There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
Fani Willis and the Democrat Party might have thought Donald Trump’s mug shot would portray him as a villain to voters — but they couldn’t have been more wrong.
“The backlash of martyring Donald Trump: it’s a real thing,” says Jason Whitlock of “Fearless.”
“The former president’s mug shot from a Fulton County jail has given black men the space to abandon the cosplay of painting Trump as the second coming of Adolf Hitler,” he adds.
It seems that Whitlock is right.
Derrick Gibson, a black man and former New York State gubernatorial candidate, has gone viral for declaring himself the leader of the “N****s 4 Trump 2024” movement. The viral video has been circulating on social media and shows Gibson wearing a shirt that reflects that sentiment outside the Fulton County jail the day Trump was arrested.
“I’m here to support president Trump,” Gibson is seen telling the camera, adding that the government has historically made up charges and locked black men up “for decades.”
“So I know Trump is innocent. I support Trump against this corrupt two-tier justice system, that’s why I’m here, to show my support as a black man for Trump,” Gibson explained.
Despite not agreeing with the vulgarity Gibson’s shirt reflects, Whitlock believes he “captures the sentiment of working-class black men.”
However, Whitlock believes it won’t just resonate with black Americans, but all Americans.
“Americans love to rebel. It’s in our blood. This Trump-led rebellion will only grow stronger. I say that because Trump isn’t really leading this rebellion; he’s just the avatar, the symbol,” he says.
Gibson even had a message for Fani Willis, who he claims went to school with his sister.
“She’s full of s**t,” he says. “She’s a puppet for the white liberal that is controlling everything. She’s in front, but the white liberal back there pulling those strings, telling her what to do.”
When a reporter asked Gibson if he thought this would help Trump’s election, he responded, “Of course it is, it’s going to elevate him all the way.”
“I think we should make Trump king, that’s how I feel,” he added.
A useful thing about getting older is learning which groups in America are conservative and which ones are leftist. For example, lawyers, teachers, school boards tend to be leftist. Certainly teacher unions are leftist, judging from their political donations to Democrats. Librarians also tend to be leftist. They tend to champion secular left values to kids, against the wishes of parents.
Here’s an article from The Federalist that discusses a new report about the goals of the American Library Association’s president, Emily Drabinski:
The American Accountability Foundation, a conservative nonprofit, published a video and memo this month compiling radical quotes from Emily Drabinski, the president of the powerful American Library Association (ALA), a nonprofit that receives some of its money from member libraries, many of which are taxpayer-funded. The ALA, the oldest and biggest library association boasting nearly 50,000 members, coordinates programs at local libraries across America.
The report documents Drabinski, a self-described lesbian Marxist, attacking conservatives and parents as “far right, white supremacist, fascist,” an “angry white mob,” and the “Christo-fascist right.”
Being a Marxist, Drabinski said, is “very much who I am and shapes a lot of how I think about social change.” She has criticized the idea of “gender as a binary system with only two acceptable gender markers” and championed LGBT books in children’s sections. Drabinski, who supports drag queen story hours, also whined in a 2013 academic paper that religious books under the Dewey Decimal System are “overwhelmingly Christian” and present heterosexuality as “normative.”
[…]Libraries are “good places that do all kinds of things that people on the right don’t like,” Drabinski said on the “Citations Needed” podcast in March, according to the report.
Anyone who wants to disagree with Drabinski about using libraries to do things that people on the right don’t like is typically called a “book banner” – someone who likes to ban books. That’s what people on the secular left like to when parents express their desire for their children to learn computer science, instead of women’s studies, gay studies, Marxist studies, etc. I prefer that libraries stock “Code Complete, Second Edition” by Steve McConnell, instead of “Why your feelings determine your gender”. And that makes me a book banner, according to the secular left.
It’s too bad that Drabinski never studied anything useful, like computer science. Computer science is harder than “library science”, but it would probably have thought her how to think critically, how to solve problems in the real world, and how to think through her beliefs rationally. As it stands, we just need to understand that secular leftists like her are opposed to parents, and they should be kept away from children. They are dangerous to children.
Personally, I would just just privatize all the libraries, and force them to appeal to customers if they want to get paid. As long as they are getting taxpayer money, they can do as they please. No more student loans for non-STEM degrees. No more public sector unions. No more taxpayer-funding of the secular left. Instead, we need to privatize everything, give parents more control of their children’s education, and people who want to work in schools should have to complete 5 years in the private sector, first.
On Thursday’s “Newsline,” former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker comments on the National Archives withholding President Joe Biden’s pseudonym emails. Watch NEWSMAX, an independent news network with a conservative perspective, available in 100M+ U.S. homes.
“More than ever there is a parallel economy expanding inside the country where everyday folks are using the power of the purse as their primary vehicle to ‘live within the truth’ and repudiate lies.”–JASON MATTERA
Ronald Reagan’s famous mantra was Peace through Strength.
It was the Gipper’s way of presenting military might as the best approach to protect America’s freedom, particularly from foreign aggressors.
Today’s woke apostles have a mantra of their own, albeit an unspoken one: Peace through Conformity.
The citizen is offered the veneer of harmony, but solelyon the condition that he accept as true the vapid ideology being foisted upon him.
Bake the cake … or else.
Chant “Black Lives Matter” … or else.
Put your pronouns on Twitter (X)… or else.
This is how the totalitarian mind works.
It advances its ideological aims through force, threats, and propaganda — especially propaganda.
More than four decades ago the anti-communist statesman Václav Havel skillfully identified the fragility of this worldview and offered a prescription to ensure its demise.
Although the times and issues are different from Havel’s era, the Marxist compulsion for control remains the trademark of any progressive movement.
In this respect, Havel’s insights provide us with a useful tutorial on how to “revolt” against an immoral “system.”
The lesson is both simple and practical.
In his acclaimed essay “The Power of the Powerless,” Havel introduces readers to a grocery store manager who hangs a “Workers of the world, unite!” banner in the window to accompany the fruits and vegetables that are available for sale.
Havel then asks a series of questions regarding the sign:
“Why does [the manager] do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment’s thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?”
The manager by all accounts is “indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit,” writes Havel.
In fact, “individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence … they must live within a lie.”
Peacethrough Conformity.
What happens, though, when the manager stops tolerating these “mystifications” and refuses to put up the sign?
It is at this moment, Havel believes, that the “powerless” begin to reestablish their influence within an unjust structure:
“He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power…He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth.”
We find ourselves navigating a similar conviction today, as a growing number of Americans realize that it is possible to live within the truth against the radicalism of the LGBTQ+ lobby.
And, unlike Havel’s shop manager under Soviet oppression, living within the truth is far easier for us to carry out.
In short, we can just take our business… elsewhere.
Enter Bud Light and Disney.
Bud Light inexplicably partnered with trans activist Dylan Mulvaney, going as far as to make Mr. Mulvaney a “commemorative” beer can to highlight his “one year” of “girlhood.”
Bud Light’s customer base responded by living within the truth that Mr. Mulvaney cannot experience girlhood for even a day, let alone for an entire year.
So these customers opted to buy a different beer.
Now, after 20 years of being America’s top-selling beer, the Anheuser-Busch brand has fallen to second place.
In an act of desperation, Bud Light has started giving away “National Football League Sunday Ticket subscriptions or gift cards to the NFL’s store” in the hopes of boosting depressed sales.
Disney is likewise suffering from self-inflicted wounds.
For decades parents of all political stripes have trusted the House of Mickey to provide family-friendly programming to children.
Disney elected to squander that trust by moving their product into the realm of a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda,” as one executive infamously put it.
