We see in this parashah (Hukkat (Regulation) Numbers 19:1–22:1) that Moses lost the right to go into the Land because of his rebellion. More than that, he judged Abba’s people and took on the role of supreme authority. Then, in his anger, he disobeyed Abba and struck the rock.
For so long, Moses saw himself as YHVH’s servant. But in a weaker moment, he saw himself as Israel’s master.
We need to learn from Moses and realize that we also must hold tight to the role of servant if we want to walk the Land in this age.
So, how do we move into full servanthood and sonship?
The good news is that Yeshua told us.
Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
How do you become poor in spirit?
You do not look at yourself or begin by trying to do things to yourself.
You look at God.
You read His law.
Look at what He expects of us.
Contemplate standing before Him .
Look at Yeshua the Messiah.
The more we look at Him and how He lived His life, the more hopeless we feel about ourselves.
Look at Him.
Keep looking at Him.
Once you realize there is nothing you can do yourself, it will be done.
You cannot look at Him without feeling your absolute poverty and emptiness.
Empty, hopeless, naked, vile.
But He is the all-sufficient One.
When you see Him, when you stand before Him, only then will you know how empty you really are.
It is this emptiness, this poorness of spirit, that allows you to begin the journey into His rest.
Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
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Matthew 5:4 “How blessed are those who mourn! for they will be comforted.”
What are we mourning?
While we can tend to mourn pain in our lives, a true morning is a deep conviction of sin.
Understanding the severity of sin and the state of man causes a son to mourn.
We had to be poor in spirit before we could be filled with the Holy Spirit and here again is another example of exactly the same thing.
Conviction must of necessity precede conversion.
A real sense of sin must come before you can experience the true joy of salvation.
This is the whole essence of the Gospel.
"So many people spend all their lives trying to find this joy of a son. They say they would give the whole world if they could only find it, or could be like some other person who has it. Well, just that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this is the explanation. They have failed to see that they must be convicted of sin before they can ever experience joy. Some people do not like the doctrine of sin. They dislike it intensely and they object to its being preached. They want joy apart from the conviction of sin. But that is impossible; it can never be obtained. Those who are going to be converted and who wish to be truly happy and blessed are those who first of all mourn. Conviction is an essential preliminary to true conversion."
Matthew 5:4 “How blessed are those who mourn! for they will be comforted.”
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Matthew 5:5 “How blessed are the meek! for they will inherit the Land!”
You cannot spend time with a verse like this without it humbling you.
It is the thing for which we are called and for which we are meant.
So, what is meekness?
Meekness is essentially a true view of oneself.
Expressing itself in attitude and conduct with respect to others.
It is therefore two things:
It is my attitude toward myself
And it is an expression of that in my relationship to others
You can now see that a son can never be meek unless he is poor in spirit.
You can now see that a son can never be meek unless he sees himself as a sinner.
There must be an absence of pride.
The meek son is not proud of himself.
He does not glory in himself.
He knows there is nothing within him of which he can boast.
He does not make demands of: his position, his privileges, his possessions, his status in life.
He is not overly sensitive about himself.
He is not always watching himself and his own interests.
He is not always on the defensive.
We all know about this, do we not?
Is it not one of the greatest curses in life as a result of the fall -- this sensitivity about self?
We spend the whole of our lives watching ourselves.
But when a son becomes meek, he is done with all of that.
He no longer worries about himself and what other people say.
To be truly meek means we no longer protect ourselves, because we see there is nothing worth defending.
So we are not on the defensive -- all that is gone.
Matthew 5:5 “How blessed are the meek! for they will inherit the Land!”
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Matthew 5:6 “How blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness! for they will be filled.”
What does it mean to hunger and thirst?
Obviously it does not mean that we feel and we can attain unto this righteousness by our own efforts and endeavor.
That is the worldly view of righteousness which concentrates on man himself and leads to the individual pride of the Pharisee. Or to the pride of one nation as against other nations, regarding itself as being better and superior.
Recall, being poor in spirit is a negation of every form of self-reliance so this is not something you can do on your own.
It means a consciousness of our need, of our deep need.
I go further, it means a consciousness of our desperate need.
It is not a passing desire.
Hunger is something deep and profound that goes on until it is satisfied.
It hurts, it is painful.
Just like actual, physical hunger and thirst.
It is something that goes on increasing and makes one feel desperate.
It is something that causes suffering and agony.
To be hungry is not enough; I must really be starving to know what is in His heart towards me.
When the prodigal son was starving he turned to his father.
Now that is the whole position.
Matthew 5:6 “How blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness! for they will be filled.”
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Matthew 5:7 “How blessed are those who show mercy! for they will be shown mercy.”
What is mercy?
Grace looks down upon sin as a whole.
Mercy looks upon the miserable consequences of sin.
A man’s concern about the misery of men and women leads to an anxiety to relieve it.
Consider the Good Samaritan.
He didn’t just see a hurt person and have compassion and pity.
He stopped and did something about it.
Abba Himself sent His Son to us in our miserable state.
He looked down upon man in his pitiful condition as the result of sin, and had pity upon him.
The grace that is there in regard to sin in general now becomes mercy in particular as God looks at the consequences of sin.
Those that are merciful will receive mercy.
This is not, “if I am merciful towards others, God will be merciful towards me.”
He is merciful towards me SO I am to be merciful towards others.
