The Only Way to Happiness: Be Poor in Spirit
Matthew 5:3
I want you to open your Bible tonight to Matthew chapter 5, Matthew chapter 5. As I mentioned to you, I have recently been able to release a book called The Only Way to Happiness and it's a book basically on the Beatitudes. Jesus presents for us in Matthew chapter 5 the most profound and at the same time paradoxical teaching on true happiness. But it's not just a subject among many, it's foundational to all His teaching and it's foundational to entrance into His kingdom. God wants us happy. Psalm 144:15 says, "Happy is that people whose God is the Lord." God wants our lives filled with joy. God wants to bless us. He wants us to experience bliss, a deep inner happiness, not produced and not affected by emotion or by changing circumstance, a kind of blessedness and a kind of joy, a kind of bliss, a kind of happiness that is not subject to outside forces but only inside ones produced by God in the heart.
And this should be the character of a believer...blessedness, happiness, joy. This is what His kingdom promises us and the Beatitude says it so magnificently and so pointedly. The Lord wants people in His kingdom to enjoy real happiness. And that's the subject of the Beatitudes and that's the subject of the Sermon on the Mount which the Beatitudes begin. Of course, the sermon runs all through chapter 7 to the very end. But Jesus starts with these Beatitudes, they're called. Each one begins with the word "blessed" which is just another word for happiness. Jesus was talking primarily to His disciples, you'll remember. His disciples came to Him it says in verse 1, but also beyond them, they were the inner circle, the multitude could hear what He was saying as well. Everybody needs to hear about happiness, not just those who already know the Lord but everyone. Everyone needs to hear that God wants to bring to us true happiness, true blessedness.
And the question is...how do you find that? And the Beatitudes indicate to us that it really is opposite what the world would assume. Blessed are the poor...the world would say blessed are the rich. Blessed are those who mourn...the world would say blessed are those who laugh. Blessed are the gentle, or the meek...the world would say blessed are the proud and the confident. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst...the world would say blessed are those who don't hunger and don't thirst cause they have everything.
We get shaped by the world, even those of us who are in the kingdom. And our attitudes become shaped by the world. The world's media, newspapers, books, magazines, television, radio, music, movies, you name it, literally, relentlessly sells us the world's perspective and in the end corrupts our otherwise pure thinking. This is not just inimitable to our day. There were people in Israel, including the disciples, who sought to truly understand God and the kingdom. But their thinking was also corrupted by the reigning philosophy of their day which was perpetrated by religious leaders, in those days Pharisees and Sadducees. Jesus had to clear away all the lies and all the error and get right back to the core of true happiness.
True happiness is found, by the way, only by entrance into His kingdom. What does that mean? That simply means only by coming...becoming a subject of His, only by acknowledging Him as King coming into His sphere of life, coming under His rule, coming under His authority, coming under His blessing. That's the only place true happiness occurs. So any offering of happiness is at the same time a call to the kingdom. When Jesus said, "You'll be happy if you do this...You'll be happy if you do this," He was really saying, "This is how you enter the kingdom and there is where you find the happiness."
So, you have here not only teaching about how to be happy, but teaching about how to enter the kingdom because they're the same thing. Entering the kingdom is where happiness is found. And outside the kingdom there is no lasting happiness. The word "blessedness" has an opposite, the word "blessing" has an opposite...cursedness, cursing. In fact, in the Greek it's the word ouai which is "woe" in English. And woe is not a wish regarding a coming condition. Woe is not a description of a present condition. Woe is a truth pronounced on people and it means they're cursed. And the word "blessedness" is the opposite. Blessing, makarios, blessedness is a word pronounced on people, pronounced on them as recipients of all the goodness of God which produces a condition of happiness.
The kingdom is a place for God to pour out blessing. Ephesians 1 verse 3, "We have been blessed with...what?...all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus." When we came into the kingdom, we began to be blessed. In Ephesians chapter 2 it tells us that that blessing will go on forever because it says in the ages to come He will show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. He started blessing us the day we entered into the kingdom. He started providing all the things to make us truly happy and that will go on forever and ever in this life and the life to come. God offers us salvation, from our perspective, to bring to us true happiness, contentment, bliss, joy, gladness. That's what God offers. And the path, or the pattern to receive that blessing and to enter the kingdom is outlined for us in these incredible Beatitudes. It starts with being poor in spirit, mourning, and being meek and hungering and thirst...thirsting for righteousness. It manifests itself in an attitude of mercy, purity, and peacemaking and it causes the world to react to us with reviling and persecution and false accusation. But in the end, it transforms us in verse 13 into salt and verse 14 through 16 into light. This is the flow of the Beatitudes.