This is why “Lightyear,” the latest “Toy Story” movie, features a lesbian relationship and why the “Fairy Godmother’s Apprentice” at Disneyland may be a creepy dude in a dress.
Or why ticketholders are no longer welcomed with “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” but with the androgynous greeting “dreamers of all ages” instead.
What Disney has dubbed as a campaign of inclusivity and tolerance is nothing more than an attempt to usurp the moral authority of the family on the topics of gender and sexuality.
And parents have had enough.
They have resolved to livewithin the truth that men can never be women, no matter how much tissue is stuffed into a bra.
As a result, moms and dads are exploring alternative forms of entertainment for their kids, while Disney is left learning the biblical principle of sowing and reaping.
Not only is the company bleeding digital subscribers, they have recently lost an estimated $2 billion at the box office and attendance at their theme parks has plummeted.
The popular phrase Go Woke, Go Broke is broad simplification to be sure, but it does convey a fundamental reality: the American consumer has options.
More than ever there is a parallel economy expanding inside the country where everyday folks are using the power of the purse as their primary vehicle to “live within the truth” and repudiate lies.
Of course, we can’t boycott every woke company.
Yet as the Bud Light and Disney episodes demonstrate (and Target), there are a few big fish that we can fry as an example.
If corporations are going to use their product line to impose woke culture, that’s their choice.
We, on the other hand, are under no obligation to support any business that hates our values.
In fact, we should make it economically painful for them to hate our values.
As Václav Havel observed, “Living within the truth [is]… an attempt to regain control over one’s own sense of responsibility.”
The Church must be involved in public discourse and influence. That’s why we write —so our readers can be equipped to understand and pursue righteous change in the world. For more timely, informative, and faith-based content, subscribe to the Standing for Freedom Center newsletter.
U.S. — History was made this week as five late night talk show hosts — Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, and someone named Seth Myers — announced they were joining forces on one podcast amid the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes in a desperate attempt to come up with a single funny joke.
“We’re not sure it’s even possible,” said Fallon, the host of The Tonight Show. “Without entire teams of writers coming up with jokes for us every day, we’re all completely helpless. We haven’t had to be funny on our own in years. We thought our best chance at coming up with at least one joke was to put all of our minds together.”
Despite working on the podcast around the clock for several days, the hosts have had no luck. “It’s starting to look like a lost cause,” Colbert said. “This podcast was intended to be a revolutionary comedy team-up, but it’s slowly turning into a group therapy session while we all come to the realization that we can’t make anyone laugh. I wanted to break out the dancing syringes, but they’re all on strike. Whenever I couldn’t get laughs before, I could fall back on my vaccine propaganda. What am I supposed to do now?”
The podcast was expected to continue until either a successful joke was made or the world as we know it has come to an end, whichever happens first.
At publishing time, the hosts were rumored to be regretting their decision to not invite former talk show host Conan O’Brien, which would have sufficiently camouflaged their lack of comedy talent.
In Disney’s upcoming reboot of 1937’s Snow White, will the Prince kiss the sleeping princess? Or will he obtain her consent first?
With just months to go before the first primaries of the 2024 presidential election, Tucker Carlson says he’s concerned that former president Donald Trump could be assassinated.
“State of control”, the control society is increasingly becoming a reality.
What is the price of convenience?
The CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) and the digital passport can make our lives easier and more efficient. But new international legislation shows that the purpose of these possibilities, has far-reaching implications for our privacy.
In this documentary international experts such as Edward Snowden, Arno Wellens, Catherine Austin Fitts express their serious concerns and criticisms. It compiles the range of facts and opinions, creating a shocking picture about the future of mankind. A crystal-clear narrative that can”t be ignored.
As of July, 61% of adults still said they are living paycheck to paycheck, according to a new LendingClub report, slightly more than last year’s 59%.
Yet, recent releases show that, at least compared with the soaring inflation of a year ago, consumers who have been squeezed by higher prices should be experiencing some relief. June and July both saw easing in the pace of price increases, with core inflation up 0.2% for each month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Already, four out of five consumers’ spending habits have been affected by inflation, according to TD Bank’s annual consumer spending index.
“Consumers are undoubtedly continuing to feel the impact of inflation and rising interest rates,” said Chris Fred, TD Bank’s head of credit cards and unsecured lending.
Now, 78% of consumers earning less than $50,000 a year and 65% of those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 were living paycheck to paycheck in July, both up from a year ago, LendingClub found. Of those earning $100,000 or more, only 44% reported living paycheck to paycheck.
We can get into real trouble when we fail to make basic distinctions. Consider the issue of truth versus opinion, or fact versus feelings. You are entitled to your own opinions, tastes and preferences, but you are not entitled to your own truth or facts. Truth is truth, and facts are facts, regardless of how you feel about them or think about them.
The law of gravity may not be to your personal liking, but it remains in place nevertheless. You can speak all you like about “my truth” but there is only THE truth. So pretend all you like that the law of gravity is just someone’s personal opinion, but if you leap off a ten-story building you will discoverer immediately that your mere opinion does not matter at all.
Or consider the woman who now” identifies” as a man. She can start lopping of her hair – and other bits – but she still has every single cell in her body screaming ‘female.’ Reality has a nasty way of getting in the way of our illusions and preferences. In a similar fashion, a square will always be a square, no matter how hard we try to identify it as a circle.
All this is also true in the realm of worldviews, religions, and truth claims. Contrary to what many people state, religions are NOT all the same, and do not all lead to the same God. Anyone who actually has studied the various major world religions closely knows how very different they actually are.
Pretending they are all alike is a case of intellectual vandalism. It is also a case of seeking to short circuit the truth. Opposing truth claims are NOT identical nor can they be readily harmonised. Sure, we want people of differing faiths to try to live peacefully with their neighbours, but that is a different matter.
All this came to the fore quite recently. In a new post about the film Sound of Freedom I mentioned that there is a very real place for going through a doctrinal checklist, but we need not always be on the same page with someone when it comes to saving our child from sexual predators. So one gal wrote in with this comment:
I’m surprised that anyone would criticise this film on the basis of the theology of those involved in the production. We don’t judge, or even ask, about the beliefs of our doctor, our plumber or the supermarket checkout person.
I’m also surprised, Bill, that you advocate a “theological checklist” be applied to a potential marital or business associate. Having worked in several workplaces in my career, I’ve rarely known what beliefs my fellow workers hold, nor has it seemed of any relevance in the secular world of business.
I married a man from a different faith tradition and we’ve been very happy together for over 30 years. We don’t argue about theology because we both know it’s a matter of personal opinion. Who knows, we could both be wrong. We’ll never learn or consider a new viewpoint if we don’t discuss such matters with an open mind.
As I started to write a response to cover her various points, it grew longer and longer. Given that it might be of some help to others, I decided to turn it into a full-length article. So what follows is what I had said to her in reply:
Thanks ****. But I need to explain to you why some things DO matter when it comes to theology. Yes, a qualified pagan plumber is just fine if that is all you need. And if you are one of a dozen or a hundred workers in a business, it may not matter at all to know about some or all of their personal beliefs.
But I was referring to a quite close business association, as in when you and one other person are considering getting into an important and costly long-term business partnership. Then you WILL want to know much more about the other person, and if you are a Christian, knowing his religious beliefs can matter greatly as well.
