Blessed are the poor in spirit.

As we look through the Sermon on the Mount, don't get me wrong-I do believe in personal holiness. We should seek to stay free from personal sins and live holy in that way. What you'll find as we look at the Sermon on the Mount is that this is not the only way Jesus defined the goal of the Christian life. In fact, I would dare say it wasn't even the primary way He defined it.

We've already took a (very) brief look at the Old Testament prophets that were the precursors to Jesus' teachings on the Kingdom of God. What we saw there was that their primary concern-and thus, God's primary concern-was for the Israelites (God's original "kingdom") to love mercy and justice and care for people who couldn't care for themselves. This, along with staying away from idol worship were the most egregious sins. Also, looking through the Old Testament, we see that God cared very little for the religious ritual of the Israelites. This is from Isaiah 1:

¹¹ "The multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?" says the LORD.
"I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.

¹² When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
this trampling of my courts?

¹³ Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your evil assemblies.

Later in the chapter, Isaiah mentions the sins of Israel:

Take your evil deeds
out of my sight!
Stop doing wrong,

¹⁷ learn to do right!
Seek justice,
encourage the oppressed.
Defend the cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow.

Given this background, it should come as little surprise that some of Jesus' first recorded teachings had to do with this very thing. When a large part of the message of the prophets was to take care of the "throw away" people, we shouldn't be shocked that Jesus leads with the same thing when proclaiming the Kingdom of God.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus comes proclaiming that what Israel failed to do, the Kingdom of God would accomplish. There is a great deal of inequity in life. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Israel was constantly reminded this isn't the way things should be. Maybe it's how things are with the "pagan," but it was not supposed to be that way with Israel-God's Kingdom.

So Jesus comes proclaiming the Kingdom of God in the beatitudes. "Blessed are the poor in spirit." This means more than just the "humble." It means those who society has forgotten--the unimportant people, the poor (both financially and within society). The are "blessed" because the Kingdom is theirs.

During this time, there were many laws keeping the "poor in spirit" from becoming members of society. This is illustrated by all the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament. If you were a leper, or were "unclean" in some way, you couldn't come worship at the temple. You had to do some ritual washing and wait a prescribed period of time before you would be acceptable to God. Some people because of certain incurable diseases could never be "acceptable" to God. Of course, this created a lower class of citizen.

When Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom as belonging to the poor in spirit, He turned the whole system on its head. The Kingdom is available to everyone--the lowest first and the greatest last.

Can you imagine what you would have felt, if you had heard Jesus and you were perpetually unclean? Freedom! Joy! Unbelief. How would you have felt if you were the religious establishment? Annoyed, angry, frustrated, skeptical. No wonder Jesus was accused of overturning the whole religious system. That's exactly what He was doing.

Today, in our effort to make the Beatitudes more palatable, we usually interpret this that humble people will inherit the Kingdom. The reality, what Jesus was saying was much more revolutionary than that. So the question for us is, "What do we do about it?" Does the church operate as if the Kingdom belongs to the "poor in spirit?" I think too often we play favorites and cater to the middle class, the rich, the dynamic and the talented. Where does your church reflect the teaching of Jesus that the Kingdom belongs to the forgotten people? How does your life reflect the Kingdom's attitude toward the poor in spirit?

Sermon on the Mount

I have lately (the past year) been working through the Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew 5ff and Luke 6ff) Many of you know that best way I know to get a passage of scripture or an idea down into my soul is to let it percolate in my mind and my life for a while. When I do this, I study every angle and idea associated with it. As I do and as I figure out how to incorporate it into my life, that's where it takes up residence in me and the Word becomes a part of me.

I preached on this passage a few months ago (you can listen to it here), but there's only so much you can do in 30 minutes. I wanted to take the time to dissect it a little more closely.

I've always been drawn to the sermon on the mount, particularly the Beatitudes. For some reason, they seem to resonate with me and I'm not sure why. In many ways, the Beatitudes are speaking to people who are very much unlike me. I've lived a pretty charmed life for the most part-great family, I couldn't ask for a better wife, my kids are a good as I could expect being raised by me, I've never been in the hospital and I've only broken one bone (and I'm not even sure about that!)

The people Jesus is speaking to and about here are very much unlike me. I can see how the Beatitudes could be "good news" to them, but what about me? What do the beatitudes have to do with me? Isn't that the question that's in the foremost of every individualistic Christian's mind?

I've always been told that when we read the Beatitudes that we should read it that Jesus was saying this should "be our attitude." As I read this section it's hard for me to believe this is what Jesus was intending. Is Jesus really saying our attitude should be "poor in Spirit" (which I don't think translates as simply "humble." Are we supposed to be "meek" or should our attitude always be that of "mourning?" I don't think that was how Jesus lived life, so apparently that's not the case.

I do think the key here is in the blesseds. Remember that the single greatest message of Jesus was the "Kingdom." The counter-cultural, counter-religious, God-centered Kingdom of Heaven. I believe we need to read the beatitudes in light of the Kingdom. The idea of the Kingdom of God goes way back into the Old Testament and is especially poignant in the prophets. For a more in-depth discussion of this, you can listen to this podcast from my "Exploring the Kingdom" class.

Israel saw themselves as God's chosen people or in essence, the "kingdom of God." Of course, they weren't content with God as their King, so they asked for a human king to rule over them. God reluctantly agreed, but the Israelite kings were not always cooperative with God's plan and led the nation astray. Because of this, God sent prophets to Israel to warn them of the consequences of going astray.

So we see passages like Isaiah 10, where the prophet pronounces judgment on the nation of Israel and warns them that if they don't change the way they do things, God will judge them (by sending another nation to conquer them). Of course, this would be devastating for Israel's self-image. After all, if they are really "God's Kingdom" He would never send a pagan nation to take them over. Surely God would do everything to protect them. But the prophets told otherwise. Israel didn't want to hear it, didn't listen to them, and subsequently were dragged off to Assyria.

However, in the middle of each warning from the prophet, there was always hope. So we see in Isaiah 11, for instance that Isaiah promises a "shoot from the stump of Jesse." Of course, David was the son of Jesse so Isaiah is saying that God promises to bring about someone from the line of David (and Jesse) to be the one who sets things right again. That's why Matthew goes to such great lengths to trace the lineage of Jesus back through Jesse. Matthew wanted to make sure the Jews knew that Jesus fit the image of the Messiah (even though He wasn't what most Jews expected of the Messiah).

In the next post, I'll get into the actual Beatitudes, but here let me just point this out, because I think it's instructive for us and should change the way we look at righteousness and salvation. In the evangelical church today, we often see righteousness as this personal holiness thing. We don't do certain sins--like drinking, or swearing, or lying, or looking at porn, we go to church and read our Bible, and believe the right things--usually that "Jesus died on the cross for my sins," and whatever other pet doctrine we have. While there is an element of truth to these things, they are not ultimately or completely what the prophets or Jesus defined as righteousness.

Go back to Isaiah 10 for instance (this is only one example, but I guarantee that if you look though any of the prophets, you'll see these same themes running very strongly through them). What does Isaiah 10 mention are the sins of Israel?

• Making oppressive laws
  
• Depriving the poor of their rights
• Making widows their prey
• Robbing orphans

The list goes on in other places, but notice God's concern for the powerless of society and His love for mercy, justice and love. Because of a lack of these things, Israel deserves to be destroyed. It's on this canvas that Jesus paints the Sermon on the Mount. Take a look at Matthew 5 and Luke 6 and start to look at them through this lens. We'll continue the discussion next time.