PURSUING HAPPINESS: Strength Under Control
Matthew 5:5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”
James 1:2-8; 19-25
1. Acts 17:6 – in response to Paul and Silas’ preaching of the Gospel and the conversion of numbers of Jews and devout Greeks and many of the city’s leading ladies – the leading Jews gathered a crowd of rabble rousers to arrest and drag them from their host’s house before the city authorities.
• Unable to find Paul and Silas, who were secretly hidden by their hosts and helped to escape, they dragged Jason, the host, and some of the new converts before the magistrates.
• The charge that they brought against these new believers was this: “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also…saying that there is another king, Jesus.”
2. Turning the world as we know it, upside down. Wherever the church has truly been the church and believers have been faithful in their witness as followers of Jesus Christ and not allowed the world to squeeze them into its mold - that is exactly what happens.
• And that is precisely the message Jesus clarifies for His disciples in the Beatitudes and the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.
• We discover here a wisdom that is so contrary to the mindset and ways of this world. In the Kingdom, those who want to go up need to go down – the way of exaltation is the way of humility. The way to be first is to be last. True strength is found in weakness. True riches in poverty or bankruptcy. True and lasting comfort in mourning.
3. We have discovered thus far that the very first Beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God” is the ground floor port of entry to the Christian life – acknowledging our utter spiritual bankruptcy before God.
• Whatever currency, and however much of it, we had acquired for ourselves in the world, has no purchasing power in God’s Kingdom and we come to God acknowledging our poverty.
4. The next step on God’s stairway to Abundant Life is that of mourning our condition – where our hearts grieve over the pain we have brought to the heart of God.
• We start seeing our sin and rebellion from God’s perspective and we grieve over it.
• Instead of comparing ourselves to those more wicked than we are, we see ourselves in the light of Christ and our hearts are broken in sorrow and repentance.
• It is at that point that the gracious mercy, forgiveness, and comfort of God floods our souls and we start experiencing His true happiness.
5. Today we move to the next step which pronounces God’s Blessing and Happiness on the meek and promises that they will inherit the earth.
• So, what images come to your mind when you think of “the meek”? In an aggressive, arrogant, self-assertive and self-seeking world that has elevated individual rights almost to a place of universal supremacy – meekness smacks of timidity, of weakness, of spinelessness and being a general doormat for others.
• Roget’s Thesaurus online confirms this perspective by offering the primary definition of meekness as “hesitancy” and offering as synonyms the following: backwardness, bashfulness, constraint, doubt, fear, hesitation, humility, insecurity, modesty, mousiness, reluctance, reserve, self-consciousness, sheepishness, shyness, timidity, timidness, timorousness, unassertiveness.
• Well, I’m sorry, but they have missed the boat on that one! It’s also the perspective that Hollywood uses to portray Christians and pastors in sitcoms, soaps, and movies so much of the time – as bumbling oaf’s and dimwitted, backward, irrelevant and spineless fools.
• Nothing could be further from the truth. The Biblical understanding of meekness is literally “strength under control” – and it is that thought that I wanted to capture with the picture on the front of your bulletin of the powerful stallion, with rippling muscles and rearing to go, but constrained by the bit in his mouth and the reins of his owner.
6. In Numbers 12 we have a story of Miriam and Aaron, Moses’ sister and brother questioning his authority as spokesperson from God, saying “Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us also?”
• And verse 3 of that chapter describes Moses in this way: “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all men that were on the face of the earth.”
• Believe me, no wimpy “Mr. Milktoast” would ever have been capable of leading 600,000 men plus women and children and livestock out of Egypt and through the Sinai desert for 40 years with all the mumbling and grumbling and criticism and stiff-necked rebellion he had to endure.
• Instead, Moses was a mighty and courageous man who allowed God to place a bit in his mouth and willingly placed the reins of control in God’s hands.
• In this story, instead of taking matters into his own hands, either to defend himself and justify his position or attack them for their jealousy, he left the matter in God’s hands to vindicate him.
• The Lord responds by speaking directly to all three of them at once, leaving no doubt about His choice of Moses as His spokesman and causing Miriam to be covered with leprosy.
• But there is no self-righteous or boastful glee at being vindicated. No “That’ll teach you to mess with me!” Instead Moses cries out to the Lord on her behalf, “Heal her, O God, I beseech thee.” Showing that the meek do not take delight in the punishment of the wicked for they know their own frailty and dependence on God’s mercy.
7. The first prayer I was taught as a child started out with these words: “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild…” The greatest demonstration of meekness ever is in the life of our Lord Jesus Himself.
• Here is the One through whom the entire universe was made and to whom all power and authority rightly belonged –
• Before whom demons trembled and fled.
