The Poor in Spirit

Open your Bibles to .

When you think of the word “blessed”, what comes to mind?

As you are turning there, let me ask you a question: When you think of the word “blessed”, what comes to mind?

For me, all I can think of is the posts you see on Facebook and Instagram that talk about how great life is going and the tag it with the hashtag #blessed.

I am not trying to hurt your feelings if you use that hashtag from time to time, but if you were to search it on Instagram, you would find that a lot of the people who tag their posts #blessed are giving God credit for things that the Bible says he would never approve of.

We usually think of “blessed” as anytime life is going smoothly, we are getting what we want, or things are generally good.

Often, we link our blessings to our hustle or to some idea of karma, where we did enough good things that the universe finally granted us some kind of status that we had tried hard to achieve.

We rarely use the term when things seem to be going bad. You don’t see many people posting pictures of their flat tires and saying #blessed. They don’t post that they just had a massive fight with their spouse and both are in opposite ends of the house…#blessed!

As we dive into the first part of Jesus’ teaching here in the Sermon on the Mount, he is going to redefine for us what it takes to be blessed.

We are going to be looking at a section of the sermon called “The Beatitudes”.

The word “beatitude” is a carry-over from a Latin word that means, “blessed”.

So the Beatitudes, then, are Jesus outlining for us what it really takes to be blessed.

I hate to spoil it for you, but it has little to nothing to do with what car you drive, what your house looks like, what job you have, or even how healthy your relationships are.

When Jesus speaks of a blessed person, he is talking about something more than the happiness that comes from having stuff or status or something else we normally chase.

The truly blessed are those who are citizens of God’s kingdom. As a citizen in his kingdom, we have peace with God that nothing else can take away.

That relationship with God is the source of our deepest happiness, but there are seasons when it is completely appropriate to be sad, even as we will see through this list.

The blessedness that Jesus is talking about is a deeply-rooted, unshakeable joy that remains even in those sad and difficult moments.

One Bible commentator put it this way:

Last week’s message felt a little like drinking from the fire hydrant as we covered a lot of information.

Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Matthew—Volume 1 Chapters 1–10 (Revised Edition) The Supreme Blessedness

The beatitudes speak of that joy which seeks us through our pain, that joy which sorrow and loss, and pain and grief, are powerless to touch, that joy which shines through tears, and which nothing in life or death can take away.

Just like the other aspects of God’s kingdom, we enjoy some of this now, but we wait and long for the day when we joy won’t have to rise up in our hearts through tears, pain, and grief.

But, look at the formula Jesus uses in these statements: “Blessed are the…for they will...”

Jesus is saying that these blessings are in the here and now, not just the future.

Although we may not enjoy them in their full, uninterrupted form, those of us who claim to follow Christ should experience joy when we live life the way he is calling us to live.

Some have even said these statements may even be declarations — “O how blessed is the man...”

As we will see, though, the way to this kind of blessed life is the opposite of what you would expect.

There are 8 different

This is clear from the very first beatitude, which we look at this morning.

Open your Bibles to .

Let’s read it together here in ...

From this beatitude, we see two steps to living a blessed life.

They sound completely counterintuitive, but they are what Jesus teaches us lead to a blessed life.

If you and I are going to live a blessed life, we have to first...

1) Recognize your poverty.

Jesus starts confronting people right off the bat.

Remember that one of the points he is making through this entire message is that he is confronting the wrong ideas the Pharisees had.

The Pharisees were some of the Jewish leaders who thought they had everything figured out.

They studied all the commands that God gave in his word, and they made sure they followed them to the letter.

If the Law said they couldn’t eat certain insects, then they would make sure to strain their soup so they didn’t accidentally swallow a gnat.

If the Law said to give a tenth of your income to God, they would even give a tenth of their herbs from their garden.

It started out as a good concern, making sure they were doing everything they could to honor God with their lives.

Unfortunately, though, it had turned into an obsession with the way they looked on the outside.

Everyone who saw the Pharisees would have thought that they were spiritually rich, but in reality, their hearts were still cold and far from God.

We will see this in more detail later, but from the very first words out of his mouth, Jesus is confronting that idea and showing them that the blessed life isn’t found in living an outwardly spiritual life.

Instead, it is found in acknowledging our poverty.

He says that those who find the unshakeable joy that comes from knowing him do so when they realize they are poor.

