49 - Jesus Gives the Beatitudes

James Tissot [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

BACKGROUND AND LINKS

49. Jesus gives the beatitudes: Matthew 5:1-12; Luke 6:17-26

When reading this chronologically using all four gospel accounts, Jesus has just chosen His twelve disciples (Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16). After this, Jesus began his training program for them and a "large crowd of His disciples and a great number of people from all over" (Luke 6:17). This is a time of teaching. Matthew 5-7 and the parallel passage in Luke 6:12-49 are most often referred to as the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew's account is much longer than Luke's. Matthew's audience was Jewish, so many parts interpret the Law.  Luke's audience was primarily Gentile. So, these parts were omitted. Some commentators see these two passages as two separate events, but we will not. 

The exact location is unknown, but it is believed to be somewhere between Capernaum and Gennesaret near the Sea of Galilee. In Luke, the sermon is said to take place on a level place while the Matthew account says that He went up on a mountainside. The most logical explanation is that He had gone up to pray and chose His disciples and came down to a lower, level place to give the Sermon on the Mount. 

Plato (423-347 B.C.) in Republic and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) in Nichomachean Ethics attempted to answer the question about which life is the "good life." Jesus came along in the context of the day and answered that question in Matthew 5:1-20.  
What makes a person blessed, which means "favored" or "happy"? Some commentators see this sermon as an ethical code for God's people, a checklist of spiritual attainment. "If I am poor in Spirit (humble), then I will inherit the kingdom of God." According to this interpretation, Jesus laid down, 

. . . a platform of important principles for the enlightenment and guidance of His kingdom forces. This sermon is not a mere ethical code but its sublime moral principles far surpass all human moral standards. Christ's idea of Righteousness as here set forth, became the kingdom's ideal of Righteousness which has never yet been approximately realized by humanity. In His universal eternal principles in this sermon, Jesus laid the basis for the kingdom work for all time. In one discourse, He superseded all previous standards and set up the new and final religious goal for the human race. He here uttered the final word about character and privilege, conduct and duty, religious ideals, the divine and human relations of men, and the supreme objective and goal in life and how to attain it. (The Christ of the Gospels by J.W. Shepard, p. 176. This is a quote in The Life and Ministry of Jesus Christ: Book 1, p. 71.)

Other commentators believe that the Beatitudes "cannot be 'good news if they are understood as a set of 'how-tos' for achieving blessedness" (The Divine Conspiracy, p. 106). Rather, they believe it is an announcement by Jesus to the great mass of humanity who was following Him that they did not have to have it all together or be part of the right ethnic group to be in the kingdom of God. Jesus had come to announce blessing to the "spiritual zeros"!

Standing around Jesus as he speaks are people with no spiritual qualifications or abilities at all. You would never call on them when "spiritual work" is to be done. There is nothing about them to suggest that the breath of God might move through their lives. They have no charisma, no religious glitter or clout. 

They "don't know their Bible." They "know not the law," as a later critic of Jesus' work said. They are "mere laypeople," who at best can fill a pew or perhaps an offering plate. No one calls them to lead a service or even to lead in prayer, and they might faint if anyone did. 

They are the first to tell you they "really can't make heads nor tails of religion." They walk by us in the hundreds or thousands every day. They would be the last to say they have any claim whatsoever on God. The pages of the Gospels are cluttered with such people. And yet: "He touched me." The rule of the heavens comes down upon their lives through their contact with Jesus. And then they too are blessed -- healed of body, mind, or spirit -- in the hand of God.

. . . precisely in spite of and in the midst of their ever so deplorable condition, the rule of the heavens has moved redemptively upon and through them by the grace of Christ. . . 

The Beatitudes, in particular, are not teachings on how to be blessed. They are not instructions to do anything. They do not indicate conditions that are especially pleasing to God or good for human beings . . . They are explanations and illustrations, drawn from the immediate setting, of the present availability of the kingdom through personal relationship with Jesus. They single out cases that provide proof that, in him, the rule of God from the heavens truly is available in life circumstances that are beyond all human hope.  (The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard, p. 100-102, 106)

This second view seems to be in keeping with His announcement that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" before the beatitudes (Matthew 3:2; 4:17; Mark 1:15).  They are a "clarification or development of his primary theme in this talk, and in his life: the availability of the kingdom of the heavens" (p.99). 

Christ came to found a Kingdom, not a School; to institute a fellowship, not to propound a system. To the first disciples all doctrinal teaching sprang out of fellowship with Him. They saw Him, and therefore believed . . . The seed of truth which fell on their hearts was carried thither from the flower of His Person and Life.  (The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah: Volume 1, p. 528-529)

REFLECTION

I am part of a group that calls themselves the "Kingdom Project," because we have covenanted together to live out kingdom life, right here, right now. 

Lately, we have been reading through Matthew, looking at everything that Jesus says or implies about life in the kingdom.

Some of the questions we are asking are:

-Who can experience life in the kingdom?
-How can they experience life in the kingdom?
-What does Jesus say or imply life in the kingdom of God is like?
-What keeps people from experiencing life in the kingdom?
-How is life in the kingdom different from life outside the kingdom of God?
-When can life in the kingdom of God be experienced? Is it now or in eternity?
-Is life in the kingdom of God to be experienced alone or with others? How does this happen either way?

As you continue in the Sermon on the Mount and even get into the Parables of the Kingdom later on in Matthew 13, ask yourself these questions.

APPLICATION - Making This Message Personal to Us Today

You are really walking in the good news of the kingdom if you can go with confidence to any of the hopeless people around you and effortlessly convey assurance that they can now enter a blessed life with God. 

Who would be on your list of "hopeless blessables" as found in today's world? Certainly all of those on Jesus' list, for though they are merely illustrative, they also are timeless. But can we, following his lead as a teacher, concretize the gospel even more for those around us? Who would you regard as the most unfortunate people around you? (The Divine Conspiracy, p. 122)

To some extent, all of us are broken, and Jesus came as good news for us all! Who are those around you? Go to them!

Here is an entire series on the kingdom of God by Dallas Willard:

Guidelines for Life in the Kingdom

PRAYER

Lord, please open our eyes to see and ears to hear what You have for us. Please lift the veil from our eyes. Help us to walk in the good news of your kingdom and bring that to others in hopeless situations. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. On earth as it is in heaven. Amen.