Exploring My Strange Bible - A Kingdom of Blessing - Gospel of Matthew Part 5

Episode Date: May 28, 2018

In this section, we’re exploring Jesus’s most famous collection of teachings in Matthew chapters 5-7. Jesus is announcing to the Kingdom of God that way of life that he’s inviting his followers to join only makes sense WITHIN the announcement that God’s Kingdom has arrived through Jesus. This teaching focuses on those famous little poetic sayings at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount called “The Beatitudes”. It makes reference to the types of people who are blessed, but what does that even mean? What would it mean for a Jewish prophet or rabbi to go around and announce that certain people are blessed? These are familiar words that can lose their power and sharpness from over-use, but we’ll explore more about these questions in this episode.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right. Well, in this episode, we're going to continue exploring the gospel according to Matthew. It's part of a bigger series that we're going to continue exploring the gospel according to Matthew.

It's part of a bigger series that we're in that was a teaching series I contributed to years ago when I was a pastor at Door of Hope. This is the opening section that we're exploring in this teaching of the famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' most famous collection of teachings in Matthew chapters 5 through 7. The setting for this is, of course, Jesus' announcement of the kingdom of God and that this way of life that he's inviting his followers into in the Sermon on the Mount only makes sense within the announcement that God's kingdom has arrived in and through Jesus. This teaching focuses on those famous little poetic sayings at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount called the Beatitudes about blessed are these kinds of people, blessed are these, blessed are those. So what does that even mean? What would it mean for a Jewish prophet,

rabbi to go around announcing that certain kinds of people are blessed or blessed if you're down with the King James pronunciation? So what does that even mean? Again, these are familiar words that can lose their power and sharpness from overuse. So let's relearn all over again what Jesus was trying to communicate through all of these blessings at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. There you go. They pack a surprise punch, at least they did for me, and I hope they can for you too. So there you go. Let's learn together. Here we go. These might be some of the most familiar words of Jesus to many of you. Some of you might have grown up with these blessings.

What are these? This is Jesus on a mountain talking to a big crowd of people, and he pronounces these nine blessings. And some of these are just really ingrained in some of our minds, these really vivid images of peacemaking and hunger and thirst for righteousness and being poor in spirit though if we actually try and explain it to somebody else most of us actually have no clue what any of those things mean but they sound nice you know because jesus said them and i think these blessings we call they're called the beatitudes which comes uh from uh the latin word for blessing or being fortunate uh which is where that name comes from. But, you know,

they're not. They don't actually seem that difficult to understand, do they? Jesus has his people, and he starts talking to them by pronouncing these blessings on them. And for, you know, being merciful and meek or gentle and pure in heart. And those are good things that Jesus wants us to be like. And so he pronounces a blessing upon them. It's pretty simple. I don't think I need to say more, I guess, right? Because it's so simple. But so you're right.

It's actually not complicated. But these nine blessings that Jesus opens up with are not complicated. In a similar way, like opens up with are not complicated. In a similar way, like a swimming pool is not complicated. You get in it. And immediately, like it's intuitive, you're wet, right? And you get in the shallow end maybe. And it's very, you're like, yeah, it's a swimming pool, precisely what I expect.

And then maybe you take a few steps. And you ask some questions. Like what on earth does it mean to be poor in spirit? What does that mean? precisely what I expect. And then maybe you take a few steps and you ask some questions like, what on earth does it mean to be poor in spirit? What does that mean? And who said meek in any conversation in the last year? Like, what does that word mean? And then you ask some questions. Then you're like, whoa, the pool is actually up, you know, to my waist now. And you take a few more steps and you're like, why does Jesus pronounce a blessing on people who cry a lot, right? Who mourn. Isn't that something I generally don't enjoy doing? And why is he blessing people who get beat up? Isn't that something I would want to avoid in most

scenarios? And then you're up to your neck now. And then you're like, why? What does it mean to be blessed in the first place? Blessed by whom? Blessed for what purpose? Blessed with what result? And who is he even saying these things to in the first place? And why does he begin one of his most famous collections of teaching with these nine blessings? And then you're waiting. And all of a sudden you realize the pool is 12 feet deep.

That's my experience with the Beatitudes. And I just helped you recreate it right there. And so in my mind, these sayings are, there's more than meets the eye. And they might seem a little bit kind of harmless or benign. You know, what's dangerous about nine blessings, you say over people. But these nine blessings, I'm convinced, are actually deeply challenging. And if we hear them rightly, I think they have the potential to actually completely turn upside down your view of yourself and of God and of other

people. And so that's what we're going to do. We're going to walk into the deep end of the pool and explore these. And actually, the first question, to me, the most helpful question that really began to unlock, for me, the deep end end of the pool is a question that you don't need to know a lick of ancient history. You don't need to know any other languages other than English to ask this question and answer it. And I think if you ask this question and answer it and you keep asking it and you keep asking it, every line through these blessings is deeply profound. It unlocks everything. And the question is simply this. Who is Jesus saying these nine blessings to, and on what occasion? I guess that's two questions, right? That was one. That's two questions. So who is Jesus talking to,

and in what setting or what context is he doing that? And asking that question actually might highlight something that's very common. These three chapters of Matthew, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, they're the most famous collection of Jesus' teachings. They're called the Sermon on the Mount in church history. And many people who primarily see Jesus as a moral teacher tend to lift these three chapters out of their context in Matthew and treat it like a little pamphlet. This is like the ethics of Jesus in summary. This is ethics light with Jesus or something like that.

