After this preamble, Matthew opens the first of five major teaching sections of Jesus in his gospel. The number five is reminiscent of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. Similarly, the reference to Jesus’ ascending a mountain brings to mind Moses’ ascent of Mount Sinai when receiving the law. This Mosaic connection is later reinforced by Jesus’ repeated pronouncements, “You have heard that it was said . . . but I say to you” (Matt. 5:21–22, 27–28, 31–32, 33–34, 38–39, 43–44). Matthew’s message is clear: Jesus is a new and greater Moses who authoritatively teaches and applies the law of God (see Matt. 7:28–29).
In this inaugural address in Matthew’s gospel, at the inception of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches His followers about the character of kingdom citizens. As a master teacher, He presents these characteristics in the form of eight memorable Beatitudes, each pronouncing a blessing on those who possess a given character trait, with the addition of two metaphorical attributes, salt and light. Thus, Jesus echoes the Ten Words or Commandments in the law of Moses by positing ten characteristics of those who will inherit and inhabit the eternal kingdom of God. Notably, while “seeing the crowds,” Jesus directed His words to His disciples (Matt. 5:1–2).
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:3)
Jesus starts to paint His portrait of the kingdom citizen with a perhaps surprising attribute: poverty of spirit. “Blessed”—that is, eternally favored by God—are those who know themselves to be spiritually poor and needy, like the man in Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee is boastful, arrogant, and proud of all his religious accomplishments, while the tax collector, “standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ” (Luke 18:13). Those who know themselves to be spiritually poor keenly sense their need for God and their dependence on Him. They plead for mercy, because they know that they could never stand before a righteous, holy God on their own merits.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matt. 5:4)
In the next beatitude, Jesus affirms a piece of Old Testament wisdom as enunciated in the book of Ecclesiastes: “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart” (Eccl. 7:2). In view of the fact that all of us will die one day, we should live in light of our eternal destiny. Therefore, “the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure” (Eccl. 7:4, NIV). Impenitent pleasure-seekers ultimately engage in a denial of eternal realities, while the wise person is conscious of his final destiny, mourning his own sin and the sins of others around him. Conscious of their own shortcomings and rebellion against God, they thrust themselves on God’s mercy and will receive comfort and forgiveness.

The War for American Independence was a significant turning point for the Presbyterian Church. As the church re-imagined America’s role in God’s plan, they came to wrestle with national sins that threatened that future, specifically slavery and the continued division in Christ’s kingdom. Repenting these sins, they knew, was the only real safeguard for both American independence and the country’s new transformative role in the world. Although slavery would, by the war’s end, take a back seat to spiritual schism, it was not forgotten and would be addressed specifically in 1787. Independence meant that the process of rebuilding lay ahead and the Presbyterian leadership was primarily concerned with uniting Christians for this purpose. However, when the Presbyterians restored Christian unity to its place of priority, it was not as it had been before the war. A nationalist spirit had been joined to their cooperative hopes and it was expected that this interdenominational nationalism would help to transform the newly independent states into an idyllic Christian republic that would benefit and expand the kingdom of Christ. 

