Recently I have found myself going through the book of Matthew. I was preparing to do a teaching on what it means to be a Christian and how we should be living our lives as Christians. Most probably not the easiest topic to cover. I found myself being drawn to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five to chapter seven. It is a long sermon given by Jesus with much depth and much that can be drawn out from the text. I read through the sermon by Jesus a couple of times and each time I found myself getting stuck on the beginning of the sermon, the nine blessings of Jesus. This is a very interesting portion of scripture and it is something that I have heard quoted in church throughout my life. As I read through this section I realised one fatal flaw, I did not actually know what any of it meant, I had made assumptions about what I thought it could mean throughout my life but I had never actually taken the time to research and study to see if my assumptions were anywhere close to the truth. Once I started studying what these nine phrases actually meant I found myself being deeply impacted in many ways, I found that I was being challenged in my view of coming to faith in Christ and also my view on how I see the world and those around me. These nine phrases or nine blessings as I like to call them are purposefully placed at the beginning of Jesus’ message, I don’t believe that Jesus just thought that it would be nice to say these things but rather I believe he had a deep and profound message he wanted to share. I want to try and explain what I have come to learn about these blessings and speak about how it has impacted me, the blessings are found in Matthew Chapter 5 Verses 1-12. Before we get into the text I would like to set a bit of a foundation.

One thing that I have learnt in my time studying the Bible is that we can not take one part of the Bible by itself, what Jesus is saying in chapter 5 must be taken into connection with all the chapters that came before it. One thing that this process really helps us with is that it shows us who Jesus was speaking to. In the chapter just before we see a glimpse of the types of people Jesus was talking to. Now I had always believed that Jesus gave the sermon on the mount to his twelve disciples as verse one of chapter five says “when he sat down his disciples came to him”, this has always led me to believe that it was the twelve, while this may be partially right it is also false as not all the twelve were there yet and Jesus seems to not have chosen his twelve yet as this appears to be the beginning of Matthew. Now the answer I got from Matthew four was exactly who Jesus was talking to. The first group is found in Matthew 4:18-22, now these four men whom Jesus calls are part of the twelve disciples but there is something more significant about them that Matthew, the author of the book, is trying to show. The thing that all four of these men had in common was that they were fishermen. Now one thing to note about fishermen is that while they were very hard working they were not the most educated sort of people, they may have had some education yet they would not be the type of people who in the modern day would have gone to college, they were a rough people and sometimes very stubborn. This is the first set of people whom Jesus has called to follow him. The next couple groups of people are found in Matthew 4:23-25, now here it can be seen that a few more people are starting to follow Jesus. The groups that we find here are the sick and diseased, the demon oppressed or possessed, those with seizures, the paralytics and many other people from all over. There is one thing which many of these people would have in common in the time period of Jesus and maybe even in many countries today, they were not your most prominent citizens, they were not the ones with power, and they did not make any big decisions for the nation and they most certainly were not viewed as being blessed.

During the time of Jesus there were many teachings about those that are seen as being blessed in life and one such teaching which was very popular was from a man named Jesus Ben Sira who lived a while before Jesus Christ came. Now Ben Sira also declared nine blessings and they went something like this,

I can think of nine whom I would call blessed,
and a tenth whom my tongue proclaims:
blessed is the man who delights in his children,
and the one who lives to see the downfall of his enemies;
blessed is the one who lives with a sensible wife
and the one who does not plow with ox and ass together;[b]
blessed is the one who does not sin with the tongue
and the one who does not serve an inferior;
blessed is the one who finds a friend
and the one who speaks to an attentive audience. (Wisdom of Ben Sira 25:7-9)

This is taken from a collection of Ben Sira’s own teachings and in this, the one clear things being shown is that those that are blessed in life are those that already have things going well for them. One important thing to note is that the people to whom Jesus is talking may very well have not fallen under any of these categories of being blessed, they were not the type of people that would have been seen as following God and they were definitely not the wealthy sort of people. Now the question becomes why would Jesus say blessings to a group of people that clearly by cultural and economical standards would not be perceived as being blessed by both those times and our own times. The reason I believe is simple, well simple and not simple. Jesus is trying to show the difference in his kingdom, Matthew is specifically highlighting these people that Jesus is talking to in order to show that Jesus’ kingdom is different. It is not about your privileges in life that show you to be blessed but rather it is something else, something entirely different, that even those who are struggling in life can be seen as being blessed in Jesus’ Kingdom. Now the big question is what does it mean to be blessed in Jesus’ Kingdom and that is something I would like to go into in the next blog.