The Exposition of Matthew (Matthew 5:1-6)
(The Beatitudes of Christ)
Questions to be answered in this study
- How many sermons does Matthew record including The Sermon on the Mount?
- What is the name of the mountian traditionally believed to be the location of The Sermon on the Mount?
- What are the two serious consequences that the teaching of the Pharisees brought on Israel?
- Each of the twelve verses of the beatitudes begins with the word blessed; what does blessed mean?
- The beatitudes are divided into two groups; what are they?
- What does it mean to be “poor in spirit?”
- What is the difference in the mourning in verse 4 and the ordinary mourning over the death of a loved one?
- What was the sin David mourned over in Psalm 51?
Introduction
The Believer’s Relationship to God, Part I
“Americans are the unhappiest they’ve been in about 50 years,” according to new data from NORC at the University of Chicago. Researchers found that “only 14% of people called themselves ‘very happy,’ down from 31% in 2018.”
Sadly, many today, in America, cannot find happiness. Billy Graham showed the way to happiness in a book he wrote several years ago, “The Secret to Happiness,” based on the beatitudes of the Bible. Today, we begin our study in the Beatitudes, from one of Jesus’ most famous sermons, the Sermon on the Mount, covering chapters 5-7.
Matthew places particular emphasis on the authority of Jesus’ teaching. In all, Matthew records five major discourses or sermons, which Jesus delivered to His disciples and the multitudes. Of the five, the first one, which we call “The Sermon on the Mount,” is the most famous. Many believe this is the most excellent Sermon ever preached. In this Sermon, Jesus corrected the false teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees, which had dominated the learning in Israel for hundreds of years.
It is not clear, in the Gospels, as to the exact location where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. When we visited Israel last January; our tour took us to a large hill known as Karn Hattin, located near Capernaum along the Sea of Galilee, traditionally believed to be the location of The Sermon on the Mount. Today there is a modern church located there called the Church of the Beatitudes.
The Beatitudes cover the first twelve verses of Matthew chapter 5.
1 “And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto 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 they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
5 “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”
6 “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
7 “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.”
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”
10 “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
11 “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.”
12 “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”
There are a couple of things we need to clarify to understand better the purpose of Jesus’ discourse, the Beatitudes:
First, we need to consider the religious culture in Israel during the time preceding and leading up to the time of Jesus. Over at least four centuries, bad theology had distorted the truth of Scripture. If we go back to the prophet Ezra, we get a glimpse of where it all started. Ezra knew and loved the Word of God and taught it with all purity. He taught in the period after Israel returned from Babylonian captivity. Israel was sickened by the Idolatry of Babylon and wanted never to return to captivity, so they were ready to hear Ezra and recommit themselves to God and to following His commandments. Ezra started a school to train religious leaders called “scribes” to correctly understand and apply God’s law. However, what began to be a good thing evolved into something that destroyed the traditional worship of God and the keeping of His laws.
After the death of Ezra, a new generation of scribes came along who were not content to teach as Ezra had. They began to expand and add to what God had commanded, in order, as they contended, to understand God’s Word better. They began to list a set of rules that people were to follow, contrary to what God’s law instructed. They started with only a few additional rules and restrictions. Theirs was to encourage Israel’s obedience and reduce violations of the law. However, that was just the beginning. Over the centuries, 1,000s more rules were added, which came to be known as the “Mishnah.”
With each new generation of scribes came new rules, which reinterpreted old rules until, eventually, the traditions of the scribes became more prominent than the Scripture. They began to refer to the Mishnah as inspired. Moses is credited with having written the Tora, the first five books of the Old Testament. The Scribes included what they contended was the unwritten oral Tora given to Moses, which had been traditionally handed down through the ages. Finally, the Mishnah became Scripture in the minds of the people. Later the sect called the Pharisees came along and picked up on the false teaching handed down by the scribes, magnified it, and enforced it as God’s law. The hypocritical Pharisees began setting the rules and also determined how they were to be interpreted.
After hundreds of years of living under Pharisaical Judaism, Israel had lost any account of truly understanding what the Word God taught. So, by the time Jesus came on the scene, Israel was under the rule of the precepts of the Mishnah. Everything, including the keeping of the sabbath, feast rituals, temple service, virtually all religious service, and practices, which had a minimal relationship to Scripture, was conducted according to the artificial rules passed down by the Scribes to the Pharisees. Sadly, these practices are still in force among orthodox Judaism today.
To sum it up, The Mishnah, a collection of Jewish oral traditions, has become the first part of the Talmud. The second part of the Talmud is the Gomera, a rabbinical commentary of the Mishnah. The book is enormous. If you read one page per day, it would take seven years to finish it. What started with a few rules came to be 1,000s of regulations. Ironically, what Ezra hoped would help preserve God’s Word in Israel had become a means of distorting it, rendering it useless and detrimental to God’s cause. So, when Jesus, the promised Messiah, did come along, Israel was too steeped in false doctrine to recognize Him for who He was.
Second, the following central point to Israel’s background includes the multitude who came to listen to Jesus, whose belief in God and His Word was turned upside down. So, when Jesus addressed the crowd that day, His message was to turn them upright again, which was not what the crowd had come there to get. They had heard of the healing that Jesus performed and had come for healing or to see the miracles. They were by no means a religious elite.
