Happy Are The Humble - Part 2

Christian is happiness 75 so celebrities would be the happiest people on earth and stated many good things the feeling empty and miserable you surprised that I am Turning Point of the gym are considered one of the happiest people often made quiet lives of said far outside the spotlight from his series on the Beatitudes is David is the conclusion of this message happy humble will you know.

Humility is something hardly anyone ever wants to talk about because as soon as you talk about people think you might think you have it and then you don't and I've taught some lessons on it from the New Testament. But here's one of the key passages about humility were Jesus teaches us that one key to real joy and happiness is humility. And I told you before that humility is not thinking less of yourself. Humility is just thinking of yourself less.

And Jesus and Moses and others were humble and yet they were strong and assertive people. Humility is not weakness. Humility is seeing yourself as God sees you, and strength, but also realizing your dependence upon him, and were going to talk about that again.

In just a moment as we finish this first characteristic this first beatitude, let me remind you again that tomorrow on the Friday edition of Turning Point were going to talk about happy are the hurting, how can you be happy when you're hurting will find out tomorrow. Let's get started now with the last part about having what would be the characteristics of a person who is poor in spirit. Interestingly enough, in the story of the publican and the Pharisee, the richest of the two was the one who was poor in spirit. Tax collectors had great resources.

Most of it through extortion. Frankly, but they were some of the wealthiest people in Jesus day the rich man the publican. He was the one who prayed God be merciful to me a sinner that proves once and for all that poverty of spirit has nothing to do with our outward resources or material abilities.

It's an inward attitude of heart. Blessed are the poor in spirit. What would you expect to see if you saw someone like that while the first thing I wrote down is that those who are poor in spirit will recognize that they are out of step with the ways of the world.

I read the owner of the Chicago Bulls gave summary statement of the rules governing Michael Jordan. This is what he said. He said Michael Jordan is living the American dream. He said the American dream.

Listen to this now is to reach a point in your life where you don't have to do anything you don't want to do and you can do everything that you do want to do. That's the American dream and I dare say that some of you today are pursuing mentoring, trying to get yourself into a place where you don't have to do anything you don't want to do and you can do everything that you do want. No wonder JB Phillips decided to coin the Beatitudes for this kingdom.

Here are the Beatitudes for this world. Happy are the pushers for they get on in the world. Happy are the hard boiled, for they never let life hurt them.

Happy are those who complain, for they get their own way. In the end. Happy are the blasé, for they never worry over their sins.

Happy are the slave drivers for they get results happy are the knowledgeable men of the world, for they know their way around. Happy are the troublemakers, for they make people take notice of the Beatitudes of the kingdom of this world, let me tell you something, my friend, if you live according to the kingdom manifesto of Jesus Christ, even for one day you will find yourself in conflict with everything that's going on around you.

You will feel the tension you will feel at the very core of who you are.

Can I get a witness you know what I'm talking about. If you are poor in spirit, in the sense that Jesus meant it.

One of the first evidences of that will be that you feel like you're walking to a cadence that's different than everybody else's. You have to show up every day and Sam to try to be in tension with everybody around me. It will come naturally to you. If you are walking after Jesus Christ.

It will be the most natural normal thing will sense that something is out of sync in the world but you have the sweet peace in your heart that you are exactly where you want to be number two. Those who are poor in spirit will realize their emptiness apart from God. That's really what it means not that you are worthless, but that what it really counts in terms of real life that God is the key to it that Jesus Christ is the answer when Jesus speaks of the poor in spirit. I think he means the opposite of everything that is summed up in the word pride.

The poor in spirit is the man who does not boast about his talents or his attainments because he knows he has nothing that he did not receive if he is a gifted is because he is been given much. Remember Sampson in the Old Testament, you remember him a haircut that ruined the life remember him.

Here is Sampson standing there in the Valley of historic surrounded by the lords of the Philistines and the Bible says Key West. Not that the Lord was departed from him. It was not bad enough that Sampson lost his power when his hair was cut off, but it was really discouraging to read that he did not understand.

He went out as he had gone out before the fight and he got in the middle of the battle and realized he was powerless. Someone is said that no man is so ignorant as he who knows nothing and knows not that he knows nothing. No man is so sick is he who has a fatal disease and is not aware of it no matter so poor as he was destitute and yet thinks he is rich. That's the pitiable thing about the Pharisees wasn't so much what they believed it was their utter lack of knowledge of how poor they actually were in the sight of God. Jesus gives us a dramatic story about that. He was a great storyteller illustrator of all illustrators.

