This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Sermon on the Mount” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, May 4, 1975.

Our scripture reading this morning is first of all taken from Isaiah chapter 35. Isaiah chapter 35. I’m reading from the King James. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. We together? shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy in singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it the excellency of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God. Strengthen ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not, behold your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense. and he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

Then shall the lame man leap at the heart and the tongue of the dumb sing. For in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. In the habitations of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. And a highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness. The unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be for those, the wayfaring men, though fool shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor ravenous beast shall go up thereon. It shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs of everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

And then from the New Testament, Matthew 4, beginning in verse 23. And Jesus was going about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among them. And the news about him went out into all Syria, and they brought to him all those who were ill, taken with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics, and he healed them. And great multitudes followed him from Galilee and Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan. And when he saw the multitudes, he went up to the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth, and he began to teach them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Father, it is not always that we come to your Word seeking what your will is, or the determination that no matter what it is, you will do it. But Father, the beauty of your Word is that it comes to us in the light of day, and it is promised to us in which Saul and Sinai are captivated. Tears even now come to our eyes in expectation. We’ve got to understand, Lord, that it is not our position to be those who pity ourselves, but it is our position, Father, that we are infertile beings, and we are afflictions, that we receive the blessings of God. So, Father, we receive that blessing today that is meant for us in His Word. Coming, laying aside all those hindrances that bar our way to the Word, There are certainly degrees of light that penetrate us in our walks in this life.

And possibly one of those rays of light struck you the first time you read this passage of scripture from the New Testament. You were in a predicament, you were in a situation, you were depressed, possibly you were looking for some answers, you were longing for something, and you turned to your Bible. And providentially you came to this passage which was so constraining that you weren’t able to stop reading until you had completely finished three chapters, possibly chapters five through seven. One verse just pulled you on to the next and whet your appetite a little bit more. You weren’t used to reading so much of the scriptures at one time, but by the time you were done, you had not even realized that so much time had gone by.

And your reaction was exactly that of those who heard the sermon when it was first preached. This is the sermon on the mountain. And the sermon was preached to people who responded And they responded in the way that is recorded at the end of the sermon, the last part of Matthew 7. When Jesus was done, they were all amazed, and they marveled, and they were overwhelmed, because this one Jesus spoke as having authority, and not as one of the scribes.

This was a bit of a light that came to you, but it wasn’t light that gave you a full understanding of everything that was in the sermon, because you certainly didn’t have that. There were certainly degrees of darkness, and there were many things in the sermon that you didn’t understand. You couldn’t comprehend. But its attractiveness was overwhelming. It almost constrained you. and years have gone by, possibly since that day. Though you might not have returned to read the whole sermon in one sitting, you certainly have remembered some of the passages that struck you that day, and then so much do.

Preaching on the Sermon on the Mount is a very difficult thing. For even though we can appreciate the authority of Jesus Christ, there is a measure in which we do not have that authority. And I think that authority pertains not only to the attitude with which Jesus Christ presented this message, but also the clarity in his own mind that he had about the ideas that he was presenting. Jesus understood exactly what he was saying, even though I might not. I think this degree of might in the understanding of the Sermon on the Mount was something that was quite evident.

When I boldly tried to handle the Beatitudes in a prayer meeting last winter, it was one of the most confusing. One of the most painful, one of the most upsetting experiences that I have had in my ministry, trying to get at the heart of what Jesus was saying in the Beatitudes. And if I was confused, you can imagine how the people felt that were there. Many of them stuck with it, they held out to the end, they persevered themselves, and Though there was only a measure, a degree of blessing, and I have to admit it was minimal, possibly we do have a leg up on understanding what’s going on when Jesus speaks the way he does in the Beatitudes.

Talk about the night, and then you have to talk about the dawn’s early light. And I guess it’s like the sunrise, you know, it doesn’t happen all at once. It comes in degrees. And the light shines more and more. And I hope that as we grow and mature in our own thinking, that we can say, in the later days of our own lives, that we understand more now than what we did before. I say this because I feel that this is exactly the pattern of what Jesus Christ is painting for us.

There is no other image in the Bible that is more important than the ill image of a journeyman. That journey has more life at its end than it does at its beginning. And you ought to be able to perceive that in your journey. I mean, you should know more today than you did when you first believed. And if you don’t, something’s wrong. You’re not going anywhere.

