The Only Way to Happiness: Be Gentle
Notes
Transcript
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Introduction:
Introduction:
Like the first two beatitudes, this one must have been shocking and perplexing to the hearers of Jesus Christ.
Because He taught principles that were totally foreign to the thinking of the day.
The crowd that Jesus was speaking knew very well how to act spiritually proud and spiritually self-sufficient.
They were great in erecting their own pious facade.
Because they had actually believed that the Messiah was going to come down and would commend them for their goodness.
Matthew, vols. 1-4 (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary) Chapter 15: Happy Are the Meek (5:5)
They eagerly anticipated that the Messiah would deal gently with them and harshly with their oppressors, who for nearly a hundred years had been the Romans. After the Maccabean revolution that freed them from Greece, the Jews had a brief time of independence. But Rome’s rule, though not as cruel and destructive, was much more powerful than that of Greece. Since 63 B.C., when Pompey annexed Palestine to Rome, the region had been ruled primarily by puppet kings of the Herodian family and by Roman governors, or procurators, the best known of which to us was Pilate.
One day, Jesus had one of the strongest exchanges with the Pharisees.
Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?
The fact was , of course, that Israel’s history was one of repeated conquest and oppression, by Egypt, Assyria, the Medes and Persians, the Greeks, and, at that very time, the Romans.
Apparently pride would not allow those Pharisees to acknowledge one of the most obvious fact of their nation’s history and of their present situation.
All Jews hoped for deliverance of some sort, by some means.
Many were expecting deliverance to come through the Messiah.
The Zealots, as their name implies, were the most vocal and active proponents of deliverance.
Many of them expected the Messiah to come as a powerful, irresistible military leader who would conquer Rome in the same way that Rome had conquered them.
They were not, however, waiting passively for their deliverer, but were determined that, whenever and however He might come, they would do their part to make His job easier.
Their numbers, influence, and power continued to grow until Rome brutally attempted to crush Jewish resistance.
In A.D. 70 Titus totally destroyed Jerusalem and massacred over a million Jews.
Three years later Flavius Silva finally succeeded in his long siege against the stronghold at Masada.
When the Jewish rebelliousness continued to frustrate Rome, Hadrian swept through Palestine during the year 132-135 and systematically destroyed most of the cities and slaughtered the Jews living there.
In Jesus’ day the aggressive, rebellious Zealots were not many in number, but they had the sympathy and moral support of many of the people, who wanted Rome to be overthrown, however it was done.
However, in whatever way various groups of people expected the Messiah to come, they did not anticipate his coming humbly and meekly.
Yet those were the very attitudes that Jesus was both teaching and practicing.
The idea of a meek Messiah leading meek people was far from any of their concepts of the messianic kingdom.
The Jews understood military power and miracle power.
The even understood the power of compromise, unpopular as it was.
But they did not understand the power of meekness.
The people as a whole eventually rejected Jesus because He did not fulfill their messianic expectations.
He even preached against the means in which they had put their hope.
In their minds, Jesus could not possibly be the Messiah, and the final evidence was His crucifixion.
I mean, the OT taught that anyone that hangs on a tree is cursed of God (Dt. 21:23).
And even as He was dying the Jewish leaders could not resist a last taunt against His claim to be Savior and Messiah.
He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.
He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.
But Jesus’ rejection began long before the crucifixion.
When He began the Sermon on the Mount by teaching humility, mourning, and meekness, the people sensed something was wrong.
This strange preacher could hardly be the deliverer that we are looking for.
Jesus’ teaching seemed new and unacceptable to most of His hearers simply because the OT was so greatly neglected and misinterpreted.
They did not recognize the humble and self-denying Jesus as the Messiah because they did not recognize God’s predicted Suffering Servant.
That was not the kind of Messiah that they wanted.
And then Jesus hits them with this wild and wacky paradoxical sermon that was a head shaker and an eye roller.
If you want to be Happy, Be Poor?
If you want to be Happy, Be Sad?
If you want to be Happy, Be Hungry and Thirsty?
If you want to be Happy, be Meek?
Jesus continues this message to these listeners but opening up to them reality of what Kingdom Living looks like.
HE has already said, Happy are those that realize their spiritual bankruptcy, that they have nothing to bring to God.
For they are the ones that will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.
Happy are the ones that mourn over their sin, because they are the ones that will find the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
And I want to break the next beatitude in four manageable parts;:
First, The Concept of Meekness, what does it mean?