"This beatitude follows all the others. I am poor in spirit and realize that I have no righteousness. I realize that face-to-face with God and His righteousness I am utterly helpless. I can do nothing. Not only that, I mourn because of the sin that is within me. I have come to see, as the result of the operation of the Holy Spirit, the blackness of my own heart. I know what it is to cry out, "Oh Wretched Man that I am! Who shall deliver me?" and the desire to be rid of this vileness that is within me. Not only that, I am meek, which means that now that I have experienced a true view of myself, nobody else can hurt me, nobody else can insult me, nobody can ever say anything too bad about me."
I've seen myself as something truly hateful and it is because of this that I hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Does it not follow inevitably that, if I have seen and experienced all that, my attitude towards everybody else must be completely and entirely changed?
If all that is true of me, I no longer see men as I used to see them.
I see them now with the eye of a son.
I see them as dupes and victims and slaves of sin and Satan and of the way of the world.
I feel sorry for them.
This is how Yeshua saw me when He was on the cross.
A son has great sorrow for those trapped in the world.
Matthew 5:7 “How blessed are those who show mercy! for they will be shown mercy.”
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Matthew 5:8 “How blessed are the pure in heart! for they will see God."
Holiness, a pure heart, is required in order to see Abba.
Only those who are like Him can see Him.
Yeshua said,“He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”
Sons can see Abba in a sense that no one else can.
Sons can see Abba in creation. Another way we see Him is in our own experiences.
The most amazing thing ever said to man is that I will see Him face-to-face.
If we grasped this it would revolutionize our life.
I am being prepared to enter the presence of the King.
Do I believe it?
Do I realize that I will see Him face-to-face?
The pure in heart will see God.
Can I grasp this at all?
The only way to have a clean heart is to allow the Holy Spirit to come into me and cleanse me.
Abba is dealing with me and my heart is being cleansed.
I am going to see God!
Is this not the biggest, most momentous, most tremendous thing I have ever been told?
The time is short and I do not have long to prepare.
Am I not ashamed at this moment that I am wasting my time on things that not only will be of no value on that great occasion, but of which I will then be ashamed?
Matthew 5:8 “How blessed are the pure in heart! for they will see God."
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Matthew 5:9 “How blessed are those who make peace! for they will be called sons of God."
Only a man with a new heart, a pure heart can be a peacemaker.
This man must be delivered from all self-concern.
He does not look at everything based on what it does to him personally.
We tend to look at things as to how they affect us.
He recognizes that other people are under the control of powers and principalities.
He has pity on them.
His only concern is the glory of God.
He is prepared to suffer injustice in order to glorify God.
He says, “what matters is the glory of God.”
If his suffering leads to that then he will endure it.
He does not need to express his mind.
In fact, he learns not to speak.
He keeps control over his tongue.
No gossip.
He views every situation in the light of the Gospel.
You must go out of your way looking for ways to make peace.
You may even have to humble yourself before your enemy.
Matthew 5:9 “How blessed are those who make peace! for they will be called sons of God."
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Matthew 5:10 “How blessed are those who are persecuted because they pursue righteousness! for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs."
You aren’t persecuted because you are difficult, objectionable, lacking wisdom, foolish, rude, etc.
You are persecuted because you are pursuing righteousness.
People provoke and irritate which leads to persecution but this is not what we’re talking about.
We are slow to realize the difference between prejudice and principle.
We are slow to understand the difference between being offensive because of our nature and causing an offense because we are righteous.
Being righteous and practicing righteousness is to be like Yeshua.
Therefore, you are blessed if you are persecuted for being like Him.
A real son is not considered nice, but righteous.
In order to be like the Messiah, you must become something brand new.
Light exposes darkness and men love the darkness.
We are not to be offensive, foolish, unwise.
We are not to parade our faith.
We are not to do anything that calls for persecution.
By being like Yeshua, we will naturally be persecuted.
Matthew 5:10 “How blessed are those who are persecuted because they pursue righteousness! for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs."
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Now that you are poor in spirit and have mourned your sinful state, now that you have grown meek and now hunger and thirst of righteousness, ready to show mercy with a pure heart, ready to make peace and prepared to be persecuted for pursuing righteousness…
Now…now we can pray the Lord’s Prayer.
As we come to the gate of the Tabernacle we lift our eyes to see the fullness of His dwelling place and we say to Him:
Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, my Abba, whose name is far above all principalities, power, might, and dominion.
We then put our flesh upon the altar and say to Him:
I ask that my ways get completely consumed by Your holy fire and Your Ways come mightily into the earth.
As we have our meal there beside the altar, we thank Him by saying:
You have given me all of the sustenance that I need for today.
We then walk to the bronze laver, wash ourselves clean, then say to Him:
I have forgiven so please forgive me.
Turn and face the Tabernacle curtain. This is your last chance to go after the things of the world. On the other side of this curtain is a place of His Holiness and there is no room for worldly things in that space. If you decide to move closer to His presence, you say to Him:
Please keep me from being tempted by the things of this world. Please help me not be tempted by provision, comfort and authority. Give me the courage to trust in You and You alone. I’m leaving the world behind so please keep me safe from the Evil One.
As you walk through the Holy Place, your path is illuminated by the 7 Spirits of God and you look over to the table of faces to see the sons of Jacob looking back at you. You are part of Israel now. These are your people. You come to the table of incense and you finally come to realize and say:
All power, authority, and glory are Yours.
As you stand in that place of prayer at the table of incense, you look up and see that your Bridegroom has torn the veil that used to separate man from Abba. After all of this, after you have given up everything and become a servant of all, making your way into His presence, you declare once and for all:
I stand in full support of who You are.
Most of this narrative is derived from Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones.