Today I get into the meat of Jesus’s Sermon on the Plain.
“20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed are ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. 22 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake. 23 Rejoyce ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in like mannor did their fathers do unto the prophets.”
This is the complete list of beatitudes or blessings Jesus made on the plain. He opens up with His woes next, something not included in His Sermon on the Mount. I will cover them in the next post. Much of this is an abbreviation of the Beatitudes Jesus gave on the Mount. So I won’t repeat myself. Jesus has changed up the delivery from the previous sermon. The inclusion of woes leads me to believe that this sermon was delivered at a later date, after the scribes and the Pharisees began to follow Him to find ways to trip Him up.
The words Jesus uses in this sermon are an echo of the Sermon on the Mount. It is the same words for poor, kingdom, hunger, filled, weep/mourn, etc. But Jesus changes the rhythm and the cadence in this one. Notice verse 22, Jesus states the blessing as if He knows already these persecutions are coming upon His followers. It’s not delivered as a conditional statement, if men shall hate you. Jesus is telling us that we will be hated by the people who hate Him. This is something He wants us to be prepared for and not to be afraid of.
Read the Old Testament, how each of the prophets were persecuted by the people who were bound by the enemy of our souls. Jesus wants us to be assured that their curses are not binding on us, that we are blessed of our Father in Heaven. The devils have no other power over us than to temp and tease us, attacking our minds. The demons are no better off so long as we give them no homage. It is only when we entertain the thoughts these evil entities place in our minds that they gain control over our lives. That is why Jesus reassures us here that we are blessed, not cursed, when we follow Him.
An interesting aside: The title Jesus uses here in reference to Himself, the Son of Man, is first used in reference to Him in the Book of the Prophet Enoch, when Enoch met the preincarnate Christ in Heaven. It is sad that this book was removed from the Old Testament in the Third Century, AD. It is one of the greatest Gospels of Christ in the whole Bible, right up there with Isaiah and John.
I realize that this one is shorter than most, but I have already covered these blessings in previous posts, and I just needed to cover the differences between the sermons.
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