The world and the Bible conflict greatly in almost every facet of life. Spiritual happiness is no different. In this sermon, we examine the Biblical view on happiness that comes from being poor in spirit.

The Happiness of Spiritual Poverty

Matthew 5:3

Intro

What do words like poverty, sorrow, mourning, hungry, weak and thirsty have to do with happiness? To a person in love with things of this world, they are the furthest things from happiness. In fact they are the very things that you would want to avoid. It is because when people think of happiness they look to the world as their source of it. But what Christ tells us in this passage is that everyone with that mind, is dead wrong.

Context

When Christ came, He did not declare a kingdom that made sense to anyone with a mind set on worldly things. He didn’t, by worldly standards, achieve much. One example being that the very people whom He came to save are the very same people who killed Him. He was a man of sorrows, yet “blessed forever.” He came to build a kingdom yet, died homeless.

It is all because the world does not understand the things of God. That God uses and chooses the lowly and rejected things of the world to accomplish His purposes. So you can Imagine, a first century Jew, sitting before Jesus on this mount and expecting to hear things that would “tickle the ear.” They were expect Him to declare now would be the time for the kingdom, now is the restoration of Israel and now would be the time to satisfy all the perceptions of what they thought true happiness would be.

In a few passages back, Jesus had just begun to declare the the Kingdom of God is at hand. To the Jew, this meant that the heir to David’s throne had come. The first point illustrated in these beatitudes, is we should not look to worldly strength to solve a spiritual problem.

With the expectation of a new Jewish monarch, they would begin to assume that what Jesus would now say would have to do with conquering worldly issues and building a worldly kingdom. So you could imagine much to their shock and confusion when Jesus begins to describe the very things as blessings that they would hope He would have solved.

Blessedness

What Jesus is going to describe here are blessings. What does it mean to be blessed? The word blessed here and in all the beatitudes can mean fortunate, prosperous, or perhaps the easiest translation “happy.” Not a temporary happiness but a state of contentment. It is a deep and restful contentment that is not found from anything gained in this world. Its is a perfect happiness. So for simplicities sake, you can think to yourself “deeply happy.”

What is important here is that you get out of your head the idea of worldly ideas of happiness. You have the whole world, shouting at you, what will make you happy and for the most part we believe these ideas. So you need to say to yourself, “I don’t know what happiness is.” The hearers of Jesus had their own idea of what would make them happy, they had their own ideas of what it would be that Jesus would do for them to make them happy.

Ok, so let’s take some examples of things that people think make them happy. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that these things are sinful, I am saying that we don’t believe God when He tells us the things that will truly make us happy. See we look to what we think will make us happy and we pursue that. But you see we chase after the wrong things, because we don’t believe God when He says “this will make you happy.” There are things we look to and things that we seek to make us happy, and they may be good in and of themselves, but not for the purpose of the type of happiness that Jesus is talking  about here. I just want to make sure I’m clear so that if I tip your cow, it’s on the basis of scripture and not just me.

So things like, cake and cookies, and food, and beer and vodka are all things that we may look to for to make us happy. I don’t want to stop there, for some people it’s football, the super bowl, family, video games, cars, new clothes, shopping. Maybe, we’ve had a long week, and we think you know, what I really need, is to relax and watch some tv. On and on I could go, I could literally list any and everything in the world. People look to any and everything for happiness.

Again, I’m not saying that any of these things are wrong, but what I am saying is that if we look to these things for a true and deep happiness, we won’t find it here. I’m not wanting you to rob yourself of the great blessing that God has for you. The problem is not worldly things but worldly means. Because what happens is when we start to come to these things for happiness, they may give us a temporary pleasure, but it’s just that – temporary. The next time we come back to it, it may not give us the same satisfaction that it did before. Say, you enjoy a good beer, but you depend upon it for you source of happiness, so eventually one beer doesn’t give you the same happiness it once did so now you depend upon two beers, then three, then a six pack, then passing out. God has created many things for us to enjoy, not abuse. [ They are not a source but can be a means by which God can use ]

If we want real happiness, real joy, does it make since to listen to anyone else but God? No, it doesn’t. Jesus is telling us about real blessedness, you can’t find this anywhere else. Therefore, you must empty your mind of whatever guilty pleasure you may have that you look to for true happiness and be excited for what Jesus is about to tell us this real happiness is.

