Untitled Sermon (3)

Or what if you are involved in recruiting staff, is meek a word that we would find in the essential and desirable person specification.

Is meek a quality we look for in our politicians or leaders?

If you were to take a look at the Collins English dictionary, you find:

Meek.

1.

humbly patient or docile, as under provocation from others.

2.

overly submissive or compliant; spiritless; tame.

3.

Obsolete. gentle; kind.

Bit of a mixed bag really, docile is not a great look is it.

Brings to mind images of well trained pets.

Spiritless, overly submissive or compliant, tame.

There’s the pet thing again.

Then we get to the idea of meek meaning gentle and kind…..but oh, wait- that’s obsolete.

We’ve moved on, we don’t do that anymore.

We live in the days of” I’m worth it, and Have it your way and Just do it…….all ad slogans by the way.

These days the concepts of kindness and gentleness and humility are Obsolete.

Or at least as it pertains to meekness.

It seems we don’t do meek anymore, so our 3rd Beatitude comes as a bit of a surprise.

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth,"

Instead of trusting your own strength and abilities, Jesus calls you to leave who you are and all you have in the hands of God.

That’s where we’ll spend our time together today, and I’d like for us to think about the reality of meekness and the reward of meekness, and how these impact our lives as followers of Jesus, as disciples, as taught ones.

Firstly we’ll consider the reality of meekness,

and as we’ve just begun to think about:

· Meekness distorted.

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth,"

It’s a statement that seem’s counter intuitive, at least to the noise the media in our culture makes.

Modern life’s about living large and in charge, about making your breaks and taking your chances.

Boss level living.

Fake it till you make it.

The idea of being humble, patient, submissive, gentle and kind is a million miles away from the slogans we are bombarded with on a day to day basis.

Our culture constantly pushes messages of vanity, immediate gratification, and materialism.

Life is what you make it, and it’s yours for the taking.

Now we might consider this to be a contemporary problem, but it’s not, there was just as much of this kind of noise in the culture that Jesus was confronting in our text today.

In first century Israel, there were different groups, all wielding power and influence and each with a different expectation of what it meant to be part of the people of God.

Jesus’ words here echoed those of Psalm 37:10-11:

“In just a little while, the wicked will be no more;

though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.

11 But the meek shall inherit the land

and delight themselves in abundant peace.”

Those prophetic words were written by David, and they were speaking of the future fulfilment of God’s promise given through Abraham, that the people of God would inherit the land.

As Jesus spoke his words, a 1000 years had passed since David’s writing, and Israel had pretty much gone through the wringer.

100 years after their writing, the land was divided into the Northern and Southern Kingdom due to leadership wrangles and ambition and a pretty major lack of meekness.

Then there was 200 years of mainly wicked and corrupt leaders, 19 in total. Again, it seemed meekness was in short supply.

Then we have the Assyrian exile and the Babylonian exile which swept the people of God away from the land.

In both cases it most definitely not the meek who gained the victory and the land.

The Lord in his providence, brought the majority of the people back to the land in 537 B.C.

But this promise of David remained out of reach, because we know that they suffered harsh treatment under the hands of the Persians, then Alexander the Great, then the Syrians.

The last two centuries prior to Jesus life, was marked by a 100 year reign of the ruthless Hasmonean dynasty and finally we come to the situation in which we find the land in the time of Jesus life and ministry.

Roman rule, with a mixed bag of kings, procurators and governors appointed by the Emperor.

As Jesus spoke these words we know that Herod was the Tetrarch, the ruler of Galilee and Pontius Pilate was the Procurator of Judea.

There was a tension between the men, and the communities and cultures they represented. And this was a tension which was made worse by their own compromise, ruthlessness, cunning and self service.

Again, a distinct lack of meekness.

So, it seems that we have a 1000 years of history that contradict Jesus’ words.

The worship of the God of Israel, which was central to jewish identity was dominated by 4 groups.

The Pharisees, the Saducees, the Zealots and the Essenes.

In looking to scripture, in looking to this promise, each had a different view in how the restoration of the countries fortunes would be brought about.

The Pharisees were religious conservatives, who desired to see Rome overthrown and looked to God raising up his promised Messiah, who would overhthrow Israels foes in a spectacular revolution.

The Saducees were well educated, of the priestly class, highly political- and were looking to their own politicking to bring about an economic solution to Israel.

The Zealots hated the Romans, and were looking to a military solution, one which they held in the hands of their sicarii, dagger men, who assassinated the enemies of the Jewish state.

And then we have the Essenes, who opted out of all responsibility and involvement within society, and withdrew into desert communities.

They believed the solution was found in a reclusive lifestyle.

John Macarthur, sums up the cultural noise of the time this way:

The Pharisees sought a miraculous answer, the Saducees sought a materialistic answer, the Zealots sought a militaristic answer and the Essenes sought a monastic answer…..but Jesus cut right across all four philosophies and taught that. “..the meek will inherit the earth.

It’s an age old problem, man has always sought to gain the earth by his own will, resources and strength.

We always seek to take matters into our own hands.

That’s why Jesus message of the Kingdom, the Gospel is revolutionary.

