Upside-Down Kingdom

Introduction

Open with prayer if Nick doesn’t

You know, I’ve found in my 31 years of life, that there’s really two different kinds of people.

There’s those who really love things that fly - planes, helicopters, movies about planes, Elon Musk’s rocket ships, commercial jet liners.

And then, there are those who have to tolerate their friends talk enthusiastically about planes while putting on a smiling, caring face.

I’m not going to tell you which type I am, I’m sure you can figure it out, but basically any thought of a plane gets my motions sickness centered brain on high alert, and makes me almost immediately nauseous. Especially movies like Top Gun where you have to track all these pilots going mach whatever, doing barrel rolls, flipping upside down, experiencing g forces that literally make them black out.

There’s this one movie I can think of that does this, called “Flight” with Denzel Washington where their engines go out, the plane starts stalling and nose diving straight toward the ground, and to stop the dive, he flips the entire plane over and the aircraft is able to land.

This maneuver was actually done in real life on Alaska Airlines Flight 261, which is just incredible to me that a pilot can make those kinds of decisions in the heat of the moment. To roll over a huge commercial airliner full of passengers.

And in those moments, the world is upside down. Up is down, down is up. But, as it turns out, inverting the aircraft is often the best way to handle intense situations in the air. For example, it’s easier for a jet pilot to invert the jet, and go “up”, which is actually toward the ground, than to do a simple nose dive, if they need to get lower in altitude.

It’s faster, more efficient, and safer on the pilot. In order to correctly maneuver and pilot, they have to let go of the instincts, and open up their perspective on the world.

And let me tell you, this is exactly what Jesus did in something we call the Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps the most famous sermon to ever be given, Jesus opens up with something called the Beatitudes, or the blessings.

What Jesus does is he takes the values of what humanity thinks are of importance, and he flips the perspective to God’s perspective. Whatever people thought of blessings, Jesus says pretty much the opposite.

And that’s exactly what we need. We need a change in perspective.

Because we have our own perception of values. We have our own ideas of what blessing from God look like. We hold up our own things that are so important to us, of what prosperity looks like, but Jesus’s mission is to get us to look at the Kingdom of God like God does.

Because as it turns out, the upside down kingdom is a result of us being upside down, not God.

So, I’d like to invite Ron up to read our passage today, which is Matthew 5:3-12.

Okay, let’s break this passage down a little bit here. The entire section relies heavily on a single word, and that word I think is really important to understand.

That word is “Blessed”

Blessed

Now, blessed can mean so many things in our day. We’re #blessed on social. We use it to say we’re blessed by God when we get something we need. We receive blessings. I hear it a lot: how are you? Blessed, brother.

And I’m not saying any of those phrases are wrong, or shouldn’t be used, because I think it takes anything good in our lives and attributes it to God, which is the best practice, because it’s true.

What I’m suggesting this morning is that blessing has a different, more robust definition in the eyes of Jesus.

Furthermore, “blessed” had a completley different overtone in the ancient near east than it does in our western, modern world.

And if you’ve ever talked to me or listened to my other sermons, you know I love talking about the spiritual realm and the other deities and spiritual beings in the Bible, so let’s break down what Blessed meant to the ancient writers of Scripture.

=μακάριος=makarios

And in essence, the definition of makarios pertains to to being fortunate or happy because of circumstances. Looking at the lexical entries, in the beatitudes especially, it means “of humans privileged recipient of divine favor”

Okay, so that already adds a lot of flavor to what Jesus is talking about.

But, we need to dig a little deeper, because on the surface, Jesus is saying “you are humans of privileged diving favor if someone dies and you’re mourning, or if people insult you”.

That, to be honest, doesn’t make any sense. And I’m sure the listeners of Jesus were having trouble following too.

Because as Jesus sits down with his disciples, and this crowd formed around them, they would have been listening to this travelling rabbi that was teaching with the authority that seemed higher than even the scribes of the day.

Even the pharisees, the religious elites, the best of the best teachers, Jesus was teaching with some authority, some kind of confidence that the world had never seen.

And as this crowd listens in, remember, they come from everywhere. There’s Jews in the crowd, sure.

But there were people from all over Palestine. People from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond Jordan.

People from the Roman Empire.

People of all kinds of religion - Pagans, gentiles, worshippers of multiple gods, Roman gods, greek gods.

There were people of all kinds of social statuses. Business men and women. The rich, nobiliity. The poor and destitute. The ones that were sick and needed Jesus to touch them before they died of disease.

The crowd was filled with such a mix of people, but they all had one thing in common - curiosity. They were eagerly listening, along with the 12 disciples, to the simple, yet profound words of Christ.

And to them, their ears would have perked at this “Blessed” statement.

Because again, it means divine favor. It means your god would have bestowed something on you in exchange for worship.