The pattern of what Jesus is saying here is laid in himself. What he is actually talking about here is pilgrims on a journey. And he has become a pilgrim for us. He has taken upon himself flesh and blood, identified himself with his people who were on a journey to the heavenly city. And the foreign spirit is pertaining to them. Now I might digress for a moment and try to fill in some spaces.

There are some arguments about the interpretation of the Beatitudes. There are some very hot arguments about the interpretation of the first Beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And it’s certainly possible, and I cannot deny it, to get into all kinds of fascinating economic discussions about the character and the nature of the poor. But I think, first of all, we have to set the stage and gain an appreciation for what Jesus Christ is speaking about here. For as popular as the interpretation is, that is, interpreting the poor in spirit along economic lines, so it also is popular to completely interpret the poor in spirit along spiritual lines, exclusively. The interpretation usually goes like this among conservative commentators on the Scriptures.

They see that what Jesus is talking about here is a pre-conversion situation or condition. You are pouring Spirit before you are converted, but after you are converted, you leave this poverty behind and go on to something else. You’re no longer poor. You are poor no longer.

They usually interpret it along the lines of a man coming to the end of his rope. A man recognizing and realizing that he is spiritually bankrupt. He has no resources with which he can save himself. He is now put in the position of having to turn to God in repentance and in faith. The poor in spirit are those who, prior to their conversion, realize that they are spiritually bankrupt. They have no resources left. and now they must repent of their sins in deep humility, turn from them in faith to Jesus Christ, receive him and rest upon him alone as he is offered in the gospel.”

Now, everything I’ve said about our condition prior to conversion is true. That is exactly what happens to us. We recognize that we have reached the end of our road, that we are going down the wrong road. We are headed in the wrong direction. And not only are we headed in the wrong direction, we have no resources left. We are bankrupt. And therefore, the only way to reclaim the situation is to turn from our sin, that is, the direction in which we are headed. towards God, making Him the new destination, and receiving Christ alone by faith as the way to the destination that we desire.

Now that’s true, that is certainly true, but that’s not what Jesus is talking about here. He is not talking about your condition prior to conversion. He is not encouraging those to whom he spoke to repent and believe. He’s speaking to these people as if they already believed and as if they had already repented. He’s talking not about the beginning of the trip, he’s talking about you in the midst of the trip.

You’re on your way now, and what characterizes you on your way? What characterizes you on your way is that you are poor in spirit. Being poor in spirit is not something that you experience once in your life and then you can forget about it and get on to the riches, to the reward. No. Poverty of spirit is a way of life.

For all the wayfaring men that we read about in Isaiah 35, who are on a journey to the heavenly garden, to heaven’s path, their destination is the sun, and the only way to walk that road is through a full experience. It’s important that you hear this, because so often we are told that all the unfortunate things, all the distasteful things of Christianity are over with our conversion. That we can leave those things behind, we can forget about them. What does Jesus tell us in Matthew 24? I believe it’s verse 28, if I’m not mistaken. No, it’s verse 13. He tells us that he who endures to the end shall be saved. He who endures to the end, only he shall be saved. And what is the character of those who endure to the end? Poverty and stupidity.

How do I know this? What makes me the expert? All right, let’s look at the pattern. The pattern is already laid in Jesus Christ, for, in effect, Jesus Christ, in his baptism, is experiencing something that is similar to our conversion. As baptism is that which occurs at the beginning of our faith, So it is that which begins Christ’s ministry. For Jesus Christ, who has identified himself with his people in baptism, in effect experiencing a conversion himself—I don’t mean that literally, only figuratively—is now working out that conversion by walking in the spirit with which he has been baptized. He comes up out of the water, he receives the Spirit, that’s what happens to us in conversion, and now he proceeds to walk in the Spirit. He is driven out into the wilderness by the Spirit himself, we are told, in verse 1 of chapter 4.

The pattern is laid in Christ. You begin, but you don’t stay there. You see, you go somewhere. You don’t run in place, you do something. Then we go on. Read quickly, skim those verses at the end of chapter 4, 18 through 25. There’s a word that repeatedly occurs there. Can you pick out that word? It’s a verb. It’s a verb. What is that word? It’s the word, or the verb, follow.

See, Jesus has come to the disciples. He’s come to Peter and Andrew beside the Sea of Galilee. He calls him. That’s conversion. And now he encourages them to follow him, you see. Christ, who has been baptized in the Spirit, walks in the Spirit. Now he calls Peter and Andrew in the Spirit and commands them to follow him in the Spirit. That word is repeated four times.

