Complete Beatitudes

[HKHaugan]

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven (Mt.5:3).

 

This very well may be the foundational theme for the whole Gospel.  It is addressed to every human being, believer and unbeliever alike.  Jesus is making a statement that opens the door to the heart. That is, if the heart is willing to receive it.  The heart is the internal battleground where fear dominates an individual’s view of self and others because of its self-centeredness caused by sin. 

 

Sin victimizes the heart’s aloneness as it surveys the environment in which it exists.  Fear is the twin brother of pride which together produce defensive self-protection through rationalization and self-justification.  The primary biblical examples are Adam and Eve.  When God asks Adam, “Where are you?” he replies, “I heard you in the garden and I was afraid was because I was naked, so I hid.”   I heard you in the garden (spiritually separated from God), and I was afraid (spirit of fear and shame), because I was naked (relationally alone), so I hid (loss of identity, relationship and self-worth).”

 

It doesn’t stop there.  God asks two other questions that gets Adam to see how it has affected his relational experience with Eve as well as God. “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”  Adam discovers he has another problem, defensiveness.  He blames both God and the woman, “The woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.”  Blame.  The woman feeling the same effects tries to shift the blame on the serpent.  It’s always someone else who is responsible for my condition in life.  There is no perfection, no love, only aloneness and despair.

 

Summing it up we have aloneness, fear, guilt, loss of identity, self-worth and blame as six factors produced by sin, the tempter’s nature carrying out his plan to separate each human being from their Creator.  They comprise the downside in the spiritual dimension that influences every single human being as they process their daily living experience.  It is these factors and their instigator that put into action God’s response, a spiritual response to counter the tempter and his temptations.  He curses the serpent and puts enmity between the serpent and the woman telling him that her offspring will “crush your head and you will strike his heel.”  Herein lies the plan that will spiritually restore the heart of every individual spiritually, personally and relationally, first to God and then to one another.  Yes, their bodies will die but they will find a new way of life which will be spiritual, personal and relational.  That perfect life finalized in the birth, life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, God the Son.

 

Each of us having been born with a sinfully self-centered nature can be reborn spiritually by accepting God the Son Jesus in our mind and heart, who through the Holy Spirit gives us this new life to grow and share with others.  With a reborn spirit we can live with confidence personally and relationally.  The tempter’s six, aloneness, fear, guilt, loss of identity, self-worth and blame are replaced with each of us having a unique relationship with Jesus, faith instead of fear, our guilt forgiven, making us a child of God, blameless and spiritually maturing.  Think again about Jesus changing the six jars of water into pure wine at the Cana wedding feast.  God’s ‘Seven’ replaces the tempter’s six.  The Holy Spirit births each of us into a relationship with our Heavenly Father through Jesus His Son in a never-ending growth experience in His eternal Kingdom. 

 

 

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted (Mt.5:4).

 

One thing that must precede our reading of the Beatitudes is the One who is presenting them.  He is the source of the blessings.  He is the source of their meaning.  He is the source of their resolution.  If He is giving His blessing in the moment we experience each of these, it is because He is present in each of us personally and the Spirit is resolving them in us.  These are His insights for the restoration of the image of God in each of us.

 

There are three kinds of mourning, personal, relational and spiritual.  In each there is a degree of sorrow, guilt, regret and remorse.  Sorrow is usually because of our recognition that we can’t control circumstances.  Guilt is when we know we have done wrong and we have that sense of grieving separation for our part in it.  Regret is the specific reaction we have when we are aware of our complicity.  Remorse is the hanger-on when we don’t have what caused the problem resolved.

 

Personally, we mourn over our tendency to make mistakes, past errors that remain with us because of distance and time.  Grief is the mourning we carry at the death of family, friends and associates. 

 

Relationally, we mourn over our aloneness, not being understanding and understood, emotionally distressed and isolated because of unresolved relationships. 

 

Spiritually, mourning can find itself expressed in anger or blame.  It’s when we don’t understand the ‘why?’ in a situation or “Oh God, why me, what have I done to deserve this?”  We slam a door, beat our fist on a table and scream at the world around us.  In each of these we are searching in the invisible for a visible, understandable answer.  It is deep within the heart, beyond the mind’s grasp and seemingly lost in a spiritual reality that seems distant. 

