Pastor Art Snow • March 14, 2022

8 Insights into the Beatitudes: life lessons given by Jesus within the Sermon on the Mount

The greatest sermon ever preached, by the greatest preacher who ever spoke on earth, sacred rhetoric from the lips of the second person of the Trinity. Jesus ascends the mountain on the shores of Galilee to explain “a way of righteous living”. Unlike when Moses ascended Mt Sinai there were no stones cut by sizzling fire, but instead gentle words that cut into the human heart challenging its broken moral and spiritual compass. 

W.G.T. Shedd in his monumental work entitled Sermons to the Natural Man (copyright 1876) said,

“The Decalogue is the legal basis of the Old Dispensation,  and the Sermon on the Mount is the legal basis of the New.” If this be true then as Christ followers we can read this sermon as a guide for our everyday lives knowing that Jesus has provided a way for our lives to please him everyday and in every way. 

Jesus begins this great sermon with eight statements or “Beatitudes” the word simply means “happy”.  These eight statements speak of divine joy, perfect happiness. They are the ideal heart condition of a citizen of God’s kingdom. They are in fact how a true disciple should be described. 

Gregory of Nyssa a mystic who lived in Cappadocia in Asia Minor around 380 AD described the Beatitudes this way…

“Beatitude is a possession of all things held to be good,
from which nothing is absent that a good desire may want.
Perhaps the meaning of beatitude may become clearer to us if it is compared with its opposite.
Now the opposite of beatitude is misery.
Misery means being afflicted unwillingly with painful sufferings.”

I would like to follow Gregory’s lead and have us consider that the “way of righteous living” is found within these eight statements of Jesus. And the best way to find them is to look at what Jesus was really after in the human condition, as seen in the opposite of the statement.  So much of the beauty of this entire sermon is lost because people look at getting slapped in the face and turning the other cheek or surrendering a T-shirt and their jacket also, or smiling while you fast.  They miss what Jesus is really after those things buried deep within our hearts. 

So much of the beauty of this entire sermon is lost because people look at getting slapped in the face and turning the other cheek or surrendering a T-shirt and their jacket also, or smiling while you fast.

I will take each of these eight statements of the Beatitudes and pin-point what deep part of us Jesus is targeting and then try to resolve each of them within our own hearts.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

To be “poor in spirit” is humility, those who recognize their need for a Savior. The opposite of humility is Pride. It is pride that caused the fall of Lucifer the covering angel, it was pride that kept Jonah from embracing his mission, it was pride that caused Nebuchadnezzar to live like an animal for seven seasons, it was pride that kept Naaman from his healing from the dreaded leprosy. And and it is pride that keeps you and I from pleasing God.

God spoke through the prophet Micah and said that He only required three things from us; to love mercy, do justice and to walk humbly with our God. The very first thing Jesus targets in us is this thing called pride that causes us to fall, today is a good day to surrender pride, and walk humbly with our God. 

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

To mourn is to have deep sorrow over our sins, to express our need for a Savor, throwing ourselves on the mercy of a forgiving God. The opposite of this is Self-reliance, saying to God, no I’ve got this.

The independent soul who wants to be the Captain of their fate, the Master of their souls. It is these islands who stand alone with no need for God in their lives who will in fact never feel the comfort of God, because they have Become a god to themselves. The problem of course is when they breathe their last breath, then it is too late to be comforted.

What does it profit a man to be self-made, self-reliant, and self- justifying if they are destined to live an eternity having rejected the mercies of God, hopeless, helpless and lost. Today we are given the opportunity to fall into the hands of a merciful God asking for His grace. 

“Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.

This word gentle or meek is so mis-understood by the western mind, it is a Greek word 2,000 years removed from its context. It is a picture-word, it is like a 2,000 pound horse being controlled by a small bit in its mouth, it means “strength under control”.

The opposite of meekness or gentleness is Self-governing, not wanting to take a stance of meekness which could be misunderstood as weakness but instead taking the attitude, no one is going to roll over me, I can govern myself. No one is the boss of me, I will determine my future and my fate by my own governing hand.

