The Oaks
The Oaks
1. How to Be Blessed Every Day - Be Poor In Spirit
•
Josh Hallmark
Early in Jesus ministry, he sat down and gave 8 keys to blessing in the life of his followers. In this series we examine some of those attitudes that Jesus linked with specific blessings and how they are awarded.
In this talk, we learn the vital key of understanding our need for God's help in our lives.
Hey, I'm Josh Hallmark. And I want to thank you for listening to one of the Oaks podcasts. Remember this message from Isaiah chapter 61. God takes the seeds of brokenness and turns them in the Oaks of righteousness. And that she
So, so here's the deal. Let
me just share the image right in my talk so that I have time to share what I want to share with you guys. Um, so Jesus is early in his ministry. He, he's gathering disciples, and he makes a couple stops in Matthew chapter five. To get disciples he says, Come follow me. People already are There's like buzz around him. Like just so you guys know, I don't think that this is the first time that ever seen Jesus when Jesus said, Come follow me, actually rabbis in the day, that's what they would say to somebody when they were calling them into an apprenticeship. relationship so they already knew Jesus, I knew who he was. And when he says come follow me. That was him offering them a spot on his team. Okay. Just so you guys know, mostly everybody had already been picked who were with the rabbi's. Okay? So something for you guys to know. So,
so here's two
things that they would tell them when they were in school. They would say, um, come follow me. Or you know, like when they were when because they you guys they memorized insane amounts of the Scripture. But if they didn't say Follow me, they would say like a teacher would Go work in the family business and go work in the family business means you didn't make the cut for for your master's degree in theology and so, so so go where the family business? Where did Jesus find a lot of his people, his disciples, what were they doing? What about the fishermen? What do you think they were doing? They were working in the family business. Has he ever got picked last when people were picking teams? Listen, Jesus picked people because he saw something that was in them. So anyway, Jesus is he's so he's clearly a different kind of Rabbi, right? It says that he he stops and says, Come follow me. They leave everything they follow him. And then the next phrase, this is Matthew chapter five. Still, it says Jesus starts healing people. So he really is a different kind of Rabbi. He starts healing people
who are oppressed by the devil.
They have like demonic issues. Some of them have seizures. He's healing people that have all types of maladies in their life and
He gathers a crowd.
And, you know, you start hitting people and then you know, people talk. And people have needs, right? You guys know what it's like to know people needs we all have needs, or crowd gathers around Jesus. And Jesus decides to start giving a sermon. He's got a crowd, he's I mean, you guys are at church, I might as well just go ahead and give you a talk. And so Jesus gives an eight part talk on how to be blessed every day. And that's what I'm going to share with you guys.
So one of the
one of the things that God's doing, we've been talking about this so far, is that God is trying to mature us. Okay. And we talked a couple weeks actually, Rob spoke last week, you talked about perseverance last week, is that right? And But before that, we were talking about personal growth, about having a paradigm of growing that we're always growing. And, and we talked about this verse right here from a feagins that says, the body of Christ has been built up to reach unity of faith, not and not And become mature, say mature. That's what God is trying to produce in us as maturity. And till we reach the whole fullness of the measure crushing instead speaking the truth in love, we will grow up or grow to become an every spet. Respect mature. So this is something that the Lord is trying to bring about in your life and your life. He's trying to bring maturity, right. And so what if I told you that instead of just reading a self help book, we actually go to the master himself and find out some keys on how to be blessed. Every single day. All right, you guys ready? All right. First of all, let me say one more thing. This is just in the month of what's the month August, I've been trying to hit some like personal growth type things because that is one of the core values of our church. This is actually from our website, is it we're committed to this what we're doing at our church, we're committed to building a safe place. where people can grow and learn more about who they're created to be. As we process life together, we move past the problems there, hold us back. So here's the framework for what I'm talking about today. Now, here's the Scripture, Jesus seeing the multitude he had been, he had been healing people, right? So this gets a crowd. He sees the multitude and he says, this is a good time to tell everybody how to be blessed. This is like, I'm gonna give them some teaching. So he went up on a mountain.
And when he was seated, oh,
what if I just taught like that?
I'm gonna spend the rest of the day sitting right here, okay. Um, when he was seated, his disciples came to him, he opened his mouth, and he taught them saying, blessed Can you say, Blessed? Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom. 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, because they will be field.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall be given mercy they will obtain mercy.
And then Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God. So each one of these he's given these are called the Beatitudes. You ever heard that? the Beatitudes and you could remember this way because it's attitudes that you want to be the Beatitudes. That's not actually what it means. Be attitude is that all Latin word that means blessed. But um, so this is a sermon about being blessed. If you want to know how to be less than eight easy steps. This is it right here. When I say easy, it's not easy, but it's an eight step. But here thanks each thing Jesus says, He basically,
let me see if I can find a pointer.
