Introduction to the Beatitudes
Shape up for Summer: Matthew 5:1-12
Shaping up for summer. Is it just me, or has the frequency of the Weight Watchers ads on the TV increased recently? It’s that time of year, isn’t? Christmas came and it was great and we tucked in to turkey and all the trimmings. New Year came and we made resolutions and took out Gym memberships, but then it was Easter and all those Easter Eggs. Now, it’s April, the summer is looming and we really do want to get into shape.
Which is great, but as Paul wrote to Timothy, “Physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”
I’ve been given the task of introducing what, as far as I can make out, is a 4 month sermon series, leading into the summer and giving us plenty of time to work on getting into a much more important shape, a Godly shape. I am, in effect, the text scrolling up the screen at the beginning of a Star Wars movie. I’m going to do the same job as that text. We’ll have a look at a bit of the background to the story, introduce ourselves to some of the language, and set ourselves up to make the most of the next 16 weeks.
And I’ll begin at the beginning. Because the passage we just heard read wasn’t quite the beginning of the story. The beginning of the story is told in Genesis, the first book of the Bible.
God created us and we were created for blessing, for living in and delighting in God’s favour. We were created to be the stewards of God’s earthly kingdom. God was our king, we lived together with God and experienced the joy and blessing of living in that Kingdom.
But then, we sinned, we rebelled against our King, and were disobedient to our God. And so, instead of God’s blessing we experience God’s curse. We could no longer live in God’s Kingdom, the Paradise created for us to enjoy, we were expelled by our own disobedience, our refusal to submit ourselves to our Creator King.
The Old Testament part of the Bible goes on to tell of the history of the pain of people living under that curse and shows us the impossiblity of people removing that curse through their own strength.
But, thanks be to God, we don’t have to remove the curse through our own strength.
We know this because, in the New Testament, we see the birth of Jesus, the King, come to remove the curse and claim the throne. When the angel came to tell Mary that she was pregnant with Jesus, this is part of what was said:
“He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; his kingdom will never end.”
And then, when John the Baptist was preaching, just before Jesus started his public ministry, this is what he said:
“ Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near”.
And now we reach the section of the Bible that we’re going to spend 4 months looking at. This section that introduced Jesus disciples, and us, to the blessing and the challenges of the Kingdom.
We’ll come back here later, but for now, let’s complete our dash through the history of the Kingdom of God.
We’ve just finished celebrating Easter, when there was a huge event for this Kingdom. Jesus in his death and resurrection, established his Kingdom on earth. He took the curse of God on himself and defeated it. Because of this, we can now be part of that Kingdom. When we bow to our King, and say that God is our God, we become part of that Kingdom.
In a few weeks we will celebrate Pentecost, the time at which the Holy Spirit came to the church to fill us with the gifts and strength needed to live in the Kingdom and for the Kingdom.
And Jesus is King. Now. In 2005. But 2005 isn’t the end of the history of the Kingdom.
Because Jesus will return. We live in the now and not yet time. The Kingdom is here but is not completed. The Kingdom is here, and the doors are open to those who want to come in. The Bible finishes with the descriptions of what will happen when Jesus returns to close the doors and restore, in full, the blessings and favour of the first day of creation.
And we live in the in between time, the Kingdom is open to all, and we are part of it, but still living in the world. How are we to live? How are we to be identified as Kingdom people? How do we both invite people into it and spread its blessings to those outside it?
Over the next four months we’ll be thinking about these things and lookng for some of the answers in what Jesus said to the first disciples on the mountainside above Galillee.
To get a feel for what’s going on, lets look a little bit before, what’s been going on before they got to that mountain?
Matthew 4 23 - 5 2
Jesus went throughout Galillee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon possessed, those having seizures, and the paralysed, and he healed them. Large crowds from Galillee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordon followed him. Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on the mountainside and sat down, his disciples came to him, and he began to teach them,
Jesus has been going around, actively bringing blessings to the people. He’s been healing and preaching and freeing. Those are all blessings. Not surprisingly, he’d gathered quite a crowd and they were following him, seeing the blessings and wanting more.
