The Sermon on the Mount, Introduction to the Beatitudes

Don't be too positioned, listening.

I've just had some back problems and knee problems that have been bothering me all week long.

Being on the schedule to speak here today and down in Colorado Springs, I thought it'd be safer if I just sat down and not aggravate that condition anymore. Hopefully you brought your Harmony of the Gospels with you today, but if you didn't, I will be projecting all of the scriptures we'll be reading on screen here. Today we'll be continuing with our series of studies on the Gospels, picking it up where we left off last time with the Sermon on the Mount and the beginning of the Beatitudes.

By way of review, I'd like to go through a few points we talked about last time to kind of frame our minds for what we'll be talking about today. Last time we covered the background to the Sermon on the Mount, and that was a sermon in itself because there is a lot that we need to understand before getting into this message of Jesus Christ. Last time, by way of review, we saw how both Matthew and Luke set the stage for introducing Christ's teaching by establishing his credentials.

Before we pay attention to the message, we need to understand fully who the messenger was. So it went through that last time, some of Jesus Christ's credentials, and they were, again, by way of review, that he was of the promised lineage of the Messiah, that his birth was divinely foretold by angels, that he was the fulfillment of a number of prophecies, that he had been preceded by John the Baptist, the Elijah who would come and make way for the coming of the Lord, that the Father, God the Father, had proclaimed Jesus to be his beloved Son, that Jesus had defeated Satan in the temptation in the wilderness, and that he had performed miracles.

And these are the things we've discussed in our gospel studies leading up to this. And it's interesting that both Luke and Matthew cover these same points with the chapter references up there, leading up to the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. And we also went through what I rather humorously called the granddaddy of all Rimesim. Rimes, we've talked about that quite a bit, a word that means a hint or a clue or a look back.

There's a common method of teaching that Jesus uses repeatedly, but not only Jesus, but in this case Matthew uses this as a technique to connect Jesus Christ with Moses. And he deliberately makes seven different connections in his gospel leading up to Matthew chapter 5 of parallel events between the life of Jesus Christ and Moses. First, that Jesus and Moses escape death as an infant, that Jesus and Moses both entered Egypt, that they both went into the wilderness, that they were both tempted in the wilderness, that they both fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, that they both ascended a mountain, and that they both revealed the law of God from that mountain.

So seven different parallels there. And we covered what the point was of those parallels, which is that actually three different aspects of this. One is that Jesus is the second Moses, fulfilling the prophecy that God would raise up another prophet like Moses. And also that as Moses was the great lawgiver of Israel, Jesus is also a great lawgiver. And then we also talked about how Jesus was the I Am, the Lord Yahweh who gave the law to Israel at Mount Sinai. So we also talked about, I don't have slides for this, but we talked about some of the differences between the Gospels of Luke and Matthew and how they cover the events of the Sermon on the Mount and why that is, some of the reasons for that.

And also we talked about how Matthew's account is actually a compilation or a summary of Jesus Christ's teachings that were given over the course of his ministry at various times and places, and that Matthew structured his Gospel around five collections of Jesus's teaching. And he took his basic Christian living teachings, you might say, and compiled them together here in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. And that's one of the ways that Matthew structured his Gospel, and that accounts for a lot of the differences between Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount and Luke's account.

So now we come to the beginning of the actual Sermon on the Mount, or what we would call Christianity 101. Christianity 101. If you've taken college classes, your starting freshman classes are labeled 101. That means this is the beginning, this is the foundation.

So what Christ discusses in the Sermon on the Mount is the basic Christianity that Jesus Christ wants and expects his followers to practice. Again, the basic Christianity that Jesus Christ wants and expects his followers to practice. This is the core reality of how he wants us to live, the core reality of how he wants us to live. If you do have your your harmony with you, you might turn to page 25, and notice how Luke structures his chronology or biography of Christ's life. He has the Sermon on the Mount right here at the bottom, but what is immediately above that? What is immediately above that is Jesus Christ's calling and choosing of the 12 apostles.

As we talked about last time, Jesus had a lot of followers, a lot of disciples, you might say, both men and women, but he chose out of those 12 who were chosen to be apostles.

It's interesting the way that Luke structures this. Again, Matthew has rearranged his material chronologically to order it around the five discourses, as we talked about last time. But Luke is probably following the chronological order of the actual events where Jesus chooses the 12, and then what happens right after that? Then Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount, gives them the basic instructions of Christianity 101. He's chosen his apostles for a mission, an apostle means a messenger or one who is sent with a message. And then what is that message? Well, it's the message of the kingdom of God, but that also requires instruction for how you enter or how you become a part of that kingdom. And that is the instruction that we find here in the Sermon on the Mount. So what we'll do now is read through this portion that is called the Beatitudes First, and then we'll go back and start to pick up on the things he wants us to learn from this teaching. And I'll tell you up front, we won't get very far, so don't expect that today you're going to learn a lot about the Beatitudes. Over the next year, maybe two, we'll see how that goes, but not today. Before we get into the Beatitudes, let's cover one thing. What does the word Beatitude mean?

It's a word that is from the Latin Beatus. Beatus, we see up here on screen, B-E-A-T-U-S, which simply means blessed or happy. Blessed or happy. So from that we get our English word Beatitudes. So picking it up then, let's read through the Beatitudes.