The first step in entering the kingdom, the first step to happiness is being poor in spirit, realizing your spiritual poverty. The second one is mourning over it. The third one is humbly falling down before the glory of God in your condition. The fourth one is then pleading for a righteousness which you don't have and hunger for. That begins then to manifest itself in an attitude of mercy toward others, a pursuit of purity and peacemaking in your own life, and creates hostility in the world. That's the flow of the Beatitudes.
We want to start at the beginning because this is tremendously important information, tremendously important truth who are outside the kingdom as well as for those who are inside the kingdom. Let's take the first beatitude tonight in verse 3, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Now we want to answer a few questions that will be posed and that will take us through the meaning of the beatitude. Question number one, why does Christ begin with this? I mean, this is the first recorded sermon of Jesus. This is how He inaugurates His unfolding teaching throughout the New Testament. It begins with these first things, and this first statement, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." This is the first real instruction Jesus gave in the New Testament, the first gospel, the gospel of Matthew, first recorded sermon of Jesus, first statement, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." And it's fair to ask...why does He start here? It must be significant, it's the first thing said, first thing recorded in terms of actual preaching from Jesus. Why does He begin with this? Because it is the fundamental characteristic of the Christian. It is the fundamental characteristic of the citizen of the kingdom of heaven. All other characteristics flow from this one. This is where everything starts. This is where happiness begins. This is where entrance into the kingdom begins. Jesus begins by saying...There's a mountain you have to scale, there are heights you have to climb, but the first thing you must realize is that you are outside the kingdom of God and you can't get there on your own. The mountain is too high, the heights are too great, you can't do it. And you have to start with that realization. You cannot enter My kingdom, you cannot be happy until you realize your bankruptcy, your poverty.
This is very important stuff to the Jews who are very proud about their religious achievements, very proud about their ceremonial accomplishments, very proud about the sacrifices they had offered to God, very proud about their zeal for the law, very proud about their circumcision, very proud about their identification with the covenant people Israel, very proud about their self-righteousness. They were self-confident. They were self-important. And Jesus says if you're going to enter the kingdom and find true happiness, you've got to recognize that you have absolutely nothing, you are bankrupt. That's where it all begins. Poverty of spirit is the foundation of all other graces. Poverty of spirit is where everything starts. You may as well expect fruit to grow without a tree as the other graces to grow without this one. Nothing happens until this happens. As long as a person is not poor in spirit, that person is not capable of happiness in the sense that God offers it. That person is not capable of entering the kingdom. As long as I'm clutching my own self-importance and my own self-righteousness and my own accomplishments and my own religiosity and my own morality and as long as I'm holding on to this as if it somehow gained me access to God, as long as my hand is full of that dirt, it can never receive the gold of God's grace. Happiness is only for those who are unworthy.
Isaiah said it of Christ and Christ reiterated it. Isaiah 61:1, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me." Jesus repeated it in Luke's gospel. "He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted." Everything begins with brokenheartedness. Until someone is poor in spirit, Christ is never seen for what He really is. He's never precious. Before you can see how bankrupt you are, you can't understand how valuable Christ is. You can never see His matchless worth until you understand the full extent of your own worthlessness. He who sees himself clothed in filthy rags can appreciate the robe of righteousness that Christ breaks. Until you're poor, you can't be rich. Until you're a fool, you can't become wise. Until you lose your life, you can't save it. Jesus often said such paradoxical things.
And why is this first? Because inevitably what prevents people from entering into the kingdom is pride. And at the very start pride must be broken. Proverbs 16:5 says, "Cursed are the proud." These things God hates, a proud heart...at the top of the list.
