Last Lord's Day morning we introduced the Sermon
on the Mount as our theme of meditation
for some time to come in our morning
worship.
And we come this morning to the first
of the Beatitudes, which we have recorded for
us in Matthew chapter 5.
And we are going to look this morning
at the words of verse 3, Prosperity from
Poverty.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.
The subjects of God's kingdom are discernibly different
from the subjects of every other realm in
history.
The people of God in any generation, in
every generation, will necessarily be distinguishable from those
who owe their prime allegiance to men rather
than to God.
Our Lord Jesus Christ in whom the life
of the kingdom as well as the rule
of the kingdom is personified, he transforms his
people, he changes the subjects of his kingdom.
And in coming into his kingdom such a
massive, such a deep transformation occurs that his
subjects are distinguishable.
Now as we saw last Lord's Day morning,
in these Beatitudes our Lord Jesus Christ is
indicating the kind of character, the type of
character that should always be fit, indeed is
necessary for all his subjects.
You will find that the characteristics mentioned in
these Beatitudes are such that we can experience
them and indeed should experience them progressively.
For example that which we are going to
be looking at this morning, poverty of spirit.
It's not something that we experience once for
all and then leave behind us and we
manifest it, we don't manifest it anymore in
life.
It's not something that comes into our experience
at a given moment and then we forget
about it.
But it is something that enters into the
warp and woof of our thinking and of
our living and should by the grace of
God and the ministry of the King of
our realm should deepen and enlarge and express
itself more and more obviously in the lives
of all his people.
All these Beatitudes therefore are aspects of, or
they point to aspects of the basic Christian
character.
We act as we do because we are
what we are.
Our King makes us into new creatures and
because he does that our behavior will sooner
or later assume a new characteristic.
We shall learn to behave as he requires
us.
But first of all we have this development
and this gift of the basic ingredients of
character and of all the Beatitudes.
The one before us this morning is absolutely
basic.
If the Beatitudes as a whole form the
foundation of the Christian's life and living, then
it is true to say that this and
what we have here is the foundation of
the foundation.
Until a man or a woman knows what
it is to be poor in spirit, he
will never mourn, she will never mourn, will
never be meek, will never seek hunger and
thirst after righteousness and so forth, and will
never know purity of heart, and will never
become a peacemaker.
None of the others are possible unless we
start here.
We are dealing this morning with the fundamental
of all the fundamentals as far as Christian
character is concerned.
It is really the most crucial question as
to whether you and I are really aware
of what this is and know it in
experience.
Are you a braggart before God or a
beggar?
Do you boast or do you beg?
Are you proud or are you humble?
This is the basic issue in entry into
the kingdom over which Jesus Christ is King.
His subjects are all humbled men and women.
Now there are two main things that we
want to look at this morning.
And the first is this, we shall look
at the bountiful prosperity that is here announced
by our Lord.
Listen to the familiar words again, we are
so familiar with these words that we probably
are in danger of missing the deep truth
that they hold.
Blessed, says Jesus, are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven or
the kingdom of God.
They refer to the same phenomenon.
The manner in which Jesus announces this ninefold
blessedness to the evidently poor followers before him
may at first elicit a chuckle from the
sophisticated skeptic.
These words have elicited more than chuckles.
The worldly wise would conclude the preacher either
mad or blasphemous who says this kind of
thing.
What blessing has poverty ever brought to anyone?
That's the kind of question your modern man
will ask.
To top the list of his beatitudes with
a promise of the spiritual blessedness, the kind
of which is envisaged here, and then to
say that this poor person has a share
in the kingdom of the ages, is a
subject of the one kingdom that rules over
every other kingdom and outlasts every other kingdom
and never ends, the kingdom of God, to
say that is the most ludicrous thing to
say in the years of the sophisticated man
of the 20th century.
Nevertheless, my friends, this is what Jesus said.
And this is what we are going to
take very seriously this morning.
I want you to look at two things
that are mentioned here.
Two aspects of this bountiful prosperity.
They are brought out, one by the use
of the word blessed at the beginning and
then by the reference to theirs is the
kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven
at the end.