Second, The Clarity of Meekness, how is it manifest in the Scriptures.
Third, The Conclusion of Meekness, what is the result of someone who is meek?
Fourth, The Consequences of Meekness, why is meekness necessary?
Now, we will start today and see how far we will get..
These are very important things that we understand.
Notice:
I. The Concept of Meekness (vs. 5a)
I. The Concept of Meekness (vs. 5a)
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
The word “meek” is the Greek word “πραΰς” and basically means, “to be gentle, to be humble.”
To give you the concept of what the Bible means when it speaks about the meek, let me draw your attention to two areas.
A. The Incorrect Concept
A. The Incorrect Concept
The incorrect concept of meekness that our society placed on this attribute is that the meek are the weak.
That meekness denotes cowardice, spinelessness, timidity, or the willingness to have peace at any cost.
One dictionary that I used defined meekness as:
deficient in spirit and courage
Meek people are seen as people that do not exert their rights, that allow people to walk all over them and let people do to them whatever they want to do.
The incorrect concept meekness sees those people as suffering from a horrible case of passivity.
Meek people are seen as people that are push-overs.
Meek people are seen as not self-assertive, people that are not motivated.
They are seen as people that just exist, but really have no purpose.
Soft spoken, and effeminate.
That is the thing that makes this such a paradoxical sermon, in that it the exact opposite of how the world says that people should be.
You should never be viewed by people as bring a push-over.
The world says that if you allow people to push you around, they will do it and you will become enslaved to them.
The world says that we should be people that always exert our rights and our privileges and should never let anyone take them away from us.
And if someone tries to take away our rights, then the fight is on because we will fight for our rights.
The world looks at meek people as totally weak people who need to learn to stand up for themselves.
Never allow anyone to take the credit for what you do.
Exert your pride and do not let anyone take advantage of you.
That is how the world perceives the idea of meekness.
But that is an improper concept of meekness.
B. Proper Concept of Meekness
B. Proper Concept of Meekness
So while that is the concept of meekness that the world gives, it is not the idea that our Lord had when He said, “Blessed (Happy) are the meek...”
Meekness is power under control, it is someone who has yielded control to someone else.
Meekness, if you think about it, is really the most kind of power and actually has more power than a person who exerts himself.
Meekness is not that a person is weak; on the contrary.
All of the strength is there, all of the power is there, it is just not self-asserted.
Listen, wherever you have a broken heart, wherever you have a sense of spiritual bankruptcy, wherever you have mourning over sin, you have submission.
And submission to God is meekness.
you could liken it to the taming of a lion.
When a Lion is tamed, he is no less strong, only yielded to the will of another.
It is the same lion, just under control.
Not impotent, not cowardly, but controlled.
Meekness is literally the person who gives up his power, gives up his agenda, gives up his will, gives up his purposes, his goals, his dreams, his ambitions to come under divine control.
Wind under control is a gentle breeze.
Wind out of control beings devestation and deadly hurricanes.
Meekness; therefore, is a person that has power that is under control.
Who willingly gives up his abilities and will for the divine will of God.
One writer put it this way:
John MacArthur Sermon Archive The Only Way to Happiness: Be Meek
“This is the fruit of the Spirit which is found upon the soil of spiritual poverty, contrition and mourning, a noble flower which grows out of the ashes of self-love upon the grave of pride. On the one hand a man sees his own utter ruin, his unworthiness and misery. On the other he contemplates the kindness and benignity of God in Christ Jesus. The internal characteristic is a disposition of heart which through the keen perception of its own misery and the abounding mercy of God has become so pliable, so flexible, so tractable, or movable, that no traces of its original ruggedness, of its wild and untamed independent nature remain.”
That is meekness.
The person of meekness is willingly to give up everything and anything in this world because he knows that God has a better plan and a better world.
For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.
In a word, a person that has died to self never mulls over injuries received, never mulls over shattered ambitions and dreams, bears no grudges.
And by the way, this is not a natural quality, this is a gift from God.
Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.
Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.
Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.
For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.
Meekness is waiting for the Lord, that is what it is.
But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
The Psalmist gives u she attributes of a person that had meekness.
