"The Gateway to the Kingdom"

I want to invite you to experience what my Life Group has been experiencing. 2 months ago, we decided that we would study the Sermon on the Mount in a 5-week series. What a great dense-packed set of Jesus' teachings from His own physical mouth. Soon after starting, I noticed that the daily "My Utmost For His Highest" devotionals by Oswald Chambers were also starting to examine the Sermon on the Mount. Last Sunday, our preacher used a few verses in the sermon that we had just read in our group days before. And last night we concluded our study on the Sermon on the Mount. Low and behold, the "My Utmost" from last night:

THE GATEWAY TO THE KINGDOM
"Blessed are the poor in spirit." Matthew 5:3

Beware of placing Our Lord as a Teacher first. If Jesus Christ is a Teacher only, then all He can do is to tantalize me by erecting a standard I can not attain. What is the use of presenting me with an ideal I cannot possibly come near? I am happier without knowing it. What is the good of telling me to be what I never can be - to be pure in heart, to do more than my duty, to be perfectly devoted to God? I must know Jesus Christ as Saviour before His teaching has any meaning for me other than that of an ideal which leads to despair. But when I am born again of the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come to teach only: He came to make me what He teaches I should be. The Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into any man the disposition that ruled His own life, and all the standards God gives are based on that disposition.

The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces despair in the natural man - the very thing Jesus means it to do. As long as we have a self-righteous, conceited notion that we can carry out Our Lord's teaching, God will allow us to go on until we break our ignorance over some obstacle, then we are willing to come to Him as paupers and receive from Him. "Blessed are the paupers in spirit," that is the first principle in the Kingdom of God. The bedrock in Jesus Christ's kingdom is poverty, not possession; not decisions for Jesus Christ, but a sense of absolute futility - I cannot begin to do it. Then Jesus says - Blessed are you. That is the entrance, and it does take us a long while to believe we are poor! The knowledge of our own poverty brings us to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works.

You gotta love God's little "coincidences." And the "My Utmost" above is a great way to conclude such a study. Praise God.