The Pathway to Blessing

Well, good morning to y'all. Wow, it feels like I'm going to be held accountable from all directions this morning. Good to see y'all. May God bless us as we look into His Word again. You can turn your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter 5, beginning in verse 1. "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. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say, 'All manner of evil against you, falsely for My sake.' Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven. So persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trotten underfoot of men. You are the light of the world; a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.

Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." I'll stop there. I know for the sake of time and especially the seating arrangement here, I plan not to keep you very long this morning. We have a passage of Scripture in front of us this morning that we could spend hours with. We call it the beginning or the Sermon on the Mountain. We're just going to touch a little bit, hopefully, on the first couple of verses here.

So a little bit of the setting here: as we understand it, this is the first of Jesus' recorded sermons that He gives. And if you notice, He was leaving if we back up in chapter 4, verse 25, and He says, "And there followed Him great multitudes of people from Galilea and from Dicapolis and from Jerusalem and from Judea and from beyond Jordan." And if you look at your maps, you'll see that probably surrounds and collects together people from a hundred-mile radius or more.

And there's great multitudes. And I don't know what that means. When Jesus says great multitudes, I'm guessing there's many, many. They come together. But if you notice, He went up into the mountain and He was seated like you guys are seated right now, and I'm standing the reverse. So He sits down, and if you notice, the disciples are the ones that seem to be pressing forward next to Him.

I can only picture the multitudes are sort of halfway down the mountain and just sort of following from a distance, as Peter did. But the disciples, you notice, they come right up next to Him. So it seems like this message maybe is given more to the disciples today, to those that consider yourself a Christian. This is a message for us.

Most of us, I'm sure, are considering ourselves disciples. So the message is for us. If we notice, maybe some of the purposes of the message here that stood out to me: first of all, if you notice, He mentions the word blessed.

Blessed are you. Blessed.

Do you know it's God's desire? Probably one of His greatest desires is to bless His people. And we don't know this morning exactly what that means, is to bless His people. But I think He repeats this seven or eight times here.

And every one of the blessings has a promise that follows.

When we leave here today, I'm guessing we're going to use that word probably a number of times. "Well, God bless you as you travel home, students. God protect you." We use that word quite frequently. I'm not sure if we really know what it means.

We'll talk about that just a little bit later. But we see the first purpose here of this message. God wants to bless His people. And I think this is an important thing to keep in mind. When God created us, when He created Adam and Eve, and He breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, that, I believe, was a breath of blessing. It wasn't anything that we dislike. It was good. It was goodwill. It was part of His own presence that He was breathing into him eternal life. So let's keep that in mind as we think about blessing this morning.

Another thing that stands out about God's blessing, we can say, "Well, God bless you," but that means what we say, I guess. But when God blesses somebody, we see that back in Israel's history when the Israelites had just destroyed or had war against the Amorites, I believe it was, and they were just ending right up to Moab. And then the king there was fearful because he saw what they did, and he's fearful. And he says, "They're going to come up, and they're going to lick us up just like an ox licks up the grass of the field." What a description. You ever see a cow that's hungry, and she comes along, and she just licks the grass of the field, and vroom, it's gone.

That was the picture. And he was fearful. But there's something that Balak understood about that army that I don't think we understand. He somehow knew that they had the blessing of God upon them. And he said, "If we could somehow undo that blessing" you know the story? He called for Balaam. He sent for Balaam because he was known to be this man that would be able to reverse blessing and put on curse.

And Balaam came, and he opened his mouth three times, I believe the Bible tells us, to curse these people. Balak knew that somehow, if God's blessing was taken away and a curse put on them, they're going to lose their power.

In other words, it's His way of disarming them. And you know the story? Balaam opened his mouth three times to curse them, and all that came out was a blessing. I love that story. If God is for us, who can be against us? When God's blessing is on our life, we're safe. We're protected. In the spiritual realm, we're all armed up, aren't we, with God's blessing and protection over us?