John MacArthur Sermon Archive The Only Way to Happiness: Be Meek
“Trust in the Lord,” … verse 3, “Trust in the Lord. Verse 4, “Delight in the Lord. Verse 5, “Commit your way to the Lord.” Verse 7, “Rest in the Lord. Do not fret.” Verse 8, “Do not fret.” Verse 9, “Wait for the Lord.”
All of those attitude are the attitudes of the meek, they just give up everything for the purposes of God.
I could exert my own will, my own power, but the meek person is the person that gives up those things for the will of Him that saved you.
Listen, giving up your power, will, ability, or rights for the purposes of God has nothing to do with cowardice; that is what the broken in Spirit do, that is what those who mourn over their sins do.
It is the attitude, when all the “would be” disciples went away and stopped following Christ, and Christ asked them it they were going to go away to:
Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.
Follow this: if you are broken in spirit and you realize your spiritual poverty, and you are mourning over your sins; if that is truly the attitude of your life, then what can you do but yield?
Just commit your way to the Lord, that is not cowardly, that is meekness.
Meekness is not the absence of assertiveness, it is the absence of self-assertiveness.
It is using your strength for the glory of God and the betterment of others.
The Lord may call you do to something that will take a tremendous amount of courage.
So meekness is not indolence.
The Lord may call you to do something that is going to take a tremendous amount of energy and effort.
Meekness is not a lack of conviction.
It is not wishy-washiness.
Meekness say, in progression, “Lord, I have nothing to offer, I am broken, I am bankrupt, I mourn over my bankruptcy, I must therefore, be humbled before you and anything that is to occur in my life of value and blessing that pleases you, you must do.”
“I commit it to you, I trust you, I delight in you, I wait for you.”
In the ultimate sense, meekness is complete surrender to God.
I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.
Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.
For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.
I have yielded my life to the Father.
He sets the example for us.
Jesus was no coward, He was not weak, He was meek.
Now I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, who in presence am base among you, but being absent am bold toward you:
Jesus had power under control and it was under the control of the Father.
Hr yielded up the prerogatives to use His divine attributes.
He gave up the right to independently use His attributes to God and therefore set the perfect example for us.
Jesus Christ certainly did not show weakness when He cleansed the temple, ye the Scripture says that He was meek.
Meekness not mean that I am weak, it only means that I have yielded my power, my purposes to the purposes of God.
I have yielded up control.
This person is meek because he has died to all self-righteousness.
He knows that he cannot claim any merit before God.
Meekness is submission under provocation, the willingness rather to suffer than to inflict injury.
The meek person leaves everything in the have of him who loves and cares.
Let me show you a practical example of this from the Scripture.
In Genesis 13, you have Abraham and when he left Ur of the Chaldees, he took his nephew Lot with him, and they had a family disagreement.
And there was a strife between the herdmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdmen of Lot’s cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land.
Now, Abraham had the right to the land.
He was God’s man and Lot was the hitchhiker.
But Abraham handled it in a remarkable way.
And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be brethren.
Is not the whole land before thee? separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left.
Folks, that is meekness; that is power under control.
Abraham had the power to do whatever he wanted, it was his land, but he yielded the power to Lot.
Even though he had the power, he would not use it for his own advantage.
But allowed the purposes of God to unfold.
Then there is Joseph who had the power as the prime minster of Egypt to avenge himself against his brothers.
But as you read the account in Genesis 42-46, you will find that he did the exact opposite.
He had the power, but he yielded that power to allow the plan of God to unfold.
Then there is David and the remarkable situation where Saul was chasing David.
In 1 Samuel 24, Saul was chasing David and David came upon Saul in a very indelicate situation where he and his men where hiding.
David found Saul, his enemy and really the enemy of the Lord, in a time where he could have leaped upon him and overtaken Him and would have overthrown his enemy.
David had the power of the moment and he could have seized that moment.
And he said unto his men, The LORD forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the LORD’S anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the LORD.
So David stayed his servants with these words, and suffered them not to rise against Saul. But Saul rose up out of the cave, and went on his way.
Then there is Moses:
(Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.)
Moses, the greatest leader in all of Jewish history, was said by God to be very meek, more than anyone on the face of the earth.
When you think of Moses, you also think of a man that was fearless.
Going to the most powerful man in the world, Pharoah, and ordering him to release the people of Israel.
And not only did he go, but he kept going back until Pharoah obeyed the voice of the Lord.
So, the concept of meekness is not that it is weakness.
It is power that is under the control and God and is used for the betterment of others and not ourselves.