Let’s dive deeper into this idea.

There is something that you can’t tell in English that is happening in the Greek that Matthew wrote down Jesus’ words.

There are actually two different words that the Greek New Testament that are translated “poor” in English.

The first kind of poor are those who are poor enough they have to work for a living.

They are not wealthy enough to sit back and relax; instead, they have to work hard jobs to make ends meet.

You may remember the story of the Widow’s Mite. The widow at least had two coins left, so she was this kind of poor.

That isn’t the word used here, though.

The poor in spirit are the other kind of poor—those who don’t have two nickels to rub together.

This is the destitute who have no choice but to beg if they are going to have anything.

The word actually comes from a verb that means “to shrink, cower, or cringe”[2]

Can you picture this kind of poor? People who are so destitute and desperate that they shrink back and are cowering.

That is the people who Jesus says are blessed.

That doesn’t sound right, does it?

Not only that, but we need to recognize that Jesus isn’t talking about being materially poor.

Maybe it helps to recognize that Jesus isn’t talking about being materially poor.

The Bible doesn’t teach that it is more godly to be poorer than someone else.

In other words, it isn’t necessarily good to be materially poor, nor is it good to be materially wealthy.

It does teach that those with fewer resources can have an easier time trusting in God because they aren’t as secure with their possessions, and it does warn us against hoarding our wealth or trusting it for security.

He does

However, if you fast forward to the next chapter, Jesus is going to tell us that we should give to the poor. If it was good to be poor, then why would we be commanded to help them out of poverty?

Jesus isn’t talking, then, about material poverty.

He is talking about those who acknowledge that they are spiritually poor.

That means that the key to blessing isn’t

Spiritual poverty is having the humility to understand just how little we have to offer God.

Here is how John MacArthur describes it:

“To be poor in spirit is to recognize one’s spiritual poverty apart from God. It is to see oneself as one really is: lost, hopeless, helpless. Apart from Jesus Christ every person is spiritually destitute, no matter what his education, wealth, social status, accomplishments, or religious knowledge.” (John MacArthur)

[3]

How is that for encouragement?

It almost sounds like something from Alice in Wonderland: the way up is down; the way to a blessed life is to realize you are completely and totally helpless!

In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul pulled together a number of different passages to summarize our situation:

Romans 3:9–12 CSB

What then? Are we any better off? Not at all! For we have already charged that both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin, as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one.

Apart from God, none of us have anything to offer him.

That flies in the face of everything the world says about how to get ahead, doesn’t it?

Blogs and magazines and even many preachers say that you just need to recognize what is inside you and live up to your full potential.

The old version of the American dream was to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and just grit your way through, and one day you will end up where you want to be.

Jesus is saying that the way to blessing is through recognizing that you don’t even have bootstraps to pull yourself up on!

When we recognize that, it doesn’t lead us to same kind of life the Pharisees would live, where we try to work our way to God.

Understanding our poverty of spirit teaches us that it would never work.

Instead, it fills us with a humility that leads us to surrender and depend on God and God alone for anything good to come out of our lives.

When God has done this for us, it will work out at least three different ways.

First, we will surrender our attachment and dependence on ourselves. If I have nothing to offer, then I can’t be at the center of my life.

As pastor and Bible commentator Warren Wiersbe said,

The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Four: The King’s Principles: True Righteousness (Matthew 5)

“Poor in spirit” is the opposite of the world’s attitudes of self-praise and self-assertion. It is not a false humility that says, “I am not worth anything, I can’t do anything!” It is honesty with ourselves: we know ourselves, accept ourselves, and try to be ourselves to the glory of God.

To quote Dirty Harry, “A man’s gotta know his limitations.”

When we acknowledge our spiritual poverty, we see our sinfulness, we surrender to Christ, and we get out of the way and let God lead, strengthen, and live through us.

That means we also surrender our attachment to stuff.

If I can’t earn my way to God, then nothing I could chase after or achieve could get me to him.

No possessions, no status, no effort on my part could get me to him.

In surrendering those two attachments, though, we gain an incredibly important one: we are attached to God.

We realize that God is our only hope, our only source of help, and everything we need.

That is why Jesus said that the poor in spirit will be the ones to follow through on the second step to the blessed life:

2) Receive God’s kingdom.

Isn’t this beautiful? By giving up and acknowledging that I can’t do anything apart from God, then I receive entry into the kingdom of God.

Again, here is MacArthur, saying it more succinctly than I could:

“In giving up their own kingdom, the poor in spirit inherit God’s.” (John MacArthur)

[4]

Blessing in this life doesn’t come through building up my kingdom in whatever form that is.

It doesn’t come as I focus on building my platform and increasing my influence.

It doesn’t come as I focus on making a name for myself at my job, or even in trying to leave a legacy for my family to know how great a person I am.

True blessing, unshakeable joy, comes as I surrender my kingdom, my desires, and my effort to get to heaven on my own.

That is what it means to be poor in spirit: recognizing our own inability to honor God, to live as God commands, to be what he created us to be and do what he created us to do.

When we reach that point of recognizing our dependence, it is then that we are given the privilege of citizenship in God’s kingdom!

It isn’t something we earn or deserve, which is why Paul would later write:

Ephesians 2:8–9 CSB

For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— not from works, so that no one can boast.

So, then, as we start this journey of Jesus describing for us what it means to be a part of his kingdom, we see that the entrance requirements aren’t what we expect.

He doesn’t tell us to try really hard and hope we get in. That’s what the Pharisees were doing.

Instead, he calls us to realize our own spiritual poverty and surrender to him.

That posture of trust and obedience

Here is the thing, though: That mindset of trust isn’t just how we enter into the kingdom; it is the mindset that we maintain as we walk with him.

We recognize that we are saved by recognizing our own spiritual dependence on God, but now that we are saved, we think that we have to live it out on our own.

Your behavior, especially your motivations, should change when you follow Jesus.

However, that change isn’t in your strength; you are still completely dependent on God!

The church in a city called Galatia had that problem.

Paul had preached the gospel to them, and many had been saved as they recognized their need for Christ.

Your behavior, especially your motivations, should change when you follow Jesus.

After Paul left, a group of people came in and started teaching that the Galatians needed to do certain aspects of the Jewish ceremonial law in order to stay saved.

However, that change isn’t in your strength; you are still completely dependent on God!

Here was how Paul responded:

Galatians 3:1–3 CSB

You foolish Galatians! Who has cast a spell on you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? I only want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by the Spirit, are you now finishing by the flesh?

No matter how long we have been saved, we are still completely dependent on God to accomplish anything of eternal value.

We still can’t do it on our own, which is why we need to remind ourselves daily of just how poor we are apart from him.

We need him to fill our lives, like a hand fills a glove, and allow him to transform the way we think, reorder our desires, and strengthen us to obey.

However, when we

So, then, here is the first way to live a blessed life: recognize you are spiritually poor.

Not only does this bring us joy by putting us in right standing with God, it has at least one other experiential benefit as well.

We can be joyful, because we know that

How many of you have heard the phrase, “Not my circus, not my monkeys?”

The idea is, “I am not in charge, so I don’t have to control what is going on or how other people are acting.”

That is part of the blessedness of this declaration: Your salvation, your entrance into the kingdom of God, the circumstances of your life, aren’t up to you to create.

You walk with him in trust and obedience, doing what he tells you to do, but ultimately, God is the one doing it!

He invites you to join him in his work in a real way, because he is loving and kind and gracious, but he is the one who will bring it all about.

This is how God has always worked! He started his nation with a child born to a man and woman who were too old to have kids. He delivered his people from opposing armies in miraculous ways time and time again.

He summarized it this way when a man named Zerubabbel was faced with the challenge of rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem:

Zechariah 4:6 CSB

So he answered me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by strength or by might, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord of Armies.

The God who is in charge of all the armies is the one leading what happens in this kingdom, so you and I can relax and simply follow his leading.

If you sense he is calling you to step out in some way, whether that is spending more time with him through Bible study and prayer, leading your family to greater involvement in his work, or some other step of obedience, know that he is the one supplying the plan and the power to do it!

You surrender to his will, and then live every day as a citizen in his kingdom, letting him lead.

So, are you ready to live a blessed life?

Acknowledge your spiritual poverty and receive entrance to his kingdom.

Endnotes:

Barclay, W. (Ed.). (1976). The Gospel of Matthew (Vol. 1). Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster John Knox Press.

MacArthur, J. (1985). The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Vol. 1, . Chicago: Moody Press.

Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible Exposition Commentary. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.

[3] ibid., 151.