Matthew 5:1-3 - The Sermon on the Mount Introduction
Tom Shrader begins a verse-by-verse study of the Sermon on the Mount, emphasizing that it describes how Christians should live after salvation, not how to earn salvation. He teaches that the Christian life begins with spiritual bankruptcy - recognizing we have absolutely nothing to offer God and can do nothing to earn His favor.
“The Christian faith is not an ethic, it's a doctrine - what makes you a Christian is not your behavior, what makes you a Christian is what you believe.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Sermon on the Mount
Recorded: January 31, 2002
Duration: 42 min
Themes: humility, salvation, grace, poverty, surrender, dependence, bankruptcy, repentance, new believer, struggling with pride, feeling unworthy, seeking salvation, young adult, spiritual seeker, questioning faith, beginning discipleship
Scripture: Matthew 1, Matthew 3, Matthew 4:23-25, Matthew 5:1-12, 2 Timothy 3, 2 Corinthians 13:5, Romans 1:16, Romans 3, Genesis 2-3, Luke 21:2
Theological Themes: sanctification, holy living, spiritual poverty, salvation by grace, christian ethics, spiritual disciplines, biblical exposition, verse by verse
Full Transcript
Today I'm starting something new. I don't know how long we're going to take - eight weeks, ten weeks, twelve weeks. It doesn't matter. We're going to take whatever time it takes. We try at least once a year to either take a book of the Bible or a section of Scripture and work through it chapter by chapter, verse by verse. I prefer that style in church. That's the way we teach, and we're not necessarily in a hurry. We did the book of John - the Gospel of John - and I think it took us just under five years. So we're not racing. We don't race through this stuff.
I'll tell you a great story about that. There was a guy whose wife had been waiting and waiting to get her husband to church. Finally one day he said, "I'll go." So they came in, and it was the night we did the introduction of the Gospel of John. This guy's not a Christian, so it's the night we're doing the introduction of the Gospel of John. So I do my thing, and they're driving home. She's been praying and waiting for this moment. You don't want to mess it up, and you don't know whether to say something or not. So she said to him, "What did you think?" He said, "I didn't like him very much. I thought he was sarcastic and cynical." But he said, "You know what I'll do? Since they started that tonight, I'll just keep going with you until he finishes that book."
She said - and she obviously knows our style - "Really?" He said, "Yeah, you promised me." His view was it couldn't take long. It was chapter three. In chapter three, God saved that man. It was a great story, and they loved to tell it. They were a great couple. They still are a great couple.
The Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 5-7
So we're going to take a look at a section of Scripture out of Matthew's gospel. I said to you last week, this is the week to bring Bibles and notebooks. We'll be doing this for a while. What we're going to look at is the Sermon on the Mount - Matthew chapter five, chapter six, and chapter seven. What I want to do today is really do an introduction. We aren't going to get very far into this study.
If you look at Matthew chapter one, we're looking at Matthew's gospel. He begins by giving us the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Then he talks about Jesus' conception and Jesus' birth. He talks about Mary being a virgin in the story that we looked at not too long ago with the Christmas story. The wise men come and visit Jesus. They're told that Herod will be coming to hunt down and if possible kill this baby. So they flee to Egypt. They spend some time there. When it's safe, they return home.
John the Baptist: Breaking 460 Years of Silence
In Matthew chapter three, we meet John the Baptist. It says, "Now in those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea saying, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet when he said, 'The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.'"
Fascinating - and I don't want to spend a lot of time on it - but if you can imagine the furor that this stirred. John is out at the Jordan. John is preaching like this. All of a sudden we're told in verse five of Matthew three, "Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea." Now we are pretty confident that when it says "all," it didn't mean every person in Judea got there. But what that gives you is a sense of this moment.
We totally lose track of this. The prophets had not spoken for almost 460 years at this point. Once you end Malachi, you've got the Old Testament in front of you. Once Malachi is done, the prophets are silent. God hasn't spoken. Remember, God's speaking through the prophets - "Thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord" - and then the prophets are silent for almost 460 years.
Put it in some sort of perspective. Let's say we're in year 2000. We go back to 1540. That's a long time ago. So from 1540 to 2000 - a long time - you've been waiting for something. Waiting for something to happen. What they've been waiting for, these Jews, what they've been waiting for is to hear from God, a message from God. John the Baptist comes, and John the Baptist is the new prophet. John comes, and he stirs up all sorts of furor.
