What is Blessed Poverty?

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I want to invite you to take out your Bible, turn with me to Matthew chapter 5.
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As many of you know, in just a few short weeks, two of our young adults in the church are going to be being married.
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Yeah, I'm talking about you guys.
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And this last week we were together talking about their wedding ceremony, talking about the traditional vows of the wedding service that people speak to one another.
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The traditional wedding vows.
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As many of you are familiar, you know the person will say, I take you to be my wife, to have and to hold, for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer.
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And it's implied within these vows that you are expressing the two extremes of life.
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Sometimes things are good and sometimes things are bad.
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The good things in the vows are expressed as health and riches.
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And the bad things are expressed as sickness and poorness.
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Currently, or culturally, we understand that a person whose situation would be called bad might be a person who is experiencing times of either physical sickness or economic distress.
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Most people believe that it's good to be healthy and rich and it's bad to be sick and poor.
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So, as a society, we have concluded that.
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We have concluded that being poor is akin to being sick.
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And that is undesirable.
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It's not good.
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It's the other extreme of life.
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Yet, when we come to the very first of Jesus' Beatitudes, He speaks of a blessedness which accompanies poorness.
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He actually speaks of the value of poorness.
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So, what I've decided this morning, as we continue our study, I don't know if some of you thought I might do all the Beatitudes in one sermon.
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That's impossible.
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I've decided to do one at a time.
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So, if you thought the Sermon on the Mount was going to take a while, well, the Beatitudes themselves are going to take a little while just to get through.
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But we're going to do just the one this morning.
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And we're going to look at this Beatitude where Jesus regards the poor.
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And we're going to see that this often quoted Beatitude is just as often misunderstood.
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And what we want to do is we want to seek to understand what Jesus meant when He pronounced the blessing of the Kingdom of Heaven upon the poor.
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So, let's stand together and read just the one verse and then ask God's blessing on our service.
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Matthew 5, verse 3.
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Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
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Our Father and our God, we thank You for this opportunity to again hear Your Word and to study it.
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I pray that You would first and foremost, Lord, keep me from error as I seek to bring enlightenment to this passage, as I seek to give exposition of this passage.
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I pray that You would keep me from error.
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I pray ultimately that Your Holy Spirit would be the teacher and that He would open hearts and minds to a better understanding of this text and that through it we would all be edified and that Your name would be glorified.
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And this is our prayer in Jesus' name and for His sake.
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Amen.
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Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, one of the things that Jesus does is that He seeks to clear up misunderstandings of God's law.
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We talked about this last week.
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Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, You have heard it said this, but I tell you this.
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He's saying, you understand this this way, but you're wrong.
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This is how you need to understand this.
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Jesus is effectively giving an exposition of the law throughout the Sermon on the Mount.
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Well, beloved, this morning I want to follow in the footsteps of Christ because in the same way that many people in Jesus' time had misunderstood the words of Moses, in our time there are many people who have misunderstood the words of Christ.
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Do you understand what I'm saying? Just as the people of Jesus' time had misunderstood the words of Moses, in our time there are many people who have misunderstood the words of Christ.
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And one of the places where I find a great deal of misunderstanding is in the Beatitudes.
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The first portion of the Sermon on the Mount.
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In particular, this first statement wherein Jesus gives a blessing to the poor.
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And this morning I want to demonstrate three things.
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I don't know how many of you take notes, but I'll give you the outline very simply.
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Number one, the poor does not necessarily refer to economic poverty.
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That's number one.
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Number two, the term poor does refer to being absolutely destitute of self-reliance.
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It does refer to being absolutely destitute of self-reliance.
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And number three, the term poor in spirit is in direct opposition to the modern self-esteem gospel.
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The modern gospel of self-esteem, which is what the gospel has become.
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So that's our three-part message today.
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Let's begin with number one.
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The term poor does not necessarily refer to economic poverty.