The other thing we notice in this short passage we read, He talks about being a salt to the earth. And I don't know for sure what that means. I did a little more research on the word, and I understand the word earth there simply means soil.

So He's looking to us, and especially you young fellas. He's looking to you all. He's not looking to the politics today to preserve the earth. The money that's spent on all the climate study and the Chesapeake Bay and other bays that are being polluted, can you imagine? They can study, and they can spend money, but they're not going to preserve this earth. If there's anyone here yet on this earth that is going to bring saltiness and preserve the earth, the soil and I don't know how all that works, but if God put a curse on the soil when Adam and Eve sinned, then when He reverses that and He blesses His people and we walk in His blessing, then somehow there's also a reverse in the soil.

Isn't that exciting? And the light of the world, another purpose of us being here yet, the light of the world. As the world's getting darker and deeper, infested with sin and dishonesty and everything that is folks, He's going to look to us. He's going to look to the next generation. He's going to look to you guys and you young ladies. He's going to look to you to be a light. The sad part is so many people today just begin to blend in more and more with the society and become a part of the problem. God wants us to be a remedy, to stand up, to be men and women of God to make a difference, like the flashlight in a dark room.

What a blessing.

And then another thing that we see in this, in the end, He's going to cause the society of the nations to stand up and take notice, not to you or me, but they're going to give glory and honor to God the Father, His purpose.

Last week, we had a rain come through here one evening, and there was a rainbow. Maybe some of you locals saw that. I don't know. I told my wife and my children, I don't know if I've ever seen one that was so nice and clear and bright just the whole way around. And when we see that, what do we do? We typically take the family out. We call them together. We nowadays send a picture of this, and we say, "Look at this beautiful thing. There's a rainbow." We just go out there, and you know what?

I'm probably not as impressed with the beautiful colors, but I'm so drawn to the one that's behind the colors. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, God. Thank You for being faithful to Your promise, Your covenant that You made to us. It's just a refreshing reminder that God said, "This is what I'm going to do as a token, as a covenant with My people." And He still does it. He still does it. Praise God.

That is what Jesus is asking us to be, is that rainbow where it causes the world to stop and to call everybody together and say, "Look at this," and they're all going to turn to God and glorify Him because of your life, your life that speaks of Jesus. It's not you. They're not going to marvel at you, but they're going to marvel at your great God, the King of the universe. So our life is supposed to be a reflection of our Maker.

The first thing He says, "I'm going to bless you." The title this morning is The Pathway to Blessing. "I'm going to bless you." Now, there's been a study done in America, North America, I understand. They took about 52,000 Americans of about all age groups, and they asked the question, "Now, if you were to pursue happiness to its fullest, what were some of the things you would be going after?"

And I know some of the dictionaries, some of the commentators, use this word blessing here and say it simply means, in our language, happiness. And something about that just doesn't sit right with me unless I misunderstand the word happiness. I understand the word happiness has to do with circumstances.

So everything goes good for me today. I'm going to be a happy man by the end of the day, hopefully. But anyway, back to this research they've done, there was this cycle and the pattern of man from young to old, and it was things like this. People, young children, might say, "Well, they think once they can go to school, they're going to be happy. Once they were in school and they graduate from that, maybe then they'll be happy." And the next step and so on, driver's license, and then getting married, and then having children. And then the next group said, "Well, when all the kids leave home, then there will be genuine happiness."

Careers, jobs, education, the list went on. But the sad part about it, the last-ditch effort was retirement. Have you ever met retired people that are really happy? There's some around, but according to Brother Miller's book and his study he did on retirement, he said, "That is one of the highest rates of suicide, unfortunately." Isn't that sad?

You go through life, and every step of the way, you're finding these bits and pieces of happiness. And, well, it just does last a short time. And then I need another step of happiness. And so it goes. And so it goes. And the sad part is, I've spoken for a number of older people that were retired, and they look back over their life, and they say, "I don't really know the purpose of life. I've never figured it out yet."

