Matthew 5-7 is Matthews account of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. It is something really popular that most people who have been in church have heard and can recognize portions of. The beginning few verses are called THE BEATITUDES. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled" Mt 5:6. There are 9 of them in total.
I say this a lot in ministry; when you read the Bible read it slowly so that you can catch all that is going on and ask yourself questions along the way.
One thing that became so powerful to me from these verses was the fact that the word "Blessed" in the original language means "Happy". Jesus was talking about happiness here and how to get it.
Our culture and humanity is pretty much built on a search for happiness. Everything that is advertised to us is advertised in a way that shows us how we will be happy if we buy this or that. Think of the things that you have purchased in the last few weeks, some of them may be based on a need, but there is a certain element of a search for happiness in there.
Human beings are searching for happiness and Jesus hits this topic at the very beginning of his message.
Here is what i see from these 9 statements about happiness. You can not attain happiness by trying to gain happiness. WEIRD right. But the Bible never says that we can gain happiness if we search for happiness but rather we will gain happiness if we search for something higher than happiness.
I think about it like this, i love New York Yankee hotdogs. Yes, the actual hot dogs from the stadium. But you cant get a hot dog from the game if you do not buy a ticket to the game (more expensive than a hot dog). You must go out and search and pay for something much higher than the hot dog, and the same is true with happiness.
If we are searching for happiness we will never get it, but rather if we search for righteousness we will gain both righteousness and happiness. INCREDIBLE>
we need to make sure that the way we are spending our lives are not simply for happiness but for the much higher calling we each have, righteousness.
