The Beatitudes

Hey, welcome.

Thank you for being here.

My name's Greg, and I'm excited about what I'm going to share.

We're going to start a new collection of teachings that are going to take us really from now up until Father's Day.

It's the Sermon on the Mount, which is basically, if you have your Bibles, Matthew 5 through 7, chapter 5 through chapter 7.

And I'm just, I've been spending a lot of time studying this.

I'm excited to share it with you.

If you've been in church before, you you may be familiar with some of these teachings, but really what I want to do is uh really kind of share it the way I think Matthew intended for us to receive it.

And I think in so doing, it'll put maybe a fresh take on some of this.

Uh and I know I found it personally tremendously helpful, so I'm I'm pumped to share it with you.

Before I do, let's just open up and prepare hearts in prayer.

Uh Lord Jesus, I just say thank you for the opportunity to be here.

I thank you, God, for what you have shared with me, what your word teaches us about God, about ourselves.

Lord, I pray today you would give me the ability to communicate in a way that's appropriate, that represents your heart.

Lord, help us to connect our heads and our hearts to understand academically what we need to understand, to see truth clearly.

And then Lord, help us to not just walk out and go, hey, that was good, that was true.

Help us to be clear about what we're supposed to do with that, how it's supposed to transform and renew our minds, and then end up in our behavior.

We love you, we thank you, we praise you in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.

Amen.

All right.

I want to share with you something I hope sticks in your brain because I think this will not only help you in uh looking at Matthew 5 through 7, but I think every time you read your Bible, uh hopefully this will help you to read it maybe a little bit better, get a little bit more clarity, and maybe this will be your default when you read something in the Bible that confuses you.

I'm gonna start off by actually referencing a movie that my mom and I watched when I was a kid.

Uh she took me to Blockbuster Video.

Come on, somebody.

Anybody remember Blockbuster?

Anyone remember those VHS tapes?

Come on, family movie night.

There was no streaming, there was no Netflix, it wasn't even in the mind of God yet.

And but there was this place Blockbuster, and you could rent a VHS and take it home and watch a movie, and that's what we did in like 1987.

This movie called The Princess Bride came out.

All right, all right.

We got a few fans in the house.

Okay, so uh for those of you that have seen the movie, if you haven't, whatever, I'll give you a little summary, right?

If I was to ask you, those that have seen it, tell me about the plot, tell me about the characters, whatever, you would go right into this.

It's an epic tale.

So it's uh this this guy Wesley, who's this farmhand, and he goes out to try to seek his fortune.

He ends up getting uh captured by the dread pirate Roberts, okay?

And then there's this woman named Buttercup, is is uh, I mean, I guess it's her name.

I don't know.

That's what her parents called her.

So uh that's Buttercup and Wesley, and they fall in love.

But uh more than that, there's these other characters.

Andre the Giant is in the movie, there's a six-fingered man, all right.

There's all this crazy, you know, magic, all this stuff.

Okay, so that's the epic tale.

And if I asked you the Princess Bride, that's where probably you would start.

But for those that really remember the movie, it's actually a story about a grandpa and a grandson, okay?

It starts there.

So the whole movie starts out.

There's this kid, Fred Savage, okay, is playing Atari.

Come on, who remembers Atari?

The joystick, one button, okay.

This is what we came up on.

Archaic at this point, but that's what it was.

And he's playing this video game.

The young boy's faking sick.

He doesn't want to go to school, he just wants to play Atari.

Mom's got to go to work.

Grandpa shows up.

All right, so go ahead and bring it up.

This is uh Peter Falk shows up to Fred Savage, and he says, Hey man, I'm gonna read you a story.

Kid didn't want to hear the story, he wants to play Atari, but he's like, hey, just let me tell you the story.

He's like, it's probably a bad story, it's probably a kissing story.

He's like, Oh, there's a little bit of kissing, but it's more than that.

So grandpa's a great storyteller, and the movie ensues.

All right.

The reason I tell you this is because if you and I were to sit on the couch and watch The Princess Bride, there would be kind of three things going on.