Yes, and that
he affirms a virtue, the pure in heart. And then he says what the reward is? What if I told you that you don't see God because there's compromise in your heart? What if I told you you could see God? If you have a pure heart you wreck, I would say, see God, you recognize God Blessed are the pure in heart, for they recognize God. And I think in this context, Jesus was talking about not having ulterior motives. You know, a lot of times when somebody talks to you trying to figure out what is their angle, but as always having an agenda with people can keep us from actually seeing what the Lord is doing in their life anyway. So that's that kind of So there's another one he says, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God. And blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness say,
if you are done wrong because you were doing what's
right, he ends with saying there's the kingdom of heaven. Not if you're persecuted for stupid sake. Sometimes Christians do that right. But persecuted for righteousness, a persecuted, spoken evil of insulted, called names because you're doing what's right. Then Jesus expressly says you're blessed. So what I want to do today, I just want to talk about the first one, okay? And so I want to talk about this when Blessed are the poor in spirit. So I'm going to give you guys a few things about what this means, um, or what I think it means. So Jesus said, if you want to be blessed,
it's better to be blessed than to be cursed. Right?
Do you want to be blessed? What is blessing By the way,
blessing is when things work in your life. When God's blessing is on you, the Bible says that He gives you wealth, without sorrow. You know, some people have money, but they are very, very unhappy people. And so, the blessing of the Lord, it adds things to your life, it actually gives you power to succeed.
That's what blessing is.
You know, there's this guy called named balem. And somebody had hired him to curse Israel. And he's like, how can I curse and when they're blessed?
It's like the blessing of God
wouldn't let the curse come in.
It filled the space, if you will. So when we're blessed, we're walking in Blessing. Would you agree that's probably a good thing.
y'all gotta be louder than that. I'm sorry.
Would it be a good thing to be blessed, is better than being cursed. Right? And, and and better than just being status quo to be to be blessed. Oh, Jesus said that you're blessed if you are poor in spirit. Because Yours is the kingdom of God. And so here's what I think that means. And let me unpack it for just a minute. I think that Jesus is saying is that being poor in spirit, positions me for the resources of heaven? What is the kingdom of God every time Jesus talked about the kingdom of God, he talked about it in a way where there was it there was a when he demonstrated it rather it was a way of provision for people. provision for him. Or sanity, peace. You know, when people were wounded people were tormented.
And he healed him or he delivered them of their torment.
That was the kingdom of heaven coming.
Now let me just throw this thought out real quick, um
the kingdom of heaven.
Think about the United States of America. The Republic, right?
Think of that as a kingdom. Okay.
You know the United States is like a really
resourced
country, isn't it?
I'll say something neat. I was. I was talking to you the other day about this with so I'm watching World War Two in HD. For about it's on Netflix is probably my second or third time through the whole series. One of the things that just like it fascinates me so deeply about the Second World War is how is the logistics of it? Like how they were able to amass so many people. You know, and normally how many people storm Normandy, Diane Deena. It was like 150,000 soldiers came ashore within like a 48 hour period. But I was talking to Doug, they're there. So we have a retired Army Colonel, on staff with us. He's one of our history instructors. And he was telling me, he's got like a master's degree in leadership and stuff. And I think some of it specializes in warfare. So he's got a qualified opinion. But he talked about in warfare. If you want to fight somebody and take them out, you have to you have to have two things. You got to have soldiers right.
Okay, you got people
To fight, unless we're fighting with drones, we haven't quite gotten there yet. Don't guess maybe sort of but
the people and then what else do you have to have?
You've got to have munitions, you got to stuff. If you're gonna fight unless you guys are just planning on going like the kilts and run naked in the battle. You got to have clothes. You got to have food, you got to have munitions. In fact, um, one thing that that they were saying in that, that show that I was talking about war two in HD, one
of the soldiers because they,
they were telling us D day all the time. They're saying this D day, but it was always a drill. And, you know, because basically, we had a huge encampment in England, we're all doing our training and getting ready to go and invade Normandy. And anyway,
so we're going to liberate Europe, big day data, right? Okay.
They, one of the soldiers said it was always a drill. But then he realized at some point, this huge, I don't know, I'm about to make up a word amassment of, of resources, everything you could think of, like, you know, bullets to the sky, you know, all these crates of everything. And he's like, I knew that it was on like Donkey Kong. He didn't really say that. But he said, I knew it was on. I knew something was about to happen. Anyway, this is the thing like what Doug was saying is you got to have people and you got to have resources. Well, here's the deal if the United States of America it's pretty big nation, right? But let me tell you something, it is small compared to the kingdom of heaven. I want you to understand that the the, the scope, the scope in America, we fought in the Pacific, and we fought in Europe, that was pretty big. It was a World War. It was in several theaters, but that's the main problem. As we were, but the kingdom of heaven is invading the whole world for all of history. So the thing I want you to understand about the kingdom of heaven is resourceful. God has two plans. One plan is to send people but he's not sending you naked in a battle. His second plan is to resource you with the things that you need to be blessed in the design that He has for you. I want you to understand that God wants to bless you. He wants to give you what you need to be able to fulfill your God given destiny, because as you're fulfilling your God given destiny, there is no alignment with other people's destiny, which is in alignment with the whole big picture that God's trying to do in the earth. Yes, tracking with me. We're all in this together, right?