Poor in Spirit

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Poor in Spirit First

The first thing that Jesus tells us about being “blessed” is that you must be poor in spirit. Not exactly what we would expect, but that is why we need Jesus’ word to instruct us. I believe that if you are not poor in spirit, all of the other beatitudes and teachings of Jesus and the Bible will do you no good. If you are not poor in spirit. This is the first Beatitude and I believe that tells its significance, but I also believe that without a proper understanding of “poor in spirit”, it will be hard for the other truths to be applicable. Let’s get into what poor in spirit means …

Poor in Spirit breakdown

What about the phrase “poor in spirit”? The word poor here conveys the idea of poverty and bankruptcy. It’s not even “poor” as we would typically to understand it, the word used here is someone who is so poor that they are in a real danger of death. It’s a desperate type of poverty in which the person is so broke that they are dependent upon the good graces of others as a means by which they can live. A “poor” person like this would be a beggar who would long for the crumbs that would fall from someones table.

Imagine yourself, life as a beggar, unable to do anything for yourself. You are far too weak and do not have enough strength to work. There is no way of life for you other than begging people and asking for others to help sustain your life. This is the type of poverty that Jesus is talking about.

What poor in spirit is

What does this type of poverty mean when it is applied to a person’s spirit? To define your spirit, it is your inner self. It is what “feels, thinks, wills and decides.” It is the you, behind your body. To be poor spiritually then, is to have a bankrupt inner self. A great awareness of your own inability. It is to have, in our cultures terms, a complete lack of “self esteem” and “self-confidence”. Being poor in spirit is to view yourself in such a low and poverty based mentality that you have no hope in yourself. You are at the “end of your rope” as the saying goes.

You can imagine yourself in a 1,000 foot deep pit. The walls are rocky and jagged all the way up. You look up, all the way up and see the bright shining day at the top. It’s cold, miserable and dark down where you are. You want to get up and out of the pit. You see others before you try and make the climb. One thing’s sure, if you try and climb up out of the pit yourself and fall, you will most certainly hit rocks on your fall and die on your way down. The person who is poor in spirit in this situation, realized the situation that they are in, they cannot get out on their own. They realize that they are have no hope, ability, or power to save themselves. Their only option is for someone to help. But those who look to their own ability or strength as a means of hope will try and scale the walls, eventually they will slip and fall to their death.

This is our exact dilemma, we put hope in ourselves. We put too much hope and confidence in ourselves to solve our own problems and issues. Each and every time that we do, it’s like we try and scale the wall of the 1,000 pit only to slip and fall dead on the ground. We continue to deceive ourselves by putting trust in our strength or ability. We fail and continue to fail but still think that somehow we can be our own hero.

Poor in Spirit: Contrary to the world

The concept of being poor in spirit is totally contrary to the worldly mind. The great philosophy of the day shouts, “Believe in yourself. Love yourself. There is nothing wrong with you.” Especially if you want to be happy. We have something called “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs” that tells each person what they need in life to be happy. It’s taught as one of the leading ideas of how people become happy in life. It has as one of the most important steps to achieving happiness “self-esteem”. But the biblical perspective on this is exactly contrary to this. Having a high view of yourself is going to actually negate your happiness. Have you ever thought of that? Now don’t fall into the other ditch, where you give yourself some sense of self-hatred or false humility. We have to view ourselves right as the word of God presents.

This whole world tempts you and pulls you all with a lore to try and put before you more beautiful things than Christ. In an effort to please ourselves we give in.

