Inheriting The Earth (1) &

Few of the beatitudes, I think, more starkly show the contrast between God's wisdom and
worldly wisdom than does beatitude number three.
Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.
Think it through with me for just a moment, in the world, how do you inherit the world?
Well, you inherit it by drawing on your natural strength, your natural ability.
You train it, you fine tune it, you aggressively step out into the arena,
toe to toe and head to head with whatever opponents you face and may the best man,
may the best woman win.
Well, Jesus says in the kingdom of God that's not how it works, the inheritance does not
go to the strong, it doesn't go to the powerful, instead it goes to the meek.
Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.
Of course, immediately raises the question, what does it mean to be meek?
And because sometimes a negative can be as helpful as a positive,
let me again begin this morning by pointing out what meek does not mean.
To be meek is not to be naturally shy or reticent.
And there are, of course, people like that aren't there.
They're just naturally shy, they hold back, they're never in your face,
they put their best foot forward, they do their best just to please other people.
And of course, that's not all bad because people like that are often very pleasant to get along with.
But where that comes out of their own flesh, it is usually governed by self-preservation
and a natural hesitation to engage life, it's a coping mechanism driven by fear,
fear of offending others, fear of not being liked, fear of losing your friends, fears of being found
out and so like a chameleon, they adapt to their surroundings in a desperate attempt to survive.
It might look like meekness, but it is not.
It's not a natural shyness, nor is it being weak.
To be weak is the lack strength and conviction.
You have no backbone, no courage, you're unable to stand up against whatever comes your way.
That's not the same as being meek, even though a lot of people confuse being meek with being weak.
As a matter of fact, I would make the argument that one of the reasons so many people are offended
by the teachings of Jesus and a lot of people are and drawn to the message of the gospel
is because they have this stereotypical image of being weak, this invitation to lay aside your strength,
this idea that somehow or another you're going to be particularly for males less than a man.
Well, that argument doesn't stand up in the face of Scripture because if you look at the people
in the Bible who are particularly singled out as being meek, you will discover they are far
from being weak. Take Moses, the Bible says concerning Moses in the Old Testament that he was very
meek, more than all men that were in the face of the earth. You could never say that Moses was a
weak man, the way that he stood up to Pharaoh, the way that he led the children of Israel through
the wilderness, the way that he fought for the inheritance of God's people. Moses was a man
of incredible strength, even while he was extremely meek. When you go to the New Testament, you
discover the Lord Jesus says concerning himself that he is meek and lowly and he invites you and me
to become like him, but don't ever confuse the meekness of Jesus with weakness because Jesus
had plenty of backbone. He was not afraid to stand up for righteousness, he was not afraid to take
on the political and the religious rulers of his day and yet the Bible says he was meek and the
Apostle Paul says concerning himself in the New Testament by the meekness and gentleness of Christ,
I appeal to you and the Apostle Paul by no stretch of the imagination can be called weak,
to be meek is not the same as being weak even though in the popular mind that is often the confusion.
And then being meek does not mean that you are a helpless victim.
Sometimes people get that impression, particularly when they read later on in Matthew,
chapter 5, teachings like somebody strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Somebody wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.
Somebody forces you to go with him one mile, go with him two miles, give to the one who asks of you,
do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. We read verses like that in the
sermon on the Mount and we think the invitation that Jesus has given us as an invitation to become
a helpless victim. We say to ourselves, well if you live that way, everybody's going to walk
all over you and we all know that if you allow people to walk all over you, that's exactly what they're
going to do. But if you look carefully at those verses, you will discover that in each of those
verses the verb is in the imperative that is to say you make the choice to turn the other cheek.
You make the choice of giving your cloak as well or going the extra mile. Nobody is taking
it away from you. You are freely giving it out of obedience to God and out of a sense of calling.
Jesus said, concerning his death on the cross, nobody's taking my life away from me. I am
laying it down. See, to be meek is not to be a helpless victim. It's not to be a doormat.