Here is a twofold blessedness.
The blessedness that is involved in the word
blessed.
And then the description of the blessed man
as his is the kingdom of God or
it belongs to him or he belongs to
it, he is a subject of it and
he is living within its bounds, heir to
all its glories.
Let's look at the first.
It is the more subjective aspect of the
blessing announced.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Last Lord's Day morning I indicated how one
of the last verses of the Old Testament
speaks about judgment, about a curse.
And then the New Testament is hardly opened
when Jesus comes onto the platform, onto the
stage of things.
John the Baptist has been put in prison
and he has lost his life, he has
been murdered.
And Jesus comes and he announces blessed, blessed,
blessed.
His ninefold blessedness is what he announces in
the years of men who are heirs to
the curse of sin.
It's a remarkable word this.
Many of the translators use the English word
happy for blessed.
And there is a sense in which it
is most appropriate because the word unquestionably carries
this subjective aspect of things.
The person referred to here is a person
who really knows fulfillment, who really is blessed,
who really has joy, which is a fruit
of the Spirit.
But there is something about the word which
is very unfortunate, I mean the word happy.
Very unfortunate as the translation of the Greek
word makarios which is used here.
It falls short of the mark because underlying
the English word happy is the word hap,
or chance.
And the idea is, you see, that the
blessedness referred to here depends on what happens
to you, on your circumstances.
That is not what the New Testament says.
The New Testament thunders at us that the
blessedness that Jesus gives to his people and
the subjects of his kingdom does not depend
upon your circumstances at all.
The gift of his grace and the gift
of his mercy and the gift of his
peace and of eternal life, citizenship in his
kingdom does not depend on your outward material
circumstances at all.
Daniel in his lion's den, Jeremiah in his
pit, Paul and Silas in prison, Stephen and
his martyrdom, John and Patmos and Jesus from
his cross, loudly tell us there is something
about this that comes with us into all
kinds of circumstances.
Jesus could even speak at the end of
his life of my peace I give to
you, not as the world gives goodbye unto
you, let not your heart be troubled.
It is not dependent on circumstances, on what
happens to you in this world.
One writer makes the point that in its
older form, this Greek word makarios, translated blessed,
it used to refer in Greek writings to
the bliss of the gods, the pagan gods,
the mythical deities of Greek thought.
Now the point is of course, it was
used thus of the quality of joy or
the quality of happiness that only belonged to
the gods, not to ordinary mortals.
F.
W.
Boreham I think is the first who said
or brought to my notice, and I think
to the notice of others from what I
read, the fact that a long time ago
the island of Cyprus was called Haimakaria, Makaria
being the feminine form of Makarios.
Haimakaria, the happy island, the happy isle, why
was it called that?
Well apparently its soil was so fertile, its
climate so perfect, its natural resources and outlook
so utterly satisfying, that it was inconceivable that
anyone could find a better place anywhere on
earth, this was the ideal.
Such is the bliss envisaged by our Lord
Jesus Christ, and this reference to it being
the bliss of the gods is not unbiblical,
twice at least the Apostle Paul refers to
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ as the blessed God.
On Timothy 1.11 he refers to the
glorious gospel of the blessed God, and its
the same word that we have here.
And then again in 1 Timothy 6.15,
God the blessed and only ruler, the king
of kings and lord of lords, the blessed
God, what is this blessed then, this blessedness?
My friends it is the quality of peace
and of joy and of fulfillment and of
happiness that belongs only to God as revealed
in Christ.
And Jesus comes among ordinary men and women
like you and myself and he says, I
bring you blessedness.
And the subjects of my kingdom are the
recipients of this divine gift of blessedness, makarios.
That's the more subjective aspect of it, but
look at the objective.
Theirs is the kingdom of heaven or the
kingdom of God.
Last time in describing the context in which
the sermon appears in Matthew's gospel, we indicated
that the kingdom of heaven or of God
refers primarily to the rule of God, God's
rule, God's reign.
His kingdom as we have already said this
morning, supersedes every other kingdom.
