Eternal Destiny Earthly Distinctiveness
Matthew 5:1-12
1 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
2 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
13 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.
14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
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I love beginnings.
The first steps a child takes, for example. There’s nothing that compares to watching a young child progress from crawling to taking steps unaided. It’s a new beginning. Everything opens from that moment on, literally. You close things you didn’t even know opened until that little idgit found it!
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Our Saviour is starting out in His public ministry. It wouldn’t last long and He seemed to make every moment of it count.
As He starts out, He lays down the groundwork for highlighting the differences between how He does things as compared to the religious elite (Scribes and Pharisees, v. 20) of His day.
It had gotten so bad that Jesus felt the need to expose the ones who, through their false teachings and practices, were dismantling the very core of the Torah itself. And He took it very personally. To destroy, diminish, deplete the Torah is to do it to Christ Himself, the Word Made Flesh.
So Yeshua let everybody know it wasn’t He that was destroying the Torah but rather the religious elite.
And that …
Brings us to the most discussed aspect in Matthew 5 …
In fulfilling the Torah Did Yeshua do away with, abolish, abrogate the Torah? (v. 17)
Well it seems to me He made it very clear. But somehow we’ve managed to convolute the whole thing to such a degree I’m not even sure He’d recognize why He came! But He did know why He came and He told us why He came. He came to “fulfill” the Torah, not to “destroy” it.
Thayer’s Greek Lexicon: Fulfill
“universally and absolutely, to fulfill, i. e. "to cause God's will (as made known in the law) to be obeyed as it should be, and God's promises (given through the prophets) to receive fulfillment": Matthew 5:17”
Thought: If Yeshua came to do away with the Law/Torah then, according this verse, He came to do away with the Prophets as well, right? Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about that aspect? Hmmm??
So let’s trying something different.
Suggestion:
Instead of focusing on the word “fulfill” let’s, rather, focus on the word “destroy.”
I got this off the Blue Letter Bible site ——
Destroy:
To dissolve, disunite
(what has been joined together), to destroy, demolish
metaph. to overthrow i.e. render vain, deprive of success, bring to naught
to subvert, overthrow
of institutions, forms of government, laws, etc., to deprive of force, annul, abrogate, discard
of travellers, to halt on a journey, to put up, lodge (the figurative expression originating in the circumstance that, to put up for the night, the straps and packs of the beasts of burden are unbound and taken off; or, more correctly from the fact that the traveller's garments, tied up when he is on the journey, are unloosed at its end.)
And yet again …
When it comes to determining the roll and function of the Law/Torah after Christ’s substitutionary death on the Cross (in fulfillment of the Law/Torah), Theology maintains Christ DID, in fact, come to destroy it.
This type of thinking, reasoning, concluding frightens me to death. Why?
If Theology can convince Christians to believe the exact opposite of what they are reading with their very own eyes, then …
It begins to makes perfect sense how the world (and believers) could be duped into believing and following Fauci and his cohorts — contrary to everything we KNOW they told us at the beginning of this fabricated fiasco.
I digress …
Back to the main point of this blog.
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As I read Matthew today, two things in this passage stood out to me: Eternal Destiny and Earthly Distinctiveness.
**Eternal Destiny: This is referred to as “the kingdom of heaven” in verses 3 & 10.
Only those in Christ, those washed in the blood of Christ, are qualified and quantified as true citizens in the Heavenly, Eternal Kingdom over which Christ is supreme.
This aspect is especially highlighted to expose the false, hypocritical spiritual leaders of the people. I love that the “Beatitudes” are, in reality and context, an outspoken indictment against the religious system — then and now.
Don’t you wish you had experienced the moment when the people listening to Jesus began to wonder if He was calling out their religious leaders? Throughout the crowd you probably could have heard the murmurings:
“Is Yeshua really saying that our religious leaders are excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven? That they don’t see/know God? Really?” Wow!”
Shock waves swept over the mass of people assembled there that day.
And so …
In this Sermon on The Mount, Jesus is giving very special instructions and guidelines for distinguishing between false faith and genuine saving faith.
Those that have their Eternal Destiny with Jesus in His kingdom manifest a very specific ——
**Earthly Distinctiveness: That’s the essence of Matthew 5-8.
However, two primary things struck me as core to the earthly distinctiveness of all true born-again believers.
*First: Our unseen, internal spirit: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” v. 3
I’d like to share some insight on “poor in spirit “ from Matthew Henry:
“To be poor in spirit is to be contentedly poor, willing to be emptied of worldly wealth, if God orders that to be our lot; to bring our mind to our condition, when it is a low condition.
“This poverty of spirit is a gracious disposition of soul, by which we are emptied of self, in order to our being filled with Jesus Christ.
“It is to be humble and lowly in our own eyes.
It is to be humble and lowly in our own eyes. To think meanly of ourselves, of what we are, and have, and do
“It is to be as little children in our opinion of ourselves, weak, foolish, and insignificant
“It is to look with a holy contempt upon ourselves, to value others and undervalue ourselves in comparison of them.
“It is to be willing to make ourselves cheap, and mean, and little, to do good; to become all things to all
men.” ——
Being “poor in spirit” is to be that which distinguishes us from those without Christ.
*Second: How we can personally experience, and manifest, the fullness of our distinctiveness: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” v. 6
That which a person consumes is that which defines him. This has nothing to do with necessities of the body but rather necessities of the spirit. The internal unseen and not the external seen.
We are experts at dressing up the outside but perhaps not so proficient at building up the inside — that which nobody can see or know but you and God. And since we can hide our true self from others, it becomes all too easy to live our life as a vain show acted out on our made-up stage.
Our fullness is to contrast with the emptiness of the lost that are watching us as we live out our Earthly Distinctiveness.
Do you, do I, HUNGER and THIRST after righteousness? Are we filled? Are we fulfilled?
And if we don’t hunger and thirst, then our weakened and diminished earthly distinctiveness will manifest itself as salt that has lost its saltiness — good for nothing, without impact.
Or …
Do our spiritual stomachs constantly growl with hunger pains?
And when it does, what do we feed it with? Junk food of the world or the pure milk of the Word?
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Application:
If man doesn’t live by bread alone but by EVERY word that proceeds out of the mouth of God …
Are we really living if we’re not ingesting our spiritual nutrients? Interesting question, no? Are we just existing or are we really living … living the healthy spiritual life God intends for each one of us?
Think of it this way:
The Word of God is His personalized prescriptions to keep us spiritually healthy and whole.
Or if that doesn’t connect with you …
The Word of God is His personalized recipes to keep us spiritually healthy and whole.
Seems simple enough: Eat and live or don’t eat and die.
If that makes sense in the physical then it should also in the spiritual.
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I’m assuming that those reading this are fairly certain about their Eternal Destiny. That’s a good thing.
And so I’m encouraging us to live out the full potential our Earthly Distinctiveness.
How?
*Corporately as the Body of Messiah in our local fellowships.
and
*Personally as the individual members of the Body of Messiah.
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We need to take personal inventory and be brutally honest with ourselves. Are we manifesting an:
Earthly Distinctiveness
that faithfully and truthfully expresses our
Eternal Destiny?
I trow hope so.