How are you Doing
How are you doing?
Matt 5:1-12
For the church to remember the love of God
Intro
Blessed
Happy joy
Without religious connotation
Fortunate, lucky
In the Greek no are, it was added to help the verse make sense. It real is a statement proclaiming. O the blessedness of…..
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Poor in spirit.
Absolute and abject poverty
Hebrew the word poor was used to describe the humble and the helpless man who put his whole trust in God.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Mourn
Mourning for the dead,
The person who really feels the desperate plight and terrible suffering of others
The person who experiences personal tragedy and intense trauma
Blessed is the man who is desperately sorry for his own sin and his own unworthiness
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Meek
In our modern English idiom the word meek is hardly one of the honorable words of life. Nowadays it carries with it an idea of spinelessness, and subservience, and mean-spiritedness. It paints the picture of a submissive and ineffective creature.
Is the happy medium between too much and too little anger
Always angry at the right time, and never angry at the wrong time.
As every instinct, every impulse, every passion under control.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
who hunger and thirst
to have a starving spirit. It is real hunger and starvation of soul. It is a parched and dying thirst. It is a starving spirit and a parched soul that craves after righteousness.
“How much do you want goodness? Do you want it as much as a starving man wants food, and as much as a man dying of thirst wants water?” How intense is our desire for goodness?
Righteousness
Be good and to do good
There are those who stress being righteous and neglect doing righteousness. This leads to two serious errors
a. The error of false security. It causes a person to stress that he is saved and acceptable to God because he has believed in Jesus Christ. But he neglects doing good. He does not live as he should, obeying God and serving man.
b. The error of loose living. It allows a person to go out and do what he desires. He feels secure and comfortable in his faith in Christ. He knows that wrong behavior may affect his fellowship with God and other believers, but he thinks his behavior does not affect his salvation and acceptance with God.
There are those who stress doing righteousness and neglect being righteous. This also leads to two serious errors
a. The error of self-righteousness and legalism. It causes a person to stress that he is saved and acceptable to God because he does good. He works, behaves morally, keeps certain rules and regulations, does the things a Christian should do, and obeys the main laws of God. But he neglects the basic law: the law of love and acceptance—that God loves him and accepts him not because he does good, but because he loves and trusts the righteousness of Christ
b. The error of being judgmental and censorious. A person who stresses that he is righteous (acceptable to God) because he keeps certain laws often judges and censors others. He feels that rules and regulations can be kept because he keeps them. Therefore, anyone who fails to keep them is judged, criticized, and censored.
The question each person needs to ask is this: how much am I seeking after righteousness? Am I seeking at all—seeking a little—seeking some—seeking much—seeking more and more? What Christ says is this: a person has to crave, starve, and thirst after righteousness. A person must seek righteousness more and more if he wishes to be saved and filled
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Mercy
Hebrew sense
Means the ability to get right inside the other person’s skin until we can see things with his eyes, think things with his mind, and feel things with his feelings.
Sympathy means experiencing things together with the other person, literally going through what he is going through.
is not that what God did in Jesus Christ? In Jesus Christ, in the most literal sense, God got inside the skin of men. He came as a man; he came seeing things with men’s eyes, feeling things with men’s feelings, thinking things with men’s minds. God knows what life is like, because God came right inside life.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Pure in heart
Check your motivations
Is a person employed primarily for self, or to serve Christ and to earn enough to help others who have a need (Col. 3:24; Ephes. 4:28)?
b. Is a person ministering to help the needful, or to have a sense of self-satisfaction (cp. Matthew 5:7)?
c. Is a person worshipping to honor God, or to satisfy a feeling of obligation?
d. Is a person praying daily to fellowship with God, or to gain comfortable feelings that he pleases God through praying?
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
Peacemaker not peacekeeper
Peacemakers
In Hebrew peace is never only a negative state; it never means only the absence of trouble; in Hebrew peace always means everything which makes for a man’s highest good.. In the east when one man says to another, Salaam—which is the same word—he does not mean that he wishes for the other man only the absence of evil things; he wishes for him the presence of all good things. In the Bible peace means not only freedom from all trouble; it means enjoyment of all good.
The peace which the Bible calls blessed does not come from the evasion of issues; it comes from facing them, dealing with them, and conquering them.
Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be doing a God-like work. The man who makes peace is engaged on the very work which the God of peace is doing
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Believers shall suffer persecution
because they are not of this world, holy set apart
because believers strip away the world's cloak of sin
because the world does not know God nor Christ
because the world is deceived in its concept and belief of God God is love, but He is also just and demands righteousness. The world rebels against this concept of God