… overview of the beatitudes
notes the opening and closing statements:
Matthew 4:23 ‘and he went about all galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people…'
and
Matthew 9:35 ‘and Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity.’
What is the sandwich in-between the pieces of bread?
C5-7 are a collection of Jesus’ teaching (sermon on the mt)
C8-9 are a collection of stories mainly about his healing ministry.
This guards against favouring or emphasising one aspect of Jesus’ ministry over another. The Jesus who gives thoughtful and profound ethical teaching is also the Jesus who calms the seas and walks on water and heals the sick. He is both. Reductionists tend to ignore the second half in favour of the first, his ethical teaching whereas some charismatics love the signs and wonders but don’t want to be challenged by what he has to say about lust or anger or divorce or lying.
The crowds and the disciples
Mt. 5:1. Jesus sees the crowds, heads up a mountain and his disciples come to him…
Mt. 7:28 ‘and when he had finished… the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority…'
The crowds were there even though his teaching was directed at his disciples. There was a double audience. He spoke to his disciples but within earshot of the crowds.
The beatitudes
8 promises sandwiched between two promises: no. 1 & no. 8 promise ‘…theirs is the kingdom.’
The other 6 promises are all future tense: they shall be comforted… they shall inherit the earth… they shall be satisfied… shall receive mercy… shall see God… shall be called sons of God
These six promises sandwiched between the ‘theirs is the kingdom’ are all things you can count on if you’re part of God’s kingdom. Piper also points out the ‘now and not yet’ dimension at work here. Theirs IS the kingdom but they SHALL BE comforted.
We can see the now and not yet of the beatitudes in each of them:
Being comforted: Rev 21:4 ‘shall be comforted’, Mt. 5:11-12 ‘rejoice and be glad (now)’
Obtaining mercy: v7 ‘shall receive’ Mt. 18:23-35 ‘have received it now’ and must treat others mercifully because of it.
Being called sons of God: v9 ‘shall be called’ v16 ‘glorify YOUR father in heaven’
Piper: The beatitudes are words of celebration for disciples - people who have been awakened by the present power of the age to come. And they are words of invitation for the crowds.
Matthew 5:3-4 : THE DISEASE OF SELF-RELIANCE
Why do people think that it’s a legitimate objection to say that Christianity is crutch of weak people? Ans. because self-reliance is the belief/value system of the day.
Here’s a great quote:
Any Messiah who comes along and proposes to replace self-reliance with childlike God-reliance, and self-confidence with submissive God-confidence, and self-determination with sovereign grace, and self-esteem with magnificent mercy for the unworthy—that Messiah is going to be a threat to the religion of self-admiration. That religion has dominated the world ever since Adam and Eve fell in love with the image of their own independent potential when they it saw reflected back to them in the eye of the serpent: "You will not die; you will be like God."
Piper makes the point that the reason Christ is a stumbling block to so many is because he takes the disease that we all hate the most namely helplessness and instead of curing it, makes it the doorway to heaven.
That is so right!! Oh how I want a cure for my helplessness, confidence to replace my insecurity. I want an experience or a belief that will strip me of feeling weak and make me feel strong and dynamic and charismatic, like I can run for Prime Minister or set up my own business. I want to experience the death of helplessness and the birth of ‘yes I can!’. I want self-help and self-confidence but instead Jesus gives me… well not that.
Wow! Pipers lists people in scripture to explain what ‘poor in spirit’ might be:
Jacob, Moses, Abraham, David, Peter, Paul, the Canaanite woman, the justified sinner, the centurion, John the baptist, Isaiah, Solomon as well as the missionary to India William Carey who had etched on his tombstone: Born August 1th 1761, Died June 9th a834 ‘a wretched, poor, and helpless worm, on they kind arms I fall.
Amazing. Today people would decry Carey’s poor self-esteem issues and yet he was hardly a man who was held back by his convictions. He saw himself in relation to God and that brought him great release and happiness, or in Jesus’ words ‘blessedness’.
Poverty of spirit is:
- it is a sense of powerlessness in ourselves
- it is a sense of bankruptcy and helplessness before God
- it is a sense of moral and uncleanness before God
- it is a sense of personal unworthiness before God
- it is a sense that is there is to be any life or joy or usefulness, it well have to be all of God and all of grace
‘sense’ because although all of us are those things before God, not all of us are ‘blessed’.
Quote:
Blessed are you! because you are going to be comforted. Fear not, you worm, Jacob! Fear not, Moses, Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:6–8), Isaiah, Peter! For I will be with you, I will help you, I will strengthen you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. Yours is the very kingdom of God. Amen.
