The Beatitudes #2

Well, last week we started studying the Sermon on the Mount. We focused on largely verses 1 and 2, where Jesus, having healed the crowds of all of their diseases and infirmities, he retired from them and he went up onto the mountain and he taught those who followed him. The crowds had gathered because they'd heard about the miracles. The word had spread throughout the land. He's healing everybody, so everyone's bringing their sick. But it was his disciples who followed him up the mountain. to hear this sermon, the Sermon on the Mount. What we saw last week is that following Jesus meant listening to him and obeying what he says. Toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about this very thing. He compares the results of those who've listened to him, and he puts them into two categories. He says, there are those who heard and did what I said, and he likens them to a house that's been built on a rock. And he says, when the storms of life come, that house will stand, that man will stand.

Because he's firmly rooted on the rock, Jesus Christ, and on his word. The other category were those who heard and did not do. They listened, but didn't obey. Said, hmm, but didn't amend their life, didn't change. And he likens them to a house that's built on sand, which, until the storm comes, looks the same as the house that's built on the rock. But when the storm did come, that house was destroyed. And Jesus tells us, great was its fall. And so at the end of the sermon last week that I preached, I challenged you to read the Sermon on the Mount five times this past week. I said that's what I was going to do. And I did it. And it took work for me to do it. And I hope that you did it. If you didn't, you ought to do it this next week. And you should continue to do it. To study and to come to Jesus and to hear his words. This week we're going to be moving on to the first of the Beatitudes, verse 3.

And as we study this passage, my hope is that we will grow to understand and reflect or embody the characteristics that Jesus gives to us here in this passage. Our text this morning is Matthew 5, verses 1-12. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. I want to talk generally about the structure of the Sermon on the Mount for a minute, just as... to get us going the right direction. I would divide the Sermon on the Mount basically into two sections. The first being the Beatitudes, which is what we just read, and then the whole rest of the sermon. So from Matthew 13 on through the end of chapter 7. And the difference between the Beatitudes and the whole rest of the sermon is the subject that they deal with. Everything that comes after the Beatitudes deals with how Christians are supposed to live.

How should they process? What does it mean to be a salt and light? What should we do when we judge other people? What should we do when we're scared? What should we do when we lust? What should we do when we're angry? What should we do when we're worried about money? And on and on and on. How should we view the law of God? There's all of these instructions to us about how to live as Christians. But that's not what the Beatitudes do. The Beatitudes are not a description of how a Christian should live. They are a description of what a Christian is. Okay? So as we read through these Beatitudes, you should be thinking, this is what is supposed to be true about me. And something that's worth noting at the very beginning is that this is like, you might liken it to the fruit of the Spirit, perhaps. Love, joy, peace, patience. We can go through the list and you can say, well, if you were to rank yourself on that list, each one, how loving am I on a scale of one to ten? How peaceful? How joyful? And you go through and what you find is there's a variation.

Okay? Some of them, you tend to be more of this. And other ones you might say, you know, I'm not a whole lot of that, but I want to be. The same thing is going to be true of the Beatitudes. You're going to look at some of these characteristics and you're going to think, you know, that is very difficult for me. And I want to draw a distinction at the very beginning between that is difficult for me, but I want it to be true of me, and that's just not for me. All of these things are incumbent on Christians. All Christians, all of them. Okay? Now, some of us, you may read this, and we may say some people, you know, the one we're reading this morning you're focusing on is those who are poor in spirit. Okay? And we'll get into what being poor in spirit is in more detail in a minute. But suffice it to say now that to be poor in spirit is to be humble or to be meek or to be self-aware of your own failures. Okay? Now,

Some people are naturally inclined that way. I could point out in this room half a dozen of you who are ready and in moments notice to say, yes, I'm a terrible person. Even when it's not true. To apologize when you didn't do anything wrong. In fact, the person you're apologizing to is the one who did wrong. It's your temperament. What I want to say to you from the very beginning is that's your natural temperament. That is not what Jesus is talking about here. Okay? So if that's your natural inclination, You don't get to check out this week because you're like, oh, I already feel terrible about myself. You don't have to be a Christian for that to be true of you. You could go outside these walls and you could go into your workplace or into your extended family and I suspect you would find people that you would say that of.

