A worship service was held at 10.30am in the church on Sunday 1 February.  The service was simultaneously broadcast on the Church Facebook page.  For the next four weeks you can catch up here.  The sermon starts at about 39:06 in.

The Bible passage was Matthew 5:2-12 and Duncan led and preached. Follow this link to view the Youtube videos about the ‘Beatitudes’ which Duncan recommended, and this link to the Introduction to the Beatitudes which we saw this morning.

The sermon was hugely encouraging:  Jesus preaches to those aware of their own brokenness and need, and we discover that its when we discover that our own resources can’t meet our need that our hearts begin to open to the God who is our Source.

 Here’s the full text of Duncan’s sermon as it was delivered:

 There isn’t a great deal of difference between the challenges faced by people 2,000 years ago and today, when it comes down to the actual nuts and bolts of life.

Issues around coping in a challenging world, well, that hasn’t changed in 2,000 years, really. Issues around being caught in the crosshairs of all the competing powers and struggles in the world. globally, internationally, locally.

These are the kind of dynamics that are always at work in humanity. When Jesus arrives on the scene, we saw in the video, the Roman Empire is  in power, and people are generally oppressed. The gospel repeatedly speaks of crowds of people following Jesus, looking out for him, desperate to find healing and hope in their lives. It’s in the context of oppression and so much need.

The same realities which touch the world today when we look around us. The same realities. These are what Jesus is facing when he preaches this famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, which begins with these words known as Beatitudes.

Blessed

There are 8 blessings, or Beatitudes, between verses 3 to 10. Each beatitude begins with a Greek word that is translated into English as either ‘blessed’ or maybe ‘happy’, or something. And the Greek word is makarios. And it’s a very, very strong word in Greek. The word carries a sense of joy and gratefulness and delight in what’s happening in our lives.

And of course, the whole idea that Jesus is putting together here of being ‘blessed’ at the same time as experiencing all kinds of what we would view as very negative things like mourning, that seems a very strange mix, doesn’t it, as we come to a sermon, to mix things like poverty and blessing together?

Be overjoyed, Jesus said, in your poverty of spirit. Be overjoyed in your mourning. Be overjoyed in your hunger and thirst for righteousness.

At first glance, it seems ridiculous that someone should suggest that mourning or persecution or poverty can simultaneously be things that bring us joy in life. Aren’t things like mourning or poverty things to be avoided at all costs in our lives?

Jesus’ Audience

 Jesus’ words of blessing, though, only really begin to make sense to us when we see the context in which these words were used. And that’s why the video was helpful this morning. Jesus, as we saw in the video, isn’t preaching the gospel to the elite and the powerful in Judea. He isn’t preaching the gospel to safe and secure and self-satisfied people either.

People who flocked to him, as we saw on the video, were almost certainly in the main the very poor, the excluded, those considered unimportant within Jewish society. So many of Jesus’ stories – just think about the stories that you know about Jesus this morning – so many of them are centred around people who were excluded, people who are weak, people who are overlooked within society. lepers, tax collectors, Samaritans, blind Bartimaeus, a paralyzed man, and children who were of no account in ancient world societies.

The only credential these people had when they came to Jesus was their sense of need of him in their hearts. And over all of that, Jesus’ words were spoken in a context where everyone within that society was experiencing oppression under the Roman Empire.

Jesus’ words, I want you to realise today as we look at these Beatitudes together, aren’t a general word of blessing to all around him. They are spoken directly to people who knew themselves to be in the direst of need. struggling in all kinds of ways in their lives and needing help.

They are spoken to people who know that they are the end of their tether, who cannot cope with the reality of what they’re experiencing in life. The blessing of Jesus only begins to make sense when we realise that we don’t have it all together in life. That’s the ultimate reality of these Beatitudes as we come at them together today.

The reality of being a self-made person or someone who is secure and feels that sense of security in our own being this morning is a very difficult reality to confront this beatitude, where Jesus is saying that those who are blessed are those who know themselves not to have it all together in life.

The reality of Jesus teaching this morning and the Beatitudes that there is a special blessing in knowing that reality of need in our lives at all kinds of levels, brokenness, pain, the reality of just facing these things and looking to Jesus in the midst of it.

