Paul Carrington's sermon, titled 'Blessed are the Poor in Spirit,' delves into the teachings of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, specifically focusing on Matthew 5:3. Carrington explains that the Beatitudes laid out by Jesus represent a radical reversal of worldly values, contrasting the world's admiration for pride, wealth, and power with the kingdom of heaven's foundation of humility and spiritual poverty. He emphasizes that none of these Beatitudes reflect the natural tendencies of man; rather, they necessitate a new birth and transformation of the heart. Carrington highlights that Jesus' teachings demand an acknowledgment of one's own moral bankruptcy and a dependence on God's grace for salvation, as opposed to the Pharisaic emphasis on self-righteousness and moralism. He uses various examples, including the rich young ruler and personal anecdotes, to illustrate that true blessedness and happiness come from recognizing one's need for God's mercy and aligning oneself with the values of the kingdom of heaven. The sermon concludes with a call to look to God and embrace spiritual poverty as the gateway to inheriting the kingdom of heaven and experiencing true joy and peace.

Praise the Lord for giving us such a Redeemer as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I could ask, please open up to Matthew chapter five. We're going to be in the Sermon on the Mount here this afternoon, talking over the words of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And we're really going to be focused on verse three. But with this inaugural address, what we have is that the sower is going forth to sow.

It's really the king of the kingdom laying out the constitution of what it's like to live beneath his rulership. It's that mustard seed that's just been planted, or if you go back all the way to Daniel, you'll remember that little stone that was cut out without hands. And it's at work now, filling the whole earth. And that's what we're seeing here right now. And by the time the Lord closes his mouth at the end of chapter seven, we'll just see the the multitudes that are astonished at the weight of the wisdom, the power of what he's laying down here in these verses before us.

And he really begins in the most, I would say, the most unusual way. It's really a total reversal of the world's values that are laid out in front of us. You know, you're treated to it all week, aren't you? The beatitudes of the world. If you go out into the world you can see them and hear them everywhere.

Blessed are the proud, blessed are the admired, blessed are the rich, blessed are the powerful, Blessed are the self-reliant, blessed are the influential. It graces all the covers of the magazines that you see. You know, you've got people vying for inclusion in this year's top 100 influential people or most beautiful people or most successful people. But there's a kingdom that has foundations and the builder and maker of that kingdom is God. And so I want to read to us here the Beatitudes.

As I said, we're going to be focusing today just on verse 3. I do promise to speed up. We're not going to just do one verse every Sunday, I promise, but this one I just want to lay out some some things I think that will be important as we get into some of the rest here. So Let's read verse 3 down to verse 10. Hear the word of the Lord.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you again this afternoon.

Lord, what a privilege it is to go through these words of the Sermon on the Mount, Lord. We do pray that you would help us, instruct us, guide us, help us to understand these things laid down by our very Lord and Savior, the King of the kingdom, Christ Jesus, Lord. We are so glad to be citizens, members, really sons and daughters of your family. Lord, thank you for making it so. And Lord, for those that are still outside the walls, we do pray that you would move mightily upon hearts, Lord.

We want to see young ones saved and older ones saved, you know oh Lord and you have the power to do it. So we pray that you would undertake to bless our time now as we go through these words Lord may you receive the glory and the honor amen amen well let's let's get right to it the Lord Jesus here is really asked answering the question you know what are my citizens like how does the Lord describe really what what every Christian is meant to be. Well you find that here in these Beatitudes and as I said we'll be focused on this this first one here blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven and really the careful reader the listener will will notice what a conundrum we run into right in these opening words of the Sermon on the Mount. You know, what is he doing here? There's no instructions that he's giving up front.

There's no directions. And on top of that, not one of these beatitudes reflect the natural tendency of a man. Not one of us by birth is like anything we read here in these Beatitudes. It would be one thing, you know, if the Lord was telling me to do stuff, you know, sell my goods, or climb that high mountain over there, or even give my body to be burned. At least there would be something that I could do.

