Ending First
Matthew 5:1-12
5 February 2017
In 2010 my now wife finally agreed to watch the Harry Potter movies. She was all caught up by the time the last one hit theaters. But before we ever moved to Ohio, the number of Star Wars movies my wife had seen was zero. That’s just un-American. There are just too many Star Wars references in life. But I finally convinced her to watch the Star Wars Movies. Of course the originals were made in the 70s and 80s and the prequels came out around the turn of the millennium. So I suggested that since very few people had this opportunity, she should consider watching them in chronological order. And she did. And it was very interesting. Most people, when they watched the prequels, knew the eventual fate of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Won Kenobi. They knew that some of the people who did not appear in episodes 4-6 must not have made it. They knew how it ended. But it was designed that way. Most of the time reading the last chapter of a book first or watching the last episode of a series first is going to ruin it for you. But think about the perspective difference. A character who appears to be bad for the whole book or the whole movie series but then turns out to be good – you’d probably feel differently about that character if you started by reading the finale.
In life we certainly act differently if we know how things end. “If you behave, I’ll buy you the toy” often has a short term effect on the child’s behavior. I once worked as a waiter. That can be a different perspective because in many jobs, you know the end result because your salary is set. As long as you have the job, you can look at how many hours you’re scheduled and predict exactly what your paycheck will be. So how does any of this relate to Scripture? When you put your faith in Jesus, you know the ending, even if you are six movies or twelve seasons away from it. Matthew 5 is known as the beatitudes. Beatus means “blessed” and this is the section where Jesus keeps saying “blessed are the…”
1 Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them, saying: 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. First of all, there are two different words that are translated “blessed” in the New Testament. There’s one that’s basically the word “eulogy,” that kinda describes how one is viewed. “Blessed be the name of the Lord” – those kind of phrases. But the word used in Matthew 5 (and Greek translations of Psalm 1) is different. It’s more about intrinsic value and status. And that makes sense, because the poor in spirit would not have been well spoken of, which, very literally, is what the other “blessed” means.
Now what does poor in spirit mean? As you know, a lot of what Jesus did and taught was in defiance of or contrast to the Pharisees. That comes out quite a bit in Matthew’s Gospel, whose audience is primarily Jews. He wants them to know that Jesus is the Son of God, the descendant of Abraham, the Messiah called for by all the prophets. And he wants them to knowthat this Jesus was the one to follow – not the Pharisees. So the poor in spirit are people who are not like the Pharisees or teachers of the law. The poor in spirit are not so self-assured about themselves that they think they don’t need any help from anyone or God. Those people are blessed, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.Again, Jesus is assuring His disciples, most of whom were not highly educated and well regarded in aristocratic circles, that their value before God has nothing to do with how high they could climb a social ladder. Just because your life won’t be celebrated by historians and generations to come does not mean that God will forget you. The conveniences and riches that you may give up to follow Christ are not all that is out there. I know there are plenty of rich people and popular people and really happy people who are believers, but according to the way of the world, you can never reach your fullest potential if you are spending time and money on things like church and reading an old book.
5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. So verses 3-5 basically deal with our attitudes about ourselves. Do I think of myself as God’s gift to mankind, or do I recognize my role in existence as an instrument to glorify God? How meek am I? If I can be meek before God, then I can be meek before my brothers and sisters. I don’t need to be the center of attention if my attention is centered on God. And He thinks more highly of us than any human anyway.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. What is your greatest desire in life? Acceptance?Love?Success?Legacy?Fun? If it’s anything like that, you can hunger for it your whole life, and you may even be filled, but you’ll keep hungering and thirsting. If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you will be filled, because that’s something that will last an eternity. Verse 6 is very similar to Psalm 1:“Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord.” Now most of us do want to have success and acceptance and all those things. How do we get to the point where our delight is in the law of the Lord? How do we get to the point where we actually hunger and thirst for righteousness? It doesn’t come naturally to sinners. This is why we sing things like “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” We know where we need to be; we know what we want to want, but we don’t always want it. So we ask God to send His Holy Spirit so that we might hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Are you seeing how Star Wars ties in yet? Did you notice the tense of the verbs? They will be comforted. They will inherit the earth. They will be filled. Jesus gives a preview of the last chapter. And that drastically changes our perspective on the first chapters. Mourning has a new perspective. Being meek has a different perspective – it’s all shaped by what we know is coming.
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.If you’re being really rowdy and disruptive in class, the teacher may scold you or punish you in some way. Or the teacher may find someone who is being respectful and quiet and loudly and publicly compliment that student. Jesus taught both ways and here again He is doing some of the latter, even though it’s mostly His disciples up on the mountain. But He is proposing behavior that is the opposite of what the religious leaders were doing. To show mercy you might have to give up something that you are entitled to. You might have to give up the right to get even. You might have to give up some time or some money. You might have to sacrifice your pride. It might require some of your energy. And if there are people you could show mercy, there are probably people who could show you mercy, people you have wronged. We’ve all sinned against our neighbor and so we’ve sinned against God. But Jesus is not talking about how you make atonement for your own sins. It maybe sounds a little like that: the way you get mercy is by showing mercy. The way you inherit the earth is by being meek. But one of the biggest and yet most common mistakes in statistics is confusing correlation with causation. An obvious example would be if a young child would one day notice, “You know, it seems like every time we go to church, there’s football on. I’ll bet if we missed church, there’d be no football.” That’s an obvious case of a correlation, but no church made any sort of arrangement with the NFL. Another less obvious one that you hear about sometimes is minorities in prison. Blacks make up about 12% of the U.S. population, but almost 40% of the prison population. Some draw from that disparity the conclusion that the system is unfair or targets blacks. That might be true, but citing the prison inmate statistics is very lazy research, because correlation does not prove causation. So we don’t want to confuse the two here in Matthew 5 either. Jesus is not saying that you must do this in order to have that. He’s saying that the kinds of people who have that are the kinds of people who do this. It’s a fine distinction, but an important one. It’s really all about having a humble heart before God.8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. The one who made peace between God and men was the Son of God. As a result, those who put their faith in that peace are also called sons of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. This is the part where we really need to think ending first. Nobody wants to get persecuted or insulted. Nobody sets out to get persecuted or insulted. For that very reason we often choose the path of least resistance. But when we know where the path ultimately leads, that changes things. When the ending is the kingdom of heaven, we can recognize the blessing of persecution. When the apostles were flogged in Acts 5, they left rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering for Jesus’ name. So 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”The greatest prophet was Jesus. Of course He was much more than just a prophet, so His sufferings were the worst. We’re not better than Jesus, so we’re going to experience some persecution and suffering too. If we are pure in heart and meek, we won’t run away from those sufferings, thinking we deserve better. We’re not better than Jesus. But we’re not worse either. If we’re going to be called sons of God – that’s what Jesus is, so we can also expect the same greatness that Jesus accomplished: we will rise from the dead, for ours is the kingdom of heaven.