Speaker 1: This is BibleProject Podcast, and we're reading through the Sermon on the Mount. The sermon opens with nine surprise statements about who is a part of what God is doing in the world. I'm Jon Collins, and with me is co-host Michelle Jones. Hi, Michelle. 

Speaker 2: Hi Jon. Remember, there are nine Beatitudes, and they're in three sets of three triads. 

Speaker 1: Right. And today we're going to go through the second triad. 

Speaker 2: This is the triad where you get a picture of the type of people that God is forming. They hunger and thirst for righteousness. They show mercy and they’re pure of heart. 

Speaker 1: So we'll start today with hungering and thirsting for righteousness. 

Speaker 2: Hungering and thirsting sounds very intense. I know people who, when they get hungry, they're just not people I want to be around. 

Speaker 1: <laugh>

Speaker 2: Could you get hangry for righteousness?

Speaker 1: Yes. It's a very evocative image. It also begs the question, what does Jesus mean by righteousness? 

Speaker 2: That's one of those very churchy words that we just can't quite put our finger on. 

Speaker 1: Here's how Tim puts it—

Speaker 3: It refers to the character of someone who is in right relationship with others around them. 

Speaker 2: So that's where we'll start, hungering and thirsting for right relationships. Thanks for joining us. 

Speaker 1: Here we go. 

Speaker 3: Okay. Here's the second triad. “The good life belongs to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, because they will be satisfied. The good life belongs to those who show mercy, because they will be shown mercy. The good life belongs to the pure in heart, because they will see God” (Matthew 5:6-8).

Speaker 1: I love that we get to unpack these, because they've become so familiar, yet I don't know what they mean. 

Speaker 3: <laugh> Yeah. That's so much of the Bible for so many people. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Over-familiarized into meaninglessness. Okay, so, let's dive in. I think I mentioned, in the twenty years of following Jesus, this is, I think, my fourth slow, deep pass through the Sermon on the Mount, with stacks of books. And it keeps giving, man. So, “the good life belongs to those who hunger and thirst for—” (Matthew 5:6). So, first, Jesus is using a metaphor. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: That's met by the second line, “because they will be filled or satisfied” (Matthew 5:6). 

Speaker 1: Yeah. And you get that, you're hungry, you need food and water— 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: You have a good meal, and you feel good.

Speaker 3: That's right. So let's just, um, note, he's carrying on the theme of lack, being without, that comes from the first triad, the powerless— 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: Those who grieve over loss in the world—

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: Over their own loss. And then, um—

Speaker 1: Those on the outside.

Speaker 3: Those on the outside. To be in a perpetual state of hunger is not what I would think of as the good life. 

Speaker 1: No. 

Speaker 3: <laugh> Literal or metaphorical hunger, but it's a state of lack—

Speaker 1: Mm. 

Speaker 3: As opposed to a state of abundance. But not just lack. When you're hungry, you lack something and you want it. 

Speaker 1: I know. It's the worst. 

Speaker 3: <laugh> You being hungry?

Speaker 1: Actually, no. Just lacking something. What I was thinking about was, I've been running more lately and, um, I did some mileage the other day and I was getting a blister on my toe. 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 1: And I was only like a couple miles into a pretty long run. And it just occurred to me, I'm going to have to think about the pain in my toe the entire time.

Speaker 3: Yes. 

Speaker 1: And so I was lacking homeostasis, or whatever. I was lacking comfort. 

Speaker 3: You’re also lacking mole skin.

Speaker 1: <laugh>

Speaker 3: That little soft stuff you put— do you know that stuff? 

Speaker 1: What? No. 

Speaker 3: Oh, dude, it's amazing. 

Speaker 1: For hiking?

Speaker 3: Oh, I use it all the time. 

Speaker 1: Oh, really? 

Speaker 3: Yeah. The moment you feel a hotspot—

Speaker 1: Yeah. Put it on. 

Speaker 3: Just put that stuff on. 

Speaker 1: I had nothing but some water and—

Speaker 3: <laugh> 

Speaker 1: Miles of trail. 

Speaker 3: <laugh> 

Speaker 1: So there was—

Speaker 3: <laugh> Oh man. 

Speaker 1: It's not just lacking. 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 1: It's the pain—

Speaker 3: The irritant— 

Speaker 1: And the irritant—

Speaker 3: Yes. 

Speaker 1: Of the hunger, of, like, it's there—

Speaker 3: That’s it. 

Speaker 1: Gnawing at you. 

Speaker 3: That's it. Okay, good.

Speaker 1: Constantly, every step.  

Speaker 3: It’s great. Perfect image, then. So Jesus is saying, the good life belongs to people who are lacking something, but not just lacking it. The lack irritates, agitates, puts them in a constant state of tension and awareness of the fact that they lack this thing. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: And what is the thing that they hunger and thirst for? It's usually the Greek word dikaiosuné.

Speaker 1: Dikaiosuné.

Speaker 3: <laugh> Dikaiosuné. The traditional English word for this in the New Testament is righteousness. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a religious word. 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 1: I grew up with the word righteousness, meaning, “the state of being pure and good—”

Speaker 3: Before God. 

Speaker 1: Right. Before God. Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Not having flaws. 

