A Good Person
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Our misunderstanding and misdirection
Matthew 5:1-5
I. Opening Illustration
Her face is one of the most recognizable of the twentieth century.
She was not a fashion queen or a movie star.
She held no official positions or offices.
She lived for fifteen brief years.
Anne Frank was born in Frankfort, Germany in 1929. Her family moved when she was very young to Amsterdam to escape Hitler’s rising tide of anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, they didn’t go far enough.
For her thirteenth birthday, Anne Frank’s father bought her an autograph book she admired. She determined to use it as a diary. Shortly thereafter, her family was forced to go into hiding in a secret annex behind her father’s shop.
There, they lived for over two years, hidden and kept alive by some faithful friends and employees.
Anne recorded it all in her birthday gift. She made entries in the diary from June, 1942, to a few days before her capture in August, 1944.
Shipped from one concentration camp to the next, Anne miraculously survived Hitler’s hate.
But, a typhus epidemic ended her life only a few weeks before the Allied forces liberated where she was held captive.
Anne didn’t survive, but her diary did. In one sense, Anne got her wish.
I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me. I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.
—Tuesday, 4 April, 1944, pg. 177
Her diary was published and became revered as one of the most authoritative voices of the Holocaust.
But I am not wanting merely to praise Anne’s writings.
I want to look and challenge an assumption.
It is perhaps her most famous quote. But, it is in error. I bring this up only because it is a fallacy held by many today.
I’m a good person
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
II. Introduction
Toward the end of her diary, Anne made this entry:
It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
—Saturday, 15 July, 1944, pg. 237
Anne said, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
We find ourselves wanting to believe what Anne wrote.
It sounds right. It sounds noble. It sounds good.
Yet, while we wish to believe that, we recognize that is not the case.
Any parent of a small child knows this.
We teach our children to not trust strangers.
“No matter what people offer you, run away.”
Why do we do this?
Because we don’t believe people are really good at heart.
When we leave our cars on the parking lot of a mall, what do we do?
We reach over our shoulder with our key fob and set the alarms.
We even lock our cars when we come to church.
Why? Because we don’t really believe people are good at heart.
People purchase identity theft protection to secure their credit and assets.
We are always seeking Passwords, encryption, locks, gates, fences, walls, and vaults cover our world.
Why? Because we don’t believe that people are good at heart.
Again, we want to believe it.
We want to believe that our names and reputations are safe in the hands of others.
We want to believe that our families and children are within an envelope of safety.
We deeply crave to believe that the people we come in contact with are good.
Yet, the question is this:
Why am I to believe that everyone else is good at heart when I checked my own heart lately and didn’t like what I saw?
What we should be doing and seeking is that God search us…not ourselves
Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts:
Man’s Heart is Unfaithful
God gave man the charge over everything in the Garden. Only one commandment did he have to follow:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . Be faithful in that one area…just one.
Unfaithfulness is actually a synonym for sin.
God asks a person to do something; he is not faithful to it.
Why? Because man’s heart is not good…This is why God destroyed all living things from off the face of the earth in the days of Noah.
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
We need the Righteousness of God: what does the bible say about our Righteousness?
But we are all as an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; And we all do fade as a leaf; And our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
Five hundred years ago, John Calvin was born. Calvin, you may recall, fashioned a set of beliefs that are to one degree or another believed by many Protestants today.
He taught that man was totally depraved:
Meaning: Marked by corruption or evil....perverted.
The bible does tell us that man is born in sin and shapen in iniquity.
Why do I believe this to be true?
Because in this, We see reasoning that would explain the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Adolph Hitler or Caesar. We see that something wicked dwells in the heart of man.
I believe it as well because of what I read in Scripture.
Paul describes that the natural man is bent to do evil. Then, he describes the struggle within each person:
Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
Jesus even argued that we should never call someone “good,” because there is none good but God (Mark 10:18).
Anything worthwhile in our lives is not intrinsic (originating from within), but extrinsic (Originating and externally sourced).
It was not born there; it was put there.
Parents taught us good things.
Elders gave us good things.
The bible says in James.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
It did not come from us.
Jeremiah said it like this:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
In other words, no matter how bad my heart may be, God is still interested in my heart.
He’s interested in me.
B. Man’s Spirit is Best When Poor
This is what Jesus said earlier in the book of Matthew.
He put it first in His sermon on the mount Obviously, it must have been premier on His mind.
What does “poor in spirit” mean?
The word “poor” means to be a beggar.
It’s not just impoverished, but it is the lowest of the low.
Jesus teaches us not to think more highly of ourselves than we should but only by being humble can we catch a glimpse of Gods nature.
There is a Pulitzer-Prize winning book called, “The Most Famous Man In America”, by Debby Applegate. The book was twenty years in the making and revolves around the life of Henry Ward Beecher who Lincoln called the “most famous man in America” during the Civil War.