And if you do that, I'm pretty convinced you'll really misunderstand what Jesus is trying to do in these three chapters because Matthew has placed them, he's placed chapter five after what chapter? And there's method to that madness, right? There's method to it. Because ethical teaching was one of the things that Jesus did, but only trying to flesh out the implications and how we should respond to what his core message was all about. And if you were here last week, we explored that. What is Jesus' core message? You would for sure hear him talking about this on any given day that you heard him teach. It's about the kingdom. Look, I even left the words

up from last week. So when you think of Jesus, think of the kingdom. Because look at chapter 4, Matthew 4. I know we're going to focus on 5, but just remember chapter 4. Look at chapter 4, Matthew 4. I know we're going to focus on 5, but just remember chapter 4. Look at chapter 4, verse 17. Jesus comes onto the public stage, and Matthew, thank you, Matthew. He has summarized the whole message of Jesus in one little sentence to make sure you don't miss the main idea. What's it about? Matthew 4, verse 17. Hey, repent.

Everybody, pay attention. Turn around. The kingdom of heaven has come near. So this is what we explored last week, the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven is the storyline of the whole Bible and about how humans have both rebelled and ruined ourselves, each other, and God's world. And God has set in line a whole set of promises in the story of the Old Testament scriptures to lead up to this promise that he would one day come among his people as king and reclaim his rightful rule and reign over his

people. And Jesus claimed that that's what was happening, and it was happening in himself and in what he was saying and in what he was doing. And he was utterly, and it was happening in himself and in what he was saying and in what he was doing. And he was utterly convinced that it was good news. It was really good news. And so what does Jesus do? He comes and announces the king and the kingdom in Salomon. And then what's the first thing? This is last week. What's the first thing Jesus did after that? You remember? He went for a walk on the lake, right? Very typical of Jesus. And he runs into these fishermen, right? These no-name fishermen. And what does he say to them?

Follow me. Look at chapter 4, verse 19. Come follow me, Jesus said, and I'm going to send you out to fish for people. At once they left their nets, and what did they do? They followed him. He sees two more fishermen. They're with their dad in the boat. And he calls them, and what do they do?

Look at verse 22, chapter 4, verse 22. Immediately, they leave the boat and dad, and what do they do? They follow him. Then Jesus goes around the whole region, right? Itinerant teacher kind of thing. Teaching, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, healing. And then who's coming to him? He's got fishermen in tow, right?

He's like unlikely bunch of fishermen. And then who else is starting to follow Jesus now? What does it say? Look at verse 24. News about him spread and what kinds of people are flocking to Jesus? Sick people, people whose bodies don't work, people with just pain and limbs that don't work, people who are oppressed by spiritual evil. They're called crazy or lunatics by everybody else. They're having seizures, the paralyzed.

And in this setting, this is Roman society, we thank them because the seedbed of whatever democracy and that whole philosophy of politics and more people had clean water than ever before because of the Romans and the aqueducts and the road systems. And it was at the same time the most cutucts and the road systems. And it was, at the same time, the most cutthroat society you could ever possibly imagine. And there's no welfare. There's no food stamps.

If you are one of these people, where do you live? What part of town do you live? You live in the slums. And you are most certainly pushed to the absolute margins. You're poor. You're subsistence living, day labor. And these are the people, Matthew makes it a point to tell us, who flock to Jesus. And what do these crowds do?

Look at verse 25, chapter 4. These large crowds of all these sick, hurting, poor fishermen, farmers, day laborers, they flock to Jesus from all these regions. Crowds of them from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, all across the Jordan. And among all these crowds, what are these sick, hurting people doing? What do they do? What's the last sentence of chapter 4? They follow him. So we have fishermen following Jesus when he calls them, and then we have these crowds of sick, hurting people who, in the eyes of Roman society, they're the losers, they're the unimportant, the insignificant. They're the ones flocking to Jesus. And among those crowds, a whole bunch of those are following him too.

