Sermon on the Mount part 2—Introduction to the Beatitudes

Today's message will be continuing with our series of studies on the Gospels, particularly on the Sermon on the Mount. We'll pick up where we left off last time, with the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. Last time we covered the background to the Sermon on the Mount, and that was a sermon in itself because there's so much there to cover to set the stage for understanding the message that Jesus Christ gave for us in the Sermon on the Mount. And just by way of quick review here...

Sorry about that. Okay, thanks. I don't know why they always put these plugs on the wrong side, but they managed to. Let's get this back to where I was. By way of quick review here, last time we saw how both Matthew and Luke, who are the two Gospel writers who record the Sermon on the Mount for us, how they set the stage for introducing Jesus Christ's teaching by establishing his credentials for why we need to pay attention to his message.

They established his credentials as someone who's teaching we are absolutely obligated to follow. And those credentials, by way of quick review here on screen, are that Jesus was of the promised lineage of the Messiah, that his birth was divinely foretold by angels, and I've given the chapter references... Maybe he was the fulfillment of a number of prophecies that he had been preceded by John the Baptizer, or the Elijah who had come and prepared the way for the coming of the Lord.

We saw that the Father had proclaimed Jesus to be his beloved Son. We saw that Jesus had defeated Satan in the temptation in the wilderness. And we also saw that he had performed a number of miracles. And these are all things we've covered so far in our studies of the Gospels. It's interesting that both Matthew and Luke cover these same points in establishing Jesus Christ's credibility. Then after that, we went through a particularly fascinating what I call the granddaddy of all Remesim.

Remes being a word that means a clue or a hint or a look back that contains a deeper message that isn't necessarily evident on the surface. And I call this the granddaddy of all Remesim because it covers several chapters of the Gospel of Matthew where Matthew draws these parallels between Jesus Christ and Moses. And we covered seven points of parallel here that both Jesus and Moses escaped death as an infant.

How both Jesus and Moses entered Egypt. How both Jesus and Moses went into the wilderness. How both Jesus and Moses were tempted in the wilderness. How they both fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. How they both ascended a mountain. And how they both revealed the law or the teaching, the revelation of God from that mountain. And Matthew uses this sequence here of corresponding events to draw these parallels between Moses and Jesus Christ.

And we covered the point of this too because the parallels without a point don't mean a whole lot, but the point of a Remes is again a deeper meaning. You might say hidden meaning there. So it's to bring out something deeper for us to think about. And the point of Matthew using these parallels, drawing these parallels and ending with Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount, on a mountain, is that Jesus is a second Moses, fulfilling the prophecy that God would raise up another prophet like Moses.

And another point is that as Moses was the great lawgiver, so Jesus Christ is a great lawgiver. And then we also covered how Jesus was the I AM, the Lord Yahweh who gave the law to Israel there at Mount Sinai. So these are all aspects of the background that we need to understand before getting into the Sermon on the Mount. We also, I'm not projecting this on screen, but we also talked about some of the differences between the accounts of the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew and from Luke, and why some of those differences exist linguistically in the way they both organized their Gospels.

And then we also spent a fair amount of time discussing how Matthew organizes his Gospel, which is around five sets of Jesus' teachings, the first of which is this, the Sermon on the Mount, covered in Matthew chapters 5 through 7, and went through and showed the evidence and the proof of that. So now we come to what I would call Christianity 101. Those of you who have been to college or taken college classes, you know that freshman beginning classes are such-and-such 101.

That's the basics. This is what you have to take, the classes you have to take before you can move on to the more advanced materials. So the Sermon on the Mount is what I would call Christianity 101, meaning it is the basic Christianity that Jesus Christ wants and expects his followers to practice. These are the foundational principles, the foundational teachings upon which we will build later on.

Now, it's interesting if you brought your harmony of the Gospels with you, and we won't spend time in it today, but if you just look on page 25 where the Sermon on the Mount begins, I'd like you to notice what is directly above it.

Luke's Gospel, as far as we can tell, is in chronological order, and notice what is directly above it. It's the calling and the choosing of the twelve apostles. So the way Luke arranges his Gospel, he has that calling and choosing of the twelve apostles just before the Sermon on the Mount. What does this mean? What are we grasped from this? Well, as we talked about last time, Jesus had a number of different followers, multitudes who heard the Sermon on the Mount.

Among the multitudes, he had followers or disciples, and then among those he had a smaller core group of whom he chose twelve to be apostles. He had both men and women followers, disciples, you might say. However, he chose only these twelve men to be apostles. What does apostle mean? We talked about that last time. It means a messenger, or one set with a messenger. So he chose these particular twelve to carry a message.

What was the message? The message was of the coming kingdom of God. But also beyond that, it was, how do you become a part of that kingdom? What is required for you to be a part of the kingdom? So now, the way Luke structures his gospel, he goes into how you become a part of that kingdom. So this is a basic instruction that those twelve apostles would have received along with the others in the multitudes and followers who were there to hear this message also. So Jesus now, in the Sermon on the Mount, begins telling them how people can become a part of that kingdom. So one other quick point to cover, because we are talking about the Beatitudes today, and that is, what does Beatitude mean?

Well, it's come from the Latin word Beatus, which means blessed or happy. Blessed or happy in the Latin. And I think that probably influenced the translators in translating the Sermon on the Mount, as we'll get into in the latter part of the message today. So what we'll do today is now we'll just go through and read the Beatitudes so we can get a frame of reference in our mind, and then we'll go back and start dissecting what Jesus wants us to learn from that teaching.

So Matthew 5, verses 1-12, And seeing the multitudes, he, Jesus, went up on a mountain, parallel with Moses, and when he was seated, his disciples came to him. Then he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I might mention too here that kingdom of heaven doesn't mean we're going to heaven to get a kingdom.

