We're going to be looking at a passage that shows the total devotion that we need to have to this one God, Matthew chapter 5. We started this series last week. And I'm going to go ahead and read this. By the time we're done with this series, you may be able to recite the Beatitudes by memory. Beginning at verse 1, And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated, His disciples came to Him. Then he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven Father we thank you for this your word. It is our glory to submit to it We desire to become more and more conformed to the image of Christ To experience on a day-by-day basis the power of your Holy Spirit to enter into all of the resources of the kingdom that you have ordained for your people and so I pray that each of these steps that need to be in place and your people would be richly manifested that we might inherit the kingdom, that we might inherit the earth and We might show forth the glory that these Beatitudes speak about. Give to us an authentic Christianity and remove from us all just mere externalism. Father, from the inside out and from the outside in, may we be out and out for the Lord Jesus Christ, characterized by your word and by your grace. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, last week we saw that the Beatitudes are a call to enjoy kingdom living to the fullest. And I think every one of us wants that to happen. We've had our times of dryness. We've had our times where we long for a richer Christianity. And I think we can identify with that first catechism question that says, what is man's chief end? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. He wants us to enjoy him. That is God's purpose for our life. And as Billy Sunday said, if we're losing our joy, there's a leak in our Christianity somewhere. And so in this series, what we're going to be trying to do is to stop up those leaks and to restore to our lives the joy of the Lord, which is our strength. Now, if you did not hear last week's sermon, I strongly encourage you to download it from the web and listen to it, because It has a whole bunch of principles that help you to understand each of the Beatitudes that we're going through. I'm not going to cover that again, but they are principles that are really essential if you're going to understand these Beatitudes properly. So we're at Beatitude number 1, verse 3. And this first Beatitude gives the very first step that we need to have when we begin our Christian life. And it's the very first step we need to have every day as we appropriate kingdom power through the remainder of our lives. It's not just a one time thing. This is characterizing us through the rest of our lives. So basically what this is is it's joyfully saying nothing in my hands I bring simply to thy cross I claim. That's what this beatitude is about. Now the word for poor. is uh... the greek word not pennase but the greek word patokos and actually technically you don't pronounce the p on the front but i'm pronouncing it so you know what word we're talking about it's uh... patokos this was a word that described a person who had absolutely nothing to his name he was a beggar uh... he was uh... a person like the picture you have on your outline there a lazarus filled with sores you know the The dogs are licking his wounds and the only food that he can get is the food that's being, the scraps that are being thrown away from the rich man's house. Anyone who owns anything is not the patokos poor. Now, the Greeks despised this word. Let me just give you an example. Plato banished the patokos from his ideal community. He said, there shall be no beggars. That's the word patokos. Blessed are the beggars. You know, you could translate it that way, but he said there shall be no beggars in our state. And if anyone attempts to beg, he shall be driven across the border by the country stewards to the end that the land may be wholly purged by such a creature. That's the word that Christ is using here. It's that kind of a beggar. OK, so this is shocking. When Jesus is speaking these words, it's like, whoa, it's a frontal blow for people. What is he talking about? Blessed are the poor. in spirit. And the paradox in Christianity is that those who know they can contribute nothing are the ones who have the faith to lay claim to the kingdom. Those who recognize their absolute poverty have the faith to be able to gain the riches of the kingdom. And this first beatitude then is the key to unlock the riches of the kingdom. And before I open that up, what I want to do is I want to look at some of the counterfeits that Satan has brought into the church. He is such a subtle and crafty deceiver. He knows how to twist the word of God and he knows how to rob people of their kingdom heritage. And God's purpose is not to keep us in misery like Lazarus was, OK? So don't look at that picture. He wants us to enter into the kind of stewardship heritage that Joseph really is the model for. So let's look at these counterfeits to the true beatitude. First counterfeit is socialism. For the past 100 years, this counterfeit savior has been masquerading as being the advocate for the poor. But far from bringing happiness and fulfillment, what has it done? We've had a whole hundred years. We can look at it. It has brought nothing but incredible, pervasive envy and hatred and centralized government and nonstop revolutions. It's been a continual conflict. Gutierrez used this beatitude to argue for Marxist guerrilla warfare against the, quote unquote, ungodly rich. And even though he rightly defined this word, he said, OK, this is talking about people who are physically poor. In the literal sense, that's true. That's the word that's used. He ignores the in spirit part of this equation. But he turns the beatitude upside down when he says this, that Jesus here is bringing a real protest against the poverty of our time. And I would say, no. He's not protesting poverty. Whatever poverty he is talking about, he is blessing it. He