The Poor in Spirit

 

527-B

 

“Oh, what bliss”, said Jesus, “Oh, what a joy-filled life!” He said, “Oh, what a joy-filled, blissful life for the man or the woman who is...” and then He began to fill in the blanks. How would you fill in the blanks? How would you define a blissful life? If someone were to say to you, “Happy is the man who is...” and pause, how would you complete the sentence? It would usually be, to some degree, at least, something like...” Happy is the man who has”, or “Happy is the man who does or happy is the man who can.”

This is where the gospel of Jesus Christ departs from the value system of the world and charts a course for the human heart that is so different it requires a special interpreter, God Himself, to even understand it, and it requires something called “grace” given by that same interpreter to accept it and apply it to the choices of life. Jesus is about to say to us: “Happy is the man who hasn't, who knows he can't and doesn't, but who recognizes God Is. Blessed he is and, oh, what bliss is his.”

That is where we are as we continue the opening stage of our look at the beatitudes, “God’s beautiful attitudes”. Jesus began at the beginning; at the point where beautiful attitudes have their origination. He said that there is an inner self-contained joy for the man who is "poor in spirit." Our goal is to deal in this lesson with the foundation stone of this beautiful life, what it means to be poor in spirit. Isn't it interesting that God's beautiful life represents the antithesis of that which the world calls happiness?

In the last lesson we had a look at the introductory verses for the Sermon on the Mount. The Scripture says:

Matthew 5:1 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:

2 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

3 Blessed are...

There a few basic facts that are worthy of review. The passage says “seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain.” The multitude was, basically, the same

crowd that Jesus sees today. It included the curious, (those who simply wanted to see what all the fuss was about), His adversaries, (those whose status in the religious hierarchy was being challenged by this amazing carpenter), and of course, the truly spiritually hungry. By far, those He was able to help were those who knew they needed a physician. The same is true today. In every church, in every class, in every seminar you enter, there will be the same mixture of listeners. Some are self-sufficient, but curious, some are religious, but unrepentant, still others genuinely seeking. We know there were many in that last group following Jesus.

Matthew 4:25 tells us that many were sick, tormented, had diverse diseases, were terrorized by the enemy and lonely. But in the crowd who followed after Him were also the affluent, the self-righteous, the healthy, the wealthy and the powerful. Jesus looked upon them and saw all of their needs. His heart went out to all of them. Because it did, it says that He stopped what He was doing and went up into a mountain. He retreated for a moment.

His retreating to the mountain was twofold. There was no convenient place for Him. He was the Son of God who had no place to lay His head, was born in a manger, and was buried in a borrowed tomb. The only pulpit or rostrum He had was a piece of rock hewn on a hillside where He could sit. That was all He needed. He was teaching that the kingdom of God was not in a place, but in men's hearts. This was no special place or holy mountain. This was an ordinary hillside. The Scripture says that when He reached a place where He could be seen and heard, He sat down. There were Jewish rabbis whose habit it was to teach while they were going about their business, but when they had something to share that was official or important, they sat down. The people gathered around them and knew that what was to be imparted next had power attached to it.

Matthew 5:1 ...when he was set, his disciples came unto him:

We discussed in the last lesson that He taught the disciples while the multitudes listened. His message was to the few, so that the few being changed by the message would go forth and minister to the many. The same is true today. It continues:

2 ...and he opened his mouth and taught them saying...

We looked at the fact that the phrase, "and he opened his mouth" literally meant first of all that the timing of His message was perfect. He only lived 33 years on this earth and He waited 30 of those years before He opened His mouth. When the time was right, when His audience was ready and His message was ready, He spoke.

Secondly, we see that His message was important. The literal meaning of the phrase "he opened his mouth" meant two things: that what was to be said was very important, and that the message had come from the heart of the one who delivered it, not just from his mind.

