Blessed Poor in Spirit

As I was thinking about this just now, I guess I should have entitled this message, Another Man's Sermon. This is a sermon the Lord preached. We don't normally think about Jesus as a preacher, but he was a preacher. Obviously, he was the wisdom of God and there's there was an ability that he had to preach that no one else had. I believe that when he spoke these words, those who heard them understood them without exposition. at least the ones that he gave that understanding to.

And I pray that God would give you understanding from these words from Christ's sermon. It's recorded here by the Spirit of God through the pen of the Apostle Matthew. And as Brad expressed it, and I've often felt this, when I read these words, and I've said this before, when I read these words of the Lord Jesus Christ, from Matthew 5 through 7, I feel very intimidated.

I am intimidated because the Lord tells us, he describes to us what constitutes true happiness. He calls it blessed here. And yet, there's many things to say about that, but one of the things is that it's Good to know what is true from God's view that makes us truly happy. But I guess what's intimidating is that I see so much of a lack in myself, and I know I can't produce what he describes here.

And so that in itself raises the question, why did the Lord say these things? Why did the Lord Jesus Christ, Master, the one who is truth itself, the revelation, the express image of God's person. Why did he say these words? And he chose these words uniquely out of all the other things he could have said. So there must be extremely great importance in what he had to say here.

We know that Jesus is the Son of God. He came down from heaven, he was sent by God. He was sent in order to give life to us who had no life from God, not spiritual life. That's why he was sent, to give life to his people. He says so in 1 John 4 9, for this cause the Son of God was sent into the world that we might live through him. And many other reasons he was sent, but primarily he was sent to give life to his people through what he would do and what he would say.

And so this life, he tells us, throughout the New Testament, this life is in him. It is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, that righteousness that is The reason life is given, that righteousness also must also be in him. Everything to do with life has to be in him.

So I believe that when the Lord speaks these words here, he says he opened his mouth and he taught them these words, that he strikes with the first words, he strikes at the heart of everything else. That's why it's so important. that we ask the Lord to reveal to us what these words mean, and what they not only mean, but that he would fulfill them in us.

I love what was said in this hymn that we just sang by Horatius Bonar. Thy work alone, O Christ, can ease this weight of sin. Thy blood alone, O Lamb of God, can give me peace within. Notice how he puts it, thy blood alone, O Lamb of God, can give me peace within. Not only before God, but within us.

So that's one of the things we see here in these words is that this is describing us, is describing every one of God's children. When I was young, very much younger. I remember reading these and in my Bible it had a heading over this and we called them the Beatitudes. And I thought that word Beatitudes meant these are the attitudes you need to be. I think a lot of people think that way, Beatitudes. You need to change your attitude. You need to have these attitudes. But it turns out the word Beatitudes is not even spelled B, space, attitudes. And it doesn't mean be attitudes.

It actually means something else. It means utmost bliss. And that surprises me. So the word blessed here is the word that also conveys that. Now, realize again, the one who spoke this is God, the Son of God, God the Son. And he is the truth. Truth is Christ. or Christ is the truth. So whatever he said, whatever he said must be true and he said that this is what a blessed person is.

Someone who has the utmost bliss, who is truly blessed, is poor in spirit and all these other things. I think there's nine different blessings here. I counted them and I think there's nine. That's a lot of blessing. But also the strange thing is that, and this is the way the Lord's words often were, and they are to us even now, is that it's a paradox, isn't it?

Because, for example, in the fourth verse, he says, blessed are they that mourn. Now, mourning is something you do when someone you love dies. Such a great loss, a permanent loss, that person you love so dearly, you'll never see them again in life. And so you mourn for that loss.

How could that be a blessed thing? Well, again, that's why the Lord says these things. The master teacher, he's teaching us something that's very, very important. And he says it in a way that arrests us. It causes us to ask these questions. How could it be that someone has the utmost bliss in the truth of God who mourns? Or is poor in spirit and so on. You would think that the last person on earth who would be blessed above all others would be someone poor, wouldn't you? So that's some of the motivation to go to the Lord and ask him, what does it mean, Lord? You preach this sermon, preach it to my heart. Make me understand your word. So that's something. And I've entitled today's message, The Blessed Poor.