Matthew 5:5 - BLESSED ARE THE MEEK
Psalm 37 features the closets parallel to this beatitude with its ‘the meek shall inherit the land’ statement. We see from this psalm that meekness which is rewarded is not simply natural or learned meekness but a meekness towards God. The individual in the psalm described as meek consists of a peaceful freedom from fretful anger, a trusting God and rolling our ways onto him and a waiting patiently for God. Meekness which produces this pronouncement of ‘blessed’ is meekness toward God.
Described in Moses (meekest man on earth) during a scene where a dispute between aaron and miriam arises. He doesn’t defend himself and is vindicated by God. Described also in the book of James where we see it appears as teachable, listens to the word of God.
Chesterton makes the point in Orthodoxy that whereas men used to be doubtful of themselves but undoubting of the truth it has now reversed itself so that we are doubtful of the truth but undoubting about ourselves.
In the book ‘habits of the heart’ Robert Bellah writes about American culture:
It is an understanding of life generally hostile to older ideas of moral order. Its center is the autonomous individual, presumed able to choose the roles he will play and the commitments he will make, not on the basis of higher truths but according to the criterion of life-effectiveness as the individual judges it.
This is the spirit of the age and the world we live in. Meekness care about the truth.
We are those who will inherit the earth and therefore: let no one boast of men. For all things are yours. And one of the things mentioned is the world. Don’t boast, because the world is yours.
Matthew 5:6 - THOSE WHO HUNGER AND THIRST FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS
The first three blessers are directed towards those who are broken and sorrowful and desiring righteousness. The second three blessers are towards those who are active and overflowing with deeds of mercy ‘merciful, pure in heart, peacemaking.’ and again it is with regards to righteousness that they are persecuted and treated.
So to boil the beatitudes down further we have: blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and those who are persecuted because of righteousness.
Righteousness is also mentioned by Jesus in v20 with the statement ‘unless your r’ness exceeds that of the pharisees…’ and then Jesus describes what that looks like: not getting angry with your brother, not lusting, telling the truth, returning evil with good, pray for our persecutors. So righteousness is:
- showing mercy to other people
- being pure in heart before God
- making every effort to make peace
Leon Morris
Matthew 5: Leon Morris
We should note that this is a sermon addressed to disciples. There is no call to repent which is the first note in Jesus’ preaching to the people.
‘opened his mouth’ - not necessary but prepares the reader for some significant teaching.
‘poor in spirit’ are those who recognise that they are completely an utterly destitute in the realm of the spirit. They recognise their lack of spiritual resources and therefore their complete dependance on God. It is the opposite of Pharisaic pride on one’s own virtue with which Jesus was so often confronted.
Isaiah 66:2 is a good example of the poor in spirit.
Jesus is pronouncing a blessing on those empty of any spiritual resource, poor as they often were in material things as well.
‘blessed are those who mourn’
Morris contends that to read this as ‘those who are grieving a loved one are really blessed because one day they’ll be comforted for their loss’ is a wrong way of reading it. It does seem quite a strange idea. Instead he contends (along with Bonhoeffer) that it is those who mourn over the state of the world and aren’t charmed by this life that are blessed. 'It won’t always be this way’ Jesus is saying. Psalm 119:136 ‘my eyes shed streams of tears, because men do not keep thy law.’ probably gets closer to what Jesus means.
v5 ‘the meek’
‘we should not miss the point that all three of the opening beatitudes bring out the truth that the follower of Jesus does not aggressively insist on his own rights but displays genuine humility.’
meekness = humility and a genuine dependancy on God
The meek are those who have said ‘no’ to self-assertion. It is Christian to be busy in lowly service and to refuse to engage in the conduct that merely advances one’s personal aims.
v6 ‘the hungering after r’ness’
This is a wholehearted desire for God’s will and pursuit of God’s way of living. Jesus says that they ‘will be satisfied’ meaning that God will satisfy them, not that they will somehow achieve it on their own. The genuine disciple, the blessed/happy one, is someone who longs to live rightly before God.
v7
Similar to Piper, Morris points out ’the first four beatitudes express in one way or another our dependence on God; the next three the outworking of that dependence.
v8 ‘pure in heart’
‘purity at the very centre of our being’ since ‘out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder etc.’ Jesus is saying that the truly happy and blessed one is someone who is pure/clean at the core of their being, not only someone with ‘clean living’ but ‘clean loving’ also.
v9 ‘peacemakers’
There have been less than 300 years of peace in the world - billy graham…
Jesus is not talking about peace-keepers, but makers. There is of course the sense in which all believers are embers of the family of God, whether they are distinguished as makers of peace or not. But those who make peace are fulfilling what membership in the family really means, and this is something to which all the members in the family must aspire.
v11
an extension of v10. God’s people have always been rejected by the worldly: persecution puts us in good company.