It is the kingdom of heaven. And actually what Matthew's practice, we see this repeatedly in Matthew's Gospel, is where Luke or Mark may say kingdom of God, Matthew will nearly always have kingdom of heaven in his Gospel. Why does he do that? Well, because Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience, and they're very familiar with the commandment against using God's name in vain. So the Jews of that time would never use the word God there, or the name of God. They would instead substitute a synonym, and in this case heaven.

They mean the kingdom of God, but they won't use the word God. We also see another synonym referring to God in Matthew's Gospel as the power. So this is something we pick up on. We see Matthew using that twice here in the Beatitudes, where he uses kingdom of heaven as opposed to kingdom of God. So verse 4, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

So if you believe in going to heaven, what's wrong with the meek? They get stuck on the cruddy old earth, and the other people get to go to heaven. Well, again, it shows the fallacy of the belief in going to heaven at death. Verse 6, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and see all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who are before you.

So as we see here in verse 12, rejoice and be exceedingly glad, these characteristics in our lives should have us rejoicing and experiencing great gladness. But this isn't exactly what we would normally expect on the human level. Humanly, we expect the opposite to be blunt.

We expect the opposite. You know, the world, if you think about what most people in the world would make you happy, would make you fulfilled, would make you feel blessed, what kind of person does the world think would be happiest, would be blessed the most? Well, it would be somebody who is meek, somebody who is humble, somebody who is poor in spirit. Not really. They would view somebody as happiest who is the real go-getter. The one who goes out with all the gusto of life to get everything there is out of this life, going out on adventures and doing everything on their wish list, crossing off those items, that sort of thing. It would be the people who get exactly what they want, even if it means walking up the backs of those who are standing in their way. It would be the one who gets all the nice toys, and as the saying goes, the who dies with the most toys wins. It would be the one who is rich, the one who is famous, the one who is popular, the one who has everything going for him. What does Jesus say? He says, no, that's not it. That's not it. He says, the really blessed people are those who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who are meek, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who are merciful, who are pure in heart, who are peacemakers, who are persecuted, or even reviled. Now, to most people that sounds absurd. It sounds like Jesus is describing a state of misery, not a state of happiness or a state of blessedness. It all sounds backwards. And guess what? It sounded backwards to the people of Christ's day, too.

We've talked before in this series of studies about the different groups of people that Christ encountered in his ministry, and what were their priorities? What did they think would make a person blessed or happy? Let's talk about a few of those groups. Your average Jew living in Judea or Galilee, what did they think would make them happy? What would bring them a good life? Well, they thought blessing and happiness would come from throwing off the cursed Romans, kicking them out of the land, and re-establishing a Jewish kingdom along the lines of the kingdom of David, the kingdom of Solomon, where the entire world then rightly worshiped God.

That's what they thought would bring happiness. And then, of course, a subset of these were the zealots we've talked about a bit. One of Judas' disciples, apostles, was Simon the Zealot. Who were the zealots? Well, they were what you might call the parallel today might be the militia people. They lived back in the mountains with a gun cabinet the size of this room. And the zealots thought that the way to happiness was in finding a Roman soldier to kill, or somebody who collaborated with Romans, and killing them to advance the cause of establishing a Jewish kingdom, the kingdom of God as they saw it there on earth.

So that's what they thought would bring happiness. What about the Pharisees? We've talked a lot about the Pharisees. What did they think would bring happiness and bring blessing to a person's life? Well, they thought blessings and happiness came about through fastidiously observing every detail of the law. They wanted people to follow every detail of their traditions and man-made interpretations of the law. We've talked about how they set up a hedge around the law and some of their extreme rules about what you could and could not do on the Sabbath.

You couldn't spit on the ground on the Sabbath because that was plowing. If your house was on fire on the Sabbath, you could put on all the clothing you could carry out and get it out of the fire, but you couldn't gather up an armload of clothing and take out of the house. This sort of thing. So they thought that was the way to happiness, and they were so determined that everyone be happy that they tried to enforce their beliefs on everyone else, even if it killed them.

I'm thinking about the absurdity of that. You can see it with ISIS in the Taliban today. They have their rules about what's going to make you happy and right with God, and if you don't follow those rules, that'll make you happy. We're going to kill you. So that was kind of the Pharisees approach. And we see this. The number of times they tried to stone Jesus and eventually did participate in having him executed. What about the Sadducees? Who were the Sadducees? They were the priestly class, the Jerusalem religious establishment. They were the ones who ran the temple and the priesthood and so on. And how did they view happiness and blessedness?

Well, one thing about the Sadducees is they did not believe in life after death, or did not believe in a resurrection. So consequently, what they thought, their philosophy of life, was to get everything you can in this life. He who dies with the most toys wins, because there is no afterlife. There is no resurrection, so get it all while you can. This sounds so out of touch with us understanding the Scriptures as we do, but that's what they thought. We actually see that reflected later in the book of Acts, where Paul is being grilled before the Sanhedrin, which is a combination of Sadducees and Pharisees.

And he gets them arguing among themselves about whether there is a resurrection or not. Why? Because the Pharisees believe in a resurrection, and the Sadducees don't. So he gets them arguing over that, instead of pointing their guns at him, so to speak. And this also is why they get so upset when Jesus... they've turned the temple and temple worship into a big money-making business there, through the money-changing, which we've talked about, through the sacrifices, through rejecting the lambs or the pigeons or doves that people would bring, and forcing people to buy one of their goats or pigeons or doves, and the incredible markup they would put on those animals.

So yeah, they were trying to get all they could out of this life, even if it meant oppressing the people coming to the temple to worship. So the point I want to make through this is that Jesus was teaching a very different set of priorities, and a very different way to happiness and to blessedness from what people were expected. The way to becoming a part of the Kingdom of God wasn't to strap on a sword and pick up your spear and go off and try to kill Romans, to establish a physical Kingdom on earth at that time.