In verse 20 it says, they immediately left their nets and followed him. After, after, in verse 19, he had commanded them to follow him. Then we have the scene repeated, but this time with John and James. We see in verse 22 that immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.

The journey has begun, conversion is behind, they have already believed. And what happens with the multitudes? The same pattern occurs. Jesus is calling them. He is preaching, proclaiming, heralding the gospel of the kingdom in verse 23. And the effects of that kingdom are manifest. But then we see in verse 25, the great multitude follow him. The pattern is the same.

Those who have been called, those who have encountered Christ, those who have pleaded and repented of their sins, must now follow. And it is these, now, that Jesus sits down and teaches, on top of the mountain. Those who have followed, he teaches. And there is a special sense in which his teaching is only for those who follow, and he’s going to explain to you what you’re doing. And truly, what kind of people you are not, who are on the road. You are poor, poor in spirit.

All right, that’s how I know that what I am saying is right. I also know because of the structure of the Beatitudes themselves. I know it because each one of these Beatitudes are describing a continuing experience, not a once-for-all thing that you have at the beginning of your experience with Christ and then you can forget about. It’s something that characterizes you from the initiation of your faith to the time in which you are received in the resurrection into your destination. Notice what it says.

Not only are these the poor in spirit who are on this road, but they are those who mourn. They are the humble or the gentle. Is gentleness a once-for-all thing? They are those who hunger and thirst. Is that a once-for-all thing? No, it’s something that characterizes our journey.

You see, we are always hungering and thirsting until we arrive. We are always humble until we arrive. We are always mourning until we arrive. We are always poor in spirit until we arrive. And we are always merciful in verse 7. And we are always to be pure in heart. And we are always to be peacemakers. And we are always persecuted. The light’s gone on in the room, and we’re content to sit in the corner, with our face to the wall. We’ve got to turn around, stand up, face the light, and walk.

Also you see this pattern that Jesus is painting here for us. It’s a pattern that’s already been demonstrated in the Old Testament. For in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms and in the Prophets, you have these words that come to the poor, such words as we read this morning in Isaiah 35, that are repeated again and again, promises that are given especially to the poor. For in Isaiah 61, we are told that the poor will have the good news that is the gospel preached to them. In the Psalms 72 and 137, We are again told of the blessings of God that are meant for those, meant for those who are first of all his people, but now because they are his people, have experienced this poverty, this affliction, this oppression. But you see, they are already the people of God, and they are already on the journey, and it is in the journey that they experience this poverty of spirit. which always characterizes them on their trip. If you want to know whether you are on the road or not, you should examine yourself to see whether you are a foreign spirit. Who are the foreign spirits?

There’s no way that we can get around it. The literal poor stand behind this image of Christ. Those who are actually destitute and economically deprived. And this provides a great and powerful pattern for Christ’s ministry himself. For Jesus Christ is one who has experienced poverty. He has nowhere to lay his head. In contrast, even with the foxes and the birds, who have nests and dens. Jesus Christ is poor. He is literally poor.

Jesus has a message about poverty. He says for us that we are not to lay up for ourselves treasures on earth, and we cannot serve God and money. The literal poor are in mind. He also has an encounter with a rich young ruler, where he tells this young man that what is necessary for him to enter into eternal life, to reach the destination, is for him to sell all that he has given to the poor and beg for and follow Jesus.

The disciples are examples of that poverty. For here the disciples who have been called at the end of Matthew 4 have left all, they left their boats, their occupations, they left their father, in order to follow Christ. Nothing is as important as Jesus Christ and his call. Peter confesses this fact in Matthew 19, verse 27. For he speaks to Jesus and says, we have left all for your sake, to follow you. We are the literal poor of the earth. In the Old Testament, the same pattern is discernible. It is the literal poor who are in line.

Israel was not a rich nation. Israel was the poorest nation, the most obscure, the hated nation, the nation that all the rest of the nations used to trample over on their way to war. They used to steal all their grain, harvest all their crops, take them with them to feed their armies and their horses. They were the afflicted, they were the poor, and they were doubly poor as the economic distinctions began to rise within the nation of Israel itself. And you saw the remnant losing out, having nothing, and the rulers getting more and more and taking more for themselves, building more barns, building palaces, building houses, taking their ease. But the poor were forgotten.

