Matthew 5:1-10 – The Truly Happy (Blessed)

by John Carter

John Carter – January 7, 2018

 

 

{ESV}

5 Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

{Translation}

{Manuscript/Outline}

The Audience

The teaching of Jesus recorded in Matthew 5-7 is often called The Sermon on the Mount. And too often it is presented as a teaching for the crowds and for the disciples of Jesus. But truly, this is a teaching for Jesus’ disciples with the crowds listening in on Jesus’ teaching. The message for the crowds is ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ But for the next three chapters, we will learn what it means to be a citizen of this new kingdom and reign of the living God. As Jesus sits, a common practice of teachers and rabbis while teaching, it is the disciples who gather closest to hear their master’s teaching.

  • “The focus on these chapters is not then the wider proclamation of the ‘good news of the kingdom’ (4:23), but the instruction of those who have already responded to that proclamation and now need to learn what life in the ‘kingdom of heaven’ is really about.” (R.T. France)

Luke & Matthew
            There is much debate over the similarities and differences between Matthew’s ‘Sermon on the Mount’ and Luke’s ‘Sermon on the plain.’ This debate mainly deals with the content of each sermon and the differences between the two. Essentially people want to know, did Matthew and Luke record the same sermon or two different sermons. This is a highly simplified understanding of the debate. But due to time, it seems that that discussion will be left for another time. For the sake of this sermon, and the following sermons, I will be working under the assumption that Matthew and Luke recorded two different sermons, but because the itinerant preaching was from the same source (Jesus) the feel of each sermon is remarkable similar yet still distinct.

8 not 9
This will be dealt with a little more fully next week, but today we will not be covering the 9th beatitude. Essentially, the first 8 beatitudes are in the 3rd person and the 9th changes to the 2nd. The 9th also includes commands (imperatives). And finally, both the 1st and the 8th beatitude end with the same present (not future) promise, ‘the kingdom of heaven is theirs.’

Blessed and Truly-Happy
I picked ‘truly happy’ instead of blessed for several reasons. Linguistically, blessed is better translated from a different word in Greek. The word translated here is often translated as happy. But happy can be a little too weak in our modern understanding of the word. This is why I prefer the compound word ‘truly-happy’ to help demonstrate a language that is a little more vivid for our context.

  • “Makarios does not state that a person feels happy, but that they are in a ‘happy’ situation, one which other people ought also to wish to share.” (R.T. France)

(v.3) 1. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

  • “The wealthy too easily dismiss Jesus’ teaching about poverty here and elsewhere as merely attitudinal and confuse their hoarding with good stewardship.” D.A. Carson
  • Thought: The kingdom of heaven belongs to the homeless and destitute. Walk down the riverbeds of Humboldt and the back alleys of Fortuna. Those with no worldly possession are not envied. These are the poor. Not the person having to cook their own meal because they can’t afford to eat out again this week.
  • “The penes has nothing superfluous, the ptoxos nothing at all.” (Trench, p . 92)
  • “Real poverty in the human order is almost automatically taken as a sign of failure in every respect.” (Willard)
  • “Those poor in spirit are called ‘blessed’ by Jesus, not because they are in a meritorious condition, but because, precisely in spite of and the midst of their ever so deplorable condition, the rule of heaven has moved redemptively upon and through them by the grace of Christ.” (Willard)

(v.4) 2. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

  • Mourn death, and mourn sin. But our greatest mourning is of sin.

(v.5) 3. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

  • “Lloyd-Jones rightly applies meekness to our attitudes towards others. We may acknowledge our own bankruptcy and mourn. But to respond with meekness when others tell us of our bankruptcy is far harder.”
  • “In the end it is the meek, not the self-assertive, who will have a place in God’s kingdom.” Morris

(v.6) 4. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

  • “The deepest spiritual famine is hunger for the word of God” (Amos 8). (D.A. Carson)
  • “To believe oneself to be in possession of righteousness, like the Pharisee in the parable is fatal. To know oneself to be in want of it is not enough. One must feel the want of it, and have a passionate and persistent longing for it…” (Plummer)