It's not to allow people to walk all over you. I was struck the other day by a little story,
a fellow by the name of Jay Upton Dixon, founded a group of submissive people called doormats.
And doormat stands for dependent organization of really meek and timid souls.
If there are no objections. And their motto was, the meek she'll inherit the earth,
if that's okay with everybody. And their symbol is a yellow traffic line.
To be meek is not to be that kind of helpless victim.
Well, if that's what it's not, then what does it mean to be meek?
Well, the word meek comes from a Greek word that is often translated as mild and gentle.
It was often used in connection with taming a wild horse. And already there, you begin to catch
some of the paradox because a tamed wild horse has not lost its strength. No, its strength has come
under submission and is now usable as opposed to wild brute force that cannot be harnessed for
a purpose. And so the dictionary definition of meek is to be humbly patient or submissive,
especially under provocation. Martin Lloyd Jones, I love his definition. He says to be meek
is to have a true view of myself expressed in an attitude of submission towards God and
forbearance and gentleness to other people. Still another way of wording it is to say to be meek
is an absence of pride and self-importance and a willingness to live humbly and gently.
Sir Winston Churchill captured it well when he was once asked, "Doesn't it thrill you to know
that every time you make a speech, the hall is packed to overflowing?" Well, he replied,
"It's quite flattering, but whatever I feel that way, I always remember that if instead of
making a political speech, I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as large."
That sort of helps you put in perspective when your head swells and absence of pride and self-importance
and a willingness to live humbly and gently. Let's try to flesh that out a little bit now,
because practically speaking, that means this. It means, first of all, an absence of arrogance or
an absence of a know-it-all attitude. We've all met people like that,
perhaps sometimes we ourselves in company are people like that. The chances are we don't see
ourselves that way. People who are confident about their opinion on every subject they need to
pontificate and they always lead the argument and they think their thoughts are better and more
knowledgeable than anybody else's. To be meek is to know that no matter how much I may know,
no matter how informed my opinion may be, in the total scheme of things, I know very little
indeed, and there are many others all around me who know much more than I do, and so therefore,
it behooves me to listen more than I speak. It behooves me to take in other people's opinions,
weigh them and learn from them. A person who is truly meek shows that meekness in an attitude
of teachability. You can take that person by the hand and they're willing to learn from people
all around. In that way, I might add that I just skipped over that a little bit. The attitude
number three really builds on the first two be attitudes because you will notice, again,
there is a logical progression. It begins with being poor in spirit. I know that what I am and
what I have to offer is never enough before God. I need His grace and His power. Understanding that
I am nothing leads me to mourning because now I recognize how far short I fall of the glory of God
and how impossibly difficult it is for me to be anything close to what God would have me be.
And the more I try, the more I fail and the more I'm driven by faith to Jesus,
while understanding that if I know what it is to be poor in spirit, if I know what mourning
for my sin is before God, then meekness is a quality that automatically follows out of that
because that drives how I live before God and how I relate to other people.
That's why you can take these be attitudes and just start somewhere in the middle.
Now you need to begin at the beginning. And then as by faith in Jesus, you discover His saving grace.
You can learn how to deal with your sin. You can grieve and yet be joyful and comforted at the same
time. And as you learn to leave that way, you know that you don't have to prove anything before
anybody else. You don't need to try to demonstrate your arrogance because humility before God
and before me and now becomes the defining principle of your life. Blessed are the meek
for they will inherit the earth. So it means an absence of arrogance not only,
but it also means a desire to know and do God's will. If I know that I'm not enough,
if I know that I'm grieving because of my failure, if I really love God and want to honor Him,
then I'm going to do whatever I can to try to get to know Him and to please Him. Since He's God
and I'm not, since we've come into a proper understanding of how the universe works,
I'm dust. He is eternal. Then I bow before His will. I learn to accept whatever it is that He
sends my way, knowing that in Christ He loves me intensely and even though it may seem very
painful at the moment, it comes through His hands of love. And having understood that He is God
and I am not, then I want to seek what it is that He wants me to do here because I don't know the way
and He does know the way. Then I'm going to study Scripture. I'm going to attend worship services
where the Word of God is being taught or Bible studies where Scripture is opened up. You see,
in my arrogance, I may know how to do life until God convicts me that I don't know how to do life
apart from Jesus and that drives me to my knees and that makes me look for Him and that makes me hunger
after His Word. When I want to know how to do marriage, when I want to know how to raise my children,
if I want to know how to do my business, if I want to know how to relate to my employer or to my
employee or how to relate to the world, it drives me to my knees, it drives me to the Scriptures,
and then I receive from Scripture what God has to say to me. James, you will recall, talks about
receiving with meekness, the implanted Word. How often don't you and I set ourselves up as judges
over the Word of God? We say, "Well, it's that smorgasbord effect that we've talked about earlier.