There would be you and I watching it, and we're watching a grandfather tell a grandson a story about all these things that happened.

All right, so go ahead and go to the next slide.

This is everything going on.

You got grandpa telling the story, you got Buttercup and Wesley, you got Andre the Giant, you got the six-fingered man, you got the terrible uh uh king or prince or whatever he was.

He was a terrible guy, bad.

Um, but but you've got the story.

Now, what we tend to do in reading the Bible is we open it up and we just start reading about the king and we start reading about the six-fingered man and all this.

But you got to understand every book of the Bible is somebody telling a story to somebody else.

There's a grandpa and a grandson, essentially.

So when you see Matthew, you're like, well, who is Matthew?

And who is Matthew writing to?

And the more that you can understand that, you're not just reading the words of Jesus, you're reading the words of Jesus, the gospel according to Matthew.

And Matthew has something he's trying to accomplish as well.

So the more I can understand that, the more it could keep me maybe from some misinterpretation or jumping to conclusions of going right into the story.

Does that make sense?

So for the rest of your life, whenever you read the Bible, think about the Princess Bride.

Think about somebody's telling a story here, and there's more to the story.

Okay, let's start with that then.

Who's Matthew and who's he telling the story to?

Who's the grandfather-grandson, so to speak, in the story?

Well, you have Matthew, who um is a Jewish man, he's a tax collector, he became a follower and an eyewitness of Jesus.

He's a meticulous note taker, he's great with Microsoft Excel, he's great with accuracy, as tax collectors are, they don't miss a penny, okay?

And so he knew accuracy and he was trained in shorthand, and so he kept great records.

And he releases this whole deal uh a few decades after Jesus' ascension.

Because what's going on?

The Romans uh politically are oppressing the Jewish people.

Things aren't don't seem to be getting better, they seem to be getting worse, and we had heard things about who is Jesus really?

What was all that about?

And I heard something about him coming back.

Should we be looking for him?

Is he coming back in our lifetime?

Is that happening now?

What's going on?

And so you have a lot of these questions going on, and so Matthew is writing, and here is simply put, here's his agenda, here's what he cares about.

He wants to prove to these Jewish people that Jesus of Nazareth is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy of the Messiah.

That's what he wants them to know.

This wasn't just a guy who came and lived and died, and is somebody we should remember from history.

This is the Messiah, the chosen one that came in, and what he did was much bigger, and it lives on beyond his death.

Part of the way that he goes about proving that is what you see in chapter one, which is a genealogy.

So in the genealogy, you open it right up, most people just go right past it.

But Matthew has a point, and he's trying to show them, okay, the link between the Old Testament prophecies and the life of Jesus.

And then he goes through talking about the resurrection.

Again, those are the two main things that Matthew's using to prove to this audience, this you know, first, second century Jewish audience, that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah.

So he uses the genealogy and the resurrection.

Couple important things to note.

He references the Old Testament 62 times.

So he's adamant about showing Jesus as the fulfillment of what they'd learned from the Old Testament.

But here's what you got to know about Matthew.

When Matthew's doing this, he doesn't say, hey, I'm gonna quote the Old Testament now.

He speaks in insider shorthand language like a grandfather to a grandson.

If you heard a grandfather, grandson talking, there might be things that they're saying that are deeper than what you're picking up because you're not an insider necessarily.

So what we know about Matthew, it's written for us, but it's not written to us.

And so the reason I tell you that is because as we go through the Sermon on the Mount, you're gonna hear some stories.

If you've been around church, you're gonna hear some statements, you're gonna hear some um allegories and some some parable uh um illustration type of things that you've heard before, but you've heard it maybe through an American lens, or you've heard it through a Western lens, or you've heard it, you you maybe didn't catch what he was doing there.

And so I'm gonna bring some of that up.

I think it's gonna, that's one of the reasons it's gonna put uh a really a fresh understanding in our mind of what Jesus was trying to say.