 

The very image of God in us recognizes its separation from it source.  Therein begins the blessing.  The recognition causes a reaching out.  We think, we investigate our emotions and attitudes that lie in the heart.  Realizing we are an image of God and even a child of God, we search His Word, we call on friends for prayer, we share our feelings with another brother or sister in the Spirit. 

 

“…for they shall be comforted.”  The promise is that what starts with recognition is the gateway to resolution.  Comfort is that personal sense of having heard the call and accepting it in the heart.  But comfort is temporary.  It is the moment that stability finds a base in the heart in order that we move on to the next event in our life having been freed from what had stopped us.  Whether it is the death of a close friend or family member the comfort we receive spiritually is to free us from the self-mourning to being available for someone else’s time of mourning.  To know that the will of God is to take care of His own both in life and in death.  Blessed are those who know the meaning of mourning in the mind, plant it in the heart and live it in the Spirit.

 

The very fact that we mourn is the image of God in us reflecting our separation from our Creator.  His promise for the believer’s future in Him, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed (Rev.21:4).”

 

 

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Matt.5:5).”

 

Are you a country boy, an urban sophisticate, a suburban seeker?  Is Chicago ‘your kind of town?’ Maybe the ‘Big Apple’ is you.  Perhaps you left your heart in San Francisco or feel you are a ‘man of the world.”  But above all that, are you comfortable in your own skin, the most local part of the earth you will ever know?  Why?  From dust we came and to dust we shall return (Gen.3:19).  Our personal identity is wrapped up in so many spiritless things that this may be the best way to approach the meaning of meekness. 

 

There are two basic meanings of meekness.  There is the present age’s idea that meekness is empty weaknes.  Then there is the Biblical understanding, gentleness arising from an inner strength.  Meekness (Gk. praeis) used in the time of Jesus had a built-in understanding.  It was gentleness in the context of a relationship with God.  Regardless of circumstance you didn’t get rattled when insulted, provoked when challenged or when a weakness was manipulated.  This was an inner strength upon which you relied and lived.  ‘You were comfortable in your own skin.’

 

The Biblical kind of meekness is a particularly applicable word for our present age where cultural division and personality attack are the daily media presentations.   We are launched into the fray on a daily basis simply by turning on the news.  The underlying media strategy is to get us to feel overwhelmed, to take sides, see everything as a personal threat and stay frustrated about issues over which we as individuals have no control.  Right there, in those moments, meekness is the issue.  Because what happens on a large cultural level happens within every individual.  Based on what we ultimately believe in and trust, that is the strength behind how we ultimately process our life and respond. 

 

This world condition, the way human society without God works in our earthly environment, is not new.  It is the challenge everyone has always faced every day.  Having just emerged from a major political climate of anxiety, frustration and emotional duress, we are confronted by the temptation to dwell on possible future alternatives of survival through social upheaval and insecurity.  We have to face the fact that we are media influenced, culturally conditioned and feel individual isolation.  How believers in Jesus face all that starts with repentance because meekness is reliant not on what but who is the source of the inner strength that causes us to pause and realize who is in ultimate charge of everything.  When our personal world is turned upside down who is the ‘right-side-up’ person upon whom we depend for counsel?  It’s not about having a stiff upper lip or gritting your teeth or sucking it up and getting on with it.  It’s about releasing ourselves to the One who is our strength.  That’s meekness in every next moment.

 

When Jesus was teaching on that distant mountainside, was in the world He lived in experiencing inner and outer religious, political and social turmoil.  The dominant Roman political machine, the compromised spiritless religious leadership, the social class separation and its judgmentalism, the economic climate and physical survivability were all prevalent cultural forces in the individual mind.  In that shaky climate the Lord Jesus called people to realize how blessed the meek are.  Not only that.  The meek shall inherit the earth.  Say what?

 

Right there, Jesus the man of inner spiritual strength, Spiritude, was presenting Himself as the source of that strength every person can have.  If we approach our earthly life with Him at the center of our processing this life then it is on the earth we are directly involved with that we inherit real strength; truth for our mind, a trust for our heart and the spiritual guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Notice how Jesus fulfills that reality when God gave Adam and Eve the right to rule over the earth.  Starting with the body and place we live in and the relationships we have within them, that is the earth we will inherit when we place ourselves in the loving hands of a loving God who revealed Himself in Jesus.  The earth then becomes our friend not our enemy. There is beauty everywhere that can be seen and enjoyed.  It begins where our inner strength is.  Nothing can shake what we know is real within.