No, the way to become a part of the Kingdom of God was in meekness, in mercy, in being poor in spirit, in being a peacemaker, in being pure in heart. And this is not at all what people were expecting to hear. It's very contrary to their expectations. We also see Jesus giving a number of astounding promises here for those who would inherit the Kingdom. Jesus' promises, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. For they shall be comforted.

For they shall inherit the earth. For they shall be filled. For they shall obtain mercy. For they shall see God. For they shall be called sons or children of God. For great is your reward. So these are the promises Jesus gave, but these promises are linked to specific things. They are linked to the attitudes that we see in the beatitudes. They are linked to the character that is a part of those attitudes. They are linked to the behavior that is a part of those attitudes. They are linked to what we really are, deep down inside, hopefully through God's Spirit working within us. And as with most of God's promises, they are conditional.

They are conditional on the attitudes, on the character, on the behavior that is reflected in the beatitudes there. We'll go into this more and explore these concepts more as we go along in covering the Sermon on the Mount. The point I want you to understand here is that Jesus' teachings were thoroughly radical to the people of that time, totally contrary to their expectations.

It was radical then, and it is radical now. It's radical now because these teachings compel us to turn our priorities in life upside down and inside out. They compel us to look deeply inside ourselves, to take a long, hard look at ourselves, and to compare what we are with what God wants us to be, again, as reflected in the beatitudes. It's spelled out in the Sermon on the Mount. But first, before we get into that, this will be a long study. But first, we need to understand some more of the background before we get into what is actually stated for this in the beatitudes. So let's back up now to where we left off last time, which is Matthew 5, verses 1 and 2. So let's take a look at the background here and get a grasp on some of the not well understood things that are being conveyed to us here. So Matthew 5, verse 1, Matthew says, "...in seeing the multitudes," we talked about that last time, "...he," Jesus, "...went up on a mountain," we talked about that last time, talked about the geography around the Sea of Galilee. And then we see, "...and when he was seated, his disciples came to him, then he opened his mouth and taught them saying." And I hope we're beginning to realize by now that every word that we read in the Gospels is important, because there are a lot of meanings in there that go right over our heads if we don't understand the historical and the cultural context of what is going on. By the way, I meant to bring this today. I received a terrific new Bible this week. I'll have it at combined services next week, if I remember. It's called the New International Version Cultural Backgrounds Bible, and it's written by two outstanding scholars, probably the best in their field, one who wrote all the notes for the Old Testament, one who wrote the notes for the New Testament. And it goes into a lot of the cultural background of the Bible. It was just released a week ago, Tuesday, and I just got my copy two days ago. So if you want to buy yourself a nice piece present, the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, I think, is the official name of it. It's about 1,500 pages or so, depending on the version, costs anywhere from about $36 for the hardcover, up to $70, $80 for a leather bound.

I highly recommend that. Okay, back to the culture and history behind what we see in these words here. Some of the details are really easy to miss if we don't understand the background. What I'd like to first draw our attention to, and this is in one of the study questions I sent out last night, is why does Matthew say when he was seated his disciples came to him? Does this mean that Jesus is just kind of tired from walking up the mountain and he finds a soft-looking rock and sits down because he's going to be talking for a while and speaking like I am today? Not that there's a parallel there, but it kind of helps reinforce the point. This wasn't planned, by the way. So when he was seated, his disciples came to him. Why does Matthew include that little detail?

Why does he do that? Well, it's something we need to understand about the culture of that day, and that is that rabbis, and Jesus is a rabbi, gave their authoritative teaching while seated.

It's a little hard for us to understand because we're used to the speaker standing up here, but in that day, rabbis gave their authoritative teaching while seated. And there are actually a number of different references to this in the Gospels. I'll demonstrate this. I'll go through these pretty quickly, so you may just want to write down the reference. Don't try to copy the scriptures. We're going to cover a lot of scriptures today, so I just want you to get the reference more than anything. Matthew 23, verses 1 through 3, Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples, saying the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. And they have actually excavated a couple of these in synagogues in Israel. A stone seat about the size of this table here, and at least one that I'm familiar with, actually has carved in the stone in Hebrew on the side of it, Moses' seat. And what that meant was this was a seat of teaching in the synagogue, where the scribes, who are the teachers of the law, that's another term we see in the Gospels for them, and the Pharisees would sit in Moses' seat and do what? Well, we see that in the next verse. Verse 3, Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe from Moses' seat, they are telling you which laws to follow, their interpretation of the law, that observe and do. So they are teaching seated in Moses' seat in the synagogue.

Let's look at another one here. This is an interesting one because it brings out two points. Luke 4 and verse 20, we discussed this months ago, this is when Jesus begins his ministry teaching in Nazareth, his hometown. He goes to Nazareth, and he's invited to teach at the synagogue there. So he stands up and he's reading the scroll there. And it says, Luke says, Then he closed the book, or rolled up the scroll, handed it to the attendant, and sat down, and noticed, and the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him. So Jesus has stood up, he has read from the scroll, and this is a common part of the synagogue service at the day. They would have readings from the scrolls of the different books of the Hebrew scriptures, and then there would be a teaching part. And this is what Jesus is doing here. He read from the scroll, then he sits down, and everybody's looking at him intently to hear what his teaching is.

And we know the rest of the story goes on to say some things that they took in a very bad way, and they tried to kill him as a result of that. But it does demonstrate here that he is sitting down to teach. Some other passages, Mark 9, verse 35, and he, Jesus, sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, if anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.