And a lot of people go to their grave just that way. They haven't figured it out, the purpose of life.

Jesus this morning wants us to take us deeper than just the happiness, even happiness to its fullest level because there's something in here that doesn't fit with happiness. If blessed really means happiness, then we should say, "Happy are you when you're persecuted."

Does that fit? It doesn't really fit because it's not in the list of the study when people said, "Well, I think I can really be happy once I'm persecuted." But Jesus says, "You're going to be blessed when you're persecuted." Is that possible, and how, and what does it mean? Let's look at the first

thought here.

When I think of the blessings of God, the blessed, I think more of the breath of God. I think of a covenant that God makes with His people, a promise, a, could we say, a commitment like He did with the Israelites.

And Balak and Balaam couldn't undo that no matter how hard they tried. They could not undo that. You see the protection.

When we look at the Ten Commandments, we see Ten Commandments that were given by God to Moses for His people that had to do with thou shalt not, things that we shall not and we cannot do as God's people. But here in the Beatitudes, we see eight or nine, seven or eight, I believe there are, of things we ought to become. So it's not about doing or not doing so much, but who are we going to become? And that's a challenge I want to leave for the young folks especially. If you consider yourself this week, my wife and I were at a viewing.

A wife of an old school friend of mine passed away sort of suddenly. These were folks I haven't seen, some of them, since school days. I mean, that takes us back 40 years maybe. And the one young lady said, "Oh, Harvey, I remember you all those years ago."

And she had a scoop of questions about your siblings. "How are they doing? How's your sister so-and-so? How's your brother so-and-so? Where are they? Are they married? Where do they live?" And I'm like, "Oh, this is strange." I mean, we're talking about all these years that we haven't talked.

I went home, and I thought over that a little bit. I thought, "In 40 years from now, you students have connected, maybe some of you, for the first time. And maybe it's going to be a several-year relationship here maybe, maybe not.

Maybe some of you won't hear about each other for many years, maybe 40 years." Seems like, "That makes me feel pretty ancient this morning." But talk about 40 years. I'm not that old. I might look old. I'm 55 for your information.

But I'm saying that's a short time. It really is. That went so swiftly. It was only but a few years ago, it seems like. I was your age. It's just how life is. The older you get, the quicker it goes, I think. I don't know. Does it or does it seem like it?

So in 40 years from now, if you would meet an old Bible school student and the questions would be, "What happened to so-and-so?"

Let's think of that a little bit different. We think of terms of, "Did I get married? Did he or she get married? Do they have children? Do they have grandchildren? What kind of job do they have? Where do they live?" Those things are important, and they're important to God. But when I look back over my life, I say, "How important are those things? If I could redo my life and I could go back 40 years and I could make some of those crucial choices, what would I do different?" I'm not sure if I'd do much different. I'd probably marry the same girl.

I'd probably just be an old farmer again all over. I would probably just live in the same house I did the last 40 years in the good old state of Pennsylvania. I don't know. I don't know I'd do. But if I could go back 40 years and start over, I can tell you what I would do different or what I would work at, where I would get a jump start at, is at the characters that Jesus is going to point out to us.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed is the farmer, or blessed is the mechanic. Blessed is the applianceman. Blessed is the, "What are you today?" Blessed is he that gets married. Blessed is he that has children or grandchildren. Blessed is he when he gets retired finally.

Is that what Jesus is saying? Am I saying those things aren't important to God? Not at all. But I think we need to focus on what is the most important to God. It is our spirit. These blessings have all to do, whether or not we're going to cultivate the spirit of Jesus or we're not.

Jesus said one day, "Except a corn of wheat fall to the ground and die, it abideth alone." And I think we could talk about that for a long time. What does that mean? Brother Clyde back here is a seed salesman. He would know more about what goes into corn seed than I do. But I mean, I know corn seed is tremendously expensive anymore, and I'm guessing that's why, is because there's a lot of input. There's a lot of research. There's a lot of study. There's genetically modified now, whatever that all means.