Now, what's our question to ask of the nine blessings, what's our question? So who's Jesus talking to and in what setting? Chapter five. When Jesus saw the crowds, and you now know who makes up those crowds, he went to a mountainside and he sat down. His disciples came to him. Now, who's that? So, I think when we see that word, if you're familiar with the Gospels, you might think,

oh, the 12. He has these 12 close disciples. Now, does the circle of the 12 disciples exist yet? No, you're reading, this doesn't happen until chapter 10, right? So four of them are in tow now, the four fishermen. They're going to be part of the 12. But so who are the disciples? What's a disciple? Somebody who follows Jesus. Who's following Jesus? Loads of people. Loads of people. And primarily, Matthew says, what's the makeup of these disciples who are coming from the crowds? What's the makeup? Just, I'm trying to overemphasize the point to make it crystal clear. Fishermen, sick, hurting, poor people. So you have Jesus on a mountainside who sits down,

and he has just huge crowds of people who have come out of even larger crowds because they see something in Jesus and his good news of the kingdom, they're all in for him. And what does he say to a huge crowd of disciples who are unimportant and insignificant and hurting and sick and just scraping by? He says these nine blessings. These nine blessings. And in that setting, words like this, they're electric. That's what they are, right? Nobody's familiar with what Jesus is saying here, that they're hearing this good news of the kingdom for the first time. And it's positively electric, what he's doing. And it's actually, I think it's really hard for us to recreate what that would have been like,

to hear Jesus amidst all these crowds and to hear him say something like this. I don't know how to recreate it, but I'm going to try. I'm going to try. And so as I was thinking about this over the last couple weeks, I was trying to scan my memory, like what, what, oh yes, exactly. So I have a friend who introduced me to the work of these two British artists. They're sculpture artists who do big installations and so on. Tim Noble and Sue Webster. I had never heard of them before, like three weeks ago or whatever, and maybe some of you have, in which case don't nudge your neighbor and say, oh, I know what he's going to do. So Tim Noble and Sue Webster. And what, they've done a lot of different things, but in about 10 years ago, they did a whole series of works and installations and sculptures.

I just, I'll show you one. Here's the first one here. So you walk into a gallery show, I'll show you one. Here's the first one here. So you walk into a gallery show, and you walk into a room that is dark, and you'll see a table, an old abused picnic table with all of these beer cans and Coca-Cola and Pepsi cans,

and it's weird, you know, and you're like, oh, it's one of these art shows. You know? It's like dark and offensive, but no one's going to tell me what it means and whatever. So, but this isn't offensive. Yeah, you're like, oh, it's kind of, and then you get closer and you're like, oh, everything's shot through with BBs. Someone just shot this thing through with BB guns. Everything's destroyed or whatever. And then

in the corner of the room, a spotlight turns on and shines on the table, and then you see the silhouette on the wall behind it. Come on. Come on. That's awesome. That's the coolest thing in the world, right? So the tall boy has become one of the world trade centers. I mean, that's really amazing. Anyway, so look at that. So you're like, that is, so what happened there? There was a moment of surprise. What's going on in this piece? It's about perception. What you perceived was trash

actually can become the vehicle of meaning and of significance and beauty the moment there's this surprise light that reframes everything of what you thought was there in the first place. You walk into the next gallery room and you see literally a heap of trash all over the ground. And, you know, whatever social commentary you want to make, trash and McDonald's. I don't, you know, whatever you want to make of that. And same kind of thing. Corner of the room. The light goes on.

And it's people. And it's people who actually look like they're sleeping in the trash. But then you realize, of course, the silhouette is made of the trash. And then you read the title of the piece. And then you're thinking of Portland, right? The enormous amount of young homeless people who live on the streets of Portland. And then all of a sudden,

like the juxtaposition of trash with these people, it gets you thinking about perception, doesn't it? It gets you thinking about how you see people who don't have homes and who live out in the open in our cities and how you perceive them, how you think of them, both as the setting where they live, but it also makes you rethink. It's just this surprise reversal. You walk into another room and you see these odd, odd-looking objects made of chair pieces and toilet paper. I mean, what on earth?

You're like, what on earth is that? And then same thing, lights go out, spotlight, and it's, what on earth? Who could even, who would think of that? Tim Noble and Sue Webster, apparently. Now, I don't know them, and I haven't even read any interviews with them. I just think it's the coolest thing I've ever seen, and I wanted to show it to you. That's one reason why I'm showing this

to all of you. I actually can only infer what they're going for. I can talk about, beholding the work, its effect on me. What immediately strikes you is these works are all about surprise and this reversal of your perception. What you thought were things that are discarded, what you thought was chaos or trash or garbage, from a certain angle, and when the light, the right surprise light shines upon it, the trash becomes this vehicle of beauty and meaning and significance. And the same surprise, you know, that each of those three times was like, whoa, holy cow, from that angle I never saw. That's, I think, an inkling. You have an inkling of what Jesus is accomplishing when he says these words. He's talking, who's he talking to?

when he says these words. He's talking, who's he talking to? He's talking to sick, like hurting, day laborers, subsistence living. They're not important. Nobody cares what these people think about the future of Judea and the Roman Empire, right? That's who's flocking to Jesus by the crowds. And to them, he pronounces these blessings.

