The Values of the Kingdom

I still remember the 3 B’s of Carthage Middle School: Be Responsible, Be Respectful, and Be Safe. Those 3 values were intentionally laced into the language of my middle school experience. I would hear that little mantra repeated every single day during the school announcements. The school’s leadership wanted to ensure that every student understood what mattered most to the organization. Our daily decisions and the way we handle our various adolescent dilemmas should be shaped by those statements: Be Responsible, Be Respectful, and Be Safe.

Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount, this orientation to the Kingdom of God, clearly spelling out the values of the kingdom. These values in your bible may be preceded by the title “The Beatitudes”. The word “beatitude” stems from the Latin translation (beati) of the first Greek word (Makarios) used in each statement Jesus makes in this passage. The word is translated throughout scripture as “blessed”, “fortunate”, or “happy”. Jesus showed his disciples and us how to be blessed, fortunate, or happy in God’s kingdom. He’s giving a filter for making decisions and living well in this kingdom He’s come to establish. The only problem is that Jesus’ teaching here runs completely contrary to our typical experience of the world.

In our experience of this world and its kingdoms; blessing, fortune, and happiness are typically tied to wealth, health, power, abundance, impressive outward appearance, or the lack of conflict. But Jesus unveils the upside-down way of God’s kingdom. If we are citizens of God’s kingdom, we experience the most real blessing when we’re poor, when we mourn, when we hunger and thirst, and when we’re pure in heart –not just in external appearance, and even when we’re “persecuted”.

As you continue exploring the Sermon on the Mount, you may find many of Jesus’ teachings quite radical and surprising. I’m sure the original listeners did too! But perhaps, we shouldn’t be surprised that we are surprised. God has come into the world to establish a kingdom that will last forever… it’s bound to be different than what we typically experience or expect. It may even be that we’re the ones who have been living upside-down in a disoriented world and God has graciously come to turn us right-side-up.

Discussion Questions

• Icebreaker: Who would you say is the most fortunate and blessed person you know? (This is a great spot for someone to win some brownie points with the rest of the group by saying “Me. Because I have you all in my life”.)
• Which statement of Jesus in this passage is most difficult for you to accept?
• Which statement of Jesus in this passage is most encouraging to you?
• Which reward or blessing that Jesus lists in this passage does your heart crave the most?