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Although it is very popularly held among certain segments which might call themselves Christians, it is not what this text is saying.
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In fact, if you were to look at the Roman Catholic teaching, the Neo-Evangelical teaching, modernists and socialists, you will find that they interpret this text as purely economic poverty.
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It's economic destitution that Jesus is talking about here.
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And that economic destitution is what makes people right with God.
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Well, Jesus said, blessed are the poor.
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Thus, if you're economically destitute, then you're right with God.
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And there are many people who believe that is so.
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But let me tell you something very simply, and hopefully you already know this, but just in case you don't, I want to say this very simply.
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There are many people in this world who are in financial crisis, who are at the same time opposed to Christ and to the gospel.
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That's simple isn't it? There are many people in this world who are in financial crisis, who are at the same time opposed to Christ and opposed to the gospel.
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And to proclaim them righteous and blessed because of their poverty is not biblical, nor is it a right understanding of Jesus' words.
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To say, hey, he's poor, thus he's right with God.
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The two do not compute.
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In fact, Jesus provides his own appropriate interpretation.
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He does not simply say, blessed are the poor.
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He says, blessed are the poor in spirit.
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He provides his own definition.
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This shows us that he is not referring necessarily to economic poverty, but a different kind of poverty which is, blessed by God, a poverty of the soul.
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Furthermore, if we actually do a Bible study on the subject of poverty, we will find that there are actually some types of poverty which God condemns.
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Did you know that a poor person who is poor as a result of laziness is actually condemned by the Scriptures? The Scripture condemns laziness.
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In the Old Testament, Proverbs, in chapter 6, verse 6, it says, Go to the aunt, O sluggard, consider her ways and be wise.
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Without having any chief, officer or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest.
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How long will you lie there, O sluggard? By the way, sluggard, in case you're not familiar, means lazy person.
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When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man.
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You see, this text tells us that if it is pure laziness which has led to our poverty, then that's not blessed by God.
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In fact, the Apostle Paul tells us very simply, if a man does not work, he is not supposed to eat.
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Very simply.
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There are also passages in the Scripture that tell us that if we are poor as a result of frivolity or excess, then that is not blessed by God.
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Proverbs 28, verse 19, Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits, and to break that down, he who follows frivolity, he who follows excess, he who is not responsible, this person will have plenty of poverty because he's not responsible.
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So here we have the Scriptures condemning laziness, it's condemning excess, and saying if these things lead to economic poverty, then no, it's not a blessing from God.
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It's a result of the old, you reap what you sow, reality of life.
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So it's clear that simply being impoverished is not necessarily a condition for blessing from God.
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In fact, sometimes poverty is the result of God's judgment.
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In contrast to this, when we look through the Bible, we also see in Scripture that there are those who God blessed who did have material wealth.
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There was Abraham.
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Abraham had great property.
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He had great livestock.
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He had people who served him.
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He had an entire nation, essentially, that he was the head over.
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He was a blessed man when it came to his relationship with God.
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Now, he's called the friend of God, but he's also economically wealthy.
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So too was David.
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He was a man who was called, what? A man after God's own heart.
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But yet David was economically wealthy.
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They demonstrate that it is possible to have material wealth and still be in a positive relationship with God.
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On this point, Brian Swerdley has written, and he wrote this, and I think it was very insightful.
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He said, There is no virtue in being poor economically.
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The unregenerate poor are no closer to God than are the unsaved rich.
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There is no spiritual advantage of living in economic poverty.
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If poverty guaranteed spirituality, the poorest sections in cities and the large third world slums would be the safest places on the planet.
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But we know they are the most dangerous.
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That's an interesting thought.
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If economic purity resulted in spiritual transformation, then these places would be the safest places in the world.
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And I thought, that's a pretty insightful thought.
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The Roman Catholics have interpreted this passage, blessed are the poor in spirit, have interpreted this passage in such a way that it has led to the belief in the taking of a vow of poverty.
