Summary: The Beatitudes function as the doorway into the sermon on the mount. In it, Jesus describes who the kingdom of heaven has come for and what it will do to them and for them. It describes who the disciple of Jesus is and what their new life in Christ is all about. If we cannot hear and understand what He says here, then we won’t understand what comes next in his teaching from the mountain. The disciple of Jesus is the poor in spirit, the unable, and lowly. The disciples is in a state of objective need, but the kingdom of heaven is at hand! Jesus has come to give his disciples the thing that they lack!