And the first thing you notice here in verse three is he says, blessed are the poor in spirit. A lot of times in my encounters with school teachers and professors at college and other places and political things is they claim that the Lord is the friend of all poor people as if just being financially impoverished gives you an in or a preference with God. It's as if physical poverty is synonymous with spiritual poverty, but that's not what the Lord is teaching here. He's not saying that people who don't have anything are automatically blessed. But he is saying that those who have poverty of spirit, they are truly blessed. And so that's one thing that's not missed here is that what he says here has to do with a spiritual condition. not a physical condition.

There were many people in scripture who were either rich or poor, and they all had a poor spirit. For example, Abraham was very rich. It says in scripture he was very rich in cattle and gold and servants and other things, and yet he was poor. in spirit because before God, he said, I am but ashes, dust and ashes. That's poor. I'm but dust and ashes before thee.

So he had this poverty of spirit and he was rich in things of this world. Lydia, in Acts 16, whose heart the Lord opened, she was a wealthy woman, but she was poor in spirit. Nicodemus was rich. And his friend, Joseph of Arimathea, was a rich man. But they were poor in spirit. So you can see that there's a pattern throughout scripture. Solomon, very rich. King David, very rich. And yet, they were both poor in spirit. And we can keep recalling these examples to mind.

And on the other hand, there was in Luke chapter 16, there was the beggar Lazarus. He was a beggar. He had nothing in life. He sat at the rich man's door waiting to be given something. And yet he was poor in spirit also. So being poor in spirit can be the condition of someone who is rich in this world or not rich in this world, poor in this world. There's something that I heard Todd Nybert say about this, and I want to credit him with it because I thought it was very, you know, the most insightful things are almost always the most obvious things, but you don't see it until someone says it. He says, beggars can't be choosers. And it turns out that's a perfect fit for this scripture, isn't it? Beggars can't be choosers.

You know where that comes from. It means if you're a beggar, you're going to be glad to get whatever we give you, and you don't get to choose. It's up to the giver. And that strikes right there at our pride, doesn't it? What do you mean? I mean, there's this word that's kicked about today. It's called entitlement.

And there's this expression in the Bill of Rights. It says God has given everyone inalienable rights. And yet there's people who don't seem to have any rights. But if they're inalienable, then why don't they have them? Is that document true? Or is God's word true? You be the judge. So the point here is that this poverty of spirit is not a natural characteristic of the human trait, the human personality.

What you are, for example, some people are outgoing. My granddaughter, for example, very outgoing. And they're not intimidated. The apostle Peter was very outgoing, I believe. And you could think of others who were very bold. Samson, Elijah, very outgoing people. They had an opinion, and they were smart.

They were intelligent people. and yet they were poor in spirit. So their personality trait, you tend to think, well, a poor in spirit person is someone who hardly speaks. They're so shy and bashful and introverted that they don't have much to say until they really get riled up. But no, you can have a personality that's very bold and yet be poor in spirit.

Obviously, Peter was. And then there's the woman who had an issue with blood for 12 years, very bashful, snuck up behind Jesus just to touch the border of his garment, yet she was poor in spirit. And you can think of many others, can't you? Think of Ruth, the Moabites in the book of Ruth. She was poor in spirit and she was very quiet in spirit too. Or Hannah, the mother of Samuel. These people were quiet, and yet they were poor in spirit. There's others who were loud, and they were poor in spirit.

Rich and poor, loud and quiet, it doesn't matter, because this is not a characteristic. It's not a personality trait that you're born with. It's a spiritual characteristic. It's really, God is describing, through the Lord Jesus Christ, he's describing to us the character of those who are born of God. You can't see them, can you? But this is describing their inward personality, if you would say it that way, their spirit. And the spirit often in scripture is associated with the mind. The two things are almost synonymous, perhaps they are.

What we think in our heart, that's what we are, the Proverbs say. And it says in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 16, we have the mind of Christ. So our mind, what we think, truly think, is going to be what we are. And the Lord tells us here that one is poor in spirit when in their spirit, the spirit of their mind, they think this way, and this describes them. Now, back to the question then.

Why did the Lord Jesus Christ say this? First, why did he describe things which describe a spiritual nature that we cannot produce, and yet is required for us to be blessed? Why did he say this to us? Why did he just say, well, you can't do anything about this, so I'm not gonna tell you.

Well, because the very expression of this need and the truth that those who have this characteristic, this spiritual characteristic, have been given this by God's grace, that itself excites in us a realization of our poverty, our poverty, that we don't have it.

