Be-Attitudes #2 - “Who’s on First?”
Matthew 5:3; Luke 18:9-14
By James Galbraith
First Baptist Church, Port Alberni.
January 14, 2007
Introduction
The comedy routine “who’s on First” is a 20th century classic. In it, Bud Abbot and Lou Costello are get into a lively discussion about the baseball team they are about to watch.
The routine starts like this:
LOU: I love baseball. When we get to St. Louis, will you tell me the guys’ names on the team so when I go to see them in that St. Louis ball park I’ll be able to know those fellows?
BUD: All right. But you know, strange as it may seems, they give ball players nowadays very peculiar names, nick names, like "Dizzy Dean". Now on the St. Louis team we have Who’s on first, What’s on second, and I Don’t Know on third. LOU: That’s what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellows on the St. Louis team.
BUD: I’m telling you. Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Don’t Know is on third
LOU: You know the fellows’ names?
BUD: Yes.
LOU: Well, then who’s playin’ first.
BUD: Yes.
LOU: I mean the fellow’s name on first base.
BUD: Who.
LOU: The fellow playin’ first base for St. Louis.
BUD: Who.
LOU: The guy on first base.
BUD: Who is on first.
LOU: Well, what are you askin’ me for?
BUD: I’m not asking you -- I’m telling you. WHO IS ON FIRST.
LOU: I’m asking you -- who’s on first?
BUD: That’s the man’s name!
LOU: That’s who’s name?
BUD: Yes.
And on it goes. Lou never does figure out “who’s on first”,
and that is why I have used this sketch to introduce my message today.
We all struggle with figuring out “who’s on first”. I don’t mean who’s playing first base for St. Louis, but rather who should be in first place in our lives.
Jesus spoke some very clear and profound words to this. One day on a remote hill he spoke these words
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
And those who heard him speak were never the same again.
What he meant by this, and what is means to us,
is what we will direct our attention to this morning.
Setting/Review
Jesus has brought his disciples into a remote region of Judah,
far away from the city of Jerusalem.
The region is close to the Sea of Galilee, in fact the mountain side on which this message is given over looks the Sea itself.
There is a bit of a message in the geography here;
Jesus has brought himself to the people in an area about as opposite to the city of Jerusalem as one could find in Judah.
You could almost say that he has chosen to distance himself from what the city had come to represent. People would expect a Messiah to come from the spiritual centre of their universe; he has chosen to reveal himself in the “boondocks” of the country.
He has not been a public figure for long, but he has already begun to attract a crowd. The verses immediately before these tell us that,
23 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. 24 News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.
There is indeed a large crowd of curious bystanders around,
and we can be sure that the words Christ is about to speak
are meant to be heard by them as well as the disciples.
He has sat down with his disciples and started to teach them.
His words are going to center on the importance of living differently than the society in which they have lived in all their lives.
He is taking the spoken and unspoken rules that which they lived by
and turning them upside down. Now what do I mean by that?
He is not striking down the law of God; in fact he is just minutes away from making this warning to them,
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Jesus was not a bystander while God revealed in law to Moses centuries earlier; he was, is and always will be his Father’s Son, sent to do his work.
No, what Jesus is taking on are the insidious and counterproductive deceits that had crept into the faith and society of God’s people in Jerusalem.
In their day, faith had become a way to earn one’s way to God and a show of one’s own virtues and achievements.
Sacrifices that were supposed to be offered as a confession of sin or thanksgiving had become a means of showing off what you could afford to throw away.
Prayers were either repetitious babbling or public bragging.
Wealthy Israelites made huge donations in public, to show their piety,
and how much God had blessed them over others.
And the Law had become a standard to judge each other by,
rather than a beacon to God.
All of this Jesus sets out to tear down, and his first words are
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Poor in Spirit
Last week, when I did an overview of all the be-attitudes,
I explained what it means to be poor in spirit.
Please allow me a bit of repetition before we go a bit deeper.
Being “poor in spirit” means that we live with a understanding of how much we need him, and of how helpless we are without him.
It is not, as too many people believe, a call to look down on ourselves or even hate ourselves.
That would be directly contrary to the fact that God himself has made us in his own image, and loved each one of us enough to send his own son as a sacrifice for our sin.
It means that we need to appreciate and take to heart the fact that without Jesus all of our potential and achievements and self esteem and abilities amount to nothing more a temporary distraction from an eternity of separation from anything of any value at all.
We all live understanding our need for food, water, shelter, clothing and other essentials of life. We do not generate these things within us, we seek them from outside sources. Acknowledging our need for these things is part of a normal life.
What Jesus is saying is that we must also see our need to acknowledge our inherent lack of goodness, our sinfulness, if we are to be a part of the Kingdom of heaven that Jesus came to establish.
kingdom of heaven
“the kingdom of heaven”, also called “the kingdom of God” in the Bible,
is both our present and our future as God’s children. Let me explain.