In our culture and society

The world in all it’s grand wisdom does the exact opposite of what scripture says. Anytime we see a biblical command, we don’t have to look far in the world to see where it does the exact opposite. Ex: When the bible condemns lying, we can look and see what the world see that it is full of lies, in politicians, celebrities, at work, in relationships and on and on it goes. So it should be no surprise to us that when the Bible says blessedness comes from being, “poor in spirit”, the world shouts “be rich in spirit.”

I often go into thrift stores and like to look for old theological books, usually right next to that category is something called “self-help.” There are often more of these books than there are theology books. “Self-help”, that is this worlds solution to all your problems. They will tell you all about the power of “positive thinking”, “fix yourself up”, “how to have your best life now” and it’s all wrong. All it does it nothing more than to inflate your ego, make you feel better about yourself than you should.

See this is the point that I want you to see if nothing else, that when you, the world and everything else shouts that “You cure for all your sin, sorrow, for all your happiness, all your joy is found within you. You are all you need, love yourself more more more.” But here, Christ says “NO! The only thing that will make you happy is not how high or rich you view yourself, but how lowly and poor you are.”

Why are poor in spirit blessed?

At this point you say “Sean, none of this sounds like the happiness that Jesus was talking about, what did He mean when He said we would be blessed?” One reason, Jesus gives us in the second half of the verse, “For theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” The kingdom of Heaven being the Kingdom that Jesus is here to declare. The Kingdom not of this world, the everlasting and eternal kingdom of which whose subjects will have eternal life.

So from the text one of the primary reasons that the poor in spirit are blessed is that they will have eternal life.

Journey Through Scriptures – Why poor in spirit?

At this point there are a couple questions that I want to answer. The first “Why does God give the kingdom to the poor in spirit?” and the second “What causes someone to be poor in spirit?” The idea of being “poor in spirit” is a wildly unpopular idea, so I don’t want you to think that I just made this up. Let’s take a small journey through some scriptures and answer these questions.

Psalms 34:18: The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the contrite in spirit.

This passage probably is probably the closest passage in the OT to what Jesus says in the new. It says that God is near to the broken hearted. He is close to them and He saves them. Contrite in spirit. This word in the Hebrew can mean dust or crushed, so think of a person in a pepper grinder, ground up into a pile of dust. He saves them. The Lord saves those who cannot save themselves. Have you heard the expression “God helps those who help themselves”? It’s a great saying, except that it’s totally wrong. We cannot help ourselves. The ones who are brokenhearted and contrite in spirit are the ones who realize that they need a savior.

Imagine a mother with a sick child, so sick, it’s very possible the child could die. What could the mother do? She has no ability to heal the child on her own. She would shake the child about and say “Be well!” She would run out of desperation for the childs life, to try and get any and every doctor that could make the child well.

Spurgeon – The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart. Near in friendship to accept and console. Broken hearts think God far away, when he is really most near them; their eyes are holden so that they see not their best friend. Indeed, he is with them, and in them, but they know it not. They run hither and thither, seeking peace in their own works, or in experiences, or in proposals and resolutions, whereas the Lord is nigh them, and the simple act of faith will reveal him. And saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. What a blessed token for good is a repentant, mourning heart! Just when the sinner condemns himself, the Lord graciously absolves him. If we chasten our own spirits the Lord will spare us. He never breaks with the rod of judgment those who are already sore with the rod of conviction. Salvation is linked with contrition.

Isaiah 57:15: For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

I love the language here used of God. It says God dwells in the high and holy place and also with the one who is of a lowly spirit. Isn’t that fascinating? So why is the lowly spirit appealing to God? Well, we can answer that by inverting the question, why is the prideful person unappealing to God? Prideful people, don’t see their faults, they think too much of themselves to think that they are wrong in any way.

Isaiah 66:2: All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.

James 4:6: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

The inverse is also true. God opposes the proud, but the proud also oppose God. You’ve heard the saying “Religion is a crutch”, for some people that may be true, but for Christianity, it’s not, Christianity is a life support system.