He told a story about a man who had everything in life and in a self-satisfied soliloquy one night this man said so, thou hast much goods laid up for many years. Take diet easy drink and be merry. And Jesus said, thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of the and then we often skip this Jesus addendum to that story was so is he that Laya up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God while you remember the Laodiceans. Some of you who study the New Testament. Remember, that's a church mentioned in the book of Revelation the church to which John the apostle wrote a letter it was possible for a church not to be poor in spirit as well.

The Laodicean church was like this and John wrote this in the power of the Holy Spirit. He said to that church, because you say I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked is a sad thing when a person is empty and they don't know it, you know I run out of gas a lot I need to tie don't watch the gas gauge and small is running out of gas, which you know what I got out of my driveway and I looked down at my almost back in and sit down.

I'm taking your car. But then, what would she have done, you know, and so I looked at the gas gauge and I mean it wasn't just on and it was clear beyond empty over on the peg. Why live at the top of the hill so blessed is the man who knows his tank is empty. I coasted all the way down the hill, you know, it's hard to steer a car with power steering when the engines turned off.

But I made it I must've coasted for a mile and 1/2. You know what I had just enough gas to get from where I stopped coasting when I put in the gas station, it coughed. It is bad to have an empty tank but it's even worse not to know the tank is empty. Soon, I'm trying to say many women is a person who has poverty of spirit is a person who has the proper assessment of who he is inwardly without God is a wonderful thing to know who you are. Without God, so that you can then find out all you can be with God. A person who does not have a poor spirit who continually builds himself up and trust in the outward things of life is a person who will find it very very difficult ever to humble himself and come to God seeking grace.

Isn't that why Jesus said that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven been for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Was he saying that rich people can go to heaven know he was saying that rich people have so many things outwardly to trust in that sometimes they find it very difficult to realize the poverty of their own spirit, and so they go on their way trusting in all the outward things and before it's too late. They never make a change. Those who are poor in spirit will realize their emptiness apart from God. You know what, that's true. Before were saved. It's also true. After were saved as I made an observation and I wrote it down in my journal that this whole thing about poverty in spirit is something that grows on us and in us as we get older is really tough for a very young person to have that quality about his life gets out of college is got all his degrees and he's bought into the system. You know that says if you work hard and get to the top, so he charges the marketplace with the enthusiasm he's going to be number one in whatever field is chosen to be and he doesn't need God. But what happens as we get older you know what happens when you go through this process of realizing that little by little, you are in control of all the things in life that you thought you were health and financial situations and relationships in all of these things. If you're not careful. They have a way of beating on you until you are reminded that you are not sufficient for these things. Most of us who have any measure of this in our life at all, have it because of the circumstances God has used to develop that within us tribulation. Does this and causes us to grow in this way.

The third thing I want to say is that those who are poor in spirit will reach out to others with the spirit of love and compassion. You show me a person who is into himself.

He has no time for others is really into his own agenda never has time for relationships never is building into the life of anybody else that person has not captured Jesus words here.

You see, if you're into yourself, you will never have time for others but if you understand where your resources are. You will be sensitive to those around you.

I want to give you one more those who are poor in spirit will reach their highest joy in serving others humility is the key service. That's why Jesus did what he did when he washed the feet of his disciples he was giving them a lesson in the service a real servant cares not what the task is only that it needs to be done and those who serve are those who have truly found the joy of Jesus statement concerning the poor in spirit. Philip Yancey is a great writer, wrote a book called the Jesus I never knew incredible book and there's a chapter in this book on the Beatitudes. Believe it or not.

Somewhere in that chapter.

Philip Yancey makes the statement, he said I want you to know that here is something we all will realize to be true. He said the people that we laud the people we strive to emulate the people we feature on the covers of popular magazines are not the fulfilled happy balanced persons. We might imagine that I have to stop for a moment and say every week we have an illustration of that.

Philip Yancey says my career as a journalist has afforded me opportunities to interview stars including NFL football greats, movie actors, music performers, best-selling authors, politicians and TV personalities.

These are the people who dominate the media we fawn over them poring over them.

I knew she of their lives.

