Do you know the first sermon Jesus ever preached? How about the first sentence He ever said publicly, as best we can tell from the Word of God?

When Jesus started His ministry at the age of thirty, He went up on a mountain and sat down to teach. And here is the first sentence He said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3, NIV).

That makes no sense. “Blessed—happy, to be envied, filled with spiritual joy—are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” In other words, the only people who get all God has for us to make us the people He wants us to be and fill us with peace and joy are the people who are poor in spirit. That is counterintuitive.

In our society, if you’re rich, you have it made. Jesus reversed this.

There are two words for “poor” in the New Testament. One describes a person who must work every day to get food for that day. The other word is ptokos, which means abject poverty. It describes a person who has nothing at all and can’t work either. He has to beg. This is the word Jesus used!

Jesus was saying, “Blessed are the beggars, the people who have to receive from someone else, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

I wish somebody would have told me this when I went into the ministry, because this is a deep first principle of spiritual life as a Christian: If we have nothing, then we have to look to God for everything, and God will fulfill every good desire He has for us. If we have something, on the other hand, then we try to make our own way in life rather than just humbly looking to God and saying “Fill me.” God provides for those who are humble and empty.

God has an aversion to the proud—people who are full of themselves. They’re independent. They don’t need God. The Lord sets Himself like an army general, according to the original language (see James 4:6), to bring down those who are proud.

Some people think that what made Lucifer fall from heaven as a created angelic being and become Satan is that his heart was filled with pride. Imagine, there was no tempter, and yet he became proud. He became the tempter. And he’s always tempting us toward a lot of sins, but basically it’s pride, self-sufficiency.

This principle of being poor in spirit is capped off in one of my favorite passages in the New Testament.

When Jesus replaced John the Baptist on the religious scene, John’s disciples were naturally hurt. So they went to John and said, “Teacher, that man you baptized, now He’s baptizing, and everyone’s going to Him.” But John the Baptist said something so good: “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven” (see John 3:26–27).

In other words, “Don’t feel bad for me. Jesus couldn’t do anything unless the Father had given Him the ability to do it. What am I to do? Fight against God?”

That’s why jealousy is such a spiritual absurdity. We get mad at someone or jealous of him or her because God blesses that person more than He does us. That’s like fighting with God. But as the old Broadway play says, “Your arms are too short to box with God.”

Paul said it this way: “Why are you boasting? Why so high and mighty? What do you have that God didn’t give you? And if God gave it to you, how could you be proud? Everything comes from someone else” (see 1 Corinthians 4:7).

The best example of this is in the parable of the vine and the branches.

Jesus said, “I am the vine.” The vine is the whole plant. “And you are the branches that grow out from the main stalk of the plant. You have to abide in Me, or you can do nothing” (see John 15:1–5).

So “blessed are the poor in spirit—the branch that just abides in the main stalk of the plant.” Why? Because the life is not in the branch; it’s in the plant. The branch has to just stay empty and abide. Every good thing will simply flow through us if we just abide in Jesus. That’s the joy of being empty.

But get the turnaround on this: Paul had learned this lesson, so he said, “In myself I can do nothing. I’m the chief of sinners, the least of all the apostles. But I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Why? It’s not me” (see 1 Corinthians 15:9; 1 Timothy 1:15; Philippians 4:13).

If we had to depend on ourselves, it would be all over. But if we just abide in Jesus and trust in His strength, His love, His grace, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. “How blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” So be it.

Prayer

Father, thank You that You receive us when we are poor in spirit. Help us no longer to lean on our own strength but to come to You emptied so that Your Spirit may fill us to accomplish all You are calling us to do.

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