Word of Salvation – Vol. 43 No. 08 – February 1998
Blessed are the poor in spirit
Sermon by Rev. J. Westendorp on Matthew 5:3
Scripture Readings: Isaiah 61; Matthew 19:16-30 & 5:1-12
Suggested Hymns: BoW 195; 119c; 89a; 515
Introd: Some have called the beatitudes the “be-happy-attitudes”.
Some modern translations read: Happy are those who mourn… happy are the meek…!
That raises the question: what is it that really makes us happy?
What really makes us happy?
I guess everyone here would answer that question differently.
For the unemployed… happiness is finding work.
For the sick and injured… happiness is getting well again.
Some single folk would say: happiness is finding the right partner.
So what is happiness really?
Is it a holiday to Fiji?
Is it finally paying off your mortgage?
Is it driving the latest model recreational vehicle?
If happiness for you is defined by those things then I regret that I’m going to burst your bubble.
Ultimately none of those things can bring us the kind of happiness that lasts.
Your job can’t… and your spouse won’t…!
Good health is always temporary… and one day death ends it all.
And holidays and possessions always leave us hungry for more.
Jesus knew that so He set some other standards for happiness.
Happiness is being poor… happiness is when you are persecuted.
And then Jesus used a stronger word that happy… he said, “blessed”.
Blessed are those who mourn… blessed are those who hunger and thirst…!
‘Blessed’ is a salvation word… it has to do with God’s favour and God’s riches.
So not just happy… but eternally happy… happy beyond your wildest dreams.
Fine! Except that Jesus seems to have some strange idea about who are really happy.
What do we do, for example, with this first beatitude: Blessed are the poor…!
A] THE POOR WHOM JESUS SINGLES OUT FOR BLESSING.
1. We could of course focus on those words Jesus added: Blessed are the poor in spirit…!
So we could conclude that we’re talking about a certain attitude.
We could then discuss briefly what that attitude is… humility maybe… or dependence.
And then we’d be very quickly finished with this particular beatitude. Happy are the humble, full stop.
Let’s turn to Luke 6… and we’ll see that it isn’t quite that simple.
Luke 6 is Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount.
And Luke has Jesus talking not about an attitude but about a social class.
Luke 6:20: Blessed are you who are poor….! Notice: not – poor in spirit – just poor.
I’m not sure why Luke puts it a little differently to Matthew.
Some say each give their own interpretation of the Sermon.
Or maybe Jesus preached it twice. But in any case both are the Word of God to us.
So we also need to do justice to the way Luke puts it in his gospel.
And then we see that a little later in Luke Jesus puts the same thing another way for emphasis.
Luke 6:24: But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.
The point I want to make is that we must not too quickly spiritualise what Jesus is saying in Matthew.
He is talking in the first instance not about an attitude but about a certain class of people.
The poor are pronounced happy… the rich have a ‘woe’ pronounced over them.
In a way, that’s quite understandable… rich people are rarely happier because of their riches.
Howard Hughes was one of the wealthiest men the modern world has known.
But he was also one of the unhappiest men.
He died of malnutrition as a recluse.
Or think of some of the successful and wealthy singers, musicians and movie stars.
Jimi Hendrix… Marilyn Monroe… Kurt Cobain… Heath Ledger… they all suicided.
Even though in a material sense they had the world at their feet.
OTOH we meet many contented and happy people who live close to poverty.
2. This beatitude in Luke’s version is consistent with the rest of Scripture. For example: James 5.
James sounds a strong warning against riches.
Vs.1 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you.
In James 2 we see that there is a sense in which God even favours the poor.
Vs.5 Listen my dear brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world…?
I could mention many other Scripture passages that teach the same thing.
Isaiah 61, where we read that the poor have good news preached to them.
You cannot escape the conclusion:
God has a special care and concern for the poor, the downtrodden and the oppressed.
He chose as His special people a slave people out of Egypt.
He declares Himself the Father of the fatherless and the widowed.
Or we could think of this another way.
The beatitudes are a picture of the kind of character that God approves and blesses.
And that character was especially modelled in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Beatitudes are a snapshot of our Lord. Jesus lived this out.
He said on one occasion:
Foxes have holes and birds nests but the Son of man has nowhere to lay His head.
Recently some people have tried to prove Jesus was wealthy and had servants.
They argue that his seamless robe was the equivalent to a thousand dollar suit.
That flies in the face of the clear teaching of the Bible… materially speaking He was poor.
3. This beatitude… particularly as Luke records it… is then a radical teaching for our materialistic society.
If anything, God has a bias in favour of the poor and needy….so….!
