Billion dollar question. What do the Beatitudes mean? We have put a ton of time and thought into this together. It's been very fun to try to break this down into little pieces, to try to look at the big picture structure of the whole thing, to even go and look at some of the extra biblical stuff that might give us clues about how the original audience would have received it. We've done all that work. Congratulations. High five. That's what that sound was. You have put in the effort and the time. And in a way, I feel like now we have kind of earned the ability to look at this together and maybe make an assessment of what it most likely actually means in whole. So starting from the top, you got the option that we've rejected several times. I still think it needs to be rejected overwhelmingly, and that is that this is a list of commandments. I understand how a reader could pick this up and at first glance feel like that's what they're seeing. I could especially understand how someone who has been around the version of Christianity that is rooted in behavior and formulas about behavior, they get social acceptance and where you earn acceptance from God by doing nice things or behaving properly in the community. I get that. And I get how this could be really attractive to that person because I've been that person. That version of my faith crashed against the rocks, but I've really run that scenario in my brain. I've run that simulation. And I think that version of my brain would have been likely to look at this and setting logic and reason aside would have been like, oh, there are things that you're supposed to do because the Bible is about things that you're supposed to do. But the other side of the faith-breaking divide version of my brain says, I don't know. It looks more like the Bible is the story of the main character, God, and the plot is God choosing to redeem a seemingly broken-wrecked thing. And the power of that redemption is entirely within God and through his character and through his power, meaning that, I don't know, if that's kind of the interpretive matrix for the whole document, this doesn't look like it's an explicit list of things to do. So I'm going to continue to respectfully reject that option on those grounds, as well as on the grounds of it would seem really weird to the original audience to be commanded to mourn. I mean, they just got done dealing with Herod the Great, who commanded people to mourn under penalty of death when he died. Unfortunately, those orders weren't carried out. So to treat this as a command, I just don't think it would resonate with the original audience. I don't think that's what it could have meant. I probably took too much time rejecting that. Okay, here's another possibility. Maybe these aren't commands. Maybe these are more ideals or principles or things to strive for. Like obviously, you can't do all of these things. You can't do mourn. How do you even make yourself hunger and thirst for righteousness? Okay, so maybe they're not commands, maybe they're ideals, maybe they're something everyone should strive for, or an ideal way things ought to be, and we should put energy and effort into crafting the world to be more like this. I don't think that totally holds up with the rest of the trajectory of Jesus' call to action through his ministry, but I think it's a better read than just saying it's a one or a zero, do this or don't do this command with a reward or a punishment. It seems bigger than that. And I'll pick that up in just a minute. Okay, a third option that I think we can't help but consider is that this is a list of things that you can do or be to get into a right relationship with God or to get into heaven. So in this line of thinking, we could read the Beatitudes as eight things that if you can do or be, that then you earn the approval of God, you become called a son or daughter of God, you become an heir to the kingdom, an agent of the kingdom, and you get to participate. But that doesn't square real neatly with that stuff we were looking at later on in Matthew chapter five, where Jesus says, For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. That's verse 20 of chapter 5. I mean, the Beatitudes end at verse 10, or at least the first eight do. So really 10 verses later, he contradicts it. I don't know. I don't think these can be entrance requirements. I think what we've seen is that Jesus is affirming that the entrance requirements are actually completely untenable. You just, you can't achieve the entrance requirements. And so I think a stronger case than one, it's a list of commands, two, it's a list of ideals, three, it's a list of how to get in, would be four the idea that it is kind of that progressive thought that describes the trajectory of the Christian life, starting with things being reconciled vertically between people and God. And then the second half, after we come down the other side of the chiastric mountain, is how we reconcile or do right between us and other people in light of what has happened between us and God. I still don't think that is the right answer, but maybe it could be part of the right answer. So I don't think the best explanation for what this means is that it's a list of commands, that it's a list of ideals, that it's a list of things to do or be in order to get in admission requirements. I don't think the best description is that this is a trajectory or a conveyor belt that people get on and then move through. Although, quick aside here, I have read some books by people who are enormously smart who do argue for some combination of those four, or most often the fourth. And they could be right. Our homework and our conversation points me in a slightly different direction, but I I mean, I probably don't need to say this. I think you understand what the agreement is between you and me here. If you see this one differently, you're not crazy. These are positions that I could understand how somebody could make a case for. But what I would challenge myself and all of us to think about is that we're not just working with eight beatitudes. We're working with an entire document. We're working with really four accounts of the gospels before we even get into all the other stuff. This needs to square and make sense with all of the Old Testament. It needs to square and make sense with all the rest of the stuff Jesus says. And so even though I think we can make a good case for maybe two or three of the four that