So again, we're in Luke chapter
6, verse 20, and how fitting that hymn that we sang. I was looking through the bulletin
this morning, and there was a wonderful whole page from an excerpt from
a sermon by Spurgeon on debtors we are. And this song here, the
vinyl sentence in that That hymn was, destroy our enmity and pride,
and we'll crown you king. That's what has to happen. And
that's in essence what we're talking about today. In Luke
chapter 6, We're beginning the words of
the Savior on this sermon on the plain, this level place of
the gospel. In verse 20 it says, He lifted
up His eyes on His disciples and said, Blessed be ye poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now,
for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now,
for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall
hate you and when they shall separate you from their company.
and shall reproach you and cast out your name as evil for the
son of man's sake. Rejoice in that day and leap
for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For in the
like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. But woe unto
you that are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe
unto you that are full, for you shall hunger. Woe unto you that
laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you when all
men shall speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the
false prophets. And we're not going to cover
all that today, but he gives us the things that are what we
would say were fruits of the spirit. And then he gives us
the things that are contrast to that, that are fruits of the
flesh. And so as we look at these, that's important to keep that
perspective in mind as we look at this. And as last week, we
kind of took this verse in reverse order, and we spent some time
discussing the Kingdom of God, what that is and what it is not.
And the Scripture just lays it out fairly clearly. The Kingdom
of God is not this, and the Kingdom of God is not that, but it is
these things. And it turns out that the kingdom
of God comes to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ himself
in his substitutionary death on the cross and his triumph
over death and sin, that quote from Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. And we learned
last week some important things that relate to us about this
poor that's expressed here. That is a prerequisite. He says,
blessed are the poor because the kingdom of God is yours.
And we learn from John 3 that you must be born again to even
see the kingdom of God. You must be born of the Spirit
to enter the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God is righteousness,
joy, and peace. All those things that we find
in Christ. The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.
And we learned that we believe according to the working of His
mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him
from the dead. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of
God from 1 Corinthians 15. The kingdom of God is not in
this world, is not of this world. John chapter 18 and John chapter
17. The kingdom of God is a mystery. the mystery of free grace from
Luke 8, verse 10. And we learn that this blessedness
is something that we receive in Christ. Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with
all spiritual blessings in Christ. In heavenly places in Christ.
So all these blessings that we look at here in Luke or blessings
in Christ. And since He is the very essence,
the very person of the Kingdom of God, and our blessings are
in Him, then that's important for our understanding of the
blessed be ye poor. And we understand from the lessons
on the true Sabbath that Christ is our rest, and when we enter
into that rest, we cease from our own works. And so with our understanding of
the kingdom of God and the other things that we've learned We
can only conclude that the poor here reference can be none other
than those to whom the Spirit of God has born from above, born
again, who recognize themselves as entirely destitute. Because that's what that word
poor means. It means the worst, lowest form
of beggar. They're entirely destitute of
any merit or self-righteousness. comes to us as, and we recognize
it, like in, I really appreciate those hymns, the hymn that we
sang this morning, and other hymns, I was thinking this morning
that people that have truly been, found themselves in this condition
of poor, and they try to express that to others in the form of
a poetry or a hymn, Others try to express things that they,
more rules and stuff for you to do. And here's conditions
that you, all that religious stuff. But
all these hymns that we love and cherish written by people
that, try to express their understanding
of what's happened to them. Top lady said, in my hand no
price I bring. He had nothing with which to pay. Totally relying on Christ for
all our salvation. Nothing of self-merit. They are blessed. They're supremely
blessed, it tells us. And it gives us the idea, in
the context of it, that they're happy beyond reason, happy beyond
measure, no matter what their circumstances are in this life.
Paul said, well, I've learned in my previous religious life,
man, he says, I profited much above all my brothers in the
Jewish religion. He had all these religious merits
that he counted on. He said, well, that was all done. But he said, I have learned to
be content in whatever state I'm in. Because he knew the eternal
circumstances of it. knowing that we're strangers
and pilgrims in this world and one with and in Christ and thus
in His kingdom. He is ours and we are His. There's another hymn that I like. I found a friend. I am His and
He is mine forever and forever. In Hebrews chapter 12, we closed
with this scripture last week. Hebrews 12, 28, whereby we, receiving
a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we
may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear for
our God is a consuming fire. What a concept, what an idea. And it can only be understood
and expressed by a person that's been made poor in the spirit
here and recognizes the fullness of grace. If you get a chance
to read that excerpt from that Spurgeon sermon there on we are
debtors. We're debtors to sovereignty.
