Good morning.
We are ministering in competition with a great fan. It makes me feel as though I am on board a Boeing 747, so why do you not fasten your seatbelts? We sincerely hope that the Captain is going to speak—the Captain of the host of the Lord.
Before we look into Matthew 5, I would like to share a few more introductory words with you. Please turn to John 2, verse 23.
Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, beholding His signs which He was doing.
But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men,
and because He did not need anyone to bear witness concerning man; for He Himself knew what was in man.
Here we see that the Lord did not commit Himself to these people who believed because of the signs He did, because He knew what was in their hearts.
It is not going to be signs and wonders that will enable us to behold our Lord. It is only when our hearts are being conformed into the image of the Lamb of God. As we read yesterday, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” The Spirit descended out of heaven upon Him and remained on Him.
I came across a most remarkable word in Psalm 18 this morning that I would like to share with you before we look into Matthew 5. Psalm 18, verse 25:
With the kind Thou dost show Thyself kind;
with the blameless Thou dost show Thyself blameless;
with the pure Thou dost show Thyself pure;
and with the crooked Thou dost show Thyself astute.
Here is the kind of heart we have got to have if we are to see the Lord: the same kind, the pure. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Those who are pure in heart shall see God; they shall behold God.
Those who are blameless—the Lord will reveal Himself to them as the One who is blameless. And to the one who is true, the Lord will reveal Himself in another manner.
How important it is that we understand the importance of bringing our hearts right before God, having the right attitude, having the right spirit within us, having the nature of the Lamb of God, so that we can behold Him, so that He will commit Himself unto us and show Himself unto us in these days.
May the Lord help us. Shall we pray?
Father, we come unto You this morning. Lord, do remember us. Remember that we are dust; we are nothing. O God, without You we are nothing. Without Your presence, we are nothing.
We thank You this morning that through the precious blood of Jesus, we can come before You. Lord, it is our desire to behold the Lamb of God, to see You, Lord; to look into that wonderful nature of the Lamb of God, to behold the Lord, and to be transformed into the same image.
Father, we ask You to be with us. We thank You for being with us, and enable us both to speak and to hear, because we can do neither. Neither can we speak nor can we hear without Your Spirit resting upon us. Lord, thank You for being with us this morning. In the name of Jesus, amen.
Let us turn to Matthew 5, reading from verse 1.
And when He saw the multitudes, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him.
And opening His mouth, He began to teach them, saying,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of 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, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when men revile you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me.
Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Amen.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
A Norwegian theologian has translated this verse as follows: “Blessed are those who, as far as their inner being is concerned—what they are and what they do—appear before God as beggars.”
Well, we certainly do hope that we have quite a crowd of all the spiritual beggars of America with us this week. God is looking for people who have a teachable spirit—the humility and ability to receive.
When the Lord pointed out the true representative of the kingdom of God, He took, within the crowd of the disciples, just a child. It was not a learned scholar. It was no priest. It was no scribe. It was just a small child.
And He said that if we were not able to receive as a child receives, we would not even be able to enter into the kingdom.
God does not want us to be childish or to remain babes in Christ. But there is some aspect of the child that God wants us to have all during our time here, no matter what knowledge we gain or what maturity we grow into. That is the ability to receive, and receive, and receive, and receive from the Lord.
Brothers and sisters, it is a sad fact, and one of the greatest hindrances today is that many of the Lord’s people have lost the ability to receive from God.
That might, in the end, lead many of the Lord’s people into deception.
Read about the church in Laodicea. Well, as a matter of fact, it started already in the church at Ephesus. In the letter to the church in Ephesus, we see how rich the church was, how able it was, how mature it was.
There was endurance, there was activity, there were many things, and there was the gift of discerning false prophets from genuine ones.
Still, the Lord pointed out that something serious was beginning to happen among this group of believers. They were losing the ability to receive from God. They were beginning to rely on what they had received.
They were, in fact, in danger of being able to go on in the works of the Lord and in the life of the church without badly needing the presence of the Lord, the Lamb standing in the midst, and the light and presence of the Holy Spirit.
I told some of my friends that I went to Norway two years ago and spoke to a minister who had been a Lutheran priest for many years. But he left that denomination, and he said to me, “You know, I left it because I found out that the doctrines—all the system of doctrines—were so strong that they could go on and go on whether the Lord was there or not. It did not matter.”