Um, we know that Matthew's writing to, you know, his intended reader was Jewish people because Matthew does zero, he does nothing to explain Jewish tradition or culture to the to the reader.

He just assumes that they know, which is different than the other gospel writers.

I'll give you a quick um quick illustration here.

So Matthew, or I'm sorry, Mark, Mark is also a gospel writer.

Mark 7, just look at this excerpt from Mark 7, verse 2.

Mark 7:2

It says, They noticed that some of the disciples failed to follow the Jewish ritual of hand washing before eating.

Now look at verse 3.

Parenthetically, it says, the Jews, especially the Pharisees, do not eat until they have poured water over their cupped hands, as required by their ancient traditions.

Similarly, they don't eat anything from the market until they immerse their hands in water.

And this is but one of the many traditions they have clung to, such as the ceremonial washing of cups, pitchers, and kettles.

Matthew doesn't do any of that.

Mark does that, John does that, Matthew doesn't do any of that because he's expecting this to the group of people that it goes to.

Let me just say this, I don't want to assume anything.

I'm not suggesting that it has no relevance to us.

It has tremendous relevance to us.

It just affects how we approach it.

We have to understand that he's going to be saying things.

We've got to look deeper, especially when we find ourselves confused.

Um, he's the only one that talks about the kingdom of heaven, right?

John and the others would talk about the kingdom of God, but he's the only one that uses the term the kingdom of heaven, which is kind of a re it's a reverential Jewish expression.

But if you're reading that, right, as an American right now, and you're like, what is a kingdom of heaven?

You might jump to a conclusion as to what that means.

So we're gonna that these are the things we're gonna look at.

All right?

Okay.

So that's that's the grandfather and grandson, that's Matthew, and who he's talking to and what his intentions are.

Now let's jump into the story.

Let's look at Jesus.

If you pick up the Sermon on the Mount, it starts in Matthew 5, starting in verse 1.

It says, now when Jesus saw the crowds, when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down.

And his disciples came to him and he began to teach them.

All right, let's pause there.

It says, when he saw the crowds, well, okay, so we know Jesus is teaching this to a large group of people.

But what is this group of people?

Who are they?

Okay, well, we let's flip back one chapter.

So if you have your Bible, go back to the end of Matthew 4.

So we just read Matthew 5.

Let's go back to the end of Matthew 4, see if we can, if Matthew gives us any indication, any detail at all about who Jesus is talking to.

Matthew 4 23 says Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and look at this, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

Imagine a whole group of people who had disease and sickness, and somebody heals all of them.

What do you think would happen in the community?

What sort of communication do you think would take place?

What sort of phenomenon?

Look at this, verse 24.

News about him spread all over Syria.

Duh, as it would.

Everybody that showed up walked out.

Everybody that came in on a mat walked out.

Everybody uh who was sick got a clean bill of health.

Therefore, it goes viral.

And people, look at this.

People brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed.

So this isn't a comprehensive list.

This is just a cross-section.

People that couldn't walk, people that had physical and emotional and spiritual issues.

And look at this.

And he healed them.

So this wasn't a one-time thing, it's now a two-time thing.

So you thought the crowd was big before, verse 25 says, large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, the region across the Jordan, they all followed him.

So when you read Matthew 5 1, that said Jesus saw the crowds and he went up and sat down, and the disciples came and he began to teach them.

Now let's really get a good picture of what's going on here.

Who is there?

A huge group of people.

What is this group?

A big group of people with a bunch of problems.

So they're expecting round three.

The first time, he healed everybody, the second time, he healed everybody, and now people have come from everywhere and they're all sick, hurting, in severe pain.

Well, let's think about that.

What does that mean then for their economic situation?

These are people that would have been suffering financially, these are people that, as far as the culture and society, they didn't have any power.

They were at the bottom of the social strata.

And what they're all thinking is if we come to Jesus, we are unfortunate people, and Jesus is in a healing mood, and he's in a miracle mood.

So if we go here, he could deal with the problem in my life and get me to a better place.

So with that in mind, it makes all the sense in the world, and we see a whole bunch of new dimensions to what is called the beatitudes.