We're debtors to grace. We owe everything. So in this lesson, we're kind
of looking at this. We said, blessed are you poor. Well, that kind of goes against
our nature. We're kind of brought up with
the idea of work hard, be successful. And we measure things by that. And pride comes into it. Even though the lowest sort of
beggar has an essence of pride about them, that they might not
come to Christ just because I'm not doing well here, obviously,
but I'm not that bad. I'm not that low. We want to look at that. Indeed, the thing that we want
to keep our eye on is the the kingdom of God comes to us in
this person and work of Christ and his finished work on the
cross and that the kingdom of God is not really so much of
a where but a who and we are his people and wherever he is
is his kingdom. In Acts 17.27 it says, that they should seek the Lord,
if happily they might feel after him and find him, though he be
not far from every one of us. Well, if we think about what
that really means. It means He's not far from any
one of His people. He's with them. So, as this first
part of this verse describes those who are the possessors
of this kingdom of Christ Himself, Blessed are ye, poor for yours
is the kingdom of God. The poor, they are blessed because
the kingdom of God is theirs, and they recognize that. And
as Ephesians said, that all blessings are in Christ. And there's no
exception to that. That all blessings are in Christ.
So how is this linked to being poor? It seems kind of like an
oxymoron kind of a thing. Well, if you're blessed in Christ,
you should be really wealthy. And that's what millions of TV
evangelists tell you today. Oh yeah, God wants you to be
wealthy and well off and all these things that are just fleshly
items. So what exactly does this mean?
Who are they? Who are these poor? How is this
achieved? And as it's normal It's pretty
clear that this scripture like many others is viewed in two
usual ways, physically and spiritually. We always come to that basic
dividing line and we apply that here. The physical comes only
from man and is from his perspective as he views things from an unregenerate
state, which is dead and trespasses and sins. an element of pride,
an element of trusting to one's own resources, no matter how
meager they might be. There's just so many scriptures
that deal with this subject throughout the Bible. Remember the Lord
was saying he was at the temple and this publican guy, this rich
guy comes in and remember in our study of the temple, they
had all these, they had 12 bins for people to put money in. Whatever
tribe you were in, you came in and you threw your money in that
box. So it was kind of a contest between the tribes to see who's
box was always charged up. They put these big brass funnel
things on them so it would make a lot of noise when you threw
in your money. This rich guy goes in there and
throws in all this shekels. This poor widow woman comes in
and throws in the two mites. And he says, she gave everything,
she cast in her entire livelihood, and this guy just made a big
show of it. So there's always that contrast
there between the fleshly and the spiritual. She says she was
totally relying on Christ for everything. So we have that contrasting view
that all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust
of the eyes, the pride of life, it's not of the Father. but is
of the world from 1 John 2.16. The spiritual view comes only
as the word implies from the spirit of God. That's where that
comes from. It is the spirit that quickeneth. The flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you,
they are spirit and they are life. And many in the religious
world, they are led to take a vow of poverty. Isn't that silly? I vow to take
a vow of poverty and it just becomes another work when they
do that and with their idea is that it makes them more spiritual
and it actually puts God under an obligation because they have
done this, then he is obligated to do that. It just becomes another
form of works rather than acknowledging their spiritual inability to
pay for their sin. It's just another man scheme. Really they are substituting
a work in the place of Christ's finished work. In essence they
are saying, well I know he did this, but I need to do a little
bit more to add to that. Because I don't think it was
enough. Or the pride says, I have to contribute something or I
just don't feel right about myself. So, you can't place those kind of
things and sacrifice goods or wealth in the place of or in
addition to Christ's substitutionary death on the cross and his triumph
over death and sin. It won't work. It's not satisfactory. Many equate wealth and physical
prosperity with spiritual success, and thus it's an indicator of
being in the kingdom. Wow, look at all the wealth I
have. I must be in good with God. I must be in the kingdom. You know, we're not the judge
of that, but it's usually not an indicator of that as we find
in scripture. So we, as we look to the scripture
to teach us what the truth is here, the very term poor again
is translated from a Greek word, which means a very poorest sort
of poverty, abject poverty, poverty, which results in the necessity
of begging for your very existence. You don't have anything to have
anything with. You're just that poor. And that's
the way that a person must come to the Lord in salvation. In my hand, no price I bring.
