The episode presents a compelling introduction to the upcoming series on the Beatitudes, highlighting the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Kimberly Lockinour, the host, elaborates on the significance of the Beatitudes, which offer a radical redefinition of what it means to be blessed in the eyes of God. Throughout this discussion, I emphasize that true blessing is found not in worldly achievements or possessions but in spiritual depth and reliance on God. The Beatitudes serve as a mirror reflecting the qualities that emerge in individuals who are filled with the Holy Spirit, such as humility, compassion, and a desire for righteousness. As I invite listeners to embark on this journey, I provide a brief overview of how the series will unfold, focusing on the unique challenges posed by each Beatitude.

Takeaways:

1. The content shared on Living the Selah Life serves primarily for spiritual encouragement and personal reflection.
2. This podcast is not designed to provide medical or psychological advice of any kind, and listeners should consult professionals for such matters.
3. The teachings discussed in this episode highlight the contrast between worldly values and the values of God's kingdom as presented by Jesus.
4. Kimberly Lockinour emphasizes that true blessings come from a relationship with God rather than from external circumstances or material wealth.

The content shared on Living the Selah Life is for spiritual encouragement, personal reflection, and informational purposes only.

It is not intended to diagnose, treat or replace medical, psychological or professional advice of any kind.

Please consult a licensed healthcare provider or qualified professional for any physical, mental or emotional health concerns.

The views expressed are those of the host, Kimberly Lockanor, and are based on personal experience and Biblical insight.

Welcome back to Living the Selah Life, a podcast that invites you to slow down, breathe and reconnect with the presence of God.

I'm your host, Kim, and this face is for anyone longing to become more familiar with his presence.

Each episode is an intentional pause, a moment to reflect, realign and remember that God meets us when we create space for Him.

So take a breath.

You are right on time.

Let's live the Selah Life together We just completed our series on the Fruit of the Spirit.

We explored how the Holy Spirit produces His character in us.

Today we are beginning a new series on the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the Beatitudes.

Since they are so closely related to the Fruit of the Spirit, I figured that would be the next logical place to go.

So over the next several episodes we'll discover what Jesus says about the blessed life and what it means to be citizens of his kingdom.

This teaching is some of the most challenging and also the most beautiful and sometimes the most misunderstood content in all of Scripture.

Jesus completely redefines what it means to be blessed and what the kingdom of God looks like.

So our main teaching for today is going to be the upside down kingdom.

Matthew 5:1 2 says, and seeing the multitudes, he went up on a mountain and when he was seated, his disciples came to him.

Then he opened his mouth and taught them the location here matters.

Jesus going up on a mountain to deliver Teaching about God's law echoes Moses going up on Mount Sinai to receive the law from God.

The Jewish people listening would have recognized this parallel immediately.

Moses went up to the mountain and came down with God's commands written on stone tablets.

Jesus went up to the mountain and delivered God's kingdom.

Interpretation of those commands do Directly from his own mouth.

Moses mediated the law between God and the people and Jesus is God speaking directly to his people.

Moses gave external commands about behavior and Jesus teaches about internal heart realities.

Moses delivered the law that exposed sin and Jesus reveals the kingdom life that the Spirit produces in those who follow him.

The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus declaring, I'm giving you the authoritative interpretation of what God has always wanted.

I'm showing you what kingdom life looks like And I'm describing what becomes true of people when God's spirit fills them.

It is very important to know who Jesus was talking about at this time, because although we read the Sermon on the Mount as an amazing story, it's something else.

This is one of my favorite stories because I'm very familiar with the persecution of Christ and the things that he went through.

But this Sermon on the Mount and the things that he said was so out of order for the day, it's not even funny.

Why is this sermon so profound?

The Sermon on the Mount is extremely profound because Jesus completely reverses everything that the world values.

The world says that blessed are the powerful, the wealthy, the self sufficient, the popular, the comfortable, the winners.

And Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful, the persecuted.

He's flipping things completely upside down.

