Blessed are the poor in spirit....

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3).

The sermon on the mount in the gospel of Matthew begins with these words from Jesus. I preached a sermon yesterday on this but each of these blessings that we call the "beatitudes" is so rich and so great that I thought I would pass along some thoughts on each of these eight blessings in verses 3-10.
Maybe these can help guide us this week. Maybe you will find yourselves in them, or perhaps you will sense where God is leading you in them. So, let's look at that first one, the one about being "poor".
We don't want to be poor in anything. Being poor means that you don't have what others have. And normally we look at this as a bad thing, we often want what other have. Or we think we deserve things that we don't have. But the Beatitudes are a system of blessings in reversals. For each of these "blessings" in Matthew 5 Jesus is flipping the table on what is perceived the cultural and societal norm.
So He begins here, with being poor. But not just poor financially. Poor "in spirit". To be poor in spirit means to be empty of oneself.

The Message paraphrase writes this verse this way, "You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and His rule".

I understand that. I know what it means and what it feels like to be at the end of my rope. There is nowhere left to go, there are no other options, there is not much time left of holding on. Somethings gotta give! Somethings gotta change!
And that's when it does, or at least it can.
When we empty ourselves of ourselves and see "poor" in spirit not as a bad thing, but as a beginning thing. Being at the end of the rope doesn't have to be the end.
Being at that end can be the liberating beginning!
It is there we finally realize that we are not in control. It is there that we finally realize that if we let go of this thing we have tried to have a white-knuckle grip on, that we are in the hands of an almighty and all-loving God.
And when we let go and empty ourselves He begins to fill us. But we are filled with some different things than we were before. And some of those things are the following verses in these beatitudes that we will get to later.
But first there is a blessing for those who are poor in spirit....the kingdom of heaven.
Wow, talk about a role reversal there! You go from poor and empty to receiving the kingdom. And this is not a future when you die we all go to heaven type of blessing. It is in the here and the now. Today! If you will accept the blessing.
The kingdom of heaven is something Jesus spent a lot of time talking about, and something that I have spent a lot of time reading and praying about. And here is what I think. When we empty ourselves of ourselves and become this vessel for God to fill up we begin living a new life in this kingdom come now. Not fully and completely, of course. The full arrival of the kingdom will usher in a time of no more pain, no more death, no more tears, where the Lord is our light and there is no sin or darkness. But what I mean is that when Jesus said "theirs IS the kingdom of heaven", I think he meant it.
So that's our blessing today. Living a life in the kingdom for the King today. To be filled up with what we need to live this kingdom life with kingdom values.
So be #blessed today, and be a blessing!

Sermon URL: https://www.facebook.com/TelfordUnitedMethodistChurch/videos/1254662261247058/