Beatitudes Summary and Intro to the Rest of Chapter 5

Beatitudes Summary – and – Intro to the Rest of Matthew 5

Beatitudes Summary

Q: Now that we are done with the Beatitudes, in general, what do you think of them?

Q: Do you have an “overall” thought or idea about the Beatitudes as a whole?

Q: What are they? (Important!) (Short, pithy summary statements)

A: What do YOU think?

Q: What are they NOT? (Equally Important!)

A: 1) They are not entrance requirements for heaven. 2) They are NOT rules or behaviors required to get us saved, or “keep” us saved.

Q: Again, What are they?

A: For whatever it is worth, this is what I think. They are three things. 1. They are a perfect picture of what a normal Christian could be. 2. They are a perfect picture of what a normal Christian should be (but we are not yet). And 3. They are a perfect picture of what a normal Christian someday will be in heaven. 

They are the pathway of sanctification. They are a description of what our character is to be. They are something to aspire to. They are something to grow into, but they are NOT something we can ever, muster up by our own strength. The first three Beatitudes – 5:3-5 are the ‘standard” for the Christian’s being – who we are to be in our hearts, our character – and the last five Beatitudes – 5:6-10 – are also who we are to be in our hearts, but are also the Christian’s standard for activity. They are a description of what a true Christian is to be doing – a picture of what our activity should look like, with the understanding that none of us is there yet. Once we have a good clear picture in our minds from the Beatitudes of what a true Christian should look like or could look like, we have something clear that we can move toward. In the Beatitudes, we gave clear, simple “picture” of the goal for our lives. 

        SO –

1. Fight pride. Being poor in spirit, spiritually bankrupt is NOT BAD. IT IS GOOD. It is good to have an honest, biblical understanding of exactly where we stand before a holy, just and perfectly righteous God. On our own we will NEVER MEASURE UP. And we need to know that we truly are spiritually bankrupt.
2. Mourning that truth is good! It makes the Gospel valuable and precious. Being poor in spirit and mourning our spiritual bankruptcy is what gives the Gospel meaning. Remember, we are studying “THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW.”
3. We need to know the Gospel – that what we DON’T HAVE, GOD GIVES!! Things like Righteousness, salvation, and eternal life in heaven.) We need to know and understand and believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Believe it.
4. This is humbling. But this is also Good News! This is the way to joy and peace and acceptance and blessing. And it is freely available. Again, fight pride. There is nothing we can do to earn it or maintain it, other than just truly believing it with our whole hearts. Believe it. 
5. Knowing these first three Beatitudes that I just described, and having them as a part of our internal makeup, a part of who we are (however imperfectly) having these attitudes in our hearts naturally leads to Beatitude 6: Hungering and thirsting for righteousness. We begin to want to know more about God and Jesus and the Word (all inseparable.) We begin to desire and value His truth, His wisdom. We begin to renew our minds by treasuring what He treasures. We learn to love His Word more and more and more. And we begin to grow in Christlikeness. 
6. As we grow in Christlikeness – becoming more like Christ, we start looking and acting like Him. We start becoming less proud and less judgmental, and more merciful. We begin to take on more and more of His character and His attributes into our own lives. We become more like Him. But in all this process, we never lose or grow out of the understanding of our own spiritual brokeness. We will never be anything good apart from Him. We must always stay in the vine.
7. As we prayerfully read and mediate and memorize His Word, we continue to grow and mature in our faith, and we begin to experience more and more of His wondrous activity in our lives. He is cleansing our hearts. He is slowly but surely purifying us. The more our hearts are cleansed by His redeeming and purifying work in our hearts, the more we begin to “see” God for  who He really is. 
8. The more we see God for who He really is, we begin to realize the true value of His Word and His work in our lives and our hearts. Now we are starting to resemble what a child of God should look like. The minute we are born again, we are adopted into His family. FOREVER. But we don’t automatically start “acting” or “behaving” like children of God. That takes time. That is called sanctification and continues throughout our entire lives. Now we are not only at peace with our Creator, but we are starting to understand peace in greater depth. And so, the more of Christ’s peace that flows into our cups, the more of His peace flows out of our cups and into the world around us. And so, we become peacemakers. 
9. In this lost and fallen world, peacemakers who sow peace will, sooner or later, will  encounter opposition from this world, from people who still live in darkness and do not understand the light. And we will not only encounter spiritual warfare from lost people, but from Satan and his demons. Christ said, sooner or later, if we put our faith out there and boldly proclaim Him, we will suffer for righteousness sake and for the sake of His name. But that is NOT a bad thing either!! It is a source of deep and profound blessing, blessing that words cannot adequately describe. 

Q: What is the value of the Beatitudes for us today? 

A: What do YOU think?

Q: Have you ever heard the saving, “Fake it til you make it?” 

Agree? Disagree?

Q: Have you ever heard of the saving “If you think you are humble, you are not?”

Q: What do you think this means?

Q: Can a person be humble by acting humble? (No! Only by being poor in spirit.)

