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“A
Reality of Faith”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Matthew 5:1-12
“Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS we have just heard the beginning of the Sermon
on the Mount, which many believe is the greatest sermon ever recorded.
If you would like to read the entire sermon at one time, it’s
in Matthew, chapters 5 through 7.
Jesus saw crowds of people, so he walked up to a high place on a
mountain, he sat down, and his disciples came to him.
It was then that he started preaching.
The last verse in chapter 7, tells that the crowd of people were
astounded by his teaching, because they heard authority in his words,
not just the academic accomplishments which the scribes liked to
display.
It might appear to us that Jesus, when he saw the crowds, went up the
mountain, to move away from them. And
yet after hearing the last verse about the crowd being astonished by his
teaching, it very well could be that Jesus knew they would also follow
him up the mountain and see that they, like Moses, were also
experiencing a divine event up on a mountain.
Also, Jesus started teaching when his disciples arrived, but finished
with the crowd there. The
implication is that the disciples were the first to be there, and that
is when Jesus began to speak.
If some of the crowd noticed this, maybe that made them
interested in what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
Jesus began his sermon with what has been named as the “beatitudes.”
“Blessed are the poor in spirit…Blessed are those who mourn
…Blessed are the meek…” Jesus
lists nine different situations that are actually blessed by God.
Four of the beatitudes which speak of, hunger for righteousness,
merciful, pure in heart, and peacemakers are easier to imagine. But,
they come after the first three.
I don’t know if you have ever heard of D. Martin Lloyd-Jones.
In his late 20s he was a medical doctor in London.
He was serving in a hospital that was the most important one in
England. And one of his
professors said he was the most brilliant student he ever had.
After a couple of years, he became a Christian, left medicine,
and went into preaching because he believed that leading a soul to
salvation was a higher vocation than healing a body. In the 20th
century, he was one of the greatest preachers in England.
One of the first books he wrote was Studies
in the Sermon on the Mount.
When I browsed his book some this past week I read where he said
there is a logical reason behind the order of the beatitudes.
When I read and thought about “Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and
“Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God,” I could understand why we need to realize
the presence of heaven before we may see God.
When Jesus is teaching about blessedness regarding the poor in spirit,
the sad, and the meek, he is not saying that these situations are really
a form of happiness, and that they should be desired.
He is, through authority, showing that with what God is
accomplishing in God’s self, even when they are in misery, they will
find themselves on the outer edge of this world, and actually coming
into the kingdom of God, because of what God has done for them in the
life of Christ. This is our
truth!
This kind of poverty or being “poor in the spirit” is actually the
gift of the Holy Spirit, and the work of Jesus Christ.
This poverty is a reality of faith because it opens our eyes to
where we are being taken into for our salvation through Christ.
Before the Apostle Paul actually saw and heard our Lord, he fell
to the ground, a trembling came over him, and he was blinded.
As the gift of the Holy Spirit and the work of Jesus Christ, this
poverty was actually a reality of faith. It is what led him into knowing
and serving Christ for the rest of his life here on earth.
Saint John of the Cross lived in the middle ages.
His classic book is The
Dark Night of the Soul where he basically teaches us that God does
lead us at times where we finally realize that it is absolutely no
attributes to ourselves that bring us to God; it is totally and
completely God who brings us into God’s life of eternal love.
And when we are finally brought to this truth in this life it is
the highest reality of faith. This
is even higher than being on the top of a mountain.
As painful as it can be in this world at times, and that is not because
of God; that is because the devil and the power of sin, to be poor in
the spirit is to reach a point where our poverty is in the spirit of the
old humanity that was crucified on the cross.
Then we also have the greatest reality of faith that sees the new
deposit God has given us, THE
HOLY SPIRIT.
Whatever kind of pain and suffering we might be going through right now,
our dark night of the soul, we are being blessed, here right now with
the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, when the full presence of Christ
is revealed to be in us. We
may be poor in the spirit, but we have already been blessed with all the
treasures of heaven in Jesus Christ.
This is our reality of faith.
Let us pray: Gracious God thank
you for all that you have already accomplished and completed for us in
Christ. May we, during this
sacrament, contemplate the poverty of our spirits that have been
replaced by the wealth of the Holy Spirit that you have placed in us?
Amen.
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