Beginning in Matthew 5.1, And seeing the multitudes, he went up on a mountain, 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 here, kingdom of heaven is a euphemism that Jesus uses primarily in the Gospel of Matthew, because according to one of the Ten Commandments, you're not allowed to take God's name in vain. So the common practice in Jesus' day was you never use the name of God, period. You would use a synonym, and we see this throughout the Gospels. Here, Jesus doesn't use the phraseology, kingdom of God. He refers to the kingdom of heaven, substituting heaven, therefore, God. There are other cases we see this in the Gospel. I didn't write them down today, so I won't go into a lot of detail, but that was one of the study questions that I included last night and earlier in the week. So, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, or kingdom of God. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Here's another proof that we don't go to heaven, because, as Jesus says here, the meek are going to inherit the earth, not heaven. So, you have Jesus contradicting Himself, if the traditional view of heaven is correct. 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. There's the term kingdom of heaven used again, where Matthew or Jesus, we're actually not sure which, whether Jesus is using heaven or whether Matthew is changing it for a Jewish audience and substituting heaven for God. Verse 11, Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say 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 were before you. And as we see here in verse 12, the last verse here on screen, these characteristics in our lives should have us rejoicing and experiencing great gladness.

But think about what Jesus has said here for a minute here. You know, this isn't exactly what a person would expect when it comes to being blessed and being happy.

Humanly, we expect or experience, you might say, the exact opposite.

How does the world view somebody who is happy, according to the world standards? What would it take to make us happy, to make us fulfilled, to make us satisfied?

Well, the world would say that the blessed and happy person is the one who is the go-getter, the one who goes out and gets what he wants, even if it involves stepping on other people along the way. The one who is blessed and happy would be the one going for all the gusto in life, the one who gets all the nice toys and dies with the most toys. That's the one who wins. The one who is rich, the one who is famous, the one who is popular, the one who is everything going for them. That is the way the world would view what it takes to make us happy, to make us blessed. But Jesus says, no, that's not it. That's not the key to really being blessed and really being happy.

As he says here, the really blessed people are those who are poor in spirit, the ones who mourn, the ones who are meek, the ones who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the ones who are merciful, the ones who are pure in heart, the ones who are persecuted, the ones who are persecuted, and the ones who are reviled. Now to most people, that sounds absurd. That sounds totally crazy and backwards. It sounds like Jesus is describing a miserable state, not a state in which we would be blessed or happy. So it all sounds backwards. And actually, to the people of Jesus' day, it sounded backwards too, because after all, what were they expecting? We've talked about this a little bit before, but by way of review, let's cover some of the major groups of people that Jesus encountered during his ministry. The average Jew of his day, living there in Galilee or Judea, and the Pharisees and the Sadducees. What did they expect? What did they think it took to make you blessed and happy? What were their priorities in life for a blessed and happy life? What did they think it would take to make them blessed and happy? Well, most Jews of Christ's day thought that they would be blessed if they had a strong leader who would rise up and lead the nation to throw off the Romans, the hated Roman government, the oppressors as they saw them, to overthrow the Romans and re-establish a Jewish kingdom. That's the way they interpreted the many prophecies of the kingdom of God in the Old Testament there. So that's what they thought would certainly make everybody in the land happy and make everybody blessed. Another subset of this, which I didn't include separately, but the zealots. One of Jesus's disciples was Simon the Zealot. The zealot were a you might say the Tea Partiers, the extreme Tea Partiers, or the militia groups would be kind of our modern parallel. And their solution for happiness, as they saw it, was to go out and stab a Roman to death, or to kill those who collaborated with the Romans to help establish and bring in this kingdom, to restore a Jewish kingdom over the land there. So that was what the the average Jew of Christ day wanted. And that's what we see at times in the desire when they want to take Jesus by force and make him king. What about the Pharisees? What did they think would make you blessed and happy? Well, they thought that blessing and happiness came about through fastidiously observing their traditions, the traditions of the elders, and every detail of the Mosaic law. And to make sure people did that, they came up with this whole body of law and built this fence around the law so that nobody could possibly violate the Sabbath. That's why we see, as we've covered before, the disputes with the Pharisees and Jesus overhealing on the Sabbath.

Healing was a good work, a good deed that Jesus does repeatedly, but that violated the Pharisees' traditions and their teachings, so they hated him for it. So the Pharisees created their own set of laws that really made the law an incredible burden on people, not a source of happiness and satisfaction, but an incredible burden. So they thought that was the way to happiness, and they were so determined that everybody be happy that they tried to enforce their beliefs on everyone else, even if it involved killing them. It's kind of like ISIS and the Taliban today. You're going to be happy by following our laws and rules, and if you don't, we're going to kill you. So we're serious about you being happy. That was kind of the Phariseeical approach there. So they were willing to stone people, as they did try to do with Jesus on several occasions, to try to make him conform to their view of what it would take to make you happy. Well, what about the Sadducees? Who are the Sadducees? The Sadducees are the ones who control the temple, and mostly the priesthood. It's mostly the priestly class. They're in Jerusalem who ran the temple and its worship services. And their version of happiness and blessedness was to get what you could in this life because they didn't believe in a resurrection or an afterlife. We see this referred to over in the book of Acts, where Paul actually gets the Sadducees and Pharisees arguing among themselves rather than ganging up on him over the resurrection. The Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection. So, their philosophy of life was, again, who dies are the most toys wins. So, that was their approach. That's also why they turned the temple and the offering system into a big money-making business. We've talked about that before with Jesus overturning the money changers tables. They're in the temple and how they would reject offerings that people brought to the temple so they could sell them their own animals that make a huge profit off that. So, this is the common views of the people that Jesus commonly encountered of what they thought it meant to be blessed and happy. So, Jesus comes along teaching a very different set of priorities, a very different approach to happiness and blessing. And the way to being a part of the kingdom of God wasn't to strap on a sword and grab your spear and go off and find some Romans to kill. The way to being a part of the kingdom of God is found in what?

