God had been preparing his people for centuries for Jesus' coming, for his kingdom to be more fully revealed. John the Baptist began preparing the Jews for Jesus' ministry with the message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Jesus began his ministry preaching the same message, a message we still need today, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
What is meant by the word repent? To repent means we are aware of the guilt of our sin, we mourn and hate our sin and turn from it to God for mercy. It means to turn our backs on worldly ways and choose to follow God's ways. We change our lives to live as God intended, in a loving relationship of obedience to him. We choose to live in God's kingdom.
In Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reveals how people in his kingdom will live this life of repentance. There are no new laws in his sermon, it's a summary of all that God had been teaching the Israelites throughout their history. But Jesus emphasizes God's heart behind the laws. The laws that the Israelites found impossible to obey need to be obeyed in a different way, with a different perspective. Jesus shows us that obedience doesn't come from making more rules to follow in order to stay within the law, obedience needs to come from the heart. We need inner transformation. Jesus came so the laws could be written on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). He wants to give us his Spirit to help us obey through a loving relationship with our creator (John 14: 15-17).
But we must allow God to write these laws on our hearts. We must want to obey even though obedience is contrary to our sin nature. We must want to “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” What does this looks like?
Jesus introduces his Sermon on the Mount with the poetic Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-10. In it, he describes the person who repents and the results of their repentance. Each Beatitude expresses a blessing for people with a specific repentant mindset/heart-posture. The word blessed means happy, favored, joyful or spiritually full. The person's blessing or spiritual fullness is related to their heart's posture; it's the natural spiritual result of that posture.
The Beatitudes are divided into two parts. Jesus tells us first what it looks like for people to repent and be filled with his righteousness (Matt 5: 3-6). Then he describes the results in our lives when we receive his righteousness (Matt 5: 7-10). All along the way, we are blessed with spiritual fullness.
Next Thursday we will start our devotional journey through the Beatitudes. Hope you will join me!
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“Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org”
I’m so excited about this study as there is so much to learn from the Beatitudes. 😀