This is how Jesus opens.

Well, what's a beatitude?

What does that mean?

Beatitude means blessed.

What is blessed?

Blessed is don't overthink it.

It means exactly what you think it means.

Very fortunate.

It means someone who would be in uh well off or in a position to be envied.

And Jesus is going to go through and say, Blessed are you who are poor in spirit.

Blessed are you who are grieving and mourning.

So when you think of it now, notice now we got to make sure that we get what he's doing.

Because I'm going to go through and I'm going to hit, you know, a bunch of these things individually.

But I think the right way to think about the Beatitudes isn't to extract each individual thing and get overly hung up on what he meant by each, blessed are this and blessed are this, and to really look at it as a composite.

It's like one of those things, like, you know, it's like a stained glass window, like you can look at each little part, but when you stand back and you look at it, it tells you a story, it paints a picture.

And the big picture of what Jesus is saying here is hey, you guys showed up to me thinking that you have a physical or exterior impediment that is prohibiting you from being blessed.

Later on in the Sermon on the Mount, he'll say something like this Hey, don't get overly hung up about worrying about tomorrow.

Tomorrow will have its own share of problems.

He's like, let tomorrow worry about tomorrow.

Let it worry about itself.

He's essentially saying, you know, today's enough for today.

So think about that now.

What Jesus understands is there will always be problems in life.

You'll have versions of sickness.

You're going to have issues emotionally, relationally, spiritually.

You're always going to have something that has you feeling down here.

And what he realized is their psyche, their mindset was if we don't get this out of the way, we can't be blessed.

And what Jesus is saying is, blessed are you even when.

I got to go into this a little bit more because to really understand the culture and the psyche of the day, okay, what you have is a group of people that here's what they think, here's how they think you get blessed.

Here's how they think you become fortunate based on the blessing of God.

They had the the Torah, which was 613, call it rules for piety, holiness, and conduct, how you behave even in their their civil environment, but also how we ultimately give God what He wants.

And if I give God what He wants, He'll give me what I want.

What do I want?

I want to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, right?

That's what I want.

And so they think now if you're good at keeping this law, God's rules, then God will bless you this way.

And if you're not, then all of the exterior issues like sickness and illness and all of this, it's all connected to you not being blessed by God.

You remember later on when Jesus is walking with his disciples and they see a man begging for money who's been blind since birth?

And Jesus disciples, do you remember what they said?

They're like, who sinned?

Who sinned that this guy was born blind?

Was it his parents?

Because in their rationale, the only way you get sick or something bad happens to you, and again, this would apply to things like barrenness, somebody couldn't have a child, they would conclude they are not blessed, they are not fortunate because somebody sinned somewhere, somebody did something wrong, therefore they're incapable of being blessed.

So unless I can give the man his sight back, he can't be blessed.

Unless we can uh you know make her to be fruitful, then she can't be blessed.

And so Jesus corrects his disciples right there.

He's like, nobody sinned.

That was that's not the issue at all.

That has nothing to do with it.

But again, this is the mentality of the day.

And certainly being sick, lame, going, uh, you know, feeling severe pain and being at the bottom economically, having no um political connections, being down here, nobody thought of them as blessed, nobody called them blessed, nobody viewed them as blessed, people treated them in terrible ways, and of course that's gonna affect how you see yourself.

And what Jesus is doing is giving them an amazing gift here.

He's giving them some control of their internal environment, their internal environment.

Um, okay, I'll go one more thing and then we'll get into this, just to help you understand the context of the culture even more.

Just like we have influencers, they had influencers in Jesus' day.

So the uh a hundred years, so 150 BC, a guy named Ben Serah, who was a he was a scribe, he was an early scribe, he's considered a wise, influential man.

He was somebody who he sort of um uh built his reputation and his following around um the fact that the nation of Israel had been subject to so many other nations that it had really caused them to be essentially sloppy in their in their religion or in their nationality.

And so what what he um basically they've been affected by uh the Hellenistic world, the Greek culture, the ideas and the ideals of the Greek world.