And the prophets always come back upon the rich and say to them, look, it is the poor that the Lord loves. Special kind of poor. The poor who have put their trust and confidence in God. The poor who are not remorseful, who are not bitter, who are not upset at the fact that they are poor. Who aren’t on a crusade themselves. but who are waiting for their reward in heaven. The literal poor are behind the image that Christ uses. We cannot close up our hearts against the literal poor. As a matter of fact, the poor provide us with a living parable.

A continual parable, because Christ says, the poor you have with you always. They’re always there, you can always see them. They’re a constant reminder to you of what you should be, not placing your hope in this world at all, and not laying up for yourselves treasures here. But seeing that your heart is where your treasure is, and that your heart must be set upon the treasure of heaven and the riches of God’s grace.

The literal poor stand behind what is being said here. But there’s a deeper sense to all of this, and I’m sure you’re aware of it. For these literal poor provide us a picture for the afflicted poor, who contrast the comfortable in their spirituality, the afflicted poor. who in the world’s estimation are the weak, the powerless, who have no visible means of support, the unimportant, the meaningless, who are completely deserving of our disdain, who deserve to be overlooked and to be forgotten.

That is what the true Church of Jesus Christ is. The forgotten entity of the world that is truly the salt of the earth. Do you know what it means to be the salt of the earth? It means to be the preserver of the earth. The world survives because of the Church, and the world doesn’t have to die.

But the Church can’t exalt themselves in the face of the world. They must receive their poverty and their obscurity, gladly and joyfully, as any Christian must. We’re not on an ego trip. We’re not out to show the world that we’re better than they are. We’re not out to show the world that we can do everything better than they can. That Christians automatically have success. how to win friends and influence people, that is not what Christianity is and that is not what Christ is all about. He is not a shortcut to a better income.

He does not spell instant success for you in any way, for your life is characterized by poverty. by what the world considers to be meaningless and unimportant, weak, powerless, with no visible means of support. But we’ve got an invisible means of support, what the world can’t see.

In the eyes of God, here is God’s estimation of the poor. We are the exhausted, we are the feeble, we are those who have a palpitating heart, who continually need the correction and the encouragement of the preaching of God’s Word. That’s why Isaiah preaches. That’s why I preach. We are the poor, who are near point of exhaustion because our spirits are about to give out. Our spirits are weak. And that’s why we come to hear the preaching of the Word, in order that we might be encouraged on our journey, and that we might not sin.

That’s why Isaiah preached, that’s why he spoke in Isaiah 35 the way he did. Strengthen ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong and fear not, behold your God is coming.” That’s what preaching is. How will you be able to get to the point of not seeing God’s face in your walking? Not to change, not to give up. It’s repeatedly reported that that’s my state. I’m setting that fire again, planning to fan the flames. It’s a glowing flame. They can come to service on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, visiting service.

You are adding to claims and saying that you might not be able to and that you might not be able to fly. If you have not experienced exhaustion and you want to fly, then you are not able to do it. You are not there. And if the preaching of the Word does not stand the praise of your zeal for God and your expectation, then you are not faithful.

Because that’s what teaching is. That’s what being young is. And that’s what being 18 is. You need the encouragement. Of course, the final point here is that these poor in spirit are blessed. How ironic. The poor in spirit are the ones that are blessed, not the ones that have all the money. And when you get the money, that’s not the same as your death.

It might not have anything to do with God at all, and you know that. are blessed of God, and they can receive that blessing now, and that blessing that they receive now is a guarantee to them that they shall reach their destination. You’ve got the blessing, you’ve got the joy and the richness of poverty, you’ve got the blessing and the richness of life. The major benefits to you today are for your concern that you might be assured that you are able to reach your destination. You have the wherewithal to make it.

You’re not going to run out of money. You’re not going to run out of strength. You’re not going to die beside the road. You’re not going to be left behind. You’re going to make it. And you’re going to make it. God bless you. Our Father in Heaven, we thank you for this word and this ministry of Christ. He understood what you’re saying.

We pray your forgiveness because in the hardness of our hearts and in our own sin, we have not understood. And I have not understood. And therefore, wrestling with these passions has been a very painful thing for me. And I am asking you, Father, that for myself and for these Lord’s people, we might all attend to your words and understand more perfectly now what it means to be poor and sick, and that we might endure to the end. For Jesus’ sake, amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.