The Baptism of Jesus: A Perfect Picture of the Trinity
Verse 13, staying in Matthew three: "Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John, to be baptized by Him. But John tried to prevent Him, saying, 'I have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?' But Jesus answering said to him, 'Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.' Then he permitted Him. After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.'"
Now, you all know that the word Trinity doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible. We know the Bible does not say, "Here's the Trinity, here's what it is." But here's a perfect picture here in Matthew three. Here's the perfect picture simultaneously of the Trinity. Jesus comes up from the water, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove, and God the Father speaks from heaven. This is an extraordinary moment.
A Word About Baptism
I will tell you, when we talk to people about the Christian life, one of the things that virtually always they remember is their baptism. We don't talk a lot in here about the idea of baptism, so let me spend a little bit of time on it. I think - and this is me - I think the Scripture teaches pretty clearly that baptism is something that follows a profession of faith. If you believe Jesus is who He said He was, and at the point that you confess that and understand that, you are to be baptized. That's a public declaration.
This is a public declaration of an inward condition. It's at baptism that I give testimony to what God has done in my life. I know the night that Susan and I were baptized, it was a magnificent night for us.
I had an incident a couple of years ago where I had these four gals that were going to be baptized, and we had met, and they were buddies, so I said, "Well, we've all talked, so I'll be there on time, but I'm not going to be way early." I came in, and the four of them were kneeling in a circle praying, asking God to bless this, asking God to use it. It was a terrific moment.
So we went in, and we did the baptisms, and when we came out, the four of them were just standing in a circle holding hands. They were hugging. They were so ecstatic, and I said, "Okay, I got something I want to say to you, but I didn't have time. I'm wet. I got to get back out there. I'll try to catch you."
Here's what I wanted to tell them, because that's an extraordinary moment. Most Christians that I know, serious about their faith, especially who come back as adults, who understand that this is obedience. I'll bet you there's a boatload of you in this room who have come to faith in Christ as adults and never been baptized. You know we got no ax to grind with you, because we couldn't baptize you. We're going to dump you in a shot glass or something up here. I don't know what we're going to do with you, so we're not going to baptize you.
The Importance of Baptism
That's not our deal, but you all ought to be in a church where they baptize you. You need to be baptized, and for some of you, that's a little awkward, because you're even in positions of leadership in that church, but that doesn't matter. You don't say, "Well, gee, I wanted to do that, God, but it was awkward." That isn't going to get you very far. So you need to do that.
It's an extraordinary moment, but here's what I want you to see, because it was right here. I was going to take them right to Matthew 4. Here's Jesus. Here's this moment where He hears from the Father, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased." This is as significant a moment for Him as it would be for you.
The Danger After Spiritual Highs
Now, Matthew chapter 4, "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." Oftentimes, when you are coming off a spiritual high, you're coming off a men's retreat, you're coming off a lady's study, you're coming off God using you in some extraordinary way in somebody's life, you're coming off a time of teaching a lesson, when all of a sudden you just know God really used you. I don't know what the circumstance is, but some moment of extraordinary spiritual euphoria. Here's my words to you: watch out. That's when you're vulnerable.
He goes from this extraordinary moment into the wilderness. He goes into the wilderness and He's tempted. You know the story. We won't spend much time there, but we'll drop down to chapter 4, verse 23.
The Ministry of Jesus
"And Jesus was going about in all Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people." Let me stop there. If you're one who underlines in your Bible, there are three key words there that really pretty totally describe the ministry of Jesus: teaching, proclaiming, healing. Jesus is going about and He is involved in those endeavors. He is teaching, He is proclaiming, He is healing.
Verse 24, "And the news about Him went out in all Syria." It's all throughout the land they hear that He is healing. And verse 25, "And a great multitude followed Him from Galilee."
Jesus Begins to Teach Formally
And now chapter 5 verse 1, "And when He saw the multitudes, He went up on the mountain. And after He sat down, His disciples came to Him." Now let me tell you what's significant there. As Jesus is walking around and talking, that's informal discussion. But once Jesus sits down, that's the formal presentation. That's now speaking officially. That's taking the position of saying, "Okay stop and look and listen here." Jesus begins to teach.