is saying this is an absolute essential for the kingdom. And yet this interpretation persists. Stephen Charles Mott said that while the Old Testament did not give any favoritism to poor or to rich, and I'm glad he at least could see that, he says this beatitude gives the new biblical way we must give priority, favoritism, and bias toward the poor. He said, Biblical justice is biased in favor of the poor and weak of the earth. Now, I would say it's not even justice if it's biased. Justice by its very nature cannot be biased. But he says, Biblical justice is biased in favor of the poor and the weak of the earth. This partiality was nowhere more clearly and succinctly stated than in the prophetic Beatitudes of Jesus, blessed are the poor, woe to the rich, Luke 6, 20 and 24. The first principle of justice and distribution is the correction of the oppression. And these liberation theologians, they're not averse to using guns and revolution to achieve this forced redistribution of wealth. Now you might be surprised by this and say, okay, that's just a weird fringe. And not so. You would be amazed in the commentaries how many people are influenced by this kind of interpretation. William Hordern said, the Bible recognizes what Aristotle and others have missed, that the creative forces in society must come from the bottom of the social order because the upper classes are blinded by the interests which they are defending and cannot see the greater good for fear of losing what they have. He didn't talk about the blindness that can happen to all men, but it's always the rich. And what's his solution? Well, through revolution, the poor need to bring about kingdom equality. Now, Owen Whitfield was at least honest enough to recognize this text doesn't say that, and he really hated what the Beatitude did say. Here was his comment. I say to you, not blessed are the poor in spirit, but rather, blessed are the spirited poor. The poor won't inherit the earth until they get sassy enough to take it. And you might think, OK, that's just way far out. Liberal theologians like that don't in any way indicate what's going on in the evangelical church. And I would say nothing could be further from the truth. This kind of concept has impacted evangelicals themselves. Now, they're not going to use the sword in a Marxist kind of a guerrilla warfare, but they're quite content to use the sword of the government to redistribute wealth wherever they can. How many evangelicals do you know that are opposed to government education, or social security, or welfare, or food stamps? And yet if you're not opposed to those things, by definition you're holding to exactly the same thing. It's a forced redistribution of wealth from one part of society to another part of society. Let me read from Ronald Sider, a Christian socialist who is honored and respected sadly in most reformed seminaries, not to speak of most evangelical seminaries. Commenting on this verse, he says, I want to argue that one of the central biblical doctrines is that God is on the side of the poor. It, and he's referring here to Matthew 5.3, it reflects a situation where the rich were mainly those who sold out to the incoming culture and had allowed their religious devotion to become corrupted by the new ways. Now, he's missing the point, you know, that the poor themselves can fail to be poor in spirit. You know, it's not like it's the rich don't have poverty in spirit and the poor do. He goes on to say, if the poor were the pious, the faithful and largely oppressed, The rich were the powerful, ungodly, worldly, even apostate. So he's really turning this on its head when he interprets this. Now he thinks he can explain away this poverty in spirit this way. Matthew has not spiritualized Jesus' words. Jesus did not mean that poverty and hunger are desirable in themselves, but in a sinful world where frequently success and prosperity are possible only if one transgresses God's law, poverty and hunger are indeed a blessing. The kingdom is precisely for such people. Now, I'm giving those extended quotes because these errors, to one degree or another, have infiltrated most evangelical denominations. OK, like I said earlier, if you're If you're a supportive of government education, you're really holding to the same thing. Maybe not using Marxist guerrilla tactics, but it is exactly the same principle that you're advocating. Farmers look to the Department of Agriculture for bailouts and faith-based initiative of George Bush. What it was doing is it was stealing money from the populace as a whole, giving it to churches and to other ministries so that they could engage in this work for them. In fact, three times our church has been offered hundreds of thousands of dollars. The third time they said, how come you have not responded to this request? I wrote back to them and I told them that I had no interest whatsoever in this and that they had no constitutional right to be giving this. This was theft on their part. They haven't written back to me after that. But socialism is a poison that has been slowly destroying the church of Jesus Christ. And if you have even the slightest shred of class envy, you are far from inheriting the kingdom like this beatitude wants you to inherit it. Satan is keeping you from true blessing of kingdom happiness. Jesus is not saying happy are those with class envy. or happy are the financially discontent. Those socialists, and they call themselves Christian socialists, they are anything but happy and fulfilled. It's quite the opposite. Now, what about the financially rich? Can they be poor in spirit? And I would say, absolutely, yes, they can. In fact, I've given a picture of Joseph. He was a person that the scripture would describe as poor in spirit while he was financially poor, and he remained poor in spirit when he was financially, you know, the second command. He was vastly rich. And the scripture points out that there are men like Abraham, Job, and David, truly poor in spirit. Now I should hasten to