 

Meekness is not anxiety hiding behind a fake smile, a pretensive handshake and a passive attitude.  “Who by being anxious can add one hour to his life? (Mt.6:27).”  Jesus was never led by anxiety over the economic, social and political issues that surrounded Him.  In fact, it was those things and their anxiety-producing enemies that killed Him.  But He rose from the dead and beat the world.  His kind of meekness was what we were designed to have by faith and in turn to share it.  The Holy Spirit was the strength within, the faith leading Jesus to follow His Father’s will in all His choices and decisions. 

 

His Spiritude is our life and the earth we walk every day becomes ours.  Therein is the meaning of meekness.  Meekness in the world of relationships and meekness on the daily real estate where we have been placed.  The Cross in daily detail is our real meekness before God in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Meekness before God, the vertical beam. Practiced where we are, the horizontal beam.

 

 

 

 

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled (Mt.5:6).

 

There is a significant difference between what we hunger and thirst for visibly and what we hunger and thirst for invisibly.  Righteousness involves both.  It’s not just processing in the mind, heart and spirit what will meet the desire of our physical satisfaction.  It is really something much deeper, the hunger and thirst for being right in everything we think and do.  Wherever we are and whatever we do with whoever we are needs to be right.  We want to look right, be right and act right.  It’s the deep inner hunger and thirst in everyone. 

 

The social and economic culture we live in has a set of thirst quenchers that work for awhile but always seem to come up short when it comes to filling us.  The hunger pangs for more never seem to get the promised vacuum filling.  You get the right job in the right profession, have a growing family, hang around with the right people and get a home in the right neighborhood with a club membership and special seats at sports arenas.  You’re famous and people recognize you when you walk in.  But there’s something all that doesn’t fill, the invisible emptiness in the physical fullness.  As health slips way and the common pursuits are no longer heart driven, emotions fray and despair plays a familiar tune.  The missing link is the spiritual void that was left in the dust of our ‘right’ choices.  The ‘fitting in’ to the secular world’s process sapped all the energy and all that was left was the ten virgins’ unprepared lamps. Empty lamps, empty hearts and empty lives.

 

The real hunger and thirst is for wisdom, a wisdom that comes only from a relationship with the Lord of Right, Jesus, the Son of God.  Remember Eve seeing the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?  She looked at it thinking it looked right, was the right kind of food and desirable for gaining wisdom, the ability to think and do right.  She took some and ate not realizing that apart from God that ‘right’ was not accessible without God leading the access.  All she came up with was aloneness, fear, relational separation, blame, shame and despair.  These made up the spiritual heart condition all human beings inherited ever since. 

 

So then, what is the ‘right’ Adam and Eve lost?  Answer, faith, trust, belief, the spiritual “substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen (Heb.11:1).”  Their mind was tempted to think apart from God, their heart to trust apart from God and their spirit to have faith to do what was really right apart God.  The whole of human history is wrapped in the coils of this condition.  When Paul became convinced that there were none righteous, no not one (Rom.3:10) and that only a relationship with Jesus could begin the recovery, his purpose and mission became his life.  People needed to be restored to God through the only person who ever got life right, the resurrected Jesus, the Righteous One, whom he encountered on a road trip to Damascus.  Thus his three missionary journeys, his many letters to the churches in the Mediterranean and his appeal to the emperor in Rome for an audience to be a witness to this truth about Jesus. 

 

Jesus revealed that being right was a spiritual gift from a spiritual source, the spiritual Kingdom of God.  That in order to get life in this world right it had to start with a relationship with Jesus who made every next moment of His life right in this world through faith.  That through His Crucifixion and Resurrection He became accessible spiritually, personally and relationally to all who would receive Him.  But it starts spiritually, through the gift of personal choice, the only way a loving God can share His love.  The freedom to choose Him is the deepest freedom because it reaches our ‘inmost being’ where we really live and process life.  So, righteousness is not just a ‘religious’ word.  It means that the deepest yearning in our life is the yearning to be right in all we do.  We want to love right, be right, say right, do right and make the right choices in everything.  That is a totally right desire that can only be met by the One who is the Righteous One, Jesus the perfect Son of God.  He is the only One who ever got life right.  His death showed it.  His Resurrection proved it.  John wrote that Jesus was the way, the truth and the life (Jn.14:6).  The whole of the Bible is built around that reality.  The hunger and thirst within fulfilled in Him. 

