May 28, 2023
Matthew 5:1-12

The title of the Sermon is “Beatitude Blissfulness.”

OUTLINE
1 The beatitude benefits
2 The application —the how to— section begins.

I have somewhat of a lengthier introduction this morning. How could I not? We are beginning our talk on the Sermon of the Mount this morning.

The Sermon of the Mount has been labelled many wonderful titles like, “The Compendium of Christ’s Doctrine,” “The Magna Charta of the Kingdom,” “The Manifesto of the King.” There is agreement that in the Sermon on the Mount, lies the essence of the teachings of Jesus to the inner circle of chosen men and the world. (Barclay)

But I must confess that if I had heard Jesus’ first sermon recorded in Matthew, I suspect that I would have left confused and “not comforted.” (Yancey, p 109) People have often contemplated the sermon for many years before drawing any hard conclusions. People still look at the Sermon in wonder.

The Sermon of course begins with the Beatitudes; the eight sayings of Jesus at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes get their name from the Latin word for blessed, “beatus.” ³ Blessed has a few meanings “supreme blessedness, happiness”; prosperous (LSJ); but we sometimes think of “blessed” as divine or heavenly bliss (Hart) or Christian joy.

There are many varied views on how to think about and approach the Beatitudes. Spurgeon preached that the Beatitudes are a ladder that is to be climbed; that one Beatitude leads to the other to the other and so on as one rung of a ladder leads to another. Or perhaps you would agree with Barclay, the Beatitudes are a part of any and every Christian’s life by default¹ That the Beatitudes are a part of every person’s life at conversion. Others would prefer the views of the Christian mystics who claim that there is a special depth of understand and especially depth of experience in their relationship to Jesus as these virtues are contemplated; that is as Inge wrote, to “be a partaker of the Divine nature” the goal must be a “state of perfect contemplation.” (Inge, p 6, 10)⁴ Many throw up their hands towards the Beatitudes and have joined the ranks of Yancey, when he exclaimed that, he “may never be ready to declare, ‘This is what the Beatitudes mean.’” (Yancey, p 109)

I hope to give confidence to us all as we look at the beatitudes this morning. But I will say in part here that, I do agree somewhat with the mystics in that, the Beatitudes must be contemplated —better, meditated on— by each Christian. One must always take the Scriptures into serious and often strenuous thought if to ever receive their benefits. I would add that the next step for each Christian is to take action on those regular meditations after being convinced of God’s truth. He does this never forgetting that God has equipped him —through the indwelling of the Spirit— for taking hold of the virtuous, Christ-like life as explained by the Scriptures. This equipping being the work and power of the Holy Spirit.

Along with those comments, I believe that, what the Ten Commandments are to the Mosaic Law (in that they summarize them), The Beatitudes are —at their core— a summary to the Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes explain Christian character traits and God’s associated blessings for embracing each one of the Beatitudes. The rest of the Sermon on the Mount, in its essence teaches us, through commandments, the details and the “how to” embrace the Beatitudes as a way of life. “It has been well said, ‘The Beatitudes describe the attitudes that ought to be in the believer’s life.’”[443, Wiersbe, Live Like …, p. 22]

READ

5:1 Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

• “Often a Rabbi gave instruction when he was standing or strolling about; [but] his … official teaching was done when he had taken his seat.” >> So Jesus indicated that this teaching is central and official when He sat down to teach the crowds. (Barclay)
• And it was here, in Matthew’s account of the gospel that Jesus’ disciples became visible.
• And it is straight away that Matthew presents a type. Now remember, “a type in Scripture is a person or thing in the Old Testament that foreshadows a person or thing in the New Testament.” (GotQuestions)
• The type: Christ preached this Sermon, “which was an exposition” of the law of love on a mountain because as Henry observed it was “upon a mountain the law was given [to Moses also]. But observe the difference: when the law was given, The Lord came down upon the mountain [in Moses’ case]; now the Lord went up; then, he spoke in thunder and lightning; now, [with a human] voice: then the people were ordered to keep their distance; now they are invited to draw near: a blessed change!”[438, edited for clarity]