Knowing about another person’s theological stance does matter in a number of areas – at least if you are a biblical Christian who believes Scripture and takes it seriously. I just wrote a piece featuring a list of the areas where you do need a doctrinal checklist, and another list of things that do not require such a list: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2023/08/31/on-theological-checklists/
Your comment came in just after I posted that, but I see we agree on at least a few things on the lists! Let’s reconsider the matter of a marriage partner. For those who do have a high view of Scripture, we have perfectly clear injunctions such as this from the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:14: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?”
This is not mere advice, but a command of Scripture. And that verse would certainly apply to marriage, and likely to things like very close business associations as well. If one does not like that command, they should not argue with me about it, but with God, since he was the one who inspired Paul to write it.
As to the two of you getting along nicely, that is great. And in general, it is a good thing when those of differing beliefs can live harmoniously with one another. Nothing amiss there. But I am referring to something rather different here. Things like interfaith worship services – and interfaith marriages – can only really work when those involved do not take their particular faiths very seriously.
For those who think that all religion is merely a matter of “personal opinion” with nothing right or wrong, and nothing true or false, then sure, they can all live happily together in one big kum-by-yah situation. But if truth claims are at stake here – and they are – then what one believes matters enormously – and has eternal consequences.
For example, if Christianity is true, then Islam can NOT be true. Consider the core beliefs of the former: Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died on a cross for our sins and rose again. But Islam of course fully denies all that. Again, if Christianity is true, then Buddhism is not true – one need not even believe in God to be a Buddhist. So all religions are not the same, and if one is true, it will cancel out most others.
All biblical Christians believe that truth matters, and it matters for eternity. As Jesus unashamedly put it: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). I – and all true believers –accept that as being fully and utterly true.
Thus I cannot be a Hindu, a Muslim, or an adherent of other world religions. And I could not marry someone who fervently believed in their religion over against mine. As Scripture also says, “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” (Amos 3:3)
If religious claims were merely a matter of personal taste, like the flavour of ice cream, then yes, we would not need theological checklists. But if truth claims are at stake here, including the eternal destiny of every single one of us, (and they are), then yes, truth matters enormously, and it is not just a matter of personal opinion or preference. Then in certain key areas (who you hire as your minister, or who you have teaching in your seminary, eg.) you DO want to know what another person believes.
Lastly, as to the idea of being open-minded and learning from others, again, it all depends. If you want to learn new things about how to crochet or bake a casserole or repair your car, then sure, being open-minded and willing to learn is crucial.
But that is not how it works with truth claims – whether theological, mathematical, or what have you. There are real limits in other words in wanting to keep discussing and learning when someone comes to you insisting that two plus two does not equal four.
Claiming that truth is up to each person is no better than claiming morality is relative. What if someone insists that we keep an open mind about the value of stealing and trafficking children to satisfy the sexual lusts of adults. Some things ARE wrong and we do NOT need to be open-minded about them. We do not need to learn the other person’s point of view on things like paedophilia.
So we need to reject those things which are clearly wrong, and we need to reject those things which are clearly false. Keeping an open mind on some things is a real virtue. But in other cases, some open minds need to be closed for repairs.
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Many of us begin the day with anxious thoughts. The “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) never seems to reach us in the middle of the night or when we first open our eyes. Instead, as the morning comes we say to ourselves, “There is so much to think about. So many things are dancing around in my mind. I’ve got so many challenges.”Thoughts such as these so easily produce anxiety and stultify our commitment to prayer.
Paul helps us to overcome these draining, even crippling feelings by directing our gaze toward those virtues which will liberate our thinking. A mind that is filled with the content described in Philippians 4:8 will have little space for anxiety-producing, peace-disrupting, joy-destroying notions.
What Paul was encouraging his readers to adopt is a distinctly Christian way of thinking. A Christian mind, he taught, is not a mind that is trained to think only about “Christian topics” but one that has learned to think about everything from a Christian perspective. Ultimately, we are what we think about. It is in our minds that our affections are stirred, and it is through our minds that our wills are directed. It is in the mind that we conceive of and produce every action. It is therefore imperative that we learn to think about what is right and godly.
The Bible is not concerned with mere mental reflection for its own sake. The Christian is not called to sit on a high hill and think blessed thoughts in abstraction, removed from the routines of everyday existence. Rather, Paul provides us with a list that will establish us in our motives, our manners, and our morals. Each of us is called to live in the realm of the real, not the phony; the serious, not the frivolous; the right, not the convenient; the clean, not the dirty; the loving, not the discordant; and the helpful, not the critical. In short, we are called to think like Jesus.
Paul is not simply calling you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, though. This is not a rallying cry to try your best to perform the list. Sanctification by self-effort is not God’s agenda. The multifaceted virtue Paul speaks of is the fruit which grows on the tree of salvation. This fruit is brought forth by those whose roots are embedded in grace. So, let your heart be gripped by God’s grace, and train your mind to think on that which is truly praiseworthy. When those influences converge, your life will be one that brings glory to God. Aim to make His grace, and this fruit, the first thing you think about when you wake up tomorrow.
Questions for Thought
How is God calling meto think differently?
How is God reordering myheart’s affections— what I love?
What is God calling meto doas I go about my day today?
There are those who insist The Chosen with its depiction of Christ is just “entertainment.” Yet the same people who gave us this show are selling The Chosen Devotionals and Bible studies.
Here is a brief video compilation assembled by Shane Cox
A true encounter with God’s grace in the gospel cannot leave His people unaffected. His awesome goodness and love should cause our hearts to quake. Today, Michael Reeves shows why the fear of the Lord is a delight for Christians.
145 I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. 2 Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. 3 Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. 4 One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. 5 On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. 6 They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness. 7 They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness. 8 The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 9 The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made. 10 All your works shall give thanks to you, O LORD, and all your saints shall bless you! 11 They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power, 12 to make known to the children of man your2 mighty deeds, and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. 13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations. [The LORD is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.]3 14 The LORD upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. 15 The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. 16 You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing. 17 The LORD is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. 18 The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. 19 He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them. 20 The LORD preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. 21 My mouth will speak the praise of the LORD, and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.
Put Not Your Trust in Princes
146 Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul! 2 I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. 3 Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. 4 When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. 5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, 6 who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; 7 who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free; 8 the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. 9 The LORD watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. 10 The LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the LORD!
He Heals the Brokenhearted
147 Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant,4 and a song of praise is fitting. 2 The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. 3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. 4 He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. 5 Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. 6 The LORD lifts up the humble;5 he casts the wicked to the ground. 7 Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre! 8 He covers the heavens with clouds; he prepares rain for the earth; he makes grass grow on the hills. 9 He gives to the beasts their food, and to the young ravens that cry. 10 His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, 11 but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love. 12 Praise the LORD, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion! 13 For he strengthens the bars of your gates; he blesses your children within you. 14 He makes peace in your borders; he fills you with the finest of the wheat. 15 He sends out his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly. 16 He gives snow like wool; he scatters frost like ashes. 17 He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs; who can stand before his cold? 18 He sends out his word, and melts them; he makes his wind blow and the waters flow. 19 He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and rules6 to Israel. 20 He has not dealt thus with any other nation; they do not know his rules.7 Praise the LORD!
2 Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. 3 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife1 is her husband,2 and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, 5 but every wife3 who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. 6 For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. 7 For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 9 Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10 That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.411 Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; 12 for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. 13 Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, 15 but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (5:3)
The Beatitudes
The series of conditional blessings promised in Matthew 5:3–12 have long been called the Beatitudes, a name derived from Latin and referring to a state of happiness or bliss. Jesus presents the possibility of people being genuinely happy, and that available happiness is the opening theme of the Sermon on the Mount. Many people, including some Christians, find that hard to believe. How could a message as demanding and impossible as the Sermon on the Mount be intended to make people happy? Yet the first and greatest sermon preached by Jesus Christ begins with the resounding and repeated theme of happiness, a fitting start for the New Testament’s “good news.”