Speaker 3: So dikaiosuné is Greek word. It's one of the standard Greek translations. Uh, it's a group of words that comes from a root tzedekah. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: And at its root, tzedekah means to be in right relationship with someone, or it refers to the character of someone who is in right relationship with others around them. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: But you can refer to a whole group of people as having a quality of tzedekah, which means all the relationships are equitable. 

Speaker 1: Mm. 

Speaker 3: And people are in right standing with one another, meaning they treat each other rightly. And the way that you do right by someone depends on the type of relationship it is. 

Speaker 1: Sure, yeah. 

Speaker 3: You know, if you're my brother, or if you're my dad, or if you are my coworker—

Speaker 1: Or teacher.

Speaker 3: Or teacher, or employer, or whatever— 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: There will be different — 

Speaker 1: Person bagging your groceries. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. Different types of behaviors will qualify as doing right by that person. 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: So the way that this word is used most often, however, in the Hebrew Bible, is when the stories are about people who are responsible for creating and ensuring tzedekah in the community. 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: And they're doing a really terrible job, usually. It is why it gets brought up. 

Speaker 2: So righteousness isn't just some abstract moral code that we live by, but it's actually how we show up for one another. We want to dig into a couple more passages that illustrate this, and to do it, I've invited Dr. Ben Tertin into the studio. He's one of our BibleProject scholars. Hi, Ben. 

Speaker 4: Hi, Michelle. Thank you. 

Speaker 2: Okay, so help me out here, Ben. What should come to my mind when I use the word “righteous” or “righteousness”? 

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. I think the first thing that should come to our mind, hearing that word, is how do I relate to other people? 

Speaker 2: Not, how do I show up? 

Speaker 4: Yeah. I suppose you could see it that way, in the sense of, like, am I showing up in a loving and kind way toward other people? But if you mean it in the sense of, am I showing up with all of my personal holiness codes in order, and I don't really care about other people, then, yeah, that’s not righteousness.

Speaker 2:   Huh. 

Speaker 4: So, let's just do an example, here, right out of Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah in chapter twenty-two, verse three. And he is just laying into the King of Judah, um, well, for reasons that'll become clear as we go.

Speaker 2: I love a good fight. 

Speaker 4: <laugh> He's giving him the business. All right. He says, “This is what Yahweh says, oh, King, ‘Do justice and tzedakah, do justice and righteousness’” (Jeremiah 22:3). And you're like, those are great words, but it's cool because he flushes it out for us. “’Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been wronged. Stop doing wrong and violence to the immigrant or to the fatherless, the orphan, or to the widow. Stop shedding innocent blood in this city’” (Jeremiah 22:3).

Speaker 2: That sounds more justicey—  

Speaker 4: Uh-huh, uh-huh. 

Speaker 2: Than what I think of when I think “righteous.”

Speaker 4: Yeah, that's good. Oh, well, you caught it right in the beginning. He says, “do justice”. The Hebrew there is mishpat. Uh, we've got a video on justice. 

Speaker 2: Yes. 

Speaker 4: And in it, we break down these two words, mishpat and tzedakah, and they're always super tightly connected. And the idea, notice, he's saying to this king, “Man, your town is all jacked up. It is messed up. And the way for you— meaning not righteous, because of how you're relating to each other— you are violent, you are oppressing people. 

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Speaker 4: You're doing wrong to each other. Still vague. But we get a concept of, you're harming people and you're particularly— this is always called out in the Old Testament— particularly, these groups are really getting marginalized or shunned: immigrants, orphans, widows. 

Speaker 2: Widows. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. People who are not showing up with a whole bunch of benefit to you, you seem to say they don't matter, then. And he says, that is unjust. So do mishpat, do justice, and when you do, it is what creates righteousness in the city, which is, notice, in this context, it is right social relationships, right ways of living mutually together in the society. 

Speaker 2: Okay, so, I'm going to throw a word out—  

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 2: That will feel loaded, but I don't mean it to feel that way. 

Speaker 4: My favorite kind of words, Michelle. 

Speaker 2: <laugh> 

Speaker 4: Loaded. Explosive. 

Speaker 2: Okay, good. 

Speaker 4: Lay it on me. What do we got?

Speaker 2: Well, here we go. So you have, you've got poor, you've got widows—  

Speaker 4: Uh-huh <affirmative>.

Speaker 2: You've got immigrants. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 2: And then there's this, it almost seems like there's this need for equity, uh, to, to bring these people to a place where they're not being oppressed or mistreated, but—

Speaker 4: Yes. 

Speaker 2: So is that word equity? Is it—  

Speaker 4: I think it's great. It comes, you're right, it comes with some modern baggage. Baggage that could mean different things with it. But the way you said it was really, really good in terms of, so the part of it I wouldn't bring into it is a sort of homogenous, bland, everybody-has-all-the-same-amount-of-everything. 

Speaker 2: Right. But it would very much be, there is nobody being oppressed. There is nobody who is without what they need for life and flourishing. 

Speaker 4: Okay. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. 

Speaker 4: There's, there's no scenario where somebody is just rocking and rolling and somebody else is starving. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. 

Speaker 4: That's just happening. 

Speaker 2: And especially if you see that person doing that and you do nothing about it. 

Speaker 4: Absolutely. 

Speaker 2: That makes you unrighteous. 

