Reined In and Ramped Up - Matthew 5:5 - August 7, 2011
Series: Kingdom Life – A World Turned Upside Down #3
Over the last several weeks that we have been together we’ve been looking at the Sermon on the Mount; specifically, at the Beatitudes as found in Matthew chapter 5. I will ask you to turn to Matthew 5 again this morning as we take a look at the 3rd of the Beatitudes that Jesus has given us. As you are turning there, let’s do a bit of a quick review so that we’re all on the same page. Each of the Beatitudes starts with what word? …. That’s right – each Beatitude begins with the word “Blessed” which is a word that describes, “a deep seated happiness.” The world around us is perpetually seeking after an enduring happiness and not finding it; Jesus tells us where true and lasting happiness is to be found.
And the first thing He tells us here is that true and lasting happiness will be experienced by those who are poor in spirit. “Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Now, we cannot make ourselves poor in spirit. You can’t wake up one day and say, “today is the day that it’s going to happen.” It’s not the work of a man or a woman – it is the work of the Spirit of God that opens our eyes to the reality of our spiritual poverty. That poverty has been there all along – we just haven’t recognized it for what it is. But when the Holy Spirit begins to work in a person’s life, as He opens our eyes to see God as He is, it’s then that we begin to see ourselves as we really are. When are lives are seen against the backdrop of God’s glory, and His holiness, we begin to clearly see the depth of our spiritual poverty and we begin to understand just how totally dependent we are on the grace of God for our salvation. We bring nothing to the table when it comes to salvation. That’s why the apostle Paul says “none can boast” because salvation is a work of God from first to last.
Now as we come to terms with the reality of our spiritual depravity, and of how offensive our sin is to a Holy God, there is a grief that begins to well up within us. We mourn our sin. We see it as God sees it. We see it in all it’s ugliness and we abhor it. We are filled with sorrow – not a worldly sorrow which is here today and gone tomorrow – but a godly sorrow that leads to repentance. We are so offended by the reality of our sin, that we mourn it, and we are so deeply grieved by it that we turn from that sin to the wholeness that is found in God alone. That is why Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” We are comforted as we find healing and forgiveness and new life in Jesus.
Which brings us to the third Beatitude; Matthew 5:5, read it out loud with me, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. ” (Matthew 5:1–5, NIV) When we began this series I told you that Jesus would turn our perception of the world upside down. We have seen that already as we’ve looked at the first two Beatitudes and we see the same thing here in the 3rd Beatitude as well. The things the world values are not the same things that God values.
Jesus proclaims that it is the meek who are blessed – but the world despises meekness. They equate it with weakness, and if there is something our culture hates, it is weakness. Survival of the fittest, right? The whole theory of evolution that people have bought into is based on this idea that the weak will perish and only the strong will survive. This is the worldview by which so many live their lives. This is their belief system and it impacts the way they live.
But the world’s got it wrong. Meekness, isn’t the same, as weakness. Someone once said that “meek” is the untranslatable word. By that they meant that there is no one word in the English language that captures the full meaning of the Greek word that we translate as, “meek.” That’s why in our Bibles it’s translated in different ways in different verses. In some places it will be rendered as “gentle,” in others, “humble,” and in others still, as, “meek.” All three of those words share something in common but they each convey a slightly different image as well. If you combined them all together we would begin to understand this meekness that Jesus is talking about. And that meekness is not the same as weakness.
Now some of you here this morning grew up around horses. And some of you here at camp work with the horses pretty much every day. But horses have always been something of a mystery to me. The first time I sat on a horse was for my sixth birthday. It was the worst birthday ever! Don’t get me wrong - I had longed to ride a horse for all of my short life. You see, at that time I wanted to be a cowboy when I grew up and to be a cowboy you needed to be able to ride a horse, so this was truly the opportunity of a lifetime for me. But the moment mom and dad put me on that horse my excitement turned to terror and I began to cry. I’ve seen pictures of me on that horse – I was not a happy camper.
