I’ll close out this week’s discussion on “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” with this illustration.  Some time back Kim and I took the girls over to Desoto Caverns.  As we waited at the mouth of the tunnel there was a lot of chatter and excitement and that escalated as we walked into the man made tunnel leading to the cavern, but the moment we entered the cavern something happened—everyone became silent.

Even Hollie, who was holding my hand, noticed it—she said quietly, “Everyone stopped talking.”  We crossed the threshold of something spectacular and instantly became aware of our insignificance. 

On any given Saturday one team will hit a field goal and one team will miss one—thousands of hearts will rejoice and thousands of hears will sink, but the sun will come up on Sunday and God will still be God.  In the daily activity of our lives we really need to catch a glimpse of the eternal.  It changes everything.

Luke 12:31 says, “But seek his kingdom and these things will be given you as well.”  Jesus goes on to say, “Don’t be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.  Sell your possessions and give to the poor.  Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there you heart will be also.”

Why bother with the stuff that makes us seem rich in the world’s eyes, but won’t last beyond your last breath?  Why not look at the Greatness of our God and see your poverty instead.  In seeing that you are able to call out to Him and when you do He will give you the Kingdom!  That will last forever!!

Being blessed starts with understanding that you are dependant.  We are all poor in spirit, but the blessed ones are the ones who know it.  Jesus isn’t even saying you are blessed because you became poor—He is saying, you are blessed because in the midst of your deplorable condition God moved upon you redemptively. 

We struggle with this don’t we? Our culture tells us that being blessed begins with what you have.  If you don’t have it—go get it and then you’ll be happy, but Jesus goes against all of that.  If you are going to be Kingdom Minded you will have to let Him get rid of the earthly mindset.  Poverty of Spirit is foundational to salvation.  I have nothing to give, I have nothing I can do, I have nothing because I am nothing without Him—I am simply in need.  I am a man dead in sin in need of life and I have no hope of bringing it to myself.

The word Jesus used for poor isn’t just poor—it is beggar poor.  It pictures someone crouching and begging.  It describes someone who is totally dependent upon others for life.  Have you come to that place spiritually?  Do we really think we have something to bring to God’s table that will make us worthy of sitting there?  Have we developed a theology that somehow makes us equal with God—worse yet, have we developed a theology that makes God subservient to us?  Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit—for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

This may be the coolest Systematic Theology lesson you’ll ever get!

I hope you will take time to read today’s blog on the first Beatitude, but if you have time watch the following video.  What a great reminder!

As we study the Beatitudes we will see a standard of living that runs counter to everything the world practices and holds dear.  To live this way will cause the world to do one of two things—they will be attracted to Jesus and get born again or they will persecute you by lashing out at Jesus in you.  When you boil it down—that is really the only two reactions possible for someone who abides in Christ.  The abiding life promises a blessed happiness—joy in the midst of despair, peace in the middle of conflict, and happiness that is not based on circumstances.  In fact, Jesus speaks of a blessedness that cannot be “produced by the world or by circumstances, and it cannot be taken away by the world or by circumstances.  It is not produced externally and cannot be destroyed externally.”  (MacArthur) 

Where does it all start?  Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  Chapter four tells us that Jesus was going about preaching and teaching and healing every disease and sickness among the people.  “News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pains, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them.”  As a result, people were coming from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem and Judea.  We can be sure that many, if not most, of the people were poor and considered to be outcasts in their society.  Maybe Jesus looks over at one of the poorest of the poor and says, “Blessed—happy—are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Phillips translates this verse like this—“How happy are those who know their need for God, for the Kingdom of heaven is theirs.”  That is the meaning Jesus is getting across—He isn’t talking about financial poverty—He is talking about spiritual poverty.  The life of abundance starts with realizing and seeing our spiritual bankruptcy before God.  We are sinners, were dead in our sin, we are under His wrath, and we have nothing to offer God, nothing to plead, and nothing to earn His favor, but when we get to that place we find it isn’t about us at all—it is about His loving grace.

Does the fact that Jesus is in you and that you are in Jesus change the way you live?  What impact does being a Christian have on your daily decisions, on your daily living, or in your relationships?  Does it change anything at all?  I read the story of Dirk Wilens.  Dirk was a Mennonite in Holland in the sixteenth-century.  The Mennonites were outlawed and when caught they were often executed.  He was being chased across a lake that was frozen and his pursuer broke through the ice.  In response to his cries for help he turned and rescued the man who was grateful and astonished, but nevertheless he arrested him.  A few days later he was executed by being burned at the stake.  He was killed because of his Christ-likeness. 

It isn’t supposed to happen like that is it?  In our cultural Christianity God is supposed to rescue us from things like that.  He is supposed to take care of our checking account, give us the nicest cars, the best clothes, the biggest homes, and our children are never supposed to be sick.  Truth is, if our version of Christianity were Biblical the cross would have never happened.  How could someone as good as Jesus, be loved by God and at the same time go to the cross?  If there is anything assumed in the Sermon on the Mount it is this—following Jesus changes everything!  How could we expect anything else?  He is now in us and if we are obedient we are in Him.  He is now living in and through us and somehow I just think Almighty God living in us will bring change to our daily lives.

The Sermon starts with a portion of scripture we know of as the Beatitudes.  These eight verses are perhaps the best known verses in the Bible—right up there with the 23^rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer.  We savor these words, we affirm them, we mediated upon them, we even engrave them on kitchen plaques, but how do we live them?  How do we become what they say we are supposed to become?  Let’s start right there—the beatitudes are not something you are supposed to become—Jesus isn’t saying, “Become this and you will be a Christian.”  He isn’t giving us another set of laws—the beatitudes are a set of proclamations. 

