Count Your Blessings Trivia Quiz

Answer: Nine

Some consider that there are only eight beatitudes, and that the final one is an expansion of the eighth. However, the eighth beatitude identifies the cause of persecution as "for righteousness' sake", while the ninth says, "for My sake". Because of this clearly expressed distinction, I consider the last "Blessed are..." to be a ninth beatitude.

Answer: the Kingdom of heaven will be theirs

In the Beatitudes, Jesus deliberately set out to express His teaching in apparently paradoxical statements. When His audience heard Him say that it is those who are spiritually bankrupt whom God will bless, they would have said, "Huh? Say what?" (or the Aramaic equivalent) - and thereafter they would have listened more closely, to try to make sense of His teaching. Matthew 7:28,29 records how the people were amazed by the authority with which Jesus taught. Christian teaching is that Christian salvation - the blessing of God, if you will - begins with confession: the recognition of spiritual bankruptcy.

Answer: they will be comforted

Jesus continues with mourning, in which, according to Christian teaching, He is addressing the repentance of those who have acknowledged their sinful state. In simple language, Jesus has said: Those of you who know you are bad people, you will be blessed. Now He says: Those of you who are sorry that you are bad, you will be blessed.

Answer: they will inherit the earth

In today's world, meekness is not often seen as a virtue. However, the meekness in this text can be interpreted not as a contemptible, put-upon, spineless weakness, but as a right attitude of submission to higher authority. In this view, Jesus is here speaking of human beings in their right relationship to God: in submission to God. If you are meek (and not proud) before God, Jesus says, then you will be blessed. How? You will inherit the earth, God's creation. Those who consider that the idea of the meek being the ones to inherit the earth is laughable, should perhaps bear in mind the thought that those who inherit usually do so from the deceased!

Answer: They deal with the restoration of the relationship of sinners with God

In Christian teaching these three beatitudes may be summed up as Confession, Repentance and Submission: I confess I am a sinner, and spiritually bankrupt; I repent of my sins, and mourn because I want to do better (and cannot); and I acknowledge that God is my Lord and my Judge.

Answer: they will be filled

This is a great promise: if a person truly longs to be holy; if he or she hungers and thirsts for righteousness as someone starving to death hungers for food and one dying of thirst craves water - then that person will be filled, completely satisfied.

In the context, this is not the same thing as saying that if you want, you will have. According to Christian teaching, having been restored to relationship with God, then if you seek personal holiness with the single-minded passion of the starving and the thirsty, you will, through the grace of God, attain it.

Answer: they will obtain mercy

This is such a deceptively simple teaching. But in ancient Judea, as in the world we know today, the merciful were likely to be taken advantage of. According to Christian teaching, this beatitude addresses a person's relationship with God rather than with other people: God wants His followers to show mercy to others, and as they are obedient to Him in this, then they will be blessed in receiving mercy from Him for themselves.

Answer: they will see God

Who is pure in heart? What human being can say, "I am pure. I never do or think or say anything that is not pure and holy."? One way to read the beatitude with a Christian understanding is that purity of heart is something that is of Jesus Christ, and the only way in which one can be pure in heart is to become Christian, receiving the new life of Jesus Christ in one's own heart.
The disciples of Jesus are promised that the more closely they walk in His steps, and the more closely their lives and values reflect those of their Messiah, the more clearly they will see God.

Answer: They deal with the relationship of the saved to God, and becoming holy

As the first three beatitudes dealt with justification, so, in Christian understanding, these middle three deal with sanctification, with becoming holy. Christians believe that this text teaches that desiring holiness, and practicing holiness, in one who has been brought into right relationship with God, will bear the fruit of holiness and purity of heart.

Answer: they will be called sons of God

The original Greek is far less emphatic in gender than the New King James Version; it is quite acceptable to read, 'they will be called children of God.'
Why this blessing? According to Christian doctrine this is because, in being peacemakers, in acting to bring peace, they are displaying a recognisable image of their divine Father, as children often resemble their parents in appearance, character and quirks.

Answer: the Kingdom of Heaven will be theirs

With this Beatitude Jesus comes full circle: the promised blessing is the same as that offered first, to the poor in spirit. The New Testament Bible teaches in many places that those who follow Christ, who do God's will and reject the accepted ways of the world, will be persecuted and rejected by those who belong to the world. (See, for example, John 15:18-25.) Most Christians believe that those who have been saved and made holy will inevitably undergo suffering as a natural consequence of having become enemies of Satan and his world - but in the end they will be full citizens of God's eternal Kingdom, while the world is destined for destruction.

Answer: rejoice, because they have a great reward in heaven

This, to modern (and especially Western) thinking can seem a little too much like pie in the sky when you die ... unless you actually believe this promise. For these believers, the pie is just as real as the sky and the earth itself, and the promise as sure and reliable as gravity.

Answer: They deal with the life of God's people in the world around them

In Christianity, Jesus' teaching in the Beatitudes summarizes salvation of the sinner, purification of the believer, and the work of the saved in the world: these last three beatitudes address the latter, and warn of suffering in this world even as they promise blessings in the next. For anyone other than a Christian, this is foolishness. For a disciple of the Lord Jesus, these are His commands, which are to be obeyed.

Answer: The Prophets

"As they did to the prophets, so they will do to you." The whole history of God's dealing with His people, as recorded in the Bible, is a record of repeated faithlessness and idolatry, and a people who many times turned on the prophets who brought God's Word to them. Matthew 23:37-39 records Jesus' lament over Jerusalem, and in Matthew 21:33-46 Jesus tells the parable of the landlord and his vineyard, on the same theme.

Answer: "Woe to you, when all men speak well of you..."

The full quotation is, "Woe to you when all men speak well of you,
For so did their fathers to the false prophets." The parallel is clear: if the world, and especially the worldly, approve of you, then in God's sight you are (probably) doing something wrong.
The Bible records that friendship with the world is enmity with God. (James 4:4) In 1 John 2:15 we read, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." (NKJV)
Jesus tells us in Matthew Chapter 6 to store up our treasures in heaven, not on earth, and He concludes in verse 21, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (NKJV)