So he said, “I joined the Pentecostals. And do you know what I found out? They did not have a wrong system of doctrine, at least not in Norway, but they had some strong men, strong personalities, who were able to keep together the whole organization. So they did not even need the Holy Spirit sometimes.”
I am not criticizing either the Lutherans or the Pentecostals, because I know it could easily happen to us—to you and me.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who are able to receive from the Lord.
You know, sometimes I really fear that the Lord should bypass me in what He is doing today. If you look up Luke 4, verse 25, this is what I fear could happen to me and to many of the Lord’s people.
But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land;
and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.
And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.
And all in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things;
and they rose up and cast Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff.
But passing through their midst, He went His way.
Oh, friends, what would happen if the Lord came into our synagogue today—into our churches, into our fellowship?
Would we be so rich in everything we have experienced, everything we know, and all our religious activity, that the Lord would have to bypass us and go to someone else—someone who was really poor and longing for Him to meet them?
May the Lord help us, that nothing we have experienced so far could hinder us from going on with Him and experiencing much more of what He has.
Blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Sometimes I feel that the Lord just has to take away a lot of the blessings that we have received. If you look in Scripture, in Jeremiah 2, verses 2 and 3:
Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
“Go and proclaim in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord,
I remember concerning you the devotion of your youth,
the love of your betrothals,
your following after Me in the wilderness,
through a land not sown.
Israel was holy to the Lord,
the first of His harvest;
all who ate of it became guilty;
evil came upon them,’ declares the Lord.”
“I remember concerning you,” says the Lord, “your devotion, your following after Me in the wilderness”—a land not sown.
A place with almost nothing. A place with no blessings, a place with no riches at all.
Now, I think that sometimes God has to lead His people into the wilderness, lead them back to the wilderness, because we are being taken up so much with everything we have, with all the riches we have, with all the knowledge we have, and with all the things we are experiencing.
Then we will experience the time that the people of God experienced in Hosea 2. Beginning in verse 5:
For their mother has played the harlot;
she who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For she said, “I will go after my lovers,
who give me my bread and my water,
my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.”
Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns,
and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.
And she will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them;
and she will seek them, but will not find them.
Then she will say, “I will go back to my first husband,
for it was better for me then than now.”
For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil,
and lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.
Therefore, I will take back My grain in its time,
and My new wine in its season.
I will also take away My wool and My flax given to cover her nakedness.
And then I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers,
and no one will rescue her out of My hand.
I will also put an end to all her gaiety,
her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths, and all her festal assemblies.
And in Hosea 2:14-15:
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
bring her into the wilderness,
and speak kindly to her.
Then I will give her her vineyards from there,
and the valley of Achor as a door of hope.
And she will sing there as in the days of her youth,
as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.
And it will come about in that day,” declares the Lord,
“that you will call Me Ishi
and will no longer call Me Baali.”
Here you have the picture of how God is dealing in a strange way with His people. Because they became so rich with all the oil and flax and wine that were lavished upon them—all the blessings they received from the Lord—they began to trust and rely on the blessings.
They began to trust and rely on their knowledge. They began to be able to go on without being poor in spirit, without being able to receive from the Lord.
The only way the Lord could bring His people back to Himself was to strip His people of everything they had: the oil, the wine, the flax, and the wool. He stripped His church so that it would appear naked and poor before the Lord.
In order to do so, He led His people out into the wilderness to speak to them there, in order that the people of God might discover the Lord afresh. They discover the presence of the Lord, and they learn to sing as in their youth.
It was the Lord who mattered, and it did not matter what was around. It was not the blessing that mattered; it was the Lord Himself who mattered.
Oh, blessed are the poor in spirit—those who are able to empty themselves, to unload themselves, not only from the burdens of sin, problems, and difficulties, but to unload themselves of past blessings and past experiences in order to meet the Lord afresh and receive from Him whatever He has to give.
Blessed are the poor in spirit. To be poor in spirit is, in fact, to be utterly dependent upon the Lord—to be a beggar. That is a good word: a spiritual beggar.
Sometimes it is hard to remain in that position. It is difficult to remain in that position.
I heard about a minister in England. It is only in England these things happen.
