Poor

What must I do to have eternal life?

Have you ever wondered that? What good thing can we do in order to be saved?

This question was asked by a young man in Matthew 19. He asked Jesus this question for two reasons. First, he asked because wasn’t sure that he had eternal life. If he was sure there would have been no need to ask the question. Are you certain that you have eternal life? Are you certain that if you were to die tonight that you would go to heaven? Or, like this young man, do you have doubts?

Second, he asked because was sure there was something he could do to ensure he had eternal life. He'd kept the Ten Commandments since he was a child, but he felt like there was something else he needed to do. He didn’t know what that something was – that’s why he’d come to Jesus – but he was certain there was something. Is there anything we can do to ensure we have eternal life?

Turn with me to Matthew 5. As I mentioned last week we are starting a series this morning on the Beatitudes which are found in Matthew 5. Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount with a series of statements we call the beatitudes. They received that name from the Latin word beatitus which means “blessed.” Jesus starts each of the beatitudes with the word “blessed.” And today’s beatitude, the first beatitude, is from verse 3.

1Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2and he began to teach them. 3Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Mathew 5:1-3)

Each of the beatitudes follows this formula. In the first part Jesus identifies those who are blessed and in the second part he explains why. Let’s start with the second part – the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven or kingdom of God is mentioned over one hundred and fifty times in the New Testament referring to Jesus and to God. What we need to know about the kingdom is that it’s not a physical territory like we usually think about kingdoms. We have physical boundaries we can point to and say this is where a country begins and this is where it ends.

Perhaps you’ve seen the GIECO advertisement with the gecko standing on State Street in Bristol. It stands on one side of the middle line and pronounces, “I’m in Virginia.” Then it shifts it weight to the foot on the other side of the line and says, “Now I’m in Tennessee.” Then, placing both feet firmly on both side of the state line he says, “Now I’m in Virginesee.” You can drive to Bristol and see the state line separating the two states right down the middle of the road. You know where one state end and the next begins. There are physical boundaries you can visit.

But the kingdom of heaven isn’t like that. You can’t go to a place and say, “Now I’m in the kingdom of heaven” because the kingdom isn’t a physical place.

When Jesus appeared before Pilate at his trail, Pilate asked if Jesus was the king of the Jews.

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” (John 18:36)

The kingdom Jesus refers to is does not have boarders. You can’t fly there.

Instead, the kingdom is where God rules. That aspect of the kingdom is here and now. When we submit to God’s authority in our lives we are part of the kingdom. But there is also a future aspect of the kingdom, the heavenly aspect. One day we will go to be with God where he will rule forever. This is what we are thinking of when we talk about eternal life.

So who is a part of this kingdom? To whom does it belong? Jesus says it belongs to the poor in spirit. But who are the poor in spirit?

The poor are those who don’t have a lot of money or resources. But being poor is more than just not having a lot of stuff you can hold in your hand. Being poor also means having a lack of options.

I didn’t have a lot of stuff when I was growing up. I just shook my head when looking at the amount of stuff our children had when they graduated from high school. They each had more stuff that Mary Anne and I had combined when we were out of college and married. Times have certainly changed. I may not have had a lot of stuff, but I didn’t lack options. Let me give you an example.

My senior year of high school I did what most seniors do, I started filling out applications to the colleges I was interested in attending. Since I was only interested in two it didn’t take too long. My first choice was GA Tech and I was accepted. However, there was no way my mother could afford to send me and my father, who probably had less money, didn’t offer. I knew what it meant to not have very much money. But I did have options. I filled out forms for grants and aid and then I went to the back which gladly loaned me twenty-five hundred dollars to pay the rest. Between the grants and the loan I paid for tuition, room, board, books, supplies, and living expenses for the first school year. I didn’t have fifty cents to my name, but I had options.

I think most of us can relate to not having a lot, but being poor is more than not having much; it’s not having options either.

My first year of seminary I took Greek with a student from Kenya named Robert. Robert told stories of what it was like at home. One story I still remember was about school. They would get two hours for lunch because none of the students brought their lunch. Since they all had to go home for lunch they got a long lunch break. Robert said each day he would run home, about four miles, when he knew there would be nothing to eat when he got there. When he was growing up they were happy to get one meal a day.

When I was growing up there were times when there wasn’t much food, but I can assure you I never missed a meal. I may not have likes the cauliflower or Brussels sprouts my mother served, but there was always a meat and usually two vegetables. If I didn’t eat it was my own fault. We may not have had much but we always had choices, because if my mother hadn’t been able to put a meal on the table we could have gone over to my grandparents where we would have been fed. We always had options. Being poor is not just the lack of abundance; it’s the lack even of options. There’s nothing left and there’s nothing that can be done.

Jesus says that it’s the poor who are blessed; more specifically he says it’s the spiritually poor. They are the ones who will have peace and contentment because the kingdom of heaven belongs to them. You may not consider yourself wealthy, but are you spiritually poor?

The truth is we are all spiritually bankrupt, we just may not realize it.

Jesus told the story of two men who went to pray: a Pharisee and a tax collector. Remember, the Pharisees were the teachers of God’s word. They deservedly receive a bad reputation today, but back in the day they were the ones to whom the people looked to explain the scriptures. They were the religious heroes. They were the ones who were calling people to return to their faith in God. The tax collectors on the other hand, were people who obviously didn’t care about God, his word, or his people because they were siding with the Romans against the Jews. In this story Jesus says these two men went to the temple to pray. Once at the temple the Pharisee stood up and prayed:

11bGod, I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. (Luke 18:11b-12)

The Pharisee is telling God about all the good things he’s done. He’s boasting about his spiritual wealth. Have you ever done that? Have you ever thought that? Have you ever boasted about how good you are? At least I’m not as bad as my neighbor. You should just see some of the things he does. He’s a hopeless cause.

