On the surface, putting the words blessed and mourning together doesn’t make sense. We don’t naturally associate mourning with blessing, unless maybe you work for a mortuary. Typically, those experiencing great grief are not considered blessed, especially when the word for blessed carries the idea of fulfillment or a life worth envying. Here again we see how the Gospel of Jesus is counter intuitive to our natural reasoning. Happy are the sad? This doesn't make sense and yet, it is what Jesus clearly taught. The question we must ask then is this: In what way is it true that people who mourn are people who are blessed?

Matthew 5:4

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The Beatitudes begin one of the most well-known teachings of Jesus in all of the New Testament, a teaching known as the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is also one of the most misunderstood teachings of Jesus. Some believe the Beatitudes are the New Testament version of the 10 Commandments; that one must obey these words in order to become Christian. But neither the 10 Commandments nor the Beatitudes were given as a set of rules to keep in order to go to heaven. The best way to see the Beatitudes is by recognizing the number of times one phrase is used repeatedly in Matthew’s Gospel- “kingdom of heaven.” Jesus will refer to the kingdom of heaven no less than 31 times in Matthew, 8 times in the Sermon on the Mount and twice in the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes begin and end with the kingdom of heaven. So the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes in particular help answer the question: What kind of person does God use to bring His kingdom to earth?

Matthew 5:1-10

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What if your value system was skewed and you were pursuing things that were taking you further away from God’s blessing and purposes? If that was true, would you want to know it?  We begin a new series today looking at a teaching of Jesus recorded in Matthew’s gospel that is, in many ways, the foundation of the Christian life. If we don’t understand this message and know how to apply it to our individual and corporate life as a church, we are going to miss God’s best for us. This teaching is known as the The Beatitudes.

Matthew 4:23-5:10

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Video of Message