And they're charged because the things that he's promising to them are things like the kingdom of God and inheriting the earth. And that they will be the ones who will be able to see and meet God in a personal and intimate way. And they are the ones who will be called God's family, God's children. It's just reversal, surprise. And what I love also about these works, of course, is that they're just using pre-existing materials and arranging them in these unique ways. And then once the surprise hits, it's like, oh, I never saw that coming. And this is exactly what Jesus is doing. And this all revolves around the word blessed, what Jesus is doing with

this word blessed. So we'll hone in on this, then we'll come back up, and then we'll work our way through the nine and just sit at the feet of the master and have our minds blown by what he's doing right here. So blessed. What on earth does it mean to say that someone's blessed? And not just in general, what does it mean for Rabbi Jesus someone's blessed? And not just in general, what does it mean for Rabbi Jesus to say it to this group of people at this time in this place? And this is where knowing a bit of history and Jewish backgrounds, I think, is really illuminating. Because Jesus is not the first teacher to talk like this and to teach like this, to pronounce blessings on people. He's taking a pre-existing idea and a pre-existing way of talking and a way of teaching. To go around as a rabbi or as a teacher pronouncing blessings on

people has a long, long prehistory in Jewish culture that precedes Jesus. It's actually rooted in the Bible itself, in the Jewish scriptures. And there are loads of poems in the Hebrew scriptures themselves that begin by pronouncing blessings on people. Can you think of one? If you've ever read the book of Psalms, great collection of Hebrew prayers and poems, can you think of the first line of the very first psalm? How blessed is the person who doesn't act like a jerk, but who immerses themselves in the scriptures. That's how Psalm 1 begins. One of the greatest and longest poems in the whole book of Psalms, you'll just see how it begins right here. Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord.

Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart. So we have this depiction here. When you say that someone's blessed, you're holding up this example, this model of first something you want to attain to. Here's something that in the Jewish community we hold as admirable, right? And we should strive for this to be someone who's blameless, who immerses himself in scripture. I'm seeking God with all my heart. They're blessed. But they're not just a model. You're blessed by whom? By God. And what does that even mean? It means, it's a very rich concept. It's about, there's relational clarity, right, between you and your creator and your redeemer. There's relational reconciliation.

You're in right relationship with God. And it's not just about relationship, though. It's about living and experiencing the fruits and the consequences of that, which are described in the poem as you go on through Psalm 119, that things tend to go well for you. You're wise. You're able to navigate through difficult decisions and so on because you're informed by God's presence in the scriptures. You're blessed. God likes you. God's your buddy.

He's for you and he's with you. Now here's what's interesting is that after the completion of the writing and collection of the Bible, this way of teaching continued in Judaism, and this way of talking about the people whom God favors. And so this became a very common way of teaching and talking in Jewish communities. For example, in the communities of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Your pastor's going to read to you from the Dead Sea Scrolls. What'd you do Sunday, right? We read from

the Dead Sea Scrolls, all of us together. So the community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. What'd you do Sunday, right? We read from the Dead Sea Scrolls, all of us together. So the community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was a very, very eccentric, unique community of Jewish people who were so convinced the whole rest of Judaism was going to hell in a handbasket, they withdrew to the desert, took their Bibles with them, wrote a whole bunch of weird literature, and just prayed for everyone else to be destroyed and go to hell except themselves. And you can go online. You can read the literature that they wrote. One of the scrolls has a whole scroll that actually, it sounds like you're reading the book of Proverbs,

but it's stuff that they wrote. And it's very interesting. And lo and behold, how do they perceive themselves and talk about themselves? What are the ideals of this Dead Sea Scrolls community? They say, blessed is the one with a pure heart who doesn't slander with his tongue. Blessed are those who adhere to the commands of the Torah, who don't adhere to perverted paths. Blessed are those who rejoice in wisdom, who don't run into paths of folly. Blessed are those who search for wisdom

with pure hands and don't pursue her with a treacherous heart. Blessed is the man who attains wisdom and walks in the law of the Most High. And if you didn't know it, you would think you're reading in the Bible somewhere. We're holding up, but of course, this is a community of people that believes they're the only ones who are actually living like this. And that everyone else is just screwed. And so for them, this is a way of holding up their highest ideals. And a way of talking about how we are among these blessed ones whom God favors because we're the ones who are doing this. Go one step further.

And this is the last example that I'll show you, but it's really interesting. There was a famous, one of the most famous Jewish teachers from about 150 years before Jesus lived. His name was Jesus II, Jesus Ben-Zerah, Jesus the son of Zerah. And he wrote a famous collection of teachings and reflections called The Wisdom of Ben-Zerah, and you can go read it today. It was preserved in Jewish communities and Christian communities, and one of his most famous poems is a collection of blessings. Jesus pronouncing blessings 100 years before Jesus pronounced his nine blessings, right? And look at how he intros this. He says, there are nine whom I would call blessed,

a tenth my tongue proclaims. Blessed is the man who can rejoice in his children. Blessed is the man who lives to see the downfall of his foes. Blessed is the one who doesn't sin with his tongue. Blessed is the one who doesn't serve an inferior. Blessed is the one who finds a friend. Blessed is the one who speaks to attentive listeners. Greatest is the one who finds wisdom, and none is superior to the one who fears the Lord. Now, as you read through that list, there's a whole bunch of it you go, oh yeah, that's just, that kind of sounds like the Bible to me, you know? You don't sin with your tongue, and you fear the Lord, and find wisdom, and that kind of thing.