They tend to be self-effacing. They tend to be the kind of people who think everything rides on them and they're quick for the sake of unity or for peace or because they absolutely hate conflict. They'll take all of the responsibility themselves and it's all their fault. That does not make them a Christian. It does not make them a Christian. And so the thing Jesus is talking about here is not your natural temperament to be meek and taking the blame. That person who's wired that way still has something to gain here. What Jesus is talking about is not a natural thing, but a spiritual thing. To be poor in spirit is not what I've just described, but is something else. And it's something that God gives us and produces in us. Now, with that as an introduction, I want to start by asking you the question, what is a beatitude?

This section is, you know, everyone says, well, those are the Beatitudes. Those are the Beatitudes. That's great. What is a Beatitude? What's the word mean? When I started thinking about this, I thought, well, it has to do with, you know, the word I'm most closely associated with is attitude, right? It's a Beatitude. So it's like a commands to have a certain attitude. That's what I thought. No. Not even close, okay? Beatitude is an old word that we don't use anymore in our day, but that is used in Scripture to simply mean a blessing or a state of happiness. It is something that is conferred on you by someone else, okay? A particular blessing. And so the reason these are called the Beatitudes is because Jesus is declaring a number of circumstances where people are declared by him, to be blessed. There are other places where this same idea is used, these sorts of blessings. There was a place where Jesus was asked, why do you teach in parables? And Jesus gives an answer that's not a popular answer, especially to those who are not Christians. What does he say? I speak in parables so that hearing they won't hear. Because what? Otherwise, what would happen?

they would turn from their sins and be saved. Now, Jesus said that. Now, some people would look at that and they would scoff at it and they say, that's a terrible thing. But to those who are blessed, they would say, what a wonderful thing that the gospel isn't hidden from everyone. That God is merciful to some. Blessed are you, for God has revealed these things to you. The same sort of blessing. Later on, when Jesus is, there's a question of who Jesus is. Who are you? Who are you? And he comes to his disciples and he says, who do the people say this? Well, some say a prophet and some say Elijah and some say John the Baptist. And he says, who do you say that I am? And Peter says to him, you're the son of God. And Jesus responds to him and say, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood did not reveal that to you. And it's the same idea here. You are blessed because you understand something. Something is true about you that God made clear to you.

Now you'll notice in the examples I've given to you, whether it's understanding parables or Peter making his confession or any of the Beatitudes we've just read, none of these have to do with our experience of things. The blessing that's spoken of here is not something that we feel and we go, I feel blessed of God. I sense it. It's apparent because here it is. It is not an experiential blessing, but a state of blessing. In fact, if you read through the Beatitudes, you'd think, None of these sound like happy things that I would desire to be. Poor in spirit, mourning, persecuted, hungering and thirsting, living in the midst of conflict, having to be a peacemaker. Which one of us says, sign me up for all of that? And so what you find is in the Beatitudes here in this list, there are many difficult circumstances, and those are the indicators of God's blessing on the people in those circumstances.

It's a gift that he gives to his children even as they suffer in this world, even as their circumstances or what we might consider to be blessings in this life are absent. We would think a state of blessing would mean comfort and peace and joy and unity, calm water. But that's not what Jesus tells us here. And so it should go without saying, but I will say, our experience or our perception of God's blessing is not to be relied on. Don't trust yourself. That's what I'm saying. You'll set up all kinds of like, well, if God loves me, if I'm a child of God, then this is what my life will be like. And the one thing I can tell you you will never say, this is what my life would be like, are the things that are described here. Poor in spirit, mourning, in need of comfort, being persecuted, being maligned, being lied about. You remember the rich man and Lazarus? Where the rich man has his wealth and his...

his food and all of his stuff. And then there's Lazarus on his porch in pain, suffering, wanting some scrap of food to eat. Now, by our measure, we would look and say, which one is blessed? The rich man who has an abundance or the poor man sitting on the porch begging for scraps? Of course, all of us would say, if we hadn't read scripture and didn't know what it says, we'd say, it's the rich man, clearly and obviously. But that's not the case, is it? When those men die, it's Lazarus who is the blessed one and not the rich man. The rich man sees what's going on and he says, he says, Abraham, send somebody back to warn my brothers so that they don't end up like me. They think that they have it all and they're wrong. You remember the publican and the tax collector and the Pharisee both going into the temple.

