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Matthew 5:1-12
00:30:05
This week Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Michael Barber continue their study of the Gospel of Matthew by diving into 5:1-12.
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to FORM Live. I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute. And joining me today is Dr. Michael Barber. And we're going to be doing our Bible study, continuing our Bible study on the Gospel of Matthew. We're so happy you could join us. Please feel free to grab a Bible and join us. We're using the Augustan Bible, which is the English Standard Version, Catholic edition, which is a beautiful translation, a recent translation that's very close to the Hebrew and Greek. That's why we like using it for study purposes. And we're going to start off now with Matthew, Chapter five, which is the Sermon on the Mount. And we've been going through Matthew's Gospel, and now we're in chapter five. And chapter five is a special chapter because it begins a new section of Matthew's gospel. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew's gospel is the Sermon on the Mount, which, as you could say, is the Magna Carta of Christian doctrine. I mean, this is really a key speech of our Lord Jesus Christ that really displays for us his key teaching for us to be disciples. How do we live as disciples? You know, St. Augustine loved the Sermon on the Mount. He did a whole little treatise on the Sermon on the Mount, a very extended teaching on it. And he said that if we lost all of the New Testament but had the Sermon on the Mount, it would be enough for us to know how to be disciples of Jesus Christ. What a beautiful idea. And that's the beauty of this speech. And whether from saints like St. Augustine to recent people like Diedrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote his famous book, the Cost of Discipleship, which was just on the Sermon on the Mount. It was a class he taught just on the Sermon on the Mount. There's so much, and I know, Michael, you're going to feel the same way I do when it comes to the Sermon on the Mount. We could teach a whole class on the Sermon on the Mount. I mean, it is so rich. And I think this is going to take us at least a couple of. Of episodes, probably, to walk through the Sermon on the Mount.
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B
I would say so. In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the heart of the Scriptures is the Gospels, because in the Gospels we find Jesus teaching, but at the heart of Jesus teaching in the Gospels is the Sermon on the Mount. So here we have the center of the heart of Jesus teaching, and here we see an important chapter shift in the structure of Matthew's Gospel. We've been talking about how Matthew can be divided up into five major Blocks of material with a prologue and an epilogue, right? The first two chapters of the infancy narrative. And then at the end you have the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. In between, you have five major sections of narrative and discourse. Narrative Jesus doing things, and then discourse Jesus giving an extended teaching. And this seems to be deliberate. And what we've already seen is that in Matthew 3 and 4, Jesus is showing us how to be the Son of God. Remember what Satan says to Jesus. If you are the Son of God, then do X, Y or Z. But what Jesus is going to do is give us an example and overcoming temptation in the wilderness, right? He's baptized, then he experiences temptation just like us. We experience temptation after baptism, right? And then after we read about the temptation narrative, Jesus sets out in the Sermon on the Mount to now put into words his message. Not just give us an example. And this corresponds to what the Second Vatican Council taught, and that is that God's plan of revelation consists of deeds and words that form an inner unity. And that's beautifully on display here. So one of the great things about the Sermon on the Mount is to read it within the context of Matthew's Gospel. And we're going to see how various themes that we've already encountered or picked up and then to see how Jesus is elaborating on some. Some of the lessons we've already seen in Matthew 3 and 4.
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A
I love how you talk about, Michael, the idea of deeds and words. And of course, one of the deeds that we. That precedes this great Sermon on the Mount is Jesus fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. And of course, we're reminded that Moses fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. And so now Jesus goes up on a mountain in chapter five. And if you know the story of Israel, and we already talked a lot about how the temptations of Jesus were related to the testing of Israel in the wilderness. So now you see Jesus as a new Moses, right? Because he's going to give a new law, a new teaching on a mountain. And that's going to be so important. I think it's going to be so powerful for people to see that. And of course, we've got several allusions to idea of a new Moses here, Michael, that you mentioned the five discourses. And of course, the number five is very symbolic for the Jews because that signifies the Torah, right? The five books of the Torah, which is the five books of Moses, which is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. And that was also known in the Greek as the Pentateuch, which means five. Right. And so the idea that Jesus gives five speeches of teaching in the Gospel of Matthew, I think Matthew's saying Jesus is the new Moses and his teaching is the new Torah.
