September 22nd, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

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Today we are continuing on with our series on the Sermon on the Mount – if you missed them, you might want to go back and catch up with Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, and blessed are the meek

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Our next “beatitude” is from Matthew 5:6,

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

What do we typically hunger and thirst for?

When I was pregnant, I didn’t have terribly strong cravings – none of those middle of the night ice cream runs.  One thing that I definitely wanted both pregnancies, though, was meat! NP still laughs about one occasion when we were driving to my parents’ house and had gone through the Wendy’s drive-thru for frostys. When he pulled up to order, I suddenly decided that I wanted a bacon cheeseburger instead of a frosty. “For dessert?” he asked incredulously (I have quite a sweet tooth). A bacon cheeseburger was absolutely what I wanted for dessert!

I was thinking about people who were known for their cravings in the Bible – two popped into my mind, neither of whom I would want to be equated with.

Esau’s physical cravings led him to trade his birthright for a bowl of stew. Hebrews 12:16 warns,

“See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son.”

Why is sexual immorality tied to Esau selling his inheritance? Sexual immorality, like Esau’s poor decision, is a sin we fall into when we follow our physical cravings.

The other individual who came to my mind was Samson. Samson, to me, is the ultimate example of almost limitless potential thrown away because he could not control his flesh. He craved what had been prohibited. He did what he wanted and it destroyed him, and a lot of people with him.

Our physical cravings will always mislead us. Our flesh screams to us, “this is the only thing that will satisfy!” And yet, it’s a lie. A lie we buy into over and over and over again. It fails to satisfy us, so we go back for more and more and more – more sexual promiscuity, more food, more thrills.

I’ve been personally convicted lately about the lack of discipline in my eating habits. As I discussed in the post Soul Hunger, I think part of the reason that fasting is so prominent in the Bible and in the lives of people who are wholly devoted to God is that it pulls us away from being at the whims of our physical cravings.

When I’m stressed, discouraged, lonely, bored, frustrated, etc – I have a tendency to eat. As I stated in Soul Hunger:

How often do I come to a place of realizing that I am empty and incapable, and instead of realizing that the hunger in my soul is for God, I stuff a cracker in my mouth? When I am emptied of myself, do I long for His the comfort of His presence, or for an oreo as my comfort food?

Obviously physically our bodies need food and water to survive. But are we eating to satisfy legitimate physical hunger, or are we masking the symptoms of spiritual longings for His presence? Only God can satisfy our soul “as with the richest of foods.”

Notice what Jesus says: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

The Psalms are full of references to spiritual cravings for and true satisfaction in God.

•As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness;
I will be satisfied with Your likeness when I awake. (Psalm 17:15)

•As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God? (Psalm 42:1-2)

•God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly;
My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You,
In a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary,
To see Your power and Your glory.
Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips will praise You.
So I will bless You as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness,
And my mouth offers praises with joyful lips. (Psalm 63:1-5)

When we long to behold God’s face in righteousness – when we long to see Him for all that He is and submit our lives to Him in obedience – that is the source of true satisfaction. The satisfaction of soul that all of us long for.

What are you craving? What do you yearn for above all else? There’s only one thing that will satisfy you.

If you find yourself wrestling with food addiction, sexual purity issues, or substance abuse, I have heard excellent things about the free online Bible studies at SettingCaptivesFree.com.

September 3rd, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

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Continuing our series on the Sermon on the Mount (you can go back and read blessed are the poor in spirit and blessed are those who mourn), today we’re taking a look at Matthew 5:5-

Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.

I won’t spend too much time on this – if you missed it I’d encourage you to go back and read Meekness, Anger’s Bridle from back in June.

I did find the definition of meekness in the lexical aids to my study Bible to be so interesting.