say riches can very subtly draw a person's trust away from God and to them. And so there's always a danger if your trust is in those things. But scripture says you can be a materialist absolutely bound by the shackles of mammon, that idol, whether you're poor or whether you're rich. It really does not matter. And there are materialists out in Africa that are dirt poor. There are materialists who are poor here. It's not an issue purely of riches. So let me give you some scriptures. Psalm 34 and verse 6 says, This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. Now here's David, one of the richest people in Israel, and yet he says, I'm a poor man. And the word that he used is the Hebrew word ani, which is the poorest of the poor. In fact, it's the equivalent of the ptokas poor. It's the beggar kind of poor. Now, what is going on here? He's poor and yet he has a kingdom? Yeah, that's exactly what the Beatitude is talking about. Those who are poor in spirit, indeed, are the ones who are inheriting the kingdom. Here are some other scriptures that use the same word. Psalm 40, verse 17. But I am poor and needy, Yet the Lord thinks upon me. You are my help and my deliverer. Do not delay, O my God." So David is calling himself poor, even though at this stage in his life he's got a kingdom, he's got riches, he's got security, he's got prestige. And yet he was poor in spirit, had nothing whatsoever to do with his outward financial condition. Matthew 5.3 does not say, blessed are the financially disadvantaged, does not say, blessed are the peasants who can't eat, you know, don't have any food. He's saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, in spirit. And more and more, I'm becoming aware that I cannot do anything apart from Christ. I cannot shepherd the flock of Christ. I'm driven to my knees and recognizing, Lord, if you do not shepherd through us, there is nothing we can achieve. Any church that we might build is a church that the gates of hell can prevail against. I cannot do it in myself. Here are some other examples of a wealthy person who was poor in spirit. Psalm 69, 29. But I am poor and sorrowful. Let your salvation, O God, set me up on high. So he's not saying I'm glorying in the pitiful situation that I'm in. No, his poverty is driving him to the Lord to receive the very riches and the very graces that God delights in giving to us. Psalm 70, verse 5, But I am poor and needy. Make haste to help me, O God. You are my help and my deliverer. O Lord, do not delay. Psalm 86, 1, Bow down your ear, O Lord. Hear me, for I am poor and needy. Psalm 109.22, for I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. Those are all scriptures that show how ridiculous the socialistic interpretation of this verse really is. It's my contention that until socialism and class envy is repented of, no one will ever find the happiness and fulfillment that this beatitude promises. The poor of spirit have a kingdom, but the kingdom will forever elude socialists. Now, if Satan can't get you down through class envy, he will try to get you down through an inferiority complex. And the problem with this second counterfeit is that in some ways it does resemble poorness in spirit. But I want to demonstrate how an inferiority complex is just as preoccupied with self as pride is. The foundation of pride's arrogance is self. The foundation of inferiority's fear is self. One has an inflated view of self, the other has a deflated view of self, but they're both preoccupied with self being their only resource. Pride hangs on to self as a boast. Inferiority hangs on to self as an excuse. Neither one is looking to the Lord Jesus Christ for their resources. When you are poor in spirit, you're going to abandon self. You're going to start to look to the resources that you have with Christ. And you will never, as long as you're preoccupied with self, you're never going to have the tremendous joy. The scripture speaks of it as a joy that's even past comprehending. You'll never have that joy and that fulfillment, that happiness and those kingdom resources on your own. And over and over, this is such a subtle thing. Just yesterday, I was on my knees before the Lord Once again, repenting because I was getting depressed that I can't shepherd people through their pain. And the Lord's rebuking me. It's like he's saying, Phil, whoever said it was up to you, you're just the tool in my hand. And here I am not being poor in spirit, not looking to the Lord and saying, Lord, apart from you, I can do nothing. It's so subtle, and yet it can take us a mile away from the benefits God wants us to have. Now, false humility is very closely related to an inferiority complex, but I really think it is a third counterfeit. False humility fails to recognize the gifts, the abilities, and the growth that God has already given. Basically, false humility is thinking lower of yourself than you ought to think. We usually have the opposite problem, don't we? We think higher of ourselves than we ought to think. But this is really a manifestation that's still a problem. Some people decline God's calling upon their lives because they think, I'm not worthy. Well, who is worthy? OK, that's not a good excuse. Moses initially had a false humility when he tried to talk himself out of taking God's call upon his life. God called him to lead Israel. And he's thinking up every excuse in the book as to why he cannot do this. And he's just terrified of the idea of leading Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness. And basically what God is doing is saying, Moses, it's not about you. It's about your sufficiency in me. You need to look to me. God is saying, if you are a believer and you put your faith in me, you're going to have all of the resources that you need. Just as one example, Moses says, I can't talk, Lord. You've got to find somebody else. I stutter. I'm a very poor talker. And here's what God says. Who made man's mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you will say. And he did