In contrast, the tax collector stood back in the shadows keeping his head bowed afraid to even look up toward heaven. That’s because he understood his spiritual poverty. He understood that he hadn’t lived right. He had broken God’s laws and had no excuse. There was nothing he could point to in his life to commend himself before God so he prayed:

13bGod, have mercy on me, a sinner. (Luke 18:13b)

The tax collector was admitting his spiritual poverty. He had nothing to boast about and he had no options. There was not one thing he could do to impress God.

We’re told Jesus addressed this story to those “who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else” (Luke 18:9). Jesus told this story to those who thought they were spiritually wealthy. They didn’t have any spiritual needs. They were doing just fine.

Jesus addressed a similar group in Revelation 3. The Laodiceans saw themselves as physically and spiritually wealthy. They had everything they needed. But in his letter his letter to them Jesus tries to convince them that in reality they weren’t as well off as they thought they were. They may not have had any physical needs, but spiritually speaking they were wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. The problem is they were so proud of their material wealth that they didn’t think they needed anything – physically or spiritually.

It’s possible to have so much stuff that we don’t think we need anything and that we can do it on our own. That was the problem with the young man who came to Jesus. He knew he lacked something, but he was certain that he could do or pay for anything he might be lacking. He could provide for his own salvation. Do you remember Jesus’ answer to what he could do to have eternal life? Jesus told him to sell all that he had, give it all to the poor, and then to come and follow him. It’s then that we’re told of the young man’s riches. The young man went away sad because he had great wealth.

Giving away all his stuff would not have made him good enough to get to heaven. That’s not what Jesus is trying to say. Jesus didn’t just want the young man to give away all his stuff; Jesus wanted the man to follow him. Jesus wanted the young man to realize that he was depending on himself and his wealth. Instead, he needed to learn to depend on Jesus. He could only become spiritually wealthy by first becoming spiritually poor and coming to Jesus. But his physical wealth was getting in the way. He had to learn to let go of the stuff that he had so that he could come to rely solely on Jesus. As long as he had his wealth, as long as he had all his stuff, he thought he could do it on his own. Jesus knew the young man couldn’t come to him until he had come to the end of himself.

Have you ever come to the end of yourself? Have you ever come to the point where you realized you had nothing to offer to God? You saw your sin for what it truly is and confessed before God that you needed him.

As I mentioned in the last sermon, we like to start the year with a New Year’s resolution. That’s a good thing. I encourage you to make New Year’s resolutions and to keep them. But what is a New Year’s resolution about? It’s all about us and what we want to do. But eternal life isn’t found in what we can do but what God can do. It’s found in poverty. As long as we think God owes us his blessings we are not spiritually poor. As long as we think we deserve God’s blessings we are not spiritually poor. We must come to the end of ourselves and realize there is nothing we can bring before God to earn his love. There is no good thing we can do to inherit eternal life.

Does anyone enjoy playing solitaire on the computer? I do. I grew up playing solitaire with cards. I remember my mother sitting on the floor playing game after game. But I like playing on the computer better. I like playing on the computer because I can cheat. The computer will allow you to undo your moves. You can get to the end of the game with no more moves and you can undo every move and start over from the beginning. And I do that often. I try to figure out if there was some way I could have won. If only I’d moved that 4 instead of this 4. Is there a possible way for me to win? I don’t want to give up until I’ve explored every possibility.

That’s the way we are with life. We want to hold on to whatever hope we might have of doing it ourselves so that we’ll deserve eternal life. We resist that with every fiber of our being admitting that we can’t do it. We tenaciously hold on to whatever we think will earn our way to heaven and prove we deserve it even when holding on to those things drags us further from God.

I’m sure you’ve heard how you catch a monkey. You catch a monkey by attaching a gourd to the ground with a rope. You put a hole in the gourd big enough for the monkey’s hand to fit in it, and then you place a banana in the hole. The monkey will smell the banana and put its hand in the gourd to get it. But with its fingers wrapped around the banana it’s impossible for the monkey to get its hand out of the gourd. Then you just walk up and catch it. Even though the monkey knows it will be caught it will not let go of the banana.

What are you holding onto? What are you refusing to let go of? Like the monkey with the banana we think that what we’ve got is of so much value, but the kingdom will not be yours until you come to the end of yourself and let go of everything you have. As long as we think we are good enough to do it on our own we don’t need Jesus. You must admit you spiritual poverty. The only riches we have are found in Jesus. The kingdom of heaven belongs to the spiritually poor.

So what can we do to have eternal life?

First, we must admit our spiritual poverty. We must come to the point where we realize that we have broken God's commands, that there is nothing we can do, and so we need God's forgiveness.

Second, we must believe that Jesus is God's Son who died for our sins, was raised from the dead, a Will one day return.

Third, we are commanded to submit to being baptized.

And fourth, we are to live for Jesus each day of lives. As Jesus told the young man who asked what he needed to do to have eternal life, we must follow Jesus.

The good news is we don't have to be good enough to have eternal life. God sent his Son to die for us to make us good enough.