Chapter # 6 Paragraph # 5 Study # 2
October 7, 2007
Lincolnton, N.C.
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<382> Thesis:   The "blessedness" of being a participant in the Kingdom of God is reserved to the "poor". Introduction:   Several years ago Hazel and I were invited to attend the dedication of a new building that a church in our area had built. For that dedication, the church leaders had requested of a certain man that he come to be the key speaker for the occasion. This man had, at that time, the position of head of the Department of Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary. In that position, this man had had extensive exposure to the inner workings of many churches. Out of that experience he made a comment and asked a question. The comment was: "I have never known of a large church that was also a godly church." What he meant was that the leaders of the large churches within the realm of his exposure had inevitably made certain compromises with the Truth about God so that they could increase the numerical size of their churches. Then he asked this question: "Why do we always want to grow to be a large church?" It would appear that he was saying that there are certain, almost inevitable, results to the ambition to have a large church that would compromise the godliness of the church. This morning we are going to see Jesus making a very similar statement, but with a different set of issues. Let me see if I can prejudice your thinking a bit. If you had the opportunity today to choose whether you would become significantly wealthy, or significantly poor, which would you choose if the choice itself was relatively amoral? If, at the end of the day, you were going to either have a significant amount of money, or almost none at all, and the choice was not prejudiced by some heavy duty attachment of evil, which would you choose? Now, having answered my question, let's look at Jesus' opening words to His disciples in Luke 6:20: "Blessed are you who are poor because you get to inherit the Kingdom of God" (personal paraphrase). Does that alter your choice any at all?