SIDEWAYS GRACE AND MERCY UPSIDEDOWN: THE BEATITUDES
BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO MOURN AND BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT
DR. JIM DIXON
MATTHEW 5:1-12
JANUARY 7, 2001
“He Makaria” is the name the ancient Greeks gave to the island of Cyprus. He Makaria means “the blessed place” or “the happy place. Of course, the island of Cyprus was known for its food and drink. It was known for its beautiful climate and for its wonderful culture. The Greeks believed that a person could live his or her entire life on the island of Cyprus and have a full life and be blessed and be happy. Even today, the Greeks sometimes refer to the island of Cyprus as He Makaria. They call it “the blessed isle.” They call it “the happy isle.” That is why, in 1959, Michael Christodoulou Mouskos, the Greek Orthodox priest who became the first president of Cyprus, took the title Makarios, “blessed.”
Makarios is the first word in the Sermon on the Mount. Makarios is the first word in the Sermon on the Mount because the Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes. It begins with the blessings. We could view these nine Beatitudes as a prescription for happiness, everything you need to know if you want to be happy.
The Declaration of Independence asserts the inalienable right of each citizen of the United States to pursue happiness. People pursue happiness in many ways, but if you really want happiness, come to the Sermon on the Mount and examine the meaning of the Beatitudes. This morning we take the first two Beatitudes. First of all, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
On a cold January day in 1864, a doctor was summoned to the Bowery, the impoverished section of New York City. He was called to a rundown, beat up old hotel room where a man was lying on his hotel room floor dying. This man had been drunk. This man, in his drunken stupor, had fallen into the sink, hit his head on the sink and shattered the sink. Part of the sink had actually sliced his neck open. He was lying on the floor bleeding, and so the doctor was called. The man was awake as the doctor sutured his neck, and the man just kept begging for a drink. Another resident of that beat up hotel brought some rum for this drunken man to drink.
The doctor sent this wounded drunken man to the Bellevue Hospital. He slipped into a coma, and he died four days later. They never knew his name, but they found a piece of paper in one of his pockets. It looked like he had scribbled the beginning of a poem or perhaps the beginning of a song. This raised the curiosity of some of the people at the hospital, and they began to try to find out who this man was. They were stunned to discover that this man was Stephen Collins Foster, the most beloved songwriter in America at that time. It was Stephen Foster who had written the most loved songs in America, the beloved songs such as “Oh! Susannah,” and popular songs like “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Camp Town Races,” “Suwannee River,” “Beautiful Dreamer,” “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.” We write songs popular throughout America. He was the most famous songwriter in America.
He was a man with a good heart and with a great mind. He was a brilliant man, but his life was snuffed out at age 38 because he was addicted to alcohol. His life was ruined by alcohol. There are millions of people in the world today just like Stephen Collins Foster, people with good hearts and brilliant minds, their lives ruined by alcoholism.
The Bible, of course, does not condemn drinking. But the Bible does condemn the abuse of alcohol. A person who abuses alcohol should not drink at all, but of course that’s the problem. Alcohol can be very addictive. That is why, in 1935, Alcoholics Anonymous was formed—AA. Alcoholics Anonymous has one overriding theme and principle, and that belief is if you would be healed, if you would be blessed, you must become poor in spirit. You must come and say, “I am an alcoholic. Help me.” You must come to God and say, “I AM an alcoholic. Help me!” You must come to another group of people and you must say, “I am an alcoholic. Help me.” You must become poor in spirit. You must humble yourself before God and man.
The word for “poor” in this Beatitude is a word we need to take a look at. The primary Greek word for poor is the word “penes.” The word penes literally means “to work with your hands,” and this described the day laborer, the person who was barely able to scour a living, a person who worked with his hands and was just able to make enough money each day to put a little bread on the table. It was a person who was just one day away from starvation, a person who had no extravagances. It was the lowest class of worker—penes. But that’s not the word that Jesus uses in this Beatitude. He uses a different word for poor. He uses the word “ptochos.” Ptochos refers to abject absolute poverty. A person who isn’t even able to work for a living, perhaps because they are injured or they’re ill or just unfortunate. But they are destitute and they are helpless and they are beggars. In fact, the word ptochos comes from a root word which means “to crouch” or “to cower.”
In order to fully understand why Jesus chose this word, we need to go back to the Septuagint, to the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, where we see that this word ptochos translates the Hebrew and Aramaic word “ ebyon.” The word ebyon went through an evolution. Originally the word ebyon meant “the poor, the destitute,” but then the word ebyon came to refer to the helpless. Then the word evolved so that it came to refer to the oppressed, those who, because of their helplessness and poverty, were oppressed. Then finally, the word ebyon came to refer to those people who had humbled themselves before God, cried out to God, and put their trust in God in the midst of their poverty and their helplessness. In the midst of their oppression, they had reached out to God. They put their trust in God and cried out to Him for help—the ebyon.