We then learned about the authority of the teacher. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, it is said that "they were astonished at His teaching because He spoke as one having authority, not as the scribes and Pharisees.” The phrase “and he taught them saying" could literally be translated that He continually taught them the same thing. It was a continual process. He taught His message on the hillside, He taught it in the valley, and He taught it in the synagogue. This was His message: “Blessed are...”

The Greek word for blessed is makarios. It literally means joy which finds its secret within itself. In the last lesson we discussed that the island of Cyprus was so named that by the Jews because it was considered to be a self-contained island of happiness. Everything the people would ever need was on that island. They felt that you could find total happiness without ever leaving its borders. So the literal meaning of the word is “self-contained joy, serene, untouchable and unaffected by circumstances, crises, people or pressures”. Jesus says, "Oh, what bliss, what a life." That is what He was trying to impart to His followers. Let’s now go back to that hillside and listen to our Lord as He spoke to the people. He was going to build a foundation stone for everything that would follow.

The first qualification for this beautiful life is a poverty-stricken heart. This is the spring from which the others spring forth, a poor spirit or a spirit of poverty. One way to get the full thrust of a phrase like this is to simply see what all of the translators and commentators have had to say about it. Here are a few of them:

The King James Bible says “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. Others translate it or paraphrase it like this:

“Spiritually prosperous are those who are humble and rate themselves as insignificant.”

“Humble men are very fortunate!”

“Blessed are those who feel poor in regard to spiritual things.”

“Blessed are those who know their need of God.”

“Blessed are those who are broken in spirit.”

“Blessed are those who are truly subject, willing to be ruled, not rebellious or troublesome.”

“Oh the bliss of the man who realizes his utter helplessness and puts his whole trust in God.”

“Spiritually prosperous are the destitute and helpless in the realm of the spirit.”

“Blessed is the one who realizes he is nothing, can do nothing and has need of all things.”

That is what it means to be poor in spirit. None of these contradict the other. All of them are simply facets of the same diamond of spiritual truth. We might combine them for the moment and simply define it this way:

Blessed, happy, blissful is the man who, seeing himself insignificant before God, spiritually poor, and desperately in need of Him, is broken in spirit and subjects himself to be taught and ruled by God continually. Oh, what bliss. The kingdom of heaven is his.

We must also remind ourselves that it is incredibly difficult to evaluate if you are poor in spirit. It is tough to evaluate because the very process of evaluation carries with it the temptation to be proud of your humility, and then you are no longer humble. The whole concept is to be balanced spiritually. To this end, we are going to seek to look for a few lessons at what it means to be poor in spirit. This is the stepping stone which leads to the altar where the fulfillment of the other “beautiful attitudes” becomes a reality.

Being poor in spirit seems to have relative implications. Let’s put it in the physical realm to better understand it. Suppose you live in a very modest home, but it meets your basic needs. You are invited to visit in someone else’s home whose dwelling is even more modest than yours. Maybe you have two sofas and they have one. You may have two bathrooms and they have one. You may have carpet and they don't. As you leave their home and head back to yours, you may say to yourself, "We are doing pretty well. We are prosperous." But then the phone rings and you get invited to someone else's home. They have four bathrooms. They have lush carpet. They even have a garage instead of a carport. This time you go home and look at that very same house that was so satisfactory before, and suddenly you say, "I'm not satisfied anymore. I'm very insignificant. I'm not successful. I'm poor." Nothing has changed. You have the same house, but your perspective has changed because of what you are comparing it to.

Now remember in the physical realm this is wrong, because a man's life consists not in the things he possesses. Jesus was just as comfortable with the wealthy as He was with the poor. Things or possessions were not a measuring stick to Him at all. We should desire to be the same way. But in the realm of the spirit, it is an appropriate illustration because if we gain a little knowledge, go to a Bible study, or go to Sunday school, we may begin to be very spiritually proud. It can be very subtle. We can begin to think we are important; we are satisfied. We become judgmental. We become spiritually proud like the Pharisee who said, "I thank God that I'm not like those others." Then suddenly, something happens in our lives. It would be great if we could become poor in spirit without having to have tough circumstances come into our lives. But God brings things and experiences into our lives that cause us to realize suddenly, "Good grief! I'm not who I thought I was at all." Then we are called on to look at Jesus, and we recognize our spiritual poverty.