His kingdom says the psalmist, rules over all
and everything.
Whatever kingdom of men you may think of,
whatever rule, whatever government, whatever rulers, over them
all stands the sovereign rule of God.
Even so, God has allowed certain alien elements
to enter his kingdom.
He has allowed sin to come in, which
is an alien element, and Satan who brought
sin.
And yet God has said that in due
course he is going to rid the whole
universe of these alien elements and bring the
whole thing, the whole cosmos, the whole universe
back to its keel, purged of all things
that are alien, and in it he will
fulfill his eternal purposes of grace.
Now when the Lord Jesus Christ came down,
it was made evident that God had already
stepped into history to start this saving work.
When Jesus stepped out to proclaim the kingdom
of heaven is at hand, it was evident
that God was with him.
Have you noticed that?
I'll ever be grateful, and I'm sure you
will too, to Nicodemus for saying what he
did to Jesus.
No man, he says, can do these signs
that you are doing unless God is with
him.
We know, he says, referring to himself and
other teachers and other leaders of the jury,
people in high places, we know, he says,
we haven't missed this.
No man can do the miracles, the signs
that you are doing unless God is with
him.
You see what they've noticed?
Here is a different kind of life.
Here is one who has come with authority,
not only in his teaching, but he heals
the sick.
He touches the eyes of the blind.
He heals the deaf.
Indeed, ultimately he will even bring the dead
out of their graves, Lazarus, he says, he
will say, come forth, and Lazarus will come.
Jesus has come into life, and as we
saw at the end of chapter 4 of
this gospel of Matthew, he's involved in healing
all kinds of diseases, indicating, you see, that
he comes with the power of a kingdom
that rules over all.
And there is no disease, there is nothing
in this life that he cannot handle and
cannot deal with.
And yet, though he gave so much time
to heal the symptoms of sin and the
fruits of sin and deliver men from them,
he was destined and he was pledged to
do something deeper and bigger and greater than
that.
He came not to deliver men simply from
the symptoms, but from that which caused the
symptoms, from sin, from Satan, and to deliver
us from our bondage to the tyranny of
sin and Satan and be freed and at
last there again the image of God our
maker in all its glory.
He came to do that, and on the
cross he did it.
On the cross he took our curse upon
himself.
On the cross he took my sin and
yours, and he died in our place instead,
and he paid the penalty of our redemption,
and he procured eternal life for us.
Having raised again from the dead and showed
himself to be alive by many miraculous and
many amazing episodes, over forty days he finally
ascended to the Father, from whence he sent
forth the Holy Spirit to bring the eternal
life that he had procured by his blood
and imparted to men who would believe.
Jesus is the King of the Kingdom, pledged
to deliver men from sin and from Satan.
Now, as the King of kings and Lord
of lords, he tells these ordinary men and
women who were sitting before him, first of
all his disciples, he was ostensibly sitting down
to teach them, but there were others that
had gathered as we read by the end
of the sermon, a whole multitude of them,
and he tells them all, and they've all
probably here, blessed are the poor in spirit
among you, anywhere, for theirs is the Kingdom
of Heaven, they share with me in the
eternal Kingdom.
The bliss of the first beatitude then is
that of being a citizen of that Kingdom
whose King is Lord of the universe, Lord
of life and death, savior from sin and
Satan, and master of destiny.
It is to share with him in his
kingly program, as he presses the battle to
its ultimate conclusion.
That is the bountiful prosperity and privilege announced.
And my friends, it's announced this morning.
It is a day of grace.
And because it is still a day of
grace, this is to be announced today, wherever
there are those who represent our God and
our King.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is
the Kingdom of Heaven.
You and I may enter the Kingdom and
enjoy the bliss and the blessings and the
privileges of the Kingdom, and anticipate the consummation
of it all, in God's good time.
But the question of questions of course is
this, how, how?
And so we come to our second point,
the beneficent poverty that procures what is divinely
pledged.
These are words that should take our breath
away.
Blessed are the poor in spirit of all
people.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
is the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom
of God.