Verse 2, "And opening His mouth, He began to teach them, saying," and now Matthew chapter 5 verse 3. And what you see there are what we identify as the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are a subset or a section of the Sermon on the Mount.
The Beatitudes
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven." That's the verse we'll look at today. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the poor in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil things against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you."
What we're going to look at is this teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. And the reason we're going to spend a ton of time today, by way of introduction, almost a half hour, is I want you to understand the significance of this sermon. Arguably the greatest sermon ever preached.
The Significance of the Sermon on the Mount
John Stott, in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, makes these observations. Let me read them to you. "The Sermon on the Mount describes what human life and human community look like when they come under the gracious rule of God. Jesus emphasized that His true followers, the citizens of God's kingdom, were to be entirely different from others. They were not to take their cue from the people around them, but from Him, and so proved to be genuine children of the Heavenly Father. Their character was to be completely distinct from that admired by the world."
When Jesus gives us the Sermon on the Mount—
Important, He's not telling us how to be saved. It's not because I follow the Sermon on the Mount that I'm a Christian. It's because I'm a Christian that I follow the Sermon on the Mount. Do you get the distinction? It is very important.
I thought that I've been making this comment over and over again. I got a call last night. I was talking to a friend, and he said, "You know, you said something this morning that absolutely was incredible." I said, "Well, thanks. What was it?" And he gave me the comment, and I said, "You know what? I've been saying this, I thought, for like six months, and I haven't had any reaction." So I just assumed either A, it's not as significant as I thought it was, or B, I'm not saying it very well, or C, it just doesn't matter.
Christianity is a Doctrine, Not an Ethic
Here's the point I was trying to make, and I sure thought I said it in here a bunch of times. The Christian faith is not an ethic. It's a doctrine. What makes you a Christian is not your behavior. What makes you a Christian is what you believe. You see that? It's a very significant truth.
An ethical Christian and an ethical Hindu are going to look a lot the same. Almost every religion that's out there has some code of ethics that basically is going to tell you how to operate as a good person. Isn't that what religion is?
There's something distinctively different about Orthodox Christianity. Orthodox Christianity is distinct from every religion in the world in this sense. All religion has either one of two, or a combination of these two things. They either say, "You do the best you can, and you earn your way into pleasing God." We would use the term heaven. You earn your way into heaven. Or they say, "Yeah Jesus died, but He did His thing, but you got to do your thing too." That's all religions. You take all the religions of the world, you tend to throw them together, and that's what you get. Some variation or combination of those things.
God's Work, Not Man's Effort
Orthodox Christianity comes along and says this: there is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do to earn your salvation. There's nothing you can do in any way, or any shape, or any form that is going to make you acceptable to a holy God.
It seems to me all religion, other than some of the goofy liberal stuff we have now, virtually all religion acknowledges that man is sinful. From there we shoot off in a variety of areas, but they tend to even stay along the same line that says, man is sinful, and that sin is a problem between him and God. And we talk about various levels of what that problem means. And then somehow there's the idea of, how do we take this situation that's broken, and put it back together?
So at Christmas, when you're singing Christmas carols that have a line that says, "God and sinner reconciled," the implication is, God and sinner have been brought back together. The question we're asking is, how does that happen? Virtually all religions of the world say, through man's effort, maybe with a little bit of God's help. Christianity says, through nothing that man does, through everything that God does.
But that's not the end of the relationship, that's the beginning of the relationship. And now I'm saying, how am I supposed to live? What's it look like? What's a Christian person look like? That's what the Sermon on the Mount does.
Living in a Counter-Cultural World
The Sermon on the Mount comes along, and it basically acknowledges the fact that we are living in a counter-cultural world. That's what Stott's saying. In fact, Stott goes on, and here's what he says: "Thus the followers of Jesus are to be different, different from both the nominal church, from the secular world, from the religious and the irreligious. The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of this Christian counter-culture. Here is a Christian value system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude toward money, ambition, lifestyle, and relationships, all of which are totally at variance with those of the non-Christian world."
I'm not going to ask you to turn there, but Paul's writing to Timothy. Paul's writing to Timothy, and in his second letter to him, in 2 Timothy, chapter 3, Paul talks about something that's very important. He's giving advice to this young man, this protege, and he's saying to Timothy, "Timothy, there's some stuff you need to know." Here's what he says: "But realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come."
Now, here's what we're going to say to you. You're living in the last days, and a lot of people get all excited about that, but the reality is, they've been saying you're living in the last days since Jesus died. As you read Paul's writing, you get a sense that he anticipates Christ coming again, perhaps even in his lifetime. There's been, here you go, cut me a little slack here, there's been a Hal Lindsey in every generation. In every generation, they've said, "Jesus is coming." Jesus could come at any time. You know why? You know why they say that? Because God wants it that way. God wants you to live with a sense that at any moment, He could return. Doesn't that reality change your life? If the idea was that Jesus could come tomorrow, doesn't that affect the way you live today?
The Character of the Last Days
Paul says to Timothy, "Timothy, understand the last days will be difficult times." And then he describes the last days and the difficult times. You know what he talks about? People. "For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God."
What an indictment, huh? Those are the last days. That's the world you live in. That world you live in, it's all summed up: lovers of self. There's one word in there that's particularly atrocious to me. It's "unloving." And on the surface, you don't get the full grasp of it. What the word means in the Greek
A World Without Natural Affection
Paul tells us that in the last days, men, women, and humans will not have the natural God-given affection. Let me give you an example. A mother with her baby. My secretary just had a baby, and when she comes into the office with that baby, we might as well just acknowledge that the world has stopped. Everybody comes around. These gals are just passing the baby around. They can't get enough of it. They hold that baby. They love that baby. Even the guys kind of come by, see the cute little baby, and go "chicka, chicka, chicka" with the baby. Everything just stops.
That's the most natural thing in the world. We had a gal a while ago, and she came up and said, "Oh, I'm so pregnant." You couldn't tell—she's still wearing her jeans with a belt. But the baby, the baby. See, that's natural. That's God-given.
But in the last days, we'll be unloving. We'll give up those natural tendencies. You live at a time when 1.5 million moms kill their babies every year, put them in trash cans, whatever it is. Where couples—I was home the other day, and it was Monday, so it's my day off. Rockford comes on too, so I'm waiting for Rockford to come on, and I'm flipping through channels. There's Sally Jesse Raphael, and then there's another one. You just have parents sitting on there, screaming at their kids and their kids screaming at them. Not only are we sick, we seem to find some sort of fascination with how sick we are.
A Form of Godliness Without Power
Here's what Paul says: In the last days, we will be lovers of self. He then gives that whole list that we just read. He said they'll be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. But they'll hold to a form of godliness, although they deny its power.
See, these are religious people. They have religious trappings around them. You go over to Borders and get into the spirituality and inspiration section—there are thousands of these books. Turn on Oprah, and she's regularly into some spiritual thing. You have that show now where they're crossing over. You have all this spiritual stuff. They hold to a form of godliness, but they deny its power.
What's the power? Paul doesn't let you guess. He tells you in Romans 1:16: "I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of salvation." The power in faith is Jesus Christ—Christ dead on the cross, and now He's alive.
The Purpose of Matthew's Gospel
So Matthew gives us this gospel. It's a complete delineation of how you and I are to live. Here's what we're going to do this morning: we're going to ask you to take an inventory of what we're going to say and apply it to your own heart.
Second Corinthians chapter 13, verse 5 becomes really the overarching presence of this study. It's from the Living Bible, so it's a paraphrase, not word-for-word translation. Ken Taylor writes this in 2 Corinthians 13:5: "Check up on yourselves. Are you really Christians? Do you pass the test? Do you feel Christ's presence more and more within you, or are you just pretending to be Christian when you actually aren't?"
Here's what we're going to ask you to do: take a look at your own life. Take a look at your own life and ask the question, "When I take this ethic and I lay it down, do I see this in my life? Am I just pretending to be a Christian when I'm not really a Christian at all?"
The Demands of the Sermon on the Mount
When I get into the Sermon on the Mount, I'm going to see that it demands that I be born again. We're going to look at the beginning of it. Today, all of a sudden, God talks to us in this word through Christ about this different kind of happiness—a happiness that's internal, not external.
John MacArthur writes this one simple sentence: "No part of Scripture more clearly shows man's desperate situation without God." That's the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount.
We're going to do something right now that's very unusual for us in this room. I love saying that because then all the heads pop up and you wonder if this is the day we shave your head and make you sing. It's not. Here's what we're going to do: we're going to stop in the middle of a lesson and pray. We're going to ask God to open our eyes today.
