When it pays to be poor

I have recently been reviewing Christ’s sermon on the mount recorded in the gospel of Matthew (Chapters 5-7). I like to think of it as the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher that ever lived.

Jesus begins His discourse by describing eight qualities (Beatitudes) that will characterize those that follow him. It is His description of righteousness, and it’s His prescription for happiness. There’s always a close connection between holiness and happiness. There is no true happiness apart from God.

The Lord begins each Beatitude with the word, “Blessed,” or as it reads in the Greek text, “Makarios,” also translated “happy”. If one reacts to situations and circumstances in the spirit of the Beatitudes, then your life will indeed be happy. As the psalmist says, “Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.” (Psalms 119:165)

For this short article I want to consider the first beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3) Jesus begins here because unless this one principle is settled, we lose out on the blessings of His Kingdom.

To be poor in spirit means that you recognize your poverty, you understand that your human condition is one of spiritual bankruptcy. I don’t mean to be of poor spirits, but to realize you are spiritually poor.

But here is the good news: Jesus opens the treasures of His grace to the beggars. He spreads a feast for “the poor, and the maimed, and the lame and the blind.” (Luke 14:21) The principle is also found in the Old Testament, “There is one who makes himself rich, yet has nothing; and one who makes himself poor, yet has great riches.” (Proverbs 13:7)

It is because Jesus Christ, though He was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9) He proclaimed in Nazareth’s synagogue, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.” (Luke 4:18; Isaiah 61:1)

To those who realize that they are sinners who deserve nothing but the wrath of God, who do not belong anywhere except in the shoes of the publican who with bowed head cried, “God, be merciful unto me a sinner!” (Luke 18:13)

Without Christ I am nothing, because He alone can save me from this world and from myself. And that’s what He desires to do. To the poor in spirit, and to these alone, is the Kingdom of God given, it is a gift as absolutely free as it is utterly undeserved, given to those who know that they can offer nothing. All they can do is to cry to God for help and He hears their cry.

Pastor Alvaro Sauza can be reached at the Sandpoint Seventh-day Adventist Church, 2235 Pine St., or by phone at 208-263-3648.