I have nothing. It's just a metaphor. It's just
a symbiological picture of the way that we are made to come
to Christ. As that hymn said, He has to
tear that down. He has to tear down that pride.
He has to tear down that reliance, that self-reliance on our own
merit or whatever we're substituting in the place of Christ. And this
word means a beggar is cringing, is stooped down in absolute or public mendicance and the poorness,
distressed. It's kind of like the religious
concept of dead not being dead, just mostly dead. And I'm not mostly, I'm still
a little, Little not poor. So if we apply the physical understanding
here, the formula would be simple. Become poor and automatically
you qualify to be in the kingdom and be the possessor of it. Give
away all your stuff. The Lord applied that to a guy
because he knew he wouldn't do it. It wasn't really a quid pro
quo kind of a thing where he says, well, I've done all these
works. And he says, well, you've got
one thing left that you haven't done. He says, get rid of all
your stuff. Sell all your stuff and give
to the poor. Be rid of your reliance on yourself, metaphorically speaking. And the guy said, well, I got
a lot of stuff. I can't do that. Well, there you go. You're going
to go to eternity trusting in your own merits and your own
resources and your own self. So we find that kind of thing
doesn't really stand up to the scrutiny of scripture. The scriptural
understanding is here presented by Christ is rooted in eternal
love and presented to us clearly in the Old Testament as well
as in the New. And a couple of scriptures that
we'll look at real quickly to give us some kind of understanding
about what is here meant. We'll turn to Isaiah chapter
55 verse 1. And Isaiah, he's always writing,
as Norm pointed out the other night, who has believed our report? Who's believed the good news?
Who's believed the gospel? And from a physical standpoint,
it didn't seem to be many, but still he presents the gospel
out and leaves it to the Lord. He says, ho, everyone that thirsteth.
Come to the water, and he that hath no money, come ye and buy
and eat. Come ye and buy wine and milk
without money and without price. What kind of far-fetched idea
is that? You know this word buy here is
a Hebrew word that gives us the, it's connected to the grain trade. trading, buying, and selling
grain. When you think of the Lord as
the bread of life, and all the metaphors that He uses about
the wheat and the tares, and all those things that spiritually
speak about Him, the manna from heaven, the bread of life, He
that eateth of this bread shall never hunger. Those kind of things,
it gives it a little bit more of a spiritual context than just
the monetary buying and selling of something. It's much, that
pool is deeper than that. So he says, come and buy without
money. Because you have no money. You
have no currency that is valid in this spiritual kingdom that
we're talking about. And we'll go to the New Testament
here and look at a scripture there in 1 Peter 1, verse 18. And again, we have a hymn that's
based on this block of scripture here that a person has said,
I know this to be true. And I'm writing a hymn about
it to express my understanding of it. For as much as you know
that you are not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver
and gold from your vain conversation or useless manner of life that
was received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious
blood of Christ as a lamb without blemish and without spot. That's
the only currency that's satisfactory in this transaction that we're
talking about. Blessed be the poor for yours
is the kingdom of God. From these two scriptures we
know that redemption is not nor can it be linked to or with the
physical nature of monetary concerns. It just doesn't have anything
to do with that. The blood of Christ in the substitutionary
sacrifice of giving his life a ransom for many is the only
thing that satisfies God the Father for sin. Isaiah 53, 11. He shall see the travail of his
soul and shall be satisfied. That's what satisfies God. That's
why he can be the just and the justifier. By his knowledge shall
my righteous servant justify many for he shall bear their
iniquities. And there's just so many scriptures
that fall into that line that he saved us and not we ourselves
and so forth. So one's physical status as poor
or wealthy really has no bearing on their ultimate salvation.
