Good morning, Saylorville. Good morning. It’s good to be with you here this morning as we continue in our series in Matthew on the Beatitudes. And we’ll be looking at Matthew chapter 5. But before we do that, let’s have a word of prayer together. Lord, it’s good to be here this morning, here to worship you, here to give you glory, here to learn from your word. And Lord, it’s not a mistake that you have each individual here in this room sitting in their seat this morning. You know every heart. You know every pain and struggle and joy and worry and anxiety. And you want to speak to our hearts this morning. So Lord, would you give us hearts to listen to you, to hear from your word. As we talk about meekness, Lord, it’s not an easy word. It’s not an easy concept. Help us to grasp it, to understand it, and to live it out. We pray these things in Jesus’ holy name. Amen. Matthew chapter 5. And we’re going to start in verse 1 and read to you verse 5, which is the passage that we’ll be looking at specifically this morning. “Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to 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 those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.'” And here’s the verse we’re looking at. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” As we get started this morning, I want to ask you a question. Would you consider yourself a meek person? Would you consider yourself a meek person? In order to answer that question, you have to understand what meek means. It’s not something we talk about. It’s not a common word. We don’t use it in our everyday language or in our culture. It’s often looked upon as a negative word. Most people think weak, pushover, timid, quiet. I don’t know a lot of people who actually want to be called meek. I’ve spent a lot of time with a lot of men. I’ve been on wilderness trips, weeks, spent weeks with men. I’ve been in ministry almost 25 years, student ministry, and then what I’m doing now. And I can honestly say I cannot remember a time when I’ve ever met with a guy, and he said, “Would you pray for me that I would be meek?” It just doesn’t happen, especially dudes. We don’t want to be called meek. Why is that? Because in our culture, the word meek has a negative connotation. It’s not something we want to be known for. It’s because we are, as humans, are proud about ourselves. We are living most of the time to build our own kingdom. We as humans want to be known as strong and powerful and having influence, having a title, being in charge, being a leader, being successful. And at the end of the day, we want to win. We do not want to be known as weak or mild or a pushover or timid or unsuccessful, and we don’t want to lose. So when we get to this passage, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to us. We really struggle with this passage in a sense because it’s just confusing, and it would have been confusing to the people that Jesus was talking to. They were oppressed by the Roman Empire, and they’re thinking, “Here comes Jesus. He’s going to set up his kingdom, and let’s go fight. Let’s go win. Let’s grab our swords.” And Jesus, in a sense, flips this whole thing on its head. So Jesus is actually saying that meek is a good word. He’s saying that blessed are those who are meek. Now, remember, blessed is not really the– when we think of blessed, we just think, like, everything’s great and everything’s wonderful, and we’re just like, “Oh, my goodness. Your life is so awesome.” But remember, blessed was the idea of supremely blessed or happy or congratulations or this is the good life– those who are meek. If Jesus is saying it’s good to be meek, then we need to understand what it means and what it means for us today. What does Jesus mean when he says blessed are the meek? In order to understand that, we kind of got to look back at the first two beatitudes in Matthew 5, and Jesus, in a sense, is stacking those two on top of each other, and then we get to the third one, right? So the first one is blessed are the poor in spirit. Secondly is blessed are those who mourn. So in the first one, we need to understand who we are before a holy God– poor in spirit. And we talked about it’s almost like you’re a beggar. You have nothing to offer. If you see a beggar on the side of the street or you roll up in your car and they’re standing there, most people don’t roll down the window and say, “Hey, do you have $5?” Or, “Hey, do you have any food that you could give me?” We wouldn’t do that, right? Because the beggar has nothing to give. The beggar has nothing to offer. And then we get into verse 4, and we talk about those who mourn will be comforted. And we talked about mourning our sin and who we are before a holy God, that Jesus died for our sin. My sin put Jesus on the cross, and he took my place, and he died for me, and he was buried, and he rose again, and he’s alive. And we understand who we are before a holy God and the grace that was shown to us by Jesus coming to die for us. That causes us to be very humble and very meek. We humbly recognize our unworthiness and our sinfulness before a holy God, and that humbles us, and we have nothing to boast about, nothing in our lives to boast about. The only thing we can give to Jesus is our sin and our wickedness. And we put our faith in Christ, and Christ alone, and he makes us a new creation. Look at what 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” When we trust Christ, if you have, the Spirit of God lives in you, it dwells you, and you’re no longer about your kingdom, but you’re about God’s kingdom. We have essentially died to our own kingdom. We