I remember an experience in my life that helped illustrate this point. I had been a Christian for just a few years. I was in a church where there was a great deal of opportunity for service. I was one of those who didn't particularly know not to volunteer for everything that came along. So, I volunteered. Before long, I became very "important." I don't know if I was really important, but I was very important to myself. I felt like my spirituality rated somewhere up there with Moody, Spurgeon, and Billy Graham. (Just kidding, but I was feeling pretty spiritual because I was so active).

I got an invitation from a friend to go to a weekend seminar being taught in another city. I wasn't sure whether the church could manage if I wasn't there, yet I decided that we would go. I couldn't get out of it. I later learned that some friends of mine were praying for me, because they felt like there was a deep spiritual need in my life that I wasn't recognizing. They were praying that God would turn me inside out. However, if I had known they were praying for me, I would have resisted even more. I didn't think anyone needed to pray for me.

At any rate, we went to the conference. When I walked in, I felt like King Kong. When I had been there for about 15 minutes, I was under the chair looking up wondering what I was doing in a place like this. People were singing with a joy and exuberance and excitement that I didn't have. I knew the Word, and I knew the Lord, but I didn't have that joy. I looked around as they began to share testimonies. I will never forget some of them. The realities of their walk with Christ was different than mine. I was walking with the Lord, but at a distance. I was so busy working for Him that I wasn’t building a relationship with Him. I felt like I was so indispensable to His program that surely I had everything I needed. I can remember as those hours unfolded, the longer it went, the smaller I got. When it was almost over, I was under the carpet, no longer just under the chair.

The speakers then began to unfold the love of God and what it meant to just allow God to let Him live His life through us. In the process of what happened that day, I began to understand, that having thought I was something, I had to be confronted with Jesus and with others who knew Him well to realize, in reality, I was nothing at all. I began to understand, in part, though only in a very small way, what it meant to be poor in spirit. We have to go through that again and again in our lives, because pride keeps inching its way into our hearts. I get up here and stand in front of you to teach and look out there at you and Satan nudges me in the shoulder and says, "Pretty neat!" I turn to the Lord and say, "Lord, what would the kingdom be like without me?" The Lord answers, "Well, there would be one less hypocrite." That is what it means to be poor in spirit. It is the realization that God doesn’t need us. He needs nothing. We need Him. Oh, how we need Him.

God loves us, but the world and the church, believe it or not, will keep right on going when we are gone. If necessary, He will raise up stones to preach the Gospel. They will probably be more faithful than we are. The whole point is that we need to look at the basic aspects of our spiritual life that give us the ability to be poor in spirit. We are going to deal with two of these aspects. The first one is God's perspective of man. How does God look at you? You can't really have a healthy view of yourself unless you have a healthy perspective of how God sees you.

What is a God's eye view of you? I think that we could draw a triangle and draw a bar across it like you were making a seesaw or a balance. On the left-hand side you could put - Awareness of Sinfulness. On the other side to balance it you could put - Right self-image. Alongside the Awareness of Sinfulness you could write - All That You Are Apart From God. Alongside Your Right Self-image you could write - All That You Are in Jesus Christ.

 

That is what it means to be poor in spirit. You are truly aware of all that you are apart from God which is nothing, but just as aware of all that you are in Christ which is everything.

Now there are five things that make up God's opinion or viewpoint of you and of me. These will help us get the idea.

1- God views us internally. In the tire business, as tires come off the assembly line, there is a machine with an x-ray attached to it. They can look at that tire with an x-ray machine and even if the outside of it looks beautiful, they can tell in advance if and where it is likely to fail. That is the way God views us. God views us internally. 1 Samuel 16:7 says,

16:7 But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.