A seed of corn is very valuable. But Jesus said, "Except it fall to the ground and die, it's going to be alone," saying it's going to be worthless. And I think of that this morning, and I know you students heard a lot from God's Word this week.

Studying God's Word, it's so important to know God's Word, to memorize God's Word. But it's just like that seed, except we, as a people, learn how to build character. We can know Scripture from beginning to the end. We can memorize it. We can sing it. We can know it all so well. But Jesus is telling us this morning, "Except we fall to the ground and die."

We die really hard. I don't know what this means for sure, but He says, "We are to become poor in our spirit."

Our society says not so. You need to stand for your rights.

You need to, and if you lose, you have 100 attorneys out there advertising for you to come to your rescue. Defend your rights. Be strong. Know who you are. Jesus turns that upside down, and He says, "If you don't learn how to become poor in your spirit, you can't receive this great blessing."

What does this mean today in our life? What does it mean to become poor in our spirit? Do you remember the story that Jesus gave? He said, "Two men went up to the temple to pray." Good thing, going to prayer meeting, two men. The one was a Pharisee, which was a religious person. He knew the Bible. I'm sure he went to Bible studies and so on, and I think he knew pretty much everything about the Bible. Very good. And apparently, he lived a good life. The other one was a publican, and they're known as just sort of the down and out, the outcasts, probably not even a profession of any kind. And they began to pray.

Jesus says the Pharisee prayed something like this. He even had a lot of thanksgiving in his prayer. He said, "Thank You, Lord, that I'm not like other men are."

Think of that.

And then he had a list of a few things that he did. He fasts twice a week, I believe it says. That's a good thing. How many of us can say that? We fast twice in a week.

And we give tithes of all that I possess. I'm like, not like those men that are extortioners and idolaters or immoral or whatever the expression was, and not even like this publican right next to me.

Now it's the publicans turn to pray. And the Bible says, from a distance, he didn't even look up to God. He didn't even have the posture of prayer. He just smote his breast and said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner."

And Jesus turns around and He tells us, "This is for you and me today." He tells us that man went justified rather than the first.

Why? We say, "Why, God?" I mean, after all, the religious person had some good deeds. He probably was not living in sin. The second person possibly had sin in his life. The only difference I can see between the two this morning is the second one got a glimpse of this first verse of Jesus' first sermon, poor in spirit.

You know why? It does really matter what our spirit is like.

Another story. Jesus once knew that His disciples were traveling, and as they traveled, they had a discussion. Actually, He calls it a dispute. You guys ever have a dispute? And Jesus asked them, "So what were you disputing about out there?" And they were too embarrassed. They didn't want to tell.

And Jesus knew all things. He said, "I know what you were talking about. You were disputing which of you should be the greatest." Do we ever do that? Oh, we wouldn't say it, would we? But we're really interested in who has the nicest car or who can lift the most weights or ladies, who has the nicest dress or prettiest hair or whatever it is.

We think in those terms, don't we? You know what? Jesus is trying to debunk that whole spirit because He told them, "Folks, I want to tell you something." He got a little child as an object lesson, and He put that child right in front of Him, and He taught them something.

He said, "Except you become as this little child," and it becomes converted and become as this little child. You cannot be a part of the kingdom. Now here in verse, this first one He gives us, He says, "The blessing is that you will become part of the kingdom."

A little quote I come across, "Humility is the mother, root, nurse, foundation, and center of all other virtues."

I believe there's a lot of truth to that, but our world today promotes this self-sufficiency, independence, "I got this. I can handle this." You see that? We're surrounded and we're challenged day in and day out with that spirit, and Jesus is calling us to take the low road if you want to receive the blessing.

James says this and Peter says this, "God resisteth the proud but giveth grace to the humble." That word resist there is a military term. It means that God will go to war with those that are proud.

