Happy Are the Humble
Matthew 5:3
Take your Bible, if you will, and let's look at Matthew Chapter 5 together, Matthew Chapter 5. Sometimes I think the shorter the verses the more I can think of to say. And usually that's because when you only deal with one verse you deal with it as one verse because it is so full of meaning. It is so pregnant with truth and we're going to find that as we go through the Beatitudes, and we'll go one Beatitude at a time, that even though they're one simple statement and only one verse, we have to take them one at a time because they're so loaded with tremendous truths. So tonight we're going to be looking at verse 3, the beginning of the Beatitudes, the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount.
Verse 1 says, "And seeing the multitudes He went up into a mountain and when He was seated His disciples came unto Him and He opened His mouth and taught them saying, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'" As we studied in our last lesson, Jesus came to bring men happiness. Jesus came to bring men blessing. Jesus came to make life meaningful, and the key to the kind of happiness and the kind of blessedness that's talked about in these beatitudes, the word blessed was our theme for part of our discussion last time, the key to that kind of blessedness is following a new standard for living. A new kind of life, and that is what Jesus sets forth in the Sermon on the Mount.
In Matthew Chapters 5 through 7, our Lord is establishing a counter standard of living, counter to everything the world knows and practices, a new approach to living that results in blessedness, makarios, and we saw that this makarios, is a deep inner happiness, a deep and genuine sense of blessedness, of bliss that the world cannot offer, not produced by the world, not produced by circumstances, and not subject to change by the world or circumstances. It is not produced externally; it cannot be touched externally.
The promise of Christ then in the Sermon on the Mount is at the very beginning. He is saying if you live by these standards you will know blessedness. And so in verse 3 it is blessed and verse 4 it's blessed, and verse 5 blessed, verse 7, verse 8, verse 9, 10, 11, and finally as a result of all this blessedness, verse 12 rejoice and be exceeding glad. The whole Sermon on the Mount introduces itself with a promise of blessedness, happiness, deep inner satisfaction.
Now we said, also, last time that this blessedness, this well being, this bliss, this happiness in which believers live and, which they enjoy, is really a gift of God. For makarios or blessedness is characteristic of God. The greatest possible understanding of the term blessed comes when you understand that God is blessed. So happy is the people whose God is the Lord. Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord, for He above all is blessed. Blessed by God, says the Bible. Blessed by the Lord Jesus Christ and if they are blessed, if they have this deep inner bliss, this deep sense of contentment and blessedness because of the virtue of divine nature, then only those who partake in that divine nature can know that same blessedness. Only as we partake in the very nature of God can we be blessed can we know this happiness. It doesn't belong to anyone outside those who know God.
So Jesus came offering a new standard for living and His emphasis was not on externals; it was on internals. He was not telling them a new way to live every day; he was telling them a new way to think first that would result in a new way to live every day. It was not talking only about behavior; He was talking about attitude. He was saying that the inner part of a person's life is the real key to happiness.
And last week we talked about the fact that you can pile up all you want, stuff on the outside, and it never brings any happiness to the inside. So that we see that Jesus is offering blessing and happiness based on a new standard of live, a new kind of living, a righteous standard, and, if you will, and this will be a key word, a selfless standard, a selfless standard. This great sermon, the greatest sermon no doubt ever preached, focused on this kind of happiness, this kind of blessedness and the amazing thing about it is, as we said last time, the only people who can know this blessedness are the people who know they can't live this way on their own, and so they're totally dependent on Jesus Christ.
Now remember that I told you last time that the multitude was there and they were hearing and they were listening, but the message was really directed to the twelve because no one outside faith in Jesus Christ could ever know this blessedness. No one who didn't have the power of God operating in his life could ever function this way. No one who had not come to this particular point of humility could ever know and experience any of these great blessings. Only the partakers of the nature of God can know this blessedness. And I believe, beloved, that this message is for all of us. I know that historically some evangelicals have objected to the Sermon on the Mount and said it's too hard. Matthew 5:48b, "Perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." That's too hard. That's not for us. If it's too tough we just pass it off to the millennium. It must be the kingdom and a lot of people have said that the Sermon on the Mount is kingdom living, it is kingdom principles, but there are lots of problems with that. It's really impossible for many reasons.