Far from being the cosmic killjoy that many accuse Him of being, God desires to save men from their tragic lostness, to give them power to obey His will, and to make them happy. In this great sermon, His Son carefully and clearly sets forth the way of blessedness for those who come to Him.
Makarios (blessed) means happy, fortunate, blissful. Homer used the word to describe a wealthy man, and Plato used it of one who is successful in business. Both Homer and Hesiod spoke of the Greek gods as being happy (makarios) within themselves, because they were unaffected by the world of men—who were subject to poverty, disease, weakness, misfortune, and death. The fullest meaning of the term, therefore, had to do with an inward contentedness that is not affected by circumstances. That is the kind of happiness God desires for His children, a state of joy and well-being that does not depend on physical, temporary circumstances (cf. Phil. 4:11–13).
The word blessed is often used of God Himself, as when David ended one of his psalms with the declaration “Blessed be God!” (Ps. 68:35). His son Solomon sang, “Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who alone works wonders” (Ps. 72:18). Paul spoke of “the glorious gospel of the blessed God” (1 Tim. 1:11) and of Jesus Christ “who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords” (6:15). Blessedness is a characteristic of God, and it can be a characteristic of men only as they share in the nature of God. There is no blessedness, no perfect contentedness and joy of the sort of which Jesus speaks here, except that which comes from a personal relationship to Him, through whose “magnificent promises” we “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4).
Because blessedness is fundamentally an element of the character of God, when men partake of His nature through Jesus Christ they partake of His blessedness. So it becomes clear at the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus is speaking of a reality that is only for believers. Others can see the kingdom standards and get a glimpse of kingdom blessings, but only those who belong to the kingdom have the promise of personally receiving and experiencing the blessings. To be blessed is not a superficial feeling of well-being based on circumstance, but a deep supernatural experience of contentedness based on the fact that one’s life is right with God. Blessedness is based on objective reality, realized in the miracle of transformation to a new and divine nature.
The Beatitudes seem paradoxical. The conditions and their corresponding blessings do not seem to match. By normal human standards such things as humility, mourning, desire for righteousness, mercy, and persecution are not the stuff of which happiness is made. To the natural man, and to the immature or carnal Christian, such happiness sounds like misery with another name. As one commentator has observed, it is much as if Jesus went into the great display window of life and changed all the price tags.
In a way, happiness is misery with another name; Jesus has changed the price tags. He teaches that misery endured for the right purpose and in the right way is the key to happiness. That basic principle summarizes the Beatitudes. The world says, “Happy are the rich, the noble, the successful, the macho, the glamorous, the popular, the famous, the aggressive.” But the message from the King does not fit the world’s standards, because His kingdom is not of this world but of heaven. His way to happiness, which is the only way to true happiness, is by a much different route.
Seneca, the first-century Roman philosopher who tutored Nero, wisely wrote, “What is more shameful than to equate the rational soul’s good with that which is irrational?” His point was that you cannot satisfy a rational, personal need with an irrational, impersonal object. External things cannot satisfy internal needs.
Yet that is exactly the philosophy of the world: things satisfy. Acquiring things brings happiness, achieving things brings meaning, doing things brings satisfaction.
Solomon, the wisest and most magnificent of ancient kings, tried the world’s way to happiness for many years. He had the royal blood of his father, David, coursing through his veins. He had vast amounts of gold and jewels and “made silver as common as stones in Jerusalem” (1 Kings 10:27). He had fleets of ships and stables filled with thousands of the finest horses. He had hundreds of wives, gathered from the most beautiful women of many lands. He ate the most sumptuous of foods on the finest of tableware in the most elegant of palaces with the most distinguished people. He was acclaimed throughout the world for his wisdom, power, and wealth. Solomon should have been immeasurably happy. Yet that king, so great and blessed by earthly standards, concluded that his life was purposeless and empty. The theme of Ecclesiastes, Solomon’s personal testimony on the human situation, is “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun?” (1:2–3).
Jesus came to announce that the tree of happiness cannot grow in a cursed earth. Earthly things cannot bring even lasting earthly happiness, much less eternal happiness. “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed,” Jesus warned; “for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). Physical things simply cannot touch the soul, the inner person.
It should be pointed out that the opposite is also true: spiritual things cannot satisfy physical needs. When someone is hungry he needs food, not a lecture on grace. When he is hurt he needs medical attention, not moral advice. True spiritual concern for such people will express itself first of all in providing for their physical needs. “Whoever has the world’s goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (1 John 3:17).
But the more common danger is trying to meet almost every need with physical things. That philosophy is as futile as it is unscriptural. When King Saul was distressed, his jewels and his army could give him no help. When King Belshazzar was having a great feast with his nobles, wives, and concubines, he suddenly saw a hand writing on the wall, “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.” He was so terrified that his “face grew pale, and his thoughts alarmed him; and his hip joints went slack, and his knees began knocking together.” His military power, his influential allies, and his great possessions could give him no solace (Dan. 5:3–6, 25).
The great Puritan saint Thomas Watson wrote, “The things of the world will no more keep out trouble of spirit, than a paper sconce will keep out a bullet.… Worldly delights are winged. They may be compared to a flock of birds in the garden, that stay a little while, but when you come near to them they take their flight and are gone. So ‘riches make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven’ ” (The Beatitudes [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1971], p. 27). The writer of Proverbs said, “Do not weary yourself to gain wealth, cease from your consideration of it. When you set your eyes on it, it is gone” (Prov. 23:4–5).
Tragically, many preachers, teachers, and writers today “who must be silenced” (Titus 1:11) are passing off worldly philosophy in the name of Christianity—claiming that faithfulness to Christ guarantees health, wealth, success, prestige, and prosperity. But Jesus taught no such thing. What He taught was nearer the opposite. He warned that physical, worldly advantages most often limit true happiness. The things of the world become fuel for pride, lust, and self-satisfaction—the enemies not only of righteousness but of happiness. “The worry of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful,” Jesus said (Matt. 13:22).
To expect happiness from the things of this world is like seeking the living among the dead, just as the women sought Christ at the garden tomb on that first Easter morning. The angels told the women, “He is not here, but He has risen” (Luke 24:6). Paul said, “If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Col. 3:1–2). John said, “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world.… And the world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15, 17).
True blessedness is on a higher level than anything in the world, and it is to that level that the Sermon on the Mount takes us. Here is a completely new way of life, based on a completely new way of thinking. It is in fact based on a new way of being. The standard of righteousness, and therefore the standard of happiness, is the standard of selflessness—a standard that is completely opposite to man’s fallen impulses and unregenerate nature.
It is impossible to follow Jesus’ new way of living without having His new life within. As someone has suggested, one might as well try in our own day to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy that in the Millennium the wolf, lamb, leopard, kid, lion, and cow will live together peaceably (Isa. 11:6–7). If we were to go to a zoo and lecture a lion on the new peaceable way he was expected to live, and then placed a lamb in the cage with him, we know exactly what would happen as soon as the lion became hungry. The lion will not lie down peaceably with the lamb until the day when the lion’s nature is changed.
It is important to remember that the Beatitudes are pronouncements, not probabilities. Jesus does not say that if men have the qualities of humility, meekness, and so on that they are more likely to be happy. Nor is happiness simply Jesus’ wish for His disciples. The Beatitudes are divine judgmental pronouncements, just as surely as are the “woes” of chapter 23. Makarios is, in fact, the opposite of ouai (woe), an interjection that connotes pain or calamity. The opposite of the blessed life is the cursed life. The blessed life is represented by the true inner righteousness of those who are humble, poor in spirit, whereas the cursed life is represented by the outward, hypocritical self-righteousness of the proud religionists (5:20).
The Beatitudes are progressive. As will be seen as each one is discussed in detail, they are not in a random or haphazard order. Each leads to the other in logical succession. Being poor in spirit reflects the right attitude we should have to our sinful condition, which then should lead us to mourn, to be meek and gentle, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful, pure in heart, and have a peacemaking spirit. A Christian who has all those qualities will be so far above the level of the world that his life will rebuke the world—which will bring persecution from the world (5:10–12) and light to the world (vv. 14–16).
The Poor in Spirit
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (5:3)
Discussion of this first beatitude demands that it be looked at from five perspectives: the meaning of poor in spirit, the location of this virtue in the list, the way to achieve that attitude, how to know if we have that attitude, and the result promised for having it.
the meaning of poor in spirit
Ptōchos (poor) is from a verb meaning “to shrink, cower, or cringe,” as beggars often did in that day. Classical Greek used the word to refer to a person reduced to total destitution, who crouched in a corner begging. As he held out one hand for alms he often hid his face with the other hand, because he was ashamed of being recognized. The term did not mean simply poor, but begging poor. It is used in Luke 16:20 to describe the beggar Lazarus.
The word commonly used for ordinary poverty was penichros, and is used of the widow Jesus saw giving an offering in the Temple. She had very little, but she did have “two small copper coins” (Luke 21:2). She was poor but not a beggar. One who is penichros poor has at least some meager resources. One who is ptōchos poor, however, is completely dependent on others for sustenance. He has absolutely no means of self-support.
Because of a similar statement in Luke 6:20—“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God”—some interpreters have maintained that the beatitude of Matthew 5:3 teaches material poverty. But sound hermeneutics (the interpretation of Scripture) requires that, when two or more passages are similar but not exactly alike, the clearer one explains the others, the more explicit clarifies the less explicit. By comparing Scripture with Scripture we see that the Matthew account is the more explicit. Jesus is speaking of a spiritual poverty that corresponds to the material poverty of one who is ptōchos.
If Jesus were here advocating material poverty He would have contradicted many other parts of His Word—including the Sermon on the Mount itself (5:42)—that teach us to give financial help to the poor. If Jesus was teaching the innate blessedness of material poverty, then the task of Christians would be to help make everyone, including themselves, penniless. Jesus did not teach that material poverty is the path to spiritual prosperity.
Those who are materially poor do have some advantages in spiritual matters by not having certain distractions and temptations; and the materially rich have some disadvantage by having certain distractions and temptations. But material possessions have no necessary relationship to spiritual blessings. Matthew makes clear that Jesus is here talking about the condition of the spirit, not of the wallet.
After He began His public ministry, Jesus often had “nowhere to lay His head” (Matt. 8:20), but He and His disciples were not destitute and never begged for bread. Paul was beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, stoned, and often economically hard pressed; but neither did he ever beg for bread. It was, in fact, a badge of honor for him that he worked in order to pay his own expenses in the ministry (Acts 20:34; 1 Cor. 9:6–18). The Lord and the apostles were accused of being ignorant, troublemakers, irreligious, and even mad; but they were never charged with being indigent or beggars.
On the other hand, no New Testament believer is condemned for being rich. Nicodemus, the Roman centurion of Luke 7, Joseph of Arimathea, and Philemon were all wealthy and faithful. That “not many mighty, not many noble” are called (1 Cor. 1:26) is not because they are rejected due to their positions or possessions but because so many of them trust only in those things (1 Tim. 6:6–17).
To be poor is spirit is to recognize one’s spiritual poverty apart from God. It is to see oneself as one really is: lost, hopeless, helpless. Apart from Jesus Christ every person is spiritually destitute, no matter what his education, wealth, social status, accomplishments, or religious knowledge.
That is the point of the first beatitude. The poor in spirit are those who recognize their total spiritual destitution and their complete dependence on God. They perceive that there are no saving resources in themselves and that they can only beg for mercy and grace. They know they have no spiritual merit, and they know they can earn no spiritual reward. Their pride is gone, their self-assurance is gone, and they stand empty-handed before God.
In spirit also conveys the sense that the recognition of poverty is genuine, not an act. It does not refer to outwardly acting like a spiritual beggar, but to recognizing what one really is. It is true humility, not mock humility. It describes the person about whom the Lord speaks in Isaiah 66:2—“To this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.” It describes the person who is “brokenhearted” and “crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18), who has “a broken and a contrite heart” before the Lord (Ps. 51:17).
Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax-gatherer to “certain ones who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt.” As the Pharisee stood praying in the Temple, he proudly recited his virtues and gave thanks that he was not like those who are sinful, especially the tax-gatherer who was nearby. The tax-gatherer, however, “was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful to me, the sinner!’ ” The tax-gatherer, Jesus said, “went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted” (Luke 18:9–14). The Pharisee was proud in spirit; the tax-gatherer was poor in spirit.
When God called Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt, Moses pleaded his unworthiness, and God was able to use him mightily. Peter was still aggressive, self-assertive, and proud, but when Jesus miraculously provided the great catch of fish, Peter was so overawed that he confessed, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (Luke 5:8). Even after he became an apostle, Paul recognized that “nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom. 7:18), that he was the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15), and that the best things he could do in himself were rubbish (Phil. 3:8).
In his Confessions Augustine makes clear that pride was his greatest barrier to receiving the gospel. He was proud of his intellect, his wealth, and his prestige. Until he recognized that those things were less than nothing, Christ could do nothing for him. Until Martin Luther realized that all his sacrifice, rituals, and self-abuse counted for nothing before God, he could find no way to come to God or to please Him.
Even at Sinai, when the law was given, it was evident that God’s own chosen people could not fulfill its demands on their own. As Moses was receiving the law on the mountain, Aaron was leading the people in a pagan orgy in the valley below (Ex. 32:1–6).
Israelites who were spiritually sensitive knew they needed God’s power to keep God’s law. In humility they confessed their helplessness and pleaded for His mercy and strength. David began his great penitential psalm with the plea “Be gracious to me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness; according to the greatness of Thy compassion blot out my transgressions.… For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me” (Ps. 51:1, 3).
Other Israelites, however, took another approach to the law. Knowing they could not fulfill its demands, they simply brought the law down to a level that was more manageable and acceptable. They piled interpretation upon interpretation, creating man-made traditions that were possible to keep in the flesh. Those traditions came to be known as the Talmud, a commentary on the law that leading rabbis developed over many centuries and that eventually superseded the law in the minds of most Jews. They exchanged the Torah (God’s revealed law) for the Talmud (man’s modification of the law). In the name of interpreting and protecting the law they contradicted and weakened it. They brought God’s standards down to men’s standards—which they could keep without God’s help. They then taught as doctrine those precepts of men (Matt. 15:9). They made the fatal error of thinking that God was less holy than He is and that they were more holy than they were. The result was the illusion that they were sufficiently righteous to please God.
Traditions have to do with what we can see and measure. They involve only the outer man, whereas God’s law involved the whole man. The Ten Commandments cannot be fulfilled simply by doing or not doing outward acts. They not only forbid making idols but also require love of God (Ex. 20:4, 6). Honoring father and mother is first of all an attitude, a matter of the heart, as is covetousness (vv. 12, 17).
