Recently, I was fortunate enough to take some time off to spend with my family. However, during that time, I was also blessed with being sick in bed for about a week. It was the sickest I had been in quite a while, and I found myself too tired to do anything except watch TV, so that’s what I did. Of course, I watched a lot of football, but I also found myself watching a lot of YouTube as well. If you have ever used YouTube, you know there is an algorithm that will give you suggestions to watch based on what it thinks you like. I was suggested some videos from some so-called “Christian Influencers” that I’d never heard of. I thought I’d give them a watch to see what was up, especially since they had a lot of views. As I watched these videos, I noticed some things that all of them had in common. All the individuals in the videos were well spoken, they were all passionate, and they all talked about things that sounded very church-like. However, there was a problem. A large majority of what they were speaking about was not Biblical in the least bit. Sure, it may have sounded spiritual, but when you compare it to the unchanging Word of God, you will quickly see that these videos just contained opinions of individuals who were trying to gain credibility by using God’s name in vain. They made it sound great, but deceived many people. They were trying to use their influence to define what a Christian is supposed to be and what they are supposed to do. However, there is no influencer, no teacher, no author, no preacher who has the authority or ability to define what a Christian is and how they are supposed to live — other than God. He already did so through His Word to us — the Holy Bible. With that thought in mind, I want to start a new sermon series entitled “Be like Jesus”. In it, we will look at some of the defining features of a Christian according to God’s Word. More specifically, I want to look at the first points of the first recorded sermon of Jesus to see exactly what Jesus said on the topic. So if you have your Bible this morning, turn with me to the 3rd verse of Matthew, Chapter 5.
Matthew 5:3
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
So far in Matthew’s Gospel, we have seen the Christmas story played out, we have seen John the Baptist’s rise into ministry, and we have seen the ministry of Jesus begin. His ministry started when He was baptized, then was tempted in the wilderness by Satan, called His first disciples, and began to teach and to heal the sick. As one would suspect, at this point, Jesus started to gather a rather large following, and in Chapter 5, we have recorded a sermon Jesus preached to these crowds, which we call the “Sermon on the Mount”. Jesus used this sermon to teach His followers about how to live what we would now call the Christian life. This sermon starts out with a single word, “Blessed” and that’s where we are going to start this morning.
Blessings Beyond Understanding.
The first handful of verses of the Sermon on the Mount are better known as the Beatitudes (hence the sermon title, “BE like Jesus”). Beatitude is the Latin word meaning “supreme blessing” and it fits perfectly because as Jesus begins this sermon, His first eight statements all begin with the word “Blessed”. Therefore, to understand Jesus’ sermon properly, we have to understand what the word blessed means in the context Jesus was using it, and this is not an easy task for the English language. English struggles with “blessed” because we just do not have a word that can capture the totality of what Jesus is saying. Because of this, most translations will just leave the word as “blessed”. However, there are a handful that use the literal translation of the Greek here, and that is “happy”, but that is not what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is not talking about behaviors that will change the way people feel; He is making an objective statement about what God thinks because of these behaviors. The word “blessed” paints a picture of the approval of God being upon someone — the ultimate and supreme approval. While this might ultimately bring about happiness in a person's life, it’s not what Jesus is communicating here. I love how Max Lucado defines this word. He calls it the smile of God or the applause of Heaven. I think these help us to understand what a wonderful thing it is to be blessed, that these attitudes and behaviors Jesus speaks to us about bring the approval of God on our lives. However, I think we need to be reminded of something so we are not misled. These attitudes Jesus speaks to us about, and calls blessed are not legalistic rules that we have to follow. Rather, something that will happen as we follow God in love and obedience. These are acts of love that let us experience His love more deeply. Remember, God always knows what is best. He always wants what is best for us, and if we are to truly follow Him, because of our love for Him, we follow Him in obedience (John 14:15).
Since we now have an understanding of what Jesus meant by His usage of the word blessed, I think there is a question that we must ask ourselves and should ask all throughout this sermon series: Is the blessing or approval of God the most important thing that you seek after in your life? All of us seek someone’s approval, whether it is a boss, a spouse, a child, a friend, or ourselves. However, as a follower of Jesus, there is only one person we are called to try to ultimately please, and that is God. As we are told in 2 Corinthians 5:9, “So whether we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please Him”. That’s what Jesus is communicating and encouraging every time He uses the word “blessed” in the Beatitudes. He means for us to walk in obedience with God, because not only is it for our ultimate good, but most importantly, God is glorified as His will for our lives is being lived out. This is what God wants for us, and it should be no surprise to us that what constitutes God’s blessings is far from the world's idea of what makes someone blessed. The world calls people blessed who know, who are strong, who have authority, who seem to be self-sufficient and satisfied, those who are rich, and those who are popular, but Jesus never calls any of those blessed. Instead, Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
Poverty is the Key.