 

 

 

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy (Mt.5:7)

 

There seems to be an orderly flow of the Spirit as we go from the major theme introduced, spiritual poverty.  Each step in the Beatitudes is a step toward spiritual riches and maturity.  It rings with Jesus’s words that will emerge in 6:19, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

 

Mercy is the key word in the Old Testament for love.  For the Hebrew mind mercy was the love of God.  That in turn takes us to His parable of the Good Samaritan in which the culturally despised people of Samaria were considered unclean as was their land.  If the institutionally religious priest and Levite passed by an injured man what was really going on there?  Notice their process.  Their religious responsibility to maintain bodily cleanliness to remain liturgically clean was more important than the needs of another image of God.  Jesus is identifying ethnic, cultural and religious failure to meet the real needs of people around them, spiritual needs. 

 

If we deal with the Parable known as that of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10), I would hasten to say that the real subject of the parable is the half dead man, the one assaulted and left to die on the road to Jericho.  He is the one in need.  He is all of us left half dead by sin, with its religious, cultural, ethnic and secular identity divisions keeping our hearts suspended from spiritual functioning.  When Jesus uses the image of a Samaritan who could do good, it was a jarring confrontation to the self-elevating religious mindset that believes in religion before relationship.

 

Ethnicity, religion and identity seeking are the primary barriers to spiritual maturity expressed relationally through prejudice and judgmentalism which are attitudes governing the secular mind.  The most combatant followers of modernized tolerance are the those who offend the basic openness of shared ideas the freedom that comes from real tolerance.  The most intolerant are those whose constant bleating for tolerance exposes their hypocrisy.  It take Spiritudinal mercy that sees all people as images of God to be loved with patience and understanding. 

 

Those who do not know Jesus are the half dead walking all around us.  They just don’t know that death shadows their every move.  That is relational death, emotional death, social death and that inner grasping for meaning and purpose based on self-survival through self-elevation, spiritual death. 

 

Mercy is both a quality and a gift od the Spirit.  It takes sin’s blinders from the eye and gives the formerly blind to see the quality of God’s image in everyone starting with self.  This comes from the love of God which opens up the way we view the world of people the way Jesus did.  No one was beyond the scope of His love and concern.  

 

One more thing about mercy.  When one has realized that it takes the Cross to put in perspective our own spiritual poverty.  It’s then that the door is open to the riches that lie right behind the door that is Jesus.  He fills us with the Holy Spirit who provides and fill us with mercy.  Mercy is given us to see the mercy available to everyone through us.  “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” They will not only be given mercy, but they will also show what mercy is and those shown will be blessed.

 

 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God (Mt.5:8).

 

You have to really appreciate the order in which Jesus chose to present His new looking-forward lifestyle.  Follow me in this thought. 

 

First, we started with being awakened to our personal spiritual poverty.  This may be the most important theme not only in the Sermon but in all the Gospels since it opens us to what we really are, spiritual beings having a human experience.

 

Second, that led to our inner frustration in not having the ability to do something about it.  We needed to face that and mourn over our spiritual condition which is the first step in accepting responsibility for our sin and the need to say. “ I’m sorry Lord God.”  The need for repentance. 

 

Third, this brought us to our knees so that we leave the platform of self-centeredness and face our deepest need, to let God become our God, to become meek and humble before Him, to let Him be good through us. 

 

Fourth, it’s then we realize our inner longing, the hunger and thirst for spiritual feeding.  We have “wandered and strayed like lost sheep” desperately searching for a shepherd to lead us to a spiritual pasture where true life exists and is eternally dependable.   It’s the pasture of His Word where what it means to be right in all we do starts in the heart and is reflected in the way we think right, feel right and do right.  Jesus is the wisdom of God in the heart.

 

These first four get our spiritual life in order.  Now Jesus shifts to our relational experience.

 

Fifth, He brings mercy into the picture to get us properly oriented in what it means to be spiritually relational.  He’s teaching us how to build a base for real relational living. Mercy is the key word in the Old Testament for love.  For the Hebrew mind mercy was the love of God.  Jesus defines it and fulfills it when He says, “As the Father has loved me so I have I loved you,” and “Love one another as I have loved you.”  Love is the fulfillment of mercy.  Being merciful opens the door to God’s love being seen and experienced. Being relational is first with God and then with others. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.”  To love God and others is to love yourself.

 

It’s not so much about us as it is about God as we see Him in Jesus.  His heart, having a heart like Him, finding out and following the path He sets for me right where I am. But we have to go down that path of discovering what it means to be an image and child of God which is why God’s Son becomes the only way to travel that path.  He’s the perfect image, the exact representation of God.  It’s spiritual. It’s personal. It’s relational. 