In meekness and mercy and being pure in heart and being poor in spirit and being a peacemaker.

So, this is not at all what the people were expecting to hear at that time. We also see Jesus giving some pretty astounding promises. Here in the Beatitudes, what are those promises? We've read through them, but a quick review. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God. For they shall be comforted. For they shall inherit the earth or the land. For they shall be filled. Never be hungry again. For they shall obtain mercy. For they shall see God. For they shall be called sons or children of God. And great is your reward. But notice also, as we read through the Beatitudes there, that these promises are linked to several important things. They are linked to our attitude. They are linked to our character. They are linked to our behavior. They are linked to what we are down deep inside. The very heart and core of our being. And as with most of God's promises, they are conditional. They're conditional. It's those with those attributes who inherit these astounding promises here. We'll explain these and go into much more detail as we go along in covering the Sermon on the Mount. A point I want to leave you with in this part of the background is that Jesus' astounding teaching was radical then. It was radical to those who heard it as we just talked about, the different groups and their expectations. It was radical teaching to them. It's not at all what they envisioned the kingdom of God was all about.

And that teaching is equally radical now. It's equally radical now because it compels us to turn our priorities in life upside down and inside out. Our expectations of what it means to be blessed or to be happy, totally different, compels us to look deeply inside ourselves.

It requires us to take a long, hard look at ourselves and compare what we are with what God wants us to be, which again is spelled out for us here in the Sermon on the Mount.

So we'll be going through and discussing some of these things as we go through the Sermon on the Mount. I was originally thinking I'd cover the Sermon on the Mount in two or maybe three of these sessions and I've concluded that is vastly unrealistic to get the kind of understanding we need out of these. So just as an FYI, I'll probably be giving a sermon on each one of these Beatitudes or maybe cover two of them. We'll see how that goes. I've just come across so much good material and researching this and I want to make sure because again this is Christianity 101. I want us to understand and get out of this everything that God wants us to learn from these statements of Jesus Christ teachings. But before we do that, I want to go a little bit more into some background that we didn't cover last time. Last time we did cover the multitudes, who that was, who his followers were, who his disciples were. We discussed him going up on a mountain in a parallel with Moses ascending Mount Sinai to receive the law or to give the proper teaching of the law. And now I want to pick it up here in the middle of verse 1 here where it says, and when he was seated his disciples came to him. You know, as we've been covering in our studies on the Gospels, I hope we've come to realize that every word that is recorded in the Gospels for us is important. We've seen that demonstrated again and again that every word has meaning in there. There's a meaning and lesson behind everything that the writers of the Gospels tell us. And last time again we talked about the first part of that verse. So now let's look more closely at some of the details that are easy to miss if we don't understand the background. So Matthew first tells us here, before getting into the teaching, that Jesus, when he was seated, when he was seated, does that just mean that well, it's a hot day and Jesus just found a rock to sit down on and it was convenient for him to do that. So that's what he did.

A point we miss if we don't understand the history and the culture is that rabbis or noted teachers gave authoritative teaching while seated.

Gave authoritative teaching while seated. As I'm doing today, this is coincidence, but it wasn't planned. But that's the way rabbis typically taught is while seated, not standing. They would read from the scriptures, from the scrolls, while standing, but the rabbis would teach while they were seated. We actually see a number of references to this in the Gospels. Here's one of them. I'll go through five or six of these here. 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 this is referring to something they have actually found these in several synagogues in Galilee. It's actually a carved stone chair. And in some cases, you actually have written, carved on the side of them in Hebrew, Moses' seat. So we know exactly what this is talking about. It was a chair in the synagogue, carved out of stone or wood. And the scribes and the Pharisees, who were the teachers of the law, that's what the scribes were, teachers of the law, means the same thing, would sit in Moses' seat in the synagogue and give their official teaching of the law. And Jesus is therefore, whatever they tell you to observe, so this tells us what they were teaching. They were explaining the law, giving the law that people were to observe or to follow that observe and do. So Jesus himself confirms this was the practice. Let's notice several examples of where Jesus did this, where he sat to authoritatively teach. Luke 4, verse 20, we've talked about this. This is in the synagogue at Nazareth at the beginning of Christ's ministry. And this is just picking a verse out of context, but it says, then he closed the book.

The context is he is standing up and reading from the law, from the scroll.

It's not the book, it was a scroll. So he closed the book, gave it back to the attendant at the synagogue, and sat down. Because part of the synagogue service would be a reading from from the Hebrew Scriptures, and then a teaching based on that. So he sits down, and the eyes of all who are in the synagogue were fixed on him. They're looking at him. They want to see what his teaching is. So he stands to read from the scrolls, but then he sits down to teach. That's what's going on there. Another verse, Mark 9, in 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. So he sat down to teach, to give his authoritative teaching. Another one, Matthew 13, verses 1 and 2, on the same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea.

He's not just going out there to sit and twiddle his thumb, because, we read next, and great multitudes were gathered together to him. Why? Well, they came because he sat down to teach, and they came and gathered around to hear his teaching as well. Another one, similar, Matthew 15, verses 29 through 30, Jesus departed from there, skirted the Sea of Galilee, and went up on the mountain, and sat down there. Then great multitudes came to him. Same exact thing. He's sitting to teach the multitudes. And also, Matthew 24, verse 3, at the beginning of the sermon, well, this was the real sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Mount of Olives, otherwise known as the Olivet Prophecy. Now, as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, tell us, when will these things be? The things that would lead up to his return.