There is special blessing, Jesus is saying, in knowing that whatever the kind of poverty we might be experiencing in our life, whether it’s spiritual or physical, in all of these things, Jesus is open to that reality of blessing and beatitude.

There is a special blessing too for the seemingly capable in life too, who know that their achievements and strengths don’t amount to much without others coming alongside them to help in their places of weakness.

Nobody in this world is truly strong or invincible. Every one of us, every one of us this morning, is ultimately dependent on others. We are all ultimately fragile dust.

A revolutionary sermon

The only person Jesus ever made a promise of paradise to was a thief on the cross. Jesus offered the greatest comfort and the greatest blessing to one who was experiencing the ultimate humiliation on a cross.

This is the blessing that Jesus offers to us in our need. He turns the values and the expectations of this world upside down. This is a revolutionary sermon from Jesus for us to think about together.

Even when you’re excluded, even when you feel you’re on the outside or weak and powerless, you matter to God is what Jesus was teaching. You are seen, you are known, you are welcome.

No wonder they flock to Jesus when you understand the background to what this sermon was all about. Jesus sets the scene for all of these blessings with these words: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ .

Beginning with this particular blessing of those who are poor in spirit is not an accident. As we saw in the video, this sermon is well organised. It is not an accident that the blessing of those who are poor in spirit is first. This is a deliberate order in the sermon. Because poor in spirit is all about recognising together today, recognising that our need is the great gateway to blessing from God.

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’. Jesus, as he sits down to teach, is presenting himself to the people and to the crowds as the One who has authority in this world over all that happens and all that we experience. None of what happens in this world takes Jesus by surprise.

And here he wants to teach his followers what the blessed life is. In the midst of all the turmoil and tribulations that life can and will bring, perhaps the most important thing we need to notice today is that the disciples came to Jesus. As he went up on a mountainside and sat down, the disciples came to Jesus. They came to the one who had the authority and the power to bless.

Those who come in brokenness are blessed

And in that respect, we want to recognise today that nothing has changed. Jesus is still the one who can bring us blessing in the midst of difficult times. He is the way, he is the truth, and he is the life.

And so the encouragement of this story today, as we think of all the different ways in which we can share together, is to gather and to learn and to be blessed as we teach and share and learn and encourage one another as the disciples did.

It may also seem very obvious, but I just want to point this out as we begin this looking at the Sermon on the Mount, and in particular the Beatitudes today, that the Beatitudes are blessings.

It may seem very obvious that they’re blessings. But in fact, I think we can often forget it as we live our lives day by day. The first words Jesus offers to his disciples, the first words the Gospel of Matthew records from Jesus’ sermon are words of blessing.

Jesus begins his ministry by inviting us to be part of a kingdom of blessing as we see our need of him. I think that’s really important for us to hear today as we begin this journey through the Sermon on the Mount together. Blessing comes first from Jesus. Jesus begins with blessing, not judgment, not terms and conditions. Jesus begins with blessing.

Why?

Because the people are near and dear to the heart of God. Whatever else Jesus’ first followers are going to go on to do and to learn and to accomplish in the future, they will never get beyond the identity that they are loved and blessed by God. Without condition, without measure.

What Jesus bears witness to in the Beatitudes this morning is God’s unwavering closeness to those who see their need of Him today. God is nearest, Jesus is saying, to those who are lowly, oppressed, unwanted and broken. God isn’t obsessed today with the shiny or the impressive. God is too busy sticking close to those who have that sense of the messy and the chaotic, the unruly and the unattractive.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. In our poverty today, spiritual or otherwise, wherever we feel that we have that need, God meets us with his riches. ‘Come to me, Jesus said, all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls’.  (Matthew 11:28)

And so we begin this journey of blessing with Jesus as we walk our way through the Sermon on the Mount. Remembering today that we are invited to that reality and sharing of His blessing as we journey together with Him.

We are God’s children and the kingdom of heaven is ours. The one who blesses us is near. And so as we begin this journey together, may Christ become all that you need and all that you want. Our go-to, our starting point day by day as we seek to follow Him. and to know his blessing upon our lives. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.