Now pride doesn't necessarily mean that you parade your money. It doesn't necessarily mean you parade your goods and your possessions and etc. Pride means you put confidence in your personal achievement, personal morality, personal religion, personal goodness. You are unwilling to acknowledge the fact that the best that you can do is filthy rags. The only way then to come into God's kingdom, the only way to come to blessing, the only way to be genuinely happy, truly happy both in time and eternity is to confess your own unworthiness, your own utter inability to please God, your own incapacity to meet God's standard.
It was the apostle Paul who went through this. He said when I was a Jew and I was living out my Judaism and putting my trust in it, he said, as touching the law I was blameless. When it came to my external maintaining of God's law, I was blameless. Nobody could have identified any flaw in my ceremonial law keeping. But he also said, we have no confidence in the flesh, no confidence in the flesh. At...at the first glance of any Pharisaical-law-keeping Jew, Paul looked like a paragon of religious virtue. Paul says it was all manure, Philippians 3, it was all dung, he says, it was all waste, refuse. That's what Jesus is talking about. He's talking about looking at the best you are and understanding that it's waste, dung, manure.
The church at Laodicea was deceived. Revelation 3:17 they said, "I am rich and have need of nothing." That will keep you out of the kingdom for sure. How many such fools are there all the time throughout all history who don't see the reality at all? They're like the little maid Seneca wrote about who was born blind but wouldn't believe it. The world, she said, is dark but I am not blind. Many perish in such a foolish disdain for reality.
So, Jesus begins here because everything begins here. You will never enter the kingdom, you will never experience true happiness until there is a deep recognition of spiritual bankruptcy...not just in the worst things in your life, but in the best. That as Isaiah said it, "Your righteousness is like filthy rags." "Your blamelessness as touching the law...Philippians 3...is manure." Your morality is worthless. It all begins there. And that's why He begins there. That is to say, the only people who enter the kingdom, the only people who experience God's blessing are people who come to a point of recognition of utter spiritual bankruptcy.
Now let's go in to that and ask a second question. Specifically, what does Jesus mean "blessed are the poor in spirit"? What is He saying in specific? Or to put it another way, what kind of poverty is He talking about?
Well, let me say, first of all, that He's not talking about material poverty. And there are a lot of people who want to sort of make the Sermon on the Mount into a nice little warm and fuzzy ethical standard and they want to quote it, "Blessed are the poor." And they want to put some virtue alongside poverty. In fact, Luke 6:20 says, "Blessed are the poor." Here in Matthew, of course, we indicate what kind of poverty we're talking about. But there are plenty of people who think that poverty in itself, that is the absence of material possessions and absence of money, is somehow in itself a virtue. That's not what our Lord is talking about. If it was, then it would be unchristian to alleviate somebody's burden, wouldn't it? It would be unchristian to give money to the poor. And the Bible over and over and over again tells us to give money to the poor, give food to the poor, meet the needs of those who are without. If somehow poverty in itself was a virtue, we would be taking them from virtue to vice. So we would be better off to leave the starving people starving and let the war-ravaged refugees continue in their abject distress, leave the orphans alone, shut all the hospitals, end all the mission efforts if spiritual blessedness somehow was associated with material poverty...it is not.
Today the sort of new gospel is that spiritual blessing is associated with wealth. The wealthy you are today, the more evidence supposedly you give of having entered in to the prosperity of the gospel.
We're not talking about material things at all here. Being poor or being rich has nothing to do with it. There were many poor people and still are who come into the kingdom. And there are a few rich, not many but a few. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea were wealthy men, as apparently was Philemon. As I said, 1 Corinthians 1:26 says there are not many but there are some. David, you'll remember, in Psalm 37 testified that in all his years he had never seen the righteous forsaken, had never seen them begging for bread. In Paul's life there were times of hunger, there were times of thirst and there were times when he had enough. He knew how to be abased and how to abound, he told the Philippians. There was never any begging, neither was there with the Lord. Some people think Jesus was the poorest of the poor. He wasn't. Jesus grew up in a middle class home, maybe even better than a middle class home. His father had his own business. He was a carpenter or a builder, also could have been a mason building houses and all things like that. Jesus grew up learning a trade. The only reason that Jesus didn't earn a living was because He became an itinerant minister, an itinerant preacher and traveling around was supported by the donations of those who believed in His ministry. But they had money. They had enough money to give away some. You remember Judas was holding the bag and it was kept not only for the needs of the disciples as they traveled but also a little extra to give to the poor as necessary. The Lord never begged, the Twelve never begged, Paul never begged.