And then finally, as he is being tried, as he is on trial for his life, Matthew 26, 55, Jesus says, in that hour, Jesus said to the multitudes, have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to take me? I sat daily with you, teaching in the temple. And you did not seize me at that time. So why, what is it about my teaching that makes you want to seize me? Is what he's saying. He's saying that he sat and taught daily in the temple. So again, this is the posture in which rabbis would give their authoritative teaching there. And Jesus, we see, did that, did that repeatedly. Now, it's quite interesting, you know, this sounds rather quaint to us, but we actually see traces of this carried out today.

One example, not sanctioning this, but the Pope, for instance, when he speaks ex cathedra, what does that mean? Ex cathedra is Latin, and it literally means, ex is from the chair, from the chair. In Catholic doctrine, when the Pope speaks from the chair, what he says is infallible. It is his authoritative teaching. They probably picked that up from Jesus and the practice of the early rabbis there. Another example, colleges and universities. You'll hear of professors who occupy the so-and-so chair of economics, or the chair of theology, or the chair of political science, or political studies, or something like that. It's called the chair. Does that mean there's a literal chair? No, it doesn't. It's describing a position, an authoritative position for teaching. So that custom even exists today in some of our terminology used in colleges and universities, which goes back all the way back 2,000 years to the rabbis sitting to give their official teaching. So what is Matthew's point in saying this?

The point is actually pretty obvious. What he's doing in giving us this little detail is to tell us that what follows in the Sermon on the Mount is the official teaching of Jesus Christ.

And because it is his official teaching, we'd better pay attention to it. This is our rabbi speaking, and in the view of the day, the rabbis spoke for God. They represented God in his teaching. But in this case, who is the rabbi? The rabbi IS God. The rabbi is God in the flesh, Emmanuel, God with us. So we'd better be sure that we're paying attention to his official teaching, which Matthew then records for us in the Sermon on the Mount.

One other aspect. Let's look at the next verse here. Verse 2. Then he opened his mouth and taught them, saying... One of the study questions I sent out was, isn't this kind of redundant? Didn't he have to open his mouth to teach? What's going on there? Is Matthew just tossing in extra words? Being redundant? What does this mean? Was there any other way for Jesus to teach? Did he sometimes write in the dirt? Did he use sign language? Is Matthew pointing out that on this occasion he chooses to speak verbally? Well, no, that's not what is going on. Our song leaders don't get up and introduce the speakers and say, and now to open his mouth and give us the sermon we'll hear from so-and-so. No, we don't talk that way. But it did have specific meaning in the culture of that day. And Matthew includes this because of that specific meaning. As usual, as we find so often in the Gospel of Matthew, something deeper is going on, something historically and culturally significant. And without understanding that history and culture, we miss this part of what Matthew is trying to tell us. To open one's mouth, and I'll put it up here on screen for you, to open one's mouth is a Hebrew expression that signifies a profound or important discourse or proclamation. I'll read that again. It's a Hebrew expression that signifies a profound or important discourse or proclamation.

Matthew is the only Gospel writer who uses this expression. And again, who is Matthew writing to? He's writing to a Jewish audience, a Hebrew audience. So we don't really have any close equivalent to that in English. But it's a Hebrew way of saying that what follows is very profound. It's very important. And Matthew's audience would have understood this expression because it's used several times in the Hebrew scriptures that illustrate this. Again, I'll give you five, six, or seven of these. First one, Psalm 51. And verse 15, this is from David.

And he says, "'O Lord, open my lips,' or, "'Open my mouth, and my mouth shall show forth your praise.'" Again, don't try to write all these down. Just write down the references if you want those. Another one, Psalm 78 and verse 1. This is a Psalm from Asaph.

"'Give ear, O my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old.'" Another one from Proverbs 31 and verse 9 from Solomon. "'Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and the needy.'" Another one from Ezekiel 3 and verse 27 where God directly says to Ezekiel, "'But when I speak with you, I will open your mouth, and you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord God.'" Here's a very profound illustration of what follows is something very important, very urgent. And here God says He will open Ezekiel's mouth, "'And you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord.'" These are the words of God I'm giving you.

And a final one, Ezekiel 29 and verse 21. "'In that day I will cause the horn, or the strength, 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 again, we see this is a pretty common Hebrew expression used a number of times in the Hebrew Scriptures and Matthew's audience when he says Jesus sat down to give His authoritative teaching and He opened His mouth. That means that what follows is something that is very important.

That again, we really need to pay attention to. So again, Matthew, just with these two little phrases that he sat down and that he opened his mouth just with those seven or eight words, he's telling his audience that this is very, very important. It's very urgent. This is the authoritative teaching of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. So we'd better pay attention to it.

And again, if we don't understand the culture and the history, we miss these really crucial clues of what Matthew is telling us here.

This is why again, every word of God's Word is important and why understanding the culture and history and historical background is so important because without that we miss out on some of these important things that Matthew is trying to tell us. We're at a breaking point now. We're going to transition to something else. So any questions about what we've talked about so far? Okay. All right. We'll go right ahead then. Last time, I spent quite a bit of time talking about how Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount is a compilation of a number of Jesus's teachings and sayings that he gave at different times and places over the course of his ministry.