And so he's calling them back to radical um adherence to the Jewish law, to the Torah, and to clean up anything that's been sloppy or contaminated by the other nations around us.

And so he wrote in 150 BC, it's called the wisdom of Ben Sirah, S-I-R-A.

You you could go online and read the whole thing.

It's published, he published it because he wanted it to be distributed.

So again, this is a thought leader, this is somebody that would have affected how they think.

And Ben Sira, a hundred years before Jesus, wrote his own Beatitudes.

He wrote his own blessed, and this is an excerpt from that.

He said, There are nine whom I would call blessed, and 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 does not sin with his tongue.

Blessed is the one who does not 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.

When you read that, it's kind of interesting.

Because some of it feels like the type of stuff you would read in the Bible, right?

It feels a little bit like Proverbs.

It almost some of it rhymes a little bit with Jesus' beatitudes.

You know, stuff like, well, you're fortunate if you can rejoice in your children.

There's nothing wrong with that.

You know, bless is the one who doesn't sin with their tongue, that's good.

You know?

But then there's some stuff in there you're like, bless is the one who speaks to attentive listeners.

Well, there's nothing wrong with attentive listeners necessarily, but the spirit of this, the connotation, is essentially being an influencer.

It's saying when people are hanging on your every word, when when when you're so important that you stand up and everybody listens intently to you and they're locked into you, like all those, all of that attention is part of what makes you blessed or makes you fortunate.

So then essentially he's saying, if you're overlooked, what about the one that's not doing that?

Again, that that that started to affect.

Well, if I want to be blessed, I have to have this sort of following or this sort of attention.

How about blessed is the one who does not serve an inferior?

It starts to make sense some of the stuff that Jesus taught.

Because he comes up a hundred years after this and he's talking to a group of people who all would have fallen into that category as an inferior.

He's like, hey, you're blessed if you never have to serve one of those people.

Does it make sense why Matthew later makes sure that you know that Jesus said, hey, who's greater?

The one who sits at the table in the place of honor, or the one who serves at the table?

He's like, I'm among you as one who serves.

Why Jesus washes the feet of an inferior.

Was he blessed or not?

Yeah.

Hey, any of y'all walk on water?

No.

I didn't think so.

I did, and I'm among you as one who serves inferior.

Who's inferior?

What are you talking about?

So he has to uproot this stuff that Ben Sirah was talking about.

How about this?

When he says, Blessed is the man who gets to see the downfall of his foes.

Blessed is the one that gets to see all the haters destroyed.

Blessed is the one that all he does is win, win, win no matter what.

Jesus says, Hey, you know, you've heard it said this.

He goes, I say, love your enemy.

Pray for those who persecute you.

And I say love, not in some touchy-feely kind of way, how you feel about your grandkids or how you feel about your kids.

No, no, no.

I'm not talking about affection.

I'm talking about a deeper love.

Jesus is taking it way deeper.

Well, what's he doing?

He's showing up to a culture that has a paradigm of what it means to be blessed, and he's standing to a whole group of people that's hoping that someday, if I can get this sickness out of my body and I can get some money in my bank account, and I can get up from the bottom of the social strata, if I can get enough success and climb enough ladders, then I'll be what Ben Sira said was blessed.

And Jesus said, forget Ben Sira, I got something better for you.

I'm going to show you the heart of God.

You're already blessed.

You're already blessed.

It doesn't mean you're not hurting, it means you're hurting and you're blessed.

Let's go, let's look at this.

Okay, let's go in.

Verse uh three.

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

Verse four, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Okay, look what he's doing here.

Is he saying, he's he's basically introducing the idea that God has created us to be able to hold two thoughts and two feelings simultaneously.

To have mixed feelings, and to not have to just pick one, but but to actually have two realities going on at the same time.

What we tend to do is pick one, you know, and so but we know this.

You can you could be standing at a casket mourning and be simultaneously grieving what you lost and grateful for what you had.

You can hold them at the same time.