So being poor in spirit.
Jesus says this is a key For years to be the kingdom of heaven. In other words, the full might have not the American army in wartime, but the full might of the kingdom of heaven, the resources of heaven are at your disposal, but you have to be poor, and spirit to get it. All right. So, real quick, who wants the resources of heaven? We do we need it. We need the resources of heaven to be deployed to us. But the Lord has a condition and it's that you're poor in spirit. So let's talk about what that means for the rest of our time. Okay, what does it mean to be poor in spirit? Number one poor in spirit means that I understand my lack is this crazy.
Before you get
the resources you need, you have to understand that you don't have what you need.
And that's okay.
Don't people get on your nerves when they act like they've got it all together?
Like they know everything. If you know everything, you got it all together then there's nothing more to give you. I think that's what Jesus is talking about. He's like, you have not made any room inside your internal person to get more stuff because you're full of it. Right?
Okay.
So understand my law. Here's a verse in Second Corinthians and this is Paul the apostle, arguably the second most influential person in all of history. He said this. He was a powerful figure. I'm saying he really influenced the nation's Paul came to the Lord's like, Lord, I'm like, I'm feeling lack And this is what the Lord said to Paul. Paul, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is actually made perfect in your weakness. And then Paul says, well, therefore I will boast more gladly about my weakness so that Christ power may rest on me. This is why for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness and insults and hardships and persecutions, difficulties for when I'm weak, then I'm strong. So Paul got this idea that he didn't have to run from his own weakness. But the actually the embracing of his own weakness enabled him to receive provision from heaven. What was provision in this context is grace. Right? What is Grace? This is the word is Cara ch AR is and it means the divine influence of God moves on your life that reflects in your life. So karass is like is a stuff Grace, it's not just some of us think of grace. And we just think I got, I got what I didn't, or I didn't get what I deserve. Or no, that's mercy. I got what I didn't deserve. That is grace. But it's more than that. What I'm saying is like you ever heard the word charismata? That's like the gifts of the Spirit is a divine endowment. So basically what the Lord is telling Paul, I'm going to give you a divine endowment that enabled you to work, say resources of heaven. That's what I'm talking about. So Paul said, it was not me that worked. But it was the grace of God working in me. With that understanding of grace, it's actually got influence in my heart enabled me, like you guys might be at the very end of your rope. And you'd be able to shine in that moment because of the grace of God. Right? But you don't get grace. Let's just call that a resource of heaven. You don't get grace. Unless you're poor in spirit. And Paul started saying, Hey, I'm just acknowledging my lack. I'm acknowledging why not so I can receive so Second thing poor spirit means is I'm not afraid to ask for God's help.
Y'all here, just take a deep breath.
Say it's alright if you have weaknesses. Okay? Like we all do, right? And I'm not just talking about areas of compromise of sin that's different, you know, repent of sin. But we are we're all gifted with different things that we bring to the table and there's things that we don't have. And we don't have to get so worked up about that.
When the devil comes and tells you,
you just don't have what it takes.
Let me tell you one tactic.
I may not teach my kid to say no, Devlin, geez, no, but let me do another tactic. You're so right. Probably so. I'm so glad that Jesus makes makes his power shown in my weakness.
Just a thought just agree with him.
Yeah, probably so
I'm poor in spirit. I'm not afraid to say God Hill. One of my favorite things to do is to ask for God's help because I just know that I need it. We can either do it in our own self, our own strength, but whatever you birth in the flesh you have to maintain in the flesh that's so tiring. But what if you said, Lord, I need your help. And he offers his hell. There's just something there. The blessing of the Lord comes with a good aftertaste. Let me just say that Okay. Um, this is Matthew five, three, this is exact same verse. It's just a different translation. But it says, God bless. This is blessed are the poor in spirit. There's Kingdom Heaven, says God blesses those who realize their need for him. It's just another way to say it.
So if you want to be blessed
if you want to get key number one To be healthy, wealthy and wise, if you want to be blessed by God, acknowledge that you need his help. It's really simple. Number three, poor in spirit means that I don't think I'm better than other people.
So, going back real quick to this verse. No, I'm sorry. It's I've got it to come. Here it is right here. Um First Peter, Peter says, clothe yourselves with humility. This is the important spirit towards one another because God opposes the proud. But he gives grace What does grace the grace is that empowerment to live right? empowerment delivery. He gets graced humble, humble, you're that sales therefore under God's mighty hand so that he may lift you up. So one thing this is that principle that Jesus is talking about, you're blessed when you're poor in spirit, because Yours is the kingdom of heaven. In other words, the resources of heaven are available to you the kingdom is available to you, if you're poor in spirit, but what does he do if you're not poor in spirit? Would you look right here? Can anybody figure out the answer by looking at the verse? If you do, I'll give you air fist bump. God actually opposes pride. This is really, really important. If you don't want to be blessed. Then just think that you're better than someone else. Just label other people. This kind of people and I'm not even talking about racism. that's a that's a blatant one. Okay. But I'm talking about just these kind of people are idiots these kind of people are idiots and these kind of people are idiots. I tried to guard my heart the other day. I was I call somebody an idiot in my mind I'm not actually said it out loud. My Lord forgive me. Because they did one thing is there was nobody that you guys know if some it was just completely It was a business related, but I didn't know them. But I had asked the Lord forgive me, I don't want to put people in a box. We have idiot moments, right? By the way, I think that's what cursing people is this when you sit. When you pronounce something over them like that. It'd be better to say that was an idiotic thing to do. That's an action. Right? It's like you don't call people fools. You say if you call somebody doubtful. You're in danger of how far do you have something to say john?