Again and again in the Old Testament, you see those who put their trust in God and cried out to God are called the ebyon. There is no doubt when Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount He spoke in Aramaic and He used this word ebyon. Blessed are the ebyon, those who have put their absolute trust in God—those who are helpless before God, those who have cried out to God and put their trust in Him. The word is rendered into the Greek language with this Greek word ptochos, but just to make sure that people understood the meaning, they added the Greek words “to pneumati,” “in spirit.” “The poor in spirit.” This was so that we could understand what Jesus is talking about: People who have reached the point of helplessness and have cried out to God. Blessed are they.
You’ve read Luke 15, and you’ve read the story of the Prodigal Son, sometimes called The Loving Father. This story is told by our Lord Jesus Christ in Luke 15, verses 11 through 32. You know how the Prodigal Son came to his dad and demanded his inheritance. He took his inheritance and he went off to a far country and he lived a debauched life. He lived a depraved life, and he just threw his money away in riotous living. There came a famine upon the land, and this son became impoverished. He fell into poverty, and he gave himself out to hire to a pig farmer. That was unthinkable for a Jew. He tended pigsties, and he became so impoverished he would have gladly eaten the pods that the pigs were eating. Suddenly, Jesus tells us, this young man came to his senses. He thought, “My father’s servants live better than I’m living. I will go to my father, and I will say, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be your son. Make me as one of your hired servants.’”
You see, that son became poor in spirit. He became poor in spirit. He became ebyon, ptochos. He became poor in spirit, and that was the beginning of blessing. That was the beginning of happiness because he came home poor in spirit. What did the father do? He ran out to meet him. He came home poor in spirit, and his father ran out to hug him. His father killed the fatted calf, had a party, put the finest robe on him, and gave him the family signet ring. He was a son again. He put sandals on his feet. The blessing all was preceded by poverty of spirit.
Of course, in that parable, Jesus is telling us that the son represents us and the father represents God. And if we would come to God, we must come poor in spirit. It’s the only way we come to God. The only way we become a Christian is to kneel at the base of the cross, poor in spirit, helpless, crying out for God’s salvation. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
There’s a second Beatitude we deal with this morning. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” I want to take a few moments and tell you about a woman named Jane Appleton. Jane Appleton was born on March 12, 1806. Her father was the President of Bowdoin College. Her family was highly respected in the community. Jane, as she grew up, had one desire and that desire was to have a family of her own. She wanted to find a husband and she wanted to have children. Most of all, she wanted to be a mom. She wanted to nurture her own children.
In the year 1834, Jane met a man named Frank and they fell in love and were married. Just a few years later, Jane became pregnant. She was so excited. This is what she had longed for. This is what she had waited for. In her pregnancy, she prepared the room in her house. She decorated it. She didn’t know whether she would have a boy or a girl, but she decorated this room and she prepared it. Then, after carrying this child for nine months, in the moment of birth something happened. In order to save Jane’s life, the child died. Jane was devastated. Her grief, her sorrow, was almost beyond comfort.
A few years later, she became pregnant again, and this time she gave birth to a little boy. This little boy was healthy, and Jane poured her life into him. When he was only four years old, he came down with a bacteriological infection. Of course, there was no penicillin in those days. The condition was severe, and the little boy died at the age of four. Jane was devastated again and beyond comfort again.
Then, just a few years later, she gave birth to another son named Benjamin. Jane and Frank called him Benny. The year was 1853 and the date was January 6. Benny was 11 years old at the time. Jane and Frank were on a train. They were traveling on that train from Boston, Massachusetts, to Concord, New Hampshire, and something happened. One of the railroad cars derailed, and it threw the whole train off the track. The car that Jane and Frank and Benny were in just rolled end over end.
Jane woke up in the midst of the rubble and confusion and she began to call Benny’s name. She began to call for her son. She saw that her husband Frank was already up and looking for Benny. Frank saw Benny there in the midst of the rubble. Benny was dead. The back of Benny’s head had just been cut off by the wheel of a railroad car. Frank covered up the body of his son. He didn’t want Jane to see this, but it was too late. She was already standing there, and she had seen her son. She would never be the same.
Frank tried to comfort his wife in the weeks that followed. He said to her, “You know, we can begin a new life. We’re going to move to a new city. I’m taking a new job. You’re going to be moving into a new house, a new life,” but she didn’t even want to live as she was so deep in her mourning. They moved into this new house in a new city. The city was Washington, D.C., and the new house was the most famous house in America, The White House.