A Prayer for Open Eyes
Let's pray. Father, we ask that You'd open our eyes. For those that are here and they would just acknowledge, "I'm not a Christian, maybe interested, maybe not. For whatever reason, I'm here." God, I pray You'd touch that person's heart today and raise in them questions. Make them uncomfortable. Make them miserable, if that's what it takes to get them to love You.
God, for those that are here and they're Christians—they're pretty certain of it, pretty confident of it—God, I pray You would teach us something new and You would break our heart yet again.
God, I pray for what to me is the toughest group: those that think they're Christians and they really aren't. They've come face to face with the claims of Christ and there's been some sort of acknowledgement, but there hasn't been any life change. There isn't any difference. They can be in church or out of church. They can be givers or not. They could even be deacons and elders. But God, they think they're a Christian and they aren't. Will You help them see that they're deficient, that they need You? God, please do that work in our life. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.
Understanding the Beatitudes
We have about 15 minutes, and we're going to look at verse 3: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." When we look at these Beatitudes, here's what I need you to understand: they're not a smorgasbord. All Christians should look like this. All Christians should manifest these traits. They're the very thing that, because of our heart change, demonstrate the difference between Christians and non-Christians.
You can't look at this list, these Beatitudes, and say, "Well, here's what I'll do. Give me one gentleness and one merciful. I'll take those." No. They come as a package.
The Deliberate Order of the Beatitudes
God put these Beatitudes not just on paper, but in an order that's deliberate. The Christian life begins with the attitude that's captured in Matthew chapter 5, verse 3: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." When you look at this passage, there's one thing that jumps off the page. Do you see it? It's the word "blessed" - you see it again and again: blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed.
What does that mean? It means literally happy, fortunate, blissful. But it's different than the circumstantial happiness that we see around us.
True Happiness Transcends Circumstances
I got an email the other day from a guy reacting to my year-end comment. My comment was, if you had a bad 2001, it's your fault, it's nobody else's. He told me this tragic story of something that had happened in his family - something that was awful and completely beyond his control. He said, "It's hard for me to call it a good year with this in place, and yet you're telling me if it's a bad year, it's my fault. I'm stuck."
What I told him is what I said to you: if you had a bad year circumstantially, that doesn't mean you had a bad year. When we say it's your fault if you had a bad year, we don't mean circumstances beyond your control. We mean your response to those circumstances.
I look back over our life as a family, and there have been certain defining moments. Clearly, when Sarah had her accident and she was laying with brain trauma in intensive care, that was a defining moment for our family. But I've got to tell you, that year was one of the greatest years of our life. It was a time where all of a sudden, all the faith that we had studied in the classroom now moved out to the laboratory.
God's Sovereignty in Difficult Circumstances
God either allowed that accident or caused it. She wasn't doing anything - three guys ran a red light and hit her. She was minding her own business. I don't sit around wringing my hands. It's fascinating - there was not one moment of tears, one moment of sadness, one moment of wringing our hands. Not me, not Susan, not Haley, not Sarah. Why? Because we know this: God either caused it or allowed it. I know that, so He did it for a reason.
There was a sense almost of excitement that said, "I wonder what God's going to do here." It was a great year. The circumstances don't dictate your life. Do you get that? You're not a victim of circumstances. You're a victim of your own weak faith. You either believe or you don't. It's either real or it isn't. That's the truth.
Understanding Physical and Spiritual Needs
Blessed is the person who is poor in spirit. That means there's a happiness that transcends circumstances. Let me make a point: you have certain needs that spiritual things can't meet. That may stun you. For example, right now I'm really hungry. The Bible isn't going to take away that edge. God designed me to be hungry. You can be thirsty. You need clothes.
But most often for us, our problem is the opposite. We try to take physical things and meet spiritual needs. Every human that ever lived and every human that ever will live is designed with a desperate need for God. You were designed to walk hand in hand with God.
Look at Genesis 2 and 3 in your time. Man's created, and he's walking with God in the cool of the day. That's what you were made to do - to commune with God. That's what heaven will be. It's not us sitting around playing harps. It's us communing with God, learning about God. That's what you were designed to do, and you still have that need.