Another one, Matthew 13, verses 1 and 2, on the same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea. Was he sitting to teach? Well, read the next verse. And great multitudes were gathered together to him. Why were they gathered together? Because he was seated to give. His official teaching is a rabbi. Parallel to that, Matthew 15, verses 29 through 30, Jesus departed from there, stirted the Sea of Galilee, and went up on the mountain and sat down there. And what happens when he sits down to teach? Then great multitudes came to him to hear his teaching. Another one, Matthew 24 and verse 3, now as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, tell us, when will these things be? And then he gives the Olivet prophecy, Matthew 24 and Matthew 25. You might say that was the real sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Mount of Olives.

And let's see, one final one. This is near the end of his ministry, Matthew 26, 55. In that hour, Jesus said to the multitudes, these are the ones coming out to arrest him, have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to take me?

I sat daily with you doing what? Teaching in the temple. And you did not seize me then.

So why are you coming to seize me now? He's saying that what did he do? He sat daily doing what? In the temple. Teaching there in the temple. So we see this demonstrated again and again that rabbis and Jesus himself did their authoritative teaching by sitting. That's not to say that he didn't teach as he was walking along the roads with his disciples and followers and so on, but it does show clearly that he did what was common among rabbis of that day, to sit when he gave his authoritative teaching. This is what he is doing. This is the point Matthew is making by including this here at the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes.

Interestingly enough, this concept of sitting while teaching continues to this day. Not to support this idea, but when the Pope gives his official teaching, what is that called? It's called speaking ex cathedra. Ex cathedra is Latin for from the chair, seated. And what he does when he speaks ex cathedra is considered infallible, the infallibility of the Pope. Yes, Arthur? In the cathedral, yes, right. Yeah, where the chair is, where the Pope's chair is. If you're familiar with colleges and universities, what do they call some of the particular professorships? They'll say the professor occupies the chair, the so-and-so chair of economics, or chair of philosophy, or chair of political science.

So it all goes back to this idea of official teaching being given from a seated position here. So it's interesting how this continues on. This concept continues down to our day as well.

So what is Matthew's point then in saying that Jesus sat before teaching? Well, in this little detail, he doesn't have to explain it, but his point in using those couple of words is that what follows in the Sermon on the Mount is the official teaching of Jesus Christ. So we had better pay attention to it. This is our rabbi speaking, and rabbis spoke for God, but in this case, the rabbi is God. The rabbi is who? The rabbi is Emmanuel, God with us, God in the flesh. So we'd better be paying attention is the point that Matthew is making. He doesn't explain that, doesn't spell it all out, because all of his Jewish writers and readers who read his gospel understood what it meant to sit down to begin teaching there. Let's look at the next verse then, the next verse. So again, going back here. So when he was seated, his disciples came to him. Verse 2, then he opened his mouth and taught them saying, does this mean that Jesus sometimes taught by writing on the ground or by saying something like that? In this occasion, he just happened to open his mouth and teach. Is that redundant? What's the meaning of this phrase that Matthew just includes in there? Matthew alone. Matthew alone is the only gospel writer who includes this phrase.

Why does he do it? What does it mean? This is another one of the study questions that I sent out last night. Well, to open one's mouth is a Hebrew expression that signifies a profound or important discourse or proclamation. It signifies a profound or important discourse or proclamation. It's a Hebrew way of saying what follows is very important, so you need to pay attention. Matthew's audience would have understood this. Again, they're Jewish, they're Hebrew, they understand the Scriptures. How do we know this? Well, because we find this expression used a number of times in the Hebrew Scriptures. Again, I'll go through these quite quickly, but you can write down the references. One from Psalm 51, verse 15. This is from David. And he says, O LORD, open my lips, and my mouth shall shew forth your praise.

Slight variation of that expression, but it means the same thing.

Another Psalm, 78, verse 1, this is from Asaph. Give ear, O my people, to my law.

Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth. There's that expression in a parable. I will utter dark or deep sayings of old. Another one from Solomon, Proverbs 31, verse 9. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.

From Ezekiel, and here's one that really demonstrates this concept that this is something very important, very crucial, what is to be said. This is God speaking to Ezekiel, and he says, But when I speak with you, I will open your mouth. Does that mean God is literally going to pry open Ezekiel's mouth? No, he's saying God is going to speak through him, something that is very crucial, very important for them to know. And you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord God. And another one, Ezekiel 29, verse 21, this is the last of them. In that day I will cause the horn, a horn means strength or power of the house of Israel, to spring forth, and I will open your mouth to speak in their midst. Then they shall know that I am the Lord. So we see from these different examples what I just showed, that this is an expression that means what follows is something you better pay attention to because it's important. It's speaking for God, you might say.

So Matthew, again, has written to a Hebrew or Jewish audience who would have understood this Hebrew expression. And again, it's interesting, he's the only gospel writer who uses that expression. So it's a Jewish way of telling a Jewish audience that what Jesus is about to say is extremely important. He's done that twice. He's done that by saying Jesus sat to teach, and he's done that by using this expression. He opened his mouth to say these things. So just in a couple of words, Matthew has done what? He has just semi-rate words, and he has given this shorthand for saying, look, this is Jesus's official teaching, and we better pay attention to it, everybody, because this is really, really important. It's a teaching coming from a teacher sent from God himself. So any questions on that? We're about to transition into something else, so I have a couple of points in here where you can...

The attitude is not a word found in the Bible. It's something that was introduced probably by the early church fathers writing in Latin, and it stuck, and has come down for us this day. Yeah, teaching and instruction? Is that what it is? Clearly.

The attitudes? I don't think it's totally arbitrary. They came up with that term because what are the attitudes? Blessed are. Blessed are. What is Latin for blessed? Beatus.

So that's where it came from there. We'll go into that in a lot of detail here in a few minutes.

Mind-dumbing detail, I guarantee you. So stay awake, please, if you want to follow this.