When Matthew writes here, then he opened his mouth and taught them saying... Matthew uses a verb tense in Greek that we don't have an equivalent in English. There are just some things in Hebrew, some things in Greek that do not translate well. One is the verb taught here. The verb tense... In English, we have past, present, and future. I did this last week. I am doing this right now. That's past. This is present. I will do this tomorrow. That's future. We have those three tenses. Greek has a number of different tenses that we don't have in English, so it affects a way we do or do not always grasp the meaning or the way translators translate some things. The translators try to make it clearer for us in English, and because our English is limited in a case like this, sometimes we miss the nuances of what is there in the original Greek. In Greek, this word taught up here means something that is a repeated action, something that started and continued there. So, a way to translate that into English and capture the real meaning, although it's awkward English, a way to translate it more accurately would be, then he opened his mouth, and this is what he used to regularly teach them, saying. This goes along with the point I talked about a lot last time about.

Again, this is a compilation of Christ's teaching over several years. This is reinforced in this Greek verb tense that is used here. The Sermon on the Mount wasn't a one-time thing. Matthew is telling us as clearly as he can in the Greek that this is what Jesus used to regularly teach his followers here. So, it just reinforces the point that I made last time. But I did want to bring that out, that again, the Sermon on the Mount is a summary of Christ's teaching, which he regularly gave, and which Matthew and others of the disciples probably committed large portions of that to memory. That's why we have in Matthew three chapters, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, where Matthew has memorized a lot of Christ's teaching and preserved for us here.

With that bit of background, then we get into Christ's beatitudes again. Again, we'll read through them again to refresh it in our minds.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 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. And blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

One of the study questions I sent out earlier this week and last night was, when Jesus uses this phrase, blessed is or blessed are, is this a rim-es?

Is this a rim-es?

Well, I kind of gave away the fact that it is because I said, if it is, what does it mean? What's he referring to?

I want to ask her a show of hands. How many of you looked it up?

But this again is a profound rim-es.

We talked about a really profound one last time. The granddaddy of all rim-es is, maybe this one is the grandmother of all rim-es, because it's close. It's quite a profound rim-es here.

And what is the deeper meaning of this rim-es? First of all, let me illustrate the rim-es here for us.

This blessed is or blessed are that we've seen in all these passages right here, is a rim-es to many Psalms and Proverbs.

This is a common Hebrew expression or formulation in the Psalms and Proverbs. And Jesus's audience would have immediately recognized it.

Let's notice some examples of this.

And there are a lot of them. So I'm just giving this to illustrate it. You can look it up on your Bible software. Just look up blessed is or blessed are or happy is and happy are. And you'll find this list. There's actually 30 of them, so don't try to write them all down. I'm just giving you these to show the depth of the rim-es and the depth of this particular expression. How often it is used in the Hebrew Scriptures.

And notice these examples. Sometimes it is translated blessed. Sometimes it's translated happy.

But the Hebrew word is the exact same word. It's the exact same word. Blessed and happy. Exact same word.

So notice these examples here. Psalm 1.1. Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.

Now notice again which verse this is. This is the first verse of the book of Psalms.

The book of Psalms was something that every Jewish man and a lot of the women would have memorized.

So when Jesus says, blessed are, they're immediately going to think Psalm 1.

Psalm 1, verse 1. That's the way the book.

What were the three divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures? The law, the prophets, and the writings.

The law, the prophets, and the writings.

Or is it sort of the writings in one place in the Gospels? I didn't include this in my notes. It's called the Psalms because the Psalms was the first book of that section of the Hebrew Scripture called the writings.

And it starts with what verse? Here, blessed is.

So people would have certainly picked up on this, but let's notice all the others. 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. Next verse. Blessed is the man unto whom the eternal imputes not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

Psalm 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 who makes the Lord his trust. 41.1. Blessed is He that considers the poor. 65.4. Blessed is the man whom you choose.

Psalm 84.4. Blessed are they that dwell in your house.

Next verse. 84.5. Blessed is the man whose strength is in you.

Psalm 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 who 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, that seek Him with the whole heart. 127.5. Happy. Again, same word for blessed. Happy is the man that has his quiver full of children.

128.1. Blessed is everyone that fears the Lord, that walks in His ways. 128.2. Happy or blessed shall you be, and it shall be well with you.

144.15. Blessed or happy is that people whose God is the Lord. Psalm 146.5. Happy or blessed is He that has the God of Jacob for His help, whose hope is in the Lord, His God.

So those are the ones from the Psalm. So now, notice how many there are in the Proverbs. It's not as many, but still quite a few.

And here, generally, it's translated happy most of the time, but again, it's the exact same word. Proverbs 3, 13. Happy or blessed is the man that finds wisdom, and the man that gets understanding.

832. Blessed are they that keep my ways. 834. Blessed is the man that hears me.

1421. He that has mercy on the poor. Blessed is He. Here, it's switched. The sentence doesn't start with blessed, but it ends with it.

1421. He that has mercy on the poor. Happy or blessed is He.

1620. Who so trusts in the Lord. Happy or blessed is He.

Proverbs 28, 14. Happy or blessed is the man that fears always. And last, Proverbs 29, verse 18. He that keeps the law happy or blessed is He.

Again, just say 30 different uses of this formula of blessed is or blessed are these people.

I might mention, too, that in the Greek, and you can see this in your Bible, you can actually see it if you have your harmony there, that the word are looking at the at the beatitudes.

Actually, it's not in here the way I formatted that. But if you look at your Bibles, are has been inserted in there. There's not a verb in the original.

So it just says, well, I'll get to that in a minute.

Nor in Hebrew, all these expressions, where we read blessed are, blessed is, happy are, happy is. There's not a verb there.

The reason for that is that...

Well, let's see. Do I want to get into this? I'm maybe getting ahead of my notes.

