Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The Beatitudes, Part 12 of 50
TEXT: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3).
IDEA: The “poor” tells us a great deal about what it means to be “poor in spirit.”
PURPOSE: To help listeners appreciate why the prophets listed “poor” as being the people that God favored.
Matthew’s report of the Sermon in the Mount states the opening beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Luke simply says, “Blessed are the poor.”
I. There has been a debate in Western Christian circles about which of these two statements is the basic statement.
One group says that Luke really captured the truth Jesus conveyed when he has Jesus saying, “Blessed are the poor.”
Jesus in opening His ministry, announced that He had come “to preach the gospel to the poor” (Luke 4:16-18; comp. Isaiah 61:1).
When John the Baptist wondered if Jesus was really the promised Messiah Jesus replied, “. . . the good news is preached to the poor” (Matthew 11:5).
They believe that Matthew spiritualized Jesus’ simple and powerful statement.
Another group sees Jesus as a prophet and that for Him, like Isaiah, “the poor” are the humble and devout who seek God. Isaiah 66:2 from whom Jesus seems to borrow this language says:
“But this is the person to whom I will look: He that is poor and contrite in spirit, and trembles at his word.”
According to Kenneth Bailey, the reference to the “poor” occurs 15 times. Three of the references lean in the direction of “people who don’t have enough to eat” but the other eleven are clearly oriented to “the humble and pious who seek God.”
To turn Luke 4:16 into nothing more than politics and economics is to ignore biblical history, but the texts of both the Old and New Testaments call on those in the kingdom to seek justice for the poor and the oppressed.
The Old Testament concept of ”the poor” included a dual reference to the socioeconomic condition of the individual as well as a spiritual dependence on God for help and vindication.