But he's come on a different kind of mission. He's come to really do something different and that is to re-institute heart religion. And he's aiming at something much, much more. He's come to do business with the souls of men. And Martin Lloyd-Jones, when he comments on this particular, these verses here, he says, these descriptions, these beatitudes indicate perhaps more clearly than anything else in Scripture the essential, utter difference between the Christian and the non-Christian.

Almost like what we heard this morning. You know, what he wants is the heart and because the natural man hates God and will never choose him, you can't help but notice something from this very, very first statement here. Something you can't help but notice that something must have happened to these people that he's speaking about, because again, by nature, none of us are like this. Supernaturally though they've been turned into something totally different and so our first critical point here that I just want to make is that nothing that the Lord said in his three and a half years of ministry here on earth presses home the necessity for the new birth like what we read here in this very opening beatitude. And I want you to remember the times, remember the times that the Lord was speaking.

The Pharisees have been traveling sea and land to make proselytes. They were telling men what to do. How many steps they could take on the Sabbath, what to eat, what not to eat, how to wash, all these different types of things, how much to give, very much a focus on the letter, but not so much on the Spirit. And the Apostle Paul being a Pharisee pre-conversion, he summed it up like this, he says, if anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh. I am more so." And then he goes into his resume of what it was as a Pharisee.

But Jesus, he starts in a different way as opposed to telling men what they ought to do. He's gonna get there, but he's telling men what they ought to be, what they must be. And so our second critical point here is this, that these beatitudes aren't just a half-hazard kind of mishmash of different things that he thought would kind of go well together. But there's a sequence, there's a flow of these characteristics that are resident in his people. And we'll see that as we get into these one by one.

But the man who is poor in spirit will be brought to mourn. And the mourner will possess meekness and so on. That's how the flow goes. And by the time you get to the final beatitudes, we see that the greater the likeness to Christ develops in a person, the greater the human hostility that develops as well. You know, and as American Christians, you know, we've been living in fair weather, if you want us to put it that way, all of our lives.

We've had it pretty good, but mark it down that holiness will provoke hatred in a world that is opposed to God. But rest easy, Jesus tells us, at the end you're in good company for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. And so here in verse 3, we get to the gateway verse. That's the way that we ought to think of this first beatitude. You could say that here is the narrow gate that the Lord talks about later on in chapter 7.

And so he starts off with this, and I just want to walk us through really kind of four little sections here looking at the exact words that we have before us. He says, blessed or happy are the poor in spirit. And what an affront to the natural man we meet with here. You know, we saw today in our text in Romans 8 that the carnal mind is enmity against God, hates God. And the carnal man all of his life, his entire worldview has been built on a foundation that can't really support him, but he doesn't care.

You know, the floorboards are shot through and they're termite infested and eaten, but he's happy to dwell there because it's his abode. You know, the ungodly man, he's glad that he's so good, at least in his own eyes and by his own standards. And our pastor at the time of the Lord's Supper, he took us to Nicodemus. And you know, like Nicodemus, what's happening here in this verse, in verse three, where he says, blessed are the poor in spirit. Really what's being happening here is he's being told, or we're being told, that your whole life, the ladder has been leaning against the wrong wall, if you want to put it that way.

Imagine this wall here to my right, and you've been on this earth 60 years or 50 years, whatever it is, and you're halfway up that ladder, climbing, climbing, head down, grinding it out. And then all of a sudden one day a man comes and says no no no that ladder is actually against the wrong wall you need to come down and come up and go up this ladder or go through this gateway that's kind of what's happening here but the Lord is saying that if you will be blessed, if you will be truly happy, if you will be citizens of my kingdom, you must first come face to face with your own moral bankruptcy and apply outside of yourself for help. And so more than anything else you can see in a climate like the one that the Lord Jesus was in, it's this kind of teaching that led to Christ being scorned and hated and persecuted and at the end crucified by men. This religion is not popular. But you know what?

Anywhere you go in the world, you will find that this is the common religion. Everywhere you go in the world, it's called moralism. It's this idea that I can somehow be good enough. I remember when we were in Turkey, in Izmir, I would go downtown not too far from where we live and I would go to this little restaurant where I got to know the owner and some of the guys. It was very, just a very cat, you know, you could buy a little sandwich for something like 50 cents.

It's nothing fancy. And the owner's name was Omer. And every time I would come there, you know, we'd have like six or seven of his guys and different people, and we'd all be talking. And unlike William Pitt, who we heard about this morning, or even unlike Nicodemus, who said, I don't even understand what you're getting, Omer, he actually understood what I was talking about when I was talking to him about the substitutionary atonement of Christ. I never used those words of course, but he understood this idea that the only way in Christianity that a man can be saved is on the merit of somebody else.

But to him it was totally impossible. And I still remember what he said. He shared with me a Turkish idiom that's very very popular, which is every lamb must hang by its own leg. And to you that might sound strange, but like when you go to buy your groceries in a place like that, you don't go to necessarily like a mall or a shopping place, you'll go to the butcher, or you'll go to a fruit stand, or you'll go to all these different individual shops. Well, when you go to the butcher, all of the meat is hanging in the window, the lamb is hanging in the window, and the idea is that every single person must pay for his own sins or else he will never be saved.

That's the idea. He understood what I was saying, but what you're meeting with is the collision of two foundations. It's the one that's on the one side self-righteous that lies really at the foundation of every religion that I must do good and I can be good enough to merit salvation or heaven or whatever else it might be. And on the other side is the principle that Christ is laying down here. No, you must come face to face with your own moral bankruptcy.

That's what lies at the foundation of Christ's kingdom, the very first words out of his mouth. When we open up the Bible, and Matthew, or Mark actually has a good account of it, I think most of the gospel except John, But the account of the rich young ruler is another one that we can we can look at and here's a man who? He had come to the very door of the kingdom But what was it that kept him outside the walls? You know he was under the the false impression that he could enter somehow by his own merit. And all he needed was maybe a little boost or a point or something else to just kind of get him over the edge.

That would do the trick. And the Lord Jesus, he knew the man. And he tells him, keep the commandments. Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth. And Mark has it so beautifully.

It says that the Lord Jesus looking at him, he loved him. And he tries to show him his inability to even keep the first commandment. The first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. So the Lord Jesus goes right after him and says, sell all your goods, give it to the poor, and come follow me. In other words the God that you're worshipping put him aside and put me first and come and follow me.

Well as sincere as this young man was he didn't grasp the very first principle that we're being exposed to here, which is the only way to inherit the kingdom, is first to declare yourself spiritually bankrupt. I love the way Thomas Watson says it, he says it like this, if the hand is full of pebbles, it cannot receive the gold. And that's what this rich young ruler had in his hands. And of course we know the account, he goes away sorrowful. Well, in a sense what the Lord really is doing here, he's making a declaration of war against man's religion, which is again from the very beginning, moralism, but nothing contradicted the Pharisee's religion so much is what he was saying right here.

And this is what I want to really drive home. You know, it's not the cherubim with the flaming sword that turns every way, that keeps men away in the back, back in the Old Testament, keeping them away from the tree of life, but it's really richness in spirit that keeps men, that hinders men from entering into the kingdom of heaven. If there's anyone today outside of the kingdom of heaven, You're perhaps along the walls, you come to church Sunday by Sunday, but you haven't passed through this gate. You have to do business with the fact what is keeping you outside, And it really does come down to this one simple thing. It's richness in spirit, the unwillingness to come to Christ on his terms.

You know, I was talking to a neighbor the other day. He came over and we were talking. It was a funny account, you know, he had just received the Bible and they told him to read John 3.16 and so he says, I couldn't for the life of me, you know, I went to the beginning of the table of contents and I'm looking for John 3.16. I couldn't find it anywhere. I went to John, the book of John, and I didn't know, he's never opened the Bible before, so he didn't know what is 3 in verse, so we talked about that, but we were talking about what it is that enables a man to come to terms of peace.

And here's a man, he's dying of cancer, living in a old mold-infested mobile home, and he begins to tell me of his good works and the things that will give him merit before God. You see, this is at the very root of man, that I can be good enough. I'm trusting in something, but it's like those rotten floorboards. They can't sustain you, they can't support you in any way. And the Lord Jesus is laying these down so beautifully here.

