Last week I came across this quote from a pastor, Mike Erre, who claimed in a podcast denouncing the recent Matt Walsh film, Am I Racist?,  “You cannot follow the Sermon On The Mount and engage in a culture war.” As someone who considers the Sermon on the Mount one of my favorite passages of Scripture, my immediate reaction was to find that statement entirely absurd. For in that sermon, Jesus challenges the hypocritical religious culture of His day. The Sermon on the Mount should also motivate us to engage the culture of our day as we stand firm on the truth of God’s Word.

Now, of course, there can be differing opinions among Bible-believing Christians as to how to best do that. I’m sure there are strong Christians that differ on their opinion of that particular movie or approach, but to say that ANY part of the Bible prohibits Christians from standing up to our increasingly pagan culture is ridiculous and heretical.

For our 2 Kingdom Messengers in the month of October, we will be walking through the start of that Sermon, the Beatitudes, and see the ways in which Christians are called to stand up to a culture that would force them to disobey the Lord. This series will divide the Beatitudes into two lists of four, the first list from Matthew 5:3-6 and the second from Matthew 5:7-10, and each week will study a pair of Beatitudes, one from each list.

Today we will start with the first Beatitude from each list, Matthew 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” and Matthew 5:7, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” Both of these Beatitudes lead us to humility – humility before God and humility before others. For when we do engage the culture around us, we need to do so in humility – not to serve ourselves or our own agenda, but as humble servants of the Great King and His Word.

To be “poor in spirit” requires acknowledging that, on our own, we are spiritually bankrupt. In ourselves we have nothing of value to offer God or this world when it comes to spiritual riches. All of our spiritual wealth and wisdom must come first from the Lord. We are all spiritual beggars. When we understand our spiritual poverty will we be able to understand how to receive the mercy of God and how to rightly extend that mercy to others. Jesus then promises that those who acknowledge their spiritual poverty are given the kingdom of Heaven.

A great example of this from the Old Testament is the account of Rahab. When Joshua sent spies to scout out the Promised Land, the men came to Jericho and found shelter and refuge in the house of Rahab the prostitute. When the officials of the king of Jericho questioned her, she protected the spies and sent the guards off in the wrong direction. In Joshua 2:11, she told the spies that when the people of Jericho had heard about the great victories the Lord had given His people over the kings of the Amorites, “our hearts melted in fear and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.”

Rahab recognized not only her own spiritual poverty, but the collective spiritual poverty of her people. She knew there was one true God, the God of Israel, and that the gods of their culture were powerless. Upon this realization and confession, she threw herself on the mercy of God. She asked the spies to show mercy to her and her household since she had been merciful to them – and the spies agreed. Rahab and her household were saved because she was willing to stand up to her culture and serve the Lord rather than men. Not only were Rahab and her family spared, but they were even welcomed into the people of the Lord – Israel. They were shown mercy because she was willing to show mercy to the spies who were condemned by her culture for being the servants of the true God.

We see this in many other examples in Scripture. Daniel served the Lord over the culture of Persia and was thrown into the lion’s den. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego stood up (literally) to the culture of Babylon and were thrown into the fiery furnace. In Acts 5, when the Apostles were arrested for causing a disruption, the Angel of the Lord miraculously freed them from prison and commanded them in Acts 5:20, “Go, stand in the temple courts and tell the people all about this new life.” When the Apostles did this, the upset and confused religious leaders brought them back in for questioning. However, the Apostles answered in verse 29, “We must obey God rather than human beings!”

We need to have the same courage as Rahab and the Apostles today. We need to publicly confess the only way out of spiritual bankruptcy is to turn in repentance to the riches of God’s mercy. As His faithful servants, we are required to honor the Lord above our culture and its secularized religion. Our culture, like those religious leaders, seeks to silence us. We are told that the Word of God is not welcome in the public square. Who will we be faithful to? As servants of the Kingdom of God, we are required to stand up and boldly call our culture to repentance through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.