On the way out the door last time, I used an inside baseball term, and that is the Beatitudes. And it occurs to me that probably a lot of you are like, oh, the Beatitudes. Yeah, those are like that series of blessed R statements that open the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five. And probably others of you were like, the beat, huh? What is that? What's the thing now? And it's okay if you don't know that language. That is not a Bible word. It is an after-the-fact theology Bible interpretation word that gets floated around in Christianity a lot. And it does refer just to exactly that, this series of almost metered blessed are statements, blessed are this, for they will be that, that open the Sermon on the Mount, the first of five great big speeches from Jesus that form the skeleton for the Gospel of Matthew, these blessed are and for they will, or whatever statements that serve the purpose on the front end of this kingdom manifesto from Jesus, of immediately challenging all of our values, of demanding that we change currency if we're persuaded by this kingdom and we want to be a part of it. So yesterday we looked at one of the more difficult to interpret, that being the blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven passage. Seems like almost a thesis statement for this whole thing that adopting this posture of humility before the king, understanding that everything about the kingdom is his agenda, he's in charge, but it's okay because he's benevolent and he's good and he's just and he's merciful and his kingdom is going to be awesome. So we can just take our hands off the wheel. We can that sound like a country music song. That wasn't what I was referencing. We can lay down our imagined right to be in charge and fully trust that this king can get it right. And in addition to that, we don't even have to hold back a little bit, worrying that the next guy who takes over is going to be awful. So we don't want to give too much power to this one because this king is held out as being eternal, that promise dating all the way back to the one that was made to David in the Old Testament. Eternal king, eternal kingdom. So then the blessed are statements go on. It says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Now at this point, it gets a little bit tricky because I've heard this handled a couple of different ways in churches and in writing and stuff like that. And one of those ways is to imagine that these blessed are comments somehow correspond to the Ten Commandments. Now, okay, in strength of that argument, and I want to be fair here, clearly Matthew is drawing on the Moses motif for Jesus. He's definitely trying to present Jesus as a new and better Moses who is going to bring about a new and better family of faith, a more complete family of faith. You'll see as we get to verse 17 of chapter five here that Jesus is fulfilling the law of Moses, new and better once again. So, well, who were the Ten Commandments given to? Moses. So maybe at that level you could draw the parallel. I can't I can't call somebody who thinks that crazy. It's a very valid read. To call it one-for-one analogous, though, it kind of defies the actual language that Jesus is using. So I suppose then what I'm talking about now is the second perspective, which I lean to, which is that even if this is meant to remind us a little bit of the Ten Commandments, we're supposed to immediately see it in contrast to the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments happen in the larger context of the second of the big covenants we always talk about, the covenant that God made with Moses, where to summarize it, God was like, hey, you are going to be my people. I'm going to be your God. And this is going to be conditional. If you obey me, I am going to bless you. And if you disobey me, I'm going to punish you. But the results will be the same either way. All the nations are going to know that you're my people and I'm the one true God. Well, here the formula is a little bit different. It's very proactive. Not don't do this or else this will happen. It's blessed is this. And furthermore, because this is what will happen. But at the same time, it doesn't really work to call these Ten Commandments because you can't really do all of the Beatitudes. And maybe we could make a case for blessed are the poor in spirit. Okay. So don't hoard money or don't hoard things. Don't chase after the values of this world. That covers maybe the physical side of poor and spirit. Spiritually, you know, you want to be not proud. You want to again assume this right posture before the true king and embrace the values of the true king as expressed in the kingdom manifesto. Like maybe that is something you could do. Even there, it sounds more like a state of being. But the second one, blessed are those who mourn. I don't know, is go ahead and fake it? What if I'm not sad? Like, what if I'm super happy because I have life in Jesus and I have it abundantly, and I'm pretty pumped up about that, and things look great in the world because there is this kingdom and stuff's gonna be okay. Like, wait a second. The second new Ten Commandments says I have to be sad about things. So I guess it's just morning day, and uh, I'll be sad. Some Christian traditions have tried to build in sadness to their rhythm. I guess I feel that every year when we do the holy week, Monday, Thursday, uh Good Friday stuff. I almost said Black Friday. Wow. Uh commercialism is uh cluttering my religion brain a little bit. But it looks more like what we're seeing in the Beatitudes are our states of being, stuff that maybe there's a cyclical relationship between the values of the kingdom and us trying to get it right. And maybe as we nudge ourselves toward getting it right, the values of the kingdom become more internalized. And then we can't help but become more poor in spirit as we better understand the king and the values of the kingdom, and then that makes us want to be more poor in spirit because we understand the values, and then that makes us more that. I mean, maybe it could be that, but some of these would seem to just be states of being, which causes me to say once again, that I think the best theory for how to read the Beatitudes is not as a new list of things to do, is not as a psychological list of emotions or going through a list of ways that we might feel from time to time. I think the best way to read it is that the kingdom is upside down, that it's a defining of values and currency, that all the stuff that you think is valuable in your world and all the stuff that you would pursue and want to be and view as an ideal state of being in Jesus' kingdom, it's kind of the opposite. There's a blessing to mourning. Why? Well, because you know the joy of the great comforter's comfort. What does that look like? Oh, I don't know. I've got some theories, and maybe we could break that down further as we get deeper into the text. But I suppose the one comfort would be that there's a king in a kingdom and that it's truer and realer and better than all of the