So what is it to be poor in spirit? We've just looked at what it's not with the rich young ruler and so on, but to be poor in spirit is really to have the acknowledgement of the fact that I deserve nothing. No, not nothing. I deserve punishment for my sins. The things I've done, the things I've said, the things I've thought, it's the acknowledgement, it's the agreement with God that I am a sinner.

I am what you say I am in your word. And so the the poor in spirit is the man that comes to know that the only innocent man the world has ever known is the Lord Jesus Christ. And this man for the first time perhaps is coming face to face with the holiness of God. And being poor in spirit, it lies at the foundation of all the other character traits that we're going to be looking at. That's why I wanted to spend some time here today, just going through it here, this one particular one.

But I want to say a word on what poor in spirit is not, because there can be, you know, this kind of going from one extreme to another, but being poor in spirit is not being mousy, Right? That can oftentimes be a situation where we just we think, well, I'm poor in spirit so I just let people kind of roll all over me. It's not being afraid to look men in the eyes. That's not what it means. It's not being a victim.

You know, Peter and John were poor in spirit while they were being bold before the Sanhedrin in Acts chapter 4. So don't be deceived by false portrayals of what it means to be poor in spirit, to be humble. And then he goes on to say this, he says blessed or happy. I started with the poor in spirit, we're kind of going back, but paradox of paradoxes here is this that the man who is rich in spirit, He's never come face to face with God and therefore is not happy. But the fundamental proposition here is that if you are poor in spirit, it is because you've seen something of the holiness of God, which has made you abandon any hopes in meriting God's favor.

It's the acknowledgement of I'm just morally bankrupt. And so in these words, in the very opening words of the Lord Jesus here in the Sermon on the Mount, we're acquainted with the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And this is what gives way to the blessedness, to the happiness that he's talking about here. You know, you recognize you have nothing to recommend you to God? Well that's the best thing that's ever happened to you because God does have something or rather someone to make the way for you.

And so then he goes on to say this, blessed are. And there's two things I want to bring out in this word are. Blessed are, this verb to be, right? The first thing I want to say is this is that right now in the present Blessed are it's a present tense Verb not one day in the future not one day when you pass into glory Not one day when Jesus comes back, but no, now, right now, you are blessed, is what he's saying. And if you're a Christian, you may not feel happy, but you are in a happy state.

You're in a state of happiness, a state to be envied because God's face smiles upon you. Just think of that and how when you go into the world and you look around at everyone that perhaps doesn't know the Lord, What a state it is that God has bestowed upon you to know you, that you would become the sons of God. Your sins are no longer imputed to you. You're in a covenant relationship with the God of heaven, the one who's made all things. Well how real and how sustaining is this relationship, this happiness that you have with God?

How sustaining is it really when push comes to shove? Well from a human standpoint, as we get further on, from a human standpoint, what does persecution do? It's supposed to destroy enjoyment. Isn't that the whole purpose of torture chambers and crucifixion and all these other things? It's to destroy enjoyment.

And yet a little while later we find out that it's the cause of enjoyment and rejoicing. And we'll see this when we get to Acts chapter 5, our next chapter. One of the most astounding things that we come across is Peter and John, who just a few months prior are cowering in the upper room and had just basically denied the Lord. They come home rejoicing, it says in Acts, that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. You see the difference of what happens here?

And it all flows from what? It all flows from this this state of blessedness, this state that you find yourself in, this happy state with God. Well that's the first thing, it's the fact that you are blessed. Now the second thing that I want to talk about here on this word are is Christians are different in what they do, that's true, but it's because they are different in who they are. You see what Jesus is aiming for is different what the Pharisees were aiming for.

They were aiming for behavioral modification in much of what they were doing. They may not have said it in those terms, but that's what they were going after, to make proselytes, to get people on their side. But the Lord Jesus is going much further, much deeper than that. He's going right to the very soul and the core of man. And so, one thing that we always want to remember that in the Christian life, being precedes doing.