The world says to get ahead by promoting yourself, producing your rights, accumulating more and eliminating anyone who threatens all of these things.

And Jesus says the blessed life comes through humility, surrender, mercy, purity, peacemaking, and willingness to suffer for righteousness.

Everything Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount contradicts natural human thinking.

It makes no sense.

Worldly sense, shall I say?

Because it makes 100% sense, but it makes no worldly sense.

And it really made no sense when he was preaching.

Seems foolish to those who don't know God.

First Corinthians 1:23 24 says, but we preach Christ crucified.

To the Jews, a stumbling block, and to the Greeks, foolishness.

But to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

The kingdom of God operates by completely different values than the kingdoms of the world.

Jesus redefines what it means to be blessed.

The word blessed appears nine times at the beginning of the Sermon of the Mount.

In Greek, the word is makarios.

It's M A K A R I O S. It describes a state of deep spiritual well being and flourishing that comes from being in right relationship with God.

Makarios is not a fleeting happiness and it's not a good mood or positive feelings.

You know, when we say, how are you?

I'm blessed and highly favored.

It's not that.

It's the condition of someone who has what they most need.

Need.

The world ties blessings to circumstances.

Good health, finances, stable finances, shall I say, great relationships, nice house, nice car, nice home.

But Jesus separates blessings from circumstances entirely.

You can be very blessed while mourning, he said.

You can flourish spiritually while being persecuted.

You can have what you most need, which is God Himself, while lacking what the world considers essential.

This is why Jesus can say, blessed are those who mourn, and blessed are those who are persecuted.

These statements sound contradictory unless you understand that blessing comes from God's presence, not from comfortable circumstances.

The Beatitudes describe people who are blessed because they possess God and His kingdom.

They're not blessed because life is easy.

They're blessed because they have God, and having God is everything.

Later in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus repeatedly says, you have heard that it was said, But I say to you, he's quoting the law that the people knew and then giving his interpretation.

That goes much deeper.

The religious leaders focused on external obedience.

The Sadducees, the Pharisees, all the E's, like, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't break your oaths, don't steal.

But Jesus goes deeper than that.

He says, anger is murder in the heart.

Lust is adultery in the heart.

Your words should be so trustworthy that you don't need oaths.

Guard your heart from greed.

Y' all see this?

Like this.

Jesus teaching this message at this time is so amazing to me because it is one of the hardest things I can imagine for people to have to hear, because it was just something that was not being taught.

Jesus is exposing that God has always cared about internal reality, not just external behavior.

The Pharisees kept the letter of the law while violating its spirit.

They avoided murder while harboring hatred.

They avoided adultery but entertained lust.

And they kept their oaths while being fundamentally dishonest with people.

Jesus teaches that the kingdom of God is about a heart change, not behavior management.

God wants people whose hearts are pure, not people who are skilled at appearing righteous while their hearts remain unchanged.

And this is why the Sermon on the Mount is impossible to live through our own willpower.

We can modify our behavior through discipline and willpower, but we cannot change the heart.

Heart change requires the Holy Spirit's work in us.

And then we go to the Beatitudes and their descriptions of what becomes of true people when God's Spirit fills them.

When the Holy Spirit works in someone, they become poor in spirit.

They recognize their desperate need for God.

They mourn over not only their own sin, but over the brokenness in the world.

They become meek, surrendering their demands and rights to God.

And they hunger and thirst for righteousness, wanting God more than anything else.

And these qualities are only able to appear because God changes people's hearts from the inside out.

This is why Jesus can describe such a high standard of Living and then call it blessed.

If the Beatitudes were only about performance, they would be crushing.

No one would be able to measure up.

Every single one of us and them would fail.

But when we understand that the Beatitudes describe what God does in people, they become encouraging.

God will produce that in Me he is, and in you, because we are unable to do it ourselves.

And I thank you, Lord, for doing it in us.

Jesus perfectly embodied every Beatitude.

He was poor in spirit, completely dependent on the Father, doing nothing on his own initiative.

