Thread by @firstladyship

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.

1. The Sermon On The Mount talks about the “Eight Beatitudes” Or “Blessings” that Jesus delivered on the Mount Of Beatitudes.

Christians world over are familiar with the “Eight Beatitudes.” But have you really pondered on its significance at the time?

2. Why did Jesus choose to teach that to a gathering of predominantly poor followers?

We shall look into all of that, & the deeper meanings of the prayer, in this thread. Sit back, relax & enjoy. I’ll like to hear your opinions as well?

3. Today, “The Beatitudes” serves as “moral guidance” for Christians. But in Jesus’s time, their meanings would have been highly controversial. It would have resonated deeply with his audience.

4. The “blessings” spoke directly to the disadvantaged & those forced to suffer poverty, persecution, pain, & sadness.

In Jesus’s radical new teachings, the poor are the ones who would be blessed by God. Rather than the more prominent in the society.

5. “The Beatitudes,” in which Jesus called the poor “blessed,” seemed very counter intuitive to anyone at that time. “How could the poor be blessed?”

That seemed like a kind or “Radical Social Revolution;” that Jesus is reversing the values that people would have grown up with.

6. These radical ideas, continue in the prayers Jesus recited on the Mount. One that more than two billion Christians still recites today called “The Lord’s Pray.”

“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come.”

7. While different versions of the prayer exists, it’s meaning is universal. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus indicates that people should embody the values of the Kingdom.

And to enter into the Kingdom, our sins have to be forgiven. Our debts to God have to forgiven.

8. But we need to embody that in our own lives, by forgiving the debts of others; “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Today, it can be interpreted as a general plea for forgiveness.

9. But to a 1st-century audience in the kingdom of Judaea, the reality of debt, was terrifying.

Most people in ancient world were subsistent farmers. Now it’s very easy for that sort of farming to get you into debt. Particularly with a bad crop or bad season.

10. And you could be enslaved in some communities for that debt. So when I talk about “debt,” or debtors, I am not just talking about a bit of financial losses, but a real existential crisis.

You might lose not just your land, but your whole status as a free man.

11. Now, the enslaved are referenced frequently in the New Testament. Slavery was widespread across the Roman world.

So in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus was tapping into the genuine fears of the ordinary people.

12. For increasingly desperate people suffering under “Roman Oppression,” Jesus’s radical message promised a brighter future.

But it also challenged the Jews to forgive their enemies. Jesus’s time (the 1st-Century), was a long history of Jewish resentment against foreign rule.

13. Roman legions were extremely brutal. They came down from the North, through Galilee & they stamped out opposition wherever they saw it

They burned cities to the ground, raped & pillaged along the way. Now Jesus was promising those living in that violent world, a better life.

14. A Kingdom, where God is incharge. And this is a very potent message to people, who are living under the domination of Rome.

This “Kingdom of Heaven” is a great utopian land & of course, people want to hear about it.

15. Other apocalyptic groups out there (teaching at the same time Jesus was teaching his followers), they were very self-contained

Jesus is the only one speaking to people, telling them of the impending destruction of the world, & the importance of repentance, in the here & now.

16. Almost any other teachings of Jesus, the “Sermon on the Mount,” encapsulates his apocalyptic message that the end is coming soon.

But it wasn’t just Jesus’s words that people were drawn to. His actions was about the demonstration that God’s power was working through him.

17. Jesus spent most of his Ministry, preaching to the poor. His audience was the type that was ready to receive a radical, & occasionally spectacular message

Jesus was dealing with lower class people without an education, he is teaching people about how God can be real to them,

18. and how God can meet their needs. And he is showing that by the way he does his miracles.

People are deadly ill, & he healed them. People have demonic disorders & he cast out demons. People are hungry & he feeds them.

19. Along with the Resurrection, the feeding of the 5000, with just five loaves & two fishes, is the ONLY miracle mentioned in all Four Gospels.

To try & understand what this story would have meant to 1st-century Jews. What is the story behind the “Feeding of the 5000?”

20. What’s interesting about the feeding of the 5000, is the “symbolism” behind it.

I think this is a very Jewish symbol here, of picking up on so many ideas from Isreal’s past. In the Old Testament, Moses miraculously fed the starving Israelites during the Exodus from Egypt,

21. with manner from Heaven. Centuries later, people in Jesus’s time were waiting for a similar messianic figure, to free them from oppression once again, & to feed them.

The messiah was not thought to be a divine being by most Jews in Isreal in the 1st-century.

22. The messiah was understood to be a “political leader.” To 1st-century Jews, beings the messiah means to “overthrow.” The Romans in this case.

So a miracle like the feeding of the 5000 would for many, have been proof of Jesus’s Divinity, that “Jesus was the Messiah,”

23. for whom they have been waiting. Jews believed that at the End Times, they would live in the “Golden Age” where there would be lots of food, lots of feasting, lots of wine, & because I suppose people were hungry a lot of the time.

24. So this idea of a great banquet at the End Times, was a really potent symbol of what life was going to be, when God was in charge.

Jesus’s miracles offers an alternative to the status quo. Most of his miracles were showing you what it would be like, in God’s Kingdom.

25. So Jesus’s message is about the “Kingdom of Heaven,” what life would be like, if God was in charge, instead of the Romans.

That’s something people would certainly want to listen to & follow.

26. The Gospels follow the movements of Jesus from the Shores of the Sea of Galilee, to Jerusalem, to his Passions, death & resurrection.

And they note that the women were following him along the way. In the 1st-century Holy Land, a woman’s place is in the home.

27. So Jesus traveling with women, would have raised eyebrows. It would be so easy to describe the ancient world as misogynistic. A woman’s place is likely to be in the kitchen.

To be Continued....