Untitled Sermon (5)

What’s Going On??

This morning we start a summer series on the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes is what we call the first section of Jesus sermon on the mount.

Jesus has just started his ministry. He has traveled around Galilee, and called some of his disciples. Starting in verse 23 of the previous chapter,

23 Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.

24 The news about Him spread throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, cepileptics, paralytics; and He healed them. 25 Large crowds followed Him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan.

Jesus was beginning even now to differentiate himself from the current teachers of the Law. To give you a better idea of what it was like for the people in that time, the Pharisees had a saying that went, “When a sinner dies, heaven rejoices.” You may remember that Jesus directly contradicts this teaching later in his ministry by declaring that there is rejoicing in the presence of God in heaven when one sinner repents. In the Luke account of the Beatitudes teaching, Jesus had recently healed a man on the sabbath. To those with a perceptive eye and ear, it would have already been clear that Jesus was at a minimum a prophet who spoke with the authority of God, and to some he was possibly viewed as even more than a prophet.

The setting for this great sermon is a mountainside where great crowds had formed to hear Jesus. These crowds would have been all encompassing, meaning there were poor and sick, rich and healthy, spiritual and unspiritual, and most importantly those who thought they were close to God and weren’t, and those who thought they could never be close to God, yet they were.

Subjects and Co-heirs

King Jesus is now giving his “inaugural address” so to speak. If you have ever heard an inaugural address you know that the leader spends his time informing his subjects of their standing, and their role in the kingdom. Jesus bookends this list of blessings called the Beatitudes by saying “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Imagine sitting here as two different people, a Pharisee, who believes himself to be the pinnacle of earthly godliness, and a prostitute or tax collector who is absolutely disdained by the religious leaders of the time, and who is fully aware of their own moral filth and spiritual weakness.

Jesus sits down with his disciples gathered around him and addresses them. The crowds are hearing his message as well, but Jesus instructs his disciples first saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This statement has two parts so lets break them down. First,

New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

What three key words do you see here? Blessed, poor, spirit.

What does blessed mean? The words meaning has origins back to the Psalms when the Psalmist or David describes those who are righteous and close to God as blessed. On its face the word means happy, but when you dive deeper, and you look where the word is used, you find that what is being described is actually Joy. What is the difference between happiness and joy? Happiness is not ungodly in any way, but it is temporary and a surface level emotion that stems from our enjoyment of things which are comfortable, beautiful, humorous, and fun. Joy is what we receive from God, which overflows into the gaps of comfort and security, and enables us to see the hope in hard times. Some of the circumstances described in the beatitudes are definitely hard times.

Many of Jesus’ audience, including some of his disciples, would have been very familiar with what it is to be poor. Jesus is saying blessed are the poor in spirit. This can be a hard one to understand, and for the longest time I didn’t really grasp the meaning of this. Jesus is essentially saying, blessed are those who let God be God, because they are not. The Pharisees in the crowd had all these rules and rituals that they thought made them closer to God. They were wrong. I’ve been reading in Hosea. Hosea was an old testament prophet who spoke to the nation of Israel when they had turned away from God. God is speaking through Hosea and He says of the Israelites, “as they had their pasture, they became satisfied, and being satisfied, their heart became proud; therefore they forgot Me.” (Hosea 13:6)

This was the condition of the Pharisees! They had set up an entire system on top of God’s law that made them feel good about themselves,(satisfied), and they had forgotten God their Father!

Now place yourself in the shoes of a man or woman hearing this who KNOWS they are a sinner, and realize the implications. Jesus is calling to them, “Let ME be your righteousness, and you can have the keys to the Kingdom.” Here is our second part of the first Beatitude, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Heaven will be like a giant family. Almost everything we know about it has something to do with relationship right down to it’s start with what we call the wedding feast when Jesus receives His bride the Church. The Lord Jesus Christ is saying right here and right now to the Pharisees and to us, I don’t want your extra rules, they don’t reflect me, I don’t want your new rituals, they don’t glorify me, I don’t want your sacrifices, they aren’t true obedience, I don’t want your make up and white washed tombs and all the things you do to hide who you really are, I WANT YOU. God doesn’t need all these things from you, He needs you to be poor in spirit. Joel called it Spiritual Bankruptcy. When you are bankrupt you have nothing. Nothing to own, nothing to offer. God says in Isaiah that even our righteousness, the good things we think we bring, are like filthy rags. Oh how I need Him. At my all time, top of the world, best in class, strived all my life, mountaintop on a clear day, BEST, I fall short of the perfection God requires. And to be honest with you guys, I’m rarely on the mountaintop by myself. Outside of Christ I live in some spiritual gutter in a spiritual third world country. I’m bankrupt. But praise be to the Lord Jesus Christ my Savior who rescues me from this body of sin and destruction. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us says . Does that give you chills and butterflies at the same time? It should! Christ loves you in your spiritual gutter, because He knows what you will look like glorified with Him in the Kingdom of Heaven. He gave you value when he purchased you with the most expensive currency ever. His blood.

When someone declares bankruptcy they are legally saying I can’t pay my debts. The bank then takes over and reorders their life in order to satisfy debts. Every person who breathes is spiritually bankrupt, but not everyone knows it/ is willing to declare it. Why do you think that is? It’s because it means you aren’t in control. Here’s the deal though, in most cases, bankruptcy is actually the first step towards becoming rich again. It works kind of like this with our spiritual lives as well but with a twist. Jesus is saying, I need you to declare bankruptcy on your LIFE, in order so that I can give you eternal life, which is EVERYTHING. I have already told you guys that I am spiritually bankrupt, but I want to give you all the opportunity to publicly do the same. If you are aware of your spiritual dilemma, and acknowledge that you don’t bring anything to the equation when it comes to salvation, then I want you to do something. Now you should not do this because your friend does or doesn’t or even because I’m saying so, but if you are willing to say that you are spiritually bankrupt and you need Jesus, raise your hand. Now all together let’s declare bankruptcy. On the count of three say “I declare spiritual bankruptcy”.

Subjects and coheirs. That is what we are in Christ. Without Him we have nothing, with Him we have everything. If you don’t have a personal relationship with God, I want to invite you to taste and see what it’s like. Taste and see that the Lord is good. If you choose to follow Christ, you need to be bankrupt in your heart. You could lose everything, I can’t promise you won’t. But you will gain everything, and everything that is of lasting value, is relationship with God. Let’s pray.