We know all about poverty. That is when you don’t have something. That is the lower end of the "have’s" and the "have nots." Of course, we know that poverty can be a bit relative. When I say that, I’m not speaking of family relatives: "Where there’s a will, there’s a relative." I’m referring to the truth that not all poverty is created equal. I see that when I travel to Eastern Europe. What we call poverty, they call normal. We call poverty when you have to do without certain luxuries. They call poverty when you have no food for an extended period of time.

What does it mean to be "poor in spirit"? That is a quality of which we do not speak. But if you take the words apart, it is really very simple to understand.

We know all about poverty. That is when you don’t have something. That is the lower end of the "have’s" and the "have nots." Of course, we know that poverty can be a bit relative. When I say that, I’m not speaking of family relatives: "Where there’s a will, there’s a relative". I’m referring to the truth that not all poverty is created equal. I saw that when Tom and I traveled to Moldova earlier this year. What we call poverty, they call normal. We call poverty when you have to do without certain luxuries. They call poverty when you have no food for an extended period of time.

The Greek language has a word to distinguish between the two types of poverty. In Greek, you can speak of someone who is poor and they have no money for any extra things. Or you can speak of someone who is completely impoverished and who is without even the basic necessities. This is a pauper; he is poor and has very little to his name. This is a beggar; he has nothing and must live on what others give to him. It is the second type of poverty that Jesus describes in this verse.

Happy is the one who is not merely spiritually lower middle class. Rather happy are those who are spiritually bankrupt and destitute.

This goes beyond all normal reason. Why would Jesus say such a thing? Because it is only when you come to terms with the fact that you are spiritually bankrupt that you can even be saved. It is only then that God gives to you all of the riches that are in Christ Jesus.

On what are you depending for your salvation? If you were to stand before God this morning and He were to ask you why you should be allowed into heaven, to what would you point? If your answer was to have anything to do with your own goodness and spiritual worth, then you are lost. The only one who ever gets to heaven is the one who realizes that he doesn’t deserve to be there. Christ didn’t come to save good people. He came to save the lost. And you can only find His true happiness and blessings when you come to understand that you are spiritually impoverished.

Jesus is saying, "Happy is the man who is spiritually destitute, who has to come and plead for mercy, because it is that kind of man who enters the kingdom of heaven."

You will never enter the kingdom of heaven unless you have a sense of your own spiritual bankruptcy. You will never become a citizen of the kingdom unless you realize that you are unworthy. The kingdom is not for the self-sufficient. They have no reason to trust in Christ. God does not save the self-sufficient. He only saves those who have found their sufficiency in Christ.

God is looking for people who are poor in spirit. He seeks to bring forth this quality in our lives. A broken spirit is a spirit that He can use.

This process is not very pleasant. It is often painful. We cry out, "Why is the Lord putting me through this?" The answer is that God is preparing us. He is making us to be poor in spirit.

God is doing a work in you. He is at work within you, bringing to the place where you will recognize your spiritual poverty. And when you come to that point, then you have become someone whom He can use.

There are blessings to the one who is poor in spirit. But the fact that Luke does not include the specific indicator "in spirit" suggests that there is a correlation between poverty versus spiritual poverty.

You see, the temptation of financial wealth is that you begin to focus upon that wealth and that you lose sight of your spiritual poverty. This is a constant theme throughout the Scriptures. James warns of the pitfalls of wealth. Jesus said that you cannot love God and money.

Financial poverty is no guarantee of spiritual poverty. But financial prosperity is often a pitfall to the realization of spiritual poverty. When things are going good, we tend to forget the spiritual realm. At such a time, we need to repent and recognize our spiritual poverty.

What happens when we experience such a broken spirit and such a contrite heart? At such a time, we mourn over our lost condition. That brings us to our next point...

In the same way that verse 20 spoke of spiritual poverty, I want to suggest that verse 21 speaks of a spiritual hunger. This is indicated in Matthew’s account.

Notice what this passage does NOT say. It does not say, blessed is the man who IS righteous. That is the way that the Pharisees would have worded it. The Pharisees taught that it would make you happy to BE righteous. Their entire religious system was centered around becoming righteous by doing good works and abstaining from bad works.

But Jesus didn’t say that. He said, "Happy is the man who hungers and thirsts for that spiritual quality that he doesn’t have." It is only the one who realizes that his own righteousness is lacking who has reckoned to him the righteousness of another.

This is the doctrine of justification. It can be summed up in three points.