But do you see some other things going on here in these blessings? If we're holding up this ideal and we're saying these are the ones that God favors, these are the ones whom God is with and experience the presence and success of God's presence in their lives. So look at the last blessing. Blessed is the one who's important so that when they speak, people want to listen to them. That's interesting. So you know that you're blessed and God is with you and for you if people think that you're important and want to listen to what you have to say. Go up just a couple. Blessed is the one who doesn't serve an inferior. Now, you don't need to know much about Roman culture except to know that it's very cutthroat.

It is all about honor and shame and where you are in the social hierarchy. So you're blessed if you know that you never have to humble yourself and actually serve someone who's of a lower social status than you. That's how you know God is with you. Well, that's interesting. That doesn't sound like something Jesus would say at all, right? It actually seems to me that that's actually the kind of thing that Jesus loved to obliterate and deconstruct, right? How oppressive that whole worldview is. But in this, here's a Jewish respected teacher. Here you go. Blessed is the man who lives to see the downfall of his foes. This is an individual whose success in career or whatever means that no one can stand up to this person, and it's just success, and everyone who comes against him

is defeated and undermined in some way. So how do you know that God's with you and God's for you? Because you win. You win. You win at everything that you do. Do you see what's happening here? So we've got some Bible, but this is also a set of blessings from one of the most famous Jewish teachers before Jesus that's fully immersed itself in the value system of the world, in which everything is about status, am I admired, and where you are, and you never step below the person that's below you on the status scale, and so on. It's about them trying to get on the ladder up to you and so on. And this is the world that Jesus lives in. And this is the imaginative cultural world that our poor fishermen and sick, hurting, insignificant people who flock to Jesus when he announces the good news,

this is what fills their minds. And Jesus, the first thing he says to them is a set of nine blessings. And so you hear the first bless and you're like, okay, oh, brilliant. Of course, Jesus, you're a Jewish teacher. You're going to talk about the healthy, wealthy, and wise and how God's with them. And maybe you'll help us get there, Jesus. And that's exactly what Jesus does not do. Do you see that here? It's exactly what he doesn't do. What he does is he actually affirms everything about these people in full recognition. The poor, we'll talk about what all these mean, the poor, the mourning, the meek, the unimportant, people who long to see righteousness done in the world but actually

don't have any ability or position to do much about it. And Jesus says, the kingdom is first being offered to you. You're the fortunate ones. To the rest of the world, it's like the room with the bright lights on and it's the heap of trash. But surprise, Jesus of Nazareth says, the kingdom of God is here and it entails this whole reversal of how you see yourselves and your identity and your status and your value and your place in the family of God. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Let me summarize this with words that are better than my own by a commentator that I came across. He puts this in the best way.

A guy named Stanley Hauer was. He says, too often, these characteristics of the blessings here have, in Christian history, been turned into ideals or virtues that we must strive to attain. Poor in spirit, mourn, meek, hunger and thirst, merciful, pure in heart, and so on. When we do that, we turn them into formulas that help us gain status and favor with God. Which is, of course, precisely the opposite of what Jesus is trying to say. Right? It's just one of these ironies of how badly we can misread the Bible. So, rather,

they are descriptions of the kinds of people to whom Jesus, in fact, first brought the kingdom of God. Nowhere does Jesus tell us that we should try to be poor in spirit or mourn all of the time or try to get yourself persecuted. It's true. It's true, right? He simply announces the great surprise that these people who are not significant or honored in their society are precisely the ones who have received the honor to be first among those called into God's kingdom. Are you with me? Do you see what Jesus is doing here? He said, dude, how can you not love this man, right? I want to follow someone like this. So here's what I want to do. Really, all we can do is just dive into them. And we're going to look

briefly at each of these nine blessings and unpack them. But they're not meant to be taken separately. Think of these nine blessings as like a stained glass window with nine pieces of colored glass. And each one contributes to a whole, and you actually view each one in light of all of the others, because some of them are really puzzling. But then when you look at them together, you realize how they fit together into this beautiful portrait. And who's in the stained glass window? Whose picture are we to see there? Just hold that question in your mind. Let's dive in. So blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom in heaven. Again, everyone, who is Jesus talking to on what occasion? These crowds

with this particular makeup on the occasion of him announcing the arrival and the good news of the kingdom. Blessed are the poor in spirit. What does that mean? The poor in spirit. So is Jesus talking about the economic situation of his hearers, which Matthew has really highlighted for us, that they are in fact the poor, and so their spirit is a way of talking about their being, or their attitude, their mindset, their hearts, and so on. And so these are people who are, they're crushed. They're the beat down. They're the ones who don't think highly of themselves because no one else does either. And it's all connected to their economic situation. Or there's been a whole bunch of Christians throughout the 2,000 years of scratching our