to make their offerings. And the tax collector comes in and he won't even lift his head up. His head's down and he's beating on his chest. And he says, have mercy on me, a sinner. And he won't look up because he knows God is holy and he knows he's not. And the Pharisee sees him and he says, thank you, Lord, that I'm not like him. Which one was blessed? It was that tax collector who was beating his chest, who knew he was a sinner. and knew that he needed God's mercy if he was going to ever have a hope of life. And Jesus told us, he says, that man went home justified because he was poor in spirit. I want you to realize I'm not trying to give you all of these examples so that you can distill out of them a list of attitudes or behaviors that you're supposed to emulate. Oh, I'm supposed to act humble. I'll ask you.

Do you know the difference between someone who is humble and someone who's acting humble? Do you know it when you do it? No, sometimes we don't, sadly. And then we have others to point us out, right? But you can see the difference in other people. You recognize genuine humility versus this like, well, when it's not real. And so I say that to you now simply to warn you, don't try to fake it. I'm not trying to give you a list of stuff to do. this time. I typically say, here's a list of stuff to do. This is what it means to live like a Christian. That's not what the Beatitudes are. I'm going to tell you this morning what you need God to make you become. What he needs to turn you into and cultivate in you for the rest of your life. If it's going to be in there, it'll be because he put it in there, not because you did. And so it takes faith to grasp these things.

They don't align or agree with our natural desires or what we see going on around us. So what is the first beatitude, the first state of blessing that Jesus tells us? And it is worth noting before I read it to say, Jesus didn't just rattle off a random list. There's an order to these things, okay? The first one being the foundation. When you build a house, You want something tall that you can live in, but the first thing you do to build a house that's tall you can live in is dig a hole in the ground and lay a foundation that you can build the other stuff on top of. Which is to say, if you don't have this foundation, you have a house built on sand. The other Beatitudes flow out of this one. It is foundational. It is fundamental. It's when you cannot skip over and say, oh, well, I know about mourning.

But I don't know about humility, so we'll just pass this one by. If you do, you will end up with a house built on sand. And so the first beatitude is, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So at the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus deals with the primary thing that every man, every woman, every child is concerned with, which is, how do I get blessing? How do I get happiness? Where does it come from? Where do I find it? What do I have to do to get it? If you think of your own life and you think of the frustrations or the difficulties, the hardships or the burdens, when you boil it all down to what is really going on here, what you have is something that's standing between you and something you think will make you happy. My joy is on the other side and this problem keeps me from it. So is it normal or natural or good for you to want to be happy? Yes. God made you.

To seek joy. He made you to be joyful. The Westminster Shorter Catechism's first question, very big, very broad, very general, is what is the chief end of man? Like what is the most important thing? Like what is the number one reason God made you? What is the chief end of man? The answer is man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And so that question teaches us that our joys will come from knowing God and from being known by him. And that all of the things that we try to put in that place won't work. It will not work. It will not give you joy. For a time, perhaps, but not forever, as the answer says. God made man to live in a state of joy, a state of blessing. And you see that in the garden, right? Adam and Eve were in the garden before the fall. What were they?

Happy. They were happy. They were happy until they sinned. Then they were no longer happy. What will we be after the resurrection? We will be happy, where there won't be any more tears or any more sorrows or any more death. And so you realize that sin has taken away the blessing of God. Adam and Eve's sin caused God to take them out of the garden, out of perfection. And to remove himself from them. His presence went away. And with it, their blessing. And what came in its place was thorns and thistles and pain and childbearing. A fallen world. And so when Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit, he's getting at the most natural or basic desires that you and I and everybody else have. The question is not whether we have it. The question is not whether it's appropriate to have it. The question is simply, how do you get it? Where does it come from?

