Blessed are the Poor in Spirit | Rev. Paul Lawler

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Welcome to the podcast of Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
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Join us as we dive into this week's sermon that challenges our hearts and minds to grow closer to Christ.
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We pray that your heart is inspired and transformed by God's Word.
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And if you will, let hear God's word together.
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We start a new teaching series this morning, and it's on the Sermon on the Mount.
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Obviously, we begin with the Beatitudes, so we just invite you to remain standing for a reading out of the gospel.
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Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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You may be seated.
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So, Jesus, we pray that you would intensify, amplify the ministry of the Holy Spirit, illuminating your word in these emerging moments as acts of worship.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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Now it's rare for me to stand in the pulpit and say words like this.
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What we're about to step into today and in the coming months is truly revolutionary.
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And I want to submit to you on the front end that is not hyperbole.
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We're going to begin today with Jesus presenting the possibility of your being genuinely happy.
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In fact, John Wesley talked a lot about this, a lot.
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Wesley said, true religion implies happiness as well as holiness.
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Many of you know he linked those two together, and happiness is peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
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Wesley said, the more holy we are, and I'm going to inject properly understood.
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A lot of us when we hear the word holy, it just sounds so, and this won't sound very pastoral, stinking religious that we don't realize the gift that it is.
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The Sermon on the Mount, we're going to learn that together.
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But Wesley said the more holy we are upon earth, the more happy we must be, seeing there's an inseparable connection between holiness and happiness.
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Thus, the more good we do, the happier we be.
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Wesley also said, when he noticed people who had dry religion, in other words, very anemic and lethargic in their relationship with Christ, Wesley said the people are not happy because the people are not holy.
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And again, holiness needs to be properly understood.
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And we're going to journey in that through the Sermon on the Mount in the coming months.
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But when I make a statement that the Bible, that Jesus specifically talks about pathways of knowing happiness, many people, including many Christians, find that hard to believe.
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And so want you to notice something.
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If you've got your Bible open, you might have noticed Jesus repeatedly, and I only read one of the Beatitudes, Jesus repeatedly talks about blessing.
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In fact, that Greek word used there is makarios, and it actually translates blessing, but all its cousins.
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It translates blessing, happy, fortunate, blissful, flourishing.
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And none of that is like pushing it out to the edge, trying to make it say something it doesn't.
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That's how the word translates.
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And so Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount understanding human need and describes the potential for life to be experienced in a way here on earth, let alone heaven, here on earth, by an inward-centeredness in Christ that is not affected by outward circumstances.
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And so when we talk about blessedness in this way, and all that it means, it's fundamentally an element in the character of God.
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And Peter teaches us in 1st and 2 Peter that you, believer, as you follow Jesus, you have the opportunity to partake of the divine nature of Jesus.
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It's almost like Peter is using a parallel, like you partake of a meal and it gives you nourishment, that Jesus himself nourishes your heart, your spirit in a life where you partake of his blessedness.
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So to be blessed is not a superficial feeling of well-being being that is based upon your circumstance, but it's rather a deep supernatural experience that emanates out of the centeredness of Jesus in your own life and emanating out of your relationship with him and being in alignment with his heart and life.
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Now, you know I like to say to you from time to time, let's pause and keep it real.
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Here it is.
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To the natural person who doesn't know Jesus yet, or perhaps even for an immature or carnal Christian, please understand that's not said like pointing a finger at anybody, but these are definitions the Bible uses.
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For a carnal Christian, it's possible when we describe this that happiness sounds like misery with another name.
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Why do I say that?
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Because phrases like poor in spirit are often held at arm's length when we read them on the surface.
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But and we operate in a way where we're blind to what Jesus was driving at.
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And therefore, an immature or carnal Christian misses the mark and is left with an anemic or, shall we say, a malnourished understanding and experience of everything that Jesus is offering to the believer.
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And so what's happened as we read a text like this, Jesus changes the price tags of what really brings happiness.
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Now, let's contrast this because we all live in a fallen world.
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And the fallen world we live in, the world says, happy are the rich.
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Happy are the successful in the world's eyes.
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Happy are the glamorous.
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Happy are the famous.
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And when we read the Gospels, we recognize that if we were to really word it succinctly, that there's a lie that accompanies every one of those phrases.
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And the lie is simply this things satisfy.
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Things satisfy your deepest longing.
