SERMON OUTLINE

Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit             Matthew 5.3

Blessed

The Blessed are those who trust in God through their Savior Jesus Christ and know the fellowship and favor of God on their lives. Blessed is the enjoyment of our relationship with God and the experience and hope of His promises to us.

Outline of Beatitudes

V3, Foundation. Basic Heart attitude that motivates all

V4-6, Three heart responses. Heart attentiveness

V7-9, Three outward responses. Heart in action

V10-12, The world’s response. Heart antagonism

 Blessed are the poor in spirit

-“Penes”, the working poor who can sustain themselves

-“Ptochos”, the begging poor who need the  gifts of others to survive. Lazarus (Luke 16.19-31). Jesus (2 Corinthians 9.9)

-Not material, behavior, love, religion poverty but bankrupt in spirit and condemned before a Holy God by Adam’s sin and personal sin.

-Not acceptable to natural man who is proud and sinful.

-God’s greatest gift is the revelation of poverty of spirit. Ask God for it.

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven

-A present reality, not a future promise

-The exchange of poverty for heavenly riches

-Example Luke 18.9-14

 Conclusion

1)    Make God in my image.

2)    Follow a religious system.

3)    Acknowledge the reality of our spiritual poverty and of God’s provision for heaven in Jesus Christ. Be Blessed, humbled and grateful to God.

SERMON NOTES

Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit               Matthew 5.3

-The Blessed are those who trust in God through their Savior Jesus Christ and know the fellowship, approval, and favor of God, on their lives. Blessed is the enjoyment of a relationship with God, and the experience and hope of His promises to us.

-As I pointed out last week this first Beatitude is the foundation upon which the rest of the Beatitudes logically follow. It is very important that we understand what Jesus is teaching in this verse. This verse makes known to us the basic heart attitude that is to be found in every true Christian, and the basic heart attitude upon which the Christian life is to grow.

-Lets begin this morning by looking at the word “poor” used in this verse. Greek has two words that we translate into English as poor. The word “penes” describes a person who is materially poor but still able to sustain themselves without begging. This is the working poor. Though they have little material wealth they can still provide something for themselves. The other Greek word, the one used in this verse, is “ptochos” and describes the begging poor. The root of this word is “to crouch, to cringe, to cower”. It describes total hopeless poverty. It describes a person who is so poor that they are reduced to begging to survive. A “ptochos” man who is completely dependent on the charity of others for life itself. This word is used to describe Lazarus in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. Most translate this word as “beggar”. Each day Lazarus would beg for his food at the rich man’s gate in order to survive. This word is also used in 2 Corinthians 8.9 to describe the humiliation of Jesus that brings us the richness of salvation. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.” Jesus came from the Glory and Majesty of heaven where He was worshipped and obeyed as God, to complete and absolute dependence on His Father emptying Himself to abuse and slander by sinners and to the utter poverty of a shameful death on a cross.

-So the word Jesus uses in this first Beatitude describes a person in great poverty, helpless and in need of the charity of others to survive. This person is very aware of their need and of the required help from others for life itself.

-Now Jesus is not describing material poverty here but the poor in spirit. This person in not described as poor in material goods, poor in righteous behavior, poor in love, or poor in religious beliefs, but poor in spirit. Jesus is describing a person who has realized that before God they are bankrupt and have absolutely nothing available to get them to heaven. Ever more they understand that as sinners they are hopelessly condemned before a Holy God and have no righteousness to offer to God and no works that God will accept from them.

-Since Adam’s sin the state of the human race has been helplessly poor in spirit before a Holy God. Apart from the Mercy and Grace of God eternal death as a result of sin is unavoidable. Like the beggar who will die apart from the help of others so the sinner is bound for hell apart from the Grace of God.

-Seeing ourselves as poor in spirit before a Holy God is not acceptable to the natural man who is under the power and deception of sin. We naturally think of ourselves as spiritual people but we are really poor in spirit. We fancy ourselves intellectual and creative creatures worthy of God’s attention and blessing, and worthy of heaven, but in reality we are spiritual beggars. Mankind without the Spirit of God is offended at the thought of being a beggar before God, in need of the righteousness of God offered in the Savior Jesus Christ. Natural man is too proud to see and admit his complete and absolute poverty before a Holy God. But God’s reality is that we are rebellious, selfish, greedy, lusting, controlling, angry, self-worshipping sinners who do not realize the depth of our spiritual poverty. We only become a Blessed people when we do recognize and admit that we are poor in spirit. The truth is that we are totally dependent on the Mercy and Grace of God for forgiveness and spiritual life and we must come to God for His Grace and Mercy.

-The greatest and richest gift that God can give a man or a woman apart from salvation in Jesus Christ is the revelation of his/her poverty of spirit. If God has shown you the wickedness of your sin and your lost, helpless and hopeless condition before a Holy God without Christ, you have received a gift worth more than all the riches that this world can offer. If I were offered a $1 million dollars or a greater revelation of the depth of my sin and of my need for Jesus Christ, I would choose the revelation of the depth of my sin and my need for Christ, because I would be choosing a gift that would last for all of eternity. The gift of conviction of sin leads us to the great gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. Ask God to show you your poverty of spirit and the great riches of salvation in Jesus Christ.