And there are really only 3 main ways this was thought to happen. Blessings almost always came in the form of prosperity, power, or fertility.

Either your god would give you wealth and things and animals and a good life, of they would give you power over your enemies in terms of war, land, people, etc.

Just as an example, the character of Abraham in the Bible has lots of these blessings, right? If you don’t know Abraham, we was really the beginning of God’s redemption plan in Genesis 12 on.

Abraham was promised by God lots of blessings that God ended up fulfilling - he promised Abraham that he would father a great nation. His name would be great, forever.

We would inherit a promised land, Abraham has a mass of wealth, whether gold, animals, servants, tents, everything he could possibly want.

He was promised a son after not being able to conceive with his wife Sarah.

But heres the thing about all these blessings - they weren’t different in nature from the other religions of ancient Mesopotamia where Abraham lived.

What was different is the God that gave Abraham the blessings. See, the other pagan religions required child sacrifice. It required a transaction. It required the human to be exactly right with their god, otherwise there would be a lack of blessing and even possibly punishment.

But Abraham, rather than bringing something to God that He needed, Abraham gave his faith to Yaweh.

Because God’s blessings were never a result of transactional need, but of right relationship.

He alone is the only god to ever want true relationship with his beloved creation.

Fast forward from Abraham to Jesus, it makes so much sense that Satan tries to convince Jesus to bow down to him by using these three things: prosperity, power, and fertility.

Do you remember reading this one? In Mathew chapter 4?

Satan meets Jesus out into the wilderness and tries 3 times to temp Jesus.

Satan says: hey, you look hungry. You can do anything, turn these stones into bread. Theres prosperity.

Satan says: Hey, jump off this temple, the angels will catch you. Theres power.

Satan says: Hey, look at all this from the view of the mountain, every kingdom will be yours in splendor if you bow down to me. There’s all three as a king - prosperity, power, and fertility.

See, what Satan loves to do, and what the evils of this world love to do, is take something God had created good, and make it corrupt. Evil. Unfit.

As C.S. Lewis writes in his book, The Great Divorce…

“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

So, blessed, it meant something to this crowd that Jesus was about to flip upside down. Because the world had corrupted what God’s blessings were supposed to be.

This good, happy, fortunate, divinely privileged life that they had in their minds was far from God’s definition.

Think of the good life, that wraps up the blessed definition.

Because the good life for that crowd, and equally us, was being recognized and appreciated. It was being wealthy, or at least have enough money to take care of your family.

It was having as many children as possible, and for those kids to grow up, get married, and do the same.

It’s have a good job, having a position of power, moving up through the ranks for your career.

Being comfortable. Everyone liking you.

Being the man of the room, having your word heard over others, retaining all your rights, being able to deliver something to God that he was missing.

The list goes on and on.

Then, Jesus, who is God, who is the savior of all humanity, who came from heaven.

He shows up as a baby, grows up in carpentry, picks 12 nobodies….

That Jesus sits down on the side of a hill and he flips the script of what a blessing is.

Jesus Flips the Script

Blessed are the poor in Spirit. That just means the people who can bring nothing to God - they are of no value whatsoever in society. Those people get the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the mourners, the ones who have either lost someone they love, or are mourning their place in society, or mourning in the face of evil. Those people will be comforted.

Blessed are the humble, or the meek. The ones who are content with what they have, unwilling to claw their way to the top. They will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who want God’s justice, not their own, they’ll be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, not ones who want vengeance, who are willing to turn the other cheek rather than exert power. They will in turn be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, those who are true to their word, and are the same on the inside and out. They will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers. Not the war mongers, not the shrewd who always get their way. They are sons of God.

You’re blessed if you’re persecuted, if you’re insulted, if people hate you because you refuse to worship anyone but God.

For the Kingdom of heaven is theirs.

I want you, for a minute, to imagine yourself in first century Palestine.

Imagine you’ve been sick for years. Imagine you’re so poor that you have to beg on the street.

Imagine you don’t have a way up the military ladder, that you don’t have a home, that you don’t have any way to provide for a family.

Imagine you don’t have kids, an heir, land.

You’re powerless, infertile, prosperity and comfort have eluded you for a lifetime.

And you hear this rabbi saying you’ll inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.

Mind you, these types of people didn’t even get a second look when passed on the street, yet Jesus is saying God is blessing them.

Imagine the moment of hope, a faint light at the end of the tunnel.

Someone of power and influence was finally giving them a look. Hope wasn’t totally lost.

And there is the power of this teaching, of Jesus’s Beatitudes…

Jesus is Redefining His Kingdom

What Jesus is doing here is making the new covenant with His creation.

See, Jesus isn’t reserving spots in His Kingdom, or his Father’s house, for nobility. For fellow Kings, for those who can give him money, or bring in more people like an MLM scheme.

Jesus is not building a transactional kingdom.

