Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Matthew 5:3-4
Blessed. In the Greek this word is makarios. As we went over our small study of this word in our precept class one gentlemen shared this statement about the word makarios, “there is despair in the attempts to find its English equivalent for translation.” Ponder that. When Jesus said “Makarios…“, the word held so much power and meaning we don’t even have a word in our English language that can really correctly interpret it… “blessed” is the best we can do.
Then as we have a tendency to due with our English words, we find a way to use them into the point of the dilution of their meaning. They become common place and begin to be applied to things that really are not worthy of their original intent. We make words meant to describe great depth of meaning and significance into common ordinary words that end up holding no immediate significance.
We use the same word to describe our desire for ice cream as we do our devotion to our spouse. We use the same word to describe a roller coaster ride as we do the character of our God. We use the same word to describe our affection for spiders as we do the evils of this world. We make common the uncommon and therefore when we read the beatitudes in Matthew 5:1-10 we think how sweet, but we miss the point that as the words of Jesus enter our ears they should cause our mouths to drop open and our hearts to turn over within us.
First of all let me help you get a better picture of this day. In Matthew chapter 1 we are given the genealogy of Jesus. We see immediately that Matthew want us to see that Jesus was a legal heir to the throne in the direct line of David, both by birth through Mary (who was the son of David through his son Nathan, 2 Samuel 5:14) and by adoption through Joseph (who was the son of David through his son Solomon). Then we see that Matthew wants to make clear to us that Jesus was the Son of God, Immanuel God with us. Conceived not by flesh and blood, but by the Holy Spirit. Matthew begins his gospel by laying this foundation.
He also uses the first four chapters of this book to show how from the moment of the intent of His conception Jesus was fulfilling Scripture. At least seven times we read, This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the LORD through the prophets… (Matthew 1:22, 2:5, 2:15, 2:17, 2:23, 3:3, 4:14). In chapter 3 we meet John the Baptist. John would be the one who be the forerunner to the Messiah. He would be the one who make ready the path of the LORD. He would be the one who cry out, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Beloved, do you realize that if you belong to Christ you too are supposed to be a John the Baptist? You too are supposed to be crying out into the wilderness of your world, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. You too are supposed to be making ready the way of the LORD and making His path straight? You too are supposed to look and sound and act differently than the religious self-righteous and the lost secularist? Are you?
Now John had grown the crowd. John had made the way. Then Jesus stepped onto the stage. In chapter 3 we see Jesus come to John for baptism and in His baptism we read that all those watching that day heard God the Father confirm God the Son and saw God the Spirit descend upon Him like a dove.
We then read in chapter 4 that immediately after that Jesus is led into the wilderness to battle Satan in His flesh and blood for forty days and forty nights… and while he battled all of Jerusalem and Judea and the district of the Jordan was a buzz. The talk was scattering all around about the man who came down to the river to be baptized by John who declared Him the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world.
Sometime after Jesus battled in the wilderness John the Baptist was taken into custody… and Jesus picked up his cry, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. John had fulfilled his purpose. Beloved as do we. We can only lead someone to the Way… we can’t walk them down the path. Our job is too make the Way clear and the path straight, Jesus will do the rest.
In Matthew 4:17 Jesus begins to preach and in Matthew 4:18-22 He calls His first disciples. Now let us remember that the one’s that He calls had already met Him. Jesus didn’t walk by the Galilee that day and say, Alakazam! Follow Me, and these fishermen mindlessly got out of their boats and zombie walked after Him. No. We know from John’s gospel that some of these men had been following John the Baptist. Andrew was there the day Jesus was baptized and he spent the day with Jesus (John 1:39) and I have no doubt that those forty days that Jesus battled Satan alone, Andrew was talking to John and his brother Simon, and who ever else would listen and discuss these things with him. So when Jesus picked up the baton of John the Baptist and said Follow Me… these men were ready to follow a man they knew, He was not a stranger (John 10:4-5).
From that moment on…
Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.
Matthew 4:23
Jesus did not just pick up the message of John the Baptist, He WAS the message. We read in Matthew 4: 24-25 that the news spread throughout all Syria. Crowds followed Him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.
Look at the map below and think about it for a moment. Look at the range of distance and how quickly the news spread over this range. Now, this was before Fox News and CNN. This was before the telephone. This was before the telegraph. This was how powerful the impact was that Jesus was making on everyone who came in contact with Him.
So here we are. Jesus is with His disciples and He is going throughout all of Galilee teaching in the synagogues and healing every kind of sickness and disease and He is proclaiming the gospel and crowds from all over the middle east are traveling to Galilee to find Him. Coming to Him, bringing their sick with them, in hope against hope that He would heal them. Then in Matthew 5 we read “When Jesus saw the crowds…”
Imagine the scene.
It’s not the Jesus movie scene where everyone is sitting quietly criss-cross-applesauce on the green grass listening intently to a standing Jesus speaking softly with open arms and hands… no I believe it was probably closer to utter chaos.
In the crowd were the sick, the dying, the demonically possessed, the epileptics, the paralytics, the leprous, the blind, the deaf. In the crowd were the Jew, the Gentile, the Samaritans. In the crowd were the searching and the seeking and the skeptic. In the crowd were both those who wanted to be a disciple, those that were just enjoying the show, and those who were there to determine the validity of this One who was causing such a commotion in the land.
I imagine this scene closer to a refugee camp or a war zone makeshift hospital. Everyone screaming and demanding that their loved one be touched first. Pushing and shoving and fighting to get the front. I imagine the sounds of the screams of the hurting and the sounds of the venomous cries of those who were demoniacs standing so close in the presence of the One who had authority over them to bind them in eternal chains until the great day of the LORD. I imagine the disciples being caught and lost throughout the crowd trying to maintain some type of resemblance of order and calmness.
Then I imagine Jesus. I imagine Him looking at the crowd and turning to walk up the mountain without saying a word. I imagine that one by one His disciples, realizing that Jesus had went up on the mountain, told the people to be still. To hold on, they would be back. And then they themselves, one by one and two by two, turning and heading up the mountain to sit at the feet of their Teacher.
Then we read in Matthew 5:2 that Jesus opened His mouth…
This word “opened” in the verse in the Greek is anoigó and it means to open, break a door, a gate. Metaphorically it means to give entrance to the soul. It means to furnish opportunity to do something, to open to one, to grant something asked for, to speak freely, to hold nothing back. It means one who recovers the power of speech to restore the faculty of hearing, to part the eyelids so as to see, to open the eyes of one’s mind, to unseal, to unroll.
Beloved, just let that sink in…
Are the cries of the crowd overwhelming you? Have you realized that you are deafened to the voice of your Teacher because of the chaos of the world around you? Then precious one look up… Jesus is on the mountain. He has sat down. He is waiting for you.
More on the Sermon on the Mount:
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