I think I'll take this. I like what he has to say about this part of my life and I like this and
I like this, but this I don't like and this part I really hate and so all of us set ourselves up
before God is judges over God. That is the epitome of arrogance because God will not lead those who
are arrogant. The Scripture says the meek will he guide in judgment and the meek will he teach
his way. Let's ask yourself the question this morning with regard to meekness.
How much of anew at all attitude do I carry with me? How much pride do I have in what I know
about Scripture or life for doctrine? And ask yourself the question, how hungry am I?
For God to show me how to do life in a way that truly honors Him. One of the reasons we gather
in a place like this as I said recently, when most of the rest of the world sleeps in in something
morning or sits around drinking their coffee and maybe watching television is because we know we
need to hear from God how to do life in a way that leads to blessing and Jesus says this is how you
do it. You humble yourself before God gets worse. Good news gets worse.
It's not only an absence of arrogance. It's not only a desire to do God's will,
but it is an ability to be open to receiving criticism and correction.
And I dare say this morning there is in the single place that is a more defining
sign of whether or not we are meek than in how we handle criticism and correction.
And if you've ever been in a situation where somebody comes along and you know they slap
you on the fingers, they point out to you attitudes or words or behaviors or belief systems that
that aren't right and they speak into your life then you will know that almost immediately and
automatically there's a guard that goes up. Is that not true? Little man, little woman on the inside
begins to stand up and you can come up with a thousand and one reasons why they're wrong and
you're right. And you know what? You might even be right and they might even be wrong.
But it's that attitude of being resistant to criticism and resistant to correction
that is an indication of pride. It is not an indication of the humility that comes with meekness
because see, think at it from a biblical point of view. If I really am poor in spirit,
that is to say I know that I haven't got what it takes. If I really grieve because I know I
haven't got what it takes and I'm driven to Jesus. And now I have become meek in my relationships
with other people. Then if you come along and you criticize me or correct me, you're no longer
my enemy, you're my friend. And that shows you how far we all have to go in terms of growing into
meekness because that is so foreign to most of us that we can't even begin to appropriate that
kind of reaction. And yet scripture says faithful are the wounds of a friend. See, if I really know
that I'm a sinner in need of grace and in need of salvation, then if you come along
and you agree with God about my situation, then I would gladly receive that as opposed to
rejecting it. And again, it shows how much we need to grow in Jesus to even begin to get our heads
around that kind of a biblical notion. And surely one of the tests of our Christian maturity
is how we respond in situations where we are not only being criticized fairly, it's one thing
to receive that. But when we're being criticized unfairly and the humility of Jesus needs to grow
in our hearts and in our lives. So it's an absence of arrogance, it's a desire to know and to do
God's will. It means that we are willing to be open to criticism and to correction. I can
tell you from a pastoral point of view, I know how hard it is to receive criticism myself,
but I know how people can turn against you and how quickly they can turn against you if you speak
into their lives and invite them to live consistently with their confession to follow Jesus.