2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

• In verse 2 there is an idiom —a saying— in Jesus’ day. This idiom of “he opened his mouth” was used to signify that “solemn, grave and dignified utterance” was taking place. It was the “preface for a most weighty” sayings of the first century Rabbis. … It was used of a teacher’s “utterances when he is really opening his heart and fully pouring out his mind.” (Barclay)
• I must also note that, Matthew used the phrase “and taught them” to describe Jesus’ teaching. That phrase is in the Greek’s imperfect tense verb form; “the imperfect tense, describes repeated, continuous, or habitual action in past time.”
• So this may mean that Jesus taught what is in the Sermon on the Mount throughout the time of Jesus’ ministry and that the Sermon on the Mount may have been put together from smaller sermons and sayings of Jesus by Matthew.⁵
• Nevertheless, Matthew presents this as a body of teaching, so we will cover it as such from here on out.

We are going to bring out some technical observations too from the first Beatitude and them discuss more of the applications of the rest. This is important for it brings out some important points that we should be aware of.

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

• Aramaic is almost certainly the mother tongue and most commonly used language of the Jews in Jesus’ day.²
• "Aramaic was “originally spoken by the ancient Middle Eastern people known as Aramaeans.” It was similar to Hebrew but it also had much Syriac and Phoenician in it as well.¹¹
• Why do I bring this up? It seems that the beatitudes were spoken in Aramaic and translated directly into Greek, for in the Beatitudes the verb “are” is not found (see here and here). (Barclay)
• So if one were to translate them more closely, they would read more like Hart translated them here as, “How blissful the destitute, abject in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of the heavens;”
  • Know too that heaven in most of our English translations is “heavens” plural in the Greek.
  • Again the word for “blissful” or “blessed” can also mean “happy,” “fortunate,” “prosperous,” but originally with a connotation of the divine or heavenly bliss. (Hart)

• Makarios ( Greek #3107 ) then describes that joy which has its secret within itself, that joy which is serene and untouchable, and self-contained, that joy which is completely independent of all the chances and the changes of life. … The Christian blessedness is completely untouchable and unassailable. “No one, [will take your joy from you” said Jesus in John 16:22]. The beatitudes [then] speak of that joy which seeks us through our pain, that joy which sorrow and loss, and pain and grief, are powerless to touch, that joy which shines through tears, and which nothing in life or death can take away. (Barclay)

• So how are these ones blissful if they be poor in spirit?
• We get the key from the Greek word translated “poor” in English.
  • In the Greek there are two words used for “poor.”
  1. There is the word penés (G3993): a day laborer who works for his living and has only enough money for each day. The poor man is “not destitute.” (Barclay; cf. Hart, Blueletter)
  2. There is also the word ptóchos (G4434): lit: one who crouches and cowers, hence the beggarly poor. This man is in a state of “absolute and abject poverty” in spirit. (Barclay)
  • Guess which one is used in this first Beatitude? Yes the latter.
  • So blessed is the man who is in abject and complete poverty in spirit. Blessed is the man who’s spirit is absolutely destitute. (Barclay)
  • So the blessed rightly understand their position in relation to God. The fear of the Lord has overcome these due to their parallel acknowledgment of where they are at positionally with God.
  • To understand where we are at as the way God sees the unbeliever is to take the first step towards a blessed life.
  • Whyte wrote, “You are a truly humble man when you are truly despised in your own eyes.”[457, Whyte, 1:89]
• A humble person is ready to receive Jesus as Savior.
• So to paraphrase this Beatitude more closely to the original it might read: Blessed, the bankrupt spirits, for theirs is the kingdom of heavens.

4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

• There are at least two major views with this Beatitude:
• #1 Mourning is the result from the people who are identified with Beatitude #1. That is being fully aware of their spiritual bankruptcy, they mourn over their condition.⁶
• Adapting a Jamieson quote here, “Religion, according to the Bible, is neither a set of intellectual convictions nor a bundle of emotional feelings,” but is instead a compound of both, the intellectual understanting of one’s position “giving birth” to the emotional mourning. So the first two beatitudes are joined together.[460, p. 896]
• Others disagree: Barclay wrote, “… the Greek word for to mourn, used here, is the strongest word for mourning in the Greek language. It is the word which is used for mourning for the dead, for the passionate lament for one who was loved.”
• Both have some merit in their interpretation and more importantly both will be solved in the future.
• We are reminded here of two verses:
  • Revelation 21:4, as the Lord is concluding this place as we know it and bringing forth the new heavens and the new earth, we read, "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
  • Isaiah spoke to theses days when he wrote in Isaiah 65:17, “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind."
  • One day all mourning will be in our forgotten past. What a Blessing that is coming for us!