When we hear the first part of this statement from Jesus, “Blessed are the poor …”, there is no doubt our minds will probably think about someone who has a lack of money or someone impoverished. There have been many non-Christians in history who have thought that is what Jesus was speaking of. The Emperor Julian the Apostate, in the 3rd century, is reputed to have said with vicious irony that he wanted to confiscate Christians’ property so that they might all become poor and be blessed by God. However, this type of poverty that Jesus is speaking of has nothing to do with finances, and that is made clear when we look at His entire statement, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. This type of poverty is spoken of many times in the Bible, and those who heard Jesus that day would have understood what He meant. Jesus was saying that just as someone in financial poverty has nothing of their own and relies on others for their financial needs, someone who is poor in spirit has nothing and must rely on another for everything they need in the spiritual realm. This truth is the most fundamental and foundational principle of the Christian faith. We are all sinners. We are all spiritually bankrupt and can do nothing to save ourselves. This principle is revolutionary and in direct contrast with every other religious system or ideology that has ever existed. Other religious systems require you to do something, and when you do that well enough, you will be accepted by a god. False religions are all about what YOU can do. But that’s not true. The truth is, there is nothing we can do to make ourselves accepted by God because we are ALL spiritually destitute. When we look at the entirety of scripture, we see it explained this way. In Romans 3:23, we are told that we have all sinned and have fallen short of God’s perfect standard. Isaiah 59:2 tells us that those sins not only fail to meet God’s standard for us, but it also cuts us off from God. We see in Hebrews 9:22, as well as through the entire sacrificial system under the Mosaic law, that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of our sins. We still find ourselves trying to pay off our own sins in other ways, usually by our own deeds, just like they do in other false religions. God’s word tells us in Isaiah 64:6 that even our best deeds are like filthy rags, and no amount of rags can pay the debt we owe. It’s like if you were to walk into a car dealership tomorrow, pick out the nicest car on their lot, and then pull out that box of rags you keep in the garage and ask how many they need. You will be laughed right out of the showroom, and no one in their right mind would even try that. For some reason, we will still try to pay our sin debt with filthy rags when it comes to the debt we owe to an almighty, thrice-holiest God. We must understand that we are wretched, poor, and sinners who have no hope in and of ourselves. That is the first step to being blessed. When you do not understand your desperate need for someone else to save you, you will not understand the amazing grace that Jesus brought through His life, death, burial, and resurrection.
In Ephesians 2:8-9, we are told the only way to be saved from our sins and to have our debt to God paid is to put our faith in Jesus Christ alone, and then we are saved by His amazing Grace. It isn’t anything we can do for God, but it’s all about what He did for us because of His love. That the God of the universe would step down and become a part of His creation to pay the debt that we owe and could never pay. He shed His blood in our place and offered us the gift of salvation that according to Romans 10:9, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved”. This is the Gospel of Jesus — the Good news. However, for you to understand what good news this is and put your faith in Jesus Christ, you first have to understand your desperate need for Him, because we are all poor in spirit. Otherwise, we will pass into eternity forever separated from God because of our sin. Understanding that we are poor in spirit is not just the foundation of our Christian blessedness, it’s also what sustains it. We need God in everything that we do — every day and in every decision. As Christians, we should be seeking to please God. The very moment we think that we have it all together and try to live the Christian life without God — we are in trouble. This is the problem that the church in Laodicea had in the Book of Revelation. Listen to what Jesus said to the church in Revelation 3:17 - “You say, ‘I am rich. I have everything I want. I don’t need a thing!’ And you don’t realize that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.” These people were born again. They were a part of the church, but they had strayed, forgetting that they are indeed poor in spirit. Jesus had to correct them by reminding them that we need Jesus every hour of every day.
The Kingdom is Open.
As Jesus proclaimed that those who are poor in spirit are blessed, He shares the consequence of their understanding of their sinfully wretched state. As mentioned before, that is the first step to inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is something that all of those who were listening that day would have understood because it’s something the prophets spoke about, and it was what John the Baptist had been preaching. For us, 2000 years later, what is the Kingdom of Heaven? I think a pastor of yesteryear said it best when he described the Kingdom of Heaven as “already but not yet.” What he meant was that there is the Kingdom of Heaven that is coming one day, but it is not here yet. That Kingdom is described in Revelation 21:3-7, “I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.” And he also said, “It is finished! I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End. To all who are thirsty, I will give freely from the springs of the water of life. All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children.” However, the Kingdom is more than something to look forward to. It is also something we can embrace right now. When we realize our poorness before God and place our faith in Jesus Christ to do what we could never do, it’s in that moment that we experience the Kingdom of Heaven as well. It is at that very moment that we are adopted into His family. It is at that moment that we are fully forgiven and set free from the bondage of our sins. That all happens right in the moment of salvation and not some future date. It’s then that we inherit all the promises God has given to His children. We are God’s royal subjects right then. He is the King of Kings and Lord of all Lords right now. Because we are adopted into His family as His children, we have some authority because our Father is King. The authority that we have was given to us by God and described in the Great Commission. We have been given the authority to go and be witnesses to what God has done in our lives, sharing the Gospel, and making disciples, not through our own power, but through the power of the Holy Spirit that now dwells inside of us. Yes, the Kingdom of Heaven was here the moment Jesus arrived, but the best is yet to come for all who have called upon the name of the Lord to be saved.
What Jesus was speaking of is the greatest rags-to-riches story this world has ever known. Even though we have nothing, God has provided a way through Jesus Christ to give us the Key to His Kingdom, and that all starts with realizing our desperate need for Him. Charles Spurgeon wrote this synopsis of this very first Beatitude, “The first link between my soul and Christ is, not my goodness, but my badness; not my merit, but my misery; not my standing, but my falling; not my riches, but my need. He comes to visit His people, yet not to admire their beauties, but to remove their deformities; not to reward their virtues, but to forgive their sins.” If you do not realize that you bring nothing to warrant your forgiveness, you will never be saved. This is because you are relying on Jesus plus something else. Whether that is your own good deeds, your church attendance, your praying, your Scripture reading, your giving, or when you are trusting in anything outside of Jesus alone for salvation, you are not poor in spirit and will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. We must be poor in Spirit if we are going to be blessed by God.