And that's what Jesus is telling us. This is where a Christian's joy and happiness comes from. Now, as I said, we, like Adam and Eve, are very prone to swap out the blessings of God for temporal or worldly or earthly blessings. You remember the story of Moses? People of Israel, they go into Egypt because there's a famine, and then they settle in the land of Goshen, They live there for hundreds of years, and they multiply, and they grow to the point that Pharaoh becomes threatened by the size of Egypt. And so he says, kill all the firstborn sons. Kill all the boys. No more of that. Well, Moses is born, and he's hidden, and the midwives lie about it, you know, and he's hidden. Eventually, he's tucked away in a basket in the reeds where Pharaoh's daughter comes down and finds him and says, look, a baby.

And then Moses is given back to his mother to be nursed for a while. But where does Moses grow up? He grows up in Pharaoh's house. He's given a lot of what would be considered earthly blessing. And as Moses is growing up in Pharaoh's house, life is getting harder for his people. Their oppression is mounting up. It's becoming more difficult. Their slavery is coming into focus. while he's living in the lap of luxury in Pharaoh's house. So then Moses comes of age, and he's got a choice. What joy does Moses want? He's got the world's joy. He's in Pharaoh's house, raised by Pharaoh's daughter, and the choice he has is, will I continue in that, or will I seek the blessing of God?

In Hebrews chapter 11, it records all this in very short form and tells us what Moses did. And pay attention to the choices he had to make. In Hebrews 11, 24-26, it says, By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to endure ill treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. for he was looking to the reward. And so Moses is given to us in these few verses as a perfect example of the choice that you and I face every day. On the one hand, the son of Pharaoh's daughter. On the other hand, ill treatment with the people of God. Again, the passing pleasures of sin, the reproach of Christ. Moses chose the ill treatment. He chose the...

the reproach of Christ. And it tells us why at the very end. It says, because he was looking to the reward. Moses understood something about Pharaoh and about Egypt. Now, did he have some special revelation? You're going to be the guy who is going to, you know, that I'm going to use to destroy them. No, he didn't. Because later on, when the Lord comes to him and says, I'm going to raise you up and you're going to do this. Moses says, no, no, no, not me. No, no, no, not me. It's easy to look at Moses in those circumstances and to say, well, he failed. And it is true that him saying, not me, send somebody else, was a lack of faith, was a failure, something that you and I can identify with. And yet there is also this other part of it where he understands the immensity of the work and the glory of God, and he says, I'm not fit for this. In the same way that John the Baptist said of Jesus, there's one coming after me of whom I'm not fit to untie his sandals.

That he had some conception of the glory of God. And he said, this is not me. I can't do this. That is an indication of him being poor in spirit. Him understanding who he was and understanding who God was. It's worth noting with Moses, and the same is true for you and I, he couldn't have both. He couldn't have both. Time and time again in your life as a Christian, I want you to know, you can't have both. You have to choose one or the other. You'll either choose God or you will choose this world. Don't be a fool who thinks that you can toe the line between the two. You can't. You won't. In fact, to do that is to choose the one without losing the benefit of the other. You say, well, maybe I can be worldly and still have God's blessing. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity toward God? That's what James tells us.

And so Moses had to choose and you have to choose and that choice will be clear. It'll be obvious to you and to the people around you. Here are the choices. I've picked one and I've let go of the other. And so as we study the Beatitudes, you will always have a choice of what kind of man or what kind of woman or what kind of son or what kind of daughter you want to be. What do you want to be true of you? As we look at what it means to be poor in spirit, the choice is going to come to you. Do you want that to be true of you? Are you willing or are you going to spit that out of your mouth and say, that's not for me. I don't think of myself that way, nor do I want to. When I was reading and preparing for this, I was reading Martin Lloyd-Jones on this text, and he just says very simply, you can't be a Christian. You're not a Christian if you don't want this stuff. And he's careful to draw a distinction in saying, these things will not be perfectly true of any of us.