that with every one of the other excuses that Moses had. He said, it doesn't matter. I'm going to be with you. I'm the one who's your resource. You're poor. You're supposed to be poor. You need to recognize your poverty, if there is a word like that, and cling to me. So you feel unstable? Don't worry. I am the rock. He is the great I am. Are you hungry? I am the bread of life. Are you thirsty? I am the living water. And if you just think about what Moses would have missed out on if God had said, OK, if you're not interested, I'll go with somebody else. He would have missed out on all of the miracles. That seeing the glory of God that intimate friendship that he had with God now sure he went through a lot of troubles as well But there were glorious things and incredible kingdom fulfillment that he had because God finally got it through a sick thick skull that false humility is a Counterfeit you've got to have a true humility that looks to the Lord and says Lord I know I don't have anything to contribute but I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me So basically, what I'm saying here is that we need this throughout the rest of our lives. It's not just how we start our Christian walk. Now, another form of false humility seems like the opposite, but it springs from the same root. And that's where we boast in our humility. False humility fails to see any pride in its own heart. fails to see its own sin. This is actually one of the worst forms of pride, to fail to see your sin, fail to see that you are so poor you don't even have the humility that you need. You fail to recognize your pride. One person said, humility is like underwear, essential but indecent if it shows. The closer we get to God, the more God shows us How much pride we have in our hearts. Every human has pride in his heart. And the more he is driven to the Lord and said, Lord, even on this resource, I am poor. I can't even have humility before you. I need your spirit to give me the fruit of the spirit so that I can walk in your kingdom ways as you intended. So false humility is a is a counterfeit fourth. Poverty of spirit is not suppression of one's personality. It doesn't deny the way that God has made us. It recognizes, hey, the things that I have that are good, they come from God's hand. I'm going to use them as resources. I'm not going to say, oh, yeah, I can't do that. No, you can if God has made you to do it. So don't be denying the very things God has made you for. Fifth, it's not an apathy about our inadequacies. It's not a contentment. with a lack of happiness or a lack of success or a lack of kingdom power. Some people simply do not care that they are bound by sin. They don't care that they don't have kingdom power. They're apathetic about it, okay? But anyone who is a beggar kind of a poor person cares. He's a person who doesn't know where his next meal is coming. He is driven by necessity to go to the one who can give life. and finances and joy and power. It's desperation that impels him. So anytime you see apathy about your Christian walk, you can guarantee that you do not have poverty of spirit. If you're poor in spirit, you cannot be apathetic. You're driven to the Lord. You're going to say, Lord, I'm desperate for you. I hate the way that my life is. I want your grace in me. And you're going to go to the bank account in heaven and begin withdrawing resources that God gives to you. So apathy is maybe one of the worst counterfeits that you could get. Now, very quickly, let me cover three more counterfeits. And I got these from Thomas Watson's fabulous commentary on the Beatitudes. Thomas Watson points out that being poor in spirit is not the same as being spiritually poor. What does he mean by that? He means that everyone's spiritually poor. They just don't recognize it. Okay. Everybody is spiritually poor. Not everybody is poor in spirit. Revelation 3, 17, he says, and do not know, and here he's talking to the church, do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. How could they not know that they were spiritually poor? Well, the reason is because Satan has put a blindness on their eyes. He's put like a veil and he can do that to Christians as well. The reason he wants us to keep from seeing our total spiritual poverty is the moment we begin to recognize that we become poor in spirit, we've got the key to unlock the riches of the kingdom. He does not want us to be able to see that. And so there are a lot of people out there who are spiritually poor. In fact, everybody is, but they're not poor in spirit. Seventh thing that poor in spirit is not is being poor spirited. And I got this from Thomas Watson as well. People who are poor spirited are no fun to be around. Okay. They're greedy. They're not generous. They can be mean, cranky. They have no ability to overflow from their heart into the lives of other people. Whereas a person who is poor in spirit, he's able to drink so fully of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's got plenty to give to others. So a person who is poor in spirit, he is generous hearted. He's generous spirited. He's not poor spirited. Okay. There's a distinction that you need to make there. And then finally, being poor in spirit is not taking a Roman Catholic vow of poverty. These are the people who sell their estates, they leave them behind and they join a monastery. And what we're going to be seeing on the third beatitude is those kind of people aren't inheriting the earth we're commanded to. So it's a counterfeit as well. So what is being poor in spirit? I think we've already defined it just by looking at what it's not as we've been going through there. But let me give you three more indicators. First, the word spirit indicates that the kind of poverty he's talking about is an inward attitude of life. It's a spirit's perspective on life. The spirit itself is poor. So irrespective of your outward circumstances, you could be vastly wealthy. You've got a perspective on life that says, Lord, I am needy. I am needy. All of this could be taken away in a flash. I need you. And so David had riches, he had a kingdom, victorious army, prestige, and yet he was poor in spirit, meant he had to trust God, which meant God trusts him with more wealth and with more graces. He pours it out into his life. Second facet of poverty is seen from the word poor. There is a total absence of self-reliance. Last week we saw there were two kinds of poor. There were the Pennes poor. They were not totally reliant upon other people. They need cash, otherwise they might lose their business, or they might lose their farm, or they might lose their house. So they needed a loan, they needed some help. But they weren't totally reliant upon others. They had some self-reliance, but the Potokos poor, he had nothing, absolutely nothing. He was 100% reliant on others, didn't have a house to live in. These were the ones, by the way, when Jesus gave the parable and he said he invited people and this one's busy, you know, getting married, another one bought an ox, he has to test it. Then he goes out into the highways and hedges, and he brings in the ptokos poor. These are the people who are non-self-reliant. Those are the ones that are at the banquet in the kingdom. So they have to be brought. The definition of the word itself shows absence of self-reliance. Third facet of this poor man is seen in the paradox that the person remains poor, but he has a kingdom. He has nothing, but he has everything. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven now that phrase theirs is the kingdom of heaven is in the present tense Which means at the very moment while this person is poor in spirit. He has the kingdom That's a paradox there. There's only one kind of poor man that you can have that true of and that is a steward and the The concept of stewardship, I think, brings all these three facets together. A steward was a slave, and therefore he owned nothing. But unlike other slaves, this steward has been elevated to a status where he has the enjoyment of and the running of an estate, or a house, or other articles. He can even use them for his own purposes It's almost like it was his but he's doing it for somebody else and Joseph I think is a wonderful example of a steward. He was enslaved But he was elevated from being a mere slave to being Potiphar's steward, so it's not every slave that is a steward everything Potiphar had except for his wife was put under Joseph's control and Joseph related to it, it says in the text, as if it was his own. It says it right there in the text. So he handled Potiphar's estate for Potiphar's benefit. So it belongs to Potiphar, but he handles it as if it was his own. So even though he's truly poor, he has the enjoyment of all kinds of things. Now let's apply that concept of poverty to kingdom living right now. And that's Roman numeral two. And I think the first thing that we've got to be convinced of is that Being in the kingdom is not an illusion. It's not just a theory. It's not just a concept that we have in our head. It's not an already, not yet. Okay. Christ has given us, he doesn't say here, blessed are the poor, because in the future, they're going to get the kingdom. And we can understand that. But he says, blessed are the poor for theirs is present tense, the kingdom of heaven. So when we pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, what we're praying is that there would be an extension of more and more poor spirited people whom God could trust with the kingdom resources. It's an invasion of planet earth with the kingdom of heaven. So just as Joseph was truly in Potiphar's house, we are truly in the kingdom of heaven. Just as Joseph truly had the enjoyment, the food, the clothing, all of the enjoyment of Potiphar's things, God delights in blessing his people with kingdom blessings. Just as truly as everything Potiphar did, I mean Joseph did, he did for the advancement of Potiphar's house, everything we do and have needs to be for the advancement of Christ's kingdom. We need to be thinking that way if we are poor in spirit. Now, if you don't think that you're in a kingdom, you're not going to have the faith to claim certain actions. And I think this is one of the reasons why dispensationalists don't have long-term strategies. They don't think they're going to be around very much longer. They don't engage very often in social action. And their excuse is, why polish brass on a sinking ship? But if the ship is not sinking, it's going to affect their actions, right? So let me just give you a few scriptures. Do we presently have kingdom blessings? And I would say, absolutely, yes. Paul says, all things are yours. 1 Corinthians 3.21. If you need it as a steward, ask for it. You can claim it. All things are yours. But if you cease being a steward, nothing is yours. God told the Corinthians, and God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you always, having all sufficiency in all things, not just intangible things, in all things, may have an abundance for every good work. Now may he who supply seed to the sower and bread for food supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness while you are enriched in everything. And in context, he's talking about money. Okay. That's the context. You can read it. Second Corinthians nine, eight through 11. If we're lousy stewards, well, the kingdom is going to be hurt because we are supposed to be stewards of the kingdom. But if we're good stewards, then the kingdom will be advanced. If we're ignorant of the enormous assets of the kingdom for which we're stewards, we cannot possibly take our stewardship seriously. And so Ephesians 1 tells us not only that Jesus Christ has been exalted to sit on His throne at the right hand of the Father, but it says we're seated with Him. We have authority with him. Ephesians 1.3 says we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So we got a spiritual bank up there that we could be writing checks on. That's what he is basically saying. We possess it now. Now