He mourned weeping over Jerusalem's rejection, grieving at Lazarus Tomb.

He was meek, surrendering his rights, submitting to the Father's will, even unto death.

And he hungered and thirsted for righteousness.

His food was to do the will of His Father.

Jesus showed mercy, even forgiving those who crucified him, healing those who had no claim on him, welcoming sinners and outcasts.

And he was pure in heart, living with complete integrity, motivated only by the love for the Father and for people.

He made peace, reconciling humanity to God through His death, breaking down, dividing walls between people and groups.

Jesus was persecuted for righteousness, rejected by religious leaders, betrayed by friends, condemned by the government and and crucified as a criminal despite his innocence.

When we read the Beatitudes, we're reading a portrait of Jesus.

This is what he looked like when he walked on the earth.

This is how he lived.

These qualities were perfectly present in Him.

And as we follow him and as His Spirit fills us, we begin to reflect his character.

We start to look like Him.

The Beatitudes describe what we're becoming as the Spirit works in us.

When you read the Sermon on the Mount and feel overwhelmed by how far you fall short, you're responding correctly.

That awareness of insufficiency is exactly where God wants you.

He wants you to know you need him to desperately, that you cannot live this life without his power, and that everything depends on his work in you.

The poverty of Spirit that Jesus blesses in the first Beatitude is this recognition.

I cannot do this.

I need you, Lord.

Apart from you, I can do nothing.

That recognition is the entry point to everything else.

Jesus preaches.

I say preaches, that Jesus teaches.

In this sermon over the next several episodes, we'll walk through each Beatitude one by one.

We'll explore what Jesus meant by each statement, how the Holy Spirit produces these qualities in believers, and what these realities look like in daily life.

We'll discover that being poor in spirit is the gateway to the kingdom.

We'll learn why those who mourn are blessed and what kind of mourning Jesus is describing.

We'll explore what meekness means and why the meek inherit the earth.

We will also look at what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness with a holy desperation.

We'll examine how mercy works, receiving it from God and extending it to others.

And we'll understand what purity of heart involves and what it means to God.

We'll discover what it means to be peacemakers who builds bridges rather than burn them, or how persecution for righteousness brings blessing and why Jesus says to rejoice when you're insulted and persecuted for following Him.

Finally, we will look at what Jesus says about salt and light, how Kingdom citizens influence the world around them through their distinct way of living.

This series will challenge you.

It will comfort you.

It will expose areas where you're trying to live.

Maybe in your own strength.

It will reveal places where the Spirit wants to work more deeply in you as well, which is always a good thing.

My earnest prayer is that as we walk through the Sermon on the Mount together that you'll see Jesus more clearly, understand the kingdom of God more fully, and surrender more completely to the Spirit's work in you.

We will move on to this week's Scripture Spotlight.

And this week our Scripture Spotlight will be a simple reading of the Sermon on the Mount that we talked about.

And it comes from Matthew chapter five through chapter seven.

We're not going to read the whole thing.

We will read Matthew chapter five and please go read chapter six and seven.

And it says, and seeing the multitudes, he went up on a mountain, and when he was seated, his disciples came to him.

Then he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.

And blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

You are the salt of the earth.

But if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned.

It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

You are the light of the world.

A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.

Nor do they light a lamp and and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

Do not think that I came to destroy the law of the prophets.

I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill.

For assuredly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will be by no means passed from the law till all is fulfilled.

Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

And we will stop right there.

That is A Matthew, chapter 5, verses 1 through 20.

Amen.

Again, we're only going to have a reading of the Scripture because I will go into detail about the Sermon on the Mount in later episodes.

And so that's just redundant.

Let's move on to our pause prompts.

And remember, pause prompts is where we take inventory of where we are so that we can know where we're going.

Here we go.

Pause prompt number one.

What values have shaped your understanding of what it means to be blessed?

And how do those values compare to what Jesus teaches in Beatitudes?