We know that it refers to our lives in heaven with God when we die. Heaven is where those who love God and given their hearts to him end up after their lives on Earth are done.
But the Kingdom of heaven is also what Jesus was bringing to earth, building it piece by piece as he walked from town to town.
He showed people what being a part of the kingdom of heaven meant.
This kingdom was, in part, a new way of living that demonstrates how God wants people to live.
When people believe in Jesus and put their faith in him, they become a part of what he is doing, and a part of the kingdom of heaven. They are admitting that they need what he has to give, and would be lost without it.
When they reject him and his message, choosing instead to try their own devices, they are rejecting the kingdom he is building.
They are, in essence, saying that they do not want membership in his kingdom, both and for eternity.
Jesus is telling his listeners that they need him;
that they cannot solve the problem of sinfulness from within.
and that they need to be “poor in spirit”,
as opposed to boastful of their achievements.
When we come to Jesus and express our need for him to do forgive us and cleanse our souls form sin, we are being “poor in spirit”.
If we’re not ready to do this, we cannot consider ourselves to be a part of what he is doing, and Heaven remains a unreachable place.
Later on in his travels, Jesus told a story which explained what he meant by “being poor in spirit” in more detail.
I read it at the beginning of the message, but since it’s not too long, I’ll share it with you again:
Luke 18:9-14
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
The Pharisee was, in the public’s perception, the role model.
They wore the right clothes, followed the right rules, kept the right friends, made the right sacrifices and knew the scriptures forwards and back.
This man seems to be a role model for the role models!
His twice a week fasting was more than what was required by the law,
and his consistently generous tithing would place him in high esteem, amongst even the Pharisees themselves.
He was so confident that God looked upon him as something special that when he prays he thanks God that he’s such a wonderful guy!
The sum of his prayer is, “Look at me, I’m way better then him!
Contrary to what this audience would have thought,
Jesus places this Pharisee in the role of the fool.
He is so obviously wrapped up in himself that he has no idea that he actually needs God much more than God needs him!
He walks away from his prayer feeling great about himself, but no closer to God’s forgiveness than before he stood up and showed off. He knows a lot about God, but he doesn’t really understand why he needs him.
The tax collector would be the evil one in the crowd’s opinion.
These men represented everything the people hated;
foreign control, overbearing taxes, prison if you could not pay.
Worse yet, these men had the power to cheat the people and get rich by charging them even more than their supervisors required.
The crowds are probably hoping that Jesus will end his story by saying, “and when the tax collector fell down to the ground in shame,
God sent down fire from heaven and consumed him”
But Christ places him in the role of the hero instead.
Not a hero in the sense of a conquering champion,
but a hero in the sense that he is able to see himself for what he is,
and place himself at the mercy of God in heaven.
He is truly “poor in spirit”,
desperately in touch with the nature of his own sin,
and desiring that God would forgive him for it and have mercy on him.
He’s not covering up his misdeeds; he’s laying them before God and begging for his soul.
And contrary to the high-flying Pharisee in the vicinity, God has mercy on him, and the man leaves with his relationship with God restored.
So where does this leave us?
If we want to be a part of what God is doing here on earth,
we need to come to the place where we can confess our need for him.
Not just our enjoyment of him,
our respect for him,
or even our admiration of him,
but our full, complete, unavoidable need for him.
If we want to live with him in Heaven,
we need to accept that we can’t make the journey on our own
and simply holler “I made it” when we slip from this life into the next.
Being poor in spirit means putting God in first place in our lives. It means living with the daily recognition of the emptiness of our lives without God.
We can acquire so many things,
see so many sights, work so many hours and spend so much time
doing the things we love most, but without God taking first place in our lives, they will amount to nothing in the end.
We can’t fill the place that belongs to him with anything but Him;
If we think that anything else can adequately fill the place that God wants in our lives, we are sorely mistaken.
We have to come to grips with the fact that we are sinful people,
and in need of forgiveness.
Christ didn’t come to forgive “people doing pretty good on their own”.
He came to forgive “sinners”.
This is a universal concept – the bible tells us that “all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”
The world’s answer to this is to deny it,
Christ’s answer is to face it and hand it over to him.
It is nothing more than simply acknowledging something we all face,
and admitting we need his help.
How do we give him first place?
We start by simply admitting our need for him.
Confession. Repentance. And the forgiveness that follows.
Taking time to be with him.
Letting his standards be our standards.
Not letting our friends, neighbours or family determine our path, but letting his Word show us the way through life. They can support us, encourage us and even teach us, but our lives are in God’s hands, and not theirs.
God’s kingdom is wide open to those who can see their need for him.
Who’s on First in your life?