Ezekiel 11:5 And the Spirit of the LORD fell upon me, and said unto me, Speak; Thus saith the LORD; Thus have ye said, O house of Israel: for I know the things that come into your mind, every one of them.

God says, "I know the things that come into your mind, every one of them." Now that is powerful.

Psalm 139 paraphrased, says this,

Psalms 139:1 - O Lord, You have examined my heart and know everything about me.

139:2 - You know when I sit or stand. When far away, You know my every thought.

139:3 - You chart the path ahead of me, and tell me where to stop and rest. Every moment, you know where I am.

139:4 - You know what I am going to say before I even say it.

In other words, God views us internally. You are an open book before God. You can't have poverty of spirit until you come to grips with that fact. We are so used to masquerading and playing games with the people around us, we begin to think that’s really us. We play the game particularly well at church. We think that if we can impress our fellow Christians, we must really be spiritual, but we are not impressing God. He knows the thoughts that went through our hearts this morning, last night, and the day before. He knows the motivation that causes us to do the things that we do. We might as well relax and accept it, acknowledge it and get excited about it.

2- God uses us possessively. We are not your own. We have been bought with a price. He, therefore, knowing our heart, has the right to demand and desire of us the kind of heart attitudes that would please Him. 1 Peter 2 tells us that we are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and a peculiar people. Now all of us would agree that we are a peculiar people, but the real meaning of that word is that we are a special prized possession of the King. Isaiah 43:7 says,

Is. 43:7 Even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory,

We are a priceless possession.

3- God uses us realistically. What a relaxing thing that is. He views us internally and possessively, but He also views us realistically. He knows what is in man. We find in Scripture:

Romans 11:34 For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counselor?

1 Corinthians 13:12 Now we see through a glass dimly but then face to face.

Isaiah 40:15 Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.

Job 23:10 But he knoweth the way that I take:

Scripture also tells us that He knows our frame and remembers that we are but dust. God has a right attitude about you. He understands your limitations and mine. He knows that we have the flesh battling within us. He knows that we are going to sometimes fail and has prepared to meet that challenge, when it happens, with forgiveness. He views us realistically.

4- God views us eternally. His primary concern is not our accomplishments or our talents, but that we have a teachable spirit. God isn't so concerned with what we do; God is concerned with who we are. God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose the thing that makes him blessed, his own soul? In other words, do not lay up your treasures on earth. God's concern is not so much with what we do or become, but what we are in Him, because He views us eternally.

5- God views us expectantly. We read in Jeremiah,

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

God looks at us through the eyes of a loving Father, and He is excited over every point of obedience in our life. Peter was about to betray our Lord, and Christ turned to him and said "Peter you are going to mess up and do the wrong thing. You are going to betray me, but, Peter, I will pray for you. When you repent, (and you will) I want you to strengthen your brothers. When you get it all back together, and you will, be an encouragement to other people." The whole idea is that God views us expectantly. He knows that we are going to make mistakes. He knows when we fall; but He is ready, willing, and excited about round 2, round 3 and round 4.

So God views us internally, possessively, realistically, eternally and expectantly. He knows that, in ourselves, we can't do it, but He can. He makes Himself available to us to do it. In other words, consider the principle of relative value based on relative investment.

Let me give you an illustration. Let's imagine that you go home today and parked in front of your house is an old beat up antique Ford car. Maybe you didn’t even know they made cars that long ago, but there it is. Now I have nothing against old cars. But this one is a wreck. The fenders are falling off, the tailpipe is on the ground, the windshield is broken, and the transmission is falling out. The hood falls off as you look under it, and you see that the wires are not connected to the spark plugs. Inside the car you see that the headliner is gone and the upholstery is torn to shreds. Suddenly, you realize that this car is not only an antique, it’s a dog.

