Understanding The Beatitudes

Welcome to the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke. And I'm Pastor Cameron.

And this is the Uncut Podcast where we have uncut, honest conversations about

faith, life, and ministry.

Today we're going to have a maybe a slightly shorter episode than normal,

but we thought it would be worthwhile.

Kind of a question we got through the text line.

Somebody texted in and they were asking us kind of our opinion on like their,

understanding of the B attitudes. I think they pretty much got it right. I think

they got a very good understanding of the B attitudes but so not we're not necessarily responding to correct or necessarily affirm their understanding,

But I actually think that like the Beatitudes are one of those passages of scriptures that everybody is familiar with, and we've all probably heard

sermon series on, and I think one of the ways that they're largely talked about

is just flat-out wrong. And so I think it's worse like saying, you know what,

let's take a little bit of time, open passage, and maybe create some clarity

around a passage that's often misunderstood or mistaught.

Yeah. So most people are, you might or might not know, the Beatitudes are a section of scripture,

sayings of Jesus, right?

Primarily in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew chapter five.

And Matthew, his Gospel has several different like chunks of teaching that Jesus.

Like, does. And Matthew's Gospel is generally considered to be the most Jewish of the Gospels

in terms of its reliance on Old Testament referencing. It's the importance for Matthew

as the writer of the gospel to communicate Jesus both as the prophetic fulfillment of the promise from Messiah through David's line as well as to

begin to establish not to begin to but to firmly establish Jesus as an authoritative teacher and interpreter of the will and heart of God and so several

different discourses within the gospel and this first section in Matthew chapter 5 through basically the end of chapter 7 are kind of what we call the

first discourse of Jesus' teaching, better known as the Sermon on the Mount.

Right, which contains like just generally some of the most familiar your teachings of Jesus generally, just like at large, like these would be,

passages that people who've not read the Bible in a very long time would still be

like, oh yeah, like I've heard that or something like that. Right, right. And so when you

approach it, you see that they're seemingly couched, underbracketed on both

sides with this allusion to Jesus kind of being the new Moses. Yes. You know, he

He goes up on the mountain top or the mountain side, I think, in Matthew 5, verse 1,

now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountain side and sat down.

His disciples came to him and he began to teach them. And then at the end of that discourse, at the end, when Jesus had finished saying these

things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught as one who had authority

and not as their teachers of the law.

And when he came down the mountainside, large crowds followed him.

And so there's this going up the mountain, similar to how Moses did to receive the law, right?

Coming down from the mountain, how Moses brought the Word of God down in the form of the law.

So Matthew's maybe attempt here to, um, to...

Portray Jesus as the new Moses, which is appropriate. I think it's more appropriate to say that Moses is the old Jesus.

Don't think too hard about that. Yeah.

But no, like, you're hitting a really important thing that I think is worth mentioning,

especially since you brought it up, is that the Old Testament serves to point forward to the coming

the fulfillment of Christ, how Christ is a more full, complete type of Moses.

My point is that, what is the place of reference?

Is Moses the place of reference for how Jesus should be? Or is Jesus, you know, pre-incarnate Jesus, who Moses is seeking to be?

That's my point.

Yes, even if he's unaware of it.

So, yeah.

Okay, and so then the Beatitudes exist there right at the beginning.

It's kind of the prologue to the big section of teaching.

And they are the blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for there you will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they won't hear of the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil things against you

because of 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.

So, what is maybe the classic way that these are used, or interpreted, or understood, or applied?

And then what is maybe an alternative or appropriate view to them?

Well, like the classical view, and I know, I've heard.

I'm sure I've heard sermons on this. I've definitely read books and study guides and stuff on that have like taught this.

Um but the kind of the most popular popular view of it is like well all of us want to know how to live a blessed life Cameron.

Right. Right. All of us want to be the blessed of Christ. Right.

And Christ right here is telling us what you must do or what type of person you must be in order to live that blessed life.

So therefore, and then it's usually broken up into like weeks or chapters or studies

of like saying, all right, blessed are the poor in spirit, Cameron, how must we become poor in spirit?

How do we pursue poverty of spirit? Blessed are those who mourn.

You know, we really just need to mourn more. Like that is something that we really ought, like if we really want Christ to bless us,

we ought to like pursue mourning, right? Blessed are the meek, right?

And particularly those first three, you know, as you kind of go down, some of those become,

a little bit easier to see or to argue as virtues. How do we put ourselves in a place of being persecuted?

Yeah. That one's lost its virtue in our modern day, but essentially we interpret the passage as

a list of virtues to be strived for in order to achieve the blessed life.

That's the way I would say probably 90% of study material and popular material interacting

with it talks about it.

But if we understand the context of Jesus' ministry and the kingdom that he sought to

bring and the people that he sought to include in the kingdom, and we look at it through

the lens of the disenfranchised and those who were typically ostracized from community

or not ostracized from community, then...

That it maybe makes us have a little bit different approach to understanding?