Okay, yeah. The reason I mention that is this actually makes the Rhem as even more clear, because it does away with the is and the are. So Jesus is using a word structure that everybody in his Jewish audience would immediately understood. That he's using a Rhem as back to all of these multiple uses of that formula in the Hebrew Scriptures. So it's clear that Jesus is using a Rhem as here, pointing people back to these passages that are very familiar to them. But what's the point? What's the point of the Rhem as? The whole point of a Rhem as is to point people back to something, to give them a clue, to look back at something, to point to a deeper meaning that isn't necessarily there on the surface. So what's the point of the Rhem as? What's the underlying message? What message is Jesus trying to get across by pointing people back to these multiple uses of that formula? I got any takers on that?

Okay, let's break it down then. What are the two books that Jesus is using a Rhem as to?

We just showed them all up there. Psalms and Proverbs. Who is most closely identified with the book of Psalms? King David. King David, exactly. Who's most closely identified with the book of Proverbs? King Solomon. Good, good. You're starting to think first century. Good.

So when Jesus uses all of these pointers, all of these clues, looking back to the books of Psalms and the book of Proverbs, he's pointing people to look at David and Solomon. Who is David?

David is Israel's greatest and most beloved king. Out of all of the kings of Israel in their history, David was their hero. Our modern-day equivalent might be George Washington. David was the greatest of their kings. They had great affection for him.

So that's who David is. David is Israel's greatest and most beloved king.

So that's why he's pointing them back to David. But what's the parallel?

By quoting and referring people back to the psalms, by using that same formula, as David did so often, what is Jesus saying? He's saying that he is the one who is like David, that he will become Israel's greatest and most beloved king.

He's wanting people to connect David's teaching through the psalms with his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. And as David was Israel's greatest and most beloved king, so he will ultimately be Israel's greatest and most beloved king. What about his Ramesh to the Proverbs? Who was Solomon?

Well, Solomon was Israel's wisest king, known throughout the ancient world for his wisdom, to the point that the queen of Sheba came to hear Solomon's wisdom.

So by drawing this parallel, drawing this Ramesh back to the Proverbs, it's a twofer. It's a twofer Ramesh. So Ramesh back to the psalms. It's also a Ramesh. Back to the Proverbs. So Ramesh back to David, because as David was Israel's greatest and most beloved king, so Jesus is ultimately going to become Israel's greatest and most beloved king.

And pointing to the Proverbs, he's pointing back to Solomon, who is the wisest king.

What's the parallel? The parallel is that Jesus is saying that he is like Solomon, Israel's wisest king. Do you get the Ramesh? Take some thinking. You have to think first century. You don't have to think with our analytical Western minds. You have to think like a first century person. Hearing Jesus's words would have thought or would have come into their mind. They're hearing Jesus use this formula that's throughout the psalms and throughout the Proverbs. And he's teaching as David did. He's teaching as Solomon did. All these words that we've memorized, these sayings, these praises. So what's he's doing? He's drawing the point that he is a teacher and a king like David and like Solomon there. So this is why I keep talking about Ramesh so much, because if we don't understand that, we miss a lot of the message, the underlying message, that is given there for us. Any questions? We're at another transition point here.

Any questions here? Yes, Tina?

Exactly. I didn't include that in my notes. But yes, there he explicitly draws the parallel, that he is one who is greater than Solomon. And I think in that same passage, he, if I'm not mistaken, even refers to the the queen of the south coming to him to hear his wisdom. And he says, but yet a greater one than Solomon is here, referring to himself. Yeah, great, great point there. Yeah, excellent. Yeah, you're thinking first century. Wonderful. Okay. Okay, we'll move on into the final section here. So yeah, by way of transitioning into this, notice the things we've covered. We covered how Matthew includes Jesus sitting to teach, which conveys a message that this is his authoritative teaching. We've discussed Matthew's use of he opened his mouth, which is saying that what follows is very profound, very important for us. We've covered this rim, as that Jesus uses eight or nine times right here, back to the Psalms and back to the Proverbs, pointing himself, linking himself to King David and to King Solomon. So these are all part of setting the stage for what's followed. This is why he said we're not going to get very far in the Beatitudes today. We talked for about an hour here and just got through two verses. So now let's look in the remainder of the sermon at a key word that Jesus uses here. And I'm going to end this sermon talking about one word. One word, because every word is important. And this word is particularly important if we're going to understand the meaning of the Beatitudes. And that word is blessed or blessed. What does it mean? Some of you may have a Bible translation that translates this as happy. Some do that. But again, this is what the word Beatitude means. It's Latin for blessed or happy. And I think that that probably influenced the translators, frankly, and how they translated this word as either blessed or happy there. But again, to recap a point I made earlier, it seems kind of crazy to say that a person is blessed or happy when they are mourning.