(v.7) 5. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

(v.8) 6. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

(v.9) 7. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

  • Makers of Peace

(v.10) 8. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

  • “’Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called on to suffer. In fact it is a joy and a token of his grace’” (Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship, 80-81).
  • “The blessed do not achieve it but hunger and thirst for it.” (Morris)
  • Righteousness, “it is a gift of God.” (Morris)

Conclusion

  • “The Beatitudes assume a new heart, for the natural man does not find in happiness the qualities mentioned here by Christ.”[2]
  • “Beatitudes are descriptions, and commendations, of the good life.”
  • Thought: they are also anti-‘American-dream’ – and anti-prosperity Gospel and those who believe that you can have ‘your best life now’, like Joel Osteen.
  • “How are we to live in response to them?” (Willard)
  • “…the humiliation of spiritual incompetence…” (Willard)
  • “The Beatitudes, in particular, are not teachings on how to be blessed. They are not instructions to do anything. They do not indicate conditions that are especially pleasing to God or good for human beings.”
  • “They single out cases that provide proof that, in him, the rule of God from the heavens truly is available in life circumstances that are truly beyond all human hope.” (Willard)
  • “You are walkingi n the good news of the kingdom if you can go with confidence to any of the hopeless people around you and effortlessly convey assurance that they can now enter a blessed life with God.” (Willard)

{Reading Notes}

Matthew 5:1-12

A.T. Robertson

  • “The Beatitudes assume a new heart, for the natural man does not find in happiness the qualities mentioned here by Christ.”[3]
  • John 13:17; 20:29
  • 1 Tim 1:11
  • Tit 2:13
  • “Sorrow should make us look for the heart of God and so find the comfort latent in the grief.”[4]
  • Thought: Ecclesiastes – House of Mourning

EBC – D.A. Carson (2010)

  • 157 – “The unifying theme of the sermon is the kingdom of heaven.”
  • 158 – “It is anachronistic to suppose that all are fully committed in the later ‘Christian’ sense of Acts.”
  • 158 – “Sitting was the accepted posture of synagogue or school teachers.”
  • 162 – “The wealthy too easily dismiss Jesus’ teaching about poverty here and elsewhere as merely attitudinal and confuse their hoarding with good stewardship.”
  • Thought: The kingdom of heaven belongs to the homeless and destitute. Walk down the riverbeds of Humboldt and the back alleys of Fortuna. Those with no worldly possession envied. These are the poor. Not the person having to cook their own meal because they can’t afford to eat out again this week.
  • 163 – “Lloyd-Jones rightly applies meekness to our attitudes towards others. We may acknowledge our own bankruptcy and mourn. But to respond with meekness when others tell us of our bankruptcy is far harder.”
  • 164 – “The deepest spiritual famine is hunger for the word of God” (Amos 8).
  • Thought: Spiritual vs. physical is a false dichotomy when analyzing the sermon on the Mt. The two are both important. Our distinction should be between what is perceived and what is real. Real huger is beyond our common assumptions about spiritual and physical. Real mourning is not constrained to tears and heartstrings.
  • 165 – “Inward sham deceit, and moral filth cannot coexist with sincere devotion to Christ.”
  • 167 – “’Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called on to suffer. In fact it is a joy and a token of his grace’” (Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship, 80-81).

NICNT – R.T. France (2007)