- [05:04]
B
100%. 100%. So here we have, at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, we have the Beatitudes really sets the table for all of Jesus's teaching in the Gospel of Matthew. And of course, there's a reason that the church decided to put Matthew first in the New Testament. So we really read the entire New Testament through the lens of the Gospel of Matthew. So let's turn now and look at these Beatitudes. Right. They start with blessed in English. That's the way it's normally translated with. We want to be careful, though, in the Greek. The word that's used here is makarios, which is a word that is important to understand. It doesn't simply mean someone who's received a blessing. Right. There's actually a different Hebrew background for blessing. The word that's used here is the term that's used especially for a person who is in a state of blessedness. You could translate this. Happy are the poor in spirit. Now, I don't like that translation because I think it detaches it from a covenantal relationship with the Lord, which is important. But the key idea in these kinds of statements, we find them in the.
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A
Scriptures, like The Psalms, Psalm 1 begins, the very first word is, blessed are happy is the man who meditates on the law of the Lord.
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B
Right? So we see these kinds of blessed statements in Scripture. Jesus is going to give us a definitive explication of what it means to be blessed, what it means to be happy. Let's just stop here for a minute and make an important point. We only find happiness in holiness. We only find wholeness in blessing. Right. If we really want to be truly fulfilled, we're not going to find those in the things of this world. We're going to find true happiness in following the law, following the teachings of Jesus.
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A
Well, I like how you say that, Michael, because I think it goes back to the idea that in the Latin word for beatitude, which means happiness, beatitude is the idea of the state of happiness and joy. And so the idea that we call these the Beatitudes means that they are these ways in which we find ultimate happiness. And that's what Jesus wants us to have. And the whole moral life is not simply about. And this is the beautiful thing about how Jesus sets this up. And then how the tradition From Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas refer back to this. And that is the moral life. Doing what's right and avoiding what's wrong is exactly what leads us to happiness and fulfillment. And so it's not just simply about going to heaven or hell and in the afterlife. It's about our happiness in this life. And God wants us to be happy in this life. And that's why the law he gives is not a limitation. It's a roadmap to happiness. It's a roadmap to fulfillment. And Jesus is giving us these Beatitudes. He's saying, here's the roadmap to finding joy and life and happiness in this life.
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B
Right. And in fact, that term beatitude is used for enjoying heaven, right? Right. For entering into our heavenly fulfillment. Right. And so what the Beatitudes are teaching us is how to enter into that life of beatitude even in the here and now. Salvation, as I like to say, is not just the future reality. It's not just fire insurance. It's not just getting out of hell. It's something that we can enter into in this life. So Jesus is going to show us what it means to be truly fulfilled, to be truly happy, to be truly blessed. The blessed life in these sayings. And yet they seem a little counterintuitive at first, right? Normally, you wouldn't imagine, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. That's a sort of strange idea, the poor in spirit. In Luke's Gospel, it simply says, blessed are the poor. What's the idea here? Blessed are the poor, not just in material goods. Right. But here's the deal. In the Old Testament, God is often on the side of the poor. Why? Because the poor have to trust in the Lord. They're detached from worldly goods. They can't trust in their own resources. They can't rely on the rich and powerful. They have to trust wholly in the God of Israel. And so what Jesus wants us to learn is it's not just enough to be poor.
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Right?
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Oh, well, I got nothing. Blessed are you? No. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Inasmuch as we're like those Anawim, right? The poor, the vulnerable, who have to depend totally on the Lord, then that is, if we are to become like them, poor spiritually. Right. Then theirs will be the kingdom of heaven. So the kingdom of heaven is in contrast to what? To being wealthy in spirit. Right. To being attached, to being obsessed, to being someone who relies and puts trusts in earthly riches. So if you really want to find True happiness. If you really want to find true fulfillment, number one, how do you do that? You have to learn to be detached from worldly goods. I think that's the key there for the first beatitude. Yeah.
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A
And I'm thinking of which psalm refers to that. Is it Psalm 34? It talks about the meek. And basically what you use this term, anoim, which in the Old Testament refers to those who are downtrodden, crushed, but yet got favored by God. And this is Israel really. Israel ends up being dispossessed of its own property, you know, subject to the nations and to exile. And yet the faithful remnant who have nothing but God are kind of close to God. And I think Jesus is saying, look, you know, he's coming back as king and he's saying, blessed are those, you know, who are poor in spirit, those who really have the humility and have the sense of there's nothing I can trust in myself to secure my future and my security but God. And that's the first step. And I know Augustine, when he talks about this, talks about that really the poor in spirit means they're not full of pride. The opposite. And Augustine kind of talks about this way to look at this is the prideful, the arrogant, they're full of themselves, right. Whereas the poor in spirit are empty of themselves. And so you know, that idea of poor in spirit, we I think sometimes misconstrue this to think, well, if I'm poor in spirit, isn't having the spirit of God or being spiritual good. But this is not about being poor in the spirit of God or in the gifts of the Spirit. It's being poor in terms of our own spirit being inflated. In other words, there's a meekness here, there's a humility. And that's why Augustine says this is the first beatitude. Because the first step in approaching God is humility. And the worst step, and the biggest misstep in approaching God is is pride and arrogance. That self inflated ego, right.