So to answer the question “why does God give the kingdom to the poor in spirit?”, He gives it to those who see their need for it. To those who need a savior. Mark 2:17 “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”

How does one become poor in spirit?

So for the second question let’s look at Psalm 51:

Ps 51:16-17 For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

This is out of a familiar Psalm, the beautiful Psalm where David confesses his sin before God. What he says is amazing. True sacrifice before God is not works, or an animal sacrifices or any other such thing. True sacrifice is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Sound familiar? This is the similar language used by Jesus on the passage we have been looking at. I love the Bible, isn’t this great that it all fits together? This text explains this almost as an appeal to God, not a sacrifice as if somehow our feeling bad for sin somehow atones or pays for our sin. “You will not despise”, God looks at the heart and see’s the inward state of it. If someone comes before God as if God owes them something, or full of pride, they’ve got it all wrong. It’s someone who is broken and is honest about their state before God.

So what caused David’s broken spirit? If you’re not familiar with the story, David, king of Israel committed adultery by stealing another man’s wife, murder her husband and lying all the while to try and cover it up. He gets confronted by Nathan the prophet who rebukes him for his sin and he writes this Psalm as a response. So what caused Him to be poor in spirit was his sin in the light of the truth of God’s righteousness.

You see when we come to understand our own sin, all of the things that we have done wrong, how we have done nothing but step and trample over God’s law and offend Him, it’s not something that makes us feel good. Day after day, living lawlessly in sin and immorality in drunkenness and thievery, drugs and pornagraphy, but sin is not just things that you do. Sin is also a matter of the heart. Evil thoughts that you think and have about others, the wicked and vile fascinations that intoxicate your mind. These too are sin.

Then we look at God, perfect and right in every way. In Him is no darkness, no wickedness, no sin. A beauty that we have not see and a beauty that we do not appreciate. What would a good and perfect God do to us sinners? Give us justice, a good judge cannot simply let evil men go. See when we talk about these things, our consciences flair up and accuse us. The knowledge of our sin present before us.

The person who is poor in spirit looks at their sin as a deadly cancer that they cannot cure. It’s a leprosy that no garment can cover up. It’s a stain so deep that no water can clean. It is a weight too great to hold. Someone who is genuinely poor is spirit, is so plagued by their sin, they know that every effort they put out would only end in vanity.

Blessed are those who mourn

This flows into the second beatitude.

Now the question then becomes are you poor in spirit enough to ask for help or do you simply try and work things out in your own pride? When you look at your ability to save yourself do you see hope or a lost cause? Are you like the beggar who is dependant upon the mercy of another to be sustained or do you find that you are rich?

My son, is beginning to get bigger and bigger and as he does he wants to do more and more things on his own. On of the things that he insists on doing is getting in and out of the car seat all by himself. I don’t have any problem with that, but one day, I naturally plucked him out of the car seat and set him on the ground. He instantly started to yell and shout about wanting to do it himself. He was refusing to be helped and it greatly upset him because of the pride that was in his heart.

The same is true of sinful man. He simply does not admit his need before God. He simply will not come to the realization that he is unable to help himself. This is why doing religious works to please God is such a popular idea in all of the other religions. Man simply believes that he can and must contribute something towards his good deeds to be accepted into heaven. But the truth is that he is simply unable to solve his own problem. The only way, is if he can see is spiritually poor condition, recognize his own spiritual poverty and ask for help.

Remember the word “poor” used there. It referred to someone who had to beg even to stay alive. This is our situation. We are so spiritually poor, that we must humble ourselves and beg for help. Can you imagine yourself being so poor, so helpless that your only hope was to go out on the streets and beg people for food, money or anything they had to help you stay alive. It would be completely humiliating and an end to your pride, but it would be your only means to stay alive.

Entrance into the Kingdom

You see the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor in spirit, because they are the ones who realize their own spiritual poverty. They beg God for mercy and God in His infinite mercy grants it. So entrance into the kingdom of heaven is not depending upon man who runs, but God who gives mercy.

