What does it mean when Jesus says the poor in spirit are blessed? For starters, it means that to follow Jesus, you must find your spiritual resources outside of yourself.
June 18, 2009
Makarios Living – Blessed are the Poor in Spirit
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Welcome to Haven Today. I’m Charles Morris telling the great story that’s all about Jesus on a program that is not a program to tell you when to buy back into oil futures. No, this program talks about riches of another kind, riches that last, riches that keep. This is a program called “Makarios Living – Blessed are the Poor in Spirit” based on the Sermon of Jesus in Matthew 5. Makarios is the Greek word that we translate “blessed”. I’m using that word because English words have a way of becoming frightfully plain, ordinarily ordinary. Listen to the Beatitudes from Matthew 5, words spoken by Jesus and recited by Hollywood actor Bruce Marchiano on a special 2 DVD set called “Jesus the Christ”.
Dramatic reading, (The Beatitudes, Matthew 5)
Song: Count it All for Joy
performed by: Shannon Wexelberg
Shannon Wexelberg, “Count it All for Joy” here on a Haven Today on “Makarios Living” and before that Bruce Marchiano from the special 2 DVD set “Jesus the Christ” reciting the Beatitudes from Matthew 5. “Blessed are the poor in spirit because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.” The world would have us believe that there is nothing blessed or fortunate about being poor on any level. Rich people are happy, at least that’s what the world tells us. But like so much of Jesus’ teaching, Matthew chapter 5 runs across the grain of what the world in which we live tells us. One preacher friend of mine from Pennsylvania says that left to ourselves our natural beatitudes would sound something like this, “Blessed are the rich for they have it all and have it all now.
Blessed are the happy for they are content with themselves and don’t need others.
Blessed are the arrogant for people defer to them.
Blessed are people who fight for the good things in life for they will get them.
Blessed are the sophisticated for they will have a good time.”
By contrast, Jesus calls those blessed who are poor in spirit, who mourn for sin, who are meek and hunger and thirst after righteousness, who are merciful, who are pure in heart, who make peace and who are persecuted. We need to be clear about the Beatitudes that Jesus preached in Matthew 5. When you are looking at certain texts in the Bible sometimes it’s easier to understand what they are saying if you first understand what they are not saying. Jesus is not condemning wealth. He is not saying, “Blessed are the poor in earthly wealth and the rich are not blessed.” This verse is not about money. Oh, he’ll get to that later, don’t worry. This is not a verse that is condemning the rich and that’s a really good thing to you and me probably. According to one survey if you are making more than $50,000 US Dollars per year you are in the top 1% of the wealthiest people in the world. Compared to the rest of the world if you make much less than that you are rich. When I drive my 3 year old car down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California with 105,000 miles on the odometer I don’t feel rich in the eyes of the world around me. But nonetheless, compared with the rest of the world my wife and I are rich. Again, Jesus does not condemn you owning riches. Later on in the Gospel he will condemn riches owning you.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.” When you are physically poor you don’t have resources right? You don’t have wealth. You are dependent on others. So poverty of spirit, being poor of spirit means that you are dependent on something outside of yourself for your spiritual resources. In other words, you look to God, you depend on him for those things you need. Your happy, you are fortunate, you are favored by God when you recognize your spiritual poverty, your spiritual bankruptcy when you realize that you don’t have any spiritual resources in and of yourself and are wholly dependent on God because yours is the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is telling you and me in Matthew 5 that it is good to be poor in the spirit, to be poor in spirit is to know one’s deep spiritual poverty before God. You and I need to come to God with empty hands. I don’t think it’s by accident that this is the first of the Beatitudes because in order to have any kind of genuinely healthy and wealthy relationship with God you have to approach God in humility and poverty of spirit. To become a Christian you have to be poor in spirit. The Bible calls us to come to Jesus repenting and believing. The call to repentance is the call to turn from your sin. You need to turn from your spiritual sin, those things that have gotten you into debt with God if you would. Turning to God in repentance and belief is linked closely with being poor in spirit. The reason you come to Jesus to follow him is because you recognize that you are not rich in the things of the spirit in and of yourself. You recognize that you don’t have adequate spiritual or moral resources to stand before a holy and perfect God so you come as a poor, bankrupt beggar and ask for his life giving bread. You turn to God and you trust in what his son Jesus has done to you in living a perfect life and taking the punishment for your sin so that you might have eternal life and then you recognize God’s favor is upon you because you came to him poor in spirit and you were made rich toward God. I have lived on this planet earth for 57 years. I’ve worked there in the marketplace, perhaps like you. I know what many who have made it think. If not aloud, they would at least be thinking to themselves, “You make it sound like Christianity is just a crutch for people who can’t make it on their own.” Well good! That’s exactly what I mean! If you want to understand the Beatitudes in your life and how you need Jesus desperately you have to know that you cannot meet the standards of the Beatitudes yourself. This is not a list of high but attainable goals as if we could motivate each other by saying, “Come on now, you can do it. Just keep on trying.” New Testament scholar Don Carson, a Canadian who has taught at Trinity Seminary and has lived outside of Chicago for many years gets it right when he says, “To be poor in spirit is not to lack courage but to acknowledge spiritual bankruptcy. The kingdom of heaven is not given on the basis of race, earned merits, the military zeal and prowess of zealots or the wealth of Zaccheus. It is given to the poor, the despised publicans, the prostitutes, those who are so poor they know they can offer nothing and do not even try. They cry for mercy and they alone are heard.” The Bible says, “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” So if you’re with me today thinking that you’ve blessed God with your presence, that he should be really thankful that you showed up and that he is so fortunate to have you on his team of service you need an attitude adjustment. Here’s a story that might help.
Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him so he went to the Pharisees house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
“Tell me, teacher,” he said.
“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he cancelled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”
“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.
Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell will you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”
Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
That’s Jesus, the Christ speaking in Luke 7:26-48. No matter how much we own or have accumulated in the world’s eyes, we need God’s help to see with spiritual eyes what he wants to make plain to us in the scriptures. We need what a friend of mine calls “HD” glasses and no, HD doesn’t mean High Definition. It stands for Humility and Dependence. First, humility, it’s been said that humility is the illusive trait that once you realize that you’ve attained it, you‘ve lost it. It’s an absence of arrogance, of self-sufficiency. Humility doesn’t look down on others yet humiliation of soul always brings a positive blessing. If we empty ourselves of ourselves God will fill us with his love. We who desire close communion with Christ should remember the word of the Lord, “To this man will I look, even to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembles at my word. Stoop if you would climb to heaven.” Don’t we say of Jesus that he descended that he might ascend? So must we. We must grow downwards that we might grow upwards. The sweetest fellowship with heaven is to be had by humble souls and them alone. God will deny no blessing to a thoroughly humbled spirit. “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” with all its riches and treasures. So first humility.
Second, dependence. I don’t have what it takes. I need help. I have a good friend who is a young man but who for many years has suffered from horrible pain in his back, pain that at times could bring him to tears. He has learned through his pain his need to depend on the Lord. And then I think of my own life. When I was not quite 2 I came down with Infantile Paralysis at the tail end of the great Polio epidemic that was sweeping North America, merely months before the release of a vaccine that would have prevented doctors from having to tell my parents their son would never walk again. But by God’s grace I walked again and I’m still walking. Yet more days than not, decades later I wake up with whatever “Post-Polio” syndrome is, wondering which muscles will ache, which limbs will give out that day. Every day I too have to learn anew to depend on the Lord. What about you? The world around us emphasizes independence and self-confidence, self confidence vs. God-confidence. So does that mean every Christian needs to be self-effacing all of the time? No. Can you never be bold or courageous or confident? Of course you can and you should, but that boldness, that courage, that confidence should come not from looking in the mirror and thinking that you’re all that but from the Holy Spirit of God living in you giving you boldness and courage and confidence born from heaven coming from Christ Jesus living in you. Jesus and the life he gives every day is greater than our inadequacies, greater than our sin. He is greater than all the resources I can muster myself. “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Song: Blessed Are
Performed by: Wayne Watson
Wayne Watson and a beautiful song from his “Field of Souls” album singing the Beatitudes, “Blessed Are”. “Makarios Living – Blessed are the Poor in Spirit” here on a Haven Today. Sometimes we hear from people who really like a series that we’ve had on the air. Well, Mary who listens to Haven Today every morning on KARI radio has especially appreciated the “Christians You Should Know” series. She even called our toll free number, 1-800-654-2836. She got Jeff on the phone and said just, “Take my order but hold my order until the series is completed. And I want a copy on CD of every program, every “Christian You Should Know” and while you’re at it can you send me 3 copies of that brand new book by Warren Weirsbe ’50 People Every Christian Should Know’?” Well thank you Mary and thanks to everyone who’s received a copy of this new book by Warren Weirsbe by making a gift to listener supported Haven Today. Thanks also to everyone who’s given above and beyond the suggested gift amount. It is almost officially summer and summers are the time of year when the number of gifts and the amount of gifts always drop. So especially in this time of recession, your gift as you are able will make a big difference. Just go to our website, haventoday.org, that’s h.a.v.e.n.t.o.d.a.y, haventoday.org to read more about the new book by Warren Weirsbe or to check out the series “Christians You Should Know”. Or you can call us on our toll free number 1800-654-2836. We also have that newly released 2 DVD set on the life of Jesus called “Jesus the Christ” starring Bruce Marchiano portraying Jesus. You can watch the video trailer there on our website, haventoday.org and when you get in touch with us would you let us know the station you’re listening to as well.
I’m Charles Morris and I want to thank you for joining me and I want to invite you to come back again tomorrow. We’ll be talking to fathers especially and Ted Tripp, author of “Shepherding a Child’s Heart” will join us as a father with me speaking to him as a father and one more time, tomorrow we’re going to be sharing the great story that’s all about Jesus here on Haven Today.