First of all the text does not say this is for the millennium. Secondly Jesus preached it to people who weren't living in the millennium. To be that's the greatest argument of all. Three, it becomes meaningless if you push it into the millennium because is says, "Blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness sake; blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you, say all manner of evil against you falsely." Now in the kingdom, my friend, no one's going to get away with that stuff or the Lord will rule with a rod of iron. Matthew 5:44, along with many other things would become meaningless. "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you." It's the same idea. There's not going to be any of that in the kingdom.
And by the way, another reason I believe this is for all believers of all ages is because every principle found in the Sermon on the Mount is found somewhere else in the New Testament. This isn't just for some super saints living in the kingdom. This is for us. It is the distinctive lifestyle of a believer of any age. It calls upon us to come to a new standard of living. It is Jesus saying to us, "Look this is the way you must live if you are to know happiness, if you are to know blessedness," and isn't it wonderful that God is offering us that? That God is not a cosmic killjoy, that God is not defining His greatest joy and raining on your parade. God wants you to be happy. God wants you to be blessed and He gives us here the principles.
And you another thing that we ought to say about this is this is distinctive living. You live like this and I promise you you'll be different. You really will. In many ways, I guess we'd have to say that Christians today have lost their distinctiveness. We were talking about that a little this morning, weren't we? We have been shaped by the world. We have been molded into the world, the world's music, and its sex morals, its marriages, its divorces, its morality, its liberation movements, its materialism, its approach to food, its approach to alcoholic drinks, its approach to dance, its approach to entertainment, its approach to sports, its approach to all kinds of things and we get pushed into that and it's very easy for us to loose our distinctiveness. And we're seeing in our day something that the Lord no doubt has had His heart broken over for all the years since the church began and that's the corrupting of Christianity.
And Jesus is really saying here God wants you to live different. God doesn't want you to live the way everybody else lives, and if you'll life this way you'll be happy, if you live this way you'll be blessed, and you know I've always believed that the manufacturer knows more about the product than anybody else. If I have a car and I buy a car the first thing I do is read that little book that tells me what to do. I know how to stick the key in and shift it, but there's other stuff I need to know. Or if I get something that, purchase an appliance, I read that stuff. I want to know what they say how that thing works. It's amazing to me that the manufacturer of everybody who lives in the world is God and yet very few people want to turn to Him and find out how they best can know happiness. How best can I know blessedness? How best can I know fulfillment? You made me, you tell me, and Jesus does right here.
I say again He's dealing with the inside. Now let me add this: the idea that Jesus deals with the inside and with our attitudes and our feelings and our thinking does not mean that there's no commitment to the outside because when the inside is right the outside is right. Faith without works is what? dead. There's doing to be an outside. You were created unto Jesus unto good works, but the true outside, the real outside can only be produced by the real inside.
I think Martin Lloyd Jones gives the best illustration of this I've ever read. This is what he said, "Take for example the realm of music. A man may play a piece of great music quite accurately, he may make no mistakes at all, and yet it may be true to say of him that he did not really play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. He played the notes correctly, but it was not the Sonata. What was he doing? He was mechanically striking the right notes but missing the soul and the real interpretation. He wasn't doing what Beethoven intended and meant. That, I think, is the relationship between the whole and the parts. The artist, the true artist, is always correct. Even the greatest artist cannot afford to neglect rules and regulations, but that is not what makes him the great artist. It is this something extra, the expression, it is the spirit, it is the light, it is the whole that he is able to convey. There is, seems to me, is the relationship of the particular to the general in the Sermon on the Mount. You can't divorce; you can't separate them.
The Christian while he puts his emphasis on the spirit is also concerned about the letter, but he is not concerned only about the letter, he must never consider the letter apart from the spirit. On the one hand to claim the spirit without living according to God's law is to be a liar. On the other hand, to try to live out the law without the spirit is to be a hypocrite. They both go together. The spirit is the right attitude and the letter is the obedience that comes as a result."
True spirituality then starts on the inside and touches the outside. Now as you look at the Beatitudes you'll see that they're like sacred paradoxes. They are almost given in absolute contrast to everything the world knows. And let me just say a word that I want as a little footnote here. You see the word blessing, the word blessing or blessed has an opposite word in the Bible. The opposite of makarios is uai, and we translate it woe. The opposite of blessing is cursing. The opposite of blessed, Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount blessed and He turned around to the Pharisees later and said, "Woe unto you." Those are opposites. And let me hasten to say this: the word blessed and the word woe neither one of them are really a wish. They are a judgmental pronunciation. Jesus is saying, He's not saying I wish you blessedness, he is saying blessed is the man who goes this way, does this, thinks this way. And other places: woe to the man who does this. They are judicial pronunciations. They are not simply wishes.