Speaker 4: There we go. I'm thinking right as you say that, like Good Samaritan parable or something like that. 

Speaker 2: Yes. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. Another great word that I really, kind of, cling to in this conversation is mutuality. 

Speaker 2: I like that better than equity. 

Speaker 4: I think it's good, because, for me, what it does is it says, am I looking at a person as better than me or worse than me? And then, as soon as I'm doing that, I'm out of a right way of relating. 

Speaker 2: Yes. 

Speaker 4: Because I'm measuring them according to something I can see, or whatever. God wants me to say to the human, “You, human, are a miraculous, image-bearing creation of Yahweh. And therefore, you are worth loving, blessing, caring for, and never—

Speaker 2: Doing right by.

Speaker 4: To be oppressed, harmed, mistreated, taken advantage of, or a great word is consumed. Uh, other times the prophets talk about this they will say, when unrighteousness is happening, it's like you're devouring each other, rather than blessing and encouraging and enlivening one another. 

Speaker 2: Okay. 

Speaker 4: Okay, Michelle. So let’s do one more verse. Uh, Psalm 11:7, “Yahweh is righteous.”

Speaker 2: Okay. 

Speaker 4: <laugh> Hot diggity, you know? 

Speaker 2: Yeah. 

Speaker 4: Like that, there you go. God, the creator who made everything, in and of himself, his character is that he is always rightly relating to you and me and everybody. 

Speaker 2: Huh. 

Speaker 4: Interesting. And, it says, so still in the same verse, “Yahweh is righteous, and he loves righteousness” (Psalm 11:7). He treats people right. And therefore, he loves it when people do right by each other. 

Speaker 2: So when we are righteous, we are imaging God. 

Speaker 4: Yes. 

Speaker 2: When we are not righteous—  

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 2: We're basically saying, “Kick rocks, God.”

Speaker 4: That's right. 

Speaker 2: Okay. 

Speaker 4: I think that's right. When it says, “Yahweh is righteous,” it means that Yahweh treats people right. He loves it when people do right by each other. 

Speaker 2: Okay. 

Speaker 4: And if Yahweh is the giver of life, he loves it when we do right by each other, why does he love it? Because we're obeying his rule? No. Because he knows that when we do right by each other, ending oppression, blessing those around us, we are coming into fullness of life. And so are they. That's his will. 

Speaker 2: So this righteousness is a vehicle for his love—  

Speaker 4: Love and life. It's a gift. It's not just a rule to obey, it's a way of right relating with everybody. 

Speaker 2: Oh, I love that. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 2: Thanks, Ben. 

Speaker 4: Thank you.

Speaker 3: Psalm twenty-four, verse three, “Who can walk up to the hill of Yahweh? Who can go and stand in the holy space of Yahweh?” (Psalm 24:3) is temple imagery. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. Who can get in the temple—  

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: In the throne room of God. 

Speaker 3: And really, which is, means that it's Eden imagery. 

Speaker 1: Right. 

Speaker 3: Who, who is it? 

Speaker 1: Who has access to the good life?

Speaker 3: Who is it that can go be in the place where Heaven and Earth are one? 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: Who can return and pass by these cherubim and get back into Eden? 

Speaker 1: Yeah. Not Cain and Abel. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. Totally. <laugh>. No. At least, not Cain. Abel didn't have a chance. 

Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. 

Speaker 3: Uh, well, here's Psalm twenty-four's portrait: “The one who has clean hands, hands of innocence—” (Psalm 24:4) 

Speaker 1: Okay. 

Speaker 3: “And a pure heart” (Psalm 24:4). That's going to be the next Beatitude of Jesus. “The one who hasn't lifted up their being to any kind of falsehood. They don't swear oaths with deceit” (Psalm 24:5). They don't try and manipulate other people to convince them that you're being truthful. They have integrity. They're the same on the outside as they're on the inside, that person will receive blessing— this is the berakah, barukh—   and righteousness from the God of his deliverance. You will receive righteousness.  

Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. 

Speaker 3: Hmm. So righteousness here doesn't mean your behavior. It's something you get—

Speaker 1: The status. 

Speaker 3: Get from God. Yes. Yeah. In other words, being counted among the righteous. It's about a declaration that God makes when he looks at someone's life and says, “That's someone who has done right by me.” Because it's really hard to know just by observing each other's behavior who God would count as righteous or not. 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: In fact, and this is Jesus's point many times over, is that we are terrible, terrible at discerning it, at discerning whether people are the righteous or the wicked. 

Speaker 1: Interesting. 

Speaker 3: We, we often confuse them. 

Speaker 1: Gosh. But, but you would think it would be obvious. 

Speaker 3: You would think. But, uh, what he's going to get into in the sermon is that, um, you can do what looks like the righteous things. 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: “Beware,” he says in chapter six, “of doing your tzedakah, your righteousness, in order that other people will see you and then think highly of you” (Matthew 6:1). 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: And he, he calls that kind of person a hypocrite. So, in the Abraham story, Abraham is powerless, and his wife, they're powerless, to produce a child. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: And what Abraham does is trust that God's promise, even though there's, there's lots of reasons not to trust. There are some reasons to trust God has been faithful to him up to that point, but there's lots of reasons not to. And he trusts God's crazy promise that a nation's going to come out of you and your wife. And God stops. The narrative stops in Genesis 15:6, “And God reckoned it to him as one who does right by me.” He declares that this guy, who trusts me—

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: For something he can't do for himself. 

Speaker 1: That’s someone who does right by me. 

Speaker 3: I mean, that's what it means to do right by me. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. And the implication of that is this is a person who then will do right by others. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. Correct. 

Speaker 1: Which, then, Abraham doesn't fully succeed at. 

Speaker 3: Well, he has successes and failures. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Leading up to his final, which is a success, in twenty-two, where he surrenders the life of his son back to God. 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: The ultimate act of faith. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: And his faith is rewarded with, with a promise. 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: And then the Apostle Paul will pick that up. He sees there a super important insight into the whole story of the Hebrew Bible. The one who God will count as righteous, the one who does right by me, is the one who stakes everything on God's Word and promise and just trusts in him (Hebrews 11:8-19). And for Paul, that's what it means to give your allegiance and trust and faith to Jesus. 

Speaker 1: So it kind of feels like we're talking about two different things, then. Abraham trusts in God's promise. 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 1: God's like, this is what I want. I wanted that trust, that faith, that allegiance—

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 1: To me. So I declare you as one who does right by me. 

Speaker 3: Yep. 

Speaker 1: But the idea of being a righteous person and doing right by God means you're going to be doing right by people. 

Speaker 3: Correct. That's right. 

Speaker 1: And then you get these narratives—

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Of Abraham—  

Speaker 3: Not doing right by people.

Speaker 1: Not doing right by people. 

Speaker 3: Totally. Yes. That's right. 

Speaker 1: And then, it all culminates this climactic act of surrendering all of that back to God again. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. So you could say he's a mixed bag. 

Speaker 1: He's a mixed bag.

Speaker 3: He's a mixed bag. Yeah. 

Speaker 1: But when Paul reflects on it—

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 1: He's focusing on the trust and not—

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 1: The right relationships that he developed amongst people. 

Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. 

Speaker 1: So, which is it, is it doing right by others or is it trusting God? 

Speaker 3: Exactly. It's both, it's the same word <laugh> to be righteous and do righteousness. To be someone who does right by God is to be someone who does right by other people. 

Speaker 1: But you got Abraham, who is being right by God—

Speaker 3: Yes. 

Speaker 1: While not being right to other people. 

Speaker 3: Yes. So what a surprise, that on the basis of trust, God will declare the ungodly to be people who are in right standing with him. Man, that is a generous, extremely generous kind of God. Right? Isn't that Paul's point? 

Speaker 1: I, I guess it is <laugh>.

Speaker 3: “One who justifies the ungodly” (Romans 4:5). That's what he says in Romans. So, yeah. My point is, these two nuances of meaning of the word are, they're actually really close together. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: To be declared righteous by God means to be someone who did right by God. Which means that in your life you'll do right by other people who are made in the image of that God that you are doing right by, by doing right to them. 

Speaker 1: So Jesus says, here's someone who is not taking care of the poor and the oppressed. When that person meets God and going to declare them as righteous—  

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. He says, nope, didn't do it. You didn't—

Speaker 3: Do right by me. 

Speaker 1: You didn't do right by me.

Speaker 3: Because you didn't do right by them. 

Speaker 1: So that's that first kind of layer of righteousness, doing right. Now, what if that person said, ah, yes, yes, God, but I do trust you and I have faith in you. I see that I screwed up. 

Speaker 3: Oh, sure. 

Speaker 1: Father Abraham screwed up too—  

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Speaker 1: But I want to surrender—  

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Then would God say, I'll declare you as righteous?

Speaker 3: My first response is, I’m not God. So I have no idea <laugh> what to say about anybody. You know, there's the sub theme of this, about God as the one who searches the heart, there are Proverbs and Psalms about this. This is about why God tests people. 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: To discern what is in them, this kind of thing. So yeah. I think God and his wisdom and generosity will be just and fair and generous with how he evaluates people. But he evaluates us. He's evaluating us. 

Speaker 1: But that's the point, is there's this moment—  

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Where God will declare—

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Your standing. 

Speaker 3: Totally. Yeah. Totally. Uh, these are age-old questions—  

Speaker 1: Yeah. Totally. 

Speaker 3: In the Christian tradition. And you can see James and Paul reflecting and working all these, all these themes— the fact that God would, uh, be generous to me and overlook my failures. But the moment that becomes an escape clause for me to begin compromising, then I need to get some holy fear and trembling. And that's just a tension that the Biblical authors, uh, refuse to solve for us, because I think it's the drama of the life of following Jesus—  

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: Is to trust that God will be generous with me—  

Speaker 1: While I pursue righteousness. 

Speaker 3: Well, while I do righteousness. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Not while I do, yeah. Sit on my arse and—  

Speaker 1: And just expect God to—

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Check me off the list because of some prayer I did. 

Speaker 3: Totally. That's right. The good life belongs to those who hunger and thirst for rightness. 

Speaker 1: Right-eousness.

Speaker 3: So, first of all, if you hunger and thirst for it, it's showing that it's something that you're not seeing or experiencing. 

Speaker 1: Hmm. Right relationships are not happening. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. This thing is, it's not something you have in the present. 

Speaker 1: Mm-Hmm. 

Speaker 3: Which compels me to think it's that first meaning, of people doing right by each other and therefore right by God. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: There's a serious lack of that, that I see going on around me—  

Speaker 1: Mm. 

Speaker 3: And it puts me in a constant state of agitation—  

Speaker 1: Yes. 

Speaker 3: Anxiety and discontent. 

Speaker 1: The blisters forming.

Speaker 3: The blister. Yeah. The blister. They see a world of people who, uh, are being deprived of—  

Speaker 1: Righteousness. 

Speaker 3: Righteousness. And they see people taking advantage of each other, and they see people doing injustice, and they see some people ignoring it all and doing great, looks like they're doing great. And it just grieves them. 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: It's another one of these paradoxes. This is similar to, um, “The good life belongs to those who grieve.”

Speaker 1: Because you're grieving over the lack of equity, of harmony, and wholeness—  

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative>

Speaker 1: In relationships. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: And what Jesus is saying is, yes, you’re grieving.

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Yes, you want that—  

Speaker 3: If you're hungering for it, what you desire is a time and a place when there is true justice. 

Speaker 1: Yes. 

Speaker 3: Ultimate justice, when everybody does right by everybody. If you are not hungering and thirsting for people to do right by each other, you're not paying attention. 

Speaker 1: If you're hungering and thirsting for it, that means you've developed a palate for the Kingdom of God. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: And yeah, you're ready. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. 

Speaker 2: So righteousness, doing right by God, doesn't bother me too much. I think the thing that sticks uppermost in my brain is that hunger-and-thirst thing. I mean, that's uncomfortable. In other words, it should bother me when the world isn't lined up with God's sense of what's right and wrong, and when people aren't treating each other right. In the same way I make moves to get water and food— like, I don't wait for somebody else to take care of me, unless I'm a baby— I need to be intentional and active about helping to set things right. You’ve got to get in there, like Jon said, get some blisters. Okay. Let's move on, take a look at the next Beatitude. Religious word alert. “The good life is for the merciful.”

Speaker 3: Second part of this triad. “The good life belongs to those who show mercy, because they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7).

Speaker 1: Yeah. And this is a big theme in Jesus's teachings of— Forgive. If you don't forgive others, you will not be forgiven. 

Speaker 3: Yes. In fact, there's the famous parable of the guy who's forgiven a debt. 

Speaker 1: Yes. And then he doesn't forgive a debt owed him. 

Speaker 3: Correct. And the conclusion of that is the guy who holds the debt saying to the guy who owes him money, saying, “Shouldn't you have shown mercy—” 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: “To your fellow? Just as I showed mercy to you?” 

Speaker 1: Right. 

Speaker 3: So, and it's the same word. 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: So yeah, mercy here actually has a very specific nuance. 

Speaker 1: Forgiving a debt. 

Speaker 3: It's forgiving someone who's wronged you or owes you. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: That's the specific meaning of mercy in the Gospel of Matthew. Wrong has been done. 

Speaker 1: Yeah, how else do you make right relationships when there's so much chaos?

Speaker 3: Yes. You have to find a way to, yeah, forgive. As, uh, Bishop Desmond Tutu said— Archbishop sin South Africa— “There is no future for the human race without forgiveness. There will be no way forward for us on individual or corporate levels without the practice of forgiveness.” And that's huge theme in Jesus’s teachings. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Ah, here's what's interesting. You actually know this word, the Greek word, mercy. It's the Greek word eleos, which we talked about in past conversations in a word study about, um, The Loyal Love of God, in the Exodus 34:6 series. 

Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Okay. 

Speaker 3: Um, so the Hebrew word khesed, which means love, generosity and loyalty. Loyalty was translated by the Greek translators of Septuagint with a variety of words, but one of the most common ones was a Greek word, eleos, mercy. And so the question is, is Jesus talking merely about forgiveness, or is he loading this Greek word with its Hebrew meaning of khesed? 

Speaker 3: So what's interesting is that in the Gospel of Matthew this word appears quite a bit, eleos, the Greek word, with the idea of khesed. So, for example, um, there's multiple stories, healing stories, where people who are in really desperate situations call out to Jesus. And what they ask him is to “Show us eleos, son of David.” So this is what the blind men say to Jesus. It's usually translated, “have mercy on us.” Or the Canaanite woman, I think whose daughter is sick, “Have mercy on me.” So it sounds weird in English, because we think “have mercy on me” means I did something wrong, please forgive me. 

Speaker 1: It’s like “uncle” <laugh>. 

Speaker 3: <laugh> Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1: Uncle, uncle.

Speaker 3: No. And this is like, hey, listen, Jesus, you don't owe me. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3: You, you don't know me, and you don't owe me. Could you show me this kindness by restoring my body? That's what they're asking over and above. So when you're saying, show me khesed, um, treat me like family, treat me— 

Speaker 1: Yes. 

Speaker 3: Treat me like you would a family member that you're going above and beyond. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: So within our social relationships, within the Biblical imagination, there's people that you are already connected to, and you have a duty and obligation to them. 

Speaker 1: Okay, so it's like, you've got your neighbors. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: And it's like, do right by your neighbor.

Speaker 3: That's right. That's righteousness. 

Speaker 1: But you got your family and your close friends— 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 1: And it's like, I'm not going to just do right by you. 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 1: I'm going to—  

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Go above and beyond. 

Speaker 3: Yes. 

Speaker 1: I'm going to align myself with you. I'm going to show you so much favor and grace and kindness and love—

Speaker 3: Yep. 

Speaker 1: It's based off of this familial loyalty that we have together. That's khesed.

Speaker 3: That's right. 

Speaker 1: Okay. 

Speaker 3: And in Jesus's mind, having that kind of love towards another is actually the ultimate goal and purpose of being a human image of God— is to love God and love your neighbor. And, and so this shades very quickly into Jesus's commands to love, using the Greek word agapē, which gets us into a whole other discussion. But the eleos Greek word rendering, the Hebrew word khesed, is about that familial bond. Which makes it amazing later in Matthew, when a Canaanite woman comes up to Jesus—  

Speaker 1: Wow. 

Speaker 3: And is saying, could, would you show me khesed? 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: And so, I would invite the reader, if, um, you're a note-taker, Psalm 136, uh, has the word khesed in it in more times than one literary unit in the whole Bible <laugh>. Uh, and it retells the story of God making creation and then of God calling and liberating Israel from slavery and bringing him into the promised land and rescuing them from their enemies. And every single line to the poem is punctuated with the line, “His khesed endures forever.” So the whole history of Israel is seen as a gift of mercy that is loving kindness, that is khesed <laugh>. Uh, Israel didn't deserve it. Yahweh didn't have to do it, but he just did it because he chose to, and he's just that— that’s khesed. 

Speaker 1: Okay. 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Do you want to do away with mercy? Do you think we should find another English word? Familial love, too wordy?

Speaker 1: Yeah. What's hard with the word “mercy” is it doesn't mean what we're talking about. What's hard with the word “loyal love” is it still needs a lot of explanation, I think. 

Speaker 3: Yeah <laugh>. Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Blessed are those who— and kindness doesn't go far enough. What is a word about how you treat your family?

Speaker 3: Generous love? How good is life for those who love generously, they will be shown generous love. 

Speaker 1: That's an aspect of it. 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. I mean, you tend to love people that are close in, and we're talking about generous over abundant love, now we're getting it. Eleos and khesed.

Speaker 2: Abundant love. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. Here, maybe I'll close these reflections. Um, again, I'll just, I'll say it. Throughout this series, I've learned so much from the multi-volume commentary, uh, by W.D. Davies and Dale Allison, uh, about Sermon on the Mount. And they summarize eleos this way. They say, “Eleos connotes the idea of loyalty in a relationship. Hence, it would seem that Matthew was persuaded that while Jesus and his followers, in their acts of mercy and loving-kindness, were demonstrating their loyalty to God, that there were weightier matters of justice and mercy— or eleos— and faith that were neglected by Matthew and Jesus's opponents, namely the Pharisees. Throughout the Gospel of Matthew, this word, mercy, and its connected words, imply that merciful action is the concrete expression of your loyalty to God. And that, what God demands, is not so much activity directed to God, but loving-kindness directed towards other people.”

Speaker 3: And they're alluding, here, to another line in Matthew, where Jesus quotes from the prophet Hosea and says to the Pharisees, “God desires eleos, not sacrifices” (Hosea 6:6). Which, he actually doesn't mean God doesn't want sacrifices, but it's in comparison. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: If you're going to surrender something to God, you can do it in the form of sacrifice, and that's good and right, and God set that up in Leviticus. But if you're comparing offering a sacrifice versus the opportunity to surrender yourself in an act of generous love towards another, God will say, do that one every time and come offer the sacrifice later. 

Speaker 2: The good life belongs to those who embody khesed love, the ones who treat people like really close family with outrageous generosity in their love. Now, Israel never deserved that, but God was always faithful to give that. God's loyal love punctuates their whole story. There's actually just one story. God's loyal love goes on forever. That's the story. And Israel's life, and in fact, all of our lives punctuate that truth. Here's our last Beatitude for the day. “The good life belongs to the pure in heart.”

Speaker 3: Here's the last one of the middle triad, “The good life belongs to the pure in heart, because they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). Do you remember how the first triad ended with a quotation from the book of Psalms? 

Speaker 1: Yeah. “Blessed are the outsiders—"

Speaker 3: Yep. 

Speaker 1: “They will inherit the land” (Matthew 5:5).

Speaker 3: “They will inherit the land” (Psalm 37:11). It's a copy-paste, quotation from Psalm thirty-seven. 

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 3: Jesus concludes this triad with another copy-and-paste quotation from Psalm twenty-four, “Who can walk up to the hill of Yahweh and stand in his holy space? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his being falsehood or sworn deceitfully. He will receive blessing from Yahweh. He will be declared righteous, to be in right relationship with God.” “This—” verse six “— this is the generation of those who seek him, of those who seek your face, oh God of Jacob” (Psalms 24:3-6). 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: The good life belongs to the pure of heart. They're the ones who will look upon the face of God.

Speaker 1: Looking upon the face of God—  

Speaker 3: Hmm.

Speaker 1: In the Hebrew Bible, isn't that a very dangerous thing to do? 