I will rise or fall by my wits and grit. It so reminds me of the self-governing Lamech in Genesis chapter four.  Who told his two wives (yes the first bigamist in the Bible) , I have killed a man for wounding me, and a boy for striking me, if Cain is avenged seven-fold, then Lamech seventy-fold. What a sad life when anyone choses to self-govern as opposed to allowing the King of Kings and Lord of Lords to govern them.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

The Bible uses the two words, righteousness and justice together 250 times, they are two words that go together. The word righteousness means “the way things ought to be”, and can be illustrated by holding your arm straight in front of you. The word justice is actually used as a verb in the Bible to “do” justice (Micah 6:8), to adjust “crooked behavior” to become straight or righteous.

The opposite in this statement of Jesus is our crookedness. Every person has this crookedness in them it is the Adamic nature we are born with,  and must be corrected by God through His Christ. 

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Mercy, who would not show mercy when given the opportunity? There are so many pictures that come to mind when I consider this question. Probably the most graphic is Caesar sitting in his grand chair in the Coliseum, one gladiator has the other defeated at the end of his spear and looks to the emperor for the thumbs up or the thumbs down and with cold steely eyes he points his thumb downwards, and the spear is plunged into the warriors heart and the life drains from his body.

What Jesus is really after here is mans Inhumanity to man. The unredeemed heart when left to itself will almost always act inhumanely to his fellow man. The only true antidote to inhumanity is the mercy that Jesus offers, yes indeed let’s cloak ourselves in His mercy. 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

To be pure in heart is to always have pure and right motives, never having a hidden agenda or looking for an ulterior motive. The opposite of this is of course Impurity, a heart that is “mixed” with right and wrong, good and bad, selfless with just a small bit of selfishness mixed in, not too much just a bit.

If you take a gallon of white paint and mix it just one very small drop of black paint, you no longer have white paint, you have off-white paint. Which describes the heart of many good people, you know mixed with impurity.

It is only a heart submitted to Jesus that can stand the true test of purity. Jesus sits on the mountain calling out every mixed heart listening to Him, and today He sits on His throne asking you and I to examine our hearts to see if there might be just that one speck of impurity and if so to repent and ask Him to make our heart clean as only He can do. 

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Make no mistake peacemakers will be called the Sons of God. So what is the opposite of peacemakers, they are Strife Sowers. This takes me back to the 7 things that God hates in Proverbs 6:16-19 they are; “Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil, a false witness who utters lies, and the one who SPREADS STRIFE AMONG BROTHERS.”

There are just certain things you do not want to be caught doing in God’s kingdom and one of them is to be a gossiper or strife sower. Whenever you sow strife you are hurting both truth and justice. The church is called to be the pillar and support of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15) and we are called to “do” justice on the earth.

Ah, yes lets be committed to spreading peace not strife, and so please God. 

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Ok so now we close with a tricky one. Jesus says this very difficult statement telling His followers that they are actually blessed “happy” when they are persecuted, and their reward will be great in Heaven. There are very few christians I have ever met that were giddy and happy when they had the privilege of facing death for their faith.

I would like to suggest the opposite of this verse is Dis-association with Jesus. The kind of dis-association that comes from fear of casting your lot in with Jesus and His followers because you may receive the same treatment as they.

The best example I can find of this is when the Romans came to Gethsemane to arrest Jesus. Peter does what Peter often does, act impetuously, by striking off the soldiers ear. But after the arrest we find John still near Jesus during the proceedings of both the Roman and the Jewish trial. But the scripture tells us Peter followed from a distance (Matthew 26:58). Peter was now unwilling to be close to the Master, because he wanted to Dis-associate from Him and the consequences that might follow. 

The heart of the matter that Jesus was targeting here was our Dis-associating from Him when it is not convenient or safe. May He give us grace to stay close to Him, through thick and thin, in the safety zone as well as the valley of death. 

May the Lord help us to repent of the sins of Pride, Self-reliance, Self-governance, Crookedness, Inhumanity, Impurity, Strife, and Dis-association. 

Pastor Art Snow | March 14, 2022

Edited and Adapted for Web Use by: Eric Muñoz Jr.