 

Sixth, now we see in Jesus a pure heart, that heart living in us by faith.  His heart becomes the motivation for our heart ready to share like Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  It’s a daunting task especially when you read Paul’s conclusive observation that there are none righteous, no not one. 

But the task is not ours. 

Not ours?  That’s right.  Purity can’t come out of desire, intention or trying which are proof of imperfection.  It doesn’t start with us.  It starts with the Creator of the heart, Jesus, the One who brought all things into being.  The actual impossibility of being perfect and perfectly right in everything is how we are born into this world.  Sin has made us imperfect and there is no perfect human being we can copy.  We inherited Adam’s compromised nature.  But Jesus’ heart is in us through faith.

 

Here’s Jesus’ confrontation of the fallen human heart.  “What comes out of a person is what defiles them.  For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.  All these evils come from inside and defile a person (Mk.7:20-23).”  Jesus was well acquainted with this fact.  Note its Old Testament issue.  It begins with the heart.  Ps.24:3-4, “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?   Who may stand in his holy place?  The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god.”  

 

Someone perfect has to take hold of our humanity, be a person like us, facing a daily life, be relational and be spiritual and show us the way and what it is.  That’s precisely why Jesus, the perfectly Right One, came into this world.  His way was the way of the Cross, the way of faith.  What He did was to make His path our path through faith in Him.  The way He was faithful is transferred to us by something called grace, the Lord’s personal touch of love on the individual heart.  We are saved by His grace through faith.  When we choose to believe in Him, to trust Him within, to be like Him in all our experience, He gives us His grace to do just that.  Our cross is faith and faith makes us right with God and begins the reclamation project.

 

What Jesus did was offer us His heart to reside in our heart to change it from within through faith.  Without His death on the Cross making that possible, we would have no hope, no heart, no love and no faith.  His life was a perfect life and that perfect life got Him killed.  He died in our place, in our lonely humanity, bearing our sin and our separation from a perfect Father God.  Without the Cross of Jesus, sin, our self-centeredness, would be our end, our death into an eternal lonely despair

Jesus changed all that.  He gave us a path right there in the Cross, the moment by moment faith to follow Him.  He showed us that taking up our cross is faith in Him as we approach every next moment, encounter, event and person.  Jesus’ Resurrection brought our hearts back to God.  We were bonded to God eternally.

 

That Resurrection faith is the faith to follow the path He has prescribed for us spiritually, personally and relationally.  His pure heart transforming ours into eternity.

 

 

Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God (Mt.5:9).

 

The relational Blesseds continue.  The seventh Blessed talks about peace.  Peace is not only a relational word, it is a heart experience and of course, a spiritual experience.  That is central because peace in the world means the absence of external conflict.  Worldly peace does not bring internal peace. It’s tenuous, unsettled.  That kind of peace is laced with the fear that lingers when we realize how temporary it is.  Then too, while there may not be a war outside there is one going on within us and others that only God can remedy with His peace.  When we have peace with God, we have peace in our heart and that’s what becomes the launching pad for extending God’s peace to others.  Public demonstrations that use carry peace signs, wear peace symbols and shout peace slogans probably do more to cause unrest than bring peace.  Those who use them seem more aggressive and unsettled than the real peacemakers who are lving God’s peace right where they live.

 

When there is internal peace its source is our relationship with God in Jesus.  He tells us “My peace I give you, not as the world gives, give I you.”  When His peace comes on us it is the inner calmness, the stability we feel within, that we share when circumstances that would rattle others does not send us into a tailspin.  That witness to the inner peace Jesus gives is our calling.  That is the beginning of becoming a peacemaker.  We see it in Jesus all through His ministry.  When the Pharisees attacked Him verbally and conspiratorially His calmness always won out.  When confronted by the intellectuals He never flinched.  Then in the final moments of His life on the Cross His gaze was upwards to His Father.  It was that relationship where His peace was founded.  His example is the one we follow in every circumstance. 

 

We have three guides to the spiritual peace Jesus promises.  First, our relationship with Him.  Second, the Holy Spirit who conveys that relational peace to us.  Third, His Word through which the Holy Spirit speaks when we are faced with situations over which we have no control.