We could just spend the whole next couple hours talking about what it's like to be in a place where you've never been more confident and more accomplished and never been more insecure all at the same time.

There are times you feel incredibly empowered and tremendously vulnerable.

There are times you feel sadness and joy, and you're feeling it all together.

And what usually people will encourage you to do will be to pick one feeling and to just move the posit to the positive feeling and deny the other ones.

And Jesus adds a, I think, a deeper thought here.

He says, Hold on a second.

I'm not telling you, blessed are you when you don't mourn, or don't have to mourn, or you don't have to grieve, or you grieve super fast at warp speed.

He said, No, you're blessed when you mourn.

So you can be mourning and grieving.

What do you grieve for?

What do you mourn for?

Because I lost something I love, I lost someone I love, I'm in deep pain.

Now, again, go back to their thought of blessed.

Well, why did I lose this?

Their conclusion was, I lost this because I must have upset God.

Because I'm not blessed, I'm not blessed, that's why this happened.

Because I'm imperfect, I made a mistake, I'm getting payback.

And so he's saying, No, when you're in a place that you lost something, don't draw the conclusion that you're not blessed because you can be feeling the pain of the loss and simultaneously in the moment go, I'm blessed and hurting.

I'm blessed and mourning, I'm blessed and grieving.

And so it's not to forsake the negative feeling that comes from grieving, and some of that is negative, but it's to add this dimension, this divine mention in your internal environment that says, I'm both.

And when you do that, by the way, it opens you up then to the next step, which is he says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

In other words, when I'm mourning, if I only think of myself as unfortunate or not blessed, I might have a tendency to devolve or to cascade into a whole negative mindset that I am just cursed.

And because I'm cursed, I'm upset with God, I don't turn to God.

And by the way, I get so caught up in what I lost that I'm unable and unwilling to embrace those who are still there that want to give me comfort.

So he's like, if in the middle of your horrible pain you can also see yourself as blessed, it doesn't deny what happened in the past, it doesn't deny the hurt in the present, but it adds a dimension to it of the blessing of God that then enables you to be able to accept the gift of comfort.

So if you go each one of these, again, we look at these is as a group, okay, but he that's what he's saying.

He's saying adding adding depth, and the depth is in your internal environment that you are blessed by God.

He says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

What is poor in spirit?

Well, if you if you want to go study it, you know, there's a lot of different perspectives on what you know is poor in spirit.

Is that tied to your economics?

Is it tied to your emotions?

Is it tied to your spiritual, their spiritual hierarchy in some way?

I think a lot of trying to like make it singular, like, well, it's spiritual poverty or it's physical poverty, financial, economic poverty, I think is a mistake.

I think poor and spirit, the reality is we are these intertwined beings.

And so if I lose something, uh I'm emotionally hurting.

When I'm emotionally hurting, it affects my body.

When it affects my body, it affects my relationship.

There's no part of my heart, soul, mind, strength, and neighbor relationships that aren't affected when I'm in a low place.

Jesus, by the way, isn't giving you a formula to be blessed.

In other words, he's not saying, hey, if you want me to bless you, go mourn.

He's not sending you into mourning.

And I say that not tongue in cheek because there are some people that see this as a formula instead of a description of the people that he's looking at.

That's what it is.

If you see it as a formula, then you'll start to develop some sort of false guilt when you're not mourning.

I know folks like this that are like, you know, I think it's the things are going too good, you know, and I want the blessing of God, therefore I better go grieve.

I better go mourn.

I better go lose something.

And many of them feel more blessed because they think this is formulaic.

It's not.

It's it's a bigger picture.

It's what Jesus is saying.

You can have all kinds of stuff going on in your exterior environment.

If he was talking to you and you were sitting over coffee and he was giving you the blessed are the and the beatitudes, he would say, Hey, write down your top nine things right now that make you feel not blessed.

Write down the top nine things right now that make you feel beat down and low, that make you feel weak, that make you feel anemic, the areas you don't have any control, the things that bother you, the things that are frustrating you.

Write those ten things down.

How do they make you feel?