That should do something for us this morning. When we look at the God of the created universe, we look at the great God that sets the bow in the cloud, that is in charge of all the galaxies, do we want to go to war with our great God?

Well, He says He's going to resist us if we have a proud spirit. Let's learn what it means to come down with Jesus, with Jesus.

When He says He resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble, He gives us a story, and this is found in the Gospel. Again, another story, a familiar story, but I'm just going to refresh our minds with it.

There once was a woman of Canaan, a needy woman, and Jesus and His disciples were traveling from city to city on a missionary trip, and this woman came out of the village and cried to Jesus. Somehow she knew who He was, at least in part. She called Him, "Jesus," I believe, or "Lord, the Son of David," I believe she cried out, said, "Have mercy on me because I have a daughter at home that is seriously vexed with a devil."

Well, that's a good place to go, is to Jesus because He was healing and He was restoring and so on. And Jesus sort of acted out of character there.

He ignored this woman. He just ignored her request. And the woman came again. Apparently, she went to the disciples, and the disciples went to Jesus finally and said, "Send this woman away because she's, I'll use my term, bugging us.

Send her away."

And then Jesus said, "Well, I'm on a trip. I'm on a missionary trip, and my purpose is to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," meaning God's people. "They need my help. They need my attention right now. And who is this woman anyway?" and just ignored her again.

But that woman didn't give up. She comes to Him again, the third time, and worshiped Him. This time she said, "Lord, help me." And then Jesus responds, "She told her that it's not good for me to cast the bread to the dogs, the Father's bread to the dogs."

Why did Jesus do that? What was He doing? He was saying this bread, this help, this blessing I have, it's not good for me to give it to the dogs. And in our day today, a dog is almost elevated to humans anymore, but not back then. You know what a dog was back then?

The scum of the earth. And this woman said, "Okay, I just love her response. Let's learn from the woman. I understand, Father. I understand what you're saying, Jesus. You have people that are more important than me. It's okay. I'm a dog." But you know what? The dogs, they love to eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table.

God knows how to resist the proud, but He does not know how to resist the humble. He does not know. He does have no program for that.

And I believe Jesus gave this particular story for our learning. I believe the very reason Jesus ignored that woman is for us to learn something from that story. So He ignores her. She gets desperate. She comes again, and she takes the way of humility, and she puts herself down as a dog, and she's begging for crumbs.

And Jesus turns around and He said, "Woman." I think He said, "Oh, woman." Do you know what that word is translated from? That word, woman, is a word of respect and honor, and it's the same word that Jesus used when He talked about His mother.

God resisteth the proud, but He gives grace to the humble, and He raises them up. Those that are exalted, He puts down, but those that are abased, He did that with this woman. He gave her a name of honor, and He blessed her, and He turned around and said, "Because of your great faith, I'm going to bless you." And the daughter was made whole that very hour. He didn't wait two years.

He didn't wait a day. The very hour. That is our God. The pathway to blessing. We must learn how to take the low road.

What about brokenness? That's another word that stands out to me when I think of poor in spirit. Do we know what a broken spirit is today? There's many Christians today that do not understand that term. Jesus taught us throughout His word that without brokenness, we cannot be a part of His family. When we come together to celebrate communion, what do we celebrate? A broken body.

The Hebrews tells us that God prepared was in the business of preparing a body. And when we think of preparing and building something up, we think of building and constructing. But what Jesus was doing when He was preparing a body, He was breaking it apart. He was bringing it down, as Philippians tells us. He took the steps down, and He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. That was the preparation of a body. And we are called to that same spirit. We are called to that same brokenness. Broken in spirit sometimes can mean broken in body as well. Jesus said, "Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken, but whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder."