If you were to call the salvage company, it would cost more to haul it off than you could get for it. You go inside and your son comes up to you and says "Dad, guess what? I earned $320 last summer with that job, and as I was going down the street a man came up to me and said that I could have his car for $300. It only took $20 to transfer the title. I gave everything I owned, but now look what I've got!" You are looking at it thinking "What a wreck!" In your son's eyes, however, he sees gleaming fenders. He hears the purr of a fine-tuned engine. He knows what that car can become because he gave everything he had to get it. To him, that car is a potential “classic”. To you it is a wreck. What’s the difference? Perspective.

That is what it means to be poor in spirit. As God looks down at us, he sees a bunch of broken down seemingly useless wrecks. Our fenders are falling off. The headlights are broken. The engine doesn't start and if it did, it wouldn’t move. But you see, God looks at us and He sees in His heart what we will become when we have been restored. Incidentally, that old Ford may well be worth $30,000 or more when it is put back together. In God's sight we will be priceless, because He sees what we can become, and because He gave everything He had to purchase us. Since He has invested everything He has in us, we are of inestimable value to Him. That is you and that is me in the sight of God. To come to a full, rich understanding of that is the beginning of becoming poor in spirit.

The second aspect, having come at least in part to view God's perspective of us is to look at God's prerequisite for us. What I want to share with you, now, is how God would like us to look at Him. Let's look at Colossians, chapter two:

2:6 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:

2:7 Rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.

One translator says it means “We are to regulate our lives and conduct in union and conformity with Him”.

One paraphrase says it this way: “Just as we have trusted Christ to save us, we are to trust Him each day with our problems. We are to live in vital union with Him.”

What this literally means is that Jesus wants us to have the Calvary perspective 24 hours a day. The Calvary perspective is the ability to envision God in your walk with the same mental attitude you had at your conversion. Things have changed, that is for sure, but basic attitudes should not. I will give you four of those basic attitudes.

Attitude 1- When we come to Christ, we come for the most part in a state of utter helplessness. In John 5:1-9 we read of a man who for 38 years lay impotent by the pool. There was no way he could be healed even though all he needed to do was to be dipped in the water. Every time there was a stirring in the waters, which allowed the waters to bring about healing, someone else who could move, or who had someone to move them, would get there first. He was in a state of utter, complete helplessness.

Then Jesus came. Out of the midst of his helplessness came healing. He was paralyzed and without hope. He just reached out and Jesus made him whole. Utter helplessness. As you have therefore received Jesus, the Lord, so walk ye in Him. You were helpless when you came to Him. What has happened? Once we become "more mature in the Lord" we often lose that sense of helplessness. We need to be reminded that we are no more capable today, apart from Christ, than we were the day that we found Him. In the flesh, the only thing we are is more accountable. In the flesh, we can do absolutely nothing more than we could do before we found Him, which was nothing, and is nothing. That state of utter helplessness is what drives us to our knees, until we cry, "Lord Jesus, be my life." He does. Why have we lost it? Why do we lose it? We need to regain the Calvary perspective.

Attitude 2- When we came to Christ, most of us came with a deep awareness of our utter sinfulness. The Holy Spirit convicted us. We recoiled in horror when we saw the sin that existed in our lives. Like Isaiah 6 reminds us:

6:5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.

That is what it was like for most of us when we were saved. We were so aware of our sinfulness that we had to have a Savior. I hate to break it to us, but we are just as sinful, apart from Christ, today, as we were before we were saved. The sin nature has not changed one-tenth of one percent. Why is it then we are told, "as you have therefore received Christ Jesus, so walk in him?" It means that we should have the same kind of attitude towards our sin today that we had when we came to Calvary. That is what it means to be poor in spirit.

Attitude 3- When we came to Christ we came in utter humility.

We weren't anything, but God was everything. Some of us had to walk down an aisle and be embarrassed. Some of us had to hold up our hand in public. Some of us had to go to a friend. Some of us had to face harassment and embarrassment afterwards with family and friends. We had to come in a state of utter humility. It means to find no cause in ourself to justify the price God paid for us. After we have been Christians for a while, however, we begin to think God really got a bargain when He got us, and that we really are worth it. I have news for us. Just as we look in the Blue Book to get the value of a car, we need to look in the black book, or the Bible, to get our value. We find out that when we look for Loan Value, there is no listing. Nothing. "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him," in a state of utter humility before God.