I fear that far too often we have the attitude that Christianity is an “I give, I get” religion. Do you get what I mean by that? I give, I get.

I give a sacrifice, I get blessings.

I pray hard enough, I get the prayer.

If I faith hard enough, I’ll get rewards.

This transactional nature of God couldn’t be further from the truth. Because let me remind you, God doesn’t need anything from you.

He doesn’t need your worship. He doesn’t need your money. He doesn’t need you in his kingdom at all.

I don’t know who needs to hear this this morning, but your “lack of faith” isn’t the reason bad things are happening. God isn’t punishing you for not doing enough.

If that were the case, following that logic, all the disciples, all the martyrs throughout history, even Jesus Christ himself, they wouldn’t have done enough to avoid death. They were somehow faithless. Of course that makes no sense.

Joel Osteen would hate me for saying the prosperity gospel is from the pit of hell, because it views God as a genie that gives you more and more based on faith. That blessings are something you call down.

That view puts God at our disposal. Which is exactly what satan wants.

God alone is sovereign, God alone is the ruler, God alone is all-powerful. He is sufficient in and of Himself, all alone, for eternity. But. He created you. And he wants you.

Which makes the invitation into His kingdom all the sweeter.

The other created, inferior gods, they actually need humans to fulfil their wished and desires and needs. But not our almighty God, Yahweh, good creator, King.

He doesn’t call for our strength, our riches, our power, anything we could give Him.

What He consistently calls for is our faith. Our humility. A contrite and broken heart. Our weakness. Our righteousness.

As Psalm 145 says

Psalm 145:14–16 CSB

14 The Lord helps all who fall; he raises up all who are oppressed. 15 All eyes look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. 16 You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.

What the Lord wants is our brokenness. He wants to repair us, to make us a new creation. He wants relationship with us.

But too often we chase the wrong things. We chase ourselves and what puffs us up. Makes us feel good.

God values something different. His Kingdom is right-side up, but we’ve made the world upside down.

I know you can all relate with at least one of these beatitudes. I know you’ve mourned. I know you’ve felt small, insignificant, poor in spirit. You’ve held your tongue, people have walked all over you. You haven’t been the richest, most powerful, or been recognized.

But if we flip the coin over, I know you can relate with these values because you’ve looked down on people that are in these situations. I know this, because I have.

I’ve placed myself over and above those in need, those who I deemed less worthy of blessings.

We can all think of people that we don’t truly want to have a place in the kingdom of God, if we’re being brutally honest.

And this is why…

We Must Live in Kingdom Culture

We must view ourselves in the Kingdom of God, right here and right now.

Jesus prays in Matthew 6:9-10

Matthew 6:9–10 CSB

9 “Therefore, you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Jesus invited the Kingdom of Heaven to be right here, right now.

We must view ourselves in this Kingdom, with the values that God places on us.

Because let me tell you, the second we forget our place compared to God is the moment everything goes awry.

It happened in the Garden, and it’s happening now.

The moment we exalt ourselves over someone else, that somehow we’ve achieved a level of status above some other poor fellow, inferior to us.

That is the moment we need to remind ourselves that our King stepped of his throne, became a human, and washed our feet.

Our King came down from heaven, was hung on a cross and humiliated, died, and rose from the grave, for nothing else than to rescue us and to invite us into His eternal Kingdom.

Our King did that with you on his mind, a mere peasant, with nothing to offer.

If that’s not an upside down kingdom, I don’t know what is.

Jesus is the lion and the lamb, he is everything, and he is sufficient. There is no other power than the resurrection of Jesus Christ and His everlasting Kingdom, and I refuse stop preaching that it is the only hope for humanity.

He is the source of power. Stop chasing your own power, your own blessings.

Stop trying to win God over, or do Him a favor.

Recalibrate yourself to God’s Kingdom values. We need to humble ourselves, and take up our crosses, and follow Jesus, even if it means death.

This is what blessed is. This is divine favor. This is the good life. That God would take pity on us, and while we were still sinners, died for us.

See, the point of the beatitudes isn’t that we should strive for being poor, or being afflicted, or mourning to be blessed.

It isn’t to say the rich and powerful are evil, and don’t deserve blessings.

The point is, we have a king that is sufficient for all. We have a king that gives us abundance of life through him. We have the free gift of eternal life that was paid so dearly for.

Jesus is calling to rightly view his kingdom. To recalibrate to Gods perspective. To focus on the things above, rather on the things of this world.

Everything we do, all of our motivations, they need to be funneled through kingdom mentality.

Our call is to humility, repentance, meekness, purity, weakness. Turning the other cheek. Placing the lives of others over ourselves.

This is the good life that our king Jesus is offering.

Philippians 4:4–9 CSB

4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your graciousness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable—if there is any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy—dwell on these things. 9 Do what you have learned and received and heard from me, and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.