But this is a spiritual question. Do you see your weaknesses and failures and say, but I want that to be true of me? Or do you see the cost of it and you say, no, I don't want that. I want something else. These are the questions that face us. If you refuse to choose, I need more time. You have, in fact, chosen. When you say I need more time, what you're saying is I know what I should choose, but I don't want to choose it. And so I'm going to have a little more time. of the wrong choice, which is quite a presumption upon the Lord God, that he'll give you the time, and it's quite a presumption upon your own strength, to think that given more time in the world, you'll make better choices in the future. And so Jesus tells us that this condition, being poor in spirit, is an evidence of God's blessing. Now, These beatitudes are recorded by Luke as well in his gospel. And this beatitude shows up in Luke 6.20. And the phraseology is different. He leaves off in spirit. And so this passage has often been confused to not be talking about being poor in spirit, but simply being poor. That to be poor is to be blessed. But it's an abuse of what Luke says. And it's certainly not what Matthew says. Poverty is not an indication of blessing any more than wealth is. Okay?

Now this is a hard thing for you and I to understand, but you do have to understand it. Being rich or being poor is no indication of God's blessing. The poor man is not cursed or blessed, and the rich man is not cursed or blessed. There are both poor people who are blessed and cursed, and there are rich people who are blessed. or cursed. And there's a bunch of people that may not be poor or rich who are either blessed or cursed. And so this passage does not teach us that to receive God's blessing, you have to be poor. You have to take a vow of poverty. And quick on the heels of that, we're thinking, well, that means I'm allowed to pursue wealth. We'll come to that in this very sermon. What I'll tell you in a sermon on the mount, what I'll tell you is at the end of the discussion of wealth, what Jesus says is very clear. He says, you can't love God.

and wealth. That's his simple statement. You can't do the both of them. So I'm supposed to want to be poor. No, stop looking for the checkbox. Stop worrying about poor. Stop worrying about money. Stop worrying about what you'll eat or what you'll wear or what you'll drink, which is the section in between where we're at now and the discussion of wealth. You see, we have to stop thinking about this in such tactile, simple, childish ways. Nowhere in Scripture is poverty commended to us as an indication of godliness. Proverbs tells us that the rich man is blessed because he has the ability to defend himself, because he can build walls. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, he says, if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, if I'm wealthy and I impoverish myself, if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but I do not have love, it profits me nothing.

Nothing. It's of no benefit to me. And you think, well, but Jesus told that rich young ruler that what he had to do was go and sell all that he had. And so it must have been better for him to be poor. And I say, no, that's not what Jesus was saying. What he was doing was casting a light on that man's sin. That man didn't know himself. That rich young ruler didn't understand what it meant to serve God. He just said, What do I have to do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said, well, you've read the commandments. What do they say to you? And he lists off the second table of the law and he says, I've done all that. And Jesus says, okay, well, there's one thing you lack. Because this young man was on the wrong track. I've obeyed God and done all that he says. And Jesus says, oh, is that the case? Well, there's this one other thing. And it was the first domino to fall. Go and sell all that you have and give it to the poor. And you'll have treasure in heaven.

And in that moment, that man realized, oh, there's a cost to follow you. I'm not a perfect person. And he went away discouraged, depressed, unwilling to sell his because he was a wealthy man. So what does it mean to be poor in spirit? It means being humble and meek, particularly in your knowledge of yourself. Now, I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon, I talked about people who are naturally predisposed that way. Listen, you aren't one. inch ahead in the race because that's your natural position. You're just not. I've met plenty of people who are very proud and also very self-deprecating, who think very highly of themselves and also think everything's their fault. It's of no benefit if you're naturally wired that way. Because if that were true, then what it would mean is anybody who's not self-deprecating naturally is incapable of this. And we need to be careful to not take the way God's made or wired or gifted us individually and say, we all have to become exactly the same because God didn't make us all exactly the same. He's given us different gifts on purpose as a benefit to the church. And so the goal is not everybody has to become exactly the same. We're all robots. We're all just like, you know, some people.

are going to be naturally self-effacing, naturally like, oh, I'm a wallflower. Oh, it wasn't me. Oh, yeah, it's my fault. And some of us are going to be, the last thing we're ever going to do is take responsibility for it and say it was my fault. We'll blame and point and say it was you and it was this and it was that circumstance and it was... Both of those people need to become poor in spirit. They need to become humble. They both need to see their own failures and their own sins. If you think of the Apostle Paul, if you had for a moment, if you could, if you could take the apostles and you could rank them and be like, okay, fantasy apostle team, right? Who's your number one draft pick? I think it's Paul. I think everybody wants Paul. Paul, they're like, Paul, you know, Paul, Paul, you know, he wrote all the, you know, he's got a cool story. He wrote most of the New Testament. He's bold. You know, he didn't, he didn't, he doesn't have these.

These, you know, all the big bad sins he committed were before he became a Christian. He didn't do any of that afterwards. Like Peter, you know, Peter was, he walked on water, then he lost faith, and then he denied Jesus. And so it's like, but he'd already been with Jesus, so he's not as, he's probably our number two. Paul, and Paul does give his credentials at another point. Me saying that you would pick Paul first is not to say there's something wrong with you. As we measure men, we say Paul was like pretty awesome. Did Paul know that about himself? Yeah, of course he did. He recorded it. He says, you know, if we're going to stack up resumes here, here's my resume, right? I'm a Pharisee of Pharisees, right? As to the law, I'm zealous, right? I was trained under Gamaliel. Like his pedigree was cream of the crop. And so if anybody was going to talk about how good they were, how great they were, why you should listen to me?

you'd expect it to be Paul. But what does Paul say about himself? When all of this is true of him, he says a couple of things. In one place, he says, I consider all of that to be garbage, refuse, excrement. Yes. For the surpassing knowledge of knowing Jesus Christ, my Lord. All that I am, worthless. That's what I think of my pedigree. That's what Paul says. In another place, he says, if I have to boast, to the Corinthians, where there's these men in the church saying, you should listen to us. We're the stuff. Paul says, well, if I have to boast, if I have to compete for your affection, I'll boast of my weaknesses. And so Paul, the man who above everyone else could have boasted and said, look at me, that's why you should listen to me, was in fact poor in spirit. Because when he had to speak about himself, He says, what I'll say about myself is that I'm a sinner. And I'll tell you about the ways that I've failed. You remember when Paul was on one of his missionary journeys and there was a ruckus and they were going to kill him. So he gets hidden and then all the people forcibly take him and put him in a basket and lower him down the wall on the outside of the city. Get out of here, Paul. They're going to kill you. The scripture tells us that Paul thinks that was a failure of himself, that he lacked faith, that that was a weakness of his.

that he was fearful and was like, okay, you know. You get the impression Paul wasn't ready to die. As much as we might admire him, he says, well, I think that there was a point at which I was weak, and it resulted in me being lowered down in a basket on the outside of the wall to run away when I could have proclaimed Christ. And we might look and say, well, that only makes sense. In fact, there's places where Jesus tells us to do that, and Paul says he's not hindered by the fact that Jesus Tells us that we're going to be persecuted and suffered. He said, I know me. And when I was lowered down in that basket, I was afraid. I was running. Someone else may do the same thing and not have the same stuff going on inside of them, but I know me, and that was a weakness. So when you talk about yourself, what do you say about yourself? What do you want other people to think of you? The truth is many of us want them to think about us.

The way we think about ourselves, which is to say, pretty highly. I want them to think, wow, what a great man. What an awesome husband and father. What a gentle and quiet spirit she has. What wonderful parents. What hospitable homes. What gentle words. But if our walls could talk, they would tell quite a different story, wouldn't they? Don't ever get a parrot. I had one growing up. Paul said, if I have to speak about myself, I'm going to speak about my weaknesses. Because I know them. and I think that they are the thing you should know about me, more than my accomplishments. There's one time where Paul says, leave me alone. Stop giving me trouble. Was it because he was a Pharisee of Pharisees? The best apostle around? The man we'd all look up to? Are those the credentials he gives to us? No. He gives us the list of all of his sufferings. Shipwrecked, beaten with rods, received 39 lashes from the Jews three times.

I spent a day and a night in the deep. I've been without hunger. I've been without shelter. I've been thirsty. I've been in fear of my life. I bear on my body the brand marks of Jesus. Therefore, don't let any one of you trouble me anymore. Those are the only credentials he gives us. All of his suffering and his sins, his weaknesses. Me, one untimely born. That's what it means to be poor in spirit. To know yourself. It's easy to talk academically or theoretically about your sins. And it's some sort of middle ground that you might want to find between being just outright proud and talking how great you are and true poverty of spirit is to say, well, I do know my sins and these are my sins. But it's academic. That's not what Jesus is getting at here. It's not what it means to be poor in spirit. All of us have to deal with this.

This is one of the things I find is that when people come to our church, it's one of the things that stands out to them. And it's that we talk about sin all the time. Now, why? Do you want to know why I talk about sin all the time? It's not because I like picking on you. Because you're me. I'm not like, oh, and you terrible people. Because I've been having to think about this and myself all week. It's because I'm convinced that this is the foundational work that has to take place. This is the hard ground of our hearts that has to be broken up if we're to believe in Jesus. That's it. That's the reason we talk about sin all the time. It's to try to get you at some point to look in the mirror and go, I am not a good person. And given enough time, I will only become a worse person unless God is merciful to me. That's the whole story from the beginning to the end. That's why I talk about sin all the time. That's why we confess our sins as a body every week. Because you and I, our hearts, our pride, our spirits, well up inside of us like dandelions grow in the spring.

You cut them down the next day, they're right back up. Here comes our pride again. Here comes our high thoughts of ourselves. Here comes our condescension of other people. Here comes our judging God. And you and I, we need regularly to be cut down and told, you know what, you're not what you think you are. You're not what you portray when you're here on Sundays. None of you are. Are you? I mean, seriously. We're all in our best behavior. We're all minding our P's and Q's. We're all polite. We all smile. We save the arguments for the car ride home, or the correction of the children, or whatever it is. And it's good for us to come and to be shown and told, you're a sinner. You don't measure up to God's standards. Not even close. And if we give you another week, you'll only accrue more debt. You won't pay one penny of it off. You need Jesus. And the only way you'll come to say, I need Jesus, is to say, I am a sinner.

And I see my sins. And I don't blame my parents or my spouse or my station in life or the amount of money I don't have or my health. All of that. You're a sinner. And if everything you thought needed to be fixed in your life was fixed, you'd still be a sinner. And it wouldn't make you any closer to God to have all of the things that are burdens to you resolved. You would find new ways to sin. In fact, if all of the burdens that you bear and that you carry each day were taken away from you, I believe it would make you more proud and further from the kingdom of heaven. It's God's kindness to us that in this broken fallen world, he makes his people aware of their weaknesses. And he afflicts them so that they say, help me. Save me. Don't let me die. That's what it means to be poor in spirit. To see yourself.

And to remember who you are. In the course of your life, you will have circumstances that expose this reality to you. Many of you are young, and many of you probably haven't faced those sorts of things yet, where you're laid bare. And it's not just to the people that you're closest to, but it's to people you would prefer didn't know the stuff. Those are times when God works. And the reason those are often the times that God works is those are the times when we have a moment of clarity and we say, you know, I don't have the answers. I made a mess. And I don't have the cleaners to clean it up. I broke something. I hurt something. And I can't fix it. It would be good for us to live in that state. Not in that state necessarily of affliction and persecution because we're too weak to bear it for long.

But in that state of self-awareness and humility, or maybe a better word for it is humiliation, where we see what we are, and other people see what we are, and the things that we project, no one's buying it, not even us. But God sees and he knows. How do you get to be like this? You have to ask God to show you. Particularly, ask him to show you how you're proud. How you refuse to rely on him. James gives an example of a man looking in the mirror. He says of the man who is a hearer of the word, but not a doer. So the one who hears what I've said, but doesn't actually go ask God to show them. This is what he's like. He's like a man who looks at his natural face in the mirror, who sees it, but once he has looked at himself and gone away, he immediately forgets what kind of person he is.

