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Kingdom Blessedness
Matt. 5:1-12
Sometimes, our understanding of salvation is one-dimensional. We want to strip away all the unnecessary extra stuff that people bring to religion and give them the simple truth of what it means to be saved by Jesus. Admit you are a sinner. Believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins. All true. But sometimes, it can leave a new believer with a sense of “Okay, now what? Where do I go from here?” We need to realize that salvation is more than just cancelling your debt. It’s more than just excusing you from the punishment; it’s about inviting you into a new way of living life. In Colossians 1:13, Paul says, “He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the Kingdom of His beloved Son.” Paying the penalty for our sin was the first step of our salvation. But Jesus didn’t free us from the prison of our sin just to leave us to wander through life on our own. He transferred us into His Kingdom.
Following Jesus means learning to live in His Kingdom. That is why Jesus, in Matthew 6:33, invites us to “seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness.” The best place to start to learn to seek the Kingdom of God is the Sermon on the Mount.
The Sermon on the Mount is found in the Gospel of Matthew in chapters 5 through 7. It is called that because Jesus delivered it while teaching his disciples up on a mountain. The reason He chose this site for this par- ticular lesson was symbolic. He wanted to make sure His disciples knew that He was doing more than giving them a series of disconnected moral teachings. He intentionally chose this sight to appear like a new Moses. In Exodus, Moses came down from the mountain with the law of God which was designed to show the He- brews how to live as the people of God. Jesus does something similar in the Sermon on the Mount. He is showing His followers what it is like to live as His followers. He is showing us what life in His Kingdom is like.
Kingdom Perspective v. 3
The Sermon on the Mount starts off with a series of statements that all begin with the phrase “Blessed are the...” This section is called the “Beatitudes” from the Latin word “beatus” which means “blessed.”
Jesus starts the sermon this way to show us that life in the kingdom means rethinking what it means to be blessed. Paul told the Romans in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” If we are going to learn to live in the kingdom, we have to realize that God calls us to understand blessing in a new way. This list shows us who is blessed in God’s eyes, in Jesus’s eyes, and in the kingdom’s eyes.
We all carry around in our own heads a list of people we think are blessed. We might not use the term “bless- ing.” We might say “happy,” “fortunate,” “lucky,” “privileged,” something that reveals that we wish we were them. Who in our society do we call blessed, fortunate, or happy?
Think about the kinds of people our world celebrates. Now rephrase it in terms of “blessed are the [blank].” Blessed are the wealthy. Blessed are the powerful. Blessed are the successful, famous, healthy. These are all things the world tells us we should seek, that our lives would be incomplete without.
In 1 John 2:16, John gives us three categories to help us see clearly the kinds of things the world values: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”
• The Lust of the Flesh: Blessed are those who experience various kinds of pleasure.
• The Lust of the Eyes: Blessed are those who acquire various kinds of possessions.
• Boastful Pride of Life: Blessed are those who attain for themselves an elevated position over others.
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