The Kingdom of Heaven

The Kingdom of Heaven March 8, 2012

³ "Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:3

Imagine with me, if you will, a group of us sitting around in a semi-circle. Maybe resting our backs on some rocks or maybe on a cloth bag full of sheep’s wool that we have just bought in Jerusalem from a merchant. (that was a bean bag chair reference for all my youth pastors!) So imagine sitting around in a semi circle taking in all of the aromas of the spring air. The sun beams down upon you and warms you to the core of your being. You feel the wind sweep across your face and in that very moment, you hear the voice of Christ, the One and Only. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

I began my study on this verse by going to the first word that caught my eye. “Poor,” strikes up all kinds of thoughts when I use the word “poor.” So I looked to the Greek dictionary for help on what exactly Jesus meant by “poor.” Ptõchos in Greek means, “To crouch or cower like a beggar,” and then it offers this amazing stark contrast in wordage. “The Greek word “penès” may be poor but he earns his bread by daily labor. The ptõchos is so poor that he can only obtain his living by begging. The penès has nothing superfluous, while the ptõchos has nothing at all.” So with that explanation we can now understand how “poor” Jesus wanted us to be.

Perhaps few people today know why the face of Lincoln is engraved on the American penny rather than on one of the larger coins. The reason for this goes back to the boyhood days of David Brenner, who had known nothing of liberty and much of hunger and want in Russia. After coming to America, where he found both liberty and opportunity awaiting him, Brenner became a famous sculptor, and was the man responsible for placing the face of the man who had said, "The Lord must love the common people, He has made so many of them," on the most lowly coin of the United States. Brenner's idea was that there would be more pennies minted than any other one coin, and consequently there would be more of them in the pockets of the common people.

The next word I come to is “spirit.” Lower case ‘s’ so Christ is obviously speaking of our own personal spirit. Interestingly enough, only because it gave me chills sitting here reading it, the Greek word for ‘spirit’ is pneuma. Now, the thing that gave me chills is that pneuma means “to breathe, as of the mouth and nostrils.” One of my favorite verses in the gospel of John comes after the disciples find the empty tomb. Jesus appears to His disciples in chapter 20, and He offers them peace and sends them away, the next sentence says, “And with that He breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.” I love to think of how close you would have to be to feel Christ breathe on you. Now obviously, this is not a literal text, He was not getting the sides of their faces all wet and sweaty by breathing on them, however I do think that He wants us to understand how close we need to be to Him. My wife is reading this as I am writing and she says “well how do you know Jesus didn’t physically breathe on them?” So I take her back to the scriptures, to God’s word. It’s His words that He breathed out into a man, and that man took them and wrote them down. He breathed into that man. It is our duty and our passion and it should be our desire that we feel Christ breathe on us DAILY! There is only one way to Heaven and that is by receiving Christ as Lord, now we can argue that all day, but until you have had Jesus, the King of the world, breathe on you… you’re not going to heaven. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Blessed are those indeed who take in the air of Christ. Blessed are those indeed who inhale all that the Holy Spirit has to offer. Blessed are those indeed who walk daily with the Lord, side by side, holding hands. Strolling down the sandy walkway towards life…