Blessed Be… Our New Sermon Series
From the 10th August 2025 till Advent, we will begin a new sermon series titled “Blessed Be…” A Study on the Practical Applications of the Sermon on the Mount.
Our trip through Matthew 5-7 will be in two parts - the first 9 weeks will attach a Beatitude to one of the later teachings of Jesus in the chapters, and the second part will be a focus on the Lord’s Prayer. We have provided this introduction for people to engage with as we enter into our new study together.
———
The Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount are passages most of us have heard many times in church. This is the single longest sermon from Jesus recorded in the Gospels. Next to His life and teaching as a whole, it should be considered one of the most important sources for our spiritual growth and ethical formation.
While the Sermon on the Mount is deeply Christian in its content, the style of teaching Jesus uses would have been familiar in His day. The structure of “Blessed be…” was common both in Jewish wisdom literature and in the Greco-Roman world. In secular culture, such sayings were used to express something considered obvious—often linking a certain way of life with a state of happiness or blessedness.
For example, in the 4th century BC, Plato records Socrates saying during his trial in Athens:
As little foundation is there for the report that I am a teacher, and take money; that is no more true than the other. Although, if a man is able to teach, I honor him for being paid… Happy is Evenus, I said to myself, if he truly has this knack, and teaches at such a modest charge. Had I the same, I should have been very proud and conceited; but the truth is that I have no knowledge of the kind. (https://chs.harvard.edu/primary-source/plato-the-apology-of-socrates-sb/ Sourced on 14th August 2025)
In Jewish Scripture, the “Blessed be…” form is everywhere. For example, in Isaiah:
Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore He rises to show you compassion, for the LORD is a just God. Blessed are all who wait for Him. (Isaiah 30:18 BSB)
Blessed are those who sow beside abundant waters, who let the ox and donkey range freely. (Isaiah 32:20 BSB)
Isaiah is especially important here because it provides much of the background for Jesus’ sermon. In Isaiah, blessing is not just a reward for behaviour—it is the description of a certain kind of person and the promise of what God will do for them. This is exactly what we see in the Beatitudes. They are not a checklist to earn God’s favour, but a declaration of the character of God’s people in Jesus’ mind, coupled with a promise of the future reality of the Kingdom—something we can live out now because of our identity in Christ.
Think of it this way: when Joshua led the people of Israel—this ragtag group of former slaves who had wandered the desert for forty years—up to the edge of the Promised Land, they were living out a beatitude:
Blessed are those who are humbled because they shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5 partial Greek transliteration)
They had been humbled, but would receive an inheritance from God. Their identity as God’s people did not begin when they entered the land—it was already true and continued through their history.
Isaiah 61 captures this same kind of identity statement:
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favour and the day of our God’s vengeance, to comfort all who mourn, to console the mourners in Zion—to give them a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise for a spirit of despair. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified. (Isaiah 61:1-5 BSB)
By using a form of speech recognised by Jew and Gentile alike, Jesus gave His followers an identity they could live in now, while pointing forward to the full arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
When we read the Beatitudes alongside the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, we are invited into Jesus’ vision of what it looks like to live in God’s way and purpose. By His Spirit, we are empowered to live in a way that contradicts the world’s wisdom: not independence but humility; not self-reliance but reliance on God; not revenge but self-sacrifice.
In this series, we will connect each of the nine Beatitudes with one of the nine major teachings that follow in Matthew 5–7—not because they are exact pairs, but because Jesus shows us in both sections what “Beatitude living” looks like in practice. My hope is that as we study these passages together, they breathe fresh life into us—individually and as a community—as we learn to live in the blessing of the Kingdom here and now.