Yeah.
And you know, the thing about it is is the opposition is what blocks us from receiving grace in this context. So, who don't think we're better than others? Let's look at this next one. Be important spirit means I am who I am and I am where I am. And this is the place where you really is can take a deep breath. Has anybody let's just pick up where what john said, Is anybody going on your own for a while and crash and burn? I started a new book this week. I'm actually today this morning. I started a new book this morning. Called a dream big by Bob Gough and I've never actually read anything by him before, but I've heard other people talk about him. But um, Bob is a he's an instructor at Pepperdine law school. And he's also
let me see which
I forget.
He's an instructor at a law school and he's also an instructor at a prison. I forget what it was San Quentin or something. But that's that's Johnny Cash his prison in it. No, that's Folsom Prison. Anyway, it was one I think it was one in California. I don't I don't remember what the name of it is, but I think that's where Pepperdine is. He says something is interesting. He said a lot of his students. Um, I think maybe he was talking about both contexts about a lot of his law students or people that have kind of crashed and burned other things. And they decided somehow through the school of hard knocks and they want to become lawyers. But then the people In prison, well, obviously they've done some things have landed him in jail, right? But he said, there's a certain in both the people that he teaches there's a certain authenticity about them. So for you to be blessed and access the the richness of God's provision in the kingdom of heaven. You can be like where you are. You can be for real like, oh, I've had some bumps and bruises along the way. I've crashed and burned it relationships are I've thrown my life away on drugs or alcohol. I've done all kinds of things that have landed me in a place but that can actually be a blessing to you in the fact that it positions you to be for real. You don't have to pretend anymore. Let me tell you something, if you've not landed yourself in sanquin You can also be for real where you are. Because when we're real, this is what the Bible says in Psalm 51. David said this is actually when David was confessing his sin of sleeping with Bathsheba and then having committed murder by the way, that's one of our Bible heroes right? He has some issues but he said you owe God desire truth in the inward parts. I think there's something about being that's that means he's for real truth so southerners they like truth on the outward parts right? painted up take it a Walmart hi Yeah, we're good how Yeah, we're good. Everything's good all time guys good all time. Let's look let's see God is not interested in your outward man. I mean, he likes your hair man. Do you know he likes you likes really look but he is interested. He he He desires truth in the inward parts. That means that we're authentic people I actually am, who I am aware that I have issues and also I'm aware of where I am. Amen.
Number five,
we have poor spirit means I'll let God do the promoting you not to fight for your own because God wants to give it to you. We confess our lat we know that we need him. This is that same verse and Peter, humble yourselves under God's mighty hand that he may lift you up at the right time. Amen. Number six actually, is being poor spirit means that I trust God with the outcome. I know that this is in God's hands. I don't have to bite and scratch and some of this comes from knowing that we're God's children, right? But I want to throw that in
So
could you close your eyes for just a moment?
Oh, I just wrote out some opening rounds for to say I forgot one of my points I forgot to put in there. But I want to tell to
be important spirit means that you don't have to always be right.
The Bible says that it would be better for you to be a fool than to be wise in your own eyes.
You don't always have to be the answer, man.
Don't be that person as the one up somebody's story all the time. Like they're telling a story about what's going on them you have to one up or you have to one up your knowledge of
certain video game.
You don't always have to be right
Actually, let me just say this real quick.
Let me say this real quick.
This is I guess this can go along with being where you are.
It's okay for you to reveal that you're not. You don't you don't know everything about a certain area. Even if you have an area, like in carpentry or something like that, where you have a lot of expertise. You don't know everything. It's okay to reveal the parts that you don't know. Because when you do that inherently opens the door for somebody else to feel that gap. Because other people do know. Right? That's why it's okay to be where you are. I go David, he's a big boss in Amazon now. But there's actually bigger bosses that have a lot to teach him. Do you see it every level is good for us to be where we are. Sometimes I think that we're really afraid of other people seeing our weaknesses. being poor spirit. What if God actually wants to use another person to fill in the gap? That's his way of resourcing you. It's okay to reveal your weakness. You don't have to pretend now some people think humility is pretend to be weaker than you are. That's not right either. Right? That's false humility. But I'm gonna bring it back to this. I just introduced this graphic to our our students at Chapel this week. And I threw this out. We got about five months left. What do you want to see happen? No, we did this two or three weeks ago at church where you guys made some goals for the rest. I want you to think about terms of your growth and you can apply it to being poor in spirit today if you want to be blessed. How can you grow? What do you want to see happen? in these next few months I want to see God redeem us. I want to see God have us on the right track, not spinning from the first six months. So this year, us actually doing something that's powerful. And these last month, we stand with me.
