Good Morning!

How are you? Doing well, I hope. The foliage is changing in Northern Maryland now and it is bee-u-ti-full. 🙂

First off, I want to thank you for taking the time to read these weekly messages. If you recall over the past month or so, we have considered that God and His word are holy and true, and we also (should have) considered our spirit within us, our inner person as the real us that really matters to God. With this proper regard for these things, today I am starting a series that will likely take us to the end of 2009.

Now, please keep in mind, these weekly messages concern spiritual things, godly things. Let us endeavor to elevate our thinking to such things that most people take for granted and/ or ignore. A higher level of concentration and attendant deep thinking will serve you well.

Have you ever wondered what God desires? Think about this: God, Who made the heavens and the earth and all they contain, Who Providentially guided human history over thousands of years, came down to earth in the person of Jesus and sat down one particular day to teach the things that matter to Him. In the Bible, this great teaching is called the Sermon on the Mount.

Frankly, the entire Bible is divine teaching from the mind of God, but this specific sermon given by Christ is like a golden nugget of truth that demands to be gazed at and studied intensely. Matthew, chapters 5,6, and 7 are the Sermon on the Mount. Today I want to simply scratch the surface of the beginning.

The beginning of this teaching shows the proper way into God’s eternal kingdom. These first few verses are called The Beatitudes. There are several, but we’ll just look at the first one this morning…

Matthew 5:1-3
Seeing the crowds, He (Jesus) went up on the mountain, and when He sat down, His disciples came to Him. And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…”

Blessed are the poor in spirit… Okay, let’s first look at the word “Blessed”.

“Blessed” basically means one is in a state of happiness, contentment, well-being, at ease, by means of God’s dealings with them… When someone sneezes and you say “Bless you”, you are invoking God’s favor on that person because the sneeze is indicative of impending sickness and death (old holdover from the Bubonic plague). Interesting, huh?

So the perplexing thing in this first Beatitude is, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” Poor in spirit??

Well, you know about (and can recognize) your spirit now, right? So does the inner you carry actual money? Nope! But think about this; the currency your spirit naturally carries is pride. Yep, good ole’ pride.  What is the opposite of rich? It is poor. What is the opposite of self-centeredness? It is selflessness. What is the opposite of proud? It is humble.

So spiritually speaking now, pride is an attitude that you manifest towards self and others in all kinds of ways. And a living a life of self-centeredness and self-righteousness marks a person who is NOT poor in spirit. See how that works? Look at it this way too, if you find yourself as living inside a cardboard box made of guilt and shame over your thoughts, words and deeds, this is closer to what it means to be poor (beggarly) in spirit.

Here’s a good question to ask yourself… Is asking for help easy or difficult for you? Asking for help (for certain things) requires a certain admission that you are unable and insufficient on your own. Asking for help requires a swallowing of pride, right?

Here’s another good question… Is saying you’re sorry (and meaning it) easy or difficult for you? Apologizing is an admission that an offense was made by you (courtesy of your self-centeredness). Saying you’re sorry for something requires humbleness and contrition, ergo, a swallowing of pride.

Oh my, the Lord God Almighty gets excited over such attitudes…  

Psalm 25:9
He (God) leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble His way.

Proverbs 3:34
Toward the scorners He (God) is scornful, but to the humble He gives favor.

James 4:10
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.

Now, recognizing all these spiritual attitudes, what does it mean to be really poor in spirit?

It means you have to get to the end of your rope, the end of yourself. It is like you have tried and tried to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but you just can’t anymore. Your own ugliness on the inside overwhelms you and you come to the point where you are cast out on the street (spiritually speaking) with no resources… helpless, naked, and desperate, reduced to begging, saying you’re sorry to God and asking for His for help, because of your guilt and shame over violating His moral law and your inability to do anything about it.

Losing the currency of your pride and self-esteem and self-centeredness and self-righteousness will cause you to see a strangely clear and other-worldly true recognition of reality. Almighty God will meet you there and lead you in what is right and teach you His ways… trust me, you’ll be willing at that point! And this is why the Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”, for such people are on the right path.

**Comments/ questions/ affirmations/ objections most encouraged!

Dear Lord, thank you for this time to consider Your word and Your ways. May our thoughts, words, and deeds bring You glory… and glory to You alone. –Amen

Peace,
Jim