Blessed are you if you can’t afford an annual holiday…!
Happy are the poverty stricken who need to call on the Salvos for a handout.
Happiness is languishing in a refugee camp year after year.
But is that really what Jesus means?
How many politicians would get elected today if they made this their policy?
Happy are the poor… for theirs is the Kingdom.
So cut the basic wage… slash the welfare payments…!
Because then God will have more people to whom He can show favour?
Poverty hardly seems a blessing in a culture that fights for the right to own things.
Happy are the poor… that seems like a divine contradiction.
And what are we going to do about this as Christian people who want to live by God’s Word?
We say: we’re blessed because we own our own house.
We consider ourselves happy when we manage our own business.
Happy are we middle class Christians because we have a car and a boat.
So what does Jesus want us to do? Be like that rich young ruler…?
Sell all we have… the caravan… the house… get rid of the lot?
What do we do with this version of the beatitude in Luke 6:20?
B] THE POOR SPIRIT AND THE GOSPEL BLESSING.
1. The beatitudes… like any Bible text have a context.
When we look at the context we begin to understand better what Jesus meant by the poor.
The context is Judea in the days of Jesus… with its religious and social make up.
And then Jesus is saying this especially over against the Jewish religious leaders.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus constantly opposes the attitudes of the Pharisees. Why?
Because they were always looking down on the audiences that gathered around Jesus.
Nor did they have a very high opinion of those whom Jesus chose as His disciples.
The crowds around Jesus… they were the common people… the riff-raff… the hoi-polloi.
The poor and uncultured… the uneducated… the cow-cockies from out in the sticks.
Women folk who never had much of a chance in their society.
Farmers and fishermen… who only knew about fishnets and fertilisers.
And tax-collectors…! Well, the less said about them the better.
As a matter of fact these learned scribes and Bible scholars considered themselves blessed.
One day God would restore the Kingdom of David.
And they taught that they, the Scribes, would then have a special place in the Kingdom.
Their version of the beatitudes ran like this:
Blessed are we scribes and Pharisees for ours will be the Kingdom.
How radical Jesus’ words must have sounded to any Pharisee who heard Him say this.
Jesus turns their standards upside down… not they but those they despise will have the Kingdom.
2. When we see that background we begin to see why Matthew has ‘poor in spirit’.
Jesus is especially countering the attitude of the Pharisees.
I don’t want to play down God’s concern for the poor and down-trodden.
In fact the Lord repeatedly calls His people to share that same concern.
There is to be a compassion for the poor of the land. Think, for example, of Leviticus 19.
The grape vines are not to be gleaned a second time… leave it for the poor and needy.
The field is not to be harvested to the very corners… the poor have to eat too.
In many pagan religions the needy and the poor can be safely ignored.
That’s their fate… their karma…!
Interfere with it and you may interfere with their next reincarnation.
Scripture has a different outlook… God wants His people to share His concern for the poor.
But that now also shows us that there is another side to all this.
God blesses some with riches precisely so that they can help the poor and needy.
So this happiness Jesus pronounces is not just limited to those poor in material things.
All this can also be applied in the way of relationships… poverty is also a relational thing.
To be poor in things… that’s relative… in relation to other people.
To be poor in spirit… that is in relation to God.
If we stay on just the material level alone Luke 6:20 does lead us into problems.
Not all poor people are saved…. neither are all rich people condemned to hell.
There have been many rich people who were wonderful citizens of God’s Kingdom.
Abraham with all his wealth…. called the ‘friend of God’.
David, rich king of Israel… called ‘man after God’s own heart’.
Among Jesus’ disciples there was also the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea.
Furthermore many poor people curse God and die in their sin.
In fact, if poverty itself got us into heaven then we would even end up with salvation by works.
Then all we’d have to do to get to heaven is sell everything and go around begging.
No… poverty in itself does not bring happiness or salvation.
Neither do riches in themselves prevent people from being saved.
3. What then? Well, there is a kind of thematic development in the Old Testament. A progression.
Material poverty and need came to be applied spiritually.
The poor had nothing and were totally dependent on God. And isn’t that how it is spiritually?
We are poor in the sense of being utterly dependent on God.
So David, for example, in Ps.34:6 refers to himself as “this poor man!” – poor before God
So there is even a sense in which the poor do have an advantage in this matter:
Not only in that God has a special concern for them… but in the sense of their need.
There is a sense in which they have a head start on the rich people in the world.
Because the Kingdom of God requires an attitude of total dependence.
Of expecting everything from God alone… and not from ourselves… and not from others.