Now, the very utterance of these words spelt
confusion to the people of his day.
This is something that is so contrary to
common belief, common philosophy.
The subjective bliss and objective privilege of citizenship
in Heaven's eternal and indestructible kingdom is, is,
is nothing that you can buy with money.
You can't pay for it.
You can't buy a ticket.
And you can't, you can't yourself get into
it by dint of anything you can do.
Rather, the condition is not plenty, not prosperity
so that you can pay, you can do,
you can give, but rather poverty of spirit.
This is contrary to everything that the people
of his day believed.
Contemporary man likewise rises in immediate rebellion when
you hear a thing like this and realize
what our Lord Jesus is saying.
This is nonsensical, your modern man says.
It is sheer madness, turning all the accepted
canons of success right upside down.
He protests and he thinks he justly protests
that blessedness is incontestably linked with opulence and
riches, not with poverty of any kind.
When did poverty ever bless anybody, any kind
of poverty?
The statement of Jesus was no less ludicrous
in the estimation of his own contemporaries.
One modern writer on this Sermon on the
Mount brings this out very clear by referring
to the four main sections of people among
the Jewry, among the Jews of his day.
And he says how they were all outraged
by this kind of thing.
To the Pharisees the secret of blessedness was
to be loyal and true to the things
of the past.
They were the arch-conservatives, the extreme right
wing and you mustn't change anything.
You've got to be true to the past
and this is the secret of blessedness.
To be a theological conservative and conserve the
things of the past, don't miss anything.
Of course they did add an awful lot
to it, but that was nevertheless their pledged
view.
Their pledged view.
As far as the Sadducees, the other main
section was concerned, they thought the exact opposite.
That blessedness depended on being able to change
and keep up with the times.
To be liberal, not to take everything for
granted or everything that your fathers told you
or that God allegedly told your fathers before
you.
Don't believe all that junk, change it a
little and become, get up to date and
just accept modern ideas and imbibe them, you
know.
But the Essenes, another main group that our
Lord had to encounter, particularly his apostles more
than our Lord personally.
They insisted that the secret of blessedness was
to get right away from the world.
And they went into their communities and they
went apart, as if they were going into
a monastery.
And they said this is the secret of
blessedness, you've got to get away from this
world.
And the Zealots, the fourth group, they said
exactly the opposite.
To them the only way to have blessedness
is to have a revolution politically.
To change the structures of society and particularly
to get away from under the yoke of
Rome.
Liberty, let's fight for it.
And that's what they wanted to do and
they were prepared to do it.
And here comes Jesus into the midst of
them all and he says look.
Blessed are who?
The poor in spirit.
For theirs is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs
is the kingdom of God.
Now part of the basic human tragedy is
that because of the effects of sin.
Ancient man and modern man alike has built
the ceiling of his life so low.
You see because we have lost the consciousness
of God.
All life as far as we are concerned
is bounded by time and sense.
There is a mall like quality to our
spiritual experience.
We live in a little tunnel.
Do you have malls here in Canada?
You do, ok, thank you.
Well we certainly have them in the UK.
And they live in their little dark tunnels
and of course they don't see anything.
Look up and the tunnel comes right down.
There's nothing above as far as they're concerned.
And man in his spiritual condition is very
much like that.
He's bounded by space and time.
And even modern space explorations doesn't seem to
have awakened man to the realization that there
may be a little bit more than he
can see.
That his ceiling perhaps is a little bit
too low.
And therefore he seeks all his prosperity in
material things.
Now that's the truth about modern man.
Man seeks his prosperity in material things and
he cannot conceive that there is genuine blessedness
outside of the things that you can buy
with money.
And since riches are apparently what supply the
key to everything that really matters well this
is what we must seek first.
And if the kingdom of God happens to
come our way let it come.
But we must have this kingdom first.
Let's possess as much riches as we can
and by means of riches we can do
everything.
We can have better homes to live in.
We can have better food to eat.
Better drinks to consume.
Better cars to drive in.
And a better standard of living generally.
But you see the sadness of it.