There was no turning back after the morning of April nineteenth.[1] When the militiamen under Captain John Parker defended themselves against the British regulars at Lexington, they signaled a transition in the imperial crisis. What was still primarily a war of words before the sun broke the horizon that morning in 1775 had intensified into an armed conflict by the falling of that evening’s shadows. Meeting in Philadelphia shortly after this bellwether moment, the ruling body of the Presbyterian church, the Synod of New York and Philadelphia, wrestled alongside their fellow colonists with the repercussions. In the course of their annual meeting the synod decided to write a pastoral letter to the congregations under their care and throughout the colonies.[2]
This letter set out four things very clearly. First, God was still sovereign in all things, and that “affliction springeth not out of the dust,” meaning, in other words, it was time to examine themselves and repent. Second, the synod insisted that they were still, and should be, loyal British subjects who hoped for reconciliation and peace. “Let it appear,” they wrote, “that you only desire the preservation and security of those rights which belong to you as freemen and Britons, and that reconciliation upon these terms is your most ardent desire.” Third, they affirmed that the elusive theory of justifiable rebellion was well within reach. If “the British ministry shall continue to enforce their claims by violence,” then Presbyterians should fight, alongside the rest of the colonists.[3] Fourth, the synod noted that while the conflict lasted its members needed to maintain colonial unity by both supporting the Continental Congress and promoting “a spirit of candour, charity, and mutual esteem … towards those of different religious denominations.”[4] Wearing their orthodoxy and loyalty on their sleeves, the Presbyterians demonstrated that they saw no separation of the spiritual and the secular and that they would strive in this time of crisis to build and preserve unions within and for these blended realms.
It would be a mistake, however, to see these union efforts by the Presbyterians in May 1775 as occurring in a vacuum. Seventeen years earlier the Presbyterians had embarked on a mission that made union building a priority for the church. This effort of 1758 was prompted by the schism that had rent the church since 1741. The reunion of 1758 was not intended to be a private affair. The Presbyterians had very publicly split and so they decided to very publicly reunite. In this spirit, they published an account that combined their reunion efforts as well as four promises for the colonial reading world. They first promised to “study the Things that make for Peace;” second, to lead exemplary lives, both in word and deed; third, to ensure that their doctrines were orthodox and evangelical; and fourth, to commend “ourselves to every Man’s Conscience in the Sight of God.” There is no doubt that these efforts were first intended to heal the divisions within the church but this should not obscure the Presbyterians’ intentions towards their fellow colonists in other churches. The synod made this point clearly when it wrote that the ultimate “Design of our Union is the Advancement of the Mediator’s Kingdom.”[5]
Thus, 1758 was the year the Presbyterians formally began an effort to heal the various divisions within the Body of Christ. This was no small undertaking, even if the initial scope was limited to colonial North America. Still, the church did find some success, as can be seen in their coordinated mission work with the Congregationalists among the Native Americans—including the ordination of the first Native American minister, Samson Occom—and their cooperative efforts with the Anglicans in Virginia to create an orderly and peaceful co-existence among the growing number of Protestant churches in the colony. Yet, for all of their notable success in the years that followed, the Presbyterians were still a long way from achieving their goal when British Prime Minister George Grenville introduced the Stamp Act resolutions, which helped spark the American Revolution. As the British Constitutional Crisis developed over the real and perceived challenges to colonial religious and civil liberties, some Presbyterians saw unions with other Christians as an ideal way not only to protect their liberties but also to strengthen the kingdom of Christ. As is evident in the synod’s pastoral letter in the wake of Lexington and Concord, this blending of spiritual and temporal objectives would continue throughout the crisis, all the while altering their original cooperative vision established in 1758.