For more information about the visit the dot o RG thanks for listening
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
So, so here's the deal. Let
me just share the image right in my talk so that I have time to share what I want to share with you guys. Um, so Jesus is early in his ministry. He, he's gathering disciples, and he makes a couple stops in Matthew chapter five. To get disciples he says, Come follow me. People already are There's like buzz around him. Like just so you guys know, I don't think that this is the first time that ever seen Jesus when Jesus said, Come follow me, actually rabbis in the day, that's what they would say to somebody when they were calling them into an apprenticeship. relationship so they already knew Jesus, I knew who he was. And when he says come follow me. That was him offering them a spot on his team. Okay. Just so you guys know, mostly everybody had already been picked who were with the rabbi's. Okay? So something for you guys to know. So,
so here's two
things that they would tell them when they were in school. They would say, um, come follow me. Or you know, like when they were when because they you guys they memorized insane amounts of the Scripture. But if they didn't say Follow me, they would say like a teacher would Go work in the family business and go work in the family business means you didn't make the cut for for your master's degree in theology and so, so so go where the family business? Where did Jesus find a lot of his people, his disciples, what were they doing? What about the fishermen? What do you think they were doing? They were working in the family business. Has he ever got picked last when people were picking teams? Listen, Jesus picked people because he saw something that was in them. So anyway, Jesus is he's so he's clearly a different kind of Rabbi, right? It says that he he stops and says, Come follow me. They leave everything they follow him. And then the next phrase, this is Matthew chapter five. Still, it says Jesus starts healing people. So he really is a different kind of Rabbi. He starts healing people
who are oppressed by the devil.
They have like demonic issues. Some of them have seizures. He's healing people that have all types of maladies in their life and
He gathers a crowd.
And, you know, you start hitting people and then you know, people talk. And people have needs, right? You guys know what it's like to know people needs we all have needs, or crowd gathers around Jesus. And Jesus decides to start giving a sermon. He's got a crowd, he's I mean, you guys are at church, I might as well just go ahead and give you a talk. And so Jesus gives an eight part talk on how to be blessed every day. And that's what I'm going to share with you guys.
So one of the
one of the things that God's doing, we've been talking about this so far, is that God is trying to mature us. Okay. And we talked a couple weeks actually, Rob spoke last week, you talked about perseverance last week, is that right? And But before that, we were talking about personal growth, about having a paradigm of growing that we're always growing. And, and we talked about this verse right here from a feagins that says, the body of Christ has been built up to reach unity of faith, not and not And become mature, say mature. That's what God is trying to produce in us as maturity. And till we reach the whole fullness of the measure crushing instead speaking the truth in love, we will grow up or grow to become an every spet. Respect mature. So this is something that the Lord is trying to bring about in your life and your life. He's trying to bring maturity, right. And so what if I told you that instead of just reading a self help book, we actually go to the master himself and find out some keys on how to be blessed. Every single day. All right, you guys ready? All right. First of all, let me say one more thing. This is just in the month of what's the month August, I've been trying to hit some like personal growth type things because that is one of the core values of our church. This is actually from our website, is it we're committed to this what we're doing at our church, we're committed to building a safe place. where people can grow and learn more about who they're created to be. As we process life together, we move past the problems there, hold us back. So here's the framework for what I'm talking about today. Now, here's the Scripture, Jesus seeing the multitude he had been, he had been healing people, right? So this gets a crowd. He sees the multitude and he says, this is a good time to tell everybody how to be blessed. This is like, I'm gonna give them some teaching. So he went up on a mountain.
And when he was seated, oh,
what if I just taught like that?
I'm gonna spend the rest of the day sitting right here, okay. Um, when he was seated, his disciples came to him, he opened his mouth, and he taught them saying, blessed Can you say, Blessed? Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom. 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, because they will be field.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall be given mercy they will obtain mercy.
And then Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God. So each one of these he's given these are called the Beatitudes. You ever heard that? the Beatitudes and you could remember this way because it's attitudes that you want to be the Beatitudes. That's not actually what it means. Be attitude is that all Latin word that means blessed. But um, so this is a sermon about being blessed. If you want to know how to be less than eight easy steps. This is it right here. When I say easy, it's not easy, but it's an eight step. But here thanks each thing Jesus says, He basically,
let me see if I can find a pointer.
