They were crying for a redeemer in every one of those areas, and God had long before promised them a redeemer. But they also, I think, wanted one who would be a deliverer in the spiritual sense and bring them some peace and some soul satisfaction and would alleviate their guilt and their shame and the remorse they had, the lack of peace that seemed to trouble their souls. They feared being excluded from God’s kingdom, and that may well have contributed to their eagerness to hear this man who was preaching about sin and repentance.Ĭertainly there is no doubt that they were anxious and very excited in looking for a redeemer, in looking for a deliverer who would not only be a political deliverer and deliver them from Rome - certainly many of them sought that - not only would be economic deliverer who would deliver them from their poverty - that they also expected of Jesus, especially after He had fed so many thousands of them, creating food for them. He was preaching repentance, and people who were feeling guilty over their inability to keep the law system that had been imposed on them were afraid and fearful that because of their inability to keep the law, they were therefore liable to be shut out of the kingdom of God. And in part, it may well have been due to the fact that he was preaching about sin. He didn’t have a press agent, he didn’t have a press release process, he didn’t do radio or television advertising, and yet the whole nation went out to hear John the Baptist. Perhaps the reason that John the Baptist had such a wide and phenomenal response to his ministry - you remember that all of Israel was going out to the Jordan River to hear him. That left them feeling oppressed, it left them feeling frustrated, and it left them feeling guilty. Consequently, the people were unable to live up to the existing religious requirements of their time. They had, in addition to the law of Moses, added myriad other laws and rules and ordinances that really composed and then imposed a relentless, rigid system of duties on the people which really were impossible to perform. They were ones who had misinterpreted the law of Moses as something that was in itself a legal code which could attain salvation. The Pharisees were the dominating religionists of the time. From the spiritual side, the people of Israel were burdened by the oppressive authority of the Pharisees. We want to focus here on the spiritual element because that’s what the Beatitude addresses. Spiritually, however, Israel was also in great trouble. Economically, Israel was struggling because the Romans exacted exorbitant - actually criminal taxes from the people so that the people were having to give up much of what they worked hard to earn in unfair taxation. Politically, Israel had lost its freedom and was under the bondage of the Roman Empire. First of all, at the time of Jesus Christ’s coming into the world, Israel was in a desperate condition. Let me give you a little bit of the background, a little of the context for these very important words. That is precisely the case in these words which our Lord spoke that day on the mountain in Israel. The first question that always comes to mind of the Bible student is this: What is the context for these words? Words like this are not created out of a vacuum, they are not dropped obtusely from any existing circumstances onto the scene, but rather they emerge out of a setting, historically and religiously and spiritually. And I find in this kind of context, where you’re dealing with a very simple and straightforward statement, the best way to get at it is to ask and answer some questions. Whenever I study the Bible, I always go through a series of questions. Whenever you have a very simple statement like this, it really is unnecessary to develop a complicated outline. I would commend to you a further study of this great statement.Īs we have done all the way through the study of the Beatitudes, we’re asking and answering key questions which allow us to get at the heart of what our Lord is saying. We’re only going to try tonight to discover its central meaning, a long way from exhausting the riches that are here. And, of course, we could never exhaust this one verse, it stretches into so many themes and so many realities. With this statement of our Lord, we face one of the greatest utterances in the whole of Scripture. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Tonight we return to our study of the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5, and I want to draw your attention to chapter 5, Matthew’s gospel, and verse 8.
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