When Presbyterians throughout the colonies responded to the synod’s four-fold charge in May 1775, most embraced rather than rejected the ruling body’s petition. They joined with their fellow Americans and served as soldiers, chaplains, congressmen, and home support. One example is found in the minister and congregation of Philadelphia’s Third Presbyterian Church, often simply referred to as the “Pine Street” church.[6] Third Presbyterian’s reputation as the “Church of the Patriots” was well earned and a March 1776 worship service led by Rev. George Duffield—future chaplain to the Continental Congress—illustrates this point well. While Duffield supported the synod’s four points in his sermon he also touched on a new idea that was becoming increasingly popular—God had chosen America for a special purpose; it was to be a safe haven for liberty. Duffield reassured his congregation that although through their violent measures the British leadership was actively opposing this plan, God would not be thwarted.[7] “Can it be supposed,” he asked, “that God who made man free … should forbid freedom, already exiled from Asia and Africa, and under sentence of banishment from Europe—that he should FORBID her to erect her banners HERE, and constrain her to abandon the earth?”[8] No, he said, America was to be the new standard-bearer for liberty and would continue as such “until herself shall play the tyrant, forget her destiny, disgrace her freedom, and provoke her God.” Giving their approval of the minister and the message, as one church historian has noted, the congregation let fly with shouts of “To arms! to arms!”[9]
The number of Presbyterians like Duffield borrowing the Puritan’s elect nation ideology increased following the Declaration of Independence. In their various capacities as ministers and laymen, Jacob Green, William McKay Tennent, John Murray, and Abraham Keteltas, to name but a few, drew on the idea.[10] Yes, Great Britain had once been the defender of civil and religious liberty in the world, but they had let that mantle slip. Were Americans worthy, then God would bless them with that honor and “this land of liberty will be glorious on many accounts: Population will abundantly increase, agriculture will be promoted, trade will flourish, religion unrestrained by human laws, will have free course to run and prevail, and America [will] be an asylum for all noble spirits and sons of liberty from all parts of the world.”[11] In this view America had tremendous potential, but as the Presbyterians warned, this glorious future was dependent on Americans humbling themselves through repentance before a holy God. To be sure there were some notable Presbyterian loyalists who resisted the break with the empire, such as William Smith, Jr and William Allen, but on the whole, the Presbyterians were remarkable for rallying around the cause of an independent America that God had set apart for a special purpose.[12]
While the American colonists were not strangers to war, the scope and scale of the Revolutionary War was unprecedented in the history of the British North American colonies. The realities of war’s death and devastation raised difficulties for Presbyterians looking forward to the glorious state they believed God meant for them. The American cause, they still believed, was holy, yes, but something had to be wrong for them to suffer as they had. While many Americans endured devastating losses, a number of Presbyterians believed that the British were singling them out for special punishment as both their institutions and ministers frequently found themselves targeted. For example, following the battle of Long Island at the end of August 1776, the minister of the Presbyterian Church there, Ebenezer Prime, fled for safety. Although Prime escaped capture, his church did not. The British destroyed the minister’s library and they repurposed the sanctuary as a depot and barracks. The redcoats leveled the church cemetery to create a common and the gravestones were used to construct the troops’ ovens.

Read More
Related Posts:

Jesus there on the cross felt in His human soul a disruption of His fellowship with God. The disruption was real, and the agony which Jesus experienced as a result of it in His totally pure and uncalloused human soul is beyond our ability to comprehend. In His question from the cross, Jesus was talking about His experiencing through His human nature the wrath of God against sin.
We are today going to consider the middle of the seven sayings of the cross. The fourth word from the cross is “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Of all the seven, this is both the most mysterious and the most revealing. Of all the seven, it is the clearest expression of the suffering which Jesus experienced in our place as the payment for our sins. Yet of all the seven, it is also the most difficult for us to understand. Thinking about this cry of abandonment reminds us that God’s ways are past our finding out. We can know God, but we can never fully comprehend Him with our creaturely minds. As we come to the essence of our Lord’s atoning suffering, even Jesus in His humanity cries out “why.” Jesus in His divinity understands all mysteries, but Jesus in His humanity on this occasion cried out, “why.”
As we consider today’s text, we will be approaching the limits of what we can understand. We must prayerfully seek to understand more and more of God’s truth. Yet we must also be prepared to acknowledge in humility when we have reached those truths which are beyond even the grasp of an angel’s mind.
In order to provide some context for the fourth saying, I want to look today also at two other sayings, the second and the sixth. The second saying from the cross, found in the gospel according to Luke, is “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). The fourth statement is in our text for today in the gospel according to Mark. It is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The sixth statement is found in the gospel according to John. It is, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
We will look at these three sayings from the cross under the headings, Confidence, the Cry and Completion.