If you have come in faith to Jesus, trusting Him alone as your Lord and as your Savior, then something wonderful has taken place.

Your sins were credited to Jesus upon the cross. He was judged as a guilty sinner. This does not mean that He began to sin, but rather He was credited with your sins. God looked upon Him and judged Him in your place.

But that is not all. That is only the beginning of justification. The other part is that the righteousness of Jesus was credited to you. That does not mean that you actually became righteous any more than that He became a sinner. But you have been reckoned with and credited with the very righteousness of Jesus. God looks upon you and judges you as though you had the very character of Christ.

And on the basis of that judgment, God makes a declaration about you. He says, "You are hereby RIGHTEOUS."

Notice the tense of this verse. It is present tense. It doesn’t say: "Blessed are those who used to weep but are now over it." No. It says, "Happy is the one who is weeping now, for he will eventually laugh."

What kind of weeping is this? In the same way that verse 20 spoke of spiritual poverty and verse 21 spoke of a hunger after righteousness, I want to suggest that this section speaks of a weeping over one’s spiritual condition.

Notice the flow of these verses.

This is not the sorrow of the world. The sorrow of the world is usually sorry only about getting caught. The world says, "I didn’t do anything wrong and I promise never to do it again." This is a godly sorrow that brings about repentance.

The sorrow of the world produces death. This is illustrated in the case of Judas Iscariot. He betrayed the Lord and then became sorry for his sin. But it was not a sorrow that produced repentance. It was not a sorrow that brought him back to God. Instead it drove him to commit suicide.

Godly sorrow is a sorrow over sin that brings us to the point where we turn to God and accept His forgiveness. This is a sorrow that brings life. And as a result, we find comfort in the arms of a Savior.

I love the story of the Prodigal Son. You know the story. He went from the love of a father to the stench of a pigsty. An inheritance squandered. A life wasted. Forlorn and dejected. And then he resolved to return home. We read about the speech he had prepared. He would recount his own unworthiness. He would offer to take the position of a humble servant. He would make amends. He must have recited that speech a hundred times on the road home.

He never got a chance to use it. His father was waiting and watching and came running to meet him. Before he could say a word, the father’s arms were around him. Loving. Forgiving. Comforting. Those arms were never stretched so wide as they were on the cross. They were stretched for us. Saving. Loving. Forgiving. Comforting. Welcoming us home.

The Christian is one who weeps over his lost condition. But he doesn’t remain in that attitude of weeping. Sorrow is turned to joy in the light of forgiveness. And the result is described by Jesus as happiness.

Once again, we must remember that we are focusing upon spiritual qualities. That means the hate that is mentioned here is a hatred that comes about because you are standing for the cause of Christ. Jesus said that all of His followers would experience this kind of persecution.

The world cannot help but to hate those who are in Christ. Why is this? I think that it is because the Christian who is filled with the Spirit is manifesting righteousness before an unrighteous world.

You see, the world likes to think that it really is not all that bad. It has adopted a standard of relative righteousness. It grades itself on the curve. It says that as long as you are not too bad then your sins do not matter. When it finds itself involved in certain sins, it merely redefines sin so that it will remain acceptable to its own standards.

But the Bible never lowers the standard of righteousness. God sets the standard. He IS the standard of His own demands. And the Christian is one who accepts God’s standards, who recognizes that he can never meet them in himself and who trusts in Jesus Christ as a Savior who met the standard in our place.

The world and its false set of standards is condemned by this. Faced with condemnation over its sinful condition, it can do one of two things:

The history of the church is a history of persecution. Sometimes that persecution is verbal or social and sometimes it goes to the point of shedding blood. But whatever the form, there will be persecution.

What is the crown of life? You might be thinking that it sounds a lot like a reference to eternal life. And you would be correct.

Do you want the crown of life? The way is difficult. It involves seeing yourself as God sees you. It involves recognizing your spiritual poverty. And hungering over that which you do not have. And weeping over your lost condition. And that will result in persecution.

Jesus is going to tell us how we ought to treat our enemy, the one who hates, curses, mistreats, attacks, and takes advantage of us. This is the one who is diametrically opposed to your best interest. He is the one whom you love to hate. He is the one who offends you and seeks to bring you down.

How do you respond to such a person? The responses for which Jesus will call are supernatural responses. They go against common logic. Logic would say, "Defend yourself; fight back!" But the Lord says, "Love such a one and serve him, even if he remains your enemy throughout."

