Title: The Poor in Spirit and the Inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven                                                                                    
Text: Matthew 5:1-3

Key Truth:  Jesus invites us to rest content in the poverty of the spirit gifted to us in His finished work and gratefully receive the Kingdom of Heaven as His assured promise to us in both the Now and the Not Yet.

Introduction: 
Q: What’s most impressive about you? What’s least impressive?

Matthew 5:1-3: How to be Poor in Spirit: Renounce the Kingdoms of This World and Receive the Kingdom of Heaven in Christ:

Working Definition of Poor in Spirit: The recognition that we have nothing to bring to God to earn or deserve His love, yet He chooses to love us by His grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
“‘Poor in Spirit’ then signifies those who are brought to the sense of their sins, and seeing no goodness in themselves, despair in themselves and sue wholly to the mercy of God in Christ….I rather think poverty of spirit is the cause of humility, for when man sees his want of Christ, and how he lives on the alms of free grace, this makes him humble. He that is sensible of his own vacuity and indigence, hangs his head in humility with the violet. Humility is the sweet spice that grows from poverty of spirit.”
Thomas Watson, The Beatitudes: An Exposition of Matthew 5:1-12

Application Questions:

1. How have you grown in being poor in spirit to look more like Jesus over the time that you’ve been a Christian? What has helped you to grow in this?
2. How have you experienced the gift of the Kingdom of Heaven in the Now? What do you most look forward to about it in the Not Yet?

Application:
Matthew 5:1-3 teaches us that Jesus invites us to rest content in the poverty of the spirit gifted to us in His finished work and gratefully receive the Kingdom of Heaven as His assured promise to us in both the Now and the Not Yet.

Communion

Benediction: Matthew 7:24-25