THE BOOK OF MATTHEW
Lesson 12, Chapter 5
The Sermon on the Mount will be our topic for the next few weeks as it takes up
Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. I think I can say without much objection that the
Sermon on the Mount represents the most consequential and panoramic
expression of what it means to be a Believer and a follower of Christ, since the
instructions are recorded as having come directly from Our Redeemer's mouth.
Clearly Matthew must have seen it in that light because he devoted so much time
to it in his Gospel. I stated in an earlier lesson that considering the momentous
nature of Yeshua's speech, it is curious that Matthew is the only Gospel of the 4
that contains the Sermon on the Mount. Admittedly Luke chapter 6 contains
something similar, and a predominant number of Bible scholars say that those
verses in Luke are but another version of that same sermon. I, however, stand
with another group of scholars and commentators who believe it is not. The
sermon that begins at Luke 6:17 and goes to the end of that chapter is regularly
called The Sermon on the Plain because it claims a different location than the
Sermon on the Mount. If you'll turn your Bibles to Luke chapter 6, we'll briefly
glance at it only so you can see the differences.
In the CJB, the introductory words to The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 are:
"Seeing the crowds, Yeshua walked up the hill." But in Luke 6 we read: "Then he
came down with them (meaning His 12 disciples) and stood on a level place".
The more familiar KJV is: "And he came down with them, and stood in the
plain". What follows in Luke is something that is close to the words of the
Beatitudes, but they are different and fewer. Afterwards are a few sayings and
then something Luke calls a parable. After that are a few other sayings, some of
which bear resemblance to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. The Bible
commentators who are convinced that the sermons in Luke 6 and Matthew 5 are
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actually one in the same base their conclusion on the foundational belief that
Luke's Gospel is the more accurate in his account of the event than Matthew,
because (for them) Matthew had an ulterior motive for not only including it in his
Gospel but also for expanding upon it well beyond Luke's, even adding to the
content if not modifying the meaning of some of Yeshua's sermon to suit his own
mindset. My conclusion is that on its face the purpose of the sermon in Luke 6,
the description of the make-up of the people who where there, the geography
where the speech was given, and the timing of it make it another and different
speech even though it had at its core the same underlying message as the
sermon Christ gave up on the hill; the one called The Sermon on the Mount.
However it is NOT the same event or the same speech.
I find it peculiar that many commentators seem to assume that nearly every
speech or teaching of Christ must have been unique and one-off; that is, that
each time He spoke and taught He dealt with different subject matter such that
He never repeated Himself nor said more or less the same things but to different
audiences in different locations. Nothing is more common among teachers,
speakers, and leaders of all eras than to go around communicating a similar
message, although structured a little differently each time, to a number of
different crowds. Even in our time of television, radio and the Internet, politicians
(for instance) will use the same core message in a number of different settings,
slightly modified each time to suit a particular audience. Clearly there will
probably never be a way to provide indisputable proof one way or the other on
this debate as to whether both Matthew and Luke are reporting on the same
speech, or that they are each reporting on different speeches given at different
places that are similar in message.
Does it really matter, then, whether Luke's and Matthew's reports are both on
Christ's seminal speech? It does. There is significance in the issue of the setting
and the geography where Christ gave the Sermon on the Mount; something that
would indeed have mattered more to Matthew, the learned Believing Jew, than to
Luke, the learned Believing gentile. It involves the reporting of Matthew (which
appears in the fabric of the backdrop for his entire Gospel account) that Yeshua
of Nazareth was a kind of second Moses. I won't review what I explained to you
about that in an earlier lesson. Only notice that in the case of the Sermon on the
Mount just as Moses went up to the top of a mountain (Sinai) to obtain God's
Torah and then came down to the side of the mountain to instruct Israel in it, so
in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus went up a mountain (a hill) to address Israel
and instruct them in the deeper understanding of The Law and The Torah in
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general. Why do so many Christian scholars, commentators, Bible teachers and
pastors not accept this connection between Moses and Christ? It is because they
also do not accept that Christ in His Sermon on the Mount was instructing the
people in the Torah but rather they see Him as erasing and abolishing the Torah
of Moses and replacing it with His own new and different commands; a Torah of
Jesus. A replacement Torah that consisted of His own teachings and commands
that overrode and replaced the ones His Heavenly Father gave to Moses 14
centuries earlier. The significance of this theological worldview (a mistaken and
wholly unbiblical worldview) towers over the Christianity that was established
beginning with Constantine in the 4th century A.D. and remains in practice
today.