Now fast forward ten or so years. I’m in high school and a few of us decided we would go and rent some horses at a stable just outside of town and ride around the half section they had set apart for that type of thing. I agreed to go because the trauma of that birthday party had faded a bit in the intervening years and riding a horse once again seemed like a good idea. But I was still a little gun-shy so when the owners asked if I had ever ridden a horse before, I said, “No.” I have since learned that that means you are guaranteed to get the horse that is on it’s last legs. When this horse moved at all it was at a slow meander and each step seemed to be a profound effort for it. I had the impression that at some point he was just going to give up and call it a day and lie down wherever we happened to be. On the other hand, one of the girls who was with us said she had ridden before and so they gave her what we might call a more spirited horse. She got up in the saddle and she was gone in the blink of an eye – we didn’t see her again until much later when she got the horse under control.
Her horse needed to be reined in. Mine needed to be ramped up. You could think of meekness as being something somewhere between those two extremes. Meekness is not weakness. Meekness is strength restrained. It is power, under control. Jesus is the perfect example of meekness.
Jesus invites us to come to Him saying, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ” (Matthew 11:28–29, NIV) That word, “gentle,” is the same word translated as, “meek,” in Matthew 5:5. Jesus was meek but He was certainly not weak.
When Jesus was betrayed and arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, Scripture tells us that Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest. Peter wanted to defend and to protect his Lord. But Jesus said, “Put your sword back in it’s place … Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and He will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:52-53, NIV) The power was there. It was Jesus’ to command. But He chose not to wield it. He chose to reign in His power and give Himself over to His Father’s will.
That is meekness. And again, it’s not something that we can make ourselves to be. Instead it flows out of the awareness of our spiritual poverty, out of the brokenness that leads us to mourn our sin, and it’s awakened within us by the experience of God’s grace, and it’s lived out in two directions. It’s lived out between ourselves and others and between ourselves and God. Those are the two directions in which we live it – horizontally with one another – and vertically with the Lord.
In relation to one another meekness is that quality of the spirit which enables us to live out Paul’s words to the Philippians. Let’s turn to Philippians, chapter 2 for a moment. Philippians 2, beginning in verse 1. Listen carefully as we read these words.
“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. [Selfish ambition and vanity, pride and arrogance, are the opposites of meekness.] Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! ” (Philippians 2:1–8, NIV)
A spirit of meekness being lived out in a marriage, in a family, in a place of work, in a church, has the power to profoundly change the way we interact with one another. Meekness leads to peace, it leads to unity, it leads to contentment, because meekness is willing to value others above itself. Think of all the things that tear marriages and families and churches apart. Many times it’s because someone, or some group of people, get the mindset that there is only one way to do things right and that is their way. And when people take that stand on the non-essential things, relationships are sundered, hearts are hurt, and households and churches divided. The kingdom of God suffers when we demand our own way without regard for the larger family of God.
Every parent with more than one child sees the truth of this lived out on a regular basis. When there is no spirit of meekness within the children they each demand their own way, they want to be served the ice cream first, they want to be the one to choose the movie that the family will watch, they want you to prepare the food they like even if no-one else likes it. Inevitably that leads to hurt and anger and frustration and sometimes bitterness and resentment. But it’s no different for us as adults. If that attitude of meekness is not a part of who we are, the issues may be different, but the end result will be just the same.
A person who is meek does not need to get their own way to be content. They don’t need to prove themselves right before everyone else. They don’t need to be seen as better then, or superior to, anyone else in their life. They don’t need to demand their rights. They humbly consider others above themselves. They do not ask, “What do I need?” instead they ask, “What does this other person need?” They don’t ask, “How can I be served?” instead they ask, “How can I serve others?”
Jesus, the divine son of God, being equal with God, made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant. That’s meekness. Jesus once said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” (Mark 9:35, NIV) Life in the kingdom is life turned upside down! And the meek are blessed, they are happy, because they have surrendered the need to be number 1. They have taken a good hard look at themselves and have seen themselves, not as they want to be, but as they really are. They have seen the good, the bad and the ugly and have come to terms with it. Perhaps a good way to put it is how Paul put it in his letter the Galatians. He said, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ” (Galatians 2:20, NIV)
Friends, meekness comes about as we die to self and let Christ live in us. Less of us, and more of Him, in each day. Which leads us to the vertical dimension of meekness. Meekness comes about, as we’ve already said, as we become aware of our spiritual poverty, as we are broken by our sin and humbled by God’s grace. When we understand the futility of the manner in which we have been living our lives, our hearts become receptive to God’s ways. Meekness towards God is evidence of a surrendered life. And it’s lived out in that vertical relationship as we humbly and meekly and willingly surrender our desires and submit our wills unto the Lord our God and as we seek to live our lives for His glory.