  • 153 – “The focus on these chapters is not then the wider proclamation of the ‘good news of the kingdom’ (4:23), but the instruction of those who have already responded to that proclamation and now need to learn what life in the ‘kingdom of heaven’ is really about.”
  • 156 – “Far from being a philosophical discourse on ethics, this is a messianic manifesto, setting out the unique demands and revolutionary insights of one who claims an absolute authority over other people and whose word, like the word of God, will determine their destiny.”
  • 157 – “Matthew may well have intended to oros also to suggest a typological parallel with Moses…”
  • Psalm 1
  • 160 – “’Macarisms’ are essentially commendations, congratulations, statements to the effect that a person is in a good situation, sometimes even expressions of envy.”
  • 161 – “Makarios does not state that a person feels happy, but that they are in a ‘happy’ situation, one which other people ought also to wish to share.”
  • 161 – “Beatitudes are descriptions, and commendations, of the good life.”
  • Thought: they are also anti-‘American-dream’
  • 162 – “A pocket guide to life in the kingdom of heaven.”
  • 162 – “In Matthew the qualities commended are essentially spiritual and ethical, in Luke they are concerned with the situation in which the disciples find themselves, particularly in contrast with the security and satisfaction which the rest of society seeks.”
  • 164 – “The kingdom of heaven has already arrived, and so these are people who are already under God’s beneficent rule.”
  • Isaiah 61
  • Psalm 37
  • 167 – “The focus is on the principle of reversal of fortunes rather than on specific ‘inheritance.’”
  • Psalm 24
  • 171 – “Modern western individualism is such that we easily think of the light of the world as a variety of candles shining, ‘you shine in your small corner, and I in mine,’ but it is the collective light of the whole community which draws the attention of the watching world.”
  • 173 – “The persecution of the prophets was an established feature of Jewish folk-memory…”

PNTC – Leon Morris (1992)

  • Application of the teachings from the Sermon on the Mount requires wisdom.
  • 93 – “It is better to think that Jesus used similar material on more than one occasion.”
  • 94 – “We should bear in mind that the teaching that follows is addressed to disciples rather than the general public.”
  • Present reality
  • 95 (FN13) – “The penes has nothing superfluous, the ptoxos nothing at all.” (Trench, p . 92)
  • 95 – “Those who recognize that they are completely and utterly destitute in the realm of the spirit.”
  • Thought: Until you can recognize, admit, come to the realization that you are in one of these lowly states you will be unable to enjoy the privileges of being there.
  • Isaiah 66:2
  • Psalm 51
  • Mourn death, and mourn sin. But our greatest mourning is of sin.
  • Psalm 119:136
  • 98 – “In the end it is the meek, not the self-assertive, who will have a place in God’s kingdom.”
  • 99 – FN24 “To believe oneself to be in possession of righteousness, like the Pharisee in the parable is fatal. To know oneself to be in want of it is not enough. One must feel the want of it, and have a passionate and persistent longing for it…” (Plummer)
  • 99 – “The blessed do not achieve it but hunger and thirst for it.”
  • 100 – (righteousness) “It is a gift of God.”
  • Thought: This is not karma. This is the reality of the one who is in the kingdom
  • Mat 15:19
  • 100 – “To be pure in heart is to be pure throughout.”
  • Thought: Jesus ‘did not come to bring peace’ yet bless the peacemakers.
  • 100-1 – FN29 – Stat on wars by Billy Graham
  • 102 – “For my sake links the whole saying with the Christian profession(confession).”

Divine Conspiracy – Dallas Willard

  • 98 – “How are we to live in response to them?”
  • 101 – “Real poverty in the human order is almost automatically taken as a sign of failure in every respect.”
  • 102 – “Those poor in spirit are called ‘blessed’ by Jesus, not because they are in a meritorious condition, but because, precisely in spite of and the midst of their ever so deplorable condition, the rule of heaven has moved redemptively upon and through them by the grace of Christ.”
  • 103 – “This same sense of propriety may even allow us to totally bypass contact with Jesus in his own Beatitudes.”
  • 103 – “…the humiliation of spiritual incompetence…”
  • 106 – “The Beatitudes, in particular, are not teachings on how to be blessed. They are not instructions to do anything. They do not indicate conditions that are especially pleasing to God or good for human beings.”
  • 106 – “They single out cases that provide proof that, in him, the rule of God from the heavens truly is available in life circumstances that are truly beyond all human hope.”
  • 122 – “You are walking n the good news of the kingdom if you can go with confidence to any of the hopeless people around you and effortlessly convey assurance that they can now enter a blessed life with God.”
  • Thought: Will you preach this message of the kingdom of the world as a light on a stool? If you do you will find yourself persecuted and ridiculed.

[1] Retrieved 1/7/18 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5%3A1-10&version=ESV

[2] P.41 – Word Pictures in the New Testament by A.T. Robertson

[3] P.41 – Word Pictures in the New Testament by A.T. Robertson

[4] P.41 – Word Pictures in the New Testament by A.T. Robertson

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