The Futility of Earthly Pursuits
The problem is most of us try to fill it with people, places, or things. Two ball clubs right now are poised in New Orleans. They're going to play, and it'll be a hard-fought battle. Somebody gets a ring. You know what? Who cares? It's a big deal, and I understand that. I want them to win, and it's a big thing. If you're one of those players, you ought to care.
I was thinking this morning when I was taking a shower, that World Series euphoria sure went away fast. I'm not saying those things aren't important. But if that's your life, you'll never, ever, ever be filled. They're going to walk off that field on Sunday, and in a sense, the team that loses is better off than the team that wins. Why? Because the team that loses still has the illusion that if they won the bowl and had the ring, they'd be happy.
The winners are going to sit around and do what Cliff Harris and Charlie Waters did years ago when the Cowboys won their first Super Bowl. Cliff Harris looked over at Charlie Waters and said, "I hate to say it, but I'm disappointed. Who do we play next?" See, where's the next game? Where's the next high? What's the next deal? True happiness isn't circumstantial. It's a relationship with Christ.
The Meaning of "Poor in Spirit"
Now He gives us the basis of it. Blessed are the poor in spirit. As Matthew transcribes this and deals with the word "poor," he has two Greek words that are available to him. One is a word that we see in other places in Scripture. Luke 21, verse 2, for example, describes the poor widow that came with the two copper coins. Remember that? The widow's mite. That word "poor" means somebody who lacks material stuff. They've got some stuff, but they don't have all they need.
When we were in Calcutta, we were in this church. You understand Calcutta is poor - very, very poor. We were there for the grand opening of this church they had just built. They had something I've never seen, where people would come up and give money, and they were coming up with rupees...
a fraction of a penny. They were coming up, and it was so sacrificial, and they were giving. It was one of the most touching things I've ever seen. Here are these people sacrificially giving. They were poor.
But that's not the word that Jesus is credited with using here. There's another word that's translated poor. It means absolutely has nothing. That's the word that's used. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Not somebody who's just down in their luck, and things are hard. It's somebody who spiritually is totally, absolutely, entirely bankrupt.
Spiritual Bankruptcy: The Starting Point
That's where it begins. If you have never come to that realization that spiritually there's no good in you. Isn't that what Paul says in Romans 3? No one is good, no not one. No one does good, no one seeks good, no one seeks God. That's the blanket indictment of mankind. If you haven't come to that realization, in that moment, then there's no way you can be a Christian. That's what He says. Blessed are the poor in spirit.
C.S. Lewis writes this: "Whenever we find ourselves or our religious life making us feel good, or that we are good, or worst of all, that we're better than someone else, I think we may be sure that we are being acted upon, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether, or see yourself as a small, dirty object." Lewis continues, "It's better to forget about yourself altogether."
See, in the last days, what will men do? They'll be lovers of self. Did you get it? They'll hold to a form of godliness. They'll be spiritual things. But true Christianity begins with spiritual bankruptcy.
It was Augustine who said it was his pride who was keeping him from coming to Christ in repentance and faith. It was Luther that said it was all the ritual that was keeping him from coming. Have you ever come face to face with this? That's the question. Spiritual poverty. Nothing you can do.
The Human Tendency to Do Something
See, the tendency of man is to do something and want to do something. That's why we love it when somebody says, "Do this, do this, don't do this, do this, do this over here, go to church here, come over here, go over there." We love that because we can check it off at the end of the day and say, "We did it."
Jesus says, "Don't do any of those things to please me. Come to me." When Christ died, that's the whole point. In my mind, this is... Although, if you get a calendar, we're only nine weeks away from Easter, believe it or not. Or ten weeks away from Hawaiian shirts. This is a very good time of the year.
But Jesus dies on the cross and rises from the dead. Why? Because you could save yourself? Or as some would say, this is a picture of new life. You'll hear ads, especially among liberals, that will say, "Oh, what happens at the resurrection is a picture of spring and new life." What is that? What happened at the resurrection is God said, "That sacrifice that was given two days, three days prior, is acceptable to me."
When Christ died on the cross, He took you from spiritual poverty to spiritual wealth. That's the difference.
Four Responses to Spiritual Bankruptcy
Now, what are you going to do with this? You've got four options. I want to make sure, because we've got to close. We've got three minutes. I want to make sure you get this. God says, "I don't care. It doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter what you think. God says, you're spiritually bankrupt. There's nothing you can do. There's a chasm between you and Him, and only God can bridge that chasm."