Let's open our Bibles to the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.
READ MATTHEW 5 all
It is important that we establish the basis that underlies all that I will be teaching
you; a faith pillar of Torah Class and Seed of Abraham Fellowship and all that we
stand for. It is that Yeshua did NOT abolish the Torah and the Prophets, and also
He warned against the consequences of disobedience to the laws and
commands contained within them, in the slightest. In a Christianity that nearly
universally says the opposite in all its institutions, it strikes me as odd that some
of the most revered and published Bible commentators would say things like the
following, as with Daniel J. Harrington in his commentary on Matthew: "The
basic theme of the sermon is that Jesus came NOT to abolish the Law and
the Prophets but to fulfill them". And from Professors W. D. Davies and Dale
C. Allison in their enormous 3 volume commentary on the Book of Matthew,
which is so highly regarded among academics that it is one of the chief reference
sources for their own commentaries on Matthew's Gospel, they say this:
"(Matthew) 5:17 - 20 is primarily prokatalepsis, that is, an anticipation of
objections. As the introduction or preamble to 5:21 - 48....... it is intended to
prevent the readers of the First Gospel from making two errors. First, it
plainly states that the subsequent paragraphs are not to be interpreted as
they have been so often by many as antitheses; antitheses that, in at least
two or three instances, set aside the Torah. Instead Jesus upholds the Law,
so that between Him and Moses there can be no real conflict. Then,
secondly, and despite the concord declared by 5:17 - 19, 5:20 tells us that
what Jesus requires of HIS followers surpasses what has traditionally been
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regarded (by the Scribes and Pharisees) as the requirements of the Torah.
So although there is continuity with the past, the Messiah also brings
something new, and it does not surprise when 5:21 - 48 goes beyond the
letter of the Law to demand even more."
So in both quotes, these renowned mainstream Bible commentators are explicit
in saying that whatever one might take from the Sermon on the Mount, it can
never be that Christ was declaring that He came to abolish and/or replace the
Law of Moses. That said, Davies and Allison go further and say that in His
interpretation of the Torah, Yeshua takes the requirements of obeying it to
another and higher level. Let me put it this way (because I've said it to you
before): Christ's requirements take God's laws and make them even more
challenging, requiring even more discipline and more devotion, for us His
Believer to obey; not less. That is, the common refrain of the Church is that the
Law given to Moses was an outdated burden, a too heavy yoke, and much too
hard and unreasonable to follow. Therefore Christ came to abolish it all and with
His new commandments make life and a peaceful relationship with God much
easier for His followers. A plain and honest reading of the Sermon on the Mount
takes that false notion and destroys it.
Let's begin in verse 1 by again noting that Matthew says that Christ went UP a
hill in order to make a speech to throngs of Israelites, which consisted mostly of
Jews. No doubt some remnants of other tribes of Israel than the Jews who
represent Judah and Benjamin, and some who had engaged in intermarriage
with gentiles, also were present. This we can discern from the locations listed at
the end of chapter 4 that tell us where these crowds came from. To extract the
best context for this epic sermon and who was there to hear it, we need to simply
keep reading from the final couple of verses of chapter 4 into the first verse of
chapter 5. Remember: when these Scriptures were first created they were NOT
divided into chapters and verses; that wouldn't happen for another 1000 years.
CJB
Matthew 4:23-5:2
23
Yeshua went all over the Galil teaching in their
synagogues, proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing
people from every kind of disease and sickness.
24
Word of him spread
throughout all Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill, suffering
from various diseases and pains, and those held in the power of demons,
and epileptics and paralytics; and he healed them.
25
Huge crowds followed
him from the Galil, the Ten Towns, Yerushalayim, Y'hudah, and 'Ever-
HaYarden.
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CJB
Matthew 5:1 Seeing the crowds, Yeshua walked up the hill. After he sat
down, his talmidim came to him,
2
and he began to speak. This is what he
taught them:
We learn that the primary reason this enormous group of people came from
many scores of miles away (and more) was for healing of all kinds of maladies.
They came because of Yeshua's growing reputation as a Tzadik, a Holy Man. A
miracle worker who, under the power of God, could heal. Some Holy Men were
also known for their wisdom, and they taught in addition to healing. So it wasn't
out of character for Yeshua the Tzadik to draw huge crowds for the purpose of
miracle healing, but also to speak profound truths to them. As of this point in time
the Jews didn't yet suspect that Jesus was the Messiah, and Jesus had not yet
publicly proclaimed that He was.