Solomon. richest guy on the planet, wisest
guy on the planet, and it didn't really have any bearing. He abused
everything he had. Like David, like everyone, they're
redeemed, but they're still in this body of sin. The physical poverty then cannot
be what is here meant as a prerequisite or condition for inheriting the
kingdom of God. And as well we note that in Matthew,
the sermon that Matthew records on the mount in chapter 5, 6,
and 7, he says, blessed are the poor in spirit. He clearly identifies
it as a spiritual thing and that's clearly what's meant here in
Luke chapter 6. If it's not physical, then it
can only be a spiritual condition, which by definition can only
be brought about by the Spirit of God. It's a fruit of the Spirit. It's something that He has divinely
acted on. And so the only reasonable application
here is that somehow a believer, the sheep, the elect, the church,
whatever term we want to call them, those that God loved from
before the foundation of the world and wrote their names in
the Lamb's Book of Life, that in time he connected them with
the gospel and caused them to know that they were poor in spirit,
that they were guilty and had nothing to pay. They are sinners
both by the fallen Adam, by their own nature, and convinced as,
I can't remember who wrote that, it might have been Hawker, where
he says, they're convinced of the plague of their own heart.
They've been convinced of that by the Spirit. Another hymn that we like to
sing, written by a Civil War veteran, I know whom I have believed,
He says, I don't know how the Spirit moves convincing men of
sin, or how He did all the things that He did. but I know whom I have believed."
They're brought to a knowledge that they cannot by any of their
own means satisfy the penalty that this fall in their own sin
nature has racked up. Another hymn, No works of mine
can take the place, dear Lord, of Thine. Thy blood hath pardoned, bought
for me." Ben Everson wrote that hymn that Mike brings up all
the time for us to sing that we love, Complete in Thee. Poorness then becomes to them
a spiritual understanding of their own inability to pay to
supply any of their own righteousness and thus the total necessity
for their reliance on Christ for all their salvation. He's
paid it all. In my hand, no price I bring.
I can't bring any price. And if I could bring a price,
it wouldn't satisfy God. And we can't ever get to the
point where, we can't ever even get to the break-even point.
We can't say, well, I'm not going to sin from this day forward,
and so I only need to come up with enough good stuff to let
Christ take care of all that old stuff, and then I'll just
do the rest. Well, we just go further in the tank every moment
we're alive. And when we're poor in spirit,
we just come to know that He's taken care of all that. He's
paid double for all that. He's removed all that from us.
He's paid it all. So then, how does one transition
from this natural state in which works or physical status are
viewed as keys to the kingdom to the spiritual understanding
of being brought to a knowledge of the truth of spiritual poverty
and spiritual inability dead in trespasses and sins. What
has to happen? The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God for they're foolishness unto
him, neither can he know them because they're spiritually discerned.
So it's not something that can be learned, earned, or otherwise
obtained. He just can't receive them. And from this, we learn that
something divine must occur before this transition can be realized.
And thus, it's necessarily a fruit of the Spirit. Probably one of
my favorite blocks of Scripture in the whole Bible is from Ezekiel.
He says, first thing, I got to tear out your old stony heart,
because it's dead. It's no good. That's the first
thing that has to happen. Just like that hymn says, destroy
our enmity and our pride. Tears out the old heart and then
I'll give you a new heart, a heart of flesh, a heart to know me. And he says, then I'll cleanse
you from all your sins. All those I wills, I will, I
will, I will. All those things that God does
for us. And then he says, when after that has occurred, then
you're going to look back on your life. And he says, he uses
the term, then you'll loathe yourself for your ways, which
were not good. But at the same time, That's coupled with the, I've
taken care of that. I've cleansed you from all that.
I've given you a new heart. And physically we can't go back
and undo all those things that we've been a part of, but we
can say Christ has paid it all. So I love that block of scripture
because it kind of puts things in order. The natural man can't
receive any of that because he's dead. He's like Lazarus. Anybody could have come in there
and told him to repent. but nothing happened until Christ
walked in there and says, Lazarus, come forth. And so there must
be some divine occurrence before this transition can be realized.
