Knowing joy which is independent of circumstances.

How do you read the Beatitudes? Are they just so much pie in the sky where the rubber can’t possibly meet the road? In other words, are they just some surreal ideal entirely disconnected from real living?

With the Beatitudes, the King summarizes elements of the privileged, enviable state of having God’s approval and favor as a citizen of His kingdom. To be blessed like this is to be spiritually prosperous and deeply contented. It is to know joy which is independent of circumstances.

We must understand, though, that our feeling of all these is always only in limited measure. The kingdom citizen does not always feel blessed, for we live in fallen flesh in a very dysfunctional world. Thus we might be inclined to read the Beatitudes with dubious doubts and cynical suspicions, imagining them as misty mirages of joy and problematic paradoxes of contentment. Though these appear as unattainable opposites of real life on this pitiful planet, the blessings of Jesus in the Beatitudes stand secure on His nature and character.

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Faithfully carrying forward what Jesus began to do

Whom shall I send? (Isaiah 6:8)

Reading:

Matthew 10:1-15

“These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not” (Matthew 10:5).

Mark 6:7 says He began to do this — sounds like a new phase in their discipleship. In fact, check out Luke 10 and Acts 1:1,2 (at least).

They were not to go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans. Later He broadened the scope of their commission (Mark 16:15; Acts 1:8).

“And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 10:7).

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