what about responsibilities? Do we presently have kingdom responsibilities? And we have to say absolutely yes. Here's the kinds of questions we need to ask. How does God expect our children to fit into God's kingdom, even while they're growing up. We need to ask that because Galatians 4.2 calls you parents stewards. You are stewards, not owners of your children. They belong to God. You're stewards of them. In 1 Corinthians 4.1, it calls us pastors here. It calls us stewards of the word of God. And we are accountable to God for how we handle this word. And so if fear drives me so that I do not preach to you something that you need to hear, God says you're an unfaithful steward. God could easily take me out of my stewardship trust. God says that we need to be stewards of his household. Titus 1.7, 1 Peter 4.10 says every believer is a steward of gifts and talents that God has given. And so the other passages talk about being stewards of our money, of our houses, everything we own, and the Gospels explicitly tie it to the kingdom. But there's not only the reality that Christ is on His throne, He sent His Spirit to empower us, and He is willing to give us all of the resources that we need, but point B warns us that our power and our authority rests in realizing our helplessness. You've got to hold those two together because God will not entrust His power to people who insist on being owners rather than stewards. He won't even entrust His power to people who insist on being pennies poor, partly poor and partly owners. He says, no, you've got to be poor in spirit 100%. Christ said, without me, you can do nothing. And when they tried, they fell flat on their face. So let's just take a look at Joseph. Joseph was truly a steward. But he was falsely accused. So this was not the reality, but let's see what happens through the accusation. He was accused by Potiphar's wife of abandoning his stewardship, basically. He was acting like an owner. He was acting as if he was Potiphar. And what happened? Well, he lost his power. God takes away our power the moment our attitude toward poverty changes. So true power comes through the realization we're poor and everything we have comes through his grace. I think of Peter. Peter was walking on the water. He saw Jesus do it and he knew if Jesus commands him, he's going to be able to do it. So he gets out of the boat because his eyes are fixed on Christ. He's able to walk on the water. He does the impossible. But then his focus begins to change and he looks at the waves and he looks at his own inadequacies and he begins to sink. And let me tell you something, the church of Jesus Christ will either sink or it will walk based on whether it thinks its resources lie in itself or its resources lie in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ told Paul, my strength is made perfect in weakness. Power comes through the realization of our weakness, but our flesh doesn't like that. We want to be in control. It just feels too dangerous to be weak, you know, to be totally dependent on somebody else. It's just hard for us to take. Power comes through the realization of our weakness, and so this beatitude is absolutely critical. You cannot skip this rung and say, OK, I don't like that rung. I'm going to go to the other beatitudes. No, without this beatitudes, none of the other beatitudes work. It's the absolute essential first step. Now, the trouble is this is the exact opposite of the way the world thinks, and the world has brainwashed the church. Let me just give you one example. There are many examples could be given. Self-esteem movement. Started in the world and everything that the world thinks is wise the church thinks is wise So let's just come on into the church and that the self-esteem movement says before you can be adequate You need to think highly of yourself. You need to look in the mirror and say Phil you're a great person you ought to love yourself because you know, you're loved by God and God would not love something that's junk. You must have something great in you. Jesus says the exact opposite and He says, you ought to look in the mirror and say, Phil, you are a poor beggar. There is nothing you can contribute to God's kingdom. Without me, you can do nothing. But praise God, you can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, right? So you're looking to the Lord. That's what the ptokos poor must do. It's not self-esteem. It's Christ's esteem that will give you incredible confidence. Now, another implication of this passage is that true wealth does not consist in possession of things. Now this may almost seem like a contradiction to what I've been talking about earlier because I've said that being poor in spirit has nothing to do with your material status outwardly and I still affirm that. This is not a contradiction. What I'm saying here is being poor financially does not take you far enough does not go far enough the poor man may still covered every bit as much as a rich man does but when you are spiritually poor what happens is you've given up being a possessor, you're now a steward, and you're relinquishing your right to those possessions. You're saying, Lord, they belong to you. As long as you keep them in my hands, I'm going to treat them faithfully. If you want to take them away, that is fine. So it doesn't mean you lose your possessions necessarily, but it means now you're treating them as a steward, you're treating them as God's property. And so the attitude is telling us of the blessedness of owning nothing. And this can be applied to everything. Let's just use Abraham as an example. Abraham, his ultimate test of whether he was poor in spirit was whether he was willing to give up Isaac. This was an incredible test for Abraham. In fact, the scripture says God was testing Abraham to see if he had the loyalty of heart. Now, what would you have done in Abraham's shoes? Would you have put Isaac on the throne of your heart and clung on to him? Say, Lord, you can take everything. You cannot take Isaac. This is my cherished possession. Abraham did not do that because he knew as a steward, Isaac was not his to possess. Now, he had the enjoyment of Isaac for many years, but he was willing to give Isaac up to the Lord. And you know what happened? God gave Isaac back to him. And this is so frequently the way God relates in our lives. Sometimes He'll give integrity checks where He'll permanently remove something. But more often than not, when we lose our life, we gain it. When we give up all, He gives back the very same things. In fact, I didn't have this in my notes, but let me just read to you from Mark chapter 10, where the disciples say that they're going to give up everything for Him. And Jesus said, Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one This is an absolute promise you can bank on. There is no one who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake and the Gospels, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time. You're not just waiting to heaven. Now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecution, so it's not all going to be hunky-dory, and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first. He's saying when you put yourself first, you're in charge, you're not a steward, you're an owner now. He says, I'm just going to put you last. I'm not going to prosper and bless the things that you're doing. But when you put yourself last, you say, I'm a steward, Lord, whatever you want, I want to relate to my wife as you want me to relate to my wife. She's no longer my property. She belongs to you. Then God says, OK, here's how I want you to relate to your wife, my property. And God says, you're going to enjoy over time your wife 100 times more than you have enjoyed her before. He's going to bless you in that way. So back to our passage here. Abraham was poor in spirit. And yet it's important to realize he still had the enjoyment of flocks and camels and herds and goods of every form. So his poverty was not the absence of things, but it was the refusal to be governed by things. Does that make sense? There's a big distinction between those two. Matthew 6 does not say you cannot use mammon or riches. It says you cannot serve mammon and still be serving God. That's the distinction. Psalm 62.10 says, if riches increase, do not set your heart on them. Luke 12.15, a man's life does not consist in the abundance of things which he possesses. Now the fourth way in which we develop an awareness of kingdom living is through surrender. True liberty comes when you totally surrender your life to God. This was one of the reasons why Nietzsche absolutely hated the Beatitudes and hated the Sermon on the Mount. He was a philosopher, and commenting on that, he said that Christianity was deficient because of its emphasis on kindness, love, humility, meekness, and forgiveness. He said a successful person had to show power, initiative, strength, and even arrogance. One of his disciples was Adolf Hitler, who once said, love is weak, hate is strong. But what Jesus Christ said is, the Hitlers of this world who try to live by the sword will die by the sword and they're going to end up losing their souls in hell. Whereas Christians who seek by God's grace to live by love will inherit the kingdom and find fulfillment and happiness. Now let's quickly look at three ways we can cultivate the poverty of spirit. And if you turn to Matthew 7, You're going to see these three ways in the section on the Sermon on the Mount where he gives the exposition. Remember last week we saw the Beatitudes are the outline, and then the Sermon on the Mount gives an exposition in reverse order. So if you turn to Matthew 7, 7 through 12, you'll see these three steps. And the first step is to constantly remind yourself, because we get fooled, constantly remind yourself of God's evaluation of you. now his evaluation is twofold and in Matthew 5.3 he said it's you're poor and you have a kingdom here he says you need to pray you're needy and you have a generous father okay that's basically the two things first side you're poor you're needy you need to ask Second side, you've got a kingdom, you've got a generous father, basically saying the same thing. So if you focus exclusively on one or on the other, you're going to end up getting imbalanced in your Christian life. If you focus exclusively on the things, the kingdom, the power, all of these things God loves to give to you, it'd be very easy for you to become proud, self-sufficient, and really end up messing up the whole works. If you focus only on the fact that you are poor, you could end up saying, I can't do anything. Having a false humility or even a kind of an attitude that says, Lord, I just can't do your calling. I'm sorry. It's just too hard for me to do. You got to hold both of those things together. So when you see yourself as poor and having a kingdom, as needy and having a generous father, then you can say, without Christ, I can do nothing. Praise God, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Okay, both of those are going to be true in your life. Now let's go ahead and let's read this, Matthew 7, 7 through 11. This is showing how do you get poor in spirit? How do you claim these principles of the kingdom? Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds. And to him who knocks, it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?" And I love that phrase, how much more. God delights in blessing His people with the kingdom resources that we need. So accept God's estimate of yourselves, which is twofold. You're poor, but have a kingdom. You're needy. You have a generous father. Second way that you can cultivate a constant awareness that you are poor in spirit is to pray. In fact, that's the bulk of Christ's exposition here. And in Matthew 5.3, it's already been anticipated by the word patokos because you could translate a patokos as a beggar. What does a beggar do? He begs, right? A beggar asks, he prays, right, basically. And here it's made very, very explicit. You will never learn how to be dependent upon God if you are prayerless. E.M. Bounds, who's written some fabulous books on prayer, said, praying is humbling work. It abases the intellect and pride, crucifies vainglory, and signs our spiritual bankruptcy. And all of these are hard for flesh and blood to bear. In other words, Bounds is saying that prayer flows from a poor heart, but it also reinforces our sense of the poverty that we have. Okay? It's two ways. We can't pray adequately if we don't already have poverty of spirit, so God has to sovereignly give that. But as we exercise the poverty of spirit, we become more and more poor because prayer reinforces that sense of poverty. Now, let me read from J.C. Ryle. He spoke of both of those dimensions. He said, All the children of God on earth are alike in this respect. From the moment there is any life and reality about their religion, they pray. Just as the first sign of life in an infant when born into the world is the act of breathing, so the first act of men and women when they are born again is praying. Not praying is a clear proof that a man is not yet a true Christian. He cannot really feel his sins. He cannot love God. He cannot feel himself a debtor to Christ. He cannot long after holiness. He cannot desire heaven. He has yet to be born again. He has yet to be made a new creature. He may boast confidently of election, grace, faith, hope, and knowledge, and deceive ignorant people, but you may rest assured it is all vain talk if he does not pray." Wow! Are you poor in spirit? Do you pray? We need to evaluate ourselves on these things. Poverty of spirit and prayer go hand in hand, as Christ made so clear in this exposition. Now we saw last week, throughout our lives we're going to be growing in these Beatitudes, right? It's not going to be a great prayer warrior right off the bat, so don't be discouraged. But if you see no indication of grief over your prayerlessness, There is something serious going on in your life. It ought to at least grieve you and you need to at least in baby steps be saying, Lord, I want your spirit of prayer and supplication to be poured out upon me. Without prayer and fasting, it's extremely unlikely that you will live out the happiness that God intended for you. J.C. Ryle again, Bibles read without prayer, sermons heard without prayer. marriages contracted without prayer, journeys undertaken without prayer, residences chosen without prayer, friendships formed without prayer, the daily act of private prayer itself hurried over or gone through without heart. These are the kind of downward steps by which many a Christian descends to a condition of spiritual palsy. Palsy means you can't move. Or reaches the point where God allows him to have a tremendous fall. You may be very sure Men fall in private long before they fall in public. They are backsliders on their knees long before they backslide openly in the eyes of the world. If you are to be stewards of the kingdom blessings that God wants you to have, if you're to experience the tremendous blessing of owning nothing, you must be men and women of prayer. The third thing that will nurture a poverty of spirit is given in Matthew 7, 12. And remember, this is the last verse of his exposition. The beatitude he says therefore So there's a connection with what he's talked about before therefore whatever you want men to do to you Do also to them for this is the law and the prophets There's nothing like trying to serve others to make you realize Lord I need your indwelling presence if I'm going to serve these people properly and There's nothing like trying to love a very unlovable person to drive you to your knees and say, Lord, I want you to love this person through me. I can't do it. I am poor in spirit. And so it drives you to the Lord. There's nothing like trying to be generous with a person who has been not generous at all with you for you to just shake your head at the response of your heart and say, Lord, help me to love. Help me to love. Help me to be generous. I need your grace flowing through the more you live out the scriptures, the more you're going to realize how poor in spirit you are and how moment by moment we must walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. We cannot do it on our own. There may be other ways. that you can develop and nurture this poverty of spirit. But these are the three ways Jesus has emphasized, and I think we need to emphasize them as well. So first off, we need to remind ourselves of God's estimate of us. We're poor, but have a kingdom. We are needy, but we have a generous Father. Secondly, we need to remind ourselves we need to pray. Without prayer, it's just not going to happen. Thirdly, we need to remind ourselves to be committed to selfless service. And as God deepens your poverty of spirit, may he also deepen your sense of fulfillment and deepen the incredible power and blessings that he is willing to pour out into your lives. Amen. Father, I thank you for this, your word and your promise that you love to bestow a kingdom upon those who are beggars. Father, help us to be poor in spirit. Help us to quit clinging to the things that are our securities, the things that make us feel like we can still have some kind of control in our lives. And help us to be giving ourselves an unconditional surrender to You, no matter what life may look like. Father, help us, help us to even pray as we ought. to act as we are. You are the God who has promised that you work in us both to will and to do of your good pleasure. Sometimes our hearts are not even willing. And Father, it grieves us that they're not willing. But as poor people, we come and say, Father, change our wills. Even give to us wills and actions that flow from your cross and from your throne. We love you, we bless you, and it is our desire to hunger after you all of our days. And so we lift up our spirits as beggars before you, knowing nothing into my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I claim. In Jesus' name, amen.