“Meekness, not in a man’s outward behavior only nor in his relations to his fellowman or his mere natural disposition, rather it is an inwrought grace of the soul and the expressions of it are first and chiefly toward God. That attitude of spirit in which we accept God’s dealings with us as good and do not dispute or resist. Prautes, according to Aristotle, is the middle course in being angry, standing between two extremes- getting angry without reason, and not getting angry at all. Therefore, prautes is getting angry at the right time, in the right measure, and for the right reason. Prautes is not readily expressed in English since the term “meekness” suggests weakness, but prautes is a condition of mind and heart which demonstrates gentleness not in weakness but power. It is a virtue born in strength of character.”

As I am humble and broken before God, as I both intellectually assent to the fact of my sin and am broken over it, meekness is a natural follow-up. I am meek before God when I accept what He has brought or allowed into my life without rebelling against Him, trusting Him to be a good and true God whose ways are higher than my own. I am meek before my fellowman as I appropriately bridle my anger.

There is a right time, reason, and expression of anger. Meekness is not covering over another’s sin and patting them on the head to assure them of their innate goodness. It is not being a doormat. But dealing with another in meekness means that 1. I am genuinely humble – I recognize who I really am as a redeemed but sinful human being, 2. I take my own sin very seriously, and 3. I take sin seriously in others because I recognize the deep affront it is to my holy God.

There are some things that should make us angry. Very angry. But typically, when we express anger it gets all mixed in with pride and self-righteousness and becomes very ugly, attacking, and cruel.

Just to make this more applicable…

I definitely understand and agree with many of the deep concerns that so many of my fellow conservative Christian Americans have expressed over the Obama administration. I do not like the direction our country is taking. I have strong opinions about the healthcare plan, etc. [State-funded abortion makes me very angry. Appropriately so.]

But friends, how much of our anger is being expressed correctly, in the right way, in the right measure, over the right things? How often do our deep convictions and opinions come across as arrogant attacks rather than as a longing for righteousness that flows from recognizing the stench of our own sin? (And please, please remember that we are commanded to respect and submit to our authorities, whether we agree with them or not!!)

Guess what – we don’t have to go to war against people. Do we need to stand for Truth? Of course. Do we need to do what we can to influence our culture toward God-honoring principles? Absolutely. But, rest assured – we know the end of the story, and the Sovereign God of the universe has already made magnificent promises to us:

A little while, and the wicked will be no more;
though you look for them, they will not be found.
But the meek will inherit the land
and enjoy great peace.
Psalm 37:10-11

September 1st, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

Think back to the last time of real mourning in your life. Whatever the circumstances – a loss of a loved one, the loss of a dream – recall to mind the anguish of soul that you experienced.

At times of loss in my life, the Christian sympathy cards that were sent often quoted Matthew 5:4 – Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Now, the Bible certainly does offer comfort for those who know God in times of grief… but what is this verse talking about?

It would be hard to word this better than the explanation in the Jamieson, Fausset, Brown commentary:

This “mourning” must not be taken loosely for that feeling which is wrung from men under pressure of the ills of life, nor yet strictly for sorrow on account of committed sins. Evidently it is that entire feeling which the sense of our spiritual poverty begets; and so the second beatitude is but the complement of the first. The one is the intellectual, the other the emotional aspect of the same thing. It is poverty of spirit that says, “I am undone”; and it is the mourning which this causes that makes it break forth in the form of a lamentation–“Woe is me! for I am undone.” Hence this class are termed “mourners in Zion,” or, as we might express it, religious mourners, in sharp contrast with all other sorts (Isaiah 61:1-3, 66:2). Religion, according to the Bible, is neither a set of intellectual convictions nor a bundle of emotional feelings, but a compound of both, the former giving birth to the latter. Thus closely do the first two beatitudes cohere. The mourners shall be “comforted.” Even now they get beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Sowing in tears, they reap even here in joy. Still, all present comfort, even the best, is partial, interrupted, short-lived. But the days of our mourning shall soon be ended, and then God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. Then, in the fullest sense, shall the mourners be “comforted.”

I love how they point out the way that these first two beatitudes tie together – when we are poor in spirit, we recognize the utter helplessness and hopelessness of our spiritual state as sinners in rebellion against a holy God. The mourning in our spirit is a result of truly acknowledging this fact, letting it sink in.

