Word of Salvation – Vol. 27 No. 33 – Jun 1982

 

The Poor In Spirit

 

Sermon by Rev. S. Voorwinde on Matthew 5:3

Scriptures: Luke 1:46-55; Matthew 5:1-12

Hymnal Psalter: 327, 430, 135, 350

 

It is difficult to be different.  It is hard to be a non-conformist.  We all want to be loved, accepted and appreciated.  We feel decidedly uneasy in a group where we’re the odd one out.  Say you’re in a gathering where the conversation turns to politics, and to your consternation you discover everyone votes Labor and you alone vote Liberal and you wrack your brains to try and say something nice about a Labor politician.  You’re in a group and yet on your own and it’s a very uneasy feeling.

And yet that is the thrust of the Sermon on the Mount – the followers of Jesus are to be different.  Different from both the nominal church and the secular world, different from both the religious and the irreligious.  Here Jesus proclaims a value-system, a life-style, a set of attitudes all of which are totally at odds to those of the non-Christian world.  He is proclaiming a Christian counter-culture.  He is proclaiming the kingdom of God.

And as He does this He calls upon His disciples, He calls upon you and me, to be non-conformists, to be different, to be odd balls – rightly understood of course, because there are always some who need no encouragement in that direction!

So how does Jesus expect us to be different?  How should Christians appear odd?  Should it be in the clothes they wear, or the houses they live in, or the cars they drive, or in the TV programmes they watch?  How are Christians to be different from the culture around them?  And the simple answer is that you are to be like other people except where Jesus tells you to be different.

And where does Jesus tell you to be different?  In the Sermon on the Mount He insists on non-conformity in five areas:- in our values and our righteousness in chap. 5; in our piety and our priorities in chap. 6; and in our perceptions in chap. 7.

So in the Beatitudes Jesus is dealing with Christian values, and these values are distinctly different from the values of the world: “Blessed are the poor in spirit… Blessed are those who mourn… Blessed are the meek and Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness…”

Because we’ve heard these words so often and because we know them so well, we forget how radical this teaching really is.  It goes against the grain of every human inclination; it is contrary to all our natural instincts.  Here is the best known sermon in the world, here is the announcement of something completely new and listen to how it begins: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.  This is what sets the tone for all that is to follow.  This is basic for our understanding of the whole Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Here is a text that deserves to be looked at very carefully; it demands very serious consideration.  I’d like to deal with it by asking three questions:
            – What does the word “blessed” mean?
            – Who are “the poor in spirit”?
            – What is “the kingdom of heaven”?

What does the word “blessed” mean?  Or as someone has said, what is the meaning of this “blessed” word?  Obviously we have a translation problem on our hands here.  Not so much a translation from Greek into English, as from religious language into everyday language.  If you were brought up with the Bible the word “blessed” means something, but to the man-in-the-street it means almost nothing at all.  So how are we going to translate it?  The Good News Bible has “happy”.  “Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor…!  In other words the Beatitudes are Jesus’ prescription for human happiness.  Is happiness your goal in life?  Is that what you want?  Then live by these sayings of Jesus and you’ll find what you’re looking for.

In fact, an American professor of psychology in the state of New York takes this thought even further and in the Beatitudes he sees “the basic formula for mental health”.  If a man reacts to his environment in the spirit of these sayings his life will be a happy one.

Well, there may be some truth to that.  God made us and He knows how we work best.  But is that really what Jesus is driving at here?  Is blessedness to be equated with happiness?  Is Jesus simply telling people how to be happy?

Here I think we must honestly answer “no”.  There may be some overlap, at times there may be a good deal of overlap, but even so happiness and blessedness are not the same.  The Rev. John Stott makes a helpful comment: “Happiness is a subjective state, whereas Jesus is making an objective judgment about these people.  He is declaring not what they may feel like (‘happy’), but what God thinks of them and what on that account they are: they are “blessed”.  In other words, happiness is how I feel within myself; blessedness is what God thinks about me.  And I’m sure you’ll admit there’s a vast difference – a happy man may not be blessed and there are times when a blessed man may not be happy.

But that still leaves us with a translation problem.  If “blessed” doesn’t mean happy then what does it mean?  And here I’d like to suggest two Australian words that are spot on but totally unacceptable.  The first is the word “lucky”.  How “lucky the man…!”  When a man really has something going for him we’re inclined to say “You lucky dog, you….!”  But we don’t really believe in luck do we?  So we could hardly use the word “luck”.