And one of the characteristics of a mature Christian body is that we can speak the truth in love
to one another, knowing that our aim is to be more and more like Jesus. Well, it still gets worse,
I hate to tell you. Because the fourth practical way of working that out is interesting
God to defend us. And again, if you've ever been in a situation where you have not only been
criticized, but you have been attacked, somebody's come after you and they've wanted to do you
in. And there isn't a shred of love in it and they have power over you, then you will not only know
the terrible pain of feeling like a victim, where do I go for deliverance? But you will know that
everything inside you rises up and you want to fight for everything that you're worth. And when
somebody wants to blacken your reputation, if somebody wants to destroy your security or
significant relationships in your life or somebody tries to muscle in into your place in life
or in relationships, then you will know that automatically again on the inside this whole program
begins to run and you start trying to figure out how do I survive not only in this battle,
but how do I come out on top? Nobody needs to teach you with me that because it is native to
the sons and the daughters of Adam and Eve. We all fight for our place. But if you look at
Scripture, and if you look at the Lord Jesus, then you discover that the Lord Jesus, though he
was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped or a thing to be
taken by force, instead he humbled himself as a slave even to death on a cross because he put his
hope and his trust in God. And many years later, the Apostle Peter put it this way in the context
of Christian suffering and how Christians ought to respond to the abuses of a pagan government
that was persecuted them. He says, "Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should
follow in his steps." Now listen to this, he committed no sin and no deceit was found
in his mouth. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered,
he made no threats, instead he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. Now listen to that
carefully. There was no sin in him, there was no deceit in his mouth. In other words,
he wasn't guilty of any of the things that he ever got accused of. Now you and me, when we get
accused, there's almost always some grain of truth somewhere. Few of us are completely blameless
or without fault in controversies or difficulties that we encounter. Jesus got insulted simply because
of his righteousness and whereas you and I would be inclined to think of how could I get even?
The Bible says he didn't retaliate and when you and I, under the pain of suffering,
make threats, I'm going to get you for this or just you wait until I get my opportunity or
may God strike you, Dad. He made no threats, instead he entrusted himself to him who judges
justly. And there you have the defining principle of what it is to be meek because when I know that
I have no rights, when I know that I only live by the grace of God that through faith in Jesus,
I am the child of God and that I belong to God and that God is responsible for defending me,
then I don't have to defend myself. I don't have to fight back in order to hold on to the little
that I feel that is being taken away from me because you see typically, now listen carefully to this,
typically the more you defend yourself and the more you fight, the deeper a hole you dig and
I'll tell you why that is. Those who are truly your enemies are not going to believe you anyway
and the more you explain and the more you try to get out of it, the more you are just demonstrating
to them in the words of Shakespeare, me thinks he doth protest too much. You sound guilty because
you're so anxious to clear your name. Far better, just to trust in God and to trust God to take
care of your reputation and for God to take care of your place because if you're his child,
if he before you, then it doesn't matter who is against you and if God is in favor of you,
he can make even your enemies as the book of Proverbs to be addressed with you.
And those who are your friends, they're already persuaded if they truly are your friends and they
know you. And so typically speaking, the model to follow is the model of Jesus when he was dragged
before the courts and suffered all kinds of false accusations. The Bible says that he was like a
lamb led to the slaughter that before its shearers was down and he opened not his mouth.
Now if you've ever been in that situation and more than once in my life I've been there,
I'll tell you that doesn't come natural to the sons and the daughters of Adam
because it is so hard to believe that God is really there and that He will really vindicate
us as He vindicated Jesus on the glorious day of the resurrection. But somebody says, does that mean
you never explained? Does that mean you never defend yourself? Does that mean you never try to
give an explanation? Well, no. There is one condition in situation where, biblically speaking,
you will find it justified to offer an explanation or a defense. Actually, there are a couple.