And there's something about being poor. If you were to think about what it is like to be poor, this is something that's true about poverty. You don't think about what you have when you're poor. You think about what you don't have, don't you? It's an absence of something.

In fact, in scripture, poverty includes debt. And that's why it's a need to have a spiritual poverty. And so this spiritual condition that God gives to us, because these things are done, this is God's work in us, this spiritual condition, which is poverty of spirit, is a necessary and fundamental. It's the first part, the first principle of God's saving grace. Without having poverty of spirit, we have no need for Christ. And there would be no faith in Christ without a need for him. And so you can see how important this is. We don't know our need.

The Lord says you need to be poor in spirit. You need to mourn. This is describing those the Lord has saved. They mourn. They're meek. They hunger and thirst for righteousness and so on. They're merciful. They're pure in heart. They're peacemakers. They're persecuted for righteousness. So these things are describing those who belong to the Lord. God's work in them is evident by these things. And it's a spiritual condition. It's not natural. It's unnatural. In fact, it's the opposite of what we naturally are. We're not naturally poor in spirit at all, are we? We're naturally very proud in spirit.

And you can think of examples on both sides of that category, poor in spirit, rich in spirit. For example, Cain was very rich in spirit. He was mad at God because he wouldn't accept his sacrifice he had labored to produce. Obviously, he grew it from the grounds of the Lord, ultimately did, but he took credit for it, and he tried to gain recognition from God for it. That's a rich in spirit person. Abel, on the other hand, realized, I have I have no way to come to God except by the way He provided, the Lamb, and He looked to Christ. So those two obviously set up the differences, and we could go down the list. There's all sorts of examples. One of the most prominent examples, I think, is the rich young ruler who came to Jesus in Matthew 19 or in Luke 18.

Remember when he comes? Lord, good master, what must I do to have eternal life? And Jesus said, keep the commandments. Oh, I have, I've done all those since my youth up. He said, well, okay. Then go sell everything you have and give it to the poor and then come and follow me.

And he said, oh, he went away so sorrowful because he could not do that. Why? Because he was rich in spirit. He expected that what he had would provide him what he needed. He didn't need something. He had what he needed. So he couldn't let go of it. All that he had was all that he had to hold on to. And so he held it very tightly.

And mercifully though, the Lord said that it's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. And the disciples were amazed when he said that, who then can be saved? And he said, with men, it's impossible. But with God, all things are possible. And so the Lord, even in that man who was set up as an example of being rich in spirit, the Lord said, he can make him poor in spirit.

That's the grace of God, isn't it? Okay, so poverty of spirit is a spiritual gift from God. And poverty of spirit is a recognition of your absence, a recognition of what you do not have. And so then we understand that this poverty of spirit is going to make us realize that when we read these words, what's our reaction going to be? Without realizing it, When the Lord has been gracious enough to give us the gospel and to lay hold on Christ by faith, we're going to say, but I don't have that. Isn't that the reaction of a poor person, a poor in spirit?

I don't have that. And I need that. And here's the other part of this poverty of spirit, because this is like the first strike of the hammer on our hard heart in this sermon, is that because you don't have it and you can't produce it, but you need it for life, then you're going to hear very carefully what the one who is truth and life itself has to say.

And you're going to find, by the grace of God, you're going to find that everything you need and everything you have is not found in you, but in Him. And that's why it's so blessed. That's why it's the utmost bliss. And this is a wonderful, wonderful truth.

I also want to remind you here before we get into this with detail, is that the Lord Jesus Christ himself, being the teacher, is not telling you what to do, or even telling you what you have to become. He first and foremost, and the Spirit of God is showing us this, that he himself is described here preeminently. Jesus Christ himself is the one, preeminently, who fulfills these characteristics, because spiritually he was poor in spirit. As Brad quoted from 2 Corinthians 8-9, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might be rich.

That's poverty. That's a voluntary poverty. But for us, a sinful people, the Lord has to make us poor. You would think that being so horribly opposed to God and having spiritual deficit, the last thing we would be is proud. But that's the first thing we find, is pride. And the Lord has to humble us by telling us what constitutes a blessed person. And how the Lord himself is the one who does it, and we find ourselves in complete need of him. And then God opens up to us the one who was made poor voluntarily that we might be made rich in him. And this poverty of spirit sends us to him.