He went to a conference to speak, but unfortunately he forgot his notes. So he told his wife, who was coming later in the evening, to bring his notes with her. But he had a meeting without notes.
He appeared before the audience and said, “Well, dear people of God, I am sorry. I forgot my notes, so this afternoon I had to trust the Lord. But tonight I will get my notes back, and things are going to get better.”
Sometimes I feel that, with or without notes, it does not matter. It is equally bad with me.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
I know a brother in America who did a lot of counseling with young people. So he thought he would make out a catalogue of answers to questions. Young people have so many questions.
He began to put down answers to the various questions. For instance, if a young man would come and say, “I have such a problem with smoking,” he would say, “Just a minute,” and look it up in the catalogue.
Then he would say, “Now listen carefully. Point one: Have you got any cigarettes on you? Deliver them to me. Point two: Please meditate on the following Scriptures,” and he would give him a few Scriptures. “Point three: Every time you are tempted, please do not hesitate to call me.”
Now, it worked wonderfully on the first one, but on the second one it did not work at all. So at last he took the whole book and threw it in the garbage.
He said, “I began to ask the Lord. When I sat before them, I said, ‘Lord, what am I going to do? How can I help them? Please, Lord, give me an answer. I need an answer.’”
From that point, his ministry blossomed as never before. Blessed are the poor in spirit.
The kingdom of heaven is theirs. Where does the Spirit of God rest? Where does the Spirit of God come?
The Spirit of God is like the wind, we learn in Scripture. And the wind is always blowing where there is a vacuum. There the wind will go to fill that vacuum.
Now we hope that there will be a vacuum in our hearts in these days, so that the Spirit of God will come and rest upon us. Look in Romans 8, verse 26.
And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness;
for we do not know how to pray as we should,
but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;
and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is,
because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
I love this Scripture: “The Spirit also helps our weakness.” The Spirit does not help anything else.
If we come, for instance, to a prayer meeting with all our well-prepared prayers and everything we want to say to the Lord—unless it is really a burden of the Spirit—we will kind of block the way for the Spirit to work freely among us, because He only helps our weakness.
He only comes where there is a vacuum, where there is a great need, where we are poor in spirit. There we will inherit the kingdom of God. There the Lord will bestow upon us His riches.
Oh, I so wish that the people of God could learn how to disable themselves, to empty themselves, to unload themselves in the presence of the Lord.
Do you remember when the Lord spoke about the child as the true representative of the one who is going to enter into the kingdom of God? Just afterward, He met a young man—a young rich ruler.
He was a good man, an able man, as far as I can see; a man of good morality, a fine young man who wanted to come into the kingdom of God, who wanted to be saved.
But the Lord pointed out that there was only one thing he needed, and that was to be poor in spirit. That was to be able to unload himself.
It was at that particular event that the Lord told how difficult it is for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of God. He used the picture of the camel, which has to be unloaded completely and bow down in order to be able to come through the narrow gate in the wall of Jerusalem.
Blessed are the poor in spirit. The kingdom of heaven is theirs.
Now, we want to behold the Lamb of God. We want to look into His life. We want to see whether He was poor in spirit.
Well, we do find this tremendously important spiritual quality in His life. Certainly we do, in Philippians 2. We read in verse 5:
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, although He existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself,
taking the form of a bond-servant,
and being made in the likeness of men.
And being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore also God highly exalted Him,
and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth,
and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Oh, have the attitude of Christ Jesus in yourselves—the nature of the Lamb of God.
How rich He was. How rich the Lord Jesus was. He was equal with God. He existed in the form of God. He had everything. He was everything.
But He emptied Himself. He unloaded Himself. He disabled Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant and being made in the likeness of men.
Now, brothers and sisters, are we going to come into the kingdom? Are we going to be able to reign with Christ? Are we going to come upon the throne and exercise authority?
There is no other way than the way of the Lamb of God. There is no one else that the Lord can trust with such a responsibility. There is no one else that God can trust with such mighty power—the rule, the reign, the authority—unless we have really learned to unload ourselves, to empty ourselves, to disable ourselves before God.
We must appear before God in what we are and what we do as beggars, as those who are able to receive, as those who are willing to forget past experiences, past blessings, and past knowledge, and come before God at this time as true beggars, asking Him to reveal Himself unto us.
