The Kingdom of Heaven

The Kingdom of Heaven March 8, 2012

³ "Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:3

Imagine with me, if you will, a group of us sitting around in a semi-circle. Maybe resting our backs on some rocks or maybe on a cloth bag full of sheep’s wool that we have just bought in Jerusalem from a merchant. (that was a bean bag chair reference for all my youth pastors!) So imagine sitting around in a semi circle taking in all of the aromas of the spring air. The sun beams down upon you and warms you to the core of your being. You feel the wind sweep across your face and in that very moment, you hear the voice of Christ, the One and Only. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

I began my study on this verse by going to the first word that caught my eye. “Poor,” strikes up all kinds of thoughts when I use the word “poor.” So I looked to the Greek dictionary for help on what exactly Jesus meant by “poor.” Ptõchos in Greek means, “To crouch or cower like a beggar,” and then it offers this amazing stark contrast in wordage. “The Greek word “penès” may be poor but he earns his bread by daily labor. The ptõchos is so poor that he can only obtain his living by begging. The penès has nothing superfluous, while the ptõchos has nothing at all.” So with that explanation we can now understand how “poor” Jesus wanted us to be.

Perhaps few people today know why the face of Lincoln is engraved on the American penny rather than on one of the larger coins. The reason for this goes back to the boyhood days of David Brenner, who had known nothing of liberty and much of hunger and want in Russia. After coming to America, where he found both liberty and opportunity awaiting him, Brenner became a famous sculptor, and was the man responsible for placing the face of the man who had said, "The Lord must love the common people, He has made so many of them," on the most lowly coin of the United States. Brenner's idea was that there would be more pennies minted than any other one coin, and consequently there would be more of them in the pockets of the common people.

The next word I come to is “spirit.” Lower case ‘s’ so Christ is obviously speaking of our own personal spirit. Interestingly enough, only because it gave me chills sitting here reading it, the Greek word for ‘spirit’ is pneuma. Now, the thing that gave me chills is that pneuma means “to breathe, as of the mouth and nostrils.” One of my favorite verses in the gospel of John comes after the disciples find the empty tomb. Jesus appears to His disciples in chapter 20, and He offers them peace and sends them away, the next sentence says, “And with that He breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.” I love to think of how close you would have to be to feel Christ breathe on you. Now obviously, this is not a literal text, He was not getting the sides of their faces all wet and sweaty by breathing on them, however I do think that He wants us to understand how close we need to be to Him. My wife is reading this as I am writing and she says “well how do you know Jesus didn’t physically breathe on them?” So I take her back to the scriptures, to God’s word. It’s His words that He breathed out into a man, and that man took them and wrote them down. He breathed into that man. It is our duty and our passion and it should be our desire that we feel Christ breathe on us DAILY! There is only one way to Heaven and that is by receiving Christ as Lord, now we can argue that all day, but until you have had Jesus, the King of the world, breathe on you… you’re not going to heaven. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Blessed are those indeed who take in the air of Christ. Blessed are those indeed who inhale all that the Holy Spirit has to offer. Blessed are those indeed who walk daily with the Lord, side by side, holding hands. Strolling down the sandy walkway towards life…

Supreme Blessedness

Supreme Blessedness February 28, 2012

The Beatitudes

¹ Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, ² and he began to teach them, saying:
Matthew 5:1, 2

The beatitudes or supreme blessedness as defined by Webster’s Dictionary. In the Gospel of Matthew the order in which this amazing sermon comes forth is patterned like this. Chapter 1, we get the family tree of Jesus and then begins the story of His birth. Chapter 2 we finish up the story of His birth. Chapter 3 gives us the introduction of John the Baptist and finishes with the baptism of Jesus Christ. Chapter 4, right after His baptism, Jesus is tempted by the devil. After the devil’s failed temptation of Jesus, He begins His ministry in Nazareth. Once His ministry begins, we are told that Jesus selects His first set of disciples in verses 18-22 of chapter 4. Chapter 4 ends with Jesus performing His first set of miracles by healing the sick. Chapter 5 picks up with Jesus’ first of many amazing sermons, yet this one comes as instruction to His disciples. In Luke’s account of the beatitudes, the instruction comes right after the selection of the twelve disciples. For this reason, a great scholar once called the beatitudes, “The Ordination Address to the Twelve.” So if I understand this correctly, Jesus is doing His first “lesson” to His students. If this is the case, how much more important is this Sermon on the Mount to us who call ourselves servants of the Lord? Maybe this isn’t just a basic sermon to all believers. This is instruction to those who call themselves servants or shepherds for the Lord. For this reason the Sermon on the Mount has also been called, “The Compendium of Christ’s Doctrine,” “The Magna Charta of the Kingdom,” “The Manifesto of the King.”

It is also understood by many scholars that the Sermon on the Mount is not just one single sermon as originally thought. Rather, it is thought that it is an epitome of all the sermons that Jesus ever preached. William Barclay gives reasons for this thought in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. He says this about the idea that the Sermon on the Mount is a selection of sermons.

1. “Anyone who heard it in its present form would be exhausted long before the end. There is far too much in it for one hearing. It is one thing to sit and read it, and to pause and linger as we read; it would be entirely another thing to listen to it for the first time in spoken words.”

2. “There are certain sections of the Sermon on the Mount which emerge, as it were, without warning; they have no connection with what goes before and no connection with what comes after. For instance, Matthew 5: 31, 32 and Matthew 7: 7-11 are quite detached from their context.”

3. “The most important point is this. Both Matthew and Luke give us a version of the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew’s version there are 107 verses. Of these 107 verses 29 are found all together in Luke 6: 20-49; 47 have no parallel in Luke’s version and 34 are found scattered all over Luke’s gospel in different contexts. It has been suggested that, after Jesus definitely chose the Twelve, He may have taken them away into a quiet place for a week or even a longer period of time, and that, during that space, He taught them all the time and the Sermon on the Mount is the summary of that teaching.”

Scholars thought that this series of “sermons” were delivered during the first year of Christ public career. John Peter Lange calls the Sermon on the Mount the “central-point of Christ’s ministry in Galilee.” There is also a couple important points to be aware of in the first two verses where Jesus shows His proof to be a Rabbi. Number one is that it says “When Jesus saw the crowds… He sat down.” This was important because sitting was the accepted posture of synagogue or school teachers. (Luke 4:20, Matthew 13:2, 23:2, 24:3.) Another important point is the use of wording in verse 2, “and He began to teach them.” The usages of the word teach in the Greek is didaskõ meaning to teach or to instruct. The other word used in the Greek is to preach which is used in Matthew 4:17, “From that time on Jesus began to preach.” This Greek word is keryssõ which means to preach, herald, or proclaim.

William Barclay says in his commentary that “The Sermon on the Mount is greater even than we think. Matthew in his introduction wishes us to see that it is the official teaching of Jesus; that it is the opening of Jesus’ whole mind to His disciples; that is the summary of the teaching which Jesus habitually gave to His inner circle. The Sermon on the Mount is nothing less than the concentrated memory of many hours of heart to heart communion between the disciples and their Master.” It is amazing to think that the select few people that Jesus invited to walk along with Him throughout His years of ministry were also invited to sit with Him while He gave some of His greatest of teachings. Teaching someone is so much more personal and intimate than preaching to someone. In the Sermon on the Mount, it said that Jesus taught them. One on one so to say, and to think that even today we are blessed to be taught one on one by Jesus Christ Himself. Are you taking advantage of this blessing daily? Are you sitting and learning, sitting and listening? We have the very words that Christ spoke in a book and we are able to hear Him vividly through prayer and meditation, so I ask you, are you learning?