But then you’ve got the more polite alternative: “How fortunate the fellow!”  That’s maybe a bit more educated but all it does is to replace “luck” by “fortune” which really amounts to the same thing.  Maybe we can’t use these words in our modern English Bible translations, but they really capture the thought of what Jesus is saying: “How lucky, how fortunate, are the poor in spirit…!”

And then perhaps another accurate translation, although a bit clumsy, is: “how enviable.”  This is the man to envy.  This is where you should be.  This is the man who has it all together.  It is more than happiness.  This is what Jesus means by the word “blessed”.  These are the people who are lucky, who are fortunate, who are to be envied.

Now let me ask you a question: In Australian society who do we think is the man who has it all?  Who has everything going for him?  Who is to be envied?  Do you know where you see him?  You see him on television – not in the regular programmes but on the commercials.  That’s where you see the Australian dream.  “Everyone who is what you want to be uses our product.”  They sell it by appealing to whom they think you want to be; and they know because they research it very carefully.  They have discovered the man whom Australia pronounces “blessed”.

You may remember about 5 or 6 years ago there was a commercial for Volvo or Toyota or something, and there was this male voice that said: “When I was 21 it was a very good year”.  “When I was 26 it was a very good year.”  And he goes no higher than 35 (after all who would want to be older than that?).  But with each year you will notice there is a flashier car and also a different girl, till finally at the age of 35 he arrives home in a chauffeur driven car, his secretary gets out to give him his briefcase; and then out of this two-storey home with its manicured lawns come bounding his beautiful wife, two pedigree dogs and two blonde children, a boy and a girl, the boy older than the girl.

You see, this man has “arrived”.  This is the kind of man our society call “blessed”.  The Commonwealth of Australia has a totally different set of Beatitudes to the kingdom of heaven: “Blessed are the youthful…!”  “Blessed are the healthy…!” “Blessed are those who are physically beautiful…!”  “Blessed are the intelligent…!”  “Blessed are those who are well educated…!”  “Blessed are the powerful…!”  “Blessed are those who have leisure…!”

Materialism and worldliness is the Australian dream and the Australian blessedness.  It is the value system of the world around us where Jesus challenges us to be totally different.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit…!”  “Blessed are those who mourn…!”  “Blessed are the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers.”

Jesus says, “This is the good life; this is the way life was meant to be.”  We need to make commercials of this.  Our lives need to be commercials for this.  This is what we want to be like.  These are the values that we have in life.

But, alas, sometimes we have our value systems all mixed up.  TV commercials speak louder than our quiet times.  Two or three hours of church a week are drowned out by umpteen hours of television.  Who do we count blessed?  What do we want more for ourselves or for our children?  Meekness or success?  Purity of heart or beauty of body?  A hunger and thirst for righteousness or a good education?  Where do your values stem from – from the kingdom of heaven or from the kingdom of this world?  Do they come from God or from man?

So maybe you can now better appreciate just how radical Jesus’ opening line really is: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

But now who are these “poor in spirit”?  What kind of people are they?

On another occasion Jesus said: “Blessed are you poor.”  And from this some people have concluded that Jesus is pronouncing His blessing on poverty as such.  But a poor man may still not be poor in spirit.  Jesus here is talking about spiritual poverty and not about a lack of material possessions.  In fact Jesus here is not talking about a man’s relationship to the world, nor about his relationship to his fellowmen, but He is speaking here only about a man’s relationship to God.  As Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones has pointed out: “…We are not looking at men confronting one another, but we are looking at men face to face with God.  And if one feels anything in the presence of God save an utter poverty of spirit, it ultimately means that you have never faced Him.  That is the meaning of this Beatitude.”

To be poor in spirit is to acknowledge our spiritual bankruptcy before God.  As sinners we are under God’s holy wrath and deserve nothing but His judgment.  We have nothing to offer, nothing to plead, nothing with which to buy the favour of heaven.  It is when we take a good hard look at the cross of Christ that we most clearly see our spiritual poverty:
            “Nothing in my hands I bring,
             simply to Thy cross I cling;
             naked, come to Thee for dress;
             helpless, look to Thee for grace;
             foul I to the fountain fly;
             wash me, Saviour, or I die.”

This is the language of the poor in spirit.  And if this is what we are, then we belong next to the publican in Jesus’ parable, crying out with downcast eyes, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!”

Are you poor in spirit?  Are you?  Now don’t be too glib as you answer this question for yourself.  It’s so easy to be deceived.  Let me give a brief illustration from the world of literature.  It’s the short novel about Father Sergius and written by Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian author of the nineteenth century.  Tolstoy gives a very penetrating spiritual analysis of this interesting character.  As a young man he had been very ambitious.  He had risen to a high rank in the Russian army and in its aristocracy.  He was about to be wed to a beautiful young woman who belonged to the nobility.  But when he learned that his fiancée had once had an affair with the Czar he broke off his engagement, threw in his worldly career and became a monk.  As a monk he was very devoted and very disciplined, but was he poor in spirit?  He had given up all his worldly goods, he was financially poor, but was he spiritually poor?  And the answer is “no”, but listen to how subtle it all is.  In the introduction it said something about the attitude of his heart: “It is pride which stands between Sergius and the true life; he is proud of his saintliness, proud of his good works proud even of what he thinks is his humility, and he is ripe for salvation only when he has succumbed to fleshly lust and thus utterly debased himself in the eyes of men and, more importantly, in his own eyes.”

Surely there’s a warning here for us, and that is that it is so dangerously possible to be a Christian outwardly, to be seen to be doing the right things, but still not be right in your heart.  Of course I can’t look inside you, God can, and you can also do it yourself.  Are you poor in spirit?  Or are you perhaps also deep down proud of your saintliness, proud of your good works, proud of your humility?

Are you poor in spirit?  If you are, and only if you are, will the kingdom of heaven be yours.

So what is the kingdom of heaven?

The kingdom that Jesus promises is quite a paradox, really.  Think of the Lord’s prayer for instance.  First we say, “Thy kingdom come” and then “Thine is the kingdom.”  Think, too, of Christ’s words before Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world”.  Compare this to what He said to His disciples: “The kingdom of God is within you”.  What kind of kingdom is this that is not of this world and yet inside people?  A kingdom that already is and is yet to come?  What is this mysterious kingdom?

When the Bible says that God is King it does not always mean that He King over creation and that His kingdom is the universe.  A king not only rules a kingdom.  If he is a good king he lives with his people.  Buckingham Palace is not on a tiny island to the North of Scotland, but right in the heart of London.  The sovereign lives with the people.  So when the Bible speaks about God’s kingdom it often means that God is living with His people.  That is why John the Baptist said: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  God, in Christ, was about to live with His people.  God had come, so the kingdom had come.  The kingdom was in the here and now.  It was a present reality.  But if it were in the here and now why did Christ say that it was not of this world and still to come?  He pointed to a time when the kingdom would be complete.  There would be no rival kingdom anymore.  The kingdom he was now establishing would one day be the kingdom of the new heaven and the new earth.  That is why it is called the kingdom of heaven.

But what about us today?  Christ is no longer living with us, nor are we yet living with Him in heaven.  So does God still live with His people today?  Yes, He does.  Christ promised that He would send the Holy Spirit.  God lives with us in the Spirit.  The British Monarch lives in the heart London with the people.  God lives with you in your heart.  God is our King through the Holy Spirit.  So what kind of kingdom is this?  In Romans 14:17 Paul says that it is characterized by righteousness, peace and joy.

And how do you get into this kingdom?  What passport, what visa do you need to get into that fair kingdom?

John the Baptist said: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  Jesus said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  John and Jesus are saying the same thing.  To repent is to be poor in spirit, and to be poor in spirit is to repent.  You see how hopeless and helpless you are in yourself.  You see Christ in all His purity and you see yourself in all your pollution and filth.    And in the agony of that experience it drives you to the cross.  You want to be clean, you want to be pure, and you know that only Jesus can do it for you.

That’s what happened to Martin Luther.  As a monk he spent hours in the confession box every day.  He would wear out the patience of his father confessors.  He was acutely aware of his own spiritual poverty.  Out of this agony he rediscovered the Gospel of justification by faith.  And as that light dawned he cried out: “The doors of paradise opened and I walked through!”  “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Are you poor in spirit?  Then how lucky you are!  How fortunate!  How much to be envied!  You’ve really got it made!

In this life there is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.  In the next there will be a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells.  You can have it both ways no wonder Jesus calls you “blessed”.  The kingdom of heaven is yours now and forever.

And for those of you still standing outside – what are you waiting for?

Amen