The clothes they wear the food they eat the aerobic routines. They follow the people they love the toothpaste they use yet I must tell you, said Yancey, that in my limited experience I have found that our idols are as miserable a group of people as I have ever met. Most have troubled or broken marriages. Nearly all are incurably depended on psychotherapy and in a heavy irony. These larger-than-life heroes seem tormented by self-doubt. He said I have also spent some time with servants people we call servants like doctors and nurses who work among the ultimate outcasts leprosy patients in rural India, a Princeton graduate who runs a hotel for the homeless in Chicago health workers who have high-paying jobs to serve in a backwater town of Mississippi relief workers in Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and other repositories of human suffering. The PhD's that I met in Arizona who were now scattered throughout the jungles of South America translating the Bible into obscure languages. Yancey said I was prepared to honor and admire the servants to hold them up as inspiring example, but I was not prepared to envy them. Yet, as I now reflect on the two groups side-by-side stars in the servants. The servants clearly emerged as the favored ones the greatest ones without question. I would rather spend time among the servants than among the stars. The servants possess qualities of depth and richness, and even joy that I have not found elsewhere. Servants work for low pay, long hours and no applause wasting their talents and skills among the poor and uneducated, but somehow in the process of losing their lives, they find them. The poor in spirit are indeed blessed. I now believe it with all my heart. He wrote theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and they will inherit the earth.

What did Jesus mean when he promised us that if we are poor in spirit, we will inherit the kingdom of heaven. Does that just mean will go to heaven when we die, or what has to be much more than that me tell you what I think it means. Remember the Lord's prayer our father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. How does the kingdom of God come down among us. I think the next phrase in the prayer tells us how listen to thy kingdom come, equals, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The kingdom of God comes to be among us.

We live within the principles of the kingdom of God.

The inward kingdom that Jesus is describing here that happens when we get to the place where God's will is done in our lives on earth as it is in heaven. When that happens, the kingdom of God comes to live among us, and we become a part of that kingdom and we discover the kind of joy that the world will never be able to manufacture or even understand there is no joy or happiness, like knowing in the corner of your heart. I am in the center of God's will, doing what God wants me to do and I love every minute of it that is the joy about which Jesus spoke, blessed are the poor in spirit with a shell inherit the kingdom of heaven. Let's pray father were reminded that if we live only for this world, we will be discouraged and filled with despair.

Blessed is the man who understands that there is a world beyond this one and while he will find joy and happiness in living here. It will only be in the measure in which he lives here. According to the principles of what is there. Lord I pray that today, as we have talked the spirit of God will have worked in the hearts but it's a hard thing, especially for us men to stand up to the line and say I got a lot of things in my life, but inside I'm pretty empty. That's where it begins and thank you Lord for telling us that when were willing to come to that place were blessed. That's the first step we really can't get beyond that until we get there Lord there surely some today who been on the tram living life in the fast lane trying to find success and happiness in all the wrong places there worn out and their tired and they really don't have a will to go on. If there's no more than what they been able to find. Lord I pray that they will turn away from the outward look and understand that God in heaven has created them with a God shaped vacuum in their heart and that until Jesus Christ at his home there. They will never know happiness and joy cause them Lord to be willing to ask him to come to deny themselves and come to Christ before we finish our prayer.

Maybe I could lead you in a simple prayer. If that's where you are, maybe you could say in your own heart like this.

Dear God, I just feel so empty inside because I've tried to find happiness in all the outer things of life in God today. I admit my emptiness.

I admit the poverty in my spirit. I realize I'm a sinner and I cannot save myself so dear Lord, please come and live within my heart. Please forgive me for my sin and cleanse my life and set up your residence within me, Lord, take away the emptiness I feel with the fullness of your spirit. Cause me to know the joy about which you have spoken in your word. Even now, even today. Thank you Lord for hearing my prayer father I know that whoever has prayed that prayer and faith believing meaning in their heart.

You have heard them. The matter who they are, no matter what they've done or what their experience might be. You have heard their prayer. Thank you for your promise that you will never turn anyone away comes to you as we have pray today. Bless and encourage those who have so pray.

Help them to be outward about their commitment to go on to serve you in the matchless name or say friends I hope you're having a good summer. I know it's probably much different than you thought it would be before all of these things started to happen to us in this country. One thing we've learned is this the one thing that is constant. That doesn't ever change that's not affected by the newscasts not affected by what happens in the environment that one thing is the word of God we had so much delight in ensuring the unchanging message of God's word to all of you listen every day on this radio station. They will see right here tomorrow. Don't forget to join us on this message, you just came from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah, senior pastor is God touching your life Turning Point is about to any point PO Box 3838, San Diego, CA 9216 visit our website@jeremiah.org/writing real copy of David's new Bible study John infinity of Christ is not of the Jeremiah Bible study series and was a gift of any amount you can also download the free mobile app is not final tablet was searching the app store for the keywords Turning Point ministries taxes have programs and results is just visit Jeremiah.org/radios for the Derry Join Us Tomorrow As We Continue to Be Happy.

According to Jesus, That's Here on Thinning Point for Taking Time to Listen to on Tonight from These Increased in