Many have looked at these verses as laws and put them off for the millennial kingdom, but Jesus told us to seek the Kingdom in the here and now—it was found in Him.  He ushered in the Kingdom and we must abide in Him to live it.  It was Luther who said, “Christ is saying nothing in this Sermon about how we become Christians, but only about the works and fruits that no one can do unless he already is a Christians and in a state of grace.” 

Do you remember the show, “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous?”  I wonder if we have been guilty of looking at the Sermon on the Mount and thinking Jesus is describing the “Lifestyles of the Saints and Holy.”  We have to remember that the life Jesus is describing is supernatural, but we cannot forget this fact—the normal Christian life is a supernatural life.  It cannot be lived apart from abiding in Him.

I hope you will take time to read Russel Moore’s blog this morning.  You can find it on the blogroll or you can just click here.  What a great wakeup call for us all!

Last week I devoted the blog to the fourth beatitude, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.”  This week I would like for us to go back and look at the first, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Some time ago I read the story of a pilot who was practicing high speed maneuvers in a jet fighter.  The pilot turned the controls for a steep ascent, but flew straight into the ground.  He did not know that he was flying up-side-down.  I read that and couldn’t help but think of today’s church.  We are moving along with big buildings, big budgets, and great programs, but are we flying in the right direction?

Jesus has become big business in the West.  Books, paintings, jewelry, and decorations with His ‘likeness’ make up a billion dollar business, but are we representing the Biblical Jesus?  If you grew up in church you heard about Jesus in song—“Jesus loves me,” you saw Him on the flannel board or in the pictures, and you thanked him for your Kool-Aid and cookies.  He was comforting, loving—a Mister Rogers with a robe and long hair.  The question we must ask is why would that Jesus be crucified?  What would a Mister Rogers Messiah do to make everyone so mad?  No, Jesus was much more than that.  (Idea from Phillip Yancey, The Jesus I Thought I Knew)

Karl Barth tells of a man standing by the window gazing into the street.  Outside, people are shading their eyes with their hands and looking up into the sky.  Because of the overhang of the building, the man cannot see what they are pointing toward.  We who live 2,000 years after Jesus have a viewpoint not unlike the man standing by the window.  We hear the shouts of exclamation.  We study the gestures and words in the Gospels and the many books they have spawned.  Yet no amount of neck-craning will allow us a glimpse of Jesus in the flesh.

Yancey spoke of the Jesus of the Gospels, “…obstinacy frustrated him, self-righteousness infuriated him, simple faith thrilled him.  Indeed, he seemed more emotional and spontaneous than the average person, not less.  More passionate, not less.”  The Jesus of the Bible called us to come and seek His kingdom first and to abide in Him.  If we are going to do that we would do well to find out who He is.  You can tell a lot about who I am by reading or listening to my sermons so I thought, maybe we can see who He is by studying the intro to His best known sermon over the next few weeks.

Every morning I read Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost of His Highest.  I’ve been reading it for years and he amazes me daily.  Today was no exception.  Let me share his devotional thought for today and at the same time let me encourage you to get a copy.

August 28

“Lord, teach us to pray.”  Luke xi. 1.

It is not part of the life of a natural man to pray.  We hear it said that a man will suffer in his life if he does not pray; I question it.  What will suffer is the life of the Son of God in him, which is nourished not by food, but by prayer.  When a man is born from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve that life or nourish it.  Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished.  Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament.  We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.

“Ask and ye shall receive.”  We grouse before God, we are apologetic or apathetic, but we ask very few things.  Yet what a splendid audacity a childlike child has!  Our Lord says—“Except ye become as little children.”  Ask, and God will do.  Give Jesus Christ a chance, give Him elbow room, and no man will ever do this unless he is at his wits’ end.  When a man is at his wits’ end it is not a cowardly thing to pray, it is the only way he can get into touch with Reality.  Be yourself before God and present your problems, the things you know you have come to your wits’ end over.  As long as you are self-sufficient, you do not need to ask God for anything.

It is not so true that “prayer changes things” as that prayer changes me and I change things.  God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of Redemption alters the way in which a man looks at things.  Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working in a man’s disposition.

We’ve been focusing on Matthew 5:6 all week, but let me close with this thought—true happiness/blessing is not dependent upon what you know or what you do—true happiness is based on those things for which you hunger and thirst.  Think about your life right now—what are you desperately seeking?  If it isn’t Jesus let me ask you a question—are you happy?  Are you blessed?  Are you experiencing fulfillment?  I love what Piper said—“The hunger and thirst of your life that cannot be satisfied by anything in this world is the constant beckoning of God to remember that you were made for another world, you were made for God.”

 Have you been frantically searching for something that will bring you happiness?

 Maybe you have wasted your life living for something you thought would bring it, but now here at the end you see it was all a lie.

 Are you on the verge of making some huge life decisions about what you will do and how you will live?

 Can I urge you to abandon the road most traveled?  Can I plead with you to move from the well worn path and to consider following the Kingdom road?  There aren’t many people on it and the way is narrow, but the way is full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  The way is different from all others, but the One who calls you promises to never leave nor forsake you—He promises to empower you and He also promised He was going to prepare a place for you and that He would come and take you to be with Him.  Are you looking for blessings?  Look no further than Jesus!