It's self-contradictory. Or when they're being persecuted. Or when they're being reviled. How can you be happy when you're mourning? Or being persecuted? Or being reviled? So what does Jesus mean here? What do the underlying words mean? We're actually dealing with two different words here. We're dealing with the Greek words that Matthew and Luke use for blessed. And they use the same exact word. But Jesus wasn't speaking Greek. He's speaking either Hebrew or Aramaic. So we need to understand what the underlying Hebrew or Aramaic that Jesus is using means. And then we need to understand what the Greek that it's translated into means. So we're going to talk about those two words that are translated blessed here through the remainder of today. And again, it's unfortunate and it's going to take some time because this is a case where both of these words don't have a good one-word equivalent in English. So that's why it's going to take some time to explain that. So it makes it a little bit challenging to come up with a good explanation that we can all follow and makes it very difficult to come up with a good one-word equivalent in English. The Hebrew word that is used in all of the examples I gave you from Psalms and Proverbs is Asher. You see it up on screen. E-S-H-E-R. And it means blessed or happy. I've talked about Hebrew before, how biblical Hebrew is a much more limited vocabulary than what we have in English. In English we have two different words, blessed and happy, that are related but have totally different connotations to them. In Hebrew you just have one word covering a range of meanings that would include blessed and happy. In the King James this word, Asher, is translated blessed 60% of the time and happy 40% of the time. It's used I think 35 times off the top of my head, I believe. So that's it. That's all we have to go on with understanding the Hebrew word. That's the only way that the word is translated, either blessed or happy. But to complicate things, there's no problem that can't with effort be made more complicated. So I'm going to make it more complicated for you. In English, blessed and happy are adjectives. What is an adjective? An adjective is a word that describes the state of something or the condition or something. It's a descriptive word about something. But the Hebrew word, Asher, is a noun. So the translators have the difficulty of trying to take a word that is a noun, blessed or happy is the man, blessed or happy are they, and translate it into an adjective because it doesn't make sense to have a noun describing a noun. In English, it's just very awkward, so the translators have a real challenge. Both are in Hebrew trying to convey this. So Asher is a noun referring to a person living in a state or condition of blessedness or happiness. It's not an adjective, blessed or happy. It's a noun referring to somebody who is in a state or condition of blessedness or happiness. I can tell I'm just going to give Mikola Fitz back there today. She's trying to explain all of this with sign language. So I feel your pain, Mikola.

She may quit after today. I don't know. So why is this important? Well, it's important. It's something of a fine distinction. So let's look at it this way. Can you be in a state of happiness while not being happy at that particular moment? Well, yes, you can't because your overall state is happy even though you might not be happy at that particular moment. Can you be in a state of blessedness while not feeling particularly blessed at that particular moment? Well, yeah, obviously we can. So this word, Escher, is used of a person's overall condition even though the person may not be feeling particularly blessed or happy at that moment. It's describing the overall state or condition of the person's life. One source I read, again, this is really awkward in English, but it used the illustration. What the Hebrew really means is something like, oh, the blessedness of the man or the woman or the person who...such and such. If you put it in a noun form, that's the way it would translate. Oh, the blessedness of the man or the woman or the person who loves God and follows his law and so on. That's literally the way it means, but it's just so awkward in English. The translators chose a different round. I don't blame them. They're trying to get the point across in the best way that they could. What about our English word, happy? Where does it come from? Well, actually, the root of the English word, happy, comes from several old root words that mean luck, luck or chance. It's 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. We're going to be happy. And if things are not going our way by luck or chance or whatever, then we're not happy. And in general, that's true, but we know there is no such thing as luck. There's no such thing as fortune. The word fortune comes from the Roman goddess Fortuna, who supposedly controlled your fortune, your luck. What happened to you?

So it's not a matter our happiness is and blessedness is not ultimately a matter of luck or good or bad fortune or anything like that. Those are false pagan concepts that have no basis in reality. So for that reason, if it comes down to choosing between blessed or happy, blessed or blessedness is a better way to translate this Hebrew word.

I'd like to read something to you that I think sums this up pretty well.

And I probably could have just read this paragraph and saved myself 15 minutes of explanation here. But this is from Vines' complete expository dictionary of Old and New Testament words.

This is a resource I gave to all of our men in our speech class.

And it says regarding this Hebrew word, basically this word connotes the state of prosperity or happiness that comes when a superior bestows his favor or blessing on one. In most passages where this word is used, the one bestowing favor is God himself. So I think this really comes the best to capturing the meaning and the sense and the intent of this word than anything. So to draw a parallel, well actually before I get into the parallel, it goes on to give several examples of this, including one verse in Job where Job is actually being corrected.

There. Now, do we feel happy or blessed when we're corrected? Well, normally no. That's an unpleasant experience there. Are we happy when we're corrected by God? No, generally not. We don't like that because it's not pleasant. But are we blessed when we are corrected by God? Yes, absolutely, because the Lord disciplines every son whom he loves. So yes, we are blessed. We're blessed to have that relationship. We're blessed to have a God who loves us enough to correct us. So we are receiving favor from God. So we are absolutely blessed when we are corrected, even though we may not feel like it at the time. So getting back to this explanation up here, that this connotes a state of prosperity or blessedness that comes when a superior conveys his favor on a person. Think about how you feel when somebody bestows an unexpected favor on you. Maybe at work. Your boss gives you an unexpected raise or a bonus, a quarterly bonus. You're in bonus that you weren't expecting. How does it make you feel? It makes you feel pretty blessed, doesn't it? So I think this is a good way to understand the meaning of this word that is so awkward and so difficult to translate into English, that we are blessed when God bestows his favor on us. He is doing things for our good because we have a relationship with him as his children, and we have a father who always does good things for his children, even if the children may not appreciate it or understand or think that at the time, like when they're being corrected here. So some food for thought. As we go through these beatitudes, I want you to think about this definition, this explanation, that we are blessed. This word, blessed, means it's a state of prosperity or happiness that comes when somebody has bestowed favor on us. And the one bestowing that favor is God, God himself.

So now let's switch. We've talked about the Hebrew. Now let's switch to Greek. Because Jesus was speaking Hebrew, Escher would have been the word that he would have used there. And all these remsim back to Psalms and Proverbs. But it has to be translated into Greek by Matthew and Luke.