Modern man like his ancient counterpart is blind
to the fact that his material kingdom is
already in process of crumbling.
And that he himself, the material part of
him that can be fed and that drinks
and that lusts and that eats, he is
in process of dying.
The whole universe says the apostle Peter, the
whole universe.
The present heavens he says on earth are
reserved for fire.
Did you know that?
The present heavens on earth are reserved for
fire being kept for the day of judgment
and destruction of ungodly man.
Let me put it to you like this.
Man's most palatial home can only give him
limited comfort for a limited time.
Because you have to leave it.
You have to leave yours, I have to
leave mine.
His most luxurious limousine can only give him
a little more comfortable ride on his way
to the grave and to judgment.
And I tell you the most important thing
is not the measure of comfort I have
on the few miles I am moving towards
the grave, earth to earth, ashes to ashes,
dust to dust, but the direction of my
life and the end of it.
Your material man has nothing to say to
this.
Superior cuisine and more sparkling drinks lose their
taste as death draws near.
Your material universe in total, as Peter says,
is to disintegrate and to go up in
flames one day.
Now Jesus was here speaking about the blessedness
of the eternal kingdom of God.
Spiritual and indestructible in its nature.
And the citizens of that kingdom of heaven
or of God, according to its sole king
and unqualified ruler, are none other than the
poor, the poor in spirit.
What did Jesus mean?
What does it mean to be poor in
spirit?
I guess we ought to say one or
two things that it doesn't mean.
Because many people do get mixed up with
this.
This must not be confused with being poor
spirited.
Jesus wasn't saying the folk who inherit my
kingdom or who share the blessings of my
kingdom are those who are deficient in vitality,
in vigor, in venture, who have no spirit
in them.
Who are like corpses with no life.
You know there are people like that.
They have no life, they have no vigor,
no verve, nothing at all.
They are half dead.
Nothing excites them.
Jesus wasn't talking about that kind of thing.
It is not a repressed spirit nor is
it a denial of one's gifts and their
operations.
That's not what Jesus was concerned with.
And it was certainly not a reference to
self-hate.
On the other hand, it's the very opposite
of self-sufficiency, of pride and egomania.
It's the very antithesis of the spirit which
sees no need of real help from God
or from man.
I can cope myself, thank you, and I
don't want help from anybody.
I'm proud of my powers and of my
capacities and I can cope, thank you.
It's the exact opposite of the so-called
positive thinking of the 20th century.
Which, however much you baptize it with Christian
chivalry, is pagan and contrary to the teaching
of the New Testament.
I can do it, chum.
I believe I can do it, I'm going
to do it, therefore I will do it.
You know, that's pagan.
Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit.
Poverty of spirit arises from a real self
-knowledge that can only come from God and
is communicated by His Spirit through His Word
to a man or a woman in the
presence of God.
It is nothing less than the awareness that
in spiritual things I am a bankrupt soul.
You ever discovered that?
Now Jesus' language implies exactly that.
The Greek word for poor means more than
mere poverty.
It means the extreme, the frightening bankruptcy of
having nothing.
There are two Greek words for poor.
The one, penes, means that someone is barely
able to make ends meet.
Perhaps he can manage to get through the
week, but he's certainly got nothing to spare.
Now that's poverty.
That is, one word represents that kind of
poverty.
But there is another, the one that Jesus
uses here, which is quite different.
It isn't that a man has got enough
to cope with for the time being, but
he's got no reserves.
It is that a man has got nothing,
he's got a bag.
It's the one used of that dear woman
in the temple.
And she puts her two little coins in
the treasury which were only the equivalent of
less than half a penny.
And having put these two little coins in
the treasury, she's got nothing left, because she
gave her all.
She was tokos.
That's the poverty Jesus is speaking of.
My friend, have you ever seen yourself like
that?
Utterly dependent upon God.
Lost without Him.
That you can do nothing to save yourself.
That you are not capable of saving your
soul.
That you cannot leave sin, and you cannot
go in heaven, and you cannot do anything
apart from Him.