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Acquiring things brings happiness.
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Achieving things brings happiness.
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Doing things brings satisfaction.
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Now there's a great example out of the Bible that reinforces what Jesus is saying in Matthew 5.3.
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And many of you, if not all of you, are familiar with an Old Testament character named Solomon.
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Solomon was exceedingly successful in the world's eyes.
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He was the wisest and the most magnificent of kings.
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He had the royal blood of his father.
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He had amassed vast amounts of gold, precious metals, jewels.
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In fact, the Bible tells us that Solomon had utilized so much silver in his kingdom that it was as prevalent as rocks in the kingdom.
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Rocks in Jerusalem.
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He had a fleet of ships and stables filled with the finest of thoroughbreds.
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He had hundreds of wives gathering the most beautiful women from many lands across that region of the world.
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He ate the most sumptuous of foods.
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He dined in the most beautiful palaces.
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He had the most fine dinnerware.
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He had the most distinguished guest that he interacted with.
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He was acclaimed throughout the world for his wisdom and his power and his wealth.
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And based upon all of those things in the world's eyes, Solomon should have been exceedingly happy.
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I mean, like hap, hap happy off the chart.
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But yet he writes in his journal in Ecclesiastes that his life lacked purpose, and that his life was desperately empty.
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Many of you know the verse, Ecclesiastes 1, 2, and 3.
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Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
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Some of your Bibles translate that after Solomon had achieved all of these things and he reflects on it and goes, This is meaningless.
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It doesn't mean anything.
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I have shared with you before that when I was a young man, my mom remarried.
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And she remarried a man that had done really well.
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Suddenly I went from the kid who lived in a nice three, two bedroom home, and suddenly I get as my mom remarries, this person he marries, whom was so good to my brother and I we're getting out of church, and he says things like, Where do you want to eat lunch?
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And I'm like, back in that day, I'm like, okay, there's a Shawnee's up the road.
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Let's go to Shawnee's.
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And we he would go, no, where do you want to eat?
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Anywhere in the Southeast.
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And we would get on his private plane and we would go eat in Atlanta.
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We would go eat in other cities in the Southeast.
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And I thought, wow, this is it.
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I learned a very valuable lesson early in life.
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It's not it.
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It doesn't fulfill.
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And some of you, when we hear Solomon's story, we go, Oh, that's ancient literature.
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I don't know that that's relevant today.
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But I'm gonna take a moment and just do an experiment with you.
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I'm gonna name a lot of names that you've heard.
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And I'm asking you a question this morning.
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What do they have in common?
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Here we go.
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Judy Garland, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin, Keith Moon, Sid Vicious.
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Some of you are going, Pastor, why do you know about Sid Vicious?
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Let's keep going.
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Kurt Cobain, Lane Staley, Ike Turner, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston, Prince.
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What do they all have in common?
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Well, yeah.
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They're each famous.
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They were each exceedingly wealthy, they each accomplished great things in the eyes of the world.
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But they all died from a drug overdose.
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If wealth and accomplishment and fame were the answer, then God help us, why did they need to numb their souls with drugs, the very drugs that killed them?
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This is why, and I've quoted him before, but is too relevant to lay off.
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That's why theologian Jim Carey once said, I wish everybody could be rich and famous so everyone would know it's not the answer.
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So what's the lesson for us?
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Physical things, accomplishments, fame.
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Simply cannot fill the deep part of your soul.
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This is why Blaise Pascal says things like, There is a God-shaped hole in you that only God can fill.
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This is why Jesus stood in the middle of a religious gathering, realizing that people were going through the outward motions, but yet he says this, he asked a question right in the middle of the gathering.
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Is anybody here thirsty?
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He wasn't talking about physical thirst.
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Is anybody here, does anybody here have an empty soul?
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Is anybody here hungry for meaning and purpose and why you're on this planet and to fill that void and the deepest part of you?
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And he asked the question, Is anyone among you thirsty?
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And then he replies rhetorically, if so, if anybody's thirsty, let him come to me and drink.
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This is why author Richard Simmons once wrote, So many people spend their lives looking for some other stream to finally and forever quench the thirst of their souls.
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However, Jesus says there is no other stream.
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And he's very clear about the fact that if we do not drink from this spring the fountain of living water, we will die.
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Wages of sins, death.
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We will die.
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You were dead in your trespasses and sins, Ephesians teaches us.
