Blessing on Purpose – Introduction to 21-Day Devotional on the Beatitudes

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Where It All Started: Prayer

Luke 6:12,Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. 13 And when it was day, He called His disciples to Himself; and from them He chose twelve whom He also named apostles:

The gospel of Matthew presents Jesus as the King of the kingdom of Heaven

What we call The Sermon on the Mount was the foundational teaching to the lives, character, and work of Jesus’ disciples – then and now.

Matthew 5:1, Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him

• This is the first use of the word “disciple” in the gospels. 
• A disciple is a learner. 
• Are you a learner or a knower?

Matthew 5:2, And he began to teach them.

KJV,  “He opened his mount and taught them.”

Two ways to understand what Jesus did:

1. Something that was completed in the past (aorist verb tense)
2. Something that was repeated, continuous, or habitual action in past time (imperfect verb tense)

The Sermon on the Mount is not one sermon of Jesus given at one particular time and on one particular occasion. 

It is the essence of all that Jesus continuously and habitually taught his disciples.

Beatitudes Are More than “Will Be”

Beatitudes Are “What is”

Definition: μακάριος

makarios

To speak well of, to invoke blessings upon a person, to cause to prosper, to make happy, to bestow blessings on.

“The beatitudes speak of that joy which seeks us through our pain, that joy which sorrow and loss, and pain and grief, are powerless to touch, that joy which shines through tears, and which nothing in life or death can take away.”  (Willam Barclay Commentary)