So yeah, good point. Last time, I want to... before we move out of this particular point, I want to bring up one other confirmation of something that I mentioned last time, that Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount is a compilation of what Jesus taught on a number of occasions, a compilation or a summary, an anthology, you might say, of Jesus's teachings that were given at different times in different locations. And this gets into language. We're going to talk quite a bit about language today. But where it says here, then he opened his mouth and taught them. This word taught in the Greek... I'll try to keep this simple, and hopefully you'll follow me here. In English, we have three tenses of verbs. We have past, present, and future.

I did this yesterday. That's past tense. I am doing this right now, today. That's present tense. I will do this tomorrow. That's future tense. Greek has more tenses than the English.

And because we're used to English, it's awkward to translate those into English in a way that makes sense to us English speakers. But Greek... I don't recall how many different tenses there are, but there are a number of them with Greek descriptions, so I won't get into that. But I'll try to keep this simple here. When Matthew writes, and he's writing in Greek here, then he opened his mouth and taught them the sense of the Greek there. It's talking about something that happened in the past, but continued to happen. And again, there's no English equivalent for that. So what it is saying, if you translated it literally into English, it would be something like this. Again, it sounds terrible in English, but to a Greek speaker it would make perfect sense. Then he opened his mouth, and this is what he used to regularly teach them.

Again, it's the sense that he started teaching them and continued the action of teaching them.

So when I talked last time about the Sermon on the Mount being Jesus's regular summary of what Jesus regularly and continually taught, this is actually confirmed in the Greek here. I didn't get to that last time, but this is verification of that. Again, a somewhat awkward concept to understand in English, but that is what the Greek says. So Matthew is saying, now I'm going to tell you what Jesus used to teach us as his apostles, as his disciples here.

So now let's go back, and then we're up to the point where Jesus begins with the beatitudes. So let's review them again. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5 verse 3. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. And one of the study questions I sent out is, is this a Rimes? And I kind of gave away the answer by my next question was, if so, what does a Rimes mean? So it is a Rimes, and if it is a Rimes, what is the deeper meaning?

Because that's essentially what a Rimes is. It's a hint or a clue to look back to draw a parallel with something from the Hebrew Scriptures, from the Old Testament, and to draw a connection between those two things. So is Jesus's use of the phrase, blessed are a Rimes? Actually, it's quite a staggering Rimes, and I'll go through it here, what it means. Blessed are, or blessed is, is a Rimes to many psalms and proverbs.

It's a Rimes to many psalms and proverbs. You can look it up yourself. You have a computer, or on your phone or tablet, just look up blessed is, or blessed are, or happy is, or happy are, and you'll see this list. And I'm going to rip through these pretty quickly. Again, I just want to demonstrate to you the sheer volume of it more than anything. So this is a common formula that Jesus's audience, being familiar, having memorized the psalms and the proverbs, would have immediately understood. The psalms and proverbs, to the best of my memory, the boys had a set, and their school teaching would have memorized the five books of Moses. The girls would have memorized the book of Deuteronomy. And if I remember correctly, the psalms and the proverbs. So eventually all the boys would have memorized psalms and proverbs in the entirety of the Old Testament. So everybody here in Jesus would have understood the Rimes that were picked up on this point. So again, I don't expect you to write all these down. You can search for it yourself. I just want to show you the number of these. Psalm 1, verse 1, Blessed is the man that walks not on the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.

Notice which verse this is. Psalm 1 and verse 1. How was the Old Testament books, how was the structure of the Old Testament at that time divided? Divided into three sections, the Torah, the Nevi'im, the Prophets, and the Ketuvim, the Writings. The Writings, and you'll actually see this referred to in the Gospels when we get there, the Psalms, the Prophets, and the Writings.

The Writings section was also called the Psalms. Why is it called the Psalms? Well, because the first book of Psalms was... the first book of the Writings was the Psalms. What's the first verse of the first section of the Writings? Psalm 1. 1. Blessed is the man that walks not on the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. So as soon as Jesus' blessed are, the minds of his audience are going to go back. Hey, he's quoting Psalm 1.

So, yeah, that's just a little side note. But continuing on, again, I'll rip through these Psalms. Psalm 2, verse 12. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. 32. 1. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 32. 2. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputes not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. 33. 12. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. 34. 8. Blessed is the man that trusts in him. 40. Verse 4. Blessed is that man that makes the Lord his trust. 41. 1. Blessed is he that considers the poor. 65. 4. Blessed is the man whom you choose. 84. 4. Blessed are they that dwell in your house. 84. 5. Blessed is the man whose strength is in you. 84. 12. Blessed is the man that trusts in you. 89. 15. Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound. 94. 12. Blessed is the man whom you chasten and teach him out of your law. 106. 3. Blessed are they that keep judgment in he that does righteousness at all times. 112. 1. Blessed is the man that fears the Lord, that delights greatly in his commandments.

119. 1. Blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord.

119. 2. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies and that seek him with the whole heart. 1-27-5. Blessed is the man that has his quiver full of children. 1-28-1. Blessed is every one that fears the Lord, that walks in his ways. 1-28-2. Happy. It's the exact same Hebrew word, blessed and happy, that's used in a number of these. Happy or blessed shall you be, and it shall be well with you.

1-44-15. Happy or blessed is that people whose God is the Lord. 1-46-5. Happy or blessed is he that has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God. And then the Proverbs, those are the Psalms, we see the same formulas, same exact wording used in the Proverbs. Happy or blessed, Proverbs 3.13, is the man that finds wisdom and the man that gets understanding. 8-32. Blessed are they that keep my ways.