You come to that realization, you've got four ways to respond. One is to deny that truth. That's what the Pharisees did. They denied that. They said, "We'll clean our own act up. We're going to follow our own rules and regulations. We've tried. We don't think we're spiritually impoverished."
Here's the second one. That's to accept that that's true, and then to do some moral realignment. In other words, you're the one who's going to take responsibility for yourself. You're going to become a very religious person. There's a sense in which priority living is like 24-hour fitness. Each January, we have a little infusion of people with resolutions. Usually, we lose them by February. That's the moral realignment crowd.
I know I'm in trouble. I see it. I acknowledge it, and I'll try to do something about it. That's your flinch, isn't it? When somebody says to you, "Are you going to go to heaven?" You're going to say, "You bet I do. I get up at 5 o'clock, and I go to this thing on Thursday, and I go to church, and I give over here, and I'm a nice guy. They do a cancer drive, and I let them put me in jail, and I raise pledges. I'm a good guy."
The Path of Despair and the Path of Hope
So you can deny it. You can accept it and try to clean up your own act. You can accept it in despair. In other words, you can look at this and say, "You know what? I am a sinner." By the way, that's most of you. Not by our estimation, but by your own. When your head hits the pillow tonight, ask yourself that. Am I a sinner? And you will just condemn yourself so quickly, if you're honest, because you are. Way worse than we think you are.
And sometimes, you accept it, and you're just filled with despair. There's nothing I can do. Give me a New Testament picture of that person. Who do we know that saw their sinfulness and was filled with despair? Anybody? Peter? Judas. Judas is the picture. Peter is the picture of the next one.
Judas is the picture. He's filled with an overwhelming sense of his sin. What does He do? He says, "There's nothing I can do." And he kills himself. Peter is our fourth illustration. He accepts he's sinful. He's not filled with despair. He weeps. He denies. He's a sinner. He's got to figure it out. But when it's all done, what does he say? Get Peter out of the Gospel and out of the book of Acts. And Peter says, "There is no other name under which man can be saved but Jesus Christ."
Now, where are you in that process? Because I imagine there's other choices. But to me, those are the four you got. And three of them are inadequate.
The Universal Nature of Heaven and Hell
There's only one right answer. I was thinking about this the other day. Think about who's going, because I think it's intriguing. I think when I get to heaven I'm going to be surprised by the people who are there, some of them, and shocked by the people who aren't.
But let me tell you what you're going to have in heaven. You're going to have people from all the denominations, different denominations. You're going to have people from different churches. There'll be people there from Scottsdale Bible, and people there from East Valley Bible Church, and people there from Grace Community Church.
But what about hell? Hell will be filled with people from all denominations, from Scottsdale Bible Church, and East Valley Bible Church, and Grace Community Church. Here's what they have in common. All the people in heaven will be people who have come to the point where they understand they're sinful and separated from God by their sin, and they will have accepted Christ, and Christ alone is paying the price for that sin. The people in hell will have rejected that and said one of a variety of things. I'll do it on my own, or I'll fill it with despair.
The Starting Point of Christian Life
The Christian life begins with Matthew 5:3. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. That's who's going to heaven. Do you have that view of sin? Do you see that in your own life?
The Church's Defective Understanding Today
Let me close with this. Martin Lloyd Jones wrote this several years ago as he looked at the church. Here's what he said: "The final explanation of the church today is a defective sense of sin, and a defective doctrine of sin. There is not a real deep conviction of sin as there once was. On the other hand, there's a superficial conception of joy and happiness that's different from what we find in the New Testament."
You know what's really sad today? This message that we just talked about, that was absolutely commonplace for hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of years, and today in most churches you can't even get them to say sin. That's a sad state of affairs, and those guys will answer to God for that failure to teach that. But we don't want to judge them, you want to look at your own life. Let's ask God, God would you please help us to see this?
Again Father, I pray for those in the room that are non-Christians that you would convert them today. For those that know you as Lord and Savior, that you'd encourage them and remind them of how you've taken us from sinner to saint. And for those that are here who think they're Christians, that they would listen to your word, they would examine their hearts, they would see the deficiency, and they would come to you and you alone. God we ask that in Jesus' name, Amen.