heads at trying to understand Jesus. It's like maybe Jesus is talking about the spiritually poor. So not their economic situation, but, you know, these are not like the leaders, the religious leaders. You know, no one is looking to these people to read the Bible in synagogue or something like that, or to pray for them, or to lead as religious leaders. They're not significant people in their religious communities. They're the spiritual zeros, right? They're the losers, right? Who, you know, they don't even attend synagogue very often or something like that. So that's a whole way that people have read and understood this. So which is it? Is it Jesus talking about religion or is it religion or economics? Which is it? And then you'll feel me slapping you on the hand and be like, don't be such a westerner, right? Who like slice up everything and as if somehow our economic circumstances are ever separated from

our spiritual experience or something like that. What a joke to even think about that idea. And of course, who are the people that Jesus is talking to? Are they poor? Totally. Yeah, Matthew's really highlighted that. Are they the people to whom the Jewish community is looking for leadership or insight? Does anyone care what these people think about the Bible or how they interpret some, you know what I mean? No, they're both, of course. They're both economically poor,

which in their setting was totally intertwined with their role in the spiritual religious community. They're the poor in spirit. They're the people that nobody admires or looks to or thinks is important, and it's totally bound up with their difficult financial circumstances, which Matthew has really highlighted. And Jesus says, I think this is the most general one to everybody, and he says, that experience of being in that lowly, insignificant condition is actually the most favorable position you could possibly be in. Because the kingdom is yours.

Here it is. It's being offered to you right now. And this is a theme that we'll come across as Jesus continues on when he talks about wealth or honor and pride and so on. Jesus has this idea about human nature, and I'm pretty sure he's right about it because I feel like he's reading my mail all of the time, that it's precisely those who are in the most difficult, desperate circumstances who are the most open-minded and ready to receive help from someone who is totally outside of themselves, namely Jesus.

It's not always true. It is often true that people who have less to lose are more open to Jesus. But people to whom following Jesus will mean totally rethinking, like, how they deal with all these financial resources or how they think about themselves in terms of career and identity and job. And that's going to mean humbling themselves and, like, totally changing how you treat people and so on. That's a lot to lose. And no way I'm going to follow Jesus. You have everything to lose. And so Jesus highlights that it's precisely the poor insignificant that are the ones who are the first to receive the offer,

because Jesus knows that they'll be the most likely to respond. And in fact, that was the case. Look at the next three. I think the next three are kind of puzzling, but when you read them together, they're really profound. Blessed are those who mourn or grieve. Blessed are the meek, and blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, because the mourn, those who mourn will be comforted. Those who meek will inherit the earth. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied, will be filled. Now, what does it mean, blessed are those who mourn? Mourn over what? Does mourning for the death of the family dog count? What counts as legitimate mourning that's blessed by God?

What does that even mean? Blessed are the meek. Who used that word in the last year in talking to anybody? What does the meek mean? So let's start with the third one, because I think once we would lock onto the third one, the other two come together. So blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Think about, and I'm not being pedantic here, really think about this. Think about a time recently where you were super thirsty.

Think about your experience of being really hungry or really thirsty. Is this a fun experience? Is this typically an experience that you chose to put yourself in? Right? Maybe if you're fasting. But if not, it's typically, and we don't like it, because it's unpleasant. It affects your mind. You get headaches. I get hangry. Some of you get hangry or whatever. You get, like me, you get irritable. And it's this visceral mind. You get headaches. I get hangry. Some of you get hangry or whatever. You get irritable. And it's this visceral thing. You don't just choose to become thirsty, right? It happens to you. And things happen to your mind and your body then that you can't control because it's like this feeling takes over you. This longing. This visceral longing. And Jesus says, bless, God is with and God is for those who have this visceral longing for what?

For righteousness. For righteousness. There's another good Bible word. So, righteousness. And here, it's the second time this word has occurred in the Gospel of Matthew. It's not the last time. And it's a super important word in the Gospel of Matthew. And we'll explore it as we go on in the Gospel of Matthew. It's not the last time. And it's a super important word in the Gospel of Matthew. And we'll explore it as we go on in the months ahead. But it's a word and a concept that

the way Jesus uses it is just lifting it right from how it's used in the Hebrew scriptures in the Old Testament. And righteousness, when you think of it, we'll just put a simple definition and we'll explore it in more weeks ahead. The simplest definition, I think, is that righteousness is about right relationship between people. Right relationship. And an act of righteousness is an action that you do, something that you do,

that creates or maintains right relationship between two parties. And so in English we have this phrase, we don't use it very often, but maybe, I think most of us would know what it means. You say that somebody did right by someone else, you know? So she did right by her man or something like that, you know? Which meant that she was a good girlfriend and stuck up for him

when his friends were making fun of him or something like that. So what's going on there? So you have someone who's in a relationship, right? A girlfriend and boyfriend. And that's a relationship that has special kind of obligations now. These two people care about each other. And so when all of a sudden that person is threatened, what does it mean to do right by somebody? It means to be faithful to how you're supposed to treat that person, to be upright, and to fulfill the way that you ought to behave in this particular