I'm kind of rejecting, they're still harder to square with the rest of what we see Jesus saying than this last option for what the Beatitudes mean, which is the one I am most sold on right now. And that would be this. I think what we're seeing is a list of kingdom values. I think we are seeing not so much a description of how things ought to be or what you ought to be doing, but rather a description of how things actually are. And on this point, if we read the Beatitudes as a description of something to hope for and long for that maybe someday God could make happen, it kind of reduces the authority and power of the God who's behind it. I mean, in Luke, we have Jesus very early in his ministry reading from this scroll and all this stuff from the prophet Isaiah, stuff about the Spirit of the Lord being upon him, because he's anointed him to preach the good news and has sent me to proclaim freedom from their prisoners and recovery of sight for blind people, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And then he rolls up the scroll and he's like, that has been fulfilled today, in your hearing. Well, that sounds like not something that's going to work out later. It sounds like something that is working out right now. I think the best read on this passage, once again, is not that Jesus is describing something that wistfully we hope the world could be someday, but rather he's describing something other than the world that already is, a kingdom that already exists, with a king already in a position of authority to rule over it forever, with a set of values that are already in place and real and growing up. Maybe they're growing up right alongside the world values and this other thing that looks more real and more true. But I think what we're getting here is the beginning of the development of the idea from Jesus that the kingdom is real, that the kingdom is realer than the world kingdom, that this is the truest, realist thing ever, and that to be on board with God's redemptive plan, to be on board with God and in relationship with God is to be in this kingdom, to exist in the context of these values, to assent, to say, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, thy will be done, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. I mean, what is this prayer of affinity to God that happens just a few pages away in the Lord's Prayer if it's not an affirmation of these values and the reality of this kingdom? Oh my goodness, I'm getting excited. Did you hear it? I try not to get too excited and weird because I don't want it to feel like I'm uh getting all worked up and yelling about things, but this is exciting to me because what this means is that the trajectory of the Christian who reads it is not, I'm gonna go beat down the world and make it into this version of things I want it to be. And I'll use politics, I'll use force, I'll use violence, I'll use manipulation, I'll tweak creatively, whatever I have to do, I am going to take charge of this thing. And in the name of the Almighty God, I am gonna help him out a ton to deliver on the thing that he wasn't able to do without me. I think it creates a really problematic trajectory if you read this as a thing that we hope happens someday, as opposed to a description of a truer, realer kingdom, the actual kingdom of God. That might sound a little bit crazy to imagine that some homeless dude or guy who crashes on his buddy's couch in Capernaum could stand up in front of all of these people and say this stuff and have anybody even remotely take him seriously. But he didn't teach like somebody who was saying, I hope this stuff happens. Wouldn't this be a cool thing if it all worked out like this? Imagine a different world, guys. What if the meek inherited the earth instead? That's visionary and that's interesting, but that's not the tone he's taking here. And in fact, at the very end of the Sermon on the Mount, it says just that. This is 728. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught as one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law. He wasn't throwing out stuff that he hoped would happen here. He wasn't trying to paint a picture to motivate people to please, please, please make this thing happen, guys. I know we can do it together, but I can't do it on my own. Let's put our strength and our power and our numbers together and make our voices heard. That is you're picturing politics. You're picturing social change. This is bigger than that. Politics and social change move the deck chairs around in the world kingdom. This is a completely different kingdom that is being described. And all of that is why I think the best read on what the Beatitudes mean is that there is a truer, realer kingdom, that Jesus is the king, that these are the values of that kingdom, and that though our proximity to this very pervasive, failing world kingdom we see might cause us to miss this truer, realer kingdom at times or forget that it's there, this reality is unfolding in a truer, greater, more meaningful, more lasting way. And the invitation to the people who hear this as we go through the rest of the Sermon on the Mount is to shift loyalty from a failing world kingdom with failed kings and failing kings to the true real kingdom with a lasting king where the values are upside down and better. Now, what does that exactly mean? How do you do that? What does it look like to live in that environment? I don't know. I think those are very, very difficult questions. Unfortunately, we've got a whole lot of Bible left to try to unpack all of that. Next time around, we're gonna be on to the little addendum that starts in verse 11 of Matthew chapter five about persecution and the role of people who participate in this kingdom in the larger world. So we're gonna start getting answers to the stuff that we're throwing out right here, like tomorrow. Quick note here, I got a couple of really nice bits of feedback from people who chose to share the podcast with friends, with people they care about. Look, I just right here for everybody to hear, I want to tell you, thank you for doing that, that I don't know what a kinder, more gracious compliment would look like than to risk your reputation with your friends by putting stuff that we talk about here in front of them. Uh, that's just really humbling and really cool. So thank you for doing that. Okay, I think we wrap it up there. I'm Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do it again soon.