Look at Revelation chapter 3 and verse 17. In Revelation chapter 3, the Lord Jesus is talking to the seven churches. In verse 17, he's talking to the church of Laodicea. Now, this is not in scripture, but I want to give you the background here to show you how wisely the Lord speaks and how directly he applies his word to our situation. He says in Revelation chapter 3, and we'll go to verse 15, he says, I know thy works.

He's talking to the church of Laodicea. I know thy works, verse 15. that thou art neither cold nor hot, I would that thou were cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth." Notice verse 17, because you say, I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing, And knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. Now that's ignorance, isn't it? Isn't that spiritual ignorance? You don't even know that you're wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. That is spiritual ignorance of the highest kind.

And then he says, I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear, and anoint thine eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see.

Now it turns out in history, it was written about this city that they were a very rich city. And the example is taken because in AD 60, there was a great earthquake and the city was leveled and they didn't ask help from Rome. which was the ruling government in that area. Rather, they used their own wealth to rebuild their city. So that's how wealthy they were. One of the historians, a Roman, said this when he wrote about them. He said, the Laodiceans arose from the ruins by the strength of their own resources and with no help from us. That's proof that they were a very wealthy people. and self-sufficient people.

So his words reflect the city's well-known attitude of self-sufficiency. And then also they were the center of what was called a black wool textile industry. And this is what the ancient records and the geographers said that they became the center for this manufacturing of expensive black wool garments and carpets. But the Lord Jesus said, buy of me white raiment that you may be clothed. So the contrast obviously was deliberate. What they prized, their black garments could not cover their spiritual nakedness. Only Christ's white garments could do that.

And then also the third thing was they had a school, a medical school there, which was renowned because they made eye salve. And so they were famous and people would go there just to get their eyes healed. They would apply the salve supposedly, it made them better. And the Lord says to them, anoint your eyes with eye salve that you may see.

So they boasted in their wealth. And Christ said, spiritually, you're poor. They boasted in their black wool clothing. And the Lord said, you're naked. they boasted in their eye medicine, the Lord said, you're blind. And the remedy was, because they were spiritually poor, they were to buy gold from him. Gold tried in the fire. And because they were naked, they were supposed spiritually, they were to buy white raiment from him. And because they were blind, they needed his spiritual eye salve. And so he directly applies spiritually to each of these conditions that they held because in themselves they were rich. They possessed earthly riches, but they lacked heavenly ones.

And the Lord said, buy of me gold tried in the fire. Now we know from scripture that gold tried in the fire is compared to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he says in 1 Peter, the trial of your faith being much more precious than gold that perishes. And so fire, we know, refines, it removes impurities, and gold is refined and made pure and valuable. So the Lord Jesus Christ is telling them about the true riches. the riches that would withstand the test of fire, that would be refined through fire.

And what is that? What is that gold? Well, it's Christ himself, isn't it? Christ himself is the riches of that gold. The apostle Paul said in Colossians 2, in him in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, treasures, the gold. And in Ephesians 3, 8, the unsearchable riches of Christ. So the Lord Jesus Christ himself is the wealth that we possess in believing him.

We don't have this wealth in ourselves. This is not in us. We're poor. It's not here. It's absent from us, but it's in Christ, you see. and poverty of spirit causes us to see it's not in me. I can't get rid of my sin. I can't do what I ought to do. I know it's right, but I can't do it. I know it's wrong, and I do it. And I can't make myself be what I ought to be. I can't become what I know I should be. I'm helpless. I'm poor spiritually. That's what he's saying here. In fact, I'm so poor spiritually that the Lord says you're dead spiritually. You're miserable, wretched, blind.

And so our wealth has to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the Lord says to the Laodiceans, buy of me white raiment that thou mayest be clothed. And this white garments, symbolize the righteousness that Christ provides to cover our spiritual nakedness, don't they? We're made accepted before God in Christ, period.

We cannot make ourselves accepted. That's the absence of acceptability. The absence of righteousness. We're poor in spirit. We realize we have none. And so the Lord has to make us accepted. God receives us for Christ's sake, not for our sake, but he receives us for his sake. And receiving us for Christ's sake, he receives us in him, as him. So their true poverty is what was, their true poverty was what stood before them instead of Christ's riches. They didn't understand it. They didn't see that they were rich in their minds with something that wasn't true riches, that they could clothe themselves with what was not covering them spiritually. And so the Lord tells them, you need to look to me and to buy this.

