Seeing the crowds, He went up on the mountain, and when He sat down, His disciples came to Him. And He opened His mouth and taught them.                   Matthew 5:1-2 ESV¹

Read Matthew 5:1-12 & Luke 6:20-26

Jesus had been going “throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people, so His fame spread throughout all Syria” (Matthew 4:23-24a). Once again, Jesus was confronted with a crowd of people wanting something from Him, but instead of immediately ministering to the multitude, He climbed a nearby mountain and got away from the hustle and bustle. Only those who were really committed to following Him joined Jesus on His climb. When they all reached a quiet spot, Jesus sat down and began to teach these disciples.

Those who had climbed the mountain with Jesus were not like those at the bottom. These followers simply wanted Jesus. So, when Jesus began teaching them about being blessed and about the things which would bring them ultimate satisfaction, a basic understanding of human nature would predict that they were expecting something different, more pleasant, and more physically rewarding than the words Jesus spoke. After all, they weren’t with Jesus just for a hand-out, they had sacrificed something to be with Him.

Yet, Jesus taught:

• You cannot be right with God until you realize you are completely needy, having absolutely nothing in yourself to redeem yourself, and no ability on your own to attain salvation (see Matthew 5:3a).
• It is a sacred thing to be filled with deep sadness and sorrow because of your sins and the sins of others (see Matthew 5:4a).
•  True consecration involves being humbly patient when others purposely try to provoke you (see Matthew 5:5a).
• You will only be truly satisfied if you strive to know God and to desire to be more like Him with desperation like that of hungering for daily food and drink (see Matthew 5:6a).
• You are supremely favored when you are called to sacrifice your rights and to be compassionate and forbearing toward those who have offended you (see Matthew 5:7a).
• Sanctification must include complete freedom of the pollution of guilt and sin (see Matthew 5:8a).
• Holiness is showcased by a life of selflessness, characterized by peace and seeking the well-being of others (see Matthew 5:9a).
• You are adored when you are pursued with harassment and oppression because you remind those who hate Me of Me (see Matthew 5:10a & 11a).

Jesus used the word blessed before each of these statements. Dictionary.com defines blessed as 1. consecrated; sacred; holy; sanctified: 2. worthy of adoration, reverence, or worship: 3. divinely or supremely favored; fortunate: [as well as] 4. blissfully happy or contented. If these Jesus’ statements are true, why don’t we feel blessed, blissfully happy, and contented when we experience them? The exact opposite is often our reality.

When we reject the carnality of hanging out with Jesus only for what we can get, and decide to submit and follow Him with our all, and difficult situations arise in our lives, we feel betrayed.

When we are confronted with the truth that we are nothing apart from Jesus, we get offended.

When we face trials, we don’t feel joy; we are convinced we are being punished.

When we get convicted of our sin, we try to justify ourselves or hide from God.

When getting to know God becomes striving in desperation, we think God has left us.

When we realize being free from sin, means the death of self, we don’t want to go that far for freedom.

When others provoke us, offend us, harass us, or oppress us, we don’t want to submit or be patient, compassionate, forbearing, or selfless.

When these things happen, we certainly don’t feel satisfied or blessed, happy or content! We begin to doubt God’s love. Once we doubt God, following Him loses all attractiveness.

Yet, Jesus said we would not be totally satisfied unless we experience tough things like those mentioned above. Why aren’t we? What are we missing? What are we doing wrong?

First, we often believe a lie.

Many of us became attracted to Jesus through an incomplete Gospel. When we discovered that Jesus shed His blood for the forgiveness of our sins we joyfully believed, accepted our free pass into Heaven someday, and pretty much went on with our carnal lives. Oh, we added some Jesus related thoughts and activities, but we are still the bosses of our own lives. We didn’t wait to hear, or perhaps we weren’t taught, the full Gospel which makes Jesus the Lord and Owner of our lives. He not only forgave us with His precious blood, But He also bought us with it. He didn’t save us so that we could continue walking similarly to that which we always have; He saved us so that we could become like Him. Many of those things which we consider problems are the very things which are breaking our dependence on ourselves and this world and drawing us closer to Jesus (see Romans 8:28).

Second, we frequently have the wrong focus.

We tend to concentrate on ourselves and our current circumstances. Like Peter, we take our eyes off of Jesus, look at the surrounding waves, and begin to sink (see Matthew 14:28-32). It is when we, by faith, look to Jesus that we naturally learn to trust Him as He encourages us and beckons onward. It is only when we focus on Jesus that we begin to have less concern for ourselves and move toward concern for His desires. Our eyes are opened, and we see things from a heavenly perspective instead of an earthly perspective. In making this shift, we begin to feel satisfaction and understand how going through difficulty is a blessing.

Third, we tend to consider only the here and now.

Our focus is on what we can see with our physical eyes. Even if we have faith that the life we currently know isn’t all there is, we often live like it is all there will ever be. We don’t actually believe that which we cannot see is just as real as what is in front of us. Because we haven’t understood the whole Gospel, we don’t realize that when Jesus’ Body was broken, so was our sin nature, and when Jesus’ Body rose, we too were given a whole new life. “For our sake, He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).  “[We] have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer [we] who live, but Christ who lives in [us]. And the life [we] now live in the flesh [we] live by faith in the Son of God, who loved [us] and gave Himself for [us]” (Galatians 2:20). Jesus’ teaching, recorded in Matthew 5:1-12, contains a lot of good news of that which is experienced when we are “in Christ.” These blessings begin when we truly give ourselves to Christ and continue into the future with Him. Jesus doesn’t just instruct us to expect only tough times if we devote ourselves to His purposes; He also promises some pretty amazing rewards. These rewards are not only ours when we enter Heaven, but they can also be experienced in the here and now.

Jesus promises that if we keep our eyes on Him and follow His lead:

• We will be abundantly comforted (see Matthew 5:4b).
• We will be completely satisfied (see Matthew 5:6b).
• God will show us mercy in the areas we have offended Him (see Matthew 5:7b).
• We will be able to perceive where God is working and join Him there (see Matthew 5:8b).
• We will be loved, cherished, cared for, and vindicated by God as His child (see Matthew 5:9b).
• We are going to inherit the earth (see Matthew 5:5b).
• Heaven will belong to us, and we will rule there (see Matthew 5:3b & 10b).

God has good things planned for those who truly love Him. We need to learn to trust Jesus that our momentary pain has a purpose. Difficulty makes us more like our Master and is preparing us for a future with Him. How we handle trials and tribulations is a testimony to those around us. Earthly trouble often opens the door to the eternal pleasure of truly knowing and being fruitful in working with God. Isn’t that what we really wanted when we decided to follow Jesus in the first place? So, “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).

(Help with understanding the meaning of Jesus’ teaching recorded in Matthew 5:1-11 was obtained by the use of The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible, New International Version, copyright 1996 by AMG International, Inc.)

1Scripture quotations marked with ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All Scriptures are taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted. To aid in understanding, I have capitalized references to God.