Don't get it backwards or you create hypocrites. He's not saying, live like this and you will become a Christian, but rather because you are a Christian, live like this. That's the massive difference and if you get that cart before the horse, you're gonna have a world of destruction and frustration on your hands. And really, again, be climbing up the ladder, leaning against the wrong wall. And so we've seen blessed or happy are the poor in spirit.

But look what he says here at the end. He says, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. You know, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The burden has been removed. Do you remember when you read Pilgrim's Progress and how he's going about, he's got this massive burden on his back and can't find any relief.

Do you know what that's like? You know, right now I'm training for a hunting trip for a little later in the year, and in the morning I get up or maybe go with one of my sons and I put on a weighted backpack, you know with weights in it and so on and it's pretty heavy and go for a long jaunt around and basically just try to get in condition for what will be coming. And I always know as I'm getting toward my driveway, seeing the sign to my house and coming up, it's hard to express the longing to have this weight off my back. And I'll tell myself stories, I'll distract myself, I'll do whatever I can. I'm almost home but I don't want to have to think about it just so I can get it off.

And when it comes off, I feel like I've got to be held down, you know, because of the weight, it's that much relief. But isn't that what happens when you become a Christian? If you come to terms with the fact that the burden has been lifted, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. You're invited, when we have the Lord's table, He's saying, come to my table. And the question is, well, is He talking about the future?

Or is He talking about now? The answer is, yes. He's talking about the future, when there's the physical reality of you sitting at the wedding supper of the Lamb, but he's also talking about now, blessed are yours right now is the kingdom of heaven. Does anything or should anything give you more peace than that? See, man didn't give it to you, therefore man can't take it away.

Moth, rust, thief, none of them can reach what God has given to you. Even the flame. Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Sometimes I wonder if we don't really do business with these things to let them dawn on us and marinate and let us really get hold of these things and we can easily sink back down into all the things of the world, but you've passed from death to life. You can't die anymore when you become a Christian.

You've passed from death to life. And so just keep these things in mind as you go about your days and even as the devil shoots his fiery darts at you to recall these things and even allow it to brighten your countenance and allow it to be something that maybe puts a song in your heart. I heard something the other day, if you're happy and you know it, tell your face. It's okay to smile and let the joy of the Lord reflect. The Christian shouldn't be dowered because you've been given everything.

The world can't take it away because it never gave it to you. Well, it's remarkable that Jesus begins his ministry in this manner. It's so unlike anything else that we read or see. And there's no direct application at all here in our text, but I think an honest question that we often would ask ourselves is, well, how do I become poor in spirit? And I just want to leave us with this.

Do not begin by looking at yourself. You know, Luther, he made the statement of any man could have been saved by monkery. He says it was I. He was doing everything he could, but no, rather the way to become poor in spirit is to look to God and to do some business being acquainted. Read his word and consider his holiness, how other he is, and think of the day that you'll stand before him and you cannot help but become poorer in spirit, or maybe for the first time, poor in spirit.

And you have that great consolation that the Lord will receive you. Yours is the kingdom of heaven. And so look at him. The more that we do, the more we will become poor in spirit, will become more dependent and more needy, less self-reliant, and by doing that will become stronger and more encouraged, will become happier. The burden has been lifted.

Always remember as a believer, yours is the kingdom of heaven. So let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we can hardly imagine really what you've given us as in our inheritance Lord, you've given us a foretaste. Lord you've deposited it in our account, you've given us eternal life, you've given us yourself Lord with you a Holy Spirit taking up residence in us And I pray that all of us, Lord, would live beneath the light of these truths, Lord, that we would, as we go from this place, be filled with joy because of what has been accomplished on our part. We thank you for causing us to be born again, Lord.

Thank you for renewing us. Thank you for strengthening us. We need you, Lord, and ask you to go with us the rest of this week. Lord, for those that have yet to pass through this narrow gate, Oh Lord, would you do the work? Would you be mighty to save?

Lord, you've done it all the way through, and we pray that you would do it now. In the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, amen.