- [12:24]
B
And it's important to note that of course the Gospel of Matthew is attributed to the tax collector, Matthew, right, Who besetting sin would have been greed, right? And accumulating wealth. And so we're going to see throughout the Gospel of Matthew a major emphasis on the idea of putting your wealth, putting your treasure, recognizing your treasure is in heaven and not clinging to the goods of this world. The rich young man in Matthew 19, for example, is going to have to learn that in order to be perfect, he has to detach himself from earthly goods. And that is a lesson that the evangelist Matthew in his own life embodies right now that leads us to the next Beatitude. Blessed are those who mourn. Now, the Fathers of the Church highlight, like Augustine, they highlight the fact that the Beatitudes are actually interconnected. They're not just random sayings of Jesus. Right? Blessed are the. Let's see. The poor in spirit. Yeah, that's a ticket. These are very well thought out. And so blessed are those who mourn. Well, why would you be mourning? Well, you're mourning because you recognize that you truly have nothing in this world, that you really are completely reliant on the Lord, that you really do have nothing on your own that you can depend on. Depend on. And so, inasmuch as you embrace the first Beatitude, becoming poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn. See, people who in this world are living it up and living high off the land and enjoying all the earthly goods and pleasures they can get there, they can get in their lives. They're not ultimately putting their eyes on the kingdom of heaven, not the kingdom of earth, kingdom of heaven, Right? And so blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
- [14:20]
A
I like how Augustine talks about this because he. He says from his own perspective as a convert and as somebody who really was in the world and loved worldly things, but he couldn't find real happiness in the world. And of course, Augustine's very attuned to the idea of the Beatitudes, the way to find happiness, because he was searching for that in all the wrong ways, in all the wrong places. And Augustine says, you know, blessed are those who mourn, because Augustine had to turn away from things that were sinful that he thought would give him happiness, and he knew they didn't. But in his weakness, you know, there was the woman he was living with, and he was, you know, he struggled with chastity. And so he talks about how blessed are those who mourn. In other words, those who are ready to give up the things of this world that don't bring happiness. There's a certain mourning of letting go. And yet you'll be blessed if you mourn for giving up earthly attachments, because you will be comforted with spiritual attachments. You will be comforted with what is most satisfying in the heart, and that's the pathway. But for Augustine, you can't get to that spiritual satisfaction comfortable until you're able to go through, in a sense, the loss and suffering, these losses of things that we like, but they can't give us happiness. It's a beautiful thing.
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B
That is beautiful.
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Now, Michael, you also know that Jesus uses the word, they will be comforted. And that's a very important term in the Old Testament with the prophets, especially Isaiah 40. Yeah, let's talk about how the prophets look at the idea of Israel's going to suffer and mourn the loss of many things, like even their land going to exile, but yet God promises comfort for them. And Jesus is kind of evoking this for the individual, no question about it.
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B
In fact, if you go back a couple of Chapters, Matthew, Chapter 3, John the Baptist is introduced by proclaiming the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Where does that come from? Guess what? It comes from Isaiah 40, where the prophet is looking to the day when God will restore his people, when he will gather them in once again, when he will bring salvation to them after having experienced the trauma of the exile by which it says, you know, in a certain sense, they pay for their sins. The exile is the result of their sinfulness. But God will one day bring what Isaiah 40, comfort, comfort my people. And so this new Exodus theme that you see in Isaiah 40, very important, prepare the way in the wilderness is tied up inextricably with this idea of comfort. And so Jesus is going to highlight the fact, blessed are those who mourn. Israel has mourned. Why go back to the very beginning of the gospel? What have we seen? Israel's story began with Abraham, then it went to David, and then it ended up in exile. And of course, Matthew says, from the deportation to Babylon, to the Christ, right? And so what he wants us to see is it was 14 generations, he says, from the deportation to Christ is 14 generations. But the deportation, that period of exile, hasn't been completed. Israel is still in exile. They're still suffering on account of their sins. And Jesus is going to be the one to announce that deliverance. Now, one thing we should point out is that of course, while the Beatitudes are exemplified for us in many ways by people like Augustine, no one personifies the Beatitudes for us better than Jesus. So blessed are the poor in spirit. Jesus is going to say in Matthew 8 later on, he'll say that the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head, right? And then we go on. Blessed are those who mourn. Jesus is going to be linked in Matthew to the suffering servant of Isaiah, who's a man of sorrows, the next one. Blessed are the meek. Of course Jesus is going to allude to his meekness as well, meek and humble of heart in Matthew 11. And then later in the triumphal entry, when he comes into the. To the city, he'll come in the same Prowse is the same word that's used here. He enters in as one who's meek and. And humble. So Jesus is ultimate. What is he doing in the Beatitudes? It's not just blessed are you when you're this. But ultimately Jesus is showing us what it means to become like him.
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Yeah, that's such a beautiful thing. And that's the heart of the Beatitudes. It really is.
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Yep.
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Because to become like Jesus Christ is to find our relationship with God the Father and what it means to be a child of God.
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Amen.
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And to live as a child of God.
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Amen.
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So these are so powerful and of course, counterintuitive to what if you just want a political messiah, this is not what you're looking for. You're not looking for the Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land. So let's look at that next.
- [19:29]
B
Yeah, let's talk about meek. Because a lot of people imagine being meek just means humble. In his commentary, Thomas Aquinas explains well, meekness also involves not rushing to anger, not being quickly overcome by. By anger. He associates it with being gentle. Right. And in the world, we often try to assert our power. We want to influence people, we want to throw our weight around. Right. And we think we can get the things that we want that way. That's not the way to find the kingdom of heaven. It's not what Jesus does. Yeah.
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You know, I think of this, you know, oftentimes we think of meekness as weakness.
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Yes.
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And the idea of meekness is. That is exactly what you were saying, Michael. It's the holding back, it's strength that's self contained and controlled. You know, I think of a dear friend of mine growing up. He was the strongest kid in our school and he loved Caddy cornering me and was my best friend and for a long time. And Kevin was. He could take anybody. Right. But Kevin was so meek. I mean, he didn't get angry easy. He did, you know, he held, you knew he was strong, but he was restrained with his strength. And that's what our Lord's going to have. You know, our Lord was strong himself as a carpenter, his muscles. And yet he doesn't resist the soldiers. And he has that incredible strength of self restraint which is really, you know, if you're weak, it's harder to be meek because you don't have, you know, you're not holding much back. Right. There's a certain strength you have to have to be meek.
- [21:09]
B
And so this follows, right? So blessed are those who mourn. You realize that you have nothing, so you become meek because you're not trying to rely on worldly strength, on human strength alone. You're trusting in the Lord, which leads us to the next Beatitude. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, because if you're trusting not in your own strength, but in God's strength, then you long for more of it. Right? Right. And so I think that's the key idea here. And of course, we see already in the previous story in Matthew 4 that Jesus doesn't just hunger for earthly food. He's willing to fast and willing to renounce Satan because he hungers for something more than simply physical food. But every word that comes from the mouth of God.
- [21:58]
A
That's such a beautiful. Yeah, that great line from Deuteronomy 8, 3, that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and to hunger and thirst for this righteousness. It means that what you find in David in the Psalms is that one's heart longs for God's ways, for what is righteous. And so it's not simply that you're, yeah, I'm not going to do bad. It's that you desire, just like you desire that we thirst or that we hunger, but we also have that same kind of compelling desire to see what is right to be done, for justice to be done. We seek that because we love God, and that's what drives us to have that. So that's a beautiful.
- [22:47]
B
And I love that line, they will be satisfied. That's of course, associated with hunger. Right. And Jesus is the one who's going to satisfy us not simply with his teaching, but he's going to give us spiritual food. As we're going to see in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus asks us to pray for our daily bread, which can have a lot of different meanings, including the Eucharistic meanings. The next one is blessed are the merciful. Now, of course, if you're hungering and thirsting for righteousness, then you're, as the Fathers say, you're a beggar before the throne of God. Right. You're the one going to God's door, knocking on his door, please give me more of this righteousness that I can't get on my own. Right. And so what does that lead to, well, if you are asking God to be merciful to you, then it's going to transform you into being a merciful person. So these two Beatitudes actually work really well together. And we see that in Jesus, right? We see the people, the blind men come out. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.