We will now consider the second saying from the cross under the heading Confidence. Jesus has been officially condemned as guilty by the Roman governor Pilate, even though Pilate also unofficially admitted that Jesus had done nothing worthy of death and was an innocent man. In God’s providence, that course of events fit perfectly with the spiritual reality. Jesus was indeed innocent of any crime, even sinless of any sin. Yet He was legally condemned for sins, not sins that He had committed, but our sins for which He voluntarily took responsibility. The Roman soldiers carried out the Roman sentence that resulted from the Roman condemnation. They nailed Jesus to a wooden cross, a tree of sorts. This also fit perfectly with the spiritual reality. According to the law of Moses, being hung on a tree is a sign of God’s curse. And Jesus was under God’s curse so that all who believe in Him might receive God’s blessing. So here we have Jesus condemned and cursed. Yet the second saying from the cross reveals to us that Jesus was optimistic even in these circumstances. He was optimistic because He was living by faith, faith in God’s revealed will, faith in the message of the Bible. That is why the writer to the Hebrews wrote in chapter twelve of his inspired letter that Jesus, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame. What joy? The joy of obeying His Heavenly Father. The joy of doing that work which was necessary for the salvation of those sinners whom the Father had sent Jesus to save. The joy of the anticipated exaltation with which Jesus knew that the Father would exalt Him after His work of humiliation was completed. Jesus had all these assurances because Jesus knew the Old Testament, the extent of the Scriptures in His day.
When the resurrected Jesus appeared to His twelve disciples in a closed room on the evening of the Sunday when Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus explained to them the Old Testament predictions of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection.
And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day…Luke 24:45-46
This message of Scripture is the basis for the confidence that Jesus had when He said to the believing thief on the cross: “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Speaking from the place of condemnation and curse, Jesus said with confidence that He would be in Paradise later that very day. Paradise is here a reference to heaven, the location of the New Jerusalem, that celestial holding place where the spirits of departed saints go to await the coming day of bodily resurrection. Jesus was not resurrected from the dead until Sunday, the third day after His death, but on Friday, the very day of His physical death, Jesus’ human spirit went to be with His Father in heaven. Jesus also spoke with confidence that the believing thief on the cross would also go to heaven that very day. Jesus died first, and Jesus’ human spirit was in heaven to greet the soul of the believing thief upon his arrival. Jesus knew when He spoke to the believing thief that He would complete His saving work upon the cross, the work which would be the basis for the thief’s salvation by grace through faith in Jesus.
Notice that Jesus said to the believing thief, “Assuredly, I say to you …” Some translations say, “Verily” and others say, “Truly.” The Greek word is a Greek spelling of the Hebrew word “Amen,” the same word that we say at the end of our prayers to express our confidence in the Lord to whom we are praying. As our Shorter Catechism says, “in testimony of our desire and assurance to be heard, we say, ‘Amen.’” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you,” or “Verily, I say to you,” or “Amen, I say to you,” because Jesus was confident in the outcome of His ordeal of suffering because of the witness of Scripture.
Let’s now consider the fourth saying of the cross under the heading, the Cry. Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” When Jesus cried out those words, He was quoting the first verse of the twenty-second Psalm, which we call the Psalm of the Cross. This is one of the passages from which Jesus in His humanity had learned that the Messiah must suffer and die and that God would deliver the Messiah from death.
This question taken from the first verse of the twenty-second Psalm is such a mysterious question as it applies to Jesus. Jesus is fully divine, and surely God cannot forsake God. And also, Jesus here addressed God as His God. How could Jesus here say, “My God, My God,” if God had forsaken Jesus? Those are good questions about Jesus’ question, and I am going to begin by stating what Jesus’ question does not mean.
This question about being forsaken does not mean that there was ever any disruption in the sweet eternal fellowship of the Godhead, in the perfect communion between the three members of the Godhead: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The Great “I AM” does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. No member of the Godhead is ever forsaken by any other member of the Godhead. That would be a most radical change in the very essence of God’s eternal being. Such is unthinkable.
Read More