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Some of you have probably heard of those who have taken a vow of poverty.
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This means that they have purposely chosen to live a life of economic destitution.
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And the results have not been positive.
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Because it leads to a people who do little to nothing productive, and they feel virtuous having done little to nothing to be productive.
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And I may step on a few toes here.
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I don't care.
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I don't mean I don't care.
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I love you all.
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But this is not meant to be offensive.
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This is a truth.
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Even the famed Mother Teresa, lauded by the Catholic Church, and lauded by many secularists, had a very unbiblical view of poverty and suffering.
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She believed the more poverty and suffering that a person experienced, the more close their relationship was to God.
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As a result, those who were in her shelters were often kept in horrid conditions, devoid of proper medical treatment, although she had access to a fortune which could have brought relief.
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Much of that money which went to the church instead of the people that needed it.
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But hey, this is how they get closer to God.
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Suffering brings people closer to God.
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Destitution brings people closer to God.
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This is how bad theology becomes bad practicality.
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And it is.
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To say that economic poverty is what makes someone right with God will lead to bad practicality.
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Because bad theology always produces bad practice.
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So it's clear that this beatitude is not speaking of the economically poor necessarily.
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As we have noted, there are poor people who are rebellious and have no desire to follow Christ.
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And there are people who have much, economically speaking, and they believe God is their sole delight.
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But if this is the case, and what I'm saying is true, then why is it when we go to the passage in Luke...
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Because remember, Jesus spoke these words not once, but twice.
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And if you go to the passage in Luke, there is no qualifier.
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In Matthew, it says, blessed are the poor in spirit.
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But if you go to the passage in Luke, and I'll be glad to let you look over there.
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Luke 6.
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We'll probably have it on the screen.
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Luke 6.
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In verse 20, it says, And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom.
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Notice that one does not have the qualifier.
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In fact, Luke's Gospel goes on to say in verse 24, But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your condemnation.
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Interesting.
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Well, does this negate everything that I have said so far? Well, I certainly hope not.
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I hope I did not think that far ahead.
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No, the reality is this doesn't negate anything that I've said, because this is one of those times where we must allow Scripture to interpret Scripture.
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Just because Jesus does not use the qualification poor in spirit in the passage in Luke does not mean that that type of poverty is not implied.
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It is a necessary consequence of comparing Scripture with Scripture, comparing Jesus' words in Matthew and Jesus' words in Luke.
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But there is something else we can draw from the Lukean passage.
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What we see in Luke, we can draw another reality and a real truth.
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There is a very real sense which the Bible expresses to us that being rich can keep people from seeking the kingdom of God.
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Because being rich causes people to make a god out of their money.
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That does happen.
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It doesn't have to, but it has the propensity to.
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People of great economic wealth have the tendency to love their money, to trust their money, to put great value in their money.
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And the Bible says we're supposed to love God, trust God, and put value in God.
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But people with great wealth tend to do the opposite.
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They tend to put those things in money.
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And this is why Jesus said in Matthew 19.24 it is easier for a camel, and you guys can finish it, a camel to go through the eye of a needle than what? Than for a rich person to go into heaven.
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He doesn't say it's impossible, but he says it's pretty hard.
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Because the reality is the rich person has a tendency to love his riches.
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And Jesus did say in Matthew 6.24 it is impossible to serve God and money.
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It is impossible to serve God and money.
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So there is no salvation in being poor, but there is a part of being rich which can keep us from understanding our own spiritual poverty and turning to Christ as Savior.
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Thus, those who trust in their riches.
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Which is why he makes the point in Luke 16.
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You remember the story of Luke 16 about the rich man and Lazarus? Lazarus is the poor man living outside.
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He does nothing but wants to eat the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table.
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And yet the rich man does nothing to help him, does nothing to love him, does nothing to satisfy him, but instead eats himself to the full.
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He is happy.
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He clothes himself in fine clothing.