When you read the Sermon on the Mount, do you hear it as a list of requirements that you must achieve or as a description of what God produces in those who surrender to Him?

And how does that perspective change how you approach this teaching which Beatitude feels most foreign to your natural way of thinking?

What would it look like for you to approach the series with openness, to let the Holy Spirit challenge your values and produce his character in you?

Remember, the Sermon on the Mount describes what becomes true of people when God's Spirit fills them.

It is about his work in you.

So we will move on to our Selah moment in prayer.

This is our opportunity to position ourselves to receive what Jesus wants to teach us through the Sermon on the Mount.

So you can begin by sitting comfortably and taking several slow, deep breaths.

Picture yourself on that mountain with Jesus.

You're one of his Disciples positioned close to him, ready to hear what he has to teach.

The crowds are behind you.

Jesus is in front of you.

His attention is focused on you and the other followers gathered around Him.

Ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you through the words of Christ, acknowledging our need.

Recognize that we cannot live the kingdom life through our own efforts.

We need the Holy Spirit to produce in us what we cannot.

We need divine power for every every quality that Jesus is about to describe.

We admit our dependence on God.

Ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you through this series.

Give him permission to disturb your comfortable thinking and reshape your understanding of what what it means to be blessed.

Release any demands for how you think the blessed life should look like and let go of your attachment to the world's definition of success and blessing.

Open your hands to receive God's definition of what matters most.

Let us pray.

Father, thank you for sending Jesus to teach us about your kingdom.

Thank you that he didn't leave us guessing about what you value, what you bless, and what life with you looks like.

We thank you for the Sermon on the Mount, this clear, challenging, beautiful picture of kingdom life.

Holy Spirit, we need your help as we pray.

Begin this series.

We cannot live what Jesus teaches on our own.

We need you to produce in us the qualities that Jesus described.

We need you to change our hearts, redirect our values and make us into people who reflect Jesus character.

Help us to receive the teaching in the Sermon on the Mount with humility.

We confess that much of what Jesus teaches contradicts our natural thinking.

Even now we're drawn to power to comfort, self sufficiency and approval.

Give us ears to hear what Jesus is teaching and help us listen with open hearts when his words challenge us.

Help us lean in rather than pull away.

Show us what we've been trying to live the Christian life through behavior modification rather than dependence on you.

Help us understand that the Beatitudes are descriptions of what you do in people who belong to you.

They're not requirements that we must achieve to earn your favorite their promises of what will become as you work in us.

As we explore each Beatitude in the coming episodes, give us insight into what Jesus meant.

Show us how these qualities appeared in his life and reveal how you want to produce them in our lives.

Help us see that your kingdom operates by completely different values than the kingdoms of this world.

Prepare our hearts for the teaching ahead.

Lord, make us teachable and hungry for truth.

Thank you that you haven't left us here to figure out these things on our own and thank you for clear teaching, for the presence of your spirit, and for the promise that you complete what you begin in us.

We trust you to work in us in all things, in Jesus name and it is so let's Lean into our Selah Moment.

Well, that is it for today my friends.

Thank you for listening to Living the Selah Life.

If this moment stirred something in your heart, please do share it with someone who needs to be reminded to pause and listen.

You can connect with me on Instagram, a daily Facebook group, or YouTube @Living the Selah Life or email me your story to Living the Selah Life at Proton Me.

That's on Living the Selah Life all one word at P R O T O N Me.

Until next time.

Remember that God is speaking.

He wants to guide you and direct you and give you his wisdom for your life.

Create space to listen.

Position yourself as a learner before Jesus, ready to receive what he wants to to teach you about the Kingdom life.

May you go from this place rested, carrying the awareness that his presence is always near.

May you be rooted in the unshakable word of God, the Logos that ground you and the rhema that guides you.

May you keep rising into the life he designed for you, into purpose, into peace, into the fullness of his calling.

May your life become a living, living Selah.

An intentional pause that reveals his presence in Jesus name.

And it is so Selah.