relationship. And so an act of righteousness is doing right by somebody. And there's all kinds of ways to be faithful in being righteous in different kinds of relationships, in a marriage, in friendship, in a family, in a community, in a city, in a neighborhood, and so on. It's also a word that gets used then in the law court in the Bible. So let's say, you know, your neighbor accuses you of stealing their donkey or something. You're like, nice donkey. I want it or something, you know, but you resist and you're like, no, I'm not going to steal it. I'll go work hard and buy my own or something. And so, but your neighbor knows that you really like their donkey or something. And so they, you know, accuse you. I don't know where this is

coming from, the donkey, right? But you get the idea. So you're in the law court. The jury says, no, this guy didn't steal the donkey. And so the judge pronounces upon you the status of righteous, which means this is a person who has done right by their neighbor. They haven't stolen their donkey. This is a person with the status of righteous. God is righteous in the Bible, which means God does right by his promises and his word, and God does right by people in his relationships as well. So think about this. We'll explore this more. So think of what Jesus is saying. Blessed are people who have this deep, unmet longing to see righteousness happening in the world.

What does that mean? If you're hungering and thirsting and longing for it, does it exist in the world? If you're hungry for a Twinkie, which I hope you never are, but if you are, do you have one in your hands and you're eating it? No, it assumes that it's not there. So how blessed are people when they look out at the world and they just see wrecked relationships, and every level just wrecked in their own relationships, among their neighbors, in their family, in the worlds between societies,

they see a lack of righteousness, a lack of people doing right by each other, and it bothers them to their core. And they can't sit by about it. It just agitates them. They'll never actually be happy with how the world is, right? And Jesus says, you're the blessed ones because you notice, you notice something that God notices big time, which is that all is not well in God's world and that God is going to be doing something about it. Namely, the good news of the kingdom, that Jesus is here, which all of a sudden helps you understand what it means to mourn. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who are so bothered by the tragedy or the evil and the broken relationships that they see happening in the world, it grieves them. So blessed are the people who don't look out at the world and get so overwhelmed with its

pain and tragedy that they actually just choose a lifestyle of distracting themselves so they don't think about the pain that's going on in the lives of other people. And how blessed are people who don't anesthetize themselves with TV or whatever, their affluence or their other distractions. Blessed are the people who are front and center, paying attention to everything that's horrible about our world and internalizing it and grieving about it. You're the ones whom God is with, it and grieving about it. You're the ones whom God is with, Jesus says, because something is beginning that will one day bring to a culmination the fact that you will be satisfied, that righteousness will be done, all wrongs will be set right, and you will find the comfort that you're longing for, which in my mind totally informs what it means to be meek.

Meek, blessed are the meek. To be meek is to be unimportant. To be unimportant. Now, you might just be unimportant in your mind. Moses was said to be meek. Was Moses important? He was super important, but he didn't think of himself as important, right?

And is Jesus talking to a group full of Moseses? No, he's talking to a group of people who think of themselves important because they are unimportant, right? By the way, their society determines things. And Jesus says, you're the blessed ones because you're the ones, as you see me bringing the kingdom into being, you're seeing a movement that is going to spread towards all of God's good creation. And in fact, it's the people of the kingdom of Jesus who will be the ones who look to him and will be a part of inheriting the new world that God is making. So blessed are the people who are so deeply bothered and don't ignore the tragedies of our world, and they allow it to just create that

longing in them. But at the same time, there are people who actually don't have any power to do anything about it because they're the unimportant. So what do you do? Well, you're blessed and Jesus is with you. But then look at what goes on, verse 7. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. So mercy, it's a simple word. I think we all know what it means. It's an act of care and compassion to help someone who's hurting. So no one's looking to you for solutions to what to do about poverty in your city or your neighborhood. You're not a leader. You're not a spiritually significant person, but you are grieved by what you see happening around your neighborhood and your city.

And so Jesus says, blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the people who both will see the big picture, but also pay attention to the fact that they have a neighbor who's hurting, and they have a co-worker, and there's this one relationship where I can do a small act of mercy, this small little foretaste of the kingdom. And that itself will be reenacting, beginning this cycle of what the kingdom is doing, like a little piece of leaven or like a mustard seed of mercy and neighbor love begins radiating out of the kingdom people. Blessed are the pure in heart, the people for whom prestige or being admired or being the people that are sought and

everybody wants your opinion, they don't care about that. What they care about is simply seeing God, simply knowing intimately and personally my creator and my redeemer, and small acts of mercy and love as I try and seek to cultivate the heart of Jesus that grieves over his broken world. Blessed are the peacemakers. They will be called the children of God. So if you're bothered and you have these small acts of mercy that are right in front of you and you're paying attention to them and God is with you in those acts, you will find yourself in moments, as you look out at the lack of right relationships in the world, where you'll see parties at conflict. It's the two people in conflict and you love them both. And blessed are the followers of Jesus who will insert themselves into the middle of that conflict