If you have not seen yourself to be
that poor and bankrupt in spirit, I say
to you, you have yet to cross the
borders into the kingdom of God.
It's for beggars only.
You remember the tax collector?
Jesus refers to him in his parable.
He and the Pharisee went up to the
temple to pray.
They happened to be there at the same
time.
Dear old Pharisee, he had such a lot
to say.
Thank you, Lord.
He says, I'm not like other people.
I fast twice in the week.
I give tithes of all that I possess.
I'm not this, and I'm not that, and
I'm certainly not like this guy there in
the back.
And this tax collector wouldn't lift up his
eyes from the ground.
You see, he couldn't look anybody in the
eye.
He knew that he was guilty.
He was out of his element in the
house of God.
What if he had a vision of God
like Isaiah of old?
What if the glory of the Lord filled
the temple?
What if God spoke to him?
That's the last thing he's looking for.
He doesn't want to look God's people in
the eye.
But smiting upon his breast, indicating his awareness
of lostness and sin, he says, God, be
merciful to me, a sinner.
And Jesus shocked him.
He says, look, he says, this man went
down to his house justified, saved, forgiven, a
child of my kingdom, a rather than the
other.
That's just it.
Oh, my friend, have you ever seen yourself
as such?
I'm sorry, I have to ask this question
this morning.
I have no doubt that there may be
someone here in Knox Church this morning.
You've never seen yourself as a beggar, and
therefore you've never cried to God to have
mercy on your dying soul.
Pray God will show you today what you
are in his sight.
What is it that brings anyone to this
lowly view of himself?
Well, clearly, not modern learning, because modern learning
tells us that we really can cope.
And we really can get on very well
without God, thank you.
And certainly without atonement, and without the Holy
Spirit, and without the Bible, and without the
church.
You don't find humility in our places of
learning per se.
Some of the most arrogant men and women
I have ever met, I met in the
university, and in the theological colleges where I
studied.
Learning, modern learning does not make men and
women poor in spirit.
It gives you a false comfort that you
can manage all on your own.
And it sends you out into the world
to break your heart, and to have your
first ulcer, and your first nervous breakdown, and
your first tragedy.
And it lives on a lie, and it
feeds the communities with lies upon lies, and
you can cope when you're a beggar, and
you can't cope.
How is it then, how do I come
to know myself in this way?
How did that Arch-Pharisee Saul of Tarsus
come to say such a thing as this
about himself?
He came to say, I know, he said,
that nothing good lives in me that is
in my sinful nature.
I'll tell you.
He came to see himself when God revealed
himself to him.
In Jesus Christ.
It was the vision of the glory of
the Lord Jesus ascended at God's right hand,
whose glory was greater than the glory of
the sun at midday.
It was the vision of the glory of
God in his son that brought him down
from his perch.
Do you know it's exactly the same today?
It takes the deity, it takes the Spirit
of God, the Holy Spirit, the third person
of the Trinity to show a man or
show a woman the real depravity of his
heart and the real need of his or
her soul.
God himself must do it.
That is why, of course, the Lord Jesus
sent forth the Holy Spirit.
He will convince the world, he said, of
guilt with regard to sin and righteousness and
of judgment.
No one else can do it.
We don't realize that we're lost unless the
Holy Spirit brings us there.
And that's why the Holy Spirit has given
us the Scriptures.
We are told that we have the Holy
Scriptures, that the Holy Spirit inspired them to
make us wise for salvation through faith in
Christ Jesus.
We're not wise to trust Christ until the
Holy Spirit shows us what an awful lot
we are.
But when the Holy Spirit reveals to us
who we are and what we are and
our real peril, then we begin to appreciate
John 3,16.
God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in
him should not perish but have eternal life.
No one will trust Jesus Christ as Savior
or receive from his hand the gift of
pardon and entry into the kingdom who has
not been thus humbled.
I beg of you then, read God's Word
and learn your soul's true condition.
Look into it as into a mirror that
is infallibly true in its judgments.
It is not warped.
It doesn't show a false image of you.
It will tell you exactly what you are
and what you need, the Word of God.
And there is no other.