Frank took his new job as the 14th President of the United States. His name was Franklin Pierce. Jane went up to her room in the White House, the First Lady. She went into her room, and she did not come out for two years. She closed the curtains. She shut out the world. Everything was brought to her in her room. Her aunt performed all the functions of the First Lady. For two years, she did not come out of her room. She wrote letters to her dead children. After two years, she finally came out of her room and attended a few social and political functions in Washington, D.C., but the press, who had called her “The Shadow in the White House,” said that she was the very picture of melancholy. The rest of her life, Jane could not be comforted. She wore black, both inside and out. She could not be comforted.
There are people in this world like that—the tragedy they’ve suffered, the mourning, the pain, the grief, is so great they just can’t find comfort. There are people like that, but it shouldn’t be like that for Christians. It shouldn’t be like that for Christians because as Christians we’ve been given the one whom Jesus calls “The Comforter.” We’ve been given The Holy Spirit. The moment we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior and we’re born into the family of God, He sends His Spirit to tabernacle within us. His Holy Spirit is The Comforter.
We’ve also been given the ecclesia as Christians. We’ve been given the assembly. We’ve been given the Church. We have brothers and sisters. We’re called to rejoice with those who rejoice, and we’re called to weep with those who weep, and we’re called to comfort each other. We’ve been given a promise as Christians. We’ve been given the promise of heaven itself, that one day we’ll be there and our loved ones in Christ will be there too. We’re told that the Lord will wipe away every tear from our eyes. “Death will be no more. Neither will there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore. The former things have passed away.” Blessed are those who mourn. They WILL be comforted.
There’s a second meaning to this second Beatitude because the word for mourn is the word “pentheo.” It doesn’t just refer to grief over the loss of a loved one. In fact, its primary use in scripture is mourning over sin, to mourn over sin. Blessed are those who mourn over sin. They will be comforted.
Now, some of you have heard of Heraclitus. Heraclitus lived in the 6th century before Christ. He was sometimes called “The Obscure.” He was a philosopher whose teachings were difficult to understand. He was, at other times, called “The Weeper.” He was sometimes called “The Weeping Prophet” or “The Weeping Philosopher.” To understand why Heraclitus wept, we need to understand the city of Ephesus where Heraclitus lived.
The city of Ephesus was the greatest city in Asia. It was in a region of the world then called Asia Minor, today called Turkey, but it was the greatest harbor in Asia. It is a major archeological ruin today, a major archeological dig. Of course, in the city of Ephesus, there was the Temple of Diana, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, built in the 6th century before Christ—the Temple of Diana, called the Temple of Artemis by the Greeks.
This temple was huge, and it was beautiful. It was far bigger than a football field. The Temple of Diana was 425 feet long and 225 feet wide. It had 60 pillars, and each pillar had been donated by a different king, each pillar donated from a different nation. Thirty-six of those 60 great pillars were inlaid with gold. This was one of the Wonders of the World, but it was a place of great evil. In Asia, the Goddess Diana or Artemis was viewed as a fertility goddess. She was portrayed as having twelve breasts, three rows of breasts, and four breasts in each row.
The Temple of Diana was just a massive brothel. It was a massive brothel with 1,500 female prostitutes and hundreds of male prostitutes. The Greeks tried to spiritualize it. I mean, they viewed their sexual behavior as worship. But if their business was not producing, they’d go to the Temple of Diana and find a prostitute, that they might be blessed by the fertility goddess and their business might be blessed. If their land was not bearing fruit, they would go to the Temple of Diana to a prostitute blessed by the fertility goddess. If a man’s wife was not giving birth and they were barren, he’d go to the Temple of Diana to be blessed through a prostitute by the fertility goddess. It was a depraved time in a depraved city. Unbelievable.
Of course, the Temple of Diana was also known for the Ephesian letters because that’s where the Ephesian letters were sold. People came from all over the world to purchase the Ephesian letters, which were charms placed around the ankles and placed around the neck with the names of different gods on them. They allegedly would give you protection and provision. It was all superstition, and the superstitions of the world were all cultivated in Ephesus in the Temple of Diana. People came from all over the world to augment their superstition.
It was also a hangout for criminals because the Temple of Diana in the city of Ephesus was like a safe city. It was like a free zone where criminals could not be prosecuted, and so criminals hung out in the region of the Temple of Diana where they could not be apprehended and prosecuted.