A: Unlike other areas and activities in your life where you can “practice” things and “learn” skills, you cannot be humble by trying to be humble or by acting humble until you get it right. With humility, you can’t fake it until you make it. Humility is much different. Humility is different in it’s very nature from other things that can be practiced and learned (like holiness and righteousness and controlling anger and lust – although all these things also can only be done with and by the power of the Holy Spirit). Humility is different. A person can only be humble if they are spiritually bankrupt, if they are spiritually broken, if they are poor in spirit. Pride is our great enemy. Anything good we can do for the Lord has the potential to lead to pride. We need to be completely broken in order to be completely surrendered to Christ. We need to recognize in our very souls that we have no true righteousness of our own. NONE. We need to give Christ complete control and authority and dominion over our lives. And whatever He chooses to do in us, we need to make sure that in our hearts we are giving HIM all the credit and all the glory that is truly due His Holy name. 

Christlikeness is described in the Beatitudes and fleshed out in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. And it ALL starts with being poor in spirit. It grows from being poor in spirit, but it never out grows being poor in spirit. In one sense, it moves beyond being poor in spirt, but never outgrows being poor in spirit. Even as a Christian grows in holiness and righteousness, he never moves past being poor in spirit. He NEVER outgrows being poor in spirit. In fact the opposite is true. The more you walk with the Lord in humble obedience and the more you grow in holiness and righteousness, the more poor in spirit you realize you are. In this life, there will always be vestiges of pride hiding in the dark corners of our souls, just waiting to break out and say, “Look at me! Look at how good I am! Or look at what I did! Look at how spiritual I am, or how giving I am, or how wise I am, or how selfless I am. 

We must always be aware of pride’s propensity to rear it’s ugly head. We must always be wary of pride. Pride is the clever, deceptive work of the devil. We must always fight pride. Pride is the downfall of many otherwise great Christian leaders. We must remain poor in spirit all the days of our lives on this side of Heaven, knowing this when we get to Heaven all sin, including pride will be completely and utterly defeated and gone forever. Heaven is not just good. It is not  just great. It is perfect, as our Heavenly Father is perfect. 

I think the Beatitudes are the “summary” key to understanding the Christian life, how it should look like and how to live it out. The very first rule is this: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matt 19:26 (NIV 1984)

This is a verse every Christian should have memorized, and that every Christian should believingly recite before he/she gets out of bed EVERY MORNING. 

Q: How do we get the blessings mentioned in every Beatitude? 

A: In Greek it’s a one word answer: pisteuō.

In English it is a three word answer. Believe, faith and trust with the intention of obeying.

 Pisteuō is sometimes translated as believe, sometimes faith, sometimes trust.

Or, like the old song says, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

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Intro to the Rest of Matthew 5

POINT #1: The Beatitudes further explained (or illustrated or alluded to) in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. 

In our book, the bottom of page 57 says, (Holman Commentary) 

Verses 3-5 deal with the individual’s heart personally (internals – the condition of our hearts), as does Matthew 5:13-20. 

Verse 6 deals with our genuine relationship with the Lord, as does Matthew 6. 

And verses 7-12 deal with our relationships with others (externals AND internals – our activities)—how we may impact them, and how they might relate to us—as does Matthew 7.

ROUGHLY, the outline of the Sermon on the Mount might look like this:

1. Matthew 5:3-5 roughly relates to Matthew 5:13-20
2. Matthew 5:6 roughly relates to Matthew 6
3. Matthew 7-12  roughly relates to Matthew 7. 

I say roughly because there is, of course a lot of overlap with other verses in Matthew, as well as the rest of the New Testament. 

POINT #2:

Jesus is correcting much incorrect teaching, misunderstandings and wrong expectations. 

The first section after “Salt and Light,” is about Jesus’ Fulfilling the Law. It is a correction about wrong assumptions and misunderstandings of law and grace, and Jesus’ intentions, as well as the role and purpose of His teachings. After this section, every very single section in the rest of Chapter 5 has a phrase something like “You have heard it said, BUT, I tell you …“. All these other sections are also corrections of current (1st century) and future (us today) misunderstandings and wrong assumptions about scripture, especially the Pharisee’s incorrect application of the Old Testament. 

Below are some of the phrases I am referring to, together with their verse and topic:

Vs 5:21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago…” MURDER (or Anger) 

Vs 5:27 “Is You have heard that it was said…” ADULTERY (or Lust

Vs 5:31″It has been said…” DIVORCE

Vs 5:33 “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago…” OATHS

Vs 5:38 “You have heard that it was said…” EYE FOR AN EYE (or Retaliation)

Vs 5:43 “You have heard that it was said…” LOVE FOR ENEMIES

POINT #3:

Much of the rest of the New Testament explains and builds on these sections here in Matthew chapters 5-7. 

God’s seeming random and subtle organization of the New Testament is absolutely BRILLIANT!

As we learned way back in April in our introduction to Matthew, the placement of Matthew as the first book in the New Testament was for a very good and strategic reason. It strongly connects the Old Testament to the New Testament with all its many references to the Old Testament. 

And the Sermon on the Mount is, likewise placed at the beginning of Matthew and the beginning of Jesus public ministry for a very good reason. It briefly and brilliantly, with a wonderful economy if words (its “shortness”) summarizes what is coming in the rest of the New Testament.