have died to self. What about you? Have you died to your kingdom? You don’t understand meekness until you understand the gospel. We understand that we have nothing to offer, and we are humble serving our Lord and King, King Jesus. So as I’ve studied meek and meekness, there are a lot of different ideas and thoughts about meekness, lots of different definitions, really, really smart people, way smarter than me, who have tried to put it in a sentence or in a phrase or in a definition, and I’m not going to give that to you, but I want to give you words that maybe would help us to understand what a meek person would look like. So here it is. A meek person is someone who is gentle, self-controlled, humble, quiet, listener, considerate, submissive, doesn’t defend themselves, is not about selfish gain. This is a Holy Spirit-controlled individual. Meekness is supernatural. Meekness comes from God. We don’t be meek and then get God because of our meekness, but it comes from God. Do any of these words describe you? If you’re a follower of Jesus, these are the things that should describe us. The opposite of meek is pride, anger, harshness, revengeful, unrepentant, self-sufficient, and selfish ambition. You see the two contrasts between the two, right? The two differences. And when I think of those two differences between the flesh and the spirit, I think of Galatians 5, 16. Let’s read this. This is kind of a big chunk, but I think it’s important for us to just understand the differences, and you can see the contrast between the two. But I say, “Walk in the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident–sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” But here’s the difference. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.” Those of us who have trusted Jesus as Savior, as we see in Matthew 5, 5 says, “Those who are meek, those who have trusted in the Lord, will inherit the earth.” They are the ones who will rule. Those listening to Jesus had to be somewhat surprised by this. This doesn’t make any human sense. It seems like the powerful, the influential, the confident, the successful, they’ll rule the world, which is true today, right? Everybody thinks that’s who will rule. That’s what the people listening to Jesus would have thought back then. But Jesus flips the whole thing on its head and says, “Guess what? Actually, the meek are the ones who will inherit the earth in this kingdom, Jesus’ kingdom now and in the future.” This actually is coming out of a psalm. Psalm 37, 11 says, “But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.” Look what Romans 8, 16 through 17 says, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” This is crazy. “And if we’re children, then we’re heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” We have all of the blessings now and in the kingdom to come. We will reign with him in the new heavens and the new earth someday, which is an amazing thing to think about. So what do we do now? What do we do now, now that we’re here, we’re living? You got to go home after this. You got to go to work. You got to go to school. How are we supposed to live? What is our purpose? We’re here to serve our king, to be more like Jesus. We are to live for him and live a life of humility or meekness. We are to live on mission and make Jesus the main story. One of our core values here is that Jesus rescued me from eternal death, so I will live my life on earth for myself? No, it says Jesus rescued me from eternal death, so I will live my life on earth for him. We are to be a reflection of Jesus in our everyday lives as we interact with others. A true test of meekness in our lives is our interactions with other people. What do your interactions look like right now? What do your interactions look like? Is it about you? Is it about your kingdom? Are you responding to people with meekness or with pride? So if we’re to look like Jesus, how did Jesus live his life here on earth? And there’s obviously lots and lots of scripture that we can look at and talk about, but we’re just going to look at a couple of them. And we actually looked at this back at Easter, Matthew 21, verse 5, where it talks about Jesus being humble. It says, “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'” That comes right out of Zechariah 9. Jesus was gentle and lowly. Look at Matthew 11, 28 through 30. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon me and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” We see Jesus was falsely accused multiple times, and he never defended himself. He remained silent, even though the accusations weren’t even true. But Jesus wasn’t weak either. We see several examples of him standing for truth and calling out truth. You see in the temple, when he goes into the temple and he pushes out all of the money changers. He calls out the religious leaders, says, “Hey, we’re not going to do this.” So he speaks a hard, firm word, and he even calls out his buddy Peter at the same time. So he didn’t just sit back and just be trampled on. He confronted truth and spoke truth when he needed to, but Jesus was meek at the same time. So Jesus is standing up for what is right, but he’s not defending himself or being self-promoting, even though he could have, because he was perfect. We are not perfect. We are totally unworthy to defend ourselves. Isaiah 64, 6, we looked at this last week, “All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.” We are so quick to defend ourselves. Why do we defend ourselves? What are we actually defending? We’re not that good. But I think we really want to look good. We want our kingdom to look good instead of Jesus’ kingdom. We would never say that out loud. We would never talk about that in community groups. We would never say that in our house. But by the way we live, by the words we say, we’re essentially saying, “I want my kingdom to look good.” We want to look successful. We want to look like we have it all figured out. But Jesus tells us to live in meekness, under the Spirit’s control. We are to live humbly in this world and to reflect Jesus as we interact with others. I love this passage in Philippians, because it’s such a good challenge to us of how we should live and then also Jesus’ great example. Look at Philippians 2, 5-8. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” What an example. So what does meekness look like for you and me? How do we live and grow in meekness? Meekness is not natural. We naturally want to fight for ourselves. We naturally want to make ourselves look better. Meekness is supernatural. When we trust Christ, he gives us the power to live for Christ and to die to ourselves. Look at what Galatians 2.20 says. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” If you know Jesus, at that moment, your kingdom died, and you live for a different kingdom. I want to read several passages that talk about this and what it looks like to live a meek life. And I want you to listen for those words and those concepts and the idea of being humble and being gentle. And I would even encourage you to just close your eyes and listen as I slowly read through these passages. And think of your life. And think of your interactions. And think of the people that you interact with and what that looks like for you daily. James 1.19-20, “Know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person 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 rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” James 3.13-18, “Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” Ephesians 4.1-3, “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, for the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.” And lastly, Colossians 3.12-14, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” Those are good verses. Those are good things to meditate on. These should encourage us. And listen, some of you are thinking, “I can’t do that.” We have to remind ourselves, if you have a personal relationship with Jesus, the Spirit of God lives inside of you, and you have the power to respond and interact with people in the right way. Not in myself, not in your own power, but in God’s power to be meek and to be humble. The more we walk in the Spirit and submit to the Spirit, the more we’ll be controlled by the Spirit, and that is what we want. More people, more like Jesus. What about you? Are you living a life of meekness? Are you becoming more like Jesus? Do you look more like Jesus today than you did six months ago? The true test of meekness is how you interact with other people. Let me read that again. The true test of meekness is how you interact with other people. I can say I’m humble. I can say I’m patient. I can say that I’m gentle. I can say I’m self-controlled. But that really comes into practice as we interact with one another. So how are you doing? Are you defensive? Are you angry? Are you self-promoting? Or do you respond in meekness? Some of you this morning are being tested in this right now. You had a name that popped into your head right now. You had a face that you saw. They’re challenging you. You want to defend yourself? You want to lash out? You want to prove to them that you’re right? They don’t seem to be listening to you. They seem to be overlooking you. It might be a spouse. It might be a friend. A family. Family member. Coworker. Parents. They’re testing you right now. They’re attacking your faith. And you might be acting out in anger or you want to defend yourself. But that person that maybe came to your mind, I want you to pray for them just right now. Pray for them. Pray for your heart. Pray for their power to respond in a godly, Christlike way. Some of you might need a heart check this morning. As I was studying this, I thought, you know, meek. I can speak about meekness. The more I studied, the more I thought, man, this is convicting. I think I’m doing okay. I look good on the outside. I’m a pastor. Been here a long time. I think I got this. And as I continued to study and I continued to ask the Lord to reveal to me things in my own heart, he revealed two things that are not super easy to admit. One was pride. I know everybody says pride. But here’s the heart of it. I think I’m better than you. I’ll never tell you that. But I think my kingdom is better than yours. I think I can think better. I’m more disciplined. I can go on and on. The other one was anger. And I would even say quiet anger. And what I mean by that is I probably would never yell at you or yell at my wife or my kids or my coworkers on staff here, but in my heart, in my heart, I’m angry. What about you? What’s God showing you? What word is coming to your mind? You know what it is. You just might not want to admit it. We should be the most meek people on the face of the earth. People we interact with should see it lived out. And we should be the most meek people on the face of the earth. And in our weakness, we can boast in Christ. Because that’s where our strength comes from. And Lord, work in hearts right now, even as we sing at the end here. Convict people of pride, of anger, of selfishness. Lord, that they would confess it and turn from it. And God, you are so loving and so caring. You want us to come to you. We do that this morning. In Christ’s name, amen.