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And here is this man who has nothing, who is sitting outside.
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And what does the Bible say? It says when the poor man died, he went to be with Abraham.
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But what happened to the rich man? He closed his eyes here.
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Here he opened his eyes in Hades, in hell.
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What's the reality there? The reality is here is this man who had everything.
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Here is this man who was in love with his riches instead of being in love with God.
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And this is a picture of those who love their money more than they love God.
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Now, I do want to make one more point before we move to the second point.
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One more part of this.
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The Bible does spend a large portion devoted to expressing God's concern for what we call the pious poor.
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The pious poor.
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The pious poor are those who are poor because of oppression and subjugation of the unrighteous.
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If you look through the Old Testament, you will see that God promises deliverance in the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, 2 Samuel, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and Zechariah.
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All of those books talk about the poor who is poor as a result of oppression and that God is their strength.
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That God is their rock.
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That God is the one who will save them from this oppression.
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And the Bible is clear that God warns the rich to never oppress the poor.
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Zechariah 7.10 says, Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.
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There is this command of God that He is going to protect those who are being oppressed.
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Again, I quote Mr.
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Shortley who says, If all of these passages are carefully studied, one does not see that God is exalting economic poverty, but rather, God is looking out for believers who are weak and vulnerable because it is the weak, the poor, the homeless, the widows, the orphans, the sojourners that are most often exploited and treated unjustly.
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That was true during the old covenant administration in Jesus' own day, and it is still true today.
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These passages do not teach that God thinks economic poverty is wonderful or that Jehovah favors socialism as some people have suggested, but rather, that God will defend and avenge the righteous poor who are oppressed.
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We must understand throughout the Old Testament and into the New Testament, it is not the poverty that necessarily brings the blessings of God.
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It is the trust in God that brings the blessings of God.
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The reality is, at least I have experienced in my life, those who have very little have at least by tendency and propensity been more trusting in God than those who have a lot, because those who have a lot tend to trust in what they got.
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So, it is safe to conclude that the poor are not blessed simply because of their poverty economically, but rather Jesus says something else.
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He says it is the poor in spirit.
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But who are those? Who is the poor in spirit? We have examined who they are not.
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It is not necessarily just the poor economically.
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Who are the poor in spirit? And this takes us to our second point.
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The term poor in spirit refers to being absolutely destitute of our own self-reliance.
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The person who is poor in spirit is the person who is acknowledging and understanding their own spiritual bankruptcy before God.
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They understand that when it comes to righteousness, when it comes to goodness, when it comes to holiness, we are not poor.
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We are flat broke.
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Do you understand that? We are not poor.
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We are broke.
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We are destitute.
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We have nothing.
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Our account is empty when it comes to our righteousness.
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The poor in spirit have nothing.
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No righteousness which they can bring to God and show Him as a testimony of goodness.
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They know what it means when the Bible says all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags before Him.
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They know what that means.
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That's Isaiah 64.
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We've all become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
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Consider King David.
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I want to go back to him.
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King David was materially wealthy.
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He had a kingdom.
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I mean, it's in the name.
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He was King David.
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But what did he say of himself? What did King David say of himself? Psalm 86.1 Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am what? Poor and needy.
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He says of himself, the rich king says of himself, I am poor and needy.
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Psalms 40.17 As for me, I am poor and needy.
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But the Lord takes thought of me.
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You are my help and my deliverer.
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Do not delay, O my God.
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That is the spirit of the poor in spirit man.
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That's the heart of the one who is poor in spirit.
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He says, as in Psalm 109.21, he says, but you, O God, my Lord, deal on my behalf for your namesake because your steadfast love is good.
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Deliver me, for I am poor and needy and my heart is stricken within me.
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This is the heart of David.
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And it should be the heart of all believers to have a spirit which understands its absolute destitution apart from God.
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So while David had much materially, how did he speak of himself? Three times in the book of Psalms, he called himself poor and needy.