Verse 3 begins what has for centuries been called the Beatitudes. We got this
strange English word from the Latin version of the Bible, where the
word beatus is used to translate the Greek word makarios. Just as we learned
that Matthew had a specific mathematical structure in mind in the way he
presented Yeshua's genealogy to begin his Gospel, so now we find another
obvious mathematical structure in the Beatitudes. It is that each of the 8
Beatitudes contain 36 words (in the Greek). If this mathematical structure is
intended to symbolize something, it remains a mystery to me what it might be. It
is further complicated by the probability that the Greek version of Matthew was
taken from the Hebrew and so the word count in Hebrew could have been
different than in the Greek. Some of the Early Church Fathers such as Augustine
and Ambrose of Milan believed that it was the number of the Beatitudes (8) that
was of interest, and that it was symbolic of the ascent of the soul into Heaven.
That seems like a stretch to me, and few other early Church Fathers besides
those I named accepted such a solution. I don't wish to speculate about it except
to notice that this interesting structure of 8 Beatitudes of 36 Greek words each
does exist, and perhaps they were constructed in this way for the purpose of
easier memorization.
The first Beatitude is vs. 3. It is "Blessed are the poor in spirit". This Beatitude
has had a number of opinions written about its meaning because it is not at all
clear. What, exactly, characterizes a person who is "poor in spirit"? Since it says
that such as person is "blessed", then obviously it means that a person who is
"poor in spirit" is benefiting from it (at least in the spiritual sense) and Christ
approves of it. To try and decipher this let's first understand what "blessed"
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means. Assuming that Matthew originally wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, then likely
what we have is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word berakhah. The Greek
word used to translate berakhah is makarios. It means to be favored, fortunate,
or happy. That is essentially the same meaning as the Hebrew berakhah so it is
a solid translation. Second is the issue of what it means to be "poor in spirit". I've
heard a number of sermons over my lifetime on this exact matter and I'm not sure
any two agree on the meaning. Because it is supposed to be a positive and
desirable trait, then what about being "poor in spirit" makes a person happy or
fortunate? Dr. David Flusser believes that especially the first 3 Beatitudes are
more of a description of just who constitutes the enormous audience that
followed Jesus up that hill in the Galilee.
Dr. Flusser (now deceased) is a legend among Hebrew scholars and he is to be
listened to as he doesn't make brash statements. Rather he puts forward well
researched conclusions and opinions. Here is his conclusion about the meaning
and intent of the term "poor in spirit" as explained in his widely-read book titled
"Jesus". Dr. Flusser says this:
"Now for the first time, because of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we can understand
the phrase 'the poor in spirit'. It was a title of honor among the Essenes.
These are the poor to whom the Holy Spirit is given".
In another but separate quote Flusser further explains that among the Essenes
this term referred to a person who was living in a spirit of "poverty, humility,
purity and simplicity". Just as today a good orator will acknowledge those who
make up his audience, so it was in Yeshua's day. Assuming that what Flusser
says concerning the clarification about this strange phrase that the Dead Sea
Scrolls provide for us is correct, we can gather rather confidently that it was the
Essenes (and perhaps those who lived on the fringes of the Essene purity
movement) that Yeshua was acknowledging. Since we're told that many of His
audience came from Judah, in the south, where the Essenes had their desert
enclave next to the Dead Sea, and from Syria in the north, where it is known that
a substantial Essene community lived in the city of Damascus, then it makes
sense that many members of the pious and scripturally knowledgeable Essene
community might attend Yeshua's sermon.
But now what is the intent of including the statement that for certain members of
the Essenes "the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs"? We have spoken in earlier
lessons that the Kingdom of Heaven is NOT a place, but rather it is a spiritual
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condition. When one repents of sinning and trusts in Messiah Yeshua, then they
receive the Holy Spirit. As a result the Kingdom of Heaven now lives within them.
Notice the grammar; it is not some time in the future that the Kingdom of Heaven
will be theirs, but rather it is that when they receive the Holy Spirit the Kingdom
became theirs.
The next Beatitude is vs. 4 and says: "Blessed are those who mourn for they
shall be comforted". Because the premise is that those who mourn will
experience some kind of religious joy (be blessed), then one must ask what this
mourning has to do with? Does it mean those who mourn the dead, such as a
dear departed family member? And since Yeshua is referring in a rather general
way to certain of His large audience, could death really be the subject of the
mourners? I think not. I see this as a reference to the Prophet Isaiah chapter 61.