Speaker 3: It is. But it's only dangerous if you live on the outside of Eden <laugh>. Right?

Speaker 1: Right. Okay. 

Speaker 3: Because if you're in Eden, “You're walking in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8).

Speaker 1: You’re walking. Yeah. 

Speaker 3: You're walking and talking. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: That's right. To see the face of God is shorthand for, to gain reentry back into Eden. Or in Revelation twenty-two, when Heaven on Earth are reunited, um, his servants— Oh, you know what? This is just coming to me in the moment. 

Speaker 1: Hmm. Some hyperlinks are happening in your brain. 

Speaker 3: Wow. Wow. Wow. So this is, yeah. The reunion, Heaven on Earth, this is the last page of the Bible. 

Speaker 1: Uh-huh <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: Uh, “He showed me the water, the river of the water of life, coming from the throne of God and the Lamb”—so the throne of the new Jerusalem is now where the Tree of Life is at the center of Eden— “flowing out of it” (Revelation 22:1-4). Uh—

Speaker 1: Tree of Life is sprouting up.

Speaker 3: Sprouting up, because the Tree of Life is the throne of God. In other words, in this new Jerusalem, Eden—  

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: At the center of it, is a thing from which flows the river. In the garden, the tree.

Speaker 1: It's the tree.

Speaker 3: Here, it's the throne of God and the Lamb. 

Speaker 1: Mm. 

Speaker 3: And that's because it's the Holy of Holies. 

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 3:   Uh, verse three, “There will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and the Lamb will be in it. His servants will serve him, they will see his face” (Psalm 22:1-4). To have access and reentry back into Eden—  

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Speaker 3: Is, uh, seeing the face. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. To look upon the face. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Mm-Hmm. 

Speaker 3: Uh, what, yeah— it’s the image. So this is all being hyperlinked to Moses on the mountain. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative> 

Speaker 3: Show me your face. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: And he says, you can't, because, here, you know, outside of Eden, it's dangerous, you'll die.

Speaker 1: So he saw, like, the back of God.

Speaker 3: He sees the back. Yeah. Such a great metaphor for the indescribable.

Speaker 1: <laugh> So this, is this getting into the holiness theme? 

Speaker 3: Hmm. Uh, this is getting in, well, it is, but um, it's using purity language. 

Speaker 1: Purity language. 

Speaker 3: Yep. 

Speaker 1: Which is like, so in, like, Leviticus—  

Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah. Ritual purity. These, these ritual acts you do as, um, to symbolize the state of my heart. So I wash my body of physical impurities before I enter into the temple courtyards. That's very common. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: Um, and you do it as a symbol of, I want to shed myself of death and mortality and also of my own moral failures—  

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: And come into your presence in a pure state. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 3: Um, but the trick is, is that's, you know, it's a symbol and external thing—  

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: But you want it to be true of what's internal as well.  

Speaker 1: I get this picture of purity being when everything is right. 

Speaker 3: Mm. 

Speaker 1: And that an impurity, then, even the smallest thing that is introducing chaos and disorder into something that is good and right—  

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative> 

Speaker 1: And I kind of get this picture of, in order to really be in God's presence, like any amount of impurity is going to, then, just get magnified and, like—

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. Compromise you.

Speaker 3: To be pure of heart means that my behavior that's observable to others is doing right by God and doing right by others. And that it's matched completely by my internal life’s motivations—

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: That are doing right by God and right by others. 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying? Like, because I think we all learn pretty quickly—  

Speaker 1: You can fake it. 

Speaker 3: You can fake it. Oh, from a young age, we learn how to manipulate others. 

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. 

Speaker 3: So there you go. That's it. Jesus is putting his finger on that. This is one of those moments in the sermon where you're like, oh man, well, cross me off that list. <laugh>, I, uh, you know, I can get with a hunger and thirst for righteousness—  

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: I resonate with that, but this one?

Speaker 1: For it to be connected to my true motivations. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. Whew. It’s a pretty tall order. 

Speaker 1: It's a super tall order <laugh>. So in one sense, you're like, okay, I get it. That's the purpose of humanity. 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 1: Uh, that's the relationship God designed humanity for. 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm <affirmative>. 

Speaker 1: And so it's this ideal. But then you think about it practically. I think about it and I'm, like, how many minutes of the day could I even say I’m anywhere near what this is asking for?

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 1: Let's say, like, the purpose of my day—

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 1: Was, just, wholeheartedly to try to be pure of heart all day. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: I wake up. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Speaker 1: And that's all I'm thinking about. 

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 1: It's my focus all day. 

Speaker 3: Mm.

Speaker 1: Like, how well could I do it? <laugh>

Speaker 3: Well, think of it this way. Uh, this is the third of a triad here, and the previous two were about doing right by others and generous acts of love. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. That's hard enough. 

Speaker 3: But in other words, I think the fact that the purity of heart comes as the third one to conclude all these behaviors— what we're talking about, here, isn't just behavior, it's character. The core character of a person. And I know that one of the important contributions of Biblical thought to the world—   and that the Protestant Reformation really kind of zeroed in on, alongside God's generous grace and mercy— is the compromised, mixed, confused, yucky nature of the human heart. 