5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

• Only Matthew’s account of the gospel is the only to mention meekness (3x in the Greek). (Constable)
• One may acknowledge their spiritual bankruptcy, but to respond meekly when others mistreat us is what Constable called “something else.” (Constable)
• Meekness is something most Americans will never grasp, much less practice.

• A missionary in Jamaica was once questioning some little boys on the meaning of Matthew 5:5 and asked, “Who are the meek?” A boy answered, “Those who give soft answers to rough questions.” We shall do well to remember this child’s definition. —Source: Unknown

• A more concrete definition is, Meekness is unreciprocated submission toward others. It has no desire to repaid in meekness.
• Notice the meek are going to have an inheritance—the earth.
  • We were talking last week about how the common conception of “heaven” doesn’t usually factor in the new earth of Revelation at all. But the NT teaches this overlooked point right out of the gate here in the beatitudes and the NT ends with this truth.
  • Inheritance is more than being in a place. Hodges used the illustration of being inside people’s homes; most of the time we will not inherit others’ houses. Conversely, the meek shall own the earth.[463]⁷
  • A major theme in the Sermon on the Mount is that God’s people will have an inheritance and rewards based on their level of faithfulness.[464, See Dillow, p. 67] Matthew lays out, Jesus’ primer on the matter here.

6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

• Matthew uses the term righteousness here "in the sense of personal holiness to God and doing His will not the “imputed righteousness” that we revive by faith. The righteousness mentioned here is not salvation; it is personal desire and action towards personal holiness. (Constable, et al.)
• So we must desire holiness, hard. Holiness does not come casually. There must be a hunger and a thirst for it!
• Constable had a good point here: “When believers [lament and sorrow over] their own, and society’s, sinfulness, and pray that God will send a revival to clean things up, they demonstrate a hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
• ILLUSTRATION: have parts of your life been more holy than others? COMMENT
• We are filled with righteousness when we crave it like our favorite foods. CRAVE
• The fulfillment of this beatitude is both here and now in our everyday choices, but we will be completely satisfied with God’s righteous transformation of our bodies in glorification.
• At the ultimate filling, “We’re gonna be home free”!⁹
• Again however, our responsibility is to crave righteousness today.

7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

• “The blessing of the merciful is that they will receive mercy from God. Jesus did not mean that people can earn God’s mercy for salvation by being merciful to others. He meant that God will deal mercifully with people who have dealt mercifully with their fellowmen.” (Constable)

8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

• Speaks to motive and holiness. Pure motives is the focus of “The Love Chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13.
• But the beatitude may also remind us of Ezekiel 36:26, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”
• One day we will have pure hearts, courtesy of our God!

9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

• Peacemaking “replicate(s)” the work of the Prince of Peace. (Constable)
• We often long for peace but yet we often too refuse to be the agents of peace.
• Lloyd-Jones suggested four things to do to foster peace:
  • "First, don’t talk so much …
  • Second, think about the implications of your action in the light of the gospel.
  • Third, go out of your way to make peace …
  • Fourth, spread peace where you are by being selfless, lovable, approachable, and by not standing on your dignity."[470, Lloyd-Jones, 1:124-25]

10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

• Here we see the first beatitude when the person of faith is the object not the subject. This person of faith is “passive” and is feeling the pain from an unholy world.[472, Jamieson, et al., pp. 897-98]
• “Persecution is as much a mark of discipleship as peacemaking. The world does not give up its hates and self-centered living easily. This brings opposition on disciples of Christ. Righteous people, those whose conduct is right in God’s eyes, those who are Christ-like, become targets of the unrighteous …” (Constable)
• Constable wrote, “Even though Jesus’ disciples suffer as they anticipate the earthly kingdom, they can find joy in knowing that that kingdom will eventually be theirs. It will [also] provide release from the persecution of God-haters when the ‘Man of Sorrows’ reigns.”