Attitude 4- We came to Christ in a state of utter abandonment. We’ve all heard testimonies by people who describe all the different things they tried: drugs, money, and alcohol. They then looked at God and said, "If this doesn't work, I am through." Can any of you relate to that? If this doesn't work, I am through. To come in utter abandonment means to throw oneself desperately onto the care of another with no way of escape. It means that there is a train going by, and you realize that this train is going to the only destination that you can get to, and it is the only way to get there. It is now about to pass you by, so you throw yourself onto the train. You land on a flatbed and rest the whole weight of your future in the belief that the train is going where you want to go, so you stay there. That is how some of us came to Christ. In utter abandonment, we threw ourselves on Him.

Now in day to day life, the problem is that we don't always stay on board. We pass by the station and see the glamour and the glitter of the world, and we forget that state of utter abandonment. We think that we can crawl off and get back on the next train that comes by. Or, we hear others walking alongside the track say "That's not the only way. There is another train." Others even say "This isn't the way at all." We begin to lose sight of that singleness of thought that we had the day we came to know Christ. Utter abandonment. Utter humility. Utter helplessness. Utter sinfulness.

Colossians 2:6-7 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him.

That is what it means to be poor in spirit.

God looks at us internally, and He knows our hearts. He looks at us possessively; He owns us. He looks at us realistically, because He made us. He looks at us eternally, with that perspective. He looks at us expectantly, because He knows what we can become in Him. He says "When you came to Me, you came in utter helplessness, utter sinfulness, utter humility and utter abandonment. What happened?"

If we want to be poor in spirit, we need to go back and recapture that Calvary perspective. God looked down from that Cross and said, "I see a bunch of old, seemingly unusable discards. Fenders are battered, upholstery tattered, parts missing, but, oh, what they can become in Me." Seeing that, He said to us, "I bought you and paid an incredible price for you. I am in the process of completely restoring you; making you back into what you were designed to be. Apart from that restoration, you are still what you were before I bought you: nothing.” To see ourselves in that light, not as brand-new Cadillacs for Him to show off, but as old, beat up Fords that have been to God's garage and been made over is the beginning, just the beginning, of what it means to be poor in spirit, and it is the first step to becoming “blessed” .

Oh, what bliss awaits the man or woman who becomes “poor in spirit”. Oh, what bliss, indeed!

For Further Study and Application

1- Jesus “saw the multitudes” and went up into a mountain. Who were these “multitudes”? “When He was set, the disciples came unto Him and He opened His mouth and taught them.” Do you think He was teaching the multitudes or the disciples? On what do you base your answer?

2- Read the translations and paraphrases on page 5. Do they all say the same thing? How would you summarize them in one sentence? Based on these definitions, are you poor in spirit? Do you think it is a one-time choice, or a lifetime of becoming?

3- What do you think it means that God views you internally? Have you ever meditated for one whole day on that fact? How will understanding that truth affect the way you live?

4- State in your own words what it means that God views you realistically. Why is this so important?

5- Do you see yourself apart from God as an old Ford in need of redemption or a neat car that God can use? How do you keep it in balance?

6- Memorize or review Jeremiah 29:11.

7- Memorize or review Colossians 2:6,7.

8- Are you as aware of your utter helplessness apart from God as you were when you first came to Christ? Of your utter sinfulness? Of the need for utter abandonment? What can you do to return to that attitude of dependence?

9- Agree to spend some time this week alone with God asking Him to teach you to become poor in spirit. He delights to do that, because He has said you will “blessed” or filled with self-contained joy when you have that mindset. Expect Him to do a work in your heart. He may well show you some things you don’t want to see. That is part of the process. Praise Him and do not interfere with the miracle.

 

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Sermon By: Russell Kelfer