And they were accused, the disciples were, of being unlearned. They were accused of being ignorant. They were accused of being mad. They were accused of turning the world upside down. But nobody ever accused them of begging. They were not somehow virtuous because they were living in a state of poverty.
So what is this poor in spirit? It is the Greek term ptochos and it comes from the verb ptosso. Ptochos means to cower and cringe like a beggar. It has the idea of shrinking from something or someone. It carries the classic idea of begging out of shame. Not talking about a con-man here, you're not talking about somebody who's figured out how to get wealthy by falsely being identified as a beggar. You're talking about a real cowering, cringing, shrinking person, shamed to have to beg but having no choice. Classic Greek describes this ptochos as one who is reduced to beggary, who crouches, unwilling to lift his eyes, pleading alms and moving about in wretched conditions, says one lexicon. It's a beggar, somebody with no wealth, no influence, no position, no honor, no respect, in some cases possessing nothing but the ragged clothes they wear, a real beggar here.
There's another word translated "poor" in the New Testament, penes. It's used in 2 Corinthians 9:9. That's a different kind of poverty. And the Greek makes these distinctions. That's poverty that demands diligent daily labor to earn a living. That's somebody who doesn't have a stockpile, doesn't have a savings account, has to work every day just to eat every day. Penes is being so poor you have to work hard every day to sustain your life. Ptochos is being so poor and so destitute and so unskilled, your poverty is so deep and you are so unable that all you can do is beg. You don't have the capability to work. You don't have the skill to work. So you're totally dependent on the gifts of others, everything comes to you from an outside source, that's ptochos. You have no resource, no talent, no skill, no craft, no trade, nothing. Typically in the ancient world it would so humiliate a man to be a beggar that he would crouch, cover his face with a garment, holding out his hand, ashamed to let even the giver know his identity. That's the word Jesus used.
You want to enter His kingdom? That's where you start. This is the true diagnosis of man. And it's only when you recognize it that you become a candidate for entrance into God's kingdom of happiness. When you see yourself as empty, poor, helpless, bankrupt, you can't contribute one single solitary thing to your salvation, you can't give God anything that in any way qualifies you for any blessing from Him, you are ptochos, not penes. You need mercy. You need grace from an outside source, from God Himself because you can bring nothing, you are destitute, beggarly, helplessly dependent.
What is Jesus saying then? Happy are the destitute, happy are the beggarly, happy are the hopelessly dependent, happy are the people who have nothing and can earn nothing. Let me tell you, folks, that's shocking stuff because it just goes right against the grain of everything the world assumes to be true.
Now this poverty is further defined as poverty in spirit, it's not poverty with regard to money, material things. It's not poverty with regard to something external, it's poverty with regard to what is internal with reference to the spirit. In other words, they look inside and realize their state of spiritual bankruptcy. This is the first message Jesus wanted to give to sinners, recognize your condition of spiritual bankruptcy. And He gave it to people who thought they were spiritually rich. These Jews who thought they had attained salvation by their own self-righteousness.
Isaiah 66:2, Isaiah speaking for God says, "To this man will I look." What kind of man does God look to? "Even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembles at My Word." Somebody who recognizes his spiritual poverty and who shakes at the contemplation of the judgment of God and realizes his spiritual bankruptcy, realizes there's nothing to commend himself to God, realizes he's hopelessly under the wrath of God.
Psalm 34:18 puts it this way, "The Lord is near to those who are of a broken heart and saves such as be of a contrite spirit." Same thing. Who does He save? Those who know they're nothing. Those who are broken. Those who are devastated on the inside because they've come to grips with their condition in sin and depravity, their empty, poor, helpless, hopeless condition. Psalm 51:17 says it again, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise." Again it's that spiritual brokenness, that sense of spiritual bankruptcy and emptiness that draws the grace of God.
I love Isaiah 57:15, there are a number of places where this same emphasis is made, but maybe this