Yes, and that
he affirms a virtue, the pure in heart. And then he says what the reward is? What if I told you that you don't see God because there's compromise in your heart? What if I told you you could see God? If you have a pure heart you wreck, I would say, see God, you recognize God Blessed are the pure in heart, for they recognize God. And I think in this context, Jesus was talking about not having ulterior motives. You know, a lot of times when somebody talks to you trying to figure out what is their angle, but as always having an agenda with people can keep us from actually seeing what the Lord is doing in their life anyway. So that's that kind of So there's another one he says, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God. And blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness say,
if you are done wrong because you were doing what's
right, he ends with saying there's the kingdom of heaven. Not if you're persecuted for stupid sake. Sometimes Christians do that right. But persecuted for righteousness, a persecuted, spoken evil of insulted, called names because you're doing what's right. Then Jesus expressly says you're blessed. So what I want to do today, I just want to talk about the first one, okay? And so I want to talk about this when Blessed are the poor in spirit. So I'm going to give you guys a few things about what this means, um, or what I think it means. So Jesus said, if you want to be blessed,
it's better to be blessed than to be cursed. Right?
Do you want to be blessed? What is blessing By the way,
blessing is when things work in your life. When God's blessing is on you, the Bible says that He gives you wealth, without sorrow. You know, some people have money, but they are very, very unhappy people. And so, the blessing of the Lord, it adds things to your life, it actually gives you power to succeed.
That's what blessing is.
You know, there's this guy called named balem. And somebody had hired him to curse Israel. And he's like, how can I curse and when they're blessed?
It's like the blessing of God
wouldn't let the curse come in.
It filled the space, if you will. So when we're blessed, we're walking in Blessing. Would you agree that's probably a good thing.
y'all gotta be louder than that. I'm sorry.
Would it be a good thing to be blessed, is better than being cursed. Right? And, and and better than just being status quo to be to be blessed. Oh, Jesus said that you're blessed if you are poor in spirit. Because Yours is the kingdom of God. And so here's what I think that means. And let me unpack it for just a minute. I think that Jesus is saying is that being poor in spirit, positions me for the resources of heaven? What is the kingdom of God every time Jesus talked about the kingdom of God, he talked about it in a way where there was it there was a when he demonstrated it rather it was a way of provision for people. provision for him. Or sanity, peace. You know, when people were wounded people were tormented.
And he healed him or he delivered them of their torment.
That was the kingdom of heaven coming.
Now let me just throw this thought out real quick, um
the kingdom of heaven.
Think about the United States of America. The Republic, right?
Think of that as a kingdom. Okay.
You know the United States is like a really
resourced
country, isn't it?
I'll say something neat. I was. I was talking to you the other day about this with so I'm watching World War Two in HD. For about it's on Netflix is probably my second or third time through the whole series. One of the things that just like it fascinates me so deeply about the Second World War is how is the logistics of it? Like how they were able to amass so many people. You know, and normally how many people storm Normandy, Diane Deena. It was like 150,000 soldiers came ashore within like a 48 hour period. But I was talking to Doug, they're there. So we have a retired Army Colonel, on staff with us. He's one of our history instructors. And he was telling me, he's got like a master's degree in leadership and stuff. And I think some of it specializes in warfare. So he's got a qualified opinion. But he talked about in warfare. If you want to fight somebody and take them out, you have to you have to have two things. You got to have soldiers right.
Okay, you got people
To fight, unless we're fighting with drones, we haven't quite gotten there yet. Don't guess maybe sort of but
the people and then what else do you have to have?
You've got to have munitions, you got to stuff. If you're gonna fight unless you guys are just planning on going like the kilts and run naked in the battle. You got to have clothes. You got to have food, you got to have munitions. In fact, um, one thing that that they were saying in that, that show that I was talking about war two in HD, one
of the soldiers because they,
they were telling us D day all the time. They're saying this D day, but it was always a drill. And, you know, because basically, we had a huge encampment in England, we're all doing our training and getting ready to go and invade Normandy. And anyway,
so we're going to liberate Europe, big day data, right? Okay.
They, one of the soldiers said it was always a drill. But then he realized at some point, this huge, I don't know, I'm about to make up a word amassment of, of resources, everything you could think of, like, you know, bullets to the sky, you know, all these crates of everything. And he's like, I knew that it was on like Donkey Kong. He didn't really say that. But he said, I knew it was on. I knew something was about to happen. Anyway, this is the thing like what Doug was saying is you got to have people and you got to have resources. Well, here's the deal if the United States of America it's pretty big nation, right? But let me tell you something, it is small compared to the kingdom of heaven. I want you to understand that the the, the scope, the scope in America, we fought in the Pacific, and we fought in Europe, that was pretty big. It was a World War. It was in several theaters, but that's the main problem. As we were, but the kingdom of heaven is invading the whole world for all of history. So the thing I want you to understand about the kingdom of heaven is resourceful. God has two plans. One plan is to send people but he's not sending you naked in a battle. His second plan is to resource you with the things that you need to be blessed in the design that He has for you. I want you to understand that God wants to bless you. He wants to give you what you need to be able to fulfill your God given destiny, because as you're fulfilling your God given destiny, there is no alignment with other people's destiny, which is in alignment with the whole big picture that God's trying to do in the earth. Yes, tracking with me. We're all in this together, right?
So being poor in spirit.