This book will tell you that the soul
that sinneth it will die.
That the wages of sin is death.
And it will tell you some very, very,
very unpalatable truths about yourself.
And all your righteousnesses are a filthy rag.
There is nothing you can do to save
your own soul.
But this is the Word of God.
And those that are humbled by it and
receive its verdict upon themselves get into the
position and condition where they appreciate the intervention
of God in Christ by his Spirit as
outlined in his Word.
And I beg of him, God be merciful
to me a sinner.
I'm closing.
The most horrible monstrosity known in Europe in
modern times was a man so grotesque in
his features that you will know he became
known as the Elephant Man.
It is said that he had a head
the size of a normal man's waist.
He had what appeared to be the beginnings
of a trunk, an elephant trunk and one
abortive tusk.
Only those of iron nerve could look at
him.
Sir Frederick Treves, the distinguished author and surgeon
of his day took him into his home
and cared for him.
But Sir Frederick Treves had one rule that
no one under any condition would leave a
mirror in the room of the Elephant Man.
He says, if you leave a mirror, he
said to the servants in his room, he
will be dismissed immediately.
For he had discovered that behind that grotesque
figure there was a most sensitive soul and
he dared not see himself.
Now, I do not criticize Sir Frederick Treves.
In those circumstances, grim and trying, I'm quite
sure he did the right thing.
This was on the level of the physical.
But my friends, on the level of the
spiritual, you dare not be without the mirror
that tells the truth.
If you go through life without looking at
yourself in the light of the word of
God, you will believe the lies of men
and you will die and you will be
outside the kingdom of the ages forever and
ever.
That's the gospel as I understand it.
Only when you receive the verdict of the
word of God as it comes to you
by the Spirit of God do you come
to know yourself and you begin to see
that you can do nothing and then with
Toplady you're prepared to say, nothing in my
hand I bring.
Simply, notice that, simply to thy cross I
cling.
Naked, come to thee for dress.
Helpless, look to thee for dress.
Foul, I to the fountain fly.
Wash me, Savior, or I die.
Now with Charlotte Elliot, of very familiar words,
many have crossed the borders into the kingdom
singing these words, just as I am without
one plea.
But that thy blood was shed for me
and that thou bidst me come to thee,
O Lamb of God, I come.
Just as I am poor, wretched, blind, sight,
riches, healing of the mind, yea, all I
need in thee to find, O Lamb of
God, I come.
Have you seen yourself like that?
You may have some visiting friends here this
morning and this kind of sermon has been
like a bombshell to you.
Like something from another world.
Because we're not accustomed to this.
Will you take it as the Word of
God?
It isn't mine.
And I tell you, when I first heard
it and understood it, I didn't like it.
It's humbling, isn't it?
But it is only from that place of
humility where I see myself utterly dependent on
God for grace that I have to lift
up my empty hands and say, God be
merciful to me.
It is only from there that I can
receive my citizenship of the kingdom of the
ages.
And it is only on the basis of
that poverty of spirit that the church can
be built.
The church will be torn in two if
men come into it who are not brought
low first of all.
I beg of you this morning, if you
have not crossed that borderline, if today you
have a sense of your need that you
never had before and you hear the Word
of God speaking not only to us as
a body of people but to you as
an individual, come down on your knees if
need be and cry to God for mercy.
Blessed, said Jesus, contrary to all popular philosophy
and psychology and theology.
Blessed, says the Son of God.
Blessed, says the incarnate Lord of all the
ages.
Blessed, says the King of kings and Lord
of lords, are the poor in spirit.
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Let us pray.
O Lord, our Father, we bow in the
solemnity of your presence and we find it
difficult to acknowledge that we are what your
Word says about us.
Difficult even though there is something in us
which knows it is true and accurate.
Grant us your Spirit to the end that
we may all frankly and honestly thus conclude
and thus be able to put out our
empty hands for you to fill them so
that you who dwell in the high and
holy place whose name is holy will come
and dwell also with us who are of
a broken and a contrite spirit.
Save those who cry to you today, here,
elsewhere, to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.