Good morning Edge Church. We are so glad that you've joined us today. We're here in Aurora. Wherever you're joining us from we just want to say thank you because we know that you could be doing other things, but you are with us today, honoring the Lord.
We're excited to kick-off this brand new series for the fall. It's called Blessed. This series is going to be based out of the most famous sermon that Jesus preached called the Sermon on the Mount, and it's specifically going to be from the section of short proclamations that Jesus made known as the Beatitudes.
First, the word beatitudes means, “what it means to be blessed.” So the word beatitudes is a description of what it actually means to be blessed. These sayings in some ways have become so commonplace in our culture that many of them have lost their original meaning. But to the first century audience that it landed on, straight from the mouth of Jesus, these words of wisdom would have shaken just about everything that they thought was true and everything they knew about life.
Jesus has a tendency to do that in our lives, doesn't he? He doesn't just leave things the way they were, but he changes things in us and motivates us in new ways. So we shouldn't be too surprised when he does that, even though we still are at times. We shouldn't be too surprised because Jesus came to seek and to save the lost and the reality is that's us. That's all of us — every single one of us.
Our internal compases are not meant to be trusted without his whole life recalibration. He came to change everything. It's not just our souls that need to be saved but it's our desires — it's our habits. It's how we treat our neighbors. It's how we spend our time and it's how we spend our money.
That's really what Jesus is getting at in the Beatitudes. So let's talk a minute about what the first century audience would have thought of when they heard the word blessed. What would it look like to them to be a blessed person? We can get clues from other passages in the Bible that show us ideas that people had about what it looked like to be blessed and also what it looked like to be cursed. In John 9:1-3, Jesus took a chance to teach his followers about what the condition of a person's health actually indicated. And he said this:
Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind
9 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.
Isn't that an interesting thing? The immediate assumption of the people was that someone did something wrong. They were looking for fault, really not too much different than we do today — what did he do to deserve that? Or what did she do to have that happen to her? So it was common 2,000 years ago, much like it is today.
It was very specifically common for people in the time of Jesus to look at someone that was born with a physical defect as a sign that they didn't have God's favor. We do that in different ways today, especially, for example, when hurricanes hit. Was that punishment for the terrible things that those people did? Or did they just live in an area where there are hurricanes because we live in a fallen world?
I remember when people went on TV years ago after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. I remember one person got on and he suggested that New Orleans was hit because of the sinfulness of Mardi Gras. I remember him literally talking about how he knew that's why New Orleans was hit. And I remember when I went there to do work, to help with the recovery, I thought, God must have really bad aim because the French Quarter, which is known as one of the most sinful areas, was completely dry. It wasn't even touched.
So health has long, historically been a human indicated sign of God's blessing and not surprisingly, so has wealth. So health and wealth go together, right?
In Matthew 19: 16-30, a rich man asked what he needed to do to go to heaven and Jesus basically looks at the guy and he says, “You need to get rid of all of your money and then come and follow me.” That's a tough one, right? Especially if you're rich that's something that you value a lot. If you have a lot, you don't want to just give all of it up.
Hey Jesus, how about half? Well, Jesus knows what motivates us. So he looked right into this man's heart and he said, “No, give it all away and then come and follow me.” We’re told that this man couldn't do it and he walked away.
Matthew 19:23-24
23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
So clearly two huge indicators of blessing to us, throughout at least 2,000 years, health and wealth are not the greatest value in the kingdom of heaven. Not because they can't be good. Not because that's not good to have good health. Not because it's wrong to save money for the future or to take care of your family. But to God, those clearly are not the most important indicators of what it looks like to be blessed.
So let's take just a minute. Let's pray and then we're going to get into the very first Beatitude today.
Father, we are told in scripture that your ways are higher than our ways. And when you are telling us about what it looks like to be blessed it is going to completely go against the grain for most of us. It's going to go against our internal desires and how we're kind of wired. So father, I pray, in Jesus name, that by your spirit and by your goodness, by your mercy, that you would help us to deconstruct our ideas about what it means to be blessed and to hear from you, the giver of all life, the giver of all blessings. Help us to recognize, God, that you are the one who understands this more than we do, and help us to help us to change and while we change, Lord, I pray that you would just be patient with us. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.
Matthew 5:1-3
Introduction to the Sermon on the Mount
5 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them.
The Beatitudes
He said:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
So right at the start, Jesus challenges the main idea that we have about blessings because most people don't equate poverty of any kind to be a blessing. So what kind of poverty is Jesus speaking of and why did he include the words ‘in spirit?’
What's this whole poverty ‘in spirit,’ because to many of us, when we first read this, it can sound like someone who's weak. Like someone who doesn't have much spirit at all. Someone who might not make it too far in life. You have to have some spirit, you have to have some heart, right? So that can't be what it means. So what is Jesus getting at?
We have to understand the words that Jesus used in order to understand the context. So the word ‘poor’ here that Jesus used in the original Greek is not a word that would be used to say that someone was down on their luck or having a hard time paying their Xfinity bill. This is similar to a picture of a beggar, a beggar who is totally destitute — in complete reliance on the generosity of the people around him to make it each day. So they’re not just a little bit poor. This is a complete beggar. Someone who has to receive from the generous hearts of other people in order to eat that day. That's the picture of poverty that we're looking at.
