In 2010, we are going to take a close look at the Christian journey.
Matthew 5:3 (NASB)
[3] "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
What did Jesus mean when he used the term, "poor in spirit"? As with most theological discussions, there are diverse opinions about what Jesus meant by "the poor in spirit".
There has been a lot written about the Beatitudes. A lot of the study focuses on the meaning of the words. For example...
Another aspect of a study of the Beatitudes that has been well covered, is to try to understand if Jesus gave the beatitudes to His disciples on the hillside, or if the crowd was present. Is this meant for just the few or for everyone? The Church, the Body of Christ here on earth, believes that the Scriptures were written for everyone to understand and apply to their daily lives.
That leads us into the discussion we will have in the next few weeks. We need to understand the spirit of the Beatitudes as they apply to our spiritual lives. So we begin today with the first Beatitude.Matthew 5:3 (NASB)
[3] "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
There are many who think that Jesus was promoting the idea of purposeful humility when He used the term "poor in spirit". There are others who take a different approach to the meaning of this familiar phrase.
Oswald Chambers is one of those scholars who took a different approach in his study of this portion of scripture. He approaches the idea of humility from a spiritual point of view. Listen to what he says.
"Beware of thinking of our Lord as only a teacher. If Jesus Christ is only a teacher, then all He can do is frustrate me by setting a standard before me I cannot attain. What is the point of presenting me with such a lofty ideal if I cannot possibly come close to reaching it?...
"But when I am born again by the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come only to teach -- He came to make me what He teaches I should be. The redemption means that Jesus Christ can place within anyone the same nature that ruled His own life, and all the standards God gives us are based on that nature...
"The underlying foundation of Jesus Christ's kingdom is poverty, not possessions; not making decisions for Jesus, but having such a sense of absolute futility that we finally admit, 'Lord, I cannot even begin to do it.' Then Jesus says, 'Blessed are you ...'
"This is the doorway to the kingdom, and yet it takes us so long to believe that we are actually poor! The knowledge of our own poverty is what brings us to the proper place where Jesus Christ accomplishes His work." (HIGH, #202)
The poor in spirit are blessed because God has made the first moves to do away with their poverty in spiritual things, not because they act with purposeful humility. It begins with the recognition of our need for redemption. It begins when we realize and admit our spiritual poverty. His blessings continue as we pursue Christian maturity and growth in our relationship with Him over the years of our lifetime.
There are many examples that could be used here. This particular one hits most of us where we live in our spiritual poverty every day. When we are confronted with the question; "How much time did you spend reading your Bible this week?" The purpose of the question may not be, to bring condemnation on us. It may be God, trying to point out our spiritual poverty, so we can grow and mature in our relationship with Him.
All of us deal with spiritual poverty in one way or another, but recognizing our spiritual poverty can be a blessing for us. You see God has made the necessary arrangements to bless us by bringing us out of our spiritual poverty. A task we cannot accomplish on our own. Listen to Oswald Chambers again...
"This is the doorway to the kingdom, and yet it takes us so long to believe that we are actually poor! The knowledge of our own poverty is what brings us to the proper place where Jesus Christ accomplishes His work." (HIGH, #202)
I fear that when our spiritual poverty is pointed out to us, our habit is to try to justify ourselves in some way. And yet God's teaching is clear. He points out our spiritual poverty so He can bless us by helping us to overcome it. That's what the Christian journey is all about.
Understanding Jesus' mission helps us to see that the poor in spirit are blessed by the Gospel work of Jesus Christ in their daily lives. Visiting in His home town, Jesus let the people know what His mission was by reading a portion of the book of the prophet Isaiah. The account is found in...
Luke 4:16-30 (NASB)
[16] And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read.
[17] And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,
[18] "THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED,
[19] TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD."
[20] And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him.
[21] And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
[22] And all were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips; and they were saying, "Is this not Joseph's son?"
[23] And He said to them, "No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, 'Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.'"
[24] And He said, "Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown.
[25] "But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land;
[26] and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.
[27] "And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian."
[28] And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things;
[29] and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff.
[30] But passing through their midst, He went His way.
Jesus uses Isaiah's passage as an example of what His mission would be like. He was to preach the Gospel to the poor. We know that He did not come to preach to just those who were economically poor because He preached to the wealthy as well while He was here on earth. He had come to preach to the spiritually poor.
In the passage that Jesus read that day there are several characters that Jesus uses as examples of people with spiritual poverty. One is a king, one a poor woman, and one is a wealthy warrior.
1 Kings 16:33 (NASB)
[33] Ahab also made the Asherah. [wooden symbol of a female deity] Thus Ahab did more to provoke the LORD God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him.
Ahab is a picture of an individual living in rebellion against Almighty God. The worst kind of spiritual poverty. God uses some incredible events and miracles to bring him out of his spiritual poverty. As always, God makes the first move to bring us into relationship with Him.