The word that is used in Greek is makarios, makarios, which means blessed or happy.

Same two words. That's the way it's translated in the New Testament, the only two ways that it's translated there. So not a great deal of help in helping us to understand what this word is all about.

So to understand this word, and this gives us also a better understanding of the kind of blessedness that Jesus is talking about, and that's why I'm spending so much time on this.

What are the origins of this word, makarios? In the ancient Greek world, this word makarios was used in reference to the island of Cyprus.

The island of Cyprus is in the Mediterranean. If you can visualize it on a map, it's just below Turkey. It's quite a large island, not terribly far from the Holy Land there. And this is a photo of the island of Cyprus. A beautiful Mediterranean island. You've probably seen photos of the Greek islands and so on. And why did the Greeks use this word makarios for Cyprus? Well, they used it because Cyprus had such a good climate. It had such good weather, a beautiful Mediterranean climate, such good soil, could grow anything and everything, trees, bearing fruit, vines, bearing fruit, all kinds of flowers. Such good minerals could be dug from the ground.

The Greeks called Cyprus makarios, or as we would translate in English, the happy place. Sometimes we hear about going to our happy place. Well, to the Greeks, Cyprus was their happy place.

Makarios there. So that's what they called it. And they called it there because they referred to the island and to the people there as makarios. As people were happier, who were blessed, as the Greeks saw it because it had everything. Great climate, great soil for growing things, fertile soil, beautiful plants that grew olives and pomegranates and fruits and vegetables and everything you could ever want.

To use a parallel in English, we might think of Hawaii, or Tahiti, or someplace like that. I know there are some people who are some of the Caribbean islands. I know some people like to go to the Caribbean or Hawaii or places like that for the feast year after year because it's their happy place. They just love going back there again and again and I get it.

I've been to Hawaii. Beautiful, wonderful place there. So this is the connotation of this word makarios. It's a place or a state where everything you need to be happy or blessed is there for you. Who provides that state for us? God does. That's why Jesus can say, blessed are those who? Our poor in spirit, our meat, our peacemakers, etc. and so on through that. We would think that we would be blessed to live in a place like this, like Hawaii, like Tahiti, like the Caribbean, like Cyprus there. So this word has basically the same meaning as the Hebrew asher that we talked about here, but it's a little easier to visualize when we understand the background and how that word was commonly used at that time.

It basically means, makarios means to be especially favored or privileged or blessed by God. Going back to the word happy as a matter of luck or chance, we can see there's a vast difference between happiness as a matter of luck or chance compared to these deeper meanings of asher and makarios, which mean that we are blessed because we are in a relationship with a heavenly Father who loves us, because we're in a relationship with a God who only wants the best for us, and 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 or greater blessings than our heavenly Father. So the idea conveyed in the Greek word makarios is one of being blessed, but in a way that doesn't depend on chance or doesn't depend on luck or good fortune or bad fortune or anything like that. And this is why the Apostle Paul, who understood this deeply, writes this for us in Philippians 4 verses 11 and 12. And what are Paul's circumstances when he writes his letter to the church in Philippi?

He's under house arrest in Rome. He's got a potential death sentence hanging over his head. And what does he say? Because he has this relationship with God, he says, I've learned in whatever state I am to be content. I know how to be a beast, and he knew how to be a beast. He goes through elsewhere, talks about the beatings he endured, the shipwrecks, being hanged to a piece of a ship debris in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and not knowing if he's going to die there, being beaten with rods, being abused, that sort of thing.

I know how to be a beast, and I know how to go abound. Everywhere in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. And then he goes on to say, I didn't include this verse, but he goes on to say, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Paul knew that being happy and being blessed wasn't a matter of his current state at the moment. His current state at the moment when he wrote these words is he's under house arrest in Rome and doesn't know if the next knock on the doors, the executioner, coming to take off his head.

But he says he's learned to be content in whatever state he is. He knew that regardless of the physical state or circumstances at the moment, he was under the watch and under the care of a God who loved him and a God who was determined to see Paul in his kingdom as an eternal child of God. And Paul's contentment and peace of mind came from having that close faith and that close trust and that deep relationship with God and not from his physical circumstances. Those physical circumstances can and do change throughout our lives.

But one thing never changes, and that is God's love for us. And God's desire to see us be a part of his family and to live with him forever. And that is the point of this word blessed or blessed in the beatitudes. We may be mourning. We may be persecuted. We may be reviled.

But because we have a relationship with God and because we have faith and trust and confidence in Him, we are blessed regardless of our physical outer circumstances at the time.

And how do we have that close relationship with God?

We have that close relationship with Him by being poor in spirit, by having 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 persecuted for righteousness sake.

That's how we have that relationship on which our blessedness depends.

And how are we blessed when we have these characteristics, these attitudes, this behavior in our lives? Well, because the closer we draw to God and our relationship with Him and our surrender and our submission to Him, the more we begin to experience those blessings that are brought out in the latter part of each beatitude. The blessedness of ours is the kingdom of heaven. Of ours is to be comforted. Of ours is to inherit the earth.

To be filled. To obtain mercy. To see God. To be called the children of God.

And to inherit the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God. As we develop these attitudes and character traits within our lives as reflected in the first part of each of these beatitudes, we ultimately grow in the blessing of the second part of each of these beatitudes.

And we begin to experience these now in this life, but we will experience their ultimate fulfillment in the kingdom of God. And we'll begin going into the meaning of each one of these beginning next time. Any questions before we wrap up today?

Okay, if not, if you think of any other questions, feel free to catch me after services. So we'll have our closing hymn now.