Heraclitus, the Weeping Philosopher, stood outside that temple and he wept. He just wept. He mourned the sin of the city. His mourning drove him to action. He would speak in the marketplace. He would speak in the city square. He would speak to people right outside the Temple of Diana, warning them of their sin. He was not a Christian. I mean, he lived more than 500 years before Christ, but he had the spirit of a just man, and he wept for the sin that surrounded him. The blessing of God in some sense was around him because the blessing of God is upon those who mourn over sin.
I promise you, if you live in this culture in this nation and you do not mourn over some of the things taking place, something is wrong with you. Blessed are those who mourn. When you look at Ezekiel, chapter 9, it is one of the clearest declarations of scripture that God wants His people to mourn over the sin of society and DO something about it. You see the pronouncement of God sending an angel into the city of Jerusalem to place a spiritual mark on each person who mourns over the sin of the city of Jerusalem. And then the judgement of God falls upon the city of Jerusalem where every person who does not mourn at the sin that surrounds them is judged by God.
And so, you look at this nation. If your heart is touched to mourning by the poverty and the oppression, then you’re going to do something about it. You might go into the inner city and be a Whiz Kid tutor or a Save Our Youth tutor if you’re mourning. If you care about this crazy world our kids are trying to grow up in, and if it causes you to mourn, you might be willing to be a Sunday school teacher to help kids who are growing up today. If you care about the fact that this nation is the largest producer of pornography in the world, maybe you’ll support the National Coalition Against Pornography. If you care about the fact that one million babies are aborted in this nation every year—if that causes you to mourn—maybe you’ll support ministries like Bethany Christian Services, which helps to place children with adoptive families and counsel young women who are pregnant. If you mourn… blessed are those who mourn. They WILL be comforted.
Of course, our mourning is not simply to be over the sin of society but over our own sin. This word pentheo, this word for mourn, is used again and again and again in the Old Testament and the New to describe those who feel grief over their own sin. Blessed are those who mourn over their own sin. They WILL be comforted.
As we close, there is, in the Imperial Gallery in the city of Vienna, Austria, a famous painting by Rubens. This painting by Rubens is considered a masterpiece and priceless. This painting shows Theodosius I, the Emperor of Rome, being denied entrance into the Milan Cathedral by Bishop Ambrose. People walk past this painting as they’re in the Imperial Gallery. They walk past this painting, and perhaps they admire the artistry of it. But few know the history of it.
Theodosius I was born in Spain in the 4th century in the year 346. His father was a famous general, and Theodosius himself became a famous soldier. He rose up through the ranks, and in 379 AD he became the Emperor of Rome. Historians do not view him favorably. He overtaxed the people. Before his death, he split the kingdom. He divided the kingdom between his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius. The Roman Empire was split from that point on forever. But Theodosius I was admired by Christians because he was a Christian. Historians sometimes call him Great—Theodosius the Great. They call him the Great because he was so committed to his Christian faith. And yet, I tell you, he was Not great. He was not great because, in his Christian zeal, he tried to drive non-Christians out of the Roman Empire. In his Christian zeal, he tried to drive pagans out of the Roman Empire.
He had just returned from Thessaloniki where he had tried to drive unbelievers out of the city. He had just returned to the Milan Cathedral from that activity, seeking to go into the church and experience communion, and he was denied access by Bishop Ambrose, who said, “You cannot enter the House of God unless you repent, unless you get down on your knees and weep for your sin.” Of course, Christ has not called us to persecute the unbelieving but to love them. Historians tell us that Theodosius I did repent with tears, and he knelt before the altar of God.
We all, if we would enter the presence of God, must repent. The Roman Empire is no more. There’s nobody in this room who’s going to be an emperor or a king. Maybe someone will be a president. It doesn’t matter. Before the cross, we’re all equal, and we all need to mourn. We all need to mourn our sin if we would come into the presence of God and find His blessing.
Archeologists have found, in ancient digs, little tear bottles called “lacrymatories.” The Romans would take their tears and put them in these little lacrymatories. They would put their tears of joy in them. They’d put their tears of sorrow in them. They would give these lacrymatories, these tear bottles, as a gift to the dead and place it, with their tears in the bottle, in the grave. They would also give these lacrymatories to their grieving loved ones, such as a friend who had lost his or her spouse. They would give them a tear bottle to show that they were mourning too, to show that they were grieving too. It was kind of a sympathy card.
They would sometimes, we’re told, keep these lacrymatories in their homes, almost proud of their tears. We might think, “Well, you know, they were overly preoccupied with tears,” and maybe they were, but God does look at our tears. I mean, what causes you to cry? What causes you to weep? I mean, do you only cry at movies? What are the real things in life that cause you to mourn? Do you mourn at the evil and the oppression and the poverty that surrounds you? Do you mourn at your own sin? Blessed are those who mourn. They will be comforted. Let’s close with a word of prayer.