Day 10: Matthew 5:1-11

This seems to be one of the first times that Jesus sits down and begins to teach publicly. And what he has to say is truly paradigm shifting for his audience. He starts off this first sermon with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Just this first phrase would have been a gut punch to the Jewish people that were gathered to hear him speak. The Jews may have been poor financially, poor militarily, poor territorially, but they took pride in the fact that they were rich spiritually. They were the chosen people of YHWH. God had picked their ancestor Abraham out of all the people on earth to make his covenant with to bring salvation to the whole world. The Jewish people had received the Law of God. The Jewish people had built the Temple in Jerusalem to honor the name of God. They were poor in every other measurable way, but they were not poor in spiritual matters. Yet this is how Jesus begins his teaching ministry?

And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Jesus goes on to tell the crowds that they must mourn, they must be humble, merciful, pure, peacemakers, lights in the darkness, more righteous than the pharisees, they must show love to their enemies, give to the needy, pray and fast, seek God above everything else, don’t judge, treat others the way you want to be treated, and on and on. His teaching was revolutionary. It challenged everything that they had been taught since they were children. 

The main focus was that if you wanted to be a follower of Jesus, if you wanted to be a part of the Kingdom of Heaven, you had to be different from the world. The message is still the same. We are called to be different. To be a Christian means that we act differently, we talk differently, we treat other people differently, we spend our money differently, we live life differently. Does your life exemplify that? If someone followed you around for a week, would they notice any difference in your daily life compared to someone who doesn’t claim to be a Christian(other than going to church on Sunday)?