Yeah. I think one key thing, or at least an indicator of either a really difficult passage

to translate or a poor, or not translate, a really difficult passage to interpret,

or a passage that you're not interpreting very well, is when you have to work really hard to

to explain away your immediate gut reaction to the text.

Like sometimes our gut reactions are like wrong, but like all that study material,

like usually ends up being like, well now that doesn't seem very like,

you know, like particularly when it comes to like porn spirit or mourning,

and you're like, well that might seem really, really counterintuitive,

but let me just give you a whole bunch of reasons that have nothing to do with anything

I can particularly point out in this passage of why mourning is a Christian virtue.

Like you end up having to do, like the chapter, like on a book like this,

would you start out, I can almost like read it or see it in front of me is like,

well now at first glance, you might think, why would we wanna be poor in spirit?

Why would we wanna mourn?

But let me explain to you how this counterintuitive like thing you would never actually want to be,

is actually a thing that Christ is telling you to strive.

And then they kind of proof text a bunch of verses to kind of like argue it into a bit of a virtue.

Yes.

So that's, you know, not every time is like, I don't know.

When our understanding of a passage It has very little of the original passage in it for its understanding,

Or maybe or maybe over complicating it or going in a wrong direction Sometimes not sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, so how would you?

How would you begin to say or how would you begin to describe or explain?

Both the heart of what Jesus is communicating here and.

It's like,

Maybe it's application for us, but maybe not Yeah

Well like first is like to kind of take the gut reaction. I think we pointed out like oh.

Who wants to be persecuted? Yeah, who wants to mourn who wants to be poor in spirit?

Nobody wants to be those things right, I I don't want to be those things.

No. And so I think taking that as a starting point is actually a really good place to start.

Just like you were saying, Christ was trying to talk to disenfranchised, those who were on the

outside of things. And he's saying, particularly in his context, Matthew in particular has a lot

to say about what true faith looks like. I'm using my own words to describe his theme here,

but he talks about the religion or the faith of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the religious

leaders, and he is holding up and trying to hold up the Old Testament and holding up Jesus and

saying, which of these is more faithful to the faith that God has called us to in the Old

Testament in some way. And Christ, his argument is Christ is, right? Christ is giving this

interpretation of the Old Testament up on the mount. And Christ's big thing is saying, like.

Look, the way that you've sought to apply the law of God has been on a surface level.

Let me perhaps bring it to a heart level. Maybe, perhaps, let me.

Turn things upside down and show that the most religious or the most faithful person who's

following God is not the person who's got their life kind of together in this very religious sense.

It's not the Pharisee who tithes out of their spice cabinet. It's the person like,

I would rather—or God is more happy or more concerned with the person who's persecuted for

for my sake, with the person who is mourning.

God is close to the brokenhearted and to the weak, a bruised reed he will not break.

Like he's going into all of those places, rather than saying like,

oh, you just need to keep the law outwardly more.

I think that leads us to a closer way. How would you kind of begin to kind of summarize that?

I would say it's really similar to that.

Rather than it being a thing, these different beatitudes, something that we actively pursue.

Not that you don't pursue them or that you avoid them. But that I think what it is,

is it's like a opening volley,

into the Jewish community at the time.

About who is and who is not blessed according to God. Yeah.

Right, so like if the theme of Jesus, one of the themes of Jesus' ministry is,

giving access to the kingdom of God through faith in him faith in Him, too.

The ones in which the worldly systems seem to exclude.

And you see that in, begin to see that even in the beginning of the genealogy of Jesus,

the inclusion of women in Jesus' genealogy in Matthew,

non-Jewish women, one of which was a prostitute, right?

You begin to see like, why would Jesus want to associate himself

with a non-Jewish prostitute woman,

pretty much the most excluded class of people in the context that Jesus was actually living in,

if not to say that Jesus was the cornerstone.

Of a new, more perfect kingdom that represents the actual heart of God

apart from the man-made structures that seek to exclude those who are poor in spirit,

or brokenhearted or meek or suffering persecution,

because God's definitely not with those people.

If you're poor in spirit, God, that's an example of someone who is obviously disobedient to God

and he's punishing them and they're on the outskirts of good, faithful, religious life.

When Jesus is coming around the back end, He was like, no, like blessed are those people as well.

Blessed are those who the world says are on the outskirts of religious life.

So yeah, he's turning to the crowd. And in a sense, he is saying.

Do you happen to be one of these things? Because if you are, my kingdom has a place for you. And

inside of that kingdom, you will be blessed. I think one of the reason one of the things that

like, maybe so like, when the original readers were reading this, they would have been like,

Like, oh, why?

That's so, like, I would never ever classify someone who is poor in spirit.

It would have been so jarring to hear somebody to say that, blessed or merciful, right?

The fact that we're kind of like, well, no, merciful is like a thing, like, is actually a testament

to how much the teachings of Christ and the gospel have impacted virtues.

Like, what we consider to be a virtue or to be a thing to be strived after now,

the fact that we're even like, why would being merciful ever be a virtue?