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So Jesus is offering us a completely new way of living, a completely new way of thinking.
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Really, it's a it's a new way of being.
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And the Bible describes that.
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The Bible describes that apart from Jesus, remember, God's judgment falls on us rather than Jesus.
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Apart from Jesus' atoning work on the cross, remember, we're not birthed into eternally with God.
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We're living under a curse, but Jesus Christ came to break the curse.
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He loves you and he came for you to break the curse so that you could enter into the kingdom now, not just when you die, but you enter into the operation of the kingdom of God now.
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And so he says in verse three that a part of this pathway goes like this: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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Present tense, the kingdom is now operative for you as a believer.
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When we were praying for these children, we were not just taking up space, praying for school administrators and captones, capstone school and their lives.
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No, we're a part of the kingdom of God.
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We have access to the reality of the kingdom.
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But notice what Jesus says: Blessed are the poor in spirit.
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Let me tell you about this word poor in the Greek.
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It's the Greek word tokas.
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It literally means to shrink, to cower, or to cringe.
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That's counterintuitive.
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But that's what it means.
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In fact, if we were to look at this word in classical and Hellenistic Greek, in other words, how's this word used outside the Bible in biblical times?
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Just to kind of enhance, what does that really mean, tokas?
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Well, in classical Greek, the word is used to refer to a person who is reduced to total destitution, or a person who is crouched in a corner begging.
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Picture that.
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This term did not mean simply poor.
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This term meant begging poor.
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Many of you know for many decades, Missy and I have served in India.
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And our my first trip into India, I'd spent a couple of weeks there sharing the gospel and doing some discipleship and planting churches.
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My very first trip in India, toward the end of the trip, our host said, I want to take you to a restaurant.
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And it's a really special place.
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And he began to tell us a little bit about colonialism under British rule and some of the things the British had built in the nation of India.
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And he said, We're going to go to an old British hotel in Calcutta called Hotel Oberoy.
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And he went on to say, now it's really close to where Mother, at that time, Mother Teresa was still alive.
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It's really close to where Mother Teresa shares in ministry among uh lepers and among the broken.
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And uh you'll see some of that uh while we're in the area.
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So we arrive at Hotel Oberoi for uh a dinner.
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Now, I want you to picture this with me for just a moment because uh let's pretend this is an Indian street right here near where Mother Teresa's work is going on.
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And loved ones, Hotel Oberoy sits on that street.
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And on this street, men and women and children leaning against Hotel Oberoy, some of them do not have hands, some of them do not have feet or legs because leprosy has taken it.
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Poor, poor, dirt poor, begging poor.
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So as you're going into the hotel, you literally have adults who are in tattered clothing hanging on them, skin and bones, emaciated, looking at you, going, motioning because they're hungry, they're begging.
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And I can step one foot right here, marble floors, beautiful marble floors, beautiful mahany woods, all kinds of exotic woods that have been carved by craftsmen.
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There's a grand piano in the lobby playing elegantly, these beautiful plants that just adorn everything, just in the right kind of symmetry.
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For those who like architecture, it's captivating and the buffet is incredible, but just picture it.
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One step right here.
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One step right here.
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Incredible luxury.
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The picture I want you to see is what Jesus is describing here.
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Blessed are the poor in spirit.
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The term does not mean simply poor, it's begging the poor.
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No, we need to clean something up.
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And what I mean by that, some people have misinterpreted this verse.
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Some people have rendered this verse thinking that Jesus is encouraging material poverty.
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And I want to let you know, loved ones, that that is not a correct interpretation of this verse.
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If Jesus were advocating material poverty, he would have contradicted other parts of Scripture, and he also would have contradicted what he's about to say in Matthew 5.42, which is where he's teaching us to give alms to the poor.
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If Jesus was teaching the innate blessedness of material poverty, then the task of every Christian would be to help make everybody penniless, including ourselves.
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So let's just validate a bottom line.
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Jesus did not teach that material poverty is the pathway to spiritual prosperity.
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The poor in spirit are those who recognize their spiritual poverty apart from God.
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Jesus is speaking of a spiritual poverty that corresponds to the material poverty of those who are tokas, beggars, desperate.
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In other words, what Jesus is aiming at for all of us, for me and for you, all of us, is that it is a blessing to see oneself in light of the holiness and grandness and the beauty and the glory of God as one who is lost apart from God, one who is hopeless apart from God, one who is helpless apart from God, one who is empty apart from God, one who is in need of mercy and grace apart from God.
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And apart from Jesus Christ, every person is spiritually destitute, no matter what his or her education, wealth, social status, accomplishments, or religious knowledge.
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The poor in spirit are those who recognize their total spiritual destitution and their complete dependence upon God.
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They recognize that there are no saving resources in themselves, and their only hope is to ask for mercy and grace in light of what God has done in the person of Jesus Christ.
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They know they have no spiritual merit, and they know they can earn no spiritual reward on their own.
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Their pride is gone, their self-assurance is gone, they stand empty handed before Almighty God.
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They are the personification of these words.
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Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.
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This is the point of the first beatitude.
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Church family, this thing permeates me.
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All of Scripture.
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We don't have time to unpack all that.
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Let me just name just a little quick flyover, real quick, Isaiah 66.
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But this is the one upon whom I will look.
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He who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.
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There's a picture of poverty of spirit.
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Psalm 34, 18.
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The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, saves the crushed in spirit.
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Again, there's a picture of humility before a holy and loving God.
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Psalm 51, 17, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a contrite heart.
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Oh God, you will not despise.
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It's all over the Bible.
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Loved ones, you may remember one of the parables that Jesus told.
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You remember the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector?
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Remember what the Pharisee said?
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I'm going to transliterate it, but you can check the scriptures to see if I'm being faithful or not.
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The Pharisee says, Lord, I am in church every Sunday, and I tithe.
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And I give alms to the poor.
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You hear the I, I, I in that?
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And then you may remember the other person who's a tax collector who stands before Jesus and says, Oh God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
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And Jesus says, there's a contrast between these two, that this man, the tax collector, who's often despised in the world's eyes, walked away right with God, rather than the Pharisee who did all the outward things correctly.
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In other words, what we recognize is the Pharisee was proud in spirit, and the tax collector was poor in spirit.
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I have an extended family member that I got into a conversation around some of the dynamics that we're talking about this morning years ago.
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And when we began talking about what all this means, he responded defensively and he said these words.
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He says, I am a good person.
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My God's a loving God, and I'm a good person.
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Do you realize what he was saying by default?
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I don't need God's mercy because I'm a good person.
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I don't need God's grace because I'm a good person.
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I don't need to be forgiven because I'm a good person.
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Loved ones, that person might check the box when they go in the hospital that their religious preference is Christian, but that is not Christian belief.
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That is the belief of what we would call vague deism, a vague notion of God.
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In other words, what characterizes this person that Jesus is describing?
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He a person that knows the blessing from God, flourishing from God, is a person who is poor in spirit.
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By the way, how do you know you're poor in spirit?
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Here it is.
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Standing before God, you have nothing to offer, and you know you have nothing to offer.
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You know that it's all on what Jesus Christ did at the cross.
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In his confessions, Augustine makes clear that pride was his great barrier to receiving the gospel.
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He was proud of his intellect, he was proud of his wealth, he was proud of his prestige.
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Until he recognized that those things really were less than nothing.
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Christ could do nothing for him.
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This is why Jesus put this as the first beatitude, because humility is the foundation of all of it.
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It's the foundation of every grace you'll experience from God, including saving grace and sanctifying grace.
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It is the basic element of becoming a Christian.
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Pride has no part in the kingdom of God.
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And until a man or woman surrenders their pride, he or she can't enter the kingdom of God, Jesus said, unless you become like a child, not childish, but unless you become like a child, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven.
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And what that tells us, loved ones, is we cannot be filled until we're empty of ourselves.
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We cannot be made worthy until we recognize our own unworthiness.
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We can't live until we admit that we are dead.
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Which is what Paul writes about us in Ephesians.
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Before you knew Christ, you were dead in your trespasses and sins.
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Spiritual realities, you were indifferent to that.
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You weren't alive in Christ.
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We cannot begin the Christian life without humility.
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We cannot live the Christian life with pride.
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And so until a soul is humbled, until an inner person comes to a place where we reconcile that I am poor in spirit, Christ can never become dear because he's obscured by self.
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Until one knows how helpless, how worthless, and how sinful he or she really is, he or she can never see how mighty, how worthy, how glorious Christ is in himself.
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Until one sees how doomed he is, he cannot see what a beautiful redeemer that Jesus is.