What does it mean to buy? How can you buy? Does it mean you eat by salvation or by life or righteousness? No. Isaiah 55 says, Ho everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, buy wine and milk without money and without price. So buying then in the spiritual sense means abandoning all confidence in your earthly things that you depend upon, temporal things, things that you have naturally, things that you can possess, things that you can produce, things that you can become.

Those things have to be abandoned. You can't serve God and mammon. You can't serve, you can't trust Christ and trust these other things too. You have to let those other things, you have to consider those things like the Apostle Paul said. They're dung.

Everything I counted gained, I considered it loss for Christ. So that the only object of our faith is Christ himself. And we have to receive by this faith from him. And that's what it means to buy. Faith is a self-emptying grace. Faith doesn't claim value in itself. Faith melts, if you will. It's absorbed in Christ because faith says Christ is all. And faith doesn't stick its head up for recognition. Faith looks to Christ that God would recognize him and receive me for his sake. because I have nothing.

In fact, I'm indebted and I have nothing to pay. So the price that we've used to buy is not money, but is the abandonment of ourselves. It's the relinquishing of all value in ourselves to have Christ. We don't say, well, I'm going to get Christ by doing this. We recognize we don't have anything. It's not like we have to get rid of it. We don't have anything. And so the apostle Paul said that too.

Those things I thought were gain, I counted loss for Christ. Everything that belongs to him has been tried in the fire. So Christ himself underwent the judgment of God and God raised him from the dead. He proved by that, that he endured the fire of God's refinement. He says, buy of me this gold. His righteousness endured God's perfect judgment. His promises never fail. His salvation cannot perish. And even though some people would say, well, this refining and gold has to do with trials that make us, you know, as believers, it makes us more and more faithful and so on.

That's not the emphasis here. The emphasis is on Christ himself. It's not that Christ is going to give me these benefits. It's that he himself is the gold. He himself is the one I look to as all of my riches. And so, the Laodiceans believed they were rich. They needed nothing. The Lord says, you have nothing. They imagine he's not in their lives. He says, I stand at the door and knock.

The gospel always begins when a person is made to see their spiritual poverty, that they have nothing spiritually. And then they see, yes, God has sent his son and he is All the fullness of the Godhead, He is the God-man, the mediator, the surety, the savior, the redeemer. His blood cleanses me of my sin. His obedience is all of my righteousness. He is eternal life. All these things are what we see when we're made poor. Our poverty, His riches, our sin, His righteousness, our shame, His white garments, our blindness, His light.

And so this buying, it's like what the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1. Look at that text of scripture. 1 Corinthians 1 deals with this regarding the poor in spirit. And notice, he says in 1 Corinthians 1, this is very anchoring, this helps us to understand what Christ meant in his sermon. It's a principle that is put at the conclusion of these list of things in 1 Corinthians 1. Notice, he says in verse 31, according as it is written, here's the principle, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. In other words, God will not share his glory, period, exclamation point, underline, bold, highlight.

No. If the Lord saves you, he gets all of the credit. It leaves nothing for you to do to contribute your salvation. Salvation is not a check made out in your name that you have to sign. If it is, you can't sign it. You won't sign it because in your mind you're hostile. You have this rich spirit and the Lord has to bring you down to say, your signature doesn't make that check valid. No, that comparison was given when I was younger. Salvation is not a transaction between God and man.

It's an accomplishment of Christ The transaction is between the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father for his people. In the equation, it's only Christ. It says Christ is all. Period. The equal sign is that Christ is everything. And so we, this poverty of spirit, we come to the painful recognition that the law requires us to pay. We have nothing to pay. It pronounces us to be in debt and tells us what to do and leaves us there, dead in our sins, no help. But the gospel tells us Christ has done everything. Christ is everything.

And what this does is, you know, I was talking to someone the other day, they were talking about a devotional that they were reading and they had questions about it. And the person writing the devotion was describing how they looked at things through life and how they experienced them, especially with regards to the things of the Lord. And the person reading this devotion was perplexed because they had to honestly admit, I don't know that that's true of me. You see, that's the reason Jesus said you have to be poor in spirit, because when you're poor in spirit, what do you do?