 

One thing we need to remember about peace.  Only God’s peace is true peace.  It is an inner peace that comes through His Spirit to us personally.  God defines what peace is, not the culture we live in or the larger world.  We will find ourselves in events and relational experiences that are unsettling, and we will feel the pressure.  That pressure may come through personal pain, sickness, economic doubt. uncertainty, social and relational crises and lingering doubts.  It is right there that God’s peace is present because He is present in them with you.  These are the times we call on brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ to stand with us in prayer.  The blessings that follow will be there and usually will be sensed in some special way according to the individuals involved.  Being peaceful brings peace to others.  Thus the peaceful are peacemakers on the way and will be seen as ‘sons of God.’

 

 

 

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness (Mt.5:10).

 

This Blessed penetrates in a different way.  This blessed involves a deeper inner confrontation than what comes from a simple insult or sleight.  The progression involved is really personal.  If you know that your heart is in the right place, that you feel right inside, that your faith in God is the only right that really makes sense, that right is going to be challenged everyday especially if you live in an environment hostile to that inner right.    

 

When the prevailing culture holds economic and social power over you, the rationalizing idea of compromise lies temptingly in the background.  After all, who really knows what I believe anyway?  Take note that it comes after ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’  It is going to take a real sense of peace and the confidence to face any trial that is called for here.  We know that historically when Rome started its major persecution of Christians, their lives were at stake.  Yet many of them never succumbed to the pressure of fear.  They lived through it by faith knowing that it was their faith that made them right with God and that they had eternal life and death was faith’s reward.

 

All of this makes the Beatitudes a forward-looking set of teachings that progressively build us to be spiritually mature, confident and strong.   Notice how the Beatitudes build one upon another as you go through them.  Jesus’ understanding of wisdom is so clear here.  You don’t get mature overnight.  Remember, Jesus was about 30 years old before He started His mission.  He was growing in ‘wisdom and stature with God and man’ during all those years preceding.  So, starting with when we were spiritually reborn by faith in Jesus, eah of us progresses differently.  But being in a spiritual family where we worship, are discipled, we begin to minister to one another and then start our personal mission in His name.  Through the Holy Spirit, the Lord stands beside us every step of the way.  We are each on our own learning curve, but we travel together. 

 

That spiritual growth experience challenges us where in one moment it demands we respond from our mind with our belief, another moment the emphasis is on our heart and its trust while yet another comes when our spirit depends on faith to motivate it into action.  Where we are weak in mind, heart or spirit is where growth takes place.  Lingering sin is still distracting us with the Tempter’s urging to follow you ideas as opposed to God’s, your feelings as opposed to trusting Him and your spirit to withdraw and avoid relational conflict.

 

Persecution is the secular world around us showing its hate for God and everything that comes from Him.  If you are in a comfortable spiritual environment like a church or prayer group, it is less likely to occur but certainly can if judgmental folks are around you.   Persecution takes different forms.  Each is usually subtle.  It can be a joke to see if you get rattled and defensive.  It can be emotional with name calling and sarcasm or downright physically hostile. So, whether it is from a group or an individual it will seek our weaknesses and launch an attack. What we generally consider to be attitudes behind them are really fueled by evil spirits.  This is why the progressive growth of the Beatitudes that we allow in our lives arm us to face any and all attacks from the secular mindset.  As Paul says, we wrestle not with flesh and blood but with the powers and authorities from the darkness.

 

Perhaps now we can see Jesus’ reasoning as He teaches His disciples what it means to be a follower of Him.  In fact, the Blessed that opens the door to dealing with persecution is doubled by verse 11 when it specifies the kind of subtle persecution they will face.  It will be just like the Prophets before them but promises their final reward is in Heaven.

 

We could say a lot more about the specifics here, but the best thing is to read the Prophets.  In them you will see how they viewed their circumstance and the faith with which they faced it.

 

Finally, it seems that Jesus is teaching with the 10 Commandments in mind.  Jesus is on a mountain just as Moses was.  In the case of Moses, God gave Him the Commandments. With Jesus the Beatitudes came for within Him.  With Moses as a leader, the Commandments were given to identify God’s chosen people as His witness in a morally corrupt world setting the stage for the coming Son of God.  Through Jesus it became personal.  Every believer could have a personal relationship with God in a spiritual family with Jesus as Head.  The Beatitudes detailed the lifestyle of God’s people; a spiritual, personal and relational lifestyle.  They were the fulfillment of the Commandments.  Each believer in Jesus would be a witness to Him as Savior and Lord.