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That is spiritual poverty.
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That is what spiritual poverty looks like.
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David is the example there.
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But I want to ask the question, what is the opposite of spiritual poverty? What would you say would be the opposite of spiritual poverty if we had to say, ok, we understand, the Bible says, blessed are the poor in spirit.
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What's the opposite of that? Well, I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it.
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And I couldn't come up with a better one.
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And if you can, you can tell me later.
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But I said the opposite of spiritual poverty is pride.
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It may sound simple, but it really is.
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Because a heart that feels self-sufficient, proud of its accomplishments, boastful of its goodness, and right with God on its own, is the opposite of spiritual poverty.
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And guess what? That's a pride-filled heart.
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And it is the very type of heart which God rejects.
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The Bible says in James 4, 6, God opposes the proud, but He gives grace to the humble.
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So poor in spirit, then, we see, is in one sense, or can be in one sense, equated with the humility with which we are to come to the Savior.
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Nothing in our hands we bring, only to the cross we cling.
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I want you to look at a story with me.
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It's in the Gospel of Luke.
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Most of you remember this story, but I want you to see it with eyes that are focused on poorness of spirit.
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Luke 18.
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Because you know, sometimes you pull illustrations from books, and sometimes you pull illustrations from life, and sometimes you pull illustrations from news stories, but the best place to pull illustrations if you have them is from the Scripture.
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And here is an illustration.
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You want to know what poor in spirit is.
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If you want to go home today and say, well, what was the pastor talking about when he said I need to be poor in spirit? Here it is.
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Luke 18.
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Luke 18 and verse 9.
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Jesus tells a parable.
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He said He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.
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So who is He talking to? He's talking to people who think they're righteous.
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They treat others with contempt.
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He's talking to people who are not poor in spirit.
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Right there.
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Verse 10.
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Two men went up into the temple to pray.
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One a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
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Now we know that the Pharisees of the day were the religious conservatives.
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They were lifted up by the people as to be the religious leaders of the day.
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They were the rule makers, the rule setters, and the rule keepers.
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These guys were all about the rules.
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And they were religious men.
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And the tax collectors were hated.
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The tax collectors were considered turncoats.
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They were considered to be citizens of the state rather than citizens of Israel.
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They were hated by the people.
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And thus when Jesus makes a comparison between the two, it's like Him saying, here's a great religious man, and here is someone that we consider to be as hated as a terrorist.
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You know? This is the great divide Jesus is giving.
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Here's a great religious man and a person that everybody hates.
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The tax collector.
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And he tells a story.
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He said the Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus, God, I thank You that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
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I fast twice a week.
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I give tithes of all that I get.
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But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
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I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
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If ever you needed a picture of what it means to be poor in spirit, this man is it.
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His utter lack of self-sufficiency and his absolute dependency on God's mercy demonstrate the reality of his spiritual poverty.
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What does Jesus say to him? You are the one who is justified.
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Not this other man who, hey, he fasts twice a week, gives tithe of all that he gets.
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He's not like him.
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Not like the tax collector.
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I do good and thus, God, You must accept me.
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And all my goodness, and hey, you're lucky to have me.
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It's the attitude of the spiritually prideful.
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But the one who is right with God, the one who is justified before Him, is the one who would not even enter in, but rather stood afar off, beating his breast and saying, Lord, I have nothing.
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That is spiritual poverty.
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And now that we understand that, as my last point, I want to make an observation regarding the state of the modern church.
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Because I believe that the term poor in spirit, which now we all understand what that means, I believe that that term, poor in spirit, is in direct opposition to what is being preached in most pulpits today, this modern gospel of self-esteem.
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Because it's in opposition to what we are called to be, which is poor in spirit.
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It has become the norm among modern evangelicals to spend their sermon times being uplifted by words of personal encouragement, rather than to hear the truths of the gospel.