That was in Luke's Gospel, I believe, in the context it was talking about the stone that the builders rejected. And Jesus taught there again saying, "This stone that was rejected by your forefathers, it's going to be a stone that you're going to have to come to terms with. There's no detour. Every person, every man, every young lady, every one of us has to come to terms with that stone. Either we're going to fall on that stone and be broken, or the stone is going to come around in judgment, and it's going to fall on us and crush us and grind us to powder in judgment."

And I suggest to all of us this morning, let's learn what it means to come to that stone and be broken.

That can mean different things for different people. Remember Jacob, another story I want to share, Jacob of old, another familiar story. Jacob was in the family line of blessing, and there again, God promised a blessing. He made a covenant with Jacob's grandfather, Abraham. It was Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

But when we studied Jacob's life, he pretty much closed the door to that blessing. If you read his life, I can't help but believe, I don't know if he defined the meaning of his own name, but it is brought out that his name actually means something like cheater or conniver or supplanter.

It doesn't have a good meaning, and I think if we read his life, we can see he lived up to that meaning. He stole from his twin brother to start with. He deceived his father, and he cheated his uncle Laban.

If you're familiar with the story and you look through that, when he was in trouble finally from stealing or taking the birthright and the father's blessing from his brother Esau, his mother was on his side and was helping him with all this. She got concerned, and he got concerned because his twin brother was angry with him, and he said, "I'm going to slay him. Once Daddy dies, I'm going to kill my brother."

And now Jacob is scared, and he's running, and his mom helped him go over to uncle Laban in Haron, I believe it was. I don't know. That was maybe a 75-mile journey or so. And if you remember, on the way there, he had a dream. He slept, had a dream, and in the dream, it was that God was pronouncing a blessing on his life, and that felt good. After the dream, he got up and he said something like this to God, "On this trip, as I go, and You will protect me and keep me and make a way that I can come back home again, then I will make the Lord my God," something of that meaning.

So he was striking a deal with God. We don't do that. It just doesn't work that way. Did you ever feel like striking a deal with God? "God, if You allow this good thing to happen in my life, then I will serve You."

God's not really interested in that.

Well, Jacob sort of had that sticking in him, and then as we know the story, he goes to his uncle. He works for him. By the way, he wants to marry Rachel in a bad way, and then his uncle did what he did. "Okay, you marry Rachel, but you work for me for seven years."

Any young man ever been told that? "You work for me for seven years if you want my daughter." Great. Well, then you know the story, and it ended up being her older sister, Leah, and finding out the day after the wedding, and then work another seven years for Rachel, so 14 years in all, and then I think another six or eight years or whatever. So he was there probably 20 years or so. By then, he had a good herd of cattle. He had children and, I mean, a whole team of people. Now he's going back home.

But there's one problem, his brother Esau. "Oh, Esau. The last I heard of him, he's still wanting to kill me, and I'm going back to Canaan, and I'm going to have to face my brother Esau." So they started on this journey, the whole band of animals and family and so on, and if you remember the story, they came to a certain place, and Jacob was so fearful about meeting his brother that he split up his band, and he sent half or so ahead to meet, to sort of spy it out, to see if they can find Esau.

And their report was, "Esau is coming with 400 men." Wow, now I'm really scared. 400 men coming against me? So then he sends gifts ahead, like peace offerings and how many animals, I forget, hundreds of them, I believe, that he sent ahead to appease his brother and say, "This is a gift from Jacob." And another thing that's very Jacobish, very Jacobish, when he split up the bands, he made sure he and his wives were in the rear so that when Esau would find the first band and slay them, his band could flee.

Isn't that sort of Jacobish? Shouldn't Jacob have been up in the lead and facing his brother head-on? No, he puts them all up there, and Jacob's clear in the back, and they cross a certain river, and then they cross this river, and then he puts his wives ahead yet, his immediate family, puts them across the river, and Jacob is behind.

I'd say it was a real chicken there. Everybody else is threatening their lives, but Jacob, he's way back there. "Come on, Jacob. Wake up."

