The Great Search For Hope

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.