Conclusion

Martyn Lloyd Jones suggested four general lessons that the Beatitudes teach:[474, Lloyd-Jones, 1:33-38]

1. All Christians are to be like this, not just some.
2. All Christians are meant to manifest all of these characteristics, not just some.
3. None of these characteristics refers to one’s natural tendencies; they are all produced by the Holy Spirit in the Christian.
4. These characteristics indicate clearly the essential difference between the Christian and the non-Christian.

• The Beatitudes are rooted in the love of God and love of neighbor. “Love, says Tauler, is the ‘beginning, middle, and end of virtue.’ Its essence is complete self-surrender. We must lose ourselves in the love of God as a drop of water is lost in the ocean.” (Inge, 193)
• Adapting something Barclay wrote, “The greatness of the beatitudes is that they are not wistful glimpses of some future beauty; they are not even golden promises of some distant glory;” they are potentials of a steadfast joy “that nothing in the world can ever take away.”
• The Beatitudes requires us to choose deeper levels of the “love God holds out to us.” “That is the motive to stay pure.” (Yancey, p 119)
• “They describe and commend the good life.”[445, France, The Gospel …, p. 161]
• At the end of the day I don’t find myself unwilling —as Yancey does-- to understand the Beatitudes.
  • Was Jesus “poor in spirit.” Did He now empty Himself to accomplish His work?
  • Did Jesus mourn. Don’t we remember the shortest verse in the Bible John 11:35, “Jesus wept.”?
  • Was Jesus meek? Doesn’t Philippians 2:7 read in part, “he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.”?
  • Didn’t Jesus hunger and thirst for righteousness? Doesn’t Hebrews 4:15 read, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
  • Didn’t Jesus show mercy? Matthew 9:13, "Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
  • Wasn’t Jesus a peacemaker? Romans 5:1, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
  • Wasn’t Jesus persecuted? John 15:20, “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.”
  • “To put the issue bluntly, are the Beatitudes true? If so, why doesn’t the church encourage … mourning and meekness and persecution instead of striving against them? What is the real meaning of the Beatitudes, this cryptic ethical core of Jesus’ teaching?” (Yancey, p 109; error edited out)
  • The Beatitudes are a clarion call to “the complete union of the soul with God” though actions and attitudes that Christ had.¹⁰

Notes

^{Notes are not in numerical order above.}

¹ Barclay wrote, “That is most important, for it means that the beatitudes are not pious hopes of what shall be; they are not glowing, but nebulous prophecies of some future bliss; they are congratulations on what is. The blessedness which belongs to the Christian is not a blessedness which is postponed to some future world of glory; it is a blessedness which exists here and now. It is not something into which the Christian will enter; it is something into which he has entered.” (Barclay)

² See these two articles here and here regarding the languages of the Bible.

³ From WordNet 3.0. Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

⁴ “Mysticism is a rather broad and vague term, but it generally has to do with a spiritual communion with some type of ultimate reality or higher power. Christian mysticism brings the principles of mysticism into a pursuit of God in Christ. A Christian mystic believes that a relationship with God is intuitive and seeks closeness to God through subjective experiences and direct communion with Him. In Christian mysticism, the knowledge of God may be informed by the Bible, but there are other means of knowing Him, too. Christian mystics often emphasize the spiritual disciplines of prayer, meditation, fasting, solitude, and silence. Christian mystics seek an actual experience with God Himself, not mere knowledge about Him. In reality, all Christians are interested in knowing God Himself, not just facts about Him, yet not all Christians would be considered mystics. ¶ Countering Christian mysticism is what we might call Christian intellectualism, which seeks to approach God objectively and rationally, avoiding sentimentality and any notion that feelings can lead to truth. Christians who are more intellectually oriented may emphasize communion with God through personal Bible study, listening to biblical preaching, and fellowship with other believers. Many Christians would say that they experience God as He really is through these mediated experiences. They would say that the Bible does more than communicate facts about God but that it actually allows one to get to know Him directly. God does speak to us directly—through His written Word. It seems that most Christians and most Christian traditions will tend to be either more mystically based or more intellectually based.” (GotQuestions.org’s, “What are Christian mystics?”)

⁵ The Blueletter site defines the imperfect verb tense as it, "Generally represents continual or repeated action. Where the present tense might indicate “they are asking,” the imperfect would indicate “they kept on asking.”

Barclay wrote, “he opened his mouth and taught them saying. In Greek there are two past tenses of the verb. There is the aorist tense, and the aorist tense expresses one particular action, done and completed in past time. In the sentence, “He shut the gate,” shut would be an aorist in Greek because it describes one completed action in past time. There is the imperfect tense, and the imperfect tense describes repeated, continuous, or habitual action in past time. In the sentence, “It was his custom to go to Church every Sunday,” in Greek it was his custom to go would be expressed by a single verb in the imperfect tense, because it describes continuous and often-repeated action in the past.”

Constable wrote, “Comparison of this sermon with Jesus’ teachings recorded in the other Gospels, especially Mark and Luke, reveals that Jesus said some of the things recorded in this sermon on other occasions. For example, 13 sayings in this sermon show up again, at various times in Jesus’ ministry, according to Luke. This has raised the question: Is this sermon simply Matthew’s compilation of Jesus’ teachings, rather than a sermon that He delivered on one specific occasion? In view of the introduction and conclusion to the sermon that Matthew recorded, it seems that this was a sermon that Jesus delivered on one specific occasion, but Matthew may have selected and arranged the material to present an summary of Jesus’ teachings.”

⁶ Cf. Jamieson, et al. (Jamieson, Robert; A. R. Fausset; and David Brown. Commentary Practical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible. Reprint ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1961, p. 896).

⁷ Hodges, “Possessing the Kingdom,” The KERUGMA Message 1:2 (July-August 1991):1-2.

⁸ France, The Gospel …, p. 172. Cf. idem, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher, pp. 268-70. Edited for clarity.

⁹ A play on words from Wayne Watson’s song, “Home Free”. “At the ultimate healing We’re gonna be home free,” source genius.com.

¹⁰ The phrase, “the complete union of the soul with God” is from Canon Overton, but the thoughts he used with the phrase are different from mine.

¹¹ “Aramaic language,” britannica.com, cf. “What language did Jesus speak?,” gotquestions.org.

Works Cited

Scripture quotations [unless otherwise noted] are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Click here to access the works cited web-page for this document, save those marked as “Notes” or “Other Works Cited”–if any. Most of these cited works correspond to the verses they are outlined with. In the case of general background information and references, one will find cited material with the Bible books the citations are associated with. ¶ Furthermore, there may be numbered notes that are URL linked; these are usually retained numbered notes from Thomas Constable’s, “Dr. Constable’s Expository (Bible Study) Notes.” These links are preserved “as is” at the time of this work’s formation and sometimes include other citation information from Constable.

Other Works Cited

^{Note: Not all of these resources listed below were used in this particular sermon outline.}

Augsburger, David. Dissident Discipleship. Brazos Press, 2006.

Blomberg, Craig L. Matthew. New American Commentary, vol. 22, ed. David S. Dockery, et al., Broadman Press, 1992. Sourced from archive.org.
(https://archive.org/details/matthew0000blom)

________. Preaching the Parables: From Responsible Interpretation to Powerful Proclamation. Baker Academic, 2004. Sourced from archive.org.
(https://archive.org/details/preachingparable0000blom/page/82/mode/2up)

Bradley, Marshell C. Matthew: Poet, Historian, Dialectician. Studies in Biblical Literature, ed. Hemchand Gossai, vol. 103, Peter Lang, 2007.

Bruce, Alexander Balmain. The Training of the Twelve. Ed., A.C. Armstrong and Son, reprint 1984, Kregel Publications, 1971 edition.

Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest. Our Daily Bread Publishing, Online ver.

Chan, Francis. Crazy Love. David C. Cook, 2008.

Evans, Craig A. The Bible Knowledge Background Commentary: Matthew-Luke. Victor, 2003. Sourced from archive.org.
(https://archive.org/details/bibleknowledgeba00crai/mode/2up)

Ewald (, Georg Heinrich August von ?), quoted in William Ralph Inge, Christian Mysticism. Scribner’s, 1899, p 339)

Hendriksen, William. New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke. Baker Book House, 1984.

Inge, William Ralph. Christian Mysticism. Scribner’s, 1899.

“Introduction to Christian Mysticism: Weekly Summary.” The Center for Action and Contemplation, cac.org.

Phillips, John. Exploring the Gospels: John. Loizeaux Brothers, 1988.

Platt, David. Follow Me. Tyndale, 2013.

Yancey, Philip. The Jesus I Never Knew. Zondervan, 1995.