That’s why the way Jesus calls those who are citizens of his Kingdom to live is revolutionary.

If we are trusting Christ as Our Saviour and looking to Him as Our Lord.

Then we are entirely new creations, new people, we are citizens of an entirely different Kingdom.

The world looks to its strength and power to inherit the earth.

Conquest, power and self effort.

Those who are citizens of Christ’s Kingdom look to his strength, to his power to inherit the earth.

Surrender, weakness and self abasement.

This Kingdom life is just as revolutionary, just as shocking, just as antithetical to the culture we live in as it was to the culture of 1st century Israel, even more so, as we live in a time where belief in the God of Scripture is no longer central to the life of our culture.

Our culture has made meekness, obsolete- gentleness and kindness, meekness is an old fashioned idea.

To be meek in the world’s eyes is to be docile, tame, spiritless.

It’s to be avoided.

And yet we have to deal with these words that Jesus has left us with.

To be meek in Jesus’ eyes is to be blessed, favoured, rewarded.

it is something to be desired.

Yet we wait for Jesus, we can be like the Pharisees, the Saducees, the Zealots and the Essenes.

We come up with our own ways to get things done, we may think we can earn our way, our politic our way, our push our way into God’s favour.

Or we can be like the Essenes, and think that pulling away, living a life of avoidance, can earn our way into God’s favour.

We know what it is like to live in a culture which is hostile to our faith, we also know what is like to look around throw our hands up.

We know what it is to feel the tension between the future promise of God’s word and the present reality of God’s world.

And to hold our hands up and say How long, Lord. How long?

The temptation for the people of God has always been to take matters into their own hands in some way, and that’s dangerous ground for us as Christians.

We are a people who are to trust in what has been done, what Christ has purchased by His blood.

We are to trust in his finished work on the cross and submit ourselves to the Lord’s providential will.

We need to hear these words from Jesus today, that our inheritance doesn’t rest on our own efforts, we don’t make our breaks and take our chances in the Kingdom.

Our inheritance comes through meekness.

So it’s vital that we understand what God means by meekness.

It’s vital we live in light of the reality of meekness.

Yet we must admit, as we have seen, our understanding of meekness has been distorted.

And to remedy this distortion we’ll look to scripture. (12mins).

· Meekness defined.

The Greek Bible word in Matthew 5:5 (praeis) is often translated “meek” or “gentle”, but it doesn’t mean “weak” at all. The word was used of a horse, which was powerful, but had come to be trained to submit to the will of its master. It is strength controlled; submitted to the will of its master. And that’s a good picture of the real meaning of meekness: trusting and submitting to the will of God.

It’s also worth us noting here, that the Beatitudes speak of a progression. Each one leads into the next.

It’s impossible to be trusting and submitting to the will of God unless you have by grace through faith in Christ come to realise your poverty of spirit.

Come to realise that in and of ourselves, we are bankrupt, we don’t come to Jesus to help us live better lives.

We don’t come to Jesus to be better people.

That view of trusting Jesus means we view him as only

contributing to our own small deposit of goodness.

But that’s a distortion of our true poverty, it’s not that we are living on a spiritual shoe string without Jesus.

Without Christ, we are bankrupt, not only are we unable to pay our way with God, the debt we owe him means we owe him our lives.

Literally.

That’s the deserved penalty for our rebellion.

But that’s the wonderful thing about God’s grace in Christ.

We don’t get what we deserve.

For when God in his grace opens our eyes to our spiritual destitution outside of Jesus, its then we are blessed, as those who are poor in spirit.

For that godly sorrow leads to repentance, and we mourn our sin, and how we have lived lives against God and his holy law.

And when we throw ourselves upon Christ, it’s then we are blessed, as those who mourn.

And having turned from our sin and turned to Christ we now are called to live as citizens of his Kingdom.

And that starts with a call to meekness.

A call to trust and submit our wills to God.

God’s grace in granting us poverty of spirit and godly sorrow has worked to show us where trusting ourselves and asserting our own will before God gets us.

So, the logical next step is that in love and gratitude and worship for being reconciled to God is to submit to God.

When we trust ourselves to God and submit our wills to God, its then we are blessed as those who are meek.

So we see each beatitude builds on a flows from one to another.

We can’t just jump in at 3 and expect a reward, a blessing, a inheritance.

Only by turning from sin and turning to Christ can we live lives submitted to God.

We can’t fake it till we make it.

It’s impossible.

If you can read the 10 commandments, go through the Sermon on the Mount, look at the life of Jesus and think you can live a good enough life based on your own strength.

Then you don’t know what it is to be poor of Spirit.

If that’s you today.

Look to Christ, seek him in prayer.

Ask him to show your helplessness, your absolute need of the forgiveness he has purchased.

It will help us to define meekness by looking at the wider context of scripture.

Especially when we are looking at isolated verses, as we are today.

We let scripture interpret scripture, as those who hold to biblical orthodoxy we believe that the Bible is without error and can’t contradict itself.

So, as we look at how meekness is described elsewhere in scripture we build a picture of what Jesus is calling us to here.