When we imagine the kingdom of heaven we think that we are naturally good enough to get it. We believe that we are rich enough in spirit to get in. Sadly none of us are.

Consider a great kingdom, the greatest in the world. It is known for it’s luxurious, riches beauty and splendor, and joy of everyone who lives there. Now there are two entrances, one called the “Royal gate” and the other the “beggars path”. The “Royal Gate” is marvelous and beautiful path. It leads up to a door, of exquisite beauty, made from the finest wood and is hand crafted, the most beautiful door in the world. But many come to this entrance expecting entry, they assume that they’re great worth was enough to get in. They declare to the door keeper, “I have arrived, open up for me.” The doorkeeper will look them over and say, I’m sorry, we do not take your kind here. So they then leave in search of a castle more worthy of their presence. The other entrance, the “beggars path” is a narrow hole on the ground that goes under the castle wall. To enter it, one must crawl under the narrow slot. Many seeking entrance to the kingdom, scoff at such an entrance, saying “If this is the way into the kingdom, surely it is not fit me.” But to those, who need no grand entrance, who have no great view of themselves, it is the finest path they will ever take.

That’s the secret, nobody likes the idea of dropping their pride. But the truth is, we have nothing to boast in. The same is true with many of us. When we look over our spiritually accounting over our lifetime, we will either see one of two things. All of the good things that we’ve done, how we have never committed any great atrocities and that our heart for the most part is good. Or we will see ourselves biblically, that every good thing that we have ever done is but garbage, each and every time we sin is enough to condemn us to tell and that our hearts are “deceitfully wicked.”

Conclusion

Why poor in spirit are truly blessed

The person who is poor in spirit is happy, because they can enter into God’s kingdom. They are happy because they do not have to place trust in themselves. When they fail, no worries.

Why the poor in spirit are blessed

There are several reason why the poor in spirit are blessed.

They view themselves honestly

For those who are honest with a self assessment of themselves, they will truly see that they are poor and spirit. If they see that they are poor in spirit, they will not be able to enter into heaven on their own ability. They can have “Confident in our in Incompetence.” The one who deceives himself will assume that they are ok and the day that they die, they will believe that all of their good works and deeds is enough for them to enter into the royal kingdom. The poor in spirit are blessed then, because they truly know their own spiritual state and are accepted before God regardless of it.

They will not trust themselves

Trusting in yourself is like investing in a failing company, you are only going to lose. When we trust ourselves, we will fail, we will let ourselves down. But the real blessing in this is that they can trust in Christ who is one who never fails. For those poor in spirit enough to trust in Christ, they have a firm and solid hope. He will not disappoint.

They have a royal invitation

In Matt 11:28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” The poor in spirit have a royal invitation from the King. There is rest for the weary. Are you beaten down by your own sin? Have you gone from one thing to the next trying to find a real happiness only to find misery and pain? Come to Christ. This text is for you. Poor in spirit come. Coming to Christ isn’t dependent upon us, but upon Christ who has made the offer. You must meet no qualification or standard to achive the kingdom, as Spurgeon said:

“[You should] not to come to Christ because you have a broken heart, but to come to him that he may give you a broken heart; not to come to him because you are fit to come, but to come to him because you are unfit to come. Your fitness is your unfitness. Your qualification is your lack of qualification.”

Poor in spirit practically

Being poor in spirit is not something that is a one time process, but something that is continually before the Christian. It is a Christian characteristic. We are not saved and then begin to feel a great worth of ourself. Poor in spirit produces godly humility. If you are not humble, you will not learn or care to learn more about Jesus or what He has to say. You will go your own way.

So what of yourself? Are you poor in spirit? Has God illuminated your mind to see your own spiritual poverty?

______________________________

© The Bridge

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on our website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by The Bridge.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By Sean Downey. © The Bridge.  Website: www.TheBridgeOnline.net