The list of practices which Jesus laid down here is suggestive, not all inclusive. Matthew, for example, gives us additional matters to consider, which were a part of this same sermon. Jesus did not intend for this list of required responses to be considered complete, but rather suggestive. These are only some of the examples of the way in which we can walk in the way of our Lord.

The practice of these commands may lead to your own physical detriment. Doing as Jesus commands may make us poor. You may object, "But I’d go broke doing this!" And that is why Jesus started this sermon by saying, "Blessed are you who are poor..."

The teaching of Jesus went contrary to the popular thinking of the day. The rabbis said, "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy." They took this from their interpretation of Leviticus 19:18.

Jesus came to break down those barriers. He came to show that all men are under sin and that all men need a Savior.

Most people show love to those who love them. There is a certain natural law at work. Most people love those who love them. Let’s face it. We love to be loved. We are like the woman who, when asked why she loved her husband so much, replied, "I love him because of his excellent tastes; he picked me!" There is nothing wrong with loving those who love us. But Jesus calls us to do something more. He calls us to love our enemies.

How is this possible? How can I love the person that I love to hate? I think that the answer is found in verse 35. We can bring about that kind of love by doing outward acts of love toward those people whom we love to hate.

Is this hypocrisy? No, I don’t believe that it is. It is an honest attitude that says, "I don’t feel loving, but I want to be obedient to what the Lord has commanded and I want to bring about the love that I don’t feel. So I am going to do the action of love even though the feeling of love is not present."

Notice the REASON that Jesus gives for showing love to our enemies. We are to show love to our enemies because God had shown love to His enemies. If we are His children, then we should follow in the footsteps of our Father. He is the pattern. We are to love as He has loved us.

Now we move from love to mercy. Mercy involves compassion. It speaks of the withholding and the removal of judgment. Notice how mercy and judgment are contrasted in this passage.

The statement of Jesus that we are not to judge has become the source of all sorts of imbalanced teaching. There are those who use this passage to teach that Christians should never pass any sort of judgment upon sin. But this is contrary to those Scriptures that teach on the importance of church discipline.

That does not mean there is no application of this passage to church discipline. I believe that there is. Indeed, this passage sets forth the entire tone of what church discipline is all about. Church discipline always has as its goal the restoration of the sinner. We are seeking to restore the sinner to his proper position in Christ. This does not mean that we ignore sin. It means that we work to do away with sin in the life of the sinner. Sometimes this involves judgment. But it is not the judgment that delights in condemnation. It is the judgment that seeks to do away with the sin so that the sinner can be restored to the full enjoyment of his fellowship in Christ.

Picture a blind man. He cannot see where he is going. He cannot see the obstacles in his path. He needs someone to lead him. He needs someone who can see. Can you imagine anything more silly than a blind man being led about by a blind seeing-eye-dog?

Here is the principle. Guides for the blind need to see better than those whom they are leading. And teachers need to know more than those pupils whom they are teaching. The purpose for a teacher is that the teacher may teach the student something so that the student will be like the teacher who is teaching it.

Why is Jesus telling this parable? Look at the context. Jesus has been talking about love and forgiveness. God’s children can be known because they demonstrate love, even to their enemies. God’s children show mercy and are slow to judge.

Here is the point. Those who set themselves up as leaders over God’s people must be those who show love and mercy and who do not jump to making judgments of others. People who are loved by God show love to others. Forgiven people forgive. You cannot really love others until you have known the love of God given on your behalf and you cannot really forgive until you know how much you have been forgiven.

The contrast has a clear implication to those who were teachers among the Jews of that day. It points to those who set themselves up as teachers of God, but who were themselves blinded to their own lack of the very same qualities that God shows to us - His love and His mercy.

Here is the principle. Before you try to pass judgment upon others, first pass judgment upon yourself. Only when you have gone through an honest self-judgment of your own sins will you be able to assist anothers who are in their sins.

What is true of trees is also true of men. They are known, not by what they say, but by what is produced in their lives. What is on the inside will make itself known by what comes out.

In the context of this sermon, this means that you can know one of God’s people by how they are manifesting in their own lives the truths of this sermon.

The Bible tells us that only the Lord is able to see the heart. We look at outward appearances (1 Samuel 16:7). But we CAN tell some things by outward appearances. Outward actions are a barometer of what is going on inside the heart.

My wife can tell certain things about my heart by how I treat her. Do I say nice things to her? Do I make an effort to be with her and to romance her? Am I physically affectionate (and I don’t just mean sex). These things are an indication of what is going on in my heart.

William Hendricksen makes the following excellent observations from this passage: