The Kingdom of Man

A Message from a Kingdom Man

The Sermon on the Mount [pt. 1]

Luke 6: 20 Then He lifted up His eyes toward His disciples, and said: “Blessed are you poor, For yours is the kingdom of God.¹

Introduction
When we come to todays text we see Jesus preaching what is called the sermon on the Mount. It is known to be one of the greatest sermons ever preached by the Christ.

No other preacher in history has ever been able to reduplicate it or imitate it. It is a text that informs, instructs and impacts generations around the world.

In fact it is the hall mark of his preaching ministry and the evidence that his proclamation could make a man desire God more than any had ever had before.

This sermon is more than words…it's more than expression, it's more than random thoughts, it's a divine collaboration of destiny and direction for living in the right now and not yet.

It is the expression of God to reveal to a people who they are while they have not yet attained into who they think they should be.

In fact, we read these words as a call to worship…we read these words as a devotional expression, we read these words as words of inspiration, but today I want to preach them as words for spiritual formation.

May the Lord bless us as we travel through this portion of the text, and may we come to understand who we are in Christ as a result of this study.

Background

It was the morning after he had prayed all night long before choosing his Apostles.

HE was in the mountain spending time with the father and getting direction for his earthly ministry.

When the morning came he assembled the 12 from a crowd of many disciples, who were waiting on him to teach them about how to live on earth and prepare for life in eternity.

This crowd that he is speaking too are a crowd of disciples. They have come from all over the region… the country, city, small towns, etc. They have come to be taught by the rabbi, loved by the rabbi, informed by the rabbi, trained by the rabbi, and most of all empowered by the rabbi.

I’m sure they thought they were going to hear something today that they had never heard before.

And that’s why I am glad that you are here today, because everyday with Jesus is sweeter than the day before.

There are two things that I think we can learn from this verse this morning, and they are about The Disciples Position with Christ and the Disciples Promise in Christ.

I. The Disciples Position

“Blessed are you poor,

Note
Here in the beginning of his sermon Jesus starts off the message by making a declaration to the crowds that have come to hear him. His declaration entails the position that they have with him as followers and disciples.

Again they have been waiting all night long… they have been sitting on the mountainside. They have been anticipating this moment with the rabbi. When he speaks he delivers a word that they had never heard before.

He says that they were blessed because of their position… “they were poor!”

Observation
This was almost a paradoxical statement because being poor and thinking you were blessed didn’t go together…

Warren Wiersbe says... The people who followed Jesus were, for the most part, poor people who lived from hand to mouth, and they lived one day at a time. They envied the rich and longed to be like them.2

But here Jesus in his sermon informs them that as disciples, things are not what they appear to be…

He reveals for us that there is a difference between the way things look in heaven and the way that they appear on earth… He says, in Heaven the poor are blessed because they are poor!

Let me explain…
The word blessed in this text is properly pronounced as makarios… it is a Greek word that means to be Happy. He is saying happy are the poor. Because something really good is on your side. “Happy are you who are poor”… The poor in this text is a different kind of poor than we have in North America.

Can I turn the light on?
This is not the poor that you and I think of when we hear the word …

Jesus is not talking about being North American resource-poor….

To be resource-poor, in that world meant you had nothing… Let me explain what resource poor is….

When you have no transportation, no money, or system to get or obtain any money….
There was no welfare or health care system if you had no money ….
There was no social security or free state benefits if you fell between the cracks of society…
There was no free public school, with free lunch, or homeless shelter if you had nothing to eat or no where to sleep…

Can I say some more?

You are not resource-poor, if you have a car that has a roof over its head {called a garage}
You are not resource-poor, if you have a refrigerator in the house and the garage.
You are not resource-poor, if you have more than 1 pair of shoes and clothes to wear.
You are not resource-poor, if you have a house or an apartment and it has more than 1 room inside.
You are not resource-poor, if you have more food than you can eat in one day.
You are not resource-poor, if you have a television, telephone, computer or any kind of device that communicates over the world wide web.
You are not resource-poor, if you have a checking or savings account.
You are not resource-poor, if you have health care, retirement, a pay check, automobiles, a place to sleep, food to eat, a bus pass, a Uber budget, a beat up bucket or roommates that you don’t like.
If you have any one of these items you are disqualified from being in the category called resource-poor.
Jesus in this text is talking to those who are poor spiritually and without resources like those of the wealthy.

Here is the Meaning of the Passage
‘Looking at his disciples, he said, “Blessed are you who are poor…

In this passage he is talking about those that have elected to choose poverty for righteousness’ sake; those who forsake the material comforts of this world in order to seek a higher calling for the sake of the kingdom of God.

Observation
There are countless people, servants of Christ, whose whole lives are a sacrifice of service to Christ. Some have foregone higher salaries, in order to be servants of Christ. Those who suffer poverty for righteousness’ sake are singled out for a particular blessing of God. These are the people who look for their fulfillment in life upon the approval of God, and who see their own value as a reflection of the blessing of the King.

Story
David Livingstone was a Scottish missionary and explorer who spent thirty-three years in the heart of Africa. He endured much suffering as he labored to spread the Gospel and open the continent to missionaries. This godly missionary once remarked:

“People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay?...It is emphatically no sacrifice. I Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger now and then with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in us. I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk, when we remember the great sacrifice which HE made who left his Father’s throne on high to give himself for us.”

Did you catch it?
The missionary gave up everything, to serve Lord and did not consider it a sacrifice at all. Yet this is exactly the kind of poverty that Jesus is talking about. Jesus says to the disciples on the mountain side that you have a divine position and you are blessed! Here it is… We will discover in this passage that this text has a promise and a future blessing in it. Jesus is saying that those who are poor towards this world, but rich towards God, enjoy a special privilege in God’s kingdom.3

Story
A Russian countess accepted the Lord Jesus as her Savior and was open about her testimony. The Tsar was displeased and threw her into prison. After 24 hours with the lowest level of Russian society, in the most miserable conditions imaginable, he ordered her brought into his presence. He smiled sarcastically and said, “Well, are you ready now to renounce your silly faith and come back to the pleasures of the court?” To his surprise, the countess smiled serenely and said, “I have known more real joy and more real happiness in one day in prison with Jesus than I have known in a lifetime in the courts of the Tsar.”

She found out what it was to be blessed with Jesus and to be poor in the Spirit. Can I get a witness?

II. The Disciples Promise

For yours is the kingdom of God.⁴

Note
Here we discover that if you are poor in righteousness…you have received a divine promise from Jesus. You are rich in the things of God. Jesus says “Yours is the Kingdom!” The word Kingdom here is the word basileia. This word means the Rule and reign of God in your hearts! It is the word that regulates the difference between what the believer thinks about things and what the unbeliever thinks about things… Once again, Jesus is saying blessed are you if you suffer poverty for me, for you will have what I have in glory.

Secondly he is saying, because of the rule and reign of God you can have the kingdom of God. Having possession of the Kingdom of God means that you have been given, the kingdom mind. And the Kingdom mind does not care about the riches of this world.

The kingdom mind does not care for the distractions of this world…
The kingdom mind does not get carried away with the divisions and disputes of political partisan issues…
The kingdom mind submits it self to the comprehensive rule of God for every area of life…
The kingdom mind is a mind that wants what God wants and desires what God desires…
The Kingdom mind is not bogged - down with trivial matters of nothingness…
The kingdom mind is the blessed mind because it resides as a citizen of two worlds…
The kingdom mind can live on earth but be seated in the heavens…
The kingdom mind can walk down here but live somewhere else…
The kingdom mind can be mistreated, talked about, rejected, ignored by humans on earth but be totally okay that they are accepted by God in heaven.

Here it is….

Blessed are you poor. Those that are poor in righteousness have something that money cannot buy….

“For yours is the kingdom of God.”

When you have the Kingdom of God… you have something that Money cannot buy,
When you have the Kingdom of God… you have peace that passes all understanding….
When you have the Kingdom of God… you have eternal security in the believer…
When you have the Kingdom of God… you have hope that transcends circumstances…
When you have the Kingdom of God… you have the grace that saves, keeps, transforms, spiritually forms, awakens, supersedes needs and desires…
When you have the Kingdom of God… you have a permanent standing in the right now rule and the not yet rule and reign of God.

Can I say some more?
Because you have the Kingdom of God…The kingdom mind lives in an unshakable location…

Poverty can’t shake it…
problems can’t shake it…
people can’t shake it…
pain can’t shake it…
predicaments can’t shake it…
post traumatic stress can’t shake it…
persecution can’t shake it…
prosecution can’t shake it…
personalities can’t shake it…
prescription drugs can’t shake it…

The kingdom mind lives in the rule and reign of God.