Jesus says this is a key For years to be the kingdom of heaven. In other words, the full might have not the American army in wartime, but the full might of the kingdom of heaven, the resources of heaven are at your disposal, but you have to be poor, and spirit to get it. All right. So, real quick, who wants the resources of heaven? We do we need it. We need the resources of heaven to be deployed to us. But the Lord has a condition and it's that you're poor in spirit. So let's talk about what that means for the rest of our time. Okay, what does it mean to be poor in spirit? Number one poor in spirit means that I understand my lack is this crazy.
Before you get
the resources you need, you have to understand that you don't have what you need.
And that's okay.
Don't people get on your nerves when they act like they've got it all together?
Like they know everything. If you know everything, you got it all together then there's nothing more to give you. I think that's what Jesus is talking about. He's like, you have not made any room inside your internal person to get more stuff because you're full of it. Right?
Okay.
So understand my law. Here's a verse in Second Corinthians and this is Paul the apostle, arguably the second most influential person in all of history. He said this. He was a powerful figure. I'm saying he really influenced the nation's Paul came to the Lord's like, Lord, I'm like, I'm feeling lack And this is what the Lord said to Paul. Paul, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is actually made perfect in your weakness. And then Paul says, well, therefore I will boast more gladly about my weakness so that Christ power may rest on me. This is why for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness and insults and hardships and persecutions, difficulties for when I'm weak, then I'm strong. So Paul got this idea that he didn't have to run from his own weakness. But the actually the embracing of his own weakness enabled him to receive provision from heaven. What was provision in this context is grace. Right? What is Grace? This is the word is Cara ch AR is and it means the divine influence of God moves on your life that reflects in your life. So karass is like is a stuff Grace, it's not just some of us think of grace. And we just think I got, I got what I didn't, or I didn't get what I deserve. Or no, that's mercy. I got what I didn't deserve. That is grace. But it's more than that. What I'm saying is like you ever heard the word charismata? That's like the gifts of the Spirit is a divine endowment. So basically what the Lord is telling Paul, I'm going to give you a divine endowment that enabled you to work, say resources of heaven. That's what I'm talking about. So Paul said, it was not me that worked. But it was the grace of God working in me. With that understanding of grace, it's actually got influence in my heart enabled me, like you guys might be at the very end of your rope. And you'd be able to shine in that moment because of the grace of God. Right? But you don't get grace. Let's just call that a resource of heaven. You don't get grace. Unless you're poor in spirit. And Paul started saying, Hey, I'm just acknowledging my lack. I'm acknowledging why not so I can receive so Second thing poor spirit means is I'm not afraid to ask for God's help.
Y'all here, just take a deep breath.
Say it's alright if you have weaknesses. Okay? Like we all do, right? And I'm not just talking about areas of compromise of sin that's different, you know, repent of sin. But we are we're all gifted with different things that we bring to the table and there's things that we don't have. And we don't have to get so worked up about that.
When the devil comes and tells you,
you just don't have what it takes.
Let me tell you one tactic.
I may not teach my kid to say no, Devlin, geez, no, but let me do another tactic. You're so right. Probably so. I'm so glad that Jesus makes makes his power shown in my weakness.
Just a thought just agree with him.
Yeah, probably so
I'm poor in spirit. I'm not afraid to say God Hill. One of my favorite things to do is to ask for God's help because I just know that I need it. We can either do it in our own self, our own strength, but whatever you birth in the flesh you have to maintain in the flesh that's so tiring. But what if you said, Lord, I need your help. And he offers his hell. There's just something there. The blessing of the Lord comes with a good aftertaste. Let me just say that Okay. Um, this is Matthew five, three, this is exact same verse. It's just a different translation. But it says, God bless. This is blessed are the poor in spirit. There's Kingdom Heaven, says God blesses those who realize their need for him. It's just another way to say it.
So if you want to be blessed
if you want to get key number one To be healthy, wealthy and wise, if you want to be blessed by God, acknowledge that you need his help. It's really simple. Number three, poor in spirit means that I don't think I'm better than other people.
So, going back real quick to this verse. No, I'm sorry. It's I've got it to come. Here it is right here. Um First Peter, Peter says, clothe yourselves with humility. This is the important spirit towards one another because God opposes the proud. But he gives grace What does grace the grace is that empowerment to live right? empowerment delivery. He gets graced humble, humble, you're that sales therefore under God's mighty hand so that he may lift you up. So one thing this is that principle that Jesus is talking about, you're blessed when you're poor in spirit, because Yours is the kingdom of heaven. In other words, the resources of heaven are available to you the kingdom is available to you, if you're poor in spirit, but what does he do if you're not poor in spirit? Would you look right here? Can anybody figure out the answer by looking at the verse? If you do, I'll give you air fist bump. God actually opposes pride. This is really, really important. If you don't want to be blessed. Then just think that you're better than someone else. Just label other people. This kind of people and I'm not even talking about racism. that's a that's a blatant one. Okay. But I'm talking about just these kind of people are idiots these kind of people are idiots and these kind of people are idiots. I tried to guard my heart the other day. I was I call somebody an idiot in my mind I'm not actually said it out loud. My Lord forgive me. Because they did one thing is there was nobody that you guys know if some it was just completely It was a business related, but I didn't know them. But I had asked the Lord forgive me, I don't want to put people in a box. We have idiot moments, right? By the way, I think that's what cursing people is this when you sit. When you pronounce something over them like that. It'd be better to say that was an idiotic thing to do. That's an action. Right? It's like you don't call people fools. You say if you call somebody doubtful. You're in danger of how far do you have something to say john?
