The Sermon On The Mount (Part 1)

• If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...

• You are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

• If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation - You are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

• If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...

• You are more blessed than three billion people in the world..

• If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead & a place to sleep - You are richer than 75% of this world.

• If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace ...

• You are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.

• If your parents are still alive and still married ...

• You are very rare.

• If you can read a Bible you are more blessed than the 80% of the world’s people.

• & you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.

In fact to be like most people in the world you would need to:

• Take out all the furniture in your home except for one table and a couple of chairs.

• Use only blanket and pads for beds.

• Take away all of your clothing except for your oldest dress or suit, shirt or blouse.

• Leave only one pair of shoes.

• Empty the pantry and the refrigerator except for a small bag of flour,

• Some sugar and salt, a few potatoes, some onions, and a dish of dried beans.

• Dismantle the bathroom, shut off the running water,

• And remove all the electrical wiring in your house.

• In fact take away the house itself and move the family into the tool shed.

• Or place your "house” in a shantytown.

• Cancel all subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and book clubs.

• This is no great loss because now none of you can read anyway.

• Leave only one radio for the whole shantytown.

• Throw away your bankbooks, stock certificates, pension plans, and insurance policies.

• Move the nearest hospital or clinic ten miles away;

• And put a midwife in charge instead of a doctor.

• Give the head of the family a few acres to cultivate on which he can raise some crops,

• Of which one third will go to the landlord and one tenth to the money lenders.

• And finally:

• Lop off twenty-five or more years in life expectancy.

• TRANSITION: I am just reminding you with those figures;

• That you are rich in this country! We need to appreciate that!

• But that is not the type of poverty Jesus is talking about.

• Note those two little words ‘in spirit’.

• Jesus is not talking about those people who are materially poor.

• Those with little or no earthly resources.

• With this phrase, "poor in spirit,"

• Jesus was speaking of our spiritual condition of poverty before God.

• You and I are spiritually bankrupt before God;