To sum it up, Pharisaical Judaism had brought two serious consequences upon Israel; First, it had deceived them into believing a false set of manufactured rules and substituting them for the actual Word of God. Secondly, it had set an incorrect standard of righteousness alien to the Word of God, which deprived the people of being a part of God’s kingdom and doomed them to an eternity apart from God. It denied any hope of salvation since they couldn’t measure up to the Pharisees’ hypocritical standard.
Today many are being deprived of salvation by the false teachings of those who teach under the guise of religion. Only Christians have the truth. Only the Bible can correctly foretell the future. Only Christianity provides salvation through one who died for sins and rose from the grave. No other religion across the world can make that claim.
Now, as we come to Matthew 5, we see Jesus sitting down to deliver this Sermon to overturn the false teaching of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus confronted the scribes and Pharisees throughout His ministry and denied their authority, calling them hypocrites. He said on one occasion they were like whited sepulchers on the outside but dead men’s bones on the inside.
Many who came there that day believed, but theirs was a mental accent; they believed in the miracles, not Jesus as the promised Messiah. John clarifies this in John 2:23-24: Many of those who believed in Jesus, Jesus did not believe in them because he knew their heart. No doubt, some turned to the truth, but many others stayed with the false teaching of the Pharisees.
At the beginning of His Sermon, Jesus presents a series of statements, which, as we already pointed out, are called the Beatitudes, which described the nature of true believers. Each verse begins with the Greek word “Makarios,” translated blessed, meaning happiness. Jesus defines the meaning of the Word blessed in verse 3 and again in verse 10 as one who enters the kingdom of heaven. What greater happiness is there than knowing you are a citizen of heaven, that your sins are forgiven? What a great blessing to know that you are redeemed and an heir to everlasting life. Jesus’ definition goes far beyond the meaning of happiness based on luck. These qualities are not physical but spiritual. Though Jesus does offer an abundant life that begins with salvation, the beatitudes have an everlasting reward that characterizes the future kingdom when Jesus rules and reigns on earth. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t measure up to the beatitudes. Remember, you are a work in progress. We, like Paul, not yet having achieved, press toward the high calling of Christ.
The beatitudes are divided into two groups, the first four are regarding self and one’s relationship to God, and the last five are about a relationship with others.
Beatitude #1: verse 3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” In this verse, Jesus promises the poor in spirit the kingdom of heaven. What does it mean to be lacking in spirit? Right off, Jesus is contradicting the teachings of the Pharisees and the false teachers of today. The Pharisees wanted the praise of men and sought after the riches of the world. They considered their wealth and notoriety as evidence that they were in God’s will. That sounds like the prosperity gospel being preached by many today. In his message, He is describing those who were a part of the kingdom of heaven, not a plan to inherit the kingdom of heaven. Had it just been a work to be done, it would have been like the teachings of the Pharisees, and those today who teach works as the way to be saved. Works and keeping rules have never been the way to heaven. It has always been by believing in Jesus for who He is and accepting His forgiveness for sins. The emphasis in the beatitudes is on the state of being, not doing.
To be poor in spirit is to understand a person has nothing within that merits God’s salvation. The theological term is “Total Depravity,” which means that man is depraved of anything good…they are poor in spirit. To the opposite of that, the Pharisees were spiritually proud. Today there is false piety, hypocrisy, and self-righteous pride, with certain religious leaders who are like magnets drawing the money of others to themselves to live in luxury. Opposite of that are true believers, poor in spirit, who hunger for righteousness and purity of heart, who are merciful and gentle in spirit. So, let’s get to know the meaning of these beatitudes and see if we measure up to the gospel Jesus is teaching.
If being poor in spirit is the only way to inherit heaven, how does one become that way? According to the Bible, the Holy Spirit does that work in our hearts through His convicting power, and He is the one who invites us to come to Christ, just as we are. We read in 2Cor. 7:10, “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.” The Spirit is the one who replaces our spiritual pride and self-righteousness and replaces it with humility and an understanding of our actual sinful condition before God. He removes the masks and reveals us for who we are, sinful and needing forgiveness.
Beatitude #2: verse 4, “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” This mourning is a different kind of mourning than being sad for the passing of a loved one. It is a heartfelt sadness for the devastating effects of sin in our lives. It recognizes that we have offended the Holy God of heaven and need to be forgiven. What a great promise we have in Scripture: “If we repent of our sins, God is merciful and just to forgives us and to cleanse us of all unrighteous,” 1 John 1:9. Before we can receive God’s forgiveness, we must first have an attitude of mourning and an attitude of repentance. Opposite to what the Bible teaches, the world, in general, is not mourning over sin; it is wallowing and rejoicing in it.
There is an excellent example of what it means to mourn over your sin found in Psalm 51: where David came to God with a broken heart over his sin with Bathsheba: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: to unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. 5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. 6 Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. 7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 8 Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. 9 Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” Jesus promises those who mourn over sin that in the kingdom of heaven one day, we will be comforted forevermore.”
In our following study of the beatitudes, we will continue with part one, which deals with our relationship with God, and then continue with part two, our relationship with others.