Now I realize I'm leaning on you hard this morning. I could lean on you harder. What I want to know and what you should be dying to know about yourself is will you remember the discomfort and the sins that you're thinking about right now after I say amen at the end of the service or when you go to work tomorrow? Or will you be the man who hears it and then immediately forgets? Ask God to show you how you're proud and then remember. Remember. Ask your spouse and let them tell you. As I was reading the scripture lesson this morning, we talk so much about men and women and men being the heads of houses and this stuff. And I'm all for it. And then you read Hannah and Elkanah and you think, what kind of man was he? His wife said, I've got a baby. I'm not going to go up to the yearly sacrifice. Unruly, rebellious woman that Hannah was? No.

a godly woman and a godly man. And what he says to her is, do what seems right to you. You remember the place where it says that she wept bitterly and she wouldn't eat? And then her husband comes to her and he says, honey, am I not better? Like, why are you so sad and why won't you eat? Am I not better to you than 10 sons? I think too often Elkanah is cast there as a Homer Simpson of a husband. A man who's just saying the stupidest things. He can come up, well, am I better than kids? But did you look at her response? When he came to her, she wasn't eating and she was crying. When after he said that to her, it says that she ate and then she went and worshiped and prayed. Do you think her husband had anything to do with that? Listen to your spouse. They know you. And it'll be at the points where they see the most clearly that you'll think, they don't know what they're talking about. Or you'll know they're right and you'll fight them anyway.

When you ask God to show you how you're proud, you are asking him to humble you. And you shouldn't be surprised when he answers that prayer through your circumstances, through other people, or through sickness and loss. How else can you fight against this? Pay close attention to how you speak about yourself and about your family. If you're a Christian, you should have some awareness, some ability to observe yourself and the things you're saying. and the things you're doing, and say, why am I doing that? What do I want that to produce? What do I want them to think of me? And if you find that what you want is for them to think more highly of you than you would, then you should shut up. And you should tell them, you know, that's not actually the whole story. Here are the sins that I committed last week. You remember when Paul and Barnabas were preaching, and all of the people, the crowds got together, and they started saying, the gods have come down among us.

Because of the things they were saying, what did Paul and Barnabas do? Man, we finally arrived. No, you guys stop it. We're not God. We're just men like you. We put our pants on one leg at a time. We're sinners. Don't confuse us with God. We're not holy like him. What else can you do? Confess your sins to other people regularly. Stand with God against yourself. When you read the scripture and you think, well, I don't like that or I don't do that or that seems harsh or that seems difficult, realize you're the one who's wrong and not God. And stand with him against yourself and say, he's right to see what I just felt and said and did as a sin. Because it was to them the blessed, the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Those who see the truth about themselves, see their depravity, are those who will be.

The citizens of heaven. Because they'll want to be free of their bondage and of this world. And they're willing to leave it behind. So do you want to go to heaven or not? Do you look forward to being free of your sins? Many times you head down this road and people are like, well, what about my family? I love my family. I don't want to leave my family. I didn't say anything about your family. I didn't say that you have to not love them at all. But Jesus himself said that he who loves father or mother or brother or sister more than me is not worthy of me. And so it's kind of a bad defense when Jesus says, don't do this, and then your response is to do it. And to say, well, what about the people I love here on earth? Where is your affection? Who do you love? Paul had this question, and in Philippians he says, for me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me. And I don't know which to choose.

Did he love the people? Oh, he loved the people. Did he love Christ? Yes. And you realize his love for the people was the outworking of his love for Christ. That's why he says, if I'm to remain on in the flesh, it will be fruitful labor. The way I will demonstrate my love for you so long as you have me here is to love these people. But I really do want to be with you, which is not to say I don't love them. I'm hard-pressed from both directions. having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better, yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sakes. You must be careful not to use your natural affections as a cover or an excuse for a cold heart. To look forward to being with God in heaven is no slight to the people that you love.

What it ought to do is stir you up and motivate you to minister to them so that you won't just have the few years of life here on earth together, but you'll have eternity together. So how do you be poor in spirit? To wrap up, be honest about yourself, with yourself and others. Acknowledge your sins and remember that you do sin in particular ways. This is the thing that more than anything else will help you to grow in your love for God. This is a foundational thing that must be true of us as Christians. Must be true of us. Not the fake, like, yeah, it's my fault, rolling over like a dog. No, it's my fault. Don't hit me. But a sincere, honest acknowledgement that you're a sinner and you need salvation, you need help. When you think highly of yourself, you will necessarily think lowly of God. But when you think lowly of yourself, it will draw you nearer to him. And so don't be precious with yourself. Be honest and trust God and come to him. And he'll save you. And you'll be blessed.

Let's pray.