Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Matthew 5:8

Here we have another example of the often subtle contrast between religion and the kingdom of heaven. Religion tells us to do our best and live purely and we will be rewarded with the favor of God for our effort. Salvation tells us that it is not possible for us to live a perfectly pure life and that the mercy of God through the sacrifice of Christ makes us worthy if we receive Christ as Lord and also savior. If we are to put our trust in the salvation of the gospel and not the effort of our religious service what is the meaning of the above scripture?

We should first notice that Jesus does not say, “Blessed are the pure in action.” Jesus is telling us that the inner heart is expressed through our outer actions, and if our outer actions are not an expression of our inner heart then of what value are our actions spiritually? To be pure in our heart is of greater value than to try to follow a set of rules and call that purity. The motives of our heart are of great value to God.

This purity of our heart is not perfection of our heart. To be pure in heart is to be in the continuous process of being made pure. When Jesus is our Lord, and our every desire is to please him, then we are continuously on the path of allowing God to purify our hearts, and through God’s grace we are called the pure in heart. The purity of the heart is not perfection but totalness.  When God is the controlling passion of our lives then God reveals to us his nature, his purposes and his relationship to us.

Through this purity of heart we begin to express what we see of his nature, purpose and his relationship, and in this way we see God himself.

Next week: Blessed are the Peacemakers

Blessed are the Merciful....

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Matthew 5:7

The most potent attack on the Christian faith are cheap substitutes for the Christian faith. As rat poison is 99% sweet corn, so the most dangerous lie contains a large percentage of the truth. One of these lies that is commonly passed off as Christian doctrine is the ideas of judgment and unforgivness. To be part of the kingdom of heaven is to be merciful and forgiving. As Christians we know that we could never live a life that would qualify us to be accepted into the kingdom of heaven. We are accepted by God through his mercy expressed to us by the grace of Jesus Christ. Grace is simply undeserved favor, and Jesus took the punishment for our disobedience, and granted us His favor that He earned through his perfect obedience to God. Every Christian is a constant benefactor of God’s mercy through the grace of Jesus Christ. The kingdom of heaven is built on mercy and to be a member of that kingdom his to express mercy as we have received it. Jesus tells us in the above scripture that we are shown mercy as we show mercy. The ministry of Jesus expressed itself as mercy to the unbelieving, bickering and slow to understand disciples so it is our duty to show mercy as members of the kingdom in which Christ is the king.

  

Next Week: Blessed are the Pure In Heart...

Blessed are Those Who Hunger and Thirst…

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.  Matthew 5:6

To hunger and thirst for righteousness is to imply that we do not yet have righteousness to a satisfactory measure, or else why would we hunger and thirst for it? For those of us who know that we are sinners saved by grace, there is the desire for more righteousness because we understand how far we fall short of God's standard. Even the most righteous of us have no reason for pride because all of our good works falls miserable short of God's standard. In Philippians 3:1-14 the Apostle Paul tells us that of all the things he could take pride in none of them are of any value to him, including his personal righteousness. Paul is not telling us that personal righteousness is of no value; rather he is telling us that personal righteousness is nothing to be in the least bit proud about. We live the Christian life because we are saved by grace; we are saved because we live the Christian life. When we get angry for the wrong reason we are a murderer, when we eat one half teaspoonful more food than God meant for us to we are a gluten, when we half a half second of sexual thought toward someone who is not our spouse we are an adulterer and on and on.  It is much like the Olympic long jumper who takes pride in being able to jump a farther distance than anyone in the world, but finds out that the minimum qualifying distance to jump is from New York to San Francisco. It does not matter how much farther he can jump than others, he will still fail to meet the standard. God's standard of righteousness is so far beyond our best attempt that we should not be proud, but grateful that God through Jesus has made up the difference.

When we become aware of how horribly we fall short of the righteousness of God then, if we seek to be righteous, we hunger and thirst for righteousness. The promise to the members of the kingdom of God is that we will be filled. We are not filled by growing in righteousness to meet God's standard, but we are filled because as we grow in faith God credits our faith to us as righteousness. God feels the members of the kingdom with his righteousness though grace.

Next Week: Blessed are the Merciful...

Blessed Are the Meek

To be biblically meek is not to be timid or weak in the common sense of the word. To be biblically meek is to subjugate our own will to God’s will and purposes. It is true that if we are meek before God it will follow that we will be meek before our fellow man. A person cannot be meek before God and yet selfishly impose their will over others who God loves and has created.  This does not mean however that we must be timid and quiet before our fellow man. We can be meek in imposing our own selfish will and bold in expressing the will and nature of God.

God is the author and creator of our original unfallen nature, so to be meek before God is to begin to access humanity’s original God reflecting nature.  In Geneses 1:26-28 humanity, man and women, is made in the image and likeness of God. That image and likeness of God was to be expressed in the dominion over and the subduing of the earth. It is impossible to be timid or week and accomplish the God given command of subduing the earth. Humanity’s meekness was expressed as the revealing of the will of the living God in the earth and humanity’s meekness is still expressed in this way.