It is totally due to God’s grace… to His favour… to His gift.
An attitude that comes with the frame of mind of the song writer:
Nothing in my hand I bring… simply to Thy cross I cling.
That was the problem with the rich young ruler.
He wasn’t prepared to trust the Lord totally for everything. That’s why he went away sad.
Like so many well off people today he was rich in his own self-sufficiency.
He could do it… he could make it.
And Jesus said: It’s easier to get your camel through the eye of a needle.
That brings us back to the Pharisees who looked down on those around Jesus.
Proud Pharisees who despised – as insignificant – the disciples of Jesus.
Luke says that it was as Jesus looked at these same disciples that He pronounced this beatitude.
Because the Pharisees had the wrong attitude. They said:
God be pleased with me… I fast twice a week… I give a tenth of all I have.
Jesus said: That is not being poor in spirit.
Poor in spirit is crying out: God be merciful to me a sinner.
That’s the one attitude that brings eternal happiness.
C] THE BLESSING OF THE GOSPEL WHICH COMES TO THE POOR.
1. Jesus says then that blessing or happiness lies in this:
Not in the poverty itself.
But rather in the kind of poverty that opens us up to receive the Kingdom of God.
To the disadvantaged… the needy dependent… Jesus awards a tremendous blessing.
And we begin to understand why they are blessed when we understand what Jesus promises them.
Nothing less than the Kingdom of heaven… or as Luke puts it: the Kingdom of God.
What is this Kingdom of heaven?
We could look at it a number of ways.
It is first and most importantly the reign or rule of God.
The Kingdom is a big thing… it is as big as God’s rulership.
Our God is sovereign ruler of all things.
We believe that there is not a square centimetre of the universe God does not claim as His.
But I think Jesus means more than that.
He means especially the blessings… the riches of that Kingdom.
And then especially on the day when that Kingdom is perfected in glory.
When Jesus comes and all the kingdoms of this world will become exclusively God’s Kingdom.
At the moment that Kingdom is not yet visible to the world.
But one day it will include all the promised riches of the new heaven and the new earth.
What a rich blessing… to live under the authority of Jesus.
To share all the riches of what He owns and controls.
That is far superior to any worldly wealth.
And Jesus promises that to the poor… the poor who’s whole dependence is on God alone.
2. By linking these two things together Jesus is showing something of the nature of His Kingdom.
It is different to the empires that we build and that we buy.
By Jesus awarding it to the poor He teaches us a powerful lesson.
That the Kingdom of heaven is God’s gift.
We can’t buy our way into it the way we might purchase a business or buy into a company.
God doesn’t sell shares to His Kingdom on the Stock Market.
If He did that then the Kingdom would only be for the rich.
But the rich can’t buy their way into the Kingdom.
Instead it is His gift to the humble poor.
When it comes to the Kingdom I have nothing to trade with.
Not all my prayers and sighs and tears… nothing I do or pay.
Only as I recognise that… am I truly poor in spirit.
As I empty myself of all my wealth and all my worthiness.
Then Jesus comes… and he brings me the riches of the Kingdom of God.
Jim Elliot once said: He is no fool who gives what cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.
That is what the rich young ruler did not understand.
He didn’t want to let go of what he had.
And he missed out on something far richer and far more wonderful.
All his material riches he one day had to leave behind.
And in the final analysis he was as poor as poor can be.
Does that mean then that Jesus is asking you to sell everything (eg.s) and give it to City Mission?
Well that all depends on whether you have learnt to be poor in spirit.
Whether you are prepared to let it all go… and get something far better.
That’s the big question that we are confronted with in this beatitude.
3. However the contrast is not just between what we don’t have now and what we will have one day.
Poverty of spirit now… and then Kingdom riches when Jesus comes.
No! The focus is on the here and now.
Let me say again that the Sermon on the Mount is the constitution of the Kingdom.
These are the by laws and regulations that Kingdom citizens live by.
And then in the beatitudes we have a description of the very character of Kingdom citizens.
Here Jesus is saying: This is what my followers look like.
This is not just something they do… this what they are.
Poor in the eyes of the world… looked down on by society around them.
Rubbished again at work tomorrow as a poor sod for being a Christian.
Ridiculed by your mates because you follow the beat of a different drummer.
But then Jesus says to you…
Yours is the Kingdom of heaven.
Notice that: Not yours WILL BE the Kingdom… one day!
Yours is the Kingdom of heaven… NOW!
Citizens of the Kingdom… living already under the rule of Jesus and out of His riches.
And then on top of all that… one day all the riches of the life to come.
Happy indeed are the poor in spirit…!
Amen