CJB
Isaiah 61:1 The Spirit of Adonai ELOHIM is upon me, because ADONAI
has anointed me to announce good news to the poor. He has sent me to
heal the brokenhearted; to proclaim freedom to the captives, to let out into
light those bound in the dark; 2 to proclaim the year of the favor of ADONAI
and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, 3 yes,
provide for those in Tziyon who mourn, giving them garlands instead of
ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, a cloak of praise instead of
a heavy spirit, so that they will be called oaks of righteousness planted by
ADONAI, in which he takes pride. 4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins,
restore sites long destroyed; they will renew the ruined cities, destroyed
many generations ago.
This is a Messianic prophecy in Isaiah. Thus this general condition of mourning
that Yeshua is speaking about doesn't so much concern grieving over the dead.
Rather it is mourning over the destroyed cities of Israel that is the result of Israel's
unfaithfulness..... Israel's sinning. It is also mourning over the oppression the
children of Israel are suffering at the hands of foreign conquerors, which is God's
judgment against them for their unfaithfulness. But also in Isaiah 61 something
changes and now the Lord will call His formerly unfaithful, but now repentant,
people "oaks of righteousness" as opposed to captives and brokenhearted. The
mourners will become comforted because they will see that Israel is in the
process of being delivered and restored. Thus the mention of the mourners is
that they "will be" or "shall be" comforted. That is, it is to occur later, in the future,
when this comforting will come to its fullest fruition. This is in contrast to the 1st
Beatitude in which the blessing will be bestowed more or less immediately, in the
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present. So those among the crowd that Yeshua is addressing in this 2nd
Beatitude are called "mourners" because they are sorry that their sin, and the
sins of their ancestors, has led to their land being under the control of heathens
and their suffering under the hand of Roman subjugation.
The 3rd Beatitude is in vs. 5, and it is: "How blessed are the meek for they will
inherit the land". You might immediately notice that I have substituted the word
"land" for "earth", which we find in most Bible versions (the meek will inherit the
earth). Before we delve into that issue, let's define who or what "the meek" are.
The backdrop of this Beatitude is Psalm 37. Let's read a substantial portion of it.
READ PSALM 37:1 - 13
This is a Messianic Psalm of David that speaks of a future time when the "meek"
inherit the Land (the Land referring to Israel). Meek is another word in the Bible
whose definition is not necessarily always agreed and seems to be used
differently in different settings. Often it carries the obvious meaning of gentleness
and mildness. But here in Psalm 37:11 the word is probably better understood as
"the powerless" because the righteous are being oppressed by the wicked. Since
it seems very likely that Yeshua is making reference to Psalm 37 in this
Beatitude, then His use of the term "the meek" means the same: the powerless.
Further in Psalm 37 the Hebrew word for what it is that the meek shall inherit
is eretz. Eretz can mean land or earth. However we must not think of earth as
meaning the formal name of our planet: planet Earth. Rather, biblically, earth is
another way of saying the undefined expanse of dry land that lies under the sky.
David's audience for His Psalm was Israelites. Jesus's audience for His Sermon
was Israelites. Therefore "the meek" in both cases are Israelites or at least a
portion of the Israelites. Biblically the inheritance of the Israelites is the land of
Israel (formerly the Land of Canaan). Therefore the meaning of "the meek shall
inherit the land:" is that the powerless Israelites shall, at some point, permanently
inherit the land of Israel such that they will no longer be occupied and oppressed
by a foreign power, which represents wickedness.
I want to pause here to put something forth as a suggestion..... perhaps a
theory..... but I cannot in good conscience say it is a fact. When I look at these
Beatitudes thus far, and when I think about the Jewish Yeshua speaking to a
Jewish crowd, and the Jewish Matthew using the Jewish manner in which he has
structured his Gospel written to be read by Jewish Believers, I see the real
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possibility that each of these Beatitudes is meant to be interpreted in both
the P'shat and the Remez senses. That is, in the simple, plain sense (P'shat) as
well as in a somewhat literal sense that also incorporates an important hint
(Remez).
Thus in the 1st Beatitude, when Yeshua speaks of "the poor, in spirit", the
reference in the P'shat interpretation sense is to the people in the crowd who
hold this honorary title among the sect of the Essenes; people who were
standing and sitting directly before Him during His sermon. Yet, when we look a
bit deeper (from the Remez interpretation sense) we understand that the way
one became "poor, in spirit" among the Essenes was (by their definition)
receiving the Holy Spirit. Therefore in a larger sense all who truly receive the
Holy Spirit (through repentance and trust in Christ), Israelites and gentiles
(Believers), can be considered as included among "the poor, in spirit" and thus
be made happy and joyful (blessed) now and eternally.
In the 2nd Beatitude, those who mourn will be comforted. From the P'shat sense,
the mourners are mourning over the ruination of the Holy Land of Israel and the
subsequent oppressions of Assyria, Babylon, and Greece in the past; and
presently Rome. Thus the comforting is that even in this they can have personal
peace, because there is hope that God will remove the pagan occupiers. But
from the Remez sense, the mourners are those worshippers of God who are
mourning over the ruination of the entire earth because due to mankind's
unfaithfulness, wickedness rules universally. The mourners are the righteous (all
who have repented and put their trust in Messiah), Jews and gentiles, and all of
these (us) can look forward to being comforted when the Lord comes in power
and glory to destroy evil and rule in justice and mercy over all the earth, and to
restore it.
In the 3rd Beatitude, the meek will inherit the earth. In the P'shat sense, those
Israelites in the audience who are powerless before the occupation of Rome are
being told that nonetheless they will receive the inheritance God promised to
them (the Land of Canaan) before their ancestors left Egypt. In the Remez sense
the powerless followers of Messiah, Jew and gentile, will together receive the
even larger inheritance promised by God to be co-rulers along with Christ over all
the earth's inhabitants. This co-rulership is the fullest fulfillment of the promise of
the 1st Beatitude that the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
The 4th Beatitude is verse 6. It is: "How blessed are those who hunger and thirst
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for righteousness. For they will be filled." The idea of hunger and thirsting after
righteous is not about food and drink but rather it is a spiritual longing. But this
longing is not one of passivity; it speaks of an active search and work to find it.
The question to be answered about this Beatitude is: whose righteousness is
being sought? What kind of righteousness is being thirsted for? Is it a human
righteousness? That is, it is something that is accomplished by means of our
good works and deeds?
The answer is that it is God's righteous that Yeshua is referring to. He is
borrowing from a Psalm of David; Psalm 107. We won't go over it all, so here is
the pertinent part.
CJB
Psalm 107:2-9
2
Let those redeemed by ADONAI say it, those he
redeemed from the power of the foe.
3
He gathered them from the lands,
from the east and from the west, from the north and from the sea.
4
They
wandered in the desert, on paths through the wastes, without finding any
inhabited city.
5
They were hungry and thirsty, their life was ebbing
away.
6
In their trouble they cried to ADONAI, and he rescued them from
their distress.
7
He led them by a direct path to a city where they could
live.
8
Let them give thanks to ADONAI for his grace, for his wonders
bestowed on humanity!
9
For he has satisfied the hungry, filled the starving
with good.
Notice that it is God's redeemed that is being addressed. From
the P'shat interpretation sense the redeemed represent all Israelites (because
1400 years earlier all the tribes of Israel were redeemed from Egypt). The
wandering in the desert recalls the wilderness journey of the Exodus. God
rescued them and when they were finally properly prepared, He took them to a
city where they could live...... meaning Jerusalem. God also satisfied the hungry
Israelites by giving them manna to eat... divinely provided sustenance..... the
entire time they were wandering, without a home of their own. He provided them
with water as needed, often in undeniably miraculous ways. In
the Remez interpretation sense the redeemed are all people, Jew and gentile,
who have been redeemed from their sins by placing their trust in the God of
Israel and His Son Yeshua. Before we did that, we were wandering aimlessly in a
desert of sin and purposelessness. We were hungry and thirsty for deliverance
from our emptiness and from eternal death. But since the molten core of God's
righteousness is His will to deliver and save, even though at the time we weren't
aware of it, by His grace He has bestowed His righteousness upon us and thus
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has satiated the thirst and satisfied the hunger of our souls, and given us life
eternal with Him.
The metaphor of hunger and thirst as representing a deep down seeking of God,
even when we didn't know that's what we sought, is found in several places in
God's Word. Among the most moving and instructive must be in Isaiah 32. There
the matter of God's righteousness (as opposed to human righteousness)
becomes a little more clear. Let's read it together to close out today's lesson.
READ ISAIAH 32 all
We'll begin with the 5th Beatitude next week.
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