If we are meek in our own will and boldly express the will of God, which is our original nature, we can begin the God given command to have dominion and subdue the earth. This dominion is not expressed by ruling over and subjugating our fellow man in the flesh, but by taking spiritual dominion. As we expand the kingdom of God and spiritually subdue everything that exalts itself against the idea of God we inherit the earth as joint heirs with Christ, Romans 8:17. It is true that we also look forward to a future rein with Jesus but in the kingdom of heaven we can enjoy our inheritance of spiritual dominion as joint heirs with Christ right now.

Next week: Blessed are Those Who Hunger and Thirst… 

Poet Ntwadumela

Blessed are Those Who Mourn

Blessed are those who mourn,

For they shall be comforted.  Mathew 5:4 NKJV

The mourning spoken of in our above scripture is not the usual mourning that is common to humanity. It is not the mourning of the loss of a loved one, status or property. This mourning is the deep pervading mourning that one feels when one realizes that something is missing, namely a relationship with God. We may not be intellectually conscious of this mourning, or where it comes from. We may not even be aware that through Adam we have lost the closest loved one we could ever have, God. We may not consciously know we are mourning for the loss of our God, but like a distant unresolved memory all of us can feel it in our hearts.

Jesus tells us that this mourning, this eternal longing for God, will be comforted in the Kingdom of God. To be a citizen of a country or a kingdom is to have the rights and benefits of that country or kingdom. Whoever becomes a member of the kingdom of heaven enjoys all the rights of that kingdom, including, but not limited to, relationship with the living God. Our mourning will turn to joy once we enter the kingdom, for in the kingdom the God that was lost to us is found by us, and we are found by him. It is our joy and privilege to be found by God in the kingdom.

Next Week: Blessed are the Meek

The Poor in Spirit

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:3

In this first statement of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus shows us the stark contrast between the nature of the world and the nature of the kingdom of heaven.  The normal way of life in the world is the opposite of what he states here. The poor in spirit are to be looked down on in the world but not in the kingdom of heaven.

Those who are poor in spirit know the value of their righteousness before God. We are all poor in spirit because we are of the fallen race of Adam. Those of us who think we are rich in spirit, or who think we are good enough to be accepted by God, are least in the kingdom of heaven. The pride of those of us who think that the lives we live are good enough to get us accepted into the kingdom of God is the worst kind of sin. In 1^st Timothy 3:6 we are told that pride can bring a person under the same condemnation of the devil. Pride is what the Pharisees demonstrated before Jesus, and is why they could not recognize him as the Messiah. The pride of the Pharisees led them to believe that their religious discipline was enough to make them righteous before God, but the opposite was true.  

         

The poor in spirit know that they are lost sinners without hope, and that the grace of God through Jesus Christ is the only way they can be rescued. The poor in spirit do not think that they are better than drunkards and thieves but know that it is by grace that anyone, including drunkards and thieves, can be saved. The poor in spirit know that the life they live for Christ is out of love for him not to show how much better they are than others. The poor in spirit have the kingdom of heaven because they trust in the grace and mercy of the King.

To be poor in spirit is to be wealthy in the Grace of God, and inherit the kingdom.

Poet Ntwadumela

Next Week: Those who mourn!  

And seeing the multitudes, he went up on the mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to him. Then he opened His mouth and taught them, saying:  Matthew 5:1-2

The above scripture is the beginning of the sermon of Jesus known as the Sermon on the Mount, and in it Jesus gives us the most comprehensive expression of the kingdom of God that we have in the Gospels. In this sermon Jesus lays out for us the nature of the kingdom of heaven, and the nature of our lifestyle as citizens of that kingdom. The central theme that is expressed throughout this sermon is God’s love for us and our love for each other. Just under the surface of every concept given is God’s love expressing itself through the kingdom. The Kingdom of Heaven is a beautiful, fertile place to live, and though we live on the physical earth we can also live in this place of spiritual strength and abundance, and enjoy its authority and benefits.    

In the coming weeks we will go through this Sermon on the Mount and mine the nuggets of love contained in its concepts. Much of what Jesus teaches here has been misrepresented and misinterpreted so that the full importance of living as citizens in the kingdom of heaven is lost. If there is no understanding of the kingdom then there is no understanding of citizenship, and if there is no understanding of citizenship then there is no understanding of who we are in the world.

The book of Matthew itself is a book emphasizing the Kingdom of Heaven, and the role of Jesus as the Kingly Messiah. The word “Kingdom” appears fifty times in Matthew’s Gospel and “Kingdom of Heaven” appears thirty times. Matthew’s is the only Gospel that contains the Sermon on the Mount in its entirety and it is Matthew that gives us the genealogy of Jesus establishing him as descending from the line of King David.

This message was very important to Jesus. The above scripture tells us that when Jesus saw the multitude his first inclination was to teach them of the kingdom. The love of Jesus was manifested to the multitude with the given them the knowledge of the kingdom. With the Sermon on the Mount Jesus teaches us who are blessed, what believers are, that He fulfills the law, the condition of our heart, and much more. All of these lessons taught in this sermon spring from the common soil of love.

I look forward to diving into the study of the Sermon on the Mount with you and exploring our citizenship and our role as love ambassadors in this world.

Next week: Blessed are the…