How about you and me? Is meekness a quality that characterizes our relationship with God? Here’s a good way to put it to the test. Take your Bible and begin reading. Start in the New Testament. Read carefully as you look for those principles and commands that are to govern the way we live our lives. Look for those verses that challenge the way you are living your life right now. Pride demands that God bow down to our desires. Meekness bows the knee to God and surrenders to Him. So when you get to those verses that tell you to love your enemies and find that you are filled with hatred, what are you going to do? When you come across a verse, men, that demands you love your wife and lay down your life for her, how will you respond? Wives, when you come across that verse that requires you to submit to your husband as to the Lord, what will you do with it? Those of you who are of marrying age, the word of God tells us not to be unequally yoked together with non-believers. What will this mean for you as you search for the one who will one day be your spouse? The Bible tells us, “Do not be drunk but be filled with the Holy Spirit.” What are you filling your life with?
See, as we give ourselves to the reading of God’s word we may find that there are many things that we, in our flesh, rebel against. But we rebel against them because we know that they are calling us to something else, to another way of doing life. The flesh says, “No!” but the spirit that is meek cries out in faith, “Not my will but yours be done!”
Meekness is Eli, learning that his life is forfeit because he did not restrain the sin of his sons, declaring, “He is the Lord; let Him do what is good in His eyes.” (1 Samuel 3:18, NIV) It is Job, faced with the loss of everything he has held dear, worshipping God and proclaiming, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” (Job 1:21, NIV) It’s Jesus, praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42, NIV) And it is you and me, every time that the Word of God challenges the way we are living our lives, surrendering the self-will and embracing the will of God – “Father, not my will, but Yours be done.”
Meekness is the attitude of the heart towards God that says “I will submit my life to the will of God in all things.” James 1:21 says this: “Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. ” (James 1:21, NIV) James is referring to the readiness to be taught by the word of God that ought to characterize a believer’s life.
A meek man, or woman, knows that it is God alone who sits upon the throne; that life isn’t so much about them as it is about God, and, as we learn in the book Job, that nothing can befall us unless the Lord permits it or brings it to be, for He alone is in control. The meek will seek to trust God, and to do good, in the face of a world that denies God, and does evil. A person who is meek will open up the Word of God, not assuming they know what it all says, but open it with the expectation of hearing afresh from God in each day and willing to do whatever it takes to bring their life into alignment with that same Word. That’s meekness towards God.
Now, as with each of the Beatitudes, Jesus gives us a promise. The second half of Matthew 5:5 declares that it is the meek who will inherit the earth. That’s not how it is today but it is how it will be one day when Jesus reins in fullness here. And such truth shows us again the upside down nature of the kingdom of God. In His economy the least become the greatest, the despised become the honored. In those verses from Philippians 2 that we read earlier, Paul reveals to us a Jesus who humbled Himself and became obedient even to death. God honors such meekness. Beginning in verse 9 we read these words: “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. ” (Philippians 2:9–11, NIV) And so it is and so it will be that the meek will inherit the earth.
I heard a song on the radio the other day with these words, “We’re not here for a long time – we’re here for a good time.” In other words live it up because we are here to have fun and to be happy. But folks, happiness is not the goal. It’s not what we ought to be striving for.
Someone once said, “Happiness is a result. It’s what we find when we’re looking for something else.” In the book of Jeremiah, God the Father speaks to the people and says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. ” (Jeremiah 29:13, NIV) And Jesus speaks to His disciples telling them to “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to” (Matthew 6:33, NIV) them as well. As we seek God and His kingdom with all our hearts we will find more than we anticipate for we will find the happiness that our hearts long for. So what are you seeking after in your life?
Let’s pray.
