Gentle Strength Series

The Paradoxical Sayings of Jesus

Gentle Strength

Matthew 5:5 & Selected Passages

This morning I've chosen for our Paradoxical Sayings of Jesus series one of the Beatitudes in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:5: "Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth."

Now, I suspect some of you will wonder, well, what's so paradoxical about that statement? Certainly, gentleness is a good thing, an excellent quality and to be desired in any and every person. We would expect Jesus to encourage us to be gentle.

Well, what's paradoxical about this statement is not that Jesus encourages us to be gentle, but the promise that comes with it—that those who are gentle will inherit the earth.

Now when Jesus made these statements, I'm sure that He was very deliberately intending to surprise us, and to make us wonder and think. He understood the power of putting two concepts together which generally don't go together. He knew the power of predicting that a certain character quality would predict an unlikely outcome. And that's exactly what He intended when He spoke this Beatitude. It was, at the time He said it, and still is today, an entirely unlikely result or outcome for a person who is characterized by gentleness.

Now just think about it for a moment. In this world, in this life, is gentleness a character quality that often promises that we will inherit territory; that promises that a result will be that we will take land? In this age, is gentleness something that promises us that we will inherit the whole earth, the world, as a result?

Absolutely not! In fact, qualities that are the very antithesis of gentleness are what characterizes those who take territory in this age. Violent and brutal aggressors throughout history have been those who conquer and subdue the nations of the earth. World history alone demonstrates this from the great empires of the Assyrians, to the Babylonians to Alexander the Great and then the Roman Empire, and even in the expansion of our own nation, the good ol' U.S. of A., the reason that these nations became so big and powerful was their willingness to enforce their authority and power on other nations because of their use of violence, their willingness to take up arms and aggressively take whatever they wanted. If anything, in the history of the world, it is generally the gentle and humble folks who end up being disenfranchised by the arrogant, the rich, the powerful, and the violent. And so when you hear this sort of promise, this sort of guarantee for the gentle, it makes absolutely no sense unless it is spoken by someone like Jesus, someone who is at least a prophet, and in this case the very Son of God—someone who knows the future, and knows and can achieve what God, as God Himself, has planned for those who serve Him.

What Jesus is encouraging us with here is the notion that a wonderful character quality like gentleness, which often produces little reward for us in the short-term, will in the long-term, in the Kingdom of God, produce great reward. The gist of what He's saying here is this—Repent, change your mind and be gentle, because will greatly reward the gentle in His coming Kingdom.

That's the only way gentleness in this world is going to be greatly rewarded—by God ensuring that it's rewarded in the Kingdom He will yet establish on the earth so that right makes might, rather might making right as it is in our world today.

This morning we're going to look first at what Matthew 5:5 meant to those who first heard it in their historical context and what therefore it should mean to us, then we're going to consider how gentleness is a characteristic of our God and especially His Son Jesus Christ. We're going to look at what gentleness is—how to define it. And finally the kinds of situations in our lives that especially call for gentleness.

So, imagine the scene once again when Jesus first spoke the Sermon on the Mount. He was on a green hill above the Sea of Galilee with thousands of people who had seen him do great miracles listening to Him. In Matthew 4:17 we have the message that Jesus was consistently proclaiming in the early days of His ministry, and it was this, "Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand."

God's Kingdom is near, it's right here. Why! Because, as it would turn out, Jesus was the King of the coming Kingdom. And now as their Messiah-King he had shown up in order to prepare them for the coming Kingdom. And for people to be prepared to enter the Kingdom, they must repent. They must change their mind about their sin and selfishness, and begin to follow God, they must begin to follow Jesus. For when the Kingdom comes, there will be a grand reversal. In the regeneration that will mark the coming of the Kingdom, the things of this world will be turned upside down, so that the righteous and the gentle will be greatly rewarded, and the unrighteous, the harsh and the violent will not be rewarded; in fact they will not even enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And so it's incumbent upon all those common, humble people who had come to see Jesus in that northern province of Galilee to repent of all those attitudes and actions they may have served them in this life, but will not serve them will once the Kingdom of God is established. And among those character qualities that needed to be jettisoned was the tendency to be ungentle—to be violent, to be harsh, to be unloving and to be uncaring.