Every thoughtful Jew knew that God’s law was far above his own human power to obey. The proud and self-satisfied responded by diluting the law. The humble and penitent responded by calling to God for help.
If God’s Old Testament standards are impossible for man to meet by himself, how much less attainable by one’s own power are the standards of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus here teaches not only that people must love God but that they “are to be perfect, as [their] heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48), and that unless their righteousness exceeds the external, man-originated “righteousness … of the scribes and Pharisees, [they] shall not enter the kingdom of heaven” (5:20).
why humility is first
Jesus puts this beatitude first because humility is the foundation of all other graces, a basic element in becoming a Christian (Matt. 18:3–4). Pride has no part in Christ’s kingdom, and until a person surrenders pride he cannot enter the kingdom. The door into His kingdom is low, and no one who stands tall will ever go through it. We cannot be filled until we are empty; we cannot be made worthy until we recognize our unworthiness; we cannot live until we admit we are dead. We might as well expect fruit to grow without a tree as to expect the other graces of the Christian life to grow without humility. We cannot begin the Christian life without humility, and we cannot live the Christian life with pride.
Yet in the church today there is little emphasis on humility, little mention of self-emptying. We see many Christian books on how to be happy, how to be successful, how to overcome problems, and on and on. But we see very few books on how to empty ourselves, how to deny ourselves, and how to take up our crosses and follow Jesus—in the way that He tells us to follow Him.
Until a soul is humbled, until the inner person is poor in spirit, Christ can never become dear, because He is obscured by self. Until one knows how helpless, worthless, and sinful he is in himself, he can never see how mighty, worthy, and glorious Christ is in Himself. Until one sees how doomed he is, he cannot see what a Redeemer the Lord is. Until one sees his own poverty he cannot see God’s riches. Only when one admits to his own deadness can Christ give him His life. “Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 16:5).
Being poor in spirit is the first beatitude because humility must precede everything else. No one can receive the kingdom until he recognizes that he is unworthy of the kingdom. The church in Laodicea said proudly, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” not knowing that she was instead “wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (Rev. 3:17). Those who refuse to recognize that they are lost and helpless are like the blind Roman slave girl who insisted that she was not blind but that the world was permanently dark.
Where self is exalted, Christ cannot be. Where self is king, Christ cannot be. Until the proud in spirit become poor in spirit, they cannot receive the King or inherit His kingdom.
achieving humility
How, then, do we become poor in spirit? Almost by definition, it cannot start with us, with anything we can do or accomplish in our own power. Nor does it involve putting ourselves down. We are already down; humility simply recognizes the truth. And simply being hopeless, helpless, and in need obviously is no virtue. That is not God’s will for anyone. His will is to get us out of that condition and into blessing. The fulfillment of that goal depends on His sovereign, gracious work of humbling.
Humility is not a necessary human work to make us worthy, but a necessary divine work to make us see that we are unworthy and cannot change our condition without God. That is why monasticism, asceticism, physical self-denial, mutilation, and other such self-efforts are so foolish and futile. They feed pride rather than subdue it, because they are works of the flesh. They give a person a reason to boast in what he has done or not done. Such self-imposed efforts are enemies of humility.
Yet even though genuine humility is produced by the Lord as an element of the work of salvation, it is also commanded of men. There are numerous divine commands to humble oneself (Matt. 18:4; 23:12; James 4:10; 1 Pet. 5:5), which the Lord perfectly harmonizes with His sovereign work of humbling. Sovereign saving work is never without personal cooperation. Because of that it is helpful to look at some of the steps from the human side of the divine paradox.
The first step in experiencing humility is to turn our eyes off ourselves and to look to God. When we study His Word, seek His face in prayer, and sincerely desire to be near Him and please Him, we move toward being poor in spirit. It is the vision of the infinitely Holy God in all His sinless purity and perfection that allows us to see ourselves as sinners by contrast. To seek humility, we do not look at ourselves to find the faults, but at God Almighty to behold His perfection.
Second, we must starve the flesh by removing the things on which it feeds. The essence of the fleshly nature is pride, and to starve the flesh is to remove and avoid those things that promote pride. Rather than looking for praise, compliments, and popularity, we should we be wary of them. Yet because our human sinfulness has a way of turning even the best intentions to its advantage, we need to be careful not to make an issue of avoiding praise and recognition. The evil is not in being given praise but in seeking it and glorying in it. When, without having sought it, we are praised or honored, to ungraciously reject the recognition may be an act of pride rather than of humility.
The third and balancing principle in coming to humility is asking God for it. With David we should pray, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Ps. 51:10). Humility, like every other good gift, comes only from God. Also as with every other good thing, He is more willing to give it than we are to ask for it, and He stands ready to give it long before we ask for it.
knowing when we are humble
How can we know if we are genuinely humble, if we are poor in spirit? Thomas Watson gives seven principles we may apply in determining humility.*
First, if we are humble we will be weaned from ourselves. We will be able to say with David, “My soul is like a weaned child within me” (Ps. 131:2). One who is poor in spirit loses his self-preoccupation. Self is nothing, and Christ is everything. Paul’s humility is nowhere more beautifully expressed than in his saying, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20). To the Philippian believers he wrote, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21).
Second, humility will lead us to be lost in the wonder of Christ, “with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, … being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18). Our satisfaction will be in the prospect of one day being fully in the likeness of our Lord.
Third, we will not complain about our situation, no matter how bad it may become. Because we know we deserve worse than anything we can experience in this life, we will consider no circumstance to be unfair. When tragedy comes we will not say, “Why me, Lord?” When our suffering is for Christ’s sake we not only will not complain or feel ashamed but will glorify God for it (1 Pet. 4:16), knowing that we will “also be glorified with Him” and realizing “that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:17–18).
Fourth, we will more clearly see the strengths and virtues of others as well as our own weaknesses and sins. With “humility of mind” we will “regard one another as more important than [ourselves]” (Phil. 2:3) and will “give preference to one another in honor” (Rom. 12:10).
Fifth, we will spend much time in prayer. Just as the physical beggar begs for physical sustenance, the spiritual beggar begs for spiritual. We will knock often at heaven’s gate because we are always in need. Like Jacob wrestling with the angel, we will not let go until we are blessed.
Sixth, we will take Christ on His terms, not on ours or any other. We will not try to have Christ while keeping our pride, our pleasures, our covetousness, or our immorality. We will not modify His standards by ecclesiastical traditions or by our own inclinations or persuasions. His Word alone will be our standard.
Watson said, “A castle that has long been besieged and is ready to be taken will deliver up on any terms to save their lives. He whose heart has been a garrison for the devil, and has held out long in opposition against Christ, when once God has brought him to poverty of spirit and he sees himself damned without Christ, let God propound what articles he will, he will readily subscribe to them. Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?’ ” (p. 47).
Seventh, when we are poor in spirit we will praise and thank God for His grace. Nothing more characterizes the humble believer than abounding gratitude to his Lord and Savior. He knows that he has no blessings and no happiness but that which the Father gives in love and grace. He knows that God’s grace is “more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 1:14).
the result of being poor in spirit
Those who come to the King in this humility inherit His kingdom, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. God has gladly chosen to give the kingdom to those who humbly come to Him and trust Him (Luke 12:32).
When the Lord called Gideon to deliver Israel from the Midianites, Gideon replied, “O Lord, how shall I deliver Israel? Behold, my family is the least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house”—to which God answered, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat Midian as one man” (Judg. 6:15–16). When Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted,” he cried in despair, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips.” Then an attending seraph touched the prophet’s mouth with a burning coal and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven” (Isa. 6:1, 5–7).