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Yeah, no, you're exactly right. Jesus is going to embody this. And I think one of the things when I think of these two right next to each other, that Jesus is not just simply, of course, the Beatitudes, as you said, model Jesus, but Jesus is the Son of the Father, and so he's the icon of the invisible God, as Paul says in Colossians 1:15. And so what we see here is a great text of a revelation of who God the Father is. You know, Moses going back to the mountain and the revelation of the Torah. But in Exodus 34, verse 6 and 7, we get the seven great attributes of God. And I think the Beatitudes are giving an explication of practical teaching about those attributes in interesting ways. So, for example, in Exodus 34, 6, it says, the Lord, the Lord a God merciful. Right. So the first attribute of God is a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger. And I love Thomas Aquinas definition of meekness that you mentioned, Michael, because slow to anger is meekness. That meekness is the. Is the strength to not get impatient and angry when our will is crossed. Right. That incredible strength, inner strength. And so here we have these Beatitudes of blessed are the meek, blessed are the merciful. These are all attributes of God himself. Jesus will be the greatest embodiment. And of course, he's God incarnate. And here Jesus as the master teacher, is teaching us about the heart of his Father, of our Father, which is really powerful.
- [25:25]
B
And this idea is going to be on clear display later on in Matthew 11, Jesus explains. He says, all things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except. Except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. So if you want to know who the Father is, you have to look to Jesus. And Jesus is giving us these Beatitudes to show us, in a way, what Pope Benedict has said is a sort of veiled interior biography of Jesus.
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Right, I love that.
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Isn't that a great line? Yeah.
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A
Well, in the next Beatitude follows this beautifully, because it says, blessed are the pure and heart, for. For they shall see God. And what's Moses desire on Mount Sinai to see the face of God, right? And that's what he longs for. And here Jesus gives us the roadway again, the roadmap. How do we see the face of God? And that's the greatest desire and it's the greatest source of beatitude that we can have. It's what we call the beatific vision, right? To see God in his incredible beauty and his incredible love is to be caught up in the beatific vision, which is just pure joy, absolute rapture. It's something we can't even understand, we can't even grasp. There's nothing in this world that gives us the experience of that kind of joy. And that's what we have with this great beatitude. Blessed are the pure in heart.
- [26:46]
B
And it's linked to the previous one. If you're merciful, you're not playing an angle, right? You're not trying to manipulate other people, you're not trying to use other people, right? If you are merciful to others, you're willing to forgive others, you'll be pure in heart. And that leads us to blessed are the peacemakers. Because if you're pure in heart, again, you're not working an angle, you're not trying to, you know, settle scores, you're just looking for peace. Well, you gotta be pure in heart to do that, right? You can't be a peacemaker if you're not pure in heart. And so blessed are the peacemakers. Very interestingly, of course, Solomon, who is in the Old Testament shalom, right, where we get the word peace, his ideas related to peace. And he's the prince of peace, he's the son of David, Solomon, he's a type of Christ. Jesus is the prince of peace, right? And they will be called sons of God. Solomon in the Old Testament is identified as God's son. Jesus is God's son par excellence. Blessed are the peacemakers. They shall be called sons of God. It works very well with that imagery. I know we're running out of time. So blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. If you're a peacemaker because you're pure of heart and you want to resolve tensions, other people aren't going to be your friend. They're going to want people who don't have pure intentions are going to persecute you. And so that works very well with this sequence. And then of course, we come to the last one, which is when men revile you. And of course, Jesus is exactly.
- [28:18]
A
He will be persecuted, you know, and it really. Augustine observes this. There's a great order. And we can't stress that enough of these Beatitudes. And the deeper you live the Beatitudes, the more you're going to get resistance. But the more we live in the life of God as sons of God and daughters of God, we shall become peacemakers. And the more we see God in His love and his face in our prayer, the more we're going to seek to share that love with others. And right now we live in troubled times. And right now we need a Christian witness to not be quick to anger, to not be rash in judgment, to not be unforgiving. These are the things. The opposite of the Beatitudes is what causes sin and division and anger and animosity and violence. And of course, sin always percolates up and injustice always percolates up to violence. And the only way to de escalate that is the Beatitudes. And it's trusting in God, it's knowing God. And that's what we need today more than ever. And so we need to reflect on these Beatitudes. We need to pray for peace and we need to become peacemakers. And sometimes that means we're going to be persecuted. Sometimes that means we're going to have to suffer for Christ's sake. But we have the joy of knowing Jesus Christ. Exactly. We can rejoice and be glad that we are in God. And so I want to thank all of you. Pray these Beatitudes because we need them in the world today. Witness them. Don't be afraid to do that. And I want to thank everybody who supports us through the mission circle. I'm deeply grateful for your support to make this ministry happen. And that little bit of giving monthly adds up to a lot. And it allows us to do this ministry. Thank you. And may the Lord bless and keep you.