Then Jesus adds this twist to that picture of the beggar, by speaking to poverty of the spirit. Because he says, “poor in spirit.” So what exactly does that mean? Poverty in the spirit, poverty of spirit is the same thing as poverty in our material world but in a spiritual sense.
In Matthew 9 Jesus took a jab at religious leaders. The religious leaders of his day looked incredibly blessed. They acted as though they had everything together. They were blessed financially and in their physical appearance and they were blessed spiritually, at least it looked that way since they taught God's laws. They taught other people to follow them. So surely they had to be blessed, right? Surely Jesus is going to come along and say, yes, these guys are great! You should follow them. That wasn't exactly how it turned out.
Matthew 9:10-12
10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Wait a second. So Jesus, you didn't come for everybody? That's so confusing. But he says, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Didn't Jesus come to seek and save the lost? And aren't we all lost? Well, yes and no. He did come for all of us, but only those of us who are willing to admit our spiritual poverty can actually be saved. There is one thing that God can’t heal us of. And it's the thing that we are unwilling to admit is a problem. If we can't admit that we have a poverty of spirit, we cannot be saved.
What does it look like to recognize our own poverty of spirit? I think this story illustrates different mindsets.
Luke 18:9-14
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.”
Now remember a Pharisee is just a religious leader of the day. It would be like a pastor and they were all hanging out and there was a tax collector among them. Guess what? People don’t love tax collectors today and they didn’t love them 2,000 years ago.
“11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people — robbers, evildoers, adulterers — or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Now was the Pharisee better in God's sight? Or, was the tax collector better? We can tell from the story the Pharisee really thought he had it all figured out. He had figured God out a lot more than the tax collector had, right? The problem is it doesn't even seem like the Pharisee had any room to recognize his own need for mercy any longer.
Then it switches back to us. This wasn't just for them. It's for us. The question we have to answer is do we recognize our need for God's mercy in our lives today? Or have we shifted from worrying about what God thinks of us, worrying about God's standards? Are we looking around at other people and comparing how good we are to how good we perceive them to be? Now the Pharisee thought he was in great standing with God, “God, I thank you that I'm not like these bad people.” That's really what he said. “Thanks that I'm really good. Thanks that I'm righteous. Thanks that I'm not like all the people that do really bad things.” He had great pride in his position and he looked down on everybody else.
Now the tax collector, I bet you he didn't have very eloquent words. I bet he didn't have all the religious sounding things and he probably had his head down and probably didn't pray quite the right way, but he knew that he was messed up. He knew that he needed to be saved. He had a sober assessment of his spiritual condition and his need for God and his need for mercy.
Now the First Beatitude is extremely important because it sets the tone for the rest of them. Do you remember your teachers in school? I remember teachers in high school would say, “this math is cumulative.” In other words, you have to have a good working knowledge of this first part in order for the rest to make sense. So you have to learn concepts in a particular order and then apply other principles later. It's the same way spiritually, too, with the Beatitudes. Because if you aren't poor in spirit, then you don't get the blessing of being poor in spirit. And do you know what that blessing is? We were told right there that it's the kingdom of heaven.
There will be no prideful people in heaven — none. No one who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps will make it there. There's not going to be one who is good enough on their own to make it in. There's not going to be anybody there who says, “look what I have to offer God,” and try to barter their way in. The ones who will be there, they're going to be the ones who knew how messed up they were. They're going to know that on their own they had absolutely nothing good to offer God, but that they are genuinely grateful for every breath that God has given them. They know that every good thing that they've received is from the hand of their creator.
May God give us the gift of recognizing our spiritual poverty today. Let's not wait for years down the road to be humbled. Let's recognize it today and make God give us the wisdom to reach out for his grace and for his mercy and to stay poor in spirit and to never get a wrong view of ourselves today.
Maybe there's some of you who want to take a step of faith today. The truth is you don't have to have the beautiful flowing words and the robes that the Pharisees would have worn. You can be just like the tax collector and you can just say, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.”
We have to recognize we can't do anything, we can't wake ourselves up in the morning without his blessing. The Bible tells us very clearly how to make sure that we are right with God.
Acts 2:38-39
38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off — for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
That's the end of our First Beatitude today but we have a few questions for you that we would love for you to consider, wherever you are in your house churches, or meet with someone this week, or get on the phone or do a Zoom call, whatever it looks like for you to have connection and community and discussion. These questions, I think, will be a value to you.
Here's the first one. It's a similar question to what we ask almost every time we do a sermon. What is your main takeaway from this Beatitude, just specifically for you?
The second question is, what does a blessed life look like for you? I really want to encourage you to try to not overly spiritualize it, especially if you're with other people. Really say what you mean — if you just need to be really honest and say winning the lottery would look like a blessed life to me, just say it. God knows it's true. You'll never grow if you don't admit where you are. So it's okay. Just be real. Then, if you kind of sense that God wants to reorganize some of your priorities, just ask him for his help.
The final one, in your life are you more like the tax collector or the Pharisee? Which one are you the most like? Really ask the question and dig in a little bit deeper. Why do you think that is? Why do you think you tend to be more like one or the other?
The answer for me depends on the day and that's why in both situations, both the tax collector and the Pharisee, they both need God. They both need mercy. May you experience the blessing of it, of having a poverty of spirit as you seek to be closer and closer to Jesus and love people well.