Speaker 1: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: Um, depravity as it were. And you can overemphasize that to the degree of actually not being faithful to the full portrait of human nature in the Bible, because humans are a lot more in God's eyes than depraved. But that moral compromise nature is really a big emphasis in the biblical story. And because it's realistic. It's true. 

Speaker 1: That's why the psalmist says, “Give me clean hands and pure heart.”

Speaker 3: That's right, actually. Yeah. That's right. David, in Psalm 51, after murdering Uriah and committing adultery with Bathsheba, ask for God's forgiveness and says, God by your mercy, create the Genesis one language. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: What I need is a new creation, like, for my core, my thoughts, my desires, and my feelings. “Create in me a pure heart” (Psalm 51). 

Speaker 1: Hmm. 

Speaker 3: So we need a pure heart. And the pure heart is, um, the entry card to returning to Eden. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: So this whole, in Psalm 24, the idea of going up to the high mountain where you go into the Holy of Holies, this is all about the return to Eden, because the temple and the tabernacle are symbolic Edens. So this is about going past those cherubim and the fiery sword that's going to be, it’s going to cut away some stuff that you might think is really important to who you are. 

Speaker 3: But God says you’ve got to lose that stuff if you want to be with me, and I want you to be with me. So let's find a way to purge that stuff in a way that doesn't kill you. That's essentially God's mission. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: In the storyline of the Bible. So God's on a mission to make us pure of heart. It's possible. 

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: I think you were just lamenting, sorry. This is the whole kind of rambling response—

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Speaker 3: To you lamenting, like, is that even possible? And there's one sense in which, wow, I'm not sure I can do that. But then, there's another sense, in which it's important to recognize the Biblical authors and God really thinks humans are capable of this. They're capable through God's new creation, power and presence and mercy and the power of God's Spirit. But it's what we are made for. We're made to be pure of heart. 

Speaker 2: God is on a mission to make us pure of heart. In our next and final segment, let's listen in as Dan Gummel talks with one of our BibleProject artists about how she chose to portray this idea of pureness of heart. 

Speaker 5: Well, hey everybody, this is Dan Gummel and I'm sitting here in the BibleProject kitchen because, uh, it was a little bit too loud in the animation studio. And I'm sitting here with a friend of mine, Rose Mayer. So I want to talk about that image that you guys associate with, um, being pure of heart. 

Speaker 6: So in this shot, what we're doing is watching the scholar interact with her own perceptions of what it means to be pure of heart. 

Speaker 1: And this one really raises the bar. To be part of this revolution, my heart needs to be so pure, I could look directly at God. 

Speaker 5: So the way it's drawn up is you have this tall scholar figure in these very impressive religious robes, and he's standing on this little pedestal, and then this light shines from above and he kind of has this chest puffed out, like swelled up, and he's looking up at this light. 

Speaker 6: So this illustrates the scholar presenting himself to God, like, check out how good I am doing. And this little bubble that pops up, of a heart on his chest, is his own idea of what he is. 

Speaker 3: Jesus knows that all of our choices, even our good ones, are often driven by mixed motives. 

Speaker 5: All of a sudden, the platform, like, swivels, and he is now facing away from the light, he's kind of hunched over in the shadow. So, like, he's a little bit more crouched over and is a little darker. 

Speaker 6: So this is just, like, drawing the rear side of a penny. You, you want to show everybody your good face, but you also have a backside, and sometimes you don't even know what's back there. And so if you, if you flip anybody around, you're going to see some stuff that's not as appealing and that's not what you would be showing God. That's the inverse of what you want to show anybody. The problem that we're trying to illustrate in this shot is the idea that we can get away with our false presentation. It's about being honest with ourselves. 

Speaker 5: That's really cool. Well, thank you Rose. Uh, it's been really fun. 

Speaker 1: That's it for today's episode. 

Speaker 2: Next week, we'll look at the third and final triad, which focuses on being peacemakers and on uncomfortable but crucial way of life for those who follow Jesus. 

Speaker 3: Biblical peace is not the absence of conflict, it's the presence of harmony. 

Speaker 1: BibleProject is a crowdfunded nonprofit, and we exist to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus and everything that we create as free because of the generous support of thousands of people just like you. 

Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being a part of this with us. 

Speaker 7: Hi, this is Cooper here to read the credits. Dan Gummel is the Creative Producer for today's show. Production of today's episode is by producer Lindsey Ponder; managing producer, Cooper Peltz; producer Colin Wilson. Stephanie Tam is our consultant and editor. Tyler Bailey is our audio engineer and editor, and he also provided the sound design and mix. For today's episode, Brad Witty does our show notes. Hannah Woo provides the annotations for our app. Original Sermon on the Mount Music is by Richie Cohen and the Bible project theme song is by TENTS. Special thanks to Ben Tertin and Rose Mayer, and your hosts, Jon Collins and Michelle Jones. 

Speaker 10: Hi, this is Stephanie and I'm from Malaysia. I first heard about BibleProject in 2017, and I fell in love with it immediately. I used BibleProject for my personal devotion and Bible study with friends. My favorite thing about BibleProject is its animation. I'm a visual learner and it brings the Bible alive for me. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. We are a crowdfunded project by people like me. Find free videos, study notes, podcasts, classes, and more at bibleproject.com.