Now as we look at these blessed, these judicial pronunciations of God, happy is the one who does this, who thinks this way, we see a sequence. Look with me quickly at verse 3. First we see the poor in spirit. Poor in spirit is the right attitude towards sin, which leads to mourning in verse 4, which leads after you've seen your sinfulness and you've mourned to a meekness, a sense of humility, then to a seeking hunger and thirst for righteousness. You can see the progression. And that manifests itself in mercy, verse 7, in purity of heart, verse 8, in a peacemaking spirit, verse 9. The result of being merciful and pure in heart and peacemaking is that you are reviled and you are persecuted and you are falsely accused why? because by the time you are poor in spirit, mourned over it, become humble, sought righteousness, lived a merciful, pure, and peacemaking life, you have sufficiently irritated the world so they're going to react. But when it's all said and done, verse 12 says, "You can rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven." And when you live like that, poor in spirit, mourning, meek, seeking righteousness, that is the result of becoming merciful and pure and peacemaking and having the world revile and persecute and say all these things against you, then you can be sure that verse 13 is true, you are the salt of the earth. That's what it takes. You are the light of the world.
You can't be salt and light beloved, you can't start in verse 13 until you start in verse 3. So let's look at verse 3. "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." This is so basic, so necessary. And I'm going to ask you give questions tonight and I want you to just answer them with me as we look at this one statement.
Why does Christ begin with this? Why does He start with being poor in spirit? When He's talking about a new kind of living, a new standard, a new way to live, why does it begin here? Why is this the source of happiness? Well simply because it is the fundamental characteristic of a Christian. It is the very first thing that must happen in the life of anybody who ever enters God's kingdom. Nobody yet ever entered God's kingdom on the basis of pride. Poverty of spirit is the only way in. The door to the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ is very low and the only people who come in crawl. Jesus begins by saying there is a mountain you have to scale. There are heights you have to climb. There is a standard you must attain, but you are incapable of doing it and the sooner you realize it the sooner you'll be on your way to finding it. In other words He's saying you can't be filled until you're empty. You can't be worthwhile until you're worthless.
You know it amazes me that in modern Christianity today there is so little of the self-emptying concept. I've seen a lot of books on how to be filled with joy, and how to be filled with this, and how to be filled with the spirit, a so forth, and lots of books on how to be filled, but I don't think I've ever seen a book on how to empty yourself of yourself. Can you imagine a book entitled How to be Nothing? It would really be a great seller in our day: How to be a Nobody. You know in so much of our modern Christianity Phariseeims feeds on pride. Poverty of spirit, on the other hand, is the foundation of all graces. You know if you don't have poverty of spirit, beloved, you might as well expect fruit to grow without a tree, as the graces of the Christian life to grow without humility. They can't! As long as we're not poor in spirit we can't receive grace.
Now even at the beginning you can't even become a Christian unless you're poor in spirit. And as you live your Christian life you'll never know the other graces of the Christian life as long as you violate poverty of spirit and this is tough. Jesus is saying start here. Happiness is for the humble. Happiness is for the humble. Until we are poor in spirit Christ is never precious to us because we can't see Him for the looking at ourselves. Before we see our own wants and our own needs and our own desperation we never see the matchless work of Christ. Until we know how really damned we are we can't appreciate how really glorious He is. Till we comprehend how doomed we are we can't understand how wondrous is His love to redeem us. Till we see our poverty we cannot understand His riches. And so out of the carcass comes the honey. It is in our deadness we come alive, and no man ever comes to Jesus Christ, no man ever enters the kingdom who doesn't crawl with a terrible sense of sinfulness repentance.
Proverbs 16:5 says, "Cursed are the proud. God gives grace to the humble." This has to be at the very beginning. That's why it's first. Listen, the only way to come to God's kingdom is to confess your own unrighteousness, confess your inability to meet God's standards, confess that you can't do it. You can't do it. Paul experienced this. I think it's, we won't take the time to look at Philippians Chapter 3, but the men were singing it tonight so beautifully, and Paul in that passage says, "Touching the law I was blameless." And he says, "However I have no confidence in the flesh," no confidence in the flesh. And it all begins here, people. You enter God's kingdom with a sense of helplessness. You enter God's kingdom with a sense of desperation and if you want to know happiness as you live in His kingdom you keep that same sense of helplessness and desperation.