Beecher was a preacher. He and his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, did much to turn America against slavery and lead the crusade to eradicate it.
Today, however, few know the name of Henry Ward Beecher. But more recognize his sister’s name than his. And surely, many more know Abraham Lincoln than Beecher.
What happened?
He lost the civil war in his own heart. He preached a message that man is basically good and brimmed-full of potential. All that had to be done was to unleash the goodness in each person’s heart.
His popularity, his fame, and his riches led him down the path of arrogance and self-confidence. His end was not pretty.
It’s never pretty when man thinks more of himself than he should. Ask the prodigal.
When we read Jesus’ words that a certain man had two sons—we long to put ourselves in the camp of one of the two sons.
We are either the prodigal who took his inheritance and wasted it; or, we are the older, obedient son who looks down at sinners.
The truth of the matter is that we are both sons?
Within us dwell both tendencies. At one moment, we are eating husks with the pigs; and at another moment, we are looking down at someone who we don’t think measures up.
Within mankind, dwells this Jekkyl/Hyde kind of thing – capable of immense good and capable of immense evil.
Our only salvation is a relationship with our Heavenly Father.
We, with ourselves, have nothing, are nothing, and can do nothing. But had it not been for His grace, we would fail.
I like what the Psalmist said:
Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses; For they have been ever of old.
Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: According to thy mercy remember thou me For thy goodness’ sake, O Lord.
Good and upright is the Lord: Therefore will he teach sinners in the way.
The truth of the matter is that God is good at heart; not man.
God’s nature is goodness not our nature.
If unfaithfulness is proof of a wicked heart, it follows that faithfulness is the evidence of a good heart.
God then has a good heart—becasue He is everlastingly faithful.
Our prayer would be this…
God, remember your mercies.
God, don’t remember my sins.
And if we would recognize His goodness and our sinfulness, He will forget our sins, but remember us.
But, if we get to Heaven bragging of all we have done, He will say, “I don’t remember you. But I remember your sins”
And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Spiritual poverty is saying, “God, I’m not good at heart. You are.”
Spiritual poverty is saying, “I don’t put myself on your plane God. I’m not worthy of your goodness.”
Do you remember the story of the cow in New York City?
It was about a cow named Molly. Molly is a five-hundred-pound, Black Angus heifer who was in the chute at a New York slaughterhouse. Her life had come down to seconds.
Molly panicked, slipped through a fence and raced through the streets of New York City.
A butcher started chasing her. Soon, NYPD cars with lights flashing and horns blaring were busy chasing her down the streets.
Police who hadn’t used a lasso in their lives were struggling to rope Molly.
Finally she raced into a dead end, and she was shot with a tranquilizer gun.
Once the city of New York heard about Molly’s case, she was pardoned. A condemned cow now lives on a farm for the rest of her days eating clover.
Not because of who she was. But, because someone stepped up and said, “Let her live.”
Similarly the one who stepped before an adulterous woman and forgave her comes before us today and says, “Let them live.”
Instead of having to die a sinners death from the sin that was upon us....God said, let him/her live.
At such a moment, we could brag on our merit badges.
We could say how good we are and all we have done.
But, if we cast ourselves at His feet and say, “God I need you.”
please forgive me....a sinner in need of a savior.
You will hear, “Let her live.” “Let him live.”
IV. Close
Anne Frank said that she believed people were good. But the next words in her diary are these:
I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.
The late Nathaniel Urshan was found of telling a story about Pentecostal pioneer, G. T. Haywood.
In a particularly difficult moment of Haywood’s life, he shut himself away from everyone else.
While alone with God, a troubled man found consolation. He had walked into the room with a concern, he came out with a song:
On Cal’vry’s hill of sorrow
Where sin’s demands were paid,
And rays of hope for tomorrow
Across our path were laid.
Today no condemnation
Abides to turn away
My soul from His salvation,
He’s in my heart to stay.
When gloom and sadness whisper,
“You’ve sinned—no use to pray,”
I look away to Jesus,
And He tells me to say:
And when we reach the portal
Where life forever reigns,
The ransomed hosts’ grand final
Will be this glad refrain.
I see a crimson stream of blood,
It flows from Calvary,
Its waves which reach the throne of God,
Are sweeping over me.
The poor in spirit will inherit the kingdom of God…..
They will find the righteousness, peace and joy in God.
They will look away from their failures…
They will see Jesus. They will see Calvary….
Anyone who meets Jesus will realize that they are not good—but Jesus is.
There is no mistake with God.
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
We must first realize who and what we are before God can make us who and what he wants us to be.
But when we realize this and allow God to mold us into what we should and can be for him we find solace in this thought in Isaiah.
Fear thou not; for I am with thee: Be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
He will uphold us with the right hand of his righteousness…which is Jesus Christ
Therein does our Salvation lie....In the hands of almighty God.