8-34. Blessed is the man that hears me. 14-21. He that has mercy on the poor. Happy or blessed is he. Here it's switched where that phrase appears in the latter part of the sentence. 14-21. He that has mercy on the poor. Happy or blessed is he. 16-20. Whoso trusts in the Lord. Happy or blessed is he. 28-14. Happy or blessed is the man that fears always. 29-18. He that keeps the law. Happy or blessed is he. There's actually about 30 different times here that we've just gone through where this formula of blessed are or blessed is, is used in the Hebrew Scriptures.

I might mention also, and you can see this if you have a Bible in your lap, the Beatitudes, notice that the word are is not there. It doesn't say blessed are. Are has been inserted by the translators to make it make sense to read well in English. It's the are or the is isn't there in the original Greek, nor is it in these Hebrew, examples we've just read. I'm going to get another language lesson here, so I hope you'll pay attention and follow me. The reason I mention this is this actually reinforces that Jesus is using the exact Hebrew that we have just read all these examples from.

It doesn't say blessed is or happy is. I'm talking myself into a box canyon here. Let me back out a little bit and give a little more introduction to it. The fact Jesus is using the exact same phraseology shows even more strongly that this is a remes here. So it's clear that Jesus is using this remes pointing people to many passages that were familiar to them, that they had memorized both men and women. But the million dollar question is, what is the point? What is the point of the remes?

What is the lesson of the remes? What connection is Jesus wanting them to make by Him using this phrase? Blessed are, again and again and again here. What's the underlying message that He is sending them? And you have to think, not with our Western thinking, you have to put yourself in the mind of a first century Jewish or Hebrew audience. So let's break it down and analyze this. Which two books is He pointing to the remes?

Anybody? Which two books? We just saw three. Psalms and Proverbs. Who would have been associated mostly with the book of Psalms? David. David. King David. Who would have been mostly associated with the book of Proverbs? Solomon. Solomon. Great. Yeah, you're thinking first century. Good. Who was David? Who was David? How did they view David? As Israel's greatest and most beloved king, David to them would be kind of like George Washington to us, the father of our country, the great hero of the Revolutionary War.

They would have held David in actually greater esteem than we would have held George Washington. David is the subject of many prophecies and he would have a descendant. And David would rule over Israel forever through his descendants and so on. So Jesus is pointing, he's cluing people in to think of David by saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the me, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and so on. So David was Israel's greatest and most beloved king. He wants to point them to that. So who is Jesus? What's the parallel? The parallel is that he's saying that he will be like David, becoming Israel's greatest and most beloved king.

And he will. He will, prophetically. No question about that. This is the unstated message that as David was the great king of Israel whose teaching is preserved in the books of Psalms, that Jesus is a great teacher, a great king, a great ruler like David. And he's destined to be Israel's greatest and most beloved king, even more so than David was.

So the other one, this rim is, I love this rim, is because it's a twofer. It's a twofer. He points back to David, but he also points back to Solomon. Who is Solomon? What was notable about Solomon? You mentioned the name Solomon to a first century Jew. What's he going to think? He's going to think wisdom. Wisdom. Solomon was Israel's wisest king. He was known throughout the ancient world for his wisdom. The queen of Sheba, the queen of the South, came to learn of Solomon's wisdom there.

What's the connection? What message did Jesus want him to draw? Who is Jesus? He's saying that he is like Solomon, who wrote the book of Proverbs. And as Solomon was Israel's wisest king, he too will become Israel's wisest king. You don't have to think of it in our English or our Western thinking. You have to think of it as a first century Jewish man or woman or child. You would have understood what Jesus is doing there through this romance.

And when you do, again, it's an amazing two-phrase. By using blessed R, this phrase that is so common in the Psalms and in the Proverbs, he's drawing people back, connecting them to Israel's greatest king and Israel's wisest king. And this was brought down in Denver this morning. I didn't write down the scriptural references, but what did Jesus say later?

He says, Woe to you, Corazun and Bethsaida and Capernaum. He says, one who is wiser than Solomon is here. It draws the explicit connection with him being wiser than Solomon. It's much more subtle here, but later he does it more explicitly. Any questions about that?

We're about to shift gears and go to another section. Whenever you read the Gospels, think Rhenes. Every word, every phrase that is in here. A great deal, a great many of them are Rhenes. I called the one we covered last time the granddaddy of Rhenes. I think we called this one the grandmother of Rhenes, maybe, because it's pointing back to so many of the Psalms and the Proverbs here and what Jesus is saying.

Any questions or thoughts on that before we shift gears again here? Yes, Arthur? Does the Greek reflect Rhenes in a totally different way? Not that I know of. I did check the Greek of the Septuagint. The Septuagint, if you're not familiar with that, is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures done 200-300 BC. And this word, blessed, actually I'll get into this in a minute, the Greek word that is translated blessed, makarios. In all of those references I gave you from Psalms and Proverbs and the Septuagint, that same exact Greek word is there.

It's clear that Jesus is an accurate translation from the Hebrew that Jesus is using into the Greek. I'll go into that a little bit more here in a couple of minutes. In terms of strictly Rhenes in Greek, I can't think of any examples. It doesn't mean they don't exist, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Now let's do some more word studies here today. The reason I'm doing this is I'm going to spend quite a bit of time on this because I want us to really understand what Jesus is trying to tell us here. We're actually dealing, as I just mentioned, with two different words we need to understand. We're dealing with a Greek word which Matthew and Luke use for blessed, but Jesus isn't speaking Greek. He's speaking Hebrew or Aramaic.

So what is the underlying Hebrew expression that he would have used? Jesus is using, in all likelihood, a Hebrew word, asher, which means blessed or happy. In the King James, it's translated blessed 60% of the time. It's translated happy 40% of the time. It's used, I think, 35 times total. As I mentioned before, Hebrew is a very limited language. The number of words you have in the Bible in Hebrew is about 1 7th the number of words in our English language. We have English words for all kinds of shades of meaning.