And that's necessarily a fruit of the spirit. And as we noticed
from John chapter three last week, except a man be born again,
he can't see the kingdom of God. Can't, there's no visual thing that can happen that can
cause him to believe that. No physical ocular evidence. I think we used the term last
week in our lesson. There's no ocular evidence of
this that will convince you. except a man be born of water
and the spirit cannot enter into the kingdom of God. So the transition
from the physical understanding of poor or poor in spirit as
recorded in Matthew 5 requires what the Bible definitions of
these terms calls a super imposition upon the person which changes
them irrevocably. And they have nothing, they don't
say, well I need to give myself a heart transplant. He says,
I will take the heart of stone out of you and give you, and
replace it, metaphorically, with a spiritual heart. He does that. We're on the table in a, unconscious
state when that happens. So, you hath he quickened who were
dead in sins and trespasses. It takes the power of God to
effect this change in a person to cause them to go from perceiving
themselves as meritorious and rich in the flesh to poor in
the Spirit. In 1 Samuel 2, verse 7, the Lord
maketh poor. Not just physically, although
He may do that and has done that. Job, he was well off and then
made poor. And when the Lord's purpose in
him was complete, he was rich in Christ again at the end. And
he had more than he had before. And that's just a metaphor again
for spiritual things, not necessarily just physical. Well, I got more
kids and camels than I used to have because I've been real lucky. Or I've been blessed. It was
a spiritual picture for the church there and should be considered
that way. The Lord maketh poor and maketh
rich. He bringeth low and then lifteth
up. Isn't that a wonderful picture
what he does? rips out that stony heart and gives us a heart of
flesh, and then that causes us to know the pit from which we've
been digged. Oh, all those things that I thought
were okay before, now are not, as we would say. It's the Spirit of God that makes
us to know our spiritual poverty, and at the same time makes us
to know that through the riches of grace in Christ, the debt
has been paid in full. 2 Corinthians 8, verse 9, it
says, For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though
He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through
His poverty might be rich. And so once again, as we stated
in our kind of our preamble to this block of Scripture and other
things, in this chapter, what Christ demands, He supplies. And we find that over and over
and over again as we go through here, that things that we, even
with the best intentions, we can't do. And if we do do them,
maybe we're only accomplishing them in a physical way and not
spiritually. James chapter 2 verse 5 says,
Hearken my beloved brethren, hath not God chosen the poor
of this world, rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom? Again,
this linkage between, and not just physically poor. the ones
that have been made poor in spirit, heirs of the kingdom which He
hath promised to them that love Him." And so we find this eternal
love link in there that has to do with this creation of a sense
of poorness in His sheep that causes them to look to Him for
all their salvation. So the contrasting verse, of
course, we find down in verse 24 to this, because he gives
us the spiritual sentence here in chapter 6 verse 20 and then
in verse 24 he gives us kind of the counter that and he does
the same thing in verse 21 and so forth. He gives us the both
sides of it. In verse 24 says, but woe unto
you that are rich for you've received your consolation. Isn't that an interesting word
that he uses there? You've received your consolation
and that word really means comfort. That's the basic gist of that
Greek word there. It means comfort. And you might
remember from early on in our study of Luke, where a certain
man was daily in the temple waiting for the consolation of Israel.
He was waiting for the comfort of Israel. And this word wo means grief,
misery. You've received your comfort.
And this word also has to do with kind of a calling effect
here. You've received your comfort,
your calling, and you better be happy in it now because that's
all you got. When that's over, you have nothing
else. Blessed be the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all
comfort. It's the same word as this consolation
here that we find in Luke 6.24. And so the contrast is clear
and we're about out of time, but you can go through your New
Testament and there's many, many verses that, how hardly shall
the rich enter into heaven, or they that have riches enter into
heaven. Luke 18, the rich man and Lazarus, the rich young ruler,
self-sufficiency and pride is the enemy. And that cannot be
overcome by human means. That can only be overcome by
the work of the Spirit and the application of the Gospel. Blessed be you poor for yours
is the kingdom of God and that is in the person work of the
Lord Christ Jesus. We'll stop there and until next
time, probably be a couple of weeks. Man, I can hardly wait
to see Lance and Corinne Robin or if she comes. I don't know
if they'll both be able to come because probably one of them
is engaged in taking care of Claire. It'd be so good to see
his face, give him a virtual hug or whatever we can get away
with. Thank you for your attention
and be free.