In spite of all that God had done for King Ahab, he still lived in rebellion against God. Ahab chose to ignore God's moving to bring him out of his spiritual poverty.
1 Kings 21:25-26 (NASB)
[25] Surely there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the LORD, because Jezebel his wife incited him. [26] He acted very abominably in following idols, according to all that the Amorites had done, whom the LORD cast out before the sons of Israel.
Elijah is another important character in a discussion about the poor in spirit. I wish we had time to go through the details of his life. There is one incident that sets the stage for one of the characters that Jesus mentions in the passage that we read in Luke, it is the widow of Zarephath.
1 Kings 17:1 (NASB)
[1] Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, "As the LORD, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word."
Well, you can imagine the kind of trouble this purposeful prediction of drought would create for Elijah so the Lord sends him into hiding in the wilderness. (1 Kings 17:2-7)
From there God sends him to Zarephath where a widow will take care of him. (1 Kings 17:8-16) Now it may seem strange to us that God would send Elijah to a poor widow who was starving to death, but that is exactly what God does.
At first the widow resists the thought of giving the last bit of her flour and oil to feed a stranger. But with the promise that God will take care of her and her son, she surrenders the last of her meager resources. Listen to Elijah's promise to her.
1 Kings 17:14 (NASB)
[14] "For thus says the LORD God of Israel, 'The bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, until the day that the LORD sends rain on the face of the earth.'"
And that is how it played out for the widow and her son. God has met the needs of her economic poverty. It is not unreasonable to think that the widow is not just like we are in the 21st century. Even in her economic wealth she is spiritually impoverished. When disaster strikes in the death of her son, she lashes out at the man of God who has brought her the economic wealth she has come to enjoy.
1 Kings 17:17-18 (NASB)
[17] Now it came about after these things that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became sick; and his sickness was so severe that there was no breath left in him.
[18] So she said to Elijah, "What do I have to do with you, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my iniquity to remembrance and to put my son to death!"
In this she shows us her spiritual poverty. Think about the miracle that had been going on in the widow's presence every day for quite some time. Now she blames the death of her son on God's prophet Elijah. The poor in spirit are those who, even with the realization of God's care for them, blame Him for the bad things that happen in their lives.
But again, God moves to take away her spiritual poverty.
1 Kings 17:19-24 (NASB)
[19] He said to her, "Give me your son." Then he took him from her bosom and carried him up to the upper room where he was living, and laid him on his own bed.
[20] He called to the LORD and said, "O LORD my God, have You also brought calamity to the widow with whom I am staying, by causing her son to die?"
[21] Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and called to the LORD and said, "O LORD my God, I pray You, let this child's life return to him."
[22] The LORD heard the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him and he revived.
[23] Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother; and Elijah said, "See, your son is alive."
[24] Then the woman said to Elijah, "Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth."
Now there are many things that make one spiritually poor but this is a good example of the attitude of the poor in spirit. The proper attitude of the individual on the Christian Journey is to realize that at times we are spiritually poor and need God's help.
Jesus also mentions the warrior Naaman. You can read about him in (2 Kings 5). Because of a Jewish slave girl in his house, Naaman hears that there is a prophet in Israel that can heal him of his leprosy. He does not come to Elisha the prophet with the belief that the God of Israel can heal him, he comes with treasure to pay a man to heal him.
2 Kings 5:9-12 (NASB)
[9] So Naaman came with his horses and his chariots and stood at the doorway of the house of Elisha.
[10] Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh will be restored to you and you will be clean."
[11] But Naaman was furious and went away and said, "Behold, I thought, 'He will surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper.'
[12] "Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?" So he turned and went away in a rage.
Spiritual poverty - I want this God to do thing my way! He can heal me, but I want it done the way I think it should be. He finally surrenders and does things the way he is told and God heals him. In spite of his spiritual poverty and spiritual ignorance, God moves to bless Naaman.
After being healed, Naaman tries to pay Elisha with many wonderful gifts but he refuses. This is not his work but the work of God to bless the spiritual poverty of a man who thought he could have things done his way and who thought that the treasures of this earth could pay for the blessings of Almighty God.
The widow of Zarephath and the great warrior Naaman are not any different than people in the 21st century. Can I ask you a question? What is the spiritual poverty that you deal with in your life today?
We can only be blessed in our spiritual poverty when we realize and admit that we are the poor in spirit and our only help can come for the moves God makes in our lives to bring us to Himself. Realizing our spiritual poverty, admitting our spiritual poverty, and surrendering to God is how the poor in spirit are blessed.
HIGH - Chambers, Oswald, My Utmost for His Highest (HIGH). Cedar Rapids: Laridian, 2000.
NASB - New American Standard Bible (NASB). Cedar Rapids: Laridian, 2002.
I want to thank my research assistants, Debi Peck (PECK) and Robyn Harper (HARPER), who do hours of research to provide many of my resources. I also want to thank Vonda Watson-Bostick and Robyn Harper, who help me with editing.