and seek to love them both and bring about reconciliation. I'm convinced one of the most difficult things you can do as a human being, to reconcile two people who can't stand each other, right? And Jesus says, you're the blessed ones. Now, what's the surprise there? Is it pleasant to get involved in the conflict of two other people? Right? It's not enjoyable, because what happens to you? If you're actually genuinely looking out for and loving both parties, what will happen to you? They'll both hate you, right? Because you're not taking their side, and they'll both shoot at you. And so blessed are the people who know that God loves righteousness and right relationships, and they know He loves peace, and they themselves, because of Jesus'

announcement of the kingdom, are beginning to realize that because of Jesus, they themselves are at peace with God. And so they will do the inconvenient tasks of putting themselves in the middle of people who can't stand each other and taking the fire and trying out to mediate reconciliation. Because reconciliation is one of the highest values of the kingdom. the kingdom. And if I begin to see this vision, and I begin to see myself as the kind of person whom God is with and God is for, and I actually maybe even try to go about being this kind of person, the last two blessings are for you, because it's going to get very difficult, and it will probably be the hardest thing you've ever done in your life. So blessed are you who are persecuted, because you're just trying to do the right thing, righteousness. And yours is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people

insult you, they persecute you, they falsely say all kinds of evil against you, because of me. You're doing this in the name of Jesus, and people hate you for it. But you're just trying to do the right thing. Rejoice. Be glad. Great is your reward in heaven in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. How many of you have been in this scenario where co-worker, friend, family, well, probably not family, co-worker, friend, acquaintance, something, they don't know you're associated with Jesus in any way. And in that world, you'd get along famously. But then it

comes up, you're associated with Jesus. You really love Jesus, and you're trying to follow him, and you're really stoked on it. And then just the conversation turns. I mean, you know what I'm talking about here. And then it's strange. How many of you have been in this setting before, and all of a sudden, all of these screwed up motives and really bad attitudes and things that you think are screwed up too, like they think that about you. And they attribute all of these motives to you that you don't. Like you don't hate anybody at all.

You just really love Jesus. And you think he's awesome, and you think everybody needs to know about who he is. And all of a sudden, people misunderstand you. Get ready. Get ready for it. In fact, expect it and assume that that will happen. And that's why purity of heart is such a key piece of this, because it doesn't matter. It actually doesn't matter. I need to do the right thing. My need to do, my passion is to see God in the face of Jesus and to see righteousness done in his world. And Jesus said that's precisely what he came to do.

And so at the end of the story, these blessings actually do begin to motivate you to do something, but not because Jesus says, do this so that you can be blessed. He says, do this because you already have been blessed. Because before you even look to try to be blessed in the first place, this because you already have been blessed. Because before you even look to try to be blessed in the first place, in all of your unrighteousness and screwed up relationships, here I am right in front of you coming to you all, Jesus says, and good news,

the kingdom belongs to you first. And so how many of us here today feel unimportant? How many of us here today feel unimportant? How many of you feel insignificant? And you feel about your life the way you first thought of the heaps of rubbish, right? In the paintings. And how many of you, your bodies are actually not working? Your body's not working. And so that totally limits all of the things that you could do or would dream of doing. How many of you know what it's like to feel not cool and nobody thinks that you're important and nobody asks your opinion about anything?

And Jesus says, you're the blessed ones. I'm with you. God is for you. Because you're the kind of person who will intuitively begin to understand the value, the upside down reverse value system of the kingdom of God. And for those of us who actually realize we do have a lot to lose in hearing the message of Jesus,

this blessing then comes as this challenge. Because it's like, holy cow, I don't want to become a person like this, you know? And all these blessings are a punch in the gut at the same time. And so that's the word of these blessings to the people of Jesus. Let me conclude by coming back to that question that I asked you. Whose picture do you see in the stained glass window? The nine pieces of colored glass that make up a portrait. If you look at these nine blessings and the characteristics, who do you see? Can you think of somebody who came from poor, insignificant circumstances, who mourned and

grieved over the state of this world and over the people that he met. And he was extremely important, but did not think of himself as important. And he longed to see God's world set right. And so with small acts of mercy to hurting individuals, he showed his pure devotion to the cause of the kingdom, and he inserted himself into dangerous situations between people who hated each other, he got persecuted, in fact, was killed for it. And the death of Jesus, who is the perfect embodiment of these blessings, the death of

Jesus is not the unfortunate death of Jesus, the great social worker. His death is actually the way that he epitomized the values of the kingdom by setting aside his status and as the representative for us all, dying in our place as he took into himself the consequences and God's own justice on the screwed up ways of what we have done to each other in God's world. And in his resurrection from the dead, Jesus' commitment to the goodness of our world and to redeeming it, he offers hope and forgiveness and life to those who will grab onto him in faith. Jesus is the epitome of these blessings, and that is good news for people like you. Unimportant, insignificant, hurting people like you and like me. It's good news for people like you. Unimportant, insignificant, hurting people like you and like me. It's good news. Amen.

Thank you guys for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible podcast. We're going to keep on learning and exploring the gospel according to Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount in the episodes to come. So we'll see you next time.