broken, discouraging stuff about this world. I mean, as we go along a little bit further, we start to suspect in the text that Jesus might even be suggesting that he defeats death ultimately, and then it sure looks like he does. So I guess that would be a form of comfort. That that which is the most destructive force in the human experience, death, is resolved. That heartache, the things that we do to hurt each other, the the things that happen to us in the natural course of life in a fallen world, that there is comfort for that as well. In other case, what we see are two states of being that aren't very desirable by world kingdom standards, that are regarded as desirable as an opportunity for intimacy and rightness with the king are held out as being idealized. Blessed are the meek. Are you kidding me? Like meek people get posterized in NBA basketball games. They stand there and cover their crotch with both hands and then squint and curl up while Vince Carter dunks in their face. That's what happens to meek people. Meek people snivel and whine like Marty McFly's dad before he became awesome, and they grovel for things with their hat in their hand that they never get. Power players wear striped ties. Coffee is for closers. That's what's awesome. No one aspires to meekness. Now, the word meek is one that people break down in some different ways. One way that you'll hear it often treated is having power, but allowing it to be restrained or voluntarily restraining it. I won't go into the whole word study on this, but there's a case that smart people can make that meekness isn't weakness, it's restraint. However, you want to slice it, certainly in the context of what Jesus is saying, it's not a desirable attribute by world standards. It's one that effectively manifests as what would look to the world as weakness, whether it is weakness or not, aside, but that what comes from this position of no power and no control, you don't pull the strings of government, you don't wield the force of money, you're not wielding the sword or the gun, you're not the one making everyone do the things. You're one of the ones by world standards to whom things happen. But then it says, if you're like that, blessed are the meek, for they'll inherit the earth. That's not who gets the earth. The earth goes to people who are willing to engage in mass death. 200 plus people murdered by their own governments in the last hundred years. Remember we were talking about that democide statistic that the University of Hawaii published? Fortune favors the bold. You gotta bust a few eggs if you want to make an omelet. I mean, these are the things that we consider to be, frankly, kind of truisms. But to the meek, you don't trample anyone, you don't run over anybody. Meekness is probably even less a desirable value in today's culture than it was at the time that Jesus said this and it was written. No one's meek on Twitter. You blow each other up. I really like our subreddit here. You guys are awesome. But even on even on my YouTube channel, which I think has one of the best comment sections. No, it has the best comment section I've ever seen in all of YouTube. And still, there's a lot of people there who aren't very meek. And unfortunately, they don't last long because they realize nobody wants to play that game with them and they go away. You wouldn't believe the things I see. We are not meek. Being electronically mediated with each other gives us even more boldness for being brash and aggressive and loud. We tend to like to vote for brash and aggressive and loud and mean and uncivilized. And not only do we just sort of ignore all of the kingdom values when it comes to things like that, we actually celebrate as Christians rejecting kingdom values as long as politics are involved. It's okay, right? We had to get power, otherwise, bad, wrong people would get it. Yeah, but if you become bad and wrong in the process, that makes a mess. And I know some of you are like, what? Oh, no! He's saying things about Trump. No, no, I'm not. I could have said that eight years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 50 years from now. Christians have always wrestled with the temptation to take up the sword, like Peter did in the garden, to be anything but meek and to justify it in the name of the kingdom really needing our help and us needing to act in ways that aren't in keeping with the kingdom values to help out the king and the kingdom to make sure it actually works out. Look, it's a bit of a paradox, but if you actually think there's a king and you actually think there's a kingdom, and you actually believe that he said that in this kingdom, meek is valuable, not power and strength and running roughshod over people, well, then hey, welcome to the club with the other 2,000 years of Christians. We have a challenge, a difficult thing that we have to wrestle through. The king says that how we often do things isn't really necessarily in keeping with the values of his kingdom. And I think one of the biggest indictments of my Christian thought historically and of our Christian thought historically has been our inability to really deeply internalize what Jesus means here. That sounds like I'm calling everybody out and like I'm fine and everybody else is wrong, then I I said it's stupid because that's not how I feel. Um, this is a tough one for me too. It's a tough one for everyone because we like power, and Jesus is suggesting that we lay down ours and instead acknowledge him as king, and that's really scary. But stepping all the way out to the big picture here, once again, I don't think we're necessarily seeing a command to be poor in spirit, to mourn, and to be meek. I think rather what we're seeing is this being held out as ideal, valuable things in the kingdom of God, and they are an intentional contrast with the ways that we're going to be tempted to prioritize and think in the rival world kingdom that this kingdom of Jesus is supposed to eventually overshadow in our lives, and even one day, cosmically, ultimately, these world kingdoms will be overshadowed by the kingdom of God, not through the force of the sword or of politics or social manipulation, but simply by the force of the reality of who God is and the superiority of Him and His kingdom. That was a lot, and I think this is a really good place to end our first week on the Sermon on the Mount. We've got more of these Beatitude statements coming up, and guess what? They're all pretty difficult. So we'll just wrestle through them together. And if they make you feel weird and uncomfortable, they do that to me too. If they make you feel like I don't know quite what to do with that, I'm not sure I'm getting this right. Yeah, uh, join the club. Thanks for being who you are. Thanks for being honest about your process of faith, and thank you for letting me be honest about mine and for being so gracious when I don't know what the heck I'm talking about. Let's continue to wrestle through this thing together moving forward next week. I'm Matt, this is a 10 minute Bible hour podcast. We'll catch you soon.