-To those who recognize and admit that they are poor in spirit and need the Grace and Mercy of God for spiritual life, Jesus says, “theirs is the kingdom of the heaven”. Jesus does not say theirs will be the kingdom of heaven but theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Those who see their need for the Grace and Mercy of God in their lives, and call upon God to save them from the eternal death of their spiritual poverty, receive the gift of eternal life and enter into the kingdom of heaven as a present reality. My present citizenship is in heaven. I am no longer a citizen of the kingdom of this world and of the kingdom of the Devil. I am now at this moment living in the kingdom of heaven in Jesus Christ. God has changed my citizenship papers because He has adopted me into His family. I am justified in Christ.

 -To the Scribes and Pharisees who were trying to earn their way to heaven and continued to be poor in spirit, Jesus said you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. But to those who admit that they are poor in spirit Jesus gives the riches of heaven in exchange for their poverty of spirit. That is why they are Blessed. The offer of the Grace and Mercy of God to those who are poor in spirit is greater than the offer of $5 million dollars to a beggar. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 -I want to give you a Biblical illustration of Matthew 5.3. Please turn with me to Luke 18.9. [Read Luke 18.9-14].

-The tax-collector in this parable recognized and admitted to God that he was poor in spirit and God brought him into the kingdom of heaven as a result. The Pharisee thought of himself as rich in spirit and God did not even hear his prayer. Which way are you trying to enter into the kingdom of heaven? Are you seeking to get to heaven by your own works of charity and by your own righteousness, or have you recognized that you have nothing to offer God and that as a sinner you are under the condemnation of God and are in need of His mercy? Blessed are you when you recognize and admit that you are a sinner under the condemnation of God and that you are helpless and hopeless to come to God, and receive God’s offer of eternal life in Jesus Christ.

 -There are three ways that men/women seek to get to heaven.

1) One way to get to heaven is to make the God of the Bible into my image. This brings God down to a manageable level and makes an idol out of the God of the Bible. I can make God’s standards into standards I can fulfill. I can depersonalize God into a new-age force. I can make God an emotional feeling. I can put God back into his box at anytime and choose the lifestyle I want to live. I can design my God so that he lets me and all my friends into heaven. Some have designed a God who does not even have a heaven or an afterlife and who only wants them to be happy on earth. Most people today do not know the God of the Bible and conveniently do not want to know Him because they have designed the God of the Bible in their own image. Are you serving the Sovereign and Holy God of the Bible or a god of your own design?

 2) Another way to get to heaven is to follow a religious system that tells you what works you have to do to get to heaven and promises to help you get there. Here the organization decides God’s entry standards for heaven and then provides the way for to the people to fulfill these standards. Their religious response is a promise of heaven. But it is a false promise.

 -The problem with these two systems of entry into heaven is that the God of the Bible is the One who allows people into heaven and both of these ways are not God’s way to heaven. You can re-draw the earth as a square with flat surfaces, and you can call people to join the flat-earth society, but that does not change the fact that the earth is round and that a round earth is the reality we have to eventually face. In our case the reality is that we are sinners and are poor in spirit and are under God’s condemnation, and are in need of God’s Grace and Mercy to get to heaven. God has only provided Grace and Mercy through faith in the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ for our sin. God’s way is not man’s way and not religions way. God’s way to heaven is through faith in Jesus Christ. Blessed are those who recognize that they are poor in spirit and put their faith in Jesus Christ, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 -Before God can fill us with Himself and with His life we must first recognize our sin and need of salvation in Christ. That is the poverty of spirit that Jesus is speaking about in this verse. To say that man is a condemned sinner before a Holy God is not a popular message today. Sin and the judgment of God are considered old fashioned and obsolete in our enlightened, intelligent society. But the fact remains that the Bible says that man is a sinner in need of salvation and that apart from Jesus Christ and His righteousness no one will get to heaven.

 -If you do not yet know the Blessed salvation of God in Jesus Christ this morning, let me encourage you to get to know the God of the Bible and His Holy standards. In seeing the true God you will begin to see yourself as poor in spirit and in need of salvation in Jesus Christ. Like the tax-collector you will come before the God of the Bible and cry out, “Be merciful to me a sinner” and you will leave that encounter justified before God and in the kingdom of heaven.

 -For those of us who already know that ours is the kingdom of heaven in Jesus Christ, it is important to recognize often that we are Blessed only because of the Grace and Mercy of God to us. Of all people in the world the Christian, who has recognized his poverty of spirit and the rich provision of God’s Grace and Mercy, should be humbled and filled with gratitude and praise to God and with uncomplaining and energetic service to God and Jesus Christ who have provided for his poor spiritual condition. May others know that we are a Blessed people by our humble love and godly service.