You'd write out how you felt, and then you go, You're blessed also.

Put blessed over here as well, because you got to add that dimension.

That's what he's doing here.

So, so blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are those who heart, soul, mind, strength, neighbor feel low, feel weak.

For yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are the meek.

What's the meek?

What is meek?

That's not a word we usually use.

If you have the NLT, New Living Translation, it'll say those who are humble.

Humble not being insecure, humble is having a correct assessment of yourself.

Romans 12 says, Don't think of yourself more highly than you ought.

But I think the implication is don't think of yourself more lowly than you ought.

I think one of the best biblical examples is John the Baptist, who Jesus said, no one who's ever lived is greater than John the Baptist.

What a line from the goat.

The goat said the goat, like it's your favorite rapper's favorite rapper.

You know, it's like Jesus said John is the greatest ever.

And then, but John, okay, so John had no sense of insecurity.

He was a bold man, but when people started leaving John to follow Jesus, all of his following was getting nervous.

They're leaving to follow me.

And John's like, that's fine.

I'm not the light, I'm a reflection of the light.

He didn't think of himself too high, too low.

It's like, you remember how Ron Burgundy was like, uh, I'm kind of a big deal.

Okay, so he's kind of like, yeah, you're kind of a big deal.

Jesus said you're the greatest to ever live.

But he's like, I'm kind of a big deal.

I'm not the light, I'm a reflection.

The light comes at me, I don't absorb it, I reflect it to Jesus.

And so what is meekness?

Meekness is I don't think of myself too way up here, I don't think of myself way down here.

It's a sense of humility, confident action, but that I have a proper view of myself.

He's like, hey, blessed are you who are meek, you you'll inherit the earth.

Ooh, here's one.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

If you have the New Living Translation, it says, Those who hunger and thirst for justice, it says.

What is righteousness?

You read righteousness, again, we tend to read that as piety or holiness.

What it means here, when you think of righteousness, it's doing right by people.

In fact, there's a lot of places you'll see him saying, doing your righteousness, doing acts of righteousness.

And so righteousness essentially is justice, it's doing the right thing.

So he says, Blessed are you who hunger and thirst.

In other words, there's a deprivation of justice.

People aren't being done right by, and it bothers you.

And it may be you're experiencing it firsthand, it may be you're witnessing it firsthand, or it may be coming across your newsfeed.

And who's he talking to?

A group of people who are seeing injustice all the time.

People that are seeing people not being done right by and have no power to do anything about it.

So do you feel blessed when you see injustice and I can't do anything about it?

No, you don't feel blessed, you feel demoralized.

I either want to become um um violent, I want to become reckless, or I want to just pull the covers up over my head and go, you know what, I can't boil the ocean, I can't fix this.

Eight billion free will people out here doing stuff.

I'm just going to go hide.

He said, Yeah, what you feel is weak.

He said, But you're blessed.

The fact that you see somebody not doing something right by somebody and you see the injustice and it provokes you and it bothers you, he's like, That's good.

That's good.

That's the God in you, that's the image of God in you.

It bothers him too, it bothers you too.

Stop right there.

You're blessed.

Now, if I can, instead of seeing myself as weak and helpless and there's nothing I can do about this, oh, of course I can't go solve 8 billion people.

But if I start seeing myself as blessed, maybe I can do something to be filled in my community, in my neighborhood.

I can't fix everybody's block, but I can do something in my house, I can do something in my family, I can do something in my neighborhood.

So he said, What will it do?

It will acknowledge the feeling, it will add the dimension of blessing, and then cause you to make a decision.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

I gotta go quick, was you pull a punch, you could take.

You you you could you could burn them down.

You could reduce them, you could reduce them to the sum of their worst decision.

You could see the worst in them or you can see the potential in them.

And instead of throwing the punch and instead of scorching the earth, you show mercy.

He said, You're blessed when you do that.

So you're kind of like your heavenly father who loved the world and saw beyond just the surface.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

You know how hard it is to keep a pure heart?

Hearts don't stay pure on their own.

