Thursday, February 6, 2014

Blessed are the Poor in Spirit

2:49 PM | Posted by | | Edit Post


Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:3


         Two thousand years ago, Jesus was born into a culture that was every bit as broken as the one we live in today. The nation of Israel was subject to the rule of Rome, a brutal empire that dominated the Mediterranean world. Because the Jewish people had rejected God and had lived in apostasy for over four hundred years, Israel had been reduced to a mere shadow of the glory it had enjoyed when its leaders walked closely with God. Men like David and Solomon were not perfect, but their lives were characterized by an intimate knowledge of their Creator. This knowledge fueled a love relationship with God, which enabled these great leaders to guide Israel through a time of unparalleled affluence. But by the time of Jesus’ birth, the religious leaders had lost their way. Instead of seeking intimacy with God, they focused on empty religious rituals. Holiness was determined by how closely you followed the letter of the Law, instead of how closely you walked with God. The Pharisees and Sadducees spent most of their time arguing over minute details in the Torah, looking for new rules and regulations to follow, instead of offering hope to the desperate masses buried under the weight of Roman occupation.
           Because of these conditions, the daily lives of the Jewish people were filled with drudgery and hardship. The Roman overlords took the best of everything the Jews worked so hard to produce. Their once great religion had been stripped of its ability to offer any hope. This was an atmosphere ripe for rebellion and war. If ever there was time for a dynamic leader to step up and take advantage of this dissatisfaction, this was the time. The people were desperate for freedom from Rome and hope for the future!
           Into this chaos stepped a charismatic young rabbi with an unexpected message—a message that offered both freedom and hope, but not in the way the people were expecting. While the masses were focused on their external circumstances, Jesus was focused on the interior of their hearts. And it is here, at this point of contention, that Jesus chose to share some of the most powerful words ever spoken, words that hold the cure for what ails the sinful human heart.
 “Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2and he began to teach them, saying: 3‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’” (Matt. 5:1–3).
          I want you to try and imagine this scene as it was unfolding. When we look at the end of Matthew chapter 4, we see that Jesus had begun His ministry in Galilee by demonstrating God’s ability to meet the people’s needs.
Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. 24News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them. 25Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.  – Matt. 4:23–25
As Jesus began to demonstrate God’s mercy and grace by healing the sick and delivering those who were demon-possessed, He became what we would call, in today’s vernacular, a “celebrity”. As a result of His fame, large crowds wanted to be near Him.
But instead of soaking in their praise and encouraging their adulation, Jesus took His disciples and retreated from the crowd. What could have been His motivation for doing this? Wasn’t His goal to reach the lost? I believe the answer is very simple. The crowd’s motivation for following Jesus was wrong. It wasn’t because they were grateful for what God had done on their behalf. It wasn’t because they were overwhelmed by His display of mercy and grace. It wasn’t because they desired a personal relationship with God. And it certainly wasn’t because they now had a passionate desire to serve God and His Kingdom. The bottom line was they wanted Jesus to take care of them and make their lives better. They were anticipating a Messiah who would come and throw off the shackles of Rome. By performing signs and wonders in their midst, they assumed that Jesus must be the long-awaited (physical) Savior of the (physical) Jewish nation. You can imagine what they were thinking after they watched Jesus perform His miracles: “Hey, if this guy can heal the sick, cast out demons, and provide food for the hungry, then surely He can destroy the Roman armies and restore Israel to her rightful place. If we just stay close to this guy, He’ll take care of everything.”
But this takes us back to what we said in the last post If you don’t understand the nature of your disease, you won’t understand how to find the cure. Their problem wasn’t Rome; it was the denial of their need for God. Their problem wasn’t external, it was internal. It was the condition of their hearts. And so Jesus came to set them free, not from the tyranny of Rome, but from the tyranny of self, from the constant pull of selfishness and pride.
           Like so much else that Jesus taught, this runs absolutely counter to everything we hear in our culture. And certainly, by what we see in the Gospel accounts about His disciples, it was counter to what they thought as well. Many times during Jesus’ ministry, while He was focused on the inward change necessary for broken individuals to find wholeness, His disciples were busy arguing about which one of them would be the greatest in Jesus’ new kingdom. We find a perfect example in Luke 9. “An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. 47Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. 48Then he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For he who is least among you all—he is the greatest’” (Luke 9:46–48). Jesus obviously had a very different idea than His disciples as to what constitutes greatness. And because of this difference, being poor in spirit was not a characteristic that His followers seemed to value. It’s very much the same for us in our culture. We are raised to believe that everything revolves around us and our personal desires. We’re inundated by television commercials that are designed to foster this belief. Whatever I think I want, I should be able to have, and when this happens, then I will be happy. “If I get the right haircut, the right car, the best house, etc., then I’ll be satisfied!
         The Kingdom of Heaven is not the establishment of some earthly kingdom, as the disciples were hoping. It is instead the establishment of God’s government in the heart of every believer. It signifies the surrender of our hearts, minds, and souls to the Lordship of our Savior Jesus Christ. Remember, Jesus said that “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). In essence, this means surrendering control of our lives to the Spirit of God as He dwells in our hearts. The Kingdom of God is any place, including the human heart, where God’s will is recognized as sovereign.
         When we become poor in spirit, we willingly surrender control of our hearts to the direction of the Holy Spirit. We give up self-control and selfish ambition in exchange for God’s will for our lives. Like our Lord on the night He was betrayed, the cry of our hearts becomes, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Above all else, we will desire to do God’s will and work, regardless of the cost. We can actually say with sincerity, “Whatever it takes, God, I’m ready!” Like a cancer patient who will submit his body to the doctor’s knife in order to get rid of that part of himself that is riddled with disease, a person who is poor in spirit willingly submits himself to the truth of God’s Word; a truth that cuts like a knife at the sin and selfishness that riddles the human heart. 
            For a more detailed study of the Beatitudes, see my book entitled "The Cure -prescription for life"
 For a more in-depth treatment of this topic, see my book entitled "The Cure-prescription for life",  available on my website: www.stevebyrens.com  - Also available on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles websites
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