Jesus continues to teach using the third person until he gets to the passage we are studying in more detail today, verses 10, 11 and 12. You will notice that there is a shift in verse 11 where Jesus stops speaking in the third person and starts speaking in the second. But before we get into the meat of what Jesus is teaching in these three verses, I want to make sure we understand what Jesus is intending in all the beatitudes.

Jesus shifts from the impersonal beatitudes to the very personal re-phrasing of verse 11. You could do the same thing with all the other beatitudes and I think it would be more meaningful to us.

• Spiritually prosperous are you! The kingdom of heaven is yours because you are poor in spirit!
• Spiritually prosperous are you! For I will comfort you when you mourn!
• Spiritually prosperous are you! You will inherit the earth because you are meek!
• Spiritually prosperous are you! For you will be filled with me whenever you hunger and thirst for righteousness!
• Spiritually prosperous are you! Because you are merciful you too will be shown mercy!
• Spiritually prosperous are you! Your pure heart will reveal to you God himself!
• Spiritually prosperous are you! Like me you are a peacemaker, and like me you will be called a child of God!

How does that sound? It removes the self-righteous piety and replaces it with truly enthusiastic praise and encouragement. This is what Jesus intended: To paint a picture of his people as richly and as colorfully as he could; to paint a picture of his people that reveals them to be the opposite of those who belong to this world.

I believe the order of these blessings is purposeful. We enter the kingdom of heaven when we realize we are spiritually bankrupt. Initially, Jesus’ first statement seems nonsense-ical. How can those who are poor in spirit be spiritually prosperous? Yet it is so. He takes us in our poverty and makes us rich by giving to us what we could never earn on our own. In doing so, we recognize our poor state and mourn for those who continue in poverty, and it is God himself who comforts us in such times. We set aside our arrogance and self-righteousness and put on meekness which leads us to an even greater desire to be more like Jesus! Since Jesus showed us mercy, we in turn are merciful toward others creating in us a pure heart. God reveals more of himself to us and the process starts all over again as we realize how spiritually bankrupt we are…

The beatitudes explain how to have a close relationship with God throughout your life.

Because Jesus made peace with us, we try to broker peace between man and God. That is what evangelism is all about, bringing those who war against God to a place where they can be at peace with God. Sometimes we are successful, and peace is made. Other times we are unsuccessful, and the very person we tried to bring to Jesus turns and wars against us. This is called “persecution”. Jesus ends the beatitudes with persecution in verse 10, but this topic is so important he takes a moment to teach us a couple key concepts about it in verses 11 and 12.