The church at Laodicea said, "I am rich and have need of nothing." And the words of Jesus to them were, "And you don't know that you are poor and blind and naked." You think you're rich, you aren't. How many fools there are in the world that never see the truth? Like the little maid of Seneca who kept telling everybody because she was born blind she is not blind, she would say, "I am not blind, the world is dark." Fool! There are people today saying, "I'm not blind. The world is dark." This is how it is in the world. Fools who do not see the reality, I am rich and have need of nothing and they're desperate.
Jesus begins here because this is where you got to begin and this is where you got to begin to get saved, and this is where you got to begin to live the Christian life in blessedness. There's no room for pride. And as I said Christianity today in our world is feeding on pride. It is just feeding on it, on the exaltation of the individual.
Second question: why does it begin here? Because this is where it has to start. You cannot come to God unless you realize that you're spiritually bankrupt and that's the way you've got to live your Christian life. You have nothing in your flesh, nothing. Second question: what does this term mean poor in spirit? We now know why it's here because it's _____ but what does it specifically mean? What kind of poverty is He talking about?
Now some people suggest that it's material poverty. They take Luke 6:20, which says, "Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom." And they say, "You see it's just plain poor." No, when you have two records in the Bible in the gospels you compare them. Blessed are the poor, what poor? There are all kinds of poverty, right? You could be poor in terms of money, you could be poor in terms of your education, you could be poor in terms of friends, you could be poor in terms of a lot of things, so when you read Luke say, "Blessed are the poor," and you find Matthew "Blessed are the poor in spirit," you make the conclusion simply that Matthew tells us what kind of poverty Luke was referring to. That's all; it's no big problem. We just put the two together comparing Scripture with Scripture.
What kind of poverty? Well it's poor without money. And there are a lot of who have written on this thought that God just blesses and gives His kingdom to poor people. Now let me tell you something, folks, if He just means the people without money, then the worse possible thing that we as Christians can ever do is give somebody money. I mean alleviating the poor is terrible, you know feeding the hungry is ridiculous. We must stop immediately. Any age and anyone who is poor. In fact, what we really ought to do is just get all the money out of everybody we can so they'll all be poor. We'd all be sort of con men. We just need to get it all, but the only thing is in so doing we who get is lose. That's stupid. We can't go around the world abolishing that kind of stuff. We'd have to close every orphanage, every hospital, all the missions, and everything that reaches out to needy people. And spiritual blessedness came from material poverty, no. On the other hand riches can really mess up people. I think poor people have a running start on the right attitude toward life, believe it or not because in their desperation they seek a source beyond themselves. The self-sufficiency of the rich causes them to be hard pressed to know God and that's why the Bible says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom because he trusts in his riches. The poor man has none to trust in. But there have been a few righteous people who were rich. Not many, Nicodemas, Joseph of Arimathea, oh some wonderful ones in the Old Testament, Philemon was no doubt wealthy, but you know God isn't talking here about material poverty. In fact, do you realize that David said in all his years he never saw the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread? In Paul's life he had times of hunger and he had times of thirst, but he never was a cringing beggar. And the Lord Jesus never went around with His twelve begging for food. The were accused of being mad, the disciples and the Lord, they were accused of being ignorant, they were accused of turning the world upside down, and believe me if they had been beggars they would have been accused of that too. But no such accusations were ever leveled at them.
Well you say, "What kind of poverty is it?" Well He tells you, poor in spirit, poor in spirit. Let's take that term. The word poor, ptochos, interesting word. From a verb, now watch this one, the verb in the Greek means a shrinking from something or someone, to cower and cringe like a beggar. That's what it means, like you just kind of cringe and cower like a beggar does. Classical Greek uses this word to refer to one who is reduced to beggary, who crouches in a corner of the dark wall to beg for alms. And the reason he crouches and cowers is because he doesn't want to be seen. He is so desperately ashamed to even allow his identity to be known. Beggars have all that stuff piled on, all those things pulled over their face, and they reach like this lest they should be known.