• Who could speak to the wind and the waves – saying, “Peace. Be still!” and they obeyed Him.
• Who could command a dead man, in his tomb already for 4 days, to come out, and Lazarus heard his voice and responded in obedience.
• Who said to Peter at His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, after Peter had just hacked off the ear of the high priest’s servant – “Put away your sword. Don’t you know that I could appeal to my Father and He would immediately have sent me twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53)
• When Pontius Pilate said to Him before His crucifixion, “Don’t you know that I have power to release you and power to crucify you?”, Jesus replied, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above…” (John 19:11)
• Awesome power - willingly and sacrificially placed under the Father’s control so that His eternal purposes for each of us might be fulfilled. That’s meekness.
8. Psalm 37, of which we responsively read some portions in our Call to Worship, is described in Scripture as “The Wisdom of an Aged Man”. I encourage you to go read and reflect on this Psalm at home. In it the elderly King David compares and contrasts the lifestyle and outcomes of the wicked and the righteous – those who live to please only themselves and those who have surrendered their wills to God.
• Though the wicked may appear to prosper, they will soon fade like the grass.
• Though they draw their swords and bend their bows, and rely on violence and human strength, their day of accountability is coming and like smoke they will vanish away.
• But those who commit their way to the Lord, who take delight in His will and His ways, who choose to be still before Him and not take matters into their own hands, who patiently trust in Him, refraining from anger and forsaking wrath – the promise is there in verse 11: “The meek shall possess the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.”
9. So what does this psalm have to teach us about meekness?
• “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will act” (v.5). Meek people are those who trust God and have the blessed assurance that He is for them and not against them. Even though they may not know what tomorrow may bring, they know who holds tomorrow.
• “He will bring forth your vindication as the light, and your right as the noonday.” (v.6). Meek people are those who do not try to take matters into their own hands, but have rolled their burdens – their fears, their anxieties, their frustrations, their troubled relationships, their life circumstances onto the Lord and are trusting in Him to sustain them.
• “Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.” (v.7). Meek people wait patiently for God and his timing and choose not to explode with anger and frustration or allow bitterness and resentment over the apparent triumphs of those who oppose them to simmer within them. In fact the meek know their own frailty and weakness well enough that whatever may be said about them or against them isn’t half the story. They know that there was nothing they could do to justify themselves anyway and so they leave that matter in God’s hands – they exhibit a quiet confidence that He has got them, their lives and their circumstances in His loving care and will work all things out for His purposes and their ultimate good.
• Since “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”, meek people know they have no need to try to grab it or take it by force, but that it is the blessed inheritance of those who have made the Lord their God and in His time it will be given to them.
10. Just a couple of additional components of meekness – in James 1:19-21 we read, “Know this, my beloved brethren, let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
• James is referring to two kinds of people here – those who seem to live on the defensive and get irritated and angry without taking the time to really hear what another is saying and so the word of God is often lost on them because they take that word as a personal attack.
• The meek, by contrast, are those who listen carefully, are teachable – they allow the word to soak in - they reflect and ponder on that word so that God’s righteousness might be worked into them.
11. Notice that the passage states that the meek are “slow to anger”. It doesn’t state that the meek never get angry. In fact at times they do. Anger is not in and of itself a bad thing. It can be both good and bad depending on how it is handled.
• When Moses, the meekest man on earth, came down from Mt. Sinai with the 10 Commandments he had received from God and saw the people dancing around and worshiping the golden calf they had made, in holy and righteous anger he threw down and broke the stone tablets.
• When Jesus went into the temple in Jerusalem and saw the cheating and corruption of the money changers, He was consumed with Holy anger. He made a whip out of ropes, overturned the tables of the money changers and chased them out of the temple courtyard saying, “My Father’s house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it into a den of robbers.”
• When the meek get angry, it is not as a result of personal feelings that have gotten hurt or noses that have been bent out of shape – they take those hurts and bruises to the Lord and allow Him to heal them. They give no place to the enemy and don’t allow those wounds to stir up bitterness and resentment – for “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God”.
12. Our passage for today states that the meek are blessed, are truly happy, for they shall inherit the earth.
• The meek are able to be at peace because they know that God has everything under control. And even if they have to endure some adversity here and now, ultimately His purposes will be worked out.
• They are confident that wickedness and evil do not and never will have the final word – that truth and righteousness will prevail.
• They know that the earth and the fullness thereof remains the property of the Lord and He has chosen to make it the inheritance of those who walk with Him.
• As you hear these words this morning, I trust that you see yourself on that mountainside among the disciples of Jesus and as you are counted among the meek, so also begin to live in the good of your inheritance.
