Mat 5:1-12; Heaven on Earth – the Blessed Life of Christ’s Apprentice, part 2.

Class Outline:

Wednesday March 20, 2024

 

Introduction:

 

The Lord died to enable us to live the SOM. TIT 2:14.

 

We must continue as we go through it to see the whole of it.

 

The Beatitudes do not come at the end but at the beginning. If we are not perfectly clear about the type of people we are to be, then there is no point in going further.

 

The Sermon, Beatitudes especially, tells us that we are the only people in the world who live with a consistent sense of judgment.

 

The SOM is a description of the character of a person and not a code of ethics.

 

What is “blessed?”

 

MAT 5:1-2, Who is Christ teaching? He is teaching His apprentices. 

 

The apprentices of Christ are blessed: fortunate, privileged, favored, and happy. 

 

If they are what they should be and manifest it in works of life and do it well enough or consistent enough to be reviled and persecuted for it - they are blessed. 

 

Blessed (makarios) means: Pertaining to being especially favored, blessed, fortunate, happy, privileged. Privileged recipients of divine favor. 

 

MAT 11:5-6 (quoting ISA 35:5; 61:1 which sums up Beatitudes). 

 

There was no faith or anything else before Jesus that could do anything for the poor and lower classes in that society. 

 

JOH 13:17, the blessed poor do not become like the earth’s blessed. 

The church has been knowing them and not doing them. 

 

LUK 14:7f. Taking the last seat (same attitude as foot washing in Joh 13) … and “invite the poor and the crippled and you will be blessed.” 

Again, the problem has been knowing but not doing. 

 

(Doer) JAM 1:12, 25. 

 

LUK 11:28, Blessed is your mother. No rather, blessed are they who hear the word and keep it. 

 

LUK 12:37, Servants found working. 

 

Sufferer 1PE 3:14; 4:14

 

Others: ROM 4:7 (sins forgiven); JOH 20:29 (not seen but believed); ROM 14:22 (does not condemn himself); REV 22:14 (washes [pres act participle] their robes). 

 

Blessings on a life are not random acts on God’s part. Nor are they earned or a source of competition. 

 

With God’s life, its manner and way, there is always blessing. It is always blessed. There is not a moment when God is not blessed. 

 

The manner of divine life (eternal life) in a human is (among others) humility, service, obedience to His will and timing, sacrifice for others, staying with righteousness when it is difficult because of temptation or persecution, faith, hope, love … all of them are blessed things that will express, experience, and bring blessings in various ways. 

 

You have to have faith to do it. 

 

Talk is not doing it - 29:13 (quoted by the Lord in MAT 15:8-9 when the Pharisees were upset about hand washing). EZE 33:31

 

JAM 1:23-25

 

You must accept God’s idea of blessings and their timing and not your own idea or the world’s.