One is before a legal court type situation where the truth needs to be discovered and you are
invited to state your case. In an instance like that, you need to tell the truth and false
modesty in that situation does not serve the cause of justice. But there's another situation
and that is when the well-being of other people demands it. Because you see what happens with
slander and accusation is that because there's always a grain of truth to it, there are well-meaning
people who get confused. And they hear one story, they hear another story, and after a while,
even the best of friends in the most committed of Christians begin to wonder, well, what really
happened in that situation? Did he or did he not? Did she or did she not? And it's at instances
like that where our motivation is not simply to clear our name or simply to hold on to our place
or simply to receive the praise of man. So in those situations where we care about the well-being
of those who are being led astray because of accusations made in our direction, that we need
to mount a defense and to explain who we are, what we did, and what is the truth of that situation,
always being very careful that we don't end up slinging the same kind of mud that is being
slung in our direction. And a classic illustration of how that works is the Apostle Paul in
Second Corinthians. The Apostle Paul on Second Corinthians gives us the clearest indication
of his own frustration and pain because it is a situation where he has been falsely accused,
and the people that he led to Christ in that situation have turned against him, and they have
catered towards false prophets and false apostles who are promising them the whole world,
but who are trying to win their loyalty for their own purposes. And so here you have a church
that is being led astray because they are naively being trapped by those who present a gospel.
That is not really the gospel because it avoids the offense of the cross. And if you know
the closing verses of Second Corinthians, some people think it was a separate letter altogether.
Paul launches into this incredibly spirited defense of himself, and he talks about boasting
of having been caught up into what the Third Heaven and how much he has suffered for the gospel
and what a great Apostle and a prophet. You remember the story, don't you? And you read that,
and you say to yourself, "Paul, you're a fool." In fact, he even says that about himself. I sound
like a fool. And then you say to yourself, "All right, Paul, aren't you going over the top here?
Aren't you not practicing what you preach in terms of trusting God to be your shield and your
fortress, the glory and the lifter of your head?" And you'd swear that that's what he was doing
until you get to verse 19 of chapter 12 of Second Corinthians, and then he puts your thoughts into
words when he says, "Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves to you?"
We have been speaking in the sight of God as those in Christ, and everything we do to your friends
is why? For your strengthening. See, Paul's not trying to clear his own A here. He knows what it is
to have a good reputation or what it is to have a bad reputation. Frankly, he doesn't care very much.
Because to him, all that matters is, do I have God's blessing? Do I have God's approval?
But he recognizes that as his name is being slandered as an apostle of God,
the people that have looked to him are losing their faith and getting off track. And so for their
well-being and therefore their salvation, he mounts this spirited defense. And he says, "I'm defending
myself, not for my sake, but for your sake. I want you to know the truth so that you can follow Jesus
and not be led astray." That makes sense. That's very different from defending yourself.
And whenever you find yourself in a situation where you want to defend yourself,
then you know you need to go to the Lord and you need to say, "Okay, Lord, where is this coming from?
And why am I doing this? Because if I'm going to be meek in the biblical sense of the word,
not weak, not shy, not a helpless victim, but if I'm going to be a true Christ follower,
then, Lord, I want to be like Jesus. I want to learn to put my hope and my trust in God."
Now, that's where we're going to stop this morning. Next time when we come back to this,
Lord willing, we're going to look at what happens when we live this way. And we're going to discover
that as we live this way, according to the teaching of Scripture, paradoxical as it is,
we inherit the earth. And when we come back to this, we're going to see what that looks like
in the real world and for the age to come.
[Music]
To make these ends as a mother, I know the strength to praise and mirror and earth. I am nothing. I am nothing.
Without you.
And take my voice and pour it out, let it sink the song to mercy I have found.
I am nothing. I am nothing without you.
All my soul means it's all your love to travel with all my will.
We'll see that I have nothing without you.
Take my body and near the end, may it be broken as an offering of love.
I am nothing. I am nothing. Without you.
All my soul means it's all your love to travel with all my will.
To another world, we'll see that I have nothing without you.
All my soul means it's all your love to travel with all my will.
We'll see that I have nothing without you.
Take my time here on this earth, let it glorify all that you are for I am nothing.
I am nothing without you. All my soul means it's all your love to travel with all my will.
We'll see that I have nothing without you.