Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus Christ begins with a series of nine blessings toward His disciples. The last verse of the Old Testament ends with a curse and now a blessing is given toward those that believe in Jesus Christ who was sent to bless. Acts 3:26 Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.
Blessed are the poor in spirit. All believers are poor in spirit, but sadly, not all believers realize that they are poor in spirit. Just as Jesus Christ told the Pharisees in Mark 2:17 When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Those that believe that they are strong in spirit are truly the weakest and will fall due to their pride. As Paul wrote in 1Corinthians 10:12 Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
Do not become comfortable in your faith! Do not allow yourself to sit back and rest on your past accomplishments. Faith does not grow in comfortable places and when we become complacent, we are no longer poor in spirit because we mistakenly believe that we are all set before God. Charles Spurgeon wrote: Learn this lesson – not to trust Christ because you repent, but trust Christ to make you repent; not to come to Christ because you have a broken heart, but to come to Him that He may give you a broken heart; not to come to Him because you are fit to come, but to come to Him because you are unfit to come. Your fitness is your unfitness. Your qualification is your lack of qualification. All people are beggars in spirit, that is why we must rely on Jesus Christ each and every day, because we are weak and He is strong so we must constantly trust Him.
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This verse is not referring to those that do not know Jesus Christ as their Saviour, because they are not poor in spirit – they have no spirit at all. J. Vernon McGee wrote: I played golf one day in Tulsa, OK, with a very wealthy oil man. He told me, “I went to church just like the rest of the hypocrites, and I was one of them, talking about keeping the Sermon on the Mount. Then one day I found out that I was a lost sinner on the way to hell. I turned to Jesus Christ, and He saved me! Oh, my friend, don’t be deceived. Only the Spirit of God can reveal to you your poverty of spirit. The Lord Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount was not telling His disciples how to become citizens of the kingdom of heaven. They already were citizens of the kingdom. The poor in spirit do not sit back and relax and decide they have it all figured out. The poor in spirit are always examining themselves, looking for the sin in their lives and trusting in the Lord for all things. The Apostle Paul did not consider himself to be rich in spirit, but recognized that he was the chiefest of sinners. He knew he was poor, but knew that in Jesus Christ he did not lack for anything. 2 Corinthians 6:10 As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.
The poor in spirit have the kingdom of heaven because they rely on the Lord Jesus Christ to be their provider. The poor in spirit have the kingdom because they do not rely on themselves but trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for their comfort, their joy, their everything. The poor in spirit have the kingdom of heaven because they are not prideful or centered on themselves. Look at God said in Zephaniah 3.
Zephaniah 3:11-12 In that day shalt thou not be ashamed for all thy doings, wherein thou hast transgressed against me: for then I will take away out of the midst of thee them that rejoice in thy pride, and thou shalt no more be haughty because of my holy mountain. (12) I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the LORD.
Moses is described in the Bible as a meek and humble man but he was not always that way. D.L. Moody said: Moses spent forty years in the king’s palace thinking that he was somebody; then he lived forty years in the wilderness finding out that without God he was a nobody; finally he spent forty more years discovering how a nobody with God can be a somebody. When Moses and the people found out they were nobodies without the resource of God, that’s when the exodus began. Turn to Revelation 3.
The church at Laodicea believed that they were rich in spirit and look at the rebuke that Jesus Christ pronounced upon them:
Revelation 3:15-19 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. (16) So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. (17) Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: (18) I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see. (19) As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
The Laodiceans believed that they had everything that they needed and physically it was true – they did have everything they needed, well, actually, it looks like they had everything that they wanted. They had fine clothing, the best food, and increased goods – everything that they wanted. But Jesus Christ calls them wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked: why? Because they also believed that they were rich in spirit, when they were only lukewarm toward the things of God. They did just enough to fulfill what they perceived to be their obligations toward God and nothing more. But they did not do what God urged them to do: to put on the white raiment that God presented them and place eye medicine on their eyes so they could see. And they did not buy the gold that had been tried in the fire. Was God offering them real gold? No, but if the Laodiceans would have stopped trusting in themselves and their riches and placed more faith in God, He would have provided them with riches better than gold. That gold tried by fire is the faith placed in God to trust Him when the times are tough. The gold tried by fire is the faith in God when you step out of your comfort zone and trust in His protection. The gold tried by fire is the faith in God placed by those that are poor in spirit. Why? Because the poor in spirit have nothing and no one else to rely on.