Those who come to the Lord with broken hearts do not leave with broken hearts. “For thus says the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy, ‘I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite’ ” (Isa. 57:15). God wants us to recognize our poverty so that He can make us rich. He wants us to recognize our lowliness so that He can raise us up. “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord,” James says, “and He will exalt you” (James 4:10).
In giving up their own kingdom, the poor in spirit inherit God’s.[1]
How to Inherit God’s Kingdom
Matthew 5:3
I do not know much about Sophie Tucker, the actress, but years ago I heard a statement of hers that I have remembered. She was being asked about her early struggles for success and whether or not she had found a certain special happiness in her years of poverty. She answered, “Listen, I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor. And believe me, rich is better.” For years I have found this remark interesting. And I remember it now because it seems to be the direct opposite of the first great principle taught by the Lord Jesus Christ about how you and I can find happiness.
Poverty of Spirit
In all fairness to Sophie Tucker, however, I must admit that when Jesus Christ was talking about poverty of spirit he was not talking about poverty in the same sense that most of us talk about it. He was not talking about the opposite of being materially rich. This is the sense in which many commentators on Matthew’s Gospel have taken Christ’s saying, but this is not its true meaning. There would be some justification for this interpretation if Luke’s version of the Beatitudes was all that we possessed in our Bibles, for Luke reports Jesus as saying: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). This could be material poverty, but it is not; for Matthew rules out this meaning by quoting Christ’s full saying. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” To be poor in spirit is to be poor in the inward man, not in outward circumstances. Consequently, to be poor in spirit is to recognize one’s poverty spiritually before God.
If it were true that Matthew 5:3 refers to material poverty, then it would be an unchristian thing for a Christian or any other person to seek to alleviate the burdens of the destitute and the starving. It would mean seeking to abolish that which actually brings them closer to God and to his happiness. If this were the meaning, it would not be right to attempt to relieve those who are starving in war-torn countries. It would not be right to try and provide for the refugees left homeless by natural calamities. There could be no social programs within the Christian churches. There could be no orphanages, no hospitals or inner city missions. None of these things would be Christian if this verse taught that spiritual blessedness was to be derived from material poverty.
Fortunately, the verse does not say that at all. And what is equally important, God does not sanction poverty in any other biblical passage either. It is true that there are verses that teach that sometimes riches can be a bad thing. Christ said that it is often hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. A person can be so caught up in the material things of this world that he can miss God’s spiritual benefits. That is true. But if it is true that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, it is true that it is sometimes difficult for a poor person to enter also, for the poor man can be equally materialistic. No, the first beatitude is not talking about either material riches or material poverty.
It is not talking about the “poor in spirit” in the sense of being poor-spirited, either. A poor-spirited person is a person who lacks drive and enthusiasm for life. There are many Christians who seem to be like this. But this is not endorsed by Christ’s teaching. David was the one man in all the Bible who was called a man after God’s own heart, and there was not a more ambitious or successful man in all of Israel’s history. David was a man who entered vigorously into the affairs of his day. He forged a nation out of diverse and mutually jealous tribes, and he united them successfully enough to be able to drive off all the surrounding nations that desired to conquer Israel. David was not poor-spirited! And yet, he epitomized, perhaps far more than any other character in history, what Jesus meant when he said that his followers were to be poor in spirit before God.
What exactly did Jesus mean? We can see the answer to this question when we recognize that being poor in spirit is the opposite of being rich in pride. In fact, you might say that being poor in spirit is to be spiritually bankrupt before God. It is the mental state of the man who has recognized something of the righteousness and holiness of God, who has seen into the sin and corruption of his own heart, and has acknowledged his inability to please God. Such a person is poor in spirit. It is to such a person, Jesus said, that the kingdom of heaven belongs. Seen in this way, the first of the eight Beatitudes is one of the strongest statements in the Bible of the great doctrine of justification by faith in Jesus Christ alone, for it is a statement of a person’s complete inability to please God by any human effort.
First Principles
This first great teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is one that can be spelled out more clearly in a number of related propositions. The first is this: we must recognize as a first principle for understanding the Sermon on the Mount that we cannot fulfill the standards of the Sermon on the Mount by ourselves. The Sermon on the Mount was not given so that a man could say to himself, “Come on, old chap, I guess we’ll just have to try harder to pull you up by your bootstraps.” This cannot be done. Paradoxically, Jesus teaches that the Sermon on the Mount is only for those who know that they cannot live by it.
Have you ever recognized this same fact about the law of God given in the Old Testament? It was not given by God so that a person might fulfill it, or some of it, and then congratulate himself on how well he is doing. It was given to drive a man to God for God’s mercy.
This is clearly demonstrated in the first giving of the law on Mount Sinai. The people of Israel had asked for the law, and God had called Moses up into the mountain to receive it. There, Moses was told that there were to be no other gods before the one true God of Israel. There were to be no idols. There was to be no greed, no adultery, no murder, no breaking of the Sabbath day, and so on. But while the precepts of the law were being given to Moses on the top of Mount Sinai, the people who had come with him out of Egypt were down in the valley doing the very things that God was forbidding. And so, right at the beginning of Israel’s history we have a demonstration that the standards of God’s righteousness cannot be achieved by sinful human beings.
In time the people of Israel recognized this truth. And those who submitted to it came to God humbly, confessing their sin, and availing themselves of the cleansing God had provided through the sacrifices. Those who would not submit to this truth and who, instead, boasted and wished to boast in their own self-righteousness, sought to whittle the high standards of the law down to the low level of their own performance. They did this by interpreting and reinterpreting it. Under the direction of the scribes a series of supplementary commandments was added to the law which had the effect of lowering its requirements, although they would not acknowledge this. Actually, the rabbis said that they were putting a “hedge” about the Torah. This meant that they were constructing a series of safeguard commandments around the central, God-given commandment, so that anyone who came close to breaking it would be warned before he did so and thus be kept from sinning. In practice, however, this meant only that the individual could tell himself that he had kept the Sabbath if he did not travel more than a Sabbath day’s journey, did not cook in his home, did not work in the field, and so on. And it was possible for him to escape entirely the far more important demands upon his mind and conduct that in God’s view actually made the day holy.
This was the situation in Jesus’ day, and the result was that Jesus confronted the hypocrisy of the religious people directly. Jesus said, “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20). And he ended the first great section of the Sermon on the Mount with the categorical statement, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). In other words, Jesus was saying, “Even though you may have kept the commandments of Rabbi Hillel, Rabbi Jehuda, or Rabbi Jose, that does not necessarily mean that you have kept the commandments of God. And the purpose of those commandments is actually to show you that you have not kept them and that you will never be able to keep them.”
Years later the apostle Paul came along and spelled out this teaching for his churches. He wrote, “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin” (Rom. 3:19–20). All the verses which I have quoted boil down to this: the one thing that the law cannot do is to make a man righteous before God. Rather, it condemns him. Consequently, if we are ever to understand the ethical teachings of Jesus Christ, we must recognize as a first great principle that we just cannot abide by them. And we must come in faith to the only One who did fulfill them and who alone can fulfill them in those who give their lives to him.
Let me illustrate the truth in this way. To preach the standards of the Sermon on the Mount to persons who are unregenerate and who do not have Christ’s nature within them is a bit like preaching the prophecies about the bliss of the millennium in Isaiah to the animal world. The eleventh chapter of Isaiah says that when Jesus Christ will return to this world to set up a holy kingdom, all things will be made right. Sin will be stopped, and even in nature the wolf will dwell with the lamb. Well, try practicing that today. I have been to the zoo often enough to know that a lamb wandering into a wolf’s cage would be dinner with wool on—no matter how many preachers were reading the eleventh chapter of Isaiah to the wolf. If the prophecy is to be fulfilled, it is necessary for the wolf to have a new nature. And so, too, if the law is to be fulfilled in us it is necessary for us to have a new nature. We need to recognize as a first principle of Christian ethics that a new nature, given by the Lord Jesus Christ, is prerequisite.
Empty Vessels
The second great principle suggested by Matthew 5:3 is that there must be an emptying in our lives before there can be a filling. We must become poor in spirit before we can become rich in God’s spiritual blessings. The old wine must be poured out of the wineskins before the new wine can be poured in.
Right back at the beginning of the Lord’s earthly life Simeon acknowledged this in a prophecy made to Mary and Joseph when they appeared in Jerusalem for the presentation of the infant Jesus at the temple. Simeon said, “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel” (Luke 2:34). Notice the order: first the fall, then the rising again. In other words, the emptying comes before the filling, repentance before conversion, a recognition of worthlessness in God’s sight before acceptance of his salvation.
This is what all God’s children have found. It was known to St. Augustine. Before his conversion, the future Bishop of Hippo was proud of his intellect and knowledge, and these things actually held him back from believing. It was only after he had emptied himself of his pride and his sense of being able to manage his own life that he found God’s perfect wisdom through Scripture. Luther’s experience was similar. When the future German reformer entered the monastery at a young age his purpose was to earn his own salvation through piety and good works. Nevertheless, he experienced an acute sense of failure. It was only after he recognized his own inability to please God and emptied himself of all attempts to earn his salvation that God touched his heart and showed him the true meaning of salvation by grace through faith. Then Luther became the great reformer of the Church. In the same way a modern hymn writer has written:
But tho’ I cannot sing, or tell, or know
The fullness of Thy love, while here below,
My empty vessel I may freely bring:
O Thou, who art of love the living spring,
My vessel fill.
I am an empty vessel—not one thought
Or look of love, I ever to Thee brought;
Yet I may come, and come again to Thee,
With this, the empty sinner’s only plea—
Thou lovest me.
An empty vessel! “I am an empty vessel.” If you will say that, then God will fill you with the life of Jesus Christ—supernaturally—and you will begin to live the standards of the Sermon on the Mount by the power of the One who gave them and who himself lived them perfectly in this world.
Confronted by God
There is only one more observation that needs to be added to these comments on the first beatitude. I have said that there must be an emptying of a person before there can be a filling by God. There must be a true poverty of spirit. But this is unnatural to man, and, therefore, impossible. We must, therefore, add that nothing but a direct confrontation with the holy, just, and loving God will produce it.
You see, it is never possible to create a true poverty of spirit by looking within or by looking around at other people. The human heart is corrupt. And because of it you will always latch upon someone who is worse in some respect than you. You will find someone who is prouder than you are, and although you may still be quite proud you will congratulate yourself on being humble. You will find someone who has strong fits of temper, and although you too have a temper you will congratulate yourself on being more moderate in your temper than he. So it will go with all the failings that make you less perfect than Jesus Christ and therefore the fit object of his mercy and salvation.
And yet, you need not look to other men for the basis of a self-evaluation. You may look to God as you see him reflected in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. There you will learn a true humility, a true sense of need, and the result will be beneficial. You will say as Isaiah did when he saw God, “ ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’ ” (Isa. 6:5). C. S. Lewis once wrote of this experience, “Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good—above all, that we are better than someone else—I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.”
As we proceed in our studies of the Beatitudes I am sure that both of those things will happen. But one other thing will happen also. We shall see more and more of Jesus, the One who is himself the Sermon on the Mount, and we shall be drawn increasingly closer to him.[2]
[1] MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1985). Matthew (Vol. 1, pp. 141–151). Moody Press.
Job 37:14 — Stand still and consider the wondrous works of God! I’ve seen the Planetarium Show at the Creation Museum many times, but it is still amazing every time!
Job 37:23 — The technical term is “inscrutable.” Elihu is right, we will not be able to “unscrute” the inscrutable!
Job 38:3 — God speaks to Job. He doesn’t explain to him why he went through the tragedies, but He ask Job some questions. Notice the question God asked man: He asked Adam to explain his behavior (Genesis 3:9). Israel Wayne exposited the Questions God Asks in his recent book.
Job 38:23 — God used hail as a weapon in the Exodus and in the conquest of Canaan (Exodus 9:13-18, Joshua 10:10-11).
Job 38:37 — Clouds, those harmless puffs of water vapor, are one of the main reasons your favorite meteorologist can’t predict Friday’s weather. “Clouds and precipitation are among the more challenging weather parameters to forecast accurately.”
Job 39:9-10 — But I thought unicorns weren’t real? The problem isn’t Scripture, but the gradual deterioration of the English language. Eric Hovind points out that the word “unicorn” is not only a transliteration from the Latin, but it also originally (per Webster’s 1828 Dictionary) referred to animals such as the rhinoceros.
2 Corinthians 4:14 — We’ve just read in Job about our God’s amazing power. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead will raise us up from the dead as well!
2 Corinthians 5:10 — The most sobering doctrine in the Bible is the Bema Seat. We aren’t just on a 80-some year cruise boat voyage to do our own pleasures. We are working towards a reviewal of our performance. Chuck Missler dispels some myths about the Bema:
This judgment is often taught as simply an awards ceremony, but that is not entirely correct. It was the tribunal seat, the judicial bench, the judgment seat, or throne of the one in charge. Herod Agrippa I addressed the people of Tyre and Sidon from his Bema seat. Jesus was brought before Pilate and his Bema seat. Paul was accused before Proconsul Gallio; and brought before Festus at Caesarea facing a Bema seat. A relic of one was found among the ruins in Corinth.
Psalm 44:9 — Did the Psalmist just borrow from Job?
Psalm 44:23 — The proper response is not to dispute with God, but to continue to call upon the name of the LORD!
Proverbs 22:13 — When you need an excuse, any excuse will do!
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One of the strongest memories of my childhood is waiting. Waiting every morning for the school bus, waiting for friends to come over, waiting for my grandparents at Christmas, sitting by the front window to see when they would arrive and how many presents they would bring! But nothing compares to the eagerness with which the children of God should await the coming of their King. After all the visions of Revelation, after all the depictions of battle and victory, sacrifice and success, the church has one great, Spirit inspired response. “Come!”
How should we respond to God’s Revelation? In the midst of the battle, aware of the King and His foe, hearing that He is coming soon, the Bible tells us our response. “Even so, come Lord Jesus!”
The race is nearly over. Our redemption is nearer than when we first believed. As we worship, may we do so with a cry for His coming. As we fight sin, may we do so with a cry for His coming. As we bear witness to the lost, may we do so with a cry for His coming.
The Lord lifts up the head of His bride and directs her attention away from the cares of this world towards Himself. The church cannot help but long for her groom’s appearing as she catches a glimpse of Him in these final chapters. Let us never be so focused upon earth that we forget what we are waiting for.
Suggestions for prayer
O Lord, come!
Pastor Greg Bylsma is a graduate of Mid-
America
Reformed Seminary, and he is currently serving at the Living Water Reformed Church in Brantford, Ontario. Get this devotional delivered directly to your phone each day via our RP App. It is also available in print, for purchase, at NTGDevotional.com.
Breaking a bad habit isn’t a simple decision to stop the behavior; it’s a continual battle. Similarly, following God requires sustained resistance to Satan’s lies, deceits, and temptations. Find out how to do that on Truth For Life with Alistair Begg.
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