By the way the word poor here, the very word is the word used in Luke 16 when it says Lazarus, the beggar. That is what it means. It is not just poor, it is begging poor. And by the way, there is another word for normal poverty, penace. Penace means you're generally, and sometimes there's an overlap, but generally penace means you're so poor you have to work just to maintain your living. So chos means you're so poor you have to beg. You're reduced to a cringing cowering beggar. Penace you can earn your own living, you can earn your own sustenance. So
chos you are totally dependant on the gift of somebody else. All you've got going for you, no skill, no nothing, in many cases you're crippled, you're blind, you're deaf, you're dumb, you can't function in society and you sit in the corner with your shamed arm in the air pleading for grace and mercy from somebody else. You have no resource in yourself to even live, total dependence on somebody else. Not just poor, begging poor. "Now that," says Jesus, "just get it, is a happy man." You say, "You've got to be kidding.
Well He's not talking about physical begging, physical poverty, but He's talking about poverty of spirit. Listen, this is the best diagnosis of man you could ever find. Man is empty, poor, helpless. Can he work to earn his own salvation? Is he penace poor so he can do just a few things and if he cranks out hard enough and works hard enough he may get in by the hair of chinney chin chin? Do you think he can cut that? No. He's not penace; he's ptochos. He is absolutely incapable of anything and totally dependent on grace from somebody else.
So He says, "Happy are the destitute cowering cringing beggars." Boy what news folks. The world says happy are the rich and the famous and the self-sufficient and the proud. What does it mean in spirit. Let me talk about that for a minutes. It means with reference to the spirit, which is the inner part of man, not the body, which is the outer part, that's all. He's begging on the inside, not necessarily on the outside. Isaiah put it this way, Isaiah 66:2, "But to this man will I look," here's God talking, now listen, "To this man will I look, even to Him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at my word." It's the man who shakes on the inside because of this destitution.
Psalm 34:18 put it this way: "The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." Psalm 51:17, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God Thou wilt not despise." Isaiah 57:15, adds this: "For thus saith the high and lofty one who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy. I dwell in the High and Holy place with Him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and revive the heart of the contrite ones."
Listen people, God identifies with people who beg on the inside, not people who are self-sufficient, not people who can work out their own salvation, not people who believe in their own resources, but those who are destitute beggarly. It doesn't mean poor spirited in the sense of lacking enthusiasm. It doesn't mean lazy or quiet or indifferent or passive. It doesn't mean that at all. A poor in spirit individual is one with no sense of self-sufficiency. He is bankrupt.
Let me give you an illustration. Look with me at Luke 18. In Luke 18:9 we read a story. "And He spoke this parable unto certain who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others." There's the opposite. Here are the opposite of the poor in spirit. Here are the proud in spirit. "Who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others." We'll do it on our own, got all the resources, etc. "Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, and even as this publican," over here. "I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the tax collector standing afar off would not lift so much as his eyes unto heaven." Ooh like a beggar; he's cringing. He won't look up. He won't even look at God and he cringes, "And he beats his breast and he says, 'God be merciful to me a sinner.'" What to hear the diagnosis Jesus gave? "I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for eerie one that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
Listen, that's as clear as you'll ever hear it. It's the broken and the contrite. Blessed are the beggars says Jesus. Blessed are those whose spirit id destitute. Blessed are the spiritual paupers, the spiritually empty, the spiritually bankrupt who cringe in a corner and cry out to God for mercy. They're the happy ones why? because they're the only ones who tap the real resource for happiness. They're the only ones who ever know God. They're the only ones who ever know God's blessedness and theirs is the kingdom.
James put it this way, it's not just the Sermon on the Mount, James said it. He said in James 4:10, "Humble yourselves in the sight of God and He will what, lift you up." The poverty here is not a poverty against which the will rebels, but it's a poverty under which the will bows in deep dependence and submission. I'm afraid this is a rather unpopular doctrine in the church today. We emphasize celebrities, experts, and superstars, and rich famous Christians. But happiness is for the humble.
May I illustrate it to you? Just listen: Jacob Jacob had to face the poverty of spirit before God could use him. He fought God all night in Genesis 32, and finally God dislocated Jacob's hip, remember that? He dislocated his hip, He put him flat on his back and he said I give. I can't do it alone. And the Bible says in Genesis 32:29, I love it, "And God blessed him there." God made him happy. Oh, I think of Isaiah used wonderfully by God, but he couldn't be used at all before he was poor in spirit. His great lamentation over the death Uzziah. King Uzziah died and he was so upset and he was thinking only of his loss and only what it was like not to have King Uzziah around and God graciously invaded his life and God showed him who really mattered and it wasn't Uzziah, He showed him Himself