Yeah.
And you know, the thing about it is is the opposition is what blocks us from receiving grace in this context. So, who don't think we're better than others? Let's look at this next one. Be important spirit means I am who I am and I am where I am. And this is the place where you really is can take a deep breath. Has anybody let's just pick up where what john said, Is anybody going on your own for a while and crash and burn? I started a new book this week. I'm actually today this morning. I started a new book this morning. Called a dream big by Bob Gough and I've never actually read anything by him before, but I've heard other people talk about him. But um, Bob is a he's an instructor at Pepperdine law school. And he's also
let me see which
I forget.
He's an instructor at a law school and he's also an instructor at a prison. I forget what it was San Quentin or something. But that's that's Johnny Cash his prison in it. No, that's Folsom Prison. Anyway, it was one I think it was one in California. I don't I don't remember what the name of it is, but I think that's where Pepperdine is. He says something is interesting. He said a lot of his students. Um, I think maybe he was talking about both contexts about a lot of his law students or people that have kind of crashed and burned other things. And they decided somehow through the school of hard knocks and they want to become lawyers. But then the people In prison, well, obviously they've done some things have landed him in jail, right? But he said, there's a certain in both the people that he teaches there's a certain authenticity about them. So for you to be blessed and access the the richness of God's provision in the kingdom of heaven. You can be like where you are. You can be for real like, oh, I've had some bumps and bruises along the way. I've crashed and burned it relationships are I've thrown my life away on drugs or alcohol. I've done all kinds of things that have landed me in a place but that can actually be a blessing to you in the fact that it positions you to be for real. You don't have to pretend anymore. Let me tell you something, if you've not landed yourself in sanquin You can also be for real where you are. Because when we're real, this is what the Bible says in Psalm 51. David said this is actually when David was confessing his sin of sleeping with Bathsheba and then having committed murder by the way, that's one of our Bible heroes right? He has some issues but he said you owe God desire truth in the inward parts. I think there's something about being that's that means he's for real truth so southerners they like truth on the outward parts right? painted up take it a Walmart hi Yeah, we're good how Yeah, we're good. Everything's good all time guys good all time. Let's look let's see God is not interested in your outward man. I mean, he likes your hair man. Do you know he likes you likes really look but he is interested. He he He desires truth in the inward parts. That means that we're authentic people I actually am, who I am aware that I have issues and also I'm aware of where I am. Amen.
Number five,
we have poor spirit means I'll let God do the promoting you not to fight for your own because God wants to give it to you. We confess our lat we know that we need him. This is that same verse and Peter, humble yourselves under God's mighty hand that he may lift you up at the right time. Amen. Number six actually, is being poor spirit means that I trust God with the outcome. I know that this is in God's hands. I don't have to bite and scratch and some of this comes from knowing that we're God's children, right? But I want to throw that in
So
could you close your eyes for just a moment?
Oh, I just wrote out some opening rounds for to say I forgot one of my points I forgot to put in there. But I want to tell to
be important spirit means that you don't have to always be right.
The Bible says that it would be better for you to be a fool than to be wise in your own eyes.
You don't always have to be the answer, man.
Don't be that person as the one up somebody's story all the time. Like they're telling a story about what's going on them you have to one up or you have to one up your knowledge of
certain video game.
You don't always have to be right
Actually, let me just say this real quick.
Let me say this real quick.
This is I guess this can go along with being where you are.
It's okay for you to reveal that you're not. You don't you don't know everything about a certain area. Even if you have an area, like in carpentry or something like that, where you have a lot of expertise. You don't know everything. It's okay to reveal the parts that you don't know. Because when you do that inherently opens the door for somebody else to feel that gap. Because other people do know. Right? That's why it's okay to be where you are. I go David, he's a big boss in Amazon now. But there's actually bigger bosses that have a lot to teach him. Do you see it every level is good for us to be where we are. Sometimes I think that we're really afraid of other people seeing our weaknesses. being poor spirit. What if God actually wants to use another person to fill in the gap? That's his way of resourcing you. It's okay to reveal your weakness. You don't have to pretend now some people think humility is pretend to be weaker than you are. That's not right either. Right? That's false humility. But I'm gonna bring it back to this. I just introduced this graphic to our our students at Chapel this week. And I threw this out. We got about five months left. What do you want to see happen? No, we did this two or three weeks ago at church where you guys made some goals for the rest. I want you to think about terms of your growth and you can apply it to being poor in spirit today if you want to be blessed. How can you grow? What do you want to see happen? in these next few months I want to see God redeem us. I want to see God have us on the right track, not spinning from the first six months. So this year, us actually doing something that's powerful. And these last month, we stand with me.
For more information about the visit the dot o RG thanks for listening
Transcribed by https://otter.ai