Isn’t it interesting how our culture tends to glorify being in rebellion? Either we pretend that we’re good people who don’t sin (despite evidence to the contrary), or we embrace our role as sinners and proudly make it our persona!

Those who are truly blessed, those who are truly His, will not only recognize the fact of their sin, they will be broken over it. They will mourn before Him and their hearts will cry out as Isaiah did, “Woe is me! I am ruined! I am a man of unclean lips!”

My question today is: how seriously do we take our sin? What do we do when God points out our sin to us through His Word, through a sermon, through a fellow believer? Do we brush it off as insignificant? Do we justify it and explain it away? Do we get defensive and angry? Do we embrace it with pride? Or do our hearts break, do we mourn, over the sin God points out to us in our lives?

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

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August 26th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

Image by Fergal OP via Flickr

As I mentioned before, I’ve been studying the Sermon on the Mount beginning in Matthew chapter 5. Today I thought we’d start looking at this amazing message from Jesus together.

I don’t know how familiar you may be with the beattitudes, or if you’ve even given them a second thought. In one of my college classes focused on how to teach the Bible, we were broken into groups and assigned age levels that we were to prepare Bible lessons for based on the Beattitudes. Once we were given the assignment it was amazing to me how everyone jumped right to work thinking about methods without actually studying the passage! Somehow we all assume that we know them because they are familiar to us. That assignment was a great motivator for me to study this opening section of the Sermon on the Mount, and I was amazed by how little I really had understood this section of Scripture. It has been refreshing and challenging to go back and spend time in these verses again over the past few weeks.

So, let’s start at the very beginning – a very good place to start! ;)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

The meaning of the word “poor” here is fascinating. It is in contrast with another Greek word which means “poor but able to help oneself.” This word means “poor and helpless; one who, in his abjectness, needs lifting. So poor he can sustain himself only through begging – one who has nothing at all.”

Right off the bat, Jesus’ words strike at the heart of what keeps countless numbers of people from accepting His redemptive work on their behalf – pride. No one likes to consider themselves as utterly helpless, unable to pull themselves up, so completely in need that our only hope is the mercy of another. And yet, it is only when one recognizes that this truly is the state of his or her soul that we can be blessed and enter the kingdom of heaven.

I remember the terrifying feeling of being wheeled out of the hospital with newborn AG in my arms, heading home for the first time. We buckled her into the car, and I remember looking at my husband and saying, “That’s it? We’re just taking her? Do they know that we’re leaving with this baby that we don’t know what to do with??!” :) We were half joking, but it was a scary thought that this completely helpless little baby was now our sole responsibility!

In order to be truly blessed, to be redeemed from our bondage of sin and filled with the satisfying presence of Jesus Christ, we have to recognize that we are as helpless as a newborn baby. Without the direct, merciful intervention of God, all of our efforts to be good and righteous and holy are pathetic failures. We must recognize that we are poor in spirit – utterly helpless and hopeless without Him.

This goes completely against our prideful and rebellious sin natures! There is no room for a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” mentality here. How frequently people object to others implying that they themselves are sinners – “I’m a good person! I’ve never killed anyone! I believe in God! I even volunteer in my community, and I donated money to help the victims of Katrina!”

Notice Paul’s response to this mentality in Philippians 3:4-9. [He had been the ultimate "good religious guy!"]

If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

No matter how well we follow the rules or do good things, we cannot gain righteousness on our own. We can never be good enough on our own to stand before a completely holy God. Through the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus brings our self-righteous thoughts into clear view – you haven’t murdered anyone, but if you’ve been angry with someone, if you’ve called them a fool, you are guilty enough to face the fire of Hell! (see Matthew 5:21-22)

Our only hope is the mercy of God. When we realize the true nature of our sin, when we are broken and humble before Him, asking for Him to give us a righteousness that comes not from ourselves but that “comes from God and is by faith,” when we recognize that we are completely helpless and unable to lift ourselves out of the pit – then we will gain the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.