You don't look to another man's experience and try to become like that person. You don't say, well, look at Abraham, look at David, look at Job, look at Isaiah, look at Paul. That's not the issue because that's not where salvation is. It's not becoming like a believer. It's not even becoming like Christ.

It's seeing that everything God accepts for me is in Christ. It's not in me. And faith, recognizing that out of the poverty of my spirit by God's gift of grace, I look to him for everything and I find it all there in him alone. So that in 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30, he says it this way. Let me go back a few verses here. He says in verse 21, For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God.

It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." That's a humbling thing, isn't it? Einstein, I know a lot of smart people, much smarter than me. I don't even consider myself smart at all, but I mean people who are really smart and they can understand things like, I don't see it, I don't get it. Even after you explain it, I don't get it. And they understand it. But the Lord says, thankfully, that in the wisdom of God, it pleased God that by foolishness He would save those that believe.

And that foolishness is the preaching that men despise, which is Christ. He says in verse 22, for the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. We declare Him. unto the Jews a stumbling block, to the Greeks foolishness." See, all men are included here. The religious man finds Christ to be a stumbling block because we say Christ is all. The Greek says, no, I need something that's more intellectual than that.

No, the wisdom of God is Christ. But unto them which are called, Not all, but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Men look at Christ and him crucified, they say, that's foolish, that's weak. No, that's the power of God, that's the wisdom of God.

You see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. And God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty and base things of the world. things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nothing things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence." You see? And here's the result of that poverty that we should find ourselves in after that declaration. It's not your wisdom, it's not your strength. It's not your nobility, it's not your position, it's not your race, it's nothing about you.

He says, of him, of God. Are you in Christ Jesus, who of God? Notice, he didn't say he's going to dole these things out to you, like chips, so that you can take them to the bank. There's nothing apart from Christ that's given to you. Everything that you have is Christ.

It's in Him. And God has made it so that in Christ Jesus, God has made us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption that according as it is written, let him that glorieth glory in the Lord, in the Lord Jesus Christ. You see how this all fits with his poverty of spirit? The Lord Jesus Christ is our all, by himself. We have received him by faith.

Faith enables us to see, though we are indebted, though we are dead in sins, though we are a wretched man. And as Job said, I abhor myself. As Isaiah said, woe unto me, I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips because of this unclean heart. And Peter said, depart from me, Lord, I'm a sinful man. And the apostle Paul said, I'm the chief of sinners. I'm a wretched man.

And everything I had, I once trusted, and I count it but dung that I may win Christ. And the Lord says, that's the way you receive Christ. Now walk that way. You see, this attitude, if you will, this characteristic, this trait of the spiritual man God has created in us is not a one-time, it's not a step and a ladder to get somewhere. This is always what you have in the beginning is all you have throughout your life and at the end it's Christ. And when you get to heaven, all you'll have if you're received into glory in life by salvation, into eternal life and glory, is Christ. All you'll have to stand before God is what Christ says, what Christ has done, what God thinks of Him.

And faith enables us, God-given grace, out of this poverty to say, the Lord Jesus Christ is everything I have. All I want, all my hope, everything. Don't worry about her, she's okay. I like this. This is teaching us the fundamentals, the first principle, that in order for us to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, It's like you can't do one without the other. But they're almost synonymous, aren't they? Poverty of spirit is almost synonymous with faith in Christ. Because without poverty of spirit, you can't believe Him. But in believing Christ, you cannot have a rich spirit.

You're going to be made poor. And that's why it's such a blessed thing. You have the gold of God's eye, His possession in His Son. You're holding Him in fellowship with God the Father as all your life and all your peace, like the songwriter wrote, the blood of Christ alone can give me peace within. That's a poor man. That's a poor man. That's a man who's been given this from God. Christ himself is God's gift. He's the one we glory in. We rest in him.

Faith is not a work that contributes something. It is the God-given abandonment of every contribution I could possibly make in the illusion of my depraved mind. Grace of God given faith to us empties us of all self-confidence before God. And we look entirely and wholly outside of ourselves to Christ. We don't look to see what another preacher experiences or a famous writer or sermon person.

The Lord Jesus himself said, the blissfully Happy person is one who has nothing at all, but Jesus Christ is his all in all. All right, let's pray. Father, thank you for your word and your mercy to us. Be with us as we consider these things and bless them to our heart. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Blessed Poor in Spirit

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Blessed Poor in Spirit

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About Rick Warta

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