First Baptist Church
545 South Main street
Jellico, Tennessee. 37762.
Pastor: Michael Blankenship
Sunday Morning January 14, 2001
It seems as if today more than ever before in history we are less satisfied with the lives, which we live. We have more than our parents and grandparents ever dreamed of, and yet we remain dissatisfied with all the material ambiences that we have acquired. In our endless search for fulfillment we look outward, scanning the planet, looking for peace, yearning for fulfillment, and grasping at the pleasures the world markets to us. In addition, we find disappointment, disillusionment and a sense of emptiness, and we ask, is this all? We look inward as humanbeings, we turn to self-reliance, and we put stock in our selves. We build up the I and the me. We depend on our skills and abilities. We purchase self-help books, on everything from how to become rich to how to loose weight, or better our vocabulary skills, and we are still searching. We look heavenward- We stare into the face of God, we see his love and compassion, we long to have a greater more meaningful relationship with him and today he tells us how.
I. By looking outward we see the world does not have the answers:
When we look outward for peace and comfort, when we stand upon the peaks of life and look for the stability we crave, we often find ourselves maintaining a witness that is weak because it cannot be fed. We are like a ship on the high sea, tossed about by every wind of doctrine, never certain of what we truly believe.
A. The poor insight: Are those who have a single-minded trust in Jesus.
Wherever they may go they bring peace, and mercy to all they encounter. St Francis it is said was likened to the poor in sight he lived a lavish life, had everything money could be and yet he felt something was missing. Wherever they may go they bring in their spirit, peace mercy, and grace to each one they may encounter.
B. The poor inspirit have a occasion to look outward;it is there that they see:
1. The destructive nature of humanity. In her hurried pace at breakneck speed and drive through service for everything from child birthing to marriage licenses. The poor in spirit often understand the uncertainty that life holds. An overwhelming sense of failure does not exist in the vocabulary of the poor in spirit. They quickly posit that they do not trust in themselves but they have built their aspirations upon a solid rock called Jesus. The poor in spirit look at the rest of the world and witness an overwhelming sense of failure.
2. It is here looking outward that the poor in spirit see: The proud and haughty looks of a civilization that has become enamoured with its self. The witness as the immoral and desperately twisted sinner curses and tears away at the very fabric of life it’s self. Life for those in whom a spirit of suffocating self reliance and greed and self dependence leads to a hurried race over the edge of eternity.
Christ Jesus exemplifies in Luke 5:5-8, often what those who are poor in spirit encounter on a daily basis. Pride and arrogance are two tools not of the intellectual giant but of the intellectual wimp. A man, who knows who he is, does not have to flaunt his idea of what brilliance is. Others will respect and think you are brilliant beyond you r own words simply when you give, to others with love and compassion. The Apostle Paul realized an epiphany of the same sort in PHIL 3:7-11. He had a reason to be proud when he was of the world, but when he came to know Jesus; the things of this world meant nothing to him. I once knew a man who had a nice car and he flaunted his nice car in everyone’s face. He talked down to people, and behaved rather poorly towards others whom he considered his inferiors. One day I was making a call through the worst area in Nashville, the houses were dilapidated and the windows broken out. The streets were lined with abandoned automobiles, and refuse. Who do you think I saw going to the garage and getting out their fine automobile? The same man who carried himself with pride, and arrogance. All that fellow had in the entire world was that car, and sooner or latter it would get old and fall apart. What do you think Many others had that would never fade away? Jesus, the son of Almighty God.
A lady used to sing a special when I was at Cross Roads Baptist in Greenbrier TN. It was called “The roses never fade.” It started off like this, “I am going to a city where the streets with gold are laid; Where the tree of life is blooming, and the roses never fade. The chourus then says, “here they bloom for but a season, soon their beauty is decayed; I am going to a city Where the roses never fade ” O how true the words and how they remind us that we are but the lilies of the field. We are God’s pleasure not our own.
The poor in Spirit. The mourners, The Meek: these are each attribute that comes from a majestic king, the God man.
3. An outward look makes us like children looking for a tidbit of hope:
A. Come to the “GREAT BOOK of Life” we come we look and we are shocked by how badly we have truly become. Far to often I am afraid; we do not know ourselves. Henry David Thoreau Writes in Waldons’ pond,
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach….
An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, simplicity,
simplicity, simplicity.”
B. The look outward allows a child of God to see the anti-thesis of Gods’ way
-The sheer emptiness and poverty found in pride
-The over esteeming danger of self-righteousness that manifest itself as arrogance.
Revelation 3:17 The church at Laodecia thought itself rich, and thought they did not need anything. In truth, they were bankrupt, blackened, and broken by their lust and pride for worldly honor. It is here that God can use us, at the very edge of oblivion, staring out in to the bleak nothingness of tomorrow. He comes and takes us here is this place and he fills us with the attributes of His mercy.
Allen Jones in his work Soul Making,
“When we have finally come to the end of our rope, there comes faith’s deepest opportunity, but we would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than clench the cross of the moment, and see our illusion die.
I will show you the skins I have shed
Left in the grass I have crept away
They are proof that I have lived.
Skin one: docile Child
Skin two: obedient adolescent
Skin three: scholar masked in niceness,
In addition, on it goes as the skin falls apart until;
Skin ten: nervous breakdown
Skinned alive.
II. There is not any comfort when we look inward:
A we cannot find niceness within ourselves Romans 3:10/19-20.
Jesus in confronting the Pharisees Matthew 5:5 reminds them that the true way to know everything is to realize that you know nothing, without God.
Nietche, writes “assert yourself for it is the arrogant that take over the earth.” The bulls of life who push and maw their way in and out of the herd soon find that nothing of substance remains. Webster’s Dictionary defines meekness as the deficiency of courage. Jesus speaks of meekness on a totally different venue. Jesus meant what he said in Matthew 11:28-30. Jesus is gentle and humble in heart, but he is tenacious against the things that would destroy your peace. Recently the local paper had a story on a Mountain fiest, a fiest is a small dog about eight inches tall and sixteen inches long. A black bear was coming at its owner, and the little Fiest, although meek in stature was strong in heart he fought the bear off and ran him away from the master. I think it is safe to say the bear had more brawn but the meek little Fiest had more heart. In the clinch we call life brawn rarely wins out and endure through sufferings and trials. Which would you rather have, Brawn of worldly accolades or a heart of conviction? Meekness is a life statement. Those who are greatly forgiven, forgive, greatly. Meekness causes us to extend grace to those less than perfect-like ourselves.
III. We Look Heavenward For Answers
We may as well be grasping at air when we look to ourselves and attempt to find some form of self-righteousness.
Proverbs 16:9 “ A mans heart deviates his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.”
Matt 15:18-20- we cannot find anything worth having without Jesus as the treasure of our hearts.
An elderly women brought into the emergency room one night was having mental dillusions. The attendants were taking everything she had away from her; she grasped a small coin in her hand tightly, until her knuckles turned white. She was afraid she would loose herself if she gave up that small coin. When we pray, we open ourselves before God, we are asked to open our tightly clutched fist, and give up the last coin of self-dependence. We are to come to God empty handed giving ourselves, because in reality that is all that we have to give Him.
