Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Matthew 5:3-4

Let’s pick up where we left off…  In Matthew 5:1 the crowd is there and Jesus has left and gone up on the mountain and He has sat down and His disciples have come up the mountain to and for Him and they sit at His feet.

Then we read in Matthew 5:2 that Jesus opened His mouth…

Let us recall that this word “opened” in this verse in the Greek is anoigó and it means to open, break a door, a gate. Metaphorically it means to give entrance to the soul. It means to furnish opportunity to do something, to open to one, to grant something asked for, to speak freely, to hold nothing back. It means one who recovers the power of speech to restore the faculty of hearing, to part the eyelids so as to see, to open the eyes of one’s mind, to unseal, to unroll.

Beloved, did you let that sink in?

Are you there? Have you separated yourself from the chaos and cries and demands of the crowd? Those that are there only because they want something from you to meet their own immediate needs. Those that will allow you to convince yourself that as long as you are meeting their needs and serving them that these good works are enough to deem you righteous and worthy of eternity?

Have you looked up from the hard work to realize that Jesus is no longer there with you? That He has pulled away. That He has separated Himself from the crowd and gone up where once again His voice can be heard. He knows that you are listening to the wrong voices and are caught up in the chaos. He has stepped away not to abandon you in your service, but to call you to Himself. He knows how very easy it is to get distracted and disjointed. He knows you need refocused.

There is more to righteousness than knowing the Law and there is more to righteousness than doing good deeds. There is more to being blessed than being healed and happy. As a matter of fact we will learn that healed and happy doesn’t even make the list.

And there is more to the kingdom of the Messiah than overtaking Rome.

I can almost guarantee that the disciples had repeatedly asked Jesus when the kingdom would come. When would He build His army and overthrow Herod and Rome? When would they be free of the taxes and subjugation of this Gentile rule and fully receive the blessing of Abraham?

The disciples had been asking and now Jesus would grant them what they asked. He would now speak freely to them. He would unseal and unroll truth before them that they just could not see. He would now attempt to open the eyes of their mind to understand…

Jesus opened His mouth and He said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

The disciples could probably look out over the crowd and see a lot of poor desperate people. They had poverty staring them in the face and screaming at them for help. They also had men, I am sure, standing proud, with robes held tight, at a distance so as not to be touched and made ceremonially unclean by certain peoples in the crowd.

But Jesus didn’t say blessed are the poor. No, He said “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”

The word “poor” in this verse in the Greek is ptóchos and it means deeply destitute, completely lacking resources, to be thoroughly frightened, to cower down or hide oneself for fear; hence, properly, one who slinks and crouches), often involving the idea of roving about in wretchedness. In classical Greek from Homer down it means reduced to beggary, begging, mendicant, asking alms. 

And this depth of poverty that Jesus says is blessed is that of the spirit.

You see a person can be utterly destitute of earthly possessions and even physical ability, yet still never recognize the poverty of their spirit just as easily as a rich religious man can be blinded to the depth of his spiritual destitution by his self-righteousness and earthly wealth. Jesus wanted to make sure the disciples caught this truth because the kingdom of God belongs to the poor in spirit alone.

The next blessing made by the great Teacher,”Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted” can be seen as a direct result of realizing the depravity of our spirit. Beloved if there is no mourning there has never truly been a realization of the poverty of our spirit. If there is no mourning there has indeed never been a moment of repentance.

Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance…

Matthew 3:5-8

Confession is nice, it might even make us feel better about ourselves. It might relieve us of our guilt for a time, but confession is not repentance.  No repentance. No entrance. The cry of Jesus is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand“

The word “mourn” in the Greek in this verse is pentheó and it means to properly, grieve over a death; (figuratively) to grieve over a personal hope (relationship) that dies, i.e. comes to divine closure. It refers to “manifested grief” –so severe it takes possession of a person and cannot be hid. 

Those that realize the poverty of their spirit cannot help but mourn because the thought that they in themselves might be able to please God comes to a divine closure. All personal hope in themselves dies and they realize they have no relationship with God and they realize it is there own fault. The disclosure of the magnitude of their sin and the truth that in no way do they lack the resources to attain salvation hits like a brick and there is nothing left but to mourn.

I remember the moment well.

First of all let me say that I remember the moment that I believed that Jesus was the Son of God. I was a child when I believed that I was a sinner and I believed that Jesus died on the cross for my sin and rose from the grave on the third day to never die again. I believed.