‘falsely’ ‘believers are not to engage in the kind of conduct that enables people to accuse them genuinely; their lives are to be above reproach.
Tom Wright
Matthew 5: Tom Wright
Wright translates ‘blessed are’ as 'wonderful news for the’… that seems to make more sense of overall purpose of what Jesus is doing. The word ‘beatitude’ comes from the latin word ‘beatus’ means ‘blessed’. This however isn’t a list of godly attitudes that ought to characterise the sort of people God normally blesses. Instead it is the announcement of a new covenant.
Wright also puts this within the wider context of the Bible’s themes. He relates it back to Moses who after leading the people out of Egypt, through the sea and to the border of the promised land then pronounced a solemn set of blessings and curses relating to the covenant being inaugurated. Jesus has returned from Egypt, come through the water and is in the land. He stands on a mountainside and describes the wonderful news of the new covenant.
illus. Wright uses the illustration of breaking the sound barrier. The film features pilots trying it and failing/dying and then one person succeeding. The successful pilot worked out that when they went through the sound barrier the plane’s controls began working in reverse and up became down and down, up. The point is then made that at the sermon on the mt Jesus is describing a new way of being human. Jesus is taking the controls and making them work backwards.
"The only explanation seems to be that he thinks he is taking God’s people through the sound barrier - taking them somewhere they’d never been before.
‘if we think of Jesus simply sitting there telling people how to behave properly, we will miss what is really going on.’
He is not offering timeless truths about the way the world is, about human behaviour.
Jesus’ sermon is an announcement, not a philosophical analysis of the world. It’s about something that’s starting to happen, not about a general truth of life.
'Follow me’ Jesus told his disciples, because in him God was doing a new thing. These announcements are the beginning of a new era for God’s people and the world. From here on in all the controls people thought tjeu knew about are going to work the other way round. In our world people think that wonderful news consists of success, wealth, long life, victory in battle… Jesus is offering wonderful news for the humble, the poor, the mourners, the peacemakers…
The summons is to live in the present as though God’s kingdom was fully present, since through Jesus it is. The challenge is to live as though up was down and down, up. The challenge is to live as though the beatitudes are in fact the right way up approach to life.
You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
Wright makes the point that in the ancient world the main use of salt was to stop things going bad. It was a preservative before it was a seasoner. Israel had been called to be a preservative but had ‘lost its saltiness’. Jesus’ new Israel was to pick up their mandate (the law isn’t being done away with) and do it better than they did.
Robert Mounce
Matthew 5: Mounce
We are not to think of the Sermon On the Mt. as a single discourse given by Jesus at one particular time. Undoubtedly there was a primitive and actual sermon, but it has been enlarged significantly by Matthew.
The ethical requirements of the sermon are intended not to drive people to despair so they will then cast themselves upon the mercy of God, but to guide and direct those who desire to please him. Although we may not reach the stars they serve as reliable navigational aids.
5:1-2
The sermon probably took place in the hill country that rose to the north and west of the Sea of Galilee.
When Jesus sat to teach he assumed the position of authority. In Jewish synagogues the teachers sat.
disciples doesn’t mean only the twelve but rather those who followed him/came to listen to him.
The form ‘blessed are you…’ is a familiar device used in the OT esp. in the wisdom literatures. Psalm 1: blessed is the man who does not walk in the…’ etc. psalm 84:4-5
5:3-4
poor in spirit: psalm 34:6 ‘this poor man called to God in his need…’ the promise to those who accept their absolute dependence upon God is that the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
‘who mourn’ are those who are filled with deep regret for their own waywardness and for the vil so prevalent in the world.
5:5-6
‘meek’ - not the grasping and greedy but the meek who will inherit.
‘hunger’ for those of us who can turn on the tap or open the fridge whenever we want, the experience of hunger and thirst is foreign. Not so for those people in Jesus’ audience.
We were created for God and nothing short of his presence satisfies.
5:7-8
‘pure heart’ means utter integrity as against ‘moral schizophrenia’ to ‘single mindedness’
Although no one has seen God (Rev. 22:4 tells us that we will one day), genuine purity provides an immediate and profound experience of the presence and power of God. The pure… see God.
5:9-10
the mention of the kingdom of heaven opens as well as closes the eight beatitudes. This rhetorical device, known as inclusion, is common in the ancient world.
5:11-12
Insult, opposition and lies are all excepted by Christ’s followers… the second verb ‘rejoice’ is compounded from two Greek words that mean (literally) ‘to leap exceedingly.’ The response to persecution is unbridled joy. The prophets received that kind of treatment and you are their true successors.
5:13-16
salt was a basic and necessary item in the ancient world.
