Then Jesus turned to His disciples and said, “God blesses you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours. God blesses you who are hungry now, for you will be satisfied. God blesses you who weep now, for in due time you will laugh. What blessings await you when people hate you and exclude you and mock you and curse you as evil because you follow the Son of Man. When that happens, be happy! Yes, leap for joy! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, their ancestors treated the ancient prophets that same way.
Luke 6:20-23
These collection of verses are commonly called the Beatitudes. I have heard it preached on at least two occasions that these are the Be Attitudes. In other words attitudes of being or attitudes to life. That may be but it is not the sense of the original. The word Beatitude comes from the Latin “beatus” which signifies “a state of happiness”. The idea comes from the Greek word “makarios” meaning “blessed, fortunate, happy or to be the recipient of Divine favour. These Beatitudes are simple yet incredibly deep. Mahatma Gandhi was profoundly influenced by the depth of these sayings of Jesus. Are you? Jesus words would have shocked his hearers then much as they do now. There lies a very apparent paradox in each of these sayings. So apparent that it ought to stop us in our tracks, arrest our attention and challenge us! Jesus pronounced blessing and blessedness on those whom we would consider unfortunate, poor and deprived. Philip Yancey came up with “fortunate are the unfortunates” as a way of putting the concept “blessed are . . . ”
Remember our discussion yesterday? What is the relationship between these accounts of the Sermon on the Mount/Plateau? Are Matthew and Luke reporting different sermons of Jesus? / Same sermon but from different sources (I.e. different people’s sermon notes) or is this the same sermon, the material of which is arranged differently. It is a crucial question which will determine the way you view the changes and flow of what is to follow.
Note the differences below.
The first obvious thing to note is that Luke has only four Beatitudes while Matthew has eight. Clearly Luke has chosen which ones to include. It is not like he has taken the first four and left the rest. Rather he has selected one, two, four and eight. You can bet these Beatitudes were memorised by those who passed on Jesus sermon. It is the kind of material that lends itself to memorisation and repetition. These are very deep and pithy sayings which are worthy of repetition and passing on to others. Therefore it is clear that for someone as thorough as Luke he would know the full list of eight Beatitudes but he has carefully selected four out of the eight. Why?
Note also how Luke changes the focus of Matthew’s “poor in spirit” to be just “poor” and “hunger and thirst for righteousness” becomes just “hunger“. There are those who want to see the missing elements added again from Matthew’s reading but that would do a disservice to the changes that Luke himself made.
Note also the addition of Luke’s temporal “now” which I have underlined above.
There is one other essential difference between the two sets of Beatitudes that I have not highlighted. I am sure you will pick it up as you compare the two lists.
These elements are all significant for helping you to determine Luke’s purpose here. It goes without saying that I am going to leave this with you to ponder overnight so you can come to your own conclusion about what is going on here. Why did Luke make the changes? At one stage I did consider just giving you the above comparative lists and leaving you firstly to find the differences and then we would consider the reasons for those differences. But then I thought that is to turn it into a two-step process and I am sure you can easily spot the differences. The more essential question is why did Luke make those changes and rearrange the material? That we will look at in the next Gem. Happy pondering.
ATTITUDE is one of the most influential factors for success & promotion.
Ribka Yusuf Wijaya
Is your problem really your problem, or is it your attitude towards the problem that’s your problem?
Joyce Meyer
Never Allow Your Attitude To Be Persuaded By Another Person’s Hard Day.
Robb Thompson
Never let your victories go to your head, or your failures go to your heart.
Sidney Mohede