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Until one sees his or her own poverty, he cannot see God's riches.
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So being poor in spirit is the first beatitude because humility must precede everything else.
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Church, hear this quote from Tim Keller.
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The question this morning is not, are you successful?
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The question isn't, are you religious?
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The question is not, are you respected?
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It is this.
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Have you become poor in spirit?
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Have you come to the end of yourself?
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Have you stopped trying to justify yourself before God?
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Have you admitted your need for his mercy that he freely gives when a woman or man humbles themselves before God and asks?
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Because the doorway into the kingdom is low.
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It's a place where pride cannot enter, only humility.
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This is why Jesus begins in this way Blessed are the poor in spirit.
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And here's an irony about the first beatitude, because the world says, fill your hands, but Jesus says, empty them, empty them before me.
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The world says to us, believe in yourself.
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But Jesus says, believe on me, depend upon me.
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The world says, Become somebody, but Jesus says, Become a beggar before God.
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It's counterintuitive, right?
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So counterintuitive.
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But when you do, you discover that the poorest person in spirit becomes the richest person both now and into eternity.
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Why?
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Because the kingdom of heaven, you've now got act, you've got access.
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The kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
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You have access in prayer to Almighty God.
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You have access before the throne to the operation of the kingdom.
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You have access in a way that we can intercede for children and intercede for teachers and make a difference in our city.
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You have access to the living God in a way that the Bible declares he becomes your mediator between you and God.
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You have access in a way that you're no longer under judgment and condemnation.
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You have access in a way that your sins are forgiven and you're reconciled to a holy God.
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You have access in a way that even death doesn't have dominion over your life.
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You have access in a way that now, even if you die, you live because Jesus is risen from the dead.
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Loved ones, this is no small matter.
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This means everything.
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So let us come with empty hands.
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Nothing in my hands I bring.
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Simply to thy cross I cling.
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Blessed are the poor in spirit.
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Flourishing are the poor in spirit.
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Blissful are the poor in spirit.
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Happy are the poor in spirit.
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In Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Let's pray for just a moment.
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Jesus, there's no magic one.
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Suddenly it just a switch is flipped, and we become humble.
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Unless you move upon the heart.
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Unless you revelate over our lives.
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So we pray you take the seeds of your word this morning.
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And I I pray Matthew 13 over this gathering.
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There's some hearts that are hard, and the seeds of your word just bounce off.
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And I pray for those hearts, God, that you do a work of softening.
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Soften hearts this morning, God.
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Holy Spirit, we need your help.
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Soften hearts.
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Pray you minister to places where people have come in today and they're living lives independent of you.
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Soften hearts.
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I pray for the person who's become jaded and is questioning if if your way, who you are, and your way really work.
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I pray, God, revelate over that man's heart, over that woman's heart, God.
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Lord, I pray for persons that battle worry and anxiety, and it chokes the work of your word in their life.
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And I pray, God, that they would lay anxieties at your feet.
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You said, Cast your anxiety upon me.
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I care for you.
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And I pray for those that battle fear and worry and anxiety this morning, that's choking your word.
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I pray you deliver them.
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Lord, there's some people that the scripture says are deceived by riches, that wealth, comfort has blinded them to their deepest need.
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And I pray, God, that you would lovingly convict the heart.
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Just show them the true riches, eternal riches.
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Cultivate a poverty of heart.
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And then God, I pray for the church that we would learn how to be beggars.
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That we would not be casual with you.
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Help us, Lord.
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Help us to see the poverty of our own spirit.
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Our need for you, God.
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God, I pray you would do this in children, teenagers, college students.
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I pray you do this in fathers.
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Pray you would do this in marriages.
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I pray you would do this in wives.
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Pray that you would do this in grandparents.
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Every generation, God.
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Lord, we pray that you help us not just to hear the word, but for the word to take root in us.
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For the word of God to produce fruit in us.
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So help us as a church, individually individually and collectively, to see our poverty and to beg for mercy.
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To beg for grace.
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In the name and power of Jesus, we pray.
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Amen.
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Amen.
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Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the podcast for Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
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We pray that today's message has inspired and encouraged you in your walk with Christ.
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To stay connected with our church community, visit us online at ChristchurchMemphis.org.
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We hope to see you this upcoming Sunday for worship as we seek to glorify God and make disciples of Jesus Christ among all peoples.