I’ve been using this word, “blessing”, but it’s one of those strange words that we tend to use but aren’t quite sure what it means.
“Ah, bless”, we might say, but what do we mean? I think that it’s got something to do with wanting good things for somebody. “Ah, bless” : “I hope that things go well for you”.
In the Bible, there are two kinds of blessing that come from God that are talked about.
The first kind is about connecting our wish for things to go well for someone with God’s power to make that wish reality. It takes “I hope things go well for you” and turns it into, “In God’s power and love I say that things will go well for you”.
For example:
Num 6:24-27
'"The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face towards you and give you peace."'
The second kind of blessing is a happiness, contentment or fulfilment that comes as a consequence of an action. It is about connecting our wish for things to go well, with the type of actions which will make those things go well. It takes “I hope that things go well for you”, and makes it, “I know that if you do this, then things will go well for you.”
For example:
Ps 112:
Praise the LORD. Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who finds great delight in his commands. His children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures for ever. Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for the gracious and compassionate and righteous man. Good will come to him who is generous and lends freely, who conducts his affairs with justice. Surely he will never be shaken; a righteous man will be remembered for ever. He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD. His heart is secure, he will have no fear; in the end he will look in triumph on his foes.
Another example of this type of blessing is found in the reading we heard a little while ago.
Jesus has been going round delivering on the first type of blessing. With God’s power he was making things go well for people. He was establishing his Kingdom. But he knew that he was going to go back to Heaven and leave the disciples, and the church he would begin through them, to continue that Kingdom on earth.
To do that they needed to know about the second set of blessings. They needed to know how the Kingdom was to work so that the blessings of the Kingdom would continue.
And do you know what, people want blessing. That’s why the crowd was there. They’d seen the good things that Jesus was doing and wanted more.
But Jesus didn’t focus on the crowd. He focussed on the disciples:
“Now, when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them”
Where are we?
Are we in the crowd, attracted by the power and the gifts, watching from a distance. Or are we amongst the disciples, sitting at the feet of our King, committed to learning his teaching so that we can work for the Kingdom?
Over the next months leading up to the summer, as we listen to Jesus teaching about what it means to live in God’s Kingdom, are we going to be spectators in the crowd or disciples, learning and applying the teaching to our lives?
If we’re in the crowd, then that’s OK. Jesus didn’t send the crowd away, he loved them and blessed them, invited them to listen in on what he taught his disciples.
There are risks to being in the crowd though. The big one is that crowd isn’t in the Kingdom. As we’ve seen this doesn’t stop the crowd experiencing some of the blessings of the Kingdom, but what the crowd doesn’t experience is the security of the Kingdom. We are in the in between time, when the doors of the Kingdom are open. This allows the blessing to flow out and people to flow in. When the doors close, those flows will stop.
If we’re among the disciples, then that’s good. But there are risks to being the disciples as well, because there are challenges amongst these blessings.
And some of what Jesus says looks a bit odd to be honest. They don’t make sense. They don’t match up to what the world says, or to what we experience.
Do we trust Jesus? Do we believe him when he says, Blessed are you when you are insulted. Doesn’t sound great to me. Discples trust their teacher. Do we trust our teacher? Trust him enough to change our lives?
There is such a lot of richness to come. So I encourage you, make a decision - tonight, ask God to give you one thing from this teaching and promise to do something about it. Give space for this to happen. Come ready to listen. Bring some paper and a pen. Write stuff down, because a blunt pencil is sharper than the sharpest memory. Try it for a couple of weeks. Take some notes. Look at them during the week, talk about it in your cell groups and pray for each other.
Over the next 4 months we are going to look at Jesus’ teaching about the things that lead to blessing.
During that time we will have an opportunity to discover more about the Kingdom that Jesus calls us to be part of, to grow more like him, and to ask the Holy Spirit to help us as we learn how to be a more Godly shape, not just for summer, but for the whole of our present life and the life to come.
Amen.
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