He emptied Himself. He did it willingly. No one forced Him to do so. He did it all by Himself. He refused to do anything independent of His Father.
In a sense, there has never been a man so weak in Himself. There has never been a person on this earth so poor in spirit as the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God.
If you look in John’s Gospel, I think you are familiar with all this that we are speaking on this morning. It is just a simple message. The thing that matters is not to know all this, but to come through the experience of it.
The thing that matters is really to learn to empty yourself before the Lord, to disable yourself, so that you can experience the Spirit of God coming upon you, resting upon you, and being with us.
In John 5, verse 19:
Jesus therefore answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.
For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and greater works than these will He show Him, that you may marvel.”
That is the avenue to revelation: the Father shows the Son.
The Father does not commit Himself to anyone else but those who are truly in the nature of the Lamb of God—those who are poor in spirit, those who have ceased from doing anything but that which the Father wants them to be and that which the Father wants them to do.
The Lord Jesus said, “I can do nothing. I can do nothing of Myself.” Well, He had the privilege of being able to do anything He wanted. He was equal with God. He had everything. But He emptied Himself in order to be able to behold His Father and depend upon His Father for even the smallest details in His life.
I remember how the Lord opened this up to me, looking into a certain place in Mark’s Gospel. It is a place where the Lord Jesus was, and many people came there. He went away to be with the Lord in prayer, and Peter came to Him and said, “Well, they are looking for You.”
There was a big crowd, but He said, “Let us go somewhere else, to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also.” Oh, He depended upon God where to go.
I would have chosen that big revival in that city. I would have gone on for weeks. But the Lord Jesus was never guided or led by the needs around Him.
He could not be. He was poor in spirit. He emptied Himself in order to behold the Father, and everything the Father revealed unto Him—these were the things that the Son was taken up with.
In John 5:30, it says:
I can do nothing on My own initiative.
As I hear, I judge;
and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.
“I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge.” The Lord Jesus would not speak if He did not hear anything.
Oh, sometimes maybe it would be better not to say a word. Sometimes it would be better for some of us who minister the Word of God if we stood up in the assembly and said, “Brothers and sisters, we have nothing to say.”
He would not speak the Word. He would not deliver a message unless His Father would speak for Him. He was not able to speak. He was not able to judge.
Think of all the judging that we are doing in our midst, how we judge each other and everything else. Sometimes it would be good if we did not do it, unless we have heard from the Father.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
In John 8:28, Jesus said:
When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He,
and I do nothing on My own initiative,
but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.
And He who sent Me is with Me.
Why? Because, “I do nothing on My own initiative.”
Where does the blessing rest? Where does the Spirit rest? Where there is a vacuum. Where there is an emptiness before God. Where we have disabled ourselves in the presence of the Lord, there we are able to say, “He who sent Me is with Me. He has not left Me alone. I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.”
Blessed are the poor in spirit. Our brother Paul, the apostle, was poor in spirit too. If you look in Philippians 3, verse 7:
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,
for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ,
and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law,
but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,
that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;
in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Here is a man speaking who is truly poor in spirit, a man who is able to empty himself of all the things that had been his past experiences, all that had any value, all that he could build on, all that he could rely on, all that he could go on with.
And surely he was the most able person. But he counted it all rubbish in order to gain Christ, in order to come deeper into the likeness of the Lamb of God.
He was not hindered by past experiences. He was not hindered by past blessings. I do not think we should despise past blessings or past experiences, but they must never become so big to us and so strong that we cannot receive from God.
We must have this wonderful attitude of being poor in spirit, being able to receive more of the Lord Jesus in our lives.
Let us close by reading from 1 Corinthians 2, beginning in verse 1.
And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.
For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.
And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.
Oh, how important it is. “I determined.” We have to make the choice. “I determined to know nothing except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”
“And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.” Oh, what a spirit. What an attitude.
“My message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” That is where the Spirit works. That is where the Spirit is demonstrated. That is where the Spirit is manifest.
Where we are poor in spirit, where there is weakness, where we are truly helpless and dependent upon the Lord, where we are truly able to receive from God—blessed are the poor in spirit.
May God indeed impress this attitude into our hearts. May we find in these days the same attitude that was in Christ Jesus being found in our midst and in our hearts. Amen.