulness, if we are to be a part of the Kingdom of heaven that Jesus came to establish.
We do not solve the problem of our sinfulness from within, we come to Jesus and express our need for him to do this. If we’re not ready to do this, Heaven remains an unreachable place.
4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
I read a book about the Coca Cola company a few years ago. In it, the writer estimated that as of the late 1980’s, almost one billion servings of Coke were being consumed daily around the world. That number is now up to over one billion a day (and lot of those are consumed in our house)!
We are a pleasure seeking people. It is part of our nature to seek what feels good. When this impulse is moderated by God’s law and principles working in our hearts it is a good and enjoyable part of who we are. God made us to enjoy pleasure.
However, it is all too easy to be consumed by this drive for pleasure. And not just for pleasure’s sake. Sometimes, in fact all too often, people seek comfort from their hurts within an excess of pleasure.
Jesus tells us that we find comfort from our hurts by facing them and mourning - expressing the hurt within us.
We must also be ready to face the wrong within us - not just the hurts but the actual sin that resides in us, and be willing to mourn over it. Sin and hurt are two very different things, but we try to ignore both by delving into pleasure. We do this at our own peril.
Jesus came to help us face the harsh world we live in, and not cover it up or ignore it. He helps us to actually feel sorrow when we do wrong, and not try to hide it, deflect it or ignore it.
He will get us through our hard times, but we have to be willing to face the source of our hurts and our sin first. When we do these things, comfort comes as Christ helps us through them
5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Pride, Power, and Popularity. The three P’s of getting ahead. All three put their subject in the middle and everyone else in a supporting role.
Jesus says get into the supporting role, and out of the middle. Meekness is a servant heart, a willingness to put others first.
It is not becoming a doormat to be walked on;
it is becoming a door opener to be walked with.
It is not keeping your mouth shut in the presence of differing opinions;
it is helping others have their say before we have ours.
It is simply seeing ourselves as people who are ready to serve others.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
The terms “satisfied”, “well adjusted”, and “practical” are all compliments to most of us. And so they should be. As far as I understand the terms,
Being satisfied means not wanting any more than what we have.
Being well adjusted means that we have adapted well to whatever is around us and
Being practical means that we’re quite useful in our own resources.
Applied to most areas of life, these are good qualities.
However, if we look at our spiritual fitness and say “I’m satisfied” or “I’m good enough”, we’re walking down the wrong path.
If we’ve allowed our minds to become “well adjusted” to the sin around us, comfortable in it, then we need to get out the comfort zone we’ve wandered into.
And if we rely on our own resources for our spiritual nurture, we’re not very practical at all.
Jesus is saying our desire to grow in righteousness should be as strong as our desire to eat and drink. Aside from breathing, these two instincts are probably the most powerful in our bodies.
So if Jesus uses them as examples, he must be making a strong point. And that point is that we should crave spiritual food just like we do physical food.
These first four qualities, being poor in spirit, facing sorrow, being meek and craving righteousness, all pointed to the inner self.
Seeing ourselves for who we really are, people in need of forgiveness.
Feeling sorrow not only for what hurts us but also for the sin within us.
to see ourselves as servants to those around us,
and seeking God’s righteousness like we seek the very basics of life.
Jesus’ words now turn us to how we live amongst others,
and he starts with showing compassion for those in need.
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
The phrase “able to take care of themselves” is one of those phrases that is quite popular these days.
Take, for example, how we give aid to people in need. The principle that governs many of our attempts to help others is found in this cliché -
“Give a man a fish, and he will be back tomorrow, teach a man to fish, and he will take care of himself”
The Body Shop - a cosmetic company which prides itself in taking up good causes, once printed T-shirts with the motto ‘Trade, not Aid”, in order to make the same point that the principle does - that we should teach people how to help themselves, and not just give them hand outs
There is merit to this approach, of course,
but we must never allow it to stifle our simpler calling,
which is to just help people where they are with what they need.
Jesus helped lame people walk again, which would obviously help them help themselves. But he also feed 5000 people who were very able to go feed themselves.
He cleansed ten lepers, with the result being that they could live life for themselves, but he also made wine at a wedding where everybody had already consumed what was provided.
“Trade and Aid” could be our motto, but Jesus says it better. Be merciful.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Being pure in heart does not mean being perfect. It means being focused. No one will leave this earth saying ‘I was perfect”, but we can leave this earth saying, “I was God’s”.
In a world that demands we accept each and every way to God that can be imagined, we are called to stand on the reality that there is one way - Jesus Christ.
We are to show that world that we trust in Jesus and Jesus alone to be our guide to God.
We need our instincts, our folklore, our upbringing, our schools, our governments and all the other institutions that guide us though life.
But when it comes to pointing the way to God, all these and everything else must bow before the one way to God - his son Jesus Christ.
When we take this stand - we will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
In a world which encourages us to be competitive and aggressive to achieve great things, Jesus calls us to seek peace in our relationships.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to bring peace, to restore the relationship between man and God. When we seek to bring peace and restore relationships we are following his example.
Peace doesn’t mean there is no conflict, however, it means the relationship is restored and whole again.
There will still be differences, big and small. Look at how our nation is “at peace” with our neighbour to the south. There are a lot of differences of opinion, from salmon harvesting and forest practices to the production of nuclear weapons, but we have a relationship which is relatively “whole”.
Peacemakers serving in the name of Jesus will strive to restore bonds that have been broken by sin. Jesus restores us to God by doing this, and he calls us to strive to do the same sort of thing, on the level we operate at and in the relationships we are in.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
How many times have we heard the phrase “don’t rock the boat”?
I’ll tell you one person who never said it - Jesus.
Each of these verses contradicts the world’s common way of doing things, and replaces it with Jesus’ way. He is definitely “rocking the boat”
He knew that living his way, the way that he is calling us to, would bring hardship on his people. Doing things “Jesus’ way” has never been immensely popular - look at where it got him 33 years after he was born.
The world has always appreciated parts of what Jesus said and did. This is why he gets called a great teacher, a prophet, an enlightened man, and a lot of other nice things.
But when the world was confronted with the full package 2000 years ago it tried to snuff it out as fast as it could. The world does not like being told it’s wrong, and it will turn on whomever dares to “rock the boat”
Jesus expands on this last point in the next two verses….
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
The world will not stand up and applaud our efforts to follow Christ.
But Christ will not let our efforts be in vain.
He stands by his people when they strive to be more like him.
To wrap up this morning, these words are both our calling and our greatest goals.
To walk away from pride and confess our need for Christ.
To face sorrow with Christ at our side
To serve others as Christ serves us,
To crave righteousness more than our basic needs,
To lend a hand when others are in need,
To remain focused on the true Saviour in a world of counterfeit messiahs
To bring harmony to broken relationships
And to accept that the world will not stand up and applaud as we serve Christ.
There is probably one that stands out for you more than the others
- I know there is for me.
That’s because when we listen, Jesus speaks to our hearts, and show us our greatest need for him.
As we look to these Be-Attitudes in the coming weeks,
ask Jesus to keep speaking, and hand over to him what he’s asking for.
