Part 15

26 May 2021

Matthew 5:2-12

A little license if you would permit me.

• Blessed are the poor in spirit for the know that no good thing dwells in their flesh
• Blessed are those that mourn as a result of their spiritual condition, as well as at the spiritual, emotional, physical, and financial damage that come as symptoms of sins’ wreckage
• Blessed are the meek for they continually refuse to indulge the prideful deeds of the flesh
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they recognise the wreckage caused by sin in their lives, and the paucity of their own hearts because of the flesh. They desire to embody God’s righteousness, knowing that they fall short of His glory, and yet they deeply desire to be something other than what they are.
• Blessed are the merciful for they do not give full vent to the fleshly desire to inflict revenge in the pursuit of justice.
• Blessed are the pure in heart, and if ever such a one is found he must be nailed to a tree outside the camp where the radiance of his beauty of character will not peel away the layers of darkness with which we mask the reality of what we are. The imaginations of mans heart is wickedness from his youth
• Blessed are the peacemakers, for they refuse to indulge the fleshly desire to dispute with unreasonable people, to fight and argue so as to prove themselves right at all cost, who are willing to appear weak and foolish in the eyes of the proud and hard of heart
• Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account, for you have not given in to the fear of man, to the fleshly desire to be well thought of by others, considered to be cool or one of the in crowd, or woke, or whatever other fleshly temptation was tugging at your heart. Instead you stood firm, resisted the temptations offered you by the flesh and the fallen will, and gave a good account of yourself for me before the watching world. Rejoice and be glad, your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Who on earth could possibly live like this? The temptations are so many and the call of the flesh so loud in our ears, both from within, but also from without in the voice of the wider darkened culture.

It is so easy to justify our actions in not living the kind of life demonstrated for us in the Beatitudes because THE WAY IS HARD, the road is narrow, the door is narrow, the goal is singular. Few are those who walk it.

Who can resist the titanic pull of the oceanic swell of our fallen hearts and our darkened culture? No one.

No one can overcome these temptations, these magnetic forces that both push us as well as pull us towards sin.

Only by the Spirit of God operating within us granting us both the desire and will, as well as the power to resist these temptations and to live in the way prescribed by Christ in the Beatitudes.

Only by the Holy Spirit can the flesh be overcome.