I also remember that in that belief, as I grew older, I could take Him or leave Him as He fit my need for the moment. I recall living like hell on Saturday and sitting in church on Sunday and feeling only a little discomfort over my actions, not enough to actually change them. Oh I hated getting caught. I hated the consequences that came with my actions. However, I could drown that easily enough.

Then eventually, finally, I began to carry a great enough guilt that I really tried to act right. In that really trying, I realized that I couldn’t. I just flat out couldn’t. It was at that moment that I realized that I was powerless. That I was bankrupt. That I was just flat out wretched and I truly began to mourn my condition. It was in this mourning that I picked up my Bible in desperation and asked God to please speak to me if He could forgive me… and He took me to Psalm 25… and I knew that He could… and He began drawing me in with His cords of love.

It was in my mourning that I was comforted.

And it was in my comfort that I cried out and begged God to never let me forget how I felt in my poverty and in my mourning because I never, NEVER, wanted to find myself that far away from Him ever again. I did not EVER again want to be seduced and deceived by the lies of Satan and find myself in the depths of that pit. Apart from mourning, real mourning, it’s easy to forget.

He has been faithful.

It is very easy for us to look at the Pharisees in Scripture and say, “Oh I am so glad I am not a Pharisee!” (Does this sound a little familiar? Maybe kind of like Luke 18:11) It’s very easy for us to get comfortable in our Christian bubble and forget that dead men have no power to not sin. It’s very easy to find ourselves standing with our robes tightly held, at a distance… forgetting where we came from… where we were when He saved a wretch like me.

But beloved, when we remember where we came from, then we stay crouched down… and when we stay crouched down we can be used by God to speak the truth of the gospel to others so that in His Light they too might be able to see the poverty of their own spirit and be able to mourn the depth of their own depravity so that the kingdom can also be theirs.

Precious one, do you mourn your sin and the sin of others or do you justify your own and look with disgust on the sins of others? Whether we be earthly poor, afflicted, and addicted or earthly rich, educated, and religious… apart from a beggar’s heart we will have no part of His kingdom.

Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written,

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Matthew 5:3-4

Blessed. In the Greek this word is makarios. As we went over  our small study of this word in our precept class one gentlemen shared this statement about the word makarios, “there is despair in the attempts to find its English equivalent for translation.” Ponder that. When Jesus said “Makarios…“, the word held so much power and meaning we don’t even have a word in our English language that can really correctly interpret it… “blessed” is the best we can do.

Then as we have a tendency to due with our English words, we find a way to use them into the point of the dilution of their meaning. They become common place and begin to be applied to things that really are not worthy of their original intent. We make words meant to describe great depth of meaning and significance into common ordinary words that end up holding no immediate significance.

We use the same word to describe our desire for ice cream as we do our devotion to our spouse. We use the same word to describe a roller coaster ride as we do the character of our God. We use the same word to describe our affection for spiders as we do the evils of this world. We make common the uncommon and therefore when we read the beatitudes in Matthew 5:1-10 we think how sweet, but we miss the point that as the words of Jesus enter our ears they should cause our mouths to drop open and our hearts to turn over within us.

First of all let me help you get a better picture of this day. In Matthew chapter 1 we are given the genealogy of Jesus. We see immediately that Matthew want us to see that Jesus was a legal heir to the throne in the direct line of David, both by birth through Mary (who was the son of David through his son Nathan, 2 Samuel 5:14) and by adoption through Joseph (who was the son of David through his son Solomon). Then we see that Matthew wants to make clear to us that Jesus was the Son of God, Immanuel God with us. Conceived not by flesh and blood, but by the Holy Spirit. Matthew begins his gospel by laying this foundation.

He also uses the first four chapters of this book to show how from the moment of the intent of His conception Jesus was fulfilling Scripture.  At least seven times we read, This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the LORD through the prophets… (Matthew 1:22, 2:5, 2:15, 2:17, 2:23, 3:3, 4:14). In chapter 3 we meet John the Baptist. John would be the one who be the forerunner to the Messiah. He would be the one who make ready the path of the LORD. He would be the one who cry out, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 

Beloved, do you realize that if you belong to Christ you too are supposed to be a John the Baptist? You too are supposed to be crying out into the wilderness of your world, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. You too are supposed to be making ready the way of the LORD and making His path straight?  You too are supposed to look and sound and act differently than the religious self-righteous and the lost secularist? Are you?

Now John had grown the crowd. John had made the way. Then Jesus stepped onto the stage. In chapter 3 we see Jesus come to John for baptism and in His baptism we read that all those watching that day heard God the Father confirm God the Son and saw God the Spirit descend upon Him like a dove.

We then read in chapter 4 that immediately after that Jesus is led into the wilderness to battle Satan in His flesh and blood for forty days and forty nights… and while he battled all of Jerusalem and Judea and the district of the Jordan was a buzz. The talk was scattering all around about the man who came down to the river to be baptized by John who declared Him the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world.

Sometime after Jesus battled in the wilderness John the Baptist was taken into custody… and Jesus picked up his cry, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. John had fulfilled his purpose. Beloved as do we. We can only lead someone to the Way… we can’t walk them down the path. Our job is too make the Way clear and the path straight, Jesus will do the rest.

In Matthew 4:17 Jesus begins to preach and in Matthew 4:18-22 He calls His first disciples. Now let us remember that the one’s that He calls had already met Him. Jesus didn’t walk by the Galilee that day and say, Alakazam! Follow Me, and these fishermen mindlessly got out of their boats and zombie walked after Him. No. We know from John’s gospel that some of these men had been following John the Baptist. Andrew was there the day Jesus was baptized and he spent the day with Jesus (John 1:39) and I have no doubt that those forty days that Jesus battled Satan alone, Andrew was talking to John and his brother Simon, and who ever else would listen and discuss these things with him. So when Jesus picked up the baton of John the Baptist and said Follow Me… these men were ready to follow a man they knew, He was not a stranger (John 10:4-5).

From that moment on…

Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.

Matthew 4:23

Jesus did not just pick up the message of John the Baptist, He WAS the message. We read in Matthew 4: 24-25 that the news spread throughout all Syria. Crowds followed Him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.

Look at the map below and think about it for a moment. Look at the range of distance and how quickly the news spread over this range. Now, this was before Fox News and CNN. This was before the telephone. This was before the telegraph. This was how powerful the impact was that Jesus was making on everyone who came in contact with Him.

So here we are. Jesus is with His disciples and He is going throughout all of Galilee teaching in the synagogues and healing every kind of sickness and disease and He is proclaiming the gospel and crowds from all over the middle east are traveling to Galilee to find Him. Coming to Him, bringing their sick with them, in hope against hope that He would heal them. Then in Matthew 5 we read “When Jesus saw the crowds…”

Imagine the scene.

It’s not the Jesus movie scene where everyone is sitting quietly criss-cross-applesauce on the green grass listening intently to a standing Jesus speaking softly with open arms and hands… no I believe it was probably closer to utter chaos.

In the crowd were the sick, the dying, the demonically possessed, the epileptics, the paralytics, the leprous, the blind, the deaf. In the crowd were the Jew, the Gentile, the Samaritans. In the crowd were the searching and the seeking and the skeptic. In the crowd were both those who wanted to be a disciple, those that were just enjoying the show, and those who were there to determine the validity of this One who was causing such a commotion in the land.

I imagine this scene closer to a refugee camp or a war zone makeshift hospital. Everyone screaming and demanding that their loved one be touched first. Pushing and shoving and fighting to get the front. I imagine the sounds of the screams of the hurting and the sounds of the venomous cries of those who were demoniacs standing so close in the presence of the One who had authority over them to bind them in eternal chains until the great day of the LORD. I imagine the disciples being caught and lost throughout the crowd trying to maintain some type of resemblance of order and calmness.

Then I imagine Jesus. I imagine Him looking at the crowd and turning to walk up the mountain without saying a word. I imagine that one by one His disciples, realizing that Jesus had went up on the mountain, told the people to be still. To hold on, they would be back. And then they themselves, one by one and two by two, turning and heading up the mountain to sit at the feet of their Teacher.

Then we read in Matthew 5:2 that Jesus opened His mouth…

This word “opened” in the verse in the Greek is anoigó and it means to open, break a door, a gate. Metaphorically it means to give entrance to the soul. It means to furnish opportunity to do something, to open to one, to grant something asked for, to speak freely, to hold nothing back. It means one who recovers the power of speech to restore the faculty of hearing, to part the eyelids so as to see, to open the eyes of one’s mind, to unseal, to unroll. 

Beloved, just let that sink in…

Are the cries of the crowd overwhelming you? Have you realized that you are deafened to the voice of your Teacher because of the chaos of the world around you? Then precious one look up… Jesus is on the mountain. He has sat down. He is waiting for you.

More on the Sermon on the Mount:

 Getting Real With Yourself

A Beggar’s Heart (Part Two)