You got to do like spiritual cardio to keep that stuff cleaned out.

It's like repentance.

Search me, oh God.

Know my heart.

Show me my blind spot.

Show me where the stuff's starting to build up in my arteries.

Show me where my heart is getting hard.

Show me, Lord, where my heart is starting to get evil.

Show me where I'm compromising and I'm justifying to myself.

He's like, Blessed are you when you do the maintenance and the repentance to keep your heart clean.

For they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Oh man.

Gosh, I'm out of time, but I'm just going to go anyways.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

How miserable is it to be a peacemaker who stands in the middle of two people who are who are tearing each other down and to stand instead of picking a it's a lot safer to pick a side, by the way.

If you pick a side, at least you have a friend and you know who your enemy is.

When you stand in the middle of the road, you risk getting hit by both sides.

I've tried to be a peacemaker with two people instead of pick sides, and they both hated me.

Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about.

It'd be a lot easier to pick a side or just butt out.

But he's like, you know what?

Some of you, he goes, blessed are you when you see two people who don't have common ground, who are who are frustrated or agitated or maybe even hate one another, and you'll have the courage to stand in the middle and try to find the common ground and try to find the common value and try to bring them together and try to get them to reframe one another and try to get them to apologize to each other and try to get some reconciliation.

You risk them both hating you and them both talking about you and turning all their venom at you.

But he said, the fact that you stood in there and you tried to make peace, blessed are you.

Good job.

That's your heavenly father in you.

Jesus, by the way, before he goes to the cross in John 17, prays the high priestly prayer, is what it's called.

But it's his final beckon call to his father, it's his final alignment to the father.

And he says in John 17, 20, I'm praying not only for these disciples, but also for all the disciples who will ever believe in me through their message.

That's me and you.

He said, I pray that they will all be one just as you and I are one.

As you are in me, Father, and I am in you, may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Some of you are standing in the middle and people they're shooting at you because you won't take a side.

And it's not because you don't have opinions on both sides.

It's not because you don't have opinion about him and you don't have an opinion about her.

You absolutely do, but you're committed to say, you know what, let's come together.

This is what Jesus prayed right before he went to the cross.

He said, When you do that, it may not feel good.

Notice what it says, blessed our peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

By who?

They may not call you children of God, they may call you the son of the devil.

Or the, you know, son of other things.

But you so they may not give you, they may not call you the son of God.

But ultimately, what is again, God's saying, that's my son, that's my daughter.

Good job.

You stood there and you tried to reconcile, you tried to make peace, you cared.

You could have turned a blind eye and you got involved.

You did the best you could do.

Just the desire for that, blessed are you.

He goes through and says in verse 10, Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are the people who insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you.

Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Again, what's Jesus doing here?

He's He's giving you and giving them and ultimately giving us an opportunity to be the gatekeeper of our internal environment.

It doesn't feel good to be persecuted, it doesn't feel good to be lied about, it doesn't feel good to have someone savage your reputation, it doesn't feel good to be insulted.

People to say evil things, do evil things too.

It doesn't feel that way, but he said, you know what, that that's the exterior, and you don't have to go singular in your feeling, in your belief.

He said, attach blessing to it as well and think back.

You know what, you're in good company.

A lot of people have had to walk through these things too, and so you can have an internal state of blessing, holding two realities at the same time.

So today I want to take a moment and pray with each of you.

And today I would encourage you, maybe even after we get out of here, when you maybe have some quiet time with you and the Lord, to use this kind of as a template, but to see deeper than just the specifics around peacemakers or merciful.

I mean, there's a lot of good lessons in there.

But to look at the areas of your life that you have a tendency to not feel blessed, to feel alone, to feel attacked, to feel persecuted, to feel overlooked, and to instead of falling into that view and even connecting it to your view of God, to see that you are blessed now.

And when that problem goes away, there will be another problem and you'll be blessed then.

And so today, regardless of what you're feeling or how you're being treated or how you're being viewed, today I encourage you to invite beatitudes into your life, the blessings of God.