And then every so often, he'd have his little prayers. He's a praying man. He's praying to God, and he said, "God, I'm not worthy of any of this." "Yeah, right. Yeah, you stole a lot of this." "Come on, Jacob."

You see that? But you know the exciting thing that happened when Jacob was back there dragging along, being a real chicken, all by himself? There met him a man. And you know what happened? They wrestled all night long.

Any guys here that enjoyed a wrestle? I've wrestled when I was young, but I never wrestled all night long. I mean, that must have been a tremendous wrestling match that it lasts. I mean, usually, I mean, one gives up or one tires out or say, "Oh, let's quit."

And this man said, "You know what? It's going to be daybreak soon, and we're going to have to break this up. Nobody's winning. It's sort of a hazy thing yet. Nobody is winning, but it's time to break it up and go home." Interesting.

And to sort of finish it off, this man just reaches over to Jacob's hip socket and puts it out of joint.

The last time I went ice skating, I probably shouldn't have been on the pond, but the 15-year-olds were it, and we were playing freeze tag, and a 15-year-old came chasing after me, and I was determined. I was probably in my, I don't know, 40s maybe.

I was determined, "I'm going to get away from this 15-year-old." And you know what happened? I somehow, over extra energy, I slipped. I sprained my ankle the worst way. It was dark, and I was glad because I crawled back to the edge of the pond, and I just cried. It hurt so bad. I was sure I had my ankle broken.

I went the next day, and we had it checked out. It was just a bad sprain. You know that sprain hurt for five years off and on.

And now Jacob is here he is. His family's ahead of him. He's all alone on the mountain. His socket is out of joint, and his wrestler is ready to leave. Jacob says, "Now, wait a minute. I'm not going to let you go until you bless me."

You know what? The promise was given to Jacob that he's going to be in line for blessing, and Jacob wanted a blessing, and God wanted to bless him. That's what the wrestling match was all about.

Well, the first response from this man, at this point, we weren't really told who the man was, but his response is, "Tell me your name, Jacob."

You know what? He was asked before what his name was, and he said Esau. Remember that? Clear back when he was a liar? This time, he's being honest. "I'm Jacob." And I believe that was God's way of just simply opening his heart and being completely transparent, "This is who I am, and I've been living up to this name ever since, and I'm done. I'm done." And that is when God, the man of God, actually Jacob, interestingly, Jacob turns around, and he says, "Who are you?" After this man blessed him. "What's your name?"

And he didn't tell him. He left, and then Jacob's testimony later is that he named that a certain name. I can't say it now. I can't bring that up. The name of that place was because God prevailed, so he recognized this as God's man, whoever that I like to think that was Jesus.

I bet it was. I bet that is one of those few times that Jesus came in body, and maybe that's why I wanted to leave before daybreak so that Jacob I'm just imagining now. Why leave before daybreak? Maybe it was Jesus.

But you know who won that battle? The Bible tells us several different places it was Jacob that prevailed, and he won the battle. How? He was the one that was limping and walking away. I would have said he lost, but no, Jacob said the Bible tells us, Hosea, I believe, tells us that Jacob prevailed. He won. You know how? And you know from there on, we never read his hip was ever put in place or healed.

I don't know that we ever read that, but one thing we do know from there on, Jacob was a good man. God said, "I'm going to change your name to Israel," which means God ruleth. Isn't that exciting? See how that works? When we become broken before God and we own up, "I'm Jacob. I'm Harvey. This is me. I have all this garbage in my life. I've been dishonest," and we just are completely transparent with God, and then God can pronounce the blessing, and you will walk away. You might limp, but you know what? Jacob was a blessed man, and his life changed. Read his life after that. He was a different man.

What a blessing.

Psalm 34:18 says, "The Lord is near the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit."

When I think of the poor in spirit, there's many things that come to my mind, and we don't have time to go through them all, but another one is prompt obedience. You know we live in a time where we're so independent, and we're so self-sufficient, and we just don't really think we need a lot of direction and counsel and accountability in our life.

We don't see that in God's disciples after the New Testament church has started, do we? We see they lean on each other. They need each other. Obedience to God, and we could look at the story of Jonah and see how Jonah just deliberately disobeyed God, and he had to go through the breaking process in the belly of all places, in the belly of a whale.

God met him there, and there was a real breaking experience, and then Jonah turns around, "Okay, I'm going to obey God now." See that obedience? What about obedience to our fellow man, those that are in authority over us? What about obedience to our parents? You know, again, it's one of those aspects of a poor spirit. When I say, "Yeah, I need my parents' direction," or you might say, "Oh, I'm an adult. I'm 18. I'm 22," or whatever.

I can think for myself, "I don't really need Mom and Dad, and after all, they're sort of old-fashioned." Do you ever think that way? Do you know what? Your parents really aren't that much older than you are, but they do have a few more experiences, and you need their counsel. You need their wisdom in your life.

You know, when we have a heart that is unbroken, we push our parents out of our life so many times, don't we? What about submission? You know, when we think of you know, I used to I grew up on a farm where my father broke horses for his own use and also for customers and so on, and I'm always jealous when I think of after a well-broke team of horses or mules, how well they worked together after they went through the breaking process, how well they worked together. It just inspires me to think there, again, is a picture of God's people working together as a team. You know, a team of horses, they're almost unstoppable when they all work together.

What a tremendous picture of a team. The word submission is used in the Bible to describe that, being subject one to another in church life, in community efforts, and folks, young folks, this is for you. There's no better time in life to begin this process than when you're young and tender and pliable, just to learn how to blend your life with people because guess what?

Time goes on like normal. You're going to have people all the way through your life, people at the workplace, in church, in school, or whatever it is, wherever it might be. Submission. 1 Peter 5:5 says, "Likewise, you younger, submit yourselves under the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another and be clothed with humility, for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble."

When we're poor in spirit, we're going to say, "I need the input of my brothers and sisters." We're going to say, "I need to be accountable to others." But when we're not poor in spirit and not broken in our spirit, we're going to say, "I got this.

I'm independent. I don't really need your advice. In fact, I never asked for it." Do we run into that attitude? The be-attitudes are all about shaping character.

Guess what? We got to the first one.

I found this little thing here. It has a title, "Who Flies the Kite?" Who flies the kite? I said, "The boy. I fly the kite. It is my joy. I fly the kite." Who flies the kite? I said, "The wind. I fly the kite. It's my whim. I fly the kite."

Who flies the kite? I said, "The string. I'm the thing that flies the kite." Who flies the kite? I said, "The tail. I made the sail. I fly the kite." Who really does fly the kite? All are wrong, and yet all are right. All fly the kite.

Isn't that the picture of what it means to blending our energy, our life, and in the end, we're all flying a kite together? Beautiful little thought there about working together. Well, I'm going to close with that, just a challenge for myself and all of us. There again, if I could start life over again, I know what I do now. This is what I would work at, is at my character because every time, every time I have managed to take and I could tell stories after stories this morning about my own life. There were times I did not take the Bible way, the Jesus way, and I responded like Jacob or like Harvey, that flesh, that old man in me, and you know it never comes out right.

It is the quickest way to pick a fight. It is the quickest way to bring darkness in a situation. It is the quickest way to just destroy relationships, but on the other side, I could tell you of stories, a number of stories, where I had chosen to take the low road in relationships and incidents at work and incidents on the highway and incidents where I've been yelled at and cursed at, which was a few times in life, and I would take this road, and the outcome was beautiful, beautiful.

And I'm here to tell us this morning that if we really want the breath of God to go with our life, we must take His way because His way there again, Matthew 11, I believe it is, says, Jesus says, "All you that are laboring and heavy laden, come unto Me, and I will give you rest." Now, a lot of people stop there. "Oh, okay. We come to Jesus. He promised us rest. Good."