You don't have that in Hebrew. In Hebrew, I've mentioned some examples like ruach, which means breath, or wind, or spirit. Same word, and you have to look at the context to understand what the meaning is. In English, we have distinctly different words for all that. In Greek, you have distinctly different words. In Hebrew, it's sometimes hard to nail down the specific meaning of a word. That is the case with this asia, meaning blessed or happy. Those are the only two ways that it's translated in the King James version of the Bible, or New King James, for that matter.

Unfortunately, this is a case where we're dealing with both Hebrew and Greek words, where there is no good, simple English equivalent of what these words mean or convey in the original. For those of you who have studied languages, you know sometimes there's just a word that isn't translatable or isn't easily translatable, especially using one word. Sometimes you need three or four words to convey the meaning. So again, this is asia here. But let's complicate things. One of Dr. Ward's favorite sayings, usually in council meetings, is there is no problem without which diligent effort cannot be made more complex. So we're going to make this... think about that for a minute.

You can take any problem and make it more complex if you try hard enough. So in English, blessed and happy are adjectives. We're going to get a lesson about our parts of speech again here. They're adjectives, which is words that describe the state or the condition of something.

But in Hebrew, this word, asher, is a noun. It's a noun, which is referring to a person who is not happy or not blessed, but referring to the condition of a person, a person living in a state or condition of blessedness or happiness. Now, that gets really, really tough to translate into English. So I can understand why the translators chose to translate it as an adjective because it reads far, far easier and more clearly...

not necessarily more clearly, but far, far easier when they translate it and use it as an adjective instead of a noun. If you really wanted to use it as... in the sense of the Hebrew, it would be something like, oh, the blessedness of the man or the woman who follows God. Now, that's really awkward, really clumsy in English. So in English, if you wanted to make it simple and readable, you'd say, blessed is the man who loves God and worships God, or happy is the man who loves and worships God.

Not the blessedness of, because you've got a noun and a noun, and they just butt heads there. But that is literally the way it's expressed in Hebrew. So the word... my point in drawing that distinction, and this is helpful in understanding what Jesus is saying in the Beatitudes, let me just ask you a question. It's kind of a fine distinction, so let's look at it this way. Can you be in a state of happiness without being happy at a particular moment?

Sure. Sure, you can. Can you be in a state of blessedness without feeling blessed at that particular moment? Yeah, yeah, absolutely you can. So this word is not necessarily used of our continual state, or how we feel at every moment in time, but of a person's overall state. Meaning our overall state. We may not feel happy at a particular moment, but our overall state is, yeah, we're generally happy.

Or we may not feel blessed at a particular time because of the way our day is going, but overall, do we feel blessed? Yes, yes we do. We do recognize that. So I want to draw that distinction. And this is why happy is not the best translation of this word. Blessed is because happy, our English word happy comes from old root words that actually mean luck or chance.

And we don't believe in luck. We don't believe in good and bad fortune. The word fortune comes from the Roman goddess Fortuna, who was the goddess of good and bad luck. You would pray to the goddess Fortuna for good fortune throughout the day, and it's where that concept comes from. It's bunk, it's pagan myth. And luck is the same type of thing. So happy in English is rooted in the idea that happiness is simply a matter of luck or chance.

In other words, if things are going our way, then we're happy because everything's cool, everything's good. And if things are not going our way, then we're not happy. And often that's true, but it's not a matter of luck. It's not a matter of good or bad fortune or anything like that. So that's why the word happy really is not the best word to use here, even though some Bible translations do translate it as happy in the Beatitudes theorem. The reason, and for that reason, blessed or blessedness is a much better way to translate this Hebrew word.

I like the way that Vine's expository dictionary of Old and New Testament words explains this word. And this is the book that I passed out to Alderman in our speech class a couple of years ago. And here's what it says. And I think this captures, explains it very, very well. It says of this word, Esher, Basically this word connotes the state of prosperity or happiness that comes when a superior bestows his favor, or his blessing, on one, on a person. In most passages where this word is used, the one bestowing favor is God Himself. And it goes on to give several examples of the way this word is used in the Hebrew Scriptures, including one where Job is being corrected. Are we happy when we are corrected by God? Probably not, because that correction is painful. Scripture tells us that God disciplines every son whom He loves, and that is not always pleasant. It can be quite painful. But on the other hand, are we blessed when we are corrected by God?

Absolutely we are, because God corrects every son whom He loves. So God corrects us because He loves us, and He wants us to receive greater blessings, so He corrects us for that. We are receiving favor from God when we are corrected by Him. So we are absolutely being blessed, even though we may not feel like it at the time when we are being corrected by God.

So to use a parallel, looking at this explanation here, when you receive a favor from a superior, maybe your boss gives you an unexpected raise at work, or maybe gives you a quarterly or a year-end bonus that you weren't expecting. How does that make you feel? It makes you feel happy. It makes you feel blessed. So I think this is a good way of understanding the meaning of this word, that we are blessed when God bestows His favor on us. He's doing things for our good because we have a relationship with Him as His children, and as a Father does good things for His children, even though the children may not think so or feel that way at the time, it is for our good. It is for our blessing there. And that is a very different concept than just happiness, which depends on transitory conditions, because conditions will change from day to day in our lives. But the fact that we are blessed by God is something that never changes. That doesn't change so long as we are faithful and in a relationship with Him. So now let's take a look at this Greek word. We've looked at the Hebrew word, asher. Now let's look at the Greek word that is translated blessed and hopefully get a little deeper perspective. This is a very important one to keep in mind here. We are blessed because we receive the favor. We receive favor, blessings from God. So let's look at the Greek word now that is translated blessing. It's the Greek word, makarios, m-a-k-i-r-i-o-s. And you're thinking that doesn't mean anything. It is linked to any word in English, and it doesn't. If you look in a concordance, what does makarios mean? Well, surprise, it means blessed or happy. That's it. Not a whole lot of help. Not a whole lot of depth there to help us better understand what this concept means. But this is where an expository dictionary is really good. Something like vines or some of the others. It bounces and others like that. Because you can go in and look up the origins of this word, makarios. In the ancient Greek world, this word, makarios, was used for the island of Cyprus.