It would be more of a virtue to be just, right? Because you want to be trampled over,

like you want to get what's yours.

So the fact that we even can conceive of being merciful as a virtue,

is a testament to Christ's impact on our thinking.

Or even what the, like, I was thinking of, it's not even as benign as like,

oh, the meek, they'll be included in the kingdom too.

It's that, it's almost like the, the Jesus is over-correcting on a cultural assumption,

by saying, not only are the weak included in the kingdom, they'll inherit the earth.

You know, it's not just the, okay, yeah, you can come and join us.

Right. Cause you don't like the meek, the meek is not the person who's out there and like making

the best business deals and like getting what's theirs. They're just like, Oh yeah.

Yeah. They don't have the lion energy.

Right. Yeah. They're just kind of, you know, they're very passive. But Jesus is saying,

despite the fact that they're being passive, they will inherit earth.

Yes. Or like, and this is not atypical of the ministry of Jesus. Just the first example is,

when the disciples try and stop the children from coming to Jesus,

the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these, he says, let them come.

Right. So it's not just that, oh, no, they get to take part or they get to be in it, but it's like

there is something about the disenfranchised or the way in which the world disenfranchises people

and the way in which God includes them and blesses them.

Yeah. And I think that understanding of the passage, it doesn't preclude you from perhaps

saying, okay, maybe I do need to strive to be more merciful and maybe I need to grow in my meekness

and I need to learn what it means to mourn with those who are mourning." Like, it doesn't preclude

you from potentially pursuing those virtues in your life, but it makes more sense of the passage.

To kind of take the pressure off of saying, this is a list of things that Jesus says that you must

become or become like, to say, well, Jesus is saying is that, do you happen to find yourself

in a place of disenfranchisement, of being an outsider, of being maybe not what the world would

say is best, or beautiful, or good, or wise? Well, good for you because I have a place for you

in my kingdom. And I think, and that relieves some of the awkward tension that I think often

gets put on that passage of saying, well, we got to find out why we must become that,

or something like that.

Right, yeah, which is, if you take that, if you take that stance or that approach,

you'll find that it's really difficult to make sense of it.

Yes, you end up kind of contorting it a little bit, doing some gymnastics,

pretzel stuff. Like, well, it must mean that I have to do this.

Well, it because what does it mean like do I must I seek out mourning?

I don't think that's actually what Christ is saying, but blessed when you do mourn.

Yeah. Yeah. You're not in a disadvantageous position when you mourn. Right. Yeah.

You know, like you will receive comfort.

Absolutely. And I think that honors the passage a little bit better.

Yeah. I think so too.

There's one author, I think it's Dallas Willard. Dallas Willard.

Spends a significant amount of time on this passage and particularly this misunderstanding

of the passage in Divine Conspiracy. And he goes through and he makes a list of like,

what would be the modern day, like, blessed are the, do you have any that like, kind of come to

your mind? I mean, I've read it. I don't. I mean, like, not one specifically from him, like, but

but like what would you kind of like place in there?

Like blessed are the,

like. Mentally ill. Mentally ill. Mm-hmm. Blessed are the people who don't have it all together. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Blessed are the.

Yeah, I don't know. Like the one, like plus or the lonely.

A lot of lonely people. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

So. But that I think gives a better flavor for where the, at least we think the passage.

Right, I would never want to go back and be like, okay, let me reword Jesus things here

and like make my own list of beatitudes.

I'm not trying to say like our list is equivalent to Christ's list or anything like that.

The thrust of the argument remains the same if you take the heart of what Jesus is saying

and you contextualize it today.

Right. So if we take the passage to mean, blessed are those who you would not think are blessed

or belong to the kingdom. The depressed or the anxious or the addicted or...

Yes, blessed or addicted. I like it.

Those that it we could perhaps make an application point Yes And say well

Then might there also be ways in which Christ wants to bless you if you are mentally ill

If you were struggling with addiction if your family is broken if you do not have it all together,

There is blessing for you in the kingdom. Yep.

You know blessed or not the go-getters You know, like, however, we want to kind of talk about that.

But I think that gives a better picture of the upside down kingdom that Christ is presenting.

And that acts as the sort of the attention getter, but kind of the preamble to them him

kind of re-explaining and expanding upon like the heart and the intention behind the law that Moses gave.

Yeah. So that's our quick fly bio, the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount, you know,

there've been entire books as thick as the Bible written on those things. So we're not going to

cover it all in a 30 minute podcast, but no, I hope maybe that cleared up a little bit of

any questions for you, or at least give me a different perspective through which to read the

Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. And I encourage you to continue to explore.

God's Word and its context, of course. And all that came just from a question that we received

in the text line. So if you have any questions or anything, any topics that you'd like us to

to, you know, to try and tackle here.

You can text us at 716-201-0507, and we will do our best to address those.

As always, thanks for listening and watching. You can like it, rate it, subscribe, share.

Do all the things. All the things.

Music.