As I come to the Sermon on the Mount I never noticed for years who Jesus was speaking to. I know in Chapter five it says his disciples and I always thought the 12 and a larger group. What I failed to see is that Matthew 4 shows us clearly who is in this large crowd of disciples i.e. followers of Jesus.
It is the lame, the paralyzed, the lepers, those demon possessed, those in pain and all types of sickness that Jesus healed. The Kingdom of Heaven was preached by Jesus from the very beginning of His Ministry and accompanied with signs and wonders. John the Baptist preached it’s coming and after Jesus ascended it was preached by the apostles in Acts 1 and Acts 28. The opening and closing of the book of Acts. Yet never preacehd by me in 21 years ofo ministry. The most important message of Jesus and I missed it all these years.
These people who Jesus preached to on that day on the mount were these newly delivered from their body and soul crushing afflcitions and sicknesses. They were the outcasts, the zeros, those “steeped” in sin as the Pharisees would see these people. When Jesus began to preach he began with declarations not positions to get oneself to so they could be blessed. How would they ever be able to earn a meritous position for God’s Blessing when most of their lives and for some all their lives were bound up and cut off from the Life of God by the religious leaders of the day. That would be another religious program that would continue to crush those already crushed by life.
No Jesus makes a declaration in the beatitudes for everyone that heard that day and throughout the centuries where you are at poor in spirit(destitute not able to get) those who mourn-the hurts they have lived with now are blessed-those who hunger and thirst for righteousness because they in the world have been denied the justice due them-the merciful since in the world they have been taken advantage of because they were merciful to others but in the kingdom they find blessing-the meek who are run over and made to step aside, always having to yield to others they will be blessed-pure in heart-no guile and always feel oppressed by the maniulation and deceitful hearts of others around them they too will be blessed-peacemaker because no one likes you because you won’t take sides and therefore no one really cares that you were trying to make peace between rival parties-persecuted for being with Jesus not a placed earned but given…you are blessed.
These beatitudes can not be earned positions or meritorious positions but those places where people in this crowd were at. Not everyone had all these places but all these places covered everyone. It was Dallas Willard in his Divine Conspriracy that opened this door to me. It was through this book that for the very first time I saw what the sermon on the mount was about and what Jesus was after for all of us.
If we start ff misapplying the beatitudes we will miss the outcome by miles. Like my math teacher told me, if your premise is wrong no matter how well you work out the problem you will be wrong every time. I was and it cost me dearly.
We can not earn our positions in Christ. We can not in the world be a certain way and therefore God must bless us. No it is all by grace. It is all by His love for us while we were sinners. No position I am in could ever make me a Son of God not even as a peacemaker….that sonship is only possible through the work of the Holy Spirit by believing and confessing that Jesus is Lord and took away my sins. That is how I become a Son of God.