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Sermons entitled, Why You Are Good Just The Way You Are, and The Virtue of Being Yourself, and sermons like that have become the norm and are becoming more and more popular, gaining thousands upon thousands of followers, entire arenas filled.
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And there has become a sense in which the gospel is no longer about telling people the perils of sin and the glory of the Savior, but rather has become about uplifting their own feelings of self-worth.
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There are men and women who are right now taking the pulpit, the mantle of authority, standing behind this pulpit, and telling every last one of their hearers unconditionally and without qualification that God loves them, accepts them just the way they are, approves of their hopes and dreams and aspirations, and wants nothing more than for them to be happy, to fulfill their desires, and will initial all their aspirations and back them all the way.
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Right? So there are.
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They're out there saying these things.
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That God's behind you all the way.
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I remember one very famous pastor.
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He told a story.
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And I tell you what, it's a good story.
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Because most of these guys can really spin a yarn, baby.
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They can tell a story.
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And he told a story about how he watches his son when he was a child sleep and the chest would rise and would fall and would rise and would fall as he would sleep in his bed.
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And he said, that's my boy.
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You know, this is great.
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It's good.
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It's a good thing.
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And he said, that's the way God looks at all of you.
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He looks at you and he says, no matter what you're doing, that's my boy.
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I'm proud of you.
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But he wasn't talking to a group of Christians.
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He was talking to a group of businessmen and women, many of whom were not Christians, many of whom God does not look at positively, but rather sees their life as an affront to Him.
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It's not the Gospel, ladies and gentlemen.
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It is a modern self-help program wherein the Bible is thrown away and replaced with pop psychology.
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And instead of teaching people the virtue of being poor in spirit, we instead build up the modern ego, which I've got to tell you, doesn't need any more building up.
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We have all these ego building programs.
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Nobody loses anymore.
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Everybody gets a trophy.
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We don't know how to tell anybody they do anything wrong anymore.
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I better stop.
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I'll go way off on that one.
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We never utter the words anymore that we're called to die to self.
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That we're admonished to take up the cross and follow Him.
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That instead of having a sense of self-sufficiency and self-worth, that we're supposed to find our worth in Christ.
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John Calvin said this.
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He said, "...humility is a real annihilation of ourselves, proceeding from a thorough knowledge of our own weakness, the entire absence of lofty pretensions, and a conviction that whatever excellence we possess comes from the grace of God alone." Whatever excellence I possess is a gift of God's grace.
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He's not lucky to have me.
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I am, beyond all men, blessed to have Him.
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So I want to leave you with this thought.
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The secret to true self-esteem is not found in pop psychology, but it is found in understanding who you are in Christ.
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You are a sinful person.
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You are unworthy of God's love.
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You bring nothing to the table in regard to righteousness.
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You are spiritually destitute, and yet Christ loves you.
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That is where you find your worth.
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That is where we understand true self-esteem.
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It's that though I bring nothing, Christ loves me and gives me all in all.
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Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
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Let's pray.
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Our Father and our God, we thank You for this opportunity to have looked into Your Word, to examine various parts of Scripture which talk about spiritual and economic poverty.
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And Lord, I do pray that we would have hearts that are broken before You, that understand that Lord God, we are rebellious sinners, but yet You loved us.
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You are infinite, and we are like unto worms, but yet You love us.
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And that's the amazing thing.
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And while we must never forget our position, we must never forget the position from which You reached down and picked us up out of, Lord, let us never also forget the great love and mercy that You gave in reaching down and lifting us up.
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We thank You for Your blessings, O Lord.
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And I do pray, I pray that we would not fall for the trap of the modern pop psychology gospel, but that we would continue to stand firm on the truth of the Word, that being poor in spirit is not about economic poverty, but it is about being humble before You, bringing nothing to You, and understanding that all we have comes from You.
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We love You.
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We praise You.
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We thank You.
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In Jesus' name and for His sake, Amen.
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Let's stand and sing.
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And if you have a need for prayer, please come.