And Cyprus, if you draw a mental map, and you see Turkey there, the big long country, underneath it in the Mediterranean Sea is the island of Cyprus. A very large island there. And it's not terribly far from the Holy Land there. And this word, makarios, was used of Cyprus, the island of Cyprus, because Cyprus had such a wonderful climate there. A beautiful Mediterranean climate. Those of you who've been to the Mediterranean, if you've ever been to any of the Greek islands, you know what a wonderful climate it is there. It had such good weather year-round. It had such good soil that you could grow just about anything there.

It had such productive trees and vines and flowers that you could grow just about anything. Any kind of fruits and vegetables and so on there. And it had a lot of good minerals in the soil for refining metals and things like that. So the Greeks called Cyprus the Happy Isle. Makarios, the Happy Isle. It was their happy place. You know, sometimes you hear, somebody tells you, go to your happy place, or I'm going to my happy place.

Well, for the Greeks, their happy place was the Isle of Cyprus. If we try to use a modern-day equivalent, it might be someplace like Tahiti, or maybe a Caribbean island, or maybe Hawaii, or someplace like that. I know we have people who love to go to the Caribbean or Hawaii for the feast year after year. And I get it. It's their happy place. Hey, it's hard to be unhappy on a beach in Maui or Hawaii or someplace like that.

I get it. It's a wonderful, beautiful place. Because you have everything you need there, especially during the feast. Unlimited money and this kind of thing. Great climate, all kinds of things to do that'll make you happy. So that helps us understand the meaning of the word in Greek, makarios. It's a place or a state or a condition where you have everything you need. Everything that is satisfying to you. Everything that is good for you. Everything that makes you feel good. There. So, and again, we would think the same thing if we lived in Hawaii or around, or Tahiti or Caribbean island or something like that. So this word has the same meaning as the Hebrew, asher, means blessed or happy.

But understanding this meaning, makarios, in the Greek as it was used here, basically means that we are especially favored or privileged or blessed by God to be in this state of being blessed, this condition of being blessed. There's this vast difference, again, between being happy as a matter of luck or chance, as opposed to being a state of being blessed because we are in a relationship with God, with our Heavenly Father, with a God who loves us and a God who wants the best for us and a God who gives us every good and every perfect gift because He wants us to be a part of His family forever.

And no one can give better blessings than God can. So the idea conveyed in this Greek word makarios is one of being blessed that does not depend on chance or on luck, which is a fake concept, or on circumstances. It depends instead on our relationship with God. And this is why Paul could write to the Philippians, Philippians 4, verses 11 through 13. And before I read this, I want us to think about Paul's condition when he wrote this. Philippians is one of what is called the prison epistles, and it's called so because Paul was under house arrest and wrong when he writes this.

What that meant is Paul is sitting there and he's writing, and he doesn't know whether the next knock on the door is going to be the executioner, is going to take him down and cut off his head. But what does Paul write? Verse 11 of Philippians 4, I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. I know how to be a based. And did Paul know how to be a based?

You can read the account he gives, I think it's 1 Corinthians, of all the trials he went through, of the number of times he was beaten, of being whipped, of being lashed, of being shipwrecked, of being out shipwrecked in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and not knowing if he's going to live through the night or the day, whether he's going to be fish food or drought or whatever, of being in perils from robbers, of going hungry because he didn't have any food, this kind of thing.

So he knew how to be a based. And he knew how to abound, as he says here, everywhere. And in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. And I didn't include this, but what he says next in verse 13 is, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So Paul knew that being happy or blessed wasn't a matter of his current state at the moment. When he writes this again, he's under house arrest in Rome.

But he knew that regardless of his physical state or circumstances at the moment, he was under the care and the watch of a God who loved him and who was determined to see Paul in his kingdom as an eternal son and child of God. And as a result of that, Paul's contentment that he felt, in whatever state I am to be content, the contentment that he felt and the peace of mind that he had came from having the close faith and deep trust in his relationship with God and wasn't dependent on the physical circumstances.

Those physical circumstances can and do change throughout life. But God's love for us doesn't change. It's not subject to him. That never goes away. And that is the point, and this is why I've spent so much time on this one word here, that is the point of this word, blessed, and the beatitudes. We may be mourning. We may be persecuted.

We may be reviled, as Christ said, blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who are persecuted. Blessed are you when people revile you. But because we have a relationship with God and have faith and trust and confidence in Him, we are blessed regardless of whatever our outer physical circumstances are.

And how do we have that relationship, that close relationship, with God? Well, it's right here in the beatitudes. By being poor in spirit, by being in an attitude of mourning, by being meek, by hungering and thirsting for righteousness, by being merciful, by being pure in heart, by being peacemakers, by being, when it comes down to it, persecuted for righteousness' sake. So that's the first half of those beatitudes. But there's a second half of each of those beatitudes as well.

And that's the promises that come from us being the first half. And what are the promises? What are the blessings in the second half of the beatitudes? For theirs, for ours, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. For you shall be comforted. For you shall inherit the earth. For you shall be filled. For you shall obtain mercy. For you shall see God. For you shall be called sons, or daughters, or children of God. For yours is the kingdom of heaven. And if we have these attitudes, if we have these characteristics, if we have this character, we begin to experience these blessings now.

And we will experience your ultimate fulfillment in the kingdom of God. And we'll begin going into the meaning of each of these in greater detail, beginning next time.